Is The Culture an interesting place to set a game?
On one hand you have lots of interesting intrigue and shit going on through Contact.
On the other you have the average person being basically interchangeably unimportant for anything with no hope of changing that. And Mind's are basically railroading GMs on steroids.
Thoughts Veeky Forums? How do you run a game set in The Culture
bump with some ideas
>Use Eclipse Phase for system
>Players are all Contact agents (and their drones maybe?)
>Give them mess to solve that isn't very important at all to get them into what kind of resources they have available
>Slowly give them more Mind attention and oversight as their tasks get more important, potentially both helping and frustrating their efforts
last bump I guess
You probably won't have much to do within the culture, unless you've got a rogue Culture Mind or a primitivist rebellion. Instead, I think you're better off playing "Benevolent Contact" by sending them into other civilizations, to mess with the locals or bring them into line with what the local Minds want.
Alternately, you could put them into... Special Circumstances. Pick your game world to invade, dictate the Culture's goals or the local problem that's creating the special Circumstances involved... and go.
Could be fun. Could also be terrible.
I feel like I have the potential to play this a lot like a more subterfuge focused Shadowrun or Eclipse Phase. Problem is I don't have much experience with either of those games.
There's plenty of room for blowing shit up, but that should be played off as pretty boring and primitive, since blowing shit up with Culture tech basically means the opposing side has no chance.
I guess I could also do a bit of Rogue Trader, if I play it more like Consider Phlebas. Though there isn't much actual canon content to support that type of game, it would be basically any space opera setting at that point.
I considered trying to run a campaign basically doing the Special Circumstances thing, though in my ideal world, I'd run it with two groups.
The first group would be playing it in a sort of PBeM way, where they're Minds discussing the problem and trying to work out what to do, and they would draw up briefs and objectives for the second group, who would be the various poor sods sent down to do what needs doing, and would be run in the more usual sitting-around-a-table rolling dice style. It could work, I guess, as a one group sort of thing - either the same players taking on both groups, or one group taking on just one role and the other side being handled by GM control.
But I thought it'd be nice to separate the groups, so that you have Minds becoming more exasperated at the antics of the biologicals, and biologicals left rather in the dark about the actual motives of the Minds.
It might be interesting to play a game where you're a group from a minor civilization trying to stop the Culture from reshaping your society. At least at first, other "Involved" civilizations could already be trying to move things in their direction so for them it boils down to picking your poison. Also, putting a party up against Zakalwe in full Culture heavy messing mode would be an interesting exercise, if likely to end in TPK.
It is, but you have to be careful.
No GSVs, keep it small. In fact no Mind at first, and later maybe, but not one that considers the party part of its population.
Limit the scope. With The Culture on the horizon you are immediately in a post scarcity hell. Have you ever played Freemarket? Conventional challenges entirely fail to deliver a game because the players are always in god mode. There's no tension except when the players invite it.
Focus on a limited problem without apparent solution. Give the party great power, but have it clearly defined so they don't feel mismatched and pointless. Show the power of technology, but don't let it dominate like in Star Trek. The solution is never technobabble, instead it serves up new problems and tensions. Use information as a plot device, keeping it secret, trusting others, using others, and being used oneself should be at the core of major plot points.
I imagine a dynamic more like Lady Blackbird than Eclipse Phase. Characters should be complex and surprising, unpredictable. Motivation and belief should interact to derive a previously undefined result, not be reduced to tropes and beaten down the path.
Gravitas?
Very Little Gravitas Indeed
I think it would be a terrible idea.
Your best bet is to 'hint' that they exist - perhaps have contacting them directly be an end-goal? Once they become involved, the 'game' portion of the game would essentially be over.
Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall
It's a boring, poorly-written setting. You'd be better off using an actually good setting.
Zero Gravitas
Looks Like Someone's missing some Gravitas.
The first culture novel is ABOUT a standard PC group murderhoboing...
They weren't Culture, but the setting has lots of room for shenanigans.
40kboo detected!
Your salt is appreciated. Welcome back any time.
I've toyed with the idea of using Dogs In the Vineyard to play SC agents.
I know the game is about Mormon cowboys, but you can use it to play anything as long as the players are powerful authority figures wandering around in a lawless wilderness.
The game mechanics aren't so much based around "Can the PCs do X" as they are "What are the consequences of the PCs doing X" The PCs can overcome most obstacles through escalation but doing so can cause collateral damage.
In the DITV setting, this is supposed to test the characters faith and shit, however the Culture books are full of contact agents (and minds) with lots of regrets.
The PCs could be similar to Zakalwe. Not from The Culture, but recruited by Special Circumstances. Sent to act as their agents in places where they don't want to be seen as directly involved.
I think this is definitely the best bet. The focus shouldn't be on whether the Culture Agents' bullshit technology can let them do something, because it can, but on what the consequences are of unleashing that sort of stuff. From what I remember, the Culture tries to not overtly use its technological advantages when it comes to less-advanced civilizations.
Combine it with but you could totally do that with the same group, if they could separate the characters. So you sometimes play the Minds making decisions based on the information the agents were giving back, and then the agents attempting to follow the Minds' orders.
If you're looking for the Culture tech level, check out the FATE game Mindjammer. It's also got rules for cultural infection for the greater good-- memetic warfare and the like.
Thought the same thing about Mage:The Ascencion.
A Culture agent can do ANYTHING! A knife missile alone can kill everything organic within a kilometer and still not build up enough waste heat to break stealth.
But that is Blatant. It invokes Paradox. It blows the Grift. And it screws up the entire elaborate con you built convincing these worthless primitives that being nice to each other was their own idea.
>"What are the consequences of the PCs doing X"
That is the best way of doing it, and fits in to the general theme of how the Culture works, in my opinion. Pretty much all of the books have that theme in them; you've got all this power at your disposal, but you're looking for a solution that doesn't escalate things too much. Like says, it's similar to Mage the Ascension (and you could borrow something like the Sphere system to handle / limit the amount of crazy technology people do, something about sufficiently advanced technology something something magic), which was one of the best oWoD games for that very reason. The question of whether or not you should do something leads to far more interesting roleplaying game,s rather than ones focused around whether or not your character is mechanically capable of doing a thing.
My heart would still be set for running it with two groups though, not because I wouldn't trust players to keep things separate, but because I think it'd be more enjoyable for both groups if they're considering "what are the consequences of doing X?" at the two very different scales.