Sci-Fi Campaign advice

Could also use relative time dilation as a sort of accelerated countdown clock that keeps them on task. Any time spent dicking around in space causes decades to pass on planet.

This also lends itself to your isolated tone and overall hopelessness. Maybe the problem you have with reoccurring characters is solved by having none, or having them age dramatically between encounters. Locations could also be desolated in these time gaps.

That is something I had not considered but is a truly excellent idea, Having NPCS at a spaceport they frequent age rapidly each time they visit would really drive home how lonely it is to be a space traveller

In one of my early missions the players were forced to override safety controls and Jump when they were too close to the planet - something something about when you Jump you have to be a 100 diameters away from an object with the object being the diameter basis. So in that case they had to be a 100 planet lengths away from the planet to properly Jump and they weren't, so the Jump bubble collapsed earlier than usual leaving them in dead, unmapped space and they had to figure out which way to go. Or if you want leave them in a Reaver occupied space.

Another time I had the astro-navigation keep alerting the players than an unknown object was too close for them to Jump but nothing showed up on scanners, but the outside cameras would catch background stars occasionally flicker. After rolling every skill check they had they figured it was some titanic black space monster was following them and they Jumped as soon as they got the green light.

My opinion is that 95% of space travel should be mundane, it is a big empty universe and the odds of running into trouble are low, but if they do run into trouble by god make them remember it.

It's used to great effect in Hyperion and Forever War.

GURPS Traveller recently was made OOP but you can find the PDFs in GURPS general (the OP there has the links).

If you're asking yourself basic story structure questions, then you might be smart to just run in the Traveller setting for now. Don't try to reinvent the wheel until you have a handle on the genre.

Try watching old episodes of Firefly. They really knocked it out of the park, and I've always felt that a good RPG campaign needs to be managed like a TV series with an ensemble cast.

>> How do I include recurring NPCs if the players are mostly on the move as free traders or agents of a corp or government?

Have a hub or two that they can visit when they're hard up for something to do. Pirates had Port Royale, terrorists had the Bakaa Valley, china opium runners had Macao and later Hong Kong, and losers perverts have Veeky Forums. Part and parcel with isolation is a need for community, a place to kick back and let loose.

Actually, a great way in general to evoke a theme is to provide stark contrasts by showing the players the opposite. So make sure there's a few quest hubs that are centers of local trade... places where stuff is expensive and where all the quests make you leave and go somewhere else to make your fortune.

>> How best to handle Combat and the more powerful and longer ranged weapons involved without ending up with rocket tag or a TPK.

Nerf the weapons or use the GURPS cinematic options to allow PCs to survive via movie style explosions that throw them but do token damage, etc. Don't be afraid of cinematic options if you're doing a cinematic campaign. Just don't try to limit access too heavy weapons, because controlling access always leads to those kinds of weapons taking over the campaign.

>> Should I give the players a spaceship?

Absolutely fuck yeah.

If you want, then have them be assembled as a crew of a free trader under a captain/mentor who shows them the ropes. Then eventually have him be killed off or retire.

cont...

>> How to emphasis the emptiness of space when the players are able to go planet hopping in space ships?
>> How to create a dark tone and feeling of isolation without them feeling like nothing matters?

Be sparing about thematics, at least at first. It's easy to overdo and/or sabotage gaming fun in the name of a badly handled theme. It's very much to your credit that you recognize the risks here.

My feeling is that the way to emphasize a theme is to present its counterpoint so as to provide contrast. So when they're at port, there are interesting characters to meet, jobs to do, stuff to buy/sell. Emphasize community and other captains and crews that they party with. Things should be wild and risky and fun.

Out in the boonies, when they're trading on a shitstain podunk settlement on a planet in the middle of nowhere, people should be insular and dirt poor. Or rich cities where everybody is snooty and cosmopolitan and looks on the characters as suspicious pirates.

Then once people are used to that, you'll do an adventure in deep space where there's nothing and nobody except whatever and whoever is aboard. THATs when you play the isolation card.

