Vanguard: Space Adventure!

[Matt Wilson]

I've been wanting to make a space adventure game for like eleventy-two years now. Primetime Adventures was actually a space adventure game at first. I started on it because I was sad about Firefly being canceled.

And here's AW, all Firefly-like in its own right. So I think it's a good thing to hack into what I'm after.

The big picture is something like AW's moves mashed with STWT's questy adventure. I don't think it's literally "get XP for killin' monsters," but some part of the reward ought to be tied to helping the community. There's trouble a brewin' and you gotta get out there and be adventuresque.

More to come, but first I have to clean the kitchen.

[Jeff Russell]

This sounds really cool! Do you foresee the ship being the community, or the player characters hopping in ships and flying around to protect the community from outside threats?

As neat as the dice mechanics are in STWT, my favorite part is definitely the community and character creation, so I'm really interested to see what you get when you add that to AW and to space.

[Matt Wilson]

Hi Jeff, thanks for asking.

It's Sunday morning, which is my me-time, so lemme tell you more.

You’re the last of the human race. Long ago, the terrible Scourge laid waste to thousands of worlds, leaving only rubble and ruin in its wake. Your world was spared.

Your only explanation — for all records of that time have been lost — is that the Prophet Isabel led your ancestors to safety, far from the reach of the Scourge. But they repaid her kindness by fighting among themselves, and they fell into a terrible dark age, fighting for centuries.

Out in the galaxy you have found no trace of other humans. Only tribes of aliens, many of them hostile to humankind, many who look upon your world as a prize to be taken.

You and your shipmates are part of a special agency code named Vanguard. Tasked with strengthening the Planetary Commonwealth, you must find allies among the alien tribes, weaken those who would be our enemies, and uncover any evidence that the legendary Scourge is still a threat to the human race.

So the short answer is that your world is the community.  Part of the game will require some meaningful "down time" back home so you can establish some connection with the stuff you're fighting for.

[Jeff Russell]

That sounds very cool, and I look forward to seeing where you take it. I get a bit of a John Scalzi vibe from the Vanguard, which is a good thing in my book.