New Age (PMT/Discussion/Worldbuilding)

[Arvenia]

New Age

This is a thread for my upcoming PMT RP called "New Age". This thread involves both discussion and worldbuilding. It would help me create a setting, come up with some terms, decide which tech would exist and even how to play the RP. All help is appreciated.

PS: The RP (basically the OOC thread) won't open up until August (due to certain reasons regarding my limited WiFi and me being not good at roleplay on cellphone). So, we can all use this time to help build this RP.

[Plzen]

Two very basic questions to get us started:

What year is the setting? This is crucially important for letting us know how far we can go from real life and how much we can delve into alternate history, so this needs to be set before we decide anything else.

What are the themes of the setting? A science fiction RP is not sold on a basis of a bullet point list of future historical events, it’s sold on a basis of aesthetic, a core concept around which the world is built.

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As for the first question, my preference is the early medium future, something in the 2100~2150 range. Far enough from our real life that we don’t have to do pages and pages of boring research and can just make up our economic, political, and diplomatic situations, but close enough to our real life that deviations from real life will be highlighted instead of buried.

As for theme, I think we should do something along the lines of environmental degradation and natural resource shortages. It’s a theme that hasn’t yet been covered in depth by an Arvenia RP, and frankly I want a change from my usual sociopolitical implications of information technology stuff. Alternately, demographic pressure and the decline of the West could be an interesting topic to cover.

[Arvenia]

Two very basic questions to get us started:

What year is the setting? This is crucially important for letting us know how far we can go from real life and how much we can delve into alternate history, so this needs to be set before we decide anything else.

What are the themes of the setting? A science fiction RP is not sold on a basis of a bullet point list of future historical events, it’s sold on a basis of aesthetic, a core concept around which the world is built.

---

As for the first question, my preference is the early medium future, something in the 2100~2150 range. Far enough from our real life that we don’t have to do pages and pages of boring research and can just make up our economic, political, and diplomatic situations, but close enough to our real life that deviations from real life will be highlighted instead of buried.

As for theme, I think we should do something along the lines of environmental degradation and natural resource shortages. It’s a theme that hasn’t yet been covered in depth by an Arvenia RP, and frankly I want a change from my usual sociopolitical implications of information technology stuff. Alternately, demographic pressure and the decline of the West could be an interesting topic to cover.

1. Okay, then this RP will be set in the 22nd century, mostly somewhere between 2100 and 2150. Regarding theme, this RP would involve things like space colonization (although not like New Imperialism), robotics, sustainability and new socio-economic theories.
2. Environmental degradation and resource shortage sounds very interesting. We can research on those. The backstory would possibly involve some kind of a global war that surely didn't make the whole world go post-apocalyptic, but still changed the geopolitical landscape.
3. I hope we can get so much more ideas from other players and eventually make a very good RP experience.
4. An old RP that might inspire this RP. It got everything regarding the environment and natural resources.

[Sarderia]

I have several suggestions for this setting:

1) The world's balance of power has been dramatically shifted. Neither the USA nor China is the current largest superpowers; that title would have most likely claimed by India, or a massive EU-like ASEAN union. While still retaining its unity, the US would be a shell of what it used to be now, if not for it's technological superiority (being the birthplace of the Silicon Valley) compared to other nations. The same could be said for China and Shenzhen, although if faced with massive losses in warfare and internal instability, the PRC would more than likely crumble.

2) Water will be the new oil of this era. Space colonization would be driven by human need to obtain Helium-3 and water, and there would be more than likely a global cryptocurrency estabilished to replace individual currencies. Preferrably something limited and not controlled by anyone, such as bitcoin.

[Plzen]

1) The world's balance of power has been dramatically shifted. Neither the USA nor China is the current largest superpowers; that title would have most likely claimed by India, or a massive EU-like ASEAN union.

Given hefty resource shortages, it’s quite plausible that Russia and Canada can stay on the great powers list as well. The Antarctic nations - Australia, Argentina, Chile, as well as Britain and Norway if they managed to hang on to their claims - possibly.

