I pulled the following from a thread in Design and Development that I didn't want to blow off the track:

Quote from: Sigmund;241494I'm going to be moving to an area where I could potentially be joining a 2nd weekly gaming group and have been looking over games such as Starcluster and Hard Nova, but what I've really wanted is a more limited setting that sounds much like what you've described so far.

To me, the cool thing about a big setting isn't that you go flitting from system to system like a bee pollinating flowers, it's that you get to pick what place within your setting that you develop and play in. I've been running StarCluster for over a decade - since well before I released it - and we almost never run a travalogue campaign. We usually focus on a single system or even a single world for a campaign, and often revisit these worlds repeatedly. It's a whole world, after all, not just a space port! My last SC campaign was set on Glorianna, and never ventured more than about 50 km from a provincial capital - a city about the size of Birmingham, Alabama. The Book of Jalan, Sweet Chariot, and the forthcoming Glorianna are all complete games set on single worlds within the Cluster. Chariot and Glorianna are actually neighbors in the same system, as is the supplement Papageniopolis Station.

-clash

That's a great point that was brought home to me when I first ran Traveller.  I generated an entire sector, sketched out politics, wrote a little about each system, etc.  I felt like I was ready for anything the players could think to do, and was ready to run a wide-ranging campaign that would have the PCs visiting and interacting with various human and alien cultures on different planets and in different environments.

Over the course of several months' play, however, most of the game took place within a single star system.  I think they used the Jump Drive on their ship three times in total, and those were short 1 parsec jumps.  But we had plenty of adventure, and no one came away from the game disappointed.

I've since moved away from trying to define huge swaths of setting because of this experience.  If you provide enough hooks and threads for the players to grab in one place, there's a good chance they won't have a reason to leave!

In about 10 years of running an on-and-off Traveller campaign in the Spinward Marches, I think my players jumped out of the Sword Worlds and District 268 subsectors a grand total of two times, and one of those was just for an annual overhaul. And I don't think they visited more than a quarter of all the systems even in those two subsectors.

Making up great mega-settings is a fun game in itself, but 99.99% of it will always remain wallpaper.

Quote from: KenHR;241613That's a great point that was brought home to me when I first ran Traveller.  I generated an entire sector, sketched out politics, wrote a little about each system, etc.  I felt like I was ready for anything the players could think to do, and was ready to run a wide-ranging campaign that would have the PCs visiting and interacting with various human and alien cultures on different planets and in different environments.

Over the course of several months' play, however, most of the game took place within a single star system.  I think they used the Jump Drive on their ship three times in total, and those were short 1 parsec jumps.  But we had plenty of adventure, and no one came away from the game disappointed.

I've since moved away from trying to define huge swaths of setting because of this experience.  If you provide enough hooks and threads for the players to grab in one place, there's a good chance they won't have a reason to leave!

Aliens! Here's an example - the SC setting has many advanced aliens - the Tommu, Kolusien, Tumentamenata, Tappi, Ven Der Opt, Kiskit, Tumuran, Ronaure, Uramkup, Guaru, Kertu-Drua, Etvar, and Formenai, yet over more than a decade, my group has only had meetings with one Tumentamenata, one Ven Der Opt, one Kertu-Drua, and several each of the Guaru, Etvar, and Tumuran. Why? My group never went to anyplace those other aliens are common. The singular meetings were with wandering aliens far from home. Until you mentioned creating aliens as background, I hadn't even realized this. The PCs met and conversed with the three singulars, fought alongside the Guaru, had their ship improved by the Etvar (for their own political reasons) with an absolute minimum of contact, and had several bizarre and inexplicable contacts* with the Tumuran, who are - in the words of one of my players - "bugfuck crazy!"

-clash

*Tumutan minds work differently than most of the humans and other aliens, and they have only the most sketchy ideas of how things work for others. Once they tried to siphon water from the ship's swimming pool after coming alongside in a stealth craft, bypassing the airlock entrance alarms, and leaving the airlock open between ships. Another time they swarmed the ship, took the ship's pilot station, and left in it's place a crate of garbage. They probably would have left something for the swimming pool water, but things degenerated too quickly that time... A sketchy concept of the word "trade."

Quote from: Vile;241655In about 10 years of running an on-and-off Traveller campaign in the Spinward Marches, I think my players jumped out of the Sword Worlds and District 268 subsectors a grand total of two times, and one of those was just for an annual overhaul. And I don't think they visited more than a quarter of all the systems even in those two subsectors.

