Galactic Havoc: Design Goals and Considerations

Galactic Havoc: Design Goals and Considerations

So, let's start thinking! To create a wh40k knockoff, I will have to come up with a clear outline of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. This outline will help me decide on my priorities - what things are important, what things are not even worth thinking about, and so on. I'm not very good with words, but I will try to explain my thought process.

First of all, what the hell am I even doing? I want to create a far future campaign setting focused on soft military sci-fi. Combat and gunplay is something GURPS is excellent at, and I would like to capitalize on that. Military sci-fi is a broad term. It can mean small squads clearing out alien infestation on some space station, it can mean spaceship armadas duking it out in space, and it can mean armies of soldiers marching to the frontlines. Even though it is ambitious, I would like to cover all these aspects of combat - both small scale (like your normal adventuring party) from large scale (using GURPS Mass Combat or something similar); from land combat to space combat. I want both the GMs and players to have options, but regardless of the scale, I have to find a way to make characters important.

Since combat is going to be the core activity, the "default adventure" will be something akin to "go to [place], shoot [bad guys]," but this simple framework can be expanded with various additions and complications to increase variety. You might have a time limit, you might have to prevent civilian casualties, you might need to perform a stealth mission or an escort mission, etc. If the base premise is fun, then it is unlikely to get boring quickly.

The setting must be designed to facilitate combat with a lot of variety. Factions must feel different - both as potential player character options and as adversaries. Each faction should have enough variety, especially if it is intended for player characters - it just won't be any fun if you can only play a generic grunt wielding a generic assault rifle. Even combat iteself should have options - it would be great if a particular situation could be approached differently.

Non-combat options and technologies should also be explored, but in much less detail. While they probably won't be very important for the characters, they will undoubtedly shape the civilization and alter the backdrop. This environmental context will only enhance the variety and make the world feel more real.

I mentioned that this is going to be soft sci-fi, and I do mean soft. Weird science, supernatural powers - all that will be present. I feel that this will increase the variety of options and also make different factions more distinct. After all, if GURPS actually lets us do such games properly, why not take the opportunity to do that?

What can I use as inspiration? This might be a controversial opinion, but I do not get people who are trying hard to make something original just for the sake of being original; I do not see any shame in using something as inspirations, even if something comes off as [well-known thing] with serial numbers filed off. If a concept/trope worked for many years, why fix something that works? I am definitely going to rip things off with no shame. I just have to think of good sources to use. Warhammer 40k itself rips many things off, and I'm going to rip off some of its parts in turn. Let's think some more. Starship Troopers sounds like a good source (but most of its parts already exist in 40k, right?) Lensman (there's even GURPS Lensman for the third edition) could work as well - it's a quintessential military space opera. But do you know what sci-fi video game has an excellent (and surprisingly dark) lore, but it very lame as an actual game? Master of Orion 3 - this is something I'm definitely going to use as a source of inspiration. Star Control 2 also is another space opera example. (I believe that Mass Effect devs took some heavy inspiration from it - have you ever compared the Reapers with the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah?)

As for the actual rules, I do not want to make things very gritty, but I'd like to keep the rules detailed. Detailed combat rules is where all the tiny differences between gear and racial templates will shine. Anyway, I think that this is a decent enough outline so far. Next up, I will have to create at least two major factions. As for the name, the current codename is Galactic Havoc. Maybe later I'll come up with something better and/or less generic sounding.