There was a war, and during that war the sky was sealed. As hackteams sparred for control of the densely populated communications, defence, and surveillance satellites, more and more of the glittering machines on the shores of the heavens collided, sending lethal debris smashing into yet more satellites, creating an unstoppable cascade of destruction.

In the end all that remained was a deep aura of blurringly, impossibly fast technological rubble, some pieces bearing kilotons of inertial energy. Most attempts to traverse it ended in tragedy, making the problem worse in the process, and so mankind was for the most part bound to earth, for a few centuries at least.

However outside the barrier created by the Kessler Syndrome stations still winked in the night, industrial and mining bases, refineries and factories, some with a population of thousands. Cut off from the vital supplies and maintenance that used to be sent by earth, the increasingly desperate inhabitants prey on one another and experiment with new technology in order to become independent.

Their lonely echoless broadcasts to those who can hear them whisper promises of bullion, precious metals and gems, the very harvest of the stars to anyone bold enough to dare the barrier and trade essential supplies.

So came about the skyrunners, defying governments and the odds in an attempt to become wealthy beyond measure. Operating with anything from elderly SpaceX modules to salvaged orbital scramjet fighters, usually launched from within submarines in the lawless oceans, these men and women are among the most reckless and fearless on earth or above it.

An entire ecosystem has grown up around the trade, with deep orbit pirates, government hunter-killer drones which will attempt an intercept before skyrunners get too high, and stations going increasingly feral being only a few of the hazards beyond the razor-edged reefs at the edge of space.

Thoughts on spicing it up or is it spicy enough already?

Could you shrink the images some so that I can read your text?

Quote from: jeff37923;612427Could you shrink the images some so that I can read your text?

That's a new one. I've removed the image now.

Quote from: The Traveller;612423Thoughts on spicing it up or is it spicy enough already?

Sounds good to me. Depending on how long the stations have been cut off, you might need to handwave how any survivors, er, survived, but you should be able to handle that.

I'd suggest that the governments and any private interests would want to be in on it, though, if there is enough up there worth getting hold of. Perhaps the HK drones are primarily used against Skyrunner teams from other countries; maybe gives you another option for earth-based games.

Also, perhaps there are spacers trying to return home somehow, on their own initiative? Or even just trying to survive out there.

Lots of potential fun with this pitch.

Spicing it up?

Might make some of the technology really experimental or alien seeming, beyond what we'd see in a future you present, because of necessity. Weird cultures would grow as people are also a resource, and generations might pass and small gene pools become an issue. It might create strange super tech "go Viking" cultures in order to gain genetic material. (Stolen from cryo, stolen mates, etc.)

Governments would probably be opposed to skyrunners since while a single run might net hundreds of millions or billions, for most governments that's not actually a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.

Weighed against which the low success rate (single or low double digit percentages?) of skyruns, plus that each failure extends the cascading debris barrier lifetime by decades, means it would likely be an international consensus along the lines of pandemic agreements, if the governments cared at all, and some don't.

Yes, skyrunning is immensely dangerous, irresponsible, and potentially hugely profitable, so perfect for most PCs.

Some ideas might include a new type of specialised hyper-AI that is developed by a corporate lab which can map out the n-body problem with a far higher success rate than anything previously, and as such will hugely increase the odds of a successful run. The question is, who will get to it first, you or another team?

Some of the debris forms temporary clusters that last a few days or weeks. Particularly insane pirates have been known to inhabit these smallish lumps to wait for returning runners, as the space around the clumps of spall tends to be slightly clearer than elsewhere, and thus provides a tempting passage route. Even if the pirates themselves don't sit in wait, they can and do leave modified killsats whirling around ready to make any successful runner's life more interesting.

Criminal organisations sometimes sponsor runs, whether or not you feel like sharing your profits with them afterwards is up to you...

Some of the larger stations especially would be quite sophisticated, needing only resupply every couple of months. Water and air recycling aren't really a problem, plus there are lots of volatiles out there just floating around, and they're already set up for mining. Food is a lot trickier, they aren't built for farming, its quite easy to starve while surrounded by the wealth of kings.

