Encyclopaedia Galactica

 It's been almost a year since my Game switched its focus to the galaxy beyond our planet. A year of really hard work.

As I explained some time ago, when I began the Game in 1987 I initially wanted a science fiction setting, but soon realised that setting it on Earth in, well, 1987, made my job so much easier: 

This gave me a huge advantage over running a pure science-fiction game. I didn't need to invent all the little trivial details such as how people cooked their dinner in this world, and the players didn't need to ask me. And of course that's exactly why I decided to time travel back to 1987 instead of setting the whole thing in the future.

Well, now we're in outer space, adventuring around a galactic empire spanning multiple worlds, species, and technologies.

Half the hard work comes in preparation. I need to create a constant stream of new planets to visit. Not quite one a week, but not far off. No planet needs to be as detailed as Earth is. I don't need complete maps and detailed histories, because the players will only interact with a small part of it before moving on. I need about as much detail as, say, a Star Trek planet has. Physical characteristics, population, technology, politics, a history outline, key personalities ... actually, it's a lot of detail, some of which I need to share with my players, some of which I can, or even must, keep to myself.

The rest of the hard work comes in the Game itself, where I have to constantly answer questions about the environment on the fly, and naturally I haven't thought through every minute detail. It's just not possible.

There are short cuts, of course. I can always fall back on my standard approach of stealing stuff, then making sure the players can figure out where I've stolen it from and can fill in the details themselves. If I rip off Forbidden Planet, for example (and yes, I have), then I don't need to explain too much about monsters from the id because the players all know what they are.

But it's still pretty much a full-time job, that I'm barely keeping on top of.

Now excuse me, I have to go and plot an interplanetary war (two very different planets, politics, spaceships, weapon technology, orbital mechanics, and I'm sure I've forgotten something ...).

I've put a small part of my documentation on the web site, organised into the Encyclopaedia Galactica. I'll try to continue to expand it over the next few weeks. But, honestly, typing up my notes and making them pretty isn't my top priority at the moment.