Grim and Dark Distopia

[the_taken]

The setting is a grim and dark distopia. Humanity has successfully traversed the stars and colonized worlds, even terraformed a few. But the promise of entire new worlds to live on didn't bring peace to humanity. Somehow, everything got worse. The corruption of governments and corporations inspired new levels of oppression. The common people, looking to fight for a better future became a new breed of criminals and terrorists. To fight these space robbers, the space cops had to develop new technology and methods for law enforcement. With the vast empty void between colonies, pirates and privateers have resurfaced, bringing about a new age of lawlessness. And worse still, over the galactic horizon lives a terrible abomination that seeks to incorporated humanity into it's soul eating engine of happiness.

This is a setting that will support five games different games.

Unhappy Colonists of Disptopia:
Space Hooligans
The first game is a low tech (aka: magic) where the players are a bunch of gangsters from the inner-arcology that are trying to stick it to the man with mischief, pranks, vandalism, petty crime, industrial sabotage, drunken partying, rock and roll and rioting. They'll have to fight rival gangs, while keeping a whole sprint ahead of the fuzz. Occasionally, Big Co will have it's own gang of crooks to get get in the PCs' face, and other times the PCs will be trying run a fund raiser to repair the rec center down the street before the street cops let the bulldozer bulldoze the protesting crowd first.

Inspirations: Double Dragon, Akira, Metropolis, Escape from New York, The Warriors, Idiocracy, Judge Dredd setting if the MC's are not Judge Dredd, Running Man, Elfen Lied, Cowboy Bebop, Starship Truckers

Gorgeous Officers of Justice:
Space Police
This game is set in the same setting, but on a separate stage. Where the first was about running around with the other hobos, the second has the players' characters working towards larger goals and performing some much more impressive stuff. The second game is unlocked when the players gain access to high tech equipment, and being able to jump a fence or punch an old lady in the face won't cut it anymore. Imagine, if you will, that Judge Dredd, Robocop, Terry McGinnis (Batman), Jean Grey, Cortana, and David Bowie teamed up to fight crime, space pirate raids and inter-colonial spy rings. Corrupt business men, scores of rioters and looters, mad scientists, disgruntled mutant football teams, gangs running a toy factory, and rogue military surplus store clerks are the kind of enemies to be had.

The second game scales directly from the first, and characters played in the first can be playable in the second with but a few changes and upgrades. In the first, combat is close combat oriented and in discreet encounters. It's really important that people don't use any weapons with penetrating power, since everyone lived in sealed environments where the outside environment is completely lethal.

Inspirations: Smoking Aces, Dominion Tank Police, Judge Dredd, Robocop, Batman Beyond, Total Recall, Ghost in the Shell, Equilibrium, Elfen Lied again, X-men, The Fifth Element, Agents of Love and Justice: Pretty Soldier Adepta Sororitas, Vexile

Lord of the New Colony:
Space Governor
I've never played a table top economy game, but if Settlers of Catan has that many expansions, then it must be possible to have a good one. This is the idea behind the third game. You pick a planet and start colonizing it. There will be a myriad of ways to randomly generate a world, and the things you do will determine what kind of colony you have. You'll even be able to scale the game back down and run adventures in your custom made colony with the other two games.

Guardians of the Great Void:
Space Soldiers
The fourth game will be a version of the second with the fat trimmed off. It'll be simplified and streamlined to make it easier to field tons of characters together and have an army of soldiers. It won't be an RPG, it'll be a tabble-top war game. There will be some stock armies, but the game will also have an expansion set of rules that interact with Space Governor that you can use to create an army that matches your colony's attributes.

Inspirations: Starcraft, Starwars: Galactic Battlegrounds, Starship Troopers, Battle LA, District 9

Lead them Across the Stars:
Spaceship Captain
The fifth game will be the second portion of the tabble-top war game, and will be more concerned with the movements of the great vehicles that travel between the worlds to do battle. This is also the part of the game where the mechs show up, since they are that big. Players can jump to this game from Space Hooligans or Space Police by obtaining a big ship and beginning to travel around the cosmos. And again, there will be rules for stock fleet generation, as well as for rules on how to create a custom fleet from stuff done in Space Governor or from scratch.

Inspirations: Starwars, Starteck: Klingon Academy, Pirates of the Caribbean.

[TheFlatline]

So for your naval-esque space battle system you forget to name every single naval-esque space battle system including Starfleet Battles, Babylon 5, and Battleship Gothic?

As far as a tabletop economic sci fi game, they actually have several of those, and there's a metric assload of economic board games as well. Some of them work better than others. I wouldn't even begin to qualify Settlers of Catan as an "economic builder" game.

Otherwise your ground centric wargame is bland and won't excite wargamers at all (who are incredibly finicky and picky and are a subset of a subset of a subset, being boardgamers, wargamers, and scifi wargamers) without some major novel approach. Simply creating a sci-fi themed army system isn't going to cut it. Even squad-level skirmish rules aren't going to cut it in the market.

The setting itself is either a darker version of Traveler or a lighter version of Warhammer 40k. Take your pick.

[fectin]

Sounds like Tengen Toppen Gueran Lagan.

[the_taken]

So for your naval-esque space battle system you forget to name every single naval-esque space battle system including Starfleet Battles, Babylon 5, and Battleship Gothic?

To be honest, I haven't played either of those. Actually, aside from some stat sheets for Starfleet Battles, I can't recall even seeing any of these games sold at the dozens of hobby stores I've gone to... weird.

Otherwise your ground centric wargame is bland and won't excite wargamers at all (who are incredibly finicky and picky and are a subset of a subset of a subset, being boardgamers, wargamers, and scifi wargamers) without some major novel approach. Simply creating a sci-fi themed army system isn't going to cut it. Even squad-level skirmish rules aren't going to cut it in the market.

So, solutions?

The setting itself is either a darker version of Traveler or a lighter version of Warhammer 40k. Take your pick.

The idea behind this is that Frank isn't working on Warp Cult because he's capable of selling stuff with his own Intellectual Property. This project is for creating a brand with a setting that the Warp Cult fits in, minus Games Workshop's intellectual property. I figured voice hearing heretics = gangs and rebels when you switch out the all powerful church of madness for the soul eating corporation.

[Username17]

The Empire could be swapped out for a mercantilist space empire that shipped people out to the stars to work in indentured servitude and even outright slavery to send the resources of various godforsaken rocks back to the hub of the empire.

Then the Warp Cultists could be replaced by colonial independence advocates. So it would be basically the late 18th century through late 19th century "rise of nationalism" period, but in space. So your goals are to convince the people of Gliese-581-2 that they are not Earthians (who happen to not have any representation back on Earth) but Glieseans who should govern themselves and make some kind of local economy where the Lithium that people are mining is actually used domestically instead of sent back in giant freighters in exchange for bullshit tiny piles of high quality Earth goods.

I could see that working. Adapt the American Revolution, the Java War, and the War of 1857 into a set of space themes. Decide whether you want to exterminate the local aliens or have them join your movement. That sort of thing.

-Username17