Re: [Audyssey] science fiction was Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Tom, We do have some diffrences here. When it comes to having an alien field to draw from, it would still be there in this story , only the aliens would have genetic matches with human beings because they are in essence human beings despite the external features and other changes. If that was not flexible enough, there is plenty of mutations out in the galaxy and even in that core empire (illegal aliens, grin). With a mutations list, you can randomly create your characters or you can pick them out from the list using a point cost deal. technically, the sky is the limit for what "race" you want to be , either pregenrated base lines, or create your own weird character. I played west end games star wars too, and I played a protocol droid who had a split personality. It was acutally an assassin droid, with protocol droid plating around it and so it would be able to get to hwerever it wanted to , do the hit, and leave as if nothing happened. So yes, I am sure robots, cybernetics, mind powers, androids, whatever it is can be generated up with a intuitive easy to use point system or random system. That should give plenty of flexibility. When it came to multi player, I am not sure what you mean. In my mind, I am thinking of a single gamer , making up a team of characters with diffrent skills and abilities. There would be no other gamer interaction, nor seperately controlled characters by other gamers. I mentioned those copyrighted materials because I didn't feel like trying to describe a light saber in just such a way that it was difrfrent just to make a point. I understand the copyrighted stuff from what you explained, and I was just trying to give examples of technology that could be gotten during a seeker trip. Sorry for the confusion. al --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] science fiction was Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Allan, I do think you have a decent story line that could be further developed into a roll playing game. Although, there are a few miner issues where I differ with you on the story line. First, your story line proposes assembling a team of brave adventurers to explore the galaxy for the perfect genetic strands of humanity to keep they human race, such as it is, from becoming extinct. As I've mentioned before if I write this game it will be from a single player point of view. There will be no party based play. So it would be up to a single player to be skilled or to be trained in various skills in order to carry out the adventure at hand rather than a full team of explorers. Second, I think I find the story just a tad bit limiting in a way. In your plot description humanity has become scattered among the stars and through centuries of genetic alterations the human species is facing extinction. That aspect of the story isn't very appealing to me as a gamer. I think I would personally like it if there actually was a galactic federation, republic, or empire of planets with various alien races besides humans. This would allow for more character development in terms of picking a character race, class, and perhaps powers. For example, when I was in college I joined a guild of Star wars roll playing enthusiast's. One thing that made the game so enjoyable was the ability to create a truly unique character in the game universe. I wasn't limited to any specific race, class, and so on. In terms of alien races alone I could be a human, Rodian, Wookee, etc. I could even be some sort of droid if I wanted to. The options were pretty flexible there. Then, there were various class types such as a Jedi, smuggler, bounty hunter, tech, and so on. You could be unaligned, or you could choose to side with the Rebellion or the Empire. Either way you had alot of freedom in deciding what your character specialized in. In terms of special powers goes this might be determined by the characters class or race. For example, in a Star Trek rpg Betazoids, while human, do haveempathic powers where a human from Earth wouldn't. A person who is part human and part Q would have special abilities and powers far above any normal human. Those are just a couple of examples how selecting a character race might effect powers. Anyway, what i was going to say is having a well defined universe for your character to play in is the amount of possible adventures available for that character. Let us say your character is traveling through hyper space when he/she recieves a destress signal. He/she may answer the destress call and find out that a mining colony is being raided by pirates. If your character is a roguelike character, say a smuggler, he/she might want to side with the pirates and get a reward for helping them out. If your character is a heroic like character, say a galactic ranger, he/she will attempt to fight off the pirate attack. Either way suchan action might come to the attention of the galactic council. If your actions were noble they might give you special tasks to carry out for them. if your actions were dishonest it might cause a bounty to be put on your head, and your over all alignment status would go down considerably. Finally, we have to be careful what technology we put in the game. You mentioned including light sabers. That is a big no no interms of copyright law. Light sabers are unfortunately a copyrighted trade mark of the Star Wars Universe. WE have to be careful about things like that. Smile. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
