"New Sci-Fi game setting - is it possible?" Topic

I have been trying to think of a setting for a sci-fi game for some days now. So far I have come up with nothing good. It seems anything I come up with has either been done, or would not sell. So my question is, is it possible to create a 'new' sci-fi world?

JT

Sure try one where humans don't exist and in our place are mighty aliens who Really don't like each other

The leprechaun

Wait I'm writeing rules for those huh? Would that count?

The leprechaun

I've been toying with making Humans other than the 'default generalist' species (a la Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, ...) So, in my universe, humans will be scarily large, strong, tough and fearsome.

Of course, I pinched that idea from Allan Dean Foster's 'The Damned' trilogy.

I was also thinking of making humanity the mysterious advanced civilisation - like Minbari or Eldar.

No humans! Of course! Why didn't I think of that? As of this moment your idea is mine, Muhahahahahaha! I need to get out more.

JT

Here's an idea I've been banging around in my head for a little while now.

It's around the late 22nd century. A little over a hundred years ago, or late 21st Century, humankind was at the height of a third world war. In addition to their regular fighting troops the various super powers of the time were using robot soldiers. In fact robotics and artificial intelligence had developed to the point of near sentience.

In any case, the war came to a crashing end for the humans with the delivery of a virus weapon that, mutating out of control, wiped the human race from the planet.

The machine that we'd created, still following their basic programming began to develop a "religion” based on the prospect of their human masters one day returning.
This basic programming included eliminating any hostile entities (i.e. machines fighting for the other sides), in order to build a utopian environment and habitat for the now long dead human species.

In a way, the machine carried the war long after we, the instigators of that war, had long been claimed a victim of it.

Eventually, the war ground to a tense stalemate. The machine, while endowed with tactically advanced intelligence, lacked the creative thought generally used to derive victory in war. Luck, and opportunistic thinking escaped the machine mind. And, as logic would have it, based on the programming parameters of “KILL THE ENEMY,” the machine fought each other in an endless campaign of violence.

Cities would be razed to the ground and rebuilt, literally overnight by construction machines driven by the purpose of their meager programming. Scarred battlefield would be cleared and replanted, only to be laid waste yet again. The war itself became aself perpetuating irony of machine perfection and relentlessness.

And, for a hundred years the machines that grappled each other for dominance of the planet, and thus, the promised blessing of their human masters coming back to give them purpose once again. Unbeknownst to them, a few humans survived the viral holocaust of the late 21st Century.

Perhaps it was providence. Perhaps it was fate. It made no difference. A single human child emerged from deep within the Czechoslovakian wilderness. And, the moment she did, spy satellites from all sides of the war noticed her immediately.

At this revelation, strategic level super computers, AIs now in control of all aspects of the now machine society began calculating how to retrieve this human female and utilize her to repopulate the species.

In this setting, the machine children of humankind are not its eventual destroyers; rather, the only thing it has left between life and extinction.

Thoughts?

Great game idea. Every battle could center around 'Eve'. Either getting to her, finding an enemy unit which has captured her, finding a mate/genetic donor, cloning attempts, etc.

JT,

What ideas did you have that you thought wouldn't sell? Post them may be we can tweak them for you. You might be surprised what will sell. As for ideas, try this one on for size. How about a space combat game where the "ships" are biological entities instead of machines. Could make for some unique role-playing set ups.

Black Lightning 2, I think that is one of the most refreshing and innovative game settings I have heard in a long time. Congrats to you.

Thanks R Jones...

In fact, you could play out this setting right now using Dream Pod Nine Heavy Gears and Jovian Chronicles Exos.
I figure a 15-20' tall Mecha in 1/144th scale would equate well as a 7-8' tall combat robot in 15mm, or true 25mm scale.

Northern Guard Heavy Gears could be North American Faction robots.

Southern Republic Heavy Gears could be European Union Faction robots.

