Mysteries of space...

[EDG]

He had his own reasons for this disinformation; mainly he didn't want these damn nosy monkeys looking for the other ancient races.

The simplest solution would have been to just kill the PCs, then nobody need know anything. As it is, the PCs don't even need to make any kind of effort to escape, they're just let go (oh and by the way the ship will self-destruct so they can't have it, nyah). Ugh. Sorry, it's an awful "adventure", it makes no sense at all.

Anyway. I think that precursor stuff should be rare, inscrutable, and make people feel really really small. And also, it should make them go "wtf is THAT!" when they first clap eyes on it.

I like the idea of the race that has just wiped out an entire quadrant of organic life. That'll make people scratch their heads for a while... but if that was me coming up with that, I wouldn't leave much in the way of clues (unless the point of the RPG was that this race was making a comeback) - it's a mystery and may well be forever.

I've created a few "haunted systems"... nobody knows why they're haunted or what the ghosts are, but people know that there's something weird going on in them and they don't want to hang around there for long.

 

[captainjack23]

I've created a few "haunted systems"... nobody knows why they're haunted or what the ghosts are, but people know that there's something weird going on in them and they don't want to hang around there for long.

CROATOAN


....exactly.

 

[EDG]

Just curious, have you actually read it recently ?

About a year ago:

http://www.traveller.comstar-games.com/viewtopic.php?p=14305#p14305

See http://www.traveller.comstar-games.com/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=1562 for the full roasting.

 

[alex_greene]

Ah, yes. Secret of the Ancients.

It was easier to just put the portal in the Ancient village. And somehow, when they return to their ship, the part of the village with the portal breaks off, and damn me if it isn't the Ancient ship, which takes off and ventures off to parts unknown.

I had a reason for Grandfather "coming out" in this adventure, when I ran it. Yaskoydray was returning, to unite the remaining Droyne and Chirpers, and bring them home.

Oh, and the Zhodani were going to get involved again - as awe-struck worshippers of Yaskoydray, the progenitor of those Chirpers that they grew up with back in the day when Zhdant was one of Yaskoydray's colonies.

And why was it that, for all Grandfather's genius, he could never figure out to leave behind edible ruddy foodstuffs on the worlds he seeds with humans?

 

[Klaus Kipling]

Yup, the Ancients got pretty much kyboshed by that Grandfather gubbins.

Far too pat and twee to be satisfying, plus it stops the mystery being mysterious.

IMTU the Grandfather theory is just that, a theory with lots of other competing ones.

300,000 years ago was just the last galactic level extinction event. There's probably been more before, but a combination of plate tectonics and supernova make any difficult to date and identify. Eccentric researchers probe the deep sky for echoes of past events, but to no avail, at least as far as definitive proof is concerned.

The Ancients then is just a term for any artefacts older than that 300,000 years. They might be all the same, they might not. In the end all the theories are just stories archeologists tell to each other, like the way they make half of the Time Team stories up out of nonsense.

Without any proof, the characters from Secrets of the Ancients just have a story to tell, nothing more. It could all have been a Hiver Manipulation for all they know (after all, seems unlikely, doesn't it?).

I'm liking the Banksian flavours in Scouts. Not only is Contact the branch name, Special Circumstances also get a mention, and most significantly, sublimation. The implication is that more than one species might have sublimed in the past.

There seems to be a tendency to read the OTU on just what has been mentioned in published stuff. Therefore no AI attempts, no cyborgisation, no nanotech, no precursors apart from the super-Droyne. But in a Charted Space as big and messy and old as the OTU, that has to be a nonsense. There's room for all and everything without it necessarily changing 'canon'.

Mongoose have already published an Ancient-type artefact far more intriguing than anything published previously in Beltstrike. If that's indicative of their intentions then perhaps the OTU is going to have mystery and enigma injected back into it.

 

[captainjack23]

Just curious, have you actually read it recently ?

About a year ago:

http://www.traveller.comstar-games.com/viewtopic.php?p=14305#p14305

See http://www.traveller.comstar-games.com/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=1562 for the full roasting.

