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Sources of inspiration for homebrewed material-other RPG settings and material.

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Extrasolar Angel Extrasolar Angel's picture
Sources of inspiration for homebrewed material-other RPG settings and material.
As sources of inspiration we can use also other settings and material published for those worlds. There are some excellent ideas contained in different books that would fit nicely into EP after some modification. Here are some settings which present ideas that I find interesting as potential sources of inspiration for EP adventures, exoworlds, plot hooks, adventures and opponents. First : Blue Planet-the setting is excellent and could be modified easily for EP as disconnected exo-colony accessible now from one of the Gates. If you want you can make it so that the Gate manipulates time as so there were more years passed on the colony in line with the setting. Or perhaps USA or another power(or even an alliance of powers) discovered a wormhole and managed to conceal it from others during the chaos of Fall times. In any case-the setting could be easily adapted to EP and provide numerous ideas. Fading Suns-while in general the setting can't be adopted due to vastly different time and scale, there are a couple of interesting things to consider. First two great source books Star Crusade 1 and Star Crusade 2(also called Lost Worlds). Both books present a numerous collection of exotic worlds that just ask to be converted into planets beyond the gates(particularly those described in Lost Worlds setting). In general the mood of the planets and their description isn't very dark, although occasionally we can find a bit more forbidding places. And the last setting that I would like to mention which is at least to me a treasure trove of ideas for certain EP games in special space-horror style-WH40k Roleplay game-Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy. Now you might be surprised-this after all isn’t a very similar setting due to completely different vision of the world, and different style. But yet I will explain why this is an excellent source. True-ideas like Chaos, Eldar, Ork-all those basic and overreaching ones are indeed not fitting the EP world and its adventures. But this still remains a game cosmic horror and ancient dangerous technology-the creators of the game went to considerable length so that their game avoids repeating endless conflicts with the stereotypical enemies of WH40k setting. So while Orks or Chaos enemies are in general useless to us, when it comes to exotic Xenos, or sanity reaping mysteries of cosmos-there is a lot of potential ideas there. For Dark Heresy I recommend following books: Creatures Anathema and Disciples of the Dark God. Don’t be fooled-the first one has numerous opponents that you can present after modification as Exsurgent creations, alien monstes or Titan abominations. The second one has numerous ideas that can be adopted into plots for space horror game a la “Event Horizon”. Rogue Trader has some interesting plot ideas for alien worlds, and Dark Frontier-containing an adventure that could be easily made into one beyond one of the Gates. As always comments are welcomed.
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GJD GJD's picture
Re: Sources of inspiration for homebrewed material-other RPG ...
I've already mentioned a traveller adventure ("Virus Fleets") that i plan to modify and include in my game, and I'm working on modifying the excellent Darkness Revealed and Alien Encounter: Invasion arc from White Wolf's Trinity game too - one of the best adventure arcs I have ever read and never got to play beyond the first chapter! G.
King Shere King Shere's picture
Re: Sources of inspiration for homebrewed material-other RPG ...
Dreampark rpg, based books by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. About a futuristic reality television depicting Live rpg. Could easily take place in a EP habitat or in a simspace. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Park
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Sources of inspiration for homebrewed material-other RPG ...
My own old favourite 2300AD (and its modern sequel 2320AD) contains plenty of useful material for hard sf. The technological level is very primitive by EP standards, but there are enough nice details for spaceship hardware, infrastructure and especially well developed alien ecosystems to make it a good source for exoplanet adventures. There is an old game, The high Colonies, which has some resonance with the world of EP. A solar system colonized by various more or independent space colonies, divided into squabbling fractions. Plenty of companies and habitats can likely be reused. Some very cheesy 80s illustrations, though :-) Another rather unknown game is Zero, where the characters are former members of a hive mind that have suddenly ended up independent. Now they have to survive as individuals inside a society that regards them as parasites or threats. Would make a great EP adventure where characters are TITAN drones who suddenly wake up inside a complex on Earth, realizing that they are free for some reason. Meatbot Massacre is essentially extreme wrestling but with biomechanical monsters fighting to the death. Might make an interesting sport for EP - specially grown and engineered monster sleeves run by meatjocks, who engage in bloody and entertaining fights. One can imagine different biolabs and hypercorps sponsoring different contenders, making it a strange bloosdport version of Formula 1. Ex Machina, the cyberpunk module for Tri-Stat, had an interesting setting called IOSHI. This is a world dominated by AR, skillsofts, ultra fluid lifestyles, influence and reputation trading and designer cultures. In many ways a precursor to current rpg thinking of these things. Still, the skill training in IOSHI is ahead of EP and has some pretty interesting and creepy ideas - imagine a world where there is no reason not to be near genius level on your speciality if you can afford it. The setting Heaven over Mountain has an interesting idea for a location: a city stretched along a beanstalk. The Daedalus setting is also good inspiration for creepy social mindcontrol.
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