The Campaign Builder's Guild

The setting is inspired by (and in no particular order):Total Recall(1990), The Red Rising Trilogy, the Red Faction Video Game series, C&C:Red Alert, Red Planet, SpaceBase 2000, Dune 2:The Battle for Arrakis(1992), Destiny, etc..etc...[/i]

You put FACTION right into the title of the setting, so presumably that's intended to be a big deal. Are games/stories supposed to focus on a particular faction? If the goal is some kind of Game of Thrones -esque multisided conflict then I think you'll need a large number of factions.

Quote from: Ghostman
You put FACTION right into the title of the setting, so presumably that's intended to be a big deal. Are games/stories supposed to focus on a particular faction? If the goal is some kind of Game of Thrones -esque multisided conflict then I think you'll need a large number of factions.

It is intended for players to control a faction yes-with some sort of system built into to roll up a new faction. There are many different forces at work-and not just on Mars, this setting just happens to focus on the action there. Jupiter and Europa would be another theatre of the conflict as well as good old earth.

So the implication is that your good ol' First World NATO powers have all collapsed on themselves and someone took over for them as the dominant powers of a unified world government; I guess my question is that between that massive paradigm shift and generations of colonization, how culturally distinct are these future Earthlings compared to us and in turn, how different are the Martian settlers from them?

Would love to see what you have by way of other factions, especially the criminal syndicates and other merc forces.

I'll echo, Rhamnousia: I'd like to hear more about the culture of these humans, and the relative cultural hegemony and/or diversity that exists in the UTG and Mars.

Quote from: Rhamnousia
..I guess my question is that between that massive paradigm shift and generations of colonization, how culturally distinct are these future Earthlings compared to us and in turn, how different are the Martian settlers from them?

Would love to see what you have by way of other factions, especially the criminal syndicates and other merc forces.

Thanks for reading Rhamnousia. Your Manticore Gardens setting is one of my favorites on these boards-

Your questions are great, really pushing me to explore and develop FACTION much more in depth. To be honest I have put exactly zero thought into how culture has developed on Earth/Mars other than a vague notion of...some settler types. I'll have to think about that. Earth is certainly a hyper capitalist nightmare what with all the corporate bullshit, and that certainly spills over to Mars and the other planets. I'll have to give this more thought. I went in writing this with the idea that, like a 80s movie I could casually graze over the larger picture of what things are like for the average man. Looks like I'll have to step it up and get some notes down.

There are certainly criminal organizations. Well-funded criminals and terrorists certainly. Many are simply clandestine divisions of the corps. doing the jobs the company would not want to be associated with.

Definitely a cool setting. Managing a faction could make for some involved and interesting gameplay. Do you have a system you're looking at using? How deadly and decisive do you envision combat to be? I'm imagining a lot of time posturing and then a quick fight once shots are fired. I do love your reasoning for why space combat would work the way it does; resources are scarce, so you don't just want to blow enemy ships to pieces, you want to salvage.

Quote from: Xeviat
Definitely a cool setting. Managing a faction could make for some involved and interesting gameplay. Do you have a system you're looking at using? How deadly and decisive do you envision combat to be? I'm imagining a lot of time posturing and then a quick fight once shots are fired. I do love your reasoning for why space combat would work the way it does; resources are scarce, so you don't just want to blow enemy ships to pieces, you want to salvage.

   I wouldn't even know where to look for a system for this or how to go about making something really in-depth. If I was building something from scratch it would be very simple. Your spot on with combat-it's a quick, bloody affair.

Do you intend on running games in it? How fiddly of a rules system are you looking for? I recommend something with a Toughness type system, because someone can drop from almost any amount of damage. It all depends on how heroic you want the characters to be in combat, or how cautious you want them to be.

FATE's a pretty good system that functions on multiple levels of scale: Romance in the Air is a good example of a FATE setting that has faction management elements to it.