Where are we playing this?

Let's make World.

We might not be able to answer these till we know the characters. How they turn out will heavily affect some of these and change what will be interesting.

What you can be thinking about in the meantime, though, is:

How large a scale do we want to set for our initial sandpit?

If we have a ship our answers will be different, but maybe only in terms of scale.

Do we want to keep the game focused into a smallish area, exploring the details of the closeby systems and planets?
Or do we want to jump off far away and explore previously uncharted systems? Possibly more superficially exploring, and making first contact before moving on?

A spaced out setting of constant new worlds will require some work to make the known NPCs (Enemies, Rivals, Contacts, Allies) work, but I can see ways to involve them. I assume this group wants to play with this part of the system. We can also see how many such NPCs we end up with from character creation.

We can start with the world (or system) we are on (or in), and see how it plays. Then we can branch out to other sectors, or nearby worlds based on how it goes (you may have to run far).

Do we want to 'discover strange new worlds', or are we more interested in 'discovering strange new people in our backyard'?

This might depend a lot on how the characters and their histories turn out. If everyone ends up having been far-travelled Scouts who know a lot about the universe (from a mapping perspective), for instance, our natural stories might be different to if they are local-yokels seeing the universe for the first time. (Are they Han, or are they Luke?)

If we do more than one or maybe two Terms, I don't think the system caters for 'inexperienced' characters, but let's see how it goes.

If the PCs were involved in wars, we need to have borders and (previously?) hostile neighbours.
Players can choose to be in the military, or they may be drafted. If a draft happens, that means active war, if not, they could have served during peace-time, you can choose, if their Events don't choose for you.

How close are we to the core worlds do we start?

Do we want to operate in the capital or on the outer rim?

The nature of the characters may dictate this for us.

I don't believe we have a Ship?

I think ships are a big part of this game, how do we want to handle this?

We Could start without a ship. Maybe limit ourselves to local troubles and need to book passage to get to other worlds/systems?

We could go the default route and build a ship together and pay for it over the course of play. This need to pay for ones' ship is often a driving force for our Travellers play and action.

If we don't want to have to deal with forty years of ship payments we could arrange some other way of getting ship, but there will always be a cost, if you steal it you may be wanted, if it is issued you may have a 'master' (like the Scout Ship Benefit).

We could make the first job be getting a ship or your own (as payment or as the job).

Two(?) of you each have a Ship Share? That could play into your getting one.

A ship as a reward sounds interesting. But ships are very expensive, so the first mission will be a tough one.

It might not be free of cost. You might still need to pay off half the loan, or you may be wanted or make enemies, or you may just 'have use of' the ship rather than owning it. These are just options if we don't want to go the regular route of paying off a ship as we play.

I have a less-than-half-formed idea about a mission recovering the 'missing' scout ship. That will be very dependant on whether TrailHead is interested in exploring that 'unknown' from their history. It is merely a simple way to link the other two's 'ship shares' with their lack thereof but keep everyone 'equal' in the 'ownership'. It might still 'belong' to the Scout Services, or it might be 'stolen from Scout Services' depending on how Benny feels about continued dealings with them. (Benny may have been found drifting in the ship's boat or something).

The 'A-Team' idea also sparked an idea about you all having a higher-than-average TL ship for some reason (I can think of a mission to get one), if we want to do that. It might cause constant and ongoing complications when trying to get it serviced and such, and attract a lot of attention.

Just vague ideas.

Tech Level (TL)
We need to decide what TL we are wanting to play in.

I don't see anything in our chats so far to suggest we are in a particularly high or low Tech setting. Of course the part of space we are currently in --or grew up in-- might be a few steps away from the norm.

Looking at the list on pages 6 and 7, I would say we are not below TL10 (what with the robot helpers we spoke about), but I think it could be interesting to set this between TL11 and TL12 "early, experimental terraforming; no Jump-3 but rumours of it; 'battlefields' are still a thing but becoming nonviable and messy"?

We can always start in --or move to-- an area that is different.

What do we think? What do we want to see?

I would prefer the lower of the 2 (TL11), just because I think that will be better for me to ease in. I'm not clear on how much we"ve seen of the galaxy. Is the Navy/Army bound to one world, or an organisation that travels to other planets with different TL's. I find it hard to wrap my head around the fact that TL14 war vessel can visit a TL5 planet and just wipe the entire planet out.

Maybe I just haven't read enough of the book yet.

You were in the Navy, you tell us.
We could also cap it at TL10, if you want. Many of the places you might visit could be a level or two below (or above) the 'setting average').

I just saw the note that Earth is TL7, so even TL10 is higher than I thought.

