[Space Rangers] Unofficial Feedback

[Gregor Hutton]

Well, I had a flight to London and back today which gave me plenty of time to read and make comments on Space Rangers. So, here we go...

Introductory fiction, all 13 pages of it. Whew! It was a lot of reading, I'll be honest it took me three sittings to get through it. It was pretty good and gave me a nice overview of the imaginary space you were creating, but it was so long! I think it would work better with a few changes:
- split the fiction up into smaller chunks, maybe 2 sections at a time as "chapter" starters through the text? They would bind the book together but not form this formidable wall of text at the start that I found it hard to get through.
- the fiction focused on one character, but the game is going to be played by a group I presumed. Could the fiction specifically describe a group? Say a pair of Space Rangers (or just one?) and associated non-Rangers that travel with them.

What about advancement and reward? Or do we just stay as these balanced characters from creation? How do you stop people advancing to have mechanically perfect characters while offering incentive for continued play?

Goals? Scenarios? What are the things Space Rangers do apart from stop Slavery? Maybe a top 10 of nefarious crimes they stop? And example scenarios. Or will the scenarios be generated by the players?

One I've been guilty of in both my games so far: needed an Example of Play I think. Example characters would have been good to, especially a party that tied in with the fiction.

Non-Rangers. Why should I play one? Well, I guess it's because there are non-Ranger abilities out there. I thought you could make it cool and fun to play a companion, and really sell it in the fiction/example of play.

Mechanics. Is there a danger that fights will end up as 6+ versus 6+ and everyone getting doubles? I just wondered about the numbers for "typical" combat skills and whether everyone would just crank those up so that everything ends up tied in fights? I think I'd explore this in a play test.

I'd like to have read about your influences and inspirations for the setting. I liked how you tipped the hat to TINS et al. (and maybe sold short the changes you actually made to the concepts from those games) for system influence, so I'd have loved to read more about the setting influences.

Dramatic complication. It seemed to me that the fiction had this really cool streak of dramatic complication at every turn. The only way this seems to be created in game is by the GM "pouring it on". I wondered if you could somehow mechanically mandate these complications: "you did this, so I can crank up another complication" kind of thing? How did the creature get on the branch? Who determined its level of ability? Can these complications be generated somehow?

Shadowy figures/Politics. I really liked the background politics, so more explanation please! Who calls the Space Rangers in? (It says "...somebody..." in the text. Who?) Is it a Mr Johnson thing? Or more Deep Throat? Or an Official in the Confederacy? So more about the Confederacy, Empire of Men, etc.

Should characters come up with motives, alliances, stresses, strains, etc.?

Religion. Touched on but not explored. Is this a hot topic? Or just flavour? I assumed that religion was like in today's world.

I thought the terms could have been strengthened more:
- Cosmos. Yes, it's SF but show me the vast wonder of the universe.
- Fight. Fighting what? Corruption? Monsters? Slavery? Crime? I didn't see the Space Rangers as Hercule Poirot, more like one part Jim Rockford to two parts Harry Callaghan.

Starting scenarios. I loved the in media res stuff. In fact, could all scenarios start that way? The GM drops the PCs in a situation and they have to explain how they got there and what the initial complications are? Get them to describe how they know all the other PCs too.

Anyway, I liked the game and this was just some questions and thought I reckoned I would throw into the ring. Thumbs up, good job.

[CSBone]

Gregor nice work on 3:16!

- split the fiction up into smaller chunks, maybe 2 sections at a time as "chapter" starters through the text? They would bind the book together but not form this formidable wall of text at the start that I found it hard to get through.

Great idea! I honestly didn't think about the possibility but that would work great!

- the fiction focused on one character, but the game is going to be played by a group I presumed. Could the fiction specifically describe a group? Say a pair of Space Rangers (or just one?) and associated non-Rangers that travel with them.

With a little distance and time I realized I needed to do that, but when I was writing it I just grabbed a first person account and ran with it. I suspect the fiction is unsalvageable for this purpose and I will have to write something completely different.

What about advancement and reward? Or do we just stay as these balanced characters from creation? How do you stop people advancing to have mechanically perfect characters while offering incentive for continued play?

Actually I want to rewrite the basic Spark mechanic and use a pool of Spark for both the Spark bonus and Body. Perhaps something akin to the pool used in Bryant Durrell's "Above the Earth". If I do this, then as the character matures their pool gets bigger. I also want to roll the Inherent Advantages and Special Abilities into the same Mechanic. This would give me a unified set of basic mechanics for task resolution, character bonuses and advancement but I've still got a ways to go on the idea.

