The Only Sci Fi Cliches You'll Ever Need Pt.

First check out this post on RPG.net

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?720797-Setting-Riff-The-Only-Sci-Fi-Star-Chart-You-ll-
Ever-Need/page9

Did you read the whole thread? My hat is off to the OP. All right let's go. Starting from the
Upper Left Corner of Space:

The only SF Cliches You'll Ever Need (more or less)

Catgirl (driving men and many women to distraction, moving silently, fast reflexes, landing on
your feet, having ridiculous luck [nine lives], seeing in near darkness)

High Tech Elf (identifying ancient artifacts better left alone, making your surroundings
aesthetically pleasing, being aesthetically pleasing, repairing biotech, seeing in the dark,
knowing a bit of ancient lore from many lifetimes ago, knowing people almost anywhere)

Space Bureaucrat (running background checks, dealing with byzantine administration,

setting up byzantine administrations, finding a loophole, always having the right form ready,
inundating computers with enough data to drive them nuts, keeping your own computers
happy and productive, treating your human workers like garbage, crunching numbers into
neutronium)

Alien Space Asian (being inscrutable, organizing for maximum effort, teamwork, knowing
protocol for every situation, intimidating subordinates, cozying up to superiors, observation)

Space Zombie Hiver (breaking in airlocks, scaring the hell out of nearly everyone, grabbing
victims, playing dead, finding victims, turning victims into more Space Zombies, grossing
people out, eating anything that was once moving)

Space Libertarian (survival in most situations, negotiation, diplomacy, jury-rigging different

technologies, driving a hard bargain)

The following worlds and places are also cliched and of course need cliches. Here are some
ideas:
Demon World (Goddawful big monsters, erupting volcanoes, endless jungle, raging rivers,
insidious vermin, insidious poisonous vermin, quick sand)

Pleasure World (every vice known to Man and his peers, every vice unknown to Man and his
peers, booze, drugs, gambling, spectator debauchery, mass debauchery, individual
debauchery, amoral courtesans, Cat Girls!)

Ocean World (Lone tiny island, flying piranha, saltwater corroding everything, sudden
storms, sea monsters, gentle sea giants)

Black Hole Station (temporal phenomena, gravity storms, meteors, mysterious visions of
different futures and pasts, alien transmissions and probes, psionic interference, and ghostly
hauntings)

Space Whale Nebula (beauty to hypnotize the mind, gentle space giants, giant space
predators, sensor jamming, ion storms)

Starship Graveyard (great place for an ambush, great place to be ambushed, debris
clouding sensor readings, that spare part you needed, booby traps from a forgotten war,
hermits/nomads)

Decadent Ancients Civilization (powers of the mind, starship snares, bizarre games played
with humans [and others], downtrodden peons, dusty treasure chests, ancient wonders no
longer understood)

The Only Sci Fi Cliches you'll Ever Need Pt. 2

Guy Hoyle (rightly) pointed out that ships could simply be treated as characters in combat
with other characters. Yes of course huzzah. I do add a layer of detail to Risus in my posts
for sure. But my goals are simple in doing this: 1) Make sure what I'm doing will add to
roleplaying and character options and 2) keep the add ons simple. Hopefully I did that with
my post on starships and thank you all for your feedback. When in doubt keep it as simple
as possible.
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?720797-Setting-Riff-The-Only-Sci-Fi-Star-Chart-You-ll-
Ever-Need/page9

Hats off to Propagandor the OP. If anyone can put me in contact with him I'd appreciate it. I
can't seem to join rpgnet. Must be my outstanding warrants for role playing with loaded dice.

Continuing our Sci Fi cliches and working on the lower left corner of the galaxy.
Mega-Corpo-Rat (making a deal, analyzing the value of an acquisition, hostile takeovers,
strip mining your human resources, back room dealing)

Old Western Worlder (shooting it out, riding a robo-horse, tracking a quarry planetside,
surveying/prospecting, heading 'em off at the pass)

Techno Feudalist (jetpack jousting, laser swordplay, shiny power armor brawling, managing
cyber peasants)

(Space) Bugs (tunneling, biting, brawling, reproduction, ambushing, building with little more
than bodily secretions, reproduction, projectile venom vomiting, reproduction (they really
reproduce fast!))

