World Building Collab Thread

For 'verse proposals, random ideas, musings, and brainwaves.

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Heretic
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World Building Collab Thread

Post by Heretic »

Taking Magister's idea about more collaborative worldbuilding for both public and individual settings, I decided to make a thread for just a purpose. Similar to the Random Idea thread, this thread allows for more participation because it is actually recommended that we all butt in into everyone's ideas here and add/modify pieces of the universes in the similar way certain boards in certain imageboards pitch in to create awesome homebrew stuff when they aren't bathing in the bottoms of human nature. Ideas can be created, killed, modified, stolen, debated, etc. etc.

I had an idea of making the very O1 forum into a world, where each one of us has a fictional persona and rule our dream worlds. NVM. That sounds like a very awful idea already. It would require us to find a list of memes that define this forum and even then our worldbuilding natures fluctuate. Well, that's one silly idea.

Another idea I had was to try out a steampunk setting, but this time in the settings of the colonized areas, such as Africa, the Southeastern Asia, etc. etc. We could even add a bit of sorcery and Comix style weird science into the mix, but it would really be interesting to see how the Steam(punk) revolution affects the colonies and indigenous people. Will the people see these machines and advances as a relief from back-breaking labor, or weapons that slowly destroy their way of life? Meh, this is just an excuse to have Tibetan Monks fight against automaton expeditionary forces.

The final idea I have which I'm actually working on is a blatant Crimson Skies rip-off, with AIR PATROL keeping the peace in AIR MANHATTAN against AIR PIRATES. Basically the USA is split into warring states or city-states, and rely on AIR MILITIAS and AIR PRIVATE SECURITY COMPANIES to defend themselves against AIR PIRATES and AIR COMMUNISTS! Aw hell, it would be much easier to simply write fanfiction for the Crimson Skies universe. But maybe we could expand on it a little bit, the setting being generally lackluster and all.

So what are your guys' opinions or other universe ideas?
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Booted Vulture »

There is already the random ideas thread though it doesn't see that much traffic.

One thing my brain goes back to sometime is the often quoted inspiration of horatio hornblower for Star trek aond try to come up with some thing that really is the Age Of Sail.... IN SPAAAACE! Starships of the first rate! etc.

Though some of the trappings would be very Star Trek 09 with the main protagonist being an up and coming starfleet captain where the starfleet is some kind of non-profit private military/peacekeeping company run by the spaaaace un. Like non-evil peacekeeepers from farscape.

Of course i've also just got into watching Avatar: The Last Airbender so magic centred fantasy adventure might also be on the cards.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Heretic »

I personally like the idea of an independent starship setting out into high adventure.

What should its mission be? I was thinking it could be a sort of regional type of thing, where the ship keeps the peace in a few systems and can be sent elsewhere if the need arises. This allows us to develop planets and use them again and again.

I'll dive into this idea more once I get back from college.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Siege »

You could have starships propelled by solar sails, with riggings and some form of masts, and trade winds spawned by solar flares. Ships chasing eachother, trying to destroy each other's golden sails with volleys of railgun fire. Roll out the long nines, mr. Gibbs! Set the whole thing close to the sun, with asteroids as treasure islands, big star bases as forts and trade stations, and the deep system as a mysterious faraway place that spawns the occasional space kraken...

Sounds pretty rad, actually.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Magister Militum »

Well, my original (very vague, half assed idea) was that the collab thread would serve less of a dumping ground for random shit and more of a place where ideas can be refined into a full fledged 'verse or interesting story. Anyways...
Another idea I had was to try out a steampunk setting, but this time in the settings of the colonized areas, such as Africa, the Southeastern Asia, etc. etc. We could even add a bit of sorcery and Comix style weird science into the mix, but it would really be interesting to see how the Steam(punk) revolution affects the colonies and indigenous people. Will the people see these machines and advances as a relief from back-breaking labor, or weapons that slowly destroy their way of life? Meh, this is just an excuse to have Tibetan Monks fight against automaton expeditionary forces.
I've wanted to do something like this, too, but my idea was much more ambitious. Essentially, it would be a 'verse divided into distinct eras, each one dominated by a particular punk feeling. In its ancient prehistory, it'd be would be classical high fantasy with knights in plate mail, mages and monsters, etc. Eventually, some enterprising fellow manages to industrialize magic and you end up with a dragonpunk setting, complete with all the magitech that that setting implies. Eventually, the setting's version of the industrial revolution starts up and steampunk emerges, blending in with the industrialized magic to create truly baroque wonders. Once we hit the early 20th century, dieselpunk is the name of the game, with further technological wonders and the sheer vastness of the dieselpunk setting culminating in the unlocking of the power of the atom. By the 'modern' era, we're in full on post-cyberpunk mode, with transhumanism, space colonization, and other emergent technologies interacting alongside with extremely refined and ubiquitous magic.

