Got mine loot!!!

[Asperion]

There is many threads and discussions about loot and rewards for fantasy genre and games. They need their magic, weapons, equipment, etc. However, when it comes to scifi, people tend to get silent. As a result,  gms tend to make the scifi equivalent of the fantasy loot. Instead of a sword,  it will be a ray weapon,  or that plate armor becomes something made from high-tech materials, etc. Looking for things other than this swap out, what clever loot have you used for your players when they defeat those opponents? What is the strange,  high-tech environment that everyone is fighting in? What is the response from the authorities? Other comments are welcome. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Starship upgrades and vehicles come to mind.  AI upgrades, cybernetic devices, strange alien creatures as pets or followers.

[Lord Liaden]

In an interstellar sci-fi setting with civilizations of differing ages and sophistication in technology, tech-hunting is a classic story motivation and may be an extremely profitable activity. Scavenging, or even stealing more advanced technology from another civilization, or hunting through the ruins of extinct races looking for overlooked caches of devices, could leave a lucky someone financially set for life. These things need not be dramatic and world-shattering, like doomsday weapons or time machines. Solar panels or thermal generators with far greater efficiency, or batteries holding much larger amounts of energy, would mean big profits while not fundamentally changing society or astropolitics. One might even find the advanced alien equivalent of everyday useful inventions like band-aids or velcro, e.g. a paint that's self-renewing and repels dirt and stains.

 

Whether a civilization is extant or extinct, its art objects can command great prices from collectors, especially If they also have archaeological significance. Even discovery of previously lost historical records or literature would be of much value to the right parties.

 

Diverse alien worlds may hold rare or unique and desired natural resources: radioactive elements, distinctive gemstones or pearls, metals with exceptional properties, and the like. Botanical species could produce compounds for everything from medicine, to addictive drugs, to temporarily inducing superhuman abilities. There would probably be a thriving trade in alien animal hides, horns/teeth/tusks, and body parts for homeopathic remedies.

 

Note that trading or transporting any of the above might be banned by the source world's government and/or interstellar treaty, with criminal penalties, meaning increased risk but also increased profit. Something for your Han Solo homages to smuggle.

 

(If you have access to the Hero Games book Worlds Of Empire, which describes a wide variety of planets in the Hero Universe's Milky Way, several of those worlds possess distinctive valuable resources that you could adapt to your own games, or use as inspiration.)

Edited June 22 by Lord Liaden

[DShomshak]

For my STAR HERO setting I postulated "hypernuclear matter," or hy-matter, which incorporated elementary particles other than protons, neutrons and electrons. These included "strange matter," whose nuclei included particles incorporating the "strange" quark (protons and neutrons only use the up and down quarks), or "muonic matter" in which one or more electrons are replaced by their heavier analog, the muon. As yet, strange particles and muons are only known to break down quickly -- but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that some circumstances might stabilize them. Theoreticians suggest muonic matter would be much denser than ordinary matter, with enhanced properties: like, muonic iron might allow even stronger magnets. No one can guess what properties strange matter might have.

 

"Supersymmetric matter," incorporating particles from supersymmetry theory, was another form of hy-matter. I postulated that it was able to convert one fundamental force into another, such as converting electromagnetism into gravity -- the basis of artificial gravity systems. (Unfortunately, RL particle accelerators have attained the energies at which evidence of supersymmetry was predicted to appear, and it hasn't. Advocates say, OK, maybe we got the sums wrong and supersymmetry will be discovered in the next CERN upgrade. The math is too pretty not to be true! Well, maybe. You can still fit supersymmetry into your rubber science with only a little stretching.)

 

The most difficult, energy-intensive form of hy-matter is the magnetic monopole, a flaw in space-time with the mass of an amoeba concentrated into one elementary particle. I made them the core of the best FTL drives.

 

Hypernuclear matter is so-called because making it involves energies greater than that of ordinary nuclear reactions. Hy-mattrer factories consist of banks of immense particle accelerators, powered by correspondingly large banks of fusion reactors. They are built on moons of gas giants, with orbital towers draoping into the atmsphere to suck up the enormous amounts of hydrogen needed to fuel the reactors. In my setting, the chief centers of manufacture were Jupiter and Barnard's Star, with a smaller (but growing) facility near the Chinese colony of Renchuang, with a few others on the drawing boards.

