Gamers generally like to explore and even create different worlds, some of them just variants on this mess we call the real world. Some games are just the 'real word', with Cthulhu for example. Others are like the real with, with 'cyber'.
Well, for about a year or so there's been a lot of talk about UFOs and people admitting they exist, and seem to do things beyond any possible human aircraft of known natural phenomena .
So if you rule out known possible natural phenomenon or human aircraft, well, what's left? Some type of craft of hon human origin that is vastly advanced over anything humans have today?
I'm wondering what the world we have today would be like if absolutely irrefutable evidence of basically alien craft existing and operating in earth's skies were made public and even governments admitted, as they slowly seem to be doing, that they are real.
Say that nothing about the actual aliens were known, just the fact they exist and are here in some ways was finally made clear.
What happens to the world then?
Any ideas?
IIRC, this is one of the possible futures of Conspiracy X. Then the bulk of the reptilians escape from the event horizon of the singularity that's held them for millions of years and they come to reclaim their planet from humans.
They probably are real, but they're not who they claim to be. It's another conspiracy for RPGs to explore.
StellaGamma Publishing produces a campaign setting for Cepheus Engine called "These Stars Are Ours" for this.
I want two tickets off this rock by next Friday?
Even with all the cheese and tackiness, I liked the "Taken" TV miniseries of the early 2000. It provided a multi generational arc of three very different families tackling with real and mysterious aliens. It had both a Government/Army point of view and the one of the common man (lot's of choices for the PCs in such a campaign).
And the aliens were scary even if, at the end, well intentioned, because they were... literally alien, and so they didn't understand how evil and harmful many of their acts were. They had a definite endgame too, which is always useful.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289830/
An episode was also devoted to the "Ancient Aliens" concept. It was the most hated, because it temporarily derailed the main plot to go to Alaska and the ancient burial grounds up there, but I found it fascinating - and the seed of another way to explore such a plot.
Quote from: jeff37923 on May 25, 2021, 08:04:33 PM
StellaGamma Publishing produces a campaign setting for Cepheus Engine called "These Stars Are Ours" for this.
A good reply, this cepheus engine seems to be quite the little platform, might have to look at it sometime.
Quote from: Reckall on May 26, 2021, 01:47:20 AM
Even with all the cheese and tackiness, I liked the "Taken" TV miniseries of the early 2000. It provided a multi generational arc of three very different families tackling with real and mysterious aliens. It had both a Government/Army point of view and the one of the common man (lot's of choices for the PCs in such a campaign).
And the aliens were scary even if, at the end, well intentioned, because they were... literally alien, and so they didn't understand how evil and harmful many of their acts were. They had a definite endgame too, which is always useful.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289830/
An episode was also devoted to the "Ancient Aliens" concept. It was the most hated, because it temporarily derailed the main plot to go to Alaska and the ancient burial grounds up there, but I found it fascinating - and the seed of another way to explore such a plot.
That certainly has potential.
The world or a game world? Irrefutable evidence and I suspect the world falls into chaos -or- looks to a big strong leader-daddy to tell them what to think. I also think aliens are smart enough to realize this is what humans would do, so they find and prop up a leader-daddy as fast as they possibly can.
I also think it would depend a whole lot about what sort of evidence was presented. Video and a narrative can completely and utterly control a reaction from the general public. So it will only be irrefutable if it is an all out attack on a fairly wide scale, multiple sightings with good video in multiple areas, or the powers that be have decided to make it a real thing.
If we were to see what look like hostility, such as a raid on a town or military installation (but still small scale) I could see a complete and utter breakdown of society in a week from people all developing an every man for himself attitude and stealing toilet paper and canned goods (people were fighting in grocery stores over fucking cleaning products). I can see immediate factions forming in the population, some who will suicide bomb themselves against the aliens, and some who can not wait to surrender and offer aid for a chance to get a leg up. Basically people will be people and if the aliens are in fact tech superior to us, our "leaders" will quickly sell it to us that working with the aliens is not so bad (by that I mean giving them anything they want, including 1 month old babies to eat) and it will be "good for us in the long run".
Game world I just run it like X-com. Probably focus more on the low key ship crashes or landings and have a team investigate (GURPS for this, for me) and create adventures from there.
