Perhaps of some interest to people! Click through and you can download the first issue in PDF!
Perhaps of some interest to people! Click through and you can download the first issue in PDF!
Originally shared by David Brin
The first issue of the peer-reviewed, open-access Journal of Science Fiction is up! Check it out and let us know what you think.
Also from the folks building toward the new Museum of Science Fiction — Science fiction is the story of humanity: who we were, who we are, and who we dream to be. https://lnkd.in/empzFrV
#TheSurveyCrew
#TheSurveyCrew
Kicked off a new game of Uncharted Worlds last night with one of my local groups, and we had an absolute blast! We gathered at 7, but didn’t get to kick off and play until something like 10 — it turns out that character creation, faction creation, and ship creation can take some time. If I were to do this over again, I might come to the game having chosen what type of campaign we’d be playing, with factions of my own creation for players to slot their characters into. The results would likely be just as good, but I was very excited to see what kind of setting we all came up with together, so I don’t mind the time-sink.
This is lengthy, but it goes into the whole shebang of things. This detail is mostly for Sean Gomes, but others might find it interesting!
I have five players, and after some chatting about what space opera is like — what it looks like or means to us — we dove into talking about campaign types; it was very easy to settle on a standard Starship Campaign. Before going into characters, the players talked about some options for what exactly they do with their starship, and thought that a Survey Ship would be an interesting focus: characters on the fringe of space, finding and charting planets, asteroids, stars, and trying to evade trouble all along the way. We very quickly — via some asides about the state of politics in the U.S. — latched onto the idea of blue collar space opera; that a survey ship is not a glamorous career move, that being a surveyor isn’t a job you choose so much as it is a job you take to survive, and that the people who take these jobs don’t have other options or need to be far away from civilization.
Very 99%, and very very exciting to me since I’ve been watching The Expanse and I was filled with images of the Belters and the work being done aboard the Cantebury. In a lot of ways, as we talked, it sounded like our game was developing into this rentpunk space opera, but we’ll see how that develops over multiple sessions. Regardless, just from hearing what they were interested in, I’ve got ideas for what kind of buttons to press and what situations to explore.
Character-wise, we wound up with:
> ELLA STIKO the Wunderkind (Productive Academic Industrial)
> HESTER the Lapsed Soldier (Regimented Militant Explorer)
> VAX SU the System Op (Productive Academic Technocrat)
> QATALLA YARHAM the Killer-for-Hire (Impoverished Clandestine Military)
> JAX BANNON the Wanderer (Brutal Starfaring Scoundrel)
So these five, for whatever reasons, have congregated on this survey ship and now work together jumping around beyond the borders of civilization, looking for anything people would pay money to see or own. We dug into Factions next, thinking more about what kind of galaxy this strange band must hail from. In the end, we continued to focus on our blue collar, capitalism-gone-too-far aesthetic that we seemed to have stumbled into. We cooked up three Factions, and then started asking ourselves whether our fourth Faction should represent some kind of stellar navy or governmental power — and then suddenly were struck with a very different idea.
The idea that there is no official stellar state regulating the vast depths between worlds; that the “law of the land” is a matter of whose backyard you’ve stumbled into; that our first three Factions were companies and other private interests, and that our last Faction should conceptually oppose that.
So, our Factions include:
> The Surveyors Guild, the powerhouse responsible for discovering, mapping, and appraising stellar objects (and probably Jump Lanes, honestly). Their Might comes from their maps, their secrets, and their necessity as the ones willing to risk life and limb on damn fool discoveries. Their Reach includes the travel beacons used throughout space, their frontier stardocks, and Surveyors Lounges on every world.
> The Alchemist Combine, a corporation that specializes in one product: labor, willing and otherwise. They bill themselves as helpers of the desperate and downtrodden, finding them work that they may desperately need if they’re just willing to go offworld; in reality, they sell human labor off into slavery and indentured servitude to all buyers. Their Might comes from the ludicrous wealth they have accumulated, their political connections, the size of their fleet, and the demand for their “services.” Their Reach includes camps, recruitment offices, and corporate HQs. Their Structure is typical corporate style with a CEO and board. Their Ideology is “A Person is a Product That Hasn’t Been Sold Yet.”
> The Juniper Networks are a technologist group — a cabal? a company? a think tank? So far, we don’t know much about JN, except that they are committed to technology and discovery, and they have the best toys around.
> Shards of Xa are a loosely connected network of pirates and isolationist cells who refuse to recognize the authority of the interstellar corporations. Their Might comes from sheer numbers, their presence throughout known space, public opinion romanticizing them, and secrecy concerning their movements, identities, and sympathizers. Their Reach exists in the form of pirate bases, unregistered freighters, and black markets. Their Structure is made up of Captains commanding “ghost fleets” of unregistered ships, and off-the-map “free states.” Their Ideology is “No One Can Own Space, No More Than They Can Own The Breath In Our Lungs.”
With Factions finally out of the way, I passed out a stack of starship flashcards that I printed out. Each player settled on a couple favorites, and then of those 10 we finally narrowed it down to one in particular that represents their Class-2 Survey ship! They picked Workshops and assigned those:
>The Helm holds Vax’s Communications Workspace and Hester’s Survey Workspace; The Helm also provides firing control for the ship’s Point Defense Turret
>The Quarters hold Ella’s Medical Workspace, and Jax’s Sleazy smoking room
>The Cargo Bay holds Qatalla’s Stealthy bolthole.
Finally, with all of that settled, we took a small pizza break, and then ripped into the Planet-side Salvage jump point from the Uncharted Worlds rulebook.
—
We joined our survey team aboard a Juniper Networks starship that suffered a crash-landing long ago on the unexplored world SR-388 — a world made up of interlacing bands of primordial rain forests and blasted desert wastelands; where the ancient, towering flora are so hungry and greedy that they destroy the land around them to survive. Hester was up in the helm area when suddenly laser fire poured out of the jungle in front of her; she snapped into cover and saw a three shards taking up firing position some distance away, while three others broke off to try and circle around, likely to cut their way onto the bridge if possible. Hester opened fire from her position, suppressing the breach team and held the helm.
