Strange Stars Fate Sale

You still have today to get in on the Hydra Cooperative's big PDF sale for the New Year. My Strange Stars Fate rulebook is part of the sale, as is Trey Causey's Strange Stars setting book, which every SF gamer should own. Check them both out, or the entire Hydra list here.

Curtain Call For Space Brothels

Subterranean edition of Leviathan Wakes

I manage programming in the anti-sex trafficking field, so it's perhaps not surprising that themes related to space brothels and sex workers in space really hold little interest for me. The TV show The Expanse carried forward some of the not-so-credible genre cliches associated with prostitution (e.g., working girls with nice cop boyfriends) - cliches which I'd like to think have a limited, ah, future.

But even within the limited optic of the show, we can see that the conditions of production/reproduction of space prostitution are about the same as space mining in the Belt: cramped living quarters, no differentiation between workplace and personal space, little insulation against coercion and violence. Very much like the experience of the majority of trafficked women and youth in real life.

Have I featured space brothels in my own games? Not too often, although players in my Fate Strange Stars games have visited a fetish bar on one of the Deodands' sordid orbitals, and one female player chose to create a rebel sex worker. For me it really depends a great deal on where the players want to go; I'm certainly not going to push them there. I've been in too many games that were theater for the GM's particular, or rather "particular", interests. I've probably done that myself at times, but maturity is understanding that you are GMing and creating a world for others - even when the primary and immediate motivation is creation for oneself.

What gets played out at the table depends on the comfort level of individual players. I frequently game with women and LGBTQ folks, and being LGBTQ myself, don't make assumptions that what one or two players find amusing will be universally experienced as fun or enjoyable. It's often best to know when to draw a curtain around a scene. In fact, we use a curtain-closing gesture at the gaming table as a sign that it's time to move on.

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: A Yantran Holiday

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Vaal

A Yantran Holiday: it has become a euphemism in the Vokun Empire for unforseen, improbable disaster. All too many Vokun lords have brought their entourages to Yantra for a holiday to dally with its beautiful and accomodating natives. More than a few of these pleasure trips have meet with sudden, inexplicable calamity.

Invariably, these disasters take the form of catastrophic technology failures. Anti-gravity or drive systems fail; Vokun rocket chairs suddenly plunge to earth; Metascape-based guidance systems become improbably unrealiable; life support systems spit out toxic goo.

More than one Ibglibdishpan mentat has calculated the odds. They have concluded that primitive and pleasantly lush Yantra is improbably dangerous - and especially so for parties accompanied by a Vokun lord.

So an experiment has begun.

The Vokun Empire has temporarily opened Yantra for holidays by sophonts from outside the Empire. A temporary Smaragdine art colony here. A space hauler shore leave there. A Hyehoon or Djagga-led eco-safari in the equatorial regions. Dilettantes from the Circus ringworld tour the natives' quaint stone shrines.

The Ibglibdishpan are watching and running the numbers.  

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 A-To-Z: Woon Academies

"For Children The Gates Of Paradise" by William Blake

Woon, the homeworld of the caterpillaroid Bomoth. It has a reputation of being a closed world, but nothing could be further from the truth. It's true that few not-of-Woon have visited the vast fungal preserves below the planet's surface. Still fewer have witnessed and reported the legendary "butterfly women" said to covort among those dim caverns.

But the surface of Woon sees many visitors from elsewere among the Strange Stars. A few thousand attend the Woon Academies: various small institutions that share what the Bomoth know with off-worlders - often for a great price. All of these institutions have extrance examinations; the application fees are considerable, and examinations occur only on Woon.

Here are a few of the Woon Academies:

• Attarus Academy is the most famous of the Bomoth schools. Here flock travelers from all regions of the Strange Stars to learn vocal and instrumental musical arts from Woon's Spiraculous Masters. A vast mountaintop castle with numerous dead-end tunnels, galleries, auditoria, and air shafts, the Attarus itself is an eerie musical instrument that resonates, whispers, and pipes strange songs into the mountain's winding passes and surrounding ravines and valleys. 
• Dchided Towers spears the miasma clouds above a spore-covered dead sea. Its students are the most daring of Phantasists: experimental oneirochemists who use their own bodies to discover and test new cocktails of dream drugs harvested from the dead sea. It's said that the dead sea's spores are the sediment from vast subterranean fungal farms whose caverns collapsed thousands of years ago.
• Cromlech is a series of ancient rock-domed complexes. Some are pressurized, others are open to the elements. The Cromlech admits only the very young among the Strange Stars' multitude of clades. That's because this academy teaches humanoid biologics how to listen to the alien languages of non-hominds, and to the spoken tongues of the wild moravecs, robots, and androids. Only juvenile biologics have neural networks sufficiently plastic to listen to and learn these languages.  
• The Mujib Academy is the most secretive and exclusive of the major Woon Academies. The Mujib also exclusively admits biologics, although it only enrolls adults. Its exact purpose is unclear, but its entrance exam is a series of vocal auditions called "The Ordeal."    

