Thoughts on Running/Playing in Gemini
I'm just going to put stuff here that I think is worth considering when making a character for this game, or for making the ship/loot in the prologue.
1.) I haven't designed this game with a lot of combat based game balance. There is a huge "power" difference between a 2 and an Ace character in terms of how good they are at stuff. However, I have tried to compensate for this somewhat by allowing low level characters to have greater influence on the group as a whole and to do a lot more 'off the cuff' kind of stuff. Thus, if you want to be a more independent, classical hero type, go for a lot of points (a high card). If you want to focus yourself on team-player kind of stuff, want to roll less dice and try to get through stuff via nifty descriptions/plans, or are just looking to try playing an under-powered character, go for a low card. As a low character, you will also have tremendous influence on the group's ship and loot, which is where 90+% of the groups resources are.
2.) Don't write your background until after the prologue. You will be expected to incorporate events from the prologue into your background. Do come up with a 3-5 sentence concept, or more than one if you can't decide or if your first concept has a minimum/maximum point limit.
3.) Combat in cyberpunk is, as those of you that have played in any of my birthday one shots know, pretty deadly. Weapons in this game are better, and armor a little worse, so that is certainly true for Gemini. Also, I will be using Morale rules so that not everybody is constantly fighting to the death. Mostly what I'm saying is that even if you want to make a combat monster (which I expect some of you are), remember that one or two guys with automatic weapons can still kill you.
4.) Gemini is going to be a game without a central plot. That is to say, Gemini is a setting, and there are various NPC actors in that setting that will go about their business: this may or may not affect the players, and the players may or may not affect some of this. Which components of the Gemini the players interact with, and what sorts of plotlines they get entangled in, will largely be determined by the prologue and by whatever the players decide is important for their characters to pursue (which will probably be based partly on their disadvantages). So, for instance, if the characters make a search and rescue/repair team, the Ship's Email will probably fill up with SOS and aid requests from throughout the system: which of these the characters decide to pursue is up to them. Depending on what happens during those runs, they may get mixed up in other storylines, etc. I've created the world, but I'd like as much as possible to let the players have a hand in deciding what the stories in that world will be.
5.) Jason's point about people who will be gone a lot is well taken. As such, I'm going to introduce the concept of "supporting characters". These will be designed to allow players who can't attend frequently, guests, etc, to have a character that is actually part of the storyline. The way it will work is as follows: In order to compensate for missing players/guests at the prologue, the GM will play 1-3 random cards from the GM deck immediately before the prologue, after all players have finished trading/redrawing. These are the "supporting characters": they are part of the crew, they are tied into the story, but anyone who shows up to a session can play any one of them, they are not specifically tied to a player. During the prologue, these characters do not play fortune points, they do not receive cards: they each have a story pile in front of them, which may be played into by anyone. During each turn, the GM may play one additional card for each supporting character, but ONLY into their story piles or the group story pile and ONLY for the purpose of tieing these characters into the group. Then, when a player that missed the prologue, or a guest, comes to play, they can take one of these characters. Alternatively, anyone who participates in the prologue but feels that they will not be able to play regularly, may designate their character as "supporting" at the end of the prologue.
6.) A lot of the stuff I've put in here is generic: "assault rifle", "light single weave synthetic armor". This is because I'm trying to keep things simple for rules purposes, but I'm all for the players adding as much color to this as they want. Use the corp descriptions or anything else to come up with the manufacturer, the type, the history, whatever. If you don't chances are that I will, so don't sweat it if this is more than you feel like doing for your equipment. On the flip side, Advantages and Disads have been given fairly specific names: this isn't to say that the mechanism I've suggested/described is the only way to get the given bonus. "Steady Hands" is a physical advantage, but the effects could similarly be called "Patient" and be in the mental advantages. You can change the In game effect of any advantage: you'll still pay the same points and get the same rules effects. Obviously, this sort of change is subject to GM approval, but I plan to be fairly liberal about it.
7.) in the same vein as #4 above, I hope that after the prologue people are motivated to create fairly involved backgrounds: there is of course no requirement to do so, but since I intend to have players make the major decisions about where the plot goes, you can be fairly sure that conflicts/storylines/whatever in your background will be drawn upon for adventures.
8.) Although nothing in the prologue translates into strict numbers for character creation, The GM will expect you to put stuff with a card behind it into your background and to choose stuff on your character to represent it: if you don't take some sort of disadvantage after having a GM card played into your story pile saying you took a grievous wound, you can bet that the GM will use some of the GM assigned disadvantages to do it. This also goes for any cards/fortune points played by other PCs.
9.) With the support characters in the mix, there is no implicit reason why a group must be "balanced": ie, if you all wanted to be fighters, for example, that would be fine: the support characters would then just be a pilot, a navigator, and a tech, most likely. That's not to say that I encourage a one sided group, but people should not be too worried about making sure that all the bases are covered. Of course, it might be handy to bring more than one character concept if you feel like it so that in the first part of the Introduction you'll have some options for complementing the rest of the group.
11.) Session 1: Ok, April 6th will be "the first session", I expect. We can go through a test run of the prologue if people want, or we can just dive right in. I'd like the prologue to be fairly in depth for the actual run: if it seems appropriate and/or interesting, I might even request people to have a brief "in character" moment. It's pretty important for the prologue that everybody pays attention, since to make the background story flow people need to know what events have occurred. For those of you who will be making "supporting characters", ie those that won't be around regularly, you'll just make a character like everyone else and participate in the prologue normally: the character will just be relegated to "support" status later. Although backgrounds and such will not be written yet, if we have a lot of time left over we may just start the game at the end of the night, although I'm not sure about this yet.
12.) When you play a card for the prologue, remember that this is "your" influence on the history of the ship, so you should feel free to have it originate from your character: ie, we get ambushed by pirates (GM play), then you play a king into the loot pile and say well, my character leads a brilliant envelopment action and traps the pirates on their own deck, while our crew lewtz their ship and runs off. *Newbs!*. The fortune points and cards you play in the prologue are resources from your character, and should be treated as such. see Fortune Points and Storytelling for how I currently intend these sorts of points to function.
13.) Normally I'm not that big of a "lotza rulez" kind of guy, especially since i've been espousing letting the GM have their way forever. But you may notice that I've introduced a lot of extra modifiers, rules, etc. for Gemini: these are all things I'm interested to try out, that I'm hoping will enhance the gaming experience. If we forget them occassionally, that's alright. If we don't like them, we'll throw them out or change them. They're simply mechanics that I think will contribute to gameplay. If there's something you are particularly concerned about, email me and I will look into it.
14.) as a corollary to #12 above, the point of the prologue is to create interesting character relationships and background for the group, not to maximize the potential of the ship, the lootz, and everyone's fortune points (although obviously, the players may well try for this). As such, you should not feel bad about making other players burn their own fortune points rather than yours even if you have more, or even in excess of 10: they are, as I said, a precious resource, especially if you took a low card. You can of course save them, but then see #12 above.
