To The Stars

Summary:

The simplest setting

To The Stars

Colin_Fredericks 07 Mar 2012 22:04

To The Stars is the simplest setting for the second edition. The premise is this: that nearly every civilization that went to the stars failed.

As in the Patent Office setting, Earth's major governments collapsed, and only Old-Worlders remain on Earth. Those who succeeded in their colonization efforts became the Stardwellers, who live planetside as well. Those who failed are Cargo Cults, or occasionally off-Earth Old-Worlders. There are about eight hundred Cargo Cults in this setting.

Transcendentals are a part of this setting; they determine the best time to contact various Cults and work with the Stardwellers to bring them back into the fold. There is a "prime directive" rule in place, but only for unofficial contacts. Since it's the Transcendentals working on this, you can bet that a contact that breaks that rule will have either practically no impact in the long run, or a positive impact.

The primary dynamic for To The Stars is between the incredibly low-tech Old-Worlders and the incredibly high-tech Stardwellers as the two of them work to bring Cargo Cults up. The Stardwellers show a tremendous amount of respect for the Old-Worlders. The common attitude is, "You came from our beloved home." While there are some who pity or look down on the Old-Worlders for not stepping up to higher technology, most of the Stardwellers' leaders show a great amount of reverence for anyone from Earth. The same attitude is not uncommon amongst Cargo Cultists, which leads to the recruitment of Old-Worlders for contact missions. On the other side, the Old-Worlders often have some initial fear that the Stardwellers aren't quite human any more, and so it takes a lot of courage for an Old-Worlder to leave Earth and travel the stars.

One of the neat parts about this setting is that any of the many civilizations that are detailed in the book can easily be turned into Cargo Cults. Want a Replicant cult? Keep only medical replicators and lose the civ's understanding of how they work. Want a Masquerade cult? Their civilization doesn't really depend on high technology; the mask concept has been around for thousands of years. You could even make a pocket group of Stored, living in solar-powered computers while all of their outside machinery and means for interacting with the physical world have been destroyed.

As with most SA settings, there are no "standard bad guys" in this setting. Certainly there are some Societies that have goals related to the Cults, but there's no Great Enemy that everyone is working against.

I considered leaving the Logicians in this setting, because I love the Logicians / Old-Worlders interplay so much, but in the end I decided that that didn't make logical sense for the Logicians themselves. Ergo, no Logicians.

The intended set of Themes for this setting leaves out Terror and any fame-oriented Magnetism. Wonder fits very well.

The Old-Worlders make a great choice for someone who isn't very familiar with science fiction. Folks who like cyberpunk or most sci-fi will be at home playing a Cargo Cultist. Those who love sci-fi or have played SA before will probably want to play a Stardweller. This sort of setup is a good way to introduce the technological revolutions in the game without needing to also learn a dozen different civilizations.

Comments, criticisms, and extensions are welcome.

Re: To The Stars

TauCeti 07 Mar 2012 23:00

With any luck I'll have a write-up for the two games I ran last week. If so, there's a decent example of a Stored cargo-cult (in a Spacer Ship of all things). (The “Dreamscape”. What happens when you try to bootstrap cognitech without, you know, cognitech).

So, two comments:

1 – Spacer Cargo-cults. Probably not common, but I can see a few of these around. Also, lots and lots of dead spacer ships floating in the void.

2 – Terror. I can see this being somewhat inappropriate for both Old-Worlders and Stardwellers in this setting (what with the 'uplift' theme). On the other hand, it's entirely appropriate for Cargo-cultists. This is a setting of dark and light, and the dark can get very dark.

…

Also, Cargo cults are especially unstable as civilizations go. I can see a lot of "first contacts" which are really rescue missions, trying to save a quickly dying cult before it is too late. As such, many of the cargo cults you interact with may actually be very short lived. Say, a cult that's in the middle of a 100 year collapse from a stable (but not terribly high tech) society to, well, nothing. Having societies which are in the process of falling gives a great deal of leeway for the GM, since you don't need to design a society that can survive for the long term (that being the point).

…

(As always, my take on things is darker than default).

Last edited on 08 Mar 2012 00:11 by TauCeti Show more

Re: To The Stars

Colin_Fredericks 08 Mar 2012 18:43

Yeah, Spacer cargo cults would be particularly rare - as soon as you've lost the knowledge of how to repair anything onboard, you're boned. I think that I might just deep-six the Spacers in this setting.

I suppose I could see leaving Terror in.

I agree with your view of the Cargo Cults. The concept I have for most of these CCs (and in fact for all cults in general) is that they go through cycles of rebuilding, advancement, crashing, and dark ages. Once you've colonized a planet it's fairly difficult to really kill off every human being, so eventually things would come back from any collapse that doesn't involve killing the farmers first.

Re: To The Stars

TauCeti 08 Mar 2012 20:38

It occurs to me that, in my usual process of seeking the darkness, I've missed out on the flip side of the Cargo Cults. Namely, the rise.

It might be interesting to showcase rising cults, that are rapidly advancing in technology and culture despite past calamities

Indeed, this setting could do with a whole lot of advice on how to design cargo cults and make them interesting.

(Also, in 1.0 the cults all had the same CVs and capabilities. It probably goes without saying, but that really shouldn't be the case in To The Stars, if it's even that way elsewhere anymore).

Re: To The Stars

Tantavalist 18 Mar 2012 00:53

Having bought the first edition and read the scraps of playtest stuff for the second, I've been looking forward to the new ruleset for Sufficiently Advanced. I like Sci-Fi novels where the tech level is through the roof, and SA is (in both versions) the only ruleset that's seriously tried to portray this genre.

