How would you justify a futuristic/science-fiction setting where people live (on one planet) nomadically...

Space Amish.

The weather on the planet is VERY nasty during certain times of the year, but these extreme weather cycles are fairly localized.

Building cities never really took hold, because once the Windy Season rolls around in your area your city is going to get demolished by hurricanes and tornadoes. Go west, and during the rainy season the entire plain south of the mountains floods. And in the mountains, winter is a deadly killer and summer is full of mudslides as everything melts, etc.

The number of places where you can afford to build longstanding civilization centers and expect them to last the year are few and far between. These end up becoming havens and trade hubs where culture and technology advance, but everyone else is forced to be constantly on the move to as to be in the best place to benefit.

It doesn't have to be aimless wandering, even advanced cultures still work here. You want to mine for iron? Then your mining company mines here for the next three months, pulls out and mines somewhere else for the next 4, then pulls out of there and goes north and mines there until the first location is safe to mine again. Trying to outlast the weather isn't cost effective, so you just move your operation in cycles to work around it. Same goes for farming and anything else based on location.

I ran a science fiction game ages ago which included a version of Mars which was basically space Tibet (at least regions of it). Himalayan flora and fauna are designed for cold, scarcity and low-oxygen conditions as is. A certain Martian valley was terraformed (the whole planet was being, but it'd take centuries to stick) with genetically engineered versions of the Himalayan ecosystems, and inhabited among other things by a society of neo-Buddhists who set up a monastery there to truly isolate themselves from everything. Their saffron robes mesh nicely with the landscape (they were a more insulated version of the traditional robes, plus an airmask). They live by herding Martian yaks and harvesting Martian oates.

Best thing I can think of;

Ever seen Trigun? Think that only account for the following;
- Plants have a hard cap on what they can support, limiting cities to a max population.
-There is enough water in the world for a desert like ecosystem, but human occupation drain the natural reserves pretty quickly. (We know about cacti storing water, and move on to new areas to collect it, etc.)
- Since there is a post apocalyptic aspect to the world, ruins and failed colonies provide areas and reasons for adventuring.

Ohhhh that's really cool! Stealing.

Long and/or extreme seasons. During summer only the poles/subpolar regions are livable and can support agriculture outside of enclosed habitats. During winter only the tropics/subtropics are livable outside and can support of the same. People move between regions following these long seasons.

A planet with an axial tilt like Uranus would see it's poles point towards it's primary at different times in it's orbit creating extreme seasonal variations.

The Amish are neither nomadic nor hunter/gatherers, you stupid fucks.

Don't the Amish, like, live in caves and fight off bears for the best spear fishing grounds?

>The Amish are neither nomadic nor hunter/gatherers, you stupid fucks.
As someone who lives and works in close proximity to the Plain Folk, it is a little annoying how so many people just know them as "those people who don't know how to use a telephone".

I know a family that uses an iPad for their business.

Bionicle's spherus magna.
Various elemental tribes.
Everyone is a gladiator character.

>Everyone is a gladiator character

Can I be an American Gladiator character?

There are literally three and only three reasons:
- they are forced by circumstances (stranded, lost, after a die-back event etc)
- lack of contact with outside the planet (assuming you are playing as an alien and this is Earth 20k BC or Earth stand-in)
- conscious choice (either as an experiment or based on personal believes: religious, political etc.)

You get to be worf's voice actor and a literal before-gurren-lagan-robot-controlling god if you roll 20 user.

Housing has become the main stay of the rich almost exclusively, vicious crackdowns on unauthorised property mean that the properties that the poor own are deliberatley ramshackle to ensure that when they get taken down the owners don't lose as much, travelling becomes a much more appealing model due to the rise of larger vehicles that double as houses (basically caravans) due to the lack of stores (and the ludicrous prices they need to pay to keep rented property) money becomes less worthwhile, travellers begin figuring out cheap foods like berries and shit.

Rolled 6 (1d20)

I want to believe

You are now mata nui.
Enjoy fighting makuta teridax.
Good luck.

