A Long Earth Setting

I'm trying to figure out what system might best work for a game in a similar setting to the Long Earth scifi series.

The setting is a universe where parallel earths are strung together in a sequence like beads on a string and someone invents a device that allows someone to step between them in either direction in the sequence (east or west).

The main thing is that unlike the original earth, all the other earths are empty of human life and exist as they would if humanity had never touched it, completely wild. They are all slightly different from each other in their histories, becoming more and more different from our own the further you go in either direction. Different geology, often wildly different evolution, and even different faces on the moon. The path stretches on seemingly into infinity. Rarely there will be some with other intelligent creatures, and there are some semi-intelligent species who have the ability to step between the worlds at will.

The books were about humans starting to explore and expand out into the new earths. I'm more interested in putting together a setting further in the future after they're spread thinly throughout a number of bands of worlds, and based only loosely on the book's setting so many details will be different and the characters and major events of the books would not have occurred.

The idea would be that due to the expansion technology has stagnated and slowed, and for many regressed or been abandoned for a simpler nomadic lifestyle. The remaining civilizations would be made up of city-states, trading cultures, and a very shaky remnant of a government from the original earth.

Travel between worlds and over them is more easily done by airships, which would be the backbone of the traders, and a few of the city-states will be situated in such a way as to force a denser concentrated population focused on technological advancement despite how much others have regressed.

Any thoughts?

So it's a completely linear progression from one to the next?

Does it require a lot of resources to jump between Earths? And are there any like weather, or geological, or time-of-the-year stuff acting as gatekeepers between jumps? Like is it possible you jump to the next Earth and have to stay there a bit, before you can move on?

If it takes a lot of resources and you can wind up temporarily stranded even if you have those resources, it gives you a lot more room to throw adventures at players. Also I'd change the linear progression to rare splits in progression. Sure: you have to go on a linear path for the next ten Earths, but the one after that connects to three worlds, instead of just two.

as with in the books it would be mostly linear. There are oddities, random "joker" worlds where either some random fluke occurred different from the worlds on either side, either resulting in a lifeless world, one with too much of something, or blank spaces where the world in question was completely destroyed. In the books those gaps are used to more easily travel to mars.

In the books "stepping" is requires nothing, making it possible for anyone to just step away to a new world with some bits of wire they bought online and a potato to power the device. At first it's more limited because people could only step with what they could carry, and would get varying levels of motion sickness from stepping (most throwing up with just a few steps). However once they build airships able to step they could travel thousands of worlds in a matter of days with no real cost.

Part of what could potentially strand someone would be the sheer scale of it all. Sure you can walk back if your ship crashes, but even if you could travel 50 worlds a days that would mean nothing if you're 10,000 worlds from civilization. It would be like being stranded at sea, except it's an ocean of wild strange forest with unknown life living in it.

I wouldn't make it require a resource, but I would limit it more. I'd put a limit on the speed for ships, have the changes between worlds occur faster, have stepping individually exhaust people rather than make them throw up, etc. It would depend on what kind of mechanics I end up using for the game itself. I wouldn't want people to be able to step away from any situation, but at the same time that's part of the setting itself, so the point would be to have problems they wouldn't want to step away from.

There would also be people with the ability to step more easily than others, some without a device at all. This would be a fun ability to have in combat (being able to jump a world over and jump back) but it would still need its limits.

Is this from the same author of the novel where aliens connect all habitable worlds in the galaxy? Time dilation is a huge issue, but stepping from one world to another is common to both settings.

GURPS.
You just describe 90% of the basic setting of Homeline vs the Continuum

I want to add that as I said before there are creatures (most semi-sentient) able to step naturally as part of their evolution. Most of these creatures are primates, and it's implied that the devices are not what cause people to jump between worlds, but they work more by winding up your brain to be able to do what comes natural for some genetic relatives.

I'd keep a lot of those creatures from the books. The mains ones being
>Trolls (basically bigfoot) who have an odd and slow collective intelligence,
>Elves who are wild semi-sentient hairless primates who hunt other humanoids and use the stepping as a means of hunting, surrounding their prey on multiple worlds as well as in space. I might just rename them orcs for my own setting.
>grays, who are tall with overly large heads. Not even the most intelligent primates but they're able to step so fast they seem to flicker in and out of existence. The elves hunt them for the large brains.

No, the series is co-written by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett. Which if you're familiar with both authors means you'll not be surprised to have a benevolent AI character (Stephen Baxter) who claims to be the reincarnation of a Tibetan motorcycle repairman (Terry Pratchett) in order to be given human rights.

