So after discovering the absolutely wonderful webcomic Darths and Droids (I highly recommend it, check it out here) I have been kindly reminded about my love of sci-fi epics. It has put me in the mood to at least look into writing down some campaign ideas for some type of space epic that will go into the file of “Things that will never see the light of day again.”
Thanks to my new found love of Old School gaming groups on Facebook I’ve found that West End Games, the creators of the wonderful d6 Star Wars system, have released the core rulebooks for their generic Fantasy, Adventure, and Sci-Fi d6 rules to the public for free download from the various PDF distribution sites out there. They've even made them Open Game License products so anyone can use them as a baseline system for their own settings which is a very awesome thing to do.
So with those downloads fresh on my various storage devices and a glorious spark of sci-fi epic based creativity I've kind of gotten into a mood of wanting to play or run a sci-fi epic. I know it won’t happen because apparently anytime I try to run something it falls through and I've got some other things that are ready to go and are just waiting for players first (Geinrich, Dresden, multiple World of Darkness, an Exalted campaign, a couple Pathfinder/3.5 campaigns, and a partially built Star Wars D20 which I would like to convert to d6 now). I think it shouldn’t be a problem to use the D6 Space rules for this so that’s what we’ll use.
So picking a setting for sci-fi is a difficult thing to do. Most people end up wanting to play in a well established setting with certain tropes or various things they know well. That’s all well and good, but when given the ability to create sci-fi from scratch with a system I think this is as perfect a time as any to pull out one of my brain. Way back in those dark days of middle school (shudder) I started to develop and flesh out my own sci-fi universe. It had originally been a rip off of various established universes (primarily Star Wars and Wing Commander) but it was mine and I liked to come up with neat ideas for various characters and societies in it.
In my navy days I came back to it again to revisit and re-work it because underway you have a lot of extra time on your hands and watches are long. I wrote out a bunch of ideas and concepts that eventually grew into the current version of this universe. Now that I’ve been out of the Navy for years and some of that information I wrote is lost, forgotten, or stupid and I want to refine it again for my new sensibilities. So hey, look, an excuse!
Back to what I was trying to say, I’ll use my own setting for a Sci-Fi campaign. It’s your standard Sci-Fi fare in general. Kind of like what you’d find in various video game universes, animated shows, comics and such. You have a Human organization spread across a large number of planets, a bunch of alien races with varying types of governments and alliances, a semi-stable level of technology, shields, plasma cannons, FTL travel, and cinematic action.
I love realistic sci-fi combat, but in an RPG no one wants to deal with the realities of space based combat, they want to be Han Solo, Christopher Blair, or Captain Kirk. They don’t want to be John “Black Jack” Geary trying to calculate the relativistic distortion of two giant fleets coming towards each other at 0.1 Lightspeed over the course of dozens of hours setting up the perfect last minute maneuver that will give them the best advantage for that brief fraction of a fraction of a second that the opposing ships will be passing each other at insane speeds. That just isn’t very RPG-ish, so I have fighter wings and such in my setting because it’s cool.
So really, just think that the setting is a rip-off of Star Wars with elements of Wing Commander, Mass Effect, and Titan A.E. and you’ll probably be close enough.
So, what could I do for a campaign? That’s always the first question. For that I turn to my favorite settings and series and look for inspiration. There are two ways to approach a new and unknown setting, Railroad tracks or Sandbox. Railroad tracks you start off with everyone in a pre-defined role with a mission already briefed and ready to go. You don’t give them an option and force them into a story and drag them around to some set pieces. They can learn new things that way. The sandbox just plops them down and you say have at it! Sandbox can be very difficult most of the time but is far more rewarding in the end. I’ll probably need to do something that’s a combination of both though.
With those in mind, what’s a good starting point? Military? Freelancer? Traders? Privateer? Pirate? Stuck on a planet because of an accident? Do they have their own ship? Human only party?
Hmmm…
Primarily I’d say that starting out as some type of Freelance Trader is a good jumping off point. Firefly is a wonderful example of the possibilities that this type of starting point provides. So at least one of the players will be the owner of a ship, at least one other person is a member of the crew and everyone else can either be a passenger or a crew member. They’re doing their best to make a living for themselves as they make their way from planet to planet at their own pace. Ah, yes. That makes the beginning easier. The opening adventure module could be a simple transport job or something. Very easy for something to go wrong, money being owed, success or failure, etc. I like it.
Alright that basic premise is done. What’s next? Scope is a good one. Maybe make a cluster of star systems near the border of the Terran Interstellar Alliance and the Confederated Systems. Some type of semi-unclaimed set of territory. Call it “The Borderlands” or some other stupidly simple name that humans would name something like that. This particular star cluster has something like 10-15 systems in it usually with 1-3 inhabited planets and handfuls for stations or hollowed out asteroids in each system. The systems may have some type of general pirate/raider problem and aren’t patrolled very well by either major power. Each system probably has its own system of government and laws, plus their own militia/law enforcement. This is probably more than enough for the first module and possibly the campaign.
What types of major dangers and conflicts exist in this cluster that they’d have to deal with? Obviously the pirates as mentioned before will be one. There is likely to be some type of criminal enterprise that operates on multiple planets and in multiple systems. Maybe some of the planets in a system don’t like each other very much and are planning a feud or a violent trade dispute. Some of the planets are going to have their own sets of problems too. Yup, Liking where this is going.
The area isn't super resource rich and not of much interest to either government and isn’t important strategically so it isn't likely to be contested soon. This means that any major problems (like the pirates) will have to be handled by the cluster. Which also means that they'll probably be handled by the individual governments independent of the others.
That's a pretty good start maybe I'll continue fleshing this out some more just as an exercise in world building.
Of course I could just do Star Wars instead and scrap all of this… do some New Jedi Order, Knights of the Old Republic, or Rebellion Era and call it a day. Yeah, that does sound tempting, but whatever.
