[gurps] Hello?

[Jon Lang]

Evyn MacDude wrote:
>  So, what is everyone playing?

I'm helping set up a Rifts game that's being purged of its Palladium
game mechanics in favor of something more closely resembling GURPS.

I'm also working on a GURPS Space "kitchen sink" setting idea for
GURPS 4e, which is why I drooled at the mention of a GURPSified
version of 2300AD.  I've got the tech squared away pretty solidly, but
I'm having a brain freeze when it comes to the cultural setup.

The tech is arranged so that the setting is divided into two regions:
a Core that's linked by a web of jumpgates and where the only
superscience that works are the jumpgates, and a Frontier that exists
outside of the jumpgate web where basic industry is comparatively
lacking, but where superscience works just fine.  Nutshell: the Core
is TL11 (Hard Science) and high population, while the Frontier is TL9
(Emergent Superscience, up to TL11^), and low population.  With a
handful of exceptions on each side, such as the jumpgate web.

There are aliens in the setting, with each starfaring alien race
following a similar Core/Frontier dynamic.  However, alien Cores tend
to be distant places, with a journey to them being akin to Marco
Polo's journey to China.  For the most part, human/alien relations
take place out on the Frontier between the respective Cores.
Likewise, an alien visiting the human Core is a novelty: not unheard
of, but rare enough that most people have only heard rumors of it
happening.

That's what I've got; like I said, where I'm stuck is in coming up
with the various cultures.  I want the Core to host at least one of
each general society (Anarchy, Alliance, Federation, Empire, and
Corporate State), with each having a unique flavor of its own (e.g.,
the Successor States of the BattleTech setting) and with both good
points (so that the PCs can be loyal subjects without being rubes or
creeps) and bad points (so that the PCs can be opposing the society
without being rubes or creeps).  I want at least some of the Core
societies to extend out into the Frontier, but they needn't be the
[i]only[/i] human societies out on the Frontier.

Beyond that, I got nuttin.

-- 
Jonathan "Dataweaver" Lang