[Audyssey] science fiction was Creating Roll Playing Games From Scratch
Hi Tom and Dark, I really like where you guys are going with the topic, and I was hoping to throw in my five dollars(inflation, you know, grin). My only concern about a scifi universe like what dark explained was that the primary purpose might get overshadowed with all the very cool things a player can do in the genre. I think, as an example, I would make a foundation like this. Earth was left behind after it was nearly destroyed in a nuclear exchange thousands of years ago, prompting the remaining human race to seek out new homes in the stars. Thousands of years later, humanity has been around, has colonized many worlds, some highly technical, some more wild, until they hit the mother lode. A core of worlds that could be a new home. They colonize, terraform, they expand and you get a new human home, with a space empire to boot. Never the less, as time progresses, the first human galactic empire falls, it's borders dropping only to about a half dozen worlds. and that leaves many planets cut off except a very few, allowing those "rogue" planets to become whatever without interference from the Hi Tech empire. Thru the time of this space "dark age" humanity all over the galaxy starts to change thru cybernetic implants, eugenic programs, genetic manipulation to make humans better suited for a particular world, radiation, magic, or just simple breeding and racial traits adaptations and mutations. In any event, after the many thousands of years and the continual changing and manipulation of DNA thru all the hybrid worlds, humanity established in the small galactic empirefind out about a strange genetic flaw which is causing the human race to become unable to produce viable offspring. In effect, the babies being born die only minutes out of the womb. Furthermore, this same genetic flaw has started to affect each and every human being. The only hope for humanity is to find a "pure strain" of humans in order to discover the answer to the mystery and save the entire human race from eventual extinction. Needless to say, brave bands of Seekers need to be brought together to go forth and search the galaxy for that elusive "pure strain". This means that all manner of characters with all manner of job skills are needed. Some examples would be military personnel who would protect the starcraft from bandits, pirates, marauders and hostile enemy war vessels. Highly trained soldiers like rangers or green beret types would be needed to go out in the field for or with the scientists to protect them and things of that nature. scientists of all sorts are needed to help discover, and create the cure to save the human race. They would also be experts in various fields like computers and A.I. , robotics, cybernetics, biology, chemistry, even archeology. Then there is the medical personnel, space craft crew to maintain and drive the seeker ship. A few ambassadors would be good for dealing with planets with civilized governments, and even some criminal types would be needed to get into some more "stealthy" situations of all sorts(after all, we are talking about saving the entire human race , by hook or by crook). Merchants would be invaluable as they would be needed to barter for things from food and water, fuel, or for a broke hyperdrive out in the middle of some desert planet somewhere. grin. The seeker ship could have a small squadron of single man or two man fighter space craft for various missions or ship defense as well, meaning maintanienc crews and space jocks would be needed for them. Then there is the possiblity of androids and robots, alien friendly races etc. Now as the seekers go searching, they will run into all sorts of strange and new worlds, and there might even be oppurtunities to grab skills not immediatly available, like maybe magic, or certain types of implants, or psionic mind powers etc and so forth. In addition, each quest does not have to be immediatly focused on the pure strain cure. The seekers could be asked to clear up some pirates at an asteroid mining colony before given a crucial bit of equipment, or a star map leading to some new unexplored planet. New technologies might be out there as well and could be bought, stolen, invented such as cloaking devices, light sabers, teleportation devices, holtzman engines etc and so forth. Also with the storyline is questions like, is the human flaw problem the inevitable product of human genetic self manipulation, or is it the new deadly weapon of an alien race not encountered yet. Could it be something introduced to humanity by a nazi like group of "pure" humans who hate all humanity not pure like themselves (which they ironically would have the very cure for humanity in themselves). Is it an attack from an alternate dimension, or was stephen hawking right and there really is some kind of information paradox out there (I watch a lot of the science channel, grin). How does that
