I'm trying to come up with some random travel events for my retro sci-fi game. Just things that could happen during travel time to spice things up a bit.

I'd like a variety of tables for different types of events.

Right now I'm thinking "shipboard events", "stellar anomaly", New planet, and "Encounter"

So far for Shipbaord events I have:

• Space Sickness!
• Fight among the crew
• Broken equipment
• Stow-away!
• Infestation!

More ideas are always welcome, as developed or not as you please

Stellar Anomaly

1.Debris cloud. Ship takes 10d6 damage passing through.
2.Cosmic radiation! Crew members must make HT rolls or suffer minor radiation poisoning.
3.Astroid belt. Piloting checks at -2 to navigate. Failure indicates damage.
4.Nebula. Sensors limited -4. Pilot -2.
5.Nebula. Weapon ranges and Nega Barrier DR reduced by half.*
6.Worm-hole! Pilot! -4 to avoid being sucked in and transported to a random location.

Space Madness!

For no apparent reason, one of the psychologically stable stalwart crewmembers goes nuts! Expect a bloody killing spree and lots of property damage!

New Planets

1. Brasila: At the center of a planetwide jungle exists a fountain of youth question is who kills you first, your fellow explorers or the planet itself ....

2. The Toymaster Planet: Everything is possible if you're a stockholder, luckily if you have a bit of money you can buy some stocks and everything is on the stock exchange and the stock exchange never closes ....

3. Eden: Yes, this planet is the Garden of Eden problem is it's actually an sentient being who has the understanding of an 11 year old girl.  A girl with a crush on at least one person in a party that happens to land on her .....just don't call her Eden because her name is Jorune.

You wake up from cold sleep to find the rest of the crew missing.  Some girl is sitting in the captain's chair on the bridge.  She has no eyes.

**** SPOILER *****  GM ONLY *******

You are dreaming.  The effect is caused by a either a chem malfunction in your sleep couch or because of direct tampering by a crewmember.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;547502You wake up from cold sleep to find the rest of the crew missing.  Some girl is sitting in the captain's chair on the bridge.  She has no eyes.

**** SPOILER *****  GM ONLY *******

You are dreaming.  The effect is caused by a either a chem malfunction in your sleep couch or because of direct tampering by a crewmember.

Shipboard Event:

You wake up from coldsleep on a generational deep space world ship. The ship drive reactor is reaching critical mass the people you meet except for 2 others are insane and physically changed because of deepspace sickness or maybe deep-sea sickness .....which is it? Is it real or a dream or some of both as you further investigate.

"Alien" encounter

  1. Merchant freighter
  2. Pirates!
  3. Distress signal
  4. Orion Corporation ship.
  5. Red Collective warship.
  6. Pleasure yacht

00 Everything's Normal
01-99 The ship explodes

My campaigns are a bit more lethal than the norm.  See also, "Rocks fall, everyone dies!", my copyrighted IRC game.

Your crew is suffering from headaches while onboard in deep space.  One of the containers in the hold is giving off an electrical interference of some kind.  One of the crew dies while operating the forklift to bring the crate down.  A witness says they heard him screaming in pain.  Then the crate hit the deck and its lid busted open.  The witness' nose starts to bleed and they fall to the floor.

******** SPOILER  ***********

Inside the crate is a robot in packing material.  It is psionic and is malfunctioning.

Quote from: StormBringer;54750900 Everything's Normal
01-99 The ship explodes

My campaigns are a bit more lethal than the norm.  See also, "Rocks fall, everyone dies!", my copyrighted IRC game.

You aren't the Bringer of Chaos for nothing, luckily I'm a cat and Mage.  We like Chaos.

@Piestro, are those new parameters? Either way, this thread and the other one are such fun. I'm glad you came back. Also it's neat if someone uses my ideas since I can't currently.  Real Life is trying to crush me. I'm trying my best to flip it the bird.

Quote from: Marleycat;547514@Piestro, are those new parameters? Either way, this thread and the other one are such fun. I'm glad you came back. Also it's neat if someone uses my ideas since I can't currently.  Real Life is trying to crush me. I'm trying my best to flip it the bird.

I can't promise that I'll use everything but I can say that nearly everything that's been posted has found a home in my notes so far

I also need some "weird" things that can happen when the players fly through certain stellar features on the map.

Quote from: Piestrio;547529I also need some "weird" things that can happen when the players fly through certain stellar features on the map.

What are the stellar features?

(I'm assuming that you want this "soft" science fiction, right?)

Quote from: jeff37923;547531What are the stellar features?

(I'm assuming that you want this "soft" science fiction, right?)

Oh very much so, I'm going for a Forbidden Planet/Buck Rodgers/Lensman feel.

I haven't decided the exact nature of the features yet, some kind of special nebula I imagine.

In the game they basically serve as the major terrain feature on the map. Something to give the players more decisions to make (given the way I have FTL travel set up "going around" is more resource intensive.)

Crossing into/through the stellar barrier... a crewmember, eyeing their screen, notices something odd.  Not sure what to make of it, he says nothing to the crew and wonders if anyone else has noticed what is happening.


*******  SPOILER ************

The date stamp on the ship's computer has reset to the start time of the Big Bang.  The time of the beginning of the Universe itself!  A being made up of what appears to be pure energy is standing next to the captain.  She and the other crewmembers do not see it.  The crewmember sitting quitely, not saying anything, slowly pulls a small (what looks to be a) media player from his jacket and turns it on.  He is able to see and record the being with his device.  The being immediately runs over to the crewmember and electrocutes him where he sits.  Then vanishes just as he appeared.  The captain and the others didn't see anything or know what happened to the crewmember or how.  The media player is partially melted, but can be repaired or its data can be transfered.  There is other data on the device that the GM can make up for the crew to discover about their "mission".

The crewmember had been paid off to gather info and report back to his buyers.

Solar Flare!

The sun vomits up a huge volume of plasma and twisted magnetic fields which catch our intrepid heroes by surprise, knocking out all of the navigational systems (and anything else you want to be effected by EMP). Our heroes are flying blind!

The only way to navigate is by sextant, constellations, and an idea of where the plane of the ecliptic is! (Before you frown at this, it was done before in one of Clarke's short stories. So its retro.)

EDIT: I just remembered that their Electronic Brain was also fried in the story so they did all the needed calculations by abacus, which were built in the handy ship's machine shop.