Urban Life

The span of history of the New Diasporia actually ranges just over a century. Most of the great social trends originate from before that period. By the time of Fr. Borland Barnes and Joesph Gutierrez a Unified Catholic Church was already in existence. The Great Compromise was in place. In many ways the first wave of the New Diasporia was made up of people who had problems with both those facts of history. Only more slowly did the Church and society follow in successive waves.
The just of those facts means that throughout all extra solar space human civilization is barely a century old. For almost all of that time travel was limited to conventional road and air vehicles. Even in the farthest reaches of the Wilds civilization, or what passes for it, is just a generation or two old. In the oldest and most primitive places perhaps as many as six generations have passed since the invention of the B/G engine.
This tends to mean that on any particular world history is not too deep. On Earth it is not unusual to see structures several hundred years old. It is even possible to see man made structures thousands of years old. This is not the case on other worlds.
Because of the pace of technological development and the speed of transport cities tend to be smaller than the old Earth cities. Most terrestrial cities are old. They formed at transportation hubs, which is why so many cities were founded where rivers meet each other, or meet the sea. In the age of rail cities were founded at rail heads and junctions. Even in the pre-industrial age cities sometimes were built at places where gold, silver and iron could be found. Only in the age of the automobile did population centers swell over the land, tied together by concrete and asphalt ribbons.
In the Highland cities, towns and villages, founded before the mid-twenty third century, it is common to have roads and highways connecting buildings and other population centers. On many worlds these artifacts of an earlier age are abandoned and unused. At least by human traffic. Interior roads are still sometimes used to transport goods using autonomous robot vehicles. On others settled during the last seventy years often commercial transmat portals are still in use, connecting roads or monorails over vast distances. Some settled recently have no roads at all, with all transportation via transmat portal.
A matrix may be used to help determine the probable mixture of transportation technologies. Many of the other cultural and social characteristics of the world can be inferred from the combination of when the world was founded and what is it's present Tech Level.

Present Technology Level	A	B	C	D
Founding Year
2320
2310
2300					Nanotech
2290
2280
2270
2260					Transmat
2250
2240
2230					Hyperdrill
2220
2210					B/G Engine

Any Highland world founded after 2300 A.D. and founded at TLA will lack roads. Transmat portals will provide the primary transportation technology. Cities will be small and widely dispersed, perhaps even over several continents. A city, village or town is really more a designation of jurisdiction than of geographical area, since the shopping district can be in one place, the residential district in another place and facilities for space traffic somewhere else. Cities are differentiated from villages in that a village will have shopping, residential areas, churches and perhaps even a monastery all within walking distance, with transmat portals primarily used to travel to other places. Such population centers are not primarily vehicle friendly (since vehicles are seldom if ever used) and walkways and pathways are laid out with aesthetic and architectural considerations in mind rather than vehicular. If transportation is need to areas not served by transmat transport capsules will be used.These worlds are represented by the dark blue area of the graph.

Any world founded before 2300 A.D. but after 2260 A.D. and founded at TL A or B will have some form of road network. If they are still TL B they will have a mixture of commercial transmat portals and vehicle lines. Transmat assisted monorail and roadways allow trans continental and trans world travel using public trains or private road vehicles. Air travel will be relegated to orbital or extra-planetary transport. If they have advanced to TL A it is likely they will have abandoned roads. Streets will be relegated to older, economically depressed areas. New villages and towns will resemble those seen on worlds in the dark blue area of the graph. These worlds are in the medium blue area of the graph.

Any world founded before 2260 A.D. after 2210 A.D. will have as extensive a road network as would be required without transmat technology. Any population center which pre-dates the mid twenty-third century will have extensive road or rail or public transportation systems. If the world has advanced to TL B some of these systems, especially those between population centers will have been replaced with commercial transmat portals. If they have advanced to TL A whole population centers with their road systems may have been abandon in favor of more advanced, nanotech produced, villages and cities supported by transmat technology. Those areas not abandoned may be occupied by the economically disadvantaged or they may have been upgraded, with their street re-purposed as tracks or walkway or built upon as newly reclaimed land.

