Diaspora Dry Run
A couple weeks ago, at Madison Games Day, I ran seven players through Diaspora cluster and character generation. Afterward there was some chewing of scenery.
With that many players, I had really intended only to do character and cluster creation because I’d expected it to take about three hours. We actually ended up stopping short after two hours when everyone got their Aspects and Skills sorted out, eschewing the picking out of equipment to shorten things.
At that point, we had about two hours before MGD closed down so I ended up running a few scenes. My plan had been to do a conflict or two to spotlight the system but, as with most plans, it didn’t survive contact with the players. In the end, there was a fair amount of roleplaying but not too much system engagement.
The session left me wanting to run/play more Diaspora but I definitely think that cluster creation needs to be a session of its own so that there is plenty of communication among the players about what kind of game, with what kind of interactions, everyone wants to see. It would also help to give everyone a good grounding in what the game specifically means by ‘hard science-fiction’.