Thorough Thursdays : STAR FRONTIERS

Prior to this post, I have only tagged Star Frontiers, the 1982, Science Fiction-Space Adventure Role Playing Game created by David 'Zeb' Cook and Lawrence Schick for TSR, seven times on this blog before this post.

I may have mentioned it briefly a few other times.

That's just wrong.

What to say about Star Frontiers?

Man oh man. This game. The red-headed stepchild of Science Fiction RPGs where I grew up. It was a love-hate thing for sure.

We played a lot of it but the attention it received pales in comparison to other games such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Traveller, Space Opera (yes, Space Opera by FGU. Don't ask me how. Another Thorough Thursday perhaps), Cyberpunk 2020, even 2300 AD...yeah. Pretty much every Science Fiction game out there saw more play than this bugger and that's a kind of a shame.

The game has something special about it, some sort of charm that is very difficult to pin down. Unfortunately, when compared to other games we were playing at the time, all it had going for it was that it was popular and available. Sadly, that's about all that made it stand out to us and that ain't enough. Because of this, it was easily overshadowed.

Much like previous Thorough Thursdays celebrity guest DC HEROES, Star Frontiers faced some pretty tough competition, not the least of which was FASA's Star Trek, which I discovered and had been playing for a year or so before I ever saw Star Frontiers. With the FASA game being pretty excellent and me being a huge Star Trek fan, you can see what Star Frontiers was up against. It really never stood a chance.

In addition to its fierce and largely unyielding competition, Star Frontiers had several elements working against it.

As I mentioned some time ago in a post about my first experience with Traveller, I expect certain things out of my Sci-Fi/Space Adventure RPGs. Among those things are interesting (and playable) alien species, starships and the ability to operate them, robots (playable if possible - otherwise at least purchasable and operable), cool ray guns, and neat technology like HUD equipped binoculars, wrist mounted computers, and the like. Not every Science Fiction universe is going to have all of those things. Star Trek is notably robot light, for example.

Two problems with Star Frontiers that always stood in the way of it winning us over were a lack of solid spaceship rules and the opinion that the aliens were, well, silly.

Star Frontiers painting by Jim Burns

I don't know why, but we never took the aliens of SF too seriously. Don't get me wrong, there are some very cool things about some of them (Dralasites in particular are pretty original for a player character species), but somehow they just seemed cartoonish to twelve year old, oh-so-serious me.

As far as the starship rules, we fudged things at first, but soon came up with our own rules for spacecraft that largely worked. When the Knight Hawks edition of the game came out, we weren't super impressed as I recall and mixed what we did like into our homebrewed system (which for the life of me I can not remember at all just now).

The rule system is also a bit odd. While I am a fan of percentile skills to some extent (I like the aesthetic), SF's skills, if I am remembering this right, start at 100%, and are then modified by the situation's difficulty, and the PC's skill. I have this memory of that particular mechanic making things seem way too easy too quickly.

While it may not live among my top ten, it is definitely a game I have found memories of. Just because my group, and I didn't love it like we loved Star Trek, or even Space Opera, doesn't mean it wasn't fun to play.

I periodically trot it out from time to time, running ones-shots or very short campaigns, but as a full campaign game it just hasn't caught on with anyone I've played with in the last 25 years or so.

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Barking Alien

Happy Birthday to Me! Today I am 46 years young. :)

A lot of Science Fiction Love on the Thorough Thursday posts, no? I hope you're enjoying them. Matter of fact, let me know how you like Thorough Thursdays in general. I'd appreciate the feedback.

Serious Investment

On Thursday, February the 12th, of this week, I will turn 46 years of age.

Expect a lot of unsolicited nostalgia, and pointless reminiscing in the comings days.

You've been warned.

Time for some personal business:

This month is kind of nuts for me.

It contains my birthday, my ex-wife's birthday, our old wedding anniversary, my Dad's birthday, my Grandma's birthday (Mom's mom) (both Dad and Grandma are deceased), my friend Dave's birthday (though I haven't spoken to him much in the past month or so - reason unknown), and of course, the dreaded Valentines Day (curse you commercially fabricated day mandating the celebration of romance!).

I also wanted to remind everyone that this is Black History Month.

OK, back to the post...

It's insightful, it's ranty, and I apologize for nothing*.

I've come to the realization that my greatest asset, and biggest flaw, as a Gamemaster, is the level of buy-in required for my games.

