The Edge is Where You Find It.

[gridlore]

One concept that I've always held to in designing RPG settings or in my nascent attempts at fiction is that interesting stories happen at the Edge. What is the Edge? It's the frontier, where man's laws give was to the rule of the gun, or the edge of known reality, where eldritch horrors leak through, or the point where a normal existence is revealed to be very different. It's a place, or a condition, where the usual rules of civilization fall aside, and heroes are called on to perform great deeds.. or to just join in in the general chaos.

The problem is Edges by their very nature are unstable. People crave order and safety. The "Wild West" period of American history lasted only about 20 years, all told, because everywhere settlers went, they brought laws, and lawmen, and enough wood to build the gallows. The most famous gunfight of American history, the one at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Az, came about because the Clanton gang was suspected of violating the town's ban on carrying weapons inside city limits! What a lot of people also don't realize is that the Earps and Doc Holliday were charged with murder over the shoot-out, but cleared after a hearing. Not exactly the romantic view we have of lawmen gunning down the bad guys, hm? Other Edges are faced with similar fates. In Call of Cthulthu, either the stars will be right (and we all die) or the stars will go out of alignment (threat mostly over) in fairly short order. You can't maintain an anarchy for long. Which is why I've always favored settings that are either on the far-flung frontiers of whatever state exists or settings that happen immediate after great upheavals that have severely disrupted the normal order of things.

What brings this on is while writing my posts on religion for Pathfinder; I've been really craving some nice, epic Space Opera. The problem is civilizations that can build FTL ships and settle thousands of worlds as tend to be pretty good, at least locally, at holding civilization together. Exploration games can be fun, for a while, but it's not what I'm looking for. But then it hit me. The aftermath of an epic, titanic war between the Terran Federation and the Evil Vaguely Mongolian In Attitude Humanoid Alien Empire (EVMIAHAE). The setting would be a far flung sector that suffered heavy fighting for years. Now, a cease fire has been negotiated, and people are picking up the pieces. Some worlds rode out the war fairly well, some are grave worlds. Everywhere there are mysteries, displaced persons, lost ships, looted museums, and rumors spiraling out of control. Fortune or death awaits the intrepid!

Something I might work on after finishing up the High Church stuff.

Comments

[seawasp]

In my fantasy campaign (and writing) world of Zarathan, the "edge" is everywhere, because while the maps show "The State of the Dragon King" and "The Empire of the Mountain" covering territory like modern countries, in actuality the real countries are basically a bunch of cities and the nearby farmland, etc., linked by the slender cleared-and-patrolled areas around the Great Roads, and the rest is wilderness. And it's been that way for half a million years. New cities appear, old ones fall, but hundreds of intelligent species, thousands of deities, magicians, monsters, etc., make it pretty much IMPOSSIBLE to "tame" the wilderness. Ruins of a dozen cities are each overlaid with a layer of forest loam and overgrowth showing how thousands of years passed between each attempt to settle the area.

[jursamaj.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's part of my problem with the Traveller Imperium: the frontiers tend to be very static. Even after major upheavals, the end result is the *same* frontiers again. The timeline should include actual advances & retreats of civilization.

Now they *tried* a real upheaval with The Rebellion/Virus. Leaving aside the problems of the Virus, it all came too late to save the setting, since the company went under. :(

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

GDW's going out of business was not due to Traveller, which had very strong sales right up to the end. The actual story is long, complex, and full of drama and personality conflicts.

[jursamaj.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't mean that Traveller was in any way responsible for the closure. I just think the shakeup they tried with Rebellion/Virus *could* have reinvigorated the setting, but GDW closing stopped that before we could find out.