Obscure Simulations Roundup: Metamorphosis Alpha

Today's FATE SF post is our contribution to the Obscure Simulations Roundup, a community blog hop dedicated to forgotten or under-appreciated RPGs. As regular readers of FATE SF know, I have a forthcoming generation ship RPG of my own called Project Generations. So it shouldn't be a big surprise that my OSR post is an appreciation for Jim Ward's original generation ship SF RPG, Metamorphosis Alpha (TSR, 1976).

Metamorphosis Alpha isn't the most obscure or forgotten RPG. After all, it was the first SF RPG published. It's not even out-of-print. You can buy Metamorphosis Alpha in PDF here, or pick up a hard copy from Lulu here.

I'm writing about Metamorphosis Alpha today because it has a special place in my heart. It was one of the first RPGs I purchased, shortly after the first edition of Traveller and around the same time that I picked up Whitebox D&D.

Cover of the Dell edition of Heinlein's "Universe"

One of the first SF novels I read as a kid was Robert A. Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky. It was an SF novel about a population of humans and mutants (you can see the mutant Joe-Jim standing in the picture above) living on a slower-than-light interstellar generation ship many generations after the ship's launch. Over that time, successive generations had 1) forgotten that they were on a star ship, and 2) had lost the skills to pilot and maintain their vessel. They were essentially lost in space, facing eventual doom unless a group of heroes rediscovered that they were on a ship that had a destination in mind. A small band of humans and mutants - two communities usually at each others' throats - made this discovery and set about to bring things to right.

Generation ship stories often involve an epistemological break from ignorance, to (re)discovery, to setting things right. Such a discovery is common in SF stories but particularly important in traditional generation ship narratives. For example, you see it in the very title of the classic Star Trek episode about the generation ship Yonada, "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched The Sky".

While scientific and cosmological discoveries made by characters in the Cthulhu Mythos stories are ultimately disempowering, underscoring the futility of human effort and of irrelevance of the human scale, discoveries made in generation ship stories are ultimately liberating and empowering. People learn that the world is not what it seems, that it needs to be fixed or improved in some way, and that the means to fix the generation ship and set its course right are within the characters' reach - if they know where to look, and what to make of things! The characters may have to struggle or sacrifice, but their efforts aren't ultimately in vain. That's hopeful, and a call to responsibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Starlost_-_intro.jpg

Of course, my encounter with the generation ship in Orphans of the Sky was quickly followed by watching the early '70s SF generation ship TV series, The Starlost. Ed Bryant and Harlan Ellison wrote the screenplay (and a novel, "Phoenix Without Ashes") for this Canadian TV series, and Ellison quickly turned against his series very vocally, deriding laughable plots, implausible SF terms, and rotten dialogue.  In 2011, "Phoenix Without Ashes" was also published by IDW as a graphic novel.

Oh well.  I loved the show as a kid. The ship model was wonderful and there was some interesting tech on the ship, such as the the habitat hemispheres, the iris doors, the small cassettes and devices used to control access to different parts of the ship through the iris doors, the bounce tubes that helped people get around the non-habitat parts of the ship quickly, and of course the librarian AI.

Silent Running also comes to mind as a generation ship eco-narrative of the '70s - even if those ships weren't really going anywhere.

Silent Running (1972)

They also had cute maintenance and gardening droids. Every generation ship needs maintenance drones of some kind. Somebody needs to continue working and repairing things while the humans busy themselves with killing each other.

Silent Running

So anyway, back to Metamorphosis Alpha. It's an extremely simple system by contemporary standards, but it does the job. There are six Abilities, rolled randomly using 3d6: Radiation Resistance (pretty important, as the generation ship Warden in the default setting was damaged by a cloud of interstellar radiation and is still contaminated with radiation), Mental Resistance (defense against psionic mental attacks, as well as the intelligence skill that helps characters understand the ship's now ancient, mysterious, and often deadly tech), Dexterity, Strength, Leadership Potential (only pure humans can attract followers; human and animal mutants don't even get this Ability), and Constitution (determines how many d6 of hit dice you get, as well as your ability to survive poisoning). If after reading the Constitution bit you're saying "Hello, Carcossa" you should be, although in Metamorphosis Alpha you only roll the dice for hit points when you create your character - not every encounter.

