# Gaming w/Jemal : Star Drift



## Jemal (Mar 1, 2013)

For a long time now I've wanted to run/play in a certain type of sci-fi game.
I've always been a fan of the 'lost in space' style of sci fi, and am looking to start up a game along those lines.  This game will definitely be high-tech sci-fi, and though there are a number of systems that may fit better, I really enjoy the flexibility of M&M, and it's the only one I have good access to that this type of game would really fit into.  I'm open to suggestions, but as my options are limited, please only suggest rulesets that are available for free online (Legally!)


I've been thinking alot on whether I want to go with a 'lone crew trying to find/achieve something in a harsh universe (Star trek: Voyager, Andromeda, Battlestar Galactica) or the "Trying to survive the ride" style (Stargate: Universe, Lost in space, Sliders).

I Decided that unless people really want to try one over the other I'm going to to with a bit of a mix, starting off with the 'trying to survive and learn to use the ship' aspect before transforming into a 'space-trek with purpose' once the crew figures out the ship. (And yes, even though I reference Sliders, there will DEFINITELY be a ship).  It will be set in a semi-dystopian future with the PC's finding a fabled 'lost-tech ship from the golden age'.  The PC's will be on a highly advanced (But not under their control) Starship travelling through a hostile and wild galaxy.


HISTORY:
By the 30th century, Humanity had become a galaxy-spanning, exploring and expanding across the Milky Way.  We found that life existed, or was capable of existing, on millions of planets.  We even found a few other sentient species - but nothing quite on the same scale as us.  Most were still struggling with basic technology, while some had advance as far as colonizing their own solar systems.  When it seemed appropriate, we would greet them, learn from each other, and even aid them in joining us among the stars.. if they were deemed 'worthy'... we were arrogant, but felt benevolent in our superiority.
The only example of another 'advanced' species we had yet to find were the remnants, scattered across the galaxy, of a Primordial - and presumed dead - race, with technology so advanced that humanity could not yet grasp it.  

In the 31st century, we finally found another advanced civilization, but this one was not so friendly.  They came from another galaxy, or so we assume.  We had encountered nothing of them anywhere in the Milky Way before this.  They attacked on sight, tore through the exploratory vessels they encountered, and examined the wreckage and crew for information on their new prey. 
We were caught off guard - never before had we encountered such power, and within a decade nearly half of our colonies had been destroyed.  A Hundred Billion dead, with no response to communication, no mercy, no rules of war.  They took no prisoners, and offered no surrender.

Humanity fought back, aided by the races we had befriended and helped along through the years.  An alliance was formed, and a century of war raged across the galaxy.  Near the end, both sides stood ravaged.  Entire systems had been mined clean to produce the weapons of war, ship graveyards littered the stars, the death toll was higher than most people could even conceive, but finally, we stood victorious.  The enemy had been purged from our galaxy, and all sentients rejoiced.. for a short time.  Most goverments and leaders had fallen, the major population centers destroyed by the enemy, vast stores of knowledge, art, culture destroyed.  For decades we had been little more than ragtag fleets performing 'guerrilla warfare' in space.  Infighting broke out over who should lead, what we should do.. racial animosity arose, and the whole thing fell apart.
Much of our knowledge, art, and past is gone.  Whole civilizations have been wiped out so thoroughly nobody remembers them.  We don't even know which planet we came from.  Some fabled rock called 'Earth'.  


TECHNOLOGY: 
The 'average' technology level of humanity is 'near future', though with MUCH advanced tech scattered across the galaxy.  Physical and mental augmentation and minor cybernetics are fairly commonplace.  Both Solid projectile and beam weapons are used, the later being attainable but uncommon, and mostly antique.  Interplanetary travel is fairly commonplace, and Interstellar travel is possible, but hard to come by.  The knowledge of how to build hyperdrives has been lost, and those ships that still have hyperdrives are much coveted.  The slower, but still stellar-capable 'FTL' drives are more common, and still reproducable by some civilizations.

Some civilizations have recovered better than others, restarting the learning curve, trying to pick up the pieces.  Most are still stuck in a 'dystopian/cyberpunk' phase.

For those familiar with the Kardashev Scale, Humanity WAS a mid-level Type 2 civilization, with the invading enemy being High type-2 and most of the other races being type 0 or 1, though quickly advancing to Humanity's level with help.  Now, everyone is back to early type 1, with some type 2 'relics'.

FTL: Practically all ships have FTL capability, and most advanced civilizations are capable of reproducing it. FTL drives vary in speed, being measured in Kc (1 Kc = 1 Thousand times light speed). The fastest being able to travel at 50 KC, the slower ones being around 1 Kc(Equivalent to Warp 9 in star trek). Most are around 20 Kc . Even at the fastest FTL speed, it takes over two years to traverse the galaxy, and the average is around 6 years. 
Though many civilizations are only weeks or even days apart by FTL.

Hyper-drive: Hyper-drives, also known to some as "Jump Drives", can no longer be manufactured by any known civilization in the galaxy, but some do still exist, and are heavily guarded and kept in top shape. Ships with Hyper-drives are capable of essentially teleporting through space. They require a cool-down time to recharge between jumps, or risk causing a catastrophe that will essentially spread the atoms of the ship (And everything/body on board) across the galaxy. The most advanced hyper-drives currently in service can transport up to 10,000 light years and require a day or so to recharge, capable of crossing the galaxy in a couple weeks. Most can move around 2-5,000 Light Years per jump and often require several days to recharge. They are still orders of magnitude faster than even the best of FTL's.

**Civilizations do the majority of their interactions with close-by planets, and reserve whatever hyper-drives they may have for long-distance or important, time-sensitive journeys.
Also just for a bit of fun, the average FTL drive travel time from Earth to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri) is about Two  hours.


UPDATE:
CHARACTER CREATION RULES: 

OK, so the setting here is going to be very Tech-heavy, and so I'm going to be going with a bit of an odd way of using M&M to play the game.

characters will be PL 4 with 50pp, but there are several variant rules: 
First up, the reason behind the lower than usual PP is manyfold, but primarily because you'll be using more equipment and devices than would usually be expected, and will be getting upgrades sooner.
Since I'm using a lot of gear and expect your gear to upgrade faster than your personal skill, I'm not going to cap the damage output or Toughness bonus gained from gear.  Instead, PL caps will be as follows: 
Attack bonus & Active Defenses will be each be individually capped at PL.
STARTING damage and toughness including equipment & devices cannot exceed PL, but it won't be too long before you start getting upgrades.

Powers will be limited based on race - feel free to make up your own so long as they are basically humanoid, no more advanced(technologically/intellectually) than humans, and don't have many powers (And nothing weird/over the top).  
Also be aware that personal power will be secondary in most cases.  the game will be much more focused around character interaction, role-playing, and ship-life. Combat and personal trinkets will be secondary.

Normal Tech -Akin to the tech level we've been discussing(anything that can be reliably produced by multiple civilizations.)- can be gained as equipment.  If the equipment you want doesn't exist in the book, you may create it similar to a power: equipment costs as much in EP as the power would in PP.  For obvious reasons, you may not put certain flaws like Removable on equipment.

For HIGH Tech, you may create it as a removable or easily removable power, so long as you don't have a lot of it.  -This is usually pre-fall level technology, stuff that can't really be recreated except by the most advanced civillizations, and some not even by them, so you're essentially carting around an artifact.  Include that as an extra complication.-

In either case, if you aren't completely sure of how a device should work, which tech level it belongs at (equipment or power), or whether it might be too high - just propose it and we'll figure it out.
*NOTE: it doesn't matter what type of advancement your character is from, something that's common for the highest tech is still equipment for the barbarians, they would just need a good RP reason why the character has it.

notable technology for character creation:
Augmentation (Genetic, Chemical, or Cybernetic) - Humanity has discovered ways of augmenting themselves physically and mentally.  You may buy abilities (Str, sta, etc) as Enhanced Powers with the 'Augment' limit, which reduces cost by 1 every two ranks (So Augmented str+2 would cost 3 points).  The limit is essentially a complication that doesn't provide you a hero point, and varies depending on the type of augment - Cybernetic augments may require repairs/maintenance, Chemical augments may require semi-frequent boosters, genetic augments can have some side effects down the line.  Also, in certain cultures Augments can be a sort of stigma.
Augmented abilities can be raised up to 4 and may exceed norms.

I'm also open to other genetic/cybernetic changes, such as minor immunities or other 'semi-super human' powers, but I reserve final say on any and all such powers.


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## Shayuri (Mar 2, 2013)

Scifi? Interested. Muy interested. I love me some scifi. Hardly anyone runs scifi.

Kudoes to you.

Let me digest your setting and cogitate a bit, and I will have moar.


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## Binder Fred (Mar 3, 2013)

Hey there, Jemal. Any known megastructures (from our time as a Type II or, more interrestingly, from the time of the Primordials)? Dyson spheres, rings, examples of planetary/system-scale/dimensional engineering maybe?


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 3, 2013)

You're in mine, I wanna be in yours 

Edit: that sounded dirtier than intended.


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## Mark Chance (Mar 3, 2013)

Jemal said:


> ...please only suggest rulesets that are available for free online (Legally!)




_Stars Without Number_.


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## Shayuri (Mar 3, 2013)

I'm fine with M&M.

I'd say GURPS, but I understand that is a tough sell to a lot of folks.


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## drothgery (Mar 4, 2013)

Well, my attempts to run sci-fi (or at least Star Wars) games have tended to fizzle, but I'd probably be interested (especially if M&M or something else I've got or can make sense of from what's free online).


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## Jemal (Mar 4, 2013)

Yeah m&m is definitely the leading contender bc it's flexible, relatively simple, and easy to obtain (go open source SRD!).
Mark: I'll check out that link once I'm home(at work now)
BF: all of that and more, though most people around in the 'present'(of the campaign) wouldn't have any clue what they are or how they work.
Though on that note, a few geniuses and  or historians on the crew would be a good idea.


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## Shayuri (Mar 4, 2013)

I'm very flexible at this point in my concept...I could go with a scientist/engineer sort, but I'm not married to the idea yet.

Jemal, what degree of fantastic elements do you envision, if any? Are psionics or weird alien powers possible? Or are we hewing closer to the laws of physics (with allowances made for superscience)?


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 4, 2013)

I want to also throw my approval of Stars without Number, it is is free and it's built in setting has a lot in common with your setting.    It is decidedly old school RPG though, like 1st Edition DND in space.   In a cool way.

I'm liking GURPs but I know there's no sense in talking you into that one, and it's already running my game.

I'm cool with M&M, but would really want to request a more detailed idea of what technology exists..

Eclipse Phase is also available free, though it rather tied closely to it's transhumanism setting.

i"m interesting in the historian role, also are these other intelligent races available as players?


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## Jemal (Mar 4, 2013)

Aliens will be playable but I'll be following the 'mostly humanoid' style of aliens.  
No 'super powers.'
As far as tech, think of things like stargate, firefly, star trek(kirk), or star wars(minus lightsabers), etc. That kind of tech is fairly common through the galaxy.  Higher tech (newer star trek style) exists but is rare, and typically lost tech.
I can't get much more specific about what tech exists without just giving a huge list.  Basically if it's part of a (reasonably realistic) sci fi it exists.  
Game-mechanically.. assuming M&M; if it's in the 'common' category I'll allow it as equipment. Higher tech stuff would have to be bought as a device (removable power)
 I'd like to keep the amount of supertech minimal at start.
For specifics if you're wondering just ask and I'll tell you where it falls or if it's a bit too far-out.

Two notes : 
First, any and all 'space tech' (ships and ship equipment) will be gained or created in game, it will have nothing to do with character creation.
Second, the game will be much more focused around character interaction, role-playing, and ship-life.  Combat and personal trinkets will be secondary.


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 4, 2013)

Of course, you hooked me like a fish in a barrel. I'd love to play, perhaps one of the alien species.

Here's an idea:

Paramax Prime, a world in which evolution never give the steps to pluricelularity, organisms developed as big blobs of protoplasm, but developed telepathic communication, and a hive communal mind. These organisms developed a complex society, and mastered several degrees of technology advancement. They lived and evolved peacefully throughout the aeons, until humans discovered their world. Initially they didn't deem these creatures worth of nothing but scientific study, but suddenly discovered their telepathic abilities, and the potential to turn these creatures into intergalactic translators. This forged an alliance between the two species. Humans later discovered other important traits of the paramaxes, which were able to survive to several adverse conditions. Their constant hunger for any organic or inorganic matter also came in handy, as they could live of waste produced by humans, and perform cleaning all around the ship. Their techno-organic knowledge also integrated greatly, many of these paramaxes becoming mechanics. 
Later, the Enemy attacked Paramax Prime, but not knowing war, the creatures didn't know how to react until it was too late. As their planet was ravaged out, protective spores left the world, with a handful of survivors. The spores spread, like coconuts floating in the waters of the dark sea that is space, and where they landed, the creatures emerged and dispersed. Other paramaxes were stationary in several ships. Their civilization is now broken, scattered, unfortunate nomads, victims of the ruthless Enemy. 

These guys will all call themselves "Paramax" and have a hive minded notion. I had in mind to play him as a techie or diplomat for the group.


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## Jemal (Mar 4, 2013)

Sorry, but I'm gonna have to say no to blob-people and hive minds, and a 'soft no' on telepathy.


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## Binder Fred (Mar 4, 2013)

Jemal said:


> Two notes :
> First, any and all 'space tech' (ships and ship equipment) will be gained or created in game, it will have nothing to do with character creation.



Does that include space suits? I guess what I'm asking is: what does the begining situation look like, roughly? How do the characters know each other, if at all (same employ, same general location/ship/planet/system)? Are they a salvage company that's found the ship somewhere out in space/depth of the earth? Random abductees "teleported" to the ship when it crossed this or that system? Something else?


