 December 29, 2013 - 3:25pm | GURPS Space presents the idea of the default adventure: the sort of activity that player characters are expected to do in a game. For instance, the default adventure in Dungeons & Dragons is exploring an underground complex filled with monsters, traps, and treasure. The default adventure of Alpha Dawn, especially the basic rules, seems to be taking on freelance assignments for an interstellar corporation. Knights Hawks expands this a bit, but focuses on military engagements in space. In both cases the default adventure is about being sent on a mission by someone else; there is little emphasis on characters finding their own adventures. Because space travel is relatively difficult in Star Frontiers, adventurers exploring on their own would seem to be discouraged. Having run other games where the players get frustrated with do-it-or-go-home missions, I've been wondering what other kinds of default adventures have been tried with Star Frontiers, and how they were made to work. I'm interested in hearing about campaigns that were not about going on missions for someone. |
 December 29, 2013 - 8:33pm | SF is not that sand boxy but you can certainly accumulate some sand box supporting materials and play that way. Just reviewed a Space Opera module where the openning encounter actually suggested allowing the players to react to the situation any way they liked. Step in and help the old man running away from some thugs or even do nothing. Then is suggested that the PCs could obtain the help of the old man in a certain task through payment of money, friendship or force. it didn't go into consequences for certain actions over others but those things should be easily etrapolated. When I'm looking for plot ideas I like to review this list of RPG plots http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/plots.htm Ross recommends mixing two and playing hard with the cliches. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
December 30, 2013 - 5:15am | Stars without Number rules have a lot of resources for sand box play and you can down load a preview copy for free. The preview copy had most of those resources- whats mission is the rules for robots and mecha and a few other minor things so its well worth getting this. Back to your original question though I would agree with you eval of the AD and KHs modules on the "default" adventure. Dragon magazine also set up a default for the PCs to be star law agents. I suppose if we analyzed the fan magazine we'd get a different default. Although I suspect that things would be all over the map for the fan magazines that it would be really tough to nail that down. For one thing the trend in the early days of the SFman magazine was more adventure seeds vs actual adventures. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 December 31, 2013 - 1:14am | Much of the "default adventures" seem to be focused around the Sathar in some capacity. By removing the Sathar and adding the S'sessu as a well-established fifth race, I remove a lot of mystery to who the players are up against. Like Alpha Dawn, my "default adventures" are those "freelance assignments for an interstellar corporation", but to me, that is just the staring point — there are lots of opportunities for those who work hard enough (and risk everything) to write their own destiny. |
 December 31, 2013 - 10:15am | In the game I play with my kids, we have long since finished the majority of the original adventure modules. I agree that they are very linear, but for us it was good because it gave my kids a chance to learn how to play RPGs. It also allowed the kids' characters to become established as heroes in the setting, and gain relationships with different factions in the frontier. When we completed the original modules and were looking at moving forward as opposed to retiring the game and moving on, one of my sons wanted to explore new worlds, and the other liked the idea of forming his own faction, the d&d equivalent of a stronghold. Since that time, our game has been centered on those two things, exploring and nation building. In both cases, the aforementioned Stars Without Number has been a great resource for ideas moving forward. A lot of our adventures now are focused on dealing with obstacles as my one son establishes his empire in unclaimed space, and in dealing with new races encountered through exploration. |
 December 31, 2013 - 11:36am | I agree that Star Frontiers is more designed to have the PCs "working" for someone. At least until they manage to get a ship of their own. However, I don't really see that as a detriment. They can still be doing their own thing by only accepting jobs that interest them and further any personal agenda that they might have. As their reputation and skills grow, they should have more offers than they can actually accomplish and thus have the option to pick a choose what they take on, somewhat guiding their fate as it were. In the end, it's really up to the Referee on how "sandboxy" the campaign will be and how much freedom the PCs have. If you started off on the Volturnus modules just to get going and added in a few additional adventures on planet, the PC's would be fairly weathly (if you let them keep all the loot) and moderately experienced. You might be able to even run them on the Sundown on Starmist adventure right afterward. After that, their fame would be such that offers would be coming from a variety of places but they may also have enough ready cash to just set out after rumors of their own. They couldn't afford to buy a ship but passage on star liners are cheap enough that they could get around. The trick is for the referee to provide the rumors and adventures that would interest their players. Anyway, that's my thoughts. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
 December 31, 2013 - 12:48pm | for the record... I've only played actual dungeon crawls in AD&D like three times in my 25 years of continual PnP gaming. But my group has always been character and story plot oriented, not hack and slash. ----------------------------------------------- |
