As usual, when I finish a major setting element, I work out the summary, the bit that would go in a simplified document so players can just jump straight in and play.
The Alliance took much longer than I thought. In retrospect, I should have realized the additional complexity of what I was taking on. Star Wars provides us with what amounts to the definitive space empire, the one which all other space empires tend to get measured. It's fairly detailed, and it's not hard to expand upon the framework they built. The rebellion, on the other hand, is something of a disaster as a setting element. It has precious few details, and what details it has don't always make sense. Like sometimes it seems to have organization (Rebel Intelligence, Rebel Fleet Command), and other times seems to just be a rag-tag collection of small insurgencies. It has access to huge ships, but no shipyards or territory to call it's own. It wants to be FARC, a small guerrilla band that loses itself in the jungle, while also being the Allied Forces of WW2! And this is only what you can piece together on your own. The various works on Star Wars just don't go that much into the rebellion as an organization, more as a group of heroes.
Thus, I ended up throwing a lot of it away and starting from scratch. This created two problems. First, the Alliance amounts to the opposite of the Empire: lots of heterogeneous powers rather than one monolithic one, which means I'm essentially stopping to right up "all the military forces of the Galaxy that aren't the Empire." While the Alliance only occupies a small portion of the Galaxy, its worlds tend to be representative of any generic, non-alien world you might find, whether it's officially affiliated with the Empire or not. Thus, I ended up creating Planetary Governments and their associated organizations as well.
The Noble Houses, though, proved the most difficult but, I suspect, the richest. Where a lot of material so far has been fairly generic, this necessarily gets specific. I tried to write up a generic house, but such posts proved more useful as advice and rules for handling houses. As with martial arts or philosophies, it's just easier for me to show rather than tell, and that's what I did. But this means names, and more names, and titles, which means planets, and it means relics (which require names, and personalities, and historical events) and conflicts and politics. You know, all the great stuff that really make a game come alive
I hope they work well, not just as fodder for politics and NPCs, but also as "splats" for players who want to be aristocratic and have it mean something. That, more than anything else, has been what this cycle has been about. This feeds into the Desiree ("Where do I come from? If I'm a princess, who do I want to marry? What's the context of my house right now? What am I worried about?") and Bjorn ("What totally sweet powers do I get? What sets members of my house apart from members of other houses"). I worry a bit about the Bretts ("Like it's a rebellion, what more do you need to know? OMG politics?!") but Willow will love it, I'm sure. It did prove that working out historical details in advance helped, though it necessarily expanded that history.
I've noticed that the aristocracy has probably had the single greatest response from my players. Back during the Imperial run, I offered to let my patrons make signature characters, and the response was very tepid, while people were suggesting aristocratic characters to me almost as soon as houses dropped. Why? Context. Thus fair I've offered fairly generic tools. You know what a fleet is roughly like, and how they operate, but one officer can sub in for another officer, which is part of the intent of the Empire. Even so, the players have very little to grasp. What makes an imperial character interesting? What sort of roles might they play? While with the aristocracy, this is clear. You can see the tensions between various houses, the sorts of roles one might play, and what each member might look like specifically. This partly arises from the heterogeneous nature of the Alliance vs the homogeneous nature of the Empire, but I think if I want to grab players, when I revisit the Empire, I need to find a similar point of tension and context, so GMs and players can see what their imperial character plays out as without necessarily having to draw on Star Wars sources they already know (we don't want every officer to be Thrawn, every imperial Space Knight to be Darth Vader, etc).
We're almost finished with the first half of Iteration 6 (It only took 8 months! I had a baby, alright?). Next: Philosophy!
Showing posts with label Summary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Summary. Show all posts
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Thursday, July 21, 2016
A Psi-Wars Index
Welcome! If you're here, it's because you're new to Psi-Wars and you want to know what it's about, or you're looking for a convenient way to navigate through the blog.Psi-Wars is an illustration of GURPS campaign design using a well-known property (Star Wars, in this case) as a source of inspiration. I use the principles of creating a minimum deliverable product, and then iterating to improve the design, doing the "least possible work" to hit the next stage. That's the idea, anyway. The result is that this is both campaign material and design journal.
If you're here for that design journal, Nemoricus has been kind enough to put together an exhaustive Table of Contents up through most of Iteration 5, so it's a work in progress, nonetheless, you can find the posts ordered for your convenience below.
But if you're here to play Psi-Wars, I've included the documents, complete as of Iteration 5, below. They're free and you can distribute them if you wish, just give credit where credit is due. If you're using it and you have criticisms, praise, or just want to tell me about it, I'd love to hear it. Drop me a line at mailanka.musing(at)gmail.com.
- Psi-Wars 1: Heroes - Iteration 5
- Psi-Wars 2: Adventures - Iteration 5
- Psi-Wars Combat Cheat Sheet
- Psi-Wars Adversaries Reference
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