#scifi currency

[tlaquetzqui]

In my SF future history, the UN has given way to the Alliance of Nations. It retains a lot of UN organs (the UN retains a lot of League of Nations ones), including the IMF. In my future it issues a currency, called the “right”, short for Alliance Drawing Right, derived from the IMF Special Drawing Right of our day. Since the government issuing it is the “AN”, and it’s the currency used by everyone, its symbol is the one used in logic for “for all”: ∀. (I think it was adopted partly in a situation analogous to the creation of the Allied Military Currency and Military Payment Certificates after World War Two: the AN having arisen to replace the UN for similar reasons to the UN replacing the League, namely a big fuckoff war the previous organization didn’t prevent.)

My main aliens, on the other hand, use what is technically a representative currency, like the gold standard, but based on an abstraction: the price of enough of an idealized animal fat (they’re obligate carnivores) to supply their metabolism with a given amount of energy. A hundredth of a Planck energy is about the daily calorie intake of a predator in the jaguar-to-tiger size range, like the aliens. (Unlike most Planck units, the energy one is huge: about 2 gigajoules, because the others are so small and there’s division involved.) I’m still trying to figure out what they call it, though—might just be the “energy, dietary”, and they just measure it in actual energy-units.

I think the aliens using, basically, calories-worth of lard, as a currency standard, grew out of similar causes to the aforementioned Allied Military Currency and Military Payment Certificates, but less catastrophic. Something like, people near the forts of the various empires accepted military ration points as legal tender, so those became a standard medium of exchange, eventually spreading over their world like the Spanish dollar. Obviously, of course, you aren’t originally measuring that directly in calories, but in volumes of fat—like how the productivity of a daimyō’s domain in feudal and shogunate Japan was assessed in units of koku (about 180 liters), generally considered the rice required to feed a person for a year.

[simulamortem]

IS ANYTHING REAL ?

Yes. Lots of things are real. Like that time you drowned because no one heard you banging against the ice. Or when that bomb went off and you learned what it felt like when your eyeballs melted in their sockets. Or the time you refused to beg for your life, even as the knife plunged into your chest, and you heard the sound of your own skin tearing, and the blade scraping against the bone inside you.

HITMEN DON’T DIE PEACEFULLY IN THEIR SLEEP.

18+ / indie / mutuals only REVENANT from APEX LEGENDS

[grayrazor]

This isn't a videogame thing. It's not even a TTRPG thing. These are standard speculative fiction rules that were set in the 1930s and people have just followed them without question ever since.

i'm guessing at some point someone in charge must've been like "if there's swords in the game then the currency is gold. if there's spaceships the currency is credits. if you do otherwise i will kill you"

[probablybadrpgideas]

For a RPG set in modern day or cyberpunk or scifi:

Cryptocurrency that changes in value every day with a dice roll. When the players are on a campaign that lasts more than two weeks ingame, the currency crashes and they have to find a new one.

­

[sprintingowl]

Pay What You Want TTRPG Bundle II

From June 12 2024 to July 10 2024 the PWYWII Bundle is running!

It's got titles from across the indie space, covering fantasy, scifi, horror, fencing, snails, mechs, tower defense, fishing, geese, and more!

And it's all available at any price you'd like (please currency only we cannot accept auguries, tamed spirits, or orbital laser timeshares.)

There's 78 TTRPGs total, including my tactical merchant action rpg Leadbellies. Grab them all at the link below.

[vintagegeekculture]

“Fnord!”

One of the best running jokes in Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus books is that of the word “Fnord,” which is a phrase that people in modern society have been trained from birth to entirely ignore and have no perception of, and most people cannot even see the word “fnord” consciously without training or concentration. But all the same, due to social conditioning by the sinister conspiracy and Powers That Be that rule all our lives secretly, the word has a hypnotic sensation of fear and confusion overcome anyone who reads it, even though they are not aware of this word or can consciously perceive it. 

Newspapers, for example, and television broadcasts, acording to Robert Anton Wilson, are entirely filled with fnords, as is most currency. Obviously, this was a joke in a satirical novel, but it is true that there are some things that are absolutely invisible....until you know how to look for them, and suddenly they are everywhere. 