Beyond that, I haven't given the setting much thought. Accelerating Future is sapping all my creative focus at the moment, with a potential reboot of some of my Comix contributions a distant second. Perhaps when AF is much more established I'll start working on this setting. Of course, I'd also be open to making it a collaborative venture, depending on any additional interest.
You could have starships propelled by solar sails, with riggings and some form of masts, and trade winds spawned by solar flares. Ships chasing eachother, trying to destroy each other's golden sails with volleys of railgun fire. Roll out the long nines, mr. Gibbs! Set the whole thing close to the sun, with asteroids as treasure islands, big star bases as forts and trade stations, and the deep system as a mysterious faraway place that spawns the occasional space kraken...
Siege beat me to it, but I was going to mention something vague similar. I remember a suggestion someone made for a hard SF version of Star Trek that involved exploring a small sphere of space around Sol in what amounted to a lasersail-propelled mobile habitat, encountering planetary and space colonies of wildly different technological levels and the occasional aliens. If you wanted to take the Star Trek analogy further, you can have an STL Federation linked by these intrepid star sailors. If the action takes place within a small (~100 LY) region of space and you can extend the human lifespan, worlds would be easily reachable by the crew, though they would radically change each time the ship arrived due to the time that's passed. Honestly, there's some bleed over here from my setting, since in a nutshell that's what the very early Transgalactic Commonwealth/proto-Commonwealth looked like, except with wormhole gates. You can easily adapt the idea to that concept, though, which can definitely be fun to explore.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Heretic »

Magister Militum said:
Well, my original (very vague, half assed idea) was that the collab thread would serve less of a dumping ground for random shit and more of a place where ideas can be refined into a full fledged 'verse or interesting story. Anyways...
Consider this thread as a launching pad for more organized ideas. Here we just tinker with the ideas to see if its concrete and functional enough to have its own thread. I know the Random Idea is similar, but that feels more personal, where everyone's ideas are their own and we can't really dive deep into it and mold it around. Or that's how I see it. Here we can butt in whenever we want in the effort of collaboration. I dunno, I just felt the concept was good enough to merit its own thread.
I've wanted to do something like this, too, but my idea was much more ambitious. Essentially, it would be a 'verse divided into distinct eras, each one dominated by a particular punk feeling. In its ancient prehistory, it'd be would be classical high fantasy with knights in plate mail, mages and monsters, etc. Eventually, some enterprising fellow manages to industrialize magic and you end up with a dragonpunk setting, complete with all the magitech that that setting implies. Eventually, the setting's version of the industrial revolution starts up and steampunk emerges, blending in with the industrialized magic to create truly baroque wonders. Once we hit the early 20th century, dieselpunk is the name of the game, with further technological wonders and the sheer vastness of the dieselpunk setting culminating in the unlocking of the power of the atom. By the 'modern' era, we're in full on post-cyberpunk mode, with transhumanism, space colonization, and other emergent technologies interacting alongside with extremely refined and ubiquitous magic.
I like the idea, but I want to include the Sword and Sandal feel from the 1960s Hercules and the (insert noun) films into the prehistory.

For a while I wondered how magic would come to play in the later eras, but then I realized that magic could have weakened as time went on. During the Steampunk era magic was for Oriental nefarious sorcerer-kings who required large fetishes and choirs of tortured savages, and by the time Dieselpunk comes into view magic is very low and accessible only by bored upper class citizens/professors/HP Lovecraft and can only be used by scavenging weak spells from old tomes that require horrifying rituals or cause insanity. Even then magic is starting to become more alien and less supernatural. The Atomic Age is so focused on COMMIE SPIES and NUCLEAR FORDS to even dive into such blasphemy. Cyberpunk comes around and there may be some renewed interest in it, but by then magic is only a whisper that the reclusive and cryptic sensei can feel but not use, and forces their cynical students to go through pseudo-oriental training while spouting off incoherent quotes in some abandoned lower level warehouse. And finally, transhumanity hits and magic and technology almost become one.

A theory for this decrease of magic is that maybe during the Magitek Era some big incident/cataclysm/massive war occurred that put a stress on the magical source and the population of skilled magicians. Maybe because of a combination of massive genocides from the wars and their super weapons, as well as "polluting" the magical source/stream/reality, magic use became harder and harder to learn and use. After a few centuries, as clockwork-based inventions and Leonardo Da Machiavelli comes to power, magic is all but lost and forgotten, only remembered by indigenous people and the secret societies.

Just a thought .
Siege Said:
You could have starships propelled by solar sails, with riggings and some form of masts, and trade winds spawned by solar flares. Ships chasing eachother, trying to destroy each other's golden sails with volleys of railgun fire. Roll out the long nines, mr. Gibbs! Set the whole thing close to the sun, with asteroids as treasure islands, big star bases as forts and trade stations, and the deep system as a mysterious faraway place that spawns the occasional space kraken...

