Fun encounters for a Sci-fi Hex Crawl

[MysticSkyWhale]

I've been working on a new campaign idea that can pretty much be summed up in one sentence: Your characters were abducted by aliens, dropped off near the equator of a habitable world, and told that if you can get to the North Pole, they will give your species the secrets of FTL travel.

Pretty simple, right? In essence it's going to be an open-world hex crawl (which I've never actually run one of those). What do you guys think would be a fun thing to see in a campaign like this? Keep in mind a few things:


No magic. It's a soft sci-fi, Star Trek-esque setting.
Player characters don't have gear they didn't make themselves (except for one thing the aliens gave them)
The thing that the aliens gave them is a yet-to-be-named device that functions as a compass and that tells them which things are toxic to their physiology (akin to telling a dog that chocolate is toxic to it; it does nothing to stop them from eating stupid things or cure them afterward, nor does it warn them about parasites or other foodborne illnesses like salmonella)
All of the fauna on this planet have been genetically engineered by the abductors to be as dangerous as possible. Additionally, some species that the player characters can play as are obligate carnivores.

[Palanan]

Is the broader context something like David Brin’s Uplift series? Are the aliens representing some sort of Galactic Gallimaufrey, and are they using this arena-world to test wolfling species to see if they’re worthy to join?

As far as gengineering the fauna to be as dangerous as possible…are we talking allosaur snipers riding armored titanotheres with laser turrets, or is this more on the ROUS side of things?

Either way, you can’t go wrong with mosasaurs.

[Excession]

The characters are running short on food. If they check, one of them reads as edible to all the others.
Ocean. Hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of it. Storms, doldrums, food and water shortages, predators, the works. Want to build a boat or keep walking around? Possibly not a good one, ocean sailing in a hand-built boat made with jerry-rigged tools is suicidal.
Rainforest. Depending on the type of forest you can barely move through it. Finding a river or coast to raft along is much faster. Sticking above the tree-line along a mountain range may be faster too. Each of these alternatives comes with new risks.
Stumble across an alien ruin or crashed spaceship. Investigation might give shelter, food, new tools, a vehicle, or a lore dump. Perhaps the aliens haven't been entirely honest.
An abandoned camp left behind from a previous run. Same options upon investigation, just lower quality stuff, or lore that turns out to have been made up by the previous contestants.
Obvious, or obviously trapped, resupply drops. The game show is no fun if the monkeys die too fast.
The party stumbles across the tracks of a party travelling in front of them. Ambush, negotiate and trade, or something else?
The party is being followed by another party. What do they want?
A tunnel that was clearly made by an intelligent species. Where does it go? How big are the cave spiders?

[MysticSkyWhale]

Is the broader context something like David Brin’s Uplift series? Are the aliens representing some sort of Galactic Gallimaufrey, and are they using this arena-world to test wolfling species to see if they’re worthy to join?

As far as gengineering the fauna to be as dangerous as possible…are we talking allosaur snipers riding armored titanotheres with laser turrets, or is this more on the ROUS side of things?

Either way, you can’t go wrong with mosasaurs.

The broader context is that the abducted species are being used as entertainment in a sort of Hunger Games arena spanning an entire planet. It's very rare that any singular species gets the reward. As far as the engineering goes, it's more on the ROUS side of things, but every predator is an apex predator with a lot of competition and there are a lot of predators by intentional design.

[MysticSkyWhale]

The characters are running short on food. If they check, one of them reads as edible to all the others.
Ocean. Hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of it. Storms, doldrums, food and water shortages, predators, the works. Want to build a boat or keep walking around? Possibly not a good one, ocean sailing in a hand-built boat made with jerry-rigged tools is suicidal.
Rainforest. Depending on the type of forest you can barely move through it. Finding a river or coast to raft along is much faster. Sticking above the tree-line along a mountain range may be faster too. Each of these alternatives comes with new risks.
Stumble across an alien ruin or crashed spaceship. Investigation might give shelter, food, new tools, a vehicle, or a lore dump. Perhaps the aliens haven't been entirely honest.
An abandoned camp left behind from a previous run. Same options upon investigation, just lower quality stuff, or lore that turns out to have been made up by the previous contestants.
Obvious, or obviously trapped, resupply drops. The game show is no fun if the monkeys die too fast.
The party stumbles across the tracks of a party travelling in front of them. Ambush, negotiate and trade, or something else?
The party is being followed by another party. What do they want?
A tunnel that was clearly made by an intelligent species. Where does it go? How big are the cave spiders?


Also, I love these.

[Glorthindel]

In these situations, I am all for cross-campaign easter eggs.

- Drop in a random old encampment that was occupied by people who seem to have come from a campaign world featured in a previous campaign. Bonus points if an abandoned piece of equipment is eerily similar to something unique carried by one of your players previous characters ;)

- Gelatinous Cube. They are always funny, especially so in a genre/setting/system the players aren't expecting to find them - the players will read and recognise the signs, and discard the warning because they wont think you are diabolical enough to convert one.

[MysticSkyWhale]

- Gelatinous Cube. They are always funny, especially so in a genre/setting/system the players aren't expecting to find them - the players will read and recognise the signs, and discard the warning because they wont think you are diabolical enough to convert one.

lmao that's amazing

[DavidSh]

Semi-giant ants, about the size of a small dog, that completely control a few acres of ground.

Sunflowers from Ringworld, with reflective petals that can, in large enough numbers and on a sunny day, fry anything that comes too close.

A huge herbivorous beast that you could climb on, and seems to offer protection from the predators, but always seems to be slowly walking in the wrong direction.