starting from scratch

sinmaan

Mongoose
What are the good "campaign" premises to start with a group all the way from the character creation considering that you simply don't know what to expect you'll have to manage character-wise?

So I guess the premiss must be very general and suitable to all sorts of character....from the noble all the way to the lowly scavenger to work together.

From your experience, what worked well?


Thanks
 
What's worked for me is to make them troubleshooting agents from some low-level, resource-poor backwater organization—tech poor, advice rich. Give 'em some generic assignment that allows them to flesh the basics of your TU. Open ended, so if they want to sandbox they have the option. Don't fire them if they fail the mission, just plunge them headlong into another adventure.

Don't give them a ship initially. Too much autonomy and, realistically, burden. The skipper is often their very best Patron and story generator. Give 'em passage where they need to go. But if they really, really, really want a ship, then let them work to that.

One of the most satisfying adventures I ever ran offered best outcome if the characters actually failed the given assignment. They sort of tumbled to that, realized that they had permission to fail, were better off in fact, and it really teed things up nicely for a loose, non-controlled, relaxed feel to all stories that followed.
 
Have them role play the last year (or 6 months) of their final term of service on board a medium sized merchant cruiser. As Lemnoc suggested, allow the skipper/captain (you the GM) give mission parameters for the first couple of adventure. Be aware that your players are all part of the crew, no mater their background. As a Merchant Cruiser you can think of any reason why a Naval character would be thrown together with a rogue type. The have not yet mustered out and are making salaries per standard core book tables. After a few missions their contract ends, they muster out and are officially "ready to play the game". By this time everyone knows everybody else strengths and weaknesses. And which personalities rise to the top etc.. As a GM you will get a good idea of how they will play the game going forward so you can prepare yourself a bit better. Now they can pursue their own ship if they want, their own goals etc... and do it with a bit more wisdom. Be sure and let them know "For the first 2 or 3 adventures, this is still considered your character creation phase" so as to let everyone get used to the system, but also because some players may not like the idea of a "GM controlled campaign". Anyway, just one idea. Have fun.
 
How about get them to generate their own homeworld details and if they decide on differing homeworlds have them discuss how their worlds know each other and let them come up with the reasons for why their characters are together.

For example in my game i left this far too late as the character generation was done by email but one player did respond and came up with considerable detail on his character's homeworld which was why they started the game there.

Sometimes all you really need to do is listen to your players to discover little nuggets you can use and other times you can adjust your game if what they came up with is better than your own idea had you already got the adventure up and ready for play by that point.

Anyway best of luck with this, don't forget to let us know how this turns out because there will always be someone else in similar straits who could use a tip or two!
 
I have had some good results by having the players waking up from cold sleep and using a medic npc to question them to make sure their memories and motor functions were unimpaired. By using this as start just by asking questions you can roleplay not only player backgrounds but shape your jumping off adventure.

Examples:
1. What species are you? ( Then list any options your allowing.)
2. What is the name of your homeworld? ( Have them roll or use a list of preferred worlds.)
3. Any physical problems or discomfort? ( Roll stats.)

This way by investing some time into the questions you want the medic to ask you can have a basic framework in place and the players can contribute to local color so to speak. The drawback though is this makes character generation a longer affair. Hope this helps.
 
sinmaan said:
What are the good "campaign" premises to start with a group all the way from the character creation considering that you simply don't know what to expect you'll have to manage character-wise?

So I guess the premiss must be very general and suitable to all sorts of character....from the noble all the way to the lowly scavenger to work together.

From your experience, what worked well?


Thanks

You mean for a sandbox open world game session? I don't create stories/plots for the game sessions. The players themselves come up with their own plot. I just referee.

So far... a player character won a ship in a poker game. He didn't know how to fly the thing. He hired some other player characters to be pilot and gunner and medic, etc to be his crew (he became the captain). There is a terrorist attack of some kind going on a block away. The players decide to leave that city. Their ship is parked on the roof of some 500-floor Hotel, with some 30 other ships belonging to hotel guests. The miltary comes in and tells the characters to leave while the miltary sets up a base of somekind on that roof top. The characters take off.

The next session, two more players joined the Hangout+ game. It turns out that the two new characters were frozen in low passage and were just discovered right after they took off. The captain only won the ship a few days before and hadn't looked inside the ship yet during that time. They wake the two passengers that are upset now because they were on their way to some vacation planet, and they want to know what happened to the real captain of the ship.

That captain was reported found dead on a TAS news channel from the planet they just left. blah blah blah
 
A spoiled rich kid inherited a starship (or was given a yacht) and needs capable people to actually operate it and, of course, be her bodyguards (as money and trouble go hand in hand). So the PCs get hired for this job; they hop from world to world following the patron's whims and getting her out of trouble (into which she inadvertably gets).

The ex-Navy Pilot might be hired as skipper and pilot for the yacht; the rogue sent by the debutante's father as a discreet bodyguard and/or to spy on her; the Marine might be the overt bodyguard; and so on.

---

Alternatively, all of them get abducted by a villain (a mad scientist? Grey-style aliens?) for whatever twisted reasons and have to work together to escape. Once out, they'll have revenge as a common motive... And a common enemy!
 
