Krasnikov tube vs Worm Holes and Alubierre Drive

[Drashner1]

The main questions that I have are-
-does everything have to happen in between multiple stars? When you want to go slightly closer to what OA considers plausible- which of course may not actually be what happens- I prefer to make as much as possible happen within a single solar system- especially one with lots of moons or artificial habitats. It's good to ask- Do you really need a large number of entire habitable planets...or do you really just need a large number of diverse locations? I know most space opera is more of a "thousand worlds or go home" kind of genera, but even our solar system is gigantic- most of the stories from all of history have happened on only our one planet, so sometimes it might be better to reframe the question as- how much time do the characters need to spend traveling through space and what kind of locations do they really need to go to? does this really need to be accomplished with wormholes?
Could they travel between moons of a gas giant, if you only need 8 or so locations?

I ask this in particular if your story is set within the next thousand years.

Of course good stories (or even great stories) can happen in a single star system (or on a single planet or megastructure). You can even have multiple stars and solar systems to play with in a binary or multiple star system (which are very very common). And as you say, solar systems are HUGE - and each planet and moon (and large asteroid) within them is a WORLD.

For added fun, you can have megastructures that are themselves the size of world or even solar systems

For all its interstellar scale, OA is perfectly fine with the idea of very detailed and complex descriptions of worlds and solar systems (and habitats and megastructures) and with stories that are told on/in them. If a story is well done, we don't really care if it takes place across dozens of solar systems - or within the bounds of a single world or city or even building.

I can say that actually quite a lot of the stories set in OA are set in a single locale rather than hopping from system to system in the course of a single story.

Ultimately (as with so many things with OA) it comes down to what individual members feel like working on or including in their work.

Perhaps we should try to make that element of the setting clearer to more people consider playing at that scale?

Todd