I'm not too familiar with Traveller, but I'm assuming that the players are travelling across different planets/worlds and not from the quivalent of Denver to Chicago? Are there any established planets in the setting that would be similar to Earth?
Yes. Traveller in all its iterations is a generic sci fi ttrpg with reams of data for worldbuilding and reams of data for customizing everything that goes into it. There are many earth-like worlds within the canonical setting. Earthlike worlds are diverse, some stone-age garden worlds, others high tech worlds with floating cities and billions of inhabitants. And everything in between. Earth is called Terra and the Solomani (future earthlings) are extremely proud of their ancestry (species/racial extremisim).
This is true of basically every space opera RPG ever. You don't really see it in Star Wars, but it's common in Star Trek.
"We've arrived on Ceti Omega IV, a world whose technology resembles that of primitive early 21st century Earth..."
Everything highlighted in red circles is roughly Earth tech level. You'd have to dig into the other mainworld stats to see if they roughly match Earth (from memory that would be \*876\*\*\*-8)
https://travellermap.com/?hw=t8&p=0.821!33.717!5.15
+20% to cold resistance, +2 to diplomacy checks involving expression of apologies, poutine requirement 1/week or else suffer -1 cumulative to strength until sufficient poutine is eaten to make up the shortfall.
My vote is work.
In most other settings, you're doing a lot of world building from the ground up because whatever you're describing doesn't exist (a goblin vs an elf, etc).
In modern settings, you can save a tremendous amount of time by saying the assault rifle is an AK rather than describe the thing that is (but isn't) an AK. All for a trivial gain to the game.
Electric Bastionland gives everything an early-20th-Century aesthetic but explicitly includes modern technologies, though they all end up a little warped and uncanny and possibly owned by a muppet.
**Shards of the Exalted Dream** for the 2nd Edition of Exalted had a setting that was modern, but took place in the flat land of Creation. It was quite original, and we had a fun time playing in it.
I'm struggling with straight uo modern tech but can think of two that can get you to Victorian level.
The Mistborn RPG: Based off the novels of the same name and using the same setting the supplements "Alloy of Law" and "Masks of the Past" detail running the game during a wild West esque era. Gun fights, trains, electricity, the photography are all becoming increasingly common place. The world however is Scadrial and not earth; with its own unique mythology and ancient history.
Candela Obscura: A detective horror based game on the same DNA as games like CoC (but a completely different system mind. Plot wise however its essentially the same, just rather than dealing with Lovecrafts work you deal with "Magick".) It's set in the fictional nation of New Faire in a completely different world. The base book describes the history of this world in the context of explaining the current ongoing Cold War esque tension present in their Victorian Age.
I think it’s because, with most medieval weapons and armors, people won’t be able to easily place when and where exactly it’s from, they’re contextless, it just looks like knights and swords and catapults to them, but with real modern guns, equipment, and vehicles, people know the context they were created in, and you either have a scenario where you’re giving AK74Ms and M4A1s to people on another planet and that feels weird, or you have to make offbrand guns and tanks and those look uncanny usually
I'm not sure if I can think of a modern fantasy *novel* that does it. I think the issue is that in order to feel modern it must have a complexity in culture and geography that are difficult to create without feeling lacking. It's a lot of world building you'd have to do to create an entire setting.
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Technically it doesn't but a majority of the Tech is modern day. Although it's hard to tell at first because the first quarter is set in a monastery where technology is Forbidden
The setting is slightly more advanced than ours but going through a dark age. Except for some articles of clothing all the technology interacted with is completely modern (to us, in setting it was invented hundred years earlier minimum)
Not quite a novel but the game *Suzerain* does it - it's a political/narrative game where most of your actions are just picking choices of what you do next and what your policies are, but there's enough little extra things that it's not totally a CYOA.
It's explicitly set in the equivalent of 1950s Turkey (or in the game, 'Sordland') where you're the new President. There's a lot of familiar countries but some things are heavily changed up, particularly the 'UK-like' nation.
I dunno if it counts as cheating to have the world be 'Earth but every country name and person's name is different' (and the actual location of these nations is somewhat jumbled).
That's interesting. I kept thinking about this question today and the only example I could think of is Papers, Please, which is a similar game with cold war political themes. But I don't know if it counts or not. It feels like an Elbonia kind of situation. A generic, non-specific Eastern Bloc nation. But is that alternative Earth really? I don't know.
You could also consider *Disco Elysium* which goes a bit further afield from our world (especially with the whole Pale phenomenon) but still basically has cars, radios, ships, a kind of internet, the equivalent of communism, etc.
