A friend of mine is running a Traveller game, and I'm playing a doctor who went through their first term in the science roll that also covers being a doctor, second term in media they were ejected from early. So obviously this was a skilled young doctor who entered a Top Chef style competition except for doctoring.
The only problem is coming up with a suitably cheesy name for the competition. I have it as Under The Knife, but the brainspace is running dry on this one
The Galaxy's Next Top Doctor, Cycle 37 Gamma: Droids in the House
So I keep having a particular idea for a forum game of being the support crew for an F-Zero/Redline style sci-fi racing league.
A cool idea.
I'd expect you need to create randomization factors such as pilot skill, course, and happenstance. Team "Owner" should control the purse and have some bidding function on things like pilots, machines, or venue. Sponsorships come with benefits (more money, better parts) at a cost (worse parts, less money, pilot's training time is eaten by PR)
It's a little F-Zero, a little Fantasy Football, just missing a bit of it factor to set it off.
There are ways to do it, but you'd need a couple bodies to help. Personally I wouldn't mind something to keep my occupied between actual work at work.
EDIT; oh! To keep folks engaged during the week, training and other actions update daily, so you can adjust strategy on the fly (unless you opt for multi-day regimens/press tours, which have their own advantages) until you hit race day and see who's quick, and who's roadkill.
This is in general the ideas I had spinning in my head. Auctions for parts and stuff means balancing is a little easier for me and balancing pilot time between training to use the new kit you just jammed in his craft vs getting PR to secure sponsorships is a nice, meaty sounding choice.
The main issue is like, how to do the races such that they come out with good results but don't also require a boat load of rolling from runners. My current plan is to just eventually surrender to the opposed rolls and use Polaris's system which has in built advantage/disadvantage on the next roll and other tie breaker stuff that could be useful in addition to having a really easy to grok skill scale (5/6 is passable 15 is a skilled professional). With acceleration/braking letting drivers (controlled by me, which is awkward but eh) set their speed and dictating their modifier and then ships handling (effected by the terrain) acting as a limit on pilots skills. Break it down into like, 4/6 sections of track that are rolled per lap (so like, 10/25 seconds of racing per section depending on how straight it is).
Let me first preface that this idea super-excited me, so I've been scratchbuilding a system and setting since yesterday.
In X5 (I can give a brief setting overview once I'm not on my phone at work) machines have 3 stats: Speed, Handling, and Performance.
Speed - How fast the machine goes. This plus your pilot's piloting rolls during a race help determine if they gain or lose position.
Handling - How well the machine maneuvers around a course. Mostly static and used to counter a track's difficulty.
Performance - The machine's endurance. Gets worn with use and enemy attacks. Once it hits 0, your handling and speed start declining.
There is also a 4th pseudo-stat Special that covers abilities granted by parts and sponsorships that don affect the other stats directly.
Tracks have 2 stats: Difficulty and Feature
Difficulty is how hard it is to drive the track. If a vehicle's Handling is lower than the difficulty, it loses performance each lap (Particularly brutal in the infamous Xalapa 500!)
Feature is a track's defining feature, a quality that makes it famous or infamous, and adds a bit of spice to the race. Port Albion's low orbit boardwalk has No Rails for example, making it easy for machines to take a dive into the ionosphere (hope you've got units for a replacement machine!)
You test each lap, rolling each pilot's die (pilot's that don't train either don't add their stats or don't roll their die) and add it to the machine's speed to see if they gain position. Other parts can affect the game, as can prior efforts to sabotage your machine by rival mechanics.
It's a really rough outline, but I think it can work. Whaddya think?
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
Hail Hydra
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I got an invite to a Star Trek adventures game. I asked the GM what we are likely missing crew wise. He said there is currently no one filling in as First Officer, Chief Science officer, or counselor. I rolled up a candidate for XO and for Science Officer, not sure if I will do counselor, I like both of these guys a lot.
I randomed a bit for the XO and ended up with a Betazoid with and Artistic and Creative background. STA lets you accept or rebel to your background for different stats, so I went rebel and decided that unlike the typical mindful, peaceful members of their race, Kalos is a lot more rough and tumble. He went up through the Security section of Starfleet but has now taken his first posting as a First Officer. While not afraid of a confrontation, he prefers to try and keeps things peaceful, using his telepathy and presence to defuse fights before they start.
The science officer is a Trill named Joran Cela. He has Joined a symbiont because if I'm going to play a Trill, I'm going to do it all the way. Joran was born and raised on a science station, and would have happily stayed there all his life, studying a local warp phenomenon. However, he was the only candidate for joining Cela, a symbiont bonded to a mortally wounded Trill who fled to their station. Cela, being a being of greater lifespan, wants to get out and experience it all. Together, they end up at Starfleet Academy in the Science track. Joran finds that he likes getting out and working with new people, and thrives during his training and first few postings.
Character creation is great fun, I could do it a few more times, but just choosing between these two is already going to be tough.
I really love character creation in STA. The lifepath gives you plenty of hooks to hang a story and background from without being too restrictive, and I love how the available options are set up in such a way that it gently but firmly nudges you toward creating characters who fit the fiction. STA gets that Star Trek characters are interesting because of their background and personalities ("my guy is shy but observant and expresses himself through art") rather than because of their mechanical or combat gimmick ("he's a CLERIC who uses DUAL WHIPS OOOH").
I got an invite to a Star Trek adventures game. I asked the GM what we are likely missing crew wise. He said there is currently no one filling in as First Officer, Chief Science officer, or counselor. I rolled up a candidate for XO and for Science Officer, not sure if I will do counselor, I like both of these guys a lot.
I randomed a bit for the XO and ended up with a Betazoid with and Artistic and Creative background. STA lets you accept or rebel to your background for different stats, so I went rebel and decided that unlike the typical mindful, peaceful members of their race, Kalos is a lot more rough and tumble. He went up through the Security section of Starfleet but has now taken his first posting as a First Officer. While not afraid of a confrontation, he prefers to try and keeps things peaceful, using his telepathy and presence to defuse fights before they start.
