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Sci-Fi, space battles and multiple PCs in a single ship
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<blockquote data-quote="MarkB" data-source="post: 7288258" data-attributes="member: 40176"><p>That is the tricky part. I've run Star Wars Saga Edition and played Traveller, and while they do offer a variety of secondary roles, those roles often boil down to "make an ability check on your turn. If you succeed, you give +2 to the gunner/pilot/whatever." Ultimately, the only ones having fun are the gunners, and to a lesser extent (unless they also get to shoot) the pilot. The only times I really made space combat work reasonably for an entire group was when I gave them Y-Wings so that everyone was either the pilot or gunner, and they all got to shoot. Even then, the ones who weren't specialised for space combat felt awkward.</p><p></p><p>But it's a delicate balance between people feeling left out, and artificially adding make-work to the encounter just to keep them entertained. Not every space combat is going to feature a boarding action, or a warp core breach, or an unexpected stowaway, and adding in such events simply to give the non-starship-oriented characters something to do can feel very artificial after the first few times.</p><p></p><p>My preferred solution, if I were designing a game that heavily featured starships, would be to have a separate 'layer' of starship-related talents and abilities on top of a character's personal traits, ensuring that they must pick some of each rather than choosing between them. Characters could certainly specialise towards one or the other to some extent, but it would essentially be a way of ensuring that you'd never end up with a party divided between space combat specialists who feel useless outside a cockpit, and away-team specialists who start to feel bored the moment the Red Alert klaxon sounds.</p><p></p><p>And then ensure that multi-crewed starships were designed to take advantage of each of the crews' strengths in active fashion, not just in terms of "roll to assist the cool people." Every action that a character takes should be either proactive or opposed - either they're doing something to set the pace of the combat, or they're foiling the efforts of the enemy to do so, or both.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MarkB, post: 7288258, member: 40176"] That is the tricky part. I've run Star Wars Saga Edition and played Traveller, and while they do offer a variety of secondary roles, those roles often boil down to "make an ability check on your turn. If you succeed, you give +2 to the gunner/pilot/whatever." Ultimately, the only ones having fun are the gunners, and to a lesser extent (unless they also get to shoot) the pilot. The only times I really made space combat work reasonably for an entire group was when I gave them Y-Wings so that everyone was either the pilot or gunner, and they all got to shoot. Even then, the ones who weren't specialised for space combat felt awkward. But it's a delicate balance between people feeling left out, and artificially adding make-work to the encounter just to keep them entertained. Not every space combat is going to feature a boarding action, or a warp core breach, or an unexpected stowaway, and adding in such events simply to give the non-starship-oriented characters something to do can feel very artificial after the first few times. My preferred solution, if I were designing a game that heavily featured starships, would be to have a separate 'layer' of starship-related talents and abilities on top of a character's personal traits, ensuring that they must pick some of each rather than choosing between them. Characters could certainly specialise towards one or the other to some extent, but it would essentially be a way of ensuring that you'd never end up with a party divided between space combat specialists who feel useless outside a cockpit, and away-team specialists who start to feel bored the moment the Red Alert klaxon sounds. And then ensure that multi-crewed starships were designed to take advantage of each of the crews' strengths in active fashion, not just in terms of "roll to assist the cool people." Every action that a character takes should be either proactive or opposed - either they're doing something to set the pace of the combat, or they're foiling the efforts of the enemy to do so, or both. [/QUOTE]
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