 August 16, 2012 - 9:53pm | Hey everyone. I've been thinking quite a bit about what I'm going to do to expand my kids SF campaign after we run out of canon materials... One of the things I plan on doing is a sort of Gamma World/Fallout-ish campaign where my kids get stuck somehow on a post-apocolypse planet. I've been looking over some scenarios from the game Darwin's World here: http://www.rpgarchive.com/index.php?sysid=59&page=adv&sort=Alpha. Since the Sathar are an older race, they're perfect for nuking some planet a few hundred years ago to give the mutations some time to builld... Another thought came to me the first time I read jedion357's timeline project in the SFman. It was this line-referring to the humans entering the frontier from Earth after accidentally discovering void travel.: "The result was seven ships dropped out of the void in an star system, four near a nebula and one was never heard from again." I was thinking that the ships from Earth could have come in from the "south" of the frontier - from the direction of Liberty and the Waller Nexus. What if the lost colony ship was just a bit further away than that? I guess the better question is - what kind of colony would one expect to find after some 2 centuries? Suppose this planet was NOT the one from the aforementioned Sathar nuking - with one colony ship and no resupply - could you expect the colony to replicate the high-tech manufacturing of the other colonies? Or would you find something a little more primitive - say early 20th century tech? Obviously the colonists would have passed down whatever high tech they had when they got there, but I'm imagining a rough start. No space flight or at least no interplanetary flight. If the planet was inhosipitable that would really be a problem. But say they found a decent place and started growing as a population with minimal ability to manufacture electronics... Thoughts? |
 August 17, 2012 - 4:13am | there was a great article called Archangle slated for issue 18. It was an adventure set on a post apocalyptic planet. Had a lot of good ideas, I'd recommend referencing that. In case it was unclear in the timeline- one of those ships misjumps and founds the colony that is the center of the Dark Side of the Moon module to satisfy statements in that module. the last ship is never heard from again to intentionally leave referees with a plot device as a good mystery is a good story base. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
August 17, 2012 - 6:29am | ^ Do you know if that article is here anywhere in it's Pre-SFman form? And a great mystery it is... If the lost ship founded a colony that wasn't wiped out-what kind of civilization do you think explorers would find after 200 years? |
August 17, 2012 - 9:57am | I think they would have lost a lot of tech and dismantled the ship for supplies. The oldest buildings would be cargo modules and probably reserved for the powers that be and for government functions. New buildings would be built from local supplies or locally raise terran trees. Government would of expediency have started out with tight controls and only in the most liberal of wet dreams would they ever have relaxed without civil unrest. Weapons among the powers that be would be carefully maintained 200 year old fire arms, perhaps with recently manufactured ammo that is prone to jamming. Among the populous weapons would be primitive designs mostly unpowered melee but a creative type might come up with hand made stun sticks or perhaps an electric sword. The arrival of the PCs would unsettled a slow simmer that wants to errupt into a boil. Both sides will want to use the PCs to their advantage. Because this is for your kids you will want to avoid moral ambiguities and paint one side as really bad. I'll think on this more. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
August 17, 2012 - 11:50am | That is pretty sweet. Yeah, I'm thinking with their scientific background they would be able to develop electricity and simple machinery barring an completely inhospitable environment. The higher end manufacturing and electronics especially would be a no go. I'm thinking if this was a sci fi tv series they'd go old west with it, which I'm thinking is a little overdone and too ove the top. But a industrial era - perhaps pre WW2 is another matter. |
August 17, 2012 - 1:52pm | I know if I was stuck there and couldn't leave, electricity would be a priority. But then thinking of the processes necessary to develop insulated copper wire is pretty mind blowing. That is if there are supplies of conductive materials readily available. I mean-we're talking about scientifically advanced people, so they would understand the principles involved in all of these things, but to actually manufacture them is another matter entirely. I wonder where Thomas Edison and Nikolai Tesla got their wire from. So if you have 500-700 humans who start a colony-they start reproducing and the population grows. First need would be food. Second would be shelter. These would dominate the first years of the colony. Then as equipment from the trip starts to break down, and the food and shelter part get stabilized, long term development comes into play. Government would have been on the agenda from the beginning, but a longer term solution would be