The science officer is a Trill named Joran Cela. He has Joined a symbiont because if I'm going to play a Trill, I'm going to do it all the way. Joran was born and raised on a science station, and would have happily stayed there all his life, studying a local warp phenomenon. However, he was the only candidate for joining Cela, a symbiont bonded to a mortally wounded Trill who fled to their station. Cela, being a being of greater lifespan, wants to get out and experience it all. Together, they end up at Starfleet Academy in the Science track. Joran finds that he likes getting out and working with new people, and thrives during his training and first few postings.
Character creation is great fun, I could do it a few more times, but just choosing between these two is already going to be tough.
I really love character creation in STA. The lifepath gives you plenty of hooks to hang a story and background from without being too restrictive, and I love how the available options are set up in such a way that it gently but firmly nudges you toward creating characters who fit the fiction. STA gets that Star Trek characters are interesting because of their background and personalities ("my guy is shy but observant and expresses himself through art") rather than because of their mechanical or combat gimmick ("he's a CLERIC who uses DUAL WHIPS OOOH").
Agreed. I think I ended up where I was for a few different reasons, which melded together nicely. The intent did seem like you create a character the way you want, then pick a role based on your strengths. But in a group of 6, I wanted to know what we were missing rather than become 3rd Engineer or something. So I knew I wanted to push towards XO. And my favorite XO is Riker, so I wanted to channel him some. I intended it to be a trial run, so I was rolling randomly for race, environment and upbringing. Betazoid/Homeworld/Art and Culture is...not very Riker. So I decided he was a bit rebellious, more of a physical, dynamic personality. I stopped using random location and went security at the academy, and picked my two career events based on what I'd come up with so far (injury and betrayed ideals).
I still want to play science officer, but it seems like I may get the chance with supporting characters, which is another nice system.
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
edited September 2017
And speaking of Star Trek, we had the third session of my campaign on Friday. I wanted to get things started in grand style so I consciously conceived of our first adventure as the "two-hour premiere" of our "series," with my favorite classic Star Trek movie plot - a giant unidentified object is headed straight for Earth at maximum warp and for some reason the heroes are the only ship who can intercept it in time.
(The object - the "intruder" - is a huge unmanned cylindrical spaceship 30 miles long, like V'ger from Star Trek 1 or the whale probe from IV. And I've decided that it, and they, are all creations of the same ancient species, and that species is the oft-mentioned "Preservers," who collect and save samples of endangered sentient organisms as part of some galactic experiment. Oh, and they also created the other big cylindrical Star Trek spaceship, the Doomsday Machine. This particular ship is a busted robot that has been digitizing whole endangered planets - beaming them up and then just holding them in memory, basically - but hasn't set them down anywhere yet, and it's running low on RAM and is about to start erasing people unless the PCs help fix it. So it's not malevolent, just broken. But I want to stretch out the ambiguity of whether it's some horrible invader for as long as possible.)
In our first session, they left Earth spacedock in their brand-new ship (the Akira-class battlecruiser USS Invictus) with a crew of cadets and headed out of the solar system at maximum warp to rendezvous with a science ship that has been following and studying the intruder. And in true The Motion Picture/Star Trek V fashion, as soon as they hit warp speed, the new engines broke and the session was spent making daring leaps through gouts of plasma fire to repair the damage and restart the engines.
In session 2, they found the science ship shut down, without power, and being attacked by Orion pirates. It seems the intruder object broadcasts powerful EM transmissions that interfere with starship power generation (just like the whale probe in Star Trek IV). The Orions had beamed over onto the science ship and were trying to salvage it and take its crew as hostages or slaves. There was a space battle and, after the pirate motherships were driven off, a fight on the decks of the science ship with phasers.
In session 3, after cleaning up the mess made by the pirates and helping to get the science ship up and running again, our heroes got a look at the data the science ship had recorded. The intruder vessel had entered this solar system (a remote, uncharted system at the edges of Federation space), and approached a class M planet. There was a bright glow and...then the science ship lost power and didn't see what happened next, but now the planet is an asteroid belt. (In truth: the planet was breaking up and the machine saved the inhabitants. But I wanted it to look like it might have blown the planet up.)
Then one of my friends has an idea: "how long ago was this?" Uh, like twelve hours, I say. You would have been here except your ship's engines broke on the way. "Cool. So why don't we warp 13 light-hours away and put out a bunch of sensors and Class 1 Probes all networked together and pointing at the planet to see what actually happened?" ............well shit, why not? So I whipped up a timed engineering challenge, and there was a bit of drama as the engineer finished modifying the probes right at the last minute, and we had a cool montage of the ship using its rapid-fire torpedo launcher to shoot dozens of probes out into a perfect grid, and I told my players what they saw.
And that kind of gave away some of the mystery earlier than I was expecting to, but like, when players come up with a solution that cool straight out of left field, what kind of monster wouldn't just roll with it? And i love that they're already thinking like this. They're leaning forward, they're engaged. This is the sort of shit I want more of.
And that kind of gave away some of the mystery earlier than I was expecting to, but like, when players come up with a solution that cool straight out of left field, what kind of monster wouldn't just roll with it? And i love that they're already thinking like this. They're leaning forward, they're engaged. This is the sort of shit I want more of.
How much of the mystery did it give away? Are your players aware that the Intruder is trying to save things?
Or did you go with: "Unfortunately, the effects of the warp drive combined with the destruction of the planet distort and disrupt the data that you're collecting. You see the Intruder approach the planet, and some odd energy signatures that may be an extremely powerful but unknown weapon powering up, and then the planet implodes." or some other trek-nobabble solution to preserve the mystery.
see317 on
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
And that kind of gave away some of the mystery earlier than I was expecting to, but like, when players come up with a solution that cool straight out of left field, what kind of monster wouldn't just roll with it? And i love that they're already thinking like this. They're leaning forward, they're engaged. This is the sort of shit I want more of.
How much of the mystery did it give away? Are your players aware that the Intruder is trying to save things?
Or did you go with: "Unfortunately, the effects of the warp drive combined with the destruction of the planet distort and disrupt the data that you're collecting. You see the Intruder approach the planet, and some odd energy signatures that may be an extremely powerful but unknown weapon powering up, and then the planet implodes." or some other trek-nobabble solution to preserve the mystery.
