Sector Zero

Well this one is a bit of a sad story.  After re-reading this I had wanted to touch up a few things and clean up a couple areas where I actually stopped writing in mid-sentence for some reason but realized that my original Word doc had mysteriously vanished and was missing from all of my backups.  Oops.  So then I tried converting the PDF into an editable format and doing some heart surgery but I’m sad to report the patient didn’t make it…  There were simply too many goofy PDF-to-Word formatting gremlins to deal with.  Bottom line is this: I have to re-post the original version with all of its flaws, so please excuse me for that.

This was my first foray into “Savage Worlds in Space”; my obligatory Star Trek homage.  The original title was Spaced Out and I imagined it as being a much more anarchic take on the traditionally staid Star Trek formula: a setting where Mirror, Mirror is the prime reality.  Over time I backed off of this quite a bit and ended up delivering something much more by the numbers.  I still like to believe that players will feel encouraged to run unorthodox crews and to try wacky stuff within the framework I provided, but I think I could have pushed myself a bit more here.  It needed to be a bit more Space Pirate and a bit less Federation, but oh well.

I do go a bit table-heavy in this one, but I was really enjoying the process of coming up with different gear by tech level.  Also: more randomizers!  I love randomizers.  The concept was that this setting would be very episodic in nature and not campaign based at all, so that you’d sit down for a session and just whip up some encounters on the fly, keeping both the Gamers and the Game Master on their toes.

Mechanically the bit I’m most proud of here is the way I envisioned Ship Combat.  Even though I don’t think I quite pull it off, I love the idea of the players taking on the roles of the bridge crew and performing individual actions that can either synergize with or neutralize what their companions are doing.  Thematically I think it fits very well with the idea of a “Red Alert” situation in your typical Star Trek episode.

On a related note: if you haven’t tried the mobile game Spaceteam, I’d encourage you to grab 3 friends and take a look at it.  It’s very much in the spirit of what I imagined a Sector Zero game session would be like.