Sounds pretty rad, actually.
Magister Militum Said:
Siege beat me to it, but I was going to mention something vague similar. I remember a suggestion someone made for a hard SF version of Star Trek that involved exploring a small sphere of space around Sol in what amounted to a lasersail-propelled mobile habitat, encountering planetary and space colonies of wildly different technological levels and the occasional aliens. If you wanted to take the Star Trek analogy further, you can have an STL Federation linked by these intrepid star sailors. If the action takes place within a small (~100 LY) region of space and you can extend the human lifespan, worlds would be easily reachable by the crew, though they would radically change each time the ship arrived due to the time that's passed. Honestly, there's some bleed over here from my setting, since in a nutshell that's what the very early Transgalactic Commonwealth/proto-Commonwealth looked like, except with wormhole gates. You can easily adapt the idea to that concept, though, which can definitely be fun to explore.
Lol two completely different ways of dealing with it. I was thinking maybe we can incorporate both realities together? Perhaps a rift in space-time causes the two realities to merge into a new reality? This forces both the STL Federation (Coalition of Systems perhaps?) and the Her Majesty Ether Fleet to adjust to both the new universe and to each other.

Alternatively, the mast-ships Siege proposed could be some sort of technological style of a couple of planets or so that refuse to be ruined by the drabby, square-based, cliched images of spaceships and revolt against the standard fleet regulations that the Coalition of Systems imposes on its planets.

I had two characters in mind:

Captain Hannah Kakaina
Born in a miner's outpost around Jupiter, Hannah Kakaina always wanted to join the Commonwealth of Systems' (can be changed if you guys have any other names) Intrepid Program, plowing the unknown in a fast cruiser, blasting space pirates in the name of the Commonwealth but still having autonomous reign of her ship. When she turned 17, Hannah immediately joined the Enterprising Youth Program and was shipped off to Pluto for training. There she learned piloting, navigation, first contact and diplomacy, crew dynamics, and the legal framework of the Coalition. The goal of the Intrepid Program was to allow certain captains more freedoms and powers to effectively deal with problems faster than most fleets.

Passing her tests with flying colors, Ensign Kakaina became part of the crew of the CSN Venture. Rising up in rank, Hannah finally became captain when her aging captain keeled over from a Todox Jelly Donut that had too much Todox sugar in it. Despite the rather anti-climatic rise to power, Captain Kakaina took control of the Venture and set forth to new frontiers.

There she met the nefarious SIR ROGER WALLCASTER and his ship, The Kraken, which looks similar to a ship
from the 17th/18th century. Despite the seemingly silly look, Sir Roger Wallcaster has managed to evade and harass Kakaina in her attempt to explore the universe and keep Coalition order in the inhabited lands. Captain Kakaina vows to one day personally blast Sir Wallcaster's head with her machine pistol.


SIR ROGER WALLCASTER
Either a nefarious privateer from the other reality or some minor warlord in a nearby planet, SIR ROGER WALLCASTER loves to harass Intrepid Coalition captains, especially the persistent Captain Kakaina. His ship, the Reckoning is a solar-mast powered ship with rail cannon sponsoons and Easy Boarding Modules (ESB). A man of elegant tastes, Sir Wallcaster wears the best clothes, wields the most decorative weapons (usually a pistol of some sort and a cutlass), and keeps his mustache in prim shape. His crew is filled with criminals and outcasts, ready to take their anger out against the Coalition.

Not much is known about the history of Sir Wallcaster, but rumors have it that he is a bastard son of a notable politician or His/Her Majesty themselves (if we are doing the reality cramping).

While he considers his harassing of Captain Kakaina a game, he knows full well the dangers and is equally willing to eliminate his rival if necessary.


Wherever we go with this idea, I for sure want the guy in the upper right hand of the poster to be in it. Seriously. He could be Captain Kakaina chauvinistic First Officer. Damn, look at that hat..hell, look at that chin! Mang.

Oh hell, I'll even make a backstory for him too! It'll be underneath the poster.

Image

Executive Officer Reginald Steele
The XO of the CSN Venture, Executive Petty Officer Reginald Steele is a blast from the past. He wasn't always that way though. As a young spaceman, Reginald was fairly well-mannered and egalitarian. But an incident occurred during a routine patrol. For two weeks, communication with the ship he was on was lost. When it finally reappeared, the captain was dead and Reginald Steele was captain. When interrogators questioned the crew, none could remember what happened. Whether the ship went through an alternate dimension or the crew simply went into a paranoia due to isolationism, it is not known. What is known is that Reginald Steele came out an aggressive masculine individual who would call females "toots" or "babe". While not convicted of any crimes, Reginald Steele was relieved of his command and with the help of some obscure legal loopholes, was sent to a new ship, the CSN Venture, as its Second in Command. Captain Kakaina was more than displeased when she learned that a potentially crazy and bigoted man was in charge of the daily operations of the ship. When Kakaina tried to use her Intrepid Captain powers to throw Reginald out, the Navy simply tossed her ship out on a mission.

XPO Reginald Steele proved himself during a fight between two colonies over some land, when he tore off his uniform shirt and man-wrestled the fighting ambassadors to the ground. Impressed with this display, Captain Kakaina was about to change her mind of XPO Steele until the very next day she found him with the daughters of both ambassadors in bed. After fighting off an enraged planet, Kakaina promptly punched Steele and gave him as much paperwork and electronic filing as possible, keeping him away from the crew as much as possible.

