Galactic Encounters Role-Playing Game

Creating game materials? Monsters, spells, classes, adventures? This is the place!
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Solomoriah
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Re: Galactic Encounters Role-Playing Game

Post by Solomoriah »

Just uploaded a new release. I'm not sure if the fabricator parts are too complicated or not. They are important to the setting, so they deserve coverage; hopefully it's not too much.

I'm going to press on as if it's a good idea.
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Re: Galactic Encounters Role-Playing Game

Post by teaman »

Hoping that you can use this one. Did a different version for another project, but thought it might work with her wearing space armor.
space_warrior.png
space_warrior.png (2.07 MiB) Viewed 5470 times
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Re: Galactic Encounters Role-Playing Game

Post by Solomoriah »

Nice! I've kind of backed off this project for the moment, but it's been on the back burner before...
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Re: Galactic Encounters Role-Playing Game

Post by teaman »

Solomoriah wrote: Fri Nov 27, 2020 6:59 pm Nice! I've kind of backed off this project for the moment, but it's been on the back burner before...
Thanks Solo! Hope you get the chance to get back on the project eventually. But I know what it is like to have too many things you'd like to do.

And then there is real life and real work. Can't let that slide too much either.

Thanks again, glad you like the image.
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Re: Galactic Encounters Role-Playing Game

Post by Spiralbound »

On FTL:
Why not offer 2-3 methods for the GM to choose from? After all, the intent is for the Core Rules to NOT imply a setting as was the case with BFRPG. The LACK of an implied setting was one of the major attractants for me and I'd like to see the same for the science fiction version. As for which methods, I suggest ones which create as different a resulting game play as possible, regardless of how similar they may seem in-game.

One method could be preset Star Gates which allow (near)instantaneous travel between two vast distances. This creates a very distinctive set of conditions for getting around the galaxy. You need Gates to travel interstellar distances, yet you can't go anywhere you want, only where there is another gate. The GM could make this as limited or as interconnected as they please. Perhaps each Gate only connects to a single other Gate. Maybe they are bidirectional, maybe unidirectional. Maybe each Gate can be "tuned" to any other Gate - so long as you know the address of that Gate. Discovering the location of a new Gate is then a MAJOR event! The nature of the Gates themselves can also be tweaked to taste. Are they naturally occurring phenomena or are they super-tech constructs? If tech based, are they created by humanity, or were they discovered, left behind by some unknown ancient "other people" (Humans or aliens)? If created by humanity, how hard are they to create? Beyond their origin, what access is there to them? Free to use by all, guarded and controlled by a Galactic Gate Authority, or is each Gate owned by a different group? Will wars be fought to gain control of a Gate? Are some Gates more valuable than others? Can a Gate be destroyed? Answering these and other questions can greatly affect the resultant setting and the types of adventures players can have - and this is just ONE of the methods!

Another method would be Solo's Wormhole Drive. This is interesting because you can go anywhere you want, but you don't technically pass through the intervening space since you're going through your own custom wormhole which creates a "shortcut". There are obvious possible limitations though... How much of a shortcut is this wormhole? If I want to travel 80 light years away to the next inhabited star system, how much power does it take to create a wormhole capable of reaching that far? How long is this wormhole? Can I put more power into its creation to also control the wormhole's length? Some ships may need to make the journey in eight 10 LY hops, each of which take 10 days to travel through (plus whatever time it takes before the ship can create the next wormhole). A much more powerful ship may be able to make a single 80 LY wormhole so short it takes only 8 hours to travel through it. With this method in place, you can go anywhere, but the ship you're driving makes a huge difference to your freedom of movement. As a side note, from a game play perspective there is no functional difference between this method and the Jump Drive of Batterstar Galactica even if conceptually they may feel different.

