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[VoidSlayer]

The great ship brought us to this world.  While the light-speed barrier was never crossed, humanity managed to escape Einstein's trap aboard a vast machine to sail between the stars.



The technology of our ancestors is beyond comprehension to us now.  A great city, almost a world in itself, was at their command along with what may as well have been magic.



But the universe is not so kind.  When they reached what should have been a new home, instead they found themselves betrayed.  The great work of mankind fell from the sky, to crash to our world below.



The details of the fall are murky, but only a few survived of the millions who once lived.  Everything was lost, safety, knowledge, memory.



But from the ruins survivors emerged.  Plant and animal, factory and robot, and the families of humanity.  Your family.


-yonaz

The technology of the ancestors is not dead and the dangers have not yet passed.  It is time for you to lead the way and leave a legacy among the ruins.


-MWojtala

Legacy is a post-apocalyptic science fantasy in which you control both a family and a character.  It is a cooperative storytelling game based on the Apocalypse World engine.  In it you tell stories both grand and personal, then once an age is complete we can advance the timeline to the next generation and tell a new one.

free reference guides from drivethroughRPG

I am looking for 4-5 players to play the scenario outlined above, we will all give some further insight into the world before and the world now then make some families and characters.  You can download the playbooks from drivethroughRPG.com or I can just post them.

[Skynet]

I am interested in it, but it does sound demanding. I will tentatively say IN (especially for worldbuilding), but if no one else comes, well...

Could this be a single player game? I run a Family, you play as the unforgiving world, and together we can make this work?

[crazyabe]

PTW

[VoidSlayer]

So a little bit more about this game as a bump in case anyone else was interested.

The world building basically will ask everyone to add something to the golden age, some kind of super tech/magic that will help inform the setting and be present in the ruins and dangers of the world.  Some might seek to rediscover this and others might even have some of the tech, and it will make the nature of the threats faced more apparent.  For example I said some kind of giant interstellar space ship, but what that looks like would be up to the players to help develop, each contributing something.

The same would go for what happened during the fall, what major settlements exist at the start of the game and what the nature of the threats being faced in the near future are.  I will provide an overall theme, get impute on some specifics then reconcile everything into a story.

The five family playbooks in the basic game we can play with cover a pretty good base.  There are lots of options and moves that are descriptive enough to customize a starting family, and they can change significantly over time.

The Enclave of Bygone Lore Arcane scholars who cling to the wonders – and horrors – of the World Before.

The Gilded Company of merchants Discerning traders, avaricious collectors and opulent hoarders.

The Lawgivers of the wasteland Fierce hunters motivated by a strict moral code.

The Servants of the One True Faith Religious ideologues who hold their family close and their doctrine closer.

The Tyrant Kings Thugs, warlords and conquerors bringing the world under their dominion by force.

The character playbooks cover some specific classes, but they can also be modified by the family you choose, primarily in equipment.  Experience is less about using your moves and defeating enemies as carrying out the role you chose.

The Elder

You’ve lived longer than anyone else and guided your dynasty through calamity after calamity with a combination of wisdom, empathy and cold pragmatism. You just need to get your dynasty through one more crisis, and then you can retire. The Elder uses Sway to keep their minions in line, work out what  makes others tick, and reshape their family to be what it needs to be.

The Envoy

Your family has an appetite too rich for their scarce resources, and the clans in this valley have always hated your advanced tech. With time you could turn that round and have them eating out of your hand, easy, but you only have two days until the crystal myrmidons get here and you just don’t have that luxury. Time to break out the big guns. The Envoy uses Sway to make deals and unearth secrets, and Force to lead their new allies to victory.

The hunter

What do you do when a rippling horror stalks the night, a traitor has stolen your grandfather’s sword or a charismatic warlord is rallying  your enemies? You call a Hunter, of course. With sharp steel and  blazing guns they’ll cut right to the heart of the problem. Hunters use Force to wage war and hunt down the inhuman.

The Remnant

The Fall wasn’t all crashing stars and ravenous swarms. As the alignments fractured and the catastrophic energies discharged, some people were twisted and altered into things eternal and inhuman. Some of these Remnants have found adoptive families willing to look past their oddities and grateful for the services they bring. Remnants use Lore to make use of their chaotic abilities, and Sway to bring the wisdom of the World Before into modern conflicts.

The Scavenger

Want to know the incantation that charges your solar cannons? The chip that turns toxic sludge into crystal clear water? The location of that lost arsenal you need to fight off the empire next door? Best talk to a Scavenger. Scavengers use Lore to recognise the things they pick out of the ruins of the past, and Steel to survive the process of getting home.

The Seeker

Barely any fragments of the world before survived the Fall, and those that weren’t smashed by fearful zealots were hoarded in secret by  withdrawn misers. Then you came along. Armed with keen insight and a head full of half-remembered cantrips, you will piece together the broken shards, pry out the hidden treasures and set back into  motion the mystic machinery of the world. The Seeker focuses on Lore above all else.

The Sentinel

There’s no safe place in this world, but your kin need someplace to call home. It’s your calling, then, to be the bulwark on which your families’ foes break, the unblinking eye they cannot hide from, and the keen blade that stops them hurting anyone else. The Sentinel uses Steel to weather their enemies’ attacks and Force to push them back.