It's not just that I have a bridge to sell you, it's that you have to believe guys like me own bridges, they sell them from time to time, and you have to really want to buy one for this to work.

Bowery Bugs

Warner Brothers Cartoons - 1949

 

I think the main advantage some of my older groups had over my current ones was the acceptance of this buy-in.

My old New Jersey group was especially into being especially into whatever new game idea I came up with. I could experiment with different genres, different systems, different ideas, because they would take the concepts I suggested, hug them tightly to their bosom (figuratively speaking of course), and say, "Yes! We get to play children in a creepy orphanage in Dickensian England? It's like Oliver Twist re-interpreted by Charles Addams**? I am so there!"

That was the thing. They were always there for practically anything. Moreover, they got it. They always, intrinsically understood what I was going for. Always. If they only got it a little, they would rent movies, read books, watch TV shows, animated series, or Anime that was said to be similar, and then BAM!, they would get it. Not kind of, or sort of, or just a bit better than they got it before. No, they would now be completely in tune with my head space.

Damn I miss that. So, so, so much you can't imagine.

My games are not for the lazy. I'm not a lazy GM, and I require a proactive, fully awake player if we're both going to get the most out of the game. I put a lot into assembling, and prepping my campaigns, and if the players aren't going to put in the same level of effort, or at least invest the same level of emotion, it just isn't going to be all that magical.

I get that what I am asking isn't always easy. I'm asking a lot I know. When I put forth a premise for a game, it either just hits you, or you get grazed and intrigued, or it's a miss. If it's a miss, what can I do. It's a no go. Better to try something else than beat a dead Tauntaun. If I grazed you though, I'll help you get it, but you've got to try as well.

It seems to me that, all too often, whatever game I am running these days, my current players (not all, and not always) are playing the game that is in their heads. Sometimes I get lucky, and it's the same game I am running, or very close to it. Other times (pretty regularly in fact) it's their own game that features only their character, in a world about them.

This was not supposed to be a post comparing the people I've played with past, and present, BUT DAMN! If there is one thing that frustrates me more than any other aspect of my gaming these days it's this. Right along side this is having absolutely no clue how to fix it.

Here is where I sound like an old foggy.

I think part of the problem with my current campaign groups, and their ability (or inability) to buy-into the genre mind-set of some of the games I suggest, is that they are younger than the average member of my older groups. The current group is generally less experienced, had less exposure to some of the things I think are interesting, and have many other things to attract their fandom-fueled attention that weren't around when I was younger.

It's a different generation. We had no internet, no email, no near instantaneous streaming of movies, television shows, and animated programs. These young'uns have it too damn easy. Although they also have a crapload of awesome.

We had to work to get information. We are used to that. We are well versed in things we were interested in, because it took effort to learn about them. If we saw something, and didn't know what it was, or what it was about, and it seemed cool to us, we looked into it until we knew. We embraced new things, different things, and reveled in what was different about them.

With the ease of access to information we have today, I am amazed at how few people are familiar with...with...SO MANY SUBJECTS!

The members of my NJ group not only bought into my pitches, they brought in their own knowledge, know how, and fields of interest. You could count on one person to make historical references, and know about famous (and not so famous) events in world history that might relate to the scenario. Someone would figure out the science behind some of our Science Fiction scenarios. We had artists so inspired by the games they did artwork (most all of the artwork in my current games is done by me).

The other thing odd about my current mainstay players is that I get emails, Facebook messages, and texts from them all the time about what they're going to do in the next session. They always want to tell me what their PC will be up to, what they want their PC to accomplish, etc.

I never got that from my old groups. Instead, they showed up at the sessions eager to accomplish stuff. They told me what they were going to do when they were doing it.

What my new guys don't ask, or rarely so, is anything about the setting. It's about what they're going to do, not about the world their in. No discussions of genre, no references to writers, or artists who created excellent examples of the milieu, it's themes, or it's possible look.

Buy-in is the key to my best work. Buy-in will always remain the not-so-secret formula to what makes me a damn good GM. I realize that without buy-in, I am good, but not great. I think that's it. The missing X-Factor I've been chasing these last several years. Why my games are good, even really good, but not spectacular. Not the kind that got me my old reputation for being one of the best in the gaming circles I moved in.

Which games over the past 10 years have been that good? The Muppets ones. The Smurf one. Ghostbusters.

The ones with a big buy-in, and people willing to pay.

