The "Lost" Star Trek Campaign Pitch

This is normally the time of week when I would make a "Colony" post.  Those who interact with me personally know, however, that I have decided to turn that into an actual PDF book.  Writing on that has proceeded apace.  I should have the first chapter done by the end of the week.  That has left me little time to think of something interesting to post. 

One of the original goals of this blog was to present campaign pitches for potential future games in my game group.  The whole first month of posts was dedicated to that concept.  Below is a pitch I made to the weekly group that did not quite make the cut at the time, but I think still has potential.  It did not make it into the first month of campaign pitches either, mostly because I ran out of days before I ran out of ideas.  I don't have a lot of preamble to this one.  Everyone knows what Star Trek is.  And so I present to you...

Star Fleet Academy Blues (Star Trek RPG)

The game will begin with the characters’ entry into Star Fleet Academy, follow their careers through four years of classwork/adventures, and finish with the player’s first assignment, the Graduation Exercise, which will determine their future Star Fleet Career, if they can complete the exercise with their lives.

Extra Character Points for the first PC to blast that smirk
off Riker's face.  With a phaser.  Locked on the KILL
setting.

This game will consist of five distinct story arcs.  The first four will be three to four week stories each detailing the unusual occurrences the cadets undergo in their Academy career, one for each year at academy.  The last story arc will be slightly longer, and at the end of the Graduation Exercises (and the game), the PCs will be split up and assigned to their first true Star Fleet deployments.

Because this game is so episodic, it allows for a really wide variety of adventures.  While past events will have ramifications in the future episodes, the time that passes between episodes allows for the PCs to move from one story to the other easily.  Also, since Star Fleet Academy is about exposing cadets to a wide variety of experiences, that variety will translate to the adventures they become involved in.

This game may draw from the Star Fleet Academy box set by Last Unicorn Games, but some of my players may have already played through that material, so it will be mostly used for background and not for the adventures contained therein.

Cut with Our Own Dust

"Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust."
-- John Webster

I started a different post for today, but it is really not coming together the way I want it to.  I have a system for writing just about everything (I know you are shocked).  The post I wanted to make has not only broken my system, it has shattered it and scattered the pieces to the four winds.  Since I am on a self-imposed deadline and time is winding down, I will change over to a different topic and try to wrangle with the original post when I have more time, patience, and a better idea of how to tackle it.

Instead, today I will reintroduce a pitch that I made to the weekly group last year.  At the time I developed a paltry five different game ideas and presented them.  As there were four players, I allowed each one to eliminate one of the pitches and then we played what was left.  That process ended in the Supers game that I have mentioned a time or two already.  One of the other pitches has made an appearance earlier in the month.  The other two have potential as well and may show up after this month is over.  Today, however I want to talk about dust.  Specifically Other Dust.

A few years ago, author Kevin Crawford came out with a pretty nifty space game called Stars Without Number. The game is an intriguing mix of old school and newer mechanics. And even better, the game is free.  He does have a spiffier version that you can pay cash for, but the free SWN is complete and playable on its own.  Unlike so many other free games, looking this one over does not give the reader the impression that they got what they paid for.  SWN is, in fact, pretty damn good.  The true innovation Crawford creates was a system of keyword that the game master can attach to a place (in this case planet) to use as shorthand in case the players decide to go there some day.  When someday arrives, the GM uses the keywords to flesh out the location.  Looking at what I wrote, what he did does not seem very impressive, but I assure you that is the limitation of descriptive ability and not his product.  The system is amazing, adaptable and deserves better than the vocabulary I possess to describe it.

With the publication of SWN, Crawford made a name for himself as a solid game designer and has developed a bit of a following among independent minded gamers.  Capitalizing on his success, Crawford has adapted his keyword system to other genres.  Other Dust, which shares a history with SWN is his post-apocalyptic entry.  It uses a system compatible with  SWN, but different enough that the characters feel like survivors instead of citizens of the stars.  The setting is Earth, but one that had already colonized the stars before the end came.  Events in SWN reveal that Earth was abandoned.  The history of Other Dust reveals what happened to those who were abandoned.  I find that combination of stories irresistible and  something I would like to explore.

The Pitch

When the cities look like this, maybe
 it is time to look to the stars.