If you are a pure human, you are pretty much done at this point. Take clothes and weapons typical of your community. If you are going to play a mutant human or mutant animal, you roll 1d4 to determine the number of physical mutations you get, and 1d4 for the number of mental mutations. You pick your mutations from the lists for each type. Then the GM gets to roll to determine randomly what physical and mental mutational defects you get; the GM rolls either once (if the player has 4 or less mutations) or twice (i.e., once on each list, if the PC has 5 or more mutations). Mutants get no equipment.

Then you are ready to play. The core mechanic is d20 based and there won't be huge surprises to people who have played other OSR d20 games.

The GM needs to have at least part of one level of the Warden detailed before play begins. This is good as it enables sandbox play, but there's nothing to stop the GM from detailing as much of the ship upfront as they'd like to do. Like building a dungeon, this is a game in itself.

The book tells you what the general details of each deck of the ship should be, as well as the kinds of technologies found on the ship, and their relative complexity; PCs roll their Mental Resistance vs. an item's complexity in order to figure out if their character knows what to do with it and can handle it without risk of injury. There's guidance to help the GM build mutated animals, plants, and humans, as well as guidance for robots and androids (i.e., chemical life - essentially, replicants).

There's no experience system, so (all things being equal) characters will keep the abilities that they have until death or the end of the campaign. I think that's good, as it keeps play focused on exploration and problem-solving, and not on monster hunting and treasure seeking as ends in themselves. All the treasure in the world won't do you a bit of good if your ship burns up in an alien sun, crashes into an uninhabitable planet, or runs out of gas between the stars.

Here's a few campaign ideas for Metamorphosis Alpha:

Metamorphosis Moonbase Alpha: The sudden departure of Earth's rogue moon caused a disaster at home, and a very long, strange trip for the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha. The Alphans are used to sudden transitions. One moment, their moon is travelling along in the depths of interstellar space; a few days or weeks or months later, it is careening into another solar system entirely.

So imagine the Alphans' surprise when they receive an automated distress signal from a ship they are approaching. A signal in English. It's a vast ship. It's an Earth ship: the hull says: "Warden." Moonbase Alpha's computer (there is only one!) has no record of any such launch. Was the vessel launched after the moon ripped itself out of Earth orbit?

A ship this big could have many things of value on board: replacement technology, hydroponic supplies and seeds, medicines, astrogational records, news from Earth - many things. The ship is crawling with radiation. It's too risky to send more than one Eagle to investigate. The Commander calls for volunteers.

[The GM should secretly roll 1d6. That is how many days the Eagle crew will have to explore the Warden before the moon begins to accelerate away from the Warden forever.]

An Eagle from Space:1999

Return to Yonada: The  U.S.S. Enterprise is called back to the asteroid generation ship of Yonada. A civil war has broken out on the vessel, even as it has settled into a stable orbit around a habitable world. A restorationist cult called The Most Devoted to the Oracle have declared that it is heresy to leave Yonada. They have tapped into the central computer of the ancient space ark, and have appropriated the medical secrets of the Fabrini (the Yonadan's distant ancestors who built the ship), unleashing a mutogenic viral plague which has wreaked havoc on the People of Yonada. Worse still, the High Priestess of the People, Natira, has gone missing. She must be rescued, as Natira is the Yonadan leader with the greatest interest in helping the People of Yonada complete their ancestors' long journey to colonize a new world.

Play a native Yonadan loyal to Natira, or a Federation officer! Find Yonada's rightful ruler! Defeat the cult and its mutant menace!