Quote from: The Thing on May 25, 2021, 06:29:05 PM
Say that nothing about the actual aliens were known, just the fact they exist and are here in some ways was finally made clear.
What happens to the world then?
Any ideas?
You know how skeptics deny and challenge everything, and believers argue with them?
That's what happens, and it looks no different from reality. I mean, we have people who argue the earth is flat. You think accepted reports of UFOs will change anything?
You need a better hook to get a gamer's interest. I'd recommend going the Roadside Picnic/Stalker route, but dialed up to an 11, and have aliens come down and that their mere presence does -something-.
The aliens themselves stay in their ships; we never interact with the aliens, but even the skeptics can't deny that the 2.7km sized "disc thing" that's hovering over Chicago and mucking up gravity underneath it isn't of this earth. After that, accepting the immortality people claim the Tendrils of San Francisco brings is real is much easier. All around the world, people find more and more places where "aliens" have arrived. Maybe they're still around, maybe they've already left (seemingly). Regardless, they've changed the world around them, and now humanity is trying to deal with the changes. This isn't a post-apocalyptic setting though! People still go to work, food is still grown and shipped around, climate change and peak oil and riots and all the other worries people about like the news tells them to still happens.
But there's no hiding that aliens have been here, are still here, and the world is changing.
The governments tried to block off impacted areas. But once they realized how widespread the areas are, they gave that idea up. Now they try to control people. You can still live in Seattle for example, but you're not supposed to use any of the hundreds of (known) "summoner crystals". And if your subconsciousness activates one, as scientists believe is pretty common, you may be held accountable for whatever criminal actions your "daemons" commit. If they can trace it to you of course.
Meanwhile, Russian agents (and Chinese, and German, and Iranian, and Canadian, and...) are inflitrating America at every angle to see what they can learn/steal. Lots of potential spy stuff here! Or maybe the aliens are worldwide, and foreign agents investigate everything but are stretched really thin. Sure the pyrokinesis everybody in Sydney has is neat and all, but it's already been established that you need three or more people holding hands within 10km of The Ifreeti for it to work. And the Ifreeti is a loudly glowing (sic) cylinder estimated to weigh 700 tons and is 80 meters tall. It's not going anywhere easily. Except... the Australian government has put guards and scientists around it and have learned they can chip away pieces of the Ifreeti, and its power is at full strength even with a piece. (Although the Australians don't realize the Ifreeti's pieces will grow into new cylinders with use.)
Like I said, this isn't a post-apocalyptic setting. But we're probably rapidly sliding into a pre-apocalypse.
Well i was thinking the real world, and how to model that into games that simulate the real world more or less.
For one thing I believe it could lead to a real renaissance in modern science around the world. I mean, if it were proven beyond all doubt that alien craft that could outperform any human technology and operated on principles of physics that we can't grasp yet, it could lead to a global effort to make new scientific progress. Fuck, it might get american kids taking college physics courses again! it might get education funding raised! Science might become cool again.
Fuck you, i can dream.
For a campaign I would like more for my aliens to be remote, almost urban legends, and scary. The PCs could, at the beginning, even not be sure if these "aliens" are real, or if they are the cover story for some secret government activity or such. "Abductees" could develop fake memories of being examined by "scary doctors", because their brains can't elaborate correctly the experience aboard an alien spaceship. And then, what's the aliens endgame?
There is this other movie, "The Fourth Kind", which sadly damages itself by presenting both a fake "found footage" about some events in Alaska and then the "Hollywood" version. They should have chosen a road and stayed with it: using both ruined the immersion. The story, however, is truly scary, with incomprehensible aliens that use humans like guinea pigs for unexplained experiments only to discard them incurably broken both in spirit and body.
I would absolutely use SAN rules but, for once, avoid "lovecraftian" ideas. Greys, strange lights and the "Ancient Aliens" series on History Channel would suffice (in my game world 95% of the "documentaries" contents would be balloonery - it would be up to the PCs to discover what is true among all the dreck).
And then there is the interesting point made in "Taken" that I mentioned earlier. In that miniseries the aliens are revealed to be well intentioned, but their methods are very often evil and scary. The destroy people's lives, sometimes killing innocent civilians. Victims go crazy. Males and females are kidnapped, forced to copulate, and then minwiped "to produce superior beings".