Using the word fnord or saying you could “see the fnords” a lot was a sign, particularly in the early pre-1993 internet when it was almost all nerdy scifi loving engineers, that you were hip, enlightened and could see through the illusion of society (the Illuminatus books were rather like the Matrix of the 70s and 80s). 

[amethystsoda]

What is time princess about? I've been seeing it on the Play store but I have no idea if to download it

hello anon! I'd be glad to give you an overview and some tips for starting out! :D

Time Princess is what happens when all your childhood dreams of getting transported into a book come true.

At heart, the game is a set of continual isekai stories, transporting you to different "books" with the help of a magic desk and giving you "create your own adventure" options to see how the story plays out.

Your fairy companion Isabelle helps you learn the ropes, and you have to go through one mandatory book (a Marie Antoinette themed story) to get access to your room and the larger bookstore

(I'll put the rest under a read more bc it'll get long)

For each chapter you complete, you earn 1-3 tickets. With these tickets, you can unlock new books! The more you play, the more you earn towards new stories.

The game currency works on a coins and diamonds system--you don't NEED to purchase anything to play (though it may make the game a bit easier in some areas)

You get free stamina to access books and crafting materials every 11 hours and the Time Princess discord server has codes pretty frequently for diamonds, tickets, etc.

I personally splurge for the Fashion Booster every 2 months because I know it helps support the game and the artists! I try not to use real money on the random outfits unless I REALLY want one bc it can get addictive.

One of my favorite parts of the game is that, as you play, you unlock "album" art (full color illustrations that tie into the story!!)

One other thing I love is that the game is very targeted towards Bisexuals, as there are TONS of queer wlw story lines (though because of the games' popularity overseas and censorship, often gets called "best friends" etc)

Another fun part is the variety of stories!!!! There's art history!! There's stuff based on old fairy tales like Swan Lake. There's fantasy stories like The Apothecary. There's a Pirate story!!! There's Chinese, Japanese, and Korean stories. There's a western cowboy story! There's futuristic scifi!!! There's a victorian flavored horror story!!!

Most, if not all, of the stories are with adult characters and have adult storylines!! (the books will also give you a content warning before downloading)

On top of the stories, there's plenty of other fun aspects--mini games, fashion challenges, checking in with your companions every day to earn crafting materials, joining a society, playing events, and just playing dress up with your outfits and taking pics for fun.

The discord community is great too, and there's often interview nights with some of the book authors and giveaways of materials and prizes (I actually ended up winning a plushie Lafayette one time!)

The discord server also has game guides and walkthroughs for everything!

Everyone who plays the game gets really into the stories and characters, so even though the tumblr presence of fans may be smaller, you have an immediate bond with the other players!!!

They've also done some really cool collabs with museums like The Louvre and the Flamenco museum. You get to earn clothes from famous paintings or historical ones during that event period!

Finally, don't forget to save your big clothing crafting for Saturdays! You get double the materials!!

[ghostofadragon]

i do intend to clean this chart up/add more detail but i've been doing a lot of really repetitive art projects lately and it's going to be a while before i have it in me to line/color this many dragons, so i'm posting this as it is for posterity.

dragon species in sun of alcoritrés, my analog-scifi dragonrider oc universe! SoA dragons are quasi-sentient aliens who had their own developed cultures before humans crash-landed a generation ship on their planet and were forced to stay there indefinitely. the story takes place about 3000 years after the crash. dragons barter and sell their own unhatched eggs as fair currency, which is why specific 'breeds' can be cultivated without immense psychological fallout to any party involved.

[nellasbookplanet]

Book recs: post- and transhumanism

AKA: cyborgs, uploaded minds, and humans otherwise altered by technology.

I have previously written a rec list for books featuring robots and artificial intelligences, but ended up excluding various titles for not quite fitting the theme. Hence, this list, which focuses more on the step from human into something else, commonly with themes of what it means to be human.

Previous book rec posts:

Really cool fantasy worldbuilding, really cool sci-fi worldbuilding, dark sapphic romances, mermaid books, vampire books, portal fantasies, robots and artificial intelligences

For more details on the books, continue under the readmore. Titles marked with an * are my personal favorites. And as always, feel free to share your own recs in the notes!

