Long-ish term help for a Sci-fi game.

**Soft Serve** · 01-08-2010, 10:56 PM

I'd like to homebrew a Sci-fi game, although not alone. I have so many ideas, so much I want to do, but barely any time to do it and when I do get time I forget what I thought of. So far all I have decided is D100, and that it should be strongly military based. I don't mean "combat" based, I don't mean "men-on-ships" I don't mean anything other than that the players time should all be spent either between Mercenary contracts or working for government armies.

I haven't a lot of Sci-fi game experience, nor D100 experience, so anybody who deals with those primarily and can contribute at least a night a week until we get on track would be great.

**michael** · 01-10-2010, 12:25 PM

Well if it is military based, I would do a rough outline of the major factions. Who is fighting who, and why?

Next I would define the minor factions. The arms dealers, mercenaries, supply routes, and faction turncoats/spies.

Then I would define the internal bureaucracies that are leaching off these factions.

This will give you a well-defined feel for the setting.

Then I would make 1 or 2 major characters that are going to symbolize each of the factions. No stats, just story, about 100 words each.

Now you will have characters that will give the background a life of it's own. These steps will give you a functional setting in which to insert your adventure hooks. Each character you write can come with it's own set of adventures as well.

Next make the characters write their backgrounds. Have them answer the basic questions:

When was your character born?

What did your character do for a living?

What were your character's hobbies and interests?

What was your character's relationship with his or her family like?
Any kids?

What languages does your character speak?

Any special skills?

What is your character's wealth level or social status?

Who are your character's friends and enemies?

What is your character's morale code?

What are the most important moments of your character's life?

What are your character's plans for the future?

After they answer these questions, let them stat their PCs. These questions will give each character a "built-in" adventure that you should easily be able to weave into your previously defined factions and characters.

If you PM your email to me, I will add you to one of my game sites so you can see this process in action (and feel free to plagiarize as you wish).

Hope this is helpful.

**Soft Serve** · 01-10-2010, 09:25 PM

Originally Posted by michael

Well if it is military based, I would do a rough outline of the major factions. Who is fighting who, and why?

Next I would define the minor factions. The arms dealers, mercenaries, supply routes, and faction turncoats/spies.

Then I would define the internal bureaucracies that are leaching off these factions.

This will give you a well-defined feel for the setting.

Then I would make 1 or 2 major characters that are going to symbolize each of the factions. No stats, just story, about 100 words each.

Now you will have characters that will give the background a life of it's own. These steps will give you a functional setting in which to insert your adventure hooks. Each character you write can come with it's own set of adventures as well.

Next make the characters write their backgrounds. Have them answer the basic questions:

When was your character born?

What did your character do for a living?

What were your character's hobbies and interests?

What was your character's relationship with his or her family like?
Any kids?

What languages does your character speak?

Any special skills?

What is your character's wealth level or social status?

Who are your character's friends and enemies?

What is your character's morale code?

What are the most important moments of your character's life?

What are your character's plans for the future?

After they answer these questions, let them stat their PCs. These questions will give each character a "built-in" adventure that you should easily be able to weave into your previously defined factions and characters.

If you PM your email to me, I will add you to one of my game sites so you can see this process in action (and feel free to plagiarize as you wish).

Hope this is helpful.

Here I have a site with some stuff completed. Right now it's mostly just assorted notes that make no sense looking at them...But that's what I got so far.

**outrider** · 01-10-2010, 10:58 PM

You might want to find star frontiers. As I recall it was a d100 system. It will give you a basis to work from.

**Soft Serve** · 01-11-2010, 02:29 PM

Originally Posted by outrider

You might want to find star frontiers. As I recall it was a d100 system. It will give you a basis to work from.

I'm not so much worried about the D100 being confusing. I'm sure I can adapt to that. It's that I want to make a Sci-Fi game and I've been referencing traveller and just taking things out as I do. Like Traveller to me is very rules heavy (I don't know how anyone else feels about it but theres my ¢2.) What I'm going for is a game you can play on the fly. Really quick to grasp and understand, but also lethal. So Character generation would have to be simple. At the same time the world has to be vast. There can't be any shortness in weapons, worlds, people to kill, creatures to...kill, and so on. And it's all of these elements that I'm saying are difficult to attach to a Sci-Fi game considering Sci-Fi typically consists of different atmospheres, laws on planets, types of ships and warp drives and all this crazy nonsense that you have to worry about before actually playing.

