Sandbox Between Stoplights 5: 75% Teeth and Session Zero

Sandbox Between Stoplights 5: 75% Teeth and Session Zero

Hello, I'm Josh. In the last episode, I talked about the cork board technique I use to keep myself focused. I decided that the government of my universe works kind of like a sci-fi UN. I assigned a few traits to the aliens, and decided that they’re not individuals but  are more like a hurricane or swarm of locusts. Lastly, I figured that they were some sort of ancient “trip wire” left over from a long dead alien race.

Today, I’m going to start on the physiology of the aliens. Not only will there be billions of them, but I want each one to be monstrous and deadly.

For clarity's sake moving forward,I'm going to stop calling them “aliens” and start calling them Shrike, though I actually intend to let the players name them in the game. The other species I mentioned before, the one that *made* the Shrike, I’m going to start calling "Shapers.”

On my cork board, I compiled the Shrike from a mixture of an Arachnid from Starship Troopers, a Xenomoprh from Alien, and several other sources.

The xenomorph and arachnid are close-up, animalistic killers, that are approximately 75% teeth and sharp bits. I like that idea, there’s something more visceral about fighting an enemy that can carve you to pieces with minimal effort. It also fits with the Shrike being a force of nature, because ranged weapons generally imply a highly intelligent society, which is not at all what I want for them.

Every piece of a well constructed world should tie into at least one other part. It makes everything more coherent and easier to remember. Tying their weapons to their nature is an example of this.

The Shrike, *themselves,* were designed by a highly intelligent society, the Shapers. I don’t want this story to deal with the Shapers in any real way, so I’m going to hand wave them off the stage. Obviously, their role in the narrative is important since they designed the Shrike, but if they're a million years extinct by Session 0 they won’t matter in the campaign.

Now I just have to figure out why the Shapers *made* the Shrike. If I start from a perspective that they were designed to be a weapon of terror to control the Shaper's subjects rather than a weapon of war to conquer them, it explains a *lot* of seemingly irrational behavior. I can use that to build tension and add mystery to the Shrike. It also lets me make them particularly cruel. Cruelty is an excellent way to engender the hatred I want the players to feel towards these monsters. Hatred is an intense feeling, but if you can’t do anything about it, it’s extremely disempowering. Casual cruelty is a major reason why Delores Umbridge from Harry Potter regularly makes the into the top 5 greatest villains. Umbridge was cruel to Harry, Harry was powerless to protect himself, and we (the audience) felt impotent rage.

All this leaves me with a mental image of a creature that is somewhere around 3 meters tall, made of an intensely strong exoskeleton, possessing at least 6 legs, with biological hydraulics like some insects. It’s covered in sharp surfaces, claws, and teeth. Every Shrike can move impossibly fast, take massive amounts of abuse before dying, survive in vacuum or high pressure, and have virtually no need to eat or rest. This is a killing machine with no soft spots and that’s the point. There won’t be any computer virus, thermal exhaust port, or miracle to save humanity from the Shrike, and I’m reflecting that even in their physiology.

The characters may never learn about the Shapers, because that knowledge has definitely been lost to time. But, it’s still important that I have it in the back of my head, because at some point during the campaign, I‘m going to tell the *players*. I’m going to do this for the same reason an author gives their readers information their characters will never posses: it makes a better story.

Another part of making a better story is building ties to the universe as soon as possible. Session zero, if you can manage it. If that's is a concept you’re not very familiar with, I’ll have a link in the show notes that explains it.

My session zero will be a little different than one you might have with a regular gaming group because, as I mentioned in a previous episode, I’m going to be soliciting players for this specific campaign.

They will already have a decent sense of what they signed up for by that first meeting which will save me a bit of time. I’m going to use this saved time to make sure we have some gameplay after our Session 0 talk and character creation. It won’t be standard gameplay, instead I’m going to have the players make their home colony, but it’ll be a lot more than more narrative than just filling out another character sheet.

Mostly because I like the name, I picked Ariel, a moon of Uranus, as the location for the colony. I jumped online, found a great city map someone else shared, and got to work. Somewhat arbitrarily, I decided the colony has a population about as big as New York City. To help show that, I decided on a system of  “primary” and “secondary” locations. The primaries are things that I think would be critical to the social or practical infrastructure of the colony, like power, food, businesses, or schools. Each primary location will have a short description, an NPC, and a question.

Each NPC will have blanks for the players to fill in, kind of like a MadLib. For example, I might give the NPC a name, but leave their pronoun up to the player to decide. I might fill out their hobby, but not their motivation. Regardless, most of the blanks will be for the player, and all NPCs will have the same categories: Name, Pronoun, Hobby, Like, Dislike, and Motivation. Lastly, is the question. All of them should flesh out something about the colony or it’s history, for example “What is the most popular flavor of Nutrient Meal on Ariel?”

Once finished filling out a primary location, the player can select a secondary. Each secondary would add more “flavor” to Ariel, and maybe some practical bonuses as well. It might be a large weapon manufacturer giving them access to powerful gear or it could be a luxury resort where the party can meet the rich and famous.

I brainstormed all of this while I was driving, filing away different ideas for locations and how I might describe them. It took a couple of iterations over a few weeks to get it right, but I ultimately came up 14 primary and 24 secondary locations. The players would have to pick and choose the secondaries, and not be able to have all of them. This is by design, since loss, choice, and cost, will all be recurring elements. I believe this is a good way to begin exposing the players to that in, what I hope, will be an *intriguing* way.

I’ll include a few example pictures of what I ultimately came up with in the show notes.

And that’s where I’m going to leave it for today. I have a clear picture of the Shrike's behavior and physical appearance. I know why they do what they do, and even a little bit about how they do it. There’s more to say about this session zero topic, so I’ll wrap that up next time. I’ll also talk about how I’m going to use non-player characters to help me manage the dynamics of a group of strangers, playing together for the first time, in a universe none of them know.

Thank you so much for listening, and good luck this week.