How to create a new setting for Space Adventure roleplaying that

File: gypsie danger.jpg (648KB, 1920x2885px) Image search: [Google]

648KB, 1920x2885px

>>48806805
One big, really sexy hook that Star Wars doesn't have.

You can't, mate. Star Wars is pretty deeply embedded into the psyche of most nerds, in popular consciousness as a whole.

But if you insist on trying I'd suggest going back to the source, the old pulp books, comic strips and film serials and try to draw from that without cribbing from Star Wars.

Stuff like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Barsoom. Hell, jump forward into the fifties and sixties and grab some Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock, Barbarella, stuff like that.

And remember that the thing that makes people love Star Wars even more than any other sci-fi thing out there is the fact its a fairy story/fantasy at the end of the day. So look at Lord Dunsany, Tolkien, Robert Howard, Fritz Lieber, the Wizard of Oz.

Draw from a lot of places and try and synchronize it. Lucas' great success was taking pulp sci-fi and marrying it to the conventions of high fantasy. The orphaned farm boy discovering a magic legacy, the ancient wizard that teaches him, the dark knight and the cruel wizard he serves, the princess in the tower. Imagery we can identify with and latch onto as familiar, even if its been covered in sci-fi trappings.

Your efforts are doomed before you've even started, but good luck.

>>48806805
Base it off something other than Star Wars.
Imagine the Aztecs' Flower Wars, but at a stellar scale, then have the combatants be suited in a cross between space fighters and human-scale power suits. Their technology progresses so that they have stored their minds inside black boxes in their skull - and your goal is to recover enemy black boxes to sacrifice their memories into your planet-city-state's governing AI-god.

So yeah, just make up shit instead of defaulting into Star Wars or Star Trek.

File: MCQ_IA_63.jpg (418KB, 1920x897px) Image search: [Google]

418KB, 1920x897px

>>48806857

Like what?

Settings come from something.

Star Wars is so amazing because it's just fantastical while also being on the more "gritty" end of things. And even then it's only so popular because of the movies.

Settings are tools to tell a story. Tell a story and the setting will come naturally.

File: McQuarrie7.jpg (665KB, 1024x519px) Image search: [Google]

665KB, 1024x519px

>>48806858

This feels like it's on the right track

>>48806858

I'd also say to draw from stuff that they didn't draw from. There are plenty of things that the creators of Star Wars never thought about or thought were shit, use those.

File: McQuarrie5.jpg (457KB, 1024x434px) Image search: [Google]

457KB, 1024x434px

>>48806931

>>48806805
Star Wars was devised as story first, setting... not even second, really. More like waaay, waaay fifth or sixth. All the EU shit only came about after Star Wars had cemented itself as a great story first and foremost, and people were emotionally invested enough in its world to want to know more.

This is a problem that seems to infest modern fantasy/space opera writing, especially among amateurs. You don't start by laying down an entire world. You start by writing a good, solid, dramatic story, and build the world to fit.

Like, half the reason Star Wars feels so weird and magical is because so much of the setting is vague and undefined. Details are only ever given when they matter to the story at hand. In the Force Awakens, when BB8 is running away into the desert, there's a moment where a... thing... pokes its head out of the sand and watches him roll away. What that thing is, or why it's there, is never explained. Because it doesn't NEED to be explained. It's just a weird little thing that helps make Star Wars feel all the bigger and stranger.

File: enhanced-buzz-wide-20284-1398184134-22.jpg (165KB, 990x743px)

165KB, 990x743px

>>48806971

It's interesting how simple all the designs are in Star Wars. Despite the greeble, everything is basically a circle, a cube, a triangle. Nothing is too complicated.

The technology works the same way, as do the plot and characters. Get the sword. Rescue the princess. Fight the guy.

It's like how much of the plot and gameplay of Dark Souls is simply "Ring the bell. Light the fire."

>>48806984
" You don't start by laying down an entire world. You start by writing a good, solid, dramatic story, and build the world to fit."

This.

>>48807004
Dark Souls captures the Star Wars magic pretty well. I'd argue Legend of Zelda does too.

I agree with Peter Serafinowicz in saying that Dark Souls is essentially a dark fantasy version of Zelda.

File: Star Wars Stuff.png (1MB, 1600x1000px)

1MB, 1600x1000px

>>48807019
>>48807034
This picture is actually a really good example of what I mean. It's clear that when this painting was produced, no-one had yet decided that lightsabres were solely a Jedi thing, because what the term "Jedi" actually meant was still up in the air. So stormtroopers carrying lightsabres (and regularly engaging in melee combat, given the shield guys in the background) was totally possible.

>>48807004
For all their faults, one thing the prequels got right was maintaining that commitment to simple, readable shapes in the ship and robot designs.

File: This Look.jpg (29KB, 481x326px) Image search: [Google]

29KB, 481x326px

>>48806858
>Barbarella

File: enhanced-buzz-wide-24934-1398184146-46.jpg (105KB, 990x422px) Image search: [Google]

105KB, 990x422px

What if, instead of lightsabers, there were transparent orange chainsaws?

