Scifi for Legend?
- Thread starter danskmacabre
- Start date
alex_greene
Guest
This is going to sound like heresy here, but ...
Stuff the gear!
The last thing you need, in a Modern campaign, is to get hung up on tech. It really is the last word you should ever put into any sourcebook.
Why?
Because it's all out there, in front of you.
Laptops, broadband connections, WiFi, 3g and 4g mobile smartphones, apps, eBooks, plasma screens, the internet, satellites, email, social media. Right there in your face. You don't need to worry about that - only its effect on a campaign, when your character's Intelligence score translates to "how quickly he can google the answer."
Weapons, also, you might as well do the research on - so ask around. Go and either join a gun club and tell them you're trying to research things like the ranges and accuracy of an MP-5 versus a P90, or the comparative manstopping power of a SIG Sauer against that of a Glock-19; but don't get so hung up on creating lists of gear and bits that you lose sight of the fact that you are creating a setting. And the setting is of far greater importance than measuring the lands and grooves and right hand twist on a fictional polygonal barrelled autoloader with a 15 capacity magazine.
You need to focus on specific eras, and what they did - and did not - have. For instance:-
- The Seventies: No email, no internet. Phones tethered to the wall by wires. Audio only. Walkie talkies the size of house bricks. CB radio, towards the end. Culturally, people think of it as The Day Taste Died - actually, it was the Last Stand of the Traditional Dandy, ending a long line of flamboyancy among gentlemen of leisure, as the long line of gentlemen of leisure itself came to an end. The end of the Danger Man, the John Steed, the Jason King. Out with Adam Adamant in his Edwardian smoking jacket with frilly collar and cuffs; in with the 'hard bunch - the Bodies, the Doyles, the Regans and Carters, all leather jackets and 'andy with their fists and Cockney accents and calling women "plonk," whatever the hell that meant.
- The Eighties: the dawn of the Era of Greed. Man-shaped sharks striding the world like a colossus, ruining economies for decades to come. Big shoulder pads, Bros, mobile phones the size of house bricks. No internet, no email, but a handful of young punks knew their way into the system, MacGyvering ingenious hacks with bits of tinfoil and paperclips. The last era of good music, as it all gets washed away by market-tested, focus-group-oriented commercial Kylie and Bros (rhymes with "dross.") Challenger; Chernobyl; the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989; and it ends in celebration, with Nelson Mandela's release from Robben Island in early 1990.
Two small examples. Both equally Modern. Both completely alien mindsets to anyone living in the 2010s. And the Sixties, the Nineties and the Bush/Blair years have to be counted, too, because would you believe it, people are still living in both eras - and they're both now in the past.
Like I said ... forget the equipment. You haven't got time for the equipment.
Stuff the gear!
The last thing you need, in a Modern campaign, is to get hung up on tech. It really is the last word you should ever put into any sourcebook.
Why?
Because it's all out there, in front of you.
Laptops, broadband connections, WiFi, 3g and 4g mobile smartphones, apps, eBooks, plasma screens, the internet, satellites, email, social media. Right there in your face. You don't need to worry about that - only its effect on a campaign, when your character's Intelligence score translates to "how quickly he can google the answer."
Weapons, also, you might as well do the research on - so ask around. Go and either join a gun club and tell them you're trying to research things like the ranges and accuracy of an MP-5 versus a P90, or the comparative manstopping power of a SIG Sauer against that of a Glock-19; but don't get so hung up on creating lists of gear and bits that you lose sight of the fact that you are creating a setting. And the setting is of far greater importance than measuring the lands and grooves and right hand twist on a fictional polygonal barrelled autoloader with a 15 capacity magazine.
You need to focus on specific eras, and what they did - and did not - have. For instance:-
- The Seventies: No email, no internet. Phones tethered to the wall by wires. Audio only. Walkie talkies the size of house bricks. CB radio, towards the end. Culturally, people think of it as The Day Taste Died - actually, it was the Last Stand of the Traditional Dandy, ending a long line of flamboyancy among gentlemen of leisure, as the long line of gentlemen of leisure itself came to an end. The end of the Danger Man, the John Steed, the Jason King. Out with Adam Adamant in his Edwardian smoking jacket with frilly collar and cuffs; in with the 'hard bunch - the Bodies, the Doyles, the Regans and Carters, all leather jackets and 'andy with their fists and Cockney accents and calling women "plonk," whatever the hell that meant.
