The Plague Star – Rumors

There are ten Rumors. Seven are true, three are false.

• The Temporal Null Chamber is a devious trap that will break down all organic matter inside to be deposited in the Protein Bank.
• The password to defeat the AI intelligence is ‘mushroom’.
• Bring both the Silver and Golden Theta amulets together to master the secrets of the Promethean Vault.
• The deadly Rollerram dislikes smoke.
• The password to defeat the AI intelligence is ‘oldearth’.
• A Soul-Feed telepath, armed with a silver Mind-Blade, ventured into the tunnels of the White Worm and was never heard from again.
• The atmosphere of the starship is infested with 1,000 deadly plagues from 1,000 alien worlds.
• The Sandkings will worship a more powerful intelligence as a god, revealing secret treasures to their master.
• The Protein Re-Sequencer has the power to cure horrible afflictions.
• A plasma-fired double blade chainsaw is kept under lock and key within the Glassteel Armory.

The Plague Star – Threats

Whenever I write up an Edge of the Empire adventure, I always like to have a list of twists (Threat, Advantage, Triumph, Despair) at the ready to both keep me on message and as a go-to in case I run low on creativity in the heat of the moment. Here they are!

THREAT / DESPAIR LIST

1. Summon a monster – cloaker, cobal-cat, Scorpion-Lizard, Hruun Giant, Dactaloid Abductor, Frost Vampire, star vampire, Rot Grubs, jamison spider, breth hounds, subterranean fire worm
2. Brown Mold – feeds on heat
3. Yellow Mold – large spore area, feeds on psionics
4. Russet Mold – mind control, vegepygmy
5. Tear in a spacesuit – Expose PCs to a deadly bacterial/viral/fungal infection
6. Release deadly spores
7. Hull Breach! The character nearest to the rupture must succeed on an Average (dd) Resilience check or have their body and all their possessions sucked through an inch-wide hole. Characters failing this check are killed instantly with their equipment and bodily remains ejected into the void.
8. A sudden explosive delivers a Critical Hit to you or a nearby ally.
9. Emergency bulkhead smashes down, sealing off a passage.
10. Engage auto-defenses
11. Psionic lure
12. Cans of explosive gas
13. Vorpal trap
14. Fire, it spreads
15. Turn off gravity / enhance gravity
16. Crystals that amplify / split laser beams
17. Hungry/thirsty, angry, afraid, exhausted
18. Enemies are alerted to your presence, granting a b to their Initiative checks and imposing b to your skill checks involving discretion and subterfuge.
19. The door out of this room becomes electrified.
20. Hope is lost. Make a Fear check.

 

GENERIC TRIUMPH & ADVANTAGE

1. Reveal a new Rumor.
2. Verify the truth or falsity of a rumor.
3. Reveal a cache of medical supplies.
4. Reveal stowed away hand-held weapons or explosives.
5. A nearby trap or hazard is delayed or disabled.
6. A secret compartment is found bearing a reward
7. A subtle hint to a puzzle or secret is revealed.
8. A sudden explosive delivers a Critical Hit to a nearby foe.
9. You find a temporarily blind spot in the ship’s sensors and can take a moment to recover Strain without danger.

The Plague Star – Disease

The Last major theme that I hadn’t addressed in the Pregen Character sheets was disease. Throughout the adventure, infections of all types worked their way into the characters via interaction with gross, slimy, weird stuff and a multitude of polluted breathing environments. I wanted to give this element more narrative weight, though, and decided that I needed to develop additional mechanics to make this really stick. Hence, I developed disease cards. These were given out during specific failures, and ala cart with Threat. Diseases were also “advanced” with an additional card of the same type on a minor amount of Threat. A few players in my games begged their companions at the end – please kill me.

The disease cards come in four types, the variety there to keep things interesting. Each type has different effects, but all of the same general mechanics effect: add Setback, remove Boost, downgrade skills, upgrade difficulty. All disease also either reduce Soak, spread, or deal Wounds; further emphasizing the high lethality I was aiming for.

 

The Plague Star – PreGen Characters

The Plague Star uses Edge of the Empire rules, and has strong themes of disease, horrific beasts, telepathy, and genetic manipulation. It also takes place in a fictional universe which way too many people are unfamiliar with.

