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Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...


Kristopher

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I'm in the early stages of trying to come up with a science fiction campaign. It's going to be interstellar in scale, with FTL. While I'm not going for space opera or epic, one element I do want to include, I think, is more mysticism than typical science fiction settings or games. What I'm thinking of mixing in is a sort of "otherspace", that allows things like FTL, psionics of a sort, and other strangeness. There's also the possibility of "horrors from otherspace" if I want to go that way, even if it's just for a session or two. (Maybe even eldritch things that feed on "psionic" energy, lurking in wait...)

 

So, does anyone have any thoughts on this sort of thing? Any resources or references or experiences they could share?

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

I'm in the early stages of trying to come up with a science fiction campaign. It's going to be interstellar in scale, with FTL. While I'm not going for space opera or epic, one element I do want to include, I think, is more mysticism than typical science fiction settings or games. What I'm thinking of mixing in is a sort of "otherspace", that allows things like FTL, psionics of a sort, and other strangeness. There's also the possibility of "horrors from otherspace" if I want to go that way, even if it's just for a session or two. (Maybe even eldritch things that feed on "psionic" energy, lurking in wait...)

 

So, does anyone have any thoughts on this sort of thing? Any resources or references or experiences they could share?

 

Well, this is a common theme, and there's a number of sub projects I'm working on that involve similar elements, but:

 

Deep Space 9, Babylon 5, Descent Freespace, there's a ... Cthulu Giant Robot game out there, as well. It really depends on what feel you wanna nail. I don't think anyone has done true magic... woops.

 

Spelljammer. Space 1889. it's a widely explored topic, I can go on like this for hours. You'd need to be more specific before I can offer something more concrete. You're too generic right now, Kristopher.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Spelljammer had magic, but Space 1889 didn't, to my knowledge, have any magic. It was more of a Victorian Era science fiction with Victorian Era science.

 

The idea is cool - the DOOM video games had magic for the baddies. I don't know if there was any space travel in Shadowrun but magic and technology mixes a lot in that game.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

ICE's Darkspace was a game ahead of it's time that had a lot of great stuff in it that might help.

 

Oddly enough I don't see the .PDF on ICE's website but, like the truth, it's out there.

 

Here's a brief description:

 

http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/RM2/RM2_1301_DarkSpace.php

 

RM2_1301_DarkSpace.jpg

 

Rolemaster and Spacemaster

Dark Space

Author: Monte Cook

Stock #: 1301

ISBN 1-55806-140-1

Published 1990 by Iron Crown Ent.

Cover Price: $16.00

Page Count: 160

 

Cover/Jacket Text:

Mankind's very existence is threatened by a horror from before time and beyond space. Alien entities called the Elder Worms in days long

passed are seeping down once again from their lairs in the Dark Nebula, and the people of the Twenty Worlds are their first prey. To stop these beings before their evil plots come to fruition, brave heroes must use all at their disposal: magic, telepathy, and high science.

come to them worlds of...

DARK SPACE is a complete campaign setting well as a unique combination of science fiction,

fantasy and horror. Contained within are detailed descriptins of twenty different worlds and the society that binds them together. Organizations, religions and governments of this fantasy/high tech

society are included as well as a number of new races and beasts unique to the setting.

DARKSPACE includes:

• A complete campaign setting compatible with Rolemaster; Space

Master, or both games together. Dark Space can also be worked into

any existing campaign (fantasy or science fiction).

•Comprehensive rules for the biological science of Softech, along with

hundreds of items and uses, such as specifically engineered creatures,

biological starships and vehicles, physical enhancing microorganisms, grafts which can give any character wings, claws, natural weaponry, and much more.

Softech is a science which can do anything conventional "hardtech" sciences can and things unimagined until now.

•Rules for creating metamorph characters with super-human powers. •Rules for bio-ships with layouts and diagrams, and bio-ship combat.

skills and a new profession, the Softechnician.

•New spells and psion lists as well as magic rules for dealing with technology and space travel. Dark Space can be used as a guide for adding technology to Rolemaster and magic to Space Master.

detailed description of the creatures from the Entities From Deep Space section of Creatures and Treasurges II, with new entities, their leaders, their insidious plots and motivations, and their foul airworld.

