Designing a Sci-Fi Campaign Setting from the Ground Up

[Gomez]

I want to build a Sci-Fi Campaign Setting using the d20 Future rule set. But building a galaxy wide setting from scratch is quite the undertaking. Even though I could just start simple with a single ship, space station, or planet. I need to have some background and some sort of guidelines on how the galaxy works, who lives in it, technology, etc. It's not as easy as building a simple village and the surrounding area for a D&D game setting.

I have a general idea on what type of setting I want to run but nothing concrete.

So what do you I need to set up and what can I ignore at the beginning? Any suggestions or comments on how to start?

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

I think the biggest factor would be how space travel works, particularly how easy it is. The easier space travel is, and the faster people can move around, the more campaign you'll have at the beginning. There will be more places to go, more aliens to encounter (as well as more aliens locally), and more alien tech to track.

If you wanted to make the campaign in D&D "start at the base town and branch out" terms, then you would want to start with slow, possibly even slower-than-light space travel (FTL oesn't have to mean instant acces, though, even at twice the speed of light it could take a year or so to move between systems). Then, either technological advances or encounters with alien tech allow the PCs to branch out and explore more things, discovering as they go.

Of course, your dilemma was more along the lines of how to design a setting, presumably with a lot of travel and different aliens and a wide scope. So, some other things to keep in mind:

-While technology will probably vary from race to race, you'll still want to decide on some basic levels of tech that can or cannot work within your universe. Every race is going to have variants on moving through space, healing disease, blasting people, etc. Some will be better than others. Where you want to set the upper limits is on things like AIs, teleportation, cloning, and other things that would have major impact on the setting. Thing about all the different sci-fi universes out there, and what they have, and decide what you would or would not like to keep. From that, you can build a sort of general picture as to how life and the game should work.

- For aliens, get a general idea of how many different species you want. There's universes out there that have only humans, and there's universes that have more species than can be counted. A middle range would probably have a few major (ie PC) species, and a number of minor ones who are mostly weird-looking background material (think of the Babylon 5 approach). This would work pretty well, since you can define 2 or 3 species at the outset and always add more later if you want to.

Aliens and tech are the major things that I can think of for starting out. Once you have that down, you can generate history (how tech was developed, who went to war over what reasons, etc) and current situations and feelings. That's a pretty good start right there.

 

[Masada]

First I'll suggest Dawning Star as a nicely done Sci-Fi campaign world. You could also look at Blood & Space. These would give you lots to start from and possibly save you the whole trouble.

If custom built is what you really want to do...

The easiest thing for me is to plan to start the characters at a low level with limited mobility. Then you don't have to flesh out the whole galaxy. Most people are only immediately concerned with their home. The local folks, the local law enforcement, the local events are what a 1st level character are likely to be involved with.

To this end I'd start with a planet and some nearby adventures. If you want to jump right in to starships then have the PC's start in a solar system. Plenty of adventure in a handful of planets. Later on add stargates or FTL travel.

A good chunk of the setting can be stolen from your favorite sci-fi books. If your players don't read the same books, steal the whole damn thing. If they do read the same books, well then they'll immediately understand the backdrop of your campaign and you can still steal the whole thing.

 

[Khairn]

Masada is right, in that Dawning Star and Blood & Space are both really good. But I agree with Byron in that starting with a basic concept of how inter-stellar travel will work is probably the pivitol tech question that needs to be answered. After that is done, you have a good tool that can be used as a measuring stick to determine if an idea about a planet / alien race or star empire is viable (logical) or not.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Since a couple have already recommended Dawning Star, I reckon it would be gauche of me to do the same. So, I'll add another, more basic tip, and it's something we did with DS as well: Come up with the theme of the campaign. What is it going to be about. For DS, it was about humanity's instinct and will to survive. But you could choose anything: the corrupting nature of power, technology as magic, fear as a byproduct of diversity, etc. Once you get the theme, a lot of ideas will flow naturally from that. For example, if you chose to go with the corrupting nature of power, this might sprint a number of ideas, such as the concentration of advanced technology in the hands of a few--perhaps mega-corporations. And so on. Using this process will also give your campaign an almost imperceptible cohesion that your players will find rewarding.

And you could always hire a technical advisor. But you can't have R.J. Grady--he's ours.

Good luck!

 

[Quickleaf]

I would highly recommend checking out Traveler. I think there's a d20 Lite version for free on their website. What kind of feel are you going for? What are sources for your inspiration?

 

[Jack of Shadows]

Well,

I'll second what Justin said above, decide what sort of story you want to tell. Once you've done that come up with a starting point and tell your players to create character concepts around it. No stats yet, just concepts. For example here is what I did for my very successful homebrew:

I decided I wanted to do a campaign with a supership akin to Blake's 7 and Sol Bianca. Next I set up the beginning and told the players that their characters were on a space liner escaping from a planet that had just undergone open rebellion. I then asked them to tell we who they were and why they were on the liner. Working with what I got back I had the following characters:

- A hired assassin who had been brought to the world to kill a terrorist leader of the rebellion.

- Aforementioned terrorist leader of the rebellion who was also the daughter of the planetary leader who hired said assassin.

