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. 

—oOo—

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.

Coming Together

Reunion is the first scenario for River of Heaven: Science-Fiction Roleplaying in the 28th Century, the near Transhuman Space Opera RPG published by D101 Games. Designed for four to six players, it is an introductory adventure that can be used as a one-off scenario, a convention scenario, or as the starting point for a campaign. They take the roles of crewmembers serving aboard the interstellar stepship, the Cape Verde, a vessel owned by House Harper-Yung, one of the ruling families on Jericho. Of course like any stepship, all interstellar piloting and navigation functions are carried out by a Pilot’s Guild provided Stepdaughter, who is literally plugged into the ship.

As Reunion opens, the crewmembers are waking up from Vitrification, the means of cryopreserving both passengers and crew for the long, typically years’ long, voyages between star systems. This is typically an unpleasant experience, those put under usually suffering from nausea, disorientation, and even temporary sleep sickness. Fortunately, the crew are trained to overcome these symptoms and quickly realise that something is amiss… First, the medical team that would usually be on hand to help revive them is not present. Second, they are in zero-g—which means that the ship is not accelerating. So where is the medical team and what has happened to the rest of the crew? Further, what is going on with the Cape Verde?

The truth of the matter is that the Cape Verde has been attacked and boarded. To say more would be to spoil the scenario, but the player character crew members need to find out by whom and why as well as what has happened to the rest of the crew. In doing so, they not only get to explore their stepship from nose to tail, they may also discover a deep, dark secret at the heart of River of Heaven. The player characters are free to pursue the plot in Reunion however they like, though much of the plot will proceed unless they intervene. There will certainly be locations aboard the Cape Verde that the player characters will want to visit—the bridge being an obvious example—and the scenario does include certain encounters to that end. For the most part, the scenario and its plot are location based, but this will diminish as the actions of the player character crew members impinge upon the plot. 

To support this set-up and plot, Reunion includes descriptions of, and deckplans for, the Cape Verde, plus the vessels used by the scenario’s adversaries. Also given are the stats and write-ups for the NPCs, both the crew members of the Cape Verde and of the adversary vessels. Last of all are the character sheets for the six pre-generated player characters.

Physically, Reunion is slightly underwhelming as the deckplans for the various spaceships and starships feel just a little too basic. The deckplans do break the book’s text as otherwise there are no illustrations. In places, Reunion could also do with another edit.

Reunion is a scenario in which the player characters really do need to be proactive in pursuing the mystery at its heart. If they prevaricate, there is every chance that they will find themselves adrift and potentially be unable to get back to civilisation. This is not so much of an issue in a one-shot or convention scenario, but in one intended as the start of a campaign…? Other than this, Reunion is a solidly done scenario with potential for some good action and revelations at the heart of the setting for River of Heaven.

A River of Heaven Dammed

The year is 2701 and mankind has reached the zenith of the Bright Age or Third Renaissance. In the past four centuries, world after world has been colonised and whole polities have declared their independence from Earth, but Faster Than Light travel remains a scientific impossibility. The first colony ships were slow, but in the wake of the near disastrous Solar System War that followed mankind’s first contact with the extra-terrestrial species known as the Spooks, recovered technology gave us the Step Drive and thus the Stepship. Piloted by Stepdaughters—each trained and provided by the Guild of Pilots and integrated into their vessels, these kilometre-long vessels are capable of achieving near Light Speed, cutting interstellar travel times by years—though passengers are still required to remain in cryogenic vitrification. This has enabled the Guild of Pilots to become one of the most powerful economic agencies across the River of Heaven, alongside the Guild of Engineers that maintains all Stepships  and the Guild of Communications that maintains the near instant Quantum Communications network along the 'River of Heaven'. More recently, the Machine Civilisation—descended from the first A.I.s built by mankind that escaped beyond the Solar System—returned to present us with amazing technological advances, including the Visser Cube. When linked Visser Cubes are placed in separate star systems, they enable interstellar travel via wormholes, further cutting travel times to as little as instantaneous or minutes.

The gifts from the Machine Civilisation have enabled the feudal corporate polity of the Kentauran Hegemony—centred on Alpha Centauri—to eclipse Earth and the Red Empire of Mars. This is a golden age, one that other worlds want to participate in, whilst others see the relationship between the Kentauran Hegemony and the Machine Civilisation as a threat to their individuality and their independence. Worse, away from the Cardinal Worlds of the Kentauran Hegemony, there are signs of interstellar piracy in the Outremer Worlds and a growing number of Renouncer Zealots—each intent on destroying all Artificial Intelligences.

This is the default setting for River of Heaven: Science-Fiction Roleplaying in the 28th Century, a far future, near Transhuman Science Fiction RPG published by D101 Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Notably, it is written by John Ossaway, who is best known for Cthulhu Rising, a near future setting in which mankind went out to the stars and discovered that the secrets best forgotten about the universe in the 1920s had a basis in a reality. It was a setting that showed much promise and was well supported by the author, but never received the support it deserved from Chaosium, Inc. bar a pair of Miskatonic University Library Association Monographs. The influences upon River of Heaven are as diverse as John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series, Alistair Reynold’s Revelation Space series, and Frank Herbert’s Dune novels—the latter in particular.

