Ski Jump Design

Continuing from last week’s thoughts. 

In a recent conversation we had, Ed Jollyboat used the analogy of an airport runway as a linear introductory section to a game, which opens up into blue sky freedom. I want to run with that, but I’m moving over to a ski jump analogy instead.

In short:

Climb: Make it easy to get the book to the table and have other players want to play.
Descent: Begin with limitations and linearity to give the game momentum. 
Launch: Now get the players making big choices. 
Flight: Support the play that comes from player freedom. 
Landing: Have a finishing point in mind, even if you don’t stick to it. 

Now the longer version. 

The Climb

Sure, there are no-prep games, but really I think any activity that involves simultaneously getting a bunch of friends around the same table requires at least a form of prep. Forget drawing maps and practising NPC voices, the real climb is done in the real world.

I’ve heard much anger at the idea of putting marketing copy inside your gamebook but... hear me out... in some groups... the GM does need to market the game to players in order to get that game to the table. 

Worse still, as a GM with a bunch of books on my shelf, those books aren’t done marketing themselves to me yet. They need to sell their dream to me even as I hold them in my hands. Not vying for my attention, but working to convince me that I can and will run this game, leaving me passionate enough to draw a group of players in and make the dream a reality. 

The Descent

That’s the hard part out of the way. It’s all downhill from here. Of course, you can’t change direction, but it’s just for a little while. This is the part where you set the players quickly off in a certain direction and stack up the momentum. Traveller’s lifepath and ship mortgage are classic examples. Electric Bastionland’s Debt and Mythic Bastionland’s Oath are my attempts at this. 

The Launch

The point of transition between that linear descent and the open skies of flight. At its most basic level I plan my RPG sessions to have an important decision thrown at the players almost immediately. A dungeon with a front door and a sneaky tunnel round back. A hex map with a starting point and vague directions to your first hook. The splash of cold water that wakes up the decision-making brain. 

The Flight

This is the “hey this game runs itself” dream. With the players fully engaged, invested, directing the play, all you’ve got to do is enjoy the view and watch out for geese. The important thing here is that the players enjoy this freedom that we’ve been building up to, without feeling overwhelmed as they might be if we just shot them out of a cannon without warning. The GM also needs support, typically from library content in the book, or tools to help with improvisation. 

The Landing

I imagine Ski Jumping 101 has a pretty early class on “how to land”, but for a long time I didn’t really think about how my sessions or campaigns might finish. I’m especially interested in the latter, now, as you’ll see in the City Quest of Mythic Bastionland, or the equally appealing “you might die of old age”. Even if you never get there, I’ve started noticing that players appreciate at least a suggestion of how the game might reach a conclusion.

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A Game you Play

Pandemic Legacy (2015) wasn’t the first legacy boardgame, but it was the breakthrough moment when many players became aware of the format.

Imagine you play a game of monopoly (I’m so sorry) but throughout the game you make permanent changes to the board, adding shortcuts and roadblocks. You tear up some cards and add secret new cards to the chance deck. Next time you play, the game is slightly different, working through a campaign affected by your individual games. After a certain number of games, the campaign ends. 

Pandemic Legacy’s campaign lasts 12-18 games, after which you’re done. You can’t play the game anymore. You can’t even sell it, as you’ve modified and destroyed the components. 

I remember arguments that Pandemic Legacy was unappealing because you could only play it a dozen or so times. Why get this, when you can get the regular Pandemic game for half the price and play it hundreds of times?

A counterpoint stuck with me.

Most boardgames are games you could play a hundred times. Pandemic Legacy is a game you will play 12-18 times.

My shelf is full of TTRPGs, adventures, and campaigns that I could play hundreds of times. What makes a game something that I will play a few times? Despite my usual tastes, I don’t think this is about simplicity. 

What takes a game from “I’ve been meaning to run that some day” to “yeah, I ran that it was great”.

This is brewing for now, but expect more next time.

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Factions Without Borders

Intergalactic is going to be the first game I make that actually has a canonical map.

Not that this is the whole galaxy, of course, but it’s a start. 

There are concrete places and people who live there too. Of course we need factions, right?

I know I don’t want factions to be brushes that I use to paint chunks of the map, like “this swathe of blue space belongs to the Suchandsuch Empire, and this pink blob is the Confederacy of Thoseguys”. I’ve always found that sort of map lures you into the borderlands, exploring the worlds that exist between two factions, but what if everywhere was like that?

Instead of borders butting up against each other I want the colours to mix into each other, creating patches of interesting blends from their primary hues. 

