The Campaign Builder's Guild

I'm pulling together ideas for a science fiction setting that is probably best described on a whole as "gothic space opera", although I'm trying to steer clear of WH40K territory.  I'm looking at something with bits of transhumanism, space travel, mystery, wonder, exploration, and lots of grandeur.  It should generally paint a pretty bleak picture of humanity, but at the same time have plenty of potential for swashbuckling and such.  I'd like it to capable of supporting military action, action-adventure, monster hunting, conspiracy theories, politics and espionage, crime drama, exploration, etc.

That's what I'd like, anyway.  I just want to open discussion on things that would make or break such a setting and have a place to post ideas as they occur.

A word on technology:  I'm generally assuming some sort of gravity manipulation, reactionless STL drives, and FTL stardrives being available.  I'm iffy on the existence of intelligent aliens (outside of conspiracies, of course!) but the galaxy will appear to be full of lifeforms.  AIs will exist, but they won't be creative or even particularly volitional outside of the orders given them, and genetic engineering of humans will exist almost exclusively to prevent disease - not enhance humans; enhanced humans will likely be stigmatized.

I'll post more as it comes.  Thanks in advance!

Hi. Welcome to the Forums!

Gothic Space Opera is certainly an intriguing term. It looks like you've already pinned down the core tone of the setting and how you want the adventures to develop.

I'm curious as to how you would develop a universe without the existence of aliens. (outside of conspiracies...btw what clues or phenomena spark these conspiracies?) I'm a little perplexed by "the galaxy will appear to be full of lifeforms".

A thought just now, maybe humans have evolved differently in different parts of the universe...could make for interesting tension/technological necessities etc.

Good luck, looking forward to see this develop.

I like 'Gothic'...let's move forward here...

The Gothic part is interesting, especially since you're not wanting to do Warhammer 40K "Everything is super ultra dark all the times and everything wants to kill everything so unless you're one of the super-powerful god-men or non-humans you might as well slit your wrists and be done with it" tone. (I dislike Warhammer 40K).

From what you've described with the word Gothic, you're looking for something dark but not depressing, in it's own way awe inspiring like the gothic architecture. However, from what you described in what you want in the setting (Easy travel, iffy on aliens, AI's non-threatening, genetic engineering being used for medicinal purposes only, etc) it sounds like a pretty upbeat commentary on humanity. What do you see making the setting darker to fit the Gothic tone you have in mind with those factors in place?

Gothic usually implies supernatural powers at work, or at least terrifying and irrational ones (madness, disease).  Will there be psychics, magi, demons, ghosts, or any occult stuff, or is that too close to the 40K mentality?  If not, which parts of the Gothic will come through most strongly?  Seems like mad AIs, rampant genetic grotesquery, unfathomable alien intelligences, and horrific plagues are out... where's the horror come in?

EDIT: Crazy religious fanaticism is also a common Gothic trait... again, is that too close to 40K?

Must... stop myself... from complaining... about bleakness.

The "gothic" can easily be supplied by dwelling on humanity's more base tendencies (war, backstabbing, neglecting the needy, etc.).  I'm not against some religious fanaticism, but I'm not looking to go all gungho with it, like in WH40K (I am a fan, but a lot of it bugs, me, too, so I'm stuck avoiding too many similarities so as to avoid the comparison).

"Resplendent with life" can easily mean microorganisms, plants, insectish things, animalish things, etc.  Just nothing that appears intelligent in the way that humans are.  Also, I prefer to keep intelligent aliens, volitional AI, and the like off limits generally, so that their occassional presence or hinted presence can serve as a source of horror.

I find horror (and as a result, aspects of gothic romance) to be a focus on the unknown and hints at what horrifying truth might explain it.  Frex, implying the existence of aliens with unfathomable goals can be more horrifying than meeting a little grey guy you can waste with one good swing of a frying pan.  You can't shoot implications, and let's face it.  Humanity would probably shoot any malicious aliens it knew about.

I should also mention that I'm not expecting humans to have really colonized the entire Milky Way.  They have probably colonized a few hundred worlds in the local vicinity of Sol.  The wonderful politics of that mass of humanity will likely provide plenty of room for horror in and of itself.  Recall that many of the scenes described in some of the most poignant gothic novels were drawn from real-world events of the time.

So those are current thoughts.  I'll be posting more as it continues to stew and you prod me with questions.

[EDIT]
I should also mention that while I intend to avoid recreating WH40K, it's worth mentioning that WH has managed to bundle up just about every trope in existence, so truly avoiding it would be impossible.  Still, I am certainly not looking to recreate it.  I could as easily describe Dune or even The Chronicles of Riddick as "gothic space opera", so I feel there is enough wiggle room to do this successfully.