The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi*

Place this one in the category of ‘accept that you’re gonna be confused as hell and just let the world wash over you’. The singularity has come and gone and humans can now easily upload, download and copy themselves into new bodies, not all of them human and not always willingly. Consciousnesses and time has become something close to currency. Follows a murder mystery on Mars.

The Scorpion Rules (Prisoners of Peace duology) by Erin Bow*

Young Adult. Featuring a dystopian future in which an AI forcibly keeps world peace by holding the children of world leaders hostage. If anyone attempts to start a war, their child will be executed. Greta is one of these children, kept in a school with others like her. But things start to change one day when a new, less obedient hostage arrives. A unique, slowburn take on the YA dystopian craze, also featuring a bisexual love triangle.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Jenna Fox Chronicles) by Mary E. Pearson

Young Adult set in a near future. Jenna wakes from a year long coma after an accident, and something is wrong. Is this really her life? Are her memories her own? Exactly what happened a year ago, and what did her parents do to get her back?

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky*

Millenia and generation spanning scifi. After the collapse of an empire, a planet once part of a project to uplift other species to sentience is left to develop on its own, resulting not in the intelligent monkeys once intended but in sentient giant spiders. Millenia later, what remains of humanity arrives looking for a new home, only to be met by the artificial remains of the ancient woman who once led the uplift project - and she is not willing to let them on her planet.

War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi*

In an enviromentally fraught future, the Nigerian civil war has flared back up, utilizing cybernetics and mechs to enhance its soldiers. Two sisters, by bond if not by blood, are separated and end up on differing sides of the struggle. Brutal and dark, with themes of dehumanization of soldiers through cybernetics that turn them into weapons, and the effect and trauma this has on them.

The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey

1969 classic. Features a future in which children born too weak to survive are put into and raised in mechanical bodies. Helva, one of these children, grows up to be put in charge of her own space ship, from which she works to fulfill various missions out in space, missions which she quickly comes to learn are much more dangerous than she could've imagined.

Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles) Marissa Meyer*

Young Adult fairy tale retelling. Cinder, a cyborg with a mysterious past she can't remember, lives with her stepmother and two stepsisters in New Beijing as a deadly plague ravages the world and a race of Lunar people threaten war against the entire planet. As Cinder becomes entwined with the young prince Kai, she is pulled more and more into dangerous politics that see her as less than human due to her cybernetics, yet need her to save them.

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

Six million years in the future, humanity has spread across the entire Milky Way galaxy. Purslane and Campion are both clones of the same woman, sent into the galaxy millions of years ago to explore along with almost a thousand clones like them. Every 200 000 years they all meet to compare memories and experiences. But this time Purslane and Campion arrive late - and discover that a secret millions of years in the making has lead to an extinction level attack against their kind. Now they must find out the truth before their line is completely wiped out. Absolutely wild world-building, featuring various kinds of posthumans (among which the clones are, shockingly, the most similar to people of our time).

Nexus (Nexus trilogy) by Ramez Naam

In a near future, a nano-drug is developed that can link human minds together, having the potential to change humanity forever. As different factions fight over it - some wanting to control it, other to eradicate it, and many to exploit it - a scientist who's caught improving the drug is thrust into a world of danger and international espionage.

Skinned (Cold Awakening trilogy) by Robin Wasserman

Young Adult. Rich girl Lia Kahn had the perfect life - until she died and was brought back by having her memories downloaded into a mechanical body. Despite having her life back, Lia also finds her life changed, as people fear her and treat her differently. Worse; she herself isn't sure if she's still really Lia, or whether she's even a person at all anymore.

Blindsight (Firefall duology)by Peter Watts*

Vampires and aliens and questions of the nature of consciousnesses, oh my. A ship is sent to investigate the sudden appearance of an alien vessel at the edge of the solar system, but the crew, a group of various level of transhumanism, isn't prepared for the horrors awaiting them. No, seriously, this book will fuck you up, highly recommend if you’re okay with a lot of techno babble and existential horror.

