High concept for this campaign springs from Iain M. Banks Algebraist - in that there is a thread of interstellar civilization that sees military defense as a thing like the fire brigade. Humans have stumbled to the stars into the midst of this and through the arcana of ancient opaque interstellar governance processes bid for a bunch of star systems. The humans understood they were taking over the systems. The galactics understood they were just taking over responsibility for those systems. The humans won the bids because noone else wanted the hassle. You are some of those humans.
The pitch is "SHIELD or Stargate Command but you are responsible for a sector of inhabited alien worlds". Throw in some Babylon 5 but the aliens are not bothering to come and talk to you.
Ingredients I want to have in here:
Star Wars Cantina / Mass Effect mixed bag of aliens
Cranky local aliens who are going to make you go down on the surface and play conflict-resolving sheriff
Cryptic weird aliens that are going to need you to figure out their nonsense
Teeming alien metropoli that are both your responsibility and utterly beyond your control
Alien factions prosecuting bizarre ancient vendettas
Space pirates
Far fewer resources than the situation apparently needs because your parent group underbid
Ruins, mothballed alien kit and lots of opportunities for salvage, refit and empire building
NPC hotshot mecha/fighter jockeys you need to keep in line
At least one kaiju deployed in an orbital drop
Dubious allied aliens with their own agenda
Aliens having their own utterly unrelated Epic Adventure on your patch
Perhaps the campaign concept could be 'start with the alert' with each session or small set of sessions being a particular crisis then a block of downtime where everything just rattles along.
I am not sure if I would put the players as front-liners or make them the division heads and give them a giant toolkit of stuff. Managing and maintaining the toolkit between missions would be a thing to be dealt with in and of itself. Possibly a resource management minigame for downtime? You have a kaiju, how are you feeding it and housing it between crises? You have a bunch of highly strung mecha-pilots, how do you keep them from dueling with each other over romantic slights? Other options could be some actual supers, an investigations team, hackers, auditors, diplomats, naval capital ships, etc.
I would like to give scope for matching of crisis to tools - maybe the players strap on their own transforming mechs and deal with things personally, maybe they slap a bounty contract on a fugitive, maybe they glass the city the problem is in from orbit and deal with the repercussions afterwards. I would very much like players to have 'obvious overkill' options available.
Types of stories told through all of this would be basically anything interesting I ever felt like stealing from supers stories, sci-fi disaster movies (this week Independence Day, next week Pacific Rim!) or big graphic novels like Metabarons or the like. The playspace would be a set handful of worlds to give the chance for familiarity with the terrain and build some connections as opposed to being the Navy and every crisis is in a different place.
Also gives scope for 'low noise' crises like dealing with people digging up something ancient and ominous, investigating odd murders, diplomacy and the like.
For my Joesky tax - a couple of problems a newly arrived system defense force needs to deal with:
1. Exploration / Census - the maps are wrong, the sensor readings are telling you all your databanks are lies, the only thing right seems to be the number of planetary objects. Time to figure out what you even have here.
2. The warm welcome - the locals have been waiting with a list of things they want to resolve. How much of this is nonsense? What do they expect you to do about the rampant gang wars in the undersea mining bases? None of this was in the brief.
3. The gear - your inventory finds half your crew exist on paper only and all the equipment you need was bought from the lowest bidder. You need to figure out what you have and who you need to operate it before something really goes wrong.
4. A massive earth corporation has arrived behind you - they have 2 enforcers for every one of yours and worse, three times the lawyers. What are they up to and why are the locals so agitated about it?
5. There is a blank on your sensors. You can see the system gas giant has five moons out the window of your station but sensors and any local you ask insist there are four moons. The closest you got to an answer was an old terran drifter who lived here before the system changed hands who said 'don't wake them' and spaced himself that night.
6. The locals insist there is a major system drill scheduled and have been cracking open vaults, spinning up defense systems and buzzing around in patrols doing target practice. Your planetside assets are sure that something is going to happen with all this noise as cover but they have not gotten their networks deep enough yet to say what.
Edit - further thoughts on assets you have to play with here.
I like this concept. If I were running it, I'd want the players to start as the people sent in to solve the problem by the corporate bosses with various problems created by inept managers: Not enough staff, terribly vague instructions and no further communication, inadequate resources, old/unreliable equipment, excuses, finger pointing, accounting says you're spending too much money... If done right, it could be hilarious.
ReplyDeleteAll of that - combined with a crew of hot-headed, over-powered minions that you have to ride herd on. And never getting thanked, of course.
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