Maybe something like in Clifford Simak's "City". Technology's advanced to the point that the means for generating power, producing food, cleaning water and treating the waste of entire families are now cheap, mobile and simple enough to operate people are no longer dependent on central infrastructure, and affordable transportation is so good they don't need to live anywhere near their friends or workplaces (or, in a more modern setting, maybe everything just happens online).

Emphasize the world's emptiness. For a visitor from a more urbanized society, the solitude is alien. It's maddening, in a sense: beautiful, but at the same time eerie and maybe even a little bit sad. You walk for days and all you see around you is grass, and the occasional tree. There are no car noises, no powerlines, no signs. If there are roads, they are cracked and overgrown. The occasional husk of a building crumbles into the forest. There are birds, herd animals, maybe even wild predators, but no signs of people.

Then, with the quietest whoosh of air, an antigravity vehicle lands besides you. The people inside, of indeterminate ethnicity and speaking an unknown language, are friendly but inscrutable. They appear to be dressed in simple robes and tunics (actually made from smart fabrics) and the interior of their home/vehicle) is furnished with wooden and woven-grass furniture. They invite you to a simple meal of rice and fish, and a cup of tea.

Then they tell stories, and play a stringed instrument around a fire outside. There is no rush. There are no obligations. Come morning, they return to their grav vehicle, and fly off.

You screwed up the last part when you turned them from some kind of high tech Lakota monks into Japanese. I know it's easy to get confused, what with... um... both cultures requiring oxygen for survival, and all that.

Not all nomads are hunter gatherers. In many cultures, nomads traveled alongside herd animals like goats, sheep or yak, and in some proto agricultural practices like spreading seeds along the migration routes (so by the time you return next year crops would've regrown) were practiced throughout the American plains.

Kinda hard to make a meal with Lakota tribals look serene and peaceful, what with it all being wild berry and onion soup and strips of dried buffalo.

Mostly this.

Environmental hazards like hurricanes and others, that are outside the control of the available technology, so they are too powerful to be prevented yet are somewhat predictable like seasons, and force people to effectively live a nomadic lifestyle.

How would tribal warfare between the nomad caravans look in a futuristic world?

Low population for a large, bountiful area.

"It depends". Could be anything from "mobile cities" launching cruise missiles at each other to ritualized knife fighting to resolve matters of honor.

To jump on what this user said, this way of life is commonly known as nomadic pastoralism.

Also in some situations you have mounted nomads using the fact that they control all the war-capabale mounts (and thus all the cavalry) to effectively set up a fuedal system where they're lords/protectors of a non-nomadic population that grows most all the food, makes all the weapons, builds all the infrastructure, and does all the work that doesn't involve traveling between communities for trade, diplomacy, war, etc. This arrangement was common among the Mongols and many North African tribes who started out more as your usual nomadic pastoralists.

And to answer 's original question, I'd just point him at today. Nomadic cultures still exist, and in a lot of instances, they aren't "fully modernized". They use guns, but they still carry swords. They ride on animals instead of in vehicles, but they have TVs, video cameras, music players, and cell phones.

Pic related.

Any agricultural engineers can give confirmation on this? How small of an agriculture can you pack into a vehicle to feed a family? Sounds cozy as hell, to be honest. Sit around your high tech truck all day, traversing the grasslands, scooping up some Japanese straight out of the aquarium whenever you get hungry.

Some also use the whole image of being exotic primitive nomads to make a lot of money off of guiding tourists. So you travel to some desert shithole in the Middle East to meet quaint Bedouin camel riding Hamid, who hosts you in his stinky tent with all the disgusting coffee and flatbread you can choke on, then after you fall asleep slips straight back into his hut behind the nearest rock to heat up a TV dinner and go shitpost on Al-Fourshan from his wi-fi receiving laptop.

It's so telling that when a fa/tg/uy tries thinking about the luxuries of civilization, they think about TV dinners first. If pemmican and wild nuts are on one end of the spectrum, mac and cheese is totally on the other.

I'd say limited scope, small unit combat with global rules of engagement.

