The Kzinti Reloaded

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Slaver_Weapon_(episode)

What could be better for Christmas than a Kzinti ambush? We're thinking a bit today about how the Kzinti will be upgraded for our "Ringworld Reloaded" scenario at Con of the North in February. As with our exploration of the reloaded Puppeteers yesterday, one of the key questions for the scenario is how the transhuman technologies of Nova Praxis have affected the Kzinti. There are also a bunch of other canon-changing questions that we'll get into here.

Larry Niven introduced the Kzinti as something of a foil for the humans as they expanded into space. As a decidedly uncowardly, impulsive, and aggressive species, the Kzinti also made a wonderful contrast with the cowardly, conservative, and cautious Puppeteers. Given the role that honor, proving one's bravery, and making a name for oneself has played in Kzinti culture, I don't see them readily adopting the entire panoply of transhuman technologies.

Chuft Captain

Any technology that makes "the final death" irrelevant or impossible (such as backup copies of one's mind), or even worse, pervasive forking would tend to dilute any claims to honor or glory. Exactly which copy or which fork gets to keep an honor-name earned by a deceased "original"?

That being said, Kzinti telepaths, who are seen as cowardly anyway, might actually experiment with a number of transtype technologies - especially shells, backups, and forks. These would create an even greater social gap and sense of disdain and distrust between the warrior types and the telepaths, but I think ultimately the Kzinti would appreciate having a limited number of these experts working on behalf of their warriors.

Kzinti Telepath

For their own safety, the transtype Kzinti telepaths would probably use Shells out in the field. They'd scan the enemy with their meat-body from a safe distance away, while their Shell works directly with a ground combat team to infiltrate and counter the enemy's networked systems. In order to protect the Kzinti combat honor-system, the telepaths' Shells would be only lightly armed; the warriors wouldn't want any competition from cowardly telepaths.

The Patriarch would almost certainly demand that the transtype telepaths be physically, socially, and technologically isolated from the rest of Kzinti society when not actively part of field operations. The transtype telepaths might even have their own world or an orbital tucked safely away somewhere within Kzinti space, no doubt kept under the constant watchful eye of numerous ECM-shielded Kzinti warships.

Cyberwear, though, that's a different issue. My guess is that Kzinti warriors wouldn't eschew a variety of cybermodifications as long as those are hidden beneath their ample fur. So, reinforced skeletons and muscular systems, special organs to process and clear toxins and contaminants, maybe even internal stasis fields to protect a few vital organs (brain, heart, etc.) in the case of a lethal blow - any of those might be fair game, as long as they can't be seen at a casual glance, and don't erode the Kzinti cultural preference for unique personal identities that can be accorded honor for specific deeds.

The Puppeteers will sell this cybertechnology to those Kzinti warriors who want it. Kzinti should expect to pay full price for the tech, or the Puppeteers may offer them an opportunity to barter for it.   The barter might involve having a warrior check out a strange planet, orbital, or ship, or investigate other space phenomena that the Puppeteers (naturally) fear to investigate on their own.

Puppeteers would be all to willing to keep quiet about their surgical interventions; they are cowards after all.

There's still the issue of sexual dimorphism. I haven't decided what to do about that, but Larry Niven's notion that Kzinti females aren't intelligent just isn't very appealing to me as a GM. We may opt for more of a gender-based cultural dimorphism, along the lines of SF author Eleanor Arnason's Hwarhath:

• Males are violent, impulsive, and irrational. They are kept away from females and children. 
• Males guard the borders of the civilization; they are the military. It's where they can do the least harm to society.
• Females have an equal capacity for violence, but are much more discerning in its application. Their aggression is more often channeled into economic and political affairs. And of course poisoning and assassination.
• Females and males consequently live very separate lives; homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is a shameful form of social deviance.
• All biological reproduction happens through artificial insemination; females raise all the offspring. Males, of course, are sent to the border when they become juveniles.
• Females run government and economy. Most females stay on the core world(s). 
• Kzinti economies tend to be autarchic in nature, since females do not often go to the borders to negotiate with aliens. In certain periods, non-threatening aliens (e.g., Puppeteers) are invited to the core worlds for trade negotiations.
• A certain degree of black market trade and smuggling occurs on the borders of Kzinti space. This is usually managed on the Kzinti side by members of the military. It is a form of corruption and graft, which is considered neither honorable nor dishonorable in itself, as long as it doesn't distract military officials from their core duties of defending and expanding the borders of Kzinti space. Occasionally such black market trade leads to important technology transfers; this can advance ambitious officers' careers to the General Staff itself.  
• In this general scheme, there would be no Patriarch, but instead a Matriarch and a Council of Elders (all female, of course) - and an all-male General Staff.  
• Diplomacy is a bit of a sticky wicket. First encounters almost always involve the all-male military, and are invariably accompanied by violence. Wars usually start spontaneously and impetuously, rather than as a matter of policy. 
• In the event that a war needs to be ended through some sort of negotiation process (a denouement which is the rule in Kzinti wars, rather than the exception) the end of hostilities is negotiated by a delegation composed equally of Kzinti female officials, diplomats, and traders, and members of the Kzinti General Staff. 
• Such negotiation processes typically break down numerous times before they reach a successful conclusion. In practice, these negotiations are a three party affair: the alien party, the Kzinti government party, and the Kzinti military party.

Could Be Trouble: Insane Puppeteers

Art by John Byrne

Sorry about the bait-and-switch. This isn't the first time John Byrne has put Larry Niven's Puppeteers into a comic. He did that in his X-Men run too. But today's post isn't about Puppeteers in Star Trek. We just think it's a fun image!

What we're on about today is Puppeteers in the more modern milieu of transhuman SF. I will be running a Nova Praxis "Ringworld Reloaded" scenario at Con of the North in February, so I have been wondering a bit what the "new" Puppeteers I will introduce there will be like.

Specifically, what does Puppeteer insanity look like in the transhuman future of "Ringworld Reloaded"?

Well, because the Puppeteers are cowardly herd-based herbivores (they're definitely not the brave kind), any Puppeteer who shows signs of not being afraid - things like being out in the world, travelling in FTL spacecraft, spending time with carnivorous and impulsive Kzinti, poking around Neutron Stars, or exploring strange new worlds in person - they are most definitely insane!

Niven showed us all that back in the day.  The Puppeteer's supreme leader - the very icon of that species' cautious and cowardly nature - is called the Hindmost for a reason.

I am thinking of adding a few new forms of not being afraid to the insane Puppeteer's behavioral repertoire. Here they are, with the voice of the Hindmost in italics as a silent critique of these insane behaviors:

• Cybermodification: the Puppeteer has replaced many parts of its body with cyberware. Risky, risky. Who made this tech? It certainly isn't of General Products manufacture. Humans? How extensively was it tested? For how many Puppeteer generations was it tested?

• Genetic modification: the Puppeteer has hacked its own genes to make improvements - maybe a third eye-stalk, of course backward-facing for greater safety from predators. They've left the herd, that much is clear. But with all these messy genetic modifications, are they even a part of our species any more? And what if these modifications spread virally?

• Shells: the Puppeteer has discarded (or at least left behind) its natural body in favor of downloading its mind into an artificial body (whether cyber, organic, or a combination). What kind of puppetry is this? This one is taking the human name for us too literally.

• Forking:  the Puppeteer makes multiple, downloadable copies of its own mind. We approve of redundancy; our race has organized itself around this form of conservatism. But this one goes to far. It seeks to become a herd of one. That is not a proper herd. Who would go to the Back and become the Hindmost?

So, what are we missing? What would you add to the list?

Ringworld With Nova Praxis

What if Larry Niven had written Ringworld using the SF idioms of the last couple of decades? AIs, full body replacement, personality back-ups, nanotechnology, drones? We're considering exploring this a bit by running a game of Ringworld on Sunday night at Con of the North 2014.

I discovered Niven as a kid, completely by accident. One Saturday morning, I saw the Animated Star Trek episode "The Slaver Weapon", and discovered Kzinti, the Slavers, Stasis boxes. The next Sunday afternoon, I went to the Greece Ridge Public Library and discovered Niven's story "The Soft Weapon" in his collection of Known Space stories.

Very fortunately, I have a copy of Chaosium's classic Ringworld RPG, which is really the only reference material that I need for what I want to do. However, there is this neat animated visual reference for the Ringworld, as well as a website featuring the Ringworld RPG and Known Space.

The trick with this scenario will be to make it feel interesting and new. I don't want to read all the Ringworld sequels, or stick to the whole built-out history of Known Space.

It has to be Ringworld Reloaded.

But we will have Kzinti!  Kzinti Reloaded, with both males and females intelligent. This is a species that is already at a huge intellectual disadvantage, so let's not waste half their brains!

The Puppeteers are also must - they're just too fun to leave out. There are also interesting implications to having so conservative a species around in a setting that involves nanotechnology and transhumanism.

As far as the humans go, I am actually thinking of using most of the background of Nova Praxis, and mechanics of Nova Praxis/FATE Core.  That means a version of Known Space in which humans have developed many of the trappings of transhumanism, and have begun exploring and colonizing other systems using FTL. Borrowing from and mutating the history of Known Space, the humans have recently had a brief, first war with the Kzinti, and have also met and begun trading with the Puppeteers.

Players could be humans, transhumans, AIs with drones, Kzinti, or Puppeteers. The set-up would be similar to the novel Ringworld, in that the Puppeteers have recently learned of the existence of a Ringworld, and want it checked out. With the catastrophe that befell Earth, humans in particular might find something like the Ringworld a very attractive place to settle. And the Kzinti are always looking for new places to conquer. The Puppeteers, as always, have motives of their own...

The Arrival Of Nova Praxis

The Anubian Ambassador and The Box

When I arrived home at lunchtime today to feed the Anubian Ambassador, there was a mail van parked in front of the house. As I was parking, Tattooed Loveboy the Mailman was getting out of the van with a big box. I followed him to the house, and witnessed his at least 2-3' dead drop of the box onto our concrete stoop.

Fortunately, it came well packed - a box within a box, with the inner box nested all around with peanuts. Not the kind of peanuts that the Anubian Ambassador likes, but you can't please everyone. It arrived undamaged.

What was in the box? The beautiful print edition of Nova Praxis, +Mike McConnell's FATE-based RPG of transhuman SF. I can't wait to spend some time reading through it. One thing that I am VERY pleased about is that the font size is just right to be readable for those, let's just say, of the Whitebox generation!

Here's the cover:

As you can see below, the Anubian Ambassador is already using her light-manipulation powers to assemble zones for a combat scenario. We both want to play.

Singular??

At the end of May, I published a little piece called "Singular?" which examined the rather long lineage  of  transhumanism and the singularity as concepts. These ideas weren't invented by Eclipse Phase or Nova Praxis, but have a much longer history in philosophy, science, mathematics, and literature.

This week I stumbled upon an equally interesting discovery: the concept of 3D printing in a science fiction work published in 1970: Philip K. Dick's A Maze of Death. I am about halfway through the book now, so I am sure there are still some surprises ahead in this bleak little book. But I was really surprised to see a world with little machines (not microscopic - at least not so far - but small machines ranging in size from insect-mimics to a matchbox sized "building" that seems to be a scaled down version of a larger building on the planet Delmak-O.

Some of these machines are able to copy things - for example, manufacturing pens. Dick uses the word "printing" for the work of these machines. I still find the word "printing" a somewhat strange choice for these template-based manufacturing processes, but apparently Dick saw this as "printing" even way back then.

Dick anticipated these technologies, and I am sure others did too. And some 40 years after the novel, it is becoming a reality.

All of which makes me wonder why more people don't talk about this Dick novel?

Singular?

There's a reason that Vernor Vinge, in his classic SF novel A Fire Upon the Deep, dubbed the galactic internet the "Net of a Million Lies." His novel is a great example of an ancient singularity awakened and once again gone awry, with far reaching consequences for many. I thought of the novel, and of Vinge's name for the internet (and let's face it, back in 1992 he nailed an emergent property of the real world 'net with this name)in the context of a recent controversy at the margins of SF gaming .

People have pointed out similarities in the settings and themes of two recent SF RPGs: Eclipse Phase and Nova Praxis. I see them myself: the themes of singlarity, transhumanism, and a resulting planetary disaster. These are fairly common themes in contemporary SF.

I'd be surprised if game designers weren't playing around with them.

And I see enough differences between the two games to think each one is quite original.

But time for a reality check. There are apparently some people out there who believe that Eclipse Phase invented the themes of singularity, transhumanism, and planetary disaster. This kind of colossal ignorance really needs to be challenged.

First of all, within our  little planetary gaming community, Phil Goetz and Anders Sandberg invented the first game dealing with the themes of the singularity and transhumanism. It was called Men Like Gods (an H.G. Wells reference) and you can download it here for free. The downloadable version in the link is dated 2004, but I know the game was first published online in the mid-to-late '90s.

There is also the shared world-building project Orion's Arm which goes back to 2000. Orion's Arm also deals with transhumanism and the singularity, and has been a favorite site for SF gamers for a long time.

Finally, of course, there is GURPS Transhuman Space.This was the first professionally published RPG dealing with the singularity and transhumanism. It won the Grog d'Or in 2003 for Best Role-playing Game, Game Line, or Game Setting. It was a more optimistic future than Eclipse Phase or Nova Praxis, but one I dare say where the solar system is on the brink of terrorists and/or corporations unleashing a thousand different catastrophes.

Sarah Newton's Mindjammer originally came out in 2009 as an original setting and transhumanist SF toolkit for Starblazer Adventures. It will be rereleased in a much expanded edition for FATE Core in 2013. Newton's setting combines positive, optimistic transhuman themes with the sweep of space opera. Her setting is influenced by the fiction of Cordwainer Smith and Olaf Stapledon, but it is a very unique and original positive take on our transhuman future.

Of course, Eclipse Phase, which won the 2010 Annual Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Game, combined themes of singularity and transhumanism with planetary disaster. That was its key innovation, and it led to a wonderfully dystopian setting with a clear role for PCs. They are members of the Firewall, a protective conspiracy with many elements similar to John Clute's notion of a pariah elite.

The singularity-transhumanism-planetary catastrophe triptych genie is now out of the bottle. And these themes are going to continue to combine and recombine in new and different ways.

That being said, Eclipse Phase did not invent the concepts of the singularity or transhumanism.

The origins of the concept of the singularity go back to the 1950s: you can read about its history here. I think the concept is profoundly theological (which is one reason it is also called The Rapture of the Nerds), but it makes for some fun gaming. Arguably the concept is also derivative of the works of earlier philosophers such as Spinoza, Olaf Stapledon, and Teilhard de Chardin.

The concept of transhumanism goes back at least to J.D. Bernal's 1929 essay "The World, the Flesh, and the Devil."  You can read the essay in its entirety over here at the wonderful web-archive Marxists.org.

Of course the notion of planetary catastrophe goes back thousands of years as theology and mythology. The Late Victorians were quite obsessed with the notion, and it is in this time period that we begin to see the theme first presented in science fiction and the scientific romance.

Preorder for Nova Praxis Hardcover

The preorder for the Nova Praxis hardcover is up now on the Void Star Studios website.

If you are looking for a transhuman SF RPG that uses the FATE engine, Nova Praxis has it! If you are wondering what the game is all about, you can check out the Void Star Studios page on the game here. I also did a series of posts and reviews of the game back in the Fall. The link to the reviews and a sample character (built using the earlier draft rules, which of course evolved) can be found here.

But a lot has changed since my reviews. Over the last few months, designer Mike McConnell has been hard at work to ensure that the game will work for YOU, especially if you are a fan of FATE Core. Not only does the final version of Nova Praxis have a custom-built implementation of the FATE engine - created for transhuman SF gaming - but Mike has also built reverse compatibility into Nova Praxis, so that it can easily be used with FATE Core.

So get in on the preorder if you think you'll want the hardcover!

And you don't need to wait for the release of the hardcover to start reading and playing the game. The Nova Praxis Augmented PDF is already available for purchase. It's simply the best PDF in my game collection. Nova Praxis Accelerated is a truly state-of-the art, highly navigable design that is optimized for tablets and for apps like Goodreader - one of the few PDF products that I could actually use to run a game at the table.

Congratulations to Mike McConnell for producing such an excellent game, and for running an exemplary Kickstarter!

We're looking forward to running the game at some events this summer! Stay tuned for details.

Monday Nova Praxis Day

Cover designs by Andrew Chason

We are expecting Void Star games to release Nova Praxis, their FATE-based transhuman SF game tomorrow.

Four years in the making, this is Mike McConnell's dreamchild!

If you look here, you'll see that FATE SF has run a series of features on the game, including a multi-part review of the beta edition last Fall.

More to come!

Nova Praxis Kickstarter Now Live!

I am Ready to Resleeve! 

Wait - is that an Aspect? 

This morning, the Nova Praxis Kickstarter went live. 

I have made my pledge. 

Please consider making one of your own! 

The website for Nova Praxis has many topical links, as well as connections to the Void Star Games message boards where you can discuss the game. Previous links to my reviews of Nova Praxis are here:

The Setting

Mechanics and Chargen

Characters and Gear

A Sample Character Created by FATE SF

I hope to be posting at least one more character this week - a SIM, essentially a disembodied human consciousness living on a machine.

Investigator Hargitay - Centurion Special Service Investigator

Investigator Hargitay is attached to the Coalition's Centurion Special Service. Her specialty is investigating and tracking down SIMs and Sleeved individuals who have committed crimes with seeming impunity.

In her childhood, Hargitay's mother was stalked and killed by a rogue SIM; she grew up in foster care. Her mother's death was Hargitay's motivation to join the Special Service. After a confrontation with a cybersleeved, massively-forked posthuman perpetrator, she decided to undergo Apotheosis herself and get sleeved.

OGL MECHANICS

ASPECTS:

• Approach: Think about it from the victim's perspective
• Belief: We won't be safe unless we protect others
• Connection: I had a good partner
• Desire: To live in a society in which the sleeved and SIMs aren't feared
• Experience: Child of a crime victim
• Flaw: Indignation can trump judgement

STARTING STATE: Sleeved

• Alpha sleeve or +1 on bonus to purchase a better one

SKILLS:

• 1 Rank 5: Insight
• 2 Rank 4: Diplomacy, Firearms 
• 3 Rank 3: Assets,  Intimidation, Mnemonics 
• 4 Rank 2: Guile, Research, Resolve, Stealth 
• 10 Rank 1: Cohesion, Demolition, Education, Engineering: Hardware, Engineering: Software, Networking: Apostate, Networking: House,  Melee, Pilot, Security

Gamma Sleeve:*

• Base Value: 8
• Sleeve Aspects:
• Gene-Fixed Biosleeve
• Striking Looks
• Physical Skills:
• Athletics 4
• Endurance 4
• Perception 3
• Quality 2
• Augmentations: 
• Apotheosis
• Data Jack and Storage
• Exceptional Genengineering
• Light Screen Camouflage (i.e., light-bending cloaking device)
• Striking Looks

*I bumped up the Sleeve model by two steps from Alpha to Gamma in order to show off more Augmentations.

ADVANTAGES:

• All Seeing Eye: +3 on Perception tests
• Licensed: has access to restricted equipment
• Right Place, Right Time: spend a FP to arrive in a scene at just the right moment
• See the Soul: once per scene spend a FP to perform an Assessment on a person and determine one of their Aspects 

STRESS TRACKS:

• Physical: 6 
• Mental: 5
• Social: 7
• System: 3

REP-RATING: 3

GEAR:

• Rep-Rating Purchases:
• ARID Cloner
• Virtuality Interface
• Restricted Items:
• Heavy Gauss Pistol
• Protective Vest

Nova Praxis: The Digital Text

One more thing about Nova Praxis as a PDF it is a joy to read and navigate.

I have a LOT of PDFs and a number of ebooks, but the number that I have actually read cover-to-cover is quite small when compared to printed books.

This was not the case for me with Nova Praxis. The document is optimized for the iPad and in particular for its excellent Goodreader App. As you can see from the picture above, the text is laid out landscape. On the left hand margin there are chapter tabs. On the right hand margin there are forward and backward arrow keys. Below the arrow keys, there is an icon of a human figure; that takes you to the character sheets, making it very easy to move between the game rules and a sample character sheet.

On the top margin right in the center of the page, there is an icon of a globe. That takes you to the Void Star Games forum page, which makes it easy to move from the text to conversations about the text and how people are interpreting and using it.

The book is very well bookmarked. Finally, there is also a very reliable BACK key in the lower right hand corner of the page. This is quite helpful for returning to where you were reading from other places in the text that you may have jumped to to check something (such as the character sheets at the back of the book). All of the features made it easy to read and navigate this PDF.

Nova Praxis Review - Characters & Gear

Nova Praxis art by Andree Wallin

This is the final part of our three-part review of Mike McConnell and Void Star Games' forthcoming transhumanist SF RPG Nova Praxis,

You can see the first part of my review here, and the second part here.

I also published some further reflections on hacking the game system for running other SF settings like Battlestar Galactica here.

Today we are going to complete our review of Nova Praxis by looking at characters and gear. The first step in character generation is selecting Aspects. Each character gets to choose 6 of these. Unlike many FATE games, Nova Praxis does not require collaborative Aspect generation. Instead, you create six Aspects for your character that are coded A-F by theme:

• Approach - how you overcome obstacles
• Belief - philosophy or beliefs that guide your actions
• Connection - people, places, things that define you
• Desire - your characters goals and ambitions, and what drives him/her to adventure in the first place
• Experience -  defining event that shaped who you are as a person
• Flaw - that is pretty self-explanatory!

I really like this system for generating Aspects, which pioneered in Strands of Fate. While traditional FATE Aspect generation produces very cohesive parties and cooperative play groups, this the A-F schema is a great way to get a game started faster and is probably a smoother point of entry for traditional gamers who are not yet familiar with FATE

For the reader's convenience, I am repeating some information below that comes from my post last Wednesday, describing the next two steps in character generation. 

In step two of character generation, you decide what kind of character you will play. You have three choices:

• A Pure, a relatively normal human; 
• An uploaded SIM that lives on the network (and which can interact with the world though pervasive Augmented Reality systems and drones); or 
• A Sleeved, a mind that has been downloaded into a cybersleeve or biosleeve. 

The transhumanist options are the SIM and Sleeved. If you want to manipulate Augmented Reality (the partial virtual reality overlays projected onto realspace that can be seen using special glasses or contact lenses - players of Shadowrun 4th Edition will be familiar with this kind of technology), or use the Mesh (essentially cyberspace) to manipulate information, pilot drones, invade other networks, or launch cyber-attacks on other SIMS or Sleeved, your best bet is to start with one of these two latter options.

The Pure aren't necessarily reactionaries, however. The majority of people living in Coalition space aren't SIMS or Sleeved; they are still Pure aka normal humans. Becoming a SIM or one of the Sleeved is expensive. It is also something of a leap of faith towards new technologies with the potential to undermine our notions of the body and individual identity

In step three, you choose Skills. There are three strategies for allocating skills. You can create a Specialist, an Expert, or a Generalist, which is the gradient from having a highly specialized skill set to having a relatively broad, generalist skill set. Some of the skills are similar or common to other FATE systems, while others are rather unique. A few examples of new or variant skills include:

• Assets: a general measure of wealth, whether financial wealth or other assets such as a habitat or vehicle
• Cohesion: mental stability and sense of self. This helps you deal with psychological trauma such as that associated with resleeving. (And yes, this is kind of Resolve-y, but a much more genre-appropriate skill name)
• Networking: which comes in two flavors, one representing the media-dense, highly networked culture of the Houses (megacorporations) and one representing the more libertarian culture of the Apostates
• Engineering: which comes in both Hardware and Software types
• Guile: just what it sounds like!
• Mnemonics: which covers understanding and treating software minds, and operating resleeving facilities
• Quality: a sleeve's processing power, control of software, power regulation and storage, and resistance to tampering
• SINC: the ability to write and use the source code for Savant programs (see the Advantages in step four for more on Savant programs)

Keep in mind that SIMs do not get physical skills, such as Athletics, Endurance, Perception and Quality. Only the Pure or characters who are Sleeved get those - SIMs don't have a body! 

Once you have selected Skills, you select four Advantages for your character. These are similar to Stunts in traditional FATE. Many but by no means all confer specific combat advantages A couple of them are broadly useful in the context of the game setting:

• Exceptional Facility boosts the Assets skill by giving you access/control of higher quality, special facilities such as workshops and labs
• Licensed gives you access to technologies that are restricted including almost all weapons
• Savant is an advantage that gives you the ability to modify the source code for SIMs and sleeves, and unlocks a host of other abilities. This one is pretty critical if you want to do anything that involves information manipulation, piloting drones, or carrying out direct attacks on other SIMs. You will want to invest in the SINC skill if you have this Advantage
• SIM State advantage is what allows SIMs to exist as a virtuality inside a machine, create a virtual home in cyberspace, and communicate with others using Augmented Reality and the Mesh.

In step five you calculate the four Stress Tracks - Physical, Mental, Social, and System. Unlike most FATE games, the number of stress boxes in each track is directly determined by combining specific skills. For example, the number of boxes in your Social Stress Track is determined by adding your skill score in Assets + Diplomacy. No flipping around the skills pages to find the skill-specific adds to Stress Tracks as in a number of other FATE games.

Step six is calculating your Rep-Rating, a metric for your popularity, social standing, and ability to leverage favors. Recall from the second part of our review that Rep-Rating is a wheel + hub track in which temporary increases and decreases in your palanca are checked off on the wheel, with a complete rotation clockwise increasing your Rep-Rating by +1, and a complete counterclockwise rotation reducing it by -1. Your overall Rep-Rating is tracked using the number in the hub of the wheel. At the start of the game, the number is the highest of your two possible Networking skills +2.

The final step is selecting your Gear. In the draft of the rules which I am reading, there is a very extensive Gear section. Gear includes weapons and armor, as well as different kinds of equipment, technology, clothing, access to medical care including resurrection, and insurance (with different levels of resurrection-related insurance available - and some of these can lead to scenarios!). All Gear have a Value rating, and your PC will start with one item equal in Value to your Rep-Rating +1 and another item equal to your Rep-Rating. Items with a Value lower than your Rep-Rating are free. You can also use your Assets rating to acquire a number of restricted items (such as weapons).

What can I tell you about Gear? There's a ton of it. It includes: 

• Sleeves: biosleeves and cybersleeves - both base models that can be customized, as well as already off the rack, already customized sleeves 
• Augmentations: cybernetic implants, genengineering, nanotech, and more
• Savant Programs: which can do everything from rifle though other SIMs memories, to manipulate Augmented Reality to create hallucinations, to controlling a cloud of nanomachines, to piloting drones, to invading secured systems

Technically all of the above items are still in the Characters chapter. I think that is because they are an intrinsic part of the character - a part of either their body (if they have one), their sleeve, or their mind. 

The Gear chapter includes a lot more items - all extrinsic to the character - including weapons, armor, various kinds of equipment, and services (medical, resurrection-related insurance). A lot of the weapons here are quite deadly. I am particularly fond of the Particle Acceleration Guns (or "PAc Guns") which disrupt the target's atomic structure, causing heat to be released. A lot of it. This is very reminiscent of Catherine Asaro's "Jumblers" (my all-time favorite name for a military sidearm!) in her Skolian Empire series.

The PDF draft that I reviewed did not have stats for vehicles (including spacecraft). But author Mike McConnell assures me that spacecraft and other vehicles will be in the final draft. The draft concludes with sample NPCs and character sheets.

In summary, this is shaping up to be another great FATE SF game! I am planning to take it for a test drive with my gaming group some time in the next few weeks!

Nova Praxis Intermezzo

Just above, you can see the trailer for the Nova Praxis RPG. It explains the logic behind the setting - particularly the material basis for the emergence of the setting's human-machine intelligence civilizational singularity (please don't blame author Mike McConnell for this particular phrase; it is an emergent entity of the FATE SF singularity).

I'll be back on Monday with the final part of our review of Nova Praxis, covering characters and gear. I'll also present a couple of character designs next week. Today I just wanted to share a couple of reflections on the game. The first relates to the core mechanics, and the second to other potential uses of the transhumanist technologies presented in the game.

The evolution of FATE mechanics used by Strands of Fate and now by Nova Praxis creates a system where the players can make ALL the dice rolls. This works because when the GM is running NPCs, s/he can assume that the NPC just rolled a 0 on their test and use the sum of the NPCs skill + modifiers as the Effort resulting from their action. This speeds up the game by reducing the number of dice rolls. It also makes the game a bit more player-facing. Of course, the GM can still roll 1d6-1d6 + skill + modifiers if they want to, especially if they want to make a scene featuring a particularly important NPC more unpredictable. I know some people already use this approach when GMing Diaspora as well.

Nova Praxis art by Andree Wallin

The transhumanist technologies as depicted in the mechanics of Nova Praxis are also perfect for emulating some other SF settings dealing with transhuman themes. I am thinking specifically about the near future worlds presented in the anime Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and the TV series Caprica and Battlestar Galactica (the remake).

For example, you can use Nova Praxis to model both kinds of Cylons:

• The human-seeming models are essentially massively forked SIMs inhabiting distinct gene lines of biosleeves. Cylons seem pretty resistant to the trauma associated with being forked, but it is hard to argue that resurrection/resleeving for them is non-traumatic (even if sometimes that trauma manifests as  ecstasy or even as resurrection-addiction - both good Consequences, and the latter a Persistent one).
• The mech and fighter models are massively forked SIMS inhabiting standardized cybersleeves.

I am very tempted to try this out, and add a few of the old Cylon administrator types like Lucifer as meddlesome SIMs still lurking on ancient Cylon mainframes.

Nova Praxis Review - Mechanics and Chargen

Nova Praxis Art by Andree Wallin

Are you ready to rrrrummmble?  On Monday, we reviewed the setting of Mike McConnell and Void Star Games' new transhuman SF RPG, Nova Praxis. The game is powered by the Strands of Fate iteration of the FATE system. A couple of years ago, Mike McConnell developed Strands of Fate as a more universal FATE engine/toolkit.

I think that game was driven by a desire to clarify and systematize how FATE works. Thar design carries over well to Nova Praxis, so the game should resonate well with traditional gamers seeking a rigorous system  as well as with indie RPG fans who already love FATE.

The mechanics chapter of Nova Praxis doesn't turn FATE into HERO System 5th Edition, Revised either! It's only about 58 pages in total, and the core of that chapter is significantly less, since the mechanics section also covers many special cases (e.g., chases, falls, poison, diseases), the totality of which probably won't come up in play every single session.

I'll try to focus on what is distinctive to Nova Praxis and Strands, and then take a peek under the hood at character generation.

First things first: Nova Praxis uses a 1d6-1d6 dice mechanic rather than 4DF, which produces a slightly wider range of results: -5 to +5. Fans of Starblazer Adventures and Legends of Anglerre will be familiar with this variation on FATE.

Secondly, Nova Praxis reframes the traditional FATE ladder of Effort as a Difficulty scale. Again, not an earthshaking change.How well you do on an action is determined by rolling:

1d6-1d6 + Skill Rank + Modifiers vs. Difficulty

The total net result compared against the Difficulty is called Effort. A variety of  modifiers can contribute to the Effort score, representing such things as environmental conditions, help from people with similar skills, or good equipment. The Difficulty scale provides you with benchmarks for relative success. For example, you will need an Effort of 2 to get a Moderate success with an action.

This is likely to appeal to players and GMs who like traditional target number/difficulty systems and "shift" systems. Other than that, the "hows" of of skill use are pretty similar to other FATE games. Combat, for example, is resolved by a skill vs. skill type roll between attacker and defender. There are four kinds of Stress: Physical, Mental, Social, and System. System stress is important for individuals who are either SIMS (essentially human minds that have been converted into software and uploaded to live on a network) and or such minds when they have been sleeved into artificial bodies known as cybersleeves  and biosleeves.

Consequences come in four sizes: Minor, Major, Severe, and Extreme. There are very clear examples of each level of Consequence for each of the four types of Stress. Mechanically, there is also an important difference between Severe and Extreme Consequences,  and Minor and Major ones. The former two are Persistent Aspects which are easier to Compel. A PC must always pay a FP to avoid a Compel to a Persistent Aspect. This is good mechanically since it creates a bit of a death spiral in which a defender with Persistent Aspects will be more likely to run out of FPs - they will be pushed to make a Concession to end the conflict. There are also very clear rules for healing from Stress and the four different levels of Consequences.

Resources and reputation derived from social status/social networks can be managed using a cool wheel and hub track system for Rep-Ratings. The hub of the wheel is your overall score. Around the rim is a series of boxes like stress track boxes in many fate games.  Bumps (or increases) in Rep-Rating are filled in clockwise. When you have accumulated sufficient bumps to reach the 12 O'Clock position, your overall score goes up by one. Hits (i.e., damage) to your reputation works in the exact opposite way: bumps are erased in counterclockwise direction until you reach 12 O'Clock. Then your rating in the hub goes down by one.

Your Rep-Rating can be useful in many different ways, including acquiring resources and equipment without spending money (this is equivalent to all the gift bags and swag which celebrities receive for free), or leveraging other kinds of favors from people in your social network (for example, getting a higher status community gatekeeper to make a social connection for you). It looks like a cool mechanic that could be adapted for other FATE RPGs. It really emulates quite handily the media-immersed social environment of this world, and some others I can think of like Trinity and Aberrant.

No less importantly in a transhuman RPG the mechanics cover things like resleeving (i..e., downloading your mind into a new cybersleeve or biosleeve), forking (the odd situation in which two copies of mind simultaneously exist in different bodies, and merging (in which forked selves are re-integrated into a single mind). Each of these experiences can cause trauma (i.e., Stress), which is experienced as a mental attack.

On Friday we'll take a detailed look at the character generation system. To give you just a taste today, with Nova Praxis you can create three types of characters:

• A Pure, a relatively normal human; 
• An uploaded SIM that lives on the network (and which can interact with the world though pervasive Augmented Reality systems and drones); or 
• A Sleeved, a mind that has been downloaded into a cybersleeve or biosleeve. 

There are three strategies for allocating skills. You can create a Specialist, an Expert, or a Generalist, which is the gradient from having a highly specialized skill set to having a relatively broad, generalist skill set. Some of the skills are similar or common to other FATE systems, while others are rather unique. A few examples of new or variant skills include:

• Cohesion: mental stability and sense of self. This helps you deal with psychological trauma such as that associated with resleeving. (And yes, this is kind of Resolve-y, but a much more genre-appropriate skill name)
• Networking: which comes in two flavors, one representing the media-dense, highly networked culture of the Houses (megacorporations) and one representing the more libertarian culture of the Apostates
• Engineering: which comes in both Hardware and Software types
• Guile: just what it sounds like!
• Mnemonics: which covers understanding and treating software minds, and operating resleeving facilities

Next are Advantages, which covers special abilities and special applications of Skills. More on all of this and Gear next time! 

Nova Praxis Review - The Setting

The transhumanist SF FATE RPG Nova Praxis is a very welcome addition to the FATE family!  It's going to become my go-to system for near-future transhumanist stories with conspiracies and intrigue. 

Mike McConnell of Void Star Games made a name for himself a couple of years ago with Strands of Fate, a complete generic/universal rebuilding of the FATE system. I do believe you can run anything with it, from Clan of the Cave Bear to Call of Cthulhu to Battlestar Galactica. While I haven't yet run something using Strands of Fate, I admired Mike's effort to create a generic, gearhead-friendly implementation of FATE, my favorite game system. Strands is a game for building other games.