Okay, you hate ancients for resolving a mystery, and Annic Nova for not, generally hate anything written by MWM, despise railroads and disorganized/open ended adventures....and......
You liked Chamax ? The uberderivative bughunt/hackfest ? Sure, it isn't a railroad, but.....an outdoor dungeoncrawl with mysterious alien saucers automatically delivering orcs -I mean Chamax bugs- to the players doorstep for shoot-em-up goodness ? I mean, its fun and all, but it recommends just using d6 for chamax minis so you can kill them in droves efficiently. Is it just that it lacks the MWM antimagic you comment on ?

Given how OLD some of these are, and the general quality at the time (D&D modules were railroads with sidings, generally; which was why they had "read me boxes") you seem to be hitting a fairly small and easy to target nail with a BIG hammer.

 

[rust]

I'd rather not derail the thread with talk of the OTUs Ancients, but what things people would like for an alternate TU.

In my setting the Solar Federation controls a sphere with a diameter of
about 180 Parsec, bordering on the realms of 5 alien species (two of them
discovered and contacted during the campaign).

There are lots of ruins within the known space, the most interesting ones
are those of the Precursors, a species that controlled a realm along the
trailing edge of the known space about 100,000 years ago.

The realm of the Precursors was destroyed in a war with a still unknown
species from above the galactic plane (yep, "my" space is three-dimensio-
nal), and even the descendants of the Precursors - who survived on some
remote colony worlds - have no reliable informations about the past.

So, what the characters have are some ruins and artefacts (most of them
either useless or impossible to understand), some questionable and ra-
ther contradictory historical records of other species, and the myths of
the descendants of the Precursors.

For the characters, it is obvious that there is a "pattern" that they could
understand - if they only had the informations, which they will most pro-
bably never get. The mysteries of the Precursors can be explained, but
the explanation stays out of reach of the characters.

 

[captainjack23]

I'd rather not derail the thread with talk of the OTUs Ancients, but what things people would like for an alternate TU.

[/quote]

Yes, lets. Sorry about the previous digression.

I think at least part of the issue raised by EDG is this: in a high tech information rich environment, how does one produce mystery, or at least a sence of things that are bigger than our current knowlege ?

Old empires/civilizations are one way, and for most of history has been quite a reasonable and realistic way to have mystery gnosis (ooops. Forge-speak) in a civilization. Is it the only way in SF ?
It seems that much of the problem is that modern mystery is either active and current, and often self concieling (conspiracy theory/illuminati/etc) and often much bigger than the players can deal with. (Unseat the trilateral comission ? Me ? Are you INSANE ?). Crime mystery for whatever reason hasn't done well in RPG settings - and magical mystery gets creamed in SF settings. So we end up with archaeology as an easy way to have players involved, and on a scale they can deal with, I guess.

So. if we have to design an alien ancientesque race, guess the question is this: what do they need to contribute ?

 

[rust]

So. if we have to design an alien ancientesque race, guess the question is this: what do they need to contribute ?

In my setting: Potential rewards (e.g. artefacts), potential dangers (e.g.
the unknown species powerful enough to almost wipe out the Precur-
sors), sense of wonder / object of curiosity and simple entertainment.

 

[kristof65]

I think at least part of the issue raised by EDG is this: in a high tech information rich environment, how does one produce mystery, or at least a sence of things that are bigger than our current knowlege ?

Exactly. And what's a good balance for presenting that to GMs and players in a setting? The CT Secret of the Ancient's module is a good example of what NOT to do - despite the fans asking for it, most were quite disappointed with it in the end. In designing an ATU setting, I don't want fans to be crapping on my modules 20+ years later for the same mistake of providing too convenient of an answer. OTOH, I don't want to leave GMs too frustrated that they have to decide so many things themselves.

So. if we have to design an alien ancientesque race, guess the question is this: what do they need to contribute ?

I'm thinking along the lines of Rust - those aliens are there to present potential rewards, dangers, sense of wonder, etc. Sure, it's basically just archeology with a sci-fi veneer - but it is an interesting way to provide adventure and a sense of being involved with something bigger for the PCs.

