Continuing a conversation, and seeking more perspectives ...
Say we've got a whole caravan of small space ships, each with population of about a family. Each ship is free, sure, but also reliant upon each other ship for trade, specialized competencies, and friendship.
Or, as Matt Johnson put it: This game is about a proto-typical american western town in the 1800s. Only it's actually in space. And it's the 2800s. And the towns can move.
What game system do we use for this?
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The obvious is Traveller, but there's not the support for friendship & togetherness that I want in Traveller. And everybody's always fucking military.
ReplyDeleteMod Fall of Magic?
ReplyDeleteA space hack of Urban Shadows could be ... bizarre.
ReplyDeleteA pretty reasonable (I think) requirement is new folk being able to find a place. People without any particular skill, who are going to try to learn. I think there's room for this here, as a lot of jobs would be keeping attention while watching the cargo, or helping out in the kitchen, or whatever.
ReplyDeleteCortex Drama?
ReplyDeleteCharacters are defined in Smallville by their powers and their relationships with each other. The Cortex Hackers Guide makes it clear that you can mix & match their character systems so you could cobble together a system where characters are defined by their ability at the various jobs on the ship and their relationships with each other and both of these two areas would carry equal mechanical weight.
So a character might look like:
Technician Drayson
Pilot d8
Tech d10
Captain d6
Gunner d8
Face d4
Trader Sophie's adopted little brother d8
The Captain thinks I'm reckless d4
Auntie Jess thinks I can keep a secret d6
(Something like that anyway. Is been a while.)
Beating a dead horse: Legacy!
ReplyDeleteBy the time your characters are generated your group should have a relationship map something like this:
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/mqDFONsi2v5xMxeja5EjbRFqWWNDE6ZtNTTdUIkUe8SncYhRZ86CfVtjIGU14aiBli5eZGKxZA
Hack Lady Blackbird?
ReplyDeleteHill folk
ReplyDeleteOh, the Quiet year
ReplyDeleteI concur with Brian Ashford but I am biased.
ReplyDeleteFor threads like these, the question is often presented in terms of premise, as if it's the spaceships and stuff that determine what systems can be used. But what you really want is to describe gameplay.
ReplyDeleteCause I can play this premise with Best Friends, right? Or Toon. Or, frankly, Void Vultures. Each of those would result in very different games. The question is what do the characters do, not what backdrop they do it in front of, and then pick a system that spotlights those activities.
Well, sure, Josh Roby. That's why I don't think AW, for instance, would work.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking for companionable time together, enjoying each other, and maybe engaging in some commerce. But, together.
Huh, I'd totally be down for an AW game set here. But then I've never played an AW game where the PCs weren't together.
ReplyDeleteI've rarely known an AW game to be nice, though I've tried. Have you seen one?
ReplyDeleteNot like Golden Sky Stories nice, but cooperative at the very least. ;)
ReplyDeleteDespite seeing Tony Lower-Basch on average twice a week for the last two years, I have never played any Golden Sky Stories.
ReplyDeleteHmm. Maybe I'll bring Golden Sky Stories pregens next week.
ReplyDeleteI would totally play Golden Sky Stories set in a star caravan.
ReplyDeleteFor AW, you'd need totally different player sheets, so it wouldn't really be AW, and all you need to do is make the player sheets nicer:
ReplyDeleteThe Engineer
The Healer
The Therapist
The Space Farmer
The Energy Expert
The Navigator
The Leader
The Musician
The Artist
The Programmer
The Pilot
The Xenobiologist
The Project Manager
Does AW have a countdown mechanic if the PCs do nothing, like Monster of the Week? Because that would work nicely for dealing with resource problems or crises.
DitV. The PCs are the most respected folk in the train, and get called as council whenever things are souring.
ReplyDeleteRon Stanley You could use different playbooks, sure. But the vanilla out-of-the-box play books would work fine, too. The hardhold just happens to be a big spaceship; the chopper gang all fly little fighter ships, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut guys, the chopper and the hardhholder are assholes.
ReplyDeleteThe hardhholder is a trap, with a gang of violent bastards holding a civilian population hostage.
The chopper leads a gang of assholes who raid and take what they want.
Neither of those really sounds like what we've been describing. Does it?
