Author Topic: Beyond the Stellar Sphere  (Read 3576 times)

Nayt

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Beyond the Stellar Sphere
« on: September 21, 2016, 04:29:33 PM »
Beyond the Stellar Sphere
Hello, everyone! I totally promised to put this text RP setting out almost half a year ago, but . . . well, better late than never! This setting is fairly multi-toned, but is strictly in the deep end of science fiction. What I mean by multi-toned, of course, is that your stories don't have to be horror stories, grim bloodbaths, or sarcastic mercenaries if you don't want them to be. The setting I've got presented for you lends itself towards things like that, but if what you really want to do is get a bunch of people together and play out a space-themed reality TV show . . . Well I'm sure it exists, and I'm sure it's watched by billions.

It's worth note that this setting is strictly freeform; you'll find a link at the bottom of this contents post to the do's and don'ts of freeform RP, in case you're new to it and/or haven't done it all that much before.

This first post is going to be a table of contents of sorts. In it, I'll have many helpful links and the like, and I'll do my best to keep this updated as needed.

When you create any threads related to this, just make sure you put [BtSS] in the beginning of the title. If enough stories are going on in this setting, I'll get Matthew to make me a delicious rack of ribs a subforum devoted to Beyond the Stellar Sphere itself. Character sheets aren't necessary to join up or anything, just be sure you've read the lore I've posted in this topic. If there are any lore topics that you want me to include here for the sake of others, either toss me an IM or post in this thread!

Finally: while I've put forward a complete setting, there are some vagueries here and there. Ideally, those should give you ideas for characters and conflicts. I'm not so attached to what I've written that I'll balk at people pushing a universal plot along or anything of the sort; I'm very open to what we can all do with this post-Earth sci-fi "world," and I'd be elated to see members building up stories with solar system shattering developments.

1. Intro: Old Earth
2. New Worlds
3. New Mankind
4. New Life
5. Old Life
6. New Developments
7. The Do's and Don'ts of Freeform Forum Roleplay
« Last Edit: September 21, 2016, 06:32:38 PM by Nayt »
. o O (I think I must agree with Sliss. The "Fat Chance" would have been a perfect name for our ship.)

Nayt

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Intro: Old Earth
« Reply #1 on: September 21, 2016, 04:32:16 PM »
Old Earth
     by Granus Kar, The Kraken Mare Informer

By the dusk of the twenty-fourth century, the Earth was ruined--and mankind had yet to leave this solar system. Despite technological advancements, even clean advancements, we were never able to breach the kuiper belt. Not far enough to matter, at least. Certainly, there were probes. Even some failed manned missions to nearby star systems. But with only sub-light travel at our fingertips and the insurmountable wall that is extra-solar communication, each and every shot at a new Earth has been met with the same horrible interstellar scream.

Temperatures continued to reach higher and higher levels, rapidly warming well beyond historical precedents. Arctic ice melted. Sea levels rose. Mass flooding, mass evacuations, mass relocations, and then . . . evaporation. Lakes dried up, sea levels dropped, and moisture burned from the soil, as an ever-growing plume of mist flooded the atmosphere.

And the worst part? The worst part is that eventually we pulled our collective heads from our collective asses and started trying to save the world. That was the twenty second century--but it was too little, too late. Completely cutting atmospheric pollutants accomplished nothing. The damage was done. We’d reaped what we sowed. And now, there’s nothing left to sow on that dead planet. And once it was clear that the Earth was doomed, we fled. Broke out of the Earth sphere, terraformed other worlds, made new homes.

Top scientists claim that 10,000 years from now, Earth will be just another Venus. Unless, of course, we somehow figure out how to decloud an atmosphere. But this writer long since gave up hope. We’re never going home. We’re going to be stuck on terraformed moons ‘til we concoct some new way to drive ourselves extinct. Maybe we’ll run out of resources. Maybe we’ll have a war, build some new bomb that can take down entire moons. Or maybe we’ll just fade into galactic obscurity, trapped in our Sol System ‘til we stop birthing new humans.

