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beccaelizabethI started out bored and thinking idly of making a me in GURPS again (stopped as always by the depressing reality that I am an unplayable character)
and now I've wandered through rules until I have at least a dozen pdfs open and am considering How To Start A Planet (or demiplane, as applicable.)
Because if I'm going to get up to playable with my disadvantages
I have to balance it out with something
and while high levels of Magery are always fun
they also need me to, like, do stuff? Regularly? To be useful?
So I started thinking about Allies
and a half dozen rulebooks later
I have GURPS Space open and I'm wondering how to get a hundred million people to live on one colony planet.
See it would start with a few close allies with actual social skills, thpugh how you get allies when you yourself do not have social skills is a tricky one. Possibly you can sell The Dream and be the one that can open a Stargate? Because with Monastic disciplines of faith and Power Investiture you could save up a whole lot of points for doing big spells with, until tada, backyard Stargate! ... or something vaguely like.
So you need a core group, like your adventure party but Allies are more reliable and less likely to have that one edgy one who is Secretly Evil. And with a core group you can survive discovering a Stargate and get home again.
And then you need to start an organisation dedicated to going to live on the other side of the Gate. I happen to have a rulebook for that. It has ways to calculate startup costs and so forth. So you'd need some serious seed money and a way of making the thing economically viable as you scale up. Like you can make it a Volunteer organisation, but you lose Loyalty and Resources, because people wander off etc.
So you make an orgsnisation and go off to another world.
My plan usually starts with 200 people, because Atlantis, but you can't do much in the long term with 200 people who get cut off. They aren't self sustaining at a high tech level. I mean obviously if you've got replicators and a generator, or are just using holodecks, the math is whatever you want it to be, but if you have an empty planet and a dream then you need a LOT of people to make your accustomed tech level happen. You can do the import export thing if the gate is regular, but a magic gate can take a really long time to power up, so, got to be careful. And unless you find a second much younger person with the requisite level of Magery and train them up you are going to get cut off by mortality sooner or later, which is pretty different than tech. You'd want to make the gate a magic item or permanent, but the costs on that are astronomical, and made of time and lives. Unless you have Tech magic and really big generators.
ANYway, the GURPS Spave rules make up a lot of stuff, but they reckon you need 100,000,000 people to keep a cut off society at TL8, the current tech level. GURPS Space page 180, I always lose the page. 100 million TL8, 50 million TL7, 20 million TL6, 10 million TL5. TL4 takes a big jump down at 'a town of a few thousand' and lower tech levels are self sufficient at a few hundred.
TL4 is age of sail: stagecoaches and windmills. Unless you want to be stuck pre industrial revolution you need to scale up.
I just looked it up and the entire US Deparment of Defence has less than 3 million people, so still needs more warm bodies to stay at Industrial Revolution levels of tech.
... I mean that doesn't sound right, but what do I know? Obviously it needs farmers and miners and power plant engineers to even start anything. Does it need fewer farmers these days because of self sustaining stuff like imrpoved yields and better knowledge? Would that make a big difference? Lower tech levels needed way more warm bodies in agriculture. How many people does it take to keep tractors moving? Like, a lot, but...?
So like, you'd get all these colonists, but to start with they'd be bringing the good stuff with them. The ability to sustainably build more of the exact same good stuff takes Many people. Says the rulebook.
So I can imagine a story that goes from one person with The Dream to two hundred people stepping through the gate to... I don't know, a few thousand? I can imagine scaling up to a city if they take their time. But from there to a country seems like a generations thing.
Except how much of the world would need to want to go? Like one or two percent?
And they'd have a huge variety of reasons.
So I guess maybe?
But combining wanting to go with resources needed to do it???
That is a really large scale story.
And it's like colonising Mars? Where at first they have a huge injection of resources from the habitable end but eventually they'll have to sort out a new relationship with home?
Except if there's a permanent gate then the cost to get to the new world is a whole lot lower, and it's habitable there if I say so, so people can just stroll in with a tent and... well, starve, but a lorry could bring a lot of setup, and many people could fill a lorry with something.
Colony stories are kind of creepy though because Earth has done that in several directions and it sucked. Like, you can tell a story about an empty world and then it seems fine, but that same story of being empty got told as justification for killing people and taking their stuff, which is not fine.
And it's like castle stories. Sure I like the idea of setting up a castle and only inviting my friends, but I don't like the social implications. Inclusion not exclusion, pls.
... so a space colony story is just liek me imagining making like a million friends?
... and getting stuck imagining like a dozen?