Worlds still at tech levels below B will still use their roads and public transportation systems. Gravity assisted ground vehicles and transport capsules will make up the majority of transport. Newer materials might be used for roads, and it is possible that planned communities could exist which separate vehicles from pedestrians. With lots of land and relatively few people the overcrowding existing in many areas of Earth is seen less, at least in the Highlands.

Outside the Highlands a much greater variety of technology mix and social and cultural geography is possible.

Life in a distributist nanotech society

The most difficult aspect of adventuring in any society whose tenants are radically different from the players own is trying to imagine what life is like for the player characters. This is important because social norms color what kinds of choices are reasonable for the characters to make and so limit the options of the players. These limitations are most often enforced by the referee or storyteller or gamemaster, but automatic compliance of the players often is effected by how reasonable those limits seem.
Very few players would disagree with a GM who called a SWAT team in if their characters shoot up a police station. Their response might be different if the GM calls in a ninja hit squad because they've ambushed a Confederate scouting party in a U.S. Civil War era game.
So social environment is very important. If the society is radically different, say a devout Christian norm as opposed to the radical progressive secularism of the present day that still might not be that great a leap. The PCs could likely look back several hundred years to the societal norm of the pre-Reformation Christian eras. However such societies were very different from civilization in the Highlands, most notably due to the existence of nantechnology.
Now the limitations of nanotechnology quite put to rest the common fantasy of a nanite swarm creating a banquet complete with table, chairs, prime rib, and champagne cooling in its ice bucket out of thin air. Even so it is easy to see that a small group outfitted with a number of nanotech factories and the designs needed to utilize them would be quite independent of need for the economic structures typically organized along traditional capitalistic grounds.
While the economic structure practiced within the Highlands might be categorized as distributism, it is no more pure pure distributism than what is practiced in the twenty-first century United States is pure capitalism or what is practiced in twenty-first century China is communism or capitalism.
The very existence of nanotechnology makes old supply side economics obsolete. But even when anyone with a nanotech factory and a pile of materials can make just about anything there is still an advantage to a certain amount of specialization. Someone still has to design the patterns that factories use to create items. Metals, petrochemicals and other elements must still be mined, purified and transported. And even with nanotech factories it is still more efficient to grow a crop or raise a herd than it is to produce nano-tech food.
Some amount of capitalization, that is the concentration of capital for the purposes of investment still occurs. The difference being the lack of isolation from consequences which was inherent in the progressive era corporate system.
Corporations, as originally instituted, limited the liability of investors for debt beyond the amount of assets they had in the corporation. This shifted risk to the debtors of the corporation. In the 19th century this was extended to protect shareholders by limiting the corporation's liability in both contract and tort claims. This further isolated members of the corporation from accountability for the corporation's actions. In the 20th century, changing law served to concentrate authority for guidance of corporate actions in the hands of corporate managers, who were theoretically accountable to shareholders, but often beyond their actual control. This further isolated those controlling the actions of the corporation from the consequences of their actions, both moral and legal. Of course it was possible for governments to hold corporate officers accountable for illegal activities, and even for a corporation to be dissolved for a pattern of such activities. Such sanctions typically require extensive and expensive action on the part of government, with corporate officers often shielded from direct accountability and hapless shareholders punished through loss of asset value. This pertains to legal responsibility, attempting to hold corporations up to moral accountability was even harder. This ignored the inevitable corruptive effect exercised by many large corporations as they solicited beneficial laws from compliant political leaders in return for both legal and illegal bribery.
Like many types of destructive social patterns the initial consequence of the decoupling of cause and effect resulted in a temporary economic boom. Often such patterns extend for what in human terms is a significant span of time, making the inevitable consequences less obvious. But the cause and effect relationship is as true as the law of gravity. The consequences of the divorce of behavior consequences in the economic sphere would eventually lead to economic collapse.
As communism and socialism fail because they do not take into account the nature of man so to does capitalism fail when it too fails to take into account the concupiscence caused by original sin.
Adam Smith's "invisible hand" does not work when the natural balance of economic cause and effect is corrupted by government intervention, legal redirection of consequences or criminal intent. Corporations and capitalism on their own are neither morally corrupt or sinful. However in their original incarnation, that is chartered by governments, for the common good, rather than to realize corporate revenues for the state in the form of taxes or profits for the shareholders, corporations can produce enormous good and still produce profit, which is of itself not sinful. This is accomplished by keeping corporations closely regulated, focusing on the protection of the public good and limiting corporations to comply with the purposes expressed in their charters. This generally results in small corporations, which are closely regulated by government in the interest of the commons. Naturally this produces a lower rate of return than unfettered capitalism, but it also prohibits the fiction of the immortal corporate "person", beyond common morals and ethical constraints. It also tends to ensure profits over the long run, if limiting their unfettered expansion. In the Highlands this is considered an equitable trade.

