Strange Stars: A Recent Science Fiction Appendix N

A few weeks ago, Rob Barrett made a request in the comments of this post for "more recent SF" suitable for Strange Stars inspiration. In the section on galactic adventuring, I relied mostly on older, well-known and non-science fiction references because I want to convey the idea that the setting is easily accessible and usable for the sort of stuff people typically use science fiction games too do.

That doesn't mean science fiction from the past twenty years hasn't been an influence on the conception and development of Strange Stars. I mentioned a few of these in the intro of the setting book, but here are a few more:

Hannu Rajaniemi. The Quantum Thief; The Fractal Prince; The Causal Angel. This series is one of the biggest inspirations for Strange Stars, but its influence is diffuse. The interaction of information and physical life that pervades the series is very Strange Stars, as are the exotic societies of Earth, Mars, and the Oort Cloud.

Greg Egan. Diaspora. The conception of moravec, infosophont, and biologic groups was inspired by Diaspora, specifically, w

Alastair Reynolds. The Prefect; Chasm City. The Glitter Band is a great example of the varied polities of the League of Habitats or the Circus. The Ultras have some resemblance to the Star Folk, if not the same style. Chasm City in particular would make a pretty good Strange Stars adventure.

Karl Schroeder. Permanence. The primary inspiration for the metascape is the exoscape of Permanence.

Charles Stross. Glasshouse; Accelerando; the books in the Saturn's Children universe: Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood. The technology and economic considerations in Stross's novels underpin similar concepts in Strange Stars. If you want to really get a feel for how I envision fabbers, read Glasshouse. Neptune's Brood also has a very well-realized "water world."

Scott Westerfield. The Risen Empire (Succession Book 1). Though I haven't written a lot about military matters in Strange Stars material, the planetary assault and space battle in this book greatly informed what I think such things would look like among "modern" powers in the setting.

John C.Wright. The Golden Oecumene  trilogy and related stories. The technology of the Golden Oecumene with the trappings of Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of man gets you a good representation of the Radiant Polity. The novella "The Far End of History: A Tale from the Last Days of the Seventh Mental Structure" is a great example of what sort of things went on in the Archaic Oikumene.

Strange Stars OSR Arrives--and a Special Deal!

Now you can explore the Strange Stars universe in Sine Nomine's Stars Without Number or similar OSR-derived science fiction games! The Strange Stars OSR supplement is now available in pdf.

The contents include:

• Tips for creatings characters and 19 clades--from Atozan librarians to armored thrax warriors--as player character options.
• A catalog of adversaries and threats from the monstrous ssraad to the more subtle agents of the Instrumentality.
• A gazeteer of known worlds and rules for creating random orbital habitats
• A sampling of factions big and small from across the known galaxy
• Advice on running adventures and campaigns in the Strange Stars with a random adventure seed generator

And here's a special deal for early adopters: Everyone buying the pdf will get a coupon for $3.55 off the cost of the soft cover when it's released.

Wednesday Comics: Storm: Pirates of Pandarve

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues with his adventures in the world of Pandarve. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: The Pirates of Pandarve (1983) 
(Dutch: De Piraten van Pandarve) (part 3)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

Storm and Rann travel back to find Ember. She  is gone, though they do find her bow. Rann is certain she is dead--there are many dangers in space, after all--but Storm can't convince himself.

They travel on to Vertiga Bas the Pirate Planet to see if they can find Rann's daughter. Around the planet there is a swarm of ships. Rann explains:

The two locate the ferryman. He operates a hot air balloon that transports people from "orbit" to the only landing zone allowed to visitors--for a price. Rann grumbles about the cost, but he pays it.

A Vertiga Bas official greets them when they arrive. He tells them the laws of the Theocrat hold no sway here; there is only one law. For a price, he explains: Do nothing wrong. This actually means: "don't get caught by the police doing anything that might be considered an offense." These who break the law of Vertiga Bas are branded with a yellow circle, and anyone who gets two yellow circles is ejected into "orbit" by a catapult, there to die of thirst and hunger.

Storm and Rann don't plan to stay long. They make their way to a bar to try to find information. Storm asks the barkeep if he knows of any ships that have arrived recently with slaves to sell. The barkeeper informs him that asking questions is "considered anti-social in Vertiga Bas." After Rann pays him, the man becomes more helpful: in the Market of a Thousand Jars there is a slave market and a new ship has just unloaded its wares.

