Solarpunk

I'm a developer for an open-world tabletop RPG called Fully Automated! The goal is to create a free, open-source game that can be to solarpunk what D&D is to fantasy and Shadowrun to cyberpunk. And the first version is mostly done. It's got:

• A flexible, easy-to-play system similar to a d20 game!
• A massive open world!
• An easy character creator along with a dozen pre-made example characters!
• A high-stakes three-story campaign with over 14 hours of content! ...And a lot more!

I'm looking for more play testers, both as players and (if you're game) GMs! We've got a Discord server where we're running games on a rolling basis. The goal is to release it for free by the end of the year. I'd like to get as much feedback as possible before then, and if possible build a community around this totally free, open-source tool for making and sharing diverse solarpunk adventures!

Fully Automated! RPG Manual

Fully Automated! Campaign 1: Regulation

Share these freely!

EDIT: I should have included the link to our Discord server. You can join here or spectate if you like: https://discord.gg/tjscrvjd

Image credit: "Exploring Los Angeles", a concept image by Sean Bodley

Has anyone read this book? I'm currently reading it and I find it an incredible way of looking at the transition to a Post Capitalist society in the 21st century.

I think the idea of a progressive transition to micro production in which small companies and eventually just communities being able to do things that are currently assumed to be dependent on mass production a great stepping stone to a decentralized and solarpunk future.

Also do you think there is a relevant amount of people in the instance interested in these type of books of this genre to justify a community?

ENGLISH BELOW

Salut, je sais qu'il y a des francophones qui fréquentent cette instance Lemmy, donc je viens pour vous inviter à rejoindre la communauté (on dit sous-lemmy ou commu ?) que je viens de créer sur l'instance Lemmy FR jlai.lu
C'est là : !solarpunk@jlai.lu

Pour l'instant c'est assez vide, à part la description trop longue, mais je posterai un peu de contenu au moins une fois par semaine, et vous êtes bienvenu⋅es pour compléter !

J'ouvrirai aussi l'équipe de modération pour ne pas être seul à décider de tout.

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[EN]

Hi, I know there are French speakers who frequent this Lemmy instance, so I'm here to invite you to join the community that I've just created on the Lemmy FR instance jlai.lu
It's here: !solarpunk@jlai.lu

For the moment it's pretty empty, apart from the too-long description, but I'll be posting a bit of content at least once a week, and you're welcome to add to it, as long as we can read some content in french !

I'll also open up the moderation team so that I'm not the only one deciding everything.

I'm planning out a photobash (hopefully part of a set) showcasing options and possibilities for a more solarpunk world. My goal for these is for them to be a more practical and actionable view of a solarpunk society, more than just green skyscrapers or super scifi-looking places. I'm mostly setting these in a post-crumbles setting, with a focus on rebuilding in a more thoughtful and inclusive way. I want to try to illustrate solarpunk concepts and themes directly. 

I've done a co-op salvaging technology for reuse, and a high speed railway, and I'd like to take a shot at showing the places where people live next - just a street at a time, so not every scene will check every box, but I'd very much like to source ideas to include while I'm still planning layouts.

I've got a few different elements I'd like to include already (again maybe not all in one scene):

• More colorful buildings, emphasizing buildings as a canvas for art from graffiti to commissioned murals
• Lots and lots of trees. I like the idea of a street/path layout that provides each building with some kind of vehicle access (for firetrucks and ambulances and handicapped people, along with day-to-day things like moving trucks, large items deliveries, construction vehicles) while converting many roads to forested bike and pedestrian paths. At the very least, more tree-lined streets
• Streetcars/streetcar cables overhead (emphasizing public transit)
• options for a Third Place, where people can be outside home or work without having to be customers or tresspassers (I really don't have any of these yet)
• Alternate uses of existing structures and resources; I want to avoid the feeling of a scratch-built or utopian future. I'm currently working on a parking garage converted to living space with colorful facades between the concrete, and a farm, park, or forest (I haven't decided yet) on the roof
• The tech salvage co-op from last time delivering a laptop or running wires, building a meshnet
• Green energy, solar and wind in realistic locations (so not much wind in the cityscapes, I suspect) especially in a setting where infrastructure has been neglected and rebuilt
• Alternatives to corporations, and an emphasis on society being run by and for regular people
• Alternatives to cars; bicycles, rickshaws (pedal-powered and electric), 
• Fruit trees, public gardens

If you have any additional elements, ideas for scenes/combos of elements, or specific ways you think things should be shown, and especially practical considerations, please let me know. It's a lot easier to work those in while I'm planning rather than trying to work on it once layers are all tangled and perspectived.

