I need sci-fi stuff

i have a mountain of resources for running anything in a fantasy world but i have about 1 page of resources for running a sci fi space game, and most of those are just pictures.

I'm really blanking out, I'm not good at all at coming up with aliens or planets or even hooks for the party to go on, which is sad because I've wanted to run a space game for so long.

can anyone help me out here?

ill bump with random art i was using for inspiration

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and thats about it

and i found this funny thing while researching just now. i can work it in somewhere

What sort of space game do you want to run?
High-flying space opera like Mass Effect or Guardians of the Galaxy?
Trek-esque exploring the unknown?
Low-lifes and quasi-criminals eeking out a living, like Firefly or Cowboy Bebop?

i think mass effect, minus the dramatic galaxy saving plot.

The players are unaligned space farers. they have full freedom to travel anywhere the want and do whatever they want so long as they dont get caught doing any crimes.

its my first campaign I've run without a centralized plot and without fantasy.

Sounds like you want to start a sandbox game. Stars Without Number has a pretty good toolkit for generating star sectors, a few plot ideas per system and letting you run around in it. Easy to port to other games, has a free download version and a bunch of splats. I liked Diaspora's method too on the other end of the spectrum but its for smaller scale.

Probably a good idea to talk to your players about what sort of game they're going to be playing and how it requires a bit more input/initiative from them. Ask what sort of scifi stuff they like and put it on planets but make it different.

Not OP but I could use some help too, I need quests for a space pirate game

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Seconding this, Stars Without Number's world generation is pretty based, and it has some pretty cool supplements.
Caveat is that the system as is isn't amazing ("Classes? In my sci-fi?!"), but as your man says, all the world-building stuff is designed to be plundered from for other games.
You can find it all in the OSR trove under Sine Nomine Publishing.

I'm a bit of a Traveller dork so I'd say look into that, but it definitely has a more grounded feel.
It also has a pretty cool lifepath-based chargen system, which turns chargen into a mini-game to decide your life up till you start adventuring.
Again, you have a tendency to end up with washed-up veterans and space-hobos, but that's all part of the fun.

Also, in terms of general world-building, try to keep the play-space smallish.
This is so you can flesh out most of the worlds your players visit, rather than having them all seem the same. A Stars Without Number sector is about 20(?) planets and I reckon you could do about twice that if you're willing to put in the work.

It also helps to just have some bare-bones notes on each planet (Mostly Desert, Cannibal Cultists at the poles), and then flesh it out if the players are going to go there. Just get the players to tell you where they want to go next session. that sort of thing.

Also, when I say "smallish play-space" you could always do the same thing as Mass Effect, where because of the way FTL works, you can only go so far out from a given Relay. This means even though you're travelling the galaxy, you're still limited to a few clusters.

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thank you, when i get home ill go look for it, thank you so much.

but do they cover alien creation? I'm not looking to subvert every race like an uncreative fuckwad. i just want something besides "blue human" and "green human" or "furry human"

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was gonna contribute but all my sci-fi stuff is very old-school

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It does aliens. I really like the Dead Names book for aliens civilizations, ruins, artifacts and stuff. Lots of good tables there.

Also you can probably port in some you like from games or books or whatever and change them up a bit. Most people haven't read/played/whatever enough scifi to recognize everything and/or will be happy to see stuff based on things they like.

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...is that lego?

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This might be sci-fi depending on how you use it.

Not too sure about Traveller's alien creation (though given it's been around for near 40 years I would be surprised if there weren't five different systems for it!)

Stars Without Number's base setting is quite human-centric, so the alien creation doesn't so much focus on xenobiology beyond "are they not!Reptiles or not!Insects?", instead focusing on how the species broadly differs from humanity on a psychological level.

Aliens have two-ish "lenses", which are the broad traits that make them different from people with funny foreheads. Stuff like Curiosity, Faith and Wrath.
The book comes out and says that it's not designed to be realistic, more that it's supposed to make aliens that are both memorable for the players and easy for the GM to come up with stuff on the spot.

Also, the supplement Dead Names is built around generating ruins and lost societies, one of the categories of which is aliens. However, as above , it's mostly for building weird ruins and degenerate societies.

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@OP

Google SWN and Emichron for a "sector generator" that puts together a pretty hefty chunk of galactic space with dozens of planets and factions. It's pretty useful for other systems, as it provides tech levels and even antagonists and allies on each planet. It's probably the best random generator for sci-fi games bar none.

Donjon also keeps a pretty sizable collection of generators, but there is zero support for modern structure map making. It does, however, sport some more useful generators for mundane items and quests that Emichron does not.

Enjoy.

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Maybe sci fi?

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Sure is baby

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I do have the full version of this picture, but it's too big to post here.

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Hey, who turned out the lights? Hey, who turned out the lights? Hey....

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