Most stories I've watched don't have this kind of scale. Adventure groups, not entire countries. Kings, not Kingdoms. The story focuses in to the actions and reactions of a very much smaller group as representatives of a larger story.
So I could imagine a group and say they all bring their own people with them?
... like a pyramid scheme but for living on a new planet.
And each stsge of colonisation would need a different set of organisations. Like the first lot would establish it is possible to survive there and map out the territory and establish some crops and so forth. The people dedicated to building new computers for everyone could be a later wave.
I don't know. I hate stories where they have like wilderness full of orcs and success is establishing a town after killing off orcs. Why not wonder whst the orcs need and get it for them? Establish friendly trade relations with people who know how to survive there? But no, the story has people with alignments, and wants to kill the Evil ones. Boring, convert them instead, have ,ore people. I mean maybe with tractors and some better chickens they wouldn't need to be mean to neighbours? Or maybe they would get slong just fine if people didn't keep on trying to extend 'civilisation'?
... so I want empty wilderness and all the fun of a resource management game.
... kind of like the Terry Pratchett books with the multiverse being a step away.
... except with a gate I am the boss of so I can drop the portcullis if people are mean.
The problem is the basic story of space colonies is
we came out here because people suck
but it turns out we are people
and we suck.
Like, you bring your conflict with you, even if you have an actual blank slate to draw it on.
And if that's going to happen to your group at whatever scale
you need to do some very big thinking to make it attract a hundred million people
without collapsing in on itself.
Or, you know, resign yourself to being seperate stagecoach states.
I have no story here.
Except there's always a bunch of spells where magic users can just do this? Make their own world or make off for one? And sometimes the inhabitants get Weird.
So that's fun.
Also the population and supply chain thing kind of in itself explains why Yrth remains at a lower tech level: if everyone keeps arriving through the Banestorm then they won't bring enough of the pieces to sustain a higher TL.
Black powder weapons are pretty low tech though, so, that part still requires active measures.
Games where you've got a door that could be to Narnia, Yrth, Golarion, or Anywhere, that seems like fun. Like if Stargate Command walked through and found talking animals.
Anyway. That is what I have been doing, rather than sleeping, as might also have been helpful.
Thinking on how you would play through from 'hey this gate goes Somewhere' to 'and now we have a self sustaining high tech world'.
It kind of rewuires understanding, like, society as a whole.
So.
Bit tricky.
and now I've wandered through rules until I have at least a dozen pdfs open and am considering How To Start A Planet (or demiplane, as applicable.)
Because if I'm going to get up to playable with my disadvantages
I have to balance it out with something
and while high levels of Magery are always fun
they also need me to, like, do stuff? Regularly? To be useful?
So I started thinking about Allies
and a half dozen rulebooks later
I have GURPS Space open and I'm wondering how to get a hundred million people to live on one colony planet.
See it would start with a few close allies with actual social skills, thpugh how you get allies when you yourself do not have social skills is a tricky one. Possibly you can sell The Dream and be the one that can open a Stargate? Because with Monastic disciplines of faith and Power Investiture you could save up a whole lot of points for doing big spells with, until tada, backyard Stargate! ... or something vaguely like.
So you need a core group, like your adventure party but Allies are more reliable and less likely to have that one edgy one who is Secretly Evil. And with a core group you can survive discovering a Stargate and get home again.
And then you need to start an organisation dedicated to going to live on the other side of the Gate. I happen to have a rulebook for that. It has ways to calculate startup costs and so forth. So you'd need some serious seed money and a way of making the thing economically viable as you scale up. Like you can make it a Volunteer organisation, but you lose Loyalty and Resources, because people wander off etc.
So you make an orgsnisation and go off to another world.
My plan usually starts with 200 people, because Atlantis, but you can't do much in the long term with 200 people who get cut off. They aren't self sustaining at a high tech level. I mean obviously if you've got replicators and a generator, or are just using holodecks, the math is whatever you want it to be, but if you have an empty planet and a dream then you need a LOT of people to make your accustomed tech level happen. You can do the import export thing if the gate is regular, but a magic gate can take a really long time to power up, so, got to be careful. And unless you find a second much younger person with the requisite level of Magery and train them up you are going to get cut off by mortality sooner or later, which is pretty different than tech. You'd want to make the gate a magic item or permanent, but the costs on that are astronomical, and made of time and lives. Unless you have Tech magic and really big generators.