QuoteI should also mention that I'm not expecting humans to have really colonized the entire Milky Way. They have probably colonized a few hundred worlds in the local vicinity of Sol.

Okay, this part I have to comment on. How advanced is terriforing, and how large an area do you mean by "local vicinity"? The Orion Arm is a pretty big area, but there is very little evidence to suggest a large number of terrestrial planets within it - much less ones capable of sustaining earth-like carbon-based life. Unless you plan to have very, very advanced terriforming techniques, they're going to have to spread very far apart.

Plus, for humans to be the only intelligent species and to have colonized "hundreds" of worlds we're talking about a massive population and time - let's assume for a moment each colonized world has 100 million inhabitants (less than that and I fail to see any point in moving to a new world, considering how large a world is). With a modest estimate of hundreds being 200 planets, that's 20 billion people off Earth - and they'd barely be using the available land/resources of the colonized worlds.

I don't think you need more than a few dozen worlds for a setting like this - unless you want to go even more Soap Opera than I had initially thought. Granted, the idea of hundreds of smaller, scattered colonies is interesting, but feels better for a Western Soap Opera than a Gothic one.

So I guess my questions are as follows: how large are the colonies, why are they so large/small, how many are there, are the worlds terraformed or naturally life-sustaining, do they include moons of various gas giants, and how fast does your FTL go (note that "Speed of Plot" is a perfectly acceptable answer to this question), and finally: how hard do you want the science in this science fiction to be?

but colonies don't have to be based on the planet itself. massive scaffold-cities floating in space could be all there is to a single colony, their only reason for existance being to extract something worth while from the planet: rare elements, energy, basic elements etc.

This would make sense if, in fact, few planets would be hospitable to mankind, and therefore the need for resources would be at a premium. We are already starting to have certain resource issues on Earth today, and out population is still under 7 billion in total.

Think Cloud City, but with your gothic tone.

I'm having a hard time understanding how this:

Quote from: Xathan Of Many Worlds(I dislike Warhammer 40K).

I thought you were describing why 40k was awesome, how it wonderfully captured the hopeless feeling of dark ages in the future, and GRIMDARK RAH RAH RAH...but what do I know?

One frequent feature of the Gothic is ruins - heck, they inspired the entire genre's creation.  Maybe there are worlds where the aliens are long dead but their ruins and terraforming efforts remain.  Perhaps human colonists live in the shells of the defunct alien cities?  Might be a good way to have aliens remaining creepy/mysterious.

Quote from: Ninja D!I'm having a hard time understanding how this:

Quote from: Xathan Of Many Worlds(I dislike Warhammer 40K).

I guess I wasn't be sarcastic enough. :P don't get me wrong, Warhammer is a brilliantly done setting and lord knows I'm a fan of darkness myself, but 40K takes it to 11 - there's dark, and then there's bleak, and while bleak can work, for me it just kills it - the setting is far too grim for my tastes, and I like dark settings to have some kind of hope (most of the time - Lovecraftian settings are the typical exception to this.) Part of the problem for also is the power - I don't like ______ is the absolute best/most dangerous/nastiest __________ in the UNIVERSE, which is a Warhammer trope.

However, if you want to discuss this further it might need its own thread, don't want to hijack this guy's campaign setting.

So much to reply to.  A few responses off the top of my head (and thanks for provoking some more thought):

FTL travels at the speed of plot, at this point, for sure.  I haven't even begun to place worlds yet, as I'm still sifting through the HIP charts for useful stars (and I must say there are a freakin ton within 500 ly, so I suppose that's the initial shell I'm running with).

"Colonies" refers to any colonization effort.  Most are terrestrial worlds where humans can either exist without technological help, or they rely on some degree of technology.  Terraforming really isn't a reality, since, well, it takes WAY too long.

Colonies range in population, but most worlds aren't completely populated.  In fact, a good many are little more than giant ranches where they raise and sell animals for meat or food crops.  Others are industrial mining centers.  Some are trading posts, etc.  Populatiosn vary greatly with the nature of the world and how old it is.  I haven't really worked out proper population figures.  I'm sort of assuming colonization has been going on for a couple hundred years, though.  Enough generations for "natives" to no longer feel like immigrants to their new world.

And Steerpike, that's a freaking awesome idea. Whether or not that works its way into here or not, I might borrow it for other ventures.

well, I think the point we were all making about colonies was that inhabitable, earth-like worlds are excedingly rare. Like, more than I can explain with words. As far as I know, we haven't found one thats even close and scientists seem to get excited if they find a dingly little rock where the equator is as hot the north pole in January.

