PDA

View Full Version : Collect the Set Plots



Kami2awa
2016-06-19, 03:25 AM
Firstly, if you play games around the South West of the UK, stay out of this thread :) massive spoiler alerts.



Space. The final adventure. This is the quest of the Astral Ship Cygnus*...

* I'll think of a better name later.

I'm currently preparing a Spelljammer-esque campaign set around a fantasy equivalent of our solar system, based loosely on debunked ideas of how the planets are, as well as many ideas stolen from old sci fi and the steampunk books of Robert Rankin.
The system used will be Pathfinder.

For a very quick summary of the setting, Earth is an industrial revolution, Steampunk world, inhabited principally by humans but fairly cosmopolitan. Venus is a jungle world, cut off by its cloud cover and inhabited by the elves. Oh, and it has dinosaurs.

Mars is a desert world with mysterious canals and pyramids, inhabited by the orcs, who may or may not be the vestige of a lost, advanced orcish civilisation.

The asteroid belt is inhabited by the dwarves - they had a planet once, but it broke up to form the belt (some say it was the dwarves' fault - they Delved Too Deep). The Drow live in ice palaces on the dark side of the moon, because who doesn't want an ice palace on the moon?

So, in summary, Orcs are from Mars, Elves are from Venus :P

Politically, Earth and Venus are colonial powers, with the humans as relative newcomers and the elves as a former, declining power. Their colonies are on the moons of the outer planets, and on Mars (which the orcs aren't happy about). This puts the dwarves in a powerful trading position as the waystation between the inner and outer planets. The outer moons are much more conventionally sci-fi, inhabited by various alien creatures - Europa is the domain of the Aboleth, and they are at war with the humans there. Note all of the planets in the solar system are habitable in this setting - it is all based on Medieval to early 20th century ideas of space. I am still undecided whether or not to put the Earth in the centre of the solar system.

The plot I have in mind at the moment is this: The PCs happen upon a drifting, alien Astral Ship (a flying ship capable of travelling world to world). A survivor on the ship tells them that it comes from outside the solar system, having passed through a gateway between stars (the Astral ships are not capable of FLT travel, although they are extremely fast, making crossing the interplanetary distance akin to crossing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail). The gateway has been created by an invading alien species - the ship, its spirit (i.e. its AI) and its survivors are effectively a refugee from that invasion.

There is a piece of ancient tech on Mars which can close the gateway - this has happened before, and the Martians developed it for this very purpose. However, it requires a power source consisting of a number of items (as yet, undecided as to what form these MacGuffins take). Unfortunately, colonialists from Venus and Earth long ago stole the items - er, sorry, I mean acquired them for research purposes.

So ultimately what I have in mind is a collect-the-set plot. Trouble is, I think these are a little overused, and I've previously been in a campaign along similar lines with this group (collecting pieces of an artefact that would restore the flow of life energy and souls between the prime material and the other planes). I think, however, such a story can be a great way to have a quest across many otherwise unconnected parts of a world. What are people's opinions on this? Is it overused?

Knaight
2016-06-19, 04:08 AM
It's generally overused. With that said, this might be a place where you make an exception, as it's both a more plausible collect the set plot than most, and one that can hopefully be at least partially circumvented in places.

Yora
2016-06-19, 05:32 AM
Instead of hunting just for the content of a box with spare parts, I would instead go with having the players look for alternative things that could be use to repair the machine. One of them might be an old part that is still sitting around in some lab that can be cleaned up and used. But for other things the players might have to find some rare minerals they need to dig up, or they need to find a very rare specialist who can build a piece but wants something in return.

Mutazoia
2016-06-19, 09:24 AM
I guess my questions would be more technical.

If the aliens can open the gate, what is to prevent them from simply opening it again immediately after the PC's close it? Can it only be opened for an hour, once every 12k years, when Mercury is aligned with Sagittarius?

What makes our solar system so attractive to a race of invading aliens, that they would keep trying to pry open our front door every few thousand years?

After however many thousands of years since the last attempted invasion, and after being picked apart for "research materials", would the ancient door-stop even work, even if all the part were recovered?

Maybe, instead of trying to recover the parts, the PC's are trying to build a new machine, based on ancient technical drawings. So they will be trying to find people who can translate the ancient language, people who can make sense of crazy advanced tech, find the rare raw materials, find someplace that can actually process the raw materials into working parts as well as finding a way to bankroll the project, all while trying to convince the rest of the solar system that the threat is real and keeping the various governments from seizing their new Astral Ship of alien construction, for "research purposes".

Kami2awa
2016-06-19, 06:38 PM
Instead of hunting just for the content of a box with spare parts, I would instead go with having the players look for alternative things that could be use to repair the machine. One of them might be an old part that is still sitting around in some lab that can be cleaned up and used. But for other things the players might have to find some rare minerals they need to dig up, or they need to find a very rare specialist who can build a piece but wants something in return.

I really like this idea; I did intend to have the gate powered by a planetary alignment, so it makes sense that the Martian device might require something special from several planets (those in the alignment). This will allow for a lot of exploration and at least a visit to each world. Giving the campaign a weird science feel of reverse engineering the Martian tech fits the setting too, though I'd not go as far as constructing a completely new device as suggested.

As regards getting the alien ship stolen by researchers, that might happen too, but the solar system within the setting is highly diverse, with many odd ship designs from the outer planets, and so an alien-looking ship is not going to cause as much surprise as you might think.