ANYway, the GURPS Spave rules make up a lot of stuff, but they reckon you need 100,000,000 people to keep a cut off society at TL8, the current tech level. GURPS Space page 180, I always lose the page. 100 million TL8, 50 million TL7, 20 million TL6, 10 million TL5. TL4 takes a big jump down at 'a town of a few thousand' and lower tech levels are self sufficient at a few hundred.
TL4 is age of sail: stagecoaches and windmills. Unless you want to be stuck pre industrial revolution you need to scale up.
I just looked it up and the entire US Deparment of Defence has less than 3 million people, so still needs more warm bodies to stay at Industrial Revolution levels of tech.
... I mean that doesn't sound right, but what do I know? Obviously it needs farmers and miners and power plant engineers to even start anything. Does it need fewer farmers these days because of self sustaining stuff like imrpoved yields and better knowledge? Would that make a big difference? Lower tech levels needed way more warm bodies in agriculture. How many people does it take to keep tractors moving? Like, a lot, but...?
So like, you'd get all these colonists, but to start with they'd be bringing the good stuff with them. The ability to sustainably build more of the exact same good stuff takes Many people. Says the rulebook.
So I can imagine a story that goes from one person with The Dream to two hundred people stepping through the gate to... I don't know, a few thousand? I can imagine scaling up to a city if they take their time. But from there to a country seems like a generations thing.
Except how much of the world would need to want to go? Like one or two percent?
And they'd have a huge variety of reasons.
So I guess maybe?
But combining wanting to go with resources needed to do it???
That is a really large scale story.
And it's like colonising Mars? Where at first they have a huge injection of resources from the habitable end but eventually they'll have to sort out a new relationship with home?
Except if there's a permanent gate then the cost to get to the new world is a whole lot lower, and it's habitable there if I say so, so people can just stroll in with a tent and... well, starve, but a lorry could bring a lot of setup, and many people could fill a lorry with something.
Colony stories are kind of creepy though because Earth has done that in several directions and it sucked. Like, you can tell a story about an empty world and then it seems fine, but that same story of being empty got told as justification for killing people and taking their stuff, which is not fine.
And it's like castle stories. Sure I like the idea of setting up a castle and only inviting my friends, but I don't like the social implications. Inclusion not exclusion, pls.
... so a space colony story is just liek me imagining making like a million friends?
... and getting stuck imagining like a dozen?
Most stories I've watched don't have this kind of scale. Adventure groups, not entire countries. Kings, not Kingdoms. The story focuses in to the actions and reactions of a very much smaller group as representatives of a larger story.
So I could imagine a group and say they all bring their own people with them?
... like a pyramid scheme but for living on a new planet.
And each stsge of colonisation would need a different set of organisations. Like the first lot would establish it is possible to survive there and map out the territory and establish some crops and so forth. The people dedicated to building new computers for everyone could be a later wave.
I don't know. I hate stories where they have like wilderness full of orcs and success is establishing a town after killing off orcs. Why not wonder whst the orcs need and get it for them? Establish friendly trade relations with people who know how to survive there? But no, the story has people with alignments, and wants to kill the Evil ones. Boring, convert them instead, have ,ore people. I mean maybe with tractors and some better chickens they wouldn't need to be mean to neighbours? Or maybe they would get slong just fine if people didn't keep on trying to extend 'civilisation'?
... so I want empty wilderness and all the fun of a resource management game.
... kind of like the Terry Pratchett books with the multiverse being a step away.
... except with a gate I am the boss of so I can drop the portcullis if people are mean.
The problem is the basic story of space colonies is
we came out here because people suck
but it turns out we are people
and we suck.
Like, you bring your conflict with you, even if you have an actual blank slate to draw it on.
And if that's going to happen to your group at whatever scale
you need to do some very big thinking to make it attract a hundred million people
without collapsing in on itself.
Or, you know, resign yourself to being seperate stagecoach states.
I have no story here.
Except there's always a bunch of spells where magic users can just do this? Make their own world or make off for one? And sometimes the inhabitants get Weird.
So that's fun.
Also the population and supply chain thing kind of in itself explains why Yrth remains at a lower tech level: if everyone keeps arriving through the Banestorm then they won't bring enough of the pieces to sustain a higher TL.
Black powder weapons are pretty low tech though, so, that part still requires active measures.
Games where you've got a door that could be to Narnia, Yrth, Golarion, or Anywhere, that seems like fun. Like if Stargate Command walked through and found talking animals.
Anyway. That is what I have been doing, rather than sleeping, as might also have been helpful.
Thinking on how you would play through from 'hey this gate goes Somewhere' to 'and now we have a self sustaining high tech world'.
It kind of rewuires understanding, like, society as a whole.
So.
Bit tricky.