H is for Hyperspace

If you're new here: This whole A to Z blogging lark was supposed to take place during April. Well, that didn't work for me, so I'm doing it now.

Our subject is using the old SPI wargame Freedom in the Galaxy as the basis for a roleplaying game, using the Chaosium's old Worlds of Wonder boxed set as the basic rules.

What I'm doing with the A to Z is exploring different aspects of this project as I work on them. This is all a work-in-progress, but I'm confident it'll lead to somethign cool.

As always, comments are invited.


Certainly there's no other way to venture from star to star in a proper science fiction setting than hyperspace! (Sure, there's warp drive if you want to do Star Trek, but we're doing Star Wars!)

The basic rule is this: The farther you jump, the more dangerous.

Ships can end up either:

* At their destination (orbit),
* Adrift in the destination system (drift 1), or
* Lost in space, attempting to get their bearings (drift 2).

Which result you get depends on the navigation characteristic of the character involved and the distance (on the map) of the jump.

It seems to me that this would be easy to simulate in BRP.

1) Assign a Navigation skill to the player depending on the characteristic of the character.

2) Assign a difficulty (1-20) based on the distance jumped.

3) Have the character roll on the Resistance table; success indicates a successful jump. Failure results in Drift; catastrophic failure gives Drift 2. (And getting back from a Drift 2 situation could be an adventure in itself! Or not.)

Okay, I just checked my book and find that there isn't a catastrophic failure on a Resistance Table roll. That's okay. I can add one, just for Hyperspace navigation! Take 10% of the value needed; if the roll is failed in that top 10%, it's a Drift 2. If it's a normal failure, it's a Drift 1.

Example: Professor Mareg has a Navigation of 2. For a jump of distance 1, he'd automatically succeed. For a jump of distance 2 or greater, he'd need to roll.

How to make this work?

Okay, the Navigation skill would be a number (like a stat) from 1-20. Let's say 4 times the actual value, so in this case he'd have an 8. (The character with the highest value has a 5, so that would be 20 and still fit neatly on the resistance table.)

That's the active value. How about the resistant?

Let's go with a conversion of 3. So a jump of distance 1 would be 3, 2 would be 6 and so on.

So, Professor Mareg, making a jump of 2 would have a factor of 8 versus a factor of 6, giving him a 60% chance of success. Since there's only a 40% chance of failure, he'd need 4% (or 97-00) to get a drift 2 result. (Unless his navigation equipment was sabotaged...)

I can live with that.

G is for Galaxy Map

If you're new here: This whole A to Z blogging lark was supposed to take place during April. Well, that didn't work for me, so I'm doing it now.

Our subject is using the old SPI wargame Freedom in the Galaxy as the basis for a roleplaying game, using the Chaosium's old Worlds of Wonder boxed set as the basic rules.

What I'm doing with the A to Z is exploring different aspects of this project as I work on them. This is all a work-in-progress, but I'm confident it'll lead to somethign cool.

As always, comments are invited.


This is the map for Freedom in the Galaxy:


The dotted lines divide the galaxy into provinces, which have an effect on the boardgame and could have an effect on the RPG, too.

Each star may have one or more worlds; each world may have one or more inhabited environments.

Just because characters are in on environment on one world, doesn't mean that the inhabitants of the other environment(s) will be affected by what they do.

Additionally, not all characters are suited to visit all environments. (Since it's a wargame and not a roleplaying game, the rules leave out such inconvenient things as gravity and atmosphere -- but then, so does Star Wars, so we're good there.)

Each world has its own native races, some of which are star-spanning races. These are important for the 'domino effect' which can accelerate the rebellion (and, in the wargame, is something much to be desired by the rebel player -- pity I didn't think of that when I did "D"!)

Travel about the galaxy is accomplished through Hyperspace (about which more tomorrow). But once you've got there, what do you find?

Each world has an Orbit box. Ships, characters and troops in orbit can venture down to the
planet's surface or leave and enter hyperspace to visit another world.

There is also the matter of detection.

It is possible for orbit to contain imperial vessels and for the player characters to still evade detection. But it isn't necessarily easy.

Once a character is "spotted", he can be targeted. (N.B.: This works both ways; player characters

will want to spot enemy characters...) This can lead to assassination attempts, capture, whatever wild scheme I'd like it to.

