New enemies and ideas for future threats

[Soban]

So I think we are heading towards a consensus that we need more enemies that are real threats. We need more Level 3 (factional) and Level 4 (setting) threats. I think there are three aspects to this discussion. First, bringing factions like the NMX and Kuvexians who already exist but are currently not really a threat back up to where they are real threats. Second, creating new enemies who provide interesting options and storylines. Third, 'disaster' events, I'm quite enjoying reading how we are all responding to the Norian's arrival. Not everything our characters need to respond to is some big bad. Perhaps we need more 'space hurricanes' that give us similar opportunities.

Right now, I'm working on two ideas.

The first is a ravenous horde of alien locust called the Swarmtide.

The second is a robotic utopian republic who all believe that biological life is obsolete and needs to be discontinued, with violence if necessary. They aren't trying to kill people, just upload them involenarily into robotic bodies that they believe are 'better'.

What are your ideas? What sorts of enemies would you like to fight? What sort of situations do you think would provide interesting role play opportunities across whole factions and the setting as a whole? The idea of this thread is to gather a lot of ideas and hopefully to help build some of them as well.

 

[raz]

Was going to make a new thread, but this one is already the second or third post-Kuvexian War enemies thread so it seemed fine to bump it. These are just some thoughts rather than any kind of call to action or change.

I miss the feeling of Star Army when there is one war against one enemy.

That’s not to say the roleplay is in a bad place at all. Every GM seems to be doing what they want fairly successfully without being tied down. Kaiyo’s fighting Mishhu, Resurgence is exploring and having adventures, there’s the Kodian Civil War with its shadowy threats, and the 2xf is now off having starfighter combat on a new frontier. And others! So much going on that it’s too much to fit concisely in this paragraph. This is all nice and good.

But for me it feels like something is missing. Yamatai is a Star Empire but it’s not really fighting off things you’d expect to threaten an empire. The freedom for every GM to go off (which is great OOC) has created a situation wherein a lot of action is occurring but it’s mostly for the sake of itself rather than in service of some grander in-character purpose.

Maybe this feeling is simply because I have been around so long and am used to two Mishhu Wars and the Kuvexian War being so cool. Or perhaps the roleplay has outgrown such things and truly relegated the great factions to being setting elements where every “table” (plotship) has their own “campaign” rather than being a place where these space nations are focused in a more realistic way.

As I started this post with, I’m not interested in any big change or the introduction of another meta war anytime soon; I wouldn’t trade the Kaiyo’s current adventure just so the setting is more focused. Nonetheless, I did want to put my thoughts out there instead of holding onto them in silence.

Have fun writing your sci-fi in any case.

 

[Fuzzbucket]

@raz
I can see where you're coming from! It's fun to have a main, large, and inclusive plot that seems like a huge deal! Something where everyone's involved and it's the end of the world! I've been in a plot like that and the high octane rush is insane. I know how much fun it can be, but the biggest thing I'm thinking about is the scale.

Compared to the close and personal quarters of the last place I experienced this, Yamatai is huge. And when I say huge, I mean 10x the setting size as this other place. We're talking Star Wars levels of depth, scale, and development. If anything were to be done like that, where everyone gets involved, we'd have to have our Imperial Army and our Darth Vaders, like you talked about! It can happen, it's there, but it may be unrealistic to have giant wars on a more frequent basis.

However, I do think that drawing out these giant wars and showing different facets of it (political, criminal, military, etc) and emphasizing the implications those parts have on the whole could help solve that "what is Yamatai doing" feeling.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

I've given my take earlier in the thread but will do so again from a different angle as the thread has once again leaned into how it affects yamatai and not everyone else (I know the site's name and where the majority of players are.) and will do so from that lense despite my embargo from ever being able to be one I will pretend I'm allowed to be a yamatai player and give my OPINION on what might be fun from my pov.

Empires do more than just engage in massive fleet-smashing wars twice a decade. As they expand and their population grows they face all kinds of problems from within as well as without. Factions rise and fall and war for political power and leverage. It needn't always be some foreign enemy that shows up to lose in a logistical fight against Yamatai in the seat of their economic and industrial power.

I realize people would caterwaul and moan, but like 90% of yamatais systems simply exist after having served their purpose briefly at some point or another in RP and just exist on the map and nothing more. At this point in any other scenario not controlled by OOC Yamatai would be going the way of rome as admirals and sector leaders decide the direction they think the Empire should go and use the vast political leverage they might have across the absolute bloat that is Yamatais massive government to enact localized change that spurs ideological paradigm shifts in their direction as contagious as such things can be as they build what are amounted to pocket empires within the empire that answer to it only in name.

Perhaps it's time to make use of some of those systems and pull a sisters war where Yamatai can address its internal issues and quell dwelling rebellions that might be popping up as the Empire is still recovering from the last war and the opportunists make their moves. Bring new RP and life to skub articles and unused systems instead of everyone wanting to go and leave the sector to play outside of it because there is nothing left to do because yamatai takes up almost the entire map.

