I’ve recently rediscovered my love of Science Fiction after devouring the Expanse novels by James C A Corey. I turned back the clock to my teenage years and started re-reading the Foundation trilogy by Asimov, the Lensman series by E. E. ‘doc’ Smith, and Moonbeast by A. E. van Vogt. It certainly was a golden (if decidedly misogynistic) age for sci-fi! In the midst of this I loaded Elite Dangerous onto my (son’s) XBox and started my journey to claim the title of “Elite” – something that eluded me when I first had the game on my old Amiga.

All of this got me fired up for some space-faring adventure. I have the rulebook for Traveller and also Elite Dangerous: RPG, so I thought I’d start to build up a few adventure/encounter settings. This list will (hopefully) grow over time. Feel free to use them as One-Shots and incorporate them into your campaigns, and even join a few together into a larger adventure.

1. Trapped on a station that is on lockdown – a robot/cyborg/alien that was hidden within a cargo container has escaped and is killing everything. By an odd coincidence, it was the players who delivered it.
2. You are yoinked out of hyperspace into the deep void between systems. But you aren’t alone – there is a graveyard of ships of all sizes lying derelict there. Your Frame Shift Drive is not working and something just scanned you.
3. Your latest delivery has gone sour – the buyers have not shown up and a very stern looking dock official, together with some well-armed militia, are outside your vessel demanding to see your cargo manifest. What the hell is actually in those containers?
4. A remote underwater research station has called for assistance claiming their reactor core is damaged. When you arrive, you find the place littered with bodies and bathed in blood. A crashing noise above you suggests the elevator to the surface landing pad has just been destroyed by something. You need to find another way out.
5. A prisoner held in the Detention Centre on a space station is awaiting transfer to the inner system for trial. His (wealthy) family has commissioned you to rescue him and return him to their home world unharmed.
6. You have landed on a backwater planet that is struggling to establish itself, delivering a much-needed cargo of medicines. The buyer asks you to provide some additional security as she takes the cargo out to the settlement that needs it. On horseback.
7. You drop into a system only to find you are wanted criminals here. The local police escort you to the nearest orbital station where they have video and DNA evidence that prove you committed the crime and yet you have never been here before.
8. The Federation and Empire have been uneasy neighbours for centuries, but rarely has it flared up into outright war. Tensions have been rising though and an accident or miscalculation by either party could tip them over the brink. You just witnessed that miscalculation.
9. A very rare artifact has been stolen from the palace and the local security forces have begun to swarm around the space-stations like angry hornets in search of the perpetrator. Unfortunately for you, this was one of those times you have an illicit cargo in your hold.
10. Piracy has become a significant problem within this binary system. The local militia keep the lanes around the stations clear, but nothing is safe in the void between the two suns. A freight company is looking for armed ships to act as escorts for their bulk hauler ships, since the militia seems unwilling to assist.
11. While visiting a planet, the party is beset during the night by dreams of violence and revolution – vivid scenes of injustice and cruelty that demand retribution. They are awoken by explosions and fire as the city has erupted in civil unrest. There is fighting on the streets, civic buildings are on fire and anti-riot droids are deploying to quell the violence. Everyone else in the city seems to have been affected by the same dreams.
12. You were hired to guard a convoy of surface vehicles as they make their way across an ice-field to a remote research station. There is no recorded pirate activity in this system and the climate is so harsh that the chances of banditry is negligible, so why do they need heavily armed guards? You’re about to find out.
13. A dull job of escort duty around an asteroid mining operation turns hot when an alien ship drops into the system. All attempts to hail the craft are ignored and suddenly several of the asteroids start to move of their own accord.