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Post by neil on Apr 15, 2021 9:13:52 GMT
We know Jeff's producing a bunch of different campaign archetypes, of which Red Sky Charters is the first published. But there's no reason we can't come up with our own! Here are a few ideas: - GEO Wardens, roving eco-police solving crimes against the environment
- Long-John prospectors, dealing with exploitative Incorporates, organised crime, and stranger things in the wilderness
- An Incorp or university research team, exploring the planet
- Native Patrol, based somewhere remote, doing search and rescue operations, mercy missions, general police work, and so on
- Flying Doctors, rushing in to deal with medical emergencies in remote outposts and homesteads
- A grass-roots community group in Haven, trying to make life better for ordinary people, in the face pressure from Incorporate interests and the GEO's straitjacketing restrictions
What are your ideas? |
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Post by Pawel on Apr 15, 2021 9:38:24 GMT
Oh man, these are all awesome!! <3 I've always had a thing for: - A bunch of GEO HIST undergrad students, carving away time to pursue their own scientific dreams, while slaving away in their professors' labs and field bases
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Post by neil on Apr 22, 2021 7:12:05 GMT
Thinking about a couple of these a bit more. How about a Native Patrol search-and-rescue team, doing search-and-rescue, mercy missions, medical evacuations, transport of urgent, life-saving medicines, all that sort of stuff. They're sponsored by some Incorp state, with embedded camera drones, and turned into a reality TV show back on Earth. To keep things ethical, the Incorp doesn't get involved with operational decisions by the team.
The SAR team get access to the equipment, logistics, and support provided by the Incorp. The Incorp gets the good publicity and media revenue.
You can run detailed rescue and medical scenes using some stats for dangerous situations and expanding the Manoeuvre system to show different approaches, perhaps using FitD Clocks for pacing.
As well as rescue-of-the-week adventures, there's tensions with the Incorp. Incorp PR people make "suggestions" on different rescues, or how to do things, to increase ratings and/or make the Incorp look good. An Incorp exec wants a ride-along seat. The reality TV editing makes different characters look good or bad. There's the occasional fan who turns up. PCs negotiating different rights and TV fees. Press conferences.
There would be push-back from GEO and Natives from the team, accepting Incorp money. But the money makes the team more effective, and saves lives. Kick up too much of a fuss, and the Incorp pulls out.
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Post by Pawel on Apr 22, 2021 8:30:55 GMT
Neil, this is perfect! I love it. You could easily turn it into a whole campaign, properly polished and written down. Awesome stuff.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Apr 22, 2021 9:37:14 GMT
I like this idea. I had thought of search and rescue teams before, but throwing in the Incorp sponsorship and streaming is genius. I asked once before about whether the setting would be updated to include the like of Twitch streamers or YouTubers. I feel like Jeff probably has enough going on not to pester him directly about it, but I do wonder how often he directly reads stuff on this forum. |
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Post by Pawel on Apr 22, 2021 9:54:27 GMT
Well, he does have a rather engaging day job and with the KS campaign going on he's busy promoting the game on all kinds of social media. I'm sure that once this mad rush quietens down some, he'll be a more frequent visitor. Tech revision is an important part of the Recontact edition. I imagine plenty of work will be put into CommCore and its more specialised platforms too. Let me see if I can get a confirmation for you.  |
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Post by neil on Apr 22, 2021 10:14:05 GMT
Thanks for the comments. The basic idea is recycled from a succesesful Mindjammer / Thunderbirds campaign I did at the local club. (We started by dealing with an experimental nuclear power plant that was about to blow up a university and most of a city, and finished by diverting lava flows away from some houses and a nature reserve for endangered birds.) The Incorp angle gives some context and complexity to the "rescue of the week" core, meaning there's some carry-over from rescue to rescue, and the players need to think about more than just the immediate problem. It's similar to wrapping a quest structure around a dungeon crawl. Rescue is also a change from the crime/espionage/paramilitary activity that's standard for a lot of RPGs, and in a lot of Access Denied ideas in BP. My gaming tastes have moved away from destruction and dominance. As for writing it up... yeah. Lovely idea. Finding the time is the hard bit. Perhaps it's a game to offer at the club when some draft rules become available. |
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Post by Pawel on Apr 22, 2021 10:21:09 GMT
Thanks for the comments. The basic idea is recycled from a succesesful Mindjammer / Thunderbirds campaign I did at the local club. (We started by dealing with an experimental nuclear power plant that was about to blow up a university and most of a city, and finished by diverting lava flows away from some houses and a nature reserve for endangered birds.) The Incorp angle gives some context and complexity to the "rescue of the week" core, meaning there's some carry-over from rescue to rescue, and the players need to think about more than just the immediate problem. It's similar to wrapping a quest structure around a dungeon crawl. As for writing it up... yeah. Lovely idea. Finding the time is the hard bit. Perhaps it's a game to offer at the club when some draft rules become available. Ha, this sounds like a real fun campaign. I adore nicely structured story units tied up within larger arcs. But you're right, writing such stuff down takes a lot of manhours. But hey, the new, post-covid normality is hopefully somewhere on the horizon, and who knows what it'll bring? Hopefully more time for hobbies, though obviously hopefully not too much either.  |
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Post by Pawel on Apr 22, 2021 14:46:35 GMT
I like this idea. I had thought of search and rescue teams before, but throwing in the Incorp sponsorship and streaming is genius. I asked once before about whether the setting would be updated to include the like of Twitch streamers or YouTubers. I feel like Jeff probably has enough going on not to pester him directly about it, but I do wonder how often he directly reads stuff on this forum. Hey Jason, Jeff says that: "Absolutely there are CommCore personalities. Poseidon Outback explorers, VR gamers, edutainers and social pop stars. Many are artificial constructs - especially the political, insurgent personalities, on anonymous servers." So yeah, you can definitely expect there to be plenty of stuff to do for year 2199 version of streamers. |
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Jason
Junior Member
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Post by Jason on Apr 22, 2021 15:21:34 GMT
Good work, there. Actually, I've often thought Thunderbirds would be a good fit for an RPG but as you say, it needs something external to tie the missions together and around and I've never quite felt like The Hood really does the job well enough.
