[Empire of Doors] Space Opera/Science Fantasy

[Dotan Dimet]

Last session, my gaming group destroyed the world. So this week, we started a new campaign.

We'd brainstormed last session and in the begining of this session. Sword & Sorcery, a non-tech setting, Star Trek and Dune were all suggested. I toyed with an idea about something set in the Dreamlands (Lovecraft remix) and was distracted by Planescape. Both myself and some of the players wanted a setting with "space" and opportunities to move about. Eventually I offered a postapocalyptic space opera setting, very vaguely sketched:

The Empire fell a long time ago. It had stretched across the galaxy, connected not by FTL spacecraft, but by Gates, which allowed people to step across from one planet to the other. Not everyone could pass through these gates - only certain people had the gift to navigate the hyperspace between them and emerge. These people, the Navigators, carried news, information and materials between the worlds.

And one day, the gates stopped working. The navigators stopped coming through. Interstellar travel (slower than light, minor but still important) has also stopped, and with the worlds left to their own devices, Civilization has crumbled.

Many years later, on a backwater planet, a gate stands alone in the middle of an empty desert plane. There is a flash of light, powerful lightning lancing down from the sky. The gate has been activated.

Who are you and why did you step through the gate? I asked the players. I gave them free rein in coming up with their characters and their home worlds. I also told them that psi powers are available in this setting, but these will be mostly telepathy and similar powers - telekinesis would be very weak, if at all.

The character Oren came up with, Jack, is a "space trucker", a former military-trained covert-ops specialist, discharged for "attitude problems". He comes from an advanced, high-tech world, and works as a shuttle pilot, flying freight in space (to orbit or to the moon, I assume - Interstellar travel is out). He's also a smuggler, and activated a gate when he got jumped on by security forces who cornered him in a sting operation. He conveniently had his overnight bag with him, and a gun. Oh, and he's very physically tough. Oren described him as sort of Corbin Dallas from "Fifth Element", but he also sounds very much like Arnold or Dolph.

Boaz came up with a sort-of Jedi/Ninja: His character, Adep, belongs to a secret society/criminal conspiracy group, which have extensive martial arts training ("he fights very cool"), specifically the "Gun Kata" (from the movie Equilibrium); they also have psychic powers, in particular the ability to transfer their consciousness into someone else and control his body. This struck me as an awfully disruptive power - both for the campaign and for the setting. Bo suggested that it works at any range, targeting people through their photographs; that the limitation is that it doesn't work on people wearing metal headgear (tinfoil hats!) and that it is fatiguing (when he is possessing someone, Adep's body slumps unconscious). Bo also added a cool suggestion that his society claim to be the remnants of the Imperial police (the image of the Imperial police taking over people's minds - of the "Jedi" actually being Orwellian thought-police - was so creepy and cool, I think it what made me let him get away with it). Adep's reason for passing through a gate was blunt and simple: his boss/master told him to do it, and he obeys without hesitation - a sort of Samurai code of discipline. Adep dresses in black, with pistols, hidden knives, lockpicks, metal armbands and other ninja gear (including the infamous "instant water" bags...)

Ghoula's character came from an ancient research station - a space habitat inhabited for thousands of years by a dying race of scholars, who had adapted and genetically engineered themselves into an immortal, infertile, dimorphic race of mental supermen. The men had developed more abstract thinking abilities ("Mentats"), while the women had developed more in the direction of empathy, reading body language, social interaction, intuition, and finely-tuned body control ("Bene Gesserit"). Her character, Kachkala, was the last child born to this race, and was sent through a gate in hope that she would find a way to save it. She has solid blue eyes, a shaved head with a tataric horse-tail top knot, and very strange clothes.

Finally, Israel, playing his cards close to his chest, created the dashing Bandana, diplomat from the planet Conan, a wiry warrior in a fur jacket, armed with twin shockguns and mounted on a handsome stallion called Mach.

As we open the game, these four characters find themselves near a Gate in the desert. A boy called Jorn greets them.He is apparently the one who "called" them to this particular planet (which is called Jotun). Jorn is apparently a potential navigator.

