The Churn: an Expanse game
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@cura said in The Churn: an Expanse game:
@testament said in The Churn: an Expanse game:
I mean it's just more Amos appreciation which I can completely get behind.
He and Avasarala are my far-and-away favs. So many of the characters are great, but those two...
The moment between Amos and Chrisjen in the most recent season when he's showing her how to use magboots and she's all "How do you know how to walk in heels?" and he's like "I didn't always work in space."
is pretty much the best thing ever.
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I should add if you do watch The Expanse, make sure you watch it on Amazon Prime. To get the unedited Chrisjen swearing every other word without making the censors work overtime.
Also
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@testament said in The Churn: an Expanse game:
I should add if you do watch The Expanse, make sure you watch it on Amazon Prime. To get the unedited Chrisjen swearing every other word without making the censors work overtime.
Also
I knew that was the line coming. Like, I'm not to that point in the books, but I knew. I even whispered it to myself before the door closed.
"I am that guy."
God I fucking love Amos.
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@auspice So you're still reading Caliban's War? That one I think is the most faithful of the books to tv in the three seasons so far.
Once you read Abaddon's Gate and then watch season three, there were a lot of liberties taken. The main plot points are there, so it doesn't skimp on that. Just some things like how the PoV perspective of Bull in the book is transposed on Drummer in the series.
There's a lit of big and small changes in the third book to the third season, but I don't think it's bad. I think they're both really good on different merits.
I could nitpick the first book and first season, how Holden didn't call in the distress call on the Scopuli. How they weren't stranded in space until the Donnager showed up.
Mostly, I think I'm just happy to talk about the material with people who've also watched the show/read the books. Seriously, I keep looking for people at my work and nobody has heard of The Expanse.
Breaks my damn heart.
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@testament said in The Churn: an Expanse game:
a lot of big and small changes in the third book to the third season, but I don't think it's bad. I think they're both really good on different merits.
This is how I've felt about it. It's increasingly deviating from the specifics of the books, but it's maintaining the dynamics between factions and characters, and I can understand why they've made the changes they've made, either as shorthand for a limited window of time, or to work in a visual medium. Granted, the authors produce the show and have written multiple episodes themselves, so I guess that's no surprise.
The nice part of that is that it's still worthwhile to read the books even if you start by watching the show, because there's so much more of the story to experience.
@Insomnia : I've been watching this! I am personally interested in seeing how it turns out, but not for the MU*, probably. Even if I were up to the task of sorting out an Ares plugin for that system, I think I'd just rather dive into the epic narrative end of space opera.
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@cura So you guys are using standard FS3 instead of the Ares release? I think Ares would work great here. Especially since it has support for bigger ships, I think.
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As cool as having Donnager or Agatha King sized ships would be, I'd be more into smaller ships. Akin to Rocinate or Guy Molona
Though I'd be careful about allowing PCs getting weapons on their ships. Some OPA ships did but they were in the minority. The running trend seemed to be unless you were a military, you're not likely to have weapons on it.
Then again you could also have a really really stupidly rich corporation and buy your way into weapons.
And stealth tech.
And alien bio weapons.
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@testament sorta said in The Churn: an Expanse game:
And alien
bioweapons.***=NSFW content***
click to show -
I'm not associated with the game in any way, but based on the web portal, it's definitely Ares.
I don't know that Ares really has additional support for larger ships than FS3.2 had, although I certainly could have missed an update. I totally agree with @Testament that capital ships (and probably anything larger/more powerful than the Roci) is probably a bad idea--there's just too much power there to leave things too far up to chance. In my opinion, for something like The Expanse, battleships should be plot points, not on-screen rolls.
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@deadculture said in The Churn: an Expanse game:
@cura So you guys are using standard FS3 instead of the Ares release? I think Ares would work great here. Especially since it has support for bigger ships, I think.
They're using Ares. I'm not on staff but I'm helping out with tech support. There's no real difference between FS3 2nd (Penn) and 3rd (Ares) editions in terms of big ship support, but like @Seraphim73 said - neither is really designed for that. I've used it for Basestar-on-Battlestar action on BSG games before, but usually it's better to just leave those to plot points/rolls instead of +combat.
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@testament said in The Churn: an Expanse game:
Though I'd be careful about allowing PCs getting weapons on their ships.
@seraphim73 said in The Churn: an Expanse game:
In my opinion, for something like The Expanse, battleships should be plot points, not on-screen rolls.
It is indeed built on Ares, which is lovely. Including FS3 was not the selling point of using Ares, for me. I like FS3, and I like that it's simple and lightweight, which is why I'm leaving it in, but the Expanse is classic space opera, which means over-the-top action and grand adventures and, generally speaking, things that FS3 may not be perfectly modeled to represent.
It's important to me to emphasize that the game favors narrative value over rolls. If somebody doesn't want to roll dice on that game, they probably won't ever have to, beyond the occasional perception check, maybe. I want it to be a fun box of toys that people can play with if they like that sort of thing, and I think +sheets are a good way to make sure everyone is on the same page about things, but using it to roll dice won't be compulsory.
Just copy-pasting from the policies that are up on the game's portal, in the FS3 section:
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FS3 is meant to be a very simple, very streamlined option to guide, expand, and enrich RP here, to help prop up RP in interesting ways and lend an element of chance to storytelling. It is NOT intended to restrict or define RP, or put hard boundaries on storytelling. On this game, RP always comes first. If two characters want to RP an over-the-top action scene without rolling dice, we are A-OK with that. (You should probably not pose your character being an expert marksman if they have no firearms skill, but if you wanna pose them as having no skill but somehow getting that one-in-a-million headshot, against all odds, because it makes for an awesome moment of story and everyone else in the scene is okay with it? Nobody is going to have a problem with that.)
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FS3 is not designed or balanced for PvP. The PvP this setting encourages is strategic, political, and resource-based rather than reliant on a system for combat between two characters. If players want to try using it for PvP just for fun, that's cool, but no PvP consequences using FS3 are ever going to be enforced by staff.
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We've adjusted the points a character is allowed to spend in chargen substantially upward. New characters receive an abundance of points to begin the game with, and it's possible to create a truly badass character with them, straight out of the gates. You do not HAVE to use all of the points you're allowed to, but you won't be side-eyed for doing so. Progression/advancement in FS3 is intentionally slow, and fairly limited -- there's not much point in racing off to try to max everything, given the difference in your odds of success between ranks of skill is not immense, and it's easy to consistently succeed at rolls with even an average skill level. The amount of points you are given here in CG makes progression even less emphasized once IC. See above: FS3 is really just here as a fun option, and the game is not excessively system-oriented. You can probably spend the entire duration of your time on this game without ever doing more than rolling occasional skill checks (and maybe not even doing that).
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cough https://www.polygon.com/2018/8/7/17660410/the-expanse-tabletop-rpg-kickstarter-green-ronin cough
Neat article about the actual creators of the show.
