[Solar System] Discouraged by crunch landscape preparation
CedricP:
This is great! Thanks Eero, I had a hard time to figure out how to go simple with the crunch. With my lack of experience with the game, I think my first reflex was to try to mimic too much tSoY and tWoN crunch landscape.
Maybe if we had created the characters during our setup session, I think I would have seen that the situation dint really need a lot of crunch. We would have focused on the practical stuff.
Like I said in the Sorcerer thread were I was asking some advice on gameplay, our session zero for setting up our games were often tepid and I think we over compensated a little bit this time. Normally, since it is my first time running Solar System, I think I would have aimed for a situation where it is less tempting to think that it need a lot of crunch. But still, I am glad that your solutions will let us keep the colorful stuff we came up with. :)
I really like your minimalist treatment (and appreciate d. comments), I will certainly use all of this.
I will go with what I have now and stop worrying. I will wait for our next session to have some actual play to see how it go before posting again.
(As for the native of the planet, I will wait a few sessions before introducing them to gain some experience with the game)
CedricP:
We played our first session.
We started by creating the characters and by talking a little bit about them. Character creation was quick and nice.
-Dominic created a protective troll.
-Kyle a scientist who believe in the Living God.
-Jumanji83 a crime boss inspired from Al (the saloon owner) from the Deadwood serie.
Dominic choose the Secret of Trollhood with mighty blow and Secret of Body Weaponry and Disarm to build his troll on.
Kyle choose Secret of Technology Maintenance and Secret of Biotech modification (reason) for his scientist. But his main highlight was to choose Key of Faith.
Jumanji83 main secrets were Secret of Contact and Secret of Imposition and Secret of the Sudden Knife. Since he had created his character before the session he dint choose Secret of the Criminal mind (I was wishing that he would take it).
Sadly no one choose Secret of Background. It would have been nice to flesh out their character past with flash backs (but we still can do it without having to resort to a secret).
Kyle had some difficulty to choose his abilities for his scientist. We ended up giving him Science(R) and Repair(R), but after the game we changed Repair(R) for Technology(R) to widen it scope.
It helped to have the secret landscape that Eero preped for me, Kyle consulted it more then the other. Dominic and Jason mainly consulted the TSOY and SS books for their secrets. I had also preped a list of keys appropriate for the setting.
Well like I said, creating the characters made me realize that I should not have been so intimidated by the crunch.
We ended up using many crunchy bits from TSOY. Since TSOY is such a major influence, maybe that for Solar System it would be nice to have some examples of different approaches of a same crunch landscape to help us to think out of the TSOY box.
During the game I dint really use any secrets for my PNJ. But for now the prisoners are separate from the guards and I dint introduce the Immortals, I dint reveal any psyker and I disabled the prisoners cyberware (they need to unlock them with a electronic key). It nice to be able to take my time to introduce the crunch. (just with it secret of trollhood, the troll really did stand out physically).
Its also nice to have some idea of the crunch in advance. The question of technology maintenance already surfaced in our first session, even if we dint see any equipment deteriorate, having defined the crunch for it foreshadowed the issue.
(I want to post a AP somewhere soon).
Eero Tuovinen:
Nice to know that you're getting the hang of the game. One thing you might want to do is to keep your own file of the types of crunch that are actually affirmed to be in play by the group, either because some characters obviously are using it or because the players have openly considered the crunch as an existing option. This will be useful in the longer term due to how you'll be able to tie new ideas into old ideas by keeping hold of some sort of an overall picture; it'll also help you in piling fictional weight in individual pieces of crunch. For example, you might wish to posit yourself the question of who, exactly, will possess the Secret of Mighty Blow in this campaign; is it something you get because you're big and strong, or is it perhaps a sign of killer instinct, like I suggested above in this thread? Value-lading the crunch landscape in this manner and tying it organically into the fiction makes the crunch more useful overall in informing and supporting vivid play. This is a somewhat abstract point that I myself find important simply because I don't much care for effect-first power systems in games; it's much more interesting if a character having some certain crunch also tells something specific about his identity in the fiction instead of having players pick abstract power packages that are then arbitrarily colored in afterwards.
What Keys did Dominic and Jumanji choose for their characters? That's probably going to be important in any further prep you do; the game works best if the players actually get to use the Keys they choose for their characters, after all.
CedricP:
I am already keeping a file of the available and affirmed crunch. We reserved Secret of mighty blow for the more physically imposing characters like trolls and cyborg with enhanced brawl (and big cyber arms). For killer instinct I reserve Secret of brutality or of the sudden knife (for character who have committed murder in their past). Technology and equipment oriented secrets, like Secret of maintenance will be for characters like engineers and spacers.
I want to add secrets to our secret landscape, by drawing a secrets map (like a relation map) as we introduce them in play. I think it will be fun to add crunch this way.
As for the player characters keys, Yep I know that I need to focus on them ;-) I wanted to address them in my AP.
Eero Tuovinen:
That sounds good, I expect that you'll do rather well with the game once you get a few sessions under your belt. Have you prepared backstory material for the forthcoming sessions? Are you using Key Elements?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page