Got an idea for a Storyteller incident?

[Keller]

• Streaker ; there's always a guy who can not keep it in
• Sticky Fingers ; a settlers takes off with all cash/gold
• Eco disaster ; settlers disrupt the eco system by introducing a dominant alien species or making a key species go extinct
• Tourism ; a famous space blogger mentions your planet as the place to be (can also attract more pirates , etc)
• Prophet ; a settler proclaims himself as a prophet of "insert name of religion/god"
  Zealots ; religious uprising amongst the settlers
• Computer virus
• Robot uprising
• Power grid failure (solar flare/corrosion/sabotage/storm damage)

[SharpKris]

here's my list

- slavers coming to abduct your colonists (knocking them over the head and dragging them off the map)
- space marines drop to fight you or buy all the weapons you can spare.
- robot herd (a herd of robots feeding off of scrap, mostly non threatening, but a danger to your resource)
- slave merchant (need more colonists?)
- alien contact! (they will either be friendly or try to abduct you or your cow. will make funny crop drawings on the area before they leave)

[luxSolisPax]

Stumbling upon another colony. The colony could be of any size but it creates an interaction between a dynamic entity as opposed to an isolated event. That colony has a leader that people generally obey. Maybe he's a war monger. Maybe they're simple farmers. Maybe you stumble upon a friendly ninja village willing to help fend off pirates.  The possibilities become limitless and the depth of the narrative just explodes.

[TacoStorm]

It would be really cool if you could have adjacent colonies to interact with. What if a bunch of prisoners/convicts set up shop nearby? They may have a shady past, but they're just trying to survive. Do you try to bring them back to justice? Leave them be? Try trading with them? Try to integrate with their society?

There's a lot of cool story telling that could happen if you had other people nearby to interact with.

- War breaks in that solar system out and the system is engulfed in fighting (military camps are set up nearby, and don't necessarily try to interact with you, but may try to do so. What if they try to take your women? Or "capture" your stockpile of ammunition? What if deserters try to hide in your town?)

- All species of wild life suddenly vanish, one at a time. Why do they disappear? Where do I get my food from now? Will we be next?

- WORM ATTACKS! Everybody likes the worms from dune. Games should have more of those.

- Zombie outbreak. Played out, but could be fun, especially if you've got lots of corpses from dead pirates lying about.

- Drought. Affects plant yields/growth

- Volcano eruptions

[Ogaburan]

I will add my voice to some of the already suggested events, and expanded on them with my 2 cents.
Hope this will provide some inspiration.

I think the concept of "Alien Contact" should be explored.
With a few themes in mind:
- Native "low tech" culture.
- Mysterious "high tech" extinct culture.
- Visiting "high tech" aliens.

Native "low tech" culture
Some Ideas:
1. A somewhat naiive culture of seemingly peaceful aliens.
(Similar to the duck people of Dragon Pass - which is a very old game based on random events you should really take a look for inspiration.)
This can present the player with the dilemma of how to deal with them.
Exploit them- With a possibility it will backfire when it turns out they are not always so harmless as they look. With a random seed to spawn ubber soldiers if this patch is taken, so it will blow the mind of some of the more greedy players. Otherwise you will get some slave-power.
Trade with them - For x,y,z exclusive items.
Interbreeding - Only a few men and women... and they have needs!
You can let the player have a choice to encourage/discourage "relations" between individuals of both races.
With results verrying between the human defecting, impregnation (not limited to females... perhaps? sub mission to keep him alive for a few weeks perhaps? A new "unit" with special abilities perhaps?) or the alien joining your colony.
Defend them - Some constant bonus as long as they are alive.

2. Hostile tribe
Predator like culture - Who will be hard to kill, and solitaire. After killing a few, the player might earn their "respect". Opening up possibility to trade.
Hive mind - Endless spawns of ants/bugs/insectoids that will compete for resource until their "anthill" will be destroyed.
Nomadic Tribe - Groups of individuals with pets. They must have pets... and maybe those pets could be capturable? Tamable?

