The Wanna Be #12 "What is Starfaring?"

Okay, first things first.

I had contacted Ken St. Andre, the original author of Starfaring and Tunnels & Trolls, telling him my intention to do a new edition and he had this to say:

Why on earth would you do that? Now Starfaring sounds pretty good as a column title, but the first edition so underwhelmed the world, that a second one seems redundant.

Go for it, Jack. To tell the truth, it'll be a miracle if I ever do anything notable again. If you use any of my ideas, I'd appreciate a little credit, sort of like what DC does for Bob Kane or Siegel and Schuster. :-)

In other words, go ahead, but why bother. Who would care?

That is a darn good question. Sure Starfaring has a place in Role-Playing Game history. But does the world need a new edition of it?

The answer is, of course it does. Christ, you start questioning your projects worth like this you might as well just pack it in, go home and take a nap.

Does Starfaring have a future and a place in the RPG marketplace? Will people like it? Will it sell? Will it make a dollar and a cent?

You bet your sweet ass, it will.

Good, that’s settled.

You have to believe in yourself. Otherwise, who else will?

Second edition Starfaring is going to be a monumental undertaking. The original book had barely a suggestion of a world, (or universe) in the traditional RPG sense of the word. This means I’ll be building this world from scratch from the ground up, milking whatever inspiration I can from the original book.

When it come to world building, especially for a commercial product, there are many, many schools of thought on the subject. What’s a good thing to do? What’s bad? The truth of the matter is that RPGs are still pretty new. We’re still experimenting with the medium. There is no “right” or “wrong” per se. But there's what does sell and what doesn’t. Or, more accurately, what has sold and what has not.

I’m sure everybody has a ton of advice or their own viewpoint, for that matter. But this is my game, my design. Therefore, I’ll use my own design philosophy.

The way I see it, there are two main parts to a role playing game: the rules and the world.

The rules tell you how to play the game. I’ll focus on the rules for Starfaring sometime later, but suffice it to say I plan to modify the Tunnels & Trolls/Mercenaries Spies & Private Eyes engine to suit my needs.

The world tells you why you play the game. That is, why play Starfaring instead of Star Wars (any edition), or Star Trek or Star Frontiers or Alternity or Traveler, ferchrissakes. There is no real shortage of space adventure games. The reason you’d pick up Starfaring over any of the other games has a lot to do with the world. If you like the Kien, you’d pick up Starfaring just to get the rules and background material on the Kien race. Even if you play to convert it to GURPS.

Now, there are many ways to create a world and many tools to help. One major tool that has been both slammed and lauded is fiction, also known as flavor text or gaming fiction. I happen to like flavor text. This is probably because most of the flavor text I’ve seen actually enhances the feel for the game. I’m mostly talking about the Warhammer Armies books. I have a much better idea what the Warhammer Old World is like thanks to those brief little stories.

That seems to be the secret: brevity. The stories are meant to enhance the feel of the world, not take over the whole book. Well, it may seem to be the secret, anyway. Before I’m done I may even start work on a Starfaring novel. Like anything else, it’ll have to take it’s own shape. I shouldn’t cut a 10,000-word story to 500 words just to make sure it’s brief. Because then it’ll be a bad story, which will be no help at all.

Another tool is the metaplot, but I’m not sure if I want to use it or not. Star Wars is a perfect example of an overarching metaplot. You have the evil empire ruling the galaxy, Luke Skywalker and company come in and take them out. What’s left for the players to do? If the players kill Darth Vader or the Emperor or some similar action that’s not in the Star Wars cannon, it’s not really Star Wars. They could just do stuff on the side of the main action from the movies, but that’s not quite so satisfying.

Naturally, this hasn’t stopped hundreds of people from enjoying all incarnations of the Star Wars RPG, however they decided to play it. This largely due to the popularity of the Star Wars films, which probably helped fans overlook the metaplottiness of the games.

