New GM needing help with almost everything with space campaign

[Tungsten93]

Man, I can't thank you guys enough for taking your time to help a beginner out this well. All very comprehensive answers that will help me a ton for now. I think the best things I can do right now is figure out what the players will actually interact with, work that out, and for now don't really bother with the rest, figure out how the campaign will develop after the first couple of sessions and then work out what is important when the time is due.

[Tungsten93]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I'm also curious how many planets you have, and how many factions.

I have 15 star systems, of which 5 have a standard garden planet that is earthlike in air pressure, temperature and stuff, I did adjust some numbers to get favorable results, I can always add more planets later on. I have three factions, one faction that initially did the first space colonization, one faction that broke off because they became too far distanced from the first faction eventually resulting in a civil war, and one 'explorer' type of faction that is basically a coalition of independent planets that primarily have the goal of becoming rich off of uncolonized planets. This faction isn't really centralized as they only really act as one entity when matters concern all of them.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Tungsten93

Man, I can't thank you guys enough for taking your time to help a beginner out this well. All very comprehensive answers that will help me a ton for now. I think the best things I can do right now is figure out what the players will actually interact with, work that out, and for now don't really bother with the rest, figure out how the campaign will develop after the first couple of sessions and then work out what is important when the time is due.

Yep, this. This will get you going and help you to have enough detail and interest and preparation for a good game without being diluted into other areas that you can develop over time.

Also remember, your players are often your best source of material. If they ponder a puzzle or some information and come up with an answer or solution that's better than your initial idea, run with it! It makes them feel good because they "solved" the issue correctly and it helps you with interesting details.

You might also benefit from grabbing a copy of How to be a GURPS GM:

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/howtobeagurpsgm/

and also the next title How to be a GURPS GM: Managing Expectations:

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/howtobeagurpsgmme/

Can't recommend these highly enough for any level of experience (and not just for GURPS, eiither).

[Tinman]

Hi. Welcome to GURPS & the GURPS community.

In your situation I'd recommend choosing a setting that you all like & either use it as is or modify it. Being so inexperienced, it's overwhelming enough to figure out the rest of a new system.

That being said it seams like you have already started with world building & I'm too late.

The most important thing I think is to remember the rules are guidelines. If you are in the middle of things, don't worry about the exact modifiers. Just chose a modifier that you think feels right & go with it.

Also, having a 'cheat sheet' with range modifiers, other modifiers & important pages is a good idea for quick reference.

That said, I wish you and your group the best of luck & hope you have a lot of fun with the system.

[thrash]

Welcome! We're (obviously) always excited to see new players and GMs.

Originally Posted by Tungsten93

How do you have stuff make sense in your world, without going down the rabbit hole?

I'm a pretty flagrant rabbit-hole-delver myself, so I understand the impulse. Don't get the idea that extensive world-building is necessarily bad or wasted effort, if it helps you visualize your setting and you have fun coming up with it. Just be prepared, however, to dump it all and wing it if your players ignore your prepared set-dressing and take off in a different direction (and they will, at some point).

One way to actually make use of the economic analysis is to focus your bounty hunters on what Traveller calls skip-tracing and others call the repo(session) trade: tracking down ships that have been stolen by their crews (a form of piracy technically called barratry). In Traveller, ships are expensive and often financed by a bank loan, with proportionally heavy monthly payments. It is not uncommon for captains and crews to "skip" their payments and make a run for it with the ship. Anyone who can reclaim a ship for the bank is thus guaranteed a generous finder's fee.

You can use your economic background to set the stage for your repo opportunities. A ship with a bounty on it will want to escape notice while still being able to make a profit on trade (more now that they aren't going to split with the bank). What are the trade routes in your setting that have the least traffic or visit the most remote corners? Where do decrepit or poorly maintained ships (because they were going bankrupt before they ran) go for maintenance? That's where your players will find their targets.

[whswhs]

In my current GURPS campaign (soon to end), which is fantasy rather than SF but has a rather sfnal approach, I started out by deciding that I wanted to run fantasy with multiple humanoid races, like Tolkien, but without the assumption that some races were Good and some were Evil (which started bothering Tolkien after Lord of the Rings was in print). So I made up seven races, differentiated by what GURPS terrains each of them was adapted to, and I thought about analogies to other mammal species for each of them:

* Dwarves were adapted to subterranean terrains and were influenced by naked mole rats
* Elves were adapted to woodlands and jungles and were influenced by gibbons
* Ghouls were adapted to deserts and were influenced by hyenas
* Men were adapted to plains and were influenced by horses ("Man the mortal, master of horses")
* Nixies were adapted to rivers and swamps and were influenced by beavers and otters
* Selkies were adapted to islands, beaches, and lagoons and were influenced by sea lions
* Trolls were adapted to mountain and arctic terrains and were influenced by bears

Also taking off from Tolkien, but in a different direction, the world was animistic, with spirits as the basis of magic, but with no pantheons and no one god.

Then I drew sketches of the tectonic plates and their motions, figured out where the land masses lay and where the mountains were, drew paths for winds and currents, laid out the climate zones, and plunked each race down in the habitats that suited it; and I worked out the various culture areas for each race.

