So, I’m running a campaign on Sunday nights and I wanted to seek some advice from you guys.
I just revealed a potential alien invasion in the works in the recent session. In response the player of our Outsider felt he should explain some things about the ‘Galactic Union’ – which is the major alliance of spacefaring races he had in mind when he made his character. Apparently:
– They encompass 99% of the spacefaring states in the galaxy.
– Consider all pre-spaceflight sentient species as under their protection.
– As such, the Ikkarans (my invading species) would have to wipe out humanity in such a way as to hide their involvement, or risk all out war with the Union.
– Since the Union encompasses 99% of the spacefaring peoples of the galaxy, all out war would therefore be disastrous for the Ikkarans.
So…basically, he’s saying he comes from this ‘perfect’ society that has no potential for meaningful conflict and any overt invasion plans by my bad guys are just fucked.
For context, I’ll explain a bit about the arc I had in mind. I had two arcs linked to this. The main villain, Vanguard, is a former (Doomed) superhero who has been brainwashed by the alien biotech he had become bonded to and turned against his former team, the Amazing Eight. In the resulting battle he was subdued and sent to the Spike, but not before he killed two of his former teammates and another burnt out his powers, leading to the disbandment of the team.
After a recent prison break from the Spike, Vanguard is once again at large. He is now pursuing two plans:
1) Attempting to contact the Ikkaran homeworld and coordinate plans to create a hyperspace portal for the invasion force to arrive on Earth through.
2) What little remains of his old human self seeks revenge on his former teammates, and seeks to eliminate them before the invasion.
So…what do I do with this?
Well, first things first: you don’t want to outright negate what the Outsider said. They get first say about their people, just like the other heroes get first say about their families and friends. That authorship should be respected.
That said: I think “perfect society that has no potential for meaningful conflict” is off the mark from what has been declared. What it sounds like is more akin to the Federation, or the council in Babylon 5, or the UN. Which means basically the following:
1) Just because your worlds are allied doesn’t mean that they completely agree on everything. The Ikkarans will have friends in the GU who will support them, even though their actions go against policy. This will buy them time and leniency.
2) With an organization that big, instituting official policy will take time, especially for something like declaring all out war. Nobody wants to set the galaxy on fire without a really good reason, and since Earth is just a protectorate and doesn’t really have any major allies in the GU, intervention on Earth’s behalf will take a lot of convincing and debate and what not.
3) A big society like the GU will have a sufficient weighty set of laws, which comes with a sufficient weighty set of loopholes that the Ikkarans can exploit. E.g., with all the superscience that modern Halcyon is flinging around, Earth might be advanced enough not to fall under GU protection anymore. Or the Ikkarans might have visited us in the past and have a legal claim. Whatever works.
None of this really contradicts the Outsider’s statements, they just show that things in space, like on Earth, don’t always work the way they should. It’s the Outsider’s job, initially, to view their home as better than Earth, and they should paint it that way (it’s right there in the playbook description!). But it’s your job to help the character realize that both their old home and their new one are equally flawed and beautiful. Questioning your worldview is part of growing up.
One last thing: your Outsider said a lot about galactic policy, so they might want to engage with that, e.g. speaking on Earth’s behalf to the GU or the like. I’d keep that in mind and leave some breathing room during the invasion where they can do that. Look to The Reach in Young Justice for an example, maybe.
You could also say that since the Outsider has come to Earth, things have changed since they weren’t there to keep things on track. “Looks like your old rival has come to greater and greater power since you’ve been gone”
Perhaps there people within the Union that also want this planet removed or have been paid a substantial amount to Bury it?, Or unease/great threat thats causing alot of Issues, or hey maybe a Space-Brexit between nations and the Alliance is breaking apart, the Attack is going to be blamed on a different race to start chaos.
Or hey maybe this race is from a Darkspace or Galaxy beyond the one the union is part of.
