Spinward Marches 1256 Campaign query

[Hopeless]

Okay I'm in the process of getting the opening details done for the first game and I wanted to see if I've missed anything.

So far only one of the players has generated their characters with one of the others currently unable to get access to the internet thanks to recently moving home and the other two only recently returned from holiday abroad.

So prior to this I ran a game set 14 years prior to this where they ran a Lanth Senator, his aides and a group of navy, marines and a scout who were sent to a secret meeting only for it to turn into an ambush and they eventually escaped losing an noc marine and hospitalising a PC marine in the process which is when they discover that every system that was on the Stellar Gate Network (think Stargate atlantis meets Babylon V style gates which replaced the X-boat route) exploded causing massive losses.

The game I was planning was set 14 years after that event and involved the PCs dealing with life in the Marches.

Now what I do know is that the one character generated is a native of Fulacin and was a former scientist and field researcher who served very briefly in the scouts, the others include 2 sword worlders and a native of Regina.

The game I'm planning starts off with them being sent on an errand to Kinorb in the Rhylannor subsector to delivery some delicate sensor equipment to an orbital installation assigned to act as a hub to activity in Kinorb since there are no inhabitable worlds present and most of the activity involves either research into turning the six worlds that make up the 10 orbital points of the system.

Kinorb (thanks to Gurps Space from a suggestion made in an earlier thread) has a single red M5 class star with 6 worlds, an asteroid belt and a gas giant with its two furthest orbits being empty.

Still working on details on those worlds but thanks to drive thru rpg I picked up some interesting ideas which I hope to turn into a good game.

The PCs are delivering components to Kinorb but have drawn the interest of a spaceroaming group called the Children of Orion whom have exceedingly good pr and backing and have taken to committing acts of piracy to fund some of their schemes with an alarming interest in salvage mostly the ships of those they prey on.

However also in the system are a group called the Gaeans which is a research foundation and consist of only women looking to free themselves of the necessity for men, however they tend towards having their research bases in more isolated systems due to the bad pr they get from those in power who either see them as a threat to the male common interest or to those that are interested in their research.

The delivery is actually for them and isn't what it was initially claimed to be something the Children of Orion have been hired to obtain.

Now to make things more interesting there is a penal colony in this system mostly petty thugs, smugglers who have been forced to do manual labor in the asteroid belt as a means of extra income for their jailers.

Some family members of one of the convicts has found out where he is and are intent on freeing them unaware that they've chosen a very bad time to put their foot in it!

Fortunately for the PCs they have a contact in the system who runs his own scrapyard think outer space junkyard and can get their breath back since there ships aren't armed.

The Children of Orion will pursue them but the added complication will also reveal the presence of the Resistance.

The backdrop for the campaign was that over a century and a half ago the then govt was kept in line by elements of the Solomani Defence Guard nicknamed the "Sol Guard" whose purpose was to protect the inhabitants from those assigned to govern them as a sort of watchdog.

The Marches was cut off from the rest of the Solomani Imperium by the 13th Nanotech war when the Sol Guard deliberately disabled the Home Gate the only means of travelling to and from the other side of the Great Rift that separates the Marches from the rest of the Imperium.
The govt already in trouble for serious corruption and backing an incompetent power mad naval admiral took this chance to wipe out the surviving Sol Guard and rebuilt the Marches falsfying history so that they could keep control even going so far as to erase the location of the Home Gate and blame the destruction on the Sol Guard.
The Solomani Empire or Sol Empire as it was named eventually split as a result of religious hardliners who formed the Theocratic Consulate better known as the Consulars which held off the Empire due to the troubles arising from keeping the Sword Worlders under control.

Now 137 years later the Stellar Gate Network exploded badly decimating the military forces of the Marches allowing the Sword Worlders to throw off Imperial rules and the Empire split into two with its more advanced brethren forming the Aryan Conclave.

The game I'm planning as I stated starts off in Kinorb and will deal with things gradually since I could run this as a straight rebellion vs the empire but I'd like to see what they come up with.

So I guess I really should get to the point and ask should I scrap most of the above and just go with, its 151 years after the spinward marches book is detailed the gate network that replaces the x-boat route has blown up effectively altering the marches and the PCs get to see and even involved in what happens next?