Here are the PreGen character sheets used for The Plague Star. I started by taking the basic build of every Class/Career combination from Edge of the Empire, except Force-Sensitive Exile, and tooling around with the rules a bit to get the desired outcome. I wanted to make things simple and and a bit of a blank slate for players to build on. To do so, I didn’t mess around with XP builds, but rather assigned some starting Characteristics, and then added a rank in each skill that a Career or Class granted access to. To further reinforce the “blank slate” idea, I put in a little empty avatar symbol for players to doodle their portraits on.

I then threw on some bonuses from my Starting Homes, supplemented with a brief description of a populated world in the 1,000 Worlds universe, a different world for each character. To further reinforce the importance (in my mind) of these worlds and their descriptions, I added a mechanic to encourage players to utilize their homeworld’s feel with an upgraded skill check for doing theme-appropriate actions.

I wanted to streamline things a bit, too, so you’ll notice that some weapons have properties like Pierce removed and simply added +1 to their damage. I wanted these to be able to be picked up by someone who had never played in the system and have them start playing immediately with almost no explanations needed.

Next, I handed out Force Powers to all characters to play off of the theme of telepathy and psionics. Again, to streamline, instead of requiring Force Die rolls, I just made everything chew up Strain.

Lastly, I wanted this adventure to have a massive death toll, and so created a completely new way of determining Wound and Strain thresholds, with a result well below the usual limits. Here, they are the sum of (Brawn x2, Agility, Presence) for Wounds and (Willpower x2, Intellect, Cunning) for Strain. It’s not realistic, I know. I don’t care.

The Plague Star – Overview

So for awhile now, almost a year, I’ve been toying with the idea of releasing another dungeon crawl in the FFG Star Wars system. During this time I’ve been obsessed with the earlier weird sci-fi works of George RR Martin (yes, that one) and his 1,000 Worlds universe. I ran a pretty fun and successful full campaign this past summer, and then prepped to showcase a trophy adventure at some gaming conventions in both October and just last week. The campaign has been discussed a bit on this blog before, and I’m now finally at a point where I can share some of the adventure.

The overall plot of The Plague Star (the adventure) is pretty close to the plot of The Plague Star (the short story). The universe is recovering from an intergalactic dark age, the Interregnum, and resumption of spaceflight is finally coming back after many generations following the collapse of a grand galactic human Empire. Earth’s enemies, alien species known as the Fyndii and the Hrangans, have been badly beaten and wiped off of most worlds. The incredible power and technology of the height of the old earth empire is still lingering about, however, ready for intrepid explorers to risk their lives seizing it. In The Plague Star, one such group of mercenaries finds a 1,000-year-old Earth Ecological Core seedship drifting through a star system under minimal power, derelict and ripe for the taking. Control of the seedship comes with it the full might and technology of the Earth Ecological Core and the ability to remake the ecology of an entire planet through genetic engineering and a cellular database of the most hideous monsters and diseases of the entire galaxy. The invading crew soon find out that the seedship is controlled by a homicidal telepathic AI supercomputer and must find a way to shut it down. It’s a weird dungeon crawl set in space, filled with disease and horror.

Sounds pretty awesome, right? Unfortunately, it’s stuck. My dream was to be able to publish this for full public consumption, something to be really proud of, but I think with the IP issues involved, I just can’t make it a for-sale item while still retaining my vision. So, for the rest of this month I’ll be dissecting the notes I have and making them at least usable, posted here. If you feel it’s worthwhile and exciting, please go over to Defy Danger , the Defy Danger Blog , and our DriveThruRpg Products and give some support to where most of my creative energies have been going the last year or so.

Scifi Dungeon Crawling

Just a quick post and update. I’m working on a polished adventure based on my 1,000 Worlds material for Edge of the Empire. My plan is, however, to also release it under a conversion to another popular science-fiction based roleplaying game that is capable of supporting some dungeon crawling type environments.

Readers – what are your favorite scifi RPGs? What makes them particularly suitable for for this genre?

