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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Circuits and Rallies

I'm back from holiday! I guess coming back to familiarity after a few weeks of novelty got me thinking.

Sometimes you repeat the same stuff over and over. Sometimes you breeze past stuff, never looking back. We’ll use an imperfect racing analogy of Circuits and Rallies. 

Circuits are great because you get to revisit things, building a familiarity with them. In Intergalactic Bastionland this is the ship, where you regularly return to the same place with the same people. 

Rallies are great because you’re experiencing a flurry of new material. In Intergalactic this is visiting worlds, where you get to experience a strange place and meet new people. 

This isn’t a case of good vs bad. Both types of element have their advantages, but benefit from the other in order to shine. 

And of course this usually isn’t a perfect fit. You can encounter new people and places within the ship, and you might revisit a contact when you go back to a world. The purpose of this idea is to consider whether your game would benefit from more of either type of content. 

In my last Traveller campaign I think the crew visited eleven worlds, with no return visits. There were a few recurring NPCs, but they only encountered them on new worlds, usually requiring a little hijinks behind the curtain to get everyone in the right place on time. As such, it felt very rally-like, a road trip through space where the happenings on each planet felt quite disconnected from each other. It felt like a bit of a missed opportunity to go back to a known location.

This is part of my impetus for having Intergalactic take place on a much larger ship, with that acting as the circuit. This is the Star Trek model, right? Planet of the week, with the ship acting as a consistent element.

So why do I worry that the players won’t care about these worlds if they don’t return to them?

At the moment the ship’s movement is unpredictable, largely outside of the players’ hands at the start of the game, but my gut feeling is that new worlds will be slightly more common than recurring worlds. 

So it’s easy to imagine the players not caring about these worlds, beyond a place to pick up a one-off job before blasting off into the void. Maybe they won’t even care if they revisit a world like Labyrinth and find that the planet’s core has finally annihilated itself from within.

I guess this is the nature of space, or at least a game that encourages such wide-spanning space exploration. It’s okay to have the novelty of the rally alongside the familiarity of the circuit.

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Tempo

Been tinkering with some advice for pacing a game of Intergalactic. I suspect I'll go a bit further than this, but it's a start.

The speed at which the group moves through events in the game world can shift between slow and fast tempos. The Referee should use the fastest tempo that feels appropriate for the situation, and might find it useful to tell the players when the tempo is shifting.

The names dictate the units of time that are being individually tracked, each of which usually presents a decision point for the players.

1. Rounds - Individual combat rounds, typically in the heat of battle. Slower than real time, where life and death decisions require precision.

2. Moments - The closest to real time, advancing through time until the next decision point, for exploring, socialising, and planning.

3. Watches: The three watches that make up a day: Topwatch, Midwatch, and Bottomwatch. This tempo is used for activities that span many hours.

4. Days: Used for moving through the individual days of a long journey or layover.

5. Phases: The three phases of the wheel: Transit, Dock, Layover.

If things feel like they're lacking momentum, try shifting to a higher tempo. They all have their uses, so try out the tempo most unfamiliar to you.

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Pins

Or patches, badges, tattoos. This covers a broad category of unofficial trophies that can be earned by a member of a starship crew in the form of some sort of physical mark to be worn. 

They have the following things in common:

• They are awarded by Hands only.
• They are entirely unofficial.
• They open social doors.

Earning a Pin

The story goes that the first Pins were hammered together from scrap metal, awarded to Hands, by Hands, as a jab at the Heads and Officers who would chase medals and wear them with pride. Some ships banned them, but they were still awarded as tattoos hidden away beneath uniforms.

Although tradition still dictates that only Hands can award a Pin, they are now considered universal, with Heads, Officers, and even some Captains ensuring they receive their dues. 

The system is strict, intended to avoid the need for a neutral judge. If somebody can prove they’ve met the requirements for a Pin for the first time, usually through witnesses, then they’re eligible for it, and that’s that. Each Pin can only be earned once.

Pins are usually awarded in batches, in a combination of sacred ritual, hazing ordeal, and rowdy party.

Unofficial Accolades

This whole system has been allowed to flourish because it gives the crew a sense of accomplishment on what can be a rather repetitive life of drudgery. When the Hands are excited about earning some shiny new trinket then they stop considering other career options or asking for a raise.

