Category: Whole New World

The art for Enhanced or Through the Silver Gate doesn’t vibe well with Whole New World so I’m hunting for an artist again to produce the cool retro-space vibe I need for this.

“The human race is going to be adrift, desperate for a rock to cling to while they catch their breath.”

FTL

There’s really no FTL in the setting. Sure, FTL tech was used to get the humans here, but it’s a kinda of a one way trip. They were catapulted here.

Tech Level

We can assume some technological advances. Particularly in computers, sensors and maybe even some bioware. But the space ship tech? “the only way humans have ever figured out of getting somewhere is to leave something behind.” I do like the idea of sarcastic robots.

Limited Resources

The ship has limited life support, limited fuel but effectively unlimited energy when the solar veil is deployed. This can, with time, replenish fuel stores.

Interpersonals

“That’s what I love – out there we face great odds. Death. But not evil.”
We’ve always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments. These moments when we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. Or perhaps we’ve just forgotten that we are still pioneers. And we’ve barely begun.

We’ve started working on (yet another) world. A Sci-Fi setting we are calling “Whole New World”.

Premise

I’ve been a big fan of Interstellar, released in 2014 (and therefore has it’s 10th anniversary later this year) and I’m very keen on the rush of mature Sci-Fi we got around that time. Interstellar in particular was highly praised for being the new gold standard by which scientific accuracy in science fiction could be measured and while everything can be criticised, I did enjoy…

Mathematical Physicist Ikjyot Singh Kohli first published an article defending the physics used in the film. The article was written shortly after the film’s release in response to a number of scientific blogs that criticized the film’s physics for not being accurate, which were shown by Kohli to be due to several misunderstandings by the authors of the blogs in question.

Moon (2009)
Gravity (2013)
Interstellar (2014)
The Martian (2015)
Ad Astra (2019)

For a brief time it was a bit of a renaissance in science fiction.

Last night I rewatched 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) and loved the physicality of it. The space suits, the discovery pods, the ships that looked like I can imagine space ships to look like.

In Play

In theory this idea is a little like a game I played years ago (and IMO didn’t play enough); Justifiers. In Justifiers the PCs are anthropomorphised uplifted animals, criminals or ex-soldiers whoa re sent out to ‘justify’ the expense of colonising worlds. They’re catapulted to the orbit through some sort of wormhole, have to land, survive and construct a transmatt system to get themselves home. If they die, it’s seen as a reason not to invest more in that world.

But I want to share and shed some concepts.

This isn’t about corporate greed. The PCs are not the hapless pawns of some corporation wanting to make more value for shareholders.

This isn’t about more world, more stuff. This is about one world, the world that will save us all.

This isn’t about shooting things. It certainly can have shooting but for the most part it’s about exploration.

This is about humanity’s survival. The PCs are the crew on the lifeboat that will save humanity from extinction.