Space Lords and Ladies
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@Lithium said:
@Pyrephox And then on top of that, you have the ship captains themselves, so there is a third class that also dominates shipping because of smugglers and then you have the government who is taxing everyone and controls the city itself.
This could be a lot of fun.
That's a really good addition. Ship captains could provide that ever-popular "rough and ready" PC type, while still giving them ample reason and opportunity to be allowed into the "noble" social circles.
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The whole game should be based around the 1920s ships, but in space: yachts, tramp steamers, the belated naval arms race between nations, cruise liners. Moons and stations would functions as smaller islands.
Who doesn't like a space yacht?
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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Gotta be careful, though. If the theme/idea is supposed to be Space Lords and Ladies and their political and social machinations, you don't want everyone to turn around and app Joe the Ship Captain.
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We can just hire Nymeria to say, "No, you can't play a hedge knight!"
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I am down with art deco ships - something like the Amarrians from EvEOnline.
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@BigDaddyAmin Slightly off topic, my biggest, /biggest/ gripe with EVE, the lack of symmetrical ship design. It's like... whyyyyyy?!?!?!
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I thought that Amarr vessels were pretty symmetrical? The Minmatar vessels look like shit in my opinion but then again they are supposed to look like shit. The Gallente crafts look like something my toddler blew out of her nose.
The Amarr Titan bothers me though. It looks like a giant horse dildo flying through space.
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@BigDaddyAmin Amarr and Minmatarr are closest to symmetrical, but the Amarr still aren't and the minmatar look like they're made of rust and duct tape. Anyways this is the wrong topic for this, so back at space lords and ladies.
If it's a politics game, everyone apping Joe the Ship Captain just puts themselves at the mercy of the npc's or the PC's who are running the government, the farmers, and the docks. The beauty of a 4 way system is that there's no way for a single faction to control everything. The farmers have to grow food to sell and support themselves, the space docks rely on trade to keep money flowing in and out, the captains need cargo/passengers, and the government needs taxes.
Then, as with every space game, you can eventually have the aliens attack and all four have to unite to throw off the alien oppression (Or they fail, all hail our alien overlords) and you have a fifth faction. And since it's space lords and ladies, the aliens are of course space elves or something else beautiful.
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Ehh. Either way for the majority of players it might turn into a TS factory. So this will be the soundtrack:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lZ23UR6Rzc
(Don't laugh. This is the kind of stuff I listen to when I get down. In real life. I don't know what other people listen to when they are stroking it up something fierce. Comment as you see fit.)
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@BigDaddyAmin Uhh... every game turns into a TS factory.
TRANSFORMERS turned into a TS Factory... I still don't get that one but it did.
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Sigh. Cirno isn't here to make fun of my white ass listening to R&B.
Anyway. How does Transformers turn into a TS factory? Mechanical vulvas?
But for this game I am thinking less EvE Online, more of a combination of Dune, Red Rising, and Old Man's War.
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At least the factory part is in theme for Transformers.
And I meant to adopt the changing issues of the day in that put the 20s in space. Just to give you a merger of zeitgeist and economics, culture etc. Something to emulate but expand upon via sci-fi and Lords and Ladies. The ton in space. The Space Season. Dangerous Lunar Liasons.
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I like Dangerous Liaisons.
I still like the idea of a colony somewhere out in the flung far reaches of space. Primitive aliens who are essentially enslaved by the nobility. Maybe I'm just thinking of my Haitian MUSH idea that I've had for years.
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I have been doing some thinking whilst commuting and somehow came up with the following rough draft for a setting/idea:
So in the distant past some extraordinarily wealthy individuals set off into distance space to colonize, expending all of their vast wealth in doing so and very much establishing this colony with the intention of setting themselves up as Space Nobles. They did this, and had the resources to set themselves up with an extremely well planned, high technology and rapidly developing base, only for all contact with Earth to be cut off without warning. They were deliberately not connected to the wormhole network used for FTL travel but were still alarmed by this and cautiously expand back toward the core.
At this point they find out that aliens have successfully conquered the human race and start a war with them, a war they are winning and have been for centuries, 'liberating' occupied human populations or isolated and technologically regressed worlds then welcoming them into new lives of being serfs for their genetically augmented and super tech possessing new overlords. The aliens have their own wormhole network but destroy it as they lose territory (Unless daring heroes thwart this perhaps!) meaning that the advance is limited to the speed of light, with new wormholes being brought forward to consolidate gains.
The game is set in a region on the edge of a cluster, with stars perhaps half a lightyear from each other (go for say 3x time in game, fighting across space to new systems is a thing albeit slow) where an advance force of especially ambitious/covetous nobles pushed far ahead, only to fight a bitter battle in interstellar space where their fleet was scattered and their wormhole 'back home' destroyed. They won and seized the sector capital, they are advancing and setting up a local wormhole network, they can still talk to everyone else via Ansible or whatever, but they have no way back and no way for massive reinforcements to arrive for say... 20 years.
There would however be a constant stream of scattered ships arriving from interstellar space, often unexpectedly, to allow new PCs to turn up.
Everyone would be trying to 1) Fight a war, 2) Set up themselves and their families to get as much as possible and 3) Try to ensure that when contact with the Empire is reestablished they are not executed for being Space Traitors but rather get to become the new Space Viceroy. Space Nobles are super capable, products of generations of genetic enhancement, and have really good technology, but cannot make new Space Noble grade ships locally (though starships can probably manufacture new smaller, expendable on adventures grade ships, Space Armour, Space Swords, etc). The aliens are dangerous but on the back foot, the 'Liberated' humans definitely better off under Space Nobles rather than Evil Aliens but likely remembering Space Democracy as a thing.
I do like the idea of the Aliens being Space Elves or something, that opens a lot more options for interaction than if they are bug monsters or robots or similar.
Originally I was thinking that all Space Nobles would have their own starship, albeit varying in size and capabilities, making 'ship owners' a 'class' works though. Reading the above I did think that you could have a divide between Conquistador type Space Nobles, and Space Navy Officers (who would be nobles themselves of course). The former would have more economic clout, likely mandates to administer worlds, ships which make much better Space Palaces and also manufacturies or able to land as a colony, etc.
Space Navy types would have more outright murderous warships (Though certainly not unique access to them), possibly more unity of purpose, etc, but would be cut off from their supplies and with no choice but to work with/for the more privately motivated Space Nobles, even outside of the fact that they have major personal incentives to do so.
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@Packrat I like. I even like Space Elves (let's not call them that, though).
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Eldar?
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@BigDaddyAmin
Warhammer 40k space elves. -
If there are space orcs the Spelljammer fan in me wants them to be called Scro.
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Call them The Messengers.
MultiPass!
I have a waggish sense of humor.
