Bay 12 Games Forum

Just for the record I lean to the side of meeting up in a space bar. The reason I can't decide is purely because I know some of you guys would like cryo. If it wasn't for that I would have made up my mind on the issue a while ago.

I am going to go to bed and see what the consensus is when I wake up.

I'm pretty set on the whole starship crew idea. I do like a lot of the ones posted but I feel like I could do this adventure well. I haven't made up my mind on a few things though. Firstly and most importantly is whether or not to have actual players instead of acting on general consensus. I've never done it before so it'll be a bit of an experiment.

Secondly is how to start it. There are a few people who like the waking up from stasis setting. This is really interesting from a plot setting perspective since you've already got this plot driven beginning: 'what the hell is going on'. It also provides a nice mechanic in that if a player dies it's much easier to write a new player into the narrative, just pull another character out of stasis.

The other starting situation is something along the lines of You all meet in a space inn.

This gives a lot more player control over the start. You can pick the supplies, equipment and ship that you start with. Maybe even design your own ship if I bother to think of a simple enough system. Of course I could let the players choose what the ship in the cryo-start is doing but it just seems more fun to have you all wake up with absolutely no background at all.

I had a fiddle and I think I'll be making use of a fractal world generator on http://donjon.bin.sh/. I tried to draw a planet and it just didn't work out. I did a bit of a mock-up of the view you'd have of a system:
I thought i'd share since I bothered to do it up.

So, thoughts?

Quote from: Evil Lincoln on June 28, 2013, 09:09:30 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on June 28, 2013, 09:04:15 pm

Or have it so that FTL has to have both ends in equal gravity areas, requiring vessels to go to certain areas to get to certain areas.

How exactly would that work?

I think he is talking about "Warp Gates" as they are often enough called. While I have seen anything from tunnels spanning the distance to only sender and reciever, it is commonly a controled wormhole of some sorts. So they do make at least more sense than a ship breaking pretty much any physical law that you could think off.

That is actually a great idea - what if the team is to re/establish the gate in said area of the derelict space-station? With FTL only possible through these gates, we would have the much beloved cyro-option as a possibility, but with the long-term possibility of FTL arriving at our doorstep.

I'm not a fan of the whole portal network concept. If you guys really want it though I'll do it.

Just so you know, I'm not going to try and make this 100% accurate to science. It's only a forum adventure. I'm not a physicist so even if I really try to make it 100% accurate to real science i'm not going to be able to do it anyway.

I'm getting the vibe that people either want to have a game where it's like build a village/colony in terms of viewpoint but you either have a ship or a space station. Is that right?

We are a crew on a spaceship and are trying to mine things. Not really a "build a village", more of a "give orders to crew to go to a station and press buttons"

This was something I thought of but my imagination wasn't sparked until I read this and really thought about it. I really like the idea of the characters starting out on a large space station with a hefty sum of cash. Then they buy their ship, supplies and equipment then set out in search of their fortunes.

What I really like about this is that I can petty detailed with the ships. Each one could have different methods of energy generation, propulsion, artificial gravity, cargo carrying methods, navigation, sensor equipment, ect. It could get very interesting to say the least.

I'd quite like a game where the people are boarding and repairing a derelict station, managing trade with passing traders while trying to set up some kind of profitable venture and reactivating/exploring parts of the station which have been abandoned for-who-knows-how-long and contain who-knows-what. Possibility of mad !SCIENCE! and dwarven asteroid miners.

I was thinking about the possibility of this when I wasn't sure if I should make another adventure or not. It has a lot of potential on pretty much every axis of challenge. You've got some economic stuff going on with trying to make a profit, exploration since you have a big mysterious station, combat (damn space pirates!) and political stuff since the station could be in the middle of some political shenanigans.

Quote from: Aseaheru on June 28, 2013, 01:02:24 pm

Or a small mining ship / slow travel ship gets to its target and the crew awakes.
Slow travel requiring cyro or people living on the thing...

I was imagining a cryo, with some kind of malfunction leading to the players having to survive in an almost empty area...and deal with whatever caused the malfunction...

I think rule number one of cryo is that nothing can ever go right. As soon as you hop in that tube you know shit is going to be going down when you get out.

I do like the idea of the crew waking up and instead of being at the next spaceport they are in orbit around a mysterious world with no idea where they are and no one in communications range. From there you can pretty much go anywhere, alien intervention? conspiracy? black magic? anything is possible!

and each player controlling a single person? Failure to post your turn means that consensus of other players direct your actions.

I've never done an adventure with multiple players. It seems like an interesting thing to do and it would lend itself to a lot of things but I've never given it a shot because my games are really image based. It'd be a real pain to have to draw 7 different panels and keep up with every player exploring stuff. Plus there is the whole issue of what players can see, if I am PMing everyone their own panel then it's pretty much like doing a bunch of games that all interact with each-other.

That said it's not that big of an issue if you are smart with your setting. If I go with something like the first suggestion I addressed I'm really tempted to have seven or so players with their own characters. I like the idea of the doctor and engineer both trying to get the captain to give them money to improve the facilities. It would be even better just in the first little section where the players have to decide what ship they want. You've got the engineer wanting the ship with the water cooled fusion engine but the ship has no weapons systems and the medical bay is in disrepair.

if we are going to be a mining ship crew I'd prefer we were on an FTL capable ship or were operating in system

I'd probably go with FTL capable. Probably a system where FTL travel isn't viable near stars so all ships have secondary methods of propulsion.

I don't know how fast FTL would be though. It's possible that cryo would be required or at least desirable.

If we need a way to be just introduced to each other it can be our first day on the new ship "Evil Lincoln"

"You all meet up in a space inn."

That's right! I'm letting you guys have some say over my next adventure (or tell me not to make another adventure whatever).

Basically I'm not in the whole 'build a village' mood right now and I'd like to know what you guys want to see. I'm not looking for plot outlines or anything just the genre theme and setting.  Ideally I'll be doing an adventure that I want to make and you want to see.

The only real restriction is that I'm in the mood for something sci-fi, anything from '20 minutes into the future' to a 'space opera' is fine.

Also just keep in mind this isn't a 'make this adventure for me' thread.

Sorry I haven't updated (or said anything) for a while. I just haven't been in the build a village mood.

Honestly I feel like doing something with lasers.

We've got a tie right now if this is correct:

10ebbor10
Tomcost
kaian-a-coel

Ashsaber
GreatWyrmGold
Aseaheru

I'll probably update in an hour or two so unless someone else posts i'll flip a coin.

Sorry but as much as I really want to I don't feel comfortable updating because of my internet usage situation (again). This is actually really annoying me since I really wanted to go on a mad updating spree.

I'm going to try and keep my usage super low over the next few days to get myself out of the danger zone. So I'll get back to you guys then.