Yonada

Ark of the Shunned Ones: A reconnaissance starship far beyond the borders of the Humanspace Empire discovers an ancient generation ship: a vessel of the hideous and inimical Shunned Ones. The Ship's Telepath reports the presence of human minds on-board the generation ship, as well as the minds of a great many other alien races. The Shunned Ones' ship is in a terrible state of disrepair, leaking radiation and strange other-planar energies; it may not survive much longer. It would be desirable to rescue the humans on-board, and to explore this great vessel before its imminent demise. The Captain orders a team of scientists and marines to board the ship.

Hideous Inimical Alien From "This Island Earth"

Beneath the Pyramid of the Sun: The great hexagonal Sun crosses the sky every day. Every day, your temple feeds it a live human heart, ensuring that it will return from the Underworld at the end of the night to bring the next day. Yet today, just before the sacrifice, a strange creature appeared from the Underworld beneath the temple, and stole the mid-day sacrifice. A group of brave warriors and priests must descend into the Underworld and find this monster.

"Chariots of the Gods?", anyone? Aztecs, mutants, and more on a generation ship with many different habitat compartments, each containing a different ancient human culture.  (Check out Harry Harrison's Captive Universe for even more inspiration!)

"Captive Universe" cover art by Alan Guttierez

Also, be sure to check out Brett Slocum's idea for a Paranoia-Metamorphosis Alpha mash-up over at The Eye of Joyful Sitting Amongst Friends blog.

Finally, we leave you with a rather evocative piece from near the end of the Metamorphosis Alpha book. The artist is David Sutherland, who was not only responsible for the art in Metamorphosis Alpha, but also did many of the illustrations for Empire of the Petal Throne.

Art by David Sutherland! 

Evil Hat Street Team Activities In November

In November, we participated in the Evil Hat Street Team in several ways, including:

• Gaming and posting our Project Generations FAE playtest report (Task 4). I had a second gaming event I wanted to share, but Task 4 only allowed one entry. Come back to FATE SF next week to find out about our Fate Core Tekumel event at U-Con!
• Reviewing Fate Core on the FATE SF blog (Task 2)
• Spreading the word about the Street Team by placing the icon and a link to the Evil Hat Street Team page in the left hand sidebar of the FATE SF blog (part of Task 5)
• Reviewing FAE on the FATE SF blog (Task 2)
• Further spreading the word about the Street Team by summarizing our own Street Team efforts (again, Task 5)

We look forward to the next set of opportunities to participate in the Street Team!

Project Generations FAE At U-Con

FATE SF ran two games at U-Con in Ypsilanti, Michigan this past weekend. Saturday's game used Fate Accelerated Edition. I ran a session of Project Generations, part of my forthcoming series of Fate-based generation ship offerings from Modiphius Entertainment.

The session started with the players taking Project Generations' collaborative and Diaspora-inspired "Create a Generation Ship on the Fly" rules for a test drive. That went amazingly well. The players created a rickety generation ship: a desperate, nameless ship fleeing a cosmic disaster. The way the players described the disaster was "Cthulhu ate earth." A generation ship had been under construction for a while. Humanity was already colonizing the solar system. When the disaster struck, survivors in the colonies decided to act immediately and launch the ship ahead of schedule.

At the time of the launch, certain things had been taken for granted. Most of the nameless generation ship's reaction mass was used in a getaway launch burst. Some technologies were still in their infancy, such as AIs and nanotechnology, but assumed to be on a good trajectory. By a couple hundred years after launch, everyone expected that things would be even better. Many problems at launch would have been solved.

Not so much.

Things just got worse and worse.

The PCs were part of the reserve crew for a future launch; they were already in suspended animation at the time of the launch, and knew nothing of the cosmic disaster which has struck Earth. Their first clue that something was wrong was when a ham-handed Engineering robot awakened them some 300 years after ship's launch. No Medical robots or personnel anywhere in sight. Things only got worse from there.

The ship was in very bad shape. The humans and robots on-board had company. The inimical kind, from beyond time and space.Fortunately our heroes were the A-Team. They pressed on, confronting horror after horror. Tough bastards that they were, they eventually got to the bridge and took control of the ship.

***

Everyone seemed to have a good time. One player even ordered a copy of the Deck of Fate while I took a brief bio-break. He liked how I was using it to flavor situations and dice rolls with the Aspects on the card. I can't say I mind being called "oracular" one little bit.