File: 1328931082112.jpg (36KB, 345x281px) Image search: [Google]

36KB, 345x281px

>>48807127

File: enhanced-buzz-wide-6234-1398183920-42.jpg (109KB, 990x470px) Image search: [Google]

109KB, 990x470px

>>48807127

File: enhanced-buzz-wide-19526-1398184012-36.jpg (127KB, 990x430px) Image search: [Google]

127KB, 990x430px

>>48807157

File: Star-Wars-Rebels-Concept-Art-9.jpg (246KB, 2430x1366px)

246KB, 2430x1366px

>>48807113

Here's some concept art by a (non-McQuarrie) guy who gets it

File: star-wars-1313-concept-art-2.jpg (70KB, 810x540px)

70KB, 810x540px

>>48807217

Here's some that really doesn't

File: Star-Wars-Rebels-Concept-Art-10.jpg (228KB, 2430x1360px) Image search: [Google]

228KB, 2430x1360px

>>48807227

Less Neuromancer, more Princess Mononoke in Space

>>48807127
The battle of Hoth would go dramatically one-sided.

>>48806805
>Depth as Star Wars
Someone has to say it.

I find that a good contrast of >>48807227
Mixed occasionally with >>48807300 makes for a good space setting. You have to realize that technology is there, but you still want that mythical storytelling atmosphere.

File: enhanced-buzz-wide-19647-1398184148-41-930x529.jpg (122KB, 930x529px) Image search: [Google]

122KB, 930x529px

If Willow were set in space, would it be better or worse?

File: 084 - bTvCXiW.jpg (188KB, 1280x555px) Image search: [Google]

188KB, 1280x555px

>>48807475
This makes me think of Evangelion and how they threw crosses everywhere.

>>48806805
Dune or The Incal
>/thread

Consider something like eclipse phase's gatecrashers. Almost all of our civilization is contained within the solar system, but there's a jump gate in the Kuiper belt to a solar system "router" which allows travel to hundreds of formerly inhabited worlds, with human smugglers and colonists and so on trying to make their way in the far reaches of space

Don't go full eclipse phase and make it all transhuman. Instead, make customizing an iron man style space suit part of character creation. There aren't really shuttles in this setting, because the suits have enough power to make it to atmosphere on low gravity. The suits are energy shields like in dune, so a lot of personal combat is melee and hacking based.

>>48807363
>implying it's not

>>48806805
Draw on its sources, like some other anons mentioned, but don't forget that one of the strengths of the original series was that it also drew on how the world looked to people at the time. X-wing cockpits are just fighter plane cockpits, the room with the clear plastic maps where they coordinate the battle is just a CIC you'd find on a carrier, Mos Eisley is just some seedy bar in Morocco. It's easy to see everything as Star Wars, to look at Han Solo and think, "that's Han Solo" instead of thinking "that guy's going to steal their money and leave them drifting in space."

File: 1422506813548.png (2MB, 2560x1440px)

2MB, 2560x1440px

>>48806805
Coming from someone that is striking out on just such a task themselves, I can say that it's vitally important to focus on the story but also the cast of characters involved in it.

For me, I wanted to do a Space Opera that doesn't have UNLIMITED zany alien species overwhelming the senses; instead I choose to have a very very select group of extra terrestrial species. To compensate for the lack of diversity, I have a rich history and culture set up for them as well as dividing factions among them.

I mean, personally, if you just keep shitting out fuckery into your universe WITHOUT there being a purpose for it then it just adds too much clutter and detracts from the finer elements.


May I ask you what you're working on? I'd be very interested in hearing about it.

So too if you desire to hear about my setting, I'd be glad to discuss it further.

>depth as Star Wars
A major point of Star Wars was cutting as much depth and exposition as possible without confusing the audience. Everything you conceivably need to know is contained in the original trilogy. In fact I would argue so much of the EU sucked and still sucks because nobody intended there to be explanations for 90% of what you see on screen.

Halo is an example of a series where the outside content was intended from day one (IIRC the first book came out before the first game), and the books really benefit from that. Fall of Reach is just good. Tellingly, once they reached the limit of what Bungie intended to say quality fell off a cliff.

>>48806805
the world in Destiny gave me the same Star Wars feel, for some reason

>>48809641
>nobody intended there to be explanations for 90% of what you see on screen.

Which works for a MOVIE format, but literally is cancer for everything else

>>48809362
Some other dude, but post more details. I'd check out your book.

File: arbalest Z sketch one.png (7MB, 2858x1567px)

7MB, 2858x1567px

>>48809786
Sure, here's the basic setup in as loose a format as possible because I have to leave in a few moments

>Humans have fully explored their native system
>almost all resources have been drained from their homeworlds
>technology is developed to traverse to the next suitable and closest system
>a gateway, linked from their homestar to another is constructed, first of its kind
>the only problem is that initially it is a one-way trip
>the first Pioneer fleet is sent with enough provisions to establish settlement and extract vital resources
>after establishing colonies and ensuring sustainability, construction of the second gateway is implemented
>during this time they make first contact with an alien race across great distance
>initially just communication, but eventually interest develops of meeting one another
>the aliens are slightly more advanced and can traverse to our Pioneer solar system, but it takes still yet a very long time
>fast forward a few hundred years and the construction of the gateway is nearing completion
>the alien fleet is on the outter skirts of the system now
>a diplomatic envoy is launched to meet them, splitting the fleet's power up considerably
>as the envoy is on the way, disaster strikes
>in a freak accident the gate is destroyed, resulting in an inner planet being forced into a collision course with the star
>the major government body was based on that planet
>seemingly out of no where a new unknown and colossal fleet appears on the opposite end of the system from where the diplomatic meeting is to take place
>this new lifeform initially refuses any attempts at contact, but it is clear that they're assembling a fighting force

That's where my story begins. The first contact of an alien race, major loss of government structure and a mysterious threat amasses outside in the dark.

Right now I'm still in heavy world building mode, but I am also experimenting with homebrew system.

With luck, /tg/ /co/ and /tv/ for this

>>48806984

Although I agree to an extent with your sentiment, dune really shits over that rule.