[Diaspora] Diaspora Hack for Revolt on Antares

[Kenneth Coble]

I can't recall if I've mentioned it on this mailing list before, but
the very first 'gaming' product I ever bought was the old TSR
mini-game "Revolt on Antares."  While my fist copy is lost somewhere
in the attic or something, I grabbed a fresh copy off eBay a few years
ago and have fallen in love with the setting all over again.  I've
made a few half-hearted attempts at figuring out some way to do some
gaming in the setting - either RP, or once I stumbled into the
wonderful world of 15mm sci-fi minis, tabletop wargaming.  Nothing has
ever really seemed to click, but I think Diaspora's version of FATE
(plus its integral wargaming ruleset!) might be the way to go.  I'm
going to hammer away at this some here as well as on my blog, and I'm
actively soliciting feedback, suggestions, or just commentary on the
process.  I think one of the main strengths of this approach will be
the player 'buy-in' as they'll be actively involved in detailing the
setting, which was one of the neatest moments in our first Diaspora
session.

For people who never played the original "Revolt," the bare-bones
version of the backstory is that Antares 9 is on the edge of the
(presumably crumbling and decadent) Terran Empire; seven noble houses,
descended from the first wave of human colonists, are fighting for
power and control of the planet.  The leaders of each house have some
fantastic over-the-top psionic ability (teleportation, electrokinesis,
telepathy - a different one for each house), and each house also has
some artifact of unreproducible Precursor god-tech.  In the basic
scenario for the original game, some of the houses revolt against
Terran rule, some remain loyal, and the others get recruited into one
side or the other as the game goes on.  Other wrinkles in the setting
include a lot of off-world (some frankly alien) mercenaries;. the
(again presumably) oppressed native population of Antares 9; and
gribbly tentacled alien invaders (that show up in the second scenario,
but I'd certainly want to include them in my conversion).

One of the reasons I'm thinking Diaspora will be a great fit for this
is that rather than sitting down and doing all sorts of background
work for all seven houses and hoping that I'm brilliant enough to
capture the imaginations of the rest of the players, I can hack the
Cluster creation rules and let the whole table help define each house,
with the help of some Fudge dice!  But this takes us right up to my
first issue:  what are the 'stats' we'd be rolling up for each house?

Here's the only one I've gotten so far: the starting state of Loyalty.
 This is the key, because rather than having to sit and decide who
takes which side, etc, we'll roll for it.  +4 is absolute fanatical
servile devotion to the Terran Throne; -4 is going to be open and
total rebellion, taken to war-crime-y lengths like systematic
atrocities visited on Terran civilians and/or Terry sympathizers.
Zero will be 'neutral.'  We'll put a 'slipstream guarantee in at this
point as well: if there's not at least one House at +2 or higher and
one House at -2 or less, we'll use [some algorithm that we'll
determine when we figure out what the other stats are] and place a
House at any needed value of +2 and -2.

Now we've pointed out my problem - I'd like to figure out what other
stats need to be determined.  I don't think tech is a good choice, as
the original game presents each of the houses having equivalent values
for their forces (in other words, everyone's laser tank battalions are
as good as everyone elses), with the Terran forces being slightly
better than their House counterparts.  So I think tech gets a pass
here.  Which house gets which power is set by the original game as
well, and rolling to determine which Artifact they get isn't
interesting enough from a narrative point of view to bother with (if
we even stick with this idea, it'll just be a flat die roll, or
picking the actual chits from the original game out of a bag).

The original game does give each House a slightly different mix of
forces, and the ones who have arguably 'worse' forces get more
reinforcements - this dichotomy might lend itself to a 'guns or
butter' stat, where +4 is an overbuilt military force that's already
stretched the limits of a House economy to the point that it's
unsustainable, while -4 is a House with virtually no military at all,
but with tons of economic and industrial potential to be converted to
a war footing in the future.  The problem is that this feels a bit
reductionist and silly, and I'm not sure it really passes the laugh
test.  I could split this into two seperate stats - 'Mercantile' and
'Military.'  That would give us the possibility of having some houses
be all-around powerhouses, and some getting screwed on both fronts.
This doesn't replicate the game, but I want to be inspired by the
setting, not shackled to it; and the thoughts of some Houses getting
to be like pre-WWI Germany, with a massive military and a bumpin'
economy while others get stuck being post-WWI Germany with no military
and a boned economy seems like it could make for both good RPing as
well as interesting fodder for wargaming scenarios.  But splitting
them out thusly means we're already at 3 'rolled-up' stats for each
house.  I'd be willing to go to four stats, but five or more feels
like it would be a bit much.

Can anyone suggest any other stats that you, as a player, would be
interested in knowing about a faction before you sit down to game with
it?  I'd thought of some sort of 'democracy' or at least 'decency'
stat - while the houses are all run by the noble families, maybe
something that moves them along a spectrum from 'legitimately
concerned with our subjects and giving them some voice in their
governance' to 'throw another serf on the fire, this one's quit
screaming?'  Maybe a stat for how stable each House is?  While the
backstory suggests that they're some sort of long-standing hereditary
nobility, an unstable house might have lots of cadet branches of the
main family arguing that they're the real heir?

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.  Later on this week I'll
post something about character creation in this setting, and fish for
ideas on how to handle the 'immovable objects' of the setting (the
Imperial Terran Consulate, the natives, the invaders).

PS if you'd rather take this to my blog, I made pretty much the same post there:

http://flintlocklaser.blogspot.com/2010/03/diaspora-hack-revolt-on-antares.html

Either way, I'd appreciate your feedback!