Game News Colony Ship RPG Update #8: The Jackson Riflemen

[Infinitron]

Tags: Colony Ship RPG; Iron Tower Studios; Vault Dweller

After taking a couple of months off, presumably to finish up Dungeon Rats, Vault Dweller has a new Colony Ship RPG development update for us. The topic of the update is ostensibly the colony ship's shuttle bay, but it practice it's really about the faction that dwells there, a group of space rednecks who call themselves the Jackson Riflemen. Although it does have some nice concept art of the place:

Like many locations overflowing with toxic masculinity it’s guarded by unfriendly men with guns and low social awareness – a militia outfit known as Jackson Riflemen.

The Riflemen have a ‘complex’ belief system that prevented them from allying with any major faction. They want to be free, so they are in agreement with the Brotherhood on many issues. At the same time, they value tradition, which is what the Protectors are selling. Last but not the least, they loosely follow the word of Jesus Christ - “read the Bible as interpreted by experts”, which makes them open to the sermons of the Church of the Elect.

So the best way to explore this location is via “diplomacy” by securing an alliance with one of the factions which might be trickier than you think as the Riflemen aren’t really a team player eager to take orders from the city slickers. If anything they are a force of chaos waiting for the right opportunity to be unleashed.

The second best way is by taking advantage of the new stealth system and sneaking in (just don’t get caught as the Riflemen are a firm believer in capital punishment). The third best way, meaning the absolute worst way, is to attack this well-defended location head-on, but hey, it wouldn’t be a role-playing game if we didn’t let you do something stupid to learn a valuable lesson or two.

One of the endgame scenarios is an all-out war and the Riflemen are a good ally to have. They make (and trade) high-quality guns and even have a couple of riot freedom droids they managed to fix.
​

Short, but possibly controversial.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Like many locations overflowing with toxic masculinity it’s guarded by unfriendly men with guns and low social awareness

Fairly transparent jab at the Codex. Will not buy.

 

[retamar]

Loving the concept art, Is this a 3D model painted over?

 

[an Administrator]

Do they have a wall around their base?

 

[Severian Silk]

No, they're on good terms with the Space Mexicans.

 

[Sacred82]

 

[duanth123]

Like many locations overflowing with toxic masculinity it’s guarded by unfriendly men with guns and low social awareness – a militia outfit known as Jackson Riflemen.

loosely follow the word of Jesus Christ - “read the Bible as interpreted by experts”,

firm believer in capital punishment.

city slickers.

city slickers.

city slickers.

This is seriously some Fallout 3/4 tier nonsensical. Like, 'spare time to advocate for the emancipation of synths' caliber dissonance.

I hope I'm wrong, in that the overall setting eventually lends some verisimilitude to your space rednecks.

Living in an impossibly advanced space ship.

Hundreds of years in the future.

 

[AbounI]

it wouldn’t be a role-playing game if we didn’t let you do something stupid to learn a valuable lesson or two.

Why am I thinking of His Imperial Miltiades?

 

[oldmanpaco]

WTF does low social awareness mean? No trannies in the woman's RR?

So they made a bunch of bible thumping, gun toting, isolationists who hate the gays (or something) and look to be all white in the concept art. Good times incoming.

 

[Daedalos]

I can honestly say, this game is starting to be my most anticipated cRPG, even if it's still years away from release!

Anything sci-fi is like cRPG christmas for me.

to you, VD

 

[Stainless Veteran]

 

[HoboForEternity]

can ou just go all murderous and gunz blazing into their base?

 

[Vault Dweller]

I hope I'm wrong, in that the overall setting eventually lends some verisimilitude to your space rednecks.

Living in an impossibly advanced space ship.

Hundreds of years in the future.

Is this the first update you've read?

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,7104.0.html
^ update #1

The Setting

Before we start looking at quests and characters, we have to define the setting, both the relevant past that defines the present and the present where the game takes place. Any Colony Ship setting starts with 3 key questions:

• Who launched the ship?
• What was the social system/order?
• What caused that system’s collapse?

