[Space] Baseline Universe

[Flyndaran]

TL9 safetech with only three giant FTL ships that carry space stations for instant set up in new systems.

One alien species with a monopoly on the FTL ships, and a few others lifted from the stone age. Screw the prime directive. ;)
One aquatic cuttlefish like species with status issues.
One uplifted species that came from the FTL guys' sister planet.
One anomalous species from a sulfuric acid covered planet with ATR 1.

I'm not sure if I would include humans. Or maybe have a few individuals "abducted" while the rest of earth lives ignorantly of the Federation.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Often, yes. But the higher the level of technology the harder it is to wipe out a society completely. I just don't see how you could wipe out a TL12 interstellar society plausibly.

Oh, I agree. That's part of the big mystery. Where did they go? Why? Plus, in order to fit in with our observable reality (where space telescopes haven't seen any dyson spheres or other such projects) why did they disguise all their mega-engineering projects so fastidiously? What were they hiding from?

Given my GMing predilictions, there'd probably be some kind of "cosmic horror" answer.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Often, yes. But the higher the level of technology the harder it is to wipe out a society completely. I just don't see how you could wipe out a TL12 interstellar society plausibly.

One idea I've had is for a setting where healthy/active interstellar states are TL11 with isolated "hermit kingdoms" at TL12 where the residents are either waiting to Ascend or to die from boredom and having made themselves redundant.

I will acknowledge that this part borrows from Uplift.

Various immortal aliens who are the last representatives of vanished races would wander around sightseeing. At least three of them will have started covering their ships with rectangular panels of blue wooden veneer and traveling with human "companions".

This part of course is completely original.

[ImperialOne]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran;

Often, yes. But the higher the level of technology the harder it is to wipe out a society completely. I just don't see how you could wipe out a TL12 interstellar society plausibly.

Law of Nature? There is always some bigger fish in the sea. Perhaps a powerful entity simply creates a pocket universe and removes a society from known existence? Sure, the society isn't destroyed per se, but it is certainly "wiped-out/gone as far as the crest of the universe is concerned.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Suppose you were going to run an (interstellar) Space game. Or in fact are.

I actually like a great deal of varriability in my Space games, still, you asked about a baseline setting.

What would your Tech Level be?

Tech Level Nine with FTL and Matter Transmitter superscience. But otherwise, straight TL9, though very Transhuman Space! in many ways now. I guess STAR TREK has colonized my brain.

Would you have spacefaring alien rivals to humanity or just genetic variants of humanity?

There would be others, either, as in THS just forming out of humanity, or full blown aliens, even if they are technically human. The STAR TREK option of humanlike aliens is good for me. Really Alien aliens is also fun.

What would be your preferred propulsion model?

I prefer a cheap reliable jump-drive for the established routes and an expensive tricky warp-drive for explorers. That way, the galactic mains have strategic value, but the off-the-beaten-track areas are lively too. Just harder to reach. World on the Jump-Drive routes are in cheap quick contact with other star systems, like the major trading nations of the 21st century. Systems that you need to reach by Warp-Drive are like 17th century North America or 18th century Madagascar, isolated but not sealed off.
[/quote]

How far in the future would it be?

It depends on how much cultural change my setting needs. If you need neo-human speices to have their own evovled cultures, that can take centuries. If I simply want modern people in space, fifty years on and handwaving. It varies.

Why would be good.

[sgtcallistan]

What would your Tech Level be?

Mixed: from primitive/fallen worlds to TL11/Star Wars/Dune level, to finds of higher tech from earlier times (also human, oddly).

Would you have spacefaring alien rivals to humanity or just genetic variants of humanity?

Both: most people you meet are humans or variations thereof due to separation over time/radiation/genetic manipulation in the distant past (includes cat-men, dog-men, etc. for colour, a nod to Cordwainer Smith, and to give the players a race problem to rise above).
Then you meet some slightly superior aliens, who look like very different bipeds.
Then you discover they are also basically human stock...

What would be your preferred propulsion model?

I use 'conversation drive' as adapted from the old WEG Star Wars game.
The journey lasts long enough to have a conversation/planning session; or to cut away to what others are doing at that moment.
Cinematic, basically.
The propulsion drive itself is even simpler; 'it works until it doesn't'.
Still needs a ship to accelerate up to speed/away from a gravity well.
Helps the dramatics, y'know.

How far in the future would it be?

Far, far future (Dune), or long, long ago (Star Wars). Dramatically the same I feel, as we don't have to worry about Earth or so many of it's problems. YMMV.

Why would be good.

Why? Just because. I find that good. ;)

[roguebfl]

I like use Asimovian Jumpdrives for my FTL drives, it allow space opera battles becuase your restrict to STL inside a gravity well, Navigation routs to avoid gravity wells bettwen you and your target destination.

if your players have issue with FTL communications, no problem you just use Jump Drive curers, the Pony Express Rides again 8)

Also like Uplift/Babylon 5 feel that humans aren't the biggest kids on the block 8)

[Frost]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Suppose you were going to run an (interstellar) Space game. Or in fact are.