It's been awhile since I did proper full colors and textures photobashes, and I'm still working on the more loose/casual style, but I'm getting a bit better as I go, I'm happy to take ideas.

Also, I'd also like to do some more non-city scenes, rewilding, smaller communities linked by public transit, but don't have any specifics yet.

I would love if someone would write a parody of modern society. Something roughly like this narrative

Setting/Context:

• energy becomes a non-issue (fusion powered cars; extra loud systems)
• cars and highways get so big that people literally start driving their house to work
• ads about "wait in line at the drive through from the comfort of your own home"
• started with rich people getting drivable houses (not RV's or motorhomes; but driveable homes that are branded in a completely different way)
• normal daily commutes of 100miles since everything is so padded out with parking
• instead of owning land, some people just park in "overnight" areas with random neighbors (nobody knows their neighbors)
• speeds are being increased because of the 100 mile daily commute, but it's causing increased accidents (nuclear) which are downplayed; people start padding their portable houses with radiation protection
• Being too poor to afford a high speed portable home means you're effectively barred from registering to vote or perform daily tasks

Then:

• someone (protag) has an idea of just staying parked permanently at his job's parking lot (he works at a grocery store)
• His parking space is 1 mile from the front door of the grocery store so he "invents" the idea of mini-transportation
• He convinces a handful of people to stay parked next to him and stars relying on them for small services (doctor advice, plumbing work, etc)

But:

• the company won't allow any goods or services to be exchanged on their parking lot; those doctor services are illegal
• cooperations band together to mandate no-overnight parkin (or some other better antagonistic thing, this is where my lack of writing skills is apparent)

Eventually:

• (fight-club style expansion) there is a small movement of people planting their houses forming small communities on top of the massive parking lots
• they repurpose their fusion generators
• etc

I have worked in building maintenance and repair. One thing that is extremely hazardous to a concrete building is too much water. I have seen many concrete planters that crack and result in water leaks for lower levels. Standing water in concrete structures is a huge no no. I do not have a lot of experience in engineering on this matter, but whenever I see a solar punk sky scraper with vegetation on its exterior, I think "cool, but maintenance and inspection must be horrible! Repairs must cost a fortune when those roots and moisture degree the concrete."

What engineering controls does one need to create a durable structure while exposed to constant moisture needed for vegetation, and the vegetation itself? I know there are green sky scrapers with gardens all over. What is the maintenance of those structures? Do they hold up\last as long as bare concrete structures?

As title says. I think my PC is using like a max of 500w when it's juicing but idles for less. I was thinking of using an ecoflow high grade setup for this. Anyone have experience doing something similar?

I might switch to a small micro tower setup by Dell or Lenovo that uses like 120w max. The new Mac minis seem to cap out at 39w though which is crazy.

I came across this in the kids section of the library with my kid. He's a little too young for this, but I flipped through and it looks like some top-tier kids solarpunk. Anyone seen it?

A blog post about my London-based solar panels and battery.

This is a Rant. I know I should write my own fiction with blackjack and hookers but just let me get it out of my system.

I've read some solarpunk at this point (mostly short stories) and the number of times that I've read the equivalent of "and we all decided not to be jerks to one another and agreed to a bunch of stuff" it's basically a meme at this point. Yes, Solarpunk doesn't need to be hard sci-fi, there can be fantastical elements, but can we get over the "we magically work as one humanity now"?