Are you sure? I'm not the most familiar with that, what's similar here?

>The idea would be that due to the expansion technology has stagnated and slowed

Why would this happen? We get a near infinite supply of raw materials, we get near infinite amount of space to live and produce food, allowing for humanity to grow tremendously, and with the spit out a lot more scientists and engineers. Regression is what happens when populations collapse and resources dry up.

How the hell does the airships help? They just sound like someone wanted to go Final Fantasy all of sudden.

Things like stepping to another world and then back again to bypass walls or armor needs to be thought about and covered.

>Why would this happen? We get a near infinite supply of raw materials, we get near infinite amount of space to live and produce food, allowing for humanity to grow tremendously, and with the spit out a lot more scientists and engineers. Regression is what happens when populations collapse and resources dry up.

The catch there is the same catch as before, the shear size of it all. There are enough habitable worlds for every human now on earth to be a king of a dozen of their own. There are unlimited resources, unlimited raw materials, unlimited food, unlimited space...

limited people.

Human expansion into these worlds is like splashing an overflowing glass into the concrete of a parking lot. It spreads, it splatters a few feet, but it's far from covering it. Suddenly it's not concentrated anywhere and even the glass seems mostly dry. Humanity becomes spread thin. Humanity is no longer forced into highly concentrated cities and their existing cities have emptied.

The short term result is like if you had a post-apocalyptic setting where 95% of the world is wiped out by a disease. There is suddenly plenty of resources and space for those left, but there are not enough people to really fill that space yet, and it will be a long time until there is.

My setting would be after humanity figures out ways of drawing people back to cities (instead of the easy nomad life, living off of the plethora of easily hunted food and low hanging fruits of the worlds humanity never touched). There would be plenty of settlements spread all over, small kingdoms and small growing agricultural nations along trade routes, relic cities and countries from our time, and then a collection of city-states with varying levels of technological capability, ranging from those living mostly off of relic technology mixed with regressed tech, and those who are more advanced with us.

The big appeal of the setting is the vastness.

Not the OP, Airships helped because they had an AI doing the stepping instead of a human. The AI controlled the airship as it's body, and so took the airship and all it's contents (the humans inside the airship) every time it stepped. As it was an AI it didn't get motionsick and could will itself to step millions of times every second. The body was an airship instead of some other vehicle because they didn't want to have to refuel, needed to carry a large amount of cargo, stepping has an arbitrary restriction you can't bring anything too magnetic and airships fly so you won't be surprised by changes in the landscape (except of course for surprise megamountains or toxic atmospheres).

The idea with infinite space and infinite resources is that a lot of our society is based around having insufficent resources. The idea was if people could just step a couple of worlds over at any time, and be in a pristine environment where they could easily feed themselves, they'd reconsider why they were getting out of bed in the morning to go the 9-5 job they hated.

OP here, adding to that,

The airships work better due to the nature of traveling between the worlds too. You need to travel over distance as well as between worlds, but the distance part is hard because the world around you keeps changing, the geography, the trees. A character is described as needing to climb a tree to step in one place because there was a landslide in the next world over in that exact place. You can't make a car step, it needs to be suspended in some way. You could use a boat but with changing geography rivers won't stick around geographically and islands can pop up and continents drift over the thousands of worlds. Planes require runways, but they are used.

You need something that can travel long distances in the wild, or no distance at all, suspended in the air where there are few changes except the weather. Unlike other air transport you can also simple remain suspended in the same place geographically when only traveling between worlds.

In my setting I think I'd remove the need for an AI, require the device used for stepping to be larger and different for ships and vehicles, basically boosting a person's ability so they can bring all that mass with them.

I'm also on the fence about keeping the rule from the books that you can't bring iron when stepping. (when you carry anything with iron the iron is left behind. Objects made with iron will come, but without the iron parts. Iron in blood is for specific reasons is immune to this). It's an interesting idea for the book's setting, but not for a game setting.

Not that user, haven't read your whole thread yet because I'm kinda busy, but tl;dr on Infinite Earth:
Someone on Earth/Homeline found out a way to travel to parallel Earths that followed a different history, sometimes wildly different, sometimes apparent copies of Homeline but in the past. Homeline is hypercapitalist and exploits the other Earths. On their travels they meet agents from a world called Centrum that had a wildly different history, but figured out parachronics too. Before long they discover that Centrum has the capacity to move parallel Earths "closer" to them, making them easier to access, by fucking with events enough. Homeline tries to prevent them so that parallel Earths can develop as they would naturally without intervention. (Nevermind their own interventions everyfuckingwhere else? Jfc, Johnson's Rome. They literally bought Roman senators and all to turn a parallel Earth where the Roman Empire still exists up to the year 1206 and turned it into a holiday resort.)
It also has Reich-5 (local year 1995 I think) where nazis won WW2 and an independent state of Burgundy filled with SS is looking for a true, pure victorious Hitler to kidnap and bring to their world. They use magical mutant human mules to travel the worlds.

