d6 Mass Effect Plots

[LibraryOgre]

Hzurr, I'd appreciate it if you don't read this... I trust you, but I don't have a body of unseen Whovian lore to steal from draw on. :smallbiggrin:

Ok, so we're going to be playing some d6 Mass Effect this fall, with me as the GM. If you're not familiar with it

http://www.bozark.com/mass/x/downloads.html

We'll be going primarily from the 1.0 rules, backed by d6 Space

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php?manufacturers_id=468&filters=0_0_0_10020

Which is available free through drivethrurpg, having been released under the OGL.

I'm planning on setting the game in the two years between ME1 and ME2... between Shepherd's death and resurrection, but I'm kinda on the ropes for plots. A few things I want:

1) Semi-episodic. I don't mind having an on-going arc, but I'd also like a somewhat mission-driven structure that's easy for someone to be absent for... there's a good possibility of that.
2) Diversity. If someone wants to play Blasto's twin brother, who was too outrageous for the Spectres, I don't have a problem with this... but they need to be able to play alongside a Krogan mercenary, an ex-asari commando, a human martial artist, and whatever else my lovable nutjobs can conceive.
3) Space flight will not be a major part of it. They may fly from planet to planet, but I don't want the game to bog down in flight scenes where no one does anything but watch the pilot play.

My current thoughts were to be somewhat Shadowrun-esque them playing the parts of a corporate espionage team, but I'm open to other ideas.

[Doktor Per]

Dude, you have to pull an Alien (not Aliens, keep that as a surprise for later)

Pretty ordinary mission, are private security on a transport and then you mislead them by having them run into some pirate types, or whatever at the distress site and have these foes swear revenge (or some sort of ominous threat) And while your heroes have been off kicking pirate ass, one of their scientist has gotten pregnant (unbeknownst to everybody) after some sort of beast attacked them in the other vessel (you can mislead again that when they go and investigate the facehugger looks more like a headcrab. There were no survivors.

Then you just go through the damn movie, just throwing everything you can off. (You may want to give them a little Crew: Expendable in their mission briefing)

[Noblesse]

Mass Effect is my favorite video game series at the moment. Kudos to you for running it.

Mission Ideas:
-classic damsel in distress, utilizing stealth and whatnot to reach her and try to get her out. Only to find out it is a trap and they have to fight their way out

-Krogan world virtually untouched by anyone. Goal? Obtain non-genophaged DNA, possibly to help with the research to cure it, or to keep it in place. Kind of difficult when they don't speak a language anyone knows and attacks anyone not in their tribe on sight--with guerilla tactics. Only thing to watch out for here is that they don't try to 'save' the krogans i.e. releasing them

[LibraryOgre]

Well, we had character creation, and everyone went with a non-human, and only one (a turian detective) is not biotic, so I'm working with something a bit different.

Basically, they were all kidnapped and used in biotic experiments (my current thought is Cerberus, but I can go another route). The turian happened to get too close, and so he was also taken.

Our party:
The aforementioned Turian detective
A drell assassin who likes bows (my ruling is that neither melee combat nor bows activates shields).
A batarian biotic.
An asari commando.
A heretical hanar medic.

I'm planning on starting them relatively naked and alone. I may wind up going in and fixing everyone's characters... the 1.x version on the above link is pretty rough.

[Jerthanis]

The politics and cultures are so rich and wonderful that I can't help delving into it for inspiration for Mass Effect plots.

For example, the Batarians were actually a Council race before a conflict over Human settlements in an annexed system, where the Council ruled in favor of the Humans, resulted in them essentially withdrawing from the Council and becoming a rogue sovereignty. In the wake of this, Batarians have lost so much face and political clout that it can't be a policy with 100% approval rating among Batarians. There could easily be a political group seeking reconciliation with the Council, but there is also obviously the ones who feel betrayed by the Council and seek revenge against them and the Humans.

The Human/Turian relationship is warming significantly in recent years, notably with the collaborative project of the Normandy... but the First Contact War / Relay 314 incident is within living memory... only about 25 years ago... with the issue of the Humans being upgraded in their "Dreadnought" class ship allowance (determined as a ratio of how many ships the Turians have), it's entirely possible a group of short sighted Humans might want to take advantage by rekindling war between the two, not thinking of the ramifications.

Salarians are the ones responsible for the Genophage, which sterilzed most of the Krogan population. A worrying act and an even more worrying capability. What would happen if there was an anonymous leak that Salarians had stockpiles of variations on the Genophage... variations designed to target Humans, Turians, Asari... all other races? It doesn't matter whether they ACTUALLY have any or not, the other races will ask if it's true and the Salarians will deny it. Salarians are so good at Spy/Counterspy work that it'd be almost impossible to independently verify or expunge this accusation, but the poisonous political atmosphere could cause severe tensions to rise between everyone else and the Salarians.

Mass Effect is not just my favorite Bioware RPG, it's my favorite Sci-Fi Setting.

[LibraryOgre]

Hmmm... since the group doesn't have a salarian or a krogan, making it a salarian-backed project (run primarily by humans, who think they're doing it for another group entirely) towards genophage research (maybe late stage, seeing if it has different effects on biotics?) would be a good option. It also adds the "We're not going to be allowed off the planet" vibe...