I will use my own homebrew history, which will be presented to the player(s) as printed hand-outs before the game-start. Of course, these hand-outs would be biased towards what people living on their homeworld(s) should know. There will be one A4 (maybe even A5!) page of information known by anyone in the setting, another A4 page of information known only to those with EDU 8+ and a two-sided A4 page known to those with a skill in Social Sciences (History). Of course, if no one will have EDU 8+ and/or Social Sciences (History), I'll only have to create the relevant pages!
The actual setting, the Alkonost subsector and the Risar subsector, is only recovering from the Dark Night and trade is sporadic at best. Therefore, most people will not know much about other worlds and about the setting's history beyond the most basic facts. And even those basic facts will be, on many worlds, distorted into some kind of a folk-tale, in which the Consortium will be painted as a legendary golden age destroyed by a few corrupt officials; only those with higher education will know about the Consortium's stagnation and decay. And there would be the Laanese version of the story, in which greed and over-reliance on machines (and, particularly, AI) have destroyed the Consortium; the Laanese see the Consortium as technologically advanced but morally flawed.
Also note that most locals don't like the Inheritors (as many, but not all, tend to be raiders), though the felids have a somewhat better, though still checkered, reputation (especially since they were mercenaries and traders more often than pirates). There are also issues of Human supremacists, Celiran nationalists and Celiran (and Human) religious fundementalists, especially on the more isolated worlds.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Divorcing Alkonost (Canopus) from the OTU
As you might have read in my posts on the Mongoose boards, I'm fed up with the OTU. That said, I still love the majority of my own stuff made up for the Alkonost (Canopus) setting, and I am firm in my decision not to abandon it - it is my favorite setting so far.
So I have decided to divorce this setting from the OTU, or, at least, re-imagine it into a non-OTU ATU.
Thinking of this, I was toying with this idea for the last month or so, even before that thread on the MGT boards has become the last straw for me in regard to the OTU. I have several reasons to remove my setting from the OTU:
1) It is hardly OTU already. Even until now, I haven't cared much about Vilani, Darrians, Grandfather, Zhodani, the Marches, Imperial Nobility or the Reformation Coalition. The only OTU-ish things I was using were the Collapse, the AI Virus and the Aslan, with some touches of Solomani. But all of these are, more or less, generic sci-fi themes: Long Nights, felinoid aliens and AI empires are present in many sci-fi works. So why not have my own Dark Night, my own felinoid alien race and my own AI empire, and get rid of the OTU bother once and for all?
2) The licensing issues. If I use the OTU, I'll have to do various things in order to conform to the Foreven license, such as publishing the Solomani ship designs as ones present in Foreven and using CT stats for the rest. In a non-OTU setting I can easily use the entire MGT SRD with no problems at all, give everything MGT stats and be perfectly legal.
3) The vast amount of canon for the OTU - although some of it is VERY GOOD AND VERY WELL-WRITTEN - has an annoying tendency to hamper my creativity and lead to writer's blocks. The artistic freedom of an ATU would be a very good thing to have. For example, I can have my own aliens without thinking "how would that fit into the OTU?".
4) The OTU history is LONG, with everything being millennia-old. I like my worlds having a shorter history, of maybe several centuries at most.
So what I have in mind is a background containing many elements from my Shattered Federation ATU with many elements of the previous version of the Alkonost setting. You'll have Zoo-Builders, Celirans, Precursors and Inheritors alongside Laana, Alkonost, Kedeshius, Garland and the Incunablis Machine Empire.
The basic concept is the following:
The Consortium was the greatest civilization in recent history, a multi-species society - though predominantly Human and Celiran - enjoying great prosperity and progress, reaching up to Tech Level 15 (16 for experimental tech) and encompassing the unimaginably huge size of almost four sectors (circa 2,000 systems). Formed after the break-up of the old Apollo Federation in the First Civil War, the Consortium, governed by the Treaty of Cera Nayen, carefully integrated the various post-Federal splinter-states into a pluralistic, democratic polity where the various cultures could interact peacefully while maintaining local and regional autonomy. Technological advancement allowed for Jump-6 Mail Couriers, self-aware AI and cheap, safe star-travel.
