ess-pea-ay-CE emm-ay-pea-pea: SPACE MAPP!

Maps!

I found a way to do a 3D Map on the web - where the hard work was done by someone else!

You can see the site and play around with it here: 

https://plot.ly/~bloo/67/stellar-map-test/

The ability to color code systems, let players easily look at the map, and for that map to be in 3D, instead of faking it with a 2D map is much more appealing to me. (The data there is actually from something completely unrelated to stellar locations).

CharGen

I've been making some steady progress on this, mostly by taking a big red pen to a lot of Traveller old saws. I'll post some examples soon. One example: Vacc Suit is not a skill in taking suits on and off. Vacc Suit 1 means you are trained in putting the suit on and off, maintaining it, making simple repairs, etc. Vacc Suit 2 is skill with EVA units - squirting around space like Clooney in Gravity. Vacc Suit 3 would be something like Ripley's powerloader exoskeleton (but pressurized) in Aliens. Battledress will be treated similarly. Barring subsequent better thoughts.

Black Friday Approaches

I have often attempted to avoid have some face-to-face gaming going on during Black Friday (November 27 this year). Managed to pull it off once or twice. It approaches again and I think I'm going to shoot for it as a goal. Especially now that I've got my own office with a giant conference table, tons of comfy seating, and space for all my game junk.

So things might accelerate here a bit. Of course, I'm still hoping to combine face-to-face and online and/or asynchronous play. Even if it is only some guidelines from LHCV, DoW on likely scenarios.

(What is "LHCV, DoW"? If you don't know, you are not cleared for that information?)

Addendum:

If you didn't get the reference in the post title:

Fold Space?

Been thinking about interstellar travel. I never liked the fixed duration of Traveller's "7 days per jump, regardless of distance" rule (and I think it falls apart if you look at the canonical ship designs). But I am fond of the speed of communication being the same as the speed of travel.

Folding space appeals to me. There is an Origin point and a Destination point. We can consider those in the same plane. Imagine that piece of paper folded so the two points touch. Jump the small distance on one point to the other - boom - interstellar travel. So goes the standard metaphor.

But folding space should be hard. Instead of making the points 'touch', let's just shorten the distance by curving space  - put a slight curve in the plane.

To travel along this shorter curve, and not the full, long, scenic, realspace path, you exit realspace and enter a new type of space - "fold space. In the lower right of the image below, this is the region around D.

The amount of time the trip takes depends on how far away the target is - and probably on how good your fold drives are? More advanced fold drives would presumably let you get farther from realspace, shortening the trip further. This would allow one ship to catch another in fold space, and probably precipitate both into realspace.

Fold space is kind of like skimming through real space, you're not in realspace, but you're right next to it. Some things would precipitate you out of fold space: large masses (stars), black holes, quasars, fold drive failure, etc. The better your fold drives, the greater a mass you can ignore.

I think I'd like ships in fold space to be detectable at the destination, or along the way, by ships or sensors in fold space. For example: a sentry ship (or really a station or automated fold space buoy or something), who totally aren't pirates at all, enters fold space and monitors for inbound ships. Incoming ships detected, take notes, back to real space and broadcast a warning

Change destination while in fold space? Or fold, drop, realign, fold, repeat?

Is this just the Star Wars system?

Is this metaphor helped by the idea of a Holographic Universe? Sure. Why not?

Science Fiction Requires Science

Another survey to see if there's any consensus of opinion on technology stuff. Teleporters, Replicators, AI, Clones, Robots, Etc.

Tech Survey

Setting Inspirations

Merely for seeing if there are any unconscious leanings to or away from various flavors, scents, and rhythms. I'm keeping my feelings out of these. I have intentionally omissions some popular sci-fi themed media examples because I am kind of annoyed by them and others because I am forgetful. Don't analyze my sorting biases - just react on your own.

Take a look at the following images, watch the videos, listen to the music. I'm pretty certain none of you have seen or heard all of them.

Because I am too cheap to pay too much for surveys that would let me embed or even have proper links to things, this round use the number and title to respond to the survey link.

(Note: there is no order to these except how my poor memory dredges things up with help from webtron. Webtron is your friend. Listen to Webtron.)

Survey link!

Lord Weird Slough Feg

Blue Oyster Cult: Veteran of the Psychic Wars

Wally Wood

Spacegirl

Buck Rogers:

(for the intro music)

Why not Gil Gerard 1980s version of Buck Rogers?

THAT BUCK ROGERS SCARRED MY MOTHER!

LITERALLY!

ON HER LEG.

THERE IS A SCAR!

Symphonies of the Planets

NASA <BEEP> Talk <BOOP> Over

20 Minutes of Oxygen

Star Blazers

2001 Daft Punk

2001 Straight

Actually, 2001 was pretty damn trippy

Alien

Aliens: with marines

Forbidden Planet

Outland

Last Starfighter

Hunter Prey

Legend of the Galactic Heroes

Awkward fan dub

Slingers

In case the video doesn't work: vimeo link.