Mechanically, River of Heaven uses D101 Games’ OpenQuest, a stripped down version of Chaosium, Inc.’s Basic Role-Play, the original generic RPG first published in 1980 and most recently republished in 2008 whose  mechanics underlie  so many of the RPGs published by Chaosium.  These mechanics are still percentile-based, but OpenQuest keeps the number of skills and possible modifiers to a minimum. For the most part it does this effectively, but its combat mechanics cannot escape a certain degree of extra complexity, surprisingly more so for personal combat rather than for vehicle or space combat. Personal combat is also very deadly, two shots or a single critical hit being enough to disable, if not kill, a player character. This is particularly important given that under OpenQuest and thus River of Heaven, the ‘monsters’ or opposition are often as deadly as the player characters. Indeed, the advice for the Games Master is to keep the number of threats or foes faced by the player characters to a relative few lest they be overwhelmed. Over all, the rules are simple and straightforward and for anyone who has played Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest, very easy to pick up.

Character creation is also simple. A player selects  Human Subspecies—Baseline Humans (from Earth or Outremer Worlds), Genies (most of humanity from the Cardinal Worlds), Skinnies (microgravity environments), Tweaks (bio-engineered pilots, soldiers, or for Zero-G environments), or Bioroids (biological robots) and either buys his character’s stats from a pool of points or rolls for them. Every character receives the same pools of points to spend in turn on his Resistances and his Combat, Knowledge, and Practical skills. A character also has a pool of points to spend on Augmentations—Biotech, Cyberware, and Nanotech like a GPS, Hypaedia (personal encyclopaedia), improved organs, subdermal communications, and so on. Many of these need to be activated to work and for every one installed, it pushes a character towards a personal singularity at which point he becomes Transhuman and a Games Master NPC. Every character has two Hero Points that can be spent to gain a re-roll, downgrade a Major Wound to a normal wound, and to avoid death. Options allow for Personality Traits that can triggered for skill bonuses and Motives that once fulfilled grant Improvement Points which are spent to better skills.

Our sample character is a minor member of House Harper-Yung of the Kentauran Hegemony. Of the Noble caste, he was caught up in a sex scandal two years ago and was exiled on a low remittance. Thus he has to be careful when he is in the Kentauran Hegemony. He is persuasive and well-mannered and prior to his exile was training to work in the family corporation. He had barely begun his studies when the scandal occurred. Now his primary skills are his charm, and his swordsmanship and ability to play chess.

Xiang Tu Harper
Human subspecies: Genie
STR 16 CON 13 DEX 18 SIZ 11
INT 17 POW 12 CHA 17
BioEnergy 12 Transhuman Points 6
RESISTANCES
Dodge 53% (+20%) Persistence 37% Resilience 35%
COMBAT SKILLS
Close Combat 64% Ranged Combat 45% Unarmed Combat 44% Heavy Weapons 17%
KNOWLEDGE SKILLS
Computer 17%, Culture (Kentauran) 47%, Culture (Other) 27%, Language (English) 67%, Language (Mandarin) 37%, Natural Sciences 27%, Religion 27%, Religion (Other) 17%, Technology 17%, Science 17%
PRACTICAL SKILLS
Athletics 39%, Craft 27%, Deception 35%, Drive 35%, Engineering (Type) 17 %, EVA 45%, Influence 47%, Medicine 27%, Mechanisms 35%, Perception 34%, Performance 27%, Pilot 37%, Streetwise 39%, Trade 37%
AUGMENTATIONS
Beacon/1, Combat Reflexes/2 (+4 to Combat Order), Cortical Shunt/1, Pheromones/2
Motivation – to be restored to House Harper-Yung

River of Heaven’s chronology runs from fifty years hence up to the early years of the Fourth Millennium. It is fairly detailed, whilst still allowing room for the Games Master to run his games. The setting at the time of the Bright Age is similarly detailed—if not more so—and that is something of a problem because River of Heaven does not quite get the presentation of its setting right. The primary focus of the RPG’s setting is physical in nature. Now this is understandable. After all, River of Heaven is a near space Science Fiction game set on other worlds, so some detail is needed about the physical nature of these worlds and the star systems they are in. Yet River of Heaven concentrates on the physical details—such as each star’s Metallicity and each planet’s Obliquity to orbit—at the expense of other background detail. Again, this is a Science Fiction RPG and some of these details are needed when running a Science Fiction campaign.

Yet others are not and what is lost in this focus is a feel for the people and organisations of the River of Heaven as well as their aims and objectives. So what are the aims and beliefs of the governments and corporations of the Kentauran Hegemony or the Empire of Mars? What does a Guild Engineer know and believe? Why does a Renouncer hate the Artificial Intelligences used throughout the River of Heaven? What does the Machine Civilisation want? To an extent, some of these questions are addressed in the Friends and Foes chapter under the individual entries, but even the given answers feel underwritten and unhelpful. This is despite the back cover blurb suggesting various roles that a player could take on, including “a crew member on an interstellar trader, a member of the mysterious Engineers’ Guild, a body-hopping Intercessionist agent – out to manipulate human cultures to its own secret ends, a Renouncer Zealot – intent on destroying Artificial Intelligence in all its forms, or perhaps one of the Reclaimers – planetary engineers dedicated to terraforming any viable planet they happen upon…” Unfortunately, River of Heaven just does not provide enough information or advice on how to create and portray such characters, and similarly, not enough information for the Games Master in creating interesting NPCs and plots.

