[Fanzine Focus XIX] Back to the Spaceport: Phase 1, Datapacket 1

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

For the most part, the current wave of fanzines is all fantasy orientated, a great many of them dedicated to and supporting the Old School Renaissance in one form or another. Essentially an Old School form of support for an Old School style of roleplaying game. So when a new fanzine appears dedicated to a different genre it can be a breath of fresh air and when that fanzine approaches its subject in more thoughtful and detailed fashion, then that breath of fresh air might be more than a little minty fresh. So it is with Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games. This is a Science Fiction fanzine dedicated to all types of Science Fiction gaming, so roleplaying and miniatures, for example. It is also a Science Fiction fanzine dedicated to Science Fiction in all of its many subgenres—urban (Cyberpunk and dystopian), post-apocalyptic, interstellar travel, Victorian and Edwardian, and so on. It is also a Science Fiction fanzine which is very British in its approach to Science and it also a Science Fiction fanzine that when necessary, is prepared to examine the issues posed when gaming with a particular Science Fiction genre.

Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1 is entirely written and edited by David Haraldson and you can tell that it has a serious intent from the moment you open the front cover. He takes the time to credit all of the artists, the fonts used for each article, and the particular games. This is not necessarily interesting, but it points to an aspiration towards a professionalism and a seriousness. Then flip through the pages of the fanzine and there are copious footnotes, often links to outside sources of research and the like. In terms of presentation, the fanzine is clean and tidy, perhaps slightly cluttered in places, with artwork used judiciously. The use of different fonts for article titles is very eighties, as is the organisation of the contents into different departments. So ‘Yesterday’s Tomorrows’ for Edwardian and Victorian scientific romances, ‘Bright Lights, Mega City’ for urban Science Fiction, ‘Into the Ruins’ for post-apocalyptic Science Fiction, and so on, which is all very White Dwarf magazine.

The first department is ‘Yesterday’s Tomorrows’ and ‘The Green Hills of Venus’. This is the write-up of the first from the Challenger Distinguished Lectures given by Professor Octavian Black. It presents his findings on the successes and failures of the first few expeditions to Venus, starting with the 1889 Chadwick expedition. In classic style, it presents Venus as a hothouse jungle planet, complete with lizardmen and megafauna, but also hints at secrets deep within the planet. Complete with a story hook and lots of knowing Easter eggs if you know the genre, its gets the fanzine off to a good start.

‘Manchester, So Much To Answer For’ is the first entry for the ‘Bright Lights, Mega City’ department, presenting two Manchester-inspired gangs—the Rusholme Ruffians and Frank’s Gang a.k.a. the Sidebottoms. The former is a gang inspired by the eighties band, The Smiths, whilst the latter a gang inspired by the papier-mâché mask-helmet wearing media personality/artist, Frank Sidebottom. More attention is paid to the latter than the former and it shows with more ideas on their gang structure and how to use them. Certainly, Frank’s Gang makes for a fun prank/performance gang to add to a Cyberpunk roleplaying game as well as the Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD Roleplaying Game and Vurt: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game. ‘Me And My Melancholy Motor’ for ‘Into the Ruins’ provides the TEdison Razorback, a vehicle with an A.I. and a personality for getting around a post-apocalyptic world akin to that of Gamma World or Mutant Crawl Classics. Complete with a personality table and mental health crisis table, it provides a fun NPC for Game Master to bring to her campaign and roleplay.

The highlight of Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1 is ‘Mx. Land & Dr. Britling See It Through’. The longest article in the issue, it explores the nature and problems of the Steampunk genre and how it applies to gaming as well as how the Steampunk movement regards gaming. In the first case, rarely as a ’punk genre and typically as a neo-colonial, imperialist celebration, and in the case of the latter, badly. Of the roleplaying games available, it highlights Marcus L. Rowland’s Forgotten Futures as probably the best roleplaying game of Victorian and Edwardian scientific romances and it also presents a manifesto for exploring the genre in the pages of Back to the Spaceport. This is an absolutely splendid read, interesting and thoughtful, certainly all but worth the price of the fanzine alone.

