[Galactic] Central NJ playtest reportage

[Robert Bohl]

So I'm going to write here about the playtest run I have going of Galactic. It's using the alternate "dice record sheet" rules that Matt posted. First, I'll talk about the captains:

Mitchell Argyos of the Prometheus (Tom): Astronaut: 4, Professor: 2, Warrior: 4. Edges: Ship: Has fantastic analytical/scientific computer (2); Talent: Remains calm and disciplined under pressure (2); Passion: Humanity first in all things; Gear: Hand-held alien language translator; Talent: Expert marksman. Connection: Khaidu Zanele, captain of the Odysseus, sister ship, possible love interest.

Mitchell is a captain in ConSec, in a secret sub-group dedicated to keeping an eye out for The Scourge. He believes humanity is worth saving and has dedicated his life to it. A life dealing with angry Remnant aliens has made him a bit of a human supremacist, but not in an evil, torturey way. His crew (none of whom except Franks knows about the ship's mission) includes Alderman Franks (Damian), a civilian oversight representative who is a rival; Henry Orion a civilian historian who has no clue why he's on the ship, who has a professional relationship with him; Wes Sparks: First mate and security officer, who trusts Mitchell implicitly and has a professional relationship; and Tatum Cole: a hired-on Warrant Officer who is an expert on alien cultures, and who also has a professional relationship with him.

Big Dan Pickett of the Mighty Flea (Martin): Astronaut: 2, Scoundrel: 3, Warrior: 5. Edges: Passion: Return to glory (2); Talent: Laughing in the face of death; Ship: Can outrun any legal freighter; Gear: Immaculately clean saber; Ship: Jamming equipment; and Gear: Torch lighter. Connection: Occasional employer/friend: Thaddeus Bell.

Big Dan is a mercenary/scavenger/smuggler of the first order. He's an old-schooler, running a clunky ship, who's past his prime. He wants to be in the big leagues again. His crew includes: Dr. Hoskins (Damian), the ship's medic and a professional rival who thinks that the captain's old-time ways are holding the Flea back; Lt. Desmond Katz (Rich), the ship's "P.R." guy who also thinks the Flea is going to waste and could be run much more efficiently for better profit; "Killin'" Carl Lucky (Rick), whose job is "Murderer" and is a bit of a psychopathic nutcase grunt who has unrequited love for the captain; and Jack Pickett (Tom), Big Dan's uncle and the ship's cook, who was still flying back before there were FTL drives.

The Constant Pilgrim nee Darius St. James of The Greatest Gift (Rich): Astronaut; 3, Diplomat: 4, Scoundrel: 3. Edges: Passion: Spread the Word (2); Talent: Convincing those in doubt (2); Ship: Landing shuttle; Gear: Old star maps; Passion: "Don't question, don't be questioned." Connections: Cyrus St. James, father and mining magnate.

The Pilgrim is the leader of a cult that believes Isabel did not mean humanity to settle down when it did. He and his crew are on a search to find the world that they were meant to settle on. Generally the theology finds many permanent things to be problematic: it encourages polyamory, bisexual activity is expected, and has people choose new names when they become adults in the cult. The cult itself is not crazy/offensive/cruel/whatever. They are genuinely good people. His crew includes: The Pathfinder (Damian), the nominal captain of the Gift and the Pilgrim's wife, they have a professional relationship, I believe, or perhaps she has unrequited love for him; Eli St. James (Rick), the Pilgrim's son (I don't know what his job on the ship is), The Garden (Tom), the ship's cook, a former drug addict, in love with The Pathfinder and a rival of the captain; and The Templar (Martin), security/muscle/enforcer who has a professional relationship with the Pilgrim.

Wilhelm Von Buleau of the Wöglinde (Damian). Diplomat: 5, Scoundrel: 2, Warrior: 3. Edges: Passion: I must grow my business (2); Talent: Great businessman; Talent: Efficient killer; Ship: Size of an office building; Ship: Extensive hanger; Gear: Exceptional PDA. Contacts: Senator Harding.