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## drothgery (Mar 5, 2013)

Jemal said:


> Yeah m&m is definitely the leading contender bc it's flexible, relatively simple, and easy to obtain (go open source SRD!).
> Mark: I'll check out that link once I'm home(at work now)




Hmm... I was wondering if I'd be able to drop a planet as sort of stereotypical Victorian England in space (which is to say stuffy arrogant SOBs, don't have a lot of regard for 'barbarian' cultures no matter how friendly they might be with individual 'barbarians', will try to press their religion on you ... but probably are doing more to revive 'modern' tech than anyone else, and tend to do things like stomp out the slave trade and are clearly less bad colonial overlords than anyone else). And then build something like a Simon Tam type from there.


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## Jemal (Mar 5, 2013)

First up : I've been looking into stars without number.  It does look like a passable system, and the opening blurb caught my eye - aside from the 'psychic' thing, it could be a good fit for what I'm envisioning, so right now I'm going to open it to a poll: 
Low level M&M or Stars without Number? 
*NOTE: Stars without number seems to be very similar to 1st ed D&D In Space.


Mark Chance said:


> _Stars Without Number_.




Secondly, when I say 'ship equipment', I'm referring specifically to ships and equipment for those ships (Guns, engines, shields, etc) - not items that would be found IN ships, but items that are PART of ships.

drothgery, that would be perfect, there are probably dozens of worlds like that.  I can see them forming into an alliance of sorts and being one of the more powerful, forward-thinking but stuck-up/full of themselves empires that have risen up.

As far as how you guys get onto the ship, that's one of the things I wanted to talk about.  There are a few major options I had been considering, but wanted Player input, as it will likely play a role in what kind of characters you all choose, and how (IF) they know each other.
Option A: Salvage crew.  This could be legal salvage, illegal salvage, or even a military/science expedition.  Basically this is the option for "We CHOSE to come to the ship"  
Option 2: Accidental Refuges.  This would be an option wherein the PC's are on a ship travelling between systems which has a 7malfunction:  FTL/Hyperdrive gives out, no communications.. sabotage or just bad luck?  Either way, they end up dropping out near an old and unrecognizable ship, and head over hoping to find something to help - parts to repair their ship, or a way to use the new one.
Third Choice: Explorers.  In this option, the ship is actually buried under a city on a planet, and some people are exploring it thinking it's an ancient lab/complex.  This is a bit of a mix of the others: Some PC's are there for a purpose while others may have just been in the vicinity when the ship was activated by the first group, and get taken along for the ride.  This is I think my personal favourite because it allows for the largest scale of different PC's.
*NOTE: The first choice would have the least NPCs involved.  Both the second and third would involve numerous NPCs.  If you're interested in a small group with little 'on board' NPC interaction, go with the first one, if you're OK with (Or look forward to) NPCs on board with you, then the other two would be better fits.


And now, a bit of info about the two types of ship drive (Will edit this into the opening post, along with any new information I add in the future)
FTL: Practically all ships have FTL capability, and most advanced civilizations are capable of reproducing it. FTL drives vary in speed, being measured in Kc (1 Kc = 1 Thousand times light speed). The fastest being able to travel at 50 KC, the slower ones being around 1 Kc(Equivalent to Warp 9 in star trek). Most are around 20 Kc . Even at the fastest FTL speed, it takes over two years to traverse the galaxy, and the average is around 6 years. 
Though many civilizations are only weeks or even days apart by FTL.

Hyper-drive: Hyper-drives, also known to some as "Jump Drives", can no longer be manufactured by any known civilization in the galaxy, but some do still exist, and are heavily guarded and kept in top shape. Ships with Hyper-drives are capable of essentially teleporting through space. They require a cool-down time to recharge between jumps, or risk causing a catastrophe that will essentially spread the atoms of the ship (And everything/body on board) across the galaxy. The most advanced hyper-drives currently in service can transport up to 10,000 light years and require a day or so to recharge, capable of crossing the galaxy in a couple weeks. Most can move around 2-5,000 Light Years per jump and often require several days to recharge. They are still orders of magnitude faster than even the best of FTL's.

**Civilizations do the majority of their interactions with close-by planets, and reserve whatever hyper-drives they may have for long-distance or important, time-sensitive journeys.
Also just for a bit of fun, the average FTL drive travel time from Earth to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri) is about Two  hours.


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 5, 2013)

I take M&M blindly. =D And I'd lean to explorers

A question: If I decide to go with an alien race, what would be acceptable? I mean, what small features could the species have in order to make it paticular? Blob people is a no, but you can't pretend that there would be humanoids in other planet, seriously.


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 5, 2013)

I kinda like "Third Choice: Explorers." but I don't really feel right voting on it as I don't want any coruption from how close my my game is.

I guess in the end we both made VERY different universe, but if you're stealing the basic thing for Stargate: Universe, you're still stealing the same thing.   

You'd think if they're that mean of us wanting to steal from it, it would have lasted longer.


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## Binder Fred (Mar 6, 2013)

I'm favoring M&M and options 1 or 2 myself, perhaps in combinaision? Crash/stranded near the ship, send an ad hoc boarding party to try to solve the problem/scavenge (composed of the most abled present (i.e. the PCs)), ship triggers with just/mostly just the party aboard? Combine 1, 2 and 3? Ship found (embeded in comet?), towed to nearest habitat and put in orbit at what they *thought* was a very safe distance, early activation of some of the ship's functions cause widespread shut-downs (killing some/all of the original science party on board?), ad hoc boarding party sent to try to solve the problem, combined with those stranded in the immediate viscinity (press, police/security, the curious, the ambassador standing by in case this is a first contact), etc?

Re FTL, what about in-system transportation, Jemal? Can it use FTL/Hypers or is there the equivallent of a "not in a gravity well" restriction on the technology? 

You've also talked about speed, but what about price? i.e. 2h to get to the nearest system, but at what cost? Do people commute between systems? Work in the outer system by day, go to bed in the heart of the system's capital at night? What about freight? Is it economic to ship base, high-bulk material across systems (metals, frozen gases, food), or is it all low bulk-high value stuff?


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## Raivon (Mar 6, 2013)

I shall play this game!! Hehe


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## drothgery (Mar 6, 2013)

Jemal said:


> First up : I've been looking into stars without number.  It does look like a passable system, and the opening blurb caught my eye - aside from the 'psychic' thing, it could be a good fit for what I'm envisioning, so right now I'm going to open it to a poll:
> Low level M&M or Stars without Number?



 On a very cursory flip-through of Stars w/o number, I'd vote M&M.


Jemal said:


> drothgery, that would be perfect, there are probably dozens of worlds like that.  I can see them forming into an alliance of sorts and being one of the more powerful, forward-thinking but stuck-up/full of themselves empires that have risen up.



Cool.



Jemal said:


> As far as how you guys get onto the ship, that's one of the things I wanted to talk about.  There are a few major options I had been considering, but wanted Player input, as it will likely play a role in what kind of characters you all choose, and how (IF) they know each other.



 I think I'd lean explorers, though accidental refugees might be fun too.




Jemal said:


> And now, a bit of info about the two types of ship drive (Will edit this into the opening post, along with any new information I add in the future)
> FTL: Practically all ships have FTL capability, and most advanced civilizations are capable of reproducing it. FTL drives vary in speed, being measured in Kc (1 Kc = 1 Thousand times light speed). The fastest being able to travel at 50 KC, the slower ones being around 1 Kc(Equivalent to Warp 9 in star trek). Most are around 20 Kc . Even at the fastest FTL speed, it takes over two years to traverse the galaxy, and the average is around 6 years.
> Though many civilizations are only weeks or even days apart by FTL.



... which suggests that in this universe the overwhelming majority of stars have no habitable worlds; there are tens of thousands of stars in a 1000-light-year sphere around earth.


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## Jemal (Mar 6, 2013)

OK
Looks like the leanings are towards M&M Explorers.



> ... which suggests that in this universe the overwhelming majority of stars have no habitable worlds; there are tens of thousands of stars in a 1000-light-year sphere around earth.



The most recent estimates put 'habitable planets' in the milky way at about half a billion, though 2.5 Billion is also a number that gets talked about a lot.  Compare that to the 300 billion stars, and you get a lot of dead space.  Even if we were to assume 3 billion, that's still would mean only 1 percent of all stars in the milky way have even a single habitable planet.  So yes, an overwhelming majority.

Also, much Sci Fi (And my game in particular) uses planet clusters - lots of habitable planets in an area, followed by patches of empty space and then more clusters.  These areas would tend to form stellar nations much like nations on Earth, with 'lakes' or 'oceans' of uninhabited space in between.

AND, keep in mind I said "many civilizations are only weeks or even days apart by FTL."  Not that the closest inhabited PLANETS are days apart by FTL (That would mean they were hundreds of light years apart!), but that the distance between civilizations tends to be larger than the distance between planets within a nation... Dead areas of space acting as 'natural barriers' like mountains or rivers on a planet once did.

Beyond that there's also the fact that the vast majority of knowledge has been lost, including 'who is where'.  The galaxy is in a re-exploring phase, and it's very easy to overlook a planet when you're hopping around the vastness of space.  There are probably many 'lost worlds' no more than a few dozen light years away from some of the more advanced civilizations - they simply haven't been discovered again yet, likely because their tech level is low, or no sentient life survived on them.  Or perhaps they want to stay hidden..



> I'm favoring M&M and options 1 or 2 myself, perhaps in combinaision? Crash/stranded near the ship, send an ad hoc boarding party to try to solve the problem/scavenge (composed of the most abled present (i.e. the PCs)), ship triggers with just/mostly just the party aboard? Combine 1, 2 and 3? Ship found (embeded in comet?), towed to nearest habitat and put in orbit at what they *thought* was a very safe distance, early activation of some of the ship's functions cause widespread shut-downs (killing some/all of the original science party on board?), ad hoc boarding party sent to try to solve the problem, combined with those stranded in the immediate viscinity (press, police/security, the curious, the ambassador standing by in case this is a first contact), etc?



 That's basically just a more specific  variant to the 'explorers' option I had proposed.



> Re FTL, what about in-system transportation, Jemal? Can it use FTL/Hypers or is there the equivallent of a "not in a gravity well" restriction on the technology?
> 
> You've also talked about speed, but what about price? i.e. 2h to get to the nearest system, but at what cost? Do people commute between systems? Work in the outer system by day, go to bed in the heart of the system's capital at night? What about freight? Is it economic to ship base, high-bulk material across systems (metals, frozen gases, food), or is it all low bulk-high value stuff?




Good questions. 
First: 
Hyperdrive and FTL both have 'minimums' that prevent their usage in-system.  FTL travel is only sustainable at a minimum of 1Kc and must be on for at least a few minutes to prevent engine damage.  It is not usable within systems for that reason, and in fact most FTL flights end at the outskirts of a system and then use Light-speed engines to travel within the system, to prevent over-shooting.
Hyperdrives are not entirely accurate, so Jumps are also usually planned to hit the outskirts of a system to prevent crashes.  It is theoretically possible to plot a jump within a system, or to jump directly to a planets orbit, but even a single digit calculated incorrectly a hundred decimal places down the line could spell disaster.

In system, Light-speed drives are used, capable of travelling up to light speed.  
**NOTE: I will be ignoring time dilation from speed, and other problems often associated with 'light speed travel' for simplicity in this universe. **

Within habitable systems(At least the more advanced ones), there are often Space Stations and often more than one planet in a system is habitable (Or may have been terra-formed back in the golden age).  Other planets may also be used for resources or to house enclosed colonies, and so inhabited systems can be fairly busy.  
Depending on the system, it could take anywhere from an hour to a day to get from a hyper drive/FTL drop-out point to a specific planet, or mere minutes to get between two locations if they're close enough.
Travel within system is common.  (Think of each Solar System as the equivalent to a city, or possibly a state/province.)

As far as Price, I don't see that coming up ever for PC's given the nature of the campaign, so haven't detailed it.

Also, though your characters will not know this yet I'll tell you: The ship you'll be on is capable of breaking many rules.. but until its under your control, it does so at my whim. **



> I guess in the end we both made VERY different universe, but if you're stealing the basic thing for Stargate: Universe, you're still stealing the same thing.
> You'd think if they're that mean of us wanting to steal from it, it would have lasted longer.



I actually don't see that as being a problem.  Mine will be very much 'roaming the galaxy' type game wheras I get a different vibe off yours.  Also SG:U is only one member of the genre I'm trying to replicate, though I must agree - Why did they have to cancel it? Stupid networks..


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## Binder Fred (Mar 6, 2013)

Jemal said:


> As far as Price, I don't see that coming up ever for PC's given the nature of the campaign, so haven't detailed it.



It's a question of world-building rather than dollar signs, Jemal. Not "Can I pay for that trip to alpha centauri" but "What kind of world do I live in"? Do our PC's live in a world where daily commuting from the outer orbits to the inners is not only possible but the norm? Or would the trip consume a month's salary each side? A couple year's salary? Those are three fairly different worlds right there. Certainly for the latter possibility, the decision to pack up and go live around the orbit of Jupiter becomes much more weighty and permanent, while in the former, a comfortable PC would naturally expect to go for a quiet retreat on the moons of pluto (or equivalent) every long weekend. (Then there's the whole space-to-space vs gravity well-to-space considerations... Or do we have artificial grav/anti-grav tech to take care of that? Orbital elevators maybe?)

Similarly, if bulk shipping between systems is not only possible but economical, then increasingly specialized/themed systems à la Star Wars become viable (and quite possibly innevitable): ressource systems, farming systems, vacation systems, bureaucratic systems, etc. Increase bulk shipping difficulties and, by necessity, you end up getting more and more self-sufficient "island" systems, which have to source the majority/all of their essentials locally. (I sort of get the impression this last one is what you're shooting for? Each system a semi-independant system-state loosely bound together in confederation/civilization with nearby system-states?)


