Hey guys,

sometimes during the start of a campaign I find my players lacking a common motivation. Though I thought about the option to address the problem during character creation, I tried to solve the problem differently for my current campaign. We extended on the homestead rules provided by the official books and tried to forge something that allows the homestead to evolve and NPCs to go on adventures parallel to what the PCs are doing. So typically at the beginning of the session we are spending 10 minutes dealing with the players homestead (a small space station at the moment) and assigning NPCs to jobs and small missions, which we, very roughly, then play out. It is quite mechanics-heavy, but works well for the group.

For a full description of the system we are using, refer to the blog entry . I hope you can get something from that for your games. I would be happy for any feedback, if you have some! :)

Tim