Pathfinder Exos could be Pacific Asian Faction robots.

Wyvern Exos or CEF Battle Frames could be Russio-Slavic (hey, I just made that up... Cool, eh? ^_^) Faction robots.

If you're really sassy, you could try to find the old RAFM 1/87th scale Heavy Gears and go heroic 28mm...

I just bought Chain Reaction 2, and I'm thinking of building this setting for that.

" It is too late trojan bunny the countdown to my rulebook being published has begun MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" Serouiously though I have finished my rules and they will be sent out tomorrow.

The leprechaun

Tom Bryant:

Lets see if I can remmember. It was something like the year 2100. People had been getting mechanical implants that make you see better, move faster etc for a good few years now. The government, realising that if we continue on this path, eventualy we will be nothing but machines. Long story short, the government (or 'the man') now goes about killing anyone with implants, or techies as they are called. The techies, of course, decided to fight back. Small groups of techies use there implants to their advantage and fight the government forces. That's pretty much it. Now that I think about it, it seems kinda stupid. Your thoughts?

Black Lightning 2:

Very cool idea!

Chaosleprechaun:

Any idea when it will be out? Any minis? You got me interested!

JT

To the trojan bunny

You have said that some of the things you come up with have already been done.

Have you ever thought about doing a sci-fi game based on existing material rather than tying to come up with the whole setting and background yourself.

As an example I have just purchased the HAMMERS SLAMMERS handbook a sci-fi tank and infantry game based on the novels by David Drake. The book is by Pireme Publishing and there are miniatures available from OLD CROW and GZG. These were all done with the permission of the author David Drake. He even attended a gaming event in the UK in order to help launch the products.

Other recent and big examples are the LORD OF THE RINGS game products now being put out by GW and the STAR WARS rules and figures being put out by Wizards of the Coast.

So are you a fan of any sci-fi books and or movies that you think would make a great game.

I think that there is a lot of good sci-fi out there that has not been tapped for the game market.

"People had been getting mechanical implants that make you see better, move faster etc for a good few years now. The government, realising that if we continue on this path, eventualy we will be nothing but machines. Long story short, the government (or 'the man') now goes about killing anyone with implants, or techies as they are called. The techies, of course, decided to fight back. Small groups of techies use there implants to their advantage and fight the government forces. That's pretty much it. Now that I think about it, it seems kinda stupid. Your thoughts?"

Has anyone here seen the movie Equilibrium?
It stared Christian Bale (Reign of Fire and the new Batman) as a Tetragrammaton Cleric in a 1984-ish society where it was illegial to have emotion.
Anyway, these Clerics were badasses. Employing the Gun-kata, which was a form of martial art where the gun was an extension of ones hand.
It was really ground breaking good stuff, if you could work your way past the cheese.

Anyway, what if you did this:

You have your cybernetically augmented people, right? But, instead of just trying to outright kill them, the Gov just wants to register them (which would lead to obvious discrimination). Kind of like the Mutant problem from X-Men.

Anyway, the cyborgs resist... Well some of them anyway. Those that do register end up being employed by the Government to hunt down and "prosecute" the unregistered cyborgs.

So, now you have this Matrix style, Inquisitor skirmish game where one or several cyborg "Techies" are fighting it out... One side the resistance, the other side the loyalists, empowered with super-human capabilities (which could be fully customized by the player), and in the middle, everyday cops and SWAT teams...

You could even go so far as to introduce a quasi-religious aspect where the church, using advanced eugenics, has created super-human "Archangels" to take on the "taint of technology..."

It can be kind of a amalgamation of the matrix, johny nhemonic, and universal soldier.

How's that?

