Gamecrafting: Excelsior

[Pyrephox]

So, I've been hankering for a very specific sort of game for a very long time, and finally got around to writing down some information. Now that Ares is out, I actually think that (with some tweaks) the kind of play that Ares promotes might be a good fit for what I want from the game. It's not something that I'd ever expect to have a broad appeal: it's SF, but not hard SF with reams and reams of specialized equipment, but rather a focus on colonization and discovery, with some light sim elements (in that building the colony is a tentpole of the gameplay, and the colony has stats which can be impacted by events, which in turn impact other events, and it is entirely possible for the colony to fail and pretty much everyone to die...although that's not LIKELY. But it is possible) and some creative elements (in that players will have a hand in creating flora and fauna as it's discovered) and some survival elements (diseases are a thing, requiring food supplies is a thing, environmental hazards are a thing, etc.).

So, after writing far too much on it, I thought why not toss some of it out and see what other people think. It's definitely a niche project, but feedback is appreciated. I'll start with just the premise and 'who the characters are' and 'what do they do' broad strokes, but I can elaborate on most anything if people are interested.

Premise

All characters are crew and cargo of the colony ship Excelsior, which was bound for an officially chartered planet on the edge of explored space. Instead, after an unknown disaster in transit, the ship’s automated systems have crash-landed the vessel on an entirely unknown planet, outside of the known systems. Excelsior, once grounded, was never meant to take off again, and as the planet proves not immediately inimical to human life, the ship initiates colonization protocols, and its crew and cargo awaken.

What Do Characters Do?

There are three ‘core’ aspects of play on Excelsior, which will be facilitated and supported by staff:

Survival: The planet that the Excelsior has landed on is entirely unprepared for human colonization, and none of the scouting logs and readings in the ship’s databanks are relevant to it. Discovering and surviving the dangers is a key aspect of game play - there will be environmental hazards, predators, diseases, and unknown factors to discover, survive, and overcome. This aspect of play encourages and primarily engages scientific and exploration based characters.

Civilization Building: Each colonist and crew member was issued a specific plot of land with specific resources and rights - none of which are valid anymore. The agreed upon Charter for the creation of a probationary colonial government could, arguably, also no longer be valid. Determining how to set up the new government, how to honor (or not honor) the land grants, and other social and organizational issues is an ongoing source of conflict and negotiation, especially between factions who had originally planned to be separated from each other, but now must rely on others for survival in an unregimented environment. This aspect of play encourages and primarily engages diplomatic and social based characters.

Mysteries: The planet and vessel offer mysteries based in the past, and uncovered in the present. One of the biggest questions to resolve in the beginning is - how did the Excelsior get so badly off-course, and then choose to crash land on a planet that happened to be habitable by humanity? Was it truly an accident? And if it wasn’t, what was the purpose and - more importantly - are the perpetrators still in the colony and planning further disruptions? However, as the world is explored, further mysteries are uncovered with ruins and signs of ancient alien civilizations, as well as technology of unknown purpose and operation. This aspect of play encourages and primarily engages investigative and intellectual based characters.

Who Are The Characters?

Human: There are no playable alien races in Excelsior. Humanity has come in contact with a few alien species, but the level of integration is minimal.

Factions: The original colony plan had several organizational charters, as well as numerous independent settlers. The organizational charters provide starting factions, although it is expected that characters can create new ones or dissolve old ones as the game progresses.

Excelsior Crew: Excelsior’s crew were originally meant to serve as an immediate provisional government, and have been trained to work together, as well as having a hierarchy headed by the Captain, then the Executive Officer, three Division Heads (Engineering, Astrogation, and Internal Systems), and a Colonial Manager.

Solip Schism Services: Employees and executives of a megacorp who were chartered a significant amount of land and mineral resource rights in EUX-065’s southern continent. SSS specializes in resource extraction, processing, and shipment.

Xenoecology Unlimited: Researchers and administrators associated with a system-spanning nonprofit organization charged with attempting to catalog and preserve examples of all known life. Since every new planet is teeming with undiscovered flora and fauna, it is accepted that the fieldwork is a life appointment.

Interstellar Protectors: Members of a private security firm who were contracted by the colony to provide law enforcement and protection for the first five years of the colony, until native systems could be developed and filled. IP has a policing division and a quasi-military division.

The Navidison Initiative: A colonist collective who agreed in their organizational charter to abide by the teachings of Ophelia Navidison, a psychologist and theologian who preached genetic integration between human and environment; most members of TNI have genetic enhancements meant to aid them in adaptation with their chosen homeworld. This is not their chosen homeworld.

