Audience Participation

With Strange Stars out for a few weeks now (and reviews appearing), enough time has probably past that I can query folks as to what they'd like to see here on the blog to further explore the setting. So, what would you like to see next?

One thing I haven't talked about yet is the League of Habitats (other than Circus and a brief mention of High Lonesome). I could elucidate more on time frames for hyperspace travel or earlier historical eras like the Archaic Oikumene or the Radiant Polity. Then there's always more practical stuff like currency or sample names for more cultures. I did a post a while back getting very specific about inspirations for particular cultures, and I could always do something like that again.

Those are my ideas but you may have others. So what would you guys like to see? Comment here or drop me an email with suggestions!

Names in the Strange Stars

Obviously, you can use whatever names you want for the members of the various clades and cultures in Strange Stars, but here are some examples/guidelines for making up names on the fly for members of the Vokun Empire that fit with the examples given in the setting book:

Vokun
High status Vokun names are multi-syllabic tend to end in -esh or a vowel. Female names are more likely to tend in a vowel and tend to be slightly shorter. Lower class Vokun names are shorter (generally two or three syllables). It is a grave insult to give a Vokun a nickname or otherwise shorten their name without permission.
Examples:
Female: Artazosthra, Ishramis, Jannaxa.Valakasta,Yazdaneshta, Zarshanta, Zrazdakai
Male: Axangavazda, Ksurukandesh, Makathryavu, Tehuteshada, Vahupareshta, Zrayangashamesh

Engineers
Engineers use long designation codes that provide information on expertise, location, and genetic lineage. At the Vokuns' insistence, Engineers use a base designation of one or two syllables with other sophonts.
Examples: Aznat, Enek, Inaat, Ikatik, Mnazek, Ndzat, Omnak, Tlek

Art by Garrisonjames

Ibglibdishpan
Names of the ibglibdishpan are composed on two, monosyllabic elements that end in a vowel, n, ng, m, l, r, sh or rarely b. Among themselves they employ numerical family designation that is placed before the personal name, but they rarely use these when dealing day to day with other cultures, except in formal situations.
Examples: Chun Ri, Gan Yul, Ro Nar, Ang Tu, Tan Em, Ib Kan, Li Pan.

Kuath
Kuath have a singular, gendered personal name.
Examples:
Male: An-Tuani, Cham-Ka, Hulan-Yi, Konaga, Ngata, Sungoro, Tanathi, Waruahi
Female: An-San, Chanya, Dara-Ja, Miri, Shu-sheng, Susi, Ulathi

Yantrans

Yantrans use a personal name and a family name. The family name is typically given first.

Examples:
Surnames: Aranun, Haunahi, Hokuni, Kamata, Nohoka, Pomaku, Tutani
Female: Ahilani, Aonami, Elaheli, Hani, Ko’ana, Mululani, Poma, Uku
Male: Atamu, Aonga, Hukono, Isako, Kamaki, Rano, Tuati, Yano, Uko

Voidgliders
Voidglider names are typically radio-communicated are not readily translatable to the phonemes of other clades. Nicknames are often employed by other species, and voidgliders will refer to each other with "translated" names.
Examples: Solar Wind, Luminous Object, Distant Star, Freefall Warrior, Far Glider, Blue Shift.

Strange Stars Update

With both the pdf and the hardcopy of Strange Stars out, it finally got it's first review from Eric over at the Swords & Stitchery blog. I did an interview with Chris Kutalik (author of Slumbering Ursine Dunes--on sale now!) over at the Hill Cantons blog, wherein we discuss the (probably not so secret) inspirations for Strange Stars. Right here on this blog, I've updated the Strange Stars Index page. Those updates include the last couple of posts before the release of the book and the posts I've done on adventuring in the the setting since its release.

Just because the book's out, we're not resting on our laurels. More posts are to come here and some Fate system book excerpts on John Till's Fate SF blog. Yesterday, he talked about his inspirations when writing for Strange Stars.

Wednesday Comics: Multiversal Spotlight: Earth-37

The Multiversity Guidebook came out a couple of weeks ago, giving new information on the 52 Earths of the current DC Multiverse as envisioned by Grant Morrison. If you're reading Multiversity and inclined to skip this because it's just a guide book, you should reconsider as there is a bit of story there. Even if you haven't been reading Multiversity, but you're a fan of the DC multiverse you should check it out. Many of them were the old standbys we've seen since the earliest days of the Pre-Crisis Multiverse. Some are of much more recent vintage:

Earth-37
Apparent Concept: Earth Chaykin
Pictured: (left to right) Robin (Rickart Graustark), Batgirl (Barbara Gordon), Joker (Bianca Steeplechase), Star Hawkins, Tommy Tomorrow, Iron-Wolf.
Sources: Weird Worlds (1972) #8-10; Twilight #1-3 (1990) and presumably Ironwolf: Fires of Revolution (1999); Thrillkiller #1-3 (1997) and Thrillkiller '62 (1998), collected here.
Analogs: The world of Thrillkiller was designated as Pre-Crisis Earth-61 in Absolute Crisis on Infinite Earths (2006); Post-52, Thrillkiller characters were shown as being on Earth-37 in Countdown: Arena #1 (February 2008).

