See You Space Cowboy

[LordKruelos]

See You Later, Space Cowboy
(Futuristic Bounty Hunters/Smugglers/Mercenaries)

So it appears (http://www.crafty-games.com/forum/index.php?topic=6226.15) there's a demand for a game in the Traveler / Firefly / Cowboy Bebop / Outlaw Star / Han Solo on a bad day genre.



Unless someone else wants to take this and run with it, I'm willing to GM it.

Does anyone have strong opinions about what the game SHOULD be?

[LordKruelos]

Current Cast

MilitiaJim
Lyssa T’vres

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Daughter of a trio of eccentric matrons, even by the standards of Ilium, Lyssa grew up with her mothers and many sisters. At the insistance of her mothers she studied dancing, her biotic powers, and small arms.  Early in her maidenhood she found herself growing more and more interested in technological systems.  Virtual reality and VIs occupied her for a while, but she longer for better opponents.  Eventually she moved on to security systems.  These proved to be much more interesting and challenging.

She, and three of her sisters, formed a repossession corporation that specialized in recovering hovercars, then expanded to small shuttles.  After several years of reposession success, the sisters began to accept contracts to retrieve stolen vehicles.  It was one of these retrieval jobs that went badly wrong and found the three surviving sisters "exiled" from Ilium.

Foproy
Zane

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zanes commanders from the stg that he watched to many vids as a child, those who flew with him said otherwise. he seemed to glean a certain talent from watching them and many maneuvers he attempted were taken straight from these sources. it was this style of flying that got him discharged from the group, despite being one of the best young pilots they had. up until a few months ago he was running a decent "import export business till he lost a cargo for an influential turian now he is hiding on omega.

TFWFH
Sev'Teema nar Veysa

(click to show/hide)

Like most Quarians, Sev grew up on the Migrant Fleet.  Unlike most Quarians, she moved around a lot within the fleet.  Her father is a very ambitious man and was often being promoted by the Admiralty to captain more and more prestigious ships.  He currently commands Ember, a frigate captured after a pirate raid.  Even as Sev was being moved around from ship to ship, her family pushed her aggressively in her studies.  The result is that she didn't have any close friends growing up, but did grow fond of the several ship's VIs she met.  She began to focus on AIs in her studies and eventually became frustrated with what she sees as the fleet's blind and irrational fear that's holding the Quarians back from actually understanding the Geth.  Eventually she was simply forbidden from continuing her studies any further.  Fed up, she left for her pilgrimage soon after.

Since leaving the fleet, she's been looking for a way to further her studies regarding AI, but she hasn't had much success.  The Citadel is nearly as restrictive of AI research as the migrant fleet, and the terminus systems aren't exactly a bastion of higher learning.  She's been in contact with some members of an AI advocacy group (I know they exists, but I can't find any named ones), but is hesitant to meet with them because if that were to be known it might be enough to result in her exile from the fleet and she would like to go back eventually.

glimmerrat`
Yuri Kravchenko

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A former Earth Alliance marine, Yuri was implanted with an L2 series bioamp at age 17, making him one of the first generation of human biotics. After training for several years on Gagarin Station, he was transferred to active military duty. At age 26 he was caught up in what later became known as the Skylian Blitz. The things he saw and the injuries he suffered put an effective end to his military career. His L2 bioamp almost killed him on three separate occasions during the engagement, and the neural damage was extensive; he lost control of his biotic abilities, and forgot almost everything he had learned.

Now, he's a miserable bastard stalking the corridors of Omega. The shrapnel in his right knee causes him no end of grief, and the malfunctioning bioamp implant means that he's always in the market for illegal prescription painkillers. He's old before his years, and looks at least a decade older than he actually is. He drinks, he smokes, he cusses constantly, and he has no career to speak of. He'll turn his hand to almost anything that'll pay the rent, as long as it doesn't involve working for the Alliance. The back-stabbing bastards stiffed him out of his war pension and left him to die once already. He won't let them do the same again.

[VisualStatic]

I'm not against a straight Bounty Hunter, but I think it would more interesting to have it a bit more open ended.  Such as we take whatever jobs we can get, be that bounty hunting, smuggling, or *shudder* legit jobs.

[LordKruelos]

I'm not against a straight Bounty Hunter, but I think it would more interesting to have it a bit more open ended.  Such as we take whatever jobs we can get, be that bounty hunting, smuggling, or *shudder* legit jobs.

