Building the playground: what do we want out of this?

[Klaus]

There's a great deal of discussion on this forum, which is good stuff. But I wanna come at some of the issues from a different angle.

What do we actually want out of this setting? After all, a game setting is a playground - we want it equipped with all the best toys, eh?

So what kind of campaigns do people wish to run in it? If we rush ahead and plan our astrography etc too quickly we may end up precluding or making difficult some kind of campaigns. It may be we want to do that, but we want to make the decision ourselves rather than find its been made for us by dice rolls.

We know the local humans are solomani, that the rim war will have some major bearing on events (even if its set after the war), and that low burn tensions withthe Hivers will form the backdrop to everything.

however, thats just the big stuff - war, espionage, politics and privateering.

as the Sol Confed is anti Imperial, it should have a different character. there is less centralisation, therefore more political diversity and probably debate, but under the domination of a powerful Sol Party. There will be more dissent and perhaps aggressively competitive factions and fractions. control and policing will be less complete and probably more heavy handed. and most importantly, the lack of a central authority figure will mean powerful individual worlds will have alot more influence than in imperial affairs.

To me that means this setting is fluid and unstable and implies lots of adventuring opportunities.

piracy will need bases that allow attack of shipping lanes

smugglers will want a backwoods trading route

criminals will need planets that let them operate

colonists and settlers need worlds to settle and reasons to leave their original homes

traders will need valuable goods to move from place to place

etc etc

If we can define what we want to put here now it will help us develop the UWP data and quirks of history and politcs

 

[Malenfant]

Well, what I want are realistic systems

. Plus also realistic population distributions, colonisation efforts, governments, and societies. Everything else can fall into place from that as far as I'm concerned

.

As for the actual setting... I figure it's a place where two frontiers meet, with a no-mans land where anything goes to coreward. So I'm hoping there'll be lots of interaction with aliens (esp. Hivers), criminal organisation hanging out in the relatively lawless non-aligned regions (along with hardy colonists and explorers braving those same areas). Plus a cold war going on between the Hivers and the Solomani to spice things up.

 

[Klaus]

Yeah, that sounds just right to me. lots of opportunities for different kinds of adventure.

the imperium was never quite brutal enough for my tastes; far too benign

this way the 'goody' places will be scattered lights in a sea of seething nastiness. that way the good guys can still shoot people.

i want slavers too. even players who like being piratical murderers tend to find slavers distasteful.

 

[RainOfSteel]

A) Priates!

B) Smugglers!

C) Backwoods trading routes!

. . . .

. . . .

X) Realistic population distributions!

Y) Colonization efforts!

Z) UWP Lines that don't make me dizzy!


Huzzah! All of the above!


But seriously, folks . . .


What do I want? Hmm, sounds like a Shadow question.


No, really . . .


Sol/Hiver buffer zone. I want an active buffer zone, as I explained before. 50% backwater worlds (of little importance), 45% middlin worlds (of moderate importance), and 5% important worlds (which will mean 1-5 at most), and no, absolutely not even one single Pop A world in the buffer!

Sol space. We're a long way off from Home and a longer way off from heart-home Terra. There should be at least one evil villain Sector Corps here as greedy and depraved as Enron or Worldcom, ur, urk, I mean, Aztlan, ur, Arasaka, oops . . .

Conversely, there should be at least one major bright spot, a world, a corp, a faith, something with which to hold up a candle against the darkness (Vorlon ship blows me up, the Vorlon says, "You are not ready for candlelight." Oh! What was I saying?!?)

The Sol Megacorps (there are a few), will need to be detailed, because just like the Megacorps in the Imperium, their influence will be found almost everywhere.

I've scanned through the Alien Module on the Solomani, and given the history, I no longer think a war between the 3I and the Hivers can be inserted into things, so I'm withdrawing that.

There is going to have to be some sort of backdrop conflict.

I'd like to see: A group of Hivers is actively trying to Meme the Solomani into a more pacifistic attitude. Hardcore Solomani security forces have discovered this. A twilight war of wills and personalities and thoughts and faiths is waged across the Sector, with the indeps caught in the middle, pawns and catspaws. The PCs may, or may not, themselves get caught up by one side or another in the conflict. The Solomani fight to preserve their historic culture. The Hivers fight to make sure the Solomani don't destroy them and others.

