Where Did Last Week Go???

Well, um... oops. Seems I missed last week. And I had things to talk about too. How did I manage that one?

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Honestly, Hubby and I had a lot going on last week, so I was barely home last Tuesday. Not much time to write when I'm not even in the same building as my computer. Then the rest of the week kind of ran away from me, so I didn't bother trying to play catch-up. I had other writing to focus on, which I'll discuss in a moment.

First of all, the coworker I tended to butt heads with is officially gone. She had put in her two-weeks earlier this month (er, I guess that's technically last month now... Happy June, everybody!), and Thursday was my last day with her. We also already have a replacement. The newbie is about my age, and seems real open to learn, which is already such a breath of fresh air. I'm hoping the personnel switch will be a major load off, and that ease of stress can help me get back to some semblance of writing normalcy (as well as just general mental health wellness). That said, part of the craziness of this week was that transition of the one coworker leaving and starting to train the new one. Yesterday was also Memorial Day in the States, which means "big weekend specials." Ignore that we've had the same sale on for about 3 weeks now, and it's still going for one more week; everyone decided to hit up the store this weekend. So.... that was hectic! Not terribly overwhelming though, so there's that.

What I've been doing the rest of the week, however, has been a combo between watching more NoPixel with Hubby, catching up on our watch list of Netflix shows, TV shows, and YouTube videos, and me continuing to world build - er, galaxy build? - for the upcoming Scum and Villainy campaign Hubby and I want to run. Well, rather, that I'll be running so Hubby can play a character, but I'm also running a lot of the set-up by him first to make sure it makes sense. With any luck, we'll be able to kick off our campaign by mid-June/early-July. Everyone involved should be well past their two-weeks post-final-shot of their vaccines, so we'll be good to go on the COVID front as well. Weeeeee!

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The opening of last week, and pretty much the entirety of the week before that, was spent just reading through the SaV handbook to get the rules down, and see how they might differ from Blades in the Dark. There are some changes that Hubby and I discussed, to see if we wanted to stick with the changes SaV did or revert back to how Blades does the same mechanic. More often than not, we decided to split the difference, as it were.

I have post-it tabs all over the handbook, and I've been slowly photocopying pages so I can highlight the bits I want to make sure to remember, as well as help cut down on the book tabs. This quickly turned into me photocopying about a 1/5 of the book, though. Shhhh, don't let my work know I've used so much paper and ink!

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Full disclosure: I STILL haven't finished reading through the handbook. Some of the more key things unique to this game - such as how to play an alien race - known as a xeno - or what happens when interacting with an ancient artifact, or what information is known about the ancient but now deceased race known only as the Precursors, or how to build things using the advanced technology typical of a space opera theme, etc - are towards the back of the book, but I've just plain skipped over them for the time being. Instead, I wanted to flesh out the actual life going on in this game.

In Blades, the closed-in city of Doskvol is already overrun with an assortment of criminal syndicates, corrupted political parties, and a dirty police force. Part of the game play involves your up-and-coming criminal crew siding with some of these factions while surviving the wrath of those the crew managed to piss off. For SaV, it's very much the same way.

The game takes place in a corner of the galaxy known as the Procyon Sector, consisting of four different solar systems: Rin, Holt, Iota, and Brekk. The whole known and developed galaxy is run by a Hegemony, but the Procyon Sector is on the edge of this governing power; all but forgotten by the Hegemony. This is where the players can either decide to go full Space Cowboy/Space Pirate, or they can do odd-jobs to just try and carve out a life for themselves on one of the inhabitable planets/moons in the sector, or they can fully rebel against the Hegemony, or anything in between, honestly. Think of the Star Wars franchise, especially The Mandalorian and its setting of nearly forgotten planets by the New Republic. Or think of Cowboy Bebop, or Space Dandy, or Trigun, or Outlaw Star, or just about any other space opera themed anime. Or Firefly or its movie Serenity. Or you could even go with Marvel and think of either Guardians of the Galaxy (both movie and comic versions) or the Starjammers from the X-Men comics/90s cartoon. In truth, one of the alien races introduced in SaV is called the Sah'iir, and it kept me SO LONG to not read it as the Shi'ar, which is a prominent alien race within the X-Men comics. I STILL occasionally read it as Shi'ar, frankly.