Mysterious "high tech" extinct culture.
Just Abandoned Items/Buildings. Maybe forcing the players to solve some kind of riddle to get to them... or earn enough "hacking" tools/capabilities to open abandoned vaults. Slowly discovering some interesting mysterious lore adding some aspect of exploration to this game.
Items can vary from weapons, powerful mining tools, resource spawning points/items.

Visiting "high tech" Aliens
Greys - Trying to abduct colonists, for anal prob purposes only. A classic.
Refugees/Neutral - Fleeing some this or that terror. They might join if the player helps them. Or just trade. Bringing with them the possibilities of nasty diseases needing some specific-odd cures.
Evil/Hostiles - Ex-ter-mi-naaaaate!!! (Dr Who?)
Benevolent (?) - They come bearing gifts! Their free! They really want to help! Only those trinkets... tend to back fire...
A very powerful weapon that has a chance to explode when used.
A drug that eliminates the need to sleep... yet... the high metabolism it gives needs a constant diet of... HUMAN FLESH!
A ball that predicts the future, allowing you to turn back time (reload) to the last 24 hours... secretly spawning one of several bad events that will happen if used.
I can go on and on...

Just please dont go down the "Zombie" road...

[lingbot]

I'd like to see more cause and effect incidents within a grander context, for example, some soldiers from the industrialised core worlds are lost and stumbles into your colony, capture and give to another faction or shelter and until the next passing industrial ship?  Picking either option has consequences with the other factions and the 'love/fear' mechanic.

Somewhat off topic, research could be replaced by trade.  As it stands, research is about trading time for advancement and once something is achieved, it's a permanent ability, rather than drip-fed by the storyteller.  I guess this is a discussion of whether you want the game to be more sim or drama driven.

[Jakadasnake]

- All species of wild life suddenly vanish, one at a time. Why do they disappear? Where do I get my food from now? Will we be next?

This is cool because it's an opportunity to create a pretty low-key incident where the player wonders if the game is bugged. What if, playing FTL, you started noticing random minor damage incurred after a few warps here and there. WTF? I mean, I'm going to repair that but what's the deal with this game. Suddenly you find out there is a space-algae growth slowly devouring your ship and you have to shut off the oxygen supply for a set period of time to get rid of it.

That's just an example, but consider that every great story benefits from foreshadowing. This event could happen within the context of multiple other incidents prior to culminating in a pretty neat super-event.

This thread has a lot of cool ideas.

In my opinion, diversity is king here. For every simple incident or mechanic that is added, a new interaction between that thing and every other thing is created. The growth is exponential. Think of all the interacting mechanics in a game like Spelunky. Ultimately, this may benefit far more from simpler (albeit, unique) ideas. But how would you get them to interact in the context of this story? The best answer I have is that they should affect characters.

Man, I just lost a colonist.

versus

Holy cow, remember the guy who got taken captive by marauders and was later rescued with severe PTSD? Yeah, well turns out he had Cazzers. I mean sure, technically he is dead, but that hivemind that replaced his brain has eyes everywhere on this planet. He'll be able to warn us of the next incident that will occur prior to succumbing to the disease.

Alright, onto the meat and potatoes of my post. Actual suggestions. Like I said, simple is good. I'll leave a lot up to imagination because it's too early to get bogged down by details.

Wait, animal life on this planet could be sentient?

• Become vegetarians, keep your domesticated animals but don't eat them.
• Continue eating them. Understand their affinity with groups that may attack you.

The sun of this system is quickly approaching its death.

• Subject a select group of your finest to a risky mission to reignit the sun.
• Prepare to recolonize in a nearby system. (A.K.A. reroll the terrain)

That smoke smells funky....

Imaginary monsters begin their assault of the base. Joust them!

What's this cube-thing?

Buildings grow legs and begin walking. Your base layout is scrambled. Random citizen inside a building that moved develops a strong affinity for technology.

We'll just need bigger bombs.

Mortar shells begin impacting near your base....

Going to add more via edits. Cheers!

