As part of my neverending quest for potentially gameable ideas, I've been thinking about near future-esque stuff.

Now, let's say that I want to set a game around a 100 years from now, I want it to include no elements that contradict our current understanding of science (so no psi, no ftl, no antigravity or whatever) and I want it to be on a human scale (so no playing post singularity AIs debating mathematical truths, not as PCs anyway).

I want a downbeat future, not an optimistic one, as that tends to create more opportunities for play.

What kind of technologies do you see as likely?  What do you see as being the interesting in play possibilities created by them?  What do you see as being the problems they would create in play?

I want to tie this to play, for example wearable semi-AI linked to a global net is feasible, but also creates issues in play as the PCs can access more data on whatever they encounter than the GM will probably have prepped and may stretch the ability of the GM to make it up on the fly while maintaining consistency.

Currently I'm leaning to a resource starved world in which global warming has led to serious and deleterious effects, but that's detail, it's the prognoses and their effects in actual play good or bad that interest me here.

Edit:  Oh, it needs to be a credible future, that's not the same as probable.  The future may go many ways, as long as its credible I'm not so worried about whether it's more or less likely than another scenario.

Funny you should bring this up.  The Discovery channel just recently did this show called 2057 where they get a bunch of brains together and get them to think about the near future of our world.  You can probably gleen some hot ideas from it.  The medical shit was absolutely fascinating.

Keith

Dude... you're asking us to come up with an entire setting for an SF game.  Want to narrow it down a bit?  what type of areas or moods are you wanting to work on?

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalDude... you're asking us to come up with an entire setting for an SF game.  Want to narrow it down a bit?  what type of areas or moods are you wanting to work on?

What can I say, I'm lazy.

Actually, it's more that I want some ideas as to likely technologies and their likely impacts on actual play.

However, I'm thinking of updating cyberpunk motifs to be a bit less tired and irrelevant.  Assuming significant climate change, resource constraint led conflicts and a failure of government to address these challenges an outcome is of a rather bleak future.  A future in which things are a hell of a lot worse than they are now.

So, some parameters:

Significant global warming impact, that leads to more extreme weather patterns, to the loss of whole territories that are currently inhabitable, to dispossessed populations and to mass species dieoffs.

Coupled with that is a resource crunch, particularly fuel and water.  Leading to increasing conflicts over resources, conflicts that are worsened by the climate change impacts.

On the other hand, ingenuity persists.  So there will not be a lack of progress, but it will be progress in the face of serious social and global issues.

Which leads to a situation where people are struggling to survive, and in a sense to a classic cyberpunk setting.  But without all that crap about cyberware and the whole form over function thing.

It's also about accessible hard sf, a near future hard sf setting is just plain easier to get into than a distant future one.  The human concerns are closer to ours.

Maybe I put too much in the OP, my key interest here was credible technologies you see as coming up over the next 100 years and what their in game actual play effects were likely to be.