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I have an idea for a campaign set in the Starfinder Universe and connecting with our Earth, here it is:
In 1947, and Alien Spaceship was shot down by US Air Force jets. The spaceship crashed in a farmer's field. When the Air Force investigators arrived to recover the crashed spaceship, the farmer managed to hold back one particular item. The Air Force hauled the spaceship away and put out a cover story about recovering a crashed weather balloon. The object the farmer kept was a Well of Many Worlds as described in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. This particular well of may worlds connects to 1000 other worlds, all of them in the Starfinder Galaxy. Actually they are 1001 Wells of Many Worlds connected to each other at random. Every time the Well at either end is picked up and folded up and then laid out flat again, it connects to a new well of many worlds, one of 1000 rolled at random with three 10-sided dice for determining which one. Some of the wells are on worlds, some are on spaceships. The farmer has kept this hidden in his basement, and at one point he went missing, and was never seen again. A detective was sent to investigate, and he found this magic item in question, he unfolded it, and it connected to another world in the Starfinder Galaxy, and so begins this adventure. What do you suppose would happen next?
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An awesome reboot of Stargate? Go see if Joss Whedon or J. Michael Straczynski is available.
Just a way to get Earth characters, that are not familiar with magic into this setting. Maybe by bringing in some old D20 Modern characters and converting them to Starfinder, if this is possible. I think it would be interesting if one of the "Worlds" was an abandoned starship. Lets suppose the FTL drive broke down, and the crew abandoned ship by exiting through the Well of Many Worlds, then something disturbed this Well causing the crew to be unable to return and effect repairs. The sublight drive works fine by the way, and the starship could be refueled with hydrogen through the well. The ship goes sublight and takes a number of decades to reach the nearest world. Of course when the ship arrives is when you start the campaign present.
How well would the Earthers adapt to an ancient alien starship? It could be fun done right but there is a lot of hand waving that would be needed i think, modern day Earthers would be able to grasp the basics of future tech but would be far behind on all skills and probably would have issues adapting to magic powered plasma canons... If it was me i would probably open the campaign a year or two after this all happened, they get to choose from the full list of Starfinder classes to build from to represent a crash course on living in a sci-future world and they are awarded their ship as salvage as a sort of hand out from the local government because its not worth fixing to them and lets them look benevolent to give it to these poor lost PCs who just want to find a way back home. Maybe have them run a few "rat killer" tier jobs at first to pay for the repairs to their hulk and then send them off to find home.
Well the gate goes both ways, so long as no one moves it, or folds it it stays open. For the purposes of this magic item, a room or a table on the starship counts as a fixed location, but if anything jars it, if the ship engages in combat or there are extreme maneuvers, then the well might reset to another world, all the ends other than th one at Earth are to someplace in the Starfinder galaxy. Now whoever discovers it has to decide what to do with it. Does he turn it over to the government, or does he keep it a secret? The starship is just a piece of technology/magic to help with the transition. There is the little matter of how one learns how to pilot the ship, how to activate its stardrive. None of the technology onboard the ship that is above PL5 actually works on Earth, as there are just about magical components to every item, many of them are considered to be mundane, but they contain elements of magic nevertheless, this helps prevent the pollution of the Earth with superadvanced technology, the raygun you bring though he well just won't work if you pull the trigger beyond a certain distance from the well. Magic does leak through the well of many worlds however, magical items will operate if within a certain distance of the opening. The well is just a small part of a single magic item that is spread all across the Galaxy on different worlds, spaceships and installations, it is mostly a curiosity, and you can't program the well for specific destinations, it is all random!
Torbyne wrote: How well would the Earthers adapt to an ancient alien starship? It could be fun done right but there is a lot of hand waving that would be needed i think, modern day Earthers would be able to grasp the basics of future tech but would be far behind on all skills and probably would have issues adapting to magic powered plasma canons... If it was me i would probably open the campaign a year or two after this all happened, they get to choose from the full list of Starfinder classes to build from to represent a crash course on living in a sci-future world and they are awarded their ship as salvage as a sort of hand out from the local government because its not worth fixing to them and lets them look benevolent to give it to these poor lost PCs who just want to find a way back home. Maybe have them run a few "rat killer" tier jobs at first to pay for the repairs to their hulk and then send them off to find home. There are a number of options, there is trial and error, the ship isn't exactly alien, it was made for humans of this Galaxy. Maybe the ship's computer can be of some assistance, there might be a translation program for instance. Maybe a Djinn lives aboard the starship, it has connections to the elemental plane of air, and it maintains the atmosphere so that it remains breathable. Any other ideas?