Great players, and a great game!

FATE Track and Leonard Balsera at U-Con in November

This November, we'll be making the pilgrimage up to U-Con in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I completed a two year program in non-profit leadership at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, so it will be nice to go back up there for a few days. Hopefully we'll have a chance to hit one of the Zingerman's Roadhouse while we're up there too.

U-Con is deservedly famous for its longstanding track of Tekumel games. Readers of FATE SF know that I am a fan of Tekumel, so this con promises to be a real treat!

But this year, U-Con is also hosting +Leonard Balsera, the author of Fate Core, as its Guest of Honor. You can find info on events with Leonard Balsera here.

There will also be a special track of Fate-based gaming events. And they're looking for more FATE GMs.

I'll be offering two FATE events:

• Lord Ksarul's Broken Labyrinth is a Fate Core scenario that will be cross-listed with the both the Tekumel and FATE Tracks:
• A party of masons and priests must go into the Underworld to discover why the temple walls are collapsing! Experience both Tekumel AND FATE Core: two great things that go together!

• Project Generations is the title of the other scenario I'll be running. That will be a Fate Accelerated Edition scenario featuring some of my forthcoming work for Modiphius Entertainment:
• Create a generation ship setting and go for an adventure together with the author of Modiphius Entertainment's forthcoming Project Generations series of FATE SF games!

Don't Be Afraid To Make Things Tough For Your Players

The title paraphrases an email that Starblazer Adventures' lead author +Chris Birch sent me a while ago about the FATE scenario I am playtesting for Project Generations. Last night we wrapped up playtesting. Players had great suggestions for finalizing the scenario for publication, which I'll be digging into this weekend.

But today I wanted to talk for a moment about the penultimate combat we had last night. It was brutal. I used the FATE Drop Dice tables I have created for Project Generations to generate a series of zones around a Landing Bay, position allies and adversaries, and quickly statt up the major NPC and their minions.

It was cyberzombies and controller robots against our the three players, with their "allies" standing on the sidelines and watching everything go down. In Starblazer Adventures, weapons provide bonuses to the amount of Stress racked up by a hit. That contributed to a fast and furious battle.

A battle in which our pilot, Lightning, used the just-landed shuttle as a weapon. She fired its beam weapon at the opposition (and I narrated one cool laser-ricochet mishap), and also hover-swung the shuttle around using it to dislodge some cyberzombies who were attempting to board.

Unlike the PCs last encounter with cyberzombies and controller robots, these were fast zombies, controlled by two beffy robots who waded into the fray - quite unlike the cagy stickman controller robots in the last encounter. These robots did some damage.

One PC, Antonio, suffered two Consequences; he lost an arm with one of them! Another PC, Buffalo the Robot Fighter, wracked up three Consequences, one of which was Extreme. He ended up with a horrible gash from mouth to cheek, sort of like this:

The Joker Drawing by Carlos Velasquez

 Not ideal, especially when you are the diplomat and power-negotiator!

The controller robots end up ever worse, KIA, with three Consequences each. One lost an arm. The other lost its head. Both kept on fighting, while the consequences racked up on both side.

Our heroes eventually prevailed, but it was close. And Antonio ended up with something he really wanted: one of the controller robots' crab-claw hands as a prosthetic. Granted it is a 150 lb. prosthetic, and the graft was done by someone with a rather, well... theoretical grasp of human anatomy.

So Antonio ended up looking rather like poor old Vina from the original Star Trek pilot, "The Menagerie":

He was nevertheless pretty happy with his new crab-claw prosthesis.

My experience with both Starblazer and Diaspora has been different from Spirit of the Century, where PCs rarely took Consequences. Combat in these two games manages to be both fun and risky.

It will be interesting to playtest FATE Core in Tekumel in a few weeks and see how combat works with the refined and streamlined FATE engine.

