A Cozy, Creepy, Winter Campaign PART DEUX

I'd think Faceless Government Office. Their employers stay somewhere safe and cozy and don't think about the crawler crews unless a) there's some sort of complaint and they need to make sure everything is running or b) something important needs to be done and they have to divert a crew to do it.

Nothing's gone wrong on either side? You have your circuit, follow it. No I don't care about this 'supernatural' bullshit, just get the mail delivered.

>Party arrives at a seriously distant outpost -- could be anything as long as the npc count is like a half dozen at most
>Getting to civilization on foot, at least given the current weather, is not plausable
>Crawler is damaged while they stay overnight. Looks like a mechanical fault, parts and knowhow are present but it will take some time to fix and outside working hours are pretty low.
>Shortly after, Radio Silence ensues. The radio isn't dead as well as anyone can tell and if they can power both the base and crawler radios at once they can talk to each other, but the outside world might as well not exist.
>Random party members suffer insomnia, get private notes about things they see or play out encounters alone in the middle of the night
>If the PCs compare notes, their 'delusions' have some similar threads. NPCs don't want to talk about it. Like, creepy don't want to talk about insomnia, night, or anything outside.
>The longer Crawler repairs take with cascading faults and just plain need to do a lot of work, the more it looks like sabotage
>Radio silence continues.

>Some viking reenactors have set up a long house just north of a small village.The crew are charged with bringing them supplies for a big party on the winter solstice and invited to stick around for the party.After one too many beers a number of drunk reenactors setout to raid the village.Can the crew (now drunk as well) round up the rogue vikings before they either kill someone die of exposure or get shot by town police

Fuck no. I fucking hate the whole "let's put freelancers with equipment worth billions and apparently barely making any wage" bullshit backstories. If you operate gear this costly, you either are rich as fuck and own it, or it belongs to your employer, whoever that would be.

Or you could just have a mortgage on it that you have to pay off.

>Mortgage on equipment that wear and tear
Either you are stupid or banking system in States is.
Or both.
Unless you are talking about leasing.

In the first thread, there were three dispatchers that worked rotating shifts:

>Rough, gritty and mildly racist old tank driver that knows these crawlers well.

>Eloquent but neurotic younger guy with panic attacks and bouts of paranoia.

>Kind but quirky young woman who sends the PCs off on rewarding errands.

>The crew have to transport ice cores from a mining town to a research station in another town
>Due to a mechanical fault in the crawler, the ice cores melt while in the cargo bay
>The cores contained a dormant disease that the PC's are now the carriers of

House does wear and tear yet people mortgage them all the time.
Also insurance on complete loss of the team.

>Comparing a heavy-duty machine with real estate
Yup, it was you being retarded all the time.

>Let's make a post out of short film OP posted!
>Nobody will notice!

>PCs see smoke
>If they investigate they find a cabin burned down with a young woman in the snow nearby
>She's asleep/unconcious at first. Some symptoms of exposure but nothing super serious.
>Assuming she gets roused, she wants to go somewhere.
>It's not off the route, per say, but it'll be a while to circle there.
>Maybe an obscure little town they find on their map, near somewhere they're scheduled to go but not itself a place they meant to visit
>She's pretty affable in general but dodges questions about her past and outright refuses anything about the burned out cabin
>Personal Dark Secrets about the girl could be just about anything from here. Could be nothing. Could be top tier creepy fuckery.
>If she's successfully brought to her destination, either massive cozy homecoming, massive creepy revelations, or massive feels hit from the place being toast can ensue.
>I'm leaving the payoffs vague because I feel like it's something the GM could fill in to best mess with their party's heads or skew the game the way they want it to go.

The land is the most valuable asset and it increases in value all the time

This might shock you, but average house is expected to have longer life than 10 years.

>A town the crew passes through with some regularity is home to two incredibly Slavic brothers who enjoys shooting drinking big tits and building hilariously dangerous contraptions. The crew are alternately employed by the brothers to get parts and the rest of the townsfolk to try and fix the latest disaster they have caused

Leasing or whatever. I don't really know shit about business.
I'm referring to the system that Traveller uses where people don't really own their starships.

>the system ... where people don't really own their starships.
It's called being an employee.