Of course it could be done. But to pull this off succesfully, it's important not to be too attached to contemporary warfare & society, or you'll get no further than 2100. You could have a game based on the idea that advanced bio-engineering will become the dominant technology. Soldiers might look like cybernetically augmented human-tyranid hybrids. That could give lots of scope for great miniatures, as well as some interesting twists on conventional infantry warfare as they'll be able to do things no regular GI Joe could. Or you might play around with the idea that weapons miniaturisation and the need for precision and high manouvrablility made tanks obsolete. They could have been replaced by power-armour suits for heavy artillery and martial arts trained commando's using small energy guns (and I mean small, including shoulder or helmet mounted stuff, not a jazzed up M16 rifle). Again, this could make infantry combat different from what is currently on offer. Or you could have a game focusing on command & control issues, where the forces are entirely made of robots (many of them non-humanoid in shape). In fact there are lots of possibilities, the important thing is to get away from copying contemporary mechanized infantry. This includes the visual style of sci-fi miniatures. There's no reason why they should look like present-day marines.

Black Lightning I doubt that your setting (or any other that substitute humans with other races) could work.

Humans are essentialy social animals: believe it or not we find human interaction and relationships more interesting than hardware or fantastic aliens/monsters.

That's the reason why every good fiction (or game setting) has to have humanity at its core.

Describe me an alien society, and it would be as exciting as following a documentary on ants!
People have to identify with the main characters (or playing pieces), have to comprehend the reason why they suffer and sacrifice themselves.
If you say that your machine simply fight because they are programmed to, than sorry, but I'm sure that's not sufficient.
That kind of machine could be really good as villains, but by themselves they can't substitute the main characters.

Maybe, maybe not. For stories this could very well be true. For gaming I think it depends on the scope of your game & the market share you're aiming for. Part of the gaming audience is quite conservative & wants not just humans, but humans that think & act in familiar ways. In WH40K, these players will go for Imperial forces or maybe Eldar or Orks. But there are also those who prefer Tyranids, Necron or Tau. Or Cobalt's alien Palansi or Abhor or the Kryomek aliens, whatever. A game centered on robots or aliens will attract some of these players. I know that if Black Lightning 2's game plays smoothly, and if I can find enough cool mini's to go with it, I'd probably play it.

I have look'd at Hetzerdog's story for Babylon's Burning, one big rock hit's the Earth and end's all civilisation.
Not in my opinion, a rock that big would kill all life on Earth.

I think it should be like this. A rouge commet crashes throu the asteroyd field and drags thousands of rocks with it. The commet keeps going out of are system but the tail, now with thousands of rock's in it, is in the path of the Earth. The Earth passes throu the commet tail and is bombarded by rock's that distroy city's, road's, ship's at see and aircraft in the sky. This go's on for day's until the Earth has passed throu the commet's tail.

I would call this story line Cascade as the rock's would Cascade down from the sky like water from a waterfall.

I like to reed a series of book's called Death Lands by James Axler. Set two hundred years affter an atomic war a small group of people, made up of different charactures with different backgrounds, find an old bunker with a Mat-Tranz macahine (star Trek transporter) witch takes them from one part of the world to anouther.

This would make a good si-fi story line and could be used with any post apoc, minis.

My current theme is based (loosley) on Fearless, convicted criminals from various races can opt for early release from prison by signing up for gladiatorial combat. I'm planning to have two factions per side that will be a mix of robots, aliens and humans, the side that wins gets to go home.

Another similar idea I had was based on Unreal Tournament, with the same mix of types, but all starting at low power/low ability/low weaponry status. For each enemy you kill you absorb their energy and get an upgrade- the result would always be one super badass survivor with more weaponry, armour and abilities than any creature has a right to.

Any of you guys read Orion's Arm? It's a ( deep breath ) hard-scifi far-future space opera. It's based on the collaborative work of many writers and developers, and has humanity ( and its creations, uplifts, subspecies, and derivatives thereof ) at a timeline around 10,000 years after Tranquility ( i.e. after the first landing on the moon ) . The history of the setting allows for an enormity of different wargames, and the people building it would most likely be very friendly towards any attempt at such.