Thousand Worlds – Star Map

A core part of the Thousand Worlds campaign is the Star Map. It is an exercise in deductive reasoning and delayed gratification. It is a puzzle intended to be solved over many sessions as the players strike out into the black and explore your universe. In this setting, the galaxy is in a dark age where interstellar travel is all but lost to a handful of people.

In this campaign-long puzzle, the players explore a sector of the galaxy, divided into four quadrants, in an effort to find all 33 inhabited star systems out of the vast expanse of 498 available star system. 

Inhabited Worlds of the Man-Realm Sector (0,0 -500,500)

• Old Earth
• Newholme
• Baldur
• Thor
• Provinaa
• Wellington
• Avalon
• Croan-Dhenni
• New Pittsburgh
• Arion

Inhabited Worlds of the Fyndii Sector (500,0 – 1000,500)

• Greywater
• Worlorn
• Jamison’s World
• Vendalia
• Slagg
• Rhiannon
• Thisrock
• Darkdawn

Inhabited Worlds of the Damoosh Sector (0,500 – 500,1000)

• Shkeen
• Lost Colony: House of the Worm
• Lost Colony: Planetos
• Bitterblooms
• Shrakky
• Norn
• Suthleim

Inhabited Worlds of the Hrangan Sector (500,500 – 1000,1000)

• Old Hranga
• Kimdiss
• High Kavalaan
• Prometheus
• Bastion
• Corlos
• Aath
• Tober In The Veil

The campaign begins with a large starmap, such as shown below. The Game Master is to print out a large size version of this starmap, at least 24” on each side, and color in the stars based on the exhaustive lists provided below.

Behind the scenes, the Game Master populates this galactic sector with a scattering of inhabited planets. The players are to strike out into the galaxy, using clues accumulated through play (called ‘Galactic Location Cards’) to help deduce where the safe, inhabited worlds are located. Except for rare exception, each inhabited planet has two Galactic Location Cards that may be found in the campaign which hint at its location. There are also a series of Galactic Location Cards randomly shuffled in which eliminate potential star clusters as completely uninhabited. In this way, industrious players have two parallel avenues of deduction in finding their goal: direct Galactic Location Cards pointing to the correct answers, and indirect Galactic Location Cards excluding the incorrect answers. Puzzles are always harder to solve at the game table than the designer thinks, so it’s a good idea to have multiple avenues of investigation to prevent the game from stalling.

Visiting an uninhabited world always results in a dangerous, random encounter. Players are expected to use pure deductive reasoning in their efforts to suss out the locations of inhabited worlds. Skill checks and other game mechanics can be used to garner more Galactic Location Cards, but they should not be able to add any additional information on their own.

The design of the Galactic Location Cards is the meat of this mystery. Not only must the Galactic Locations Cards provide enough hints to get the players and story where you need them, but they must do so in a fun, creative, and varied way.

All Galactic Location Cards have been provided in the text at the very end of this post. Click on the full blog post to see the extensive listings of Galactic Location Cards, star clusters, stars within them, solar color, and where the inhabited worlds lie in wait.

Be open-handed with handing out these Galactic Locations. The players need a steady stream of new information to make meaningful choices and deduce where their next destination lies. The last thing your campaign needs is a boring, plodding session of trial and error. Exploring the galaxy should feel like a thrilling adventure in and of itself.

Thousand Worlds – Cultural Norms

“Fungal Planet” by Parasky 

A rich and interesting part of the Thousand Worlds campaign is the discovery of bizarre cultures that populate its stars. The setting harbors a vast array of atypical science fiction planets, with stories rich in unsettling themes that most players are simply not used to. When I started my campaign, I parsed out these cultural descriptions piecemeal over several weeks. In hindsight, I think it would have been better to deliver this information faster, clearer, and in a more accessible manner. This is some of the background stuff that puts the players’ minds in the state you, as GM, want them. It gets people in the mood that you are going for, gets them thinking along the same lines that you are, and whets their appetites to jump out and explore your universe.

