Why not a Sci-fi RP that takes place in the local group?

[Nilesapa]

When dealing with a RP universe, scale comes to be a question. How big should I go?

The way I see it is, the more advanced the tech is in terms of transportation technology, the bigger the RP should be. Look at cultures in our world, tribal groups and bronze age societies tend to be very small and regional, iron age cultures like the Romans tend to be bigger, but also are regional as they are restricted to concrete roads and horseback. Mind, having a large empire on horseback is very possible- just look at the mongols or centaurs, but mind these groups tend to be more nomadic and have a habit of settling into the agrarian societies. Fantasy settings with high magic however may be able to hold much more territory, so a continent sized playground may be needed for them. Dragons after all, do allow for a lot more mobility. As does having a magic carpet flying police force. Modern/Industrial societies however, are much more apt for world spanning settings due to having access to galleys, trains and airplanes. Also airships in many cases. Especially airships.

If you want a RP that spans a star system, you better have spaceships. FTL at this point isn't necessary as a planet is only light minutes or hours away. That's a massive distance for a person on horse, but when you have space shuttles and lasers, there really isn't much need for FTL when you can get to other planets in just a week or less. But if you're planning to go colonize other star systems, you better pack up a worm hole at the very least.

On larger scale RPs with low speed FTL, the local stars within a few dozen light years is more than enough. Already you have almost a hundred star systems to have space adventures on, why at times I wonder if having a massive space RP across the galaxy is overdoing it. Think of all the star systems you pass over when you jump ten thousand light years to another civilization!

Of course, when making a RP the size of a galaxy you pretty much make stars not into a set of worlds, but small little parts of land, with whole galactic arms becoming markers for what region of space you are in. Space Operas tend to require large civilizations that span many star systems and have FTL that is capable of traversing the galaxy. To not have slower FTL or no FTL will make your space RP way too massive- many RPs die within a month, imagine having to wait seventy thousand years for a response to that diplomatic message you sent!

But now this brings me to a idea I keep contemplating that is horrible and should never be made, but will bring up here any ways.

Why not a RP that spans the whole local group?

What, too big for you?

It's not really that massive a leap from a galaxy spanning space RP, is it? 300-400 Billion stars in the milky way is only seven times less than the amount of stars in the local group as a whole. Why, the local group when you look at it is like multiple continents with lots of small islands doted all over the place, just take a look:



See? Milky way and Andromeda are like the big continents with Triangulum being sort of like Australia, than you have large islands such as the Magellanic clouds and small spherical star associations scattered all about that are sort of like the small islands. On this scale of RP you would get people who can make massive, galaxy spanning societies with spacecraft that can go intergalactic distances. Perhaps large, galleon-esque spaceships who can make the trip to far off galaxies to explore and colonize. Mind that the RP can easily be constrained to the local group, a gravitational bound association of galaxies for some reason like "the FTL that has enabled intergalactic travel is unable to leave the gravitational bonding of the local group".

I'd be like the age of exploration, but in space with advanced type-2 societies vying for dominance over the local group. The tech cap would be enormous in a RP like this, or not. Who knows, after all people in the year 4599 CE are still using Gauss weapons in some RPs without a problem.

I'm just posting this here mainly to see if it's been done or how other people interpret the whole idea of making a intergalactic sci-fi RP. People in some Sci-fi RPs tend to make a species from another galaxy anyways, so having the whole local group as part of the system may actually be more balanced in some regards.

[Vilageidiotx]

It can certainly be done. I think the reason people don't is because the implied level of technology is almost too much to grasp. We'd be talking about a civilization that is essentially unrecognizable.

[Dinh AaronMk]

It can certainly be done. I think the reason people don't is because the implied level of technology is almost too much to grasp. We'd be talking about a civilization that is essentially unrecognizable.

@Vilageidiotx

Pretty much this. Multi-galactic sci-fi in any case usually ends up being the realm of goofy mid-20th century B-rated sci-fi as well. Those being the sort of films or stories where the aliens don't physically manifest in a specific shape and might be like sentient goo (or in a case of a Monty Python skit: a sentient dessert). This also draws to image the sort of alien life as perhaps Kojima's Bodysnatcher series (although that's technically pan-dimensional) where in the sense the alien have no single body and are entities that can take over individual's bodies and use them as their own vessel for interacting with the local environment and feed on it.

So once you get to that scale it's plausible that things may be so far beyond our scope of imagening (SP?) that society or species would have evolved beyond what we know. It could be far too abstract for us to tackle, and I tried to do that once, but I couldn't wrap my head around the necessary functions to explain it, even as a fictional mechanization.

