DusterBoy Posted October 7, 2009 Report Share Posted October 7, 2009 Re: Hard sci-fi adventures? Or the background in Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress makes for a good scenario. Or, sticking with a Transhuman Space-style background, there's plenty of room for a war on Mars between, say, China and the US. And who knows what the terraforming on Mars has uncovered. . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyrath Posted October 7, 2009 Report Share Posted October 7, 2009 Re: Hard sci-fi adventures? 2. What if some nation somehow gains military control of one of the colonies? Will the military imprison colonists who are citizens of a hostile power? And if the colony has a mass driver or spaceport' date=' would the military use it to fire projectiles at a hostile power on Earth?[/quote'] Or if they want independence. See Robert Heinlein's classic THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS. That book was probably the first SF reference for using a mass driver as a strategic bombardment weapon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted October 8, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 8, 2009 Re: Hard sci-fi adventures? The Moon may want independence someday, as would Mars eventually. But for now, they'd still be too dependent on Earth. So the war between the west (USA, EU) and the east (Russia, China) will affect everyone adversely. And yes, there will be quite a few battles on Mars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
egaroadkill Posted November 7, 2009 Report Share Posted November 7, 2009 Re: Hard sci-fi adventures? My player’s say thier favorite episode I run is the one they nick named “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Universe” where the players small tug and salvage employer has assigned them to join up with a couple of other companies to prepare an obsolete, remote university astrophysics station (Bernal Sphere) for transfer and resale to new owners. A day or so after arrival, one of the few remaining university astronomers makes a discovery that he shares with everyone. There is a heat source he’s located far out in the ort cloud of the system that turns out to be a star ship. He’s even identified it as the long lost colonial liner Moscova. She’s a massive ship that was the pride of the Russian federation; reportedly filled to the gills with cargo and the personal treasure of 1200 people all lost decades earlier on her maiden voyage to the colonies! The party along with the other crews, the university staff and a few other “competitors” who hear this now must rush to make the claim. To make it fun I simply copied the characteristics of the competing actors from the old movie as captains and crew and let the chaos run rampant as people scramble for the salvage rights. There have been times when the game gets real mean with violence and nasty acts of sabotage and others turning to dirty tricks and friendly competition. The games with (IPW) interparty warfare breaking out were the absolute best! Towards the end, before the law arrives, the players might discover the ship was sabotaged and that even that went wrong. Instead of simply damaging the drives in Sol system, the ship was thrown far off course and drives ruined stranding the vessel in a distant systems ort cloud. The players can also find clues as to which government and corporation was behind it (The conspirators are today now key politicians and corporate execs, movers and shakers of the UN). A little later, an old black hat arrives in amongst the other government investigators to make sure the ships secret stays a secret. There have been other times I’ve thrown an opportunistic merchant/pirate into the mix who shows up after the UN investigators with guns blazing. Their second favorite adventure is when the tug suffers a radiation shield breakdown during a huge flare forcing the tug to land at a mining colony on Io. Then ensues a direct rip off of Outland. My own home grown Sci-fi game of three decades is a near future (70+years), human only (no aliens but some rare AI) hybrid taking stylistic hints from 2300AD (balkanization, familiar states the various Colonial Arms), Jerry Pournell’s CoDominium (corruption, oppressive bureaucracy, BuReloc), Ben Bova’s Planetary Tour (UN economic oligarchs, corporate intrigue, mass media manipulation, replace believers with political ideologs following collectivist demagogues), and a little P.K. Dick cynicism with sprinklings of cyberpunk and the wild, west on the dumping worlds. A real fun Dystopia my friends all say. I normally start the campaign using the tried and true Heinlein coming of age path with a hard dystopic twist (similar to “Higher Education”) starting everyone in one of the many CoDominium like “Welfare Islands” that players say are akin to life in Neo Tokyo (think beginning of Akira) only more vacant and run down because a quarter of the bums have been hoodwinked/forced migrated to the periphery. I quickly present them an option out of high school early, before becoming a 15th grade senior, and into work with a struggling but honest little orbital maintenance business (tug boats and orbital cleanup) and eventually into the real meat of the campaign. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted November 7, 2009 Author Report Share Posted November 7, 2009 Re: Hard sci-fi adventures? Interesting ideas, egaroadkill! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted December 5, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 5, 2009 Re: Hard sci-fi adventures? Here's a goofy one for you. New Havana is Cuba's only extraterrrestrial colony, located in Elysium Mons on Mars. Feeling vulnerable, it has purchased several missiles from Russia. These missiles could threaten US colonies on Mars. An American space cruiser, the USS Kennedy, is dispatched to investigate; it is met by a Russian space cruiser, the RFS Kruschev. Tensions mount as the two warships square off, their missiles locked on each other... Here's a picture for you. The ship on the left is the USS Kennedy; the ship on the right is the RFS Kruschev. The miniatures came from the Cold Navy (Kennedy) and Star Blazers (Kruschev) lines. The picture of Mars was taken from one of the Viking probes. Edit: The Cold Navy ship is actually the bigger miniature. It doesn't look that way, because I positioned it farther away from my camera than the other miniature. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyrath Posted December 5, 2009 Report Share Posted December 5, 2009 Re: Hard sci-fi adventures? I'm finishing the structural bracing of my hard-SF rocketship Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted December 5, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 5, 2009 Re: Hard sci-fi adventures? I'm finishing the structural bracing of my hard-SF rocketship Nice! What program are you using? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyrath Posted December 5, 2009 Report Share Posted December 5, 2009 Re: Hard sci-fi adventures? A free program called Blender. http://www.blender.org/ I have some other work here http://www.flickr.com/photos/nyrath/sets/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clonus Posted December 6, 2009 Report Share Posted December 6, 2009 Re: Hard sci-fi adventures? More than likely there are dozens of them gathering dust in a corner because inflicting pain would be considered torture and we would much rather not inconvenience the pirates. . They don't have the range for that application. When they're used, it'll be against crowds of civilians. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.