December 31, 2013 - 1:41pm | Some interesting ideas here, thanks. I can see a picture forming, in parallel with D&D. In that game, low-level characters are searching for loot to gain XP. High-level characters strike out on their own to build strongholds and become rulers. So for Star Frontiers, I can envision a game where early characters are troubleshooters for hire, usually working for the mega-corps. It's still mission-based, but the characters get to choose their missions because they're freelancers. As they gain experience and skills, they can move into specialized careers: exploring new worlds or new territory on settled worlds, ruling their own planet, becoming traders, and so on. The alternative, mission-based careers of Spacefleet, planetary militias, or Star Law are always available, and, provided the character takes the requisite time to train, provides lots of free skills. Providing multiple missions to choose from is a bit like writing up several levels of a dungeon at once; it's not really any harder. Okay, this is looking a lot more flexible now! |
December 31, 2013 - 1:41pm | for the record... I've only played actual dungeon crawls in AD&D like three times in my 25 years of continual PnP gaming. But my group has always been character and story plot oriented, not hack and slash. Dungeon Crawl is gygaxian while story driven is Hickman Revolution The old school grognardian in me wants to raise dice in his spear hand, shaking them and shouting, "Bring on the classic dungeon crawl!" while shouting the war chant "Gygax! Gygax!" but..... the story teller in me knows stories are so much more interesting. What to do, what to do? I liken the dilema to reading an old E.R. Burroughs novel with extremely flat characters written in the first person- at the time I discovered them as a pre-teen I loved them immensely but over time as I matured some and gained broader experience and I lost interest in his books desiring stories with more complex characters and plot lines. However, fast forward to the new millenium and word leaks out that their making A Princess of Mars into a movie and I reread it on my smart phone and enjoy myself out of a sense of nostolgia. Is it possible to mix the two methods? One trend in recent TV series is to not have the main characters stagnant. Time was that the main characters remained the same and the only new thing was the problem of the week each episode. It was thought that if the public liked and loved the show and its characters that you could not fundamentally change them. The new paradigm is that characters are expected to grow and change over the course of the series. Yes there is a problem of the week or a problem with a cliff hanger holdover to the next week but over the course of the series one or more characters is exploring new dimensions in the character or unravelling a mystery or pursuing a personal quest. A personal favorite is Burn Notice with Mike Weston trying to figure out who burned him, why and how to get back in with the agency all the while he's helping some small person with a big problem they cant handle. Other shows do this to one degree or another but with Burn Notice it was so central to the concept of the show. How to play this out in an RPG? 1. you'd have to have the problem of the week/session 2. the characters would have to have personal quests, character development, or such that the players are interested in resolving. 3. there would need to be an opportunity for one or more characters to take a step closer to their personal thing during a session- ideally this would be at the end of the session or the middle to end lest a player wanders off in their mind thinking over the new clue to their characters mystery. A lot of story developments will take place where and when information can be conveyed to the PC which means either NPCs or a book/scroll/inscription. On the one hand you will need to get the PCs back to the "city" to have a chance to advance their personal thing. On there other if its a quest to assemble the Parts of Many Rods then it can come during the dungeon crawl. Bottom line would be that the referee would need to be on top of managing a weekly story and a season long story. Random geomorphs and random monster and treasure tables would aid with the weekly mini dungeon crawl. However this could equally work with Hickman style story adventure and ignore the dungeon crawl thing, it would simply be more work to manage two levels of stories whereas a randomly generated advenure is easy enough while the referee focuses on the overstory of the PCs. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
December 31, 2013 - 1:45pm | I'd like to keep the discussion of hack-and-slash versus storytelling out of this topic: it's not the same as sandbox versus quest. |
December 31, 2013 - 3:25pm | Dungeon Crawl is gygaxian while story driven is Hickman Revolution [snip] Is it possible to mix the two methods? I think so. I really try to. There's a few new folks on here since the last time I posted this, but once again, an interesting read: The Interactive Tool Kit As I referenced earlier, I have been using a player driven mode lately - I allow the players to decide what leads they are going to follow up on. From time to time, this ends up being a crawl of some type as they raid a pirate base, alien hive, old ruin, etc. As Terl Obar mentioned, this pretty much happened from the time they were in posession of their own ship. The Gullwind, of course... Any more, I use a method based loosely on the Faction Rules in Stars Without Number. I have a list of the big players in the setting; Streel, PGC, CDC and a few other factions specific to my setting. I put them in an excel spreadsheet with columns for each month, and rows for each asset posessed by the factions. I basically set the faction agendas and plan moves against one another based on that. Each game session, the players receive a news briefing, based on the different news organizations in the setting, and their own intelligence gathering capabilities, and the players decide where to allocate assets. If the players chose to ignore or fail to uncover an important detail, certain things will happen. Case in point right now in my setting is a Streel ultra secret organization that is working on bio-engineering tech. They have been capturing people to use in their experiments, and even caught a friend of one of their followers. If the PCs continue to not act, Streel will eventually begin Beta testing their new gengineered soldiers on someone. |
