Creating SF Settings in a LARP

The most popular genre for LARP games is fantasy, often high fantasy. SF games do exist, but these are much rarer. The aim for Solar Stories is that it develops into a fully-fledged setting for table-top RPGs and LARP.  When I think about the tabletop side of things, SF isn’t that different from fantasy. We can use maps, diagrams and plans to work where things are and give players a sense of geography. LARP is different because the players have to act within the game environment.

Playing in the environment is challenging as I don’t know anyone with a spaceship. I do have a few ideas.

Accept that not everything can be recreated.

It’s true in fantasy larp, and it’s true for science fiction players as well. Not all environments can be created. Generally, you cannot create that enormous ancient stronghold in a fantasy game or show dragons flying about. That doesn’t stop anyone from having fun. If it can’t be created physically, it can be created in the players’ minds, and you can reference it. Fantasy players have been doing this for a long time. 

So can SF players. Take rotating O’Neil-style space colonies. You can’t create the upward curve of the ground that sweeps up so that you don’t see the sky but the ground above you when you look up.

Planetary Surfaces are just places.

Get the action onto a planetary surface, especially a rural SF location, and all the problems disappear. A forest is a forest, regardless of the genre. Take a look at the range of shows shot in Canada. A good location is a  good location.

How Does this work in Solar Stories?

Solar Stories sweeps across the solar system; it’s not all metallic corridors, for example.

  • Earth – Many different countries, cultures and places to include
  • Man-Made Space Colonies – A good many of these are vast and include buildings, towns, farms, fields and forests on their inside surfaces
  • The Caverns of … – Huge and ancient open spaces to keep the colonists sane. Existing on Mars and many great colonies built into asteroids under the moons of gas giants.

Spaceships are just Buildings.

Any manned spacecraft is nothing more than an enclosed space. Just like a building. Admittedly the more immersive generating staging you can do to help player imagination, the better. However, the truth is that a spaceship is something you need to stay inside of and that buildings are good at that does not change.

So are Small Space Colonies

If your space colony is nothing more than rooms hacked into rock, a cluster of connected modules or somewhere that cannot be easily left, then once more, a good building is an easy stand-in.

Anywhere can be Anywhere.

If we imagine a future society using virtual spaces, just as we are starting to do, then anywhere can be anywhere. If you’re in a spacecraft or tight colony, using virtual reality would make sense as an escape from the confinement. Adventures set in VR are a well-worn trope. There is no reason why larp should not make use of it.

Tents are surprisingly useful.

In an SF setting, why think about tents? Well, here are some ideas.

  • In a breathable atmosphere, a tent is still a place to live. If the story is set away from civilisation, then tents are still valid.
  • Sometimes, for example, creating quick housing in a refugee crisis is necessary. Tents work
  • Need an emergency shelter on an airless asteroid? A tent could be a good stand-in for just such a thing, 
  • Need a small cramped space capsule? A tent could do that. 

Costume Maketh the Immersion

When all else fails, remember that good costumes and props make a huge difference in making the game feel believable. Aim for the highest standard of costume that you feel is practical. Good props should never be underestimated. Having something tangible in hand that looks like it should be in the game universe always works better than having nothing at all.

Image Reference

https://space.nss.org/settlement/nasa/70sArtHiRes/70sArt/art.html

NASA Ames Research Centre.

Going Beyond into the First Space Race

I’ve added another video blog about Space Vikings and Space Pirates. It’s not about fictional characters. It’s about how history is vaguely interacting with the present and perhaps the future. The video explains itself, so have a look.

Space Pirates and Space Vikings takes me to

It feels as if we’re in a second space race. The first one started in the 1950s and went on into the 1970s. This one is not about superpower posturing. It is all about which private companies (often in conjunction with national organisations) can create practical solutions to reaching orbit and space exploration. I’m by no means the first person to put this idea forward and its not the first time I’ve felt it. The British launch sites make it feel more real and more personal.

This time the Space Race happened step by step and without ticker tape parades.  This time instead of global nationalistic broadcasts, we have YouTube.  Yet around the world, companies are building, innovating and launching. It opens up possibilities.

Some of those possibilities are the ones that science fiction authors have been writing about for decades. The worlds created by an expansion into space. About the societies, politics and attitudes that will change everything about how we live.

It may even be that we are in the origin story for Solar Stories.

A space launch from Cornwall leads to a video and this blog. Acts of history are triggers and triggers make lots of things happen

Maybe even Cornish Pasties in space. 