There is probably quite a bit of economic tension in Europe between the resource-rich nations of the north and east, and the industry-heavy nations of the centre.

2) Water will be the new oil of this era. Space colonization would be driven by human need to obtain Helium-3 and water,

Almost certainly not. Under no reasonable technological assumption will it be cheaper to get water from space than it is to just desalinate ocean water, and if we want environmentalism and resource shortages to be a theme we should stick to fairly pessimistic energy technology assumptions, which means no helium fusion.

and there would be more than likely a global cryptocurrency estabilished to replace individual currencies. Preferrably something limited and not controlled by anyone, such as bitcoin.

Interesting idea. I imagine that the global financial system would resemble Bretton-Woods, then.

[Arvenia]

1) The world's balance of power has been dramatically shifted. Neither the USA nor China is the current largest superpowers; that title would have most likely claimed by India, or a massive EU-like ASEAN union.

Given hefty resource shortages, it’s quite plausible that Russia and Canada can stay on the great powers list as well. The Antarctic nations - Australia, Argentina, Chile, as well as Britain and Norway if they managed to hang on to their claims - possibly.

There is probably quite a bit of economic tension in Europe between the resource-rich nations of the north and east, and the industry-heavy nations of the centre.

2) Water will be the new oil of this era. Space colonization would be driven by human need to obtain Helium-3 and water,

Almost certainly not. Under no reasonable technological assumption will it be cheaper to get water from space than it is to just desalinate ocean water, and if we want environmentalism and resource shortages to be a theme we should stick to fairly pessimistic energy technology assumptions, which means no helium fusion.

and there would be more than likely a global cryptocurrency estabilished to replace individual currencies. Preferrably something limited and not controlled by anyone, such as bitcoin.

Interesting idea. I imagine that the global financial system would resemble Bretton-Woods, then.

I would be interested in custom nations.

[The National Dominion of Hungary]

Hmmm seems interesting. Especially if we decide to go with resource shortages and early space colonization as a theme. Perhaps even underwater colonization and resource exploitation on Earth.

Something that would be interesting to explore would be cybernetic enhancement and perhaps large scale cloning and their effect on economics, culture and society.

Also, how far into the future is it going to be? Around 2150? And did the Long Peace continue or was there some period of great upheaval at some point?

[Arvenia]

Hmmm seems interesting. Especially if we decide to go with resource shortages and early space colonization as a theme. Perhaps even underwater colonization and resource exploitation on Earth.

Something that would be interesting to explore would be cybernetic enhancement and perhaps large scale cloning and their effect on economics, culture and society.

Also, how far into the future is it going to be? Around 2150? And did the Long Peace continue or was there some period of great upheaval at some point?

1. There is resource shortage and space colonization. However, about the latter, there is basically going to be a "Space Trusteeship Council" operated by the UN, which might help prevent a scenario similar to New Imperialism. Also, we might have great use of space resources (albeit no Helium-3).
2. Cybernetic enhancement is an interesting idea and this RP will be filled with new socio-economic theories.
3. It is set somewhere between 2100 and 2150. Also, the backsotry would feature a period of great upheaval in the 21st century (which includes a global war).
4. This RP might have newer countries (not the ones that still exist IRL) such as Scandinavia, Cascadia, Maphilindo and even an African great power.

[Hobbes Dystopia]

tag

[The National Dominion of Hungary]

1. There is resource shortage and space colonization. However, about the latter, there is basically going to be a "Space Trusteeship Council" operated by the UN, which might help prevent a scenario similar to New Imperialism. Also, we might have great use of space resources (albeit no Helium-3).
2. Cybernetic enhancement is an interesting idea and this RP will be filled with new socio-economic theories.
3. It is set somewhere between 2100 and 2150. Also, the backsotry would feature a period of great upheaval in the 21st century (which includes a global war).
4. This RP might have newer countries (not the ones that still exist IRL) such as Scandinavia, Cascadia, Maphilindo and even an African great power.