Meanwhile, Ella and Vax considered the Juniper Networks vault door in the cargo bay. Huge, sealed, and no power to disengage the locks. Jax Bannon joined in the conversation with a simple solution: explosives. Vax did a quick scan of the area though and realized that an improperly placed explosive would bring the hold down on them, and while they argued about using explosive, Ella made her way back to engineering to bring power back online.
The jump drive was an absolute wreck, with exposed cabling and the interior mechanism on-display. Rather than reinitialize a, you know, damaged reality-warping engine, Ella found some juice left inside the ship’s batteries and brought those online just fine. The symbol on the vault door suddenly flickered and then glowed with life as the cracked and broken control panel beside it lit back up.
Vax jacked into the console and accessed the locking mechanism; the vault door slid open, revealing the six meter long, one meter tall rust-red crate striped with yellow warning bars. At the same time, though, a security alert blipped up on the console… Vax saw this warning. Bannon didn’t need to see it, though, because he saw the two floor panels flanking the vault rise up into columns that suddenly twisted and rotated around like a fractal rubix cube to construct a lightning canon on-the-fly! Bannon grabbed Vax’s collar to try and get him out of the way but took a lightning blast to the back that dropped him; Vax, having seen the warning, fired up the jump boots he wore, but was weighed down by Bannon’s spasming body still clutching his jacket. Vax ditched the jacket — and Bannon — on the cargo bay floor to reach the safety of the catwalks overhead.
Meanwhile outside, Qatalla monitored the perimeter of the ship from a rocky dune, some distance from the crew’s own shuttle. From her perch, Qatalla could see the Shards staging an attack on the helm — and was in the perfect position to see a grav-skiff with two more pirates come zooming out of the jungles at the nose of the ship and bank its way around the neighboring sand dunes. Unnoticed, Qatalla used the hook and line from her infiltrator’s kit to disappear from her perch and appear on the grav-skiff between the pirates! Chaos ensued as she tried to plant her laser knife in the neck of the driver, only for him to panic and jerk the skiff off-course — the laser-knife dug into his back and he yelled out as the wound burned! Qatalla didn’t have a chance to finish the job, though, as the passenger on the skiff pulled out his own knife and sliced across her side!
Qatalla takes a moment to think that it’s suspicious that these pirates were already on this planet, seemingly watching this ship.
Back inside the ship, Hester held the Shards at bay with continued suppressing fire — igniting the jungle around them — before suggesting they go the hell away. Clever pirates, they took her advice and retreated into the jungle. Having seen the skiff herself through the bridge portholes, she dashed back through the ship to find the crew’s entry point — a giant gouge through the cargo bay — and stumbled on the fractal lightning guns! One lanced off a shot at her, and she deftly dodged into cover without a care in the world.
Vax, meanwhile, now had a connection to the system and used it to shift from the vault controls into the security system, and succeeded! However he was only able to shut down one of the cannons, and picked the one preparing to roast Bannon’s recovering form — and worse still, this unregistered access to the system caused the reactive security system to pingback his location!
The remaining cannon, targeting Hester, pulled another rubix-fractal bit and morphed itself 360 degrees to instead fire on Vax’s hiding place in the catwalk! He threw himself out of the way as Bannon, having recovered, pulled his pistol and shot the cannon to throw off its aim! No dice! The reactive security constructed a deflector shield out of its own components and ricocheted Bannon’s bullet off somewhere into the hull, all while its lightning-bolt electrified the railing of catwalk holding Vax — jumping from there to his cybernetic braincase and corrupting his optics!
Ella, hearing all of this chaos going on, got into the computer system and looked at the ship’s power schematics and used her own brilliance to assess what was what. She hesitated to simply kill the power, because the crate was still inside, and she was right: the vault door can be deactivated when power is being supplied, but if power is cut then the door is designed to reseal with powerful magnetic bolts. However, there will be a few seconds to enter the vault and the schematics suggested that an emergency route existed out of the vault, allowing it to be used as a panic room in certain scenarios. She forwarded all this info to the crew and then shut down the batteries!
Back outside, Qatalla wrestled with the knife-wielder riding behind her while the driver did his best to shake her loose from the skiff! The knife-wielder went to stab her in the throat — but had already had her laser-knife plunged into his chest, as he toppled helplessly off the back of the skiff and was dragged along the rocks and sand by his security harness. As Qatalla prepared to turn her knife on the driver again, the skiff suddenly jumped a sand dune, sailing through the air before nose-planting into the sand with a sickening crumple! The passengers are thrown clear, and roll across the sands in a heap! While recovering, Qatalla has enough time to process the Shards of Xa shuttle settling down beside their own, disgorging additional pirates onto SR-388’s surface.
In the cargo bay, Hester takes off in a sprint to reach the vault! The remaining fractal cannon gets off one final shot before it loses power completely, and Hester easily evades it like some kind of space-valkyrie or something, scooping up Bannon by the hand as she goes! Vax watches from the catwalk as Hester and Bannon enter the vault and get their hands on the cargo as the doors nearly grind shut and seal them in. But Vax is a clever guy with a bright idea! He draws and throws one of his shock knives at the vault, and managed to sink it into the tracks of the door! It discharges, and the vault doors gradually open — just slightly — as the door drains the power cell of the knife!
Bannon and Hester take this opportunity to drag the cargo out into the open, just as the vault doors conclude slamming shut with a thunderous CLANG. A job well done, right? Well, celebrations are cut short when they realize they’re now surrounded by seven Shard pirates — must have come out of the jungle and crawled in through the opening in the cargo hold’s hull during the chaos of dragging the cargo loose. They’re arranged in a semi circle around the two of them — but one of them steps forward and puts their gun to Bannon’s head, taking him hostage!