William Nichols Nah. The Hardholder can also be the person willing to lead from the front the people willing to defend the rest of the community. You can make that gang professional and restrained, it's just that making them fucking hyenas is funnier.
ReplyDeleteI'm less familiar with the Chopper, but I'm sure you can do them up as the most civilized of a bunch of rough-around-the-edges outsiders, earning their way into community using the only skills they have.
AW does have an underlying assumption that the world defaults to violence and deprivation, but you can choose to rise above it. Only if you want that not to be a choice at all is Apocalypse World the wrong tool.
(Or just play without those two. ;)
ReplyDeleteSo AW playbook are very surface level identities. They're what a stranger can quickly identify if they come wandering into town, which is really a big part if the post apocalyptic trope. With the set up you described, I don't think those surface identifiers is how people think of another. With a tighter group being family sized, then identifiers will probably require deeper knowledge. Maybe it's a position or role on the ship, like 'The gal who fixes things'. Maybe it's a moment that defines their reputation, like 'The guy who ate the last doughnut'. Maybe it's more if a personality thing like in Night Witches.
ReplyDeleteYeah, problem with AW in general is the reliance on guns and violence to solve problems. Even the Mestro D' can solve problems with 4-harm AP.
ReplyDeleteFor some definition of "solve". And I'm looking for resolution that are, for lack of a better word, nice.
You could track something other than physical health, as the thing that takes damage in conflicts.
ReplyDeleteHeh ... you want some fun math/game-theory thinking? Try this on for size:
ReplyDeleteEach character has a 'Fit' track, which they can put at risk in order to attempt to win conflicts (i.e. the equivalent of Harm).
A character's Happiness is the lowest Fit track of any other PC. Their own Fit track is not included in the calculation. Happiness is a cap on the bonusses that can be applied to various important tasks.
Maybe have less guns available in playbooks and give more health to everyone? AW encourages violent solutions because npcs are very easy to kill.
ReplyDeleteEnh, AW makes violent solutions appear easy but the GM rules ensure that this is rarely the case. But I dunno if William wants this thread to be about AW. ;)
ReplyDeleteSo what does nice resolution look like? What tools, abilities, or situational advantages are used in it? How do you interpret actions to resolutions?
Yeah, I don't really wanna discuss AW intricacies here. Suffice it to say there's a lot of "You got these guns", or "When you threaten someone with force" moves.
ReplyDeleteAs for nice resolution: I dunno! I've been playing AW for so long that I do't know other hotness.
Somebody tell me about Golden Sky Stories or some such?
GSS characters have two pools: Wonder, and Feelings. Wonder is used to invoke game-altering magic powers. Feelings is used to boost individual stats for better effectiveness (plus 0d0 ... diceless where if you spend the gap between your ability and the needed result, you succeed).
ReplyDeleteEach character also has relationships with other characters. The relationships have strengths, which need not be symmetric: Kuma the dog can love his master at level 4, even if his distant and cold master only cares for him at level 1.
These relationships start each session at 1 or 2 points, and can increase ... rapidly if the character is adorable and hilarious, more slowly otherwise (they get paid for through a Fan-mail mechanic). In general terms, your relationships will increase more quickly the more warmly people feel toward your character (and, likewise, the relationships from NPCs to PCs will increase more quickly the more warmly palyers feel toward the GM's portrayals).
Wonder pool refreshes each scene to the sum total of all of your relationship strengths. So if you love other people, you will influence the shape of the narrative.
Feelings pool refreshes each scene to the sum total of all of other people's relationship strength with you. So if you are beloved, you will succeed.
Note that, no matter how much people might like to, they cannot raise their relationship with your character if they do not have the fan-mail with which to do so. Therefore, if you want to be beloved, you must express your warmth and regard for other characters in a tangible and mechanically supported way.
huh. Well, that's not at all about how hard, cool, sharp, hot, and weird you are.
ReplyDeleteThere's also a couple things that look like AW style moves -- "When you reveal your magical nature to someone for the first time..." and the like.
ReplyDeleteHuh. And no AW systems immediately come to mind that I'd like for this.
ReplyDeleteWhat's that other super nice system you talk about sometimes, Tony?
The one you set a walking city in.