•Non Player Characters and creatures both high and low level, and guidelines for creating a player character at any level for this unique environment.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

OK, definately not going for CthuluTech or Spelljammer or Space 1889. Also not going for a Star Wars or Star Trek feel. I want the science and technology to be neither window-dressing nor one of the main characters of the thing.

 

I want one group of systems to be full of asteroid miners living in hollowed-out major asteroids and facing the dangers of working the rocks (think the Belters in Niven's Known Space, for example), who've done this kind of work for generations; there's also a native species in the region of space that they don't like that has a claim. But a week away by FTL there's system with a lush terraformed planet and lots of resorts for the rich. And so on.

 

I want a fairly conventional starship and tech feel, but navigating in "otherspace" (whatever I end up calling it) requires a Talent, and there are other, mainly minor, abilities, based on ability to tap into "otherspace", that would in general be called psionics.

 

Some little-known or remote species might have mystics or shaman or priests and believe that their talents are magic.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

one element I do want to include' date=' I think, is more mysticism than typical science fiction settings or games. What I'm thinking of mixing in is a sort of "otherspace", that allows things like FTL, psionics of a sort, and other strangeness. There's also the possibility of "horrors from otherspace" if I want to go that way, even if it's just for a session or two. (Maybe even eldritch things that feed on "psionic" energy, lurking in wait...)[/quote']

"The Game of Rat and Dragon" by Cordwainer Smith

In SPI's RPG "Universe", psionic adepts are the FTL drive. In A. Bertram Chandler's "Grimes" novels, psionic adepts are the FTL communication system.

 

And if you want something gritty but "Traveller" flavored, with lotsa psionics, run, do not walk, and dig up a copy of the novel THE SHATTERED STARS by Richard S. McEnroe. http://www.bookfinder.com is currently showing about 25 used copies for under $6

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

The Warhammer 40K setting could be mined for some ideas as well

 

I thought about that while trying to answer Thia's post. "The warp" does share some features with what I'm going for, but it's a lot darker and nastier and more dangerous and "magic" than I'm looking for.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

OK, definately not going for CthuluTech or Spelljammer or Space 1889. Also not going for a Star Wars or Star Trek feel. I want the science and technology to be neither window-dressing nor one of the main characters of the thing.

 

I want one group of systems to be full of asteroid miners living in hollowed-out major asteroids and facing the dangers of working the rocks (think the Belters in Niven's Known Space, for example), who've done this kind of work for generations; there's also a native species in the region of space that they don't like that has a claim. But a week away by FTL there's system with a lush terraformed planet and lots of resorts for the rich. And so on.

 

I want a fairly conventional starship and tech feel, but navigating in "otherspace" (whatever I end up calling it) requires a Talent, and there are other, mainly minor, abilities, based on ability to tap into "otherspace", that would in general be called psionics.

 

Some little-known or remote species might have mystics or shaman or priests and believe that their talents are magic.

 

How about mining Dune for some spicy ideas?

 

You can use Talents instead of drugs, or have drugs enhance natural Talents, or drop drugs entirely but use the idea of Precognition being a prerequisite to Navigation. Some version of the Mentats and Bene Geseret (under different names and with different trappings) might fit with what you imagine.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is pondering

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Suppose "otherspace" is in some ways a dimension of the mind. It's accessed, and to some extent manipulated, by conscious or subconscious thought. Ships can travel faster through it than through normal space, because the pilots able to take a ship through it believe that they can travel faster. And some of that dimension "leaks through" back to those touching it, allowing them to shape it in this world according to their will, or else causing spontaneous, uncontrolled phenomena.

 

How is otherspace accessed? By the same methods that mystics have employed for millennia to reach a "higher plane" of consciousness. Meditation. Sweat lodges. Ritual drug use. These and other tools and disciplines let mystics on Earth touch otherspace briefly and in small ways, but in outer space, without the psychic clatter of Earth distracting them, the connection is stronger and easier to achieve.