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/165972/Strange-Stars-Fate-Rule-Book?src=slider_view

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 A-To-Z: "V" Is For V&V

Illustration by David Lewis Johnson

"V&V"? That's Volkun & Voidgliders of course. But it could almost be the name of a roleplaying game - or at least a campaign using the Strange Stars setting!

These two races are tied together inextricably in Strange Stars.

The Vokun have an entire empire named after them. Their young are lean, aggressive, impusive, and ambitious. Their elders are corpulent, conspiratorial, and ambitious. But the Vokun are an empire in name only. The reality is one of clan elders vying against each other for commercial dominance and political power.

Think the Great Houses from Dune, but with no Emperor.

Every clan elder is a Harkonnen.

Which leads me to a new campaign idea. I'm currently rereading Dune for the first time since high school. I noticed someting in the text that had never registered before:

"We must not, however, ignore the possibility the Duke has contracted with the Guild to remove him to a place of safety outside the System. Others in like circumstances have become renegade Houses, taking family atomics and shields and fleeing beyond the Imperium."

So the Imperium has an outside? How had I missed that before?

Now, the Strange Stars setting has many outsides. The core setting we know through the Strange Stars Game Setting Book is just the fragments of what was once a much, much larger civilization. Many hyperspace nodes are now quiescent, hiding connections to long-lost systems waiting to be rediscovered. There are many systems out there in which to run, hide, and explore.

This is very useful game-wise. One could imagine a Vokun clan that has lost big in the political game. They might decide that their only option for continued survival is to strike out on their own.

Maybe they had time to assemble a clan flotilla. But maybe the elder only has time to evacuate with a single huge clan ship.  Alternatively, the elder might only have at his disposal a single modest space yacht.

Desperate times.

But no matter how desperate the times and how limited the resources, that evacuation will soon need to transform itself into an exploration and surveying mission. And eventually of course trade and commerical exploitation.

Because that's all the Vokun really know how to do.

So that clan elder will need at least one Voidglider, the sleek, space-skinned clade that serve as the Vokun's space scouts. The Voidgliders are expert at "sniffing out" hyperspace nodes. Perhaps the Vokun elder has a Voidglider who serves his clan already. But perhaps he doesn't, and the elder will need to mount a raid on the Voidglider space-reservation in order to get a scout or better yet at least have a breeding pair of the species.

An entire tribe of Voidgliders might be persuaded to come along with the Vokun evacuation fleet in exchange for a "better deal" in the future: no reservation.

There could be a whole Strange Stars campaign here: V&V.

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: "U" Is For Ulster

Exile concept art by Joshua Gabriel Timbrook

When I was writing the Strange Stars Fate Rulebook, I had conversations with setting creator Trey Causey about how technology worked in his setting. One of the things he shared is that spacecraft have smartmatter barriers that you can pass through to leave the ship. When you pass through, it wraps a smartmatter spacesuit around you. 

The concept reminded me a bit of the skinhugging Ulsters, a setting-defining spacesuit worn in Mark Rein-Hagen's Exile RPG setting. 

I am going to use Ulsters in the next Strange Stars game I run. 

Two drafts of Exile were published before White Wolf discontinued work on the project. Exile was hands-down the most epic space opera setting that has ever been created. It promised to revolutionize SF gaming the same way that Exalted did fantasy.

I am sharing two excerpts from the first and second drafts to share the concept of Ulster. 

Content below the first triple asterisk is from the first draft of Exile.

Content below the second triple asterisk is from the second draft. Where a table was deleted I added a [snip].

No challenge to the image rights or authorship is intended.

I hope this excerpt gives readers a sense of what might have been possible with this game. 

Another piece of concept art by Joshua Gabriel Timbrook

*** 

Ulster — Standard spacesuit. Bacteria colonies insure reusable air, process waste and provide a suitable temperature and pressure to your environment. Tiny micro-maneuver thrusters allow movement in zero-gravity environments. Inertia compass included. Comes in black, gray or dark blue. Three patch pockets standard. Equipment straps available upon request. $1,000.

