Quadrants and Regions

The galaxy has four Quadrants.
They are Aurek, Besh, Cresh, and Dorn.

The galaxy has three Regions.
They are The Core, The Expanse, and the Fringe.

The Twelve major players in the galaxy have dominance in one sector. Some are listed here. (Others are secrets).

The United Earth Directorate (The UED) holds power in the the Aurek Expanse.
The Tolkeen Alliance holds power in the Besh Expanse.
The Protoss control the Dorn Core.
The Zerg ravage the Dorn Expanse.

Random Space Encounter

Because sandbox games really kinda rely on random encounters, I figure there needs to be one for space travel. So here it is...

Roll 1d100
01-50 = No Encounter
51-52 = Pirate Ambush
53-54 = Mynock Swarm
55-56 = Starship Crossjump
57-58 = Cosmic Rays
59-60 = Gravity Storm
61-62 = Solar Flare
63-64 = Jammer Leechs
65-66 = Meteor Swarm
67-68 = Sluk Bed
69-70 = Mortiss Colony
71-72 = Asteroid Spider
73-74 = Murderoid
75-76 = Astereater
77-78 = Mercurial Slime
79-80 = Q'nidar Pack
81-82 = Blazozoid
83 = Wormhole
84 = Silatic
85 = Witchlight Marauder (space)
86 = Zwarth (spirit warrior)
87 = Clockwork horror
88 = Gonn
89 = Focoid
90 = Rogue Moon
91 = Gravislayer
92 = Constellate
93 = Gammaroid
94 = Rogue Star
95 = Great Dreamer
96 = Esthetic
97 = Monitor
98 = Moon Dragon
99 = Sun Dragon
100 = Stellar Dragon

A few are pretty obvious and I can detail later, but a few are kinda vague an unfamiliar.
- A Mynock Swarm is a swarm of mynocks, and will almost certainly end in an infestation on the ship, slowing jump speeds dynamically.
- A starship crossjump is the rare event when two ships jump path intersects. It causes both ships to drop into normal space more or less face to face. I'll make a random table for the nature of the ship.
- Cosmic Rays is a fancy way of saying "lots and lots of radiation". The radiation is high enough it can overwhelm the ships shields causing damage to the ship or the crew or both.
- Gravity Storm is a area of space where gravity is...unstable. It causes ships to drop into normal space and plotting a jump out is +2 to whatever the difficulty normally is. It can also cause damage to the ship as gravity changes erratically.
- Jammer Leechs are magical space barnacles. They damage the ship and generally suck. When this result occurs, the ship arrives on target, but into an invisible spore cloud. Within month the infestation takes hold and the ship begins to take damage.
- Sluk is space seaweed. It is nearly invisible in open space and can mire a starship.
- Mortiss is a form of magical space coral. It can, in time, turn a ship into an asteroid of hard clay.
- Rogue Star is a star thrown from the galactic center at tremendous speed. Getting close to one will cause a ship to come out of jump space and potentially damaging the ship.

Space Travel

Objects in space move constantly, and very quickly. The Earth, for example, orbits the sun at about 19 miles per second. The Sun spins through the Milky Way at about 155 miles per second, and the Milky Way moves within it's local group at about 186 miles per second. When nothing (nothing!) in space is standing still and any given planet will be hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, of miles from where it was a few seconds ago, it is very hard to travel a course.

So we don't.

Space travel is instantaneous by use a a Jumpdrive. You get information from a computer, plot a likely path, the FTL drive spins up, and in a flash of light you are there. Usually.

Things can go wrong of course. Depending on how far you are trying to travel, things can go wrong very easily. Distance is a factor, but it is not the most important factor. There are all sorts of hellish things in space. Massive black holes, supernova, neutron stars, quasars, white holes, asteroids, dark matter asteroids, rogue stars, the list goes on. All those things have to be avoided. Since space is changing constantly...this is a random roll. For Savage Worlds, roll a d6, add that to 4 and you have the difficulty.

