What's the best way to begin a space opera campaign?

[delericho]

All of this is fine and dandy, but I'm having a bit of trouble now deciding precisely how I want to begin this campaign. If the players roll up a typical set of characters, and I'm sure they will, I'm liable to see a spread of variously good- and neutral-aligned mercenary soldiers and pilots, rogues and scoundrels, techies and psionicists. (Have you noticed how, when playing Alternity, the diplomat is by far the least-played class?)

What, in the opinion of all you GMs out there with sci-fi experience, is the best way to draw a rabble of player characters into a heroic space opera?

"Roll for initiative!"

If you've got a bunch of mercenaries and scoundrels, start them on a ship desperately trying to outrun the forces of an irate ex-employer, a corrupt law-enforcer, or a seedy crime boss. Put them up against obviously impossible odds, but give them an obvious escape route (or, better, two or three).

That should pretty swiftly gel the group together, get them all moving in some direction, and give them a fairly solid initial motivation. From there, you should have a few directions you (or they) could take the game.

 

[Ulrick]

The PCs are all in a bar/space port/space station/home planet/whatever, when minions of the Main Bad Guy attack and destroy everything. The PCs must help each other escape.

Each PC has unique knowledge and skills that can help them escape that pertains to their background. For example: one PCs might have a spaceship, another might know the layout of the area to get to the spaceship, another character might know how to drive the local form of transportation, while the last might have understanding of enemy tactics--where they will strike, etc.
That should help them bond. Somewhere along the way, the Main Bad Guy causes each PC to lose something or someone.

All the while you play music from Wagner or Holst--stuff that sounds like Star Wars but not quite.

 

[Kafen]

(Feh. No Alternity prefix.) This is an open-ended question for all you clever refs out there.

The last several long-term campaigns I've run have all been high fantasy. It remains my favorite genre, but we all need some variety after a while (especially those of us who chronically DM and hardly ever get the chance to play, but that's a topic for another post). I feel like I'm starting to get burned out on Tolkienesque fantasy worlds, and I have no desire at all to dip into Conanesque low fantasy or any flavor of superheroes. As far as popular RPG conceits go, that leaves some brand of sci-fi.

Space opera would have to be my choice, because it shares something fundamental with high fantasy: it's got clear-cut good-aligned heroes, evil-aligned villains, and just enough gray area in between for lovable rogues and scoundrels. Darker styles of low fantasy or hard sci-fi tend towards black and gray morality and crapsack worlds, both of which I find obnoxious in the extreme. I want to run a campaign that feels more like Star Wars. (What can I say, I'm one of those nerd heretics who just didn't care for Firefly very much.)

For the moment, I have a setting in mind, something that I'm slowly home-brewing and adding detail to. I have all the major factions, organizations, and alien races ready to go. But I'll also likely lay out these two conventions or table-rules before I sit down with my players to begin the campaign.

1) In space opera, the protagonists are good guys. The player characters can be what D&D usually thinks of as good or neutral, but if anyone turns evil, they get NPC'd. I think this is a reasonable rule for most any campaign where the DM doesn't want to deal with evil PCs, but especially for certain genres that just demand it.

2) In keeping with genre convention (I'm thinking of both Star Wars and Star Trek here), the majority of the protagonists should be human. Aliens, robots, and other special snowflakes are the exception, not the norm. To model this, players must start the game with human characters. If a player character dies, the player may then opt to roll up an unusual character, drawn from among all alien races (&al.) that the party has so far encountered in-game.

All of this is fine and dandy, but I'm having a bit of trouble now deciding precisely how I want to begin this campaign. If the players roll up a typical set of characters, and I'm sure they will, I'm liable to see a spread of variously good- and neutral-aligned mercenary soldiers and pilots, rogues and scoundrels, techies and psionicists. (Have you noticed how, when playing Alternity, the diplomat is by far the least-played class?)

What, in the opinion of all you GMs out there with sci-fi experience, is the best way to draw a rabble of player characters into a heroic space opera? Drop them in the middle of a firefight between good guys and bad guys, and hope they side with the good guys? Mysterious stranger in a bar who wants to hire them for an interstellar treasure-hunt? Start them on a planet under the thumb of an oppressive empire, and hope that they start sticking it to the man? Archaeological dig on a remote planet releases an ancient, alien darkness?

Help me, EN-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope! (...sorry, that was lame, I apologize.)

You have a straight forward starting point. However, you should keep in mind something with Space Opera. The starting point for the characters is not always the starting point of the narrative. The distinction is profound once you sit down to assign adventures.

