Hello all you wonderful, supportive people. It’s been a bit of a crummy two weeks writing-wise. It’s been a struggle to get words on the page, kinda thing. I’m working at getting a good pace going again.
Faction Spotlight: Heirs of Taaj
I’ve uploaded a new faction spotlight for the Heirs of Taaj. They are the remnants of the old empire, noble houses who use their wealth and influence to rebuild the “age of nobility”.
This is one of the situations where I have to censor my own biases. The first draft of these guys was way too unambiguously evil, and I had to go back and make things more neutral. The whole “At Their Best” section helps with that, but the rest of the text needed to be a bit more neutral and academic about their outlook. I know I won’t succeed in expunging all of my own biases, but I can at least make an effort to give them a fair shake. Like every other faction, this faction will be the closest thing to The Good Guys in someone’s game.
Interestingly, their schemes ended up pretty positive, benign or only slightly evil.
What’s Next
Next I’ll start on the Dai’Rho, the drug-religion of the wandering warrior monks.
Gasp! Less than a week since the last update? What madness is this?
I’ve been tooling around with the presentation/layout of the Factions. See, I definitely don’t want to club readers over the head with a lot of background and information. What I want is to create a portrait, something vibrant and bold to inspire a gut-level understanding of what the faction is and how it behaves.
More importantly, I want the essential information to be clear, concise, and readily apparent. So here’s my 4-page structure that I’ll be using:
Page 1: Brief outline and history of the faction. “At their best” and “at their worst” sub-sections, defining them from the lens of protagonists and antagonists (portrayed differently depending whether the characters side with them or against them).
Page 2: Might, Reach, Structure, Ideology.
Page 3: Politics: How they interact with characters (what Favors they grant, what Debts they call in, what they do to opponents). How they perceive the other factions.
Hello all. Quick update this time around. Been doing a lot of small, uninteresting things with Carta this past week, so nothing to really “show”, except for this.
New Career: The Rebel
Part of making a heavily urban setting is that it completely invalidated most of the Explorer career, both mechanically and thematically. So I decided to go back to the drawing board and create a new career to replace the Explorer. Introducing The Rebel career (below).
Note that the symbol is not final, I need to do another pass on it.
I invite you all to take a gander, maybe try combining it with your favorite careers/skills and see if you can break anything in un-fun ways.
Rebel Design
I wanted something that fit more clearly in an oppressive, authoritarian, political landscape. At the same time, while I wanted to do away with the “nature/wilderness” aspects of Explorer, I definitely wanted to keep the reckless, brave aspects. The Rebel allowed me to salvage Boldly Go and Recklessness, which are two of the most well-received/popular skills in all of Uncharted Worlds.
The new skills play in areas I hadn’t really touched upon before. Well, ok “Walk Away” is something that could easily be in core UW and I’m kicking myself for not having it. But both “Instigate” and “Safehouse” are skills that are best served in a heavily urban setting like The Core. Personally I’m very happy with the way the career shaped up, I feel it provides some nice tools for creating archetypes.
(On that note, I find myself looking on UW with some… dissatisfaction. I know that Perfect Is The Opposite Of Finished, but man, I’ve learned a lot. There are some skills that just don’t sparkle at all. One day I’ll write Uncharted Worlds, 2nd Edition.)
What’s Next
Next update I’ll be re-introducing the Factions. I’m still working on creating a layout for each faction that provides the correct mix of information vs inspiration (I’m not a fan of info-dumps, they’re too scholarly/clinical.)
In which our hero laments his inability to do a dang weekly update
Hello! I am still around! It’s been a while.
Super long post incoming! /blaring klaxon
Print On Demand is back: UW and FBH, both Hard and Softcover!
It took forever, but I got my proofs and made my changes and got everything uploaded and they’re now available for print! Huzzah! The Hardcover and Softcover versions of both Uncharted Worlds and Far Beyond Humanity are available through DriveThruRPG.
You’ll also be happy to learn that I finally fixed the dang CYMK issue that was creating faded/desaturated covers. The latest proofs are just as vibrant as the kickstarter printed Lulu versions.
An apology to the Stellar Backers
I’d like to take this opportunity to give a humble and heartfelt apology to the Stellar Backers (100$+). I had promised to include characters, planets or factions designed by you in Carta Galaxia, which was supposed to be the first post-launch release. A year and a half later and work has just begun on Carta. That’s awful, and I feel terrible about it.