Seems good, I really like the comparisons to pirates and opium runners in Port Royale and Macao. I think I will certainly start them off in a space port that is a hive of scum and villainy, with just enough regulation that the mortgage on the ship can be enforced.
Just in regards to adventures, I was planning on introducing them with the buy low, sell high style of gameplay that seems standard for traveller, maybe get them messed up with a few gangs and corps, then have them slowly find traces of a huge conspiracy that eventually leads them out into the depths of the void.
How does that sound?

> Should I give the players a spaceship?
only a captain can get one, at least one player should have the skill to be a pilot, and they need to spend point on that
> How to emphasis the emptiness of space when the players are able to go planet hopping in space ships?
random events on ship and planets they hop into, if they visit a planet, they may discover dead ancient civilization, get old broadcasts of ships asking for help then discovering said ships already destroyed, their ship being ionized and can't travel until they fix it, planets with heavy gravity that threaten to kill everybody (unless you have gravity manipulator on ship), black holes that will bend the way of the ship or possibly sucking them into another sector, planets with mines infested by monsters, players dealing with blackouts on their ship, having to navigate on pitch black darkness to fix it while a mutating alien on board, ship breaches, space pirates and traps, a virus that automatically hacks into the players ship and disable defenses, deplete oxygen or other dangerous stuff.
make the fear of empty space a thing, players loose mental stats, get anxiety, need a doctor to keep people in check, illness from constant traveling and being exposed to artificial light and life support.
world building should be mostly through broadcast signals, getting to populated places should be rare, even space stations shouldn't be that populated.
> How to create a dark tone and feeling of isolation without them feeling like nothing matters?
just use the previous events to build a dark tone while keeping players invested through personal goals, have two characters being related to each other or have to look for each other
you made me crave for a sci-fi compaign right now

Sounds great but I'd avoid too much emphasis on big megacorps. Instead, let them handle the main traffic lines between important worlds and covering important commodities. They're the reason the free traders can't do normal jobs in normal places. But don't let the game turn into shadowrun, where everything is corporate politics and johnsons hiring out the players as spec ops saboteurs. Let them have their freedom, so scraping by becomes their responsibility not (via your NPCs) yours.

To build on that and other ideas other anons, including myself, threw around, consider spam.

To elaborate: when in "civilized space", near space stations etc add info that "comm console chirps merrily with notices of signals permeating the space - advertisements, open-channel chatter, random trivia constantly travel through the ether". Maybe even prepare some random bits in case players will check the console and will want some examples. Refer to it regularly, a'la "if you consider getting new weapons, you may want to check black market - they certainly will sell better stuff than the civilian-grade tasers your comm console floods you with advertisements of", maybe even have them look for clues, information or some special deals using it. Make them know that said chatter, news etc are always there when they're in "civilized" space. Make them rely on it.

And then, when they're in deep space, cut it off. Comm console is silent, registering nothing but faint, unrecognizable echoes of signals possibly hundreds of years old and even that rarely. Make it mute, and them - cut off from the world.

Of course, that may require of setting that long-range communication isn't instantenous. Maybe the setting requires actual couriers and drones with their FTL drives to regularly course between worlds dumping communications, picking up new ones and moving on since stuff like radio-waves and laser impulses have speed limits under the speed of light (that is if you're planning to use FTL in general in your setting).

I would go with Traveller, its great. Mongoose 1st edition is pretty solid.

You should give the players a spaceship or have them work towards one or borrow one early on. Traveller is all about travelling between different worlds, and the PCs expense-covering income is often generated by their passengers and/or cargo.

Traveller isn't as lethal as people make it out to be - with decent armor there's no problem. As long as people use cover and are smart they will be ok. as the GM its your job to balance things against your party to prevent a TPK. Playtest things on your own if you're unsure.

