I ran Impulse Drive last night. This is a pbta hack by Adrian Thoen.
Overall: I enjoyed it! This worked for us, and we had an admittedly fairly silly time. Which is what we needed.
We used the quick start characters, and decided to be on a pirate ship. Their ship was the skull of a space whale -- the last of the space whales! Their reputation was as xenocides, that they destroy the last of dying species.
What they actually were was scientists. They had The Intellect, The Alien, and The Tempest, and went around looking for strange new life so The Intellect could write papers about it. They just happened to show up as something terrible was happening to that life.
They weren't bad, they just had that reputation.
They wind up kidnapping / babysitting a newborn member of a space race -- whose parents are hundreds of kilometers long and made of mostly hydrogen, but it is able to fit on their ship and alters the gravity onboard. They bring it to a station, and it starts to cause havoc.
On The System: I really want a trade ship as an option. The Free Trader from Traveller, the merchant ships of Solar Clipper series, the ship before the Roci. I want that as an option.
The foibles were great, but it wasn't clear where you would or would not use them. If I ran this again, I might just XP to be "when you accept disadvantage from one of your foibles, mark xp". That is, have XP be instead of on a failure, when you lean into your human faults. Some example foibles would also be great.
The hooks are great, but I don't know how these plug into the system. They aren't used to help/hinder, so I dunno.
Also, calling XP advances was confusing AF.
I want there to be more social moves, maybe one about making a fair trade rather than manipulation. But, then, I've wanted this move for a while.
This is real close to what I want.
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Good to hear! I have stopped keeping up on the Impulse Drive revisions, because I feel like I barely have time to read them before there's a new adjustment (and my group currently has another game on the go). I'm excited to see this game develop.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeleteYOU had a silly time playing a game? Say it ain't so!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear you had a good time with Impulse Drive! Your ship and crew sound super interesting and fun!
ReplyDeleteCalling XP Advances has caused friction for a few groups, and it's one of the things I'm considering changing. I like Advance because it implies forward motion, as opposed to learning. Advancement in Impulse Drive is about characters moving forward, often through trouble and accumulating stuff - and not necessarily learning from their experiences.
There used to be a more literal buy-and-sell system in previous versions, but Mercantile and Lucrative Exports replaced it with a more abstract system when I moved from literal accounting and money tracking to a more consequence - based financial system.
There was a version of Foibles that gave an Advance when you activated them no matter the result, but players would try to get advantage at the same time to cancel out disadvantage to get the Advance for "free"
Hooks used to be an economy like strings that could also give advantage, they were usually used in this co-operative way to negate disadvantage. Hooks are now used to generate Foibles that focus on the characters' relationships with each other. It's a good fast kickstart to the game for new players who are unsure about good Foibles.
You can check the old 3.0 zip file for most of the older systems that I've recently cut if you're interested. Some of it may do what you're looking for.
None of this came to my internet mail box! G+ is in serious trouble.
ReplyDeletePredictably, all the stuff I was thinking about is stuff Adrian already knows about. Imagine that.
My G+ notifications are super spotty too! My phone seens to be getting them more reliably though.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I mean, I'd love to see the ingenuisity of players trying to offset the disadvantage by finding an advantage. They still don't get a third die, so the advantage is also wasted.
ReplyDeleteI'm not opposed to it on occasion for sure, but the previous methods were too exploitable, to the point it became the default method of play
ReplyDelete