"Borrowing" from Shadowrun

I've recently learned of the Priority system that Shadowrun uses in its lastest incarnation or two. Character generation ("chargen") is divided into several categories and the player assigns each category a priority. You can see it here. The categories there are: Race (and Special Points), Attributes (Strength, Dexterity, etc.), Magic/Resonance, Skill Points, and Resources. You pick one for your highest priority, another category for second, etc.

The way it is set up, if you want to be a full-on Wizard, you must assign Magic as your top priority. You want to be a Shadowrun Troll with all the trolly advantages, you must choose Race as your top priority. (So you can't have a Full Troll who is also Full Wizard, which shapes the world a bit, but this is also just the starting place in an hopefully balanced way between players).

This appeals to me. With some fiddling, it should work well with other settings.
Feudal (or Active Military) rank could replace Resources, or supplement it. More generically Organizational Power. Psionics or Powers can replace Magic, etc.

Just throwing up a quick hypothetical:

Priority	Attributes	Skill Points	Rank	Organization/Affilation	Resources	Powers
A	58	34	Head	Interstellar Mega Org. (Fleets)	Gigabucks	Kwisatz Haderach!
B	53	28	Senior Level	Interstellar Medium Org. (Battalion)	Megabucks	Veteran of a 1000 Psychic Wars
C	48	22	Junior Level	Interstellar Small/System Large Org. (Squad)	Kilobucks	You have one trick
D	43	16	Veteran NCO	System Medium Org. (Sidekick)	A few bucks	You can sort of sense something, maybe
E	38	12	None	None / System Small Org.	No bucks	You got bupkis
F	32	6	Stripped	Outcast from something	Major debts	You got worse than bupkis.

Keep in mind, this would be a starting point for players - things change. The goal is interesting choices and all players start with the same options.

The parentheticals in Organization/Affiliation is an idea that a character might control other characters to some degree. Han Solo has Chewie (or vice versa), but Admiral Thawn commands Fleets. Commander Apollo commands a Squad (which is effectively a "gang" in combat).

Also worth noting, I use the term "command" specifically. It isn't pure "control". A command gets interpreted and sentient entities have the ability to override or ignore them. Or fail a morale or discipline check. Or be influenced by others.

Setting Survey

A brief survey for getting your feedback on the feel of a sci-fi setting.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RJXMC5V

• How to choose or define the setting
• Interstellar travel style
• Interplanetary combat style
• Technology diffusion

Survey Results

8 of 10 respondents so far, which included a couple of people who are more boardgamers than role-players. Half are non-DFW area. So that's enough for me to start drawing some conclusions - especially as some people are likely not interested or able to play at all.

Genre Interest

Not what I would have guessed (and some responses may yet come in).

• Science Fiction / Far Future (most Liked + Favorited)
• Post Apocalyptic
• Fantasy (most Favorited)
• Super Powers
• Near Future (most "Not Sure")
• (above here zero "Not Interested")
• Spies and Mysteries
• Military Action
• Wild West
• Time-Travel / Dimension Hopping
• Steampunk
• Supernatural
• (below here multiple "Not Interested")
• Pre-WWII Adventure
• Modern
• Horror
• Martial Arts (least interest of any type)
• Victoriana (most "Not Interested")

Focusing on the positive, not that there is a need to combine anything but some very preliminary thoughts leap to mind: 

Sci-Fi + Post Apoc. = Megatraveller Rebellion-ish  (some bits of I've recently acquired) or Star Viking (which Traveller borrows a lot from). It would be pretty well suited to a strategic and tactical game. Hacked to bajeezus, naturally.

Fantasy + Post Apoc. = something I made some notes on last year. I envisioned players having a writ to recover land devastated by a comet impact and try to improve with a bit of the feel of Crusader Kings 2 on the strategic level. Based on actual Europe.

And there's a fantasy idea I have set in real Europe that becomes quasi-apocalyptic that doesn't involve a comet.

Super Powers could quickly become the cause of a Post Apocalyptic setting by creating the apocalypse. That's basically Abberant, or Rising Stars. And I've been looking at Marvel's FASERIP system a lot lately - it's all free online.

Other things: 

Most are fine with some math and are cool with whatever dice work. Everyone whats to put some thought in to their characters. Pretty evenly split on how to generation method except that no one likes pre-gens - as it should be.

Split between Classes (with prestige or sub-classes) and Skills (with some restrictions) for those having a preference.

I like my character to enter the game universe as... Pretty evenly spread amongst all answers

Level up or Leveled up? Almost all for Variable.

Power levels. The clear preference is up to human theoretical maximum.

Character generation methods: no interest for Class and Race with prereqs or building points for everything but nothing else is consistent.

Current Thoughts: The Hundred Light Years War?

I'm leaning Sci-Fi. Perhaps with a touch of Apocalypse (fall of the Empire - Game of Space Thrones? Space Kingmaker?).  It allows for some of the other well-liked broad categories such as Military Action (Space Marines) and Spies and Mysteries (Sandbaggers in Space?).