Wanted: Good Space RPG Adventure Seeds

[athelind]

I'm going to take the basic premise and perhaps some details from Tri-Tac's old game, Incursion, in which the players are ordinary Earthers from the 21st Century, abducted by aliens, who wind up in charge of an advanced starship -- but without the coordiinates that will take them back home.

Once that's out of the way, it becomes another Small Band Of Adventurers In A Tramp Starship -- with the added perk that Everything Is New.

This is a nice, flexible setting that allows for a wide range of plots, stolen from inspired by any number of sources. I'm using the d20 Modern/Future rules, so I can pretty much tap into the acres and acres of dead trees that have been wasted on D&D and its d20 kin for the last five years or so for Strange Alien Monsters and the like.

My problem?

I'm drawing a blank!

Anyone know of a good source for adventure seeds that I can adapt to my own setting? Anyone have any adventure ideas?

hinoki, since you're playing in this game, I'll whup you upside the head if you read this thread.

Comments

[waywind.livejournal.com]

Starting question to find out whether any suggested adventure seeds are appropriate: is this hard sci-fi, soft sci-fi, or science fantasy? (That is: ultra-realistic, satisfactorily realistic, or deliberately unrealistic?)

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Unquestionably Soft Sci-Fi. I'll keep the Real Stuff Real (like orbital mechanics and ecological balances) largely real, but the whole premise revolves around FTL (science fantasy that's acceptable in "soft" SF).

As for technology -- that's DEFINITELY Soft SF. Pulp-Era stuff, like antigrav and force fields and pocket particle accellerators.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

I was stuck to add anything, too, until more clarification was given.

Hmm...do the players have a chance to get even with the aliens who shanghied them away? And are they the only ones that has had this happen to? And what were the aliens planning to do with them?

[for the above, I'm reminded of such books as Pournell's "Janisarries", and Forstchen's (sp?) "Lost Regiment" series]

Additional information is also needed; are there other star-faring alien races? Is interstellar commerce common enough for PCs to work as tramp merchants? Or is the grand them of the campaign is to get home, get revenge on the aliens, or soemthing else?

As for ideas for soft high-adventure SF and space fantasy, you could not do wrong by hunting up TSR's old "Star Frontiers" setting and supplements, ditto the same for the old Space Opera RPG (which is somewhere online with the okay of the designers).

There are umpteen Traveller setting books and plot seeds that could be adapted (ie. 101 cargoes, 76 patrons, etc.).

I'd also recommend the SF works of Jack Vance (Demoon Princes and Alastor Cluster series) for humans interacting with alien human cultures, Andre Norton's "Solar Queen" stories for space merchant adventures, ditto CJ Cherry's Merchant and Chanur books, and James Schmitz's "The Witches of Karres" series for whimsical soft SF fantasy with some very interesting ideas.

::B::

[trpeal.livejournal.com]

Man, reading this and howardtayler's recent posts make me realize how much I'd like to play in a SF campaign. I've got Traveller T20 and I'm about two microns away from buying GURPS Transhuman Space. And I'd like to do it in person. The Jadclaw campaign I'm in on RPOL is going fine (even if we have shed a lot of players), but it's not the same. I'm going to have to see if I can convince some of my friends down in Pittsburgh to get a monthly session going.

My problem is that I'm a fairly poor in-person role-player, and an even worse GM.