I always enjoyed the brief trips into Si-Fi that modules like Temple of the Frog, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and a few others provided back in the old days.
Additionally, I often incorporated parts of the 1st ed Gamma World modules Famine in Fargo, and Legion of Gold, (the sub-aquatic laboratory, unearthed by the looming eruption offered an alternative method of fleeing the Island of the Slave Lords)into my campaigns over the years. The beauty of the Si-fi sojourns was that the tech equipment was all powered by non rechargeable power sources and thus had charges, and thus I never felt unbalanced the game. But I never knew a player who didn't enjoy blasting an android with a Mark VII blaster from time to time.
I personally would like to see the odd si-fi alien observation station/crashed space ship/rogue androids appear in the Pathfinder world.
Thoughts?
ASEO out
|
I personally would like to see the odd si-fi alien observation station/crashed space ship/rogue androids appear in the Pathfinder world.
This already exists in Pathfinder. Numeria is a country built around the ruins of an enormous crashed spaceship (called the Silver Mount), where cruel overlords use scavenged technology to hold advantage over their rivals. There are robots running around, as well as horrific mutagens and toxins. It's pretty awesome.
There's also Alkenstar, a land where science is used instead of sorcery and they manufacture firearms, but it's apparently fallen out of favor with the designers--which is a shame, since it's the place I would be most interested in seeing developed after Ustalav.
Jeremy Puckett
|
|
For my at-home yearly Con I ran a one-shot in Numeria. PCs were pathfinders sent to investigate a ruin opened up by recent meteor strikes, but of course it was just a crashed space ship.
It was a lot of fun, the trick is in the presentation.
-The weapons fire marks on the sides of the ruin? Looks like wizards dueled with lightning.
-Blasters just look like a broken metal crossbow that has had the bow portion snapped off.
-Encountering bodies in white plate mail with black underleathers was great before they encountered the living versions, with strange white plate helms made to kind of look like a skeleton face. (Imperial Stormtroopers)
-One PC (Andoran) had a side quest to kill the black night that was destined to enslave the world. (Darth Vader, of course)
Dropping the WOTC plastic minis for these guys on the table was priceless. For a one-shot, it was silly but very fun. Numeria is the perfect place to merge any Scifi with fantasy. You might want to read the wiki page on it.
Also, the Seven Swords of Sin module is set in an ancient research lab and has some pulp sci-fi elements to it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think it can be very cool, so long as you can keep it from breaking the suspention of disbelief.
Just remember that magic can still be incorporated. For one game I ran, as it went epic the players got involved with the remains of a civilization that had developed magic to the point of being technology.
In the first ruined city they found hundreds of living spells were uswed to keep the place running. The spell did everything from producing sunlight in a cavern to providing hot and cold running water. They also encountered golems with a sufficiently complex program that they acted semi-intelligently.
The second location they eventually found was a research facility suspended in lava inside a volcano. It had semi-intelligent golems, "computers" based on complicated illusion spells, more living spells and a power generated based on magic.
Really awesome sci-fi type stuff, great game, and it was all magic based.
Bear with me, I'm going somewhere with this that is actually on topic:
Anyone remember the old Might and Magic games? I don't mean the "Heroes of..." series, I mean the Might and Magic RPGs from the 80s and 90s, Might and Magic I-XIII (people who suggest there was an IX will be shot ;) )
A number of them took place on fantasy worlds (which were in fact experimental worlds created by advanced beings), but had parts where you found alien and/or "precursor" craft and weaponry (and you had to learn to get weapon proficiency in energy weapons, etc.). There's a host of adventure ideas in just reading over synopses of those games.
(Heck, I don't know the Golarion setting really well, but I wouldn't be surprised if Numeria was inspired by that. Who knows?)
Anyway, I think it's certainly doable, and to some extent, to build a similar scenario, I would just look at the Modern System Reference Document for a starting point for stats of energy weapons and the like. Simple automatons can be represented by golems; otherwise the MSRD's "Future" rules for robots could probably be adapted to the Pathfinder ruleset relatively easily.
Bear with me, I'm going somewhere with this that is actually on topic:
Anyone remember the old Might and Magic games? I don't mean the "Heroes of..." series, I mean the Might and Magic RPGs from the 80s and 90s, Might and Magic I-XIII (people who suggest there was an IX will be shot ;) )
A number of them took place on fantasy worlds (which were in fact experimental worlds created by advanced beings), but had parts where you found alien and/or "precursor" craft and weaponry (and you had to learn to get weapon proficiency in energy weapons, etc.). There's a host of adventure ideas in just reading over synopses of those games.
I only played Mandate of Heaven (I think that was VII), but know people who played others - and as far as I know, you usually end up fighting aliens.
And the Heroes line isn't exactly immune to this... Play the final Hordes of the East level for long enough and you find out how you get those extra troops (UFO drop-off)
Bear with me, I'm going somewhere with this that is actually on topic:
Anyone remember the old Might and Magic games? I don't mean the "Heroes of..." series, I mean the Might and Magic RPGs from the 80s and 90s, Might and Magic I-XIII (people who suggest there was an IX will be shot ;) )
A number of them took place on fantasy worlds (which were in fact experimental worlds created by advanced beings), but had parts where you found alien and/or "precursor" craft and weaponry (and you had to learn to get weapon proficiency in energy weapons, etc.). There's a host of adventure ideas in just reading over synopses of those games.
I only played Mandate of Heaven (I think that was VII), but know people who played others - and as far as I know, you usually end up fighting aliens.