And so I come back to balance. Where's the line between "These haven't been explained enough" and "You ruined their allure" - that's a key question. Ok, I know it isn't a line - more of a fuzzy grey area, but there definitely have to be some markers on either side.

 

[EDG]

Okay, you hate ancients for resolving a mystery, and Annic Nova for not, generally hate anything written by MWM, despise railroads and disorganized/open ended adventures....and......
You liked Chamax ? The uberderivative bughunt/hackfest ? Sure, it isn't a railroad, but.....an outdoor dungeoncrawl with mysterious alien saucers automatically delivering orcs -I mean Chamax bugs- to the players doorstep for shoot-em-up goodness ? I mean, its fun and all, but it recommends just using d6 for chamax minis so you can kill them in droves efficiently. Is it just that it lacks the MWM antimagic you comment on ?

No, I like the Chamax ones because they're good, fun adventures that have a structured plot and that the PCs can do something useful in. Unlike the other ones I commented on.

And don't get the cause-and-effect wrong here. I don't think those other adventures are crap purely because they're written by MWM - I think they're crap because they're either too railroady, or are just vague outlines with no actual plot, or have too many inconsistencies and contrivances. The fact that they all happen to be written by MWM seems to demonstrate that he's not a good writer of adventures (at least not for my tastes).

Given how OLD some of these are, and the general quality at the time (D&D modules were railroads with sidings, generally; which was why they had "read me boxes") you seem to be hitting a fairly small and easy to target nail with a BIG hammer.

So what if I am? I'm pointing out why I think those adventures are not very good - their age isn't of any relevance. (and a lot of old D&D adventures were pretty lousy too, but there were some good ones in there).

 

[rust]

And so I come back to balance. Where's the line between "These haven't been explained enough" and "You ruined their allure" - that's a key question. Ok, I know it isn't a line - more of a fuzzy grey area, but there definitely have to be some markers on either side.

I think the players should have a fair chance to discover some of the an-
swers, but they should never be able to discover all the answers - and at
least in some cases where there are answers, there should be potential
alternative answers, too.

In the end, the players should have a good chance to get an imagination
of what has happened in the past, and how this influences their presence
(and, potentially, their future), but they should never be certain that their
imagination is the only possible one and right one.

Well, this is still very fuzzy, but I do not find a better answer to you ques-
tion. :?

 

[EDG]

And so I come back to balance. Where's the line between "These haven't been explained enough" and "You ruined their allure" - that's a key question. Ok, I know it isn't a line - more of a fuzzy grey area, but there definitely have to be some markers on either side.

Well, if you say "OK, here's the whole story behind this race" then I think that's gone too far.

Most of the good SF stories involving ancients don't even attempt to explain them. Heck, even in Total Recall (it's arguable whether that's a good SF story, admittedly ), we were just presented with the alien terraforming engine and that's it - nothing about who the aliens were, where they came from or anything else. But it served its purpose as a source of tension and the ultimate goal of the story. Ditto in Star Trek and Bab5 whenever this sort of thing has showed up.

Hell, look at Alien. We have no idea who the space jockeys were, what they were doing, or what their relationship with the Alien is... but there they were anyway.

Most of the time nobody's going to even be able to find out what the story behind the eroded ruin or the crashed spaceship or the dead planet or the alien artifact is - they just have to deal with the consequences of finding it. And that's how it should be in most cases, IMO (at least from the players point of view).

 

[lastbesthope]

Ditto in Star Trek and Bab5 whenever this sort of thing has showed up.

To quote Sinclair "Life is full of mysteries, consider this one of them"

:lol:

LBH

 

[Dave Chase]

Having a race show up once, is good for a mystery adventure. You can write it so that many of the races details are not needed to have a good adventure.

Having a race or such show up several times, you are leading or suggesting to the players that there is more and they will expect more.
Some more detail in needed or at least suggestions/guidelines on racial attitudes, equipment and such.

But the catch 22 is if you start giving up such information then the players will expect more.