When it was obvious that Earth had finally succumbed to the years of greed, environmental devastation, and subsequent natural disasters, those who could afford it took to the stars.  You were lucky enough to win the lottery and secure a berth on one of the last sleeper ships off of the planet.  Unfortunately, when you finally emerged from the decades of cryo-sleep, you found that your ship was damaged and never made it off the dying planet.   Now you and your fellow survivors must make your way in this strange new earth, a planet that did not actually die, but did not quite survive either.  Using your limited amount of old world equipment, can you and your fellow shipmates navigate what the world has become?  And when a stranger offers you the chance at salvation, can you overcome the obstacles that stand between you and a more permanent sanctuary? Adventures will begin with PCs just trying to survive in the unfamiliar remnants of their former world, but a definite goal will eventually present itself, if the players have the fortitude to finish what they started.

Adventuring Into the Black

Mi Tian Gong.  Dong le ma?

I really want to make an effort to focus this blog on the positive things about gaming.  There are a lot of things about this hobby to celebrate and like most things geeky, there are a lot of people who would rather whine and complain about what is supposed to be a source of enjoyment.  I do my fair share of that, but I would really like to limit the amount of that sort of thing that I do here.  As such, I will express my one negative opinion about this subject, get it out of the way, and then make my way to the more constructive and creative aspects of this endeavor.  <RANT> Margaret Weis Productions has made two games in the Firefly universe: Serenity, which I did not like, and Firefly, which I like even less.  The PDF of the latter was so bad that I cancelled my pre-order of the physical product before it comes out later this year. <END RANT>

While I find the published games somewhat lacking, that does not dampen my enthusiasm for the property and the potential to run a successful game in it.   The original television series lasted less than half a season before Fox cancelled it.  I was fortunate that I discovered the series on DVD a couple of years later, and was thus spared the gutting that came with the cancellation for so many of the first run fans. The Serenity movie was uneven, but at least it brought a sense of completion to several of the character arcs, if not the entire story.

If you are unfamiliar with the Firefly universe, my best advice is to go.  Find it. Watch it.  If you find that you do not like it, search your inner self to figure out what has gone so terribly wrong in your life and see if there is anything you can  do to fix it.  For those who feel they do not have the time to enrich their life, I will tell you this.  The world of Firefly is set in the very early days of Human colonization of Space.  Earth was, as is often the case in Sci Fi, exhausted and humanity, primarily the Americans and Chinese went to the stars. The primary focus  of colonization is a small series of systems.  Eventually the more self-reliant, but sparsely populated, colonies on the Border, an outer ring, of planets decided that they no longer wished to be dictated to by the Alliance controlled Core planets and revolted.  The revolt did not go well.  Present day is several years later with the powerful inner rim once again in control.  The central hero of the story was a devotee of the Independent Border's  lost cause.  He exists on the fringe by operating his rust bucket space ship with a crew of quirky characters, most of whom have secrets, or at least interesting pasts,  that drive the narrative.  Eventually, they run afoul of a shadowy government group that genetically modified one of the crew.    

On the surface, that sounds pretty generic.  The devil is in the details.  The crew are all fully realized characters whose lives engage you.  The Verse
is not our own, but the problems the crew face are very accessible.  Little details transform what could be a vanilla effort into something truly special.  The characters speak in a mixture of English and Chinese slang that seems odd to the ear, but quickly becomes second nature.  The equation of the Border colonies with the American West, complete with sheriffs, six guns, and horses makes the backdrop both alien and familiar at the same time.  When the high tech Core worlds begin to make an appearance, they seem somehow even more out of place than the ranches and cowboy hats you have become accustomed to.

As much as I love each of these characters, I would
 prefer you create your own to fly the Verse.

One of the problems with the existing game material is that the authors seem insistent on replicating EVERYTHING about the series and original crew in your own characters.  I did that the first time I ran Serenity and the game admittedly went pretty well.  The game I would like to present at this time is a little different.  In this game the PCs will not own their own ship.  Instead, the ship itself is the property of a small colonization effort on one of the Border planets.  The players will indeed be the crew of the ship, but rather than vagabonds bouncing around the Verse at their own whim, they are responsible for delivering some of the valuable commodities produced by the colony to buyers and return with supplies desperately needed for their friends and neighbors.  It is one thing for a crew to pick up a cargo of grain and trade it for some medical supplies.  It is quite another when you are delivering your neighbor's entire crop and failure means that she and her family will likely starve to death, or die of the space measles if you do not return home with the proper vaccination in time.  The various adventures will roughly split equal time within the colony, in the Black transporting goods and the occasional passenger back and forth, and on other planets including the occasional foray into the byzantine Core.  