The third method could be either the Warp Bubble of Star Trek or the Hyperspace of Babylon 5, either will provide similar game play effects. You get to go wherever you want as fast as you want (within the limits of your ship), but you still have to deal with other ships doing the same and you might find yourself under attack en route. There are still loads of room for GM or campaign specific adjustments though. Can a travelling ship be detected? Can you track their path? Can you set up an ambush point and knock them out of their warp bubble or hyperspace? Sure, fighting under speed may be possible, but I bet it's a lot easier to fight them when they AREN'T zipping along at FTL speeds! One game play difference between a warp bubble and hyperspace is interaction with other galactic objects. With the warp bubble method one assumes you'd need to perform careful route calculations to avoid accidentally passing through other space objects like planets, stars, black holes, etc. Failing to do these calculations could be disastrous, but makes for a dramatic moment of tension as the players skip the calculations to escape the space pirates all the quicker, but now the GM is rolling to see if they end up trying to smash through a gas giant, or if they pass too close to a black hole and are dragged off course into unknown territory.... The GM begins to laugh evilly after consulting his table, and the players begin to sweat. Or perhaps hyperspace has it's own dangers. What's in there? Strange "hyperspace monsters" that are attracted to the energies of a transiting ship and want to EAT it? Maybe to them you are a tasty little minnow in a massive hyperspace ocean? Are there worlds native to hyperspace? You can make hyperspace as mundane and empty or as bizarre and crowded as you want. The possibilities abound...
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Re: Galactic Encounters Role-Playing Game

Post by rredmond »

Love those ideas Spiralbound! Thanks for resurrecting the thread!!

I was thinking about this the other day. What if our solar system ends up being one of the last ones to support life and the “aliens” come to live on the other planets in it. That does (more than) imply a setting :) but it can set up for plenty of adventures and then extra-system travel and adventuring can be whole other supplements that others can build on and get as creative as they like.
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Re: Galactic Encounters Role-Playing Game

Post by Spiralbound »

rredmond wrote: Thu Jul 08, 2021 5:30 am Love those ideas Spiralbound! Thanks for resurrecting the thread!!
You're welcome. There are so many good ideas in this thread, I didn't want it to die. I also have thoughts on currency which I'll be posting later today.

I was thinking about this the other day. What if our solar system ends up being one of the last ones to support life and the “aliens” come to live on the other planets in it. That does (more than) imply a setting :) but it can set up for plenty of adventures and then extra-system travel and adventuring can be whole other supplements that others can build on and get as creative as they like.
I like this setting concept. It is thought-provoking and highly suggestive of ideas for further development. For instance, WHY is our remote system the last? What happened (or is STILL happening) elsewhere? Is there a galactic threat which the other aliens are trying to escape? Is the Sol system the last refuge? Will it become the site of some galactic 'Last Stand'? Against whom or what? Big questions with important answers for your setting. I hope you develop this seed further into a full blown setting supplement for use with this system once it is completed.
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Re: Galactic Encounters Role-Playing Game

Post by rredmond »

Thanks and welcome to the forums Spiralbound!
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Re: Galactic Encounters Role-Playing Game

Post by Spiralbound »

On future Currency:
(Take two! I had it all written out and my log in timed out. I lost the whole %$^%$#^@ thing!)

As Solo and others pointed out, using current currency methods won't work well in a post-scarcity, galactic scale future. Resources are too plentiful and computing is too advanced to use cryptocurrency. Any form of commerce requires a commodity which is both finite and exchangeable. When all physical resources are functionally infinite, what remains? The only remaining commodity we would have left to trade on is our own time, it's the only personal and finite resource left. Now I'm not proposing a crass implementation as employed in the movie Elysium where one literally pays for things using time remaining to live with a hardwired "kill switch" for those who overspend. That is too blatantly literal and not plausible really. Instead, we make the concept of "time spent" a commodity.

First, there is the most simplistic exchange. I agree to spend "x" amount of time doing a thing for you in exchange for you doing or giving me a thing I want. That's pretty straight forward, lets move on.

Second, there is the indebted version of the first exchange. I agree to spend "x" amount of time doing things for you in exchange for things you give me now. This does come with the issues of what happens if you default on paying or if you unexpectedly die before repaying your debt, etc. Ultimately, though this debt is no different than real world debt using dollar bills.