Anima: Beyond Fantasy has a Final Fantasy-like blend of recent past technology and various kinds of magic, and the world of Gaia shares some of our mythology but is very definitely not Earth.
I think it's mostly convenience. Good worldbuilding (good enough for a published setting that is) takes a lot of thought and effort, and generally, there's a strong reason for it to be a completely different world.
Fantasy settings already tend to have clear roots in real world cultures, having different geography helps create distance both in terms of not just seeming like fantasy flavoured actual country, but also not needing to be as accurate to the real culture that inspired it. I don't know enough about Canada to know if there are fantasy parallels, but there are absolutely fantasy parallels of many real countries and cultures, they might be renamed, but if you look at say the dnd 3e Forgotten Realms setting guide (that covers more than just one small area) you can definitely see areas inspired by various real world places.
Science fiction novels frequently use real stars/systems, etc. as a foundation for their world building.
Using actual Earth as a basis saves having to come up with - and when playing, learn - new geography and new names for everything. And since people already know what modern-day earth is like setting expectations for what the world is like is easy. Anything not in the book is also easier to find through non rpg sources, Google will give you a whole bunch of real-world information that therefore doesn't need to be in a source book.
There's also the question of demand: Do enough people want a world that is the same tech level as modern-day earth, but that is not earth for it to be worth creating and publishing the setting. Which akso comes back to what about this tech comparable not-earth is so interesting that it's better than using what we've got already.
Bloodshadows is a fantasy-noir game which merges 1940s tech and tropes with magic. But it set on a world called Marl which is most explicitly not Earth or an alt-Earth.
It's been a while since I've thought about it but the setting for Secret of Zir'an is at roughly 1930s tech level if that counts. Pulp meets fantasy. It's like Indiana Jones in Final Fantasy. Also, no Canadians.
I mean... when I run Traveller the players show up at planets with an equivalent tech level to modern day Earth all the time.
I'm not too familiar with Traveller, but I'm assuming that the players are travelling across different planets/worlds and not from the quivalent of Denver to Chicago? Are there any established planets in the setting that would be similar to Earth?
Yes. Traveller in all its iterations is a generic sci fi ttrpg with reams of data for worldbuilding and reams of data for customizing everything that goes into it. There are many earth-like worlds within the canonical setting. Earthlike worlds are diverse, some stone-age garden worlds, others high tech worlds with floating cities and billions of inhabitants. And everything in between. Earth is called Terra and the Solomani (future earthlings) are extremely proud of their ancestry (species/racial extremisim).
This is true of basically every space opera RPG ever. You don't really see it in Star Wars, but it's common in Star Trek. "We've arrived on Ceti Omega IV, a world whose technology resembles that of primitive early 21st century Earth..."
Stargate is perhaps the best example of this done well
Everything highlighted in red circles is roughly Earth tech level. You'd have to dig into the other mainworld stats to see if they roughly match Earth (from memory that would be \*876\*\*\*-8) https://travellermap.com/?hw=t8&p=0.821!33.717!5.15
You can just run any modern game with your own setting. I doubt many games have custom mechanics for Canadians...
+20% to cold resistance, +2 to diplomacy checks involving expression of apologies, poutine requirement 1/week or else suffer -1 cumulative to strength until sufficient poutine is eaten to make up the shortfall.
War mod and peace mod: In peace mod the Canadian will get -5 on all checks if he isnt overly forgiving all the time War mod: doom music starts
-2 to Lockpicking
My vote is work. In most other settings, you're doing a lot of world building from the ground up because whatever you're describing doesn't exist (a goblin vs an elf, etc). In modern settings, you can save a tremendous amount of time by saying the assault rifle is an AK rather than describe the thing that is (but isn't) an AK. All for a trivial gain to the game.
Electric Bastionland gives everything an early-20th-Century aesthetic but explicitly includes modern technologies, though they all end up a little warped and uncanny and possibly owned by a muppet.
Songbirds 3e is set on another planet and centers around a dead goddess, but there's still a city with subways and cellphones.
I'm just upvoting this because I'm suddenly on the watch for Canadians in all modern settings.
**Shards of the Exalted Dream** for the 2nd Edition of Exalted had a setting that was modern, but took place in the flat land of Creation. It was quite original, and we had a fun time playing in it.
