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Resileaf
2018-06-14, 03:21 PM
Greetings, Playgrounders. As I am preparing my next campaign, a Starfinder game based on the videogame Stellaris, I come to you for opinions for the concept I have in mind and if I am being overambitious.

My basic idea is that the campaign will not have an overarching goal, except for milestone levels, where they will encounter end-game content from the videogame that will be dealt with in a longish quest chain. Everything outside of these milestone levels will involve random, unrelated quests and mission, and foreshadowing quests that hint at the trouble to come. The players themselves start living in a slum, painstakingly saving money to buy their first starship together with which they'll be able to live the space-faring dream.

There will be Stellaris spoilers in this post, so if you wish to not know anything about the game, do not read further.

My intention is for there to be a storyline per level, with a complexity fitting for their current level, and for the campaign to go all the way to level 20. I would therefore like ideas of specific Stellaris events that I might be able to use in-game. What I currently have in mind is for each 5 levels to involve an end-game crisis.

Level 5: The Prethoryn Scourge
- Or more acurately, the remnants of it. 40 years after the Swarm invaded the galaxy, what appears to be an infestation has been located on a fringe planet.
- The players are one of several groups of mercenaries such as they who have been hired to make light of the situation, and see if it's a full-blown infestation.
- Their primary goal is to capture the queen of the nest if they can. Otherwise, they must kill her. To prevent being overwhelmed by swarms of Prethoryns, each group is given an emitter that can shock and knock out all Prethoryn around them (with a cooldown on use to prevent overwhelming).
- The Queen is not interested in conflict, and will be willing to meet with the quest givers. Another group of mercenaries, however, will attempt to kill the queen out of revenge for the billions of lives lost to the Prethoryn 40 years ago. The players will have to decide if they protect the queen or let her die to the mercenaries.

Level 10: The Extra-dimensional invaders (I choose them second because it would be hard to make a lvl 15 questline around creatures you can't fight on foot)
- The players will be tasked with studying a rift in space from which energy seems to be leaking. Upon arrival, they will watch the rift widen as thousands of energy beings emerge from it.
- As the players' ship would not be able to fight such creatures, at least not so many, they will have to escape and warn other planets.
- Their main involvement in the questline would be to help with the evacuation of besieged planets, participate in hit and runs against the invaders, and relay messages between armies so that they can be fought against.
- Although the players will not be the key to the defeat of the invaders, their aid will be greatly appreciated and they will gain a large measure of notoriety.

Level 15: The Contingency
- If there are androids in the group, they will be at risk of being controlled by the Contingency, requiring aid from the other players to escape it.
- The players will fight an army of robots invading a planet, protecting an important figure (the quest giver from the Prethoryn questline).
- They will then witness an entire planet transforming into a robot factory, one of four that has been created to destroy all civilizations.
- They will participate in a strike against one of the factories, and personally invade the core of the planet-factory to destroy it.
- The core of the Contingency will be located, and a large fleet will be sent to attack it, but will fail. More planet-factories emerge.
- As a last ditch effort to protect the galaxy, the players will seek what is known as the Cybrex, which will turn out is part of the Contingency's programming that has been cast out to prevent it from stopping the cleansing of the galaxy.
- The Cybrex will aid them by allowing them to enter the Contingency's core to delete its mainframe from the inside. The players will fight the Contingency's attempt to stop them, culminating with a giant mech that the Contingency will have uploaded itself into to fight them directly. Upon its destruction, the robot factories will go deactivate, allowing the galaxy to destroy them for good.
- The players' contribution will make them known galaxy-wide.