Waddayamean We Don't Have to Go to Volturnus?

TSR put out six major role-playing games in the 1970s and early 1980s.  Top Secret (Spies), Boot Hill (Western), Gamma World (Post Apocalyptic), Gangbusters (Gangster Era America), Star Frontiers (Space Opera) and another one that slips my mind at the moment.  There were of course some others notably the pretty terrible Conan the Barbarian and Indiana Jones games.  Oh right, the one I forgot above was Marvel Super Heroes.  Still seems like I am still forgetting something...

I owned most of the games I listed in that first sentence.  Star Frontiers was the notable exception.  My only experience with it was watching my algebra teacher confiscate a copy from one of my classmates as a Freshman in High School.  That seems like an odd oversight especially given how much more product support there was for SF over the years.  Looking back, I suppose that space gaming just was not high on my list of priorities.

The Kurabanda Chieftan, an
honorless dog... er, monkey...
monkey-dog?

It was only last year that I finally dipped my toe into the SF universe, to find that I rather enjoyed it.  At least when the environment of the game itself wasn't trying to kill me.  I can, without reservation, tell my entire readership that they should never, never, never, never go to Volturnus.  Never.  The travel brochures lie.  Also, I will attest that the Kurabanda have no honor.  Truth.

That said, the Star Frontiers game had pirates and criminals and crazy (as opposed to mad) scientists and people to save. Good times.  The game master, one of the rotating Player-GMs in my Sunday game, was a long time devotee of the universe and knew what was going on.  We played the game in Savage Worlds and my character went from a complete newb all the way to "so Legendary I can't figure out what advance to take next" level. Through it all he managed to carry an unopened box of cheeze doodles, an accomplishment that I am absurdly proud of.

When considering space games to potentially run for this blogging exercise, Star Frontiers came to mind for a couple of very good reasons, but there were some reservations as well.  Primarily, unless I run this game for the weekday group, there is the possibility that I might be stepping on the toes of the other GM.  I would hate to run the game if he considered it HIS domain.  Also, there is the very real fact that he knows the game world with the kind of consciousness that decades of exposure to the material can provide.  I will never know as much about the Star Frontiers universe as he already does.

Ready for action.  Except the Dralasite on the left.
He looks like he is about to sneeze.

On the other hand, it perhaps he is like me and runs the game because he wants to play in the world but never gets the opportunity.  I know that I would be thrilled to play in a regular 7th Sea, Legend of the Five Rings or Savage Mars game.  I have run those games, the first two a LOT, because no one else will.  If that is the case then maybe this game is one of the best options of the month.  It is always a good idea to make your once and future GM happy!

That said, my knowledge of the game world is kinda spotty.  Much of the original material is available online, but is a melange of radically different rules systems, optional, but sometimes treated like cannon races, and  the sort of muddy writing that made gaming in the 80s both the best of times and the worst of times.  Likewise, the preprinted modules are all well trod material for some of my potential players, so they are not likely a good source of anything but inspiration.  In order to get my footing, I think a first adventure with very little chance go off the rails is in order.  The players are in that cosmopolitan hub Port Loren when a general call goes out.  Local datanets indicate that PanGalactic Corporation's CEO Chang Kim Lee is looking for a ship's crew for a personal mission and fast!  Mr. Lee has the kind of connections that can make a career, or break one.  The PCs, looking for adventure, wealth, and gainful employment, will likely jump at the chance to get in good with such an important personage.  This is the kind of opportunity that a body would kill for.  Too bad someone with low morals is willing to do just that to the PCs...
 

On Alpha Centauri, everyone can hear you scream. They are all psychic.

