Session 1 - Character and setting creation

These are a few of my impressions of our first Galactic session on Monday. All in all it took us a little more than 2,5 hours to finish characters, factions, worlds and one quest (seed?) per Captain. All four of them. 

Preparation was fairly fast and easy. I gave the players a very quick and condensed history of the background first, although I have to admit I'm not much of a fan of either reading a lot of setting information or relaying it to players. Having covered the basics: humans on Caliban, the Scrouge and so on, we tackled Factions first. It seemed the easiest thing to do, as one player was coming in late.

I gave the players a quick rundown of the things they needed to flesh out about each faction and they set down to scribble away furiously. Interestingly enough, there was little to no interaction among the players as they did so. Also I think that it might be nice to have the aspects for Faction or World printed on a ready-made form. I'm not sure if that's because it'd be helpful, or because I've spent so much time among Germans. ;-)

We then moved on to creating Captains in much the same way. We worked our way through each step/aspect of the character, with me just announcing what they have to do next and them writing their ideas down on their notes. The only part that was a bit confusing at first, was the distinction between Concept and Personality. But we basically just threw the two together and carried on.

Next was coming up with different Worlds for the game, which we handled in pretty much the same way. With the occasional bit of interaction among the players to make sure they didn't double up on planet names or planet concepts. Water planets seemed to have been very popular with this group, but then again it was freaking hot that day.

We then came up with crewmembers, which was the first time there was some proper interaction among the players. They described their Captain's personality and the other players tried to come up with crewmembers who could easily provide some conflict for the Captain. Thinking back, I'm a little fuzzy about whether the Crew Agenda in a scene should be about the Captain butting heads with the crew or not.

Another thing I noticed was that the factions we came up with, veered a little into the unusual. We had a religious order (Holy Church of Isabel), a mining company (Universal Mining Garbage & Shiprescuing Corp.), a fast food chain (McDonalds Drive-In Corp., seriously) and "Space Pirates" (Free Traders). The atmosphere was overall closer to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy than to Battlestar Galactica. I'm not sure if you, Matt, have a specific style in mind with the game or if it's supposed to be wide-open. Either way, I expect some slight adjustments to happen during play eventually. Mostly because the players instinctively equated "loss of crewmember" as that crewmember dying and from a first read-through the game seems to nudge the Captain towards having to occasionally sacrifice a crewmember. So the first crewmember biting it might lead to the players re-evaluating their view of the game's atmosphere. But maybe I'm just overestimating the difficulty of it all.

Starting quests were done fairly quickly as well. Although I had to explain "cliffhangers" a little more thoroughly. Mostly because putting them at the start of a story seemed a little unusual. After character creation I went through a sample conflict with the players, so they could get a feel for it and especially recognize the importance of winning the crew agenda. Which reminds me, does the GM start the game with any Hazard at all or does he accumulate it after losing dice in the first conflict? Also, I read in one of the threads that you wanted to make "1 Fortune spent = 1 Hazard for the GM" a rule of the game. Does that still hold? I don't remember reading anything about it in the playtest files. And one last thing, I noticed that a playsheet for the GM might be a good idea as well. Especially when it comes to tracking doubt dice of each crewmember, as well as having the two tables on hand for quick reference.

Overall, the players are cautiously optimistic I think, and not quite sure what to make of the game so far. There will probably be some more solid comments after Monday's session.

One bit that caught me off-guard was how excited I am about the game and taking everything the players came up with and turning it into our game's setting and adventures. That's fairly unusual, as I've never much cared for developing setting as a GM.

Hey Joh, thanks for the feedback!

So yeah, I guess when I leave stuff out of the playtest doc, I leave out the big stuff. You're right. Every time players spend Fortune, for any reason, the GM gets it as Hazard. And yes, the GM starts with 5 Hazard per captain. That worked great for me with 3 captains. Let me know if 20 feels like too much with 4 captains.

It makes me laugh, shamefully, that I left both those things out. Sorry.

As far as creating factions and then captains, I prefer it that you create the captains you want, then come up with factions and worlds that suit them. I'd say the McDonald's thing is a little less edgy than I intend the setting to be. Your guesses about crew sacrifice are in line with what I'm imagining (it's also sad to think that if civilization rebooted on a distant world, we'd invent fast food again).

One bit that caught me off-guard was how excited I am about the game and taking everything the players came up with and turning it into our game's setting and adventures.