Level 20: The End of the Cycle
- Throughout leveling from 16 to 20, the players will be involved in plots that will foreshadow the End, but without being able to prevent it from harvesting the strongest empire of the galaxy.
- Upon reaching lvl 20, they will be called by the questgiver from the Prethoryn questline for an important meeting in a fringe area of the galaxy.
- He will tell them how, nearly fifty years ago, during the height of the Prethoryn invasion, the empire he comes from suddenly saw itself grow in strength unexplainably. Farms produced twice the food, mines found twice the usual resources, scientists discovered scientific breakthroughs in half the time they usually did. Literally overnight, the empire was twice as strong than it used to be. Long he's pondered why, and a prominent psionic in the government claims he knows why. He wants to players to take the psionic to him.
- The players will have to protect the psionic from the empire's agents, and will learn about the pact that was done fifty years ago and how he fears that it will doom everyone.
- The players will then try to convince the governments of some planets to leave the empire's control, but generally to no avail.
- On the 50th anniversary of the pact, the empire's worlds are destroyed instantly. Every planet, every ship, every citizen perish at the same time to be claimed by the End, a massive entity that appears at the Empire's capital planet. The only survivors are the psionic and those who followed him and escaped the empire in time.
- The players must convince the galaxy to unite against the End, and a plan to defeat it will be devised. It will rely on the players taking a psionic artifact into the heart of the End, and use it to destroy it from the inside. To keep the End from realizing the plan, the combined forces of the galaxy will attack it at the same time.
- It will turn out that the artifact was not intended to destroy the End. What it actually does is preserve the players' minds so they are not simply swallowed by the End and added to the billions of souls that fuel it. They will converse with the End itself, a godlike entity that is dedicated to destroying the entire multiverse under the justification that existence itself is temporary, so better to get rid of it rather than let universes die slowly and painfully.
- Defeating the End will require dying to it constantly, as it obliterates their souls over and over (the psionic artifact they brought regenerates them constantly). As time passes, the End weakens, allowing the players to contest to it more fairly. Through constant attrition and determination, the End will finally yield and abandon its goal of destroying the multiverse in respect to the players' tenacity.

I hope this wasn't too rambling or badly explained. I'm excited to start it, and hope that I'll be able to live up to the grand ambition I've set for myself. Any comments or criticisms (or even ideas for questlines) will be appreciated.

Andor13
2018-06-14, 07:40 PM
Greetings, Playgrounders. As I am preparing my next campaign, a Starfinder game based on the videogame Stellaris, I come to you for opinions for the concept I have in mind and if I am being overambitious.

My intention is for there to be a storyline per level, with a complexity fitting for their current level, and for the campaign to go all the way to level 20. I would therefore like ideas of specific Stellaris events that I might be able to use in-game. What I currently have in mind is for each 5 levels to involve an end-game crisis.

Sounds amazing.

For extra fun, for the level 1-5 range, you might start them on a pre-ftl planet currently undergoing the hilarious covert infiltration plot line. Perhaps they are recruited by the "aliens" to help stop the turncoat from spoiling the takeover, (it is kind of in your worlds best interest after all.) Afterwards they are heros to some, but a significant fraction of their homeworld's population that has not embraced Kang and Kodoss wants to kill them, so the aliens give them a ship as a reward.


Level 10: The Extra-dimensional invaders (I choose them second because it would be hard to make a lvl 15 questline around creatures you can't fight on foot)
- The players will be tasked with studying a rift in space from which energy seems to be leaking. Upon arrival, they will watch the rift widen as thousands of energy beings emerge from it.
- As the players' ship would not be able to fight such creatures, at least not so many, they will have to escape and warn other planets.


Just as a general bit of advice, never, ever count on PCs to run from an encounter no matter how outnumbered and out-gunned they are. You would think "You're in Firefly, the enemy is a fleet of star destroyers, who are also ghosts." would be enough, but there's always some guy who will say "I think we can take 'em"

Your players might not be that dumb, but don't count on it.

Tohron
2018-06-14, 11:06 PM
I think you're overdoing it a bit on the number of endgame crises they're facing. Facing a remnant of the Scourge relatively early seems fine, but having the Unbidden AND the Contingency show up seems like it could cause some crisis fatigue. Since the Extradimensional Invaders aren't really suited to players fighting on foot, I'd suggest dropping them and replacing them with something like an Awakened Fallen Empire, which could have players doing things like infiltrating facilities in worlds they recently conquered to capture tech for reverse engineering.

Also, if you're doing the Contingency, don't forget how it sends out android infiltrators/impersonators disguised as biological species. Creates all sorts of fun opportunities for paranoia.

Just another thing, if you're looking for a way to start the game off with a bang, having the players meet in a planetwide revolt on a border world recently captured by Fanatic Purifiers would definitely do the trick.

Resileaf
2018-06-15, 08:23 AM
Sounds amazing.

For extra fun, for the level 1-5 range, you might start them on a pre-ftl planet currently undergoing the hilarious covert infiltration plot line. Perhaps they are recruited by the "aliens" to help stop the turncoat from spoiling the takeover, (it is kind of in your worlds best interest after all.) Afterwards they are heros to some, but a significant fraction of their homeworld's population that has not embraced Kang and Kodoss wants to kill them, so the aliens give them a ship as a reward.


