Interest check: A Nocturne (FitD game of morally dark hard-ish SF)

[Douglas Muir 406]

What it says: checking if there's any interest. This is a bit of a niche. It's a hard-ish SF game where you play the crew of a slower-than-light starship, using the Forged In The Dark system. If you've played Blades in the Dark or Scum and Villainy? Like that.

"A NOCTURNE is a hard sci-fi RPG that casts the players as the crew of an interstellar spitter craft - a vast, weird, scarred old spaceship - and charges them with a simple task: make Profit by any means necessary. Will they be smugglers and thieves? Scavengers? Diplomats? Con artists? Or mere war-criminals, leaving nothing but dust in their wake? Will they let their stress and guilt consume them and their craft, or will they rise above it and retire to some peaceful world, rich as kings? Will they even survive 'til the next inhabited system?"

Elevator pitch: this is a game where you can literally start play with a Death Star. 3/4 of the ship may be under the control of rogue nanotech, feral stowaways, or uplifted mutant rats, and the controlling AI may be violently bipolar. But still.

Requirements: you would need a copy of A Nocturne, and either a copy of BitD / S&V or familiarity with the system -- A Nocturne assumes you already know the basic system.

So, checking. Any interest?

[Therenger]

Count me as interested.

[Andostre]

I'm not familiar with the system or the A NOCTURNE setting, but I did a bit of reading about it when I saw this Interest Check.

The premise sounds really fun.

Douglas Muir 406 wrote:

Requirements: you would need a copy of A Nocturne, and either a copy of BitD / S&V or familiarity with the system -- A Nocturne assumes you already know the basic system.

I don't have any familiarity with BitD, although I do with a couple Power by the Apocalypse games, which I saw one person make a comparison to as a narrative-first style of game. I would be conscious of what the learning curve is. My free time is limited, so I would be conscious of how much legwork I'd have to do to get to the point where I could play the game.

How long is A NOCTURNE? What sort of material is in it that the player would need?

To gain familiarity with Blades in the Dark, would looking through the game's SRD be sufficient?

[Douglas Muir 406]

Andostre wrote:

How long is A NOCTURNE? What sort of material is in it that the player would need?

To gain familiarity with Blades in the Dark, would looking through the game's SRD be sufficient?

It's about 200 pages. It assumes you already have the base BitD / FitD rules, so it doesn't explain things like how the system works. So it's a lot of setting and setting-specific rules.

If you were the only noob in the group, it would probably be fine. It's a pretty easy system to learn.

If we do start a game, there's a Bundle right now where you can get it -- one of six or seven FitD games for about $20. Or you can get it from the designer's website, here for EUR 15 (about $16).

Doug M.

[Gabriel XIII]

Just purchased the Bundle.

[Andostre]

Thanks for the info!

Another question, regarding the "make a profit by any means necessary" clause. Would you be putting any guidelines in place for things that are off-limits, or would that be up to the players?

[Darkness Rising]

That is very weird: I just came back to this forum to post an interest check of my own for a sci-fi indie game, to find there is one already here!

Count me interested, I love the FitD system and played Band of Blades one Christmas a while back (there were no survivors) - but I'm not familiar with A Nocturne. I'll pick up a copy of the rules and read through.

[Douglas Muir 406]

Andostre wrote:

Thanks for the info!

Another question, regarding the "make a profit by any means necessary" clause. Would you be putting any guidelines in place for things that are off-limits, or would that be up to the players?

Session Zero -- we would discuss.

The game literally has a mechanic for mass-scale mayhem, with the strong implication that the destruction of Alderaan is on the table. But we don't have to use that mechanic. The game plays fine without it.

You can totally play as a group of scrappy underdogs who are trying to get by in a tough universe. Or cynical but not utterly conscienceless mercenaries who are just looking for the big score to retire on. It's up to you as a group.

Doug M.

[Douglas Muir 406]

Darkness Rising wrote:

played Band of Blades one Christmas a while back (there were no survivors)

Congratulations on playing correctly!

-- It is possible to win BoB, get to the final objective and survive. But it should not be easy. If you're playing it as it's meant to be played, you should be seeing Call of Cthulhu levels of lethality. That game encourages you to play multiple different characters, and there's a reason for that.

Doug M.

[Darkness Rising]

Yes, I'm half-convinced that BoB is some sort of Kobayashi Maru given life in an RPG in order to test your gaming group's capacity for failure - I'm not entirely sure it can be beaten (with that said, Christmas at mine tends to be fairly alcoholic so not every decision made was entirely optimal). But a good time was had by all, which is what counts!

I'm really liking what I've read so far of A Nocturne. I hope you get enough interest to run it.