Wanaxar

 Further developing this idea.

Art by Matt Hilker

Wanaxar is the fifth planet (currently), and the largest in the System. The crushing gravity and terrible atmospheric pressure make whatever surface might exist inaccessible to most denizens of the System, but Wanaxar is not uninhabited. Floating cities drift through its colorful, poison clouds and ride its frequent storms.

The Wanaxarans (Giff or Giv, in their language) are a broad, powerfully built people, adapted to their homeworld's high gravity. It has been suggested that they resemble anthropomorphic hippopotamuses, but in truth, no living human has actually seen these fabled beasts as they did not survive Old Earth, if they ever existed at all. The source for this reference is a popular animated character inspired by archaic children's books.

The Giff are not native to Wanaxar. Their own legends say their ancestors came here from one of Wanaxar's numerous moons fleeing a rapacious invader that they never saw in the flesh but whose warships laid waste to several worlds. It is the memory of this event that likely led to militaristic bent of Wanaxaran cultural today. Indeed, the entirety of their society is organized along military lines, though obviously not all serve in a combat-related capacity. Still, Wanaxarans find it usual to contractors of other species to perform tasks they consider beneath them, and aliens on Wanaxar can be found in positions form menial laborers to city administrators.

Wanaxarans can be rather stiff from the human perspective, governed as they are by complicated system of military courtesy, but they can be quite affable once initial formalities have been honored.

Merkuro

 This is a follow-up to this post.

Merkuro is the closest planet to the sun and tidally locked, so that it has a searing Dayside where temperatures climb high enough to melt lead, and a frigid Nightside that's cold enough to chill oxygen to a liquid. Only the narrow band of the Twilight Belt is close to habitable, and it is a badland riven by canyons and caves, wracked by storms. 

Human explorers would have been surprised to find life here, had the Vrusk of Marva not tipped them off. Liquid gases flow underground from the Nightside and melt to provide breathable, if rarified, air for cave complexes and even deep canyons in the Twilight Belt. Here peculiar invertebrate life developed, amorphous like amebae, but multicellular. One species (if such a term has any meaning with these lifeforms) developed sentience. These unlikely, elastic creatures, the plasmoids, would become one of humanity's best allies in the System.

Plasmoids are somewhat mysterious in that while they did not have particularly advanced technology at the time of human first contact, they possessed the theoretical framework to understand advanced concepts, and took to modern technology easily.  Some have proposed that plasmoid knowledge, perhaps even plasmoid sentience, may have come from consuming earlier interplanetary explorers (perhaps members of the Precursor race that inhabited New Terra before humanity's arrival) and absorbing their knowledge. It is a credit to plasmoid broadmindedness (and perhaps their renowned sense of humor) that they do not find such speculation offensive.

There is a human-operated spaceport in the Twilight Belt, called Solar City. This is a mining and broadcast power planet for New Terra. Most of it's inhabitants are roughnecks, miners, and technicians who do their hitch and then return to New Terra with a big paycheck. There are naturally ramshackle saloons, gambling houses, and other places of entertainment that tend to grow up around such camps to separate the workers from their money.

Rockets , Rayguns, and Other Worlds

I've been thinking about a campaign setting that would utilize a bit of material from Spelljammer, a bit of material from Star Frontiers, and then some reconfigured stuff from D&D in general. The ruleset would be 5e (it's what the group I would likely play it with knows the best), but that would allow me to draw from Rocket Age 5e and other sources saving me some work. 

I sketched some of the bones last week, and it would conform to some of the particulars I outlined in this alternate Spelljammer idea, here. The basic idea is that humanity, fleeing some cataclysm on Earth, wind up either in a distant star system or either an alternate universe (I don't know if the players will know which or if it will matter) where the solar system is uncannily like a pulp version of our own. The laws of physics will obviously be somewhat different here, but I don't expect that to be a focus of play.