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## doghead (Mar 6, 2013)

Binder Fred said:


> Crash/stranded near the ship, send an ad hoc boarding party to try to solve the problem/scavenge (composed of the most abled present (i.e. the PCs)), ship triggers with just/mostly just the party aboard?




Nice. I like the way you think.

Throw in a semi-sentiant ship (some like The Ship that Sang or Farscape) with some residual imperatives that has it bouncing around the universe of its own violition until the characters can master some key systems and it you could have all sorts of fun.

thotd


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## Jemal (Mar 6, 2013)

doghead said:


> Nice. I like the way you think.
> 
> Throw in a semi-sentiant ship (some like The Ship that Sang or Farscape) with some residual imperatives that has it bouncing around the universe of its own violition until the characters can master some key systems and it you could have all sorts of fun.
> 
> thotd




Well that is the basic idea.



Binder Fred said:


> It's a question of world-building rather than dollar signs, Jemal. Not "Can I pay for that trip to alpha centauri" but "What kind of world do I live in"? Do our PC's live in a world where daily commuting from the outer orbits to the inners is not only possible but the norm? Or would the trip consume a month's salary each side? A couple year's salary? Those are three fairly different worlds right there. Certainly for the latter possibility, the decision to pack up and go live around the orbit of Jupiter becomes much more weighty and permanent, while in the former, a comfortable PC would naturally expect to go for a quiet retreat on the moons of pluto (or equivalent) every long weekend. (Then there's the whole space-to-space vs gravity well-to-space considerations... Or do we have artificial grav/anti-grav tech to take care of that? Orbital elevators maybe?)
> 
> Similarly, if bulk shipping between systems is not only possible but economical, then increasingly specialized/themed systems à la Star Wars become viable (and quite possibly innevitable): ressource systems, farming systems, vacation systems, bureaucratic systems, etc. Increase bulk shipping difficulties and, by necessity, you end up getting more and more self-sufficient "island" systems, which have to source the majority/all of their essentials locally. (I sort of get the impression this last one is what you're shooting for? Each system a semi-independent system-state loosely bound together in confederation/civilization with nearby system-states?)




Well, keep in mind this is essentially a post-apocalypse setting on a galactic scale, with everybody recovering at different speeds.  Most of civilization had been demolished: the vast majority of knowledge, art, governments, military's, corporations, colonies, etc lost.. and that was before the infighting and power struggles that followed as people tried to grab what they could.  The galaxy (OR at least the portions of it your characters are from) managed to survive the first portion of that and make it into the rebuilding phase.
In the less-recovered/advanced portions of space (Which tend to outnumber the higher end civilizations greatly) FTL may be the top of the line they have access to.  Some have only FTL, but they have it on all their ships, some barely have any ships but may be on the cutting edge of Biotechnology and cybernetics, others could have lots of local ships but very little in the way of advanced tech such as FTL.  Some places may even oddly enough have several Hyper-drives but no FTL!
It's about as hodge-podge as you can imagine.

So, obviously it would depend on the recovery of the local civilization, but if you want an example, I'll stat out how space-travel would work in one of the higher-end civilizations (Which is more than likely where the PC's are from, so would be what they're familiar with).  We'll use Drothgery's suggested Victorian empire: 
Travel within a solar system is common place, like travel within a city. Normal space-ships may be owned by ordinary citizens.  (Cars in the early 21st century - affordable but not cheap) 
A local cluster of stars serviced by FTL ships would be traversable but expensive - generally reserved for business trips, shipments, or vacations.   Wealthy people could go between systems at will, and would likely own their own FTL capable ships.  Personally owned FTL ships would not be unheard of, but not overly common except among the rich.  (Cars in the early 20th century - not affordable, but not unthinkable).  The Faster FTL's would be much more expensive (HIGH END Luxury Cars), as would travelling to systems outside the local cluster.
Slower Hyper-drive ships would belong to corporations (note: in many cases corporations ARE the government/military of a cluster), and the very rich. (Private Jets/Yachts.)
Faster Hyper-drive ships would belong exclusively to Mega-corps, Governments, and the Super-Rich (and in many nations, these three may be the same thing).


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 6, 2013)

Any ideas on my species question?


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## Jemal (Mar 6, 2013)

Sorry, missed it the first time around.


Voda Vosa said:


> A question: If I decide to go with an alien race, what would be acceptable? I mean, what small features could the species have in order to make it paticular? Blob people is a no, but you can't pretend that there would be humanoids in other planet, seriously.




No pretending, I stated it outright in post # 11: 


> Aliens will be playable but I'll be following the 'mostly humanoid' style of aliens.



Standard Sci-fi alien types without any real 'super powers'.  
NO playable alien race is smarter or more advanced than humans in this setting.  They can have their own unique quirks - stronger, limited telepathy, natural weaponry, extra limbs, etc.. but they're all generally humanoid and very similar in DNA to humans.


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 6, 2013)

Weird. Ok, what about hovering (not flight) and extra limbs as the only powers? Something like that.




I wanted to make a multiple handed (tentacled?) techie.


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## Jemal (Mar 6, 2013)

I'd be ok with flight and extra limbs, but you'd still have to be humanoid if you're from this galaxy.  And if you're not, we'd have to have some private discussions about that.
Anyways, I'm pretty late for bed now, will talk about it more later.


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 6, 2013)

I think your missing Jemal's point, he's not looking for realism, he's not looking for farscape even,   he's looking for star trek.   Vulcans and Klingon don't make sense but we just roll with it.  

At least that's what took from Jemal's statements,


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## Shayuri (Mar 6, 2013)

There are scenarios it -could- make sense. If species on various planets derived from a common source, perhaps. A progenitor race that biased the evolution of life on a number of planets, for example...or a common ancestor that was once starfaring and spread widely in the distant past, then regressed or was otherwise lost.


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 6, 2013)

I get both points of views, but being a biologist it is hard for me to digest. Even a pangalactic approach as Shayuri mentions, would mean humans were the progenitor race; unless you mean something like Prometheus movie thing? Which of course is completely wrong at so many levels I can't even begin with (biologically speaking).
I'm that kind of guy who can't see why we have to be so scientific about ships and tech and stuff and not about other natural laws of the universe. 
I mean, even granting the fact that these life forms are all carbon based and have the same concept of consciousnesses would be a great leap into fantasy. Adding the humanoid thing just blew my mind. Perhaps I had more Star wars in the head when I started arguing =P

I'll PM you Jemal!


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 6, 2013)

Double post!


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 6, 2013)

All I can say to it [MENTION=51271]Voda Vosa[/MENTION] is just roll with it, and hopefully my aliens in my game will be better for you.   Though I still have a few cinematic conventions, just for easy of story.


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## Shayuri (Mar 6, 2013)

In fairness, most aliens in Star Wars are pretty humanoid too. 

And the pangalactic approach doesn't require the progenitor species to be human. It just requires the 'seeding' of Earth to have taken place quite awhile ago. Long enough for natural evolution of the seeds to have taken place.

Heck, simply influencing the formation of DNA and amino acids, or early primordial life, might be enough to explain a lot of phenotypic similarities. I mean, all vertebrates on Earth share a common basic skeletal structure. Sci fi aliens sometimes aren't much more 'humanoid' than that.


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 6, 2013)

The "seeding" theory is of course impossible to be true, or at least highly improbably. Even is an outer space alien came here and spread RNA (not DNA, mind you) evolution could have taken and infinite amount of possible evolutionary roads. We (and all actual living organisms) are the outcome of one of them, marked by both an incredible amount of luck, and stochastic phenomena. Evolution proceeds selecting from a plethora of designs, armed with natural disasters and such, the fossil record is full of incredible things (I highly recommend S.J. Gould book "Wonderful life" about Burgess Shale formation to understand that point). 
So the seeding theory would necessarily have to be changed so that what is seeded is either highly related species, or even a small colony of say humans. Evolution should shape them according to the new world's rules of survival. 
As for the skeleton thing... I would disagree as well, compare a shark's skeleton with that of a dog. It's not just completely different in parts, also in composition. The only common thing would be a protective structure around the nerves called spinal cord. You can imagine the different body plans you can build around that.

And yeah, most aliens are also humanoids, but a bunch of them are not. There's crab people walking around, slugmans, and other oddities. 

A side note: I'm debating for the pleasure of it, don't take none of this as related to the game.


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## Shayuri (Mar 6, 2013)

Okay, there are a handful of exceptions to the skeleton, but you have to admit there's a vast amount of similarity between -most- critters who have backbones. 

Let me back up though, because you clearly know much more about this than I ever will, and my points aren't really addressing the problem.

The problem is one of perception, and plausibility. The reality is that no expert can ever be fooled by fiction concerning his specialty. This is why police officers tend to hate police dramas, lawyers can't get into courtroom dramas and so on. The requirements of fiction intended for laypeople are in many cases incompatible with how experts in the field understand the reality of that area. 

My suggestion therefore would be to try to approach this situation not as a challenge against what you know, but a challenge FOR what you know.

Consider the phenomenon as it is placed before you; a galaxy that is not our own but is similar to it, in which many organisms on apparently completely unrelated worlds show remarkable similarities. Why? No one knows. It's a mystery. Theories abound, but no one's come up with one that adequately and fully explains all the details observed. Your character may in fact be one who is researching this very issue. Perhaps that's what he's doing in space...seeking out fossils and primordial chemical soups and discoveries about the origins of life in the cosmos, and why it seems so impossibly convergent...at least as far as sentient species are concerned.

In short, turn what you know into something that helps you get -into- the setting, rather than something that forces you to reject it. Approach the situation as a scientist; make your observations, then try to explain them. In this case, the GM is telling us what we observe. It falls to us now to understand why it's so.

Of course, this may only be delaying the issue. If Jemal ever tries to actually answer that mystery within the game, then you come right back to, "But that's not how things really work!" Hopefully by then though, you'll be willing to set aside your understanding of life sciences for the narrative as easily as the rest of us put aside our notions of causality and physical law.

And who knows? Perhaps you yourself might turn your knowledge of the subject to help the GM, suggesting possiblities that seem plausible to you, that also fit within the framework of the game. I'm sure Jemal wouldn't mind a few ideas thrown his way, as long as you leave him room to introduce surprises.


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 6, 2013)

Yeah I was just about to comment that the only way seeding could produce a Klingon for instance, is if it were done writing the last 2 million years ala star gate.

Anyways, I'm quite willing to operate under the star trek style rules of for no other reason than it helps separate from my game. 

I'm not sure about the species of my character yet, but I think I'm gonna play a young doctor.


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 6, 2013)

Shayuri said:


> Okay, there are a handful of exceptions to the skeleton, but you have to admit there's a vast amount of similarity between -most- critters who have backbones.
> 
> Let me back up though, because you clearly know much more about this than I ever will, and my points aren't really addressing the problem.
> 
> ...




Wow I got to say I'm completely buying this. Hadn't thought about it that way.


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## Binder Fred (Mar 6, 2013)

Jemal said:


> We'll use Drothgery's suggested Victorian empire: [Snipetty snip]



interresting. Speaking of that place, how about this to make it more Victorian: The system/empire instituted severe voluntary cut-backs on all luxuries during the war (The Austerity, with a rallying cry of "Overcome!"), going from streamlined product lines (much less variety, yearly contests to get the few available production mandates from the Queen (*)), to voluntary personal austerity (modest/practical fashions (by today's standards), subdued colours, politically correct understated consumerism from the rich, pious shows of low consumption from everybody that doesn't want to be shunned), to deep cuts in personal transports (cabs and shuttle coaches heavily favored vs owning your own ship) and "voluntarily" reduced human rights and freedoms. Since the war ended, the system is slowly heading towards a more liberal clime, with arts and architecture making their re-appearance and luxuries slowly flooding back in from re-opened trade lines. Much of the war restrictions are still in place though, with a sizeable conservative element that seems to feel they are now part of the "proper, Victorian way".

*= an industry council based in the town of Queens,  as I didn't want to go *too* Victorian with an *actual* queen, but up to you Drothgery. Maybe the planet housing the capital is called Queen?


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## Jemal (Mar 7, 2013)

I was hoping not to get too deep into the humanoid thing, because it IS a plot point later in the story.  Suffice to say that there are answers, your characters just won't have them yet, and if the game lasts long enough, things shall be revealed.

I'd be open to a character such as Shayuri suggested, one that is baffled by the existence of so many humanoids and looking for answers, though keep in mind that they've been common place for a couple centuries, so you would be a major oddity, questioning something that's been an accepted fact since centuries before the downfall of civilization.  Even if you're right, nobody's likely to listen to you because they KNOW that all the intelligent life encountered - with the exception of that from another GALAXY - is at least vaguely similar to humans.  If you're OK with being 'that scientist' though, it could make for some interesting roleplaying, especially given the events of the game. 
VV: I've also msg'd you back about the possibility of being an extra-galactic being.  Though I'd prefer the characters to all be from the Milky Way, I could accept a single 'oddity'.


Also, I do have an understanding - albeit informal - of Chemistry, Biology, Evolutionary theory, Physics, Astrophysics, and Astrobiology, and often converse with true scientists, and enjoy research, so I'm not just pulling this stuff out of my 'portable hole'. 

However, in the end what matters is that this is the story I'm telling, and if you'd like to be a part of it, I'm afraid you'll have to find a way to either suspend or harness your disbelief for the good of the story.
However, I too enjoy a good debate, so as long as we can do so without interfering in the game: 
[sblock=Debate]


			
				Charles Darwin said:
			
		

> "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."



Saying that an assumption of carbon based life is a leap into fantasy seems to indicate a lack of chemical and cosmic understanding.  In Astrobiology, it's generally accepted as common sense that WHEN we find other life, it should be carbon based.

