Help me flesh out a kernal of a setting idea

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Help me flesh out a kernal of a setting idea

 

Personally I like the "only known intelligence is human" type games. It eliminates the “prosthetic of the week” aliens that plagued ST. And, later on down the line once the game has gotten it’s stride, if you allow the discovery of non-human ruins or a possible non-human contact, it can really make the game interesting/exciting.

 

First Contact when there are already a bizzilion aliens running around is meh….

 

First Contact, that actually is First Contact can be a really cool game….

 

So what about First Contact where they invade ("V") or just want to glass the planet (Halo) or perhaps are only interested in being left alone, and we royally screwed up (Ender's Game)? There are a LOT of variations on "First Contact" stories, although I will easily agree that the "alien of the week" motif was broken and lacked fun.

[Spence]

Re: Help me flesh out a kernal of a setting idea

 

So what about First Contact where they invade ("V") or just want to glass the planet (Halo) or perhaps are only interested in being left alone' date=' and we royally screwed up (Ender's Game)? There are a LOT of variations on "First Contact" stories, although I will easily agree that the "alien of the week" motif was broken and lacked fun.[/quote']

 

They would fall into the "First Contact that actually is first contact" category . As in the very first intelligent alien species encountered. Most books/series/movies/games tend to blow it (IMO anyway) when they populate things with dozens of different species.

 

If humans were the only intelligent life and they have several hundred years of starfaring to reinforce this, then the discovery of ancient alien structures would be BIG. The discovery of Intelligent living aliens would rock the very foundation of the species.

 

If humanity has already had contact with alien intelligence than meeting another is simply another exercise in assessing threat/profit.

 

First Contact only happens once.

 

Before a species has First Contact they are alone in the universe, on the top if the evolutionary ladder. The big dogs….

 

After First Contact they are just one of many and even if they have only contacted one other species, it isn’t hard to believe there are more. The second contact becomes “not new”.

 

But in the context of a RPG.

 

If your PC’s are free merchants they really are not going to care about in-depth xenohistory. At least beyond evaluation artifact value and/or find the artifacts.

 

If they are soldiers, they will not care what happened 10,000 years ago, they will only care about how to kill them or otherwise stop them.

 

The same for pretty much all the other types of PC’s. Unless there is a need in the immediate plot. There really isn’t a need for a detailed ancient history.

 

 

Now don’t get me wrong here. I like writing up long involved back stories and histories about the game worlds I run. When I GM it helps me get into the feel of the game world. But I would guess that 75-90% never gets much more than a glance by players because not much is needed for actual play.

 

I was just pointing out (or thought I was:ugly:) that there is a difference between need and nice to have in prepping for a game. Don’t get caught up in the nice to have to the point the game derails or fails to start.