As the subject says - i'm planning my first game, and the plan is to launch in two weeks. Some background data:
I think i'll start on Mars. it's fairly well detailed, it's not TOO freaky right out of the gate (so to speak) and my players will find enough there that's familiar enough for them to get the feel for the setting without getting lost or in over their heads right off the bat.
I'm writing the initial scenario, which is going to involve Olympus, the TQZ, some neo-hermetic freemasons involved in something way over their heads and a cognite executive who's got a hidden agenda. there's going to be a few martian nomads and a ranger in there too for local color.
some observations:
I usually have to pull my punches a bit on the first scenario with a new game/setting. not so with EP - dying and resleeving is part of the charm.
combat seems far simpler in this system than it has been in others (most recently Rogue Trader from Fantasy Flight Games).
plenty of room to grow! Sunward really helped set the game up for me. enough detail to build, but not so much that I couldn't write a few things on my own.
background material/ideas easy to find, both here on this site and on some of the linked fan sites.
questions:
has anyone else recently fired up an EP campaign? if so, what did you do that helped your players get into the setting a bit easier?
thoughts/comments/observations/suggestions welcome!
thanks in advance.
Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.
Planning my first EP game
Mon, 2011-10-31 12:44
#1
weaver95
Planning my first EP game
Mon, 2011-10-31 13:03
#2
Re-Laborat
Re: Planning my first EP game
My thoughts:
Immerse them by little tidbits of description. My first time through, I had a sticky at eye level that said "Remember to describe everything in terms of AR and remember about Mist." So, for example the loner drinking at the bar who isn't broadcasting a Mesh ID but instead has an AR "Do Not Disturb" sign over him. The company-town brothel where the working girls have price tags and specialties listed any time one glances at them. A pair of shop-owners arguing about one's AR advertisement blocking the other while a bored cop halfheartedly tries to mediate.
On Mars, if you're not in one of the better urban zones, have clankers everywhere, some begging. In better neighborhoods maybe the clanker or uplift delivery-sapient being shoved around by private security.
Think about the setting of Blade Runner. It constantly told you what the world was like, even though very little of it was shown on screen. It implied a great deal by crowding the screen with repeated examples.
Dig through Sunward, consider hyperons involvement on Mars, consider how it will show. the whole "company town" idea one might run into outside the major cities can be extrapolated from Westerns, "Railhead" for MDOT projects instead of transcontinental railroads.
I found Robinson's "Mars" books invaluable. Awesome scenery. the scale of Mars is its own truly alien environment.
Mon, 2011-10-31 13:06
#3
weaver95
Re: Planning my first EP game
*scribbles notes*
this is good stuff....
I'm also thinking that I might want to compile a list of common terms/concepts and make some hand outs for my players.
Mon, 2011-10-31 13:11
#4
Re-Laborat
Re: Planning my first EP game
Definitely a good idea. And use them. Make "Ruster" part of normal conversation.
Ah, I forgot. Outside cities, remember the massive scale of the terraforming projects. Have the occasional alert to avoid given coordinates due to commentary bombardment. Let them see one come in on the horizon.
Mon, 2011-10-31 13:40
#5
weaver95
Re: Planning my first EP game
good call. i'll work that into my initial write up.
Mon, 2011-10-31 14:00
#6
Arenamontanus
Re: Planning my first EP game
"You all meet at an inn, where a mysterious hooded stranger approaches your party... which is pretty typical for the corporate VPN simspaces Deucalion Solutions uses for its employees. The hooded stranger is of course Mr Zhang, your boss."
I think one important aspect of EP that should be as prevalent as AR is the sense of doom. This is ten years after the Fall. The question is not how many family members you lost, but if any survived. Something horrific has happened, so vast that most people cannot even talk about it - think about how people in the 20's or 50's avoided mentions of The War. A lot of people have just recently rebuilt a semblance of normality and are clinging to it, even though it is utterly bizarre. Most people are on constant psychotherapy, drugs or reconstructive psychosurgery, but of course keep that secret from everybody else. One reason the TQZ is taboo is simply that it is an active reminder of that horrible time... and a promise that it might come back.
Typically, I find that players not used to a wildly transhuman setting need a bit help settling in. Having NPCs that use the settings tricks as everyday operations can be helpful. "Oh, extra guests! I'll fab up some extra cutlery and food! You do eat, do you? Otherwise, we have a subscription to GourmetNet for sim-dishes."
