by Jason Campbell
The past few weeks we’ve been developing the “bones” for a sci-fi campaign. Today we’re going to look at the beginning of this campaign, and in following weeks we’ll be touching on how the sessions go, from a GM and players’ perspective.
Genre: This game will be science fiction, somewhere in between space opera and hard sci-fi.
Game System: We decided to run this game using the Cypher System Revised, from Monte Cook Games. I know this system very well, and it is genre independent so it can be used in any genre or setting. We found players from “looking for games” channels on Discord servers like Cypher Unlimited so some of our players were new to the system while others had experience with other Cypher System games.
Setting: This game takes place in a universe of my creation. Part of the reason I wanted to run a sci-fi game is so that I could create a “universe”, as I’ve done this many times in fantasy but never in a sci-fi setting.
Premise: The premise is that the characters came from a civilized galaxy with advanced technology including faster than light spaceships. The characters were on a mission to discover new energy sources when they were mysteriously transported to an unknown star system. They have no idea where they are and no obvious way to return to the galaxy they know. I told the players this ahead of time to ensure they were ok with this concept for two main reasons. First, this game will likely be about exploring strange planets, but probably not include much ship to ship combat. Secondly, because of that certain character types would be challenged, for instance a starship pilot would found his training might not be valuable at least at first.
Player input: I like to let the players help create not just the story’s direction but the setting itself. To this end I defined a few non-human species, but the species of the characters was left wide open. They could use a species from some other science fiction setting, or even create one of their own design. Note that the species choice is largely about role-playing, in the Cypher System as I use it the species will rarely add special abilities.
So what do you think? Please let us know in the comments what you like, dislike, what you’re surprised at, etc. And check back in on October 13 to read how it’s going from a player’s perspective as well as the GM perspective! Thanks
