O1 Galaxy - An RPG Attempt

[Destructionator]

The more I think about the private individuals, the more I like it. It would be nice and different than the O1 world too, in more ways than just window dressing.

We could be wealthy people with a bizarre hobby, a legitimate business man with less than legitimate clients, mobsters, gun runners, the works.


Kenneth Baker, CEO of ArmsTech Ltd. His company is well known for producing military hardware on government contracts. What the authorities don't know though is that he skims a little off the top to build high end hardware for his black market clients.

Rufus Shinra, President of Shinra, Inc. The Shinra company started out as an electric power supplier and later expanded to offer virtually everything, including, and in no way limited to, private armies of high tech soldiers available to anyone who can pay their fee.

Vito Corleone is a wealthy citizen with his fingers in all kinds of activities, without regard to legality. From hotels to gambling and prostitution to racketeering and murder, Mr Corleone does it all. In recent years, the authorities believe he has added drugs to his resume, but like with all the other activities they suspect him of, they can't prove he is directly involved in anything.



Suppose the good Don wants to take out a rival family. He might have his middleman hire Shinra's SPACE SOLDIERs and pay the incredibly high fee to get nothing but the best. Knowing the Don's taste is impeccable, and what happens to people who disappoint him, President Shinra contacts his old friend Kenneth, and arranges to "test fire" ArmsTech's newest military mech right in the direction of the rival's ride... oops, that was a restricted area, he shouldn't have been there in the first place. It's not my fault, coppers, honest!

...but why was $100K transferred to a seedy fellow the day before, with a rap sheet including such evils as hacking navigational computers? Pure coincidence, of course. Certainly not ArmsTech's fault, and Shinra has a well documented paper trail that they paid that fellow for a revolutionary new software algorithm he developed, not for hacking. The Don, of course, has motive, but god damn it, there's no proof. Again!

Mang.

[speaker-to-trolls]

Nice, play Space Mafia today!

Though that would, it must be said, be an entirely different kind of game to most space political games, and require much meditation on the nature of space crime, including Space Murder. Which gives you, Mr Ruppe, something of an advantage from the outset

So yeah, that'd be an entirely different kind of ballgame, especially considering that, as Somes J points out in some of the threads on future people (Homo Sapiens Novus) on his yahoo group, accident and murder are likely to be the number one and two causes of death for nigh immortal transhumanoids, so they will have all kinds of futuristic measures to make Space Murder more difficult.

[Destructionator]

hehe. Though, my brilliantly epic novel takes place in my conservative setting, and also mostly avoids technology even inside there, except as little tangential details. (I want to show there that life in space habitats isn't like what lots of people have in mind when they hear of them; there is no need for Big Brother to be everywhere, and one stray bullet doesn't kill everyone!) So it isn't the best example of transhumanist stuff.

The only specifically sci-fi thing in there is how and where the killer dumped the body.


Space Murder II: Murder in the Space Army (which i'll start once I finally finish writing the current one) be more techy though. Including an epic space fighter battle! I can't resist typing up the cliffhanger right now:

THE END OF ACT V

"Good news, I got the promotion! You're looking at the new Long Range Laser Battery Commander at Luna II. I'd be in prison instead if not for you guys being there for me. Thanks again."

"That's splendid, congratulations. Hey, listen, next time you get a black envelope in the mail, don't open it! "

" So, you going to shut down the corrupt brass next?"

"Yeah, we're gonna head home at the end of the week to report all this to the Royal Inspector in person."

"Well, good luck."

"Yup."


EXT SPACE

We see a small shuttle capsule leave the center of the habitat and dock with a parked interplanetary spacecraft. Its core is about the same size as the SPACE HUMMER, but with a different layout and two big solar panel wings sticking out.

Shortly after the capsule docks, the large ship fires up its plasma rocket, and ever so slowly, but steadily, starts to accelerate.

(While there'd be a somewhat big gap in reality between the next few events, we condense time to avoid boring the viewer and running out of screen time.)

We then zoom into the habitat and see a makeshift SPACE FIGHTER (that is, a space car with an extra fuel tank and a machine gun strapped on) launch off the surface and start gaining on the WINGED SPACESHIP.


INT SPACESHIP

(Despite the engines burning, this scene is still virtually zero-g due to the plasma rocket's poor acceleration.)

The computer sounds RED ALERT. Adam and Leila quickly seal themselves in the cockpit and strap in.

He looks over the radar screen. Just one other ship on the screen, the space fighter, definitely heading right at them. They are too far away from the habitat cluster for anybody else to be around to help.

"Fuck me, their spacers are pros too. Hold on!" He starts manipulating the controls.