It's pretty harsh in its science though – faster-than-light travel can only happen if a wormhole connects the two systems travelled between, and then only if the wormhole is not defended – because you can't go faster than light when passing through, so you'd better be able to withstand a few seconds of attack to get outside the 100,000 km weapon range of the defenders! : ) Weapons include conventional, fission and fusion nuclears, amat ( anti-matter ) , nano-, pico- and femto-tech ( if you though nanotech was small you got another thing comin'! : ) ) .

Interested parties can peruse orionsarm.com/main.html for more information.

-A.

Could be interesting, too bad they don't have a section dedicated to the ancient art of war :-( Or did I miss it somehow???

I wonder what ultratech level tactical groundcombat would look like. If they still do that sort of thing then of course :-)

I am currently doing work for a company that is releasing a new Sci-Fi miniatures Skirmish game next year.

It is being formally announced at Gamma next year and is supposed to be released at Gencon 2005. I think I heard the promo materials will be out after Christmas.

Before you say "Oh not another one of those". I have been around gaming for a long time but this is the coolest game and gaming enviroment I have ever seen. It is all "True Tech" no magic or anything. The art work and fluff are fanfreakingtastic. I have been telling them they need to put this world into books. It sort of reminds me of the first time I ever saw traveler or the original Rogue Trader. It is that kind of originally good.

On top of that the game is one of the most fun I have ever played and they are still tweaking it. I had to sign a NDA so I cannot say anything specific, at least for now, but you should keep an eye out for it.

I promise when you see it you will know it is the one I am taking about because you will be saying "COOL!"

Jeff

My wife and I where watching an Anim'e called "last Exile" I was thinking it would make a cool miniatures / Rpg. I wont give the storey away. it is just cool to discover it on your own. There are several factions vying for control. one of the factions, "The Guild" controls all the production of a substance called "Claudia", which allows all the airships to fly. The guild has very high tech equipment and these cool star shaped fighters that can land and walk about like the robot fighters in Star Wars Ep.1. The other factions have equipment that is a cross between WWII and the Napoleonic era. The show has a lot of cool Air ships that are like flying battle ships. Then there is the Sylvanus. It is like a battleship and Aircraft carrier rolled into one. Then there are the "Vanships" cool little multi purpose flying vehicles like twin seat airplanes. some are equipped like fighters. You guys should check it out if you havent seen it. You can find it on Winamp internet tv. just look for "Last Exile"

George D

I've been developing a setting for some stories and books I may try in the future. I keep changing things. You may want to think about "common" things in other games you want to avoid before you go too far.

Thanks for all the feedback. I had considered the man using their own techies as well, could be interesting. So you guys don't think my idea is stupid?

tulsatime:

I'm currently reading Hammer's Slammers! I picked up the pre-release box game at Salute from Mr. Drake! Very nice guy, by the way. Whatever you do, don't buy the boxed game! The forces they give you arn't even legal in the rules! Grrrrrr

Black Lightning 2:

I saw the movie about a week a go. Very cool.

JT

Your idea is not stupid. The best thing about sci-fi is that any setting is possible, no matter how ludicrous. It can be extremly goofy and still sell, or it can be fairly mundane and sell.

Wasn't there a series of toys that came with little comic books that had a similar premise to the one Black Lightning sugested? There was even a comic book series about the robots from DC. I think they were called zoids or something like that. From waht I can recal there were two factions of robots, one that were gardeners (why the gardeners had laser hand I do not know) and one that wanted to kill the humans when they came out of coldsleep. Contrary to my expectations (even at twelve) the comics were fairly good.

Rael Sirhc, I believe you're thinking of Starriors. It was a toy line, with mini-comics with the toys. Marvel put out a four-issue mini-series as well. The details are very fuzzy, but I know I still have some of the toys, and the mini-series, somewhere.

Good artists copy, Great ones steal....