Wilhelm is a riot. He's the head of the first business among the children of Isabel's retreat to create a company that is "about" nothing other than making money. His crew is entirely attractive women who are given stripper-like names when they come on staff. He's a bit of a Patrick Bateman type, not in the killing-women way but in the very-clean-and-professional-but-vicious-and-ruthless-and-bloodthirsty way. He's prone to disregard the lives of aliens. His crew includes Honey Brazil (Tom), the navigations officer who has a secret crush on him; her sister, Indigo Brazil (Martin), the communications officer who is openly in a romantic relationship with the captain; Miss Diamond (Rich), the bodyguard who has a professional relationship with the captain; and Ruby Meyers (Rick), the scrappy engineer who's sick to death of all the sexism and wants to overthrow Wilhelm's command.

Doc Z Model B of the StarJunker X (Rick). Explorer: 3, Scoundrel: 3, Tinker: 4. Edges: Passion: My people first; Gear: Haxtor 15, a device which can pull data from nearby computers that is related to the Makers; Ship: Stealthy; Gear: Sensor tinkering kit; Talent: Photographic memory; Talent: Good with gadgets; Ship: Excellent in atmosphere and water. Connections: Judge Crank.

Doc is the leader of a group of humans who have taken on cybernetic implants. These implants used to work better in the old days but the technology to fully understand them has been largely lost and they are on a search to find this original technology to improve themselves and find out more about where they came from. The crew includes 101010 (Tom), the science officer who has a professional relationship with the captain; Old Model A (Rich), the ship's cook and father figure to Doc (though not technically his father); Johnny Omega (Damian), the ship's gunner and a bit of a hothead young punk who's always looking for any advantage over the captain; and Mary (Martin), a fully human med tech who has unrequited love for the Doc.

[Judd]

Rob,

Could you break this down by who made what up, how you did it, what was written down and such?

Right now its just a blur of fiction with no context.

Doing that for each and every ship is a bit much but if you could pick one that had a particularly interesting process that stands out to you, that'd be great.  I'm curious how the collaboration went down at the table and what the gamers' reactions to it was.

Judd

[Robert Bohl]

Well as with any collaborative world creation bit, there was lots of back and forth with people making suggestions to one another, too much for me to pull apart (the creation step was about a month or more ago). Ultimately the crewmembers were each made up by the person who's playing them and the captains, by the player who plays them. That's probably obvious.

I specifically remember that I suggested that all of Wilhelm's crew be women, and someone else suggested the stripper-like names. I think Tom thought of the sister/Captain/sister romantic triangle.

[Robert Bohl]

AP notes and questions coming soon, I promise. First, factions and relevant worlds:

We did the create-3-worlds-per-person thing instead of the one-world-per-person thing. At some point I'll probably detail all the words because they're cool as hell, but here I'll only do the relevant ones to the quests we've got ahead of us. One person created each world and faction (with comments from others). However with the worlds, we didn't do the rumors at first due to an editing thing in the books, so I had people create rumors for other people's worlds. I'll note when I can remember who made what.

WORLDS

Buckman's Retreat (Rich)

• Location: Colony
• Environment: Mountainous with electrical storms, fertile isolated valleys.
• Settlement: Mutually antagonistic feudal baronies ruled by heirs of the original settler, each allied to a Territory on Caliban.
• Notable character: Lord Thomas Buckman, ruler of the weakest barony, desperately in search of a way to secure his position.
• Rumor: Lord Buckman has been secretly negotiating with ConSec for weapons, protection, etc. Reports vary as to what he's given up: space for a ConSec base, mining rights, slave soldiers?