So, you don't want to get spotted. (And I'll be looking for player ingenuity to evade/avoid such things...)

You also don't want to fail on too many missions. Fortunately, there are a flock of player characters out there (the wargame comes with 20 rebel characters). So, one bad mission won't spoil the whole rebellion.


Right here, I'd like to state something I don't believe I've mentioned so far: This is NOT some 'story path' or 'plot point' campaign. This is a sandbox. I haven't made any assumptions about what's going to happen. I don't know if there will be a happy ending for the rebels, or if they will all die horribly in an imperial prison.

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. (But I don't really want to waste the letter P on pudding...)

F is for Freedom in the Galaxy

The game we're adapting here. Once called the best adaptation of Star Wars to a wargame.

Where to start?

First of all, I've never actually played it. I've wanted to, for decades now -- ever since I saw the description in Nicky Palmer's Best of Board Wargaming in the early 80's.

Didn't think I'd have the opportunity, because SPI was busy folding at that time. But then TSR bought them! And didn't reprint FitG. But Avalon Hill did! But I never saw a copy, and soon thereafter I suffered an economic downturn.

Thank god for eBay.

I actually got an unpunched copy. But I punched it almost immediately (take that, resale value!). I'm weird like that; I enjoy punching out the counters for wargames. Sorting them into the counter storage tray (which SPI liked to include in their games, but Avalon Hill always wanted you to pay for...)

Even if I rarely touch them again.

I have many more games than I've played. I don't know what it is about me. I like the idea of a game, so I buy the game. But I don't have a regular opponent, so I don't play it (or I fart around with it in solitaire mode, but that doesn't help much -- I seem incapable of actually learning a game by playing solitaire. Remind me to tell you about the first time I played Panzer Leader against a real opponent...)

Anyway...

The object of the game for the rebels (who will be the players in my RPG version) is to foment rebellion throughout the galaxy. They do this by undertaking missions, as briefly discussed earlier, and by military action.

The object of the game for the empire is to stop them.

Fleas attacking an elephant. Classic stuff! The empire really just has to be luck once; the rebels have to be lucky all the time. But if they are, the payoff is immense.

I do plan to use this in the game, assuming it goes on for any length of time. As things go more and more their way, the rebels will find that the empire is stepping up it's countermeasures. In short, things get hairier for the rebels no matter what they do.

That way, they don't become complacent. There's nothing sadder than a complacent player...except maybe a complacent GM.

So I have to stay on my toes, too.

I'm looking forward to it.

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.

D is for Danger

But I don't want you to think that overthrowing an evil galactic empire is all fun and games. Characters will run great risks, possibly even dying in the process.

Or being captured...

Remember that great scene in Star Wars when Luke, Han and Chewie go down to the detention block to rescue the Princess? That can totally happen in my game.

It's also possible that the characters staging a rescue attempt will fail. Utterly.

It all boils down to missions. I'm in the process of understanding the mission procedure from the wargame so I can mimic it in the RPG. Note that I say 'mimic'; I'm not going for a one-to-one translation here. Rather my adventure design will be influenced by the missions suggested in the wargame, as modified by the current state of the rebellion and the empire both.

I'm going to adapt the Table of Missions from TSR's venerable spy game, Top Secret. The main points of the table for each mission type were the following:

* Information the players know,
* Information the players don't know, and
* Possible complications

Set this against the backdrop provided, with varying environments and races and levels of Imperial involvement, and you can see how the same mission at two different times on two different planets will be two different missions.

That should keep the players on their toes!


Bonus post!

D also stands for Diving Right In

Sure, I could sit down and work out all the different neat aspects of the wargame and how I expect to model them in an RPG. But it'll be more fun and more productive both to get the basics down and then get straight into adventure design!

So, within the coming week or so I aim to have prototype character conversions set up and the rudiments of the first mission (adventure) down on paper.

It won't be easy, but if I slack off now it'll never happen.

And that'd be D also -- for Damned Shame.

C is for Cards

(Or as I like to think of it, Concentrated Array of Relevant Data)

There are really two kinds of cards I'll talk about here. The first is the 3x5 card I mentioned a couple days ago. I've started using them, and they're great at concentrating the focus of the task at hand.

(As a side note, I did consider moving up to the 4x6 card, but decided to tough it out. Go, me!)

