Giant Steps

Craignote: This game came about when Tonya & Kev & I were having a play with character generation in the Atomic Robo RPG, and wanted a setting so that we weren’t trying to build characters in a vacuum. Given that I picked my continuation of the Space Race idea from our Apollo Rising episode, I’m not sure whether I succeeded or not

Fighting Like Balloons Armed With Dart-Guns

“Those were some insane times; When things got really bad, you had armed raids, sabotage missions, soldiers in spacesuits shooting at each other … Balloons armed with dart-guns.”
~ Lt. Col William Scott (Ret.), Lunar Recon

Suit & habitat punctures are boring.
If the first hit is an instant death-sentence from suit blowout, or the first shot fired which doesn’t hit its target kills everyone in the habitat through depressurization, it puts the tension in the wrong place; The stand-off with an inexplicably-alive Otto Skorzeny in the wreckage of a crashed Nazi UFO shouldn’t come down to the first person to yell “Tag; You’re hit”.

In Giant Steps, suit punctures and habitat leaks are consequences.
Fighting a Selenian Brood-Warrior in the ice caverns of the South Pole and it gets a solid hit in? The Mild Consequence of “Suit Leak” or “What’s That Hissing Noise?” might just keep you in the fight.
Getting your moon-suited ass handed to you by the descendants of the Confederate Space Program in the lava tubes of Mons Hadley? They just might accept the concession of “Scrambling To Fix A Cracked Faceplate” & let you withdraw from combat.

Unexpectedly Unexplored

“Anyone who tells you that the Moon is fully understood is lying or an idiot.
There is so much broken terrain that you can only get through on foot, so many valleys and caves impervious to orbital sensors, that there could be anything, and more importantly anyone out there.”
~ Dr. Martin King, self-styled ‘Future Discoverer of the Selenian Race’

I have been asked about, and have explicitly not given, a No Moon Nazis guarantee.
If I can come up with a reason to do it, I will totally have the ridiculous swastika-shaped building out of Iron Sky sitting in a valley, inexplicably unnoticed by orbital surveys.

“We found a secret outpost once.
I mean, the people in it knew about it, but I don’t think they wanted anyone else to know they were there, so they got pretty excited when we rolled up the valley in a mining rover.
Guns were waved, and things got tense, but they calmed down once they saw that we were an exploration crew.”
~ ‘Dave’, Trucker

“I didn’t recognise their company logo; Simple thing, with a crescent moon and a single star.
We did ask them if this was an area they’d laid claim to, but for some reason they weren’t bothered by us prospecting out there. Maybe they’d already surveyed it?”
~ ‘Ed’, Prospector

“I kind of think they were more interested in the Indian Space Agency base in the next valley.”
~ ‘Dave’, Trucker

By 2020, the moon has been somewhat inhabited for 45 years.
Nobody’s entirely sure how many countries have a presence on the Moon; All of the ‘first world’ nations, certainly, and an unknown number of the rest.

Littered With Abandoned Technology

“You never know what you’re going to find.
Couple of months ago we rescued a group of prospectors who’d had a fuel tank blowout, but managed to put down near an old habitat. They had no clue who it belonged to, we’d certainly never heard of it, and the signs on the roof had faded to oblivion, but the flag on the wall inside was Bhutanese.
I never even knew those guys had been up here.”
~ Capt. Allison Boshoff, Lunar Rescue Inc.

While the Moon is still largely unexplored, half a century of landings & missions have left infrastructure in the oddest places; Abandoned extended-stay landers, prototype lunar bases, temporary work shelters too difficult to remove after the job was done, and vehicles whose crews met with misfortune (or maybe foul play) and never made it home.

Barring accident (or susceptibility to vacuum/massive temperature fluctuation/radiation bombardment/incredibly abrasive dust) nothing really decays on the Lunar surface, so it’s not uncommon to see someone using an old Lunar Rover, or a modified Lunar Escape System as a way of getting around.

“People, and for that matter Robots, tend to forget that ‘Abandoned’ isn’t the same thing as ‘Non-Functional’.
The rate of change in tech, particularly in the early days, meant that a lot of stuff was switched off and mothballed, just left out there to … Well, not decay.
Wait, maybe?
I’ve fired up the odd mothballed bot in my time, and some of them are still wandering around today.
Of course, some of them are territorial & violent, so it’s worth hiding behind a rock when you hit ‘On’.”
~ ‘Lemon-Yellow-Sun’, Selenologist & Former Warbot

Technology has advanced, and intelligent robots, while not exactly commonplace, no longer draw crowds. Oddly, non-mobile AI is not a thing; There’s something about the process of building an artificial intelligence that means that smart robots working controls is a better idea than a central mainframe.

Half A Century Of Subterfuge

“The success of the Apollo missions and the N1 launch failures of the Soviet Lunar program lead most to believe that the Space Race was over. January 1973 changed all that.
The Soyuz LK landing on the Ocean of Storms kicked the partially-mothballed US Space Program back into action, which further encouraged the Soviet program, and the whole thing snowballed from there, neither side willing to not be on the Moon.”
~ Dr. Maxim Leonov (no relation), Lunar Historian

Despite setbacks, the Soviet N1/L3 program continued, with a manned landing in the early 70’s.
The Apollo program, intended to end at Apollo 17, was kicked back into life by this, and they plow ahead into the extended stay missions

Both sides built moonbases, explored, built infrastructure, and looked for resources, all the while keeping tabs on what the other side were doing.

Accusations of spying and sabotage were, and still are common, but despite outbreaks of conflict & combat, the situation somehow never turned into an all-out Lunar war.
The Cold War hasn’t really ended, though it has calmed down somewhat, in part because of the sheer complexity of international alliances & allies.

The Moon is largely self-sufficient when considered as a whole, though corporate and national interests & squabbles do their best to complicate things, leading to a certain D.I.Y. aesthetic among the more independent ~~Loonies~~ Lunar inhabitants. Don’t call them Loonies.

Influences

Astronauts In Trouble, for the blue-collar astronaut vibe, and the idea that intelligent robots are just a thing.
Atomic Robo, for Action Science! and the Gonzo approach to history
Planetary, for the secret history of the world vibe.
Ministry of Space, for general alt-history awesomeness

Pre-Gens

Lt. Col William Scott (Ret.), Lunar Recon
Dr. Martin King, self-styled ‘Future Discoverer of the Selenian Race’
‘Dave’, Trucker
‘Ed’, Prospector
Capt. Allison Boshoff, Lunar Rescue Inc.
‘Lemon-Yellow-Sun’, Selenologist & Former Warbot
Dr. Maxim Leonov (no relation), Lunar Historian