I'm about to start up a new campaign, but the setting as written is a little to shiny for my tastes, so I was wondering how you guys would go about making the setting a bit darker and bit rougher? Generally, I prefer setting in which there aren't really any "good guy" organizations - the PCs might meet good individuals, but the various institutions are generally corrupt or at least highly self-serving, and the impetus is very much on the PCs to be the heroes. So less like Star Wars, more like Dune.
It's starting at a local level on a town I'm making up on Akiton and we're going for a space western theme in the beginning, so I've got some time to flesh out what the greater system looks like, but here were some early ideas I had.
The Pact officially only extends to the Diaspora. Anything beyond that is not a Pact World. The Pact Worlds themselves each vie constantly for political advantage over one another, and sabotage and espionage are very common.
The Kasatha are a lot more militant, and the faction on the Idari that is crying for them to colonize (by force, if necessary) is more vocal and larger than as presented in the core rulebook.
Brethesda is the unofficial intermediary between the Pact Worlds and the Outer Worlds (going out to Aucturn - no one touches Apostae). They have a reputation for being skilled mediators and diplomats but a lot of people are weirded out by them largely because of their non-anthroporphic shape.
The Outer Worlds helped in the war with the Veskarium and against the Swarm, but refused to sign the Pact afterwards due to concerns that their distance from Absolom Station would lead to them being marginalized under the Pact.
The treaty with the Veskarium is tense as heck, and as the years have drawn on, it's starting to look like each side saw it differently. Many people in the Pact Worlds fear that what they felt was an alliance and a trade agreement was seen as a suzerian arrangment to the Veskarium.
There is nothing that even remotely resembles a Pact military. Forces are rallied on, at the widest, a planetary scale. Stewards have a lot of authority but there aren't very many of them. They have the right to commandeer resources and manpower in pursuit of missions when deployed, but they're usually seen as secret police or unwanted federal interference.
Androids are kind of like replicants that also have a fair number of mechanical components. The knowledge of how to make them is known only by the anacites and is one of their most closely guarded secrets. Their sentience and autonomy has been recognized on the Pact Worlds and using them as slave labor is illegal there, but not beyond the Diaspora. Whether or not they actually have souls is still a matter of debate for many people.
Any thoughts or suggestions?
I am unsure if this is the direction you want to go but a cross between alien and firefly may be good in this setting. Instead of a lens on the large scale, the pcs are just joes trying to get by, like the space truckers or mercs respectively. The alien feeds the weird creepy things in space and firefly fits the wild west and big bad corps.
Yeah, I definitely want to draw on Firefly early on. We just did character creation a few hours ago, and the party is...
Korasha Solarian - came from a deeply religious family and became estranged from them because her solarian philosophy didn't mesh with their beliefs (still haven't nailed down a god for them), but they basically become a drifter exploring the universe and landed in this little town some months ago where they were abandoned by their last crew after a falling out with the captain.
Ysoki Envoy - Professional grifter who's been in town for 5 years as he's been lying low from an as-yet-to-be-determined criminal syndicate after stealing something from them or otherwise pissing them off.
Android mechanic - escaped from slavery elsewhere on the planet and fled to this town and works as a mechanic for broken down ships and vehicles but has dreams of making it as a crack pilot.
Here's the brief writeup I did for the town they start in:
Switchtracks was once boom town on track to become Akiton's next
metropolis. It's built next to a massive deposit of Thasteron ore,
necessary for conventional ship drives. While thasteron is still used
for short-distance starship travel, 100 years ago Drift technology was
discovered and made thasteron unnecessary for long journeys. Demand
didn't quite disappear, but it dropped significantly, and further
development of Switchtracks effectively stopped. Fortunes were lost,
and a lot of people who came to the planet to strike it rich ended up
stuck there. Many of their descendants still work there today in what
is now just a corporate mining town.
The six magnetic rail trains that haul thasteron ore and credits in
and out of the town are its lifeblood. Thasteron remains the backbone
of Switchtracks' economy, though there are also some moisture farms
and sand cow ranches on the outskirts that keep the residents feed.
These remote outposts must constantly deal with the threat of attack
from local shobhad tribes who to this day resent the town being built
on their ancestral lands.
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I don't know that limiting the Pact Worlds members makes it more gritty. Rather, I think that having Eox, Apostae, & Aucturn in the mix makes it that much more gritty in that the main political entity that the players are most likely to be citizens of is one that tolerates & even relies on factions as morally questionable as those, making them complicit in whatever atrocities the people of those planets commit. Not to mention that their presence in the Pact lends to more internal tension & conflict, not less. By excising them you create a more clear divide betweeen "good guy worlds" & "bad guy worlds".
I like the idea of more militant kasatha & a tenser relationship with the vesk.
I think I'd personally highlight the influence & presence of elements like the Aspis Consortium & the Golden League, and emphasize that the "good guy factions" like the Stewards & the Starfinders may have noble stated goals but their organizational structure is highly corrupt & their actions are often amoral.