Despite this, XPO Steele proves valuable in the field of battle. So good in fact that the captain put him in front of all the away teams, hoping one day that he would come in a body bag.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Invictus »

The Star Trek-style story format has been suggested more than a few times on this forum before; there's probably something to the idea. The hard part of building a universe around it is probably establishing the baseline of the explorer(s): there's obviously a spaceship that can get around, but by what method? And how fast? And what kind of attitude do the explorers bring to it and what does this imply about where the explorers came from? Even in this thread, there are quite a few ideas about this already and so it might be better to create a setting where all these can happen at the same time - some kind of Space Age that turns out to resemble the Age of Sail, and including elements of *Punk is not inappropriate.

Of course there would be other things going on too: piracy, disaffected asteroid miners, whatever is happening back on the planets...are they still relevant? What do the explorers feel about where they came from, and vice versa? Did the STL slowboaters take off because they wanted to distance themselves from their homeworld through time dilation, and were too independent-minded to want to rely on a fancy FTL drive? Do the solar sailors enjoy the massive patronage of their home polity (and consequently an enormous boost from their extremely energy-expensive laser arrays)? Etc.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Heretic »

Solar Sailers? I like that name already lol.

Concerning the method, I would say keep the idea of some sort of solar sails since this setting seems to be more local the more we discuss it. As for how fast, I dunno too much about space speed, so I'll leave it up for grabs.

The biggest factor is the crew. As Invictus said, what attitude do the explorers bring and how will this affect both where they came from and how they deal with others.

More discussions to be had soon. I like this thread so much that I'm writing prior to going to college in the early morning.

Still, I want Reginald Steele in it.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

What is known is that Reginald Steele came out an aggressive masculine individual who would call females "toots" or "babe".
Heretic, you outdo yourself. :mrgreen:

Other men would emerge from interdimensional anomalies as gibbering wrecks driven mad by the things they saw. But REGINALD STEELE comes out a man's man, ready for action, to show the bad guys what's what and to put them uppity dames in their place! Namely, in the kitchen, making REGINALD STEELE a sandwich! :lol:
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Invictus »

One thought I've had is that imposing hard sci-fi restraints of spacecraft propulsion might detract from the classic second-star-to-the-rightness of it, if you catch my drift. A relatively small area of explored space may not even be contradictory to this wish, since it allows for relatively fleshed-out locations and colorful locales would help make the universe itself distinctive. (And since we now know that even Alpha Centauri has planets around it...) And it would give different creators (and factions) room to explore different routes to spaceflight and their implications without necessarily being bothered with an optimal way of doing things. If there is a best place for the *punk to come in, it would be to see how these diverse paradigms adapt to and help usher forth (or not!) the Age of Space Sail.

And now, a bit of inspired micro-minifiction:

The Arkhangelsk Express shot through the void like a gleaming stack of bullets, aimed at the gravity well of the nearest inhabitable star. Every sleek module was attached to the last with hollow cables and acceleration, pure inertia pumping fuel and reaction mass through the insulated pipes and into the engine section, where spent ions stream out back like the tell of a ghost. Other sections carry supplies; crash-gelled and tube-fed crew; partially shuttlecraft chambered like bullets within bullets. Also important are the sections up front of course: the buffers; the hardened sensors; the ice shield, the very prow of which was carved by the dockmen into the likeness of Saint Gagarin the Pioneer, outspread angel wings abrading away in micro-meteorites and cosmic radiation. The Express launched ten years ago and there's not much left of him now. It left behind arguments on whether the act was one of subtle subversion; at least the Chairman had the grace to look slightly embarrassed when she smashed the bottle over the icy figurehead's face.

The construction and the launch of the express was a lengthy ordeal. The capacity in the orbital gantries and the antimatter refineries was thankfully there, growing right alongside the traffic to the Outer Planets and the Asteroid Belt - and the confidence of the financiers too, at the loads of frozen gas and ore being brought back. And the science - the science had always been where it was, simply waiting for practicality to catch up. A new Federation was ascendant, flush with loot and unspent war-tax but empty on goodwill. All it took was the brushing aside of a few naysayers, and suddenly it seemed like there was never a reason not to do it.

Putting the accelerator array in place really revealed the difficulty of the whole business. Three venture companies went bankrupt on the project, and twice as many comet barons with more volatiles-money than prudence almost lost their fortunes. They're still petitioning the courts for redress, arguing that they did their duty for the State and deserved their due for it. But in the end it was the State that stepped in and completed the behemoth, building it up to the standards of a military reasonably renowned for its efficiency. That was an achievement even the dissidents would have equivocated on, as was the launch itself; even one miscalibrated ring would have turned the Express into the biggest harmonica in space. But it didn't. Whoosh went the gun and the bullets were heading for the stars, a crystallization of everything we have known and prepared for.

