Points of Light in Points of Light in P...
Say there's a Solar System filled with the now insane defensive asteroid AIs that are engaged in paranoid Cold War with each other. However this is better than the surrounding star systems where biological space-mechs (think Spelljammer's Living Weapons) have created a dangerous wilderness suggestive of the "Chaos" that lurks beyond the borders of "Law" in OSR settings.
In the Solar System would be worlds that have their own bits of civilization, maybe the outer planets are doing all right but the inner-space between the Sun and the Asteroid Belt has been pillaged and harvested too many times by the agents of the varied asteroid AIs. For example you have continent-sized terraformed fields doing nothing but producing bio-mech shock troops for the Cold War or maybe for some older, more sane but long forgotten conflict. Other worlds might be left to wild robot species that have their own predator/prey cycles ala Horizon: Zero Dawn. (Or maybe it's more like Nier: Automata, or possibly the Matrix save the robots use human fields for Psionic Gifts they can apparently never possess).
Yet even on those worlds there might be some civilizations, or maybe it's the Matrix robots eeking it out on a ruined world surrounded by weaponized biology. Maybe an area that's been cleared out and protected from the more serious threat of, say, Gray Goo, but still holding a bunch of potential village devouring threats.
So how did it all get to be this way again?
Looked through two White Star supplements, Stark Space and Have Death Ray, Will Travel. The former takes White Star in the direction of Cyberpunk in Space, the latter a more 1950's Scifi direction. Point have their place in a Points of Light setting, given different civilizations will likely develop along different lines depending on accidents of environment like what high tech or psychic "magic" from a previous age is lying around in the surrounding ruins. ("Surrounding" at this scale might mean on the closest moon.)
For example Iain Banks had a great article about the Culture that suggests advance AI could give us a successful planned economy. So if there was a local AI that into economic planning - perhaps as the "softer" part of the Asteroid Cold War - it might make sure there are no corporate ruled dystopias. The epic heroes in the 50s science fiction with lots of fantasy trappings idea from HDR, WT would likely also not be be the end result of such an AIs influence, though you never know for sure.
Banks also suggests that the dispersion of entities across space would prevent authoritarian structures. This I'm not as convinced by, it works for the Culture because the Culture had access to infinite energy and those benevolent AI. If you need fuel, food, and protection from whatever's out there in the Void - the last naturally assumed by a PoL setting - it seems more likely to me that we return to the progression of tribes to kingdoms, bartering travelers to corporations. (Note, I need to actually look up some history here.)
In any case this would be a Post-Culture setting, where for whatever reason such advanced civilizations like that one are gone. Transcended or destroyed isn't necessarily clear - there might be evidence for both.
How would the real presence of Psionics, the Way ("Force") and possibility of spirits/gods/Other affect the kinds of societies we see arising post Cataclyms? Is there still a trend toward Culture like civs?
The worshiped Other - which I don't really want to ever make explicit - skewing probabilities in the favor of a particular bloodline might result in authority through lineage, as would some Psionic gene. Or if those previously mentioned Uplift Engines that will emulate "psionic" powers are keyed to a particular gene.
If psionics is seen as proof of a religion we might see much more missionary work among the stars, with the realization that there are psionic talents in other species with their own faiths perhaps sparking a holy war. Religions might, on the other hand, find amazing commonality when you look at their mystical traditions rather than their orthodoxy (especially if the Way is some kind of Real Benevolence on Its more positive side.)
If multiple sentient races are present on one world but only one has incredible psionic gifts that might feed into a dangerous narrative justifying conquest or perhaps a kind of benevolent imperialism. OTOH if that psionic talent is empathy-telepathy you might get a civilization trying to have Sense-8 style orgies with as many participants as possible (at what point are you just a conscious wave of potential for sensation in these orgies by the way? Bodiless but having causal power specifically over others' bodies).
If AIs cannot master psionics nor the Way it might also tilt away from trusting such entities or regarding them as real Minds. (Also if the budding civs are plagued by insane AIs that would represent "Chaos".) This would tilt against there being a Culture, though I guess this would depend on how rare psionics and usage of the Way are. If you have whole patches of the galaxy/galaxies lacking in Psi ability AIs might be granted person status faster and get the ball rolling in those places. OTOH precogs and telepaths (even faux-Psi equivalents granted by a Noosphere Datanet + quantum computers) might be able to do the planned economy thing for a civilization...yet I suspect this might - whether using true Psi or transhuman augments - drive the planners insane. Maybe a synced group of fleshy minds might manage to do what an advanced AI could.
