Mar 5, 2016, 12:04 PM

So between having recently consumed the Red Rising trilogy and recent comments about Lords and Ladies games, plus a lack of space stuff, I have found myself thinking about Space Lords and Ladies. The Fifth World was run by legitimately nice people but never scratched my itch (not to mention being gone) so I found myself sort of musing the following. It is kind of random and a bit stream of consciousness but I thought I should share and see if my thoughts match with other people's at all.

Key Ideas:

  • The setting is not supposed to be 'nice', Space Feudalism (Or Space Rome) is liable to be a fucked up kind of place with gigantic inequalities to support Space Lords and Ladies living in unimaginable luxury.

  • Space Lords & Ladies should have admirable qualities still, there should be honour, ideals, glory, bravery. Living up to the IC ideals of a brutal Space Noble should be seductive even if the whole society is built upon oppression and exploitation. Being a Space Noble should be amazingly cool.

  • Crunchy estate/fief management, resources should be limited, (social or economic), people should compete over them and gain tangible benefits. Resources should be expended and everyone should always want more.
    This should be fairly abstracted especially given the scale, a few moving parts, but people should be able to intuitively grasp what is going on. Also this should require fairly minimal administrative burden. Build in reasons to delegate power also!

  • Players should not be in outright warfare with each other in most circumstances, rivals, enemies, but not in open war. Part of the same 'society' with reasons to go to parties even if they are plotting the other's demise.

  • Space Nobles need some reason to be seriously important militarily. Magic Space Powers? Magic mind machine interfaces? Dune type shields and magic space swords? Genetically engineered super people? If the latter make it so that they are 'pushing the envelope' and not hugely stable so that fucking idiots and crazy people still make sense (some players are going to fit the bill!).

Thoughts from Prior Games

  • Do not have one person make a Space Duke and get four Space Legions also then have the same tier +sheet as the person who makes a Space Knight who has their Space Sword and Space Horse (ship?). Alternative, Space Duke has to have Space Skeletons in the closet sufficient to summon a Space Count of Monte Christo or two, have people pay chargen resources for wealth/power which comes from safely 'Off Screen' and is not tied to drawbacks. So if you want to be a Space Duke who holds Space Lands on the border and is constantly menaced by invasion or is hated by the Space King for murdering his brother? Cool! Want to be the Space Duke who owns rich Space Estates in the core worlds and has an uninterrupted supply of infinite completely legitimate Space Gold? You might have to compromise on your Duelling skill.

  • Make the game an actual sandbox, that does not mean staff should not introduce plot elements and run NPCs with agendas but they should be deciding 'Where do we want the story to go?' then railroading things. The meat of the game should be competition between player characters and the environment they find themselves in.

  • Keep It Simple Stupid when it comes to economy, it should not be entirely abstracted, it should be something people compete over, but have it at say Reign level rather than trying to replicate Crusader Kings II in MUSH format. Too much administrative burden leads to staff burnout, leads to delayed requests, leads to collapse of trust and interest.

  • Do not have an awesome Space King. If there is a Space King then they should be an NPC and be kind of crap, better might be a Space Regency Council or a distant Space Emperor who issues directives then has to rely on local player characters to actually follow/enforce them.

  • Some people will try to insist that (Insert Sci Fi Thing Here, often assassination related or utilising of relativistic projectiles to kill planets) or nukes should let them instantly win whatever issue they are facing. First of all make it clear things are soft Sci-Fi, but also head them off at the pass. Fuck nukes, space battles already involve ships throwing antimatter missiles or singularities at each other. For bonus points really crazy tech levels mean that you can have your spaceships look like the ones from Jupiter Ascending (but limit your influences from that terrible film to stealing aesthetics).

  • Encourage making older characters or those with ties to the setting with bonus points or something, otherwise a lot of people will make orphan 18 year olds. I could also see giving bonus point for living children, more if they are potentially playable adults.

  • Let PCs be the characters who are awesome at things, only do not just let them, spell this out. Also communicate this to new players and publicise things like 'Hey, we have four people who are Supreme Space Duelmasters but nobody who is the Greatest Space Spy.' Try to discourage people making incompetent wallflowers.

  • Maybe some kind of Social Currency? Prestige? Something tangible and tracked that really encourages people to blow their economic resources on fancy parties, employing legions of servants and Moon Palaces.

  • Do not have players write up the wiki entry on their own family/house/country or whatever. They will inevitably end up being super awesome at everything with a token flaw.