I told them that their ersatz telescope could only pick up stuff on the EM spectrum, not "gravimetric" this or 'subspace" that, which everyone agreed was reasonable, and I basically narrated what they could see from a distance - the planet, with some city lights visible on the nightside surface, a glint of light on metal (the ship, as seen from outside the solar system), a flash of energy, and then no lights on the nightside or any green of vegetation on the dayside - all organic life gone. Then the ship departs and the planet slowly begins chunking up.
I did, however, tell them that radio activity spiked around the time of the probe ship's arrival, and that the atmosphere was unusually thick and soupy for a Class M world and that sulfur showed up on the emissions spectrum. "Volcanoes!" someone said. "They were freaking out because there were probably volcanoes and earthquakes everywhere" (and this person was, of course, right). So they are about 95% sure that the planet fell apart of its own accord but aren't yet sure if the energy is some kind of doomsday weapon or what. Nobody has yet suggested a giant transporter.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I got an invite to a Star Trek adventures game. I asked the GM what we are likely missing crew wise. He said there is currently no one filling in as First Officer, Chief Science officer, or counselor. I rolled up a candidate for XO and for Science Officer, not sure if I will do counselor, I like both of these guys a lot.
I randomed a bit for the XO and ended up with a Betazoid with and Artistic and Creative background. STA lets you accept or rebel to your background for different stats, so I went rebel and decided that unlike the typical mindful, peaceful members of their race, Kalos is a lot more rough and tumble. He went up through the Security section of Starfleet but has now taken his first posting as a First Officer. While not afraid of a confrontation, he prefers to try and keeps things peaceful, using his telepathy and presence to defuse fights before they start.
The science officer is a Trill named Joran Cela. He has Joined a symbiont because if I'm going to play a Trill, I'm going to do it all the way. Joran was born and raised on a science station, and would have happily stayed there all his life, studying a local warp phenomenon. However, he was the only candidate for joining Cela, a symbiont bonded to a mortally wounded Trill who fled to their station. Cela, being a being of greater lifespan, wants to get out and experience it all. Together, they end up at Starfleet Academy in the Science track. Joran finds that he likes getting out and working with new people, and thrives during his training and first few postings.
Character creation is great fun, I could do it a few more times, but just choosing between these two is already going to be tough.
I really love character creation in STA. The lifepath gives you plenty of hooks to hang a story and background from without being too restrictive, and I love how the available options are set up in such a way that it gently but firmly nudges you toward creating characters who fit the fiction. STA gets that Star Trek characters are interesting because of their background and personalities ("my guy is shy but observant and expresses himself through art") rather than because of their mechanical or combat gimmick ("he's a CLERIC who uses DUAL WHIPS OOOH").
Agreed. I think I ended up where I was for a few different reasons, which melded together nicely. The intent did seem like you create a character the way you want, then pick a role based on your strengths. But in a group of 6, I wanted to know what we were missing rather than become 3rd Engineer or something. So I knew I wanted to push towards XO. And my favorite XO is Riker, so I wanted to channel him some. I intended it to be a trial run, so I was rolling randomly for race, environment and upbringing. Betazoid/Homeworld/Art and Culture is...not very Riker. So I decided he was a bit rebellious, more of a physical, dynamic personality. I stopped using random location and went security at the academy, and picked my two career events based on what I'd come up with so far (injury and betrayed ideals).
I still want to play science officer, but it seems like I may get the chance with supporting characters, which is another nice system.
This gets to what I dig about this lifepath as opposed to some other lifepath systems I've played, which is that by RAW you get to choose whether you pick your options or roll them and neither is recommended or preferred. That way you can go in with a concept and then make choices based on that concept and aim for a specific result like being the best Vulcan doctor or whatever, or you can roll randomly and assemble a concept from the ideas it gives you.
And it's cool because the mechanics are tight enough that letting you pick doesn't make you a min-maxed uber character (this is an issue in some forms of Traveller; when a career term can give you +1 to a skill, but +4 at a skill is almost guaranteed success, so the game can't let you pick skill-ups or everyone would be invincible gun gods) but rolling randomly doesn't give you a gimped bullshit Frankenstein of a character. It's really freeing.
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
Then one of my friends has an idea: "how long ago was this?" Uh, like twelve hours, I say. You would have been here except your ship's engines broke on the way. "Cool. So why don't we warp 13 light-hours away and put out a bunch of sensors and Class 1 Probes all networked together and pointing at the planet to see what actually happened?" ............well shit, why not? So I whipped up a timed engineering challenge, and there was a bit of drama as the engineer finished modifying the probes right at the last minute, and we had a cool montage of the ship using its rapid-fire torpedo launcher to shoot dozens of probes out into a perfect grid, and I told my players what they saw.
And that kind of gave away some of the mystery earlier than I was expecting to, but like, when players come up with a solution that cool straight out of left field, what kind of monster wouldn't just roll with it? And i love that they're already thinking like this. They're leaning forward, they're engaged. This is the sort of shit I want more of.
that's god damn brilliant. Now you're thinking relativistically!
13 lighthours is surprisingly close to what would be somewhat real-tech feasible. You're in the Kuiper belt from earth, and our best looooong exposure picture at that distance (of Pluto) is a few hundred pixels.
Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
13 lighthours is surprisingly close to what would be somewhat real-tech feasible. You're in the Kuiper belt from earth, and our best looooong exposure picture at that distance (of Pluto) is a few hundred pixels.
yeah, I DM with my laptop and I fired up the googles specifically to find that out. it's pretty wild.
also, since warp drive canonically functions by bending space (compressing it in front of the ship and extending it in back of the ship) I bet a properly-tuned warp drive could bend a circular cross-section of space to create, effectively, a miles-wide lens
MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
How is Discovery?
I don't want to just shell out for CBS since it's literally the only thing on that network I care about, so I figure I'll take my week-long trial at some point later when more of the episodes are up.
I don't want to just shell out for CBS since it's literally the only thing on that network I care about, so I figure I'll take my week-long trial at some point later when more of the episodes are up.
Doesn't premiere until the 24th, and then it's just the first part of a two parter premier.