 

Because hy-matter is so difficult to produce, it is expensive. Not totally beyond price because it is made in such quantities. But it's a major factor in the cost of starships and other advanced tech -- which makes it eminently worth hoarding, or stealing.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Asperion]

What about nonmatterial rewards? With easy availability of surveillance records,  authorities,  media, pcs, and others could easily spin what was done for whatever purpose they desire. This could make larger, better rewards than anything material that pcs recieve.

[Lord Liaden]

Well, if you're going the digital route, how about obtaining the access codes to the interstellar currency exchange, and downloading a billion credits into your account?  😈

[DShomshak]

That sort of happened in Jack Vance's "Demon Princes" space opera series. <spoiler>: The interstellar society has apparently forgery-proof money, with a ubiquitous "fake-meter" that can tell tell the difference. Nobody knows what the fake-meter detects, because the machine infallibly self-destructs if tampered with. Only a handful of people -- the directors of the interstellar bank know the secret. When series hero Kirth Gersen finds one of the directors murdered, it takes him a while to realize what the message he carried meant, but eventually he figures out it's the secret of money and the fake-meter. He now can forge unlimited amounts of money.

 

And what was valuable enough to tempt the band director to betray the secret, when money is almost literally no object? How about... the secret to renewed youth and life indefinitely prolonged? A biotech treasure for which any trust might be betrayed, and any price paid.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Asperion]

Was asking for all the different ways that characters can be rewarded for dealing with those problems that their local authorities have proven either unable or unwilling to deal with. These rewards can be physical, electronic, perk, or something else. I could see authorities taking either a blind eye or giving some form of contact or favor as payment in place their form of cash. 

[Rich McGee]

 

On 6/24/2024 at 12:49 PM, DShomshak said:

That sort of happened in Jack Vance's "Demon Princes" space opera series.

Beat me to it, that was the first thing I thought of too.

On 6/24/2024 at 12:49 PM, DShomshak said:

When series hero Kirth Gersen finds one of the directors murdered

If by "finds murdered" you mean "accidentally got killed while breaking up the info exchange" then sure.  But since Kirth stole the formula before the guy was even dead and was in the middle of kidnapping him for a bounty when he died, I guess the details are best left unexamined.  Gerson's one stone-hearted guy.

 

On 6/24/2024 at 12:49 PM, DShomshak said:

How about... the secret to renewed youth and life indefinitely prolonged? A biotech treasure for which any trust might be betrayed, and any price paid.

And yet Gerson looks at what the process entails (killing children, among other things) and destroys the instructions without regret or thought of disseminating it.  Maybe not so stone-hearted after all?  Of course, a cynic could point out he destroyed both sets of info and yet still remembered the counterfeiting cheat well enough to recreate it months later, and he's demonstrated nearly perfect eidetic memory in other instances...    

 

The biggest material treasures usually found in scifi RPGs are the starships themselves.  If you can take a ship without having to shoot it to pieces in the process that's often more valuable than anything else you'll ever see, but you have to find a way to achieve legal ownership unless you enjoy being hunted as a pirate.  That's one of the reasons Traveller has so many scenarios featuring hijackers, although the concept isn't confined to that game.

 

For nonmaterial loot, one of the biggest categories would be exclusive knowledge of survey results.  Even something "minor" like a planetoid known to be loaded with high-value substances (which might not be mineral - depending on tech and the situation a big water-ice find could do) is a fortune if sold to a firm that can extract the stuff.  The stellar coordinates of a planet with a shirtsleeve environment would be worth impossible sums to a government or really big business concern - but with the telescopes we have even today the idea of physically surveying for that sort of thing is starting to look pretty outdated.  There just shouldn't be hidden worlds out there, just ones that haven't been given a good look yet.  Let the astronomers find a likely prospect, then send drones or manned scouts to check up on them.  The location won't be secret, but accurate on-location data would still be worth something, maybe quite a lot to the right people.

[DShomshak]

3 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

 

If by "finds murdered" you mean "accidentally got killed while breaking up the info exchange" then sure.  But since Kirth stole the formula before the guy was even dead and was in the middle of kidnapping him for a bounty when he died, I guess the details are best left unexamined.  Gerson's one stone-hearted guy.

 

Fair. It *has* been about 30 years since I read the book... I remember the counterfeiting hack a lot better than the circumstances!

 

(And yeah, just like the "secret planet" trope is getting less plausible, it's a little hard to believe the phenomenon the face-meter tests for wouldn't be figured out by careful physical analysis. Oh well, still a rip-snorting good yarn!)

