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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eltab" data-source="post: 7227611" data-attributes="member: 6803337">You will find Larry Niven's Known Space universe helpful.1) The Cure For Cancer.  After an R&D effort modelled on the Manhattan Project and Project Apollo.1) Jihadi-ism eliminated from Islam.  This process is philosophical and social as well as military.1) Unexpected (positive) side-effects to the above provide an on-ramp to pull the remaining nations that are mired in the Third World into Developing World status.   This does not 'eliminate poverty' but makes it obvious that staying that way means it's being done on purpose.1) Mankind returns to the Moon and builds permanent infrastructure.  Mines for materials that can be used in space program (because 1/6 the gravity is cheaper to haul stuff up out of).  Radio telescope at point farthest away from Earth to insulate against civilization's radio noise.  Basic science experiments that don't work in an atmosphere.  International Historic Park where Neil Armstrong left that footprint.1) Satellites at Lunar Trojan points turn into "cell phone towers" and a chance to experiment with Dyson spheres, XL construction in 0-gravity, &c.1) Industrial facilities built in Earth orbit, later on Moon.1) Research into Global Warming provides scientific principles for Weather Control (or at least Influence) capabilities.1) Nearly universal Internet access, physically speaking.  There is no such thing as an intellectual backwater.1.95) Who woulda thunk? - The physical principles needed to create a working controllable fusion reaction can be discovered only after experiments performed in zero-gravity.2) Fusion ramjet - interstellar motor that can carry a bus-full of Voyager space probes to nearby stars.  With an AI to help pick targets for the probes, scan an entire solar system's worth of planets / moons, then radio results back to Earth.2) Fusion power plant can use gas giant atmospheres as fuel, therefore Jupiter's moons become potential colony worlds.2) Inevitably, somebody figures out that letting a fusion plant run wild creates a VERY BIG bang.  Somebody tries it - maybe as a war-stopper, maybe as a terror political statement.  (I would place this event on an interplanetary colony, not on Earth.)2.95) Lunar radio telescope discovers something about the universe that enables another technological leap - warp drive? - that matures later.</blockquote>

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