The articles for the departments ‘STL Signals’ and ‘Standing Orders’ are more personal and prosaic in nature. ‘STL Signals’ looks at PBM—or ‘Play by Mail’—games and the author’s experience with a couple of PBM games, Riftlords and Phoenix: Beyond the Stellar Empire. It is diverting enough and again harks back to the heyday of the hobby in the eighties. ‘Standing Orders’ is devoted to Science Fiction miniatures wargaming and ‘21st Century Fighting in Built-Up Areas’ looks at urban conflict scenarios in miniatures games where the line of sight extends across the whole of the playing area. Written for use with Ground Zero Games’ Stargrunt II rules, the rules and suggestions here can adapt to any rules system the reader prefers, the article is useful for anyone running these types of games, but is otherwise just a little esoteric in comparison to the other articles in Back to the Spaceport.

Of more use perhaps is ‘Art Crime’. Written for the ‘Under Other Constellations’ department, it is a set-up and a cast of supporting NPCs suitable for any Science Fiction roleplaying game in which interstellar travel is possible. Here the idea is that the transportation of ordinary goods is too expensive to make it worthwhile, but the shipment of luxury items, including art, does not. It consists of four detailed NPCs—The Thief, The Investigator, The Amateur Sleuth, and The Collector—around which the Game Master can build a scenario or encounter. Written for use with FrostByte Books’ M-Space and Design Mechanicsm’s Mythras Imperative, it would easily work with any number of Science Fiction roleplaying games and adapting the plot and NPCs should be easy enough. Lastly, ‘Music for Spaceports’—a nice nod to Music for Airports—reviews three albums of music suitable for use as background sounds in Science Fiction games. Of the eight articles in Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1, this feels like filler.

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In addition to the fanzine itself, Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1 comes with an Old School Renaissance Science Fiction pullout. ‘On Xanadu, A Stately Pleasure Sphere!’ is written for use with White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying and similar Science Fiction roleplaying games, as well as Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game: Transhuman Adventure in the Second Age of Space, it presents a Space Opera-style scenario/hexcrawl on the planet Xanadu, the best source of the Star Flowers, a delicacy amongst the galaxy’s elite. The planetary governor, Magnus Dominus, spends his time in seclusion in his imperial palace whilst working the planet’s population piteously hard growing the precious star flowers. The set-up is open to multiple plots, including assassinating the governor, abducting him and putting him on trial, stealing something from his art collection, fomenting rebellion, and so on. This could easily be mixed in with the ‘Art Crime’ article from the issue. Overall, this is a nice extra to the actual issue and easy enough to add to a Game Master’s campaign.

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It is a pleasure to have a fanzine which covers a genre in the variety of its subgenres and one which does so in as high a standard across all of them. It sets the bar high for future issues, one that we can only hope that the author can maintain for the second issue and also when other contributors write for it. Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1 is an engaging piece from beginning to end, thoughtful and interesting, the article Steampunk a superb highlight.

Cultural Conflict

Hearts and Minds: Saving a World on the Brink of War! A Mindjammer Adventure is a sourcebook and scenario for Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game: Transhuman Adventure in the Second Age of Space, the Space Opera setting with a harder, more contemporary Science Fiction edge published by Mindjammer Press. Set some fifteen thousand years into the future during the Second Age of Space, it takes place on the world of Olkennedy whose society stands on the brink of civil war. Originally settled eight thousand years ago during the First Age of Space, like so many planets settled then, the original colonists were forced to survive with no contact from Old Earth, a local astronomical event forcing some into stasis, the others to survive as best they can. When the surviving original colonists awoke, their reappearance led to tensions between them and the society which had survived, regressed, and was building anew. These tensions have been exacerbated in the last two decades when long spread rumours of aliens were confirmed with the arrival of the Commonality.

In the Second Age of Space, the New Commonality of Humankind presides over an expanding sphere of influence and control, seeking to maintain and protect its culture as it maintains and protects those of other worlds through the offices and agents of the Security and Cultural Integrity (SCI) Instrumentality. Yet not every world wants or is ready to accept the influence of or integration into the Commonality. So it is with Olkennedy. There are many on the world who do not believe that the Commonality when it says it protects the rights and cultures of those worlds it adopts and in particular, they fear the loss of individuality should they accept implants which grant them access and membership of the Mindscape, the virtual world which connects the Commonality. There are a great many who would take up arms to protect the loss of such rights and culture, and there even more who could be persuaded to join them. Opposing views clashes, tensions rise, and civil war  looms. It is into this febrile situation that the player characters step.