Jorn wants to take them to The Man From The Sky, a stranger who traveled from afar to reach the gate and who recruited him to open it. They go to the nearby town. On the way, Jorn insists they stop in a nearby cave to put on local clothing and hide Mach (the horse), since the locals apparently aren't fond of people coming out of the Gate.

A big temple dominates the primitive desert town, and the streets are patrolled by acolytes armed with truncheons. Jorn leads them to a shed where The Man From The Stars is supposed to be waiting, but he is distressed to find the man missing. A pair of suspicious acolytes show up and try to take them in for questioning. This suits Bandana fine, because he's in a "take me to your leader" sort of mood; the acolytes were reacting badly, but Adep took over one of the acolytes' mind and used this to defuse the situation - preventing it from turning violent.

The four outworlders proceeded with the guards to the temple (Jorn stayed behind), where they met the High Priest, who also did not appear very sympathetic - apparently, the locals had bad encounters with people who came through the Gates: the priest referred to them as "demons". He threatened the PCs with an advanced weapon, apparently some gun taken from these "demons". He did not react well to Bandana's offer to rejoin the Empire ("Good news, we're putting the Empire back together!"). The high priest suggested his visitors retire to refresh themselves - and had his guards escort them to a prison apartment that was locked once they were inside.

They discover Jorn's master, the man from the stars, in the cell next to them (they can talk through the windows); they catch sight of Jorn on a nearby rooftop; Adep once again uses his consciousness-transfer power to control a guard and make him open the door's bolts and pick the lock. They free the man from the stars and sneak out of the temple. They rejoin Jorn and lie low until night time, then sneak out of town.

The man from the stars tells them that he was part of a space fleet, and that his craft crashed on this planet, "near the forbidden zone". They set off across the desert at night, with the general purpose of reaching his crashed craft.

In the desert, they are ambushed by a sniper with a powerful beam weapon, who cuts down Jorn. The others - Adep, Jack and Bandana - manage to close range and overcome their attackers, who are apparently two acolytes. The session ended as they were about to question the one surviving acolyte.

What have I learned:

   * If you want low-tech, pseudo-mediaval space opera, find more ways to limit guns.
   * Saying "no" to players ("you can't knock the door open", "this doesn't work") is fun (and a change).
   * Bene Gesserit and Jedi don't mix that well. The consciousness-transfer trick is too useful and "steals thunder" from more subtle social manipulations.
   * "A desert planet" is lazy SF.
   * There needs to be more of a reason for people to be together. Conversely, this doesn't neccessarily have to come from the players. At one point, Kachkala came along with the others because Ghoula thought she wouldn't go out on her own. But it might have been cool if she had (instead of coming along with the acolytes to the temple). I'm not sure if this is just the player dragging the character along in the precieved direction of the plot, or just the character being sensible.
   * Jack was pretty quiet - and he was the only one who actually framed a back story (i.e., an incident that lead him into the gate). Maybe Oren was just tired.
   * Israel seemed to have fun, and Bandana is a proper incarnation of his ur-concept of a character apathic or dedicated enough to cheerfully charge into the midst of danger and action.
   * I need more wonders, more scale.
   * Running SF makes me nervous: I usually run things very loose, making everything up on the fly, letting the players throws suggestions at me, until the background just accretes (and we usually play superheroes/modern fantasy, a very forgiving genre). I think space opera really needs more prep.

[DevP]

* Running SF makes me nervous: I usually run things very loose, making everything up on the fly, letting the players throws suggestions at me, until the background just accretes (and we usually play superheroes/modern fantasy, a very forgiving genre). I think space opera really needs more prep.

I think I find this an interesting point. I've tried very hard to create space opera with very little prep necessary, with various hits and misses. So far, it seems that the only key is Expectations: have a clear bullet point outline of the ground-rules of the universe (the unfortunate flipside being you never *really* have enough, and "enough" is subjective anyways; hence setting-creep).

Besides that, you can use technological conceits to create a more playable universe; if interplanetary travel takes a few weeks, you can make it clear that you only do that sort of travel between sessions (so you only focus on a single planet each session).

