Starbound: What Do You Want To Do In The Future?

[gothwalk]

So I'm working on this science fiction setting, Starbound. There's a post coming up on duekstreet.org wherein I'll tell you some of what I want to do in it. Meantime, though, I want to do some market research. What do you want to see and do in a scifi setting? Some bits are preset - it's going to be epic-scale, stretching across many solar systems, and high tech. It'll be used for short stories, maybe even novels, possibly comics, and certainly RPGs. Give me a wishlist.

(I'd really like to see a lot of responses to this, by the way - even if they're just "Die Shatner Die", or "I want lots of dakka", it's all grist to the mill.)

Comments

[caturah.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything that's been said so far, but what I'd also love to see, and yes, I know this is something you wouln't be able to go into in much detail, or it'd ruin the purpose of it: Strangeness.

Basically, I want to see alien races, technoology and customs which are completely incomprehensible to human sensibilites or the like. And I don't mean "different" in the fluffy, cushioned way of that alien who breathed a different air combination from Babylon 5, I mean properly different. (I can hunt up a reference if you like).

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Most excellent. Here's what I wrote earlier..

[caturah.livejournal.com]

I think I'll like this.

Having read what you've written there, just to throw in, it's a bugbear of Chris's that the star trek universe had little or no travel apart from the fleet. Where's the trade and logistics? The holiday goers, or the rich just wanting to show off? I know not every place will have the volume some star wars planets have, but there has to be a happy medium somewhere surely?
Also, I *love* the idea of non-instantaneous communication.. the fun a GM could have with that...

[microgirl.livejournal.com]

I would suggest as a balance/counter to that that they not be *too* incomprehensible - one, because how can you, the writer, comprehend their differences enough to write them and two, we, the players/readers/experiencers won't be able to get our heads around them enough.

There needs to be something the reader can recognise, even if it's "Holy crap that's just fucking *weird*"

And the argument against point one of "Well, the writer doesn't need to 'comprehend their differences', because he's the one making them up, so he can say whatever he likes and no matter how crazy or wacked out the readers have to just accept that as part of them being 'too weird to understand'" I just completely disagree with. They have to be consistent with themselves at the very least. If they have an incomprehensibe psychology, or physiology or whatever, there has to be a good reason given. And to do that the writer has to be able to comprehend them. Make them too incomprehensible and it's like trying to comprehend God. We can't, simple as that. We overlay human psychology and human emotions on him/her/it because that's the only way our minds can deal with it.