[williamknox]

Incidents ah? Hmm *Looks at things that could end the world* Dead animals people etc rise from the grave and start attacking other animals and people. Could all so have a %50 chance of a person getting the zombie infection (Kinda like how vampires work in Skyrim) But the infected (Not yet turned into a zombie) could be treated via med packs?

[enystrom8734]

A disease outbreak. Colonists start slowly losing health. Have to research a cure or quarantine the infected if caught early enough. Could mutate or find that it is a parasite that is infecting animals now too.

[Jakadasnake]

Incidents ah? Hmm *Looks at things that could end the world* Dead animals people etc rise from the grave and start attacking other animals and people. Could all so have a %50 chance of a person getting the zombie infection (Kinda like how vampires work in Skyrim) But the infected (Not yet turned into a zombie) could be treated via med packs?

Kinda disagree man. Would love to see this game avoid the overdone zombie thing. Not that we need to be hipsters here, but zombies are just way too prevalent in video games these days IMO.

[Semmy]

I havent read all thats already been said.
But just my 2 cents.

- One of the immigrants could be a serial killer you'd actually have to visually see who it is.
- If your food outnumbers > your number of peeps food should become rotten and should lure in some nice critters or spread a sickness among your people so your medbay/doctor has some more uses.
- When you hole up your people to much and when they miss daylight they should become sick over time. Or become sick when walking outside again. One of the most awsome DF features there used to be.
- Bigass firestorms. We are on some unknown planet who knows when or how close past the sun we move. A nice research building/tool could be hooked up to this incident telling you approximatly how close to the storm you are. So will you keep working outside or run inside close the doors and hide. Offcourse a late game incident as it will roast buildings from certain materials.
- Has anybody already talked about worms. God i miss dune's worms. only hardened ground is safe. One of Herbert's best creations d-;
- Winter is coming... ow shit wrong game.
- But above all the thing that often goes wrong in games like this is that you must really build well defences for invasions.
DF makes it to easy to bypass invasions with certain traps/builds. Invasions should have different ways of attacking you burning your village braking down doors. scaling walls with ropes or ladders. For all i care you give them engineers to build stuff on the spot. So when they cant reach you they set up a minicamp and start building up a assault. And maybe if you dont kill them fast enough let them get reinforcements who will bring the siege equipment. So many dammed options d-;

well many more but im curious to what you would add or want.

[ZebioLizard2]

I'd love to see something done for malfunctioning War Robots, robots still set for war to collect resources to create more of themselves and to continue fighting on. If you don't deal with them they'll steal mineral supplies and simply produce more strong troops to fight.

[Tynan]

Well! This thread is certainly bursting with ideas. From streakers to zombies to tribal invaders (one that I quite like, that - fits the frontier theme well). I'll be mulling all this stuff over more when it's time to open up new features. Maybe sooner, actually. I have it scheduled to drop in a bunch of new events in the next week or two, right after I smarten up the AI Storytellers a bit.

I'd love to see something done for malfunctioning War Robots, robots still set for war to collect resources to create more of themselves and to continue fighting on. If you don't deal with them they'll steal mineral supplies and simply produce more strong troops to fight.

That's an interesting one. I've always been interested in Von Neumann probes and the Berserker concept. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft

[Semmy]

In the interesting wiki... let me go look for more from that guy

[FangoWolf]

Sticky fingers Hal grabed an alien artifact - hmm no instruction manual - random events.  Maybe the nerds can crack a few of the effects for predictable events.  Limited uses.

Eco imbalance - weed outbreak that strangles crops.  Workers must remove the weed spaces.  Could lie dormant in some spaces to come back later.

Aliens leave a clone of one of the workers.  Is he trustworthy?

Alien animals that have been breed for food, the aliens show up and it is akin to humans eating dogs.

Posse shows up wanting to arrest one of the colonists.

Master Mechanic for hire.  Hire him for some fixups before he moves on.

Yevette sold some of our supplies for ride off the planet.  (Dr Smith like)

Set threshold of supplies and power to jump to the next planet and hope for a better location.