Answer these questions and you’ll have a detailed and logical setting. Here’s our take on it:

The Founding Fathers:

Who’d launch and most importantly pay for an undertaking that costs so much yet delivers so little? Even if Earth were overpopulated, launching a ship to Alpha Centauri – a flight that would take hundreds of years if you’re lucky enough to have mystical elven Engines of Speed X10 (thousands of years if you don’t) – solves zero problems and thus gets zero cash.

Thus, it would have to be a private enterprise with a pinch of religious zealotry. Would a neo-Christian American foundation pay to establish a 100% Christian God-fearing colony on Alpha Centauri in the distant future? They conquered the New World once and by God’s grace they can do it again - even if it takes a thousand years to get there! Yee-Haw, gentlemen!

The First Generation:

The first generations are zealots who believe in the Mission. No sacrifice is too great, no suffering is too unbearable. They will never see Earth again; they will never see Alpha Centauri either. Their children, grandchildren, and so on are doomed to live and die on the ship in the name of the Mission. They will never see the sunlight, never swim in a sea, never sit under a tree, all because they had the misfortune of being born on the ship, chained to a fate they didn’t choose or want. ...

So they made a bunch of bible thumping, gun toting, isolationists who hate the gays (or something) mutants and look to be all white in the concept art. Good times incoming.

Fixed.

can ou just go all murderous and gunz blazing into their base?

You can try but maybe 5% of players would be able to pull it off. Kinda like clearing the mountain pass all by yourself in AoD only much harder because you won't be able to dodge bullets.

 

[oldmanpaco]

So they made a bunch of bible thumping, gun toting, isolationists who hate the gays (or something) mutants and look to be all white in the concept art. Good times incoming.

Fixed.

Come on now, I don't think you should be going around calling homosexuals mutants.

 

[Morkar Left]

Though, it's Fallout in a big spaceship? Hey, why not. Sounds interesting!

 

[duanth123]

I hope I'm wrong, in that the overall setting eventually lends some verisimilitude to your space rednecks.

Living in an impossibly advanced space ship.

Hundreds of years in the future.

Is this the first update you've read?

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,7104.0.html
^ update #1

The Setting

Before we start looking at quests and characters, we have to define the setting, both the relevant past that defines the present and the present where the game takes place. Any Colony Ship setting starts with 3 key questions:

• Who launched the ship?
• What was the social system/order?
• What caused that system’s collapse?

Answer these questions and you’ll have a detailed and logical setting. Here’s our take on it:

The Founding Fathers:

Who’d launch and most importantly pay for an undertaking that costs so much yet delivers so little? Even if Earth were overpopulated, launching a ship to Alpha Centauri – a flight that would take hundreds of years if you’re lucky enough to have mystical elven Engines of Speed X10 (thousands of years if you don’t) – solves zero problems and thus gets zero cash.

Thus, it would have to be a private enterprise with a pinch of religious zealotry. Would a neo-Christian American foundation pay to establish a 100% Christian God-fearing colony on Alpha Centauri in the distant future? They conquered the New World once and by God’s grace they can do it again - even if it takes a thousand years to get there! Yee-Haw, gentlemen!

The First Generation:

The first generations are zealots who believe in the Mission. No sacrifice is too great, no suffering is too unbearable. They will never see Earth again; they will never see Alpha Centauri either. Their children, grandchildren, and so on are doomed to live and die on the ship in the name of the Mission. They will never see the sunlight, never swim in a sea, never sit under a tree, all because they had the misfortune of being born on the ship, chained to a fate they didn’t choose or want. ...

I actually read every single one of your updates before I first posted, to be absolutely sure it made no sense. It still doesn't.

It beggars belief that a 3rd or 4th or even 2nd generation of actual rednecks (putting aside the dubious conceit that such people would willing board a spaceship, for life, as opposed to the cultist or yuppie megachurch archetype), which is what you described in the update, would act like carbon copies of their ancestors decades/hundreds of years into the mission, despite living and dying in a spaceship with none of the trappings that actually define/mould such a persons identity, unless they were in fact somehow exact clones.

It's as bizarre as everything in Fallout 3 working as if the bombs just fell, rather than it actually being 200+ years into the future.

The only thing the Christianity hook explains is their appreciation of the bible.

