Category: Uncharted Worlds: Discussion

Finally picked up Uncharted Worlds. The player principles on page 8 are just fantastic.

Finally picked up Uncharted Worlds. The player principles on page 8 are just fantastic.

Finally picked up Uncharted Worlds. The player principles on page 8 are just fantastic.

Sean Gomes – Question: What class ship would the Firefly class be? I’m trying to visualize the size of our ship.

Sean Gomes – Question: What class ship would the Firefly class be? I’m trying to visualize the size of our ship.

Sean Gomes – Question: What class ship would the Firefly class be? I’m trying to visualize the size of our ship.

Is there a way to link files in this group that everyone could access?

Is there a way to link files in this group that everyone could access?

Is there a way to link files in this group that everyone could access? I was thinking it would be cool to have a place where people could share their character sheets and ship sheets and in a sense build a library of pregens (or npcs)

Sean Gomes​

I’m bouncing back onto the wealth topic, and I’ve been mulling a few things around in my head that I wanted to toss…

I’m bouncing back onto the wealth topic, and I’ve been mulling a few things around in my head that I wanted to toss…

I’m bouncing back onto the wealth topic, and I’ve been mulling a few things around in my head that I wanted to toss out to the community for advice.

First, I think the abstract wealth system works in theory, but in practice my players are repeatedly asking “How much does X cost?” or “How much can we get for Y?” Example:

Last night they docked at a Hutt controlled spaceport. The Hutts keep trade taxes low, but charge tremendous docking fees. I described it as such, but the players immediately were trying to ascertain how much is “tremendous”…and I had no good answer for them. Mechanically, I treated it as an acquisition which I think RAW is correct. I explained abstract wealth, and we did work it into the fiction (they wound up finding a “friend” that worked in the port authority that allowed them to bypass the fees rather than spending cargo on an acquisition roll, but owed this friend some favors), but it felt incorrect to me.

Later, one of the players wanted to replace his blaster. Again, acquisition roll (though I think he could have just received one sans roll as it was just a Class 1).

Towards the end, the players wanted to pick up goods to trade with the mining facility they were heading towards (DataNet assessment, the facility needs Fusion Plant materials). They rolled two acquisitions, one success one partial so I ruled they got two cargo; one Class 2 parts, one Class 2 parts that was slightly unstable. They’re going to want to sell these at the next station and, potentially, not pick up new goods…how would we handle selling goods without getting anything for it (i.e. cashing in)? I’ve considered favors, credits, etc but I’m not convinced I’m going down the right track with any of them.

Possibly because I loved Trade Wars 2002, and I picked up ‘Suns of Gold’ for SWN the other day, I’m flirting with implementing the trade system from SoG. It’s decidedly not abstract, but has anyone employed something similar to that (fixed cost trading, basically)?

Advice/Criticism welcome. As a side note, we took the advice from my thread last week to heart and had a much better time with combat and conflict this week; explaining consequences went a long way in helping me adjudicate and helped both me and the players understand what they were trying to overcome.

Initial musings on Uncharted Planes, a thin reskinning of UW for a fantasy world of planar travel.

Initial musings on Uncharted Planes, a thin reskinning of UW for a fantasy world of planar travel.

Initial musings on Uncharted Planes, a thin reskinning of UW for a fantasy world of planar travel.

1. Stats and Moves: some things may need to be changed to fit the setting. Current thinking is:

Expertise -> feels too technical. Knowledge? Lore?

Assessment -> maybe Discover or Study or Dig (I kinda like Dig)

Get Involved -> feels too cheery. Maybe back to “Help or Hinder”

Brace for Impact -> Take A Hit

Patch Up -> almost fits. Maybe just plain old “Heal”

Open Fire / Launch Assault -> no good original ideas yet but i might combine them into one move.

2. Command doesn’t fit the intended style of play, so this will probably use a Seduce or Manipulate move from other PbtA games. Probably named “Manipulate or Deceive”.

3. Access and Interface don’t fit at all. Currently sitting at:

COMMUNE (+Devotion)

When you spend time communing with the arcane, divine, or philosophical Essence of a place, Roll+Devotion. On a 10+, you are accepted and welcomed; regarded as an ally to others in the area of similar Essence. On a 7-9, as above, but some see you as an enemy instead of a friend.

4. This brings me to the idea of Essence that roughly maps to Data Points. The most engaging part of the Planescape setting is the hard line philosophies and allegiances to gods and powerful beings. It is a world of black and white and red and blue and many other distinct colors, with no in between.

In this hack, Essence is the stuff of concept that permeates everything and colors behavior and ideas. Manipulating Essence lets your know allegiances or fake your own.

Thoughts, opinions, etc?

Just finished a read-through of Uncharted Worlds.

Just finished a read-through of Uncharted Worlds.

Just finished a read-through of Uncharted Worlds. One thing that jumped out to me that I couldn’t think of an immediate answer (possibly I’m over-thinking) is if the group goes the route to start with a starship.

The text says they’ll be in some significant debt (whatever color that debt takes), but doesn’t give much guidance beyond that.

Is that extra debt in addition to what they already start with? How much?

On Origins and Species

On Origins and Species

On Origins and Species

Something I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, and something that has been mentioned a few times, is “Alien Origins” in Uncharted Worlds. The thing is, there will be very few “Alien” Origins in Far Beyond Humanity, for one simple reason: Origins are not about species. They are about society. 

By-and-large, Origins are dictated by the social, cultural and economic realities of a character during their formative years. And while an alien may come from a different society with different cultural mores and values, we see a rough approximation of the careers repeated, or closely enough that we can make an equivalence.

The only time that Origin will not describe a childhood is in situations where the character in question has not had a childhood, where the character has not been exposed to a cultural reality. They have not been shaped by the slow, complicated process of learning and growing through societal exposure.

For example, one Origin that I will be including is the Robotic Origin. The character is explicitly programmed and designed a certain way by their Origin, rather than implicitly shaped by their environment during a receptive “youth” phase. Same goes for the Grown Origin; be it cloned or phytomorphic, as these characters go through an accelerated maturation, reaching “adulthood” too quickly to be affected by a societal Origin. What they lack in a lifetime of societal learning (i.e.: lacking a usual Origin skill), they make up for by having a unique design, function or abilities (species Origin skill).

So how do you make a creature of a species if you don’t have an Origin? Simply put, in 99% of cases, a xenosapien (intelligent humanoid alien) doesn’t differ enough from a human to warrant special rules. This is especially true in Space Operas, where most aliens are simply reflections, exaggerations or inversions of certain aspects of humanity, with odd skin patterns and/or exotic foreheads. 

Simply state the species of the character and then choose Origin/Career/Career as normal. The minor differences in biology will make for interesting side-notes, rather than being decisive traits. Even when a particular species is characterized as being particularly strong, fast, etc, such things are not of a magnitude that would affect play, though it might affect descriptions.