EXT SPACE

The bigger and slower WINGED SPACESHIP starts to rotate and veer a bit off to the side. The camera zips to the SPACE FIGHTER and we see tracer rounds fire out of its gun, in the direction of the other ship. Freeze frame.


TO BE CONTINUED

oh gods however will they get out of this one?! (cookie to anyone who guesses correctly)

[Czernobog]

I'd like to keep FTL, and would like the game to be about polities rather than corporations or individuals. I'm also leery about allowing the Culture in, since they seem a bit too powerful for this type of game.

[speaker-to-trolls]

I'd like to keep FTL,

Eh, whatever, as I said there's a certain amount of extra thought that has to be put into the astrography of a solar system, though it also has the plus side of giving people definite places for all their shit rather than the vagueness of 'space'. Unless, that is, anyone has the time and inclination to comb the internet for the location of nearby stars to go in their empire. Respect (of a strange kind) to anyone who does, but I doubt it's going to happen.

and would like the game to be about polities rather than corporations or individuals.

Again, a lot of extra thought would have to go into the rules of Space Mafia.

I'm also leery about allowing the Culture in, since they seem a bit too powerful for this type of game.

...
Yeah, just a hunch here but given how you billed it as 'hard sci fi' I think that might have been what humans refer to as a joke.

[Destructionator]

While it'd take some thought, it would be fresh. But in any case, let's get the ball rolling.

[speaker-to-trolls]

^With the current setup? OK, here's a little something to start things off.

Ahriman Cluster, capital world of the 9th Empire of the Exiled, is a magnificent triumph of modern engineering, which is not at all bad for something which has existed for almost six hundred years.

When the asteroids were first discovered they orbitted the planet Gayomart in an erratic manner, frequently raining down onto it and adding further turbulence and scarring to the huge planet's thick atmosphere and expansive crust. Nevertheless the Antarctican colonists had thought that the planet and the star system which it occupied were worth the effort of taming this harsh environment. So over decades of painstaking effort the colonists had tugged, nudged, driven and otherwise moved the rocks into more stable positions, changing them as they did so into all manner of fantastic shapes; enormous cartwheels linked by spokes miles long, tubes of rock and steel like the shells of caddis larva, sticks with great gleaming baubles at either end, and many others besides.

If one had a time machine, a gigantic fleet of surface to orbital transports and a callous disregard for the right to freedom of movement, one could have transferred the entire human race circa 2000 AD to the Ahriman Cluster and only displaced one half of its people.

Somewhere on the outskirts of the Cluster, the twin silvery grey cylinders of the Chondrichthyen habitat spun silently against the black background. A well tended and affluent (depending upon one's standards for such things) habitat, it was unremarkable but for a small number of permanent Mandigrean residents, which earned it the ire of certain xenophobic sectors of society, and for the fact that a small number of dignitaries from the 8th Empire were visiting it today due to the alleged quality of some of its clubs.

Some 100,000 kilmoetres from the habitat, an unremarkable asteroid 50 metres across moved listlessly through space. The asteroid was well known to the monitors, organic and mechanical, human and Mandigrean alike, of the Cluster, and had never in its history approached close enough to warrant alarm, in any case it could be safely destroyed within minutes if its behaviour became at all remarkable.

This was assuming that the rock was, in fact, no more than a rock, a reasonable assumption to make, one would think.

Such was thought by the Cluster's monitors, at least, so those who were capable of such were quite surprised when the rock went from only a little warmer than its fellows, easily explicable by its orbital path taking it a little closer to the sun of late, to distinctly, worryingly brighter, especially in four particular places. Four places roughly the right size to admit the entry or exit of a substantial missile.

Defences were mobilised immediately by those either unfased by the surprise or quick witted enough to suppress it, and such was fortunate, it meant that a reasonable number of interceptors had a chance to move out toward the rock by the time its first volley of missiles had leapt from their magnetic launchers. The missiles were not to be taken lightly, they ducked and weaved and dodged with impressive technique even before splitting each into three dozen smaller objects. These burned on forwards, throwing themselves in all directions to draw as many of the defenders toward them as the second volley barrelled out of their holes and screamed toward the habitat. A second wave of interceptors had likewise been dispatched to meet them, but the first volley was still at large, doing all they could to maintain the gap in the city's defence.

The first two missiles of a third volley made their way out of the rock before the defenders defences were brought to bear on the source of their troubles and it vanished, beaten into a cloud of dust by a dozen huge projectiles. It had seemed to carry almost no defences of its own.

If one were given to anthropomorphisation it might seem unfair that of all the missiles, which seemed to be so skilled in their evasions of their enemy's defences, only three of them hit home against the Chondrichthyen Cylinder.

For twenty nine thousand people who instantly felt the impact, and nothing more afterwards, it seemed extremely unfair indeed.