The first half of Hearts and Minds is devoted to detailing and describing the world of Olkennedy, its people, history, and culture. Or rather it focuses on the area which can support life, a crater deep enough to hold an oxygen-rich atmosphere and which has a subtropical climate, including a sea, with snow layers to the north. The planet has a high gravity, is subject to high winds and storms, and has a short day. The generally self-reliant inhabitants have had millennia in which to adapt to this. The planet is home to five distinct nations. Columbiana is youngest, but the most advanced and most dominant, its citizens mostly descended from the colonists—known as the Awoken—who emerged from stasis a millennia ago, whilst Van Kuvrai is home to the descendant of the colonists who did not enter stasis. Nwasha and Omianto are home to the Nwasha pithecines who were originally developed as labour by the original colony. Nwasha is primarily an arboreal culture whilst Omianto is more industrialised. Lastly, Akantack hominids, similarly developed as a labour force by the original colonists are nomads who live in the Snow-Layer which runs around the rim of the Crater or the Akantack Sanctuary. Although the five nations of Olkennedy have existed peacefully for a century, now their planet’s membership of the New Commonality of Humankind threatens to bring them into conflict once again.

As well as the inhabitants and cultures of Olkennedy, Hearts and Minds details the colony’s ecology, flora and fauna, major cities such as Craterport Down, technology, and more. Scenario hooks and random events are provided for both wilderness and urban settings, such that there is more than enough information here for the Game Master to run her own adventures. Together with the Genotype for the Akantack hominids, there is also information enough to create characters native to Olkennedy and perhaps explore some of its history, for example, why the Awoken emerged from stasis when they did or what were conspiracy theories surrounding the Commonality’s presence prior to the Disclosure, the traumatic event which revealed the existence of the New Commonality of Humankind to the Olkennedians. 

Of course, Hearts and Minds is designed to explore a clash of cultures, that is between the Commonality culture and a relatively newly found culture, that of Olkennedy. Whilst some Olkennedians accept the presence of the Commonality, many do not and they have coalesced around the Fiver separatist movement, named for the five nation on Olkennedy. In the years prior to the arrival of the player characters, its activists have been actively attacking the Commonality presence on planet, fomenting riots, causing unrest and engaging in acts of ‘terrorism’ or ‘freedom fighting’—depending on your point of view. This is not helped by factionalism within the Commonality itself. Two factions are detailed. The Integrator faction want to bring newly discovered planets into the Commonality, whilst the Dialogic faction wants to maintain a conversation with each newly discovered world rather than simply bring into the Commonality.

The second half of Hearts and Minds is the adventure itself. The most obvious role for the player characters will be SCI Force agents, sent to Olkennedy because of the deteriorating political situation, but they might also be diplomats, soldiers of the Armed Forces Instrumentality, merchants, scientists, or a mix of all six. Their roles of course will colour their approach to handling the situation on Olkennedy. For example, soldiers of the Armed Forces Instrumentality are more likely to commit to a military solution, whilst diplomats will seek a more conciliatory solution. Whatever their roles, throughout the scenario the Game Master will be tracking the effects that their actions have using Mindjammer’s Plot Stress mechanics. Essentially, through their actions, it is entirely possible for the player characters to sway the opinion of the Olkennedians towards or away from accepting the presence or membership of the Commonality—or somewhere in between.

The adventure is played out over four episodes and an epilogue, the latter being when the Game Master will assess the actions of the player characters and determine the ultimate outcome of events on Olkennedy based on them. There are plenty of opportunities for both roleplaying and conflict, but Mindjammer being a Transhuman Space Opera roleplaying game, there are lots and lots of opportunities for action. Now much of the action may well look a little like a cliché in places, but the action scenes are well handled and once the player characters get involved, with their wide array of Aspects being brought into play, the action will be anything but. If there is an issue with Hearts and Minds, it is that running it is a challenge. This is because it explores numerous options and their consequences as the scenario proceeds, and it is all too easy for the Game Master to get lost in them. The likelihood is that the Game Master will need to work harder to keep track of everything, especially of the consequences of the player characters’ actions and decisions, and when combined with having to present the scenario and roleplay its many NPCs, she may well find she has a heavier workload than is the norm.

Physically, Hearts and Minds is well presented behind its Eugène Delacroix’s ‘Liberty Leading the People’ inspired cover. The book is mainly done in black and white, but touches of colour are used to bring out its maps. The artwork is excellent, although a little dark. The writing and editing are well done, but if there is one thing that the book lacks, it is an index. Although less than a hundred pages in length, there is a lot of information in Hearts and Minds and having a better means of finding things would make it easier for the Game Master to run.

