Space Campaign Prospects

Continuing my Sojourner series, I was thinking about sandbox play. In this post I describe the way I run my sci-fi sandbox campaigns that is compatible with any system. To start off you will need a couple of worlds and factions with interconnected relationships.

Working for both sides of the blockade to make ends meet. Crushing starship debt. Time is nothing but adding weeks and subtracting credits. They say that a month in space is darker than any darker. No starlight reaches these depths ever. Human eyes were not meant to see it.

Procedure

Campaign time is measured in months. In a month the crew can: visit a starport, travel between nearby worlds, or repair severe ship damage.

At the start of every month roll for an event:

Whenever the crew spends a month in a starport, follow these CORE steps:

1. Costs: pay docking and living expenses for the crew.
2. Opportunity: pick an assignment from the job board and zoom in on the action.
3. Recovery: the crew can rest, spend downtime actions or travel.
4. Epilogue: apply consequences based on the taken assignment, change the crew’s standing with the factions involved. Proceed to next month.

Prospects

Completing prospects is the main way for characters to gain access to new equipment, locations and other boons from factions.

The Job

A job consists of several elements: task you are assigned with, reward for a successful mission, factions you gain and lose reputation with for completing the job, timeline that occurs if the job is not taken.

Once the task is decided, decide which faction would benefit, and which faction would be weakened if the assignment was completed. If the job is of great weight, multiple factions may be affected on either side. Keep a tally of each faction’s attitude towards the crew.

You might keep a twist hidden from the players. They can be an interesting way to increase tension in otherwise routine missions, but if overdone they risk becoming expected.

Be open about the timeline that occurs when a job is not taken. For example, if the crew doesn’t take a mission helping the teamster union in a strike, the next month they are weakened or totally destroyed. If a VIP guild representative is not taken to their destination, they call of an important trade deal with a local house. The players will have to carefully pick how they want to influence the world.

Now let’s place our jobs on the board.

The Board

The job board is how the players receive missions, and also how they receive updates on the state of the world. The board contains 3 jobs for the crew to follow. It is updated month to month based on the crew’s decisions. Here is an example of a job board in action:

Month 1 (F=Factions, R=Reward, T=Timeline):

Jobs don’t have to be local to the current world. Making travel a requirement for missions is a great way to incentivise your crew to visit different worlds.

Note that the board can (and should!) be adapted to your crew. If they are more inclined to haul cargo and evade combat, include more missions concerned with delivery. As a rule of thumb, after a crew completes a job, include two jobs of that type or faction next month. Be sure to include new job types and factions each month to give the crew new opportunities.

It is assumed that the crew takes one job per session, so that you have the time to update and prepare the board for the next month. If you plan on playing several prospects per session, prepare several months worth of the board accordingly.

During month one the crew chose the Blockade run job to help the Teamster Union survive. They have successfully smuggled the goods, but on their way back got hit by a Navy turret. After resting and repairing their ship, the crew is low on cash. They looking for a mission to pay the bills.

Month 2:

If you want to slow down the pace of the campaign, you can refresh the board only every other month. This way the crew can pursue more jobs before they have to deal with the consequences.

When playing with several groups of players sharing the same universe, using the job boar is a good way to intertwine their actions. Events from one group can ripple to the other. Crews might be completing missions from rival factions and undermining each other’s progress.

To read: Planning a Campaign as a Series of Decisions - Retired Adventurer. I like how this post proposes asking questions as a way to add depth to your prep, without actually preparing for every single possible scenario.

Published on June 13, 2022.

Tagged: mechanics   space   osr   sandbox   sojourner  

← Previous post

Space Campaign Lifepaths

Next post →

Worlds of Classic Traveller

Comments