And that was where we left off, an excellent cliff-hanger for our next session next Saturday!
#UnchartedTravel
#UnchartedTravel
I spent today throwing together a “pull list” of names for my IRL campaign of Uncharted Worlds that starts this Friday. I know how hard it can be to put on the spot and name things — especially locations — especially in settings that can be so removed from any context the players are familiar with. So, I spent today with some random planet generators, did some trimming, did some tweaking, did some inventing, and I share the results with you.
172 Planets, split into two lists of 86.
The first 86 are intended to be “far-flung” alien worlds, for campaigns where your space opera has no ties to Earth, Earthlings, Earth history, or the like. I’ve done my best to scour this list and remove or modify foreign language words that the generators decided sounded “weird enough” to be alien. I’m sure I haven’t gotten all of them.
The second 86 are various words, primarily but not entirely in English, that I could imagine getting bolted on far-flung space opera worlds as names. Some of them are folk lore or historical, some are simply colors, others suggest a planet’s features are responsible for the name, and others are just fun nouns and adjectives that sound great if you say them in a Darth Vader or Han Solo voice.
There’s no details to go with any of these names: they’re arranged randomly so that I or any of my players can just choose one and make up the rest as we go along. The second list is the more evocative of the two, and should definitely paint an image in the players’ minds about what the world is like, so you can mine their thoughts for details. The first list, though, GM’s will have to make use of some canny follow-up questions to figure out what the planet or system is like.
Please enjoy! If you like some of these, feel free to say so in the comments — maybe even share what kind of ideas are inspired by one of these!
#UnchartedTravel
#UnchartedTravel
Some people roll through here asking about how to best handle alien environments in their game; how do we make up the worlds that our PCs set foot on — where they get up to no-good? There’s plenty of ways of making these planets, and I think one excellent way would be to crowdsource these worlds! I mean, hell, why not, right? Who’s to say that a planet you make up wouldn’t fit perfectly into my game? So, I’m throwing out the hashtag #UnchartedTravel as a place where we can showcase the things we’ve made up that anyone’s heroes could run across on their travels: worlds, locations, individuals… Think of it as a tour guide for the galaxy!
So, for the inaugural entry I’m going to draw people’s attention to Vast & Starlit on Drivethrurpg. It’s a lovely little microgame by Epidiah Ravachol that uses no dice, and is just all about having an exciting conversation about space brigands. It’s pay-what-you-want right now, so you can scope it out for nothing if you’re wary of this. But man there is some solid stuff in there! Such as, for example, its guidelines to making aliens and far-off planets.
You pick a baseline, and the rest of the players tweak, exaggerate, or reverse specific aspects of that baseline. Do this three to five times, and then reincorporate the aspects while discarding the baseline. By way of example, I’ll take it for a spin.
I’ll be using my hometown, Pittsburgh. I’ll be using these five aspects:
1. The area has a unique dialect sometimes called the ugliest accent in America.
2. The City is known for its three rivers and its “golden triangle” collection of bridges.
3. Former steel city, now a booming city for medicine.
4. Pittsburgh has pretty okay public transit… its free anywhere within the city, as long as you don’t cross the river.
So let’s mess with those and learn about the planet Yinza VII!
1. Ugly dialect? Exaggerate! The people of Yinza VII have this weird extra sound-producing organ in their chest cavities that kind of sounds like dubstep through a garbage disposal. They can understand you just fine, but you’re going to need an interpreter if you’re going to make any kind of deal with a Yinzese merchant.
2. Rivers and bridges? Tweak! Yinza VII is known for its Golden Pyramids, strange alien objects left behind by the Yinzese gods (so they claim). It’s hard to argue with them though (language notwithstanding), because water has bubbled up from the soil beneath the pyramids for eons, flowing into three life-giving rivers surrounding the capitol.
3. Steel, then Medicine? Exaggerate! Yinza VII is practically overflowing with medicine — its those pyramids and that water again! Pretty much everything edible or drinkable on this world will treat what ails you, keeping you healthy and young. However, the metals in the soil are of really poor quality, and the people don’t get out into space on their own. They’re stingy about exporting any of their crops, just to give themselves a bargaining chip with the rest of the galactic community.
4. Free Transit? Reverse! Yinza VII is highly strict about the movement of its citizens, for two reasons. One: ensure no one disturbs the Golden Pyramids (except of course for the wealthy and powerful, but ain’t that always the truth?). Two: ensure that the delicate ecological balance that lends rejuvenating qualities to their food and drink is not disturbed. The end result is something resembling a “benign” police state. You’re free to go wherever and do whatever (within the bounds of the law), as long as you can demonstrate you’re not traveling too far afield without your papers or without proper clearance from the powers that be.
So, hey, there’s a planet for you to use in upcoming games of Uncharted Worlds! Yinza VII! World of Golden Pyramids, inexplicable rejuvenating rivers and foods, a populace whose language is impenetrable to offworlders, and a transit bureau with all the enforcement power you’d expect from military police. Does one of your PCs need a medical miracle right now? Can they get the permits to land, or do they run the blockade? Can they get someone to understand what they need? What if a member of the crew is “relocated” by the transit bureau for byzantine reasons, or something from the ship goes missing across the nearest border?
Hope folks enjoyed this example of making a planet the Vast & Starlit way. Seriously, its a fun way to think up weird space opera stuff, should you need it.
(apropos of nothing, I picture the Yinzese as looking like smaller, bipedal versions of that giant pig that shared water with Finn in Force Awakens)
I kicked off 2016 the right way: I showed my young sister-in-law Return of the Jedi for the first time, completing…
I kicked off 2016 the right way: I showed my young sister-in-law Return of the Jedi for the first time, completing her viewing of the Original Trilogy in time to take her to see The Force Awakens this weekend. As I was watching it, some thoughts rattled around in my head, so I decided I would talk about them.
