Kindred: Legacy of the Stars

Overview

Kindred is a table-top RPG that was developed by me and a group of friends during our summer module. The game takes place in the far future where humanity has mastered FTL travel due to the prescence of technology known as Kyndertech, giving the game its name. The setting places the player at the Magellan Naval Academy, where they learn how to pilot starships in order to better serve humanity.

The game features its own codex and in depth lore. It also has a branching storyline and an innovative ship builder system, where the player can customize their ships with equipment that is tailor made to each situation within the campaign.

Responsibilities

Game Design

Conceptualized the game's combat system
Conceptualized on the game's decision tree
Designed the Hub and Spoke area
Worked on the Game Design Document
Designed the custom character creator system

Narrative Design

Wrote the game's campaign
Wrote the game's lore and codex
Designed the campaign's characters
Designed the quests

Worldbuilding

When designing the world for KINDRED, I wanted to make humanity feel foreign yet distinctly familiar. One way I accomplish this was fleshing out the character creation system. In that section, players were able to pick the home world for their character. Each planet was unique with its own set of cultures and was different from each other. I came up with a total of 9 planets with each selection giving the player specific traits.

I also wanted the world to feel less grounded compared to other sci-fi series but still kept to certain tropes. Pirates were present in the setting, sailing on vessels known as star-galleons. The Kynder served as the elves for the faction with advanced technology and mysterious origins. This helped to give the setting its own flair.

The narrative also affected the way game mechanics worked. Pirate enemies were given high speed stats and offensive based skills to reflect the hit and run tactics that the Pirate Princes used. For the Kynder, they were given more defensive stats and better weaponry along with skills that allowed them to buff their own abilities, to represent the advanced technology of the Kynders as well as the fact that they had the best ships in the galaxy.

Character Design

Each character the player crafted had to be special and unique. No one likes playing as a carbon copy of one another so the character design needed to be distinct. One way was letting the player's upbringing define their traits.

I worked on the principle that we are shaped by the environment around us so character creation was broken down into 3 categories. Culture, childhood and home planet. Culture plays a key role in the player's personality traits. A man born on Earth will be more arrogant as he hails from a significant and politically powerful planet, while a human born within a drifter colony will be more merciful due to knowing about the struggles of a hard life.

Childhood allowed the player to decide how much gold they started with. Different childhoods gave players access to different types of dice rolls. This allowed for a diverse economy as a result.

The home planets were the most important as they gave each player a different appearance. Aside from that, they gave them bonuses to the rolls they could perform. A person born on Mars had a general bonus to their perception while a person born on Nostromo had a bonus to leadership. Because of this system, each player was able to create a unique and diverse character.

Enemy Design

The name of Theobald Red Hand is mentioned throughout the adventure book many times. The GM will hype up the pirate prince, telling the players of his exploits and evil deeds which will convince them that Theobald will be the final foe of the setting.

However, this is subverted when the players defeat the Pirate Prince in the 2nd last mission of the adventure book. As the players graduate from the academy, they will encounter the true villains of the book, the Kynder who are hinted to have been manipulating events throughout the game to conceal their arrival back into the milky way.

The Kynder return in full force to attack Magellan Academy which also sets up a potential sequel to Kindred. In the final mission, it is already extremely difficult to battle one Kynder war ship and the thought of fighting an entire fleet is meant to both scare and excite the player for future battles with them in the sequel.