So, the initial approach could turn into a conundrum for the PCs: Can we actually try to "understand" these beings, communicate and find a common ground? In a "government" milieu this could be a debate between the military and the scientist, but also among "daring civilian researchers" opinions can be split. And a sadistic GM can of course keep in his pocket the absolutely evil aliens of "The Fourth Kind" should the players decide that "of course this is a metaphor for communicating and understanding!"
So, a lot of X-Files, Ancient Aliens, Urban Legends, fear and SAN loss for me. The "ID4/X-Com" approach can be he start of a second phase, but I liked how both "Taken" and "The Fourth Kind" reached their very different endgames with only a relatively small group of people destined to know the truth.
Quote from: The Thing on May 27, 2021, 12:18:32 PM
Well i was thinking the real world, and how to model that into games that simulate the real world more or less.
Problem is, really real world generally makes for unpopular game settings. The closer you get to mundane life, the more people have no reason to play when they could just go outside and live. I'm not convinced "pilots confirm UFOs are real" makes for much of a game.
Quote from: The Thing on May 27, 2021, 12:18:32 PMFor one thing I believe it could lead to a real renaissance in modern science around the world. I mean, if it were proven beyond all doubt that alien craft that could outperform any human technology and operated on principles of physics that we can't grasp yet, it could lead to a global effort to make new scientific progress.
Maybe. But we're assuming a lot of stuff here: 1) UFO skeptics become the new Flat Earthers. 2) UFOs are assumed to actually be using some great new physics that we don't have (as opposed to, say, advanced holographic technology). 3) UFO-related research pans out in life-changing tech within the PCs lifespans. 4) All of this results in a game that's more than just an excuse for a "mundane" real-world espionage campaign.
Quote from: The Thing on May 27, 2021, 12:18:32 PMFuck, it might get american kids taking college physics courses again! it might get education funding raised!
When I was a kid, the joke went "science is questions without answer, religion is answers without question." Looking around today, by that metric science has become another religion. If UFO science indicates that our current understanding of physics is all wrong, expect people pushing back -hard-. And subsequently being unable to make heads or tails out of what they're looking at . All that funding and renewed interest means squat if colleges can't convince kids to ignore a few decades/centuries of scientific progress that was in the wrong direction, and they have to think in ways that would be deemed wrong a short time before, if not outright maddening to the human mind ("alright you research nerds. Make a SAN roll!" "Bah! I'm already hardened to science-based SAN rolls. I'm a quantum physicist! I'll just take the minimum SAN loss, thankyouverymuch.").
Granted, with UFOs around, people will be more inclined to try out all sorts of stuff that folks used to scoff at. Ley Lines are real, Pyramid Power works, the Necronomicon (paperback edition) lets you summon Sumerian demons, and Telekinesis is possible if you drink enough caffeine.
Quote from: The Thing on May 27, 2021, 12:18:32 PMScience might become cool again.
It's plenty popular, if only in a "I'm in the IFLS Facebook group!" kind of way.
Quote from: The Thing on May 27, 2021, 12:18:32 PMFuck you, i can dream.
I'll be blunt, you're using a tone like you might use with people you know. You don't know me, I'm not your friend. Save the "fuck yous" for your family.
Quote from: Habitual Gamer on May 27, 2021, 02:08:31 PM
If UFO science indicates that our current understanding of physics is all wrong, expect people pushing back -hard-. And subsequently being unable to make heads or tails out of what they're looking at .
I don't know. I'm not sure, for example, that there would be a single, uniform reaction.
Let's say that a U.F.O. crashes in the United States after pulling some physics-denying stunts. I'm sure that the military would like to know how a flying object can turn on a dime while going at 600Kts. What if the Russians or the Chinese deploy all of sudden some advanced technology? Were their scientists simply better than expected, or they got some crashed U.F.O.s too and now are further into understanding formerly unexplored scientific fields? The paranoia would run high.