- The Eighties: the dawn of the Era of Greed. Man-shaped sharks striding the world like a colossus, ruining economies for decades to come. Big shoulder pads, Bros, mobile phones the size of house bricks. No internet, no email, but a handful of young punks knew their way into the system, MacGyvering ingenious hacks with bits of tinfoil and paperclips. The last era of good music, as it all gets washed away by market-tested, focus-group-oriented commercial Kylie and Bros (rhymes with "dross.") Challenger; Chernobyl; the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989; and it ends in celebration, with Nelson Mandela's release from Robben Island in early 1990.
Two small examples. Both equally Modern. Both completely alien mindsets to anyone living in the 2010s. And the Sixties, the Nineties and the Bush/Blair years have to be counted, too, because would you believe it, people are still living in both eras - and they're both now in the past.
Like I said ... forget the equipment. You haven't got time for the equipment.
taxboy said:
I'm not hostile to the idea, but before we do anything like this we need to decide what we're going for ... Do we host it for everyone to download, do we sent it to Mongoose and hope they publish it, or do we publish it ourselves under OGL (probably not). We don't know yet.
alex_greene said:
I agree. Our system should be as general anyway that we simply will not be including such specific items - stuff like that belongs in a setting-specific source book, if at all. Most of these items can be eyeballed by any gm in a matter of seconds, because we all know what they do.
alex_greene said:
Yup, the gameplay is much more important than accuracy, to a degree. When we had our brainstorming meeting, it was a priority for me that combat feels cinematic AND sorta-accurate. I don't wan't it to end like Dark Heresy where the best thing you can do is either:
1. Storm forward while keeping the trigger squeezed in, spraying everything.
2. Use a sniper rifle at point blank range..
I wan't it to at least reflect realistic combat, but not so much that it ruins the cinematic/fun feel. I've done my conscription military service and been shooting with my police-dad since I was 10, so I have a desire to make a combat system where things don't get too (in my opinion) stupid; If nothing else, because I haven't seen a modern-combat system that had what I seek so far. I want (tactical) movement to be as important in a firefight as it is in real life.
alex_greene said:
We'll leave details like these to setting-specific books. Other than short chapters in the back, which will be mainly for inspiration, setting will be as general as possible - because we don't have time for this kind of detail, as you illustrated is needed above. Plus, we want to focus on different stuff.. I'm thinking agents/007, indiana jonas & modern-age Deus Vult - Mixster has been talking about post-magical-apocalypse & Star Wars/Space Opera. So we'll leave these things pretty far away from the core rules... at least for now.
But you do make a nice point of how different nearby periods can be - at least when viewed with outside eyes.
At least that is my take on it.
- Dan
Hopeless said:
My setting was called Runequest 2012. But I guess it could be renamed the legend of 2012. The idea was that as the year became 2012, god died. He had been dying for years. But at the end he finally gave out. Now god hadn't been a big force in peoples live, his main job was managing the faith of people and directing it, so the power would not be used for silly things.
The idea was that this "god" was both the Christian, Muslim, Mayan and whatever faith you have god. But he just showed different aspects and directed all that power to himself. The idea that he was omnipotent was wrong, but he was the most powerful being in existence.
Anyway, since his death, faith ran wild. And fame and affection was close in likelyness to faith and belief. Thus, super-stars actually became super. The intro scenario was called "Return of the King", and was about Elvis coming back to life from the gathered belief that he never died (yes the campaign was supposed to be rather goofy). The idea would be that when you had a pact the target of your pact would be the one giving you spells, and he would get your dedicated POW as extra MP to give you those spells with. So idols would sort of be Magic Point Banks, that would trade spells for magic points.
