Shiny New Ideas for our GorRahm game

This is nearly stream of consciousness, so apologies. I’ll try to clean it up before posting.

In terms of tone, I lean towards the ‘gritty’ tone of the movie and pilot instead of the light-hearted tone of the series. I want in-character jokes, and witty intercharacter dialogue are a must of this setting. And I want the language to show up – I want shiny and go rahm. I think one of the SW splats had a list of phrases – they will be used by me, for a certainty, as will old west dialect, particularly as you move out from the core worlds.

So do those things.

But, I like that when you first meet Badger, he’s checking a girls teeth before purchasing her for no doubt nefarious purpose. And the crew stands there and watches. I like that ship parts break at the worst times, and salvage ops are seen as vultures feeding off the dead. I don’t want a crew of psychopaths (one or two might be okay, based on the show), but somewhere between world-weary realists and cynical pragmatists seems appropriate as the norm. By the same token, a character who is not these things would be a peculiarity to his peers, and might be fun to play (think Wash!).

In terms of canon, I’m pulling from the series and movie, obviously. I won’t be yanking my npcs from the cast – don’t expect to hang with Mrs. Reynolds (as much as we’d all want to). It’ll be effectively all original characters, but as for history of the ‘Verse, organizations, world flavor and such, I’d say the show, the movie and anything I like off the wiki are in play.

I plan to have you guys play a ship’s crew/supercargo. Please work this into your character design thoughts. I’d like to have a way to keep the crew together, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have tension about leaving. I’d lean towards not having NPC crewmembers, but I guess that’s open for debate. There’s definitely a balance to be struck in terms of numbers if we want a varied cast of individuals.

If we play FATE, there’s a very clear way to go about building the ship we can talk about. If not, I’ll come up with a method of shipbuilding. As you can tell from both the show and the movie being named after the ship, it’s critical that you guys have a say in your ship. It’s design, its features, it’s history. This needs to be a real place that your characters can inhabit. It needs detailed deck plans, and personal touches, and the best way to make it thus is to have you all invest in it a bit. I want to know how each of your cabins is decorated. Tell me about a stairwell or a sticky cargo bay door or a burn mark in the corridor. These things need to be there, or the ship won’t come to life like it should.

I’m not sure how to handle planets yet. I have a variety of thoughts, and this will be somewhat (game) system dependent. One thing I like about FATE is it gives everyone the ability to make a couple planets in a reasonably flexible way. If you want to make a planet from the show/movie/etc., that’s doable. If you want a new and improved planet of your own devising, that’s also doable. If we go SW, I’ll probably handle the majority of planets with blurbs and take player input in a more ad hoc basis as fits their character backstory. When you arrive at a new planet, I can give some local details to flesh out the initial blurb.

But regardless of game system, I think each planet should have an Issue. Unlike in SS, there is some degree of interplanetary communication, so the Issue will be some planetary problem that’s cropped up and hit the ‘net. Maybe a drought wiped out some crops, or a group of rebels has set up base in the foothills, or a magistrate is collecting taxes for his own private fleet of combat cruisers, or a reaver attack left only 3 survivors in a border town. These issues will change and resolve, and may not be through the most reliable sources of information (how many times were there misunderstandings or downright lies about what was happening on a planet in the show?). These will be plot hooks, sure, but they’ll also inform tone, and I hope ‘verse wide happenings.

Another feature I want for each planet we detail is at least 1 npc. This is someone at least one crewmember has met. Maybe they’re a friend, maybe not. Maybe they died since you were there last, even. But this should be some contact you can use as a resource, or need to avoid as a threat. Or both. I want these to be ‘one-sentence’ npcs – Badger: the uppity and unscrupulous businessman with illusions of grandeur. Mishka, the conscienceless banker with a penchant for ‘fair’ dealings. These characters can be business contacts, old flames, buddies from the war, former shipmates, that guy you helped out of a pickle last year, whatever.

The last planet feature I think would be useful is a Scene on the planet. This can be a particular dockyard, or a whole town, or a bar. This is where play is likely to start when you arrive on this location, so it’ll have a bit more specifics that are indicitive of the planet as a whole (or not…)

Another issue I’ve been considering: does anyone have another player they’d like to bring in? We can probably fit one more, but I want consensus on this. A new player will probably shake things up as much as the game swap, and could slow things down in game flow, but with JWW busy short term it might be handy to have an extra crewmember. If you have someone in mind as a crewmember, discuss it by email with the current crew, and if there are no big objections we can ask them if they’re interested. Since they’re joining game in progress, we’ll pitch the game as it stands, take it or leave it. I don’t want to do a round 2 of game system/setting discussion once they’re on board. Let’s aim for 1 or 2 at most, and not let things get crazy hiring on greenhorns.