[I remember an Italian comic book with a story that started with the Soviets launching the Sputnik, and the US President calling the Army and angrily demanding "Why the studies on the Roswell's U.F.O. were so unsuccessful?" - only to be told that no U.F.O. had crashed at Roswell. The story proper was, then, about the attempt by the C.I.A. to gain access to the technology that the Soviets had gained at... Tunguska! Those were the days :D]
Quote from: Jam The MF on May 25, 2021, 07:57:23 PM
They probably are real, but they're not who they claim to be. It's another conspiracy for RPGs to explore.
My theory for them is that they're some sort of interdimensional being/thingy.
Slightly out of phase with our version of "Reality".
Harmonics that can be shifted into our frequency?
Here is a link to a depository (THE depository?) of declassified government documents about U.F.Os anywhere in the world. I guess it can give one idea or two.
https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/
What happened with the OP?
One day they are posting fine. Then BOOM! Crazy?
As for UFOs and this recent screed of "they admitted they are real!" its just one more in a long long long line of these claims and pretty much every time it gets dis-proven somehow. This recent one with the fighters tracking the blip flying alongside was so obviously an imaging glitch of some sort that I am surprised anyone thought it was real.
Oh wait. People still think "rods" are real even after it was show they were just digital camera quirks with fast moving things. But nope. They are real and must be hiding in another dimension!!!! (No. Really. People were claiming exactly that.)
I miss the old UFO magazines from the 70s and 80s and the old UFO documentary movies and TV specials. If you want ideas for fantastical things then grab some old issues and you'll likely get a few ideas.
Like from one I still have.
Giant Space Rats! Alien rats with telepathic powers and more. And Space Critters! Invisible giant flying jellyfish things that feed on cattle. Only orgone ray cameras could reveal, and orgone ray cannons to combat them.
Quote from: Omega on May 29, 2021, 12:10:32 PM
What happened with the OP?
One day they are posting fine. Then BOOM! Crazy?
He was nuked by the Pundit for sockpuppeting or something like that.
Quote
As for UFOs and this recent screed of "they admitted they are real!" its just one more in a long long long line of these claims and pretty much every time it gets dis-proven somehow. This recent one with the fighters tracking the blip flying alongside was so obviously an imaging glitch of some sort that I am surprised anyone thought it was real.
Well, we are talking about a RPG setting where UFOs
might be real. Personally, I don't believe in UFOs in RL, but I like to devour the literature and the shows because they can be very creative.
Quote
I miss the old UFO magazines from the 70s and 80s and the old UFO documentary movies and TV specials. If you want ideas for fantastical things then grab some old issues and you'll likely get a few ideas.
"Project UFO" was a hit here in Italy when I was a kid. Even then, I liked more the mystery than the tacked on "twist" they artificially put at the end of the episodes ("Here is the explanation...but... wait! Here comes a totally made up event that proves how the UFO was for real!" I was only 12 and hated that part... ::))
For the nostalgics, it's on YT!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXbE3vFpgt0&list=PLNI0ZFnVijehC1OTmqJKwz8wsKMLCzWly
We actually had a UFO sighting over my home town, complete with military men showing up very promptly to question people, including me, and later declared that it was... I kid you not... Ducks Migrating.
Now. Do I believe in UFOs? Yes. But only that there are unexplained things out there. Not that they are by default alien in origin. Leaning heavily to things like experimental vehicles or someone doing a "Psychological Study" which was all the rage in the 70s. Or mute glow-in-the-dark ducks! 8)
What they were trying to show with Project UFO was that what you saw might not be what you thought you saw and that what you saw might not be real because someones around trying to either pull a trick, commit a scam, cash in on someone elses real sighting, cover something else, weird coincidence, or whatever.
Makes sense since the writer for it had done and would right afterwards do another Sherlock Holmes adaption, and is the creator and writer for more than one western detective series, Hec Ramsey for example. Even an episode of Have Gun - Will Travel.
Not all had a twist. Sometimes at the end they just showed that yeah it was an alien/ufo and one of the accounts really was true.
Quote from: Omega on May 29, 2021, 09:41:38 PM
What they were trying to show with Project UFO was that what you saw might not be what you thought you saw and that what you saw might not be real because someones around trying to either pull a trick, commit a scam, cash in on someone elses real sighting, cover something else, weird coincidence, or whatever.
