>>21681224
Edit: Scratch "half a millennium", replace with 100,000 years.

So as the Sphere's less properly connected zones, which can stretch for millions of kilometers, collapse into barbarism or anarchy, with matter generators also able to easily produce weapons- overpowering boredom and the ease of acquiring essentials leads to violence and chaos for the hell of it, like in Judge Dredd. These zones turn into violent slums where constant gang warfare prevents the rise of any real authority. Soon, in some areas the gangs begin to stratify into militias, which protect and defend neighborhoods anywhere from a single town of a few hundred in a small compartment to thousands of kilometers of territory and billions, or even trillions, of people.

The lack of maintenance also ultimately causes some systems to run down; waste channels from some zones filter into others, generators break and are never fixed, and everything becomes a mess as trash piles up. Soon many people are sick of living in shit and decide to strike out as explorers, seeking some kind of energy in their lives within the slowly decaying areas of a giant dyson sphere. You are one of these explorers; aims could be anywhere from trying to make it to centrally-controlled zones, just seeking exploration and new cultures as human creativity has reached absurd heights out of boredom, or for the glory and machismo of it, or just to find something to kill or loot.

Ancient technology, anything that works, or parts to a new matter generator are all valuable items. The scrap of decayed cities are reforged into anything from swords to guns. Working power is rare and the most powerful slum-cities have access to working generators, and guard them jealously with legions of militia and robots.

All the while, the robots that built the Sphere are expanding it layer by layer; areas unconnected to the civilized zones are often colonized and become parts of the slums.

It's a reasonable setting if you need infinite sci-fi dungeons.

OP


I love you. This concept is actually absolutely amazing. I think I may steal it for some project of mine.

Reminds me of the superstructure of Blame!

Basic character sheet, part 1:

Let's use SPECIAL.

Strength: How big you are. This affects everything from your item carrying capacity to your damage resistance to your melee damage.

Perception: Decides weapon accuracy, item discovery, tech points (which are your character's ability figure out how to use advanced equipment, like lasers, or uncovering old tech)

Endurance: Your health and immunity to disease; also gives partially to Willpower, which decides how courageous one is, one's ability to try the near-impossible, jump chasms, etc.

Charisma: Self-explanatory; one's power to negotiate, convince others to work with you, swindle, entrance, and so on. Also gives to Willpower; positive self-image, you know.

Intelligence: Again, self-explanatory. You're clever, you can figure out how to use old tech, and gives a little to willpower.

Agility: Also self-explanatory. You can jump higher, move faster and dodge easier. Gives to Willpower.

Luck: The likelihood that positive events will befall your character. Could be discovering a rare item an unknowing man is about to throw away, could be an enemy's weapon jamming in a firefight, so on.

I like it and I might eventually steal it.

If I may offer a suggestion?

Exploring known areas or relatively safe zones (Bandits, highway men, invading armies, etc) allow for nice low level or high adventure feels. Outer layers (IE: built the most recently) of the sphere are high aristrocratic-feeling.

You start finding neater things as you get firther inwards. Ancient technology, weapons that are so complicated that they appear to be one solid piece of nothing more than plastic, but are twice as durable as steel and weigh as much as aluminum. Humans like you, who will protect their hoards of treasure with extreme prejudice. Cults worshipping the sphere as a god. Etc.

Then you travel deep. Perhaps closer to the inner workings of the sphere. Perhaps too close for the sphere's rudimentary AI's liking. Maybe you find and open a sealed section of the sphere, where something vital to producing plant life went horribly off course. Cue cthulu-esque levels of "OH GOD THE WALLS HAVE EYES OF FLESH AND JUST ATE JIM"

>>21681453
Basic character sheet, part 2:

Willpower: One's willingness to do insane things. It's the difference between jumping that chasm or staying on the other side, to rescue that kid from a burning spire, to stare down that mutant sticking his mug in your face and win, to stay calm and defuse that bomb threatening that town. It is decided by your SPECIAL result.

There are 5 points standard per trait of SPECIAL, with an extra 5 available for distribution. You can subtract from one and add even more to another if you so please.

Willpower is generated by this breakdown.

S: 1 Willpower per point
E: 4 Willpower per point
C: 2 Willpower per point
I: 1 Willpower per point
A: 3 Willpower per point
L: 2 Willpower per point

I'll describe the levels of Will next post.

