Arcadia: Home Away from Home [ EDIT ]

Arcadia: Home Away From Home

The Premise
In the year 2090, Earth is a planet on the brink. Wracked by war, disease, poverty, social upheaval and runaway climate change, the future of humanity seems, for perhaps the first time, truly in doubt. Several O'Neill cylinder colonies spin at the planet's L1 and L2 Lagrange points, a small but permanent Martian outpost has recently been founded, and the now twenty year old moon base on Luna has been transformed from a simple colony into significant shipyards, manufacturing and processing facilities. The base is a staging ground for the launch of the United Nations Space Ship Esperar. A key component of the most ambitious space project in history, the Esperar will carry over a hundred thousand colonists out of the solar system, and far beyond. Nearly 40 light years away, the Earth-like planet Arcadia orbits the G-class star at the center of the TRAPPIST-1 star system. All analysis suggests the world is a garden paradise, teeming with primitive life and possessing an atmosphere humans can breathe.

Apply Within
The colonist selection process is about to begin. For those interested, please fill out the form below and reply in this recruitment thread.

Name:
Background / Specialty:

You've decided to leave Earth.
Why? Who or what are you running from, or running towards?
Conversely, who or what will you regret leaving behind?

More About the Game
Concept: A hard science fiction exploration and survival game on a distant world filled with wonder and horror. Heavy on faction and interpersonal play. Since PCs will be grounded, realistic characters and not larger-than-life heroes, character death is a possibility. Step carefully.

Aim: To have fun with everyone playing a well-realized and very socially-focused sci-fi game. I intend to lean into having the players drive decisions and big chunks of the action. The planet will be a sandbox to explore, though it will not be passive. We'll target playing for a year and evaluate continuing, or not, at that point or some other good break in the action.

Tone: Realistic and serious with moments of levity, joy, fright, revulsion, and camaraderie. Dark and gritty without being grim. Depending on how things go, significant strangeness or otherness might well creep in.

Subject Matter: Mature -- this will be hard R. Violence, gore, body horror, dangerous action, vengeance, anger, romance, sex. We'll use lines and veils to dial in further for folks' comfort, but be aware the game is meant to be visceral.

Touchstones: 2001, Alien, Aliens, Annihilation, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, Children of Men, Ex Machina, Gattaca, Gravity, Her, Interstellar, Moon, Prometheus, Solaris, The Martian, Sunshine.

System: Offworlders (modified, no need to buy the game -- I'll provide what's needed for full character generation. It's an excellent indie space game, though...)

Expected Posting Rate: Daily

Safety Tools: X-Card, Lines and Veils

Feedback Process: Stars & Wishes

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In terms of the skills and specializations needed, the sky is the limit. Scientists, administrators, security specialists, shipmates, doctors, farmers, colonists, mechanics, pilots, xenobiologists, surveyors, leaders, councilors, law enforcement agents, medical support staff, engineers, operators, laborers, system specialists, roboticists, entertainers -- and many more. Pitch any and all ideas and we can talk about them.

I'll be selecting 4-8 folks to get started, and expect to recruit and add people as the game goes on, injecting new blood (there are different ways I plan to do this, in-game) and replacing folks we might lose over time.

Note that this game is explicitly friendly to LGBT and any other minorities or marginalized groups.