Young Centurions

I had to pull out of the recent Fate More Kickstarter, due to the first in a series of massive car repairs this Winter/Spring. This week, a slew of new Evil Hat releases hit The Source, and I grabbed them all! No more fear of missing out!

The new game Young Champions is particularly welcome. The game is set in the Spirit of the Century RPG universe.  And SOTC was my first brush with Fate. In fact, it was love at first sight!

I may have run the first open game of SOTC in Minnesota. That demo game years ago at The Source drew my friend Chad, who created a Jungle Lord (transplanted to NYC), as well one of the only Hollow Earth Expedition RPG fans in town, who played a Doc Savage type, complete with labs and domicile in the Empire State Building!

The action featured a fight on a Zeppelin in the skies over NYC. Like so many subsequent Zeppelin fights in my SOTC and HEX games, it did not end well for the Zeppelin! I think in this case, a wrench being used as a weapon hit a metal ladder frame within the airship's canvas shell. Sparks were drawn, and leaky gas cells ignited. Things like this happen, ALL-THE-TIME, in Spirit of the Century.

From there, I never went back! I've run many convention scenarios set in the SOTC universe, ranging all over the Earth and onto Mars. We've had Moorcockian Eternal Champions and villains in our games too, including the Ulric and Ulrika twins (my own creations), Count Zenith, and Jumping Jack Flash. But by Fate Core standards, SOTC has a bit heavier frame than I really need for a good pulp action Fate game, so it is good to see Young Centurions deliver the pulp using the lighter chassis that Fate Accelerated Edition provides.

And this isn't simply a retread of the 1930s SOTC setting, but instead features the young heroes of 1910 earlier in their career. I haven't read through the rules yet (just got 'em) but the cover and interior art are just outstanding, so I want to call that out today. Look at the diversity of heroes - and vehicles - on the cover. (Tractors don't get nearly enough love.)

And look at the heroes on the back cover:

Finally, I'll point to my new favorite character right here:

Given that my initials are JET, I'd say this is a perfect character.

Tomorrow's Fate Strange Stars Game

You start in a backwater star cluster connected to the iceworld Boreas. The star system’s name comes from its primary planet, Zolymayas. The system has that one inhabited planet; it’s a very hostile world with a crappy, third-rate starport. The planet is almost self-sustaining. Most technology here is late 19th Century, although as usual a few hoarders and exclusive enclaves have something better. Some places have electricity, and many have intact lead piping, but there’s no free Metascape access here.

You’re in a band. You came here for a gig at a spaceport dive called The Furry Octopus. All of 5 spacers showed up for that show. Nobody seemed very impressed. The space hauler who promised you a ride back to Boreas and out of this cluster took off early. So you’ve been stuck here a while. Turns out there’s less demand for cutting edge psychedelia than you were promised. Times are tough. You could really use a gig.

You’ll create characters using the Strange Stars Fate rules. Possible player character roles in the band include:

• Promoter
• Lead Singer
• Musician(s) – feel free to invent an instrument
• Groupie
• Drug Supplier
• Security/Roadies
• Your own crazy ideas

You’ll also need a name for this band. You’ll have to duke that out at the table.

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "Z" Is For Zolymayas

Cluster Graphic by Lester J. Portly

Our final Strange Stars A-to-Z post is an open letter to you, dear reader. Strange Stars was built to be canon light. The Strange Stars Game Setting Book provides just enough detail for you to make the setting your own. The philosophy is that GMs are going to modify and fill out the setting anyway; our job is to create just enough to facilitate each GM's local ideation, creation, and iteration of the Strange Stars.

If you are a fan of the Diaspora RPG, you probably recognize the diagram at the top of the post as a part of a cluster of several star systems. While the Fate edition of Strange Stars is built for Fate Core, I used the Diaspora SRD to build out world generation and cluster design rules for the Strange Stars Fate Edition Rulebook. Each sphere represents a star system and its parameters for technology, Environment, and Resources. The Technology-Environment-Resources scales run from -4 to +4 as they do in Diaspora, but the details of scale are different in the Strange Stars. A tad bleaker, you might say!  The lines and curves linking the systems represent hyperspace nodes.  

Only one of the worlds up above is "official": the anchor world in the cluster is the ice-planet of Boreas, which is described in the Strange Stars Game Setting Book. Each of the other worlds in the cluster was created by me using the system and cluster generation rules in the Strange Stars Fate Edition Rulebook.

As for myself, I'll be using this particular patch of stars this coming Friday! The action will start in the Zolymayas system, which has one very hostile, industrializing world; a world that is almost self-sustaining. The kind of place that desperate people do desperate things to escape.

I hope you'll create your own worlds for Strange Stars! Make the Strange Stars yours!