Third, there is the "proxy" version of paying with time spent. In this version we create a unit of "Time Spent", let's call it a "Temporal Credit" (TC). By giving it that one degree of abstraction, we have now opened up a whole universe of possibilities. We can now accumulate unspent TCs and then spend them later. We can also assign TC values items based on the time originally spent to create them. By accumulating the TCs of others one could even become wealthy.

What is a TC worth? This depends on how big you want the numbers to be in-game. If one TC equals 1 hour, we're looking at REALLY big numbers for some items. The bigger the value, the fewer TCs we need for buying things.

Let's assume a Galactic Standard Measure (GSM) of TCs of 10,000 minutes. This roughly translates to about a week of "time spent". You could make it worth exactly one Earth week by using 10080 minutes, but what's the point when humanity will be living in space and on millions of planets, each of which will have their own day lengths and timekeeping systems. a 10,000 min GSM TC can be then used to assign values to everything else.

If you built a spaceship and it took 18 "months" to build, that would be a base build cost of 72.58 TC. This doesn't cover the costs of the factory it was built in or the material costs themselves, so let's increase it by a factor of four to 290.30 TC. Finally, let's double that for a modest profit margin, and we're now selling a spaceship for 580.61 TC. This is a lot of "Time Spent" though, 96,768 hours or 11 Old Earth years. An individual couldn't reasonably expect to pay this with their own personal time. Then again, we are talking the purchase price for a new spaceship, likely a large one as well considering the base costs. The main thing is using TCs allows us to move on with the game development process. We apply a TC to various goods and services and off we go to create the rest of the game.

Services can also be given a TC costs. An engineer or a physicist could be contracted to assist with a project. He might charge 4 TC per day, assuming their assistance would shorten the project by a month for every day they are involved. A musician could put on a live performance of unique variations of their popular songs, guaranteed that none of them would be recorded. The performer could charge a TC per person for such a unique experience.

Already existing items could also be assigned a TC cost based on their original time spent to produce. Special accrediting agencies could be used to determine how much time it originally took to produce the item and then valuate it accordingly. Certain especially old items may even have added to their TC value the time spent keeping it in existence since it was created. Take for example if someone in the year 6015 owned a surviving copy of the 1215 Magna Carta document. It isn't unreasonable to assume there would be additional TC applied to it's value to cover the efforts expended over the last 4800 years preserving the document.

Some locales may also devise their own local currencies using the GSM TC as a foundation. For example, the Gessorm colony world may declare four currency denominations. The Bar (B) worth one TC, the Portion (P) worth 1/4 B, the Slice (S) worth 1/4 P, and the Measure (M) worth 1/10 S. Thus, we could now price everything from a shoelace to an orbital space station using a combination of "virtual coinage" representing various divisions of the GSM TC.

If you prefer a more readily remembered currency, you could use a Full TC (FTC), Quarter TC (QTC), Tenth TC (TTC), and Hundredth TC (HTC). The HTC is roughly equivalent to an hour and a half of "time spent", the TTC is 16.66 hours, the QTC is 41.66 hours, and the FTC is just under a week. A tutor for a school boy might be 2-3 HTC per hour. A meal at a restaurant could be anywhere from 1 to 4 HTC or a single Slice.

You could just list everything in fractions of a TC, but that will end up creating price lists with awkward tiny pieces of a TC. 0.02 TC for a pair of pants, etc.

Doing the work up front and setting a value for the standard TC and then creating an example currency from THAT will end up saving a lot of time and effort in the long run.
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Re: Basic Scifi Role-Playing Game

Post by RLS89ZX »

artikid wrote: Fri Nov 29, 2019 4:26 am I'd love to see a BSFRPG, and I'm willing to help! It's actually something I've been giving a lot of thought over the years.
...
Really cool ideas, & I'd definitely love a Post-Apotalyptic Science Fantasy version of the Basic Fantasy RPG
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