necessary. Fabrication of materials for construction and maintenance. Transportation would be huge. Mining would be necessary to obtain metals for building. Fishing and agriculture would be labor intensive in the absence of macnines. Wow. What would a colony like this look like? I don't know about anyone else, but it's been a while since i fired up a forge and made anything with a hammer and anvil. There would be a re-learning necessary. Computers would help them speec up the learning curve but a lot to learn. It may be a little much to think they would even have electricity after 200 years. I'm sure they would have had generators and perhaps solar powered gear, but with no resupply and after 200 years none of that stuff would still be working. Or very little. Perhaps the level of technology at about the time of the industrial revolution. |
August 17, 2012 - 2:18pm | A helpful Wikipedia article on the industrial revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Textile_manufacture There's so much involved in how things were made back then. I guess what really makes a difference is what equipment they had after they arrived and what the environment is like on the planet. |
August 17, 2012 - 3:34pm | Population Growth calculator: http://www.metamorphosisalpha.com/ias/population.php |
August 17, 2012 - 5:50pm | Vulcanized rubber has been around since at least the 1860's as some union troops were issued cotton rain coats covered with vulcanized rubber as well as the same thing as a ground cloth. They could easily revert to copper wire covered with rubber, covered with woven cloth like power cords of the 1950s. However they would scavenge all they could from their colony ship and landers. I would also bump the population numbers up. A PC with an everflame will have a serious trade good but they will be after electonics and weapons; plus let one PC discard a spent SEU clip and see how fast it disappears. I would go with a George Orwell Animal Farn society, "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others" In fact read that book with your kids and watch out when you bring this adventure! Of course you might not actually want to expose your kids to George Orwell and get them to start thinking critically as they'll likely be be failled in the modern public school system for asking inconvient questions of of their teacher and showing independence of thought. ;) note to self import some George Orwell Animal Farm ideas into the Family of One. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
August 17, 2012 - 6:20pm | I was looking at that population growth calculator. A base population of 500 with a 2% growth rate winds up at about 25,000 in 200 years. The UN posted the highest population growth percentage as notrh of 4% I believe - with 2% looking like it was a high number. If the colony ship had a machine shop that was in tact - that would be a game changer. A large factor in the industrial revolution was machines that made machinery components. Not having to make that up from scratch would be a BIG deal. Would this topic be more appropriate for the colonization workshop? Or is it okay here? |
August 17, 2012 - 6:34pm | Its ok anywhere u just might have trouble locating it qgain here. You have to assume that colony expeditions made provision for such things as machine shops unless the colonist are neo-luddites or amish. Simply rule that this colony ship was carrying what you need it to carry. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 August 17, 2012 - 7:07pm | In the General forums conversations are public, in the Project forums conversations are only exposed to the members of that Project. If the project is public anyone can go and read but only members are notified of new content when clicking What's New tab above. The best practice is to create a forum topic in the project and link back here. I've went ahead and did that for you (I'm very interested in the project). For future reference you can simple use the following markup w/o spaces to reference material on this site. < < node,xxxx > > where xxxx is the number you see after node in the URL. |
 August 17, 2012 - 9:41pm | Cool adventure idea. :) One book that comes to mind is "They also serve" by Mike Moscoe, this is the author that went on to write the Kris Longknife series as Mike Shepard. The back story trilogy book TAS tells the story of a mis-jumped ship that finds a colony created by a mis-jumped colonizer. The colony is fairly high tech but lost all the interstellar flight capability in the interest of survival. Whenever I read Kris Longknife books I think the author must have played Star Frontiers. I should ask, he's local and I know people that worked with him as a DBA/coder. |
