Moon Soldiers Must Die: Rules and Cliches

I will be using Risus for tomorrow night's Moon Soldiers Must Die! one-shot. This is mostly due to my comfort with the system and my lack of time to actually plan the game for the other systems that were under consideration. I still want to run PDQ, FATE, Danger Patrol, and various old school sci-fi games, but they will have to wait until my schedule is more favorable.

The particular set of Risus rules that I will be employing are as follows:

Characters: 10-dice characters with cliches and concepts that are appropriate to a Rockets n' Raygun-style Retro SF game (see below for examples). Characters will be passengers or crew aboard the luxury space liner Venusian Queen.

Character Options: Hooks, Double-Pumps (must be justified), Sidekicks & Shieldmates, Lucky Shots, and Questing Dice. No Tales and no Funky Dice this time around.

Just-in-Time Character Definition: To get playing quickly, players need only define one of their cliches. At any time during the play, the character can assign remaining dice to new cliches, Lucky Shots, Questing Dice, or even Sidekicks.

Play Options:  Pumps, Deadly Combat (as detailed in the Risus Companion), Monkey-style combat, and Ad Hoc Teams. 

Science! Using the rules for "Target Numbers and the Single Showoff" (the magic "system" from the Companion detailed here), characters can use the scientific or academic abilities implied by their cliches to declare facts to help define the local scene and the setting in general. The Target Number will depend on the actual usefulness of these facts and/or the disruption they might cause to the setting.
 
Get Me Outta Here: I'm considering using an experimental and untested rule that will allow characters to make a healing roll if they try to retreat and break out of combat. Depending on the situation, disengaging after the heal check could be a Simple Contest or could continue as full-fledged Combat (chase).

Sample Space Opera Cliches Appropriate to the Scenario

• Alien Manservant
• Archaeologist
• Bartender
• Bureacrat
• Colonial Marine
• Colonist
• Doctor
• Famous Athlete
• Fighter Jock
• Kid
• Lounge Singer
• Mechanical Manservant
• Mercenary
• Missionary
• Personal Trainer
• Planetary Explorer
• Rocketship Captain
• Rocketship Engineer
• Secret Agent
• Shock Trooper
• Steward
• Stowaway
• Tourist
• Xenobiologist

The above list of cliches is by no means exhaustive. Players will be encouraged to spice up their cliches with advice from the Anatomy of a Cliche article over at Uncle Bear.

Image of LCB Astronaut from the Risus LCB Dingbats font.