By way of apology, I’ll be sending each of the Stellar Backers a signed, printed hardcover copy of Far Beyond Humanity at my expense, and I’ll be in touch to get those characters, planets and factions. They will be immortalized in Carta Galaxia. It’s… just going to take a little longer than expected.
Now to the meaty stuff: design!
Carta Galaxia: Scope
I had posted a couple of polls earlier in the month, trying to get a feel of the scope and style of setting that people were expecting. The results were pretty clear; a significant majority preferred a sandbox approach limited to a single solar system (off-world stuff, but no Jump travel). So I’ll be committing to that. If that’s not your particular cup of tea, don’t worry, there are two more settings coming that will explore very different themes and scopes.
Carta Galaxia: Conspiracy System
There’s a popular philosophy in videogame design that encourages the designer to Find The Toy. This is especially true with sandbox games. So I’m applying some of that principle to designing this sandbox.
Specifically, this setting is one that revolves around inter-faction socio-political conflicts. Rather than create a set sequence of events and conflicts, I wanted something that felt fluid and organic. Thus, the Conspiracy System, which is linked at the bottom of the page.
The Conspiracy System is a story-generation mechanic: it creates mini-conflicts across a territory, tracking the rise and fall of factions as they try to gain power for themselves and dismantle the powerbase of their rivals. It has this wonderful “alive” feel, where the factions are always up to something, and the characters can get in on that action (or can be roped in to repay their Debts).
I’m super happy with how this turned out. I’ve amused myself just playing with it as a toy. And it’s setting neutral. It can be used in any campaign that has 5+ factions. I’m hoping that folks will find it useful to get the campaign, even if they don’t necessarily play with these specific factions and worlds.
I’m planning on doing this kind of “custom system” for each of the three campaign settings. Value added, kinda thing.
What’s Next
Next… week (hopefully), I’ll be introducing a whole new career to Carta Galaxia. It’ll be replacing the Explorer, who is sadly obsolete in this cityscape-riddled stellar dystopia.
I’m happy to report that it looks like the kinks have finally been worked out with the DTRPG print on demand stuff, especially regarding the faded covers. I’ve taken the softcover ordering down from the site in order to update the files. Plus! I’ll also be offering Uncharted Worlds in the (relatively) new Hardcover format as well.
Additionally, I’ve got both a hardcover and softcover Print On Demand version of Far Beyond Humanity in the works!
DTRPG has shipped all the files to the printer, and as soon as the printer approves I’ll be able to order Proof Copies, and then open the PoDs up for sale! Sadly, this probably means 2 weeks (including shipping).
Scope of the first Campaign Setting
You may have seen a vote post up on the community this past week. That was part of my big review/clean-up/overhaul of the first campaign setting (codenamed: The Core). The result is pretty clear; the setting will focus on a closed solar system: one major planet (divided into provinces) plus colonies, star bases, etc.
This will allow for some space-travel, but will make things a lot more cramped, to give that claustrophobic, omnipresent corporation-vibe for this cyberpunk-ish setting (neon-punk?). Plus I have some really fun GM/sandbox tech that I’ve been brewing up, which will be unveiled next week.
Introducing the Factions of the Core
Some of you may remember an old ooooold post about the factions and how they relate to each other. I’m recovering as much of that work as I can, but my design goals for the setting have changed somewhat, so there will naturally be changes.
– GalSec is gone: The presence of a military force in a political setting acted as an inhibitor, rather than an inciter. It toned down potential inter-faction hostilities. Now each faction is free to have their own security forces, rather than relying on the Space Cops. Plus GalSec itself was kinda boring pseudo-Western draconian military type faction. Also, with the scope reduction “Galactic Security” seemed kinda out of place. Maybe GalSec will find a home in another setting.
– Talwar SysTech has taken GalSec’s place. I realized I didn’t have a good old-fashioned rapacious MegaCorp! Obviously an oversight. Talwar has a monopoly over high tech goods, the SectorNet, cybernetics, and robotics. They are an extraterritorial corporation that directly challenges the Ministry’s government. NOTE: I’m not 100% sold on the “SysTech”. If you guys have a cooler Megacorp-ish name for Talwar, I’d be happy to consider it.