**michael** · 01-13-2010, 11:53 AM

You could make a series of baddies that are fighting for control of the galaxy (or system). Maybe throw a "soup" together that is:

1 cup Borg (Trek)
1 cup Shadows (Babylon 5)
1 cup Zerg (Starcraft)
1 cup space zombies (Source?)
A heaping spoonful of pitifully weak PCs.
A pinch of sadistic GM
1 full bag of Cool Ranch Doritos

You're good to go

**Soft Serve** · 01-13-2010, 08:23 PM

Originally Posted by michael

You could make a series of baddies that are fighting for control of the galaxy (or system). Maybe throw a "soup" together that is:

1 cup Borg (Trek)
1 cup Shadows (Babylon 5)
1 cup Zerg (Starcraft)
1 cup space zombies (Source?)
A heaping spoonful of pitifully weak PCs.
A pinch of sadistic GM
1 full bag of Cool Ranch Doritos

You're good to go

You forgot the Mountain Dew...

**Sascha** · 01-13-2010, 11:07 PM

Or go the Diaspora route and have the players at the table contribute to setting creation; you give some mechanical guidelines and they fill in the details. Fluff material gets created, and it'll be stuff the players (theoretically) actually want to see in play.

**Soft Serve** · 01-14-2010, 03:46 AM

Originally Posted by Sascha

Or go the Diaspora route and have the players at the table contribute to setting creation; you give some mechanical guidelines and they fill in the details. Fluff material gets created, and it'll be stuff the players (theoretically) actually want to see in play.

If I was planning on it being just me and some people then that'd be dandy. The issue is that I have a habit of making several games for several occasions and whenever one occasion arises usually somebody else brings it up...Eons of Conflict was a cheap little beer and pretzels game I made that I played with a small group that expanded, and branched into games I wasn't even part of. People were playing it with RL groups... I want to rival that with this, and I don't even know how to begin.

I've determined I want a lot of customization to go into it. Everything from what the character wears to what he's shooting. I've also decided I might just make it Earth and Mars based. I'm planning to have some kind of beta done by Mid-February, so if anyone knows any good references for 200+ years into-the-future guns, vehicles, armor, etc send it my way. Preferably a souce I could view online.

Also I'm having trouble determining important Attributes, whether or not I want skills, talent trees, feat-ish-things, classes, or what. So any feedback on the best way you've seen it done is helpful.

Very much appreciated. ♥ Soft Serve.

**Soft Serve** · 01-14-2010, 08:28 PM

Also considering using money as the main source of Experience.

**thexpert** · 06-09-2010, 09:41 AM

I'm keeping an eye on your threads in this vein because I just started a Sci-fi game with some friends based on FASA star trek (for vehicles) and a revamped and simplified Palladium (for character generation). (Palladium used D100 skills so it worked for FASA star trek). Now the whole crew can be obliterated at once, and rather quickly if I'm a clumsy GM, because FASA:ST is a strategy/miniatures game all about blowing up ships. The ground fighting is basically a clunky D20 system with emphasis on martial arts and what the mix of characters can hit my NPCs with.

I borrow from Dune, Trek and Ghost in the shell (hacking is becoming a big part of ship combat) so that there will be bizarre combinations and fan service at every turn. My players all hate star wars, so we left it out!

Sorry to ramble, If anyone has any input on this, drop me a line!

**Soft Serve** · 06-12-2010, 12:56 AM

Thought this thread was dead or I would have said I started again on a different site so ignore the link above if you want cause it won't be updated ever again.

If you want too see how far I've come on the new one just say so and I'll post that up.

**thexpert** · 06-15-2010, 12:13 PM

Originally Posted by Soft Serve

Thought this thread was dead or I would have said I started again on a different site so ignore the link above if you want cause it won't be updated ever again.

If you want too see how far I've come on the new one just say so and I'll post that up.

I'd like to see it. I'm constantly updating how things will be done in my game, any ideas at all would be welcome.

**Raicheck** · 06-18-2010, 01:07 AM

Eclipse Phase's system is Open source, and usable for non-commercial ventures. It's a percentile based system, and might work well for you with some tweaks.

**Soft Serve** · 06-18-2010, 12:38 PM

Work in progress and I'm going to change the site at least one more time but here it is so far.

There are a few empty pages and paragraphs that just stop mid-sentence but you know how it is.

www.newagewar.webs.com