So in that vein another thing to consider regarding religious development besides psionics/mysticism is that these Points of Light do have bits of incredible tech from previous ages as well as some memory of those prior ages. If you're a 9th worlder in Numenera, for example, you do have the ruins of all these other civs around you. How does that impact religion - including the Religion of Progress? Is it inspirational, terrifying, a blow to the self-esteem, what?
If there are merchants flitting between PoLs via their FTL drives does it become harder to make people believe you - a lowly land bound king - is ruling due to Divine Right? With wrecks of fallen Orbitals around you holding the bones of a thousand alien races is it easier or harder for people to believe they are made in the image of God - not just a god but the Creator Being who is the very Ground of Being?
If your civilization manages to get some ships into the Void, and you're lucky enough to be near a Jump Gate that links to an untapped network, you might find yourself thinking about how the accidents of History have turned out to be in your favor. When you see the other possibilities out there - the potential for the past horrors of Deep Time as well as Present suffering - you might start to feel somewhat religious. "Somebody out there likes us."
The presence of these varied factors doesn't suggest a galaxy spanning proto-Culture culture to me, though I could see anarchist-socialist post-scarcity collectives developing here and there. And maybe if the Star Knights get their act together and enlighten some old AIs, & there really are some deep commonalities found between religions across the star systens you might see motivation toward something like Banks' Culture. It's kinda amusing that the civilization he foresaw as a consequence of atheistic humanism + computationalism I can only see being achieved as a kind of Psionic "New Ager" Collective.
That said while somewhat skeptical about the trajectory the human race takes under his initial conditions I still think the notes of the Culture Banks supplied are great, especially the suggestion that it would be unlikely Post-Scarcity conditions work in favor of centralized - especially tyrannical - authority. In terms of actual gaming if you accept those implications you could use Post-Scarcity transhumanism to eliminate things the Players and GM find boring like tracking food, fuel, ammo, and depreciation of equipment/vehicles. There could still be threats in the Outer Dark - violent civilizations and experiments gone wrong and all that. But I think the dream of a now lost Post Scarcity Civilization, an achievement that now only exists in artefacts and "magic" items, fits a PoL setting more...
In the Solar System would be worlds that have their own bits of civilization, maybe the outer planets are doing all right but the inner-space between the Sun and the Asteroid Belt has been pillaged and harvested too many times by the agents of the varied asteroid AIs. For example you have continent-sized terraformed fields doing nothing but producing bio-mech shock troops for the Cold War or maybe for some older, more sane but long forgotten conflict. Other worlds might be left to wild robot species that have their own predator/prey cycles ala Horizon: Zero Dawn. (Or maybe it's more like Nier: Automata, or possibly the Matrix save the robots use human fields for Psionic Gifts they can apparently never possess).
Yet even on those worlds there might be some civilizations, or maybe it's the Matrix robots eeking it out on a ruined world surrounded by weaponized biology. Maybe an area that's been cleared out and protected from the more serious threat of, say, Gray Goo, but still holding a bunch of potential village devouring threats.
So how did it all get to be this way again?
Looked through two White Star supplements, Stark Space and Have Death Ray, Will Travel. The former takes White Star in the direction of Cyberpunk in Space, the latter a more 1950's Scifi direction. Point have their place in a Points of Light setting, given different civilizations will likely develop along different lines depending on accidents of environment like what high tech or psychic "magic" from a previous age is lying around in the surrounding ruins. ("Surrounding" at this scale might mean on the closest moon.)
For example Iain Banks had a great article about the Culture that suggests advance AI could give us a successful planned economy. So if there was a local AI that into economic planning - perhaps as the "softer" part of the Asteroid Cold War - it might make sure there are no corporate ruled dystopias. The epic heroes in the 50s science fiction with lots of fantasy trappings idea from HDR, WT would likely also not be be the end result of such an AIs influence, though you never know for sure.
Banks also suggests that the dispersion of entities across space would prevent authoritarian structures. This I'm not as convinced by, it works for the Culture because the Culture had access to infinite energy and those benevolent AI. If you need fuel, food, and protection from whatever's out there in the Void - the last naturally assumed by a PoL setting - it seems more likely to me that we return to the progression of tribes to kingdoms, bartering travelers to corporations. (Note, I need to actually look up some history here.)
