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brainstorming & development / Re: Uncharted Worlds - Space opera hack
« on: October 10, 2013, 07:28:49 AM »
So, in short, we had a fuckin' blast with it. I think a large part of it for the group was just being able to play something that wasn't DnD, and particularly something that was kind of Firefly-ish.
We had:
An Artificial Military/Personality who was a mercenary with a Squad, who was the original owner of the ship itself.
An Artificial Scoundrel/Cybernetic on the run from the Imperial Navy R&D project that created him.
And a Spacer Clandestine/Starfarer, who was a little more amorphous, but had a background with the Silver Syndicate, a galactic trade cartel/migrant fleet. Kind of a schmoozer and a blockade runner, the kind of guy who can talk his way past a roadblock or a star-system interdiction with equal ease.
We kind of skimmed over the crunchy mechanics of the ship and stuck to the feel of it. Ship-to-ship combat was avoided when the Captain used his Gadget for a decoy system and maxed his Avert Disaster roll, thus escaping the Imperial Naval Intelligence ship that was trying to run them down. Looking back, I probably would have made him take a debt and then fight a boarding action; he should have won it easily, since the Agents wouldn't have been expecting six highly trained Marines and a couple of supersoldiers to be their adversaries.
Character creation took about two hours between three players, which I didn't find surprising since we were handing off between two computers and two of the guys had never played an AW type game. That done, we spent at least as long on actual gameplay, in which we did a lot of world-building and fleshing out of our characters.
This was my third time GMing, and the first two were using straight AW. Third time was the charm for a successful and fun session on my watch, since the last two kind of flopped due to group chemistry and some lack of understanding on everyone's part. I think it might be the comparability of settings; when you compare AW to Mad Max, people look for the Humongous or Barter Town. When you say Firefly and Mass Effect, people want to walk around, meet people, and pull of a heist or two.
Seeing as how it was my third game ever as a GM, it was nice for my players, instead of asking what other systems I could pitch, to say "We're doing this again next week, right?" Really glad I went with this over the FFG Rogue Trader.
tl;dr It's solid, newb friendly, just needs the finishing touches put on it. Character advancement, ships and ship combat, and a sheet is all it needs. Moves need a few tweaks, or maybe some adds. There's no equivalent to either Go Aggro or Seize By Force, which my players needed a few times. Also, maybe an Interrogate move? But as I said, there's no reason it can't be played as is, unless you really need the stats on that ship.
We had:
An Artificial Military/Personality who was a mercenary with a Squad, who was the original owner of the ship itself.
An Artificial Scoundrel/Cybernetic on the run from the Imperial Navy R&D project that created him.
And a Spacer Clandestine/Starfarer, who was a little more amorphous, but had a background with the Silver Syndicate, a galactic trade cartel/migrant fleet. Kind of a schmoozer and a blockade runner, the kind of guy who can talk his way past a roadblock or a star-system interdiction with equal ease.
We kind of skimmed over the crunchy mechanics of the ship and stuck to the feel of it. Ship-to-ship combat was avoided when the Captain used his Gadget for a decoy system and maxed his Avert Disaster roll, thus escaping the Imperial Naval Intelligence ship that was trying to run them down. Looking back, I probably would have made him take a debt and then fight a boarding action; he should have won it easily, since the Agents wouldn't have been expecting six highly trained Marines and a couple of supersoldiers to be their adversaries.
Character creation took about two hours between three players, which I didn't find surprising since we were handing off between two computers and two of the guys had never played an AW type game. That done, we spent at least as long on actual gameplay, in which we did a lot of world-building and fleshing out of our characters.
This was my third time GMing, and the first two were using straight AW. Third time was the charm for a successful and fun session on my watch, since the last two kind of flopped due to group chemistry and some lack of understanding on everyone's part. I think it might be the comparability of settings; when you compare AW to Mad Max, people look for the Humongous or Barter Town. When you say Firefly and Mass Effect, people want to walk around, meet people, and pull of a heist or two.
Seeing as how it was my third game ever as a GM, it was nice for my players, instead of asking what other systems I could pitch, to say "We're doing this again next week, right?" Really glad I went with this over the FFG Rogue Trader.
tl;dr It's solid, newb friendly, just needs the finishing touches put on it. Character advancement, ships and ship combat, and a sheet is all it needs. Moves need a few tweaks, or maybe some adds. There's no equivalent to either Go Aggro or Seize By Force, which my players needed a few times. Also, maybe an Interrogate move? But as I said, there's no reason it can't be played as is, unless you really need the stats on that ship.