FreakyCheeseMan
2014-01-21, 11:59 PM
I've got a game I'm planning to run, as soon as I get a system and a group together - wanted to run it by the forums, see what everyone thought.
Basic Overview - PCs belong to a small and unpopular ethnic group; the planet has been conquered by an outside force that has forced said group even closer to the edge. The players and a small group of others have finally fled into the wilderness from which their ancestors originated, and are struggling to survive, and possibly join the resistance, against the invading empire.
Less Basic Overview
"Cruth" is not a very nice planet. The magical field is weak, the vegetation is limited, the wildlife is aggressive and dangerous, and both the rotational period and orbital cycle are twice as long as Earth's, leading to frequent extremes of cold and heat. The one thing Cruth has going for it is a great deal of mineral wealth, including several rare magical elements - these can be found in the myriad lava caves that run through the crust of Cruth, but underground rivers and frequent floods make gathering them exceptionally dangerous. The planet was originally home to two mining camps peopled by human slaves, set there by a now-forgotten alien race.
The human population managed to cling to the edge of survival for several centuries before one family/clan - known as "The Red House" managed to rise above the constant fight for survival and begin to organize, plan for the future and unite the planet. This unification was mostly peaceful - the Red House had a lot to offer, and most people were very willing to swear allegiance in exchange for the benefits of their rule.
One group resisted - the descendants of the other (now scattered) camp, who had taken up residence in a particularly lethal area known as the Black Palm Forest, named for a rare species of fungus that infected the inhabitants, causing the palms of their hands to become black - a trait which they passed onto their children. The Black Palm were living as raiders, shamans and savages during the Red House's unification, and resisted them bitterly for several centuries of slow war - the difficult of life on Cruth meant that few resources could be spared for all-out war, but the long, slow conflict bred a great deal of bitterness.
Eventually the Black Palm were pacified and absorbed into the larger Cruthan culture, but ethnic tensions were always a factor, and the Red House often found the descendants of the Black Palm to be a vexation, if not an outright enemy.
About fifty years ago, all of this changed when the Ogtherians arrived - a powerful slave-empire from a much more hospitable world, the Ogtherians were the first of the human slave-colonies to discover interstellar flight, and used it to build an empire across every world they could find. When the invaders came, the Red House knew they had no chance against the advanced and well-equipped Ogtherian army, and surrendered almost at once; the Red House were allowed to remain in charge of the day-to-day governance of Cruth, so long as they quartered Ogtherian troops and cooperated with Ogtherian slavers and mining efforts.
As times grew more lean, old emnities rose to the surface, and the descendants of the Black Palm found themselves at odds with their Cruthan neighbors more and more often. The Ogetherians saw this prejudice and decided to take advantage, seeking to label the Black Palm as a common enemy, to render the rest of Cruth more cooperative to the occupation - or, at least, to get the planet to turn a blind eye, so long as they focused the worst of their abuses on the unpopular Black Palm.
Faced with enslavedment or extermination, many of the Black Palm finally fled the villages, going back into the largely uninhabited wilds from which their ancestors once waged war against the Red House. In the depths of the Black Palm forest, they band together in isolated camps and struggle to survive - and, perhaps, to fight back against their oppressors.
What the Campaign Would Be
I don't have a single main arc planned for how the game would go, but I do have a few things I'm pretty confident about.
First, the players will NOT be single-handedly defeating the Ogtherian Empire - it's too big, it's not that kind of setting, and that's something that will take entire armies to accomplish. At most, the players could become an elite group of resistance fighters, taking on high-priority missions to strength the position of the resistance as a whole.
The game's gonna start on Cruth, but sooner or later the players will move off-world, as the other planets Ogtheria has occupied begin to develop space-flight of their own, and start to form a unified resistance. Depending on what direction the players decide to go in, they could try to get a spaceship of their own and use it to aid the rest of the Black Palm, or perform missions for the rebellion, doing odd jobs on a variety of occupied worlds. Alternatively, they might decide they'd rather try to sit the war out entirely, and go exploring/adventuring across undiscovered space, only dealing with the broader conflict when they have to come back into "civilized" space for repair/supplies.
I really, really want to hit the players with a lot of tough roleplay challenges - this is gonna mean limiting them from the usual PC response of "Everytime I see an evil thing I kill it, and then there's no more evil." So, early on players might be entirely outmatched by the Ogtherian military, and have to make hard choices to preserve the security of themselves and their camp. (Stealing food from innocent civilians because attacking the Ogtherians for it is too risky, killing other Cruthans who happen across their camp for fear they'll sell them out to the Ogtherians, etc.) In the late game, this means deciding how far is too far, in their campaign against the Ogtherians - a lot of the rebellion's options would be brutal/immoral.