There has been a staggeringly large amount of exceptionally varied life forms on earth, and the one thing they all have in common is their chemical basis being Carbon.  
That's not something unique to our planet, Carbon is the most likely chemical for life to form around and is the fourth most abundant chemical known to man, preceded only by Hydrogen and Oxygen(Water), and Helium (Which is noble and inert).  The next most likely chemical in the milky way that COULD form the basis of life is Silicone.  Even if we assume Silicone WOULD form life, (which is something we haven't seen on the entirety of our planet, or in any of the organic compounds and hydrocarbons we've found on meteorites/etc), it's only about a tenth as abundant as Carbon.  This would seem to indicate carbon based life as being 10x more likely than silicone simply by dint of abundance alone.  Add on top of that the fact that any form based on Silicone would require an environment free of Oxygen - a chemical even more abundant than Carbon - and Silicone's likeliness as a candidate drops even further.
And Silicone is the leading contender among alternate biochemistry theories, even people who sneer at 'carbon chauvinism' concede that after silicone the statistical probabilities of variant life drop dramatically.

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMIyYwq_A8E Neil Degrasse Tyson describes it better than I, and you may pay more heed to him since he's got 'official lurnin'.
Part of his rant is about the fact that life DOES exist, and thus inconsequential to our current debate, I'm just pointing out his support of carbon-based life.*

RE: Humanoid - Keep in mind that the term 'humanoid' is rather open-ended in science fiction.  

And you don't need to go into the fossil records to see the variety of life on earth, there's no question that any style of life form IS possible, however in the galaxy of this science Fiction Game (Emphasis on the fiction and the game), as with most games and fiction, artistic license is often taken in order to tell a story.  
Both Science Fiction and Games are about suspension of disbelief, if you need sheer gritty realism this is not the place for it.  

Also, 'Stochastic phenomena' is just a scientific way of saying luck. 


*SIDE NOTE: I find it amusing that no matter what game I play, the argument always seems to be about minor scientific anomalies rather than the stuff that is a much greater breach of science?  in D&D I always have to mediate arguments over falling speed, but nobody gives a damn about the two mile tall giant swinging a mountain and flinging lightning...

I don't mean to be dismissive, I'm actually curious : Does the concept of Carbon based humanoids from another planet really bug you more than ships travelling thousands of times the speed of light, teleporting ships, and an intergalactic war that managed to wipe out the vast majority of civilization, life, and knowledge across the entire galaxy?  Because scientifically, I would understand the former to be the MOST plausible of all that.[/sblock]



> interresting. Speaking of that place, how about this to make it more Victorian: The system/empire instituted severe voluntary cut-backs on all luxuries during the war (The Austerity, with a rallying cry of "Overcome!"), going from streamlined product lines (much less variety, yearly contests to get the few available production mandates from the Queen (*)), to voluntary personal austerity (modest/practical fashions (by today's standards), subdued colours, politically correct understated consumerism from the rich, pious shows of low consumption from everybody that doesn't want to be shunned), to deep cuts in personal transports (cabs and shuttle coaches heavily favored vs owning your own ship) and "voluntarily" reduced human rights and freedoms. Since the war ended, the system is slowly heading towards a more liberal clime, with arts and architecture making their re-appearance and luxuries slowly flooding back in from re-opened trade lines. Much of the war restrictions are still in place though, with a sizeable conservative element that seems to feel they are now part of the "proper, Victorian way".
> 
> *= an industry council based in the town of Queens, as I didn't want to go *too* Victorian with an *actual* queen, but up to you Drothgery. Maybe the planet housing the capital is called Queen?



The way I viewed it, None of the current civilizations/governments really existed in a big way during the war.  When I say civilization FELL, I mean it fell HARD.  The Victorian empire could be one of the first to have clawed its way back up, or it's possible that some of the planets managed to survive partially intact.  
The devastation caused by the extra-galactic Enemy was near-total.  The majority of sentients that survived did so on less advanced planets that weren't targeted, or on mobile ship convoys(ALA Battlestar Galactica), only re-colonizing after the war.  Perhaps the Victorian empire was stagnant, uninspired monarchistic planets that were skipped as 'unimportant targets' during the war.  They're not advanced because they were important before, but because they WEREN'T, they're 'advanced' now because everybody who WAS more advanced than their slow-moving ways was destroyed.
Imagine everybody in the world today reduced to Dark Ages level technology - except some which were on the level of the Old West.. advanced enough to understand and maybe begin reproducing some of the 21st century technology even though they didn't have it before.  
They may have been far behind before, but they're ahead of the curve now.
The more liberal recent leanings could come from the realization that they are now at the technological forefront, and have the opportunity to seize the day and expand.  Possibly they could see themselves as the light of humanity destined to lead the rest out of the darkness.

Keep in mind humanity was a galaxy-spanning type-2 civilization, much bigger and more advanced than the Star Trek Federation or Star Wars Empire, and is now split into many splintered groups centuries behind what they once were.


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 7, 2013)

Jemal said:


> VV: I've also msg'd you back about the possibility of being an extra-galactic being.  Though I'd prefer the characters to all be from the Milky Way, I could accept a single 'oddity'.
> [sblock=Debate]
> 
> Saying that an assumption of carbon based life is a leap into fantasy seems to indicate a lack of chemical and cosmic understanding.  In Astrobiology, it's generally accepted as common sense that WHEN we find other life, it should be carbon based.
> ...




And I msg'd you back with a reply.

[sblock=Debate, weee!]
I'll reply to the bolded sections in order:

1: That's because we all share a common ancestor, a life form based con carbon (Known as LUCA, last universal common ancestor). Once there is life, it is hard for it to surge again from another source, given the sheer amount of competence. We do not know for sure if there ever was other types of life before ours, but there could have been. As of now, there's only one type of life, with one type of biochemistry. I remember, if memory doesn't fail me, that there was this theory of silica being a primordial component of what eventually led to life on earth, aiding the pre biotic component selections.

2: Agreed, it's less likely because its less abundant. But is as abundant as Nitrogen, and that too is a principal component of carbon based life, without which life wouldn't be possible in the more strict sense (No RNA). That isn't really a reason for it not to be a plausible option. We are speaking a quite large amount of planets, and not a large difference in concentrations. 

3: What? In fact silicon creates its more stable compounds binding with oxygen. 

4: Yeah I know, I'm just debating cuz I like the subject.

5: And that's the meaning I intended for it. Random would be more precise. Luck is tendentious. 

6: Perhaps, but we don't know to what extend future technology will advance. However, basic principles of life don't depend on the time factor. Additionally, I'm a biologist, if I were an engineer, I'd probably argue giant light speed travelling ships 
[/sblock]


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 7, 2013)

[sblock="Debate"]

I'm not a biologist, or an engineer, or a physicist,   I work IT at a bank, but I am a geek so I study random stuff.

1 2 and 3:   If you know biology you should know there are some good arguments about carbon life being more likely than silicon.   Those stable bonds you mention with oxygen are part of the problem they are too stable.

6: I definitely have more problem with FTL than with carbon biology.  You are looking at it backwards, you say time doesn't change life.    It is implausible, that life would be carbon-water based, with humanoid features.   It's not impossible, cuz it happened here, just unlikely for it to happen again.     So given infinite time and infinite universe, it statically HAS to happen again, in fact an infinite number of times.     Faster than Light travel on the other hand, violates everything we know about physics.  Because of relativity, FTL is time travel, and violates cause and effect.   Paradoxes galore.    

So basically, you are complaining about something that is unlikely, (but possible it's happened once that we know of) but ignoring something that is Impossible.   

But, space RPG can get boring without FTL so we just accept it, and promise to not duel with our tachyon pistols. 

I look at the biology the same way, I just don't know what I'm suppose to promise not duel with[/sblock]


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## Shayuri (Mar 7, 2013)

[sblock=My wall of text, encapsulated in this tiny place]In fairness, a hypothetical drive that doesn't involve actually traveling through spacetime doesn't violate physics. We just have no idea how to actually do such a thing. The 'hyperdrive' from this setting is therefore physically plausible, albeit entirely magical in terms of how it causes the ship to exit spacetime, then re-enter it. 

The 'slow' FTL drives of course are another matter entirely. Maybe some kind of Alcubierre warp drive or something. Still leads to a huge pile of issues of course, but we can sweep those comfortably into the gap between 'what we know now' and 'what we know in The Future.' 

As for the proliferation of various types of life...I don't know much about the math involved. My sense however is that we have a very narrow understanding of how life might develop on worlds with significantly different chemistries than Earth. The closest thing to 'alien' life we can find here that I am aware of is the life that develops around thermal vents in the deep sea; life that develops metabolisms entirely different than most other life on Earth...and even it is 'carbon based.' 

We don't really know if life based on other compounds is possible. All we know is that other compounds could chemically have many of the same traits carbon has that makes it work for life here on Earth. Until we actually FIND alien life though, any features it has or doesn't have is entirely speculation. 

Which is self-evident. I only bring it up to try to defuse the tendency people have when debating to assume a sort of authoritarian stance. 

At some point, when discussing alien biologies, we have to develop a more general definition of life, I think. The line that divides 'just a series of chemical reactions' from 'a living being' is grey even here. That would only get greyer when we look at really alien environments. I think there's a very good chance that a great deal of life we find in the cosmos will be chemically similar to us, largely because the life that is NOT chemically similar to us we will not find. Or will misinterpret if we do.

I also think it's fair to say that while a lot of living things will be completely different from us, beings who occupy similar ecological niches that we have, and come from similar environments, may well be physically similar to us...in a very broad sense of the term. There's no reason it HAS to be...but it's fair to say such a being would have features that are analogous to ours, because they would have experienced similar environmental pressures. They might use tentacles instead of fingers, but they'd still have to manipulate their environment dextrously, for example.

Then there's the question of intelligences that develop in radically different, but chemically similar, environments. Those, I'd argue, we have trouble recognizing even here on Earth. Why should space be any different? So it may well be that a great many sentient beings do not form these spacefaring compacts and collusions...not because they don't exist, but because only a certain type of being (the ones similar to us in evolution and traits) tend to do that sort of thing. [/sblock]


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 7, 2013)

[sblock=debate]1-3: Not really, the problem with silicon is that it has low affinity to other chemical species as nitrogen, phosphorus and that the compounds it makes are levorotatory, while most compounds used by earth life forms are dextrorotatory. 

More likely as I already said, yes. But as you say in point six: "So given infinite time and infinite universe, it statically HAS to happen" so everything is possible in the realm of probabilities. Just consider that the number of combinations needed to decode a human randomly are higher that the number of atoms in the universe. We are unique in the most broad of senses. 

I am not complaining, I'm merely puzzled by the fact of such an unlikely phenomena, of a galaxy of humanoids. Also I'm not ignoring the other stuff, I'm not in a position to objectively say anything about it.

Shayuri has a point in that, if we encounter other forms of life, based on completely different chemistry, we would hardly recognized them as living beings. They might have too brief life spans, of too long, they might move so slowly that we would not even see it. Who knows? 
I would agree that if we ever find intelligent life, we will find something similar to us, because that would be what we would be searching for, but that doesn't mean they will be humanoids, or have internal skeleton, or eyes, or mouth, or legs, or head... and so on.[/sblock]


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## Shayuri (Mar 7, 2013)

They might not have exactly the same traits as us, but I'd expect them to have traits that serve the same basic purpose.


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## Binder Fred (Mar 8, 2013)

Jemal said:


> The way I viewed it, None of the current civilizations/governments really existed in a big way during the war.  When I say civilization FELL, I mean it fell HARD.  The Victorian empire could be one of the first to have clawed its way back up, or it's possible that some of the planets managed to survive partially intact. [Snippety]



Hm. Well this is more Drothgery's baby than mine, so I'll let him work out his preferred sequence for his victorians. The victorian aspect doesn't really inspire me, really... Or rather, I think I'd prefer to be one of the 'barbarians'.  Say one of the last system the Victorians "civilized" in their (re)expension? Just to be absolutely un-subtle about it, how about I give my PC a swarthy east indian complexion?  (Alright, alright, so maybe that's too much. Keeping the Hindi theme though ).

[sblock=Hira ki chiriya, "The adamant/diamond bird"]A sparkling system with abundant gas giants and not one but two asteroid belts, both rich in volatiles, hence its name. It's three main habited world were blasted to smithereens during the War (litteraly in two cases: Eka Kavita (_One Song_) has mostly collapsed back onto itself by now, but a good three-quarters of Deju (_Home_) was knocked clean off the ecliptic by some sort of gigantic hammer blow and still hasn't fully stabilized into its new orbit; as for Bagica (_Garden_), it's still technically there, but its surface is a roiling, half-solid sea of wild nanoes and nano-counters busily changing the now triple-quarantined planet into... something). The survivors were mostly all asteroid and gas-giant miners, now stranded in backwaters facilities and a few vacation/refuelling moons... 

Surprisingly enough, they were almost all the way out when the victorians found them again: They'd lost all types of anti-grav/artificial grav technology (which the victorians have in spades (?)), but as spacers they still had a firm grasp of genetics, advanced material assembly and were still in full control of their specialized medical micro-hives - if not the universal assembler nanoes of their ancestors. Newly-built 'Beanstalk' orbital elevators now sprouted from partially terraformed moons, they were busily harvesting the ressources of their system (including the now-bared cores of both Deju and, more-interestingly, Eka Kavita) to feed and sustain their arithmetically growing population (which outnumbered, and still outnumbers, the victorians four to one) and were even working on trying to re-understand the few remaining FTL drives that they had (none of them in full working order, sadly (*)). This last proved catastrophically detrimental in the carefully orchestrated conflict that followed.