While I can only speak for myself, I will suspend my disbelief for FTL, laser beams, psionics, and even aliens way before I will be able to accept that a single solar system has 3 planets that can sustain life.

Quote from: Señor Leetzwell, I think the point we were all making about colonies was that inhabitable, earth-like worlds are excedingly rare. Like, more than I can explain with words. As far as I know, we haven't found one thats even close and scientists seem to get excited if they find a dingly little rock where the equator is as hot the north pole in January.

I have a lot of contentions with this.  We are unable to detect smaller worlds because we lack the equipment to detect such minute wobbles in a star's position, and the luck of happening to be staring right down the edge of the solar system so that it's planets actually traverse the portion of the star we view is miniscule.  To say that finding habitable planets is virtually impossible based on our insufficient means of detecting them is like saying that humans cannot break the sound barrier because we can't run fast enough to do it.

That said, the recent Hiparcos survey cataloged over 33,312 stars within 500 light-years of earth (excluding Sol).  What you are suggesting is that it is more likely to flip a quarter 15 times (2^15 = 32,768)and get heads every single time than to find another habitable planet within 500 light-years of Earth.  I'm just trying to put into perspective the statement you've just made.

Personally, I find it perfectly reasonable to assume there are habitable worlds out there.  If you need an example of worlds that are close to habitable that scientists have found, despite all impediments, NASA posted this article (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/gliese_581_feature.html) on September 29, 2010.

</rant>

For future reference, I am stipulating, as the greatest science fiction authors we've seen have often done, that there are habitable worlds aside from Earth.  My apologies for the tirade, but such nitpicking is disruptive and unproductive.

I'm sure no one meant to be disruptive or anything, they are just different views on the subject is all :)
 
If you were gonna use that idea with the ruins, you can always argue that the aliens before had all the time they needed to terraform the planets and that alien/human physiology was a reasonably close match (we only have one periodic system after all, so I don't think another carbon-based lifeform is too ridiculous to consider).
Alternatively, they could have sent terraforming probes out a long, long time ago, while they were still handling the logistics of colonization.

Personally, I have no problem with you stipulating the existence of habitable planets. That's pretty standard fare for Sci-Fi after all. Maybe the humans just found a more fortunate corner of the galaxy.

I am eager to see what you do with this, Humabout. There are only a few settings here at the CBG that are futuristic and feature a lot of space travel, but there's so much potential. I've also done the "planetary ranch" type of deal in my setting, where they often end up being entire continents or planets owned by an organization that's doing some dark research.

I really like that you're not going with a loud alien/AI presence; as you have said it'll definitely add to horror opportunities and such things can be so difficult to implement beyond an antagonistic perspective that it bogs down the narrative of the setting.

Quote from: Humabout

Quote from: Señor Leetzwell, I think the point we were all making about colonies was that inhabitable, earth-like worlds are excedingly rare. Like, more than I can explain with words. As far as I know, we haven't found one thats even close and scientists seem to get excited if they find a dingly little rock where the equator is as hot the north pole in January.

I have a lot of contentions with this.  We are unable to detect smaller worlds because we lack the equipment to detect such minute wobbles in a star's position, and the luck of happening to be staring right down the edge of the solar system so that it's planets actually traverse the portion of the star we view is miniscule.  To say that finding habitable planets is virtually impossible based on our insufficient means of detecting them is like saying that humans cannot break the sound barrier because we can't run fast enough to do it.

That said, the recent Hiparcos survey cataloged over 33,312 stars within 500 light-years of earth (excluding Sol).  What you are suggesting is that it is more likely to flip a quarter 15 times (2^15 = 32,768)and get heads every single time than to find another habitable planet within 500 light-years of Earth.  I'm just trying to put into perspective the statement you've just made.

Personally, I find it perfectly reasonable to assume there are habitable worlds out there.  If you need an example of worlds that are close to habitable that scientists have found, despite all impediments, NASA posted this article (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/gliese_581_feature.html) on September 29, 2010.

</rant>

For future reference, I am stipulating, as the greatest science fiction authors we've seen have often done, that there are habitable worlds aside from Earth.  My apologies for the tirade, but such nitpicking is disruptive and unproductive.

haha, I didn't mean to nitpick at all. All I was trying to get across is that since gothic implies a dark, ominous setting, space is already set up to easily use one of the darkest and most ominous things: loneliness. Space is huge, as I'm sure we all know, and those big empty spaces can be used to great effect to create a melancholic, empty, slighty unhinged setting.