December 31, 2013 - 4:27pm | I'd like to keep the discussion of hack-and-slash versus storytelling out of this topic: it's not the same as sandbox versus quest. But that is exactly the point, using Hickman's revolution but not so much on the mission of the week but on the overstroy of the PC's personal quest/, mystery/goals which would need some team work on the part of the player and the referee. Player would have to develop the character to a high degree to be able to tell the referee what his goals and ambitions are. The referee will spend time and effort to create the opportunities (and red herrings) for the player to pursue this in game. Presumably every PC in the game will have this going on- an individual story they are working on for the self realization of their character. In a game with 4 PCs that is four sets of "story" for the game master to work on and if the mission of the week is a story game framework this is a lot of work for the referee. Employing sand box tools and even geomorph maps and random tables for opponents and treasure would greatly aid a referee embarking on that path. Its not that the mission of the week is unimportant as a referee can and probably will work into it items from the personal quests of the PCs. It's also important from the aspect of character development in gaining X points with good and creative play being rewarded with bonus points. And you never know when that search and clear the derelict ship (dungeon crawl) is a step forward for the character who's ambition is to become a merchant prince with a fleet of his own. Except in this case all 4 PCs end up owning a 1/4th of the ship and now that PC needs to either buy out his companions to obtain his goal or barter a service with them from their share in the ship. That naturally brings him into their personal quest if its of sufficent stakes to warrent the value of a quarter of a 5 million credit ship. I'm simply suggesting a shift away from the default adventures of the Hickman revolution where the story is the mission of the week (or 4-5 sessions to play out a printed module) to making the mission of the week somewhat irrelevant but that the ongoing character development of the PC is the real story and the mission of the week can be either classic sand box play or story driven (no doubt some mini dungeons crawls will come in handy in this). I dont really see hack and slash as a bad thing in fact I would welcome a major encounter where the PC could mow down large numbers of horde type opponents but they face many more than large numbers requiring smart play lest they become the subject of song and holodramas like the heroes of the Alamo. After all a magnificent stand by 7 PCs against hundreds is the stuff of legend and there is no reason the PCs should not become the subject of legends (note I'm more apt to allow the PCs to become the subject of legend over becoming legendary in power) I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
December 31, 2013 - 8:18pm | I dont really see hack and slash as a bad thing in fact I would welcome a major encounter where the PC could mow down large numbers of horde type opponents but they face many more than large numbers requiring smart play lest they become the subject of song and holodramas like the heroes of the Alamo. After all a magnificent stand by 7 PCs against hundreds is the stuff of legend and there is no reason the PCs should not become the subject of legends (note I'm more apt to allow the PCs to become the subject of legend over becoming legendary in power)
I've had a few scenarios where hordes of creatures have come at the PCs and found it is a lot of fun for everyone. I think the trick is not to overuse. |
January 3, 2014 - 10:31am | I ran a Gamma World game (the edition that uses D20 Modern rules) that I sold to the players as "a GW Dungeon Crawl". They had some things happen that forced them to be sent out on a scavenge mission to try and save thier community (based on odd social structures of the large community they were from ... not important to the topic) Anywho... they ended up in Columbius Ohio and had to flee the streets from the plauge of Squeakers who desimated the goup of 20 or so guys they had come with. They fleed into the only large building left standing (mostly) which was the Huntington Bank HQ building. So... I used that building as a sort of vertical dungeon crawl. So they could go from floor to floor fighting various things in the building (running from the Obbs due to them being unhitable!). Of course as a story oriented player I had an over arching plot where the AI of the bank (which appeared female in a hard light hologram) was being held captive by another military AI in a blackwater office. The Military AI of course had some robots under its control and had stollen critical bits of the Bank AI which required the PC's to storm the Blackwater office to forcibly download the stolen components to make her whole and able to be rescued fromt he building. That was a good game... still basically story driven, but with a definate dungeon crawl element to it. ----------------------------------------------- |
 January 3, 2014 - 1:36pm | This may have been something that kept SF (or Traveller, for that matter) from taking off in my crowd back in the day: "What do we do with it?" D&D, we understood, was dungeon-crawling, and sometimes hex-travel in between those. For SF, we had Volturnus, but once we beat that, we were kind of stumped until Knight Hawks came along. Other SF modules were hard to come by, I don't think I saw most of them until I found the PDFs here. I remember getting the vibe from the Basic rulebook that PCs should be Star Law Rangers, but that was never followed up, to my knowledge. Then, after we latched onto the "Warriors" encounters and escaped with the Gullwind, the concept of having our own ship and flying about to make our own fortunes on trade or missions seemed really appealing. Too bad we never got around to doing it, I think I still haven't gotten that out of my system. |