Technology will conform to pulp sci-fi standards, with rockets with some sort of atomic powered aether drive playing their way through the system. Swords of some sort will be present side-by-side with rayguns, but I haven't decided whether they will be or everyone or particular characters, or whether they will be normal swords or something special. Psychic powers will take the place of magic.

How Do You Like Your Sci-Fi?

I posed this question this question as the title of a blogpost the irst time on February 15, 2013. It's a topic that TV Tropes--unsurprisingly--has some thoughts on. This scale is a bit granular and more detailed (and perhaps a bit more judgey). Here's my sort of summary of the basics of both of these:

Hard: So, on one end we've got fairly plausible stuff that mostly extrapolates on current technology. This includes stuff like William Gibson's Sprawl series and the novels of Greg Egan (from the near future mystery Quarantine to the far future Diaspora). A game example is this category would be somethig like GURPS Transhuman Space.

Medium: Getting a little more fantastic, we arrive in the real of a lot of TV shows and computer games. One end of this pretty much only needs you to believe in FTL and artificial gravity but is otherwise pretty hard. The fewer impossible things you're asked to believe (and the better rationalized the ones you are asked to believe in are), the harder it is. Hannu Rajaniemi's Jean Le Flambeur trilogy falls here, on the harder end. The middle of this group adds in something like psionics (Traveller gets in here, and a lot of science fiction novels, like Dune and Hyperion). The softer end throws in a lot of too-human aliens and "pure energy" beings (Babylon 5, most Star Trek).

Soft: Here lies fantasy but with a science fiction veneer and context. Some Star Trek (the animated series, particularly) comes in here, and Farscape. This is also the domain of Star Wars. Simon R. Green's Deathstalker cycle turns up here, too.

Ultra-Soft: Some Star Wars tie-ins in other media come in here, as do things that include magic (or similar fantastic elements} mixed in with an otherwise soft sci-fi universe: This would include superhero sci-fi properties (the Legion of Super-Heroes and Guardians of the Galaxy) and comic book epic sci-fi (what might also be thought of as Heavy Metal sci-fi) like Dreadstar, The Incal, and The Metabarons. It's possible it stops beings science fiction on the mushiest end of this catgory and just becomes "fantasy."

So what consistency of sci-fi is your favorite--particularly in regard to rpgs?

The Howling Dark

Bedlam is one of the worst duties you can pull. Some guys think the Company's punishing them, but that would require them to take notice of us, wouldn't it?

Anyway, only the small ships go to Bedlam and they slow down toward the end so you spend longer in sleep than on a lot of runs. They have to do it that way, because Bedlam is all inside. You drop out into a big cavern. It's all caves and passages. If there's a surface or a single star in that whole reality, nobody has seen it.

The Company and other corporate partners are mining that rock. That part's not too bad. Gravity pulls you toward it, like somehow you were inside a rotating hab and it's all spin gravity, only it isn't spinning. It's weird, but no weirder than other places. What's bad about Bedlam, what drives the miners and support staff crazy, are the winds and the dark.

No sun, no stars. No light. Except for the lightning we put in, it's totally black. 

And those winds--they don't make any sense. Where are they coming from? Where do they go to? They come screaming through those big tunnels and its like a banshee behind you. You can't hear anything. Can't think even. People go deaf from it, true, but the ear protection helps with that part. There's something else, though. The tech guys say it's infrasound--sound so low you can't hear it with the ears. It gets in your head, though. Effects the brain. Causes paranoia, hallucinations. Drives people crazy.

At least they say it's infrasound that does it. I wonder. Ask anybody that's been there are they'll tell you the whole place is thick with, well, malice. I think that place hates us, and it's out to get us all.

In the Shadow of the Space Gods

Amrit is a fluid substance found within the spacetime called Asgard. In its found state it is a thick, clear fluid containing a faint, white, internal luminescence. Amrit is psychoactive, leading to intense entheogenic effects, but in a refined form its constituents are an essential component of rejuvenation fluids, anti-aging compounds, and thousands of other medical uses. 

