There will be a focus on four kinds of personal firearms in the setting: Projectile, Laser, Plasma and Sonic.
Sonic weapons have replaced tazers for the most part, and are very popular in ship-to-ship boarding actions, as there is no risk of penetrating the hull and sonics ignore body armor that isn't heavily sound-proofed (and even then the vibrations will rattle your skull a bit). They're the non-lethal main, basically.
Lasers are, for the most part, in the form of tools modified into weapons or sniper/hunting rifles, since in normal combat being able to see where you're shooting is kind of important, and because they're liable to scatter and disperse in the kind of dust and smoke you get in large-scale combat. It's often used by assassins, but also by hunters. Lasers generally sound like loud pops or cracks followed by faint buzzing, with the more powerful types of beam-weapons being as loud as conventional firearms in our modern world.
Plasma weaponry serves much the purpose of lasers in most space opera, the bolts of superheated plasma you fire are slow enough to be visible and look awesome, and most plasma weapons are indeed called "blasters". Plasma weapons have recoil and can overheat the barrel, and yes, they do make 'pew, pew'-sounds. Oh yeah, you get green, white, blue, red bolts. Depends on the gas used.
Projectile weapons mainly come in three varieties, flechette, caseless chemical propellant and electromagnetic coil-weapons. Flechette weapons are often used for those wanting something with punch that incapacitates rather than kills, most police forces around the galaxy uses some variety of them, with everything from tranq-darts to versions of smart-bullet beanbag ammo that knocks out but leaves no lasting injuries. Most flechette weapons use compressed air or other gases to propel the ammunition, and it's not 100% safe, you still get occasional fatalities. Still, as most humans say, better to have trigger-happy law-enforcement agencies 78% less likely to be able to kill you than what we used to have.
Caseless is basically regular firearms, but without shell casings, the issues had with such weapons having been solved at this point. Caseless ammo basically has cartridges where the body is the propellant itself, and the bullet is directly fastened to it, this allows for smaller cartridges and no flying shell casings. These guns still have to eject the burning gases and particles, so they still need about the same amount of moving parts, but at least the load of a pistol is bigger, and calibers can be larger. Firearms with caseless, chemically propelled ammunition are extremely common, but for understandable reasons they're rarely used in spaceships or on environments in space.
Electromagnetic coil-weapons are heavy-duty stuff, the equivalent of a Desert Eagle .50 but more accurate and a hell of a lot deadlier. Ironically, the projectiles are much smaller. Attempts at making larger coil-guns than pistols have yielded varying results, for the most part the weapons require wielders who can handle the recoil, which means either people in military-grade powered armor or species much stronger than humans.
tisdag 19 januari 2010
lördag 2 januari 2010
The Veen - setting-building notes
I have a very specific thing in mind when I write the Veen. It's the early Victorian British, mainly, the early to mid-1800's, but with fashions and art more suited to the Rococo or even Renaissance, lots of gaudy colors, and even their battlecruisers have useless crenelations and coral-like protrusions. The mentality is very much White Man's Burden, arrogant Imperialists who believe just because they have the biggest and most powerful stuff they deserve the largest pieces of the cake, and anyone not as advanced as they are inferior and deserve barely mockery.
Note that these are technically good guys. Yeah.
In the setting, the Veen loathe/hate/dislike humans for two reasons. The first is the same reason they dislike any species not their own: They're not Veen. Veen society is, for the most part, deeply bigoted towards non-Veen.
But the second reason, the reason why bigotry towards humans is actually encouraged by the governments of the Veen, is known only to a few of them. It's a deep, dark secret, and one they would prefer never to get out: Humans and Veen might be related.
Genetic deep scans reveal human and Veen to have more than 99% of their DNA in common. In fact, the scientists who performed the tests surmised it would not be impossible for Veen and humans to procreate.
Add to this that humans smell good to the Veen. Their olfactory senses are slightly sharper than ours, and to them, our natural body odors, even hidden away by washing and use of perfumed hygiene articles, trigger several bodily reactions, such as endorphins and other natural reactions. Basically, they like our smell. Some Veen have surmised that this is somehow intentional, going by the Precursor Theories that are common in the Alliance (the idea that a precursor species went about the galaxy seeding life and technology) and theorizing that humans and Veen were made for one another.
...naturally, a fairly tightly wound, up-tight monoculture like that of the Veen Empire can't very well have a walking aphrodisiac species gallivanting about in Alliance space.
For GM's this isn't all that difficult to portray. Humans get a slight bonus to social rolls against Veen, and that's about it.
As for what Veen look like, well, they look mostly human-like, but instead of scalp-hair they have thick, vestigial, mostly useless tentacles, and instead of eyebrows they have little neat fleshy ridges. They have eye-lashes, but that's just evolutionary good sense. The tentacles are pretty much just dead weight, and men have shorter tentacles than women (they still reach the shoulders by adulthood, so there's very little difference to non-Veen). They're also vaguely erogenous zones, about as sensitive as ear-lobes. They're slightly shorter on average than humans, and their eyes lack whites and pupils, tending towards solid-color hues of green, blue, black and purple. They don't see much better than humans, though.
Note that these are technically good guys. Yeah.
In the setting, the Veen loathe/hate/dislike humans for two reasons. The first is the same reason they dislike any species not their own: They're not Veen. Veen society is, for the most part, deeply bigoted towards non-Veen.
But the second reason, the reason why bigotry towards humans is actually encouraged by the governments of the Veen, is known only to a few of them. It's a deep, dark secret, and one they would prefer never to get out: Humans and Veen might be related.
Genetic deep scans reveal human and Veen to have more than 99% of their DNA in common. In fact, the scientists who performed the tests surmised it would not be impossible for Veen and humans to procreate.
Add to this that humans smell good to the Veen. Their olfactory senses are slightly sharper than ours, and to them, our natural body odors, even hidden away by washing and use of perfumed hygiene articles, trigger several bodily reactions, such as endorphins and other natural reactions. Basically, they like our smell. Some Veen have surmised that this is somehow intentional, going by the Precursor Theories that are common in the Alliance (the idea that a precursor species went about the galaxy seeding life and technology) and theorizing that humans and Veen were made for one another.
...naturally, a fairly tightly wound, up-tight monoculture like that of the Veen Empire can't very well have a walking aphrodisiac species gallivanting about in Alliance space.