In any case this would be a Post-Culture setting, where for whatever reason such advanced civilizations like that one are gone. Transcended or destroyed isn't necessarily clear - there might be evidence for both.
How would the real presence of Psionics, the Way ("Force") and possibility of spirits/gods/Other affect the kinds of societies we see arising post Cataclyms? Is there still a trend toward Culture like civs?
The worshiped Other - which I don't really want to ever make explicit - skewing probabilities in the favor of a particular bloodline might result in authority through lineage, as would some Psionic gene. Or if those previously mentioned Uplift Engines that will emulate "psionic" powers are keyed to a particular gene.
If psionics is seen as proof of a religion we might see much more missionary work among the stars, with the realization that there are psionic talents in other species with their own faiths perhaps sparking a holy war. Religions might, on the other hand, find amazing commonality when you look at their mystical traditions rather than their orthodoxy (especially if the Way is some kind of Real Benevolence on Its more positive side.)
If multiple sentient races are present on one world but only one has incredible psionic gifts that might feed into a dangerous narrative justifying conquest or perhaps a kind of benevolent imperialism. OTOH if that psionic talent is empathy-telepathy you might get a civilization trying to have Sense-8 style orgies with as many participants as possible (at what point are you just a conscious wave of potential for sensation in these orgies by the way? Bodiless but having causal power specifically over others' bodies).
If AIs cannot master psionics nor the Way it might also tilt away from trusting such entities or regarding them as real Minds. (Also if the budding civs are plagued by insane AIs that would represent "Chaos".) This would tilt against there being a Culture, though I guess this would depend on how rare psionics and usage of the Way are. If you have whole patches of the galaxy/galaxies lacking in Psi ability AIs might be granted person status faster and get the ball rolling in those places. OTOH precogs and telepaths (even faux-Psi equivalents granted by a Noosphere Datanet + quantum computers) might be able to do the planned economy thing for a civilization...yet I suspect this might - whether using true Psi or transhuman augments - drive the planners insane. Maybe a synced group of fleshy minds might manage to do what an advanced AI could.
So in that vein another thing to consider regarding religious development besides psionics/mysticism is that these Points of Light do have bits of incredible tech from previous ages as well as some memory of those prior ages. If you're a 9th worlder in Numenera, for example, you do have the ruins of all these other civs around you. How does that impact religion - including the Religion of Progress? Is it inspirational, terrifying, a blow to the self-esteem, what?
If there are merchants flitting between PoLs via their FTL drives does it become harder to make people believe you - a lowly land bound king - is ruling due to Divine Right? With wrecks of fallen Orbitals around you holding the bones of a thousand alien races is it easier or harder for people to believe they are made in the image of God - not just a god but the Creator Being who is the very Ground of Being?
If your civilization manages to get some ships into the Void, and you're lucky enough to be near a Jump Gate that links to an untapped network, you might find yourself thinking about how the accidents of History have turned out to be in your favor. When you see the other possibilities out there - the potential for the past horrors of Deep Time as well as Present suffering - you might start to feel somewhat religious. "Somebody out there likes us."
The presence of these varied factors doesn't suggest a galaxy spanning proto-Culture culture to me, though I could see anarchist-socialist post-scarcity collectives developing here and there. And maybe if the Star Knights get their act together and enlighten some old AIs, & there really are some deep commonalities found between religions across the star systens you might see motivation toward something like Banks' Culture. It's kinda amusing that the civilization he foresaw as a consequence of atheistic humanism + computationalism I can only see being achieved as a kind of Psionic "New Ager" Collective.
That said while somewhat skeptical about the trajectory the human race takes under his initial conditions I still think the notes of the Culture Banks supplied are great, especially the suggestion that it would be unlikely Post-Scarcity conditions work in favor of centralized - especially tyrannical - authority. In terms of actual gaming if you accept those implications you could use Post-Scarcity transhumanism to eliminate things the Players and GM find boring like tracking food, fuel, ammo, and depreciation of equipment/vehicles. There could still be threats in the Outer Dark - violent civilizations and experiments gone wrong and all that. But I think the dream of a now lost Post Scarcity Civilization, an achievement that now only exists in artefacts and "magic" items, fits a PoL setting more...
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