- The security chief of one of the other planetary leaders who had been killed by above terrorist.

- The head of the planetary government's intelligence network.

The story started out being about a bunch of folks with a supership but turned into something completely different because the characters each had their own agendas. The 'universe' unfolded itself from the character's backgrounds. The group the assassin belonged to had been the secret fomentors of the rebellion because they were interested in acquiring the worlds vast orbital shipyards. Other survivers were after the head of intelligence because of the nasty files he had on EVERYONE. The terrorist had to figure out what she had really been fighting for in the first place. And the security chief went along with everything while having both his ex-wife show up as a survivor and having to chase his daughter halfway around the galaxy in order to keep her safe.

In essence the story came from the players and not from anything I created beforehand. If I decided I wanted to add a new element, I just added it. Space games are great that way 'cause space is HUGE. Players don't complain that they'd never heard of something before. They say, "Cool! I've never heard of that before!"

Jack

 

[Johnny Angel]

Travel technology, as Byrons_Ghost has mentioned, is an important defining factor. It affects not just how much planet-hopping you can do, but also the whole feel of what humanity's horizons are. Note how in some settings, like the Aliens universe, space travel takes decades, during which the crew is kept in cryo. Space travel is a long-term and lonely prospect. You leave your home and do not expect to return until generations have come and gone. In other settings, like Star Wars, there is a hyperdrive that makes the vastness of space such familiar territory that even a craphole like Tatooine gets a lot of action.

Communication technology is also an important factor. How far can messages travel, and how fast? Communication has vital importance in military strategy. Slow communication will tend to isolate systems. The whole galaxy may have an interdependant economy, but individuals will be more provincial in a world in which it's not very easy to get to know people of another world.

You also need to know what your monetary system is like. Is money hard coin, as it is assumed to be in D&D, or is it negotiable instruments and numbers in a computer, as it is in our world? When you get beyond a direct barter system, you have to have some institution that people put faith in to guarantee the value of promisory notes or lines in some ledger. Solid currency requires some stable institution, even if the whole galaxy is at war.

What kinds of governments exist? Designing planets allows you to play around with different models of how societies organize themselves. It also gives you an excuse for adventures. And the nature of governments is going to be a function of what technology is available.

Designing individual worlds, it helps to consult a gaming-oriented planetology system. Gurps Space and the Alternity Gamemaster Guide both have nice guides to designing star systems and planetary environment.

As for suggestions for pre-designed systems, Dawning Star and Blood and Space have already been mentioned. Until the Helios Rising supplement comes out, Dawning Star can stand in as a good example of a single planet where a colonial population is struggling to carve out a new home. Blood & Space: Prometheus Rising provides a nice model for a single solar system campaign. The Star*Drive campaign setting from the old Alternity game has a beautiful design for a map of humanity's spread across a single arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The Star Wars campaign setting presents an entire galaxy full of details for the characters to bop around in. So, even if you want to design from the ground up, there are examples of any campaign scale you want to use.

 

[Dougal DeKree]

Storyarch

Hello Gomez.

What was an important step for me in creating my own SciFi-Campaign was to create the overall timeline first. As an example take Starwars: it's good vs. bad. the bad guys are building the deathstar to destroy some planets and building it will take them a year.
It's important to first develop the string of events for each major group as it would happen without someone interrupting. In the example, without the rebellion interfering, the DS is built and goes on a rampage.

When you made such strings for each major group, you decide at which points one group will likely have contact with one of the others and how that will impact on the whole scenario.

Next you split this timeline (including all groups) up into small chunks - the size you believe can be handled within one adventure. This provides you with what is going on in your galaxy, what the players can influence and what is bound to happen anyway.

Then decide where the key events will take place and which NPC's you need for them and your basic skeleton of the campaign is set up.

For me this worked out wonderfully - after about two hours working in an excel-sheet, i had the campaign-arch including 12 major power groups going at each others throats with the players being able to change small but important events during 36 adventures.

I hope that this is not written too jumpy...

Dougal

 

[S'mon]

Have an idea of the kind of feel you want - the two main genres IMO are romantic sf like Star Wars or Buck Rogers or Dune and military sf like Starship Troopers or Aliens. I recommend having a vague idea of the setting on a galactic scale, but keep it vague. Important advice for a playable sf RPG setting: KEEP IT AS OPEN AS POSSIBLE. What this means is, avoid having rigid authoritarian or utopian empires running everything in the campaign . Keep everything as local, and as wild & woolly, as possible. The D&D analogy is a good one, except for village think 'planet'. A village at the heart of the all-powerful kingdom is likely to be calm, peaceful & boring, right? That's a _huge_ problem with many published sf settings, inc Traveller to some extent. I suggest detailing a sub-sector, maybe 6-12 systems, as if it were a small D&D realm, with "orcs/space pirates live here" type notes. Seed the area with adventure hooks like that - maybe one planet is an aggressive tyranny, another the nice sylvan realm, the third a sleazy mercentile centre. Paint with a broad brush, give every world its own feel and adventure 'hook', and you have yourself a campaign setting.