>Crew find a broken down crawler in the wastes
>In the cargo bay is letters, hundreds of them, addressed to the town their route is currently taking them
>Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night, amirite?
>Crew delivers mail to town successfully
>It's propaganda for a rebel government/enemy nation, and the PCs have just been played 'Operation Cornflakes' style

>Players sight -- or think they sight -- shadow people
>Could be a hiker, trick of the light, whatever.
>Not much reason for people to be out this far...
>Some look like they're moving
>Slow burn creepy, spend more than one session having random perception, by roll or not, spotting the fuckers
>Gradually increase the average number of shadows spotted and decrease the distance. The first sightings might be solitary figures a mile or more off, then small groups become more common as the sightings creep in to a couple hundred yards or such
>At first shadows vanish when you blink, later on they linger better.
>If players investigate the shadows they don't find beings, but maybe they find something: Anomalous tracks, items in the snow, not anything that explains what they saw but correlated with it.
>Lost Souls following the light? Murderghosts scouting their prey?

>They should own it!
>But they don't own it!

The closest common analog would be a privately owned vessel (boat).

In Traveller, you play space tramp freighters. You occupy the spaces that large corporations don't fill. It's like buying a home, business and 18 wheel delivery truck all at the same time. Some parts you buy outright, other parts you have a mortgage on.

That's a good comparison. Boats are large and expensive to maintain.

You still use a ship that is not yours. You don't own you and it's not leased to you either. You are just an employee.
Like a tramp freighter, who doesn't own his truck either, but just works for logistics company

Literally what for? The entire point is being a company employee, having dispatches, mission control and all that. Without it it's just pointless roaming the arctic for no real reason. As in - better sell the vehicle and move somewhere warmer.

>New Dispatcher over the radio, after PCs have gotten used to the usual suspects.
>Well-spoken male, sounds like Orson Welles plus a multiple pack a day habit
>Crawler can't seem to raise anybody else from home for a bit but this guy seems legit, coming in just like any other dispatcher.
>Talks to them like a boss, telling then what they'll be doing not asking or offering. Not nasty, just very business and knows his place
>When other Dispatchers come back into the lineup they seem nervous, out of it, or otherwise not on their 'A' game
>Some of new guy's assignments seem a little shady.
>They also seem to lead to more 2spooky4you stuff than average, and/or the spooky is more dangerous than normal.
>If the PCs have any spooky friends (because this is cozy as well as creepy) they're either really disturbed by this guy's voice or can't hear it.

>You don't own you
Okay, now that's slavery.

>PCs notified that their loans/mortgages/leases are being transferred or their company bought out
>New Managment becomes interested in the spooky goings on
>In a shocking twist, New Managment isn't spooky, and is instead willing to offer PCs a bounty for playing paranormal investigators on the side of their deliveries.
>Dispatchers are a world-weary ex-waitress who likes to talk at the PCs and isn't a very good listener...
>A kind of obsessive Mulder type who's low key but intense, thinks spooky is very real and very dangerous. up to the PCs to decide if he's fucked in the head or the only sane man...
>And an energetic younger woman who is absolutely enamored with a romantic vision of being out on the ice and in the wilderness and is probably some kind of new ager who thinks most of the spooky stuff is either benevolent or at least harmless if approached with respect. May blame you if you get attacked by murderghosts.

>and is probably some kind of new ager who thinks most of the spooky stuff is either benevolent or at least harmless if approached with respect
>She is god-damn right 9 out of 10 times

Glad to see we have a new thread! I love this stuff, Veeky Forums, when we all just brainstorm.

>She is god-damn right 9 out of 10 times
>The 10th time, just fucking run. And blame Mulder for probably being the one to get you into that shit.

>When it's the 10th time, it's a situation that at first glance looked cozy and safe, so nobody was expecting it will go brutal and/or dangerous

>most of the spooky stuff is either benevolent or at least harmless if approached with respect
>is god-damn right 9 out of 10 times
You know that's actually a pretty good way of balancing comf and creep.
Just enough uncertainty/danger to keep you on your toes but not so much it just turns into a straight up horror campaign.

Not exactly related with this particular thread subject, but last year I was running a long campaign for my players centered about complete wilderness with just few people within weeks reach (no settlements, just a bunch of lumberjacks here, a hermit there and an abandoned military outpost here), but played up the creepy value by the fact their target eluded them and the entire area was anything but the stories they've heard, not to mention crazy stuff, like lack of bridge they were supposed to use as a landmark or road suddenly turning into a regular, wild forest that just couldn't grow up in last two years (that's how old their intel was).
They've ended up so freaked they were afraid of approaching just about anything. And if they've spotted human activity, they spend literal days in-game on carefully observing and probing before approaching, with dozens of fail-safes prepared in advance.