Just iron? As in pure elemental Iron? Because iron bonded to something is not really iron in the same way anymore. Iron bound to haeomoglobin, iron oxides, etc should be immune to that.
It'd be interesting to see the development of alternate minerals and/or ways of binding the iron to allow it to step.

That was the reason why iron in human blood was fine. They never got into ideas for binding the iron for anything man made, they developed everything to rely on other materials more and then didn't touch it more than that.

Before the airships it made metal workers essential for people trying to travel far out to settle. They would make their small settlements cover a few worlds but all drifted back to whichever one the forge was built on. Why build your new family homestead and farm on a world where you can't even get basic farming implements? They had just spent over a year trekking by foot a whole 1,400,000 worlds with only what they could carry between them to live a simpler life detached from the modern world. So they need iron and a forge.

But once the airships come and you no longer need to travel that far by foot, and trade exists between what is now a city and the original earth, then you have tools and things that you can carry while stepping. That's when the development of alternate materials comes about.

There is just something about the idea of traveling far off into fairyland and worlds unknown without a bit of iron by your side that feels unsettling to me.

I've played with the idea of having special stepping abilities (such as stepping without a device, stepping faster and easier, being able to see worlds ahead without stepping, stepping multiple worlds at once or seeing paths that skip between multiple worlds or across space itself, stepping sideways into alien planets) so having a rare ability for carrying iron is possible.

Throw in the idea that ships can carry iron in certain quantities , maybe only with the right equipment or when piloted by a person with an iron stepping ability, and maybe that would put my mind at ease about the concept.

There's just something comforting about iron which makes a world without it feel spooky.

>Humanity is no longer forced into highly concentrated cities and their existing cities have emptied.
Believe it or not but many people choose to live in densely populated places, and with reason. Access to jobs, schooling, friends and families and other conveniences tend to push people to live near each other rather than buying a farm out in the middle of nowhere. There is still plenty of cheap land out in the middle of nowhere that's basically wilderness in the real world that people just don't bother with because moving there and making a living is damn inconvenient. So I doubt the cities would just empty like that. You have to leave everything behind to be thing king of your own little world and leaving every thing you know behind is hard unless your life utterly sucks, and for most people it's atleast bearable.

Are there an infinite number of parallel earths or is there a really large yet finite number?

>Why would this happen?
Consider Africa, a veritable eden of resources and food.
Consider Europe, a chilly, often harsh land embroiled in constant warfare.

Where did the scientific method originate from?

We have reached a point where all you need for science is profit, not warfare.
Also, Europe, chilly. Harsh. lmao

Compared to Africa? Absolutely.

>We have reached a point where all you need for science is profit, not warfare.
Capitalism is just civil and well defined conflict.

>a veritable eden of resources and food
Which is why Europe was unable to colonize the interior until the late 19th century

And what about the exterior, then. Last I checked, the entirety of Africa isn't a hellhole jungle.

In any case, the argument is simply that adversity, conflict, and the limitation of resources is the primary drive of innovation and science.
"For the love of knowledge" is a much more pure and desirable reason, but ultimately one that isn't all that convincing to people who wouldn't support it just for the love of knowledge.

Consider Africa, a veritable hellscape of scorching wasteland and near-impassable jungle.
Consider Europe, a verdant land of rivers and forests.

Adversity may drive some innovations, but it's hardly ever societies on the brink that whip out true breakthroughs. Can't pay your scholars when you're more concerned about where your next meal comes from, after all! Prosperity and security drive advancement more than war or restriction, I'll tell you that much.

>Prosperity and security drive advancement more than war or restriction, I'll tell you that much.
Wrong. Being just prosperous and secure enough to support a scholar or academic class is necessary, but having some adversary or conflict is a great way to get more resources going to those scholars.

Only if you actually win the conflict and actually garner more resources than you spent capturing you objectives. And with the way warfare has shifted lately and the politics involved it's hard to break even, these days you are mostly fighting for ideological reasons rather than resources.

One direction the book went with all you guys are talking about was to worry about humanity falling apart back to its roots because suddenly it's a lot easier living as hunter gatherers only needing to stop by at the most bountiful parts of any world.

So while governments and businesses decayed and fell apart as all the people in them drifted of to any of a number of simpler lifestyles out there, the name of the game was either holding on to people or giving incentive for them to stay or work for them.