How about a Solar system (pick an odd number of suns, and go from there) where planetary orbits switch around due to variable gravitational pull (Any physicists in the room can reload now). This gives a chance for any number of very very archetypal planets to come into "range" of one another for exploration/trade/fights.

Secondly, Populate these planets with creatures of varied biological makeup... Plant people (Farscape), Silicon Based Life (Shard)... Reptilian evolution (Space Slann GW)... Keep in mind, all the while... that none of these are humans.

Then, with all these different critters battling one another, you can have small human brigades with their high tech ships come in to explore. They can bring Ridiculous amounts of weaponry on the scene once they've run across the natives of whatever planet they land on. The humans are the aliens, they're the elite troops, and you never see more than a handfull of them at a time. Meanwhile, the local species are all fighting it out with whatever they were born with, Spores, Crystaline Mines (Shard Meadow Muffins), Crude Weaponry.

Mind you, these varying, nonhuman races can all have one or two very specific aspects that identify them. They just don't have a full gambit of human emotion... Plants can be very defensive and paranoid, Crystaline forms can be very industrious and orderly, Reptilians can be impulsive and basic. This way you get certain aspects of human behavior for players to relate to. In an RPG, since you (presumably) have humans playing the characters, you'll end up with a pigeonholing effect, which you may not want, but strictly for flavor and short fiction, it might work.

Again, make the humans the outsiders... make them irrational, make them murderous and destitute. They're a billion miles from home, and the only thing that keeps them going is an animalistic survival instinct and training bordering on brainwashing. Don't let the story center around the human race... let us be a terrible mystery for once. Every Race should take their turn being the orcs.

Rael Sirhc-
Wasn't there a series of toys that came with little comic books that had a similar premise to the one Black Lightning sugested? There was even a comic book series about the robots from DC.

Yep! Mad Dog nailed it right, it was caller Starriors. Have all the comics and most of the toys including the base with it's little scorpion robot guardian. The "bad" Starriors wanted to find humanity's last hiding spot and kill them before they woke up and resumed control. The "good" ones obviously wanted to protect the humans.

Cute little toys with wind up weapons. Decent comic too and the boys and I had fun playing with them.

BL's concept sounds a lot like the movie "Screamers". Still one of my favs.

BL: Ever considered writing out that awesome background in a slightly more narrative fashion and getting it published? If so, send me an email. :) With one slight tweak it would make an ideal "alternate universe" and would fit perfectly into Ćtherverse.

-Jason Lauborough - jason@triskelegames.com - Triskele Game Design Studios - www.triskelegames.com

@ Trojan bunny
No minis as of yet and wont be out for a while go ahead and steal the idea i got rejected :( noone likes the idea

Cloudcaptain - "Screamers" was actually based on the Philip K. Dick short story "2nd Variety".

Me, I just want high-tech sci-fi centaurs. Infantry and cavalry in one!

"I wonder what ultratech level tactical groundcombat would look like. If they still do that sort of thing then of course :-)"

Having read the Culture novels, two options are :

Semisentient guns and armoured suits, infantry that can shoot down missiles from over the horizon, and inch-long combat drones that can take out a tank squadron.
OR
a (semi)sentient cloud of nanobots that can reshape into pretty much any form, can create lasers in its structure, and has within it about a dozen antimatter nano-warheads.

Alternatively, assuming Clarke's Third Law to be true, you can simulate 'ultratech' combat using Warhammer Skirmish, D&D, etc, and lots of high-powered wizards and heroes with magic weapons.

Not being Sci-Fi per sé, but I've been working on a post-apocalypse setting in which Earth was hit by some sort of EMP pulse, completely wiping it clean of technological advances and what not.

It's not highly developed at this point, but I'm getting there :)

I definately like BL's setting, sounds really unique!

I'm not sure folks really want anything "new" per se. I think they prefer the same old stuff presented in a newish but not to radical format or stye. Then again I could be wrong.