I think it's OK to have a world that, without mass media and government control, we would realise that people are friendly and getting things done is easier than it seems, but it's also OK for this to be done in pockets. It's OK for there to be raiders and selfish people and people who still endeavour to pollute and it's OK to have bad guys. It's OK for the indigenous ways to just be the norm rather than the exception, but there are still a lot of ancap crazies out there.

So, if you're writing climate fiction / Solarpunk, please consider not doing that. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Shinzou Keigo, Hirayasumi, Chapter 15 “On a typhoon night”

• “It’s because we live in a world where not succeeding is the same as losing.”
• “That’s why I quit.”
• When you’re back home, your true feelings come out easily.
• “For me … that kind of world … didn’t make any sense …”

Jumping from a previous post on education. Feel free to skip the first 7:30 minutes (which mostly defines solarpunk as a concept, I think we're good on that in this space), but this seems like this Human Restoration Project is a good thing with the wonk behind it to make it functional. (extra linky just in case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nh0EkuiBzs)

Slate Star Codex

"Los Angeles, 2043: An optimistic scenario for transportation" by John Rossant

crossposted from Reddit:

hi all - my wife and I are doing our best to amend our terrible soil in climate zone 6b/7a (western Colorado, near the Utah border). our logic and philosophy is that at this time we can only do what we can do, so that's making our home as solarpunk and permaculture-centric as possible right now (without losing sight of building collective resilience and empowering the disenfranchised).

to that end, our soil: it's pretty abiotic. to grow food, which is a future goal, we need healthier soil. also we're not flat broke but we're relatively close; being frugal and cheap is a necessity. so we determined that we're going to try to amend our soil using cheap, locally sourced, and recycled things - and maybe more sweat equity than I'd love, ha! we elected to go with the lasagna method.

the lasagna method is to lay down different strata of materials to encourage the breakdown of "brown" and "green" materials, in composting terms. also our yard currently is mostly dirt with a few weeds for good measure, so even if we eff it up, it'll be okay.

I work in IT and my wife's a librarian, so we have access to a LOT of cardboard. I've been collecting it slowly over the summer, and today we decided to lay down our first layer.

here's the plan: lay down a layer of cardboard (brown only, tape and labels as removed as possible) two sheets thick. soak the cardboard so it doesn't blow away in the wind. cover that with a layer of wood chips, which we happen to have from removing a tree along our fence line with our neighbors and chipping it up. the wood chip layer is about two to three inches thick, and then we soak that, too. finally, we cover the wood chips with a layer of greens; for us, this is getting on our local Buy Nothing group and asking for lawn clippings. we are also going to plant fall cover crops and once they have grown in the spring, do a chop-and-drop layer of that.

over time, we will plant a few trees (looking at either a local growers apple variety or a multi-graft we can buy online) and have a rotating group of garden beds.

so that's our plan: a bit of couples labor each weekend over a long period of time, with the hopeful result of improved soil biology and then the growing of native.plants and flowers and food crops.

I hope this is solarpunk enough to warrant this post!

good growing to us all.

I checked for posts about this and didn’t see any. Hopefully the cross post works properly.

Archive links: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/hKYX9

https://archive.ph/qleLE

Sharing this here because it looks applicable to solarpunk

Good Day Punks!

Back again with another worldbuilding post, this time in the efforts to explore a better education system. To understand a better time, place, and methodology for learning, and how these understandings can be incorporated into a new reimagined world. It's time to take our schools to school with the latest worldbuilding post:

Solarium - The Pursuit of Learning

I generally think that we do ourselves a disservice by limiting our learning potential to the times and place of the classroom. There is much more that can be gleamed by integrating the learning experience with the world around us. Would you agree? Would you rather education be part of a rigid, maybe convenient schedule? Would love to know your thoughts as I use this post and all the user comments to generate a writing prompt and flesh out more of my worldbuilding.

Whether you comment or not, hope it was at least a thought provoking read and I greatly appreciate your time! Have a great day! :)

Not sure how to word this.. But who should I be following in terms of battery/energy storage research and development companies? I'm less interested in start ups and more interested in bigger companies who are investing heavily in R&D