Not quite the same thing, but I ran a long Rogue Trader campaign and space combat came up maybe once. Possibly not at all. I do remember a space battle, but I think we handled it "dramatically" rather than using the space combat rules.
The same is true to a lesser extent of the starship construction. The players were keen to build their ship in the first session but after that it became simply a home base and a vehicle to get around the campaign map.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that you probably don't need them in 1000S2. If it were me I'd have dramatic rules in the main book -- name, shape, history, unique features; a simple story based way of handling combat -- with more detailed systems in an appendix for those who want them.
I would have responded very differently to this at various stages of my life. As a teenager I spent countless hours with the MegaTraveller vehicle design rules, along with the Book 8 robot rules. This was essentially "solitaire play". Sometimes it was just for my amusement. At other times, when I had a weekly game, I just felt better when a vehicle or starship that the players encountered had a spreadsheet to back it up. Similarly, if they visited a star system I'd generate the whole system down to the last barren gas giant moon because I believed that made everything better. At that time in my life, I would have looked down on a system without these rules.
Then I became a professional engineer, able to design and build real things of concrete use to real people. Getting my imaginary starship or robot details exactly right (per some game designer's idea of "right") no longer seemed important.
Today I'm very happy to say "you see a hovercraft" and get on with the adventure. Starship combat is handled cinematically, though I am a sucker for the Book 2 computer rules-as-written because they're just so alien to today.
"3. Optional Detailed Rules: For GMs and groups who crave it, include a full system for construction and tactical combat, but clearly mark it as optional and put it in an appendix so it doesn’t dominate the rulebook."
First two things that comes to mind are Appendix I. Psionics and (especially!!) Appendix II. Bards from the 1e PHG. Tucked away in appendices, yes, but non-stop subjects of debate, despair, and division from the day of publication.
Appendices have a way of drawing, not diverting, attention. Integrate everything into the system, or leave it out, I should think. I believe your "Narrative" Default model is the best one. Ships as setting - that's who we are, that's this game. You're not getting something you didn't expect, and you aren't expecting something that was never promised in the first place.
Starship combat and to a lesser degree design is a game within a game. I think it is difficult to fully integrate into RPGs and still include every party member without it feeling forced (i.e. dividing up combat rolls between various battle stations).
Starship design rules seem to be a “Power user feature” where a small but vocal subset of users absolutely loves and depends on it even though the majority never touches it. Unfortunately I fall into that power user category and love tinkering with different designs and mechanics. I’m very much reminded of both Battletech and Car Wars. Many of my friends were quite happy to play with stock or lightly modified (weapon swaps) cars or ‘mechs. I found that the design game within the game gave me a way to engage with the game when I wasn’t playing the game.
My proposal (below) might hit the sweet spot for you without alienating anyone who would rather just weapon swap Car Wars, so to speak. If everyone starts with the Starship attributes = 1st Captain Attributes (which I should mention, can change with a new, sufficiently influential Captain - former shipping barges converted to a garbage scow, for example, would re-stat based on the influential scow captain's attributes.
But within those parameters (i.e. players like you, and the less power players like everyone else), everyone would have a basic understanding of the ship and crew and visitor mechanics. Power user, however, gets to go into gritty detail of why - exactly - the ship has a STR of 80, an INT of 35, a TECH of 27, etc. for example. This will influence how victory conditions in combat or high-risk exploration are both determined and modified mechanically following the discrepancy check.
I can't guarantee it, but I strongly believe that my proposal really does provide a little palatable crunch to ship design so that they enjoy it and resolve it quickly, but this in know way starves the power player of the nerdphoria of minutia. In fact, I'd argue it it allows the power minutia to blossom in a pleasing way for everyone.
My usual thinking on this sort of thing is that complicated systems push people away - compare the design systems in classic Traveller Book 2, Book 5, and MegaTraveller. Though, Book 5 made TCS possible (up until someone solved the mathematical model at the Origins TCS tournament, I think it was). And MT opened the door for some cool, weird scenarios like "Equalizer Project" in Challenge #61, which isn't starships, but it's in the same ballpark - and it's specifically the "everything from robot vacuum cleaners to million-ton battleships" that helped make that design system as complex as it was.
Anyway, the point is, the more subsystems you have, the more different kinds of scenarios your system can support.
For ideal roleplay and "gamification" ships should simply be (mechanically, societally, culturally) an extension of its original captain (or possibly builder).
