Roleplaying Focus – An Interview with John Bromin of New Zion

New Zion, a Star Trek RPG by John Bromin

Today is a special day, because I have someone very special to talk to here about his new Star Trek game that is beginning on Ongoing Worlds. This is hopefully to be the flagship of many interviews I will do with old and new games alike within the roleplaying universe.

So let me begin by introducing the person I shall be interviewing today. John Bromin is a role-player here who always seems to come up with unique and interesting stories with this writing style. It’s always made very fun and interesting reading, so I’m very excited when he wanted to tell me about his new game on Ongoing Worlds – New Zion.

Hello John, so tell us? What is New Zion and what is it about?

“New Zion is a scifi game, set in the Star Trek universe, just on the tail end of a great war, The Dominion War. With so many people in dire straits, a resort planet which was on the brink of being closed down suddenly finds itself overflowing with visitors. Every last one of them looking for an easy way to forget the horrors of war that they had experienced. The planet become increasingly popular, with all manner of people arriving in there downtime.”

“Somehow an illness is set loose of the planets surface rapidly killing off a large number of the people on the planets surface, causing Starfleet to ‘send in the big guns’ so to say.”

“In general though I’m trying to strike a good balance between a nice bit of cheese to take the edge off, and a heavy level of dramatic situations, and action, with a splash of romance, and comedy. It’s going to be a bit of a balancing act, but in the worst case scenario, we just change things around a bit to suit what the player base wants.”

Sounds interesting. Where do you plan on taking the storyline in terms of developments of it’s characters and world? What is the driving focus of the storyline?

“Now that’s a pretty hard one to go into without spoiling anything, but I’ll see what I can do to lift the veil a bit so to say.”

“Needless to say, we don’t really want the whole situation to be fixed in less time then it takes to reach warp, but I do understand, and I think everyone playing should as well that eventually there will be a cure. There are going to be quite a few plot points between here and there though, so I expect the sickness (Player base permitting) to last at least a year of real time. That way we can explore the planets rather rapid decent into chaos, as food shortages continue, riots worsen, and more of the population succumbs to the illness.”

What is unique about New Zion from other role-playing games we’ve seen so far?

“New Zion is a combination of the classic outbreak story we’ve seen so many times in film and literature, such as The Stand, and the one and the only, Star Trek, I really think the combo lends itself well if I’m frank with you. While I know plenty of games have done each of these separately I really think that New Zion has something special about it. By combining the two, we have the chance to make something one in a kind, that people will absolutely go head over heels for.”

It certainly seems that way! What kind of things are you looking forward to with New Zion, do you have any goals you wish to achieve?

“I’m really looking forward to working with a lot of good writers, and to running a successful game. I’m hoping that we can get a good batch of talent working with this little story project. I’m also looking forward to possibly working with another Star Trek role playing group who I’ve had contact with over the matter. If we were able to work with that group, I think that we’d have enough players to keep New Zion going for a very long time to come.”

So we can expect to see New Zion around for the long haul. Have you ever GMed a game before? Are you excited about New Zion?

“Am I ever excited. This is one project that I’m vary glad to be able to be getting some support on. It looks like we’re already getting a good deal of potential candidates for characters. I’ve not really seen the current levels of interest from the community since I was first trying to run Omega 7. I’ve actually run quite a few small games in the past, and while most of them have never really broken the ten member threshold they’ve all been a lot of fun to be a part of.”

“Games like The End, and the newer Omega 7 were attempts to try something new as well, and while they may not have had quite as many members as New Zion looks to be getting, I put my heart into every game I run.”

They were certainly unique in their design and presentation I totally agree! So who would enjoy this game? Any requirements for joining the game?

“You want pulse pounding action? We got it. You want hard choices? We got that to. You want the chance to make your characters come to life in an unforgiving paradise, to survive where so many have died? Then New Zion is Perfect for you.”

“Well the only real requirements are that you can stick to the rules, and that you know at least the basics of Star Trek. Even if you don’t know that much about the universe, there are plenty of wonderful sites, like Memory Alpha, where you can get all the information you would ever need on the wonderful world of Star Trek.”

Fantastic, I’m going to join in right now. How does one sign up?

Oh it’s really easy, you just jet on over to the Ongoing Worlds Website, sign yourself up with an account, and make a character for New Zion. We try to get back with any applications within the first week of there application being sent in.

Thanks to John Bromin for sharing his latest game – New Zion. Find the link to the game page below.

http://www.ongoingworlds.com/games/541

Want to do an interview about your game that you are running? Or simply one that you are a part of, drop me a line or leave a message in the comment section below and I’ll get back to you.