Just so this isn't entirely off topic, it seems to me that something like International Rescue would be very welcome on Poseidon, and perhaps easier to hide an island base...
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Post by Kasadain on Apr 22, 2021 19:18:16 GMT
I planning to run a game about a bunch of pharium dealers in an on and off again relation ship with the native resistance. Snowfall with cyborg flipper.
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Post by Pawel on Apr 22, 2021 19:42:45 GMT
I planning to run a game about a bunch of pharium dealers in an on and off again relation ship with the native resistance. Snowfall with cyborg flipper. Haha, awesome idea!! |
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Post by neil on Apr 23, 2021 6:27:24 GMT
I planning to run a game about a bunch of pharium dealers in an on and off again relation ship with the native resistance. Snowfall with cyborg flipper. Sounds like a good game. Lots of scope to have different parts of the setting appear and inform the game. |
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Post by Admin on Apr 23, 2021 16:39:43 GMT
We know Jeff's producing a bunch of different campaign archetypes, of which Red Sky Charters is the first published. But there's no reason we can't come up with our own! Here are a few ideas: - GEO Wardens, roving eco-police solving crimes against the environment
- Long-John prospectors, dealing with exploitative Incorporates, organised crime, and stranger things in the wilderness
- An Incorp or university research team, exploring the planet
- Native Patrol, based somewhere remote, doing search and rescue operations, mercy missions, general police work, and so on
- Flying Doctors, rushing in to deal with medical emergencies in remote outposts and homesteads
- A grass-roots community group in Haven, trying to make life better for ordinary people, in the face pressure from Incorporate interests and the GEO's straitjacketing restrictions
What are your ideas? Many of these are on the list! Here are the options I have been sharing with freelancers as we consider assignments. • Exploration/scientific discovery - glorification of scientific adventures on an alien world. Think The Martian and The Europa Project or Annihilation, but with ongoing adventures and happier endings. Promotes environmental themes. • Native insurgency vs Incorporate exploitation - emphasis on the political tension and brewing (inevitable) war. The insurgents are sympathetic heroes while the Incorporate are, well, corporations focused on the most efficient exploitation of the planets resources. Promotes the anti-capitalist and environmental themes. • Crime/law enforcement - GEO marshals or native patrol vs the Gorchoff syndycate or Incorporate eco-crimes. Gritty, urban crime like the Departed or Heat, or rural lawdog stuff like Justified or the Tony Hillerman novels. Would be awesome if the writeup supported play on either side of the law. • Colonial life - small close-knit, rural newcomer outpost struggling against the hostile ecology/environment and undermined by human nature and political conflicts. Think the unfinished Terra Nova series, the new Lost in Space or Legacy of Herot by Niven. Could even feature the hybrid colony at Bright Savannah? • Native/outback - life and survival in the deep outback, low tech human community vs nature, emphasising interpersonal relationships (including cetaceans) and family/community drama/struggles, local political stressors reflecting global events. Think Avatar without the white savior nonsense. • Incorporate/urban - corporate intrigue, espionage, spy games, think Jason Bourne movies and classic political thrillers, or alternatively something like Upgrade or even Bladerunner 2049. The political intrigue parts of The Expanse too. • Military peacekeepers - GEO military operations focused on trying to keep the Incorporate nations and the natives from going to war as tensions rise and conflict becomes inevitable. Military/political thriller stuff, with the PC’s special forces unit caught in the middle. The intention is that each option be a ready-to-use, non-generic outline that leans into the given genre, presenting a unique, evocative window into the BP setting while also providing specific hooks, NPCs and story options/inspiration. Ideally they would support episodic storytelling like a TV series, as well as serve as the basis for a longer-form campaign thread. |
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Post by Admin on Apr 23, 2021 16:46:01 GMT
Thanks for the comments. The basic idea is recycled from a succesesful Mindjammer / Thunderbirds campaign I did at the local club. (We started by dealing with an experimental nuclear power plant that was about to blow up a university and most of a city, and finished by diverting lava flows away from some houses and a nature reserve for endangered birds.) The Incorp angle gives some context and complexity to the "rescue of the week" core, meaning there's some carry-over from rescue to rescue, and the players need to think about more than just the immediate problem. It's similar to wrapping a quest structure around a dungeon crawl. Rescue is also a change from the crime/espionage/paramilitary activity that's standard for a lot of RPGs, and in a lot of Access Denied ideas in BP. My gaming tastes have moved away from destruction and dominance. As for writing it up... yeah. Lovely idea. Finding the time is the hard bit. Perhaps it's a game to offer at the club when some draft rules become available. The Emergency Response Teams in the BP setting are intended to support just this kind of rescue operations campaign. I definitely want to include one in the archetypes. |
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