Matt wrote:
As far as creating factions and then captains, I prefer it that you create the captains you want, then come up with factions and worlds that suit them.

Mostly because the players instinctively equated "loss of crewmember" as that crewmember dying and from a first read-through the game seems to nudge the Captain towards having to occasionally sacrifice a crewmember. So the first crewmember biting it might lead to the players re-evaluating their view of the game's atmosphere. But maybe I'm just overestimating the difficulty of it all.

Sadly, two players had to cancel at the last minute so Galactic has been postponed to next Monday. But I've a couple of questions instead.

Am I reading this right, that losing a quest means that many people suffer or die, but that the objective is reached eventually?

What happens to Trust/Doubt dice when a crewmember is removed or to Hazard when a Captain is switched? I'm thinking they'd be reset to zero, is that right?

Emily, so far we've only finished character creation. We won't start any actual adventuring until next week. But I'll keep an eye on how the players deal with stakes when they look at crewmembers dieing instead of merely being removed from the story.

Am I reading this right, that losing a quest means that many people suffer or die, but that the objective is reached eventually?

What happens to Trust/Doubt dice when a crewmember is removed or to Hazard when a Captain is switched? I'm thinking they'd be reset to zero, is that right?

Thanks for the quick reply.

I've phrased my question badly though, I was interested in what happens to the Hazard and Doubt/Trust score, when characters die / are removed from the quest. That is, when a crewmember ends up with 5 or more Trauma or when 2 archetypes are reduced to zero.

From what you said, I'd assume that Hazard remains the same, but Doubt/Trust is set to zero, when the new crewmember enters the game at the next quest. Actually now that I think about it... is it at all possible to have a "traumatised" crewmember return somehow? Or are they gone for good once they've hit their trauma limit?

Guten Tag, Joe, or Guten Abend, whichever it is:

Traumatized characters are gone for good when they max out their trauma, and their attached scores go with them.

Hazard stays the same because it's the GM's resource and has nothing to do with individual captains.

We had our first proper Galactic session on Monday. Overall it was a lot of fun, despite us still trying to get settled with the game and figuring out how we want to play it.

Our group features four captains, with a fifth one possibly joining us next week. Here's a quick rundown of them and their crew.

Tim Hammit (Jannis) is the Captain of the Flying Dutchman. He's basically Sean Connery from Hunt for Red October. Capt. Hammit is on the run from the Caliban government for deserting his post. During what he deemed a suicide mission, he disobeyed orders and brought his crew to safety instead. His crew consists of Gasparo, a chronicler, who idolises him; Zoltan, his ambitious security officer, and John Porter, his XO with a knack for scrounging. In his first quest Capt. Hammit would have to rescue his daughter Dalia from the hands of Caliban's Internal Security.

Gerechter Michel (Niklas) - which roughly translates to Michel, the Just - is a politically motivated idealist and pirate, who's committed his life to fighting slave labour. He commands the Bonzenschreck (very loosely translated as Filthy Rich Guys' Bane) and also Jean-Pierre, the original politically correct advisor and idealogue; Esso his personal bodyguard bound to Michel by oath and skilled in espionage and finally Barton, the chief engineer. His first quest deals with trying to buy back a slave ship and crew from a merchant when he discovers that they are in fact completely broke.

Connor O'Hara (Simon) is the captain of the Silencer, and part of Caliban's starship fleet. He's a bit of a bigot in that he considers his purpose to be to serve and protect humankind first and foremost. His crew includes Sergei, the Cook; Dr. McNeal who's something of a conscience to O'Hara and Varona the four-armed alien engineer who has served the longest under O'Hara's command. The Silencer stumbles upon the wreck of a spaceship that seems to serve as the first taste of an entire armada preparing a huge attack.

Capt. René Rømø (Erik) has the Emily Morena, a spaceship under the employ of the Kierkegaard University and on a scientific research mission. He served in the Fleet before being dishonourably discharged for a diplomatic faux pas. His current crew includes Cameron Carter, weapon expert and admirer of the Captain; Vonk the ship's translator and the captain's blood brother and Moonshine who is not as much of a flower child as his parents and who has his eyes on Rømø's wife. Their first quest would lead him through the Danadorian Labyrinths and to the mysterious inscriptions there.