It was victory, it was progress, it was a new beginning. It was named for a regular star-route even before the next series of hulls have been laid down, because if anything it was a thing of hope. We remember how we came here, even if we hadn't espied the reaction flares or deciphered the radio shells as they swept past us. The next step in humanity's grand journey was ours to take. Besides, why would everyone else be already out there if it wasn't worth it?
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Heretic »

One thought I've had is that imposing hard sci-fi restraints of spacecraft propulsion might detract from the classic second-star-to-the-rightness of it, if you catch my drift. A relatively small area of explored space may not even be contradictory to this wish, since it allows for relatively fleshed-out locations and colorful locales would help make the universe itself distinctive. (And since we now know that even Alpha Centauri has planets around it...) And it would give different creators (and factions) room to explore different routes to spaceflight and their implications without necessarily being bothered with an optimal way of doing things. If there is a best place for the *punk to come in, it would be to see how these diverse paradigms adapt to and help usher forth (or not!) the Age of Space Sail.


Of course there would be other things going on too: piracy, disaffected asteroid miners, whatever is happening back on the planets...are they still relevant? What do the explorers feel about where they came from, and vice versa? Did the STL slowboaters take off because they wanted to distance themselves from their homeworld through time dilation, and were too independent-minded to want to rely on a fancy FTL drive? Do the solar sailors enjoy the massive patronage of their home polity (and consequently an enormous boost from their extremely energy-expensive laser arrays)? Etc.
I agree with the first paragraph. The small setting could allow for more personal and unique factions that allows for various sorts of propulsion, each with pros and cons.

As for the second paragraph, I think it really depends on the group. Captain Kakaina for example is paid with her own ship to protect the Coaliton's interest, while secessionist freelancers probably won't care what's happening to their homeworld. And because this is in a smaller frame of space piracy could be a alot more frequent, lurking around obscure trade routes or hiding behind some big asteroid to "sneak" up on ships about to get out of the local gravitational pull to FTL if we do have FTL.

And if we do have FTL, should it be more of a "jump" system that isn't very fast but helps reduce the time it takes to get to Point A to Point B? Maybe this is still new technology so it requires a startup time and can be pretty hazardous. This allows more freedom of movement without breaking the need of interacting locally. This is usually used by the Traveller RPG system (and the Elite/most Space Combat Simulation Games) to make ships feel more like boats with masts up. The Hyperspace System of FTL that WH40K and Star Wars uses is said to be more akin to the Age of the Metro Station, so we really don't want that.
Invictus said:
-Story Snippet-
It seems this shows the creation of some sort of Federation and their new ship. Could it be the ones that are doing the Intrepid Program, is it another faction, or could it be another universe setting altogether? The mystery thickens (until Invictus tells us what it is lol) :D

Damn, the Arkhangelsk Express is such an awesome name.
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Heretic, you outdo yourself.
Indeed I have *puts on ego cape* I never really seen many misogynist dick characters, so I decided why not put one in an First Officer position and let it roll? Aside from hentai games, there hasn't been any protagonists like these in the modern time, so I decided why not try to be original? Next I shall create a alcoholic rock-based lifeform who remembers the good old days during the Dinosaur period or some crap like that. :lol:
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Magister Militum »

I gotta say that I'm immensely inspired by this thread. We're really getting back to our roots and creating what looks like a promising setting.
And if we do have FTL, should it be more of a "jump" system that isn't very fast but helps reduce the time it takes to get to Point A to Point B? Maybe this is still new technology so it requires a startup time and can be pretty hazardous. This allows more freedom of movement without breaking the need of interacting locally. This is usually used by the Traveller RPG system (and the Elite/most Space Combat Simulation Games) to make ships feel more like boats with masts up. The Hyperspace System of FTL that WH40K and Star Wars uses is said to be more akin to the Age of the Metro Station, so we really don't want that.
The only reason SW hyperdrive makes space travel feel like a cross-country drive is its sheer speed. You can easily form a hyperdrive or warp drive that is much, much slower. It could also be, like 'Vic suggested, that FTL exists, but certain groups of spacers refuse to use it because they prefer exploring space the long way or want to take advantage of time dilation. Just because you have FTL doesn't necessarily mean that no one will want to travel at sublight velocities. Think of it as another sub-culture.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Now I'm imagining some kind of trip from, say, Earthican/Venusian urbanite worlders to the Jovian badmoons to seek our prospects in those untamed spaces, like some kind of interplanetary version of Oregon Trail. It'll take weeks, some might get raided by space bad guys, others fall for the hazards of nature like micrometeorite showers, and a few just might catch dysentery.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Invictus »

Well I did just write up a fairly literal wagon train to the stars.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Ah, yeah. I kind of mentally pictured your post as a greased lightning superfast Trans-Siberian Express thing combined with the huge spess ship from Avatar. Built with all the greatest technological megaliths of a mighty nation, to bridge the gap between stars.

