As my slew of prior posts might indicate, I’ve been spending some time thinking about our upcoming Diaspora campaign…In particular the opening scene. The characters naturally started in two different groups: Billy and Martin are now partners in smuggling, hoping to someday find William to help them clear their name from the wanted list. Mason, William, and Tim are doing their best to avoid “the Man” in their hot T3 prototype ship.
Billy was once tasked with kidnapping William and bring him to New Florida to face trial/questions/employment for cracking New Florida’s cyphers. To complicate the first encounter, Tim had once threatened to kill Martin for getting Tim’s girlfriend hooked on XX. Needless to say the first encounter should be charged. Layered on this is the fact that Dynamic Solutions, a company based on Exxon, wants its T3 ship back…and quietly.
My thought is that the scene will start with Mason’s ship, and skeleton crew, in the middle of it’s response to an S.O.S. being sent from Billy and Martin’s ship. And they aren’t the only ones responding, they just happen to be the first. The challenge becomes how will they respond to the growing understanding of the situation.
I’ve poured over the Diaspora rulebook, Dresden Files Role Playing Game (RPG) and Spirit of the Century, in particular the amazing section Tips and Tricks of Spirit of the Century. One of the things is thinking about the Pulp Plot Framework:
- Endanger the Characters
- Reveal the True Danger
- The Pursuit Encounters Complications
- Certain Doom
- The Twist
- Final Showdown
- Breakneck Escape (Optional)
Obviously the first scene is going to be the Endangerment; Followed by a scene that will reveal the True Danger. I’m anticipating a handful of directions the first scene might go, and the corresponding True Danger for each path. Much like a Schrödinger’s Cat if a path is not chosen that path’s True Danger will likely never manifest nor necessarily exist.
I’m also reviewing each character’s aspects (at least those that have given me theirs) and tried to pair them up with other character’s aspects. I’ve looked at three pairings, and one pairing is complimentary while the other two are contradictory. This is a track straight out of the Dresden Files RPG. Establish a reason for them to work together as well as establish points of potential conflict.