Blue Planet

I have never played this game and am not sure I ever will. I remember picking it up  because I had heard it was a setting that was accurate scientifically. The setting is  one that I am not sure would find all that enjoyable though.I tend to prefer my science  fiction games to be post apocalyptic anymore or tinged with horror. The game has been  published at least three times and even has a GURPS treatment. It was originally done by  Biohazard Games. I am not sure if this is the same Biohazard Games that has connection  with Resident Evil or not though.


Published: 1997
Pages: 348

From the back of the book:

2199AD
Welcome to Poseidon

The planet . . .
A waterworld, home to a savage ecology and awash in the mystery of an ancient alien  past.

The human race . . .
Desperate and dying on a famine-ravaged Earth, reaches hungrily for the once forgotten  colony world and its promise of ultimate survival.

The Long John . . .
Hidden below the ocean floor, a priceless, enigmatic ore that holds the key to human DNA  and the promise of human immortality.

The colony . . .
Transformed into a lawless frontier as mining corporations wage brutal war and colonists  fight for the survival of their adopted world.

The aborigines . . .
Inscrutable, powerful, and enraged in defense of a primal heritage as ancient and  mysterious as the planet's darkest waters.

The game . . .
A compelling journey into humanity's dark future on a distant planet where life is hard  and dying is easy. A world where GEO Marshals enforce the peace and wired mercs patrol  deep waters in deadly fighter subs. A place where corporate greed and human desperation  ravage an alien ecology, threatening to plunge humanity into a war of survival with an  ancient legacy.


From the company's site:

The Premise


The year is 2199 and life on Earth is a hopeless struggle between economic chaos and  social decay. Incorporated city states dominate the political landscape and natural  resources are virtually exhausted. Civilization has barely survived a seventy-five year  dark age known simply as "The Blight". For more than three decades an engineered virus  ravaged the world's agricultural crops while social panic reigned and billions died of  starvation. The resulting chaos has only recently been stabilized, due primarily to the  heroic efforts of the Global Ecology Office. This organization was created by the United  Nations in reaction to "The Blight", and is all that still remains of most of Earth's  original world governments. Powerful and benign, yet challenged on every front, the  G.E.O. struggles to protect human rights and ecological integrity in the face of  Incorporate inhumanity and social desperation. The G.E.O. remains the last best hope  throughout the solar system, and the newly resettled colonies beyond.

In 2065, long before the outbreak of "The Blight", astronomers discovered an anomalous  body beyond the orbit of Pluto. During the following decades a series of probes revealed  the anomaly to be a rift in space, an example of the hypothetical, astronomical  construct known as a wormhole. Further exploration eventually demonstrated that this  phenomena was in fact a usable passage to another region of space. Humanity looked to  the stars with collective awe when it was discovered that an Earth-like planet waited  beyond the worm hole. A planet covered by blue oceans and teeming with life. A pristine  world, unexplored and unravaged. A water world that would eventually become known as  Poseidon.

As part of a long term plan to ease the heavy burden on the Earth's vanishing resources,  the U.N. member nations began an intensive colony effort, seeding Poseidon with  genetically altered, human colonists. The Athena Project did much to aid the Earth's  failing economies and social morale. Unfortunately, 'The Blight' struck soon after the  colony ships were launched, but before the planned resupply ships could be built.  Desperate for resources to fight 'The Blight', and therefore unable to do anything else,  the U.N. was forced to abandon the project and the colonists. This was the first in a  long series of harsh decisions the U.N. would be forced to make in the years that  followed.

In spite of the failure of the resupply effort, and the lack of contact with Earth, the  colonists on Poseidon actually survived. As their technology wore out and failed, they  learned to rely on pioneer ingenuity and their genetically engineered bodies. Spreading  across the planet's surface in small villages and family groups, the colonists adopted a  life much like the ancient Polynesians, settling the planet's countless island  archipelagos.

One of the many discoveries made by the colonists was that they were not the only  sentient life forms on Poseidon. Frustratingly alien in their actions and motivation,  these aborigines became a source of fear and mystery for the colonists. Encounters often  ended in bloodshed, and superstition grew as evidence of strange empathic abilities was  discovered. The true origin and motivations of these beings lies in the ancient history  of the planet and is a mystery as dark as the planet's deepest waters.

As the G.E.O. slowly salvaged the future of the human race, it again looked to the  stars. In 2164 a small science vessel was built and sent through the worm hole in hopes  of initiating a second colonial effort. No one had anticipated the survival of the  original colonists, and those on Earth were stunned to discover the colony had not only  survived, but had grown from the five thousand original colonists to over eighty  thousand souls.

The recontact mission was met with mixed reactions from the original settlers; many were  excited and relieved, many were bitter and retreated into uninhabited regions, but the  majority were calmly indifferent. Poseidon had become their world, and they had become  its natives. Contact was welcome, but essentially unimportant. They had made their peace  with the planet and had no intention of giving up the lives they had built.

Traffic between Earth and Poseidon was minimal at first, and consisted mainly of  scientific missions and Incorporate research and development teams. At first they had  little impact on the natives or the planet, but as Poseidon began to give up its  secrets, that quickly changed. The nature of the worm hole and it connection to Poseidon  became the source of endless debate. The intelligence of the aborigines became a  compelling mystery though all efforts at contact or capture ultimately failed. The  planet's biological diversity and ecological intricacy defied understanding. The genetic  code of the native life was found to be inexplicably based on DNA, explaining why the  colonists had been able to initially survive, and subsequently thrive. And, in the  planet's exposed crust, Incorporate geologists found a substance that would eventually  motivate a colonial frenzy that not only threatened to change the colonists new way of  life, but threatened to plunge humanity into a war of survival with an ancient alien  legacy.

Longevity Matrix Ore, or Long John, was first discovered during an Incorporate mineral  survey. Though initially a closely guarded secret, word soon leaked about the fantastic  potential of the substance. This mineral could be processed to provide biochemical tools  of such awesome power that nothing in the realm of genetics remained beyond the control  of gene engineers. Nothing. Humanity had discovered the key to immortality!

On Earth, a world still foul with the smell of the dead, humanity exploded into a  colonial gold rush the likes of which history has never known. Incorporate greed and  human desperation sent millions rushing to Poseidon to stake their claims and to feed a  market driven by humanity's primal fear of death.

So, in 2199, Poseidon is a planet of company boom towns and corporate mining facilities,  native settlements and orbiting factories. Life is hard, fast, and amphibious. Frontier  law prevails as G.E.O. Marshals try to protect native rights and enforce Incorporate  regulations. The aborigines remain a mystery, yet are blamed for increasingly frequent  acts of sabotage and carnage. Sea floor installations are guarded by squadrons of  fighter subs, and corporate takeovers often involve marine assault teams. The natives  have grown to hate the Incorporate and fear for their new world as environmental  extremists incite ecological warfare in defense of the planet. Always new colonists  flood in, hoping for a better life, as ruthless opportunists scavenge what they can.  And, lost in the background, scientists preach caution, claiming there is something  wrong, something strange going on below the water's surface . . .