Right, so, today, I updated to WordPress 3.5, and moved the blog to a new 64-bit server. Let’s see how it holds up…

This is just so anyone who’s interested knows that this… “repository”… is still being maintained…

Cheers,
J.

A coleague at work pointed me towards this. I figure it was worth sharing.

Give It Five Minutes

Cheers,
J.

Wikipedia defines Space Opera as “a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in outer space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing advanced technologies and abilities. […] Perhaps the most significant trait of space opera is that settings, characters, battles, powers, and themes tend to be very large-scale”.

Indeed, Agora is a game of space battles, interstellar intrigue, kings, emperors and dictators, air locks and blaster burns, a galaxy-wide Faith, an Imperial Navy, and naturally, an autonomous and self sufficient space station parked in the middle of nowhere.

The above is the introductory section for Agora, a space opera setting for Eero Tuovinen’s Solar System rules set, as based off of The Shadow of Yesterday, by Clinton R. Nixon.

In addition to the obvious Babylon 5 inspiration, Agora drinks from many sources, ranging from the strictly historic, like ancient Rome or the Spanish Inquisition, to the most outlandish science fiction franchises, like Star Wars and Star Trek. References will be obvious throughout this text, and the authors make no claim to the referenced material.

Agora was developed by Gonçalo Cardoso Dias, Diogo Curado, Luis Figueira and myself. Originally, we were going to license it under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Portugal license, but then this happened, so we’re not. Instead, we’re going to get it illustrated and published as both a PDF and a print-on-demand book, and sell it. All the proceeds will go to a charity in Gonçalo’s name.

We think it’s a fitting memorial.

In any case, I’d like to show some writing samples, stuff that’ll give a feeling of where we went with it.

Culture Description Example – Tholians

“Every once in a while, two independent planets would start some war. In came the Tholians, to ‘enforce the peace’, or ‘protect the civilians’. Five years later, both planets’ navies would be wiped out, and both planets would have become shiny new provinces in the Empire. Everyone thinks the Terran Federation was born out of some lofty ideal of peace and prosperity. The truth is that the first version of the Articles of Federation was really nothing more than some obscure and intricate means to protect the rights of independent planets to wage war on each other. It’s absurd!
- Rear Admiral Dejean Togo, Agora garrison commander, retired

Peace Through Strength

Thole is a small but incredibly rich planet and was once a central hub for one of the Trade Unions that collapsed during the period known as the Second Shattering. Made wealthy and prosperous by merit of their abundant and easily extracted natural resources, the Tholians built a culture centered on art and philosophical thought.

When their corporate shelter disappeared, however, they were left to fend for themselves. Possessing no military to speak of, they were quickly annexed and enslaved by a nearby feudal kingdom. The Tholians spent many years fighting to keep their customs and culture intact under the yoke of their savage rulers. When they realized that things were never going back to what they were, the once creative and peaceful Tholians turn their minds to rebellion and war.

For years, the conquerors held their ground, but seeing their achievements disappear under the blast of pipe bombs and army boots did nothing but harden the Tholian hearts and minds. They expelled the invaders from their home world, and in the process, suddenly realized that the galaxy was in shambles, with warlord kings run amok and mega-corporations intent on blind expansion and annexation. The enemy was defeated, but they would surely return with even greater force. Even if they didn’t, sooner or later, others were bound to come. So, the Tholians rapidly adapted the technology left behind by the invaders and launched themselves into space.

Setting Description Example – Agora

“Most people that come to Agora are well travelled. They’ve already seen the biggest space stations, the most cosmopolitan capitals, the richest markets in the galaxy. Still, the jaw gape and eye pop of a first time visitor tells it all. Nothing can prepare you for having the whole of galactic culture distilled to its very essence and literally smashed into your face as you step through the Customs air lock! It’s an unforgettable feeling.
- Grada Volvat, Tholian cruiser captain

Layout

The Deep Space Habitat is a huge self-sufficient space station capable of housing several hundred thousand people, and a permanent home to nearly fifty thousand souls. Its central decks are under the purview of the Agora government itself and are where most of the businesses and meeting halls are located. Directly below it, the customs deck provides universal access to the station, whether from the common docs or from the surrounding private docks, actually owned by the governments of each of the nations.

All around the central decks, the national wings house the various national delegations. Each of the main noble houses of Gemmel has quarters there, as do the various regiments and fleets of the Tholian imperial navy, the various departments and divisions of the Aryes Trade Union, and the various political parties of the Terran Federation. Only the Sartorian Expanse presents a completely unified front in Agora, backed by Faith and holy scripture.

Above the central decks stand the hydroponics farms, the automated factories and the energy plants that provide power and sustenance for the people on board, and above that, the huge panoramic decks and ceremonial ball rooms provide visions of rare beauty and a perspective of the galaxy as a whole.

Subsystem Example – Psionics

The Psionics subsystem is based on one ability, Psionics, and on a large number of Secrets and Techniques. A Technique is exactly the same as a Secret.

