Planning & Worldbuilding Space Opera Epic Quest/CYOA Idea

[LTR]

So it's a pretty common theme in Science Fiction & Fantasy... which is the concept of the protagonists having to journey about to assemble some epic coalition to fight some Big Bad or Great Evil. Whether it's the Army of Light assembled in Babylon 5 to challenge the Shadows and Vorlons, or the main plotline of Dragon Age: Origins to counter the Darkspawn and countless other examples. One that also stands out to me was the very mediocre game Mass Effect 3 and how it's coalition building was broken down into a game feature called War Assets which was a game concept where people, ships, resources and units etc would be collected in the course of the game and added to a 'Total Military Strength' and would lay out how successful the multi-pronged final battle against the Reapers would turn out.

I was always thinking it'd be fun to plot out a CYOA/Quest idea of a similar vein though it's more of just a concept in my mind at the moment. It'd probably involve the classic idea of the protagonists being a small initial group stranded and alone (ala Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek: Voyager) going through a dark cosmos and encountering and meeting new individuals and civilizations and everything in between and uncovering some great nemesis and having to wheel, deal, fight and fright, various disparate groups into organizing into some sort of coalition against said antagonists.

To add a bit of randomness to it all along with the player/reader choice.... we could use dicerolls to gauge certain reactions, potential outcomes or offerings or for 'random' encounters and the like.

 

[Murica]

Sounds pretty good to me. Are you volunteering to be the first purveyor of the task?

 

[JagerIV]

Hm, while its a good idea, I think so far its on the level of "I want to do something with a hero's journey in it".

As you say, its sorta the default set up for this kind of story, to let you ground a grand war story into a single group of characters you can follow.

 

[LTR]

Sounds pretty good to me. Are you volunteering to be the first purveyor of the task?

Yeah pretty much. I know I didn't elaborate much on the concept and without an OP/intro and a sampling concept it's not really much to go on but this is more of an interest check at the moment.

 

[GoldRanger]

I'm in.

 

[LTR]

I'm in.

My internet time will be limited this coming week (great timing I know) but I'll probably see if I can do some side projects while I get this set up. Maybe I can canvas ideas for setting up encounter tables and other things that can be partially randomized by using dice rolls and other things that I can use to spice up the Questing when I do roll it out.

During my time away I'll see about plotting out a general outline.... or outlining a general plot... one of those two.

 

[Speaker4thesilent]

Call me interested as well.

 

[CurtisLemay]

I am interested.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Does anyone have ideas for the OP of this, then? I might indeed be interested in helping...

 

[LTR]

I'm open to ideas.

Like I said earlier the main concept is finding a starting point for the Quest to begin and it would be a pretty classic default story theme as stated earlier.

I'll have more detailed thoughts to share later hopefully but at this juncture I was thinking that the starting vessel would be some sort of starship (I'm angling towards a Battlestar type vessel) that has been isolated and journeying through space... as surviving Battlestars tend to be. Plus the Battlestar is big, still somewhat ill defined and has lots of space for growth and exploration and is somewhat low tech which can allow for development as well as facilitating more basic storytelling from the beginning. Plus being a member of a civilization that tends to be isolated (and wiped out) in most mediums is pretty handy as well when it comes to crossovers.

The main thing for the opening post would be coming up with a nice scene setting origin and initial crew and the like that the participants can vicariously live through.

My main desire for assistance would be coming up with the 'random' encounters that the protagonists would encounter in between more scripted "main story" missions.

The other idea would be, since the overall theme would be discovering great enemies and forming a grand alliance to stop them, is an outline for how the protagonists will affect the greater galaxy around them.

I want the players choices to have a strong effect on the game setting of course, but also incorporate some randomization (using dice rollers probably) for a range of narrowed responses/outcomes/reactions formed by the participant choices.

 

[Gnich]

uhhhhhh, if the idea is still open, is it possible if i join?
(fifth (technically) ever RP thing i will have ever done, plus not alot of experience with writing, beware the Noobness that i may be oozing out)

 

[LTR]

The main idea, the ship will be a Battlestar of semi-original origin. As per the Battlestar: Galactica reimagined series, evil Cylons will attack and destroy the Twelve Colonies and the Battlestar of our protagonists will be compelled to scour the emptiness of unexplored space because for some reason, there's a lot of it in Galactica's setting. Knowledge of the reimagined television series shouldn't be necessary as this being a crossover, I really don't want to delve into all of the.... strangeness of the Cylons that happened in the later seasons though they might make an interesting (and convenient) early nemesis. But the ultimate journey of this Quest will obviously be much greater then some random genocide of fifty billion people of a single civilization.

So here's the vessel...

