Star Odyssey Playtest 9/June/2002

[Andrew Martin]

Star Odyssey
Also managed to run a playtest of Star Odyssey system this Sunday afternoon. Star Odyssey is intended to run like a one hour SF TV series; players and their characters are crew on a star ship. There's no GM! Players create problems for their characters, and act as an audience as well. The setting was loosely based on GURPS Transhuman Space (I own a copy), with the addition of star drives and force fields of unspecified origin. No other magical technology.

System
Attributes default to average of 50%. Skills default to 1/10 of an appropriate attribute. Players were free to choose any level of skill or attribute, as long as the level was above 0% and below 100%. Attributes: Strength, Stamina, Speed, Size, Sense, Spirit & Seeming. Broad skills: Species, Culture & Career. Players only roll. NPCs don't. Players roll D10 where the zero number on the D10 is read as zero, not 10.

To roll a skill, the player rolls D10. If the D10 is less than the first digit of the skill, the character succeeds with those number of concessions (or good things) that the player can say has happened. If higher, then the player can just succeed with a number of complications (bad things) equal to the difference. If equal, then roll again and compare to the next digit of the skill/attribute rating, and keep repeating as necessary. This gives a range of zero through 8 concessions, or a range of one through 9 complications.

When players give the characters complications, the players whose characters are affected get a token reward. When a player chooses to have their character's life made simpler, the player has to pay a token. The players start with no tokens, and a full pot of tokens. When the session is half way over, the tokens are removed from the center, and tokens that are paid are removed from play (returned to storage). If a player proposes a problem, and others don't like it, they discussed it and if no progress is made, bet against it with their own tokens.

Simon:
Cat parahuman, Captain, Command department, with 99% in all attributes and skills.

Kris:
Transhuman, cook, Ship's Services department, with a scattered level of skills.

Medwyn:
Uplifted Elephant, Sciences department, (didn't record attribute/skills).

Initial problems. I haven't worked out how combat runs, in the case of low success. We compensated by making weapons massively powerful, and so the key is not to get hit in the first place.

As PCs were widely disparate and in different places on board their ship, we had some problems in players getting used to doing things. Initially, the star ship (still un-named) zoomed around the solar system, and we had to hash out rules for NPCs on the bridge. We assumed that NPCs would have 50% in their career/department skill, and that I as GM would roll for them. We changed this later to let PCs roll for allied NPCs, again using 50% as the base skill/attribute.

Once I went over the rules again, about the captain proposing a problem/mission for the ship to perform, play got underway, with Simon's captain proposing that we head out on a mission to explore the galaxy. At this point, I forgot about insisting on an internal problem as well as an external problem, which made subsequent game play a lot shorter than intended! As GM and explaining the rules (which were mostly in my head and on the web, but not in front of me), I acted as a facilitator, asked questions of the players for them to answer as their character, and helped maintain logical consistency, and provided sound effects.

The characters arrived at a planet, discovered a derelict spacecraft, investigated it with the aid of power-armoured "redshirts", met hostile cy-borg-ed humanoids who had taken over the ship, fought, split up, got lost, encountered friends, found a bomb, the uplifted Elephant got taken over by memetic nanoids from the cy-borg-ed humanoids (the player spent all his accumulated tokens to make this happen to his own character!), rescued the Elephant, ejected the cy-borg-ed humanoids in a cargo module and blew them up, then returned to their star ship.

Play went incredibly fast, about twice as fast as the action in a one hour TV episode. I discovered that I had removed the token pool too early at 1/2 way point; it's better to wait until the session time is 3/4 over. Players had some tokens left over, yet the session/episode was fairly conclusively over with the problem discovered and dealt with. This is where I realised that I should have insisted on the second internal problem on the starship. It's a point to look out for in the next session. It's clear that I as a GM wasn't needed after a while; in the last half of the session, I was just playing allied NPCs, as players directed the opposing NPCs including the PC elephant (who was out of tokens).

Players concluded that there needed to be a limit on attributes and skills. Also that Species wasn't used; the differences between races, parahumans/transhumans, uplifted animals, sentient computers, ghost emulators, and so on, needed to be specified. And it would have been better for characters to have Culture as Starship Officer (allowing for merchant or other cultural backgrounds), and a new broad skill of Department speciality, like Engineering, Command, Medical, and so on.

As for the left over tokens in player's hand, I thought that these could be used for character advancement. Still undecided though.

The token system worked wonderfully well, the skill and attributes were great. Combat wasn't good enough -- I still need to fix this area. I need to write up the rules for players to read and understand better. Though it did work very well. I'm very pleased.

Will we play again? Yes!

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Andrew,

A while back, some folks played Chalk Outlines, which also was distinguished by the "players deliver adversity to one another" idea. It was a little different from your example, and apparently had some problems.

Check out the thread How we played Chalk Outlines and tell me what you think. How is your game different? How is it the same? What do you think led to the different satisfaction levels with the outcome?

Best,
Ron

[Andrew Martin]

> Hi Andrew,

Hi, Ron!

> Check out the thread How we played Chalk Outlines and tell me what you think.

> How is your game different?

> How is it the same?

Ratio (the system for Star Odyssey) uses the concept of "Concessions" as Chalk Outlines (I used Chalk Outlines as my base), but reverses the meaning of "Concessions" to mean things/events that the player wants. Ratio adds "Complications" to mean what what is meant by "Concessions" in Chalk Outlines.

So Concessions happen when a player's roll is successful, Complications happen when a player's roll isn't successful. A character's actions before/after the roll can change Complications to/from Concessions. For example, taking time changes a complication to a concession, while hurrying, changes a concession to a complication. Ratio's system adds symmetry, and allows character actions to affect the results in exchange for various tradeoffs, like time, tools, aid and so on.

> What do you think led to the different satisfaction levels with the outcome?

The token system for rewarding players to add "problems" to their character's lives seems to be the really big, effective change. The characters want their lives to uncomplicated, and so there isn't the motivation for the characters themselves to go "adventuring". The players create a problem for their characters and get a reward of a token and the reward of doing those things they want the character to do. Those characters that are also affected by the problem also get a reward (from the token pot) for their players as well.

If the other players don't like the problem, they can discuss it and negotiate or if that fails, bid tokens of their own against the other player, much like the system described in Baron Munchausen. And other players can aid either side.

Players with tokens have the advantage that their characters have "script immunity" to adverse encounters, preventing damage and acting like Hero Points do in other game systems. Characters that have players without tokens have to rely on their own skills and attributes to survive dangerous encounters.

It's clearly advantageous for characters to have players with tokens, so players are motivated to add problems to the game that are reasonable (other players can bid against/for).

Also, joining in is rewarded as well, by getting a token for having a character that's affected by the problem proposed by another player.

Players don't need to spend tokens to save their characters from danger, if their skills/attributes rolls are successful, so there's a positive sum influence in the game, when characters have high levels of skill.

Removing the token pot around half way through just signals to players that it's time to clean up the problems and gives a clean finish to the game/episode.

[Ron Edwards]

Wow. Would you believe that I recommended the Chalk Outlines discussion with no idea, at all, that you'd designed your game in part as a "correction" of Chalk Outlines? Perceiving elements of your design as good solutions to the problems they'd raised, I inadvertently confirmed your success in design!

Cool.

Best,
Ron