Creating an interstellar Science Fiction RPG in which there is no means of Faster-Than-Light travel was always going to be a challenge because Slower-Than-Light makes travel from one star system to another very slow and thus slows a story down. River of Heaven works around this with the advanced technology of the Visser Cube, but only to an extent, so that interstellar space travel becomes more of a storytelling device for the Games Master. Where River of Heaven is actually interesting is in that it presents several centuries of playable history. The default time period is the Bright Age during which contact with the Machine Civilisation advanced humanity by several centuries, in particular enabling near instantaneous interstellar travel. Yet other timeframes also lend themselves to campaigns. for example, during the Solar System War against the Spooks in the late twenty-third century and then later during the Renouncer War at the end of the third millennium. Of course, the Bright Age framework suggests its own campaign possibilities, such as merchant traders—though the extreme high cost of starship ownership means that the player characters are likely to working for someone else or renting space aboard a Step Ship; participating in the ongoing cold war between the Kentauran Hegemony and the Empire of Mars; and archaeologists exploring the Solar System and the ravaged Earth for its secrets.

Physically, River of Heaven is a brightly and breezily presented. The artwork is decent, though it may not be to everyone’s taste. Unfortunately, the editing inconsistent and the presentation suffers towards the end of the book, as does the writing, almost as if the layout artist and editor began to lose interest. If there is one thing definitely missing from River of Heaven, it is a star map. Which is an odd omission given that the RPG is meant to be set in an accurate representation of the stars near Earth.

As a Science Fiction setting, River of Heaven benefits from a simple, but familiar set of mechanics and a far future setting that is interesting and not without potential. Unfortunately, the setting of  River of Heaven: Science-Fiction Roleplaying in the 28th Century feels undeveloped and under-presented, and until the author and D101 Games can give us better support, is something for the Games Master to develop.

Between States II

Five hundred years ago Eschaton occurred. As asteroids fell to Earth, the sky boiled. Their impact cracked the Earth open, causing earthquakes to ripple and volcanoes to boil over. Fires raged and both poisonous gases and dust were thrown up into the sky. The planet’s ecosystem was wrecked and human civilisation shattered, Europe being hit the worst. Worse was to come through; an ice age descended upon the survivors and they would have to struggle against an altered climate that would radically shift the balance of power. As the climates of Europe and South Africa cooled, so did that of central Africa and when combined with the rains blown in from the Atlantic, the Sahara bloomed and the peoples of Africa, underwent a renaissance as they threw off the yoke of Europe. In the years to come they would swarm across the soupy Mediterranean to plunder the belly of Europe for technology, trade, and slaves.

In the five centuries since Eschaton, seven Cultures and thirteen Cults have arisen to dominate the new world. Directing Africa’s revenge on Europe are the Neolibyans, ultra-capitalists that divide the known world into trade regions and drive hard bargains, and are known for their ostentatious spending and charity. If the Neolibyans are Africa’s heart, then her claws are Scourgers, mercenaries in the pay of the Neolibyans, ferocious soldiers armed with multi-thonged whips who protect Neolibyan trade trips and raid Europe for slaves. The Anubians are the continent’s spirit and heart, shaman that see themselves as humanity’s guardians.

The Cults of Europe resist these African incursions as best they can, but rarely with any unity, though their interests do on occasion coincide. The Anabaptists seek to purify through fire the Earth of the taint of an ancient deity they call the Demiurge and see as the destroyer of the world and the root of all evil. The Apocalyptiks are Europe’s gypsies, promising pleasures through gambling, prostitution, fortune telling, and the drug “Burn,” but often seen as bringing addiction instead. The Ashen are descended from those that took refuge underground before Eschaton, pale creatures biding their time until they can rule the world again. The masked Chroniclers are obsessed with finding and hoarding the knowledge lost in the Eschaton with the aim of restoring civilisation. Standing at the crossroads are Hellvetics, the most efficient and capable military force in Europe, which honourably maintains its neutrality by charging a toll to cross its territory to European and African alike. The Jehammedans are fanatics wanting to dominate Eastern Europe and bring their faith to all. The Marshals dispense a forceful if grim peace in central Europe based on a strict code of laws. Scrappers are not so much a Cult, but a way of life for individuals who delve into the ruins of Europe in search of lost artefacts, ready to sell to the highest bidder. The Spitalians are a militant medical caste, dedicated to burning out the poisoned lands, and batt­ling the spore fields and their mutant armies with fungicides and fire. Living between all of these Cults are the Tribals, small clans each with their own beliefs and ways of life.

