For some time now, we’ve been stomping all over the canon of the reimagined show with our campaign. I figure if you’re going to roleplay in an established setting you’ve got two real choices — adhere to the established material and slavishly model it, or work in the interstices between the events of the movie/show/book…or that what you like, throw caution to the wind, and do it your way.
I’ve used all of these techniques — from playing on the edges of the Babylon 5 universe in a campaign back in the late ’90s, to throwing a large part of the franchise out the window for a Star Trek campaign a few years back. With my first Battlestar Galactica campaign, I did the second fleet thing — a smaller group looking to find a new home, working from the flashes of insight of an oracle in the fleet and an alternative book from the Sacred Scrolls. It worked well, but with the collapse of that gaming group, I tried something new — throwing out the stuff I didn’t want and building anew.
Adama: gone; replaced with a player character, Commander Pindarus. The Final Five nonsense: gone. The humanoid Cylons are actually from Kobol, and are agents of the blaze known as Seraph. I borrowed the Ship of Lights for the Blaze and the Seraphs from the old ’70s show. Added: more science fiction elements, archeological hints that the Cycle of Time has repeated for at least three or four times. And our people finally set down on Kobol this time in the midst of a civil war between the Seraph and the centurions they had created and those from the Colonies they coopted into working with them. The goal was the same: find the Temple of Athena and the roadmap to Earth.
We had established that the war and the Fall of Man was to bring them “home” under the loving embrace of “the Blaze” — the one true god…except it’s not. We had a ton of exposition under fire this last session, and some of it involved what the Blaze is/was.
After a great cliffhanger (literally) in the week before, we launched off into characters on the ground mission rappelling out of an old Olympian temple or palace while the ruins were being blasted apart around them. They’d already lost one (former) PC, scads of NPCs, and lost a major NPC — the love interest of the commander — when she broke her back falling from the building. Still alive, but paralyzed and barely able to breathe, the characters carted her to the Temple, where they used the Arrow of Apollo to open the tomb — to do this, the arrow had to be shot at a “lock”, which opened the tomb.
The tomb, however, was more of a command center for the Goddess of War. Athena presented as a hologram, demanded from them their intentions, and learning they were from the 12 Tribes, demanded a “sacrifice” — the injured and dying member insisted she be used, as she was the obvious choice and the Athena specter agreed. She was loaded into the sarcophagus of the goddess (empty), and a vial of something inside the Arrow of Apollo was loaded at the hologram’s direction into a panel of sorts. The sarcophagus went to work doing something horrific — laser light and milky liquid a la the resurrection ships — while the hologram gave them the night time sky from Earth stuff from the show, but followed it up with a zoom out to show that they are about 1100LY from the world, on the other side of the Orion Nebula. They can be there (safely) in about 300 days.
The sarcophagus was done, by this time, having repaired the injured colonel and “infected” her with the DNA of the original Athena. While her appearance won’t change — the body is mature and while it might change over time — she still looks like the colonel, has many of her memories, but has also had Athena’s memories programmed in somehow. The newly restored Athena gives them the low-down:
The Blaze is Hades, a jealous “god” who should have been the King of the Lords of Kobol, as he was the eldest, but was usurped by Zeus. At least, that is the memories, the legend, they had been created with. In truth, they are the creations of the TITANs, some kind of advanced machine intelligence that destroyed their makers…humans, then in a bout of regret, recreated life from Earth on Kobol and gave them the Lords to rule over them and help them develop. The Lords started to take the PR too seriously, especially Hades, who after the rebellion and exodus of the Ophiuchan or 13th Tribe (of whom he was the patron god), he followed them and discovered the TITANs. Intrigued by their investigations into the nature of the universe, he “saw the face of God” and went mad, fashioned himself as a god, and returned to Kobol to instill order and gain the adulation of his peers and their human charges.