For GM's this isn't all that difficult to portray. Humans get a slight bonus to social rolls against Veen, and that's about it.
As for what Veen look like, well, they look mostly human-like, but instead of scalp-hair they have thick, vestigial, mostly useless tentacles, and instead of eyebrows they have little neat fleshy ridges. They have eye-lashes, but that's just evolutionary good sense. The tentacles are pretty much just dead weight, and men have shorter tentacles than women (they still reach the shoulders by adulthood, so there's very little difference to non-Veen). They're also vaguely erogenous zones, about as sensitive as ear-lobes. They're slightly shorter on average than humans, and their eyes lack whites and pupils, tending towards solid-color hues of green, blue, black and purple. They don't see much better than humans, though.
söndag 27 december 2009
Humanity & The Alliance
Humanity is not a member of the Alliance.
There, now you can stop claiming Federation-ripoff and focus on what the Alliance is (League of Nations rather than UN) rather than what it isn't.
What humanity is, as far as the Alliance is concerned, is a bunch of too-clever upstart monkeys who stumbled on technology way out of their league who should have stayed in their backwater hillbilly sector of the galaxy, preferably for good.
...no, wait, that's just the Veen who think that. But the Veen thinks that about anyone who isn't Veen.
In truth, Humanity is not a unified whole, as such. While the nations have changed and grown or shrunk, borders have shifted and political power has moved around. Europe is now mainly controlled from the economically powerful Scandinavian countries, and the center of the EU is located in Copenhagen, Denmark. France, Germany and the UK being the impoverished, debt-ridden nations of the bunch...Italy is still a total mess, though. The South American Nations (SAN) is what came out of a grass-roots movement tired of Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Dole running their affairs, it's a solid union of power, money and resources, and it has more financial, military and political might than the US ever had. The United Nations of Africa (UNA) is still riddled with financial troubles and war, but they're no longer owned by oil and diamond-tycoons. In fact, the big losers of the late 21st century and the leap into space were the US, Russia and China, who all moved too slow for various reasons.
Human planets, corporations and star nations are all falling head over heels trying to cut deals with Alliance nations, and this is driving a massive surge in funding for xenobiology, xenosociology and all-round xenology. Scientists are having a field day (well, except for when they have to report things like "We're sorry, but the Blurnfs have no economy and find the idea of ownership of anything offensive to the point where they will attack anyone trying to exploit anything within their territory...and yes, we realize that sounds like an oxymoron."), human tech is making leaps and bounds and opportunist con-men, thieves, exploiters and smugglers are making a fortune on the way things don't quite work yet.
There is a movement for unification of human interests, usually derided as being too pie-in-the-sky-libertarian, seeing as their main plan for how to do this seems to be "Step 1.) Everyone joins our movement, Step 2.) All taxes and laws regulating commerce go bye-bye, Step 3.) ???, Step 4.) Profit!". As things look right now, more regulation seems more likely, and perhaps a separate judicial branch run independent of nation borders to police things...
There, now you can stop claiming Federation-ripoff and focus on what the Alliance is (League of Nations rather than UN) rather than what it isn't.
What humanity is, as far as the Alliance is concerned, is a bunch of too-clever upstart monkeys who stumbled on technology way out of their league who should have stayed in their backwater hillbilly sector of the galaxy, preferably for good.
...no, wait, that's just the Veen who think that. But the Veen thinks that about anyone who isn't Veen.
In truth, Humanity is not a unified whole, as such. While the nations have changed and grown or shrunk, borders have shifted and political power has moved around. Europe is now mainly controlled from the economically powerful Scandinavian countries, and the center of the EU is located in Copenhagen, Denmark. France, Germany and the UK being the impoverished, debt-ridden nations of the bunch...Italy is still a total mess, though. The South American Nations (SAN) is what came out of a grass-roots movement tired of Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Dole running their affairs, it's a solid union of power, money and resources, and it has more financial, military and political might than the US ever had. The United Nations of Africa (UNA) is still riddled with financial troubles and war, but they're no longer owned by oil and diamond-tycoons. In fact, the big losers of the late 21st century and the leap into space were the US, Russia and China, who all moved too slow for various reasons.
Human planets, corporations and star nations are all falling head over heels trying to cut deals with Alliance nations, and this is driving a massive surge in funding for xenobiology, xenosociology and all-round xenology. Scientists are having a field day (well, except for when they have to report things like "We're sorry, but the Blurnfs have no economy and find the idea of ownership of anything offensive to the point where they will attack anyone trying to exploit anything within their territory...and yes, we realize that sounds like an oxymoron."), human tech is making leaps and bounds and opportunist con-men, thieves, exploiters and smugglers are making a fortune on the way things don't quite work yet.
There is a movement for unification of human interests, usually derided as being too pie-in-the-sky-libertarian, seeing as their main plan for how to do this seems to be "Step 1.) Everyone joins our movement, Step 2.) All taxes and laws regulating commerce go bye-bye, Step 3.) ???, Step 4.) Profit!". As things look right now, more regulation seems more likely, and perhaps a separate judicial branch run independent of nation borders to police things...
söndag 29 november 2009
The Alliance & The Kragga
The Alliance
The Alliance is a loose conglomerate of independent star nations that have banded together for trade, cultural exchange and mutual defense. The best description for it is a League of Nations that actually works, mainly because space is big, vast and full of resources. There's no real need to war on one another when everything you need is easy to get without violence. FTL travel is the big unifier, not just with interstellar distances, but also with equalizing economies and creating true post-scarcity societies. Who needs matter-energy conversion when you can get everything you need with less energy than it takes to light a small town?
The Alliance consists of over four hundred species, of which over eighty percent are humanoid. The humanoid shape is simply an evolutionary short-cut for a lot of things, and while number of limbs and digits might sometimes differ, two legs, one head, opposable thumbs and up-right walking seems to be a common factor in developing what we humans consider civilization. Naturally, the remaining twenty percent range from things like intelligent cephalopoids to six-legged insect-hamsters, but for the most part, the aliens of the Alliance are beings you can fairly easily understand and associate with.