1: Never was in that RP but I suppose that would be to prevent landgrabs by superpowers yes?
2: Would underwater mining/agriculture/habitation be a thing? Something sort of like what we saw in Anno 2070? Though I realize that might break the whole shortage situation I bit...
3: What level of development has AI reached? Has it been bottlenecked by issues like the problem of embodied cognition and relegated to basically a super-smart calculator with massive processing power or we have borderline sentient and self-learning robots?

Hmmm... would be interesting to play some kind of Visegrad/Three Seas Union sandwiched between some sort of Eurasia, Eurofederation and United Scandinavia

Also, I think I'm going to write up some tech proposals and run them by y'all.

[Plzen]

With regards technology, I think we should definitely stick to the pessimistic end on energy technology and information technology. They stalled, some hard scientific limitations came up, none of the hypothesised future breakthroughs materialised. Otherwise it breaks the setting too much.

Non-AI robotics and biotech, though, we can be a bit more optimistic about. That would probably help reinforce the theme of resource-strapped poverty with body modifications for the few standing above the cloned masses. Or something like that.

Chemistry and materials technology, in less sure about. This probably will have huge implications on how war is fought, but I’m not sure whether pessimistic or optimistic assumptions create the more interesting setting.

[Arvenia]

With regards technology, I think we should definitely stick to the pessimistic end on energy technology and information technology. They stalled, some hard scientific limitations came up, none of the hypothesised future breakthroughs materialised. Otherwise it breaks the setting too much.

Non-AI robotics and biotech, though, we can be a bit more optimistic about. That would probably help reinforce the theme of resource-strapped poverty with body modifications for the few standing above the cloned masses. Or something like that.

Chemistry and materials technology, in less sure about. This probably will have huge implications on how war is fought, but I’m not sure whether pessimistic or optimistic assumptions create the more interesting setting.

Would there still be spaceships, firearms, global internet and renewable energy?

[The National Dominion of Hungary]

Just quick rundowns for now, can be expanded later. What do y'all think?

The main types of troops you will see on the battlefields of the world in 2150 are organic soldiers, often clones produced for military service and thus raised in special state military upbringing complexes, trained from an early age and implanted with cybernetic enhancements and biochemical augmentations such as for example carbide-ceramic weave grafted to the skeleton, making bones much stronger. These soldiers are supported by a wide array of drones going all the way down to the platoon level which aid with everything from scouting to light fire support. Thanks to advanced automation, the more modern MBT's are only crewed by a single person. Fighting robots, built in a wide array of forms, both humanoid and otherwise support the organic troops. These robots are all connected wirelessly to command consoles that are controlled by the battle-droid operators sitting far behind the frontline who command the robots in a form similar to an early strategy game. Weapons of war have stayed quite the same as in the beginning of the 21'st century, barring the widespread use of railgun technology at sea which has also seen and the beginnings of more widespread weaponized lasers, making missiles a secondary weapon at sea. Technological limitations still make these weapons unfeasible to miniaturize to the point of being used on land vehicles, much less carried by a regular infantryman. Space warfare is early in it's development but is showing signs of evolving to meet the needs of the new frontier of battle. The vast distances involved makes missiles the primary weapon at long range with hostile ships relying of CIWS-systems and jammers to survive the missile-storm. At medium range railguns are used, as at long range an unguided shot can easily be dodged in space. At short range, railguns are still used but if ships enter "knife-fight range" which is under five kilometers away, CIWS-guns can be used as well.

