Beyond Mere Space Mercenaries - Other Game Ideas and Concepts for Sub-ether and Galaxy Black

So sub-ether 2 probably represents the best (so far) the sort of default assumed game play inherent in Galaxy black[1], namely “zero levels leave their crappy home habitats and get in a starship and wander around, all along (and considerably beyond) the imperial border.  Where imperial means “any expanding colonial power.”  Call it the Federation, call it the Alliance, whatever.  If it’s a high tech stellar power with psi powers and colonial expansion, that’s the imperium.  

Or to put it more bluntly – traditional D&D DCC in SPAAAAAAAAACE

Which is wonderful. But Galaxy Black, thundering bulk that it is, allows for all sorts of other weird SF gameplay.  Here’s some examples -

 

Other Game Ideas and Concepts

 Intergalactic Dinosaur-y  Dinosaurs Mr. Rico, A Whole Galaxy Of Them! 

Thanks to some unexpected Navigator assistance an Imperial Legion has boarded and (somewhat) captured, one of the Aerkeroi[2]; 300+ million year old terraforming factory craft, a vast mobile automated ark that goes to worlds, mass material terraforms them and introduces an artificial ecology before moving on to the next world. An ISA boarding team was able to confirm their “Elder Thing Hypothesis” – linking this to a series of four other known “BDO” class objects known to exist at near to hyperlight velocities moving out of or away from our galaxy.
An intact data sample suggests in fact hat a sixth ark should by now be reaching (X galaxy) and transforming all of 50 million theorized worlds into copies of the Teranayan Mesozoic …
….. and so your ship is being outfitted to travel to this distant galaxy and explore, chart, and colonize those 50 million garden worlds, each of which should have extensive and harvestable higher animal life
Of course, on the far side of that galaxy the Aerkeroi in question is still spitting out worlds. Once there, can they find – and capture – such a prize? A maker on such an awesome scale could be capable of almost anything…..
Ideal for large parties of leveled PCs who should probably be the colony / colonization leaders who should probably have access to most o the gear in Galaxy Black
Plus dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are rad. The mix of pseudolovecraftiana and Cenozoic remixed nonsense should ,make for a fine Galaxy of the Lost type situation.

The Unvisible College

An all Wizard (or Wizards and elves, or Wizards elves, and clerics really, add casters from supplements and variants to taste) game in Galaxy Black would pro’lly look something like the Invisibles, with rival cabals of casters trying to bring about one or more ‘noosphere events’ to rewrite reality … or some other high sounding but ultimately very …. Revelatory (meaning destructive among other things here) goal.
But in broad strokes the Invisibles, say volumes 1-5 of the trade backs)
Or Shade the Changing Man (the Chris Baccalo / Peter Milligan run from the 90s) sadly there is only one collection of this out there that I know and it’s from the weaker early issues.

 

Judges Raid Thine Bookshelves

Easiest way to prep a low prep GB game? Okay this is the smartassed answer so it’s the true one – grab any three issues of one or more of the following 2000ad, Heavy Metal or Epic Illustrated, almost any old Warren or EC sf or horror comic (though in a pinch any horror, F&SF comic will do), find the three most visually interesting stories, stick this on a planet somewhere in the galaxy and hit Go!   Write up stuff as you go based on what you liked from the material and don’t be afraid to riff.  Your own notion of the idea is better than the original idea for our purposes.  Mix this with whatever else you fancy.   Ditch the parts of the concept you don’t like.  Figure out how it fits together as you go.

Don’t be afraid to let player theories become emergent truths.  Especially when theirs is a better idea than whatever bs you had prepared. You can always come back to it if you need to ditch this angle.

 

Existing resources you may already have in your gaming library

Star shrine of the Seamother
Shrine of the Kuo-Toa becomes a dandy God level for a passing starship of aqua-galactics; shove the temple complex deep inside a starship, change literally nothing else. Blibdoolpoolip makes a nasty ship’s goddess, and moreover has been written up ..somewhere online. (the only link I had was a g+ link, damn that stings)

 

Dwellers inside the Forbidden Worldship
For that matter, have the PCs find an old starship adrift, orbiting a hot young star in a system teeming with life. When they board break out Dwellers of the Forbidden City In my experience you can run it pretty much as is with a few obvious exceptions – just placing it inside a hollowed out asteroid, riffing off the old Star Trek episode The World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky, running with the backstory that it was a Quetzal era generation ship that was long ago overthrown by servitor beings on board.
Once Sub-ether 3 drops you can even have the Forbidden Worldship serve as the secret asteroid base of the White Sun but now I’ve said too much….
(and as I’ve said elsewhere you can do this exact thing even better with B4 the Lost City[3]. Just on the off chance any of you might have scored a copy of THAT recently.)


Because you own Sailors on the Sunless Sea (right?) - Stick the chaos temple atop the sunless sea on a body like Europa or Ceres and get a VERY different sunless sea. Space is littered wit the vacuum packed ruins of dead civilizations……

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[1] Maybe more accurately it’s what I feel most people will do with it out of the box.

 

[2] The Arkeroi  - 300 mya elder thing terraforming device/craft/BDO;

Maybe such things are large (VAST) mobile automated arks, that go to worlds, genesis effect them, and then introduce an artificial ecology

Much of it might be Terran derived at least in part.

 

[3] I find the statblocks in B/X era adventures to be plug and play levels of usable for DCC, just add and remix as you go.  Which does bring to mind that you could also combine these ideas and run the Asteroid of Dread. Have fun with it whatever you do!