[MGSF] First Public Beta

If anyone’s curious, this is what I’m running at 11/11/11. Everything’s here but the final demo, which I had HOPED to have public-ready before tonight but…well, procrastination. Soon.

We can start talking about it in this thread when I get back. See the locals shortly, and talk with the rest of y’all on Monday.

p.

I dont think that’s the right link…Unless you’re publishing Lacuna now.

Mmmmnope. When I click on it it links to a .zip file. What are you seeing at your end?

“Access denied
You are not authorized to access this page.”

Well heck. Updated with a Google Docs link. :-/

FYI Paul, I’ve been slowly making my way through MGSF05. There’s a lot of good stuff in there! I’m excited to hear about what happens on Saturday!

well, I think it went pretty well! Still has all the rough edges that I suspected it had, still doesn’t include a copy of Paul B, and the work-in-progress will continue to progress. :slight_smile:

Cool beans. Totally gonna give this a play or two.

Any suggestions before I do?

Also, are there any rules on how many connections Planets need to have or the order in which you make them?

I’m also curious as to how well the mission giving went. One of the things I like a lot, as a gm, about MG is how structured that aspect is, you never have to ask “Okay, so who’s giving them this mission?”

Terrific. Email me your contact stuff because I’ll want a debrief after you’ve read/played.

The setup text should guide you to a point where you’re ready to play. My demo was very front-loaded and i’m hoping to post it soon so folks can see kind of how a mission “should” look when it launches. Mission-giving should be no big deal, since there are Gwendolyn-replacements for all three kinds of games. You get your corporate missions from HQ, your government missions from whatever ministry you serve, and your private missions from The Network. Should work same-same. I’ve even contrived a setting thing that keeps you from just calling back to HQ/homeworld/client with questions or updates.

Planet connection: Each planet only needs a single connection. When you’re building characters, those connections will all be charged with one or more qualifiers e.g. enemies, trade route, distant, difficult, all that. But once you’re actually playing, there is a neutral “nothing special here” connection you can make. I need to clarify that in the text, which I’m rewriting a bit as a result of the weekend’s demo. Don’t worry about the rewrite, just play as-is and lmk what happens.

Stuff I’d like you to pay attention to:

  • Size of dice pools, and the ease with which players scrape together dice. The system is at the point now where I’m fine-tuning difficulties. In our 4p game it was “easy” to pull together pretty good-sized pools.

  • Clarity on the different scripted conflict types, and if they’re sensibly constructed. Ditch Netwar, it’s dumb and unnecessary; Virtualists can just do versus or independents. The Network is ubiquitous enough without also giving them spotlight time via scripting.

  • I’d love to be a fly on the wall during the crew/ship creation step so if you could pay attention to how and why folks make the decisions they do, that’d be swell.

  • Watch the Junior and Senior officers’ play. I feel like the Commander, Recruit and Freelancer all produce the vibe I want pretty consistently, but the Officers aren’t quite there yet. My hope was that chain-of-command stuff and the “Obey” Nature behavior would prompt more button-pushing on that front, which it might with a more experienced play group, but out of the tin it’s maybe a little too emergent/obscure.

  • If a Technological Assumption seems missing or unclear or you really really want to know what was in my head, please pay attention to that. IMO this is where the “Designer Not Included” problem is going to be the ugliest.

Thanks and enjoy!

p.

Hey, Paul. Really like how its shaping up. Matter of fact, if it’s OK with you, I’m going to run it at the Seven Hills con in Sheffield, UK in April. I usually run MG most cons I go to, and folks have been trying to get me to run a hack for ages, and Seven Hills has a sci-fi theme so it seemed to fit. I’ll make sure I let you know how it goes.

Hey, terrific!

I was allegedly working on updates but life has gotten in the way. You’ll find the ship rules don’t really work as advertised. Hopefully you can improvise around them.

Please let me know how it goes, if everyone had fun, where the pain points were, etc. Looking forward to hearing about it.