Coming Soon: Critical Mass

Stranded on a Distant Star: morality, trust and diplomacy

One thing I really have been thinking about for Stranded is a way to pair these three things.

I don't like just pure roleplaying to determine trust. I know, I know, damnit. I just don't ok?

It feels a little too much like GM fiat.

"You were captured, your lives hang on your next few words, now dance little man, dance, convince the Gm to let your characters live!"

Is it fun? As someone who GMs all the time, I have to say yes. But I don't think its good game design either.

I also hate with a passion its hard to express the notion that you roll a d20, add a bonus, and live or die.

That d20 roll being a skill check somehow seeming way dumber than a save vs death.

So I'm thinking of using a trust meter. How well you get along with a faction being determined by how thoroughly you've screwed them over in the past.

I like this for a couple reasons. First, it rewards the genuinely nice players out there for being nice. Second, it allows the devious to bide their time, setting up a betrayal that the NPC will never see coming.

Think Arminius leading Varro into the Black Forest.

If you've ever wondered what it's like inside my head...

I can't really be the only one who was secretly wishing for Christopher Walken to kill Martin Sheen in the last episode of the West Wing, can I?

[Stranded on a Distant Star]: That 70's show

Actually, we could say those 70's and 80's shows.

When talking about sci-fi I can get into there's a few broad eras of sci-fi:

• 40's camp sci-fi serials of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers
• Sword and Planet novels (Burroughs' John Carter and Venus novels)
• 50's and 60's serious sci-fi, of magazines like Galaxy Science Fiction and radio shows like X-Minus One (and Star Trek and the Twilight Zone, both of which ripped off X-Minus One to a degree that is not at all funny)
• 70's and 80's space opera, which borrowed a bit from all these: Star Wars, Space: 1999, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th century, Black Hole
• 80's sci-fi movies that aren't space operas: Terminator, Alien, Blade Runner

Now, those of you who are science fiction fans, will notice this list leaves out HUGE swaths of sci-fi, in fact, it probably leaves out 95% of all sci-fi in the world.

But this is the sci-fi that speaks to me, stories of high adventure set in a universe whose physical laws only apply when they're cool.

These are influences you will see, for better or worse, in Stranded on a Distant Star.

[Stranded on a Distant Star] 20%

So Stranded reached a milestone of sorts today: we're 20% of the way to our goal!

Thanks to everyone who contributed!

Grognardia reviews Old-School Psionics

Thanks to James at Grognardia for the thorough and thoughtful review!

Stranded on a Distant Star: specialists

This ties into my earlier post on scavenging.

One thing I'd really like to accomplish in Stranded is have those "away team" specialists really shine.

I am not sure if I will succeed at this, but I'd love for Botanist or Archaeologist to be viable character specializations.