With their resource-rich lives and lack of infrastructure, there's no real reason to go total war. The only thing I can imagine them fighting over is either ideology or access to specific areas, both of which are better suited to small fights that drive off the other rather than trying to exterminate a decentralized enemy.

Children of the survivors of some crashed space ship filled with colonists and animals instead of loads of technological dooduhs and machinery?

They still have fancy holographic projectors and jetpacks but only a handfull and they don't have the means or insight into making more.

The same as always - bunch of dudes A gets ambushed by bunch of dudes B. Assuming group B did everything fine, they massacre group A and steal their shit.

It literally doesn't matter if they are riding camels, mongolian ponies or fucking fusion scooters.

There comes a point where ambushing the other dudes takes place so fast at such a long range it becomes harder to describe as such. When your fusion scooters buzz about launching missiles at each other from 70 kilometers away, it begins looking a lot less like Mongolian tribal feuding and a lot more like I don't even the fuck know.

Modern naval warfare?

It's Neo-Mongolia, in the post apocalyptic Neo-Future.

Why would you like that?

Make the setting modern Africa.

Absence of welfare.

[voiceover]In a world where BronzeAgePervert becomes God-Emperor of Mankind...[/voiceover]

I thought most of Africa was fairly settled by now? Hell, it used to be fairly settled for thousands of years. Nomads were at the minority, and then generally in the regions where agriculture was impossible at the time like the deserts and savanna (those are deceptively easy, to the untrained western eye. There's grass everywhere, so you think agriculture must be a joke and the stupid niggers just haven't figured it out. Turns out all that grass chokes the nutrients off the ground, nothing you'll plant there can grow).

Pure, undiluted, perpetual post-scarcity wanderlust.

Don't they have to keep it in the shed with the "rest of the tools"?

They're poor as fuck by galactic standards, but this advanced technology is relatively cheap to the point that even them can access it.

Just like afghan tribal mountainmen all have modern weapons instead of (or in addition to) swords.

You could set up the planet's biome as being both rich in resources but too hostile and wild to set up a large-scale agricultural infrastructure, so that hunting-gathering is the most attractive option.

Maybe the nomads could also be paid by the government (or nearest equivalent) to explore and extract [insert X here] that would be disseminated all over the planet.

1. Constant meteor rain, maybe due to a failed space architecture (like in Cowboy Bebop).
>People constantly moving because their homes and settlements are destroyed, or meteor forecast announces that their settlement is gonna be destroyed
>People constantly moving in search of the latest meteor because their materials are valuable, or are valuable pieces of spaceship/satellite junk

2. The earth is alive. The actual landmasses are the bodies of sleeping beasts lying on the seabed.
>The beasts/giants have been still for ages, but now they're in an agitated part of the dream, so they turn their backs, shake and that, and then all the world we knew is constantly submerging/emerging. The population must constantly strive to reach the uppermost side of the beast; or the one that is most probable to be the last to sink (maybe trying to find the thing's head or dick can be a quest on itself)
>If not, earthquakes; just lots of them

3. Godzilla scaled monsters; maybe nature-powered like the FFVII Weapons.

4. Aliens are systematically taking down human settlements with a death star that can only destroy cities (but not planets)

5. Monsanto's genetically altered food has burnt the ground in which it grows (already happening in India) and there is no more fertile soil, nor non-adultered seeds. The more technology you have, you cant still print a 3D salad.

6. Nuclear clouds. If they're trackable enough, people can plan migrations going ahead of their routes.

This is all assuming that you want settings with 0% level of actual settlements.

7. Is not Aliens, but humans those who control the deathstar; for reasons unknown

8. Its actually Apes

It's a utopia. People are so rich and carefree they can revert to what their monkey-genes truly desire instead of having to uphold civilization.

I like how half the suggestions in this thread are "everything's shit, it's an apocalypse, the world's unlivable, must continue moving to collect the scraps" and half are "the world's so utopian people have nothing better to do with their time".

The planet is almost, but not quite, tidal-locked with its star. They follow the sunset to stay ahead of the long night.