You make a Knowledge (Computer) check for the roll. If you beat the difficulty, super, you arrive at the destination a few (less than 5) minutes later. If you miss the difficulty, you have a mishap. See the table below.



There you are. Space travel. It is very fast, but there is a chance it will send you to Hell.

The simple solution

In all the spare time I have I've come up with how I want to deal with "mapping" space. Mainly I don't want to. I think I might work up something at some point but it will be little more than a series of circles with names and lines connecting them. Maybe putting a pretty picture behind it, but in all reality, it won't be used "in game".

The main reason is because using space maps in an RPG is two things.
1. not fun
2. waste of time.

Seriously, when will you use it? nobody should take the time to plot a course. It is boring and serves the game in no way. The trip takes as long as the GM says it takes. How long is that? who cares? It's as long as it needs to take. no more, no less.

What I really want to focus on is a planets catalog. Kinda like the planet collection book from old West End Games Star Wars, but in brief. Nothing more than a collection of names and some interesting facts about it. Giving the players a reason to go there more than a route.

A sea of...well something besides stars

Waah!

So a few weeks after I started trying to sandbox the sci-fi setting I'm about ready to walk away from the whole damn thing. Space is f-ing huge and mapping it is just insane. Seriously, seriously, SERIOUSLY, insane.

Most space maps come in one of two flavors. The first is the hex map of dots. They are purely for utility and generally kinda ugly. The other flavor is more artistic, usually a pretty galactic background with worlds, trade routes, or faction borders imposed upon it.

The first is functional, but inaccurate, the second is just pretty.

I really have no patience or use for either. I tried to make a sector with FM8...it worked sorta and I could cobble something functional out of it, but for the game table it's not real useful. I'm not going to print every map or bring a lap top with FM8 loaded and say "Go crazy guys" to my players. For one, the work involved in doing that is right at ridiculous. for two, the players would be overwhelmed with even a shred of what that involves.

So I need a solution that does not involve a lifetime of work and does not completely overwhelm my players. How the hell did I handle space travel in d6 back before the age of computer mapping software?

Oh that's right...this table in the core WEG book

It's a simple, and somewhat silly, little thing. Just lists the most notable planets from the star wars universe and list how long it takes to get from one to the other. Simple and somewhat elegant really. Maybe too much for a more massive setting with a few hundred worlds. Still, it worked.

So how I can adapt this to a sandbox and keep things moving along without a chart that lists several hundred worlds? Not sure yet, but I think it might be a more viable option that an actual galactic map. Even if it comes to a massive chart of planets, it would be easier.

A sea of stars

So...sandboxing kinda starts with a map.

In a sci-fi setting I need to get an idea of where things happen. I want it to be a space-faring sort of thing because space travel is pretty common in the galaxy. That means I need a space map. I'll start at the galactic scale. Just one galaxy though, I don't really see the point of multiple galaxies at this point.

I'm going to use one of my favorite galaxy pictures, overly it with a hex map and use the hexes as sectors. I'll choose one sector near the bottom outer rim and name it the Rahsav sector. I'll name the surrounding sectors too, but Rahsav is the sector Earth is in and the UED controls.

Then I will zoom in on the Rahsav sector and use a star field picture, overlay a hex map on that. Each hex will be a smaller unit of space, maybe down the AU maybe larger. Not sure yet.

The Sandbox

I've been reading up on Campaign Sandboxes. Mostly from here and here (and here and here).

I normally do pretty plot drive campaigns with long story lines that never get finished...and I usually lose interest in because I work stuff up weeks in advance and my players get stuck or distracted by something shiny (or busy and we don't play for weeks on end).

I love setting design, and if I can do the core of sandbox without devoting weeks and weeks to building it, that would be keen.

On an only modestly related note, I usually design fantasy games when I am playing sci-fi games...and vice-versa. Right now, I have some ideas for a Fantasy game, but I am running a sci-fi game. To break what is almost certainly a bad habit, I am going to try to do a sci-fi sandbox, for the game I am running, while I am running it.

It's hard just writing that.

