Séadna
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In 1999 Firaxis Games released "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" for the PC. A God game where the player guides the development of human civilization on Chiron, known in game as "Planet", a mostly habitable world orbiting Alpha Centauri A. Throughout I'll just use Planet. The story woven by the game has four main elements:
- One of humans adapting to an alien world and all the unexpected practical problems that brings. Combined with the minutiae of management and construction typical to a God game this gives a hard Sci-Fi feel.
- The humans are organised into factions representing purified and in some cases "extreme" versions of various ideologies, such as Communism, Capitalism, Social Democracy, Technocracy, etc.
These first two parts give the game a feel like Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars series or to a lesser degree the earlier parts of The Expanse.
- The slow ascent of mankind into technological godhood with heavy borrowings from current theoretical physics and conjectured advances in other sciences. Sort of an up to date "Last and First Men" by Olaf Stapledon. Thus in the long run the game becomes more a grand space opera.
- The realisation that the planet's native life constitutes a hive mind that is functionally a somewhat well meaning god. The bare fact of this, what it means for mankind and how it is viewed by the game's various human factions pulls the story away from pure Space Opera and gives it a little spiritual flavour.
The book is broken into a one page introduction and the following seven chapters:
- Prologue: The background to the trip to Alpha Centauri. Worsening conditions on Earth and disaster on approach to Planet.
- Planet: A guide to the Alpha Centauri system, Planet's geography and native life
- Factions: The various ideologically driven human groups
- The Road to Transcendence: The various technological advances and major social projects that can be achieved over the course of the game.
- Colonists: Player Character details
- Hardware: Weapons, Vehicles, Equipment
- Campaigns: GM advice and suggestions, including using the PC game itself as a GM tool