Star Hero Original Setting: help with first contact

[zippercomics]

Okay, here goes.

 

I'd like to develop a Star Hero campaign world. I love the actual Star Hero suppliments, and I may cop out and use them (as they're quite well written and would likely serve my purposes), but the sadistic side of me still feels more comfortable playing in a game world I made up. That being said, making a game world can be a lilted experience if one doesn't have the wisdom to get feedback during the process.

 

Therefore, herodom, I emplore you; is this logical!?! Here goes ...

 

Humans. Semi-distant future. I'm thinking 2080 or the sort, at the latest. We've sent ships to the moon, and we've sent ships with passengers as far as Mars. But we haven't done much more than that. Then, bang, one day, a space telescope of ours receives a message from - *gasp* - alien life! Here's the watered down reason why.

 

The Philli. An intelligent, super-advanced race of scientists and thinkers who've discovered a threat known as the Baraggi many generations ago. The Baraggi are super-aggressive expansionists who send "Generation Ships" out at random intervals to simply find land, take it by force, and then repeat the process. They've been spreading like a plague out of the outer rim, and the Philli have faced them on more than one occassion. That being said, the Philli have learned the wisdom in tracking the Baraggi, and were saddened to learn that this race has a Generation ship aimed right at little ol' Earth. One ship of Baraggi will be enough to take Earth out, no problem. That's not good because we're just defenseless little pups in a galactic sense, plus it would make for a great launching platform for the Baraggi to move on to Phillus next. And they don't want that.

 

But that being said, the Philli don't subscribe to the beliefs of "First Contact". They've always accepted that there's other life in the world, and assume that much of the galaxy thinks that they do. So, they literally just show up at Earth one day and say "hey, we're the Philli, and in about 10 years a ship full of hostile aliens is going to show up and screw this joint up bad; you guys wanna bail? We'll show you how".

 

And there it is. Humans get first contact, get thrown all sorts of tech, blah blah blah.

 

My problem is this. Does any of this really fly in the face of sociology or just plain logic? Does any of it sound like a cop-out, or a blatant copy of something I haven't read yet? I'm trying not to make the Philli sound like Vulcans, so I should point out that they're QUITE emotional. They're often refered to all "child like", in that - despite their high intelligence and technology - they're impulsive and socially not that quick on the uptake.

 

Critiques are encouraged.

 

Thanks, herodom!

[Guest Major Tom]

Re: Star Hero Original Setting: help with first contact

 

This reminds me of a story I read a few years ago called "Natural Advantage"

(I can't remember who wrote the story, though). The plot went something

like this: a survey vessel from another world detects an antimatter cloud on

a direct course with an inhabited solar system -- which, of course, turns out

to be our solar system. Deciding to make contact with Earth, the aliens warn

the humans with whom they make contact that the cloud will reach the solar

system in 10 Earth years, at which time the Sun will begin to emit increasingly

higher levels of radiation, ultimately killing every living thing on Earth.

 

As it turns out, the aliens have a rather unique way of percieving time as a

result of having three eyes (yep, that's right, three eyes). As a result, their

race has developed a form of FTL travel that involves creating a field around

their ships which enables them to travel much faster than is normally possible.

Ultimately, the commander of the survey vessel decides to trade the technical

knowledge of their race in exchange for some microfiche copies of Earth's

collected history, cultural records and other information. As the survey vessel

leaves Earth to resume its journey, one of the junior officers tells the command-

er that he might regret having done that.

 

Upon their return to their own world, the commander and crew of the survey

vessel discover that a ship from Earth has arrived and is establishing diplomat-

ic relations with their people. Finding that some of the people from the Earth

ship are the same ones that they had met years previously, the commander

asks how many people are in the ship. When he hears that there are 100 peo-

ple aboard it, he thinks that that was all of Mankind that was able to be sav-

ed from Earth's destruction. When the Earth emissary realizes what the com-

mander is thinking, she tells him that their trip was not only to establish good

relations with his people, but also to say thank you. It turned out that, thanks

to the technical information given to Earth by the commander, they were able

to move the entire solar system to a safe location three years before the anti-

matter cloud would have hit it.

