The Second Summer:
A FRPG campaign set in a world 700 years after a glacial retreat. New civilizations have arisin, often building off what was there before the coming of the ice, and there is an awareness of basic (think renessance-19th century) science. The characters would be explorers and naturalists kind of like Sir richard Burton or Issac Newton/Charles Darwin with guns. I'm actually working this up for true20. I'm going to create a new role called "the Empiracist" and a bunch of other crap.

Inter galactic post apocalypse.

Jump space travel is possible to anywhere in the universe, provided you have line of sight, and your far enough away from a large gravity source, the further out the further you can jump. You can jump the breadth of the whole visible universe in a heartbeat. Anything is possible.

But something happened. The jump ships failed. Nobody knows why. That was thousands of years ago and your civ is just now climbing back out of the dark ages and discovering ancient old jump ships that somehow work... but only if navigated by a magical or psionic adept. Your one of the few that has a working jump ship, and nobody knows how to make them.

Anything could happen before, but now it's really gone wild. Once hidden worlds of strange and wonderful things are just a breath away.

Secret high magic or tech civs hidden in dark little pockets of the universe. They are places of lost order and humanity. Become a hero to these throw backs to civilizations past, and become increasingly restless as the universe beckons and they become complacent. Or become embroiled in power plays and politics as you make them by power of will alone into a new Rome.

Barbaric worlds where tech and magic and psi are somehow blinkered. They rest on vast treasures unknown to the locals. Collecting will prove... difficult.

Dangerous places that made evil pacts with powerful madness as the only way to survive the dark ages. Those evil masters want their due, in jump ships and sacrifices. They wait in ambush or actively hunt in the dark. Be careful.

Warlords with dreams of vast empires catering to their every dark whim. Your home being the next conquest of an especially successful one. She's ruthless, deadly, cunning, beguiling, and disturbingly alluring. Her followers would dive through the gates of hell for her, will you be one of them?

Lost ghost ships caught in deep space when the jump tech failed. They may hold the secrets to what happened or may be full of ancient madness and death. Capturing and taming them would be your fortune or becoming prey to the insanity that lurks within, your doom.

Become a hero protecting your home from the chaos of the new universe, or build an empire that spans galaxies, or go skipping through the black discovering your destiny.

ONE-SHOT: "RESCUE TEAM ZETA-1"

One of your world's exploration saucers is missing, and its crew feared captured by the natives. Your job: rescue them.  The craft's last reported position was in an agrarian zone in the planet's northern hemisphere; the locals call it "Alabama".  Use discretion -- don't get caught, and don't reveal yourselves to the populace!  They get a little panicky if they see big-eyed, grey-skinned humanoids walking around in their cornfields...

Easy, I'd just do a big ol' rip off, er...borrowing of the major points from "Big Trouble in Little China".  Hell, to put the veritable friggin' cherry on top, I'd be swiping from "Escape from New York" too.

Face it, everybody wants to be Kurt Russel but they are just too afraid to say so.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Mummy space pirates.

...

Alright rogue, I'll play your game...

In the year 3540, a group of interstellar grave robbers reach an uncharted world they designate as 'Jackpot' for some reason. Braving the desert elements, these courageous(?) explorers(?) manage to loot an ancient catacomb of vast quantities of shiny things, and at least one jar full of organs. The only reason they don't take everything is because of the presence of the ancient dead, which have no market value and aren't worth taking. Still, they get mighty spooked when the mummies begin to move, and so leave with what they have.

This...is not their story.

For there is an ancient prophecy/curse written on the equivalent of an ancient sticky note which recommends that anything ancient stolen from the great ancient temples will cause the ancient dead to rise, and they will not rest until everything ancient taken is returned to its rightful place.

Flash forward 120 years, and our intrepid band of at this point extremely tired mummies (who are also ancient) are still milling about in the temple because they don't have a starship. Then as if by a miraculous coincidence, a ship lands just when they're getting really way too bored (the thing about mummies is that they believe the world is driven by fate and the supernatural, and being animated dead it is hard to convince them otherwise. Because of this they believe there MUST have been a reason that it took 120 years before they could pursue their stuff).

OK, now imagine the movie 'Aliens' only with mummies and called 'Mummies'. Thats what happens to the crew of the ship.

Now these honorable undead can finally set right what went wrong. Because a wizard did it, they can sense where all their stuff is, but at this point it's all been melted down and dispersed on many worlds, aboard many ships, and in many items (and perhaps in the case of organs, many people). By their mandate they can only reclaim what is rightfully theirs, and by that I mean the SPECIFIC BITS that are rightfully theirs. For example a gold ring may only consist of 0.002% CURSED gold, and so that is all they will take.

