Introducing new Space Settings

[Yora]

Introducing a new fantasy setting for a campaign is relatively easy most of the time. Tell the players about the main humanoid peoples, which usually come from a widely known generic list, tell them the historic cultures which the setting is inspired by, and show them a map of the landscape and the various countries. If the campaign is about ongoing conflicts, you can sum up the history in a few sentences. Usually, this is enough to give players a pretty good idea of what the world is like and what to expect. and let's players know 90% of what there is to know in just five minutes or less.

It doesn't translate neatly over to Science Fiction or Space Fantasy settings. Alien species are rarely straightforward generic archetypes and geography normally doesn't matter. (Unless you have a hyperspace portal network with fixed gateways.) And because of the typically much larger scope, the detail of specific historical events doesn't matter that much either.

Introducing a setting falls into two different kinds. A first overview before the campaign starts and characters are made, and then providing the players with a steady flow of new information and details on things as they come up during play. I think looking at the two in combination might be more helpful than simply considering what kind of information can you plausibly cram into a short overview summary. Some introduction might be vital for players to know to have their characters be proactive, but might not be necessary for either character creation or a starting adventure. Delaying those details for later can free up space for more pressing things in the overview summary. So the question of how to introduce players to a new space setting is not just about what information is necessary, but also when it will be necessary.
In my experience, even the most motivated and excited players don't really want to do homework. 1 page of info to read before showing up to character creation is really all that you can expect from them. Even if they read more than that, the probability that they will remember much of it goes down very quickly.

Here some thoughts I already have. Which are completely debatable of course, or I wouldn't be asking any of this,

- With alien species, I think it might be a good idea to only introduce maybe 6 or so at the start. Even if the setting has say 20 species that would all make for great player characters, that's just too many options for players who don't know anything about them yet. Instead, introduce at first only the half dozen or so that you think might be the most fun to many new players, or which will play a prominent role early on in the campaign. Even really cool aliens with deep and complex cultures are not really that suitable when the players don't know the setting yet.
- The single most important aspect of the setting culture, before anything else, is probably a small number of really key technologies. Most importantly, "what are space ships and how do they work?" The answer doesn't not need to be complex or detailed, but I think setting some ground rules right from the start should go a long way. How does interstellar travel work? How big are ships? How common are ships? What kinds of weapons do they use? Do they have shields? Can they land? Do they have to refuel? Personal weapons and armor are also important. But also things like "is there teleportation?", "how do you send a message to other planets?", and so on.
- While settings can be complete worlds, almost every campaign has some kind of focus. Introduce the part of society that player characters will primarily find themselves in during the early part of the campaign. Is it the interstellar cargo shipping industry? Is it the criminal underworld? Is it the military? Is it frontier settlements? Give the players details on that aspect of life in the setting in the innitial overview and introduce the other as they become relevant in the adventures of the PCs.
- That being said, a quick overview over the big picture structure of interstellar politics also surely can't hurt. Is there a single big empire or two of them? Are there multi-system states? Is each planet its own country? Who enforces laws and how far does the reach of the law go? Are the planets governed by parliaments, or by aristocrats, the military, or corporations?
- If the campaign will spend a considerable amount of time on the first planet, than giving some kind of overview of that planet could also be useful. If the players are expected to leave the planet after the first adventure and likely never come back, then this would likely be wasted space that could have been put to better use. (Introducing players to Tatooine would be good. Introducing them to Hoth would be bad.)

[Telok]

From my experience...

Start with only the common pc playable species in any detail. You can introduce wierd & rare stuff as the game goes. Sometimes mention a precursor or lost history race maybe, but generally keep to the core playable races at start.

Pictures. Scout the net for any pictures you can use. Even if you maybe have to change a few details, having a good evocative pict is great for setting tone. Read a bit by a sci-fi author who changed the orbit & climate of a planet to keep one good character line.

A rough map, if practical, and a major history events list. They should, together, fill about half a page. This can be in addition to your one page of text because its half pic and half bullet point list. Everything on the history list must be somehow relevant to the setting & plot the players will initally engage with, even if only through npc reactions to stuff.