In fact, the whole humanoid thing is sort of more disturbing than the non-humanoids. Uncanny Valley gets a whole new meaning when the only real physical difference between yourself and an alien species from three thousand lightyears away is the fact that they lack fingernails and have funny-colored hair, as with the Chimauri, or have crimson-magenta skin, tentacles for hair and lack body-hair, as with the Veen. It's somehow easier to deal with aliens that look like barely bipedal winged iguanas than someone who looks like a model who just stepped out of the prosthetics make-up department at Paramount Pictures.
Kragga
The Kragga, in contrast, are truly alien, unless you ask a zoologist about pack hunters. The best description of the Kragga by a survivor was "think saber-toothed polar bears with a temper who figured out how to drive a starship by hitting it with a blunt object". These aggressive, crude, savage aliens seem like they shouldn't be a true threat, except for a few very important issues: Firstly, the Kragga have no real unified leadership, not as we humanoids know it. Killing a leader of Kragga just means they'll split into a hundred splinter groups, all eager to prove their worth as the one who feasted on the bones of the one who defeated their temporary hunt-leader. It's much like striking at a school of fish, you'll get a few of them, but then they reform elsewhere as if nothing happened. And secondly, they breed faster than rabbits. Kragga females can carry as many as four litters a year, and generally have 10-20 young per litter, half of which survive to adult age, which is a mere couple of years after birth. They have short lifespans, young adults at 2-3, fully grown at 5, senior at 10, dead of old age at 15.
The thing that makes the Kragga so dangerous to anyone else is the fact that their brains don't have a non-prey setting. They're physically unable to see anyone who isn't Kragga as anything but potential food (and even with this, they'll happily consider other clans of Kragga potential dinner), even species they can't really digest. They're not very good hunters of intelligent prey, but make up for it in enthusiasm and single-mindedness, much like wolverines they'll attack as much as they can in the hopes of getting something, anything.
The history of how the Kragga made their way into space is shrouded in myths and tall tales. Some claim they did it through single-mindedness, others that they were genetically engineered weapons, but the story that makes the most tragic sense is that once, the Kragga were confined to a single planet, a 2g world further from their pale blue-white sun than Earth, where they were the supreme pack hunters of a planet full of very aggressive wildlife adapted to a frigid climate.
To this world came a delegation of peaceful aliens, who saw the primitive societies below and decided to try uplifting the dominant intelligent species...who promptly butchered and ate the first contact party, and then spent many years trying to figure out how to work the ships and technology.
The story's been used many times to justify multiple safeguards and safety procedures when First Contact situations come up, and there is a hint of truth to it, the technology of the oldest Kragga ships seems to belong to a now long-dead species of peaceful chelonians who would, in fact, contact any species they encountered.
The Kragga are basically small packs of huge, furry, heavy-gravity land-sharks who have figured out how to load and fire a gun, but they are not very good at technology. When they need manual labor or brains, they save a few of the people they attack and work them to the bone, once they're unable to continue slaving for their captors they're eaten and a new batch is caught. This also forces the Kragga to constantly expand, hunt down new prey and assault other species, though some inter-species warfare for slaves and food supplies does take place. Populations on planets taken by the Kragga can basically be written off as dead, anyone not killed in the initial attack will be eaten within days of the occupation. Wait a week or two and the Kragga will leave due to lack of food.
It's the aggressive drive to hunt and the high metabolism that makes the Kragga so deadly. At 300 kilos minimum weight they are big, sturdy and require meat almost constantly, and since they use anything they take, they're fairly well-armed. A Kragga might not know how to rig a cannon, but it's amazing what threats of being eaten can do for a sapient's willingness to cooperate. Of course, they'll eat you anyway once you're done, unless they need you for maintenance, but still.
[Basically, the Kragga are not space orcs, they're space ogres or gnolls. With fur, horns and shark-teeth.]
The reason the Kragga haven't already conquered everything inhabited is the same as why they're so hard to wipe out: they have no central leadership. Kragga society is divided into small clans of maybe 20-30 individuals, when a clan gets bigger than that they'll either start killing one another or the younger will break off and start their own clan. Each clan runs on survival of the fittest, the fit runs things and eats the weaker. Other clans are either rivals, or potential food. Usually both. But every now and then, Kragga clans get so numerous that something akin to a lemming migration occurs, a large concentration of Kragga ships will suddenly coordinate somewhat and head for the nearest inhabited space to kill, massacre and feast on anyone standing in their way. Once they've gotten far enough from the original area the cooperation will quickly end, and whoever remains are those who were best at killing the others. Such migrations are known as "waves", though the Kragga call them "hunts", and usually they're lead by a single, strong Kragga pack-leader.
By the way, it's both singular and plural. One Kragga, many Kragga.
Currently, the main deterrent against occasional Kragga waves is the Veen Royal Star Navy, the humanoid Veen have a massive military presence in the space bordering the areas of Uncharted Stars where the Kragga hold sway, and their ships are more than a match for single waves of Kragga. Some say that when the population pressure in Kraggan space gets high enough this will end in a massive Wave that not even the Veen will be able to hold back, but this is, hopefully, just a theory. Others say when the pressure gets high enough the Kragga will turn on one another instead, most hope this is what will occur.
=================================
Next time: Humanity and the Alliance.
The Alliance is a loose conglomerate of independent star nations that have banded together for trade, cultural exchange and mutual defense. The best description for it is a League of Nations that actually works, mainly because space is big, vast and full of resources. There's no real need to war on one another when everything you need is easy to get without violence. FTL travel is the big unifier, not just with interstellar distances, but also with equalizing economies and creating true post-scarcity societies. Who needs matter-energy conversion when you can get everything you need with less energy than it takes to light a small town?
The Alliance consists of over four hundred species, of which over eighty percent are humanoid. The humanoid shape is simply an evolutionary short-cut for a lot of things, and while number of limbs and digits might sometimes differ, two legs, one head, opposable thumbs and up-right walking seems to be a common factor in developing what we humans consider civilization. Naturally, the remaining twenty percent range from things like intelligent cephalopoids to six-legged insect-hamsters, but for the most part, the aliens of the Alliance are beings you can fairly easily understand and associate with.