Your mission is insert into Asgard and retrieve as much amrit as you can without inviting the attention of the local inhabitants or otherwise impairing the safety of your team or causing the loss of Company equipment.

Local Reality: Volume relatively small, perhaps no larger than a jovian planet. No breathable atmosphere. 

Largest observed body is an irregular asteroid, estimated to to be 640 km along it's semimajor axis/widest diameter, and approximately 27 km along a perpendicular axis. Appearance likened to a mountain floating in space. Several structures or settlements are visible on the surface. Asteroid is surrounded by an undulating amrit fluid disk (in fact, actually a sphere, but with its greatest concentration in the disk), perhaps 1 km thick at the asteroid, and tapering toward the periphery.  Fluid is clear but slightly luminescent, possibly from contain organism.

Inhabitants: Amrit fluid disk appears to be inhabited by various lifeforms perhaps analogous to marine life on terrestrial worlds. The asteroid body appears to be inhabited by giant, luminous humanoid forms (approximately 500 m tall) that appear to be dressed in some sort of armor or environmental suit (though the possibility remains this is some sort exoskeleton). Their number is variable, with two being the minimum observed and six being the maximum. The giants spend most of their time immobile. but they have been observed to walk short distances or raise their limbs or gesture. They do appear to broadcast to each other, tight beam, along a psychic frequency. This communication resists translation. Attempts to do so have resulted in AI or biologic analysts developing intense religious mania.

The structures on the asteroid would only seem to serve the giants with difficulty, so it is felt they house smaller beings, or are not buildings at all.

Hazards: Simple observation of the asteroid and its inhabitants can lead to paralyzing, pathologic sense of wonder, akin to various psychosomatic culture shock syndromes known from Earth. At it's most intense (in perhaps 20-25% of observers) this can take the form of a transient psychosis like Jerusalem syndrome. Theogenic shielding and pre-medication can ameliorate these effects. Auditory hallucinations of a choir is often an early warning sign.

Fear (perhaps what could be termed "holy dread") often afflicts crew when they see the giants. This impairs mission function and team cohesion. Crewmembers have been known to mutiny under the intense belief that harvesting amrit is effectively sacrilege, and the "gods" (giants) might be wrathful. Reassurance that the giants have never been definitively shown to take direct action against harvester crews is likely to be of benefit without the activation of in-suit sedation.

Team leaders should be aware that indirect action by the giants has led to loss of crews by undetermined means. These losses have appeared to be preceded by the shift of the giant's attention to the crew's actions. Our best recommendation is to keep crew action routine and efficient, quelling any abnormal or "showy" behavior.

All The Lost Come to Mother

Here's the bad news: You're lost.

Faster-than-light travel is supposed to work like this: The ship's caster makes the sigils that get displayed on the ship's hull. The caster encodes multidimensional state vectors into a compressed, symbolic code so routing information can be read by the transdimensional machinery of an extinct, alien civilization allowing shortcuts through spacetime.

That’s how it’s supposed to work, and it works pretty well most of the time. 

There are the other times, though, when ships wind up someplace other than the intended destination or just disappears entirely. At times the casting is probably to blame; the internal state of the caster has always been a hard to control variable. Sometimes there's just a glitch--an act of God or gods in the machine, you might say.

You experienced one of those other times. You’re lost in a distant part of the multiverse, a long way in space and time from where you wanted to be or where you’re from. You're alive, which makes you better off than some, but the chances of you getting home again are slim.

Now here's a bit of good news: You've been found. A lot of the lost wind up limping into the Ring. Nobody knows why; something to do with local spacetime, I think. It's like the place where objects bouncing through the conduits come finally to rest. Anyway, Mother has taken you in, like she does all the lost ones that show up on her doorstep. This is Mother's station. 