Except it didn’t work out that way…and for ten thousand years or more, they’ve played out this story — over and over — with Hades hoping for the “right” outcome: he as the one God, worshipped and loved by his followers. However, just as humans created their machines that destroyed them, and the TITANs created the Lords that fashioned themselves as gods and viewed Man as their creation, and just as Man created machines in their image, the Blaze created Seraph as a replacement for his departed brothers and sisters, the Lords of Kobol.
The history is fractal — from the massive superintelligent TITANs, to the Lords, to the Blaze, the humanoid Cylons/Seraph and the humans…the same hubris to create a perfect slave destroys the maker. Athena, having remembers other iterations of the story, threw herself from Olympus not in despair over the colonies leaving, but to set her mind-state free to be transmitted to “follow the course of the Blaze” and find a way to stop him. She has been waiting for a millennia for someone to find her, having been beamed home 1000 years ago.
While this was happening, Galactica found out the mission on the ground was rapidly going FUBAR, and they jump in to nuke the Blaze’s citadel on the ruins of the “City of the Gods” on Kobol — the Tower of Dis, a massive diamondoid structure that is mostly computational substrate, but also an active energy weapon system. It’s dug into the planet to feed on geothermal energy and according to Athena, has the records of every Seraph, human puppet, Lord of Kobol, and who knows what else stored in it. If Hades escapes, the cycle will just start all over.
While Galactica is locked in a tense fight with the Cylon fleet over the planet, and the missiles are on route, Athena and Hades have a snark off that ends with her revealing the one thing she has left: her father’s thunder. She lets the ship and the ground crews know it’s a trick she can do only once…and they have three minutes to be outside of the magnetic field of the planet. With a strike of her spear on the floor, she sets the weapon in motion.
A few more NPCs and almost two PCs, were lost trying to evac to the SAR raptor had had just gotten to them (One of the characters was physically hurled by the increasingly strong Athena into the raptor.) and they manage to barely clear the planet as the magnetic field starts to amp up sharply and the planet starts showing signs of volcanic activity all over the globe. The magnetic field collapses down to the surface and increases to a sci-fi ridiculous level and destroys the Blaze…and Kobol.
The Cycle is broken. With the roadmap to Earth they head back for the fleet.
There was a great moment when the mission returns when the commander realizes that Athena is no longer his lover, and has his nervous breakdown in private. They also learn from her that while they have the map, they will need her to get past the “Guardians of Earth”, who will need to see someone they “know.” Hence the need to take biomass and retool it with her DNA. There were some intimations that the TITANs may be “near” Earth, and that the Blaze may or may not be destroyed. If not, they will need to attract the attention and aid of the TITANs to stop him.
If the characters follow their own plans, the fleet will split with Galactica leading the ragtag fleet of civilians to Earth, while Pegasus takes the other military assets and fights the much weakened Cylons with hit and run attacks designed to distract the enemy from the fleet’s escape.
So that’s an example of how you can take the material from an established property or universe, keep a lot of the elements (and even enhanced them), and still go your own way.
The 2014 Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride is rode, and yours truly took the prize for Most Dapper Gent, although Trixie lost out to a lovely ’70s Honda 500Four.
I will be riding in the 2014 Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride, which I assisted in organizing, here in Albuquerque. We are riding in fancy dress, proper attire, post-war period costuming to raise money for prostate cancer.
It might not be as trendy as brest cancer or pouring ice water over yourself for ALS, but it’s a good cause — so pop over to my homepage on the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride page and donate some dosh!
Here’s what I’m wearing:
Klits…they get the pussy.
..and what I’m riding: Trixie, my 2010 Triumph Thruxton:
Thanks already to Jim Sorenson for giving generously!
The local shooting range does a bunch of training courses and the former military and contractor guys are way to into the Central Axis Relock and C-Clamp bullshit. They’re not any better shots for it — it just looks tacticool. The CAR “check your six” whiplash thing? Stupid. The over the barrel hold for rifles? Great if you don’t need those iron sights. (But the modified Rambo..? That totally works. Totes.)