>>21681505
I like the setting, I don't like this. I feel this should be left to the player's interpretation of the character, for good or ill.

>>21681500
Makes sense, though assume there's sort of a "highway" connecting the outer shell to the most streamlined zones.

Willpower:
Your character needs high Willpower if you want to be the daring badass of your party

Pansy: 55 and lower. A mouse could scare you. Best you hang back and let the brave guys go; but you can also specialize in certain traits, such as being the tech-savant or being the luckiest with finding loot.
Wuss: 56-64. You'll think twice about a direct assault. Best suited for stealthier, more cautious characters.
Standard: 65-75. You're willing to make a leap of faith, but those twenty guns pointed at you is still intimidating.
Courageous: 75-85. You're braver than you look, and perhaps a little stupider, too. You're not one to back down from a challenge.
Daredevil: 85-90: You'll headbutt a rabid mutant as soon as you chuck that bomb out the window. You have guts.
Reckless: 91+. You'll do just about anything, including stuff you'll probably be killed doing.

>>21681500

Oh god, I can imagine it now.

>Insane cult guarding unknown passage
>Brutally kill all who come remotely close, hidden agents everywhere, etc
>PCs do their thing, take key(card?) from cult leader
>open gate, cult leader all "You know not what you have done
>Commence rolling for SAN loss

>>21681622

Im not diggin the whole aspect of something normally completely free and up to the player making the PC being a stat. Tech savvy PCs shouldn't have to be timid as mice.

File: 1353483118195.jpg-(151 KB, 600x600, 1352848669820.jpg)

Sweet Jesus OP, this is just what I needed.

>>21681566
I don't know, I'm hardly a genius at generating RPG stats. I'm better with settings. Other suggestions would be welcome.

Meanwhile, skills.
You have an average of ten points per skill, with twenty available between each to add. Again, you can subtract some.

Tech: How good you are with arcane technology. This includes weapons, generator equipment, and so on.
Guns: Your skill with good old fashioned lead, which, by the way, is far simpler to make than lasers in the forgotten zones.
Scrap: You can make anything, from just about anything. Basically how efficient you are when looting things.
Medicine: Your skill with healing, both yourself and others.
Sneak: Your stealthiness. How quiet you are, and so on.
Melee: How precisely and how hard you can hit. Strength and Agility both have an effect on this.
Leadership: Your ability to plan, to coordinate, to bring others to your side. High leadership makes you a natural commander.
Rhetoric: Heavily affected by Charisma. Your skill with speaking. Low rhetoric makes you a stuttering idiot, high makes you a better liar than a merchant.
Mercantile: Your commercial aptitude. You know the value of things- and can convince others differently, for your benefit.

Welcome to BLAME!

>>21681669

I mean, for CoC sanity makes sense, theres things that the PCs have to deal with that just fuck up their brains. Finding a cube that counts down from 8 on all faces, mindfuck when realizing that you saw 8 different nimbers on a 6 sided cube and whatnot. It's essentially a second health bar.

"Bravery", as your stat basically is, is just a bad stat idea in my opinion.

I'm not comfortable with such Large numbers for Stats. Probably because of how I add modifiers mentally.

>>21681721
Skills*

>>21681714
This. Your setting is cool op, but it's simply BLAME!. BLAME! is cool. But BLAME! is not new.

>>21681705

I actually kinda like the subtracting points idea. Negative points in scrap means you try to fix a jammed gun, roll a nat 1, roll negative overall, and end up turning it into a toaster. That you can never take apart again and always burns your toast.

Now back from me sucking at stat-generation, some more settings and scenarios.

Rumors exist in the most decayed zones where waste pipes once broke off and spilled their contents in, mutated fungi brought aboard ships by accident and never quite eradicated have slowly mutated. Mushrooms grow into high trees with strong stalks; mold grows little feelers like grass. The most degenerate of people who are totally shut off from the outside live in total destitution, hewing log-homes from stalks and clothing from either the mold or human leather, if they are rather unpleasant. Animals cultivated as luxury foods mutate as well into night-creatures, glowing in the darkness, feasting on the dead or on each other.

Some places, there are manic cults where the sphere is worshipped as like a cradle; there is no outside. People who say otherwise are liars, belittling and besmirching the name of the Mother Sphere. Matter generators are her gift to mankind, giving light and luxuries. Their missionaries travel between the sectors, speaking eloquently of the love the Mother Sphere has for the children living in her bosom. Those who don't listen are heretics. Consequently, they must be burned. Or flayed, as cult practices may vary.