Out of curiosity (and nostalgia), yesterday I rewatched the first episode on YouTube. I found it unusually well done even for today standards: from the science, to the civilian aviation procedures, to the way the Army investigated and reacted to things, it is obvious that the show's creators poured a lot of research in it. Even the optical effects were good for a TV show from the '70s.
In this episode, however, after everything is "explained" (by an unusually strong and vast phenomenon of thermal inversion in the atmosphere) the two Bluebook investigators admit that, yes, that was the possible cause of multiple sightings. But, are they satisfied? No. In a way, the episode suggests that the scientific explanation was a long shot. Paradoxically, the real presence of one or more UFOs was the more probable answer. But there is no proof.
To me this is the best way to tackle the problem. Later episodes maintained this structure of "Well, this
could be the explanation" - only to have, at the end, from civilians showing up and explaining how they had seen both the UFO and the aliens in clear detail to civilians who found irrefutable physical evidence only to promptly lose it before they could contact someone.
These endings, even when I was a kid, made me groan, because they felt like a cop out. Having a bunch of guys showing up with a detailed "Third Kind" account should have been a game-changer, not something forgotten by the next episode.
I still liked the first 90% of the story, however, and, as I said, the show was a hit here in Italy. I guess they bought the rights after the success of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", and for a period it was running on rotation on the Italian TV.
I discovered that they just rebooted it, BTW. It was canceled after only two seasons. I never saw the new episodes.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6632666/
Quote
Makes sense since the writer for it had done and would right afterwards do another Sherlock Holmes adaption, and is the creator and writer for more than one western detective series, Hec Ramsey for example. Even an episode of Have Gun - Will Travel.
They were the minds behind the reboot of "Dragnet" in the '60s, too. I guess that they tried to tackle a UFO show with the same realism.
UFOs as in 'alien craft' are not real. Well, that is to say they've never visited Earth but I'm sure aliens exist somewhere in the cosmos.
But they make fine RPGing material. I tend to think of them from different realities. Lovecraftian, or inter-dimensional as in the event horizon movie.
Quote from: Reckall on May 30, 2021, 06:05:20 AMTo me this is the best way to tackle the problem. Later episodes maintained this structure of "Well, this could be the explanation" - only to have, at the end, from civilians showing up and explaining how they had seen both the UFO and the aliens in clear detail to civilians who found irrefutable physical evidence only to promptly lose it before they could contact someone.
Welcome to the club. The "we found evidence! ===> oops! We lost evidence!" endings were usually vexing. But thats probably what would really happen. If you dont know somethings evidence or important then it might get ignored or tossed in the trash.
And yes the effects were pretty good and feel more real than CG ever will.
Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on May 30, 2021, 07:10:50 AM
UFOs as in 'alien craft' are not real. Well, that is to say they've never visited Earth but I'm sure aliens exist somewhere in the cosmos.
But they make fine RPGing material. I tend to think of them from different realities. Lovecraftian, or inter-dimensional as in the event horizon movie.
1: Probably not real is my take on it. We dont know if the speed of light really is a limiter and so theres that remote possibility someones oddly interested in this place. More likely as noted, various government experimental craft and psycosocial studies.
2: Call of Cthulhu modern/now and Delta Green both played with the idea. In one case the Mi-Go have been posing as aliens via remote controlled puppets made to look like what people expect Grays to look like and used these to contact governments and get some deals.
Dark*Matter has it as an element as well. A few aliens are visiting for whatever reasons.
Quote from: Omega on May 30, 2021, 08:54:41 AM
Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on May 30, 2021, 07:10:50 AM
UFOs as in 'alien craft' are not real. Well, that is to say they've never visited Earth but I'm sure aliens exist somewhere in the cosmos.
But they make fine RPGing material. I tend to think of them from different realities. Lovecraftian, or inter-dimensional as in the event horizon movie.
1: Probably not real is my take on it. We dont know if the speed of light really is a limiter and so theres that remote possibility someones oddly interested in this place. More likely as noted, various government experimental craft and psycosocial studies.
2: Call of Cthulhu modern/now and Delta Green both played with the idea. In one case the Mi-Go have been posing as aliens via remote controlled puppets made to look like what people expect Grays to look like and used these to contact governments and get some deals.