Making up great mega-settings is a fun game in itself, but 99.99% of it will always remain wallpaper.

I'm glad I'm not alone here - though I was sure I wasn't!

-clash

I do a combination of both although my "travelogue" is usually in space (stations, abandoned ships, on board adventures). I do agree, the thought I had, and one of the reasons I limited Neb to a relatively small area of space, was that the GM would create his own words. I have several groups that have dropped Neb as a sector in Traveller. This is precisely the kind of thing i was shooting for.

I will admit though, I sometimes think the market craves a focused metaplot more than the open setting.

Bill

Quote from: HinterWelt;241685I do a combination of both although my "travelogue" is usually in space (stations, abandoned ships, on board adventures).

Same here. My Travelogues seldom set foot on a planet.

QuoteI do agree, the thought I had, and one of the reasons I limited Neb to a relatively small area of space, was that the GM would create his own words. I have several groups that have dropped Neb as a sector in Traveller. This is precisely the kind of thing i was shooting for.

For the same reason I only gave one system fully fleshed out in StarCluster 2 - as an example of what the GMs could do with their own areas. The rest of the Cluster is just statblocks.

QuoteI will admit though, I sometimes think the market craves a focused metaplot more than the open setting.

Bill

I hope not. I really hate those thing! More designers dictating play to the groups!

-clash

Does anyone have the opposite experience?

-clash

Yeah, if I use a big setting I want my players to explore some of it. That's the whole thing about big settings for me. Sure you can choose a place and set your adventures there, but esp for space campaigns....space opera at that....I want the pcs to walk...er....fly through space getting into adventures and stuff.

Regards,
David R

When I ran Stardrive, my players used to travel all over. They were loosely employed by the Scout Service, and so used to explore and document far-flung planets and had run-ins with hostile aliens quite often actually. I've been looking more for "post-cyberpunk" type of scifi to run soon, along the lines of Minority Report, or I Robot.

Back in my Traveller days, my group loved planet-hopping. Knowing there is this huge universe to explore is one of the main reasons I like scifi RPGs. Exploring a single planet at length can be cool, I won't dispute that, but being able to move among the stars is very appealing. I guess playing fantasy and/or modern-era RPGs satisfies my need to explore a single world in detail.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;242080Back in my Traveller days, my group loved planet-hopping. Knowing there is this huge universe to explore is one of the main reasons I like scifi RPGs. Exploring a single planet at length can be cool, I won't dispute that, but being able to move among the stars is very appealing. I guess playing fantasy and/or modern-era RPGs satisfies my need to explore a single world in detail.

What the Col. said. I'm the same way, if there's a big galaxy to explore, I'm damn well gonna explore it. Gimme a fast ship with big guns and lotsa wierd aliens to blast into goo and I'll be happy.

I think that's one of the more shameful aspects of Star Wars gaming--people end up going to Tatooine, or Coruscant, or somewhere we've seen; rarely do people branch out and give us new bits in the games (tabletop or video)

For me, I like exploring new planets--new things, but I also like re-occuring people, and relationships coming to the forefront. It might be neat to run a game where the players are the "planet hoppers" of a big ship, or  the "beam down" crew, so to speak. They have relationships aboard ship,and get carried around--the story is about them, but the ship itself and its backup crew? They form the central backdrop for the emotional ties, and ongoing complications.

I'm not crazy about the Novel Dune but I think it's a good example (especially because nearly everyone's read it) of how even in a giant ass setting big things tend to happen in small places. Lots of Jack Vance novels follow a similar model, although usually not with such far ranging consequences. The Caldwell Chronicles (Armanita Station, Ecce and Old Earth, and Throy) are good examples of this. There is plenty of world hopping in the these, but it has a starting point that gives the moving about a bit more relevance. If leaving home is going to really mean something, I think taking some time to establish "home" as a place is necessary to facilitate said meaning. BTW, in the context of what I'm talking about "home" doesn't have to be any particular character's place of origin- or any character's place of origin really, but it has to be a place around which some of the adventure pivots- it can even be a ship as opposed to being a world. Blahblahblahblahblah.

Is this still about space opera settings?
'cause honestly the same phenomenon tends to occur in most games I run, no difference whether it is a space opera or a game of intrigue at court. Characters tend to flock to places where the shit hits the fan.