Open notes thread (or, Rob "reads" BSG)

Purposes of this thread:

* For me:To write any notes that occur to me as I watch Battlestar.
* For you: Chat with me (so, kinda for me, too) about my observations. I.e., feel free to participate.

EDIT: 6/19, I am posting VERY raw ideas, here. This is first-draft shit. It comes from my eyes to my fingers as I watch the discs. I don't mind discussion on these side-points, but please respect that these are exceedingly raw ideas. Some of them might be stupid.

Questions of faith are important, answers of faith in the series are problematical.

Major force is love. Making people love you, what love can do to you.

In the first season, at least, there's tons of situations where practical matters of survival challenge ideals. Mixed in with this is a lot of 'what does the greater good justify?' kind of stuff. That was a large part of why I liked the series so much in the first season.

2nd half of the miniseries observations/ideas:

the more you use the opening to weird, the more there's a tip in the scales from self-determination to destiny. weird is where the heaviest weight of control powers should be

Maybe an alternate +5 history, that indicates you're in love. You don't get the XP for it going back to 0, it stays and it says "I love this person." Love powers could be more controlly versions of sex powers (I don't know how controlly sex powers are). Or maybe sex should be more controlly and love more hands-off on the player's control.

In the first season, at least, there's tons of situations where practical matters of survival challenge ideals. Mixed in with this is a lot of 'what does the greater good justify?' kind of stuff. That was a large part of why I liked the series so much in the first season.

Fucking A. Nice. Thanks, Jeff, Ill be looking for that now.

Questions of bigotry vs. forceful imposition of security. "I kill the Cylon" vs. "I try to understand the Cylon."

The liberal view: Try to understand the terrorists. Figure them out. Maybe we can interface, stop the need for killing. Sometimes even get duped by people who are manipulating your trust, or be antiauthoritarian to stupidity's end.

The conservative view: People are going to fucking die here. I won't let people die. I will do whatever I have to to stop my monkeysphere from being hurt. Sometimes even hurt my monkeysphere in the short term to help it in the long term.

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Your creations get twisted and misused. Gaius's programing skillz.

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Frankenstein thing gets skirted. I don't know if I want to preserve that for genre and feel or strangle it because I feel it's been overdone. Maybe allowing for another balancing act? You decide: is this the Frankenstein problem, or Frankenstien is dead, we have new paradigm.

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James Callas's / writers' ability to interweave dialogue and have one guy respond to two people (head Six and Gaeta, frex), is fun to watch and fun to do. Support?

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Move?:Sexual teasing, seducing. Very important.

Do you want to answer things definitively vs. do you want to leave mystery? Seems like a central question in art. I like the tension between those things, even you're not allowed to by a certain point of view.

This is a tension in BSG and every other spec fic series, especially, I think.

It's also a tension in extemporaneous art, like rpgs-as-played can be.

(Extemporaneous, ephemeral art with an extremely limited audience.)

Thinking back on the series and going through your notes these things stood out to me as important:

*Making people love you, what love can do to you.

*the more you use the opening to weird, the more there's a tip in the scales from self-determination to destiny.

*Questions of bigotry vs. forceful imposition of security.

*Sexual teasing, seducing. Very important.

You should definitely build on these. Things I'd also like to point out (and some of which the BSG boardgame does really well):
-dogfights, Starbuck kicking raider ass
-do we jump now and risk loosing people or wait and risk more? other variants on the same theme - ties in with the "what does the greater good justify" and "what will we do for survival" - also, survival vs. ideals
-dealing with pressure, release, drugs, sex, drink, boxing, gambling
-religion, followers, redemption
-visions are opening your brain, going weird
-internal conflicts, it's not just cylon-human, it's worker-leader, god-gods, destiny-free will, lovers-community, army-civilians, all kinds of tension
-sickness

And I have to say it, but I'm not fond of your +5 Hx move.

Another brief thought: Caprica 6 is a Skinner.

Playbook ideas:
Viper Jockey(and his squadron) - Lee and Starbuck
Freedom Fighter [optional: Resistance(already fought Cylons. prejudiced, but experienced like not many others] - Tyrol, Sam.
Visionary - Primary type: Pythia. Dabblers: Roslin, Baltar(latter can be even Survivor who eventually changed type to Visionary)
Commander - military figure. Important decisions.
Politician - not necessarily the President, but someone with a lot of political power. Tough choices. Unique abilities
Survivor? - that's who Baltar is, that's who Romo is, they're not in the military, they're not in the leader chain. But they have unique skills no-one else has.

leader rule: in fact, commander and politician are very similar(and yet different). Could they be one type? There should be always two of them. Should there be a chance to get two Commanders? (if Cain was slightly less cutthroat bitch then I think they could get along with Adama)
Two Politicians? (Zarek and Roslin... but won't it hurt the setting too much if militaries are sorts of leaderless?)

my current thoughts, feel free to work on it, or expand

I'm going for more of a straight reskin with as few tweaks as possible.

Weird becomes Faith.  Barter becomes Political Favor.

A few playbooks are easy (Pilot = Driver/Battlebabe, CAG = Chopper, etc) some are harder (Political Leader = Operator with major hacks).


I'm writing playbooks here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GVdJ0H62eN-q3-axT0r3HYUVGH3L296SSsMc44SQKPo/edit?hl=en_US

Talking about it on storygames here http://story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=15212