Servicios inmobiliarios, empresariales y de alquiler

Focus on different characters in different adventures. That prevents all action from gravitating toward one or two characters and leaving the other players feeling ignored or sidelined. By the same token, even when featuring one player character, most if not all should have a role to play in each adventure. Engaging the Cylons in a space battle highlights Viper pilots most, but those stationed on the CIC or the flight deck should factor in. A murder mystery with political undertones shines the spotlight more on the investigator or politician, but having a combatant around could be necessary. A discovery brings the scientists or priest to the fore, but someone needs to smooth relations with those who guard the clue, or dispatch them should negotiations fail.

Moving events forward and around is critical in a Battlestar Galactica adventure. Given the diversity of character types, it’s likely that not all PCs will be present in every scene. Don’t keep a character in drydock for an entire session. Rotating scenes brings in various players and gives them a chance to play the game. You don’t want anyone feeling like they dropped off the DRADIS entirely.

Consider this adventure example. An incident of sabotage first provokes a military, tactical response. Once the immediate danger is past, a political approach becomes more prominent. Investigation of the incident involves both military and civilian personnel. The location of the event impacts people outside positions of authority, people who experience loss or who have secrets revealed by the circumstances. If the sabotage occurred in a critical area, different skill sets might be required to repair the damage, or to adapt the fleet to the loss of supplies or capabilities. In the course of a session, you might begin with an explosion on a civilian ship. Run a tight action sequence where the military responds (one or more combat-oriented type), hunting down the saboteur among the civilians (including other PCs). Switch to Colonial One and the President’s briefing and response (a PC assistant, reporter, or political figure participates). A tech crew (with scientific, medical, or mechanical PCs) is dispatched to survey the damage. They discover a new danger revealed or caused by the explosion. A representative of the President and another from the military are sent in to investigate and control the situation (allowing two different PC types to interact and challenge each other). A command review of the military response, or a debriefing of the sabotage threat follows. The tech crew begins a dangerous fix (dramatic complex action). Reactions from others (nonplayer characters) are heard, and may

Game Master

complicate things. Hopefully, the fix works and the greater danger is avoided. Perhaps two investigators come to blows or learn how to operate together better. In this way, the focus was not with one player, leaving the others as observers.

Desire

All drama is born of the desires of the characters. Understanding those desires is crucial to creating adventures which hold the interest of your players. Desires take the form of goals, needs, wants, and problems—each player may define their character’s motivations differently. While adventures sometimes just happen, most often storylines are born from characters’ attempts to fulfill needs, to obtain what they do not have or to keep what they do away from the grubbers who’d love to steal it. If your adventures do not address the desires developed in character creation, the players are likely to be disappointed or confused.

Character Traits are the most obvious expression of desires. Give these special attention and make sure that they are woven into play. A juicy Complication cries out for exposure. You might even design an entire adventure out of it.

Characters should struggle to attain their wants and needs. Some may never be satisfied. They exist for a lifetime, forming a backdrop to everything the character experiences. These larger issues are all about the attempt, not the grasping. Smaller, more specific goals form the meat and potatoes of your adventures. In the beginning, it might be reaching the fugitive fleet alive. Then the focus is escape and finding a way to survive. Once these have been conquered, even temporarily, more personal goals come to the fore.

Desires are not set in stone and goals can be accomplished in many ways. One of the most fascinating aspects of role playing is learning what a player character will or won’t do to reach his desires. Or how those desires are sharpened or changed as life goes on.

Conflict

Once desires are established, player characters are ready to go after them. To create drama or interest, forces must oppose the characters’ goals. They will be faced with difficult choices that will test their commitment. That’s when the shooting usually starts.

Opposing forces can be individuals or organizations, the law or criminals, hazardous environments or the trials of everyday life. For a

Battlestar Galactica campaign, these forces

can take some truly unusual forms.

Consider the classic fugitive fleet campaign approach. Organizations include the Colonial military, performing a defensive and police role. Covert agents may serve either of these two responsibilities. Working with, and sometimes against, the military is the civilian government. Those folks are responsible for laws, justice, and leadership. Any of these can run counter to an individual’s goals.

Many of the traditional organizations from the Colonies no longer exist, discarded in the need to survive. Some of these re-exert themselves as time goes on, often introducing instability by challenging the formerly absolute authority of the military and government. Labor unions, class-based societies, and political movements are prime candidates.

You’ll never escape plain old crime either. Part of what makes us human apparently. Anytime something is in short supply, those who sidestep the rules thrive at all levels. An individual criminal could cause trouble for the PCs. Characters might be sent to investigate a crime or could encounter the perpetrator accidentally. A more significant and extensive opposing force makes for more long-lasting conflict. Over time, the player characters might become threats to the criminal organization’s reputation or even its existence. The response could range from a message to back off to thugs catching them in a dark corridor to pressure from superiors in the syndicate’s pocket.

The environment itself can become an opposing force, particularly in space. Radiation plagues survivors on the Colonies. Problems threaten all essentials of life—water, food, air, heat, fuel, and hull integrity. Characters deal with explosions or mechanical failures, even exposure to deep space itself.

For more difficult choices, internal conflicts are the ticket. Best are situations where multiple goals interfere with each other, at times becoming mutually exclusive. There’s lots of times that you can’t do the right thing, just have to pick your favorite wrong one. This may force a character to face some moral choices that may alter their relationships with friends and loved ones irreparably. A tough moral choice is not between letting a child die and killing a Cylon leader. One option is obviously good, the other bad. What if the only way to kill the Cylon was to let the child die? That’s a much tougher call. What or who are you willing to sacrifice to win the war? To make a decision interesting, each choice must have consequences. Both options may have equal value, but the characters can only accomplish one.



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Rising Action

To grab the players and keep them hooked, action should begin in small doses, then grow as the stakes get higher. That’s called rising action. An individual adventure could begin with a bang, but even that just is a quick foray to get the players immersed. Your best bet is to start small, and let things go from bad to worse. This is definitely the way to go with larger story arcs that span multiple adventures and deal with long-term situations.

Rising action doesn’t necessarily mean combat, going from a scuffle to an all-out gun battle. The phrase speaks to the severity and consequence of character actions. At the beginning of a story, it may not matter who the player character let onto the shuttle escaping to the fleet. One stranger is pretty much like another. But what if one of those strangers is a murderer, a criminal, or a terrorist? That one act of generosity may unleash dark plots and evil deeds that come back and bite the PCs in the butt. As the players get involved in more plots and conflicts, their actions and decisions will become much more important and dramatic.

As you map out potential plots within and across adventures, consider how actions and reactions get more important. A few different escalation options provide flexibility, and makes the player character choices more meaningful. Don’t tie a key conflict to a particular NPC at a certain time and place. If the PCs end up missing that appointment, you’ll lose a central plot point. Figure out how to place the encounter in a number of different contexts. That way, no matter what the players do, they can reach the conflict and the story moves along.

Also think about what drives any nonplayer character encountered in a key plot point. Try to avoid giving the impression that a character has tracked down the party just to impart a clue and walk off stage. Create reasons for a key NPC to be in many of the places the player characters might frequent. The description or goals of the NPC may have to be adjusted given changing circumstances. Now, wherever or whenever they encounter the source, his motivations make his presence more plausible.

Keep in mind that the characters may not always succeed as the plot moments rise. A failure can challenge them to overcome their obstacles another way. But you must sketch out one or more paths from interim failure to ultimate success. A few smaller defeats makes final victory all the more satisfying; a little screw-up that ruins an entire adventure is no

fun at all.

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