Character Summary:
Jack, I love that chart! Great idea! I updated it to the newer version of Jesse and added the current sheets for Edmund and Rusty.
Jesse Milly Percy Edmund Rusty
10 12 12 6 4 Influence (Average: 9)
8 10 8 6 6 Notice (Average: 8)
4 8 10 8 4 Fly (Average: 7)
10 4 10 6 4 Know (Average: 7)
10 4 4 8 8 Fight (Average: 7)
6 4 10 6 6 Focus (Average: 6)
10 6 4 4 6 Shoot (Average: 6)
6 4 4 8 8 Operate (Average: 6)
4 4 4 8 8 Labor (Average: 6)
4 8 6 4 4 Drive (Average: 5)
4 6 4 4 8 Fix (Average: 5)
6 4 4 4 8 Survive (Average: 5)
6 4 4 8 4 Treat (Average: 5)
4 8 4 4 4 Perform (Average: 5)
4 4 8 4 4 Trick (Average: 5)
4 4 4 8 4 Move (Average: 5)
4 6 4 4 4 Sneak (Average: 4)
4 4 4 4 6 Craft (Average: 4)
4 4 4 4 6 Throw (Average: 4)
The good news is that we have at least one guy with at least a 6 in every skill. We are definitely weighted to fly/chase around the universe investigating things and convincing difficult people.
What's Our Storyline?
Antman9 wrote:Marullus wrote:I think we need to nail down the campaign theme before we can go further with the ship.
I definitely agree. I need to have that at least somewhat narrowed down so I can develop, bare minimum, the first/opening act. Hence the reasoning for my most recent round of annoying questions.
The A-Team option sounds cool to me, but I'm not playing a character. That might just be my age showing a bit too
Quaid Slauson wrote:Jack wrote:Marullus wrote:So far we have the following ideas floating and not all of them mesh:
- An independent crew picking up work to keep flyin'. (Firefly show style)
- A licensed trader doing legit work for the Guild, trying to balance their demands with our own (and competing) interests.
- Privateering - with official or at least tacit approval, we hunt down bad apples, disable their ships, and live off their bounties.
- Serving the Seht corporation by doing clandestine work to get the blueprints, tech, and materials needed for the dream of launching 2nd gen ships without the Alliance knowing about it.
- Investigating crimes and finding secrets, then stopping the corrupt bastards who orchestrate them.
- Being like the A-Team. An elite team helping the little guy and sticking it to the Alliance in a clandestine, undetectable ship.
My favorites are combining 2 and 1 (the trader's guild occasionally asking us to do certain jobs for helping us out of sticky situations, the salvage guild permit allowing us to legally tow/pick/strip/fix&fly derelicts we find as we're doing other things). We can mix it up with some 5/6 episodes (where Milly brings in a job?), and as background we're regularly doing 4 jobs which can come back to bite us in the buttocks for some of the season finales. (For Seht, I'm think generations ships, like the ones used for extremely long voyages (e.g. from Earth-that-was to the Core, but in this case going the other way) that take more than a generation to reach their destination.)
I'm not a fan of 3 where we're fighting the Alliance's enemies as privateers, but if money's tight and we just disable instead of blasting other ships, our ship can be customized to do that.
I agree with Jack on 1 and 2 being favorites. A combo works for me.
I'd like to acknowledge and thank Antman for running this game: ultimately it is his choice alone as to what kind of adventures and episodes he wants to run, and I am grateful he's asking for so much input into that decision.
As for my personal thoughts to add to this discussion: Given the crew we have (an investigator/face, a bounty hunter, a black-ops specialist, a mechanic/heavy, and a captain/pointman), I love the idea of "taking on the bad guys that nobody else will touch." This has our ship as clearly independent and taking on jobs from the disenfranchised, tackling bullies and corrupt entities who abuse them and turning the tables to the benefit of the little guy. This can be A-team style jobs in any locale (#6) or hunting and taking out bully-pirates at their ships as privateers (#3), while doing odd jobs in between (#1). Everything we do pisses off the owners of the status quo (be they criminal, alliance, or trade guild), but is for the cause of good, and I see that appealing to all our character's backgrounds.