It may or may not be apparent in the description, but there was a certain tongue-in-cheek feel to all the characters. Not in the sense of being caricatures to be laughed at and ridiculed, but more of everybody enjoying, what we considered, the outlandish and over-the-top elements of the characters.

GM prep was a bit more difficult than I expected, as I wasn't sure how close I should stick to what the players had given me. While their notes presumably made perfect sense to them, I was often left scratching my head wondering how to come up with situations that would tie in together on an at least remotely sensible level. That was mostly due to some very detailed descriptions which lacked any kind of context to make sense of them. Details and descriptions that sounded ominous and very colorful, but which didn't actually carry a lot of content to work with. 

I wondered if I was supposed to construct elaborate explanations and backstory to each quest to tie in every info the players had come up with for their planets? Or should I pick and choose whatever I liked and fill in the blanks with whatever made sense to me? I decided to trust the players to have provided me with enough content to produce quests they could buy into and be engaged by, and that I wouldn't worry about what seemed like gaping plot and logic flaws to me. Namely getting from the cliffhanger to the quest objective usually required copious amounts of backstory. This would be a bit of a problem during the game, when each Cliffhanger-scene required an expository monologue by me first.

I'll post the quests later as well as our groups' first impressions with the game. 

Galactic Session #1 (June 4)

The game lasted about 3 hours and we wrapped up the evening talking about the game, our impressions and so on. We all agreed that we had to adjust the tone and expectations a little, as the rules seem fairly unforgiving (or maybe that was just me as the GM).

We had some difficulty at first figuring out just what to draw from to come up with crew agendas for a conflict. There was some confusion among the players about whether the crew agenda is something that is against the interests of the Captain but in the interests of the crew or whether it can or should be in opposition to the plot agenda. In our post-game discussion we agreed, that  it  makes sense that the crew agenda is something that the Captain's player should want as well. But on the other hand, the mechanical rewards for winning the crew agenda (or rather not losing it) might be the only required incentive for the player to want to win the crew agenda. Re-reading the text, it seems to me that the crew agenda is about what a crewmember wants from the Captain or possibly about putting the relationship between Captain and crewmember at risk. That the crew agenda isn't derived from the situation at hand (that would be the plot agenda) but is essentially a relationship conflict. Is that right?

One thing that I was unsure about as a GM was how much backstory I should provide with each scene. On the one hand I think that just throwing the players into a colourless situation makes for a very dry scene (“You're in front of a door. You hear screams of help on the other side, what do you do?”); on the other hand I don't like holding exposition speeches unless I absolutely have to. My players are fond of throwing in lots of details and backstory as they play their characters, I'm not sure how well this actually works in Galactic. And how much the GM should be the only authority on background, setting and situation. What I missed (or overlooked?) in the text was some kind of guideline on what kind of  “authority division” (for lack of a better term) Galactic requires to work right, and what is up to the group. We also overlooked the “highest die gets to narrate” rule which made for very GM-centric story development.

One thing I wasn't sure about was whether I could spend Hazard in-between rolls, much like players can spend Fortune. It's not stated anywhere explicitly but I assumed it was possible, although it did make every conflict very difficult for the Captains. One player went so far as to say that even winning a conflict felt more like bleeding to victory. Additionally, does it ever make sense for the GM to concede a conflict? Even removed doubt dice can potentially inflict harm on crewmembers. Or is the GM supposed to concede conflicts for pacing reasons?

Surprisingly enough the switch from quest to quest was far less distracting than I feared, although it does take some book-keeping to stay on top of it all. At least more than I usually do. I'm also not quite sure how long a scene should last, or rather if attempting to finish 4 quests in a three-hour game is a reasonable goal. We wrapped up the game with only one successful quest and three Captains about half-way through their quest.

The quests were:
Capt. Rømø's cliffhanger: “Finding a way out of the Danadorian Labyrinths”
Objective: “exploration of the labyrinths”
He lost both agendas in both of his scenes, leaving one un-named crewmember dead and the others heavily injured in the Labyrinths.

Capt. O'hara's cliffhanger: “a shipwreck adrift in space”
Objective: “Defeat a group of mysterious bandits attacking a trade route with unknown technology”
Won two plot agendas, yet lost both crew agendas. He has now the support of a planetary fleet and gears up for the bandits' coming attack, but has the crew uncertain about the future. 