Independents: In addition to the orgs, there are thousands of colonists who gathered the money to pay for their own charter, and who may come from a wide variety of backgrounds, skills, and affiliations.

Colonists: All characters are colonists from the Excelsior. There are no natives or native humans on the planet, nor will there be any additional drops or contact with the wider civilization of humanity in the initial stages (and possibly not ever). New characters may either be freshly unthawed from the colony banks, or they can have been in the background and ‘emerge’ as main characters, but no non-Excelsior origins are accepted.

[Lisse24]

I love this idea.

[Sunny]

Yeah, me too. A lot.

[Pyrephox]

One of the things that I'd like to do to help characters distinguish themselves is add the ability for each character to purchase a Background and an Affinity. These are separate from Background skills - each allows a character to have something that they can spend LP (again, assuming Ares) on to give them a special effect or a critical success on certain rolls.

The purpose of this is two-fold: one, to slow down character growth by giving people useful things to do with their LP outside of just buying stats and skills, and to allow character past the XP cap for stats and skills to continue to spend LP on things that aren't just background skills.

Example of a Background:

Criminal: You’re no stranger to the underworld and the skills required to survive there, whether it was a bit of smuggling on the side, or full-time wetwork for one of the many criminal organizations of known space. You can spend an LP to auto-succeed on an uncontested (by PCs) Stealth roll, and gain the Background Skill Cracking Security: ** for free.

Example of an Affinity:

Technowizardry: You’re one of those people who probably ended up in tech support (formally or not) and whenever you walk in the room, whatever was going wrong works again...until you leave. You can spend 1 LP to make a piece of broken technology work again. This technology is not fixed, but it will do what it needs to do just long enough for you to finish an immediate task. For multi-system technologies (like the Excelsior), this effect is limited to a single console or subsystem. You don't have to know what the technology is SUPPOSED to do, but operating something without determining its function first is a good way to get vaporized.

So, as you can see - Backgrounds give you the ability to spend LP to really nail a single roll when it counts, as well as a free Background Skill. Affinities offer a way to spend an LP to create a more qualitative effect. Both are meant to provide an LP sink, but also to give people ways to create characters are more than their stats and skills, without having to create five hundred 'special abilities'.

Further customization, though, can be found through genetic and cybernetic enhancements. These won't be widely available at the start of the game (since the crashed ship doesn't have a fully functioning genetic manipulation bay, or cybernetic surgery), but both of those things can be established through the Project system.

[secretfire]

This sounds like "Sid Mier's ALPHA CENTAURI: The Mush"

I'm down for that.

So which faction are Gaia's Stepdaughters?

[Pyrephox]

@secretfire said in Gamecrafting: Excelsior:

This sounds like "Sid Mier's ALPHA CENTAURI: The Mush"

I'm down for that.

So which faction are Gaia's Stepdaughters?

I have not played that! So I don't know. Based on the name, and what Google tells me, either Xenoecology Unlimited or The Navidison Initiative could have aspects of it. XU leans more towards hard science, while TNI is more of a spiritual movement that tends to have a lot of skilled geneticists involved.

[Pyrephox]

One of the subsystems in its draft form, for the process by which characters can discover new flora and fauna, capture and study it, and eventually cultivate it for use by the colony (if it is able to be used for that).

The purpose here is to provide a blueprint for players to run the process with minimal bottlenecks from staff, and to know exactly what they need to do to achieve an end result, while leaving a lot of room for playing things out.

Discovering New Food

While it is definitely possible to just start chowing down on purple grass or that twelve-legged bug that was crawling up your trousers and hope for the best, that’s not likely to be the best way to find a stable supply of food for the 100+ colonists who have been awakened. Much less the thousands of colonists to come. There are four phases of creating a viable source of food for the colony:

Exploration: First, you have to find whatever it is you want to try to eat (or build with, or make clothes from, etc.) out in the wilderness. This requires a +job or a PRP to go out and find samples of whatever it is you want to develop. You can highlight a specific plant/animal/material that comes up in a scene, or you can specify certain criteria (“I want to find small, fast-breeding meat producers.”) that you think the colony might need. Someone will have to make a Survival roll vs 6 + the number of specific criteria (So, “I want to find an edible vegetable” is a straight 6 but might find you anything from a tuber that feeds on blood to a sour grain that froths into a fermenting foam almost immediately when ground, while “I want to find a sweet vegetable appropriate for making Earth-style breads and pastries that can be cultivated easily near the ship” would be an 8, because you’re asking for two specifics beyond ‘edible vegetable’ - that it has a sweet taste, and that it can be cultivated easily near the colony ship.) in your search. Failure on this roll usually means that the sample is guaranteed to have some significant drawback that will have to be overcome before it can be added to the food supply. A crushing success on this roll usually means that the sample is guaranteed to reveal some un-asked-for benefit that can be exploited if the sample is thoroughly studied and cultivated.