The seven Cultures of the new world include Africa, Balkhan, Borca, Franka, Hybrispania, Pollen, and Purgare. Africa is a united Culture of three Cults, though threatened by strange bloodthirsty mutant plants called psychovors that swallow the land and alter it forever. Balkhan is wild country, its people untamed and passionate, permanently divided unless threatened by others, most recently from Purgare in the West and by the Jehammedans from the East. Borca sits across most of Europe south of the ice, but is divided by the Reaper’s Blow, the colossal fault smashed open by asteroid impact. To the West of the fault, the peoples are obsessed with finding traces of their ancestors, whilst to the East, they are mostly nomads driving herds of oxen unconcerned with the past. The people of Franka are rebuilding after the Neolibyans have plundered their relics and their old capital, Paris, was lost to hordes of insects and renamed Parasite. Hybrispania is also divided, but by war rather than by a fault. The natives have been fighting a guerilla war for years against the invaders from Africa while Jehammedan pilgrims try to convert the natives. Pollen is a land of nomads, driving armoured caravans from one fertile patch of ground to the next, hoping to harvest a crop before the ground spoils into rotted wasteland overnight. Lastly, claimed by the Anabaptists, Purgare is divided along its spine, the western side poisoned ruins, whilst to the East they battle with the Balkhani for the rich soils between their lands.

The effects of Eschaton are longer lasting though. In Europe and Africa, the impact craters are the source of a Foulness that grows and spews out Spores that mutate flora, fauna, and humanity’s children. Initially appearing normal, these children grow distant from their families as their newfound ‘demonic’ abilities also grow. Known as ‘psychonauts,’ by adolescence these children are often abandoned by their families and flee into the wilderness, there to hide and scavenge until they find others of their kind. There are five great craters, known collectively as the Earth Chakra, each spewing a different type of Foulness that mutates the psychonauts in different ways.

This is the setting for Degenesis: Primal Punk Roleplaying, an RPG published by Posthuman StudiosLLC, best known for the award winning Eclipse Phase RPG. It is an RPG of primeval savagery and wild abandon set in an epic post-apocalyptic survival drama, though one that suggests at an approaching singularity, although whether that singularity is devolutionary or evolutionary in nature, is yet to be determined by the few that are aware of the threat and have examined it in any detail. The publication of Degenesis Core Rulebook Primer Edition by Posthuman Studios marks the game’s first appearance in English, for Degenesis originally appeared a decade ago in 2001 in Germany, published by Sighpress. It joins what are merely a handful of German RPGs to appear in English language versions, the most well-known being Engel, published by the Sword & Sorcery Studio, and The Dark Eye, published by FanPro. Less well known, but more recent is Western City, a GM-less RPG published by Redbrick. The game’s origins and history have a marked effect on Degenesis, but I will come to those effects after looking more closely at the game.

Character creation involves selecting a Culture, a Concept, and a Cult. The Culture must be one of the seven given in the setting, which then determines the choice of Cults available. For example, someone of the Purgare Culture can choose from the Anabaptist, Apocalyptik, Hellevetic, Scrapper, Spitalian, or Tribal Cults. The Concept suggests the situation under which a character grows up – Compulsion, Decay, Lust, Madness, Pain, Peace, Quarantine, and Wealth. Every character begins with the same values for his attributes, but to raise one, he must lower another. He will receive bonuses to the attributes from the selected Culture and Concept, but not Cult. At each stage a character also receives a few points to spend on skills, and although these can be assigned to any skill, only those skills listed under the selected Culture, Concept, and Cult can be raised by more than a single point. In addition, a character must also select a Principle from those listed for the selected Culture, Concept, and Cult. These provide no mechanical benefit, nor are they defined within the rules as they are simple roleplaying hooks, although they are briefly discussed. Lastly each character checks to see where he or she stands within their selected Cults. For example, a Hellvetic with Firearms (3) is a Private, First Class, and is equipped with twenty rounds and 500 Chronicreds, while an Anubian with Domination (2), Empathy (1), and Faith (4) is regarded as a Guide of the Dead.

Our sample character is a NeoLibyan Writer, ambitious yet unable to win a bid for one of the annually auctioned trade missions. With Accounting (2) and Writing (2), the sample character qualifies as a Writer, and has a 1000 Dinar, but if he had Accounting (3) and Negotiation (3), he would qualify as a Trader and possess 10000 Dinar. Every NeoLibyan owns an Accounting Journal. He has been hired to work as a geographer and negotiator for his first trip to Europe.

Name: Dumisani

Culture: Africa

Concept: Wealth

Cult: Neolibyan

Cultural Principle: Bonds of Kinship

Concept Principle: Obsessed with Status

Cult Principle: Good Samaritan

Attributes: AGILITY 5; BODY 5; CHARISMA 7; INTELLECT 6; PSYCHE 5

Skills: AGI 5 + Unarmed Combat 1 (AV 6); BOD 4 + Mobility 1 (AV 5); CHA 7 + Etiquette 2 (AV 9); CHA 7 + Negotiation 5 (AV 12); INT 6 + Accounting 2 (AV 8); INT 6 + Geography 2 (AV 8); INT 6 + Language (Borcan) 1 (AV 7); INT 6 + Language (Purgar) 1 (AV 7); INT 6 + Survival 1 (AV 7); INT 6 + Writing 2 (AV 8); PSY 5 + Perception 1 (AV 6); PSY 5 + Self Mastery 1 (AV 6)

Flesh Wounds: Head 1; Torso 2; Legs 1

Trauma Wounds: 5

Vitality: 4

Overall character generation is quick and easy, and the three steps of Culture, Concept, and Cult do lead to characters that fit the setting. The result though does not lead to characters that are necessarily competent, especially if a character is created as a generalist. This quickly comes to light in the game’s mechanics, called the CatharSys. To undertake an action, a character must roll two ten-sided dice, aiming to roll over the Difficulty value, but under the character’s Action Value for that skill or action. Difficulty values range from Easy (4) and Tricky (6) to Nearly Impossible (14) and Miraculous (16), whilst the Action Value is a combination of the relevant Attribute and Skill. A character with an Action Value of eight or more is seen as Experienced, whilst an Expert would have an Action Value of thirteen or more. For example, Dumisani is in Purgare and encountered a Scrapper who has artefacts to sell. He does not know what the artefacts are – he does not have the Artefact Lore skill, but he thinks that they might valuable and attempts to negotiate a deal. The GM sets the Difficulty at Hard (6) because Dumisani has no idea as to the actual value. Setting this against his Negotiation AV of 12, the player must roll 2d10 and roll over the Difficulty (6), but under the AV (12), which with a range of 7 to 12, gives him a 30% chance of success. Roll over the AV and he fails, roll under the Difficulty and he also fails, but can roll again if the GM allows, though this will be at a higher Difficulty. If he rolls doubles (4, 4; 5, 5; 6, 6) and succeeds, then the result is a Critical Success, but fail and roll doubles, and that is a Critical Failure.

The example is for a character that is at least Experienced in one of the skills for his Cult. Outside of this skill and the character’s chances of success at even Easy Difficulty are severely curtailed. With this lowered chance of success comes the greater chance of failure and thus Critical Failure. It is almost as if the CatharSys is setting the characters up for failure. This is only exacerbated in combat. The sample character is geared towards interaction and not combat, but with that focus comes an incompetency when it comes to combat and an inability to withstand any wounds taken in a fight. This is because in order to improve a character’s capability to withstand even the most minimum of damage, points have to put into the Toughness skill, and that takes away from what the character is supposed to be good at. Given that combat can be deadly once weapons are brought to bear, characters can either be barely competent – and arguably not even then – at their Cult skills and useless at everything else, or take skills to enhance their capability and survivability in combat and lose their supposed competency. Whether characters are underskilled or the Difficulty values are too high – a 4-point (20%) penalty for even an Easy task – and the CatharSys just sets up to fail. Which given the relative simplicity of the CatharSys, is just so disappointing.

Physically, the Degenesis Core Rulebook Primer Edition is a 376-page perfect bound book (also available as a hardback) done in greyscale throughout. It is done in black and white and greyscale throughout, profusely illustrated by Marko Djurdjević to great effect. The book is densely written with chapters interspersed with pieces of setting fiction and verse. The background is explored in some depth with some two hundred pages devoted to the setting and background before the reader reaches the mechanics, combat, and character generation of the CatharSys are even mentioned. Beyond the rules themselves, the GM is given the expected bestiary and selection of foes, an equipment section, details about the psychonauts, a discussion of some of the setting’s secrets and history, plus a short scenario.

The density of the Degenesis Core Rulebook Primer Edition is something of an impediment to the reader. There is almost too much to read and understand before the reader begins to grasp a feel and an understanding of the setting, as if the game is written to be read by an inhabitant of 2585 rather than one of 2012. This is not helped by either the writing, which often feels flat, or the lack of any frame of reference, so that the reader is often left wondering what is going on. It is only much later in the book that it becomes clear where the places described earlier actually are.

Degenesis is a distinctly European RPG. Indeed there is almost no mention at all of what happened to anywhere apart from Europe and Africa during the Eschaton and beyond. It also shows in the artwork, which has a high degree of flesh on show. The setting has an earthy feel, a grubbiness not found in many American designed RPGs. For a game with as dense a setting and a setting as rife with secrets, it is daunting to know where to start. The included scenario helps, but the wealth of player character Cults and Cultures is another issue as many of them are openly antagonistic towards one another, and getting them to work together is likely to prove a problem during play.

Upon first tackling the Degenesis Core Rulebook Primer Edition, the setting and book had the feel of a classic White Wolf RPG, especially in its organisation of the thirteen Cults and the seven Cultures. The extensive use of in-game fiction and verse also contributed to that feeling. Yet the effect of that feeling is that Degenesis is an old game, not a new one. For as much as the game felt similar to a White Wolf RPG, it was as equally reminiscent of another German RPG, Engel. Which is not surprising, since the English version of Engel was published by an imprint of White Wolf, but the settings are different. Engel is a post-apocalyptic millenarian RPG, part of a rash of similar RPGs that appeared before and after the year 2000, while Degenesis is also post-apocalyptic, it focuses more on horror and near transhuman themes. That said, both games date from the same period, the original Degenesis - ein Stern wird fallen appearing in 2001, followed by second edition in 2004 along with supplements.