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An onboard AI that knows how to run everything on the ship but as a safety feature can not directly interface with any other systems and is reliant on a crew to actually make the ship respond. It has seen better days and is terribly lonely. When humans stumble onto the ship from some backwater world it is desperate to communicate with them and teach them how to run the systems if only to relieve the boredom. It could go out of its way to translate and help them, it also is secretly terrified of taking them home for fear of being dismantled by the primitives so while it wants them to stay on and teach them how to crew it actually isnt that helpful for finding a way back to Earth.
Do you have any idea of what kind of ship you want it to be?
Most likely it is a small freighter with a capability to land on planets, it has a cargo hold with perhaps some cargo, it may have picked up the well somewhere, then some event caused them to abandon ship, they exited through the Well of Many worlds and something on their end caused the Well to reset to a new World cutting them off from their starship, the Starship had a small crew of like 1 or two people, perhaps there was an accident with one of the crew members, the ship itself was too far away to get help, so they desperately use the Well to get someplace faster, that's when something on the other end reset the well and reset it to connect with Earth. The starship is running on automatic when the players come aboard, they have to be careful not to cut off their exit back to Earth, otherwise the are stuck onboard the starship or they can exit to another world and lose the starship, they are probably better off staying onboard the starship and going somewhere in that. In the meantime they can load supplies from Earth through the Well. The Well of Many Worlds is described on page 532 of the Pathfinder Core rulebook, this particular one is a circle 8 feet in diameter, it can be folded up as a piece of cloth, when laid out flat it connects to another random Well of Many Worlds of similar description. he other Well has to be loose, when connected too, it unrolls and flattens out, if confined in a bag or someplace where it can't unfold the well is passed over and another Well is selected. There are about a thousand such Wells scattered throughout the Galaxy in various locations, only one is in a parallel universe on Earth, the one the PCs step through. I know of no rule that states it couldn't operate from the Drift, but we'll see what the rules are on that.
The Equipment they would load onboard the starship would come from the equipment lists of the D20 Modern Rulebook, since D20 Modern and Starfinder both use D20 rules, they should be compatible enough to be used in this setting. The Characters would be D20 Modern Characters, and they can add another Starfinder class once they accumulate enough experience points, I would use the Starfinder Experience point chart to do this, from whatever level the D20 Modern characters are at in their Modern Classes. Just as a review, the D20 Modern Core classes are the Smart Hero, The Dedicated Hero, the Charismatic Hero, the Strong, the Fast, and the Touch Hero, they are each built around one specific Ability score, such as Strength for the Strong Hero and so forth. Whatever they bring onboard the Starship would have to fit through this circular well, this would tend to rule out most vehicles except motor cycles, they could bring onboard all sorts of guns and side arms. Their money is worthless once their route back to Earth is closed off. they might want to bring aboard some gold bars for making purchases.
Is this gonna be a legit rp? If so, I'm all in! :D
If I get to pick my own ship, throw me a class 720 freighter if you would. That, or the Normandy SR-3
Tom Kalbfus wrote: Just a way to get Earth characters, that are not familiar with magic into this setting. Maybe by bringing in some old D20 Modern characters and converting them to Starfinder, if this is possible. I think it would be interesting if one of the "Worlds" was an abandoned starship. Lets suppose the FTL drive broke down, and the crew abandoned ship by exiting through the Well of Many Worlds, then something disturbed this Well causing the crew to be unable to return and effect repairs. The sublight drive works fine by the way, and the starship could be refueled with hydrogen through the well. The ship goes sublight and takes a number of decades to reach the nearest world. Of course when the ship arrives is when you start the campaign present. If that was a viable plan, the crew themselves would have used it.
I would suggest art pieces and history tapes as a form of barter, they would be artifacts of an unknown civilization, that would be worth something to a museum or academic institution but only for the first of each type they brought along.
If you are using the Starfinder rules than it sounds like the UPBs will make bringing a lot of supplies from Earth moot. Whatever weapons they could realistically get their hands on would be archaic compared to what they could assemble with a few spare UPBs laying around. Food and water would be a concern but beyond that just put a stash of UPBs in the hold.
Something else to consider would be this ship is the sister ship to the one that crashed on earth, the crew of this one went to help the crashed ship and were captured or killed.
Or, the crew were killed onboard by a neutron beam, they died and were preserved from decomp, the bodies still in their seats. the drones that killed them moved on decades ago and had no interest in the ship itself.
Or, the crew is still out there and actively searching for their ship, the well itself either being a rare treasure or there being a secret hidden stash onboard that they are desperate to retrieve.