***

Ulster Discipline

***The text in the ulster section should caress the images of people in Ulsters, wrapping in interesting ways around the photographic forms of Exiles. The figures are posed in a combination of anatomical illustrationesque positioning and fetish catalog style. They are impervious to the deadly environments that surround them: the surface of a starship, near the Trinary Suns, on an mine asteroid, in Nullspace. Microtext points out features and items of interest.***

The Only Thing Between You and the Void

Your Ulster is your friend. There is nothing, nothing at all more important that it when you are in space. Your priorities are: 1. Breathing and 2. Know Thy Ulster. 

What follows is some extremely useful advice about your second skin. Your Skin2 lets you keep your warm wet animalness alive pretty much anywhere, and it has an infinite number of clever functions as well. The Skin2 is literally that: it coats you like a layer of paint.  A flexible, extremely tough paint that recycles your waste, blocks cosmic radiation, super thermo-insulates against heat and cold, performs basic first aid should you need it, and can play host to an endlessly diverse number of accessories from strength-boosting exo-skeletons to built-in entertainment systems, to weapon holsters and mounts.  (Don’t let an Artifex find out what that plasma-thrower hardpoint is for though -- they’ll ‘fix’ it trying to look after your best interests.)

###

In and out of the second skin:

Alone, the basic Ulster resembles loosely connected strips of black leathery material.  Wearing nothing, don the Ulster by holding it so the strips fall vertically.

The Ulster will change and the bottom half will form two tubes. 

Step into the legs first. Notice it shifting and forming to you.

It will crawl up the rest of your body and stop at your neck. 

A flap projecting from the nape of the neck may now be stretched over to enclose the head if desired.

Note that additional attachments and lodes can be introduced and the Ulster will detect and interface with them automatically.

Removing the Skin2 is a bit more difficult.

First, detach any Lodes and extras.  The Ulster will go flaccid and stretchy.

Start with your face and stretch the neck opening until you can fit a shoulder through it.

Get the arm out of that side and proceed to stretch the material around the opposite shoulder.

Slip the rest off down the torso and legs and you’re out.  Usually takes three or four minutes.

###

<<<There are as many different kinds of Ulsters as there are those wearing them (the basic ship manifest type is barely functional, but with money and connections you might get your body in a Skin2 with more advanced functions), so we’ll be a bit general.  First off, the Artifex make Ulsters, and if you ever have one that’s damaged or lose the one you have just ask a tinker or higher grade T-Fex and generally they’ll fix you up.  They know (as you should too) that a human without a working Ulster is a dead human.  Luckily whatever little voices they listen to inside their heads makes sure they help out anyone in Ulster-trouble.  They won’t upgrade the Skin2 unless they’re loyal to you and even then you need to know what to tell them to do.>>>

[snip]

Known ulsters are apparently composed of a mixture of four substances, whose different proportions affect the way a lode can modify and enhance its functions. Lodes configure the various substances dynamically to actualize enhancements. For instance, the Military type/mix has a diamond-like sheen to it, seeming to lend itself to toughness and structure-based applications. Furthermore, Ulster material is made of hundreds of layers of micro-woven materials, forming shielding layers, transport layers, actuator layers, et cetera.  An Ulster can do pretty much anything because its structure is mutable, stretchable, and can serve as a medium for stuff like Lodes and Machina to communicate through.

You need to have a Consortium techie make these modifications, or have an owned Tinker fiddle with it under your direction, but here are some more ways an Ulster can be modified:

generate breathable air by itself

coats you inside and out (through your digestive, respiratory, and reproductive tract)

monitors your hormonal and endocrine chemistry and alters it as you wish

has self-renewing maneuvering jets

forms storage vacuoles for liquids and solids

animate its form on the fly for theatrical and camouflage purposes

form tentacles or tails or even extra limbs

generate and stores electrical power from solar cells or ionosphere wires

act as its own telemetry send/receive antenna

work with a Signet lode as its all-around sensorium recorder

automatically perform surgery and medical functions

You can see how the versatility of an Ulster is limited only by the imagination (and skill) of the wearer.  And the degree to which the lodes’ mandates are broken that you’re installing.

<<<Another important note: take it off.  It’s rare that one gets the opportunity to be out of your Ulster.  I know we say you gotta have it on and it’s the most important thing, but when you’re safe you should take it off.  For one thing, sex is much better in just your original skin, unlike the fun but essentially impersonal Ulster-shielded couplings that pass for most sex in the Grange.  Risk of infection and the element of trust involved makes it a whole new thing... you’ll like it.  Oh, and then there’s the stories you hear about belt miners who wear their Skin2s for years and years:  I saw with my own eyes when one took off her Ulster and her REAL skin came off with it  -- just sloughed off and she didn’t feel a thing ‘till her nerve endings hit the air!  Seems the Ulster bonds to your epidermis after a time.  Consider yourself warned.