 

[Sacred82]

lol @ thinking a few centuries from now no one will adhere to scriptures anymore

 

[Aenra]

So they made a bunch of bible thumping, gun toting, isolationists who hate the gays (or something) and look to be all white

Reminds me of some people! :D:D:D
(that i am unaffiliated with of course.. no connection, a conjecture based on hearsay and unfounded rumors)

Some of course would take the quote as derogative, but that's alright. I will take my bible thumping southerners over their spics and half niggers any damn day of the week. Hypothetically speaking always.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I actually read every single one of your updates before I first posted, to be absolutely sure it made no sense. It still doesn't.

It beggars belief that a 3rd or 4th or even 2nd generation of actual rednecks (putting aside the dubious conceit that such people would willing board a spaceship, for life, as opposed to the cultist or yuppie megachurch archetype), which is what you described in the update, would act like carbon copies of their ancestors decades/hundreds of years into the mission, despite living and dying in a spaceship with none of the trappings that actually define/mould such a persons identity, unless they were in fact somehow exact clones.

It's as bizarre as everything in Fallout 3 working as if the bombs just fell, rather than it actually being 200+ years into the future.

The only thing the Christianity hook explains is their appreciation of the bible.

1) There is a huge YUGE difference between "things are still working in Fallout 3" and "human nature is still the same!"

I was reading a book on the Punic War (Rome vs Carthage): so there was a neutral city-state; half the city leaders were leaning toward Rome, the other half were pro-Carthage. Rome "helped" their supporters to organized a revolt and hang the influential pro-Carthage citizens for treason. So Hannibal and his army show up to sort it out, but the Roman envoys stop him and say "whoa, bro, you're about to interfere into the internal affairs of this here totally independent city-state. not cool!" Hannibal says "it was an independent state until you arseholes cooked this fucking uprising, so get the fuck out of my face". The Roman envoys leave and where do they go? To Carthage. To complain about Hannibal's destabilizing actions and pour buckets of money into the pockets of the city leaders who liked money more than they liked Hannibal.

The methods, the reasons, even the arguments, those stated for the plebs and those offered in private, didn't change at all and can be easily applied to today's conflicts. Why? Because while tech changes, people don't. The human nature didn't change much since we discovered fire and I suspect it wouldn't change much in the future. Why would it?

2) Space Rednecks!

I didn't call them rednecks. I described them as a group of people favoring tradition, which often covers religion, wanting to be free (of other people's bullshit), and being able to defend their freedom. It's a very vague definition. They wouldn't fit the Fallout world but they'd fit a ship because freedom was the one thing the poor bastards never had. So it's hardly surprising that there would be a group of men willing to defend their newly found freedom with newly manufactured guns. It doesn't make them carbon copies of the southern rednecks. Much like the Nazi didn't invent the concept of racial superiority, the rednecks didn't invent the freedom+tradition+guns combo. They are merely the most colorful representatives of this movement.

 

[duanth123]

1) There is a huge YUGE difference between "things are still working in Fallout 3" and "human nature is still the same!"

I was reading a book on the Punic War (Rome vs Carthage): so there was a neutral city-state; half the city leaders were leaning toward Rome, the other half were pro-Carthage. Rome "helped" their supporters to organized a revolt and hang the influential pro-Carthage citizens for treason. So Hannibal and his army show up to sort it out, but the Roman envoys stop him and say "whoa, bro, you're about to interfere into the internal affairs of this here totally independent city-state. not cool!" Hannibal says "it was an independent state until you arseholes cooked this fucking uprising, so get the fuck out of my face". The Roman envoys leave and where do they go? To Carthage. To complain about Hannibal's destabilizing actions and pour buckets of money into the pockets of the city leaders who liked money more than they liked Hannibal.

The methods, the reasons, even the arguments, those stated for the plebs and those offered in private, didn't change at all and can be easily applied to today's conflicts. Why? Because while tech changes, people don't. The human nature didn't change much since we discovered fire and I suspect it wouldn't change much in the future. Why would it?

Maybe that's your vice, VD. You've already assumed the answer to one of the central, and most interesting, questions posed by your setting. Would human nature change dramatically without the one constant across all time: the Earth?