It’s the dawn of the twenty-fifth century, people. Who knows what the next generation is going to do?
« Last Edit: September 21, 2016, 04:51:11 PM by Nayt »
. o O (I think I must agree with Sliss. The "Fat Chance" would have been a perfect name for our ship.)

Nayt

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New Worlds
« Reply #2 on: September 21, 2016, 04:40:52 PM »
New Worlds
If humans learned one thing from destroying the Earth, it was how to screw up an atmosphere. And the most important process of terraforming alien worlds? Screwing up its atmosphere. We can’t cool a world down, but we can certainly warm it up.

Earth is gone, uninhabitable. A dried up world with poison for air, so hot that most exosuits won’t keep a traveler alive for long. Humanity had to move, had to adapt, and options were limited. Over the centuries, mankind has taken to these new worlds:

Space Itself, in the form of space stations and orbital satellites (most prominently Terra Nova, which orbits the Earth).

Terra Nova is the most famous orbital station, though large stations just like it orbit that of Jupiter and Saturn. A greater population lives in Terra Nova than any other orbital station, if only for the nostalgic value of being so close to mankind’s ruined homeworld. The being said, Terra Nova is actually the worst laid out orbital station. Not only is it the first to have been built, but the addition of more and more people have lead to more and more sectors being added to the station--which, in turn, makes it more and more difficult to navigate. Still, people are drawn to the haunting view of Earth’s gray-blue haze.

Orbital stations are roughly the size of old super-cities, half of which--the residential sections, mainly--rotate quickly to simulate gravity. Large spaceports tend to hang between residential and commercial districts. Jupiter and Saturn’s orbital stations actually put more emphasis on their spaceports than residential qualities, as they see more income generated from shipping and receiving to their moons than anything else.

Mars. Martian history is strange. You see, in the 21st century, humans started placing structures on Mars. Mars One, the first manned “mission” to Mars, was a publicity stunt, the new frontier of reality television. A handful of strangers sent off to live in a compound on Mars, knowing full well they will never come back to Earth. Mars One picked up steam, and elevated the red planet to a strange celebrity status. Within a century, it became fashionable to own Martian property, and once travel to and from Mars became cheaper and easier, high profile celebrities started fronting the bills to live in their own personal Martian compounds.

Today, a terraformed Mars is the system’s closest approximation to a pre-industrial Earth. Only 30% of its surface is water, however, so only a small fragment of the world is lived in. That which is contrasts the reddish soil and rocky outcrops with vibrant greenery, colorful buildings, and turquoise waters. Martian society is aristocratic and celebrity. To this day, it is far too expensive for the majority of humans to own land on Mars.

The greatest threat to Martian communities are the storms, which carry all the power of a hurricane, with only rock and sand to throw around. As such, Martian homes are incredibly sturdy, resembling forts and castles in their construction.

The Asteroid Belt, set between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, was never sought after for permanent colonization. While rumors of a hollowed out asteroid containing some lost city and untold riches are unquellable, no formal authority will ever admit such a thing exists.

Resource mining facilities are largely the only source of human presence in the asteroid belt. There are actually more abandoned facilities than active ones, as asteroid belt mining has been a regular source of income for a myriad of corporations since the late twenty-first century. Most of the time, these facilities are manned by robots and a few humans (or human offshoots) to ensure upkeep and repairs.

Frequent collisions make the prospect of a permanent asteroid colony unlikely. Even Ceres, a minor planet within the asteroid belt, remains untouched. That said, there are still a few corporations left  with vested interests in overturning Ceres. The atmospheric and soil contents of Ceres make it a theoretically viable world for habitation. Its atmosphere can easily be thickened, and the world’s soft, malleable soil is the result of long concealed ground water, introduced into the planet’s

Enceladus (Saturn), a tiny moon of Saturn with an icy crust, under which is a warm, bustling ocean. Underwater “storms,” or violent, turbulent tides, are caused by frequent surface geysers that burst from the ocean’s pressure. The geysers erupt into space, adding to the frozen ice of Saturn’s rings. Because of its lack of sustainable atmosphere, ice from the planet’s rings collect upon the surface, drifts down into the warm ocean, melts, and repeats. Only the ocean of Enceladus is livable. Any surface structures are closed off from the vacuum of space.

