A new preview Chapter is up on the Dropbox. This time we’re looking at new technology: new Markets, new Asset upgrades and the all-new Biomods and Cybernetics.
A few things are still missing from this chapter: Attire, Crew and Vehicles still need to be added, and I haven’t started on the Mecha section just yet (I’ve got a good idea where I want to go with it, just need to get my ducks in a row and write it out).
As usual, I’d greatly appreciate any feedback or commentary. If you have a moment, feel free to put together a few random Assets, mixing new and old upgrades, seeing what holds, what breaks, what simply doesn’t work, etc.
I’ve also done a pretty big update pass on Chapter 6 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/4e18lle8gpw9dfv/Chapter%206%20-%20Careers.docx?dl=0) from last week.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gbi0gjatfg1b51w/Chapter%202%20-%20Technology.docx?dl=0
This book sounds more and more meaty!
Judd Goswick if all goes to plan, it should be roughly 80-100% the size of the original Uncharted Worlds. Meaty indeed.
This is awesome! Can’t wait to use the new cybernetics rules. One of the characters lost an arm in an encounter with a hostile. This could help them out! Lol
Is the art just a placeholder for now?
Yep, placeholder art for now. New art to be unveiled soon.
I like that holy hand grenades are now rules-legal.
Ooh, looking forward to the Mecha stuff. One of my players is trying to get one, and we were going to wing it more or less using the existing vehicle rules.
I’m kind of tempted to add a Versatile tag for the biomods to emulate Culture glanding.
Rob Barrett , my session last night had some Culture refs, since I am reading Hydrogen Sonata and it gave me some ideas for an attack on a research vessel.
Is there some reason that biotech-focused markets are portrayed as skeevy and conflated with slave markets? I just want to get some cloned replacements and retroviral enhancements 🙂
Ah well Flesh Markets are focused on all things fleshy; organ trade / slave trade / genetic sculpting (depending on whether it is a Minor, Standard or Major). regular Markets still offer medical procedures and more common bio-tech.
While lower ranking Flesh Markets are indeed quite sleazy, the… decorum spikes noticeably in the Major markets, simply due to the level of bio-tech sophistication required to offer those kinds of services.
I admit, there’s a bit of body horror in the fiction there. Just my vision, though, no need to follow it. Those four should give a good example to create one’s own specialist markets that are suited to the politics/philosophy of the game at hand.
I kindof imagine Major Flesh Markets as a cross between a cruise ship, an Apple store and a butcher’s freezer.
Flesh markets being like a dark corner of the verse is absolutely in line with the fiction surrounding it. You ever read any fiction about cloning? It pretty much always comes down to a statement about how it’s immoral to clone things. Alien: Resurrection has just about the most clear (and admittedly hamfisted) message to this point. But a more subtle, and possibly my favorite example, is Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series.
The clone troopers are expendable and nobody seems to give a shit cuz “they’re just clones.” Even though the clone troopers give each other nicknames, have distinct personalities, decorate their armor and even show off their scars so they can tell each other apart and set themselves apart from the rest. But yeah, “Just clones! We can always make more and they aren’t really like real people anyway.”
So yeah. Flesh markets need to kinda be skeazy.
To be fair, you can absolutely have a high class, respectable and completely ethical Bio Market in your campaign setting ,especially if that’s supported by the Factions in play. It would make for a much more Transhumanist sci-fi, where new limbs and bodies are shopped for like a new cellphone (“what do you mean this body doesn’t have Aural receivers? No I don’t want an Olfactory-to-Auditory converter, I want ears dammit”)
My writeup of the Flesh markets was absolutely playing to the more common body-horror tropes of Spacer Operas. There are a lot of subtexts to unpack in there, when you consider it:
– The idea that flesh is natural and thus “holy” while technology is artificial and thus open to iteration and re-design.
– The parallels to some of the darkest times of human civilization, where we stripped people of their humanity and made them commodities, flesh to be traded.
– The cyberist idea that more technology is better, and that moving towards solutions of the flesh is regressive and destabilizing.
Thanks for clarifying where you were getting at. Viewed from that lens, it does make a lot of sense. (My first space opera, when I was a wee one, was Dune – so I first saw space opera biotech as amoral power being misused by bad people.)
If you weren’t mostly finished with this chapter already, I’d suggest a descriptor/upgrade system for Markets a la Assets. (This is a Minor Black Bio Market. Please make sure all your organs are still inside when you leave.)
Also, Amplifier feels like it might be hard to “call” in play.
Chapter 6’s Origins cards got Career text copied into them.