Star Empire
My assigned genre was space opera.
The Last Starfighter and Galaxy Quest - those fall under space opera, right?
—Colin
Star Empire
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Summary:
Who says video games don't do you any good?
I haven't watched Galaxy Quest, but The Last Starfighter was reasonably within the category.
I'm having trouble coming up with a title. If your job is to figure out what the enemy's plan is (and you're not a spy or psychic), what's a good one-word description for you?
Husband.
Um, sorry, OK. Counter-strategist? Tactician? I don't think there's an exact word, although I stand to be corrected.
Graham
Strategist will do. Thanks. I had something else named Strategist, but I renamed it to General, and it seems to fit better.
Can anyone name a video game that relies a lot on memorization? The older and more popular the better. (Note: the game "Memory" is a bad choice.)
It came out in 1983, was wildly popular at the time and the gameplay was basically "memorize which way to push a joystick at a given moment", albeit with pretty graphics.
Ok, so here's what I've got.
The setting: The peace-loving D'nai have been overrun by the vicious K'lor. Under the command of Emperor Malkath, they've (blah blah blah standard space opera setting blah) rebellion (blah) dire straits (blah) destined (blah) you come in.
I had considered actually writing that for the setting info. I still may.
Your characters (and, likely, your players) are nerds from Earth. You're fans of this book/movie/TV/game franchise called Star Empire. There's even this old video game in the back of the comic book shop.
It's a recruitment tool. The starfighters actually have the exact same controls and capabilities as shown in the video game. The technical manuals on the K'lor ships are accurate. The stats for the RTS game are drawn from actual battle statistics. Thanks to your fandom, you have everything the D'nai need to achieve victory.
The basic game mechanics are rolling a bunch of d6's and adding them together. The neat part, however, is that during a mission you're all playing your own minigames, mostly simultaneously. The fighter pilot plays a fast tactical guessing game. The troop commander plays Dots. The engineer assembles poker hands. The kid who's read all the tech manuals plays Memory. The kid with some sort of social insight puts together a puzzle. All of this works together and contributes to the team's eventual victory.
There's some more to it, of course, but that's the basic idea. Playing yourself (or you as you used to be) is encouraged.
Hmm. I like the mini-games…I'm also intrigued by the retro-kitsch aspect, as the game was presumably dropped on Earth sometime in the 80's, and bits of the era could be used throughout the RPG.
However…while it's easy to assess someone's puzzle ability by making them do a puzzle, how is the prospective GM going to adjudicate diplomacy? ("I'm sorry, Timmy, but you really aren't all that attractive"). I'm sure there are some ways, though.
I like the idea that every member of the crew has a unique function with its own game mechanics. I want those mini-games to affect each other in some important way, so that the players make choices that affect the entire group.
For example, the engineer has her own rules for assigning power, but the power assigned to the other stations affects those crew members. If the gunner doesn't have enough power, he'll have a much harder time hitting a target. If the helm doesn't have enough power, the pilot won't be able to outrun a pursuer and will have to take evasive maneuvers, which might be a lot more difficult. This creates a lot of opportunities for drama and social interaction.
The engineer will often have enough cards to make more than one good poker hand, but red and black cards help different people. He'll sometimes have to choose between aiding someone who needs it more and aiding someone whom he can better help.
At the moment, there aren't even any stats that could be used for diplomacy. Social interactions are almost completely dictated by roleplaying. It's the old "if you want to convince them, talk to me, don't roll dice." I might put in a little game for social stuff, but I'm not leaning towards that right now.
Character skill does affect the minigames in general, though - rolling better will let you draw more lines in Dots, let you leave pieces out of the puzzle, etc.
I was just thinking about social interaction among the players, rather than a separate minigame for social conflicts.
How do the various minigames interact with each other? I keep imagining that the players are off playing their own separate minigames, without a lot of opportunity for interaction during that phase. This is the only thing that worries me. If I'm playing the part of the engineer, I want my friends to be shouting that they need more power, and then cursing at me when I don't give them enough!
I'll try to build in more of that. Right now the bonuses are somewhat abstract…
Oh, wait, I know what I can do. Build in specific weaknesses to certain enemy formations - the Attack V is vulnerable to the Triple Shot, the Phalanx Formation falls before the Beam Laser, and so forth. Since the Encyclopedia gets to predict (i.e. dictate) the enemy formations, the Engineer can try to get a specific hand in order to counteract it. I'll have to give the Engineer a way to discard unwanted cards, that will help.
It'll require a bit of a change to the General as well, but the General needed some more interesting stuff anyway.
Star Empires
Genre: Space Opera
Genre Themes
- interracial conflict
- technological dominance of space
Introduced Themes
- simulation and experience
Rules
Q: What kind of mechanics does it use?
A: Pretty much all of them.
A game about people who learned to save the universe by playing games incorporates many games in its play. It fits, but each and every game must be fun for everyone in order for this approach to work. Unfortunately, each game seems to focus on one character, leaving the others to twiddle their thumbs. It’s not just a matter of boredom. Those not participating are made to feel powerless, especially when their character could suffer as a result of the outcome. This could be fixed by giving each role a way of augmenting the main player’s situation, much the way that the Encyclopedia game does.
The many games is a mixed blessing in another way. It does not have the flexibility of a universal mechanic, so the plot is really forced into certain patterns. While this may reduce the rpg’s replay value, it fits beautifully with the sort of story and beer & pretzels game you set out to make.
The game suggests not duplicating roles, but it also needs to suggest that you have to have at least one of each. Characters could be designated as having a secondary role, just to ensure there is someone to handle any sort of situation that may arise.
Setting
This takes the lighter side of space opera, discarding the drama side (The Last Starfighter, rather than Star Trek). That means it needs to play quickly, and quick play needs plenty of stuff that can be grabbed and thrown into play. The game design has that in NPCs, plot suggestions and crisis events to be used for this very thing. This is exactly what I wanted to see in the contest.
There are a few laughs, like the D’nai needing humans because they can’t reach the controls of the “improved starfighters.” That an alien race could massively modify a spaceship, but not fix the control systems, is just so perfectly in form with this sort of story. I also wondered, “but won’t the enemy forces develop new formations?,” then realized the answer was, “no” for the same reason.
Finally
So many entrants to challenges like these need to sit down with this game and realize that this is what a finished entry looks like. It is ready to playtest.
I would Heartily recommend the novel Player of Games by Ian M. Banks.
It is about a society based on a game. The citizens are given jobs depending on their ability, to the point where the best player in the society becomes the Emperor.
It can even be considered Space Opera, and is one of his Culture Novels. Much of the novel is about the protagonist's thoughts as he is playing the game,
I just happened to have re-read it this Autumn,
(I would recommend everything by Ian Banks while I am at it.)
lp
I've read it (and I'm looking to read more of the Culture series at some point). It's a very different take on the same sort of phenomenon.
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