My “pretty clear idea of what I want the game to be” has been updated:
A game for 1-6 players – Each players will take a single character that was present on Spaceship 47 when it left Earth behind. These characters from Spaceship 47 are collectively known as the Heroes. This is a purely co-operative game, with no player acting as an antagonist at any stage of the game.
10 Missions – The game takes place over 10 sessions, with the players playing a different mission in each session. The players playing the Heroes co-operate to try and complete the mission successfully. Depending on how successful the Heroes are, denotes how much of a reward they get. I also want the missions to contain a bit of variety – combat heavy, stealthy missions, accompanying NPCs etc.
The Final Mission – The final mission sees the Heroes taking all of the allies, technology and information that they have gained over the previous 9 missions and use it to try to defeat the Draydun and take back Earth.
Tracker – Each Mission has a tracker that tracks something depending on what the mission is. This is designed to keep pressure on the players as this will be the fail-condition of the mission. It could be:
the number of rounds before the Space Station the Heroes are on explodes and they all die.
the security threat level which changes on successful and failed skill rolls – if it goes above a certain number the Heroes get captured.
Miniatures – During the game, each player will move a playing piece around the board and take actions (using weapons, opening doors, hacking computers etc.). The board will be different for each mission (Space station, desert planet etc.).
Dice – People love rolling dice, so the actions the characters take will be resolved by rolling multiple dice. I will be implementing a system that resolves the action quickly though. I don’t want the game stopping while someone works out some complicated maths. You can read about the current dice system being used here.
Customisable characters – There are a lot of characters on Spaceship 47, so I don’t want to limit the players by having a few pre-defined characters. Players will pick a Species (Human, Chimpanzee, Robot or Stishak) and a Profession (Deadeye, Lawyer, Smuggler, Scout, Engineer, Doctor, Corporal or Security Officer).
Quick set-up – The game will have a book of maps (similar to these). Which means set-up will be very quick. Just open up the book to the correct page, put all of the minis on and you are good to go. The maps themselves will take up the top two thirds of the pages, with mission specific information in the bottom third. At the moment I am going to include the enemy stats in the bottom third, so that players don’t have to worry about finding the correct monster start card etc. The book of maps, means that different areas can be used in a single mission and makes it easy to set up as you just flip the page, put on the appropriate minis and you are ready for the second part of the mission.
Line of Sight – In keeping with making sure the game flows nicely, I want to implement a line-of-sight system where players don’t have to get out rulers and trace imaginary straight lines from one point to another. Making things simple must also apply for Beam weapons, determining who gets affected by grenades and making sure melee attacks are still viable.
Individual Story Element – In addition to the group story as the players go through the missions, each character will have an individual story that will come to a conclusion in the final mission. I haven’t finalised exactly how this is going to happen, but I have an idea for it rolling around in my head.