It's kind of a Fantastic Four/Farscape inspired game.

Looking for players for a new game, “The Lost and Lonely Stars.” A group of scientists, searching for a new world to transplant people from a resource-depleted and increasingly polluted Earth, get blown off-course and end up light-years away from the destination. The travel through the dimension-warping rift caused the crew to mutate, giving them powers never seen before back on the Earth. They find themselves in a middle of a galactic empire in the autumn of its power. Upstart planets are contesting their rule, and the undercurrents of disobedience and even rebellion can be felt. With whom will this group of suddenly-empowered nerds ally themselves? Will you help the empire regain its power? Will you help the rebellion throw them off? Will you thread the path of neutrality, keeping your heads down and just try to survive? And finally, while your friends and family back home sicken and die in a world that can no longer sustain them, can you do anything to he


A spaceship journeying to a distant system in the hopes of uncovering a new home for Humanity have their ship sabotaged by a radical group that refuses to let humanity abandon Earth.

Blown off course, they wind up in an astral storm. When they emerge, they're in a distant galaxy, mutated by their exposure to the warp. They've emerged into the dying days of a Galactic Empire, decaying gradually into warlordism, staving off rebellious client states and colonies struggling for independence, as well as a stirring opposition amongst their core.

I'll be going with a decaying empire. Fall of Rome, Warring States and Warlords era in China, Migration Period Europe, etc.

There are a lot of alien species. It's simply a galaxy where life has proven to be particularly prevalent for a very long time. Part of the reason is that the galactic core sweeps the Galaxy in period pulses of psionic energy. Psionics are common among species of all worlds but only in the most basic senses. For the most part it emerges as forms of ESP, usually just a sensitivity to certain energy fields or basic psychometry. No different than a pigeon perceiving magnetic field lines or a wolf tracking by scent. Just simple adaptations.

Species more advanced will have slightly more advanced abilities but they still tend to be more like those of a human savant than a superhuman. Telepathic communication, empathy, psychometry, those sorts of things. As these are evolved traits, they're treated no different than any other sense.

The key thing is that no species develops superpowered mutants among their number. Each species has psionic abilities and there are minor variations of them but no member of a species that has telepathy is going to give birth to a child that has telekinesis, any more than a fish could be born with wings.

So what makes the crew very dangerous is that they are extremely powerful and extremely varied. The fact that they continue to mutate will only make them more dangerous, once it becomes known. Naturally, people will want to court or capture them.

There's the Empire. It's vast but decaying. Though one species is nominally in control, powerful families from client species and vassal states wield quite a bit of power in court. The Empire is still huge and powerful but it's infested with bureaucracy, corruption and nepotism. Those in power have little notion of how thinly spread their resources are. Though the Empire has a large standing army and whole systems of resources and citizens, it's grown too large and too old, organisations have begun to crack as corruption eats into resources.

It can still muster a massive, irresistible force, but that requires massing forces. The Empire can put down a rebellion but in the case of a war with several states it'd lose a lot of ground early on and be put on the defensive. It relies quite a great deal on the desire for peace and stability and the assurance that no one will want to be the first to start a fight. The current Emperor is making hints at a more expansionist phase.

The Free Colonies is the Empire's frontier. Technically clients of the Empire, they're not Imperial subjects but only so long as they can pay. Trade unions are the main force of law, setting controls over their own areas of business and meeting with other unions to decide broader laws. Not utopia but reasonably civilised and functional, there are no real professional politicians, ministers are hired rather than elected, based on qualifications.

There's graft and corruption there was elsewhere but nowhere to the degree of the Empire. There's no aristocracy and bureaucracy is kept to a minimum when the people in government have real jobs to go to. The biggest problems facing the Colonies are raiders attacking the lucrative trade routes and the Empire pressing for ever higher taxes. No matter how much they pay the Empire, there are never enough ships sent to deal with raiders.

The Reaches are beyond the Imperial Frontier. There are other groups and alliances out here, the source of many raiders and traders. Small federations and hegemonies are common, though there are plenty of unallied worlds and systems.

There are plenty of Quiet Worlds, those that have yet to evolved species capable of broadcasting on the electromagnetic spectrum. Lost Worlds are those that have but kept on evolving til they got to WMDs and promptly went extinct.

One thing I do tend to avoid is monocultural species. There are plenty of dissenters in most species. Racism is less of an issue when there are entire other species to hate and also few species think in terms of race, though many have castes and other hierarchies. Plenty of holy wars. Political infighting.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:15, Thu 23 Mar 2017.