Retro Rockets

 I enjoy retro future settings for Science Fiction. It turns out I am not alone in this. The fine folks were very encuraging when I decided to write Solar Sagas (SoSag) for Quantum. SoSag never specified a year to start a SoSag campaign. 

Fast Forward to 2025. I'm writing SoSag's evolution: Retro Rockets for FTL: Nomad and I decided to pin down an actual year for campaigns as well as a timeline (should people choose to use it). I decided history went off the rails are 1947, though there were bizarre occurrences before then. To summarize I went with a  vision of the Solar System before the Mariner probes showed us how unlivable it all was. However, my version of the planets was not entirely Golden Age. Some new features discovered by our probes were used. 

Mercury is not tidally locked and rotates. The Jovian moons experience radiation, sometimes quite extreme (such as on Io). After all people have already written Golden Age Solar System settings for stories and games. I wanted a different spin. The same with the technology: for the most part it resembles the gear of the Apollo Era. 

It's sobering for me I grew up with Apollo and now it's olden times.

It also avoids dieselpunk imagery. I love dieselpunk but there is a lot of it out there. This is more Atom Punk. I'm breaking SF tropes, my vessels use boron fusion which is mostly a 'clean' reaction. Breaking Boron down mostly produces X-rays (never mind those stray neutrons, they are insignificant!). Unlike some other games, ships use boron for their reactors. Unlike hydrogen you have to mine and refine boron and refueling is not easy in places. Propellant is usually water or hydrogen which you can find easily beyond Earth's orbit. Space travel requires some infrastructure. Boron becomes a staple of trade. 

Earth starts with plenty of minerals (including boron), a booming population and a can do attitude. Being human they laugh at and wreck status quo, while rocketing where saner folk fear to tread. Where will these lead them and their neighbors? That's up to you.