Sorry, got a bit off-topic for a moment there. My point is, much like Blades, SaV has a thriving population of Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) and factions that help make the world (well, galactic sector) feel more alive. There are 12 established docking stations (3 per system), and pages explaining how to create more. There are also 36 established factions the players could either ally with or compete against. These factions are broken down both by main allegiances - between the Hegemony, criminal activities, and just "general weirdness" (usually cults) - and by power tier, ranging from Tier I (the weakest) to Tier V (the strongest).

Since Hubby wanted to also include elements - mostly the RIP racing - from the game Gravity RIP in our campaign, I was already planning on pre-creating various racing teams and racers the players could interact with and start alliances/rivalries with. This helps prevent me from having to come up with something on the fly; I'm trash at improv. Well, since I was creating these racing teams and RIP racers - and their rigs - ahead of time anyway, why not also get a better feel for the factions of the sector, right? I figured I could have fun creating cheat sheets for the players on what would be considered common knowledge for their characters. Based on that, I figured I'd write up mini bios, as it were, on the top-tier factions. I figured they're so prominent throughout the sector that most people would know SOMETHING about them, so I could play with that.

In the books - both Blades and SaV - the factions are given a simple sentence or two intro, and then slightly more depth a couple pages later. For SaV, this more detailed breakdown of the factions includes the location of their HQ, as well as any other turf they might hold. It also lists notable assets that the factions own; assets the players might want to steal or protect, depending on allegiances. There's also a list of quirks about the faction, the main motivation/goal of the faction, the current situation the faction is trying to handle (usually heading towards that main goal), and a list of 3 or 4 notable NPCs the players could interact with when dealing with each faction.

It's great information, but there's also a lot there that the players probably shouldn't know right out of the gate. Easy peasy. As I mentioned, I can just take the top-tiered factions - the ones everyone would know something about - and create my own bio. It would contain "common knowledge" about the faction, some "notable rumors" about the faction, and "notable members" of the faction, along with a couple-sentence bio about each of them.

It was tricky to read through each faction's official bio and try to organize it into "yup, most people should know this about the faction" vs "the players should still know this info, but maybe it's not confirmed facts, so this would be a 'rumor'" vs "the players' characters probably wouldn't know this, so I'll have to remember it in my back pocket." For instance, the only Tier V faction is called the Guild of Engineers. Their turf is listed as "mining concerns in every system" and "advanced research facilities in Rin, Iota, and Brekk" with the space station SB-176 as their headquarters. This all feels like common knowledge anyone who had spent significant time in the Procyon Sector would know (especially since the location of the research facilities is unknown; just that they exist in nearly every system). Meanwhile, in the Situation area, it's listed that the Guild is "beyond the ability of the Governor to police. The Guild is exploiting this, using this remote sector to perform experiments banned by the Cults and the Hegemon." This all feels like rumor to me; something the players should suspect to be true, but something they realize is only spoken in hushed tones and denied by the Guild themselves. Finally, the conclusion of the Situation paragraph says, "Their current project involves converting Way energy into a highly unstable but physical compound." Now, Way energy is this game's version of The Force from Star Wars. This feels like something virtually no one outside the Guild would know, along with the Notable Asset "Technology even the Hegemon is unaware of..." Both of those tidbits were completely left off the bio for the players since their characters probably wouldn't know any of that.

Now, once the info was sorted out, I then tried building mini-bios of the NPCs listed. This is where the majority of my writing energy went this week. To save space in an already large game rulebook, the creators only gave names, possibly a title within the faction, and a few descriptive words for each NPC. More often than not, the characters aren't even given a gender, allowing the GM just about free-rein to build these character suggestions into whatever the game needed.

Here are the examples from the Guild of Engineers:

• Avalon Riat, Chief Executive (cybernetic spider legs, megalomaniac)
• Thiel Kharrat, Operations Head (brutal, connected, influential)
• Oevers Star, Head Researcher (genius, reclusive, overworked)
• Yast Jor (commanding, shrewd, bold)

It's enough to get you started, but not much there to pull out on the fly. So, instead, I spent the week trying to think of who these characters are, and what the general population of Procyon might know about them.

