Crazy mash-up game: Starfinder Vigilante HERO/Absalom Station Blues

[bpmasher]

I want to use my Starfinder pawns for a game (I have 3 packs, including Alien Archive 1), and to FINALLY use Dark Champions again for a game, since it's my favorite HERO System book.

I just got the idea for a mash-up game of vigilante heroes as aliens and elves, dwarves and ANYTHING ELSE in the Starfinder universe. It's probably going to be a game focused on the Absalom Station of the Starfinder universe, with the option of branching out to different worlds once the game has been established.

 

Costumed (alien) vigilantes brandish their assault rifles and laser guns against the dark villains of corpse soldiers, pirates and criminals.

 

I need an angle of approach, but I have the style elements ready in my head. I want to emphasize slug-thrower guns, cybernetics and traditional forensic techniques for this game, and add some science fantasy into the mix. It's a wild swirling of imagery but I think I need to do this game as a b-day present for myself. Creative juices are flowing right now.

 

[Sketchpad]

Sounds like a Guardians of the Galaxy game with a slightly darker edge.

[bpmasher]

I should probably watch those movies for research.

 

I made the race conversions on paper a while ago, with Star Hero and the Starfinder book at hand. Was pretty straightforward to convert the stats.

Characters are the easy part. Creating a fun story for the players to interact with will be more difficult.

 

I don't know if I'll go the Batman -route or something more paramilitary, but it's forming slowly in my head.

[Tjack]

   Guardians of the Galaxy (Movie version) is a good starting place for a rough and tumble universe (You may also want to check out Firefly, Babylon 5, and Andromeda.) but you still need a point of reference for the masked vigilante part. 

    There have been superheroes in far future settings before but they generally aren’t operating outside the law. Such as the Legion of Superheroes working alongside the Science Police for example.

Whether you call them Urban Superheroes, Vigilantes or Mystery Men, they have an internal logic set of rules that makes the idea work. Criminals in comics and the real world basically have two things in their favor.  From street mugger to drug kingpin these are violence and anonymity.  The first allows them to do whatever they want while the second keeps them from paying the consequence for their actions.

  “What happened sir?”  “Someone hit me and took my money.”  “Do you know who they were?”  “No.”  “If we find them will you testify against them?”   “No, if I do they or someone else will take revenge.”   This is the basis of all crime.  The masked hero uses these two concepts against the criminals. They use the violence most people cannot muster to stop crime and cannot be identified or located by the criminal element who would retaliate. 
   Now we have to move this to a Science Fiction setting. The only masked crime fighter in that genre I can think of is the more serious versions of Space Ghost.  An unidentifiable person working from a secret location who targets pirates, drug & “human” traffickers and other criminals. 
   Each of your characters will have to have a real reason to want a justice they can find no other way. And a method for making that happen.     I wish you well. 

[bpmasher]

15 hours ago, Tjack said:

   Guardians of the Galaxy (Movie version) is a good starting place for a rough and tumble universe (You may also want to check out Firefly, Babylon 5, and Andromeda.) but you still need a point of reference for the masked vigilante part. 

    There have been superheroes in far future settings before but they generally aren’t operating outside the law. Such as the Legion of Superheroes working alongside the Science Police for example.

Whether you call them Urban Superheroes, Vigilantes or Mystery Men, they have an internal logic set of rules that makes the idea work. Criminals in comics and the real world basically have two things in their favor.  From street mugger to drug kingpin these are violence and anonymity.  The first allows them to do whatever they want while the second keeps them from paying the consequence for their actions.

  “What happened sir?”  “Someone hit me and took my money.”  “Do you know who they were?”  “No.”  “If we find them will you testify against them?”   “No, if I do they or someone else will take revenge.”   This is the basis of all crime.  The masked hero uses these two concepts against the criminals. They use the violence most people cannot muster to stop crime and cannot be identified or located by the criminal element who would retaliate. 
   Now we have to move this to a Science Fiction setting. The only masked crime fighter in that genre I can think of is the more serious versions of Space Ghost.  An unidentifiable person working from a secret location who targets pirates, drug & “human” traffickers and other criminals. 
   Each of your characters will have to have a real reason to want a justice they can find no other way. And a method for making that happen.     I wish you well. 