But in its later years, in the Third and Fourth Centuries AT (After the Treaty), the Consortium began to decay and stagnate. The high-tech, vastly wealthy Core Worlds became decadent and introverted, while the Periphery's economy declined. Bit by bit, local interests and local loyalties began to eclipse the commitment to the Consortium as a whole. As the economy lost its momentum, local leaders began to chafe under the Consortium's rule. The Core's hedonist culture saw the Periphery's worlds as backward and uncultured, while the new populist leaders in the Periphery considered the Core to be a parasite over the local economies.
In 373 AT, these rivalries came to a head. Earth, a semi-Periphery industrial world in the Rimward section of the Consortium, declared independence, formed the United Terran Republic and nationalized corporate assets owned by Core concerns. Several other Periphery and semi-Periphery worlds followed suit and broke away. The Core responded by sending the Consortium's battle-fleets against the successor states. The Second Civil War has begun.
With the collapse of the central authority, most factions tried to grab what they can from the Consortium's wreckage, turning on each other in the fight over these scraps. Untold atrocities were committed by many factions. Eventually, by the late 390's, the flames of war began to dwindle to embers as the means of production and the weapons of war were, in most part, destroyed or badly damaged.
Then, in 397, new aliens, unheard of before, came into Known Space from the Coreward: the felids (place-holder name) and the Inheritors. Opportunists in nature, these aliens seized upon the Consortium's ruin as a chance to get rich and gain worlds and political power. The nomadic Inheritors took what they wanted from the barely-defended worlds of the former Consortium. The anarchic and semi-tribal felids became mercenaries, interstellar traders, pirates, and, sometimes, also local kings. And the damage done by this invasion added up with the massive damage caused by the Second Civil War.
This is how the Dark Night came into being. Most large starships were destroyed by more than thirty-five years of intense civil war; many worlds lay in ruin; trade was vastly reduced; technology declined as the interstellar economy collapsed. Worlds became separate, each abandoned to its own fate, or, at best, left as part of a small, shaky pocket-state linking a few worlds by a handful of small remaining starships.
Now it is the end of 449 AT, and, bit by bit, a few worlds are recovering from the war. It is a time when brave adventurers can strike out against the darkness - or strike rich in salvaging precious relics from the ruins of the old Consortium. Many new opportunities and challenges await!
Some inspirations for my ATU:
Dune (mostly for Laana - the Butlerian Jihad, Mentants, and for the Incunablis Machine Empire)
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy (terraformation; semi-habitable worlds; strange colonial cultures and spirituality)
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadows of Chernobyl and S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat (for Garland and Svoboda)
Starflight I and II (great sci-fi computer games; inspiration for the Dark Night)
System Shock I and II (for the Incunablis Machine Empire)
Terminator (for the Incunablis Machine Empire)
The Matrix (for the Incunablis Machine Empire)
Larry Niven's Known Space, especially A Gift from Earth (especially for the Dense/Low worlds)
Babylon 5 (for what is possible to do with psionics)
History Channel's Life After People (for all the ruined worlds)
TNE's Path of Tears (especially in terms of atmosphere)
So I have decided to divorce this setting from the OTU, or, at least, re-imagine it into a non-OTU ATU.
Thinking of this, I was toying with this idea for the last month or so, even before that thread on the MGT boards has become the last straw for me in regard to the OTU. I have several reasons to remove my setting from the OTU:
1) It is hardly OTU already. Even until now, I haven't cared much about Vilani, Darrians, Grandfather, Zhodani, the Marches, Imperial Nobility or the Reformation Coalition. The only OTU-ish things I was using were the Collapse, the AI Virus and the Aslan, with some touches of Solomani. But all of these are, more or less, generic sci-fi themes: Long Nights, felinoid aliens and AI empires are present in many sci-fi works. So why not have my own Dark Night, my own felinoid alien race and my own AI empire, and get rid of the OTU bother once and for all?
2) The licensing issues. If I use the OTU, I'll have to do various things in order to conform to the Foreven license, such as publishing the Solomani ship designs as ones present in Foreven and using CT stats for the rest. In a non-OTU setting I can easily use the entire MGT SRD with no problems at all, give everything MGT stats and be perfectly legal.
