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ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bill Zebub" data-source="post: 9871623" data-attributes="member: 7031982">A few months ago I started a thread titled <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/space-travel.716548/" target="_blank">Space Travel</a> asking if anybody knew of games with interesting systems for hyperstellar travel.I won't repeat the discussion, but the gist of it is that I wanted the party working together as a team to make decisions.  If the GM is just rolling dice and telling a player (e.g. the designated "Engineer") to make a skill check, then nobody is really making any decisions, and certainly not working together.  I want space travel to be a game-within-a-game, but not a "mini-game" that is divorced from roleplaying.Really what I'm shooting for is that I want space travel in a sci-fi/space opera game to be the analogue of dungeon exploration.I just spent 3.5 hours in the car with my 12-year-old and we talked about this for much of the drive.  Here's what we came up with:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There are multiple possible "jump routes" between destinations, and most travel will require making several hops.  I.e. a kind of "traveling salesman" problem.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There are variables to consider when choosing a route, including:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The demands placed on the ship for each leg, compared to the advantages/disadvantages of your own ship</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The skill required to successfully navigate the route*</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The type of hazards faced if a jump mistake is made and you don't emerge where you expect</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The amount of fuel required</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The stops along the way (hazards, factions, etc.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">E.g., "I don't know, that's a tricky jump, and there's an asteroid field near that star that's easy to land inside, and our forward matter shields are in a bad state..."  "Yeah, but the Zeta Station is nearby, and those guys owe us a favor."</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">*The difficulty level of a route is a function of how many times it has been traveled (with the idea that the math gets refined).<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Some common routes have a lot of shared data so they are pretty safe</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">For many secret/protected routes the people who travel them don't share the data.  Getting data on those routes becomes an objective.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Discovering brand new routes is considered crazy and is mostly left to droids, most of which never return.  (Those that do are...different.)</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Some vague, un-defined, hypothetical mechanic in which everybody contributes to each leg by simultaneously rolling a relevant skill, and it's the combination/matrix of these rolls that determines how successful the jump is.</li> </ul>We also thought about how these maps were created.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Our first idea was that random table generation, including lists of colorful challenges/hazards, would let GMs create star maps as they were explored<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It would be fun to open this up to the community to come up with ideas for the tables</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Additionally/alternately, the game could start with a bunch of established star systems and routes, but include the tables for expanding beyond the campaign areas</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">These rules could be built into a web app that allows you to instantly generate star maps of arbitrary sizes (and route densities)</li> </ul>Thoughts?  Suggestions?  The names of the seventeen games that have been on the market for decades that already do exactly this?</blockquote>

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