Transport Capsule

Transport capsules are small utility craft used for short range transport in space or on planetary surfaces. Transport capsules are small enough to use commercial vehicle transmat portals. They have no facilities for sleeping or food preparation and so are unsuitable for use on the subspace transport networks. They are most often used to haul a few passengers or small amounts of cargo between spacecraft, transporting personnel between station modules or as transport on worlds to places not served by the transmat system. The capsule is not designed to be serviced in space, although the engine compartment is accessible by removing the floor decking. Access is through the single rear hatch. Transport capsules do not have an enclosed airlock relying on a membrane barrier to maintain cabin pressure when the hatch is open.

Transport Capsule in GURPS VE2 format:
TLA Transport Capsule-class

Crew: 2 total. 2 crew stations covering vehicle maneuvering system, communicator, 4 sensors.

Subassemblies: Vehicle +4, Body +4.

P&P: 52,000,000-kWs rechargeable power cell, 10,000 lbs. thrust Barnes-Gutierrez Hyperspace Engine (Barnes Manifold deflector; no access space).

Occ: two roomy crew stations (gravity web), five roomy passenger seats (gravity web), three roomy passenger standing room locations, 10-man full life support system.

Armor F RL B T U
Body 3/5 3/5 3/5 3/5 3/5

Equipment
Body: AESA (scan 17, 10-mile range; non-targeting); long range radio communicator (50,000-mile range); searchlight (0.45-mile range); PESA (scan 21, 50-mile range); gravscanner (scan 17, 10-mile range); multiscanner (scan 17, 10-mile range); small computer (complexity 8; compact, dedicated); routine vehicle operation program (piloting-12, C2); datalink program (C1); computer navigation program (C2); artificial gravity unit (27,000cf covering); full fire suppression system; sealed.

Statistics
Size: [LxWxH] 10'x8.5'x8' Payload: 2,000 lbs. Lwt.: 9,189 lbs.
Volume: 689 cf Maint.: 25 hours (3.85 mh/day) Price: P6420

HT: 14 HP: 750 [Body].

Space Performance: sAccel (unloaded) 1.09 G, ( 1.09 G), sDecel 1.09 G, sMR 1.09, sAccel 20 mph/s.

Aerial Performance: Stall Speed 0 mph, Drag 501, Top Speed 385 mph, aAccel 20 mph/s, aMR 5.5, aSR 4, aDecel 20 mph/s.

Design Notes:
TLA medium frame standard materials [Vehicle].
TLA DR 5 expensive metal [Vehicle].
Operating Duration: 14 H 11 M 46 S.
Vehicle Features: computerized controls, computerized diving controls, pressure proofed, no streamlining.
Volume: 689 cf [Body].
Area: 500 sf [Body].

The Pinnace

A Pinnace is an armed vessel typically carried aboard other vessels, or used from a base or station in system. Pinnace are typically built in the 250 to 400 thousand cubit foot range. They have shunting capability and are used as scouts or couriers.

Like most spacecraft which are larger than a brake or hypershuttle, but smaller than a Man-'O-War, pinnace are usually saucer shaped. Pinnace in service with the Legion usually are lightly armed, being intend primarily for planetary combat support and uncontested ship boardings. They can be used to land troops or to carry messages in areas where there is no hypercable system.
Because they are capable of independent operation most contain both eating and sleeping accommodations. Often small craft, such as ridged inflatable boats, air utility vehicles, or transport capsules are carried aboard to allow operations in frontier areas and regions off the grid. They are capable of water landings and can set down at unimproved landing areas and even remained tethered by a gravity anchor in mountainous areas too rugged for conventional landing.
All of these characteristics makes this type of vessel highly sought after by private users and traders guilds. Many second hand ones have found there way into this market, though most such vessels have had their weapons stripped and sensors degraded.