Now, Mother opened the door, but you've got to find a way to make a life for yourself here. We all earn our keep. The Company will be glad to give you place to live, credits to spend, and a job to pay for both. You'll want to stay in this sector, it's mostly humans and humanoids--oxy-breathers from a rational, four dimensional universe--around here. The aliens in other parts of the station, well, you have to be prepared. And you won't be. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The job? I'm not going to lie to you, it will be dangerous. It's important work, the Company will tell you that, but it doesn't always make sense from the boots on the ground perspective, you understand. You'll see a lot of weird stuff out there, but keep your head, do the work, and you'll come home. Probably.

This is a follow-up to this post.

Spacehunters Reprise

With Cowboy Bebop in live action on Netflix and a new season of The Expanse on the way, I was thinking about this post, originally from February of 2017.

Luis Royo

There was this short-lived GURPS campaign I ran perhaps decade ago: A "hard" science fiction thing using a lot of stuff from Transhuman Space put giving it more of a Cowboy Bebop spin: a little bit cyberpunk, a little bit 70s action film.

Howard Chaykin

If I ever ran a similar game again, besides using a system other than GURPS, I think I would draw more visually from '80s and 80's sci-fi, borrowing some elements from things like American Flagg! and 80s cyperpunk rpgs. The players' would still be ne'er-do-well, planet-hopping bounty hunters/troubleshooters within the solar system, but with it would have a different veneer.

Janet Aulisio

Weird Revisited: STAR WARRIORS!

In a distant part of the galaxy, on the worlds orbiting a giant blue star, a war wages between good and evil....

So begins a fairly derivative space opera saga and mini-setting for any game. Here are two of the primary factions:

The good guys:

The Lords of Light are the surviving members of the oldest intelligent species in the universe. They created the star system of the Star Warriors in the distant past. Most have become one with the Enigma Source, but are still able to advise the forces of good.

And the baddies:

The Demons were unleashed by the greatest failure of the race that would become the Lords of Light. These insectoid shapeshifters have harnessed the power of the Abyss--the entropic Anti-Source and use it to empower acolytes of their own. Their dark cult is behind much political unrest.

Appendix X Minus 1: Pulp Uranus & Its Moons

 

This continues my pulp DIY anthology of the solar system I first mentioned in this post on the Jovian moons. This time, another cold, distance spot less glamorous than Mars or Venus: Uranus.

"Planet of Doubt" (1935) by Stanley Weinbaum - "Something moved! Up! Up!" Pat screamed.
"Code of the Spaceways" (1936) by Clifton B. Kruse - A tale of far places, of men who are not afraid, of life on the star trail.
"Derelicts of Uranus" (1941) by J. Harvey Haggard - Here is Adventure and Danger. Mud-fishers, and a girl, — and a quasi-human looking for trouble.

And its moons, which don't see as much action as Jupiter's, have some stories, as well:

Titania
"Salvage in Space" (1933) by Jack Williamson - To Thad Allen, meteor miner, comes the dangerous bonanza of a derelict rocket-flier manned by death invisible.
"Shadrach" (1941) by Nelson S. Bond - Once, in Bible times, three men were cast into a fiery furnace—and lived! Now, on far-off, frozen Titania, three space-bitten Shadrachs faced the same awful test of godship.

Oberon

"Treasure of the Thunder Moon" (1942) by Edmond Hamilton - It's hell to be told 37 is too old to fly the
void when yon know where a great treasure lies.

Appendix X Minus 1: A Pulp Solar System Anthology

I've written a number of posts about old-style inhabited solar systems. Given that the literature that might prove inspirational for games in that setting are old and mostly out a print, I thought I might give a guide.

These stories were selected because they present and interesting (and gameable) take on the celestial body in question, not necessarily for quality--though I do think a number of them are good stories.

Since Mars and Venus stories are probably most famous and most available, I figured I'd start with the more obscure, Galilean Moons of Jupiter.

