Single Star System Sci-fi Campaigns
Something I’ve been toying with is the idea of a single star system sci-fi campaign. This came up as I was preparing for yet another sci-fi campaign. The amount of preparation seemed overwhelming. If you don’t go the improvizational Stars Without Number way, you need to prepare at least the star systems the players can reach within a session. With a huge universe like in Traveller, the group may spend only a short amount of time in one system. If I want to create more depth to the worlds and keep the player characters there, I need to somehow restrict where they can go. The solution is the Single Star System Campaign.
The easiest version is to have the campaign star system be our own. With realistic acceleration it’s large enough that it takes time to reach its outer limits. There’s also a lot of information available on the planets in our solar system.
The drawback is that there is only one habitable world here. If you want more, the campaign needs to be either set far enough in the future for some of the planets to have been terraformed, or a fantastic version of it. The choice of having Earth as the only habitable world changes the feel of the campaign, as every other place will be a hostile environment.
Running a campaign in a fantastic version of our solar system also lets us experience the planets like the science of earlier periods described. One common period is the Victorian age with “aether” ships traversing space. Another is the “rocket punk” golden age of sci-fi when the environments on other planets were unknown. In both, it’s plausible to have a breathable atmosphere on Mars, Venus or the Moon. A third fun period would be the antiquity, with a geocentric model of the solar system or even concentric celestial spheres.
A more “realistic” sci-fi campaign that allows the creation of a unique system without having to get all the facts right can use any other star system in the universe. Previously, having more than one habitable planet seemed implausible. Finding the TRAPPIST-1 system with four habitable planets (at least in some sense) changed that. When using a foreign star system you must decide whether the inhabitants of the system evolved there or were seeded from another world. In both cases this is an opportunity to play non-human characters.
Existing Single Star System Campaigns
GURPS: Mars has options for playing on Mars with different realities, from hard sci-fi to science fantasy.
Space 1899, Forgotten Futures and Sky Galleons of Mars are examples of Victorian space travel.
High Colonies, GURPS: Terradyne, Jovian Chronicles, Transhuman Space, Orbital 2100 and Shadows Over Sol are set in near future and are mostly hard sci-fi.
Rocket Age, GURPS: Lensman (at least the early years of the campaign), GURPS: Atomic Horror and GURPS: Tales of the Solar Patrol are “rocketpunk”/”raygun gothic” games or campaigns set in the early part of the 20th century (or a timeline derived from that era).
AD&D Spelljammer: The Astromundi Cluster is a single solar system campaign for the classic fantasy space game world.
Ideas for Single Star System Campaigns
Fantastic Solar System is a campaign located in our own system’s history, but with magic and fantastical beings. This allows the use of a real time period with all of the information available. In this world the fantastic beings of legend may be visitors from other planets!
The Return of Apollo is a campaign in the early 21st century in a world where the Apollo program was never discontinued and the Space Race lead into colonization of the Moon and beyond. It comes in two flavors: UN Space Command (UNSC) where the opening of a new frontier eased the pressures of the Cold War and the nations of Earth cooperated in space exploration, and Cold Space where the Cold War continued and the colonies are split according to which side of the Iron Curtain sponsors them.
After Earth is a campaign in a distant star system colonized by a Terran sleeper ship. Out of contact with the motherworld, the colonists will have to survive on their own. Hopefully they can build space capability of their own so they may contact their brethren again.