In fact, the whole humanoid thing is sort of more disturbing than the non-humanoids. Uncanny Valley gets a whole new meaning when the only real physical difference between yourself and an alien species from three thousand lightyears away is the fact that they lack fingernails and have funny-colored hair, as with the Chimauri, or have crimson-magenta skin, tentacles for hair and lack body-hair, as with the Veen. It's somehow easier to deal with aliens that look like barely bipedal winged iguanas than someone who looks like a model who just stepped out of the prosthetics make-up department at Paramount Pictures.
Kragga
The Kragga, in contrast, are truly alien, unless you ask a zoologist about pack hunters. The best description of the Kragga by a survivor was "think saber-toothed polar bears with a temper who figured out how to drive a starship by hitting it with a blunt object". These aggressive, crude, savage aliens seem like they shouldn't be a true threat, except for a few very important issues: Firstly, the Kragga have no real unified leadership, not as we humanoids know it. Killing a leader of Kragga just means they'll split into a hundred splinter groups, all eager to prove their worth as the one who feasted on the bones of the one who defeated their temporary hunt-leader. It's much like striking at a school of fish, you'll get a few of them, but then they reform elsewhere as if nothing happened. And secondly, they breed faster than rabbits. Kragga females can carry as many as four litters a year, and generally have 10-20 young per litter, half of which survive to adult age, which is a mere couple of years after birth. They have short lifespans, young adults at 2-3, fully grown at 5, senior at 10, dead of old age at 15.
The thing that makes the Kragga so dangerous to anyone else is the fact that their brains don't have a non-prey setting. They're physically unable to see anyone who isn't Kragga as anything but potential food (and even with this, they'll happily consider other clans of Kragga potential dinner), even species they can't really digest. They're not very good hunters of intelligent prey, but make up for it in enthusiasm and single-mindedness, much like wolverines they'll attack as much as they can in the hopes of getting something, anything.
The history of how the Kragga made their way into space is shrouded in myths and tall tales. Some claim they did it through single-mindedness, others that they were genetically engineered weapons, but the story that makes the most tragic sense is that once, the Kragga were confined to a single planet, a 2g world further from their pale blue-white sun than Earth, where they were the supreme pack hunters of a planet full of very aggressive wildlife adapted to a frigid climate.
To this world came a delegation of peaceful aliens, who saw the primitive societies below and decided to try uplifting the dominant intelligent species...who promptly butchered and ate the first contact party, and then spent many years trying to figure out how to work the ships and technology.
The story's been used many times to justify multiple safeguards and safety procedures when First Contact situations come up, and there is a hint of truth to it, the technology of the oldest Kragga ships seems to belong to a now long-dead species of peaceful chelonians who would, in fact, contact any species they encountered.
The Kragga are basically small packs of huge, furry, heavy-gravity land-sharks who have figured out how to load and fire a gun, but they are not very good at technology. When they need manual labor or brains, they save a few of the people they attack and work them to the bone, once they're unable to continue slaving for their captors they're eaten and a new batch is caught. This also forces the Kragga to constantly expand, hunt down new prey and assault other species, though some inter-species warfare for slaves and food supplies does take place. Populations on planets taken by the Kragga can basically be written off as dead, anyone not killed in the initial attack will be eaten within days of the occupation. Wait a week or two and the Kragga will leave due to lack of food.
It's the aggressive drive to hunt and the high metabolism that makes the Kragga so deadly. At 300 kilos minimum weight they are big, sturdy and require meat almost constantly, and since they use anything they take, they're fairly well-armed. A Kragga might not know how to rig a cannon, but it's amazing what threats of being eaten can do for a sapient's willingness to cooperate. Of course, they'll eat you anyway once you're done, unless they need you for maintenance, but still.
[Basically, the Kragga are not space orcs, they're space ogres or gnolls. With fur, horns and shark-teeth.]
The reason the Kragga haven't already conquered everything inhabited is the same as why they're so hard to wipe out: they have no central leadership. Kragga society is divided into small clans of maybe 20-30 individuals, when a clan gets bigger than that they'll either start killing one another or the younger will break off and start their own clan. Each clan runs on survival of the fittest, the fit runs things and eats the weaker. Other clans are either rivals, or potential food. Usually both. But every now and then, Kragga clans get so numerous that something akin to a lemming migration occurs, a large concentration of Kragga ships will suddenly coordinate somewhat and head for the nearest inhabited space to kill, massacre and feast on anyone standing in their way. Once they've gotten far enough from the original area the cooperation will quickly end, and whoever remains are those who were best at killing the others. Such migrations are known as "waves", though the Kragga call them "hunts", and usually they're lead by a single, strong Kragga pack-leader.
By the way, it's both singular and plural. One Kragga, many Kragga.
Currently, the main deterrent against occasional Kragga waves is the Veen Royal Star Navy, the humanoid Veen have a massive military presence in the space bordering the areas of Uncharted Stars where the Kragga hold sway, and their ships are more than a match for single waves of Kragga. Some say that when the population pressure in Kraggan space gets high enough this will end in a massive Wave that not even the Veen will be able to hold back, but this is, hopefully, just a theory. Others say when the pressure gets high enough the Kragga will turn on one another instead, most hope this is what will occur.
=================================
Next time: Humanity and the Alliance.
torsdag 24 september 2009
Isolated Sol and other setting-building fluff
...and I'm back. Finally.
Sheesh.
Took me long enough.
Anyway, as I mentioned at the end of the last post, I'm gonna start the whole Futurum (and it's still a placeholder name, not what I'll actually use) blog off for real with some general setting fluff.
Timeline & General Setting Conceits
The game takes place approximately 130+ years from now, in the mid-2130's. Since I have no metaplot, all writing for this game assumes it is the year 2135, I was inspired by the original 1st Edition Exalted, which had as a basic premise that there was only backstory, no metaplot, since player characters were assumed to break any metaplot by their actions and so adding one would be kind of pointless. I placed the game 100+ years into the future because it's long enough away to let it be vaguely plausible while still being a highly improbable space opera future.
As mentioned in the first post, the setting of Futurum is a space opera setting, or more accurately a space hong-kong-action-movie setting, with wild stunts, people shooting blaster pistols akimbo while diving sideways across the room and hot alien babes (for all preferences, hopefully).