Callisto

"Monsters of Callisto" (1933) by Edward R. Hinton - Lost at the bottom of the mysterious aquasphere, they struggle on!

"Mad Robot" (1936) by Raymond Z. Gallun - Did it ever occur to you that a machine could be complex enough to go insane? This one did! 

"The Callistan Menance" (1940) by Isaac Asimov - What was on Callisto, the tiny moon of vast Jupiter, that was deadly enough to make seven well-armed, well-equipped space expeditions disappear? And could the Eight Expedition succeed where the others had failed?

Europa
"Redemption Cairn" (1936) by Stanley Weinbaum - Here is one of the last stories by one of the outstanding writers of science- fiction. Remember him as you read it.

"Mutiny on Europa" (1936) by Edmond Hamilton - An unnerving spectacle we must have been to them!

"Repetition" (1940) A.E. van Vogt - Because a people live on a planet, it does not mean that they have a civilization on that planet. First they need to learn the old tricks and make them new.

Ganymede

"Tidal Moon" (1938) by Stanley and Helen Weinbaum - Shackled by the Gravity of Mighty Jupiter, Three Vertical Miles of Water Rush on to Blanket the Surface of Ganymede!

"World of Mockery" (1941) by Sam Moskowitz - When John Hall walked on Ganymede, a thousand weird beings walked with him. He was one man on a sphere of mocking, mad creatures—one voice in a world of shrieking echoes.

 

"Crypt-City of the Deathless One" (1943) Henry Kuttner - Only once could a man defy the deathless guardians of the Ancient's tomb-city deep in Ganymede's hell-forest and expect to live. Yet Ed Garth had to return, had to lead men to certain doom—to keep a promise to a girl he would never see again.

"Tepondicon" (1946) by Carl Jacobi - He was not the savior-type. He certainly did not crave martyrdom. Yet there was treasure beyond price in these darkened plague-cities of Ganymede, if a man could but measure up to it.

"The Dancing Girl of Ganymede" (1950) by Leigh Brackett - She was like a dream come to life--with hair of tawny gold and the glowing face of a smiling angel--but she was not human!

Io

"The Mad Moon" (1935) by Stanley Weinbaum - The great, idiotic heads, the silly grins and giggles--those infernal giggles--would drive him crazy. 

"Invaders of the Forbidden Moon" (1941) Raymond Z. Gallun - Annihilation was the lot of those who ventured too close to the Forbidden Moon. Harwich knew the suicidal odds when he blasted from Jupiter to solve the mighty riddle of that cosmic death-trap.

"Outpost on Io" (1942) by Leigh Brackett - In a crystalline death lay the only release for those prisoners of that Ionian hell-outpost. Yet MacVickers and the men had to escape—for to remain meant the conquering of the Solar System by the inhuman Europans. 

Cowboy Bebop and the Pulp Solar System

The anime series Cowboy Bebop may not seem to have much in common with the sort of stuff you'd find in the pulp magazine Planet Stories in the period around World War II, but I feel like there are more similarities than one might think:

• The action occurs in version of the solar system where a number of bodies are habitable. Sure, Cowboy Bebop says that were terraformed, but the story takes place in the 21st Century and the terraformed versions of the Galilean moons and the like are as fanciful as anything from Planet Stories.
• Jet is a former cop and Spike and ex-gangster. These sort of hard-boiled backgrounds certainly wouldn't be out of place in pulp fiction of the 40s, and not unheard of in science fiction.
• Both draw on influences like Noir and Westerns.

Sure, there are also a lot of differences, as are bond to happen when two works are the products of two different cultures and half a century. But it does some to me you could do something resembling Cowboy Bebop that fight squarely in the pulp context (in the era where bebop originated), or say pull Eric John Stark into a world more like Cowboy Bebop.

