10 Ways To Create A Near-Future World That Won’t Look Too Dated

I saw this great article on io9 that had some great points about creating a near-future world. In roleplaying we have to create new worlds/places all the time – some games more than others I suppose. We all have to create at least one world, the world of our roleplay, but we might also create places our characters visit. And if your game is a scifi spaceship game, each planet they visit might be a completely different world which you have to create and describe.

Creating a scifi world that is plausable and also gives your characters something to do can be a challenge.

In short the list from the article is this:

1. Avoid brand names and current pop references
2. Make it radically weird in some ways, but familiar in others
3. Don’t just extrapolate in a straight line from current trends
4. Pay attention to demographic trends, not social ones
5. Look at what technologies are coming soon
6. But don’t buy the hype about tech progress
7. Introduce a few dramatic changes, then follow the dominoes
8. Avoid current slang
9. Remember that subcultures develop organically
10. Keep the politics vague, but also highly specific

…for more detail, check out the article itself, it also has some fantastic images!