The Star Wars movies make really great use of Jump Points. Not quite perfect, I’d say, since everyone always winds up scattered and dealing with things sequentially rather than simultaneously. While I admit that simultaneity of crises isn’t necessary for a good Jump Point, I would imagine it works better than “So you two show up at the crime lord’s palace… and okay, so later, you two walk in… and okay, so finally you show up.” But, I digress.
Star Wars has really awesome Jump Points! “Your Military Personality Leia stands before Jabba… Hey, Industrial Explorer Chewie, what con are you two running to get close to the Scoundrel Starfarer Han? Oh, she’s posing as a bounty hunter and you as her prisoner? Rad… And hey, Leia why is Jabba about to take you seriously? Oh shit, you have a LIVE GRENADE in your hand? Hell yeah, okay, let’s go from there…” That is so rad! It goes off great, with a perfect 10+ and Chewie is in the palace waiting for the breakout, and then it all goes downhill with a really bad miss while defrosting Han.
This is just such a fun way to start off a session, especially if the GM keeps a good pace and keeps things moving — this part in the movie runs for something like 15 or 20 minutes before the whole band is back together and about to get eaten by the Sarlacc. There’s definitely something to learn here: be like George Lucas… don’t leave any players sitting around doing nothing for very long; round ’em up, and throw them all into danger fast as you can.
Second thought, and probably the more interesting thought: oh man I frickin’ loved that lightsaber duel with Vader at the end. Jeez. And as I watched it, I processed stuff that I totally knew before, but that I was seeing differently now that I have Uncharted Worlds in my brain. Like, scope this out: obviously Vader is dangerous, sure, so he’s a Threat (Agenda: “Push Luke to the Dark Side” I figure). But if Luke makes his roll, then the fights over, right? No way! Vader as a person isn’t the only threat here!
Remember, after all, that Anakin Skywalker was a master swordsman! His form and superior swordsmanship (because, honestly, Vader is the better duelist of the pair — Luke only beats him by giving in to Dark Side) are a Threat in and of themselves! Can your Mystic Explorer (or whatever you want to call Luke) work through Vader’s [Superior Defense] (its agenda is to “Protect Vader” probably) to even land a blow? Hell, if you wanted to, you could even throw [Dread] on top as its own Threat! Luke obviously didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to fight his father, especially not being egged on by the Emperor as he was! I think [Dread] is a perfect Threat, and its Agenda is probably “Weaken Resolve.” So that’s Three Threats right? But in a Star Wars game, The Dark Side is probably a constant, ubiquitous Threat… and then there’s Palpatine with his Control of the Imperial Machine, Force Lightning, Lightsaber Skills, and whatever else you can imagine…
Return of the Jedi showed me that THIS is how you make one-on-one fights in Space Opera resonate mechanically. You, as the MC, still need to bring the pathos, the scene building, the stake-setting and all that to the table… but if you feel like a one-and-done roll deflates the drama? Remember that Threats come in all shapes and sizes! They’re not all Slugs on sailbarges getting choked out (uh, THAT was a one-and-done roll to kill a Threat!). Some of your Threats have impossible levels of training that must be overcome, reputations that cripple their enemies’ spirits, and all manner of advantages even before the PCs can take an honest swing at the Bad Guy behind the mask! Think beyond the dude being thrashed on by your PC when you want to make the fight feel mechanically heavy — think about the reasons why this dude is so dangerous, or why this situation is so threatening and important… I bet you’ll find what you’re looking for.
And hey, this is my first post under the hashtag #UnchartedMedia (or #MediaMonday , take your pick) where I hope to ramble about how the sci-fi goodness we consume can influence the games we run! I’m going to try and do a few of these each week, and I would love it if the community got involved in responding or making their own #UnchartedMedia posts!
If you haven’t seen Dark Matter, I highly recommend it.
If you haven’t seen Dark Matter, I highly recommend it. My wife and I have been watching Season 1 on Netflix (haven’t finished yet, please be kind) and loving it tons. I can’t help but think it’s format would make a fantastic Uncharted Worlds game. It’s a Ship campaign, everyone has their Careers and four skills, and the Jump Point is waking up to your ship falling apart with no memory of how this came to be. Every moment that happens in play that is new for the players is just as new for the characters! You can ask players about their characters by asking them what they discover about themselves on the SectorNet! Every time they advance and take a new Skill, it really is them just suddenly remembering they can do this thing!
A+ show, A+ inspiration.
#ToProsperIsToFall #Part3
#ToProsperIsToFall #Part3
Happy turkey day!
Welcome to Part 3 of my play report for my on-going Colony game of Uncharted Worlds! This time, gameplay was smooth but slow-moving; this was a bit of a talking heads session, but no real problem there. Assessment got a real workout this time, as did the Educator Skill, and now everybody is sitting on some delicious, delicious Data Points.
Generally, I divide my PbP games into sessions on a weekly basis: Monday through Friday is game time, with weekends belonging to the players to do whatever things need their attention as adults. In real life, game length can vary widely between 2 hours all the way out to wild weekend long game-a-thons; online, the equivalent is more about user activity than time invested. But: one week, one session, that’s how I roll.
Now let’s get to it first with a character recap. If you want better details about what happened last time, or want to know more details about our Factions or more in-depth character details, use the To Prosper Is To Fall Hashtag above to find Parts 1 and 2, or browse the community for the rest of my To Prosper Is To Fall posts.
