MU Soapbox

fatefan

LAWLESS SPACE - coming soon to an Internet near you!

Experience HIGH-OCTANE FULL THROTTLE SCIENCE FANTASY ADVENTURE!

At the edge of the known universe is a frontier territory that no intelligent civilization has yet to claim or even recognize. It is a space for pioneers, explorers, criminals, exiles, and marshals, each looking to carve out a home, glory, riches, or justice.

LAWLESS SPACE is populated by:

Wayward travelers, lost in time through wormholes!
Blastersword-wielding scions of star-spanning empires!
Hivemind accountants seeking the deadly 'omega audit'!
Hyperbike-riding radiation pirates!
Otherdimensional open-sourceresses infused with crackling cosmic energy!
Enterprising mobsters connected to the Kaiju Kartel!
Sentient planetoids going through a teenage goth phase!
Heavy metal-blaring slamazons riding overclocked warpboards!
Anthropomorphic animal cosmonauts from parallel realities!
All manner of other intergalactic denizens!

LAWLESS SPACE is intended to be a game that allows for all manner of absolutely insane sci-fi and science fantasy character ideas and situations, whether played straight or as absurdity.

LAWLESS SPACE is meant to be part blank canvas, part ever-clarifying universe crafted by the contributions of players and their amazing, wacky, badass ideas about what might exist beyond the edge of the cosmos. Think space opera + candy-coated ghost peppers + sleep deprivation to a Psy cover of Manowar.

LAWLESS SPACE makes use of the Fate Core rules to try and allow for character concept flexibility while still offering some sort of narrative-friendly mechanical arbiter (as desired/needed). There might be other systems out there but, whatever, Fate works well to support bizarre high-concept ideas.

Inspirational media:

fatefan

As I'm watching Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix, I find myself thinking about what a MU* in 2020 might look like based on ATLA and/or the Legend of Korra, depending on what timeframe might work best.

What would you argue are necessities for success for such a game?

I've got a few that come to mind, but I recognize players may come to the table with some significantly different expectations:

Clear point in game world/timeline
Long-term central storyline(s) that all PCs can contribute to
Opportunities for easily grouping together PCs in scenes
Wide range of backgrounds & bending abilities
Some sort of coded conflict resolution system

Given the above, how might you rank/prioritize these (and/or anything else that might be important)? Are any missing the mark?

fatefan

Interested in fragging filthy xenomorphs with your pulse rifles?

Want to see if you can survive horrifying onslaughts of alien savagery for a slightly larger paycheck than normal?

How about dealing with ungrateful and desperate colonists trying to survive on the outskirts of civilization?

Well, we're looking for a few good staffers to get this game up and running!

Message me if you're interested--whether your skills and available energy might be best suited to building/descing, plot-running, wiki formatting, or whatever. We'll get some conversation going!

Edited to add: we're working off of a Faraday starter DB, so we'll be using FS3 for coded combat etc. It seems perfect for this particular theme.

fatefan

Holy shit!

fatefan

@juke It definitely seems to be the case that the mech part of it is very tactical, with a lot of potential customization options for mech suits etc., but the out-of-mech stuff is incredibly rules-light and narrative-focused.

I feel compelled to try to work through what a MU* system setup for it could do and whether it might function well at all.

fatefan

@Coin This is a really good point. I'd hate for anyone to feel like they had to play a bender just to have any RP agency.

fatefan

@Cupcake I'm definitely sold on the post-Korra timeline, in part for the reasons you laid out.

fatefan

I believe there's also CoMUX (http://cmbeta.wikidot.com/) but I'm not sure how active it is.

fatefan

@Thenomain I was reminded this morning that Abbadon made a PbtA-based Kill Six Billion Demons RPG that I still need to play, too...

fatefan

@Arkandel Probably not, but I'm just trying to do my part to help ... whatever ... get off the ground.

fatefan

You're going to want something that is...

Easy to run, scene-wise
Relatively uncomplicated for CG (and for playing in scenes)
Well-suited to reflect super-powered shenanigans

I mean, the username gives it away, but my personal vote's for Fate...

That said, I find myself continually returning to the Valiant Universe RPG (which itself feels a lot like the Marvel Heroic system) to see if it's possible to crank down some of the super-randomness in GM vs. player and in luck rolls.

fatefan

Thank you for the recommendations so far!

fatefan

@TimmyZ

Keep people on the same page about what they're playing I agree with.

I think this is definitely an important point, and one I'll have to consider the best way to make blatantly obvious & central for such a game. I mention this in part to help myself recognize that there's a significant difference between "players can do this on X game" and "X game exists to allow players to do (that is, it facilitates RP about) this."

fatefan

@kay Astro City

fatefan

Necro'ing this because I feel the identical sentiment described in the original post--The Last Jedi (no spoilers here, I promise) has given me so many ideas for what might be done in a SW MU* that I can't shake my mind from it.

Any chance of something happening since this thread was last around last year? (I'm guessing "no" but hope springs eternal.)

fatefan

For sure. I definitely don't mind working on something not (m)any people will play. But I also don't feel an obligation to it if I'm not sure I'll have fun with the game myself, either. (Hence my statement that it may be better suited with a TT group than as a MU*.)

fatefan

@Ghost A BPRD-themed MU* would be fucking awesome and could be (relatively) easily implemented via the Atomic Robo RPG, swapping the "Science" skill/mode for "Occult" as need be.

But, since it's Fate-based, it's essentially a non-starter.

fatefan

@surreality @magee101 Yes, it's a game running on Fate Core (mostly to facilitate wacked-out, high-concept sci fi ideas relatively easily). The theme is "original" which is to say heavily inspired by (ripping off?) that block of media listed at the bottom of the initial post in this thread.

I wanted to provide a space for nearly everything, but without the trappings/constraints of existing IP. So "lawless space" is a catch-all for the frontier of the universe, a plot point by which different character ideas can congregate without everything having to cohere seamlessly background-wise.

At this point, I mostly just need to finish drafting up the few news files I have and remind myself of how wiki templating etc. works to complement in-game info and allow for logs etc. to be posted if desired.

fatefan

@bobotron I have come to the brink of apping Glob and (on other occasions) Beak on games too many times to count now...

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