 

• The planet of Worlorn is in a slowly decaying orbit around its sun. As a result, its winters grow colder every year. It is a dying world with a doomed population.
• The Golden Theta did great works upon one of the two lost colony worlds. They created a new Not-Man species capable of living within dark tunnels underground.
• The Vendalian Masters seek to cheat death by employing clones and stealing the bodies of outworlders in the Trial of the Mind.
• The Grand Library of Avalon houses the greatest collection of records and information from before the Interregnum.
• No one goes to Old Earth.
• The culture of Arion is extremely devout and worships dragons.
• A psychic entity preys on the people of Shkeen, taking their bodies as nutrient in exchange for granting each citizen 10 years of supreme bliss.
• The people of Shrakky have a history of suffering cruel experimentation by the hands of the Golden Theta. Their society now believes in the sanctity of genetics and blood-purity, leading to near constant interplanetary war over racism.
• The surface of Croan-Dhenni is a mechanized nightmare of automation where organic life is treated as a sickness to be cured.
• One of the lost colony worlds was seeded by the Golden Theta with genetically altered Fire Wyrms to combat the deadly Ice Wraiths of the native inhabitants.
• Thisrock is a savage, crime-infested hellhole run by thugs.
• The twisted Genemancers of Prometheus are feared across the galaxy. Raiders from this planet fly out among the stars in search of fresh genetic material to add to their stocks.
• Provinaa was once a densely populated center of learning and scientific achievement. It was devastated by the Golden Theta during the Double War and is now a giant petri dish of the universe’s worst plagues.
• Thor is a desert planet whose original purpose in the Earth Empire has long been forgotten. In the wake of the Interregnum, the people here now are concerned only with finding enough water so as not to die of thirst.
• The people of Rhiannon struggle to maintain thier civil society in the face of plundering space pirates and raids by power-mad Promethean Geneticists.
• The people of Norn live an agrarian life and are obsessed with gladiatorial games.
• The Kimdissi are known as liars and thieves. Many families are called Mockmen, possessing the ability to change their facial features at will.
• Life on New Pittsburgh is driven by the reanimation of corpses. All manner of perversions may be had here.
• The surface of the world of Slagg is 80% melted, irradiated deserts caused by concentrated nuclear bombardment during the Double War.
• Baldur was cracked apart in the Double War by a Fyndii superweapon. Now it is a ring of asteroids connected by space bridges thousands of miles long.
• The surface of Old Hranga is an ever-broiling sea of conflict among the hundreds of freed Slave Races battling for supremacy. It is said that a cabal of Hragan Minds still live in the tunnels deep underground.
• The people of Darkdawn have a deep respect for the arts and their place in society. They have geo-engineered entire mountain ranges to produce somber harmonies from the sound generated by passing winds.
• Greywater is a forgotten Double War military outpost in a hellish swamp world battling. The people there live their lives in constant struggle against the hive-minded fungal overlords of the planet.
• The warrior culture of High Kavalaan greatly reveres expert craftsmanship in stone, the bonds between men who fight together, and the protection of the clan.
• Aath has a pristine landscape and unrivaled source of natural resources.
• The hyper-military culture of Bastion revolves around worship of Bakkalon, The Pale Child, and the superiority of the Human Species above all others.
• Corlos is a lush planet where a higly spiritual and peaceful sentient species lives in harmony with nature. They build their villages centered on obsidian pyramids for some unknown reason.
• The Suthlemese revere the sanctity of life above all else. Their population now numbers in the hundreds of billions. The people of Suthleim live a life rampant with starvation and cannibalism.
• Once the greatest military training grounds of the Man-realm, Wellington is now a bombed out shell of its former glory.
• Jamison’s World is a lush, oceanic planet. The wealthy elite live on scattered islands and ignore the large, main continent where the planet’s native sentient species resides.
• The planet dubbed Bitterblooms was hit hard by the Interregnum and is now a frozen wasteland where ill-equipped Hrangan Slave Races, now freed, try to eke out a living.

Thousand Worlds – Campaign Primer

Where possible, I like to put together what I call a Campaign Primer before starting a new RPG campaign. The intent here is to give an overview of the style and form the campaign will take from the viewpoint of the players. It’s an advertisement for the campaign (look how awesome this thing is!) and also a warning (watch out, this is how things are going down here and maybe you don’t like that!). It’s more communication, which is almost always a good thing.

