Entry: Extended Mission

[Starglim]

edit: Now up at with some extra content at :

Topic: Semi-disposable

"Players control robot explorers searching through the mysteries of a devastated Earth, while trying to avoid system failures, coyote attacks, shorting out in a pond, or being blown to pieces by deranged war machines."


I've had some notion to develop a mini-campaign, RPG, or something, along these lines for a while. The specific setting and mechanics are all new. Recent reading about may have given this wargamey little concept a bit more of an edge than it otherwise would have had.

[Starglim]

[Dyson Logos]

[Starglim]

[Rob Lang]

[Starglim]

[Dyson Logos]

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

I have to say, role playing Lunakhod and Sojourner has never occurred to me. At first, the concept seemed a little worrying - how attached can players be to drones? Most SF robots are just humans through a different lens (how strange - they're made out of meat!)

But with a creative and evocative system the cocenpt seems to work. I like the binary rolls, and the story is fairly evocative - though I think a return mission would be a bit sooner than 400 years (50-100 seems right, I'm rather optimistic about Humanity's ability to recover after disasters)

It might be intresting to add a nomic system of cards to randomly generate the terrain or problems. (ie each player submits a few descriptions on note cards, shuffle and draw) Perhaps a segment about playing the various mission control officers interating with Keeton would be a bit more involving emotionally.

Actually, I could see this as some strange hybrid board-game about who can make it thrugh the map collecting the best samples and finagling the most funding.

Don't wory about the lack of a low power antenna on the charts - it could be some sort of phased arary rectifier built thrughout the structure of the unit specficly to prevent loss of contact problems. I'm just trying to think about more procedures for desiging bigger and better probes - to open up some more competition and interaction between players. Technology.sample returns would take a while (about a year on a holoman trajectory, a few weeks brachistone - but with tremendous delta-V cost)

[Starglim]

[Starglim]