We write year 2210, the human race has been successful in the colonization of the solar system - yet after initial colonization civil war, epidemics and balkanization broke out on earth itself, no request for communication was answered for a period of about 100 years in which the colonies of mankind in space had to survive on their own with the basic infrastructure that had been acquired in the few generations since their founding.
It has now been about 30 years since earth had re established contact in 2184 announcing themselves under new government and rule of the Central Earth Government and Administration: CEGA. Initially seeking to reacquire a firm grasp of the former colonies, they were quick to discover that in the chaos the rest of the solar system had already founded its own nations, armies, economies and societies. The years it took CEGA to once again build its power within the solar system through a presence in space were enough for those nations to build up their own power and maintain their sovereignty for now, though the interests of earth to unite the solar system under a single ruler again are well known and without doubt.
Whether it be the great banks ruling the de facto oligarchy of Venus, Mars with its fleet of solar powered ships providing transportation and logistics for the entire solar system, Jupiter with the Jovian Confederacy or the two nations on the Moon permanently on the brink of civil war - none seem inclined to easily surrender themselves.
Conflict seems inevitable, though whether it will be resolved through means of diplomacy, war or otherwise is as unsure as the exact time that might plunge humanity towards an interstellar conflict with stakes yet unknown.
Welcome to the:
Hi!
I’m a relatively short time lurker that stumbled upon these forums through reading the great and infamous story of Boatmurdered, and as quite the avid P&P and Tabletop gamer myself I quickly delved into what is this glorious subforum and all its many creative and amazing threads which I’ve been reading for a few weeks now.
There’s been an idea in my head for quite some time now to run what would basically be the “West Marches” equivalent of a P&P campaign in space - basically, have people create characters, mash them together in random, ever changing groups who are mostly out to fulfill one task, explore some unknown location or do other stuff and then return to a ‘frontier city’ of some sorts to rest up again.
My train of thought followed that this could best be executed as crew of a ship, the players being pilots, boarding crews, engineers or whatever that travelled around on this very ship taking on various missions that are scheduled to be done - even MORE interesting if between sessions they could actually work on their equipment, have discussions about where to go next, what to do, which stuff to upgrade next or what to make. Essentially there would be two layers to the game: The P&P sessions ran on relatively short notice to whoever would sign up first, and the ‘management’ and in-between aspects of running the ship, upgrading equipment and making sure it’s good to go.
These forums seemed like the perfect platform to look for people who might be interested in seeing where this project might lead in terms of storytelling and adventureTM.
TL;DR of above spoiler:
A P&P campaign using the Silhouette Core rule system in the Jovian Chronicles setting that consists of two connected parts:
I. Players playing characters in P&P-esque missions played in sessions, ranging from diplomatic requests, to rooting out pirates attacking trade routes or gathering intelligence for rewards
II. The ‘management’ of operations that builds the base for the players, so the guys deciding what equipment to buy, which bigger contracts/missions to go for and how to keep the whole thing running.
Basically there’s going to be ‘three’ channels that this is going to run through, from top to bottom:
This very forum thread
In which the management side of things will decide on what projects they want to follow, which things to develop and any other strategic decisions. (Which I’m looking into adapting some arms-race esque systems and such). This doesn’t mean that player’s characters can’t chime in say how they feel about stuff and participate in the discussion, too. This is also where ‘recaps’ of the roleplay sessions will be posted so everyone’s on the same page of what’s going on.
A discord server
That will be used to post “missions” for people to sign up for that are then run with the players, a place where characters can do stuff between missions (engineers fixing shit, socially minded characters interacting with crew, and so on) and serves as general place for people to interact between missions (aka: There might be a bar channel where people can have IC conversations if they feel like going for some roleplay and other IC comms like general broadcasts and such)
The actual campaign hosted on Roll20
Which is a website we will use to play out the actual missions and tasks people go on. That being said I would prefer to use Discord for voice communications and actual play, simply because it tends to go a lot smoother and quicker to explain rules, do combat and in general set the mood for a scene if you don’t use text exclusively, HOWEVER, if people are totally up in arms about this and would rather prefer the P&P side of this to be text-based as well then I’m sure we can manage something.
Not exactly hard science fiction, but not star trek either. There’s no known let alone tested FTL travel, engines still run on combustion principes, lasers are nothing you use in hand-held rifles or equipment to shoot at people.
But there’s reasonably big spacecraft, fighters, mechs (think a mix between Battletech in Space and Gundam with less 12 year olds piloting them) that shoot missile batteries at each other which they try to defeat with their point defense. Lasers, railguns and all the good stuff is used, but still experimental and rather large and clunky so projectile based weapons are still standard.