The setting of the first edition was, to me, the biggest dissapointment. The idea of multiple settings for the second is, I feel, a big step forward.

"To the Stars" and "Sublight" both have very good concepts, managing to fuse the traditional New Worlds themes of Space Opera with the tech and themes of SA. But they are also both hanging onto the single biggest flaw of the original SA setting:-

"Transcendentals are a part of this setting; they determine the best time to contact various Cults and work with the Stardwellers to bring them back into the fold. There is a "prime directive" rule in place, but only for unofficial contacts. Since it's the Transcendentals working on this, you can bet that a contact that breaks that rule will have either practically no impact in the long run, or a positive impact."

The Transcendentals.

Colin- seriously, let go of the idea. I recall you stating in one post regarding the first edition that the Trancendentals were one of the big problems a large number of players had with the setting. And yet, with the chance to come up with new ones, there they are again. Clearly you think they're a cool concept, but their very existence spoils the game. Only rule breaking that the Trancendentals decided in advance was a good idea will be allowed? That's the problem in a nutshell.

Exactly what do the Trancendentals bring to the setting, apart from a way to make sure everything always works out for the best?

Take them away. Lose the safety net. Have every contact have the potential to go horribly wrong, have people around who don't respect any Prime Directive and get away with murder on a cultural scale. Make it about the PCs, NOT their omniscient benefactors.

Oh, and while I'm on the pet peeves subject:-

"The Stardwellers show a tremendous amount of respect for the Old-Worlders. The common attitude is, "You came from our beloved home." While there are some who pity or look down on the Old-Worlders for not stepping up to higher technology, most of the Stardwellers' leaders show a great amount of reverence for anyone from Earth."

Please.

How about, "A single Stardweller faction, the one controlling space immediately around Earth, has respect for the Old Worlders but the rest treat them with veiled contempt at best"? Because that has far more potential for drama and conflict, which is what makes a game interesting.

If it seems that I'm just picking holes in the setting, well, that's because my reaction to SA1 was "nice rules, but I'll need to invent a homebrew setting if I ever run it". I'm hoping that SA2 will be an improvement.

Given what I've seen of the platest rules posted here, though, I'll be buying SA2 when it does come out anyway, regardless of if I have to make my own setting. Hope to hear more about how the development's going soon!

Re: To The Stars

Colin_Fredericks 18 Mar 2012 02:49

Actually, the Transcendentals aren't part of Sublight. I'm not married to them being in To the Stars, but the setting doesn't depend on them the way the Patent Office setting does. There are two more settings, one where they're in by default but locked in a war with the Aia, and one where they're not in. So you should be fairly happy with the second edition.

The Transcendentals are part of the game because I believe they are possible, and not for any other reason. Once I believed they were possible, they became inevitable, and I had to figure out how to work them in without making humanity pointless slaves. I'm open to other ways that might happen, if you have ideas.

As for our second point, I'm not sure how long you think conflict between the Stardwellers and Old-Worlders would last, or why the Stardwellers would bother to bring them along if they didn't respect them. You obviously have a very different view than I do of how people would act. I appreciate your feedback, though.

Re: To The Stars

Tantavalist 18 Mar 2012 03:48

Personally, I don't see why the Stardwellers would bring the Old Worlders along. Or why the Old Worlders exist at all. But you've decided that the Old Worlders are a part of the setting, and as with the real world Amish, the only way this could happen is that some other, more powerful faction is protecting them.

My views on how people would act are based on my extensive reading on various periods and cultures from human history. The recurring theme is, people are not nice. I find the idea that people could grow beyond this state of affairs through cultural evolution alone absurd- either some outside agency would need to actively impose better behaviour on people (I always felt that The Culture was one of the few believable sci-fi Utopias) or something fundamental would have to change about the people themselves ("A Second Chance at Eden" by Peter F. Hamilton, for example).

Even taking the Star Trek assumption that people really will just learn to get along- the Stardwellers might respect the Old Worlders, but revere them? I doubt it.

Yes, Metatech has all sorts of ways to make people play nice. But it has all sorts of ways to screw people over as well- and what are the chances that only nice people will have Metatech?

The one version of the Old Worlders that I was planning to include in a game if I ran it was, superficially, the same as yours. People had chosen to not go for ultra-tech Transhumanism and just lived happy, fulfilling lives at a level of technology they felt comfortable with. And none of them were aware that the Transhuman entities had respected their decision but not felt they warranted a whole planet to waste on this philosphy. They were therefore merely programs running on a VR simulation so complex that a human mind couldn't possibly see through it. Any visitors were just projecting into the simulation, and leaving the simulation meant being placed into a specially maunufactured body.

On your point about Trancendentals- alright, you believe they're possible with real world science. Do you also believe in the possibility of some people having Plot Immunity in the real world? I somehow doubt it, but Themes (or whatever they're evolving into in SA2) are in the game anyway.

Why? Because having them makes the game a more fun experience for most players. Based on real world science and logical extrapolations, we shouldn't worry about human PCs at all and just have computers running all skills at max in drone bodies. But that wouldn't be fun. You've already ignored some (probable) real world science for the sake of making the game more fun and playable. I suggest that, just possibly, the Trancendentals are something else that fall into that category.

Of course, I could be wrong, and there might be a whole crowd of Trancendental fans who love the idea. It's just none of the people I've ever discussed the game with have liked the concept.