System generation


General Discussion


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Hi folks.

I've recently started GMing a starfinder game with a group of friends. We are all pathfinder veterans, but are trying our hand at starfinder.

When I asked the group what they wanted from a game, they all said the same thing. "We want to be explorers."

A fine goal for a space game, but it presented a problem for me as a GM. I've only got so much time to prep. Far to little time to build an entire star system out full of worlds, adventures, excitement, and story hooks, only to have the PC's make one stop and move on to the next shiny.

My solution, being the nerd that I am, (proudly) was to write some code for a star system and adventure generator that a GM can load up, hit a button, and have an entire star system filled with planets, anomalies, baddies, story hooks, and what not.

Its a way to generate endless content for players that they can enjoy or not, and save a ton of time for a busy GM.

What I'm asking here, is I need content. The generator is still a work in progress, and its going to take me a lot of time to fill it in with story hooks and adventure ideas, so I thought I'd ask the community for help. I'll be releasing it to the public for free once finished.

So here is what I need if anyone feels compelled to help:

1. Space story hooks. Examples would be:
"A distress beacon on a nearby planet is pulsing."
"A battle between two ships is taking place."
"A ship crash lands on a nearby planet."
2. On planet story hooks.
"A colony is under attack by pirates."
"Crash survivors are being hunted by space dinosaurs"
"Kobolds stole someones baby." You get the idea.

3. Aliens: The tool includes an encounter generator, which is useless without a bunch of cool alien races and baddies to plug into it. All I'd need are racial mods and special abilities, I can handle the rest.

I'm also open to any ideas for features at this time, but my initial goal is that it'll be able to make a star system, some planets, maybe ships or stations, wormholes, etc, and some story hooks.

A GM will still have to take those and fill in details appropriate for the party, but its a start.

Thanks in advance for your kind support. :)


3. My moderately strong advice is to save mechanical encounter generation for when the Alien Archive comes out. NPC design is not super intuitive for the game that Starfinder's developers intend it to be. You should not throw enemies built like PCs against the PCs. NPCs are not like PCs and you will benefit from many NPCs to use, and to use as examples, when building encounters.

1.
"The Hellknights are chasing a ship that claims to be innocent with intent to destroy it."
"Space evangelists decide the PC's souls are in dire peril, and will stop at nothing to convert them."

2.
"Late-medieval societies have formed and are shooting at each other with early gunpowder weapons in a bloody war."
"An underground installation is emitting a unknown radiation, but the ship's priest is unwaveringly certain that they intend to build a weapon that can kill gods.


Space
*Passive Sensors detect a weird energy signature. If the ship moves in any direction other than closer, the energy signature follows, maintaining the same distance.
*Discover a perfectly fine starship just floating along. There is no distress signal nor any signs of life/undeath. Boarding to look for clues and looting is safe, but attempting to take control of starship causes s#*! to go sideways.
*Space "gremlins" got on board last time you docked/landed your starship. They are now running around your ship, dealing enough damage to key components to cause various systems to gain the Glitching condition.
*The delivery you where asked to make wakes up early from cryo-sleep. Either hostile creature like "Alien" or innocent forced into slavery.

Planet
*Some asshat left a bunch off-world creature on the planet. They're breeding like crazy and decimating the indigenous wildlife and/or plant-life.
*Perform an emergency landing due to a critical component allowing space flight is about to break. Play the barter trade game with the locals to get what you need to repair it.


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McAllister wrote:
3. My moderately strong advice is to save mechanical encounter generation for when the Alien Archive comes out. NPC design is not super intuitive for the game that Starfinder's developers intend it to be. You should not throw enemies built like PCs against the PCs. NPCs are not like PCs and you will benefit from many NPCs to use, and to use as examples, when building encounters.

I completely agree with you here, so let me dive a bit deeper into how I've having it work.

The program will need to know 3 things.

1. Average party level.
2. Number of party members.
3. How difficult the GM would like the encounter to be. (trivial, very easy, easy, average, hard, very hard, epic)

On the back end, each monster on record will be given a challenge rating weight, and a role weight.