Capture: Once a viable sample has been located, play a scene to secure it. This might be run by staff, but can also be run by the players or another player based on the information returned by the job or PrP runner. This doesn’t have to be a dangerous scene, but it can be, and depending on what you’re looking for, there might be an inherent difficulty: for example, if you want to try to domesticate a native animal for a battle-capable beast of burden, you’re probably going after something large, brave, and with defensive capabilities - that has no fear of humans. Have fun!

Study: Once you have samples and can return them to the ship, there will usually be a Medical Sciences and a Chemical Sciences check, at a minimum, to see if the sample can serve as a food source right out of the field, if it will need specialized breeding or genetic alteration, or if it has unexpected or unsuitable side-effects. Success on the roll will usually uncover the sample's mechanical effects after a set time period, while failure on the roll will only uncover a few of them, positive or negative. Characters can study multiple times, but they generally require fresh samples to do so, which should be acquired through scenes. You can, of course, choose to skip this step and simply consume the item! This may lead to character death, illness, or entertaining side-effects, but it is absolutely an option. Choosing to consume native fauna and flora without studying it first is considered to be consenting to all potential consequences.

Cultivate: Assuming that something has been found to be safe for consumption, either through the rigorous process of study by qualified professionals, or by shoving it in your face and seeing what happens, then it can be cultivated provided the proper skills and conditions are available. This is considered a Project. Once the Project is complete, it’s assumed that the item has now been added to the list of the colony’s resources and that scavenging patrols are regularly hunting/harvesting it. This raises the Colony’s morale and health by a set amount based on the food quality of the item and any special attributes it might have, as well as if it is a new ‘niche’ (a type of food that the colony doesn’t currently have a lot of, like meat, or starch, or fiber). Successful cultivation also serves as a positive event to affect the colony's survivability rating.

[Bananerz]

I'm really interested to see the exploration component of the game on Ares!!

[Pyrephox]

@Bananerz It will not be particularly map-based, but more project based/outcome based. I'd like to have specific pages on the web portal, not just for plots, but also a Herbarium and a Bestiary which would record the stats of flora/fauna that have been uncovered - which could then be used by anyone in whatever scenes they choose to run. Likewise, colony development is less about tracking WHERE STUFF IS, and more about keeping track of what stuff exists, and whether it's hurting or helping the colony.

[Bananerz]

@Pyrephox I love it.

[saosmash]

@Pyrephox this sounds extremely cool.

[Dreampipe]

All of this looks absolutely radical.

[Pyrephox]

Last thing for a bit: an example of some of the worldbuilding. While the game takes place outside of known space, with contact with human civilization cut off, all of the colonists came from somewhere INSIDE that civilization, so they'll have ties and information about the worlds they left. There are four major powers detailed, and it's assumed that there are dozens of independent worlds and stations/ships to grow up on if a character wants to juggle geese, instead. This is the expanded write-up for one of the galactic powers:

Congregation of Allied Planets

Nickname:
Cogs

Capital Planet:
None (7 held planets)

History:
Founded roughly 159 PD, the Congregation of Allied Planets was originally born on what was - and remains - the most ridiculously lucky system in exploration so far: three habitable worlds in one system: Veeshu, Braama, and Sheev. Although only Veeshu was a ‘Goldilocks’ world, Braama and Sheev were also tolerable for humanity, and both were exceptionally resource rich. This began a tradition of colonists living on Veeshu, and working either remotely or on site on the other worlds. As holdings and relationships spread out across an interplanetary network of stations, ships, and planets, those who would become the founders of the Congregation found that the Earth-style of geographical citizenship did not serve either their needs or their desires. Instead, they founded the concept of the ‘clade’, a nation-state built on shared interests, needs, or community, irrespective of geographical or cultural origin. The twelve largest of these clades came together in 160 PD to formally sign the Congregation of Allied Planets into being, and since it has been established, it has added the majority population of three additional planets into its union, largely through sustained efforts at recruitment until a majority of the population could be persuaded to apply for formal admission into the union. In response to this, several other interstellar societies have forbidden citizenship in a clade while one also holds citizenship in their own society, and some consider the Cogs’ recruitment strategies to be predatory and aggressive.