I guess the problem that many have with metaplots come from the fact that the metaplot tends to involve the author’s own group of adventurers accomplishing things that are best left up to the player characters.

I suppose, like anything else it’s a matter of it being done right, with “done right” being highly subjective. At this time, I’m considering an active political climate with worlds being won and lost. Wars, intrigue, assassinations, coupes. A dynamic world seems more alive.

I may also chronicle the adventures of a group of “heroes,” but I’ll have to be careful to make sure they don’t ruin perfectly good adventures by overthrowing all the evil empires. This would probably be a delicate balancing act. Making sure the heroes have some impact but not too much impact.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

When writing a role playing game world, a good one in my mind, to a certain extent the world must be held in a sort of stasis, but with many adventure seeds about to happen.

Remember back to high school science class and potential and kinetic energy. Take a ball; lift it in the air. The ball gains potential energy. Release the ball, it converts the potential energy to kinetic energy. The ball comes to rest on the floor and has neither potential nor kinetic energy. Sleepy, sleepy ball.

This, in my opinion, is the secret to making a good (and commercially sound) RPG world. Many balls floating in the air just waiting to drop. Those nifty little ideas inspiring GM's to the point that they simply have to run a game.

Of course, it’s easier to come up with the idea of these neat little adventure seeds then to actually come up with the darn things.

Now, to describe the world of Starfaring.

This time, instead of making the same mistakes I made with my fantasy world, I’ll try to do right by Starfaring’s space adventure world. By this I mean that when I was describing my fantasy world, I was telling you stuff I didn’t really have. Most of the ideas are just that-- ideas. I don’t have a fully fleshed out fantasy world named Grenoble with the principle NPC’s I had outlined. Not at all. Most of that stuff I was making up as I went along.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but I didn’t give you the sense of making it up on the fly when I was describing Grenoble. Heck, even the name Grenoble was made up on the spot. It sounds oddly familiar...

Oh well. Actually Grenoble is a sufficiently cool name that I think I’ll keep it. But that’s for later.

The world of Starfaring takes place in the year 1,000,000 AD. Yes, the year one million. I rather like that. Terms like “a million years” tend to be thrown around a lot. But I have yet to see a science fiction world that takes place in the calendar year of one million. (Oh, it probably exists. I can’t be the first person to think of such a thing.)

Strange thing, there is no neat term for the year one million like millennium. In fact, the term million comes from the Latin mille, which means thousand. Million means, literally, a thousand thousand. Billion is extrapolation on the term million. Bi- meaning two, and so on. And billion means something different in the UK, so the whole issue is just weird.

I have chosen the year One Million because it is a nice, round number and many sci-fi world are way too close to the present, in my opinion. Star Trek takes place only a couple thousand years from now, for example. I wanted enough time to pass to allow for milestone like interstellar travel, colonization of space, contact with extra terrestrials to not only occur, but also to become old hat.

This goes back to the overall theme I tend to use when building a world. With the fantasy world, I wanted to make the fantasy elements fantastic again. I did this by envisioning a nation more or less devoid of most fantasy creatures and magic. With Starfaring, the word I’m looking at is the word alien. Alien races, unlike fantasy races are not necessarily rooted deep in the collective psyche or myths and legend. Aliens are... alien, unfamiliar. In Starfaring, I want to make the alien familiar. I want to make the unreal commonplace, possible boring. It will be interesting if I can actually pull this off without resorting to typical cheats such as fantasy races in space (Vulcans are pretty much Elves in space,) or even weaker alien concepts like bird men, cat men, dog men, etc.

This is going to be difficult. It’s not beyond my imagination to cook up an entire race no one has seen before, with a unique physiology, psychology, culture, etc. But how do you get people to relate to something so...alien?

Well, I’m going to do what I normally do went confronted with something so darn difficult and no idea how to do it. I’ll ignore it. Chances are, each race will present it’s own solution to this problem. I have to come up with the races first then I’ll worry about making people relate to them.