Strange Stars A-to-Z: "X" is for Xe-Xem-Xir

http://www.nydela.sakura.ne.jp/delany/babel.htm

Gender neutral pronouns such as xe, xem, and xir are used by some cultures in the Strange Stars setting. They're introduced on the Terminology page (p. 29) of Trey Causey's Strange Stars Game Setting Book. You'll find ones spelled similarly if you scroll down this post from the Gender Neutral Pronoun Blog.

I've never GMed a game in a setting where gender neutral pronouns (other than "they") were in regular use at the table, although in one Diaspora campaign a player introduced and used them from time to time.

Maybe I should use them in a game (1)... and maybe also reward proper usage (2). But I would never do this as a casual change in a game or campaign, or with stranger-players about whom I know nothing, or as a joke (3).

Here's my best guess at the proper usage for gender neutral pronouns in the Strange Stars setting, with setting-appropriate context:

• Nominative/subject: "Xe was the first Hyehoon I saw with wings." 

• Objective/object: "I beat xem within an inch of xir life" said the Hwuru thug.

• Possessive determiner: "Xir spiracles sursurrate like shivers" said one Boma to another about a third.  

• Possessive pronoun: "The pretty torture-slave is xirs" the Vokun said, pointing xir lips at the Algosian procurer.

• Reflexive: "Xe is full of xemself" said the Gnome of the officious Ibglibdishpan.

Note:

(1) I would never use this with a open game table at a mainstream gaming convention. I've had players sit down to games and before they know anyone at the table make gay jokes or use language that I'd consider demeaning to women, LGBTQ folks, etc. I might use this with a group of players that I know well, ones who think linguistic experimentation is fun, and/or understand the value of gender neutral pronouns in the real world, and/or have an interest in exploring the implications of lingustic change in SFnal social systems. I might use gender neutral pronouns in an open game at Gaylaxicon 2016 or maybe at a WisCon.

(2) Possibly with a reward mechanism for proper usage. Maybe with Fate points, or maybe just as a Boost for proper usage in-character. I am not sure how this would affect the overall economy of the game, since Fate is so language-based. I wouldn't want it to be very gameable, just a reward for immersion.

(3) Pronouns are a life-and-death matter for some people, and may be seen as less important/non-negotiable/or a joke by others whose privilege (or ontological status or social position, if you prefer) allows them to play out their gender as if it were a natural category. Which it isn't. By extended metaphor and as Gang of Four taught us more than three decades ago, "Natural's Not In It" (see the video below). For some cisgender folks, gender-neutral pronouns may may be a way to emphasize or explore the alterity of a situation or setting. For some people who are trans, it may be a way to create safety at the game table. This is really one of those things that needs to be talked through carefully at the table.

The image at the top of the post is possibly the best cover ever for 
Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17.

Strange Stars Fate - Now In PRINT!

I am happy to report that the Strange Stars Fate System Book is now in print!  I think that's all for today!

Really!

I mean it!

SNSO! Strange Stars!

Last night was my first time running a Saturday Night Space Opera! event for our open group of players! I had eight players show up for my Fate Strange Stars game, which ran from 6 PM-10:15 or so at the Fantasy Flight Games Event Center.

We started with character generation, and that went pretty smoothly. I gave everyone a copy of the Strange Stars setting book, and copies of chapters Ch. 2 and 3 of the Strange Stars Fate Rule Book, which cover character generation and clades (races), respectively.

Jay's PC, and improvised Fate points!

The characters were:

• Shrike, a space-ninja. Shrike stands for Synthetic Humanoid Reactionary Intelligent Killing Engine. Shrike was a true human in a "robot suit." His goal was never to give up the game that he was not a machine. One of his aspects was a stock phrase: "I am NOT a human being!" 
• Dorchah, a Blesh (a crystalline insect with the downloaded memories of a human medic) with telekinetic abilities. This was the first time the player, Deanna, had played a tabletop RPG, although she is a World of Warcraft guildmaster! By the time of the climactic battle, she had really grown into her role as a combat medic, telekinetically putting respirator masks on the crew to protect them from nanites, and brewing up combat drugs to juice up the Hyehoon PC!
• Butkowski, a burly, ornery Smaragdine engineer. We're pretty sure Butkowski couldn't be his real name, but he was so touchy that his crewmates didn't want to push on this issue. In the climactic battle with a Van Vogtian Coeurl in a cargo elevator, Engineer Butkowski pulled a trick on the energy starved beast!
• Bhat Akana, a Voidglider. His name comes from the Hindi word meaning "Wonder." A bit before the climactic battle, Bhat Akana used his Voidglider senses, which include "hearing" way into the EM range, to determine that Shrike was most definitely not a robot! This was a very clever use of Voidglider base abilities skills.
• Tcar, one of the feathered but flightless avian uplifts of the Hyehoon clade! Looking at Eric's character sheet after the game, I noticed he dropped in a Star Trek reference, listing Tchar's homeworld as Skorr! Tchar was the ship's pilot, but used his claws to great effect in the battle with the Coerul!
• Taan, was a unique Moravec created by the most experienced Fate player. Taan is roughly humanoid, with three Waldo-like arms. Taan specialized in Creating Advantages during the combat, distracting the Coerul with the hypnotic gyrations of his three robotic arms, and in the last moments of the battle leaped onto the Coerul's back to distract it further.
• Arkadina, an extremely chipper and talkative member of the angelic Deva clade. She felt truly called to battle against the Coerul, seeing it as her opposite: a demon from the darkest depths of hyperspace, and a grave existential threat to her god. She landed many blows against the monster, and even managed to slice off one of the tentacles emerging from the beast's back!
• Aasimar, an androgenous Yantran technoshaman. She was committed to nonviolent diplomacy - even in the midst of battle, and Created Advantage against the Coerul by going into a trance and beginning a compassionate death trance for the beast. Every time Aasimar used her powers, her gender affect switched; the player created the gender pronoun indicator below (a tiny table tent) so that the changes were visible to the other players.

Fate is opimized for a group of 3-5 players and a GM. I've run Fate of Tekumel games with eight players, and that worked OK, but eight is really a big table to manage for a fast and furious Strange Stars game!

Here are a few things to make a big game like this go smoothly:

• Bring enough Fate point chips for everyone - OR, be ready to improvise with little pieces of paper. I seriously underestimated how many players we would have! Fortunately, Jay Mac Bride had brought along some colored index cards. People made their own Fate points using the cards, and I folded cards in half to create little one-use Boost table tent indicators.
• When big groups get excited, everyone is talking at once, and less extroverted players, who may have good ideas, can get frustrated. Enforce a more structured flow of play, rotating the action from player to player either clockwise or counter clockwise. I did this at the mid-game break at one player's suggestion. It made a real difference at the table. If memory services, this  procedure was part of the normal sequence of play with Diaspora too.
• Table tents with character names are critical. 
• I also create a GM map of players around the table, like the one below.

• Finally, I use a Leuchturm 1917 journal for all my notes - work, reading groups, and game prep - and in-game jottings. I use Bullet Journal notation wherever possible or to-do lists and record keeping. It really helps to have everything in one place, with a quick method for notes.

The players were very engaged, had high energy, great ideas, and pushed the action forward at a breakneck pace. It was a great game to GM on the coldest night of the winter.

Strange Stars Saturday - January 9

Saturday, January 9th, from 6-10 PM, I'll be running a Fate Strange Stars game at the Fantasy Flight Games Event Center in Roseville, Minnesota. This is our first Saturday Night Space Opera game at our new venue, which features a very comfortable play environment with a full service restaraunt and bar.

MISSION BRIEFING

The Ship wakes you up. There's something the Company wants - and it's OLD and BIG!

This is an adventure set in Trey Causey's Strange Stars game setting, featuring the Fate system rules I wrote for Trey's setting. Character templates for quick builds will be provided! The Fate system is easy and fun and the rules will be taught!

Jump over to the Saturday Night Space Opera blog to RSVP!

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "T" Is For Transmogs

Source

Transmogs were used by the earliest labor teams to leave Old Earth. These teams usually consisted of multiple robots and a single human team lead. Robots possessed artificial intelligence, often with quite pedestrian, companionable, crotchety, or quirky personalities. Having a human team lead was essential to these teams' success. Robot teams were more efficient, more cooperative, and more purposeful when accompanied by a human.

While the ancient robots displayed unique personalities, they were not highly specialized. Instead, these ancient machines used swappable skill modules called transmogs. These were small, thumb sized devices which snapped into a port in the robot's head. Need to switch spacehand skills for salesmen's skills? Swap out the transmog. Need a construction team rather than an ag-team? Look around in the box where all the transmogs are stored and swap the modules out.

If you're confused which transmogs are which, almost any robot on a labor team can help you find the right one.

A few of these robots still exist among the Strange Stars today. They are valuable collectors items, as they often know the locations of archaitech, the hyperspace routes to long-lost systems, and how to build and repair hyperdrives.

The key, of course, is to find one with the right transmogs to do the job - or someone who possesses some of these old modules but who doesn't know or have a use for them. Many transmogs end up being used as jewelry or charms by the ignorant...

This Strange Stars post was inspired by Clifford D. Simak's short story "Installment Plan".