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Far as influences go I'd personally pull a lot from Cowboy Bebop & Shadowrun.
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I find it helps to treat the vanilla text as propaganda, exaggerated idealism, and halcyon-tinted retrospect. It's brochure fodder obscuring a tense, dilapidated, and duplicitous reality.
The Expanse is a good reference for sociopolitical inspiration, despite it being a harder science fiction comparatively. Farscape also comes to mind.
Akiton, great choice. I agree that Shadowrun would be a great resource to pull from.
Reading from the setting background, I recommend a few things:
- urban decay
- large sections of the city of Switchtracks to have abandoned tenements and residences.
- lots, lots of industrial areas. Active or abandoned.
- Showcase corporate propaganda.
- Media escapism. VRs, Corporate-Controlled InfoNet, pirate radio
- Gladiator fighting is popular on Akiton, so people are probably watching blood sport matches all the time and have their favorites.
- everyone is either cloaked or wearing breather masks, think of all those Star Trek episodes when they visit a alien black market. Oxygen is a luxury.
- Ysoki culture
- Watch Total Recall, the one with Arnold.
- heavy pollution and mutagenic effects on the environment
- fringe groups of anti-corporate culture rebelling against authority
- corruption
- the PCs are the underdogs theme
Grittier.... make critical hits bypass stamina and go directly to hit points. If that sounds too deadly, make them not do double damage.
Suddenly, every combat becomes dangerous.
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It's just the monkey with a gun panel from hellboy...
Just google "monkey with a gun hellboy" and check out the images if you're interested.
Because of how the drift works all planets are the same distance from Absolom.
The Outer Worlds helped in the war with the Veskarium and against the Swarm, but refused to sign the Pact afterwards due to concerns that their distance from Absolom Station would lead to them being marginalized under the Pact.
For that matter, travel within the same planetary systems is always on the order of 1d6 days.
And, due to how orbits & concentric circle work, the outer planets would be, on average, closer to the inner planets & Absolom Station than they'd be to each other at any given time. Aballon would be the closest planet to any other most of the time because it's small orbit means it never gets as far away as the other planets with larger orbits.
Because of the way planets orbit at any given time Bretheda, Livara, Eox, Apostae, & Aucturn could be on opposite sides of the sun from each other, but the inner planets & Absolom Station would still be between them & therefore closer than any of the other Outer Planets.
So the idea of the outer planets not signing on with the Pact because of distance... that's just not how that works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SumDHcnCRuU
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Yeah I think the setting is just fine for gritty storytelling. The action in my game takes place on a planet in the Vast that was initially colonized by the Vesk but then colonized by Pact World corporations due to the considerable natural resources and exotic life forms.
The planet is in a system with a neutron star, and only the super dense gravity of the planet and thick atmosphere protect the inhabitants from horrible radioactive death. As it stands, the cities are on artificial tectonic plates left by some sort of precursor race, which filter out the radiation and atmosphere, while allowing normal gravity.
So on the urban side you have imperialistic vesk colony leadership and amoral Pact corporations looking to exploit the local biosphere (giant tardigrades!) who are not adverse to espionage, and on the other you have a deadly, high grav, radioactive wilderness and weird underground tech created by Lovecraftian precursor aliens.
And then you have the PCs, who are Eoxian reality show contestants being drawn into all sorts of unfortunate situations by uncaring corporate overlords. They've already discovered that the local Android Abolitionist group (ALF, the Android Liberation Front) was under control of a Mi-Go, who was replacing their brains with corrupted constructs in order to obtain deep agents in the media, government, corporations, and underground aspects of the world. The last thing that happened to them before COVID suspended our local play is crash landing the Mi-Go's ship in the wilderness and having to survive for a week in what amounts to a death world.
So yeah, elements of the Pact World setting are plenty gritty, if you play them right.
The biggest change I'd make is to have none of the pact world leaders be of good alignment. Everyone is looking out for their own personal interests and that of their cronies (and perhaps planets) - and being a sociopath is a strength, not a weakness to get there.
When Gevalarsk Nor becomes one of the lesser evils at the highest levels, everything else falls into place.
Worship of Iomedae? Seen as at best quaint and provincial, at worst that you're a bigot. The Starfinder Society? Exactly why do we allow a heavily armed paramilitary group to continue to operate? The drow? Cool and edgy. Apostae? Exotic! Android slavery? Well, you don't really think they're sapient, do? Besides, what would we do without cheap android labor! So on.
I mean Gevalarsk Nor is currently lesser evil as far as we know, he is actually really helpful in Dead Suns ;D
I had a lot of fun playing him with the voice of Skeletor and boosting his role as the PCs' patron. But if they ever trust him, I've failed badly.
I always think as a GM in order to make a setting seem grittier, resources/services have to be difficult to get, which makes all the players abilities MORE valuable.
I've played with the idea that technology has stagnated for centuries with the weird pricing ("You mean a weapon that does on average 1 point more damage costs five times as much?") indicates a lot of cartels essentially manipulating the economy, hand in hand with planetary and system governments.