Back to the universe of the year One Million.

I see a main focus political body know as the Galactic Empire. The Empire is my Federation, my New Republic. They’re the good guys.

I’m using the term Empire mostly because of Games Workshops’ Warhammer game. The fantasy game, I never cared too much for Warhammer 40,000. The Empire is the main “good” nation. The emperor, Karl Franz, is a nice guy. This goes against the typical connotation Empire tends to have for me, mostly due to Star Wars and Reagan’s “evil empire” comment. I kind of like breaking tradition like that.

Now that I’ve admitted inspiration on GW’s part, I should probably state for the record that my Empire is not meant to be, nor could it ever possibly be confused with their Empire or their Imperium in any way. Lawyers have teeth, ya know.

In fact, the Galactic Empire will have a very different look and feel from the dark, gothic Imperium. The Empire is a bright, peaceful place. A place of learning, introspection, understanding.

I’m taking some direct inspiration from the original Starfaring book here. Important commodities in that game are star crystals, which power a starship’s engines, shields and weapons. For some odd reason, names of Hindu gods are used: Vishnu, Brahma, (blank). The Galactic Empire will have a Hindu/Indian look and feel.

This actually speaks to me on a visceral level. Some of my favorite music has had deep Indian influence, notable George Harrison of the Beatles and Led Zeppelin.

I haven’t seen any games with a strong Hindu flavor before. I like that, it’s unique. (There may be one out there. I haven’t played everything)

Apart from the idyllic Empire is the Terran Federation. I had considered the name Terran Confederation, but I’ve decided use of the word confederacy may be a bit loaded for what I’m going to do with them.

I’m making them Nazis in space.

Well, that’s probably a bit strong for it. The Federation is pretty much human controlled space. While the Empire is racially integrated, the Federation is very much humans first. Alien races are second class citizens at best, worthless vermin to be exterminated at worst.

Yes, it’s a heavy-handed allegory for prejudice. I’m not sorry about it.

The militaristic nature of the Federation is what makes me think Nazis. Most of the Federation, or at least those you’re likely to meet in space are in their military; ruthless, disciplined, highly trained efficient.

Come to think of it, I suppose all other races have their own space apart from the Empire. However, for the finished product I’ll focus more on the Terrans than the other races. Hey, the game will have a Terran-centric slant because I’m from Earth and I’m likely to sell it to other Earth people. Maybe editions on other worlds will focus more on other races. Maybe, if I can find a publisher out there.

However, in spite of the harsh nature of the Terran Federation, they aren’t the “bad guys” to the Empire’s “good guys.” That’s a role reserved to the Sl’sh.

The Sl’sh are directly inspired by the original Starfaring book. Ken St. Andre put them in to have the traditional bug eyed monsters in his game. The Slish, as he called them are octopoidal, non-psionic but also immune to psionic attack, and their technology works on completely different, unexplained principles. Their name, by the way, is an onomatopoeia because they go slish! slish! slish! when they walk around. (Ken St. Andre is famous for his sense of humor.)

In developing the core universe, there will be the inside, where the Empire, Federation and other normal races, and the outside, that space beyond the inside. I’m not sure if the inside will be a single galaxy, or several. But outside, all bets are off. Outside is a nice place for GMs to put their own mark on the Starfaring world. A place to stake out their own little corner of the universe.

The Sl’sh are from outside, beyond outside in fact. I’ll turn the octopoidal appearance into a Cthonian nature. The Sl’sh are true monsters. Not being natural creatures of this material plain, they do not value life and have exterminated countless races. Cruel, remorseless, thorough. The Sl’sh are an evil to behold, and overcome.

This is but a general overview of what I’m attempting to do with Starfaring as well as the thinking behind some of those decisions.

In the future I’ll have to flesh out the various races and political bodies, perhaps nail down a timeline, describe some of the super scientific gadgets available in the year One Million, and work on the system.

Oy!

Until next time.