SA: Sublight

Summary:

Notes on the largest new setting for SA2.

SA: Sublight

Colin_Fredericks 18 Oct 2011 03:42

Here's some of the "hardware" of how the Sublight setting works.

Civilizations in Sublight are used less as major players and more as backdrops. Certain civs (especially the Union and Roamers) still have the potential to factor into multiple game sessions, but for the most part this game travels through one civilization during each story arc.

Societies are a much bigger deal in this game. Characters all work for the same Society, or a few closely aligned ones. Societies that are a little more general (like the Explorers), or less politically active (like the Wargamers) are less important than those with a specific goal. The Darwinians, Hospitalers, Abstractionists, Hyperevolutes, Breathstealers, Peacewalkers, and Organized Crime are the ones who are really the focus of the setting.

Because psychohistory is a well-developed science, the Societies are able to predict potential crisis points. Originally, they would ride with the Spacers or commission ships to reach their destinations, but as competition at crisis points became more ruthless, travelling at light speed became indispensable. More and more Societies turned to transmitting the minds of their most fervent devotees from system to system, until now all of them do so.

Each Society operates transceivers in the Oort cloud of each Civilization's solar system. These relays send minds farther in-system, where they eventually reach the civilization's infosphere and are taken in by the local branch of their Society. Bodies are created locally, either biological or mechanical.

Characters are chosen for their dedication to the cause. Transmitting a living person requires exceptional care and effort, and is not done lightly. PCs need to have their Society CV at 3 or 4.

Interception is not unheard-of, especially a partial interception that can lead to identifying which agents of rival Societies have arrived as well. Characters move on not only to reach the next crisis point but to escape Cognitech virii targeted directly at their minds.

Re: SA: Sublight

Colin_Fredericks 19 Oct 2011 02:02

Sublight has a lot of potential to be a very poignant and very dangerous setting.

To start off, each time you leave a world, you may very well consider that to be you dying for your cause. Your consciousness is transmitted across light-years. If you leave a copy behind (a "remnant") to be with the people of that world, the question of who counts as the "real you" will likely be rendered moot as the losers of the conflict lash out in vengeance against you with all their resources (or, if you lost, the winners mop you up).

Characters are likely to make ties with the locals. It will take months or years after the PCs' arrival for the psychohistorical crisis they're anticipating to come to fruition. In that time, they are surrounded by people who are supporting them, providing them with food, shelter, even bodies. Each time they leave a world, you may not be returning for decades, even centuries. Any ties they make in your time there are immediately severed. News takes decades to travel. Crises are separated by centuries, and characters can't just wormhole back. Even in a society of immortals, a century is plenty of time to forget about someone and move on.

Sublight's setting will be closer to technological stasis than the Patent Office's setting, but there will still be advancements. Characters may arrive at a world to discover than during their 30 years of transmission some entirely new technology has arisen that makes life very different. Characters may face increasing amounts of future shock over the course of the game.

Then there's the matter of becoming both famous and infamous. As you show up and interfere at crisis after crisis after crisis over the course of centuries, there will naturally be some people who look up to you, and others who want you dead for what you've done. In rare cases there may even be duplicates of your character running around, from intercepted transmissions or remnants left behind that somehow survive the aftermath of the crisis. Meeting yourself should be a very tense moment, as someone may have gotten their hands on a copy of your consciousness and hacked it.

Finally, all the characters in Sublight believe so strongly in their cause that they would leave behind friends and family, have their consciousness scanned into a computer (a destructive scan, no less), and travel across the stars for the possibility of turning the tide on a remote world. Individuals so dedicated are likely to, at some point, consider their own lives less important than the success of their cause. I'm considering advising players in Sublight to have more than one character written up - the group has much opportunity to pick up new characters as they travel, and level 9 Complications can bring the Rule of Force into play.

As a side comment, I haven't been reading up on SETI so much since I downloaded SETI@Home in 1996.

Re: SA: Sublight

Pilgrim 19 Oct 2011 03:01

Talk to me about ideas on how to tweak a civilization for a new technological innovation? Or unprecedented disaster like Yellowstone and the Melding Plague?

Re: SA: Sublight

Colin_Fredericks 20 Oct 2011 04:49

It's something I haven't written yet and need to consider more, but the short version to induce culture shock is:
1. Make sure you have the tech chosen several games ahead of time. Lay out a series of inventions to bring in, one at a time, at each new world.
2. By the time the PCs get there, everyone's using it, and the PCs are weird for not using it. (Sometimes it has to be "everyone in power is using it", but that's ok.)

Will write more when more awake.