3) The vast amount of canon for the OTU - although some of it is VERY GOOD AND VERY WELL-WRITTEN - has an annoying tendency to hamper my creativity and lead to writer's blocks. The artistic freedom of an ATU would be a very good thing to have. For example, I can have my own aliens without thinking "how would that fit into the OTU?".
4) The OTU history is LONG, with everything being millennia-old. I like my worlds having a shorter history, of maybe several centuries at most.
So what I have in mind is a background containing many elements from my Shattered Federation ATU with many elements of the previous version of the Alkonost setting. You'll have Zoo-Builders, Celirans, Precursors and Inheritors alongside Laana, Alkonost, Kedeshius, Garland and the Incunablis Machine Empire.
The basic concept is the following:
The Consortium was the greatest civilization in recent history, a multi-species society - though predominantly Human and Celiran - enjoying great prosperity and progress, reaching up to Tech Level 15 (16 for experimental tech) and encompassing the unimaginably huge size of almost four sectors (circa 2,000 systems). Formed after the break-up of the old Apollo Federation in the First Civil War, the Consortium, governed by the Treaty of Cera Nayen, carefully integrated the various post-Federal splinter-states into a pluralistic, democratic polity where the various cultures could interact peacefully while maintaining local and regional autonomy. Technological advancement allowed for Jump-6 Mail Couriers, self-aware AI and cheap, safe star-travel.
But in its later years, in the Third and Fourth Centuries AT (After the Treaty), the Consortium began to decay and stagnate. The high-tech, vastly wealthy Core Worlds became decadent and introverted, while the Periphery's economy declined. Bit by bit, local interests and local loyalties began to eclipse the commitment to the Consortium as a whole. As the economy lost its momentum, local leaders began to chafe under the Consortium's rule. The Core's hedonist culture saw the Periphery's worlds as backward and uncultured, while the new populist leaders in the Periphery considered the Core to be a parasite over the local economies.
In 373 AT, these rivalries came to a head. Earth, a semi-Periphery industrial world in the Rimward section of the Consortium, declared independence, formed the United Terran Republic and nationalized corporate assets owned by Core concerns. Several other Periphery and semi-Periphery worlds followed suit and broke away. The Core responded by sending the Consortium's battle-fleets against the successor states. The Second Civil War has begun.
With the collapse of the central authority, most factions tried to grab what they can from the Consortium's wreckage, turning on each other in the fight over these scraps. Untold atrocities were committed by many factions. Eventually, by the late 390's, the flames of war began to dwindle to embers as the means of production and the weapons of war were, in most part, destroyed or badly damaged.
Then, in 397, new aliens, unheard of before, came into Known Space from the Coreward: the felids (place-holder name) and the Inheritors. Opportunists in nature, these aliens seized upon the Consortium's ruin as a chance to get rich and gain worlds and political power. The nomadic Inheritors took what they wanted from the barely-defended worlds of the former Consortium. The anarchic and semi-tribal felids became mercenaries, interstellar traders, pirates, and, sometimes, also local kings. And the damage done by this invasion added up with the massive damage caused by the Second Civil War.
This is how the Dark Night came into being. Most large starships were destroyed by more than thirty-five years of intense civil war; many worlds lay in ruin; trade was vastly reduced; technology declined as the interstellar economy collapsed. Worlds became separate, each abandoned to its own fate, or, at best, left as part of a small, shaky pocket-state linking a few worlds by a handful of small remaining starships.
Now it is the end of 449 AT, and, bit by bit, a few worlds are recovering from the war. It is a time when brave adventurers can strike out against the darkness - or strike rich in salvaging precious relics from the ruins of the old Consortium. Many new opportunities and challenges await!
