General/OOC

[Enoch]

We can also use some portion of that money to fund trading runs (and hopefully develop an income to fund other things we want but can't currently afford).

[greyarea]

Looks awesome.

[Enoch]

I suspect we'll need trade tables and tags for at least a few planets to get started trading. I can help generate those if desired, but that's setting building, so if the GM wants to do that I'm fine either way.

[Faanku]

is Neogen paying us or themselves? We lost their ship so we don't get paid, is that it?[/dialog]

Was unsure if this is RP or a genuine question, so to be sure; the subsidiary is effectively you as a party. The money is yours.

I suspect we'll need trade tables and tags for at least a few planets to get started trading. I can help generate those if desired, but that's setting building, so if the GM wants to do that I'm fine either way.

I have trade tables for the entire (known) sector, I'm still unsure as to how much I make public. Friction and the Trouble roll are probably OK, but I'm wondering if the actual tables themselves should be revealed as you investigate each world. Or I can just post everything openly. What are your thoughts?

Also, your company will need a name!

[Enoch]

I guess that depends on how widespread travel and communication between systems is. If it's unusual, and there isn't regular trade between systems, I'd say keep them secret and reveal things about worlds as we encounter them- maybe we even only discover items on the trade tables as they get rolled (the rolls to determine which goods have good deals; i.e., we learn 2 of the goods a planet offers when we actually look for trade goods there). If trade is common, I think the trade tables may be known, or at least the world type and price modifiers.

Friction and Trouble seem like they'd be the least likely to be well-known just because they're less easy to quantify. It's easy to identify that a planet exports metawheat when your own planet's markets are bulging with metawheat imported from the planet (or the planet is covered in metawheat fields). It's less easy to quantify how much trouble it is to trade with a planet or what sort of complications might arise.

Personally, I'm perfectly happy with keeping some or all of it secret until we investigate or encounter it.

[greyarea]

is Neogen paying us or themselves? We lost their ship so we don't get paid, is that it?[/dialog]

Was unsure if this is RP or a genuine question, so to be sure; the subsidiary is effectively you as a party. The money is yours.

Role playing. He doesn't have his lawyer anymore... How else would a spoiled brat read a contract?

[Marullus]

Given the interconnectedness of the current systems and that the rumors imply intergalactic CNN, I would think the imports/exports of trade tables would also be known. Planets WANT their trade desires known (or ever oversupplied to create a buyers market). I think enough info to entice us to get there is great, with the real Problems becoming evident when we hit the ground.

[Faanku]

OK, I think we'll have the world's specialities public, and leave the Friction and Trouble Tables a secret, revealed more through RP and adventuring.
Here's what you'll be going on to start with. These can potentially change depending on events and faction turns, but that's likely to be very rare.



What do you think?

the rumors imply intergalactic CNN

There isn't any way of communicating beyond the reaches of a star system, not even TL5 worlds have that ability. What DOES happen though is that messages and reports are carried from system to system by any spike-capable ship. It's very age of sail, and if you get a sufficiently fast starship and a good enough captain you can effectively outrun news of your misdeeds or reports on the changes in a system's markets, etc. If you have a Spike-4 capable ship and a captain who can trim the course, for example, you'll arrive in system hours ahead of even specialised TL4 courier vessels.
As it stands, news takes around 2-4 days to travel one hex from its point of origin, depending on the spike route taken. For example, if a spike-3 ship (the fastest available by generic T4 worlds) and a captain trimming the course left Kakimedes with information on an event the moment it had occurred, if would take ~48 hours that news to reach Mejo only 1 hex away; 12 hours to reach the edge of Kakimedes' system to make the spike drill, then 36 hours in transit. Once the ship drilled out into Mejo's system, the report would make it to the planet remotely in a matter of minutes. If that same ship then immediately jumped again from Mejo to Aers, it would be a FURTHER 72 hours for the ship to make the 2 hex spike drill, meaning the event on Kakimedes would have happened over 5 days ago. And of course all this is hinging on a specialised vessel and crew intentionally rushing the news to Aers as fast as humanly possible. It would be far more likely for news on Kakmedes to take a full week or more to reach the Reclamists on Aers.
This ties into why Mejo is such an important hub for the Unified Systems; you can just send a few dedicated courier ships back and forth between your own planet and Mejo and have the news "come to you", rather than needing to have whole fleets of ships travelling for months at a time between various worlds.

