Has anyone tried running a BSG style campaign opening?

[hdan]

Huh, I just had a curious thought.

What about gaming the Maghiz? Your characters are Darrians, far enough away from the event to get a running start. The official timeline gives you around 40 years before Darrian spaceflight collapses, but if you're ok with messing with the timeline, you could throw in Zhodani (creepy short (from the Darrian perspective) telepaths from high-G worlds that may or may not have been involved in the troubles) and Aslan (whose "timely" arrival in the area, possibly encouraged by the Zho, allows them to discover some ripe worlds that need order restored to them). Vargr were star travellers long before this time, so it's not crazy to have some Vargr around. In fact, it's likely the Darrians were well aware of Vargr, and likely had dealings with them.

Characters would be scientists or soldiers out on the frontiers of the confederation when the Maghiz goes off. Adventures would include trying to find a way to get "behind" the shockwave to mount rescue operations, figuring out exactly what went wrong, organizing to defend against the Aslan (and possibly turning them against the Zho), etc. The Zho could be (as usual) the bad guys, who arranged for the star experiments to go wrong because they needed to prevent the Darrians from continuing their rapid advance of technology. If you want to get *really* conspiratorial, you could have the Ancients "pushing" the Zho, since the Ancients (who didn't really leave, as we all know) have a vested interest in preventing anyone from reaching their legendary tech levels.

 

[2330ADUSA1]

I have had two BSG campaigns. One was a based in a stellar cluster of 15 solar systems, 12 of wich each had a human (Earth) type world inwhich that was the loaction of one of each of the Colonial colonys. The Colonials were fighting the Cylons that is my campaign were the Robots of a now dead Alien race called Cylons. They were either Old Show Cylons, New show Centurians, and Sudo-Flesh covered Terminators. I had the humans survive the attack and fight back to repel the Cylon forces.

Another shorter lived campaign, was based off the same theme but that one Battle Group discovered a huge Stargate large enough for a Battle Star to travel through. They were investigating the Star Gate when the attack happened, and at the same time gate was triggered and openned. A wormhole bridge was openned, and the battle group along with the other civilian support vessels were forced to flee through the open gate. That included the Battle Star, and as the last ship through the gate closed and shut down.

The Battle Group (Battlestar Oracle) was trapped far across the galaxy in a unknown sector of space with no Star Gate on there side. A more controled and provisioned Rag Tag fleet with a full Battle Group of other Military vessels to support the lone Battlestar.

The first campaign the group played that for 3 years, and this secound game we played for a year.

 

[GamingGlen]

I was watching nBSG at the time, and while looking at my Aurora class clipper ship from the TNE era I came up with a way to use it as a base of operations for a campaign.

In the far far future, when humans have spread far and wide, no true large empire exists. Many pocket empires do exist and many more have come and gone. It is a setting similar to the Foundation or Dumarest series of books. And, Earth is a long distant memory.

Alien invasions have come and gone. Usually the aliens would thrash around a bit, but war weariness and sometimes a large pocket empire would put a stop to it and eventually the aliens would settle into the same near-stagnant growth rate of all other sapients of the galaxy.

Then comes along a real threat. These new aliens are more methodical, have crushed several large pocket empires, and no slowing down can be seen. Regional pocket empires have sent representatives to a meeting to devise a plan to stop them. But, nothing comes of it as most people think that these aliens will eventually fail, and a large pocket empire believes they can handle the aliens.

The feeling by members of one small pocket empire is that the human race has lost its drive and is settling into old age. They think it can re-ignite the human spirit by finding the human race's original, now seemingly mythical, planet: Earth. And if Earth just happens to be near this new alien threat, it might bring more humans to care about the future.

So they build and equip a specialized ship, the Aurora, for a very long and distant mission. Various modules are attached, as well as a second spinal mount-specialized module (the miniature has this big gun module :roll: ). A couple scout ships are also assigned to it and it starts out as a small fleet. A year later and several "groupie" ships tag along, others have come and gone, to become a ragtag fleet.

I figure this would be a good episodic-themed campaign, with players having several characters to play, depending on the adventure of the day. Their main characters would one of the department heads (Combat Air Group, Lead Scientist, security or military ground, etc) and they'd roll up new ones as needed.

But, it never got further than this as 1) I really don't like being a GM, 2) I think I suck at being a GM, 3) most people around here rather play fantasy.

 

[tanksoldier]

One of the problems with a (new series) BSG style campaign is that in BSG they use fuel but apparently not much. They are able to make several jumps with only a 33 minute gap in between. Also, jumps are instantaneous.

In Traveller the need for a complete refuel every jump slows things down and the need to jump to a system where refueling is possible limits the places the quarry can jump to. The possibility that the enemy will get their first and set up a blockade of the fuel source also exists.

Now, you might be able to play on the fact that the enemy WANTS the quarry to keep running, as in BSG.

An in-system chase makes even less sense with drives that can thrust continuously at 6g. You'd be out by Pluto in a week.

Now, old BSG just ignored a lot of this and you're never sure if they are traveling from system to system, or to planet in the same system. Some things hinted at one, some at the other.

If you're willing to mess with the technology a bit and set it in a huge system like Firefly's "The 'Verse" it might work.

 

[Sturn]

An interesting campaign using Traveller technology might have the small fleet jumping away randomnly through the sector(s) of an unexplored frontier while being chased by the Enemy. This leads to many interesting and fun ideas.

With the Enemy hot on their trail they jump away to another system. The Enemy know's we were in range of 4 systems, so we hurry up and do refueling operations trying to jump yet again increasing the number of systems the Enemy must search for us. Repeat until we think we have put some distance between us, then we can slow down the pace.

With the Enemy not seen for some time, the pace could be slowed down as we take on supplies (food, water) and explore the systems we enter a bit. This opens up new adventures of meeting a new alien race, exploring the strange ruins on a moon in the system, discovering a garden world that just could be our new home, etc.

Then bam, the Enemy finds us again and we are right back to chases and combat as we try to lose them...

This allows for the usual Traveller exploration scenarios combined with large combat action from time to time.

 

[Hopeless]

The original idea is that they found an artefact that was used to reverse engineer jump technology so theyd use that to get the refugees clear and then shut down the gate at the other end thinking it was the only place they could go but eventually the enemy would just use jump drives to pursue it would just take longer and allowed for humanity to rebuild but having to fend off another assault maybe as much as 20-50 years later if not longer since part and parcel of my idea is that they have no means to procreate and depend on the technology and life they scavenge to continue their current existance.

When originally found they had wiped out the previous race and finding no intelligent life and technology to lock onto they shut down gradually being worn out until reawakened.

Every other race eventually succumbed the difference I'm looking at is that humanity expanded beyond the normal parameters for a civilisation making it possible for them to survive where the predecessor species couldn't.

There would still be life left just allowed to continue to allow the nanotech a means of continuing to exist ala Stargate atlantis and the wraith except all of them wouldn't awaken until a sufficiently massive civilisation was discovered ala the Reapers.