Mecha Jock (piloting a mecha, mecha fighting, kaiju lore, acrobatics, shooting it out, great
hair)

Dino Hunter (hunting with really big rifles, dino lore, jungle survival, camouflage, tracking,
driving an atv)

Space Vegan Gambler (gambling, figuring odds, finding a game, dodging your bookie,
cheating)

Space Pirate (boarding actions, singing and speaking in a silly accent, laser swordplay,
fencing loot, staging an ambush, finding valuables)

Space Survivalist (Not Arrakis) (generic desert survival, riding, swordplay, desert lore, finding
water, saving water)

Space Hippy (musical performance, poetry, nature appreciation, better living through
chemistry, going with the flow, abiding)

Places and Things

Space Vegas (separating you from your hard earned money/credits/phlebotinium, cheap
luxuries and accommodations, fantastic shows, anything is for sale)

Space Pirate Sector (getting you lost, messing up your communications, messing up your
sensors)

Anomaly #12 (chucking your ship across the galaxy, causing bizarre transmogrifications,
psionic phenomena, creating unidentified space objects)

Dinosaur Planet (giant carnosaurs, disorienting jungles, sneaky little toothy dinosaurs, big
bugs, vegetation that messes with sensors)

Not Arakis (killing you with thirst, killing you with sun, killing you with sandstorms, killer sand
serpents, killer natives, valuable commodities to risk your life for)
The Only Sci Fi Cliches You'll Ever Need Pt. 3

Presenting Part 3 of The Only Sci Fi Cliches You'll Ever Need. We're doing the bottom of
space today. I urge you to follow the thread on rpgnet at

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?720797-Setting-Riff-The-Only-Sci-Fi-Star-Chart-You-ll-
Ever-Need/page9

Alien Space God Cultist (kidnapping, brainwashing, techno rituals, archaeology, psionic lore,
weird mythologies, denial)

Space Viking (see Space Pirate in Pt. 2. Replace fencing loot with poetry)

Man-Ape (hunting, climbing, brachiating, hollering, shooting it out, brawling)

Psionic Space Commie (mind reading, mental suggestion, quoting from their manifesto,
subterfuge, recruiting people to their cause)

Hostile Intelligent Machine (hacking, turning your computers against you, being logical,
manufacturing more HIMs)

Radioactive Wasteland Warrior (survival in a radioactive desert, shooting it out, dog training,
hiding, scavenging food and technology)

Places and Things

Living Planet (looking like a non-living planet, scratching itches like people and spaceships
with earthquakes, natural disasters, tractoring in ships for a snack, spelling things out with
forests and rivers, using clouds to make emoticons, rock formations that resemble treasure
laden cities)

Space God's Lawn (anomalous sensor readings, junk that looks like artifacts, artifacts that
look like junk, explosive, corrosive, flammable or mind altering junk)

Planet of Hats (various hat tricks chose one or make up your own: being a gangster, being
goth, being a pirate, being a Quaker, being a dilche to space travelers, being a thief, being a
sports nut, eating hot peppers etc)

Radioactive Wasteland Planet (see Not Arakis in Pt. 2 and add in a cliche for radiation)

The Only Sci Fi Cliches You'll Ever Need Pt. 4

Presenting the Last Installment of Every Sci Fi Cliche You'll Ever Need. This is from the
thread at RPGNet. I suggest you check it out.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?720797-Setting-Riff-The-Only-Sci-Fi-Star-Chart-You-ll-
Ever-Need/page9

Kirby Near Gods (sensing cosmic threats, embodying a single concept to extremes,
inscrutable, appearing in a large explosion, surviving space and nearly anywhere else with
your cape flapping in a metaphorical wind, universal translator, ancient lore, being unkillable)

Time Wizard (knowing about nearly everything in space, navigating the time stream,
regenerating mortal injuries, turning junk into wondrous inventions)
F---less Alien (It doesn't matter. They don't do anything and nothing really bothers them.)

Proud Warrior of the Empire (swordplay, shooting it out, brawling, biting, being stoic in the
face of pain and itchy uniforms, arcane rituals of endurance and courage, code of honor lore,
boarding actions)

Mysterious Alien (showing up unannounced, leaving when you blink, being inscrutable,
causing security systems to FAIL)

Space Vampire (draining the life of sentients, popping up unseen, hypnotizing sentients,
appearing like the Universe's gift to romance, tri-sexual [will 'tri' anything], mysterious and
temporary death, scary face when pissed off)

Notzi (shooting it out, spying, keeping excellent records of tyranny, setting up death traps)

Space Roman (swordplay, logistics and supplies, drunken orgies, organization, keeping low
profile)

Evil Methane Breather (torture, dissection, inhuman experimentation, tentacle attacks)

Giger Hunter (tracking bugs, trapping bugs, avoiding bugs, hiding, flame weapons, motion
detectors, keeping cool)

Places and Things

War Eternal (grunt squads of fighters, enormous dreadnoughts, minefields, waves of
boarding shuttles, fired and forgotten drones)

Giant Computer Planet (knowing everything, hidden data caches, processing incredible
amounts of information, analyzing and predicting)

Spacethulhu (eldritch horror, hiding in non-euclidean nooks and crannies of space, blasting
sanity, epic destruction)

Every Starship You'll Ever Need

This post is taking a break from The Only Sci Fi Cliches You'll Ever Need to present
starships (I suppose you can use these ideas for other vehicles.)