Just random ideas,
The Reach (Blue Beetle, Young Justice) should be a key inspiration for you at this point. Their whole deal is that they manage to find political cover for their alien invasion. Figure out how they’ve convinced the Galactic Union (which they’re presumably a member of) that their actions are legal and ultimately beneficial to the poor sentients of Earth. That can let the heroes fight the invasion from multiple angles–on the battlefield and in the statehouse. Look also to real world history and current events for more inspiration.
Couldn’t your invaders be members of the union doing something under the table? Or Earth is under protection and the invaders are ‘helping’ to advance humans to a full interstellar set up (in a way that makes them dependent)?
Some things that may have happened:
– An alien race broke the rules of the GU far, far away, and very quickly amassed a long list of atrocities committed.
– The GU responded with overwhelming force and the end result was the total extermination of that race.
– This caused some of the members of the union to rethink what the union stands for.
– Factions formed, and those factions are busy fighting one another now. Mostly they fight with words, arguing back and forth with summit meetings. This infighting makes the union less effective in responding to threats.
Alternatively, or possibly in addition:
– The GU has debated about the status of Earth. While we might not be capable of space travel yet, humanity is close. They’ve been in debates since our 1960s about us and have come to the conclusion that we are too violent and irrational. Protection for Earth is about to be revoked.
– A senator from the Outsider’s homeworld contacts the Outsider and asks for his help. If he and his friends could come to the GU meeting and testify on behalf of humanity, perhaps enough members could be swayed to vote to keep the Earth under protection.
Of course, if they’re there, they aren’t on earth defending it from the Ikkarans. Even if they win, there might be nothing left to defend by the time they’re done.
But if they stay home to defend Earth, the GU isn’t coming to help, and may decide to drop Earth’s protection, meaning invasions like this could become a regular occurrence.
They could always TRY to use tech to remotely attend the meeting while fighting off aliens, which sounds like hilarious roleplay! Simultaneously kicking alien ass while arguing to a different set of aliens that they have us all wrong and we’re not the violent unworthy subspecies some of them think we are. Certainly, makes both tasks harder and sounds to me like a ton of fun.
Also, metaphor the hell out of this. The Earth is a galactic teenager. Have the “adult” civilizations of the Galactic Union be constantly doing the things that adults do in masks, like telling humans who they are and how the world works.
Declare that civil war has broken out in the GU, and the Ikkaran side is more powerful than those opposing them, and the reason for the war is the planet Earth and its peoples.
Either a team of superheroes went offworld and did something heroic that made Union members nervous, or a villain did something that terrified them. The superpowers, magic, weird tech, portals, time travel, and other wackiness of your traditional supers setting has convinced the GU to empower the Ikkarans to subjugate them, with many worlds abstaining from the vote and a minority actively opposing.
I get what your player is doing: they want to come from a place that’s very different from the game setting, but their experience of their home doesn’t have to be every character’s experience.
You could just use your PbtA GM superpower and go, “Huh, that’s interesting. Why would the Ikkarans invade Earth, then? More to the point, why wouldn’t you have heard about it already?” If the player says they don’t know, then you can say, “Seems like you’ve been lied to, [Outsider’s name]. Who would have the nerve to lie to you?” And so on.
I like the idea that some adults did a dumb thing and now it’s all topsy turvy.
Perhaps the solution is much simpler than it may seem. He said 99% of the Spacefaring States in the Galaxy Not the universe. This breathing room means you could reveal that a war with Ikkarans the reason the Galactic Union formed, and that the size of the Union is Dwarfed by that of The Ikkarans, who span a coupple galaxies. You could then reveal that the Union only survived because they have a secret alliance with The Ikkarans, in which they agree to turn a blind eye to some of the more War-Torn planets, like Earth, when The Ikkarans want to ransack them, so long as it looks like an accident to the galactic public… After all, what are the lives of a few hundred Billion beings for the lives of evveryone else in the galexy, The team’s outsider just needs to see the big picture for the sake of peace…
Lots of good ideas for narrative solutions in the comments, so I won’t offer any, but it seems that both you and your player are planning things in your heads without collaborating on the story. Remember to play to find out what happens. I really like the comment above about asking the player “why are the Ikkarans invading then?” etc. You don’t want to completely negate the player’s GU ideas any more than you want them to completely negate your Ikkaran invasion ideas. So talk to each other and come up with some ways that both situations can be true.