Dark*Matter has it as an element as well. A few aliens are visiting for whatever reasons.
Given how little we know about space 'the speed of light' their could be a work around, worm holes, folding space or whatever. It would be a sad state of affairs if there wasn't.
Yeah, experimental craft would be highly probable and also interpretation of strange weather phenomena and anything on a screen can produce some very strange artifacts, and with no proper frame of reference they can appear to do some beyond physics movements.
Being a skeptic, I tend to trawl all the BS artists out there for inspiration - Pure RPG gold! Bob Lazar's area 51 theories, Stanton Friedman's 'Crash at Corona' or Preston Nichols Mantauk stuff. All great inspiration for CoC or DG but what a bunch of grifters.
UFO's are real, it doesn't follow that they are spaceships piloted by green men from Mars.
Plus, sadly, all their "evidence" is always shitty recordings (even in this day and age) and testimony (anecdotal evidence) so the Ancient Aliens crowd have exactly jack and shit.
Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 30, 2021, 10:36:26 PM
UFO's are real, it doesn't follow that they are spaceships piloted by green men from Mars.
Plus, sadly, all their "evidence" is always shitty recordings (even in this day and age) and testimony (anecdotal evidence) so the Ancient Aliens crowd have exactly jack and shit.
Yes, from a semantics point of view UFOs 'technically' do exist. But are not alien in origin. :) Absolutely agree, all that Von Danyken crowd are totally barmy and have literally pulled those 'theories' out of their ass. Some good stuff for RPGs at least. ;)
Back around 2000 we were driving along and I saw this... thing... rise up over the treeline, turn and dip back down. It was huge and not a jet or helicopter. No sound. This was practically in the middle of the city and no one else saw it?
Best guess is it was either a normal jet that saw at some really weird angle. Or some experimental craft, or even some parade float in practice or who knows what. Ducks Migrating! 8)
Related. Bemusingly I am one of the few locals to have actually seen the mysterious peacocks that roam the area. No one knows where they came from and most assume its made up. I just thought they were someones pets and did not know they were of unknown origin and just freely roaming the area. Which in a way confirms those episodes of Project UFO where evidence is found but the person finding it does not know that.
Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on May 30, 2021, 10:50:48 PM
Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 30, 2021, 10:36:26 PM
UFO's are real, it doesn't follow that they are spaceships piloted by green men from Mars.
Plus, sadly, all their "evidence" is always shitty recordings (even in this day and age) and testimony (anecdotal evidence) so the Ancient Aliens crowd have exactly jack and shit.
Yes, from a semantics point of view UFOs 'technically' do exist. But are not alien in origin. :) Absolutely agree, all that Von Danyken crowd are totally barmy and have literally pulled those 'theories' out of their ass. Some good stuff for RPGs at least. ;)
We live in the era of smartphones that are more sophisticated than '80s professional video equipment and still have the same shitty out-of-focus images of the '50s, I agree :D At least in "Taken" they gave a reason for the Aliens to actively avoid publicity and the means to do it (you could take the mythology of that show and bring it up to the current era without problems).
One of my beliefs, regarding "Ancient Aliens", is that we lost a lot of ancient history. Maybe in the past some civilization was able to reach an higher technology level than they are credited for, only for it to be lost in the sands of time.
(Every time I remember that the Library of Alexandria contained 200,000 volumes before being destroyed by the Turks I get a bit depressed. Maybe "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" were only two chapters in a longer epic - and actually they have a strange narrative structure that can be explained only by considering that they weren't meant to be read "alone". Imagine if, 1,000 years from now, all that remains from "The Lord of the Rings" is the second part of "The Fellowship of the Ring" and an abstract from "The Return of the King"...)
One thing I believe "possible" is that in the past we had one or two literally "lost" civilizations. Nothing that reached above bronze age or that was able to leave meaningful remains. Graham Hancock writes about this in his books. For sure it is more verosimile that the known earliest civilizations inherited some advanced tech from previous, unknown, ones than from "Aliens".
Quote from: jeff37923 on May 25, 2021, 08:04:33 PM
StellaGamma Publishing produces a campaign setting for Cepheus Engine called "These Stars Are Ours" for this.