 

Dean Shomshak

 

 

[Jkeown]

On 6/22/2024 at 10:16 AM, Asperion said:

There is many threads and discussions about loot and rewards for fantasy genre and games. They need their magic, weapons, equipment, etc. However, when it comes to scifi, people tend to get silent. As a result,  gms tend to make the scifi equivalent of the fantasy loot. Instead of a sword,  it will be a ray weapon,  or that plate armor becomes something made from high-tech materials, etc. Looking for things other than this swap out, what clever loot have you used for your players when they defeat those opponents? What is the strange,  high-tech environment that everyone is fighting in? What is the response from the authorities? Other comments are welcome. 

I'm writing a PDF of rewards for you today. When's your next game?

[Jkeown]

Some samples: 

 

Fyre

This stuff is the psionic Flame produced by Activated Carboflux. What you do is leave an ampule or bucket of the stuff lying around and think about it bursting into flame. However, if you think about it… inopportunely… it can go off early or not at all. The stuff is as frustrating as it is deadly.

Activated Carboflux:  RKA 2d6, Trigger (Activating the Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action, Trigger requires a Turn or more to reset, Misfire; Mental Command; +¼), Delayed Effect (+¼) (45 Active Points); 1 Charge which Never Recovers (-4), OAF (-1), Beam (-¼), Real Weapon (-¼) Real Cost: 7

 

Active Xendrite Radiation

The Xendrites are no more; they’ve been gone for eons. The last members of that race committed themselves to the memory of the galaxy by transforming into light and now spend eternity being refracted around the universe with the aid of a series of Psionic Mirrors. If you happen across a beam of these wankers, you can catch them in Memory Crystals. They will probably sit in suspension for a bit, waxing quixotic about life in the galaxy billions of years ago. They’d appreciate it if you release them back into the void after a bit, though.

One of these guys was lost in a small cafe in Rickmansworth in south-west Hertfordshire,  England, Earth until the Dha’ral invasion in 2008. A small cult grew up around it after the Gamma Age descended. It was released to wander the galaxy after the Union was constituted in 2220.

Active Xendrite Radiation:  Summon 300-point Xendrite Memories (60 Active Points); OAF (-1), Strong-Willed +2 on EGO Rolls (-1/4) Real Cost: 27

Abstinol

This stuff renders one immune to the effects of alcohol. Take one of these little gray pills before a night out and drink the well dry; you won’t get drunk. The actual use for this is left as an exercise for the reader.

A word of caution: the invention of this drug collapsed the economy of Planet Smirnoff in 2391.

Abstinol: LS  (Immunity: Alcohol) (3 Active Points); OAF (-1), 32 Continuing Charges lasting 6 Hours each which Never Recover (-0) Real Cost: 1

 

Active Gel

The breakthrough product of 2419 would have to be self-adjusting earphone jacks for all those stupid music storage devices that resulted from the Grand Harmonic Contention. If there were a runner-up that year, it would be Active Gel, a regenerative goo that intelligently sought out and repaired damage as it occurred. Drinking or injecting this stuff makes one nearly immune to a wide range of damage sources. Those headphones were pretty cool, though.

Active Gel:  Regeneration (6 BODY per Turn) (96 Active Points); 6 Continuing Charges lasting 20 Minutes each which Never Recover (-1½), IIF (-¼) Real Cost: 25

 

K’zal’a Rays

K’zal’a Rays are a form of anti-photons that interact weakly with regular matter and not at all with standard light-sensing organs and devices.

The effect is that objects that emit K’zal’a Rays are Fully Invisible (No Fringe). This is fun for a few minutes until you realize that you are totally blind to normal light. This is somewhat mitigated by the use of a cane that emits K’zal’a Rays, but it’s a bit stupid at that point, yes?

A K’zal’a Ray flashlight restores a bit of sight and dignity. Dr. Hollepin perfected this and gained much fame, but he’s a complete doorknob who pronounces ‘fajita’ with a hard J sound.

K'zal'a Ray Suit:  Invisibility to Sight Group , No Fringe (30 Active Points); Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (Complete Blindness; -1), OIF (-½), 6 Continuing Charges lasting 1 Minute each (-0) Real Cost: 12

K'zal'a Ray Flashlight:  Detect Invisible Objects and People 9- (Unusual Group), Range, Sense, Targeting (27 Active Points); OAF (-1), 6 Continuing Charges lasting 1 Minute each (-0) Real Cost: 13

Kadu Drive Goo

The blue-adjacent liquids circulating around the drive organs of Kadu can improve FTL Drive performance or aid Hyper-forge Crafting.