– Brekengraf has been renamed (rebranded) to ZindaNaya, just to keep a semi-consistent naming scheme. (More on that below).
The image at the bottom of this post shows how the factions relate to each other. Neighboring factions share a common philosophy or ideal (though this doesn’t keep them from conflict), while opposing factions are openly hostile to one another.
Theming and Naming
Some of you may have noticed the naming of the factions. You’ll see more of this theme when I introduce territories, cities and people. I’m drawing heavily on South Asia and the Middle East to inform and inspire this futuristic world. Japan, Europe and the US are usually the source material of sci fi, from Bladerunner to Firefly. I figured that I’d tap into my own Pakistani background and lightly throw in some South Asian flavor (key word: lightly. I’m no historian or sociologist or anything like that, I just grew up there).
As I continue to put out previews and such, if there’s anything that stands out as socially or culturally problematic, please flag it! I’ve been immersed in Western culture for long enough that I will likely miss something.
Anywho, that’s it for this week… I have a feeling I’m missing something, though. Did I ever make a post about Montreal ComicCon? I think I might have forgotten. I shall rectify that! Tomorrow! Or sometime this week?
One of the defining aspects of the first campaign (codenamed “The Core”) is going to be the Faction interactions and how omni-present they are. Six factions, each with their own agendas, dominions and schemes. Each uses catspaws and subterfuge to undermine each other without being so overt as to foster cooperation among their enemies. This campaign will cleave closest to cyberpunk/dystopian, while hopefully maintaining the Space Opera bold primary colors (Neonpunk? Is that a thing?)
However, I’m hitting a bit of structural dissonance: the scale. The themes and mood really calls for clustered cityscapes and omnipresent faction branding. Originally I was considering putting that into a galactic setting, with multiple inhabited planets and trade routes. But the more I toy with it, the more I feel that the setting would benefit from a scope reduction. It would allow more focus on the shifting landscape, and there would be less “dark”/unpopulated spaces.
Compared to an Intergalactic War setting or a Frontier Exploration setting, the Faction Web setting seems like the best opportunity to really pull in and make things crowded and claustrophobic, without all that pesky empty space to expand into. Make them struggle to get a bit of elbow room, kinda thing.
So here are my options, and I’d be interested to know what you guys think would be most interesting:
– Galactic: Most familiar, most compatible with standard Uncharted Worlds. Multi-planet empire, each planet ruled by a dominant faction with other factions trying to dethrone them, trade lanes, interplanetary passengers, space fleets.
– System: Single colonized solar system. One main planet separated into territories, plus a smattering of off-world territories (space stations, mining facilities, lunar colonies). Territories contested by multiple factions. Some space travel, but no Jumps. Needs custom/altered Explorer career, since everything is explored (and claimed).
– Planet: Single heavily populated planet, divided into territories. Focus on mega-cities. Territories contested by multiple factions. No space travel. needs custom/altered Explorer and Starfarer, since neither are useful as presented.
Note: I am purposefully not including “all of the above”. I’d like to create something specific, rather than generic. Theoretically, the Planet or System could be part of a larger Galaxy game, but it would be a Galaxy I would not write about. What I’m considering here is a change of Level of Magnification. How far I zoom in or out.
I have my own preferences and ideas, but I’ll admit that this is a bit of shaky ground for me, since I’ve always been more free form (gee, could you tell with the way UW is written 😛 ) and obviously I want to give the community what they would find the most interesting.
In our playtest game, you mentioned the idea of normal people being “Class 1” and Augmented being “Class 3” with regard to mods. I asked “well then what is Class 2?”
Class 2 could be what Brekengraf (sp?) is working on 🙂
I’ve been toying with the way planets will be presented in Carta Galaxia.
I’ve been toying with the way planets will be presented in Carta Galaxia. I’m hoping to make them deep enough without being intimidating/borning blocks of text. Here’s what I have so far, I was hoping I could get feedback about A) the general layout B) the amount of info given and C) the type of info given.
I’d also like to apologize for how slow I’ve been with Carta in general. Work has ramped up massively this past month (Damn you E3!) and I simply haven’t had the braincells/motivation to write after a long day at the office (what little energy I have when I come home is devoted to my son before we put him to bed, natch).