Ability: Psionics – Used to roll the various psionic techniques listed below. Unless otherwise noted, use of this ability requires close interaction with the target, like a conversation, a touch, dancing in the same group on a dance floor, sitting at the same game table, etc… After the technique is used, the target will generally be aware of what was done to them, but not necessarily by whom. Psionics is opposed by Resist.

Secret of Psionic Aptitude – The character has a Psionic Pool. This Pool never refreshes on its own. Refreshing it requires the use of Secret of Meditation. When buying this Secret, the Pool starts at 1, but can be improved normally, as per the standard Solar System rules. For the techniques and secrets below, the shorthand PP means Points of Psionic Pool.

Secret of Meditation – The character can meditate for a few hours, in a quiet, secluded place. After the meditation, the character can transfer points from the Default Pool to the Psionic Pool.

Technique: Telepathy – The character can open a mental link with another character and communicate through it. Any thoughts voluntarily injected into the link by either character are automatically available to the other character.
Cost: 1 PP.

Technique: Influence – The character can shift the target’s feelings towards a simple emotion, in order to gain advantage or impose disadvantage in a specific manner. This shift lasts for one scene.
Cost: 2 PP per bonus die; 3 PP per penalty die.

Technique: Mind Reader – The character can read one specific memory or thought from the target.
Cost: 2 PP.

Technique: Mind Drain – The character can inflict Harm on the target.
Cost: PP equal to the level of Harm.

Technique: Eyes and Ears – The character can sense all that the target can sense.
Cost: 2 PP.

Specific Crunch Example – The Inquisitor

An Inquisitor is a high-ranking member of the Sartorian Expanse religious authority.

Ability: Torture – Use of Torture requires a subdued subject. It is opposed with Endure or Resist at the choice of the Inquisitor, depending on whether physical or psychological torture is employed. A successful roll has two effects: the subject suffers Harm equal to the result of the roll, and the torturer can create an Effect useable at any time any piece of information or position assumed by the subject would be relevant. The nature of this information or position must be specified before rolling. The Effect must be paid for with one point of Default, as per the standard Solar System rules for Effects.

Secret of Religious Training – This Secret counts as Secret of Religious Upbringing and Secret of Training for Pray.

Secret of Righteous Presence – The character has two bonus dice in Intimidation and Torture against characters with a Faith Pool, and can use Intimidation instead of Sway against characters with a Faith Pool.

Secret of the Weight of the Faithful – Impose two penalty dice on any roll made against the Inquisitor by a character that knows what the Inquisitor is, provided the situation has not already escalated to actual violence.
Note: Torture is always considered violence.
Note: Most people, even the non-faithful know who the Inquisitors are in any given area.
Cost: 6 Default.

Key of Justice – The character is dedicated to upholding faith and righteousness by any means necessary.
1xp: The character questions someone in the name of the church.
3xp: The character tortures someone or has someone punished for their sins.
Buyoff: Forgive a sinner for their sins.

Character Creation Excerpt

Instead of the default Solar System rules for character creation, Agora characters should use the following variant rules:

Basics – All Agora characters belong to one Race and one Culture. If their Culture has one, characters may or may not belong to a Background.

Abilities – All characters start with the following Abilities:

• Their racial Ability.
• One cultural Ability.
• Three other open or cultural abilities.
• Of the above, one starts at Expert (2) and the other four at Competent (1).

Passive Abilities – All characters start with the following Passive Abilities:

• Endure, Resist and React.
• Of the above, one starts at Expert (2) one at Competent (1), and one at Mediocre (0).

Secrets – Characters without a Background start with three Secrets. Characters with a Background start with two Secrets.

Pools – Characters start with the following Pool values:

• The Default Pool starts at 10.
• The Money Pool starts depleted at 1.
• The Combat Pool starts at 2.
• (The Psionic and Faith Pools must be purchased via their respective Secrets. The Hacking Pool is dynamic and must be determined via a roll each time it is needed.)

Keys – Characters start with one Key.

There, that should give everyone a feel for what we’ve accomplished. We’re quite happy with it.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll post here about our quest for illustrators and about whatever publishing details we come up with.

In the meantime, Go Play!

Cheers,
J.

As I was browsing the other day, I ran across this:

The Bear

Being a proud father of a brand new one-year-old, it just blew me away…

Thought y’all should know.

Cheers,
J.

I lost a friend and a gaming partner over New Year’s Eve.

Just before four A.M., we watched him go through a rather violent convulsive seizure, from which he made what looked like a full recovery. Still, it was a violent thing, and we called an ambulance and insisted he get to the hospital and get checked out by a doctor.

As it happened, somewhere between five and six A.M., still in the hospital, he went through a second massive convulsive seizure, and this time, he didn’t recover at all.

This post is dedicated to the memory of Gonçalo Cardoso Dias. You played a good game, my friend, but now your seat is empty, your boards are folded up, your pieces are all put away and your characters lie lifeless in their folders.

Still, their memory lives on in the worlds you helped create, design and build, just as you yourself live on in the memories of everyone who’s ever played with you and worked with you, and lived, laughed and loved with you.