 

Otherspace has always responded to the thoughts of people contacting or visiting it. Those who consider otherspace merely a scientific phenomenon perceive it as similar to normal space (although subconscious images may occasionally manifest), but to someone approaching it as a mystical plane it takes the form of places or creatures of myth and folklore. People who use drugs or similar methods long-term end up twisting otherspace to conform to their worst drug-induced nightmares. For most people it may just produce brief visions or phantoms, but those with greater talent or stronger will can form it into solid-seeming manifestations that others can interact with. And after contact by many people with the same cultural background -- or frequent contact with one person -- some of these places and creatures have become permanent... or even alive and sentient.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

How about mining Dune for some spicy ideas?

 

You can use Talents instead of drugs, or have drugs enhance natural Talents, or drop drugs entirely but use the idea of Precognition being a prerequisite to Navigation. Some version of the Mentats and Bene Geseret (under different names and with different trappings) might fit with what you imagine.

 

Indeed.

 

I like the enhancement idea. If someone has the full Talent to navigate for otherspace travel, they don't need the drug(s). People with the "latent" Talent need the drug(s), but it's also psychoactive and hard to resist becoming addicted to. No Talent at all, you either can't or need so much drug that you're going to burn yourself out in a one or two trips. (Hey, I made a pun there, you see?)

 

If your navigator is injured or killed, it becomes a desperate situation -- someone has to take a megadose to get the ship somewhere safe, hopefully with the medical facilities needed to save that person.

 

 

I also like the idea of guilds and insular societies, just not with the dominant power that they had in the Dune setting. Oh, and there will be AIs and such, no Butlerian Jihad here.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

I'm also likely to lift an idea seed from Niven for the nature of otherspace.

 

It's non-Euclidian, non-Einsteinian, and intensely foreign to the human mind. Those with the full Talent can comprehend it well enough to do their job.

 

Others, well, it's like the movie The Abyss. There's a risk of psychological trouble, as the movie said there is in long-term pressurized deep-sea operations. Not everyone has an issue, but you never know who will until they're out there. Try to avoid looking out any windows, too, that makes it worse for most people -- most ships button up completely for this and other safety reasons when making otherspace trips.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

If your navigator is injured or killed' date=' it becomes a desperate situation -- someone has to take a megadose to get the ship somewhere safe, hopefully with the medical facilities needed to save that person.[/quote']

 

Cordwainer Smith: "The Burning of the Brain"

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Some ideas: It has been suggested that the oracular elements of Battlestar Galactica (2005) were due to some minds having a broadened perspective in the space experienced in FTL "jumps." . I guess what I'm trying to say is that jumpspace doesn't need to be a psychic medium in itself. It's more like climbing a hill. At the top, if you happen to be farsighted or have brought along a telescope, you can see further.

 

C. J. Cherryh plays with the idea that some people/species have more functionality in "hyperspace" than others in a number of ways. But at the end of Tripoint, she suggests that the navigator of the ship the protagonist ends up on can actually sense Earthlike planets. She can also move around the ship and otherwise function while everyone else is in a coma, which is a pretty useful thing to be able to do from any perspective, and one of the most typical-player-abuse-prone feats I can think of in a typica game.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

CS Friedman wrote good (and applicable) stuff too, from the holy cow psi intensive* "In Conquest Born" to the all the aliens are mutated humans in "This Alien Shore".

 

The latter added to the psis are crazy element to make the otherspace navigators effective paranoid schizophrenics. The drugs were for the majority of their lives that weren't in otherspace.

 

 

* Hyperbole - no Geush Urva Psychokinetics, that I know of.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Some ideas: It has been suggested that the oracular elements of Battlestar Galactica (2005) were due to some minds having a broadened perspective in the space experienced in FTL "jumps."

 

In Clifford Simak's "All The Traps Of Earth", an intelligent robot hitches a ride on a starship, but it travels outside on the hull. The exposure to raw hyperspace gives it all sorts of cosmic powers, which it uses for the benefit of mankind.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Suppose "otherspace" is in some ways a dimension of the mind. It's accessed, and to some extent manipulated, by conscious or subconscious thought. Ships can travel faster through it than through normal space, because the pilots able to take a ship through it believe that they can travel faster. And some of that dimension "leaks through" back to those touching it, allowing them to shape it in this world according to their will, or else causing spontaneous, uncontrolled phenomena.

 

How is otherspace accessed? By the same methods that mystics have employed for millennia to reach a "higher plane" of consciousness. Meditation. Sweat lodges. Ritual drug use. These and other tools and disciplines let mystics on Earth touch otherspace briefly and in small ways, but in outer space, without the psychic clatter of Earth distracting them, the connection is stronger and easier to achieve.

