I've played a few games of GURPS that fiddle around at TL9 and low 10, but I've never actually done anything higher.

I'm considering putting together a semi-sandbox GURPS TL11 game with the PCs as the crew of an experimental spacecraft that gets thrown out of known space due to a mishap.  The setting wouldn't be Star Trek, though it would certainly have a few influences from there.

The game would center around the PCs in an unknown section of space looking for the resources and tech to get home.  I'd run through the backup work of having the region the PCs are in designed and they'd have the lead in terms of where to go and what to do (though, obviously, after annoying a few aliens, they would start reacting).

Interest?  Suggestions for this type of game?

Interested.  You would have to decide up front if the PCs would be largely civilian or military (with the attendant rank issues).

I'm thinking that the PCs are members of a Star Fleet-esque group based on Earth.  The ship would have a small crew (3-4 bridge crew and an engineering person) with the possible addition of a civilian scientist or two for the test flight.

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 3):

Which edition would we be using?

4e is the only edition I know well enough to run.  Most of the 3e stuff can be adapted with only minor changes.

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 5):

I only have 3rd edition. Could I just just the GURPS Lite free download?

I sold all my 3e books on eBay and bought the 4e ones back in 2006 because nobody in my area played 3e anymore.

It's been out for what, a decade now?

4e dates from August of 2004, so pretty close to a decade.  Of course, 3e was published back in 1988 so it had a long time to get entrenched with folks.

In short, though, the Lite rules are sufficient, especially if you have past GURPS knowledge.  As the GM, I'd have a heavy role in character generation and I'd probably have to give you a few rules on specific things, but in general they're sufficient.  For all of its rules density, GURPS is very flexible once you learn its tricks.

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To expand on the world concept a bit more...

The 21st century ended poorly.  The world at TL9 had polluted itself almost to the point of being uninhabitable.  Small lunar and Martian colonies existed, but the fate of humanity seemed grim.  Dozens of "Arc Ships" were launched from Earth, each bound for an Earthlike world in the near distance of space.  Once there, the goal was for the ships to land and clone new humans (who would be dream-taught everything they needed to know) in a few short years.  The ship drives of the time were primitive, and some of the genetic samples were mutated in transit.  Others malfunctioned and never reached their destinations.  Even more found that local conditions were harsher than expected and the fledgling colonies failed or devolved into tribal cultures.

Until the late 25th century, Earth experienced something of a dark age with much of the world's governments collapsing.  A few nations remained, but resources were invariably turned inward to defense instead of outward.  The Lunar and Martian colonies survived, even without support from earth, and were the main source of scientific advancement during that period.

During the 25th century, things started to turn around.  The technology of the Martian-Lunar Alliance had expanded to the point that several moons around Jupiter now contained colonies and progress on making Venus habitable was progressing apace.  Dozens of space stations hovered in the various asteroid belts, harvesting space debris for raw materials and fueling the advancement of the surviving human race.  On March 19, 2515, the Martians finally returned to earth united the remaining peaceful nations under one banner.  Within twenty years, the new Human Alliance controlled a third of the territory on Earth.  Within fifty, it was half.

Small, one-sided conflicts continued to erupt on Earth for another few decades, but the entire solar system was united by the dawn of the 27th century.

It was at that point that earth could look outward once more.  Old technology, long languishing in the data banks of Lunar archives, was brought out and improved upon.  On July 7, 2841, the first human ship left the solar system in centuries.  With a newly designed relativistic wave drive, the ship took only a week to cross the gulf between stars that an Arc Ship had taken thirty six years to cover.  What they found on their arrival, though, was not good news.  The first planet visited had only the scattered remains of a few human tribes.  The second planet held no sign of an Arc Ship at all.  This continued to be the story for much of the exploration mission.  Only five of the forty three Arc Ships had yielded a viable colony, and only an additional eight held any groups of humans at all.

For the next two centuries, mankind again spread outward, this time armed with better technology and more experience.

The game takes place shortly after that.  Mankind is just settling in to their corner of the galaxy, and they're alone as far as they know.  FTL is limited to a parsec a day, which is amazingly fast but in galactic turns it's rather short range.  A promising new tech is being tested that increase that by a factor of ten, which leads us to the story...

Nice historical background info for the state of civilization and technology... but what of humans themselves?  Is there cyberware?  Psionics?  Powers (from the genetic samples that were mutated in transit, perhaps)?  All of the above?  None of the above?  :)
This message was last edited by the user at 03:26, Sun 13 Apr 2014.