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it's leaked though, I;m just not particularly interested in hunting it down if it has been,
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
also maaaan I wanna play an irascible ship's doctor who just drinks all the time and says "DAMNIT, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a <snappy comeback>" every once in a while
or possibly an unusual half-alien constantly fighting the pull of the Federation's ideology and his home planet's values while being an engineering adept
also maaaan I wanna play an irascible ship's doctor who just drinks all the time and says "DAMNIT, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a <snappy comeback>" every once in a while
or possibly an unusual half-alien constantly fighting the pull of the Federation's ideology and his home planet's values while being an engineering adept
I'm playing a hippie betazoid doctor who makes crystal healing work.
The ship's holographic doctor fuckin' hates me.
As does the science officer.
And my klingon intern.
It's a blast.
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
Betazoids are well known as the most Woo species in the entire galaxy
also maaaan I wanna play an irascible ship's doctor who just drinks all the time and says "DAMNIT, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a <snappy comeback>" every once in a while
or possibly an unusual half-alien constantly fighting the pull of the Federation's ideology and his home planet's values while being an engineering adept
I'm playing a hippie betazoid doctor who makes crystal healing work.
The ship's holographic doctor fuckin' hates me.
As does the science officer.
And my klingon intern.
It's a blast.
I do very much enjoy getting to role play both a terminally frustrated Robert Picasso AND a Klingon trying to break the cycle of HONORGLORY only to have you as her mentor
Maybe someday we can get the sessions back on track and you guys can figure out what dropkicked a Warbird into pieces
I've had a concept rolling around in my head for years, just waiting for a good Star Trek RPG to put it down in, of a Klingon Doctor on some kind of officer exchange program with the Federation, just a big boisterous windbag who's fascinated by how all these less-sturdy people manage to get through their daily life without spontaneously melting. Like, he's a legit very good doctor, and doesn't mind helping people out with their minor cuts and their weird space flu, but he'll be telling them the whole time about how his Klingon patients wouldn't even bother reporting that they'd been wounded unless the limb was actually severed.
It was inspired by the episode of TNG where Worf delivers Keiko O'Brien's baby, after which my brother and I joked about traditional Klingon midwifery consisting of getting up between the mother's legs and bellowing at the top of your lungs "BABY, COME OUT! WHY DO YOU HIDE? ARE YOU A COWARD?! THERE IS NO GLORY TO BE WON IN THE WOMB!!"
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It'd be funny if he was legit baffled by headaches and cuts and stomach issues. Just like "I didn't even know you saw a doctor for this stuff, we don't have any medicine for that, do we?"
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Conceptually that is extremely funny but it also makes me think of how much trouble women can have getting male doctors to understand that some constant throbbing pain is a real problem and not just some unknowable woman problem, or straight up just them being wusses.
So you could do some decent commentary with that as well.
Conceptually that is extremely funny but it also makes me think of how much trouble women can have getting male doctors to understand that some constant throbbing pain is a real problem and not just some unknowable woman problem, or straight up just them being wusses.
So you could do some decent commentary with that as well.
Klingons apparently dabble in genetic engineering some, too, which is a whole other kettle of Star Trek fish.
it's super great and it kind of came out of nowhere
I had all these plans for the things I was going to try running this year and this just showed up and muscled its way to the front of the line
the thing is, there's never really been a really great star trek rpg before. the FASA one from the 80s had clunky 80s mechanics and a kind of right-wing, militaristic vibe (it was basically a wargame for wargamers that someone had grudgingly slapped rpg mechanics onto). The Last Unicorn Games edition from the 90s was pretty good for the 90s but wildly overcomplicated in true 90s fashion, with huge lists of skills and not much attention paid to balance, and the kind of dubious idea that you start as ensigns and level up to captains as you play, which makes telling actual star trekky stories kind of hard
and in the past decade or so there have been some okay fan RPGs out there but they tend to be aggressively minimalist and use reskins of D&D or d6 star wars or whatever, and fixate only on the original series to the exclusion of everything else
and then here this game comes and it has solutions for all the problems with gaming star trek in the past: you start off as the captain or chief engineer or whatever you want, just like the show; your characters are competent and multidisciplinary, your basic chance of success at most tasks is more like 70 or 80 percent instead of 50% or 33%; the DM doesn't have to come up with names and personalities for everyone on the ship because now the players get to do that instead and it's fast and simple; the players control multiple characters so splitting the party doesn't mean anyone has to sit around twiddling their thumbs; the system helps you stay in character by rewarding nonviolence and clever solutions to problems, etc etc
it was this long list of shit i didn't even know i wanted and now can't imagine playing without. it feels like a gift from the sky.
2d20 is a really good core system too IMO. Like obviously Star Trek's various tacked on systems help sell the theme super hard but the give and take of the core mechanic helps games by giving players easy ways to place emphasis on actions.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
2d20 is a really good core system too IMO. Like obviously Star Trek's various tacked on systems help sell the theme super hard but the give and take of the core mechanic helps games by giving players easy ways to place emphasis on actions.
yeah, I really dig 2d20 and am definitely going to be checking out Conan at some point because of my experience with STA. my players have found it really intuitive - a few sessions in and everyone is confidently rolling and not asking how to do things. we don't get many hours of uninterrupted play time as we're at my bro's house with his baby but the system runs fast and smooth enough that we can cover satisfying amounts of ground anyway.
2d20 is a really good core system too IMO. Like obviously Star Trek's various tacked on systems help sell the theme super hard but the give and take of the core mechanic helps games by giving players easy ways to place emphasis on actions.
yeah, I really dig 2d20 and am definitely going to be checking out Conan at some point because of my experience with STA. my players have found it really intuitive - a few sessions in and everyone is confidently rolling and not asking how to do things. we don't get many hours of uninterrupted play time as we're at my bro's house with his baby but the system runs fast and smooth enough that we can cover satisfying amounts of ground anyway.
Also Infinity. So you can leap from optimistic sci fi to dirty political spy fi.
Also Infinity continues to be the setting I am most sure is dumb trash and that I also wholeheartedly recommend as a good setting with interesting themes and set ups.