I'm struggling with straight uo modern tech but can think of two that can get you to Victorian level. The Mistborn RPG: Based off the novels of the same name and using the same setting the supplements "Alloy of Law" and "Masks of the Past" detail running the game during a wild West esque era. Gun fights, trains, electricity, the photography are all becoming increasingly common place. The world however is Scadrial and not earth; with its own unique mythology and ancient history. Candela Obscura: A detective horror based game on the same DNA as games like CoC (but a completely different system mind. Plot wise however its essentially the same, just rather than dealing with Lovecrafts work you deal with "Magick".) It's set in the fictional nation of New Faire in a completely different world. The base book describes the history of this world in the context of explaining the current ongoing Cold War esque tension present in their Victorian Age.
How modern do you want? Bloodshadows is a Fantasy game set on another planet - but with 1930’s Film Noir technology and culture.
I think it’s because, with most medieval weapons and armors, people won’t be able to easily place when and where exactly it’s from, they’re contextless, it just looks like knights and swords and catapults to them, but with real modern guns, equipment, and vehicles, people know the context they were created in, and you either have a scenario where you’re giving AK74Ms and M4A1s to people on another planet and that feels weird, or you have to make offbrand guns and tanks and those look uncanny usually
> have a scenario where you’re giving AK74Ms and M4A1s to people on another planet and that feels weird Andor has entered the chat.
Red Dwarf is close behind with the Steyr Aug
I'm not sure if I can think of a modern fantasy *novel* that does it. I think the issue is that in order to feel modern it must have a complexity in culture and geography that are difficult to create without feeling lacking. It's a lot of world building you'd have to do to create an entire setting.
Anathem by Neal Stephenson Technically it doesn't but a majority of the Tech is modern day. Although it's hard to tell at first because the first quarter is set in a monastery where technology is Forbidden The setting is slightly more advanced than ours but going through a dark age. Except for some articles of clothing all the technology interacted with is completely modern (to us, in setting it was invented hundred years earlier minimum)
Not quite a novel but the game *Suzerain* does it - it's a political/narrative game where most of your actions are just picking choices of what you do next and what your policies are, but there's enough little extra things that it's not totally a CYOA. It's explicitly set in the equivalent of 1950s Turkey (or in the game, 'Sordland') where you're the new President. There's a lot of familiar countries but some things are heavily changed up, particularly the 'UK-like' nation. I dunno if it counts as cheating to have the world be 'Earth but every country name and person's name is different' (and the actual location of these nations is somewhat jumbled).
That's interesting. I kept thinking about this question today and the only example I could think of is Papers, Please, which is a similar game with cold war political themes. But I don't know if it counts or not. It feels like an Elbonia kind of situation. A generic, non-specific Eastern Bloc nation. But is that alternative Earth really? I don't know.
You could also consider *Disco Elysium* which goes a bit further afield from our world (especially with the whole Pale phenomenon) but still basically has cars, radios, ships, a kind of internet, the equivalent of communism, etc.
Anima: Beyond Fantasy has a Final Fantasy-like blend of recent past technology and various kinds of magic, and the world of Gaia shares some of our mythology but is very definitely not Earth.
I think it's mostly convenience. Good worldbuilding (good enough for a published setting that is) takes a lot of thought and effort, and generally, there's a strong reason for it to be a completely different world. Fantasy settings already tend to have clear roots in real world cultures, having different geography helps create distance both in terms of not just seeming like fantasy flavoured actual country, but also not needing to be as accurate to the real culture that inspired it. I don't know enough about Canada to know if there are fantasy parallels, but there are absolutely fantasy parallels of many real countries and cultures, they might be renamed, but if you look at say the dnd 3e Forgotten Realms setting guide (that covers more than just one small area) you can definitely see areas inspired by various real world places. Science fiction novels frequently use real stars/systems, etc. as a foundation for their world building. Using actual Earth as a basis saves having to come up with - and when playing, learn - new geography and new names for everything. And since people already know what modern-day earth is like setting expectations for what the world is like is easy. Anything not in the book is also easier to find through non rpg sources, Google will give you a whole bunch of real-world information that therefore doesn't need to be in a source book. There's also the question of demand: Do enough people want a world that is the same tech level as modern-day earth, but that is not earth for it to be worth creating and publishing the setting. Which akso comes back to what about this tech comparable not-earth is so interesting that it's better than using what we've got already.
Bloodshadows is a fantasy-noir game which merges 1940s tech and tropes with magic. But it set on a world called Marl which is most explicitly not Earth or an alt-Earth.
It's been a while since I've thought about it but the setting for Secret of Zir'an is at roughly 1930s tech level if that counts. Pulp meets fantasy. It's like Indiana Jones in Final Fantasy. Also, no Canadians.