Foreign Elements pickup game

[ethan_greer]

So, I'm at my bi-weekly D&D3 game, and the GM has to bail after a couple hours due to illness.  One of the guys has been wanting to do an SF game, so I offer to run a pickup game of Foreign Element by Nathan Hill since I've always thought it was cool.

Char Gen went pretty smoothly, despite the fact that for a while we had just one copy printed out.  These guys are used to a bit more crunchiness in their systems, so there were some questions along the lines of "what skill do I use to do this-and-such?" but I explained that it was a tightly focused game, etc. etc. and they got into it okay.

In the end, we ended up with four characters, all pretty well-rounded.  These guys seem to be pretty good roleplayers, which admittedly surprised me a bit (pleasantly), since all I'd seen them do was D&D dungeon crawls.

What I decided to give them was a mining colony where the aa33 virus struck and disabled computer systems, including communications and weaponry, including the mining lasers.  In the ensuing chaos, two factions emerged.  The miners, led by Bill Carson, were holed in at the mine, while the rest of the community, led by Elaine Johnson, were in the town proper.  With the supply chain cut off, it's a fight for food and the miners are losing.  Enter the party, representing Enron Corporation, who wants the communication lines reopened and the mine restored to operations.  Pretty diplomatic stuff, very much in the Firefly vein.  The system neither hinders nor helps particularly with this sort of play - it is adequate.

One thing - Foreign Element needs target number guidelines like crazy.  As a GM basically running off the seat of my pants, and having no experience with the 2d10 Action system, I was floundering a bit.  Also some guidelines for the maximum allowable attribute and skill levels were needed.

All in all, the session went well.  My first impressions of Foreign Elements in this thread were pretty much spot on.

So, a foundering game night saved thanks to the Forge!  Everybody pat yourselves on the back, and thanks to Nathan for making FE available.