rust

So, what can the player characters do in such a setting ?

I usually follow the "dare to be dumb" rule, and therefore my adventures are

of the less spectacular kind. The characters do not save the universe, win

intergalactic wars or overthrow the evil Emperor of Everything each week. In

fact, they usually only try to stay alive, gain some more knowledge about the

world they live in, and - with some luck - improve the situation of the colony.

The first important adventure site is the planet itself, which offers almost end-

less opportunities for challenging missions.

For example, if you consider dungeon delving as interesting, think of the ex-

ploration of an underwater cave system. It is dark, and the silt in the water

reduces the sight to a few meters, so you have to rely on the readouts of

your sonar sensors. It is narrow, you have to squeeze through holes without

damaging your diving gear. You have no idea what may live in the deeper

parts of the cave system, and your oxygen supply will soon run low - and do

you have to turn left or right to return to the entrance ... you get the pic-

ture.

Then there are the creatures inhabiting the planet. Marine creatures tend to

have a lot of strange features, from electric and sonic sensors and weapons

to unexpected behaviour patterns.

For example, there was this migration of giant sea scorpions, too well armou-

red for the underwater weapons of the colonists, and with claws able to rip

apart even a diving hardsuit. Every few years several thousand of them mi-

grated from a deep sea trench to the mating ground of the species, and their

migration route took them right through the colony's algae fields, the colo-

nists' main source of food ...

Factions are another source of adventures. The colonists come from different

homeworlds, with different cultures and political traditions, and now have to

develop a common planetary culture and a planetary government.

This offers opportunities for a lot of intrigue and wheeling and dealing, espe-

cially if the colony has something valuable to export (crystals, in this case),

and offworld interests from governments through corporations to organized

crime would like to control the colony.

Which takes us offworld. The first adventure opportunity that comes to mind

is trade, but trade is not exactly very fascinating in the long run.

Therefore we rarely play the trade itself, usually only the interesting parts, li-

ke the trade negotiations with offworld corporations, the preparations to es-

tablish and protect trade routes, and so on.

This is usually mixed with diplomacy and "cultural diplomacy", because many of

the colony's neighbours are aliens, often only recently contacted for the first

time. Needless to say, these aliens also have "non-monolithic" societies, with

different factions with differing interests, all against the background of cultu-

res that are difficult to comprehend for humans.

And finally there are what we call "Bring Me Missions": The colony urgently

wants or needs something, and is unable to obtain it through the usual, legal

channels.

The first Pharos IV adventure ever was of this kind, a mission to bring a do-

zen dolphins from Earth to Pharos IV. Unfortunately dolphins were a protec-

ted species on Earth, and various environmental desasters had reduced their

numbers. There was no way to legally buy a dolphin, or to get a permission

to export one, and there was also no "black market" for dolphins ...

Avalanche Press did a whole series of books like that; including a Norse/Viking book where the woman on the cover must have died from hypothermia.

Yep, just take a look at this one. It is an adventure about the mysterious

end of the Norse colony on Greenland, but you really only have to look at

the cover to know why these Norse in Greenland went extinct ...

It's interesting that there are (generally speaking) differences in game style between the U.S. and Europe.

As for Germany, the differences are probably not very big. In my view the

main differences are that many German roleplaying gamers are somewhat

less interested in military themes and somewhat more interested in the at-

mosphere of a setting than their counterparts in the U.S., and that sex is

not as much of a no go in roleplaying.

Call of Cthulhu could be an example. Compared to most of the Chaosium coun-

terparts, the German supplements deal less with how to fight and kill mythos

monsters, and on the other hand describe the setting in as much well resear-

ched details that some of the supplements could almost be used as school

textbooks (minus the mythos references, of course). And the solo adventure

in the back of the player's handbook puts the player into the role of a young

woman that has been raped by Deep Ones, has forgotten all about it due to

shock amnesia, discovers that she is pregnant, and now tries to find out what

has happened to her.

Perhaps a few more words about the technology of my settings ...

I like my campaigns' technology to be on the plausible, understandable side

of the science fiction spectrum, far from the "technology as magic" concept.

Since technology and the player characters' use of it are an important part

of almost all adventures, the players must have an opportunity to compre-

hend what the technology does, and how it does it.

Therefore the technology of Pharos IV is much closer to the cutting edge of

today's science and technology than, for example, the technology of Star

Trek or Star Wars - which is often closer to "technobabble" than technology

anyway.

As a result faster than light travel and antigrav, as the two pieces of "magic"

I found unavoidable, have been developed by aliens and are still experimental

and badly understood by human scientists.

Almost everything else is based on real world science and technology. Fusion

reactors are huge, bulky and extremely expensive, vehicles are of types that

really do or could exist. For example, the water vehicles of Pharos IV are hy-

drofoils, SWATH-ships or neutral buoyancy ("deep flight") submarines.

Artificial Intelligence mimics real intelligence quite well, but requires mainfra-

me computers, and it can not develop any real creativity. Robots are dumb,

useful for simple mechanical tasks, but dangerous to have around in situa-

tions they were not programmed for. The most intelligent, useful and versa-

tile non human helpers of the colonists are trained, but not uplifted dolphins.