Like, it's no more dumb trash than other sci-fi settings taken seriously, and a lot less than most
There's some really interesting stories to tell in that setting and it's refreshingly different in many ways too. Like, the most humanist, liberal and free of the major political blocs you can live in would be Haqqislam. That's pretty cool. Also of the three main blocs all of the are majority non-white and only one of them has a significant minority of white westerners. I like that.
Like, it's no more dumb trash than other sci-fi settings taken seriously, and a lot less than most
There's some really interesting stories to tell in that setting and it's refreshingly different in many ways too. Like, the most humanist, liberal and free of the major political blocs you can live in would be Haqqislam. That's pretty cool. Also of the three main blocs all of the are majority non-white and only one of them has a significant minority of white westerners. I like that.
Alien dogs in pack hive mind infect unborn children to create Scottish werewolves that fight using hyper metal claymores. It's silly trash.
But I think that's what's kind of endearing about it. The setting is full of these dumb, absurd things next to all the more grounded political stuff and the heavier themes about the role of AI and trans humanism. It makes the setting feel like one that humans live in rather than just a vessel for sci fi concepts
Well, the Scottish bit isn't. The Scottish bit does actually make a degree of sense. And Antipodes do too! But yeah the whole Dogface thing is pretty silly.
Alright I guess this is a general "what do" request for plot hooks, but I have some bounding!
My Star Wars group is getting introduced to the sectors around Dantooine over the course of the first arc of our Star Wars adventure. Thus far I have made it clear to them that they: a) will not know who they can trust and need to deal with that, b) will not get much, if any, help from other Alliance cells, c) are a unique cell because they have a heavy transport that can lift huge amounts of cargo, and d) are being observed by the new-fangled Alliance High Command (that is in the process of preparing for the Battle of Scarif).
Specifically this is the region known in Legends as the Pentastar Alignment/Imperial Remnant. The whole region is under the oversight of Grand Moff Wessex, newly enumerated, with the exception of Yaga Minor which is in the Special Projects Administration oversight (under Tarkin). Admiral Daala is in play, although at the moment the closest the group will get is junior lieutenants tasked to recover "her property." (being one of the droid PCs)
With that in mind I need adventure hooks for a Rebel cell. I'm trying to keep the missions broad in base, for example:
First Mission: Supply Run to Ord Trasi
Synopsis: The crew must make a supply delivery to a Rebel cell on Ord Trasi.
Challenges: Bureaucracy: Imperial Customs (DC 15), Space: Slipstream Follow (DC 15), Combat: Rebel Traitors (3D+2), Search, Streetwise, or Survival: Finding the Rebels (DC 15)
The challenges are just an outline so I know what sort of difficulties and which encounters I absolutely want to happen. Originally the combat was meant to be with Imperial Stormtroopers, but someone rolled a Despair and we got Rebel Traitors instead (which was awesome because it totally upped the "who can we trust?" vibes). As you can also see, the synopsis is an actual adventure hook.
Second Mission: Troop Transport from Dantooine
Synopsis: While making a routine cargo run a Rebel cell on Dantooine asks for help departing the planet.
Challenges: Computer Prog/Repair (DC 17), Bureaucracy: Imperial Customs (DC 15), Combat: Imperial Stormtroopers (3D+2), Space: Blockade Run (DC 16)
The plan is to run one of these missions per week until we've reached critical mass and we can play through the Evacuation of Dantooine (in the run up to the Battle of Scarif/A New Hope). At which point their heavy transport becomes key Alliance infrastructure and they find themselves traveling all over the galaxy getting interjected into all sorts of shenanigans. Tentatively I'd like for them to be part of the evacuation effort at Yavin IV and Hoth (and they'll be at the fleet rendezvous for Endor), so I'm working around the films in a slightly different way than I usually do (e.g. avoid them). Daala is set up as a major foil for the group, and depending on what kind of exploits they pull they'll attract other Imperial attention.
If anyone cares, the group is a human merchant captain, an Arkanian offshoot Force Adept swordswoman, a Mandalorian merc, a human Droid Engineer, a disguised BX-series commando droid living as a human, and an R3-series Astromech.
I don't know the game system, so I can't lay out specific challenges, but I'm a long time fan of Star Wars and RPGs so I might be able to come up with some hooks...
Your crew isn't getting any support from the Rebellion, but still has needs. A ship isn't going to fuel itself after all. Ammo doesn't grow on trees, and you aren't likely to come across a blaster rifle mine any time soon. So, how does a ragtag cell of wannabe rebels fund itself when they've got a heavy transport? Time to hook up with a crime lord and move some illicit (morally questionable?) cargo. Avoid Imperial patrols, dodge rebel observers, duck opposing smugglers... Could be some good times.
The Mandalorian merc probably has some good hooks in their background you could play with. Are they running from their Mandalorian past? Maybe avoiding a birth right that would tie them down? Maybe exiled from their people for betraying their creed? Whatever the reason, they've picked up a squad of Mandalorians hunting them down, and the rest of the crew is getting caught in the crossfire. You can't ask the Rebellion for help, what do you do?
Of course, there's the traditional Seven Samurai plot, your crew gets hired by a small town under threat from some local crime lord or imperial garrison. Recruit some additional mercs for aid then lead into the big showdown. If things start going bad at the big showdown, maybe the Rebels show up with some additional fire power to pull your jibblies out of the fire.
Always good times to be had stumbling across a desperate Imperial Deserter and getting them to the Rebellion safe house. Of course, they might be an Imperial spy pretending to desert in order to gain intelligence.
Your crew has stumbled across a rare, potentially powerful ancient artifact. An ancient holocron? A legendary lightsaber crystal? The location of a forgotten Sith super weapon? The experimental data of an Apothecary that could replace bacta treatments? Such items or information would naturally attract attention from collectors and people in power, beings who will stop at nothing to add to their collections. Does your crew try to sell it to the highest bidder? Turn it over to the Rebellion, maybe the Empire? Keep it, and try to use it themselves?
A crime lord finds out who the Rebels are. In exchange for not selling them out to the Imperials, he has them do a job for him, jacking an opposing crime lord's shipment. You can twist it by having the opposing crime lord be not a scumbag and he's running supplies for a planet under blockade, or just have the rebels caught in the ensuing gang war.
