Help me populate my Sci-Fi Dungeon-Crawl Setting!

[Tensen01]

Okay, so I recently made a post on RPGnet about a Dungeon Crawl styled Sci-Fi game idea I had and through much help I decided on an idea.

It takes place in a single, multi-star, planetary system. And the idea is instead of having a single land-mass fantasy map, I have a Planetary System map that has locations that correspond to similar locations.

Instead of Empires there are Homeworlds, instead of barren wastes there are asteroid belts, instead of dungeons there are derelict space hulks.

Setting-wise the concept is thus: Around 200(Maybe more?) Earth-Years ago dozens of species left their homeworlds in an attempt to escape some sort of a galactic catastrophe simply called The Blackout. They all converged onto this system, led there by a mysterious ancient signal. After much exploration the various races came to the conclusion that this system had been created for the express purpose of harboring these races in the event of just the sort of devastation that occurred. The Creators are nowhere to be found but various ruins and bits of tech prove they once existed. Over the past couple hundred years each race set up their civilizations on the planets that fit their needs best. Society has survived, but there have also been conflicts between the more civilized(PC) races and some of the territorial War-Like races.

Players will basically be Adventurers traveling between stars and Planets exploring derelicts and ruins, discovering tech and clues to the history of this place.

The PC races I have so far are:
Humans: Humans
Uon: A small, hardy Rodent-like race (the setting's Dwarves)
Vri'es: A tall, long-lived asexual Amphibious/Insectoid race (Elves)
Autons: A Synthetic People (Warforged)

Open to suggestions for other PC Races or NPC races



The System is a Trinary system Two Suns (B & C) sharing an orbit around a Third (A), and the a Fourth outlying Star(p) orbiting the group. The Majority of the PC races will have settled on Planets around A. There are a couple Dozen Planets and a hundred or so Moons and Dwarf Planets. As well as a couple Asteroid Belt(One in Local System B and one separating A from B & C) Travel between planets around the same star takes hours, travel to other stars take days if not weeks.

Just a quick map I whipped up. Needs names, locations, and phenomena. The Relays are the only intact piece of Creator technology. They are Giant transmitters and are what put out the signal that called all the races to the system. As of yet no one has been able to get inside them and while they are no longer transmitting they are being used as signal relays, allowing fairly fast communication between systems.



So, what do I need from the community? Ideas really. Locations & Other races for the most part. Tone-Wise I'm following kind of Mass Effect meets Destiny. Don't be afraid to steal from other sources, I certainly am, and you may be familiar with properties I'm not.

[Gamerprinter]

Honestly, we help people with their maps, but are not really a world building community. The Cartographers' Guild use to have a sister site that specialized in world building (and its still around) called The Campaign Builders Guild or theCBG.org, that site is exclusively for world building communities. I'd post there if I were you.

GP

[Tensen01]

Honestly, we help people with their maps, but are not really a world building community. The Cartographers' Guild use to have a sister site that specialized in world building (and its still around) called The Campaign Builders Guild or theCBG.org, that site is exclusively for world building communities. I'd post there if I were you.

GP

Uhm, okay... Always had great help in the past on here. Not trying build a campaign just populate a map mostly. But yeah, this part of the forum seems to be thriving so I guess I'll just go somewhere else.

[su_liam]

How many of the planets in this system are habitable. You could have mysterious and dangerous Ancient installations on many or most of the uninhabitable bodies, derelict ships perhaps of the Relay Builders and many asteroids may be positively riddled with tunnels and caverns dug long before the various races were summoned by the Relay signals.

All of these could be defended by ancient robotic defenses, occupied by space orc raiders or there might be rival explorers looking to exploit the treasures of antiquity or survive terrors they've accidentally unleashed. The possibilities for dungeon crawls could be endless.

More habitable worlds could also harbor ancient installations and wreckage of their own or be good places for overland adventures. Perhaps you could have fusion-powered hot air balloons sailing between floating cities in the storm-ravaged atmosphere of a gas giant.

Look at all those new pictures of Ceres and Pluto and tell me you don't see whole worlds to map on mere asteroids and dwarf planets. Imagine a castle looming over Philae's landing site. This isn't necessarily a project you can fit into one map. You could do anything from an atlas with pages dedicated to each world in the system to a single map with the larger planets represented as textured balls and a brief notation of what's present on each body. Or you could start with the latter and work your way to the former.

In addition to what I've already mentioned, you could have acid seas, fierce alien jungles, deep frozen tunnels under planet-girdling glaciers, etc.

Look at all the moons and planets of the Solar System and then add fantastic elements. Not just fantastic. Steal ideas from conventional science fiction, westerns(ala Firefly), and horror genres. Perhaps something like Lovecraft's Mi-Go or Old Ones lurk or sleep under the ice of some outer planet or bake under the sands and stone of some inner planet.

[inuzupunupi]

I don't know how much realism you're going for, but that system is unstable. It would explode and collapse pretty quickly.