Hi everyone! I’m running my first game of Scum and Villainy, using a homebrew setting, and it’s going pretty great so far. This is my first time being a GM since high school, and my first time working with this type of flexible, narrative play focussed system.
I was hoping people might have advice on setting up a transport job for my players to be mechanically interesting. The crew is flying a stardancer, and consists of a blue collar speaker, a precognitive AI pilot, a recently created muscle, and a stitch who used to be a mortician. The next job for the crew is to smuggle some prototype technology into another system, avoiding pirates and customs agents.
I have a broad idea of what kind of hazards might exist for the smuggling part of the mission, but I’m not sure how to best design things like progress clocks. In particular, I’m not sure how to design the job so that all of the players have a way to participate. Like, a job that is “fly the ship from A to B avoiding these various hazards” doesn’t provide a lot of opportunities for anyone other than the pilot to do interesting things until/unless the players encounter a hazard.
One of the things I’m thinking about is the way that Dungeon World’s “Undertake a Perilous Journey” move has roles for multiple party members, so I’m wondering if I could try to create something like that, but I can’t quite figure it out yet.
Any advice you have would be very welcome. Thanks very much for making such an excellent community.
I will be running my first session tonight, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
I’ve been thinking about this as well, specifically making the flying interesting for everyone. I came up with some ideas:
Another ship can hail the crew, forcing the crew’s speaker or captain to interact with them (threats or deals or whatever). If the ship becomes boarded, the other crew members might have to deal with the intruders.
When bad stuff happens you can direct it towards something that involves other crew members, an obvious thing being setting the engine on fire, or a hole being shot in the ship forcing someone besides the Pilot to go outside in a space suit to patch it. If an asteroid or shot hits the ship, it could be rocked hard enough for a crew person to hit their head, which involves the Stitch perhaps having to care for them.
Way creatures infesting the ship somehow, by cargo or by phasing, could be really interesting as well.
As for clocks, I’m still a bit unsure how to apply them properly, but clocks for “Escaping” a threat, “Collection” of an item in space or something could be used. I asked about clocks the other day and got some good advice – a clock like “Escape” doesn’t have to get progress just from the Pilot using Helm – it could also be moved by other crew members’ actions, such as boosting the engine, delaying the pursuers by firing at them and so on.
Some game-agnostic advice: A smuggling job doesn’t have to be ‘done’ as soon as the players touch down. There could be obstacles at the starport and other hindrances that makes moving the goods on the planet a bit of a hassle as well.