Whereas I'm kind of thinking that, at the same time this happens in the 'verse, you'd also have far more ragtag ramshackle guys almost killing themselves just to leave Venus and go to Mars/Asteroid Belt/Jupiter to prospect and stuff, in their crummy rickety rigs.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Invictus »

To be fair, it's not like I wasn't going THIS IS AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE SPACE TRAINS, TOOT TOOT when I wrote this, so your mental picture is entirely correct. I think it would make some kind of point that successful interstellar travel really is the province of the rich and powerful. (Sure, anybody desperate enough can sling themselves out in a frozen tincan and wait a few centuries, but the odds of him setting foot on another planet again are slim.)

Interplanetary travel can also be rough, but the barriers to entry are a lot lower. In truly civilized systems, it might even get pretty routine.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Heretic »

Choo Choo!

So, from what I can extract, this universe has:

1. The human inhabited space is smaller than most sci-fi settings, and power is local.

2. There is FTL, but isn't as ubiquitous and (opinion) can be pretty dangerous.

3. Solar Sails are cool. There are a variety of propulsion systems.

4. Space travel is dangerous, but not completely beyond the reach of most wealthy local planetary organizations (The Red Cross could even get a small system ship)

6. An group of captains that work for an organization but is mostly independent, I.E. The Intrepid Program (privateers, Red Bull, The Dutch West India Company, missionaries, and conquistadors..IN SPACE?).

7. Reginald Steele.


Now, about the speculation parts:

1. The Arkhangelsk Express is pretty cool. Should we make that the Intrepid Captain's ship?

2. Should we start making the crew and life support system for the ship that will be a focus for our setting?

3. What role and mission does the Arkhangelsk Express have if we do use it? Is it purely a transportation ship that ferries people and equipment back and forth from colonies? Does it have secondary objectives?

4. What's the polity that created the Inteprid Program like?

5. I know Siege is gonna butcher me, but I was looking at the old TSW universe to get some ideas, and I stumbled upon a semi-debate that was going on then. What are the status of shields? I know in this setting it wouldn't be logical, but would some sort of particle shield work if it had outrageous power requirements or could only stop the spaceship equivalent of a 9mm? That would make it impractical as all hell but if it was some experimental prototype technology created by the SECRET CABAL would that be ok in story materials?

And in general, what protection do ships have? Reinforced Hulls and ECMs are a given, but what else? Do we have energy-based weapons here, and how do ships counter them? Heatproof reflective armor?

6.How alien should aliens be in both body and mind? Can we have lobster Spartans?
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Invictus »

Commenting on Heretic's points:

So far we haven't examined the FTL suggestion much at all and our fluff is largely focused on interplanetary travel. I don't mind keeping the possibility of FTL travel in this setting, but we will need to discuss how it relates to all the mundane STL stuff going on.

Assuming that the Interstellar Red Cross has an equivalent status to RL today, they would be able to have a lot more than just one system ship. If we really want to make Oregon Trail/Firefly-ish comparisons here as Shroom implies, then even the equivalent of small independent businessmen/farmer-settlers on credit have access to interplanetary spacecraft, albeit limited to certain specialized professions and travel routes, backed by well-developed space infrastructure and subject to plenty of risk. A big supra-planetary NGO should in theory be able to do a lot better.

Of course, this depends on the particular power/wealth of the Red Cross branch in that particular star system. Interstellar travel is going to be difficult (or just uncommon, for whatever reason) for everybody, so organizational cohesion is not going to be great. Sure, a Red Cross that works closely with a hypothetically expansive and efficient interstellar government like the Commonwealth of Systems is going to run medical facilities on everywhere that matters, including onboard interstellar ships and with hospital system ships doing rounds around hot spots. Depending on how the FTL shakes out, they might even have dedicated interstellar craft for cryo-shipping patients to more developed systems where there is treatment - but that feels a bit too much, even in more regular space opera.

One can also argue that the economic conditions that enable scrappy astroid miners to exist percludes the existence of truly developed space infrastructure (I mean, in a civilized and heavily built-up star system, why hasn't a megacorp pushed the small players out of the market?) and also the existence of the stuff above. Maybe it's a frontier world that doesn't even have the technical capacity to build large spacecraft, and the sole Red Cross cruiser is therefore a rustbucket no better than the miner rigs it docks with, running off the strained goodwill of a local philantropist. Narrative convenience probably gets to be the arbiter of this one.

Regarding the Arkhangelsk Express, I conceived of it as a rugged but ultimately one-trip exploration and colonization vehicle designed with just enough of a margin to safely get to the star system it was aimed at with its charges. It could theoretically swing for another destination or make return trip, but it would be pretty risky. An advanced and upgunned model of the same build can serve as a pretty adequate "fast cruiser" kind of warcraft, I suppose, but I haven't given much thought to space combat. As to whether my largely undefined planetary polity has anything to do with your largely undefined multi-stellar commonwealth, that's a whole another bucket of small wriggling animals.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Siege »

I'd think FTL ships could be akin to huge steam liners arriving in THE NEW WORLD. They only dock at big, established harbors, they can haul tons of crap, but you can't take 'em up the Mississippi because they'll get stuck and/or are easily outmaneuvered by smaller, more agile boats that could riddle 'em with holes if they wanted to.