 August 20, 2012 - 6:44am | a gamma world/fallout-ish campaign... stranded/stuck... surviving.... I was inspired by this post in a meeting this morning, going over ideas in my head. Here are the notes I scratched down on a piece of graph paper alongside the notes I took for the meeting itself lol... 1) The survivors who initially crashed... they would feel an amazing sense of responsibility. Can you imagine - not knowing if any other humans continued to survive/exist? Shut off from all of the rest of humanity carries with it a pretty severe burden. They would become the custodians of the collective acquired knowledge of mankind. In addition to the harshness of survival some would feel it was vital to document, record, and teach. 2) Perhaps the same planet had two or three such landings (maybe these huge colony ships detached and landed in different locations intentionally to hedge survival chances?) and each of these becomes its own government - its own "tribe" if you will. What happens when these groups meet up? Maybe one tribe isn't as prepared for long-term survival and would be willing to take what they need rather than work together? 3) What if the world upon which the colony must survive has something which places humans somewhere near the top but not AT the top of the food chain? Colonies would likely take a less shining-city-on-the-hill appearance. You'd likely find them underground or in hidden valleys, with choke points to stave off others. 4) What technology would be salvaged from the wreckage of the ship which brought the colonists there? How much of it would continue to be useful 10, 100, or 200 years later? If the ship could provide shelter to them then that's great - but what if there is some type of screen still active? Even if no local creatures fire electron beams, having a usable screen might mess with the cerebral activities of local wildlife and create a safe zone of some sort. Obviously, no subspace radio should be functional. Would kinda defeat the purpose of the "stranded" feeling. 5) The skillset represented in Alpha Dawn works best for the types of campaigns described by the adventure modules. I would recommend using "A Skilled Frontier" article from issue 9. This would give more options for survivors in such a situation to explore skills related to this type of scenario: http://starfrontiers.us/node/6423 6) The weapons in the Alpha Dawn book are surprisingly non-lethal when not firing laser beams or huge volleys of mini rockets. You may wish to consider adapting some of the ideas present in some of the other great articles in the sfman... or maybe some other simple rule you can think of (cutting STA damage points in half is a good start). Otherwise your spear-toting characters will be poking things all day long and you'll get tired of die-rolling before you kill anything :-P Love the game, but come on TSR - really?? 3. We wear sungoggles during the day. Not because the sun affects our
vision, but when you're cool like us the sun shines all the time. |
August 20, 2012 - 7:42am | 1) The survivors who initially crashed... they would feel an amazing sense of responsibility. Can you imagine - not knowing if any other humans continued to survive/exist? Shut off from all of the rest of humanity carries with it a pretty severe burden. They would become the custodians of the collective acquired knowledge of mankind. In addition to the harshness of survival some would feel it was vital to document, record, and teach.
That's a great point-thinking they were the only survivors (and finding out they were not) would have a tremendous impact on them... 3) What if the world upon which the colony must survive has something which places humans somewhere near the top but not AT the top of the food chain? Colonies would likely take a less shining-city-on-the-hill appearance. You'd likely find them underground or in hidden valleys, with choke points to stave off others. Another great thought. I was recently watching the ONLY good Riddick movie - Pitch Black and was thinking about what a great adventure that would be. And an amazing adversary - they only come out at a certain point in the orbital cycle and then wreak havok. This would put a serious dent in the population growth over time, so any thoughts of a rebuilding society isolated from the outside would be tempered by an existential threat like this. Great idea. Needs an interesting antagonist. Maybe something with an exploitable weakness that keeps them from running the planet. 5) The skillset represented in Alpha Dawn works best for the types of campaigns described by the adventure modules. I would recommend using "A Skilled Frontier" article from issue 9. This would give more options for survivors in such a situation to explore skills related to this type of scenario: 6) The weapons in the Alpha Dawn book are surprisingly non-lethal when not firing laser beams or huge volleys of mini rockets. You may wish to consider adapting some of the ideas present in some of the other great articles in the sfman... or maybe some other simple rule you can think of (cutting STA damage points in half is a good start). Otherwise your spear-toting characters will be poking things all day long and you'll get tired of die-rolling before you kill anything :-P Love the game, but come on TSR - really?? I love the skilled frontier rule set. Such a great revision. I'm actully weighing the option of using a d6 or d20 conversion to open things up a little more as well (or stealing some things to add to the rules). There's so many great supplementary ideas out there between Savage Worlds, Alternity, GURPS and Traveller that would really flesh out things as far as character depth and could still keep the Frontier feel intact. I like the combat rules (the non-lethality) for the PCs - I really prefer to only kill them when they're being stupid - but it does take forever to work out a combat. |