Civilization IV

I am not a huge video game person.  I haven't the manual dexterity to play real time games and I find first person shooters dull.  I do like the occasional turn based strategy game, though.  And among the best of those over the years has come from the studio of Sid Meier.  If I had a nickel for every hour of the various iterations of Civilization I have played over the years, I would could fill a sock big enough to clobber Godzilla.  Recently, I got a copy of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a game beloved by many of his devotees, but one that I didn't have the PC capacity for when it was new.  By the time I had the computer to support it, I had moved on to Civ IV and the graphics of AC were a little hard to digest.

Alpha Centauri.  See what I mean?

In most of the later versions of Civilization, one of the ways to win the game is to build a colonization ship and send it to... wait for it... Alpha Centauri!  On the surface, AC is a sequel game in which you find out what happens to those colonists once they get to their new planet. Not content to make "just a sequel," the Sid Meier crew created a fascinating and complex back story for the colonists, why they are scattered all over the planet, and why they don't always get along.  In addition, as the game unfolds, the player discovers the story of the new planet and the life forms that already inhabit the land masses.


In the back story, mankind has begun suffer from the long term effects of living as if our planet was an infinite resource.  Earth is dying and threatens to take the human race with it.  In an effort to save humanity, the nations of the Earth begin the Unity Mission, a colony ship effort to send a representative sample of humanity to the nearest habitable planet.  Being the horrible creatures that humans usually are, the colonists pack all of their ideologies and prejudices in their luggage and carry them along.  Ten thousand colonists start the trip to Alpha Centauri.  And they almost make it.

On entry into the system, a collision with some space debris turns tragic.  One of the cryogenic bays is completely destroyed, killing hundreds of colonists in one terrible moment.  As the crew tries desperately to repair the ship, the deep factionalization causes riot and mutiny.  A brutal act of sabotage seals the fate of the Unity Mission and the remaining colonists start a mad dash for the escape pods.

This cartoon came from Virtual Shackles.  If you like video games and/or
web  comics  the have something for you.  go check them out.

Sister Myriam.  The greatest
example of the preceeding
 punch  line.

In the game proper, the player takes control of one of the factions and tries to lead that group to leadership of the whole planet.  The process takes hundreds of years in game.  At the beginning, the player controls a single unit, explores the map for supplies, and creates the first colonies on the planet. Before planetary communications can be established, each group of colonists is completely isolated and left to their own devices.  The leaders of the various factions naturally create colonies that reflect their ideology.  When those colonies finally do initiate contact with the others,  the expected conflicts erupt.  Some leaders are more reasonable than others.  Which is to say that some of the leaders are completely implacable and the others are just ludicrously stubborn. In addition to this, it seems that Alpha Centauri is not quite as devoid of sentient life as the colonists first thought. Some of that sentient life even has telepathic powers, causing technological and ethical ripples in the game.

Fortunately, the fine folks at Steve Jackson Games thought a role-playing game based on this property was a good idea.  Their book is is a valuable resource for any game set on Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, even if GURPS isn't your system of choice.  It does a very good job of explaining the technology available. Author Jon E. Zeigler does an even better job of neutrally describing the various factions and leaders without portraying them as the total knobs that they are.  GURPS Alpha Centauri examines how to run a campaign at several different points in the progression of the video game.

The game idea that interests me begins with even before the players leave the Unity.  As members of the ship crew, they can remain largely above the ideological squabbling, at least at first.  When it all goes tits up, they will have a limited amount of time to save comrades and gather supplies before escaping in an emergency crew evacuation pod (one separate from the pods dedicated to all of the main factions).  Once they land survival becomes the first order of business.  A wide variety of adventures could then be in store as the players work to build their own immediate shelter into a budding colony.  Scouting forays to recover supply pods can intermingle with first contact missions with the local flora.  As the players establish themselves, they will gradually come in contact with some of the other, likely factionalized, survivors.  Do they join with one of the factions and risk alienating others?  Do they try to remain independent and risk aggression from the more warlike leaders?  Does someone do the colonization effort a favor and shoot Sister Myriam in the face?  And most importantly, will they be able to make Alpha Centauri the next chapter of the human story instead of just the last one?

Role Out the Red Carpet

One genre that I have never run much before is hard science fiction.  I have played in it very little over the years as well.  In the last three years, however, the Sunday crew has done some dabbling in the genre.  The first game for the Sunday crew was a Serenity game that ran for about a dozen sessions.  One of the other GMs in the group ran a Star Frontiers/Savage Worlds that lasted a good chunk of last year.  I suppose you could consider my Savage Mars game Sci Fi as well, although I really would classify it more as Sword and Planet or Pulp Science Fantasy.

