Board Thread:Fiction Universe Discussion/@comment-47205-20160329150225/@comment-47205-20160329204256

So, onto Charles' preliminaries. Here's some scientific and technological background I'd like to suggest, which particularly seem to support his third point:
 * There are very few naturally life-bearing planets in the setting (or at least the small part of the universe we'll be starting off on), although terraforming and synthetic life need not be at all restricted. This gives us a good opportunity to flesh out those precious worlds, and in particular I'm thinking about their biospheres. Fiction:Cyrandia Cluster/Wildlife gives a great example of the variety of organisms that even just a couple of people have introduced into the main fictionverse, and all of those creatures together would make for a wonderfully detailed ecosystem (albeit maybe with an unhealthy proportion of terrestrial apex predators) but only a tiny number of those are native to any one planet which I think is simply because there are so many planets to describe.
 * Interstellar civilisation existed for several centuries or millennia before FTL was invented. As a lack of FTL makes galactic empire-building difficult, societies and cultures had the opportunity to evolve and grow on their own. A lot of planets and systems will have their own long-established local governments, although there will also be interstellar organisations, religions, and so on that bind people together across the stars. Plenty of variety for people to write about. Orion's Arm provides great examples of how even a huge diversity of species can have their origin from a single planet.
 * There may be other things outside of modern physics, too: should we have something like magic/Essence?