The Survivor

This world’s thrown everything it has at you, and through quick wits and sheer grit you’ve made it through. Now your family needs someone who’ll get through the monsters of the past and the barbarity of the present to get them what they need. The Survivor uses Steel to keep going through danger and continue surviving

Each character also has a powerful death move and can carry on a memento to the next age, granting an aspect of their abilities to other characters of the family.

[VoidSlayer]

I am interested in it, but it does sound demanding. I will tentatively say IN (especially for worldbuilding), but if no one else comes, well...

Could this be a single player game? I run a Family, you play as the unforgiving world, and together we can make this work?

We could, but it would work much better, and is designed to, have at least 2-3 players besides the MC.

[vishdafish]

In

[Ardent Debater]

This looks interesting. IN

[DontBanTheMan]

I'll give it a shot.

[VoidSlayer]

That looks like five players, it is recommended we have one from each family so we can start sorting that out, tentative list of players:

DontBanTheMan
Ardent Debater
vishdafish
The Moonlit Shadow
Skynet

So which playbooks did everyone want to take?

Also, the interstellar space craft carried over ten million souls.  It flew at near a quarter the speed of light in a journey of almost four hundred years, carrying a vast civilization.  Even as they maintained the ship the population advanced and discovered new things, and the ship that arrived in the Xi Scorpii binary system much different then it had left.  A powerful central AI maintained the ship, but millions of artificial neural intelligence were developed to serve the needs of the passengers.  Not mere machines but fully sentient, some advanced the extent of human knowledge, some studied humanity and created great works, others were life long companions to individual humans, shadows closer then kin.

What other wonders existed on the ship, and what do the survivors remember the name as?

[vishdafish]

Tyrant king. Cant think of any cool name suggestions. Perhaps someone else can?

[Ardent Debater]

I call The Servants of The One True Faith Playbook.

The Ship was called the Ortus Vitae Novae, meaning Birth Of New Life in an ancient, forgotten language. Most survivors simply call it, The Vessel.

I vote that we call the Ship destroying disaster, The Reckoning, maybe it had to do with a severe nuclear meltdown and an AI Revolt, that only some Humans managed to survive as the ship crash-landed? The AI Revolt and nuclear meltdown would fuel a lot of superstition and fear towards Technology, and the nuclear meltdown might've mutated many of the Living creatures to escape the crash-site. What if some of the Hostile AI were still around and trying to conquer the Wasteland, but were kept in check by the lack of infrastructure and heavy opposition?

The Ship had strange machines that could generate electric power from nothing, genetically altered crops that could thrive in the harshest of conditions and grow within weeks, and a strange, silvery metal that holds an edge far keener than anything else, never rusts, and is nearly unbreakable. The electricity generating machines are extremely rare, expensive, and difficult to maintain, but the benefits they offer are very much worth it. The genetically altered crops would have fared well on Xi Scorpii but after The Reckoning, most were destroyed, and the ones that survived were mutated far beyond their original form. A few seeds did survive, and all of the current Labcrop are descended from them, Labcrop Farms are very rare, and the seeds are highly valuable, as those with power and control of the seeds hold a strict monopoly on them. The strange metal is called Void-steel by Survivors, and is extremely rare, typically, only the finest smiths are allowed to even touch the metal, let alone craft with it. Well made Void-steel Equipment is ridiculously valuable and is superior to other materials for tools, armor, and weapons.

Maybe some people hunt AI down to harvest Void-steel from them? These are my ideas. What is the Planet called?

[vishdafish]

+1 to above, dsounds good, perhaps the planet shud be called Orius Major.

[Ardent Debater]

+1 to above, dsounds good, perhaps the planet shud be called Orius Major.

I like that for a Planet name. What if Orius Major had two moons, impacting the Tide, the day/night cycle, and making the night brighter? Which would probably lead to nocturnal predators that don't need much night vision, but nocturnal prey would become better camouflaged, requiring the predators to become more intelligent and perceptive... Hmm, this changes a lot about the ecosystem now that I think about it, but that could be a good thing...

Did life exist on Orius Major before The Vessel arrived?

[vishdafish]

The moon idea sounds pretty good, although it would limit the options you could do in the game. Night raids would be impossible, and humans would excel slightly too much in a brighter environment (guns are far easier to aim in a bright night, and humans wont have to pay as much caution when they sleep/camp cos its far easier to see potential threats. Although very perceptive and intelligent predators would try to keep out of sight, I can't think of a feasible way that animals could ambush humans in a bright night, unless they are in a densely forested area.)

As for life on the planet before the ship landed, I think it would make the game a LOT more exciting and challenging, if they have to face native threats and stuff.

[VoidSlayer]

The moon idea sounds pretty good, although it would limit the options you could do in the game. Night raids would be impossible, and humans would excel slightly too much in a brighter environment (guns are far easier to aim in a bright night, and humans wont have to pay as much caution when they sleep/camp cos its far easier to see potential threats. Although very perceptive and intelligent predators would try to keep out of sight, I can't think of a feasible way that animals could ambush humans in a bright night, unless they are in a densely forested area.)

As for life on the planet before the ship landed, I think it would make the game a LOT more exciting and challenging, if they have to face native threats and stuff.

The planet already having life could even be the reason for such a long journey.  Alternatively a "perfectly well functioning" transforming drone could have been sent ahead to seed the planet with "completely safe and harmless" life forms.