[Pauly]

- For first time in the setting/prologue mini campaign I go with human only characters. I’m more interested in getting the players familiar with the mechanics first before messing around with the mechanics for different races. (NB I do this in fantasy settings too). Then alien races get added slowly.
- Theme of the campaign is important. Is it fantasy set in space like Star Wars or Star Trek or is it more a hard sci-fi like Traveller. Players need to be told explicitly before they start.
- Scope of the campaign is important. Are they on one world (Cyberpunk) a single solar system (Firefly) a sector of the Galaxy (Traveller) or the the entire Galaxy (Star Wars).
- travel time in space and availability of player owned space ships is something players need to know before they start making plans for characters. If you’re playing Dune or 40K player owned ships are basically off the table.
- The starting assumption will be ranged weapons will be stronger than melee. If there is something in the setting like personal shields in Dune or lightsabers in Star Wars that makes melee as strong or stronger than ranged the players should be aware of it.

[LibraryOgre]

A big one, for me, is what [space unit] society looks like. In The Expanse, you start with the Martians and Earthers at war, and the Belters caught somewhere in between. In Star Wars, you have the Rebellion fighting the Empire. In Robotech, you have the United Earth Government in conflict with the Zentraedi, who turn out to be controlled by the Robotech Masters, who are in conflict with the Invid. In Mass Effect, you have the Council races vying for power and control, with those races actually on the Council having a big lead in influence, but you also have non-Council races like the Batarians who are their own bloc.

This lets you get a handle on what the [space unit] looks like, whether that's a solar system, a local group, or a galaxy.

[NRSASD]

My suggestion is to run an honest-to-goodness tutorial mission. Something extremely low stakes but highlights the major factions in the game. Include all the primary layers of engagement that you expect the players to encounter. Give them the barest possible intro and jump right in.

For example, if you were to run a Firefly game, have the party talk to some rowdy ranchers, pick up some unruly cattle, have the Alliance stop and search them, find a lootable wreck with some environmental hazards and evidence of Reaver activity but no actual Reaver presence besides some traps, and finally encounter some bandits who try to steal your cattle when you land. End the mission with everyone getting their pay in a place where they can spend it.

Now, introduce the full range of classes and species. Let the players remake and re-equip their characters. Now that they have the ground work, their choices are a lot more meaningful. And you can give a much more detailed briefing if they want, because now they should have questions.

[Satinavian]

In my experience, even the most motivated and excited players don't really want to do homework. 1 page of info to read before showing up to character creation is really all that you can expect from them. Even if they read more than that, the probability that they will remember much of it goes down very quickly.IME that depends a lot on the players. For me one sigle page certainly wouldn't be enough. One page overview and another page each for each faction, species or location i need/want to know more about seems like a sweet spot. But i certainly would not be interested in every dpart of the setting equally.


- With alien species, I think it might be a good idea to only introduce maybe 6 or so at the start. Even if the setting has say 20 species that would all make for great player characters, that's just too many options for players who don't know anything about them yet. Instead, introduce at first only the half dozen or so that you think might be the most fun to many new players, or which will play a prominent role early on in the campaign. Even really cool aliens with deep and complex cultures are not really that suitable when the players don't know the setting yet.
It depends a lot on how alien those aliens actually are. If they are basically humans n funny suits and with minor mechanical differences all basically sharing the same culture, you can do a lot of them and it doesn't really matter. But if aliens are really different, it seems better to stick to fewer species.

- The single most important aspect of the setting culture, before anything else, is probably a small number of really key technologies. Most importantly, "what are space ships and how do they work?" The answer doesn't not need to be complex or detailed, but I think setting some ground rules right from the start should go a long way. How does interstellar travel work? How big are ships? How common are ships? What kinds of weapons do they use? Do they have shields? Can they land? Do they have to refuel? Personal weapons and armor are also important. But also things like "is there teleportation?", "how do you send a message to other planets?", and so on.
Space travel and communication seems important. But if you actually have aliens, those, their biology, culture and relation with humans seem quite important as well. Amother very important question would be "How hard is your science ?".
However, i find personal weapons and armor extremely unmportant for a sci-fi campain. Sure they might see use but i have seen several such campaings, wher not only most PCs didn't hae any, but the players didn't even know or care for what would be vommonly used until they actually got involved in such a fight.
I mean, if i really play an SF game with intersystem travel, the least interesting thing is the same kind of fight i could have in a fantasy or modern setting.

