I like putting it between the two published stories, as that gives us some room to make up new stuff.

Since this is specifically a game setting, we should make sure that there’s plenty of unknown territory — people may know there are weird cults and subcultures living on the Tower, but that’s all they know. That way players can drop in (er, c…[Read more]

Great question, James. I thought this would be interesting somewhere in between. Maybe a period of time in which the tower is completed, but not so far in the future that the citizenry is unable to imagine a time without it.

In Stephenson’s story, the construction of the tower spanned decades, so society would have become accustomed to the…[Read more]

Were you thinking of focusing on the “Stephensonian” era of the story about building the tower, or the “Sterlingian” era long after it’s completed? The second offers much more variety and conflict, the first provides more Heroic Engineering.