Our Cast of Protagonists are:
• Dr. Merit Pantaleimon is an Academy Missionary (Productive/Academic/Explorer) with Loyalty to The Academy on Alexandria and indebted to them for her life, education, and status among them
• Zeph Athena Parthenon is an Ambassador (Galactic/Starfarer/Personality) with Loyalty to Hermes Corporation and indebted to them for his Class-2 starship “The New Horizon”
• Jiro “Marat” Kankkunen is a Turncoat Spy (Rigid/Clandestine/Outlaw) indebted to Acheron Securities for their gear/training/knowledge he stole when he went AWOL; Hermes Corp for smuggling him out of Acheron space; and the Void Confederation for pushing through his paperwork to get a new identity and colonist status somewhere on the frontier
—
And now:
“Last time… on To Prosper is to Fall…”
• Imagine seeing a horrible sandstorm filled with red lightning sweep over the colony
• Imagine seeing crops get destroyed while we hear Harmony and Merit talk about how vital they are
• Imagine seeing Merit and Cosmos talking about the planet Fatima and the lost Agri-Box and SmartSeeds
• Imagine seeing a starship get blasted by lightning while hearing Liv and Zeph shout back and forth about landing the damn thing, intercut with scenes of its repair
• Imagine seeing Liv throwing some debris to the side while audio tells us the new machining parts are ruined, intercut with the Confederation Overseer reminding Zeph he has until the end of the month not to default on his contract
• Imagine seeing Reason say he thinks he knows where the damn storm came from, intercut with Ilyana standing over Crux’s bloodied body
• Imagine seeing Jiro kick Ilyana’s ass, with Jiro’s audio demanding answers, intercut with him snapping her fingers and her cries while saying Acheron circumvented Confederation law to use Prosper’s satellite
—
We advanced time by two days, from October 5 5660 to October 7 5660, giving time for the Severe breakage that the New Horizon suffered to be repaired in full.
• In that time we establish that Ilyana is brigged by the Confederation, and they refuse to extradite her into Prosper’s control.
• The Confederation would consider exchanging Ilyana for her sabotage device — however, the Colony heads claim no knowledge of its whereabouts.
• Turns out, that’s because Vandikar is holding onto it and is lying to the Colony heads about it.
• The Colony’s administration is locking horns with their Confederation sponsors about Ilyana, and it’s not going to end well.
• Word of the growing tensions, and the saboteur, has spread throughout Prosper.
Breakdown of the action this session:
• Zeph went to meet with Merit and they dug into Miane‘s work contract with Fountains.
• After a lot of work, they sussed out that the contract was strongly in Miane’s favor — good wages, clauses covering advancement. This suggested that Fountain was a little desperate, probably to stay competitive with other trade barges.
• Having done this favor for Zeph, and on the heels of the Ambassador saying “if there’s every anything you need…” as thanks, Merit made an appeal to get his help salvaging the lost Agri-Box.
• Zeph is unsure: he has 3 weeks and 3 days to complete his delivery of the drill parts for the Confederation and he still needs to secure merchandise to replace what was lost; it’s a 3 week trip to and from as it is, without a Wild Jump.
• Meanwhile, Jiro talks his criminal bosses Vandikar and The Gerant into letting him get his hands on the weird device that Ilyana used to sabotage Prosper’s NavCon tower in order to learn more about it.
• They accept that he’s a truly skilled criminal with all manner of connections, so they think he’s the right man — but they want to keep the lid on what they’ve got ahold of. They want to know who he’s sharing it with.
• Jiro is cagey, because he wants to get Merit’s help, but not bring the criminal underworld to her doorstep.. Sadly, The Gerant has eyes everywhere and word gets back to him that she is who Jiro is talking to.
• So, Jiro shows up with the device, overhears Merit and Zeph discussing an illegal salvage op, quietly announces himself and asks Merit to take a look at the gadget he’s brought.
• Zeph recognizes the thing as a slave-circuit. The Hermes Corp fleet uses something like it as emergency analog stop-gaps, in the event of a digital autopilot failure.
• Merit wants to know where it came from, and then the tension in the room skyrockets when the Ambassador and the Missionary realize Jiro is the man who beat and tortured Ilyana the saboteur…
• …And that this is the missing device tearing apart the peace between the Confederation and Prosper.
• While that talk happens, Merit is plugging in the device to run a diagnostic and access it’s system logs. She has a hard time getting into the system, but Zeph steps in to bypass some security protocols…
• …This brings the unit online, and gets them in, but it establishes a computer downlink between the slave-circuit and the master-circuit.
• Merit doesn’t notice, and is reading away, but Jiro notices it and immediately Deduces that there’s a problem: whoever is on the other end of the downlink is working with the saboteur, but hasn’t disconnected the link. They’re not trying to hide right now: they’re watching. They’re connected to Merit’s computer system and they’re learning about who has their hardware.
• Jiro tears out the connection, trying to head off any more trouble he’s inadvertently brought down on Merit.
• Merit cross-references the record of slave-circuit commands that she saw in the logs with some other information in her library and comes back with some new information:
• The slave-circuit was remotely activated, hijacking the Navigation Control Tower’s satellite feed 24 hours before the storm that wound up decimating the fields, injuring dozens, and causing tens of thousands in damages.
• The other slave-circuits on the network (their orders copied locally on this circuit) were issued orders that Merit recognizes as zero-g positioning corrections. She correctly concludes they’re orders issued to Prosper’s satellite.
• Which means someone was actually aboard the satellite, installing additional slave circuits. This is a little concerning. The log also shows that someone was siphoning information from the satellite’s logs.
• She is able to use her brilliant training to translate the instructions in the log into a working idea of where the satellite’s cameras were pointed instead of at the colony, and she circles the place on a map.
• Zeph, being the Colony’s Ambassador (and thus up to speed on their history), recognizes the location: a plain of land some 300km away. The area is criss-crossed with rich and dense deposits of prisellium (jump drive fuel) that make the area geologically unstable, and unsafe to settle. Prosper’s original settlers couldn’t erect a colony there or nearby, and couldn’t justify a remote outpost so far off so early into settling the planet, so it has remained untouched.
• So, clearly the saboteur is working with someone who has demands on Prosper’s claim to the area’s prisellium veins… Jiro knows that it’s Acheron who has these designs. Zeph wants to gift the circuit to the Confederation in exchange for Ilyana.
• However, Merit and Jiro convince him it is best to hold onto the circuit. Merit by arguing that there’s no way of knowing the Confederation will follow through on anything they learn, and Jiro by arguing that there is more going on behind the scenes and acting too soon could be dangerous.