This isn't Traveller.  It is the Larry Elmore cover art for Star
Frontiers.  I am putting it here because some of my fellow
gamers  like it.  That is all.

I have, however, had a couple of run-ins with the grandfather of Sci Fi roleplaying, Traveller, over the years.  In fact, my first experience came in the summer of 1985 when I rolled up a character and played a far trader for a couple of sessions.  I am sure that it is some kind of blasphemy to say that I found the experience lacking.  The vaunted character creation system (in which you role dice and consult charts to determine your character's skills, and a bad die role could end in the death of your character before you ever played him) seemed interesting enough, but the game itself left me flat.  That happened so long ago, that I do not remember much about why I was so unimpressed.  I will say, however, that the guy who introduced it to me turned out to be a nut job, so perhaps that colored my perception.

It probably did not help that Traveller went through such a bewildering array of editions, each with a different rules set.  I was about to list them all here, but even researching it led to such a bewildering array of variants and editions that it began to give me a headache.  The upshot of it is:  there are a LOT of different games that call themselves Traveller.  Even in the olden days when there wasn't the proliferation of roleplaying products that we currently enjoy, there was enough variety out there to avoid the space game that could not seem to decide what it wanted to be.

As you can see, the cover art for the original edition left
 something to be desired as well.

My attitude on Traveller began to change sometime in the early 2000s, when I was part of a gaming group that rotated GMing duties.  Once, when the sessions cycled out of my hands the next GM offered up a game of GURPS Traveller in which we would play Imperial marines.  Since I don't care for military style RPGs and I didn't care much for Traveller either, I was initially not very enthused at the beginning of the game.  Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised. Since I had no practical knowledge about the game world, I played a character that didn't have any either.  Private Calvin Ricks took his weapon, pointed it at whatever the bosses told him to, and shot things.  A lot of things.  I came away from the game with some weird incorrect impressions as well.  For example, somehow I thought the rebellious "Sword Worlders" we were fighting actually dressed like Vikings at first.  The game was a good one, but one that I couldn't devote my full attention to.  Changes in my work schedule made my attendance spotty, a situation that I am afraid contributed to the demise of that group entirely.

The core rule book for GURPS Traveller took all the
 evocative  imagery of the original version and
added a spiffy red border.

Still, I came away with the idea that the GURPS iteration of Traveller was self contained enough.  I understood the game system even if I did not know much about the game background. When I started thinking about what kind of space game I could run, Traveller suddenly became a more attractive option.  In the last couple of years, I have amassed most of the GURPS Traveller material and even branched out into other versions of the game as well (including at least one that I intend to write up later in the month).

The classic setting for Traveller is a sector of space known as the Spinward Marches.  This area is a bit of a borderland, where systems of under more or less human Imperial control rest uncomfortably next to the aggressive, leonine featured Aslan, the lupine Vargyr, the psionic Zhodani, and the insectoid Droyne among others.   The Marches are a frontier land, where fortunes can be won and lost all in a single faster-than-light jump from one system to the next.  The ultimate disposition of this frontier is not yet settled, leaving plenty of room for some enterprising individuals to make their fortune.  Or perhaps, to die on the surface of some hostile asteroid.  You know, whatevs.

Aslan

Droyne

Zhodani

Vargyr

The Imperium is a  pretty expansive place. Most sectors of space have never seen a member of the ruling family in their entire history.  For the millennial celebration of the Imperium, however, the royal family has decided to change all that.  Various royals are travelling throughout their holdings and visiting each sector.  Naturally, the competition to woo the royal visit to specific worlds within a sector, and then to impress them on the visit can lead to some very dirty dealing.  Of course, not everyone is a fan of the royal family either…

The characters will all begin the game as employees of an Interstellar Company, one with a typically shady past.  As events progress, the group may become involved with the larger craziness of the pending royal visit.

The game will allow the players to be a “trouble shooting” crew for their employer.  This allows for both a wide variety of characters, and for an eclectic mix of potential adventures.  Some stories may contain direct references to the Imperial backstory, while others may have absolutely nothing to do with it (or do they?).