It is rare for an RPG to be translated from another language into English, so it is good to see Posthuman Studios publish the Degenesis Core Rulebook Primer Edition. Yet the translation fails to overcome the game’s handicaps – the density of the setting, the openly antagonistic character options, the flatness of the writing, and worst of all, the inherent incompetency of player characters built into the CatharSys, which devalues player agency in the game and exacerbates the grim nature of the setting. It is the setting though, that saves the game. It is rich, it is detailed, and it deserves to be explored. From that point of view, Degenesis is worth examining at the very least.

Between States

In the last seventy years humanity built an elevator into orbit and explored the Solar System from the Sun’s corona out to the Kuiper Belt. We terraformed Mars and established colonies wherever we went. We mastered nanotechnology and built Artificial Intelligences. We cloned ourselves and uplifted innumerable species. We adopted augmented reality and mastered the ability to digitize our memories and consciousness. We gene-engineered ourselves and new forms of ourselves, known as “Morphs.” We learned how download and upload our consciousness from one body to another. The ability to change our bodies forced us to redefine our sense of self and we got close to becoming something new, a new definition of what it was to be human.

Ten years ago the Fall occurred.

The TITANS appeared. In the wake of these human-created, recursively-improving, military seed A.I.s known as Total Information Tactical Awareness Networks came conflict. First a netwar, then advanced war machines, then nuclear and chemical weapons, nanovirii and nanoswarms, with millions of humanity harvested, their memories digitised to unknown ends. The lucky few got off the Earth with their mind and body whole, but millions had themselves voluntarily digitised and their minds beamed out into space. Some of these infugees or “Infomorph refugees,” were never collected, but many remain in storage or live out an existence in virtual reality, whilst the lucky few work out long periods as indentured servants in cheap Morphs in hope that they can own a body of their own someday. The Earth itself is a smoking, irradiated, toxic wasteland, home to dangerous machines and plagues, abandoned and actively quarantined by the Planetary Consortium for our own protection.

As to the TITANS? Well, within days of the conflict breaking out, they disappeared, taking with them the millions of minds that they had uploaded. Later they were traced to the first of several Pandora Gates, each a wormhole gateway that connect with alien worlds far outside of the Solar System. Each of the known Pandora Gates is in the possession of a Hypercorp – the commercial descendants of the old megacorps, but adapted to harder, leaner times – or a faction like the Love and Rage anarchist collective which operates the Fissure Gate on Uranus.

Barely an eighth of Earth’s old population made if off world before the quarantine came down and ten years on, it has adapted to its new and many environments. The Inner System – Mars, the Moon, and Mercury – is dominated by the Planetary Consortium, a capitalist/republican system in which the biggest shareholders have the largest vote. A military, almost fascist oligarchy rules the moons around Jupiter, whilst the Outer System is dominated by an alliance of Scandinavia-style social democracies and anarchist Collectives. Humanity survives, but its fears are even greater now that its home has been ruined. It already deals with one alien species – the ambassadorial race known as the Factors, a species of intelligent slimes that protects humanity from other aliens, but fears the nature of the others. It fears another outbreak of the multi-vector Exsurgent Virus capable of self-morphing and infecting computer systems and biological creatures, one strain of which, the Watts-MacLeod strain, is known to leave its victims with the capacity to use Psionic or Parapsychological powers. It fears the use of the weapons of mass destruction that destroyed the Earth and worse, it fears the return of the TITANS or the possibility of the current A.I.s becoming fully self-aware and delivering another hammer blow to humanity.

No one faction works to prevent these “existential threats,” most being concerned with signs that their rivals are researching and developing such threats themselves. Except that is, Firewall. This is a secret cross-faction conspiracy that works to protect transhumanity from “existential threats,” whatever their source.

This is the set-up for Eclipse Phase, a near-future trans-humanist post-apocalyptic game of conspiracy and horror published by Posthuman Studios that won the 2010 Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Game. The title comes from the term, “Eclipse Phase,” which is the period of time between when a cell is infected by a virus and when the virus appears within the cell and transforms it. During this period, the cell does not appear to be infected, but it is. Humanity then is infected. By what, and what it become is another matter. At the heart of the game though is its slogan: “Your mind is software. Program it. Your body is a shell. Change it. Death is a disease. Cure it. Extinction is approaching. Fight it.” It neatly sums Eclipse Phase up, for in this RPG, a player character cannot die. “His” body can, but his self or Ego cannot, it either being recorded onto an implanted Cortical Stack and retrieved after death, or a back-up body is activated afterwards – if he has paid the insurance that ensures that there is Morph at the body bank to be resleeved into. Thus it is possible to resleeve from one body to the next, essentially holding off death. As to the extinction of the slogan, it is being fought by Firewall, which in the RPG’s default setting, the player characters are presumed to be members of. Other suggested campaigns include salvage and rescue/retrieval operations (the Fall left numerous habitants, on and off world to be scavenged), trade, crime, mercenaries, social/political intrigue, and exploration (the Solar System is not fully explored, and that is before you consider the possibility of Gatecrashing through one of the Pandora Gates).