Euphoria

• Location: Colony (close to Caliban)
• Environment: Earth-like, more tropical
• Settlement: The Lineage (a faction sort of like a feudal version of Skull & Bones); this is a pleasure and entertainment world, sort of like a Caribbean island crossed with Vegas crossed with Hollywood.
• Notable character: Mina Doran, the head of Lineage and an entertainment mogul
• Rumor: The Lineage plants subliminal codes in their entertainment transmissions that keep the populace docile and content

Nessus

• Location: Colony
• Environment: Mostly cold, volcanic areas, equator approaches temperate, rich metal ores under the surface
• Settlement: Miners living underground and in domes
• Notable character: Virgil Joad, labor leader organizing for better working conditions
• Rumor: Living underground has given the miners a terrible ailment which their employers are covering up

The Raft (me)

• Location: Remnant space, but near-colonial
• Environment: An artificial conglomeration of densely-packed and derelict ships, the size of a planet. Uncountable centuries' worth that are piled on top of one another and at the center the mass is so great that the core has become liquefied. Many of the ships are connected to one another at odd angles, and while most are dead, some are functional, with the top layer being the most functional.
• Settlement: Scoundrel haven. Mos Eisley, planet-sized
• Notable character: Jaquen the coredipper, a scrappy chick who hires out her services going deep into the core
• Rumor: Sentient machines have been spotted deep-down

Ca'ol (Tom)

• Location: Beyond the belt, in the Remnant
• Environment: Warmer, with higher radiation and closer to its sun
• Settlement: Presumably-native aliens and stranded human remnant, possibly from before the Scourge. These humans are called The Atwaam which in the alien tongue means "The Accepted"
• Notable character: Rorgyn, Chosen of the Atwaam, a speaker for these people
• Rumor: Rorgyn has been seen with ConSec agents

FACTIONS

People of the Crash Diaspora (Rick)

• Kind: Clan of cyborgs of which Doc Z Model B's ship and crew are a part, descended from a more perfect group of cyborgs
• Agenda: Peace with the flesh
• Reports to: Circle of Parts
• Allies: (can't read this)
• Enemies: The Purity Brigade, an anti-alien hate group which finds these folks particularly gross

Guardians of the Souls (Rich)

• Kind: Activist group
• Agenda: Protect the soul of each planet from exploitation and depredation (i.e., mining)
• Reports to: Only our conscience
• Allies: Starlight Studios, a faction of media producers who like to report on the group
• Enemies: The Mining Guild

Pack Rats (Martin)

• Kind: Union of banditos
• Agenda: Loot, plunder, repeat
• Reports to: The Lineage, a secret aristocratic union
• Allies: The Lineage
• Enemies: ConSec

A Remnant of Dignity (me)

• Kind: Activist group
• Agenda: To reconcile humanity with the Remnant aliens, figure out why they hate us, repair the breach, etc.
• Reports to: N/A
• Allies: Grumsh Clan, turtle-like, hunched, long-snouted, maned, inquisitive aliens who seem to enjoy human company
• Enemies: The Perfection, stern, pallid, and elongated humanoid aliens who are all about producing perfect specimens of their own race and find contact with others distasteful and corrupting

Vector Holdings (Damian)

• Kind: Corporation
• Agenda: Profit!
• Reports to: CEO Wilhelm von Buleau
• Allies: The Northern Rim Territorial Alliance
• Enemies: The Miner's Guild

Olympus (Tom)

• Kind: Secret faction within ConSec
• Agenda: Find and defeat the Scourge
• Reports to: General Raptes
• Allies: Hermes Division, ConSec's stellar cartographers
• Enemies: The Homeguard, a fiscally conservative political party on Caliban that wants to focus all governmental funds on Caliban alone.

[Robert Bohl]

First, a note about world/character creation. People loved making up all this stuff and didn't know why anyone would not want to make three worlds each. I did note that they all pretty much created the faction that their character would be a part of. This sort of disappointed me because I was hoping we'd get some more depth to the world (we already know for example that the factions they're a part of exist). That said, I can't really fault the desire. Obviously people want to more fully document their own group. I get it. And the fact that almost everyone did it means it's likely to be functional behavior. I did note that you didn't have to create the faction your group was a part of.