 

[Klaus]

I was thinking of a syndicate of evil sector corps in a trade federation, setting up what they euphemistically call 'free trade zones' (FTZ) grouped around burgeoning industrial planets surrounded by some under developed worlds that are ripe for exploiting. There could be more than one of these in a sector, maybe 5-7 worlds each.

I reckon there will be a whole bunch of wealthy individuals, investors, and financiers who might want to band together in such a federation as a way of preventing the truly big megacorps getting a monopoly. They would invest in up and coming worlds, ones the megacorps might ignore, perhaps building a new starport, until they basically owned the whole planet and could do what they please.

this kind of thing could only happen in the Rim or the lesser states. in the Imperium all this will be sort of regulated by the fact that all these financiers would probalby have noble patents and so would be bound into the empire. I reckon in the Imperium Hortalez et cie would do most of this.

also, on another note, what kind of currency is about on the Rim? The credit transfers and e-money in the Imperium would not work as well in the Sol Rim, as there's no central control and authority backing it. I'd assume that various polities and important worlds would have their own currency, that would be traded all across the Rim, and there'd be others that were completely ignored (after all, who trades in Bulgarian Levs?). Only big corps and institutions would be able to have credit agreements, so travellers and free traders might have to carry hard currency!

I would not expect this to be gold or platinum, as their too useful in electronics, but perhaps some kind of palladium alloy (spose a bit like latinum in STS9)

I was thinking that maybe the corpy FTZ's would have their own corpy scrip thats only useful to buy stuff on corpy worlds, and traders could get stitched up by being given scrip instead of hard currency.

This would lead to currency speculation and exchange rates which would complicate matters somewhat, but it would add a wealth of colour to the setting.

 

[RainOfSteel]

What do the Solomani use as currency?

Off to read more Alien Module 6.

 

[Klaus]

another point

what about religion?

the church of the stellar divinity is prevalent in the empire, but this is not going to be popular on the Rim.

there's bound to be a whole selection of Terran successor religions: post-Islamic, post Judaeo-Christian, which I'll term the 'Book Cults', some of which could be wierd indeed.

one idea I've had is something like a super-Catholic Church, that traces its roots back into antiquity, but thats more like a corp or educational foundation than a church. It would invest in worlds and colonies as long as they teach 'the book'. I'd imagine them to be non-dogmatic and unconcerned about internal heresy, even investing in muslim worlds as they're still the sons of Abraham. It would also be a staunch supporter of the Solomani Party, giving it a divine justification....

 

[Klaus]

i could really do with the Alien module reprint but I can't find it

maybe we could do with a master lexicon of canon material pertaining to the Solomani Rim and Hiver federation. I spose its too much to ask someone to summarise Rim of Fire and the pertinent Alien modules...?

 

[Klaus]

moved this from the timeline thread as i was getting into a massive digression....

How long will it take a colony to grow into a thriving world?

after all, the US and Australia are only just over two centuries old, yet have large populations now. of course, there's been constant immigration.

so what about a new colony? lets say, i dunno, 2000 people in the first wave. at 2% growth rate (v conservative for a new colony), this will multiply by 6 every 100 years. Essentially thats a pop code point every couple of centuries.

so, to reach hi pop (10) from 0 would take 1500-2000 years; thats without immigration or acts of god. that should mean most hi pop worlds would have been settled before or during the long night. worlds settled at the founding of the imperium would have a pop UWP of 6-7, with anyplace less than 800 yrs would have a pop of no more than 5.

obviously immigration and natural disaster can skew all this, as can higher pop growth rates (thi I assume they'd level out at a certain level) many of the worlds settled in or before the long night may have a significantly smaller population.

I know this is a timeline thread rather than a UWP thread but i think this has bearing on how the waves of exploration and colonisation may operate.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Klaus:


...so what about a new colony? lets say, i dunno, 2000 people in the first wave. at 2% growth rate (v conservative for a new colony), this will multiply by 6 every 100 years.

More like a doubling every 35 years (assuming current RL maturation, societal mores, and death rates). Factor a culture of anti-contraception and free love or encouraged child birth and you get more. Factor younger marriages, perhaps arranged, and polygamy and you boost it even more. Exponential adds up fast when dealing with fertile populations and no stress limits (i.e. food, space, disease, etc.)

So I get about 33 generations, some 1155 years, from a starting pair (Pop 0 mod 2) to some tens of billions (Pop A), as long as there are no other influences.* Of course you'll shave a couple centuries off that if you start with a decent colony base population rather than a mythical Adam and Eve pair.

* and I did the math right, I'm beat so...

