In most science fiction campaigns (outside of classic Traveller perhaps) it seems important that you should have a lot of defined setting ready to go, especially for a campaign.  

In fantasy (the way I usually run it), the setting starts out kind of small and implied.. and it builds as you go. This is my preferred setup method. I can get away with just doing the starting area at first and kinda build out.

One of the things I like about Universe a lot is that it fits in very closely with my preferred idea of campaign setup. There is almost no setting other than a few spaceship names listed (so I know there's such things as a Terwillicker corporation, and a Corco Company, etc..) I know there's no aliens (no rules for them anyhow). And I know that people make ship jumps by using psychic boosts from a jump officer and an engine based on magnetic monopoles. Other than that..there's just a short listing of careers for characters. Enforcer, Lawman, Scout, Astroguard, etc.. and that's it.

Thats very cool!

However, this is one of those blank page issues. Suppose I do convince a bunch of people to make characters and get them into a campaign. What are they going to do?

In my case-- I really can't start until I know what the characters are going to be. And in the case of Universe, those characters are necessarily random.

The answer: it seems to me, just as in the classic dungeon campaign, you need to define the immediate location. That means putting together the home star-system, defining the worlds (Universe has a nice table generation system for this) and making sure that there's at least one space station.

The player characters start at the space station, with all of their gear. This becomes the 'town' equivalent.

At that point you can start defining little missions.

The way I kick-off a fantasy campaign often involves what I call "Pull Quests". Just three or four little missions or adventure hooks that the players can choose from. Marauding monsters, escorting caravans, investigate a mysterious place, etc. All of those are good. And I try and co-locate all the quests in the same place.

Well, you can do this in Universe as well. But you have to jump through some minor hoops.

next post: 'Pull Quests'

Pull Quests

Always remember this: Pull Quests are about
   1) going places.
2) doing stuff.

Everything else is incidental and secondary. Your'e going to have cool NPC and plotlines and all of that other stuff happen, but don't waste too much effort focusing on it right away except for how it points back to the ideal of going places and doing stuff.

The secret to defining pull quests in Universe seems to be having the home star system (and possibly a few nearby systems) defined first. You needed to do this in the first place to get the Spaceport starting area... but don't stop before you have all the worlds in the home system (and perhaps a few surrounding systems as well)! It's important to know which worlds can sustain life, and which ones contain inhabitants. You'll also need to know which resources are on which worlds. Certain resources like crystals, certain precious metals, magnetic monopoles and things like exotic spices are adventure seeds.

Obviously you can't do this for the entire Universe. Just do the home system and a few surrounding areas.  

Look for places of interest:

Look at all of the worlds you just generated and see which ones have resources that are worth someone wanting. Also check to see how hostile of a world it is- certain worlds will require special environmental suits or equipment to survive on. You may also have noted worlds where there are only small science or isolated mining or research colonies.

Each one of those places is a place where characters might need to go.

Possible missions include:
   

• Going to a remote planet to deliver supplies, or to pick them up. Or both.
•   Resource farming in a hostile location. Not just anyone can take care of mining radioactives on a planet where the average temperature exceeds 125 degrees.
•   Going to a planet to perform a task- such as the biological survey mission, or delicate repair work, or surveying an uncharted area of a world.
•   Escorting a specialist (biologist, scientist, engineer) from one location to another (perhaps a dangerous place) such as a mission to repair planetside equipment on a hostile world.
• Mystery investigation: intermittent signals from lost expeditions. Disappearing or damaged planetside equipment
• .. Anything else you can think of.

You need to be very specific and you need to come up with about 3-12 choices. You can double up! You can have 1 mission about going to Kadmon II to pick up Titusian fruits, and another mission to go to Helena to pick up exotic spices. Both of these are pick up missins, but they involve going to different places. This is perfectly ok.

Those are the adventures.

Next you need a way to feed those adventures to the PCs. I'll have a post about this in my next post.

PT III. Getting the Quests to the players... and the players to the adventure.

Well, we have our Star System (and surrounding systems)
We have our worlds defined. (at least the nearby ones)
We have some 'pull quests'.

And we have our starting location: The Space Station in the home system.

And the PCs have got their characters.

Now we just need to knit it all together to get the whole thing going.

In fantasy- the ultimate crap cliche is the "you all meet in a tavern". I'm proud to say I have never resorted to this in the last 20 years. At  this point if I did use it, it wouldn't even be a cliche for me.

In any case, you can "get away with it" in a sci-fi game as well. The example of play in the introduction of the book actually has something like that.

The point is: don't, if you can avoid it.

Instead, do this:

The Company.

See, Universe is implied to be filled with various commercial enterprises, multinational, multiplanetary conglomerates, corporations, etc. Use this as your adventure-feeding system.

So make up a fictional company. Make up two! Make up 10+ if you like. Some companies are rivals. Some companies are unscrupulous. Some companies are going bankrupt. Just make up a bunch of them.

The Company pays for everything. The company is always hiring. And if it's a dangerous job, the company is probably hiring contractors, and paying out based on a contract. The company has recruiters everywhere.. in every starport. They advertise on the web, on holovids, over radio. Commercialism is rampant in Universe, and thats your hook. They even list 'Recruiter' as one of the professions in Universe.

The Players are hired by a company to do a given thing that you've defined in one of your pull quests. Attach a company to each pull-quest. Let the players pick the one they are most interested, get them aboard the ship, and off doing the stuff they have to do.

That's how to set up Universe, as far as I concerned.

Campaigning versus One Shots:
Once again, I want to advocate the concept of a campaign over a one-shot adventure type deal.

Notice we haven't actually written any adventures whatsoever yet? This work is all just set-up. This is the dreaded "prep work" that everyone complains about. There's actually not that much of it, and the work once done, is pretty much note-booked for future reference.