Slightly out of phase with our version of "Reality".

Harmonics that can be shifted into our frequency?

Here is a link to a depository (THE depository?) of declassified government documents about U.F.Os anywhere in the world. I guess it can give one idea or two.

https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/

What happened with the OP?

One day they are posting fine. Then BOOM! Crazy?

As for UFOs and this recent screed of "they admitted they are real!" its just one more in a long long long line of these claims and pretty much every time it gets dis-proven somehow. This recent one with the fighters tracking the blip flying alongside was so obviously an imaging glitch of some sort that I am surprised anyone thought it was real.

Oh wait. People still think "rods"  are real even after it was show they were just digital camera quirks with fast moving things. But nope. They are real and must be hiding in another dimension!!!! (No. Really. People were claiming exactly that.)

I miss the old UFO magazines from the 70s and 80s and the old UFO documentary movies and TV specials. If you want ideas for fantastical things then grab some old issues and you'll likely get a few ideas.

Like from one I still have.
Giant Space Rats! Alien rats with telepathic powers and more. And Space Critters! Invisible giant flying jellyfish things that feed on cattle. Only orgone ray cameras could reveal, and orgone ray cannons to combat them.

Quote from: Omega on May 29, 2021, 12:10:32 PM
What happened with the OP?

One day they are posting fine. Then BOOM! Crazy?

He was nuked by the Pundit for sockpuppeting or something like that.

Quote
As for UFOs and this recent screed of "they admitted they are real!" its just one more in a long long long line of these claims and pretty much every time it gets dis-proven somehow. This recent one with the fighters tracking the blip flying alongside was so obviously an imaging glitch of some sort that I am surprised anyone thought it was real.

Well, we are talking about a RPG setting where UFOs might be real. Personally, I don't believe in UFOs in RL, but I like to devour the literature and the shows because they can be very creative.

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I miss the old UFO magazines from the 70s and 80s and the old UFO documentary movies and TV specials. If you want ideas for fantastical things then grab some old issues and you'll likely get a few ideas.

"Project UFO" was a hit here in Italy when I was a kid. Even then, I liked more the mystery than the tacked on "twist" they artificially put at the end of the episodes ("Here is the explanation...but... wait! Here comes a totally made up event that proves how the UFO was for real!" I was only 12 and hated that part...  )

For the nostalgics, it's on YT!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXbE3vFpgt0&list=PLNI0ZFnVijehC1OTmqJKwz8wsKMLCzWly

We actually had a UFO sighting over my home town, complete with military men showing up very promptly to question people, including me, and later declared that it was... I kid you not... Ducks Migrating.

Now. Do I believe in UFOs? Yes. But only that there are unexplained things out there. Not that they are by default alien in origin. Leaning heavily to things like experimental vehicles or someone doing a "Psychological Study" which was all the rage in the 70s. Or mute glow-in-the-dark ducks! 

What they were trying to show with Project UFO was that what you saw might not be what you thought you saw and that what you saw might not be real because someones around trying to either pull a trick, commit a scam, cash in on someone elses real sighting, cover something else, weird coincidence, or whatever.

Makes sense since the writer for it had done and would right afterwards do another Sherlock Holmes adaption, and is the creator and writer for more than one western detective series, Hec Ramsey for example. Even an episode of Have Gun - Will Travel.

Not all had a twist. Sometimes at the end they just showed that yeah it was an alien/ufo and one of the accounts really was true.

Quote from: Omega on May 29, 2021, 09:41:38 PM
What they were trying to show with Project UFO was that what you saw might not be what you thought you saw and that what you saw might not be real because someones around trying to either pull a trick, commit a scam, cash in on someone elses real sighting, cover something else, weird coincidence, or whatever.

Out of curiosity (and nostalgia), yesterday I rewatched the first episode on YouTube. I found it unusually well done even for today standards: from the science, to the civilian aviation procedures, to the way the Army investigated and reacted to things, it is obvious that the show's creators poured a lot of research in it. Even the optical effects were good for a TV show from the '70s.