Below Decks With Project Generations

http://paulinespiratesandprivateers.blogspot.com/
2010/10/tools-of-trade-load-sight-fire.html

Today I created two huge Drop Dice Tables for Project Generations!  They allow a GM running the scenario included with Modiphius Entertainment's first Project Generations product to create random encounters for both the Habitat (i.e., green space) areas, as well as the Below Decks levels of the vast generation ship in the scenario.

The tables should be useful for any SF game set on a vast space ship.

I also created keys for each of the two drop tables so that GMs have ideas about what to do with each encounter/location. There are also encounter mechanics that make it easier to build out each encounter.

Vat Grown

http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com

Today I continued writing the scenario chapter for Project Generations. The scenario is fairrrrrly hard SF, with the PCs playing Reserve Crew who are awakening from cryostasis to deal with problems on the ship.  You generate PCs using a set of chargen on-the-fly mechanics optimized for the setting. My default assumption is that Reserve Crew are highly skilled normal humans.

But I've been thinking.

Some of that thinking was stirred by Brad Murray's recent comments on FATE Core character generation, and its contrasts with chargen in Diaspora. With FATE Core you create a more or less fully realized character. But in Diaspora, you have options that recognize that some players take a few weeks to fully understand or articulate the kind of character they want to play... kind of easing into the role.

The mechanics I'm developing for chargen in Project Generations allow for a fair amount of player choice. But last night, I started to feel that my design could leave out the player who wants to run someone just a little bit...different.

So I have built-in mechanics so that a player can self-select to play an android, a vat-grown human born on one of Earth's orbitals (with the potential for special abilities), or a cyborg.

I think this works well within the Reserve Crew narrative framework, and will be fun for player who enjoy creating characters who are just a little bit different..

The Name Game In Project Generations

We are continuing our push to complete the full draft of Modiphius' Project Generations!

Today, I made major upgrades to the generation ship history and background for the Project Generations scenario included in the first publication. I also made more revisions to the character generation rules.

I also spent some time thinking about naming traditions on the space ark. When you are departing Earth for a journey that takes hundreds of years in space, do you change your name to "seal the deal" (i.e., symbolize your commitment and the major life change)?

That's exactly what the players decided to do with their characters in Project Generations playtest.

If you have made your own SF settings, how have you changed the naming traditions? How do you play the Name Game?

Awakening From Cryostasis In Project Generations

http://www.zengardner.com/
the-cryogenic-false-hope-escape-hatch-caper/

In the scenario I am writing for Project Generations, the PCs play the Reserve Crew of a generation ship who are awakened from cryostasis. Today, I completed the character generation rules for the awakening and character generation process. All of the details for using Project Generations chargen with the Diaspora and Starblazer Adventures rulesets are now set. I still have some specific details to work through for Bulldogs!, but the overall framework is there now and seems to hang together well.

The overall approach is character generation on the fly. That is a feature of a number of FATE games, and has the benefit of bringing people into play rather quickly. Character generation is grounded in the space ark and cryostasis experience through the use of two tables, while also leaving room for some up-front player creativity and intentionality in character design before play begins.

I think the system strikes the right balance between narrativist and sandbox approaches to PC generation. If you don't like to know everything about your character before play begins, I think you will be happy with this. You have room to explore and grow your character, which is exactly what I saw happen in the playtest.

I am happy to have the rules in a more or less final form that feels right to me.

Space: 1999 - Mission of the Darians

This weekend, I put together the resource list of books, RPGs, TV/movies, and web sites about generation ships for Modiphius Entertainment's forthcoming FATE supplement, Project Generations. One of my re-discoveries in the process was an episode of Space: 1999 called "The  Mission of the Darians". In this episode, a giant space ship - about 50 miles long by 5 miles wide - suddenly appears over Moonbase Alpha, giving off a distress call warning that a great proportion of the space ark's passengers have died.

