开云体育

In the Player’s book I laid out my basic philosophies behind game design and even a bit about marketing. For Referee’s I can open the curtain and show you a bit more of how we crafted these rules

Being a Game Master is very difficult, in some ways it is more difficult than simply writing a story. In a traditional story once you write it you are finished. Story telling in a Role-Playing game is dynamic. Just as the military says, “No plan survives contact with the enemy” in RPG gaming “no scenario survives contact with the Players”! You can find your storyline in constant flux as Players throw solutions at you that never entered your mind or a die bounces in an unexpected direction.

As a Game Designer what are my thoughts here? How are the rules of Stars of Empire designed to help with these issues? First, we tried to make these rules comprehensive enough to allow a mechanic to govern almost any situation. If a Skill Roll doesn’t cover it a Forte Roll probably will. If worse comes to worse there is almost certainly an Attribute that covers the situation. Second, we tried to make these rules fairly simple. Almost everything except “How Much” rolls and Inventions are directly handled with Opposed Rolls. How Much and Inventions are only a single step removed from this core mechanic. All rolls are always “more is better” Even if you don’t have a specific table in front of you the magnitude of the difference in a situation will give excellent guidance as to the results. A difference of a couple of points is a very slim margin of success or failure, a gap of 50 or more tells everyone at the table that something spectacularly good or bad has just happened. Remember, tables don’t tell stories, you and your players do. I’m a story line gamer and write for other story line gamers, hopefully you, as a Referee, will find the information in this book inspires you to imagine tales worth telling.

I’ve always felt that rules don’t often “inspire” play and storytelling; world design does. Please think of the ?Hive, Queen and Country Universe as a sandbox, it is crafted to allow almost any type of VSF campaign a Referee can imagine, within the limits we have established. We didn’t try to be all things to all people. We want to be strongly supportive of Hard Science/Hard History VSF. We include a lot of information directly through all the worlds, cultures, nations and businesses we describe as well as the copious equipment lists. We also have provided a large bibliography and filmography for Referees and Players. In many ways on line sources are too ephemeral, but books and films are increasingly available in electronic format as well as more traditional media. Good stories, either factual ones like exploration of the Yucatan during the mid-19^th Century, or fictional ones as told by Wells or Kipling, inflame our imagination, they show us what human beings can do when confronted with mystery or adversity. If we have done our job with these products we have built a set of rules that support and guide play without placing a straight jacket on the people at the gaming table.?