Editing SGA 2003 Archive (section)

=Spaceship Zero=
; Game System
: [http://www.spaceshipzero.com/ Spaceship Zero]
; Pitch
: 
; Game Master
: Mark Hughes
; Players
: Kevin, Alan, ?
; Characters
:
; Date
: January 14, 2003
; Technical Notes
: 
; Recaps
: '''Mark:''' 
:'''The good:'''
:I described everything in a low-budget sci-fi manner--the planet scenes are all in a rock quarry, and though the players didn't push on the parts where they'd find out, the ship set is made of plywood. That'd be edited out for broadcast, of course.

:The system is fast and simple; there's no rules at all to remember, really. Most complication-free game I've used in a very long time.

:The players were just using templates, and still got really into character, hamming it up. Cheesy sci-fi all the way. It brings out the right stuff in people.

:'''The bad:'''
:It's hard to kill anything in one shot, unless you just use ZM fiat to say "he's dead". That's not entirely bad, but the super-modern weapons just aren't super enough. I might halve the number of Body Points you get.

:Rolling skills too often is bad, because you have low percentages. So I used two kinds of tests: 1) Simple tests, where you would always succeed unless you rolled 00, but the skill roll tells me how well or badly for descriptive effect; 2) Stress tests, where you can fail drastically.

:But if you don't roll skills often, you don't get to test those Zero skills and earn many Zero Points. What I'm going to do for long-term play is allow players to buy 1 Zero Point for 1 EP, once per session. I might also give out 2 ZP every time you roll a 0 when testing a Zero skill, since it didn't happen enough.

:'''The optional:'''
:I'm strongly considering adapting the TORG Drama Deck over to it, to enhance the cinematic feel even more.

:'''The episode:'''
:I fast-forwarded them through the destruction of the universe, and they came out near Tau Ceti, with systems damage to the Bendall Field and the BTL drive, and low on supplies. After a few false navigation starts by the Robot, they land on Tau Ceti IV: The Rock Quarry Planet, a couple miles from a habitation of some sort.

:The Captain and Scientist send the Robot out to investigate, but unfortunately the Robot becomes lost. Finally all going out, they find that the camp consists of wood barracks and a shiny dome, with human prisoners digging in the rock, while human "trustees" with human prods keep them working, and hybrid overseers watch the trustees, armed with guns.

:They sneak in, well, except that the Captain's none too good at that sneaking stuff, and are captured by would-be rebels among the slaves. After a bit of a scuffle, the Captain is recognized as the reincarnation of the "Chosen One", and they are brought into the barracks.

:After a bit of "if someone asks you if you're a god, you say *YES*"-ness, the slaves are rallied into a fighting force of sorts, and an ambush is prepared for the next day.

:Well, after a slightly bloody charge at the trustees and a horrifyingly bloody charge into the disintegrators of the Hydronauts (I'd expected them to pick off many of the Hydronauts first, oops), 169 of the original 206 slaves were killed, but the 37 survivors have been liberated and armed, and the Captain slowly restored their confidence and determination to free the rest of the slaves on Tau Ceti, while the Robot located the next slave colony. I made the world's simplest mass combat rules, just determining how many trustees, hybrids, and hydronauts a slave could kill per 2 turns, and vice versa.

:Definitely a pyhrric victory, but that works well for the tone of the show described in the episode guide.

:I can't reveal the details in public, but my Universe 2 is pretty variant. After reading the ep guide, I couldn't just do *one* world, I have to give them a whole bunch of strange places to go and universes to blow up before they get to anything like home.
; Player Thoughts
: '''Kevin:''' It's basically a game that you play in the style of the old Sci-Fi radio and TV shows - you know the ones as campy (or more) than Captain Kirk with that styrofoam boulder over his head... Think Captain Video, Buck Rodgers, Flash Gordon and the like.  I LOVE that style and time period for short run games... I'm not sure how it would feel running it long term - I'd guess it's best at short shots.  The rules however aren't my cup of tea... They work just fine (very similar to the old Basic Roleplaying rules of CoC) but they don't feed into the style of the game much at all...  Beyond that I had a great time playing! Mark did a good job giving us the feel of the game...  Myself (the befuddled Scientist), Alan (the Robby style robot) and KevinS. (the man's man Captain), found ourselves on a world inwhich humans were being opressed by evil fish overlords... As any Space Corp crew would do, we quickly set ourselves up as Gods and went about freeing the slaves from tyranny (only losing 170 of the original 200)!  Much fun was had by all including much GREAT roleplaying by Alan and Kevin really sinking into their roles!!

: '''Alan:''' Yeah, I thought the fun part of the game was playing the TV SF tropes. After a brief glance at the book, I'd say that the resolution and rewards systems don't really support the genre per se. Character generation certainly provided the right templates, though - including the slave girl who gives others a bonus when sitting in their lap. More rules like that would reinforce the camp.

:What suceeded was our understanding of the SF cliches - and I thought Mark's way of describing the planet as " a gravel pit somewhere in England" set a great tone. We joked about standard settings, like the California desert, a deserted industrial plant, or a steam tunnel. I began to envision a game that made these elements part of the rules - and maybe even included reusing parts and sets (remember how the Romulan cloaking device resembled Nomad from The Changelling in ST:OS?)

:All in all, I had fun.

; Additional GM Thoughts
: The Zero Dice would, if you had more of them. I'm definitely using some house rules next time to start PCs out with their max ZD, and get more ZD more often.

: But yeah, a very simple percentile system like that is just meant to work and get out of the way, and it doesn't try to be period. Since I grew up playing Star Frontiers, Call of Cthulhu, and Rolemaster, it feels perfectly natural to me.

: I think the game works well for an episodic tone. You *could* run a continuous-time campaign, but fast-forwarding through what's happened since the last ep and starting you in the action is more in line with how a TV show works. I was strongly considering having a "commercial break". I didn't try out the "Dramatic Time" rules for only using in-character speech, but that's more for the radio serial.