More Pollock than Mondrian. 

Remember, we’re talking about factions here, not states. Powerful institutions can mingle within the same physical space without borders, each claiming a functional domain rather than a geographical one. Of course each planet will feel the influence of some factions more than others, but I like the idea that you could see their fingerprints on just about any world.

Let’s look at the six factions in the game right now and the area in which they have an effective monopoly. 

Free Exchange Trust (FXT) - Monopolised Trade
Most worlds can meet their own essential demands, so interplanetary trade focuses on the exporter's unique, specialist, or curious variations. The FXT enables both the logistic and financial halves of this, not to mention the flow of information. 

Sovereign - Monopolised Governance
Most worlds govern themselves, without concern for what happens out in space, and the Sovereign assembly works to keep other factions out, gaining their own seats of influence in return.

New Compliance Authority (NCA) - Monopolised Law
A unified legal code has never been fully accepted across space. The closest thing is the NCA, born out of legitimised pirates, now a sprawling enforcer of laws nobody remembers agreeing to.

Konkord Group - Monopolised War
Most conflicts are limited to a single world, with interplanetary war requiring more resources than a government can bear to waste. Private militaries swept in to fill this void, Konkord having more success than most, eventually buying out their rivals and enemies alike.

Justice Union - Monopolised Justice 
With factions spreading the galaxy, the individual can feel powerless. This has sparked a thirst for collective justice. This union of unions rarely agrees on anything beyond the need for reprisal. 

Starpath - Monopolised Faith 
People have always looked to the stars for answers, their power to bend reality beyond any reasonable question. With no boundaries between science and mysticism, it’s only natural that an amalgam of science, academia, and religion would act as a unified faith. 

What’s the Point?
The important thing, of course, is that they each rule over a domain that the players are likely to get involved with, and each table may find them as allies or antagonists depending on their approach.

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Space is for Fantasy, not Sci Fi

Mythic has a lot of blank spaces left open for improvisation. In my experience, this works well enough, granting many advantages too.

Improvise a castle town? Sure, I’m picturing it now. How many people live here? Oh I dunno, why do you care? Raise an army? The book says it can support a warband or two. 

How does society work? Here are the roles most people fall into. You know, it’s kinda like actual medieval society but we don’t need to sweat the details. 

What’s this forest we’re walking through? Let me paint you an arboreal masterpiece, I walked through a forest two days ago.

You don’t get the same leeway with sci fi. Alien worlds are unfamiliar, and technology doesn’t get to be as arcane as true magic. 

I remember a Mothership actual play where the GM’s in the moment decision about whether a ship had remote airlock control had a huge impact on the course of the game, the GM expressing a little discomfort in that afterwards.

I love it when improvised details become important, but I don’t like it when big outcomes feel arbitrary. 

So yeah, this means I’m swallowing the bitter pill that Intergalactic requires a bit more foundational information than Mythic. Don’t think I can pull off the “here’s all your setting information on one page” trick with this one. 

On the positive side of things, this is something I’ve rarely been able to indulge in! It’s been fun to consider how the big six factions actually work, their relationships to core elements of the setting, and to each other, rather than leaving that down to the individual referee’s prep. 

Wallowing in naval minutia might leave the player characters overwhelmed by jargon, but they’re newly recruited crewmembers! Lean into this at the table, give your players the choice for how much they want to integrate into this unfamiliar culture. 

I suppose it all fits with the plan to have a fully detailed library of star systems, rather than the petri dish feel of tossing myths into your realm in Mythic. From the start I said that I didn’t want Intergalactic to just be Mythic with Lasers but I feel like I’m drifting further away with each iteration. 

God help me, for a moment I even considered a timeline.

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Pressure - Pushing Down on Me (and also up and from the side)

What pressures do you face as a Head in the top 10% of a thousand crew starship in Intergalactic Bastionland?

It comes down to what each other crewmember might want from you, and how they might ask for it.

From Above - Political Pressure
Of the six officers on the ship, one is your direct boss, but each can technically stick their noses in your business when they want to. Mostly their concerns are political, making sure the balance of power between officers is either maintained or tilted in their favour. Whether they're interested in undermining the captain or securing their authority depends on their own level of favour from above.

The ship expects excellence from you, squire, now go out and bring me a report of this problem solved.

I have a special task for you, good crewmember, and make sure no word of this reaches the Marshal in Arms.

What would the captain think of your lack of appetite for exploration, squirt? Now go survey that moon and bring the boat back in one piece, aye?