Mortal Enginges (Mortal Engines quartet) by Philip Reeve*

Young Adult. On a barely survivable Earth humanity has taken to living on great wandering cities, hunting each other across the plains for resources. Tom lives in London, but when he intervenes to stop a murder, he falls off the city alongside a strange and hostile girl on the hunt for revenge. Together they set out to catch up to the city, but are chased by a murderous machine like being set on stopping them. Trans/posthumanism isn't the main theme of the book, but it continues to grow in importance throughout the series.

Bonus AKA I haven't read these yet but they seem really cool

Meru by S.B. Divya

A human and a posthuman, called an alloy, venture together into space to explore a newly discovered, earth-like planet, testing the future of the relationship between their peoples on the way.

WE by John Dickinson

Humanity has become a hive mind, constantly connected. When Paul is sent on a one-way mission to a frozen moon, he must disconnect from the rest of humanity, for the first time seeing what it has truly become.

Accelerando by Charles Stross

In a time in which the artificial and the posthuman is more and more outpacing the human, something strange enters the solar system and starts dismantling its planets.

Honorary mentions AKA these didn't really work for me but maybe you guys will like them: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

[joviantwelve]

absolutely hate that bitcoin is a go-to currency for like, scifi/cyberpunk-aesthetic settings now. can we go back to generic "credits" please I actually prefer those

[cfrick]

Another horny game review, this one's fairly popular (comparatively): Hardcoded. I've only played the demo so far, but I love it. Mostly spoiler-free? + fanart at the end

That's right, another queer scifi robot fuckin game. I'm a simple creature.

The worldbuilding on this one is pretty incredible, lots of little bonus things to read if you're into that stuff like I am. The story is you're a super hightech android that's escaped from a scifi suburbia to this independent city where you get picked up by a bunch of queer people. Also there's a thing going around making everyone super horny? Cyberpunk 2077 wishes it was this cool. Art is lovely too, it's all in this fitting pixel art style, with lots of animations, including sex scenes, and extra pics you can find on the in-game computer. I always forget to check it!

The demo has TONS of content on it's own, an unbelievable amount for a free game. I wanna say at least 9? people to romance, and they're almost all trans. There's a witchy character and a cyborg mechanic and a cute hacker and a robot with big tits and many more. Plus lots of minor characters you can also have sex with. Just lots of sex all around. Walk around and explore, you'll find all sorts of little scenes.

I guess as far as gameplay, it's not quite a visual novel cause it's mostly these open world sections. And so much customization. I've spent the majority of my time with this game just working up coupons (the currency) and checking shops for more cute clothes and furniture. Shops update daily, so be sure to check, plus there's some unique events on Fridays you don't wanna miss. My secondary quest is finding all the sex toys, they have their own display shelf in the room so like, I gotta collect em all.

My main tip if you want to play this game yourself, make sure you run your mouse over every openworld section like its a point-and-click adventure. I missed two whole areas of the game for the first few hours because I didn't realize those were clickable spots on the map. Not to mention the whole clothing shop i missed! Could've been buying even more clothes that whole time!

Also, if you want more cute clothes, you can find some lil cheatcodes on the wiki, put those in for secret clothes.

Ok thanks for reading my porn game review, here's a fanart :]

Can u believe it my favorite romance option is the other robot wow huh how unexpected of me

[tired-fandom-ndn]

I've never heard of broken dreams. Is there a link to it somewhere? I kind of want to try it! XD

Broken Dreams Correctional Center [link] is a free-to-play erotic text-based scifi furry game where the player is undergoing a sentence in a space prison. It can be played on browser on itch.io or downloaded as an actual computer program.

There's some really nice character customization and a matching avatar for the player (which moves!), including being able to change your character's pronouns (they/them and it/its are options!) regardless of their sex/genitals at any point throughout the game. Which is neat. You can be a number of furries (felines, canines, horses, dragons, and demons with hooves and horns), a hybrid with whatever combo of features you want, or a boring human.

Like I said, the story is still lacking and it can be buggy (the gender and species preferences for encounters don't work great and the game can sometimes get confused when generating text and get genitals mixed up lmao), but the available sex content so far is really nice. There's more violent options than DOL has AND for people who like that kind of thing, there's way more opportunities to actually be the aggressor in noncon situations (that was what first got me interested tbh). There's pregnancy that can be turned off at the beginning of the game (and that has no real consequences for the player, you never interact with the babies) and options for turning off specific kinks. If you turn on the debug/cheat menu, you can also change anything and everything about your character whenever you want, including their species and genitals.

