Fleetlancer

[Warhawk]

Hello everyone.

Freelancer is at heart an RPG, but Discovery, more so than any other mod, brought out the idea that its setting had plenty of room for expansion on the theme. Once upon a time this was called “playing Factionlancer,” and no better example existed than house governments complete with law codes, bureaucracy, economic policy, diplomacy, military operations and the like. Discovery dipped its toes in rendering all of this at once, but as the intention was never to build the mod as if it were EVE, some players were left disappointed that their actions had little to no consequences for what came next.

One of my chief hobbies right now is tabletop game design using Tabletop Simulator. I specialize in wargames and political/economic simulations, having some professional experience in both areas. My designs focus on flow and tone; simply adding more is usually not better. The point is to lower barriers to entry while still leaving some depth to explore.

Let me cut to the chase: I’ve been toying with the idea of a game called Fleetlancer, essentially turning the setting into a grand strategy game with a tactical-level battle system. But the scope of this thing is hard to nail down since much of it depends on the number of people interested and how committed they are. Managed to break it down into four tiers of complexity:

Tier 1 – Just a simple, tabletop space battle system with Freelancer ships. A nice novelty, but not a huge deal. Simple, quick-ish to play, thematic.

Tier 2 – Combining Tier 1 with a persistent campaign-level world, primarily focused on the main factions. This campaign would be very simplistic and not directed by any one person: Players run battles within certain restrictions and then report on the results. The average result then applies to the campaign over time. On occasion there may be a voting system for a faction to do something or not, but at the end of the day there are no real allegiances except what every individual player cares to do. For the most part it’s just flavor while players run battles. You can participate with the intention to slant the campaign result, or not. Doesn’t matter to me. If it ends decisively one way or another, it can be restarted, or I can throw curveballs in to keep it going somehow.

Tier 3 – Combining Tiers 1 and 2 with a much more fleshed out economic and internal political system. This begins to move towards something restricted to a handful of players, since decisions would be too complicated to automate in any satisfactory way. The scope could range from an open-ended world (Civ Freelancer) or a fixed campaign setting (Nomad Wargame). It ceases to involve mass community involvement, though the battle system would still exist to skirmish at will. Since the campaign is no longer centralized, you could pick up your own game with friends and get more out of it than the Tier 2 system.

Tier 4 – The totally unrealistic combination of Tiers 1, 2 and 3 to the point where it encompasses the whole sector, every faction, all economic and internal politics, accommodates independents, and is persistent. At this point it’s a mechanically driven simulation akin to what some people wanted Discovery to be. The obvious cost in time and effort to make this happen, especially as it pertains to player count and consistent involvement, is quite serious. Automation would be implausible, so empty seats would decapitate whole factions at inopportune moments. A trade off of limiting the number of seats/factions to begin with gradually chips away at the vibe until it becomes Tier 3. Personally I think this is utopian and would have to be absolutely convinced to even attempt it.

Unfortunately I don’t have confidence in making a tabletop RPG of Freelancer itself. Other systems exist that fit the bill, I lack experience in designing such things, and at the end of the day you could just fire up a LAN server and pretend there are plot lines. Tier 1 could come in handy as an adjunct for an existing system, though, provided you can line up additional factors like equipment costs and other stats.

If any of this interests you, or brings to mind something similar that could be done or was attempted already, drop me a line or a vote here in this thread. Just testing the waters.