Need Ideas for a new sci-fi campaign I'm writing

[Ybron]

Hi, thanks for checking me out.
So here's the rules.
I'm making a loose d&d campaign that will use many standards to the 3.5 or pathfinder. However I'm completely writing the universe by hand, every race, weapon, lore etc..

Also the combat will use a variant of suggested combat rules of body hit locations from Basic-RolePlaying-Chaosium-4th-Edition, (chest, head, legs,arms etc etc...) and use new armor rules other than just having AC due to the amounts of different attacks and resistances to attacks. (for example lasers vs projectiles, natural armors and synthetic..)

The reqs for my story is that its can't be too hard a universe, I want my players to have fun, and play the alien races they always dreamed of playing, so I'm not putting too much restrictions to that, as long as they aren't from any other universe so no races from Startrek, Starwars, Mass Effect etc etc...

I am interested in being mostly space opera however I need an overall end goal.
The end goal needs to be original.. i know right? that's impossible.... but that's why I'm here...

I need a good story that's not just a rip off from a movie or game, I want a good conflict for my overall story...

Some stories I liked were the ones that had something happen that forced everyone to band together to fight.. like Halo and the flood, or Mass Effect and the Reapers.

I don't just want a struggle of Good vs Evil, because my players don't need to be good, they could be evil, The nice thing about evil is that evil wants to survive, so I just want the "conflict to force the potentially evil characters my players might make to have to band with the do gooders to fight a common need. I want something that forces everyone to a common goal, I like tension in my groups, I want players to not trust each other and be forced to work together at the beginning.

so.. what am I asking for? Ideas o a campaign, the overall goal of what my players are trying to occomplish/fight, the great conflict, the "evil" thing I can't com up with..

again think original, I don't just want a corrupt Emperor or Leader of a galactic organization, or do I need yet another space pirate mob....

thanks for ur time and ideas!!

 

[Yora]

How about this: An ancient empire mined the whole galaxy with superweapons and got crazy enough to include a Mutually Assured Destruction protocol. They still died out as did their enemies, but most of their weapons were never disasembled and still around. The campaign starts with one of the subspace-mines activating by itself, annihilating a seizable percentage of galactic civilization. The galactic community decides that the remaining mines need to be found and disarmed, but of course there's lots of factions and organizations who would really love to get their hands on one of them to nuke or blackmail their enemies, or develop a downsized version. And there's always the possibility that one of the scavengers activates the MAD protocol and whipe out the whole galaxy.
The new twist is that there is no Big Bad who wants to destroy all life. Instead the major threats are the people who are supposed to be on your side, but pose a huge danger because every involved party wants to use the current crisis to improve their own position. Everyone could betray everyone and try to cover it up later. The heroes have to fight against competing agents while at the same time making sure the official alliances don't fall apart.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Spoiler

has something like that. There is a race of ancient and powerful aliens who created life on earth, but made a mistake and it didn't come out as they had planned it. Now there is an organization with the "official" purpose of preventing the aliens from triggering the reset button and completely changing the nature of all life on Earth. In truth, they just want to stall the aliens long enough until they can trigger the reset themselves and rebuild the Earth as they wish it to be like. However, after most of the original leadership was killed at the start of the plan, the ramaining ones formed two factions with very different ideas what the new world should be like. For most of the story they are working together to fight the aliens, because they both don't want the aliens to succeed with their plan. But as soon as they are ready to trigger the reset themselves, they want to betray each other and making sure that it will happen according to the plan of their faction. And the whole time, the leaders of both factions know it.

 

[Herobizkit]

Between TvTropes.org and Imdb.com, you quickly learn that every idea is ripped off from somewhere... so I say rip off stuff that hasn't been ripped off in a long time.

Like He-Man. 80's style. It's got (planet-bound) spaceships and lasers, but it also has wizards and scantily-clad barbarians. Sure, it has a Good vs. Evil generic plot, but it also has worlds in peril. So rip off The Neverending Story... a Darkness is slowly eating away the planet. Have a planet that is sunny 50% of the time, so that when one side of the planet is in daylight, the other in night. Now have that night destroy everything it touches and, with each passing day, the players' home world is slowly being devoured.

And there's always a war of some kind... because without conflict, there is no story. As the world is getting smaller, whole kingdoms of people (and beasts, and robots) are crowding into ever-shrinking land masses, which will undoubtedly cause friction.

If you don't want the players to trust each other, give them different bosses with varying objectives and see how it plays out.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Take the "wretched hive of scum & villainy" route. They are mercenaries, smugglers, outcasts, and bounty hunters, struggling to make their way in the seedy underbelly of a corrupt and declining galactic empire.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

You could always throw them in a sandbox, see what they try to do, and then flesh out an adventure. I have done that a few times. It can work if you are careful and consistent.

 

[Tonguez]

"Well what happened you see was," said the Captain, "our planet, the world from which we have come, was, so to speak, doomed."

"Doomed?"

"Oh yes. So what everyone thought was, let's pack the whole population into some giant spaceships and go and settle on another planet.,,, So it was decided to build three ships, you see, three Arks in Space, and ...

You are on the B Ark.