"Your campaign background?" Topic

Hi all,

I just posted my ideas for a 'world' to campaign in with my 15mm colonial marines. I like manatic's basic idea about a RPG lite: characters you use in gaming and moving them along in a RPG style campaign.

I'm an old wargamer and like many in my generation I started with RPGs and found out over the years that I was more into the "hack 'n slash" side of things so I gravitated to war gaming. But I like some RPG concepts like a "world" to set the actions in and having my games build a story.

So to do that I started my own 'world' to game in: Liberty

link

I plan to add more to it as I go. Like concepts for the armies going at it, what Liberty's terrain is like and how to model it, what the political situation is and how it effects my game, and finally what constitutes a "victory" in this campaign.

So how about you? How do you tackle stuff like this? Do you? What's your background "world"? Exchanging ideas could make this process a lot of fun and motivate people to be creative.

Oh, one question. Is there some on-line or downloadable application that one could get to create maps?

Give these a shot, Tgunner.

battlechronicler.com

link

My Traveller universe is based on the one provided, but I usually use my own sectors and the Imperium isn't considered a bad thing.

I've started formulating a background for my ragtag army for Gruntz. Have it half-written up around here somewhere…

I have several detailed universes that I use for gaming. My most developed one is the Conquest System. It's something of a cross between Firefly (no light-speed drive, just one triple star system with numerous terraformed moons and planets) meets Babylon 5 (lots of alien factions undermining each other for advantages, including one ancient power who is simply biding its time to conquer the galaxy). This let me write numerous different human factions, a good variety of aliens.

It's around the 35th century. Terraforming and colonization occured 400 years ago. In name, Earth is the head of an alliance, but light speed travel is restricted only to the most wealthy government entities. So each system basically runs itself. Conquest is an incredibly resource-wealthy system, so every government within travel range fights over those resources. There are three primary Human corporations as military factions, along with numerous small mercenary and local defense companies.

One of these days I'm going to post a separate page on Basement Gaming Bunker outlining that entire universe. For now it's just a wide assortment of notes that I maintain on Google Docs.

Chris K.

Personally I start on a grand scale: the overall universe.
For me, that developed over time (and is still developing) as a homegrown space opera setting with a lot of inspiration from my favorite books, movies, games, etc.

If you think of a sort of cross between Traveller (but without one clear Imperium), Rogue Trader era 40k (some of the gritty frontier bits, not the empire), Original Trilogy Star Wars, and Homeworld, you'd probably not be that far off from the overall feel of the galaxy.

Aesthetics also matter, especially on a more detailed level. My aesthetics are mostly inspired by a mix of Firefly, a bit of pulp Sci Fi here and there, Traveller, and Mass Effect (oddly… that doesn't sound like it meshes with Firefly, but I make it work, somehow.) Also the movie Moon (if you haven't see it, see it!) in that there are lots of small, isolated stations…. much more than true colony worlds, let alone homeworlds.

Once you have that, you can start working out the galactic map (or just a large area within it, if you want to maintain some wiggle room for later), which shows systems, planets, moons, and stations. Also, political entities. At this point working out a setting for any one war is simple.

I think whats cool is that players tend to make settings in their heads naturally, without thinking about it. Mine started as I slowly adjusted my RT games to fit my weird Traveller/Firefly/Star Wars mix, which then slowly became effected by more sources as I realized I could play whatever I want without hurting my space marines' feelings…