Artifacts IYTU

[Spinward Scout]

Hey Everybody!

I was wondering how you handle Artifacts IYTU.

To my thinking, there should be 'other' artifacts other than the Ancients. There should be First Imperium artifacts, Maybe not too many Second Imperium/Rule Of Man artifacts. Darrian artifacts in that area, etc... Not just the 300,000 year old kind.

But what have you done with Ancient Artifacts, as well?

What do you think?

Spinward Scout, Over and Out

 

[aramis]

I've had 3 "ancients" IMTU, the "Ancients" (Yaskodray and his bright offspring), The "Precursors" (who predate the Ancients, and simply spread their biome by microbial contagion as they explored the mostly lifeless galaxy) and the "old ones" who are a group of sevants of the Ancients, who hid, and continued their work after the "Ancient's War."

I've dropped some pre-imperial, 1st imperial, and 2nd imperial artifacts from time to time. THe latter tend to be non-functional, but studiable. The former, well, they include a MTd1 generation ship from Vland... coasting through space at 0.1C and devoid of life. I've had several Ancient sites and a couple Precurser sites.

Plus there are the reptilians of Shadows...

There's room for them.

 

[Hemdian]

I once had the players encounter, and attempt to salvage, a Sagan class Patrol Cruiser from the ROM. (TL12, 300 dtons). They found it passing through a star system unpowered but at high speed. The original crew had perished a long time ago after misjumping into an empty hex. The first part of the adventure involved a 'chase' as the players tried to match course and speed before the ship shot out into deep space again.

There were no fancy toys for the players to keep. Nor was the ship much use as a merchant as it would cost too much to restore. But it did have some value as a historical relic.

Regards PLST

 

[Ran Targas]

I've played out similar adventures except with the ubiquitous "unknown alien starship" as the target of the high speed chase; it gives the ship's engineer an excuse to roll lots of dice and get some deserved kudos for running the plant at 125%.

I often use artifacts as plot devices, whether as the ultimate goal or just a catalyst. Often I throw one in that has nothing to do with the adventure at hand but builds on the body of evidence the players have about the history of this quadrant of the galaxy. The players know that humans are very late arrivals and there were a numerous civilizations (known and yet undiscovered) who prowled the galaxy long before humans were walking on two legs. Even hints of new goodies in a system can bring about a "gold rush" of sorts, with Indiana Jones wanna-bees renting out every Sulieman that can still hold atmosphere just to try their luck.

And then IMTU there are a few individuals and organizations that keep a very close eye out for alien tech, particularly artifacts. Specifically, there are some like minded individuals (most with close ties or similar interests to past civilizations) who really don't want the Imperium willy-nilly reverse engineering ancient tech and creating self-replicating dreadnaughts, intelligent molecular machines, or anything else that might prove disasterous. And they always seem to show up just when the players are about to make billions on their find and often use alien tech to remove the artifacts all the while preventing the players from putting up a fight. I know it's mean, but it builds a lot of paranoia and keeps things in the balance.

 

[Stormraven]

I haven't given Artifacts much thought - MTU is in a state of flux, as it's rather far down on the nebulous list of campaigns I want to run sometime real soon - but my general thoughts on them is that they can make for some very good rewards for the players, as opposed to cash, etc.

The caveat on that is, of course, that you have to keep them from changing the balance of the game. This is actually easier done than many people expect.

You can make their purpose unknown - not knowing what they do generally limits what they can sell them for, and to whom. Plus, finding the collectors that don't care are almost an adventure in itself.

You can make them incremental increases on what's available. For instance, they might find an energy weapon with a slightly better power pack than the norm. If they sell it, it's out of the picture for years, as testing and building go on, if they keep it, it helps, but not tremendously.

 

[Maladominus]

I'd go and allow my Players to discover an artifact identified as The Shining Trapezohedron in my campaign...... just so I could make them paranoid and mess with their minds.

 

[Darkhstarr]

I handled a lot of Ancient artifacts by taking a leaf out of A. Bertram Chandler-the artifacts have to approve of you to work for you. I do have a few Darrian artifacts in my campaign including including a wrecked pre-Maghiz colony ship with an intact, powered low berth area with Darrian children in cold sleep. In the Beyond & Vanguard Reaches I have artifacts from the TL17 Ykiuh civilization, who didn't have the jump drive, but had teleportation. A few intact teleport stations still exist.

 

[Gadrin]

I handled a lot of Ancient artifacts by taking a leaf out of A. Bertram Chandler-the artifacts have to approve of you to work for you. I do have a few Darrian artifacts in my campaign including including a wrecked pre-Maghiz colony ship with an intact, powered low berth area with Darrian children in cold sleep. In the Beyond & Vanguard Reaches I have artifacts from the TL17 Ykiuh civilization, who didn't have the jump drive, but had teleportation. A few intact teleport stations still exist.

yeah, wasn't there a tesseract/teleporter in one of his stories ?

I'll have to dig that one out.

I do remember him having the Serpent-class courier ship in his uni.

 

[golentan]

I handle most things as junk. Valuable junk, but stuff that won't do any good itself and which you'd need a TL 14 or 15 sensor to analyse and a brilliant mind to understand and duplicate. That said my players have gotten a few things to work and have reaped huge benefits (I made it tough enough I felt they earned it.)

 

[mad13142000]

I like several of the Canon Ancient sites that give a sense of largeness. The Rosette in Tireen or the Ringworld, even the labyrinth on Efate project a sense of lost, mysterious, lonliness...
I usually play Ancient sites like Charles Sheffield's Heritage Universe series. Big, unfathomable things that no amount of human labor could possibly produce. They are often extremely deadly - an incentive to not go poking around for cool things to port away. Individual items are usually very rare and priceless. Like the lock breaker glove thing in the Traveller novel - the owner wouldn't advertise that he possessed such a thing, and he would be careful using it because there ain't no ancient 'D' cells lying around to replace the power supply.


-MADDog

 

[BlackBat242]

1. The Ancients as presented in cannon have a number of serious problems... starting with the time-line.

They supposedly spread humanity around the galaxy about 300,000 years ago... and most of those sub-species are still supposed to be interfertile.

Any geneticist will tell you that is BS... there have been so many changes in the sol genotype in that time that there is no way we could interbreed with our ancestors... much less with others who also have 300,000 years of divergent genetic drift/mutation in entirely different environments.

The only way that would work is for the spreading to have occurred in the more recent past... more like 70,000 - 30,000 years ago... and most likely the smaller number.

A quick reference may be found here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans/humankind/m.html

Note that only Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis were around in the canon period... and man has evolved considerably since that period.




Of course, there could have been "genetic guidance" from surviving Ancients... yeah, right!




In my Universe, Yaskodaddy is basically a myth... there was a genetic change in the Droyne that led to the Chirper mutation and the fall of their civilization, and the Coyns were developed by an outside civilization & species to restore the functionality of Chirper/Droyne cerebral processes.


There have been many "Ancient" [I use Andre Norton's term "Forerunner"] civilizations and species throughout Galactic history... some overlapping, and some in isolation.

These have occurred as recently as a few (single digit) thousand years before the development of the jump drive by the Vilani in ~2,000 BC sol dating.


There are lots of Forerunner artifacts to be found... from many different civilizations, but extremely few of them are in good enough shape to aid in the development of new technology... and even fewer have any chance of working.

Their main value is to science and collectors, and either route can be profitable to the PCs.
__________________

 

[Vargas]

Oddly enough artifacts are never mentioned in the post.

 

[BlackBat242]

OK, that make you happy?