Species of the Alliance

I just uploaded a draft of a document Strange Stars: Sophonts of the Alliance. It's statted for FATE, and it's a product of my tinkering with that system to get to know it. Some of those species I've already statted for SWN on the blog, so I'm not even out the old school among you. The doc has some information that hasn't appeared on the blog. There's something for everybody.

Appendix N+1

In a discussion a few weeks ago, Aos said he was tired of the typical Appendix N and more interested in what creators specifically found inspirational in the works they cited. This is not at all a bad idea and something that I've seen in blog posts (and done some of myself), but there should probably be more if it.

To that end, here's a look behind of the curtain of some of my Strange Stars material. Since most of the posts are written vaguely "in world" maybe part of the fun is picking out the references, so if there is anyone who enjoys that, "spoilers" as the kids say. You can follow the links to the original post:

Smaragdoz
High Concept: A Jack Vance science fantasy riff on Oz as illustrated by Moebius
Important Bits: The "feel" of the world outside of Smaragdoz City is loosely in the mode of my vague (and possibly incorrect) recollections of Vance's Durdane trilogy, but not in any specific detail. The nature of the Wizard (an obvious Ozian veneer) was inspired by the Id monster of Forbidden Planet and the Uni-Mind of Kirby's Eternals.

Blesh
High Concept: A Greg Eganish take on posthuman insect men.
Important Bits: A myriad of science fiction insectoids underlie this (except, of course, they aren't really insect men, except visually) but the Vrusk made me want to put an insectoid in the setting, and the Hokun from Empire of the Petal Throne influenced the visual. The works of Egan (particularly Diaspora) influenced their post-humanness, and the Sturgeon novel More Than Human supplied the name and idea of blesh (from a portmanteau from "blend" and "mesh.").

Algosians
High Concept: A race of torture cultists
Important Bits: The primary inspiration was Uccastrog, the Isle of the Torturers, from Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique tales. There was a bit of Gene Wolfe influence with his Torturers Guild, too; Book of the New Sun was where I first encountered the term "algophilist." The appearance of the Torturers came from the Brom painting above, which probably reaches back to the Hellraiser films a bit.

Alright, that's enough secrets for one day. I hope it's interesting and not self-indulgent. If there's interest, I might do more of it at some point.

Worlds in the Ring

Circus is one of the Strange Stars' great wonders. No one knows who built the megastructure (it may even predate the Archaic Oikumene and be pre-human), but whoever it was had mastered technology beyond the reach of current civilization. It's gigantic ring has a radius of 1.9 million km and a width of about 1000 km, giving it a habitable surface area roughly 20 times that of Old Earth. It's rotational period is 24 hrs and it's tilted so that it's inhabitants experience roughly earth-like night and day. It's open to space, but centrifugal force and an upper "mesh" of radiation filtering nano hold a breathable atmosphere in.

In a system bordered by the Zuran Expanse, the Alliance, and the Instrumentality sphere, Circus has long been a center of trade. Its ruins attest to several stages of colonization by the human phyle. Modern, non-wilderness or waste sections of the great ring are a crazy quilt of petty kingdoms, communes, and experimental societies. These are the "zones"--or at least partial zones. The minimum size required of a political body for the term to be used is the subject of controversy. 

The most famous area of Circus is actually a free city--actually a megapolis or ecumenopolis--without a single name. It's most often called Interzone, though it's vast spaceport-adjacent tourist area is known as the Strip. Interzone's boundaries are vague, but including all of it's favelas and industrial parks, it covers an an area only a little less than the surface area of Sol IV (Mars). 

Spacers say there is no law in Interzone, but this is not strictly true. Rather it's a demarchy with minimalist government. The Wise Minds (a group of ancient infosophonts) select via lottery the anonymous rulers of the city--the Tsadikim--from among the populous. A Tsadik may serve for a few days or for a lifetime, based on the real-time evaluation of the Wise Minds. Every Tsadik (with the advice of the Minds) can create new laws at whim, though these must be approved by a majority of the other Tsadikim. Likewise, any Tsadik can supercede the decree of another with the same procedure. Tsadik can settle disputes among the populace themselves or a trial with a judge (this decision too is subject to review by the others).

The only immutable laws of Interzone are "property and self are sacred", "self-defense and common defense are a justification for violence", and "a contract is a contract."

Warlord Wednesday

My issue by issue retrospective will return next week. Today, take a look at these Grell covers for previous issues, without the text or logo:

Here's Travis Morgan's last issue:

And Joshua's first in full costume:

Plus, Morgan in the midst of battle:

As Seen on TV

Catching up on some DVR'ed shows I missed this past week reveals a number of gameable ideas in them without much effort. Here's what a got in a couple of hours yesterday afternoon:

Helix is a science fiction mystery/conspiracy show on SyFy about a team of scientists from the CDC sent to biotech research facility in the arctic to investigate a possible outbreak of a deadly virus. Of course, all is not what it seems: the virus (that sort of zombifies it's victims) is some sort of experimental bioweapon--and people are willing to kill to keep it secret. The setting and situation would work well for an even smaller than usual investigative sandbox. You could always move the base to the Antarctic and make the bioweapon recovered shoggoth material and you've got a great Delta Green/Call of Cthulhu scenario.

Keeping with the somewhat horrific, the last episode of American Horror Story: Coven (which I've mentioned before). The season didn't end as well as I would've liked, but it did have the interesting element of the contest to become supreme (leader of the coven) requiring the completing of the "Seven Wonders" displaying the seven arts of the witches. A competition like that and a series of miracles to perform would make a great guild advancement ritual about magic-users--or the skulduggery around it something for PCs to get drawn into.

For a complete change of tone, we have Space Dandy, an anime airing on Cartoon Network's Toonami.The titular Space Dandy is a pompadoured and none too bright alien hunter who tries (and usually fails) to bring in unknown alien species for cataloging by the government. What Space Dandy does for laughs could easily be done seriously. Hunting new sapient species in an ancient galactic civilization teeming with life (like Star Wars) is a pretty good conceit for a campaign.

Light-Years from Home

Well, not really, but I am traveling. I've updated the Strange Stars Index, though, so it's a could chance to catch up on a transmission you might have missed.

Regular updates to resume this week.

Every Picture Tells A Story

I think everyone would agree that evocative artwork is really helpful in setting the tone and conveying the feel of an rpg world and from the internet I know that a lot of people collect inspirational images in building a new setting, like I do.

It strikes me that given how much the images matter in conveying the setting, that picking new images could be used to give a setting a whole new vibe. A setting makeover, if you will.

Consider the following images:

Both of them are meant to illustrate the same literary work (Edgar Rice Burroughs's Gods of Mars), and they even include identifiable elements, but they have a very different feel. The first, by Manolo Prieto, is a bit phantasmagorical, perhaps even whimiscal. It suggests a Barsoom more akin to fairy tales or the works of Lord Dunsany, maybe. The second, by Michael Whelan, seems much more a place of serious, more sci-fi-ish adventure. I think both GMs and player's would approach a Mars illustrated in the first way somewhat different from the second.

Here's another example. Different versions of the dwarves from The Hobbit:

The first illustration is from a Russian edition of the book. These dwarves look like they've might sing "heigh ho" and hang out with Snow White. The later ones would be more at home in improbable  action sequences.

So next time you think your bored with your setting, maybe your just bored with how your conceiving your setting. New visuals maybe just help.