Enceladites refer to humans who moved to the moon well before the Earth became unlivable, and adapted to the environment. Through a mixture of medical breakthroughs and guided evolution, this offshoot of humanity have long, thin bodies covered in thick, rough skin, and slitted gills along the sides of their ribcage.

Titan (Saturn), a larger moon of Saturn with a caustic atmosphere. Contrary to 20th century thought, Titan was incredibly difficult to terraform. Already having a dense atmosphere--one that reflects light, rather than contains it--long term, heavy industrialization was necessary to bring the world’s surface temperature up to acceptable levels. Because the world reflects too much light, it is constantly dark, excepting only summers, which are no more luminous than Earth’s twilight. Oxygen producing plants are given artificial soil, artificial light, and dominate the center of every human community. Paradoxically, the caustic air doesn’t do them much harm.

Titan’s atmosphere is covered in a thick, choking smog caused by human terraforming and its native methane oceans. It always smells unpleasant, and breathing the air can be poisonous after just a couple of hours. Most citizens wear rebreathers when stepping outside. The surface is primarily methane oceans and dark, pillowy soft soil--even softer, and less dense, than Earthen beach sand.

This world was the first attempt at rapid terraforming once Earth officially became lethal. While the Martian aristocracy brought in the wealthy and influential, Titan took on Earth’s lower and middle classes.

Much like Enceladus, Titan also hosts a vast underground ocean. This, however, has gone mostly unexplored, even centuries into Titan’s habitability. There is life down below--not intelligent life, but extremely hostile life. Things in the sea: predators, all of them. Monsters capable of tearing through solid armor, of devouring expeditions whole. This life existed long before mankind’s arrival, and it will continue to exist long after mankind leaves the moon.

Io (Jupiter), Jupiter’s fifth moon, was once considered for terraforming. The project was scrapped shortly before its onset, however. Io’s surface is so covered in sulfur that no amount of effort could make the moon habitable. Conversely, it is one of the most metal rich worlds in the solar system, making it a prime target for mining colonies. Even now, a dozen different mining companies have their people in closed off communities. Exosuits are required for work outside.

Because it was never terraformed, Io remains in its natural state: a planet of fire and ice. Frequent volcanic eruptions set portions of the world ablaze, while the rest of the world is covered by its unique orange-and-yellow sulfuric snow . . . snow that is, incidentally, flammable.

Europa (Jupiter), is mankind’s second fully terraformed world. It was much more successful than Titan. Those who can make it off Titan usually wind up on Europa. Here, Jupiter takes up a third of the sky at all times . . . But only for half the planet. Europa is tidally locked with Jupiter, so the “back” half of Europa never, ever sees its host gas giant. That being said, it still sees night and day based solely on Jupiter’s rotations.

This world was initially considered a lost cause for habitation, as it has abysmally low gravity, but its underground ocean--one vaguely similar, albeit colder and more shallow, to Enceladus--more than made up for it. Mankind, first dispatched in closed off colonies, drilled deep to allow for natural water vapor to intermix with oxygen and carbon emissions in order to form an atmosphere as close to Earth as possible. Mineral content keeps the soil an orange and yellow, and the grainy water--in the form of deep, fracturing rivers spanning the entire moon--is a bluish gray, but the air is pure and easy to breath, making Europa a much sought after destination for settling down.

Europan architecture is incredibly unique, mostly for its accommodations for gravity. The moon’s gravity is one ninth that of Earth’s, which has made building up a greater priority than building out.
. o O (I think I must agree with Sliss. The "Fat Chance" would have been a perfect name for our ship.)

Nayt

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New Mankind
« Reply #3 on: September 21, 2016, 04:50:54 PM »
New Mankind
Over the years, both on and off Earth, humanity has guided its own evolution. Humans are engineered, made to be better, more powerful, more long lived than ever before. These upgrades, so to speak, were actually quite necessary. Since mankind’s move into space, live births have reduced tremendously. The move into space, the rapid terraforming projects, these were all quick. Hasty. But ultimately necessary. Earth was simply uninhabitable. Even though sterility began to dwindle the human population, the exodus into space gave mankind a fighting chance.

