Trying a new style of Gaming

[Hussar]

Fifth session down.

Apparently this experiment has yielded an unexpected result. We're likely going to be sticking with this system for a while. I guess people are liking it. It's very different from what I'm used to, I have to admit.

This session yielded the first death. The nano-infested vampires stormed out of the darkness and ate the Amish preacher. Oops. Interesting to see that yes, this system can be quite lethal very quickly. Depending on the capabilities of those involved, it can be a surprisingly short and lethal conflict. Not too bad I suppose.

The next scenario looks like it's going to be fun. Again, not particularly original - I found a writeup from someone else's game and am going to give it a spin. Good old fashioned space racing. With its attendant criminal elements and sabotage. And a new PC added in next week as well. I'm curious what it will look like to be honest. Now that everyone has had a bit of a chance to test drive the game, I think choices will be a lot more involved.

I have, in my brain, a fairly detailed campaign that I'm dying to start work on. As soon as I can get out from behind the screen for a while and really devote some time to it. More on what I have planned as it comes.

And, just for a taste of what the next scenario looks like, here's the background image:

BTW, if anyone is reading this, I could really use some ideas for short hard SF scenarios. I'm getting a bit tapped out. HELP!

 

[Rel]

BTW, if anyone is reading this, I could really use some ideas for short hard SF scenarios. I'm getting a bit tapped out. HELP!

I dunno what kind of stuff you're looking for exactly but my favorit hard SF writer has always been Larry Niven. He's got tons of short stories and I've mined them for ideas in several games I've run.

 

[Hussar]

Ooooh, I like Niven. Hrm, wonder if he's got anything on Feedbooks?

Y'know, delving into some of hte really old SF stuff might not be a bad idea. Sufficiently Advanced is so far into the future that pretty much anything goes anyway, so, using somewhat dated SF might work.

 

[Rel]

Ooooh, I like Niven. Hrm, wonder if he's got anything on Feedbooks?

Y'know, delving into some of hte really old SF stuff might not be a bad idea. Sufficiently Advanced is so far into the future that pretty much anything goes anyway, so, using somewhat dated SF might work.

Some stuff that would probably make good adventure fodder would be Ringworld (and the sequels) or maybe Mote in God's Eye if you're looking for something campaign-length. If you just want a short adventure then there are probably a few short stories that would be good.

Another inspiration that might make for a fun adventure, even in a setting like yours, would be the Dream Park books. Basically it's a futuristic fantasy LARP with holographic weapons and that type of thing. But it's also got a murder mystery component where a detective is inserted into the game in order to discover which one of the players is responsible for the murder.

It might be kind of neat to have the PC's in your game be tasked with entering the game to find something (could be a murderer like in the books or perhaps it is an item hidden in the field of play or even a piece of data that can only be accessed from within the game). So you'd sort of run two parallel games, possibly using different systems. You could have the players make D&D characters to represent their in-game avatars. Meanwhile they still have whatever capabilities they have in your Sufficiently Advanced game, which might be used to operate in a metagame environment.

 

[Hussar]

Rel - that would work nicely actually. One of the civilizations, the Tau of ... something or other (the name escapes me at the moment) is based on the idea of mass entertainment. The entire culture is essentially nothing but role players and actors acting out various massive stages (some planet sized) based on pretty much anything you could make mass entertainment out of.

 

[Hussar]

Well Session 6 is under our belt.

Interesting scenario. I picked it up off another site, it's one of the playtest scenarios for the system. The players are tasked with the following by the Transcendentals:

“Go to the world of Aurora, moon of a planet Jupiter… not the original. There will be a race around the planet. The race will be sabotaged. This will cause a disaster. Prevent the disaster, do not prevent the sabotage.” - Transcendental​

Interesting stuff. The party went in and discovered that one of the racers had a new design that he would not allow anyone to examine. After some legal tapdancing, they gained access to the ship, discovered that there was a bomb on the ship that would turn it into a missile, slamming into the planet of Aurora. They changed the sabotage to simply break the ship and let it drift away. That, of course, didn't answer the question of who sabotaged the ship.

After flailing about for a while, they used a twist and got to the bottom of things. A Darwinist saboteur, believing that the weak should be culled, was using the race to kill loads of people. Nice.

One thing that came out was the feeling that using twists is cheating. I was a bit surprised that the players were using twists as a last resort. Hrm, not sure how to deal with this.

 

[Hussar]

Session 7 has come and gone and I think this is my last time behind the screen for a while. Cool. Ended on a high note I think.

The scenario was a bit complicated. Earth is now home to the Old Worlders, in the SA universe, and they have become more or less technophobic. Living simply and pretty easily. A wayward son, Jacob Smithson, left some time ago to see the universe. Along the way, he became heavily genetically augmented, pretty much discarding his Old Worlder roots. In addition, he fell in with the Darwinists, a terrorist group intent on improving humanity at any cost.

Thus was born his plan. Genetic augmentations in SA are passed on to progeny. He returned to Earth and began using his higher capabilities to impregnate a large number of women. The children of these unions would not be augmented, the augmentations would be recessive for five generations. After that, hundreds of heavily augmented children would be born on Old Earth and would likely wipe out the culture there.

Thus the PC's come in. They discover Jacob's plot and then are faced with how to resolve it - do they allow the women to have the children or do they terminate the pregnancies, forcibly if need be?

Led to some fantastic role play. A pyrric victory for the party and are really poignient ending for the game. Nao Ling had used her twists to get close to Jacob, but, her complications caused her to fall in love with him at the same time. Made the ending all the more interesting.

Like I said, this should be my last time behind the screen for a while, but, I have an idea cooking in my brain for a longer term campaign to come. With a bit more planning, I think I could make a very good game.