Hopefully not being exhausted means I can write in something closer to American Standard English than my last post, we shall see. The comments on the last post gravitated toward a ship being available without depending on random chance which I am not to surprised by because it is the standard for most games. However that assumption does miss what I was trying to get at. Giving a ship by whatever means won't necessarily setup a game your player want to play in. I tried to run Star Hero (1st edition) years ago and it fell apart because I planned a standard Cepheus Engine style game. The Hero system is a point buy, build what you want system and the players built a teen idol, a spy, an ex-space marine and a Han Solo clone (I think it was a long time ago) it ended poorly. A part of the game failing was we made all or most of the choices in isolation before we started and it became too difficult for my GM skills at the time to create a game fusing them all together.
Perhaps if I had used the advice from the last post it could have worked. I will set out an example next but even so it will not be completely valid because it is still just me doing it. Hopefully it will demonstrate why it may be a valid way to approach a game. So for our hypothetical game group we have a GM and four players. The GM goes through the Cepheus Engine (CE) and only creates enough setting for a starting point including any modifications to the rules. The five meet up in a google hangout to babble at each other of what they want to play. Alpha wants to be a teen idol striving to become interstellarly famous, Beta has been reading Raymond Chandler and wants a film noir detective, Epsilon wants to be a girl scientist/inventor and Delta is good with whatever. Some snickering and snark later our teen idol is a twenty something idol, our detective is an ex-agent who is now a bodyguard, the girl inventor is the idol's kid sister and Delta rolls up a standard Fermi's Universe (FU) character ending up as a former soldier/scout/drifter who is now the roadie. The GM knows from his background the group can be on the TBR Showcase of Worlds! expanding the separation games concept into an on going government run traveling contest the Idol is trying to win. That's great and all but what if any of the first three don't manage to roll the qualifications to get into the right careers? Basically the GM should waive the minimum number of rolls to get the players the character they want.
So Idol Alpha wanted a teen idol the GM could say that his draft service was in the Entertainer career which is the easiest by skipping rolling the draft and qualification roll or he could have the player roll a term as an Entertainer and then go through the draft saying the first term was from 14-18 before the government interrupted his dream. For Beta Bodyguard the standard draft is fine and if agent isn't what is rolled the second term it can be selected. Scientist Epsilon is harder because the concept is a teenage genius which is unlikely to be created randomly. A little thought and the GM allows Str 1D6; Dex 2D6; End 1D6; Int 3D6; Edu 3D6; Soc 2D6; 1 term as a scientist and 1 term as a tech with no mustering out for either and setting the characters age at 16. Delta becomes the GM's favorite for not requiring anything special. None of the characters have a skill set oriented toward starship operations and none of the players are all that interested in running a starship. That implies 3 different possibilities for how the group is wandering the stars. Buying regular passages on ships which would mean finances will be a part of play to pay for all of them. Government ships transporting all show contestants and their entourages which means the group has little control over their movements. Last would be a corporate sponsor providing transport which needs the corporation to be fleshed out. The player decide on the Corporate sponsor. From here the GM can plan a series of adventures his players would actually want to pursue. The players have an idea for why they are adventuring together and some expectation of the general course of the game.
Okay none of that is an thing different or new from the standard sit down and talk it over advice every rule book mentions. Why beat a dead horse then? Mostly because I believe it is a really good idea to do this in a sci-fi game. People being what they are will have expectations of how things work and if you don't hash them out before you start a modern/future game it will come up in the middle of play. Having to stop playing the game to have an explanation of what the characters should know will derail at least the scene you are in. Having everyone on board for the general theme of a campaign is super helpful when you are using a rule set that allows for anything. "You are all in a bar" works for fantasy but not so much in genres resembling our own lives (to the extent of being adults with jobs) as a reason to risk your lives together.
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