*= Historians pointed to evidence of a giant, probably desperate muster of all Flight-capable crafts just prior or possibly just after the final blows to the system, vessels which obviously never returned, but, just as obviously, did what they were suppossed to do (whatever that was), for the Enemy never returned.The lost ships are refered to in the books as Bijano (or Chura) ki Andhara (seeds/daggers of the tempest).[/sblock][Sblock=Rough character concept]Udas Kankara ("Blackstone" on his victorian papers): Heavy-worlder EVA specialist/tech with hands-on experience in industrial blasting. Minor gene optimization (Diminished O2 consumption, efficient digestion/water recycling, 0-gee bone loss, long term rad tolerance, emergency induced coma), welding/metal artiste as a hobby. Comes from a 1.5g gas giant moon. Heavy base substance mining background (mostly ice, O2, N2; some base metal asteroids/micro-moons), furnishing the inner and outer system. Used to bulky suits with combination mag-surface tension gripers. Gear: Mandatory rad detector wrist-band, "Mind-reader" demon implant (micro-grown direct mind-machine interface; which I'm going to guess the victorians disaprove of as "breaking the sanctity of the human body and soul" ) + implanted wireless jack (left cheek-bone), external utility computer at waist (runs augmented reality, sensory filtering/augmentation, mapper, desktop/productivity apps, tech database, ...).[/sblock]

_*EDIT= *That could be our link with each other: that we are all the disparate children of Her Majesty's victorian empire?_


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## Binder Fred (Mar 8, 2013)

Shayuri said:


> They might not have exactly the same traits as us, but I'd expect them to have traits that serve the same basic purpose.



Physically. The mind is another universe entirely, of course. Strangely enough, even the most foreign looking sci-fi critter usually has human-like, easily comprehensible intelligence (is, in fact, usually *less* alien in thought than any two people from different cultures here on earth: Star Trek's "Americans with one(1) randomly-selected 'weird' custom" is a good example, but star Wars suffers from this too). As one who'se travelled a fair bit, I can tell you that we have problems understanding the actions of people with the exact same genetic makeup (at 3 decimals) but slightly differing childhoods, beliefs and/or cultures. They're perfectly sane, and when they explain it to you (when they can, "semi-rational" pretty much defining the human condition ), it often makes a weird kind of sense, but it draws relations were you wouldn't have and comes to conclusions you wouldn't have even thought of on your own. So "human-thinking" aliens are not that surprising, really - people want to be told stories where they understand the players' motivations - but you'd think the writters could go at least as far as "alien X has a distinct *culture* from alien Y" (Cherryh has some very nice examples of this in, amongst others, her Chanur novels, where the Hani, Kifs, Mahendosat, etc each have their very own culture (and she even went above and beyond to include aliens with "still somewhat understandable but definitively non-human" logic systems (The matrix-thinking -ack, <has to look it up>- The matrix-thinking Tc'a, the unpredictable Chi))... That's my personnal sci-fi pet peeve right there. 

That said, I don't usually buy the "totally incomprehensible" alien concepts either (no offense, Jemal). As Shayuri pointed out, we do share a physical universe if nothing else. We might never agree on anything, but *some* form of communication, no matter how labourious, time-consuming and difficult, should always be possible. At least enough to say "hunger" or "1+1". And if you have that, well.... That very difficulty then becomes the beauty of true first contacts.


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## Jemal (Mar 8, 2013)

Don't have time to respond to most of the debate points, just curious why BF said "no offense jemal".  I don't recall saying anything about other types of life being 'incomprehensible'.

Anyways, unless we get an influx of people insisting otherwise, I'll be going with M&M.  Will post some official character rules when I can.


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## Binder Fred (Mar 8, 2013)

What about the Enemy?


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## Jemal (Mar 8, 2013)

I never said they were incomprehensible.  I mentioned that they never responded to attempts at communication, took no known prisoners, and never surrendered.  They were Enigmatic, unknown because they had seemingly no interest in anything other than the destruction of all sentient life in the galaxy.  
Just because you don't know WHY, doesn't mean there isn't a why to know. 

OK So, will be updating first post to include character creation rules.  Since it appears to be the majority, we'll be going with the explorers theme, pretty much what I expected.


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 8, 2013)

[MENTION=63746]Binder Fred[/MENTION] 
I gotta say the mental thing for me is the big thing with aliens, and yet at the same time something I know (having never left the USA, and never been outside of a 75 distance of my birth for longer than a week) I'll not be able to do justice to, but I'll just have to see what I can do

Without being racist there are websites that document the weirdness of a certain island nation, that's same species, same planet, with cross cultural influences!    If I can make my aliens that weird, I'm happy.


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## Shayuri (Mar 8, 2013)

For all the cultural variation in human civilizations though, the underlying minds are not so different. 

I liken it to jigsaw puzzles.

The pictures that two puzzles show when assembled can be wildly, dramatically different. But the underlying mechanics of _how the puzzles work_ is pretty much the same. Oh, the pieces are never the same...the specific little shapes...but the rules by which the puzzle is assembled is always the same. All human beings share the same basic senses, biological and emotional needs, and so on. How those things are expressed can vary, but no human being is ever truly alien to another human being. If it seems so, it's because we haven't looked deep enough.

And I posit...but obviously can't come close to proving...that even an 'alien' mind could be similar to human, if it was shaped by forces similar to those shaping humans. Similar chemistries, evolutionary backgrounds and natural environments could produce something that was not entirely dissimilar to us.

Of course, change any of those variables, and you get something potentially very different. That doesn't require an alien planet either. Look at animal life on Earth that has significant but inhuman intelligence. We still can't decide if things like cetaceans are 'sentient' or not, but that's because our definition of the term is based entirely on our own self-assessment of intelligence.


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## Jemal (Mar 8, 2013)

Most importantly IMO: a similar mental structure makes for more easily relatable and narratable story.


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## drothgery (Mar 8, 2013)

(ignoring the 'how weird should aliens be' talk for a bit)

FWIW, I really didn't have a lot of concept fleshed out for my 'Victorians'; for my purposes, the similarities with Imperial-era Britain could be superficial at best.



Binder Fred said:


> Hm. Well this is more Drothgery's baby than mine, so I'll let him work out his preferred sequence for his victorians. The victorian aspect doesn't really inspire me, really... Or rather, I think I'd prefer to be one of the 'barbarians'?  Say one of the last system the Victorians "civilized" in their (re)expension? Just to be absolutely un-subtle about it, how about I give my PC a swarthy east indian complexion?  (Alright, alright, so maybe that's too much. Keeping the Hindi theme though ).




I probably should note here that I envision that it is possible for 'barbarian' subjects of the Empire to become full citizens (not easily, because they want to make sure anyone they let vote supports their society). It's difficult but attainable for a 'middle class barbarian' (something like you have to be fluent in Imperial, pass a citizenship exam, pay a fee of about a tenth of what a 'middle-class' 'barbarian' makes in a year or serve a term in the Imperial military, and swear fealty to the Throne -- noting that there are things that are capital treason for citizens that are not for mere colonial subjects ... at which point you and your heirs will be a full imperial citizen with all the rights and responsiblities thereof. Conversion to the Imperial Church is _not_ required; unofficially, if you want to reach the higher ranks in the Imperial military or other government service, it's very difficult without taking that step, and only achieved by truly extraordinary individuals).



Jemal said:


> The way I viewed it, None of the current civilizations/governments really existed in a big way during the war. When I say civilization FELL, I mean it fell HARD. The Victorian empire could be one of the first to have clawed its way back up, or it's possible that some of the planets managed to survive partially intact.
> The devastation caused by the extra-galactic Enemy was near-total. The majority of sentients that survived did so on less advanced planets that weren't targeted, or on mobile ship convoys(ALA Battlestar Galactica), only re-colonizing after the war. Perhaps the Victorian empire was stagnant, uninspired monarchistic planets that were skipped as 'unimportant targets' during the war. They're not advanced because they were important before, but because they WEREN'T, they're 'advanced' now because everybody who WAS more advanced than their slow-moving ways was destroyed.
> Imagine everybody in the world today reduced to Dark Ages level technology - except some which were on the level of the Old West.. advanced enough to understand and maybe begin reproducing some of the 21st century technology even though they didn't have it before.
> They may have been far behind before, but they're ahead of the curve now.
> The more liberal recent leanings could come from the realization that they are now at the technological forefront, and have the opportunity to seize the day and expand. Possibly they could see themselves as the light of humanity destined to lead the rest out of the darkness.



How about this:
About a century before the Enemy was encountered, a colony was started by a group of wealthy investors and somewhat eccentric academics who had managed to acquire rights to a surprisingly earth-like world in a very resource-rich system (though on the periphery of human space in the 29th century, and on the other side of 'human space' than the Enemy). The colony had just about achieved self-sufficiency by the time the war started, and while the college that would later become the Imperial University was already developing a reputation in certain circles and drawing off-world students, it was one of thousands.

With the war cutting their contacts with the rest of the universe to a trickle, and then off completely, they were forced to build their own industry largely from scratch -- although with a solid base of theoretical knowledge in a wide variety of fields. The colony gained its independent interstellar capability while most of the galaxy was expereincing the chaos of the aftermath of the war. 

When pirates -- not some last remnant of the Enemy fleet or some other aliens, but human scavengers -- seized an aid convoy they sent to one of their neighbors and massacred the crew, their perception of their fellow humans was radically altered. Guilt over having avoided the ravages of the war and a desire to help now that they could was infused with the notion that they could not let things like that happen again now that they could do something about it. Compared to the ships that fought the war with the Enemy, the fleet they sent to bring order to the system where their humanitarian aid convoy had been lost was hopelessly primitive, and the people that crewed it had no real experience. But it was the product of an intact industrial base, and establishing that protectorate was the beginning of the Empire.


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## Binder Fred (Mar 9, 2013)

Jemal said:


> I never said they were incomprehensible.  I mentioned that they never responded to attempts at communication, took no known prisoners, and never surrendered.  They were Enigmatic, unknown because they had seemingly no interest in anything other than the destruction of all sentient life in the galaxy.
> Just because you don't know WHY, doesn't mean there isn't a why to know.



Well, with a galactic war going on I'd sort of assumed we went a bit beyond politely asking (as in capture, interrogation, experimentation, dissection (all of those at Level 2 tech levels), rinse, repeat). Since that apparently didn't bring any new knowledge, I was thinking they were meant to be Unknoweable Aliens... Since that's apparently not the case, has the knowledge we gained gone missing in the War's destruction, or are they so good that we really never managed to capture a single one and *force* it to stay alive? 



drothgery said:


> How about this:



A pretty story. Do I hear the bells of imperial propaganda jingling in the background?  

Seriously though, I'd personnaly nix the "very ressource-rich" part. Hunger for ressources was a strong drive in establishing the original british empire, and is a powerful secondary motivator in any event, no matter what the original/continuing reality of the "civilizing" justification might be.




Shayuri said:


> I posit...but obviously can't come close to proving...that even an 'alien' mind could be similar to human, if it was shaped by forces similar to those shaping humans. Similar chemistries, evolutionary backgrounds and natural environments could produce something that was not entirely dissimilar to us.



Well, I would argue the main evolutianary advantage of intelligence is it's predictive ability. That could help bring us closer to our alien friends, it's true, physical phenomena being universal (though, as VV mentionned, there's the question of time perception and how narrow our experience of practical physical phenomena really is (between this and that temp, grav, speed, scale). As modern science has and continues to show us, much of the actual physics of the universe is pretty counter-intuitive compared to what our own cluged-together instictive model would seem to suggest (do you know that the human brain assumes that the sun is always above its head when judging shadows, *not* correcting for being upside down, for example? We're full of evolutionary, case-specific short-cuts like that). We could conceivably share only theorethical knowledge of what it's like to be the other - i.e. *none* of the in-built wiring - with intelligent creatures evolving in conditions that don't exactly match our own window.).

Predicting/influencing/"relating" with other animals (other humans in particular), is the *other* big evolutianary advantage though (it's amazing how much of the human brain is involved with social functions), and that part would be entirely different/missing/unrecognizable in beings with significantly different bodies/evolutionary environments (see Cherryh again (Foreigner series) for what happens when you just *tweak* at the instinctual settings that govern how a race defines frienship/association). Daulphins don't even twitch the meter as far as that scale is concerned, being brachiated (fused by fleshy membranes, granted, but still), former land mammals. We might as well be twins. 

So yes, I think it's probably going to be at least *possible* to attain some sort of understanding of an alien race, if it's evolved in conditions close enough to our own. Understand, relate, connect, on the other hand? Enough to let members of each race freely interact with each other? Much, much less likely. Aliens are probably always going to be black-boxes for us, and vice versa, only to be (safely) interacted with in strictly controled conditions by professionals on bothe sides... That's not what we generally look for in our sci-fi though, as jemal said, which is why I've personnaly set the bar of excellence at "alien can be considered a different culture".


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## drothgery (Mar 9, 2013)

Binder Fred said:


> A pretty story. Do I hear the bells of imperial propaganda jingling in the background?



Well, maybe a little. I mean, they certainly wouldn't admit to actively working to hide 'under the radar' during the war (and in fact that they had intelligence agents systematically erase evidence of the colony from the greater civilization would be very embarrassing, if anyone still alive knew anything about it). 



Binder Fred said:


> Seriously though, I'd personnaly nix the "very ressource-rich" part. Hunger for ressources was a strong drive in establishing the original british empire, and is a powerful secondary motivator in any event, no matter what the original/continuing reality of the "civilizing" justification might be.



Well, as I've said, I envision the 'Victorian'-esque and British-esque elements of the Empire to be pretty superficial.

An empire driven by a quest for resources doesn't make much sense for anyone with fast FTL and large-scale space industry. One relatively resource-rich star system is pretty much lost in the background noise of a network of civilizations as big as the one we seem to be setting up here... and the difference between a relatively rich one and a relatively poor one really wouldn't be significant over the timeframe we're talking about unless you're talking about Coruscant-esque worlds (and maybe not even then). So I guess I might nix the 'relatively resource-rich' bit on the basis of it just not mattering; one planet is going to have little trouble building a big enough fleet for a vest-pocket empire out of its own natural resources.