Originally published in 2015, the politics present in Hearts and Minds, although set on a Science Fiction world in the far future do feel relevant today. The adventure and situation explores deeply polarised political views, threats to cultural identity, loss of status, and so on, which escalate into civil unrest, acts of violence, and even terrorism. Of course, Hearts and Minds is a fiction, but undeniably there are parallels with contemporary politics, whether in the United Kingdom, Europe, the USA, and elsewhere. How much a gaming group wants to read into the scenario is another matter. It can be played with or without the group drawing the parallels.

Hearts and Minds can be played as one-shot or a convention scenario, and there are guidelines given to that end. Yet to do so, would be to miss a lot of the depth and nuance to the scenario’s set-up, to all too easily and quickly side with one polarised faction or another. Played as a full scenario, and what Hearts and Minds does is present an exploration of Mindjammer’s core themes—cultural conflict, the rediscovery of strange new worlds, and the personal conflicts which arise from them, all played out against an advanced Space Opera background. Simply, Hearts and Minds: Saving a World on the Brink of War! A Mindjammer Adventure is the ideal first scenario to showcase what the roleplaying game is all about.

The Fate of Transhumanity

It has been 193 years since the discovery of 2-space and the invention of the planing engine granted humanity with the ability to travel faster than light. It reinvigorated Earth culture—moribund for over ten thousand years—lifting it from introspection within the Mindscape and driving them out to explore the universe once again. Within days and months, the new explorers made contact with worlds that had been first discovered millennia before by the wave upon wave of slow and generation ships during the First Age of Space. What they found were colonies whose inhabitants had diverged from Earth, both culturally and biologically, having either evolved or been engineered. This included a range of hominids such as post-human and para-human subspecies, xenomorphs or uplifted animal species, new cultures and those based on old Earth cultures and even fictitious ones, wholly synthetic species, even alien species. As they made contact, the explorers were culturally contaminating the new worlds, the cultural contamination went both ways, forcing Earth to set protection methods that worked both ways. Even then, it did not prevent cultural and technological contamination of the Empire of Venu that would lead to a vicious war with Venu.

In the Second Age of Space, the New Commonality of Humankind presides over an expanding sphere of influence and control, seeking to maintain and protect its culture as it maintains and protects those of other worlds through the offices and agents of the Security and Cultural Integrity (SCI) Instrumentality. New worlds and old colonies are being discovered daily as explorers push ever further at the frontier whilst wily traders trail in their wake looking to make a killing in new markets and diplomats and cultural agents rush into ensure cultural and diplomatic integrity.  Billions upon billions of people, from one system to another have access to the Mindscape, part skills system, part virtual reality, part library, and part recorder of memories, all accessed via an implant and each user’s Halo that also enables amazing technopsi abilities as much as it leaves users vulnerable to mindburn attacks. Depending upon your authority and/or the right implant, the Mindscape is also a new arena for cultural and technological warfare, acts of terrorism, and worse. Though faster than light communication is impossible, gigantic Mindjammer vessels travel from system to system, transmitting messages and data and updating the Mindscape of each system as they go. Each Mindjammer is an sentient ship with a real personality, often of a person or hero long dead, and they are not the only sentient vessels to pilot the spaceways. As well as accepting a Mindscape implant, members of the New Commonality of Humankind and beyond have access to an array of technological and genurigic modifications, for whatever world you want to live on, environment you want to adapt to, and job you want to do, the most common of which besides the Mindscape implant is longevity and a five hundred year lifespan.

This is the set-up for Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game: Transhuman Adventure in the Second Age of Space, a roleplaying set fifteen thousand years into the future. Published by Mindjammer Press, it was originally published as a supplement for Starblazer Adventures: The Rock & Roll Space Opera Adventure Game, but has since been expanded into a roleplaying game of its very own and been adapted for use with Traveller. Like Starblazer Adventures though, Mindjammer is ‘Powered by Fate’. Not FATE Core, the most recent version of the roleplaying game, but the mechanics between the two versions are compatible. It presents a universe in which there are worlds to be discovered, cultures to be protected and invaded, trades to be made, a border with the Empire of Venu to be patrolled, virtual worlds to be explored, and more. All this is presented as a positive Science Fiction future with the New Commonality of Humankind as a technocratic dictatorship with the best interests of mankind at heart, though some cultures may disagree and many individuals chafe at its collective outlook so driving them to the frontier, and the only definite evil being the theocratic Empire of Venu. This is a setting where Humanity is evolving beyond its physical and mental limits through scientific and technological means, but still feels bound to protect culturally what it means to be human.

