The Eye: Campaign

Agreed, you both are indeed right.

If we're going to do this, I'd lean for the idea of one location best. Maybe with some missions into official sites or something, but developing deeply one original place, with characters, things, missions and such can be quite hard and time-effort consuming. But if we do it right, it can get a lot of depth. And such an example would be much more usefull/interesting than half-developed several locations all over the world.

But, if we're going to do this really, it will be a mid-term project, as we will first need to debate and decide on some key issues before we can start writing (for example, I don't see those groups in power, do I do like the idea of several factions fighting over the station). So not for Q1, though if we arrange some quick ideas, we may introduce some sort of teaser or something.

I was on my way out the door last time, so I didn't get a chance to explain myself very well.

We need to remember with a few things;

1) The stake needs to feel big, or feel personal. It's hard to do a personal stake with player-generated characters until you've had some time to establish some NPCs, and make them feel like they're permanent (which normally means you leave and come back to them a few times). But for a stake to feel big, it has to affect things beyond just one habitat. And at minimum, that likely means we have NPCs from multiple habitats engaging themselves in the PCs' affairs.

2) The campaign should feel big. You can have a big-feeling world in one habitat, through enough description and so on, but in the end, the PCs are still going to feel like everything important doesn't extend past that thin metal skin. Because of how EP is written, limiting to one habitat would feel to many players like limiting all the action to one office building. Our sense of size is also influenced by time. If we spend five minutes looking at one scene, it feels small compared to two minutes in one scene, one minute away, then two minutes back.

3) “Distance makes the heart grow fonder”. If we introduce them to a setting then take them away, on their return the place feels more permanent, more friendly, and it’s more likely to be used by the players even when they’re done with the campaign.

4) The resources are available to us. I can reference The Stars Are Our Destination because it’s a free product. No one will complain they didn’t want to buy another book. That setting and those NPCs are available for us to use, at no penalty.
Now, I’m not saying that the missions MUST go to multiple sites. But I think limiting ourselves to one location before we even have a plot is premature. We have story tools. Let’s use them!

I agree this would be for Q2 at the earliest, maybe with some little hints seeded, like the Universal Brotherhood in Shadowrun.

I think this would be a great setting for politics and paranoia; a situation where you don’t know who your friends are. Like I mentioned, I’ve been watching some shows which really use dopplegangers effectively. When you don’t know if your boss is real, or someone working for the other side, things get complex. To bring it to the next level, we could even make the PCs the dopplegangers (all it takes is for the egos to get intercepted and forked during egocasting) working, unknowingly, for the Bad Guys, while the original egos are doing the job they were originally brought in for, on behalf of the Good Guys. Most players are used to the ‘evil twin’ scenario, but I’ve yet to meet someone who has played the reverse!

Alternatively, maybe more of a cold war set up. Two big factions are on the edge of armed combat, and you know the loss of life will be tremendous. Both are littering the other side with spies and saboteurs. The PCs work for one side, but they don’t know who might actually be a turncoat, if their mission information is correct or they’re being lead into a trap, and so on.

Another cool idea is where the PCs have been set up as the fall men for something, and they need to figure out who did it and why. That could be a tidy little three-part scenario.

Thoughts?

Really? If we want to write a location description, why not just write a location description? I'd think that writing a location description across four issues would be a bit painful, but I guess one could pull it off. To use the example of New York, perhaps write about Wall Street, then Central park, then New Jersey or something. But I'm still not seeing the advantage of stretching it out.

I do share the idea that the campaign can't take on the whole of The Eye numbers. Maybe 1/3 could be fine (for example, in a number with six articles, one would be a campaign scenario and another a faction description, or something like it). As for the questions:

About the multi-writing. If this is a common project, I believe we should trust each one to write their part instead of having someone watch/edit all. Of course, proof reads and all the usual editing for The Eye would apply, but I believe most articles should be discussed here first, and then the author would get free reign on how to put all that to work and such. That leaves space for all of us to see how the child grows in interesting, yet unexpected, ways.

1) I actually don't care much for the kind of habitat, as I'm not too good on those. Gravity does sound good, though.

2) I'd take it farther away. I'd go for somewhere in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Allows us to play with both economies, to have ties to all major factions while remaining independant, etc. Seems more versatile.

3) Factions in power, I believe would require some serious discussion. But, as a starting point, I'd go through all reps and add a faction to control each more or less. I mean, who is top in corporations? Main mafia gangs? A university? Etc. Not all of them have to be equally porwerful, of course, and some may even be sharing controlling faction (maybe the socialites are a corporate elite so control both reps?).

4) I too would need more information on that reference.

5) I would go for transient economy, both money and rep working. Maybe focusing on blueprint creation/science and some mining of nearby asteroids (on my idea that it's in the belt), or something like it. In any case, we need to know where the place is first, so we know what kind of richness it may hold.

I'd add another question.

6) General mood? I mean, are we going for somewhere nice? More terrorific? Political intrigue and conspiracies in the dark? Powerful? Etc. We should find three-four adjectives everyone should keep in mind when writing in it. This should branch both in the setting and in the scenario, so it probably deserves some serious discusion.
As my take on it, I always go for a place with political intrigues and conspiracies in the dark. Maybe less focus on x-threats/horror and more into how transhumanity fights itself, grows or perishes by its own means. Somewhere once powerful but that is losing its former glory, maybe due to loss of resources/richness or overcrowding, or something. Somewhere you really don't know if anyone is who they seem or if they can be trusted, and with tons of skelletons in everyone's closets. If it were a genre for a novel, it would be a black novel.
So the adjectives would be: conspiracy, downfall, treason, and shadows (meaning, no real goods or bads, all greys).