Since the Guild of Engineers is the most powerful faction in the Sector, I also felt like the notable members will be too far removed from society for people to really know much about them. Also, these were the first bios I had written, so I hadn't found my groove yet. In the end, the above bios from the official rulebook became these extended bios:

• Avalon Riat, the chief executive. Not much is known about him beyond the fact that he's clearly a megalomaniac and has cybernetic spider legs replacing his biological ones.
• Thiel Kharrat is the head of operations. He has made a few news appearances, and everyone knows he is not someone to be trifled with. Not much else is known.
• Oevers Star, the head researcher. All anyone knows of Oevers is their name.
• Yast Jor. No one truly knows what her job is among the guild, but people certainly know her name. Many assume she's some sort of enforcer for the Guild.

Some NPCs have context clues within the faction bios that reveal their gender, such as Tallon from the 51st Legion. In the Legion's situation section it's stated, "Tallon earned many commendations on the battlefield, but swore to cleanse the Hegemonic military of nepotism when his command was sacrificed to a Noble's daughter." Obviously Tallon is meant to be male. Cool. However, most NPCs weren't given such context clues. As I mentioned above, this was probably purposefully done so the players can give these NPCs whichever gender (or no gender) they feel best fits their narrative.

So, for our game, I basically rolled the names around on my tongue to try to see how they sound, and then try to guess what gender would typically use that sound. Honestly, I debated for quite some time if Avalon should be a female, but in the end the cybernetic spider legs just reminded me too much of Dr. Loveless from Wild Wild West, so that's kind of how I picture Avalon now.

Dr. Loveless during the climax of 1999's Wild Wild West

As I shook some of the writing rust off, however, the bios got significantly longer and more detailed. Perhaps a bit TOO detailed for my players; I might have to rewrite some of it, and then have one version for the players and one for myself with the more detailed info.

The funniest part for me is that the lengthier bios I've written usually started with me going "this list of adjectives is too vague; what am I going to do with this?" and then this whole story just kind of popped up.

A prime example would be the Lost Legion. Here's the list of NPCs I got from the book:

• Commander Eterin (disciplined, veteran, inspiring)
• Captain Rowan (tough, stoic, unhesitating)
• Lt. Yon, ace pilot (bitter, just)
• Haya, a royal guard (potent, unstoppable)
• Her Excellency, the One True Hegemon (elite, royal, resplendent)

Again, I stared at that list and was just kind of like, "ooooh-kaaaaay????" Reading the faction's situation did help though:

"The 1st Legion - the Hegemon's private guard - rebelled when the current Hegemon ascended. They protect a young girl, heir to the last Hegemon, whom they hope to reinstate. They plan to capture the head of the Church of Stellar Flame and convince her to bless the girl as required."

Rolling that around in my head while re-reading the list of NPCs ended up ballooning into these bios:

• Commander Eterin, the Legion's leader. He has developed a weird dynamic with the Legion's young ward: part devout protector, part father figure, part teacher, and part loyal servant. He's massive for a human, both tall and broad, and distinguished with a square jaw, facial scar, and salt-and-pepper hair.
• Captain Rowan, Eterin's second. He is a much more calculated man, caring little for the wishes of the Legion's ward; instead protecting her solely out of duty to what he believes to be the true Hegemony. He fears Eterin has grown too much of a soft spot for the girl. He's clean-shaven, voluntarily bald, and more lithe than bulk in his muscles. He has the precision of an assassin.
• Lt. Yon, an ace pilot that rivals just about any other pilot within the sector, maybe even within the whole Hegemony. She's also cold towards the girl; making sure there is a distinct line in the sand about their vastly different class statuses and the girl doesn't mistake Yon for her friend. Yon is still loyal to the former Hegemon, but also feels it is partially his fault the current Hegemon was even able to raise to power; he had grown too soft and complacent.
• Haya, a royal guard. She is always by the girl's side; head on a swivel. She's of a broad build; specializing in upper body strength to handle the recoil from her blasters as well as to-the-death hand-to-hand combat. She does have a soft spot for her ward and may show some playfulness if she believes the girl perfectly safe. Otherwise, watch out for this wolf of a guard dog.
• Her Excellency, the One True Hegemon, the girl (of about 9) that the Lost Legion will defend to their dying breaths. No one ever refers to her by name; only title. Most of the public couldn't even begin to guess what her name actually is (then again, most couldn't tell you what any of the Hegemons' names were). Some question if the girl truly is the heir to the previous Hegemon. If she's a fake, they found a great actress, because the girl has an elitist air about her and is the most resplendent child anyone has ever seen.

