How do I run a science fiction campaign about humanity exploring/conquering the stars without going full HFY?
Relatively slow FTL
No massive space battles, boarding party or you blow up the other ship
Other alien species exist and are generally very hostile
GURPS
Use your imagination, blockhead
in all seriousness, genuinely threatening alien life
Make them similar to humans in toughness and technology but with no empathy or sense of fair play
Have the aliens riven by internal conflict maybe.
>Use your imagination
>Posts a movie to encourage OP to copy from it
Why does this never happen in sci fi flicks? All the aliens are always monolithic
Trying to set up a setting like this myself.
So far Ive settled that the aliens have to be very alien in appearence and psychology so much that both they and humans have a hard time even relating to each other. Second the aliens are primitive compared to huamnity, so while nuking them from orbit is an option human social convention/political policy prevents it. So the wars are all boots on the ground police actions or attempts to re-take captured stations/ships. As for system...
GURPS!
>Human skull
>Human handprint
>moon orbiting around the earth symbolized by a human skull/handprint
>nuking them from orbit is an option human social convention/political policy prevents it. So the wars are all boots on the ground police actions or attempts to re-take captured stations/ships
Humans are the advanced species is a nice bit
I would throw in several other species that are just a shade under humans that occasionally rally against them due to seeing humans as technocratical oppressors
Too much effort and too realistic for the alien side. But apparently capitalists, communists, nazis, religious fanatics, nationalists, anarchists, etc. would all band together to fight aliens instead of doing what humans have always done when advanced conquerors came for them.
Say “Hey! These weird strangers could help us kill those assholes across the river!”
Just an idea here, but why not have the humans be the "bad guys" then?
You say you don't want to go full HFY, so why not invert the trope and go for a dystopian space-conquest. Have the humans exist in a corrupt structure that acts like HFY is their actual philosophy. Maybe it even utilizes proganda to dehumanize the aliens, ala Starship Troopers. But then give the players glimpses into the plight of the aliens. Show them as downtrodden and oppressed, severely disadvantaged by their interactions with humans, who simply want to bleed them dry for resources and bring them to heel. Just my thoughts on where to go with this, do with it what you will.
>How do I run a science fiction campaign about humanity exploring/conquering the stars without going full HFY?
you...don't make it HFY?
make the explorers a combination of aggressive military expansionists, scientists, explorers, and politicians.
Make the reason for expansion a legitimate necessity so you can't just abandon a life-harboring planet because some alien lifeform was there first.
Make the alien species varying levels of response, maybe one worships humans as gods and gladly allows them to colonize. Maybe one species reacts peacefully but start dying from a human disease. Maybe one species is aggressive and tries to reverse engineer human space travel tech so they can start conquering.
Like all good roleplaying scenarios, don't write with a lesson in mind, present a situation and allow the players to respond how they feel is morally right while making the other forces respond according to their own goals.
just run a regular sci-fi game. HFY was a reaction to settings where humans were were just an ordinary race.
do people really not get it? is OP trolling? is this some meta bullshit?
GURPS?
GURPS!?
>Say “Hey! These weird strangers could help us kill those assholes across the river!”
I like how simple yet accurate you portay colonialism for example
...
This.
Don't be afraid to throw in more/less technologically advanced aliens. Stone and bronze age ayys are neat.
All the ayys are either non-sapient or miles more advanced than humanity. They find apes and angels, but not men.
Go read The Culture by Iain M Banks. In short they're an anarcho-socialist technocratic upotia/dystopia which has conquered massive swathes of their setting through memetic, conventional and economic warfare.
so, first and foremost you've got some issues with first contact you need to figure out: are humans already known to most of these intelligent species or not? because trust me, if you're making FIRST contact that's gonna be ridiculous. mankind would be sending trained diplomats/ scientists to these enviroments, not whatever schmucks your players turn out to be. No offense, but players are always the last type of people you want to be introducing our species to a new life form. Now, lets say that we have made contact, but only private entities have the capacity to regularly send people out to the stars. so we're stuck with these people showing up, the aliens saying "oh, the humans. well, alright." and that's it. that's your best bet for having anything interesting happen, if the humans can sort of interact with the normal sphere of alien day to day life.
Now, as for how to make it interesting? planets without advanced civilizations or maybe without any civilization at all. your players fighting against this fully alien enviroment that you don't explain to them. they have to learn as they go. and maybe their goal is some sort of alien ruin from a long dead species, or a mineral sample, or supplies sent ahead of time by their sponsor corporation. fighting hostile wildlife, plant life, unique atmospheric effects, strange geologic formations, etc. Also, for alien ruins (for surely there are many planets who had their people extinguished before reaching the stars) have it be truly alien.
As the DM, go fully outside the box for what these creatures are like and how they sense things and interact with their enviroment. then build things around that gimmick. and do NOT tell the players anything about the species, just give them basic information about structures. their holy grail/ DM super hint would be finding preserved remains of these aliens allowing them to understand how they percieve stuff, and thus giving them some insight on how to use any leftovers.
Doesn't Stars Without Number cover all of these?
Having the aliens be guilty of massive chauvenism or cultural concepts totally foreign to the players is a good start. especially if there's a sort of cultural blind spot that allows the players to ocasionally take advantage of the beings they're dealing with. getting pulled into conflicts against other nations of aliens is a great idea as well, as almost no race of people will be monolithic. so, just like the spanish with the aztec, your players end up in the middle of something they didn't sign on for. except this time they're not at the head of an army, they're basically just foriegners with interesting technology and physiology who might be of use against the enemy for sheer surprise factor.
Another option is to have certain planets be completely modernized but have guns pointed at the sky and a sort of men in black style organization to keep aliens from being known to the public. and to destabilize the government, the players merely need to escape from disection and reveal themselves to the world, causing religious strife or something.
it's an example of an imaginative idea
should be easy if you use gurps
>full HFY
Its in the presentation, retard. You can have humanity shat on and destroyed as a valiant last stand HFY or you could write something about humans murderfucking the galaxy and being more awesome than anyone and cast it as a poetic tragedy. You can set whatever tone you want for any story, it doesnt matter what the story elements are.
Why do people like you even attempt to write stories?