Space Dungeon - Philosophy and Progress

What with the recent uptick in interest about this campaign, I thought I'd throw it out there and refresh the thing, and interest new people.  I guess it must be partly on account of all the Star Wars:TFA resurgence and the well-deserved success of White Star by my pal and fellow Marylander +James Spahn

What is it, besides some gruesome chimera of Star Frontiers, DCC, and Ravenloft?  I don't rightly know.  I conceived it at first of a way to inject my anti-corporate politics (says a guy whose website is hosted by GoogleCorp; I know I know) into a low-fantasy grubby space faring game.  I thought immediately of the Cryptic Alliances of GW and the galaxy spanning corporations of Star Frontiers, and I tried to build into the campaign a fun bunch of premises (I mean, maybe, FUN TO ME):

1. The action advances behind the scenes whether the PCs play or not.  Players ought to be able to interact with each other via the community (I saw this first done by +Jason Paul McCartan in his Barrowmaze Open Table thing and it's worked well in all the campaigns I've kept on Google+ communities)
2. Always have some weird topography or gimmick to induce awesome movement and zero-G Mighty Deeds and stuff
3. Always introduce an Alien race each game.  So far, these have been the Fed, the Sheeple, the Wolfoids, the Silgurians, the Mechannids, and a couple of others.  I am awfully fond of the original Star Frontiers races and the premise is that any race is welcome as a PC
4. Flailsnails-ers are welcome (this was a New Year's Resolution of mine at the time, and I'm cool with it entirely, now)
5. Low-fantasy.  It's a struggle.  It's dirty.  Things are breaking down.
6. Nebulmor, the Tomb Planet, is where the action takes place and the undead and weird aliens are fine, but it's really the naughty corporations that are kind of the bad guys.  Right now, at this minute, Vista Financial has sent emissaries to the Berserker Droid fleet that approaches this sector of space.  They were awakened during the second game by some intrepid adventuring scumbags, after being locked away metaphysically for a long, long time.  With the captured Shining Trapezohedron that the PCs recovered for them, communication with the Berzerkers ought to be easy peasey.
7. I'd included a basic idea (but maybe not very good mechanics) for people to set up businesses and interests for in-the-downtime investment and carousing, and criminal enterprises.  I haven't really devoted too much time to it, but I gave a couple of examples (Carl's CloCloCloning, for example)
8. I stole some ideas from Kabuki Kaiser to give an example of how a settlement on the surface might work.
9. It's nestled seamlessly and fluidly into my other campaigns, and the Robolich/Cyberlich are patronized into my Purple Planet campaign (not yet published - I like there to be a little mystery but it's based on  Helgaz Belkur from AD&BI)

If you can read this, and you take an interest, you're invited to come to the Fed Station in the Spring of 2016 when I crank the thing up.  Join the community - run your own adventures, whatever.  I don't care about keeping it neat and tidy, the time-stream has already diverged like 4 times!

Magic Item of Yes That Sounds Awesome

I been sort of doing this for a regular player a little lately and there's no reasons why you ain't ought to hear it too.  Instead of having really any magical properties or mechanical effects, maybe your magic sword can give you wings and turn the whole world into a Radical Mighty Deed stage.  It's a corollary of my UH WE DONT NEED A NEW RULE FOR THAT; maybe the rule is THE RULES ALREADY COVER THAT

In DCC, the Warrior has the ultimate Freedomizer of Combat: The Mighty Deed. I note that in the more than 100 custom classes I've read for DCC, the Mighty Deed is the most stuck in there as an add-on to fight-y types. It's as if the Warrior weren't badass enough and you need little Orc teeth and infra vision, too!  Weakling!  I digress.  The mechanic is simple enough, a 3+ on the deed die and your awesome maneuver works and you get a cool thing.  It's added to your to hit roll and damage, and stacks with crits and so there's no reason not to do it each round if you're a fighter  warrior. Whatever.

The core book even goes so far as to suggest to the DM "make the scenes of fights into terrain filled stages for awesome mighty deeds", which is cool. One uncool thing, in my opinion, that the core book does is that it GIVES CLEARLY EXPLAINED EXAMPLES, which to my mind is clever way to teach people how it could work, but it also has the unfortunate side effect of turning the entire list of examples into a menu that particularly uncreative folks keep behind their eyelids.  I've had some folks "I deed to disarm" every round. Just that, roll the dice, "a 2 so no deed but I still hit."

I think that's exactly the opposite of the intent of the rule, but hey, YMMV as always.

SO. You get this pair of wings, maybe attached to a breastplate.  You don't fly. You don't float. No feather fall. None of that shit. No bonuses to hit. No damage bonuses. Just the whole world opens up and you can smash shit in glorious awesome ways. Think of it as a token to unlatch your imaginary character's feet from the floor and move, going forward, in 3 dimensions.

Caveat: If you say "I DEED TO BLIND" then it vanishes forever. Can't have glory trumped by shoddy descriptors of boring mechanic

Other examples:

Boots of striding and deeding

gauntlets of spider climb up your ass and clock you

Girdle of Boulder and Other Large Things Hurlingness

Spiderman Swinging Rope of Onehanded Kicking Your Teeth In

Cloak of Spinning Around and Flying Into the Air like a Damn Helicopter

It's just some bullshit token item at the bottom, but the trick is it unlocks that player's brain and tells him or her ITS OKAY TO DO THAT AMAZING THING YOU WANT

BY THE BY, it's my humble opinion that this is baked into the rule already, and FURTHER MORE, if you make a Warrior PC of any kind you have a great deal of freedom already just from the way the rule works. I always give the example of the White Ape Bananawarden, Smasher of Lesser Beasts. There's no explicit reason you couldn't use the Warrior right out of the box to play that PC. Grubbing after infravision and other things is merely a grab; you can get all kinds of neat stuff by adventuring, anyway.