New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

Cargo Cults suggests that the power balance among Earth's cultures could get radically overturned. After all, these aliens PTTG has set up are far more likely to admire non-Westerners. They'd probably get into fights with the Islamic cultures but many Amazonian native cultures have scary intense pain rituals.

Aliens might find things like democracy or treating the non dominant sex as human offensive. Society could get nightmarish fast.

[Astromancer]

Here's an idea. I've often used the idea of a "TECH SURGE" a type of Reality Quake that changes the technological level of a world without changing anything else. Example: If I caused a Tech Surge in Pre-Revolutionary France (circa 1780) that took the Kingdom of France from a mid-TL5 to an early TL8, I would change only the technology and cause large numbers of people to know and understand the uses of the technologies and how to repair, build, and modify them. Of course TL8 technology in Ancient Regime France would be explosive.

I've normally set up Tech Surges in the USA because America is more culturally able to deal with big technological changes if for no other reasons than most Americans have a positive view of technology and a belief that Americans are uniquely able to deal with such changes. (That belief is wrong, but the simple fact that after generations of anti-technology propaganda we still have that belief, suggests a willingness to face technological changes).

But try a Tech Surge in someplace that doesn't have a positive view of technology or their ability to handle it. If I took mid-1950s Britain from Tech Level 7 to our middle-late TL8, ordinary people might love it, but most of the Chattering Classes would have nervous breakdowns.

Another thought is the economy of the nation getting the Tech Surge. I normally choose the USA for Tech Surges for several reasons including how America's economy distributes and uses technology. However, try a Tech Surge in present day Russia. Remember, a Tech Surge only changes technology. Russia pretty much gave up on technological education for the masses in the 1980s. The knowledge aspects of a Tech Surge would be widely spread in nations like the USA, Germany, Japan, or the UK. But in Russia, the spread would be more restricted.

A Tech Surge in Russia would be a wasting asset. In America, in spite of the corperations, technological knowledge gets spread around. That increases the power of the technology. Present day America facing an early TL9 Russia, which was still exactly like present day Russia in all other ways would be an interesting struggle. Russia would actually have Wunder Weaponds and similar limitations to those Germany have in mass production of weapons in 1944-1945.

Yes, transformation of technology without changing anything else is unrealistic. But it's a game.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Cargo Cults suggests that the power balance among Earth's cultures could get radically overturned. After all, these aliens PTTG has set up are far more likely to admire non-Westerners. They'd probably get into fights with the Islamic cultures but many Amazonian native cultures have scary intense pain rituals.

Aliens might find things like democracy or treating the non dominant sex as human offensive. Society could get nightmarish fast.

Well, that's complicated, isn't it? (And we LOVE complicated). While the aliens are at least as repulsive to humans as vice-versa, the aliens aren't just pointlessly brutal. Yes, their chief deity is a being which resurrects and dies eternally, but rest assured, that's a metaphor for the way the present moment is always passing, but ever-new. Yes, agonized meditation is more painful than the practices normally followed by humans, but the very point is to overcome the pain and become stronger. Yes, daily prayer for the aliens may involve consuming a mixture of dilute sulfuric acid and powdered glass, but for them that's a mild digestive aid. And yes, they do eat their young as a delicacy, but, well, that's tradition for you.

The main bad thing to be said about them is that they are extremely self-interested when it comes to Earth (and the aforementioned paedophagy). They could quite easily share their technology base -- even censored to remove anything useful for making AI if they really care about that -- but they hold their tech close and demand high prices. Aforesaid lack of advanced automation even implies that the relatively populous humans actually are a useful resource for them as everything from domestic servants to machine operators and even entertainers.

As for human groups that work with them, yes some people in the west will be distasteful of some more monstrous elements of their culture. But the west also values open-mindedness and a certain measure of cultural relativism. Nevermind that the west generally considers a deal between consenting parties to be just good business - even if that's selling 10,000 hours of your labor to baby-eating space cannibals for a 2% contribution towards a fusion power plant.

So I foresee collaboration being something which is entirely beside conventional politics. Most political groups would presumably fracture over collaboration... and those proxy conflicts I mentioned earlier would probably start with civil wars.

[Astromancer]

The Voyage of the Ananda

This takes my contribution to another thread and restates it as a setting here.

The Ananda (named for the ecstatic primal pulse of the universe) is a vast and luxurious ship and a permanent festival/carnival/holiday. As both the word holiday (derived from holy day) and the name "Ananda" point out the core of the celebration is passionately religious. This isn't odd. Madi Gras and Carnival generally is the preparation for Lent. Holi in India is both raccous fun and profoundly spiritual. Bast, Demeter, Bachus, Dionysius, Isis, and Cybele, all had holy carnival. The most common description of the Norse gods was "Yule Beings." The most joyous festival of the year was central to who the Aseir were.