Drahliana Moonrunner wrote: Tom Kalbfus wrote: Just a way to get Earth characters, that are not familiar with magic into this setting. Maybe by bringing in some old D20 Modern characters and converting them to Starfinder, if this is possible. I think it would be interesting if one of the "Worlds" was an abandoned starship. Lets suppose the FTL drive broke down, and the crew abandoned ship by exiting through the Well of Many Worlds, then something disturbed this Well causing the crew to be unable to return and effect repairs. The sublight drive works fine by the way, and the starship could be refueled with hydrogen through the well. The ship goes sublight and takes a number of decades to reach the nearest world. Of course when the ship arrives is when you start the campaign present. If that was a viable plan, the crew themselves would have used it. The problem with the Well is if you use it and it changes destinations, then you can't get back. The crew is probably somewhere fine and dandy, they just can't get back to their starship, the PCs might even meet them later on.
Lets get all Ebon Hawk on them and have 4 or 5 previous owners all active and kind of miffed about their missing ship. ;P
Tom Kalbfus wrote: ...
None of the technology onboard the ship that is above PL5 actually works on Earth, as there are just about magical components to every item, many of them are considered to be mundane, but they contain elements of magic nevertheless, this helps prevent the pollution of the Earth with superadvanced technology, the raygun you bring though he well just won't work if you pull the trigger beyond a certain distance from the well. Magic does leak through the well of many worlds however, magical items will operate if within a certain distance of the opening.
...
I don't see any reason for the magic not to work on Earth, given it all takes place in the same universe. Any components that incorporate magic would be impossible for the not-magically-inclined Earthlings to reproduce, though.
Earth is in a parsecs wide anti-magic zone. long story that. no one likes to talk about it much either...
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Torbyne wrote: Lets get all Ebon Hawk on them and have 4 or 5 previous owners all active and kind of miffed about their missing ship. ;P I have an idea, what if the farmer and his wife is the crew. The farmer's name is Joseph Rye, he was a fighter pilot during World War II, during the war he lost his brother Peter during the D-Day invasion of France, and his father died shortly there after of a heart attack when he heard the news of his son's death, thus Joseph Rye inherited the family farm. A UFO is shot down by the US Air Force in 1947, it crashes in one of the Rye Farm corn fields, Joseph Rye manages to get to the wreck before any of the Air Force investigators, he sees a man get out of the ship throw the Well on the ground laying it out flat then he jumps through. Joseph Rye then picks up the well, folds it up and puts it in his pocket. The Air Force then arrives, they take the wreck and study it. Since the ship has magical components and will only operate under a magical field, and Farmer Rye kept the Well, then the Air Force has a very frustrating time trying to reverse engineer the components and figure out how they work, since the don't work.
The farmer studies the Well, unrolls it on the floor of his barn, steps through then steps back, he rolls it up and then unrolls it again, steps through and discovers the random nature of the thing. Joseph Rye just read a book, the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, this gives the farmer an idea. He rolls up the Well once again, brings it to his upstairs wardrobe, and he takes four metal clamps, after removing all his coats from his wardrobe he screws in four metal plates to the back of it, rolls the well flat against it, and he clamps the well to the back of his wardrobe, and does the same with the well at the other side to an 8 foot by 8 foot wooden plywood board, he then props it up to the back of a cave, so the well remains properly rigid and stiff, he jumps back into his wardrobe hangs back up all his coats and jackets and closes the door, after dinner he inspects it again, opens the door, can't see the well, Good!
The farmer does some exploring on the other side when he's not working the field of his farm, he finds a market town on the other side populated by humans and other creatures, sells his produce there and buys some futuristic stuff, it is in that town, that he meets his future wife, a half-elf, they get married, the farmer does well selling manufactured goods to the town folk, it is a sparsely populated settlement, a mining community that mines precious metals. The farmer sells the precious metals, and buys manufactured goods from the cities, makes a tidy profit, and then goes off-world for a time to buy a starship, he becomes a space merchant while leading a double life as a farmer back on Earth, he doesn't do much farming, he does just enough so as to look as if he's earning a living through farming.
Time passes, the farmer grows old, his wife does not so much, in the early years he used to bring his wife to Earth. Not anymore, he has this cover story that his wife "died" in an accident and he pretends to be a widower, she is actually running the starship and doing business. Joseph is getting real old, he is in his 90s, Joseph has a heart attack to get help, his wife takes him to a hospital. The prognosis doesn't look good. A cure exists in her universe, but it requires magic So she abducts him from the hospital and takes him through the Well one final time. She manages to obtain an Efreeti Bottle and makes a wish, the effects of the wish removes her and her husband from the ship. The Efreeti returns to his home plane leaving an empty ship.
I have a better idea. What if the starship the well led to was this one?
It is much bigger, not sure that my story would fit well here, and the random nature of the well makes it difficult, so what if the well led to this? The ship is orbiting a planet, there are pirates on board trying to figure out how to take control of the ship.
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