If on one hand, you have only a handful of worlds, tttering on the brink of the big nasty void, I, personally, think that is much more gothic than hundreds of cozy worlds. Unless you take the WH40k route and make each world a cut-throat hive of scum and villainary (I'm sure thats spelled wrond).

Howeeeeeeeeeever, that's just me. it's your setting, not mine. But someone on the forums once wrote something along the lines of "It's better to have crappy advice than no advice at all, I can work with crappy advice, I can't work with no adive." Just giving food for thought.

Quote(I'm sure thats spelled wrond)

"It's better to have crappy advice than no advice at all, I can work with crappy advice, I can't work with no adive."[/quote], I can't work with no [blank]" lines, stolen from my friend/teacher)

I do want to briefly toss in that you did state you wanted to make your universe distinctive for WH40k route, and Leetz's idea has merit - a lot of gothic horror was based on the unknown and space is huge and full of things that will kill you as is. (Not talking about aliens - talking about black holes, naked singularities, pulsars, the radiation thrown out by a supernova - basically, all the horrific things with either know or theorize exist in reality in space that would utterly destroy a human that got too close - too close in this case being measured in light years, in some cases.)

However, if you want the many worlds and want the Gothic route, what I'd reccomending doing is tinkering with societies - sure, every world is a cut-throat hive of scum and villainy, but they're often CLASSY cut-throat hives of scum and villainy - or at least that's the face that's presented. Think Dracula as he's often portrayed - sure, he's an awful monster that will feed on you and turn you into his eternal slave, but there's no need to be uncivilized about it.) A line from Terry Pratchett comes to mind, though I'm fudging the name because I can't remember who it was referring to - "Like most people without actual morals, Slant had standards." That, more than anything, might be what brings the Gothic to your setting.

My apologies for the misunderstanding, Senor Leetz.  Your clarification is certainly advice worth having.  Xathan, what you suggest is something that I was tinkering with when I first starting approaching this setting.  I originally began with the idea of having aliens and made a list of fears that really set off humans - things like isolation, loss of identity, corruption of the soul, etc.  My original plan was to have each alien embody one or more fears, with humanity providing its usual set of fears (really, a mix of all of them).  But as I gave more thought to aliens and alien cultures, the more i realized that I was just reinventing human societies or thought experiments regarding human society, all of which breaks the suspension of disbelief for me.  I like my aliens more unfathomable, and only one set of aliens embodied that - a rather Lovecraftian extra-universal bunch of nasties.

That all said, Senor Leetz is dead right about space easily representing isolation.  Even with hundreds of worlds, the emptiness is overwhelming, and to combine that with scattered alien ruins and vivid descriptions of other worlds otherliness could tip it into the realm of horror.  Colonies on the edge of the abyss living under the decaying ruins of some unknown civilization that obviously didn't survive (or did they?), on worlds that despite their habitability, simply are not Earth.  And the sorts of things that make the worlds themselves feel alien could be purely cosmetic, like retrograde or tidally locked orbits - the sun rises in the west and sets in the east; or it rises, sets, rises again, traverses part of the sky, goes the other way, and then finally sets (like Mercury).  Heck, even the color of the light from the star could make it feel odd.  Frank Herbert did that with Arakas and its sun being more bluish than Paul was use to.

another way you could think about going is focusing on the fragility of civilization in this infinite, dark, cold galaxy. Just because you have worlds that are inhabited, doesn't mean that have to be inhabitable. Self-contained hive cities that require just a few holes in the wrong places to totally implode or floating station-cities that teeter on the brink of falling into a death-trap gravity field or being smashed by a rogue something in space.

That being said, it takes just the right amount of something I haven't quite figured out to make a setting feel truly dangerous (and hence, gothic)

Making it feel truly dangerous is mostly a matter of in-game atmosphere, I find.  I'm relatively certain, with the proper DMing, even a 1950s romance set in Aspen could be "gothic".  The setting as a whole being "gothic" is more about giving the GM lots to work with and largely focusing on the dark and scary bits.  The examples you've given are certainly excellent examples of that.

I increasingly find myself thinking, however, that humans, if supplied with a a form of FTL that allows them relatively quick interstellar travel would naturlaly inhabit the most inhabitable planets first.  Heck, depending on when FTL is introduced, we may even skip many of the bodies in our own solar system in favor of more easily inhabited exoplanets or exomoons.

