I: Vision Of A New Earth

Tau 4 is a fictional but fairly realistic Earth-like planet I created in the early 1990s as part of a science-fiction roleplaying game I designed called Core Fire. It was also a roleplaying campaign in which a group of us set out to see how humankind might actually colonize a "new Earth" found near our own Solar System.

As a heavenly body, Tau 4 is the imaginary fourth planet discovered within the real Tau Ceti star system (hence the notational name Tau 4 - though it was given the cultural name of "Sylvan"). Tau Ceti is an actual star system 11.8 years from our Solar System. As a star, Tau Ceti happens to be similar to Sol (our sun) in its spectral class. So it is a source of wonder for us whether or not there is a real Earth-like planet that we could colonize in the future.

The colonization of our fictional planet Tau 4 was a fascinating roleplaying campaign that was played out by myself (as game designer and gamemaster) and three players. It was based, in part, on a scenario hypothesized by the late Dr Robert L. Forward, a scientist and sci-fi author. The Tau 4 campaign is an example of the kind of things we do in gaming just for the sake of doing them. Why? Because they are cool!

Origin Of The Tau 4 Campaign

What lead me to create Tau 4?...

I was a long-time player and gamemaster of sci-fi roleplaying games (in particular Traveler, which is to sci-fi roleplaying what Dungeons & Dragons is to medieval fantasy roleplaying). However, I was always most interested in creating worlds and adventures that had a more realistic flavour to them - featuring technology that had fewer leaps of plausibility.

I wanted to go further down this road - to design a sci-fi roleplaying game just a few klicks beyond the horizon, so to speak (nothing near Star Trek, but a little beyond the Cyberpunk genre). This I did - the game was called Core Fire. It was a dark, gritty roleplaying game, set in a time with only a few technological leaps (such as very limited interstellar travel) - and even then they were experimental and frequently broke down.

Furthermore, in the "universe" of Core Fire there were only one inhabitable planet beyond Earth. (Contrast this with some "space opera" settings with seemingly hundreds of inhabitable planets.) I was interested in a game that focused on the struggle over a single newly-discovered Earth-like planet. To actually travel to this planet would be a massive undertaking (think of emigrating to the New World a few hundred years ago).  Earth was, as you might guess, stricken with pollution, overcrowding, et cetera. Naturally, such a planet could be highly valued... What sort of conflicts then would happen on it?

The planet I created was Tau 4 (or "Sylvan"). It was fictional, but in keeping with the realistic flavour of my game, I set it in orbit around a real star: Tau Ceti - which is about 12 light years from our solar system, and is similar in nature to our sun. In the Core Fire backstory, Tau 4 was spotted by us Earthlings in the mid-21st century (I will describe it later). We sent a probe to it - which did a fly-by, gathered data and sent it back. It was then colonized by a single ship sometime in the 21st century. However, this was a one-way trip, done by essentially desperate people willing to risk all to escape the drudgery of Earth. (We will return to this voyage in a moment.)

After this first voyage there were no following ones - the first trip had been really expensive for little gain back on Earth, another was too difficult to finance. Contact between the Tau 4 colony and Earth faded to nothing (after all, radio messages would take 12 years to send). There was little to maintain it. On Tau 4 the colony grew rapidly until there was a city. The chance to "start over" allowed the colonists to build an advanced, well thought-out civilization in the rich open space of a newly-found garden planet.

But, about 150 years later, scientists on Earth discovered "other-space" (my version of hyperspace), and harnessed it. Thus "faster-than-light" travel was invented - though it was fraught with danger: it had a habit of driving people insane (a device of mine designed to restrict freedom of interstellar movement). Nevertheless a new transportation route was opened wide - complete with a flood of Earth emigrants. Where would Earth people go?: why, Tau 4 of course.

The world of Core Fire then, revolved around a struggle over Tau 4 shortly after the invention of other-space travel - partly between the "Originals" (descendants of the first colonists) and this influx of millions of Earth folks; partly between the immigrants themselves as they carved up control of the planet.

Anyway, the actual colonization of Tau 4 was a potentially interesting adventure in its own right. And as part of the design of Core Fire, I wanted to flesh out its details. What better way to do this than to run it as a roleplaying campaign in its own right? So my friends and I hypothesized and played out the colonization of Tau 4, the newly-found Earth-like planet...

[Next: Designing A New Earth >>>]