As a sci-fi GM, I keep several things in mind. Player background, MacGuffin, story arc, growth for PCs, and closure for background details of PCs. The primary thing is player background for the starting characters in my mind. It's what draws the players into your campaign and invests them in your story. The story of Han Solo is a good example of the backgrounds that show you have dark stories even in a Good Guy game. Even if you choose to go all "Good Guy" backgrounds, the backgrounds are going to allow you to develop 'living' stories with the PCs. So, backgrounds are the most important thing to keep in mind at the beginning. After that, I tend to the MacGuffin which takes the shape of whatever gets the PCs to chase the first part of the story. It gives the players an immediate motivation to proceed through your narrative and Space Opera story without giving you the finger. For example, you have family revenge as per Luke's background and his toasty 'parents' which motivates him to proceed through the whole Jedi process while doing all the feel good adventures along the way. However you deal with it, the MacGuffin is the bait which you use to draw players into the story of the PCs. It is the first investment of attention which is going to start the game. Third in importance to the game in my own opinion, the story arc is where you keep the attention of the players. For example, Star Trek uses the long term story arcs during DS9 in order to bridge the 20+ episodes seasons. The arc itself is generic - the bad guys are over there! But, they manage to keep quite a few fans on board with it over several years. If you apply the example to the RPGs, the players are investing real concern, real time, and real money into the game over the course of a campaign. They become serious players, aka fans, of your campaign. So, the story arc is possible the most important thing to control even if it is not the most aspect of the Space Opera. It is your measure which you use to pace the overall game. Fourth in importance in my book, the growth of the PCs is where you give players the reward for their investment of time into the PCs. It's a mutual story that is unique to the campaign. The collective mix of campaign, you as GM, the other players, and the game itself becomes the world's greatest novel if you do it well. Master it, players talk about the game sessions for years. Lastly, closure! I try to sneak closure for background details into the games in order to allow players to move forward without loose ends. It makes it easy to close up a good campaign as the players, story, and real life changes affect the game. It is my method of making a good impression on the player for future games.

Micro-adventures play a big part in my games at all stages for Space Opera. The game has to play to the specific moods of the players on any given day. If the players are in the mood for a space fight, you give them a space fight. If they are in the mood for a long RP session, you give them a long RP session. It's where I fine tune my game table.

Sorry, I love the genre and ramble.. To answer your question...

I would drag the players into it by a case of mistaken identity. The players could be similar in appearance to real criminals. It would give you two factions that drive the players head first into either the underworld of crime or the lanes of space to flee the police forces. That way, you could introduce NPCs of both good and bad dispositions to the party and start the game with a bang - so to speak. Plus, you could use Ulrick's idea and have the mistaken identity cost them personal things.

 

[Sorrowdusk]

Start them off on a space ship. They have to band together to deal with a problem - pirates, engine failure, catastrophic reality dump - and having succeeded (or failed, and that has interesting optins for escape) they've attracted attention. From the media, who want them as a group for interviews; from the organisation behind the failed shipjacking; and from a law enforcement agency or two. Someone's going to want to give them a job, probably more than one.

Anyone read Sea Wolf by Jack London? Have them be some mundanes, then get lost in space and then rescued aboard some sort of vessel. The ship wont turn around and cant abandon whatever its doing so they have to join up.

 

[Katana_Geldar]

With John Williams!

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Blow something up. Not just any old something of course. The something has to be important to the PCs. A home world, a spaceship, a granma. But it's pace opera so it has to be BIG.

The PCs can then be motivated by revenge. Plus you can play a bit of mystery at the start as the PCs search for the WHO and WHY.

Or go with Ulrick and or 1Mac's suggestions. I liked their ideas best.

 

[korjik]

Come on people! There is only one way to start a Space Opera:

Getting chased by a Star Destroyer

 

[Janx]

I second PC's suggestion that they start as members of an organization. it really speeds up game initialization.

I once ran a fantasy/naval campaign based on Babylon 5. All the PCs started as humans, in the military (I had fluff to support how each class could have roles, including Wizards as required "Ship's Mage").

If your game is a space opera, the PCs need a ship of their own. So they can go to places they want to go (or ordered to go). Firefly, Star Trek tend to support this concept. Even Star Wars (the party has the Millenium Falcon).

Making the PCs part of an organization supports that, because they get assigned to a ship, and presumably have some influence over where it goes, how it fights in combat.

In my game, the PCs started as enlisted or lower ranking officers on a ship. They often got assigned to away missions as a squad. As they leveled up, they moved up ranks and by 5th level or so, pretty much had their own smaller ship as a first "command"

I had some meta-gaming rules about how players of senior officers could treat other PCs (for the sake of fun and inclusion). Basically, nobody was allowed to abuse their rank as a matter of PC 2 PC bullying, thus the party could still feel as mostly equals.

There's lots of ways to start a campaign, but I find giving them a ship lets them feel like they chart their own course (even if each game you give them "orders" to follow).

 

[The Shaman]

come on people! There is only one way to start a space opera:

Getting chased by a star destroyer

:d

*Pew-pew-pew!*

 

[Shades of Green]

Depends on your tastes.

One of the easiest campaigns to run with highly diverse characters is a tramp trader one; as long as the party has the right pool of skills, almost any sort of oddball characters can fit right in. And it gives them a good hook; they're short on money, and fully legit speculative trade won't fill their empty pockets of pay their debts well enough, so they'll have to do more daring stuff to make ends meet. Think of Han Solo - taking very risky contracts because he owes money to Da Boss and ending up doing The Right Thing.

Alternatively, they might be hastily drafted soldiers (or resistance fighters) starting the game in a desperate battle again the villain's army. Since the bad guys start as top dogs, the good guys won't be too picky about whom they recruit, as long as they can hold a blaster and are willing to fight the good fight.