More GURPS tabletop campaign thoughts
Nov. 7th, 2003 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6(details behind the cut tag to avoid boring the probably 100% of you who don't care. ;)) Okay, been thinking more of the campaign. Gave the outline here, if you missed it or want to refresh memory.
More thoughts... discussing with players some of them want to take Psionics or Magic right off the bat, so I've revised things slightly. They can't take magic skills or psionic skills, but they can take Magery or levels of Psionic Power... the rationale? Earth is a special 'no power zone'. Magic and ultratech are nearly completely suppressed. This is part of why it's impossible to reach by magic right now, although there are occasional times where it needs to 'vent' and things or people can slip to other worlds. Incidentally (although no one will likely know it for some time), this is the IC explanation for the Roswell crash: An alien race visited and when they came within the field their hyperspace and anti-gravity fields just stopped, and they crashed. Most of the 'visitations' since then would be hype, with maybe some aliens sending longer range probes with more conventional technology to explore the meaning of the field. Anyway, I digress.
The effect on humans is rather like growing up on a high gravity world, and then moving to a low gravity world... you're naturally a lot stronger. So, people might suddenly find they have a psionic ability, or magical aptitude, though they'll still take time to discover it. Not everybody would, but some people. This will become more important when they get back to Earth (if the campaign lasts that long), and in doing so collapse the null-field that keeps magic and tech out. In the meantime, it's one reason why Earthborn people are so valuable; their children and descendants don't get this advantage, only people born there who've lived most of their lives there.
I do plan on them reaching Earth eventually, because I've always admired that bit of Farscape. They'll return, only to find a war has started, and now that they've returned, they can't close off Earth from outside people anymore... and, because magic and tech energies are flooding in, people all over the world are developing psionics and such.
Before that happens, though, they'll (probably, assuming they accept that offer when it comes) be working for a group calling itself the Guardians, one of many powerful groups fighting for the fate of the Universe... or, at least, their territory within it. They're the 'good guys', mainly.. they've got a number of Earth born people, especially precogs on their side, and send people on missions to various 'crisis points', which might turn the world in the future. So the PCs might be asked to go to a normal-tech world and prevent the first contact with aliens there from becoming a disaster, because if they succeed down the line they'll probably become a powerful alliance. Other factions include hordes of demons, and AI swarms (not all AIs will be evil by any means, but there will be a significant group of them which have goals hostile to mankind. And of course, varying different human groups with different goals.
I've decided that, where alien races come in, I'm going to be heavily using races from the Sector General series, since they're awesome and I doubt the players will know them. In fact, in the 'first contact' mission mentioned before, I'm thinking of having them run into a ship run by a multi-species crew: A Kelgian (furry giant caterpillar with mobile fur that reveals its complete emotional state to others, so no tact) navigator who lost some fur patches to an accident and so is now considered horribly disfigured by all her fellows, a Cinrusskin (large, fully empathic insect from a low-gravity world) doctor (and the one who performed the surgery that 'disfigured' the Kelgian), two Hudlar (extremely heavy gravity creatures, rhino-sized, who 'eat' through their skin and have no holes in their body, and so, so long as they're covered with nutrient paint, can survive for long periods in space) life-mates who are both heavy labour and science officers, and a human engineer, with perhaps some other race as
Captain, or maybe no captain, I don't know.
Trying to make the game flexible, with a longer term plan and some things actually happening rather than just keeping the status quo. Players have a tendency to be power-gamers, so rather than fight it I'd just widen the scope a little and go with it
More thoughts... discussing with players some of them want to take Psionics or Magic right off the bat, so I've revised things slightly. They can't take magic skills or psionic skills, but they can take Magery or levels of Psionic Power... the rationale? Earth is a special 'no power zone'. Magic and ultratech are nearly completely suppressed. This is part of why it's impossible to reach by magic right now, although there are occasional times where it needs to 'vent' and things or people can slip to other worlds. Incidentally (although no one will likely know it for some time), this is the IC explanation for the Roswell crash: An alien race visited and when they came within the field their hyperspace and anti-gravity fields just stopped, and they crashed. Most of the 'visitations' since then would be hype, with maybe some aliens sending longer range probes with more conventional technology to explore the meaning of the field. Anyway, I digress.
The effect on humans is rather like growing up on a high gravity world, and then moving to a low gravity world... you're naturally a lot stronger. So, people might suddenly find they have a psionic ability, or magical aptitude, though they'll still take time to discover it. Not everybody would, but some people. This will become more important when they get back to Earth (if the campaign lasts that long), and in doing so collapse the null-field that keeps magic and tech out. In the meantime, it's one reason why Earthborn people are so valuable; their children and descendants don't get this advantage, only people born there who've lived most of their lives there.
I do plan on them reaching Earth eventually, because I've always admired that bit of Farscape. They'll return, only to find a war has started, and now that they've returned, they can't close off Earth from outside people anymore... and, because magic and tech energies are flooding in, people all over the world are developing psionics and such.
Before that happens, though, they'll (probably, assuming they accept that offer when it comes) be working for a group calling itself the Guardians, one of many powerful groups fighting for the fate of the Universe... or, at least, their territory within it. They're the 'good guys', mainly.. they've got a number of Earth born people, especially precogs on their side, and send people on missions to various 'crisis points', which might turn the world in the future. So the PCs might be asked to go to a normal-tech world and prevent the first contact with aliens there from becoming a disaster, because if they succeed down the line they'll probably become a powerful alliance. Other factions include hordes of demons, and AI swarms (not all AIs will be evil by any means, but there will be a significant group of them which have goals hostile to mankind. And of course, varying different human groups with different goals.
I've decided that, where alien races come in, I'm going to be heavily using races from the Sector General series, since they're awesome and I doubt the players will know them. In fact, in the 'first contact' mission mentioned before, I'm thinking of having them run into a ship run by a multi-species crew: A Kelgian (furry giant caterpillar with mobile fur that reveals its complete emotional state to others, so no tact) navigator who lost some fur patches to an accident and so is now considered horribly disfigured by all her fellows, a Cinrusskin (large, fully empathic insect from a low-gravity world) doctor (and the one who performed the surgery that 'disfigured' the Kelgian), two Hudlar (extremely heavy gravity creatures, rhino-sized, who 'eat' through their skin and have no holes in their body, and so, so long as they're covered with nutrient paint, can survive for long periods in space) life-mates who are both heavy labour and science officers, and a human engineer, with perhaps some other race as
Captain, or maybe no captain, I don't know.
Trying to make the game flexible, with a longer term plan and some things actually happening rather than just keeping the status quo. Players have a tendency to be power-gamers, so rather than fight it I'd just widen the scope a little and go with it