Google "Spinward Fender Bender" - it's a pre-gen adventure that essentially throws the passengers of a transport into a crisis. There's a specific lead-in chapter but frankly it's a good option for throwing a bunch of never-met-befores together; be they high passage, middle passage, crew (who won't be working on the Gambit as it'll be drydocked) or just-thawed low passage, and providing them with a need for work, a ready-made reputation for being competent in an emergency, and just enough money to last until the first patron shows up with a totally legitimate job offer.
 
Some sort of disaster in a spaceport highport. All the players are simply in the same lounge waiting for a liner to come in to travel to somewhere either in the next system or some other planet in the system. A few might be returning from such a voyage and are simply waiting for transport down to the planet's surface.

They can be hanging around, then something happens to the highport. The best candidates for this kind of thing are either terrorists/guerillas taking over highport, a surprise attack (or even a deep penetration raid by an existing war foe), or something along those veins. The attack doesn't actually have to even hit the highport, even the announcement that there's an enemy fleet that's right now some hours away will trigger panic. The point is that situation will force the players to work together, even if they're normally not the kinds to work together.

What the actual point of the adventure is up to you, but it will fall into a few general categories:

1) During the Rebellion, or during some Frontier War, a large fleet of Lucan's Navy / Zhodani jump into the system and start burning towards the world the players are in orbit around. It's going to be an invasion or even a "black war" strike where they'll just show up, try and do as much damage as possible, then leave. Obviously, the highport isn't going to be ignored. The point of the adventure is for the players to work together to leave the station having secured passage out of the system. They'll have to work against pretty much everyone else on the station, hundreds of people want off of the station ASAP and they're just as desperate as the players. Obeying "the authorities" would simply mean being left behind - there'll always be more important nobles / starport administrators / and so on who can use rank or Imperial Warrants to commandeer ships leaving the players along with everyone else without a ride. And you don't want to be here when the enemy arrives. Obviously, if players have their own ships, you can have them either impounded somewhere (if they're lawless types), down for annual maintenance in some remote slip, or commandeered by some other group before they can get to it. Either way, there should only be one ship they figure they can get a ride on, if they can get there in time.

2) The Enemy Takes Over The Highport. The players have to work together to defeat the enemy who have taken over the highport. Some players are going to suggest simply sitting tight and waiting for outside forces to negotiate an end to the situation, however, the players realize that the enemy have no real intention of taking over the starport at all. They're simply buying enough time to get a political message transmitted before blowing up the highport along with everyone in it (including themselves) in a suicide attack.

3) Some sort of disaster. A mysterious explosion destroys a lot of the highport, leaving it as a burning wreck (it's burning its own atmosphere) in a rapidly decaying orbit. The players have to navigate through the rickety wreck to reach a ship. Some players will probably want to try using emergency rescue balls or whatever, but show they've either all launched or appear to be sabotaged in some fashion. As the players move through the wreckage, they might start to wonder why their lounge was the only one where the safety devices worked and perhaps they might realize that their lounge was sabotaged too, but for whatever reason the sabotage on their lounge didn't work...
 
Epicenter said:
They can be hanging around, then something happens to the highport.
Before the mongoose connections gave characters a reason to group up I liked the you are all at the port having just left your former career scenario better than the a group of strangers in a bar start or the ever popular and always hated by me you all wake up and you don't know where you are or how you got there start.

Epicenter said:
What the actual point of the adventure is up to you, but it will fall into a few general categories:
Lot's more possibilities. Social, political, economical, entertainment, legal, ...

2) The Enemy Takes Over The Highport.
if they are at the star port, why do they wait for the "enemy" to take over the star port before acting? Why not intervene to prevent it?
The players have to work together to defeat the enemy who have taken over the highport
Why couldn't they decide to help in the star port takeover?

Perhaps what you were posting was just a small example because some is very specific.
 
In medias res is my goto option. I've always enjoyed placing my characters in the middle of a large event as it gives them a reason to band together.

They could be travelling through a system and because they are just passing through get blind sided by a "sudden" war. It's been brewing up for a long time but they had the misfortune of being around when it's go time. With this they have a lot of issues to deal with.

-The starport is under threat and they have to hold off assaults or endure siege. The later offers more roleplaying options.
-As above but the PCs have to get to a friendly embassy which is safer for now.
-The starport is Okay but the local "government" isn't letting people leave without papers so they have to get to the embassy, get the papers and get out. They could arrive just in time for a riot/major attack on embassy itself.
-The PCs were caught away from the starport and have to try and figure out what is going in the face of real local dangers and lack of communications/information.
-The rebellion could have totally failed and the local government is committing all manner of atrocities in retaliation and blaming "outside agitators" for the whole mess.

I realise I can go on and on with all the potential adventure ideas just from this one suggestion. Similar things can be generated from natural or man-made disasters. You could even have the PCs arriving as part of a wave of refugees to a planet that is unaffected but not able or willing to take in such a large number of people.

That last idea is a good way to give the players a basic ship. Perhaps the planet/orbital habit/what have you had to be evacuated RIGHT NOW and the players were actually qualified to fly a ship. The original crew was dead, arrested or missing so they had to take over, grand as many people as they could and jump to the next system. As payment the government may have given them the ship outright (desperate times call for desperate measures) and crammed it with low berths along with some soldiers and medics to protect the people.

On the new host system their could be a huge draft to deal with the sudden wave of arrivals. Lots of potential on the other side but I have to wrap things up as I'm really starting to ramble.
 
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