I don't understand the recent quick-shift to the Trade Guild, and I'd like to know the intent there. Who is the Trade Guild? Are you using the Seht Corporation as our "Trade Guild" or is this a new entity we haven't discussed? If new, what are their motivations? Why are we willing to be beholden to them instead of independent?
I see being beholden to a greater power as fundamentally at odds with "get a ship and keep flyin'" independence which was the original theme. I'm okay with it if that's the group's choice but I want us to be explicit, and right now I don't understand. Percy went from being a criminal-branded anarchist to being a corporate stooge, and I'm not sure from the conversation why that is. We're now talking about he, and the ship, being potentially beholden to both a Trade Guild and a secret Seht Corporation. That's a very different feel than the original Firefly series and concept we were targeting. I'm not sure that we can reconcile this after play begins, so I want us to be clear on a direction to help Antman plan forward.
I am honestly okay if the group chooses any of the choices above. I just want us all to be on the same page on what we're doing and what our expectations are.
(While our characters are well-suited for all scenarios, running trade, disabling pirate ships, and clandestine ops all require different ship builds.)
Jack wrote:Marullus wrote:But we are working with Seht, doing clandestine jobs for them under Alliance noses. Pro-law but anti-corruption? Seems to be our theme as each of us ran into distasteful and corrupt practices which drove us from our former lives. Pro-law makes us good at loopholes.
What kind of jobs are we expecting, then?
I think your summary of transporting "blueprints, tech, and materials" is perfect. Some of the development will be at Andersonville, Salisbury, Kalidasa, and some of it elsewhere but we don't know about that. The integration work (adding engines to 2 hollowed out asteroids, and putting everything together as the generation ship?) will again be done at 2 different locations, and we won't know either location - most people working with the project only know parts of the plan.
Discussing this one separately. I think these kind of missions would be fun - but this is fundamentally a Corporate Espionage campaign, and that is a bit different than a Firefly-like game clinging to the Rim. The key component of this is clandestine or covert operations (not knowing anything happened, or if they know it happened not knowing who did it) so that the Alliance can't "connect the dots" back to the Seht Corporation. Our group should excel at that kind of work (it is my guy's specialty, even) and I would have a lot of fun playing it. I want to make sure that others would have fun, too.
What I would expect here:
- Missions deep into Alliance core space to steal plans and technology that Seht needs but doesn't have access to. This means infiltrating corporations or government facilities, accessing files or hard copies, and exfiltrating them to our trip without getting caught. Then, escaping the scene without our ship and signature being recorded and tied to the event.
- Getting rare materials needed for the Seht Corporation's work. This could be getting rid of the pirates who are plaguing a mining colony and thus securing that mining colony's exclusive contracts through shell companies so the ores and materials go back to Seht. This could be raiding a seedy den of bad guys to steal something they already stole off of some freighters, all while ensuring they don't realize what the real target of the raid is. This could be rescuing a brilliant engineer from (whomever has him and won't let him go) so he can join the Seht project.
- Containing the secrets. Loose lips sink ships and Seht can't afford their ships to get sunk. We might be asked to hunt down and silence defectors, moles, or random third parties who know something that they shouldn't and get it done before they can leak what they know to someone else.
I see our relationship being either vertical or horizontal.
- Vertical: We work for the Seht corporation and they have some control over us - we (or at least the captain) are either loyal to the cause, beholden financially (they own the ship/captain's debt?), or subject to blackmail of some kind. Because of the immense secrecy that Seht must demand, I see them wanting this relationship.
- Horizontal: We are an independent ship doing independent jobs. But the Captain has some friends at Seht; they ask us to help them out sometimes and we choose to help or not at the time. I assume we prefer this, but then I'd follow up by asking, "why does Seht trust us so much when we are a liability to them?" At what point would Seht send other assets to contain and control US as potential loose-lips?
I hope that explicitly laying that out helps us come to terms on some of the details. What is it your are thinking, Jack? What do others prefer? Are you okay with Vertical? If we are Horizontal to them, how much of our story do you want to be Seht-related work? Just the occasional link (20%)? A big focus (50%)? A piece of each job? (70%)?