The Alphans of course fly over to investigate. No suits, no-nothing to protect themselves against whatever caused the disaster and killed most of the crew.  But things are apparently in their favor. No plagues or radiation to ruin their day. They split the party in three, explore a bit, and discover that there are survivors on the ark

In time, the Alphans find the disaster has apparently divided the ship's crew into two populations. Commander Koning and Victor Bergman discover a refined, aristocratic group who control the ship and call themselves Darians (just as the people who launched the ark did). They learn from this group that although the ship has been damaged, it is in fact on course and will reach its intended destination - a new planet to colonize - in 100 years. However, the Darians need supplies and materials to repair their ship; lists are drawn-up so that the Alphans may provide assistance. But there may be other raw materials that the Darians seek from the Alphans...

Meanwhile, the other Alphans exploring the Darian ark discover a second population that has degenerated into bedraggled and dirty cavemen types, roaming the numerous damaged and disused areas of the generation ship.

So here we have a classic generation ship story set-up: a disaster has happened on the ship, and the ship's crew or population have diverged into at least two distinct social groups, at least one of which has "degenerated" into a state of primitivism or barbarism.

As always, it is important to figure out who the real barbarians are in the story.

Watch and discover for yourself...

More Playtesting For Project Generations

http://spaceship.brainiac.com/spaceship6.html

Last night, we got back into FATE SF gaming, and resumed playtesting for Project Generations! The focus of play, as an evening of rain and ice descended on the Twin Cities, was a space battle over a space ark - a battle fought using the ark's own auxiliary ships.

I used two rows of six index cards to represent the 180 degrees above and below the axis of the cylindrical space ark. The combat was fought using Starblazer Adventures ships, characters, and space combat rules.

I used Star Trek Micromachines to represent the ships involved in the battle. Poker chips were used to designate zones above the nap-of-generation ship zones represented by the index cards.

(And Micromachines are so gloriously not-to-scale! Shuttlecraft are half the size of a Romulan Warbird!)

Detachable plastic ship stands were used to represent the ark's point defense systems, which also tried to get into the action.

The players seemed to have fun, and they gave me some great feedback on the tabletop aspects of running the conflict.

There was a lot of food for thought, including these three questions for you, Dear Reader:

• What do you feel are the most critical aspects of space combat to represent in an RPG? 
• What are the most tedious aspects of how space combat gets represented in RPGs?
• Where have you had a BLAST with space combat in a wargame or RPG?

FATE Library: Starblazer Adventures

Anubian Ambassador Conniption

This is the third post in our FATE Library series, in which I am looking at the FATE RPGs that I own, have read, and have used. The first post in the series was a review of Spirit of the Century. The second was a review of Diaspora.

Today, we are taking a look at Starblazer Adventures, a massive, lavishly illustrated tome of FATE-inspired rock and roll space opera.

(You can download a free 40 page preview of the game here.)

First, my rating system:

• Book Condition? My copy is in excellent shape. It is a huge, very solid hardcover. The binding is  intact after being roughly 3.5 years in my possession. Slight corner rubs. Best of all, it did not kill the Anubian Ambassador when it slid onto her sleeping form. However, it certainly did get her attention!
• Actually Read? Well, any tome that has 629 pages of text is going to be read-as-needed, rather than read-through from cover-to-cover. At least in my house. I have read A LOT of the book (it has 34 chapters and 6 appendices), but I am always discovering new worlds within; there is always more of Starblazer to read and learn. I am most familiar with the sections on character generation, careers, skills, stunts, equipment and gadgets, aliens and mutants, robots and vehicles, and starship design. Practically every time I use the book, I  also consult the Basic Scaling chapter, which is only one page of text, but an essential reference for this implementation of the FATE Fractal.
• Ever Played? I have used Starblazer Adventures to run Fading Suns, and am currently using it to playtest my forthcoming generation ships supplement for Modiphius Entertainment, which is called Project Generations. I also use Starblazer Adventures for the FATE SF posts tagged with the Label "SBA". Many of these are for a sandbox space opera setting called "the Empire".
• Science Fiction? It was the first FATE science fiction roleplaying game. The game's subtitle is The Rock and Roll Space Opera Adventure Game. The game takes its title not from the anime "Starblazers" (although, believe me, you could use Starblazer Adventures to run adventures in "Starblazers") but from the British comics magazine Starblazer - Science Fiction Adventure in Pictures published by DC Thomson & Co., Ltd., from 1979-1991. Grant Morrison wrote for Starblazer, which is enough for me!  The interior art is most definitely 70s-SFnal; it is all from the "Starblazer" comics and is certain to hit the sweet spot for fans of art in the same vein as Chris Foss and Terran Trade Authority books. So, a game based on SF comics of the late rock and roll era, as well as a rock and roll game in the sense that it is a perfect toolkit for running fast-paced sandbox space opera inspired by Perry Rhodan, original Star Trek, Star Wars, either Battlestar Galactica series, Babylon 5, or even Firefly. Hell. Planet of the Apes. Kamandi. Forbidden Planet. Planet of Vampires. Asimov, Heinlein, Frank Herbert's Dune - mix and match or anything of your own design. Rock and roll.

