So, I'm Flying a Spaceship...
Christopher Kubasik:
My group finished up it's game of Sorcerer: The Brotherhood a while back. We had a blast and I'm now kicking around in my head for another game.
I'm planning on bringing them Glorantha/Heroquest, but I have a feeling the color isn't going to groove for one of the players. So I'll be offering up a choice.
The other choice is Traveller, simply because I loved it years ago and it still keeps calling me.
However, I know the rules simply won't deliver what I'm looking for.
I've thought about using the Solar System a while back, but found that after a while it had more moving parts than I wanted.
I'm tempted to use HeroQuest, but I agree with Ron that in most cases you want either detailed PCs or a detailed setting. I'll be using the Third Imperium as a setting, but without the detailed canon. I'll be using the "fill out the details as you go" framework from Sorcery & Sword -- having the Players help me define worlds as we roll up the UPP codes (Where I'd fill out the unknown details and surprises, but they'd have input as to what they wanted attached to the world.) Since the Imperium is too big to nail down with all its details, I'd rather focus on the characters. Which means that a lot of the coolness of Key Words form HeroQuest would be lost since we simply can't define all cultures and religions in an interesting way where they stand in contrast to each other.
Then I was thinking, "Hey. We all know Sorcerer. We all like Sorcerer. Why not use Sorcerer?" The conflict resolution system works gangbusters as far as I'm concerned. It offers tension and reversals of fortune and encourages players to add color and draw from the core elements from their character sheet. I love it.
As far as I can tell right now, I'd strip Lore and Demons out of the game. I have no idea what that would do to the game. though I know the idea has been kicked around on a few threads lately. And I'll clarify quickly and say that the game's rules and feel would be much more in the spirit of Sorcerer & Sword than Sorcerer proper. (I believe Past would become Social Standing, as one quick example of something that is different than Sorcerer & Sword, but still feels very much akin to the game.)
I'd like to keep Humanity, but I'm still not sure what I would do with it. Again, as far as I can tell, the spirit of the game I want would be a kissing cousin' to the themes and feel of Sorcery & Sword.
Okay, so here are two posts of mine from other boards talking about the kind of Traveller game I'd like to have.
This is one is from RPG, from 2003:
I think the posts on this board nail really one of the unique features of this game: that in a sprawling universe of potential adventure, your character still had to get the bills paid; in a universe so big your character could never reach its end, your PCs bones were already getting creaky at the prime of his life; in a stellar empire of infinite possibilities the choices your character had made in his youth limited who he was in his 40's.
This, I think, is an amazing and unique tension for RPGs. It's a completely different set of concerns than found in most RPGs -- which cater to the delightful and high spirited point of view that "All I need to do is keep going and I'll get more powerful and powerful." Traveller was written from the point of a view of adulthood, and most RPGs (and this is neither good nor bad) work from the adolecent view that lacks an awareness of mortality death, decay or limits.
Does this mean there are no heroes in Traveller, by the way? No. The tales of Beowulf, The Lord of the Rings, Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur and other fantastic legends posit the tension between fantastic settings and heroic deads against the encroaching weakening of muscles, the end of ages and life. Star Wars, on the other hand, the model for a lot of RPG sensibility from the mid-seventies onward, possesses exactly that naive-kid-in-a-big-place-stretching-his-muscles-forever sensibility. It's significant, I think, that Traveller was on the way to the printer just as Star Wars hit the screen. It's a pre-Star Wars SF setting. This makes it not better or worse than all the would be "youth" tales -- just different.
So, first think Traveller. Now think, "Clint Eastwood." See? Easy as pie.
And this is from a Story-Games thread from last year:
When I first saw John Huston's The Man Who Would be King, I thought, "That's it! That's a Traveller game!"
It stars Sean Connery and Michael Caine as two British soldiers drummed out of the British Empire's Army while serving in India.
They scam some money, buy a ton of guns, and head into the mountains of Afghanistan to set themselves up as warlords. They've been serving everyone else all their lives, but now they're going to have people serve them!
They find this peaceful nation buried far out of the way and take it over. But then one of them is seen as a King by the natives, jealousy starts to creep in... it's great.
No, it's not about space. But it is about guys who have been part of an Imperial military who have to figure out what to do. It's set at the fringes of the empire -- and then beyond -- which is an easy set up for a Traveller game. All this is portable to a space setting -- and I think Marc Miller and others had this sort of set up in mind when coming up with the game.
And it has strong issues for the characters, and goals.
While the Firefly model is a good one for Traveller, I was always intrigued with spinning SF into situations like Captain Sir Richard Burton tracking down the source of the Nile and so on.... Men with ambition, like the characters in The Man Who Would be King who had failed to make impression in society that they wanted, and were driven to extreme measures to make that impression. (Which, also, is part of the Traveller set-up if you look at the Social Rank, the social climbing through the services, and so on...)
Ambition -- social ambition specifically, with the money and assets only there to serve that, strike me as an excellent way to go (among many) to Awesomize Black Box Traveller.
So, first, I'm curious: Is anything jumping out at people about Humanity from the writing above. Because I've been thinking about this stuff so long I think I can't see it clearly.
Second, using tools. Like space ships. And guns. Given that this isn't going to be a game about disfunctional relationships. (Or, if it is, I'm not seeing it yet.) But there should be battles between spaceships, and characters should be piloting or using turrets, and I'm not seeing how this all works with the rules as written. I'm seeing now that Ron built a game that (as far as I can tell), really encourages the intimate and the direct in terms of combat and conflict.