Capt. Hammit's cliffhanger: “written communication of the government demanding Hammit's immediate surrender”
Objective: “free his daughter from the government's clutches”
Finished his quest and rescued his daughter from a robot-run planet, but I'm unsure about the crew agendas. I think he failed most of them (although they did all consist of the crew trying to make some quick money while on the planet).

Capt. Michel's cliffhanger: “during negotiations with a merchant the Captain discovers that they have no money left”
Objective: “find money to buy off the enslaved ship and crew”
Won a crew agenda and plot agenda each in his two scenes, leading to the merchant's crew joining him and Michel finding a suitable ship to rob in order to pay off the merchant.

Funnily enough, I think Hammit's quest probably was closest to how Galactic is supposed to work in regards to the crew/plot agenda distinction. Looking back I think we often simply tried to double up the plot agendas in each conflict, as opposed to looking at what the crewmembers want. I expect next week to run much smoother. I haven't decided yet, whether I will start the second quest with Capt. Hammit already or wrap up the other quests first and start the second quest for each Captain the following week.

As one of Georgios' players I'd like to add a few points.

My (Rene Romo) first scene started in a labyrinth. We enabled a secret mechanism that caused the entrance to close. Not until the end of our session I realized that it wasn't Joe's write up inspired by Hyperion but that it was me who framed the cliffhanger two weeks ago. Thus Joe took me a little bit by surprise when he expected me to act based upon my writings.

When trapped in the cave I decided to send out Moonshine to find a way out and asked Vonk to take care of Cameron Carter. I hoped that Joe would provide me with some information to work with and to get rid of my rival. Well, as Joe said he isn't the greatest fan of colorful descriptions. So we players enjoyed ourselves with some aimless in-character chatting until we found old Danadorian inscriptions. Joe pressed forward to frame the conflicts as described above.

First scene: I lost all my dice at the first role. I lost two points of my explorer edge(?). IIRC two of my crew were harmed. One red shirt dead. I gained one doubt.
Second scene: I lost all my dice at the first role. I lost two points of my explorer edge(?). IIRC one crew member was harmed.

Overall I liked playing the game. Most of the time all players were actively participating in every scene. Nevertheless conflict framing posed some problems. In my eyes our/the play before the first dice role needs improvement. For me the pacing felt not right. We were either to slow or to fast. How much time do you guys invest to frame a scene? How much role-playing is involved? I think for us the fun started with re-rolling the dices. The situation offers more tactical opportunities, inaccessible in the first round because now the number of dices is reduced significantly, and more space for in-character play (old habits die hard). Unfortunately I never reached this stadium.

So that's for now.

Erik

Hey Joe:

I'm just about to get in a truck and drive 700 km. Tonight when I have my feet up and a beer in my hand I'll make sure to respond. Thanks for posting again.

Okay, I've successfully moved halfway across the country, at least to a temporary stop. Let me try and tackle a few of these questions...

Re-reading the text, it seems to me that the crew agenda is about what a crewmember wants from the Captain or possibly about putting the relationship between Captain and crewmember at risk. That the crew agenda isn't derived from the situation at hand (that would be the plot agenda) but is essentially a relationship conflict. Is that right?

One thing that I was unsure about as a GM was how much backstory I should provide with each scene. On the one hand I think that just throwing the players into a colourless situation makes for a very dry scene (“You're in front of a door. You hear screams of help on the other side, what do you do?”); on the other hand I don't like holding exposition speeches unless I absolutely have to. My players are fond of throwing in lots of details and backstory as they play their characters, I'm not sure how well this actually works in Galactic. And how much the GM should be the only authority on background, setting and situation. What I missed (or overlooked?) in the text was some kind of guideline on what kind of  “authority division” (for lack of a better term) Galactic requires to work right, and what is up to the group. We also overlooked the “highest die gets to narrate” rule which made for very GM-centric story development.

One thing I wasn't sure about was whether I could spend Hazard in-between rolls, much like players can spend Fortune. It's not stated anywhere explicitly but I assumed it was possible, although it did make every conflict very difficult for the Captains. One player went so far as to say that even winning a conflict felt more like bleeding to victory. Additionally, does it ever make sense for the GM to concede a conflict? Even removed doubt dice can potentially inflict harm on crewmembers. Or is the GM supposed to concede conflicts for pacing reasons?