—
Mon, 2011-10-31 14:09
#7
weaver95
Re: Planning my first EP game
we just finished a Rogue Trader campaign (fantasy flight games) and wanted to stick with something still in the sci-fi arena. so they're still in a sci fi/hi tech frame of mind. i'm just going to have to get them thinking in transhumanist terms now rather than techo-gothic horror (although that could play a role too, now that I think of it).
Mon, 2011-10-31 15:04
#8
Quincey Forder
Re: Planning my first EP game
Another great read for atmospheres and ambiances, especially in the Belt and Trojans;
"Leviathan Wakes" by James S.A. Corey. it's the first in the Expanse series (and only one currently aviable)
Believe you me, it will do wonders for your mental images and descriptions of places like Ceres, Extropia or even Phelan's Recourse
it'll also provide you with awesome ideas for NPC and "quick time events"
—
[center] Q U I N C E Y ^_*_^ F O R D E R [/center]
Remember The Cant!
[img]http://tinyurl.com/h8azy78[/img]
[img]http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg205/tachistarfire/theeye_fanzine_us...
Mon, 2011-10-31 23:10
#9
Re-Laborat
Re: Planning my first EP game
I can't believe I wrote "commentary bombardment".
That's Arenamontanus' job and has nothing to do with Mars, specifically, or the Tarsus Terraforming Office.
(I only kid.)
Tue, 2011-11-01 00:28
#10
Quincey Forder
Re: Planning my first EP game
"Commentary bombardment" common noun. masc. heavy duty memetic warfare, generally involving several delta forks supervised by a beta forks. particularly useful on polls and election debates
excerpt of Cognite memetician handbook. Edition AF10
all kinding aside, memetic attacks can be really efficient as plot hook and McGuffin both.
Fighting a bad guy is easy. fighting a bad idea, that's something else entirely!
Starting a rumor, placing a meme in a small mining settlement in the belt against the player characters is a great way to generate paranoia in an adventure.
That's something used in Uncharted 3, for example. I'm not telling what or how it's done, but the way it's use is really scary and gives some nifty idea for GMs. kudos to Naughty Dog for that!
—
[center] Q U I N C E Y ^_*_^ F O R D E R [/center]
Remember The Cant!
[img]http://tinyurl.com/h8azy78[/img]
[img]http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg205/tachistarfire/theeye_fanzine_us...
Tue, 2011-11-01 07:17
#11
Xagroth
Re: Planning my first EP game
I started my game in Valles-New Shanghai, which I think has much more "local" possibilities than the other cities (5 domes, each with its own theme, tons of factions and people) and it's less "extreme" than Olympus regarding environment and police situation.
My advice: "build" two, three or even four locations where your players will gather sometimes. There, make two or three characters (you can even adapt -that means copy XD- some places and characters from books, series, anime...). Finally, remember to give the players a small but intense description of the city they are living before starting and some of its quirks (Olympus: the orbital elevator, all the planet's transport systems end/start there, police going around in packs instead of pairs, no dome, cold, winds, nearly a ghost town in certain neighborhoods. But, oh so beautiful view of the planet!).
Also, pick one theme. I see Olympus as some sort of frontier city of the Wild West, still in use but past its prime, no longer a capital but a port (with more buildings than people, because it is NOT a free port), so tons of dust, and low buildings with thick walls (better isolation against the cold), all in the red tint of the world.
As for places, I'd suggest at least one bar, where the players either stay drinking between jobs or their "manager" can find them, another place where they have some informer, and a place where people tends to gather to party, specially the young ones. As for the rest, most of the places you used in Rogue Trader can be recycled (but you need to change the mood a little): cargo bay, servitors (here, robots or indetured informorphs in pods/synthmorphs), markets, dark streets, luxury places for the rich... that kind of stuff.
Oh, and make a choice about weapons. My players tend to go light (a medium pistol each, and the mercenary carries a hidden assault rifle), but in Olympus your players might want to carry heavy pieces.
Tue, 2011-11-01 10:45
#12
weaver95
Re: Planning my first EP game
I have the basic idea down for the start of the campaign - my view of Olympus is something of a cross between blade runner and Innsmouth. corrupt cops, center of town is active and very corporate. But as you move out from the Needle and away from the shipment points and Comex facilities it gets weirder - empty/abandoned buildings, scrap code and static fuzz on your AR, weird echoes and movement from the corner of your eye but nothing there when you turn. clusters of hostile and secretive people. the feeling of being watched. And always about you - the wind blowing, rising and falling, at first loud then softer but always always the sound of the cold wind blowing and rattling and pushing.