Have neko fight neko, have players develop forces to contest worlds with against each other and shift the landscape of the bloated kikyo sector map, Have a civil war where the Empress still rules but is powerless to intervene in her subjects' affairs as politics bind her from just swatting all her upper echelon and admirals down for their insolence without her people removing her from power, have a conflict where your characters can lose themselves in the passion of thinking that their way is right and try to change the Star Empire or move it in a new direction.

Another massive super war with a black and white they are evil and we are the unquestioningly good style I'll still participate in but there are other major events that can be fun~

 

[Ametheliana]

Kaiyo's been brought up a lot. I would trade what Kaiyo's doing for something that shakes the core of Yamatai. I am 100% down for something that threatens the Empire. Something thematic and awful and awesome that spurs GMs to write epic battles as well as the layered mission profiles that go down in the annals of fun.

The war against the Kuvexians was fun and it led to some really interesting plot developments, but only because we did it for so long and our focus narrowed on it so intensely. It was year's of buildup with some boring missions towards the beginning but big payoff in the end. Doing that again is always my dream as a GM.

Imperial Army and our Darth Vaders

A lot of people have been talking in this thread about how they don't want the next enemy to be anyone's pet project, but when you have a darth vader, a face of evil we're fighting, that means someone has to play that character. Having a handful of "the most evil guys", one in each plot, just doesn't hit the same as the pinnacle of evil.

it may be unrealistic to have giant wars on a more frequent basis.

The end of the Kuvexian war was more than 2 years ago out of character!

 

[Alex Hart]

Not civil war, that's not space opera.

I feel like that's a bit reductive of what Space Opera can be, it's a very broad sub-genre and more often than not does include civil wars and infighting. One of the most famous examples of all time, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, very prominently features a civil war on both sides as a major plot point. However, that's pretty much beside the actual point I wanted to make.

I think that SARP is in a good place right now, with people having freedom to run the kinds of games they want, and a lot of those plots are just starting and I don't think it would be fair to disrupt those plots by throwing a new setting-shaking war at the Kikyo Sector only a couple of years after the last one ended.

I don't personally feel the need to jump into another huge conflict, and if we do decide to do one it'll have to have the appropriate lead-up to it, and every faction's FMs should be involved on the planning side to make sure that everyone has something important to do in the war, their own way to Save The Sector™ their time to shine.

A big war is obviously something we're going to do again, that much isn't in question, but we haven't done any of the requisite prepwork yet to make them more coherent than the Kuvexians, and fun for everyone on the site. Wes has had a few fun ideas (Robots being one of them), and I'm here for it when we're ready to develop them further. But we just haven't made that kind of effort yet.

TL: DR, it'll take time, probably a year or more, before we're ready to launch off into another big war, so why not let people run their non-big-war plots in peace until then?

 

[Ametheliana]

Oh, yeah I edited that out of my post pretty quickly @Alex Hart, sorry. I think Yamataian civil war something Wes said he won't do and... as a major Yamataian GM I'd simply not RP that. I meant more, it's not thematic to SARP. But Nepleslia could do it!

I know the Yamataian GMs have been asking for something bigger to work with and I feel them on it.

 

[Alex Hart]

Ah, must have been before I posted and the page refreshed. If it's not something that Wes wants for his faction, that's that, and I can respect keeping firm to his vision.

 

[Ametheliana]

new post to avoid confusion.

requisite prepwork yet to make them more coherent than the Kuvexians, and fun for everyone on the site

I just don't understand how people didn't either do the prepwork for the Kuvexians beforehand if they wanted to use them or find a way to use them as they were. I did and I sometimes just think alone about what the missing puzzle piece was for other people. Did they need a central darth vader enemy like Fuzzbucket said or did they need more nuance as bad guys beyond capitalist slavers? What was the hangup?

 

[Soban]

I don't know about one central Darth Vader, but I think we do need some sort of 'Hierarchy of Evil' as it were. Villains that we can connect to and dislike. One of the things that I've noticed about the Mishu is that there were a decent number of specific villains. Whereas the Kuvexians never really had that in my experience.

 

[Alex Hart]

I think the primary comparison I've seen is with the Mishhu, and how they had a lot of time given to them to develop a ton of different aspects of them, like lots of discussions on the forum about the nuances of Mishhu "culture" and other minutia that helped to bring verisimilitude to the Mishhu beyond "Evil fascist tentacle crab monsters". The Mishhu inspired a lot of discussion on the forums, and for whatever reason the Kuvexians didn't. It's my personal theory that the Kuvexians didn't have much to latch onto beyond their cartoon villain visage, and by doing some of that work for whatever's next, we can give players that stuff to latch onto and love.

 

[raz]

On the topic of Kuvexians, I think they're a fine baddie to have in the menagerie. Although I'm quite the expert on writing great Mishhu , the Kuvvies are aesthetically much easier to incorporate into RP than the Mishhu are and have enough development (and RP showing them off) to write about as the Mishhu do. I plan on using them sometime soon-ish.

