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theresattrpgforthat · 2 months

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The Galaxy Squad Campaign.

Back in September, I posted what I hoped to be the first part of a series in which I blogged about a multiple-game campaign called The Galaxy Squad: a series of inter-connected games all taking place in the same galaxy. The continuous blogging about this series didn’t happen, but the games certainly did! So I’m going to re-cap that series now.

I’ve already talked about our Last Fleet series, so I won’t repeat myself too much, but the biggest piece of that series that we carried forward was the ending: the blowing up of the technology that enabled Faster-Than-Light travel, so as to set up the scene for Starforged. (Last Fleet play-kit)

Starforged was not a game that I ran, or managed to participate in; this series began a trend where I and another GM handed the reins to each-other every month to give both of us a chance to tackle games that were on our to-play list. We also had a higher rate of sign-ups overall for Galaxy Squad, possibly because Monster Squad ended up being a pretty big hit.

Star-Forged can be played with or without a GM, and presents the characters with Vows that they are expected to work towards to try and complete. In Star-Forged, much of the new galaxy that our players fled to was built, because this game has very good tables for setting generation. The group generated a number of planets with different power-structures, resources and danger levels, and established a number of factions with various shady goals. This included a large corporation that was funding a lot of Forge-Spawn research, as well as a cult called the Oracles of Larissa, which dealt quite a bit with the strange space-magic that certain individuals were able to wield. (Stargazer journaling app)

One of the most important contributions from the Star-Forged game involved the creation of Celadon, a wild and lush planet teeming with dangerous life. The players landed on the planet, took one look, and took off again, which meant that it was perfect for the next game in our line-up: Moth-Light.

For Moth-Light, we started with the premise that our characters would be the descendants of one of the ships from Last Fleet, crashed into a planet and reverting back to a pre-space-flight level of technology out of necessity. This is because Celadon (called Beacon by its inhabitants) was populated by gigantic, dangerous insects called Moths. We pushed the timeline forward to a point where our players could not remember how they ended up on this planet, and then put them in a precarious situation where their current settlements were in danger. The solution: to search for another, safer place to call home.

In more abstract terms, this means that we used the Promise Pact from Moth-Light, which takes plenty of inspiration from media such as Legend of Korra, Farscape, Horizon: Zero Dawn and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Moth-Light’s story and tone can vary drastically, depending on the kind of story we want to tell. When creating this game, I briefly entertained the possibility of playing Scavengers, which would be much grittier and harsher, but the group and story seemed to fit the Promise pact better.

Moth-Light is Forged-in-the-Dark and is a phenomenal game. While it’s FitD, the Pacts provided to the group do a lot to help you determine what kind of concept and tone you’re playing in. The typical action ratings and Stress mechanics are also re-worked in a really interesting way, making them slightly modular so that they can change to reflect the Pact you are working with. I really enjoy the prompts left on character sheets that give you just enough information to start brainstorming what these pieces mean exactly for your character. The designer also has a fantastic set of Google-Sheet play-kits that put my character sheets to shame. You need to check this game out.

After Moth-Light, our timeline had a little bit of a stop-and-start. One of the games we were originally planning to include in the lineup didn’t turn out to be easily translatable to our method of play, so we pivoted to another game intstead: Wetrunner. Wetrunner is a FATE - powered game that takes place in an oceanic cyperpunk future, and we weren’t sure where it would fit in our current galaxy.

We decided to put it into the timeline before Last Fleet, on one of the planets that was eventually destroyed by a robot uprising. There, we decided that at one point in this planet’s history, climate change and decreasing oceanic wildlife led to a great profit for folks who managed to steal aquatic life from power-hungry billionaires.

In other words, we were a diver-themed Leverage crew stealing fish from Eelon Mollusc.