In this episode, however, after everything is "explained" (by an unusually strong and vast phenomenon of thermal inversion in the atmosphere) the two Bluebook investigators admit that, yes, that was the possible cause of multiple sightings. But, are they satisfied? No. In a way, the episode suggests that the scientific explanation was a long shot. Paradoxically, the real presence of one or more UFOs was the more probable answer. But there is no proof.

To me this is the best way to tackle the problem. Later episodes maintained this structure of "Well, this could be the explanation" - only to have, at the end, from civilians showing up and explaining how they had seen both the UFO and the aliens in clear detail to civilians who found irrefutable physical evidence only to promptly lose it before they could contact someone.

These endings, even when I was a kid, made me groan, because they felt like a cop out. Having a bunch of guys showing up with a detailed "Third Kind" account should have been a game-changer, not something forgotten by the next episode.

I still liked the first 90% of the story, however, and, as I said, the show was a hit here in Italy. I guess they bought the rights after the success of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", and for a period it was running on rotation on the Italian TV.

I discovered that they just rebooted it, BTW. It was canceled after only two seasons. I never saw the new episodes.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6632666/

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Makes sense since the writer for it had done and would right afterwards do another Sherlock Holmes adaption, and is the creator and writer for more than one western detective series, Hec Ramsey for example. Even an episode of Have Gun - Will Travel.

They were the minds behind the reboot of "Dragnet" in the '60s, too. I guess that they tried to tackle a UFO show with the same realism.

UFOs as in 'alien craft' are not real. Well, that is to say they've never visited Earth but I'm sure aliens exist somewhere in the cosmos.

But they make fine RPGing material. I tend to think of them from different realities. Lovecraftian, or inter-dimensional as in the event horizon movie.

Quote from: Reckall on May 30, 2021, 06:05:20 AMTo me this is the best way to tackle the problem. Later episodes maintained this structure of "Well, this could be the explanation" - only to have, at the end, from civilians showing up and explaining how they had seen both the UFO and the aliens in clear detail to civilians who found irrefutable physical evidence only to promptly lose it before they could contact someone.

Welcome to the club. The "we found evidence! ===> oops! We lost evidence!" endings were usually vexing. But thats probably what would really happen.  If you dont know somethings evidence or important then it might get ignored or tossed in the trash.

And yes the effects were pretty good and feel more real than CG ever will.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on May 30, 2021, 07:10:50 AM
UFOs as in 'alien craft' are not real. Well, that is to say they've never visited Earth but I'm sure aliens exist somewhere in the cosmos.

But they make fine RPGing material. I tend to think of them from different realities. Lovecraftian, or inter-dimensional as in the event horizon movie.

1: Probably not real is my take on it. We dont know if the speed of light really is a limiter and so theres that remote possibility someones oddly interested in this place. More likely as noted, various government experimental craft and psycosocial studies.

2: Call of Cthulhu modern/now and Delta Green both played with the idea. In one case the Mi-Go have been posing as aliens via remote controlled puppets made to look like what people expect Grays to look like and used these to contact governments and get some deals.

Dark*Matter has it as an element as well. A few aliens are visiting for whatever reasons.

Quote from: Omega on May 30, 2021, 08:54:41 AM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on May 30, 2021, 07:10:50 AM
UFOs as in 'alien craft' are not real. Well, that is to say they've never visited Earth but I'm sure aliens exist somewhere in the cosmos.

But they make fine RPGing material. I tend to think of them from different realities. Lovecraftian, or inter-dimensional as in the event horizon movie.

1: Probably not real is my take on it. We dont know if the speed of light really is a limiter and so theres that remote possibility someones oddly interested in this place. More likely as noted, various government experimental craft and psycosocial studies.

2: Call of Cthulhu modern/now and Delta Green both played with the idea. In one case the Mi-Go have been posing as aliens via remote controlled puppets made to look like what people expect Grays to look like and used these to contact governments and get some deals.

Dark*Matter has it as an element as well. A few aliens are visiting for whatever reasons.

Given how little we know about space 'the speed of light' their could be a work around, worm holes, folding space or whatever. It would be a sad state of affairs if there wasn't.