Hmm, a good idea. I'll consider how I can make it work.



Just as a general bit of advice, never, ever count on PCs to run from an encounter no matter how outnumbered and out-gunned they are. You would think "You're in Firefly, the enemy is a fleet of star destroyers, who are also ghosts." would be enough, but there's always some guy who will say "I think we can take 'em"

Your players might not be that dumb, but don't count on it.

That is fair, but I do want them to witness the beginning of the invasion. Perhaps show obviously superior warships getting destroyed will do the trick...


I think you're overdoing it a bit on the number of endgame crises they're facing. Facing a remnant of the Scourge relatively early seems fine, but having the Unbidden AND the Contingency show up seems like it could cause some crisis fatigue. Since the Extradimensional Invaders aren't really suited to players fighting on foot, I'd suggest dropping them and replacing them with something like an Awakened Fallen Empire, which could have players doing things like infiltrating facilities in worlds they recently conquered to capture tech for reverse engineering.

Also, if you're doing the Contingency, don't forget how it sends out android infiltrators/impersonators disguised as biological species. Creates all sorts of fun opportunities for paranoia.

Just another thing, if you're looking for a way to start the game off with a bang, having the players meet in a planetwide revolt on a border world recently captured by Fanatic Purifiers would definitely do the trick.

Good points. Perhaps the Unbidden would be better off be used as a minor crisis rather than a full-blown one. A quest to close the rift without it being a major milestone event.
I'm not sure about starting the campaign like that though. I would rather ease the players into the adventure, if only because starting it with a bang gives the impression that everything following it will be constantly as action-packed. Although I suppose that buying their ship just in time to escape a Fanatic Purifier invasion would definitely be quite memorable. A bit of a Starbound beginning, barely escaping a doomed planet.

Telok
2018-06-15, 10:32 AM
You're should go over the spaseship stuff in detail. From what it sounds like the default Starfinder spaceship rules may not be what you want, they're a disassociated board game that works in parallel to the rest of the game.

You may want to check the pazio forums for homebrew on the ship stuff.

Resileaf
2018-06-15, 10:37 AM
You're should go over the spaseship stuff in detail. From what it sounds like the default Starfinder spaceship rules may not be what you want, they're a disassociated board game that works in parallel to the rest of the game.

You may want to check the pazio forums for homebrew on the ship stuff.

Thanks. Will check it out.

Resileaf
2018-06-18, 09:02 AM
I ponder the best way to include a Worm-in-the-Waiting storyline. How to really make it properly freaky and incomprehensible. Cosmic horror at its best, without the Worm being made as this big dumb evil, since for the most part, it isn't.
What was shall be, what shall be was.
Would need, uh, something like increasingly common disappearances, followed by reappearances, eldritch temples being uncovered in places where they shouldn't be...
What was shall be, what shall be was.
Perhapswfuturehversionsaoftthewcharactersathemselv essactingwreallyiweird.llbe

comk59
2018-06-24, 11:31 AM
Thanks. Will check it out.

I would also look at the Rogue Trader ship combat. While it is more than a little clunky at times, it has a real sense of scale to it. Plus, ever since it went out of print, all the books are readily available for free online.

Also it includes fighters, bombers, point defense, and torpedoes, which are Stellaris' bread and butter.

Resileaf
2018-06-25, 04:39 PM
I would also look at the Rogue Trader ship combat. While it is more than a little clunky at times, it has a real sense of scale to it. Plus, ever since it went out of print, all the books are readily available for free online.

Also it includes fighters, bombers, point defense, and torpedoes, which are Stellaris' bread and butter.

Ooh, nice. Thanks for the tip! Will check it out too.

Andor13
2018-06-25, 07:29 PM
Ooh, nice. Thanks for the tip! Will check it out too.

You will need to rejigger a lot of the numbers and fluff away from "This is a light corvette, so it's only `1.5 miles long with a crew of a mere 5,000." But that's not hard.

Also I'm playing Stellaris again and it's your fault. On the upside my psionic fungus is doing quite well at infesting the galaxy.

Resileaf
2018-06-26, 12:21 PM
You will need to rejigger a lot of the numbers and fluff away from "This is a light corvette, so it's only `1.5 miles long with a crew of a mere 5,000." But that's not hard.

Also I'm playing Stellaris again and it's your fault. On the upside my psionic fungus is doing quite well at infesting the galaxy.

I refuse to apologize. You will have to live with your Stellaris choices. >:D