When injected into your hyperdrive engines, it acts as an Aid 10d6 to FTL. When used in a Hyper-Forge, it provides a similar effect benefitting the Create power used therein.  

If imbibed, it causes hallucinations of unreal spaces and a tendency to teleport uncontrollably. Frequently used as a recreational drug. Also frequently used as a plot device. Slip some of this into your Player Character’s drinks and watch them panic as they bamf around the sector in their underwear.

Kadu Drive Goo:  Aid  FTL 10d6 (60 Active Points); 3 Charges which Never Recover (-3¼), OAF (-1), One Use At A Time (-1) Real Cost: 10

Also, Kadu Drive Goo:  Aid  Create 10d6 (60 Active Points); 3 Charges which Never Recover (-3¼), OAF (-1), One Use At A Time (-1) Real Cost: 10

Again, With The Drive Goo:  Mental Illusions 10d6 (Human and Alien Class of Minds classes of minds), Transdimensional (Single Dimension; +½) (82 Active Points); Self Only (-1), Based on CON (Defense: PD; -1), Side Effects (Accidental Teleportation; -1), No Range (-½) Real Cost: 18

Kadu Drive Goo Accidental Teleportation:  Teleportation 14m, Safe Blind Teleport (+¼), Trigger (Activating the Trigger is an Action that takes no time, Trigger resets automatically, immediately after it activates, Character does not control activation of personal Trigger; Failed CON Roll While On Kadu Drive Goo; +¾), MegaScale (1m = 1 lightyear; +4¼) (87 Active Points); 3 Charges which Never Recover (-3¼) Real Cost: 20

Kadu Particle Beam Structure

The huge particle emitters Kadu possess make excellent beamguns for starships.

Feed the cycler some asteroid fragments and comet-flavored hydrogen and these things will really sing. Looks odd to have a bunch of wet, wiggly space monster parts dangling from your ship, but you probably have stranger things in your foot locker. (In fact, I know you do. Next time you’re in port, gather some marines and open that thing.)

Kadu Particle Beam Projector:  RKA 6d6, Armor Piercing (+¼) (112 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1) Real Cost: 56

However, the creature’s beam structure focuses both ways, so maybe craft some sensors or holo-emitters from them.

Now you have these ideas, you have to go kill a Kadu. Good hunting.

 

Gwen Stefani

Taken by Uluquan Sneaks just after the success of The Beacon Street Collection, her android replacement went on to great fame before being vaporized by the Dha’ral in 2008. Her dormant, nano-stabilized body is drifting in an Uluquan-marked lifepod near the border of Celestial Chorus and Pacifica sectors. When awakened with the included Nano-Nullifier, she’ll be a bit scared, shaken, and only 25 years old. She might hang with your crew, resume her much-delayed music career, or jet off to Rasalhague to finish her degree.

Nano-Nullifier: Dispel Nanotech Powers 20d6, Expanded Effect (All Nanotech Powers simultaneously) (+1½) (150 Active Points); OAF (-1), 6 Charges (-¾), Beam (-¼), Real Weapon (-¼), Limited Range (3m; -¼) Real Cost: 43

 

Korbulate Suspension

The Korbulate Suspension is a complex organic compound formed by a quantity of liquid math, patience emograms, and logic dust.  

It resets one’s perceptions every ten minutes or so, alleviating the need to sleep, eat, excrete, or do anything, really. There are guys out in the Scorpius-Centaurus OB Association that have used this stuff to wait for a super nova for over 10,000 years.

Korbulate Suspension:  Life Support  (Eating: Character does not eat; Longevity: Immortal; Safe in High Radiation; Safe in Intense Cold; Safe in Low Pressure/Vacuum; Self-Contained Breathing; Sleeping: Character does not sleep) (27 Active Points); OAF (-1), 1 Continuing Charge lasting 1 Century (-0) Real Cost: 13

 

Metagraphite

Produced as a result of hyperdrive system manufacture, these are infinitely-long (but infinitely narrow and infinitely short) carbon analogs. They are similar in form and function to fullerene and diamond cable. Normally bound up in 4-dimensional knots of stupidly complex loops and twists, they are sold as qubit storage arrays, able to hold vast amounts of data in very small spaces.

