This time, I can apologise in
advance for it being a long, rambling post. It's what Sunday mornings are for, right? Right. I am still a tiny bit half asleep, so please excuse typos, meandering sentences and stuff that only half makes sense. I may end up having to post again this afternoon with something a little more well-constructed.
So to clarify, our adventure is a corporate sponsored scout troop thing purely for advertising purposes?
More or less, yeah. "Boy Scouts (In Space) (For Adults) (Sponsored By A Fast Food Company)" was what I was aiming for. I saw the galaxy as being a bit fractured, with politics and economics and war and all that dividing people, so there needed to be an organisation that would bridge the gap between people, and that would be the Interplanetary Space Friends. It started off as something more like a scout group, but then I thought it'd be more amusing to go for something like one of those kids clubs that companies create to basically serve as promotional tools.
You get prizes, they get free advertising, good deeds are done, and everyone wins.
You don't have to be a corporate lick-spittle and do advertisements, but it certainly couldn't hurt. In my sleep-addled mind, there's room for all in the Interplanetary Space Friends. Some members may be coldly cynical about the whole thing; they're your grizzled barbecue rib hunters who would sit in the corner smoking if it weren't for the family-friendly no-smoking-unless-your-biologically-incapable-of-not-smoking rules in Henderson's Ribs. Others may see it as a religion, taking advice from the Handbook, treating the restaurants as holy temples of worship and seeing Henderson's Ribs as the greatest force for peace in the galaxy. There is likely some regulation or rule in the Handbook, or some edition of it, that encourages you to do advertising, but the Handbook is a bit of a confusing and sometimes contradictory mess. Any good deed that Henderson's Ribs needs doing will be full of clauses along the lines of not bringing the company into disrepute, not going off-message, not being seen using non-Henderson Rib's (or it's subsidiaries) (or it's partners) products, and so on.
(Abridged)Dr Gel & Bea vs Ice King, The Great Question Of Our Time
I would rather have Doctor Frosty be something of a side-gag, but would be happy promoting him to somebody that more directly interacts with the player characters if that's what people want. I may play it by ear a little, because I imagine there'll be no shortage of people your characters inadvertently anger in the course of their space-adventures. It could be good, though, to have Doctor Frosty play a recurring, if rather silly, role if folks want more of a sense of continuity between their space-adventures. In short, I'll think about that one, and see what the mood is later on when we're into the game proper.
Obviously, if any of you wonderful people have a strong opinion on the matter
right now, we can establish it one way or the other now. Otherwise, it's something to consider a bit later on.
(Abridged)The Tetris Master Goes To Space Camp, An Origin Story
Good! Yay! I think that'll put him more down on the side of "
Yay, Henderson's Ribs Is A Great Company!" side of things, and we can see how the character develops over time - will they retain their wide-eyed innocent love of Henderson's Ribs and the Interplanetary Space Friends, or will they become one of the cynical rib hunters that bring disrepute to the great name of the Interplanetary Space Friends?
If I'm being annoying then shine the bat signal into the air. The caped crusader is always able to calm me down, with a vengeance!
I am pretty much always happy to talk about things and spitball ideas, and wouldn't ever want to suggest that you stop doing so. There are going to be times where I go "
I don't think I like this", and I'll try my hardest to make my case as to why, and from there hopefully we can come to some kind of understanding, compromise or food fight. This goes for everyone, obviously, but any ideas that begin from a position of
wouldn't it be cool if... are worth having, worth sharing, and worth discussing. I mean, heck, I've got six scenarios planned out for the first "good deed" so far - and you'll be doing one of them. The ones you aren't interested in, we won't do. Time spent thinking creatively and coming up with fun ideas is time well spent in my book, even if nothing ever comes of it.
I was thinking of maybe having a bunch of bees try and wear the hat at once, or having used the material to make lots of little hats and for a bunch of them that sit in the captains chair in little booster seats(with seat-belts and everything) kind of like baby's first EU or Senate.
That'd be downright adorable, I am thoroughly sold on the idea. And, as you point out, it does help secure the Will as the Captain, unless we happen to have a particularly skilled tailor on the crew roster. We don't, of course, but that is something to be worried about. I am particularly enamoured of any story where "the tailor could lead a mutiny because they're the only one capable of sewing the hat back together" is a legitimate concern for a would-be captain bee. Laser pointer guards could be particularly devastating against any feline crew members. Which we don't have either. I shall spend the rest of this morning watching
The Cat Returns and come up with good deeds that could be done on a planet full of cats.
We also need weapons for those... unruly situations and pests. Everything from guns to fullout contraptions that work... but are severely unethical
That's a good point. Doctor Frosty no doubt left weapons hidden away during his tenure as owner of the
Quest For Flavour, and there's no telling what the various other people who have owned the ship have left behind. As Quartermaster,
@Sovi3t, would you prefer for me to come up with a list of weaponry available on the ship, would you like to come up with a list of weaponry found on the ship, or would you rather we split the duty between us - say, I come up with a list of stuff that's in the armoury, and you can add a highly experimental and unethical thing or two you've found for each mission? I think that two heads are definetly better than one when it comes to thinking up these sorts of crazy things, so I'd prefer the latter option, but (but!) I know that some folks prefer that sort of thing to be wholly in the hands of the GM, in a more "traditional" GM-and-the-player relationship.
Hitman