Anyone run a mission in space? Currently we have 1 CORP that has asteroid mining and lunar colonies in their in their repertoire as well as a CORP based in an orbital space station. I want to give the team a mission to investigate personnel and equipment on a lunar colony but I’m not quite sure how to run it.
Any ideas?
What do you anticipate being different to a mission on earth?
Commenting to follow. I’ll post later.
Hamish Cameron I guess I mainly want to show a realistic enough lunar colony.
What’s going on with gravity in a lunar colony? How does the Killer not kill everyone by shooting in the wrong direction? It’s more about the setting than the mission in a sense. I don’t want to just say this is the Sprawl but it’s space. I want it to fit our tone of semi realistic.
If I was going to do this, I would expect that most of the differences would be handled by MC description/fiction and the options the MC chooses for moves when things get complicated. You might make a custom move for repairing a hill puncture if you wanted something concrete and dangerous to put in front of the players.
Hamish Cameron that’s what I’m getting at. I’m trying to figure out what the description is. Honestly I may be obsessing over nothing and dropping down to planning mode. The players helped create everything else in the world, it makes sense that they would help generate this locale as well.
Gotcha! Maybe take a look at the last third of Neuromancer? Elysium doesn’t really deal with this, but might have some ideas you can pull for orbital aesthetics.
Anyone else have any media touchstones for this?
Hamish Cameron I will definitely read through my copy. It’s been a while since I read it. Yes, all media suggestions are welcome.
We had a mission on the orbital spin station and floating data haven of one of the corporations whose clock had hit midnight. We went there to erase ourselves from their network and steal some important data while we were at it. There was a very tense scene where we needed to leap across the minimal gravity hub and throw a data node from one side to the other during a non-lethal but still high stakes firefight. Another where we discovered the quarantined sector where a biological agent had been released. We accidentally blew a hole in the stations exterior and were able to keep from being sucked out while the security drone that was pursuing us wasn’t as lucky. We secured the data and erased our personal files before finally dropping back to earth in one of the stations reentry escape pods hoping that we hit the atmosphere before the station’s orbital defense drones got within range to blow our pod out of the sky.
It was great. I don’t think there were any custom moves but we definitely packed non lethal armaments (well most of us did) and expanded our campaign into space!
John Carroll That sounds legit.
The answers are going to depend a lot on the size and tech of your colonies, of course. I played in a game a few years ago in which we were based on the moon, with everything set in a massive domed city… but the setting didn’t really contribute that much, apart from the the fact that fleeing into the wilderness wasn’t an option for an escape plan, and and that low gravity was something you could have fun with.
However, if you were aiming lower – a smaller colony of a few thousand people, a corporate arcology, that sort of thing… the setting could play more of a part… more reasons to go outside, more flavour of a place that exists on the edge, thin margins keeping everyone alive. If that’s your interest, I’d suggest reading Artemis by Andy Weir (author of The Martian)… it’s set in just such an environment, a small Lunar city, company town, with a bit of corporate intrigue.
You could watch Outland (1981), a sort of space western with Sean Connery that is set on one of Jupiter’s moons.
If the colony/station is small enough, you could consider firearms being banned or just plain unthinkable, with local security using tasers or stun prods or jiu-jutsu or other less lethal methods.
If there’s low- or microgravity or if there will be a possibility of going outside in space suits, maybe write a couple of special moves for dealing with difficulties that might come up?
Oh yeah, The Expanse obviously is a good series to mine for ideas!
Also, some of the setting material from Eclipse Phase might be useful… I forget which one, but one of the books has some good material on different types of habitat, so whether you’re looking for some small tin-can cluster like a contemporary ISS, a larger wheel or asteroid bubble, or something colossal like an O’Neil cylinder, there’s probably some ideas for you.
Gravity, 2001 a space Odissey, Moon, Outland are a few movies you can take inspiration from Anthony Williams
📌 because the Android: Netrunner setting has lunar and martian colonies, and I’d eventually like to run a mission in one/ both of them.
Luigi Castellani thank you. This post turned into a goldmine
I ran a mission to an orbital at a con this year with the Touched Prime alpha/beta. While the biggest corps had their own orbitals (if they wanted), the corp the characters were acting against had to rent their lab space in an orbital from a corp that specialized in such real estate. I spent a bit of time thinking about the economy of the place, who lived/worked/visited there, what kind of shops or commissary would be there, what security was like on the station, both generally and within the leased/rented modules, what kind of transportation was scheduled to and from the orbital (and by whom), etc. I wanted enough detail that we wouldn’t just be running on everyone’s individual expectations, but not so much that there wasn’t room for the players to answer some questions and define other details (such as the layout of the apartments where station workers lived) through play. Good luck with it!