Following yesterday’s post, here’s some ideas to post-attack “second fleet” campaigns for Battlestar Galactica.

Key to this is the idea that another ship or ships survived the apocalypse.  In our campaign, the players’ battlestar and one of its assaultstar escorts survive the attacks on the Colonies because they are out investigating the lack of communications from Armistice Station.  They do run into the basestar there, and they lost much of their fighter group to the CNP attacks.  Fortunately, the assaultstars were upgraded, and the crew of the battlestar figure out the issue quickly enough to save the vessel (barely.)

Returning to warn the fleet, the ship misjumped due to problems related to the Cylon hack, and they were out of action for hours, trying to repair their vessel and get back into the fight.  By the time they do, Galactica and her fleet are gone.

Another idea is an exploration task force, out on patrol on the edge of the Armistice Line (or elsewhere) on a mission to look for Cylon activity, map the surrounding systems, and do science.  We encounter one of these in our campaign that has a science vessel (a Space Park style vessel), and agroship for supplies, and a tanker/tender, in addition to an older battlestar.  It’s a good assumption that there would be a few of these task forces, and that the Cylons might know where they are, thanks to their access to the Colonial Defense Mainframe.  Maybe they were held up on their patrol and aren’t where they’re supposed to be, saving them from attack (or warning them of the attacks when they get hit.)

There are two main storylines you can use here:  1) the ships stage a guerrilla war to free the Colonies, 2)  they haul ass into the Black, looking for a place to live.  If you don’t care about show canon, you could have them eventually find the fleet and aid them in their attempts to find Earth.

Some ideas for the guerrilla war option:

1.  The fleet does a series of dangerous recon missions with raptors to find out what is going on in the Colonies.  The opposition should be big enough that they cannot just go right at the Cylons.  I think we had something like 32-36 basestars (so thousands of raiders), and the Cylons were retrofitting battlestars they captured to fight.

2.  Deep Space Interferometer Telescope.  In our campaign, the SDIT was a series of telescopes rigged together in an interferometer, and controlled by a space station that the Cylons hadn’t discovered yet.  They rescued the crew, and reprogrammed the telescope to take orders from their battlestar.  With it, they were able to get reasonably fresh intelligence on the Cylon movement, and pick up transmissions from the survivors on the surface.  (Works well if you have a ground group, as well…)

3.  A series of search and rescue missions, or recon missions to connect with people on the surface of one or more of the Colonies to organize resistance.  A good twist here is that the survivors are sick from radiation, etc. and the rescuees or crew that liaise with them bring illness back to the ship.

4.  Staging a mission to capture mothballed ships (if you have enough crew to man them), or destroy Cylon bases of operations.

5.  Discovery of Scylla and her fleet.  these civilians have had everything of use stripped off of their vessels by Pegasus and they need help.  Play up the inhumanity of the move by Cain and co. to push the players to moral conundrums.  A good twist:  the fleet was seeded by Cylons with sleeper agents following the Pegasus event, and the ships have signaled the Cylons of the rescue attempt.  Have the Cylons show up right when the SAR is underway and muddies the rescue effort.

Here the key is to give them some hope that their loved one might have survived; having a relative of a character or two be found can heighten this.  Another important element is that they have to constantly move on the outskirts of the Colonies, and occasionally leave the system to hide — leaving them out of contact.  There should always be the element of discovery and a real battle in the offing.

For the Second Fleet idea —

You might start with some of the above and realize at some point that the Cylons are too many and have too tight a hold on the Colonies.  Lighting out into the Black, they come across Cylon fueling bases, mining operations.  A possible idea is that they keep coming across evidence of Galactica‘s fleet, leading them to Kobol, etc.

1.  Some kind of malfunction or sabotage causes the fleet to need water, fuel, or some other material.  Maybe it’s material to make repairs to the vessels.

2.  Murder mystery:  a young girl is found in a 55 gallon drum.  There is little forensics evidence (or no facilities to really follow up on the evidence) and the characters must scour the fleet looking for the killer.

3.  Mutinous Intent:  without hope the crew is trying to force the leadership to return to the Colonies.

4.  Religious Hints:  pick one of the characters and have them get messages from God (the Gods) leading the fleet to their next home.  Maybe they link up with the Galactica fleet and you replay/rewrite the last few seasons to suit your group, maybe they are lead to another world (maybe God wants to hedge his bets…)

5.  Disease — either natural or Cylon-caused.  How far do they have to go to seal off the infection?

There’s a wealth of ideas here to work from.  For my group, they aren’t working with the Scrolls of Pythia, but of Sybil — another oracle who wrote about another cycle of time.   The tale follows the Jericho/Masada/Troy idea of the noble resistance that eventually falls, but those that escape found the next major civilization.