Warlords can sometime rise to rule entire regions of the slums, so enflamed with hatred of the anarchy within that they create a dictatorial state, enforcing the most insane laws dictating isolation and the destruction of outsiders who come close. Oftentimes they jealously hoard rare loot, and when attacked, may yet be generous enough to give some to their savior, if only as a means to make him go away.

>>21681740
I've never read BLAME!, but from what I know of it, there's a central authority affecting things. This is anarchy, billions lost inside a dyson sphere, etc.

>>21681224
>>21681334
you just described the manga Blame!
almost down to the last detail

>>21681836

You got it wrong, there USED to be a central authority, but it's long since fallen into disrepair and since humanity has mutated and lost the genes necessary to interact with the central core AI, it can't affect the world in any meaningful way since it requires user commands to enforce any changes.

Also, RPG system for BLAME here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/59333529/BLAM-RPG-v0-6

Maybe you'll find it useful.

>>21681855
I've read Blame. This isn't Blame. He's bringing up so much new shit anyways, it's a perfectly valid addition to the Dyson Sphere genre. You don't know what you're talking about.

In short, OP, you go guy (or girl).

>>21681906
Guy.

Also, all that cyborg crap, it's still basically humans.

>>21681906

Well, it's BLAME and Biomega in one, maybe with a bit of Beneath a Steel Sky. Personally, I don't mind having another setting like this, 8/10 would play in.

Sometimes the processes intended to refine generated metal fail, leaving vast caverns of rock within the Sphere. Many of the less advanced societies in the isolated zones can mine these for valuable resources. In addition to this, biological waste, over time, secretes into a type of peat which can be burned for fuel or light. Less advanced, resource-poor civilizations will kill for access to fuel of any kind to keep their people warm.

On occasion, vast caverns meant for mass transport are left wide open, their passways allowed to flood. These caverns are sometimes used as like rivers; rickety boats made from scrap metal or stalkwood ply their trades, carrying goods between settlements or raiding them. Fish kept as aquarium pets often break loose and flood into these rivers, creating a new source of food. Now on rare occasions, the various Sphere maintenance protocols can seal rivers off, flooding towns and all in it with water, or at the least ending contact between regions. Many times, stalk-forests and biological growth exists here most of all.

The Red Meat is a common term for any cannibal group; and make no mistake, they are common, often as much so as raiders, in the most dangerous areas. Traveling to isolated settlements, these quivering, mad maniacs will loot towns and capture their populations as food. A Red Meat prison block is often thought of as the worst place in existence; terror, filth and death a constant companion to those trapped within. Frightened or vengeful settlements will pay eagerly to get adventurers to wipe out these groups wherever found.

What you just descibed sounds a lot like a less grimdark version of Blame!. You know, if the superstructure was actually inhabated to a significant degree.

>Captcha: Lord isitunam

But I don't understand, why don't the robutts come and fix the generators n shit? Is it because they only expand or what?

>>21682046
The AI's controlling them aren't functioning perfectly it seems.

>>21682003
Caverns of crystals are not unknown, especially where the most totally dangerous sectors have had their cooling systems and pressure regulators fail. Either in extreme cold or volcanic heat, minerals and other materials, as well as scrap, biological matter and everything else transform into vast, open spaces filled with crystals that are easily mined and refined. Venturing in here demands a lot of technical intelligence and preparation; not to mention equipment.

Mutants are far from unknown, especially where anarchy reigns. Mutants can range from being apathetic, slow vegetarians to huge, brutal cannibals, and be as stupid or as smart as any human and more. The darkest zones produce men with pale, almost transparent skin, huge black eyes and an impressive, wiry strength combined with a sharp sense of smell and hearing. Many are blind and navigate by echolocation at frequencies above human hearing. Some, not so- and use it as a weapon against interlopers.

The advanced cities are cruel towards the poorer ones, often keeping them that way out of a sense of novelty looking upon it. The abundance of what their generators can give them give them an enormous military advantage, though hatred of outsiders tends to mean that murderers will be hunted down like dogs. Many times, the less advanced have used this to their advantage, killing isolated patrols and wearing down defenders until a rapid assault and storm of a city's walls can lead to the fall of an empire- and, oftentimes, the destruction of its endlessly valuable technology.