[Robert Bohl]

So now I have some AP from the actual game. Overall, it went well. Tom was sort of tired and hung back and asked a couple times that his captain's scene be left for last. On another note, we spent a lot of time at the outset eating and socializing, which was nice, but which meant we didn't get to play that much. This happened at the character/world creation session too but there it didn't get in the way as much. We agreed that in the future we would come having eaten because, as much as we enjoyed eating together, we wanted to game.

Wilhelm's scene

Wilhelm's call to adventure involved talking on the radio with a mining operation on Nessus he had a stake in that was suddenly cut off with the person on the other end in clear distress. He claimed something was devouring the ore. Connection to the colony was lost. His Quest Objective is to resume mining on Nessus, with the Benefit that profits rise. His cliffhanger involved having gotten away from Nessus with a disk full of info about what happened at the mine while being chased in his personal yacht by drones that were firing little spider-like drones that, when they landed, would jolt out little mini EMPs, killing electronics.

At stake was his relationship with Indigo, the comms officer with whom he was in love, and getting the data packet back without its being erased (this wouldn't stop the narrative, the rules state that if you lose a Quest aspect you lose time and let the Scourge move forward--lost time here would have been having to get this info in some other way).

So he gets on the communicator and is short with Indigo, not being willing to chit-chat with her given the circumstances. He also wants Ms. Diamond because he's in danger, which potentially might hurt Indigo's feelings. He dumps all his dice into the quest with almost no dice going into relationship. I decide to focus on Relationship, then, just playing enough dice to keep alive for a turn in the Quest. My strategy paid off. I wiped out the crew side and was able to concede on the Quest aspect. Wilhelm brusquely told Indigo that he needed someone he could count on for this problem, and Ms. Diamond took control of the ship and guided it in by remote. Indigo took 3 of the 5 Trauma she could bear before getting retired!

The Pilgrim's scene

His call to adventure involved the family of one of his followers kidnapping her back and deprogramming her. The Pilgrim knew that she had seen a book full of hieroglyphs, believed to be of Scourge origin, and he wasn't able to ask her about them before she got taken. The Quest Objective was to get the girl back, and the Benefit would be access to the hieroglyphs.

The follower's family were on Euphoria, members of the lineage. The father runs a casino and the Pilgrim's cliffhanger involved being in the "Eye" room with his entire crew, and the father saying, "Why should I let you see my daughter?" This was a great, grabby conflict with some serious swings of fortune. At stake on the Quest angle was getting to see the girl, or having to get to see her in some other, delay-ier way. On the crew angle, it was his relationship with his son, since the whole conversation was about parenthood. At times it seemed like the crew were going to be blown away but in the end they won both aspects and nothing took strain other than one of the Pilgrim's aspects. They made the father look like a controlling bastard who didn't love his daughter but was only annoyed that his property was getting out of his control. He was shamed in front of his people and would let them see her, but only with the deprogrammer, Dr. Theoleous Mirth, present.

The Doc's scene

Doc's call to adventure occurred when his scanners were seeking a signal from Hive technology, and got it from deep within The Raft, which signal briefly turned on some devices that their people still don't know how to get to operate. His Quest Objective was to find the source of this signal, and the Benefit was to recover lost Hive technology.

His cliffhanger was he and his crew on the Raft, talking to Jaquen the coredipper. She asked, "Why should I help you? Why not just go and get this stuff myself." At stake on the Quest side was getting this expert's help versus having to race her to get to the signal on her home turf. On the crew side, it was his relationship with Johnny Omega, who wanted to show off to the girl and make Doc look bad. All of the crew threw dice in for this so I played aggressively, and they lost both sides pretty badly. Omega saw the Doc as cock-blocking him and the girl got away saying they'd better hurry.

--

Some thoughts/issues/questions in the ensuing post.

[Robert Bohl]

Thoughts about the game:

Enough time had passed that we forgot what a lot of the people's quest details were, and there wasn't enough room on the character sheet for people to write a bunch of stuff in about the quest. I think the game definitely needs World, Faction, and Quest record sheets. Badly.