[b_bankhead]

Here is an unfinished SF game I am working on which deals with many of the issues that you mentioned:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9055
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9097
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9096

Heh, you might even enjoy looking at the cover I am working on for it...

http://www.geocities.com/sentinel_graphics@ameritech.net/shipandstars.jpg

(you may have to copy and paste the geocities url to make it work)

[Alan]

Hi Dotan,

What game are you playing?  Is it something of your own design, or a published system?

[Dotan Dimet]

B_Bankhead - thanks, that looks sort-of useful. Over the weekend I spent some time looking at world generator programs, and although struck agog by stuff like Celestia, I realized that I don't need orbits and axial tilts, I need settings for stories (as planets).

Dev - I probably would have had smoother sailing if I'd gone with a more standard setting (Traveller/Star Wars etc.) But I tried to skip the whole issue of starships by setting up these teleportation gates between planets. I think the idea came from looking at Planescape and thinking of that sort of setting, where world travel is very easy (but can be restricted by the GM, umm, completely arbitrarily...).  Making a list of points sounds like a good idea.

Alan - We play freeform and systemless, rolling dice if it suits our fancy, but generally getting along by GM-player-group agreement. Starting a new game sometimes makes me pause and consider using some rules system (last campaign, when we played modern superheroes, I started with Powergame for the first session, switched to Wushu, and went completely back to freeform within about 3-4 sessions).
One of the basic tenants of our gaming is that we do no prep and no homework, and the GM (me) can be as lazy as the players. Now (that I switched to sorta-SF), I feel I should put it some effort. However, since my players' basic philosophy is "yes yes let's play", I doubt there'll be much nitpicking.

[FredGarber]

Maybe an Relationship Map might help.  

<theory words off>
I do a pretty good freeform myself, and I've found that compressing NPCs is a good technique.  Why not have the guy who teaches the Jedi Mind Trick be... a Mentat, or something like Kachkala's race?  Why not make Mach The Horse... be Something Else?

Make a list of all the NPCs that are needed for the backstories of the PCs.  It shouldn't take that long.  And then start tying them together.  Don't necessarily go wild assigning motivations, because then the web might strangle the freeform.  But once all the characters are linked in, when they discover that, say, the Chief of Police who tried to stop Jack is really a Ninja/Jedi from a Rival branch of the old Imperial Police, then they might make up a really good reason why the boss/master sent Adep through the gate.

[ScottM]

The instantaneous gates (that no longer work) remind me strongly of Farcasters (in Dan Simmon's Hyperion series). The Morgaine Cycle (Exile's Gate by CJ Cherryh) also uses gates-to-worlds, with a stronger fantasy to SF ratio.

If you're looking for "logical" limitations on the possession (which does seem to be an easy way around social/etc. problems), perhaps the effect is not just fatiguing, but it also drains X (some kind of rare electrolytes, minerals, boogum-juice, what have you). The world that person came from was rich in X, but it's rare elsewhere. Perhaps it's parts per billion around here, instead of parts per thousand at home. So with work, he can distill more X, and can use it when desperate, but it's not a constant solution.

For "amazing worlds", a good geography book is filled with exotic worlds-- if you crib from a specific ecosystem (particularly in the past) and expand it, you can have a unique world, with critters that actually fit ecological niches.

Good luck with your game. The characters sound fascinating!

[Dotan Dimet]

ScottM: Yep, I'm ripping off the Farcasters from the Hyperion series. I'd rip off Cherryh's Morgaine, too (the tone of that is probably closer to what I originally envisioned), but I haven't read the books.

Oh, and a good idea for limiting the power using technobabble, but I don't feel we need to explain why it's suddenly weaker: we just make it weaker and ignore the discontinuity. The player and I will probably feel OK if it's very limited by duration - the player suggested that his body stops breathing when he's possessing someone...

Fred: Good ideas for tying things together. I'll keep them in mind.

Now, here's the second session report:

After the ambush (last session), they gathered the stray camels and buried Jorn.
Bandana insisted on saying a few words. The Man From The Stars was clearly
heartbroken. They interrogate their prisoner (Kachkala is interested in their
religious beliefs, and if there is any convenient messiah prophecy there to
exploit...), but all they learn is that they belong to an extremist group of
zealots that are opposed to all contact with offworlders and their technology.
Eventually, Kachkala lets the prisoner go, giving him enough water to get back
to the town below the Gate. Adap claimed dibs on the attackers' laser bazooka.