On a lighter note, be creative with how you wear your Skin2.  Nothing marks you more as a green Exile than a plain Ulster.  Paint it, wear clothing over it, attach blinking lights to it, morph it into a unique drape, cut, and shape -- express yourself, baba.  This is the Grange and you should revel in your newfound freedom!>>>

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "S" Is For Ship Names, Bizarre

Looking back on SF games past, it is a relief to see that some of them offered the occasional weird starship name. Some offered whole lists of them. Although servicable strange starship names can be invented on the fly with players, this is one area that often benefits from advance preparation.

I have one or two Strange Stars Fate games coming up in the next few months, and here are a few starships that will be making an appearance in the games.

II wish I could say more about them now, but that would be telling. I've already embedded a clue about one of the ships in the post.

• Lunatic Barge
• Paradise Barrage
• Force Majeure
• Indigo Thrust

What bizarre ship names have you concocted?

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 Debut At U-Con

The Strange Stars Fate Rule Book debuted this past weekend at U-Con in Ypslanti, Michigan. The copy above isn't the forthcoming print edition from RPGNow, but rather one I made so that I had a table copy with which to GM the game. The print verson will be perfect bound rather than spiral coil!

I made color copies of the Strange Stars Game Setting Book, and copies of the character generation and clade templates chapters from the Strange Stars Fate Rule Book. That way, every player had access to both the visual references and setting background from the setting book, and the tools they needed to create characters on the fly!

Strange Stars offers players a lot of choices when it comes to creating characters. Each of the six players chose a different clade (essentially a subspecies of humanity, an alien species, or an artificial intelligence) from among the 25 clades in the template chapter in the Strange Stars Fate Rule Book. Each of the players chose a new clade template different from those selected by past players in my games.

Here's what they created:

• My friend Brett created a Magus. This fortune-telling clade has a lot in common with the Technmages of Babylon-5. Technomages are one of my favorite features of the B-5 setting, and it was nice to see one come into play in this game.
• Veteran Tekumel GM Krista created a Deva, the winged, spacefaring humanoids resemble angels. They travel the universe looking for things to help repair the damaged Jupiter Brains that make up the planets in their solar system. Krista's Tekumel games are famous for her engaging portrayals of Tekumel's weird non-human species. She did a wonderful job portraying the Deva as a particularly God-crazed clade!
• One of the hard science fiction fans at the table created a Wanderer. Members of this clade are asteroid-sized Minds downloaded into humanoid construct bodies. The player of this particular Wanderer decided that his Trouble aspect was that the source Mind had been damaged. He wasn't sure any more whether he still IS all that he used to be. The Wanderer was on a journey of self-discovery and repair.
• Another hard SF fan chose to create a Kosmonik. These are one of the more alien humanoid clades. Kosmoniks live their entire lives in space. They don't have faces any more. They have prehensile feet. We're not exactly sure what's under that suit with a face plate that they wear at all times. They are good engineers and pilots, but are very superstitious: each Kosmonik has its own taboo, and these often relate to living in space.
• A young woman whose second game ever was this one chose to play a Phantasist. They are very human-seeming sky-city dwelling pharmoneurochemists who specialize in synthesizing compounds that create specific dream states for their clients. Her specialty was nightmares.
• The final player chose to play a green-hued Smaragdine woman. His character was a member of the Pharesmid Crime Syndicate. All Pharesmid's are physical clones or mind-copies of the syndicate's founder. This character soon ran into Pharesmid adversaries during the course of the story.

A lot of times, Strange Stars players decide to play a group of pirates. This group decided to be more like the crew of the Firefly: a group travelling between worlds and trying to make things a bit better. They succeeded in not playing anti-heroes or "space assholes" (i.e., the equivalent murderhobes in space games like Traveller)! This quirky group tried to make things better! Whether they actually succeeded... well, they certainly made certain things in their sector more complicated!

It was a fun game!

Strange Stars: The Quigley Table

Yesterday, I said I'd write a 1D6-1D6 Table featuring Eric Quigley's cover image for the core Strange Stars products. Imagine these folks are PCs or NPCs. The table below gives you some options for fleshing them out a bit.

As a point of reference, I'll refer to the guy on the left who appears to be of African descent as L, the Moravec in the middle as M, and the green Smaragdine female on the right as R. As another point of reference, negative numerical results correspond to more contemporary themes in SF; the 0 case and positive numbers represent more longstanding SF themes.

The Quigley Table for Strange Stars

Roll 1D6-1D6 and consult the corresponding result below.

