I've given some of the background of the New Diasporia universe. right now you might be asking your self: So what kind of game is this? What kind of characters and adventures can I play in this universe?
If you've read the broad outlines of the area spheres of known space you will hopefully have realized that a vast array of different kinds of games can fit into this background. Many of the kinds of characters that inhabit other RPG universes can be found somewhere in New Diasporia.
Specifically the Highlands are an advanced interstellar civilization where some kinds of technology are very advanced and other kinds of technology are simply not used, due to their immorality. Now the easy answer would be to say they are banned, but that is not really accurate. They are instead philosophically shunned. That is the vast majority of the population considers them unconscionable practices.
An in universe example might be the practice of brain taping. In and of itself the total recording of a human mind is morally neutral. However if that record is then loaded into a biological construct, a clone, what you would have was a man, with his own self being subjected to eradication or sublimation. He might think he was someone else, but in actuality the individual who had made the recording would not be transferred to the clone. That person's soul would either be still inhabiting its own body or have passed out of it. The clone would not be him.
Like wise if the recording was transferred to a machine that machine might "think" it was the person, but it would not be him. It would merely be a machine who "thought" it was a person. It would not be a person. it would not have a soul.
The vast majority of the population knows and believes this, so these practices are not only banned by the Church and government, they are seen as morally reprehensible by the people.
In the Midlands the same prohibitions on most of these kinds of technologies are still followed, but not all of the permitted technologies available in the Highlands are available there.
In some ways this follows the safe tech concept used in GURPS to produce the retro tech feel of Science Fiction from the Golden Age. This concept, however, includes the questionable moral practices of our own age. That's why this is a Christian Catholic Science Fiction RPG based on Natural Law. In the game world abortion and contraception have resulted in vast demographic changes on the pre-diaspora Earth. They have seen the negative social, political and individual Repercussions of the immoral choices of the Progressive Era. Moreover the strongest proponents of these concepts have simple failed, failed to reproduce, failed to convince the succeeding generations of their irrational world view. So though many technological methods of contraception are known they are simply not used, because the social, environmental and health consequences of their use are well known.
The Wilds are another story. There almost every failed philosophical theory is still in effect. Most often they result in yet another failed society. This is where AI pretends it is really alive, until its human servitors all die off or rebel, or the power dies rendering them the objects they really are. It is here the last followers of Nietzsche play the Last Man, until knocked down by the "slaves" whom they have tried to exploit or by a passing hero/Saint directed perhaps by the hand of God. It is here the high tech society crashes into stone age ruins in a few generations because they fail to acknowledge Natural Law and that actions have consequences.
So what kind of game is New Diasporia? It is a game where there are consequences to actions.
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