There are three main missions for starships: scientific, economic, and offense/defense.
Decide which operation is the primary mission, which is the secondary. Anything left over is
tertiary. GMs feel free to stick other types of missions in there to suit your setting. A game of
subterfuge may require stealth as a mission.

Choose your cliche to reflect the mission priority. For example a Long Range Battleship
might be Primary= Offense Defense (O/D), Secondary= Science (Sci), and Tertiary=
Economics (Econ). No need to list every tertiary mission. Ships add a die to their primary
mission rolls and subtract a die from their tertiary mission rolls when rolling combat or SAC.
Science involves using sensors, conducting research and launching probes. Economic
involves making a buck, hauling people or cargo, for example. Offense/Defense means
shooting at stuff till it blows up and avoiding the same.

When you're making up target numbers apply the following modifiers: Primary 0 to +5,
Secondary +5 to +10, and Tertiary +15 to +20. There's some wiggle room there. the Long
Range Battle Ship might have the same priorities as a Ground Attack Cruiser. However the
Long Range Battleship receives a +5 to its TN for hitting ground targets while the Ground
Attack Cruiser receives a +5 to its TN for hitting ships in space.

Make sure your players know stuff like this if their characters read the ship manuals. As
another example a freighter and a yacht may both have economic for a primary mission.
However, they have somewhat different missions. The freighter hauls livestock while the
yacht ships jaded VIPs around (okay a small difference.) Pushing the yacht into service to
haul cargo can impose a +5 to any TNs for that mission. In extreme cases the GM might rule
the ship does not have the proper supplies for a mission and halve its cliche. If the freighter
wanted to haul a VIP gourmet along and didn't stock up on fine wines and cold cuts good
luck. If the Long Range Battleship wasn't armed with dogfighting missiles it might be halved
going up against a grunt squad of fighters. Add/subtract dice for the primary and tertiary
missions before halving.

So a Dreadnought of Awesomeness (5) with O/D as its primary mission would roll 6 dice
normally when obliterating stuff. Faced with a Huge Wave of Star Fighters (3) the GM rules
that due to a lack of dogfighting missiles and small quick traverse cannons the dreadnought
does not have the proper tools and has its cliche halved to (3) when fighting them. The
Armored Battlecruiser (4) fighting alongside them is not as lucky and bears the full brunt of
the dreadnought's 6 dice cliche.

Travel speeds are not directly addressed in this system. Either time doesn't matter (you can
make a run or patrol easily or you're already late) or we're talking pushing the ship for some
dramatic reason (rushing to the rescue, evading the patrol etc.) In this case look at the
obstacles faced in the trip. If it's a straight plain vanilla straight run it's covered by economics
(warships have lots of fueling stations and tankers to increase their range and long term
speed, commercial ships have room for fuel and big engines.) A trip through a turbulent
atmosphere or a dangerous field of debris would fall under O/D. A tricky FTL jump into a
nebula or near a black hole would be science.

I have a love hate relationship with fighters and shuttles. Space fighters should be flash fried
by larger ships for so many reasons (more and better fire control systems, longer range
sensors, more techs to man the sensors and guns etc.) and honestly if a loan fighter stood
even a 1% chance against a capital ship no one would build capital ships. They'd build a few
hundred fighters.

But fighters are cool and this is Risus. I have the following suggestions:

A shuttle has one primary stat and anything else is considered tertiary. Its cliches run from 1
to 3. A shuttle with a primary mission of O/D is termed a fighter.

When you're resolving actions with ships and want to take crew into account (players are
fond of this as their characters are usually the crew) do a team up. With fighters and shuttles
the pilot is the team leader. He rolls dice for his appropriate cliche and then rolls the shuttle
or fighter's cliche adding any sixes rolled. With large ships reverse the procedure. Roll the
ship's cliche and then roll for the crew (a single cliche for crew quality is fine Drab, Grey,
Efficient Drones (3), Rowdy Pirates [2] etc.) adding any sixes rolled.

If a large ship is firing at a fighter it may have its cliche halved if it doesn't have the right
weaponry or cliche. If we're talking a grunt squad of fighters then the big ship rolls to hit
normally. If we're talking a loan crazed fighter jock making a suicide run then the fighter must
close for 1d6 rounds while under fire. It can't hurt the larger craft until the rolled number of
rounds pass. After closing both craft roll their full cliche dice. The winner inflicts three
damage on the loser.

Where any character's ships fit into this is up to the GM and how big he wants ships to run in
his setting. A small free trader could be considered a shuttle for purposes of combat in which
case larger craft will find it hard to blast or it could be considered a large ship and run a
gauntlet of fighters but be blasted by warships almost immediately. The GM should decide
just how big a fish they should be in advance.