Phase World Campaign: early stages of societal collapse.

[Shorty Lickens]

I'm working on a new campaign in my head after thinking about our current situation in America as well as having finished The Walking Dead.

Some sort of natural or man-made disaster fouls up normal civilization. Fuel production is slowed to a crawl. All interstellar travel is halted. Interplanet travel is much less frequent and more risky. Decent hardworking people who used to be farmers or manufacturers or traders now must use force to protect their resources and livelihood. Some societies or large groups of individuals have turned to violence, piracy, extortion, robbery, or slavery in order to survive (or a combination of the above). Others sneak or fight through pirate blockades to keep trade flowing and essential goods moving.

My first idea was to do this in a relatively populated single star system with many planets and/or moons, some of which support agriculture, some of which support mining and manufacturing. There's several different governments among the multitude of natural bodies which previously worked well together but now have difficult relations due to the near collapse. Perhaps even on large planets with multiple continents there could be feuds and violence on the borders or oceans.

I'd like to use races and factions from the 3 Galaxies. Maybe a dozen different groups happened upon a rich but uninhabited star system and laid claim as best they could, prospered on their own, traded with each other for even more prosperity, and everyone did well until the disaster happened. Need suggestions for what they would be.

Not sure what all the options are for players. Perhaps elite security with counter-espionage missions or bounties. Freedom fighters taking on oppressive local government or raiders. Blockade runners. Militant factions with their own agenda, not necessarily scrupulous. Or maybe even scientists, engineers, and mages attempting to restore communications and travel to the rest of the 3 Galaxies and hopefully put an end to the violence. Anything else?

I guess once I figure out what kind of campaign I want, I'll need to establish the dominant races and factions and some important NPC's, not necessarily fully-detailed, but arch-types who have major stakes in the conflicts and providing leadership for their people. I'd also have to figure out the scope of such a project. Does it go on for generations? A few short yet intense months? Does it move all over the system or stay focused on one small area? Do the characters have the option to escape the apocolypse and forget about everything in their past? or come back to save billions of lives? Do they becomes oppressive dictators themselves in hope of restoring order to the planets? Actually I guess I'll leave that up to them.

Suggestions welcome.

[Father Goose]

I don't have any constructive suggestions at the moment, but I wanted to post my encouragement for your idea. It has potential and I'd love to see what you end up doing with it.

[Warshield73]

Interesting concept for a campaign. I have to admit that if I was doing a campaign like this I would prefer to use a lower tech setting and the problem with making it work in the Three Galaxies is Phase World. It's hard to cut everything off when you have a place like this with the dimensional gates and the phase tech but still you can make it work.

A really great RPG that did the was Star Without Number. I have mentioned it on the forums before but the entire game is set in the aftermath of the collapse of a large interstellar empire so it could have some great ideas.

After looking it over I have a few suggestions.

First, set it in the aftermath of the Minion War. Dimensional Outbreak gives a lot of great ideas of how the Three Galaxies will be after this war and I think it would fit your campaign just pretty well.
- The system could have been attacked during the war with major damage to the infrastructure.
- Large numbers of FTL ships would have been destroyed in the war with a very slow rate of replacement due to the heavy damage to the galactic industrial base.
- You can use this to limit the availability of FTL drives and even make them less effective like the best ship yard in the system can only produce an FTL drive that can do 1 LY a day or something like that.
- Refugees. Large numbers of refugees from all over the place flooding into the system.
- Collaborators. You could have governments or just individuals in those governments who worked with the Demons or Deevils so you could have some of them running around the system.

Second, I would set this in a large UWW star system in the Corkscrew or Anvil near a splugorth or the TGE, or both.
- A binary or heck even a trinary star system with lots of planets and asteroid belts.

JUst a few thoughts off the top of my head.

[Father Goose]

Here's a radical thought... have Phase World go the way of Trantor (Foundation Trilogy) and let the ripple effect destabilize everything in the 3Gs as the major power blocs compete to fill the vacuum. Meanwhile, this isolated system far from the centers of power becomes even more cut off. If they were reliant previously on trade with PW or one of the major powers to supply their tech, then they could be faced with a "what we have is all there is" situation. Especially if what they lack locally is the physical resources (like sufficient minerals). That way, even if they have the knowledge, they don't have the parts. This would give you the shortages and competition for remaining resources that you wanted.
As for the PCs, they could be part of a team from one of the worlds that is sent to a meeting of planetary delegates to discuss a plan to end hostilities between the various worlds. The delegates and their security teams, experts, etc come together on a space station that used to act as a trading hub for the system. Once there, something terrible happens and the PCs get involved.
Alternatively, they are a small salvage crew looking for salable scrap in the system (or a group of pirates looking for an easy score) who find themselves being targeted by someone. Or they come into possession of some piece of equipment that is too valuable to part with or too dangerous to keep.
Regardless, this keeps PW out of the equation and allows for future plotline where one or more of the major power blocs tries to incorporate the system (for good or ill) into their territory (if you want to involve them at a later date).