I had also forgotten to have people create their cliffhangers. This was very stupid of me. So I had to do it at the table. My read of the cliffhanger stuff in the book suggested that you would essentially have to narrate something that began with dice rolling right away, with no roleplaying lead-up. My rationale on this is here:

A cliffhanger might conclude with the captain surrounded by foes, hanging from a ledge, or insulted at an important formal gathering.

Am I wrong with regard to my read on this? Assuming I have this right, it's not something our group liked very much. They wanted some opportunity to feel out the characters before jumping straight to dice (especially in the first scene of the game ever).

--

Specifically about the scenes: I'm not sure whether Wilhelm's objective or benefit are grabby enough, or Scourge-centric enough (I have the same concern about Doc's objective and call to adventure). We learned pretty well in Wilhelm's conflict how important it is not to ignore the Crew aspect.

Feedback about the game in the next post.

[Robert Bohl]

Final post for me for today.

We liked how the captains and crew worked together. They're nervous that the GM has so much power that he can easily blow through them. They see this huge pile of dice on my sheet and get intimidated. My take on this is, let's wait and see.

People also were worried about how damage on the crew works. If Indigo appears in a scene again, I (the GM) is getting a massive, free benefit of 3d8. (Or is that, now, 1d6, 2d10? Or what? I find the GM dice sheet a little hard to read. For example the square images are pretty clearly d6s, but the other dice-shape seems like a d10. I've been using it as such but it was surprising there was no d8. Anyway. . .). Why would Damien ever want to see a scene with Indigo again? Why not burn through her and let her die? Again, I have a wait and see attitude on this (but I could use some help with the dice sheet issue).

Tom in particular was concerned about remembering so much. There are so many great worlds and factions we created, and he and others were concerned about forgetting what had happened with one captain when another came around. Again, my take on it is wait and see but I see their point. We're going to be making an effort to re-use and cross-use world elements so that the whole thing feels more cohesive.

We had some specific suggestions:

Create three things at world creation, 1 planet, 1 faction, and one of either.

At the start of each quest, add one world each.

The factions desperately need a relationship map. The crews could probably use one too.

--

I'd be happy to elaborate. Sorry it took so long. Our next game, tragically, probably won't happen until January!

[Matt Wilson]

Thanks for the info, Rob!

How come you didn't post at the Front?

[Robert Bohl]

Thanks for the info, Rob!

How come you didn't post at the Front?

I could if you want, I just like getting post notification here.

There was a rules questions in my last post (in the parenthetical); would you be able to address that when you're able?

[Robert Bohl]

This is an R-map I made for the factions.

[Robert Bohl]

I screwed up the insert. Here's a better link http://robertbohl.wordpress.com/files/2007/12/factionsmap.pdf.

[Danny_K]

Very cool R-map!  May I ask what software you used? 

It's interesting how the setting can suddently taken on an new, unforseen aspect, sort of organizing itself around one or two player contributions.  I've seen the same phenomenon in Lexicon games. 

Did you feel like you had to really push the Scourge aspect of the game hard?  I'm still in the prep stages of my PbP game, but I'm a little worried about how to keep the Scourge active as a background threat without pulling it right into the spotlight early in the game, especially given the large amounts of player input the game allows. 

Also, unless I misunderstood the rules, Indigo's 3 trauma makes her close to being retired, but doesn't give the GM any extra dice, unless Indigo also has Distrust dice.  The Trauma vs. Trust/Distrust distinction is a bit unclear for me, so I may be reading this wrong.  Also, there's no penalty I recall for Indigo getting killed, except losing whatever Trust dice you had with her. 

[Robert Bohl]

My read is that Trauma and Distrust are the same thing that are separated by a gulf of editing slip-up . I only got to do three scenes so I didn't get to deal with the Scourge that much, but I have plans, oh my droogies. I just can't talk about them because the other players are likely to read this.

And for the R-Map, I used Cmap Tools: http://cmap.ihmc.us/