Galactica personal spacecraft

I've been enjoying the heck outta my Battlestar Galactica Roleplaying game. Those of you who know me know that I tend to get very obsessive about my interests, and this is no exception. We've recently hit the events of the Miniseries (and 33, for those keeping track.) We're in our own universe so not everything happens exactly the same way. Our fleet is a bit bigger than what we had in the show, including two military vessels besides Galactica and about an extra 10,000 civvies.

One thought that occurred was that there should be some personal spacecraft out there. After all, Blood and Chrome show us that Raptors have been around for at least fifty years. The technology exists, it just must be absurdly expensive. And yet, there are markets for expensive ships. Two that came to mind were express package delivery and the personal jet / luxury yacht level craft.  I statted out one of each and figured I'd go ahead and share them with you.

These are done up in Cortex regular, so you could easily use them for a Firefly campaign with a few minor tweaks. I had fun with the logo for Hermes Express (a company from one of my PC's background fluff.) The font is Futurama Bold, a nod to the best interstellar package delivery spaceship to ever ply the spaceways.

What say you, faithful readers? Any other niches out there for a small, ftl-capable ship besides courier and luxury?

(Read all about my BSG game from my GM's perspective over at The Black Campbell.)

Battlestar Galactica RPG

Howdy, friends, strangers, neighbors, and readers! I've been pretty busy recently with writing, life, etc, but not too busy to try out a new RPG system.  I've been playing the Battlestar Galactica RPG, which uses the Cortex system from Margaret Weis Productions.

For those of you who don't know, Cortex is a system designed to highlight the interpersonal drama of universes like Firefly and BSG. Attributes are expressed in terms of dice, and most rolls are resolved as a paired attribute / skill roll attempting to beat a static difficulty.  It's light on crunch and heavy on drama, with a system that rewards in-character flaws with plot points that can be exchanged for bonuses to dice rolling or to make minor (or not-so-minor) edits to the story.  I rather like it.  So much so that I've been playing around with making some resources for the game.

First up, my one-page character sheet.  I managed to squeeze everything on the two-page version into this except for the advancement table (our group house-rules a different system, but it's easy enough to look it up in the book.) You can see how it works out in practice with my Viper pilot Zoe 'Billboard' Arden.  Colonial flags and rank pips can be found at the BSG Wiki. If you want to photoshop an actor into a BSG uniform, you're on your own.  (One of the things our GM does is say which actor might play which PC/NPC.  I rather like it.)

 As I'm playing a pilot, I looked through some of the prop websites and found some neat documents that I've recreated.  I have Viper and Raptor pre-flight checklists.

Here are some repair orders for Raptors and for Vipers.

Neat stuff, no?  Check out my GM's website for a ton more BSG RPG resources.I also found this series of articles a great resource for what life on an aircraft carrier is like.

End of an Era - Spoiler Free BSG

Well, that's it for Battlestar Galactica. It's been quite a ride. When I was first advised to check it out ('awesome mini-series, Jim, you gotta give it a try'), I was skeptical. So skeptical that I basically skipped it. It wasn't till after I heard a bunch of cool things about season 1 that I broke down, bought the DVDs and gave it a shot. Well, I'm glad I did. BSG offered terrific space opera, compelling characters and a surprising amount of fealty to some of the better ideas and concepts of the classic show.

The series finale was, well . . . hard to get into without too many specifics. A lot of the mysteries were answered. A lot more were touched upon, or merely left unresolved. At least one plot point that started just a few episodes ago was quietly forgotten. Overall, it wasn't a very cerebrally driven ending to the show. One character even acted quite out of character in order to serve the needs of the plot.

That said, the reason the head wasn't driving the show was because the heart was. Ultimately the emotional resonance was amazing. I didn't cry, but I did get a little misty-eyed at parts. Its message of cyclic conflict rings true to me. Oh, not the robot/human bit specifically, but it sure does seem like the same wars get fought again and again and again. All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. And the very last minute or two went in an unexpected but quite clever direction. Perhaps worth a bit of hand waving.

Overall, (and please keep in mind that I've not yet fully digested the episode, let alone the series) this is a show about emotions. Vast, sweeping emotions, larger than the characters themselves. The plot was interesting, but ultimately secondary. Contrast it to some of my other favorite space-opera: Babylon 5 is all about plot; Farscape, character; Star Trek (TOS), friendship; Star Wars, adventure; Macross, love. These are all great topics, worthy of exploration. I'm glad I watched BSG, and look forward to watching it again, from the beginning, to see what I can pick up.

So say we all!