Tales of New Gaia, a PBtA Hack in progress

Hey folks. I'm currently fleshing out the setting and backstory for a PBtA Hack, with the hopes of self-publishing it at some point.

It's called Tales of New Gaia, although the title may change. The basic idea of the game is that the characters are marooned on New Gaia, the only semi-habitable planet discovered by mankind. A series of unfortunate events back on Earth (still to be written, or maybe left up to the players) has left the relatively small population of New Gaia stranded with no way to get back to Earth.

The characters will be second or third generation pioneers and homesteaders who have come to New Gaia to start a new life. There are settlements that are maybe 50 to 100 years old at this point, some infrastructure, but mostly untamed wilderness. It would be much like the American frontier during the 19th century, except in a sci-fi setting.

Since there is no apocalyptic event, hence no Weird, I'm trying to figure out what might be a good replacement to add some mystery to the setting. I'm not keen on adding intelligent indigenous species to the mix. Maybe some sort of mutation caused by an unknown factor in New Gaia's environment.

Anyway, I'm really in the "writing down random notes" phase of this. I keep wanting to diving into making playbooks, but I feel like establishing the setting, even if it's not super detailed, should be my focus now.

I'll try and update with regularity. Any and all suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

-John

Sounds good: I'd strongly recommend writing at least one playbook early on in the process, as it's always helped me to focus on what the players and characters do in the game, which you will find feeds back into the setting.

Say for example you have an idea for a gunslinger or relic hunter playbook: by writing that up, you'll be surprised what it evokes about your concept of the setting and helps you to build upon your idea, even suggesting essential tweaks to the rules that will shape the game into what you want it to be.

I once developed a "fan fiction RPG" based on Alpha Centauri, the computer game.  The players had landed in a United Nations Unity Pod, and developed their first city by taking apart the pod.  This was UN Headquarters.  Later, three other colonies were made nearby -- mostly lower population agricultural societies.  Each one had different local laws, but they all answered to UN Headquarters.  Roads were made from each colony, to each colony. 

Sensor towers were erected to keep an eye on the colonies and surrounding territories, but there's not enough sensor towers for the outlying regions.  The three outer colonies can't even keep the power on all the time, and the competition for limited resources granted by UN Headquarters means a great deal of political strife and rivalry.  The roads are dangerous and so are frequently patrolled by UN Peacekeepers.  There's plenty of land to grow food, but farming is one of the most dangerous occupations because it means you're pretty much on your own and there's so many health risks that local media outlets have started to report corruption among food inspectors, doctors, and other government officials.

Despite all these human problems, the PCs spent most of their time away from the colony.  They were UN Rangers, and their task was to explore the nearby terrain and gather information, build maps, and report back about dangers or resources that they found.  Over the course of their travels, they discovered fungal blooms, ways to harness the fungus for medicinal purposes, giant fungal towers... and the omnipresent threat of Mindworm Boils.  Their ultimate goal was to find crashed debris from the original Unity starship, and recover any tech or data they found. 

In one adventure, they found a pod that had a manifest of three exploration vehicles, and thought they had hit the motherload only to discover it had been opened and looted.  This is when they realized their escape pod wasn't the only one that escape the crashing starship and they set out to find other signs of human survival.  This eventually led them into conflict with a group of religious fanatics calling themselves the Believers, and the campaign started to become more political and military oriented after that.

I've looked for my notes on that setting, as I had some details on politics, economy, law, technology, etc, but I can't find it right now.  If I find it, I'll post it, and you can use whatever you like.