Star Frontiersman #12 article on Sathar ...

Mycanid's picture
Mycanid
November 8, 2009 - 1:02am
Here is a direct link to the .pdf article: http://starfrontiersman.com/files/SFMan12.pdf

It has an article therein on the sathar.

I was wondering what you all thought thereof, and how much of the information we brainstormed in this forum either had to do with it or could benefit therefrom? :)
@}-,-`- "It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one’s own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between."

– Yoshida Kenko (1283-1350), [i]Tsurezure-Gusa (1340)
Comments:

jedion357's picture
jedion357
November 8, 2009 - 6:52am
Which one? there are 2: "The Sathar Briefing Report" by jedion357 and "The Motivation of the Sathar" by Chris Putnum

Personally I'm a fan of the first; its absolutely first rate and probably worthy of a Pulitzer.Foot in mouth


I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

jedion357's picture
jedion357
November 8, 2009 - 7:45am
mycanid wrote:
I was wondering what you all thought thereof, and how much of the information we brainstormed in this forum either had to do with it or could benefit therefrom?


Seriously to answer your question. On the first article I approached it as a college research project and combed through the modules and rules and published articles for info on the sathar. I did not consider anything from the forums but chose to go with the "official" documentation and write an article that would be baseline and usable by all.

The approach was "all right even though the modules and rules were probably not written with a coherent plan for the sathar and the details contained in them most likely represent what individual writers needed from the sathar at the time wrote their material- lets see if we can identify a pattern or master plan."

I decided to write the article as a bit of "fluff" or as an actual document from the Frontier just to be more readable and keep the reader's interest since most of the information covered is known to us all.

Nothing there is really new but it seems fresher for having been organized. I also added an addendum of adventure ideas to the article- just stuff that occured to me during the writing.

The 2nd article is a different approach to the same issue. and argues different sides of the sathar use of proxies.

the author goes beyond what I was attempting in that he redefined the events of SFAD-2 to have greater importance than the module implied. Personally I find his ideas intriguing.

If Volturnus was to be a staging area for invasion of the Frontier or Rim (its well placed for both) and if the expected conclusion of the module actually happened then what have the sathar been doing since?
did they give up on invasion or have they been building another staging area? If so where?
With their plans thwarted we could expect a period of time where they use the proxies strategy followed by the kick off of the next Sathar War.

what I would expect from the sathar is they would build a 5th column within Frontier society and have a number of plots well place to disrupt and ham string the Frontier's military effort. and they would plan to use proxies to maximum effect right at the start of the shooting.

That in turn suggest adventure/campaign ideas: A star law campaign involving a number of one shot but linked adventures/ investigations. uncovering a number of plots leading to a massive plot that strikes at the very core of the Frontier's government. If I planned it as a PBP game then there would be the possibility for the PCs to fail and that failure would lead to trickier complications in the next episode.
You would want to have a sense of building tension and the stakes would need to get higher and higher. till the out break of hostilities.

The campaign doesn't even have to end with the out break of war and adventure could continue with the star law agents having to negotiate battle fields in pursuit of their objectives. At least one of these adventures would be penetrating the sathar blockade of a planet and infiltrating the resistence to run down a proxie.

For this "star Law" adventure I would recommend doing each PC as a representative of a different organization to eliminate any one person being in charge in a chain of command.
1 is a star law agent; 1 is a Space fleet intellegence officer; 1 is a Royal Mounted Constable (special investigations division); 1 is an egg head scientist from the University of Zebulon on loan to Star Law
1 could be a Rim representative of an orgainzation similar to the above mentioned. plus any number could be corporate officers lent to the effort.

With everyone having different parent organizations that have different agendas then each player could be given a differing set of goals and rewarded based on those goals (sort of like in the Paranoia rpg but since its PBP you wont waste time with the GM and PC stepping aside to discuss stuff the other players aren't suppose to hear you just use email. What would be required in that sort of game would be an epilogue for each adventure that at least alludes to any manuevering done by a player behind the scenes. There would be no summary executions of other players like in paranoia but there would be a certain element of PvP to the game despite being forced to cooporate. (sounds like a truck load of work for the GM-God help the fool who volunteers to run that).

I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!