 

[silburnl]

Hmmm. I think you are overthinking your prep. Also the description you've given is long and quite confusing. I suspect most people browsing only got a few 'graphs in before filing it under tl;dr - which is probably why no one has answered you yet.

Let's boil things down. First the big picture - there are the following major political groupings in your campaign:

Sol Guard - dead(?) watchforce
Sol Empire - corrupt sectorial govt
Consulars - rebels who seceded ages ago
Sword Worlds - rebels who have only recently seceded
Aryan Conclave - rebels who haven't seceded (yet)
??? - whoever blew up the stargates (assumes not one of the above)

OK, most of this stuff is deep background and you really don't have to worry about specifics. At this stage I wouldn't go any further than tagging each group with a handful (no more than six, preferably fewer) of facts that can be expressed in simple declarative sentences. This is mainly intended to organise your own thoughts and help you come up with the local colour for your game, so provided you haven't concretely introduced one of these tagged facts into the game you are entirely at liberty to junk it in favour of a better idea later on (even if you have, there's no reason why you can't deploy 'Yes, but...' or 'Yes, and...' to modify or contradict these facts).

Moving swiftly on. Local colour - there is a system (Kinorb/Regina), a macguffin (the cargo of sensors) and the following actors:

Children of Orion - pirates, after the macguffin
Gaeans - radical feminists, expecting the macguffin
Penal colony - 'roid mining prisoners
Relatives - planning a prison break
PC contact - junkyard rat, provides sanctuary (and, I would suggest, incluing)

First things first - put the penal colony and the relatives on the back burner (you can introduce them later if you need to mix things up). Focus on the macguffin, the Gaeans and the Children of Orion.

Who is sending the macguffin to the Gaeans?
What to the Gaeans expect the macguffin to do for them?
Who wants to stop the Gaeans from getting the macguffin?
Why are they bothered?
Why did they choose the Children of Orion as their agents?
What do the Children of Orion get out of the deal?

Finally (and most importantly) why should the PCs care?

Regards
Luke

 

[BP]

Excellent advice silburnl!

Being quite the windbag and over-complicator - after I write my 'books', I try to strip things down (several times) to approach a Power Point style result others might read.

 

[Hopeless]

Gaeans: Research foundation and entirely composed of women seeking to build a nation of their own free from the necessity of men due to the usual chauvinistic attitude prevalent in the Marches.
They’re medical specialists with quite a popular following amongst those needing help since the Empire is usually only interested in helping themselves and much of the technology we today take for granted either costs a lot to obtain or isn’t available since that would threaten the Empire’s hold over the Marches made especially worse since the destruction of the Gate Network.
The Empire tend to look down on them as insignificant at best, but there are women in the Imperial military so they’re tolerated and since they provide free medical checkups in return for donated blood (and other "ahem" specimens) so tend to be well protected in most systems.

The Children of Orion: were founded and backed by Imperial interests using them for illegal activities with each group led by loyalist Imperial military so they’re directed against mostly civilian shipping to enforce the need for Imperial protection.
Since any ship travelling in the Empire and isn’t military is usually unarmed its very rare for them to be thwarted however this particular ship has already survived one such raid albeit the PC’s didn’t know it was the Children of Orion who attacked them.

The Macguffin are actually data crystals holding medical research the late relative of the PC gathered during his search into the past before he was murdered.
He had made provision in his will for the delivery to be made so that it would be exchanged for a chest he left with the Gaeans in Kinorb in the event of his death.

The PCs are unaware of this detail as they are heading to that system because the same late relative in his will asked for his remains to be cast out into space over one of the worlds in Kinorb, which is why they’re offered the job of delivering the package as the PC whose relative has died knows the recipient of the delivery (They’re both scientists but in different fields).

However as stated above a few years ago the Children of Orion tried to send the PCs lab ship crashing into the depths of a gas giant after trying to steal the database off of the relative’s then docked mining vessel, they only survived because it had been modified lab with an armoured hull giving them time to recover control and escape certain death.

The Children of Orion escaped identification that time, but have come back because they’ve been hired to obtain the delivery at the behest of those who had the PCs relative killed.

 

[silburnl]

Simplify, simplify. Here are four tags per significant actor in your plot, ordered in the approximate sequence that they will become known to your players.