That combined with the number of studies and estimations of the rate of occurrence of habitable exoplanets and exomoons (between 0.023% and 1.5% of the stars in the Milky Way.  Again, returning to the 33,000 stars within 500 ly of earth, that's between 5 and 495.  A wide swing, but still more than just the one (Earth).  So I guess it'd be justified in having relatively few habitable planets.  That would leave room open for more "interesting" colonies, for sure.  And if there are ruins of ancient civilizations out there, it would sort of make things seem a bit more creepy, too.  Heck, I might even shift this into a relatively closer timeframe to present day (before I was thinking in terms of "way in the future".  Now I'm considering, "Hey, we're still kind of new at this").

Another idea that has wriggled into my brain is that this might work (or might not work) with a semi-pulp-weird science/nazi UFO feel happening.  By that I mean that it's set in the future and we have futuristic things like dingy spacecraft and FTL drives, but there are still mad scientists discovering new and crazy things and evil people trying to use them, and conspiracies, and coverups, and stuff like you'd find in old comic books.  I'm not sure that really fits with "gothic", though.  I'm really liking the general focus on the bleakness of space and how humans are clinging desperately to life while dangling over the abyss.

Also, sorry about the stream of consciousness writing here.  I'll try to make future posts flow better.

Quote from: HumaboutAlso, sorry about the stream of consciousness writing here.  I'll try to make future posts flow better.

I like it. Makes me feel good to know I'm not the only one with a whole bunch of ideas bouncing around my head. But I would love to see some in-depth material for this setting.

I'm unsure how useful this will be to you, but here's a cthulu-take on space, by Steerpike: http://www.thecbg.org/PLUGIN_DIR/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?61798.post

Excerpt by Steerpike-- [ooc]SOL Decadent, excessive, overripe, and largely abandoned, the Sol system is humanity's home territory and includes the moldering ghost-planet of Earth as well as twelve other planetoids. Earth itself has become a wasteland, a glassy netherworld punctuated by the husk-cities of dead civilizations, the sky palled with ash, the seas boiling with the inhuman rage of the slumbering entities therein awakened. Cythera, or Venus, is more lively, its foppish and hedonistic citizenry living out their debauched lives in the flying crystal palace-cities of that world, great transparent edifices like huge jewels drifting across the unwholesome and noxious plains below. On Mars, prospectors of the whitish platinum-gold of that world pan the desiccated river-beds or caverns and return to ragtag shanties, swathed in furs and goggles, toting clunky revolvers and cruel, serrated knives, riding horny-plated and quasi-saurian vortlups and guided by the lanky and skeletal four-armed giants known as the Aihais. Mercury remains too hot to colonize, although occasional explorers delve into the long-abandoned Yithian cities that can still be found on the scorched surface: though not nearly as comprehensive as the Great Library of Pnakotus of Earth the archives of these ruins still contain some of the Yithian scroll-tubes, etched with cosmic secrets and occult mysteries.[/ooc]

Our first settlement would with high probability be a mining facility of some kind. FTL drives would give us access to a bountiful universe of rare minerals and other interesting things.
Planet's could also easily begin their settled history as penal colonies. As soon as FTL becomes widely available, a lot of companies would also be quick to set up shop as far away from official jurisdiction as possible.

But you should keep in mind that FTL travel does not mean reliable travel. The distance and angles involved in FTL need to be precise to the obscene, and I hope we all recall Han Solo's quote about flying into a sun.

Also keep in mind that FTL does not mean instantaneous either, like travels fast, the galaxy huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge. Although it may seem like an inconvenience, forcing the players to sit in cyro-snooze for 7 years would, I think, make the setting seem more serious. To counter that, you could up the median age to 150 or what have you.

These thoughts brought you by 7:00AM and South American Clubbing.  

Sarisa:  I'll start working on some real material soon.  I'm still just trying to assemble a mess of ideas into something semicoherent.

Light Dragon That's a cool idea, but I think this will get its "goth" from the terrors of living in space and the ubiquitous horror of what humans are capable of doing.

Steerpike:  Freaking sweet setting, dude.

Superfluous Crow:  All excellent points.  I could see some less-habitable worlds used as penal colonies for sure.  All of your points, really, are quite good.  I think most of those would make sense as non-planetary colonies (space stations, asteroid colonies, etc.).  I'd save the livable planets for proper human expansion, for reasons I will get into below.