Was kind of fun, even if exhausting.

>balancing comf and creep
What, the ghosts and spooks and shit? Nah, they don't bother us without a reason. They ain't stupid - our crawler's solid metal, lotsa light and smoke and fire. They hate that shit.

Y'know, most of the time, they ain't all that bad. Oh, sure, they're dangerous an' all, but...really, most of 'em just want to be left alone. Sure, there's a couple scary fuckers out there - heard about a native spirit tearing shit up out there a few years back before some crazy bastard ran it over - but most of 'em just want to be respected and left alone. Be nice, and some of 'em might even take it into their heads to be nice back. Still want to be careful - spooks helping looks a lot like spooks hurting - but it's handy to stay on their good side.

Understand? Good. Now go take that geo-whatsit shit off the back. What? Yeah, I said to stay on their good side. That don't mean being stupid enough to invite them in, greenstalk!

Apologies if it's already been said but has OP or anyone else figured out a good RP system(s) for running this idea?

>"yeah Rover 3-1 we got a ping from a distress beacon... just over that ridge to the north.... umm 54 North, 22 West, and uhh... the beacon doesnt have- doesnt appear to be registered. do you copy Rover 3-1?"
>"Rover 3-1, we copy"
>"Copy Rover 3-, go and check on that distress call. It's not uh too far off your route. go ahead and alert the nearest forward station of what you find out there... not a lot of options, its so empty... there's a station north of it... uhhh... sign APS-541, located about 50 from the ping. Over"
>"Dispatch, this is Rover 3-1. We can check it out, will alert Station 541 of our approach. staying warm in the Dispatch?"
>"Better than being out there, Rover. Dispatch, out."
>"Rover 3-1, out"

GURPS

It can even include the infamous Vehicles, since it's that kind of game that really needs it.

>GURPS
That's literally the thing about GURPS, though. Describe any scenario and you can run it in GURPS.

This seems like one of those rabbit holes of needing 78 sourcebooks though. Last thread some anons suggested reskinning Call of Cthulhu or one of the many other Cthulhu games to give a nice backbone of mixing mundane with spooky. Given the number of "At the Mountains of Madness" takes cthulhu games have to provide cold weather rules, it seems a legit call.

>This seems like one of those rabbit holes of needing 78 sourcebooks thoug
Nope. You need High Tech, helped with Vehicles and MAYBE Horror. Maybe.
That's 3 books total.
And Vehicles are only required to get all the stats of your specific vehicle, which if I recall correctly, can be even done with use of Basic Set.

People GREATLY overestimate the complexity of GURPS and what it takes to use it. I know I can run almost all of things from this thread with just GURPS Lite.

>reskinning Call of Cthulhu
Only if you want to have a failure-heavy gameplay, since CoC rules are literally designed for failing.

That is the problem with Call of Cthulu. And besides, it's not comfy enough.

Not sure if GURPS is quite right, though. Maybe a WoD game, though I'm not sure if I know enough about them - are there any that focus almost entirely on the mortals, without the mortals having to know much about the supernatural to be remotely effective?

>That's literally the thing about GURPS, though. Describe any scenario and you can run it in GURPS.
As if it was a bad thing.

And like the other user said, you need High Tech for all the gear you will use, Basic Set to make characters and if you plan on actual spoopy things - Horror.

Vehicles are for 3rd edition, so they are pretty much useless and Basic Set with High Tech will be more than enough to design any kind of snow crawler.

>As if it was a bad thing.
Oh, it's not.

But generally if there's something decently specialized, it'll do the job better than GURPS. "Jack of all trades, master of none" applies.

Base - High Tech - Vehicles - Horror wouldn't be too bad though, and this is otherwise pretty niche.

The best way to balance comfy and creepy would be to have everyday comforts reimagined by someone with only a faint understanding of the intent and purpose of them, crafted using only what's available to them.

In the last thread I brought up the idea of having gifts randomly appear outside the crawler, with no indication of where they came from or how they got there. Some ideas in that vein:

>A tin of hot cocoa mix with a human tooth buried inside somewhere.
>A glass figurine in the exact likeness of one of the crew
>A crudely stitched fur hat that was never tanned or treated properly, as if someone skinned an animal and immediately made a cap from it
>An item that went missing from the crawler eight months ago, discovered 1000 miles from where it was lost.
>A racy set of hot pink lingerie.