The emptiness of space isn't very interesting, but if you want to show the insane distances between stars, show them this before the campaign starts:
stars.chromeexperiments.com/
you'll need google chrome but its well worth it. Start zoomed into our sun, then zoom out and out until you hit the galaxy size - it is mind blowing and shows the distance.
In game the distance is mostly represented by saying "ok you guys spend a week in jump - add 1 week to your skill training". You gloss over the travel because there is literally nothing out there. Occasionally you can have things happen in-jump, which is fine, but most of the time the real story and interest is in and around the systems they're in.

Tone is up to you as a GM. describe things in a dark way, describe things mattering.

>> How do I include recurring NPCs if the players are mostly on the move as free traders or agents of a corp or government?

They'll still visit the same planets, deal with the same governments & organizations, etc. It's not going to be a new world every session because you'll never be able to keep up with the details. Handle NPCs as you always do.

>> How best to handle Combat and the more powerful and longer ranged weapons involved without ending up with rocket tag or a TPK.

I run into this a lot, especially with players who only played D&D/d20 and other such stuff. You've got to get them in the mindset of combat being deadly. I generally run "intro" sessions supposedly to get everyone up to speed on the rules, but really to drive home the point that combat is DEADLY to fuckwits who've never played anything other than Level 25 half-orc/elf wizard-thief-paladins who can kill 1000s without getting a hangnail. Kill your players' PCs and they'd get with the program fast enough.

>> Should I give the players a spaceship?

Getting and/or paying for a ship is a great hook for any referee. Use it and don't hand out free lunches. If you give them a ship, make the ship part of the job they're doing for someone else.

>> How to emphasis the emptiness of space when the players are able to go planet hopping in space ships?

Have them travel days within a system. In Traveller, jump takes 168 hours regardless of distance. Give them a place they need to travel to which is less than 168 hours away in normal space.

>> How to create a dark tone and feeling of isolation without them feeling like nothing matters?

Read any number of horror RPGs like Delta Green, CoC, etc.

As explained, all these "problems" occur in fantasy RPGs. You're just too hung up on the changed labels to realize that you already know what to do.

>should I give them dimension-crossing mounts
giving the PCs a starship in a sci fi game like Traveller is more akin to giving them a horse and cart in a fantasy game - it simply lets them get between towns quickly.

Star systems are the equivalent of towns in a sci fi setting - each has its own personality and usually only 1 mainworld which is the meat of the town - everything else is the outskirts

>I run into this a lot, especially with players who only played D&D/d20 and other such stuff. You've got to get them in the mindset of combat being deadly. I generally run "intro" sessions supposedly to get everyone up to speed on the rules, but really to drive home the point that combat is DEADLY to fuckwits who've never played anything other than Level 25 half-orc/elf wizard-thief-paladins who can kill 1000s without getting a hangnail. Kill your players' PCs and they'd get with the program fast enough.

I have no problems with lethality, coming from Warhammer fantasy role-play, but I was wondering how best to handle fire fights, what ways I could make combat more interesting etc. instead of the PCs and enemies running from cover to cover until someone gets hit and blows up.

Just a question, how modular is traveller, I was thinking of adapting the sanity system from unknown armies 2e to for it to better represent the toll that Isolation and the other things encountered in the void can have on someone, how viable would that be?

In regards to that, how to handle the sense of scale in sci-fi, I don't like the idea of entire planets being the equivalent of small medical towns in a fantasy setting outside of the very far frontier. I can't help but see it as trivializing the effect of traveling to another planet.

The standard check in Traveller is 2d6 +/-modifiers with the target number being 8. Getting a +/- 1 to your test is a big deal. I don't know the sanity system from unknown armies is, but I would make it more role play than have it affect crunch.

I agree but that's how a dirt poor settlement world would be. One or two really well-sited starting colonies and everything built since clustering around that. Why build your farm a continent away when you can move fifty miles up river? Well, there are a few reasons and by all means use them but the general point applies.

On civilized worlds, you can have dozens of locations and points of interest. There you really do fill the planet up.

