Starflight, new... ¿RPG game?

[Koljaiczek]

I'm Spanish, so excuse my poor English.

I've created a rulebook, inspirated in Starflight, a old game from early 80's. Spacial adventures similar to Star Trek or Stargate series.

My first objetive is to deep in narrative elements of roleplaying, breaking the frontier between the player and his Player Caracter.

For example, the player who play the role of Navigator must draw his own starmaps. The dices do not decide if he lost in space or not, only the player and his knowledge of his work. Of course, in a very light style of Sci-Fi; becoming a space engineer is not require

In the other hand, another objetive of my game is to allow the posibility of "building" the universe. In my game, the players are "Explorers", a elite division of
Interstel. They are the first in contact whit future allies or enemies, discover new solar systems or new tecnologies. For these reasons, there are many rules to builds news alienforms, civilizations...

The Starflight universe is only the "starting point". With this rules, you can follow many paths and posibilities: a  space opera like Stargate SG1, a dark universe like new Battlestar Galactica, or a classic space exploration like Star Trek. The decisions, taked by the players, determine the final result.

These new concepts have been received with... notable aprehension in anothers RPG forums

My game is only in Spanish (sorry), but If you wish take a look:

http://www.terra.es/personal5/oupmfebh/

[xenopulse]

Hi Koljaiczek, and welcome to the Forge.

My Spanish is much worse than your English, so sadly, I won't be able to look at your game draft.  But I like those new concepts you're talking about--drawing your own starmap and then having to rely on that information could be very, very cool, if the players have the time and enthusiasm for it.  Can you explain a bit more how that works?

Good luck with your game!

[Koljaiczek]

There are many "conventionals" rules for usual players. But I try to create an aditional "narrative system rules".

For example, the Communications Officer (an expert in study and contact with aliens) must known and follow a few protocols to speak with unknows civilization. THe aliens have many profiles: politique, religion, tech level... and require a different way to contact them. For example, if you park you starship in a world similar to actual Earth, you'll win a passport to be a prisoner investigation facilities, or even receive a hostile response. In these cases, dices and caracther sheets ar useless. The player must considerate the consecuences of is own decitions.

[Ramidel]

So in other words, you're trying to create a text-adventure? That doesn't facilitate narrativism; it's straight Gamism.

What I think would help is reading the following articles:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/ -Gamism
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/ -Simulationism
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html -Narrativism
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/glossary.html -The Forge's glossary
---
Looking at what you're saying, what you want is to focus on player knowledge of the game's setting, rather than character knowledge, and not only that, the character is not capable of using the abilities he bought (say, Communications skill) to wiggle out of this or to know what to do beforehand. This is fine for text adventures or computer games, granted; however, if you want a narrativist agenda (Story Now), that may not be the best method.

[Koljaiczek]

A text adventure?... No, is not the idea. When I said "the player must acquire some knowledge" of is PC, the people usually think in the more extreme significance of the sentence. And my poor English don't help very much )

Really, the first idea come with Paranoia, when "humoristic elements" are more important than dices and rules. In fact, ignore the rules and the dices are the first lessons of the Master.

Well, I want to explore others posibilities. For examples, in Sci-Fi series, to most important elements are Cliffhangers and Deux es Machina. Old series of the 30th, like Flash Gordon, and modern series, like Stargate, use these elements. Is possible to bring them to RPG?

Reading anothers forums, more... "traditional", this question remain without answer. Players love the "engine" of the game. Learn and study one hundred sheets and rules (from twenty expensive manuals...), are the essence of the game.

Surely, in these forums, my ideas are not news, but "Indie games" and strange concepts like that, remain ignored by most players (at least, in Spanish community of players...)

The "mechanic" are not useless, of course. In fact, in my game you can find a lot of "conventional" rules. But, like in Paranoia, sometimes is possible to subordinate the mechanic to others elements. One example: in Starflight, the caracthers are the elite team of spacial explorers, like SG1 in Stargate, or Enterprise's tripulation. Usually, they must acomplish impossible missions, even in a RPG context, like save a companions or civillians from a prison guarded by a entire army (today I saw a episode of SG Atlantis similar to this example). Even if the mission is impossible, it follow the "spirit" of the game. In these situations, sometimes the DM must read "done", when the dices say "fail".

Usually, any good DM known when he must ignore a dice. But in my game, I try to propose some specific rules.

Talk about "character knowledge"... well, the player who play the role of cientist, for example, are not forced or penalized if he can't recite the Grand Unification Teory... Seriously, most of actions can be resolute with the conventionals rules. But in some extreme situations, the dices cannot offer any solutions.

Imagine the situations: our ship are badly damaged by a horde os enemy. I don't have enought speed to flee, and our arsenal are useless, like shooting pellets against a tank. The rules and dices veredict is simple: we are dead in few rounds. But... the systems open the door to improvisation. And our cientist (a player overwhelm of Sci-fi), like Data o Samatha Carter, propose a crazy idea: "Ey, we can fly to this sun, surround the cronosphere, and use the gravitonial impulse to multiplicate our speed and flee".

Well, in our real universe... this actions will end in a barbecue. But, in a game devoted to Cliffhanger, is... simply perfect. And this solutions is not really absurde, and fit in a space opera.

So, the player knowledge of is role (and not of game's settings) grant a "bonus", in a narrative interpretaion of game.

Again, I suffer many problems to explain my ideas in a foreign languaje. Surely, I will found better arguments in these links )

[Callan S.]

Hi Koljaiczek,

I wish I knew a second language as well as you do - your quite clear and easy to understand.

Also, I like your ideas! With the cliffhangers - could players earn cliffhanger points? For example, say they act out the role of the character - when they do that they get 1D6 cliffhanger points (or whatever dice size). When the terrible moment comes, they can spend them to make up some in role solution, like flying toward the sun as your example had.

[Ramidel]

Indeed. You type better English than most of the Internet's born-and-bred Americans. ^_^

Ah. I'll raise as a suggestion that you not simply say "you can't win with stats" at any point and -require- the players to come up with a creative idea, unless you're really trying to make a Paranoia-esque "entertain the GM" game. As for doing the impossible...

I'll be frank; if the genre conventions are those of Cliffhangers or space opera, then you shouldn't need Karma Points to pull off cute stunts that wouldn't work IRL. In real life, maneuvering in the asteroid belt is trivial, but in space opera, an asteroid field is a perfect place to run chicken games; similarly, slingshotting off a sun should work. Karma points are still useful, but in my mind they should be more necessary to counter bad rolls than to alter the laws of physics in this case.

Also, of course, remember that players can often "do the impossible" strictly within the rules of the game. Any veteran of Champions or Shadowrun will tell you how his PCs used clever combinations of A, B, and C abilities and items to frag enemies they were supposed to escape from or lose to. If you've got a system as intricate as either of those, it should be possible to do this too; encourage it!

Finally, putting Deus Ex Machina into the rules is a big question mark for me, as using that particular genre trope puts the characters' fate out of their hands. It works for Star Trek when meeting alien intelligences and Q of various stripes, but PCs should usually solve problems on their own rather than expecting, half the time, that the adventure will be solved by the Hand of God crushing their enemies and saving them. Your mileage may vary on this, however.

[Sane]

Just a quick question for old times' sake. Was Starflight the one where the ultimate weapon for destroying the bad guys at the end was called the 4-Zluke? Just so that they could say "Use the 4-Zluke!" at the end?

Ash

[Ramidel]

Nope. Neither in SF1 or SF2.