Some inspirations for my ATU:
Dune (mostly for Laana - the Butlerian Jihad, Mentants, and for the Incunablis Machine Empire)
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy (terraformation; semi-habitable worlds; strange colonial cultures and spirituality)
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadows of Chernobyl and S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat (for Garland and Svoboda)
Starflight I and II (great sci-fi computer games; inspiration for the Dark Night)
System Shock I and II (for the Incunablis Machine Empire)
Terminator (for the Incunablis Machine Empire)
The Matrix (for the Incunablis Machine Empire)
Larry Niven's Known Space, especially A Gift from Earth (especially for the Dense/Low worlds)
Babylon 5 (for what is possible to do with psionics)
History Channel's Life After People (for all the ruined worlds)
TNE's Path of Tears (especially in terms of atmosphere)
Saturday, September 25, 2010
The Death's Head Regiment
I've finished painting the miniatures representing a platoon of the Kedeshian Death's Head Regiment; they are a force known for high-tech relic equipment and gross overconfidence. As long as they fight against lightly-armed irregulars like the Altheans, they strike fear into the hearts of their enemies; but they aren't likely to fare well against a well-trained, highly-motivated real military force, such as the Laanese (who back the Althean resistance and might sooner or later be drawn into this conflict themselves). The minis are Eureka Miniatures 15mm Sci-Fi Stormtroopers:
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Revised post-Collapse Starmap
I've revised the post-Collapse starmap to make things more interesting. I've also moved the focus to a single subsector at a time with map legend to make things easier to print and use.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Revised pre-Collapse Starmap
I've revised the pre-Collapse starmap to make the setting more interesting. A few uninteresting 'filler' worlds were replaced by more interesting places for the PCs to visit.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Planning the Campaign
I'm slowly but surely building my next Traveller campaign, based in Canopus in the (Imperial) year 1201. This will be a single-player campaign, with me as the Referee and my spouse as the player. The original idea was to make this a highly-political campaign with relatively little on-screen action; but following some thought I've given this, as well as a few thorough discussions with my spouse, we've decided to make things more varied.
This will be, at the baseline, a trader campaign. She'll play a female Aslan purser (and factor-on-board) of a trading ship, tasked by her clan with establishing new trade routes within the Alkonost subsector of Canopus and beyond. In addition to making formal deals with potential trade partners (and setting up local factors on various worlds), she'll also have to make a profit in the meanwhile, using her ship for speculative trade and/or passenger traffic and even certain mercenary contracts. This is, in a sense, similar to the A4: Leviathan scenario, involving exploratory trade with a ship, which, in essence belongs to a corporation (an Aslan clan, in this case). She'll have a free hand in running this operation, as long as she caters to the long-term goal of building her clan's interstellar commercial empire.
I talked with her about this and she wants a mixture of trading, adventuring, politics and action/combat, up to and including mercenary actions. For the latter part, I think I'll make her character married, with her husband being the ship's captain/pilot and also (naturally, as he's the highest-ranking male in the ship's pecking order) lead the ship's troops. I'll let my spouse play the husband and/or his retainers in tactical combat as a mini-game.
To make things easier and more varied, the character will come from Iele (Canopus/1916), also called "Aralaa" by the Aslan. This world was originally a Solomani world settled by Aslan ihatei - who founded their own new clans - shortly after the Collapse, so it is a mixture of Human and Aslan states. There is a lot of trade (and war!) going on between the Human and the Aslan states, so the PC will be familiar with Humans and be able to work with them (I'll give her a good Tolerance skill). Her ship's crew will be a mixture of Aslan clan-members and Human hirelings, and I'll possible add a single Droyne or even Hiver to make things interesting.
The game will be more-or-less a sandbox. She'll be in charge of the ship, and be able to travel anywhere within the Alkonost (and even Risar) subsectors. I'll try to set up each and every planet as a unique location with its own NPCs and adventure possibilities, so that visiting worlds will be interesting. There should be several possibilities to establish a factor's presence on each world, sometimes involving messing with local politics, sometimes involving exploration and sometimes involving combat (or doing 'favors' for someone). Smuggling and/or cutting deals with oppositional factions might also be an option.
I'm not sure about the scale of the ship I'll give her. At the lowest end of the spectrum we can have a 400-ton Solomani Trader (of pre-war manufacture and with several Aslan modifications); on one hand such a small ship will be pretty easy to handle, but it will have only limited versatility especially if we'll want to try a more varied game (with some small-scale mercenary actions added in). At the highest end of the spectrum is a 1,000-ton ship (probably a new Solomani design I'll make) which could carry a lot of cargo and passengers and maybe even a small platoon of mercenary troops; but this may be a little overwhelming for a single-PC game. However, I'm currently leaning towards the middle-ground of a 600-800-ton Wilds-modified trader, possibly carrying a squad (circa 10 troopers) of ship's troops in addition to crew and passengers; this way I can still involve the PC herself in planetside action AND send in the troops for heavier action and a tactical mini-game (with miniatures and terrain to boot!). Advice on this matter will be welcome.