Maybe we’ll meet again, in the end.

Cheers,
J.

Here’s Simon:

Is there scope for asking people to do things that may not come naturally to them, that might make them uncomfortable, but that you think they might come to love?

How much can you ask someone to stretch themselves? Should play always be easy?

And here’s Vincent’s reply:

Is there scope? Of course!

How much? Well. You get to design your game to be as demanding as you like, but your audience gets to choose whether to try it and whether to stick with it. That’s how you find out whether you’ve judged them well – if they do the unnatural thing you ask them to, then you have. If they don’t, then you’ve misjudged them.

Should I underline that? Maybe I should. If your audience doesn’t seize upon the game you’ve designed for them, you have a choice. You can reevaluate your own judgment, or else you can throw blame. Blame your audience for failing to live up to your ideals, blame cliques and status-attention in the scene, blame me for monopolizing their attention, whatever. My suspicion is that reevaluating your own judgment will give you the most fruitful way forward.

There’s smart people out there in the world, and they can teach you things.

Cheers,
J.

Yesterday was my little girl’s birthday. Literally. It was the day of her birth. At 23:50, she turned zero!

I held her in my hands barely within an hour of her birth. She’s tiny, vaguely expressive, imminently banal, as all babies are, and her greatest skill to date is an uncanny ability to suckle while asleep. And yet, there is a beauty in her that is steeped in all the potential that comes with a newborn human life.

Happy birthday, Diana! My gift to you is my pledge to love you, guide you, teach you, and share with you all of the joys and sorrows of life.

May your path bring you untold hapiness, and may you take on the whole world with all your might. May the whole world gaze back in wonder and awe at the marvel that is you, that your footprint may shine forever in the wet sands of all our lives!

Cheers,
J.

Here’s Ron:

1. Don’t fucking drop the ball on me. You have my Kicker. If it’s a mystery, you’re supposed to know what’s going on. If it’s an action-event, you’re supposed to round out its human and motivational side. If it’s just freaky, you’re supposed to embrace the weirdness. Don’t cop out. Above all, our shared agreement is that this Kicker is going to matter, and that means not only to at least one other character besides my own, but also to us, the people, here, during play. I know it matters to me, in its unbaked, unspiked form. You make sure your private/prepped version of it matters to you. All of that goes double for Humanity checks and Humanity gain rolls.
2. My character can do a lot. And I’m not sure exactly what he’s going to do first, but you can bet that in the first few moments of play, he’s going to do something, and it has nothing to do with familiar role-playing tropes or standards for character action. This guy is not a “role-playing character.” He is bigger than any prep, bigger than any game-book, bigger than any genre. I am not playing in the “playful” sense of that word. Maybe sometimes he’ll play it cool or cautious, but never purely reactive. I will not wait for cues.
3. More privately, and maybe I wouldn’t even tell you this, I’m not sure whether going this far is a good idea. There’s one key safety-net missing here – that my character is the hero, and will eventually be nicely positioned in a climactic confrontation with whoever really and for-sure truly is the bad guy. In a lot of other games, we’d know that for a fact, but not in Sorcerer. Without that, I’m looking at a character whose actions and attitude I will myself be enacting, without much premeditation, and who I cannot say at this time is necessarily the good guy. I believe he might be, or could be, or could turn out to be. But I won’t know which way he’ll jump in any number of situations until we get there in play, and that will depend a lot on the immediate history of how we got there, too. This is like 
4. I know what I’m doing in one way, though. I’m not going to go spastic on you or turtle up. You won’t be looking at my guy and at me, going “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” I’m listening to you and to everyone else, soaking up everything that’s said and described. My character’s actions and words are right in there with what’s happening and what has happened. He is not an idiot, nor a pyschotic. Whatever I have him do, just run with it, respond, bring out the consequences.
5. I love what you’ve told us regarding our upcoming game. I get it. I want to do that. I can’t wait to see it happen via the lens/input of my character.
6. The system works, as long as we stay clear about exactly what our characters are doing and what they are driving for, at least at that moment. That’s another thing you can count on: that if you want to know what he’s doing, then one of these three things will work: (i) you already know because I just told you, (ii) you ask and I’ll tell you, or (iii) you have a pretty good idea and frame right to it, waiting for my nod to confirm that what you say works for me. No tedious murk. We don’t need it. With that knowledge in hand at all times, the dice are ready when they’re needed.
7. In fact, that brings up another point. You have Bangs, conflicts, possible rolls in mind? Good. So do I. Be ready for me to do stuff which demands rolling, without your permission or prep or any consideration of your readiness.

From this thread.

I wish I had known that, all those times I tried to play this. I wish all the other players knew this.

I wish it was written in large, firendly letters on the back cover.

Cheers,
J.

Here!

Do note the three radically different green endings, but note also the three equally different red endings.

There’s four red boxes, but one of them isn’t an ending, and really, it shouldn’t be red at all.

Cheers,
J.

I present to you Master of Illusions, a “new” RPG by Simon C.

The first comment, written by the very author of the game, is particularly enlightening…

Cheers,
J.