Risus Trek

[IceGiant]

I'm putting together a game (or at least hoping too) using the Risus rule set. I know it's not complex but has anyone tried it, if so what did you think?

Only thing I really need to come up with is what to do with starships. I think for me I will assign a general die pool to represent all its stats instead of breaking them down, ie: weapons, defense, sensors. I'm going to be running in the movie era so ships would look like this.

Ship
----------

Excelsior class - 6d
Refit constitution class - 5d
Miranda/Constellation Class - 4d
Saladin/Hermes Class - 3d
Shuttles - 2d

K'tinga Class - 4d
Klingon Bop - 3d

I'm going to use a variety of ships form the old fasa game but this gives an idea.

Any thoughts?

[ghoyle1]

There must be something in the air, because I'm planning a Risus Trek campaign as well. Mine is from the TOS and TAS era, though.

I'm planning on using ships simply as tools of the trade, letting the players (as bridge crew) make the rolls (as per "The Combat System" in the rules. When it's a case of a smaller ship going up against a larger ship, it's unlikely that the smaller ship will be able to punch holes in the larger one's shields, but the smaller ship is more maneuverable and can go places than the larger ship can. Description is everything!

[The Tatterdemalion King]

I'd suggest taking the ICON/CODA ship sizes table and assigning dX based on that.

Although RISUS might also allow you to give the ships themselves certain clichés if special traits warrant–a Klingon ship will be Built For Battle, giving it a +1d for blowing things up or taking damage, but -1d for sensors, medical facilities or similar stuff. A Galaxy class ship is a City In Space/Most Sophisticated Machine Ever Built, the Defiant is a Tough Little Ship, the TOS Enterprise is Pride Of The Fleet, a Romulan BoP is a Stealthy Raider, the Intrepid class is Built to Explore. Actually, the ICON/CODA ship type is actually a pretty good source of really basic clichés too.

[ghoyle1]

The problem with assigning ships cluches is, how exactly does that work? Are they considered sidekicks or shieldmates? Do you use them as part of the group? Does one of the players play the ship as well as a character? Do they have a single cliche? Multiple cliches? Which cliches?

Using them as tools of the trade has the advantage of putting the focus back on the characters. A shuttlecraft, obviously, won't be able to harm a Dreadnought any more than the Millenium Falcon was able to harm a Stardestroyer. That forces the players to come up with creative options, which can be more fun all around (if your group likes that kind of thing).

But there is no wrong way to play, of course.

[ghoyle1]

This is from a post I made on the topic at the RisusTalk mailing list awhile back.

Anything I say falls under "There's no wrong way to play", of course, and
forgive me if I'm being too obvious.

The main reason I wouldn't use the ship as the main character is that a ship
that isn't an AI (in some form or another, like the Black Pearl) just
doesn't take any actions on its own. It's not a character in a game sense
because it doesn't initiate any action; it's a Tool of the Trade. It also
takes away focus from the characters, and focusing it on their tools. The
secret of making it work is describing what's happening imaginatively enough
to keep the players interested, as it is in all Risus contests, so you might
be able to pick up some ideas from these other games, but I wouldn't usually
try to adapt their rules to Risus. If I was planning to run a pirate attack,
for instance, I might make some notes about pirate tactics such as lurking in
a cove for unsuspecting treasure ships, boarding actions, grapples, swingin'
from the riggin', bringing down the sails, blowing holes in the hull, etc.,
but all these things would depend on the appropriate rolls in PC vs non-PC
battle. If the helmsman fails his evasive action roll, for example, the
pirates' broadside cannons might damage the hull (e.g., the Helmsman lost a
dice).

I could see a case being made for them being plus-dice gadgets, but I try to
keep a tight leash on those; they're like having Lucky Shots or Questing
Dice that don't run out. They'll be used in every single situation the
characters can justify.

Hope that makes my POV a bit clearer.

Guy

[The Tatterdemalion King]

The problem with assigning ships cluches is, how exactly does that work? Are they considered sidekicks or shieldmates? Do you use them as part of the group? Does one of the players play the ship as well as a character? Do they have a single cliche? Multiple cliches? Which cliches?

Well, they'd be tool traits that would change the value of the tool as it comes into play. It'd be up to the players to propose a justification for using the cliché in any given situation, as with PC clichés.

They'll be used in every single situation the characters can justify.

Yup!

[ghoyle1]

I wonder if Lucky Shots or Questing Dice might be an option here? This idea is half-baked at best, but I like it better than building the ship as a character. The "quest" would still be "Tough Little Ship", "Pride of the Fleet", "Cutting-Edge Explorer", etc., with whatever those implied. The advantage to using these is that they're self-limiting; you can only call on those cliches a few times in any adventure.