>>21681836
>Has never read Blame!

Go read it. Blame! is practically scifi-/tg/ required reading, and I can tell you it's literally the best comic/magna/graphic novel I have ever read besides.

>>21682054
In many areas they would, though. It's the places where the structures they've built have become decayed and isolated, in part due to distance, structural failure and just plain isolation have made it incredibly rare, if not impossible, for a maintenance robot to come by and fix things.
Also the robots responsible for building the sphere are effing huge, like several kilometers long. Imagine a spider weaving a web, with little gaps between the silk. That's sort of what it's like.

>>21682111
Also they're intended solely to build, not to maintain. The maintenance bots did not function quite as planned, however.

>>21682109
It looks intredasting. I might have to try it.

I see the vague similarity of concept, though the actual setting is different.

>>21682111
>>21682139
Sounds a bit like a cop out, but meh, okay

>>21682259
Well let me explain it a little better.

The robots intended to build the Sphere are giant and are meant for actually [i]building[/i] the sphere rather than keeping it maintained. They are programmed to construct it fractally, because the designers wanted the Sphere to have unique elements rather than be repetetive. But there's always that one fucking area in a randomly-generated landscape where it's shut off or inaccessible, and you can't get at what's inside. That's what's going on here. The material used for the Sphere hull is solid, as otherwise a malfunction of a shape-changing material could cause a catastrophic air-leak.

>>21682046
Mutations. Not only information stored in flesh mutates, if copied enough times all information is bound to change.
In a structure so massive and old machines may start acting strange. Not to mention that, say, quantum computers are more prone to failure than our current tech. The same way that a stone tablet can store information for ages and a DVD will last at best 50 years.

>>21682298
>fractals are not repetitive
You've got it backwards. Fractals are defined as repetitive. That's why they're to common in nature, for example: fractals are simple, space-filling, uncomplicated shapes.

>>21681453
>S.P.E.C.I.A.L
I already love you OP, SPECIAL is my favorite system (although I haven't had much experience to make a good judgement other than playing a bit of pathfinder and D&D).

so OP just for clarification this should be the tl;dr backstory
Humans make dyson sphere as a new earth.
It's self contained and can create all the necessities for life such as water and food.
Because this this is so massive humans are unable to care for it and parts of it fall into decay
Anarchy rises since it is too big too properly contain and it becomes a world without law
And then your character becomes an explorer into the Dyson Sphere to find hidden artifacts or is there some other reason for him to go deeper other than just exploring?

Could make for some nice exploring and interesting places to look into, maybe something like mutations occurred since parts have fallen into decay for so long they've been forgotten.

>>21682163
Op if you're still here and still interested, here's a good place to read Blame!.
>http://www.thespectrum.net/manga_scans/?preview=manga_Blame

While your setting shares the same concept of humanity being lost in an infinity, uncaring, mechanical superstructure if their own making, Blame!'s setting is far more bleak than what you described. Your setting is merely post-apocalypicesque, while Blame! sits firmly in the existential horror territory. In all honestly, I like Blame!'s setting more, but yours is far, FAR better suited for a RPG.

>>21686883
Already found a place. Not bad, one of the few mangas I like.

I'm still here, by the way. Slept, but had this tabbed. I'm willing to keep on making potential scenarios, someone can work out how the skills work. I think we've decided SPECIAL is good.
But what do we call this? Just "the Sphere"?

>>21685427
A little editing.

>Humans find a giant star that endlessly produces energy, make a dyson sphere because fuck yeah infinite power
>It is self contained and can create all the necessities for life such as water and food
>Because it's so massive, some areas become isolated or forgotten and maintenance runs down
>Anarchy in these areas rises as order breaks down, everything turns to shit
>Your character is an explorer, looking for tech to help his home, just get away, explore for the hell of it, or try to find the civilization that built the Sphere

And I already described some mutants in my posts in the thread.

>>21686883
Not OP, but thanks for the link

>SEPTIMUS

>>21687169
This has nothing to do with that. The Sphere was actually built by humans.

Tried to archive the thread since this setting seems interesting, but I can't seem to do it. Could someone else accomplish archiving?

>>21687577
OP here, I think I got it.
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/21681224/

>OP brings up an old sci-fi idea

>everyone starts talking about how it's copied from some manga barely a decade old because that's where they get all their sci-fi

every time

OP shall return.