I don't expect them to STAY in Olympus (in fact the mystery I have planned will eventually lead them to the TQZ) but it's as good a place to start as any.
Tue, 2011-11-01 15:43
#13
weaver95
Re: Planning my first EP game
so continuing my development, i've come up with the following issue - the exsurgent virus presents a certain problem. well...other than turning you into a mutant psi fueled freak of course. the issue is how much do people know about it and how does the Lost generation intersect with that knowledge?
so here's what I've come up with - feel free to chime in as I go along:
the Lost generation were indeed infected by their relatively benign strain, becoming asynchs along the way. However, as everyone knows - that generation went rather mad. i'm going to assume that for the most part the 'common man' doesn't know what made the Lost go pear shaped. all they know is that something bad happened and all Lost are a bit off. they're freaky in a way most people can't figure out. Nobody talks about the exsurgent virus, because that sort of thing isn't really common knowledge. Human nature being what it is, nobody really cares to know - they just write off the Lost as...well....Lost.
the Lost themselves might not even know the origin of their psi abilities. they just know they can do things normal people can't do. SOME might have figured out part of the story, but most either try to ignore their powers, or simply accept them as part of themselves. hell, they might have even concluded that they were engineered to have psionic powers in the first place. Lost who joined Firewall though...they might have an entirely different view.
Cognite rank and file probably don't know much more than the Lost do. And the few that are 'in the know' probably don't know all the details either. I'd guess that for the most part the hypercorp either knows about the exsurgent virus and wants to know how it infected the Lost or they don't care about how it happened, they merely want to find a way to make money off it. either way they aren't in the mood to talk about it either.
As for the exsurgent virus in a more general sense, i'm going to assume that most of (trans)humanity simply assumes that anyone mutating is 'merely' infected by a freaky/weird TITAN nanoplague and 1. run like hell or 2. shoot that thing lots and THEN run like hell. probably some combination of running and shooting is the likely result. I doubt any of the 'unwashed masses' really stops to consider closely anything someone exposed to TITANS nano mutates/warps into becoming...so most people don't know what the 'exsurgent virus' is..they just know that their nanoplague detector just started pinging like mad and they're outta there ASAP.
sound right so far?
Tue, 2011-11-01 18:40
#14
Arenamontanus
Re: Planning my first EP game
Yeah, I doubt most people (or organisations) make any real distinction between normal nanoplagues and the exsurgent virus. There are likely some "smart" plagues around due to self-replicating AIs or nanomachines that look fairly similar. It takes the big picture view of Firewall and a few others to realize that the virus really seems to be having a much more sinister agenda. A bit like how Stuxnet was not just general maliciousness but a surgical attack on some target.
—
Tue, 2011-11-01 19:10
#15
weaver95
Re: Planning my first EP game
I think i'm going to stick with the idea that Transhumanity can suffer from the same weakness as plain old regular blend humanity - sometimes they just don't wanna know the truth. sure, they could find out more if they wanted...but after surviving the Fall most people just want a regular 9 to 5 job where they can do something meaningful then come home at the end of the day, crack open a beer and have dinner with the wife/bot.
Wed, 2011-11-02 08:45
#16
Xagroth
Re: Planning my first EP game
Yeah, I think it's quite a solid way to start the game. I started this campaign as a "settled" one because the previous one, fully nomadic, was quite a shock for the players, so I try to go slowly.
For the moment, they are chasing an AGI inside a military-level Remade morph (about 100.000 creds worth of goodies!) that has not only the triads (the ones who hired the players), but some bounty hunters (hired by Cognite... uh-oh). And the players went and implicated the Ultimates (one of them blurted everything they knew... ah, players that misunderstand Real World Naiveté with "stupid"... with COG 40...). I call that adventure Blade Runner... but could be called Project 2501 also XD
Wed, 2011-11-02 11:53
#17
weaver95
Re: Planning my first EP game
tonight will be character creation for my newly formed EP game. not sure what everyone has in mind for characters, but i've got at least ONE player who wants to play a ranger. which is actually rather right in line with setting the game largely on Mars.
Wed, 2011-11-02 22:37
#18
Re-Laborat
Re: Planning my first EP game
Good luck with it! Hope everyone has fun.