I'd also like to address this:

odern/Industrial societies however, are much more apt for world spanning settings due to having access to galleys, trains and airplanes.

I'm going to contest this on the quality of the complexity of industrial-and post-industrial societies. Particularly from the model of enlightenment and post-enlightenment Europe. More often that not in this setting the abstract notions of the nation and a shared unity of involved peoples by being born to a culture/language group establishes an identity among them that may be deemed irrational. And that irrational notion is: nationalism.

Although with our airplanes and ships that can traverse the ocean in several days the rate of long-range communication and the dramatic slashing of long-distance travel does not necessarily make large Empires easy to control. Especially in comparison to prior, where rebellious groups may be more isolated to smaller geographic areas. Or populations may not act in rebellion against a foreign power because they have limited or no interaction with the power in question. In contrast with now where a minority may simply revolt against the foreign power because of a cultural awareness of themselves and knowing they're being ruled over by someone not-them.

Large Empires like the Mongols and the Romans had it easier because there was likely little notion of the sense of a national identity where-as larger "Empires" now need to account for the abstract notion of minority autonomy. There's a collective thought now in the modern world that makes holding large inter-national Empires together harder. It's the sort of natural irrationality that broke apart such old Empires as the Austrian or even Ottoman Empires. Or may have been a factor in the collapse of the Chinese Empire by awareness of certain groups own identity (Mongols and Tibetans vs Han majority for example).

So I wouldn't say that large Empires now are easier to have simply because I can drive across Europe in a day. You're going to need a lot of genocide and cultural assimilation into a preferred majority to promote the sort of stability you might have had back then, and often those two factors go hand-in-hand. Where before all you may have needed to do is play favors to non-majority groups to keep them pre-occupied and subservient (ex: The Golden Horde hanging the Grand Duchy of Vladimir before their Russian Vassals to keep the nobility more-or-less busy with themselves so they may compete for the Khan's favor so they can get the illustrous title of the holder of Vladimir). But that sort of game doesn't really work now, people are far too aware of their collective heritage before and during someone else's reign.

[Nilesapa]

So once you get to that scale it's plausible that things may be so far beyond our scope of imagening (SP?) that society or species would have evolved beyond what we know. It could be far too abstract for us to tackle, and I tried to do that once, but I couldn't wrap my head around the necessary functions to explain it, even as a fictional mechanization.

@Dinh AaronMk

Hmm. Is it necessarily so post-singularity god being, or simply a bigger swarm of drones? After all, it's easy to imagine a massive multi-galactic civilization of self-replicating probes that has spread across hundreds of galaxies. It's just hard to figure out what to do with them. Like, the mongols I don't really consider that advanced (they just had a good bow and were really good at living off their horses), but they held more land than many modern societies for over a century.

And that probably is the trouble with a multi-galactic, or really even a galactic setting for that matter the more you start really thinking of it. You make things advance logically from era to era (a galactic empire being more advanced than a interstellar one, a multi-galactic dominion being more advanced than a galactic empire and so on)... But that's the thing here. There's individual galaxies with more stars than the local group as a whole, and if limited to only the local group it may not be so incomprehensible, right? After all, it's only a few trillion star systems.

Wouldn't the issue of advancement be circumvented by making a FTL that makes intergalactic travel "easy"? I mean, if a warp drive is discovered and going to another galaxy is possible by the 22nd century, would everyone necessarily have to be post-singularity self-replicating energy blobs capable of shitting Technetium just because of that?

Well, I suppose if you believe in the singularity than yes, but like I mentioned in the OP i've found civilizations in imaginary sci-fi worlds that have humans using Gauss weapons millenniums into the future just fine.

However the more I think about it the idea really falls apart when you consider than whole milky way galaxy "system" of Magellanic clouds, star populations in the galactic halo and some tiny dwarf galaxies nearby like Fornax can produce similar results.

[Vilageidiotx]

The Mongols were technically advanced, they were just not very urban. They had one of the most impressive pre-industrial mail systems in the modern world, and they are largely responsible for the sudden spread of gunpowder weapons. The problem was that not being urban also came with not being politically stable, and their culture was so ephemeral that they just sort of got absorbed by the people they conquered.

But regarding FTL, the circumstances that would make it easy also have significant implications. Consider the amount of energy, and the mastery of the physical world, that would be required here. We're talking about a society that can harvest solar power straight from the source, and who's idea of a super-weapon would be one that destroys entire solar systems in a single flash. They would live in a world where human labor is viewed the same way we view stone tools, and who can manipulate their own genes and bodies to achieve near immortality. The culture and stability of such a society would both be difficult to understand from our perspective. And the thing is, what I am describing is probably just a near-galactic civilization. I don't know if I can fathom what possibilities lie beyond that.