Arriving at the market, Rann immediately sees his daughter:

The slave trader tries to get in Rann's way and gets punched for his trouble. That action earns Rann a yellow circle brand:

Rann's daugher goes up for auction. Rann bids 300 credits and wins, but he doesn't have the money on  him, but he assures the auctioneer he can get it. In view of his status as a newcomer, they give him one hour to come up with it, otherwise the girl will go on the block again.

Rann doesn't know how he can get the money in that short amount of time, but Storm has an idea.

TO BE CONTINUED

Dave Cockrum Drew A Campagin For You

I picked up a black and white retrospective called The Dave Cockrum Treasury (1996), and one of the most interesting things among a lot of great Cockrum art was a series images (several sort of montages) which the introduction says were pre-production drawings by Cockrum, inked by Rudy Nebres for an unnamed film that was never made. I'm sure the budgets given fantasy films in the era in which I expect they were drawn would not have been out to the task, but they do suggest a Sword & Sorcery world that could easily be kernel of a setting. All standard stuff, really, but arranged in a unique Cockrum style. I've scanned a few of them:

Chubby demon idol with temple dancers in hand--or is that an actual demon godling? A dragonheaded warrior woman, on the side of the bad guys, I assume. And who's that masked cabal meeting with those warriors? Are they wizards or perhaps priests?

Here we see two evil wizards (likely the big heavies) who seem in cahoots but not entirely friendly. The lady wizard has a spider motif as we see in one of the other images. I bet that ramheaded giant is a guard at one or the other of these wizards' castle.

A flying ship and an undead army rising. A assume those angry eyes belong to the wizard woman, but maybe not.

And here, the heroine battles a gillman in some sort of underwater passage. Above, what looks like the two wizards and the reptile woman crush an opposing force.

Of course, those are only the most obvious interpretations and possibly incorrect. It doesn't matter, you can be as radical as you want. 

The Pleasure Palace of the Libertine Sea King

An adventure idea:

The King of the Sea is renowned for his Hugh Hefnerish lifestyle, maintaining an infamous nautiloid-shaped folly and gardens for his revels. Sometimes, he surrounds it in a bubble of airy water so land-dwellers can join the fun.

Sometimes the Sea King gets busy with important matters (or in this particular case, drama with his sea witch of an ex-wife), his beautiful and mischievous concubines take matters into their own hands, and invite illicit lovers of their own...

So this would basically combine Jason Sholtis's Secret Partyhouse of the Hill Giant Playboy with Leiber's "When the Sea King's Away". Highlights include:

Groovy architecture:

Vindictive Sea Wtiches:

Art by Arthur Adams

Octopus Guardsmen:

And b-list undersea celebtriy revellers.

Banners & Logos

Sometimes it's a "good" distraction from getting the rpg writing I need to get done doing logos/headers/cover designs for other people. It's a different sort of work that doesn't feel like work at times.

I've been working on some banner's for my fellow Hydra member Humza K. He's got the first one I did up on his blog now. It is probably more Arabian Nights-y than ideal, but it looks nice. Here are two later options I did to be more adventure-y maybe:

A while back, my friend Tim Shorts asked me to take a crack and redoing his GM Games logo. A think after a couple of passes I came up with this, sort of riffing off what he had before. Yesterday, Tim got dice with that logo and they look great. It's satisfying to see a design I did show up on a physical object:

Cautious Exploration on the Planet of the Apes

"DANGER AT THE PASS" 

Player Characters:
Jeff Call as Brock Irving
Lester B. Portly as Eddy Woodward
Jason Sholtis as Francis La Cava

Nonplayer Characters:
Aurelius
Alfonso Arau as Lope


Synopsis: Irving, Woodward, and La Cava go off on a scouting mission and (thanks to random encounter rolls) find evidence that there is a dangerous predator on the loose.

Commentary: A low action session, but a lot of exploration. Left without a clear goal, the group explored westward into San Augustin Pass. They see evidence of some sort of burrowing monster. Theories as to its nature include land shark, sandworm, and (based on a sighting) some sort of bear thing.

In the end, they see mutants approaching (likely for revenge) who are led by a guy who looks like this: