What Falls Through The Cracks - Using Alien Breeds & Other Zozer Games Resources To Update Your Hostile Rpg Campaign

What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.   [Werner Herzog]

 "ALIEN BREEDS is a roleplaying supplement for the Cepheus Engine and other classic 2D6 SF roleplaying games.  It details a new species of hostile alien predator with both an unnerving and horrific lifecycle as well as an ability to mutate ad hoc to suit its current environment. ALIEN BREEDS works well within Zozer Games’  own SF setting called HOSTILE, but it can be used in any Cepheus Engine game – as long as your players can handle this beast… and there is certainly no guarantee of that!

"Included with the book is a typical colony installation. It is a fairly small example, big enough to hold may be 50 or 60 people, enough for an extended science survey, a prospecting mission or the maintenance of some new equipment on planet – perhaps a powerplant, refinery, test mine or atmosphere processor."

"The colony layout is used in the included adventure – ‘Outbreak’.  "

 Last night it was time to trot out Hostile rpg's Alien Breed for designing xenomorph or alien monsters for your Hostile rpg. The reason isn't actually the monster but that is a part of it. But instead the adventure  'Outbreak' which has a typical colonial outpost. Now personally I haven't done as much running of Outbreak as other Hostile rpg adventures. As introduction 'Outbreak' certain shares the tone of the Hostile rpg universe's adventures. The universe has far bigger things within it's depths then one expects. And 'Outbreak' explores Hostile's themes of exploration, danger, and the unexpected. 

So I'm going to be setting up 'Outbreak' in  The "Autonomous Region" setting of Outworld which is the free Cold War Travellersque style free campaign setting by Paul Elliot. The "Autonomous Region" setting is actually the interstellar boarder within by own Hostile campaign for the United States & Russia. The Russians are having problems of their own with an alien species & the United States corporations have limited intelligence on this. Why?! 

What I'm actually doing is updating both Kosmos 68 & Outworld over to our own Hostile rpg campaign. There are several things that are different from normal Hostile, the biggest thing is psionics are a phenomeon within our own various Cepheus Engine games. And while psionics sorta gives an advantage to the PC's in a universe like Hostile's it's actually of mininium use. The "Autonomous Region" setting of Outworld is supposedly the most humanistically settled region of space. And yet there's been an 'Outbreak'. 
The events of Orbital 2100 were only one hundred & twenty five years ago. Which means that missions & such are ancient history. Space isn't civilized & won't be despite mankind's machinations. 

Orbital 2100's missions are the history for our own Hostile campaign moving forward! This approach has worked numerous times. This is similar to how explorers continue to run across 1900's Antartic exploritory missions of the past. And this includes Outpost Mars which is literally brimming with alien ruins of the past. 

Outpost Mars is going to be causing quite the problem for both the Americans, and the Russians within our games coming up. And it point of fact was one of the first Zozer Games product I bought. 

The Weirder Frontiers of Space - OSR Commentary - Outpost Mars By Paul Elliot From Zozer Games For The 2100 Space rpg

 "2017 – astronauts set foot on Mars.

20 years later colonisation has begun, mining is in full swing, and the goals of scientific research are becoming muddied with profit and survival. Competing factions are growing stronger, and the engineers and scientists of the United Nations Space Co-ordination Organisation are finding that even they are not immune from the petty politics of the red planet."

"Outpost Mars is a TL 8 setting for the Cepheus Engine roleplaying game set on this newly-settled planet. Players take the roles of scientists, engineers and explorers going about their business of investigating Martian phenomenon and avoiding death or serious injury while doing so. "

"The real story  focus, however, is on the player characters and their motivations.  Trapped on Mars, working in isolation with the other player characters in the team, games will pick up on and revolve around a character's personal interactions with his team-members. On their rivalries, secrets, hidden agendas, lies and on their mutual interests." 

Outpost Mars from Zozer Games could be used completely out of context as a  different colony world out on the fringes of the Blackness of interstellar space. This is going to pick up from this blog entry here.  The struggle of the lowely spacers to establish a colony on a Mars like world with zero budget comes on the heels of some of the high profile missions of Hostile  Compared to the megacorporations missions this points up the fact that space exploration & exploitation is a richman's game. 

