Designing Cool Sci-Fi Worlds - Game Master Tips

[@rokiyo]

Oh noooo that intro, you're describing my players. One of them is an actual geologist. It's painful.

[@Remorpho]

that intro is so spot on. it happened the first time I ran a sci-fi campaign.

[@sabotabby3372]

Mine got into a fight, disabled artificial gravity, and preceeded to remember newton's 3rd law as they tried to have gunfights after which they tried just using melee attacks (which ended up worse for obvious reasons)

[@hayothegunosaurus]

my players stole an alien dreadnaught, destroyed it on accident, went back for a second and also destroyed that one too

[@cattrucker8257]

Floating cubes of jelly, you say? Looking forward to a sci-fi game with an advanced space empire of gelatinous cubes.

[@jeffstormer2547]

"They might relish outsiders..." They might like outsiders *with* relish.

[@Jackb290]

"We been traveling through space now , since we arrived in space " That's NASA level talk right there Guy shall be the leader of our ship (I don't know if I spelled your name right)

[@robertnett9793]

Around 26:00 It can be cold on a CO2 rich planet. It's just further away from it's star. It however indicates, that there is most probably no plantlife (at least not earthlike plantlife) there. Oxygen is a very instable gas, that turns into CO2 or other oxides and has to be replenished regularly. Matter of fact - finding Oxygene in an atmosphere is a very big indicator for the presence of (plant) life on the planet.

[@NumbSkull2602]

I ran a Hyperlanes (a Sci Fi setting for the D&D 5e rules) game where I started them in a crashed ship on an asteroid field, with pirates coming after them. They descended down to the planet in the remains of the ship to a volcanic planet with acid rain, to a trade city with a huge shipping yard built into the side of a cliff face. The entire culture was underground and all light was artificial. It had a huge crime syndicate and weird aliens everywhere. It was really fun. The next game I ran was just a war with the Illithid where they blew up their core planet with an Anti-Matter Warhead, but their planet I thought was cool. It was black and dead, there was no sun in their system, no light what so ever. The players had either torches or night-Vision, there was a huge series of underground caverns below the ruins of an ancient Alien civilisation. I’d really like to design more planets

[@kris.monroe]

Thank you for this! That Donjon Planet Generator is a MASSIVE shout. Thank you so much!

[@PatrickLohKamp]

Yeah Donjon's was originally started for people playing Traveller RPG. He has some GREAT work for all kinds of gamers.

[@stephenrider6107]

'planetary system half a klick away' must be using a different definition of klick.

[@spacecat85]

or very, very small planetary systems.

[@JacksonOwex]

@@spacecat85 I mean you do have to travel to systems so at some point the system WILL BE half a kilometer away!

[@alexeisenhauer5874]

It’s actually a “Khlikk” which that star system uses to measure twice the distance you currently are from the planet 😂 Half the distance there and back again.

[@SpiritWolf1966]

I enjoy all of How to be a Great GM videos

[@toddzircher6168]

Fun tip, a planet of methane, hydrogen, gasoline, etc. will not burn without oxygen.

[@gnarthdarkanen7464]

Careful there... check your numbers again... hydrogen is considerably more violently unstable than oxygen, technically... You do have a point that with only the one constituent of a "fire triangle" you won't get "ordinary fire"... but it doesn't completely eliminate the chance of a dramatic chemical reaction. OR maybe, not so fun tip... don't assume the GM doesn't have a chemical engineering degree stashed up his "ahem... tool bag" somewhere. ;o)

[@claws61821]

There ARE, in fact, a few chemicals which will self-immolate in vacuum without the presence of additional oxygen. Though, as I understand it, they are as a rule greater oxygenators than oxygen itself is.

[@potatoproductions1397]

That intro sounds like the players were trying to play kerbal space program as a TTRPG

[@Elkator955]

I've just decided to start a starfinder campaign not five days ago. The cosmic signs have aligned.

