GC: How will Soldak’s brilliant dynamism come into play in Drox Operative?
SP: The dynamic galaxy works similar to how it does in Din’s Curse where all of the interactions between the environment, monsters, races, and the players actually matter. Actions and inactions from all of these sources have real consequences, sometimes good and sometimes bad. These consequences can in turn cause more problems and so forth. That’s not very specific, so let’s walk through an example.
A ship named Nighthawk has been causing problems in the Regor star system. Since no one has been able to destroy it, Nighthawk has enough time to launch a strange Giant Pod at the planet Corvi, inhabited by the Hive. The Hive, their allies, and the players all fail to destroy the Giant Pod before it impacts the planet. After the impact, everyone finds out that the pod contained Mutant Ants that are huge, eat just about anything, and are immune to all known pesticides. The Mutant Ants seem to be unstoppable and destroy huge portions of Corvi’s crops. They even manage to stow aboard a freighter and spread to another local planet, Pallas, inhabited by the Lithosoid. Over time all of the population of Corvi starves to death because there are no crops to feed anyone with any more. Will the Lithosoid on Pallas fall to the same fate or will someone finally do something about the Mutant Ants?
The cool part about this example is that none of this is set in stone; all of it is completely dynamic. The players, the afflicted race, allies, and even enemies have many opportunities to stop the chain of events. More importantly, each time the events will be different. Next time, Nighthawk might launch an Invasion or build a Cosmic EMP Device instead of launching a Giant Pod. Or maybe the Giant Pod contained Stalkers instead of Mutant Ants. Or maybe next time they will be really nasty Mutant Ants that spread to every Hive planet and destroy their entire race. Or maybe next time a Lithosoid fleet happens to fly through the area and destroys the Giant Pod before it impacts Corvi. Or maybe the player will listen to planets when they beg for help the next time.