Still in your ballpark Klaus, and I like the general idea of knowing that the High Pop worlds are old and the population has a real history. Of course I dislike the idea of High Pop worlds in most cases. I mean, if you can (starships or even sleeper ships) why stay on some overcrowded resource limited world, strike out for new space.

I'm kind of hoping that part of what the "realistic" UWPs will fix is stupid Pop levels as regards resources (size, atm, & hyd), production (TL and starport), and society (law and gov). Do I ask too much Mal or do I read your implied goals correctly?

So we have old large pop colonies/polities and young low pop colonies. And running around between them:

Scouts making first re-contact/observation of some of the old colonies/polities, and exploring the wilds of the new colonies and looking for more worlds to settle.

Merchants wheeling and dealing with new markets. Old colonies/polities interested in the different tech, and new colonies needing a steady supply to kick start the world (including new colonists).

Pirates picking what they can where they can.

Military enforcing borders and allegiances.

and...

I grow tired. Carry on

 

[Malenfant]

It depends on the colony, I think...

I was going to post something separately about colonisation, but I may as well tack this on here while we're talking about it

See, I figure that the settlements that are on earthlike worlds (or at least, generally habitable ones) are going to be growing the fastest - the people there will want to raise their families there, plus they'll attract immigrants from outside too.

The populations of the non-habitable worlds on the other hand won't be growing much at all. As I see it, most people on those worlds will not be living there because they like it - they'll be there because they have to be, or they're used to that lifestyle. They'll be the really hardy types who choose to eke out a living on radiation-baked barren rockballs, or braving horrendous conditions to chip out those valuable crystal deposits that can't be found anywhere else.

The earthlike worlds are going to be the ones that have the most resources on them to support large populations too. Funnily enough, they're also the most clement environments for life too

. Earthlike worlds are far and away the best real estate in the galaxy - you've got warmth, air, gravity, water, mineral resources, and biological resources all in one package. It's attractive to the vast majority of the human (or any other) population, and what's more it can support that population.

All rockballs have to offer on the other hand are mineral resources, the odd spot of ice, and that's about it - hardly a great encouragement to live there. It'd take a very special breed of people to want to go live somewhere like that. While there might be a bit of population growth as some of the inhabitants start families and a relative trickle of more hardy souls arrive from elsewhere, I suspect that there might even be a net []loss[/i] of population from such worlds as people either die because of environmental hazards or decide they're fed up with chipping rocks and head off to that nice garden world that's one jump away. (that was an obscenely long sentence

).

As I was saying on one of the other threads - I see non-habitable worlds as having maximum populations of a few million people (pop 6) at most. It'll be the habitable worlds that are going to be growing rapidly to a population of billions.

But that's how I'd see it... I'm not saying that the non-habitable worlds would be empty, just that they're not going to be the ones that the majority of people are found on.

And yeah, I do want to fix the social side of the UWPs too...

 

[robject]

How likely is it that the really nice Solomani worlds are going to be claimed by nobility, or megacorporate executives, or simply rich people? Thus turning the worlds into high-cost-of-living luxury living with a service staff of millions? Do you think it possible that the truly huge populations will be on habitable but not wonderful worlds -- worlds with less water, or worlds with somewhat uncomfortable atmospheres? (Are those worlds also likely to be industrial targets?) And can the Solomanii-in-charge manage that kind of colonization control in the first place?

 

[Malenfant]

I'd really doubt that worlds can be bought by megacorps or rich people. Nobles perhaps could have them set aside, but not mere civvies. But then this is the Solomani Confederation... do Sollies have nobles?

Hrm. That said I could see Sollie megacorps buying out planets (that's what the type 1 government is after all)... SLA Industries anyone?!

I think tainted atmosphere/low water worlds would have less people than the really earthlike ones. Maybe a max of pop 8?

 

[veltyen]

Tainted I would say not. I had the feeling that one of the ways you could have tainted was when you had an atmosphere that was overtaxed by industry, hence a high population.

Desert worlds (hydro 0) I would see there being a problem, but closed environment habitation shouldn't really be relying on free water anyway, what is mined or as a byproduct of fuel cells should be adequate, certainly there would be a technical requirement for high population on a desert world. But if you look at the central Australian desert, the Peruvian high desert, or the sahara, all have had habitation even at extremely low tech level, just not in significant numbers.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by veltyen:
[QB] Tainted I would say not. I had the feeling that one of the ways you could have tainted was when you had an atmosphere that was overtaxed by industry, hence a high population.

