E is for Environments

One of the things that sets Freedom in the Galaxy apart from other wargames, even other science fiction ones, is that each world has different environments in which combat takes place. These are:

* Urban
* Wild
** Liquid
** Air
** Fire
** Subterranean

Most of these can be shown by reference to the extant Star Wars films.

Urban is a city; though it needn't be a world-spanning city like Coruscant.
Wild is non-urban; think the forest moon of Endor.
Liquid; the Gungan city underwater on Naboo.
Air; the cloud city of Bespin (although I believe the intent is for it to be a civilization with the innate power of flight).
Fire; the battlefield where Obi-Wan fought Anakin in Episode III. (No, I'm not going to look it up for you. It's late.)
Subterranean; This one gave me pause. I want to say it's an underground world like in TSR's module B4: The Lost City. But I don't have a specific Star Wars reference for this one.

(And, as an aside, isn't it odd that everything I've cited above happened after Freedom in the Galaxy was released? No matter.)

Now, the double asterisk environments above are known as 'special' environments in the wargame. Empire troops take a column shift (i.e.; a penalty) when fighting in such environments. In a combat situation, that makes life easier for the player characters.

But we're not going to be roleplaying all that many combat situations.

What about the diplomatic situations?

If you're trying to sway the water-dwelling creatures of a particular world to the rebel cause, you'd better be able to meet them on their own ground (so to speak). You'll need some sort of rebreather (and can't count on standard Jedi equipment...) or something.

Fire will be the fun one.

Sure, I'll come up with equipment for the players to use in a given adventure. But the hazards of the environment will have to come up, if only to show the players how deadly the world is...


Y'know, a thought occurs to me.

A friend of mine, back in the 80s, when we were all playing FASA's Star Trek RPG, noted how that one was "pure roleplaying". We weren't after loot, or kills, or advancement. We were just playing for the fun of it.

This game I'm working on is the closest I've come to that. And that feels kind of good.