 November 16, 2014 - 11:27pm | Okay it is a theme in sci-fi, the crashed alien ship, or crash landing on an alien planet... (I even had a book as a child that was nothing but great sci-fi art of crashed spaceships with a story behind each one of them, I really wish I could remember the title and find a used copy today.) But they also appear in a lot of TSR's stuff... usually some poor unsuspecting fantasy setting gets crashed on. There are at least 2 crashed ships in Blackmoor, 1 possibly 2 in Grewhawk, and 1 for sure in Tale of the Comet... oh there are probably more. Ray-gun equals magic to primitives. So exploring the ideas: 1 or more planets with intelligent life (in a low tech stage of development) have had 1 or more spaceships crash with either similar or very different life forms on board. Possible ways to play it out in SF that I can see... It's your ship crashing, for example you got to deal with the issues like Blackmoor's FSS Beagle crash plus mutiny scenario, can you fix the ship, if you live? Or you could be off to City of the Gods on some mission either as primitives or as modern archaeologists. Classic something found under the rocks & dirt or frozen ice like the Thing or Expedition to Barrier Peaks... got to deal with the critter/s escaping the spaceship no one knew about... Aliens setting up colony on your world... Aliens have crashed too and need your crashed ship and will do anything to get control of it. It sort of depends how you want to play it, as a primitive people dealing with sci-fi alien stuff or as the advanced people dealing with crashing or occasionally finding a crashed ship. One perk to being the primitives in a setting is that could be part of a SF races history. There are some critters lurking in the pages of D&D that started as alien beasties too. I found this in Expedition to Barrier Peaks interesting: Plague! THE SPACESHIP Sometime else, a large exploration-colonization expedition of human origin was overtaken in the course of its journey by a deadly plague. In a vain effort to halt the spread of the virus, the modular sections of the vessel were sealed and then separated, each left to its own fate. The section concerned here was drawn through a black hole and spewed into the universe where the World of Greyhawk fantasy setting exists. Chance brought it to that very planet, and its computers and robotics brought it to an intact landing. This process, however, caused an earth tremor, and a landslide buried the ship section for several decades. Then a computer malfunction sent worker robots to a cargo hatch to discharge material, and when these robots found the hatch blocked by fallen earth and stone, they promptly cleared it and unloaded the requisite cargo - unfortunately for the inhabitants of the area, for the holds contained various alien fauna and flora, and the offloading freed these creatures from stasis. Some died immediately, some lived for a time, and a few species prospered and propagated. Recently, another earthquake uncovered an upper air lock, and the tremor caused the same computer malfunction, so the worker robots again cleared the lower cargo lock and periodically discharged more of the unwanted “goods”. Now obviously all the humans died in this scenario, and the ship was buried along enough time for no one to know about it... but this ship besides holding a host of alien critters could still harbor a plague not to mention cool dangerous technology. This could be reworked for instance into how the Blue Plague really started... an established colony is suddenly dealing with strange creatures not cataloged before, and soon a group of people is put together to investigate... Of course there are great plots from movies, Alien, The Vampire Planet, The Thing and more... Just musing on old stuff...  "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
 November 17, 2014 - 12:08am | Couple thoughts: Cowboys vs Aliens. The original Star Trek: the one with the gansters and the one with the nazis as well as the one with the Coms and the Yangs- Communist and Yankees as well as the one with the Romans with machine guns +1 to Tchinkza mentioning The Thing and why not toss in the A. C. Clark movies of 2001 and 2010 I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 17, 2014 - 11:42am | So all over the Galaxy all sorts of mahem from crashed spaceships.... +4 to Jedion. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
November 17, 2014 - 3:25pm | And the Gangsters meet TOS "did you bring the heaters?" episode as well, you knew the budget was tight when they kept recycling the back lots at paramont and all the stored costumes for togas, nazi uniforms, chicago 1920s suits and so on. The one recycle of back lots and old costumes that I approved of was "City at the edge of Forever" with Liz Taylor. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 17, 2014 - 5:53pm | City at the edge of Forever was a classic. Tonight's movie is the Thing, darn creepy good film, crashed ship some sort of mutant mimic genetic predatory alien creature might have even wiped out the aliens who owned the ship or been an intelligent alien, and best of all touches on the isolation of bases from different groups... all ideas worth exploring for a newly "colonized" planet. Lots of spins you could do... different small colonies/bases owned by corporations, or run by different governments, or different races all not trusting each other... but everyone has an interest in said planet/moon for some reason. You would need a few NPCs and domestic critters to kill off and still have NPCs left in case a PC or two dies in the hunt. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
 November 17, 2014 - 9:30pm | Tchklinxa, I believe that the book you are looking for is from the Terran Trade Authority series.