- While settings can be complete worlds, almost every campaign has some kind of focus. Introduce the part of society that player characters will primarily find themselves in during the early part of the campaign. Is it the interstellar cargo shipping industry? Is it the criminal underworld? Is it the military? Is it frontier settlements? Give the players details on that aspect of life in the setting in the innitial overview and introduce the other as they become relevant in the adventures of the PCs.I would decide what the campaign is about with the group, not alone.

- That being said, a quick overview over the big picture structure of interstellar politics also surely can't hurt. Is there a single big empire or two of them? Are there multi-system states? Is each planet its own country? Who enforces laws and how far does the reach of the law go? Are the planets governed by parliaments, or by aristocrats, the military, or corporations?That is important, yes.

[Telok]

IME that depends a lot on the players. For me one sigle page certainly wouldn't be enough. One page overview and another page each for each faction, species or location i need/want to know more about seems like a sweet spot. But i certainly would not be interested in every dpart of the setting equally.

Depends on the readers and the writing. Me? I'll read old NASA technical manuals, the actual printed instructions for electronics, and random setting fiction bits to get the style/atmosphere of the setting. On the other hand if I present a supers setting based on the conceit of all supers stuff comes from the fallout (new science-radiation mutation-bad ideas-biowarfare side effects-etc.) of a failed alien invasion, then I can be sure at least two of five players have zero freaking clue that supers-because-aliens are even a thing despite it being on every page of everything including their character sheets.

Start short, direct, and with pictures if possible. Have the in depth stuff available for those interested. Keep required reading to a minimum unless you can tie it directly to a rule they'll care about (and then only expect them to correctly remember the rule about half the time anyways).

[Yora]

The problem is that when you have the players decide what the camlaign will be, but then have to write a 50+ pages world bible, there will be months of delay before play can actually start. Chances are many players will have forgotten about the campaign by then or their interests shifted to new things.
And as a player, I wouldn't wouldn't be interested in joining a campaign if I don't know what it is about yet.
Having the players decide on the campaign only really works if you already have a campaign going that is about to end in the forseeable future and they all know they want to play another campaign together after that. And all the times I asked existing groups what they want me to prepare, the answer has always been do what you think would be fun for us.
Asking players what they want to play is an option, but in my experience only viable with some specific groups.

I think required reading should really be limited to what really is required. Anything that the players can learn in the first three games as they are playing should be presented there. Non-required reading can be made, but I'm not sure how much effort is worth putting into that compared to polishing up prepared material.

[Satinavian]

Having the players decide on the campaign only really works if you already have a campaign going that is about to end in the forseeable future and they all know they want to play another campaign together after that.Well, yes. That also is some regular occurrence for me having several long running groups (but does generally include switching who is GM as well). It would pretty much the only instance where i would consider doing some homebrew SF setting.
When starting a new group with new people, it is far easier to go with established systems and settings. They don't know you (and your preferrences, interests and storytelling qualities) or trust you yet.

[SimonMoon6]

For me, the huge difference between a fantasy setting and a space setting is that all fantasy settings are the same, while every space setting is different.

To clarify what I mean: pretty much every fantasy setting is "Tolkien except x, y, and z". And everyone's okay with that sort of generic setting. It's easy to understand and accept.

But with science fiction, there's no one great science fiction setting that everyone accepts as the baseline for a science fiction setting. I mean, Star Trek comes pretty close, but some people will think of Star Wars instead. And then there's Stargate which is completely different.

So, I think when introducing someone to a system, you should say something like, "It's Star Wars except..." which will instantly give the PCs the idea that, okay, in this setting there are hundreds (if not thousands) of different alien races, none of whom are really important or have interesting abilities, so you can ignore that part of the setting completely; plus, there are robots who are treated as slaves despite being sentient beings; also, technology is pretty much run-down and grotty, with nobody really making new stuff apparently, with the exception of the evil empires and maybe the occasional good guy planet (before it gets blown up by the bad guys). PCs will probably have an old broken-down spaceship constantly in need of repair, at best, but they get to be their own bosses and do their own thing.

Or, you can say, "It's Star Trek except..." which implies that technology is bright and shiny, with people constantly innovating upon it. There are a handful of important races, some with interesting strengths and weaknesses compared to humans, making them good choices for PCs. And there are many other races out there, yet to be discovered, but even the few races mentioned by the DM are important and flavorful. A PC might even consider being a robot since slavery of sentient beings is frowned upon. The PCs are likely to be working for a greater power and thus will probably not own their own spaceship, but will get to work as part of a crew on a spaceship that's a gleaming spectacle of engineering. The PCs don't get to be their own bosses, but they don't need to be.

