Far Beyond Humanity Weekly Update #6

Far Beyond Humanity Weekly Update #6

Bit of a support/fill-in week this week. Many words were written, many sections re-written or altered or tweaked. Also that “throat thing” from last week evolved into full-blown bronchitis, so yaaay for failing my Face Adversity +Physique.

Characters Chapter

Formatting is finally finished on chapter 4! Huzzah. Also took the opportunity to revise a number of abilities, and to do that thematic overhaul of the Arcane career I’ve wanted to do for a while.

– Arcane Career is now known as the Shaper career. The career descriptions, workspaces and xp triggers have been updated to account for this slightly more generalized “reality shaping” career. The thematic shift should hopefully signal to more popular archetypes, such as the Babylon 5 technomagi, or the Mass Effect Vanguards.

– Skill change: Teleport (Shaper): While I liked the idea of a character being able to Wild Jump, the design of Wild Jump limits the Teleport to long-range jaunts. The new skill allows it to take a more action-oriented role when things get dicey, while still evoking a mini-Wild Jump. This incarnation also plays every well mechanically or thematically with a number of other skills, including Surveillance, Network, Clairvoyance, Recklessness, etc.

– Skill Change: Evoke (Shaper): This one has evolved a few times to get it to a point where it doesn’t just feel like a rehash of the Upgrade skill. In recent playtests I’ve got to see the new incarnation in action, and I’m pleasantly surprised at how creatively flexible it is.

– Skill Change: Launch (Kinetic): This skill now supports more build diversity by being allowing Mettle for small objects and Physique for large objects. Also makes it more logical when applied as the Origin skill of Primal.

– Skill Change: Telekinesis (Kinetic): Another one that went through many forms. Current implementation should be useful to many different archetypes.

– Skill Change: Terrify (Fanatic): Changed the effects of each level of success/failure slightly, to give better direction to the GM to adjust the NPC reactions. Got to playtest this one in multiple games, probably one of the most successful Skills in terms of story-driving and double-edged-sword-y goodness.

Technology Chapter

A first pass on the Vessel upgrades is up. The rules are coming together nicely. It’s quite feasible to custom-design Starships using this system, and I’m happy about that because it’s a design space I was never able to nail while writing Uncharted Worlds. The “Form” part is not in yet, but I’m sure you can make an educated guess: Form describes how the Vessel moves, whether it flies, is capable of exiting/entering atmosphere, how stable it is, etc.

New Art Preview – Characters

Another chapter art preview from +Juan Ochoa.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ms1bf6uwc6kuabu/Careers.jpeg?dl=0

What’s Next

I’ll be trying to finish up the remainder of the Technology chapter, while tooling around with early chunks of the Arcana chapter. I’ll also be going back and looking at the chapter distribution and density, possibly moving sections around so that they’re with similar systems and rules. (For example, the Fuel Scarcity optional ruleset will likely go into the Technology chapter along with the Vessel design rules and the alternate Jump technology section).

Feedback targets

I’m especially interested in feedback for the careers and origins, since they are prettymuch done and unlikely to see major changes. If you have a spare moment, I’d invite you to make characters using the new careers and a mix of new and old. See if there are any problematic or contradictory skill combinations, try to remake some of the more esoteric archetypes from popular sci fi.

Similarly, feel free to take the Vessel creation rules for a spin. These ones are still being built, but I’d really like to make sure I didn’t forget an important component.

As always: comments, questions and suggestions are always appreciated.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/atd0ygpwhur5yp6/AAB140jz3usjE3imwUkkCTLia?dl=0