The biggest thing the Empire would lack out of its homeworld (as I envision it) is 'homegrown' manpower; they were pretty small when interstellar civilization collapsed and although their native population has grown relatively quickly over the last few centuries, it's still in the low hundreds of millions; without getting a lot of outsiders to 'buy in', they can't expand the benevolent arms of the Empire anywhere near as widely as they'd like.


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## Binder Fred (Mar 9, 2013)

drothgery said:


> An empire driven by a quest for resources doesn't make much sense for anyone with fast FTL and large-scale space industry.



Uh, you lost me there. I'd maybe understand if you'd replaced "fast FTL and large-scale space industry" with "universal assembler nanoes" (where all you need then is feeder mass and energy (although you *do* still need both of those)), but as it is... What does the size and or speed of your fleet have to do with your home system's need for ressources? Without the aforementionned nanoes, you still need this much X, Y and Z to furnish your industry, meet basic needs and cover luxuries (and if the victorians are aiming to live by the same standards/duplicate some of the achievements of our, Type 2, forefathers (where we were on our way to using the entire energy output of our solar systems), those are going to consume *a lot*). Even if you have X in your system, if it's at the core of Mercury, you still desperatly want a system that has it readily available for extraction, *especially* if you have a large, FTL capable fleet. (I also suspect you might be under-estimating the energy/mass requirements of pretty much instantaneous zero to light-speed velocity engines, not to mention what potential exotics goes into building/maintaining/feeding one of those (micro-black holes? antimatter?). (I mention light-speed because we have some idea of the energies involved there. What FTLs and hypers consume: who knows? Experience seems to show that doing things faster costs more than doing it slow, so "more than a 10 year trip in a nuclear rocket/4 light year" seems a safe bet energy-wise though)). 

I could be wrong, of course, but that's how I see it. Jemal?


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## drothgery (Mar 9, 2013)

Binder Fred said:


> Uh, you lost me there. I'd maybe understand if you'd replaced "fast FTL and large-scale space industry" with "universal assembler nanoes" (where all you need then is feeder mass and energy (although you *do* still need both of those)), but as it is... What does the size and or speed of your fleet have to do with your home system's need for ressources?



 If you can do large-scale things in space, that means you pretty much have access to an entire star system's resources. And that's... a lot (consider that everything the human race has used, ever, is a small fraction of what's available on earth... and that's a tiny percentage of what's just in the solar system)... and a lot of pretty much everything, in just about any star system. Add in fast FTL, and given that there pretty have to be lots of empty systems for every inhabited one, and then you've got at the very least dozens of star systems' resources. There's no reason to go after anyone else's resources; you can pick off uninhabited systems at will.


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## Jemal (Mar 9, 2013)

But drothgery, you're forgetting about the wonderfully useful and only-appearing-in-somebody-elses-turf materials known as Unobtanium and Phlebotinum. 

Seriously though, that won't be a thing with me.  
I will be leaving the actual science and requirements of the FTL etc, and what type/how much resources they require as a behind the scene thing because the more detail you go into when trying to define/design something that doesn't exist yet, the more people will complain that you're 'doing it wrong'.  



> Well, with a galactic war going on I'd sort of assumed we went a bit beyond politely asking (as in capture, interrogation, experimentation, dissection (all of those at Level 2 tech levels), rinse, repeat). Since that apparently didn't bring any new knowledge, I was thinking they were meant to be Unknoweable Aliens... Since that's apparently not the case, has the knowledge we gained gone missing in the War's destruction, or are they so good that we really never managed to capture a single one and *force* it to stay alive?



A bit of both actually:  There are very few surviving accounts of encounters with the aliens, and none detailing such things.  There are second hand reports of the Enemy being exceptionally wary of capture, their ships self destructing rather than surrender or even talk.   There are unsubstantiated rumours of contact, but nothing concrete.  If there was successful communication or capture of an Enemy, either records of it were kept deliberately secret or they were among the vast swathes of information lost.

Honestly I hadn't originally thought about explaining it too much because I had just assumed people would roll with it.  

It appears I underestimated how in depth everybody wants to be on the history, but that's kinda the point of this game is the whole 'nobody's really sure of anything' feeling.


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## Jemal (Mar 9, 2013)

Character creation rules added to first post.  Any questions just ask.


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 9, 2013)

I've decide I want to play a young cute doctor, who is half human half alien.  But I'm lost on what kind of alien I can create that's believable to me (biologically plausible) and still humanoid.   

I found a random alien generator online that gave me a bunch of decidedly not humanoid, but I did hit upon a winged race of herbivores with no sense of smell, and a cultural dislike of clothing.  Push the gravity down the air pressure up, and the wing span out I can buy bat wings or maybe angel wings.    However it pushes my suspension of disbelief for a race that different to successfully produce a child with a human.   And I'm not sure if either count as humanoid.  

Where do you draw the line for humanoid,  is I race with bat wing arms humanoid, how about a hexopedial (predictive text loved that word. ) race with angel or demon wings.   Is the hybrid form of a lycanthrope a humanoid?  I've never counted a Wookie as humanoid, how about Trance Gemini from Andromeda she has a tail.    

I promise I'm not trying to be a post just seeing where your line is


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## Jemal (Mar 9, 2013)

I think 6 legs is pushing it but the rest of that is fine.  
As far as 'humanoid', I'd call it a basically upright posture, bipedal (POSSIBLY quadrupedal if the upper body is very humanoid), 2-4 arms, opposable fingers (Or other means of fine tool manipulation), single torso/head, mouth for consumption/noise production, eye(s), ear(s).  Extras (wings, antenna, tail, head-tails, hair, tentacles?) allowable if they're not over the top.

If a human could dress up as it for Halloween without special skills/CGI, then it's pretty fair game too. (Wookie, werewolf, most aliens from any popular sci fi)


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## drothgery (Mar 9, 2013)

Jemal said:


> If a human could dress up as it for Halloween without special skills/CGI, then it's pretty fair game too. (Wookie, werewolf, most aliens from any popular sci fi)



Though I'd suggest as a matter of practicality that aliens (or robots, depending on how good AI is in this universe) really ought to be able to speak 'common' natively or have a 'universal translator' on-hand (or not-so-universal). Wookie roars and R2D2 beeps might be okay in movies, but they're hard for PCs to deal with.


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## Binder Fred (Mar 10, 2013)

drothgery said:


> If you can do large-scale things in space, that means you pretty much have access to an entire star system's resources. And that's... a lot (consider that everything the human race has used, ever, is a small fraction of what's available on earth... and that's a tiny percentage of what's just in the solar system)... and a lot of pretty much everything, in just about any star system. Add in fast FTL, and given that there pretty have to be lots of empty systems for every inhabited one, and then you've got at the very least dozens of star systems' resources. There's no reason to go after anyone else's resources; you can pick off uninhabited systems at will.



Well, three quick points before I shut up on this:

1. We *are* presently using up the vast majority of our planet's _easily obtainable_ non-renewable ressources (the words in italic are key here). I'm a geologist, so I have a fair undestanding of these things, and the fact is that new discoveries are harder to find (all the easy ones, near surface, etc having been found), harder to put into production (farther away, deeper, more refractory to processing) and cost more to operate once they are in production. If exploration methods ever stagnate for a decade or two, we're in deep sh*t.

2. Sure, technicaly the entire center of our planet is a giant ball of fe-ni-cu, but the important thing in base ressources is not the size of the ressource, but at what cost you can get it per unit of the substance in question. A nearby system with a lot of space-borne volatiles and desirable substances will always beat out a far system with resources stuck in gravity wells plus under X km of rock, no matter if that system is already inhabited or not. And if that first system happens to have all its extraction infrastruture already in place *and* a supply of trained personnel *and* be inhabited by barbarians that probably won't be able to resist much, well...

3. If a system is truly always ressource independant (and population pressures being closely tied to space+availability of ressource as they are), what's the point of creating an empire? You gain litterally nothing except huge war and then occupation expenditutes. If you gain nothing, people don't do it. People *are* busily building stellar empires in our present universe - case in point, the victorians - so they must be gaining something. What is it?


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## Binder Fred (Mar 10, 2013)

Jemal said:


> Honestly I hadn't originally thought about explaining it too much because I had just assumed people would roll with it.



Well this *is* a sci-fi game... and you did ask for questions in your very first post, right?



DarwinofMind said:


> I found a random alien generator online that gave me a bunch of decidedly not humanoid, but I did hit upon a winged race of herbivores with no sense of smell, and a cultural dislike of clothing. Push the gravity down the air pressure up, and the wing span out I can buy bat wings or maybe angel wings. However it pushes my suspension of disbelief for a race that different to successfully produce a child with a human. And I'm not sure if either count as humanoid.



Strict definition of "humanoid" is two arms, two legs (which implies mostly bipedal), bilateral symetry. Head you can play with, I'm guessing, so long as you have the organs somewhere?

As to your questions:

Just curious, but why does she(?) need to be a half breed? Unless Jemal has some indications otherwise, that would indeed seem to be entirely unlikely... unless it was deliberate? Say your other race is so strange in thought/custom, that they (or us, or both together) needed to build an organic bridge between them to communicate? A living translator equipped with the wiring of both species? Jemal did say that we had one extra-galatic species in the deck if we wanted to use it. That could be your parents. Of course, the reasons behind the "deliberate" might be more personnal (love comes to mind), though then you have to have had fairly powerful parents to have managed the interbreeding feat with ressources they commanded (doesn't have to be *your* parents though, nothing says the new breed has to be infertile (though probably only with itself without outside help, granted)).

By the by, if you're still going with your less gravity, higher pressure idea, you'll need some constant replenishing source injecting gas into the system (say accelerated degasing of the mantle or something, so heavy volcanic activity?), or dropping the gravity will automatically drop your air pressure as well... Unless there's something preventing the atmosphere from leaking into space or something? Eh... A Dyson Shell/Niven Ring would seem to fit that bill nicely, actually, now that I think about it! What do you think? If you or your parent race is extra-galactic, the entire megastructure, star included, might be their spaceship, presently anchored near the shallows of our own milky way...


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 10, 2013)

Jemal said:


> I think 6 legs is pushing it but the rest of that is fine.




Oh when I said hexapedal I was refering to number of limbs not legs.  2 legs, 2 arms, and 2 wings, = 6



drothgery said:


> Though I'd suggest as a matter of practicality that aliens (or robots, depending on how good AI is in this universe) really ought to be able to speak 'common' natively or have a 'universal translator' on-hand (or not-so-universal). Wookie roars and R2D2 beeps might be okay in movies, but they're hard for PCs to deal with.




That won't be a problem seeing as my character will be half human.   Raised in both cultures, multi linguial.



Binder Fred said:


> As to your questions:
> 
> Just curious, but why does she(?)




Yes 



Binder Fred said:


> need to be a half breed? Unless Jemal has some indications otherwise, that would indeed seem to be entirely unlikely... unless it was deliberate? Say your other race is so strange in thought/custom, that they (or us, or both together) needed to build an organic bridge between them to communicate? A living translator equipped with the wiring of both species? Jemal did say that we had one extra-galatic species in the deck if we wanted to use it. That could be your parents. Of course, the reasons behind the "deliberate" might be more personnal (love comes to mind), though then you have to have had fairly powerful parents to have managed the interbreeding feat with ressources they commanded (doesn't have to be *your* parents though, nothing says the new breed has to be infertile (though probably only with itself without outside help, granted)).




My main reason for being a half breed is wanting to play the child of two worlds at home in neither type of character, and since we're going with the all humanoid possibly related because of [redacted], I thought I could get away with it.   Star Trek does it all the time.   If Jemal is interested in the half extra-galatic thing, I'll let him pm me.   I don't wanna step on  his toes, but I'm game if he's up for it.



Binder Fred said:


> By the by, if you're still going with your less gravity, higher pressure idea, you'll need some constant replenishing source injecting gas into the system (say accelerated degasing of the mantle or something, so heavy volcanic activity?), or dropping the gravity will automatically drop your air pressure as well...




You are presuming earth too much.   Yes if we lessened the gravity of earth the atmo would leak away, but it would take millions of years...   So what if it started much much higher, and this is where it's leaked to now?        Or beyond that what I was thinking of is, Yes a heavier N₂, O₂ Ar, CO₂, would leak away with lighter gravity.    But what about a N₂ Ar, O₂, CO₂ would be heavier without leaking away as quick simply because the Argon is more massive.   Krypton would be even heavier but is less common in the universe.   

Now if our atmo has too much CO₂ or we use some other greenhouse gas temperatures will climb, but you simply place it at a father orbit, or a cooler star, or lower albedo and achieve the same temperature.   Always ways of making things work.   Oxygen content would be the same but a lower over all percentage, and the atmo thicker so humans would have labored breathing.      

I'm thinking a moon about mars diameter with with about 0.6 Mₑ orbiting HD 28185 b, with about 1.2 atmospheres that with maybe a 8 foot wingspan and hollow bones and some lightening of the body should allow flight if we keep weight below 80lbs.

If you're worried about it, the moon may be replinishing it's atmo with captured gassed that have leaked from HD 28185 b.


----------



## Binder Fred (Mar 11, 2013)

DarwinofMind said:


> You are presuming earth too much.



Well, yes, I was sort of assuming same temperature ranges and gas composition. That said, enviro-suited alien are cool, it's true  



DarwinofMind said:


> Yes if we lessened the gravity of earth the atmo would leak away, but it would take millions of years...   So what if it started much much higher, and this is where it's leaked to now?



Multi-century thawing cycle, maybe? A wandering planet with frozen volatiles rather quickly degasing when captured by a chance-met star? Remember though that your atmospheric loss to space may be slow, but you still need at least a good handfuls of million years of the present condition for organisms to have evolved to take advantage of them (ignoring useful pre-adaptations and assuming we're talking natural rates of evolution for the moment, of course). VV can likely give us a better timeline on that: how long *does* it take to evolve wings from scratch, VV?