Senior Leetz:  Thank god for clubbing!  Those are some of the points I have bouncing around.  My general idea for FTL (which I think is getting close to complete) is that it can work over any distance within any gravitational field, and the jump is instantaneous.  Now the kinks:  the longer the jump, the more measurements and precision you need; the more complicated the calculations get, and as a result, the longer they take, despite the best mankind has to offer in way of computers; and the closer to a gravitational well, the less accurate the jump gets; and the longer the jump, the more power that is required, so charging up times get longer, too.  So while the jump itself is instantaneous, all the preparations can take days for a reliable jump, which is not a long one.  I'm ball parking (and this is far from set in stone) a reliable jump being in the 20 ly range.  Of course, if you don't have astronomical data for where you are or where you're headed, you would need to acquire that data or get real lucky, so while you could eventually cross the galaxy in under 14 years, our lack of data would require a thorough astronomical survey after each jump beyond a certain point.

Below:  I was doing some more research on the occurrence of habitable planets (defined as between 0.3 and 2 Earth Masses within the habitable zone of a star) and came up with a wide enough field of answers that I can safely drop the number of inhabited worlds drastically.  Current estimates are between 0.015% of stars and 1.5% of stars.  So anywhere between 5 and ~400 stars within 500 ly.  So I've chosen the number to be around 24.  That's enough for humanity to grow a lot and for there to be lots of secondary colonies and factions, but still keep it all manageable.  It should also put a lot of space between colonies and make each one far more important to humanity as a whole.  For some reason, that sort of gives me more of a "on the brink of the abyss" feel than 200+ colonies.

as for your FTL travel, you could have only certain lanes and areas of the galaxy or setting area mapped and thus restrict travel to only the known parts of the galaxy. This would,

A.) keep your setting somewhat concentrated in another infinite setting space

B.) lurking pirates with gravity well generators waiting along trade lanes. obv.

C.) the mysterious emptiness outside the mapped galaxy.

D.) exploring that vast mysterious emptiness.

E.) The danger of getting lost in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE.

I've been giving a lot of thought to (a) and come up with a good justification for trade routes.  Because the more precise the data and better mapped an area is, I could see astrometric laboratories sprouting up at regular intervals between colonies that continuously measure and compute regular jumps between each other.  They could sell this information to starships that jump there and greatly reduce their travel time for a cost.  These would eventually grow into trading posts and "truck stops" and possibly into even larger, more expansive colonies.  This wouldn't necessarily make starfaring safe or cheap, since these stations could easily become entangled in crime syndicates and smugglers.

(B) Obviously.  Hehe.  Honestly, I"m not entirely certain just how prevalent or feasible piracy in the traditional sense really is in space.  Of course, some not-so-honest salvage ships might help create wrecks to feed their business, and privateers are as good a way to deal with enemy merchants as any.

(C-D)  While somewhat problematic to GM as a game, this would certainly have major horror potential.  Massive survey ships trying to poke their heads into the Abyss and see what they can find before something dark and nasty lops it off.

(E) lol!  yup.  

So after some thought as to how to continue, it strikes me that I need to start in on exactly what technological advances have occurred and work out some implications thereof.

Perhaps the most important bit of technology to work out is that of how ships get around.  Obviously, I'm using a somewhat finicky stardrive that lets a ship "safely" jump as long as it is a given distance from any large masses.  I'm looking at making that distance around twice the distance to Pluto, give or take.  Shorter jumps within a system are possible, but it might be faster to use engines, since jumps require lots of measurements and calculations, and jumps closer to a star (or planet or moon) are less accurate.

This leads to a potential need for subluminal drives.  Traditionally, we see reaction engines that use anything from nuclear piles, fusion torches, plasma rockets, or ion streams to propel ships at low (or in some sci fi, high) accelerations part of the way and then coast the rest.  This certainly is sufficient, but it would take a REALLY long time to get anywhere.  The other possibility is that of a reactionless drive that can be powered by some sort of powerplant (fission or fusion, most likely) and provide unlimited acceleration.  Taking into acount the restrictions in speed imposed by relativity, you could get from Earth to Pluto (accelerating half the journey and decelerating the other half) in 18 days if accelerating at 1 G.

If we introduce gravity manipulation technology, it could (with a stretch of the imagination) explain both superluminal and subluminal drives, and provide artificial gravity in starships and space colonies.  Alternatively, the superliminal and subluminal drives could be related technology that doesn't rely on gravity manipulation, and so you'd still have to worry about atrophy in space, contend with local gravities of bodies, use spinning compartments to simulate gravity, etc.

as for your FTL travel, I always had the idea of implementing in my not yet made sci'fi setting to have the existance of a 4th dimension that lies within the current 3 dimensions. FTL travel would basically consist of dropping into this 4th dimension, which would have much different rules pertaining to time and distance, travelling to where you THINK you will appear in our dimesion, and then ducking back out of the dimension.