There's also the "Side Trip" skeleton I fairly enjoy. (Side Trip being a Stackpole/Zahn crossover from Tales of the Empire, natch) The players are on a smuggling job when then they get picked up by the Imperials. The Captain thinks they're small fish, so if they do a smuggling job for him, he'll pretend he never saw them. The players think they're smuggling items to a crime lord, but in reality, the bounty hunter sent to make sure they honor the terms is the contraband, an Imperial Operative in disguise dispatched to capture the crime lord and bring them to Imperial Justice. Hilarity ensues with mistaken identities.
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
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The Galaxy's Next Top Doctor, Cycle 37 Gamma: Droids in the House
droid's NIGHT
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Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Let me first preface that this idea super-excited me, so I've been scratchbuilding a system and setting since yesterday.
In X5 (I can give a brief setting overview once I'm not on my phone at work) machines have 3 stats: Speed, Handling, and Performance.
Speed - How fast the machine goes. This plus your pilot's piloting rolls during a race help determine if they gain or lose position.
Handling - How well the machine maneuvers around a course. Mostly static and used to counter a track's difficulty.
Performance - The machine's endurance. Gets worn with use and enemy attacks. Once it hits 0, your handling and speed start declining.
There is also a 4th pseudo-stat Special that covers abilities granted by parts and sponsorships that don affect the other stats directly.
Tracks have 2 stats: Difficulty and Feature
Difficulty is how hard it is to drive the track. If a vehicle's Handling is lower than the difficulty, it loses performance each lap (Particularly brutal in the infamous Xalapa 500!)
Feature is a track's defining feature, a quality that makes it famous or infamous, and adds a bit of spice to the race. Port Albion's low orbit boardwalk has No Rails for example, making it easy for machines to take a dive into the ionosphere (hope you've got units for a replacement machine!)
You test each lap, rolling each pilot's die (pilot's that don't train either don't add their stats or don't roll their die) and add it to the machine's speed to see if they gain position. Other parts can affect the game, as can prior efforts to sabotage your machine by rival mechanics.
It's a really rough outline, but I think it can work. Whaddya think?
I really love character creation in STA. The lifepath gives you plenty of hooks to hang a story and background from without being too restrictive, and I love how the available options are set up in such a way that it gently but firmly nudges you toward creating characters who fit the fiction. STA gets that Star Trek characters are interesting because of their background and personalities ("my guy is shy but observant and expresses himself through art") rather than because of their mechanical or combat gimmick ("he's a CLERIC who uses DUAL WHIPS OOOH").
Agreed. I think I ended up where I was for a few different reasons, which melded together nicely. The intent did seem like you create a character the way you want, then pick a role based on your strengths. But in a group of 6, I wanted to know what we were missing rather than become 3rd Engineer or something. So I knew I wanted to push towards XO. And my favorite XO is Riker, so I wanted to channel him some. I intended it to be a trial run, so I was rolling randomly for race, environment and upbringing. Betazoid/Homeworld/Art and Culture is...not very Riker. So I decided he was a bit rebellious, more of a physical, dynamic personality. I stopped using random location and went security at the academy, and picked my two career events based on what I'd come up with so far (injury and betrayed ideals).
I still want to play science officer, but it seems like I may get the chance with supporting characters, which is another nice system.
(The object - the "intruder" - is a huge unmanned cylindrical spaceship 30 miles long, like V'ger from Star Trek 1 or the whale probe from IV. And I've decided that it, and they, are all creations of the same ancient species, and that species is the oft-mentioned "Preservers," who collect and save samples of endangered sentient organisms as part of some galactic experiment. Oh, and they also created the other big cylindrical Star Trek spaceship, the Doomsday Machine. This particular ship is a busted robot that has been digitizing whole endangered planets - beaming them up and then just holding them in memory, basically - but hasn't set them down anywhere yet, and it's running low on RAM and is about to start erasing people unless the PCs help fix it. So it's not malevolent, just broken. But I want to stretch out the ambiguity of whether it's some horrible invader for as long as possible.)
In our first session, they left Earth spacedock in their brand-new ship (the Akira-class battlecruiser USS Invictus) with a crew of cadets and headed out of the solar system at maximum warp to rendezvous with a science ship that has been following and studying the intruder. And in true The Motion Picture/Star Trek V fashion, as soon as they hit warp speed, the new engines broke and the session was spent making daring leaps through gouts of plasma fire to repair the damage and restart the engines.
In session 2, they found the science ship shut down, without power, and being attacked by Orion pirates. It seems the intruder object broadcasts powerful EM transmissions that interfere with starship power generation (just like the whale probe in Star Trek IV). The Orions had beamed over onto the science ship and were trying to salvage it and take its crew as hostages or slaves. There was a space battle and, after the pirate motherships were driven off, a fight on the decks of the science ship with phasers.
In session 3, after cleaning up the mess made by the pirates and helping to get the science ship up and running again, our heroes got a look at the data the science ship had recorded. The intruder vessel had entered this solar system (a remote, uncharted system at the edges of Federation space), and approached a class M planet. There was a bright glow and...then the science ship lost power and didn't see what happened next, but now the planet is an asteroid belt. (In truth: the planet was breaking up and the machine saved the inhabitants. But I wanted it to look like it might have blown the planet up.)
Then one of my friends has an idea: "how long ago was this?" Uh, like twelve hours, I say. You would have been here except your ship's engines broke on the way. "Cool. So why don't we warp 13 light-hours away and put out a bunch of sensors and Class 1 Probes all networked together and pointing at the planet to see what actually happened?" ............well shit, why not? So I whipped up a timed engineering challenge, and there was a bit of drama as the engineer finished modifying the probes right at the last minute, and we had a cool montage of the ship using its rapid-fire torpedo launcher to shoot dozens of probes out into a perfect grid, and I told my players what they saw.
And that kind of gave away some of the mystery earlier than I was expecting to, but like, when players come up with a solution that cool straight out of left field, what kind of monster wouldn't just roll with it? And i love that they're already thinking like this. They're leaning forward, they're engaged. This is the sort of shit I want more of.
