We started off our first StarCluster 3 playtest last night. The first half the session was used up by the players first designing their company and then creating their characters. Then we started play, and continued 'til the end of the night. This will be a short playtest, because Klaxon is headed down to Orlando to work on his Masters in Game Design at the end of the month. We have one more session next week before he goes.
The players decided on a Police/Customs company, a coopertive where the players owned shares in their company. They picked assets - a big ship as HQ, with six smaller ships to use for taking them from here to there, various specialty databases on Law, Xenobiology, Sociology and the like, A Medical units with doctors, surgeons, nurses and orderlies, and other interesting stuff. The company works for contract/hire in their home system and nearby systems. They called it Valiant Detective Agency, after Eddie Valiant from Roger Rabbit.
The characters were interesting too - a Wild Cop on the Edge, a Cop Driven by Vengeance, a Corrupt Cop, and an Upright Believer in Justice. What was coolest was when they all of a sudden *clicked* into character and began working as *cops*, not your normal PCs. Pure awesome! You could practically *hear* the click! ;D
-clash
Sounds neat. And the fact that they have a support crew is neat, too. Opportunities for NPC plotlines and hooks, or do the NPCs just work in the background?
ReplyDeletePS Good luck to Klaxon at Uni - Games Design sounds like an interesting degree
The Company can have several teams, support personnel and agents, either as NPCs or as troupe PCs. You could set up several different teams, and switch between them, with each team having a different focus, or you could just set them up as NPCs. That's up to the group, but the game supports either.
ReplyDeleteyeah - I sure wish they gave Game Design degrees when I was in school! :D
-clash
Indeed. Game design degrees would have been cool. You could always go back.
ReplyDeleteAs for the game that sounds awesome. I'm looking forward to SC 3 a great deal.
Hi Tim!
ReplyDeleteNot at my age! I couldn't afford to quit my jo to do it. :D
Glad you are looking forward to SC 3! I'm getting excited myself! :D
-clash
To amplify on the "working as cops, not as normal PCs" bit, here's what I meant by that. Normal PCs tend to wait for the information to come to them when they come into a new situation. Military PCs conduct either recon by stealth or recon by fire to observe what is going on. Cop PCs look at everything in terms of clues and evidence.
ReplyDeleteFor example, this is an abridged version of one of the PCs in cop mode - the victim had been nailed to a wall by hand with big iron spikes, his ID and any cash was gone, though they knew who he was, and a ring was missing from the ring finger of his left hand - they could see the mark where it was on his skin, with a small abrasion where the ring was cut off:
PC: "I examine the desk."
GM: "It's old - maybe over a hundred, two hundred years, solidly made of local wood - not synthetics. It's dinged and dented all over, and worn, but kept in high polish."
PC: "What are the most recent marks on it?"
GM: "Right in front of the chair, four teeth marks. Upper teeth only."
PC: "Doc? Match these marks with the vic's dental pattern."
Doc: "It's a match. Vic has a slightly angled left incisor, and the tooth widths match."
PC: "The vic was pinend down here with an arm across the back of his neck, face down. Why?"
PC: "I place myself in the attitude of the vic, my mouth on the desk, then I stretch out my left hand slowly to full length."
GM: "You feel a slight grittiness under your fingers."
PC: "Here's where they cut off his ring."
-clash