Infertility and sterility plague prospective mothers and fathers alike, with only one in a hundred humans--on average--capable of producing children. Infertility via solar radiation has thus far been one of the most difficult hurdles to overcome. The easy route, and the one humanity fell back on so much that progress on a cure all but halted, was genetically engineering the future of mankind. A mother and father (or a mother and mother) pay for visits at a fertility clinic, whereupon their genetic material is taken, engineered into a child, and optionally customized by the parents--choosing recessive traits over dominate traits, for instance.

The New Man
With the ability to filter out diseases, malformations, and syndromes from humanity’s future, it’s only natural that a non-insignificant amount of people front the extra money to make their kids damn-near superhuman. It used to be you trained and prayed you were genetically predisposed to compete in the olympics. Now, with just a few more fistfulls of money, you can guarantee your child can outclass history’s most famous athletes--and with minimal training! Height, weight, build, senses: all can be perfected with a few clicks of a button.

Give that about two hundred years, and you have a brand new offshoot of humanity. These are the Homo-Specialis sub-group. They are almost universally looked down upon on most worlds, seen as the purest symbol of Martian vanity. They are all but second class citizens on Titan and Io, and a tolerated presence on Europa.

The Wired Man
Also called Wyrds, these people have been around since before the exodus into space. It started when a social media mogul decided the future of mankind laid in telepathy, and dumped a fortune into the research. The result? Two people with very particular implants in the cerebral cortex can now share thoughts in the same way they’re used to speaking, only quietly and instantly. And that was only the start of it.

Wyrds, by default, have a cerebral implant that functions as a “gateway” to accessing the full array of any other installed implants. Think of this as biocomputing; the implants--themselves a merger of metal and printed flesh--act like a completely new system in the brain, and require very little adaption to use. Most of it is as natural as breathing, although practice can hone unique abilities.

Telepathy is not the only use of Wyrd abilities. Direct access and manipulation of computers (“machine talk”), digital memory, enhanced senses, and augmented brain power are amongst the many perks of making a physical machine of your brain.

Wyrds call the Earth Orbital Station “Terra Nova” their home, and they are--tentatively--accepted everywhere but Titan, where Machinals frequently grow violent in their presence.

The Augmented Man
Before Wyrds and Specialis were even thought of, humans had pushed the limits of their in-born flesh. Cybernetics was our first foray into transhumanism. As Wyrds came to be, the field of cybernetics also took off. This, however, branched in a different direction altogether. Homo-Machinalis, or Machinals, came from a late 21st century philosophy: that mankind is defined not by flesh and blood, but by the “Soul of the Mind.” Machinals themselves were born in the mid twenty-second century, when robotic prosthesis became absurdly cheap, and the first human brain operated a full body prosthetic.

Machinals are a fairly isolated people, sticking to working communes above interacting with other offshoots of humanity. For the most part, they’re rather peaceful, and are one of the few peoples who do not horrendously discriminate against Specialis. But if in the presence of a Wyrd, those who’ve “sold their Souls,” they will not hesitate to go to war.

Machinals tend to have next to no human parts remaining aside their brains, which goes as unaugmented as possible. They also have no ability to reproduce naturally, and only increase the sizes of their colonies through growing new humans in tubes, whose families then expose them to this society of rampant physical replacement.

Fun fact: it may seem paradoxical, but “telekinesis” is characteristic of Machinals, not Wyrds! This is actually because true telekinesis is impossible, and is instead achieved through magnetics. Machinals with the right prosthetics can push and pull on magnetic materials, which gives the appearance of telekinesis. It is rumored that mixing this prosthetic with Wyrd implants can create a near godly powerful telekinetic, but philosophical differences have kept the rumor from being proven one way or another.

Titan is home to most Machinals, though there are communities of them scattered about all worlds.