In terms of what a player can take as his character, Mindjammer offers a lot of options, including soldiers of the Armed Forces Instrumentality, SCI agents, Space Force crews, intrepid 2-space pilots, canny traders and wily rogues, explorers, mercenaries, scientists, diplomats, spies, scouts, and then sentient starships, uplifted xenomorphs that include like Canids, Cetaceans, Felines, Pithecines, and Ursoids,  Synthetics like Mechanicals, Organics, and Installations, and Hominids, like the Chembu, master genurgists whose homeworld is a planetary intelligence. It all depends upon the campaign that the Game Master wants to run. Not only are the players expected to buy into this, they are expected to create their characters together as a collaborative process in order to tie them together. Further, the players and the Game Master are expected to discuss the nature of the campaign and agree on what issues it will involve. Such issues will become Aspects that can be Invoked and Compelled to bring them into play and have them affect both campaign and the player characters.

Character creation is a fairly involved process, a player deciding upon a High Concept—essentially the thumbnail definition of the character—and then selecting a Culture, Genotype, Occupation, and Trouble—what messes up the character’s life, at each stage creating an Aspect which can be brought into play. Then in the Phase Trio, the player will co-operate with the other players to create his character’s latest adventure and how he crossed paths with their characters just he will do the same with their characters. Again, the character is given an Aspect for each of the three steps of the Phase Trio. Then the player assigns some Skill ratings and selects some Stunts which enable the character to do some amazing things. These start at three, but more can be taken, though the more a character has, the lower his Refresh value is. This limits the number of Fate Points the character has, so in order to get more, the player will have to accept more Compels on his character’s Aspects, which of course, means both trouble and more opportunities for roleplaying.

Perhaps the most complex step is spending the character’s Extras budget. This consists of further Aspects, Stunts, and Skills which can be used to buy genurgic enhancements such as a Mindscape implant, personal equipment like Dispersion Field, or even a starship, complete with its own Skills. The end process is not just a character with some special abilities and skills, but one with backstory and connections that tie him to the other player characters. Done together and three, four, or five players have essentially collaborated to create a team, whether that is a starship crew, a unit of SCI agents or soldiers, Mindscape white hacker band, or just a group of adventurers making their way in a brand-new universe.

Our sample character is a Xenomorph, a Pithecine or Chimpanzee, descended from a colony set-up team sent to a now lost world to build and prepare the planet for human colonisation. The follow-on colony vessel never arrived and the construction team was forced to adapt and settle the world themselves. Over the centuries, their society devolved into one that worshiped the humans whose arrival was foretold and the technology the brought with them originally which over time stopped functioning. This left the world vulnerable to the pirates and slavers that rediscovered the planet. Me-Jane’s curiosity got the better of her and she was captured and spent two years as a gladiator and bruiser for the pirates. Fortunately she got rescued and now happily travels aboard which does not engage in such activities and which just about tolerates her curiosity and her attitude toward technology.

Name: Me-Jane

High Concept: Barbarian Chimp

Culture: Lost World

Genotype: Pithecine 

Occupation: Barbarian

Trouble: Forward Chimp from a Backward World

Aspects: To us, Humanity were gods (Culture); Can I Try That? (Genotype); Curiosity Got the Chimp (Phase One); Rage and Rage Again! (Phase Two); One Chimp is better than… (Phase Three)

Skills: Melee Combat (Great +4); Physique, Rapport (Good +3); Athletics, Notice, Stealth (Fair +2); Drive, Knowledge, Technical, Unarmed Combat (Average +1)

Stunts: Archaic Melee Weapons, Danger Sense, Percussive Maintenance

Extras: Mindscape Implant (Aspect); Expert Climber, Jumper (Stunts); Chimp Chain (Armour 2), Chimp Club (Melee Combat 2), Library Chip (Knowledge +2)

Physical Stress: 1 2 3 4

Mental Stress: 1 2

Credit Stress: 1 2

Tech Index: Poor (-1)

Mechanically, as has already been mentioned, Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game uses Fate. To undertake an action for his character, a player rolls four dice—or ‘4dF’—and counts the pluses and minuses rolled on the die. To this value is added the character’s Skill. Stunts enable a character to get better or specific results if the roll if successful, whilst Aspects can be Invoked to gain a bonus to the roll or get a reroll. Invoking an Aspect requires the expenditure of a Fate Point which can be regained either up to the character’s Refresh value each session or accepting a Compel for an Aspect to bring some complication into the current scene. Typically, the dice are rolled to successfully Overcome a goal, Create a situational, but temporary Aspect that other characters can Invoke, Attack, or Defend. A player only has to roll equal to the target number or the total rolled by the opposition to succeed, but roll above the target and a player can achieve Shifts, extra effects like increased damage.

