Yamato 2221 - Pitch

orr 1st March 2021 at 11:55pm

The year is 2221 - over two decades since the Space Battleship Yamato made its fateful voyage through the Large Magellanic Cloud to save the human race from certain doom. In 2202, the
Yamato summoned its crew again, ultimately sacrificing itself to save humanity from the White Comet Empire, vanishing in the process. Now, this long-lost ship calls a new crew to duty...

What To Expect
Yamato 2221 is a Space Opera campaign about an unlikely crew teaming up to take a legendary, derelict ship across the galaxy. It's based in the universe of the Space Battleship Yamato franchise
(specifically the remake, Yamato 2199), a world in which humanity's first alien contact with the people of Garmillas led to a war that almost destroyed Earth. Only the actions of those onboard the Space
Battleship Yamato, humanity's first FTL-capable ship, and the miraculous Cosmo Reverse System it carried, would save humanity. Ultimately, they would forge an allegience with their former assailants,
facing off against greater and greater threats such as the terrifying White Comet Empire. Now, as major players on the interstellar scale, the human race has find its way in a world that is far bigger than
any single person can fathom.

Expect:

Interstellar scale Amateur melodrama

Advanced technobabble Delving into sealed archives to find out what really happened when humanity made its first
Desperately keeping a hulking old ship alive as it rattles through the stars contact with aliens.
Pyrrhic victories against insurmountable challenges Diverting power from life support to the main guns because you have no sense of self-
Scavenging unknown worlds for the resources you need to patch up the leaking hull preservation
Not asking too many questions about exactly how the anti-grav works Never getting told the odds
Fixing the shields - with the power of friendship!

Schedule
This campaign is looking for 4-6 players.

This campaign will meet approximately every 3 weeks on weekend afternoons (subject to agreement with players). Each session will last approximately 3-4 hours, with a short screen and social break in
the middle. The campaign has a defined scope and endpoint - expect it to last 8-10 sessions, including a 'session zero' where we set boundaries and define our characters, and a debrief/epilogue session.

Sessions will be run as video calls on Google Meet or Discord, with an accompanying online wiki to keep track of lore. Player characters will also be able to perform activities in the downtime between
session - resolving the downtime will be done via messages.

System
This campaign will be run using the Genesys/FFG Star Wars roleplaying system, with heavy homebrew content. No prior knowledge of the system is needed - it's very easy to pick up!

Character Creation
Character creation will be a collaborative process with the GM, as we weave your backstories and concepts into the world of Space Battleship Yamato.

I recommend - with somewhat obvious reason - building characters with livelihoods and skillsets that, even if not originally intended for crewing a starship, can adapt and rise to the challenge of bringing
the Yamato online. This could mean, for example, playing as an experienced car mechanic who can turn her talent towards fixing an FTL drive, or an ex-military fighter pilot who is itching to get back in
the cockpit, or an academic astronomer who uses their equations and theory to help the ship navigate.

If you're short on ideas, some useful roles might be:

Leadership/Captain Navigator Soldier

Medic Engineer Researcher
Gunner Logistics
Pilot Explorer

Often, roleplaying is split into three Pillars - Combat, Socialising and Exploration. This campaign will heavily focus on exploration, with a reasonable amount of combat also. Expect the bulk of the social
action to be intra-party i.e. PCs conversing with each other as opposed to NPC social encounters. Therefore social skills/mechanics are less of a priority. Your characters should still have some though,
especially if the would be relevent to your backstory.

In addition, all of your characters must have some reason to be participating in low-budget interstellar FTL travel at the start of the campaign (e.g. heading to see their distant family, going to a cheap
conference, smuggling illegal spices, etc).

Player Character Conflict

“ Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

— William Shakespeare - The Tempest

”
Although the broad theme of the campaign is collective survival, characters will have a spectrum of different alignments and motivations. In addition, your characters will be cooped up with each other in
tense situations with limited resources for extended periods of time. Therefore inter-PC conflict is possible, allowed, and even encouraged as long as it is not gratuitous. Severe, harsh or sudden
disagreements should be preceded with an OC warning.

Touchstones
Obviously the main inspiration for this series is Space Battleship Yamato (both the 1974 original series and the 2012 remake). This campaign is roughly canon with the remake series. However it is
absolutely not manadatory viewing - in fact knowledge of the real events aboard the Yamato's first flight is not common knowledge to PCs.

If you're looking for inspiration or similar works, maybe try the following - these are all works that are broadly inspiring me when planning this campaign!

Films and TV Video Games

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back FTL: Faster Than Light
Battlestar Galactica (2004) Out There: Omega Edition
Das Boot Among Us
Torchwood Infinite Space
Super Dimension Fortress Macross Spaceteam
Macross Frontier
Apollo 13
Cowboy Bebop