• Zeph gives in; he wants to know how long they can afford hold onto the device and lie to the Colony and the Confederation — while trying to get more information from Ilyana — before retribution comes for them. Jiro says he can handle it.
• With no more info to be gained for now, and with their makeshift counter-conspiracy now in place, the trio’s business is done. Zeph veers conversation back to Merit’s illicit favor, perhaps figuring Jiro has already shown his own hand (at least sort of)? Zeph tells her they’ll need help to pull off this salvage job.
—
A very talky session, but hey nothing wrong with that.
One of the players was super interested in a ship, so I let them have the New Horizon with tons of social baggage — so I’m trying to push that ship into the limelight, make it needed, put it at risk, so the player can enjoy it. We’re well on our way to that.
The players really liked the idea of s Colony game, so I’m doing my best to think of how Threats would come for the Colony besides the immediately obvious choice of “Reavers!” or the equivalent. I’m taking inspiration from Western movies, and my associate knowledge of claim-jumping, cattle rustling, et cetera and from Science Fiction source material like Battlestar Galactica and Defiance. If you haven’t checked out Defiance, by the way, it’s an excellent source for Colony game inspiration.
I’m really enjoying the Assessment move! I don’t know why, but I particularly like this implementation/fusion of the Read a Sitch/Learn about the world moves of other World hacks. The players gave it a workout this session, learning several important things about Miane’s contract with Fountains and about Ilyana’s slave-circuit device.
Going forward from here, I suspect next session we’re going to see Barter get rolled to see if Zeph has any wealth to his name, and Acquisition to gear up for Merit’s expedition. We’ll see how things shake out!
Below, I’ve included a link to the slide deck we’re using for our game, with character sheets and so forth.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1c1dvlHqRqR9FxIExix4Lt9HBPDQbN9_0z1xcH-pWhvY/edit?usp=sharing
Extremely important to me for my players’ upcoming heist on some Super Science Botany; maybe of interest to you and…
Extremely important to me for my players’ upcoming heist on some Super Science Botany; maybe of interest to you and yours!
Originally shared by Mukil Elango
Scientists grow electric wires/components inside plants which could harvest energy from photosynthesis and other applications.
#science #plants
Have some fun inspiration for a Jump Point in your Uncharted World’s game.
Have some fun inspiration for a Jump Point in your Uncharted World’s game.
Originally shared by Rob Garitta
Place your bids. Auctioning trade rights to worlds.
http://twilightgm.blogspot.com/2015/11/solar-queens-and-cosmic-pigs-in-poke.html
#ToProsperIsToFall #Part2
#ToProsperIsToFall #Part2
Welcome to Part 2 of my play report for my on-going Colony game of Uncharted Worlds! This time, gameplay went more smoothly and we wrapped up a proper amount of play in a week… unlike last time, which took a full month, oh goodness.
Generally, I divide my PbP games into sessions on a weekly basis: Monday through Friday is game time, with weekends belonging to the players to do whatever things need their attention as adults. In real life, game length can vary widely between 2 hours all the way out to wild weekend long game-a-thons; online, the equivalent is more about user activity than time invested. But: one week, one session, that’s how I roll.
Now let’s get to it first with a character recap. If you want better details about what happened last time, or want to know more details about our Factions or more in-depth character details, use the To Prosper Is To Fall Hashtag above to find Part 1 or browse the community for the rest of my To Prosper Is To Fall posts.
Our Cast of Protagonists are:
• Dr. Merit Pantaleimon is an Academy Missionary (Productive/Academic/Explorer) with Loyalty to The Academy on Alexandria and indebted to them for her life, education, and status among them
• Zeph Athena Parthenon is an Ambassador (Galactic/Starfarer/Personality) with Loyalty to Hermes Corporation and indebted to them for his Class-2 starship “The New Horizon”
• Jiro “Marat” Kankkunen is a Turncoat Spy (Rigid/Clandestine/Outlaw) indebted to Acheron Securities for their gear/training/knowledge he stole when he went AWOL; Hermes Corp for smuggling him out of Acheron space; and the Void Confederation for pushing through his paperwork to get a new identity and colonist status somewhere on the frontier
—
And now:
“Last time… on To Prosper is to Fall…”
• Imagine a horrible sandstorm filled with red lightning sweeps over the colony
• Imagine crops get destroyed while we hear Harmony and Merit talk about how vital they are
• Imagine a starship get blasted by lightning — intercut with scenes of destruction inside — while hearing Liv and Zeph shout back and forth about landing the damn thing
• Imagine Jiro watching Vandikar’s “business associates” leave, outraged with his offer on their narcotics supply
• Imagine seeing Nenn dragged to safety by Merit, in complete and utter slack-jawed awe of her
• Imagine the cargo hold of the New Horizon basically torn to pieces, and we see Liv throwing some debris to the side while audio tells us the new machining parts are ruined
• Imagine Jiro ushering a pair of people into the bar while sand and lightning whip around the screen threateningly, and we hear Reason say he thinks he knows where the damn storm came from
• Imagine Merit looking at a plant — and dialogue tells us its the only plant left from the field — and we see her start smashing it to paste; intercut with the surgery that saves a fieldworker’s life
• Imagine Jiro observing the mark underneath Reason’s prisoner’s ear, complete with dramatic music telling you “yeah, that’s a big deal.”
—
Breakdown of the action this session:
• Vandikar and Reason quarrel about what should be done with the Acheron infiltrator; Vandikar thinks it’s a “colony issue” to be dealt with internally (and likely he has an invested interest in the weird tech she brought with her) – meanwhile Reason thinks this is a significant enough threat that the Void Confederation should be involved.
• Reason tries to appeal to Jiro to weigh in and give him a hand, but Jiro plays it cool and is noncommittal, insisting that instead they get answers first and worry about jurisdiction later. Jiro picks Crux, a lax (and maybe alcoholic) doctor out of the crowd in the bar.