It won't be perfect math, but in theory it will give the GM the skeleton of an encounter to use for the party.

Its not meant to be a perfect tool to generate content, it'll be meant to save the GM some time. It'll still be up to them to craft their game.

That being said, yes, I plan to get as much as I can from the alien beastiary when it comes out. Balance will be ongoing.

And thank you for your feedback.


1. Attacked by pirates! Can lead to either damaged system, or seeking a bounty/revenge.


1

  • The ship has become infested.(1)
  • A drow noble family is running a false flag attack to try to make it look like the Eoxians are trying to spark the tensions between Veskarium and the rest of the Pact Worlds again. In truth their matron has made a deal with the Swarm, who will stay out of the Golarion system (for now) and instead confine itself to the Veskarium in exchange for the chaos the war will cause. Your party found a secure datastick with all of this information on it that turns out to be a pilot to a new holovid series an enterprising director in the Diaspora was trying to sell to one of the networks.
  • An AbadarCorp freighter stranded between Akiton and Aballon is sending out a distress beacon. Their Drift Drive malfunctioned and shunted them to real space leaving itself behind, and now they're stranded and running out of food. They can't leave the ship behind, and can make the rest of the trip at sublight speed, but need you to make a series of supply runs since their vessel has all the alacrity of an arthritic sloth.
  • There's something on the wing.(2)

(1)credit to Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, Paramount, et al.
(2)credit to cat meff of Deviantart per URL.


Awesome, thanks all. Adding these in. Keep em coming.


The list grows, from here and other sources:

"A distress beacon on a nearby planet is pulsing.",
"A battle between two ships is taking place.",
"A ship crash lands on a nearby planet.",
"The Hellknights are chasing a ship that claims to be innocent with intent to destroy it.",
"Space evangelists decide the PC's souls are in dire peril, and will stop at nothing to convert them.",
"Late-medieval societies have formed and are shooting at each other with early gunpowder weapons in a bloody war.",
"An underground installation is emitting a unknown radiation, but the ship's priest is unwaveringly certain that they intend to build a weapon that can kill gods.",
"Passive Sensors detect a weird energy signature. If the ship moves in any direction other than closer, the energy signature follows, maintaining the same distance.",
"Discover a perfectly fine starship just floating along. There is no distress signal nor any signs of life/undeath. Boarding to look for clues and looting is safe, but attempting to take control of starship causes s&@~ to go sideways.",
"Space gremlins got on board last time you docked/landed your starship. They are now running around your ship, dealing enough damage to key components to cause various systems to gain the Glitching condition.",
"The delivery you where asked to make wakes up early from cryo-sleep. Either hostile creature like Alien or innocent forced into slavery.",
"Someone left a bunch off-world creature on the planet. They're breeding like crazy and decimating the indigenous wildlife and/or plant-life.",
"Perform an emergency landing due to a critical component allowing space flight is about to break. Play the barter trade game with the locals to get what you need to repair it.",
"Attacked by pirates!",
"There's something on the wing!",
"Party comes out of drift travel in a mirror universe which is much darker, and must find their way home.",
"A ship identical to the parties ship emergens at the same time in the same system. Both ships believe they are the real party, not the duplicate.",
"First contact with an alien species",
"The party makes contact with two warring factions on an industrial age planet, both whom beg the PCs to help them win the war!",
"Space station casino",
"The party must journey to a far off volcanic planet to destroy a powerful magic object",
"An evil force is building a battle station disguised as a moon",
"Your ship has fallen out of of Drift, there are no visible stars...",
"Groundhog day style time loop, select one party member who remembers.",
"A pulse has emanated from your Drift Drive, your ship has fallen out of of Drift, all navigational points are slightly out of alignment.",
"Something is disrupting drift communication reducing your communications back to light speed. You and your crew are only able to react to what the system looked like X hours ago.",


Every time you drop out of drift you are in the same place you entered drift. You were moving while in the drift, and you don't understand what's going on.

Another variation is that you are returned to a specific spot every time you drop out of drift. Solve the mystery or be forever using STL and get nowhere.