The Changed Man
Homo-Enceladitus, or Enceladites, are a people who first colonized the world of Enceladus prior to the fall of Earth. The waters of Enceladus proved a well of life, warmed by its hollow core, and kept from the vacuum of space by a sheet of rock and ice that covers it like a shell. Humans first started with above-shell colonies, which progressed underwater once the surface was safely cracked.

With the most habitable waters in the System, there came the question of what if. What if humans could thrive in Enceladus waters, rather than shield themselves from it? Firstly, the condition of the lungs would have to be dealt with. Gills--which would best be placed in close proximity with the body’s airways--would be necessary, lest Enceladites rely on rebreathers from birth to death. Their skin would have to change. Become thicker, sleeker. Absorb less water--repel it, in fact--or else the water would slowly rip through, gradually tearing the skin, creating open sores, and leaving infection behind.

Finally, the muscles--and by extension, the bones--would have to change. Become slimmer, longer, and better suited to living underwater. And once the first test started, it didn’t end. Enceladites have since become undersea offshoots of humanity, and they generally creep out anyone that meets one outside of Enceladus proper. They’re taller than any other human, they’ve got thick, slick skin, they’re uncomfortably thin, and usually hairless. There is also a weird stigma about them held by a lot of “normal” humans: unlike them, Enceladites are rarely infertile, partly through genetic engineering and partly through living in the least radioactive environment in the system.

There has been talk of other genetically altered humanoids elsewhere in the system, but much like old Earth legends, these are rumors of cryptids at best.

The Same Old Man
Between it all, you have the same human beings that dominated Earth for tens of thousands of years. They fill out settlements across the Sol System, intermixed with Wyrds, Specialis, and Machinals. Disease and longevity are less a problem than ever; before Earth became unlivable, most of its myriad of diseases were cured and the aging process was reformed. Now, the average human being lives to see two-hundred. After eighteen, most people remain young--or young looking--until roughly one hundred, after which they reach middle age, and continue until the body degrades and perishes at around two-hundred. The oldest living human is two-hundred forty-five.

It’s not uncommon for the average human to dip into Wyrd or Machinal technologies. Some even mix the two. Doing so, however, renders them a permanent and hated enemy of all Machinal--and most Wyrd--colonies across the system.
. o O (I think I must agree with Sliss. The "Fat Chance" would have been a perfect name for our ship.)

Nayt

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New Life
« Reply #4 on: September 21, 2016, 04:52:59 PM »
New Life
Robotics and artificial intelligence have come leaps and bounds since the twenty-first century. Before Earth’s decline, robotic labor replaced most unskilled human labor. For the longest time, robots were mindless, only programmed for specific tasks, even while their bodies became more and more like a human’s. After the Earth’s industries shifted focus following the inevitable collapse of 2130 (caused primarily by robotic labor exceeding human labor), roboticists began work on more advanced artificial intelligence--that which could make decisions for itself, even if those decisions weren’t rational.

There exist two type of robots. Utility machines and -droids, both of which still tend to be manufactured with only the most basic of responses and taskwork. Certain programs can be used to “uplift” the machines, so to speak, and give them sentience. Uplifted robots are widely regarded as fellow citizens (if not second or third class citizens), but are still the focus of violent crimes from those who refuse to accept them.

By most Machinal philosophies, uplifted machines are an abomination. Sentient robots are forbidden from entering Titan, and are destroyed on sight should they ever be found there.

Utility Machines
Mobile manufacturing being as important as it is, most machines meant to do specific jobs were given legs or wheels. These robots are blocky and purpose built, scarcely capable of doing anything outside of their own design, even if they’ve been granted sentience. The majority of difficult and dangerous taskwork throughout the system are done by these machines, and sentient utility machines are frequently regarded as a nuisance and a waste.

-Droids
Androids and gynoids came about in the early twenty-second century, and were built to be multi-purpose--bodies made to perform the same varied tasks a human can perform, without being specialized into inevitable obsolescence. They were also the majority of machines that roboticists used in advanced AI experiments. Nowadays, androids and gynoids tend to be the most commonly sentient of all robots, and this bothers people significantly less than it did a hundred years ago. Violent hate crimes are now only committed against one out of every four -droids.