Some intellectual projects are very tightly focused on the exploration of the implications of a few key discoveries; this is what Diaspora is like. Other intellectual projects explode in every direction, exploring ever expanding chains of discoveries in multiple directions simultaneously; this is what Chris Birch and Stuart Newman's Starblazer Adventures is like. This was the first FATE game to explore the full potential of FATE for scalability at different levels. The FATE fractal they discovered can model anything from a human to a vehicle to a starship to a galactic empire to a galaxy.

That makes reviewing Starblazer Adventures a little bit like trying to review of the Bible. "In the beginning..." gets you started, but after that, there are so many different books and chapters, and numerous directions that one might explore.

But let's start at the beginning. 

Starblazer Adventures uses 1D6-1D6 as its core dice mechanic. It was the first implementation of FATE to do so. The resulting distribution for 1D6-1D6 extends one number higher and lower than the distribution for 4DF, and the amplitude of the curve isn't quite as high at and around zero. It's a bit swingier than 4DF but feels fine in play.

On to creation.

Characters in Starblazer Adventures are created in collaborative Aspect-generating phases similar to those in Spirit of the Century (SOTC). PCs have 10 Aspects. There are 32 skills, most of which are closely based on SOTC. There are a few new skills, including Starship Engineering, Starship Gunnery, Starship Pilot, and Starship Systems. However, there are also Alien/Mutant skills, and Psionic skills which expands the potential skills list by another 15. Dozens of Stunts fall under the specific "normal" skills. There are also Stunts associated with Alien/Mutant skills and Psionic skills, as well as special Stunts that are accessible for Aliens/Mutant characters based on novel uses of 8 normal skills. 

Players can create characters belonging to ten different science fictional careers ranging from Diplomat to Explorer to Pirate/Rebel to Sci-Tech. Each career also has unique Stunts that are outside the normal Skills-based Stunt menu. No one has to create PCs using the Career Types, however. You can create PCs completely without using them. Career Types just add a little more specialization and flavor Skill- and Stunt-wise, and provide a bit more directionality and inspiration for someone trying to select Aspects for their PC.

Characters have two stress tracks, one for physical Stress and one for Composure Stress. Weapons add to the shifts you do in a successful hit, while armor reduces hits and in some cases takes Consequences. 

As I mentioned before, there are rules for creating Aliens and Mutants, as well as robots, which are essentially only another variation in character type. Here is one of my creations, the Witchfinder-class Android. The book gives you a huge number of descriptions and stats for all sorts of creepy space overlords, aliens, mutants, monsters, robots, etc. from the Starblazer comics. You can use these out-of-the-box, or use them as benchmarks for creating your own aliens, robots, and creatures.

Starships have Aspects, Skills, Stunts, and Stress Tracks that are structured almost identically to those for characters. This is the FATE Fractal at work. There are 24 templates for space vehicles ranging from Scale 2 Sensor Probes and Scale 3 Fighters, all the way up to Scale 6 Fleet Carriers and Scale 7 Orbital Military Bases. There are rules for building your own space vehicles. I built the Flying Fist of Judah Heavy Fighter in about 15 minutes or so. The space combat rules give any player with a relevant starship skill a chance to do something interesting during space combat.

