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Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Sun May 19, 2013 11:03 pm
by Arty
Hello everyone, and welcome (or should I say, welcome back) to Old Familiars.

This is a universe where the empires that dominated the world at the turn of the twentieth century now dominate the galaxy. Is this an alternate-history-future of some kind? Did the human nations revert back to their old tricks once they figured out FTL? Why is culture several centuries into the future so similar to the way it was a century in the past? These are all good questions, but the answer to all of them is, if you'll permit us a bit of handwavery: "never you mind all that, it's empires in space! It's fun!"

Indeed, Old Familiars is a setting that seeks to bring some of the fun back into space opera. We've got bicorn-wearing British space admirals pointing their cutlasses at the viewscreen and bellowing "Mr. Eldridge, give these curs a taste of the grape!" We've got cyberninja who run up the walls of skyscrapers to reach their CEO targets, fist in front of them and a glowing blue wakizashi held behind them. We got starships named after rock stars, Techno Police, psychic warrior-priests, bioengineered soldiers implanted with the minds of dead revolutionaries, intrepid free traders living on the borders between empires. We've got action, intrigue, mystery, we've got space battles and sword fights, and we've got mad scientists and psychic messiahs.

We're also going for a more story-focused approach to the universe than we previously did. Three-page articles about System Control Battleships and Overtanks are all well and good, but this time around we want the people who inhabit this universe, rather than the ships and gear that lets them get around the universe, be the stars of the show. Whenever possible, we'll show you this world through the eyes of the people living in it, changing it, and trying to survive it.

So: who wants to see a space cowgirl fight off a bug-eyed alien trying to steal her horses?

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Sun May 19, 2013 11:46 pm
by Booted Vulture
wow. old familiars indeed.

And a story based focus? I look forward to the forum filling up with lots of first installments then. :P

I mean yeah, not being starcraft forum anymore, we probably don't need oodles of individual units. But polities and organisations might be cool to hear about.

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Mon May 20, 2013 2:52 pm
by Invictus
I am, to understate things a bit, very enthused about this revival.

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Mon May 20, 2013 5:42 pm
by Siege
I am extremely happy to see the return of both this universe and ol' Arty here. I'm hopeful this'll be a lot of fun and simultaneously remeniscent of but also very different to old OF.
Booted Vulture wrote:And a story based focus? I look forward to the forum filling up with lots of first installments then. :P
I know it's said in jest and even then I take your point, but frankly I'd rather see lots of first installments than nothing at all.

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Tue May 21, 2013 3:13 am
by Heretic
This sounds very very familiar. Was this universe in Omniverse Zero?

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Tue May 21, 2013 5:50 am
by Invictus
Heretic wrote:This sounds very very familiar. Was this universe in Omniverse Zero?
Only the oldest and biggest of them*. In fact, OF predates Omniverse Zero and is, IIRC, one of the first wave of original universes to come about when the community's focus moved off Starcraft II fan-development, several forums ago.

*Until Comix! surpassed it by post count.

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Wed May 22, 2013 4:21 am
by Arty
I'd be sort of curious how big, filesize-wise, the original OF was, personally.

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2013 10:06 pm
by Czernobog
Glad to see OF is back! Considering that it got me involved in the OZ forums in the first place I hope it generates some new activity (even Comix has slowed to a crawl :( ). So are we keeping the Earth-gets-blown-up-and-everyone-migrates-to-the-stars history from last time or is it something different?

Also, are we going to see some sort of Space Austro-Hungarian Empire? I don't recall the old universe having one, I'd be happy to try my hand at them (give me something to do at least).