Unlike the Earth Alliance or Stellar Systems United, the Congregation is not a particularly peaceful place. Wars between clades are not uncommon, although they have to be conducted by rules as established by the Congregation Council, which convenes every month, virtually, to review ongoing disputes between clades. Most wars are technological, destroying tech infrastructure, implants, and data over buildings and land. They’re still deadly, particularly for citizens with cybernetic implants, which has developed in the average Cog citizen a healthy wariness for such devices. It’s not considered morally wrong, just reckless, to be heavily cybered, since such devices can be turned against you. Genetic alteration is considered a superior choice, but can be hard to come by - it’s expensive, and clades are reluctant to invest the money required on someone who hasn’t truly established themselves as dependable.

The most powerful current clades are the Interstellar Transportation Union, Solip Schism Systems, and the Reverent Church of the Divine Contemplation. By organizational wealth, population, and alliances, these three clades steer a good portion of Cog policy, such as it is, and they or their allies control just over half of the Congregation Council.

Culture:
Most other groups consider Cog culture to be loud, chaotic, and ever-changing. They’re not wrong. The Congregation terminated birthright citizenship very early on, instead relying on clade membership as citizenship. One cannot be the member of a clade unless that clade has invited you to join them, and you have signed a contract agreeing to abide by the clade’s laws, procedures, and policies. Technically, there are no Cog children - children are considered ‘proxy citizens’, allowed to remain with their parents and access many of the benefits of their clade, but unable to be considered full citizens until they come of age at 17. Coming of age means that the benefits of proxy citizenship dissolve, which means that for Cogs, the teenage years are a mad scramble of applying to clades, or receiving invitations from clades, and deciding who you will join - if anyone wants you at all.

This means that Cog children are taught to ‘put themselves forward’ quite early, and are encouraged to display all their strengths to best advantage. They tend to be loud, confident, ‘attention hogs’, and ambitious. The goal for most is to receive an invitation from a desirable, wealthy clade that can be signed on one’s 17th birthday, then stay with that clade until a portfolio has been built up that allows one to apply or be recruited to an even more prestigious clade, and so on and so forth. Often times, young clade members will discover an affinity for each other and a disaffinity for the more established personalities in their clade, and may terminate their citizenship in one clade to form their own. This means that the politics of clades, and their relative standing and power, are constantly in flux. Cogs never rest, the saying goes, and they tend to be aggressively productive wherever they go.

Bereft of many overarching laws or secure rights, the Congregation instead values written contracts highly, and considers verbal agreements to be worth the paper they’re written on. Interstellar Commercial Concerns, or “megacorps” as they’re more commonly known, prefer to be incorporated in the Congregation for the unprecedented freedom to dictate responsibilities and rights for their employees/clade members, but this CAN backfire if they break any of the provisions of their contracts, however small. Contract lawyer is considered one of the most desirable professions in the Congregation (and the rest of known space groans when they see a Cog lawyer show up at a negotiation).

[Caryatid]

I love the things you dream up. Always have, always will. I'd play this in a heartbeat.

[Pyrephox]

@Caryatid

(Also, I miss talking with you!)

[peasoupling]

This does sound pretty amazing!

[faraday]

Sounds like a neat game.

@Pyrephox said in Gamecrafting: Excelsior:

Someone will have to make a Survival roll vs 6 + the number of specific criteria (So, “I want to find an edible vegetable” is a straight 6 but ...“I want to find a sweet vegetable...would be an 8...

Just FYI - FS3 mechanics (I assumed you're using FS3 since you mentioned background skills and luck points) don't work that way. Modifiers add or remove dice; the target number never changes. While you could of course modify the code to do whatever you want, changing target numbers would require some extreme code surgery and have significant game balance implications.

[Pyrephox]

@faraday said in Gamecrafting: Excelsior:

Sounds like a neat game.

@Pyrephox said in Gamecrafting: Excelsior:

Someone will have to make a Survival roll vs 6 + the number of specific criteria (So, “I want to find an edible vegetable” is a straight 6 but ...“I want to find a sweet vegetable...would be an 8...

Just FYI - FS3 mechanics (I assumed you're using FS3 since you mentioned background skills and luck points) don't work that way. Modifiers add or remove dice; the target number never changes. While you could of course modify the code to do whatever you want, changing target numbers would require some extreme code surgery and have significant game balance implications.

Does Gray Harbor have significantly different code then? Because Character/Skill vs Problem/Skill works just fine from what I can see?

Ah! I see where we went wrong. I do not mean 6 as in 'this is the number each die must hit' I mean 6 as in 'this is the number in the opposing pool you roll against'.

So, the above example would be Cathy Cartographer/Survival vs Can I Eat That/4 (which is 6, because of the default +2)

[bored]

@Pyrephox Its dicepools not target #s.

[Pyrephox]

@bored Yes. I know.