[RPG I'm writing] Frontier (Sci-Fi)

[Pelorus]

Hi guys,

I'm soliciting some feedback on 'Frontier', a sci-fi background I'm writing. I'm likely to use my own system (previously used for the 23rd Letter) for the game mechanics.

The setting background is presented in this category on my blog which may be a slightly unconventional way to do it but it's easy to manage/update for me.

http://www.lategaming.com/category/g...sign/frontier/

Influences for the game include Charles Stross, Iain M Banks, Star Trek - there's a little post-apoc in there, a lot of AI, not much in the way of resleeving and hopefully a heap of aliens.

Let me know what you think (either here or there).

[Pelorus]

Summary:
The basic setting assumes that players are highly skilled, highly motivated members of the Explorer division of Human Unity, a 'federation'-alike government. Their job is to make contact, explore gaseous anomalies and try not to get killed in the process.

Terms:
Human Unity - the Human 'empire' based upon very liberal concepts and including humanity and sentient/sapient synthetic intelligences called Experts. Natural humans are definitely transhuman but not generally posthuman - this may start to occur within the scope of the game.

FTL - based upon a discovered wormhole network which permits FTL travel though travel TO the wormhole within a solar system can take a long time. The key to wormhole travel was 'bought' by Human Unity from their first contact, an alien race known to Human Unity as 'The Traders'. There were a lot of items and concepts traded and the science used to catapult humanity beyond the solar system.

Aliens - they're as alien as I can imagine them. i describe a few. In the end, we can see the immense diversity on this one planet so there will likely be a considerable amount of convergent evolution though there are no 'humans with forehead ridges' or 'dark elf analogues'. There are alien races and one is even reputedly 'humanoid' (and the Traders dealt with us using 'androids') but for the most part they are as alien as this biologist can make them (while still making them 'possible')

Science - this is a tricky one. I'm not a physicist but I'm basing it on 'firm' physics. Sure - we have FTL (which immediately makes it not HARD science) but other areas are progressions as I see them. Some areas are vague i.e. I'm not going to talk about memory capacity, processor speeds because I've read sci-fi where these were defined and they were awfully dated within a decade (2300AD and High Colonies spring to mind). There's some science I'm deliberately leaving out because I don't think it's possible within the time and ethics constraints of the setting but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

Combat - ship/ship combat is very deprecated though there are obviously ship-borne weapons. The ability of a stellar society to hit planets with asteroids and the harm that a missile at even low relativistic speeds would do to a craft cannot be underestimated. In other words by the time you detect it, it's likely too late. Combat like this is handled by computers - thinking beings that can think down to the billionth of a second easily.

I'll explain more here and on the blog as time goes on.

[Pelorus]

There are a few themes that I am exploring here. And I'm not being preachy about it.

1. Western Europe is devastated and the USA is somewhat ruined but in recovery - this is due to a particularly nasty ABC war a couple of hundred years ago. As a result, most player characters will be coming from Africa or South America. This is a deliberate move to have the protagonists be predominantly non-white. This one detail actually has alienated one correspondant so far.
   
2. The period after the war was harsh and Earth lost more than 3/4 of her population - due to considerable amounts of conventional warfare and skirmishing. A mix of more modern sensibilities as well as a need to utilise every hand to rebuild society has led to a much more equal society in terms of gender.
   
3. Humanity is rebuilding but also extending and there is definitely a mood of exploration and innovation. At the same time, Humanity is cautious having encountered two hostiles in deep space already - one of which was a lost colony from a corporate Seedship and the other was a swarm intelligence that 'harvests' solar systems.
   
4. Hardly anyone has SEEN an alien. Even on video. We have very little knowledge of their cultures, language, physiognomy. We do have a 'universal translator' algorithm which permits communications but this is a slow process which speeds up as the system learns more of the language.
   
5. there is no FTL comms network. In this case, message relays are the quickest way to transmit. A relay accepts a message from an Explorer, sends a 'message capsule' through the wormhole and when it exits, it transmits the message to the next relay waiting at the gate of a wormhole. Relays only exist at major traffic routes but a couple are carried on Explorer vessels.
   
6. We do have a 'Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' of sorts. A massive repository of knowledge we traded for. Experts and humans alike stufy it around the clock and send instructions to Explorer vessels to check and re-check.

[First Oni]

I have to say that it all sounds very interesting. I like the idea of aliens being very non-human and i love the idea of a game that isn't American/Euro-Centric. There's not enough of those games out there. If written well, they give people more info on the world around us, instead of just our own backyards.

I also like the thought that you can choose what type of game you want to run from being someone out in the universe discovering new things or someone who believes Earth's more important and stays behind to help with the reconstruction. I love choices... it's not just a one-dimensional game.

Those are my initial thoughts. :-)

[tadcan]

Will you be coming down to Gaelcon with the game to play test? They have a place for indy games to run.

I still have my 23rd letter, cyber Ninja, zombi games.

I wrote some extra background for cyber. Then tried to run it as a more hard sci-fi game. Didn't really work.