 

Now, with regards to your scenario, I can easily see something like that hap-

pening. But I can also see what would probably be Mankind's likely response

to that sort of news: "So, we've got a generation ship full of insanely aggress-

ive aliens coming our way to try and take over this world, eh? Tell you what:

if you'll give us some technical assisstance and help us improve our weapons

technology, we'll stop the SOBs before they get any farther. Whaddya say?"

 

Given that their world is next on the colonization hit parade, the answer would

probably be a resoundingly loud "YES!"

 

It wouldn't be long though, before their initial feeling of "Gee, that's a great

idea!" rapidly became "Judas Priest, what were we thinking?" --

especially once the Terrans start tossing 50-megaton contraterrene warheads

at the invaders.

 

That's just my opinion, though...

 

 

Major Tom

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Star Hero Original Setting: help with first contact

 

Good morning, zipper.

 

It lives on both the Fantasy and Star HERO boards. YES. Anyway, opinions on your queries. First up:

 

Does it makes sense? Self preservation is one amazing motivating factor for any sentient life form - the cool thing about the scenario you've created is that you're saying, in short, if Earth is colonized, the Philli are boned. That gives them plenty of reasons to assist Earth, considering their only other option is blasting it to smithereens, and it doesn't sound like that's your mechanic.

 

Second, you will need to flesh out what your Barragi do in terms of terra forming, what weaponry they wield, reasonable defenses and so on. When you say they're "way ahead" of our tech, what exactly does that mean? That they have 6d6 RKA hand weapons with 50 charges? That would certainly be excessive, and would deal enough damage to kill a BODY 8 (even a BODY 10) normal under SER. But that could also be extremely excessive. You might rather they have Personal Shields, AP Energy Weapons, etc.

 

Have you played HALO? If not, please do so. The weaponry in that game is extremely cool because of the design and the balance. The pistol is a scoped weapon that has to penetrate shields, but kills with a head shot; highly accurate. The Autorifle could be built in HERO with your eyes shut. The Plasma Rifle has Rapid Fire and deals extra damage, but when you're taking 10 bullets from a hail of gunfire, you're in for a problem.

 

Humans are panicky, and also resilient. Do you want mankind to run? Are you selling the idea that this is a fight we cannot win? You can do that, it's certainly acceptable within the genre (some of which eschews war, as MT's example pointed out, we can have happy alien endings in sci-fi) but it might not be the best fit for an action Star HERO campaign. If you're setting up a crux conflict - the Galaxy vs. the Braggi - that's gonna be pretty heavy.

 

Third, where the heck are the Philli located? I've always been under the impression that Douglas Adams was correct (and I think I had this corroborated somewhere) we are in the unfashionable, generally uninhabited, backwater Western Spiral Arm of the galaxy. You may want to consult a star map/astronomy guide to get a guage of which stars you're getting involved in this galactic war, if you're concerned about that sort of thing.

 

If you reach the conclusion that "more is just plain bad" then the Philli still have every reason in the world to show up and help, not the least of which could be because they don't want the Baraggi setting up camp on some Blue-Green marble of a world and then launching a coordinated assault on thier homeworld, using Earth to effectively shut off their escape route.

 

They don't sound like Vulcans.

 

Anyway, my spare change for the morning.

[Cancer]

Re: Star Hero Original Setting: help with first contact

 

Your opening blurb says the Baraggi are in generation ships, which to me says relativistic ("slower-than-light") travel. But the signals from the Philli are optical, that is, lightspeed. There isn't any requirement for FTL technology in your scenario so far.

 

(Minor point: it's far more likely that initial signal detection will be done by a groundbased telescope than a spacebased one. Orbiting telescopes tend to have very narrow fields of view, and are scheduled long in advance to observe specific targets. Random field discoveries ... and that's what this is ... are almost infinitely more likely to be made with an undistinguished small ground-based telescope. Confirmation may be done with more famous facilities, but initial discovery is in the realm of small telescopes.)

 

I'll have to work out when a slowship like that would be detectable with standard astronomical techniques. Gimme a day or two for that. There is likely to be skepticism from Terrestrial authorities about the Philli's warnings until the danger can be confirmed, which means unambiguous detection of the invasion.