I recently added a bunch of their stuff to my wishlist. The ship plans for the Riticulans (the greys) are superb. I almost believe they consulted with actual greys to lay them out. :-) Looks like a really cool setting.
Also keep in mind that D&D itself had as the first mini-module an alien invasion of a sort. And prior to publication I believe it was the Blackmoor campaign that dealt with one or more aliens.
For an RPG, the big question is WHAT are the aliens doing?
Usually, they are invading. Systems Failure by Palladium does a great job with the concept of interdimensional bugs crossing over into our Earth.
If you do aliens as accidental settlers, you wander into interesting fish-out-of-water and clash of cultures stories, which we've seen done many times in movies and TV. In the case of the V tv-show, the benevolent aliens weren't so nice...
I've wanted to do a violent alien non-invasion story, aka they are here for some reason, but no interest in conquering the hairless monkeys. They are here to find something, do something, unearth something, build something and leave. The PCs are tasked with getting in the way.
Quote from: Spinachcat on June 05, 2021, 10:57:33 PM
I've wanted to do a violent alien non-invasion story, aka they are here for some reason, but no interest in conquering the hairless monkeys. They are here to find something, do something, unearth something, build something and leave. The PCs are tasked with getting in the way.
I like the sound of that. It'd be nearly like if we were just insignificant insects and they'd just brush us aside when they want X resource. PC would then have to start guerilla tactics.
Pretty much the basis for both Hunter books which were heavily "borrowed" from to make the Predator movie.
In the first book aliens lure a bunch of people to a remote area, trap them within a force field and then hunt them for sport.
In the second book more of these aliens are obstensibly doing another hunt before the Earth is destroyed because one of the humans was able to use their psi-reactive tech. Which this race has a standing order of eradicating any world that even has the hint of being able to do that, let alone actually pull it off. At least one though is there to run tests before its too late to see how far this power can be awakened. And others of the hunt party have their own agendas.
Theres also the book "Anything you can do" with an alien survivor of a crash. The race is very survival oriented and once it figures out its just being pumped for info it gets loose and sets to work trying to build a beacon to call help. Trick here was the alien is so fast humans can barely perceive it when its moving. Second trick is to counter the alien a person is gen-engineered to be just as fact as it is.
Theres also a movie called Laboratory wherein several people are abducted to be tested and try and see if they can be communicated with.
And of course "I Come in Peace". An alien drug dealer is harvesting endorphins from humans because elsewhere its a really potent and rare narcotic.
And so on.
TSR's MSH had a bemusing one where lizard aliens seemed to be attacking people. But it was really just some tourists whos recording equipment stuns humans. They had no idea.
In either Champions or V&V theres one where a feline alien who crashed gets impatient with the government not fixing her ship and so escapes and starts waging a one cat gurellia war on military and civil defense points. Fully expecting to be killed and very hard to convince things arent what she believed.
In another from C or V&V theres an alien who is just a friendly scout. Lets himself get caught by oceanographers who think hes just a very large otter. Which allows him to observe earth tech and procedures. As a sort of customary joke he gives a guard who befriends him a power armour suit and a vision of it being a gift from a sea god.
And another hilarious one from C or V&V is a group called CLOWN paints a huge dotted line across the Florida border and letters that read CUT HERE visible from orbit. CLOWN shortly after apologizes to the Florida government when aliens saw this and tried to take Florida. They also apologized to the aliens for nearly being stuck with Florida.
The lyrics of The Alan Parson's Project "Some Other Time" always made me think of a very strange surveillance by a very strange alien race who exists "across the time". But many APP's songs deal with sci-fi/borderline concepts...
In a matter of a moment
Lost till the end of time
It's the evening of another day
And the end of mine
Now the starlight which has found me
Lost for a million years
Tries to linger as it fills my eyes
'Till it disappears
Could it be that somebody else is
Looking into my mind
Some other place
Somewhere
Some other time
Some other place
Somewhere
Some other time
Like a mirror held before me
Large as the sky is wide
And the image is reflected
Back to the other side
Could it be that somebody else is
Looking into my mind
Some other place
Somewhere
Some other time
Some other place
Somewhere
Some other time