Some very sensitive beings have created intricate hyperdimensional art. Some very insensitive bastards have created nets in hyperspace to screw with your drive, should you pass through them.  

The nets, called Snozzberries by those with questionable humor settings, are little black spheres in normal space. In hyperspace, they are gigantic tangles of utterly black thread. They can be set in orbit around a world to prevent ships from precipitating out of hyperspace too close for comfort or fired at escaping ships to prevent them from entering hyperspace at all.

They are normally held in shielded containers that prevent them from expanding into other realms. Just having a naked one in your pocket can cause all sorts of problems. Carrying them unshielded is a crime in most jurisdictions.

Snozzberry: Dispel FTL bought as Hyperdrive Engines 20d6, Area Of Effect (3m Radius; +¼), Persistent (+¼), Constant (+½), Transdimensional (Hyperspace; +½), MegaScale (1m = 100 km; +1½) (240 Active Points); 2 Charges which Never Recover (-3½), OAF (-1) Real Cost: 44

 

Magtonium™

This metallic-seeming substance is comprised of instantiated magnetic field lines, forming bitruncated order-5 dodecahedral honeycombs. That is to say, they look like shiny metal soccer balls. Containers formed of this stuff (themselves milled using a hyper-CNC and special pleading) can hold almost any substance, including the Bastard Material, Obstintium, and other stubborn materials like Cantankerum, Inflexulax and the Dogged Theorems. The only thing Moleculate will not dissolve is Magtonium.

It can be used to make safe containers for Neutron Star Matter.

Magtonium™ Hyper-Thermos:  Telekinesis (70 STR), Persistent (+¼), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +½), Transdimensional (Hyperspace; +½), Affects Desolidified Any form of Desolidification (+½) (289 Active Points); OAF (-1), No Range (-½), Affects Whole Object (-¼) Real Cost: 105

 

Polaric Coating

Prevents objects from touching it (Unless that stuff is coated by Polaric coating of the opposite sign). As a Special Effect, focuses (like gloves or padded sticks) coated with this stuff can be “Negative Polaric Coated” and thus manipulate Polaric Coated objects normally.

Positive Polaric Coating:  Telekinesis (20 STR), Persistent (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +½), Transdimensional (Psionic Realm; +½) (67 Active Points); Limited Power: Power loses almost all of its effectiveness (Only To Prevent Physical Contact; -2) Real Cost: 22

Negative Polaric Gloves: Drain Polaric Coating 8d6 (80 Active Points); OIF (-½), No Range (-½), Real Weapon (-¼) Real Cost: 35

 

Rakulastii Har-mones

Produced by Rakulastii in male mode. When injected into Rakulastii or other cladistical-adjacent species, it can result in Enhanced Calmness.

Rakulastii Har-Mones:  Mind Control 8d6 (Alien and Huamn Class of Minds classes of minds) (45 Active Points); 2 clips of 1 Charge which Never Recovers (-3 1/2), Set Effect (Chill Out; -1/2) Real Cost: 9

Rakulastii War-mones

Produced by Rakulastii in female mode. When injected into Rakulastii or other cladistical-adjacent species, it can result in Murderous Rage.

Rakulastii War-Mones:  Mind Control 8d6 (Alien and Human Class of Minds classes of minds) (45 Active Points); 2 clips of 1 Charge which Never Recovers (-3 1/2), Set Effect (Make War; -1/2) Real Cost: 9

Regenex Compounds

Substances extracted from long-lived creatures that are then tuned for use in a specific race.

Regenex Compounds:  Healing BODY 6d6 (60 Active Points); 1 Charge which Never Recovers (-4) Real Cost: 12

Riff Reproductive Signals

Endocrines that kickstart a variety of biological processes can act as an overall Aid to Bio-Tech Create powers. Also called “Juicing the Forge.”

Riff Reproductive Signals:  Aid  Create 6d6 (36 Active Points); 1 Charge which Never Recovers (-4), Requires A Roll (Bio-Engineering roll; -½) Real Cost: 6

 

Warp Gloves

Some objects have been tinkered with, removing visual, tactile, or physical attributes in a hyper-forge. These gloves have been treated in a similar device to be able to interact with such frustrating things. Not to be confused with weaponized Warp Fists that can phase through armor but are stopped by organic matter.

Warp Glove: +10 STR, Transdimensional (Hyperspace; +½) (20 AP); OIF (-½), Real Weapon (-¼) (Modifiers affect Base Characteristic) Real Cost: 7