• Crux and Jiro turn Vandikar’s private booth into a makeshift first aid station, laying out the unconscious infiltrator on the table. She’s in bad shape: bloody face and her throat is torn up, both raked by the sandstorm; swollen black eye from fighting with Reason.
• While Jiro is getting some salt water for Crux to clean the patient’s throat, he gets the idea to palm the infiltrator’s weird device that Vandikar is coveting and has now taken from Reason… but plans on doing it later. Then, there is a violent crash.
• Jiro finds the infiltrator has awoken, broken Crux’s nose (and the table) and has her boot planted on his chest, pinning him to the ground. Oh god, she recognizes Jiro (remember he is AWOL from Acheron)!
•What does Jiro do? He closes the distance and forces an entire shaker of salt into her open mouth and throat to choke her (look, you use the tools at hand), shutting her up before she can say his real name out loud.
• Jiro gets an unwelcome surprise when he discovers she is a Gecko™ brand Acheron Infiltrator – even whilst choking on a whole canister of salt she still is fast enough to both put Jiro into a headlock inches from snapping his neck and twist his arm around so far she could snap it and/or dislocate it with one small flex.
• But see, Jiro is also an Acheron asset — or at least he was one. So, while anyone else would need to get loose before they could do anything, he goes with it, striking the infiltrator square in the diaphragm and getting into a pure Jason Bourne-esque fight before finally getting loose and having her at his mercy.
• Jiro wants to know who she is and what she’s doing here, but she resists answering… until Jiro starts snapping her fingers one by one. Turns out, Jiro has a past with Acheron, and they taught him everything he knows. The infiltrator finally relents: her name is Ilyana and her assignment was to block transmissions between the surface colony and their satellite overhead.
• Why? So Acheron Operatives could have undisturbed access to its sensors and cameras for 24 hours while surveying the planet below! Since the rights to colonizing the planet belong to Prosper, via the Confederation, Acheron has gone behind everyone’s back, seeking new territory.
• Meanwhile elsewhere, Zeph tries to categorize the losses from the New Horizon’s dismal landing; meanwhile, his daughter Miane laments having to live planetside. She is – like her father – an Ender, born and raised in space, and she feels stifled by gravity, the atmosphere, the complete upheaval of her lifestyle at her father’s hands.
• Miane’s complaints border on the xenophobic, calling those around her born on a planet Turfers, and her words raise the ire of pilot Liv, leading to a shouting match where Liv criticizes Zeph for being the kind of Ender who passes on his own arrogance to his daughter. Liv tells Zeph she wouldn’t be surprised if one day he just picked up and left, abandoning the colony – he has a daughter to worry about and he’s not from around here, how can Prosper ever trust him?
• Zeph is in a tough spot: Liv is criticizing his position in the community, questioning his reliability, and even suggests he can’t properly run his own ship… if she walks out of here, spreads that to the other pilots, his work is shot. He’s screwed. Plus, if he handles this poorly, well, what message will that send his daughter?
• Luckily, he handles himself with grace and poise, explaining – sternly – his decision to remain with the colony and his decisions… Liv is temporarily placated, acquiescing to his command once more and even apologizing in her own way for her behavior.
• Then he turns his attention to Miane and chastises her behavior, telling her she needs to adjust and accept the new life they have. There’s no going back. This is where they are. Miane – with some reluctance – says she understands… and that she has even taken steps to try and become part of the community
• Miane reveals a contract she has signed with Fountains, a captain of Class-1 cargo tug The Wayward Sun; she intends to join his ship as a junior engineer and make the six-month intrasystem delivery circuit. The way Miane sees it, she gets to touch space again and live the life she wants, but she is still doing it for the community and will be based out of Prosper. Its perfect, right? Zeph is unsure, and wants Merit to take a look at the contract and make sure Fountains isn’t pulling anything.
• When the storm breaks, Merit and her research crew move their wounded to the Clinic so they can tended to.
• There, Merit learns that the field hand (whose life saving treatment required the destruction of the last living plant) should recover nicely, although there will be some permanent scarring; their name is Leslie, we determined.
• Merit also learns from her cohort, Squire – an Academy-trained nurse – that Nenn (the fieldworker who thinks Academics are magic, and whom Merit found praying in the middle of the storm for her to save him) has been telling his family and friends about what she did, and others are being swayed by his words.
• At about this point, Nenn’s grandfather comes into the clinic, finds Merit and gives her a leather necklace with a painted piece of paper: it’s a Cardyst charm painted with the symbol (remember Cardyst’s tattoo their arms to commemorate life events) for “Mystic” or “Cleric” – basically, the symbol a Cardyst religious leader marks their body with when they take religious vows to serve a community.
• Merit thanks him, and then behind his back tells Squire this behavior should be discouraged; Squire doesn’t see the harm in it if it means the conservative Cardysts will stop fighting against every scientific advancement The Academy introduces to Prosper.
• Around then Zeph appears, looking for Merit to discuss Miane’s decision and the contract. Cue some quality role-playing between the players: The Academy wants knowledge to be free, and Hermes Corporation thinks their proprietary space knowledge is their right and everyone else can get fucked. The players handle these ideological hurdles really well and they play out a scene where Merit questions Zeph’s parenting decision to let Miane run off with Fountain’s crew, Zeph laments the difficulties in giving your child room to grow while disciplining them without stifling their hearts, and finally Merit says she will make time to examine the paperwork later.
• Finally, with nothing else to keep her busy, Merit works up the nerve to go tell Cosmos – the colony’s botanist – that the crops are a complete loss; shredded by the storm, buried in the sand, even the lively specimens that looked like good candidates are gone, and that she had to destroy a sample to save Leslie’s life.
• Merit finds Cosmos in the hydroponics bay of the main colony facility, as you would expect, and when she breaks the news about the loss of the crops Cosmos flies into a manic state. She smashes an algae pool, she collapses against a wall, she has a fit and is a sad sight to behold.