This is not a science fiction setting. I want to make this clear from the start. The setting will not yield to any hard sf conceits, will not follow the rules of the "realism"-proponents, and will not have any major transhumanist themes. There are playable humanoid synthetics, but mostly for flavor, not to explore what humanity is or any of that stuff. There are some very good games that already do that, such as GURPS: Transhuman Space and a few others I can't recall right now. If the exploration of humanity, the idea of mankind transcending their flesh and the post-singularity phenomenon is something for you...you might want to delete this bookmark right now. That ain't my bag.
Ain't nothin' wrong with the bag, it's just not mine.
Futurum...is space opera/HK action movie/space western. Even though it lacks magic powers (psi, the Force, whatever you wanna call it) it's not a real-world-style setting. So if anything in the timeline or science is wrong, wonky or odd...this is intentional. No, really. It's not just that I suck at science.
...hey, if you can accept Star Wars for what it is, you can accept this.
Okay, so...
2010-2080: The Expansion Era
2010-2022: The world goes on as it has. Financial crisis, politics, small wars, North Korea waving their nuclear dick every time the military elite and government runs out of food and money. The usual.
2023: Scientist Erwin Galimuna finds, in an experiment to create a new polymer, what he at first believes to be a compound that generates static electricity when exposed to heat. As it turns out, the reason things stick to the material has nothing to do with electromagnetism, but with a different force of nature: gravity. The material can be made to repel or attract, and the force is literally gravitic. Extensive experiments using particle colliders and powerful electron microscopes allow for the final, working evidence of so-called "graviton" waves, or artificial gravity.
2025-2070: Safe and simple artificial gravity allows not only for technologies so far only dreamed of (hover-vehicles from buses down to skateboards, airplanes that require no wheels, resurgent dirigible technology), but also helps a heap in existing or experimental technologies. Galimuna-Tokamak fusion becomes common and inches out fission power, space launches into orbit becomes simple (though kind of slow) when no powerful rocket boosters are necessary to leave the gravity well, and within decades mankind has not only colonized near and far orbit, but also have cities on the moon and a small terraforming station on Mars.
The big boom comes in the early 2070's, as corporate and national interests race for the asteroid belt and the untold wealth in minerals that lie within it, not to mention the moons of the gas giants. Simple ion engines or oxygen thrusters combined with crude gravity-drives allow for travel times within the solar system of months instead of years.
2080-2115: The Stellar Expansion
2080: Experiments in force-field technology yields results, though not quite the way one expected. The technology is too energy-inefficient to be easily portable, but vehicles, cities, roads, all kinds of implementations are dreamed up. But it also opens up true intrasolar travel. Combining the technology with gravity-tech creates what is known as repulsor technology. The slow, steady space-launches of old are but a memory, a ship no bigger than a small jet can easily reach orbit within seconds, and the inertial compensator fields that combining gravitech and force-field tech in different alignments make allows for immense speeds.
2081: The Earth-Jupiter passenger vessel SS Lu Bu vanishes en route after attempting to break the light-speed barrier. The last, fragmented transmissions reveal desperate screams for help and rantings about "space not making sense". Most FTL-experiments are put on ice or slowed down as everyone tries to figure out just what went wrong. Most theorize it has to do with the mass of the vessel increasing exponentially, but the messages oddly mention nothing of this...
2082: The Russian deep-space probe Laika VI finds what appears to be the devastated wreckage of a spaceship approximately half a light-year outside the outer rim of the Sol system. The message takes over six months to reach Hades Station in Pluto orbit.
2083: The Red Cross rescue vessel Louis Pasteur arrives at the wreckage alongside a Kenyan military escort, and finds that the ship is the Lu Bu. The old passenger liner has been exposed to tremendous forces and has hullbreaches all over, the crew is dead...but due to exposure to space, nothing else. The ship's log reveals that the ship arrived mere hours after the disappearance near Proxima Centauri, over 4 parsecs away. The ship's surviving crew effected repairs and attempted to repeat the journey home the same way they arrived, there the log ends. The question scientists ask themselves is: why did they survive traveling at lightspeed? Twice?
2086: Scientists at Jomo Kenyatta University, Botswana, dust off an old 20th century scientific theory...hyper-space. A theoretical plane of existence next to ours, where the laws of physics are different, allowing for what amounts to skipping around faster-than-light. Many governments and corporations and universities conduct repeated experiments using powerful unmanned probes to repeat the incident, and while many successfully send a ship into hyperspace, few escape it, and those that do are badly banged up.
2091: Syad Fida Hussain, at the University of Sorbonne, manages to crack the calculations necessary to send a vehicle safely into and out of hyperspace, and also how to send communications through it. His calculations yield him fame and notoriety (and that year's Nobel prize), but it also makes for an invaluable discovery that finally allows mankind to see the stars. Unfortunately for science fiction fans throughout human space, the calculations also show that exiting hyper-space before you entered it relative to your own time is impossible. So...no DeLorean time machines. Bummer.
2092-2115: Mankind colonizes the nearby stars. None have habitable worlds, as such, but reasonably self-sufficient dome colonies are built on several of the more exploitable planets. None hold life...
By the end of 2114, mankind controls a sphere of space roughly 22 lightyears in diameter. The UN is charged with policing, patrolling and controlling human space, and the UNSN (United Nations Star Navy) is provided materiel and personnel by most nations, since none want to be left out. It is the biggest undertaking ever taken by any alliance of nations in the history of mankind
2115: The Dokidoki Express, a commercially owned cargo ship on the Luyten-Sol run, is hailed by an unknown vessel. The vessel turns out to belong to a species that calls itself the Mirrimel (closest approximate phonetic enunciation), and everything changes again.
The Mirrimel (say it very fast, with a stiff, thin-lipped mouth) are peaceful, sulfur-based cephalopoid-like life-forms that have possessed hyperdrive for about a century, and have slowly colonized their own sphere of interest. Diplomatic and mercantile envoys are sent from both sides.
2116-2135: Current Era/Exploration Age
2116: Encouraged by mankind's first instance of First Contact and the existence of sapient life in the galaxy, the UN sets up the Cooke Foundation. The foundation is entrusted with 0.5% of every UN member nation's total annual budget (gross, not net), to be portioned out in prizes for any explorer to find evidence of sapient life, actual sapient life and habitable worlds that have not been claimed by anyone else.
The gold-rush to the stars begins.