For reasons of simplicity and me not wanting to run an hour of physics calculation each setting - orbits are a thing, you have to decelerate while travelling about halfway in, thrust usually provides some form of gravity but we’ll abstract these things. For space combat we will assume forces either match velocities, or pass by each other having maybe one or two turns to fire at each other before they disappear from sight again but I won’t be calculating velocities.
As far as development from the management sides go: Could you discover FTL travel? Maybe. If you throw huge resources into it and completely forego any and all other research projects for years. New experimental rail guns? Much more reasonable, though still nothing you’d accomplish in a week with a few scientists and no funding. Design a new type of mech with cutting edge, but existing technology? Depending on the amount of production, it’ll have flaws and quirks of a prototype, but it’ll work. (SilCore has rules for this. Very fun rules.)
The big ol’ question of ‘what the fuck do you want to do’. Now, the setting and game system I’ll be using for this are fixed, but I want the participants to decide what part they want to play within the setting - I’d appreciate if you only post your responses below if you’re actually interested in playing a part of this because otherwise we might end up with a thread that A LOT OF PEOPLE would love to read about, but not actively participate in.
1. Mercenary Company
A recently formed mercenary company that is the offshoot of a rather successful, quickly growing network of corporations that originally started as a business involved in hauling goods across the solar system.
Characters would be: Mercenaries contracted to the company, possibly being promoted into commanders of certain sections or ‘combat groups’ as the story progresses. (Wing Commanders, Chief of Engineering/Medical/Whatever etc.)
Management: The board of this very company, important advisors and supervisors deciding which tasks to take, who to work for, what new equipment to order or even developed etc.
Power level: Rather low in the beginning with the possibility of developing whatever way happens. (End up becoming the largest PMC in the solar system with a fleet of carriers? Go completely renegade, take over a bunch of small asteroids and form your own nation to operate out of? Say ‘fuck it’ and end up integrating into one of the many factions’ militaries? Whatever.)
2. Government Sponsored Organization
A new, experimental Division from one of the existing powers, though perhaps not officially recognized that was set up to do a number of possible things, including but not limited to: Perform covert operations that can’t be attributed to the origin nation, develop/test out new equipment and prototypes or do a bunch of other stuff.
Characters would be: Pilots and crew assigned to the division
Management would entail: The people put in charge of...well...managing this whole shit.
Power level: Good access to equipment and staff, not as much freedom since goals will be dictated by the ‘sponsoring’ nation. Might possibly end up splitting off, having it’s own goals or do whatever that ‘secret organizations set up by nations to do shady shit’ end up doing in Movies, Anime and whatnot.
3. Returning Asteroid Colony
Before the collapse of earth’s society as we know it an asteroid was discovered that orbited the solar system at high speeds, passing it about every 300 years. Quick scans indicated valuable minerals and assets on the large piece of space rock, and after viability was confirmed a team of engineers, miners, scientists and other personnel was sent to reclaim those resources and ship them to the rest of the solar system on their return which would be initiated by a huge engine that would slow the asteroid down enough to make this feasible. (I know, by today’s standards this is pretty much impossible. But rule of cool guys, c’mon.)
You play as the nation/state/organization that has developed through generations of isolation from the solar system - and have discovered some unique minerals and properties on your own ‘planet’ and other things you’ve come across that have lead to a leap in technology. How will this culture with it’s very own society and people react to it’s return to the solar system? Will it simply deliver its resources? Try to stay indepent? You decide!
Characters would be: Important/talented personnel and people sent out to recon the solar system or do other stuffz
Management on the other hand: Probably whatever governing body you decide to operate as that lives on this space rock.
Power level: Technological advantage over the solar system, a society adjusted to research and having cutting edge technology but with no future left on the exhausted resources of their ‘home’ and no idea of what the fuck the rest of the solar system has been up to. So I’d say...rather high with tendency to go either way?
4. Something completely different that I haven’t even thought about. Perhaps a crime syndicate, miners living in the outer belts looking for freedom (pun intended) or a research organization. If so, please elaborate. Other people feel free to quote/comment on already posted idea’s if you’d rather prefer that.
So how do the character sheets look? How do I create a character?
As SilCore in it's own is a full P&P rulebook I'm sure someone would sue me for just publicly posting the entire character generation rules. We'll sit through that together on the Discord channel - it's quick and painless, usually done in 15 minutes or less since the system is quite simple. However, I'll hand you some images of the character sheets we will be using so you can get an idea on what skills, attributes, etc. there are.
The Character in this example was a quick testing NPC I drew up to get used to the combat rules, creation took about 10 minutes.