Or did you go with: "Unfortunately, the effects of the warp drive combined with the destruction of the planet distort and disrupt the data that you're collecting. You see the Intruder approach the planet, and some odd energy signatures that may be an extremely powerful but unknown weapon powering up, and then the planet implodes." or some other trek-nobabble solution to preserve the mystery.
I told them that their ersatz telescope could only pick up stuff on the EM spectrum, not "gravimetric" this or 'subspace" that, which everyone agreed was reasonable, and I basically narrated what they could see from a distance - the planet, with some city lights visible on the nightside surface, a glint of light on metal (the ship, as seen from outside the solar system), a flash of energy, and then no lights on the nightside or any green of vegetation on the dayside - all organic life gone. Then the ship departs and the planet slowly begins chunking up.
I did, however, tell them that radio activity spiked around the time of the probe ship's arrival, and that the atmosphere was unusually thick and soupy for a Class M world and that sulfur showed up on the emissions spectrum. "Volcanoes!" someone said. "They were freaking out because there were probably volcanoes and earthquakes everywhere" (and this person was, of course, right). So they are about 95% sure that the planet fell apart of its own accord but aren't yet sure if the energy is some kind of doomsday weapon or what. Nobody has yet suggested a giant transporter.
This gets to what I dig about this lifepath as opposed to some other lifepath systems I've played, which is that by RAW you get to choose whether you pick your options or roll them and neither is recommended or preferred. That way you can go in with a concept and then make choices based on that concept and aim for a specific result like being the best Vulcan doctor or whatever, or you can roll randomly and assemble a concept from the ideas it gives you.
And it's cool because the mechanics are tight enough that letting you pick doesn't make you a min-maxed uber character (this is an issue in some forms of Traveller; when a career term can give you +1 to a skill, but +4 at a skill is almost guaranteed success, so the game can't let you pick skill-ups or everyone would be invincible gun gods) but rolling randomly doesn't give you a gimped bullshit Frankenstein of a character. It's really freeing.
that's god damn brilliant. Now you're thinking relativistically!
yeah, I DM with my laptop and I fired up the googles specifically to find that out. it's pretty wild.
also, since warp drive canonically functions by bending space (compressing it in front of the ship and extending it in back of the ship) I bet a properly-tuned warp drive could bend a circular cross-section of space to create, effectively, a miles-wide lens
Fucking wish the so-called professionals were that creative with science.
I don't want to just shell out for CBS since it's literally the only thing on that network I care about, so I figure I'll take my week-long trial at some point later when more of the episodes are up.
Doesn't premiere until the 24th, and then it's just the first part of a two parter premier.
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it's leaked though, I;m just not particularly interested in hunting it down if it has been,
or possibly an unusual half-alien constantly fighting the pull of the Federation's ideology and his home planet's values while being an engineering adept
I'm playing a hippie betazoid doctor who makes crystal healing work.
The ship's holographic doctor fuckin' hates me.
As does the science officer.
And my klingon intern.
It's a blast.
I do very much enjoy getting to role play both a terminally frustrated Robert Picasso AND a Klingon trying to break the cycle of HONORGLORY only to have you as her mentor
Maybe someday we can get the sessions back on track and you guys can figure out what dropkicked a Warbird into pieces
Chicago Megagame group
Watch me struggle to learn streaming! Point and laugh!
It was inspired by the episode of TNG where Worf delivers Keiko O'Brien's baby, after which my brother and I joked about traditional Klingon midwifery consisting of getting up between the mother's legs and bellowing at the top of your lungs "BABY, COME OUT! WHY DO YOU HIDE? ARE YOU A COWARD?! THERE IS NO GLORY TO BE WON IN THE WOMB!!"
So you could do some decent commentary with that as well.
Also it's super cinematic and basically made for pacing like a TV show.
There's a very simple set of rules for creating a Red/Blue/Yellowshirt on the fly and ensuring they are ever so slightly worse than the main cast.
It's fantastic.
Chicago Megagame group
Watch me struggle to learn streaming! Point and laugh!
Klingons apparently dabble in genetic engineering some, too, which is a whole other kettle of Star Trek fish.
The Android Doctor whose personality is based largely on early 21st century memes and social media.
...wait, no. That'd be horrible.
it's super great and it kind of came out of nowhere
I had all these plans for the things I was going to try running this year and this just showed up and muscled its way to the front of the line
the thing is, there's never really been a really great star trek rpg before. the FASA one from the 80s had clunky 80s mechanics and a kind of right-wing, militaristic vibe (it was basically a wargame for wargamers that someone had grudgingly slapped rpg mechanics onto). The Last Unicorn Games edition from the 90s was pretty good for the 90s but wildly overcomplicated in true 90s fashion, with huge lists of skills and not much attention paid to balance, and the kind of dubious idea that you start as ensigns and level up to captains as you play, which makes telling actual star trekky stories kind of hard
and in the past decade or so there have been some okay fan RPGs out there but they tend to be aggressively minimalist and use reskins of D&D or d6 star wars or whatever, and fixate only on the original series to the exclusion of everything else
and then here this game comes and it has solutions for all the problems with gaming star trek in the past: you start off as the captain or chief engineer or whatever you want, just like the show; your characters are competent and multidisciplinary, your basic chance of success at most tasks is more like 70 or 80 percent instead of 50% or 33%; the DM doesn't have to come up with names and personalities for everyone on the ship because now the players get to do that instead and it's fast and simple; the players control multiple characters so splitting the party doesn't mean anyone has to sit around twiddling their thumbs; the system helps you stay in character by rewarding nonviolence and clever solutions to problems, etc etc
it was this long list of shit i didn't even know i wanted and now can't imagine playing without. it feels like a gift from the sky.
yeah, I really dig 2d20 and am definitely going to be checking out Conan at some point because of my experience with STA. my players have found it really intuitive - a few sessions in and everyone is confidently rolling and not asking how to do things. we don't get many hours of uninterrupted play time as we're at my bro's house with his baby but the system runs fast and smooth enough that we can cover satisfying amounts of ground anyway.
Also Infinity. So you can leap from optimistic sci fi to dirty political spy fi.