DarwinofMind said:


> Or beyond that what I was thinking of is, Yes a heavier N₂, O₂ Ar, CO₂, would leak away with lighter gravity.    But what about a N₂ Ar, O₂, CO₂ would be heavier without leaking away as quick simply because the Argon is more massive.   Krypton would be even heavier but is less common in the universe.



Your N₂, O₂ CO₂ and Ar would still be leaking out at accelerated rates though (since that's solely a factor of gravity and the average speed of each individual gas molecule, as affected by its mass and temperature), so you'll have to depend entirely on your initial "boosted level" of Ar to 1. compensate for the higher loss over time compared to earth, and 2. generate your increased air pressure. That would seem to indicate that you'll have to up its relative proportion quite a bit. Quick calc shows that if you wanted to up air pressure to 2 atm in pressent earth condition solely by changing the mix, as it were, you'd need about 50% Ar compared to the 1% we have now (I'm not entirely up on my gas cynetics though, so that might be wrong)... Is there a reason your atmo needs to be breathable by human? This is M&M after all. Just take a Run out of Air complication and/or a 1 PP Immunity-your atmo (this last only if you're expecting to meet it again in game, else you can power stunt it) and there you have it... Or, you know, just go with the "increased degasing" or "nested dyson shells" ideas I initially mentionned?  

It might also be a good idea to check with Jemal on the spread of artificial grav equipement in our galaxy (and the possibility of turning if off in only *some* sections of any particular ship/habitat?). I have the impression that Jemal might be going with the SG, Star Trek, Star Wars etc tropes on this one (i.e. 1g everywhere). As we'll probably be spending very little/no time on any PC's home planet, that might limit her flight ability some, to say the least.



DarwinofMind said:


> If you're worried about it, the moon may be replinishing it's atmo with captured gassed that have leaked from HD 28185 b.



 Worried is not the term I'd use: it's just part of the fun of a sci-fi game for me.

For example: Capturing superheated gas from a star? I understood the process to usually go the other way around (solar winds, etc, stripping away a planet's atmosphere). Is that possible?


----------



## Moon_Goddess (Mar 11, 2013)

Sorry, for the miss understanding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_28185_b is a 7 Jupiter mass gas giant in the habitable zone of a sun like star 138 light years away.    So the body I'm describing stealing atom is a moon slurping from it's gas giant parent rather than a planet slurping from a star.

As for possible, I'm not sure.   Even a gas giant is going to loose some atmo, due to stellar wind, and anything in orbit is bound to pick up some of that.

EDIT 



> It might also be a good idea to check with Jemal on the spread of artificial grav equipement in our galaxy (and the possibility of turning if off in only *some* sections of any particular ship/habitat?). I have the impression that Jemal might be going with the SG, Star Trek, Star Wars etc tropes on this one (i.e. 1g everywhere). As we'll probably be spending very little/no time on any PC's home planet, that might limit her flight ability some, to say the least.




Which is why I've decided not to go with the wings.

But I'm not sure what to do.    I guess I'm just like if we are using M&M I should at least have something from it.


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## Jemal (Mar 11, 2013)

Will post in more detail later on the questions, heading to bed now.  Just wanted to say one thing : I tend to prefer the 'rule of cool' over Hard SF, so even if it's not 'physically probable', if you think it'd be fun then go ahead with the planet/moon.


Also in general, keep in mind the Fiction equivalent of the Anthropic Principle


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## Binder Fred (Mar 11, 2013)

DarwinofMind said:


> Which is why I've decided not to go with the wings.
> 
> But I'm not sure what to do.    I guess I'm just like if we are using M&M I should at least have something from it.



Well, the wings could just be window dressing (vestigial?) on what I'm imagining as a rather cool envirosuited and/or gas-masked alien from a cold, volcanic planet (so you get both degassing and increased gas retention (oh, and feathers were apparently originaly evolved to keep their bearer warm, so nice example of parallel evolution there even you aren't feathered (cold protection leading to flight!))). Your background would then allow you to Power Stunt glide/limited Flight off of her existing powers. Other possible uses for wings: buffeting (*very* strong pectoral muscles), swimming (if of the right type... you could actually be a *marine* winged species, like the manta ray?), for some reason I'm seeing her using her wings to push her whole body off the ground in a dominant posture, but that's neither here nor there . Being used to flying, your species could be very good pilots... Or, you could have one of those primordial tech items Jemal mentionned: jet pack anyone? Gravity repulsor belt (personnal 0-gee eveywhere you go)? 

Better if you're an official ambassador to the victorian nation then, as that justifies giving you the tech (and even better if you come from or from near that Primordial-built dyson.. or maybe just a panetary-sized primordial artifact exists in your home system and your people are mining it for artifacts, making the victorians wary of "civilizing" you just yet, hence the ambassadorship? (maybe the active ingredient of the belt was taken from something else entirely, if we don't want to suppose too much about said Primordials physiology, and built into the belt by your people?)). Going to be a lot of tight corridors and rooms in your immediate future, but still, you'll be *flying* through them... What do you think?


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 11, 2013)

I think your vision of my character is decidedly different than mine.

I lowering the gravity in addition to raising the pressure to allow her to breath the same air as humans, just labored like if you were in the mountains.    If going with the envirosuit I could just raise the atmo more and not worry about the gravity.

I'm definitely keeping the doesn't like wearing clothes thing, and playing with the conflict between her Ilodarian father's naked culture, and her Human mother's clothed one.   Envirosuit doesn't work there.     I'm thinking some stuff.   More thought is needed.


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 12, 2013)

*	Name:*	Griklik		*	Height	*		1 mt and 80 cm																																																																																							
*	Skin:*	light purple, slippery		*	Weight	*		60 kg																																																																																							
*	Hair:*	None		*	Shape	*		Ermolaiaton																																																																																							
*	Eyes:*	Dark orange		*	Age:	*		Unknown																																																																																							




*	Complications * 
*	Amnesia	:*	Griklik has lost some portions of his memory due to extended time in stasis																																																																																												
*	From other galaxy and time	:*	Griklik belongs to another galaxy and to another time. Most likely, anyone who he had previously known is dead, so he has no contacts with anybody.																																																																																												
*	Aberrant	:*	Griklik's monstruous appereance can startle anyone																																																																																												

*	Abilities 	*(	14	pp)																																																																																											
	Strength	2	,	Stamina	1	,	Agility	0	,	Dexterity	0	,	Fighting	1	,	Intellect	4	,	Awareness	3	,	Precence	0	.																																																																							

*	Powers 	*					(	13	pp)																																																																																						
-	Ermolaiaton biology	 (	Extra limbs 4	:	Quirk: Not able to do precision work with these extra tentacles. Grants advantages (9)	) _·	11	point/s	_ 

-	Ermolaiaton coordination (Quickness 2: limited to 'stuff he can do with tentacles) _·	1	point/s	_ 

-	Ermolaiaton self gravitation	 (	Flight 1	:	Quirk: When not flying needs to used all tentacles for crawling	) _·	1	point/s	_ 

*	Advantages	*	(	11	pp)																																																																																										
	Improvised tools	1	,	Inventor	1	,	Trance	1	,	Ranged attack	0	,	Equipment 	8	
Ermolaiaton biology:	Chokehold,	Close attack,	Fast grab,	Imp. Def,	Imp. Dis, Imp. Grab, 	Imp. Hold,	Weapon bind,	unncanny dodge	

*	Skills                               	*	(	9	pp)																																																																																										
	Acrobatics                      	0	(+	0	),	Deception	0	(+	0	),	Athletics	0	(+	2	),	Expertise( Ship )	2	(+	9	),	Insight	2	(+	5	),	Treatment	0	(+	4	),	Persuacion	0	(+	0	),	Technology	6	(+	14	),	Close (Unnarmed)	2	(+	3	),	Vehicles	0	(+	0	),	Sleight of Hand                   	0	(+	0	),	Ranged combat (Accelerated particle emmitter)	4	(+	4	),	Perception	2	(+	5	),	Intimidation	0	(+	0	),	Investigation	0	(+	4	),	Stealth                             	0	(+	0	),

*	Offence	* 
	Initiative:	0																																																																																													
*	Accelerated particle emmitter	* +	4	Attack	for DC:	19	Range:	Ranged, multiattack	(		)																																																																																				
*	Throw	* +	0	Attack	for DC:	17	Range:	Ranged	(		)																																																																																				
*	Unarmed	* +	4	Attack	for DC:	19	Range:	Melee, applies grab	(		)																																																																																				
*	Grab	* +	4	Attack	for DC:	24	Range:	Melee	(		)																																																																																				

*	Defence	*	(	3	pp)																																																																																										
*Dodge:*	4 (3 from eq)			*Parry:*	:	4 (3 from eq)																																																																																								
*Toughness:*	4 (3 from eq)																																																																																													
*Fortitude:*	2																																																																																													
*Will:*	4																																																																																													

*	Equipment* 
	Accelerated particle emmitter (submachine gun with energy descriptor)	12 ep																																																																																												
	Ermolaiaton defensive harness (Large shield+ Chianmail)	9 ep																																																																																												
	Chief engenier matrix	(Enhance trait: Expertise (Ship) +4, Technology +4, Awareness +2, Intellect +2) 12 ep


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## Binder Fred (Mar 12, 2013)

DarwinofMind said:


> I'm definitely keeping the doesn't like wearing clothes thing, and playing with the conflict between her Ilodarian father's naked culture, and her Human mother's clothed one.



Then maybe a couple of minions from her father's side of the family (or her actual father/mother?) so you have something to mediate between?


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## Binder Fred (Mar 12, 2013)

Oh, almost forgot:  [MENTION=9026]Jemal[/MENTION], are we going with the 1:2 base skill rule or the rather widespread "1:3 except for combat skill which remain 1:2"?


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## Jemal (Mar 13, 2013)

> Well this *is* a sci-fi game... and you did ask for questions in your very first post, right?



 Oh most definitely, I had just misunderestimated p) how scientifically literate of an audience I would attract.  I had expected Maybe one person who would have these types of questions, especially since I'm not going for 'hard sci fi'.  It's not a  problem at all, just makes my galaxy-building seem a bit more haphazard than I would like. 
A lot of the questions you guys have had ARE stuff I had figured out, just not put down, but the variant gravity/pressure systems and the stuff about the 'enemy' were stuff I hadn't done much about.  
I'd specifically left the enemy 'unknown' but hadn't meant to imply that they were 'unknowable'.

ALL - As you have probably noticed by now, Voda has expressed immense interest in playing the one 'true' alien.  Sorry if anybody else had hopes up but he's been asking me about it for a while now.

OK, GRAVITY:  I actually WILL be using variant gravity's, but they do generally stay 'similar'.. 0.5G - 2G(The universe being largely human-run, Gravity force is measured in Earth-constant) is the average for planets with sentient life, though there are exceptions.  Average on human/mixed-race space-ships is about .8G (Allowing easier movement without causing disorientation or bone deterioration), with 1G zones for sleep and muscle-maintenance, though Race-specific ships default closer to their more comfortable norm.
 I will not be focusing overly much on how or why that is the case, but if you wish to come up with the scientific explanations OOC (Or even IC, if your character is scientifically inclined), feel free - it'll add greatly to the world, but is more work than I have time for - I'm giving most of my time to story (And my several other games, baby, work, etc..)

BF - I actually don't recall ever hearing of that rule before.. interesting thought, but not for this campaign.  I've already reduced the starting points b/c people won't be spending a lot on powers anyway, so reducing the cost of skills would be mechanically akin to increasing the points again.  
Yes, it does promote skill usage, but I don't think that's neccessary given that I've been rather clear (I think?) that skills will see more use in this campaign than any combat stats, in addition to the addage of tech upgrades.


What I miss?


Voda Vosa - I actually like the character more than I had expected.  (That's meant as a compliment though it may sound backhanded)
A few notes - I would suggest 2 ranks of Quickness, limited to 'stuff you can do with tentacles' (For 1pp) to account for the extra limbs allowing you to do certain things faster, which makes sense I think.
Is your character capable of movement aside from flight?  Keep in mind that as it isn't permanent/Innate, it CAN be nullified.  You have your flight listed as 'self-gravitation', I presume this is some sort of biological anti-gravity?  It's likely that there is tech, radiation, or other circumstances that may temporarily incapacitate this ability.
If you'd like you could take a complication that when not flying you have to crawl around with your extra limbs at a reduced speed(maybe -1 speed).  For a 1 pt Quirk instead of a simple complication, you could say that your 4 extra limbs are only usable for movement when you aren't flying.

Equipment: 


> Ermolaiaton defensive harness (Large shield+ Chianmail)	9 ep



Normally shields have the downside of needing to be wielded.  If you want this to all stem from your harness(leaving all limbs open and the shield not disarmable), I'll allow it as a 'feature' increasing the cost to 10ep.  


> Chief engenier matrix	(Enhance trait: Expertise (Ship) +4, Technology +4, Awareness +2, Intellect +2) 12 ep



 Enhancing skills or stats would be things that fall under the heading of a device, not equipment.  I'd also want to know what 'type' of device it is.. held or worn? What does it resemble?  I get the harness, but calling something a 'matrix' doesn't really describe what it is.

Finally, with regards to your complications: your monstrous appearance will likely be a big deal, but I'm going to be a bit reserved with the Hero Points gained from it.  I won't be OVERLY stingy, and when it causes a serious inconvenience/problem, it'll qualify, but it's not going to be like a normal 'racism' complication - that's just the price you pay for being 'the alien'.


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 13, 2013)

Jemal said:


> What I miss?
> 
> 
> Voda Vosa - I actually like the character more than I had expected.  (That's meant as a compliment though it may sound backhanded)
> ...




Will reply in order:

1) Glad you liked him, I liked making the concept. I will take that suggestion, I was actually struggling with how to represent having extra limbs would affect his work. 