The divide between body and self in Eclipse Phase begins more or less at the start of character generation. A player decides upon the concept for his character, and then his character’s Background – Fall Evacuee (got off Earth with his body intact), Re-Instantiated (did not get off Earth with his body intact, but his consciousness was beamed off), Martian or Lunar Colonist; and Faction – Argonaut (scientific techno-progressive), Barsoomian (Martian outback colonist), Socialite (member of the inner system glitterati), or Titanian (participant in the Titanian Commonwealth’s socialist cyberdemocracy). Each gives a few advantages, whilst several limit the type of Morphs available to the Background or Faction. He also needs to decide his Motivations of which he will have three at the start of the game. In game they helpa character regain Moxie (the game’s equivalent of Luck) and earn Rez or Experience Points.

A character has two types of skills. The first are Aptitudes (Cognition, Coordination, Intuition, Reflexes, Savvy, Somatics, and Willpower), ingrained talents that every character has and which are the basis of the second type, Learned Skills. Both will be carried with his Ego from one Body or Morph to the next, but each Morph is different and will limit and enhance a character’s Aptitudes and thus his Learned Skills, depending upon the type of Morph. This is why some of the Learned Skills in the character example receive small five point bonuses. Each player has two set amounts of points with which to purchase both types of skills, but in addition a player must draw from the points for his Learned Skills if he wants to select Traits – such as Direction Sense or Adaptability (a character resleeves with ease), his Morph, improve his Aptitudes, and get extra money so that he can purchase Backup insurance (and so has a Morph prepared if his current is killed), services, and implants from an array of bioware and cyberware. Every character starts the game with a Cortical Stack (for recording a character’s Ego) and Basic Mesh Inserts (which allow a character to connect to the all-pervasive wireless mesh), but can purchase more. A character can also purchase his “Rep” or Reputation, a social currency that he can spend with various factions in return for favours. If a character wants more points to spend on these and Learned Skills, he can select negative traits but they grant only a few points.

Lastly a player selects his character’s Morph. It is possible to play a normal, unmodified human or Flat, but they are rare, few having got off Earth following the Fall. In the After Fall, humanity has developed a diverse range of Morphs, divided between Biomorphs and Synmorphs. Most Biomorphs are genefixed humans or Splicers, but other Biomorphs are engineered towards athleticism (Olympians), combat (Furies), particular environments (like the Rusters of Mars), or a particular type of role, the latter being vat-grown morphs known as Pods, and include Pleasure and Worker models. Biomorphs also include Uplifted species such as Chimpanzees and Octopuses. As the name suggests, Synmorphs are artificial and robotic. They include the extremely cheap, mass-produced robotic shells known as Cases that are prone to malfunction, but other options include Flexbots, Reapers, and Swarmoids.

What is important to note here though, is the fact that whatever the choice of Morph, it is only a character’s starting Morph. Due to events in game, a character could easily find himself resleeved, and not in a Morph of his choice, which essentially grants the GM control over what a character’s physicality will be. This can be discombobulating for the players, let alone the characters, but overcoming the limits of one body to use another is the point of Eclipse Phase.

Lastly, a character has two sets of second statistics. One for his Ego and another for his Morph. The process is not that complex, but it is not a short process either, involving a lot of flipping back and forth as a player works out what he wants. The process can be curtailed by using one of the sixteen pre-generated sample characters.

One other option available during character generation is that of Psionics or Parapsychological powers. Available to characters who have been infected by the Watts-MacLeod strain of the Exsurgent Virus and who have purchased the Psi Trait. Once infected, the Psionic Ego – and Psionics are wired or “Quantum Entangled” into an Ego rather than a Morph – can select Psi Sleights that either enhance their users or allow the users to “Mind Hack” others. On the downside Psionics have a reduced capacity to withstand mental stress, are prone to mental disorders, and are vulnerable to further infection from Exsurgent Virii.

The sample character is a Neo-hominoid, an Orang-utan Uplift. As such Maisie is a pro-Uplift rights advocate. When not working as a Zero-g Emergency Medical Technician, Maisie supplements her income and reputation as a security ops/combat medic.

Name: Maisie
Background: Uplift
Faction: Mercurial Motivations: +Exploration+Reclaiming Earth+Uplift Rights

Morph: Neo-hominoid

EGO STATS

Initiative 80

Lucidity 20

Trauma Threshold 4

Insanity Rating 40

Moxie 2

MORPH STATS

Speed 1

Durability 30

Wound Threshold 6

Death Rating 9

Damage Bonus 2

Advantages: Common Sense, Expert (Medicine), Limber (Level 2), Right at Home (Neo-hominoid)

Disadvantages: Addiction (Chocolate), Mild Allergy (Bee Stings)

APTITUDES

                                        BASE MORPH BONUS       TOTAL

Cognition (COG)            20

Coordination (COO)     15                    5                      20

Intuition (INT)              15                    5                      20

Reflexes (REF)              20                                            20

Savvy (SAV)                  10                    5                      15

Somatics (SOM)            15                    5                      20

Willpower (WIL)           10                                            10

Skills:

Academic [Biology] (COG) 50, Academic [Chemistry] (COG) 50, Academic [Genetics] (COG) 50, Academic [Psychology] (COG) 30, Art [Drawing] (INT) 25+5=30, Climbing (SOM) 70+5=75, Fray (REF) 70, Free Fall (REF) 60, Free Running (SOM) 55+5=60, Infiltration (COO) 55+5=60, Interest [English Literature] (COG) 50, Interest [Old Earth History] (COG) 50, Intimidation (SAV) 30+5=35, Kinetic Weapons (COO) 45+5=50, Language [English] (COG) 90, Language [Mandarin] (COG) 50, Language [Russian] (COG) 50, Medicine [General Practice] (COG) 30, Medicine [Paramedic] (COG) 75, Medicine [Paramedic/Decompression Victims] (COG) 85,Medicine [Trauma Surgery] (COG) 60, Navigation (INT) 45+5=50, Networking (SAV) [Mercurials] 30+5=35, Perception (INT) 55+5=70, Persuasion (SAV) 40+5=45, Pilot [Spacecraft] (REF) 50, Profession [Forensics] (COG) 40, Profession [Lab Technician] (COG) 50, Profession [Security Ops] (COG) 30, Psychosurgery (INT) 35+5=40, Research (COG) 40, Scrounging (INT) 35+5=40, Unarmed Combat (SOM) 55+5=60

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Bioweave Armour (Light), Direction Sense, Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Prehensile Feet

Gear: Backup Insurance (four months), Cr 2750

REP:

c-Rep 25, g-Rep 20, i-Rep 20, r-Rep 35

In terms of mechanics, Eclipse Phase uses a percentile system, but one running from 00 to 99 rather than 01 to 100. Since Learned Skills range from 01 to 99, a roll of 00 is always a success. Rolls of double numbers – 00, 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, and 99 – are always a critical success if under the skill, but a critical failure if over. One tweak with the system is that Moxie can be spent to flip the result of a roll. So for example, a roll of 72 could end be flipped to a 27 and a success. What is interesting in this mechanic is that rolls of doubles cannot be flipped and so critical failures cannot be avoided.

If the system is relatively simple, the setting is not. Lengthy sections discuss in turn the new homes and habitats that humanity has found itself in the After Fall; the politics and economics of the After Fall – the economics having radically changed with relatively easy access to nanotechnology and Cornucopia Machines, though your Reputation with various factions and interests can often get you further than simple money; how to live with the Mesh, the decentralised information and data that pervades everywhere – and not just live with it, but also hack it and use it; and gear that includes everything from personal augmentation and drugs, chemicals, and toxins to weapons, robots, and vehicles. Much of this information has an understandable technological bent, so it is no surprise that the RPG’s most radical technology, that of Morphs and resleeving, gets most of a chapter of its own. Entitled “Acelerated Future,” it primarily explores the ramifications that resleeving has on society, but it also covers rules for handling the alienating effects of integrating into a new Morph and the concept of Forking. This is the sleeving of multiple copies of the same Ego in several different Morphs so that there can be multiple versions of one person moving around. There is a social stigma attached to this, but it is done for various reasons, not just the need to be in two places at once. One sign that Eclipse Phase is a hard Science Fiction RPG is attention is paid to the scale of the setting. It takes time to get around the Solar System. The upshot of the digitised consciousness is that it possible to travel great distances via Egocasting. Once an Ego arrives at its destination, it is resleeved. This is not without its dangers, but it allows easy interplanetary travel.

Rounding out Eclipse Phase is a chapter for the Gamemaster. Although the chapter contains advice for the Game Master, the bulk of it is devoted to yet more setting material. This though is not for the players’ eyes, but the GM’s only, for this setting material is about the secrets behind the setting. In truth, I have not done much more than scan this chapter as I actually do not want to know the secrets! But from what I saw it all looked to be useful, expanding upon earlier information given on Firewall, the TITANS, the Pandora Gates, and more.

Physically, Eclipse Phase is a solid hardback, done in full colour throughout. The standard of artwork is good, especially when depicting the technical elements of the setting, and whilst the layout is clean and tidy, it is does get a little busy in places.

Science Fiction roleplaying depends to veer towards the Space Opera and the light and fluffy, relying on the clichés of the genre. Eclipse Phase stands directly opposite that, its background being rich in terms of both depth and detail. This means that the setting is that much more complex, and thus that much more demanding for players to grasp, though not as complex and as demanding as it is for the Gamemaster. It asks both to grasp and use a thoroughly radical technology, that in addition to the challenges presented by the technology and its capabilities that both have at their fingertips. It is this very daunting nature of the game that is its major problem, and it is not one that is really addressed to any great depth. At least though, the game keeps its mechanics relatively simple when compared to the complexity of the game itself.

A minor issue is that given the level of detail awarded the setting of Eclipse Phase, it is surprising that none of the gear is named. It is all generic rather than branded, and in any fiction, including that of an RPG, brand names do add verisimilitude. That said, this lack of branding is addressed, but even then a list of suggested manufacturers would at least offset this minor lack.

Eclipse Phase has been a book that I have wanted to review for quite some time. I did not until now because I had been daunted by its density, but upon reading the RPG, it is no surprise that Eclipse Phase won the 2010 Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Game. It is an impressive creation, superbly detailed Science Fiction setting, with a dizzying density that grabs you and makes you want to play there. And then makes you want more detail.