Honestly it reminds me of Sunless Sea. I'm working on a Lady Blackbird reskin for SS, maybe that would work here too?

So what system would actually be good for this?

so has anyone mentioned 'Stand Still. Stay Silent.' in these threads yet? I know it's not exactly the same, but probably some reasonable inspiration in it.

It was mentioned near the end of the last thread.

It's similar, but for the fact that everything spooky (up until the recent introduction of GhostHorse(TM) and the other spooks) is just virally-created monsters called trolls. Make everything a little more "civilized" and exchange trolls for nature, and you might have something interesting there.

You know, I'm stealing those ideas. Or rather their general intent - a well-meaning "Something" that wants to be friends with the crew, but has a pretty hard time fully understand humans, so it all ends up deep in the uncanny valley.

I guess I will be the third person who will tell - GURPS. In the last thread one of the anons posted Unity Rover from Alpha Centauri, which is pretty much a job already done when it comes of making comfy, all-terrain vehicle that fits such campaign. If you want more "used" aesthetics, then the same supplement had Formers, a terraforming vehicles, with lots of tools, lots of space for cargo and not much comfort for a crew, who acts and behaves as if it was a submarine, with hot bunks and things like that.

Honest to God question - on a scale from 1 to early Order of the Stick, how good it is?
Or rather - on scale from 1 to Kill Six Billion Demons how overrated it is?

Would fit the battletech universe, in my opinion, as long as you keep it on a forgotten periphery iceworld, far from the major powers. BT seems to have the right mix of frontier spirit and high/low tech.

I just started reading today, up to chapter 4. The first chapter is all fluff that has no real bearing on the main story but otherwise I love it.

In my opinion I'd give it a solid 8/10 on quality though with some excellent visuals and a 7/10 on overhype.

Definitely good but not as utterly amazing as a lot of the more vocal fans make it out to be.

It's pretty solid. Neat setting, good writing, good visuals. I don't read a shitton of webcomics but I've never been tempted to drop it. I think it's gotten a ton of disproportionate hype, though, since some people can't be level-headed when giving praise (or criticism, for that matter, but I feel like SSSS has generated more excessive praise than excessive hate)

in a meta sense, the most interesting thing, I think, is the contrast between characters and pacing that skew comfy and a world that skews grimdark.

I'm not deep into the webcomics community, so I really don't know how others react to it.

I think it's well drawn, decently engaging, and enjoyable. 7/10, would read over most shit that passes off as long-form webcomics anyday.

I'll check these out. Not familiar with the contents of that GURPS supplement, but I'll check it out.

I get it - early years Zombie Hunters. Can dig on it then I guess.

What is this thing called?

Dig on:
www96.zippyshare.com/v/KPjyq9Gk/file.html
If you are familiar with Alpha Centauri, then it shouldn't be much problem to navigate. Warning - this is a highly-compressed PDF, so things might look weird. The "normal" version weights roughtly 150 mb.
Either way, it has all sorts of vehicles from the original game with stats, description and proper fluff, so it's worth a look. After all, the main difference between ideas from this thread and The Planet is presence of snow.

A crevasse.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Sno-Cat
This is one of early models.

And you don't want to use it. Believe me, you don't want to use it.

Why's that?

The old models - extremely unreliable mechanically, which is literally the last thing you want in arctic climate
The new models - extremely overpriced snow groomers, while there are much cheaper machines doing the same workload in the same conditions

I've switched my military conscription time for working in far north as a guard. You don't want stuff that can break down or cost gorillions out there. Especially stuff on which your life depends.

GIB STORIES!

In all seriousness, they could be pretty germane to the thread.

Nothing special, really. A as a glorified guard-slash-janitor. Done almost a decade ago. My job was to attend all the existing installations in case of a dispatch message and work as rudimentry search and rescue. Nothing comfy, nothing spooky, mostly boredom.
Still better than the same time spent in barracks, still would pick it again if I had to chose.