Anatomy of a Spaceship

Spaceships inevitably play an important role in Solar Stories. At once, being a combination of transport, home and plot devices.  It becomes essential then to figure out we describe these within the game.

Making statements about the ship technology of Solar Stories will be tough. Here’s why.

  • Ships will be built to do a job, usually on a budget. Cold hard realism says some vessels with by glitzy and high-tech. Most will not
  • Ships are likely to be old. It’s easy to imagine something that’s a family spacecraft. It’s like an old farmhouse. It’s been in use for hundreds of years and has had many repairs, modifications, extensions and rebuilds that its not the latest design. But it does the job.
  • Belief. Plain and simple, some people consider dangerous and dubious technologies as ok and exciting. Others will be appalled. Items like power, engines, and life support may be built in such a way not because it’s “The Best” but because, at some time, someone believed in it.

…There is likely to be a rich diversity in ship construction. All that said, all spaceships have points in common. Just like all modern-day real-world spacecraft do. To turn these necessities into a guide for designing ships, I’ve made a list of things a spaceship must have and assigned  a  percentage of the ship’s size to each.  Now, these are guidelines. Each one has a margin of error. If you feel that these don’t add up for your vessels, then no problem. Adjust the sizes consistently, and you’ll be fine. This has to be a loose framework since the ships of Solar Stories are so variable

Power – Up to 20%

I’m assuming that the ship’s power will be efficient and long-lasting. Also that it will take up space. I will use the word “Reactor” since the list of possible power sources is long. Power could be supplied by something we’d recognise; then again, it might not. This list is a very long way from being exhaustive

  • Nuclear Fission
  • Nuclear Fusion
  • Antimatter
  • An engineered or discovered biological reaction
  • Self Regenerating Fuel Cells (perhaps drawing energy from the nature of space-time)
  • A microscopic black hole.
  • Something that draws power from planetary and solar magnetic fields

And, of course, the list goes on. If the type of power is going to be a possible plot point or related to the nature of a lead character, then define it. Otherwise, it’s a reactor.

Main Engines – Around 20%

The main engines provide the ship’s primary means of acceleration. The main engine’s figure comprises the engine itself and any fuel required.

If a ship runs on more than one engine – the figure is still 20%. It’s just two smaller engines. However, if the ship is meant to have incredible acceleration, double the engine size (or more) by all means. Swift ships could well be primarily engines with very cramped crew accommodation.

Solar – Up to 10%

Solar power is ignored above. Generally, ships using solar energy will have a smaller power plant. Most of the work is done by exterior solar panels. But there is still a need for reserve power storage and routing so the reactor area can be reduced by between 30% of normal and 50% of normal. 

The same goes for solar propulsion. I’m thinking light sails or similar. All

the main work is outside the ship, but we still need to consider rigging and storage when the vessel is docked. That’s what counts towards internal volume.

Manoeuvring the Ship – Up to 10%

Big engines are all about getting from place to place. A ship still needs to move slowly, to spin and rotate. How this is achieved varies, but most likely involves some form of engine or reaction wheel. 

Life Support – Up to 10%

Assuming that your ship is crewed, the means of keeping the crew alive will be everywhere. Sure there will be some stocks and stores of vitals like water or air. Yes, some processing plants will be needed, but also there will be redundancy throughout the ship. This is the one system that cannot fail. For the vessel in Solar Stories, I can see lots of machinery, biological systems, and connecting conduits throughout the ship. So when designing a ship, we can talk about the overall amount of space, but its unlikely to all be in one place.

The golden design rule is the more people you pack in, the more space you need for life support. So a sleek military ship with a small crew is likely to have less space set aside than a budget space liner that really crams them in.

Guns

All RPGs and LARPs include conflict. Therefore we must have armaments on the ships that need them. Try and remember these guidelines.

  • Anything stored internally takes up internal space and reduces the amount of space for Everything Else. A big gun or big internal armoury should use up space. Start with 5% and increase it in increments of 5% based on cinematically how loaded you think the ship should be
  • Any weapons held on external pylons add mass to the ship. So if you think 18% of the ship might be engines, the hull gets festooned with missiles. Then you may need to increase the engine size to cover the weight for this. 

I’m keeping the thoughts on weapons down to this kind of guideline until such time as I write a really good set of guidelines on ships’ weapons. My immediate thoughts are with weapons, it’s going to come down to how the weight of the weapons and ammunition impacts the ship

Everything Else

Oddly enough, everything covers the crew’s quarters, command centre, cargo storage, communication and anything else you can think of. Everything else might be where all the action takes place, but how big it depends on how much space is left once items such as power, engines and life support have been considered. 