Unfortunately it's long out of print. I still have my copy of the book. It's the French translation of the book, but that's my mother tongue. It's a great read. Another book you may want to read is Polymath by John Brunner. It's about two spaceships that crash on an unexplored planet after fleeing from a supernova that destroyed their home world. The crew of one ship set out to live off the land until they are rescued. The other set to repair their ship to make it back to civilization. |
 November 18, 2014 - 4:58am | When I ran Star Frontiers in the '80s, I wrote an adventure in which an old crashed spaceship was the cause of occasional strange energy readings from a mostly unexplored planet. The ship itself was derelict, and the only intelligent life on the planet had found it were using pieces of it. They had a stone age culture but bits of the ship were used by them as weapons, especially odd crescent-shape pieces, which they used as something akin to boomerangs. The best way to describe the creatures themselves is to imagine orange, large-eyed, hairless penguins with finger-like appendages at their wingtips. My players had lots of fun exploring the environment, especially as most of the wildlife looked like it should live in the sea (i.e. there were small black squid-like things that lived in the 'trees'). The planet's atmosphere also had a high oxygen content, so they had to be wary of that. Ostensibly, the crashed spaceship once belonged to the Tetrach, as that's an area of the game that I find very interesting. I have some drawings of the planet's inhabitants somewhere. |
November 18, 2014 - 5:04am | Tchklinxa, I believe that the book you are looking for is from the Terran Trade Authority series.
That could be it... I will see if I can hunt down a copy of it & Polymath "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
November 18, 2014 - 5:06am | Kringway the critters & planet sound cool... Tetrarchs always a fun idea to play with. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
November 22, 2014 - 1:09pm | Thanks! I decided to redraw one of the creatures, so here's a very basic pic of what they look like: The crashed ship was pretty much a disc, and the crescent pieces were from it's engine. They were stacked around an turbine-like machine that was the central part of the ship. The players never figured out what they were for  |
November 22, 2014 - 1:50pm | Oh that is cool! "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
November 23, 2014 - 7:19am | Thanks Their eyes seemed quite freaky to my players. They're an array of slightly reflective bony segments surrounding a pebble-like central part. The whole arrangement can extend a short distance inwards or outwards. |
November 24, 2014 - 10:03am | Here it is with a bit more work: |
November 25, 2014 - 4:27pm | Adventure seed: PCs hear tell of a lost treasure ship. It turns out that the ship does have "treasure" but its money from Earth and no government in the Frontier will redeem it. If they dig deeper into all the cargo they might find some coin of value for its metal. Of course data in the computers of such a ship that might have had contact with earth or a ship from earth could be of immense value. So the treasure is a bit of a red herring, though some eventual value as selections of it are sold to institutions and collectors. Though with thousands or millions available the market will be glutted and value will fall. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 25, 2014 - 5:13pm | All those Terran Domars... lol. Well if the ship had navigation info that could be put to use for back tracking towards Terra that might lead to some adventures as well. You could even run a mini adventure in which the SF PCs manage to retrieve enough data to learn what happened to the ship... and instead of telling them you let them play the parts of the long dead crew, (after all they would have to watch hours of information to find out what happens in RL) but the knowledge they gain by doing this will help them latter somehow... if they decide to pursue investigating the Terran space routes. What they find might not be what they expect... "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
November 25, 2014 - 6:06pm | what if the currency was on a Bokar ship. How did the bokar get it, where did they get it? Is there overlooked info in the Bokar computer? questions - questions and too bad the PCs took the loot and split and only now realize that they might have needed to probe deeper. And when they go back there is a bokar recovery crew who will view the PCs as salvage scalpers. To bad the PCs managed to trade the currency for what they could get for it to a CFM captain as the Bokar are rather pissed that the cargo is gone and would allow the PCs a peek at the computer for the cargo back. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 25, 2014 - 11:37pm | Dangle that carrot... now if they want the info they are going to have to figure out away to get from the already ticked off Bokar. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
 July 23, 2016 - 7:24pm | Well the following aren't exactly crashed ships, but if you ever saw Space 1999's "Dragon's Domain" then you could have a Sargasso Sea of lost ships. Joe Cabadas |
 July 25, 2016 - 10:23pm | LOL! That one scene had almost every "ship of the week" they had. |
August 9, 2016 - 7:54am | The Bermuda Triangle of space where ships just vanish could be kicking ships out into such a place. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
August 9, 2016 - 9:32am | LOL! That one scene had almost every "ship of the week" they had. Yes, I think you're right about that. Joe Cabadas |
August 9, 2016 - 9:47am | The Bermuda Triangle of space where ships just vanish could be kicking ships out into such a place. And with a few mysteries in each one for the characters to solve.  Joe Cabadas |
August 9, 2016 - 9:47am | I just love that cheesy episode. Joe Cabadas |
August 10, 2016 - 7:39am | What about a wandering brown dwarf that functions as a misjump magnet. Over the centuries it's sucked in a lot of ships that never escaped. One alien hulk has a strange super science weapon that is left on automatic and fires on all new comers disabling them in one shot. PCs ship is likewise disabled. Will they suffer the same fate as so many other crews marrooned here or will they Escape the From Sarragasso? Adventure is in 2.5 phases: Phase 1: board alien hulk and shut it down, destroy, disable it. Phase 2: explore other hulks, deal with dangers, catalog what's available/ determine if any are more easily fixed than the PCs ship Phase .5 : fix a ship and leave. But since the star is a brown dwarf can a charted route to it be mapped or will the treasure trove of lost ships remain lost? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
