Tuesday, October 6, 2015

StarCluster 4 - The Core Book - A Modest Proposal

The Core Book will be an extremely focused implementation or instantiation of the full rules. It will contain:

A Chargen section with Template Trees - maybe six or so - focused on producing characters for the given setting. Each Template Tree is a page, with a master page.
A choice of 4 species - Human, Jeshen, and 2 Other Aliens, at one page each.
A limited selection of equipment, focused on the scenarios included. There will be several related bits of equipment per page, probably a dozen pages at most.
A single page with general resolution rules
A single resolution system - probably StarPool. One page.
A list of skills and how to use them. One page per linked Attribute - i.e. STR based skills, AGY based skills, etc - and one master page. Seven pages altogether.
A section on the pre-generated ship, one page per section - bridge, quarters, drives, weapons, etc. Probably about 6-8 pages.
A character sheet with one page character worksheet.
A small selection of space suits/armors as appropriate. One page per suit, with one master page, Five or six pages total.
A one page map of Jeshen Space.

Three scenarios, separated in time and place, linked by the spaceship, which is owned in turn by three different Associations. Each Scenario will have:

An Association to which the characters belong. One page.
A stellar system map in which the scenario takes place. One page.
One page descriptions of each important world in the system. Total varies. Say one to three.
Scenario Setup. One page.
Two to four factions involved in the scenario, one page for each faction, with a second page each devoted to important individuals and a standard mook for that faction.
A default timeline for _'if things are not changed by the PCs'_ events. This is *expected* and *desired* to not happen as planned!

Hyperlinked Metainformation

There will be an unknown amount of metainformation, almost all concerning how this feature or that feature was constructed from the greater cloud of options available. This metainformation will be a separate document, so the Core can be printed out/read without the metainformation.

This gives me *very* little wiggle room, which may, in fact, be desirable.

Comments?

4 comments:

  1. What are you looking at for a general page count? Just a broad estimate....

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  2. About 70 pages or so, Bill! My target number, anyway. :D

    How the hell are you? I miss you, my friend!

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  3. Things have been going well. Linda brought up writing another squirrel book with a simpler system, SA! was translated into French, and I even have a few folks clamoring for Neb II. Besides, I had to come back since we have not collaborated on a book together. ;) (Missed you too buddy).

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  4. Yes! We need to collaborate! That will be epic! :D

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