[@TheCyberSatyr]

I just started a science fantasy campaign for my players after I got bored of running a standard high fantasy campaign. Running the encounters similar to encounters in Terry Pratchett books. Allows me to bullshit explanations fairly simply lol. First session? Love it. Players started by fleeing a planet, slipping through a blockade, decided to go across the galaxy to a shady planet to get gear/assistance/money to take on the armada conquering the planet "Latinolandia" lol. On the way, they found a derelict ship with infested fungal xenomorph-anteater like aliens, eggs, as well as a giant space jellyfish from which the xeno's spawned thats stomach was a blackhole that began eating the ship they were looting. 3 of the players almost died, lmfao, but everyone enjoyed it. They were able to recover the broken hyperdrive of the ship, an extra space suit (4 players, only had 3 suits to start), and some medkits. Which might not seem like a lot, but the economy in my galaxy is a lot stingier than d&d traditionally (using 5e rules, heavily modifying aspects)

[@Luuute]

Last year I PMd you about a Starfinder video. This video has satisfied me

[@alecciarosewater7438]

According to Stellaris every spacefaring civilization is built around four different ethics - Xenophobe/Xenophile, Authoritarian/Egalitarian, Militarist/Pacifist, and Materialist/Spiritualist. Conflict becomes likely when empires have opposing ethics, and civil unrest becomes likely when individuals try to follow ethics that are opposed to the government's. It turns out that this setup is perfect for coming up with a space civilization on-the-fly As a few quick examples: Militarist/Authoritarian is your classic space conquest empire Militarist/Xenophobe is how you end up with a species that tries to kill everybody else A Pacifist/Xenophobe society would isolate themselves wanting nothing to do with anyone else ever Militarist/Egalitarian would vote their admirals into/out of office and then try to conquer the empires listed above An Authoritarian/Materialist society might be a small nation that tries to obsessively control what they already have instead of expanding An Egalitarian/Materialist might be a nation of technological wonders run by a shadowy cabal of mad scientists Spiritualist/Egalitarian/Xenophile could be a collective of several different religions rather then having a single unifying belief

[@caesersseizrs]

Guy, great vids, I use your info from all your videos constantly in a Traveller setting. Homebrew FTW

[@calebharendt6924]

I totally needed this thank you

[@TF8ase]

This was really. Good I loved the examples you gave thanks so much 😊

[@Rohnon]

Simple: Add Chainswords. Add Space Daemons. Run DeusVult.exe. *FOR THE EMPEROR!*

[@MrSteveK1138]

Death to the False Emperor!

[@GrauW0lf]

@@MrSteveK1138 Tough talk for someone in heavy bolter range.

[@kevinmerrifield4767]

Wow, Guy, you're giving me flashbacks to the old days of Traveller when it was the gold standard for sci-fi. Rolling up the sector and universal world profiles used to be laughably termed "solo play". It was time consuming but a cakewalk compared to advanced ship design.That was more like pulling teeth. ;( I wished my players would have tried a team of scouts. Then they could have done the planet design, er I mean discovery and surveying as part of game play.

[@gnarthdarkanen7464]

Just worth the mention, I found Gurps "Vehicles" to be a nearly infinite help in regards to ship design... The overt obsession with math at the levels of RPG's tends to work against much creativity "in house" as it were... The other "favorite" reference I tend toward is "Fire Fusion and Steel" and multi-platform splat-book source that helps with some alternative technicals and a chapter-by-chapter acknowledgement to the basic systems for engineering a "proper" ship. At the end of the rabbit hole, however... sometimes, it's just more fun to scratch together a likely enough visual representation, and hand-wave a bunch of "crap"... as long as it's not plot-hook level interesting for you. ;o)

[@kevinmerrifield4767]