Surprisingly enough the switch from quest to quest was far less distracting than I feared, although it does take some book-keeping to stay on top of it all. At least more than I usually do. I'm also not quite sure how long a scene should last, or rather if attempting to finish 4 quests in a three-hour game is a reasonable goal. We wrapped up the game with only one successful quest and three Captains about half-way through their quest.

Capt. Rømø's cliffhanger: “Finding a way out of the Danadorian Labyrinths”
Objective: “exploration of the labyrinths”
He lost both agendas in both of his scenes, leaving one un-named crewmember dead and the others heavily injured in the Labyrinths.

Funnily enough, I think Hammit's quest probably was closest to how Galactic is supposed to work in regards to the crew/plot agenda distinction. Looking back I think we often simply tried to double up the plot agendas in each conflict, as opposed to looking at what the crewmembers want. I expect next week to run much smoother. I haven't decided yet, whether I will start the second quest with Capt. Hammit already or wrap up the other quests first and start the second quest for each Captain the following week.

Sorry it took so long. It's been a hectic couple of weeks dealing with uni deadlines. We managed to play two sessions in the meantime. The first one wrapped up the first quest for each captain. We lost four crewmen in total (two under Capt. O'Hara's command, one of Michel's men and one of Capt. Rømø's crew). My Hazard scorewas almost down to zero by the end. The second session involved only 1 captain and 2 crewmen and was a rousing success, with Capt. O'Hara gaining 4 points of trust in total.

We are still struggling a bit with crew agendas, although in our post-game discussion we realised that this might have something to do with how we play through a scene. We're all very used to games like Shadowrun, Warhammer or D&D, where the GM adds most of the details and descriptions and each player expands the scene through small additions when the character does something. Those additions pile up over time and there's no rush to add some nice little detail right now, because you can easily do it one or two scenes later. After a while of playing like this you end up with a fairly dense setting and situation which seems to have developed "organically" because you got there in baby steps.

After yesterday's game it became apparent to me that we cannot play Galactic this way. That there is a strictly defined window of opportunity each turn where everybody at the table expands the scene, adds little details and descriptions and throws in new ideas. But most importantly, that making the most of this window of opportunity is necessary for the conflicts to really kick in.

What happened in our games was that the Captain and I quickly hashed out details to lead us to the quest agenda of the scene, while the crewmembers looked on. Once we were done, the crewmembers would use the quest agenda as a jumping off point to find the crew agenda. Which often led to some serious twisting and turning in order to tie the crewmember's relationship into the scene somehow (as we didn't want to re-phrase the established scene since we already had a working quest agenda).

This is something that might already be part of the text, but the importance and necessity of really sitting down and adding to the scene together in order for the agendas to emerge and have some weight, didn't register with me (us?) until now.

Unfortunately we (again) overlooked that the player is supposed to request a scene before the GM frames it. This lead to me as the GM having a far bigger influence in shaping the captain's character and journey than I expected. The players didn't seem to mind much and I can imagine this happening fairly often with experienced gaming groups. Another thing we stumbled on by accident (the captains sent me all their quests by e-mail) was keeping the nature of the quest hidden from the crewmembers. It seemed like a really neat idea to encourage players to play towards their crewmembers' interests and not really worry about how it all fit into the big scheme. But it might have also added to them not getting involved in the development of the scene before the conflict. Maybe Erik can add his impressions later.

Because of our various schedules we decided to focus only one captain, which will hopefully allow us to wrap up the second quest for the other captains next time we play. This time the conflicts played out very differently. While Simon (Capt. O'Hara) still had to struggle a little to win, it didn't feel quite as hopeless as the first quest. Mostly because I was down to 3 Hazard throughout most of the quest. After a fairly harrowing first quest (which left two of O'Hara's crewmembers dead) this second quest was far more successful. Unfortunately I can't tell, whether that is because the numbers work out so well or because playing with only one Captain doesn't really allow Hazard to build up.

Which reminds me of another question: when players spend Fortune during a conflict I get Hazard. Can they spend Fortune outside of a conflict (at the beginning of a scene or afterwards) as well, thus not increasing my Hazard score?

Matt wrote:
If you could provide some captain and crew information, I can suggest how the crew agendas might manifest during a conflict.

Do you mean actual crewmembers played by the other players? Two scenes wouldn't create enough trauma to kill a crewmember. Or do you mean generic "redshirt" crew?

The quests all sound pretty cool, at least from the brief summaries. Next time you play, I'd really appreciate a closer look at one of the conflicts, where you started, who decided what, how each dice roll went, what the agendas were, etc.