[Shorty Lickens]

Alright. More ideas.

The outermost planet was used exclusively for mining fuel. I do not yet know what fuel, but almost everything in the Unnamed Star System ran on it.
Overmining and poor safety precautions led to its exploding (shout out to Star Trek 6) and now the inhabited part of the star system is desperate and struggling. Alternative fuel source are being investigated, most of the survivors are rationing what little they have in storage.

I was thinking of anti-matter but then it occurred to me you don't mine a planet for anti-matter.
Maybe Phlebotinum.

Anyway, there's unconfirmed rumors of deliberate sabotage in order to destabilize the system. I haven't decided what direction I want the campaign to go, and of course the players may ignore this issue entirely and just work on solving the current problem.
I decided that the two habitable planets will each be home to a great empire, both now weakened and possibly on the verge of collapse. Before the disaster they each shared in peace and prosperity, now they have minor incidents of violence and theft, possibly pushing them closer to war.
There's also a few other planets in the system, each with their own charms.

If I ever get this campaign actually running I'll need a lot of input from the players so I can get started. Do they wanna be independant operatives looking out for themselves? Helping one or both empires?
Empire employees with specific missions?
Investigators from elsewhere somehow trapped in the system?
Mages looking for an alternate solution?

[taalismn]

Alright. More ideas.

The outermost planet was used exclusively for mining fuel. I do not yet know what fuel, but almost everything in the Unnamed Star System ran on it.
Overmining and poor safety precautions led to its exploding (shout out to Star Trek 6) and now the inhabited part of the star system is desperate and struggling. Alternative fuel source are being investigated, most of the survivors are rationing what little they have in storage.

I was thinking of anti-matter but then it occurred to me you don't mine a planet for anti-matter.
Maybe Phlebotinum.

Hell, the planet can be riddled with chunks of dark matter that reacts strangely with normal matter...Or maybe the chunks are a form of alternate matter that has formed 'bubbles' around quantities of antimatter. Presumably, something came in from another universe, collided with the planet, and now the extra dimensional object is interlaced with the planet's crust.
THere's nothing quite like it been discovered anywhere else in the galaxy, and there are some, for scientific or religious or conservation reasons, don't want to touch the stuff. But It represents. powerful fuel source and there's plenty of it, so the mining concerns have come in.

Only, now the stuff is running out. The easily accessible stuff is evaporating into subspace, and the released antimatter is exploding like soda bubbles coming out of solution. What's stable is deep in the planet's crust under lots and lots of pressure, making it prohibitively expensive to bring up with the technologies they have on hand.

[Shorty Lickens]

POTENTIAL ENCOUNTER 01:

The players are a team of intelligence agents for one of the two main empires. While going thru an immigration or refugee checkpoint they see someone who claims to be a wealthy trader trying to bribe/debate/extort/blackmail his way through the checkpoint and bypass normal procedures, skipping past hundreds or possibly thousands of refugees in line before him. As special agents they are under no obligation to assist the immigration officer, but they are employed by the empire and had previously sworn to protect its borders which includes spaceports. Do they intervene? if so, how? Could it be the wealthy individual is actually of some importance to the crown? is he a phenomenal con-artist? could he help or hinder the players later on during the campaign?
------------------------------------------


Oh and I need ideas for the two major empires. Their names I will pick last, but I need ideas for which races to use as the dominant and subjugated peoples, ideally non-human. Preferably common races of the 3 Galaxies.

[taalismn]

Oh and I need ideas for the two major empires. Their names I will pick last, but I need ideas for which races to use as the dominant and subjugated peoples, ideally non-human. Preferably common races of the 3 Galaxies.

One of the dominant powers is a species of canine(could be Kankoran or Coyle in stats), but evidence suggests that are the result of uplifted PETS. Their subjects are elves. While the elves are generally well-treated, it's clear that they're second-class citizens, except for a few pampered 'companions' who are treated at best as dumb but loyal underlings, and traceable tools at worst, with eugenic elf-breeding being a thing with the more notorious overlords.

Or maybe they're Gigants, with their insanities and mutations being an accepted part of their culture, and the canines are the primary subjugated people(this is essentially Giants and Dogboys).

[Shorty Lickens]

Elves and Gigants sound good to me.
Elves are from planet Târgu Mureş, otherwise known as Antioch 4, of the Antioch System. They like to call themselves Targunians.
The gigants are from Vălureni, also known as Antioch 5. They are known as Valurenians.

