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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8649192" data-attributes="member: 6670763">One of the first decisions I made for the technological parameters of a new setting was that faster than light communication is not possible. Though I don't remember why I picked that.Lightspeed communication means phone connection on the same planet, email to the rest of the star system with response times in hours to a few days, and courier service to other systems. You have to record or write your message, send it to a mail ship whose route goes to your destination, and then it will transmit it to the recipient on arrivial. Military, diplomats, and big businesses probably have their private carriers to deliver express messages as quickly as possible, but public mail can take weeks to arrive.I think my original reasoning for that wasn't about phone calls but about internet access. Each system has its own closed network and you can only access what is somewhere on that network. Or you need to specifically request the files or media from another system to be delivered by courier which is expensive and will take a good while. If you're currently on some frontier world with a population of 50,000, the only thing you might be able to access is the website of local businesses and public institution, and the local media library server. Which probably has mostly just 20 year old movies and games from the local species homeworld. And perhaps weekly or monthly news packages from nearby systems.The campaign structure and setting concept I am currently working with is a remote frontier sector of perhaps a dozen mining planets far away from the centers of civilization. Two of them have populations the size of small countries, but the rest each only have a couple of towns of a few tens of thousands of people. Hyperspace cargo transport is cheap, so the giant industrial mining companies have huge fleets traveling to planets with easily accessibly reaources of very high purity, which they extract for a couple of years at very low cost and very high profit. Once the most profitable resources have been extracted, they pack up their still working equipment and their most productive workers and move on. Left behind are their broken and worn out machines, and all the workers whose contracts were not renewed and private business owners who had been selling services to miners off their shifts. Those who can pack up their own stuff as well and head for greener pastures, leaving behind those who can't afford it or have nowhere else to go.After the mining fleets leave, there's still lots of resources around which can still be sold on the open market. They just take more work to extract which makes them less profitable, so the big mining companies who have the capacities just move the whole operation somewhere else. There's also usually enough abandoned equipment left behind to fix up some machines to working conditions, and so the abandoned miners can continue to make a living as independent mines.Unfortunately, not a lot of traders bother making regular trips to depleted systems to pick up small loads of low-grade resources. And those who do form cartels to avoid competition and to keep prices for imported goods high and for resources low. Independent traders who try trading with the independent mines at better rates are given clear messages to not try it again.Miners often try to improve their situation and break their dependence on the merchant cartels by pooling their resources together and forming cooperatives to produce medical supplies and simple electronics locally or maintain their own cargo ships to sell their resources in other markets. The cartels will try to bribe or intimidate local administrators to obstruct such efforts, or just sabotage equipment or assassinate leaders who are uniting the people.Of the 12 planets I have planned, two are large, prosperous industrial worlds and commercial centers with major cities, one is currently strip mined by a mining fleet, and the remaining nine already depleted planets with small independent mines trying to survive. I think that's a setting with great potential for a group of PCs with a fast ship and flexible morals. The independent mines need people who can smuggle supplies to them without the cartels knowing, defend them against raiders or corporate mercenaries, and find or stop traitors and saboteurs. The merchants need people who can do sabotage and bribe or intimidate officials without it leading back to them. And then there's of course pirates looking for small freighters to rob and slavers looking for workers for their own mines to cause additional trouble. Add to that a mechanic that forces the players to constantly pay for repair and maintance on their ship even when nothing gets damaged, and it should provide a situation for some pretty great campaigns.</blockquote>

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