In any case, every ship should simply carry the base attributes of whoever was the original visionary/captain of the ship. To put it simply, if your 1st Captain had the game attributes of STR: 50 TECH: 75 CHA: 90 and, say 47 HP, then the ship itself would have combat, maneuver, speed (however that is measured), and any other ship attribute that can feasibly releated to "strength" of...50! It would be of relatively high technology, both in equipment and in the general technical savvy of the crew. Its ship attribute for TECH would be...75! And both the society and application of the ship within that society, would have a very high CHA of 90. So original Captain Averagestrength McMicrosoft of the Sexysphere would have christened and launched The Digital Goddess, whose long-term crew performed various technical and recreational services to its patron colonies. Kind of an "IT and Casino" in space, that attracted laid-back, persuasive technologist pleasure-seekers and servers, and whose society reflected that.
And Hit Points (or whatever damage meter you are using) for the whole ship translates to a "Salvage Score" or Conquest Points or Victory Scores/points, whatever. Combat is resolved identically to normal melee and missle fire for the individual human, with one key difference: victory conditions in ship combat is declared ahead of time: Player "If I win, I board and commandeer the ship." GM: "If the opponent wins, he cripples your ship and escapes."
Once a ship's CP hits zero, then the remaining CP of the other ship are compared, and through a look up table, the relative strength of the victory is used to modify and playout revised victory conditions:
So if the PC ship wins in this scenario, but survives with 5% of its maximum Conquest Points, the table might adjust to "Instead of fully boarding and commandeering the ship, a few squadrons successfully board, loot and render inoperable the enemy ship."
If the GM controlled ship instead wins, but with a lot of CP left in reserve, the table could indicate an "overkill" of victory conditions, whereby the players ship is destroyed instead of crippled, and the victorious ship escapes with a bonus.
I mean, this is rough, but it is way more playable and intuitive for those players who don't want to get into tactical engineering combat details, while being wholly satisfying for the space wargamers.
As a long-time Traveller player, I've been used to having ship-design rules available, but how often has one of my characters had the luxury of calling at the shipyard to commission some unique, personalised class of ship? Instead the referee creates some adventure where the players take possession of some barely-functional ship in a stock design with quirks and problems, and there's no money available to upgrade it, because they need every cent just to pay the interest on their debts and buy replacement parts for the decades-old life-support system. When the GM starts a session with "the characters are in a diner in the downport", the players don't expect to start designing the restaurant. The GM hands them a floorplan and they choose a table to sit at. Even if they are left in charge to run the place for a couple of evenings, they won't be asking about replacement ovens and high-capacity dishwashers. Why is their ship different? Part of the fun of the game is learning the design's peculiarities and figuring how to make the best use of what you have.
Not quite the same thing, but I ran a long Rogue Trader campaign and space combat came up maybe once. Possibly not at all. I do remember a space battle, but I think we handled it "dramatically" rather than using the space combat rules.
ReplyDeleteThe same is true to a lesser extent of the starship construction. The players were keen to build their ship in the first session but after that it became simply a home base and a vehicle to get around the campaign map.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that you probably don't need them in 1000S2. If it were me I'd have dramatic rules in the main book -- name, shape, history, unique features; a simple story based way of handling combat -- with more detailed systems in an appendix for those who want them.
I would have responded very differently to this at various stages of my life. As a teenager I spent countless hours with the MegaTraveller vehicle design rules, along with the Book 8 robot rules. This was essentially "solitaire play". Sometimes it was just for my amusement. At other times, when I had a weekly game, I just felt better when a vehicle or starship that the players encountered had a spreadsheet to back it up. Similarly, if they visited a star system I'd generate the whole system down to the last barren gas giant moon because I believed that made everything better. At that time in my life, I would have looked down on a system without these rules.
ReplyDeleteThen I became a professional engineer, able to design and build real things of concrete use to real people. Getting my imaginary starship or robot details exactly right (per some game designer's idea of "right") no longer seemed important.
Today I'm very happy to say "you see a hovercraft" and get on with the adventure. Starship combat is handled cinematically, though I am a sucker for the Book 2 computer rules-as-written because they're just so alien to today.
"3. Optional Detailed Rules: For GMs and groups who crave it, include a full system for construction and tactical combat, but clearly mark it as optional and put it in an appendix so it doesn’t dominate the rulebook."
ReplyDeleteFirst two things that comes to mind are Appendix I. Psionics and (especially!!) Appendix II. Bards from the 1e PHG. Tucked away in appendices, yes, but non-stop subjects of debate, despair, and division from the day of publication.
Appendices have a way of drawing, not diverting, attention. Integrate everything into the system, or leave it out, I should think. I believe your "Narrative" Default model is the best one. Ships as setting - that's who we are, that's this game. You're not getting something you didn't expect, and you aren't expecting something that was never promised in the first place.
Starship combat and to a lesser degree design is a game within a game. I think it is difficult to fully integrate into RPGs and still include every party member without it feeling forced (i.e. dividing up combat rolls between various battle stations).