For example, if you travelled for 4 weeks in the 4th dimension, when you emerged, you have travelled 4 light years, or something. However, to keep people from popping up all over the galaxy using a set formula, the 4th dimension would work completely out of proportion with our dimension, so that 4 weeks in another direction could leave you 100 light years away from your original destination instead of just 4. this would also make FTL "map", directions, coordinates, or what have you extremely important and valueable.

Out side of this "dimension jumping", other ships could still use drives that were ever so slightly slower than light for inter-system trade or for your priates cruising around in massive nebulae or asteroid fields lurking for the prey.

Sounds cool.  If you want it to better mesh with quantum mechanics, call it another universe, not another dimension.  Dimensions are just variables in equations.  My unasked for two cents ;)

For actual explanation of my FTL, I was tossing between something very similar to your idea - jumping from our universe to another one and then back again somewhere else, which is pretty math-intensive if you want to pop back in the right spot - or nipping off with the classic "folding spacetime" trope so often advocated by the likes of Heinlein and Herbert.  The monumental equations involved in such astrogation would come from the delightful complexity of special relativity and having to actually accurately know the curvature of spacetime in an area.  As to exactly how that all works would be a bunch of pseudoscientific doublespeak, but that's the gist.

Considering the idea of waystations that trade in measurements to facilitate trade, I was thinking that these would actually end up being nice non-habitable world type colonies in many places, although they'd almost always be near a star, just for the free power.  The resulting network of stations and colonies would actually help populate space with humans and maintain that isolated feel (since you're literally floating around a lifeless star with nothing to keep you alive aside from an artificial habitat).

I have also been considering a rather positive side effect of having so few habitable worlds is that planet-killers are far less likely to ever be employed.  Interstellar wars would feature blockades, sieges, invasions, etc., but no one would want to wipe out a planet they could live on, since such territory is so desperately rare.  Of course, artificial habitats in space are another story all together.  We all know mankind doesn't have many qualms about mass murder in the name of some greater good.

On a side note, I need to start coming up with a name for this setting.  I also need to finish my initial profiles of the populated systems.  And to double-check that the stars I chose (randomly) are actually capable of hosting a planetary system.  (I made that mistake once with Procyon.)

take your time with names. for everything. they can make or break a setting.

Thanks for the advice.  I'm not too great with names, so I'll probably be a while posting any sort of proper setting thread.  In the meantime, I'll just keep dumping ideas here.

I'm in the process of developing a system generator in Excel to facilitate the process of coming up with interesting solar systems.  Once that's ready to go, I'll be able to start posting wikipedia-style planet and star descriptions.  That should help flesh out humanity a bit more.

On another note, I'm finding myself more and more comfortable with certain limited forms of nanotechnology.  I'm fairly okay with the use of genetically engineered microbes to assist in various refinery functions and potentially long-term terraforming.  I'd just prefer to avoid any sort of nanotech-as-magic tropes, as well as nanotech-as-apocolypse type things.  I'd prefer it to be an imperfect tool humanity is trying to develop.

I'm still interested in seeing you compile this setting when you're ready! :)

I'm going to second what Light Dragon said. :)

Ha! I haven't forgotten this little gem.  I've just find I make more progress overall if I bounce between a couple of ideas instead of burning out on a single one.  That and RL is kicking my butt at the moment.  For that matter, I might be MIA for a couple of days while I move.

With regard to this setting, I'm still having some minor difficulties rectifying the seeming contradictory ideas of sweaping space opera and gritty, realistic, hazardous human space flight.  I'll sort it out eventually; need more thought on the matter....

Quote from: Humabout
Ha! I haven't forgotten this little gem.  I've just find I make more progress overall if I bounce between a couple of ideas instead of burning out on a single one.

I cannot begin to describe how much I can empathize with this.

QuoteWith regard to this setting, I'm still having some minor difficulties rectifying the seeming contradictory ideas of sweaping space opera and gritty, realistic, hazardous human space flight.  I'll sort it out eventually; need more thought on the matter....

I think the best tempalte you could use for that would be Firefly - the space flight is gritty, realistic, and hazardous, and while I wouldn't call Firefly or Serenity* "space opera", the ships and methods of travel used would work for Space Opera very well - until you get to the problem of superluminal velocities. For that, something like the Mass Relays from Mass Effect could solve that problem - a series of relays built that are larger than ships that "bounce" ships between them until they reach their intended destination (always another relay), meaning FTL travel is /only/ a factor when moving between relays, never in combat or, well, any other time.

If you want, we could get into a huge discussion of possible ways such a relay could work that doesn't involve the typical "Wormhole!" most Space Operas use, but that depends on how much hard science you want in a space opera - and I advise very strongly that, even in a gritty one, you take hard science up to the point where it works for your setting and no further - don't let the science bog down the fun.

