The big three questions that define an RPG are:
What is it about?
How is it about that?
How does it reward players for engaging with the above questions?
Yes
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Taking a break from sterile job planning to think about skills a bit more.
Step 9: Skills
A crew is 4, with or without a spaceship.
You can have as many friends as you like, but you’re a crew when you have 4
(You do not need to be in a crew, and leaving a crew should be a fun experience)
Design Decisions
The number of skill trees/classes/specialities needs to exceed the size of an average Crew by at least 50%
So I need at least six playbooks, and they need some options, and they need a Vice-generating skill
Pilot
Required for a ship to leave at the end of the episode
UWS guyNovember 28, 2010 at 6:24 PM
Having a pilot class in sci-fi is like having a horse riding class in d&d.
OK, then, Required for a ship to leave at the end of the episode but not attract a 50/50 chance of something bad-interesting happening
Researcher
Colonial experts
Pick-pocket
Engineer
Required for a ship to leave at the end of the episode but not attract a 50/50 chance of something bad-interesting happening
Muscle
Vice-skill: I take no damage until I am the only person still fighting on my team
Hacker
Scientist
Face
Always tricksy in larps. Leaning towards “thinking this is a great idea, albeit not without issues” rather than something analogous to mind control
Digital person
Merchant
Medic
Skill choices
Everyone gets one playbook, which includes their Vice-powered skill
They also get a few other skills, with some overlap
Everyone also gets one skill from another playbook (not the Vice-powered skill)
Everyone also gets ONE THING that is their Speciality, which is 100% GM-fiat, and depends on the strength whether it is at-will or limited use, and how many uses. Might not be a “skill” as we traditionally think of them, more like Fate aspects. “Because I am ________ I can ______ when/while using __________”
(I escaped tvtropes.com after less than an hour, but it was a near thing.)
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Dammit, this thread is suddenly making me wonder how difficult it would be to convert Brookfields into a “space colony” with plastic sheeting around the balcony and walkways to set boundaries for a “dome”, and coloured cellophane on the windows to make outside look weird and dangerous…
Well done! That one’s a black hole. 
Do it.
I will help you if you want. Just saying.
Oh, this is very much in the “games I will never, ever run” box. But its intriguing to think about. @Fraser once suggested doing a space colony game with everyone wearing coloured safety glasses when outside to make things look different, and I was riffing on that.
Look y’all, I am enjoying the process a lot, but actually running this game before late 2022 will literally kill me. If I get it into a runnable state I’d be delighted to hand it to someone else
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A long lead-time is expected, especially in the current circumstances.
A long lead-time is expected, especially in the current circumstances.
Couldn’t agree more.
Still hoping to play an alien in it when the time comes.
Ah-ha!! I have named it.
I still don’t have the spoons to run it, but it’s now named Freeport
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'tis a good name. Sets the right vibe.
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Yup, sounds like a fun place!
This has been super useful for looking at writing my own larp - I’ve been meaning to do so for ages (when this last updated.)
…it is thematically similar to my own current WIP, which honestly means we don’t get too much “people on ships” double up.
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