To continue with EDG point (which is a good one), I suggest looking at B5: Crusade. In there was an alien a week kind of enviorment and you didn't need to know everything about the race to make the adventure interesting. True the B5 show had aliens and some where well known but many were back ground types.

Traveller has alien races and them most active ones are about on par with the Imperium. Races that are under or over the Imperium standard make for some interesting adventures. The cultural differences make for interesting adventures IF you players are into that kind of thing.

Dave Chase

 

[BP]

… I'd like the Ancients to be tossed out and a whole load of ruins and artefacts left behind by ancient races that we know absolutely nothing about. Whenever the artifacts are found they should be major events, at least from an archeological perspective.
…

See Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space series!

… I'm all for a Precursor warbot getting accidentally reactivated and wreaking havoc!).
…

Whoa – way too much personal info there

 

[EDG]

See Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space series!

See, that's what I'm talking about. Or the Excession, from Iain M Banks' book of the same name.


But on the other hand, there should be things that are just there.

For example, in the Spacecraft 2000-2100AD book there are a number of "unidentified objects". One is a semi-transparent alien spacecraft that is just hovering over the surface of a dead rockball, broadcasting incomprehensible radio signals.

Another is a huge structure with an organic skin found floating in space that appears to have been part of a much larger space station.

One planet constantly emits sound at a range of frequencies for no apparent reason, and has shifting gravitational fields on its surface - and had a visitor of unknown origin that seemed to focus the sounds and gravitational variation.

Another anomaly is a highly radioactive wreck of a spacecraft that crashed a long time ago on a desolate barely habitable rockball, with evidence of survivors' equipment in a nearby cave but no sign of any living crew.


All of this could be done in Traveller. No explanations even need to be given (there aren't any in the descriptions from the book) and they don't even need to do anything, but the fact that they are there - and that their origin is unknown - gives the impression that the universe is a lot bigger and stranger than the PCs think it is. And this is a good thing, I think.

For one of the worlds I wrote up ages ago, I had a black sphere just appear underground one day - annihilating the rock around it and causing a major quake that brought it to the attention of the colonists. All it did while hovering in the exact centre of the spherical cavern it had created by its appearance was broadcast a powerful, focussed beam of neutrinos through its top and bottom poles. Nobody knows what is it, what it's there for, who it's broadcasting to or what it's broadcasting. Hell, *I* don't even know what it is. It's just there, to confound the people in my SF setting and to show that there are things that they may never find out about.

 

[Gee4orce]

I think the time period for the Ancients is about right - any older than 300,000 years and the only evidence you're going to be finding is strange fossils in the bedrock. At that age there's at least a minute chance that a civilisation could leave behind something recognisable on a planet surface. Most intact Ancient artefacts are probably found free floating in space where they'll have a much longer lifespan.

I don't think there's anything in the setting that precludes there being much, much older civlisations - it's just that any evidence of them is all but vanished. I suspect some of the more impressive feats of astro-engineering are maybe down to these other civilisations. I also like the idea that the Ancients were at war with a much more powerful and older civilisation, which was the reason for their destruction and disappearance.

I don't have a problem with the Ancients transplanting species though - after all, they are supposed to be alien, and their motivations unknowable.

 

[alex_greene]

Mysteries can also be organic, biological. Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth presents a lot of mysteries, but the most intriguing had to have been the kilometres-deep rainforest known as Midworld.

Not to mention the ongoing business of the extinct Tar-Ayim, the Hur'rikku, the Xunca and the observation post they left behind on Horseye monitoring the Great Extragalactic Void. And the Ulru-Ujurr tunnellers (especially the terse, taciturn teleporter Maybenot).

And Abalamahalamatandra, the weird alien living McGuffin of The End of the Matter.

I could go on.

 

[EDG]

I don't have a problem with the Ancients transplanting species though - after all, they are supposed to be alien, and their motivations unknowable.

Just because they are alien and/or high tech, why does that make their motives "unknowable"? Sure, their motives may be unclear, but that's different from "unknowable" which implies we'd never be able to even guess at them.