NPC stat blocks

Last night I made character sheets for Matron (Diamond) and Conner. It took less than an hour. Way less, like maybe less than 30 minutes for both.

I've never made sheets for NPCs so easily. It was awesome.

I like savage worlds for that alone.

Matrix fu!

So I figured out how I want to do the Matrix.
It's very simple.
For the savage worlds rules I added a new skill "Computer" (smarts).
a character uses this skill to access systems and do things more complicated than looking at wikipedia and checking e-mail.
Once a character finds and gets access to any given system, they can do the following:
Alter Data (change records to stuff)
Control (any machine connected to the system)
Fool (change sensor data and stuff)
Overload (shut it down and break it)
Reprogram (change how it works).

See, simple. The system passive security makes it harder. Active security can try to stop it (opposed check) or regain control or detect foolery.

See, easy.

Unfortunatly, nobody can tell you what the Matrix is.

Bullshit.

It's a computer generated world in which you live. There, 9 words, done.

What nobody can do is explain or use the rules for the damn thing in Shadowrun. Seriously, pick up the books (any version) and read the rules. I challenge you to explain them in less than a page and then say the following words "They sound fun."

either (a) you will do it (poorly, and lying your ass off) or (b) you won't do it or (c) you won't be able to do it.

Either way, it leaves me with a bitch of a problem. I have two characters (not players mind you - who are prosocial and play well) who just screw the session by using the d6 computer skill I ripped from d20. It works, but I can see the rolling of the eyes from other players when they bust out their commlinks. I feel it too. It may be fun for them, but as long as they are hacking, everyone else can go get a soda or something. Just kills the flow of the game.

So I was hunting for something else. Something that did not train-wreck the whole session with computer dice-terbation. I found my old White Wolf Aberrant game and the Nova power "Cyberkinesis" which is so simple it fits on about a page and half and does pretty much exactly what deckers do in Shadowrun in a fast, simple, not-annoying way.

I will be stealing it and posting a few idea on how it will work here. I will call the posts "Matrix-fu".

New compy new deal

I got my new imac yesterday. World of Warcraft looks amazing. I should really post the differences between my old PC and the new Mac. Long and the short of it the new computer is sickeningly over powered for what I need it to do. I totally could have gotten by with much, much less. I love it.

On a completely unrelated note, I just about read through the Savage Worlds rules. I found about a billion applications of the rules to dozens of settings. It's pretty cool. I am seriously thinking I will ninja-convert my d6 game to SW and just let my players suck on it. I seriously might, mainly cause I have no time to develop my version of d6 anymore.

between IVF, kickboxing, work, new computer, and WoW I have no time or energy to mess with it anymore.

So I am pretty damn sure I will be just converting to a nice simple system and being done with it. I won't make them make new characters or change the current game in anyway other than the rules. I will need to add some things to the rules of course.

I'll need to add some gear, vehicles, mecha, cybernetics, stuff like that. I might get some help converting certain powers and such though.

The universe is not ending

But we did actually play. A little.
Some sessions are start to finish hard core gaming. We walk in, we get to it. The last few sessions have been more about hanging out and chatting that actual gaming. This was very much one of those sessions. I think we actually gamed maybe 30 minutes and I was very much not into it.

I didn't even roll dice. I used a deck of playing cards to determine what happened. I worked out well and saved me doing math. I love d6 but the addition is a mother sometimes. It's nothing compared to 4e (which damn near requires a computer to handle).

Apparently Jonathan's 4e game is coming to an end. Beka is sick of fantasy. I wonder if that is the real reason, because my game is sci-fi. Either way, Jonathan is taking this as a chance to play the Battletech game with them. I hope that works well for everyone. I might even see about playing with them. I'm not sure who plays, but hey, I like mecha more than anyone at that table.

Speaking of Doing things

The "system" part of an RPG serves one major function, to determine if things get done or not (and sometimes how well they get done). So, sometimes that is important. Other times, not so much. 