Cousin Alex (Dead Relative)
- has requested space burial over Kinorb IV
- wanted a macguffin delivered to the Gaeans
- investigated hidden history
- murdered because they discovered a deadly secret

Children of Orion
- space pirates
- prey upon disarmed civilians
- have attacked the PC's ship before
- sponsored by Imperial black ops

The macguffin
- pursued by the Children of Orion
- hidden in plain sight
- medical research data
- the reason Cousin Alex was killed

Pal Joey (PC contact)
- junkyard spacer
- has access to contraband weapons
- easily underestimated
- knows his home territory

Gaeans
- radical seperatist feminists
- medical research scientists
- despised but mostly ignored by imperial powermongers
- protected by systems who chafe under the imperial dominion

Regards
Luke

 

[silburnl]

An apposite quote from here:

I have to keep in mind the cardinal rule of world-building: details are useful only if they have some kind of interaction or intersection with the protagonist ... So unless it's something the protagonist notices, something he has to deal with, something he wants or needs or something that can help him get what he needs, and so on, it's extraneous. It's plumbing. You know it’s there, but unless it goes wrong you don’t need to worry about it.

Regards
Luke

 

[Hopeless]

Thanks for the link.

So the players are running characters based on the crew of a mining vessel.

Their introduction adventure involves a delivery whilst also dropping off the remains of a PC's relative as part of the will that is why the have a ship in the first place.

Someone tries to seize the ship en route and hopefully they end up delivering the package and in return receive a package left for one PC by their late relative which will hopefully give them a reason to continue this as a campaign rather than a one shot adventure.

Well here's hoping anyway!

 

[silburnl]

For pacing and structure, try to organise scenes such that 2-4 of the tags I've outlined are foregrounded/revealed.

That gives you 5-10 scenes to play with.

Try and frame things so that revelation of the tags doesn't depend upon player skill rolls (since inevitably they will fail a crucial roll); instead use failures to add complications or escalate the stakes rather than stop the adventure dead.

Regards
Luke

 

[Hopeless]

For pacing and structure, try to organise scenes such that 2-4 of the tags I've outlined are foregrounded/revealed.
That gives you 5-10 scenes to play with.
Try and frame things so that revelation of the tags doesn't depend upon player skill rolls (since inevitably they will fail a crucial roll); instead use failures to add complications or escalate the stakes rather than stop the adventure dead.
Regards
Luke

So;
Scene 1: Paul the scientist attends the funeral of his uncle.
Shortly after he's told that the deeds to his Uncle's mining vessel have been signed over to him as per his Uncle's will however a clause in said will requests his cremated remains be scattered over a world in the Kinorb system.
This introduces Vincent whose playing a crewmember aboard the Uncle's mining ship.

Scene 2: To pay for their trip to Kinorb a contact of Paul's deceased Uncle asks them to deliver a package to a Gaean medical facility in Kinorb which will pay for the supplies and necessary details for their trip.

Scene 3: They take off from Fulacin spaceport and head to the outer limits of the system to make the jump to Kinorb and upon arrival at Kinorb's outer system limits begins to head insystem as they're suddenly hailed.

Scene 4: Using the cover of a routine patrol a pirate ship tries to taek the ship, since neither the lab ship nor the mining vessel has weaponry this involves a fight aboard ship with the option that crew are incarcerated if they lose or if they manage to fight them off have to cope with the damage the attack has inflicted and head to the nearest docking facility.

Scene 5: Originally this should be them hiding out in a junkyard and encountering the owner who they pay for the parts they need to fix the ship. In the abbreviated version its the Gaean facility and they manage to deliver the package only to discover it was Paul's uncle who arranged it as a secret part of his will so Paul can receive another part of his inheritance that was left in their care after Paul's Uncle began helping them recover lost medical research.

Scene 6: Leaving the facility they head out system and this time see the pirates coming and this should lead to them trying to rush far enough out to jump clear.

Now if they're captured Scene 5 would have dealt with the pirates tearing up the ship looking for something and inadvertedly they overlook something that allows the PCs to escape captivity giving them a chance to regain the ship which if they do then leads to the Gaean facility and so on.

Still thinking on the rest.