Swab The Decks: When you do a mundane tasks for the betterment of crew or ship, such as making coffee, changing scrubbers, porting cargo, swabbing decks: choose 2:
-- You do it, and have time left to fix another mess, if you want.
-- You do it efficiently and professionally, and have time leftover for leisure.
-- You do it, and your good work is noticed.
-- You do it, and you learn something new and interesting about the ship or crew.
-- You do it, with time left to study. You gain a playbook starting item, move, specific crap, or stat increase (max +2).
Design intent:
1. To allow for low-level drama and easy ways to fill in how PCs spend time onboard.
2. A catchup mechanism, as some PCs will have minimal careers and lifepath when compared to others.
3. No randomness. This is entirely reward.
Does this hit those goals? What else does this do?
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That's a very rapid advancement mechanism (the equivalent of 5XP without a roll). Is there any reason why everyone (those who rolledpoorly and those who rolled well) wouldn't be using it?
ReplyDeleteThe limit there is on starting, that it's gotta be stuff you could have as a starting AW character.
ReplyDeleteStill lets people run all their stats up to +2 pretty quick. By design?
ReplyDeleteYeah I would make it mark xp rather than advance.
ReplyDeleteMy question is how often can you hit this reward button?
Tony: Kinda, yeah. I'm thinking about how to kiboshing using it too much, and am open to suggestion.
ReplyDeleteJosh: Maybe. I may also want a rule about gaining equipment and crap through advances, and that makes a deeper hack than this so far is.
You can do it as often as you do it. That is, when you do it, do it. And if you do it, do it. :-)
It seems so encouraging to do with little plot advancement and consequence. When I run it through 'what does this encourage the game to be' I feel like it pushes it to making copies and chatting with your work wife at the coffee pot. That might be an interesting game, I get the feeling that's not the game you were looking to build.
ReplyDeleteI think a yes but might be a better structure for this maybe something like "When somebody with more life oaths tells you to do something meaningful, gain ______ and chose one from below" and then make the rest minor inconviences like 'it took longer than it should'. I think then you get the advancement boost your looking for while not making it overwhelming and working with the fiction of a low rank officer trying to climb the hiearchy.
Advancement: When you advance, you can always choose to gain a starting playbook item, move, specific crap, or stat increase (max +2) until you have all options of a starting character.
ReplyDeleteDoes that scan?
... David Rothfeder That is exactly what I was going for. That is, cleaning the coffee urns while companionably chatting is exactly what this move is all about.
ReplyDeleteOk, I wasn't expecting ptba traveller to be the office in space, but hey, I can see that being gamable (I'd still like to see better off Ted the game)
ReplyDelete... It's part of it, for sure.
ReplyDeleteThere's always keep the ship flying, and go go murder hobo. in space.
David Rothfeder BETTER OFF TED WORLD YES
ReplyDeleteSee, there's also this:
ReplyDeleteShipboard Living: At the start of a session, if you Captain a mercantile vessel and use it for near enough the intended purpose, role + Void. On a 10+, choose 4. On a 7-9, choose 3. On a 6-, just 1:
-- You pay the interest on all mortgages.
-- You pay all docking fees, refuel, stock food, scrubbers, and filters.
-- You provide for the crew, providing a lifestyle equivalent to one kilocredit for all crew.
-- You have a profit, distributing kilocredits equal to the Trade value to all officers, and half that (round down, min 0) to all other crew. You receive Trade + 1.
-- You repair or upgrade the ship.
-- You avoid additional … complications.
If the Captain does not provide for the crew, they must use Lifestyle and gigs.
That's more the complication move, and it's setup at the beginning and then we figure out what sort of session we're having.
Very nice! Taking notes for my big file of 'how to make game out of long space trips' :D
ReplyDeleteYou flatter me, James Iles
ReplyDeleteI've gone through several really inelegant solutions. I'm considering all sorts of options, and am open to ideas from my favorite peanut gallery.
ReplyDeleteThe nub of the issue, for me, is deciding where the game resides. Uncharted Worlds just has you roll Cramped Quarters to say if you bonded with another crew member or got on each other's nerves, and then you get to your destination. On the other end, there's something like Ryuutama, where every day of the journey you roll for things like weather and encounters on the road, because it's all about the things that happen to you on the way from A to B.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes the second approach a lot harder for 'realistic' space travel is that space is basically boring (imagine a Douglas Adams quote here). You're not going to have an encounter on the path, and anything that goes wrong is a BIG DEAL if you want to stay alive. On top of that, you're locked in with a pretty small group of people, so it's like a TV show where 19 episodes in 20 are bottle episodes.
I guess I'd say then that a system to do this needs to a) generate and resolve social tensions between the crew, and b) let a group fast-forward to the end of a journey if they think they've mined out this dramatic vein. My main thoughts for this move is that it feels like it'll only trigger if players happen to be describing what their characters are doing day-to-day, but its results feel more like they only apply over the scale of a whole trip. Unless of course you have a set of these moves and players pick one role to play over the course of a journey.
James Iles Agreed on most fronts.
ReplyDeleteMy goal here is a move for the PCs to engage with mundane tasks until the characters master them, or the players don't find it interesting anymore.
So we can spend some game time talking about changing scrubbers, ordering linens and food, and all sorts of things as their characters get accustomed to life aboard ship. Once they can do work in that area effortlessly, then it ceases to be interesting and we move on.
That is, as they PCs get used to it we zoom out from it and deal with other problems.
Maybe some of the options should be internal options? Like, among the choices can be "You do it, and you don't feel an increased existential worry that you'll be doing this your whole life," or "You do it, and the ship seems roomy and the rhythms of routine comforting."
ReplyDeleteFair enough - so this is a 'let's dive into this bit of the setting' sort of deal then. Cool!
ReplyDelete