MoonHunter

Having been a Fringeworthy GM, and tangentially worked for Tri-Tac, I can tell you it is a great setting. (We will stick to the setting here) If you are going to run a Fringeworthy game, remember that it should feel a lot like a Star Trek Original Series episode. The idea was that they would travel to a world, interact with it in a moment of crisis, and leave... much like a Star Trek episode. There was also the optimism and positive view of things for the most part that was present in the fringe. Now such upbeat ideas are not completely in vogue, but now you know where the original designer was going with it. The advantage of the setting is the innate background explaining (to a degree) why we have the Pathways, who build them and why. There was a lot of material that was implied in the books (especially the later edition). The advantage of the implied concept is that you could do what you wanted as there was no "cannon" to follow. This worked for me really well. All my section of the Fringes were all Earth Alternate world and the occasional pocket stops. Other people had their "earth platform" go to a straight alien world. What ever you like to generate is what you should do. Remember, you need a game world/ location every week or two in a Fringeworthy game. It behooves you to have a back stock of worlds before you start. Also remember that you can send them back to worlds they liked, as they are not freebooters but part of a bigger organization. These repeat visits work well for extending the shelf life of your worlds portfolio. Having Mellor as an implacable opponent throughout the pathways gives you a lot of options, especially since you could just have "mutant mellor" do all sorts of things. Most of the antagonists are single world affairs. Having a big opponent that conflicts with you on the pathways really changes the complexion of the game setting. Just some thoughts..... Oh Long, long ago, there was supposed to be a list of possible worlds published. There is supposedly a child of that list still wandering around that was compiled on a Fringeworthy mailing list. I have yet to see it. Still you could lift worlds from multiple sources.

I love space arks. By the time you have the technology to make one of these huge generational crafts, you don't need to make them. Once you have the basics of making a space craft a hundred miles across (figuring biomes of 30 to 50 miles) and the ability to maintain an enviroment properly (which is not easy as Biosphere 2 has proven), you can build stations/ships that stay near the star or colonize any planet in the system. There will be no population issues, as various ships will absorb that. There will be no materials issues, because to make something this big you can actually make/modify matter. These ships holding your population will float and splinter culturally... a bit. Eventually those will take very long orbits (something in the oort might show up every couple of hundred years), so being a bit alien by the time to return. The reason to build an Ark are political and survival insurance. The political reasoning has to do with taking your marbles and leaving. For some reason the group needs to leave the Sol Space and find their own destiny, be in command of their own life, and not be controlled by others. (So a group that does not like the social trends of transhumanism might pack it up and leave). These people would take a ship and go... hoping that their children might find an star with a jewel planet to call their own. Until then, they will live on the ship. Survival is just that. Spreading your eggs into more than one baskets. So while you will have long orbit ships holding huge populations, they are still tied to Sol... so if something happens to the Sun or our system, they would be effected as well. Just sending them into the deep black would be tough, but ensures survival of the Humanity splinter of the moment. I have given this a lot of thought and over 200 posts worth of action. http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?424444-Setting-riff-Metamophasis-Alpha-The-Argon MoonHunter does love The Argon/ Agean. Used to hate it, but now I can look at it and go "Cool".