Three things make you a good shot: practice, find the grip that works for you…and practice. Think about all those amazing rifle(wo)men and pistoleers across the last two centuries — their stances and holds were what worked for them — but in the end, they shot. A lot.
It’s officially the fifth year of the Black Campbell blog. What started out as an all-purpose forum for my blather quickly bifurcated into a blog on gaming, movies, science and science fiction, and the occasional filler; and another on politics, history, and everything else I care to pontificate on.
There’s been a few readers that have stuck with the blog for years, and still comment from time to time; there are other readers that have become good acquaintances (can you really be friends if you’ve never met..? I suppose it’s possible.)
I’ve thought to expand the scope out of the niche games and general game review/theory that defines Black Campbell, but well — I like it here. So for those of you who regularly lurk or read or comment — thanks for sticking with me, and hopefully for you lurkers you’ll find a reason to engage with the other readers in the comments. Gaming’s a social hobby; let’s make this a place folks can feel comfortable to chat about the material presented here…
I gave my initial impressions of the new iOS8 in this post, but after living a day with it, here’s some reconsiderations and updates:
1) Battery life, for me, seems to be much improved. I played with the phone pretty steadily — mostly watching the coverage of the Scottish independence referendum — over the last 30 hours or so and finally plugged it in about at 18% power. Not seeing a dramatic change on my iPad Mini, although it seems to be charging more slowly.
2) On my iPad Mini, I’ve noticed a glitch that seems to lock up the Mail app if you do a bulk delete of mail. Not happening on the iPhone 5s.
3) The voice recognition is vastly improved. I’ve been using it pretty steadily.
4) The voice for Siri is much much more natural-sounding.
5) I’m actually using the Health app to monitor blood pressure, weight, etc. — but that could just be the novelty of the app, at this point.
Nothing else has particularly grabbed me beyond what was already mentioned in the first post.
I noticed that the new iOS update rolled up this morning quite by accident, and I think I got in before the masses swamped Apple’s servers. I threw it on the iPad and iPhone and so far, looks good, though I haven’t really dug in yet…
The download process: It seemed very quick, at first, then wen’t glacial about halfway through. Took about 30 minutes, but the actual update process was quick. Set-up was easy enough and the update did turn on the bluetooth, like it always does. I went ahead and fired up the iCloud files, or whatever they’re calling it these days, even though the calendars, etc. look to not be talking to the laptop now. This is supposed to be sorted with the arrival of the next OSX in a month or so. I can get by ’til then. I mostly use my calendar, notes, etc. on the iOS devices, anyway.
The look isn’t much different. The control panel is cleaned up, you can answer a text from the notifications screen. There’s the addition of a “Tips” app that I wish you could get rid of (you can’t), as well as Podcasts (which, again, you can’t delete.)
The great: Family sharing — you can share multiple iTunes accounts between family members, so now you can watch a movie, music, whatever another in the house has bought on their account. The downside — it uses the initiator of the sharing as the lead and billing for everyone’s iTunes goes through you, looks like. I’ll have to investigate.
Siri is much faster and seems to be able to handle accents a lot better. (My weird mid-Atlantic American/Scots blather confuses the ol’ iPhone most days. It also fills in as you speak, instead of waiting until you’re finished, so you can see where it’s having trouble.
The good: Voice messages in the Messages app. The health app could come in handy.
The “meh”: Addition of a timer for shooting pictures with your mug in them. Time lapse video.
Performance: On the iPhone 5s, iOS8 is giving me no dramatic change in user experience outside of the better voice recognition. On the iPad, I noted the predictive typing slowed performance waaaay the hell down and made typing in Pages almost impossible. I turned it off and it started working well. Predictive typing didn’t come into play on the phone so far today, but i turned it off anyway.
Battery life seems a bit low, but then again, I’m playing with the devices pretty much constantly today to see what they could do so take that into account.