So every now and then some giant liner would show up to disgorge greenhorn passengers (or battle-hardened adventurers, or other plot devices), pick up a ton of cargo, and then chug on back outta there... But they're only really good for going to Distant Places, not for going somewhere inside the same system really quickly because, well, that's just not what the Space Captains of the Space Guild of Free Merchandising (or whatever) do.

No amount of moneys is going to convince a proud space captain to have his awesome vessel of supraluminal zoominess do boring mail runs along a bunch of inner system rocks, not when he could be out rigging his hypersteamer for adventurous journeys to the Orient Stars instead.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Heretic »

ARGHHHH...I had a whole essay responding to both Siege and Invictus, and my fucking stupid computer decided to be sensitive, deselect the typing process, and made me oblivious as I hit the Backspace button. Alas, all is lost.

Well, here's a shortened, laconic version of what I was saying:

1. Due the the exorbitant costs of making a FTL drive that can come and go with ease, most colonists could resort to "gates" ala Mass Effect that is relatively easy to build. The drawbacks of this are the list of specific materials one might not have, it's a one-way method, the local Space Traffic Department might not be happy if the gate is unlicensed, pre-planning is needed for the trip to prevent mis-navigations or crashing into a asteroid belt that was conveniently on orbit in front of the ships' path that year. If two gates connect, it can serve as a metro system but less faster than usual FTL and has alot of delays and cancelled flights due to the orbital seasons that might occur (i.e. supernova, asteroids, rogue planets, ruins from ancient battles or accidents passing by)

2. Asteroid miners, in response to Invictus' post, could be frontier-based workers, but they could also be subcontractors for mega-corps that can bypass special taxes or regulations or they could simply be miners who pick at the scraps of minerals that the mega-corps don't want or need.

3. The Red Cross should exist as a super NGO power with massive ARC (see what I did there) ships that help colonies in need or after a disaster...guarded by heavily-armored zealots recruited from colonies that formed cults around the Red Cross. In return of the daily tithes of blankets and canned soup, the ARC showers down medicine (and weapons) to cure the sick of both physical and spiritual taints.

4. Each one of us should make our own Intrepid/Colonist/Pirate/Dutch West Indies/Firefly/Red Cross ship and then make a ship collectively. My idea was to create an Intrepid ship captained by someone who may or may not be Reginald Steele. The ship would be filled with Paranoia-Style characters such as Red Cross Cultists, xenomorph-rip offs, enemy secret agents bent on sabotaging the ship, diabolical Lovecraftian cultists, clones, computer systems that believe its Elvis Presley, feminists (if the captain is Reginald Steele), mad scientists, LARPers, shapeshifters, pirates who haven't entirely given up piracy, your average criminals impressed into service, and a whole colony of dwarves who believe they are in a fantasy setting (not helped by the fact that the LARPers play along and help validate that fact).

In return, I pitch in Hannah Kakaina to the community-built ship. She doesn't have to be captain. I also pitch in the idea of hydroponic gardens into the ship for oxygen and food. Maybe Spirulina plays a major part in the crew diet?
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Siege »

Gotta say I'm not a big fan of gateway-based FTL myself.

If it were up to me, I'd have a Space Boston or Space New York out there: a big harbor in the more-or-less civilized world (that's still regarded as podunk by people who know the ACTUAL civilization of far-off exoticness) where the aforementioned big liners occasionally deign to show up; then Vic's space train thingmajigs who venture from said bustling ports to the equivalent of Space Deadwood; and then the solar sailors and all of those guys who are the equivalent of lonesome cowboys riding onto the space prairie (or dashing pirate-gentlemen navigating their brigantines into the heart of the Caribbean -- pick and choose your metaphors).

Basically the farther you are from civilization, the smaller and more primitive means of space transport become. Until someone makes enough noise to attract the attention of whoever rules Space Boston enough to send out the Space Ninth Cavalry to bust some heads, and then your solar sailors have to run away from big first-rate ships of the line.

It doesn't have to be as strictly space wild west / space age of sail, mind, but I feel it works pretty well as an analogue.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Heretic »

Okay, that would make alot of sense.

So from what we've discussed the types of ship that are kicking around are, in order of theoretical power:

1. The big FTL Ships of the Line and Cargo Vessels that go through the big centers of economy, and the large military ships that the superpowers have. Grand in scheme and role.

2. NGO-Style ships that are smaller in power and scale than number 1 but can still potentially have a sort of weaker FTL. ARC Ships, CNS Venture, and Arkhangelsk Express are part of this role, where ships are more focused on a few systems clustered together.

3. Local Powerhorses that can be a nuisance to Type 2s in battle. Sir Roger Wallcaster's Reckoning could be this level, where ships are pretty advanced but still limited to their system.

