As for marketing, I think we will market the game on its own merits, touting it’s awesome d20-story-game system with specific details. Not D&D, not d20 Modern, but a crazy new creation using the best of everything we find.

Yeah, I totally agree with you here.

I just posted a response to your comment, mentioning the Character Background rules from Unearthed Arcana, which look a lot like the kind of Lifepath rules I was thinking about.

I’ve just browsed through the Modern SRD (everything except the details of combat and FX). I like how general the Modern classes are, but I don’t like them being tied to specific attributes.

I was just looking at the OGL license for Blue Rose and it looks like the bulk of the rules are open, which is way neat. I remember there being a kerfuffle about Green Ronin not declaring the open content clearly enough, but, at the front of the book, it basically says “everything except setting and description,” which is a lot, most of the True 20 stuff.

As for additional thoughts about the game: Since the PCs start scattered (right?), we’ll need to come up with an organized way to rotate scenes, control, etc. So, maybe when one player’s PC is the “primary”, the player to his left “GMs”, i.e., controls the adversary, and the player(s) to the right control secondary characters ala Galactic. End of scene, “primary” player rotates, so does the GM (as opposed to the fixed GM in Galactic), etc.

Well, I was gonna have the game start with the PCs together, as a crew, but I’d be up for looking at other things.

I’m definitely all about putting a lot of hippie scene framing stuff in it. I’m really into the game not really needing a GM and splitting up GM responsibilities among the various characters in a crew. So, for example, the crew Cartographer could keep track of where everybody was. Seems like other traditional GM responsibilities could be divided up like that as well, without necessarily resorting to the Polaris -style “player on your left” thing. Like, we know that kind of rotating GM stuff works, so I’d be more interested in exploring alternative ways to distribute GM authority. Those are just my initial thoughts, though.

I do think rotating the focus of scenes on to various players is important, especially if the players are split up and/or some of them are lost. I’m not sure yet how to mix that kind of rotation (which is very much like what you’re talking about), which GM powers distributed among players by role. Hmm…. Any ideas?

Thoughts on the “ultimate purpose”: Maybe there’s a neat S-G way of building toward some defined, climactic endgame, where this gets narrated out. Maybe the players start with one secret detail each, something about what their character “brings to the table”. During the course of play, upon a specified event details get added secretly. These events could be in-game (e.g., PCs discover a new star system) or out-of-game (e.g., player rolls a natural “20″). Then, when the endgame conditions are reached, the secret details are revealed and the group (or “winning” player?) gets to narrate the epilogue using the accrued details as his guides.

Yeah, Bliss Stage does something kind of like this, where the players ask three questions about the setting at the beginning of the game. Then, over the course of play, the questions are answered. I kinda think it’d be interesting to have one or two questions per player that get explored over the course of play. And then, at the end, they would ultimately come together and do something neat. Maybe they would all turn out to be serendipitously connected and part of some grand design (”the music of the spheres” or something).

I totally agree with you that some sort of mini-campaign framing is important. Do you have an idea of what sized campaign the game should aim for as a basic unit of play? I was kind thinking that it would be neat to have a small unit of play, like a 3-session story arc, as the basic set up, but them maybe have each 3 sessions be one Act out of 3 or 4, so you’d have 9 or 12 session macro-arcs. That way, you could play 3 sessions and quit or play for the whole 12 sessions.

As for specific antagonists, were you thinking something concrete (e.g., enemy alien species) or metaphysical (e.g., the Creator, laws of physics, etc.)?

Honestly, I think I’d rather the antagonists be complications rather than enemies. I think humanity’s greatest enemy has always been itself and the game should reflect that, maybe.

I like the idea that there could be aliens that we’ve encountered, but I like the idea that our relationship with them is like our relationship with dolphins (though maybe without the power imbalance where we keep dolphins in tanks and stuff): we think they’re sentient and can sort of communicate with them, but complex, detailed communication is impossible because we just think completely differently.

We do have this idea that some people live as bandits, whatever that means, but that doesn’t seem to be a strong enough force for conflict or challenge. I really don’t think combat is going to be a huge part of the game (though I’m going to post a conversation Elizabeth and I just had about star-wrestling), but there do need to be impediments that the characters have to work to overcome. I’m not sure what those should be.

Perhaps they are tasked with exploring a particularly dangerous area, because they are looking for something? Perhaps they are looking for the secret that explains why they can do the star-traveling thing? Perhaps there is some secret linked to the beginning of the universe and the birth of stars (and/or God/aliens, etc)? Maybe it’s like Bliss Stage and the nature of the secret is determined in play by the players, though it features in all games?

Jonathan