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Barking Alien

* Not so. 

I apologize if what I am saying in this post makes any of my players feel like crap. That is not only not my intention, but it's BS. It just isn't a true reflection of how I feel about you guys. You're awesome. You have your own strengths, your own ways of making gaming fun. In some aspects, you are one of the best groups I've ever had.

Is the buy-in thing an issue? Yes. It is. No denying it. It prevents me from taking the 1-to-10 dial, and turning it up to 11. It's not your fault. Stylistically, there are very few gamers who game the way I wish to. It's definitely a me thing.

For some additional insight check this out: Best Buy...In


** Charles Addams, the cartoonist and humorist whose work inspired the Addams Family television series. Fascinating fellow. Look him up.

They Mostly Come At Night...Mostly

My ideas for an Alien(s) game that is.

 

 

 Kane: "The pit is completely enclosed. And it's full of leathery objects, like eggs or something." 

***

I was looking into the indie Horror RPG Dread as a possible system for running an Alien(s) RPG campaign. It has a lot of potential, and virtually no hard and fast rules.

 

I like the idea of using the Jenga tower to build tension and suspense. At the same time, I need something a little more definitive in the area of character creation to make the game feel, well, both reflective of the Alien(s) setting, and more like a traditional RPG.

 

Why? Well, the one flaw in the overall design of Dread is that it's really only good for one-shots. A key reason for this is that the game is especially lethal. This is of course reflective of the Horror genre, and it's reinforced by the mechanics. Therefore it is only an issue if you want to tell a longer, or deeper, story.

 

Another element that makes it less than optimal for an ongoing campaign is the character design approach has little to nothing in the way of a mechanic for PC Experience, and Improvement.

 

You're not expected to live that long.

 

While I personally have no problem with the purely narrative nature of how characters are put together in Dread, my players are going to want a bit more to sink their teeth into. Also, since the setting deals with Science Fiction elements, the players are going to expect to see some details that make them feel they are playing competent professionals in a futuristic setting.

 

It's how (a lot of) players think.

 

Here are some ideas I have for adding some details to Alien/Dread Player Characters, of both a narrative, and mechanical nature. By modifying the standard process just a bit, it is my feeling that the players will feel their PCs are people capable of doing their job, whatever it is, and will see an in-game result that will allow me to run a mini-series/short campaign, instead of just a one-shot.

 

If the PCs are differentiated, and grow, the players will be more attached to them. Hopefully enough to try and keep them 'alive' for as long as possible.

 

Dread PCs are created by having the players answer a series of questions about their characters. The GM creates a questionnaire, and the player fills it out based on his, or her character concept. Questions can technically be anything, though they tend to range from the vital though mundane, such as 'What is your name?', and 'Where are you from?', to those that will give deeper insight into the character, like 'What were you doing at the Rileys' house on the night of the murder?".

 

Some of the answers, and a bit of additional information discussed between the players, and the GM (or Host as Dread calls them) can establish that your character has a profession, and therefore some 'skills'. Unfortunately, unless I am reading the rules incorrectly, skills you've established your character having seem to have little barring on the mechanical part of the game. Anytime you attempt to perform an action with a questionable outcome, you 'pull' one, or more Jenga tiles from the tower. Skills have no rating, and therefore no effect on the pull.

 

So here's where my Barking Alien brain kicks in...

 

 

The ill-fated crew of the USCSS Nostromo

Character Art for Alien: Isolation By Calum A. Watt

 

 

Dallas: "Well... some of you may have figured out we're not home yet, we're only half way there. Mother's interrupted the course of our journey. She's programmed to do that should certain conditions arise. They have. It seems that she has... intercepted a transmission of unknown origin. She got us up to check it out."

Ripley: "A transmission? Out here?"

Lambert: "What kind of a transmission?"

Dallas: "Acoustical beacon. It, uh... repeats at intervals of 12 seconds."

Kane: "S.O.S.?"

Dallas: "I don't know."

Ripley: "Human?"

Dallas: "Unknown." 

  

 ***

 

First, I'm going to put together a character sheet that looks like a Weyland-Yutani Personnel File, US Colonial Marine Evaluation Report, or something similar. The idea is to immerse the players right away by making their character sheet a prop, or handout in its own right (incidentally this is something I try to do in many of my games).

 

Instead of asking obvious questions, the player will be asked to fill out a form such as you would to get a job, or join the armed forces. Now, key elements on the sheet beyond Name, Gender, Place and Date of Birth, and the like, will be 'Position', 'Proficiencies', and other job skill related areas. By filling these out, we know what the PCs areas of expertise are.

 

***

Ripley: I feel like kind of a fifth wheel around here, is there anything I can do?
Apone: I dunno, is there anything you can do?

 

***

 

When a character attempts to take an action in the game that falls under the parameters of their Position (Science Officer, Warrant Officer, Infantry Unit Leader, Smart Gun Operator, etc.), or skill set, the Host should take note of it, and allow basic activities, or maneuvers to occur without a pull. For more complex actions, the PCs should get one less pull for situations that fall within their field of knowledge, or prowess.

 

Alternatively, the PC may 'Gamble' by taking the required number of pulls, but earning a Survival Point*. A Survival Point may be spent at some latter time, to pass on a pull from the tower, especially at a dramatic moment.

 

For Example:

 

Ellen Ripley, a former Warrant Officer aboard a commercial spaceship for the Weyland-Yutani Corp., had her flight license revoked following a court hearing regarding her part in the loss of her former posting, the USCSS Nostromo. She became proficient with the operation of Power Loaders, and took a job doing that upon her return to Earth.

 

[The player lists Ripley's Position as either Warrant Officer, or Civilian Consultant]

 

[The player lists one of Ripley's proficiencies as Power Loader Operation]

 

While traveling with a contingent of United States Colonial Marines, Ripley feels useless, and wants to help out aboard their ship, the Sulaco. She decides to show Trooper Commander Sgt. Apone what she can do, and displays her skill with operating a Power Loader.

 

Impressed, he tells her where to put the cargo, and ordinance the Marines need.

 

[The Host does not require Ripley's player to pull any Jenga tiles. He judges that these actions are ones that anyone who used Power Loaders professionally would reasonably be able to perform]

 

At some point later in the story, Ripley is up against a 'Queen' type Xenomorph, and decides to use the Power Loader as a makeshift battle suit to fight it. The creature is formidable, and the Power Loader was not designed for combat. At the same time, Ripley is a capable operator with experience combatting the aliens.

 

[The GM requires Ripley's player to make a number of pulls during the conflict. The player cites her character's various proficiencies, and experiences, in order to reduce the number of pulls. In a last ditch effort to defeat the Queen, she goes for a move that requires she make at least three pulls. The player decides to pull for all three, getting a Survival Point]

 

The Jenga Tower falls, and the GM declares the Power Loader is wrecked, and no longer functional. However, the player spends Ripley's Survival Point to hold on to something for dear life while she opens the airlock, ejecting the Queen into space.

 

***

 

I have additional material that I can't wait to tell you about. For starters...wait...did you hear something?

 

Jonesy? Is that you?

 

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Barking Alien

 

 

*I want to represent the Survival Points using those clear, glass 'stone' tokens. That, or some sort of chit with either the US Colonial Marine Corps patch, or the Nostromo patch. Haven't decided.

 

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan appreciation, insomnia, and an overzealous love of RPGs based on TV shows, movies, comic books, and other pop culture media. The creator of this material in no way intends to infringe up the copyrights, and badass legalese of 20th Century Fox, Dan O'Bannon, Ridley Scott, H.R. Giger or anyone else with abominable lawyers, and more money than God.

The same thing to the makers of Dread.

I am not making a dime off this. This is just for fun.

Worst Case Scenario

A friend of mine came up with this analogy last week when we had a little bump in the road in my other pal's homebrew Superhero game. I liked it, and decided it would make a good, brief post.

Picture this.

***

The GM has told his players that he will be running a game session. He tells them that they may each choose any one item.

One player tells the GM he's choosing a knife.

Knowing this, the GM sets up an adventure in which the very first thing the PCs encounter is a burning building. A fire.

The player has brought a knife to a 'fire' fight.

Heheh. Sorry.

***

What's wrong with this scenario?

The GM, knowing full well one guy chose a knife, created a scenario in which a knife was pretty much useless. He took that one guy's special thing, and made it irrelevant.

Moreover, the player, given the choice, wanted his character to have a knife. By making the knife pointless (so to speak) the GM makes the PC, and player, feel pointless as well.

But the player is at fault here too. He refused to put down the knife, and maybe, oh I don't know, throw some dirt on the fire. He could've looked for water. He didn't try to do something, anything, else.

Having a knife was not all he could do, but it was all he could think to do.

The thing is, given the opportunity to chose an item, and having chosen a knife, he fixated on the fact that a knife must be useful here. There must be a way to use the knife to fight the fire. Why else would the GM allow him to pick a knife?

What is the moral of this story?

If you, as GM, allow a player to bring a particular character into play with a particular ability, allow that player to use that power. Do not, knowingly, create a situation where that character, and therefore that player, feels useless.

If you, as a player, can't use one of your abilities for what ever reason, use the one ability we are all guaranteed to have on us at all times. Your brain.

Be flexible. Great creative. Figure something out.


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Barking Alien


This is my 860th blog post. Wee!

Thorough Thursdays : FUTURAMA

Prior to this post, I have only mentioned FUTURAMA, the brilliant, oft on-the-air/off-the-air Animated, Science Fiction-Comedy Television Series, by David X. Cohen, and Simpsons creator Matt Groening, in a few blog entries, and its only been tagged on this blog twice before.

That's just wrong.

Welcome to New New York

It's a hell of a hell of a town!

Truth be told I kind of cheated on this one.

I wanted Futurama to be my next Thorough Thursdays entry, so I looked at my list of tags to see how many times I had mentioned it in the past. According to the tags the answer was zero. There was no tag for Futurama.

Certain that this couldn't be true, I did a search for the word, and sure enough, while I had mentioned it before, I had never tagged any entries with the title. I remedied that by adding the tag to the two most appropriate entries, which only further spurred me onward towards making a Thorough Thursdays post about the show.

The concept of the 'Thorough Thursdays' series is not to add new tags, but rather to give some love to ones that have never been given the attention they deserve. Certainly Futurama is deserving of my attention, so this will be one of the rare cases where a subject gets the spotlight when it was previously not a title on my tag list.

We good? No? Well bite my shiny, metal ass!

***

I love Futurama.

I discovered the show relatively late, having missed its initial television airing. I caught it later when the reruns were shown on Cartoon Network, and later still on Comedy Central.

It was love at first viewing however, as the mix of smart humor, social parody, Science Fiction themes, and its wild, retro-futuristic setting immediately won me over.

As time, and episodes, went by, I was further impressed by the surprisingly complex characters. Voice actor Billy West is nothing short of astonishing in this series, playing main characters Philip J. Fry, and Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, as well as DOOP (Diplomatic Order of Planets) Captain Zapp Brannigan, and Doctor John Zoidberg. How often is this dude talking to himself on the show?!

I've been gripped many times with a desire to explore this setting, mixing my particular brand of outer space adventure and humor with that of Futurama (which in many cases isn't all that different).

If only there were a Futurama RPG. Sigh. Alas...

Yes, one of my many crazy, past, pet projects was creating a Futurama Role-Playing Game.

Originally based on Star Frontiers (no, really. Star Frontiers), the game became something slightly different over time, although its genetic ties to TSR's Space Opera game of the 1980s, could easily be recognized. It was essentially Star Frontiers Light (Maybe very light. Maybe not), with options for character species (called Character Types), and careers that were customized to fit the open ended nature of the show.

For example, instead of having the rules, or stats, for playing an Omicronian of Omicron Persei 8, you play an Alien, with rules for customizing your alien to create a huge variety of sentient species (including Omicronians if you so desire).

Work on the game began sometime in (or around) 2005 I believe, with periodic updates over the next several years. A few years back I went to futz with it again, but couldn't find my most recent notes. I have found only a few pages of some previous edition, and as such, have stopped working on it to pursue other projects.

Pity. I should really get back to it.

Other than the thought of having to rework the whole thing all over again, a number of other factors have set back my enthusiasm for the idea. For one, there is the fact that the show is once again off the air, which is a real downer. I had originally planned to debut my Futurama game at NerdNYC's RECESS Game Day mini-convention, but sadly it seems those are no longer being held.

Sweet Gorilla of Manila! I'm starting to get jazzed again. When the heck would I run it? Who could I get to play it?

Here's what I have been able to find/salvage:

Worth continuing?

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Barking Alien

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan appreciation, insomnia, and an overzealous love of RPGs based on TV shows, movies, comic books, and other pop culture media. The creator of this material in no way intends to infringe up the copyrights, and badass legalese of Fox Broadcasting Company, 20th Century Fox, Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, or anyone else with abominable lawyers, and more money than God.

I am not making a dime off this. This is just for fun.