[IceGiant]

There must be something in the air, because I'm planning a Risus Trek campaign as well. Mine is from the TOS and TAS era, though.

I'm planning on using ships simply as tools of the trade, letting the players (as bridge crew) make the rolls (as per "The Combat System" in the rules. When it's a case of a smaller ship going up against a larger ship, it's unlikely that the smaller ship will be able to punch holes in the larger one's shields, but the smaller ship is more maneuverable and can go places than the larger ship can. Description is everything!

That's kinda what I was planning on doing, but I wanted a system I could use that would give me a general track of a ships status. I'm not sure I'm up too abstract describing all of it to be honest.

[ghoyle1]

The players' own cliches would reflect ship's status. If Sulu's evasive action fails, the shields take damage. If Kirk's cunning stratagem fails, the ship's tactical situation gets worse. If Scotty fails to get the shields back up, the phasers fail. As the cliches go down, more and more systems are impaired, which affects the options that the other characters have. This does require the players to be more imaginative in description, but it involves less bookkeeping than most starship combat systems; overall, I find the bookkeeping approach to be tedious. I'd also want to make some notes while I'm running the combat, to see which systems are imperilled.

Admittedly, there is some comfort in having numbers to fall back on, but Star Trek itself (which is what the game is to be modelled on) depended more on dramatic effect than hard-and-fast numbers in the battle scenes. I want the players to be the focus of attention, not the ship; the ship is just a tool for the chatacters, albeit a large complex one.

[IceGiant]

Hmmm....so Kirk would lose a die as would sulu in those situations to reflect the ships's situation? I kinda like that. It makes sense, it's taken me a bit to wrap my head around that that in this case their die losses are related to the ship and not to them personally. Unless a console blows out under them mind you. But it would look like there would be a fair bit of book keeping in this way to deal with the affects of each crewman's actions.

[ghoyle1]

It does take some getting used to, and I'm grappling with other alternatives, too. But I find that I tune out long, complicated battle scenes where the focus is on the ships jockeying for position. Successful ones, such as Kirk vs Khan in TWOK, are suspenseful precisely because we care about the fate of the characters, even though the two antagonists never meet in person during the entire movie. The real drama is what's happening to the characters.

For those who want to game out starship combat, with the players playing ships as characters, Risus can do that, too.

Guy

[IceGiant]

I might keep my ship dice system but for my use. For relative scale and then have every 2 dice players lose translate into 1 die lost from thie ship. The ship wouldn't be affected until the second die is lost.

ie..

-Kirk loses a die
-Sulu loses a die

-refit enterprise drops form 5 dice to 4 dice.

Would there be a point in trying to reflect repairs while in combat? I wonder how to handle that. Engineer makes a enginerring roll versus target number and ship gets back a die?

Out of combat is easy as you just roleplay it.

[IceGiant]

But I guess I'd still need a rp description of what's going on and what is down or broken. Leaving me back where I started. Looks like extra work (keeping track of ship dice) without any real benefit.

[ghoyle1]

Here's an interesting quote from the Star Trek (TOS) Writer's Guide, second season, that may help others understand my point:

Tell your story about people, not about science
and gadgetry. Joe Friday doesn't stop to explain
the mechanics of his .38 before he uses it; Kildare
never did a monologue about the theory of anes-
thetics; Matt Dillon never identifies and dis-
cusses the breed of his horse before he rides
off on it.

Risus is fairly unique amongst RPGs in that there are no stats for weapons or other gadgets; they're just Tools of the Trade that enable a character to do certain things. Bigger, more powerful guns don't inflict more damage in Risus terms than ordinary-sized guns; they may kill you instead of wounding you, but they don't usually increase your dice. I think the same is true for starships. If you're a Freighter Captain (5) commanding an Antares Class Freighter and you encounter a Klingon Battlecruiser, you don't have the proper Tools of the Trade for battle, and would suffer accordingly; if you transfer to a Constitution Class Heavy Cruiser, your Freighter Captain (5) probably wouldn't allow you to command it effectively, either.

Guy

[The Tatterdemalion King]

I like the idea of ships losing dice triggering events or problems: consoles exploding, sudden repairs being needed, weapons or sensors going offline, or other events imperiling the crew (and giving non-pilots something to do).

But yeah, ships giving you bonus dice is totally what I'd do. For one thing, it gives everyone more stuff to play with, and that's always fun.