Thoughts on a future campaign - part one

Lately I've been spending some time thinking about what sort of campaign I'd like to run once my current BESM campaign wraps us. My initial thoughts were I'd like to do a non-anime campaign. I was thinking a science fiction campaign in general would be fun, and I was particularly excited about the idea of a Star Trek campaign. I've been wanting to do one of those for quite awhile. To be fair it's not as though I'd completely ruled out doing another anime campaign (I love both BESM and anime), I just thought my players may want a change. The arrival of BESM 3rd edition, and a few comments from my players has made me rethink this a bit.

I have sent out two different e-mail questionnaires to my players trying to gage their thoughts and desires on a future campaign. My initial missive to my players presented them with no fewer then 17 options (several of which had 3 or 4 sub-options). Confronted with such an overabundance of choices it isn't surprising my players where slow in responding. My second attempt focused entirely on sci-fi cutting down the number of options to a manageable level, and produced better, but still not entirely satisfactory results. Although one of my players did interpret his own answers thusly, "In otherwords if you could somehow cook up a way to get a group of independent/merc mecha pilots (with mecha) cruising around in a barely holding together dropship plying the space lanes in a Firefly-esque setting I'd be a happy camper for a sci-fi setting."

Well that did get the creative juices flowing. I started focusing first on the Firefly-esque part. Joss Whedon drew a lot of inspiration for Firefly from the book The Killer Angels (a side note here - it is an extremely good book - read it) which is about the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. The Civil War brought the north versus the south to my mind which started me thinking this potential campaign could feature two separate solar systems that had recently fought a war. The first solar system, the side that won the war, would be analogous to the north (and to the central planets in Firefly) more industrialized and populated than the second solar system (the losing side in the war and naturally analogous to the south). For these two solar systems to be able to fight a war this campaign is going to need FTL travel (this is also especially true if this war is going to have been a civil war/war of independence - depending on your point-of-view).

While pondering the need for FTL I went off on a little tangent. I recalled Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Fremantle a British observer of Lee's army during the Battle of Gettysburg (or at least I recalled Michael Shaara's depiction of him in The Killer Angels). This made my mind wander to thoughts of the British Empire, which called to mind Napoleon, which got me thinking about the Horatio Hornblower books by C. S. Forester, all of which reminded me of the Honor Harrington books by David Weber. Weber's books occasionally mention a wormhole connecting his Manticore Star Kingdom to various other interstellar nations. It dawns on me that something like this is precisely what I need to tie these two solar systems together and give a plausible reason they could both be run by one government (not to mention why one solar system would be willing and able to fight a war to prevent the other solar system from declaring its independence).

A brief side note: if you are interested in reading some free science fiction, and fantasy novels head over to Baen Books and check out their free library featuring a fair number of the books they publish; including the first two novels in David Weber's Honor Harrington series.

The independent mercenary mecha pilots part shouldn't be to hard to work in; especially if I throw in one or more frontier solar systems not connected to the two main solar systems by any wormhole (and thus only accessible by FTL ships - which are presumably much slower than the basically instantaneous travel through a wormhole). The obvious choice is the PCs will be former soldiers from the losing solar system. Obviously there are still plenty of decisions to make, and questions to be answered, but for some initial brainstorming I'm pretty happy with these results.

As described this campaign could be run with any number of systems, and shoot for any number of different tones and themes. As an example for a more gritty and realistic approach I'd consider using GURPS; while for a much more cinematic feel I'd strongly consider using West End Games' D6 System (D6 Space being the obvious choice). Since my players seem to be looking for some more anime action, and because we'd all like to give it a try BESM 3rd edition seems to be a strong possibility for this potential campaign. For inspirational viewing for an anime version of this campaign I'd suggest Crest of the Stars, followed by Banner of the Stars (I, II, and III), maybe Outlaw Star for a lighter take on things, and Martian Successor Nadesico also seems like some excellent source material.

While this isn't the only idea for an anime campaign I've been kicking around, it is the only one you are getting in this post. However if you come back in a day or two I'm sure I'll have a few more up for perusal. But for now I leave you with another picture that amuses me. The picture comes from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the commentary comes from some creative person with too much time on his hands.