Industrialization of human reproduction began in Japan and China in the 2040's as the Japanese demographic crisis got increasingly bad and China was dealing with the unforeseen long-term consequences of their population control policies which would have led to China's population dropping below one billion people by 2120. Invented by Japanese biologist Maiko Kubota, the so called Kubota Process essentially works as a replication of a fertilized zygote, similar to when twins are formed but repeated up to 100 times. After the cells have replicated, they are placed in artificial wombs, where they are fed and cared for until they are "born". The only variations in this process are the exact timing of the births which cannot be controlled. After birthing, the children are named and then everything depends on which country you're in. In some countries they are adopted by parents and raised in regular families while in other nations they are placed under care of the state while other countries use a mix of both approaches. Nonetheless, the cloned are cared for their childhood and when they grow up they are either released to the career they were born for or free to make their own way into adulthood. This varies from states to state and time to time but during wartime, it is mostly buff men who are "born" and trained up to shore up the reserves while and in peacetime a gender parity, or sometimes slight skewing towards more women is pursued. There is a process to speed up the aging of clones, but the decision to use this is used only in dire straits, when the clones would probably not see past their first decade in the first place. This depends on culture and country as well, but despite the fact that cloning has been around for a bit over a century, some natural-born humans are still rarely seen associating with their cloned brethren. In some countries clones are relegated to live in poverty in segregated neighborhoods while in other countries clones are treated much better but the stigma of not having a belly button often remains. Clones are able to naturally reproduce but these children of clones sadly often carry the stigma of their parents. Their children however are considered "naturals" and are freed of their "family curse," though some of the meaner kids in school might still bully you if they find out that your grandpa doesn't have a belly-button.

By 2150, cybernetics are a widespread element of society. It is distinguished from basic limb prosthetics in that they interface directly with the central nervous system, as opposed to just the ends of peripheral nerves. With this technological advancement mechanical augmentation allowed people to become stronger, faster, more durable and assume other abilities that were previously far beyond them. Advancements in the medical sector in the 2030's which addressed neurological conditions such as Parkinson's Disease, where patients were cured by getting metal electrodes surgically implanted into their brains to stop the tremors, this technology led to the breakthrough of interactive cybernetics in the 2050's. Despite having been around for a long time and increasingly commonplace, a social rift remains between augmented and non-augmented citizens. While mechanical augmentation is widespread, there is still a significant opposition to it that believed the technology could be abused, despite the apparent benefits it brought. Such groups are often religious such as the Christian Neo-Catholics of Latin America and Eastern Europe and the only branch of Islam that does not openly oppose it are the Neo-Sufi's. Secular opposition groups such as the Humanity Initiative also have strong followings. Additionally, black markets started to arise around mechanical augmentations in the form of illegal clinics and unlicensed or stolen augmentations. Crime syndicates including the Yakuza, Triads and Russian Mafia all have "Harvester cells" which became known and feared for kidnapping augmented people off the streets, then "harvesting" their augmentations to be put on the black market, often killing the victim in the process. Genetic engineering has advanced significantly, with the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world having their legacies carried on by terrifyingly expensive "designer babies" who are edited by their parents while still in the womb. Everything from their intelligence to physical constitution to appearance are designed and determined before birth to be excellent, such individuals live around half a lifespan longer than a person without access to such advanced gene-therapy.

[Plzen]

I've written up a little draft overview of the environmental and energy situation. I'll edit this later to include The National Dominion of Hungary's suggestions on technology later at some point.

Commentary welcome, of course.

State of the Species - 16th January 2120

TWO HUNDRED YEARS have passed since the first meeting of the League of Nations, the first time representatives of countries all around the world gathered in the aftermath of a devastating war to build a future of global peace, a world founded on the principles of cooperation and international goodwill. Two hundred years have passed since those idealistic days and yet the world still remains as disunited as ever, with paranoid and independent states staring at each other across their flexible frontiers, warily feeling the pulse of shifting alliances and rivalries.

So much has changed since those days, every aspect of our society, our technology, our politics... even the very planet itself. But still, certain things just never change.

Maybe humanity is just fated not to get along.

Environment and the Climate

From afar, perhaps the most visible changes that have occurred in the last two centuries have been the changes wrought by humanity on the planet itself, two centuries of industrial detritus tearing apart the fragile balance of the Earth's climate and ecosystems.

Of the environmental disasters raging across the planet, and there are many, the one with the greatest impact and the widest reach has been climate change. While conscious scientists and social activists have warned the world about the price of delaying on climate action since the 1970s, the lack of effective international cooperation and political initiative have prevented the world from acting on these warnings, to devastating consequence. The seas have risen at almost double the projected rate, being nearly two and a half metres higher than in 1920. While some large and wealthy cities were able to survive on the coast through hefty investments in coastal defences and sheer stubbornness, in much of the world the coastline has collapsed.