Something "new" in my next campaign will be that technology will develop

over time, beginning with equipment very much like that of the Modern Equip-

ment Catalog, with more futuristic technology (e.g. from the Audace ad Glo-

riam supplement for Traveller) slowly becoming available during the campaign

- I hope this will support the "feel" of a living, changing world and also give

the player characters something to work for.

Go for it!

Yes, indeed.

And once we have the "construction site" Frogspawner is thinking of, we can

perhaps find a way to make such a system a bit more "munchkin proof", for

example by deleting those GURPS advantages that are more likely to be Po-

wers in BRP and by also deleting the more silly disadvantages,

I shouldn't worry about it too much. I'd use STR = STR and SIZ = Body weight (in stone, i.e. lbs/14 or so).

Yep. And remember that you do not need exactly the same / identical NPCs,

all you need are NPCs that can fulfill the same role or function in your ad-

venture. Since the player characters will hardly be identical twins of the

ones used in Boot Hill, there is no need to make the NPCs truly identical.

Many people like this part of GURPS. Others don't.

Over here the point buy system with advantages and disadvantages was the

fashion in game design a few years ago, when every new game had to have

it.

Meanwhile this fashion has died down a lot, mainly because it was so easy

to abuse such systems for min/maxing bordering on munchkinism, with cha-

racters that were wheelchair bound, blind and allergic to flowers from Ant-

arctica, but could read minds and fly through walls ...

Right now the trend is once again more like "You can have what you can ro-

leplay" than "You can have what you can buy for your points".

I think that I would not try to literally convert the NPCs from Boot Hill into

Call of Cthulhu by following any kind of "formula".

In my view the easiest way to "transform" them would be to decide which

of their attributes and skills will be important for the planned adventure, and

how high these approximately should be (e.g. for skills "mediocre" = 50 %,

"high" = 70 %, "very high" = 90 %), and to give them these stats.

This is how NPCs usually are built in Call of Cthulhu anyway, the referee de-

cides on and chooses the stats he wants for the adventure, without using

any character creation system.

I did read Nightshade's description of his fascinating setting with great inter-

est, and perhaps a short description of my own favourite science fiction set-

ting could add a somewhat different view to the discussion about science fic-

tion settings.

All of my settings concentrate on one single planet, mainly to enable me to

design this part of the setting in enough detail to make it feel "real" and to

give the player characters a "home" they know well and can return to, with

families, relatives and other social contacts, responsibilities and duties.

The planet usually is a young colony, a world on the outermost frontier, not

yet fully explored and controlled, with surprises from the native wildlife to

alien ruins. The colonists, including the characters, are well trained and expe-

rienced professionals, but with only enough resources and equipment to get

along and to keep the colony alive and growing. They need more of almost

everything, and how to get it is what the game is about.

My favourite colony world is Pharos IV, a water world, entirely covered by an

ocean and without any land at all. This provides a native environment that

is both very dangerous - almost more so than space - and that is so alien

that it is not difficult to create a "sense of wonder" during its exploration.

Besides, it supports my approach that science fiction should put science and

technology and the characters' use of them close to the center of the game,

because on a water world the characters need technology even for basic

survival.

Beyond Pharos IV is the much less detailed background universe - in fact, I

have used different such backgrounds for different campaigns, including one

based on David Weber's Honorverse and one based on Martin Dougherty's Far

Avalon roleplaying game supplement.

All backgrounds have in common that they provide the colonists on Pharos IV

with opportunities to interact with "offworlds": Trade, politics, diplomacy, and

so on, both with the human stellar nation the colonists came from and with

the alien cultures just beyond the frontier Pharos IV is on.

This is where spaceships become important. The colonists usually have only

a single small merchant ship to start with, the colony's only connection with

the "wider universe". It is used for trade (which usually stays in the back-

ground of the campaign) as well as rescue missions, diplomatic missions, de-

fense against whoever might attack the colony, and so on.

Combat of any kind is very rare in my setting, the characters usually are the

"underdogs" who cannot risk to make their neighbours truly angry at them,

because each of those neighbours could easily destroy the young colony.

Therefore the characters have to rely on their non combat skills, especially

their technical and social skills, to solve the various problems - think "more

McGyver than Rambo".

Yep, I think this gives an impression of the Pharos IV setting and my thoughts

on its design.

For what its worth, GURPS has a series of PDFs detailing a, I believe, rather abstract ship construction system. It also includes s space combat system focused on the PCs at their different stations.

I've no idea how good either is, but I think the intent was to design simple, quick and fun systems to play.

The ship design system is indeed quite good, it is a version of the GURPS Ve-

hicles system with the unnecessary complexities removed - still a little more

complex than the simple modular system used for GURPS Traveller, with a

lot more modules / options, but not more difficult to handle.

One basically chooses a hull of a specific size and then fills it with whatever

modules one wants for the type of ship: Bridge, drives, staterooms, weapons,

cargo hold, and so on. Each module has a size and mass and power require-

ments and a specific function.