Basic Overview - PCs belong to a small and unpopular ethnic group; the planet has been conquered by an outside force that has forced said group even closer to the edge. The players and a small group of others have finally fled into the wilderness from which their ancestors originated, and are struggling to survive, and possibly join the resistance, against the invading empire.
Less Basic Overview
"Cruth" is not a very nice planet. The magical field is weak, the vegetation is limited, the wildlife is aggressive and dangerous, and both the rotational period and orbital cycle are twice as long as Earth's, leading to frequent extremes of cold and heat. The one thing Cruth has going for it is a great deal of mineral wealth, including several rare magical elements - these can be found in the myriad lava caves that run through the crust of Cruth, but underground rivers and frequent floods make gathering them exceptionally dangerous. The planet was originally home to two mining camps peopled by human slaves, set there by a now-forgotten alien race.
The human population managed to cling to the edge of survival for several centuries before one family/clan - known as "The Red House" managed to rise above the constant fight for survival and begin to organize, plan for the future and unite the planet. This unification was mostly peaceful - the Red House had a lot to offer, and most people were very willing to swear allegiance in exchange for the benefits of their rule.
One group resisted - the descendants of the other (now scattered) camp, who had taken up residence in a particularly lethal area known as the Black Palm Forest, named for a rare species of fungus that infected the inhabitants, causing the palms of their hands to become black - a trait which they passed onto their children. The Black Palm were living as raiders, shamans and savages during the Red House's unification, and resisted them bitterly for several centuries of slow war - the difficult of life on Cruth meant that few resources could be spared for all-out war, but the long, slow conflict bred a great deal of bitterness.
Eventually the Black Palm were pacified and absorbed into the larger Cruthan culture, but ethnic tensions were always a factor, and the Red House often found the descendants of the Black Palm to be a vexation, if not an outright enemy.
About fifty years ago, all of this changed when the Ogtherians arrived - a powerful slave-empire from a much more hospitable world, the Ogtherians were the first of the human slave-colonies to discover interstellar flight, and used it to build an empire across every world they could find. When the invaders came, the Red House knew they had no chance against the advanced and well-equipped Ogtherian army, and surrendered almost at once; the Red House were allowed to remain in charge of the day-to-day governance of Cruth, so long as they quartered Ogtherian troops and cooperated with Ogtherian slavers and mining efforts.
As times grew more lean, old emnities rose to the surface, and the descendants of the Black Palm found themselves at odds with their Cruthan neighbors more and more often. The Ogetherians saw this prejudice and decided to take advantage, seeking to label the Black Palm as a common enemy, to render the rest of Cruth more cooperative to the occupation - or, at least, to get the planet to turn a blind eye, so long as they focused the worst of their abuses on the unpopular Black Palm.
Faced with enslavedment or extermination, many of the Black Palm finally fled the villages, going back into the largely uninhabited wilds from which their ancestors once waged war against the Red House. In the depths of the Black Palm forest, they band together in isolated camps and struggle to survive - and, perhaps, to fight back against their oppressors.
What the Campaign Would Be
I don't have a single main arc planned for how the game would go, but I do have a few things I'm pretty confident about.
First, the players will NOT be single-handedly defeating the Ogtherian Empire - it's too big, it's not that kind of setting, and that's something that will take entire armies to accomplish. At most, the players could become an elite group of resistance fighters, taking on high-priority missions to strength the position of the resistance as a whole.
The game's gonna start on Cruth, but sooner or later the players will move off-world, as the other planets Ogtheria has occupied begin to develop space-flight of their own, and start to form a unified resistance. Depending on what direction the players decide to go in, they could try to get a spaceship of their own and use it to aid the rest of the Black Palm, or perform missions for the rebellion, doing odd jobs on a variety of occupied worlds. Alternatively, they might decide they'd rather try to sit the war out entirely, and go exploring/adventuring across undiscovered space, only dealing with the broader conflict when they have to come back into "civilized" space for repair/supplies.
I really, really want to hit the players with a lot of tough roleplay challenges - this is gonna mean limiting them from the usual PC response of "Everytime I see an evil thing I kill it, and then there's no more evil." So, early on players might be entirely outmatched by the Ogtherian military, and have to make hard choices to preserve the security of themselves and their camp. (Stealing food from innocent civilians because attacking the Ogtherians for it is too risky, killing other Cruthans who happen across their camp for fear they'll sell them out to the Ogtherians, etc.) In the late game, this means deciding how far is too far, in their campaign against the Ogtherians - a lot of the rebellion's options would be brutal/immoral.