Synthetic skin on synthetic life, however, is illegal. While humans are oft to cover mechanical prosthetics with synthetic skin, robots are required by law on every world in the system to be identifiable as robots. No one has seen a human mimic before, but the very concept is a boogeyman to most.
. o O (I think I must agree with Sliss. The "Fat Chance" would have been a perfect name for our ship.)

Nayt

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Old Life
« Reply #5 on: September 21, 2016, 04:55:19 PM »
Old Life
We were never alone. The Sol System always had life, even in the distant reaches. Where there was water, there was life. Even old water, pre-terraformed Martian ice, was host to microbes never before seen--not to mention the fossils of bizarre avian creatures found deep within the Martian soil.

Martian Fossils
Contrary to popular 20th century belief, there was never intelligent life on Mars. Life, it seems, only lasted a fraction of Earth’s history; creatures only evolved as much as rodents and avians, though their size was impressive: ancient Mars had richer oxygen and a much smaller gravitational pull than Earth (even terraformed, the Martian gravity remains half that of Earth’s), thereby allowing its beasts to thrive at tremendous sizes.

It remains unclear what happened to Mars, only that life ended in a heartbeat, the planet vented much of its atmosphere into space, and oxygen poured from the world like water against a broken dam. The only life that remains are miniscule creatures eerily similar to tardigrades, complex cellular organisms that can survive even within the depths of space.

Beneath the Surface of Enceladus
Before we arrived, Enceladus was already host to natural life. But compared to the monsters beneath Titan, these creatures are almost mundane. Because of the regularly shifting currents, the periodic subsurface storms, and disturbances caused by surface impacts and pressure vortexes, no species of great size could ever sustain themselves. A group of Earth’s (long dead) sperm whales would be ripped to shreds by the average subsurface storm. Even though oxygen content and gravitational forces would allow for larger creatures, the turbulent forces of the ocean make it impossible.

There are four main types of creature beneath Enceladus. Most common are the very small, spiny fish. Most species of fish actually have exoskeletons and organs that withhold oxygen bubbles, for survival and ease of motion.

Monsters Under Titan
All expeditions beneath the surface of Titan, into the vast subsurface ocean that fills the world, have ended in failure. There are things in the water; monstrous things, gigantic things. Unlike Enceladus, Titan’s subsurface oceans aren’t turbulent and violently shifting; pressure does not shoot geysers into space, and icy asteroids do not continue to fill its oceans to the brink. The beasts below were allowed to grow, evolve and expand per the moon’s low gravity.

But the oceans are poisonous to Terran life, and the monsters under Titan adapted eons ago. They grew and evolved through the poison, live and breath in it. All records suggest that the massive creatures are mawed (at least one type of which has two maws), thick natural armor, and teeth that can shear through rock and the ship hulls.
. o O (I think I must agree with Sliss. The "Fat Chance" would have been a perfect name for our ship.)

Nayt

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New Developments
« Reply #6 on: September 21, 2016, 04:57:37 PM »
New Developments
[space reserved for new ideas, locations, and plot hooks developed or created by the players]
. o O (I think I must agree with Sliss. The "Fat Chance" would have been a perfect name for our ship.)

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The Do's and Don'ts of Freeform Forum RP
« Reply #7 on: September 21, 2016, 05:46:13 PM »
The Do's and Don'ts of Freeform Forum RP
I realize that I should have probably made this a different topic entirely, but I don't see any other freeform forum roleplays going on at the moment, so I don't think it's quite necessary just yet.

So I am aware that most people on this message board are fans of the Drunk and the Ugly and RPPR podcasts, and that most of you are thus gonna be in the tabletop roleplaying camp--which is totes fine by me! If not, then please feel free to ignore (most) of what I've got in this message. Either way, be assured that I'm not talking down to anyone, just explaining a few things about a game with no elements of a game.

Freeform text RP has no stats, dice rolls, coin flips, or anything of the sort. I've toyed with the idea in the past, even tried it on a large scale at one point, but I've yet to see it work on anything but a single thread at a time. Because it's all narrative, that means there are a few major difference between this and a tabletop RPG. Firstly, most storylines are "GMed" back and forth. It's not really called GMing so much, either. Doesn't really have a name, just who is running the thread at the time and who isn't. If you're in with a group of other RPers, and you have an idea for a cool story bro, you just kinda start throwing some cryptic stuff, NPCs, or etc. about, and the other RPers involved will start following this story you've got in mind.

