Thursday, September 12, 2013

Three Ravens

My brain is a bit of a mess of late.

I have a lot on my mind, both life-wise, game-wise and the one place they cross and it is making other things I want to do difficult to concentrate on.

For the purposes of this post and you readers out there, I am basically chasing three ravens...




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I am continuing to progress with my StoryTeller RPG, which is going through a few changes here and there. Overall it is essentially the same game that first came to me like a bolt from the blue, but as the shock from said bolt wears off, I am seeing ways of grounding myself a little more and realizing that the games does need more work than I first thought.

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My second 'holy grail' of late (pun intended) is to finalize work on my upcoming Pendragon campaign before play starts at the end of the month.

For reasons both person and creative I seem to be having trouble reading through the entirety of the rulebook or even the key portions without getting tired or distracted. I am not sure if the material is too dryly written (because honestly I don't think it is) or if I still haven't gotten used to reading PDFs on a screen for extended periods but man, I just can't seem to get through the text in a timely fashion.

As I get older I find I have less and less patience for reading rules. This started sometime ago. When I was 16.

Anyway, I will get through it I know I will as I am really looking forward to this campaign. We have some PCs worked out already and, true to form for my guys, they aren't classical or traditional Arthurian characters but they are damn interesting. More about them in an upcoming post.

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Lastly, but certainly not least, I am working on a new game to run with the kids at the study center I work at in Brooklyn. The students are older now and no longer newbies to gaming so I want to do something a little more challenging. In addition , we've done Fantasy, Superheroes and even a little Comedic Horror but so far, very little Science Fiction.

So my idea for this semester, beginning this coming weekend, is to run a deep space exploration mission where the PCs, working for either an interstellar government or a megacorporation, travel through the universe encountering alien species, discovering lost civilizations and cataloging unknown worlds.

Now, are we looking at Star Trek? Maaaybe.




These kids are largely unfamiliar with the overall concept of Star Trek, which may prove to be awesome (and perfect for proving my 'You-Don't-Need-To-Know-Trek-To-Play-Trek').

Other options include doing it a bit more tongue-in-cheek and going with my homebrew Galaxy Quest, a bit more serious and have a realistic approach to space travel and investigation with InSpace (InSpectres variant) or even Traveller.

I'd love to hear peoples ideas and opinions on this. What simple, fast paced and relatively mechanically lite Sci-Fi game would work best for 1-2 hour session increments, with 6-8 players, ages 11-14?

Let me know.

More to come.

AD
Barking Alien 
 




17 comments:

  1. Sounds like an opportunity to lift some plots from Poul Anderson and have them working to discover new products for the Solar Spice and Liquors Company.

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  2. Heh.

    Right idea but remember, these are kids at a learning center. I'm trying to keep the overall theme PG-13 or lighter.

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  3. Alien, you have to do Alien! Drifting through the universe, all happy johhny appleseed like, and then, wham! Cut off, isolated, totally screwed!!!!

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  4. Well, Starships & Spacemen seems like a logical option, since it's pretty much Star Trek with the serial numbers filed off.

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    1. This is definitely a game I am considering. If fact, it's quickly becoming a front runner.

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    2. Traveller is of course also a great option, though its default play style of "adventuring retirees" isn't really optimal for serving explorers, and its relatively conservative tech doesn't match very closely to Star Trek's more ambitious assumptions. Still, there have been several articles about playing characters in service (JTAS 23 has "The Military in Traveller: Naval Command" about serving Navy or Marines characters, which would be almost essential for this sort of campaign, and JTAS 18 has "Adventures in Traveller: Exploration"). Still, I (reluctantly, as Traveller is my great SF gaming love) think that S&S is perfect for the sort of thing you're thinking about.

      Other reasonable possibilities include Stars Without Number, Thousand Suns, Star Frontiers, X-plorers… heck, even Jovian Chronicles could be an interesting choice (the first edition's Companion includes information on FTL drives).

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    3. I ran a Traveller exploration game roughly a dozen years ago where the PCs all had two terms of something (whatever they wanted to try for) and at least one term of Scout.

      The PCs were assumed to still be active members of the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service.

      Exploration campaigns (of a generally Star Trek nature)are among my favorite types of RPG campaigns, if not my absolute favorite.

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  5. I know what you mean about reading rule books. But I do think PDFs are the tool of satan in many ways. Okay, they're cheap and you can store billions of them on a hard drive. But they are the enemy of proper reading.

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    1. It seems to have something to do with the PDF format itself or the way the reader reads on my screen (I blame the sadistic evil that is Windows 8).

      Not only have I not had this problem in the past but I read blogs, Facebook and websites just fine.

      It may even be this particular rulebook as I was reading the Great Pendragon Campaign book just fine last night. The fourth edition rules are just hard to slog through.

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  6. I like the idea of Stealth Trek myself, and S&S would certainly work. There was a microlite Trek out there somewhere that looked interesting too. I think your biggest challenge will be to not say "star trek" while running it.

    GalaxyQuest seems like it would carry more weight if you had played Trek first. Don't rush them - do this right.

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    1. I rarely do Trek wrong ol' friend. ;)

      I agree with you though, this is a rare opportunity and I'm looking forward to milking it for all its worth.

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  7. For Star Trek, look up Where No Man Has Gone Before RPG. It's worth it.

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    1. I am quite familiar with Where No Man Has Gone Before and I do like it, in spite of the fact that it uses a d20;) I was involved in a pretty sweet Star Trek campaign over Google Hangouts using WNMHGB.

      I was actually considering that system as well but I would rather run Star Trek with Star Trek (FASA or LUG) than with a pseudo-Trek game. I'm weird like that when it comes to Trek.

      Basically, I would use WNMHGB to run a 'Trek like' game, similar to Starships & Spacemen. Again, I am really picky about my Star Trek.

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    2. Having said that, I am trying to be more flexible about my opinions on the subject.

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  8. I'd use 1st edition WEG Star Wars. You can learn the whole system and create a PC in about 5 minutes. Just strip out the Force rules if you don't care for mystical mumbo jumbo mixed with sci fi mumbo jumbo.

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  9. Have you looked at John Harper's Lasers & Feelings? It might actually be too rules-light for this case --- it might be relying on player knowledge of genre conventions to make up for its lack of mechanics. Or maybe not!

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    1. Your anti-sale pitch intrigues me. I will have to check it out. Thanks!

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