Breakthroughs, continued
This post has to do with Pirates as a product and as a physical or electronic entity.
Careful readers may remember that I was thinking about including multiple settings in Pirates. I'm going to include three: one where humanity has constructed O'Neill cylinder colonies around dozens or hundreds of near-earth-objects; one, based on the old campaign, that's crazy-go-nuts (well, not too crazy. See below.); and one somewhere in between, with only a handful of stars with human settlements around them and between which interstellar commerce has just recently become practical... and necessary. "But George!" you may exclaim, "didn't you just post that you were expanding FATE's character creation system into a kind of Setting Burner? How do these things go together?" To that I answer: these are going to be pretty sketchy settings, more templates than anything else. I'm just trying to spark people's creativity, and maybe give them a foundation and some material to work with during those fruitful five phases. They'll have to be sketchy, since I want Pirates to be short and sweet. We're talking 160 pages, digest-sized tops.
Dave (vilenin007) was kind enough to post a pretty exhaustive bibliography of what he brought to the table back in '97 when Pirates-prime was first getting off the ground. Dave started the whole Pirates shebang, I took up part-time GMing not long after, and Tom (xilet) followed. Our homebrew was a dirty-hippy troupe-style game, but we didn't know it at the time ;-).
Origins aside, the setting had a lot in common with what James Maliszewski (maliszew) rightly calls the "imperial" branch of space opera (gentle reader, do check out his game on the subject, Thousand Suns). The Interstellar Alliance was huge! Unless anyone objects, I'd like to silently tighten things up a bit before I revive the campaign. Make the setting palpably finite instead of the intimidatingly large canvas we spread all those years ago.
I've decided that I'll use the second person for most of the rules, or rather that I'll present things as instructions of how to play rather than rules. I've been trying to make myself conscious of how the text will be used. If only one person in the room has the book, I reading the text on the page out loud to be the best course of action. Even with the best role-playing games, I find myself interpreting the text for others. With work and a little bit of luck, that same text will work for solo readers and groups with multiple copies as well.
Here's another idea that's been gnawing at me: take Pirates off the printed, and rendered, page. My current musings involve animations in a format suitable for portable media players (big text and diagrams suitable for small screens), but nothing has jumped out at me as being perfect for such a presentation. Whaddya think?
I've got a feeling that "next time" is coming soon. Until then: knowledge to knowledge, baby.
-George Austin
Careful readers may remember that I was thinking about including multiple settings in Pirates. I'm going to include three: one where humanity has constructed O'Neill cylinder colonies around dozens or hundreds of near-earth-objects; one, based on the old campaign, that's crazy-go-nuts (well, not too crazy. See below.); and one somewhere in between, with only a handful of stars with human settlements around them and between which interstellar commerce has just recently become practical... and necessary. "But George!" you may exclaim, "didn't you just post that you were expanding FATE's character creation system into a kind of Setting Burner? How do these things go together?" To that I answer: these are going to be pretty sketchy settings, more templates than anything else. I'm just trying to spark people's creativity, and maybe give them a foundation and some material to work with during those fruitful five phases. They'll have to be sketchy, since I want Pirates to be short and sweet. We're talking 160 pages, digest-sized tops.
Dave (vilenin007) was kind enough to post a pretty exhaustive bibliography of what he brought to the table back in '97 when Pirates-prime was first getting off the ground. Dave started the whole Pirates shebang, I took up part-time GMing not long after, and Tom (xilet) followed. Our homebrew was a dirty-hippy troupe-style game, but we didn't know it at the time ;-).
Origins aside, the setting had a lot in common with what James Maliszewski (maliszew) rightly calls the "imperial" branch of space opera (gentle reader, do check out his game on the subject, Thousand Suns). The Interstellar Alliance was huge! Unless anyone objects, I'd like to silently tighten things up a bit before I revive the campaign. Make the setting palpably finite instead of the intimidatingly large canvas we spread all those years ago.
I've decided that I'll use the second person for most of the rules, or rather that I'll present things as instructions of how to play rather than rules. I've been trying to make myself conscious of how the text will be used. If only one person in the room has the book, I reading the text on the page out loud to be the best course of action. Even with the best role-playing games, I find myself interpreting the text for others. With work and a little bit of luck, that same text will work for solo readers and groups with multiple copies as well.
Here's another idea that's been gnawing at me: take Pirates off the printed, and rendered, page. My current musings involve animations in a format suitable for portable media players (big text and diagrams suitable for small screens), but nothing has jumped out at me as being perfect for such a presentation. Whaddya think?
I've got a feeling that "next time" is coming soon. Until then: knowledge to knowledge, baby.
-George Austin