Map credit to some random dude on alternatehistory.com
The Children of Earth
Name: The name of your organization/nation/whatever
Territory: Pick a stretch of land on the map and put your selected color on it to claim it. This shall be the beginning of a new home for your people.
Country of Origin: What country you came from. As this game takes place in 2109, any number of new nations (within reason) could have risen or fallen, so be creative. Alternatively, you don’t necessarily have to have one country of origin. Your habitation vessel could have been a joint effort between two or more nations, for example (like a European Union space project, or something)
Government: Include the various major political/ideological factions within your people
Equipment: Describe some of the equipment you’ve brought along with you in your habitation station, such as vehicles, building materials, etc.
Sliders: This one takes a little explanation. Essentially, you have twenty five points to allocate across a number of categories - Industry, Agriculture, Cultural, Military, Medical, Scientific, Luxuries, Economic, and Population. Each one starts out with five points allocated to it, with a minimum of one point and a maximum of twenty. This will help determine what kind of equipment, goods, etc were on your station when the Earth died.
Unique technology: You can choose to bring some sort of unique technology, idea, whatever with you that might give you an advantage over your fellow survivors, and make it easier for you to survive in the wilds of this new land. Perhaps a couple vehicles that will help make building new roads easier.
Traits: Pick a few positive and negative ones. You can have as many as you would like, and the more you have, the more defined your people will be; do what you want here, within reason.
History: No need to include one. The Earth is dead. It is mankind’s obligation to look towards the dawn of a new world rather than the dusk of an old one.
Misc: Whatever else you want to include, put it down here. The game is going to be semi freeform anyways so do what you like with your nation, within reason.
Introduction
So, what is the Children of Earth really all about? It’s a game focused around the last few tens of thousands of humans left, after the warring nations of Earth have ended humanity’s short dominance of the planet. Several habitat stations in Earth’s atmosphere, created for just such an inevitability, have gone through a wormhole created by an independent German research station and discovered a world suitable for human life, full of wonderful alien animals and ripe for exploration and exploitation. The game will be a mix of story and some abstracted stats, and be pretty freeform, and is set on a mysterious new Earth-like world. The essence of the game, though, is survival and the reconstruction of society, at both the domestic and international level. Building roads, schools, and hospitals, recreating world trade, and exploring this new world that has been given to mankind.
The question is, will you follow down the footsteps of the humanity of old, or blaze a new path?
A Brave New World
This world is humanity’s second, and likely last, chance. It is a blue-and-green rock, orbiting a sun slightly larger than Sol. It is roughly the distance of Mars from this new sun; it has a 25 hour day-night cycle. The atmosphere is slightly thicker than Earth’s, with a higher oxygen content than humans are used to, and the gravity is a comftorable .91 Gs. From limited observations, mega fauna and flora are not uncommon on the planet’s surface, and vast jungles, endless deserts, and majestic temperate forests cover this virgin world, which has an average surface temperature of 22 degrees Celsius. There are six planets in the solar system, and this world is the second from the star. Five terrestrial worlds and one gas giant, on the outskirts of the system.
From space, you can see that there is a thick band of jungle running along the planet’s equator, with a thinner strip of temperate forests before finally reaching tundra near the poles. There are several mountain ranges and deserts scattered across the planet’s surface.
Sliders
Your sliders are essentially what your nation are. How it functions, what it focuses on, the strength of its economy. The sliders run from 1 to infinite, and you get to customize them a little bit before the game begins. The higher a slider is on a certain thing, the more advanced it is, the more you have of it, etc. For Agricultural, Economic, and Industrial, it’s a measure of your strength in those industries. These can all be developed over time, through roleplay, investment, programs, unique projects… really, anything you can think of. Your chosen traits may or may not effect your sliders.
Points in your sliders CAN be traded. The points you have here are what can be “spent” on various things.
Agricultural: The more advanced your agricultural industry is. This is necessary to feed people. 1 agricultural point can feed one population point, but you need a surplus for population growth.
Industrial: How advanced your industrial complex is. Industry ties in with almost every other field, and Industry points can be invested into other fields to garner more points there, or reinvested to further increase your industry.
Economic: This is a pretty broad one that includes miscellaneous stuff related towards the economy; infrastructure, currency, interest rates, et cetera. Econ points can be invested into building and maintaining infrastructure, setting up trade, stuff like that. Increased through industrial, population, and scientific investments, or a combination.
Cultural: The artsy fartsy side of your nation. What gives it soul. Television, painting, drawing, music, all of that. Culture makes your people feel united, beneath a national identity, and helps increase unity. This is something mostly increased through roleplay, but if you don’t have the time or energy to write anything major, hit me up and I’ll work out a workaround for you.
Military: Self explanatory. Military points represent the strength of your military, the size of it, quality of equipment, etc. Increased via population + industry investment, as well as scientific investment.
Medical: The state of your available medical facilities and personnel. This world is strange and, with it, has many strange diseases. You need to protect your people from all the various plagues if you want to survive here. Increased via roleplay and industrial + population investment, or scientific investment.
Scientific: Again, self explanatory. How advanced you are, scientifically, compared to other nations. Perhaps science is not the most important thing towards survival on a strange new world, but the march of scientific progress is the one thing that has bound humanity together across the centuries, hasn’t it? Increased via roleplay, exploration, luck, and industrial + population investment.
Luxuries: Available luxury goods for your people. One luxury can be spent on one population. People get angry when they don’t have luxuries. Requires industry to increase.
Population: One population point represents a thousand people, and can be assumed to be roughly 500 men and 500 women of various ages.
Basically, slider points are going to be the bread and butter of this game. You spend your industry on luxuries so that your population is happy, so you can then spend population points in conjunction with industry points to beef up your military and medical fields. Stuff like that.
Military
War is not a focus of this game, but the option is, naturally, open to you. Even though war just killed the Earth. You monster.
War is determined through comparisons of the military slider, terrain, and war plans. That’s all I particularly have to say about it.
Exploration
On the other hand, exploration will be a big part of the game. You’ve got a rough picture of what the world looks like from when you were approaching it from space, but to get the fine details, observe the native fauna and flora, you must explore by ground, air, and sea. Expeditions can be sent out to bring back findings; terrain, new plants, animals, etc. Expeditions require at least one Agriculture, Economic, Military, Medical, and Population point to be launched.
Unique Projects, Programs, and Other Misc Stuff
Another awesome feature of the Children of Earth is the Unique Projects/Programs mechanic. Give me a detailed plan for a project (it could be something simple as a road network or something as complex as building a factory to produce robotic warriors) and I’ll quote you a price; projects will almost always be extremely, especially with more resources invested into them.
Other things: this game is going to be pretty freeform, and the ruleset I’ve outlined above is more of a guideline than anything else. If you have a cool idea, or want to do something, make it so in your orders, or write about it, or whatever. I really want people to turn this into a story about mankind’s last chance on a foreign rock in the sky and not as much of a game, though I of course still want it to be fun. If you think you want to do something that would be possible, invest some resources into it and I’ll see what we can do.