Or, you can say, "It's Stargate except..." which is something that I don't think anybody would do. But you could. You could even do "Stargate without stargates" and just have a galaxy populated by descendants of ancient humans (and the occasional other species, but they are rare), with basically just one bad guy race having taken over the entire galaxy with their spaceships that need pyramids as landing pads, except when they don't, which is almost all the time.

[KorvinStarmast]

For me, the huge difference between a fantasy setting and a space setting is that all fantasy settings are the same, while every space setting is different. Dark Sun is on the phone and would like to have a quiet word with you. :smallwink:

[BRC]

- With alien species, I think it might be a good idea to only introduce maybe 6 or so at the start. Even if the setting has say 20 species that would all make for great player characters, that's just too many options for players who don't know anything about them yet. Instead, introduce at first only the half dozen or so that you think might be the most fun to many new players, or which will play a prominent role early on in the campaign. Even really cool aliens with deep and complex cultures are not really that suitable when the players don't know the setting yet.


I'd say this is true, however there are two approaches to sci-fi worldbuilding, Kitchen Sink and Limited.

For Kitchen Sink, think Star Wars or Star Trek, there are an unnamed number of sentient species out there, and when some blue guy with six arms shows up, you just accept that that's a new alien. With a Kitchen Sink setting, individual race probably doesn't matter as much, since there's no way you have enough bandwidth to fully sketch out everything. Instead, let players make their own, or come up with a few examples as PC available races.


A limited setting is more like Mass Effect, with a set number of main players, and that should probably be no more than Six, each of which can be summed up in a sentence or two.



- The single most important aspect of the setting culture, before anything else, is probably a small number of really key technologies. Most importantly, "what are space ships and how do they work?" The answer doesn't not need to be complex or detailed, but I think setting some ground rules right from the start should go a long way. How does interstellar travel work? How big are ships? How common are ships? What kinds of weapons do they use? Do they have shields? Can they land? Do they have to refuel? Personal weapons and armor are also important. But also things like "is there teleportation?", "how do you send a message to other planets?", and so on.

This CAN certainly be the case, but I wouldn't say it's the Most Important. I feel like, unless you want to start digging into things, plenty of people will assume Star Wars (Ships can land, do take fuel, don't worry about the details of interstellar travel, Ships are roughly equivalent to oceangoing boats but bigger). So while opening with a lecture on starship funcitonality is sometimes good, I don't think it's super necessary. That's also a point that can easily turn into information overload and cause your players to just shut off their brains.



- While settings can be complete worlds, almost every campaign has some kind of focus. Introduce the part of society that player characters will primarily find themselves in during the early part of the campaign. Is it the interstellar cargo shipping industry? Is it the criminal underworld? Is it the military? Is it frontier settlements? Give the players details on that aspect of life in the setting in the innitial overview and introduce the other as they become relevant in the adventures of the PCs.


Agreed.

You can also unload some of that from the initial data dump by assuming that the PC's will know relevant facts. If the focus is on the criminal underworld, you don't have to open with a lecture on how K'thel Whek, the up-and-coming leader of the Bloody Suns syndicate, runs his operations from a spaceport nightclub called The Red Moon.

Your opening bit should probably mention the Bloody Suns, and in-game, once it becomes relevant who their leader is (K'thel Whek) and where he can be found (The Red Moon, a nightclub in the spaceport), give that information, since your PC's would know that.

The information in your opening lecture should be concerned primarily with information the Players may need when building their characters. Character creation should also be a conversation. If you mention the Bloody Suns are a rising power in the underworld, and one of your players wants a connection, you can give them more details, but your opening setting description shouldn't get too deep.


- That being said, a quick overview over the big picture structure of interstellar politics also surely can't hurt. Is there a single big empire or two of them? Are there multi-system states? Is each planet its own country? Who enforces laws and how far does the reach of the law go? Are the planets governed by parliaments, or by aristocrats, the military, or corporations?

Here's the thing, the answer to these can be "It Varies". You don't want to go into too much detail, try to get it down to a snappy paragraph outlining the biggest players on the galactic scale, and a quick sense of what their Thing is. You can introduce more detail later as needed.