Additional variations on this theme of the "build X like you would a character" are found in the rules for statting up creatures, organizations (everything from space-chivalric orders to vast galactic empires), and planets. You can play out conflicts between different organizations and groups, just as you can with the Company rules in Greg Stolze's REIGN.

There is a very fun planet/system generator. Here is an example of the Prison Planet that I created using that tool. The book describes numerous worlds from the Starblazer comics.

There are rules for collaborative setting generation. They are more focused on creating distinct setting-zones in a solar system or in a larger region of space - places that the PCs can help develop bring to life by creating interesting names and Aspects for those parts of the map. These rules aren't as developed and tightly axiom-driven as Diaspora's Cluster generation system, but they point in directions that are equally interesting, especially for the creation of sandbox space opera settings.

Some of the ideas presented in the game haven't even been used elsewhere in FATE, such as the ideas of Campaign, Group, and Character Plot stress: "Essentially each one is a stress track that is affected by player character failures, specific player actions and trying to escape death. As the stress damage builds up various "plot events" happen which lead to change in the characters' lives or experiences" (p.387).

For me it's not a question of Starblazer Adventures OR Diaspora OR Bulldogs!  Each one is a unique implementation of FATE and they each fill a certain niche in SF gaming. 

Starblazer Adventures fills the niche of being FATE's space opera sandbox toolkit. It blows the niche wide-open into a swirling galactic vortex. So avoid the Space Sargasso! Watch out for THAT android! And get your blaster ready! There's more to come for Starblazer Adventures! 

Project Generations - More Details On The Publication

Over the weekend, the product page went live for Project Generations, my forthcoming FATE-based supplement on generation ships for Modiphius Entertainment.

It has a lot more details on the contents of the publication!

Once we iron out a few more details, Modiphius Entertainment should be putting up timeline information for the release as well.

Stay tuned to FATE SF this week! On Wednesday, we'll post our FATE Library review of Starblazer Adventures!

Project Generations

Project Generations is the working title for the generation ships supplement I am writing for Modiphius Entertainment. 

I have been wanting to do a generation ships RPG for two decades. Back in the mid-90s I took my first shot at it creating a space ark RPG called NOAH. Now after all these years I am finishing the writing for a generation ships supplement using my favorite game system, FATE!

 My love of space arks began as a result of Fall road trips to New England with my parents. I read my first two science fiction novels in the back of my Dad's Galaxie 500 on those trips: James Blish's Spock Must Die! and Robert A. Heinlein's Orphans of the Stars. The later novel is perhaps the classical generation ship story, with its humans and mutants struggling to survive on an out-of-control generation ship.

And I wasn't alone in claiming Heinlein as an influence. His book almost certainly influenced Jim Ward's classic generation ship RPG, Metamorphosis Alpha.

The Starlost was another major influence in my youth. Although the series was much derided by Harlan Ellison, who wrote the original screenplay and served as the science adviser to the show, the design of the Earthship Ark was elegant and beautiful.

I lived on that ship in the early 1970s.

http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/props/index.html

So why Modiphius? That's the new gaming company led by Chris Birch, the lead author of the first FATE SF RPG, Starblazer Adventure! They have already made a big splash in roleplaying with the release of Sarah Newton's Zero Point adventures for Modiphius' WW II Call of Cthulhu series Achtung! Cthulhu. 

Project Generations is the first in a series of FATE-based SF products that we are planning.Whether you want to create generation ships, want off the shelf examples, or are looking for a scenario to run set on a space ark, we will have you covered.

The draft is currently dual statted for Starblazer Adventures and Diaspora, and makes the two game systems work together in some very interesting ways! Once I complete my current draft of the manuscript, I am going to go back in and do stats and conversion notes for Bulldogs! as well! There will be some particularly fun and interesting implications for the scenario included with the project for players of Bulldogs!

The most important journey for generations is about to begin!

Be sure to come aboard when we launch!

The manuscript is 90% completed, and I hope to wrap most things up this weekend. Stay tuned for more details on this exciting project!