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The look of your scifi campaign


tkdguy

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Here's some more info on my science fantasy campaign. I had this idea in college but never tried out. I shamelessly stole from different settings and shows and put them together.

One of the features in my campaign would be floating cities, like Shadow World's Eidolon. Sky ships like those in the picture are also there. Not every city floats, but much of the stuff on the ground is wilderness filled with savages and monsters.

There are knights in this setting, armed with energy swords (yes, those are lightsabers) and riding robotic horses. There are also other soldiers such as crossbowmen and pikemen. The crossbowmen's weapons are similar to Wookie bowcasters, and the pikemen's weapons are pike versions of the lightsabers.

Note: This isn't Star Wars, and there is no Force in my game. The knights don't have the mystical abilities that the Jedi and Sith have. I'm just stealing the weapons for my own use. Also, while the color of the sword shows the chivalric order the knight belongs to, it's not an indicator of alignment. So someone with a red sword isn't necessarily be a bad guy, although he may be.

I was thinking of adding Hank's bow from the D&D cartoon, but my campaign originally had elves and orcs, as well as other demihumans and humanoids. I'm thinking of dropping them.

The horses come from the Legends of the Galaxy Rangers cartoon. They are equipped with AI and can talk, just like the cartoon. A significant difference is that they have retractable wings that allow them to fly. That way, the knights need not book passage aboard a sky ship to travel to a floating city.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm really lame when it comes to science fiction. I generally run established settings.

 

Star Wars, Star Trek, and Jovian Chronicles are my go-to science fiction worlds.

 

For the most part, people know what that looks like.

For Jovian Chronicles, did you use that system or Hero?

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  • 4 weeks later...

Here's some more info on my science fantasy campaign. I had this idea in college but never tried out. I shamelessly stole from different settings and shows and put them together.

 

One of the features in my campaign would be floating cities, like Shadow World's Eidolon. Sky ships like those in the picture are also there. Not every city floats, but much of the stuff on the ground is wilderness filled with savages and monsters.

 

There are knights in this setting, armed with energy swords (yes, those are lightsabers) and riding robotic horses. There are also other soldiers such as crossbowmen and pikemen. The crossbowmen's weapons are similar to Wookie bowcasters, and the pikemen's weapons are pike versions of the lightsabers.

 

Note: This isn't Star Wars, and there is no Force in my game. The knights don't have the mystical abilities that the Jedi and Sith have. I'm just stealing the weapons for my own use. Also, while the color of the sword shows the chivalric order the knight belongs to, it's not an indicator of alignment. So someone with a red sword isn't necessarily be a bad guy, although he may be.

 

I was thinking of adding Hank's bow from the D&D cartoon, but my campaign originally had elves and orcs, as well as other demihumans and humanoids. I'm thinking of dropping them.

 

The horses come from the Legends of the Galaxy Rangers cartoon. They are equipped with AI and can talk, just like the cartoon. A significant difference is that they have retractable wings that allow them to fly. That way, the knights need not book passage aboard a sky ship to travel to a floating city.

I would play that in a hearbeat.

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I would play that in a hearbeat.

 

Thanks. I wish my players wouldn't nitpick every little detail of any campaign I come up with. Not like they come up with their own stuff. Little wonder I don't run games for them anymore.

 

Rant aside, this is the closest thing to the way my space battles go.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpfCkkKP9eE

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  • 3 months later...

I played a solo game set in my science fantasy. It was nothing fancy, just a single combat game to try some rules. I used ad&d 1E and treated lightsabers energy blades as swords of sharpness. The fight was too quick; one good roll ended it. I'm going to try a few other systems.

 

I also took some photos and played with special effects usingGIMP. I tried to make it look like a comic book.

 

Here's the battle report.

 

I recently bought some Star Wars miniatures. I plan to use them in future games.

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Our longest-running Sci-Fi campaign is based on John DeChancie's Starrigger. We started it back in the 80's (after the second book but before the final book) and it's still going strong (though honestly, if we'd read the last book, we might have lost interest before we got it off the ground. :D ).

 

At any rate:

 

The look varies considerably. Most of the Colonial Authority areas are very modern, but modern like today-- right now. The architecture is familiar, the world is well-lit, and all but the core-most worlds in any maze range from "sprawl" to "frontier." Only the core-most worlds are over-populated, but even then, the architecture and general look can be summed up as "Toronto." The nature of the campaign world ("jump in your car and drive to another planet") has removed a great deal of urban pressure, an no one is more than a few hours away from rural and pastoral living.

 

The Colonial Authority Maze-- particularly the core worlds-- are heavy with politics and regulations, and in the wealthiest areas a good bit of congestion. Technology hasn't really changed the feel of the world as it does in other settings or even some of our shorter-lived sci-fi campaigns. Affluent businesses and hyper-wealthy individuals build with bleeding-edge designs, but these quickly become dated as the styles just never catch on.

 

Frontier worlds look like one would expect: most things are built with the most abundant resources, and the oldest buildings are usually log, stone, or brick manufactured with local minerals, or even concrete. Generally, however, buildings are still squarish and houses are comfortable.

 

Other than the home worlds of the various races, no planets have people stacked on top of each other. Earth is the worst for this, as the only entrance to the maze from earth is on Pluto, and wasn't discovered until there were already more people than resources, and getting from earth to Pluto isn't cheap or easy.

 

The bulk of the worlds regularly visited are in T-maze and thus predominantly human-occupied. Other mazes are skewed toward whatever alien race first found the skyway. Mazes are huge, some of them featuring hundreds of worlds (such as T-Maze) but the majority of any maze is unmapped. (though over the years, my players have done a lot toward correcting that; usually on accident, but if you make it back to a known maze, your maps are worth an absolute fortune to the right groups).

 

 

It's the way the books felt, and honestly, given how easy it is to go somewhere else (once you get to the skyway), it just makes sense: things getting too crowded? Too noisy? Too dark? Too much anything? Get in the car and hop across the universe!

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Tkdguy your world seems like the Visionaries from the '80s.

 

Perhaps, although I don't remember much about the cartoon. I'll check it out on YouTube.

 

Edit: After seeing a clip or two on YouTube, I think there's only a superficial resemblance to the Visionaries. The look is similar, but the knights in my game don't have any magical powers. In fact, magic has been replaced by rubber science in my game. Knights only have their lightsabers energy swords and cyborg horses (taken from the Galaxy Rangers cartoon) as their resources.

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