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SR FutureRun?

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Aria

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« on: <03-05-19/1527:35> »
I’m planning an Eclipse Phase / Altered Carbon esque run that is meant to be an evolution of one possible future of the SR world.  I’m trying to put together a rough timeline to take us from 2100 to the return of the Horrors/Terrors/Elder Gods but would appreciate any gems of ideas that might help to infill some key events in the intervening years (one current elf PC is likely to have lived through much of it).
 
So, projecting forward from current SR metaplots, what might happen in the next few hundred years???  What will the dragons do (I am leaning towards disappearing without trace).  The corps will move in to space.  National governments will become even more irrelevant… what will the Awakened do?  I will allow habitats that are sufficiently large to generate their own mana field so magic won’t disappear altogether.
 
This is what I have so far, broken down by quarter century...
 
2100
 
2125
Gregarin base is retaken following the departure of the Monads, additional corporate colonies spring up on the surface
 
2136 Halley’s Comet returns with a swathe of associated weirdness
 
2150
CFD nanites are finally reverse engineered to provide a consistent recording of consciousness that allows for effective immortality for those that can afford it.
 
2175
Increasing geopolitical upheaval results in more off-world colonies being created, space expansion increases massively over the next fifty years to most parts of the solar system
 
2200
Terraforming begins on Mars, the SINless starving masses on Earth offer themselves in indentured servitude to serve the corps in space.
 
2211 Halley’s Comet
 
2225
 
2250
 
2275
A violent corp war breaks out over diminishing natural resources on Earth.  In the aftermath, for the first time there is an almost equal number of metahumans on space as on Earth
 
2286 THE FALL
Coinciding with the return of Halley’s Comet and around 2000 years early the Horrors finally return in force. Humanity respond with a barrage of nuclear, chemical and nanological weapons. The Earth is left a devastated wasteland, a patchwork of radiation hotspots, sterile zones, nanoswarm clourds, roaming war machines and other unknown things among the ruins, and that is before the malignant horrors lay waste to whatever is left.
 
2300
 
2325 Proposed time of the FutureRun
 
2350
 
2375
 
2400
 
2425
 
2450
 
2475
 
2500
 
4574
Peak of the mana cycle
 
7137
End of the Sixth World

Any help much appreciated!
 
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Beta

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« Reply #1 on: <03-05-19/1749:52> »
I notice that the horrors' early return comes just after a vicious corp war.  I can't imagine that those things are unrelated.  Be it just massive deaths or deliberate use of mass scale blood magic, surely the one helped along the other.

Otherwise, I think somewhere along the line a few things that could happen:
- some fairly mass extinctions
- at some point corps flex their muscle and use orbital bombardment to destroy a government that was getting too above itself, settling for all time that corps run things.  (maybe also corp takeover of the few (if any?) government run space assets)
- The development of another strain of fab bacteria that helps create manaspheres in space
- Fairly detailed empirical mapping of the interaction of magic and genetics (and whatever else plays in there)
- Something that accounts for how much genetic optimization is or is not present in your future.

Ajax

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« Reply #2 on: <03-05-19/2026:40> »
Just gonna ask the same thing I do whenever someone brings up the idea of using Game X to run something like Game Z: Why not just play Eclipse Phase, Transhuman Space, or maybe the Infinity RPG?
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Aria

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« Reply #3 on: <03-06-19/0607:23> »
@Ajax: Principally because this is an ongoing game with recurring NPCs from the Earthdawn period to the future world... I’ve always loved that aspect of SR that it is rooted in past worlds and has the potential for future ones. Secondly as I don’t have the time to learn a new rule set and SR is comprehensive enough to cover most things... and we tend to gloss over rules anyway in favour of RP... if this was going to be an ongoing game I might look at using EP but for now I don’t really need to  ;D

Thanks Beta, will definitely take on some of those ideas!
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Michael Chandra

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« Reply #4 on: <03-06-19/0724:23> »
Don't forget the army of Cyberzombies the dragons prepared to fight both mankind and the Terrors. Possibly used at the point where mankind drove Dragons off Earth, and then resurfacing when the Terrors arrive to fight the Terrors, still roaming the world after the Terrors have been partially fought off.
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Hobbes

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« Reply #5 on: <03-06-19/1028:20> »

- The development of another strain of fab bacteria that helps create manaspheres in space


Terraforming on Mars could just do that on its own.  Large enough Space Stations/Asteroids/Moons as well since you've got to "Farm" stuff and scrub CO2 and all that.  Potentially enough living Plants, microbes, plot device Nanites,  could form a Manasphere.

Tecumseh

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« Reply #6 on: <03-07-19/0146:37> »
Large enough Space Stations/Asteroids/Moons as well since you've got to "Farm" stuff and scrub CO2 and all that.  Potentially enough living Plants, microbes, plot device Nanites,  could form a Manasphere.

This is actually a plot point from one of the pieces of fiction in 4E's Street Magic (p. 111 specifically). So, Aria, you have a solid precedent for allowing habitats to generate their own manaspeheres.

As for plot developments, I might ask about blood magic, specifically why it's not used to combat the Horrors a la the Great Ghost Dance or something similar. Perhaps, like in The Matrix, certain elements of humanity intentionally scorch the Gaiasphere in a vain attempt to deprive the Horrors of the mana levels they need to access our world.

I'm not an expert in Earthdawn but The Fall sounds like the equivalent of the Scourge. Some Fourth World civilizations survived via kaers: underground, warded cities that didn't always work. Perhaps that's something that could be incorporated into the game, which would give it a Fallout vibe of emerging from a vault (or, alternatively, dealing with life inside the vault).

Ajax

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« Reply #7 on: <03-07-19/0219:27> »
As I recall, it was a plot point in earlier editions (when the looming threat of the Horrors was a bigger part of the metaplot) that blood magic and ritual magic actually served to make it easier for the Horrors to come into our plane.
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Michael Chandra

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« Reply #8 on: <03-07-19/0424:09> »
As I recall, it was a plot point in earlier editions (when the looming threat of the Horrors was a bigger part of the metaplot) that blood magic and ritual magic actually served to make it easier for the Horrors to come into our plane.
They weaken the border with the metaplanes. But that was before FASA went poof and the two IPs ended up in separate hands.
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Aria

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« Reply #9 on: <03-07-19/0757:15> »
I'm not an expert in Earthdawn but The Fall sounds like the equivalent of the Scourge. Some Fourth World civilizations survived via kaers: underground, warded cities that didn't always work. Perhaps that's something that could be incorporated into the game, which would give it a Fallout vibe of emerging from a vault (or, alternatively, dealing with life inside the vault).
It's exactly that and I've hinted at the various kaer equivalents in my games so far...but with the scourge coming 2 millennia too soon and on top of a corp war it's not unreasonable to assume that most of these are space stations rather than beneath Earth.  Nothing stops astral travel like a true mana void :)

Of course that makes the 'astral portal' that allows physical access to astral space a little odd but handwavium… If it's ok in Equinox then I can pinch the idea for this game :D ...and also pinch themes from Babylon 5, the Blue Planet RP game... this is going to be fun :)


EDIT: Game timeline in visual form can be found here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3Yw4d165IBNbENuY0pTRm41YUk, the tabs have links to our ongoing ED and SR timelines too

Still open to suggestions for cool things to add to it!
« Last Edit: <03-07-19/0845:19> by Aria »
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