Which isn't to say that it is impossible. Just remember that, with multi-galactic civilizations, you are dealing with demi-gods.

[Dinh AaronMk]

Which isn't to say that it is impossible. Just remember that, with multi-galactic civilizations, you are dealing with demi-gods.

@Vilageidiotx

Or full-on gods, if from out current perspective.

We may even be looking at a race that has learned to somehow transcend physical limitations as well pretty much, making any desires of universal control most likely irrelevant if the physical world is worthless. And since we don't know what's beyond the current universe and the perceivable physical realm it makes what's beyond difficult to ascertain or what would even be the driving aspirations characters operating in that realm would have.

This was the main problem I had when developing my aforementioned alien race. The Xeno I think, or something. Effectively they were a race that learned to transcend mortality and physical bodies and wafted around the galaxy seeking the knowledge that'll take them further. They had no grounding government in the contemporary sense and could communicate across vast distances on an almost psychic channel, basically rendering many of them the same character and the entire collective was a character. And their vast advancement beyond the other races made them pretty much impossible to take, at the same time they didn't give a shit about "worldly" conflicts of the physical races of the galaxy, so wouldn't be involved anyways.

In that sense, trying to grasp the direction they would go in, where the end-goal is, and all of that was beyond my own perception. I couldn't even perceive how they'd get there.

An allegorical comparison to what they were seeking might be the Siddha of Jain mythology. The Siddha being those souls without a body who have attained perfect understand and knowledge of the universe and effectively became all-known Gods. But they don't *do* anything. They've transcended beyond action. That's what I imagine what we'd be seeing in this sort of RP.

From a literary standpoint writing a story from a Siddha would probably be boring. There'd be no progression of anything, no conflict, and no climax. It'd just be 'being'. The only function of a Siddha in a story would be almost like a guide to the lesser races who would be caught up in conflict. Or in the purist Jain interpretation they'd be something the lesser races look to as an example of any of the desirable qualities of the perfect being (absolute pacifism, absolute honesty, absolute non-possession, absolute chastity/celibacy, absolutely not owning more than you need).

[Nilesapa]

The Mongols were technically advanced, they were just not very urban. They had one of the most impressive pre-industrial mail systems in the modern world, and they are largely responsible for the sudden spread of gunpowder weapons. The problem was that not being urban also came with not being politically stable, and their culture was so ephemeral that they just sort of got absorbed by the people they conquered.

But regarding FTL, the circumstances that would make it easy also have significant implications. Consider the amount of energy, and the mastery of the physical world, that would be required here. We're talking about a society that can harvest solar power straight from the source, and who's idea of a super-weapon would be one that destroys entire solar systems in a single flash. They would live in a world where human labor is viewed the same way we view stone tools, and who can manipulate their own genes and bodies to achieve near immortality. The culture and stability of such a society would both be difficult to understand from our perspective. And the thing is, what I am describing is probably just a near-galactic civilization. I don't know if I can fathom what possibilities lie beyond that.

Which isn't to say that it is impossible. Just remember that, with multi-galactic civilizations, you are dealing with demi-gods.

@Vilageidiotx

Perhaps looking at the way the Greeks saw the gods may be of one way to do so. They were immortal, didn't have manual labor and pretty much were custodians of the world who intervened frequently in human affairs and had shit loads of infighting. So it's definitely not impossible, but what you describe pretty much sounds like the cap of how advanced you should go for some reason. Like, they still sound bound to reality in a way the entities aaron describe aren't.

As for multi-galactic societies I actually have imagined a couple if you're curious. Both of them named after super cluster groups for the sake of it. One is the Leo, who are that aforementioned endless swarm of drones that have colonized multiple galaxies. But even they probably are orders of magnitude more advanced simply because it's not hard to imagine these drones using star lifting to increase their populations to cover whole galaxies.... There'd be more of these drones than there are grains of sand on earth.

The other are the Virgo, who pretty much ran into a similar issue Aaron brought up; they are so advanced they don't even exist in reality anymore, instead having become part of it. Hard to really tell a story from that sort of perspective.

But the thing is i'm not thinking of multi-galactic pan-cluster entities. I'm only thinking of societies that can go to the Andromeda and not much further. The local group is a pretty tiny compared to the rest of the universe. Is the jump in tech to get to other galaxies just that big? If I just say the FTL you get when you figure out how to make a warp drive is just that good, would there still be problems?

[ArenaSnow]

The BattleTech universe came to mind when I saw this thread.