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It occurs to me that there is a jumble of ideas just rolling around in my head at any given moment. It also occurs to me that I haven't actually done anything towards running or designing a setting in a long time. I don't know if I can keep anything cohesive in my brain, but I really feel that it is time to start putting ideas out onto the table. I don't know where these ideas are going or what my end game, if I even truly have such a thing, is. All I know is that my brain, though active, has been stagnant with the lack of expression.

 

So I am starting with Space Opera as a setting. It is always been my second favorite genre and my favorite genre to run. I tend towards Star Wars more than Star Trek in terms of character abilities. I have baseline assumptions about playable races from my time running Gemini Ascendant. I want to add more. I am also shifting the mechanics more towards superhero than heroic. Mostly, that is going to be for character generation. Characters will be built using points to buy their signature weapons and powers. To take an example from Star Wars, Luke would buy all of his Force powers and Lightsaber with points. Boba Fett would buy his Mandalorian Battle Armor. That sort of thing.

 

Keep in mind that this is not Star Wars. I am pretty sure that Star Wars, Mass Effect, Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Trek and a bunch more IPs will be inspiring me. They always do. I choose to post ideas here, instead of a blog, to elicit comment and feedback. I work better with constructive criticism than in a vacuum. 

 

Wish me luck.

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I spent a large portion of last night and this morning finishing up an old project of mine. I wanted to build a galaxy image/map for the Gemini Ascendant campaign. I guess it is done now. Just to be clear, this new potential campaign is going to take place in the Gemini Ascendant setting. Just not necessarily at the same time as the old one. Anyway, here is a basic image of the galaxy. I will probably be adding some labels and pointers towards small clusters and individual worlds.

 

This is the beginning.

 

post-206-0-02441800-1423513630_thumb.jpg

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Sort of a declaration of top-down design intent, eh?

 

Sounds like you are more interested in the space opera of the late 20th Century rather than the "planetary romance" flavor, e.g. Flash Gordon or E E Smith's Lensman saga from the first half of the century. Nothing wrong with that, but the term "space opera" to me first calls to mind the spaceship-and-ray gun stuff from the earlier era.

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Sort of a declaration of top-down design intent, eh?

 

Sounds like you are more interested in the space opera of the late 20th Century rather than the "planetary romance" flavor, e.g. Flash Gordon or E E Smith's Lensman saga from the first half of the century. Nothing wrong with that, but the term "space opera" to me first calls to mind the spaceship-and-ray gun stuff from the earlier era.

 

Sort of top down, though more fleshing out what is already a setting into a larger setting. I've always heard the term "space opera" to mean things along the lines of Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. Personally I always considered the earlier Flash Gordon and Lensman type stories to be "pulp sci-fi."  Not that I want to get into an argument of semantics. I've never really wanted to run Flash Gordon. Just not the exact flavor that I enjoy.

 

I'm going to be adding to this as the inspiration and creative urge strike. I'm probably going to weekend warrior this stuff as I wrestle with time constraints and an energy/soul sucking job during the week. :)

 

If I had a wit of artistic talent like Storn Cook, I have images in my head that I want to express as real images. I'm going to see if I can use Gimp and layer on bits to get what I want to accomplish into something resembling pleasing.

 

I have a couple of species write-ups that are essentially large info dumps that I am going to add packages to. That's sort of my goal for addition this weekend. 

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Thanks. I'll take a look see later.

 

My problem, so far, is frustration at my inability to create art that represents the species. I've got a ton of ideas that I just need to sort through.

 

I'm probably going to have to get some sort of organization software downloaded so that I can keep everything in order.

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Yeah, creating a space opera campaign setting from whole cloth is a daunting task. I've been working in mine sporadically since the early 90s

 

As for art work to represent various races etc, just peruse google. Chances are pretty good that you will be able to find something close to what you want unless you are trying to go totally unique.

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I might borrow that map too. I just need to figure out how to add labels and tags to it.

 

Use GIMP, Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. Any raster graphics program that supports layers will do. Open the image, create new layers above the base layer. Use the Text tool for whatever program you are using and create a label for each layer. That way you can turn on or off any labels depending on how much or little you want your players to see.

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Did you make it? I think it's fantastic! 

 

I particularly like the Ancient Space God's Lawn and the Catgirl Empire

No, I can't claim anything to do with it. Someone had posted "the last fantasy map you'll ever need." I saw this on Google+, so posted it here because it was along the same lines--and had some good laughs.

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If you need a map of the galaxy I think this one could make for a fun campaign. :winkgrin:

 

post-6272-0-06402500-1396076232.png

I would have to rearrange this quite a bit.

 

My space communists are not psychic (well, some of them are) and thats where the mecha are (well almost everyone has mecha, but the space elves and the communists use then the most) and my diverse nice guys are not in the middle.

 

 

And my really advanced aliens actually give some #₩€%$, in fact they manipulated things so that the diverse nice guys could get started. But they are also the mysterious aliens who know everything butt wont tell anyone.

 

And my catgirls arent just catgirls, they actually have cat guys too and are part of the diverse niceguys.

 

And my space elves are.....well, they are space elves with a murderous bent, so they arent your typical space elves, unless you count the Romulans.

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I've not given up on this setting. Still crafting both critters and PC species.

 

Re-reading my copy of Star Hero (that insists that the binding was an optional extra) for ideas.

 

Tinkered a little with the map to darkness the arms. Have not found a successful method yet but I am working on it.