Exploration and Science Fiction Settings

 On a pulp science fiction reading kick lately (mostly stuff out of Planet Stories or Thrilling Wonder Stories), I've come to conclusions about something in the structure of these stories that has previously bothered me. It's not uncommon for these stories to take place on a "Io no one has ever explored" or "a seldom visited Ceres" or the like, despite the fact the story suggests fairly developed civilization or at least trade lanes around these bodies. Why is (for instance) Ganymede a thriving colony world and Callisto unexplored?

The problem is not so much with the stories as with my expectations of them. I'm used to thinking space as divided into explored and explored territory, something like Star Trek or the like: here is civilized space, there's a border, there's the hinterlands. Sure, you might have outposts in the "wilderness" or "uncharted worlds" in otherwise fairly civilized areas, but mostly the unexplored is demarcated from the known. It's model inherited, perhaps, from simplified views of the Age of Exploration and the discovery of the New World.

These pulp studies model themselves on somewhat more modern conceptions. I think we can loosely place in them in three categories:

• The Jim Bridger Model: I'm wandering around areas others have passed through, seeing things they missed.

• The Amundsen/Hillary Model: Let us prepare to go to this place no one has yet been able to reach.

• The Shipwreck/Crashed Bush Pilot Model: People avoid this place because there isn't much to recommend it. I'm hear and I don't want to be, and I've found something weird.

Model Three and One mostly differ by intention, and can overlap.

These three models suggest a setting that is mostly explored, or at least explored around the edges and the primary exploration of the current age is "filling in the blank spots" to varying degrees.

Their are obvious parallels to traditional D&D style fantasy settings. The classic "wilderness exploration" game looks more like Star Trek, but the dungeoncrawl sort of game is more filling in the gaps exploration.

In making a sci-fi setting it seems to me you'd want to think about what sort of exploration you want to have (if that's going to be a focus) and the implications of the size and layout of setting "space."

The Solar Frontier

In a universe other than our own, the early observations of the planets were not proved fanciful misperceptions by the march of science, but instead bolstered by it. By the time space probes were sent, the people of Earth knew Mars and Venus were inhabited.

In time, the three species of the inner planets formed a partnership: the Vrusk of Mars, and from fecund Venus the Hadozee and Dralasites. With their combined efforts, the alliance of worlds made rapid scientific advances, and they would need them. Beyond Mars, the Alliance encountered the vessels of a mysterious new civilization, one that would eventually learn was called the Sathar.

There were other species out in the deep beyond of the solar system, but the Sathar ruled there and they had turned their double-pupiled gaze to the inner worlds.

The New Old Solar System

The "Old Solar System" with a wet, fecund Venus, and a habitable desert Mars, doesn't have the be the relegated to pulp retreads with gleaming, silver rockets. S.M. Stirling wrote a couple of alternate histories in his Lords of Creation series wherein Venus and Mars just happened to be habitable (well, not just happened to be, but no spoilers), but the stories were otherwise fairly hard sci-fi. The anthologies Old Venus and Old Mars have a few stories in a similar vein.

There's some reason you could put a pulp-derived but more rigorous in its details Mars or Venus in the background of an rpg setting like Transhuman Space or The Expanse or any other nearer future or solar system only sci-fi thing.

A habitable Mars or Venus doesn't require much of a stretch of scientific plausibility, but it might be fun to go full Edmond Hamilton or Leigh Brackett with fungal forests on Saturn or mud-mining on Io. I can't think of any reason why in an rpg you couldn't overlay the trapping of hard/near future science fiction on a completely pulp solar system.

Weird Revisited: The Galactic Great Wheel

So here's the pitch: Sometime in the future, an early spacefaring humanity encounters a gate and gains access to a system of FTL via hyperspace (or the astralspace) and gets its introduction to an ancient, galactic civilization with arcane rules and customs a bit like Brin's Uplift universe. At the "center" of the gates is Hub, a place with a gigantic neutral territory station--like Babylon 5 on a grander scale. Hub connects to all the various worlds. Here's a short sampling:

Archeron: A war world, possibly one where a decadent civilization has kidnapped warriors form different times and worlds to battles for their entertainment.