Here is what I sent my players, way back in the spring of this year. It’s brief and to the point. It lets players know what fun and exciting things are in store for them (get them excited!), but also lets them know that this is not a pull-your-punches kind of game.

The game setting will be somewhat like a traditional Edge of the Empire campaign, but set instead in the universe of GRRM’s dystopian Thousand Worlds. It is assumed that players have no knowledge of the setting or game mechanics. The players will represent a handful of desperate space-faring travelers trying to save themselves and their own unique alien species from utter extinction in the face of a brutal, intergalactic dark age, known as the Interregnum, as well as terrors from the past. Spaceflight itself will be a rare commodity, which the player characters (crew) will use with their own unique psychic abilities to leverage an unfair universe to their favor.

You will play a mismatched crew of a derelict starship, a leftover from the grand spacefaring days of ten generations past. Things at home have gone from bad to worse, and as a result, you’ve decided to throw what meager resources you have into this cobwebbed shell of a tin can and venture into the grim, alien-infested darkness of The Jambles.

The campaign is expected to have few, if any, Human crew. Player characters will be mostly comprised of what was once alien slave races, freed from the clutches of their hive-minded overlords, the Hrangan, in the aftermath of the Double War and the collapse of galactic civilization. Also, robots. Players can be robots too, that’s cool.

The playstyle sought after will be in many ways modeled after the rogue-like video game FTL. If you are unfamiliar with the genre, please rectify this. Expect an emphasis on charting/mapping hyperspace lanes, evading an unstoppable foe, starting with nothing and then growing an increasingly powerful starship, and sudden horrific death.

WHAT YOU WILL DO:
– Travel from star to star, mapping out the hyperspace lanes of the galaxy
– Uncover lost ruins and forgotten technology
– Salvage derelict battlecruisers orbiting the dead worlds of your forefathers
– Lie, cheat, and steal your way to wealth and power in a medieval/futuristic economy
– Exploit an unfair universe with your own unfair advantages
– Encounter never-before-seen aliens
– Explore the sad ruins of an intergalactic dark age of misery
– Cry sometimes, maybe
– Unlock the mysteries of your own latent psychic powers
– Stop the perpetrators of the universe’s most horrific tragedies – Destroy all humans!

Related to that, I also created a listing of all inhabited worlds in the campaign. The purpose here is two-fold:

1). To have a quick reference for the GM to look up keywords about the planets, as a springboard for sudden improv when the players go shooting out into the galaxy on their own.

2). To whet the players’ appetites even more, make them curious and hungry to explore.

You may notice some influence from P is for Planet. The worlds described here are the most interesting, in my opinion, from the written stories. I’ve stayed pretty faithful to the literary source, but twisted a few things here or there to make a better game overall. As you all should know, I don’t bow to canon, canon bows to me.

When I ran the campaign this summer, I did not include this information to the players right off the bat. They had some, but mostly had to wander around the galaxy on their own and uncover it piece by piece. This was a mistake. Have this enticing campaign fluff out there at Session #1. Make them dream of the fascinating worlds they will find.

 

AATH
Principal Geography: Forested
Technological Level: Stable
Keywords: exploitation, nature, deforestation, resource gathering 

ARION
The culture of Arion is extremely devout and worships dragons.
Principal Geography: Open plains
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: Catholic, Dragons, Crosses, Liars, Subjugated, stained glass
Moral of the Story: Separation of church and state

AVALON
The Grand Library of Avalon houses the greatest collection of records and information from before the Interregnum.
Principal Geography: Low gravity
Technological Level: Starfaring
Keywords: starships, Academy, learning, isolationist, elitist
Moral of the Story: Focusing knowledge on the elite comes at the cost of suffering of others. Withholding information and technological advances is morally reprehensible.

BALDUR
Baldur was cracked apart in the Double War by a Fyndii superweapon. Now it is a ring of asteroids connected by space bridges thousands of miles long.
Principal Geography: Asteroids
Technological Level: Starfaring
Keywords: starships, mining, NIMBY, planet was destroyed in the Double War and now just inhabited chunks of rock
Moral of the Story: Everyone needs to help out their neighbor in times of trouble.