Part of me wanted to suggest build characters at Level 1 (Back to Basics level) and then the same character at level 6 (+5 Spycraft 2.0/WOF levels) so at Level 1 the characters get flashbacks and at level 6 the characters are in the present, as crew on a ship like a Firefly

[VisualStatic]

So something like  Tough Hero 1/Soldier 5?

[LordKruelos]

So something like  Tough Hero 1/Soldier 5?

Yes, but build 1 would be Tough Hero 1

Build 2 would be Tough Hero 1/Soldier 5

[ludomastro]

I like this idea very much; please count me in.

Are we looking for near future or far future?
Earth and the solar system or the whole galaxy?
FTL drive or hard science?

(My votes: either, either, FTL)

[MilitiaJim]

Where is a good hat for throwing in this ring?   

I don't see the point of a Back to Basics level if you're popping over into Spycraft classes at level 2, but I guess that's just me.

Is there a level of sci-fi that would put Transmechs into play...?   

[VisualStatic]

I'd prefer something Firefly level of tech, but that's me.

[nfactor13]

I'd love Farscape meets Call of Cthulhu,  but I'm up for any of the ideas that I've seen.  Sounds like a lot of fun whatever it ends up being.

[Mister Andersen]

Can we not use Fantasy Craft / Master Craft instead?. It seems to me that the main attraction for 2.0 is its modern gear , but it should be trivial to move that over to a cash based economy with The Big Score (plus the whole Prudence tax certainly fits the genre to a T)

[Mister Andersen]

Is there a level of sci-fi that would put Transmechs into play...?   

I endorse this statement (Transmechs was written using transitional tools, and wouldn't require a lot of tinkering).

[tfwfh]

Is this still open to other players?  I know pbp isn't my preferred mode of play, but I'm tired of having to be the one running games and at this point I'll take what I can get.

[LordKruelos]

As I see it, this thread is currently fact-finding and defining the game we want to play, and several of you have brought up key questions to resolve to get this sucker off the ground.
Since we're still defining the game, players (and player cap) haven't yet been determined, so if you're interested, now's a pretty good time to help determine what gets played.

Setting

Do we use an Existing Setting/Concept or are we rolling our own? (My preference is an existing setting because it does a lot of the heavy lifting for us, but I'm open to discussion)
How Future is our Future? (Near/Far)
How hard is our science? (I vote for not having to break out the astrophysics)
How advanced is our tech and how far have we spread?
(Again, this is most easily answered by taking an existing setting as a starting point, be it something as simple as http://wiki.rpg.net/images/b/b6/Cowboy_Bebop_Cluster_Map.jpg
to more detailed like http://www.fireflyshipworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/verse-frontbig1.jpg
or http://nurpa.com/2005resources/files/b5galacticmap2262.jpg
or even full-bore crazy like http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/088/f/7/mass_effect_galaxy_map_2_0_by_dwebart-d3a34qx.png

Mechanics
What rule base should we use? (Anderson I think is the only one who has stated a preference for FC, I would argue that 2.0 & WOF's classes are better suited for this kind of game, but I can also see the value of using FC + Mass Craft to leverage all the great work that's been done. Thoughts?)
Magic / Biotics / I Can Kill You With My Mind? (Obviously the rule-base used largely determines the available mechanics, but even based on FC you can handwave a lot by re-skinning various magic effects.
Transmechs? (I've had zero exposure using Transmechs. My preference is for a game focused on the organic squishier forms of life. Again, much of this is determined by the decisions we make regarding setting and scale)
Conversions and Fan-Made Stuff (My preference is to minimize the amount of ad hoc conversion required, if for no other reason than my hunch that the longer we take hashing out mechanical nuances the more likely the game is to smother itself in minutia without getting off the ground).
Scope and Length (PBP games have an unfortunate tendency to burn themselves out quickly. As such, I propose we focus on a primarily episodic approach, with some sort of unifying reason that the players can sign onto for why they're working together in the first place, and each PC having a subplot that can come up both in current play and in flashback scenes)

I don't see the point of a Back to Basics level if you're popping over into Spycraft classes at level 2, but I guess that's just me.

This is not yet a requirement, just something I'd been musing on (and one could continue in Back to Basics classes for levels 2-6 if they wanted). My conceptual reason was the idea of enabling "Flashback" stories where a younger, less experienced, less badass version of the character could be useful. Unless people think it's a good idea that we should run with, we can safely ignore the idea.

[VisualStatic]

Anyone else got a copy of Traveller, we could co-op the life story generator out of it.   I'll have to dig out my T20 version, its buried in a box still.