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I am currently looking to start a homebrew campaign for Pathfinder that involves integrating story, technology, and fluff from the Stargate franchise into the Golarion setting that we know and love, and I plan on using the existing Stargate RPG (which already runs on D20) as a basis. Problem is, I have no idea how to actually write such a setting, much less get players interested. Could somebody help me out?
So far, I only have a few possible templates to build off of;
- Milky Way Galaxy, pre-Tau'ri (before the 1st Stargate movie even takes place)
- Milky Way Galaxy, post-Ori (following the events of Stargate SG-1, season 10)
- Alternate Universe/Timeline (nobody from Earth, period)
- Pegasus Galaxy (post Lantean-Wraith War)
- Pegasus Galaxy (mid-war)
- Stargate Universe (a random galaxy that Destiny had passed through at some point)
Thoughts?
Don't write it as a setting...
The reason Expedition to the Barrier Peaks doesn't destroy a Greyhawk Campaign is that any toys players take from the ship have a very limited lifespan until the power cells run out.
The reaason Numeria doesn't overpower the rest of Golarion, because again their tech is tied to generators which aren't very mobile, nor replicable, in addition to the fact that the Technic League which only at best half understands what they use, keeps an iron grip on it.
You'll find it much easier to keep the flavor of both worlds, if you make their interaction a tightly focused story which keeps the worlds separate when it's done.
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Uh, yeah, basically I am trying to do what you said. I just worded it very poorly.
Thing is, I still don't know how to actually create a workable "adventure path" without having written even a basic plot outline to follow, and even less how to do something like that without aggressively railroading the players due to the fact there are just so many different planets to theoretically visit.
Obviously, in order to prevent conflicts with the established Stargate canon, certain gate addresses would be entirely off-limits (no Earth or Atlantis for instance), but that would also prevent the players from ever encountering certain races like the Replicators (hope to Desna that your party doesn't have adamantine weapons and mithral armor)
I always liked the idea that Earth and Golarion are in the Milky Way because we know that Cthulu and the other great old ones are in the Pathfinder universe. However, keeping Golarion completely separated from the rest of SG cannon would be very infeasible. So here's my suggestion:
Use SGU after the series finale. The ship eventually reaches a new galaxy. After it refuels on Golarion's star, it wakes up the crew from stasis. That's when the crew notices the sensors going nuts as it scans a nearby planet in the system. Not finding any gates on the planet, they decide to park Destiny in orbit and send an expedition crew in a dropship.
This puts 2 needed limits on the technology. The limit on technological devices themselves as the only stuff that exists is what came on Destiny. And a limit on how long devices last because everything would probably have to be recharged from either Destiny or the dropship itself.
From here, you have several possible options. The game starts some amount of time after the above events, after the crew has made relations with one of the countries.
Alternately, you have the party encounter the dropship as if a random encounter, or you could start the game with the dropship encountering a group of heroes (that way you could have a player play as an Earthling). King Maker might be a good campaign for this as it would have the players' actions determine the relationship between the crew and Golarion.
If you want some inspiration on how to have high technology act with fantasy, I would recommend checking out the Galactic Mage book series.
I did something similar in a Starwars Saga game I was running. While exploring the outer regions, I had them come across Destiny while everyone was still in stasis and slow-rolled what the ship was as much as possible. It was pretty fun watching them freak out about how the ship was heading straight towards a very close star and trying to explain that to the one awake crew member (Eli Wallace) without a common language.
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Ah, Stargate and Star Wars, I was actually thinking about something like that not too long ago; a Stargate being discovered during the Clone Wars, and an SG team comes through via wormhole accidental time travel, thereby disintegrating a Clone Trooper in the opening wormhole... Complete with a Wilhelm scream and a Jedi staring at the Stargate in complete shock.
Back on topic; The problem I have with not having Stargates in a Pathfinder/Stargate adventure is exactly what it says on the tin. It has called Stargate for a reason :/
That is not to say that your own idea doesn't have merit, though.
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The example opening scenario that I came up (before starting this thread)with would have Dungeon Crawl Classics-style level zero player characters, helping uncover an artifact in Numeria... And before they can even figure out how it works, it starts dialing suddenly, and the Pathfinders are attacked; the only way to survive the engagement would be to escape, and any surviving Level 0 player characters later meet up with the actual, properly built Level 1-5 player characters... The reason these "elite" Pathfinders are called in is because the technological nature of the Stargate raises a red flag within the Pathfinder Society's ranks.
The first idea that I had was that it would actually take place before Stargate (1994), with the Earth Stargate not even getting unburied, and any attempt to dial certain addresses (like Earth, Abydos, or Atlantis/Destiny) would either result in "Chevron 7 will not lock", or in the case of Atlantis, the entire party dying as the city floods.
Also, another ambitious mechanic I wanted to try is that for any planet that the players dialed, if maps and encounters weren't already planned then the whole planet would come off a random encounter table. Also, the more stuff you did out there in the universe, then the greater the risk of the planet being attacked... Once it climbed high enough, eventually Golarion will be attacked by ship, at which point it's completely screwed if they don't get any help.
The reason that I initially planned for a Pre-SG1 Golarion was actually so it would mesh better with the alternate timeline/multiverse that I came up with. Of course, it is also the most limiting option, hence why I put the other options up for debate. So I will consider your ideas, Scud.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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You could set your campaign after all the SG series and not worry too much about tech overshadowing Golarion cannon. Make the arriving tech and arrival of true magic on earth or elsewhere an important part of your story.
Maybe among the wreckage in Numeria is a gate...maybe the wreckage is a Destiny-like ship and an SG group discovered the gate address. Or the PCs find the gate and open it.
If I were tackling such a crossover I might run a prologue-adventure that sets up the connection between the two settings. Then let players make their actual characters so that they come from either setting establishing a group dynamic more like you see on later Atlantis episodes.
Then you need to decide what the threat is that drives the campaign...in short you need your villain.
If the main thing you want is for players to be able to use the gates to explore different worlds, than this can be done in many different ways.
Have it be a completely different galaxy that had it's own ancient civilization that set up a gate network.
Have it be a galaxy where some of the seed ships have peppered gates throughout it. This gives the possibility of Destiny eventually showing up.
Have it be the Milky Way, but thousands or millions of years from now. Then it's up to you if the known races are even still around, even humans, and whether or not Earth is accessible as it could be after our Sun goes red giant. Even if Earth and Humanity is dead, Cthulhu would still live :)
With all of the above options, you would have complete control over what technology, if any, they come across and exactly how said technology would function.
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I must say, I really like some of those ideas.
I am bad at inventing new adversaries, but maybe in the first "season" of the adventure, I could pull up an existing race that gets negligible screentime as it is; the Aschen.
Alternately, I could bring out the classic Replicators. Annoying little bastards. Chances are though that the Replicators would be impossible for players to kill that early in the adventure, regardless of how they came back into being.
If anyone else has ideas for adversaries, I am eager to hear them. I think we have established it will take place after the shows, but thousands of years is definitely too big of a leap for my tastes.
And possibly, by the power of transgalactic bridges constructed by the Tau'ri, exactly which galaxy will likely become irrelevant (it might take place anywhere from a few months after Stargate Universe, to a few decades after SG-1, but no more than a century)
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I can't help but imagine the latest SG team being an Oracle, an Alchemist, a Bard and a Paladin/Gunslinger.
Oh, and one piece of technology that I will not allow? Zat guns, or at least not the 1-shot-stuns, 2-shots-kills variety... And DEFINITELY NOT the 3-shots-disintegrates variety.