Hey, folks. I'm looking for something to occupy my time while I wait for other games to update, and thought I might offer to GM a game of my own. I had a couple ideas in mind. As far as systems go, I was looking in two very different directions: FATE Core and Microscope.

On the one hand, I love FATE because of how flexible it is, how it doesn't hinge on the game being full of combat, and how it allows you to get a feel for your character and party before anyone even starts rolling dice. On the other hand, I just picked up Microscope and, as someone who loves fleshing out settings, am intrigued by the idea of a collaborative history-building system that lets you jump backwards and forwards in time. Which is not to say the two couldn't even feed into each other! It's an interesting idea in itself to take the history created in Microscope, and play during various periods as adventuring groups in FATE.

It's also worth noting that I wasn't looking to adapt any particular setting or IP into a game; I really prefer the sense of coming up with setting material myself (even if it's only a step or two removed from whatever its inspiration was). Either way, here are the loose ideas I was considering GMing for:

Space Opera: Starships, lasers, aliens and artificial planets. Or, alternatively, rock haulers, kinetic weapons, splicers and asteroid colonies. I love science fiction and I appreciate fantastic space operas, gritty hard SF, and everything in between. In FATE, this could be a multispecies crew of an exploratory vessel, uncovering the mysteries of the cosmos, or a hardened band of criminals and pirates trying to make a buck and stay one step ahead of the space patrol, or an extended clan of miners trying to keep hold of their family claims and resist the evil megacorporation trying to force them out. The possibilities are really very broad and I'm open to suggestions. In Microscope, we could explore the history of human colonization, a particular polity, a given ship, or a certain planet.

Palace Intrigue: The cogs of the Empire are greased with the blood of the weak and inept. In a hard and unforgiving time, those without allies fall quickly, family trumps friendship, and the Empire comes before all. This could be semi-historical, low or high fantasy, or even SF in itself. In FATE, the players could be rivals vying to curry royal favor, or members of one family trying to defend themselves from external threats and perhaps seek the throne themselves one day. In Microscope, this would similarly be either the history of the kingdom, the history of one family, or perhaps more abstractly the history of some important item - a magic sword, the crown jewels, a proud family banner.

Game would probably be Mature or Adult rated, depending on the sort of interest I hear. If anyone is interested or has suggestions, I welcome comments.

PS: I also love Traveller (Mongoose Edition), but I recognize that it's not everyone's cup of tea to roll on tables to find out what table to roll on next.

That miner-focused space opera is of terrible interest to me.

Does that mean you're 'terribly' interested in it, or that its interest to you is 'terrible'? :P

That first one. :)

I feel like a lot of Space Opera falls into two categories - military fleet battles, and the Firefly method (bunch of ne'er do wells drifting about robbing and saving people in equal measure). I like those, but this relatively novel perspective would be interesting to play out.

If it gets started, even with a small group, I'd absolutely love to be involved.

Well, again, the beauty of FATE is that it doesn't push one style of play over any other. Do you want a system geared entirely around combat? You can make it so. Do you want exploration and feats of physical prowess to be the main focus? You can do that, too. How about an entirely peaceful game based around political maneuvering and verbal sparring? That's possible also. Character growth is not geared around kills and XP, but around how much you play.

One (Traveller) game concept I loved but never got more than one session into was something like Perry Mason In Space.

I'd be interested in a Space Opera game. SF is my favorite reading material, as well as RPGs.

I was buying every SF game that came on the market, and while all of them had some great ideas, none of them had a universe that I liked.

Again, one of the things that attracts me to FATE and Microscope both is the freedom of players to help build the worlds they want to play in. If you've never played, FATE encourages collaboration between the GM and players to flesh out exactly what kind of features and facets they want to face together - important, because FATE's Aspects (think of them as Post-it notes for plot details) contribute directly to GM decision making, players' personalities, and dice rolls. There may not have been a Persephone University before, but as soon as you take Dropout of Persephone University, that creates all sorts of opportunities.

Likewise, Microscope is cool because there's no 'GM' as such - everyone takes turns adding in details of the history you're building, be they the main eras in that history, significant events within those eras, or the climactic scenes which make up each event. Beyond the list of elements all players agree upon at the beginning cannot become part of the game, there's no limits to what can or cannot happen. Alien infiltrators in the middle of your alternate Cold War? Do it. Temporal shenanigans complicating your fantasy saga? A wizard did it. How about heavenly powers meddling in your business juggernaut? Maybe you really can take it with you. You just got done building a majestic Utopia? Find out what happens when you blow it up! To a certain extent, the consequences only matter if you want them to, because time is not a fixed construct - you can always go back to before the walls fell, and explore some other facet of that history.

edit: Just so I don't double-post, here's a potential prompt I'm working up for the 'space opera miners' idea:

In the aftermath of a massive interstellar war ending in stalemate, both sides are cash-strapped, resource-poor and bled dry by years of fighting. Not only do both sides - and other markets to boot - need raw materials, there's millions of tons of scrap and salvage just floating around, ready to be harvested and returned. In this environment, one family/group of acquaintances chooses to put what money they have left into a ship for mining, salvage, hauling and other such enterprises - risking bureaucracy, corruption, con men, pirates, and other threats for the opportunity to strike it rich and secure their futures.
This message was last edited by the user at 07:03, Sat 25 June 2016.

I'd be interested. I've actually been thinking about Fate space opera lately, how it could be fun to run with a strong "make it up as you go" intention with the setting. Scrappers/miners could be an interesting angle.

On the other hand, I've been aching to play Microscope since I bought it a while ago, but haven't had a game get past the first round. So I'd be up for that in a heartbeat as well.

Again, I'm more than happy to go in either direction, so it just comes down to what players would be more interested in - playing through their daily travails in FATE and building the setting as an ad-libbed byproduct, or building the setting/history as the direct goal of playing Microscope. If it were left up to me, I'd come down on the side of FATE, largely because I'm more used to it, but I'd be interested to give Microscope a whack if there's greater interest in it.

I've never done FATE, but heard good things. I am for that.

In reply to mattdude00 (msg # 10):

I adore FATE and would happily play either!

My preference I would probably have to say Microscope, for the simple reason that I'd like to see a game of that all the way through.

Just dropping in to say I haven't forgotten this idea, I'm working on organizing my game basics (intro, RTJ, rules) before I start recruiting. It is/will be FATE based, dealing with miners, and aside from the most coarse details, pretty much everything is left open for definition.

In reply to tyrantsabre (msg # 13):

*thumbs up*

The game "Belters, Grinders and Rock Rats" is now up and recruiting for players! The plot and world details are a bit sparse, but as detailed in the RTJ, we'll be firming up the details as we recruit players.

link to another game
This message was last edited by the user at 06:24, Fri 01 July 2016.