While international geoengineering effort have managed to curb and even start to reverse the temperature rise, which would hopefully slow down the rate of sea level rise in the future, this came with an explosive package of side effects both foreseen and unexpected. The most severe of these have been droughts, that ancient terror of all agricultural societies made worse by climate change and doubly worse by geoengineering efforts. The Sonora Desert stretches from Seattle to Brasilia, the sands of the Saharas expanded northwards into southern Europe and southwards into the Congo Basin, while the Gobi Desert creeps towards the Chinese coast and the Ganges River is starved for lack of rain.

Even as some areas of the world suffer for the lack of water, others suffer for its abundance. Tropical storms hitting the eastern coast of America, southern and eastern Asia, northern Australia, and eastern Africa have greatly increased in both frequency and severity, and the increased storm surge risk from rising sea levels have not helped. The heavy rains and flash floods which frequently accompany these storms wash away croplands and cities, making an already precarious global food and housing situation even worse.

All this leads to the mass displacement of populations - climate refugees, driven out by the hundreds of millions from homelands which are no longer fit for human habitation. It is the worst refugee crisis that the world has ever seen, and unlike many refugee crises in the past it is not a temporary affair driven by some war or disaster. It is an ongoing affair, with more and more having to pick up and leave every year, and there is no end in sight yet to this rising flood of the desperate and hungry. The number of people who need to move grow by the minute, and yet the world is increasingly running out of places to move them to, and the will to move them there.

Energy Resources and Supply

The world of 1920 was, at least in terms of resources, a plentiful one. At the height of the industrial revolution the age saw almost revolutionary technological and economic change buttressed on seemingly infinite cheap energy from coal and oil. That coal and oil is now mostly gone, all used up, and with it the optimistic outlooks of future prosperity.

The energy mix that fuels civilisation in the world of today in 2120 comes from a variety of different sources, but many of them are small, providing only a small amount of energy or providing energy only to highly limited areas. The major energy sources, the ones still of global relevance, can be counted on the fingers of one hand: lignite, uranium, clathrate, and so-called "renewable" power.

Of these, lignite, a form of coal, is perhaps the one with the longest industrial history. While it is a fuel of very low quality with many impurities, the exhaustion of higher-quality bituminous and anthracite coal as well as petroleum and conventional natural gas reserves have left lignite as the only remaining alternative for those less prosperous nations seeking a low-cost source of energy. Low-cost, that is, compared to the other sources of energy available in this day and age; by the standards of 1920 or even 2020, even lignite would be an extremely arduous and expensive way of keeping the lights on. Obviously, because the costs of climate change and climate change mitigation are enormous, the use of lignite is a subject of intense international scrutiny and controversy.

Nuclear power, the extraction of usable energy from the fission of fissile isotopes, originated in the 1940s and have seen considerable improvements in the decades since. But much like space travel and electronic computing, both of which are innovations that also have their origins around the same time period, after a few decades of progress innovation stalled and the grand benefits dreamed up by early visionaries never materialised. The so-called "fourth generation" of nuclear power, which promised to liberate nuclear power from fuel constraints by vastly improving efficiency and using unconventional isotopes, have tantalisingly remained just out of reach for decades, with research hitting all sorts of unexpected scientific, engineering, and economic obstacles year after year. While uranium still remains reliable - vaguely - despite strong cost increases throughout the 21st Century, it is also a substance that is tightly controlled for its obvious security risks, and in an unstable world fraught with national rivalries, those without a domestic supply of uranium face the difficult question of whether they want to place the fate of their nation in the whims of the unpredictable and volatile global commodities market.

Clathrates, or methane hydrates, are a combustible carbon fuel that can be harvested from the seafloor. While reserves are available in abundance in nearly every ocean coast around the planet and there is enough to supply human civilisation for centuries more, it is also an extremely expensive source of energy, with near-prohibitive costs of extraction. Furthermore, while the fuel is clean when compared to lignite or biomass, it is still a carbon fuel and its contribution to climate change continues to ensure international controversy about whether clathrates really are the way forwards.