But the religious rites come with parades, dances, carnivals, circuses, theater performances (plays, operas, ballet, oritarios, puppets shows, anything and everything), gallery showings, poetry readings, and thousands of attempts to create new forms of art.

As no one world could support this eternal Sacred Festival the Ananda travels the stars. Millions visit the Sacred carnival ship when it visits their star system. Some lucky people live on the Sacred Carnival ship as passengers.

************************************************** *

The Ananda is a city ship. It has a vast crew that lives on the edge of the carnival. People have to cook the food and clean the streets. Some get to work the shows as supporting cast. Think of being a working stiff in 1940s LA. Hollywood is there, as close as your breath, and very far away. The frustration of that is the basis of murder mysteries.

With all of the incredible noise of the Ananda you could hide a great deal of signal. Espionage, smuggling, and other shadow business plagues the city ship. Being a law officer in this city could be interesting to play.

More later.

[Astromancer]

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sky

What are the locals whining about?

They're having trouble breathing.

Surely that's something that they always faced. The planet has very thin air.

We dug a vast pit about twenty kilometers deep and two hundred fifty kilometers in diameter.

How does that not collapse? And why the devil did we do that?

Force Fields mainly and this planet isn't all that tectonically active. More so than Mars, but not very. And we did it for tourism. The air pressure towards the bottom of the pit is near Earth normal. The climate is warm. You can fly using human muscle strength. It's a paradise. But we did concentrate most of the planet's air in the pit.

Paradise Valley is incredible. The gravity is .3 of Earth standard, "sea level" Psi is 15.5, and the climate is semitropical, on an ice world. To bad the natives hate the tourists. But the natives can't come down to were the tourists stay. It's fatally hot for them.

Basically, near sighted plans by the economic development board have bitterly offended the local population. The vast pit dug to create a tourist and leisure area has sucked up so much of the planetary atmosphere that the land area available for agriculture, grazing, and hunting has been reduced by two-thirds. Worse that remaining third isn't as fertile as it was because the planetary weather systems are shot.

The PCs have to prevent a war, which the locals would lose badly, and convince proud warriors to move to another world far away. Given that the locals worship their ancestors that become spirits of the land leaving their homelands is leaving their ancestors, their gods, and their very souls. Not getting them to leave means the very corrupt economic development broad gets to hunt them down like vermin.

[johndallman]

Just how heavily guarded are those force field generators? And did anyone bother to move the former contents of the pit far away?

I suspect that corrupt development board died in the collapse of the pit after sabotage by the locals, and the mountain range built around the pit with the spoil fell in. The surface air pressure won't be entirely restored, but it will be better, and the board's heirs will have learned a lesson about human rights.

[doctorevilbrain]

The whole mountain range collapsed?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by doctorevilbrain

The whole mountain range collapsed?

Given the width of the pit just turning off the force fields wouldn't change things enough. Most of the excavated materials were placed in strategic areas to reduce the tectonic side effects of the excavation. Enough of the excavated materials were placed around the rim to slow down the flow of water into the pit. The board of economic development clearly deserves death by brutal means, but the scum knows how to build a stable structure.

No, the PCs can't allow the locals to attack the Tourist/Leisure Base. It would give the economic development board the right to call in the regular military.

This setting has cyberpunk like elements of truly nasty corruption.

[Inky]

Since the gravity is the same and all that’s happened is that a large quantity of air has been taken out of circulation, wouldn’t just bringing in a lot more air fix it? Possibly, it would just all go to the bottom of the hole and result in the air pressure at the bottom of the hole being higher than it should be, I don’t know off-hand, but, if not, it seems like a civilization that can dig a 200,000 cubic kilometre hole for an ill-thought-out tourist project might be capable of shipping in 200,000 cubic kilometres of air.

It seems like, if you want to play the scenario as written, though, that’s fine so long as you stipulate that the PCs don’t have the sort of clout to be able to do that or to be able to make the board of economic development do it, and that the board of economic development are not all on the planet (the text at the beginning of the post implies that they aren’t, given that the black text person seemed to be surprised by the news that they’d done this) so just murdering the people running the project on the planet will not fix the problem, as tempting as it might be.

[Astromancer]

Inky's idea of bringing in more air is sound. Given the low gravity the main effects on the Tourist site would be making human powered flight easier and sunburn far harder. Which opens up the possibility of peeling off members of the economic development board to fight against each other. Which would be the most effective way to defang such powerful opponents.