Since my timezones makes it hard for me to make the think tanks, here’s my few pence worth on some of the ideas we presented.
Star Doors: I’m very much picturing these are magi-tech stones circles which you stand in the middle of. You could make use of local alignments of moons. A planet like Jupiter or Saturn that has lots of moons would be a very good hub locations as all the moon alignments let you jump easily about the solar system. You could have a large base on one of the moons. Conversely, getting to a planet that doesn’t have moons is hard, so Venus and Mercury are rarely visited. But given how awful a place they both are, why would want to go?
The Eye of God: Based off of Mark’s idea of the day of the eye being a day that the culture you’re in makes all its big decisions, the ages of the world are set by the arrival of the eye and are given names. I got the impression that this was something that happened quite often. For a very long term game, you could have it only occur once every 25 years or so. By playing through several days of the eye, you could set up a generational game.
The Eclipse: It wouldn’t just be the heroes running around trying to do the will of the gods before the end of times. Everyone would. So you’d end up with people fighting each other for the chance to do the deeds praised by the god in question. Maybe even people deliberately getting into trouble for money so that others could gain karma by rescuing them.
Futures Inc: I like the idea of this incredible power and achievement being used for such banal reasons. With competition, it’s not a stretch to imagine planets and stars being pulled apart by competing corps. And for reference, there’s a wikipedia article on moving stars – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine
My additional idea is very similar to Pat’s, but rather than straight up astrology, it a much more powerful source of magic and destiny.
Stellar Tractors
The alignment of stars is serious business, seriously profitable business. In a universe of magic, the alignment of the stars do really affect a person’s abilities and potential. Once humanity learnt to travel the stars, it wasn’t long before they started to seek out worlds with favourable positions so that the heavens would shine well on any child born there. It was inevitable that, as technology advanced, humanity would reach new hieghts in shaping its own destiny.
The crew of the Stellar Tractor Tarquin’s Might are one of a dozen of starships sent out into to adjust the location of a set of stars into the pattern desired by their employer. The idea is that the new constellation will bring prosperity and power to a failing colony world. That’s the idea at least. Not only are there those who oppose such stellar tinkering, who’s to say that everyone involved is telling the truth and that the new constellation will perform as advertised?
Photo by A Brendan (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)