They get all their tech by scavenging ruins or stealing/trading with more advanced peoples. They don't have the knowledge or industry to recreate it, but at the same time they've grown so dependent on it that they're constantly moving around trying to get to the next source of tech to replenish any lost supplies.

If Grandma's super pacemaker or your bionic eyes or whatever gets busted and you've already picked the surrounding ruins clean of anything useful you're basically shit out of luck, and that situation is why they can't stay in one place too long.

How about asteroid belt scavengers?

How about a large portion of society looks down on the widespread use of technology to support themselves, and takes great pride in self-sufficiency and independence

Basically a society of do-it-yourself-er's trying to show each other up in how survival-y and crafty they are with great disdain for advanced plebeians

I had a traveller planet where the seasons were extraordinarily potent (high axial tilt and mountains formng wind-tunnel-like effects). This meant that during winters the upper lattitudes were inhospitable, and the equator was inhospitable in the summer.

Thus the wildlife was migratory in the extreme, traveling toward and away from the equator with the seasons, following the terrain between the mountain ranges. some of the wildlife were sources for rare chemical compounds and medicines that couldn't be synthesized, so the colonists of the planet were nomadic, following the herds, collecting the chemicals to sell at permanent trading stations on the equator during the winter.

They were still very high tech, using vehicles, gps, and weaponry to follow and hunt not only the chemical-producing beasts, but food.

I want Americans unironically pulling themselves by the bootstraps to leave this thread

It is interesting. Half of Veeky Forums sees cities as the heart of civilisation while the other half see them as a necessary evil.

>Implying this hard non-existing binary situation

Some tectonic shit, slow but unstoppable. Like small volcanoes appearing and disappearing everywhere. You have a month to run before shit hits the fan, the place becomes total wreck, but plants regrow in a month or so. Happens once per 0.5-5 years randomly.

nomads who occasionally stop by the space port to sell exotic skins and hides for the latest laser rifles and synthetic fabrics

they hunt animals with laser rifles, they sleep in plastic tents, they have small energy generators, but they still roam the planet, herding space-cattle, and trapping large animals for space-fur

their backwater only receives light shipping, and their strong traditions mean they feel no need to expand, so they are content to trade pelts, exotic meat, and textiles

I mean, it really comes down to the fact that urban and agricultural centers have both costs and benefits. If you have the technology to create those centers and choose not too, it's either because you have little or no need for the benefits they offer (world is too good), or because the cost is too high for the resources available (world is too shit).

Something like this setting? Just set the world as it would be 200 years from now; hugely developed technology, but whites have been extinct recently.

Now jump ahead another 200 and you have existing tech but a backward culture and Hunter gatherer society.

The planet is large and rotates very slowly. A day on this planet is something like ten earth years. People live in the twilight, always advancing with the rising or setting sun. The day side of the planet is a blazing inferno, the night side is a frozen wasteland, but the wildlife has all adapted to either migrate with the twilight, or has some sort of hibernation shell to survive the extremes.

A bunch of land-trains or convoys of vehicles fighting each other as they travel along a valuable trade route?

Ideally somewhere where for whatever reason building a road or railway isn't practical, but crossing it with a load of trucks is

Or pic related perhaps

I wonder if you can carry bio-diesel fermenters on vehicles in such a way that you could get a truck or convoy that "grazes"

Historically speaking, these kinds of societies have always been very egalitarian and peaceful. How about a civilisation that's become so advanced that it reverts back to primitive social structures simply because technology has made more complex civilisation no longer necessary? In a world where everyone has the technology to be completely self-sufficient, why wouldn't they just travel around on endless camping trips with their friends & family?

>nomadic hunter gatherers
>very egalitarian and peaceful
>what were the steppe peoples

Regularly occurring seasonal desasters (iceshelves, floods, huge ass thunderstorms ) in a huge scale + poverty to not have a fitting shelter to sit it out. So while the citizens of ecodome X seal themselves off for the radioactive murderfrogseason, you better move with the convoi to the lands of megadome Y, where the maneating glaciers just melted away

Post-apocalyptic world littered with the advanced technology of the precursor race that fucked everything up. You can have nomads with future tech exploring the ruins and scavenging for valuable stuff.