You can level up after encounters and increase your strength/agility/stamina/sex appeal and you can earn perks in specific things (like BDSM, exhibitionism, fertility, etc) as you do scenes related to them with perks that can be TURNED OFF!! That's something I really like lmao. It's a very BDSM heavy game with a lot of sex toys that are very dynamic and affect how your character moves and communicates, and they can be used against other characters in encounters too. And if you're bored and looking for a scene, there's a specific "look for trouble" option that automatically triggers a scene. There's also medical experimation scenes that your character can opt-in to for in-game currency, which can get a bit intense with things like mind control and tentacles.

The preview images available don't show it, but a recent update also included skins for your characters with some really fun patterns that you can mix and match and three custom colors that you can choose for each pattern on different parts of your character's body. My character rn is a kitty cat with black, gray, and lavender lynx spots :)

Warning that there are some scenes in the animated section that glitch and flicker, if you're photosensitive.

[nettlewildfairy]

ok so the credits and gold post I reblogged earlier is funny but for the curious there is like a real reason it works like that.

The real reason scifi tends to go with credits as the currency and fantasy goes with gold, especially in games is because of cognitive load, or in more common vernacular, gimme points.

I.e. people have a limited amount of memory space to learn new words at once, or they will start to have a less fun experience. This number isnt static and varies person to person but generally in a sci-fi or fantasy scenario the writer or game designer has a bunch of things they want you to learn, the names of places and people and countries and spaceships and enemy factions and what the magic system is or how laser guns and robots work here and every one of those takes a little bit of mental energy to absorb. If a book throws an entire page of words you don’t understand at you at once it’s like reading a brand new language with no context clues, that’s not great.

And games put a lot of the cognitive load points into learning new mechanics to solve puzzles and hinting at things the player can do for plots and quest lines, battle tactics for which cool sci-fi gun to use, etc.

and unless the game is medieval a currency trading sim or space currency stock trading sim it’s unlikely to be a major part of the gameplay. At that point is it worth using your limited gimme points on inventing a new word for currency that will require tutorials and in game dialogue and context to explain or teach? Probably not.

(That said someone please make a medieval currency trading sim, it sounds like it would rule)

[improbable-implosions]

Like I mention in the show notes this time, I've been really enjoying the more modern books we're showing off on the podcast. Honestly, I'd really love to work out some way to feature more short story collections that aren't public domain, or at the very least, more specific modern short stories. I read a lot of them, after all, and there's been a good few that've really stuck with me.

For example, I've been looking for one who's title didn't quite stick with me. Thankfully, two stories from the same collection spring to mind, but I'll talk about the one I'm looking for most, first.

It's set in a society where time is used as currency, which opens with a scene of a group of street buskers doing some performance art, wherein they set their internal clocks to tick down simultaneously, such that the mob they were standing in instead causes them to fall, spelling out MEMENTO MORI in a town square. I have a faint impression of them describing the time bank as a series of analog babbage-engine style computers extending down and down for what feels like forever, but I'm not quite so sure of that as I am of the memento mori scene.

The second story, in this same black-covered scifi collection, swings a bit more horriffic, as a young woman struggles against the thrall of a claude glass, each time she stares, finding herself more and more strongly compelled to never look at anything else. There's a particularly vivid passage of her describing how a lizard that wandered into the house looks after staring into the claude glass, her perception of color forced into eye-popping contrast in comparison to life as it was before.

As for other details, I can tell you it's probably one of those "year's best scifi" collections, likely from sometime in the 90s, as it was being weeded from the school library in 2015ish. I have a faint impression of the cover having a ringed planet on it, and it was a standard-sized paperback on pretty cheap, well-yellowed paper. If you've got any guesses, feel free to reach out!

On a similar note, if you've got a story you feel is a good fit for paper cuts, I'd be happy to consider it. Doesn't even necessarily have to be something published, either, but I've found the show is solid cross-promotion for the tales within!