2117: Explorer-scout Ginseng Money out of Ares City, Mars, discovers a reptilian civilization in the Hollerman-Tilpfer system, 35 light-years from Sol. The reptiles are peaceful herbivores (though they get...rambunctious in mating season) who have reached an early 21st century technology level, and though they're only mildly interested in humanity's more advanced technology, they strike up peaceful relations.
2122: Korean explorer Park Soon-Gie finds herself stranded with a broken hyperdrive just off the axel of Hayasawa 21. After two days of broadcasting an SOS, a ship of unfamiliar make arrives. The species is called the Chirruug, and are wing-less avians who most of all resemble five-foot turkeys with enlarged heads. The Chirruug provide parts, and Soon-Gie finds herself wealthy beyond her wildest dreams on her return to Earth.
2128: A ship from what calls itself the Aquamarine Hegemony exits hyperspace near Hades Station. The ship contains three different sapient species (the amphibious mammalian Kriiiii, the arthropod-like C'K'K'T and the sapient silicon-based fungal Colonies) from the same number of star systems, who have heard of Earth from the Mirrimel and decided to open trade relations. The three star nations have a very...abrasive mannerism, and relations become strained very quickly.
2135: The merchant and explorer Daniel Yokabwe-Hiroiichi procures the star-maps to a rumored inter-species space station 67 parsecs from Sol, and travels there in his beat-up freighter the Iskander.
He discovers Junction Station (this is the most accurate translation to date), a trading outpost and gigantic artificial city in space, situated near the borders of thirteen powerful star nations, and home to over five hundred different species.
Three weeks later, the Aquamarine Hegemony is attacked by unknown forces arriving from the othr side of the Milky Way. The only message that escapes before every sapient is brutally slaughtered is "The Kragga are coming."
=====================================
...and that ends the basic timeline.
Why didn't Earth get any messages from other civilizations if they're that near?
Well, it's like this, the sub-particle transmission waves of the positron hadron flux reacted with the chitty-chitty-bang-bang-we-love-you energies and...
...no, I'm sorry, I won't do Star Trek technobabble. Simplest explanation? We're in the equivalent of a space valley, surrounded by mountains on all sides. Basically, any radio-wave transmissions have to pass through so much cosmic junk, radiation belts, nebulas and sheer interstellar crud that by the time it reached Sol it was just random white noise. That's why Fermi's Paradox does not apply here.
...pseudo-junk-science? Well, duh. See the setting conceit rant above.
Next Up: The Alliance Species & The Kragga
Sheesh.
Took me long enough.
Anyway, as I mentioned at the end of the last post, I'm gonna start the whole Futurum (and it's still a placeholder name, not what I'll actually use) blog off for real with some general setting fluff.
Timeline & General Setting Conceits
The game takes place approximately 130+ years from now, in the mid-2130's. Since I have no metaplot, all writing for this game assumes it is the year 2135, I was inspired by the original 1st Edition Exalted, which had as a basic premise that there was only backstory, no metaplot, since player characters were assumed to break any metaplot by their actions and so adding one would be kind of pointless. I placed the game 100+ years into the future because it's long enough away to let it be vaguely plausible while still being a highly improbable space opera future.
As mentioned in the first post, the setting of Futurum is a space opera setting, or more accurately a space hong-kong-action-movie setting, with wild stunts, people shooting blaster pistols akimbo while diving sideways across the room and hot alien babes (for all preferences, hopefully).
This is not a science fiction setting. I want to make this clear from the start. The setting will not yield to any hard sf conceits, will not follow the rules of the "realism"-proponents, and will not have any major transhumanist themes. There are playable humanoid synthetics, but mostly for flavor, not to explore what humanity is or any of that stuff. There are some very good games that already do that, such as GURPS: Transhuman Space and a few others I can't recall right now. If the exploration of humanity, the idea of mankind transcending their flesh and the post-singularity phenomenon is something for you...you might want to delete this bookmark right now. That ain't my bag.
Ain't nothin' wrong with the bag, it's just not mine.
Futurum...is space opera/HK action movie/space western. Even though it lacks magic powers (psi, the Force, whatever you wanna call it) it's not a real-world-style setting. So if anything in the timeline or science is wrong, wonky or odd...this is intentional. No, really. It's not just that I suck at science.
...hey, if you can accept Star Wars for what it is, you can accept this.
Okay, so...
2010-2080: The Expansion Era
2010-2022: The world goes on as it has. Financial crisis, politics, small wars, North Korea waving their nuclear dick every time the military elite and government runs out of food and money. The usual.
2023: Scientist Erwin Galimuna finds, in an experiment to create a new polymer, what he at first believes to be a compound that generates static electricity when exposed to heat. As it turns out, the reason things stick to the material has nothing to do with electromagnetism, but with a different force of nature: gravity. The material can be made to repel or attract, and the force is literally gravitic. Extensive experiments using particle colliders and powerful electron microscopes allow for the final, working evidence of so-called "graviton" waves, or artificial gravity.
2025-2070: Safe and simple artificial gravity allows not only for technologies so far only dreamed of (hover-vehicles from buses down to skateboards, airplanes that require no wheels, resurgent dirigible technology), but also helps a heap in existing or experimental technologies. Galimuna-Tokamak fusion becomes common and inches out fission power, space launches into orbit becomes simple (though kind of slow) when no powerful rocket boosters are necessary to leave the gravity well, and within decades mankind has not only colonized near and far orbit, but also have cities on the moon and a small terraforming station on Mars.
The big boom comes in the early 2070's, as corporate and national interests race for the asteroid belt and the untold wealth in minerals that lie within it, not to mention the moons of the gas giants. Simple ion engines or oxygen thrusters combined with crude gravity-drives allow for travel times within the solar system of months instead of years.
2080-2115: The Stellar Expansion
2080: Experiments in force-field technology yields results, though not quite the way one expected. The technology is too energy-inefficient to be easily portable, but vehicles, cities, roads, all kinds of implementations are dreamed up. But it also opens up true intrasolar travel. Combining the technology with gravity-tech creates what is known as repulsor technology. The slow, steady space-launches of old are but a memory, a ship no bigger than a small jet can easily reach orbit within seconds, and the inertial compensator fields that combining gravitech and force-field tech in different alignments make allows for immense speeds.
