Freedom and Anarchy in Science Fiction

[cranewings]

In RPG's, and to a lesser extent, in bad science fiction that I love, the characters can generally do whatever it is that they feel like they need to do.

It is hard to come up with believable anarchy in science fiction, what with technology and all. So what are all they ways it can be done?

Mad Max / Post Apocalypse: There is no society around to enforce order.

Epic Points of Light: Each planet is its own jurisdiction. If you commit a crime on one planet, you can just leave. "I have the death penalty on 12 worlds." You can still deal with bounty hunters, but the governments of the different planets don't assist each other, even with lists of wanted people.

Fatal Flaw in Security: If it were mirrors edge, you can always just run away on the roof tops and the police lose track of you.

Too Respected: The PCs can use their Picard / Kirk powers to just ignore command and do what they want. As long as they are always successful, there is no penalty for ignoring the chain of command.

What else? This is important because I'm trying to formulate how the PCs can get away with murder in my next science fiction game. Right now, I'm thinking it is #2, where the worlds are enemies, privateers are an issue, and no world prosecutes criminals for crimes they commit on other planets.

There is still the technology issue: so stealth will be key and in Battlestar Galactica style, once a ship jumps it is nearly impossible to track.

[BigNorseWolf]

Technology , over the long haul, tends to cancel itself out. Ok, there's a tracking chip in you? Well you a tin foil hat blocking your chip and an illegal beacon that says you're over there in your couch the whole time. They have facial recognition cameras? you have holo projectors on your face.

Hard science could help you out here. If nothing goes faster than light then sensors can't reliably track ships in deep space that move nearly as fast.

Then there's also things like interference, asteroid belts etc.

[Curious]

cranewings wrote:

What else? This is important because I'm trying to formulate how the PCs can get away with murder in my next science fiction game. Right now, I'm thinking it is #2, where the worlds are enemies, privateers are an issue, and no world prosecutes criminals for crimes they commit on other planets.

Tell the PCs not to get caught.

[yellowdingo]

If the over city is a security nightmare where 90% of the populace dont have security clearance to live there - move into the sewers and dig out black market shops and sell rat burgers.

As Planet of the Apes iv: Conquest of the planet of the apes showed - if you need to get a security clearance to get in the city - sneak down to the port where they bring in the caged apes from Borneo and get yourself a fresh Identity.

[Krensky]

Well, in one of my last sci-fi games I went with a variation on the points of light thing. I suppose. It drew heavily from Eclipse Phase, Core Command, Outlaw Star, Sol Bianca, and Drake's Empire From the Ashes. Had it been out then, I probably would have folded some ideas from Bodacious Space Pirates in as well.

Essentially, it's several thousand (perhaps tens of thousands) years in the future. Terra is a myth. The Golden Age when Man, his Creations, and his Companions strode across the heavens as if they were Gods is long gone. Their Stellar Federation has replaced Atlantis in the myths of man kind. Destroyed from within by dark, incomprehensible, corrupting forces from beyond the Rim, the galaxy fell into Darkness.

The Galaxy has rebuilt itself, but so much has been lost. Interstellar travel is more art than science with surviving Jump Cores passed from parent to child or master to apprentice. There are some multi-system governments, but the primary interstellar power groups in the galaxy are the Famílias de Comerciantes, the Fako de Komunikado, the Konpayi Mèsenè, and the Jōkhimī Samāja. (props give what for anyone who can say what those mean and what language they're in).

The players couldn't get away with murder, but being members of the Jōkhimī Samāja gave them a lot of leeway since most planetary or system government rely upon them along with the other three organizations who all tend to stick together somewhat regarding large issues despite fighting between each other constantly.

Basically as long as what they did was related to a job and wasn't insane or egergous and they avoided local entanglements they were probably clear. Unless the someone in the Samāja took issue with it or someone hired a Jōkhimī or Mèsenè to do something about it.

[LazarX]

Here's the downside to a galaxy in anarchy.

You might be free to do what you fee like doing... But so is that bandit who's got no law to worry about either.

With the spacelanes being predated by banditry, interstellar trade grinds to a halt and the economies that depend on it collapse.... including the means to maintain those complicated pieces of machinery called starships.

Digging up the Rebellion series in MegaTravller will give you some insight...especially the "Hard Times" book which shows the consequences of the Third Imperium's collapse.