After that I named the different regions, following an adopted convention of giving everything a Latin name, the way astronomers do for planetary features. So, for example, the known continent was Terra Media, its coastline faced Mare, and across Mare was Occasia.

I figured out geopolitical tensions from that: The elves who were setting up an empire based on controlled breeding of lesser races, the elven aristocratic refugees who had set up a more conservative realm across the sea, the ghouls who were practicing firestick farming on elven jungles, the men who were setting out to conquer the wealthy cities of the nixies, the trollwive enchantress who was trying to make it always winter but never Christmas in the surrounding lands . . .

On one hand, all of this was working out the inherent logic of the world. But on the other, it was all focused on having multiple races interacting with each other, and on opportunities for trade on one hand and conquest on the other.

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by Tungsten93

...Me and my friends (who are just as unexperienced as I am) have decided we want to play a new campaign and I've made the stupid decision to be the GM. We decided on doing a space setting with a bounty hunter theme like Cowboy Bebop, so mainly adventures on planets, sometimes in space, with the spaceship mostly being a form of transport. Space combat is secondary. After looking at a couple of systems that do space, I decided on GURPS....

You sound a lot like me several years ago! I actually had an idea of a galaxy for stories, and wanted to try it in a roleplaying game. I looked at sci fi RPG after RPG. and got frustrated because all of them seemed like they'd take a whole lot of work to adapt to what I wanted.

Then a friend told me about GURPS. When I started GMing it, I had never played GURPS and never run a sci fi game, and none of my players had ever played GURPS (I don't remember if any of them had ever played a sci fi game). So I decided to keep my first adventure simple and standard--it was almost a bounty hunter adventure! A princess had been kidnapped, and her father who was a king offered a reward for her return. Our campaign ended up being primarily space espionage, with the starships being mostly transport.

I agree with what others have said--don't worry about developing everything! I only had a rough idea of the planet where the princess was being held in my first adventure. In the second, the entire multi-session adventure was all set on the same planet. That gave me time to build.

I don't know if this will help you, but there's a semi-active GURPS wiki that deals with some sci fi campaigns at https://mikevsspacegaming.fandom.com

[Pursuivant]

It's old but Robin's Laws is also a good "How to GM" guide.

Overall, Keep It Simple for everyone's sanity.

1) Sound out your players to get a sense of what they want or expect from the game.

Make it clear up front what SF tropes are/aren't present.

Will there be aliens? psionics? FTL travel? Teleporters? Cinematic weapons like force swords?

Will it be mostly "hard" SF which obeys the laws of physics or will it be space opera where the laws of physics are mostly ignored?

2) Put most of your GM prep time into building a "core" location where the characters will spend most of their time. Fill in the details for other parts of the campaign setting bit by bit based on your overall assumptions.

Don't forget useful and unique items, settings, and NPCs the characters can use. Getting the players to interact with the "scenery" helps to get them invested in the setting.

Give your important NPCs some personality trait which makes them memorable and some method by which the player characters can successfully influence them.

3) Be prepared to be flexible. If you've got a lovingly worked out planet/culture/whatever that the players just aren't interested in, don't force it on them. Rework and move things as necessary so that they fit the players interests. Then gradually steer them back to the material you've prepared, but in their own time. If the players really hate your idea, come up with something else.

4) Never underestimate your players' ability to screw things up. They might be diabolically clever and short-circuit your adventure. More likely they'll be utterly clueless or stupid and completely mess things up or go chasing after what you consider to be a false lead.

Give the players and their characters a challenge, but don't make it too frustrating for them. Give them fair warning when their characters are obviously outmatched or when a particular plan of action is a blatantly bad idea. If they still want to proceed, they've got no complaint coming.

Get a sense of how invested your player are in their characters. Some players will be devastated if their PC gets killed. Others take it in stride.

Understand that GURPS combat is notoriously lethal and take measures to keep the characters alive. E.g., give the bad guys stun pistols rather than plasma cannons.

Be prepared to quickly and quietly reduce opponent quality and strength to give underpowered or weakened groups a fighting chance. Likewise, boost opposition quality and tactical position (but NOT numbers) if the characters aren't being challenged.

Don't create puzzles that your players can't solve with a bit of thought. Allow their characters to make IQ and skill rolls to solve puzzles that the players can't figure out. If the players are stumped for more than 10 minutes and are clearly becoming frustrated, give them another way to deal with the problem.

Also, consider why you've including a particular obstacle in the game. If it doesn't serve some dramatic purpose leave it out. If it's necessary but clearly overwhelms the PCs, give them some other method of dealing with it. For example, recruiting an NPC with the proper skills or equipment to do the job for them.

5) Finally, every adventure needs to be "Player Character Centric." Give every character a chance to shine. For example, if you've got an outdoorsman character in the party, make sure that there's at least one scene where skills like Animal Handling, Camouflage, Hiking, Navigation, Stealth, or Survival are vital.

Likewise, design combat encounters so that every character has something to do every turn, even if it's a non-combat action.

[Alden Loveshade]

Here's a couple of highly useful resources that could help you a lot. The first is free.


1) https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/resour...gnPlanning.pdf
I've used some form of a campaign planning guide (sometimes expanded) for every campaign I've run. It helps the GM pin things down, and is a great guide for the players.

2) https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/howtobeagurpsgm/
This is a valuable resource for a new GURPS GM.