Here's something - Creating the PC's company. one of the optional by recommended things is to create a company for the PCs to belong to. The GM can create it, or the players can create it together. I have found - using this mechanic in IHW: Wild Blue and OHMAS - the players creating their own company works beautifully. It reflects what they want out of the game, and tells the GM what they want. Here's the list of company types i have come up with, with the assistance of my game group:
Trading Company
Mercenary Company
Bounty Hunters
Troubleshooting Consultants
Smuggling Company
Biotech Company
Politician’s Henchmen
Medical Company
Espionage
Police/Customs
Diplomatic
Explorers
Insurance Agency
Cult/Religious
News Agency
Disaster Relief
Courier Service
Musical/Theatrical Troupe
Academic Research Company
Detective Agency
Like? Dislike?
Nice idea - gets both the PCs and the GM thinking along the same lines which makes scenario composition easier (especially when you, as GM, know that the players are already focused on a story idea).
ReplyDelete"Biotech Company" is a very specific sort of business, but your list has no other such businesses at all (such as IT, engineering, transportation and everything else). I would replace it with "Business Corporation" or something like that.
ReplyDelete@ Kobold:
ReplyDeleteExactly! The players are going to allocate company resources based on what they want to do. You as GM can read that in reverse, and see their interests.
@Kdansky:
Ummm - all of these are very specific sorts of businesses. That's the point! Biotech Company or Insurance Company? Mercenary Company or Courier Service? Choose what type of company you want. You think a Musical/Theatrical Troupe isn't a business? A News Agency isn't a business? I am not following your reasoning at all.
-clash
Hi Clash,
ReplyDeleteHow about "colonisation company"? I suppose it goes a step on from "explorers" - first you seek out an unclaimed world with desirable resources / climate, place a bid, attract colonists / capital to develop the resource.
Could break down into colonisation company and prospecting company.
First-contact experts? Probably a specialism of exploration, also.
Good luck with it all,
Marchand
Hi Marchand!
ReplyDeleteColonization Company is a great idea, but I'm leaning towards a suggestion by Greentongue on RPG.net for a Resource Extraction company - oil, lumber, hunting, fishing - whether legal or illegal.
-clash
I assumed it was supposed to be a complete list and therefore rather abstract. Most items cover a really wide range of services, such as Medical (prosthetics, drugs, hospitals, implants...), Insurance (property, life, health, starships, warfare), Trading (weapons, drugs, starships, food, luxury items...), but Biotech really sticks out in a bad way.
ReplyDeleteMost of your list is "What they do", but Biotech is "How they do it". Biotech is either a subgroup of weapon manufacture (and therefore just a subgroup of "Production of stuff by means of Engineering"), or medical.
I stand by my call that the list is not well-rounded yet.
Biotech covers Genetic Augmentation, Genetic Adaptaion to environments, Uplifting animals, individual Gene Tailoring for retro-virus 'splicing', Bioroid Design, Cloning, and other related technologies. I see quite a range of stuff there, even without getting into purely medical genetics, which is more concerned with fixing problems and maintaining proper homeostasis.
ReplyDelete-clash