Brainstorming a “Kitchen Sink“ Sci-Fi campaign

[Dannyalcatraz]

I probably will include religions, though I don’t know how crucial they will be. I remember an oldie in which a priest exorcised a planet...right before it was bombarded to oblivion by the military. And another that had a cultish theocracy as a major force on the intergalactic stage.

And while I don’t want to go full-on Stargate with it, aliens posing as gods might be common enough that it’s a major crime...

 

[Fenris-77]

For what I want religion to do it doesn't need to be 'magical' at all. I fijdd it useful for the story space and narrative possibilities it opwna up. That said, going the other way there is also cool.

 

[Mallus]

And while I don’t want to go full-on Stargate with it, aliens posing as gods might be common enough that it’s a major crime...

How about an organization devoted to exposing aliens who use advanced technology to pose as deities in order to exploit less-advanced cultures? You could call them... hmmm... Mythbusters.

Admittedly, I rank TNG's "Devil's Due" higher than most Star Trek fans.

 

[Nobby-W]

I probably will include religions, though I don’t know how crucial they will be. I remember an oldie in which a priest exorcised a planet...right before it was bombarded to oblivion by the military. And another that had a cultish theocracy as a major force on the intergalactic stage.

And while I don’t want to go full-on Stargate with it, aliens posing as gods might be common enough that it’s a major crime...

They can make background fluff or be the subject of an adventure - maybe the party could go explore an old monastery. You could use religious organisations as factions, antagonists or patrons. If you had a Jedi or Bene Gesserit style order they could be affiliated with some religion. You could do Dan Brown style conspiracies, secret societies and other such shenanigans.

You could make the whole 'verse theocratic, but IMO this has already been done to death with WH40K.

What might be interesting is having a theocracy that you have to interact with (maybe something like Gilead from A Handmaid's Tale). Imagine a party of smugglers, traders or pirates operating on the fringes of a theocratic empire. They might also be privateers or spies working for some other nearby polity.

You could have Aliens with weird religions. One set of aliens I did had a parasitoid larval stage - much like the xenomorphs or District 9's prawns. By and large they were smart enough to avoid sentient hosts, but some lunatic fringe cults spun their propensity to pick up parasitic DNA fragments from the host into a dogma about sentient hosts providing the best DNA. Suddenly there are mysterious raids on outlying colonies.

The aliens brought a far right party into power (with a slogan that roughly translates to 'Restore Katamar to its former glory'), that is turning a blind eye to these cults, as adherents of the doctrine are starting to represent a significant chunk of their political support base. Fun and games ensue.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

...without going full-on RIFTS.

I was struck by the campaign design bug while participating in the Star Wars “Mind share” thread. I don’t want to play in or run any of the major Sci-Fi settings out there, but participating in something that echoes them could be fun.

So, for instance, while I might not want to mess around with the Clone Wars, Jedi Vs Sith, and so forth, I totally want some form of lightsaber or monofilament swords in the game. Stargates might exist, but not necessarily any of the aliens posing as gods. Other lost megastructures and tech from prior stelkar empires might pop up as well, be they from Bab5, Defiance or Larry Niven’s Known Universe.

Yes, there would be some form of sentient machines, possibly even malevolent. But a biotechnologicslly proficient race like Steven Donaldson’s Amnion might get the nod instead of the Borg of Star Trek.

What kind of elements do you think would be good to yoink from Sci-Fi movies, TV shows, comics or stories & novels?

"Dead" civilization like the end of Charles Stross' Accelerando

Spoiler

Everyone has uploaded themselves to the net, and then taken all the physical components of the entire solar system and turned it into a lattice surrounding the star powering said net.

Mixture of supernatural and far future science, a la Peter Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction

Sentient ships, a la Iain Banks Culture, or Anne Leckie's Ancillary

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think I’m going to crib some notes from David Brin.

In his Uplift novels, humans, dolphins and a couple other species are starting to become a part of the greater galactic civilization. I’m thinking dolphins- evolving in wide-open 3D spaces- would make great starship pilots. Maybe even the core of sentient ships.

Additionally, his Postman novel (poorly adapted into a movie) has a lone man using a ruse of delivering the mail in an official capacity as the catalyst of actually bringing back civilization. Couple a dynamic like that with the aftermath of a big galactic war, and you have stories to tell. See also the Defiance TV show.

Said war could have had Bab5-like dynamics.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Oh, Postman in a post-empire galaxy after there's an apocalypse. And the players find a ship that turns out to be a postal message ship (ansibles (ftl communication) has not been invented). And they are trying to just scrap and find deals like in Traveller, but every planet or station they get to, everyone is hungry for news about the rest of the galaxy, and more importantly personal communications to them individually. And they ask the PCs to take their messages onwards; and the PCs become the "Postal Service" in the post apocalypse. Cool idea @Dannyalcatraz !

 

[ART!]

I would definitely include this if I was setting up a sci-fi game: FTL travel as Thing That Will Drive You Mad. You need drugs or to be comatose to not risk losing your marbles - but some people can stay awake without this risk, or without as much risk.

Naturally, things go pear-shaped now and then, and the not(?)-insane person has to wake up some comatose/drugged people to deal with A Situation.

 

[MarkB]

I would definitely include this if I was setting up a sci-fi game: FTL travel as Thing That Will Drive You Mad. You need drugs or to be comatose to not risk losing your marbles - but some people can stay awake without this risk, or without as much risk.

I really liked the way it was done in Larry Niven's Know Space series - FTL space is known as the Blind Spot because it's so visually incomprehensible that the human brain edits it out of the picture. If you look at a window while in FTL, it's like the edges of the window pinch together. If you stare too long, it feels like that spot of nothingness is growing, the surrounding walls slowly creeping together to be swallowed into nothingness. In one short story a pilot has to go to FTL in a ship whose outer hull got disintegrated, and when he makes the mistake of looking up from the controls he literally forgets the very concept of eyesight.

 

[Zardnaar]

How about an organization devoted to exposing aliens who use advanced technology to pose as deities in order to exploit less-advanced cultures? You could call them... hmmm... Mythbusters.

Admittedly, I rank TNG's "Devil's Due" higher than most Star Trek fans.

Stellaris had a variety of ethics in the game and you can select the government type. You can have up to 3 or be fanatic about one of them.

It's kinda useful when you map sci fi or real life civilizations to them.

They are

Militarist
Pacifist
Xenophobe
Xenophile
Materials
Spiritualist
Authoritarian
Egalitarian

You can kind of use the system for fluff for your space factions. Using some examples.

Daleks. Fanatic Xenophobe, Militaristic
Federation (Trek) Xenophile/Fanatic Egalitarian
Nazi Germany militarist/xenophope/authoritarian

There's also hiveminds, robot empires etc so you can build your own Tyranids, Borg, Skynet etc.

Had a thought to make a Stellaris RPG using a tweaked D6 or a revised d20 Star Wars Saga RPG using 5E mechanics but with microfeats.