I ran Solar Wind & Sail today: a pbta hack about space pirates.
It went really well. Like, much better than I expected from a first run.
What really made it was having a blank deck plan to Traveller's Free Trader. That's three decks of amazing.
So, Thanks Game Designers Workshop for sending me free deck plans! That made my night. Anybody know Marc or others at GDW?
We wound up with a bloodthirsty crew of pirates with no food, no boarders, no real hull, and no seers. That is, the food was poisoners, the only designed boarder was the Captain, the hull had huge gaps, and the only seer was the Stargazer. They couldn't rely on NPCs to help with those things.
I've got some ideas for improvement, some of which I'm already implementing tonight.
Including, it turns out, some really great feedback on my MCing from George Austin. That guys is the best.
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Zed had some great things to say about tweakable dials you didn't even realize you'd build your built into the system!
ReplyDeleteI betcha the best part will be figuring out what cool stuff you did (or could have done) needs to be part of the game. Like, 'I did this and it worked really well, should my game text just say "do this?"' 'George thinks giving each of these abstract things a face would help. Should my text just say that? And have a list of names and quirks for quick generation?'
Yep!
ReplyDeleteI've already written a bit about dials: The smaller and crappier a ship you start with, the more ship's systems you cross out. So, if you start with a 100t ship, then you cross out five ship's systems.
But, if you're in an 800t ship? One entire grouping is at +4; one at +3, one at +2, one at +1, and the Stargazer chooses a ship's system that is busted. So, an 800t ship could have all the Trade maxed out, all weapons at +3, all Void stuff at +2, and then the Fargazer could nix the medical (or the hull!), then still go around and improve stuff. You wind up with a really tough ship that way!
I'm also writing about giving each downside and each stat group a face; not sure how to phrase it, but I'll figure it out! That's the hardest part for me, and I think I can come up with something MC-facing.
I'm moving distribution of booty to the Captain, and using Booty as the help mechanic we so desperately needed.
A bunch of little changes, thus far nothing monstrous.
I put up yesterday's ship: https://plus.google.com/+WilliamNichols/posts/EXfrFKzXz1m?sfc=true
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