After a session or two of buildup and planning, the characters finally popped the trigger on the mission to find the Tomb of Athena on Kobol they called Operation PARTHENON. They had the benefit of a ton of intelligence from the damaged basestar they had found a few sessions ago — PHOTINT of the area, some idea of disposition of forces, and they know that with the skin jobs and centurions fighting each other, the attention will be off of a possible Colonial incursion. That said, they knew the mission was going to be extremely dangerous. They have a secondary mission after recovery of the “roadmap to Earth” of destroying the Tower with a nuke delivered from Galactica.
The mission entailed four raptors doing a LAAI [Low Altitude Atmospheric Insertion] jump. Parthenon 1 & 2 were carrying the ground mission, Parthenon 3 & 4 were ECM raptorsthat immediately took off through the mountain passes, hoping to draw any Cylon attention away from the ground mission. I put together a series of PHOTINT pieces for the players to work with on my iPad. Example: here’s the basic layout of what’s left of Olympus, overlooing the “City of the Gods” in the valley below, which is dominated by the massive Tower of Dis — the “home” or headquarters of the Blaze on Kobol, and now either the HQ for the centurions or the skin jobs (they don’t know which…)
And the insertion…
In this case, the Deiopolis (City of the Gods) is in the valley in the upper left. There is another inhabited (or not due to the civil war) city to the north (off the pic to the right.) For these aids, I pulled up Maps on the computer, killed all the notations (set to satellite view), and then captured the window and added the rest with Seahorse. (I’m on a Mac.) I threw together a Keynote/Powerpoint presentation for the mission…because Powerpoint, once invented, is like the herpes of an organization; you can’t get rid of it. Standing in for Olympus/the City of the Gods is Telluride, Colorado. It was the closest I could get to my verbal description of the area.
The insertion is a close thing — they get the coordinates right, so no one winds up in a mountain, but going off of what was on screen and what we’ve established in the game, the jump effect creates a split second of vacuum around the raptors, which are moving at supersonic speeds, but that bubble collapses immediately. I rated the effect as a FORMIDABLE for the pilots. Parthenon 1 and 4 biff their rolls, lose control, but managed to make their recovery rolls at HARD. Had they missed, the raptors would have crashed.
The ground assault cuts through tight canyons and put down out of sight of the Tower of Dis, which can see much of the ridge that Oympus is on. One of the player’s characters did an excellent job with his ECM rolls and they go unobserved for almost 20 minutes while the ground team moves to Olympus and climbs a small rock face. Once in Olympus, however, they get spotted by strange boa snake meets lamprey meets robot sentries and the fight is on!
About this time, Parthenon 4 gets shot down, Parthenon 3 runs out of its decoys and other EW gear and jumps back to Galactica, which is waiting at about 30SU from Kobol (about the orbit of Neptune, if this were our solar system. They are 4 hours from knowing what is going on….
Except. The ground team gets aggressed by not just raiders, but directed energy weapons from the Tower that are destroying the ancient ruins around them. Heavy raiders bring in centurions and in a heavy exchange of fire, a few of the raiders and heavy raiders are destroyed. Unfortunately, Parthenon 2 is disabled and the crew injured; it is unable to make space. Parthenon 1 is damaged, but still in the game, but it is only a matter of minutes before the unarmed craft will be overrun.
In Olympus, the ground team loses four of their eleven members, and they finally move to rappel down to the Tomb of Athena. We cliffhangered (literally), with the group descending just as the Tower obliterates the buildings near them, possibly endangering the team. The raptor crews are either injured and about to be hit by a 12 man squad of centurions, and Parthenon 1 can’t stay on site much longer…
The session ran long — almost until 11pm, instead of the usual 930-1000 time. Only one of the (former) PCs had been killed, a few minor NPCs, and there was the chance of two major NPCs from the show (Starbuck and Helo) buying it.
Cut out the dreamy crap about spirals and life at the end and you have a pretty cool video of how the planets actually move around the sun. Now the “old model” they’re describing works just fine when you are looking at just the solar system, but the addition of the movement of the sun does give am interesting perspective…
Between rewatching Role Models and reading up on the Jedburgh Ba’ tradition, I realized something that can improve on the verisimilitude (a word I use because i love the sound of it, and it makes me sound smarter than I am) of your RPG setting. People play games, watch games, beat each other up over games…always have, always will.