Jack squat.

It takes significant amounts of land and labor to get modest yields: farms make their money from efficiency of larger operations. And water and dirt are HEAVY.

Depends on what you consider nutrition, really. Cyberpunk 2020 had Nomad packs carrying around tanks of genetically engineered algea to feed the clan, for example. Could probably achieve acceptable results by filling it with a proper combination of plankton and such. Wasn't the krill/chlorella combination discussed as a means of feeding space colonists?

reminds me of mortal engines

Yes, but once again. Water is FUCKING HEAVY.

It's far more efficient to use Native American methods of creating relatively long lasting groves and fields that will grow with minimal attention while you're away, so you only have to go and harvest during the harvesting season and you can assign only a small crew to tend it in the meantime, like a communications outpost.

This works well if it's secret or if you don't have enemies who will raid it.

Make the environment somehow extremely hostile to permanent settlements so that it becomes nearly impossible to build and maintain towns and cities. Then make the planet a source of some highly sought after natural resource so that people have a reason to go down there and, you know, live in that hellhole.

>not wanting to play a face and be a gladiator's hype man and manager

The Legend Reborn was a piece of shit, but Metus was incredibly based in it. One redeeming thing about the movie.

All that being said, I think you're sort of on to something. Go post apocalyptic route, but LONG post apocalypse. People have recovered and rebuilt, but they just don't have the resources or know-how they used to. They have some technology, and no how to repair and duplicate it, but don't really understand it enough to innovate, and greater society has completely fallen apart, and is still in the early stages of being rebuilt.

A breakdown of communication technologies is paramount for this. There can't be any kind of internet or phone left. In that case, things will get tribal real quick, regardless of how fancy your equipment is.

Because at that point people go virtual "hivemind" where they live out their fantasies in cyberspace and only interact with outside world as galaxy eating swarm of nanobots.

Pull out some pseudo-science out of your ass, like a fertile planet far off in the galaxy, rich in minerals and resources when scanned by a ship from orbit, fails to detect that there is some sort of EMP surrounding the planet in the atmosphere. Once the ship enters the ozone all the electronics fail, causing the ship to crash. The players must eject themselves from the ship via escape pod or parachute in order to survive. Small settlements have popped up throughout the planet because of this, but no one has been able to escape it thus far. There are rumours of a city to the west, run by minerals similar to coal, where a miniature industrial revolution is happening. If you see black smoke in the distance and the smell of brimstone, you know you are near.

My niggah

if you have technology and a post scarcity society then you could have a traveelling culture that wasn't vermin.Maybe snowbird style, staying ahead of harsh weather.
insect farms can be compact but have a high protein output.

ever read the hellicona trilogy? people change shape due to disease and climate change over generations. good stuff

>Roaming crop rotations, possibly with robot automated farming systems.
>planet has extreme seasonal weather, and staying in one place using food production is not viable.

You. I like you.

>Don't they have to keep it in the shed with the "rest of the tools"?

The thing about Plain Folk (which encompasses other groups besides the people you call Amish) and technology is that if they judge it as being a benefit to their lives with no detriments, they will readily begin using it. The best example I can give is an elderly Amish man who could no longer walk on his own. The family got him an electric scooter, on the basis of "there's no point in making him suffer by being immobile, and this helps improve his quality of life."

Having an iPad in your house is perfectly fine, so long as you're using it for work and your kids aren't shutting themselves away playing games on it when they could be interacting with the rest of the family.

They probably have to charge it in the shed, but chances are they keep it in the house so it doesn't get stolen or damaged from the cold.

>scooping up some Japanese straight out of the aquarium whenever you get hungry.

Did the Japs mutate into fishmen in this future?

A magical apocalipse made agriculture impossible.
Maybe with one or more notable exceptions, like the surroundings of a huge city where past knowledge is still preserved.

>Plain Folk
A life without technological entertainment does sound a little boring, I agree.

Culture