I am a huge fan of Space Opera and Planetary Romance. However, I really don’t care that much about big wars and huge battles and a big final duel in which the hero kills the villain to make everything right again. It’s dull and unimaginative, and what kind of statements can you really make with that? Killing the opposite leader is the solution to all problem is a terrible and really dumb message. Even more so when the enemies have all military advantages on their side. It’s an adequate setup to put lots of spectacle and explosions on a screen, but that’s about it. It has nothing to say except that violence is the best option.

The problem is of course that despite my wonderful imagination, I have been struggling a lot with coming up with anything else for adventure stories since I started wanting to create stories 12 years ago. But thinking once again about what else I could possibly do to have some kind of story in my game, I did remember that I already had one interesting idea some years ago with the first iteration of the Iridium Moons setting:

When the large interstellar mining companies ceased all their operations in the Galia Cluster because of shrinking profitability, they sold off all their industrial and infrastructure assets to anyone who would take them. They had already stopped making any upgrades or replacements decades ago, and there was no point is disassembling them and paying the costs to move them to new mines opened in other places. As the wealthy elite of the Galia Cluster had been company employees who had already mostly left to the new mining worlds, most of the buyers were various underworld bosses, and they became the new oligarchs who now both own most of the industry and govern the major cities of Sarhat, Kion, and Palan like feudal lords.

While the Oligarchs sit at the very top of the hierarchy of corruption and exploitation that makes up the sector’s remaining heavy industry, they are out of reach of ordinary people and basically untouchable, but they also care nothing about some farming villages or small family mines outside their cities. The Oligarchs share power between them, but they only do it with disdain. While every one of them would love to gain all power for themselves, they all know that the power and wealth they currently have depends on maintaining the status quo, and have very little tolerance for anyone rocking the boat. This is the only thing that has kept the Galia Cluster from becoming a fully despotic dictatorship for the past 70 years.

But below these big Big People are the little Big People, who are just as greedy and ruthless. And in a system of old leaders that are secure in their power and focused on maintaining stability, there are very few opportunities for the people below them to rise up in the hierarchy to positions of greater power and wealth. To climb up in the Oligarchy, people have to cheat and break the rules meant to keep them in line. While the Oligarchs have little patience for anyone who upsets the balance of power, they all care about money even more. If their underlings manage to pull off their own ambitious schemes and kick up a large cut of the profits to their bosses, there rarely will be any repercussions. And they will be able to get away with much more brazen things in the future and keep climbing up the ladder as long as they are raking in more money. But if they fail and only upset the population and other factions while costing their bosses money, punishment for stepping out of line will often be swift and severe.

The villains that ordinary people find themselves facing are not the Oligarchs themselves, but ambitious and ruthless underlings trying to impress and gain favor with their superiors. And they are playing a very dangerous game. To put an end to the corrupt schemes that threaten villages and small mines, heroes don’t have to overthrow the entire Oligarchy and defeat their large forces in battle. Instead, they only have to disrupt the plans for long enough and expose the corruption until the Oligarchy will devour its own to maintain its own hold on power. And this doesn’t have to include killing the minor official who came up with all of it.

I see a lot of potential in this for exciting and compelling adventures with meaningful stakes that don’t mandate extensive violence to progress and achieve a victory at all.