This is where our Squad took a turn for the wacky. We were donning secret identities, wrestling with former connections to the Calamari mafia, and coming up with elaborate Seahorse-racing schemes to lure in our marks. It was hilarious, it was goofy, and it was a great tone-shift from our previous drama-heavy games. (Wetrunnner play-kit)

Next up: Scum & Villainy. This is where a lot of the set-up in Starforged really did us a favor. We had a lot folks at this point who were excited about Scum & Villainy, so we ended up running two games on two different days of the week. Both games were set up as bounty-hunting crews on the Cerberus, for reasons that I’ll mention later.

We started by recalling the factions we had created in Starforged and mapping them according to theme and tier. I also ported over some of the planets that had been created in Starforged, and started them out in ways that made sense, giving them levels in Weird, Crime, Wealth and Tech. Then the players created characters, and we added more details to the world based on their interests. (Scum & Villain play-kit)

For group A, this led to an investigation into Obsidian Inc, the shady company introduced in Starforged, where Forge-Spawn research invited plenty of cult-related trade and imperial intrigue. We had one player with a robot character continuing the theme of betrayal, turning on the group in the last scene, leaving us with an open-ended ending hinting towards a future rivalry between her and the rest of the crew.

For group B, we set out on an investigation of a racing circuit that was being fixed against the organizer’s will, with strange artifacts and a very humorous rivalry between the crew’s pilot and an NPC called Flick.

As a game, Scum & Villainy elicited mixed reactions. Some folks really loved the chances to experience a number of dramatic moments and heavy role-play, especially during downtime. Others found the harsh consequences from mixed successes to be a bit jarring, especially since Moth-Light, which uses the same bones, feels much more forgiving. Scum & Villainy is definitely a much closer hack of Blades in the Dark, which is meant to be pretty brutal in dishing out harm and consequences. I know that as a GM, I was expecting the Gambit mechanic to carry much more of the weight than it actually did, and if I run this game in the future, I’ll want to have a much more in-depth talk with my players about how harsh we want the consequences to be.

Last, but certainly not least, is A Complicated Profession. This is a game about bounty hunters experiencing a career change into cruise ship employees - and this is why we all played as bounty hunters in the previous games. This was a chance for anyone to carry forward a character they had already created into a new setting, and two players did exactly that. Hatchet, our Mystic, took up the mantle of the ship’s janitor, and Kalo, our former pilot, took up the role of the ship’s bouncer. (A Complicated Profession play-kit)

Once again, we were provided with a much-needed change in tone. A Complicated Profession has so much room for light-hearted comedy, and we took it and ran. Our ship is in a weekend-at-Bernie’s situation, with a captain that is totally out of commission but we need to maintain the facade that he’s still alive in order to make sure we can still get paid. We had occasional run-ins with junk pirates, organized birthday parties for alien teenagers, and solved many a problem with a food processor.

A Complicated Profession is another game that can be run without a GM, although in this case we still had one person take the role of a facilitator because a) we had too many people show interest and b) not everyone had access to the book. As you play, characters will slowly let go of pieces of their old lives, and pick up new skills to help them with their new job, including choosing a new name at the end. I have laughed so many times while playing this game and I’m so happy that this is how we decided to tie up the Galaxy Squad series.

After this my friends and I are re-organizing how we play our games, so we might not have a thematic timeline in the same way we did for Monster Squad or Galaxy Squad. But these experiences have taught me some really valuable lessons, the primary one of which is this:

Choosing games to play based on a theme will sometimes point you towards games that you may not have otherwise thought to pick up. Those games may end up being something that you absolutely love. In this case, I was very excited to run Scum & Villainy, but it ended up being the biggest let-down on the list. Meanwhile, I had never heard of A Complicated Profession before my co-GM introduced me to it, and it is now going at the top of my list of recommendations.

If you are in a game group and you have access to a number of different games between you and your friends, taking turns to try out the stuff you are all interested in will introduce you to so many games, and while not everything will be a hit, you’ll learn a lot about what you like, and you may find your next favourite game. So try stuff!!

#tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #mint plays games #galaxy squad #space games #cyberpunk #space opera #sci-fi #dnd

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