This is an awesome thread on twitter atm:
Here
IE: How to make the tech and other things in different setting balance each other.
SO for my series: I have a whole lot of powerful people but things are in place to limit them from going "ITS OVER 9000! Spirit Bomb."
Its a simple good vs evil story at its base:
Paragons vs Devils, The Scholars vs Unity.
Then on each side, you have the players. The pieces that move this giant chess cold war along.
Basic Stopgaps: So the various K3+ Civilizations dont go all, well thats done and fixed!
- The Uplift Protocol, what you can and cannot do for a civilization that's still developing. Right now Earth is almost K2. Some "Dweller Gates" helped them get to Alpha C and a few other systems to colonize.
- Earth is in a Testing Phase, so the overall Uplifted Community cannot "Directly" interfere. But since Atlantis is also Uplifted, lives on Earth, co-mingled with Human Bloodlines, Earth is in a weird kind of Legal Limbo with some things. Cause technically its home to a near K2 and K4 civ.
- Demis, they throw a wrench into it as well. Especially the magical community. Even if the story hasn't gotten there yet.
Area 51 was directly created because Atlantis exists there. Its why the Grays are trying to mess with Earth. But so are the good guys. They want Earth to earn an Uplift slot. The antagonists want to enslave humanity's drive for exploration and experimentation. Each wants to guide Humanity in an opposing direction. I loved that aspect about B5 so I wanted to put my own spin on it in my series too.
So what do you do when you have a pretty powerful set of people, make it more about Ideology then raw Force, cause when that comes out you have the Vorlon Planet Killers and other things. We aren't to that part of the story yet. :P
When giving the Star Spangled Banner some Achilles Heels, I thought about what I dearly loved in Superman and Clark Kent. A Gentle Giant. But even a character like Supes still gets called Overpowered, kinda like Goku, gets the same bad rap for being flat. But FLAT arc characters are just as important. Because that's how you can gauge how these characters directly influence your side cast.
Give me more Jonathan Jostars, I dont find them boring in the slightest.
So some basics:
- She has a spine and heart condition that overall limit her available power cap. (For now, the story reasons are pretty dang fun once it comes out.To use a chess idea: She's being listed as a Pawn but in reality, might be more like a Bishop.)
- Since she has no noticeable Typherian abilities, her father's status as an Earther takes primacy. So no K5 tech to save the day easier. He's more in the know about certain things because of who he is married to, the council had to make a special exception for that. But like his wife, he is now bound to the rules of Uplift Protocol. And he hates it just as much as she does. Plus Eliza cant really use her mother's tech properly because of her spinal injury.
- All the factions have access to different skills sets and tech. While the keepers might have outdated Null ship stuff, they still didnt just sit on it, they went off in another direction with it. A kinda experiment and work with what you have.
- Plus Star does have a weakness against some mental things and Earth based Magics.
So you just gotta balance stuff in certain ways with some setting logic. A bit of tropes to where, yes, there's a whole lot of crazy stuff out there but at the end its about the characters at the pov level. How does all of this effect them?
I suppose that's why its important to have some world building. To see where everyone is at on the map.
If the power scale is enormous, make it more about the people on the ground level, not even power wise but who's effected by what. Their relationship to that tech or that galactic society or even their own people's overall pov on "how things must be done."
KScale Link:
Here
Lovely B5 Art:
Here