Space is mindbogglingly big and its easy to see a mission to a Mars like planet taking a very long time. Due to  einsteinian physics we can see these petty factions of the Space 2100 rpg still being a problem within Hostile universe. Yes, this is even with hyperspace in the Hostile rpg.  Because of fact that  spacecraft's missions take hundreds of years to get to their destinations. Slap a hyperdrive on a space 2100 space craft with heat venting for the radiation & you've got another faction in 2d6 space ready to go or attack depending upon the campaign. 
For the Earth Sector rpg of Independence Games there's even more confusion as factions that haven't been operating for hundreds of years suddenly find themselves at odds with peaceful colonies. There could be an entire campaign of different frontier era explorers at each other's throats. This sorta of campaign could be a repeat of the Age of Sail from Earth all over again. Could any megacorporation afford the waste of life that this would create?! Absolutely not! There might be specialized diplomats whose job it is to defuse these sorts of situations due to uncounted missions from Earth reaching their final destinations on the frontiers of space. The collapse of the wormhole in the Clement Sector saw to that. 

And those frontiers of space are dangerous unto themselves as we've seen in Far Horizon from Zozer Games. The legacy of Tartarus is going to be a whole cloth piece of urban space mythology. Now add in the legends of phantom armies of colonists and the roughnecks that might stumble across them?! Sounds like something out of a bad urban legend until these colonists are camped outside your colony's door. The frontiers of space are very weird indeed. 

Outpost Mars for Cepheus Engine  From Zozer Games
 Is Available Here 

'Failure Is An Option' Further OSR Commentary On 'Far Horizon' By Paul Elliot From Zozer Games For The Hostile Rpg Instead of Orbital 2100 rpg

 "Far Horizon is a Near Future science fiction adventure and spaceship book for Cepheus Engine and for the Classic 2D6 SF roleplaying game that is based on. "

"It is 2100 AD and the Earth’s Space Development Agency has funded a mission to the outer edge of the Solar System. Pluto and Charon have been explored and human landings have been made for the first time. Now the crew has taken on a new mission to explore Tartarus, a minor planet billions of kilometres from the Sun and one that is a rogue and not native to our Solar System. Tartarus is a passing interstellar traveller and Earth wants the crew of the Far Horizons to be the first humans ever to land on such a mysterious ‘rogue world’. Its irregular trajectory has the scientists on Earth puzzled – and there’s nothing like getting humans on to the surface to solve a puzzle!" 

Far Horizons is a favorite adventure from Zozer Games because it has the potential to be a multiple part campaign adventure. The idea that a planetary body has a very expensive spacecraft around it wrapped in an enigma surrounded by a mystery. Draws in players like moths to a flame. What happens when a mission fails, the planetary body is still in orbit and still no one knows what happened! Suddenly, in the Hostile universe 125 years later nuclear jets fire after a frozen computer's circuits tumble together. The PC's corportation detects the signal & the race is on! 
Taratus is still a major interstellar find and the puzzles of the Kuiper belt are still being explored even as the belt is being mined. And if Orbital 2100 is the 125 year  past of Hostile then there's still a lot of national tension going on the boardrooms of Earth & beyond. 

There doesn't have to be a monster per say to have the horrific happen simply look at the history of the Shackleton expediation for inspiration. The long term effects of the secrets of the Far Horizon mission is incredible for the Hostile universe. Men will kill for it, murder will be commited, science will explode, and the space industry will be rocked from stem to stern. The legacy of Tartarus from the 

'Far Horizon' mission could actually be run as well in Independence Games Earth Sector universe  with the same implications. The puzzles, traps, tricks, etc's rewards of the Far Horizon are very far reaching indeed. And this could spell the change needed to breach the worm hole closing in the Clement sector if played right. 
Far Horizon is an upper level medium adventure in which the 'meat headed' approach of Space Opera rpging is going to get the PC's killed or worse. Seriously, Far Horizon's is a very finely balanced but extremely well done 2d6 Science Fiction adventure for Zozer Games's rpg products & other 2d6 Science Fiction rpg's. 

Far Horizons by Paul Elliot From Zozer Games Is Available Here.