Those of you have been following the YouTube channel for a little while might have seen that I previously did a video for Galactic 2e by riley rethal and Going Rogue 2e by Jess Levine. If not, you can check it out here because it will be relevant to today’s topic, the scum & villains expansion.
What Came Before
For those of you who do not care for videos or who watched it a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, lets do a quick review of what Galactic and Going Rogue are.
Galactic is a GM-less & token-based Belonging Outside Belonging game for 2 to 5 people that was inspired by Star Wars. It tells character-driven space opera stories build around relationships between characters, factions, and The Space Between. The idea is that you are a tight-knit group attempting to assist the Liberation resist the fascism that has a stranglehold in the galaxy in the form of the Mandate.
Going Rogue, meanwhile, was strongly inspired by the more grey storytelling and characters present in later Star Wars stories like Rogue One and the subsequent prequel Andor. It embraces the ideas that sacrifice is often necessary for the success of the cause and that no rebellion is truly clean or perfect. To do this, it added a number of setting elements like factions that vie for the soul of the Liberation, clock mechanics that ratchet up the tension, and new playbooks to expand the base Galactic game.
Scum and Villains
Today, Jess Levine is seeking to address a different angle to Star Wars’s storytelling with the scum & villains expansion. It takes the morally ambiguous characters and galaxy that we experienced in Going Rogue, but reminds us that for many in the Galactic Universe, the opposition is not the Mandate but the crime lords and petty tyrants that exploit the marginalized and the folk who will do whatever they can to stay afloat. As you can imagine, here we are telling stories closer to The Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett series with scarred characters
Changes to the Mold
To do this, Jess has the players break the “the scum & villainy” pillar into two, similar to faction splitting of the Liberation in Going Rogue. The Scum of our game are the desperate, doing what they need to do to survive out here on the fringe or forgotten corners of the galaxy. Meanwhile the Villainy are those that profiteer in those same places, either for credits or power. They can be opposition, but also a source of sorely needed income or other resources for our band of characters.
Other mechanics have also been modified to better fit this new mold. Clock mechanics that had been introduced to tick down the fate of your group in Going Rogue have been transformed into a new form of character-based Fate. Not only do these Fates provide a redemptive motivation for your character to act in ways likely contrary to their previous life-path, they also reward characters who complete them with strong abilities. For example, the Guardianship fate encourages you to protect someone to your own risk or detriment. Completing the clock earns you a strong move that allows you to swoop in and save the day or at least a person’s hide.
When and Where Can I Get scum & villains?
The Scum and Villains Expansion will be available through Itch.io on May the Fourth. However, Jess will also be running a bundle including the expansion that will be hosted from May 4th to the 30th, so that might also be something you want to check out!