Quote from: SineNomine;546534I'll point to N. Harrison Ripp's beautifully convenient sector generator for Stars Without Number. Just click on the Worlds tab and you've got a list of setups. If you want more detail with the tags, you can just grab the free SWN rulebook; all the world generation is system-neutral.

Incredibly cool link!  Thank you.

Quote from: Piestrio;546526That idea goes great with your avatar

Wow, now that you mention it...

"You're gonna need a bigger planet, baby."

Quote from: SineNomine;546534I'll point to N. Harrison Ripp's beautifully convenient sector generator for Stars Without Number. Just click on the Worlds tab and you've got a list of setups. If you want more detail with the tags, you can just grab the free SWN rulebook; all the world generation is system-neutral.

Holy smokes, that is amazing.

That sector generator is pretty damn cool. So cool that I have to be the third person to chime in with praise. Quick, direct, useful. Great brainstorming tool; here's awesome pieces, now go Venn diagram them into something awesome.

Can't think of much right now (brain tired) but Poul Anderson is probably the go-to source for this stuff.

No retro galaxy is complete without a Planet of the Bee People!

Bertram Chandler's Rim of Space and Grimes series are a gold mine of retro goodness.

The Pirate Planet - A planet of retro-sci-fi space pirates as evidenced by the large Jolly Rogers on their ships and their eyepatches. They're the only noteworthy military force in the area, flying around raiding and looting nearby star systems. However, they're also the only ones who can (and do) keep an aggressive alien race or space monster in check.

The Obviously Chinese-ripoff Aliens - A strong, stable, rich and largely isolationistic alien species with exotic customs and byzantine politics. They might try to use the heroes in their plot to take over other nearby planets or just involve them in the quite but dangerous power struggles inside the Imperial Court.

The Love Planet - Whether its pheromones, psionics or sub-etheral sonics, everyone who comes to this incredibly romantic planet falls in love. This is, of course, somehow exploited by the villains of the week.

One I used for a Star Trek game once;

Sideria - a planet that in the Golden Age had a truly massive population - so large, in fact, it was decided that twelve sectors of the planet were to be delineated and inhabitants of each sector would undergo a "sleep" period of hibernation, all but one sector asleep at a given time, so that the 12th Sector could live their lives while the others slept, thus preserving resources and easing population pressure. After the collapse, the system continued but the inhabitants forgot that they were living 1/12 of their lives for each passing year. With decaying machinery leading to the deaths of millions/billions of people over the centuries, the current planet has a fairly sparse population at any one time, most of them having succumb to memory lapses due to the extended and repeated hibernations, living an Eloi-type existence on a planet-wide city that they have no memory of how it came to be. Their needs are still maintained by the automated "Krell" machinery below the surface, tapping the core for power.

The "hook" in the Star Trek game was that the ship arrived near the end of a cycle, made contact with the current population and it's leaders, made agreements, and sent a delegation to an "annual" all-night bachanalia (not knowing about the sleep/wake cycles of course). Just before midnight, they realized one of their crew was missing, and he was found murdered in a nearby alley. The local officials promised that starting the next day, there would be a full and co-operative investigation launched. Murder was a nearly unknown crime in their world, so they are as shocked as the away team at the turn of events.

So of course, at midnight, the automated machinery drugged all of the revelers - including the ship's delegation. Since the ship's officers were not "official" citizens of the planet, they weren't spirited away into hibernation, so they woke up with a big hangover the next day in a deserted Zone of the planet-city. Nobody who woke up the next morning knew them, or knew anything about the murder or the promised help with the investigation.

So the problem was a) figure out the story of the planet b) decipher the clues about who would have murdered your crewman without being able to question anyone about it, and c) do you violate the Prime Directive to interrupt the entire civilization of a planet of sleepers in order to find the murderer of your crewman - or do you wait a full year and come back, with all of the problems associated with a year-long delay in studying forensic evidence?

Of course in your pulp universe, there's also the tantalizing prospect that there might be people in hibernation who have gone through enough cycles that they might actually be "original" members of the lost age, with all of the knowledge and power that it would imply.


Also, Heaven and Earth fucking rocks. I've had a copy on every computer I've owned for about 10+ years now and will keep it forever.

Also-also, that SWN system generator fucking rocks, and I WILL use it.

Pretty amusing stuff, keep it up!

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;547284Pretty amusing stuff, keep it up!

RPGPundit

Yes, please

Quote from: Piestrio;547449Yes, please

You better use some of it though.

Quote from: Marleycat;547490You better use some of it though.

Oh, it'll get used. No worries there I've already got a couple people interested