August 20, 2012 - 8:38am | In the back of the Re-mastered AD book there are optional lethal damage rules. Also, Issue #18 has some ideas presented by Dyson Logo's. You could cut all STA's in half accept for PC's - which artificially makes the tougher. Their heroes after all! Just beware when they asked to make a skiensuit out of tree bark. Skinsuit made from tree-bark.  |
August 20, 2012 - 10:00am | @ w00t - the anticipation is killing me! When is #18 coming out? |
August 20, 2012 - 10:11am | @ w00t - the anticipation is killing me! When is #18 coming out? Today! I'm just waiting for Tom to send in an Ad for the Frontier Explorer. If I don't get it this afternoon I'll put it in #19. |
 August 20, 2012 - 7:48pm | Oncefaroff- The "Archangel" article Jedion told you about will most likely be in 19. I had to move it. As for a postapocolyptic campaign, I had an idea years ago of making space travel for my Gamma World game and having them end up in the Frontier and see what happens. I gave up because I am not could at conversions. You can download the Gamma Dawn conversion at the Starfrontiersman site. Another thing that might give you some ideas is a show called IIRC "Outcast". It is a British tv show about a colony that is struggling. It has some good ideas you could use. There are only 8 episode on Netflix. It was cancelled. Another show that might give you inspiration is an old 70's kids show ArkII. It has some good ideas too. It is about earth after an apocolypse. |
August 20, 2012 - 8:51pm | Outcasts is an excellent foundation of what could/would happen when a colony ship lands. It's on Netflix, fyi. |
 August 24, 2012 - 11:20am | Odds are that if somebody is sending out a colony ship, they will have a well orchestrated plan of action that they will follow with precession...upon a normal landing. If enough of the officer staff survives disaster, the survivors will have a form of government to follow (even if not precisely as planned) as well as specialized labor forces. I imagine that the (surviving) leaders of each field of study will become as gods. I also imagine that those responsible for maintaining the equipment will become a prestigious class of citizens over time. As far as population growth rates, I would inflate them. The concept of child labor is an old one. I imagine that every able bodied woman would be impregnated as often as possible providing the food resources are available. A good colony to be a man on...not so much for a woman. I would think that such a ship would also carry the cultural history archives as well as technology archives as well. As alluded to earlier, the knowledge would be there even if the resources to achieve it are lacking. |
August 24, 2012 - 11:55am | @Inigo Montoya - Good points. I guess the case could be made for pretty much any desired outcome. Rough landing, inhospitable planet, bad aliens and you get an outpost stuggling to survive. Good landing and conditions and you could have a functional society. @Karxan & w00t - good call on outcasts. I watched the whole series this past week. Good story other than the completely unbelievable premise that the British could actually pull off anything!!!  |
August 24, 2012 - 12:46pm | I was thinking further about the population increase. Depending on the sponsors of the expedition, the crew was most likely highly qualified in their technical fields. It's possible that a segment of the initial population was generic citizenry. Its even possible that some or all of the colonists were screened and selected for their genetic stability. It depends on who is sponsoring the colony and why. However, if the ship has a misfortune and the survivors are trying to salvage their colony from the start, I could see the scientific community taking charge and initiating a 'breeding' program to insure the best possible future. Because of the need of a work force, all able bodies would be encouraged to reproduce. But the best and the brightest (healthiest) would be carefully bred to secure a better future. This could result in society with a huge rift between the two classes. PCs may arrive at the lost colony to find a little, charismatic, goose-stepping leader of an Arian nation subjugating their lessors. The PCs could find a culture that does not mirror the 'typical' human society. Just some thoughts from a depraved mind. |
August 24, 2012 - 8:55pm | A rogue corporation lead by the demented socialist Dr. Van Goone convinces Triad Truce (a cadre of like-minded environmentalist seeking a home away from civilization) to settle a newly found habitable moon in a system near Sundown. The ship was "shot down" and "crash landed" near the base of a mountain range. Luckily the location provided everything the new colony needed to thrive. Dr. Goone spent 14 months building a secret laboratory complex in the mountain and riddled the colony area with spy equipment including over a dozen spy satellites. He hopes to catalogue the development of a civilization starting from scratch. |
August 24, 2012 - 9:12pm | OFO, as you said you could have any outcome. It is only limited to your imagination. Even Anne McCaffry's Dragon Rider books gives a good account of what could happen to a ship crash landing and what kind of society can develop. So many ideas to glean information. |