A touch longer than the bios I had for the Guild of Engineers, huh? And I don't know if details such as "[Haya has] a soft spot for her ward and may show some playfulness if she believes the girl is perfectly safe" should be so common knowledge that my players would need to know that factoid. Instead, it should probably be something to keep in my back pocket. Something to know about the character in case the players ever interact with her or spot her "in the wild". Along those lines, I have a few other characters where I'm mentally picturing them as androids, but I also know that's a tidbit I don't want to be considered common knowledge, so I left it off the bios.

So.... yeah.... looks like I'm making one of these cheat sheets for me and another for my players.

Or... maybe not? Considering I'm not done yet and my "cheat sheet" is already 12 pages long!

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In the SaV handbook, there's a small section that talks about how to set up your own NPC factions to add to the game. One of the things you need to figure out is what Tier they would fall into, and the book gives examples of what each Tier's power level roughly means:

"Strong locally or weak on a few planets? Tier I. Strong in one system or weak in a few? Tier II. Strong in a few systems or weak throughout Procyon? Tier III. Tier IV is strong in multiple systems, and Tier V has reach and dominance beyond that in some way."

Based on that information, I knew that the PCs would know all of the Tier V and IV factions, and possibly the Tier III ones as well. However, I didn't bother checking to see how many factions that would actually be before undertaking this task. The answer is 20 out of the 36 factions listed in the book. Whoops. I mean, that list drops down to only 9 factions if I just stick with the Tier IV factions and the lone Tier V: Guild of Engineers. But what about "strong in a few systems or weak throughout Procyon"?

I'm still working on the Tier III factions, so I might have to pause and research if they're supposed to be just strong in a few systems, or if they're known throughout Procyon, and pare down those final 11 factions. Or, maybe I'll just keep going, add in the final 16 Tier II and Tier I factions, make that my master log - going back to include details I thought of but aren't necessarily "common knowledge" for the PCs - and then thin that master log down for the players.

In other words, I've still got a LOT of work ahead of me. Especially since I haven't even touched the Gravity RIP side of these NPC builds.

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by Yanare Ku

It's beginning to look like maybe we won't start playing until July after all....

I'm having so much fun trying to flesh out these NPCs though, and I'm already mentally plotting out how these factions will interact with each other during player downtime or between gaming sessions, in order to help make the universe feel more "real". The NPCs are all still doing their own things on the side; they aren't all there just to help push the players forward in their story. It helps make the players feel like their characters are part of this living and breathing thing.

I'm so hyped for this!

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Oh! That Bitmoji reminds me, I haven't talked about what I wanted to say last week. So, the reminder comes from the fact that one of the streamers Hubby almost religiously follows now - Ray_C - says "Let's Gooooooo!" all the time. It's basically his catchphrase (along with "I've got a plan" and "I need an akuma"... just... check out this Soundcloud song someone wrote for his character to get the idea).

Anyway, the reminder of Ray_C brings me back to nopixel. While talking to ChibiSunnie a couple of weeks ago, I kind of spit-balled an idea of making a Miraculous Ladybug non-magic, streamers AU. I even came up with how the Love Square shenanigans can still show up in this AU.

This post is already so long, so I won't get into the details this week, but if you want to see what I've come up with so far, you can check out my Tumblr post about it: Yet Another Plot Bunny Joins the Masses

For this week, though? I think you've listened to me ramble long enough. Take care, peeps, and a very happy Pride to my LGBTQIA+ friends, family, and random readers.

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