Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[mte-aaron]

The winner of the genre poll for the first Perilous Journey campaign is sci-fi. Now it's time to choose the sub-genre.
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[salcor]

I love Cyberpunk and military science fiction, but I think what Savage Worlds is missing is a good dedicated science fiction setting. The Pulp Sci Fi settings are interesting, but I know it isn't really what I am looking for.

Salcor

[Jordan Peacock]

I agree with Salcor. Now, I hope that some of the desire for military sci-fi will be accounted for by Nemezis, but there's still room to play in this field.

Space Opera:
If you did go into space opera, what I think you really, really need is some development of ship combat rules. The Savage Worlds core vehicular rules are deliberately generalized. The Pirates RPG book expands a bit on ship-to-ship combat, but sadly does so very sloppily in ways that I think weren't properly thought out. Slipstream rocketship combat often feels like Pirates RPG ship combat ... but in space.

What I would want would be a system that can involve both "starfighters" and "capital ships," where I can use my spaceship miniatures on a hex grid or on a plain board with tape measures, and space battles can maintain the "Fun! Fast! Furious!" method without resorting to extreme abstractions (such as boiling it all down to a "Chase").

Introducing new mechanics unique to the setting would be perfectly fine -- and in fact a bonus, to my mind. I've imagined that starfighter combat might be a lot more interesting if I were to introduce some unique mechanic such as a "maneuver deck," with cards for PCs to have with different "trick maneuvers" they might pull, as opportunity presents itself, to get the edge in a battle over the NPC "mooks." The battle in a dogfight should be about working your way into position to get a solid hit on the enemy -- not hitting and hitting and hitting again, and finally getting lucky when your damage roll eventually Aces, so at last you can blow the thing up.


Military Science Fiction / Sci-Horror:
On the other hand, lately I've been putting a lot of thought into running a "sci-horror" campaign, featuring some of my Reaper IMEF troopers I've been painting up -- though I'm still working on some sort of horrific enemy for them to fight in the claustrophobic confines of a derelict space station.

"Nemezis" looks to be the sort of setting that might fill a long-standing gap in science fiction, but I think there's still room for other exploration of such a broad category. So far, Nemezis looks to be fairly high on the tech scale, judging from art with force-fields around the armor (and the lack of need for helmets), and the sheer scope of the playing-ground.

I'm not sure what the proper term for it should be, but I'd like to see some fairly "low-tech" science fiction. I think a lot of "Aliens" (the second movie in the series was the best, to my mind), but perhaps if the Marines were better equipped, and the enemy made a little more sense.

One thing very important to me as a GM, when running a "serious" science fiction campaign, is to consider the IMPLICATIONS of the technology level, and what is and what IS NOT possible within the universe. The casual introduction of such "common" sci-fi staples as time travel, FTL travel, matter replicators and transporter technology can open up huge cans of toxic radioactive worms on an otherwise sane campaign. The players will not just nod at the introduction, use it to solve the problem of the week, then forget about it and move on, never mentioning it again like some classic Star Trek episode (This week, here we are, back in time, on a scientific mission, because we can just DO that, you know!).

No, the players will most certainly NOT forget, and they will do their best to exploit the unexplored implications of any technology. So, I end up with players who plot to use a common spaceship with FTL technology to turn it into a planet-smashing weapon that no one can hope to defend against (because it's arriving at faster than the speed of light -- so how can you tell that it's coming? And, oh yeah, here's a handy calculation of its mass times its speed, and what should happen when it hits a planet). Or, I end up with teleporters and matter replicators being used as frightening weapons and thwarting any sort of meaningful game economy. Things get especially ugly if there's even the merest possibility of technology that permits time travel in a setting. I'm also very wary of "nanotech," as cool as it might be, since mere mention of that word seems to be an excuse for introducing all sorts of "magi-tech" into a setting, if one isn't careful.

So, I'm actually willing to give up my FTL travel, if we can have our exotic space locations a little closer to home -- say, terraformed planets, or at least a Mars colony and some asteroid mining operations. Earth is big on its own. There are some interesting rocks in the rest of the solar system, and it is HYOOOOOGE. I see a lot of potential for plenty to explore, even if the tech never gets outside the solar system, or doing so involves long travels to distant outposts in cryo-chambers.

If there ARE aliens, I want them to be ALIEN in some respect -- not just "bumpy-forehead alien of the week" that happens to be (astoundingly) genetically compatible with humans.

If aliens aren't part of the equation, I want some sort of "exotic" characters as an option for PCs or adversaries -- be they robots, cyborgs, animal "uplifts," genetically-engineered variants, or whatever.

I also want some sort of adversary that's worth fighting. Cynical "megacorporation-vs.-megacorporation" plotting is all well and good for a cyberpunk setting, but occasionally I just want some hive-mind bug aliens or berserk killer robots or nano-zombies or gen-gineered monstrosities that I can swarm the heroes with, and they can blow to kingdom come with no moral reservations whatsoever.

Honestly, I've got a lot of leeway on what I'd take, but those are just my general thoughts on the matter, since I've been trying to cobble together a rough sci-horror setting for an upcoming campaign.

(I'm leaning heavily toward having the heroes arrive on a ship and getting out of cryo-stasis to find that the far-flung research station they've been sent to has been overrun by a man-created horror, and due to the sheer distance and lack of FTL communications or travel, they can't just call in for the cavalry to solve the problem. I've been in some sci-fi campaigns where I simply COULD NOT run that sort of plot, short of blowing up the ship and all of the communications equipment, because the tech level was such that our heroes could hop planets on a whim, with no need for "cryo-stasis" or the like.)
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[mte-aaron]

Please remember that the Perilous Journey series is not a setting guide but rather a setting agnostic campaign that only utilizes the core rulebooks. They will be designed so that you can run them as-is or drop them into your favorite setting.
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[mte-aaron]

@Jordan, given the information you've listed above, you should be pleasantly surprised with the space opera pitch I've received so far... However, I won't go into further details as the final theme will be determined by the Savage Worlds community.
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[Jordan Peacock]

[mte-aaron]

The Savage Worlds community voted that our proposed Savage Worlds "Adventure Path" series is going to be called Perilous Journey. They will feature a 6-book campaign that follows the characters from Novice through Legendary and only requires core rulebooks (no setting guides) and the player's guide that should go along with the campaigns.
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