And eventually the rate of things breaking down will exceed the amount of duct tape available. The huge long tail of manufacturing capability that made the stations possible in the first place is basically impossible to reproduce on the fly. Medical supplies likewise.

Barring disasters, most stations could stretch it out for a couple of decades at least, but of course there are always disasters. The social effects are also interesting.

Quote from: Silverlion;612506It might create strange super tech "go Viking" cultures in order to gain genetic material. (Stolen from cryo, stolen mates, etc.)

Ooh can you say slave trade? Transporting foetuses and incubation gear might make more sense though, depends on how feral a station goes, which could also make the exchange of goods interesting. As would competition between stations for the very few supplies delivered by skyrunners. I could certainly see raiding with relatively primitive technologies being a factor, as one station struggles to stabilise its food supplies, a smaller station might raid them, spoiling whole crops in the process.

Governments might maintain jamming stations on earth to try and block broadcasts from the stations containing shopping lists of needed supplies and the stupendous amounts they are willing to pay for them, a cruel inversion of the humanitarian efforts that would have been undertaken in different circumstances. The needs of the many, as they see it...

Accessing these crackly transmissions through the few windows of opportunity might be a trade unto itself, with "listening specialists" racing from place to place, selling their information to the black market undernet. A higher value would be placed on more reliable listeners.

The Skyrun Show!

As soon as HK drones and tracking stations detect an active skyrunner starting a run, less reputable entertainment networks immediately start broadcasting from their own detectors. High powered observation equipment focuses on the runner's vessel, and star studded commentary accompanies a glitzy presentation following the runner's progress.

The ship's exhaust can be followed all the way out past the Kessler zone, so large sums of money are wagered around the world on the chances of success or failure of the run, with impromptu skyrun parties being thrown and pundits quickly analysing the type and capabilities of each vessel after they clear the drones.

The identities of the skyrunners themselves are never really known, for obvious reasons, but charismatic presenters often bestow titles on them like "sidewinder" or "blackjack", who are feted in their absence by the public. It's become quite a business in its own right.

Contrary to the government line that skyrunners are irresponsible thrillseekers keeping mankind trapped on earth, these adventurers by their very nature are individually certain that they will be the ones who make it, and so won't be adding to any problem.

Further, they maintain that they are humanitarians simply funding their expensive missions with stargold, and hey, maybe its better if humanity stays landlocked for a few more centuries until we have proven ourselves more responsible galactic citizens.

After all, it wasn't the skyrunners who chained the gates of heaven.

They're merely trying to slip between the links and chinks to bring medical supplies and other vital equipment to those abandoned by humanity. Besides in a few more decades no doubt technology will have advanced sufficiently to clear the spaceways once again, with or without their contributions, or so they reason, by which time the lost stations will probably have perished horribly.

As reasons go these are fairly compelling, but still the general moratorium on skyruns through the jaws of the Kessler Syndrome remains, enforced by lethal military-grade high speed drones. After a certain altitude the drones abandon their pursuit, since an intercept would ensure more debris in the sky.

However returning home loaded with wealth can be just as tricky. Rather than trying to shoot down returning skyrunners, teams are deployed to arrest them wherever they touch down, or mostly splash down. An outbound skyrun merely has to survive the Kessler zone, an inbound skyrun has to disguise its exhaust and dodge carefully between the debris until it can reach the right position and velocity to get to its prearranged drop point as quickly as possible. This final drop is usually too rapid and random for the media to pick up on except in retrospect.

Almost one in eight attempted skyruns come to a fatal end on this final leg, whether snarled while trying to evade detection or by descending too rapidly with collision-damaged vessels, which has caused public outcry in some quarters to legalise the practise.

Another side effect of the unpredictable return journey is that criminal syndicates which sponsor skyruns can sometimes be evaded if an alternate pickup can be arranged. Why settle for fifty million when you could have five hundred million after all? Besides the obvious downside of having a powerful criminal organisation hunting you...


Any other ideas?

A secretive group of high level Ministers, Presidents, and corporate heads have entirely different reasons to want the skyruns to fail beyond preventing orbital littering, and will do everything in their considerable power to stop them, perhaps explaining the arguable overkill deployed when skyruns are launched.