How to Use this guide

All the numbers here are a loose guide that adds a certain amount of internal space to a specific function. 

Figure out how much you need to give any crew and passengers, then give your ship an overall length. 

Then work out the percentages. For example, does your ship need lots of speed or handle a lot of passengers? If so – take those areas to the maximum percentage possible. That’s all you need to do. Work out what you need and use the sizes as a guideline to help you allocate space to essential functions.

By the end of the process, you should end up with spacecraft where you have an idea of its capabilities and perhaps an inkling of a personality as well.

Going More Multimedia – Lets Add YouTube

Multimedia – that’s a term that these days feels like a real blast from the past. Once upon a time it was all the rage. I hardly hear it.

It would be better to say that my online blogging and related activities are now backed up by a new YouTube Channel. Actually its not really a new challenge, more like the relaunch of some prior video fumbling’s.

Before I go on an apology to anyone wanting more Solar Stories background. I’ve two articles in development. But I felt it important to get things started on the YouTube side of things. The urgency came from knowing that I had been given a great channel name and it was going to waste. I had to do something. That something was create a statement of intent.

That’s the first post of this resuscitated channel. A statement explaining what I intend to do with it. So lets take a look.

That is the hope of the channel. That it becomes a place that adds depth and value to my writing in a way that I could never do just in blogs alone.

Yes its a big ask and an even bigger ambition, but lets give it a go. After all its not every day that somewhere like YouTube gives you your own name as a channel.

Rules for Solar Stories

Solar Stories has always been intended as a Table Top RPG setting that could make the leap into the world of Larp. While I’ve been thinking about the next Solar Stories post, a massive row has erupted in the world of RPGs regarding the D&D Open Game Licence (OGL). The quick version of the OGL row surrounds the release of information about a new version of the licence used to publish third-party dungeons and dragons material. The changes were not in favour of the Dungeons and Dragons Community. To say the community is unhappy is quite the understatement.

Obviously choosing, what you build something on is very important.

Creating something unique is always the temptation. But then so is working with a common standard, and that has the added bonus of the base rules being tested.

The OGL fiasco makes basing anything around the eternally popular Dungeons & Dragons out of the question.

So What Am I looking for?

Solar Stories is being built as source material for a game. All games need rules and that is what I am looking for. A rule set flexible enough for the emerging Solar Stories background. Its possible that characters created for a table top environment may jump to larp. That has to be a consideration.

Rules Considerations

  • The rules must be from a licensing scheme which is clear, open and not owned by a publishing company
  • The rules if published by an operating TTRPG company must come with a guarantee of being open and free to use in perpetuity.
  • Any ruleset must be flexible and fast to play. It must be clear enough to translate to LARP play

Possible Table Top Rules Systems

There are plenty of free RPG systems and good few open source systems. Here are three in consideration

Fate

Fate is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence and has reference materials that offer a great deal of flexibility in subject matter. Bonus Creative Commons Licensing is managed by a Non Profit and not the publishers of Fate.

Basic Role Play

Basic Role Play is produced by Chaosium who are one of the oldest RPG companies in existence. Basic Role Play is licensed under an Open Game Licence unique to Chaosium which offers plenty of possibility for building a game

ORC

The new kid on the block. ORC (Open RPG Creative Licence) is a new initiative started by RPG Publisher Paizo but looking to put together an new licence and a new rules reference. The good news is that the licence looks to be managed by an independent organisation. Since its announcement ORC has gained some serious support. It remains to be seen how it will develop. Read about the announcement here.

LARP Rules

This is where the going gets tough. Over the years there have been open larp systems. However understanding the status of these at this point in time isn’t massively clear. In fact the top Google Response is LARPBook. LARPBook is a project I manage. The website is currently in hiatus although it is full of great material.

Unless I hear of a really good system then I think the approach for Solar Stories will be to write a Creative Commons Licensed Larp Converter Reference.

The job of the Larp Converter Reference is this. Take characters designed in the head or in a set of table top rules and translate these to terms which can be applied to a set of larping guidelines. That should do the job.

Final Thoughts

D&D dominates table top RPGs and any changes to it that are in the favour could only have ever created a furore. But the D&D OGL row has done the world a favour. It’s reminded everyone that community counts. And also its made the community move further towards creating something that is open flexible.

It’s also made me think about my plans. I appreciate that.