Hobloglin

So You’ve Been Convicted

You have been convicted of a crime. Worry not! Your felony against the pan-galactic empire of which you are a citizen is not an eternal blot on your person. The empire has graciously moved beyond the barbaric institution of incarceration and has fully embraced Criminal Self-Determination. To that end, the vessel you are on is currently bearing you to one of the empire’s thousands of Criminal Resettlement Planets*, whose atmosphere you will be entering in a matter of minutes. Welcome home!

*The term “Prison Planet” is contrary to the mission of the Resettlement project and an affront to the empire itself. Please refrain from using it.

The Game

This is a setting for use with the Mothership 1e system by Tuesday Knight Games.

You now live on a Criminal Resettlement Planet (CRP), where the only residents are other Resettlers like you. Your first goal is to survive; any goals beyond that will be up to you and your comrades to decide.

This is a setting for use with the Mothership 1e system by Tuesday Knight Games. Create a character by:

  1. Roll a Mothership character. Skip all gear selection. You are wearing only a jumpsuit
  2. Roll or select an Alignment
  3. Prepare for arrival, your final home awaits!
d3 Alignment
1 “I didn’t do it!”
2 “I did it but I won’t do it again!”
3 “I totally did it and, given the chance, I will do it again.”

All play is carried out using Mothership 1e rules. Wherever these are inapplicable, the GM has final say.

Warden Prep

The following are things you will probably want to determine in advance. Everything else can proceed out of gameplay.

  1. Randomly roll where the PCs will be landing and what the geography of the surrounding area is. All CRPs are habitable planets with access to food and water.
  2. Generate two or three factions and populate the surrounding map.
  3. What is the nature of Resettlers’ arrival on the planet? Examples:
    • Automated dropships, to save on labor.
    • Self-destructing ships to keep the locals from using the technology.
    • Ships manned by paroled Resettlers.
    • Teleportation.
    • Parachute capsule.
    • Armed escort.
  4. How long do the PCs have before the locals arrive at the landing site?
  5. What are some encounters they’re likely to have?

To start, you need only generate the small portion of the planet the PCs have landed on. You can expand boundaries as your PCs determine their goals and work toward them. Don’t be afraid to use the other Resettlers that came in with them as foils, foes, or allies — they are excellent fodder as they will be close at hand.

Warden Notes

The nature of the CRP has been left open in order to keep the friction of getting to the table low and to support differing interests of groups. Maybe this is an all-android CRP. Maybe the empire has fallen already. Fit it to your table and your world. Any lore or restrictions contained herein should be seen as excisable tissue.

Typically, the governing body will not maintain a presence on the surface of the planet due to the potential for insurrection and escape. The “walls of the jail” are the miles of distance from the surface to open space.

Because there are literally thousands of CRPs across a multi-galaxy-spanning empire, there is no standard to how the CRPs are run, not to mention what the situation is like on the ground. There are no galaxy-wide prison cartels or resistance movements. Your PCs are effectively isolated.

The adoption of the ethos of Criminal Self-Determination was done in the name of humane treatment, so that criminals have a chance to live out their lives in dignity, but very little is done to ensure that reality meets the ideal in the day-to-day.

Creating A Criminal Resettlement Planet

Your planet will probably eventually need the following:

  1. An administrative body that governs the planet. This could be at the sector-federal level of the empire, farmed out to a local government, or even a corporation. Roll some attributes of the body.
    1. Well-meaning
    2. Cruel
    3. Indifferent
    4. Opportunistic
    5. Idealistic
    6. Begrudgingly compliant
  2. The civilizational past of the planet
    1. Recently occupied; intact buildings.
    2. Older ruins.
    3. Ancient alien ruins.
    4. No history of civilization.
  3. What technology is available, three axes:
    1. High to low technology
    2. Ubiquitous to rare
    3. Sanctioned by the governing body to contraband
  4. Local flora and fauna.
  5. A growing map, with settlements and points of interest.

Generating a faction

There are three informal faction attributes, each on an axis.

  1. Collaborative to oppositional
  2. Working toward escape to resigned to fate
  3. In touch with reality to not

Some archetypes would be:

  • Pacifists
  • Militaries
  • Cults
  • Democracies
  • Communists
  • Anarchists
  • Collaborators
  • Hedonists
  • Revolutionaries

Factions will need:

  1. 1-3 NPC Leaders
  2. A handful of lower-level NPCs
  3. A name
  4. Goals
  5. Size
  6. Rough placement on the attribute axes

Notes

I went and pulled a To Be Resolved and drafted two games in a week. (To be clear, TBR’s feats are quite a bit better thought out and polished than mine. I’ve been impressed and inspired by how he’s managed to go from ranting about bees on Discord to having multiple playtests in the books. 🙇🏻‍♂️🍻!)

My first note was “prison planet RPG!!!!” After that, I started thinking about the transition – how they would get onto the planet with the guards feeling safe (Andor S1 playing somewhere in the back of my head). Then factions, and then the generative aspect of it. I also really like how this side-steps the greed aspect of a traditional adventure party story – this party legitimately needs resources to survive. Unless the party really wants to go for the brass ring of escape, which is going to be a tough . Even if they wanted to settle down and be merchants, the world is too unstable to support quiet civilization for long.

It may be that stronger lore and more decisions made out of the box will be more helpful for others to play and run it, but I’m using the open space as a springboard for myself to generate a world or two for playtest purposes. Maybe it’s more lore-heavy if and when it ever makes its way in front of someone else, but for now I’m writing for me and any potential Resettlers I lure onto my CRP.

Also it needs a name and “CRP” is annoying but there it is.