Character and Game generation for Farscape Fate - Part 1

Creating The Game World

In this blog I will be talking about what as a group we came up with at our first session and what I have expanded on with these ideas in mind. As the first session was on one of the hottest Saturdays in the late afternoon it was ideal to sit around a table. We managed a couple of hours and at least got the characters almost complete. I got to discus with the group what they wanted out of the game and we together came up with some connections and reasons for the group to be together. 

For those crazy few that have not had the pleasure of experiencing the wonderful and imaginative series which is Farscape. I will briefly explain what is the Farscape universe and in what state the players will find it.

Farscape is set in a part of the Milky Way far away from Earth, the main character John Crichton a Human finds himself there through a worm hole. This being the first theme that will feature in my game worm hole travel and parallel universes. Farscape the series touch on the multiverse theory and it does create some interesting plots within the game.

Also a theme that is always present in Farscape is the threat of being chased by organisation or powers across the galaxy. The group has helped create and will except many of the different factions and races within the game wanting them for many reason. 

And the last theme that I will mention which will definitely feature in my game, the crews ever evolving frictional comradely. All my group are great role players and bouncy off each other so well, I except half the plots will evolve from their interactions with each other. 

The State of the Uncharted Territories.

The uncharted territories is a large part of the inhabited area which is claimed by the major factions within that area. It has obviously no known size and parameters it is just a term used in Farscape and will be used in this game. I will describe the major factions of note in a later blog for more details for those that are interested. But just think of it has a Star Trek or Star Wars universe but with more lawlessness. That is what the uncharted territories means it's the parts the major factions can't being order too. This is where the players are from and it will be the setting for most of the games.  

The game will be set after the series ends so knowing the outcome of what was called The Peacekeeper Wars is kind of useful to understand in what state the uncharted territories and the main factions are in. The game will be set around 25 years (or cycles as will now be refered) after the PKW so I have taken some artistic licence on what happened after the war ended which I will explain in this Spoiler alert below.

The Peacekeeper Wars.

This war was fought between the Sebacean Peacekeepers (genetically altered humans) and the Scarren Empire (Big lizardy types) and there assorted allies or slave races. It was a costly war for the Peacekeepers and only because of the Eidelon's returning which were the Peacekeepers old master that had the racial power to create an aura of peace and reason which was used to keep the peace between all the different races. Also John Crichton dropping a worm hole bomb in the middle of the final fight which scarred both sides into at least agreeing to open peace talks and ending the war. If you haven't seen Farscape then that is pretty much the TV movie that finished off the series and don't worry lots more happens and it's well worth a watch on it's own if you don't want to sit through four amazing series, sorry love Farscape can you tell.

In my verision which differs from the comic series which I'm ignoring as my players aren't that Farscape hardcore like me but I will probably steel some ideas so probably good they haven't read them. So both the Peacekeeprs and the Scarrens lost a large potion of their ships to the worm hole bomb and so after coming to come peace accord they both went back to their territories to lick there wounds, except both sides their problems with rebel factions within their own that disagreed with their leaders decisions, also the Peacekeepers for 3000 years have been taught to hate all alien races thus the Eidolens trying to resume control has created factions within the Peacekeepers from the start. Some Scarrens rebel as they see weakness in their leader or just see the chaos of war to escape the Empire and start a life in the UT.

During the 25 cycles between the PKW and the start of game both factions have settled down with now only minor trouble within their territory. The UT has pretty much stayed the same lawless, full of pirates, smugglers, bounty hunters and criminals. The main factions have now started policing the areas outside there own and are bring more order to parts of the UT.

       Sebacean - Peacekeeper                                                                            Scarren - Ruling Class

The Nebari Establishment/Resistance

I was always disappointed that Farscape as a series had to end because they never got to explore the Nebari in more details which would have been some of the 5th series if they had got it. Every time I've started a game I've giving it some kind of Nebari interest and two players played the race but as they games never progressed far we never got to really have the Nebari involved. This game again will have a Nebari influence and one of the players will be a renergade Nebari pirate so I expect the Nebari to feature a lot in the game.

As it is set a while after the PKW I have decided that the Nebari so their opportunity and started to take over parts of the UT and expanded their boards to rival both the Peacekeepers and the Scarrens. 

The Nebari like to mind cleans people that don't fit their ideal, so they will have set up factories to process the inhabitants of planets they have conquered that don't immediately become subservient to the Establishment. 

Also as the Establishment's territory has grown so has the number of Resistant members fighting against the Establishment. As the Establishment conquered different species they just created more terrorist cells on more of their planets. The Establishment is in constant war with the Resistant and this has slowed them enough for the other two main races to regroup and start acting against the Establishment. I don't know exactly yet what the friction will do between the three major powers but the Nebari are deluded enough to think they can win against the other two and claim all the UT as Nebari.

Nebari - Resistance

Other Critters

I am planning like many a Farscape episode has a critter of the game, which might be a monster type creature or it could be a planet with some interesting alien life forms for them to explore and get into trouble with as always is the case with these things.

I am also planning of having a race that is unfortunately in the D20 Farscape book as the system was terrible for Farscape and captured nothing of the series. But it does have some nice planets described and a small monster manual at the back with some interesting Farscape type creatures. One being the Shaeloss, this is a race of translator microbes gone wrong in an experiment to try and advance them. The experiment resulted in giving the microbes full intelligence. The microbes started taking over their host and quickly wanted to make everyone like them. They are like sci-fi zombies with intelligence and an agenda. I loved reading about this race as it brought a lot of ideas to mind with how I could just them as an ongoing bad guy, I saw them as Farscape's answer to the Bog, like Luxan's and Klingon's.

Picture of Ilanic Shaeloss

Next blog I will post the characters we created and how they will fit into this frelled up universe. As my first game is on Saturday I will probably be writing up ideas to start the game off, which will be involving a scientific Shadow Base. Which I will explain in my next blog as I go into how their characters lives are going to tangle into hopefully a rag-tag group of misfits.