Idea Sci-Fi colony ship gets brought to a fantasy world, need additional help

[Corrosion]

This is an idea I've had for a while. I was planning for it to be a 1x1, but I think it would be better as a fully-fledged group rp.

The premise is as follows:

In the 23rd century, humanity has become a rapidly-expanding interstellar empire after the discovery of faster-than-light travel. Vast colony ships with thousands of colonists are constructed to settle new frontiers across the stars hundreds of lightyears away, making journeys that would take generations in mere weeks. These brave colonists are the ones to pioneer a new age for humanity.

One such colony ship is the titular Far Passage, a vessel on its way to an exoplanet a thousand lightyears away from Earth.

However, it would not complete its journey.

On its transit to the planet, it is ripped from its path and transported to another world, one that is for all intents and purposes, a fantasy world straight out of a storybook.

This is essentially a science-fiction meets fantasy sort of plot, with the colonists now stranded on the planet having to make do with their situation, and the natives of the fantasy world having to deal with the outside-context problem.

At the moment I'm still working on the general setting. I'm mainly a science fiction guy, and I'm not exactly as good at coming up with fantasy worlds. The ones I've created have been pretty generic. I do want to start this eventually, but I feel that I need more help discussing ideas and the plot.

I prefer Discord when it comes to discussions such as this.

 

[Cealen]

even though i’m not a group rp person- i don’t really have any *personal* interest in rping this idea out, but who knows- I’ll still give my two cents here, and if you wanna talk further i’m open to it, :-D

the bigger downfall i see people fall into time and time again with fantasy worlds is that people care too much about not making their fantasy world “generic”. here’s the thing- your world can be as “generic” as they come, because it’s only what’s happening in said world, not the set dressing, that makes it interesting! the set dressing/world should exist to only make your story more interesting. you can have the most intricate world building, the most unique magic system, but if your main story STILL is just “chosen one saves the world” or something that your world doesn’t make any more interesting, you already lost out on what makes fantasy interesting to many people.

for your idea, your premise is interesting enough alone that it could warrant a “generic” fantasy setting, so i wouldn’t be worrying so much about it, honestly. if it’s a “sci-fi meets fantasy” situation anyways, a generic fantasy setting might even enhance how “alien” this world feels, and how, like you said, it feels “right out of a storybook”.

i feel like you should think in the way of what will happen AFTER the colonists arrive there. they’re obviously going to be far more high-tech than whatever is on the fantasy world, if you’re thinking of a medieval fantasy world. so, i feel like either this could go two ways- the fantasy world citizens see these colonists as almost divine beings who were sent to “help” them. sudden, the colonists are shoved into a “hero” role, as they are seen to be these highly powerful beings with their future technology. do the colonists let that get to their head or not, do they accidentally “hurt” the people they are trying to help because they can’t see them as “equals” to them- they feel like fake people from a storybook, do they keep on trying to get hole even though they would then be “abandoning” these who need help, was it right in the first place for everyone to assume they have to fulfill this “hero” role for the “good” of society... lots of interesting thematic developments can happen if you go that route!

the other route of course has fear of these people, and they see them as harbingers of the end- basically, instead of seeing them as “heroes”, it’s the exact opposite, they see them as the big baddies that need to be destroyed. of course, being viewed as villains is... not liked by the colonists, or who knows, they might revel in that role, angry for the fantasy people for not being “welcoming” to them. it can be interesting their attempts of either trying to not be viewed as villains, or realizing that there is a bigger threat, and then ending up merging kinda with my first idea and assuming a “heroic” role?

these are just my ideas on mainly the biggest premise of how they’ll interact with one another, because i think that’s the most interesting part of your idea! but maybe that can get the idea ball rolling. that’s just my two cents, again, though, we may have very different tastes when it comes to rp stories, but i hope my idea ball starters helped even a bit :-D.

 

[marcoone]

The biggest thing you need to figure out, really before anything else, is ultimately how these two sides interact. That will be one of the main drivers, if not the main driver, of your plot.

What, for example, are the boundaries of your sci-fi tech and the local fantasy magic? Do they act as sort of equalizers to each other? Does one have an advantage over the other?

What sort of cultural differences are you looking to introduce? What sort of similarities? What are the benefits and flaws of not only the local fantasy societies (and there can be many) but your sci-fi people as well? What sort of assumptions do your main characters walk in with? How are they confirmed, how are they challenged?

Generic fantasy is fine so long as you flesh out these sort of key conflicts.

 

[Corrosion]

feel like you should think in the way of what will happen AFTER the colonists arrive there. they’re obviously going to be far more high-tech than whatever is on the fantasy world, if you’re thinking of a medieval fantasy world. so, i feel like either this could go two ways- the fantasy world citizens see these colonists as almost divine beings who were sent to “help” them. sudden, the colonists are shoved into a “hero” role, as they are seen to be these highly powerful beings with their future technology. do the colonists let that get to their head or not, do they accidentally “hurt” the people they are trying to help because they can’t see them as “equals” to them- they feel like fake people from a storybook, do they keep on trying to get hole even though they would then be “abandoning” these who need help, was it right in the first place for everyone to assume they have to fulfill this “hero” role for the “good” of society... lots of interesting thematic developments can happen if you go that route!

I think I might just do that. Maybe a couple members of the crew letting their technological superiority go to their heads and go rogue and try to conquer the native fantasy world somehow, and the main player characters (players can be colonists or natives) have to join forces to stop them.

the other route of course has fear of these people, and they see them as harbingers of the end- basically, instead of seeing them as “heroes”, it’s the exact opposite, they see them as the big baddies that need to be destroyed. of course, being viewed as villains is... not liked by the colonists, or who knows, they might revel in that role, angry for the fantasy people for not being “welcoming” to them. it can be interesting their attempts of either trying to not be viewed as villains, or realizing that there is a bigger threat, and then ending up merging kinda with my first idea and assuming a “heroic” role?

I'd say the whole plot is kicked off by a group of adventurers going into an ancient ruin and finding some kind of artefact or contraption left by a long-dead civilisation and activating it, which is what brings the ship to the planet in the first place. Of course, the whole activation basically creates a giant flashy light show, so everyone knows that it's them who did it, and I'd say that a ton of natives (given how this is a world where magic exists) see it as some kind of cataclysm.

The colonists will also be caught off-guard since they were originally sent to colonise a whole different planet as a mining colony, so some won't be pleased that this isn't what they signed up for.

What, for example, are the boundaries of your sci-fi tech and the local fantasy magic? Do they act as sort of equalizers to each other? Does one have an advantage over the other?

The sci-fi tech is fairly close to reality since it's about the early 23rd century over at that side. The magic is kind of what I'm still trying to figure out.

What sort of cultural differences are you looking to introduce? What sort of similarities? What are the benefits and flaws of not only the local fantasy societies (and there can be many) but your sci-fi people as well? What sort of assumptions do your main characters walk in with? How are they confirmed, how are they challenged?

The colonists are pretty much from your fairly typical united Earth kind of government, while the fantasy world still largely has a mostly feudal society, so there's definitely going to be quite a lot of culture clash there.

 

[Corrosion]

Alright, so I did a bit of thinking. Player characters will belong to either of two groups: elite members of the colonial expeditionary team known as Pathfinders tasked with scouting the planet, or adventurers who are part of the party who activated the relic which brought the ship to the fantasy world in the process.

I'm still trying to figure out how the two groups will eventually meet, though.