• -5: One of the figures has a cortex  Metascape bomb, a devastating digital weapon with the potential to wipe out the local noosphere.
• -4: The crashed spacecraft in the background used to be alive; it had issues.
• -3: The Moravec carries (or IS) the consciousness of the crashed spacecraft.
• -2: R is a mind-copy of the criminal mastermind Uln Pharesm, founder of the Pharesmid Crime Syndicate. All Pharesmids are mind-copies or bio-clones of the founder. Her tattoos are minimalist, and take the form of yellowish pigmented zones under her eyes.
• -1: The armsman L is an Aurogov cultist. He spends every free moment, when not in physical training or active combat in the LZ, using the Aurogov's self improvement software for a relentless series of self-audits and critiques. At least then, he's quiet and not actively prosyletizing his companions.
• 0: L prefers to be called Fury. He's never without that cigar you see him chomping. It stunk up the whole ship; maybe the smoke got into a critical system and that's why it crashed. 
• +1: M is a robot. Somehow, M subverted its ethical protocols. Especially the one about not harming humans or allowing them to come to harm.
• +2: The Trio are bounty hunters. They are looking for YOU and your companions. You may not even be sure why.
• +3: The crashed ship was stolen.
• +4: L is a Space Marine. Got that? S-P-A-C-E M-A-R-I-N-E. For hire, of course. He was also the pilot and is pretty pleased that he executed a landing from which all three could walk away.
• +5: R is an assassin; those yellow patches under her eyes should have been your first clue.

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "Q" Is For Quigley

That Strange Stars book cover! There has been such a buzz about Eric Quigley's great cover illustration! For many SF gamers, the art signals that the Strange Stars is a spiritual successor to TSR's classic SF RPG Star Frontiers, whose cover also has three figures in the foreground and a burning spacecraft behind them.

True confessions time: I only acquired a copy of Star Frontiers a year ago at Goodman Games booth at U-Con; my early SF game inspirations were Traveller (I bought the Little Black Box before I bought White Box D&D) and Metamorphosis Alpha, and the wargames Alpha Omega and StarForce: Alpha Centauri. More recent gaming inspirations for me have been all about the Fate system and include +Chris Birch's amazing Starblazer Adventures, +Brad Murray's brilliant-and-lean Diaspora (a major inspiration for the world generation rules in the Strange Stars Fate Rulebook), and +Sarah Newton's Stapledonian SF masterpiece Mindjammer.

I know classic SF was an influence on Strange Stars setting designer +trey causey, but truth to tell he hasn't hidden his more contemporary SF references either, which include many authors associated with the New Space Opera. We outline a lot of those influences in the "Adventures and Campaigns" chapter of the Strange Stars Fate Rule Book.

Come back tomorrow for a 1D6-1D6 Table based on the Strange Stars cover, showing off both classic and contemporary SF references built into Strange Stars!

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "P" Is For Pirate

Doctor Who "Sleep No More"

Did you see last night's episode? There was a funny quip by the Doctor that you don't really add anything by putting the word "space" in front of words like "restaurant." It's not a space restaurant, just a restaurant. Clara's rejoinder is "What about spacesuit? And space pirate?"

That shuts the Doctor up for a second. And next thing the Doctor and Clara know they're being accused of being space pirates.

Most of the Strange Stars Fate games I have GMed have included space pirates. In three cases, the players decided to BE the pirates. This works very well with on-the-fly style games that come together at conventions.

Space battles are rare in the Strange Stars setting (hyperspace-capable starships use very old, very difficult to replace and repair technology), but space piracy isn't. Boarding actions are common, as are hijackings (either at a starport or in deep space), false flag "rescue" operations, and raids on planets and space stations. Extortion/protection rackets targeting traffick on secondary and tertiary hyperspace routes are another way that piracy occurs. Many Space Haulers quit while they're ahead and give up the goods at the first hail from a pirate.

There are distinct tiers to the pirate enterprise. The top players are the dreaded, cyborged-up, ruthless Zao Corsairs. They are the Strange Stars' answer to Firefly's Reavers. But don't say you're a Zao Corsair unless you really are: the Zao take a dim view of wannabees who dilute their brand.

Another bad news group that frequently resorts to piracy is the inhuman Ssraad. While the three warring clades of these reptillian space demons are as likely to prey on each other as on any unfortunates whose path they happen to cross, there is no doubt that the Ssraad are beginning to range farther and farther from home.

Then there is everyone else. Part-time Space Haulers, belters, smugglers, or mercenaries. Mutineers with nowhere else to go. All pirates great and small. They're all bad news.

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!