There are also what I like to call "tavern talk" roleplays. These are threads where it's just characters talking with characters. There's no guide to the story, and it all evolves from RPers posting back and forth with each other. These can lead to some awesome character moments, and sometimes even explode into some big plot reveals.

There are only a few rules that need following:

1. THE GOLDEN RULE: never, ever, EVER assume control of another RPer's character without their consent. This is called autoing, and on most RP forums, breaking that rule can get you a temporary (or even permanent) ban. I by no means have the authority to do that (and also I'm way too nice to do that to someone anyways), but it's aggressively disrespectful to your fellow RPers, and the worst thing you can do.
2. Respect your fellow RPers: we've all got stories we want to tell; some of us may be experienced with it, some may not be as experienced, but either way, no one's creativity should be shunned. If you don't like RPing with a particular person, you by no means have to be in a thread with them!
3. Finally, try to avoid Mary Sue-ish and godly powerful characters. In freeform RP, power creep is something incredibly difficult to avoid, but it's on RPers to do their best. If you've got a character in a fight with another's character, it's no fun for either of you if one character or the other is invincible. Unless, of course, it is all part of the storyline that you and other RPers are collaborating on; in that case, do as thou wilt.

While not exactly a rule, I do also suggest making sure your characters have the ability to socialize with one another. I can say from experience that playing a lone badass in the corner that wants nothin' to do with nobody will actually get you next to no RP.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2016, 06:32:08 PM by Nayt »
. o O (I think I must agree with Sliss. The "Fat Chance" would have been a perfect name for our ship.)

jfan999

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Re: Beyond the Stellar Sphere
« Reply #8 on: September 22, 2016, 11:32:24 AM »
I have some setting questions:
1) How does government work, is there a unified government or is each colony self governed?
2) Is there a shared economy? Are there mega/hyper corps?
3) Space Pirates? 

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Re: Beyond the Stellar Sphere
« Reply #9 on: September 22, 2016, 12:07:03 PM »
Questions & Answers
In this post, I'll keep track of any questions that've been asked about the setting, and my corresponding answers.

1) How does government work, is there a unified government or is each colony self governed?

Think of each planet like a solitary nation, with each of its colonies mostly self-governing city-states. Colonies make their own rules, but planetary governments can override those rules.

Permanent space stations, on the other hand, are usually controlled/built by a megacorp, and are self governed--unless, of course, they orbit close enough to be in the planet's uppermost atmosphere, in which case the planetary government can claim it.

2) Is there a shared economy? Are there mega/hyper corps?

Perhaps it's the pessimist in me, but I'd err on the side of hyper corps controlling most resources with fists jammed right into the hearts of local governments. The economy is a shared credit system; I tried to wrack my brain to invent a new money name, but "credits" are used a lot in science fiction for a reason. So credits it shall be!

3) Space Pirates?

Always.

Quote from: anonymous
Can physical currency still be a thing? With Wyrd and AI being a thing I think there would be some form of unhackable currency for people woried about that kind of thing.

There is absolutely a currency like that. Credit sticks, credit chips, things along those lines. Basically unmarked credits that can be deposited in a person's account.
« Last Edit: September 26, 2016, 10:05:45 AM by Nayt »
. o O (I think I must agree with Sliss. The "Fat Chance" would have been a perfect name for our ship.)

Capman

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Re: Beyond the Stellar Sphere
« Reply #10 on: September 25, 2016, 01:26:58 PM »
Moved this to a dedicated child board for ease of access and organization.
Be a Road Trip, not a Ponyfinder.

Nayt

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Re: Beyond the Stellar Sphere
« Reply #11 on: September 25, 2016, 06:34:22 PM »
Thanks, brah.
. o O (I think I must agree with Sliss. The "Fat Chance" would have been a perfect name for our ship.)