Pioneer Gameplay Concerns

[hrafnkolbrandr]

So let me start off by giving a short disclaimer. I am really excited for Pioneer. I love the focus on the near-future, and on space travel actually being difficult and dangerous. I did not get an opportunity to back the kickstarter; but it will probably be a preorder (if available), or day one purchase (physical) for me.

That said, I will probably never play it with my group. I will explain.

I read through the scenario and quickstart downloadable from the kickstarter page, which was very cool of you guys to put up there. Then I saw there was an actual play of the scenario on YouTube, so I checked that out.

To put it simply- While the folks from 12-sided Studio were entertaining- They are not my players. As the scenario went on, it became apparent that there just wasn't a great deal of "meat" provided by the game/scenario. Many of the skill checks asked for by the GM seemed superfluous- for example, "roll charm to see how your rival takes your statement" (paraphrased). Honestly, an unnecessary check in my opinion. As well as some of the situations where the GM had players spend influence- for example, using influence to get the billionaires to shut up. Or how about, just close the comm channel.

If you take out most of these superfluous checks and resource sinks, leaving those actually required by the scenario; the game is in my opinion left pretty sparse. After I finished watching the actual play, my impression was that the people at 12-Sided had managed to somehow take a half-hour scenario, and stretch it into 2 hours of gameplay. Which honestly is great for them.

But my players...probably won't do that; and I suspect that my group isn't alone in that respect.

It doesn't help that we didn't really get to see the escalation mechanic in play. The only significant complication was in regard to the gimbal malfunction and the fuel line issue; which only really complicated things due to their choice not to fix it earlier. This leaves me with the impression that the GM is going to need to throw in a lot of seemingly arbitrary complications to put some meat into their sessions for the players to chew on; and to be frank, I don't think I have the GM chops, and sheer technical knowledge of spaceflight to do so in a convincing manner.

I really hope that the final product includes some robust GM tools to generate scenarios and detailed complications to inject into those scenarios. Because non-exemplary GM's like me are going to need them.

So those things have me a little apprehensive about the prospects of the game and it's suitability for tables like mine. I hope that when we get the final product, there will be...more to it. Otherwise, as much as I would hate for it to be the case; this game will probably never see my table.

 

[Michael S]

So let me start off by giving a short disclaimer. I am really excited for Pioneer. I love the focus on the near-future, and on space travel actually being difficult and dangerous. I did not get an opportunity to back the kickstarter; but it will probably be a preorder (if available), or day one purchase (physical) for me.

That said, I will probably never play it with my group. I will explain.

I read through the scenario and quickstart downloadable from the kickstarter page, which was very cool of you guys to put up there. Then I saw there was an actual play of the scenario on YouTube, so I checked that out.

To put it simply- While the folks from 12-sided Studio were entertaining- They are not my players. As the scenario went on, it became apparent that there just wasn't a great deal of "meat" provided by the game/scenario. Many of the skill checks asked for by the GM seemed superfluous- for example, "roll charm to see how your rival takes your statement" (paraphrased). Honestly, an unnecessary check in my opinion. As well as some of the situations where the GM had players spend influence- for example, using influence to get the billionaires to shut up. Or how about, just close the comm channel.

If you take out most of these superfluous checks and resource sinks, leaving those actually required by the scenario; the game is in my opinion left pretty sparse. After I finished watching the actual play, my impression was that the people at 12-Sided had managed to somehow take a half-hour scenario, and stretch it into 2 hours of gameplay. Which honestly is great for them.

But my players...probably won't do that; and I suspect that my group isn't alone in that respect.

It doesn't help that we didn't really get to see the escalation mechanic in play. The only significant complication was in regard to the gimbal malfunction and the fuel line issue; which only really complicated things due to their choice not to fix it earlier. This leaves me with the impression that the GM is going to need to throw in a lot of seemingly arbitrary complications to put some meat into their sessions for the players to chew on; and to be frank, I don't think I have the GM chops, and sheer technical knowledge of spaceflight to do so in a convincing manner.

I really hope that the final product includes some robust GM tools to generate scenarios and detailed complications to inject into those scenarios. Because non-exemplary GM's like me are going to need them.

So those things have me a little apprehensive about the prospects of the game and it's suitability for tables like mine. I hope that when we get the final product, there will be...more to it. Otherwise, as much as I would hate for it to be the case; this game will probably never see my table.

You're not alone friend

 

[shirgall]

As a roleplay focused crew we were also concerned by the "let's play" but I think we can make it work. I'm looking forward to the rulebook and scenarios and I think we can make it work.

Sing it in your head, "Do you want to build a moon base?"

 

[MongooseMatt]

As the scenario went on, it became apparent that there just wasn't a great deal of "meat" provided by the game/scenario.

Worth mentioning...

That mission was the very first written, and not all the rules were available at the time of filming (which had to be done quite in advance, obviously).

I would ask you hold judgement until you see the new missions in Mission Control and Ares Ascendant

 

[Sigtrygg]

I would also argue that the referee and players at 12 sided studios may well not have the experience of watching every Scott Manley video, every spaceflight documentary, every space accident documentary, even just the true story of Apollo 13 rather than the cinema treatment.

Here is the true scenario.

The PC team is launched to the stranded celebs, they dock, they return with the celebs. Everything is automated, everything has peen planned and every eventuality predicted and a solution proposed.

Sounds boring.

But here is the thing. Even computer precision is not perfect, and trouble has a way of cascading.

Every time the computer or a crew member has to perform an action advance the SNAFU track by one if successful, but the degree of failure if they fail. They then succeed on a sorting out the issue task, but that gets them an additional SNAFU track point.

At critical points determined by me things start to get "interesting", then"dangerous", then "mission critical", then game over.

It is worth reading or watching the now declassified report on the Boeing Starliner mission, how those astronauts survived is a miracle of succeeding critical dice throws.

Boeing Crew Flight Test - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[hrafnkolbrandr]

Worth mentioning...

That mission was the very first written, and not all the rules were available at the time of filming (which had to be done quite in advance, obviously).

I would ask you hold judgement until you see the new missions in Mission Control and Ares Ascendant

I'm definitely going to view the final product before I make a final verdict; and I am excited to see the Mission Control stuff.

I'm just hoping you guys provide solid, deep tools for creating our own adventures (or tweaking/adding variability to the published ones) as well.