Being ‘Powered by FATE’ means that Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game has certain cinematic feel to it a la Space Opera, but being ‘Powered by FATE’ means that it does one other thing really well—and that is, scale up. This is because it combines the descriptive elements of the Aspects with a ladder of adjectives that goes from Terrible and -2 all the way up to Legendary and +8, a combination which not only works well with characters, it works well with constructs like starships and their personal avatars, installations, vehicles, organisations—including agencies, corporations, and polities which can be up to interstellar in size, cultures, planets, and more. Numerous examples of all of these appear throughout the book for the New Commonality of Humankind setting along with the means for the Game Master to create star sectors, worlds, cultures, aliens, and more. The scale though, also means that they interact with each other highly effectively, so that not only could a battle between two fleets or a culture clash between two worlds or a trade war between two merchant houses be handled with same ease as player character/NPC interaction, so player character interaction between these can also handled with the same ease, whether that is implanting a virus in the command ship’s computer to disrupt its command systems, blocking a meme attack in the cultural war, or besmirching the reputation of a rival merchant prince.

Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game includes chapters not just on character creation, cultures, genotypes, and occupations as well as the ‘Powered by FATE’ rules, but also technology, the Mindscape, constructs, starships and space travel, vehicles, organisations, cultures and their interactions, worlds and civilisations, stellar bodies and star systems, and aliens. Quite a bit of this could divorced from the New Commonality of Humanity setting and used to run a Science Fiction setting of the Game Master’s own design, for example, the worlds, civilisations, stellar bodies, and star systems mechanics work well in any Science Fiction interstellar setting. Of course, many of the examples that support these rules are specific to the New Commonality of Humanity setting and there is great deal in the book that is still integral to the setting. Primarily this includes the history of the New Commonality Era and the Second Age of Space, but it also includes a sample octant of space, the ‘Darradine Rim’, a section of the Darradine Restoration subsector. Descriptions of just twenty of the key worlds in the octant are given, but there are hundreds more not yet located on the map and so ready for the Game Master to create. Just a pair of final scenario hooks are given, but sadly no starting scenario. This though is understandable in part, because every campaign would have different set-up and therefore require different sample scenarios.

Physically, Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game is a sturdy slab of a book. Black and white throughout, barring the world writeups in the ‘Darradine Rim’ chapter, the book does feel as if it should be in colour. The writing is engaging throughout, clearly showcasing the author’s enthusiasm for the setting, the lengthy index decent, and the editing reasonable. The book though could be better organised, especially when it comes to character generation, which involves a lot of flipping back and forth of pages in what is probably one of the most complex means of character creation seen in any FATE roleplaying game.

What amazes about Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game is the scope of game, whether that is in terms of the huge array of character types possible or the range of campaign types that setting and the mechanics both allow. Yet Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game does not just amaze both reader and Game Master, it daunts them too. There is almost too much to take in in the pages of this roleplaying game such that despite the ease of play with the FATE mechanics, Mindjammer is not a casual roleplaying game. As a one-shot then yes, but a campaign requires the players to sit down with the Game Master and together work out what they are going to play as a group, though the small group of free agents with their own ship a la Firefly or Traveller is essentially the default. Indeed, character generation works best as a group endeavour. Then there are the individual parts of the rules and the setting which almost need to be learned separately, the chapter on the Mindscape for example, requires a different approach to that needed for the rest of the book and the setting. 

Nevertheless, if Game Master and players alike are prepared to step up, then what they will discover in Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game: Transhuman Adventure in the Second Age of Space is a Science Fiction setting which offers a surfeit of choice when it comes to character types and campaign set-ups combined with tried and tested mechanics that support great roleplaying. All of which will play out against a Space Opera setting with a harder, more contemporary Science Fiction edge. 

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Mindjammer Press will be at UK Games Expo which will take place between May 31st and June 2nd, 2019 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.