What people might not realize is that the Kuvexians are about no less developed than the Mishhu were after the two Mishhu wars. But the structure of them being a good adversary is there just as much as it was for the Mishhu at the same age. On the RP front, the Third Battle of Nataria and the Battle of Glimmergold are good examples of Kuvexian development. On top of that, the Eucharis had a lot of really good Rixxikor facets as I recall, and the Kaiyo II had some really standout missions against traditional Kuvexian forces that serve as a good definition.

The Interstellar Kingdom's remnants are actually way more diverse and deep than the Mishhu imo. When in doubt whether an NPC enemy has been fleshed out, you just gotta go look for the RP that's out there with a quick forum search.

Beyond commentary on the Kuvexians, I do think we could launch a big site-wide metaplot today and it'd be fine. All of the previous wars have been announced and then ramped up pretty slowly. But let's remember that such hasn't been suggested.

As I started this post with, I’m not interested in any big change or the introduction of another meta war anytime soon

Good talk, though. Glad to have the future of enemies being discussed a bit. Always fun stuff.

 

[Alex Hart]

Good talk, though. Glad to have the future of enemies being discussed a bit. Always fun stuff.

Agreed, it's always good to talk about this kind of stuff, they're important conversations to have.

 

[Ametheliana]

I wonder if it's better to have these talks sooner than the moment of war declaration so that we can have a slow buildup and a complete understanding of what everyone would want in the future? Do we have the ability for most plots to have their peacetime while something that will envelop all of Yamatai is gradually building in one?

Also raz, if it's not obvious, I am certainly here to suggest that slow build!

 

[Soban]

I'm also in favor of the slow build. My idea is that we make possibilities, minor villains that could become major ones if we decided on them. That right now we build several ones and start planting seeds for larger conflicts that we can harvest later.

 

[Kai]

I have, for a very long time, spoken about bringing the fabled Black Claw Star Empire back into being a thing. I've been told that the empire as a whole is probably gone in any meaningful way so as to not be the threat that it was way back in SARP Pre-history of G.I. Joe Nepleslians and the BCSE being hush puppy plushies subjugating them, but, I feel like digging up an old looming threat from history would be super cool. I've heard of GM's using small remnants of things that looked like the Black Claw Star Empire, and I would love to build on that. I think I mentioned last week or so on Discord that for the "Beyond" Metaplot that I've been developing on and off, the primary enemy was going to be some remnant group of the species that ruled the BCSE, that had been cut off during the Empire's drawback ages past, and sort of turned into their own thing, a semi de-centralized space mafia that used blackmail threats to take tax and tribute from leftover colonies, a foe that would be big enough to be dangerous to an exploratory fleet but not necessarily enough to make us turn tail and run. And Just as was suggested, I sort of wanted to have prominent villains, recurring enemies that return to scourge the players as time goes on.

Whether or not people want to contribute to this, or use this as something they could build and pull from, is of course up to them, but I love drawing from SARP's rich history, even if the reality of it was somewhat goofy. oftentimes the best stories come from these kinds of sources, and I'd love to tap into that. I might need to dig into Wes' brain a little bit, and see if he can remember how the BCSE was portrayed, and how we might turn that into a more believable, and ultimately fun, enemy faction for everyone.

 

[Soban]

Not to mention that 'Black Claw Star Empire' is a really badass name for some villains.

 

[raz]

If the wiki is to be believed, our characters essentially live in the space once occupied by the Black Claw Star Empire. The "empire" itself — which is the territories and administrative mechanics that oversee them — was rebuilt by the Uesureyans, while the power held by the Black Claw species was eliminated via revolution. The humans they subjugated became those who occupy the Kikyo Sector today. Sorta feels like if we encountered them again as a factional entity they'd be some pushover remnant whose power couldn't compare to the combined forces of Yamatai, Nepleslia, and Uesureya.

The dog people might even exist around today and are just un-mentioned or exist as genetic leftovers within commonplace mutants, furries, or even humans. There was an Uesureyan genetically engineered dogboy who appeared on the YSS Heartbreaker, too, though whether he is connected to the Black Claw in any way is unknown (can't even find his wiki page anymore).

Not saying Black Claws shouldn't show up or be a bad guy but. Our characters live in their space and their ancestors took all the power/resources the Black Claw once had. A page one post by Wes says we should fight against "peer factions."

 

[Wes]

Nevertheless, we know many of the species in the Kikyo Sector are not natives there; they were brought here or created here. This begs the question: Where did they come from? And are there other Kikyo Sectors, so to speak, out there? Maybe things turned out differently in other colonies or other locations in the Kagami galaxy. If we zoom out at the effectively limitless stars around our familiar sector, the possibilities get substantially more unbound.

 

[Ametheliana]

I'm reading from that: we don't need to narrow our focus on enemies we've had in the past when, if we extend our optics a bit, there are a multitude of things that we do not know which could scare us?

 

[Kai]

I'm also reading into it as 'there could totally be a sector where the Black Claw Star Empire retained control' I think it's sort of a blessing from the Wes for us to find and bring up all these wonderful ideas that we've had.