• Turns out that Cosmos blames herself for the fieldworkers who were injured by the storm, and she is exhausted by season upon season year upon year of failed crops and it is getting to her. Cosmos is a Cardyst, and she has struggled for years to marry her scientific pursuits with her religious ideology and the balancing act has begun to wear on her and she is finally asking herself if the two can be reconciled, or if she is a failure to the entire colony.
• Merit speaks some encouraging words, and Cosmos mentions off hand that if she could just get her hands on some SmartSeeds – a high-tech, highly expensive, impossible to acquire colonization tool that the Confederation purchases on behalf of “approved” colonial efforts – she could turn some things around. Well…
• Merit remembers hearing about the last colony that the Confederation bought those for: a world called Fatima, this perfect idyllic wonderland with twin suns and beautiful auroras that was to be developed by a tourism megacorporation. However, the colony vessel went missing! Hmmm!
• Merit shares this info with Cosmos, and she lights up with excitement! If Merit knows where the SmartSeeds could be then they have to seek them out! In Cosmos’ worldview, Prosper will never truly be civilization until the people have tamed the land and become one with it… and the SmartSeed technology will finally make it possible, make up for the years of work she considers a failure.
• Cosmos’ arguments appeal to Merit, even as her Academy education tells her that her job is to educate the galaxy, not to gallivant across it in search of adventure. Merit’s passion for discovery wins out, however, and she is persuaded; they just need a pilot, and a ship.
• Merit remembers that Zeph wants her to concoct a lesson plan for Miane, and she tells Cosmos that the good Ambassador “owes me a favor”
• Meanwhile, Zeph hits up Herasdi – the Confederation’s Adjunct Overseer responsible for maintaining tariffs in the Colony and ensuring efficiency in the mining operation. Zeph breaks the news that the drill parts the Confederation ordered and paid for were lost when the ship was racked by lightning in the dust storm.
• It turns out — according to Zeph’s player — that the way things work around the colony is this: as long as the Colony keeps giving a hefty percentage of all gold silver tin and prisellium that they mine to the Confederation, they will foot the bill for most large scale construction projects in Prosper, provided the people demonstrate they have or can manage the infrastructure to support it. The drill parts that Zeph was transporting were purchased by the Confederation – with transport through Zeph arranged by the Confederation – to expand Prosper’s mining operation in return for an expanded deal between the two entities. So the loss of the parts is more than a little political fiasco.
• Zeph says he needs time to repair the New Horizon (which is totally true, its roughed up). Herasdi says that’s fine, but hey, delivery promise was by the end of the month and if the parts don’t arrive then there will be no pay for Zeph and they’ll happily pursue damages against him.
• Zeph gets the hell out of there and sets to work on New Horizon, leading the repair crews in an all day operation in the blistering desert sun amidst dust and a whole fleet of grounded ships, negotiating not enough repair crews, tools, machines, or parts to go around. What with one thing and another – and a dozen hours – the hull and the hold are finally repaired, as is the Clogged Intake malfunction. However…
• The New Horizon‘s shields are still down; the lightning strike, combined with the duststorm getting into every system has apparently inverted the charge running through the shield emitters, and there’s no way to bring them back online until that charge has been flushed, and Zeph doesn’t have onhand or in Prosper the tools needed for that extensive of an operation. He’s going to need to pay a visit to the star system’s local shipyard, and hope he can cover the costs.
—–
And that’s where we are, going into Part III. Lots of new and exciting ideas and characters got introduced this game!
We now know that it was Leslie who Merit saved (don’t ask if Leslie is a first or last name). We met Crux, a maybe terrible Doctor? We’ll see. We met Squire, a fellow Academic sent to this planet as a Missionary just like Merit, except that he’s not a huge fan of the place. We met Cosmos, Prosper’s botanist and we got to hear about her personal trouble reconciling the Cardyst’s Taoist/Animist/Amish principles with her pursuit of science. We met Herasdi, the Confederation’s person-on-the-ground in Prosper. We were introduced to Fountains, a cargo ship captain, but we haven’t met him yet… and man, I wonder if Zeph is going to have words for him anytime soon.
We got introduced to the idea that Acheron biologically modifies some of their agents! Specifically, we were introduced to the idea that Acheron has an entire marketing division labeling its soldiers for mass consumption. What the hell is a Gecko™ Brand infiltrator? What other brands are there?!
We got to see words like Ender and Turfer, terms that delineate between classes of people in our setting: those spaceborn and raised, and those bound by gravity.
We’re seeing a few of the Cardysts starting to fit the “magic” of the Academics into their religious worldview.
We got introduced to new terms like “SmartSeeds” and the complex technology behind them and the Agri-Box that governs them! And we discovered a new world, Fatima, where this technology may even now be lost! And oh man it looks like that space field trip might be happening! Who knows what kind of trouble they’ll run across hunting down the lost colony ship carrying this prize.
Oof, meanwhile, Zeph needs to get in the sky and hunt down new machine parts wherever he can if he is going to have any chance at all of profiting from this trip and avoiding the legal wrath of the Confederation… but the trip alone will take something like a month if he plays it safe, and by then Miane will have begun her job with Fountains… and thats not even accounting for his Shields still being dead! He needs to find answers, do his job, avoid trouble – its so hard being a space dad! Plus, ugh, there’s gonna be some political problems, I imagine, in light of those parts getting wrecked!
And of course let’s not forget this whole ‘Acheron hijacked our satellite to survey our planet for expansion, illicitly bypassing any kind of claims laws Prosper may have on the whole rock.’ How’s that gonna shake out? Are they gonna do anything about it? Is it time for a little spaceship jaunt up to the satellite to see what’s what?
Below, I’ve included a link to the slide deck we’re using for our game, with character sheets and so forth. You should be able to scroll through below, or open it in a new window by clicking the Google Slides icon.