I love talking about game systems and that will probably be a major part of this blog. I've played most of the more commonly known systems. I started gaming in the mid-80s. I started on 2nd ed AD&D. I think I played one session or two of 1st edition. In middle school and high school I did West End Games Star Wars d6 system and FASA's shadowrun (2nd and 3rd edition). I've done a little with Shadowrun 4th edition. I dabbled in the palladium system (mostly TMNT). When Wizard's released D&D 3rd edition and shook the foundation of reality with the OGL I jumped on that bandwagon like a drunken whore. I was an adult (or as close to that as I care to get, at very least I had some money) so I spent bucks on D20 crap. I have shelves of D20 books. D&D, D20 modern, lots of 3rd party stuff, you name it. I have dozens of d20 pdfs. 

when Wiz-co released D&D 4e I started off liking it. I got bored and sick of it within 3 months. I love the "game" part of it, and I don't hate the "roleplaying" part. I detest the magic items system and character creation/leveling is just pure hell. Whatever the reason...got bored. hard. fast. 

So I went back to d6, didn't like the d6 adventure rules so I did a custom revision of d6 using d20 at a template. It was a pain and a half. Took weeks and really, it's not 100%. The sad thing is I've kinda lost interest in d6 as I've done it. Something about the semi-sloppy old WEG rules made it more fun. 

Which really brings me to my point...if I have one. No system is really perfect. No system is clean and simple enough to be easy to learn and play but complex enough to be accurate. So you just need to find something that works most of the time and then house rule the hell out of it until it works for you and your players. 

I think Wiz-co got their heads up their backends trying to craft a perfect system. No version of D&D is anything like perfect from any perspective, it's just not. Every edition has some goofy annoying crap going on. THACO, grappling rules, magic items, something will be goofy and annoying and everyone will hate it but deal with it. (except for those weird clowns who try to defend it...like people who say they like the Last Airbender Movie - freaks.) 

I tried to do the same sort of thing. I tried to take d6 and give it all the good parts of d20 with none of the bad. It's not working very well. I challenge I've been as successful as Wiz-co. My players are happy most of the time, but the rules heavy nature of d20 has made the rules light d6 seem heavy. 

I started to revise d6 again to strip away all the goofy parts that make it seem heavy. It's coming along better but honestly, it's a TON of work. I haven't touched in weeks for three reasons. 

1. I'm a busy guy.

2. It's gotten boring. 

3. I haven't even played in like a month so who knows when anyone will see this and even then...will they kill me when I make them change their characters. (yes, they probably will). 

So...what to do? Options sir!

1. when we play again (I suspect near the heat death of the galaxy) we keep going with the semi-heavy rules and be damn glad of it...as they glare at me for equipment supplements I promised them would be done months ago and likely will never get done. 

2. knuckle down and get the revision done and all the supplements I promised for the new lighter rules. 

3. scrap it and do something else (keep story/characters the same?). 

What the hell I am going to do?

Well, I should be working. It's Saturday and I work Saturdays.

I should also be getting reading for a game tonight. But that's not going to happen.

See, my group meets at the home of one of the players. He has three kids and they don't travel very well at 7pm. They are rarely asleep when I get there...and sometimes not when I leave...but they are usually in bed for the majority of the evening. Sometimes.

(In bed does not equal quiet - they should sell tickets to the WWE match in that bedroom).

But, that house is no longer the abode of my player. (some non-sense about the homeowner foreclosing or something...it's goofy). So they are living in his wife's parents home with her sister and her two kids. I love kids and I'm not setting foot in that house. Oh, and like 3 pets I think. The parents who own that house are on an extended vacation to...any. where. else.

So without a house to go play in, and unless the sister willingly babysit all 5 kids (so not happening) there is not going to be a game tonight. (pout face).

I'd be more miffed it if were not for having missed so many Saturdays of gaming over the last 3 months. At this point it kinda feels normal. It's not actually all that upsetting. I know where the story is going and I've known for months. The odds of my ADHD players having a damn clue where we left off is about 75%. The odds I will remember where we left off are maybe 35%. What has happened and what will happen is a bit of a blur for me at this point.