Some general Information: Skills have a Level and Complexity. The Level works just as in every RPG you've ever seen: More levels, more dice. Complexity is basically how advanced your characters understanding of a given subject is.
A very good example for this is the 'Medicine' Skill. A character with Medicine level 4 and complexity 1 is really fucking good at first aid in combat, fixing blood loss and initially stabilizing patients. But since he lacks any deeper education he doesn't know how to perform surgery or other more complicated forms of medicine.
In contrast, another character with Medicine level 3 and complexity 4 might not be as good in performing some basic first aid skills because he lacks experience/talent/whatever but he probably has a doctor's degree or some other form of training and knowledge that allows him to perform but the most complicated surgery without issue.
This also allows for character who, for example, are really good at quickly fixing a mechanical problem on the fly with what they have, but have no idea how to design an engine and other similiar things. This usually applies to all skills except for some edge cases like language (where complexity indicates how many different languages your character speaks at that level)
As you can see some skills have a description attached to them, these are specializations. Some skills like Pilot and Gunnery require them and you need to spend points for each additional specialization your character has, some of them (like 'Military' under Etiquette in this example sheet) can have them added for a skill bonus in that particular area.
I'll also go through the attributes really quickly:
Build - Size and body frame, not physical might (ex: A character with really high build but low fitness might be large and have a lot of mass, but he still has troubles lifting heavy weights)
Creatitiy - How well the character can use his mind to innovate and figure out stuff on the fly.
Fitness - Flexibility, endurance, resistance and muscle tone. Basically the other side of build.
Influence - Exactly that. A character's charm and how good he is at influencing others.
Knowledge - Ability to learn and remember information, usually somewhat indicitive to education aswell.
Perception - Finding stuff, noticing or predicting attacks, etc.
Psyche - How your character comes 'across' others. A high influence might mean he's a smooth talker, a character with high psyche seems friendly and trustworthy from the outset, is empathic and just generally someone you want to be arround.
Willpower - Determination and self-discipline.
The other attributes you see on the sheet are secondary ones that are calculated through the main ones, so don't worry about those too much.
For sake of ‘documentation’ if you’re interested in playing as either side, please fill out this QuickFormTM
[b]Mandatory:[/b]
Forum Name:
Ingame Name: (Management technically doesn’t need one, but it’s still nice to have. Otherwise I’ll make some form of cover or ingame name from your user name.)
Interested in: Management/RP-Character/Both
Preferred campaign idea: (See spoiler: 'What part will we play')
Timezone:
[b]Optional:[/b]
If RP-Character: Are you okay with using VOIP for sessions or would you prefer text-based sessions?
Anything you might have a particular interest in?: (ex: ‘I want to play a character that is responsible for repairing/fixing/coming up with on the fly technical shit to modify equipment’)
What timezone are the P&P sessions going to be?
I live in europe. But I’m a student and my sleep cycle isn’t the most predictable thing. If we’re going by GMT+0 or Zulu time then anywhere from 20:00-06:00 is reasonable, I’m quite ready to adjust to available players on weekends or during summer break etc. I'll try to post the session times and a general overview of the mission one day in advance, and then players can sign up for it through the discord server. I might reserve slots for people if they didn't have the chance to play for quite some time or specifically asked for some kind of mission otherwise - first come first serve.
Do characters have to be fighter or mech pilots?
Since most mission are probably going to involve some kind of spacecraft thing some skills would be nice. I’m not opposed to someone riding shotgun as gunner of some larger fighter or even a character that stays exclusively on the ship as engineer/communications specialist or something of that sort, you’ll probably be more involved in the Discord side of RP than the Roll20 sessions though.
If we get like, fifteen people that all want to play marines boarding ships or private investigaros tho then we can always throw things arround.
Do I need to know the rules of the P&P System?
No! It’s fairly easy and quick to learn, at the basis it’s a D6 system that puts way more emphasis on the skills and abilities of your characters than skills. (You roll D6 dice equivalent to your skill, add your ability score. Multiple sixes add one to the total result. Example: You have an ‘Agility’ of 2 and ‘Acrobatics’ 2 and try to run after some guy to catch him, you roll 2 D6 and take highest, then add 2.) What this does it that you don’t get the usual randomness of D20 systems. If your character is an experienced marksman and he’s told to shoot a standing target under ideal conditions at 400m then it’s basically impossible for him to fail.
Do I need to know stuff about the setting?
Nope! I’ll try to give insight and explain the different factions and their motivations throughout the campaign as best I can and will always be available for questions either on the forums or through the discord server!
So where's that discord?
Here:
https://discord.gg/98D3nA9
Author
Topic: Aurora Project | Sci-Fi Strategy and P&P mix (Read 847 times)