Which has now happened.

With the upcoming release of Nova Praxis, Mike McConnell's new transhumanist SF game, we now have a complete RPG powered by Strands of Fate.  And no fears, you don't need to buy Strands to play this: Nova Praxis is a complete RPG with a rich setting and a streamlined version of the Strands system.

Even better, it's a game I want to play.

Mike McConnell was kind enough to share a Beta version of the game with me. Today, we'll look at the setting. Wednesday, we'll come back and look at the system itself and at character generation. We'll round out our exploration of the game on Friday.

Let me say for starters that I have followed transhumanist RPGs for a long time. The first one was Phil Goetz and Anders Sandberg's Men Like Gods, which was published for free in the mid-90s online. That game was very inspired by the two thinkers that gave birth to the core concepts of transhumanism, physicist J.D. Bernal, who authored the seminal transhumanist work "The World, the Flesh and the Devil", and philosopher and science fiction author Olaf Stapledon, author of The Star Maker and many other works with a grand SF vision.

 Next in the lineage was GURPS Transhuman Space. With its stunningly beautiful art by Christopher Shy, Transhuman Space painted a near future setting with corporate and political intrigue in our solar system. Next came Eclipse Phase (another near future game with stunning art), an explicitly left-wing game with a catastrophically ruined Earth, numerous factions and conspiracies, and a much darker feel. As a counterpoint to this we have Sarah Newton's FATE-based Mindjammer (with a second edition on the way in 2013) with an incredibly far future, relatively optimistic setting inspired by Stabledon and Cordwainer Smith.

All of these games are strong offerings. But, in contrast to the fields of fantasy, horror, and space opera gaming, if you want to run a transhuman SF game you have only a few options. Having another option helps open the field a bit!  And having two different transhumanist FATE games is great, as the mechanics can cross-fertilize.

But back to Nova Praxis.

The game's present day is 2140. Earth is no longer habitable; it has been contaminated by a nanoplague called a "technophage": essentially a runaway weapon released in 2112 by one of the two great powers of 21st Century Earth.  It was an intelligent weapon that - oddly enough - refused to switch itself off.  As a result of the devastation unleashed by this weapon and the war that preceded it, some 3 billion people have died. Fortunately, millions of humans made it off world - thanks largely to the actions of corporations that stepped in when governments didn't. Humanity has been forced to adapt (thus the "Nova Praxis" title, which means New Practice or New Way of Doing Things) - and it has.

But let's back things up a bit. The world got interesting around 2042. A singularity occurred in the form of an Artificial General Intelligence - a self-aware machine that began to evolve and innovate, exponentially. This machine, interestingly enough called Mimir, developed the material basis for most of the technology that followed over the next century: nanotechnology, compilers (molecular assemblers), Nano-Swarms (nano clouds that can configure and reconfigure themselves to create smart objects), the Mindset (which converts the human brain into a network of nanomachines that can be backed up, leading to Apotheosis or virtual immortality), the ability to download and back-up the Mindset, Sleeving/Resleeving (downloading the Mindset into a cybershell or bioshell), and more. In short, everything you'd need to develop a post-scarcity society.

But things aren't that simple. Unfortunately, Mimir inexplicably shut down permanently only a short time after emerging and leaving humanity with all the new technologies. Are there poison pills among the designs? The players will have to figure that out!

And then there's the Coalition, the new post-Earth, post-war government uniting many different space habitats and planets. Although everyone in the Coalition has a guaranteed minimum standard of living, not everyone in Paradise is happy with it. That's because the price for a post-scarcity society is the need for constant personal Reputation management. You gain access to greater social resources by doing things that other people rate as of social value. Your Rep can go up or down, and there are PC mechanics for this that regulate access to social resources and more.

In the Coalition, you also have to make peace with living under constant surveillance from AIs. And when you look under the surface of things, there are factions and competing agendas everywhere, including:

• Purists who are opposed to transhumanist technologies;
• Purifiers who use terrorism to advance the Purists' objections into practice; 
• Apostates who reject the post-scarcity social contract of the Coalition, in exchange for a more dangerous and libertarian life on the margins;
• Government by corporations called Houses, whose employee-elected representatives serve in a Senate. The Houses put up a front of unity, but are constantly fighting with each other behind the scenes for advantage, power, and resources;  
• Remnant forces representing the former belligerent powers behind the war that destroyed Earth;
• Posthumans, also known as Aberrants (ahem!), who seek to transcend the limits the Purists have imposed on transhumans in order to avoid the emergence of a post-homo superior;
• A variety of religious factions, including surprisingly relevant Cartesians (my call on that!) called Astralists, and even a sect dedicated to the Artificial General Intelligence Mimir.

As should be obvious by now, the history and setting are complex and take some digesting. The information is presented in different ways, including essays, a historical timeline, and profiles of the planets and space habitats of the solar system, as well as descriptions of exoplanets (the setting is near-future SF but humanity has made it to the stars), and various factions. This is all front-loaded; the mechanics don't start until page 72! All-in-all, plenty going on in the world of Nova Praxis, and plenty of conflicting agendas and conspiracies for PCs to get caught-up in! 

Join us on Wednesday, when we look at system and character generation!