Solar System RPG Part 2

[Evo Plurion]

In my meandering attempts to develop a Solar System setting for Traveller, I was thinking about our earlier discussion. While we covered lots of technological ideas, we didn't really explore the background (political, economic, etc.).

The Earth-centred settings I've looked at seem to require that Earth be removed (perhaps temporarily) as the centre of power, so that others can be established and so that the RPG setting isn't politically lopsided.

Is this too much of a cliche, or does the SSRPG setting require it?

 

[mike wightman]

The Walter Jon Williams book Hardwired has an interesting way of taking the Earth out of the picture in its backstory/history.
The industrialised orbital stations and offworld colonies drop big rocks on military bases, resisting capital ciies etc. to hold the Earth to ransom.
You don't have to take the Earth out of the picture, just limit the influence the nations of Earth can exert on the colonies.

 

[robject]

This kind of discussion can go hand-in-hand with the colony threads hashed out in other sections of COTI. How capable is a colony which otherwise relies heavily on seriously huge trading partners -- in other words, the nations and multinats of Terra?

Conversely, how slow and tenuous would be the growth of colonies who don't have such trading partners available...

How about a two-part compromise: a Twilight:2000 scenario where the Earth has some limited nuclear exchange, coupled with slow ship acceleration speeds of less than 0.06 G? That would make Terra a little aloof, plus make trips to and from Terra slow, and make local transactions more attractive... especially if constant acceleration were a paltry 0.01 G. Here's a sample of some travel times (mid-course turnaround assumed):

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Acceleration 1AU 2AU 4AU 8AU

0.01 G 28d 40d 57d 80d
0.02 G 20d 28d 40d 57d
0.03 G 16d 23d 33d 46d
0.04 G 14d 20d 28d 40d
0.05 G 13d 18d 25d 36d
0.06 G 12d 16d 23d 33d</pre>[/QUOTE]You get the picture... the slower the travel speed, the more a colony is forced to rely on its local resources and perhaps other colonies.

 

[vermeylenhans]

I'm not too found of earth-is-no-more-a-major-player settings too. Why should that be?

Have a look at GURPS Transhuman Space. Even if you drop the technological twists of the settings, you still have a great 'realistic' solar system setting. Earth is still well in the middle of the picture. With Europe, China and the US the three leading powers, closely followed by a bunch of other nations, or meta-nations like the Trans-socialist alliance. Lot of space colonies: plenty of earth orbit and Lagrange points stations, moon is earth's industrial park, mars is being terraformed, venus and mercure are intensivly colonized, the asteroid belt houses a lot of small frontier stations and the US have a big outer system colony on Titan.

 

[veltyen]

I'm not too fond of europe-is-no-more-a-major-player settings.

USA and China being the leading powers in the world is just unrealistic.

Apologies for the sarcasm.

Humans have a tendency to beome complacent that their point of view, and their empire will stand forever. Each leading empire in history has fallen once it reached that point of view.

I would say it is likely that given 200 years of space colonisation the major powers would no longer be earthbound, but would be the more dynamic colonies.

 

[Golan2072]

I like the low-tech, near-future Traveller idea.

"Removing" Earth is not 100% nescery but is a useful plot device if you want the colonies to develop relatively independantly - though, in a low-tech Sol-based game, when travel times between planets are long, this might not be absolutely nescary.

A useful site for near-future, real-science inter-planetary travel and development is
http://www.permanent.com/

 

[vermeylenhans]

Originally posted by veltyen:
I'm not too fond of europe-is-no-more-a-major-player settings.

USA and China being the leading powers in the world is just unrealistic.

Apologies for the sarcasm.

Right. On the other hand, american players shouldn't have too many problems with that 'the USA are the center of the universe' thing...

Apologies for the sarcasm.

 

[vermeylenhans]

But I do agree, I'd really like to have a less china vs us focused setting...

 

[Evo Plurion]

For two reasons mentioned below, I'm leaning toward a scenario in which Earth undergoes a cataclysm (asteroid impact, huge solar flare, nuclear war, rampant disease, overpopulation, etc.) while her colonies remain unscathed. In the campaign's "present", Earth has regained much of her economic and political might, but she doesn't dominate the System to the extent that she would have otherwise.