They want the stations to die off, as quickly as possible, and will take any steps needed to make that happen.

Strategic analysis of the situation by classified statistical prediction arcologies indicated that should the stations survive and even thrive beyond the Kessler Syndrome before it dissipates, they would then hold an unassailable high ground, and could keep adding more and more debris to orbit, leaving the earth to stagnate for potentially thousands of years while their new civilisations flourished in the starlight.

Almost by accident, they had created a new and possibly vastly stronger enemy.

The response to this unacceptable threat to their power, as the powerful see it, adds a fresh dimension of danger to the existence of the skyrunner.

They can't tip their hands of course, aside from the public outcry, if the stations suspected that powerful forces on earth were actively trying to destroy them their response could be unpredictable; a rain of meteorites on heavily populated areas being but one possibility. Shipping a container of nukes up there would be extremely foolish.

Likewise simply destroying one station with for example contagion would be counterproductive, the rest would immediately begin taking extreme quarantine precautions to prevent further destruction.

This group, known only at the highest level of various espionage and diplomatic agencies as S17, must proceed with caution, targetting the ability of the stations as a collective to survive in the mid to long term, building a secret momentum and webs of schemes which will, they hope, culminate in the destruction of everything beyond the Kessler Syndrome.

Video of the Kessler Syndrome in action here, really fascinating if you've got a few minutes to spare.

I would probably set up a game like this so that skyruns would be the culmination of several sessions. Finding the funding, developing the delicate network of contacts needed to not only supply the run equipment but with the expertise of how and where to launch from and to collect you afterwards, what's needed, subplots involving S17, the police, criminal groups and a wide variety of other actors, all of this should consume a fair amount of the group's time.

A little more controversially, they should be aware that even if they've spent ten sessions building towards their skyrun, they can still perish very easily in the attempt. If it wasn't so, there wouldn't be any fun to it. Make or break really does what it says on the tin here, so I'd brace them before they even begin the run, and occasionally remind them from time to time.

What I like about these kinds of games (as opposed to fantasy) is there are plenty of options for the PCs to spend their uber wealth upon successful completion, without actually eating into adventuring time. Set up research labs to build pet technologies, become the batman, put it all into government bonds for steady growth, spent a wedge on a secret base, kit out their submarine to become a godzilla among subs, create your very own spy network, endless choices with minimal overhead gamewise.

With that said I'd probably limit it to two or at most three skyruns per campaign. Besides the megamoney involved, the risk of death is simply too high, and it has to stay that way or the equilibrium of the subsetting is disturbed. Regular skyruns shouldn't really happen. Of course if they did, even secretly, that would make things very interesting for S17 and anyone that got in their way.

And not one crack about making the Kessler run in less than 12 parsecs?

Really intriguing basic idea, BUT:

Quote from: The Traveller;612913With that said I'd probably limit it to two or at most three skyruns per campaign. Besides the megamoney involved, the risk of death is simply too high, and it has to stay that way or the equilibrium of the subsetting is disturbed. Regular skyruns shouldn't really happen. Of course if they did, even secretly, that would make things very interesting for S17 and anyone that got in their way.

When I've read the initial blurb just now, my first reaction was "Cool, we get to go orbital to loot space stations and junk! Awesome!". And then you say "oh, only two or three such events per campaign, because my precious realism forces that".

That's just silly. It's the most interesting and eyecatching part of the whole game, and you set things up so players can't actually do it! That's like setting up D&D and then saying "Oh, but you only get to go into the dungeon two or three times per campaign." "Here's this new set of miniatures wargaming rules, but after three battles you have to melt down your army and start building a new one." "Here's Vampire: the Masquerade, but you're not allowed to play vampires." It's that silly. It's idiotic. I'm saying that as a friend who wants this thing to succeed, and if honest hard talk gets you there, then honest hard talk it's going to be.

If you've half a brain, then take all the elements of realism that would prevent more skyruns and throw them out the fucking window. Just declare that used spaceships are actually much more reliable than that, or launches are cheaper by a factor of lot when you grease some palms in Baikonur, or hostile dronecraft are crappier or something.