"The Arcadian Empire sees itself as the victors of the Rift Wars, and the rightful rulers of the galaxy. Each world is a feudal fiefdom, controlled by an aristocratic noble house, answering to the Empress.
Their main rival is the Galactic League, a military alliance of numerous independent systems that arose to check Arcadian expansion after the Rift Wars ended. The Galactic League council meets on the moon of New Unity. This council negotiates issues between members and dictates policy for the Fleets. Although primarily concerned with warding off Arcadian aggression, the League does pursue missions on behalf of member states, and New Unity is a hotbed of political backstabbing and horse trading as member states jockey for influence and try to wield the League's considerable power for their own benefit."



- If the campaign will spend a considerable amount of time on the first planet, than giving some kind of overview of that planet could also be useful. If the players are expected to leave the planet after the first adventure and likely never come back, then this would likely be wasted space that could have been put to better use. (Introducing players to Tatooine would be good. Introducing them to Hoth would be bad.)

This is very true.

In Sci-Fi settings, some planets are notable for themselves, some are just points in Space. There's nothing wrong with the most significant thing about a planet being it's spaceport. You don't need to get into the local economy if the PC's are just going to meet in the Spacebar, fight some Spacethugs, get into their ship, and leave.


All in all, with any new setting, your goal is to avoid information overload. Try to break things up into simple bite-sized chunks, and don't be afraid to use references as shorthand to make things more digestible. It can be tempting to start going on about warp drives and plasma torpedo, but that can be a good way for your players to just check out.

[LibraryOgre]

Dark Sun is on the phone and would like to have a quiet word with you. :smallwink:

Dark Sun is just Barsoom, though. :smallwink:

However, there's a LOT you can do with Fantasy that doesn't have to be "Tolkien, but", and some get twisted to be called "Tolkien, but" despite not really being that.

For example, the Chronicles of Prydain. Yes, there is a Dark Lord in his Dark Lord Realm, but elves, dwarves, and such are Fair Folk, and a single political entity. They touch on some of the same things, but only because they share some source material.

Earthdawn has more explicitly Tolkienian races... but everyone is magic, the dwarves are the setting's mercantile and social touchpoints, orks are people not caricatures... the only really Tolkien thing is that there are elves, dwarves, orcs, and trolls, but none of them resemble their Tolkien counterparts except in the broadly physical (and in name only, in the case of the trolls), plus windlings and t'skrang and obsidimen.

Hey, Morrowind. The dominant elven culture is racist, slaving, xenophobes. They have a long history of enslaving the reptile people to the south, they mine eggs from giant insect creatures as a major form of food, and hollow out the backs of giant insects to ride around on.

Where do you draw the line on what makes something "Tolkien, but"?

[BRC]

I feel like it's less "Fantasy is just Tolkein But" so much as it's if your setting IS Tolkein But (Which many RPG settings are), it's very easy to introduce.

"The Elves live Here in their forest, the Dwarves live Here in these mountains, the Orcs live over there" and everybody gets the gist.


There's no equivalent touchstone for sci-fi. You can say "This is like Star Wars But", and it's not clear what you're talking about, not because Star Wars is a less detailed setting than Tolkein, but because Star Wars hasn't been endlessly remixed in quite the same way.

"Like Star Wars" Could mean "There's a big space empire and a kitchen sink of alien races" it could mean "There is a Magic Space Religion", it could mean "We're not going to think too hard about how spaceships worK"

[KorvinStarmast]

Dark Sun is just Barsoom, though. :smallwink: And Barsoom isn't Tolkien anything, nor is Cimmeria/The Hyborean Age/Conan's world Tolkien. :smallyuk: And Lankhmar is for sure not Tolkien :smalltongue:

[Yora]

I made an attempt (http://spriggans-den.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Hyperspace-Opera-Overview.pdf) to get as much information for my new setting as practical on two pages (because the font is quite big). Since it's not text to read, I could add another page worth of images, but picking those out and doing pretty layout is stuff that I don't think isn't important now for this discussion.

This would be information after the pitch that covers rules system, campaign scope, tone, and so on, and only cover the setting. It's also the stuff to read before the PCs start exploring the world through play.

To anyone who is curious enough to read it. Does this seem like something useful to give to players? I'm really quite happy with the first page, but I am not sure if the second page about the four most prominent species in the area (and most recommended for PCs) does actually much to help new players. Is there anything that stands out as not appearing to be of use to a player at this point, or things that you think really seem to be missing and shouldn't wait for later?