Baator: The world of beings who (like the Overlords in Childhood's End) look suspiciously like devils from Earth belief, and indeed act very much like them, destabilizing worlds with Faustian bargains somewhat like in Swanwick's Jack Faust.

Beastworld: A planet where many animal species share a group intelligence.

Carceri: An environmentally hostile ancient prison planet.

Limbo: A world in an area of reality warping "broken space" where hyperspace spills in leading to a graveyard of ships.

Mechanus: Robotic beings out to bring order to the galaxy via assimilation. A somewhat (maybe) more reasonable Borg.

Pandemonium: A world only inhabitable in subterranean caverns, but even those are swept by winds that generate infrasound that can drive humanoids insane like the titular Winds of Gath.

Weird Revisited: Dead Stars & Outer Monstrosities

 The release of the pdf of the William Hope Hodgson-inspired rpg Grey Seas Are Dreaming of My Death last week, brought to mind this post from last year...

Art from the Oldstyle Tales Press edition

As we understand the word," said the old Doctor. "Though, mind you, there may be a third factor. But, in my heart, I believe that it is a matter of chemistry; Conditions and a suitable medium; but given the Conditions, the Brute is so almighty that it will seize upon anything through which to manifest itself. It is a Force generated by Conditions; but nevertheless this does not bring us one iota nearer to its explanation, any more than to the explanation of Electricity or Fire. They are, all three, of the Outer Forces—Monsters of the Void.... 

- William Hope Hodgson, "The Derelict"

Spelljammer has never really felt like it was about exploration to me. There's nothing wrong with that, but plenty of science fiction literature paints space as a place for confronting the unknown. This is really a perfect fit for Spelljammer where its pre-modern, "magical" spacecraft put the stars within reach but not the science to understand any of it. Not that there is necessarily science as we know it to understand, in any case.

I think I would look to the horror/adventure stories of William Hope Hodgson, specifically his nautical yarns like The Boats of the Glen Carrig, "The Voice in the Night," "A Tropical Horror," and "Demons of the Sea." A little pseudo-science borrowed from his Carnacki stories could only help.

The characters are competent space-hands, perhaps mildly colorful rogues like Howard's Wild Bill Clanton or just working stiffs like the crew of the Nostromo in Alien, not bold explorers or science fantasy swashbucklers. Their jobs involving them going through places that are not (usually) inhabited by hostile species of space orcs or the like, but are instead fundamentally almost wild, always strange. Weird danger can rear it's head at any time, and your vessel is just another ship that disappeared in the Void.

Weird phenomena should be encountered as frequently as monsters, I think. Monsters, when they do show up should be unfamiliar, and probably not seen enough to become mundane.

Beyond the stories of Hodgson and Alien, other potential sources of inspiration could be the comic series Outer Darkness, the science fiction stories of Clark Ashton Smith, Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and of course, Moby Dick. 

Some Thoughts on Science Fiction Settings

Thinking about science fiction settings in rpgs (and in film and television which I think is the biggest influence on rpg sci-fi settings) I think that two important factors are scale and frame. Scale is the size of the setting, not necessarily in absolute terms (though maybe), in narrative terms. Frame is a descriptor or genre of the typical types of stories the setting supports. The two factors are not independent or exclusive.

