Wuxia, Rules questions, and Recapping current developments

Where we’re at:

So I just wanted to list out what I see as being the last bits necessary before we start the next ‘step’ (which is basically play). This list was generated for my reference, but I thought it would be useful for you guys too as we finish up creation.

Sam:
Need 1 planet, a Sidetracked and an On your Own

LR:
Finalize stunts, need On your Own

Bphage:
Need On your Own

Kenna:
Need stunts, skills, 2 planets and sidetracked

Terry:
Need one Stunt, On Your Own

Obviously, all this is draft until everyone is finished and has a chance to chime in with final suggestions, so that’s one for everyone’s to do list.

My to do list:

I’ve come up with some suggestions for each of you to fill in those gaps in the list above. Don’t feel you need to take these suggestions – they are just brainstorming to help fill in.

Sam, I figure you could do a planet with a supposedly ‘irish’ culture. Maybe they got it right, or maybe its more like in Dune when they come across the museum sietches, As for your On your own, How does he feel about being out of the box? Does this crew remind him of anyone? You alluded to becky earlier…

LR, Becky has spent some time on the border, taking oddjobs and assuming personas. How’s she adjusting? Is it like carlton where everyone seems beneath him, or has she adjusted to life out here among the rubes? How does she feel about being the only woman on the ship?

Bphage, you gave a great example of how you came to ‘hire’ the Doctor and you and to a degree the communications officer – is this indicative of your general leadership approach? How do you see your ‘boat’s work?

Kenna, I can’t help but notice some McCoy in your doctor, along with Caudle. I could totally see a stunt called ‘He’s dead, Carl’ where you use your Medical skill in lieu of brawling – you can suss out where to hurt them. We already talked about some skill ideas, so I imagine you’re closing in on that. For you planets, where’d the Doc do his residency? Maybe an old flame lives there. Maybe there’s a planet where he’s sourced medical supplies a few times, perhaps a shady bureaucrat or other underworld operator. You mentioned Niska, which is fine, I believe his station circles Ezra, so that’d be an option.

Rather than make a list like this and not offer something in return, I’ve uploaded the ship image for the (tentatively named) Wuxia. Bask in its greatness. I decided not to give it a paintjob, instead leaning toward the idea of different materials undergoing oxidation due to reentry stresses and heating; I wanted it to look ‘used’ and maybe alittle ‘abused’. If you guys want it to be ‘Blue,’ though, I can do that I guess.


Rules Adaption:

Advancement.

You may have noticed that as written, there is no advancement per se in Diaspora. Between sessions, you can do some modification of your character to reflect play, but this is strictly zero sum. My concern is that this would stagnate the character development a bit.

There are, however, official ‘preferred’ ways to add in advancement that have been vetted by the community. My favorite of these is a scheme that basically says you can, instead of moving a skill up and a skill down, move a skill up from zero to one, or up into any level above that (one level at a time, of course) as long as the level below always has at least one more skill in it.

To demonstrate, that would be something like this. Session zero you have this skill pyramid.

5
44
333
2222
11111

Then you add (separated by commas for each ‘session’)

1, 11, 12, 121, 1211, 1212, and so on.

note that after 6 ‘sessions’, you’d have added two level 1 skills, and two level 2 skills – a pretty modest improvement. I don’t think this type of progression will ‘break’ the rules of the game – and given the usual pace of things in a pbp, these advancements will be slow coming. For reference, most of the characters were earning about 2.5 ‘points’ in the last game per session, and were at around ~30 points after 20 months. That’s 12 sessions, effectively. At 12 sessions in this game, you’d have this skill tree:

5
44
3333
2222222
11111111

The other advancement that is often employed is the ability to take an additional situationally appropriate stunt. These are necessarily ad hoc, and would happen (as most things do in this game) by general table approval.

So what do you think of these advancement methods? Are they reasonable to implement?

World-building:

I use the wiki a lot to keep track of things so far, and hopefully you are too. I’d like to keep this going as we play. If you meet a new NPC, or travel to a new town, I think that should hit the wiki. I’ll update as well on things that are important to me, but this has some advantages for you guys to do it as well.

First, you’re telling me what parts of the game are sticking – this will help me with what direction you are interested in pursuing.

Second,recaps at the start of sessions are a usual FATE thing; a player who chooses to make a significant recap gets a FATE point. I’d say the same holds here: if you make a reasonable entry into the wiki of some in-game event, that’ll get you a FATE point. I’ll distribute these at the start of ‘session’, but you don’t have to wait until a refresh to update, obviously. This seems like a reasonable way to implement an important source of points.

That’s three pages of text for now, and an image, so I’ll hold off on more thoughts and get some sleep.