The Man From The Stars revealed that his name was Gaxaue (a bushman name, one
the PCs are bound to forget. Damn). He outlined the geography and politics
of Jotun (the local planet) to the group - They are heading into an area that
is bordered on one side by the sea (where there is a larger population) and on
the other side by the Forbidden Zone, where "the ground moves".

Gaxaue tells them that he crash-landed his ship on the edge of the Forbidden Zone; He
did this after being attacked by an unfamiliar hostile ship, one he suspects of
being a "Dragon".

I inserted a footnote here, explaining that
"Dragon" is a common term for alien robotic probes which search for
life signs and exterminate them, and that these Dragons destroyed the Earth in
the past, and that they are the reason that Radio communications are forbidden
throughout the worlds of the Empire. Yes, I ripped this off from Greg Bear's
"Forge of God".

So, they decide to head to the crashed starship (Jack seems most keen on this -
he's sure that as a space pilot he can repair the ship). They also mount up on
the camels to put some distance between themselves and any pursuit, and this
emphasizes that they are a bit short on mounts.

Eventually, Gaxaue leads them to the next village, circling to the other side so as not to
approach from the direction of the Gate. They announce their interest to trade
for some camels, and are taken in by a local trader who offers them his
hospitality, and then inquires what they have to offer. Bandana discovers that
money is worthless, but his knife - good steel - is much admired. Jack is sure
that the natives will admire his plastic stand of post-it notes (Oren - the
player - travels too much in cabs...), but the locals are skeptical.
Kachkala donates some needles and thread (she travels light), and Adap (another
light traveler) get some assistance from Bandana, who sneaks him a hand-welder
gadget (which will eventually run out of gas, but will be impressive until
then).

Once they have their Camels, they travel the desert, a fairly uneventful trip,
except that they run across some wild donkeys, and Adap insists on taming one.
I let the player roll dice, and he succeeds, so a new member joins the team
(however, briefly): Olaf, the ninja donkey.

Israel - Bandana's player - had a suggestion here that perhaps Adap will use his consciousness-transfer power on the donkey and end up
trapped there.

They skirt the edge of the Forbidden Zone - where the ground ends in a sheer cliff
dropping down a few hundred meters to a vast sandy plain where the ground
shifts and drifts, as if with an underground current - and reach Gaxaue's ship:
a black delta-wing, half buried in the sand. Gaxaue touches a dimple in the
surface and an entrance ripples into existence. The inside compartment is empty
and smooth-walled, but with an irregular surface, sculpted in smooth swells. Sections
of wall glow with a soft light.

Gaxaue kicks off his shoes, revealing that his feet have long toes and opposable
thumbs - essentially a second pair of hands, and crouches in a small depression
in the floor. He slips his fingers into small foot and hand holds and the
ship's VR control interface flares into life in all its holographic splendor.

Gaxaue explains that he tried to land his ship on the planet to get to the Gate;
unfortunately, he'd never done something like this - he's part of the human cultures
that live permanently off-planet, what Bandana's player summarized as
"Space Bedouins" - so he crashed while trying to land, probably
because he failed to correctly modify his ship for atmospheric flight (The
ship is made of some adaptive smart nano-material). Perhaps Jack, who said
he was a space pilot, could help him?

Jack is eager to help, and instructs the ship on how to modify itself to fly in the
atmosphere. He also instructs it to build him some familiar controls (Bo -
Adap's player - mimed a steering wheel here). He also makes sure that these
modifications are military-level, not freight-hauler style.

Here I suggested that Kachkala would be invaluable in
actually making Gaxaue and his ship understand Jack's instructions - her
super-social adeptness letting her bridge the considerable differences in the
technical jargon between the two cultures. This, I'm sorry to say, was a sort
of a GM push, that didn't really engage the player; Ghoula - Kachkala's player
- was falling asleep at this stage.

