So, my White Star OSR space opera game yesterday for a bunch of hip young Londoners, all pretty much RPG novices, went really well, and they want to play more next week. Currently we're playing the introductory adventure, but I haven't got much else lined up. Any sandboxy space opera adventures you'd recommend for conversion? The group leader declared she wanted to serve the Dark Side, so they are currently working for Void Knight Telamacus, a Darth Vader expy, opposing those dastardly Rebels. Adventures that can be fitted to a 'serve the Dark Lord' theme would be particularly great. :cool:
Quote from: S'mon;1042355So, my White Star OSR space opera game yesterday for a bunch of hip young Londoners, all pretty much RPG novices, went really well, and they want to play more next week. Currently we're playing the introductory adventure, but I haven't got much else lined up. Any sandboxy space opera adventures you'd recommend for conversion? The group leader declared she wanted to serve the Dark Side, so they are currently working for Void Knight Telamacus, a Darth Vader expy, opposing those dastardly Rebels. Adventures that can be fitted to a 'serve the Dark Lord' theme would be particularly great. :cool:
So... Are we just filling up some points on a hexmap with "serve the dark lord" sort of stuff? Does it have to be star wars, or can you re-skin D&Dish stuff?
Because man, Carcosa is just silly with hexcrawl stuff that fits in with a D&Dish rules set. I got a lot of mileage out of it by re-skinng some of the blander hexes into something more campaign specific. Like, instead of "300 green men following His Divine Blade" you could make it "300 rebels following 3rd level Jedi padowan Divine Blade".
And it has a lot of weird hexes too, which are great to pull out when you accidentally park your spaceship inside a giant space worm living inside an asteroid.
Let me see... I recently got my copy of Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu from ACKS, and that has a fantastically detailed hexmap in the back and lots of goodies. It'd serve, without any modification, as a sort of "barbaric alien world" for your players to crash on.
Yoon-Suin can't be recommended enough. You could use it as a decadent planet filled with narcotics and strange alien life forms. Depending on how wed you are to "one planet, one biome!" you could stretch it into several planet's worth of content
I always felt like Star Wars could use some screen time devoted to a Sith-temple dungeoncrawl. "Retrieve me this lost Sith artifact" would fit any dungeon that has a big evil thing in it. Maybe sinister Stone of Sakkara?
Quote from: Azraele;1042446I always felt like Star Wars could use some screen time devoted to a Sith-temple dungeoncrawl. "Retrieve me this lost Sith artifact" would fit any dungeon that has a big evil thing in it. Maybe sinister Stone of Sakkara?
The Temple of Elemental Evil always screamed "Sith temple" to me. Make Hommlet a moon orbiting the planet where the Temple is located, and you've got your Star Wars scale right there.
Quote from: RandyB;1042462The Temple of Elemental Evil always screamed "Sith temple" to me. Make Hommlet a moon orbiting the planet where the Temple is located, and you've got your Star Wars scale right there.
I approve of and/or endorse this idea.
Hello fellow Whitestar GM.
This is a logical purchase: The Graveyard at Lus (http://www.rpgnow.com/product/155254/The-Graveyard-at-Lus?term=graveyard&test_epoch=0)
Quote from: Nerzenjäger;1042490Hello fellow Whitestar GM.
This is a logical purchase: The Graveyard at Lus (http://www.rpgnow.com/product/155254/The-Graveyard-at-Lus?term=graveyard&test_epoch=0)
Thanks - just bought the pdf. Unfortunately it's a lot less detailed than I'd like, I like keyed starship (inc space hulk) floor plans that can be crawled through, that sort of thing. The low level, nitty gritty stuff.
Reskinning wilderness - I'm not sure how well fantasy wilderness hex crawls work when the PCs have a starship and can just fly over them?
Reskinning dungeon crawls seems like a good idea, thanks. I'm planning to use the Astronaut's Tomb level from Stonehell Dungeon, I like the idea of putting a Void Knight artifact maguffin in there. I don't have Temple of Elemental Evil, but I'll have a think about what I do have that might work for alien world dungeons. I suspect the more minimally keyed stuff will work best.
I do have a bunch of Venger Satanis sandboxy stuff (Alpha Blue, Isles of Purple Haunted Putrescence) but I'm leery of using any risque content with people I've just met, especially when some work for The Guardian. :)
Quote from: S'mon;1042502Thanks - just bought the pdf. Unfortunately it's a lot less detailed than I'd like, I like keyed starship (inc space hulk) floor plans that can be crawled through, that sort of thing. The low level, nitty gritty stuff.
Hulks and Horrors (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/111781/Hulks-and-Horrors--Basic-Black-Edition?manufacturers_id=4617) has rules for designing your own space hulks. Alas, no maps, keyed or otherwise.
Quote from: S'mon;1042503Reskinning wilderness - I'm not sure how well fantasy wilderness hex crawls work when the PCs have a starship and can just fly over them?
Think of the scenes in star wars were they land and explore; that's your wilderness hex crawl.
I'd double recommend Yoon-Suin in this case. It's not a hexcrawl so much as a roadmap for making dozens/hundreds of hexcrawls. Any procedural content generator (Vornhiem?) would be great for that purpose
Quote from: S'mon;1042502Thanks - just bought the pdf. Unfortunately it's a lot less detailed than I'd like, I like keyed starship (inc space hulk) floor plans that can be crawled through, that sort of thing. The low level, nitty gritty stuff.
Have a look at these:
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/149134/Star-Temple-of-Saturgalia
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/149530/Colonial-Civil-War
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/155361/Space-Cede
This looks like a cool sandbox:
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/201735/The-Lucanii-Drift
Starships & Spacemen is more Star Trek than Star Wars, but I'm sure it could be useful.
Quote from: Azraele;1042530Think of the scenes in star wars were they land and explore; that's your wilderness hex crawl.
Another way to look at hex crawl in sci-fi is viewing the whole sector/quadrant/whatever as "the wilderness" - filled with random encounters with ships, weird events, etc. - to be explored in the same fashion. It's a matter of scaling the environment to match the mobility of the PCs.
Quote from: Robyo;1042613This looks like a cool sandbox:
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/201735/The-Lucanii-Drift
Starships & Spacemen is more Star Trek than Star Wars, but I'm sure it could be useful.
Thanks for reminding me about this, I've ordered it & will see about adapting it.
Stars Without Number, even the free version of the first edition, has great tools for running a dynamic war or other such conflict in the background of a sandbox setting, with events providing inspiration for specific adventures. And it's already sci-fi, just kit it out as Space Opera.