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I actually am going down this rabbit hole specifically because I came up with what I think is a rational technological justification for mechs. The idea is basically instead of just armored walking tanks (which is what Battletech canon says), mechs have really strong forcefields that shed a lot...

Now this is making me think about the Cold War, and how in an attempt to prevent 'dominos from falling,' the West got involved in a lot of local conflicts to try to keep different countries on their side. And even if resources are ubiquitous, I guess it's still valuable to have access to...

Hence why I think I'd prefer going with my own setting. I just don't buy it being possible to suppress all the scientific knowledge before people figure out what you're up to and stop you. I dunno. Maybe if, like, every planet got bioweaponed or nuked, and civilization entirely collapsed...

I just personally find the whole, "Nobody saved any records on how to build reactors" or whatever to be pretty silly. Disrupting supply chains is a thing, sure. Like, one narrative I read about the 'Bronze Age collapse' is really just that a few sources of raw materials had local disruptions...

This reminds me of when a friend ran a D&D campaign where we all had to play lizardmen. Our city of lizardmen was going to have a big Aztec-esque sporting event against other lizardmen to see if we could go to the championships, where they'd play the forces of the dead to keep the sun from being...

So yeah, there could be lots of worlds that are kinda inconsequential. People colonized them to look for resources, and you might have thousands of millions living there, and no one bothers to invest in major defensive weaponry because no one has a reason to attack. Most places would just do...

I like the Balkanized idea. Even if you do have large interstellar nations, the conflicts would happen in places that are not in alliance with them, sorta like what we have these past few decades in eastern Europe. As for rare resources, a deep dive into the Battletech wiki reveals that someone...

I recently got bit by the nostalgia bug for Battletech. Big robots, no magic or psychic mumbo jumbo. Fun times. But thinking back on the novels I read in the 90s and the video games over the past couple decades, and comparing them to the understanding I have today about how war works, and my...

At what point? In canon he tries to rescue her and gets fed up that she's not the woman he remembered. He thinks she's weak, but he'll obey her instructions. I suppose a PC Kasvarina might try to bring Asrabey along as extra firepower, but you could play up his ego. If she insists on having...

I work at a library, and a coworker and I had a conversation about me possibly running a 1 hour game for some staff who've never played RPGs before, as part of a series of staff members sharing their hobbies. I've run simple systems before, but how simple do you think I could go and still have...

Someone pick 15 for Faolyn. She needs our help!

A lot of folks struggle to understand their sexuality and gender identity in a society that is often hostile to not following cishet binary norms RPGs let you dabble and try out different identities, which probably entices more LGBT folks to keep playing.

If by 'got better' you mean 'got turned into a giant mantis,' maybe.

Don't laugh, everyone, but: ants. Seriously, my favorite little block of text I wrote was the sample encounters and treasure for fighting giant ants. ... Eclipsar Fey dragon Giant Ants Penitent Mantis Runic Guardian Vaknid

There are billions of other humans already. We are already not special.

Well, okay, the original poster asked us to keep this focused on the tech, not the ethics. My bad. I've got concerns, but I should start a separate thread about those. Sooooo, like, what other interesting discussions are to be had about how the technology works? Like, I heard a podcast talk...

I really like what I wrote for this book, and I hope people enjoy fighting them, but dang, I don't get to talk about it for months!

'How it works' includes the social context of its operation. If we were talking about how internal combustion engines work, once we got past the initial mechanics and maybe chemistry, I think it would prove useful to talk about the extraction of fossil fuels, and the designs of different...

Fair enough. Seems like the energy consumption issue is not a real thing to worry about. So I will continue to focus on the exploitative and undemocratic nature of centralizing power through automation without checks and balances to ensure the output is used for the public good, or to share...