Here are the frames I have thought of with a media representative. There are likely more that slipped my mind:

• Crime/Hard-boiled Mystery (Outland) - Hard people doing hard things...in space
• Exploration, Pulp (John Carter) - A stranger meets a strange land or lands
• Exploration, Mystery/Horror (Alien) - we've found something anomalous and now it might kill us.
• Exploration, Realistic  - (can't think of film here) - Alien planets are mostly inhospitable, talking to other species is hard!
• Exotic Ports of Call (Star Trek) - every week another world, another adventure
• Outpost (Babylon 5) - Everybody comes to Rick's
• Pioneers (Earth 2) - A little bit of exploration, but mostly we're putting down roots
• World-trotting (Star Wars) - Constant motion; as many exotic backdrops as possible
• Galaxy Wrecking (Guardians of the Galaxy) - the universe is vast and wild

I am probably missing some very realistic genres or some "ten minutes into the future stuff"/mild cyberpunk stuff, but I'm thinking mainly here of science fiction settings that include space travel. Some of the categories are also broader than others, too. 

Why isn't Star Trek (for instance) Exploration, Pulp? Despite it's mission statement, the Enterprise mostly seems to go to places people have gone before. They do very little first contact. Their activities harken back to pulp stories about places that are known, but perhaps little understood. Exploration, Pulp in my formulation is really the descendant of the Lost World novel. 

Here are the Scales in order of increasing size:

• Ship/Station
• Planet/Megastructure
• Orbital System (this could be either a group of moons or artificial satellites)
• Solar System
• Near/Few Star Systems
• Several Star Systems
• Many Star Systems/Galaxy
• Galaxies+

There is sometimes the issue of "visible scale." A setting may technically have a large scale than what the characters typically interact with. In general, I think the commonly visible scale is most important for fit with frames.

The following frames seem to go best with smaller scales: Crime/Hard-boiled Mystery, Exploration Pulp, Exploration Mystery/Horror, Exploration Realistic, Outpost, and Pioneers.

These frames seem to me to go best with large scales: Exotic Ports of Call, World-trotting, and Galaxy Wrecking.

Forgotten Futures: Stanley Weinbaum

 

I've mentioned the science fiction of Stanley Weinbaum (1902-1935) on this blog before. I was pleased to discover that the free rpg for public domain setting, Forgotten Futures has a Weinbaum adaptation: Forgotten Futures XI: Planets of Peril. If nothing else the worldbook is great. 

You might want to check out the other Forgotten Futures rpgs are well.

Random Asteroids

Continuing my random old science fiction solar system generators here with one for the asteroid belt. The asteroids are much less specified than Mars or Venus in the fiction, but there are stories to draw on. The first thing to keep in mind is that asteroids in pulpish tales tend to be much closer together than in real life. Maybe not quite Empire Strikes Back asteroid field distance but close.

Basic Theme:

1  Gold in The Hills - The Belt is a rural backwater, but it draws prospectors and those who cater to them. Think boomtowns and eccentric mountain men spacers.

2  Islands in a Vast Sea - Strange societies, exotic ports of call. It's one part The Odyssey  and one part South Pacific adventures of  Voyage of the Scarlet Queen.

3  Lost Worlds - A more isolated version of the above. The Belt may even be mostly empty, but a few hidden worlds lurk there.

4  Place of Mystery - Mostly uninhabited now, but there are this wasn't always the case. There are tombs to rob, artifacts to loot.

Why is This Rock Different? (Note that the answer here will suggest things about other asteroids!) 

1  It's inhabited

2  It's a piece of some structure

3  It's actually a dwarf planetoid

4  It has an atmosphere and life despite it's small size

Who Are the Inhabitants?

1-2  Strange and varied beings, unknown elsewhere

3-4  The adventures, nonconformists, and/or criminals of other worlds

5-6  Native primitive human(oid)s--how they spread from rock to rock is a mystery

What Do Outsiders Do There?

1  Exploit Mineral Wealth

2  Exploit the Natives

3  Hiding Out

4  Homesteaders

5  Archeology/Exploration

6  Crashed/Maroon/Exiled

Selected Asteroid Belt Sources:

"Marooned off Vesta" Isaac Asimov

"Master of the Asteroid" Clark Ashton Smith 

"The World with A Thousand Moons" Edmond Hamilton

The Twilight Zone "The Lonely" 

"Trail of the Astrogar" Henry Hasse