It's a fascinating system and I absolutely love it, definitely one of the many reasons SWN stood out to me.

[Enoch]

I like it- both sharing the general info and keeping the specifics private and the explanation of information sharing between systems.

[Marullus]

+1!

All good to me!

[Faanku]

Nice, we'll go with that then.

How much time, though?

I said May in the initial State of the Sector posts, so you have about 3 months.

[Faanku]

The contract is intentionally beneficial to the party, in case you were trying to spot any loopholes or hidden gotchas; Odo is experienced enough to realise this with his Administer and Trade skills.

[Enoch]

I figured as much, but it's always nice to have confirmation.

[Faanku]

Did you have anything to add, or should I move things along?
I was waiting for someone to accept the offer IC or to propose anything extra.

[Enoch]

Sorry, I apparently wasn't clear: I meant to indicate that Odo is going back into the room and signing (though he'll ask about the racer for Silas).

[Marullus]

I did the first real faction turn and added the results to the State of the Sector page early, in case it helps with the new player's backstories.
As an aside, do you guys prefer for factions and the faction turn to be public, or to just have news tickers from the results like this? Wondering which people would prefer.

To be honest, these were lost on me - I didn't understand they were faction moves. I am not entirely sure how to engage it as a PC.

I haven't ever seen anyone engage with the Faction subsystem before. If you are inclined to share the OOC gears, I would be intrigued. I appreciate learning from you here.

[Faanku]

To be honest, these were lost on me - I didn't understand they were faction moves. I am not entirely sure how to engage it as a PC.

I haven't ever seen anyone engage with the Faction subsystem before. If you are inclined to share the OOC gears, I would be intrigued. I appreciate learning from you here.

I'm not sure how much of the faction rules you know, so I'll just start from the top.
The faction system is basically a way for the GM to simulate the sandbox universe and prompt quest and adventure ideas without needing to plan things out as you would in a more structured campaign. You create factions that represent planetary governments, large religions, rebel factions, mercenary groups, anything at all that is identifiable as a recognisable force in the sector, and you then assign them goals, traits, and a plethora of assets representing tangible buildings and people that are theoretically interactable with by the party.
After each adventure (or every month or so) there is a faction turn, where each faction makes a move to pursue their goal. They can buy new assets, move existing assets around the sector, or attack other factions. Whilst military units like gravtank formations and strike fleets might attack and be attacked in the more traditional sense of the words, when assets like lawyers or lobbyists "attack" it can represent legislative manoeuvrers in galactic courts; when a postech infantry asset attacks a bank asset, it doesn't mean a platoon of armoured squaddies has opened fire on a building, it could represent arrests in the bank's management, for instance.
It's these attacks and assets purchases/movements that leads to the news articles posted in the linked thread. Though some or even most of them don't mean much to you right now and might not lead to any adventures that involve the players, they help make the universe feel alive as things are happening even outside the DM's full control.

Below I'll get into specifics for this campaign.

This campaign's faction sheet is here.

The first thing I did was establish who the major players are in the sector, generally picking the populous worlds. You don't need to make every planet a faction, but with how intertwined the Unified Systems is it made sense to have a lot of them represented. They're all mid-sized factions, the default for planetary governments, except the Free Peoples who are less coordinated but still a force, and the fractured Kakimedian government; they are now two minor factions warring.

After statting them as appropriate to the narrative, they each get a trait and a goal. Most of these are self-explanatory. Mejo for instance, with its favourable trade hub status and links to the Exchange, want to keep everything business as usual, so they get the Exchange Consulate tag and the Peaceable Kingdom goal. Meanwhile the Giran Ascendancy, with their genetech mastery, get the Eugenics Cult tag and the goal of Planetary Seizure, wanting to fully claim Melanth for themselves.

Next comes assets. Using Mejo as an example again, the first thing I wanted to do was represent their lucrative markets and popularity as a free port. They got Venture Capital and Pretech Researchers to embody the large number of exotic items available on the planet, as well as Party Machines to represent the overwhelming approval from the general public. As they are a mid-sized faction, they get 2 assets of their highest stat and 1 each from the others, so for their force asset pick I went with Counterintel Unit to represent the reach of the Council's spy network and preventative military policies. They could have just as easily been a Guerilla Populace or Hardened Personnel to embody their ties to the Free Peoples pirates or more obvious troops, but Conterintel seemed more Mejoan.