This will be, at the baseline, a trader campaign. She'll play a female Aslan purser (and factor-on-board) of a trading ship, tasked by her clan with establishing new trade routes within the Alkonost subsector of Canopus and beyond. In addition to making formal deals with potential trade partners (and setting up local factors on various worlds), she'll also have to make a profit in the meanwhile, using her ship for speculative trade and/or passenger traffic and even certain mercenary contracts. This is, in a sense, similar to the A4: Leviathan scenario, involving exploratory trade with a ship, which, in essence belongs to a corporation (an Aslan clan, in this case). She'll have a free hand in running this operation, as long as she caters to the long-term goal of building her clan's interstellar commercial empire.
I talked with her about this and she wants a mixture of trading, adventuring, politics and action/combat, up to and including mercenary actions. For the latter part, I think I'll make her character married, with her husband being the ship's captain/pilot and also (naturally, as he's the highest-ranking male in the ship's pecking order) lead the ship's troops. I'll let my spouse play the husband and/or his retainers in tactical combat as a mini-game.
To make things easier and more varied, the character will come from Iele (Canopus/1916), also called "Aralaa" by the Aslan. This world was originally a Solomani world settled by Aslan ihatei - who founded their own new clans - shortly after the Collapse, so it is a mixture of Human and Aslan states. There is a lot of trade (and war!) going on between the Human and the Aslan states, so the PC will be familiar with Humans and be able to work with them (I'll give her a good Tolerance skill). Her ship's crew will be a mixture of Aslan clan-members and Human hirelings, and I'll possible add a single Droyne or even Hiver to make things interesting.
The game will be more-or-less a sandbox. She'll be in charge of the ship, and be able to travel anywhere within the Alkonost (and even Risar) subsectors. I'll try to set up each and every planet as a unique location with its own NPCs and adventure possibilities, so that visiting worlds will be interesting. There should be several possibilities to establish a factor's presence on each world, sometimes involving messing with local politics, sometimes involving exploration and sometimes involving combat (or doing 'favors' for someone). Smuggling and/or cutting deals with oppositional factions might also be an option.
I'm not sure about the scale of the ship I'll give her. At the lowest end of the spectrum we can have a 400-ton Solomani Trader (of pre-war manufacture and with several Aslan modifications); on one hand such a small ship will be pretty easy to handle, but it will have only limited versatility especially if we'll want to try a more varied game (with some small-scale mercenary actions added in). At the highest end of the spectrum is a 1,000-ton ship (probably a new Solomani design I'll make) which could carry a lot of cargo and passengers and maybe even a small platoon of mercenary troops; but this may be a little overwhelming for a single-PC game. However, I'm currently leaning towards the middle-ground of a 600-800-ton Wilds-modified trader, possibly carrying a squad (circa 10 troopers) of ship's troops in addition to crew and passengers; this way I can still involve the PC herself in planetside action AND send in the troops for heavier action and a tactical mini-game (with miniatures and terrain to boot!). Advice on this matter will be welcome.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Canopus Trader Map
I've created a variant of the Canopus starmap, based on what is known to the Traders' Cooperative Network, a non-affiliated information source which will be available to the PCs.
Note the vast prevalence of Amber zones in the quadrant; most worlds outside the Restored Canopus Republic are marked as Amber zones due to problematic governments, unstable trade with the outside universe and other Wilds conditions. Using the Mongoose Traveller rules, this will mean that selling weapons will be quite profitable in the majority of the quadrant; also, there will be quite a hefty passenger flow from the Wilds into the safer worlds of the Restored Canopus Republic.
Note the vast prevalence of Amber zones in the quadrant; most worlds outside the Restored Canopus Republic are marked as Amber zones due to problematic governments, unstable trade with the outside universe and other Wilds conditions. Using the Mongoose Traveller rules, this will mean that selling weapons will be quite profitable in the majority of the quadrant; also, there will be quite a hefty passenger flow from the Wilds into the safer worlds of the Restored Canopus Republic.
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