 

Assuming the generation ship is a slowship, the counter to it (now that you know it's coming) is clear: set up something big to collide with it before it gets here. That's much easier to arrange if you launch from ahead along its target vector. You want to hit it as early as possible, to maximize the destructive kinetic energy of impact. Depending upon where the slowship started out, they may already be decelerating.

 

Obviously the colliding vessel is a suicide mission, but if the Baraggi can send us the design for interstellar "lifeboats" the crew on the collider might survive the mission and be up for interesting post-success adventures elsewhere in the Galaxy.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Star Hero Original Setting: help with first contact

 

This is why I said check with one of the astronomy types - he's right, you can do this Armageddon style and just blow the thing to smithereens long before it makes contact. However, then we get into plot questions - is it self defended, blah blah blah.

 

For example, if they are war like, they'd've dealt with something annoying like an enemy cruiser long ago. What's the life span of these people? How long does it take to travel from point to point? What sort of on-board tech do they have? Why bother colonzing some distant world, rather than curb your own population? Why are they aggressive? Can they be reasoned with?

 

Within the bounds of tech and races they've conquered, does FTL exist? If it does, why haven't they adopted it? Cost? efficiency? If you fire a plasma cannon at one of those GenShips, what happens? Can the ship be knocked off course? Will it course correct? How much punishment can it take? Would it be subject to a raid by a daring band of misfits with nothing to lose?

 

Samurai 7, 7 Samurai, Armageddon (again), The Dirty Dozen and just about any anime involving giant machines and the end of the world. All should provide character archetypes for that angle. But what is your angle? Where are you going with this, and what's your objective?

 

I've said multiple times writing is popcorn - start small and explode it into something larger. What's your objective for your players in this setting? What will their roles be, and what is the nature of your primary conflict?

[Basil]

Re: Star Hero Original Setting: help with first contact

 

Okay, here goes.

 

Humans. Semi-distant future. I'm thinking 2080 or the sort, at the latest. We've sent ships to the moon, and we've sent ships with passengers as far as Mars. But we haven't done much more than that. Then, bang, one day, a space telescope of ours receives a message from - *gasp* - alien life! Here's the watered down reason why.

Cancer is right: such a signal would probably first be detected by a small ground based facility. Not only do the space telescopes have a narrow field-of-view, but they cover visible light and frequencies the atmospere is opaque to, which does not include most radio-wave frequencies. If the Philli broadcast in the radio-wave spectrum, it will be detected on Earth's surface (or, potentially, by a facility of the farside of Luna).

 

The Philli. An intelligent' date=' super-advanced race of scientists and thinkers who've discovered a threat known as the Baraggi many generations ago. The Baraggi are super-aggressive expansionists who send "Generation Ships" out at random intervals to simply find land, take it by force, and then repeat the process.[/quote']

How do they survive in what would inevitably be extremely hostile environment, while fighting sapients native to such an environment? Anyone who tells you there are "earth-like" planets in outer space is very probably correct, but only in an astronomical sense. In terms of environment and ecology, they will be as hostile and difficult to survive in as the vacuum of outer space. And the same would be true, mutatis mutandis, of any other sapient.

 

BTW: re. your aliens' names: unless you want "guys in rubber suits" aliens, they will almost certainly speak with sounds some of which would be not reproducable by humans, and therefore their names will not be transcribable.

 

They've been spreading like a plague out of the outer rim' date=' and the Philli have faced them on more than one occassion. That being said, the Philli have learned the wisdom in tracking the Baraggi, and were saddened to learn that this race has a Generation ship aimed right at little ol' Earth. One ship of Baraggi will be enough to take Earth out, no problem. That's not good because we're just defenseless little pups in a galactic sense, plus it would make for a great launching platform for the Baraggi to move on to Phillus next. And they don't want that.[/quote']

Just how big are these Generation Ships? Something that can carry the populace, materiel, and infrastructure to take over a planet inhabited by billions is going to be one HUGE fricking ship. Remember, while you can destroy from the air (or from space), you must have troops on the ground, good ol' infantry, to conquer and hold ground.

 

But that being said' date=' the Philli don't subscribe to the beliefs of "First Contact".[/quote']

What belief is that? I'm sorry, I've never heard of first contact being a belief, or having A specific belief attached to it.