So, if I'm Piloting, and trying an evasive maneuver, and the other guy does fires laser turrets at the ship, and we roll, and he gets Victories over me, what happens? Is my guy damaged? Is the ship damaged? Would the ship be statted like a Demon and used as a tool this way -- though it has no agency of its own? Or would this rules set be best served by having an AI ship that has agency -- shifting the tech slightly, so the PCs have a relationship with a ship? (Much like R2D2 or HAL.)
I'm not sure exactly how to proceed here. What I don't want to do is come up with a really involved hack that feels like I've added a whole new gob of gaming stuff on to the Sorcerer rules. I like the Sorcerer rules as they are. My guess is I'm not seeing something: Either that there's an obvious answer in front of me, or that I'm looking at ship-to-ship combat in the the context of Sorcerer the wrong way.
The meta-reason all this matters to me, of course, is that this exercise (thinking it all through and/or executing it in play) is going to teach me a lot about the under the hood elements of Sorcerer. With this in mind, I might simply be barking up the wrong tree for the kind of story I'm after (as outlined in the posts above), and might be better served by another game all together. But, again, learning why Sorcerer & Sword isn't the right game (if thi
Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions and warnings would be sweet!
CK
Ron Edwards:
Hi Christopher,
I'm thinking that Lore would remain, perhaps as "the Beyond" as in Jack Vance's novels which is as far as I can tell the same as "the Black" in Firefly. The point past which known values or law or social conventions are no longer reliable. The neat thing is that you might be playing a leather-vested two-gun unshaven human guy, and I might be playing a tentacular bouncy guy, but we'd both share that concept and have scores in dealing with it.
Applying it during play itself seems relatively easy to me, but I'm not sure whether it's immediately clear to anyone based on my personal description of it.
Anyway, regarding Humanity, it jumps right out at me from your sources: friendship. I agree that age, ambition, and limits of the past (successes as well as failure) upon the present are a big deal, but I think of those as the framework for the really trenchant outcomes for all those stories - which are about friends.
Is it friendship to sacrifice yourself for the friend? What if you do so to manipulate him?
Is it friendship to go ahead and save yourself when your friend stands in the breach so you can can do it?
Is it friendship to back up your friend when he's being stupid? Is it friendship to kick him in the ass, or in some cases, to kick his ass really bad?
How does shared experience and long history with shared duty, or with past success or failure, define friendship?
When I think of all your references, that's what sings out at me.
And not for internet answering, Christopher, but do you trust friendship? Does its dangers really outweigh its benefits, when we're not talking about George Lucas or Disney (in which friendship, success, duty, and reward always support one another)? And even if the danger does come home to roost sometimes, is friendship still worth it?
I don't know if these questions make you shudder a little when you consider them for real. If so, then I'm on the right track.
Best, Ron
Christopher Kubasik:
Ooooohhhh. That is it! Humanity::Friendship.
And yes, I do shudder. (You creepy, know-it-all mutherfucker.)
Strangely, I've just started a correspondence with with someone who I haven't spoken to in years -- and the minute I read your words, "Do you trust friendship?" the bolt of ambivalence I've been feeling as we catch up went up and down my spine. I have no answers beyond that (internet or otherwise) right now, but certainly these questions are questions that have haunted me for years, and I've been thinking about them on the front burner of late.
As for Lore, still not sure yet... but I'll think on what you've offered. But the game seems like a really good idea right now!
CK
Christopher Kubasik:
I'm supposed to be doing other stuff today -- but my brain is stuck, so I'm obsessed with this.
After thinking about it, I think I know what Lore is -- if only because I'm trying to map as closely to the GDW Third Imperium and default Classic Traveller setting as possible.
So, clearly Lore is Psionics. I mean, it's sitting right there in front of me. The Zhodani practice it, and although they take pride it in (it makes a person honest!) it also means that you no longer have Friendship -- you have a micro-managed police-states built one person at a time.
I think I will also utilize Psionics as the gateway to the technology of the Ancients. (Again, I'm keeping the overall and general canon, but starting up a fresh subesector within the Spinward Marches). Studying and applying Psionics allows one to understand/tap artifacts, documents and technology of the Ancients. Yes, you get to understand and use something that is beyond human -- but how much human will you have left by using it!
I did a search on "the Beyond" and I dig it -- but I think this will be folded into Past: Social Standing -- a social environment where one comes from or has sunk to. You carry yourself in a manner that marks you as a "Beyonder" -- a non-citizen of the Imperium, even if you've got the papers. A Barbarian in the social conscious world of the Imperium.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Christopher,
That sounds like fun.
I thought a little bit about the technology, spaceships, and doot-doot-doot-swoosh! spaceship dogfighting, and this what I came up with.
Option 1: it ain't nothing but more vehicles and more gadgets, and so you use the same old Sorcerer scores as before - probably Past and either Stamina or Will. Use Stamina when the pilot is leaning and straining to hold the ship steady through a spin or whatever, and use Will when he has to stay cool and tap the keyboard rapidly with one hand, staring forward fixedly with a bead of sweat running down his brow. All this cinematography is old-school anyway, right? The dogfights from, well, dogfights, and the maneuvering from submarine combat, or in some cases, from 19th century warships.
So for option 1, the dice and scores and stuff are all there, and you treat damage as a new table of its own. Here's the surprise: treat small guns and large guns in ship terms relative to a ship taking damage (or same thing, treat the ship basically as a person and use the guns rules as written), with Armor turning it to Fists damage as usual. Damage taken to the ship means penalties to your ability to fight with it. So basically, when you die, it's because the ship is blown up or blown open and you die from that.
Um, now that I think of it, that's the only option.
Best, Ron
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