Here’s some basic ideas for games your players’ characters might play:
There medieval football, the closest to which today would by the Jedburgh or Kirkwall game of ba’ (ball…with a Scottish accent.) You choose two destinations — one for the Uppies, one for the doonies (downies) from either end of town. There’ a designated person to “throw up” the ball, usually a leather hand-stitched thing about 4″ in diameter, sometimes adorned with ribbons, etc. The goal is to get the ball over the destination point up the town or down. You play in a mob — none of this small numbers crap — and it can take all day. The big honor of keeping the ball goes to someone on the winning side.
Rugby/football/soccer — There are other obvious variants of football. Some even use your foot, NFL fans. Rugby is a nice one — it’s like American football, but without all the padding and helmets. Score points by getting the ball into the goal, and have fun pummeling other people into the grass. Soccer is a bit more civilized, with mostly kicking, rather than throwing and carrying the ball, as in football and rugby.
Keep It Up — Volleyball, beach ball, tennis, badminton even jai alia are keep it up games. Drop the ball, the other side gets a point. There might be other rules, etc., but this is the basic game. Jai alia just adds the extra fun of a hard ball moving at high speeds for greater injury potential!
Get It In — Basketball, Battlestar Galactica‘s pyramid, Rollerball — all are versions of this: Get the ball, throw it in the basket/hole/whatever for points.
Ball games typically are team sports, with teams as small as doubles up to the mob scrums of handball. Team sports, like their older brother political parties, inspire intense — often idiotic — loyalty and pride. They can have a lot more subtext than just colored jerseys — they imply where you are from, your religion, your politics. Get asked in Glasgow is you are Rangers or Celtics, and they’re not just asking if you like blue or green; are you Catholic or Protestant. On a Friday night after a few pints, this could lead to a beat down in the wrong neighborhoods.
Speaking of beat downs: Contests of skill, strength, etc. are fun. Arm wrestling over a few pints? Always good. Archery or shooting contest? Obstacle courses? Boxing/karate/cage fighting matches — these are ways to have the characters earn some dosh or respect without having to run a mission of some kind.
The other major gaming you see is racing. People will race anything. If slugs were big enough to ride, we’d race ’em. Dog racing, Pinewood derbies, horse racing, bicycles, trains (yes, there have been train races),motorcycles, cars, boats, planes, spaceships — we either ride ’em or watch ’em. For powersports, half the fun is when the person biffs it. Everything from regulated tracks with warning flags, and rules for not trying to wreck other racers, road rallies where you go from point A to B, timed events (to prevent crashes), demolition derbies — add some nasty terrain and speed and it gets fun.
Games of chance: People love the easy money, and the thrill of maybe winning is enough to have people playing the Redneck Retirement Fund weekly across the United States (the lottery, for those trying to figure out the putdown…) Dice. Cards. Roulette (with or without the gun), pachinko, dominoes….the quick way to handle this in game is to have the players roll some kind of gambling skill or attributes appropriate to the matter. But if the game is the point of the adventure — say, you’re running Casino Royale as a scenario in a espionage game — why not bust out the cards for some high stakes action? Even if it’s just a few hands, it will change the flavor of the session. (I bought triad cards for Battlestar Galactica for just this thing, but the characters have been a bit to busy for games, lately…) Now add gambling to any of the situations above and you can add drama to the events.
Can you make a simple game played in a session as intense and “important” as fighting the bad guys? Have a look at Role Models — a lightweight comedy that is actually much more respectful and understanding of geek culture than something like Zero Charisma. The climactic SCA/LARP battle is not life threatening, but for one of the characters, it is central to who he is — losing the scrum to the “bad guy” really is that important, and despite the characters using boffer swords and dressed like members of KISS (seriously, see this movie!), the audience does feel that this is high stakes, even if it is stupid to some of the characters.
The Black Campbell 