[BRC]

I made an attempt (http://spriggans-den.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Hyperspace-Opera-Overview.pdf) to get as much information for my new setting as practical on two pages (because the font is quite big). Since it's not text to read, I could add another page worth of images, but picking those out and doing pretty layout is stuff that I don't think isn't important now for this discussion.

This would be information after the pitch that covers rules system, campaign scope, tone, and so on, and only cover the setting. It's also the stuff to read before the PCs start exploring the world through play.

To anyone who is curious enough to read it. Does this seem like something useful to give to players? I'm really quite happy with the first page, but I am not sure if the second page about the four most prominent species in the area (and most recommended for PCs) does actually much to help new players. Is there anything that stands out as not appearing to be of use to a player at this point, or things that you think really seem to be missing and shouldn't wait for later?

There's a lot of talk about the various tech levels of each species, but the gist from the rest of the document is that the PC's are going to be in a multi-species society that isn't based on any one specie's tech level, so that's less than useful.

There's also no real discussion of the cultures of the various species, except that the Netik are good at judging moods, and that the Mahir are very different culturally from the Enkai.

There's a lot of facts and figures, but very little that actually helps the player choose what species to play beyond aesthetics. I Don't really see a "hook" for playing any of these 4 species.

For most fantasy/sci-fi races, there's something that makes them Cool or at least Unique. Klingons are Proud Warrior Race Guys, Vulcans are Vaguely Psychic, and have a culture built around Logic and strict mental discipline. Elves are immortal defenders of nature, Dwarves work hard and play hard, ect ect.

You don't want to paint every member of a species with the same brush, but give some degree of what makes this species interesting, especially the Enkai and Mahir, because right now I can tell you about their history and appearances, but not anything about them as people.

[Yora]

Yeah, in this format there's really not enough space to go into any detail to be useful for character creation. I think it would take at least half a page per species at this font size. And it's not even all of them.

Perhaps the space would be better used to describe the primary faction of the Enkai, Damalin, and Netik, and cover what role they play in the politics of the sector. (The Mahir are not really that important as a faction, so they don't need to be covered here at all.)

[BRC]

Yeah, in this format there's really not enough space to go into any detail to be useful for character creation. I think it would take at least half a page per species at this font size. And it's not even all of them.

Perhaps the space would be better used to describe the primary faction of the Enkai, Damalin, and Netik, and cover what role they play in the politics of the sector. (The Mahir are not really that important as a faction, so they don't need to be covered here at all.)

That's probably correct. You'll want to give details on your species at some point, but as far as the top-level basic campaign stuff, local Factions is going to be more important than species history.

[LibraryOgre]

Yeah, in this format there's really not enough space to go into any detail to be useful for character creation. I think it would take at least half a page per species at this font size. And it's not even all of them.

Perhaps the space would be better used to describe the primary faction of the Enkai, Damalin, and Netik, and cover what role they play in the politics of the sector. (The Mahir are not really that important as a faction, so they don't need to be covered here at all.)

With really big settings, I find it most useful, as a creator, to start really big, and let other people fill in the small.

The Zoosh are huge, don't often apply their power precisely, but are usually pretty good-hearted. The Dipper are prone to conspiratorial thinking, do a lot of espionage, and are highly superstitious. The Mabel are generally social and gregarious, making alliances. The Stan are avaricious. The Gideon are religious nuts with a corrupt core. The Cipher are evil incarnate. These are their general areas of control, this is how they interact, this is some aspects of their government. As the DM, this is mine to create.

Then a player says they're from a given planet, and give some insight onto who they are and what the planet is like. The DM might need to tweak these ideas but this detail doesn't affect the system as a whole.

[Thane of Fife]

To anyone who is curious enough to read it. Does this seem like something useful to give to players? I'm really quite happy with the first page, but I am not sure if the second page about the four most prominent species in the area (and most recommended for PCs) does actually much to help new players. Is there anything that stands out as not appearing to be of use to a player at this point, or things that you think really seem to be missing and shouldn't wait for later?

I think that the first page is mostly okay, and the second page does not contain much of interest. It basically says that there are red people, white people, aquatic blue people, and four-armed bug people. I think you would need to give more details, or at least some kind of distinguishing details, for these to be useful.

