Did some works, got told not to stress about going into the office but also that an office day every couple of weeks would probably be viewed favorably.
Okay, let’s see if I can write something despite this stupid WYSIWYG editor (all WYSIWYG editors are dumb, for some reason).
Dave asked me if I had any ideas for a campaign to run after the current Lancer game finishes, and I didn’t have anything, so I thought about it. I did come up with an idea, but looking at too many indie games on itch.io made me think it could be a game on its own. Not a system, but a game for telling a specific story, with lots of random tables for start conditions.
It’s like this: Your people have been living on their isolated planet for untold generations, doing just fine with what you can produce locally and maybe a few eternal ultra-tech artifacts left by the original colonists. You would be fine continuing your isolation forever, except that now your planet needs something you can’t get locally. You will have to take the one spaceship you have access to and venture out into the wider galaxy to get it before everybody dies/apostasizes/is conquered.
As a campaign starter, I’d make the players come up with the starting conditions, but a standalone game would need tables to roll(/choose/invent something comparable)
- Why your planet is cut off from everyone else
- What the problem is (artifact failure, alien invasion, sins of the past come back to life, natural disaster, subtable for each)
- Why it’s you in particular being sent
- What your ship is like (including how you got it)
- What resources you bring with you
I tend toward a universe full of aeons of undocumented weirdness, with small polities that might be doing just fine, but aren’t currently attaining the galaxy-spanning or posthuman heights of previous ages and just use what’s left behind. Kind of Vancian, with Strange Local Customs all over. This would have to be expressed through the GM-facing tables.
- How does this system treat outsiders (likes them, doesn’t like them, hates them, variable depending on something spurious)?
- What strange customs are enforced here?
- What problem does this system have? (Not PC-oriented; whether it’s an obstacle, an opportunity, or an irrelevance is up to their resourcefulness)
- Does this system have what the PCs need?
There would have to be a Doom Clock, of course, so the PCs can’t just fart around indefinitely, but what happens in that time is Play To Find Out What Happens. A complicated chain where each system wants something from the next system until finally they can unravel the recursion to swap for what they need? Exploration and scouting until they can make a lightning raid and scarper? Legitimate commerce until they can buy what they need honestly? Screw those guys at home, we’re staying out here with the green alien hunks?
I guess there should be some kind of resolution system, PbtA or FitD. I tend toward the latter because it can be more flexible (although maybe there’s a set of playbooks that would work with any homeworld?), asymptotic with more dice, and has the handy notion of levels of effect. I feel like having the right preparation should matter a lot. I’m not sure how much character advancement there should be. Maybe have it tied to the Doom Clock, so the PCs get more capable as the time pressure increases? That’s a nice negative feedback effect to avoid failure, if tuned properly.
So many tables!
Read: FAIL.
Words: Just what you see above.