But that argument should only work if you have a hi-pop TL 6-8 world (ie one that's chugging out lots of CO2 and pollutants) shouldn't it? Plus they'd have to be doing a heck of a lot of pollution to actually turn the atmosphere into a tainted one.

At higher TLs, when you have fusion power and fuel cells are used, what is there to pollute the environment?

 

[Klaus]

I don't know if people would always seek pastures new. For a start they tend to be stubborn; its usually the young who move on. Also moving planet is stressful, not tomention dangerous, not the kind of thing people will do at the least cause (it would take a lot for you to move house wouldn't it?). Biggest problem is expense - 1000cr just for one jump for one person, no more than 2-3 parsecs most of the time, and thats in low berth. So even if the colony world their great grand parents were dumped on is not particularly nice, they may not be able to afford to leave.

Hi pop worlds could easily emerge (tho having taken a look at Malenfant's sector map we really are only talking about 4-5 subsectors of Sol frontier space. I wouldn't expect more than 2-3 hi pop worlds here) for many reasons, and even if they're hell holes. Here's a couple of scenarios.

Big, wealthy industrial planet: will attract immigrants looking for work or a higher standard of living (NYC circa 1900), maybe causing lots of tensions but cheap labour is always popluar with industrialists.

Poor world with trace atmo: in the dim distant past a ship crash landed on this world. Thru luck, guts, and knowce they survived, and after a time survived v successfully. by the time traders return to the area there is a successful and happy pop (say 6-7) in domes and tent cities. A good society has emerged and people generally want to stay, so in time it becomes hi pop.

Also, with a war going on ther's going to be huge numbers of refugees. Rich worlds will be able to make them move on; they'll end up getting dumped on poor planets where the locals can't stop them. Of course, disease will take its toll (but this creates a nice backdrop for smuggling medicines and people).

so in general I'd agree with Malenfants guidelines, just that a few exceptions here and there add spice and flavour.

 

[Malenfant]

I don't really believe in big wealthy industrial planets. Look at Earth - would you call it an Agricultural world or an Industrial world? It's a mix of everything, because on a habitable planet you can do everything on a small scale.

You can't do that on a non-habitable world. Sure, you can do mining and manufacturing on a hellhole, but that's about it. Plus you have to wonder how much it actually costs to keep many people on such a world. Somebody presumably must be building all those domes and environmental protection systems, and somebody must presumably be paying for it all. Besides, I can see having a small population devoted to industry on such worlds, but not a large one (and you don't need to have a large population to be wealthy if the right resources are there).


As for the poor world with a trace atmosphere - how would those people have survived without outside help? Any colony - even an unprepared one like that - would be insane to want to expand their population when resources are very limited.


re: refugees - sure, if there's a war on they'd want to leave. But leaving a planet isn't as simple as packing your bags and going for a long walk across a national border. In a war, the starports are probably going to be the first things that get levelled (especially now we're outside the Imperium), and even if they're not, would people actually be allowed to leave the planet? And more to the point, would they be allowed to arrive at a planet if they left?


I don't mind the odd exception, but I think it's important that the reasons that allow it to exist are realistic.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

"You can't do that" is of course relative to tech level. The real question is "Why do that?"

 

[Klaus]

thats all true, but look at Earth. People live just about everywhere (apart from antarctica), from the Arctic to Tibet to the Sahara to the Outback. Why did their ancestors go there in the first place, if the conditions were so harsh? And alot of these peoples aren't jumping at the chance to leave (or at least were'nt until globalisation happened). The Arctic and Nepal are every bit as harsh as some more marginal worlds, yet people settled these areas at TL0!

Humans are pretty good at surviving anywhere. And once they get good at it they can be reluctant to change their ways.

And I'd live on the Moon if I could!!

 

[Klaus]

something else. We shouldn't think just about why would people settle a particular world, but also why would people want to go. Reasons from history are overcrowding and persecution among others, and desperate people may take desperate measures (especially if they can only get hold of rickety old ships that can't go far). Australia was a penal colony; the original colonists were sent against their will. The New World was originally settled by pilgrims who wanted to set up their utopia. Remember the Raelians? If they'd had a starship they'd be off up there rather than 6 feet under.

I don't think settlement should be too perfect, it should be quite messy.

I think that applies to the Sollies. The Hivers would take a longer more planned approach I expect, and their settlement patterns would probably b e more ideal.