2081: The Earth-Jupiter passenger vessel SS Lu Bu vanishes en route after attempting to break the light-speed barrier. The last, fragmented transmissions reveal desperate screams for help and rantings about "space not making sense". Most FTL-experiments are put on ice or slowed down as everyone tries to figure out just what went wrong. Most theorize it has to do with the mass of the vessel increasing exponentially, but the messages oddly mention nothing of this...
2082: The Russian deep-space probe Laika VI finds what appears to be the devastated wreckage of a spaceship approximately half a light-year outside the outer rim of the Sol system. The message takes over six months to reach Hades Station in Pluto orbit.
2083: The Red Cross rescue vessel Louis Pasteur arrives at the wreckage alongside a Kenyan military escort, and finds that the ship is the Lu Bu. The old passenger liner has been exposed to tremendous forces and has hullbreaches all over, the crew is dead...but due to exposure to space, nothing else. The ship's log reveals that the ship arrived mere hours after the disappearance near Proxima Centauri, over 4 parsecs away. The ship's surviving crew effected repairs and attempted to repeat the journey home the same way they arrived, there the log ends. The question scientists ask themselves is: why did they survive traveling at lightspeed? Twice?
2086: Scientists at Jomo Kenyatta University, Botswana, dust off an old 20th century scientific theory...hyper-space. A theoretical plane of existence next to ours, where the laws of physics are different, allowing for what amounts to skipping around faster-than-light. Many governments and corporations and universities conduct repeated experiments using powerful unmanned probes to repeat the incident, and while many successfully send a ship into hyperspace, few escape it, and those that do are badly banged up.
2091: Syad Fida Hussain, at the University of Sorbonne, manages to crack the calculations necessary to send a vehicle safely into and out of hyperspace, and also how to send communications through it. His calculations yield him fame and notoriety (and that year's Nobel prize), but it also makes for an invaluable discovery that finally allows mankind to see the stars. Unfortunately for science fiction fans throughout human space, the calculations also show that exiting hyper-space before you entered it relative to your own time is impossible. So...no DeLorean time machines. Bummer.
2092-2115: Mankind colonizes the nearby stars. None have habitable worlds, as such, but reasonably self-sufficient dome colonies are built on several of the more exploitable planets. None hold life...
By the end of 2114, mankind controls a sphere of space roughly 22 lightyears in diameter. The UN is charged with policing, patrolling and controlling human space, and the UNSN (United Nations Star Navy) is provided materiel and personnel by most nations, since none want to be left out. It is the biggest undertaking ever taken by any alliance of nations in the history of mankind
2115: The Dokidoki Express, a commercially owned cargo ship on the Luyten-Sol run, is hailed by an unknown vessel. The vessel turns out to belong to a species that calls itself the Mirrimel (closest approximate phonetic enunciation), and everything changes again.
The Mirrimel (say it very fast, with a stiff, thin-lipped mouth) are peaceful, sulfur-based cephalopoid-like life-forms that have possessed hyperdrive for about a century, and have slowly colonized their own sphere of interest. Diplomatic and mercantile envoys are sent from both sides.
2116-2135: Current Era/Exploration Age
2116: Encouraged by mankind's first instance of First Contact and the existence of sapient life in the galaxy, the UN sets up the Cooke Foundation. The foundation is entrusted with 0.5% of every UN member nation's total annual budget (gross, not net), to be portioned out in prizes for any explorer to find evidence of sapient life, actual sapient life and habitable worlds that have not been claimed by anyone else.
The gold-rush to the stars begins.
2117: Explorer-scout Ginseng Money out of Ares City, Mars, discovers a reptilian civilization in the Hollerman-Tilpfer system, 35 light-years from Sol. The reptiles are peaceful herbivores (though they get...rambunctious in mating season) who have reached an early 21st century technology level, and though they're only mildly interested in humanity's more advanced technology, they strike up peaceful relations.
2122: Korean explorer Park Soon-Gie finds herself stranded with a broken hyperdrive just off the axel of Hayasawa 21. After two days of broadcasting an SOS, a ship of unfamiliar make arrives. The species is called the Chirruug, and are wing-less avians who most of all resemble five-foot turkeys with enlarged heads. The Chirruug provide parts, and Soon-Gie finds herself wealthy beyond her wildest dreams on her return to Earth.
2128: A ship from what calls itself the Aquamarine Hegemony exits hyperspace near Hades Station. The ship contains three different sapient species (the amphibious mammalian Kriiiii, the arthropod-like C'K'K'T and the sapient silicon-based fungal Colonies) from the same number of star systems, who have heard of Earth from the Mirrimel and decided to open trade relations. The three star nations have a very...abrasive mannerism, and relations become strained very quickly.
2135: The merchant and explorer Daniel Yokabwe-Hiroiichi procures the star-maps to a rumored inter-species space station 67 parsecs from Sol, and travels there in his beat-up freighter the Iskander.
He discovers Junction Station (this is the most accurate translation to date), a trading outpost and gigantic artificial city in space, situated near the borders of thirteen powerful star nations, and home to over five hundred different species.
Three weeks later, the Aquamarine Hegemony is attacked by unknown forces arriving from the othr side of the Milky Way. The only message that escapes before every sapient is brutally slaughtered is "The Kragga are coming."
=====================================
...and that ends the basic timeline.
Why didn't Earth get any messages from other civilizations if they're that near?
Well, it's like this, the sub-particle transmission waves of the positron hadron flux reacted with the chitty-chitty-bang-bang-we-love-you energies and...
...no, I'm sorry, I won't do Star Trek technobabble. Simplest explanation? We're in the equivalent of a space valley, surrounded by mountains on all sides. Basically, any radio-wave transmissions have to pass through so much cosmic junk, radiation belts, nebulas and sheer interstellar crud that by the time it reached Sol it was just random white noise. That's why Fermi's Paradox does not apply here.
...pseudo-junk-science? Well, duh. See the setting conceit rant above.
Next Up: The Alliance Species & The Kragga
söndag 15 mars 2009
Genre: Suggested reading and viewing.
To give those going into this setting a sort of inkling of what inspired this setting, I'm presenting here a small gathering of media that provided ideas for the genre and setting ethos.