Bonding and Recognition

The crew already has an unofficial hierarchy of Seniority denoting how well respected they are in their job, with tiers of First down to Third.

Pins are more of a social element. Having lots of Pins won’t earn respect alone, but it can allow access to social events that require a specific Pin. 

The system indulges in faux-grandeur as a winking parody of naval tradition, but the nepotism can be very real. 

Specific Pins

There are twenty-one Pins that are traditionally considered to be the core set, and countless others that are newly created, guarded secrets, or mostly forgotten.

Although designs are not standardised, the name usually gives a hint.

1. Order of the Mole: Travel via a gate.
2. Goat’s Eye: Witness a ship being destroyed.
3. Stone Skull: Suffer a wound from a Warp attack.
4. Red Hand: Comfort another crew member as they die. 
5. Left-Lung Fellowship: Float freely in space with no suit or breather.
6. Electric Eye: Visit a Star outside the Home Cluster.
7. Crossed Axes: Take part in boarding action on another ship.
8. Mark of the Laughing Fool: Make an officer bleed.
9. Black Heart: Get badly injured (Critical Wound) on the job.
10. Maggot Club: Return to the world on which you were born.
11. Court of the Plastic Queen: Make the “big jump” between the Processor and the Titan. 
12. Dusty Band: Set foot on an unoccupied world.
13. Mark of the Violet Chamber: Defend this ship from boarding.
14. Artful Society of Journeyers: Visit all seventeen stars in the Home Cluster. 
15. Bonepile Crew: Catch, kill, and eat an animal living on the ship.
16. Roach Society: Survive the destruction of a vessel.
17. Dead Duck: Endure a Transit of 15 days or more.
18. House Java: Stay the night at Hotel Java on Whiteout in the Dragon System
19. Elder League: Visit a world claiming to be a new Bastion.
20. Clan of Cousins: Spend a whole month on the commons deck only.
21. Golden Star: A picture of the Captain is put on display somewhere only the Hands know. If it remains untouched for a whole month then the Captain has earned this pin.

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Minor Worlds

So what about those unsettled and unexplored worlds in Intergalactic Bastionland?

They won't get the same detail that the main worlds get, but I want to include some information for them, and a quick way to generate new ones as needed.

Here's a first draft of a system for that.

Minor Worlds
The worlds fully detailed in their system section are major worlds. Other worlds are minor worlds, either barely inhabited or uninhabited. For those not detailed, roll d12 and d6, consulting the following tables:

Type
1 Rock - Low gravity, no atmosphere, or water
2 Mire - Extremely toxic environment
3 Crucible - Extreme heat or volcanism
4 Jungle - Overgrown with vegetation
5 Waste - Flat, arid, and choking
6 Tempest - Volatile weather patterns
7 Crush - High gravity and extreme landscape
8 Sinister - Invisible threat, radiation/microbes
9 Anomaly - Strange behaviour
10 Flux - Shifting to a new phase or destruction
11 Fluid - Non-solid surface
12 Hive - Teeming with hostile lifeforms

Status
1 Unknown - No recorded information
2 Scanned - Observed from orbit
3 Surveyed - Explored on surface
4 Vessel - A faction keeps a vessel present
5 Orbital - Small Orbital base present
6 Landing - Small base on surface

World Spark Tables can provide more details. Settlements on minor worlds are too small to be open to speculative trade, population typically in the tens.

Exploration Processes
Scanning a world from orbit takes a frigate or ship 1 week and provides broad stroke details. Surveying provides fine details, takes a week, but requires a team on the surface.

Establishing a base on the surface or in orbit requires a ship to manufacture parts, with the following baseline costs:
Base (for 10 people): 5,000 frags, 1 week
Landing (for 100 people): 50,000 frags, 3 months
Orbital (for 10 people): 10,000 frags, 1 month
Full Orbital (for 100 people): 100,000 frags, 1 year

Other Stars
Roll to see if the current star has any new neighbours (excluding already known neighbours).

For a new star, roll d6 to discover how many worlds are present.

1 No worlds
2 1 minor world
3 d6 minor worlds
4 1 major world
5 1 major world, d6 minor worlds
6 d6 major worlds, d6 minor worlds

So we can see how the Goldfather system looks with its minor worlds added.

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