[ghostly-rantings]

okay i know this is a total derailment & im so sorry but i have to say this bc its been in the back of my mind for like 17 years so- when i wrote that i was specifically thinking of that one magic tree house book where the kids go back to the great depression and pay their cab driver with a $20 bill, to which he responds with great gratitude

however, Magic Tree House: Blizzard of the Blue Moon was published in 2006. and this is what a $20 bill looked like back then

and THIS was the most recent $20 bill design in 1938 (when they traveled back to)

not to mention, back then, $20 was an INSANE amount of money, and people would likely know how they look due to the rich and famous flaunting their wealth in the roaring 20s, just the previous decade (when this bill was first printed)

so for a poor cab driver during the great depression to not be suspicious of two kids with a $20 bill that looks absolutely NOTHING like what would be considered "real money" back then and accepting it with no questions asked was very immersion breaking to say the least. countries constantly change their currencies' designs to counter counterfeits, meaning any time someone travels back in time more than a few decades or so, their money is going to Look Fake to most people who handle cash daily (which was Most People)!

but its so often skipped over in scifi, ive seen some shows and movies reference it but it always bothers me when it's not , especially now, as a former cashier, i would absolutely Not be accepting a Time Traveler From The Future's fake monopoly money looking ass bills

In time travel movies, when the time traveler asks 'What year is this?!?' they're always treated like they're being weird for asking.

When in reality, if you go 'What year is this?!?' people will just say '2024. Crazy huh.' and you go 'Wtf where has my youth gone.'

And if you ask 'And what month??' people won't judge you, they'll just go like 'SEPTEMBER!!! Can you believe it?!?!' and you go 'WHAT?!? Last time I checked we were in May?!?'

[stonegearstudios]

2024.... UUUUUUUGH

Ok, gonna do a brief overview of 2024, then do a small devlog for On the Shoulders of Giants

In short, 2024, she mostly sucked.

-Tried to go back to school, do an online course in Architectural technology, but couldn't hack it. The course material, being all online, who knows what the real killer was. -Went back to the same seasonal job I've had for 4 years now, it's... fine, but didn't even get me enough hours to get on EI after -Spent from summer to winter looking for jobs, without a single response -Spent more than the last week hocking up my lungs

So yeah, 2024, not really great except for a small trip I took with my mother

But on the other hand I did do a few small things

Released my first rpg thing ever, a magic item that's pretty nice (mostly cause of @regal-bones art)

I put out a small scifi adventure about stumbling across a dangerous, and profitable, chest

A little pamphlet to let you generate a nuclear bunker in a hurry

And finally, a lore primer for my long suffering skirmish game (not gonna bloody try and charge people for that)

But, that was this year, a lot of lows and a scant few highs, so lets look at one of the projects I'll work on in 2025

Ok, so On the Ruins of Giants

As I've been sick for well over a week, I haven't exactly been nose to the grindstone, but it hasn't be completely empty, I've been making jot notes to pass some time.

Now, I wouldn't recommend trying to read these, I certainly hate reading my own handwriting, so here's a few of the points on them

Some musing on combat positioning and abilities. I don't want this to be a grid mandatory combat game so I was thinking of more abstract options.

Ideas for conditions, I was thinking of taking inspiration from Darkest Dungeon 2 and their token system. Things like Fear, Dizzy, Bleeding, Poison, and so on

One of my favourite post apoc games is Red Markets. I don't want to go full economic horror (they're mice, they don't know what economics are), but resources being scarce is a intrinsic part of the post apoc genre. Like healing conditions should cost resources somehow

Had the idea that for mice, a single day is broken up into three roughly 8 hour periods of activity and sleep, so every day is three days for them. I need a better word for it

For mice, it makes sense that food is both a currency and a resource. You need food to travel, to rest, to barter favours from others, and so on

Speaking of that, thinking about health is something else I was doing. The mice should feel vulnerable, but most modern players really hate loosing their characters and instant death especially. Thought about using a wound system, where you have a small health pool but when emptied you don't immediately die, you get a wound.

Wounds could also provide a justification for going back to "town", you need to be in a safe space to recover from them.

Thinking about what you need to do to create a character, I want it to be relatively quick. Pick a class, pick or roll on three life event tables, and you're good to go

There's a lot more in there but for now I need to start typing it out and organizing it, wonder if I can bang a basic system out for playtesting before February?