Possible future Alien RPG campaign: The Near Earth Frontier

Below is a background premise for an Alien RPG campaign I'm brainstorming at the moment. This does not use the standard setting from the Alien films. Technology is slightly more primitive to start with...

Two and a half centuries from now, the Solar System is no longer an untouched wilderness of rock and gas and frozen seas. It has become, instead, the workshop of humankind. Yet, for all the distances traversed, for all the machines cast adrift into orbit, it is still very much a near Earth civilization. Mankind has not yet broken its leash. The stars remain far away, untouched, unreachable. But within the confines of the inner planets and the outer colonies of Jupiter, Saturn, and their moons, the human story continues, more complicated, more dangerous, and perhaps more fragile than ever before.

The miracle of the age is not faster-than-light drives, nor wormholes, nor any sudden leap into the stuff of legend. The miracle is engineering. Vast chemical rockets, nuclear propulsion stages, and ion drives carry cargo and passengers across millions of kilometers with the reliability of sea-going vessels from an earlier age. A round trip to Mars is now routine, if not comfortable. Ceres and the Belt beyond are peppered with stations and outposts, supporting a thriving but precarious trade in metals and water ice. Even the moons of Jupiter, once the distant dream of astronomers, are reached by corporate convoys every year.

Yet for all these accomplishments, no man or woman has yet left the Solar System. And perhaps none ever will. The sheer distances mock our ambition; the speed of light, that absolute arbiter of the possible, is as unyielding as ever. Humanity has instead become a system-bound species, stretching its supply lines farther with each decade, and learning with some reluctance that even in the age of fusion power, resources are never enough, and friends are never plentiful.

Technology of the Age

Daily life across the colonies is simultaneously astonishing and frustrating. Reliable fusion reactors power the great transports, but they remain large, temperamental, and the property of corporations or governments. Ordinary citizens travel in cramped transports that burn hydrogen and oxygen with patient efficiency. On the Moon, Mars, and Ceres, pressurised habitats cling to life like coral reefs, dependent upon constant maintenance and the delicate balance of recycled air and water.

Artificial intelligence, long promised as mankind’s tireless companion, has become the most controversial technology of the era. Simple expert systems manage orbital traffic, pilot shuttles, and monitor life support with extraordinary precision. Yet “true” AI — machines with intuition, creativity, or self-direction — remains elusive, and to many, terrifying. A handful of classified projects claim breakthroughs. None are publicly acknowledged. Ordinary workers know only that AIs run their ships and stations, but supposedly within the strictest safeguards. Rumors, of course, whisper otherwise.

Medicine, too, has advanced, but not transcended the body. Organ transplants, cybernetic limbs, and anti-cancer therapies are commonplace, but the human lifespan is still largely bounded by the century mark. There is no panacea, no immortality. Even in the most sophisticated habitats, disease, injury, and radiation remain constant hazards. And for the millions living on the frontier, medicine is what one can carry in a kit bag, or what the corporation is willing to provide.

What is not available is as significant as what is. There is no faster-than-light communication; every message is delayed by the tyranny of distance. There are no teleporters, no tractor beams, no convenient artificial gravity. Crews work in rotation to prevent bone loss; habitats spin like wheels to provide partial relief. Life in space is still a compromise with physics, a negotiation with death. The margin for error is as thin as the hull between a man and vacuum.

The Extent of Settlement

The Earth remains the heart of civilization. Its billions of people, divided between the United States, China, Europe, and a host of lesser powers, dominate the economies of the System. But their reach is fragile. The Moon is a patchwork of national and corporate bases, dug into the dust, fiercely guarded as stepping stones between Earth and the rest of space. Mars is a world half-tamed: domes, underground cities, and scattered terraform experiments huddle in its vast deserts. Ceres and the Belt are mines — dusty, lawless, vital. Beyond, Jupiter’s moons are the frontier proper, where only the most determined corporations or governments can maintain a presence.

Everywhere there is rivalry. The United States and China, having avoided a final war on Earth, continue their conflict by proxy across the heavens. Each claims supremacy; each funds shadow projects, hires deniable agents, and courts the loyalty of station crews and transport captains. Between them stand the corporations: vast, borderless entities like the Interstellar Transport & Recovery Corporation, whose ships ply every trade route and whose employees carry the burdens and risks of expansion. For the ordinary worker, allegiance is not to a flag but to a contract — and to the tenuous promise of a wage deposited safely in an Earthside bank.

The Human Experience

For the crews of transport ships, for the miners of the Belt, for the researchers on Luna or Europa, life is a mixture of awe and claustrophobia. Outside the viewport, the majesty of the cosmos — rings, storms, the silent grandeur of the stars. Inside, recycled air, flickering lights, and the gnawing knowledge that any failure, however small, could end everything in seconds. This breeds resilience. It also breeds paranoia.

Rumors of sabotage, whispers of corporate espionage, suspicions of artificial intelligences manipulating events from behind sealed code…these are the undercurrents of daily survival. The frontier is not only harsh — it is treacherous. And when betrayals occur, when systems fail, or when whispers prove true, a handful of individuals may find themselves the only barrier between survival and catastrophe.

Thus, the Solar System of the twenty-third century is neither utopia nor apocalypse. It is a frontier: hard, dangerous, filled with possibility. Humanity has stretched its grasp across the inner worlds, but its reach is tenuous, its confidence uncertain. Great powers contend, corporations maneuver, and workers struggle to survive. Somewhere in that vast silence, new powers stir — whether artificial, alien, or born of human greed. And for those who travel the trade routes, who crew the transports, who salvage the derelicts and escort the scientists, the question remains: what waits in the dark places between the worlds?