Potential topics to ask your TTRPG party about before you embark on a sci-fi campaign:

We started out general, asking:

• What sci-fi tropes do they want to see? 
• Don’t want to see? 
• Are tired of? 
• Are there any influences they don’t want you to ruin for them (or spoil for that matter)?
• How tech-heavy do you want this campaign to be? 
• Should real-world physics influence gameplay? (ex. Can you breathe in space? Is there sound?)
• Alien coverups – X-files style the-gov-doesn’t-want-you-to-know ones or beach ones!
•  First contact 
• Invasion stories 
• How much hope do you need to enjoy a story? 
• Does it feel possible/likely that your party might succeed, or is it the dread that is moving the needle for them?
• What about stories where we are the aliens invading +/or colonising another planet? 
• How important is intention? 
• Is it better or worse if it was an accidental invasion? 
• Does the equivalent of the Prime Directive exist in your world?
•  Hive mind aliens & potential ethical conundrums that could create tensions within the party.
• Interspecies romance – It’s important to have a bigger convo about what your table is comfortable with re: romance/sex in roleplay.
• Space Zoos – Sentient/sapient beings held for the entertainment and/or education of self-proclaimed higher evolutionary beings & breaking them out and/or being the exhibits.
• Intergalactic war – The basis of many a space opera, is your character a strong supporter of the war? Were they drafted & are opposed to it? Is your party trying to stay neutral?
• Cryo-sleep/suspended animation
• How your player(s) develop their backstory can make this very cool, but springing it on them could be really frustrating.
• How could that actually be played out? What would it look like? 
• Cryo-induced memory loss - Do the memories come back in pieces or not at all? Utilising blank character sheets & letting the story fill the info in.
• Generation ships
• Immigrating to a new world/off world for your descendants to have a better life (or just to live).
• The potential for time anomalies/dilation, factions turning on each other, and forgetting that there was ever a world beyond the ship.
• Space pirates-are they hot? 
• Are they more Shit Mouth Shit Jaws (only really a threat in combat) or like the Reavers (war-criminals prone to cannibalism)?
• Do your players want to play space pirates? & if so, how?
• Time loops 
• Timing is everything, and in a Groundhog Day situation, your characters repeating consequence free indefinitely might be fun, but probably not a great story. So, how long do you do this for? (Is it repeating a day, an hour, and what about real-time? Is this a one-shot or one session of a larger campaign?) 
• How would they use this time?
• Do you as the DM set a limit? Ex. an explosion at the end of each loop that will destroy the ship, and the loop restarts a little later each time, cutting down how long they have to solve the problem.
• Time Travel 
• Major events in history and playing out repercussions: Is there some sort of Time Police in your world that they have to face? How serious are the characters and how does that change the tone of the campaign? 
• Small changes that exclusively affect the character’s life (& direct social circle), but they still have to experience potential ramifications.
• Paradoxes – fun or headache inducing?
• Time Travel Tourism/Repercussion-Free Time Travel
• Alternate Universes – the possibilities are endless.
• Re-imagining characters from other campaigns: How would being in space/alien races change them?
• The Dangers & Ethics of Scientific Process 
• Experimenting on other species to develop cures. Or being experimented on.
• The Trolley Problem, but w/ spaceships & planets!
• Teleportation – The Ship of Theseus, body horror, & the potential mishaps that could arise.
• Digital World 
• Making digital backups of minds to be uploaded into clone or robot bodies.
• Consciousness being held in the cloud indefinitely.
• Reading the terms & conditions: Who really owns your body after you die? What can they do with it? 
• Who owns your consciousness? And the classic, would you fight a clone or digital copy of yourself?
• 3D Printed bodies & Growing Clones for Organ Harvesting
• (true) AI in Relationships – Do you live & let the robots love? Do the robots love? 
• Making moral decisions for other player’s characters that might have impacts on the story +/or how they play down the road.
• Enhanced Humanoids
• Whether it’s super soldiers or bionetics, how do humanoids in your campaign gain an edge, and did they sign up for this or was it put on them? What limits would your party put on themselves?
• Cyborg racism, cultural norms, & the forced servitude/inscription of the cybernetically enhanced.
• Virtual Reality as Escapism
• Is this a Ready Player One situation (basically all VR all the time), or more of a hollow deck setup (expected to use it responsibly)? 
• How does this technology get used? And what are the consequences of abusing is? 
•  Post-Apocalyptic 
• Is this story more Mad Max/Water World, or is there still hope to turn things around? 
• How far into the future do your players feel is a comfortably removed distance? 
• How existential is your dread? 

If you have some that we haven’t thought of, or want to suggest a piece of sci-fi media that was really well done, let us know on the contact page!