Sc-fi fans in general are big believers in ET. They pull out the Drake Equation (forgeting that the equation has little to plug into it besides made up numbers) and dream of little grey men with rather odd probing habits.
It's an attractive idea (not the probing part), and when I was young and wishful I spent some time researching the fringe areas of science. The foolishness I found there made me a skeptic of such things forever after. Oh some of them would be cool if true, but coolness doesn't make them real.
Even when they are chased after by people who should know better.
SETI being the example currently on my mind. I hold a degree in Electronic Engineering Technology (stone age stuff, early 80s), and the whole idea seemed iffy to me back when it started. The reasons are nicely summed up in this article. In short, the reason they haven't detected anything likely has nothing to do with the question of something being out there not- it was just a stupid idea fueled by wishful thinking. The physics and reality of the problem indicates that failure is nearly certain.
The neat things about stupid ideas however is that they can be really fun in game campaigns.
Greg Bear for example wrote a book with the idea that the reason SETI didn't detect anything was because ET learned it was best to be quiet- or you could end up dead. From a rpg point of view, that's a cool idea even if the book itself was rather dull.
Marvel comics ran with a very similar idea, although it started much better than it ended. A common problem especially in comics which in this day and age is basically a dying medium.
I've used quite a number of silly fringe ideas in my campaigns, because campaigns aren't made to be serious. Nothing wrong with that.
Unless people start believing them for real. The millions of dollars SETI have spent indicates to me that too many people let fantasy bleed over into reality.
So what fringe ideas have my readers used in their games?
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I based a campaign on cryptozoology once. It's a nice way of having, basically, modern-day "adventurers" who go around and fight monsters except with tazers and electric nets and whatever, to capture and study (rather than loot). I've always found it an interesting twist on typical action-adventure games. And it let me use some of the more idiotic ideas I saw as a kid when unidentified critter reports in the local news were rampant. (No joke, at one point a report of a flying, blood-drinking kangaroo made the local evening news.)
Cryptozoology is a good one.
I've used various of the critters in adventures before, but never arranged a campaign around them. Sounds rather fun.
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