Goals? Scenarios? What are the things Space Rangers do apart from stop Slavery? Maybe a top 10 of nefarious crimes they stop? And example scenarios. Or will the scenarios be generated by the players?

Man, I wanted to do an entire Player section on who the Rangers are, what motivates them and an entire GM section on Scenarios...I just ran out of time! The short answer is that the Rangers take care of everything that crosses jurisdictions or cannot be pursued by the normal legal or judicial system. Piracy, slavery and hunting criminals across multiple jurisdictions is their normal fare but they could find themselves doing anything. Also Rangers find themselves to be lightening rods for all kinds of trouble from criminals who simply assume the Ranger just has to be after them!

Actually your idea about having the Players generate Scenarios is awesome, but I wouldn't even know where to begin. Any suggestions?

One I've been guilty of in both my games so far: needed an Example of Play I think. Example characters would have been good to, especially a party that tied in with the fiction.

Yep, I would have liked to do one...I just ran out of time...

Non-Rangers. Why should I play one? Well, I guess it's because there are non-Ranger abilities out there. I thought you could make it cool and fun to play a companion, and really sell it in the fiction/example of play.

Actually, Non-Rangers could almost be more fun than the Rangers, afterall, by definition a Ranger is inherently good...a little ambiguity in motivation can be a lot of fun! Who would you rather play, Superman or Batman?

The idea of selling it in the fiction is the key. I just don't know how...yet.

Mechanics. Is there a danger that fights will end up as 6+ versus 6+ and everyone getting doubles? I just wondered about the numbers for "typical" combat skills and whether everyone would just crank those up so that everything ends up tied in fights? I think I'd explore this in a play test.

Actually, since an Expertise greater than 5 automatically becomes a +1 Spark there is no chance of you ending up with +6/+6. +5/+6 yes, but not +6/+6. That being said, I know I've got some mechanics issues. This was actually one of the things I was most worried about but I was too heavily invested in TiNS to fuddle too hard with it. Now that I've got a little more than 24 hours I've got to gut the underlying assumption and see where I end up. With an Expertise transfer at 5+ and a Spark pool of some form combined with the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic, I should have a wide enough set of possibilities to keep things from getting too regimented. I hope. Otherwise it's back to the drawing board again.

I'd like to have read about your influences and inspirations for the setting. I liked how you tipped the hat to TINS et al. (and maybe sold short the changes you actually made to the concepts from those games) for system influence, so I'd have loved to read more about the setting influences.

Lordy, lordy, there are a LOT of them. This is just the short list I can pull off the top of my head:

Visual Influences:

• Outland (Movie) -- Sean Connery and shotguns on a mining colony in space.
• Fifth Element (Movie) -- Dirty, disfunctional, lived in world with well defined haves and have nots and LOTS of guns.
• Babylon 5 (TV Series)
• Battlestar Galactic (TV Series) both the old one and the new one.
• Beyond the Stars (Movie)
• Cycops (Comic Mini Series)
• Alien vs. Predator (Comic Mini Series)
• Starship Trooper (Movie and CGI Series)

In short, I like a dirty, mixed up, vibrant, lived in universe. With guns. Lots of guns.

Literary Influences:

• Christopher Anvil's Interstellar Patrol
• Buck Rogers (Original Newspaper Serial)
• Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom, Tarzan and Carson on Venus (Pulp Serials) Pacing, pacing, pacing.
• R.A. Heinlein's Friday, anything with Lazarus Long in it, Starship Trooper, Stranger in a Strange Land, Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Citizen of the Galaxy...okay, everything he's ever written
• John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata (First Quadrilogy)
• [Battletech Grey Death Legion Saga (Trilogy)
• "novels for men" -- Mack Bolan, Able Team, Seal Team Six, James Bond etc.
• L. Neil Smith's The Probability Broach
• James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear
• http://www.miskatonic.org/dent.html Lester Dent's Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot

In all cases I like the idea that one motivated individual can change the world. I also like the pacing and the fact that the simple "hack" plots of some of these books are great gaming fodder. Smith, Heinlein and Hogan I like for their individuals first philosophy...and did I mention the guns?