Thanks again Georgios (do you go by Joe? or is that just a LJ fluke?). Don't worry about taking long. I'm actually in between homes right now. 90 percent of everything I own is in boxes, so I'm up to my neck in stress and chaos.

Your interpretations are giving me some good ideas for how to present certain parts of the text. I think your realization of "we cannot play Galactic this way" is fairly accurate. Depending on future playtest reports, I'll consider addressing that topic loud and clear.

It's always a challenge figuring out what the audience does or does not already know or assume. Even with a target audience I'm going to run into some bumps. Thanks for continuing to plow through it.

Regarding crew and agendas, did you apply any of the sample relationships listed on p. 32?

Matt wrote:
Thanks again Georgios (do you go by Joe? or is that just a LJ fluke?).

Your interpretations are giving me some good ideas for how to present certain parts of the text. I think your realization of "we cannot play Galactic this way" is fairly accurate. Depending on future playtest reports, I'll consider addressing that topic loud and clear.

Regarding crew and agendas, did you apply any of the sample relationships listed on p. 32?

Matt wrote:
Regarding crew and agendas, did you apply any of the sample relationships listed on p. 32?

Our fourth(?) session featured two of our four Captains (Capt. Hammit and Michel), since Erik unfortunately had to cancel at the last minute. We managed to finish Michel's quest and are about half-way through Capt. Hammit's quest.

This time we paid much more attention to the crewmember's relationship when looking for a crew agenda in a scene, which in some cases meant completely redefining them to make them useable. Simon mentioned that he felt the crew side of the conflict worked much better this time around, as they were much more engaging then in our earlier games. Although I wasn't quite as excited about the conflicts themselves, I did notice that when put next to one another plot and crew agenda provided a lot of content to play around with. The scenes played out very dynamically and felt less like individual set pieces and more like parts of a coherent ongoing story. This became obvious when we reset Porter's relationship to his Captain to one of questioned loyalty (with him having a criminal past). Suddenly Porter's actions had an added depth that existed independently of the scene's plot. This is obviously the way it's supposed to work, but this new dimension suddenly popping up was notable and well received. It seems to me that getting a handle on crew relationships is key to making Galactic take off. The rest can be easily understood by anybody who's ever run a game himself, I think. How to use Crew Relationships and Crew Agendas, though... well.. we sort of bounced around a bit, before figuring them out for ourselves. But I have to admit, I still can't actually explain them to others. I think it has a lot to do with how the players relate to the two agendas and how they let them play off of each other. It's a bit like alchemy, really. You throw together two different elements, shake well and sometimes there's a reaction and sometimes there isn't. And nobody at our table knows why. In other games I'd immediately read up on the examples in the book, and although the examples in the file are fairly short.. I'm not entirely convinced that a more elaborate passage would have made things easier for us.

One scene that worked fairly well had Michel having taken over a hostile ship being hailed by two heavy battle cruisers who had just jumped out of hyperspace and requested identification. We threw in various ideas, introducing some kind of ID console which Michel's crew suspected of having lethal security measures installed to avoid abuse. Jannis suggested that his crew member Barton, who believed Michel to exploit him and the rest of the crew (relationship), would be sent to deal with the possibly dangerous identification console and thus convince the heavy battle cruisers that everything aboard the ship was fine. The console obviously needed some sort of ID from the ship's captain or XO, which prompted somebody to throw in the line "Captain, I've found this thumb." The plot agenda was established as: convincing the battle cruisers that everything is ok; whereas the crew agenda was: convincing Barton that Michel wouldn't risk the crew's life to save his skin. I was fairly low on Hazard at that point, so I moved most of my dice to the crew agenda. Niklas won the plot agenda completely (kicking out all of my dice) in the first roll, and the crew agenda as well by taking his connection I believe to re-roll my highest die. The scene ended with the cruisers moving on and leaving Michel's new ship alone, as well as a speech by Michel with which he managed to convince Barton that they were all in this together. One of the reasons why this scene was so memorable to me was that the events and the characters felt at the same time consistent and unpredictable.

