A BASTION OF ODDITY
[A former Konkord Star Major, name since redacted, in response to an audience question at the Windfall Orbital State of the Dragon Conference. Recording provided by FXT Free Bulletin.] Well, I’ve never been asked such a brave question by such a scholar of the stars. [there is a pause, the panel host beginning to speak, before being cut off by the Star Major in a mocking voice] “They’re just…
There’s a saying that all of the institutions are really just about pushing pencils. The FXT buys the pencils, the NCA tells you what colour you’re allowed to use, and Sovereign tells you that’s not your pencil so put it back. I didn’t say it was a good saying. I got it from a Notarianshand up on fifth, so take it up with them. Sovereign knows everything has a rightful owner, and it’s probably not…
It’s easy to underestimate the great institutions. Look no further than the FXT, which some mistake for a corporation. They control money, but they aren’t a bank. They control trade, but they aren’t merchants. They’re a monopoly, but they’re not a monolith. They’re a sprawling web of open hands and closed fists. Confused? Think of it this way. Claiming ownership of clusters of stars is no true…
Although the six great institutions sprawl across the Home Cluster, your Ship is independent, at least in principle. It’s a certainty that your Captain holds the favour of some institutions and the ire of others. If there’s one that a Captain must manage especially carefully, it’s the NCA. The New Compliance Authority replaced the Compliance Authority , which replaced the Compliance Agency which…
Continuing from last week’s thoughts . In a recent conversation we had, Ed Jollyboat used the analogy of an airport runway as a linear introductory section to a game, which opens up into blue sky freedom. I want to run with that, but I’m moving over to a ski jump analogy instead. In short: Climb: Make it easy to get the book to the table and have other players want to play. Descent: Begin with…
Pandemic Legacy (2015) wasn’t the first legacy boardgame, but it was the breakthrough moment when many players became aware of the format. Imagine you play a game of monopoly (I’m so sorry) but throughout the game you make permanent changes to the board, adding shortcuts and roadblocks. You tear up some cards and add secret new cards to the chance deck. Next time you play, the game is slightly…
Intergalactic is going to be the first game I make that actually has a canonical map. Not that this is the whole galaxy, of course, but it’s a start. There are concrete places and people who live there too. Of course we need factions, right? I know I don’t want factions to be brushes that I use to paint chunks of the map, like “this swathe of blue space belongs to the Suchandsuch Empire, and this…
Mythic has a lot of blank spaces left open for improvisation. In my experience, this works well enough, granting many advantages too. Improvise a castle town? Sure, I’m picturing it now. How many people live here? Oh I dunno, why do you care? Raise an army? The book says it can support a warband or two. How does society work? Here are the roles most people fall into. You know, it’s kinda like…
What pressures do you face as a Head in the top 10% of a thousand crew starship in Intergalactic Bastionland ? It comes down to what each other crewmember might want from you, and how they might ask for it. From Above - Political Pressure Of the six officers on the ship, one is your direct boss, but each can technically stick their noses in your business when they want to. Mostly their concerns…
In writing the setting for Intergalactic Bastionland I feel pulled between the gravity of three stars: Reality - What would it really be like to be in space as we understand it today? History - What are some interesting equivalents to mine from actual history? Fantasy - Yeah but what if this weird thing was out there?? I suppose it’s like simultaneously pulling from the present, past, and imagined…
Something I'm testing out for my Intergalactic testing, recently added to the playtest doc . Being part of a thousand-strong crew on a huge starship has become a key part of Intergalactic, something I was eager to explore as a point of difference to the familar sci-fi RPG setup of a small independent crew with their own ship. From my initial playtests I wonder if I went a too far with this, having…
I'm back from holiday! I guess coming back to familiarity after a few weeks of novelty got me thinking. Sometimes you repeat the same stuff over and over. Sometimes you breeze past stuff, never looking back. We’ll use an imperfect racing analogy of Circuits and Rallies. Circuits are great because you get to revisit things, building a familiarity with them. In Intergalactic Bastionland this is the…