Things that actually can be related with the thread:
>You can get used to polar night pretty quick. The days are getting shorter and shorter, until one day sun never rises again. For next 5 weeks. Pretty freaky at first, but after the initial shock dwindles, you just go on your biological clock rather than time of the day
>Warning - biological clock has a "day" set as 25 hours long. If you are not careful, you can fuck up a lot of things if not making use of alarm clock and remebering this trivia. You don't want to fuck up things because you confused hours while operating time-sensitive machines
>Getting outside in any other conditions than daylight in pristine weather (no wind, at least 3/4 of the sky clear, lack of fog) is equal to suicide; getting tethered turns it into a suicidal attempt
>There is almost no wildlife around; if you notice any movement - that's why you are carrying a rifle on your shoulder. Armed, get out of that place. You don't want to make sure if it was a polar bear or a rabbit. You want to get the fuck out.
>Engines need to run non-stop when the temperature drops below -20 Celcius. All of them, even those in technically "warmed up" sheds or rooms. This makes a lot of noise, but that's the only way to be sure they will be working

>TBC

>Even if you are not a mechanic and have no technical knowledge, learn how to fix engines. While they are running or at least still warm. This might be a life or death skill. Stuff used in such conditions is the most basic kind of mechanics, thus you can learn that with a manual at hand
>Everything vital - and I mean EVERYTHING - needs to have a replacement stored. Preferably a replacement that isn't "one fit all" kind of deal. You don't want to have a single replacement and then realise you need the exact same part to fix another thing, but the logistics only outfitted you with one
I had to improvise how to get an elastic hose, 2 meters of it. You don't want that to happen to you
>Take a lot of flares. Unless it's the polar day, you want to have those things handy
>Crop your hair, but in the same time get a beard if you are a guy. You can't wash regularly, so long hair are a problem, but you don't want to be bald. Facial hair really helps, but again - keep it short. No "viking beard" bullshit
>Psychical evaluations are a thing. You are profiled before you are sent in. And you should be profiled after the polar night. And you are profiled after a return
Remember about that. If you want to spice campaigns - just add a crew member or an NPC that wasn't profiled lately
>It's cold and you are always hungry. Even if you eat for two, you will still lose weight, because you can burn 5000 calories while pretty much doing nothing
>Taking a piss is painful when you are outside. Really painful
>Not wearing eye-protection? Enjoy irreparable eye damage!
Which is a good hook for a blind dispatcher in campaigns. You know, the old fart that can't leave his cabin, because he went blind due to youthful stupidity
>You want eat your food spicy, because after a while, you can't feel any other taste. And it's not about just quality of rations. You can feel three tastes after a while: spicy, fat and nothing. And fat gets boring pretty quick, plus not all things have this taste

As for dispatches. Nothing really interesting, seriously. Let's make a mental list of all things
>Regular runs to see if the anthenas are intact
>Few times to check if an emergency landing plot is clear after blizzards (no ice shards, frozen snowdrifts, etc)
>Regular runs to see the few and in between settlements, since it was technically part of the duty
>All sorts of emergency dispatches: people not showing up after they should, supply truck not coming on time, guys went surveying and still not getting back, this kind of work
>Actual emergencies - got a bunch of guys freighting fishes got trapped after their truck ended up on broken ice, as it was "spring" and they've overestimated the thickness of ice. Nothing bad happend to anyone, but they were unable to get the truck out by themselves. When I've arrived next morning, they were tired, since they were all too spooked to go sleep inside the truck, since they weren't sure if it won't go under the ice completely.
But most of the time - nothing really happend. I've read all my books in first 4 months, expecting them to last for entire year. Learned a bit of German, since I've carried a textbook and a dictionary "in case of boredom". You know it's boring when you are reading dictionary to kill time.

Also, you pretty quickly learn all the faces of people you met at least twice. I'm not a "face guy", but there are so little people, you just memeorise them, even if not talking with them.

What kind of engines did you use that it could run 24/7? I want one in a truck.

Just about any engine can do that. No, really. The real point is for how many months/years you want it to run. Techically you don't need for it to run longer than 4 months, which as far as I'm concerned, even a regular car engine can do. At least the diesel ones (just make sure it doesn't go off, or you won't be able to restart it in case of diesel under -30 or so).

Also - avoid automatic transmission. You won't be able to fix that in case of failure, unless you happen to carry a portable car workshop with a lot of specialised tools and even more replacement parts.

I'm loving this thread.

Kind of a side note: I feel like the Cozy side is actually harder to run than the creepy. Because it's kind of easy to trade in paranoia, isolation, darkness... and still get the drama for game running, but Cozy isn't a skill you develop nearly as quickly. Any thoughts?

