Making engineers sexy.

Been working on Spacers a bit. Sometimes I get really discouraged, because I think of all the great S-F RPG's that have been published and have really gone no where. From Traveler to Gamma World to to Fringeworthy to Alternity to whatever...what RPG game gets the people playing it so loyal that they continue playing it after more than a handful of sessions? Then it occurs to me to look for what is missing in these games.

Okay but all this is bunk. Really it is.

These games are great, as I have said already. These games are great and it is the GM's interest in them that keeps any game, let alone the whole paper RPG hobby. alive. His players, steady or infrequent respond to his, or her, passion long enough to turn off the boob-tube and be the stars in their own mini-series. Good stories sell and tabletop role-playing is a social event.

That actually is what LAG is about. Coming up with a system that I like and selling decent episodes, err scenarios; that's my angle. The GM is the director and his core players act as the heroes in the on-going story. Cameo appearance characters can be NPC's or infrequent visitors. The story and the novelty of the approach is what I am counting on. Truth be told I am modeling Spacers scenarios heavily on TV serials and series like Buck Rogers and Enterprise. To me they represent the right mixture of high drama and atmosphere which might not lead to twelve plus years of dinner and game sessions, err ten seasons on TV, but the participants, err viewers will remember the experience, err show.

In play-testing the scenarios to date, I am not finding a lot wrong with the game mechanics. So while I should be happy, I am noticing that my engineers are having a hard time time staying involved in the game play after the first hour ninety minutes. So while I have got the ship-to-ship combat having everyone involved, I need to make the techno-babble an actual aspect of the game. If only I could wrap spandex around a bunch of equations that equal 34-2xD and paste a cyborg part over her, err its left eye.