Now as this power runs hay-wire, and Justin Bieber gets mindboggling powers. The world kindda goes bananas in a war between different believers. People start spotting aliens, and hearing rumours of magic, and suddenly everything is just weird and the other magic systems seep in, that would be when the players discover what god was using all that power to keep at bay, changing the pace into a much more epic game.
It wasn't really created as a setting as much as created as a single campaign setting, with the ending being the players possibly ascending to be new gods. But I guess it could be re-written into a setting.
Also, I'm in on Alex_greenes ideas. Atm, we just have some 15 guns with different stats, and they have been made mostly by me and a wikipedia index of firearms, and looking up their stopping power, calibre, and effective range.
All the other items would be quite easy to work out how it works in a game. If you bring internet to the table, you could just google when something was made/how common it was in a certain time period to set it up.
The deal is to get worked in combat manoeuvres. The combat manoeuvres as they are have a hard time accomodating to ranged combat. Few of them, except impale, choose- and stun location make much sense for firing with a firearm.
Also, we need to find out a way to work in auto-fire weapons. Atm. Dan doesn't want it to just give you a larger chance to hit. I don't care either way, I wanted it to be something rookies do, and not something trained professional do (since I've never held a gun, and I figure that if given one, I'd start firing full burst at most chances untill I learned how to handle one) I think the idea was to make Auto-Fire decrease your chance to hit, or set a maximum chance for hitting something.
---
So all in all, we all know about the gear you can get in a modern setting, but none of us really know alot about how a firefight goes down. Dan and I wanted to make it cinematic, but at least slightly realistic, so I guess watching a lot of action movies would be a good source of inspiration.
---
I'm neither for or opposed to the idea of Pay Pal. I don't really need the money it would get so I guess I would just keep making it for free, and if we never got around to finish it I would feel back for taking peoples money.
Although a few extra dollars is never bad.
alex_greene
Guest
Okay, well for a start you might as well come up with some mechanics for the following:-
- Parkour: also known as Freerunning, it's the sport of movement using every available urban surface; rooftops, walkways, walls, railings, whatever. Look as Parkour as being a "combat manoeuvre" for any athletics - based skill, such as Jump or Climb.
- CQB: Close Quarters Battle: Also called CQC (Close Quarters Combat), it is specifically ultra-short range combat, mostly hand-to-hand, with melee weapons, typically in very confined spaces such as a building with narrow, confined rooms or corridors ... or even a vehicle.
- FIBUA: Fighting In Built Up Areas: Urban warfare, house to house and room to room fighting. Limited sight lines and fire ranges, enhanced cover, an enemy which might know the terrain better than your unit, a three dimensional environment, booby traps, snipers. Sometimes called, over here, Fish and Chips (Fighting In Someone's House and Causing Havoc In People's Streets).
Anything involving modern battle tactics could make use of computers, not only for "hacking" local CCTVs to gain situational intelligence of enemy movements without their knowing, but also to guide surveillance UAVs - drones. Something you can do on the fly from an iPhone while ducking under cover.
I wrote a chunk of White Wolf's Dogs of War for their World of Darkness. Stuff like this was only just coming to pass, making the bits I wrote obsolete virtually overnight.
Hells, it even makes the Traveller combat system in the forum next door obsolete.
- Parkour: also known as Freerunning, it's the sport of movement using every available urban surface; rooftops, walkways, walls, railings, whatever. Look as Parkour as being a "combat manoeuvre" for any athletics - based skill, such as Jump or Climb.
- CQB: Close Quarters Battle: Also called CQC (Close Quarters Combat), it is specifically ultra-short range combat, mostly hand-to-hand, with melee weapons, typically in very confined spaces such as a building with narrow, confined rooms or corridors ... or even a vehicle.
- FIBUA: Fighting In Built Up Areas: Urban warfare, house to house and room to room fighting. Limited sight lines and fire ranges, enhanced cover, an enemy which might know the terrain better than your unit, a three dimensional environment, booby traps, snipers. Sometimes called, over here, Fish and Chips (Fighting In Someone's House and Causing Havoc In People's Streets).