***

We recently published some Quick and Dirty Robot Rules for Strange Stars. Transmogs can be used with these rules quite easily. Here's what to do:

• In place of the Assignment aspect, give the robot a Personality aspect. Examples include:
• Lazy labor robot
• Battered and brused mechanical spacehand
• Any crankier and you'd need to wind him
•  Sexy but rusty gynoid
• A machine that remembers ancient things
• Select a Failure Mode. Particulary appropiate ones for ancient labor team robots include:
• Touchy transmog slot
• Needs direction
• A tendency to wander
• No spare parts
• Select skills/approaches as normal.
• Write in a Transmog Slot as an Extra. 
• Instead of selecting three Stunts, each of these robots has a single transmog slot. 
• When a transmog is plugged into the slot, the robot temporarily acquires one specific transmog stunt. 
• Transmog stunts represent physical, mental, or social skills; they can never be psionic in nature. 
• A robot may not swap out their current transmog on their own. The swap always requires the assistance of another character. It takes one turn to make the swap. 
• There's no hard and fast limit on the number of transmogs that a robot has in their possession, but 5 is a good starting number.
• If a player is creating a transmog-capable robot, they may start play as soon as they have written one transmog stunt for the character. Other transmog stunts may be selected during play.

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "R" Is For Robots

Robots. Mechanical women and men have been a staple of science fiction from Karel Capek's play R.U.R., where the term "robot" was introduced. (Capek credited his brother with coining robota as play on the term for serf or corvee labor.)

Soon enough there was Maria of Metropolis, a machine woman with the powers of illusion and mesmerism:

Then there's some of my favorite 1960s space toys, the Zeroids:

And soon enough, these cute poker-playing drones from Silent Running appear on the scene:

So where might one find robots among the Strange Stars? First of all, when I use robots in the Strange Stars universe, they are a lesser kind of intelligent mecanical life form. Some robots may be full sophonts with unique personalities, deep individuation, and complex behavioral repertoires. Others have more limited intelligences conforming to one of several generic personality templates; these are designed for specific (if broad) productive roles in society. Still others lack all but the most rudimentary intelligence, and are designed for very specific menial roles.

Robots are non-self-replicating, and their intelligence (however individuated) is an emergent property of their immediate physical media (e.g., the result of a functioning positronic brain). Unlike moravecs, robots aren't quasi-immortal life forms passed down from the copied mind of a biologic, a Jupiter brain, or some other transcorporeal intelligence. True to Karel Capek's original vision, most robots in the Strange Stars setting are intended for labor - usually in its most tiresome and repetitive forms, including household services, guarding facilities, industrial production, or mining.

Robots are owned; they're tools for getting jobs done.

Unfortunately, they all have failure modes, and some rebel.

***

Quick and Dirty Robot Rules

Robots for Strange Stars can be built using Fate Accelerated as a framework. Our assumptions with this design are that most robots are human-sized or smaller. 

ASPECTS: All robots have at least two Aspects, an Assignment and a Failure Mode. 

• Assignment represents the robot's current or ideal-typical function. Examples include: 
• Sturdy mining robot
• 12-eyed sentry robot
• Idle household servant
• Faithful but lonely agricultural drone 

• Failure Mode is just what it sounds like; it represents the most likely to cause this robot to malfunction, cease to operate, or rebel. This aspect is often not obvious to casual observers, although characters with engineering, science, or hacking abilities may find ways to Create and Advantage and figure this out. Exmples include:
• Not properly programmed for the job
• Ethical protocols altered
• Lonely and resentful
• Out of spare parts

SKILLS: Robots have six basic skills. Bush league robots will have a +1 in one skill, and a zero in all the rest. Middling models will have +2 in one or two skills, a +1 in another, and zeroes in the rest. Advanced robots will have one skill at +3, two at +2, two at +1, and one at zero.

• Tend: This skill represents the robot's ability to dig, gather, and forage, as well as maintain and repair simple machines (moisture 'vaperators, for example). Agricultural drones lead with this skill; so do mining robots, and robots responsible for routine repairs.
• Build: Robots designed for construction, assembly, and complex engineering tasks have this skill.  Industrial robots are good at this. Robots with this skill are also good at a range of physical tasks including moving heavy objects and climbing. Build can be used to defend against physical attacks. 
• Guard: This represents a robot's ability to attack and defend against other machines and biologics. Sentry robots are good at this; people wishing to deploy a cheap, obedient military force often go this route. Robots with a skill above zero are familiar with a range of weaponry. 
• Scan: Notice for robots; this skill represents a robot's basic abilities to scan and interpret its surroundings. This skill includes standard biologic senses such as hearing and seeing, and more rarely includes chemosensory apparatus. Most robots are able to percieve a broader range of sound frequencies and electromagnetic radiation than biologics. If build by a culture that uses the Metascape, the robot will generally have access to the Metascape as an additional "virtual" sense. 
• Solve: The robot's skill with abstract thinking and problem-solving. This skill is the robotic equivalent of Academics and Science.
• Serve: The robot's facility in interacting with infosophonts, moravecs, and biologics. This skill is the robotic equivalent of  Empathy, Rapport, and Will. It is generally the lead skill for robots designed as personal servants, interpreters, and protocol droids.

STUNTS: A robot whose highest skill is +2 may have one stunt; a robot whose highest skill is +3 may have two stunts. Here are just a few stunts a robot might possess:

• Danger, Will Robinson!: The robot has developed particularly keen insights into sophont motivations and behaviors. Take +2 to Serve skill to anticipate who presents the greatest danger to someone who you are programmed to protect.
• Kawaii: Your physical form is small, or otherwise percieved as "cute" by most biomorphs. You trigger their protective/parenting instincts. Take +2 to Serve to persuade biologics that you are harmless or worthy of protection.
• In Their Best Interests: You can persuade other robots that you have the best understanding of how to serve a sophont master. Take +2 to Serve skill to make another robot obey you in performing some action.
• Infiltrate: Because you were programmed for stealth operations, you take +2 when using your Guard skill to move into or through an area without being detected by sophonts.
• Impersonate: You have learned how to imitate moravecs and infosophonts inhabiting machine bodies. Take +2 to your Serve skill to persuade others that you are really a moravec or an infosophont.
• Personal Force Field: A robot with a force field takes +2 to its Build skill to defend against ranged attacks.
• Mass Wins Out: Because you are solidly built, take +2 to Build to intimidate an sophont in a social contest.
• Mesmerism: Your programming has given you unusual persuasive capacities. Maybe its your sleek plasteel exterior; maybe you have learned The Voice. Spend 1 FP to compel a group of sophont Extras to follow a one sentence command.
• Metajammer: Robots with this stunt can interfere with the local operation of the Metascape. They take +2 to their Scan skill to increase the difficulty that others face in accessing the local Metascape. 
• Operate Vehicle: Robots with this stunt may use the Tend skill to pilot vehicles  including spacecraft. Because hyperspace nodes have psi-sensitive components, however, bad things often happen when robots pilot ships through hyperspace nodes.
• Protocol Droid: Due to its special programming, the robot takes +2 to its Serve skill when attempting to create a favorable first impression with a sophont. 

STRESS & CONSEQUENCES:

• A robot whose highest skill is +1 has one or two stress boxes and is taken out once these boxes are filled.
• A robot whose highest skill is +2 has two OR three stress boxes, AND can also take a Mild Consequence before being taken out.
• A robot whose highest skills is +2 has three stress boxes and can take a Mild and Moderate Consequence, OR has three stress boxes and can take a Mild, Moderate, and Severe Consequence.

Strange Stars Fate Game at U-Con

If you're curious about the Strange Stars setting, I'll be running a session this coming Friday, November 20, from 3-7 PM, at U-Con in Ypslanti, Michigan. My game is crosslisted with the Game with the Creator (this is not a religious event, I assure you) and OSR tracks.

I'll be running my game using the Fate Core ruleset for Strange Stars that has just been published by the Hydra Collective.  There is still at least one open seat, so if someone will be at the con and is curious about the game or about the Strange Stars setting created by Trey Causey, pick up an event ticket or stop by to say hello!

Since the Strange Stars Fate Rule Book was just published this week (you can get it here), who knows? We might even have a player at the table with the rules! That's an exciting thought!

Rest assured though that if you sit down to play, we'll have everything you need to create a character on the fly and get in the game!

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "O" = OUT NOW!!!

I'm very pleased to announce that the Strange Stars Fate Edition is now for sale at RPGNow and DriveThruRPG.  The adaptation of the Strange Stars setting to the Fate system has been a very fun project, about a year and a half in the making!

I am very appreciative of Trey Causey for inviting me to adapt his Strange Stars setting for Fate Core, and how cool is it to have the book published by the Hydra Cooperative, no less!

So if you like Fate and SF, well, it's time to MAKE THINGS STRANGE!

Strange Stars A-to-Z

Layout by B. Portly, art by Adam Moore

We're excited to share that the Strange Stars Fate System Rulebook is very close to completion. Layout is almost entirely done, and I have done a couple rounds of edits of the laid out manuscript. The title page is a real sizzler with some fantastic anti-robot combat art - something worthy of the pages of Magnus Robot Fighter!

Strange Stars is entirely the brainchild of Trey Causey, the publisher of the blog From the Sorcerer's Skull. It's been a privilege to work with him on this project! Visit the Strange Stars Index on Trey's blog for all sorts of Strange Stars universe flavor.

But you don't need to stop there: the Strange Stars Game Setting Book is already available as a full color all-setting book. And if you've seen DK's wonderful line of illustrated Star Wars, books you'll have an idea what you are in for!

Within a few weeks, the Fate Core ruleset for Strange Stars will also be available, with rules for creating characters from the different clades (races) of the Strange Stars setting, as well as rules for threats, world creation, factional play, and much, much more. 

To celebrate the upcoming release, this week I am launching an A-to-Z style series of blog posts featuring some of my own creations for the setting. Strange Stars is built with lots of room for you to be creative and really make the game and setting your own. I''ll demo some of my own ideas here, and if you happen to join my for my Strange Stars games at U-Con in November, or Con of the North in February, feel free to let me know you want to see some of these things at the table!

"What Is 'Library'?"