Now that every faction had its tags, goals and assets, it was time for the first turn. After rolling randomly for the turn order and assigning every faction their monthly income, the Daphion Monarchy was up first. Looking at their goal of Expand Influence, I figured they'd want to establish a base of influence on Mejo, so the first thing they did was move their Blockade Fleet (which represents Sarokoulan privateers working for Queen Elasine) one hex into Mejo's system. This is a Use Asset Ability action, and as no other assets belonging to Daphion have any abilities, this was the end of their turn; a faction can only take one action every turn. Next up was the Giran Ascendancy, whose goal is to seize Melanth. They need a unit on the planet they want to claim, but have no way of transporting them, so they purchases the Freighter Contract asset in preparation for next turn. As Purchase an Asset is an action and they had spent all their income, that was the end of their turn.

Once everyone has had a turn, the GM then extrapolates what happened and converts it into in universe information. In this case, I used headlines on the Mejoan News Network to represent snippets of news you might have caught in your 3 weeks of downtime, maybe checking the feeds on your comm or catching a TV in a bar somewhere.
There are other ways to represent this obviously, but I thought this was nice and flavourful.

Some examples of what led to the news headlines:
- Daphion moving a unit to Mejo triggered the Free Peoples' Pirate tag, as they have a base of operations on Mejo; Daphion thus "paid" one faccred to the Free Peoples. Later on in the turn, Lorina's movement of their Commodities Broker to Mejo triggered this tag as well, then later still the Free Peoples' Franchise asset successfully attacked Daphion's privateers. Because of all this the Free Peoples ended the turn the richest faction in the sector, and seeing as their Franchise asset represents deniable piracy this means a lot of money was lost to criminal activity. That in turn led to EXCHANGE BOUNTIES REACH RECORD NUMBERS, as well as the hint that Daphion privateers are in the sector with the Free Peoples "claiming their own losses to 'external influences'."

- The Mejoan Council's Venture Capital asset managed to roll a 1, destroying itself. This inspired the Magnus Partnership into existence, to represent the heavy blow to the faction's wealth. Later in the turn, Lorina, the Plutocratic tagged faction with a Commercial Expansion goal, moved one of the powerful wealth assets to Mejo. Though they had no direct involvement in the loss of the Venture Capital, it was easy to link the two moves together narratively; MAGNUS CEO LEVIES BLAME ON LORINA becomes a headline, and now there's an in-universe animosity between the two factions that can lead to adventures, as well as making Lorina more than just a place that makes starships.

- The Assembly of Clans moved their Postech Infantry asset to Kakimedes via their Extended Theatre, led by the faction's Military Conquest goal. The Reclamists also moved their Lawyers to the planet with its Covert Transit Net asset. Though both factions did basically the same thing, narratively the results are much different. The Sarkoulans moved military units in military troops transports, whilst the Reclamists Lawyers represent missionaries and aid workers, the Transit Net representing how widespread the Faith is. The Reclamists could have just as easily moved to Mejo or Daphion for their goal, but narratively it made sense for them to assist the beleaguered psions on Kakimedes.

And that's pretty much it. Apologies if this comes across as rambling, I'm typing it on and off.
If you have any questions feel free to ask them, I enjoy this system a lot and it's absolutely amazing for inspiring adventures in a sandbox.

[Spykee]

Personally, I prefer being able to see the faction turns. I've several reasons but the major one is it'll help me learn now SWN works. Just my two penny's.

[Faanku]

Personally, I prefer being able to see the faction turns. I've several reasons but the major one is it'll help me learn now SWN works. Just my two penny's.

OK, I added the previous post as a spoiler underneath the State of the Sector update, and will add an explanation of each faction turn to future posts similarly.
The spreadsheet is linked in those posts, so you can see each factions tags and assets already, but if you want to know more about the technical side of things then feel free to ask.

[Enoch]

We do still have to come up with a name for our company. I don't have any great ideas, and I'm not sure I can identify a single theme that unites our crew. Here are a few ideas I got off a name generator, but please add your own ideas.

• Axiom Lines
• Passport Cargo
• Praxis Shipping
• Dimensional Reclaimation, Inc. (DRI)
• Universal Transports
• Bag's End Exports