Anything involving modern battle tactics could make use of computers, not only for "hacking" local CCTVs to gain situational intelligence of enemy movements without their knowing, but also to guide surveillance UAVs - drones. Something you can do on the fly from an iPhone while ducking under cover.
I wrote a chunk of White Wolf's Dogs of War for their World of Darkness. Stuff like this was only just coming to pass, making the bits I wrote obsolete virtually overnight.
Hells, it even makes the Traveller combat system in the forum next door obsolete.
alex_greene said:This is going to sound like heresy here, but ...
Laptops, broadband connections, WiFi, 3g and 4g mobile smartphones, apps, eBooks, plasma screens, the internet, satellites, email, social media. Right there in your face. You don't need to worry about that - only its effect on a campaign, when your character's Intelligence score translates to "how quickly he can google the answer".
You need to focus on specific eras, and what they did - and did not - have. For instance:-
- The Seventies: No email, no internet. Phones tethered to the wall by wires. Audio only. Walkie talkies the size of house bricks. CB radio, towards the end. Culturally, people think of it as The Day Taste Died - actually, it was the Last Stand of the Traditional Dandy, ending a long line of flamboyancy among gentlemen of leisure, as the long line of gentlemen of leisure itself came to an end. The end of the Danger Man, the John Steed, the Jason King. Out with Adam Adamant in his Edwardian smoking jacket with frilly collar and cuffs; in with the 'hard bunch - the Bodies, the Doyles, the Regans and Carters, all leather jackets and 'andy with their fists and Cockney accents and calling women "plonk," whatever the hell that meant.
Like I said ... forget the equipment. You haven't got time for the equipment.
This is a great point. I find the problem with modern and sic Fi, it is way too easy to travel or goggle answers!
The low tech 70 and 80 s are a great idea to provide restrictions...so good to have rules to cover low to high tech modern.
Talking to my group yesterday (curry lunch!) and they say they like traveller but find the system clunky. Now if traveller could take a legend system....
Morningkiller
Mongoose
taxboy said:
That would be interesting. A lifepath character generation for Legend similar to the Traveller one would also be sweet.
danskmacabre said:I know Mongoose make Traveller, but I'm just not that keen on the Traveller game (no offense to Traveller fans
But is there any chance at all of a Scifi iteration of Legend/MRQ2?
I doubt whether Mongoose will do anything SciFi for Legend, but if they follow up on their promise to release legend as OGL then there's nothing to stop people from producing their own Legend-compatible SciFi system.
A while ago, I made a stab by combining the MRQI/Traveller/D20 Future SRDs, but I never got further with it. This is something that I would like to build on, but haven't time at the moment.
Morningkiller
Mongoose
soltakss said:
I had a look at that and it was very good. I am running a 40k Rogue Trader game that I recently converted to MRQ2/Legend. It was very helpful when trying to eyeball weapon and armour damage for the conversion.
With MRQ2 going OGL I think there will be an appetite for some sci-fi. Getting a toolkit that would allow people to set up and run Star Wars/40k/Star Trek/Cyberpunk and other stuff would be awesome.
The Big Gold Book for BRP has pretty much all the stuff you want from a mechanics viewpoint - weaponry of all descriptions, past, present and future; skills and professions for a modern/future age all they need is to be re-tooled or re-skinned for Legend. As an example, the majority of CM's in Legend simply replace the "specials" benefits from BRP. For those of you that aren't familiar with BRP, they have 5 levels of success; Fumble, Fail, Success, Special, Critical vs. Legends 4. Remembering that most of the development (as far as I know, and I'm no expert) for BRP came from Call of Cthulu and the Sormbringer/Elric games,"modern - early history (1920's+) is pretty well detailed.
I think the main thing, and here I agree with Alex completely, is the setting rules need to be tailored for whatever time period you're using as technology is vastly different from one decade to another. If I were undertaking such a project I would include time period specific chapters with enough information that extrapolation of the intervening years is not a massive chore.