Thu, 2011-11-03 02:18
#19
weaver95
Re: Planning my first EP game
well, character creation is done. we had some rough issues there at the start, but I went over the background material and handed out some information on the game setting. we discussed characters, looked over archtypes, and here's what we ended up with:
Martian Ranger (barsoomian faction)
Martian genehacker (criminal faction)
Lost assassin (brinker faction)
Bored oligarch (anarchist faction).
the oligarch has essentially decided to move her money somewhere safe and quiet, then topple the PC because hey - why the hell not? she's bored and they're insolent. The genehacker just wants to make money, but he found out about things like the exsurgent virus and *really* didn't like what it implied. the Ranger is down with the B and the Lost assassin is searching for some way to balance her gifts and curse while trying to turn assassination into a new performance art.
so thats my core group. I might end up inviting another player into the mix but that depends on people's schedules.
EDIT:
incidentally, the quick start rules PDF helped immensely.
Thu, 2011-11-03 08:08
#20
Xagroth
Re: Planning my first EP game
I hope you had more luck with the character creation process than I did, because I ended devoting about 2 full sessions and 2 parts of a gameplay making and remaking the character sheets. Point miscalculation (the AGI player ended with about 1200 CP spent... before getting to money and gear! XD, and the hitman payed for the whole skills, including thee part covered by the attributes), point distribution (200 in knoweldge skills, 600 in active...), and a few issues with Field skills.
If I can have a suggestion for The Eye fanzine people, I'd ask for "profession" packages/suggested skills, like "an ego hunter would have the following skills: blablabla" (without costs and such, just as a way to make characters a little more congruent with the background).
Thu, 2011-11-03 11:11
#21
Re-Laborat
Re: Planning my first EP game
Suggestion noted. I'm sure you've seen NPC File #01.
What professions did you have in mind?
Thu, 2011-11-03 12:55
#22
weaver95
Re: Planning my first EP game
My players found the list of 'character archtypes' to be very useful. we used the main book, Sunward, Panopticon and the quickstart rules as templates for character creation. they took those characters, then they adjusted them to make them fit better into what THEY wanted to play. it sped up character creation quite a bit lemme tell ya.
the only character we ended up building from scratch was the Lost. she ended up a performance artist/assassin. I did mention she's crazy, right?
Thu, 2011-11-03 14:29
#23
Re-Laborat
Re: Planning my first EP game
Lost == Crazy. :)
"Madame Eurydice reviendra des Enfers."(Aside towards fictitious artist/murderers)
Thu, 2011-11-03 15:45
#24
weaver95
Re: Planning my first EP game
On a related note, there was some discussion of 'motivations'. I was somewhat at a loss as to explain the concept in a way that would mean something to my players.
Thu, 2011-11-03 15:59
#25
CodeBreaker
Re: Planning my first EP game
In what way? They represent the characters abstract goals in life. Say I have an AGI character who hates the way his kind are treated in the Inner System, and wants to change that. He might take +AGI rights as a motivation. They are objectives and ideals that motivate the character to action. They aren't the only ideals the character holds, but they are the important, defining ones.
—
-
Thu, 2011-11-03 16:06
#26
weaver95
Re: Planning my first EP game
my players weren't used to considering their character goals in three terms or less. abstracting them out was a bit of a challenge, at least at first.
Fri, 2011-11-04 09:48
#27
Xagroth
Re: Planning my first EP game
Mmmm I'd say to them that those three motivations are NOT the whole character, but his core, the stuff he will never doubt. Remember, being true to them allows to gain Moxie points during gameplay, and the book gives only examples: you can make them more concrete, or take others altogether.
For example, +logic (you value logic as a ways to explain everything around you, looking for an explanation for everything), +chaos (you value endless change, without any need for meaning behind, often starting situations and leaving them for themsleves to develop), or even +aliens (you wanna find the good aliens to leave this shithole called "transhumanity").
Long term goals, core motivations, dreams... A player can have many, but only three will be "tuned" to his "heroic side" (the Moxie).
Fri, 2011-11-04 22:34
#28
weaver95
Re: Planning my first EP game
I'm adding this to my list of things to use while on Mars...
http://www.fireflywiki.org/Firefly/ChinesePhrases
Sat, 2011-11-05 15:05
#29
Re-Laborat
Re: Planning my first EP game
There are some more complete ones out there (including the link near the top of that page to 'fireflychinese.com') but definitely. Whatever the top language in your environment is, bring it on in and start tossing little bits and pieces in. Anything to build mood.
Oh, and definitely remember the colors of the Martian noon-sky and sunset. That's a mind-trip right there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIksHVxEH2c