Setting things lower than TL9 means no 'gravity manipulation' or 'jump' so we would be dealing with much more intimate stuff and would therefore need to know more about the tech we deal with, stuff that the 'sufficiently magical' technology of higher levels allows us to handwave away.

I am liking TL10, now that I have adjusted my understanding.
Agreed. We can say there are no (known) TL14s around. We can say that TL11 is the highest anyone has even heard of and you all don't have access to that yet.

I agree with starting at the lower end. Even lower than TL11 is fine by me, as long as there are other locations to go to that are higher.

I guess you could even have a TL 7 village on a planet with TL 12 large cities, no? Even if the technology is there, not everyone has access to it or wants to have it.
Kinda like the aboriginal tribes or the Amish on earth.

So, the question might be: TL9 or TL10?

If we start TL9 I think we will may have to move up to TL10 soonish to keep going? Does anyone have any idea what the book suggests/assumes as a default? I can look later.
Now much higher? We can set a range that we are interested in.

We can always change this upwards later if we want to. Adjusting downwards is doable but much harder.
Yes. I am not a fan of single-biome planets (desert or forest planets, for instance). I have spent a fair bit of time working out ways to explain their existence, though, since they do simplify gameplay.

It is possible that higher TL cities are planet-spanning, so once the dominant society is high enough there may not be any more pockets of lower tech. We can see. Lower tech could be outlawed in some places. A lot of lower tech is 'bad for the environment' and once electric cars are mainstream, running cars on fossil fuels might become illegal... Crazy idea, I know, but this is Sci-Fi. :)

Planets and Star Systems!
We will need to make some Planets and Systems to play in.

Maybe we each want to roll up a random system or two? Or pick some options from the lists that we think are interesting and we can start to populate the universe?

I glanced at https://zhodani.space/stuff/generators/random-subsector-generator/ and it might be a way to get started, though we may have to fight to keep it within the TLs we establish (I don't see a way to limit it). There may be other random generators more suited to our needs.

If you want to just shout out things that appeal I can work on incorporating them into a (few) system(s).

Depending on our ship-situation at the start we may not need to bother with too much just yet.

How about the space equivalent of the Bermuda triangle, where strange things happen and people get lost?
Sector BL4K

How detailed do we want to be here? I guess we'll each have a home planet and maybe a couple of planets we've been to in our life. Other than that, should we say how many planets are in our current solar system? Do we define what's on them, which ones are habitable, which ones have aliens (if any)?

Er... Yes?

Say whatever you want. We can smoosh it all together and make sense of it later. Some things might not turn out to be true.

Provide as much details as you want.

Even at TL9 we have Jump technology, so we have access to other solar systems (or sectors, or whatever). We don't need to define how many of anything, we can see what we have and work it out and discover more as we go.

Uh, I picked a TL11 laser pistol as one of my Scout benefits (I rolled a weapon, and that’s what I picked.) If we go with a lower TL, that’s fine but I’ll need to downgrade my weapon.

Benny met and made a contact with an alien, so we need at least one alien culture. I’m okay with interpreting the "alien" culture as humans that are not part of our society, though, if the group doesn’t want aliens.

I do like the edge of charted space and edge of friendly space events that Benny had. I like the idea of exploring the unknown. So it could be cool to spend some time in known space then go exploring to solve the mystery of Benny’s blackout and to meet up with his alien contact. Not that I expect the game to revolve around my character, to be clear.

Not necessarily. Why did you keep this weapon? It might be very high tech and worth keeping. Maybe the Scout Services have access to TLs above everyone else? Airshark also has a TL11 Laser Pistol (from the Navy) so those might be sources of higher tech stuff than civilians can usually get?

These might also just be 'very nice examples of weapons' so they act as TL11 even if they were made by TL9 people?
You get to tell us about that.

I think that was the only mention of 'aliens' in the Character Creation?

Maybe --and this is just me spitballing-- they are the only 'aliens' we know of, and that is why they are special enough to be mentioned? This does make them rather special, whereas having more aliens (and the contact is what is special) makes them less significant to the story. We can decide how they fit.

@Airshark, @TheGenerator, @TrailHead:
Everyone should give a little feedback on just how alien our aliens should be. Both for this Contact and for all alien interactions going forward. (might need its own thread)
Sound good to me. What does everyone else think? We can easily adjust this as time goes by.
Did you see the offhand note I made about that being a way to get a 'free' ship? If you are interested in doing that early we can look at that more. If you want to keep it a mystery for a while longer (delaying is always a risk in PbP) we can do something else.
How's that for an out of context quote? :)

We can take it in turns being the center of the active story.