2)I will also shamelessly steal that idea. I like the fact that his bio-anti-gravity might be nullified, forcing him to crawl. 

3) I thought that it would have plates over some of his tentacles that he would have to wield. If that sounds ridiculus I'll take the harness for 10 ep, no prob. 

4) I was thiking something like a pep boy from fallout, a hand (tentacle?) held device, with a screen, or a holographic display, that contains a database and instructions. It would be something the creators of the ship would have designed for the engineer crew to be able to do repairs quicker and easier. 

5) Ditto on the monstrous appearance, wouldn't want it otherwise


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## Shayuri (Mar 13, 2013)

We'll need to work out how the Flying Cthulhu joined our merry band. Something tells me we didn't just meet a thing from another galaxy in a bar somewhere. 

Thinking on concepts now. Not sure what I am after. I like playing techies and pilots, but I do it so often. Perhaps a change of pace.

Or perhaps not. I kind of want to see what other folks are doing before I commit.


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## Jemal (Mar 14, 2013)

We've already discussed his entry to the game.  Lets just say the ship comes with a few toy surprises, including mascot.


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## Binder Fred (Mar 17, 2013)

I won't be submitting a character for this game after all. The greatest part of it is that I just got accepted in a game where I've been a lurker for some time (Yeah!), and that tops my quota for available free time. To be candid, the rest, which is minor but still an influence, is a question of game-feel: I like the base concept and I'm sure I would have had a lot of fun in this game, but I was also, obviously, hoping for a harder feel to it when I first came up with my character concept. Nothing wrong with softer sci-fi (I love Star Wars, the softest possible science you can possibly achieve ), but that's not what I was really looking for at the time.

Have fun you guys! I'll definitively be lurking in,
Fred.


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 17, 2013)

Was editing my character, but you didn't reply to some of my questions. If you can, I'll finish the edits.


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## Shayuri (Mar 18, 2013)

Okay, so where does that leave us as far as who's playing what so far?


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## Jemal (Mar 19, 2013)

With BF pulling out, the only character concept I've seen aside from Chibi Cthulhu from @Voda_Vosa  - who has a character sheet - is the 'half-breed doctor' proposal from [MENTION=33]DarwinofMind[/MENTION]

Have seen interest but not noticed any specific character proposals from [MENTION=4936]Shayuri[/MENTION], [MENTION=360]drothgery[/MENTION]
Also one post each, but no follow ups from: [MENTION=6703681]Raivon[/MENTION], [MENTION=2795]Mark Chance[/MENTION], [MENTION=8243]doghead[/MENTION]  so not sure if they were/are still interested, or just commenting.


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## Shayuri (Mar 19, 2013)

I'm interested, just trying to organize my concepts and get some stats going.


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 19, 2013)

I've been trying to get my stuff organize, I've had a hard time in the last week and haven't done anything on any of my games.


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## Shayuri (Mar 19, 2013)

I'm having a dickens of a time too.

I may have to make some tough choices soon if I can't do everything I want to get done each night.


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 19, 2013)

*Sarah Palwen*
Half-Ilodara Doctor
PL 4 PP 50/50

STR 0 STA 1 DEX 2 AGL 2 FTG 0 INT 4 AWE 2 PRE 2 (13pts)
Offence	
Initiative:	2	
Throw	 +	2	
Unarmed	 +	0		
Grab	 +	0	

Defence	 (2pts)	
Dodge:	3 = 1+2	 Parry:	:	0 	
Toughness:	1 
Fortitude:	2 = 1+1	
Will:	2	

Advantages: (11pts)
Attractive
Beginner's Luck
Eidetic Memory
Equipment 4
Improvised Tools
Jack-of-all-trades
Well-informed

Skills: (15pts)
Expertise: Doctor 5 = 1+4
Insight 5 = 3+2
Perception 4 = 2+2
Persuasion 5 = 3+2
Technology 6 = 2+4
Treatment 8 = 4+4


Prehensile Tail: Extra Limbs 1; Innate (2pts)
Nano Surgical Wand: Healing 5; Stabilize, Easily Removable (7pts)

Equipment:
Scrubs
Loose Skirt
Purse
-Smart-Phone (or whatever is current)
 Flashlight
 Makeup
 Camera
Medical Kit
Pharmacist kit
Surgery kit

Complications:
No Smell: Sarah and all Ilodara do not have the sense of smell.
Herbivore: Sarah is mostly Herbivore and suffers nausea if eating meat.   She cannot digest meat well enough to get nutrition from it.
Nudity: Sarah was raised in a culture that repects nudity and often feels desire to go without clothing.   Or simply forget that she is expected to wear it.

Sarah's mother is human, and her father Ilodara (Ilodar Sapian Sapian) from the warm moon HD 28185 bII
She looks mostly human but her skin is tinged purple, full Ilodara are fully purple, and she has a long flexable tail that ends in a tuft of hair.
Her hair is dark and her eyes are violet.  If seen in clothing, she is often in pink scrubs or loose fitting clothing. She was recognized as a child prodigy early and got her doctorate at the age of 18 she has currently completed her intern time and is looking to explore the universe more.


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## jackslate45 (Mar 19, 2013)

If I knew M&M I would be really interested.  It sounds like a really cool idea!


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 19, 2013)

go for it.   M&M is available online www.d20herosrd.com for free


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## drothgery (Mar 21, 2013)

Eh, I don't think I'd be comfortable in a game with a wannabe nudist and a tentacle monster. Sorry.


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 21, 2013)

I um

I didnt' mean to run anyone off, 

um don't leave.....


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 21, 2013)

Yeah me neither =P

But, hey its a fantasy game in a pbp board. You wont be seeing purple boobs.


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 26, 2013)

So??


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 26, 2013)

I think I killed it  

The nudist thing just came up in a random generator and I thought it was funny, like the blue chick on farscape.  

I apologize for anyone I offended I'm fine with taking it out.


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## Shayuri (Mar 26, 2013)

No offense taken here. 

But I understand that there's a kind of...skittishness folks have sometimes. I don't see it as much on Enworld, which is very well moderated and has rules of conduct that are strictly followed. But especially in a PBP, where we have to work other people's characters into our own narratives, I suppose I could see someone being uncomfortable with that idea. Especially if there'd been similar situations in the past that turned awkward.


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## Jemal (Mar 27, 2013)

I've got no problem with it, I thought it was cool.  I've been waiting to see what's up, do people need anything Specific from me right now?


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 27, 2013)

I revised my character, I think its done now.


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## Moon_Goddess (Mar 27, 2013)

Only thing I need from you Jemal is to look my character over for approval.


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## Voda Vosa (Mar 27, 2013)

I'll be taking some days off for vacations, I'll be back on the 3rd of april.


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## Shayuri (Mar 27, 2013)

Jemal, what do you think about the possibility of an artificial intelligence? Or possibly a human-derived bio-engineered being?

As I ponder, weak and weary, I find I am liking the notion of a character who challenges the notion of 'alien' by setting something that looks human but isn't next to things that look alien but perhaps aren't.

Or something like that.

If that doesn't appeal, I can just play a brash young pilot and go with something I know well.


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## Jemal (Mar 28, 2013)

Shayuri: 
For AI You'd have to be either be pre-fall and have some reason why you don't know how to recreate all the old awesome tech (Maybe a memory wipe or corrupted processor?) or you'd have to be a BRAND NEW experiment that has escaped.  Only a couple of the new societies might have managed to recreate AI beings, and if they have you'd be highly sought after.

As for bio-engineered, do you mean 'new species built from the ground up', or genetically engineered from a pre-existing species?  The former is a no for story reasons.

Others: Here's a Rogue's Gallery thread please post character sheets there so I can look them over and then I'll tell you what if anything needs changing.


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## Shayuri (Mar 28, 2013)

A pre-Fall AI has potential. Perhaps a unit that was never activated, never programmed, and sat in some kind of storage for ages until uncovered. Of course, at PL 4 it wouldn't really be a 'construct.' It would have to be built to imitate living things pretty closely. Few unusual immunities and so on. But that's all secondary to the concept.

For a genetically engineered organism, my thought was that it was based on human genetics. It might even just be a clone of someone with some nips and tucks around the edges to enhance it. Either way, the idea is that the character is artificially made, not naturally born.

-------

As I think more about it, I'm drawn more to the pre-Fall idea. Some kind of high tech android that tests the boundary of what is and isn't 'alive.' Mind wise, it could have suffered damage or corruption that causes large blocs of memory and knowledge to be inaccessible (as possible plot hooks later) or can simply never have been prepared for activation, and was started up with only the most basic of operating protocols (how to move, how to speak, etc).

No special resistance to damage or effects, I think. It even has needs analogous to eating, sleeping and drinking. I was thinking of giving it a Complication where conventional medical technology was not very effective on it, and giving it a low level of Regeneration...the complication kicks in for damage that isn't subject to regeneration, or situations when the regeneration is nullified.

Just shotgunning ideas for now...what do you think of the overall concept though, Jemal? Before I get too attached. 

---
Edit 2: Electric Boogaloo

Hm. Then again, we already have a lot of intelligence-oriented concepts. Maybe someone who's focus is more physical would be wise.

Though it could still work perhaaaaaaps...

Argh. This is why I've been having so much trouble.


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## Jemal (Apr 9, 2013)

Alrighty, sorry about the delays - still adjusting to the whole 'new baby + more work responsibilities' at same time issue.  Will be posting up my reviews of characters ASAP.
ALSO, For the Record, the RG currently only has one character in it.. Darwins.  Please post your characters there if you are ready for them to be looked over.  I would like to get this game going fairy soon.

EDIT: Also went back and double checked, looks like Shayuri, Voda Vosa, and Darwinofmind are the only three confirmed players.   Oh well, just means you guys need to be intense roleplayers. 


    [MENTION=4936]Shayuri[/MENTION]: The kind of genetic engineering I'm seeing from what you suggested is actually not completely uncommon in higher-tier civilizations even Post-Fall.
I personally like the damaged pre-fall 'android' idea the most.   It seems the most interesting (and doable), and also gives me yet another source of exposition to exploit, by 'rebooting' or reactivating certain memory centres. 
Also if it's a semi-alive android you don't even have to build it with the standard 'construct' abilities.  Maybe it's close enough to living that it IS affected by fortitude effects, it's body having been engineered to closely mimic people, but perhaps it just has a very high fort save representing it's greater resistance from being 'different'.

As far as the Physical vs Mental - I've no problem with a lot of smart people on the ship, just means a more intellectual campaign with mental challenges becomes possible.  It gives options.
On the other and, if you want to be physical, there's nothing saying you have to be a 'smart' android.. maybe you've got a damaged cortex or something?  Or were just not designed/programmed for higher thought.


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## Voda Vosa (Apr 9, 2013)

Sorry, posted on the RG now.


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## Shayuri (Apr 9, 2013)

I think I'm missing something...is there a house rule in effect?

Sarah has 13 attribute points, but is only paying 1pp for each. I thought they're 2pp apiece.

Something similar appears to be happening with Griklik, who has 11 attribute points, and is paying 14pp for some reason.

If it was one or the other, I'd think it might just be a mistake on the part of the player...but since it's both, is there a house rule I missed, or an errata?  If I'm wrong about attribute price, or if there's something in their builds I just didn't notice, then it could impact my own construction quite a bit. 

Thanks!

Edit - Also, Darwin appears to be buying skill points for 1pp per skill rank, but it's actually 2 ranks for 1pp, isn't it? Argh, I need my book.


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## Voda Vosa (Apr 9, 2013)

I have an artefact that provides me with Awareness +2, Intellect +2


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## Shayuri (Apr 9, 2013)

Hmm...

Oh, I see it...but it's bought as Equipment. Is that...can we do that?


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## Jemal (Apr 10, 2013)

I can't seem to find my post on Equipment vs Devices, I remember I did relax equipment restrictions somewhat - I AM allowing for more things bought as equipment, provided they'd be Common equipment for the current human tech level, but I'm fairly certain I said stat boosts would be higher tech though not uncommon.  
If I'm wrong please point out which post, otherwise please change it to a device (Removable power).

As for Darwin's - Shayuri is right.  You have both Attributes (Str, Sta, etc) and Skills at 1 each, but Attributes are actually 2pp per and skills are 1 for two.  Your attributes should cost 13 more points (26 total) and your skills should only cost 8 (And you would have 1 extra skill point to spend).


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## Jemal (Apr 13, 2013)

Sigh, I've been thinking and after several weeks it seems like the interest in this thread was mostly for debating the universe, not actual interest in playing within it.  

I was hoping to have a rather large cast since it's meant to be a roleplay heavy game, but now I'm looking at not even having an average sized one.   No offense to the three who have maintained interest, you're all great gamers, but I don't feel the game will go as I was hoping with such a small group.  
I think I'm going to have to call this game short and see if I can't drum up more interest for another project.  You guys will have first dibs if this comes back or in my next game if you're interested.


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## Voda Vosa (Apr 13, 2013)

=( 

I would have loved to play that floating squid alien.


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## Shayuri (Apr 14, 2013)

Sci fi is always a tough sell, it seems. It's why I jump at as many as I can when they show up.


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## Jemal (Apr 14, 2013)

Well as one of my other options im pondering, you guys have any interest in the new world of Darkness stuff?


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## Voda Vosa (Apr 14, 2013)

Don't have the sightless idea on what that is.


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## Shayuri (Apr 14, 2013)

World of Darkness covers a lot of ground. 

I'm familiar with the new WoD system though, and can say that I think it's better than the previous version.

What do you have in mind?


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## Jemal (Apr 16, 2013)

VV: That's too bad, it's a great system.  It's basically a supernatural, 'dark' setting.. vampires, werewolves, mages, etc. 
Shayuri - Will be posting up an OOC thread about that in the near future.  Keep an eye open.


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