BASTION
The hyper-military culture of Bastion revolves around worship of Bakkalon, The Pale Child, and the superiority of the Human Species above all others.
Principal Geography: Metropolitan
Technological Level: Starfaring
Keywords: Steel Angels, overpopulated, subjugated, starships, warmongering, religious zealots, The Pale Child, prophecy, kill children and make an effigy
Moral of the Story: All prophecy is false.

BITTERBLOOMS
The planet dubbed Bitterblooms was hit hard by the Interregnum and is now a frozen wasteland where ill-equipped Hraangan Slave Races, now freed, try to eke out a living.
Principal Geography: Frozen
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: isolated tribes, irregular winters from crazy orbit, exploitation from nearby starfaring worlds, ice vampires, illusions, charlatans, inbreeding, limited gene pool
Moral of the Story: Trust no one.

CORLOS
Corlos is a lush planet where a highly spiritual and peaceful sentient species lives in harmony with nature. They build their villages centered on obsidian pyramids for some unknown reason.
Principal Geography: Forested
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: pyramids, jungle, psychic community, dream-visions, exploitation of natural resources, upgraded Cool/Discipline checks
Moral of the Story: Defeat your enemies through dreams and false prophecy.

CROAN-DHENNI
The surface of Croan-Dhenni is a mechanized nightmare of automation where organic life is treated as a sickness to be cured.
Principal Geography: Artificially constructed
Technological Level: Starfaring
Keywords: cybernetics, loss of humanity, starships, isolationist, “psychically” linked via wifi/borg implants
Moral of the Story: Eternal life is eternal hell.

DARKDAWN
The people of Darkdawn have a deep respect for the arts and their place in society. They have geo-engineered entire mountain ranges to produce somber harmonies from the sound generated by passing winds.
Principal Geography: Irradiated
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: Sadness, songs, loss, melancholy, suicide, subjugated, darkwing bats
Moral of the Story: Don’t kill yourself.

GREYWATER
Greywater is a forgotten Double War military outpost in a hellish swamp world battling. The people there live their lives in constant struggle against the hive-minded fungal overlords of the planet.
Principal Geography: Wetlands
Technological Level: Stable
Keywords: subjugated, mushrooms, hive-minded fungal infection, isolated military base, suspicion, swamps, alpha-gators
Moral of the Story: You have to place your trust in someone in order to survive. 

HIGH KAVALAAN
The warrior culture of High Kavalaan greatly reveres expert craftsmanship in stone, the bonds between men who fight together, and the protection of the clan.
Principal Geography: Tectonically unstable
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: clans, subjugated, iron, fire, mining, nuclear fallout, machoism, patriarchy, knives, duels, Beth-Hounds, oaths, honor, jade, glowstone, roiling storms, warging into animals
Moral of the Story: The traditions of the past can be a burden in a developing world. 

JAMISON’S WORLD
Jamison’s World is a lush, oceanic planet. The wealthy elite live on scattered islands and ignore the large, main continent where the planet’s native sentient species resides.
Principal Geography: Oceanic
Technological Level: Stable
Keywords: ignorance, forgotten continent, crumbling ruins, ashes, psychotropic spiders, poison darts, fungal forests, dark continent, hubris, mud pots, aquatic, fish-men, gills
Moral of the Story: Don’t trash the environment.

KIMDISS
The Kimdissi are known as liars and thieves. Many families are called Mockmen, possessing the ability to change their facial features at will.
Principal Geography: Jovian / gas giant
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: shapechangers (mockmen), lies, tricks, mind-control
Moral of the Story: Everyone lies. 

NEW PITTSBURGH
Life on New Pittsburgh is driven by the reanimation of corpses. All manner of perversions may be had here.
Principal Geography: Irradiated
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: animated dead, necromancy, necrophilia, rust, wastelands, overpopulated
Moral of the Story: Capitalism unchecked destroys lives.

NEWHOLME
The largest surviving Old Earth Empire battle fleet stands stationed at Newholme, where the military rules through fear.
Principal Geography: Open plains
Technological Level: Starfaring
Keywords: starships, enslaved machines, expansionist, aggressors
Moral of the Story: There’s a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.