 

I don't know, you gave me a lot to think about. Maybe it could be division that broke off the Starfinder society when something disastrous happened to SFS members in the past. Maybe a number of society members were kidnapped for human trafficking and drugged to become slaves. Maybe the PCs are a group that were loved ones or relatives of these people, and formed a clandestine "gang" to deal with the culprits. 

 

The crime, whatever it was, affected the PCs to trigger their thirst for vengeance and breaking off on their own to get even.

 

Possibly the Starfinder society regards them as criminals, and keeps tabs on former members. Watched -disadvantage. I have to look into the Pact Worlds book to find antagonists for the player characters and  see what kind of campaign I can form out of the existing factions.

[bpmasher]

Meanwhile, I need to start looking at equipment (Dark Champions staple). 

 

I'm going to go loose on weapons limitations due to class, so that everybody can wield the weapons they buy familiarities for. Pilot dudes can use PDWs like tankers, give them assault rifle damage, a range mod of 0, Perception modifier of +3 to +4. Actually most of the characters will benefit from having these weapons, I gotta dig up my weapons pictures to get a visual.

 

A subvocal mic and radio systems for all member of this "squad". Personal body armor that looks like clothing. Grenades and explosives.

 

I'm thinking about equipment in terms of The Division video games, where a single person packs a ton of firepower. Not necessary, but some situations might call for it.

 

The weapons in the Starfinder corebook are mostly magic effects tied to a weapon (cryo, flame, toxins) etc. I can work on this with the Hero rules and include some of them in the later phases of the campaign. Maybe I will make these weapons the rarest of all, so that the baseline guns will still be slug-throwers and lasers.

 

Cyberware. biotechnology and drugs can be created with Hero, take some direction from Star Hero and Starfinder books, but not strictly canon.

[bpmasher]

I'm tempted to pull a "shadowrun" on this campaign and put all the races and aliens on Earth, with alternate history and the possibility to FTL-travel to the Pact Worlds later on in the campaign.

 

I know Golarion is it's own thing, but the space is vast, and possibilities are endless

[Tjack]

I had an idea to toss at you, if you don’t mind. 
    A decorated highly trained combat veteran loses his family to a slaver raid and decides to “punish” the guilty instead of following the more civilized forms of justice. To this end he recruits others who have exceptional skills (Karate Kid) or racial abilities (Chameleon Boy or Phantom Girl) he believes could be useful.  In order to keep any friends or family from retribution he encourages the members of his team to conceal their identities from everyone...including each other. 
   It’s basically the Punisher forms the Avengers.  But it gives you a few things. A reason for the group to exist and characters to have differing skills and powers,  an NPC to hand out assignments and equipment, and a reason for masked heroes to exist in a universe that’s never seen them before.
   Use it, don’t use it, just trying to help.  Best of luck.

[bpmasher]

36 minutes ago, Tjack said:

I had an idea to toss at you, if you don’t mind. 
    A decorated highly trained combat veteran loses his family to a slaver raid and decides to “punish” the guilty instead of following the more civilized forms of justice. To this end he recruits others who have exceptional skills (Karate Kid) or racial abilities (Chameleon Boy or Phantom Girl) he believes could be useful.  In order to keep any friends or family from retribution he encourages the members of his team to conceal their identities from everyone...including each other. 
   It’s basically the Punisher forms the Avengers.  But it gives you a few things. A reason for the group to exist and characters to have differing skills and powers,  an NPC to hand out assignments and equipment, and a reason for masked heroes to exist in a universe that’s never seen them before.
   Use it, don’t use it, just trying to help.  Best of luck.

 

Good stuff. I'll work with it.