And so led by a teriyaki flavored mummy named Ma'jilik, they blast off in their newfound ship (yes, the mummies can fly it because they, um, learn fast? gained the knowledge from eating the brains of the crew? played Traveller once? how the fuck should I know? It's a plot device, like how Kirk can become romantically involved with every alien female he meets, and you all seemed OK with THAT one. Just accept it. Geesh...), heading towards the greatest concentration of stuff that is theirs, boldly going where no man...really wants them to be.



Oh, and they look like pirates because the ex-crew were a bunch of people on a pirate themed starship cruse (What do you mean that's a cop-out? Fine, YOU come up with the reason that mummies would willfully dress like pirates Mr. Smartytrousers).

Quote from: chaosvoyager(What do you mean that's a cop-out? Fine, YOU come up with the reason that mummies would willfully dress like pirates Mr. Smartytrousers).

Because they are MUMMIFIED PIRATES!  Sometimes the answer is right in front of you.

Quote from: HalfjackBecause they are MUMMIFIED PIRATES!  Sometimes the answer is right in front of you.

0_0

Then it was quite a coincidence that they ended up nabbing a starship with a pirate theme. I mean, what are the chances?

Quote from: SettembriniAlthough it might be a cool idea, it´s actually a Rifts sub-genre.
It´s been done pretty often.

Which underlines the coolness, but undermines the "bestest evar" part.

Oh sure, I realize its even suggested in the RIFTS conversion book, but I was just suggesting that the particular take on it, emphasis on survival and maintaining morale/military discipline etc etc. would just be a really cool campaign to run.

RPGPundit

I see. The very setup you chose has many benefits-

The biggest one is that it presents a much more likeable and understandable "home nation". In vanilla Rifts (is there such a thing?), you have a hard time getting the players to relate to any one of the gonzo factions, and more often than not, you´ll have a bunch of contradicting allegiances.

Especially as the default "good" guys from Tolkeen and Lazlo are mostly Unicorn-huggers, whereas the alternative is Techno-Nazis from the Heartland.

I once planned a Saiyan invasion of Rifts Earth.

I figured that was at least the minimum power level you really needed to have a credible global threat in that world . . .

Quote from: SettembriniI see. The very setup you chose has many benefits-

The biggest one is that it presents a much more likeable and understandable "home nation". In vanilla Rifts (is there such a thing?), you have a hard time getting the players to relate to any one of the gonzo factions, and more often than not, you´ll have a bunch of contradicting allegiances.

Especially as the default "good" guys from Tolkeen and Lazlo are mostly Unicorn-huggers, whereas the alternative is Techno-Nazis from the Heartland.

Yes, plus you have the "embattled crew facing impossible odds" thing, reminiscent again of Battlestar Galactica... though any campaign I ran would be closer to the original BSG than the atrocity that has co-opted that name today.

RPGPundit

It´s a great setup, no question. I´d play immedeately. But do yourself a favor and look into Zach´s and my house rules for Rifts Chargen. Otherwise you´ll spend a lot of time on it.

Where are those houserules? I mean, I've played lots of RIFTS before, so I know my way around chargen. Did your houserules actually find a way to simplify the character creation process though?

RPGPundit

Quote from: Pierce InverarityAlso, Traveller and Rifts are two great flavors that should not be mixed evar. Not at my pseudo-walnut veneer, faux-Memphis style IKEA couch table.

I'd totally pillage Trav for a space-faring Rifts campaign.  UWPs, easy ship generation, great deckplans, what's not to love?.  I wouldn't set glitterboys loose on the Spinward Main, but there's totally room for some light peppering of Trav in the insane salad of Rifts.

Skull Squadron (Robotech RPG) - A recreation of the SDF-1 actually crashing in American Samoa in 1985.  The players are the test pilots of the first prototypes of veritechs.  Not as reliable as the finished product, the test pilots call themselves the Skull Squadron under the command of Captain Roy Fokker, commander of the SDF-1 air wing.  

Civilian Unit Deployment Agency (CUDA) (Marvel RPG) - The government unable to replicate the development of extraordinary beings to stop super powered crime, creates an agency to identify and utilize volunteer extraordinary civilians.  The extraordinary civilians work under jurisdiction of the presiding authority to assist with arrest and/or elimination of super powered threats.  CUDA also is in place to decrease or eliminate super powered vigilantism.  

The Pact of Sanctum Cruor (Rules Cyclopedia) - In order to save man and dragon kind The Creator and Tiamat agree to the Pact of Sanctum Cruor (Pact of Holy Blood).  Man will come to reside in the ruins of ancient civilizations on the worlds ate bare by Tiamat's brood in exchange for The Creator to spend eternity in the belly of Tiamat to quench her endless hunger.  The players play the Vindettis Cota, a unit of volunteer and sentenced men, that combat Tiamat's brood and other dangers of the dragons world.  An amalgam of ideas influenced heavily by Planescape, Dune, and Conan, this has been my pet project that's been going on for almost seven years.