New Project! Sc-Fi OSE Setting With a Weird British Aesthetic

After wandering around in a daze post the Wulfwald RPG release, or maybe that should be ‘wondering’ based on this Blog site’s title, I've finally settled on a new project and started working on it in earnest.

One thing I learned during the writing of Wulfwald was that I shouldn’t write all the fun stuff first. It makes writing the rest of the project harder and slower. And I was very slow in finishing Wulfwald.

This time round, I’m determined to approach things a lot more, if not methodically, at least logically and steadily.

To that end, I have started a design doc for the new project. The first part of that is some blurb explaining the general idea and concept plus a mini appendix N of specific influences.

So here it is . . .

SETTING BACKGROUND 

The Shattered Continuum is an OSE Sci-Fi setting and alt-rules supplement embracing a weird British Sci-Fi aesthetic, or Bri-Fi, heavily inspired by . . .

Classic 2000AD characters and strips, including Nemesis the Warlock, Rogue Trooper, ABC Warriors, Strontium Dog, Halo Jones, and DR & Quinch.

Some of the more militaristic and mysterious elements of Gerry Anderson TV shows, such as Captain Scarlet, Terrahawks, Space 1999, and UFO.

Weird and quirky British TV shows like The Tomorrow People, Blake’s 7, Quatermass, and Sapphire & Steel and classics like Day of the Triffids, A Clockwork Orange, A Brave New World. 

And in a category all its own is ZARDOZ!

These influences and more are all combined in what I’m calling this weird British Sci-Fi setting, or Bri-Fi setting if you will.

Imagine a universe where the British Empire never faded. Instead, its terrible power and influence continued to grow until, no longer content with an Earth-spanning empire, it expanded to become a galactic empire—the British Imperial Galacticus, or "the old BIG," as it was colloquially known.

With a pernicious grasp spreading out across all four arms of the Galaxy, the empire brought peace and trade to many new solar systems, planets and peoples. Well, peace and trade after all the colonial violence, asset stripping, conquest, and interstellar gunboat diplomacy was done with.

Yet still, the Empire's hunger for power and more worlds to conquer remained unquenched. 

When it sought to dominate space, time, and interdimensional worlds, it sowed the seeds of its own and the Galaxy's downfall.

No one knows the exact cause of the cataclysm known as “The Shattering,” and there are many wild theories of events that led to the formation of “The Shattered Continuum,” but everyone agrees it was the Royal Navy Galacticus to blame.

Arrogantly combining three different technologies of indeterminate alien, or interdimensional origin during the ill conceived and aptly named Project Icarus.

Secrets and galactic folklore shroud the nature of those technologies, but many believe a combination of the highly experimental and now highly sought-after Continuum Drive, a living bio-computer of sorts, and a bizarre alien fuel created them. 

This fuel not only powers interstellar flight but also acts as a potent psychedelic with even more potent psionic side-effects, nicknamed “Tantric Tea” by those brave enough to dabble.

Whatever caused the shattering, the effects have been devastating for the empire, the galaxy, its people, the continuum and the very fabric of reality itself.

In what is now known as “a rather unfortunate incident.” The test flight of these three experimental technologies aboard the HMIS Thatcher caused reality to shatter into thousands of isolated pocket realities known as “The Spheres.”

Each Sphere effectively became its own mini universe, populated by the ghosts and remnants of the Empire, and haunted by the very real physical threat of alien conquest and a more secretive and mysterious interdimensional threat. Even amidst such hostility, the forces of imperial authority and the rebellious spirit of the Imperial citizens, who value freedom above all, fight for supremacy whilst the rest of the galaxies' unfortunate citizens fight merely to survive.

Though most Spheres remain isolated and separate from each other, there are some means of travel between the isolated realities. Warp Waves, Ley Lines, Wyrmholes, and crumbling Imperial Jump Gates are all dangerously unstable ways to travel between the spheres.

In one last act of reality warping irony, one of the most stable ways to navigate the spheres is by use of a ship fuelled by Tantric Tea, piloted by a living computer and powered by one of the now highly sought after Continuum Drives.

It is one of these very ships that our intrepid party of 1st level adventurers has “acquired” in a backwater sphere in the Shattered Continuum’s almost stable outer rim.

MASTER LIST OF BRI-FI INFLUENCES

Anything on the list with an asterisk “*” is a primary influence. 

2000AD Comics

Robo-Hunter

The A.B.C. Warriors*

Ro-Busters

Strontium Dog*

Mind Wars

The Mean Arena

Nemesis The Warlock*

Rogue Trooper*

Ace Trucking Co*

DR & Quinch*

The Ballad of Halo Jones*

Bad Company

British Sci-Fi TV Shows

Gerry Anderson Shows

Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons*

Terrahawks*

Space 1999

UFO

Kids British Children’s Sci-Fi Shows

The Tomorrow People (70’s uk show only)

The Tripods

Adult(ish) British Sci-Fi TV Shows

Quatermass

Blake’s 7*

Outcasts

Galactic

Day of The Triffids

War of the Worlds (BBC 2019 adaptation and the Fox Networks StudioCanal 2019-2022 show).

Sapphire & Steel

Invasion Earth

Cold Lazarus

British Sci-Fi Movies

Attack the Block

A Clockwork Orange*

2001: A Space Odyssey

1984

Lifeforce

Fahrenheit 451 

Logan’s Run*

Zardoz*

 

And John Boorman’s Excalibur* (1981) but in Space, British Imperial Space!

Novels and Literature

1984

The Day of the Triffids

War of the Worlds

A Clockwork Orange

Brave New World

Other

Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds album and musical