Sci Fi/Opera Originality

[Arkandel]

@miss-demeanor said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:

And God forbid you do a game where people can either inhabit planets, space stations, or ships. Now you have to flesh out all three. And I cannot stress enough how important fleshing out ships are for a sci-fi game.

Not to say fleshing these things out isn't a big project, because it is, but that's the least of your worries if you're doing that to your game.

The real issue is now you need to populate all three since, unless you're confident in your ability to attract a sizable playerbase, then splitting it up will just make RP that much harder. And what's the payoff?

It makes way more sense to allow people to sandbox being all over the place in temporary rooms or whatever but keeping your players in one easily reached geographical (*) location as much as possible.

(*) Cosmological?

[Miss Demeanor]

@arkandel See, and I like Firefly-type sci-fi. People living in ships, on planets, in stations that sit out in the vacuum of space. Being able to visit any or all of them. Just... doing what you do. I find crafting up NPC races/people to be easier, but that's a 'me personally' thing. Its harder for me to make the worlds and places.

[RnMissionRun]

@miss-demeanor said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:

@arkandel See, and I like Firefly-type sci-fi. People living in ships, on planets, in stations that sit out in the vacuum of space. Being able to visit any or all of them. Just... doing what you do. I find crafting up NPC races/people to be easier, but that's a 'me personally' thing. Its harder for me to make the worlds and places.

I agree!

Still waiting for someone to make a good Firefly game!

[Miss Demeanor]

@rnmissionrun Actually, you should take a look at Starfinder if you want a decent Firely-esque game that uses a known system. Its Paizo's new game, uses D&D system but the setting is pretty baller. And it introduces alien races, so its not just humans out there trolling the galaxy. There's everything from the Skittermander (think Stitch) to Vesk (giant lizardfolk) to Shirren (superhot alien psychics) to androids (self-explanatory), there's even insectile races and the Ysoki are rat-like folk. There's a bunch more, but this is what's in the core book. But yeah, you get a crew of people, a spaceship, and you go have adventures! Be smugglers, be heroes, fight against the Pact's oppressive influence (or accept the limits to freedom in return for more safety!). Its a pretty awesome game so far and I'm enjoying making my grenade-lobbing Ysoki mechanic with her doglike stealth drone!

[faraday]

@miss-demeanor Firefly and Starfinder always struck me as settings that freaking rock as tabletop games (where you can be a single crew) and completely fall apart when you try to extend that to an even modestly-sized multi-player game.

I've just been burned too many times by Star Wars games where you're stuck on one planet while everyone else who's online is someplace else, and Firefly games where you're either stuck on a ship with nobody else from your crew on, or stuck on a planet while everyone else is away on their ships.

Which I think is another hurdle Original Sci-Fi games (and established ones too) have: focus. When the entire galaxy is your playground, herding the cats together becomes more of a challenge.

[Seraphim73]

@faraday said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:

Which I think is another hurdle Original Sci-Fi games (and established ones too) have: focus. When the entire galaxy is your playground, herding the cats together becomes more of a challenge.

Agreed 100%. I would strongly suggest to anyone looking to create original-theme sci-fi that you come up with a way for quick and easy interaction. Whether it's wormhole drives that allow instantaneous space travel, 'casting into another body like in Altered Carbon, Waygates like in The Fifth World, the ability to join anyone anywhere in real-time VR, or... I don't know... something that allows anyone anywhere to RP with anyone else anywhere else any time.

[Miss Demeanor]

@faraday I will absolutely agree about the Firefly bit. It relies almost entirely on ships and crews to go anywhere/do anything. I think Starfinder has a little more accessibility if only because it is really just D&D in space. So yes, you can have a crew and be on a ship OR you can be a merchant that travels around from planet to planet OR you can be a mercenary gun for hire OR you could be an Envoy of your species, trying to make contact and form alliances with others, etc. You don't HAVE to constantly be on a ship and there are smaller shuttlecraft and the like that you can use if you are part of a crew and they aren't online and you want to do a thing. So you aren't as tied in place.

That said, yes, in general I would agree that they are definitely better for and more aimed at tabletop where you have a single group. Also, I have to admit that I'm biased. I got the Starfinder book recently and its just baller. I'm loving the setting, the races, the classes... but I'm also one of those people that likes a little Shadowrun in my Firefly, and Starfinder gives me that.

[faraday]

@miss-demeanor Well you CAN do all of those things in Firefly too, but almost nobody does. Everyone wants to capture the feel of the show, which is centered around a small ship crew/family.