August 10, 2016 - 8:24am | There could be a limited society here, pirates or normal people who now act pirate like prey on all new comers. They have an agreement ship worked by enslaved individuals and the scavenge the wrecks. Approximately 3-4 ships have been docked together to form a station of sorts. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 August 10, 2016 - 8:47am | One thing to throw in here. This scenario only works in a universe where space travel is fairly common. If there are not that many ships then building up a huge junk yard of ships would take a very long time to build up and to have ships regularly arriving to keep the inhabitants supplied before they die of old age. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
August 10, 2016 - 10:15am | Good point rattraveller. Let's say this process has been going on for a millennium or more? Would 10 ships present be too much? One could be an eorna ship from 900 years ago. One could be a sathat ship from ? Any time in the last 1000 years would work. One is obviously the alien hulk with the super science weapon. 3 would be alien in origin completely unrecognizable to PCs and of great age- klikk and heliopes in suspended animation? In fact maybe the alien hulk with the super science weapon is klikk origin? 3 to 4 would be from frontier core 4 races. 2 were exploration. Ships that Zebs Guide tells us disapeeared. One is a freighter. And one is just the piece of an at ship (the dome). Ancient eorna in suspended animation. Exploration crew that has turned cannibal and are slowly eating off everyone else. Other exploration crew is gone. At ship crew is gone. Freighter crew is enslaved and working the 0 g hydroponics in the ag dome till they're needed as a protein source. Leader of the cannibals is like Reinhardt in The Black Hole. They invite the PCs to their Sarragasso Station of 4 ships docked together at the air locks. Their is a banquet but you might want to pass on the "beef stroganoff" nudge wink. Cannibals will make a play to separate and subdue the PCs. This will be the first challenge. Next is knocking out the klikk origin hulk. But side trips to explore other wrecks is possible. Most of the older ones are in poor condition, micro meteor holes and deteriorated from age and the harshness of space. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
August 10, 2016 - 11:00am | Good point rattraveller. Let's say this process has been going on for a millennium or more? Would 10 ships present be too much? One could be an eorna ship from 900 years ago. One could be a sathat ship from ? Any time in the last 1000 years would work. One is obviously the alien hulk with the super science weapon. 3 would be alien in origin completely unrecognizable to PCs and of great age- klikk and heliopes in suspended animation? In fact maybe the alien hulk with the super science weapon is klikk origin? 3 to 4 would be from frontier core 4 races. 2 were exploration. Ships that Zebs Guide tells us disapeeared. One is a freighter. And one is just the piece of an at ship (the dome). Ancient eorna in suspended animation. Exploration crew that has turned cannibal and are slowly eating off everyone else. Other exploration crew is gone. At ship crew is gone. Freighter crew is enslaved and working the 0 g hydroponics in the ag dome till they're needed as a protein source. Leader of the cannibals is like Reinhardt in The Black Hole. They invite the PCs to their Sarragasso Station of 4 ships docked together at the air locks. Their is a banquet but you might want to pass on the "beef stroganoff" nudge wink. Cannibals will make a play to separate and subdue the PCs. This will be the first challenge. Next is knocking out the klikk origin hulk. But side trips to explore other wrecks is possible. Most of the older ones are in poor condition, micro meteor holes and deteriorated from age and the harshness of space. Nice. Reminds me of the original BSG.  Joe Cabadas |
August 10, 2016 - 11:39am | One slave left working the ag dome but has been locked away in a closet somewhere in anticipation of the PCs wanting the dollar tour of Sarragasso Station (freighter, exploration ship, and ag dome). However the damsel in distress scrawled a note in ag dome, "help me they're cannibals" INT check to spot it. Reinhardt figure blames it on the local dralasite joker. It's a given the girl will be butchered next but the PCs are fresh meat and the subdual process might lead to a death or two on either side and the old saying is waste not want not. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
August 10, 2016 - 12:00pm | So brown dwarf is a failed star but it glows in infra red. Not all the ships will be in the same vicinity in orbit around it. Most obvious means of getting from hulk to hulk is by launch. KHs assume that they would be used for close limited travel between ship and station can the be used on inner solar system scale? Speed will be limited and and trips take time. I suppose the best bet is repair a ship's disabled engines and go with that. Damsel in distress is an astrogator and carefully charted the orbiting hulks. Her records are in computer. Farthest away from the PC's location is a sathar ship (use destroyer deck plans from Terl Obar- why reinvent the wheel unless we want a smaller more manageable ship). 3 hulks are ancient, alien, deteriorated and already picked over so there is nothing here for the PCs though a xenomorph like threat is possible and one hulk could have an advance alien computer core in a completely incomprehensible language but certainly something of value to sell back at civilization and its portable. Klikk hulk has super science engine killer and klikk and heliopes in suspended animstion. This one will be a dungeon crawl with explosive ending.Reinhardt and even the rescued damsel in distress will tell PCs that anything approaching it is fried with defensive lasers (PCs will have to be creative. That's 3 ships for Sarragasso station, one sathar hulk, 3 ancient alien hulks and the klikk hulk for total of 8. Add in the exploration craft of Reinhardt with very strong evidence of his cannibalism for 9 and one other? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
