2300AD, thoughts and wishes

[Colin]

I'm about to start noodling with 2300AD and Mongoose Traveller. There are some ideas that I'm tossing around:
Change the timeline to have the Twilight War occur in 2024, as a result of the fighting that occurred after a catastrophic asteroid impact.
Include much more in the way of space-based society and technology: habitats, stations, free-roving mining colonies...
Revisit the near Star List and map. See if there is some way to update them without destroying the setting
Adding a limited amount of new "Transhumanist-style" technology. Still no viable AI, but some good approximations. More bio-tech and bio-tech enhancements.
Keep weapons-tech largely the same, add a few things. Keep same "gun-bunny" text descriptions of the weapons.
Update styling on combat walkers a bit, add a few more to book.
Add a power-point system to starship design, and try to retain or model as much of 2300 starship design within the mongoose/high guard rules as possible.

That's just the start. Now I expect that this posting will have others posting their wish-lists/rants, and that's cool. One caveat, one that I always use. I will read anything. However, I am under no obligation to actually use any of it.

Thanks.

 

[Mark A. Siefert]

Well, if they can move the Twilight War to 2012 for the new version of Twilight 2000, you have more than enough creative license to move it to 2024 in your version. (The asteroid impact is a nice touch. It's reasonable AND it gives mankind a good reason to get out into space once it picks itself up.) The application of biotech enhancement rather than mechanical is more up-to date. (Pure cyberpunk has a tendency to sound so 1980s.)

 

[Anonymous]

Well as the new version of Twilight 2000 is set (and called) 2013 woulnt that be a starting point for the twiliight war ?
Adding in at the end (circa 2020) the asteroid stike drags the survival back into a war of desperate survival - drop the asteroid of the china sea allows for Frances prosperity.

Rog.

 

[Colin]

I was thinking more of Kazakhstan for the asteroid strike. Gives the Central Asian Wars more poignancy, and if the asteroid had tantalum, a clear reason to go to war.

The rights to Twilight 2013 belongs to someone else, so I'm not even going to look at it.

I'm thinking about taking a new look at terrestrial wars since the Twilight War. Most wars will be as much psychological and memetic as actual violence. Most actions will be small-unit stuff and counter-insurgency. Drones and animal-brain combat robotics would be developed for these venues. No one wants to spark off a big war, so most heavy fighting takes place off-world.

The War of German Reunification, and even the whole fragmented Germany thing, needs to be looked at closer.

 

[Anonymous]

Having the asteriod containf tantalum has an extra effect as well.
We know that Stutterwarp drives need discharging or they lead to fatal radiation poisoning this could have an effect on the Earth's water system.
This might be a second reason why the still well of countrys make a rush back into space - the Earth is a nasty place to live with contamination.

As 2013 shares its back history with the 2000 back story isnt there somekind of cross-usage ?

 

[Sturn]

Change the timeline to have the Twilight War occur in 2024, as a result of the fighting that occurred after a catastrophic asteroid impact.

I would prefer not to move that far from the original reasons for the Twilight War. Changing politics to natural asteroid is a very large change.

Twilight 2013 has new political reasons that are not necessarily grand, but having an asteroid impact may alienate some fans. The T2000 and T2300AD timelines were once compatible and fans might like to keep it that way.

Sure, new reasons are fine, but keep it in the general ballpark, not something completely different please.

You could even keep it very generalized. A nuclear war that was sparked off due to socio-economic reasons in the early 21st Century that resulted in a set back technologically and the rise of France to fill the void. If any of that is changed in a great way it starts to become something other then 2300 AD for some fans and incompatible with the histories of T2000/2013.

 

[Colin]

The current Twilight 2013 is owned by someone other than Mongoose, and thus unavailable to me. It's not so much the asteroid strike itself, as the wars that break out in it's aftermath. Territory grabs, revenge wars, lots of little wars that mushroom into calamity.

That, or a series of bruch-fire wars just escalate until the nukes start flying. I'm not so keen on this. It would take a great deal to get someone to push the button, I think.

 

[lastbesthope]

I was just looking at buying Twilight 2013 the other day, maybe I'll wait and see if any cross working happens first.

LBH

 

[Eisenmann]

The current Twilight 2013 is owned by someone other than Mongoose, and thus unavailable to me. It's not so much the asteroid strike itself, as the wars that break out in it's aftermath. Territory grabs, revenge wars, lots of little wars that mushroom into calamity.

That, or a series of bruch-fire wars just escalate until the nukes start flying. I'm not so keen on this. It would take a great deal to get someone to push the button, I think.

Someone not afraid of MAD who believes that ultra-violence is a means for some greater cause is a horrible spark that could kick off a nuclear calamity.

 

[Colin]

Not that I am aware of. To avoid any issues, I haven't even looked at Twilight 2013.
That being said, if it looks interesting, buy it. My concerns have nothing to do with the quality of 2013. As I said, I've never seen it. I just don't want to muddy the waters.
Nor do I want anyone to think that I'm advocating NOT purchasing 2013.

 

[rust]

The War of German Reunification, and even the whole fragmented Germany thing, needs to be looked at closer.

