Humanspace Empires Playtest: The Morning After

After sorting out some technical difficulties with Skype at the start, we delved into ckutalik's HSE playtest game. No PCs died and the citizens of Maub IV were spared destruction. A few Saturday-Morning GM thoughts:

• It was cool and helpful to have The Drune on board for this one to answer questions and get direct feed back on issues with the rules.
• While I'm sure to hear shrieks of "sacrilege" from some gamers, I think that miniatures and a map would be useful in games like this. For online gaming purposes, I'd recommend a program like MapTool that features interactive mapping, text-based chat, initiative tracking, a dice roller, and other features. While it requires a little more preparation, it can be a huge help. I played in a Hellfrost campaign using a Skype/MapTools combination and it was loads of fun.

On that note, I've got my own HSE game to prepare for.