The Stars Our Destination

Star Frontiers.
Last week was our first character creation session. The players asked me what my concept was, but I turned the question back around on them and asked them what kinds of people they want to play. From there we began building the setting.

Here's an example.
One of the players wanted to play a guy that works in a garage in farm country. He's the local boxing champ with aspirations for bigger fights beyond this podunk agricultural colony on this planet in the middle of nowhere.

Another player wanted to play a character that had been from a wealthy plantation society before his prospects dried up; he signed on as crew on a trading vessel that did business with everyone they could afford to... including the underworld. Now he's inherited the old junker, but he's also inherited some of the past that comes with it.

I asked the players if they'd mind coming from the same place, just to unify some of the ideas on the table. They decided that the planet had once been prosperous, but in the recent alien war much of it had been slashed, burned, and irradiated. Thus, our plantation-man-turned-trader goes to the space lanes to earn a new living and make a new life for himself. He hires on a mechanic from his native world--somebody who wants to get out badly so he'll work for cheap--a tough, imposing looking guy to discourage anyone from messing with them.

That's one set of characters. The other two are a war-journalist-turned-author and an embittered veteran (sniper) of the last war between humanity and a more advanced alien race called the sethi.

I have a lot of weird plans for this game. I'm having everybody make at least 2 characters apiece, partly because I expect the game to be more lethal, partly because I'm experimenting with the way plot and scenes can work in RPGs... but I'll get to that another day. More characters are being generated tonight.

I've opened the doors for anything the players want or can imagine, and I'm trying to yes-and that and stick it into this universe. Since most of the characters are (so far) noncombatant types, their adventures are going to be focused on different objectives. Blasting somebody probably isn't going to be the best option for these guys most of the time. This presents a most welcome challenge to me as GM.

I remember back in the '80s and '90s my friends would make all kinds of characters for RPGs. Of course you had the folks that came in with the tricked out power builds, but you also had a lot of people who focused on fun, flavorful characters with loads of personality. Like that protocol droid that couldn't fight, but he sure was good at working the shields. The key was to make adventures that suited those quirky characters, that were tailored for their specific skills and abilities and role-play styles.

That's what I'm hoping to do with this game. If I didn't love the tactical element, I wouldn't have sought a game in which combat (imo) can be run like a streamlined D&D. However, I only want it to be an option. I don't want it to be the default assumption of the game, nor do I want to avoid it entirely. Military (or just plain violent) characters can seek out fights, but there should be plenty fun for characters that aren't combatants. They should be able to avoid fights if that's what their characters chooose to do. That's the goal anyway. We'll see how it goes.