Also, the title seems very misleading to me. Look up space opera on Wikipedia: the first two sentences say, "Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes science fictional space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it features technological and social advancements (or lack thereof) in faster-than-light travel, futuristic weapons, and sophisticated technology, on a backdrop of galactic empires and interstellar wars with fictional aliens, often in fictional galaxies." Your setting comes across (to me) as one where you have gone out of your way to exclude as much of that as possible. Maybe I just don't understand where you're going, but my best guess from this would be that intend to run a post-apocalyptic game set on another planet.

[Yora]

I know, it's an old working title from a first idea two years ago.

And something I have learned about RPG campaigns is "never use genre titles in your descriptions." It only gets you into debates about the exact defunitions of the genre. Any time you say "Sword & Sorcery", you can hear the howl of a barbarian in the diatance who comes running to challenge you to a duel of semantics. :smallbiggrin:

[Satinavian]

[URL="http://spriggans-den.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Hyperspace-Opera-Overview.pdf"]
To anyone who is curious enough to read it. Does this seem like something useful to give to players? I'm really quite happy with the first page, but I am not sure if the second page about the four most prominent species in the area (and most recommended for PCs) does actually much to help new players. Is there anything that stands out as not appearing to be of use to a player at this point, or things that you think really seem to be missing and shouldn't wait for later?
Slightly difficult to judge independendly as i have read (and posted in) your other thread. But i'll try anyway.

After reading this, i would have a couple of quite important questions to make sense of it :

- How hard is the science ? It seems roughly Star Trek level hard, but the blurb is not really enough to get a feeling for it.
- Do those aliens (aside from the aquatic one) even share environmental preferrences ? If not, how do mixed communities and mixed ships work ?
- Gunpowder weopons and petrolium machines ? Those only make sense with an oxigen-rich athmosphere and even having petrolium in the ground would suggest that is not the result of recent terraforming. And that is normal ? How, why ?
- Why do you even include stuff about weapons ? If societies are hundeds and at est a few thousands for a whole system there should not be anyone to fight against.
- You don't mention humans. I assume that means no humans ? If so, good idea. If not, write something about the humans.
- There is a lot of stuff about miners as a core industry of the relevant sector. How does mining even work ? Usually i would expect mining(for off world export) to be done mostly remote/automatic and in asteorid bells/Oort clouds. There is no reason to do that planet based to cart the stuff into the orbit and there is even less reason to do it with manual labor. Even with the most exploitative system measurable, it should be way easier to let machines do it than to provide survivable conditions for minors on a planet. Dune gets away with it because this whole anti-ai-setting premise and because all the planets had been terroformed long ago before a technological decline. If you really want to do gruff guys with pickaxes relevant in an interplanetary SF setting, you need to reduce the credibility to Star Wars levels of only cosmetic science trappings.


So the two page overview would not be enough for me to get a feeling for your setting good enough to make a character

[Yora]

Slightly difficult to judge independendly as i have read (and posted in) your other thread. But i'll try anyway.

- Why do you even include stuff about weapons ? If societies are hundeds and at est a few thousands for a whole system there should not be anyone to fight against

"The secret ingredient is crime." :smallbiggrin:

(Also, even Wikipedia agrees that it's Space Opera.)

[Satinavian]

If only 300 people live in a system, than half of them know each other and any criminal, who does not successfully keep secret what he does, is instantly an outcast with nowhere to go.

You don't need weapons for such small communities, at least not for criminals.

[Yora]

Yes, but most people live on planets that have hundreds of thousands or millions of people.

[Satinavian]

Ah, I interpreted that
Known Space covers the homeworlds of 15
intelligent species, over a hundred colony
worlds with populations on the scale of
countries, and an uncountable number of small
outposts and settlements home to only a few
thousand or even hundred people.

means most systems have indeed much smaller populations. And that the partiularly low tech ones were such smaller ones.

[Yora]

Well, yes. Both. :smallbiggrin:

I did do a quick and dirty calculation for what I consider plausible demographics and it looks like this:
99 billion people living on 14 homeworlds with average populations of 7 billion.
900 million people living on some 150 colony worlds with average populations of 6 million.
90 million people living on some 1500 outposts with average populations of 60,000.

90% of all inhabited planets together have only 0.1% of the galactic population.
99% of all people live on only 0.01% of all inhabited planets.

I was a bit surprised how many worlds with 10s of thousands of people you can have even with such extreme values, but it works out. It's easy to forget how stupendously big a billion is.