What would your Tech Level be?

For my curent homebrew setting TL10^ is probably the best description though the defigning paridigm is Conservitive Hard SF unless I need superscience to solve a specific problem (ok so its a cop out, but so what). TL 10 (slightly edited) strikes me as having a good ballence between novelty and familiarity.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Would you have spacefaring alien rivals to humanity or just genetic variants of humanity?

Both have their uses. My gut instinct will always be humans only, but at the end of the day one or two non-humanoid, non-PCable races are too useful a plot device not to keep in reserve. When I need to play the alien card I have a couple of races picked out ready for use although it hasn't come that far yet.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

What would be your preferred propulsion model?

Either fast superscience STL or slow FTL. I have used both in various incarnations of the setting with some sucess but for the curent version I have gone back to STL with a pesudo-velocity drive pinched almost verbatim from David Pulver's 'Meridian' setting. This suits the campaign because it makes interstellar travel a big deal without being completely unatainible it also suits the episodic nature of my campaigns.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

How far in the future would it be?

Given the slow nature of travel I tend to use a rough outline of a future history running from about 100 years from now for 1500+ years. The timescale is chosen for much the same reasons as the TL. The relitively early starting point provides a degree of familiarity while alowing a measure of exoticism that can then build over time as settlement expands and cultures evolve and diverge.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Suppose you were going to run an (interstellar) Space game. Or in fact are.

What would your Tech Level be?

My Oriichalcum Universe has a future 'space setting' as well as a setting ~30,000 years in the past for non-Earth-related uses if need be.

My 'future space' setting has uses a 3e scale, but the basic Terran tech level is 3e TL9 and TL10, (probably about 4e TL10), with a lot of TL8 gear still around, and a smattering of 'special' gear that could be treated as 3e TL11 and TL12 (probably 4e TL11). I make a lot of mods to the scales, though, and I work on the assumption that the laws of physics are such that 3e TL10 represents a 'natural plateau', it takes a lot of effort abd resources to get any higher (it partly has to to with the scale gap in physics between the electroweak and strong nuclear forces).

(This helps explain why different societies might operate at the same tech level even though one is much older than the other.)

Certain people and groups have access to 'exotic' technologies that for special-case reasons are equivalent to some forms of 3e TL11-12 gear, at extraordinary expense in money and effort and resources. But for the most part it's 3e TL9 and TL10 technology for the advanced peoples, with modifications to things like AI and robotics and medicine.

Would you have spacefaring alien rivals to humanity or just genetic variants of humanity?

Variant humans (meaning subspecies of Homo sapiens) and near-humans (other non-interfertile species of genus Homo) exist all over the Milky Way, all evolved from Terran stock and spread there thousands of years ago by dei ex machina entities. They're already out there when Terrans reach the stars. These variant-humans and near-humans fuifill the role of 'rubber suit aliens' Star Trek style, enabling friendships, romances, personal animosities, etc, beteen beings just different enough to be fun, while remaining basically enough like us to be interesting.

(Their home environments were reshaped to be enough like Earth that humans can operate there easily...usually. This is natural, since these 'aliens' are our close genetic cousins, so their native environs have to be much like Terra and thus comfortable for Terrans...though some some fun special cases exist.)

There are also 'alien aliens', biochemically of the same basis as we (their anestors too were once Terran, but the most recent common ancestor might have lived 100 million years ago), they can be very different, with evolutionary histories that shape them to be veyr much unlike us. Fungal intelligence, cephalopod intelligence, sapient rodents, avians, cetaceans, etc. For complicated reasons, most of this second group also has a few freaky things in common with us, and most of their cultures are very young.

Then there are the 'reallly alien aliens', with non-Terran origins, alien biochemistry, totally different. There is cryogenic life, including sapient life, based on liquid helium, and there are even more alien entities which fulfill the campaign of role of angels/gods/plot devices.

But precisely because the more alien creatures are more alien, they interact less often (usually) with Terrans than our near-cousins and half-slblings.

Why all this? Because it lets me have a plausible excuse for lots and lots and lots of worlds where unprotected humans can live, adventure, and operate without heavy protective suits, and interact face-to-face with aliens who are still enough like us to be interacted with usefully.

(What do a cryogenic helium-based alien and a guy from Chicago have to fight over, trade for, or talk about? And how can they interact in any way save while wearing heavy protective suits, since their natural environs are 100% instantly fatal to each other? A Human is to a Helian as a being with blood made of liquid iron and breathing rock-plasma is to a Human. If you have to wear such protective suits, why not just use teleoperated machines in the first place?)

