[BE] Introductions/Opening Discussion/Basic Info

edited May 2018 in burning-empires
Welcome everyone to our mad experiment!

We're going to play through a single-phase campaign of Burning Empires, an epic Sci-Fi game about body-snatching aliens invading a remnant planet of a once-great human interstellar empire.

I'd like for us to start world burning on Tuesday the 29th. World Burning controls what lifepaths are native vs. non-native to the setting so you might want to look over both lifepaths and the world-burning chapters, just to get a feel and notice what you think is interesting. BE feels a lot like Dune and little like Warhammer 40k if you're familiar with that. There is a good chunk of Medieval-in-space vibe.

For pace we're looking for 5-7 posts per week. I can accommodate faster/slower a bit. Weekends if you want, but I know that's family time for several people. There is the hangout backchannel for communication and I have contact information for everyone. Good PBP needs communication. if you're going to be out of town or unavailable, let us know. If this ends up not being for you, please let us know

This is a mechanically dense game, though not as strictly structured as it first appears, and I'm sure we'll be working out some adaptations as we go.

Most of us know each other at least a little, but let's introduce ourselves.

I'm Trevis, and I'll be the GM for the game. I've taken a crack at BE before in a live setting and gotten a bit of interesting play out of it. It's always been an intriguing game to me. I've also played Burning Wheel and for the past several years have played in a bunch of PBTA games in play by post with a great crew of players (many of which are here.)

I'm a survey technician and art/art history teacher and have a son in middle school. I'm at GMT -5 since it's daylight savings in the US. I'm a Sci-Fi fan generally, and have recently read Asimov's Foundation (never read it before.) Which maybe is what prompted me to look at BE again, probably because of the broad scope.

If you need a link to rules, let me know. Any questions or other details we'll work out. Whatever questions you think of, just ask them here. I'm looking forward to seeing what we come up with!

Comments

  • Probably one of the earliest things we should come up with is whether you want to play the Humans being invaded or the Vaylen invaders! Humans is the default, but both are supported. The Infiltration Phase (First phase, if that's the phase we pick later) might be more interesting as the Vaylen.
  • I'm down for humans. Also GMT -5.
  • Hi, I'm Wilhelm/Wilper.

    Thanks for letting me join this game in spite of the time-zone hurdles.

    By day I'm a team leader in healthcare IT. By night I play and design tabletop RPGs and edit a small RPG fanzine called Hydra.

    I have played BE twice before, both times as PbP. Both games died shortly after the prep. But it is such a neat game that I'm willing to take the risk (and the failure wasn't on me those times).

    If it comes to a vote I'd be on the PCs-as-humans side. To me a large part of the setting is the whole infiltration/paranoia bit, and if we go PCs-as-vaylen we'd miss out on that.

    I should have my core rule book somewhere, though I can't spot it right now. But I'll have the whole weekend to look for it. It will sort itself out for sure.
  • Hey there! I'm Mike Flynn.

    For the past two years, I've been recovering from twenty years of middle management. Now, I'm a stay-at-home-dad and a writer. With the writing, I'm steering wildly between a novel and short stories--literary and speculative fiction mostly but I'm adding some memoir when I need to crank the pain up a notch.

    I've played BE once IRL. The game went all the way through to a satisfying conclusion. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can make happen with PbP.

    I'd rather play humans. I think the conflict is baked in better that way.

  • edited May 2018
    Hi. I'm John Lammers.
    By day, I work in the software industry in the healthcare space, desperately trying to remind people that I'm still technical despite being in management for years. Nights and weekends, I'm the developer of a virtual tabletop called "EpicTable", and I'm shopping my first novel while working on a second. I have two kids, 7 and 10--ages, not names. ;)

    I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi and have been gaming for decades. I've played face-to-face, virtually, and via PbP. For me, PbP has had the highest "awesomeness density". But maybe that's a function of who I've played with--several of you!

    I've never played BE, but I've been circling it for years and am looking forward to this.

    I too would rather play the human side (note that I didn't actually say "play a human"). I agree with what others have said about the paranoia aspect, and the human worlds seem far more developed and thus a better first game.

    Oh yeah--I'm Eastern U.S., so right now that's UTC-4, but I'm also usually up very late, so I have fairly broad timezone compatibility.
  • Whoops, I'm Mischa. Day job is the sysadmin for a tuition-free high school arts conservatory. Night job is papa duty for currently 8 and 5 year old boys. I don't game face-to-face as much as I want to, but I'm slowly scratching that itch online and with irregular game days with friends.
  • Heyo, I'm Adam Robichaud — I run these cyberous digs. By day, I'm a software developer in the Astronomy market. By night, I'm the king of all turkeys — by which I mean my 2-year-old son, and a stinky beagle. I hail from the communist lands of Ottawa, ON, Canada, and have been known to write the occasional food-related game.

    I have never played any games that have purportedly been on fire — though many of the games I've played in have been pretty hot. I'm keen on humans, so I guess we could play on that side.

    N.B — please forgive the css mess going on with the site. I'm fighting update fires. They should stabilize soon, hopefully.
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