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Yup. I actually have some rough stats in mind for the Galaxy With No Name (Yet).  I figure it is about 90% the size of the Milky Way and is about four billion years younger. It is roughly 900-1000 ly average "thickness" and it recently swallowed up a smaller Magellanic size galaxy. The two "deformed" arms at the "bottom" of the galaxy are the remnants of that galaxy. I should try to make a profile image of the galaxy to demonstrate the thickness and relative locations of the known species. I am going for a highly populated galaxy but not nearly as populous as Star Trek or Star Wars. My ideal comparison is probably more along the Mass Effect setting lines (9-12) known species but crammed into a smaller slice of the galactic real estate.

 

In the original campaign that I ran, I introduced several different types of FTL. I am reverting back to a single type (Void/Hyperspace drive) with has roughly a 1 LY/Day speed but is limited by the fact that sentient species are both needed to navigate the Void and are also susceptible to going batsh*t insane if they stay there too long. The practical limits are about 7 LY per month. The Void drives tend to require a lot of maintenance which further limits long range travel to massive explorer ships that can haul the replacement parts along with them. As another consequence, there are a lot of way stations dropped along frontier areas for the purpose of resupplying and maintaining smaller ships.

 

Sublight travel is going to be more than a little Rubber Science with very (as in unrealistically) efficient VASIMR like drives.

 

More later. Just random thoughts inspired by Cancer's post. Thanks.

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  • 2 weeks later...

In the original campaign that I ran, I introduced several different types of FTL. I am reverting back to a single type (Void/Hyperspace drive) with has roughly a 1 LY/Day speed but is limited by the fact that sentient species are both needed to navigate the Void and are also susceptible to going batsh*t insane if they stay there too long. The practical limits are about 7 LY per month. The Void drives tend to require a lot of maintenance which further limits long range travel to massive explorer ships that can haul the replacement parts along with them. As another consequence, there are a lot of way stations dropped along frontier areas for the purpose of resupplying and maintaining smaller ships.

 

Sublight travel is going to be more than a little Rubber Science with very (as in unrealistically) efficient VASIMR like drives.

At 1ly/day in your hyperdrive, that's quite close to 3/4 of an AU per second. That is an interesting speed, if the ships need piloting to avoid obstacles while the drive is engaged ... if stellar-mass objects in real space make impassable zones in hyperspace, and planetary-mass objects make potholes in hyperspace, and the population of free-floating planets is appreciable, this could be the case. It would also make astrogation a bit more of an art, as on long-distance runs it may be easier, if not also faster, to do roundabout trajectories, looping out of the main plane of the Disk and then back in, avoiding the high-density midplane and the clutter of lots of stuff there. This could be accentuated depending on what you can see while in hyperspace and what can impede that detection tech.
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Also, if pilot endurance is the limiting factor, AND there's viable articial hibernation tech that will allow a hibernating human to traverse hyperspace without going nuts, ... then an express courier could utilize the full 1ly/day speed a much higher fraction of the time by having hundreds of crews in hibernation tanks, and cycle a new one out/old one in each week. A ship with 100 crews running relay like that could get to that 700 ly limit in 800 days (allowing a day in normal space for each crew changeover) as opposed to 100 months in the normal mode you describe; that's 2.2 years versus 8-and-a-third years for that one-way trip. Assuming you can build a ship with that many hibernation tanks and have that many trained crew available, it might be worth it to do that under some circumstances.

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Interesting idea. It still would not overly change the balkanized state of the setting to have a very few ships that can do that. I imagine that Explorer and Colony ships could probably field a large rotating crew. The average tramp freighter could convert the cargo bay or something but most are likely going to be stuck making shorter jumps through space. That means they will probably meander near a core system or two. This is by design. I want to have a few detailed sectors with some room to find some other stuff on the peripheral of known space. So this is working out perfectly.

 

The key to the hibernation tech is how does it work. Is it like Aliens? Is like being frozen in carbonite? I seem to recall a friend describing Traveller hibernation as being a medical procedure to replace the blood with some other liquid, freezing the body and then reversing the process at the other end. Seems very creepy to me which is probably why I might stick with something like that.

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At 1ly/day in your hyperdrive, that's quite close to 3/4 of an AU per second. That is an interesting speed, if the ships need piloting to avoid obstacles while the drive is engaged ... if stellar-mass objects in real space make impassable zones in hyperspace, and planetary-mass objects make potholes in hyperspace, and the population of free-floating planets is appreciable, this could be the case. It would also make astrogation a bit more of an art, as on long-distance runs it may be easier, if not also faster, to do roundabout trajectories, looping out of the main plane of the Disk and then back in, avoiding the high-density midplane and the clutter of lots of stuff there. This could be accentuated depending on what you can see while in hyperspace and what can impede that detection tech.

 

Now that is an interesting idea. Up until now, I sort of considered Void travel as a fairly linear affair. You plop into the Void in System A, travel for X number of light years and drop out at System B. I have to kick back and think on that idea. See if it can/should be melded into my existing concepts.

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One of the reasons I haven't posted any stats yet is that I am considering an alternative to Hero. The problem with that is finding a system. My first inclination is towards a percentile system. I know a lot of people dislike percentile systems, but I think that they can be a little more granular than Hero is. I have been reviewing Star Frontiers and Top Secret S.I. for inspiration. I recall both as fun systems but I might be viewing them through the lens of nostalgia. I do know that I want to have something that balances, as much as possible, a fast playing resolution system with enough crunchiness to satisfy the Herophile in me. I've considered BRP and a survival horror game that I found on RPGNow. I'm just not in the market to spend money on a system that I may or may not use.

 

Until I settle on a system, I should probably focus on non-mechanical aspects like maps and story background stuff.

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