The 'middle-aliens', evolved from Terran stock in the anicent past, but far from Human, enable closer interaction with creatures still very unlike us, but who can share environments clement, or at least tolerable, to each other, or who can use each other's environments with a breather mask instead of a full-coverage suit of armor. Since we have a common biochemistry, and need some of the same resources, there's more to talk about and fight about, too.

The common ancient-Terran heritage also gives me an evolutionarily-valid excuse for 'animal people' aliens like the Kzinti, if I want to use it, or to have Mongo-like worlds where megalodons and tyrannosaurs still roam, waiting to interact with the hero(ine) from Terra, and to produce alien environments extrapolated from Terran ones.

What would be your preferred propulsion model?

Nuclear rockets are common (fission mostly), along the lines of NERVA and its cousins, antimatter-fueled rockets (not photon drives, but ships using tiny amounts of seetee to react with tons of propellant) exist, but are uncommon and very expensive.

Physics advances have enabled FTL travel, and also allowed the creation of drives are appear to be (but are not) reactionless, and have been combined with traditional propulsion to make nuclear-lightfield style rockets of extreme efficiency and enormous ISP and thrust.

The 'reactionless' drive actually exchanges momentum with other bodies by suiperscience means, which limits it in some ways and helps prevent R-bombs, but the same drive can be used for both FTL and sublight propulsion, efficiency falls near stars and moreso near planets, more local mass makes the drive less efficient. (Thus, sometimes the same ship might be able to go from Sol to Alpha Centauri in, say, a week, but also need three or four days to get from Earth to Mars, since in the inner System it works less well).

The 'reactionless' drive requires a McGuffin material, orichalcum, to work. That makes stardrives fantastically expensive (orichalcum goes for aruond 90 million dollars a gram), and leads to the practice of building FTL drives into huge 'barge carrier' ships that transport smaller shuttles and other ships from star to star. Having your own internal star drive is a major luxury...and can make you a very tempting target for less-than-entirely-honorable sorts.

How far in the future would it be?

The setting is roughly 2055-2125. This is far enough off to be useful, but close enough to keep enough continuity to make nations, peoples, languages, etc, familiar and useful. Several major new political powers have risen on Earth, but many familiar nations are still there, too. Foods from other star systems can be purchased in the markets, but you can still get a traditional Philly cheesesteak (wi or wit-out as you please) or Chicago hot dog, too.

The Caribbean Union is the wealthest polity on Earth per capita, and Argentina is a military superpower, but the Scots and the English still can't quite decide whether they want to be one state or two. The USA still has fifty States, but they aren't exactly the same States, Saint Louis is the Federal capitol city...but the Cubs still play at Wrigley, Texas and California are still rivals, and America still can't make decent cheese...according to the French.

And so on.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Suppose you were going to run an (interstellar) Space game. Or in fact are.

What would your Tech Level be?

That depends on the game. I've got one game on my prospectus which is a TL9 Conservative Hard Science setting, and another two which are TL 11^; one is a retarded progression SafeTech setting set in A Galaxy Far, Far Away, the other is set in Earth's future and is closer to modern thoughts of scientific progress in a medium progression.

Would you have spacefaring alien rivals to humanity or just genetic variants of humanity?

Hmm... Yes. ;)

If I might clarify. The TL9 setting and the far-future-Earth setting both have human variants (one of which I derived from SPANC). The far-future-Earth also has some rival alien races, most of which are not even humanoid. I'm with whoever said "No half-Vulcan races"; humans and other humanoid races should not be able to interbreed unless they all originated on the same planet and have similar enough genetic codes (like orcs, elves, and humans - and occasionally giants, trolls, and ogres - in most fantasy settings). In the Galaxy Far, Far Away, aliens are quite prolific.

What would be your preferred propulsion model?

In the near-future TL9 campaign, chemical rockets, ion drives, and lightsails/mag-sails are the most likely candidates. In the far future setting, I've traded out for reactionless drives. The GFFA setting uses reactionless pseudovelocity drives.

For FTL travel in the far-future setting, I prefer using a "hyperspace onion theory" drive. Using this model, think of RealSpace as being the "skin" of the onion, with hyperspace being "layers" "under" the "skin". The deeper into the "onion" you go, the less time it takes to go between two points on the "skin". However, there is an adverse effect on the human body and mind if you go too "deep" into the "onion"; this makes unmanned probes faster than manned flight, as well as serious regulations as to how fast civilian and military craft are permitted to go. Also, it is impossible to maneuver in hyperspace once your course is set, although anything unexpected can drop you back to RealSpace.

How far in the future would it be?

TL9 hard science: 2100 AD
TL11^ future-earth: Looking at about 2500 to 2700 AD or so.
GFFA: Earth doesn't exist in that galaxy; although it may exist in one that's visible in the night sky or in telescopes. Senator Grebleips will fund a mission composed of his race in the waning days of the Republic to that particular galaxy, where one of the Force-sensitive members of his race will befriend a juvenile native.