NORN
The people of Norn live an agrarian life and are obsessed with gladiatorial games involving exotic animal species.
Principal Geography: Mixed
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: bronze age, feudalism, gladiatorial games, wild animals fight, zoos, cobalcats: psychic panthers, great houses, famine
Moral of the Story: Dog-fighting is horrible.
Persons of Interest: Herold of House Lyronica, House Arneth 

OLD EARTH
No one goes to Old Earth.
Principal Geography: Toxic atmosphere
Technological Level: Advanced
Keywords: overpopulated, extreme isolation, hostility, xenophobia, over industrialization
Moral of the Story: No one goes to Old Earth.

OLD HRANGA
The surface of Old Hranga is an ever-broiling sea of conflict among the hundreds of freed Slave Races battling for supremacy. It is said that a cabal of Hraagan Minds still live in the tunnels deep underground.
Principal Geography: Hot & arid
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: dark dark were the tunnels, hiding, hateful, storms, lost tombs, sealed vaults, Mind-stealers, psychic
Moral of the Story: The glory days of long lost triumphs are best let go to make room for new growth.

PROMETHEUS
The twisted Genemancers of Prometheus are feared across the galaxy. Raiders from this planet fly out among the stars in search of fresh genetic material to add to their stocks.
Principal Geography: Volcanic
Technological Level: Starfaring
Keywords: genetics, mad science, crazy mutants, golden theta, silver theta
Moral of the Story: Science gone unchecked is a danger to us all.

PROVINAA
Provinaa was once a densely populated center of learning and scientific achievement. It was devastated by the Golden Theta during the Double War and is now a giant petri dish of the universe’s worst plagues.
Principal Geography: Toxic atmosphere
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: plague, giants, pestilence, weapons testing site
Moral of the Story: The cost of war extends to the innocent no matter how much we try to protect them.

RHIANNON
The people of Rhiannon struggle to maintain thier civil society in the face of plundering space pirates and raids by power-mad Promethean Geneticists.
Principal Geography: Jovian / gas giant
Technological Level: Stable
Keywords: desperately fighting off marauders and pirates and slavers
Moral of the Story: Watch out for space pirates. 

SHKEEN
A psychic entity preys on the people of Shkeen, taking their bodies as nutrient in exchange for granting each citizen 10 years of supreme bliss.
Principal Geography: Mountainous
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: psychic, happiness, hive-minded, red fungus, spirituality, India, peace, death, decaying animals are nutrient for plants
Moral of the Story: Is perfect happiness worth giving up freedom and the end years of your life?

SHRAKKY
The people of Shrakky have a history of suffering cruel experimentation by the hands of the Golden Theta. Their society now believes in the sanctity of genetics and blood-purity, leading to near constant interplanetary war over racism.
Principal Geography: Tectonically unstable
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: racist 

SLAGG
The surface of the world of Slagg is 80% melted, irradiated deserts caused by concentrated nuclear bombardment during the Double War.
Principal Geography: Irradiated
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: Sands melted by nuclear fire into sheets of glass, horrific mutations, cannibalism

SUTHLEIM
The Suthlemese revere the sanctity of life above all else. Their population now numbers in the hundreds of billions. The people of Suthleim live a life rampant with starvation and cannibalism.
Principal Geography: Metropolitan
Technological Level: Advanced
Keywords: overpopulated, religion, massive cities, weird food sources (nanowheat, slig-meat, oil-pods), hostile, expansionist, proselytizers, missionaries, food shortages, starvation, love of all life
Moral of the Story: Strict adherence to religious dogma is very dangerous 

THISROCK
Thisrock is a savage, crime-infested hellhole run by thugs.
Principal Geography: Asteroids
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: crime-ridden, gangs, overrun
Moral of the Story: Don’t do drugs, kids.

THOR
Thor is a desert planet whose original purpose in the Earth Empire has long been forgotten. In the wake of the Interregnum, the people here now are concerned only with finding enough water so as not to die of thirst.
Principal Geography: Low gravity
Technological Level: Stable
Keywords: food shortages, cannibalism, starvation, desert, dune
Moral of the Story: Do criminals deserve our love and compassion? 