Yes, please.

If you have any chance to remove that almost ridiculous War of Ger-
man Reunification and the related silly stuff from the setting's history,
please - please - do it, it really kills my suspension of disbelief
for this setting.

And if you need someone to take a look at "German" names, whether
from the original material or new ones, I would love to volunteer for
that task.

 

[Colin]

All that being said, if the direction is to stick to the established canon, well, that's what I can do.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

It wouldn't have to be that big of an Impactor either. A strike like Meteor Crater in Arizona or the Tunguska Event, but in a more populated area would be more than enough to shake things up.

If the impact was in the Middle East, with diminishing oil reserves, that could easily precipitate the Twilight War.

MY DESIRES:
Beef up the Chinese Arm. Don't make them the wimps of the setting. The Austra-American Arm should be the weakest with the European and Chinese Arms about equal, but managed in different ways, so there is a definite flavor to each Arm.

I think updating the Near Star List will cause problems with the Arms, but it might be possible to "forget" just a couple of stars and be able to make it work. Alternately, keep all the known stars and allow some cross-Arm movement... I don't think it would break the setting to have a couple of Bridging Systems. They might be perfect for political campaigns.

 

[EDG]

Change the timeline to have the Twilight War occur in 2024, as a result of the fighting that occurred after a catastrophic asteroid impact.

Just be aware that there's a very fine line between "catastrophic" and "world-ending". All we need is an asteroid a couple of km across to hit us and that's it for major life on the planet. And afterwards, we'll be too busy dying to want to start a war over anything.

Generally asteroid impacts don't start wars, they end them. Unless it's one of those tragic comedies of errors where it's small enough and has the bad luck to land on a city (wiping out everyone there) and then people think it's a nuke gone off and start lobbing nuclear weapons around until they realise their mistake.

I think it'd be better to keep the Twilight war as something political, though the changes required to make it happen would require a somewhat large dose of salt to be taken with it. But in the end, the Twilight War is a small part of the setting that can be glossed over - it's something that happened in the distant past, and not particularly relevant in the 2300s. You could even just say "a big war happened in 20xx, and that changed the power balance of the world... so, moving on..."

 

[Rex]

Change the timeline to have the Twilight War occur in 2024, as a result of the fighting that occurred after a catastrophic asteroid impact.

Just be aware that there's a very fine line between "catastrophic" and "world-ending". All we need is an asteroid a couple of km across to hit us and that's it for major life on the planet. And afterwards, we'll be too busy dying to want to start a war over anything.

Generally asteroid impacts don't start wars, they end them. Unless it's one of those tragic comedies of errors where it's small enough and has the bad luck to land on a city (wiping out everyone there) and then people think it's a nuke gone off and start lobbing nuclear weapons around until they realise their mistake.

I think it'd be better to keep the Twilight war as something political, though the changes required to make it happen would require a somewhat large dose of salt to be taken with it. But in the end, the Twilight War is a small part of the setting that can be glossed over - it's something that happened in the distant past, and not particularly relevant in the 2300s. You could even just say "a big war happened in 20xx, and that changed the power balance of the world... so, moving on..."

Big war happened, catastrophe destroyed the records. Move forward.

~Rex

 

[rust]

Big war happened, catastrophe destroyed the records. Move forward.

Good idea, I would only add something like "the few remaining records
give conflicting and contradictory accounts, each nation published its own
version of the background and the events". :wink:

I am currently doing some research for a renaissance setting, and even
the most important events of the period are hidden in a fog of missing
records and records with a "national bias" that makes it extremely diffi-
cult to get an idea of what really happened, and why. :lol:

 

[Mark A. Siefert]

Generally asteroid impacts don't start wars, they end them.

I disagree. With the devastation caused by mega-tsunamis and a looming impact winter ready to starve/freeze humanity, I don't see people sitting down to singing Kumbuya ala Gene Rodenberry. Human nature is that if you don't have it and can't make it, you take it from those who have it. If those you take it from resist, you kill them. Throw in nationalism--or worse, our old "friend" religion--to justify this mutual plunder and you've got a recipe for World War III.

 

[Mark A. Siefert]

Big war happened, catastrophe destroyed the records. Move forward.

~Rex

I'm not so sure that would make for a believable setting. I would imagine that in a civilization so devastated by war that all previous history is erased would take much longer to achieve interstellar travel, much less recover to early 21st century standards . This is 2300 AD, not 4300 AD.

 

[Mithras]

Asteroid impacts never 'get old'; see the KT event on that regard, and the recent Jupiter impact, too.

Politics, however, can get old in just a year or two. Look at Twilight 2000. Look at the re-write. Political futurism looks good for a year, then it dates badly. That rule has always held throughout history.

So future proof your 2300AD.

Asteroid impact or Yellowstone Park Supervolcano.

BANG.

 

[rust]

Politics, however, can get old in just a year or two.

A very good point. And if an asteroid impact or a supervolcano seems
too heavy handed, think of something less spectacular but equally de-
vastating - even a virus that kills all rice or wheat plants would be quite
sufficient to cause enough problems to trigger a major series of wars.