You can tell a lot about a universe by the general themes present.
What if Star Wars had taken place largely on some frontier world with nothing of real interest to the Empire or Alliance, and the movies had been about the daily adventures of some random people there? Like, say, Tattooine and the Skywalkers if C3P0 and R2D2 had never crashed there. How about Star Trek told from Harry Mudd’s point of view?
The main themes I’m shooting for in the Alliance are – in no particular order – as follows:
- Low Populations and Population Densities: the Alliance is only a few hundred years old and has high technology. Large families aren’t needed thanks to widespread automation, and are frowned upon in most places. Even a high-population world will have a population in the low millions, and they will be spread over most of the system.
Most planets have one or a few cities, with the rest of the population widely scattered across the surface. Typical homesteads are thousands of acres on newly-colonized worlds, and your nearest neighbors may be twenty miles away. Thanks to automation, any family compound can be nearly self-sufficient if the family puts in some effort. Even on a more densely-populated world, living outside one of the cities usually means you’re living in near-isolation if you so choose. - Life Is Not Cheap: the Alliance’s low population means almost everyone is valuable to the species in some way. Murder and assault are usually serious crimes. The Alliance military is based largely on remotes and independent robots.
- Newton’s Third Law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Everything you do will have some effect on the universe. It may not be major, but it’s there and it will ripple outward for the rest of time. It might be good, it might be bad, it’ll probably be both depending on who you talk to. A particularly cynical way to approach this is to use the advice given in GURPS Goblins and examine the game session for who the PCs annoyed through their actions or inaction. See also Don’t Be A Dick.
- Don’t Be A Dick: there is almost always a peaceful solution. Violence breeds violence, right up to the point where the lynch mob learns you the error of your ways. An extension of this is that for the average Alliance citizen civil rights simply aren’t an issue; the general rule is “if it isn’t hurting anyone else, who cares? Stop being a dick.” The current civil rights debates in the US would be seen as utterly bizarre to most people of the Alliance; they would be amazed that people advocating for the restriction of basic civil rights based on gender, preference or ethnicity are taken seriously. See Life Is Not Cheap.
- Us Against the Universe: the universe is a dangerous place; we need to work together to survive. It isn’t so much because of dangerous aliens (although that does happen), but simply because humans are fragile and the universe isn’t made of Nerf.
- To Boldly Go: the universe is huge, even our tiny corner of it. There is always someplace new to explore. Assuming you aren’t put off by the danger that can be involved.
- A Place For Everyone: with the sheer diversity of available worlds and systems up for grabs, someone can find a place to belong. Granted, it might be a prefab shelter you conned a freighter Captain into dropping on a barren chunk of ice and rock in a system that wasn’t colonized because there was nothing there worth the expense, or maybe it’s an ancient courier ship you bought with your life savings so you could wander the galaxy in peace, but it’s yours.
As I may or may not have mentioned elsewhere, this isn’t Star Wars, Warhammer 40K, or even the Hammer’s Slammers series by David Drake. It isn’t even really Firefly or Star Trek; although I’m sure some of you will see traces of all of the above.
What I’m shooting for is a more optimistic approach to science fiction gaming, more like Asimov, Bradbury or Harrison than the dystopias that have become so popular of late. The Core is deliberately being designed as a near-utopia, with no plans whatsoever to make it a disguised Hell. If it seems boring, it’s because it’s supposed to; people have almost anything they want, and are largely free to pursue their own interests. Are there crappy places to live? Sure. Are they the norm? Not so much. Is there war? Of course; see Us Against The Universe. Will it likely affect the players? Not unless they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time or decide to get involved.
There will be plenty of situations where these themes are violated flagrantly. That’s how it works when you’re a story that at least tries to go beyond dungeon crawling in space.