>I don't like the idea of entire planets being the equivalent of small medical(sic) towns

What you're overlooking the fact that not every world will have a population in the billions or hundreds of millions.

In Traveller, for example, half of the worlds created by the sysgen in any version have populations under 100K. As correctly pointed out, many worlds are going to little more than a collection of small towns associated with various resources extraction efforts.

While there will be a Trantor the PCs can spend years exploring, many worlds are going to be more like Podunk, Pixley, and Hooterville.

And those are the planets where the big transport companies can't be bothered to serve and so they rely instead on tramp freighters.

>I have no problems with lethality, coming from Warhammer fantasy role-play

Well, that's part of your problem. Your view of combat with modern weapons has been shaped by WarHamster & it's various cancerous offspring. Forget everything WH40K has "taught" you.

>>... I was wondering how best to handle fire fights, what ways I could make combat more interesting etc. instead of the PCs and enemies running from cover to cover until someone gets hit and blows up.

Guess what? Using cover, dodging, and all the rest is EXACTLY what combat with modern firearms is all about. You can either accept that reality or nerf weapons & other aspects to play WarHamster. The choice is yours.

>Just a question, how modular is traveller, I was thinking of adapting the sanity system from unknown armies 2e to for it to better represent the toll that Isolation and the other things encountered in the void can have on someone, how viable would that be?

Seeing as there's no sanity system in Traveller, you can bolt one on very easily. The effects of an eroding sanity may be a problem.

I've seen a sanity system used with Classic. Because Classic limits the number of skills & levels to the total of a PC's INT & EDU. After a sanity loss "hit" a PC's INT or EDU, the referee would secretly roll to see which SKILL was effected. In the case of a level 1 skill, the PC would lose the skill entirely, In the case of a level 1+ skill, they'd lose only a level. The kicker was that the player wouldn't know which skill was effected until they tried to use it.

Exactly. There also worlds where the players won't get lost among the billions of inhabitants and thus can make a bigger "splash".

Not exactly certain what you mean about WH40k, but seeing as I don't really care for it as a sci-fi-fi setting which is why I am wanting to play traveller in the first place not any 40k RPG.

So how does one make the dodging from cover to cover etc. more interesting?

>So how does one make the dodging from cover to cover etc. more interesting?

Not getting your ass shot off should make it interesting enough.

>Should I give the players a spaceship?
No.

This pretty much solves all the other problems.

> How do I include recurring NPCs if the players are mostly on the move as free traders or agents of a corp or government?

Thats easy, always have a list of NPC sheets on hand, you just need to put 3 things; name, WTF he/she is and some atribute to remember, if SHTF add the numbers and you are done.

> How best to handle Combat and the more powerful and longer ranged weapons involved without ending up with rocket tag or a TPK.

Cover, make sure that they use a lot of cover, but not just putting themselves behind windows; go prone and advance slowly, if they don't like it suggest them to run a lot, if they still don't like them ask them to stop being retarded and putting themselves in fights they cannot win.

> Should I give the players a spaceship?

It all depends on what do you want or need for your campaigns and how much attention do you want to give to it

> How to emphasis the emptiness of space when the players are able to go planet hopping in space ships?

Go Hard-Science and tell them the simple truth; they are simple monkeys ill fitted for space, if they want to see something they have to go to the sensor room and if you give them a window it should be just one black screen of nothingness, even if they get "close" to a star the star should be a small dot.

Remind them constantly that the only thing between them and space is around 5 mm of aluminum sheet and that in space the darkness is so deep that it feels like matter that you can touch with your hands.

> How to create a dark tone and feeling of isolation without them feeling like nothing matters?

Thats easy; Isolate them, for anything they want they have to wait minutes to compensate for the light lag, if they want anything that goes beyond communication they will have to wait hours or days make them constantly uncomfortable through bureaucratic inefficiencies enhanced by nature's laws, so they feel only heavily challenged not discouraged.

Just play Traveller, it has all you need to generate systems and planets