My idea would be a setting well past that where there exist all of these things but various corporations have changed into their own societies for research, production, trade etc. They become their own cultures and city-states. The appeal is always for people seeking knowledge or to learn, and they have recruiters for schools funded by the states and corporations, always out visiting villages and tribes looking for anyone who wants more of something. Or for people who just want something different out of life, or need to escape something.

At the same time they drill in at schools the virtues of seeking knowledge, progress, and doing your part etc.

The idea is they can then easily retire with theor own boat out to a small settlement somewhere.

Cities put the utmost important in schools because they are the main draw and important to their very existence.

Just some ideas.

This. Hippies, other guys wanting to build a society of their own and fugitives aside, most western population will at most move to suburbs 1-10 worlds away from original city for cheaper rent and faster way to work (I guess iron-less computers and bikes will solve most issues)

What the fuck?
I'm pretty sure it's easier going to a supermarket than hunt and grow your own food.

Is the book worth reading?

It's pretty good IMO. Certainly the first book is worth reading for the neat worldbuilding and Lobsang, but personally I think the sequels went downhill pretty fast. Then again I haven't read the Long Utopia yet.

In our crowded over hunted over fished planet yes. Bht in or to do that's you need to work a job, pay rent, pay for all kinds of shit, dl all kinds of shit, just to have the luxury of convenience with food.

In this setting though even if there are not as many fish around in the rover you're standing next to there are bound to be many in any of the dozens of worlds a few steps away in different versions of that river. The animals aren't as cautious of humans, it is practically a garden of eden where you never have to work the land.

Wake up. Go fishing. Catch enough fish in an hour to feed your family for the day. Wife picks berries a few worlds over. Go swimming in the pond, take a nap, watch the clouds. No worries.

That easy kind of life never been consistenly possible in hour world for very many people. But if you're working a 9 to 5 and can barely keep up with rent. Or your government is shitty and life hard, or you break your back lifting things all day... Well that simpler life in eden sure looks nice. You'd trade tv and supermarkets if life is no longer a struggle.

The first book is definitely worth reading.
I feel that after a point the sequels lose focus, but they never get actively bad, in my personal opinion at least.

You don't have to grow a damn thing, food grows itself.
You could harvest dozens of square miles of forest while expending less physical effort than scrounging a single one without stepping.
Hunting's pretty easy too if you can spot an animal, pop out of existence, and then pop back in right next to it.

Food might not be an issue but what about shelter with plumbing, heating and cooling. And medical care for illness and injury? And even if a lot of people start ditching modern society that just makes common labor more valuable and better paying for people that stay so would likely even out, assuming middle and lower wage and working conditions were as shitty as the US right now instead of like say France. Plus if you have to work so little to feed yourself you are left with a lot of free time so what are you going to do with it? You'd almost certainly have no power in your little cluster of worlds and it could get pretty fucking boring after a while and with people that spread out it'd be hard to keep in touch with other people since you'd have to walk so far, probably through the "property" of dozens of neighbors atleast to go see a close family member who didn't live with you. And who about schooling children, them growing up and meeting people then finding their own little place? It wouldn't take too long before each family finding their own place would be a huge fucking walk for those near the human's origin Earth and it would start seeming less and less attracting to go out trecking to find your own place and then people would certainly start fighting over the best locations near convenience.

I'm pretty sure you are describing the GURPS Infinite World's setting.

But I like electricity. I'm sure billions others do too.

Yeah no, I want fries and a hamburger, not fruits that aren't exact copies of Earth's and might look exactly like a just fine apple but be poisonous and give dysentry because the planet's history is a tiny bit different.

The difference is that humans only ever evolved once, there aren't alternate histories.

people keep saying it's the same but they're not really, at all.

The premise isn't just multiverse with infinite worlds, it's multiverse where humans only ever evolved on one world. The odds of finding any other intelligent life are good, but only after searching millions of empty worlds.

The books had ruins from a long dead civilization of lizard people millions of worlds away, semi-sentient primates of various shapes, and a massive supper-intelligent blob from a much more distant world where all the life that developed on its world worked to one singular organism. Others were discovered in later books like a race of tribal, warring dog people from a Pangaea world and then glimpses of other things that are spoilers and don't interest me for the use of a game setting.

But these worlds are wild and empty. This is wilderness, and infinite dark wood full of monsters and terrifying fairy folk the deeper you go. There's no world where Hitler won or where society developed differently, because there are no other worlds that produced humans.

It's a wildly different concept and I don't see how you can even confuse the two.