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 3:36 am
by Arty
So are we keeping the Earth-gets-blown-up-and-everyone-migrates-to-the-stars history from last time or is it something different?
Earth is definitely still Terra Incognito (pun intended, narf) this time around, though no one is entirely sure why, or what happened to it. Everyone has a slightly different take on Earth, from "it was destroyed during a terrible war" (and of course, who destroyed it also depends on who you ask) to "we left because it was getting overpopulated, so then we just all left," to "a sentient computer virus deleted every historical record and nav-coordinate pertaining to Earth," to "it was swallowed into some alien dimension" to "there never was an Earth, man! See, humans were just designed and birthed in these, like cloning tanks out in space? By this super-intelligent Progenitor Race, right? But they don't want us to know it, so they implanted us with this ancestral memory of a homeworld that doesn't even exist, dude, and, oh man, the kings and the shoguns and the corporate suits, man? They're totally in on it!" Each theory has about as much evidence backing it up as any other, and everyone who's gone looking for Earth has either come back empty-handed, or hasn't come back at all.
Also, are we going to see some sort of Space Austro-Hungarian Empire?
Well, the backstory for the very, very first iteration of OF was that Eastforce was a merger of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Tsarist Russia, but since I was (and, really, remain) an unapologetic Russophile, the Austrian and Hungarian elements sort of faded until they were nearly transparent.

Eastforce will have a new incarnation (under a new name), but it will have a somewhat wider cultural base than last time, including some significant south-eastern European influences. So, short version of a long answer: yes. Sort of :)

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 3:20 pm
by Invictus
So, whence Space Germany? Back when the universe was Space Great Power Conflicts, a burgeoning and neophiliac Prussian Empire made sense, especially as a distinct entity from Germania as the morally unambiguous bad guy. But then I felt on reflection that the whole designed-by-Space-Apple, capsule-hotel, everyone-wears-grey-jumpsuits aesthetics of Space Prussia to be a bit too much.

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 6:49 pm
by Siege
Ugh. Germania will always be the horrible stain of stereotype on my otherwise damn near faultless and unsullied soul.

We have a lot of ideas about Prussia. Quite a few of them are silly, and it's a trick to balance the silliness with all the horrible possibilities spawned by ZE NEW SCIENCE. So that's why it's taking a bit longer.

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 8:22 pm
by Arty
Oh, Germania is definitely going to be nixed. We abused that sucker so, so much the last time around.

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2013 1:00 am
by speaker-to-trolls
So, since this edition seems to be more concerned with personal dramas and the conflicts and dynamics inside the nations than in international politics, is there still great game-y stuff afoot, with unclaimed systems as Africa and India and wherever? Or do the powers mainly keep out of each other's way?

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2013 8:37 am
by Invictus
speaker-to-trolls wrote:So, since this edition seems to be more concerned with personal dramas and the conflicts and dynamics inside the nations than in international politics, is there still great game-y stuff afoot, with unclaimed systems as Africa and India and wherever? Or do the powers mainly keep out of each other's way?
Seconding this question. Every star nation description so far seems baked in with enough internal conflict and tension to be their own standalone settings. But what's the overall game plan?

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2013 10:24 pm
by Arty
Well, there is no overarching plot to pit each of these nations against each other in a massive world war one in space scenario. While there is plenty of interaction between the nations, and there have almost certainly been both wars and alliances in the past (and will be again in the future), we're not gearing up for one solid, singular Event with OFv3.0.

Rather, the "game plan" depends on the individual stories to be told within the universe. If one story needs Prussia and Britannica to be locked in an endless trench war on a desolate, airless moon, then that's what will be happening in that story. If another story requires that the KaiserReich and the Star Empire be allied against an extradimensional alien invasion, then that'll be the situation in that story.

We've very purposefully not given an exact date for the "present" of OF, simply stated that it's set in the Far Future, which lets us change details and timelines however we need to make them fit with the plot and characters for the stories. So while the various empires won't change a whole lot, because they're very much characters in and of themselves and need to have a certain level of consistency, we're leaving the larger questions of astropolitics a little more open-ended and malleable.

Re: Saying hello to some old friends: Universe Introduction

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 10:02 am
by Siege
I certainly believe there ought to be things like the Africa Cluster where there's a lot of intrigue and warring going on, because that's the sort of thing that spices up the setting. Plus, now that the empires themselves are smaller (relatively) such things can have an actual impact. After all, previously these were nations of ten thousand or more worlds, so what impact could one or even a dozen stars changing hands really have? We haven't defined just how big the empires are now, but since they're smaller the stakes per star are comparatively higher, and in my opinion that only makes Great Game-y elements more important.

Right now though I think we're still pretty busy fleshing out the new clothes of our old emperors, and we haven't quite gotten around to conflicts between empires yet. But I'm sure we'll get around to that: it wouldn't be OF without some proper skirmishing between dukes and samurai and whatnot.