Azelator Ereus's page

We are doing this in my group right now. The idea is that we are on a scientific expedition to explore the reasons for the Gap, and as a result we are not to operate the Drift drive on the main ship in order to provide consistent data. We are essentially moving out from Pact World space on 'impulse' systematically and seeing what happens, dropping drift beacons along the way. There is a very large crew aboard the ship, and the PCs are not in absolute command.

We are doing troupe-style play where every PC makes a 7th level, 5th level, and 3rd level character. Two are supposed to be crew members, while one can represent another interest that has found its way on board*. The groups can be mixed together, or used in parallel, depending on whats going on. So sometimes you are in command of the away team, and sometimes you are the red shirt. We have only done a few sessions with this configuration and its going well.

I think the issue we're running into immediately is that the original concept was each session plotline would be self-contained, like an TV episode, and pulling that off in a TTRPG setting is no easy task.

We had a pretty cool starship battle where a lot of the side characters with Piloting skills got pulled into smaller fighters as gunners, whether they were any good at it or not.... Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

*Mine is a Teifling Bureaucrat from Hell.

Looks to me like theres approx 20 million humans in Striving and about 10 in Arl, the respective megaplexes of Aballon and Akiton. That number struck me when I first read it and made me realize that, like with the Hykli*, there is a pretty big untold story here with those folks.

*Although you could, say, read 'Princess of Mars' which is pretty much where the story of Akiton begins.

I'm pretty sure the Bounty Hunter TV show with the cowboy outfits is canon on most tables.

Wei Ji the Learner wrote:

Variant transhuman races who've adapted/evolved to life in various environments!

I deeply bums me out that the Hykli never got any racial variance.

There is also plenty of ink that could be spilled on the humans living on Aballon.

If you had a computer, and a spell chip with an instance of summon creature, and you were a spell caster, you could indeed do exactly this. I have been experimenting with calling on Aeons (more traditionally ritualistically.. Z is a mystic..) as skill monkeys/historians of the akashic record, and as long as I keep it interesting as a player the GM has been using the instance to give up interesting information.

Playing a male Damaya Lashunta character who prefers male gendered humanoids has brought this whole topic up since I started playing SF. Since the Damaya were clearly correlated with gender in Castrovel's past, one can only imagine there was some kind of society-wide 'transition' on this topic. It is explicitly stated that one determines which subtype you enter at puberty, assumably regardless of biological sex or sexual preference.

It also affects my background in that the reason for his Outlaw status is that as an impressionable teenager he was seduced by an older (male human) mentor, and convinced to participate in an act of piracy. Taking off on the run with said person, who eventually ditched him in the Diaspora, taking the Thuamaugen they had hijacked from his mothers' technomagical gas mining station orbiting Liavara. So I'm screwed, meet this goblin, and do some debt collection work on a few stations before I find my way back to Absolom just in time to start Dead Suns.

I later barter with the Bone Sage to find out exactly how wanted I am and if my image from the news has managed to trigger a manhunt for me. He reveals that my mentor was in fact killed, on Eox, and is likely reanimated. So I'm going to have to encounter my manipulative ex in zombi (?) form at some point.

This is all just part of making characters that breathe, but being queer is kind of a central detail in the storyline as it unfolds. Also the relationship of the older man with much younger boy/man, where a young gifted person is groomed by a skilled but socially awkward adult and has to heal from the damage that causes is a story I know is part of many peoples lives, particularly gay ones. So I was inspired to tell it. I don't think I'd ever be interested in rping sexual situations or joining a group where that was a place it went, but I do think fleshing characters out as sexual beings gives them a depth which would be unavailable otherwise.

As for whether your sexual identity matters or should be a aspect of game is of course a matter of preference for how you want your games played. But as a gay man playing a character with a sexual trajectory similar to my own, I can say that rendering that detail has given a level of personal connection with the character which resulted in a lot more depth to my background story. Similar, I imagine, to the black men I game with whose human/nearhuman characters often have dark skin/hair, sometimes dreadlocks. Seems logical to me.

It also seems logical that any person of any gender would be well challenged to play a character without a conventional gender such as a Barathu, one of the handful of mollusk-like beings, or something that occasionally sprouts a bud or a seed. It brings all kinds of interesting questions about how we imagine ourselves in relation to others and the places we are in.

Sorry/not sorry for the necromancy.

I can think of a few reasons for this. Firstly the general content has to be appropriate for kids in order to still have the broad appeal that allows Starfinder to be such a success. Second the mechanic had to be balanced, and they chose to impose distinct mechanical advantages and disadvantages to the effects of individual drugs. It seems to adhere to the typical story arcs of typical drug users, in the typical ways stories are told about drug users. Does this allow you to accurately recreate the experience of several tech startups and take group bonuses to higher and higher Computer rolls towards the completion of a complex task as various physical and social side effects begin to creep up? No. Do we really need that? Not so much. Although it's fun to think about.

I would definitely read an 'adults only' Pact Worlds edition where all of the mutogenic hallucinogens of Aucturn and the Eyes Wide Shut Vampire parties on Eox are laid out in more detail. I suppose the Vestracs are already legitimately psychedelically horrifying. Like borgs that strap themselves into cenobite suits and scream in unison so they can boot up the Shadow Drive. They've got some heady gear.

But to be honest the space the setting leaves for the GM and players to co-create flavor to your groups individual taste is one thing that's so great about it. Want to make something that acts more like the drugs you know personally? Work it out.