Suggested Reading: Mike Resnick's Santiago is a kind of space western, with aliens, cyborgs, con-men and gunslingers in a galaxy where you travel from star to star with no more complication than crossing the Earth's ocean on a ship today. It's very good, and has a very "legends are self-perpatuating" tone to it. Warren Ellis' graphic novel Orbiter is a clear inspiration for the hyperdrives in the setting (allowing for faster-than-light without time travel complicating things), and the White Wolf paper&pencil roleplaying game Trinity (originally ÆON, before Viacom and MTV got their law-suit-happy panties in a bunch over someone using that word in a sci-fi context) is a very good example of the general tech level of the setting (no transhumanism, no AI, but still interstellar FTL, biotech and fusion). Other inspirations are the space romps in Alan Moore's Tom Strong, as well as his Jonni Future (set in the same universe).
Suggested Viewing: Farscape, the tv-series and miniseries, to start with, to depict just how weird and wonderful and generally oddly humanoid the universe in Futurum is, and also, hot alien babes. Titan AE is another good watch, no hot alien babes (am I annoying you yet?), but cool spaceships, a generally light tone, and surprisingly clever heroes. It may also be the first sci-fi movie to take the implications of energy-to-matter conversion seriously (if an entire dominant spacefaring race is made of sapient energy-forms, how would they react when a bunch of barely evolved apes figure out matter-to-energy?), unlike Star Trek. Star Wars has a few fingers in the game (mainly for the hot alien bab- ow, quit hitting me!), as well as Chronicles of Riddick (the general competency of the protagonists in CoR is close to the starting PC of Futurum). The Fifth Element is a light-hearted romp into goofy 70's French sci-fi, with awesome action scenes, tons of humor and a visually gorgeous galaxy, not to mention hot alien babes. Ha! And last but not least, Firefly, a space western in a highly improbable solar system (and when I say space western, I mean space western) with likeable characters, cool spaceships and excellent genre awareness. And hot human babes.
Suggested Listening: The original score of the Farscape TV-series is a good place to start, as well as the score to the videogame Mass Effect, but also various 80's synth, synthpop and the likes. Eric Serra's score to The Fifth Element is another good one. Generally, as long as you avoid the too-recognizable scores to the various Star Treks and Star Wars movies, you're golden.
Suggested Playing: Mass Effect has somewhat clumsier FTL and such, but it has an amazing design and a retro 80's vibe to it, in the best way, and the vast, unexplored galaxy is very much akin to the Uncharted Territories of Futurum. Other good games are the Star Control series, but other than that most sci-fi-flavored gaming tends towards the darker spectrum. Halo might be a good setting to borrow from, excluding the somewhat more horror-oriented Flood.
Next: Some brief history and background. Just exactly why did humanity never receive any transmissions when the galaxy is so darn populated?
Suggested Reading: Mike Resnick's Santiago is a kind of space western, with aliens, cyborgs, con-men and gunslingers in a galaxy where you travel from star to star with no more complication than crossing the Earth's ocean on a ship today. It's very good, and has a very "legends are self-perpatuating" tone to it. Warren Ellis' graphic novel Orbiter is a clear inspiration for the hyperdrives in the setting (allowing for faster-than-light without time travel complicating things), and the White Wolf paper&pencil roleplaying game Trinity (originally ÆON, before Viacom and MTV got their law-suit-happy panties in a bunch over someone using that word in a sci-fi context) is a very good example of the general tech level of the setting (no transhumanism, no AI, but still interstellar FTL, biotech and fusion). Other inspirations are the space romps in Alan Moore's Tom Strong, as well as his Jonni Future (set in the same universe).
Suggested Viewing: Farscape, the tv-series and miniseries, to start with, to depict just how weird and wonderful and generally oddly humanoid the universe in Futurum is, and also, hot alien babes. Titan AE is another good watch, no hot alien babes (am I annoying you yet?), but cool spaceships, a generally light tone, and surprisingly clever heroes. It may also be the first sci-fi movie to take the implications of energy-to-matter conversion seriously (if an entire dominant spacefaring race is made of sapient energy-forms, how would they react when a bunch of barely evolved apes figure out matter-to-energy?), unlike Star Trek. Star Wars has a few fingers in the game (mainly for the hot alien bab- ow, quit hitting me!), as well as Chronicles of Riddick (the general competency of the protagonists in CoR is close to the starting PC of Futurum). The Fifth Element is a light-hearted romp into goofy 70's French sci-fi, with awesome action scenes, tons of humor and a visually gorgeous galaxy, not to mention hot alien babes. Ha! And last but not least, Firefly, a space western in a highly improbable solar system (and when I say space western, I mean space western) with likeable characters, cool spaceships and excellent genre awareness. And hot human babes.
Suggested Listening: The original score of the Farscape TV-series is a good place to start, as well as the score to the videogame Mass Effect, but also various 80's synth, synthpop and the likes. Eric Serra's score to The Fifth Element is another good one. Generally, as long as you avoid the too-recognizable scores to the various Star Treks and Star Wars movies, you're golden.
Suggested Playing: Mass Effect has somewhat clumsier FTL and such, but it has an amazing design and a retro 80's vibe to it, in the best way, and the vast, unexplored galaxy is very much akin to the Uncharted Territories of Futurum. Other good games are the Star Control series, but other than that most sci-fi-flavored gaming tends towards the darker spectrum. Halo might be a good setting to borrow from, excluding the somewhat more horror-oriented Flood.
Next: Some brief history and background. Just exactly why did humanity never receive any transmissions when the galaxy is so darn populated?
måndag 16 februari 2009
Introduction
In the year 2135, Mankind has reached the stars, found a great and wondrously populated universe, and discovered that many assumptions we held were wrong. Also, hot alien babes.
Welcome to the future.
This blog is intended to follow my attempts at turning a bunch of loosely gathered ideas and notes into a coherent roleplaying game setting inspired by light-hearted space opera. The blog name is not the intended title of this setting, it's a placeholder name meant to invoke a sort of retro-futuristic flavor, and the final product will have some other name (one that hopefully isn't copyrighted already).
Welcome to the future.
This blog is intended to follow my attempts at turning a bunch of loosely gathered ideas and notes into a coherent roleplaying game setting inspired by light-hearted space opera. The blog name is not the intended title of this setting, it's a placeholder name meant to invoke a sort of retro-futuristic flavor, and the final product will have some other name (one that hopefully isn't copyrighted already).
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