My game commitment roster is full right now, but I have an idea I’ll unpack later when I’ve got some of my other…

My game commitment roster is full right now, but I have an idea I’ll unpack later when I’ve got some of my other…

My game commitment roster is full right now, but I have an idea I’ll unpack later when I’ve got some of my other projects out of the way.

I want to make a love child between Lasers and Feelings and Blades in the Dark. I’m thinking of calling it The Radiant Beyond. 

Down time is when the star ship is traveling. Alert phase is when there is conflict. Thematically redo the action list, potentially collapsing it to four actions, a middle ground between Lasers and Feelings and Blades in the Dark. 

Make new playbooks based on the style of my Knives of Duskwall hack, using special abilities in a slightly different way. Also, make clusters of advantages and disadvantages that come with being an alien, as well as potential culture/biological related special abilities for those who focus on their heritage over time.

Then use the positioning framework, the factor framework, the dice function, the stress and condition system, and the downtime action system. 

Retool down time to be a more dependable week frame, give or take three days. 

Make a regional entanglement table, based on the sorts of story the group is telling. Uneasy frontier, troubleshooting, exploration, etc. Allow the ship to move between assignment groups, thus varying the entanglement potential.

Make the crew sheet more literal, grounded in the quirks of serving aboard this particular vessel.

Combine that with a mission generator and problem generator to fall back on when the entanglements don’t keep them engaged, and that could be a FANTASTIC game.

11 thoughts on “My game commitment roster is full right now, but I have an idea I’ll unpack later when I’ve got some of my other…”

  3. “Make a regional entanglement table, based on the sorts of story the group is telling. Uneasy frontier, troubleshooting, exploration, etc. Allow the ship to move between assignment groups, thus varying the entanglement potential.”

    This sounds great. I haven’t even got to play the game yet, but all the tweaks and changes people have been suggesting are great insight into game design.

  5. No, crew being the people who serve on the ship. I like how Lasers and Feelings lets you pick good and bad things about the ship, just fictional traits, and I’d keep that.

    However, the crew sheet is a combination of resources you have available and ways the culture/training affects you, and that works for a starship.

    The main thing I’d change about crew abilities is not having ones that still function when you’re no longer on the crew. I don’t want permanent changes to character sheets because of serving on a ship, because that raises questions about what happens when the character gets transferred around between vessels. So, nothing gives you +1 rating for example. 

    However, I will likely create some special abilities that a ship may allow people to purchase that are not on their play books. Also provide guidance for making up new ones that match a crew’s experience serving on a vessel.

  6. You might learn certain skills when you serve on a vessel (tactics on a combat ship, for ex) so getting a +1 rating from a crew sheet could still make sense.

  7. I guess it depends what is needed to join the crew. If they stop over at a starbase and Bill strolls aboard assigned to the ship, and the crew sheet says everybody gets +1 rating for being a crew member, I don’t like that.

    If it’s an option that he can buy as he is integrated into the ship’s culture, that’s fine with me. I’m also fine with adding ratings through experience and saying it’s from experience and training aboardship.

    I could see a special crew ability being “Expert Flow” and giving +1d when doing a certain system aboardship, because the culture and tech are streamlined to do that. But you wouldn’t keep it if you went to another ship.

    As always, it’s a matter of which abstracts are comfortable and which ones get itchy, and that varies from person to person. =)

  8. I’ve been thinking of working Ashen Stars into a blades type game. Keep the investigative skills and make investigation an action, ship combat is very similar to clocks already, work in blades resolution and stress to replace general ability pools and add some of the reputation and downtime to a more blades style downtime system.

  9. writes notes for a blades hack and slowly starts bobbing his head and mumbling a tune You’ve….hmm…lasers and I’ve…hmmm….feelings. You’ve got lasers, and I’ve goooot fee-lings.

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