From Aside - Personal Pressure
The other heads, your peers and rivals. It's easy to focus on the latter, thinking they're all out to get you. The truth is, most look to their peers as an outlet for a personal life that can be difficult to find in the cold steel of a starship hull. Of course, if they stumble onto some leverage over you, they'd be silly not to take advantage.

Comrade, you hear the latest scuttle about the Chaplain and the Purser? Fight's happening middle of bottomwatch tonight down on the drive deck? You taking a side?

I thought I could count on you, Bud. Just tell me what you saw up there and I'll keep a nod for you.

Mate, I've taken more than enough knocks for you. This time I need something big in return.

From Below - Practical Pressure
It's a cliché that Hands have the most grounded set of needs on the ship, just wanting some assurance they'll be fed, kept safe, and maybe stop doing this job some day. There's some truth in that, and Heads are in a position to make a Hand's life better or worse by a meaningful amount without too much effort.

Boss, I can't work without better gear, and the Quartermate, much as I respect her, she doesn't understand what we do down here. You know I wouldn't cause fuss just for the sake of it.

Just thought you'd want to know about those troublemakers, Chief, and if there were any private quarters opening up near you I could keep you posted in future too.

I'd be honoured to even be considered to help out on the boat with you, Guv. I love the ship and all, but it's been months since I've been out in the stars, you know?

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Trinary Stars

In writing the setting for Intergalactic Bastionland I feel pulled between the gravity of three stars:

• Reality - What would it really be like to be in space as we understand it today?
• History - What are some interesting equivalents to mine from actual history?
• Fantasy - Yeah but what if this weird thing was out there??

I suppose it’s like simultaneously pulling from the present, past, and imagined future. This applies to a lot of space-based settings, but is by no means universal. I’ve done all three of these, and you can see their impact on its wobbly orbit.

Let’s take travel times as an example, a staple concern of space TTRPGs.

A realistic approach involves looking at real distances between stars, and thinking about travel times if we assume near-lightspeed. Remember to consider how much of a pain it is to get a big vessel up from a planet and out of its orbit.

A historical approach considers what would be the equivalent, probably sailing between continents. We’re talking weeks or months depending on how far back we go. What was life like on these voyages?

A fantastical approach imagines infinite possibilities, perhaps with a view to (lowers voice) make the game work a bit more easily. Yeah, we have a way to go faster than light, but you can’t do it too much because... erm.. It’s just how the ship’s special drive works, okay?

The mass of each of these stars will differ within your own personal trinary system of influences. Even if you’re drawn to one in particular, the other two are sure to be warping your orbit in less obvious ways. 

I’m dropping the star analogy now because I just spent too long reading about trinary star systems. 

The goal is to weave these three influences into something that feels internally consistent, characterful, but still recognisably beneath the sprawling umbrella of science-fiction. 

Shit, now I’m onto umbrellas. Abandon blogpost.

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Boat Loan

Something I'm testing out for my Intergalactic testing, recently added to the playtest doc.

Being part of a thousand-strong crew on a huge starship has become a key part of Intergalactic, something I was eager to explore as a point of difference to the familar sci-fi RPG setup of a small independent crew with their own ship.

From my initial playtests I wonder if I went a too far with this, having a bit too much time cooped up in the ship, sometimes making it easy to forget you're in space at all. Layover offered a chance to get off the ship but you were then confined to a single planet and there wasn't much drive beyond "make some money for yourself", then you were back on the ship for the next transit. None of this was outright bad, but I wanted to make the balance between workplace-restriction and starfaring-freedom a little more even.

Enter the Boat Loan, a replacement for the current "ticket of leave".

[from the Layover Page]

Boat Loan

Crew working Double Duty Detail now receive their Boat Loan, being granted temporary ownership of one of the ship's boats, and the freedom to roam the system. This privilege carries three hard rules:

1. Return on time for the next transit.
2. Return the boat in the condition you took it.
3. Get Officer approval for each trip, agreeing to their modifications and stipulations.

Typical Officer stipulations might be a share of profits gained, an errand to run on their behalf, or taking specific crew members with you.

The Captain and Officers have access to their boats but usually stay on the ship, whether out of fear the ship will abandon them or the lack of appetite for visiting dangerous worlds. 

This opens up little stretches of freedom for the players to explore the current solar system, but still ultimately ties them to the main ship with the pressure to return on time and profitable.

Transit times have been tweaked to make all this a little more viable while still applying financial pressure and uncertainty. Ships are now horribly inefficient for interplanetary transit compared to boats, to the ship is assumed to stay in-place between interstellar transits.

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