Added in. The list grows! :D


"Sensors indicate that somehow the underdeveloped planet you dropped out of Drift near has a society of preflight aliens living in a derelict starship."

"Welcome to the Edensphere! The temperature is a constant 17.5 C in the evenings, and 24.1 during the day. Every landmass is a white sand beach with a tropical jungle starting 30 yards inland. There are no natural predators, though we have imported dolphins and porpoises and their food sources, and theirs, and so on. Before we allow you your rest and relaxation though, we have just one small task for you. A trifle, a token job, really. A favour, if you will. You see, our crust may have sprung a slight leak. It's only about a mile wide."

"Someone has disrupted the famed auroras of planet Boreas in the Cynosure system. Find them. Kill them. Restore the aurora."


Updated. Thanks again.

with the addition of these, here are some sample outputs when running the program, formatting will look more normal in the final release.

```Blue Giant
{'Atmosphere': 'none',
'Day Length': '26 Hours',
'Planet Diameter': '38710891921 Kilometers',
'Population': '92389 life signs',
'Type': 'Oceanic World',
'Year': '877 Days'}
{'Size': 'Collosal', 'Stability': '89 Percent', 'Type': 'WormHole'}
{'Atmosphere': 'Thin',
'Population': '1094965544 life signs',
'Type': 'Asteroid Field'}
Attacked by pirates!```

```Blue Giant
{'Atmosphere': 'Special',
'Day Length': '57 Hours',
'Planet Diameter': '44664379303 Kilometers',
'Population': '225393 life signs',
'Type': 'Ice World',
'Year': '125 Days'}
{'Atmosphere': 'Normal',
'Day Length': '26 Hours',
'Planet Diameter': '74383148579 Kilometers',
'Population': '4939812512 life signs',
'Type': 'Jungle World',
'Year': '568 Days'}
{'Atmosphere': 'none',
'Day Length': '48 Hours',
'Planet Diameter': '69304056456 Kilometers',
'Population': '165859 life signs',
'Type': 'Volcanic World',
'Year': '527 Days'}
{'Atmosphere': 'Thin',
'Day Length': '83 Hours',
'Planet Diameter': '2415554677 Kilometers',
'Population': '81709 life signs',
'Type': 'Gas Giant',
'Year': '385 Days'}
A scientist is capturing victims from many different races to use them as pitri dishes to develop vaccines.```

```Trinary Star System
{'Atmosphere': 'Thin',
'Day Length': '20 Hours',
'Planet Diameter': '61793693428 Kilometers',
'Population': '5677534291 life signs',
'Type': 'Temperate World',
'Year': '836 Days'}
Something is disrupting drift communication reducing your communications back to light speed. You and your crew are only able to react to what the system looked like X hours ago.```


Almost finished with starship generation to create spaceships to populate these systems.


There are a lot of Adventure generators out there, and I think this is a great initiative for Starfinder specific settings and goals.

Rather than worrying about the specifics of the encounters, I'd just make them part of the plot or location.

Plot Hook (random):
-> Encounters (semi random)

Location (random):
-> Encounters (random):

Twist (yes/no)

picking a location appropriate random encounter shouldn't be hard once you know where they will end up as part of the rumor or plot hook. I actually think that sometimes coming up with the core hook or rumor can be the hardest part. So building a large list of those will be helpful. Locations can be somewhat easier to build a list fordepending on whether or not you're involving mostly core worlds, or specifically having them find only new planets.

The best part about this is that you don't need to actually generate everything all at once. The randomization aspect will give you tons of available combinations at the push of a button, but I think scaling the creation to just a single adventure would on its own be quite the achievement. If you have an interestingly picky group that tends to pass up hooks, then you just have to hit the button a few more times to generate a new incident or rumor for them to come across and then run with it if they go for it. A random dungeon generator would be kinda cool as well if it could be modified for the sci-fi setting and present ed as various facilities (random Starship layout for any salvage-type mission), random medical facility layout, government building, whatever.

The Alien Archive has almost everything needed to build that engine to create a CR encounter appropriate for the group, give it random capabilities and then just create a new name for your monstrocity!

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