Rottweiler
06-13-2010, 03:06 PM
Hey y'all.
Ditched the post-apoc idea in favor of a cool little sci-fi goulash using a mix of D6 (from my WEG Star Wars days) and elements of Firefly RPG (plot points, ads/disads) and storywise... pretty much borrowing from every franchise.
I'm makin it up as I go but I've already made a lot of notes and thought I'd run it by you guys.
I plotted out about 12 star systems outside Sol including the Helios system (BSG), jumpgate routes and a scattering of starbases (Babylon 5), technology just a tad better than Firefly, only introduced one alien species (the Sarzi - a short, hard-working amphibian race) so far, and the general storyline is 600 in our future:
The governments of the world follow the U.S. in shutting down their space programs. Private corporations begin filling the vacuum by funding their own space transport construction.
The scientists using the Hadron Collider open a rift to a dimension where matter and energy exist in an accelerated state in 2012 ... basically discovering hyperspace (renamed HACspace after the machine - always hated the term hyperspace.)
The technology is scaled down and "HACdrives" are built that pump energy through pinholes in and out of this dimension. These devices vary in size and function from vehicle propulsion to mass teleportation to the newly-established colonies on our Moon and Mars. Naturally, we assume we have the "free, clean energy source" we always wanted... but turns out its killing our planet.
Fast forward over the next few years.. as world governments collectively decide to evaculate Earth and systematically merge amongst themselves and with the corporations to form "govcorps" with authority, resources and funding to pack humanity into the "World Mover fleet" and out to the stars to find a new home, leaving Earth to aboriginal races and turning it into a wildife preservation, basically.
The game begins in 2618, where a career employee of ParcEx Interstellar - one of three major starfreighter companies in the entire Colonial Alliance - has worked his way from the mailroom to the spacedocks to finally gets command of his own ship. He handpicks a... colorful crew that pitch in the credits for the down-payment on an old Lockheed-Grumman Javelin-class freighter, the "Providence." Our goal is to work to pay off the ship from ParcEx and go independent.
Now I figured there'll be rival companies, security checkpoints, raiders, organized crime... aggravatingly strict System Laws of certain govcorps that we have to abide by (for the simple fact that the jumpoints are chained throughout the systems - and with no FTL drives except in the huge military ships, an average 1-week jump between systems could turn into 5+ years if you're blacklisted from that particular area!)... and eventually I plan on revealing one or two more alien races but I wanna keep the aliens to a minimum.
That raises a question: am I missing any angles? There are NPC's in the crewmembers' backstory, adventures that come with the job, the factors I mentioned above, and the eventual alien plotlines. I'm kind plotting it out like I TV series - episodal arcs, season arcs, and the big, epic series arc - so suggestions are appreciated.
Oh, and lemme add something about the game. It's sort of a Westward Expansion/Gold Rush-era feel of Firefly (govcorps blow up "black rock" planets where terraforming didn't take and colonists fly out and lay claim to the asteriods, mine em, and sell minerals back to the govcorps -- the "Colonial Dream," I call it.)
I want a real feel to it, so overpowering stuff like Jedi's and Psi-Corps are OUT of the game. Cybernetics is allowed but very rare... the tech I'm fine with, I just figure the human body travelling thru all the conditions of space (temperature, gravity, radiation, etc) for hundreds of years means anything considered "elective surgery" has a reeeaallly low success rate. You could have an in-ear communicator, just not an implant.
Not that we don't have nice things... Cyberpunk has those "smart goggles" that give a PC thermovision, telescopic sight, etc but you change features by switching out chips. I told one of my players "nah, brother, just use Bluetooth and upload wirelessly - that's fine. Limited range of a couple meters from the ship but you can switch out all ya want from the ship's computer." He also mentioned needing to send the quartermaster/first officer out to collect music (vinyl, etc) and I'm like "just download it from subspace for free!" I decided there are four braodcast/download channels of subspace: Alpha = Govt, Bravo = Military, Gamma ("Charlie Channel" sounded dumb) = Business, and Delta = Civilian. I'm toying with the idea of an super-secret Echo channel for the black market/hackers/underworld but its just an urban legend at this point.