Dramatic complication. It seemed to me that the fiction had this really cool streak of dramatic complication at every turn. The only way this seems to be created in game is by the GM "pouring it on". I wondered if you could somehow mechanically mandate these complications: "you did this, so I can crank up another complication" kind of thing? How did the creature get on the branch? Who determined its level of ability? Can these complications be generated somehow?

I would add a set of mechanics for doing this in a heartbeat if I could figure out how. Any suggestions of a place to start?

Shadowy figures/Politics. I really liked the background politics, so more explanation please! Who calls the Space Rangers in? (It says "...somebody..." in the text. Who?) Is it a Mr Johnson thing? Or more Deep Throat? Or an Official in the Confederacy? So more about the Confederacy, Empire of Men, etc.

I just ran out of time! Now that I'm not under the gun I intend to expand this. The really short version is that the Confederacy is a rather Balkanized group that band together mostly for military and trading reasons and little else. The Empire of Man is the worst of the Star Wars Empire, cyberpunk corporate feudalism and a/state Dickensian (What a great word!) dysfunction. Needless to say they don't get along.

Should characters come up with motives, alliances, stresses, strains, etc.?

I think so, but I haven't got a good mechanism for it.

Religion. Touched on but not explored. Is this a hot topic? Or just flavour? I assumed that religion was like in today's world.

Depending on where you are it can be both. For myself, I would like to explore the motivations of religion, but I don't know that in this particular game it CAN be more than just flavor/color.

I thought the terms could have been strengthened more:
- Cosmos. Yes, it's SF but show me the vast wonder of the universe.
- Fight. Fighting what? Corruption? Monsters? Slavery? Crime? I didn't see the Space Rangers as Hercule Poirot, more like one part Jim Rockford to two parts Harry Callaghan.

Cosmos. Again I ran out of time. I wanted to show how truly majestic, terrifying and awe inspiring a Universe with Trillions of sentients on millions of worlds can be. I've got a LOT of work to do to bring that to fruition.

Fight. Space Ranger is ultimately about kicking ass and taking names. If you can tell me how to get that across better, I'm all ears. As much as I want to explore the deep dark issues of the human soul in a sci fi setting, this is NOT that game. I want Space Rangers to be screaming fast, minimum handling time, simulationist, escapism. Anything that detracts from that must be ruthlessly rewritten.

As for the characters, think one part R. A. Heinlein's Friday, one part Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, one part Mack Bolan and a splash of Sean Connery's and Peirce Brosnan's James Bond. Shaken, of course. Rangers are about finding the problem and squashing it like a bug.

Starting scenarios. I loved the in media res stuff. In fact, could all scenarios start that way? The GM drops the PCs in a situation and they have to explain how they got there and what the initial complications are? Get them to describe how they know all the other PCs too.

Actually that is my plan. Again, I just ran out of time with the 24 hour version.

Anyway, I liked the game and this was just some questions and thought I reckoned I would throw into the ring. Thumbs up, good job.

Thank you very much for all of it Gregor. With a little luck, a lot of work and some more advice I just might have something marketable. Speaking of which, if I can get this game a little further along, might you be interested in illustrating it?

Anybody else have comments?

[Gregor Hutton]

Very cool. Thanks for the reply.

I liked the main character in the fiction, so you have to keep her in. :)

Maybe it could even be like Ars Magica's troupe in a way with only one player (or two at a push) playing the Space Ranger? I can't help but think of something like the Hercules and Xena TV Series. Sure Hercules and Xena were the "main" characters, but I'd rather have played Bruce Campbell's character Autolycus. Like you say the Rangers are the good guys, whereas non-Rangers could have greyer moralities (which naturally would create conflict and complication for the Ranger).

Maybe use some sort of chip mechanic, where a player can spend a chip for some effect but they then hand permission for a complication to the GM? I don't know, or maybe Rangers and their friends have inherent complication levels built in, as you say weird stuff always happens around them. As for scenario ideas for players, could they come from "kickers" and "bangs" in the style of Ron's Sorcerer? Get the group to mutually form the situation and then throw in their kickers and start using their bangs to get the scenario off and running. Like you say a non-stop rollercoaster once it's started. :)

Oh, and you have to give the possibility (even an incentive?) for someone to be a double agent or similar for the Empire of Men. That would be cool, especially when the villains are always one step ahead (like in the fiction).