Chuubo's Marvellous Wish-Granting Engine ... but that's a toolkit of largely unsorted system elements, out of which I have designed a working game system by selection and tweaking. I would never claim that it's going to achieve these sort of results straight out of the box.
ReplyDeleteBulldogs! uses Fate, and it's about people/green people/purple people/blue tripods/sentient slugs/vicious teddy bears in space being awesome.
ReplyDeleteMindjammer is another Fate-powered science fiction setting. I have not seen it, but I suspect it is a little more fiddly and crunchy than you want.
And you could probably use Fate Accelerated out of the box.
I pretty much love Fate.
So ... I should do it with the New Diaspora, whenever it hits, Ron Stanley?
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of a bunch of ships that have 2-5 people onboard. Little family ships.
ReplyDeleteSome have great engineers, some have folks who know propulsion.
Mostly, they've got just folk. With enough skill to stay alive, steer, and buy and sell as their friends do. With a couple people onboard, fantastic spacesuits, and (therefore) minimal need to dock, you don't need a lot of skill onboard.
Or am I missing something?
It sounds like a plausible enough setting to me. There's usually something "missed" in speculative fiction, that if looked at carefully would spell real-world disaster. Larry Niven famously miscalculated the stability of the Ringworld, and even in the Solar Clipper books I will admit to having doubts about the combination of re-used (and therefore differentially rigid) cargo containers, with the Lois's dependency upon the central spine not being subjected to long-term metal fatigue. None of that slows down my enjoyment of those settings, and I'm not seeing anything that should slow down your enjoyment of this one.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I don't know anything about Diaspora (or Mindjammer for that matter). If it were me, I would use Fate Core, customize the skill list based on what I expect people to do in the game, add a lot of setting flavor, and call it done. But you're not me, so that solution might not work for you. And I have a very limited knowledge of rpgs, so there may be much better solutions.
ReplyDeleteI'd think about what problems the characters are going to have to solve in the game. Do they have enough food? Do they have enough oxygen? Do they have enough hydrogen? Do they have enough fuel?
Will there be alien threats? Will there be aliens that appear to be threats because of misunderstandings but turn out to be nice? Are their ships constantly breaking down? Are they fleeing something--persecution, invasion, or ecological devastation? Are there social conflicts between ships and within ships? Economic conflicts (trade) between ships? Will there be cosmic threats? Are they trying to find a new planetary home, or have they grown accustomed to space? Will there be opportunities for trade? Are they criminals on the run?
You need to be able to build characters that can solve all those different problems, in different ways, and you need a game engine that will allow each of the different character types to solve the problem. That way the negotiator, the covert ops, the engineer, the merchant, and the fighter can argue about what's the best way to approach the problem--and there's no wrong answer.
Some other problems, which might be solved in addition to, or instead of, the ones Ron lists:
ReplyDelete- Who makes the coffee?
- Is it fair to ask the person best at making the coffee to always be the one to make the coffee? Or does the crew sometimes suffer awful coffee in the interest of not punishing good work with more work?
- Will there ever be anything in my life but the constant grinding routine of keeping the coffee urns filled? Will I ever get used to this? What have I gotten myself in to?
- Oh my God, have I gotten accustomed to the idea that my whole life is just waking up, making the coffee, going on break, going to sleep, and repeating? How do I keep the walls from closing in, and my sanity from fracturing?
- Do I open up to people about my petty worries about coffee and walls closing in, when they've likely got problems of their own?
With a small enough crew, there's less specialization.
ReplyDeleteIf we've got, say, five officers plus 3 watchstanders and a quarter share in the kitchen, then maybe that's Captain, XO & Deck, Systems, Trade, Engineering. Maybe the officers take turns cooking, too.
And the three watchstanders monitor the ship from their pad, and rarely see each other except for family dinner.
That's phase one. Phase two doesn't need rank and crap.
ReplyDeleteDiaspora is a fate hack for space, like traveller and such:
ReplyDeletevsca.ca - Diaspora
There's gonna be a 2nd edition. I'm following along on the patreon.
Fate Accelerated Edition uses Approaches rather than Skills. The Approaches are Careful, Sneaky, Forceful, Clever, Flashy, and Quick. So anybody can fix the engines, but you might want to get the Careful one to do it. The Flashy one could do it in a pinch, but it might not be done to spec.
ReplyDelete