So around the beginning of February our LAN gaming group had been struggling with what we could find to do for 6 of us. We had been working on SWTOR, we'd been playing SoaSE, Star Trek Online and a few other games but it wasn't quite as cohesive as we wanted. Having 6 players there weren't too many games we could all play and not everyone had our beloved Sins of a Solar Empire. I knew a few people had played Tabletop RPGs but it was mostly D&D.

One day the topic was brought up about a new campaign some people had tried out and how it had bombed and some of them were bored with D&D. It was then I happened to remember that in my basement I had a milk crate full of GURPS books I had been collecting since I was a teenager. So I started perusing the books and figuring out whether I was in a better position now then when I was 17 to GM a Campaign.

I realized that I had far more story telling tools at my disposal 20 years later and the basis of a decent story had always been just on the edge of my consciousness. Whenever I would day dream this same story would evolve a bit more. I figured it might be a chance to actually have the story told and even better yet have other people contribute to the story.

So I floated it by the group and quite obviously I am writing about this because they agreed to give it a try. My next conundrum was whether or not to base this in a known universe or something made up on my own. My original idea had been to use the universe from Microsoft's Freelancer space sim. But I found that the all human universe was a bit too limiting to my story. I wanted something that I was familiar with but the others may not have been so conscious of. Which is when I happened to notice the X3 series of games sitting in my Steam Library.

This was almost the perfect universe to tell my tale, the games focused on the space aspect of the universe while my campaign would focus on the ground side of things. Almost like DUST 514 and how it completments EVE Online. There were enough aliens to keep things interesting but not be overwhelming like the Star Wars universe.

Now 4 weeks later we've held the first character workshop, and I've now started to stitch the backstory together for those who are unfamiliar with it. The backstory is coming to the players in the form of news articles via a newsletter like system. Almost all of the resources I'm using in these newsletters is coming from sources based in the X universe with a few exceptions.

I'm hoping that I can stay on top of this series of articles and document the progression of the group as they find their way through the story and the universe I lay out before them.

Campaign Backstory News Items

First News Article

The second news letters set 140 days after the first one