Talk:Nephon Sector

--Edmiao 23:38, 28 February 2007 (MST) One thing that has always bugged me about space games is that you have a captain. inherantly the captain has the ability to boss people around. that makes me want to make characters who have no interest in being bossed around. I played that out with Raphe, and started it again in the one shot, and it gets old. Can we try to design a space campaign with no captain? Or maybe make the captain an NPC. Perhaps the characters are all Indiana Jones knock offs and they hired a starship to shlep them around from place to place. So space travel goes like this: Indy 1 and ShortRound found some clues to uberloot on planet Ohmygodlookatallthegoldimus Prime. They convince Indy2, Indy 3 and Dr MyFaceMelts that it would be fun to go loot some old tombs. so the group bustles up into the ship and tells the NPC Captain Schleper to make course for Ohmygodlookatallthegoldimus Prime. Suppose in this scenario a PC could be Capt Schleper, but eventually we'll have this conflict: Capt. Schleper: "Not on my ship!" Short Round: "Fine, lets find another ship" and that would get tiresome as well.

I want to make a wish upon a Nephron. Wish I may, wish I might, wish that there be no captain in sight.

That was so beautiful and it just came to me out of nowhere, man. the horror. the horror. the horror.

--Edmiao 23:48, 28 February 2007 (MST) That said, Ben has made a good point that the GM should take control of a game and have free reign. Requests may be entertained (see my wish above), but a game by committee will end up in lamer than lamesville.

--BenofZongo 00:18, 1 March 2007 (MST)I personally find it interesting if there are some hierarchical relationships between players, but that's just me. That's why I made Garcon (who, actually, had to do anything any of the players told him to do as a direct order). Things can be more evenly divided if there is more than one person with maximum authority, or if different people have chief authority under different circumstances. But whateva...my current concept is either a techie, a pilot, or a gun toting ueber combat monster, so it don't make no difference to me.

--Matts 10:00, 1 March 2007 (MST)You guys can set up the relationship of who owns the ship versus who flies it versus who gets the work, etc; as long as the ship has a functional crew, it's fine by me. The Firefly RPG had an example ship where the guy who owned it and the guy who captained it had a mutual agreement; you guys can come up with something similar.

Or, there can be a captain, but by no means is his authority absolute. In this game, the captain has to command respect for more reasons than 'he controls the paycheck.' Maybe he does, but without the other players' involvement, he'd have no paycheck to control.

I mean, I personally have no problem if Ed makes a character who chafes under authority; but hopefully the presence of that authority isn't going to rub Ed the wrong way like Antares Darkeye did. Then again, so what? That's a legitimate source of conflict and drama; one of the oldest. If Ed's not interested in making a guy who hates authority figures, well, nothing's stopping you...

--Gdaze-- Eh I don't care if we have a captin as a player character or not. It'd be cool if he has some moral boosting power though. Anyway, a few things of note. I'm a little worried about how stakes work, that is how you are told how you will fail, combined with "traits". To me this seems like it could make everything take kinda long. Not saying it would, just saying it seems like it might.

That being said I'd really like to know the following information about the universe. Just to really help me get into the whole setting. I know you might not have this all thought out just yet, but are just things I feel would really help all players overall!

Weapon Tech Level - Lasers? Blasters? Guns? I know you guys did a one shot, but I'd like to see something in writting about this.

Starship Weapons - What is typical of use? Only rockets?

Commucation Tech, internet, personal message devices, etc.

AI - What about robots? Since we are in Japan after all hahaha. But yeah, are their robots? If so what rights do they have?

Aliens - Any alien lifeforms at all?

Bio-Tech - Cloning? Replacement limbs?

Cybernetics - Are they around? How much are they typically if they are? Any kinda policey the government has on giving them out?

Personal Defense - Armor much?

And finally, general tech level. Hover cars? Personal jet packs, jump belts, flying whirl-o-ma-gig, floating cities, space station cities, etc, etc.

Just some things I'd really like to know!

--128.95.11.21 10:35, 1 March 2007 (MST)I'm sure lots of people will disagree with me on this one, but if there's just "conflict and drama" between the players, we're never going to get anything done. This is why I harp on "the hook": its fine if people don't always agree, but if they don't have a legitimate reason to work together, and not just together with anyone, but specifically together with the other people in the group, you can expect that to significantly complicate things like "the plot". I also have a question: if this is going to be episodic, with us appearing at a new site each time, does that mean we will not actually be spending a lot of game time on the ship?

--Gdaze-- I was going to suggest maybe there should be a page where we all post the kind of character we want/are going to make. Only problem is I can't make mine till the world is more definded, that is my own personal thing though.

--Matts 11:14, 1 March 2007 (MST)While I have things I'm doing as far as the setting goes, if there's things you guys want to see (robots, cybernetics, plasma dildos), we should work that out. The setting is basically Firefly with the Chinese influence replaced by something I'm more familiar with (Japanese influence). So, it's basically a western-style space opera. Does that mean no energy weapons? Honestly, I can't say I think it matters too much. If you guys want laser guns, why not? I'm strongly leaning towards various weapons being more or less equal against an unarmored foe (a bullet is already pretty lethal). Energy weapons (or chemically-propelled projectile weapons) would be neccesary in space, though, since there's no air to combust.

I'm looking to keep the tech level relatively low and gritty. That doesn't mean you can't be a robot, it just means that being a robot won't make you any tougher than a person (think dude from Alien). That doesn't mean that you can't have cybernetics, just that cybernetics won't give you any particular advantage unless you get a Trait for them.

But we can all agree that if the tech gets out of control, the game loses its grittiness. You won't be playing invulnerable star troopers, but independent shippers who are always looking for another job or a little more income so they can keep flying. If you can turn over any bank you want or raid armed convoys without problems, then the the motivation for the group disintigrates.

So: I actively invite collaboration on the setting; I have an idea of how I want to run the game, but the setting is skeletal because a lot of it isn't important yet. If you want to see something in particular, post it. Which is to say, don't be trying to pull this shit from Firefly to Cowboy Bebop or Battlestar Galactica or Dragon Ball, but if there are sci-fi elements you can't live without, let me know!

--Jason 11:15, 1 March 2007 (MST)I dont understand how all this occurs. Before this group I had never played in a group where the players find ways to sabotage a game if they dont have a hook forced on them or if they dont find one themselves. Before everyone pipes in with thats waht my character would do and blah blah, save it. In the vast majority of cases the characters had chosen to be where they are, and real people understand that once they have made a choice sometimes that means they need to sacrifice tiny personality quirk x to accomplish a goal they had agreed to undertake. A ship cant run without a captain, it just cant. Somebody has to have authority when it comes down to it. If Ed insists on finding a way to piss all over the captains authority, that might be fun for a few minutes but really what is says is we shouldnt play a space game. I wanted to leave at about 10pm during the one shot because of his antics. How important is the actual tech level to who your character is? It would be more helpful for the Gm to know what your character is and have that be part of the story at an early time. The entire world at large doesnt determine who your character is. Its a whole heck of a lot of work to develop every little piece of the galaxy and a relatively small amount to make your character.

What Im trying to say here is there are a lot of little things people are making huge and in the end it makes the game worse. We need to understand that these skewed points of view impact the game at large.