[kdtipa]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

At that point, where do you start your campaign? Are your players part of the Resistence? Are your players opportunists who seek adventure among the stars? Are you players collaborators who welcome their new alien overlords?

I think in having read the other responses and based on my own first reactions, the thing I'm most curious about is the motivation of the alien species. Why invade at all? They can see our technological levels pretty easily, and understand that we're far off. Why not just put a station in a good distance away, but not outside of striking distance with a device in place to hit Earth with an asteroid nearby? Then there's no need at all for an occupying force or to have to manage anything. If humans ever get to be a problem, hit the planet with an asteroid. It feels like humans wouldn't have the choice to rebel or not if the aliens are doing a smart thing.

I'm trying to think of reasons the aliens might want to occupy the planet without killing humans off entirely...

• Someone important is hiding here that they don't want to kill, but can't find easily... so they land lots of troops and begin the search for those people. Humans can either try to help the invaders to get aliens off the planet faster, or resist because the invaders aren't being nice about their search.
• Artifacts are surfacing from long ago that are high technology even beyond what the invaders have. They want the tech for themselves, so they aren't willing to mass destroy anything, but obviously can't let humans have it. You have a built in way to give the PCs little bits of help to fight back.
• Humans have some value intrinsically that we weren't aware of. Maybe hyperspace travel requires incredible computation... or incredible intuition that our brains work really well for. We become slave fodder for them, or some people might choose to work with them intentionally and end up treated better. We end up used in their wars to help them be more mobile than their enemies.

I feel like no matter what, if the campaign is the long game to becoming allies with the aliens is a difficult to make interesting for players. And resistance is a much easier formula for adventure. Finding important artifacts before the aliens do; helping the people trying to hide on Earth; and finding ways to genuinely fight back if we're hyperspace navigation systems... it all makes a little more sense to me as a campaign hook.

One final thought... aliens crashing here in enough number to be a problem but without the ability to get infinite help from space could be fun too. They use their tech to try to rule the planet and bring technology up enough so they can get back into space... but they treat us horribly in the process. So, players either try to work with them to change things from the inside and save people, or try to fight back and just take the tech for humanity.