@@gnarthdarkanen7464 You're dead right about maths Vs creativity, especially in the older RPGs. Funny you should mention Fire Fusion and Steel or FFS, Fruedian slip there ;) as I recall it. That exactly what I was thinking of. Ah, curse my need to create Star Destoryers! I never did try Gurps. I was more Cyberpunk / Warhammer40k and now Star Wars. Thankfully newer RPG systems are more about keywords and points allocation than equations. I still love the Traveller character creation though, plus the quirkiness of T4 task resolution and I'm leaning on those for my own system. But the one I'm trying out now, Mindjammer is FATE-based, built on the old Traveller's sector/system/planet design and pretty solid but more friendly for the Time crunch and without a need for an accountancy degree. ;) I have to Say though the new Alien RPG looks very tempting.

[@gnarthdarkanen7464]

@@kevinmerrifield4767 The only issue about Gurps is the (early on) inclination that some of us get to try to run the WHOLE system... and in any practical sense, that can't really be done. Gurps is a Generic Universal Role Playing System... so it's entirely designed for anyone to be able to run any kind of game in any kind of setting... like buying your own lego factory in a single book (well now it's three) ... give or take supplements you find intriguing. Admittedly, there's a little math... BUT nothing even as complicated as "FFS" (and why I originally went with the full title...lolz). Vehicles had some "dubiously complex" business about exacting crew quarters and minimal space, but those volume equivalents were roughly approximate anyway, so you'd "shoot for close enough and eyeball it"... as some of us say it. Otherwise, it's modular, and you can drop the mechanical rules you don't care to use (like for too damn much book-keeping, who cares how fast fuel burns... stick to "Range as a stat" rather than hair-splitting). It plays as far as YOU want to take the math, or just "damn the math, full creative ahead!" (if that's more your thing). When I first perused the Basic Set Third Edition... I was confused, and withdrawn... When I was introduced to it "the easy way" by playing... I asked a couple questions about mechanics I'd seen in the book, and was referred to that same, "It's a system, not a game... you MAKE your own game" from the text... and it didn't take long to fall in love. It's more work than a "Traditional RPG", like D&D, since you DO make your own game ... BUT it's simpler than building your own entire RPG from scratch, since you already have the basics, dice, stats, relationships between stat's and skills, some ideas about themes and powers, spells, magic and costs... and you can do whatever else you want... and drop what you find "overtly labor intensive". Now, I've long played under THE (#1) Cardinal GM'ing rule. "Never EVER let the rules get in the way of the game." BUT Gurps is a MONDO short-cut to that perfect setting with the exact archetypes and variations YOU want to do. While I still have a soft-spot for D&D , I've loved Gurps ever since. Can't say I've done much with Fate, BUT... that's not to say it isn't a cool system. In any case, if you happen to look into Gurps, it's better to remember it won't play well if you try to include EVERY part of the system. ;o)

[@kevinmerrifield4767]

@@gnarthdarkanen7464 It sounds interesting and as a Fallout fan too, I might have gotten into it back in the good old days (since it was Gurps before it was SPECIAL system). But my group has always been very keen on rules that evoke specific settings. TBH, it's only since I've started writing my own rules set that I've tinkered with a somewhat generic system and even then it's for three (possibly four) separate but still specific settings. Some of my difficulty was just due to running Traveller, pre computer spread sheet, in fact pre internet and I've never found a reason to dive back into any crunchy RPGs since, (40k's percentile and 3.5 OGL Conan excepting) and it seems like the modern trajectory in game design is toward lighter "drama" and "coffe table" games that frankly seem to lack enough mechanics to support enough gritty immersion for old hands like me and my group. The first thing I want to do with FATE is add more complexity. ;) That's what Mindjammer is really - FATE with Traveller systems tacked on and ironically, then kickstarted as a setting for Traveller. It's probably a matter of changing tastes in marketing relative to current RPG theory but then, even my taste has moved towards a little less crunch these days. Honestly, who's got the time anymore :( What I'm aiming for now is less about cutting out the math because it's math and slows the game (although it absolutely does), and more about cutting it out as a obstacle to immersion, creativity and roleplaying for my players. I am always on the lookout for new concepts and elegant mechanics though, so I'll keep an eye out for and see what ideas from GURPS I can "homage" :) Cheers.