And the Heroes line isn't exactly immune to this... Play the final Hordes of the East level for long enough and you find out how you get those extra troops (UFO drop-off)
And I meant I-VIII not XIII obviously.... I need to learn to not post pre-coffee.
I didn't know that about Heroes, that's pretty cool.
I don't remember encountering aliens per se in the first two, although you do find a spaceship.... OTOH it's been a LOONG time since I've played any of those games.
Anyway, the point is, it has been done and can be done again. :)
I don't mind if discrete areas of Golarion are developed along the lines of the old Blackmoor adventure setting, incorporating technology and sci fi elements. I'd rather it stayed well roped off and optional and this technology didn't leak out into the world at large, though. I enjoy both sci fi and fantasy RPGs, but generally prefer them kept separate except for occasional one-shot excursions.
I didn't know that about Heroes, that's pretty cool.
I haven't seen it myself, but in the Academy campaign, you can "buy" units at the beginning of the week, paying with XP - apparently, if you keep it up long enough, an UFO will come and deliver them to you. I never played for that long - maybe I'll fire up a savegame and wear out my enter button to go UFO-spotting.
Anyway, UFOs seem to be the running gag for M&M. I wonder if Heroes VI will have some.
|
I firmly believe that Paizo will do a journey to the Red Planet. It will be like The Barrier Peaks meet the Red Planet. Wouldn't be surprised if it kicks off from Numeria. Transporters, dimensional travel. Having read a few planet stories books, I can see that this is easily bridged and explained. I think it just matters on the way of timing before you get this.
Numeria reminds me of Phantasy Star IV, which is probably why I love the setting so much.
Numeria reminds me of Phantasy Star IV, which is probably why I love the setting so much.
...I hadn't thought of the correlation before, but yeah. That works.
And now I want to play Phantasy Star III.
III was good, IV was superior! :P
I would love to see an adventure in Numeria that added some Sci-Fi elements to the game. The only problem I would see with this is adding something that could throw an entire campaign off (example: Fighter with a laser gun).
If I was going to add Sci-Fi elements to a fantasy game, I would do it one of two ways. The first way would be to created a campaign setting kind of like this. The second way would be to run a one-shot adventure where a UFO crash lands on the world and turn the crash site into a dungeon complex.
There's also Alkenstar, a land where science is used instead of sorcery and they manufacture firearms, but it's apparently fallen out of favor with the designers--which is a shame, since it's the place I would be most interested in seeing developed after Ustalav.
This saddens me significantly - I love firearms in my fantasy, and Alkenstar always struck me as an awesome weird west / Wild ARMs style area.
|
I always enjoyed the brief trips into Si-Fi that modules like Temple of the Frog, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and a few others provided back in the old days.
Additionally, I often incorporated parts of the 1st ed Gamma World modules Famine in Fargo, and Legion of Gold, (the sub-aquatic laboratory, unearthed by the looming eruption offered an alternative method of fleeing the Island of the Slave Lords)into my campaigns over the years. The beauty of the Si-fi sojourns was that the tech equipment was all powered by non rechargeable power sources and thus had charges, and thus I never felt unbalanced the game. But I never knew a player who didn't enjoy blasting an android with a Mark VII blaster from time to time.
I personally would like to see the odd si-fi alien observation station/crashed space ship/rogue androids appear in the Pathfinder world.
Thoughts?
ASEO out
Famine in Far-Go was the first module I ever ran, starting a lifelong addiction to the hobby. I bought a used copy a few years ago, and hope to adapt it to an Omega World one-shot... one of these days.
I'd also like to take a moment to say I'd love to see support for Numeria and sci-fi concepts for Pathfinder, in general.
I don't mind if discrete areas of Golarion are developed along the lines of the old Blackmoor adventure setting, incorporating technology and sci fi elements. I'd rather it stayed well roped off and optional and this technology didn't leak out into the world at large, though. I enjoy both sci fi and fantasy RPGs, but generally prefer them kept separate except for occasional one-shot excursions.
I remember realizing with some amazement and amusement when I read the Shadow Elves Gazeteer and discovered that their primary Immortal was, in fact, the Nuclear Technician who tried to stop the meltdown that ended up resulting in the explosion that shifted the Earth on its axis, returned magic to the world, revealed the second moon, and turned Nebraska into Blackmoor. I laughed for a good ten minutes as I started putting two and two together. When my players asked what I was laughing about (they only got snippets of the Gazetteers as I revealed them to them in the game), I just shook my head and said "You'll find out eventually."
Many months later, they thought I was making it up until I showed them the book.
I would love to see an adventure in Numeria that added some Sci-Fi elements to the game. The only problem I would see with this is adding something that could throw an entire campaign off (example: Fighter with a laser gun).
If I was going to add Sci-Fi elements to a fantasy game, I would do it one of two ways. The first way would be to created a campaign setting kind of like this. The second way would be to run a one-shot adventure where a UFO crash lands on the world and turn the crash site into a dungeon complex.
That's a legitimate concern. I have a friend where when we played Exalted he absolutely couldn't stand the Autochrontians and their technology in the Exalted universe.
If I may use Phantasy Star IV as an example, you can have lost complexes in the mountains where machines have continued out their original orders since their creation centuries ago. Metal and genebred monsters wielding arcane swords and vicious claws would be the threat to adventurers, and any advanced technologies like laser weapons or rocket launchers either only function in the complexes themselves (due to an ever present energy field) or cannot be recharged due to how complex they are (a laser gun has six shots EVER.)
** spoiler omitted **
I guess it is time I took my copy of GAZ 13 out of the shrink wrap...
ASEO out