4. Small mom-and-pop ships that aren't even the best in their system, but are relativity cheap and easy to get a hold of. Small cargo traders that go from planet to planet are these, as well as small patrol boats.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Invictus »

Re: the limitations of FTL spacecraft - I like Siege's ideas. It's partly a matter of culture and a matter of available infrastructure - it takes a certain level of technology (and massive upkeep) to be able to berth and resupply a hyperliner safely, but the benefits are of course worth it. Systems that make themselves a reliable port for FTL travel find themselves rapidly wealthier and more able to project influence to other star systems, assuming that they don't crash and burn from the expense first. That said, what about projecting some of that sweet superluminal power on systems which aren't FTL ports? There's no reason why a warp cruiser with sufficiently long legs can't just stay at a system (and blow up some uppity natives while it's there) without resupplying.

That can be where the Siege's idea of lumbering steamships come in. Maybe FTL only works where space-time is at asymptotic flatness (hardly an uncommon idea in sci-fi), which means that the absolute mobility advantages of a FTL warship cannot balance out the cost-effectiveness of STL warships while around stellar bodies, which is where all the action happens. Adding to that, maybe FTL drives are made of small singularities or something else that weighs millions of tons in real mass, which means that FTL drive-equipped vessels invariably maneuver like ass and are not very suited to an offence-centric space combat paradigm (unless SHIELDS). This means that it is also difficult for big interstellar polities to practice gunboat diplomacy on backwater systems, so the Space Wild West stays wild. And poor.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Siege »

Here's the kernel of a potential idea:

Out somewhere on a Jovian satellite off in the deep system there's a fairly well-to-do moon-state. It used to be a colony, it isn't exactly that anymore, and over the course of a century or so it has managed to leverage its position as a pretty good harbor (and the distance away from whoever settled them in the first place) into wealth and relative power. They even established some highly profitable colonies in the inner system asteroid belts themselves. Life, as the people say, is good. Sure, the government could be a little more open and less autocratic, and the military less eager to shoot fools in the face with lasers but as a whole it's a pretty nice place to live.

But of course, there's trouble in paradise. A whole bunch of the inner system colonies are being less than forthcoming with the taxes the central government feels owed. So a decision is made to dispatch a mission on a long, multi-month mission into the badlands of the inner system, the proverbial space wild west, to collect what the remote moonlet feels it is due.

The catch being that they don't send a grizzled veteran of the psychic wars, or a massively armed warship. What do you think we are, bad guys? No, they send a bureaucrat. A mid-level manager. A tax collector. His name is Rineheart Mettle, and he is about as far removed from the tough and tumble, swashbuckling and gunslinging, self-confident privateers that populate the spacelanes of the inner system as it's possible to get. He is a slightly hesitant, mild-mannered man who's never used violence before in his life -- hell, he rarely even raises his voice. He's an administrator, not an admiral.

There's a couple reasons why he's the one that gets sent on this ludicrous mission. First, there's a lot of people in the moonlet's administration who don't really have any idea of how bad the inner system really is. Sure they hear the occasional story of hardship and piracy but surely it can't be that bad? Besides, they consider themselves civilized -- and civilized people don't respond to a dispute with gunboat diplomacy. You try to talk first. Or, secondly and more accurately: according to some of the less scrupulous people in the administration you try to talk first, and if your talking guy gets blown up you have an excellent excuse to send in the gunboats.

And finally Rineheart may be a bureaucrat, but he does have some principles, and those have lead him to speak out at moments it might have been better to shut up, career-wise anyway, and some of his superiors see this as an excellent way to get him out of the way for a few months at least and maybe permanently should he come to a sticky end. This mission, then, is as much about collecting taxes as it is a way to get rid of some troublesome elements.

So what is essentially a revenue service cutter is sent into the inner system on a mission that, it turns out, it is wildly unsuited for. Because what difference could one civil man make west of the Pecos in the dangerous primitivity of the inner system? All the difference in the world, it turns out, as Rineheart rises to the impossible challenges before him, rallies his crew and begins to unravel the strands of intrigue that make the system what it is.

Characters aboard the ship would be the aforementioned Rineheart Mettle, who is essentially Space Arthur Weasley; head of security Verity Mzansi, an obsolete and embittered replicant soldier who is far more aware that they're essentially being thrown into the lion's den armed only with a dinner fork; JUB4L, the omnicidal AI from a dismantled warship installed in the cutter mostly so that it would have a place where it cannot do any harm; a so-far still nameless engine chief who used to be a reality engineer for a giant FTL liner but got drummed out for some reason.

It would be up to them to investigate the situation in the inner system, survive its rigors, outsmart its pirates, make hay of the dense web of political affiliations between the myriad asteroid-states and mercenary groups, find the occasional treasure to send home, prevent the occasional space train robbery, essentially become the only representatives of the law west of the Pecos enlightenment and civilization and, finally, find out just why SOMAC - the Société Marchand auf Aktien Comercial, the largest interstellar mercantile trade and transshipment syndicate within six light years - is so invested in maintaining the status quo.

And that's all I got so far.
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Re: World Building Collab Thread

Post by Magister Militum »

Thematic reasons aside, why would the inner system be like the Wild West? You'd think the outer system and Oort cloud would be more suited to that. Other than that, that premise is awesome.
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