Campaign Questions - What is the Campaign About?

As promised, here is my treatment of the campaign questions from earlier. Please let me know your thoughts.

What is the "Kings" Campaign About?

The new Kings of Orion is an echo of Dave's original Knights of Orion project. The original campaign was essentially a series of pulpy adventures strung together by the conceit that the player characters were all in the service of the King of Orion in order to protect and serve the people of the kingdom. I would like to continue in that tradition.

The Knights of Orion are still beloved and admired despite being outlawed over the past twenty years or so. They are a combination of special forces and rock stars.

Action will lead the plot in every game. I would like the players' trust to allow the game to start In Medias Res on nearly every session. By starting at the middle of the story rather than at the beginning, we can get through more and have more fun. If that becomes a problem, we'll make the appropriate changes.

Each session will feature steadily increasing stakes. As the PCs get stronger and have more to loose from failure, the more that they will be squeezed for resources.

The arc of each session will feature steadily increasing stakes as well. I like to call this the "out of the frying pan into the fire" principle.

I hope that this campaign will feature more shades of grey than Dave's previous "Knights of Orion" project. There is no single clear cut "king" for the player characters to serve. Those PCs who lust for power need only reach for it. Although the motivations of the PCs are straightforward and free for all players at the table to see, each and every character will have to choose a "dark secret" that could potentially unravel the entire campaign. The characters' "dark secret" will also be kept from all the other players at the table. If the "dark secrets" run the entire campaign off the rails, so be it. That could be pretty entertaining as a matter of fact.

Despite being a sci-fi campaign, hand to hand combat will remain very important since I've scaled the weapon tables so that only melee weapons have armor piercing values needed to reliably crack open powered armor. Powered armor will also be rare enough that it is only worn by wild cards.