The other kind is the card that comes with the game Freedom in the Galaxy (see examples).





Zina Adora and Adam Starlight are clearly the stand-ins for Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker. Emperor Coreguya and Thysa Kimbo are non-Star Wars creations (since "The Empire Strikes Back" hadn't even come out when FitG was released). The Advisor Android might be a C-3PO analogue, and the cache of rare gems allows bribery or something (the errata notes it disappears after one use).

I like this approach. A lot of the info that the game contains is on the cards or the tables; as a result the rulebook is still only 32 pages. (Sure, that's long for a wargame, but if the info on the cards was included, it'd 64 pages at least! Additionally there would be much cursing and page-flipping attendant on each game.)


Then, you look at Magic: The Gathering, and the whole game is on cards!

I'm not going that far. I'll stick to character sheets and dice, thank you very much.

But I do like the idea of putting the things that don't go on character sheets on cards. Each possession, for instance, will go on a card. When a character has that item, he holds the card. (Between play, I'll paperclip it to the character sheet.) Each Imperial character will have a card, too -- which is not to say that I won't eventually make up a character sheet for each, but I shouldn't need it for routine play.

I'll also put the rebel characters on cards -- that way, I can surreptitiously make notes while the character is being played and the player might not know anything about it!


I'm also toying with the notion of putting the major elements of my adventures (aka "Missions") on cards, so that I can flip through them easily and not let some huge pile of papers intimidate me behind the screen.


And I also specifically bought colored 3x5 cards, so I can easily distinguish between types.

So, yeah, not that ground-breaking, I know. But I got C done! That's 3 days in a row. Better than my last effort.

B is for Basic Roleplaying

I've been searching for quite a while now for my favorite RPG. I don't think I'll ever find it, but for the immediate future, BRP seems to be it.

The thing I like in particular is that the characters are pretty much human. Sure, Superworld allows for super-human abilities, and other iterations include magic, mutations, sorcery and high tech, but the basic character is recognizably human.

And, more to the point, stays that way.

The one gripe I've always had about D&D and similar is that as characters advance they become less human and more godlike. Look at a high level fighter in D&D. You can shoot him with a cannon and he'll shrug it off. High level magic-users can alter reality and also take a sword to the chest and laugh it off.

Whereas real people can be killed with a mere dagger.

BRP gives the options for (game mechanical) greatness, but retains the essential frailty of the human form. And I like that.

But then, there's another version of edition wars:

Sharp-eyed readers of this blog may have noticed that I specified that I'd like to use Chaosium's Worlds of Wonder to run SPI's Freedom in the Galaxy. The question may have arisen "Why not just use the current incarnation of Basic Roleplaying, aka the Big Yellow Book (aka BYB; or sometimes BGB for Big Gold Book). Especially, I might add, because I do own the Big Yellow Book.

But it's 400 pages!

I'm sorry. I love the idea of the game. I love the 16 page booklet I bought back in '83 or so. I love the way new games have continually added to the core rules.

But I just can't get through 400 pages of rules in any consistent or meaningful fashion.

Worlds of Wonder, on the other hand, has the 16 page BRP with which I'm familiar, plus three settings that are 18 pages each (including a mini-adventure!) Now, many of the Superworld rules won't be necessary, and most likely ditto for Magic World. In fact, I'm going to lean heavily on the BYB for inspiration. But the final rules I use will be more akin to WoW than BYB.

One reason is size, as mentioned above. But another reason is Awesome, as mentioned yesterday.

Magic World gives us Sorcery, which is almost directly repeated in the BYB as Magic. But only almost.

The BYB gives us tiers of power, depending on how one wishes to run one's game. For starting spells, the Normal tier gives 4, the Heroic tier 6, Epic 8 and Superhuman 10.

These all start at a %-value of the character's INT x 1 (although it does note that characters may spend skill points).

Magic World only gives the starting spell-caster 4 spells, like the normal tier. But they start at INT x 3.

(No, I won't be using spells in a science fiction game; this is merely illustrative.)

So, the older version gives more awesome characters (in my opinion) than the later one does.


Also, because of the aforementioned size, it's easier to carry.



Stay tuned tomorrow! Since I'm not following the strict rules of the A-Z thing anyway, I'm going to go ahead and post on Sunday! Any guesses what C will be?