I think the main thing, and here I agree with Alex completely, is the setting rules need to be tailored for whatever time period you're using as technology is vastly different from one decade to another. If I were undertaking such a project I would include time period specific chapters with enough information that extrapolation of the intervening years is not a massive chore.
Prime_Evil
Emperor Mongoose
Dan True said:
That's a nice idea. Any chance of a preview?
Prime_Evil said:
I hope it is - I get the idea while horribly drunk, so there must be something to it
When we have something to show, yes. Right now we're both hung up on school stuff, but hopefully we'll get back to it during September and start writing again. At the moment most of our ideas are in various documents and notes.
- Dan
sdavies2720
Mongoose
Long ago there was a supplement called "Dynasties and Demagogues" which had an elaborate system for verbal combat. IIRC it was a little baroque for Legend, but it could be a rich source for combat maneuvres and other ideas.Dan True said:
Steve
Vile said:
Indeed they did, in a slightly modified form.They were very useful as weapons are definitely not my strong point.
Come to think of it, Mongoose have a vested interest in not doing a SciFi Legend supplement, because of Traveller. However, there's no such restriction on RuneQuest, which will be very similar to the Legend rules. So, if a RuneQuest SciFi supplement came out, it would be very easy to take certain elements and use them in a Legend SciFi supplement, especially if these elements were similar enough to something that exists in an SRD.
Prime_Evil
Emperor Mongoose
What kind of 'feel' should an SF variant of Legend aim for? Should it a hard SF game or lean towards space opera? If you convert material from the Traveller SRD, you end up with technological assumptions close to the OTU. Is this a desirable thing? Or is it better to look to the d20 Future SRD for a setting where energy weapons and other advanced technologies are more common? Does anybody have any thoughts on the matter?
alex_greene
Guest
In the same way that Legend can break free of the constraints of RuneQuest, it can also create a SF setting without the constraints of Traveller.
Legends of Sci Fi doesn't have to have a Jump-drive and a Jump-6 limit. It does not have to have the same kinds of technologies as Traveller either - if you want light sabres and something that works kind of like The Force, write them into the equipment list and have your GM decide what works for the setting. If you want time travel like Doctor Who, or dimensional travel like Sliders, Legends of Sci Fi could throw them in right off the bat.
Mongoose doesn't have to limit itself to the psi-weak grittiness of Traveller, when you could have epic psionic battles - again, like Star Wars, but also possibly with the grand scale of the psionics of Gary Mitchell from Star Trek.
And why have only one set of Ancients? Does the setting need Ancients? Could the setting include Type II, Type III and Type IV civilisations, advanced carbon-based sophonts evolving into incorporeal energy beings, slow generation ships, routine transporter technology at TL 12, AIs being commonplace, cybernetics from TL 9 and immortality through cybernetic nanite anagathic implants bonded to the tissues of the pancreas?
The point - Legends of Sci Fi can go so completely far from Traveller that FFE would not have any trouble in acknowledging that no conflict of interests ensues from its publication.
Legends of Sci Fi doesn't have to have a Jump-drive and a Jump-6 limit. It does not have to have the same kinds of technologies as Traveller either - if you want light sabres and something that works kind of like The Force, write them into the equipment list and have your GM decide what works for the setting. If you want time travel like Doctor Who, or dimensional travel like Sliders, Legends of Sci Fi could throw them in right off the bat.
Mongoose doesn't have to limit itself to the psi-weak grittiness of Traveller, when you could have epic psionic battles - again, like Star Wars, but also possibly with the grand scale of the psionics of Gary Mitchell from Star Trek.
And why have only one set of Ancients? Does the setting need Ancients? Could the setting include Type II, Type III and Type IV civilisations, advanced carbon-based sophonts evolving into incorporeal energy beings, slow generation ships, routine transporter technology at TL 12, AIs being commonplace, cybernetics from TL 9 and immortality through cybernetic nanite anagathic implants bonded to the tissues of the pancreas?
The point - Legends of Sci Fi can go so completely far from Traveller that FFE would not have any trouble in acknowledging that no conflict of interests ensues from its publication.