Also Infinity continues to be the setting I am most sure is dumb trash and that I also wholeheartedly recommend as a good setting with interesting themes and set ups.
Like, it's no more dumb trash than other sci-fi settings taken seriously, and a lot less than most
There's some really interesting stories to tell in that setting and it's refreshingly different in many ways too. Like, the most humanist, liberal and free of the major political blocs you can live in would be Haqqislam. That's pretty cool. Also of the three main blocs all of the are majority non-white and only one of them has a significant minority of white westerners. I like that.
Alien dogs in pack hive mind infect unborn children to create Scottish werewolves that fight using hyper metal claymores. It's silly trash.
But I think that's what's kind of endearing about it. The setting is full of these dumb, absurd things next to all the more grounded political stuff and the heavier themes about the role of AI and trans humanism. It makes the setting feel like one that humans live in rather than just a vessel for sci fi concepts
Well, the Scottish bit isn't. The Scottish bit does actually make a degree of sense. And Antipodes do too! But yeah the whole Dogface thing is pretty silly.
My Star Wars group is getting introduced to the sectors around Dantooine over the course of the first arc of our Star Wars adventure. Thus far I have made it clear to them that they: a) will not know who they can trust and need to deal with that, b) will not get much, if any, help from other Alliance cells, c) are a unique cell because they have a heavy transport that can lift huge amounts of cargo, and d) are being observed by the new-fangled Alliance High Command (that is in the process of preparing for the Battle of Scarif).
Specifically this is the region known in Legends as the Pentastar Alignment/Imperial Remnant. The whole region is under the oversight of Grand Moff Wessex, newly enumerated, with the exception of Yaga Minor which is in the Special Projects Administration oversight (under Tarkin). Admiral Daala is in play, although at the moment the closest the group will get is junior lieutenants tasked to recover "her property." (being one of the droid PCs)
With that in mind I need adventure hooks for a Rebel cell. I'm trying to keep the missions broad in base, for example:
First Mission: Supply Run to Ord Trasi
Synopsis: The crew must make a supply delivery to a Rebel cell on Ord Trasi.
Challenges: Bureaucracy: Imperial Customs (DC 15), Space: Slipstream Follow (DC 15), Combat: Rebel Traitors (3D+2), Search, Streetwise, or Survival: Finding the Rebels (DC 15)
The challenges are just an outline so I know what sort of difficulties and which encounters I absolutely want to happen. Originally the combat was meant to be with Imperial Stormtroopers, but someone rolled a Despair and we got Rebel Traitors instead (which was awesome because it totally upped the "who can we trust?" vibes). As you can also see, the synopsis is an actual adventure hook.
Second Mission: Troop Transport from Dantooine
Synopsis: While making a routine cargo run a Rebel cell on Dantooine asks for help departing the planet.
Challenges: Computer Prog/Repair (DC 17), Bureaucracy: Imperial Customs (DC 15), Combat: Imperial Stormtroopers (3D+2), Space: Blockade Run (DC 16)
The plan is to run one of these missions per week until we've reached critical mass and we can play through the Evacuation of Dantooine (in the run up to the Battle of Scarif/A New Hope). At which point their heavy transport becomes key Alliance infrastructure and they find themselves traveling all over the galaxy getting interjected into all sorts of shenanigans. Tentatively I'd like for them to be part of the evacuation effort at Yavin IV and Hoth (and they'll be at the fleet rendezvous for Endor), so I'm working around the films in a slightly different way than I usually do (e.g. avoid them). Daala is set up as a major foil for the group, and depending on what kind of exploits they pull they'll attract other Imperial attention.
If anyone cares, the group is a human merchant captain, an Arkanian offshoot Force Adept swordswoman, a Mandalorian merc, a human Droid Engineer, a disguised BX-series commando droid living as a human, and an R3-series Astromech.
So! Star Wars adventure hooks! Please!
Your crew isn't getting any support from the Rebellion, but still has needs. A ship isn't going to fuel itself after all. Ammo doesn't grow on trees, and you aren't likely to come across a blaster rifle mine any time soon. So, how does a ragtag cell of wannabe rebels fund itself when they've got a heavy transport? Time to hook up with a crime lord and move some illicit (morally questionable?) cargo. Avoid Imperial patrols, dodge rebel observers, duck opposing smugglers... Could be some good times.
The Mandalorian merc probably has some good hooks in their background you could play with. Are they running from their Mandalorian past? Maybe avoiding a birth right that would tie them down? Maybe exiled from their people for betraying their creed? Whatever the reason, they've picked up a squad of Mandalorians hunting them down, and the rest of the crew is getting caught in the crossfire. You can't ask the Rebellion for help, what do you do?
Of course, there's the traditional Seven Samurai plot, your crew gets hired by a small town under threat from some local crime lord or imperial garrison. Recruit some additional mercs for aid then lead into the big showdown. If things start going bad at the big showdown, maybe the Rebels show up with some additional fire power to pull your jibblies out of the fire.
Always good times to be had stumbling across a desperate Imperial Deserter and getting them to the Rebellion safe house. Of course, they might be an Imperial spy pretending to desert in order to gain intelligence.
Your crew has stumbled across a rare, potentially powerful ancient artifact. An ancient holocron? A legendary lightsaber crystal? The location of a forgotten Sith super weapon? The experimental data of an Apothecary that could replace bacta treatments? Such items or information would naturally attract attention from collectors and people in power, beings who will stop at nothing to add to their collections. Does your crew try to sell it to the highest bidder? Turn it over to the Rebellion, maybe the Empire? Keep it, and try to use it themselves?
There's also the "Side Trip" skeleton I fairly enjoy. (Side Trip being a Stackpole/Zahn crossover from Tales of the Empire, natch) The players are on a smuggling job when then they get picked up by the Imperials. The Captain thinks they're small fish, so if they do a smuggling job for him, he'll pretend he never saw them. The players think they're smuggling items to a crime lord, but in reality, the bounty hunter sent to make sure they honor the terms is the contraband, an Imperial Operative in disguise dispatched to capture the crime lord and bring them to Imperial Justice. Hilarity ensues with mistaken identities.