[@gnarthdarkanen7464]

@@kevinmerrifield4767 More or less... that's exactly how I handle it... though it's more convenient (due to experience) for me to convert to Gurps' 3D6 based system... OR just chuck a D20 at it and call it a day (less crunching, lazy)... D&D converts almost without bother. AND books like FFS provide just enough terms in one or two designs (keeping them simple for illustration) that there isn't a high call for dubious math (the kind that REALLY clogs the game) to convert from and to several other systems... like Traveller (2000). ;o)

[@Frederic_S]

I loved this long in deep videos of the past.

[@99zxk]

"Forget Earth..." "What if 80% of it is ocean..." Sounds very similar to Earth.

[@Flemmi]

Funny just started a Stars Without Numbers Adventure. Your timing is good.

[@TheZiiFamily]

My giant cyclopsian robots will be pleased

[@TF8ase]

This point very much sounds like a text adventure. 21:38 You meet a Manta Ray. Do you ... 1. Disgorge Fish 2. Float backwards towards them. ... Do you

[@razorboy251]

Well this is a rather timely video as I am trying to design a sci-fi world right now!

[@Sethrir]

Do you practice the Eddie Izzard voice or do you sound great naturally?

[@budjy1]

Wonderdraft + Planet maker makes beautiful custom planets

[@Erika-gn1tv]

You know, that intro sounds like a good time. Think of all the Wikipedia articles to be scoured!

[@aaronkennedyduffy5085]

All we need now is a steampunk guide

[@jbranum3087]

Star trek adventures crossover: the pc's get to an anomalous liquid nebula. Objects entering the nebula create a breathable atmosphere relative to the gravity they possess. The liquid of the nebula is extremely flammable (like the phlogiston in ancient Greek mythology). It's the home of the species that Adonnis. Female q shows up to cause havoc and observe. Pc's encounter spelljammer ships and dnd worlds.

[@geoffreycannon2197]

I've been using donjon since I started concepting out my spelljammer campaign! Ha!

[@warrenokuma7264]

I have been using Traveller.

[@MrSteveK1138]

The intro sums up our pain as a GM...*buys the Starfinder Deck of Many Worlds*

[@captainmanx5615]

Monty Python voice! Turtle people, this must exist. Water is H2O. Can a planet have water but no oxygen?

[@MisterJasro]

Yhea. Earth used to not have oxygen (O2). Actually, when it got introduced, it killed off almost all life on the planet. Look for the great oxidation event

[@ericmagnuson8719]

I loved the intro, but as a chemist, the players will probably decide not to ask me after a while. (Evil grin)

[@Zadrixvaz]

If it is a warfare Planet??

[@yungo1rst]

list the amount of factions on the planet who are looking for assistance on the level of the players. there could even be missions of retrieval of assets like tanks or aircraft behind enemy lines and the player ship could be on the fastest orbital route to get to that hotzone. if you mean the planet against the players, they could detain the players assets if unable to turn back with the ftl engine they have.

[@maynardz03]

My players do things like this and its both fun and stupid Player: Is the air breathable? Me: Yes Player: Will everything set on fire or explode or someshit if I fire a gun Me: No Player: Cool, lets go look for dope shit to steal

[@tylercondon5386]

One thing kills me is that only carbon and silicon based lifeforms should exist

[@thenoremac2685]

I created a series of tables and formulas in google sheets that will randomly generate the physical statistics of a planet and star system for me. Sometimes I get some interesting results.

[@scottmantooth8785]

*oooh LOOK!!!! another strange uncharted and obviously primitive planet...let's call it UberBooger and then make fun of the indigenous inhabitant's and impress them by making fire...who's with me?*