 

they've always accepted that there's other life in the world' date=' and assume that much of the galaxy thinks that they do. So, they literally just show up at Earth one day and say "hey, we're the Philli, and in about 10 years a ship full of hostile aliens is going to show up and screw this joint up bad; you guys wanna bail? We'll show you how".[/quote']

"Bail"? As in evacuate? If the Philli can evacuate Earth, they are near-godlike in power.

 

By 2080, if Earth's population continues to grow at ~1.5% per annum, the Earth will hold 20 billion people. If the rate drops .1% per decade, the Earth's population will be 15 billion (all figures are very approximate). To move that many people, plus enough materiel, production capacity, etc. to make survival a decnet probability would be a project a dozen orders of magnitude larger than anything humanity has ever attempted. The sheer volume of stuff to be transported defies description. The time and energy that would need to be committed is mind-melting.

 

Then there's the need to re-create (at least some of) Earth's environment on a distant planet around a star other than Sol. After all, humanity would still need to eat, which requires agriculture, which requires thousands of plants, animals, and micro-organisms that are not "food" per se, and each of them requires others, and so on.

 

And all, mind you, in 10 years.

 

If the Philli can accomplish that, a single Baraggi ship will be as hard to deal with as pulling wings off a fly; once you catch it, it's done for.

 

And there it is. Humans get first contact' date=' get thrown all sorts of tech, blah blah blah.[/quote']

Why is humanity given any tech? If the offer is to evacuate, there's nothing humanity needs be taught.

 

Now, if humanity does not bail out, and the Philli alter the offer to help us defend ourselves, then there the possibility of humanity getting new tech.

 

My problem is this. Does any of this really fly in the face of sociology or just plain logic?

Not absolutely, but there are some difficulties with it. Especially in terms of just what capabilities the aliens have.

 

Does any of it sound like a cop-out' date=' or a blatant copy of something I haven't read yet?[/quote']

No cop-outs per se, but there's too much handwaving for me; points as noted above. Also, I don't remembe reading anything all that similar.

 

I'm trying not to make the Philli sound like Vulcans' date=' so I should point out that they're QUITE emotional.[/quote']

Odd. Why do you think it necessary to say this? There's nothing un-emotional in any of the above; quite the opposite---such an extremely generous offer is not one logic would dictate.

 

They're often refered to all "child like", in that - despite their high intelligence and technology - they're impulsive and socially not that quick on the uptake.

 

Critiques are encouraged.

 

Thanks, herodom!

Well, you've gotten my $0.02.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Star Hero Original Setting: help with first contact

 

I think the idea sounds great in outline, but the devil’s always in the details and you’ve got some more `splaining to do. Basil and the others have already hit most of the high points, but here are a few other notes.

 

For starters, do you see this as hard SF or space opera? What do you intend the focus of the campaign to be for the PCs? What sorts of technology do the Baraggi and the Philli have? Especially, how do the Philli plan to evacuate Earth? (And if the Phillis are as advanced as all that, why haven’t they found a way to deal with one Baraggi sleeper ship on their own?) If the Philli’s motive for helping us is partly because Earth “would make for a great launching platform for the Baraggi to move on to Phillus next,†then just relocating humanity doesn’t help them. So is the intention to help us fight the Baraggi? (I can’t see humanity giving up the homeworld without a fight in any event.) But then, that fight is 10 years away, right? So what do the characters do in the meantime?

 

Another concern from a dramatic standpoint is that they way you’ve described it so far both the villains and the allies/mentors are completely off-the-table, which means the characters can’t really interact with them. (Especially if you’re using light-speed comunications.) If that’s the intent, fine; but then who do the PCs interact with? Contact was a great movie, but it’d be a boring RPG.

 

Finally, I understand your concern about the Philli sounding too Vulcan (ie – humanity’s peaceful alien benefactors). But actually they reminded me more of the Thermians from Galaxy Quest.

 

Feel free to post more details if you like.

 

 

bigdamnhero

"You do know you're talking to a man with live ammunition? You know that? Okay, good, just checking. Now go on with your bull$#!& story."