ReplyDeleteStarship design rules seem to be a “Power user feature” where a small but vocal subset of users absolutely loves and depends on it even though the majority never touches it. Unfortunately I fall into that power user category and love tinkering with different designs and mechanics. I’m very much reminded of both Battletech and Car Wars. Many of my friends were quite happy to play with stock or lightly modified (weapon swaps) cars or ‘mechs. I found that the design game within the game gave me a way to engage with the game when I wasn’t playing the game.
My proposal (below) might hit the sweet spot for you without alienating anyone who would rather just weapon swap Car Wars, so to speak. If everyone starts with the Starship attributes = 1st Captain Attributes (which I should mention, can change with a new, sufficiently influential Captain - former shipping barges converted to a garbage scow, for example, would re-stat based on the influential scow captain's attributes.
DeleteBut within those parameters (i.e. players like you, and the less power players like everyone else), everyone would have a basic understanding of the ship and crew and visitor mechanics. Power user, however, gets to go into gritty detail of why - exactly - the ship has a STR of 80, an INT of 35, a TECH of 27, etc. for example. This will influence how victory conditions in combat or high-risk exploration are both determined and modified mechanically following the discrepancy check.
I can't guarantee it, but I strongly believe that my proposal really does provide a little palatable crunch to ship design so that they enjoy it and resolve it quickly, but this in know way starves the power player of the nerdphoria of minutia. In fact, I'd argue it it allows the power minutia to blossom in a pleasing way for everyone.
My usual thinking on this sort of thing is that complicated systems push people away - compare the design systems in classic Traveller Book 2, Book 5, and MegaTraveller. Though, Book 5 made TCS possible (up until someone solved the mathematical model at the Origins TCS tournament, I think it was). And MT opened the door for some cool, weird scenarios like "Equalizer Project" in Challenge #61, which isn't starships, but it's in the same ballpark - and it's specifically the "everything from robot vacuum cleaners to million-ton battleships" that helped make that design system as complex as it was.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the point is, the more subsystems you have, the more different kinds of scenarios your system can support.
ENNNNNNNN.
ReplyDeleteOOOOOOOHH.
For ideal roleplay and "gamification" ships should simply be (mechanically, societally, culturally) an extension of its original captain (or possibly builder).
In any case, every ship should simply carry the base attributes of whoever was the original visionary/captain of the ship. To put it simply, if your 1st Captain had the game attributes of STR: 50 TECH: 75 CHA: 90 and, say 47 HP, then the ship itself would have combat, maneuver, speed (however that is measured), and any other ship attribute that can feasibly releated to "strength" of...50! It would be of relatively high technology, both in equipment and in the general technical savvy of the crew. Its ship attribute for TECH would be...75! And both the society and application of the ship within that society, would have a very high CHA of 90. So original Captain Averagestrength McMicrosoft of the Sexysphere would have christened and launched The Digital Goddess, whose long-term crew performed various technical and recreational services to its patron colonies. Kind of an "IT and Casino" in space, that attracted laid-back, persuasive technologist pleasure-seekers and servers, and whose society reflected that.
And Hit Points (or whatever damage meter you are using) for the whole ship translates to a "Salvage Score" or Conquest Points or Victory Scores/points, whatever. Combat is resolved identically to normal melee and missle fire for the individual human, with one key difference: victory conditions in ship combat is declared ahead of time: Player "If I win, I board and commandeer the ship." GM: "If the opponent wins, he cripples your ship and escapes."
Once a ship's CP hits zero, then the remaining CP of the other ship are compared, and through a look up table, the relative strength of the victory is used to modify and playout revised victory conditions:
So if the PC ship wins in this scenario, but survives with 5% of its maximum Conquest Points, the table might adjust to "Instead of fully boarding and commandeering the ship, a few squadrons successfully board, loot and render inoperable the enemy ship."
If the GM controlled ship instead wins, but with a lot of CP left in reserve, the table could indicate an "overkill" of victory conditions, whereby the players ship is destroyed instead of crippled, and the victorious ship escapes with a bonus.
I mean, this is rough, but it is way more playable and intuitive for those players who don't want to get into tactical engineering combat details, while being wholly satisfying for the space wargamers.
As a long-time Traveller player, I've been used to having ship-design rules available, but how often has one of my characters had the luxury of calling at the shipyard to commission some unique, personalised class of ship? Instead the referee creates some adventure where the players take possession of some barely-functional ship in a stock design with quirks and problems, and there's no money available to upgrade it, because they need every cent just to pay the interest on their debts and buy replacement parts for the decades-old life-support system.
ReplyDeleteWhen the GM starts a session with "the characters are in a diner in the downport", the players don't expect to start designing the restaurant. The GM hands them a floorplan and they choose a table to sit at. Even if they are left in charge to run the place for a couple of evenings, they won't be asking about replacement ovens and high-capacity dishwashers. Why is their ship different?
Part of the fun of the game is learning the design's peculiarities and figuring how to make the best use of what you have.