Free handy to anyone who knows where I stole the names.

[SolCannibal]

Elves and Gigants sound good to me.
Elves are from planet Târgu Mureş, otherwise known as Antioch 4, of the Antioch System. They like to call themselves Targunians.
The gigants are from Vălureni, also known as Antioch 5. They are known as Valurenians.

Free handy to anyone who knows where I stole the names.

I know both are romanian (transylvanian) places, but drawing a blank beside that.

What in itself would tempt me to give the elves a pseudo-gothic vampire look, with (blood) druids making a sort of infrastructure based in plant-themed TW & sacrifices, with maybe some secret connections to similarly bloody ritualists from the Demon Fleets of Dimensional Outbreak. But that's me, feel free to ignore my over-the-top ramblings.

[Furoan]

As Warshield mentioned, Phaseworld makes this difficult, but not impossible, due to the nature of how it functions. For setting up your system, there are a couple of things to take into account for playing with. If, as you said people have turned to violence to survive a societal collapse like the Walking Dead or Mad Max, you need to make sure that there is no easy way for people to leave to more prosperous parts of the 3G, either that or have the rich people have already done that and now the poor people who couldn't afford passage on a starliner are left to scrabble through the fallen societies wreckage.

You need to point out a reason for society to collapse. In the walking dead, that was the dead rising, in Mad Max it was petroleum and water shortages. The suggestion to set your system after the Minion War that was listed above is a good option because perhaps a neighboring empire/system that was supplying the system you were playing with fell to the demons, and now there is nobody to bring in food/water/fuel etc that they relied on.

Some thoughts of what such a system needs in order to set up the situation you outlined.

* How does magic tie in to this? Are there no magic users to open portals to other dimensions/planets, or are there are small number of Ley Line Walkers/Shifters who are using their ability to bring in new goods to corner the market and give them a powerful position in this post-apocalyptic society.

* There needs to be a reason nobody uses a phase-transceiver to teleport their ship to Phase World. Some kind of event that broke them in the Minion War so that nobdoy could reinforce it, but now without a Promethan, nobody can use them and nobody can get to Phase World to get them fixed (at least in this star system)

* How prosperous was this system before whatever collapse took place? Was it on a major trade route, or comparatively in the boonies?

* What kind of resource are people fighting over? As mentioned, in mad max it was fuel and water. Perhaps its fuel for Contra-gravity FTL engines here, or perhaps its food. Whatever the resource, somebody squatting on it is going ot have a target on their back but wield a lot of influence.

* Can people leave the system via hired ships, or is there some kind of reason that everybody is stuck in this system (like a Warhammer 40k warp storm that cut Terra off from the rest of the galaxy before the Great Crusade)

* Is there a remnant of a government that is trying to hold the line, or has society collapsed completely and the system is ruled by Warlords?

* Does anybody outside know of the plight of the system? Aks is there FTL communication so they could ask for help, or a passing addventuring crew might here about the opportunities offered in the system?

[taalismn]

Antimatter fuel's always a fun thing to fight over, because if you start throwing heavy artillery around it too enthusiastically....oh, hey, physic victory! You won the battle and lost the war with loss of AM containment!

[Warshield73]

Furoan's great questions gave me a few ideas on this topic.

- Maybe the main planet was an Ecumenopolis or a planet that was settled even though it can't grow enough food for the population requiring importation of necessities. This means that as trade vanishes society will break down rapidly.

- Use repression fields (DB 5: Anvil Galaxy, pg. 30). The precipitating event to the collapse of system could be the explosion of a large, I would say 2 to 4 LY, repression field that cut everything off. Now repression fields or not perfectly defined but I have always said that they effect both FTL and STL CG drives. This would be a great reason for people to break out older tech like ion, solar, or traction drive.

This could give lots of great adventure hooks: What or who created the RF? is there a secret route out? Did all the wealthy elites escape on the last Phase Drive or Phase Transceiver ships? These fields normally last for just minutes or hours to just a few months, why is this one lasting so long?

- Magic: First I would have some new fascist government rising target mages for extermination. As a mostly tech world the population was low to begin with but this would make any attempt to use magic to escape difficult. Second, some mages are helping people to escape the planet but where are they going? Good places or maybe Splugorth slave pens or Hades/Dyval?

[Furoan]

Ohh the repression field works well. Also from the Anvil Galaxy book, it was speculated that one of the possible intergalactic communication systems in development (the Ultranet IIRC) had the potential to make a potential galaxy-wide repression field. Perhaps this planet was one of the test labs and something went wrong? Some kind of machine in a hidden lab that needs to be turned off?

