Running a BSG roleplaying game

While I've been struggling to find something I could be excited to run, I watched Battlestar Galactica Razor last night. And it's got me excited about BSG again. (Nevermind that the "razor" bit was forced and lame… including the fact that neither woman looked comfortable fiddling with the knife, even though Cain had been carrying it since she was a little girl.)

So I've been thinking about how to run a BSG-inspired game. (With Fudge, not with MWP's BSG RPG… The Serenity RPG was a disappointment, and I expect the same from BSG. They're both shows with high level of character interaction (soap opera) and MWP approached Serenity with a purely traditional simulationist view, which doesn't do anything to support recreating the kind of stuff that happens in those shows. I'm not a full-on Narrativist, but I think that the rules should do something to support recreating what we see in the shows, not just describe the physical aspects.)

I'm not running a canon "Battlestar Galactica"… I'm "reimagining" it, much like the second show did to the first. I don't like being tied to canon, I want the players to play important characters in the story without playing established characters, and so on. I want the room to make it my own.

But that said, I want to capture the flavor of the current BSG and run a good roleplaying game at the same time.

My first concern is that the show focuses on characters all up and down the command chain, in all kinds of different roles. Running a game with one character as the commander and another character as a deck hand and yet another as a computer tech is a lot harder than running a game where all the characters are Viper pilots.

So that's my first choice… are the PCs limited to a specific focus within the bigger picture, or can they come from all over the bigger picture? Will the story be about a crack Viper squad, or will it be the struggles between President and Commander and various crew?

If I had an established group of players, I'd take that question to them… but when trying to attract a new group of players, I'm thinking I ought to come with clear picture of what the game is about. Otherwise I can end up with a group split between desire for a political story and an action story.

Another choice is where to place the story time-wise… do we do jump into the story after the Cylons attack the Colonies, or do we deal with the actual attack? I'm not sure I could pull off the latter and make it dramatic enough… especially when it's railroading of a sort. The Cylons are going to destroy the Colonies and most of the fleet, and drive the Galactica off… that can't be changed. So if we started out at the beginning of the story, the players would have to be in a position where they had meaningful choices and goals within that framework.

Another big choice for me is the human-like Cylons. It has advantages in the intrigue side of things, but for some reason, they rub me the wrong way. BSG explores some really interesting stuff there, including what it means to be human, but I'm not sure I want it in my game. I think some of my dislike revolves around really disliking the Number 6 character… I find the whole Number 6/Baltar thing the only annoying part of the show.

As a game, I think the setup is challenging enough without throwing in Cylons which are indistinguishable from human. But that's something I'll probably want to talk over with the players.