TOBER IN THE VEIL
Generations ago, a great leader named Tober lead his people away past the Fringe and into the unknown reaches of the Veil to escape the depradations of the Humans.
Principal Geography: Mixed
Technological Level: Stable
Keywords: isolationist, limited gene pool, inbreeding, hidden, nebula cloud
Moral of the Story: You can’t hide and detach from your problems forever. 

VENDALIA
The Vendalian Masters seek to cheat death by employing clones and stealing the bodies of outworlders in the Trial of the Mind.
Principal Geography: High gravity
Technological Level: Stable
Keywords: body-swapping, clones, Trial of the Mind, languid, miasma, melting, obsidian
Moral of the Story: The rich steal youth from the young through the pseudo-slavery of wealth/work inequality.

WELLINGTON
Once the greatest military training grounds of the Man-realm, Wellington is now a bombed out shell of its former glory.
Principal Geography: High gravity
Technological Level: Advanced
Keywords: military training center, PTSD, marines
Moral of the Story: Integration of military back into civilian life is difficult

 

 

 

WORLORN
The planet of Worlorn is in a slowly decaying orbit around its sun. As a result, its winters grow colder every year. The planet is a dying world with a doomed population.
Principal Geography: Mountainous
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: cold, dying light, iridescent shell-beetles, failing power, lost love
Moral of the Story: Everything dies in the end.

 

LOST COLONY: PLANETOS
One of the lost worlds was seeded by the Golden Theta with genetically altered Fire Wyrms to combat the deadly Ice Wraiths of the native inhabitants.
Principal Geography: Frozen
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: dragons, ice golems psychically inhabited by spirits, weirwoods connected through continent-wide root system, medieval, castles, unpredictable winters, cannibalism, warging
Moral of the Story: Feudalism is stupid

 

LOST COLONY: HOUSE OF THE WORM
The Golden Theta did great works upon one of the two lost worlds. They created a new Man-Species capable of living within dark tunnels underground.
Principal Geography: Hot & arid
Technological Level: Regressed
Keywords: genetics, Groun, four-armed, adaptation, dark tunnels, cannibalism
Moral of the Story: Make love, not war. Splinter-races from Humanity must put aside prejudices and come back together. It is totally gross.

Thousand Worlds – Introduction

The Thousand Worlds is a bizarre science-fiction universe created by the mind of George R.R. Martin in the 70’s and 80’s. Yes, that guy.

What draws me to it are that the stories told describe a broken universe that is very alien to our experiences in the real world on earth. Like most stories set in the future, the themes presented are all parallels for modern problems the world is experiencing right now, in the present. However, the subject matter is often unsettling, creepy, uncomfortable, and most important, hits with an emotional impact like a punch to the gut. This is exactly how I like my RPGs to be.

So, I created, ran, and successfully completed a Thousand Worlds campaign, using Edge of the Empire as a basis for the nuts and bolts ruleset. From the outset, I started the campaign design by sketching out what I wanted to accomplish. I had a burning passion to share my enthusiasm for these stories, which I had just finish reading. And I wanted to have a “rags-to-riches” campaign, one that started the game off with the player characters extremely weak and poor, struggling to survive, but then end with them in an earned position of incredible wealth and power. Above all else, I wanted a campaign that – on an emotional, gut level – gave the players the feeling of wondrous discovery. I wanted to give them the childlike wonder of exploring what’s buried under the rocks, and have that thing be fun, interesting, and memorable. I wanted them to never feel like they had run out of the game, or were in any way limited to where they could go or what they could do. There’s always more out there.

In the next few blog posts, I’m going to be talking about some of the details of my Thousand Worlds campaign – design goals, planning, house rules, a starmap puzzle, creating heists, a design checklist, and reinforcing the theme of wondrous discovery in as many ways as possible. Sit tight, it’s a hell of a ride. It might take me some time, be patient.

If you’d like to dig in more into The Thousand Worlds, and I heartily recommend it, go check out this overview video. There’s links to the stories themselves in the video description, many of which have audiobooks or free recorded readings available. There are a lot of stories, but (aside from Dying of the Light) they are all short stories and novellas, making them very quick reads. My favorites are probably In the House of the Worm, A Song for Lya, and The Stone City; though it’s very hard to choose, many of them are really, really good.