Oh, I don't have a problem handwaving FTL.  It's more a matter of where to draw the line between giant awesome space battles and how precious delta-v is.  It's hard to have an adventure about getting sucked into a gas giant for lack of delta-v followed by a 4-hour dogfight in deep space.  Then couple that with how devastating weapons are likely to be in space combat....

But all of that could be what creates the fear.  The space opera bit could be the world-hopping, swashbuckling aspects.  That's the balance I refer to.

This may be too odd, but why not have no space ships- just have people drift along in space in rocket suits. It's a lonely bleakness out there then. Rocketsuits are necessary b/c ships could not have enough fuel. The suits are like the escape pods in other literature... lonely... floating in nothing and armed with your own arsenal in your suit.

Interesting, but it definitely loses the space opera feel.  Perhaps something to stash for another project, though!  The more I think about it, the more I think fragile spaceships would add to the fear factor, really.  No one will want to get into a fight, and if they do, it'll be more about wits and luck than actual firepower.  Sort of like that Star Trek TOC episode where Kirk first encounters a Romulan ship.

You could go the route where armor and defenses (for ships) had developed much further than weapons could. For example, maybe lasers never worked out, but shields did, so spaceships are these massively armored hulks that you have to board to conquer, as two ships could exchange missiles, chaff, and mass-driver weapons for hours and hours without anything big happening.

My god, you just put the most epic picture of space triremes in my head!  I'm not sure about introducing things like shields because of how they would make other aspects of life safer, but it's a beautiful image!  God I want to rip off Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars novels now!

I'll give this some more thought.  There's got to be a reason such shields wouldn't be used make little, perfectly habitable bubbles of humanity on otherwise hostile worlds...

[EDIT]
Mayhaps something akin to Dune shields would be appropriate?  They stop kinetic weapons but are gas- and energy-permeable, so that nasty aspects fo planets are still threats, but ships can fire railguns into each other all day long to no avail.

This raises the question of how boarding is accomplished?  For starters, ships would have to be on a slow approach or their shields would just bump off of each other.  That's hard to do in space when one side doesn't want to be boarded.  There must be some other technology that permits this but has limited applications outside of ship-to-ship fighting.

How would tractor beams impact society on a whole?  Industrially?  In the home?  In transportation?  etc.?

Quote from: Humabout
I'll give this some more thought.  There's got to be a reason such shields wouldn't be used make little, perfectly habitable bubbles of humanity on otherwise hostile worlds...

Maybe they only work in vacuums. Oxygen could make them implode - think Dune's lasgun + shields = nuclear explosion.

Great minds steal from the same sources, eh?

I'd avoid exploding shields if only to avoid teh perverial Tactical Nuclear Donkey, but there could be some sort of malfunction in atmospheres.  That would greatly disuade planetary invasions, though.  I'm more partial to some other inherent flaw in the shields that just doesn't protect against the actual hazards of living on an alien world.

Maybe the atoms present in air wear down shields, just like shells, bullets, and missiles would, albeit one a much slower scale, but a scale big enough to make having them in a non-vacuum completely impracticle and/or dangerous - ala static charge, ozone production, radiation, etc.

That sounds like sufficient technobabble!  But it still seems to leave the massive planetary invasions in a nasty spot.  Probably where they should be.  I'm seeing some really weird war scenes in my mind, now.  Thank you so much!

For subluminal flight, I think I'm going to use a lot of handwavium and generally treat starship engines more like car engines - you have X hours of fuel, and you can accellerate at a certain rate.  That'll give enough manueverability to allow for ships dancing around each other, bombarding each other and attempting a boarding, but stear clear of the massively unfun mess that is the rocket forumula.

This (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120328090937.htm) has me considering returning here again.  Oh the juices are starting to bubble again!

I read that a few days ago. Incredible, no?

Honestly, I don't find it all that surprising.  Considering the nature of the systems we have observed and how seemingly strange and extraordinary those are, I've adopted the mindset that no matter how bizzare a system we try to imagine, nature will top it tenfold, at the least., and judging by the staggering number of stars in the Milky Way alone - heck, within 100 ly of us (well over 37,000), and even that volume fo space is a mere 0.00005% of the volume of our galaxy.  Now couple that with the fact that organic compounds not only can, but do form naturally in space and that the gas clouds present when a star first forms is naturally condusive to their formation so that they would simply rain down on newly-forming planets, and the probablity of extraterrestrial organic lifeforms greatly increases as well.  At the least, it's totally justifiable, even in hard SF.