The problem, as others have rightly said, is that unless the rules are exceptionally well integrated in to the game system AND the setting, they tend to get ignored.

It could be done in the same way as in the Ringworld RPG: A good explanation

of space travel plus some examples of the types of spaceships that would be

useful for player characters, but without a detailed construction system and

a space combat system - if there would be many requests for such material,

it could be added later on.

Just bring a copy of D&D 4th edition to the construction site and its suckieness will pull all the seawater to you!!!

At first I thought it would work, but it was only the high tide coming in.

Further tests did show that the Atlantic actually retreats from two of the

core books while it ignores the Monster Manual.

This could be interesting for countries negatively affected by the rising sea

level caused by the climate change. They could plaster the shoreline with

pages ripped from the first two core books (I could sell them some wheat-

paste for that ...) to keep the sea away.

I have just downloaded the monograph, and after a quick look at the con-

tent I have realized that I have lost my last excuse for not creating the

modern / Cthulhu Now versions of my settings - the catalog contains all

the stuff needed to "update" the settings' gear, and even more. And the

technical parts are written in a way that even I understand well.

All in all: An excellent job, thank you very much. :thumb:

Note, however that the gearhead part of Traveller fandom is almost a separate beast from the RPG part, and that's been true ever since the time of Trillion Credit Squadron.

If this is true, it is just one more reason to produce a spaceship design sys-

tem.

The "gearhead part" of the fandom also buys the core rules, and / or the

science fiction genre supplement, and if it is indeed separate from the "RPG

part" of the fandom, these are additional customers and sales.

See, that's why gamers need to know how to do math!

And foreign language translations.

After my long in depth research (at least 15 minutes) of the Maya prophecies

in question I am convinced that there is no need at all to panic.

What the Mayas really predicted is not that we will be doomed in 2012, but

that we will be domed in 2012.

So, all that will happen is that someone will build the first domed cities, either

on land, on the seabed, on the Moon or on Mars.

Trust me, the Maya glyphs are really easy to read:

*meh* Spaceship rules take up lots of space and frankly in 99% of SF are badly handled anyway - they are a huge drain on the gaming resources for frequently little gain (for every one fun trading campaign in Traveller there are about a dozen that were abandoned because of the tedious book keeping involved in tracking trade, commerce and mortgage repayments...).

Still, spaceship material is among the - if not the - most common and best

selling Traveller material, and there is far more fan stuff about spaceships

than any other element of Traveller.

Didn't I read that on a BurmaShave ad?

You could have seen it on a picture of the Berlin Wall,

although they usually tried to remove it immediately:

Sorry, you forgot to phrase that in the form of a quatrain.

Oops, sorry, I was too busy looking for the right kind of music these days:

YouTube - Awake Ye Scary Great Old Ones

I was right, all the signs are coming to pass.

Yep, as Nostradamus used to say (although he did it in late medieval French):

"When the Unpronouncable reaches Twenty-and-Twelve, fear that day,

because the harsh sound of clicking mandibles will be coming your way."

So what we would likely see would be mostly smoothbores with some rifled muskets, and the odd percussion cap or breach loading weapon?

I think that percussion caps would be quite rare, because I did not find any

information that the caps were produced in quantity or otherwise easily avai-

lable in China. I know of a similar situation in Arabia, where such weapons we-

re disliked because it was so difficult to obtain the necessary caps.

Otherwise, if my sources paint the right picture, composite bows and cross-

bows would still be more common - even as military weapons - than firearms

up to at least 1800, perhaps even up to the Taiping Rebellion.

None of my books list Hunt and Company as anything other then an import/export company

Ah, that does make sense. The source I used was a bit unclear, and with

that background it becomes likely that Hunt and Company imported the

machines and hired the technicians (up to 600 foreign technicians, accor-

ding to this source) for the arsenal.

But right now your piddly 4 posts do not threaten the existence of all humanity like Atgxtg, "He Who Cannot Be Pronounced" with his 1925 posts.

Ah, good. I was already wondering what to do with the 4,575 cubic meters

of wheatpaste I have ordered if the apocalypse were postponed. There are

not that many uses for such a lot of wheatpaste, apart from building secon-

dary homeworlds, you know.

And now I have to find me a real long ladder to reach the construction site,

and some way to pump the Atlantic over to my own world ("Rustworld" does

not exactly sound nice ...?) once I have finished the seabeds and the Hima-

laya ...

In such truly dire situations I usually ask myself: What would the true masters

do, Pinky and The Brain ?

They once had to solve a similar apocalyptic problem. Their brilliant plan was

to build a second Earth from papier-mache, evacuate all they considered im-

portant to this second Earth - and let the original one be destroyed.

So I think I will now begin to collect old newspapers, and if there should be

a severe shortage of wheatpaste in the near future, you know I am using

it to save the world.

The Alien films don't show many, but two are pretty important in the first two flicks (Nostromo and Sulaco).

I would even say that Alien I shows almost nothing but the Nostromo, as the

interior of a starship still is a starship.

...the Alien films ... Hardly any starships in those.

We must have seen different versions. :shocked: