We interrupt our regularly scheduled Barking Alien blog to bring you this important announcement...
This past Saturday - July 6th, 2019 - I went back to my roots so to speak and started a new campaign at my FLGS, The Compleat Strategist.
In the process of doing so a pretty amazing thing happened. I got my groove back. I felt like my old gaming self again. I didn't second guess myself or my players, no one second guessed me, and I didn't pull any punches.
It was pretty damn glorious.
The campaign is titled, simply, FRONTIER.
Based on an idea I've had for over 30 years now but could never quite figure out how to put into motion, I was lucky enough to get a large group of players to buy in on what I described as, "A Science Fiction story about scientists at the very edge of known space trying desperately to save a dying Earth. Our home world needs a miracle. It's up to you to find or make one."
The setting is basically a Hard Science Fiction, Space Exploration universe with a look and feel reminiscent of late 1970s and 1980s Sci-Fi films like Alien, Aliens, Blade Runner, Outland, The Abyss, and The Thing.
The game's setting has more advanced technology than is seen in many of the aforementioned movies, with artificial intelligence, robots, cybernetics, genetic engineering, and laser weapons being a bit more common place. A bit mind you. I wanted to keep things grounded in real and current speculative science with allowances for the game's year of 2212.
What makes the game special and rather unique for me is that it includes elements of dystopian fiction and horror, two things I generally avoid except as a little seasoning here and there. FRONTIER on the other hand truly comes alive by telling the players that the Earth is a hair's breadth from either dystopian ruin or a new utopian age. It's all up to their PCs. At the same time the job is hard, space is dangerous, alien worlds are deadly and unforgiving to those who come from somewhere else. The players need to be smart, they need to be decisive, and they need to deal with bureaucracy, the greed or ego of government officials, and finite time and resources.
Saving the world is not going to be easy.
There is so much more I want to say about the setting and how the first session went but I will save that for another post. Suffice to say I had a fantastic time and the group seemed to really enjoy it as well.
More than anything else, it just feels like this is MY kind of game. I feel in my element. I feel like this is going to be one for the ages. It's been a long time since I felt this way.
This is Frontier Station, SITRI Project HQ, from SA-2, 18 Scorpii system, signing off...
...for now.
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Barking Alien
My previous post, You Can't 'Win' An RPG...Or Can You?, seems to have generated little interest or response if one goes by pageviews and comments. This has made me less motivated to write the follow up, but here I am writing it nonetheless.
I started with an idea, 'What if Role Playing Games, which are games with no clear 'Victory Conditions', had the concept of winning them built into them from the start'.
My next thought was, 'What if obtaining [the traditional concepts of] wealth and power were not a factor in those games'. I felt the need to clarify this for myself to get a better idea of where I was going with this, so I quantified it a little further. "What if there was a game in which the PCs start out reasonably powerful, with no need to gain wealth or power in the traditional sense. What would PCs in such a game be motivated by? What would they wish to achieve?'.
That's when I remembered this image by artist Alex 'Abiogenisis' Ries...
Contact by Alex Ries
According to the artist this painting depicts 'a Metahuman' meeting the Birrin on their home planet of Chriirah.
The Birrin are Mr. Ries' original species of which he has made numerous incredibly beautiful and fascinating images, but it is not that particular creature design (as incredible as it is) that I want to focus on at this time. Rather, I would direct your attention to his so-called 'Metahuman'.
Ries describes this Metahuman as a post-Human being, something more than the mere Homo Sapiens of the present day. He says that the scene takes place many thousands of years in the future, with Humans coming in many different shapes and sizes. Baseline Humans still exist, largely because the individuals have chosen to exist in our current, more recognizable form, though even these people would have some modifications.
The number of ideas this generated in my head is essentially incalculable. .
The key one though, the basis for this entire post and set up by the previous entry is this:
Picture a game where you play a Metahuman of this type. A being of vast knowledge, great power, and existing in a form of its own choosing. What is this game like? What does your character, and their companions (the other PCs) do? What are their goals?
Wealth? Ha! The very idea. What is wealth to this entity? What are material things at all?
It is possible there is a material, or perhaps several materials, in the universe/multiverse that enable their massive physical forms to function. Perhaps many of their abilities requires the absorption or similar integration of resources. It could be that while treasure is not a thing, certain materials are still needed. However, it is equally possible that can simply change energy into matter with a thought. What then?
Does their power increase? Their skills? How would experience work?
Experience, as per the true meaning of the word and not so much the abstract points used as game mechanics, would [to my mind] be one of the few things truly valuable and worthwhile to such a being. Therefore, although they might not get new abilities at certain arbitrary 'levels' [a concept I always found sort of ridiculous], when they learn something new they might somehow get the power to incorporate what they've learned into their personage.
For Example: A Metahuman observes an intelligent species at a primitive stage of development that nonetheless has harnessed static electricity and the electrical pulses from weather phenomena as a tool/power source. They have done so in a way that other species have not. By investigating this anomaly, the Metahuman understands how to perform the effect itself, thereby gaining the power to absorb and utilize electrical current.
The concept I am focusing on is one I've toyed with before in a different form, but it boils down to, 'Imagine an RPG that skews the basic conceit that you start off average [or even lowly] and then amass power and treasure as you go forth'. In the game dynamic I describe above, you begin as a being of immense power when compared to most other RPG characters. Being more powerful for its own sake is barely a concern, and wealth is essentially meaningless. What then is the game about? What then are your PCs goals. What would these post-Human entities, several thousands years ahead of our present, want, need, and value?
Just ruminating on a possibly impossible game.
What do you think?
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Barking Alien