Eleuthera (BS-59)

Class: Juno Class:
Naval strategy is often a long term game as ships are theorized, designed, laid down and built years before their deployment with the expectation of at least years of service before expensive refitting or decommissioning. The Juno class was developed alongside the Mercury and Jupiter class, each design channeling different design philosophies. The Juno class focused on a 'big gun' philosophy with the idea that future Battlestars would be the deciding arm of any fleet battle and also used as an orbital strike platform against both installations in space and planetside. Ultimately the Colonial Fleet decided on a new Mercury class Battlestar which drew most of its inspiration from the Jupiter class as the new Battlestar.

The Juno class main design flaw was that while its broadsides were more powerful then other vessels of its class, the unretracted flight pods limited the vertical range of its broadsides. In battle, the Juno class can mimic the more popular Mercury class in advancing towards the enemy, firing its powerful bow mounted high yield cannons. Conversely the Juno class can also deliver powerful broadsides and one commonly theorized and simulated tactic is to face or turn away from the enemy with one side of the Battlestar with that sides flight pod retracted into the hull, allowing the full range of broadside deployment, while the opposites sides flight pod remains extended for airwing operations.

Builder: Oranu Naval Yard, Gemenon
Propulsion:
FTL Jump Engines
8x Sublight Engines
Extensive Maneuvering Thrusters
Role: Battleship/Carrier
Crew: 2,000 Navy Personnel (1800 Fleet Reserve), 400 Marines (360 Marine Reserve)
Armaments:
4x Dual High Yield Main Battery Cannons
12x Dual High Yield Cannons (Six Starboard, Six Port)
8x Missile Launchers (Four Dorsal, Four Ventral)
Several Hundred CIWS Point Defense Cannons
Air Wing:
80x Viper Mark III Fighters
40x Viper Mark IV Strike Fighters
40x Viper Mark VII Fighters
Full Complement of Raptors
Several Atmospheric/Ship to Ship Shuttles
Facilities:
DRADIS
2x Retractable Flight Pods
2x Flight Decks
80x Viper Launch Pods
Hangar Deck
Manufacturing Areas
Marine Barracks
Radiological Lab
Astrometrics Lab

And I would like some input on the crew...

Battlestar Eleuthera
Command Staff:

Commander in Chief of Ship
Commander

Executive Officer
Colonel/Major: Major Kendra Shaw

Chief Engineer (In charge of FTL and Sublight Engines, Power Generators and other Machinery)
Captain: Barry Garner

Commander Air Group (Senior Pilot in Charge of Air Wing)
Captain

Landing Signal Officer (In charge of Flight Operations on Deck)
Captain: Aaron Kelly

Tactical
Lieutenant

Communications
Lieutenant

Chief Medical Officer
Major/Captain:

Chief of Deck (Petty Officer in control of deckhands)
Chief Petty Officer

Marine Commander (Commander of the on-board Marine Battalion)
Major

Master-at-Arms (Master of Armory and Internal Ship Security, Investigations)
Sergeant: Misty Leegston

OTHER PERSONNEL

Pilots/Flight Crew:

Battlestar Personnel:

Marines:
Sergeant Kimberly Leegston

Others

As you can see, I poached some actual characters from nBSG, some of which were underused... for better or worse. But I expect most of the personnel to be 'originally' derived... and I'll probably put writeups of them as the series progresses and the characters develop.

I would like to canvas potential readers about potential character ideas including the Ship Commander, Tactical and Communications Lieutenant, Chief Medical Officer, Deck Chief, Marine Commander and some assorted Pilots/Aircrew and Marine Personnel.

I envision most of the Questing will take place involving pilots/aircrew or 'away teams' which would consist of some of the command officers, marines and aircrew so the focus would be on those characters. For actual characters... a very brief write up or bio should be all that's needed and perhaps a picture (or link) to what their appearance is (anything spaceish ideally) would be nice. And the less animated/anime the better when it comes to 'faceclaims' for characters.

Also if you have an idea of using a canon character (from nBSG or maybe even some other setting... like some sort of Colonial equivalent of Hoshi Sato as Communications Officer for example, can also be entertained. Also we don't need to fill out all of the positions yet. CMO and Communications and so forth could simply be left undefined or whatever until needed or filled with a more background or generic character.

uhhhhhh, if the idea is still open, is it possible if i join?
(fifth (technically) ever RP thing i will have ever done, plus not alot of experience with writing, beware the Noobness that i may be oozing out)

No worries, this'll be my first 'Quest' as well. I've done lots of role playing but typically older style stuff with play by post type of things, or GM'ing. I've done lots of writing as well. The idea with these CYOA/Quests formats however is that the format... very basically... is something like this.

Writer (Me): *Writes a bunch of plot stuff then offers 1 through X number choices*

Posters: Vote on choices... posting either just their choice... or expanding in depth extensively on their choices and why it makes sense or is appropriate or so forth etc.

Writer (me): Writes a continuation on posters/players/participants choices, deriving inspiration or even material from posters votes and explanations thereof.