A new fascist government or at least a fascist faction that blames mages for the systems blights is an interesting idea. Technology always worked before after all, but now it doesn't so that obviously means mages...however the idea of the mages helping smuggling people out (possibly for a large fee) is an interesting one, and yes the option that one or more groups are sending people to the slave pens of some Alien Intelligence, dark god or demon/deevil is interesting.

Speaking of a greater being like an Alien Intelligence or God, that could be another option for why society has fallen apart. Some kind of godlike being (or even just a mortar crew who got their hands on a Dreadnaught sized battleship) have rocked up and basically told everybody that they are in charge now. If it is a God or an Alien Intelligence, there might be some kind of spell that stops people leaving, and in the case of a new 'emperor' enforcing his wishes with his fleet, it could be simply threatening to blast any ship that leaves orbit into atoms, followed by the city that launched it.

You are right that an Ecumenopolis would collapse quickly without food but it might collapse too fast. Your other option of a planet that just produces less than it needs might be more appropriate. Hell, even if the planet has all the manufacturing capability it needs but very little in the way of medical supplies...

[SolCannibal]

Want a crazy suggestion for limiting the use of phase drives?

PHASE DEMONS

"Let's make this 'verse into the hell-realm of our choosing."

"Capture the drives and making countless converts shall be possible for us."

Kind of complicates things when your nifty FTL system becomes a strategic target to a whole new demon race due to some barely known connections of it to how such demons are spawned, eh?
Just a funny idea of a Dimensional Outbreak colateral and something of a gamble for characters to mess with....

[taalismn]

Want a crazy suggestion for limiting the use of phase drives?

PHASE DEMONS

"Let's make this 'verse into the hell-realm of our choosing."

"Capture the drives and making countless converts shall be possible for us."

Kind of complicates things when your nifty FTL system becomes a strategic target to a whole new demon race due to some barely known connections of it to how such demons are spawned, eh?
Just a funny idea of a Dimensional Outbreak colateral and something of a gamble for characters to mess with....

"Too' you naming the ship Event Horizon was a really bad idea."

[SolCannibal]

Want a crazy suggestion for limiting the use of phase drives?

PHASE DEMONS

"Let's make this 'verse into the hell-realm of our choosing."

"Capture the drives and making countless converts shall be possible for us."

Kind of complicates things when your nifty FTL system becomes a strategic target to a whole new demon race due to some barely known connections of it to how such demons are spawned, eh?
Just a funny idea of a Dimensional Outbreak colateral and something of a gamble for characters to mess with....

"Too' you naming the ship Event Horizon was a really bad idea."

"Pretty certain your pick of Nostromo wouldn't have gone all that better...."

[Warshield73]

Ohh the repression field works well. Also from the Anvil Galaxy book, it was speculated that one of the possible intergalactic communication systems in development (the Ultranet IIRC) had the potential to make a potential galaxy-wide repression field. Perhaps this planet was one of the test labs and something went wrong? Some kind of machine in a hidden lab that needs to be turned off?

Ultranet that's what I was looking for. I knew that there was something that was theorized to create RFs but couldn't find it.

A new fascist government or at least a fascist faction that blames mages for the systems blights is an interesting idea. Technology always worked before after all, but now it doesn't so that obviously means mages...however the idea of the mages helping smuggling people out (possibly for a large fee) is an interesting one, and yes the option that one or more groups are sending people to the slave pens of some Alien Intelligence, dark god or demon/deevil is interesting.

This came from and adventure idea I had where the PCs are dealing with fascist soldiers trying to kill the mages claiming they are sending people to hell and mages who claim they are sending people to a colony world. How do the PCs work this out? Are the mages evil? Maybe these mages are helping people to escape and then later they encounter evil mages selling people to the Splugorth.

Speaking of a greater being like an Alien Intelligence or God, that could be another option for why society has fallen apart. Some kind of godlike being (or even just a mortar crew who got their hands on a Dreadnaught sized battleship) have rocked up and basically told everybody that they are in charge now. If it is a God or an Alien Intelligence, there might be some kind of spell that stops people leaving, and in the case of a new 'emperor' enforcing his wishes with his fleet, it could be simply threatening to blast any ship that leaves orbit into atoms, followed by the city that launched it.

This is a decent idea but to me your premise screams tech problems. I'm a big believer in tech should effect tech and magic effects magic.

You are right that an Ecumenopolis would collapse quickly without food but it might collapse too fast. Your other option of a planet that just produces less than it needs might be more appropriate. Hell, even if the planet has all the manufacturing capability it needs but very little in the way of medical supplies...

I like the city world collapsing idea because nothing says misery like billions of deaths.