So, Jack fixes the ship. It takes off dramatically, with Jack at the controls, once they have freed the
Camels and bid a tearful farewell to Olaf the donkey, who will probably roam
the dunes, dispensing justice as the planet's only donkey master of the Gun Kata.
(Mach, Bandana's horse, travels with them, of course). They fly the ship
directly back to the Gate, and it barely fits through. Bandana suggests that
they head directly to the planet that is the Empire's seat of government, which
we dubbed (on the spot) Metropolis.

They all concentrate, roll dice, and transit the Gate.

The ship emerges in a sort of Jungle, huge trees - hundreds of meters tall - surround them, with jet-black
leaves. As they maneuver through the jungle, they see that the jungle is
inhabited - there are people on the trees, dwellings that look like wasps nests
dangling from the huge branches, and a big central platform which is used by
hover-rafts for landing and takeoff.

The ship identifies the planet as one of the Core worlds, the systems closest to the Imperial capital. They land on the central
platform, and are greeted by a welcoming committee (who arrive on one of the
hover-rafts). At the head of the welcoming committee is a dark haired woman
called Orisha, who presents herself as the Consul of this jungle-city, which
she calls Brazil. Bandana uses all his charm, presenting himself as a dashing
frontiersman, a heroic provincial captain. He makes an appointment to debrief
the Consul later in private, in her chambers. Bandana's player envisions
him as a sort of bastard son of Captain Stern - Bernie Wrightson's character
from the trail segment of the Heavy Metal movie - except with a less daunting
chin. A young David Niven might also be a good analogy.

Before Orisha leads them away, Jack "locks" the spaceship and sets up some sort of
communication channel with it. Since we made it clear to him that radio is
forbidden - see the note about Dragons - we agreed that this is some sort of
line-of-sight infra-red laser communication.

Orisha offers the visitors an opportunity to refresh, but before that she gives them a short tour of the
city. It is big and populous, and the trees are both buildings, infrastructure
and manufacturing plants - they see a hover-raft sprouting from a big dark
seed, a grove of "fashion trees" which function as an open-air
clothing bazaar, and other wonders. There are many people busy about the city,
with lots of colorful uniforms - most notable are the paramilitary guards,
armed with rifles of some sort, and the gardeners, specialists who tend the
trees.

They retire to their rooms (apparently - and this comes from Bandana's player, really, but it fits the
pattern of scenes like this - there's going to be a banquet later) and Bandana
shows up at Orisha's "office". There, on a low table surrounding by
seating cushions, are arranged assorted flowers, the pollen or nectar of which
has various intoxicating effects. Bandana proceeds to pollinate the consul (in
a footnote here, I explained that sex with newly-arrived navigators - people
who can traverse the Gates - is a common and old Imperial custom, since they
were a sort of an Elite, and their abilities are hereditary. This, in fact,
probably explains where the PCs came from...

Meanwhile, Adap goes for a stroll. The player (Boaz) asked if he could identify members of his order, and
I told him they could be picked up on sight by him, since they are the ones
that constantly calculate the lines of fire as they walk (Gun Kata again). As
he walks along a balcony, one in fact picks him out. They exchange secret
handshakes, and this person turns out to be of higher rank then Adap. "Your
master has sent you to me," the man says. And we cut.

The players may or may not realize this, but the above scene runs in my head exactly like the brief dialog between the two Sith in
Star Wars: Episode I - you know, Darth Maul's only spoken line...

***

Overall, this was a good session, even though not much actually happened (i.e, no fight scenes). It opened up a lot of potential for future sessions, and gave us a better grasp of the game world. For example, the concept of "technology that doesn't feel like technology" starts to come across: Mature technology has no user-serviceable parts...

Kachkala's player expressed worries about her character before the session started, asking us for suggestions for a different concept. I'd hoped this session would allow her to get more comfortable with her character, but unfortunately nothing really interesting happened before she fell asleep. Also, the story still needs to gather some more momentum before it can engage all the players.

[Nev the Deranged]

Wow. Tropes from all over the celluverse.. Star Wars, Equilibrium (one of my faves), Stargate (another fave), Xenogenesis, Heavy Metal... a dozen more I've probably never heard of.

It's cool to know people still run games the old fashioned way- literally "old school", playground (IE no) rules, straight out of the brain consensual cooperative storytelling... gotta dig that.