Comments: Twilight was a re-imagining or Watchmen-izing of a number of DC's future nonsupers characters. It's unclear if the non-Twilight versions exist anywhere in the current Multiverse. Chaykin created Ironwolf in Weird Worlds and he gets referenced in Twilight, though never seen. We can assume he would be a different version.Then, years later, John Francis Moore and Chaykin wrote an Ironwolf graphic novel that altered his world a bit and represented some of the events of the Weird Worlds stories. The graphic novel is clearly intended to be in the world of Twilight, but it doesn't seem to jibe with the off-hand references to Ironwolf in that story! Ironwolf as pictured above looks like he did in his original 70s appearances, for what its worth.

Strange Stars: Galactic Adventuring

While any sort of adventure can probably be run in any of the regions of Strange Stars (on sale now!), each one is particularly suited to certain types of adventures:

Outer Rim
Precis: A wildnerness with dangers lurking on often inhospitable worlds.
Good for: survivable stuff, encounters with monsters in desolate places.
Inspiration: Alien, Planet of Vampires, ST:TOS "Obsession" and "The Galileo Seven," The Gold Rush (1925), Flight of the Phoenix (1964, 2004).
Comments: Ksaa territory in the Outer Rim opens up additional possibilities. They make a good standin for the scheming Romulans or Farscape's Scarrans.

The Alliance
Precis: A civilized, polyethnic region with dangers on every border.
Good For: espionage, special ops missions, border patrol, law enforcement, crime & detective stories.
Inspiration: James Bond, the Dominic Flandry novels by Poul Anderson, Ocean's Eleven, E.W. Hornung's Raffles stories, the Trigger Argee stories of James M. Schmitz, the Luff Imbry stories of Matthew Hughes.

The Instrumentality
Precis: A theocratic, expansionistic empire to be fought against or served, surrounding smaller independent states.
Good For: freedom fighters or self-interested rogues fighting the system; space pirates or privateers operating out of an anarchic port, spy stories or law enforcement (pulpy or shades of gray)
Inspiration: Firefly, Howard Chaykin's Cody Starbuck, James Bond, Ice Station Zebra (1968), Tales of the Gold Monkey (1982), Zapata Westerns.

Coreward Reach
Precis: A "points of light" wilderness with hidden civilizations and ruins of the past.
Good For: Exploration; lost worlds; comedies of manners with quirky cultures.
Inspiration: Gulliver's Travels, Forbidden Planet, the Alastor Cluster and the "Planet of Adventure" series by Jack Vance, ST:TOS "Shore Leave" and "A Taste of Armageddon," among many others.
Comments: The incursion of the Locusts also gives room for military action and an impending danger to add a ticking clock to other sorts of adventures.

Zuran Expanse
Precis: A lawless frontier where different cultures meet and ancient secrets are buried.
Good For: rogues and crminals; pirates, civilization vs. savagery, artifact looting and tomb-raiding.
Inspiration: Tatooine in Star Wars, the Uncharted Territories in Farscape, particularly the episodes "The Flax," "Home on the Remains," and "Liars, Guns, and Money," A Fist Full of Dollars, Deadwood, Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948), King Solomon's Mines, The Professionals (1966).

Planets of Adventure

"Sword & Planet"/Planetary Romance is not exactly an under-presented genre in gaming (allowing for its relative lack of presence in current media). I can think of two recent games that tackle the genre directly (Warriors of the Red Planet and Planets of Peril) with things like Carcosa perhaps touching on it. And there are others. Most of these seem to borrow directly from the Burroughs style, perhaps learning a thing or two from his imitators. One element of Burroughs's later Mars and Venus books that is sometimes lacking or minimized is that Barsoom and Amtor aren't just fantasy worlds. They--a lot like Oz--are collections of "lost worlds."

Burroughs made a career of borrowing from the H.R. Haggard tradition of hidden, exotic societies/cultures in out-of-the-way places. Except for the "baseline" culture also being exotic or alien, Barsoom and Amtor really aren't that different from Tarzan's Africa; it had thorn-girt lands full of dinosaurs and monkey men, and lost Roman colonies, and intelligent apes who thought they were living in London, etc.

The hordes of sword and planet novels of the 60s don't really do any more with this than Burroughs, mainly content to have swashbuckling derring-do with airships and half-naked princesses--and to be fair, that is probably enough for anybody--but elsewhere the whole "planet of exotic adventure" thing got pushed to patchwork, crazy-quilt levels of exotic sub-worlds: Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon.

Mongo had the Orientalist city of Ming the Merciless (with a beautiful princess), but also the ice kingdom of Frigia (with a beautiful queen), and underground kingdom with Magic Men and death dwarfs (beautiful queen there, too), plus Shark Men, Lion Men, and Hawk Men. There is a uniformity to most Barsoomian city-states with their jeddaks and metal harnesses that is thrown out the window in Flash Gordon.

This sort of thing didn't end with Mongo. Jack Vance sort of does it in his Planet of Adventure novels. Lin Carter (of course) got into the act and combined it with the dying earth in his Gondwane novels. Though seeing the Vadim/Fonda film of 1968 might not convey this, the first Barbarella saga in the comic strip has her crashing on the planet Lythion and encountering undersea people ruled by a Medusa and a society modeled on 19th Century Earth, among other adventures.

This sort of thing would be easy in gaming, though it would make sessions somewhat unpredictable from the players' standpoint. The map would just be a lot of questions marks where almost anything might go.

Strange Stars in Print!

Now the future can be in your hands. Print copies of Strange Stars are available now on rpgnow and drivethrurpg.

Cover not enough for you? Okay, here's an interior shot:

Join the Galactic Legion! Well, not really, but that was what the Star Frontier ads used to say. Just buy a copy, via the magic of the internet.