And while they get authorship over their people, I would say that a union encompassing 99% of space-faring civilizations borders pretty close to a closed-off issue. 90% sure, but if there’s only 1% not included, those 1%ers must obviously be pretty badass and/or crazy not to join. Clearly if the Ikkarans are the 1%, they must be unconcerned with pissing off the other 99% of the galaxy.
But I’d remind the player (in a very accepting and kind way of course) that utopias are boring. 99% of the galaxy can’t possibly be united in every way. There would definitely be factions and bureaucracy and in-fighting and dissension on a massive scale.
I dont find Utopias boring, since storys involving them often also involve either
A: the collapse/potential collapse of such with plenty of drama and action.
B: the slow discovery that such is not actually a Utopia, and is far darker/less so when you look beneath the series.
For example, The Children of such are indoctrinated almost to see their society as perfect and without fault, the one thing keeping the universe together, and to overlook all its flaws.
Sounds like a fun story when more of the “Utopia” comes into the story.
It’s also possible that the GU just doesn’t have time to help and protect Earth. “We’d love to help, but Univore the Galactic Annihilator has just swallowed 3 stars in Sector Aleph. We have to think about the bigger galactic picture right now.”
While the GU is busy fighting Univore, the Ikkarans plan to take over Earth, hoping that by the time the GU gets around to doing anything about it, it will already be too late. This sort of thing has happened many times in Earth history.
1. Talk to your player
2. Earth has plenty of worldwide organizations that “Defend Life” but are unable to intercede in Genocide. The motion to eject or even CONDEMN the Ikkarians could take years and years of manuevering, and Earth doesn’t have that long.
Remember that in Masks, adults are useless.
Thanks for all the advice folks. I did talk to my player about it, and he conceded that there may be a splinter faction within the Union and there’s a potential for civil war to break out and complicate matters. So, there’s that.
I was also considering something along the lines of Paul Richmond’s suggestion, where a Galactus/Parallax type entity has thrown the Union into chaos and keeps them from intervening right away.
Interesting, it’s always annoying when players try to basically make it impossible for themselves to lose! Without reading other people’s comments I think my feeling on it would be…
1) No organisation, especially that large, is entirely unified. Indeed it is reasonable to assume there are factions, not insignificant factions, that question why they help non-spacefaring races at all given the cost to themselves.
2) The union can also only encompass what they know to exist. Bring extra-dimensional threats in to play if needs be.
3) The union will, despite being advanced, reasonably presumed to be dispersed around the galaxy. Some more advanced than others. There will likely be a “main” source of resources, people and ships for any kind of defence/war on this basis. Perhaps it is reasonable to say that they are already fighting on two fronts against particularly aggressive non-unionists, in such a way that the protection of their advanced civilisations are of greater priority to them than what might be happening on Earth.
4) Also… red-tape. Take current events in to account… there are differing views within a union to the extent that lack of consensus can lead to inaction. For the purposes of your story it doesn’t matter if Earth is invaded because the likely situation of call and response to such a “space police”, especially considering the above possibilities, is that they would never be able to respond to and stop a targeted and swift assault.
Keep the idea of what your player has said but make it fit within your universe. I think it’s fine for a player to say that these kinds of things exist, but it is not fine for them to make it impossible for you to introduce drama… so make calls that mean the fiction they’ve created is still relevant (maybe part of it is that the invasion is non-defendable in totality, they will rely on the union coming to their aid, but they will also have to protect as many people as they can in the lead-time before such aid arrives), but make it fit your arc too 🙂