So I’m worldbuilding an easy-to-write Space Opera/Adventure setting.
Last time, I was limiting the technology without breaking the core Space Opera tropes I like. This time, I’m starting on how some of that nerfed technology works in practice.
So I open up Scapple, start a new file, and brainstorm the tropes I want, adding them as (what these days I call) “Positions” with jagged boxes.
One of the cool things about worldbuilding using Conflict Diagrams is that you don’t generate screeds of text! I know what I mean so don’t have to explain myself to me. However, hopefully, you won’t be too confused by the tropes I want to support:
Star Smugglers
Star Travel
Tramp Starships
System: Sense of Place
Pirates
Starship as 1930s aviation
Galaxy: Sense of Scale
If any of them don’t make sense…
Next, I go through my tropes adding factors (the plain boxes) for and against (“!” indicates “against”).
Most of the factors are vague and/or top level. “FTL Drive” is concrete, but “Evasion possible” just describes some quality of the overall setting.
I’m also…
Adding downstream factors, e.g. “Interesting systems spread out” has the downstream factor “Systems are just waypoints.”
Adding upstream factors, e.g. “Fuel is purchased” has the upstream factor “Fuel refined at wormholes”
Making connections between factors, e.g. look at the chain around “Wormholes for very long journeys”.
Indicating where a factor works in both directions, e.g. “Good visibility in space” works for “Pirates”, but against “Star Smugglers”.
Being economical, e.g. since “Fuel is purchased” I’m having it manufactured at wormholes rather than from unobtanium in the local asteroid belt.
Just to be clear, I’m doing all this by tinkering and iterating and shuffling, and always visualising. It’s an act of creation “in the zone” with the Stellaris soundtrack playing.
Finally, I work through my Conflict Diagram using yellow to highlight “concrete factors” that physically exist in the setting:
So things that are true for my story universe now include:
Fuel is purchased
Need bases and supply dumps.
Fuel refined at wormholes
Wormholes for very long journeys.
FTL Drive
Travel in hops between systems.
Interesting systems spread out.
However, I have an unresolved question:
“How do drive systems work?”
The answer needs to justify both in-system travel and the ability of ships to evade each other.
I must decide not just how ships get around planetary systems, but also why this is required.
For example, maybe there are limitations on where you can jump to hyperspace?
Maybe travel in-system is by jumping between gravity wells, which is great for Earth to Mars, but if you want to visit the Asteroid Belt then you need to crawl along on reaction drive…
Maybe.
And all of that is part of a wider topic: ship operations, including how ships fight.
Some of what I decide might cause knock-on changes in the other diagrams.
We’ll see.
Tune in next time to find out!
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