Yeah, experimental craft would be highly probable and also interpretation of strange weather phenomena and anything on a screen can produce some very strange artifacts, and with no proper frame of reference they can appear to do some beyond physics movements.

Being a skeptic, I tend to trawl all the BS artists out there for inspiration - Pure RPG gold! Bob Lazar's area 51 theories, Stanton Friedman's 'Crash at Corona' or Preston Nichols Mantauk stuff. All great inspiration for CoC or DG but what a bunch of grifters.

UFO's are real, it doesn't follow that they are spaceships piloted by green men from Mars.

Plus, sadly, all their "evidence" is always shitty recordings (even in this day and age) and testimony (anecdotal evidence) so the Ancient Aliens crowd have exactly jack and shit.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 30, 2021, 10:36:26 PM
UFO's are real, it doesn't follow that they are spaceships piloted by green men from Mars.

Plus, sadly, all their "evidence" is always shitty recordings (even in this day and age) and testimony (anecdotal evidence) so the Ancient Aliens crowd have exactly jack and shit.

Yes, from a semantics point of view UFOs 'technically' do exist. But are not alien in origin. Absolutely agree, all that Von Danyken crowd are totally barmy and have literally pulled those 'theories' out of their ass. Some good stuff for RPGs at least.

Back around 2000 we were driving along and I saw this... thing... rise up over the treeline, turn and dip back down. It was huge and not a jet or helicopter. No sound. This was practically in the middle of the city and no one else saw it?

Best guess is it was either a normal jet that saw at some really weird angle. Or some experimental craft, or even some parade float in practice or who knows what. Ducks Migrating! 

Related. Bemusingly I am one of the few locals to have actually seen the mysterious peacocks that roam the area. No one knows where they came from and most assume its made up. I just thought they were someones pets and did not know they were of unknown origin and just freely roaming the area. Which in a way confirms those episodes of Project UFO where evidence is found but the person finding it does not know that.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on May 30, 2021, 10:50:48 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 30, 2021, 10:36:26 PM
UFO's are real, it doesn't follow that they are spaceships piloted by green men from Mars.

Plus, sadly, all their "evidence" is always shitty recordings (even in this day and age) and testimony (anecdotal evidence) so the Ancient Aliens crowd have exactly jack and shit.

Yes, from a semantics point of view UFOs 'technically' do exist. But are not alien in origin. Absolutely agree, all that Von Danyken crowd are totally barmy and have literally pulled those 'theories' out of their ass. Some good stuff for RPGs at least.

We live in the era of smartphones that are more sophisticated than '80s professional video equipment and still have the same shitty out-of-focus images of the '50s, I agree  At least in "Taken" they gave a reason for the Aliens to actively avoid publicity and the means to do it (you could take the mythology of that show and bring it up to the current era without problems).

One of my beliefs, regarding "Ancient Aliens", is that we lost a lot of ancient history. Maybe in the past some civilization was able to reach an higher technology level than they are credited for, only for it to be lost in the sands of time.

(Every time I remember that the Library of Alexandria contained 200,000 volumes before being destroyed by the Turks I get a bit depressed. Maybe "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" were only two chapters in a longer epic - and actually they have a strange narrative structure that can be explained only by considering that they weren't meant to be read "alone". Imagine if, 1,000 years from now, all that remains from "The Lord of the Rings" is the second part of "The Fellowship of the Ring" and an abstract from "The Return of the King"...)

One thing I believe "possible" is that in the past we had one or two literally "lost" civilizations. Nothing that reached above bronze age or that was able to leave meaningful remains. Graham Hancock writes about this in his books. For sure it is more verosimile that the known earliest civilizations inherited some advanced tech from previous, unknown, ones than from "Aliens".

Quote from: jeff37923 on May 25, 2021, 08:04:33 PM
StellaGamma Publishing produces a campaign setting for Cepheus Engine called "These Stars Are Ours" for this.

I recently added a bunch of their stuff to my wishlist. The ship plans for the Riticulans (the greys) are superb. I almost believe they consulted with actual greys to lay them out. :-) Looks like a really cool setting.