And if you need illustrations, no problem. I'd be happy to help you out. :)

[CSBone]

I spent all last night reading through everything I could find on the net on Kickers and Bangs and R-maps. What an amazing concept! I've been running games for years with a hacked disfunctional version of it without being able to explain what I was doing or why it worked. Many thanks. I've got to get a copy of Sorcerer so I can read how they are described in the original source.

That being said, I'm not sure how to implement them in Space Ranger as I don't quite concept Space Ranger as necessarily being Narrative.

Perhaps I need to go back to the beginning and define what I want Space Ranger to be.

So from the guidelines for presenting a game:

Premise: I want Space Ranger to be a screaming fast (read low handling time) sci fi pulp shoot-em-up with bigger than life heroes taking care of the baddies in the most hostile possible manner in a mindbogglingly infinite cosmos with an ever escalating level of conflict that is resolved at the end of a session (which may in fact be longer than a single sitting) with a cliffhanger or a big blowoff. Everybody take a breath, says to themselves, "Whoa," and then dives back in.

I want the play style to be: GM sets the scene, Players decide what they want to do, Players roll their dice and then narrate what they did with penache, style and big freaking balls. GM escalates, rinse, repeat.

Setting: 40 Trillion sapients spread out over a million worlds and a million more space stations divided between the highly balkanized Confederacy, the imperial/corporate feudal and highly Dickensian (in an a/state way) xenophobic Empire of Man and the independent worlds and stations stuck in the middle.  The setting is high tech, transhumanist, transalienist and hard sci fi from the word go. With guns. Lots and lots of guns. Who are the good guys is easy to figure out (That's you!) and the bad guys are BAD GUYS. The shades of grey I want are not in the whose right and whose wrong but in the how you, as the Characters, are going to make them pay (Do I just shoot them or do I show the rest of the universe just how much they suck and then step back and watch the fireworks?).

Character Creation: Should be fast with very low handling and near infinite possibilities. Coming up with your concept should take more time than generating the character...but you should be able to put up a playable concept in less than 15 minutes. If your Character ends up dead, everybody goes, "Bummer," you make another and jump right back in.

Reward mechanic: Haven't a clue, yet. The characters start, at the very least, competent and in most case these guys ARE the calvary. Getting better is ok to a certain point, but then what? Also with the graininess of conflict resolution (a feature I want to maintain) there simply isn't a lot of mechanical room to grow. If your character starts out +4/+3 (Expertise/Spark) and the best you can do is +5/+5 (I'm going to make it impossible to be perfect) what do you give them for a reward other than a banging game?

So if the goal is a kick-it-up, screaming, booming till you blow play experience it behooves me to build that experience into the game mechanics themselves.

I just don't yet have a clue how.

Rangers have a ready made Kicker in that they are Rangers but the question is: will Bangs based on that give you enough story and the escalation I want? Likewise how then do I write the universe itself to make the Bangs self evident to the GM. Also how do I present benchmarks to the GM that allow him or her to present the right level and type of conflict to keep the game screaming along without making it into a disfunctional linear illusionism?

I hate being railroaded. I want to make it neigh on impossible to railroad. Ultimately want the Players and their Characters to dictate the game, not the GM plot.

So, again, how do you do this?

[Lance D. Allen]

Re: Bangs and Kickers; these are not necessarily Narrativist techniques. As a matter of fact, they're good techniques for basically any style of play.

From what I'm reading, what you do NOT want is a Shadowrun-type planplanplanplanplanMISSIONdowntimedowntimeplanplanplan... format. You're basically going for MISSION! and that's about it. So what you may want to look into is an episodic format in the same manner as Dogs. You set up a situation where Those Guys lay a problem at the Rangers' feet, and say Deal With It. For whatever reasons, using whatever methods, the Rangers go to it with a will. When they're done, they're done. That's all off-camera, unimportant to the point of play. Am I off-base?

If so then you're right.. advancement isn't particularly important. That isn't to say that you shouldn't worry about a reward system, far from it. Advancing characters is a time-honored way of rewarding players, and one I'm particularly fond of. But it's not the best for every game. So how do you reward the players? By rewarding the PLAYERS. This is one of those games where the payoff is in the kickass things their characters do, right? What you need then is a way to give them more of that. Hero Points or Narration Tokens or something similar, something that gives them what they're wanting out of the game.