Narrating what happens was a bit of a problem, though. Since we made sure to determine narration by highest die roll instead of defaulting to the GM - as we naturally tend to do - there were moments where a player would unintentionally introduce narration that would contradict setting elements that related to the Scourge. This a problem because the players can not know beforehand what part of their narration will or will not contradict the Scourge threat (or other background info). So far we've handled it rather clunkily with me simply blocking certain parts of a player's narration, which sadly muddles up the rather dynamic interaction of the game. It's something I'd rather not do, but I can't see an alternative to it yet.

Whereas our last game (with only one captain) felt a little toothless with Simon almost breezing through each conflict, this time the scenes were a little more challenging. Although still not approaching the harsh difficulty of our first session. My Hazard pool stayed in the single digits throughout the game, which was just enough to even out each conflict. Although edges and connections gave them a distinct advantage.

Two rules questions came up. Can you spend Hazard or Fortune to change your dice pool inbetween rolling the Crew Agenda and the Quest Agenda? Also can I spend Hazard to add dice, after a player has used a connection on my dice? I'm guessing no, but want to make sure.

Hey G: Thanks again for posting. I'm really glad the game is going better for you. You're raising some interesting issues, too. Your post is also good timing, as I'm starting to shake off the chaos of moving.

ow to use Crew Relationships and Crew Agendas, though... well.. we sort of bounced around a bit, before figuring them out for ourselves. But I have to admit, I still can't actually explain them to others.

there were moments where a player would unintentionally introduce narration that would contradict setting elements that related to the Scourge.

Two rules questions came up. Can you spend Hazard or Fortune to change your dice pool inbetween rolling the Crew Agenda and the Quest Agenda? Also can I spend Hazard to add dice, after a player has used a connection on my dice?

Some quick observations about last night's game. I'm posting this now as opposed to later, because I'm having some PC trouble now and don't know when I will get to post again before monday.

We noticed that players need to restrict themselves when it comes to narrating elements, in order to keep the 'story' sensible and coherent enough to take it seriously. This wasn't quite as obvious to us, as one would think. While there is a rule in place to help this along  (two can veto a suggestion), there was a certain reluctance to use it. This is usually only a question when it comes to introducing Edges, Connections, etc. to the scene in order to win the agenda. Vetoing such a suggestion, because you feel it's too ridiculous or far-fetched feels a little like one player scrambling to win, while you are a spoilsport about it, because you don't like his explanation. On the one hand the spirit of the game is cooperative, on the other you need to 'judge' people's attempts at narration in order for the events in the game to pay off (emotionally) later on. This "judging" is quite elemental to the game I think, but seemed to us a rude thing to do to unless it was explicitly required by the rules.

Erik (whose Captain was the unluckiest of all in our games) felt that the crewmembers only caused trouble for him, making it hard to care about them or their agenda. Although this might also be because of the rather antagonistic relationships two of his crewmembers had to their captain.

Jannis noted, that losing a quest agenda has no apparent drawbacks other than some colorfully negative narration. My guess was that emotional investment in the setting and the struggle would be important here. This seems to be one of the taks of the GM, encouraging the players to care. Again, possibly blindingly obvious to some but I've rarely had to think about this stuff before.

Erik added, that the captain's stand often felt too hopeless to put up a fight. Death is a very real possibility for the characters, so the players prefer their emotional investment to be far more casual or at least cautious. (A little like how people feel about characters in a horror movie, I guess.) It seems that players need to enjoy watching their characters suffer or wrestle with tough decisions. I was a little reminded of Doom-The Boardgame (which we enjoy playing), yet there the player occasionally get to "kick ass & take names" to release some pressure, which was something we didn't have a lot of. Even at the end of a quest.

We noted a kind of death spiral taking place, once a crewmember gains doubt. It was repeatedly the best plan of action to try to eliminate a crewmember to get rid of their doubt dice. You mentioned there was a table missing or something, which might explain this. So far using doubt dice meant either winning the conflict or potentially dealing harm to crewmembers for me. Overall as a GM I felt that I had little to nothing to lose in each conflict. Hazard bounced around in the single digits again. Following up a successful captain (who won one or both agendas) usually meant facing some harsh opposition by me as the GM.

Matt wrote:
Can you clarify what you mean by the first question? Do you mean "can you spend Hazard/Fortune to move dice in between agendas? Or "can you spend Hazard/Fortune to add dice before you roll?"

Just a quick observation from my own playtest experience with Galactic -- I think it's important to frame all crew agenda's in terms of the crew member's relationship to the captain. It's about the relationship, not about what's going on in the plot.