First game, Project Unnamed

[gruk]

So, in March-or-so, I decided that Project Unnamed was about as finished as it'd be.

It's a game set in the late 21st century, featuring a world fractioned into (many) small states, often corporate. There is space travel (though the actual mechanics of space travel are fairly vriefly described, it's not a game about insterstellar warfaring, after all) and there's a limited magic around.

The system itself should be familiar to anyone that's seen anything in the BRP family. The magic is based around channeling energy (most easily electrical energy, but anything atht contains more energy than the magic-user can be tapped) and may require a bit of back-of-envelope estimates, but I feel it should be sufficiently easy to use.

The game itself if http://games.hexapodia.net/unnamed/">downloadable from here and for those interested in the actual making of the games, some details are listed below.

* Edited in (mostly) emacs.
* What graphics there is was made using xfig.
* Typeset using LaTeX2e.
* The outline and probably 60% of the text was written in April 2004, the game was then poked and prodded for nearly 10 more months before achieving the state it now is in.
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[TonyLB]

Cool.  I like the idea that inter-stellar travel is quicker than inter-planetary.  That has the odd consequence of making your nearest neighbors (from the point of view of shared resources and communications time) the people you are least likely to ever see in the flesh (because of travel time).

If two people who developed a friendship over comms wanted to meet, it would actually be more efficient for them both to vacation in the same planet in an entirely different solar system.  I like that!

[gruk]

Yeah, it's a more-or-less direct consequence of the (not uncommon) idea that hyperspace travel is affected by gravity wells. I think I mentioned the risky way of doing interplanetary (rather than interstellar) travel, of jumping out of, getting a sloppy fix and then jumping back into a star system.

[rrr]

Hi Ingvar, I was very interested to read your game, especially as from your write-up it appeared bizarrely close in many ways to my own game I am developing!

... A sci-fi game with elements of "magic" which involve channeling energy from external sources throught the user...  replace "magic" with "psychic" and it all sounded scarily similar to my game I've been working on for the last year or so.

Having read it I am relieved to say that although there are resemblences in some setting elements and the concept over all is similar, I think we are approaching the similar subject matter from pretty different angles.

However I was particularly interested to read your magic rules.  The idea of drawing power from an external source to channel into a magical effect is something I have been trying to incorporate into my game (infact it's quite a central point)  Reading your take on this idea has certainly given me some ideas to think about .  

Thanks for posting it!

I'll have to move on with getting my game into some kind of presentable form now...

Drew

[TonyLB]

Ingvar, other than feedback of the "Wow, that's nifty!" variety (which I'm sure folks are very willing to provide) is there anything specific we can help you with here?  Is the project finished and written in stone, or were you looking for some help and/or options on the system?

[gruk]

Ingvar, other than feedback of the "Wow, that's nifty!" variety (which I'm sure folks are very willing to provide) is there anything specific we can help you with here?  Is the project finished and written in stone, or were you looking for some help and/or options on the system?

Well, it's in the "I've had (some) feedback and unless someone can point at any distinct lack, I'll toil on with other source books for the same setting". So if you see something taht is underspecified, badly written, lacking or is just plain unclear please tell me, otherwise I probably won't know to rectify it (getting a new set of downloadables down is, after all, a matter of editing the source and type "make update". Unfortunately, changing the layout is a wee bit harder (that's in the "sit down and write a stryle definition" territory and I've not done that before).

I'm actually slowly writing a supplement dealing with the Free Stockholm Mercantile Corps (current organisation, a couple of NPCs, some more equipment, historical background, scenario ideas and the like) and will, once that's more done, try to get a CCC sourcebook or one dealing more with space (including a few more alien races) written.