Ditched the post-apoc idea in favor of a cool little sci-fi goulash using a mix of D6 (from my WEG Star Wars days) and elements of Firefly RPG (plot points, ads/disads) and storywise... pretty much borrowing from every franchise.
I'm makin it up as I go but I've already made a lot of notes and thought I'd run it by you guys.
I plotted out about 12 star systems outside Sol including the Helios system (BSG), jumpgate routes and a scattering of starbases (Babylon 5), technology just a tad better than Firefly, only introduced one alien species (the Sarzi - a short, hard-working amphibian race) so far, and the general storyline is 600 in our future:
The governments of the world follow the U.S. in shutting down their space programs. Private corporations begin filling the vacuum by funding their own space transport construction.
The scientists using the Hadron Collider open a rift to a dimension where matter and energy exist in an accelerated state in 2012 ... basically discovering hyperspace (renamed HACspace after the machine - always hated the term hyperspace.)
The technology is scaled down and "HACdrives" are built that pump energy through pinholes in and out of this dimension. These devices vary in size and function from vehicle propulsion to mass teleportation to the newly-established colonies on our Moon and Mars. Naturally, we assume we have the "free, clean energy source" we always wanted... but turns out its killing our planet.
Fast forward over the next few years.. as world governments collectively decide to evaculate Earth and systematically merge amongst themselves and with the corporations to form "govcorps" with authority, resources and funding to pack humanity into the "World Mover fleet" and out to the stars to find a new home, leaving Earth to aboriginal races and turning it into a wildife preservation, basically.
The game begins in 2618, where a career employee of ParcEx Interstellar - one of three major starfreighter companies in the entire Colonial Alliance - has worked his way from the mailroom to the spacedocks to finally gets command of his own ship. He handpicks a... colorful crew that pitch in the credits for the down-payment on an old Lockheed-Grumman Javelin-class freighter, the "Providence." Our goal is to work to pay off the ship from ParcEx and go independent.
Now I figured there'll be rival companies, security checkpoints, raiders, organized crime... aggravatingly strict System Laws of certain govcorps that we have to abide by (for the simple fact that the jumpoints are chained throughout the systems - and with no FTL drives except in the huge military ships, an average 1-week jump between systems could turn into 5+ years if you're blacklisted from that particular area!)... and eventually I plan on revealing one or two more alien races but I wanna keep the aliens to a minimum.
That raises a question: am I missing any angles? There are NPC's in the crewmembers' backstory, adventures that come with the job, the factors I mentioned above, and the eventual alien plotlines. I'm kind plotting it out like I TV series - episodal arcs, season arcs, and the big, epic series arc - so suggestions are appreciated.
Oh, and lemme add something about the game. It's sort of a Westward Expansion/Gold Rush-era feel of Firefly (govcorps blow up "black rock" planets where terraforming didn't take and colonists fly out and lay claim to the asteriods, mine em, and sell minerals back to the govcorps -- the "Colonial Dream," I call it.)
I want a real feel to it, so overpowering stuff like Jedi's and Psi-Corps are OUT of the game. Cybernetics is allowed but very rare... the tech I'm fine with, I just figure the human body travelling thru all the conditions of space (temperature, gravity, radiation, etc) for hundreds of years means anything considered "elective surgery" has a reeeaallly low success rate. You could have an in-ear communicator, just not an implant.
Not that we don't have nice things... Cyberpunk has those "smart goggles" that give a PC thermovision, telescopic sight, etc but you change features by switching out chips. I told one of my players "nah, brother, just use Bluetooth and upload wirelessly - that's fine. Limited range of a couple meters from the ship but you can switch out all ya want from the ship's computer." He also mentioned needing to send the quartermaster/first officer out to collect music (vinyl, etc) and I'm like "just download it from subspace for free!" I decided there are four braodcast/download channels of subspace: Alpha = Govt, Bravo = Military, Gamma ("Charlie Channel" sounded dumb) = Business, and Delta = Civilian. I'm toying with the idea of an super-secret Echo channel for the black market/hackers/underworld but its just an urban legend at this point.