Tablenotes: Scum And Villainy

Welcome to a new, if irregular, type of content you can expect from me, Tablenotes. Tablenotes are a look of what  is going on at my own personal table as I explore new games and mechanics. If I'm going to create games I want to make an effort to expand my toolbox of experiences and mechanics. Even if I'm doomed to be a forever GM.

All this content will be rougher than you can expect in a book. It won't be as polished or with care both in terms of content and quality. But it might show you the seeds of future projects. I'd love to see what you guys react to. And you're free to pick and choose what you might want to adopt at your own table.

Scum and Villainy  is a Forged In The Dark game set in a loose space fantasy sort of setting that feels a lot like Star Wars with the numbers filed off, though they say it could work for things like Firefly or Outlaw Star. Basically, it's cool heist in space

Most of this homebrew is me taking that framework and building out my own setting. I wanted something not focused on the embrace of a colonialist spirit that drives me off from most sci-fi. To Boldly go!...to someone else home and impose your own values on them while claiming this space as yours. The colonialism happened and a lot of these people are dealing with that hurt in their own way. Or, they're part of that system and need to interrogate that.

It's all very native  I guess.

But I also pushed it to something more cinematic. I tried to make the systems (a little) more forgiving. I tried making sure everything that I gave people had a potential of creating a moment. Just something cool and memorable that could you could picture as the reveal of a page turn in a manga after being pushed into a corner.

This was very important for humans. I really hate human as a default in genre settings? It makes sense why it happens, it gives you a baseline from which you can make things fantastical. But it leads to humans being boring. And humans are not boring. I refuse to put them in a place where they are when there are so many types of humans that have never had a chance to tell their story.

So I focused on what makes humans neat. I said they're resilient, diverse, and have the amazing knack of surviving things that definitely should have killed them. I like the idea of a future where, despite everything those things are on display. People get to celebrate and find strength in their identities, differences, and cultures.