The second location that players visited in Friday night's Fate Strange Stars scenario at JonCon was the Library of Atoz-Theln, a library-world in the Zuran Expanse. As +trey causey's Strange Stars Game Setting Book relates, the Library was built before the Great Collapse. It has virtual records dating back to the era Archaic Oikumene - and even before that time. Not only does the Library contain virtual records; it also possesses physical records and artifacts from countless worlds. The Library therefore contains a vast store of otherwise lost knowledge.

The players in my "Rescue on Tenebrae" scenario had two reasons for going to the Library of Atoz-Theln.  Their ostensible purpose was to gain more information about their ultimate target, the world of Tenebrae.  However our ne'er-do-well Captain-and-Star-Lord's most important motivation for going there was to find a cache of ancient eight track tapes. Where else in the Strange Stars would one look for such antique and priceless cultural artifacts?

So they landed, under guidance from Library flight control. In my version of the Library, information is organized topographically, and one of the players declared the narrative detail that since the players did not pay special inducements, they had been assigned landing rights over the limnology section of the Library. I went with that.

The Library of Atoz-Theln has very strong Metascape virtualities, and almost as soon as their ship, the Kill-Wagon landed, the players found that they were on a lakeside beach. They felt lake breezes, even inside their ship as the Library's Metascape systems began to overwrite shipboard systems. The players exited the ship and heard the calls of shorebirds. They also spied an immense pterosaur soaring overhead. The Collections are eclectic. What can I say?

The players descended far below the surface of the world using high speed elevators accessible from the beach.  The found themselves in a corridor that was in fact a tube within a gigantic aquarium stocked with all sorts of aquatic life. If you have been to Biosphere 2 you've been in a miniature version of this.

Soon they encountered one of the numerous humanoid librarians dwelling within the Library. The player of the Star-Hawk-ey PC, who belonged to the bird-like Hyehoon clade, decided it would be fun to spend 1 FP and make a narrative declaration that the librarian recognized Gamorine, the party's Gamora-like character, as a wanted-on-all-worlds assassin. (I don't normally see PVP play in Fate games, but I went with it since it was an interesting complication. Really, I should have given a FP to Gamorine...).

The assassin teleported the librarian into one of the aquaria and let him drown.

Nasty stuff.

Next the players took a subterranean tubecar to one of the workshops where restorative work was being done on ancient artifacts. Eight tracks were stolen! The players were somewhat surprised that they were completely ignored by the librarian-restorationists in the workshops. Everyone was very focused on their own work. Kind of like the special neurological state of focus in Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky.

Finally, the players located a deep library section dedicated to the world of Tenebrae. This was a virtual reality as well. Things got creepy when the labyrinth's masked Skulkers appeared, and one took on the mien of Gamorine's father, Lord Death. Virtualities can be tricky that way, and sometimes a daughter can carry along a bit of her father without even realizing it...

Needless to say, the players soon high-tailed it out of that labyrinth and got back to their ship.

Next stop, the dead world of Tenebrae.

Hard Times On Desperation B

Friday night I ran my Strange Stars scenario "Rescue on Tenebrae." The action took place on three worlds in +trey causey's Strange Stars setting. All three worlds were in the Zuran Expanse, a lawless and isolated region of space with many mysteries. Today, I am going to share some setting material of my own for one of the systems in that sector, the home system of the Penitents.

So who are the Penitents? They are also often called by the derogatory term Deodands, as they are a people cursed with eternal recurrence for some long-forgotten crime. Indeed, loss of memory seems to be a key feature of the Penitents' peculiar purgatory, for every time one dies and is physically reborn in a new body, they have only vague memories of their previous life.

This often brings trouble. Forgotten enemies who remember you. Unpaid debts to others. Lost goods and resources due to murky memories.  It's hard to access your financial resources when you can't remember where your accounts are, let alone your passwords.

That's why almost all Penitents are reborn on their home orbital in abject poverty. It's why those orbitals are squalid, overcrowded, dangerous places filled with desperate poor people.

There's no racial conflicts at least. While there are "lefties" and "righties" among the Penitents (terms which are a constant source of confusion to visitors), this isn't a source of conflict. Everyone's chromatic chirality flips periodically between incarnations. There's no racism, just grinding poverty, an abundance of self-destructive behaviors, and for a determined few, a slow crawl to the top of the social heap.

If you step onto spacedock on Desperation B - one of numerous such stations in Penitent space - here are a few of the people you might meet.