A good way to prevent railroading is again to take a gander at Dogs. The GM sets up the situation, makes it really juicy. Then he plays the situation. He has no right to tell the PCs what is right or wrong, he doesn't get to make things up on the spot. His whole goal is to escalate, escalate, escalate. Push the players, push the characters, put the hard decisions in front of them, and lay out the consequences (NOT pass judgement! Consequences are what happen, right or wrong. This is the hardest part)

In a Space Rangers game, the GM's goal and power needs to be similar. His is not to decide how the PCs should deal with the situation laid before them. His is to push the situation at them, hard, fast and with big freaking balls. He should be prepared to be surprised, he should WANT to be surprised, and he should make it totally clear to the players that he wants to be surprised. Once they get that, the rest is easy enough.

[CSBone]

Hey Lance,

Sorry it took so long to get back to you but following your post I searched everything I could find on Dogs in the Vineyard and, quite frankly, was overwhelmed.

After reading everything, it seems to me you could run a pretty rocking game of DitV in the Space Ranger universe...I'm just not sure if you can run the kind of game I want to play using DitV.

I was, however, so impressed I bought a copy last night and I can't wait until it gets here so I can see what kind of a game I COULD run with it.

All that being said, your comments were spot on:

From what I'm reading, what you do NOT want is a Shadowrun-type planplanplanplanplanMISSIONdowntimedowntimeplanplanplan... format. You're basically going for MISSION! and that's about it. So what you may want to look into is an episodic format in the same manner as Dogs. You set up a situation where Those Guys lay a problem at the Rangers' feet, and say Deal With It. For whatever reasons, using whatever methods, the Rangers go to it with a will. When they're done, they're done. That's all off-camera, unimportant to the point of play. Am I off-base?

You are absolutely correct. Don't get me wrong, I like putting together a good plan but I want a Space Ranger session to begin and end in a shoot-em-up, slap-down, I-got-your-number-right-here, KABOOM kind of a way. You might do some planning in the middle but downtime is strictly "off screen". Keeping in mind, of course, that the James Bond/Friday getting-me-sum, I don't consider to be downtime.

If so then you're right.. advancement isn't particularly important. That isn't to say that you shouldn't worry about a reward system, far from it. Advancing characters is a time-honored way of rewarding players, and one I'm particularly fond of. But it's not the best for every game. So how do you reward the players? By rewarding the PLAYERS. This is one of those games where the payoff is in the kickass things their characters do, right? What you need then is a way to give them more of that. Hero Points or Narration Tokens or something similar, something that gives them what they're wanting out of the game.

I never thought about it that way, but it makes perfect sense. Rewards SHOULD go to the Player, NOT the Character. That is, for me however, a huge paradigm shift. Looks like I've got some more thinking to do.

A good way to prevent railroading is again to take a gander at Dogs. The GM sets up the situation, makes it really juicy. Then he plays the situation. He has no right to tell the PCs what is right or wrong, he doesn't get to make things up on the spot. His whole goal is to escalate, escalate, escalate. Push the players, push the characters, put the hard decisions in front of them, and lay out the consequences (NOT pass judgement! Consequences are what happen, right or wrong. This is the hardest part)

In a Space Rangers game, the GM's goal and power needs to be similar. His is not to decide how the PCs should deal with the situation laid before them. His is to push the situation at them, hard, fast and with big freaking balls. He should be prepared to be surprised, he should WANT to be surprised, and he should make it totally clear to the players that he wants to be surprised. Once they get that, the rest is easy enough.

I DO want the GM to be surprised. I DO want the GM to see the naked consequences of a Character's actions. I want the GM to be able to push hard on the Character and have the Players giggling like little children as the feces hits the rotating air mover rather than whining about how unjust it is that their getting creamed AGAIN! I'm just not sure, yet, how to build that into the system. Hopefully once I get DitV I'll have an idea of somewhere to start.

I hope.

Thanks for the feedback. Anything else you might feel like adding would not be turned down. Also, if you have any other resources you'd suggest I'd love to read them.

With the paradigm shift from D20 type games to what I'm trying to design now, I feel like I'm in uncharted waters.

It's tough to wrap my brain around...but I like it.

I think this weekend I'm going to try to rewrite the mechanics as a stand alone bit and get them up to be worked over.

Again, thanks.

C. S. Bone

[CSBone]

Hey Guys,

I'm going to start another thread on Space Ranger because having read all of your comments I realised I needed to rethink the paradygm I was working with.

I really need to restate the Premise, and Reward System and then ask a bunch of questions and start on rewrite 0.1.

Thanks for kicking the tires. Time to start the overhaul, Monster Garage style.

C. S. Bone