Intergalactic Flow

Normally I’m bad at earnestly acknowledging that a thing I made is good, and would rather point to my next idea and talk about how that’s going to be better. Mythic flipped that on its head. It’s been out for over a year and I look back on it proudly, happy with what it does. I’ll say it: I think it’s pretty good!

Which is a real pain when it comes to working on Intergalactic.

There’s an element of “difficult second album” even though Mythic wasn’t my first game. Its success has brought new eyes to my work, and I’m spending moments of every day spiritually galvanising myself for the inevitable... “yeah, this is okay, but I wish it was more like Mythic Bastionland”.

So I throw the baby out with the bathwater. The baby is fine, really, he lives in the book you already have, but we need that bathtub so we can play something else. It’ll still be fun, but it’ll be different for sure.

For one thing, the workflow. 

The Mythic flow, zoomed out, goes like this:

1. Before starting the campaign, spend a while building your realm, maybe reading ahead for the Myths you’ve chosen from the book
2. The knights wander around your realm and the Myths tick along like unreliable clockwork, creating a chaotic series of events for the players to get involved with
3. Between sessions you do a little prep to tidy up your notes and deal with any time changes that occur, but you’re largely good to go using your previous prep

There’s also the workflow within a session, but I’m working in session-to-session scale here. 

One of the points of difference for Intergalactic is that this will be my first RPG that comes with a fleshed out setting with specific places and NPCs. This is a starship with 12 decks, 144 compartments, 1,000 crew (only 80 of which are detailed, sorry) and 72 planets each with 6 locations and 6 contacts. The dream was that this gives you enough to sit down and run a campaign right from the book, no pre-launch prep required!

Well, outside of games that focus on group improvisation, I find zero to be a bit of a myth. Even if it does exist, I don’t think it’s reasonable for what I’m looking to get out of the game.

So what does that zoomed-out Intergalactic flow look like?

1. Before starting the campaign, read up on the starship in the book, and choose a world where the planet will begin. Maybe glance over some of the candidates for the next destination of the ship if you want to plan ahead. Choose if you’re going to start with the ship in Transit, the action starting on the ship itself, or in Layover, where the players will be sent out on Boat Leave to explore a star system independently.
2. The characters serve on the ship, dealing with incidents that occur, or go out on a boat exploring and working while the ship is in cooldown. 
3. Between sessions you tidy up your notes and read ahead to wherever the ship is heading, if that’s where things ended. Maybe you prepare a bit of bespoke content for the next game, or stick with running from the book as best you can. 

While step 1 might seem easier than building a realm from scratch, it’s just a different kind of prep. It’s less time consuming in terms of preparing materials, but I think the setting of Intergalactic demands a little more on-boarding for the referee to understand what they need to run the game. In losing the dreamlike fairytale medieval world of Mythic, we’re now in a setting that demands more concrete answers, even if the Stars themselves are enigmatic.

Step 2 is where we get back to this idea of the game “running itself”, obviously a bit of hyperbole. I think when people say this they mean that the demands placed on the knights combined with the momentum of the myths means that the game feels like it’s usually moving toward a climax of sorts, even if the referee doesn’t know in which direction it will go. The pacing of Intergalactic is a little different. I’m optimistic that little stories and character arcs will emerge from the chaos, but it’s less focused than Mythic, partly by the very nature of its scope. As written, I can foresee more ways to have an unsatisfying session with this game, which is something I’m working to balance through the guidance and tools given to the referee.

Step 3 is where I think things will run more smoothly. As the referee begins to understand how the ship and the stars work, there should be very little required before the next session, even if time has passed. 

This leaves us with something more closely resembling a traditional big sandbox, the very thing I wanted to squeeze into Mythic and make work in a different way. But this, too, should work in a different way. Different to Mythic, but also different to other sandbox games. 

After all, why go to space unless you’re going where no one, yourself included, has gone before?

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