Penitent Encounter Table

Roll 4DF and consult the corresponding result below:

• -4: Metascape realtor: A respectable sleaze tries to sell you exclusive access to a less squalid virtual reality.
• -3: Algosian procurer: A seductive alien seeks willing subjects to dominate, degrade, and torture. Non-Penitents are also welcome to apply.
• -2: Aurogov labor recruiter: What's better than working for free in a cult sweatshop? Just download this self-help software and you will be motivated to improve yourself through hard work and all-but-voluntary labor.
• -1: Flagellist: A Penitent or group of penitents seeks your help in doing themselves harm. Or giving them pleasure. Is there a difference? When you have lifetime after lifetime of misery, maybe it's all the same. 
• 0: Alms, Please: You are approached by someone (or a group of someones) begging for alms, or offering a small service like a quick hull squeegee in exchange for a small amount of food, credit, or drugs.
• +1: Something to Sell: Many who can afford to come to the Penitents' orbitals in search of sex, drugs, or something exotic and degrading. Penitents can often supply those things. 
• +2: Swap Meet: Many Penitents have almost enough resources to get off world. Maybe one has leverage in the form of something to trade? Something weird and wonderful that you want. Odd little things have a way of showing up on the Penitents' stations... 
• +3 Connections: Penitents can live a long time (do they even age?) and even when stuck in one place they can learn a lot of useful things. Like access codes for hyperspace nodes. Or the locations of star systems that are off the standard charts. Or how to reach the wealthy and well-protected Penitents.
• +4: Moral debt swaps: There's no inheritance laws on the Penitents' orbitals, and the accumulation of wealth is usually limited to a single lifetime due to fuzzy memories - and a desire not to see others get ahead of you. But there are a few people who have worked out... complex quasi-financial instruments. Exchanges based on sin, obligation, and reciprocity. One of these speculators approaches you to make an impossible trade.   

Strange Stars Guardians

We've created seven PCs for our five players to choose from in tonight's Fate Strange Stars adventure, "Rescue on Tenebrae". A number are inspired directly by the Guardians of the Galaxy, but they are definitely interpretations that work within the Strange Stars setting. Any can be played as either male or female (and for a few gender may not even be relevant).

Here is our rogues' gallery:

• Stakar Sokha, Hyehoon clade, a feathered humanoid xenoarchaeologist who has had some kind of encounter with an ancient, cruel Hawk God. Accused of Eden Seeker sympathies.
• Pluvian, Silicate Moravec, a crystal-bodied artificial being that can project heat and cold energy beams, as well as sculpt the Metascape.
• HV-27 (aka Heavy-27), a cloned heavy worlder used as a mining slave on Aygo. HV's the only slave to escape there, and HV's career as a gladiator and rebel is legendary. 
• Free Radicoon, Musteloid clade, is an uplifted animal bred for animal companion therapy on a space asylum in the Keystone Quadrant. An ornery scientist and gun nut, Free Radicoon is wanted as an animal rights terrorist.
• Gamorine, Smaragdine clade, from the lost colony of Smarag-dum. Gamorine is a green skinned assassin trained by Lord Death himself. Beware Gamorine's teleportation and Emerald Flying Daggers psi-attack!
• Radion (Radiant Icon), exiled Star-Lord scion of the last living Radiant Lord (or so Radion's father claims). Radion has a divine aura, and the Radiant Lord gene markers to match. Radion pilots the Kill Wagon, a pocket warship that Free Radicoon hotwired and helped Radion steal from Father's fleet. 
• Loki, Deodand clade, jet black on the right side, bone white on the left. Bad news on two feet, and newly reembodied after a disastrous Vokun expedition to Tenebrae, Loki's the key to everything. But Loki's memories have been altered.

Friday Night Strange Stars

Friday night, I'll be running my next session of the Strange Stars Fate System Edition game rules! The adventure, "Rescue on Tenebrae" involves a rescue mission on a creepy dead world.  You can see a few more details about the scenario here.

Thursday night, I'll be developing the pregens for the game. I'm drawing inspiration from some of the comics I have been reading lately, such as Guardians 3000, and the new Guardians of the Galaxy. So some of the pregens may end up being a tad evocative of certain Guardians of the Galaxy. There will definitely be a green-skinned female assassin, and bulky cloned heavy worlder.

If I get some more Prophet read before the game, there may be some borrowings from there as well.

Want to know more about +trey causey's Strange Stars game setting?

• Visit the Strange Stars Index
• Order a copy of the Strange Stars Game Setting Book

Strange Stars: Gelmorphs

Metal Aerogel

During the days of the Radiant Polity, it was commonplace for infosophonts to download copies of themselves into service substrates known as gelmorphs. These substrates were manufactured and extruded from raw material fabricators in the form of simple polyhedrons. They were then typically laser sculpted into a useful form desired by the infosophont, after which the infoporous substrate was imprinted with a copy of the infosophont.

Gelmorphs provided a convenient way for infosophonts to get around, particularly in war zones and other hostile environments. They are immune to vacuum, and difficult to damage using conventional weapons. Gelmorphs were one of the ideal-typical soldier types during the memetic wars which fractured and destroyed the Radiant Polity.

Mindless, ever-appetitive wild-type gelmorphs still prowl abandoned Radiant Polity complexes on isolated and long-forgotten worlds. The substrate is virtually immortal, and can even replicate if sufficient organic material is present. Wild-type gelmorphs are often still imprintable by informorphs, although an infomorph copy imprinted onto a wild-type substrate typically degrades quite quickly.