That leaves renewable energy, a term that encompasses all sources of energy that do not require the continuous supply of finite fuel. While this mostly consists of solar and wind power, hydroelectric dams and geothermal plants contribute significant amounts in those areas of the world where such resources are available. At the surface, renewable energies seem like a dream come true. It is a reasonably affordable, environmentally friendly, and resource-independent source of energy that can be used almost anywhere. There is, however, one slight problem. Solar and wind power, the dominant components of renewable energy, are both dependent on the weather, and the energy produced can thus be highly intermittent. While some nations still invest heavily in renewable energy despite this setback, those relying on it for more than 20 or 25 percent of a nation's energy supply almost always suffer periodic brownouts and blackouts.

Economics and Trade

As a result of the energy crisis and persistent geopolitical instability, the world remains a far poorer place than any observer from 1920 could have predicted.

After a brief window in the closing decades of the 20th Century and the opening decades of the 21st in which a few major nations made the jump, the gap between the developing world and the developed world remained largely insurmountable. The traditional method by which a post-colonial agrarian nation developed into a service economy, through an export-oriented and manufacturing-intensive intermediate stage, became completely non-viable as automation improved, shrinking the competitive advantage of cheap labour, and the manufacturing sector worldwide was squeezed by ever-higher energy costs.

The developed world in 2120, as a result, consists of three geographical clusters of nations: North America, Europe - or at least that part of it north of the Alps - and coastal East Asia. Even though per-capita incomes rose slightly since 2020, maybe one-fifth again as much on average in the West and half again as much in East Asia, production has lagged behind the development of new technologies and thus new products, and relative deprivation remains a serious problem. Furthermore, with the world increasingly tapped dry of resources, these wealthy economies depend on a constant flow of energy and materials from the polar regions, the seafloor, and the developing world - all of which have developed into geopolitical battlefields between great powers.

On the other side of the world, economically speaking, lies the so-called Triangle of Death. In the roughly triangle-shaped region between the Casablanca in the northwest, Ulan Bator in the east, and Cape Town in the south, including most of Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian Subcontinent, two-fifths of the world population scratch a living in the dirt, almost cut off from the global economy amidst crumbling infrastructure, crumbling social institutions, and a drought without end. Without adequate water supplies, agriculture in the region has almost totally collapsed. The end of the petroleum age has put an end to the artificial prosperity of the Arab states, the prospects of which ran dry alongside the oil in the 2030s and 2040s. Meanwhile, rising energy costs put an end to the nascent and labour-intensive industries of India and coastal Africa.

Insofar as this region has an economy, it consists of a few coastal cities surviving off the dregs of international trade through unskilled services, light manufacturing, and when that fails just outright piracy. With even the wealthiest nations around the world squeezed by their own internal political and economic crises, the system of international aid built up after the Second World War has largely fallen apart and unmitigated suffering continues in this so-called Triangle of Death.

Between the developing world and the developed world of 2120 lies the moderately-developed regions of Latin America, southern Europe, inland China, and Southeast Asia. Latin America, or at least that part of it south of the rapidly-drying remnants of the Amazon Rainforest, feels relatively little in the way of environmental pressure and has found new opportunities in the development of West Antarctica. Inland China, an arid area to start with that became even drier in the last century, is largely propped up on the wealth and stability of coastal East Asia and the jury is still out on whether the entire region will collapse into the near-anarchic chaos that consumed the Middle East or whether it will survive. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, sluggishly growing economies are slowly being buried under the mounting costs of storm and flood defences.

[Arvenia]

We need a lot of ideas for:

• New socio-economic theories
• Technology
• Politics
• Warfare
• Backstory
• Space resources

[Arvenia]

While I hope this thread would wake up again so that the New Age RP can be open to application, I have decided that I will be playing as the Cascadian Union in that RP. It will be composed of Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, British Columbia, Yukon, Alaska, Aleutian Islands, Northern California (both crimson red and dark yellow on this map), Western Montana (west of the Continental Divide) and Western Nevada (blue on this map).

I will also come up with some concepts later.