[RnMissionRun]

@miss-demeanor said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:

@rnmissionrun Actually, you should take a look at Starfinder if you want a decent Firely-esque game that uses a known system. Its Paizo's new game, uses D&D system but the setting is pretty baller. And it introduces alien races, so its not just humans out there trolling the galaxy. There's everything from the Skittermander (think Stitch) to Vesk (giant lizardfolk) to Shirren (superhot alien psychics) to androids (self-explanatory), there's even insectile races and the Ysoki are rat-like folk. There's a bunch more, but this is what's in the core book. But yeah, you get a crew of people, a spaceship, and you go have adventures! Be smugglers, be heroes, fight against the Pact's oppressive influence (or accept the limits to freedom in return for more safety!). Its a pretty awesome game so far and I'm enjoying making my grenade-lobbing Ysoki mechanic with her doglike stealth drone!

I had not heard of StarFinder, so thanks for the recommendation!

[Miss Demeanor]

@faraday Agreed, which is why I think Starfinder is the better choice, really. Its not Firefly, but it can give you that same feel of adventure and grouping up with friends to go do a thing. It also allows for things to be done between doing The Things. You can stop on a station or world, talk to folks, have some drinks, resupply. There's a D&D MU that's been running for a few years now that's done pretty well for itself despite D&D being largely considered 'only for tabletop'. I'd hazard its because its a game where the expectation is there will be Things (ie. plots) to do, but also the option for smaller things to do between The Things. Unlike with Firefly, where you are completely split up into only crews and their ships, and its thematic that you don't really do anything outside of them... Starfinder offers you the chance to go do a solo thing too. But, as mentioned previously, I'm biased towards it. So YMMV.

[Botulism]

I'm attempting to deal with the "everyone is spread out everywhere" problem on my Who game by encouraging players to group up into TARDIS crews with friends or others in their timezone. Then there are a few static locations that are public and open to everyone so crews can meet and people can mingle. I agree that having 10 PCs in 8 different places is a good way to kill a game in the crib.

[Lotherio]

I'm okay with travel times per theme, I'm not okay with real time enforced waits to get to distant locations where other players are; and this has happened outside of sci fi. I get it in the time of coded space and economy where it was more game like, but definitely not conducive to rp. It seemed rampant on Star Wars joints in the day.

[Botulism]

@lotherio Which is funny, because in SW you go from A to B in seconds in the movies, especially the new ones.

[Lotherio]

@botulism said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:

@lotherio Which is funny, because in SW you go from A to B in seconds in the movies, especially the new ones.

Exactly that, skip travel enjoy the story and rp parts. I know some people like the coded space mining (trading), but really if I want that I'll fire up old Elite (or Oolite the copy).

[Botulism]

@lotherio Right. A MU* is an RP environment first and foremost, and things that hinder RP aren't helpful. If going from A to B in a blink means more players can RP more often, why not?

[RnMissionRun]

Unfortunately I am still stuck in the mindset that avoiding IC travel times and methods is cheating because that's how we did things for years and years on Star Trek games.

Want to go to to another planet? First you need to acquire a ship (this could take a year or more of working your way up though the ranks until you were assigned your own command), then you had to learn to fly it (you almost certainly had learned this long before you got your own ship), and then you had to learn to successfully navigate through open space full of PVPers. It was wild and crazy fun back in the day but no one plays MU*s like this anymore.

[Botulism]

@rnmissionrun I get that. It's hard to break out of established ways of doing things. And that makes sense in a Star Trek theme, because you generally can't go anywhere at any time.

Maybe playing in a theme where that's not the case might help.

[Thenomain]

@lotherio said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:

There seems some interest in original sci fi/fantasy/space opera, but seems very niche these days

Arx is about big visions and doing big things. I sincerely doubt people won't be able to get into a Space Opera style game these days.

The key is to give people something to do, and they'll enjoy whatever genre you put in front of them, especially if they have some dispensation toward that genre or setting to begin with.

[Kanye Qwest]

It's a bad idea to create a setting where people can be spread out all over a universe from the beginning. If you have a game that successfully runs for awhile and attracts players through story and atmosphere, you can work on adding other places, other destinations. But first, you should definitely create a reason for players to be together.

If people want to play in depth ship and planet simulators, they can go play Eve online. People log into MU to roleplay. Everything else is just downtime/minigame.

[Thenomain]

@kanye-qwest

I will say that a lot of people do Mu* for minigame. Muds are a lot of minigame. Mushes have a lot of crafting minigames. Politics minigames. Economics minigames. Minigames all over the miniplace.

It is almost universally a bad idea to let people spread out too far. There are exceptions (a TwoMoons game I coded for had people pretty much one alt per region, which kept things alive, and the Vienna WoD game Haunted Memories had a large grid that nonetheless felt alive), but unless it feels right, or unless people are pushing in that direction, it is far better to keep people close enough that there is always someone else to interact with.