***

Wild-Type Gelmorph (Threat)

• Aspects: Mindless hunger; Hard to see until it's right on you; Slimy and resilient; That scraping, shuffling sound; Susceptible to infosophont implantation

• Skills: Superb (+5) Engulf; Great (+4) Digest; Good (+3) Physique; Fair (+2) Athletics; Average (+1): Notice.

• Stunts: 
• Tough Substrate: The gelmorph substrate is completely resistant to stress dealt by piercing weapons and projectiles, and ignores the first two stress inflicted by any hit using energy weapons.
• Vacuole: Once a gelmorph has inflicted physical stress on someone using its Engulf skill, it may spend 1 FP to encapsulate its target within a digestive vacuole. The target is then assigned a temporary aspect such as Captured, Stuck, or Being Digested.

• Stress: 4 Physical stress boxes, 2 Mental stress boxes 

• Consequences: One Mild, one Moderate.

Special: An infosphont may attempt to imprint a copy of itself on a Wild-Type Gelmorph; they are are highly susceptible to this kind of attack. The infosophont makes an Engineering skill roll using the Metascape Sculpting stunt in an Overcome action whose difficulty is the gelmorph's Physique. If the action is successful, the infosophont has imprinted a copy of itself upon the gelmorph's substrate. Roll 1 Fate Die: on a (-) face, the imprinting lasts for one Scene; on a blank face, the imprinting lasts for one Session; on a (+) face, the imprinting lasts for one Scenario. The gelmorph reverts to its mindless wild-type nature once the imprinting is gone. 

Fate Strange Stars in Layout

The Fate rulebook for +trey causey's Strange Stars setting is now in layout and in the very capable hands of +B. Portly. The writing happened from roughly June 2014-mid-March 2015. Last night, Trey shared a test layout for the first chapter, Fate in the Strange Stars. It looks wonderful.

There's really something quite special about seeing your first book in layout. Things suddenly seem very real!  I'm looking forward to having the real thing in-hand too!

We'll be sharing more content for Strange Stars very soon. My priority over the last month has been to get the manuscript in to Trey, as well as shepherding a major project with long term implications through the research phase at work. Both of those tasks are over the hump now, and I am just a few weeks away from my next Strange Stars game event, so you will be seeing more Strange Stars content here very soon!

Rescue on Tenebrae

My next convention game using the Fate rules for Trey Causey's Strange Stars setting is coming up in late April. This is a link to the write-up I am preparing for the game.

Strange Stars: We're All Pirates Now

Rad Astra Galaxy Map

Our second game at Con of the North using Trey Causey's Strange Stars setting was a pick-up game. It was not on the event schedule for the convention. The session was an informal on-demand game requested by people who could not get into my scheduled Fate Strange Stars scenario -  as well as by one player who had been in that first scenario and wanted another dose of the Strange Stars. 

It was a Saturday night, just after a fun session of Jay MacBride's Rad Astra setting (you can see his awesome map of the six-armed Hexuba galaxy up above) using the old school X-plorers RPG. I was super-tired, so I asked my friend Bob Cook, a seasoned Fate Strange Stars GM to run an on-the-fly game.

I went out to the Crown Vic and got my Fate gear. I went to the hotel's service desk, and asked if they could point me to a copier so that I could run off some character sheets. The staff offered to do it for free on their copier (they will do this kind of thing if you are polite!), and I tipped to say thanks for their courtesy (this is essential).

Bob GMs Strange Stars

The players decided to create a group of space pirates. Jay wondered if he could make a PC that was a “one off” type not featured in any of the Clade Templates for the Fate Strange Stars. Bob and I answered “Sure!” 

Galaxy Laser Team Toy

Jay was looking at a big green space toy on the game table. The toy was a Star Wars knockoff. Imagine a Wookie, but with Yantran antennae, and a skull face like a demonic Ferengi! He decided that was his character’s exact appearance! Jay was also flipping through the character templates in a copy of the D6 Star Wars RPG. Then he said, “I’m a Chewie that lost his Han Solo”: that was a rocking High Concept for a Fate character! 

The GM created a Vokun space convoy for the players to raid. He figured that the Vokun fleet consisted of a very large transport vessel (think of Metamorphosis Alpha’s Warden) and a few very well-armed escorts. 

The GM also decided that the transport vessel contained all sorts of endangered and dangerous species destined to stock a Vokun safari tourism world. That set-up was about all that was needed for a great, really rip-roaring adventure! If you’ve seen the Doctor Who episode “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” you have an idea what the players encountered - plus giant purple worms and cyber apes! 

Add the transport's stoner "free-as-a-bird" AI to the mix, and you can imagine just how trippy and fun this game was!

What a great way to to wrap up a Saturday night at Con of the North!