Give characters good conditions. You know, the crawler is spacey, actually warm and with enough space to not only avoid hot-bunking, but having actual cabins (even if shared, still not everyone sleeping in the same room).
I know for sure from sailing that good living conditions can easily make things comfy. And it's in may ways similar experience - limited space, can't exactly leave your vehicle, stuck with bunch of people in small, confirned space...

Adding to this - make a conscious effort to describe the crawler as home to the players. Make them feel it's safe (unless they carry some nasty thing in their cargo bay), secure and truly theirs. Mention a lot in descriptions how the temperature is lovely, how good it is to sense smells (you can't smell in cold air), how familiar and known the inside of the crawler is. Make it pristine, but not like from IKEA catalog, in the same time avoid making it greasy and with lot's of noises.
Best way to make it cozy is to describe how calm and silent it is inside, while they can see through the windows and ports the mad blizzard outside.

In short, creepy can be achieved by WHAT you are telling. Cozy is based entirely on HOW you are telling it.

From the previous thread:

>Imagine this ride, supped up, with a bunch of bandits in big coats and hats with ear flaps, wielding government surplus rifles, holding on for dear life as they fly over a snow bank in pursuit of a crawler.

>trainsaws

>My name is Max, and my world is ice and lead.

Spoilers - beyond just setting up the catastrophe, it turns out they're all the ancestors of the main characters.

How has no one posted this yet?

What weapons do these guys have?
> Mechanics Wrench
> Flashlights (for monsters repealed by light)
> Ceremonial Aborigional Knife
> Antique War Rifle
> Flare Gun
Nope. Old thread idea with Ryutama style operators still best idea

>Cozy campaing of zero aggression
>Weapons
How about no?

>portable floodlights for very tough darkness-element creatures, powered by a large backpack battery on the heavy
>very large tin-snips
>bolt-actions with bayonets
>an owl, for hawking
>pick-axe/pulaski
>frozen contents of latrine
>leuchtpistoles
>commercial flamethrowers (also good for when you bottom out)
>that old cavalry sword a prospector gave you that you probably should have sold already
>club with a taxidermied bear paw on the end of it
>"The Snowball" yo-yo
>punch mittens
>crampon on a string
>blades on the sides of the crawler's wheels chariot-style

I still like it being a government operation, but
>after two sessions with each new speaker, they go back to the capital, and get contacted, being asked why they haven't been responding or doing their job
>find out that the regular dispatchers are still in business, they haven't been bought out
>then who the Hell are these new guys?
>look for them, but now unable to find them
>occasionally get a strange signal, hear their voices

>zero aggression
No, 33% aggression.

Great stuff.

No, 5%

10% and we can have a deal

>rover heads into cave to shield from a huge storm
>entrance gets blocked
>finds that the cave is super deep
>have cave adventures

Let's talk settings for the sort of game we've been designing here...

>Default Canadian/Alaskan/Scandinavian/Russian backwoods
>Good news! You can use modern/period earthly expectations
>Spooky stuff is very likely to be disbelieved/denied
>Get plenty of touchstones to work with
>Con: Everybody thinks they're an expert

>Post-apocalyptic world
>Yeah you can have a cozy post-apocalypse
>You do this by assuming people are basically good and willing to work together to survive and rebuild.
>You get ruins!
>Spooky stuff is PROBABLY disregarded by most folks, but believers could be more common and more serious
>Great excuse for schizo tech levels between having the Crawler and interacting with folks who seem stuck in the 19th century a lot.
>Have to be fucking careful with where you are still
>Have to be fucking careful with defining the apocalypse.
>Tons of mundane or quasi-mundane explanations for 'spooks', this is both a pro and a con.

>We full scifi now
>Inhabited ice world/moon
>Place is poor as shit by interplanetary standards, so outside of whatever city hosts their main starport you don't see a ton of scifi tech since that shit takes specialized maintenance knowledge and probably import spare parts.
>You can still probably excuse varying biomes enough to have pine forests and mountains and shit, not just ice flats
>You have a whole goddamned planet, there's always more space to put new shit.
>Can use scifi excuses to make things a little cozier.
>Get to get away from earthly stereotypes
>Spooks can be mundane, magic, imaginary, or legitimate aliens
>On the other hand you have to do more work both to build your scenario and connect your players with it.