2) Space Rednecks!

I didn't call them rednecks. I described them as a group of people favoring tradition, which often covers religion, wanting to be free (of other people's bullshit), and being able to defend their freedom. It's a very vague definition. They wouldn't fit the Fallout world but they'd fit a ship because freedom was the one thing the poor bastards never had. So it's hardly surprising that there would be a group of men willing to defend their newly found freedom with newly manufactured guns. It doesn't make them carbon copies of the southern rednecks

There is a difference between basic human nature and a specific cultural identity. You described a faction that seemed defined more by the latter, to extent "Jackson" "city slickers" and "rifles" weren't descriptors drawn out a hat. But maybe it won't in practice.

It just seems that for all the promise of your setting, you might be settling for "Fallout in space"

 

[Sacred82]

Maybe that's your vice, VD. You've already assumed the answer to one of the central, and most interesting, questions posed by your setting. Would human nature change dramatically without the one constant across all time: the Earth?

This would depend on the time spent in a new environment so people could adapt to it. Maybe the time spent aboard the colony ship wasn't sufficiently long, or maybe they regressed to this state again after being let down, literally, by advanced technology.
And this is only about the "gunslinging freedom fighters" part. The other part would still be viable even aboard the functioning spaceship as the religious impulse seems not to die out among modern humans exposed to technology either.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Maybe that's your vice, VD. You've already assumed the answer to one of the central, and most interesting, questions posed by your setting. Would human nature change dramatically without the one constant across all time: the Earth?

What does the Earth have to do with anything? Take one of our most defining traits: we don't agree on anything and we don't get along for long. Do you expect it to go away when we board a spaceship? Discarded like a bad habit? Turned out it with the Earth all along, who knew?

But yes, I've already assumed that the human nature won't change at all and I don't see it as "one of the central, and most interesting, questions" posed by the setting.

There is a difference between basic human nature and a specific cultural identity. You described a faction that seemed defined more by the latter, to extent "Jackson" "city slickers" and "rifles" weren't descriptors drawn out a hat. But maybe it won't in practice.

City slickers was a joke (same goes for the low social awareness and toxic masculinity). I thought it was clear it wasn't an in-game description.

It just seems that for all the promise of your setting, you might be settling for "Fallout in space"

Well, Fallout was about exploring new emerging societies after a nuclear war. Back to square one, let's see what they'd come up with. We're exploring a different angle and the generation ship is a perfect setting for it.

 

[Lurker King]

I actually read every single one of your updates before I first posted, to be absolutely sure it made no sense. It still doesn't.

It beggars belief that a 3rd or 4th or even 2nd generation of actual rednecks (putting aside the dubious conceit that such people would willing board a spaceship, for life, as opposed to the cultist or yuppie megachurch archetype).

If there is something that I've learned about Vince after these last few years is that he always have a more nuanced and particular view of these things. Take his assassin’s guild in AoD, for instance. It has some ninja stuff, but it also had many things that differ from the popular view. Some quests were more down to earth and players didn’t expect. The Jackson Riflemen could be inspired from rednecks and other groups (you need to write based on what you know about the reality, after all), but they won't be the same thing by a mile. You can be certain of this.

 

[BLOBERT]

BRO LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS

AOD WAS A FUCKING MASTEROEPEECE

THIS WILL BE THE ONLY FUCKING THING I COULD IMAGINE PREORDERIBGNG CAUSE IM DONE WITH KICKSTARTER UNLESS HOOKKERS AND COCAINE ARE IN A BACKER TEER

BROS LLOLLOLOL ONE THING IVE SEEN FROM VINCE IS THAT MOTHERFUCKER IS NEVER WRONG LOLLOLLOLLOL YOUR NOT GONNA CONVINCE HIM IN AN INTERNET DEBATE LLLOLLOLOL

BUT ILL GIVE HIM THIS I THINK HE LISTENS AND TAKES CRITICISM LOOLLOLOLOL JUST TELLL HIM ITS YOUR OPINION DONT TELL HIM THAT HES WRONG LOLLOLOLLOL

 

[Sacred82]

AOD WAS A FUCKING MASTEROEPEECE

Steam review detected