Sounds cool. (8

There'll be some mandatory templates involved for characters, but it'll be mostly stuff you'd expect to learn, anyway.  Characters will probably run around 150-200cp, depending on what I decide.  Gear will probably be a standard loadout, a basic ship's armory, and an amount of personal weight allowance.

Given the capabilities of TL11, I'm inclined to go with the following:

All Human Alliance humans are genetically screened before birth and defects are corrected as needed (resulting in some Taboo Traits).  For adults joining the Alliance (a few separatist groups in the far reaches on earth and much of the population of the savage colony worlds) the screening happens later but is required for travel off-world.

Psionics are never allowed through the screening process.  Instead, psionics are controlled just like weapons.  Anyone may apply for a psi-gene, but licenses are hard to get and require a special tattoo on a person's finger to indicate their powers.  The tattoo cannot be covered for more than a few moments without becoming painful.  A license is good for an entire discipline of psionics, and is represented as the discipline talent (you have to have points in the talent to buy any powers - how many, we can discuss).  This will work like an Unusual Background, but has an actual benefit.  Telepathy is the most restricted power, being LC2 or even LC1 depending on the strength.

Cyberware is available, but generally frowned upon.  With induction DNI and easy replacement of organs/limbs, someone insisting on cyberware is something of an oddity.  On the other hand, android/robotic characters are possible and AIs are considered to be sentient citizens.

Mutants from other areas are possible, but the majority aren't wild mutations.  Instead, mutations tend to be environmental adaptations.  For instance, a heavy gravity colony produces stronger people.  Other stuff is possible, but the goal is to have the characters be the crew of a ship so it can't be too wild (or no one would trust you on the ship).  Psionic mutations do happen in the wild, but they're not allowed off their home world without getting a license or having the mutation removed.

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I'm thinking of managing resources using fabbers and dollar values.  The ship can make anything you want, but you have to be able to put raw materials into it to earn credits for what you want to make.  Including food.  I might break it down a bit more to "organic", "rare elements", and "inorganic".  I think simple is better, though.

Just be careful with AI as it can lead to some pretty nasty cybershell characters with an AI piloting them.

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 11):

Sounds good, I'll get the Lite rules and start thinking up a character.

TL 11 transhumanism is pretty wild.

I don't necessary think cybershells are an issue if they're built on straight character points.  There are ways where it can become an issue (for instance, making several puppet bodies as allies and using Possession to take them over), but it's easy enough to do a blanket ban on those.

I see a game of this nature being largely ship and social based, in any case.  Hostile aliens with space ships are the biggest threats, and cybershells don't really help there.

Or a bioroid body is an alternative for an AI in a heavy interaction game.

Truly TL-11 can get very wild.

How many points would we be building the characters with?

Okay, so I didn't vanish.  I've been putting a heck of a lot of thought into this game idea, and scouring a number of books to put together a setting, etc.  The link below goes to the PDF that I've put together based on Prime Directive, Spaceships, and a number of other books.  Character creation isn't exactly a topic for this board, so I'll leave it alone just yet.  General scope will be between 150 and 200cp, though.

Anyway, if you are interested, please take a look at this link and tell me what major items I'm forgetting, how you would break a game set up this way and make the GM cry, etc.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/86el...paign%20Document.pdf

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 18):

Thanks. I know detailed character creation can wait until later, but I just wanted a rough idea of how powerful the characters would be. I'll take a look at the PDF and tell you what I think.

OK, I've read the setting information. It looks good overall. I have a few questions:
How isolated are the different solar systems? What's the level of trade and communications between them?
There are no alien civilisations, but is there alien life, and how advanced is it? Bacteria or chimpanzees?
How powerful are psionics? Will my character be disadvantaged if he doesn't have any powers?

The total distance across the Human Alliance is roughly 30 parsecs.  With standard drives at FTL-0.5, it takes 60 days to cross.  With military grade FTL-1 drives, it takes half that.  Given those distances, there is plenty of trade, but most people never get beyond their own solar system, though multiple planet systems would have an order of magnitude more in-system traffic.  I would work up details on all of the human holdings, but the game doesn't take place there, so it's somewhat wasted effort.

Alien life is an interesting question... I'm leaning toward only primative organisms being found (of the single cell variety).  Human terraforming has given their settled worlds biospheres, though.  They can vary radically from Earth norms, depending on the world.

Psi is... different.  It's heavily restricted because in a society, it can be powerful.  However, the game itself is going to be structured such that most psi isn't that powerful.  Given what the ship's crew is trained for, no one should be able to aford all that much.

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 21):

Thanks, that gives me a better idea of the setting.
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 04:18, Sun 20 Apr 2014.