 

Otherspace has always responded to the thoughts of people contacting or visiting it. Those who consider otherspace merely a scientific phenomenon perceive it as similar to normal space (although subconscious images may occasionally manifest), but to someone approaching it as a mystical plane it takes the form of places or creatures of myth and folklore. People who use drugs or similar methods long-term end up twisting otherspace to conform to their worst drug-induced nightmares. For most people it may just produce brief visions or phantoms, but those with greater talent or stronger will can form it into solid-seeming manifestations that others can interact with. And after contact by many people with the same cultural background -- or frequent contact with one person -- some of these places and creatures have become permanent... or even alive and sentient.

 

Repped for awesome.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Suppose "otherspace" is in some ways a dimension of the mind. It's accessed, and to some extent manipulated, by conscious or subconscious thought. Ships can travel faster through it than through normal space, because the pilots able to take a ship through it believe that they can travel faster. And some of that dimension "leaks through" back to those touching it, allowing them to shape it in this world according to their will, or else causing spontaneous, uncontrolled phenomena.

 

How is otherspace accessed? By the same methods that mystics have employed for millennia to reach a "higher plane" of consciousness. Meditation. Sweat lodges. Ritual drug use. These and other tools and disciplines let mystics on Earth touch otherspace briefly and in small ways, but in outer space, without the psychic clatter of Earth distracting them, the connection is stronger and easier to achieve.

 

Otherspace has always responded to the thoughts of people contacting or visiting it. Those who consider otherspace merely a scientific phenomenon perceive it as similar to normal space (although subconscious images may occasionally manifest), but to someone approaching it as a mystical plane it takes the form of places or creatures of myth and folklore. People who use drugs or similar methods long-term end up twisting otherspace to conform to their worst drug-induced nightmares. For most people it may just produce brief visions or phantoms, but those with greater talent or stronger will can form it into solid-seeming manifestations that others can interact with. And after contact by many people with the same cultural background -- or frequent contact with one person -- some of these places and creatures have become permanent... or even alive and sentient.

 

That's a bit like the warp from Warhammer 40K (only without the almost inherent evil).

 

But it's an excellent overall idea.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

I can't find a synopsis online -- can you sum this one up for me?

In "The Burning of the Brain" by Cordwainer Smith, ships are navigated by use of "lock-sheets". These are sort of route maps of the journey. In the story, by some colossal mistake, the ship makes the first jump, then discovers that instead of having thousands of lock-sheets for all possible permutations of the journey, they have thousands of copies of one lock-sheet.

 

They are lost in space, and will slowly die as the power runs out.

 

But one of the pin-lighters, who are telepaths, notice that some of the lock-sheets are in the go-captain's memory. These can be used to navigate the ship to safety. The problem is that the process of reading them will gradually burn out the go-captain's brain.

 

The go-captain sacrifices himself for the good of the crew and passengers. He winds up being an imbecile.

 

However, in a twist, as his brain is burnt, his knowledge of starships and navigation is telepathically transferred to his niece. She becomes the greatest go-captain of all.

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Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

In "The Burning of the Brain" by Cordwainer Smith, ships are navigated by use of "lock-sheets". These are sort of route maps of the journey. In the story, by some colossal mistake, the ship makes the first jump, then discovers that instead of having thousands of lock-sheets for all possible permutations of the journey, they have thousands of copies of one lock-sheet.

 

They are lost in space, and will slowly die as the power runs out.

 

But one of the pin-lighters, who are telepaths, notice that some of the lock-sheets are in the go-captain's memory. These can be used to navigate the ship to safety. The problem is that the process of reading them will gradually burn out the go-captain's brain.

 

The go-captain sacrifices himself for the good of the crew and passengers. He winds up being an imbecile.

 

However, in a twist, as his brain is burnt, his knowledge of starships and navigation is telepathically transferred to his niece. She becomes the greatest go-captain of all.

 

I assume that the go-captains are "hyperspace pilots", but what is the meaning or origin of the title "pin-lighter"? Or does it just mean "telepath"?

 

PS: Thanks for the synopsis.

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