Reason 1. I prefer to shake up the political and economic picture on Earth. To expect things to continue the way they are for the next two or three hundred years is silly and would hinder the RPG's sense of realism.

Reason 2. Mars, the Belt Colonies and the Jovian System need an opportunity to develop their own cultural and political identities relatively free of Earth's influence. This will provide more variety and opportunities for ideological and political conflict than if everyone's allegiance is to Earth.

In this scenario, it's conceivable that Mars-based powers and Earth-based powers are economic rivals. Mars may even have colonies or provinces on Earth itself, established in the years immediately following the cataclysm when Earth's governing powers were incapable of stopping them.

 

[robject]

Originally posted by Hans Vermeylen:
But I do agree, I'd really like to have a less china vs us focused setting...

That made me think of Firefly, where the flag of the Alliance is a combination of the Chinese and US flag. The Alliance is rather authoritarian...

And it also made me think of Niven and Pournelle's CoDominium, a merging of the US and the USSR! Quite an interesting result.

Figuring out future political landscapes is a black hole -- only do as little as possible, otherwise you'll waste time on it. I'd say it's better to evolve it than innovate it; take what we know and twist it a bit, and voila.

That's another reason I don't care if Terra is the center or not: colonies are going to resemble their parents for 'awhile'. So you can take Earth out of the picture, but you won't get rid of Earthlings.

Personally, I think the tension between the massive Terran industrial-corporate-government juggernaut provides wonderful tension, especially when we know none of Earth's industries, corporations, or governments cooperate.

 

[Evo Plurion]

Originally posted by robject:
That's another reason I don't care if Terra is the center or not: colonies are going to resemble their parents for 'awhile'. So you can take Earth out of the picture, but you won't get rid of Earthlings.

In a near-future setting, I wouldn't want to exclude Earth. However, removing Earth can enhance the "other-worldliness" of a far-future setting. In the SSRPG in question, Earth would be too fascinating a place to remove altogether. Imagine what the cities and arcologies would be like, the reconstruction colonies, the irradiated wastelands, etc.

 

[CarlP]

I'm working on my near-future (sort of) campaign right now, and Earth will be a major player.

I call it a sort of campaign, because it's actually an alternate-history. I'm going for a golden age of SF sort of feel--with rocket-shaped rocket ships and the like. At the moment I favor a point of departure during WWI. The result is several major power blocks on earth, and their competing colonies in the solar system.

Earth is still the 'center' of the Solar System, but it doesn't completely overwhelm it because of the balance of power between the various great nations. I think this will be sufficient to avoid the situation of either the Earth runs everything, or the colonies bombard it into submission and go their own way.

Still, the thoughts expressed here are proving useful. Oh, and I have several of the TransHuman Space books, and I agree that they are a useful source material.

carl

 

[robject]

Very cool, Carl, sounds like a lot of fun.

 

[Evo Plurion]

Yeah that does sound really cool!

 

[CarlP]

Thank you. I'll be happy to keep y'all informed. There is still so much work to do, though....

And I still have no idea what sort of campaign my players are wanting to go with. I have a couple of ideas ready to go; I'm just waiting for responses to the email I sent out, so I can start hammering out some significant details.

 

[piperfan]

Originally posted by Evo Plurion:
In my meandering attempts to develop a Solar System setting for Traveller, I was thinking about our earlier discussion. While we covered lots of technological ideas, we didn't really explore the background (political, economic, etc.).

The Earth-centred settings I've looked at seem to require that Earth be removed (perhaps temporarily) as the centre of power, so that others can be established and so that the RPG setting isn't politically lopsided.

Is this too much of a cliche, or does the SSRPG setting require it

Two possibilities come to mind immediately. The first is an Earth where sociological factors have led it to have little interest in solar system exploration, leaving a small interplantary society largely to its own efforts, as portrayed in the later periods of Poul Anderson's Anson Guthrie/Fireball novels.

The second is to simply use another solar system colonized by sub-light settlers from Earth. It may or may not have a major, Earth-like world. Again, Anderson's Guthrie/Fireball novels portray something like this at Alpha Centauri but perhaps a better example is Joan D. Vinge's collection Heaven Chronicles that is centered on a society living in the colonized asteroid belt around another star.