Been tinkering with some advice for pacing a game of Intergalactic. I suspect I'll go a bit further than this, but it's a start. The speed at which the group moves through events in the game world can shift between slow and fast tempos. The Referee should use the fastest tempo that feels appropriate for the situation, and might find it useful to tell the players when the tempo is shifting. The…
Or patches, badges, tattoos. This covers a broad category of unofficial trophies that can be earned by a member of a starship crew in the form of some sort of physical mark to be worn. They have the following things in common: They are awarded by Hands only. They are entirely unofficial. They open social doors. Earning a Pin The story goes that the first Pins were hammered together from scrap…
So what about those unsettled and unexplored worlds in Intergalactic Bastionland ? They won't get the same detail that the main worlds get, but I want to include some information for them, and a quick way to generate new ones as needed. Here's a first draft of a system for that. Minor Worlds The worlds fully detailed in their system section are major worlds. Other worlds are minor worlds, either…
A good chunk of Intergalactic Bastionland 's current iteration focuses on the element of living and working on a starship, managing relationships, negotiating the hierarchy, and trying to keep your job or maybe even get ahead. There's a lot of fun in that, but that could just as easily take place in Electric Bastionland , in some vast factory, office block, or prison. But that's missing the other…
I've had a few people ask about playing Mythic Bastionland with larger groups of players. I've found the game flows at its best with 2-4 players, but getting up to 5 or more starts to raise a few noticeable effects. As discussed previously , Knights are powerful, so this effect is compounded when you've got six of them riding into battle. With so many gambits and smites and denies they can be…
This was prompted by hearing a discussion about tracking torches in a dungeon crawling game. This is something that I find that adds work, rarely becomes impactful, and the threatened impact is a scary but eventually uninteresting event. It reminds me of a boardgame I've been playing. Gazebo is a fantastic game by Reiner Knizia. It's a redesign of his 2012 release... actually, none of that…
Intergalactic Bastionland is now ready for public playtesting. Go here to find everything you need . We're a way off the Kickstarter yet, but you can be first to follow here.
Dock is the second spoke on the Wheel that makes up crew life, between the drudgery of Transit and the enterprise of Layover. I'm aiming for a good clear procedure to work through here. As with the other phases of the game, there are times when this will breeze past and others when it will make up a substantial part of the session. Orbitals and Landings Each world lists six locations, and the…
That's right. When you run a playtest it's not about those parasitic players. You're the one who should be under the microscope. Not exclusively, and I talked about player feedback from playtests before , but I want to stress the importance of examining your own experience as the person running the game. I'm looking out for two things: Unfulfilled Wishes Those mid-game GM moments when you think:…
Sometimes it matters which tool we pick up. It's 1981. The Roland TB-303 is a new bass synthesiser. It was designed to act as a substitute for a bass guitar player, much like a drum machine for a drummer. In 1984, after poor sales, it was taken out of production. The way you programmed sequences of notes was counterintuitive and arranging a proper multi-section song on this thing was a frustrating…
Oh, you thought your job on the ship would give you skills? As if. Only life can give you skills, and that's something you don't get much choice in. When rolling an Intergalactic character, roll d12 and d6 and consult the list of systems (the d12) and worlds (d6 in that system). This will give you three most important worlds to you. The first is where you were born, and what sort of... being you…
Intergalactic work continues. I'm constantly reminding myself that the first Mythic Bastionland playtests (then Primeval Bastionland ) were based on an extremely rough document, with vastly different rules to how the game turned out, especially in terms of the structure of myths, omens, and hexcrawling the realm. Even with such a patchy version of the game, those initial playtests were incredibly…
Setting a Bearing Before casting off, the ship must set its bearing to an agreed destination. This requires a meeting of the Bearing Council, which consists of the captain and their officers. The Bearing Council acts as a microcosm of a Captain’s authority on their ship. Yes, the Captain has the power to assign, dismiss, reward, and reprimand their officers, but the ship’s destination is always…