Psionics in Zhontaar

In my earlier S&W draft of Zhontaar, psionics were based on the metapsychic powers in Julian May’s Saga of Pliocene Exile and represented by tweaked versions of Gamma World mental mutations.  For the current version, I’m going with the ”official” X-Plorers psionics rules posted at the X-Plorers Yahoo Group.  My tweaks-in-progress:

• There is a strong connection between psionic strength and Presence, the attribute representing willpower and inner strength (X-Plorers free version, p. 6).  While high INT still determines psionic aptitude, high PRE (13+) is also required; the latter attribute provides the “power points” for using psi powers, and is also the default saving throw versus many psychic attacks. 
• Clairvoyance: Attempts at Clairvoyant projection are subject to Target Number difficulty modifiers based on the character’s familiarity with the location, akin to the White Box 5th level spell Teleport.  PC has seen and studied the location = no modifier.  PC has seen location but not studied = +2.  PC has seen and studied pictures, but not actual location = +4.  PC has never seen or studied location = +8.  Target location is in another dimension (regardless of familiarity) = +10.
• Telekinesis: The Telekinetic powers Move Object and Push are folded together into Move.  The target of a telekinetic push can make a saving throw vs. Physique to halve the amount of distance/damage suffered.  A new Telekinetic ability is Shield, which creates an invisible wall of force that will stop projectiles.  This barrier can sustain a total amount of damage equal to [current PRE x character level] before dissipating.  Otherwise, it will last for a maximum number of combat rounds equal to the character’s level; this may be extended by expending 1 point of PRE per additional round. 
• Telepathy: Targets of telepathic attacks (Mind Blast, Read Minds, suggestion, etc.) make saving throws vs. PRE to resist.  Send Message becomes Transmit.  In addition to the powers as stated, the transmitting character may attempt to implant a suggestion in the mind of the target.  Potential effects and limitations of this power mimic those of the D&D spells Charm Person or Suggestion.

Psionically-gifted individuals are viewed by much of the common populace with suspicion, but are rarely subjected to any sort of violent discrimination (and even then only in the most backwater parts of the system).  Perhaps the fact that psionics are something one is born with — rather than studied or actively pursued, as in the case of wizardry or sorcery — is what prevents these occasional frenzies from becoming the sort of full-blown pogroms that have periodically ravaged the ranks of the wizardly orders over the past two aeons.  There are numerous psionic “covens” scattered throughout the system, and several larger pro-psi organizations.  More on these later…

Saturday afternoon science-fantasy fun!

Now playing on Youtube:

Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All, the 1979/82 Filmation full-length animated feature.

Link to Part 1 of 9.

PS: Incidentally, the guy who voiced Flash Gordon in this movie and series also did another sci-fi animated hero, Thundarr the Barbarian.

Beyond the bounds of time and space…

Scholars have long debated the nature of the dimensions beyond our own material plane. Since the discovery of the first extraplanar realm — the Shadow Realm — in the 15th Aeon, wizards, scientists and dimensionauts have identified and explored several other planes of existence through black holes, wormholes, and other rifts in space-time. Initially, this required special “voidships” to travel through black holes, but advances in interdimensional technology (“idtech“) allowed for the creation of localized gates and passageways into other realities. Idtech drives allowed starships to enter D-space (“the Golden Void”) and re-emerge at another point in P-space (“real space”).

The total number of dimensions/planes parallel to our own is still unknown; there are at least seven Major dimensions, and an untold number of pocket dimensions as well.  Three of the more-familiar Major dimensions are the Shadow Realm, the Golden Void, and Morpheus.

The Shadow Realm: Visitors to the Shadow Realm are greeted by the sight of a dusty, rocky grey plain stretching endlessly in all directions.  The Realm is lit by a blacklight sun, and patches of shadow flit across the landscape beneath invisible clouds.  The monotony of travel across the plain is only interrupted periodically by pitted black stone megaliths, crumbling ruins of unknown provenance, and, at the center of the realm, a wide flowing river of black viscous ooze.  The Realm is home to several alien races of varying levels of intelligence and aggressiveness, most of whom live underground or in the forementioned ruins.

The Golden Void (aka “D-space”): a cloudy dimension of light and fire, the Void gets its name from the psychedelic swirl of red, orange, and golden hues that makes “the very air and clouds seem ablaze.”  Only the hardiest of spirits are able to gaze upon the dazzling beauty of the Golden Void with the naked eye without suffering some form of insanity, and exposure to the air will result in blindness, deafness, and in more extreme cases, random mutation.  There are no officially documented forms of life in the Void, although some mind-seared dimensionauts have deliriously spoken of encountering “angelic beings of pure energy, with crowns of fire on their brows.”

Morpheus: The so-called “Dimension of Dreams and Illusions.”  Morpheus is a soupy, murky liquid sea that is constantly roiling and bubbling, out of which strange shapes form, melt away and re-form.  Scattered throughout the sea are islands which float about unanchored; like the sea itself, the landscape of these islands is constantly in flux.  Some have theorized that Morpheus is a living entity that feeds off the subconscious and unconscious thoughts of all who dwell or travel within, which somehow contributes to the unstable nature of both sea and land.  There is a wide variety of living organisms on Morpheus, some of which have been classified by dimensional biologists.

A note regarding my previous post’s mention of “alien invasions through black holes:” Described in the visionary third volume of the Ancient Terran Ramblings of Michlus, most contemporary scholars agree that this fragment prophesied the early 16th Aeon’s legendary Dolmic Brotherhood’s prevention of an invasion of the Prime Material Plane by the Negaxci, a warlike cthnonian race encountered in the “Gateway to Morpheus,” a wormhole at the center of the Helix Nebula.

Boarding Actions and Zhontaar re-re-(re?-) revisited, part 2

“What if Zhontaar wasn’t a science-fantasy planetary setting, but a solar system or subsector?”

That’s the question teasing the gaming part of my brain these days.  From the various inspirations and influences swirling around in my head there’s been a slow but steady drip of distilled ideas…

I have yet to determine the exact cause of the apocalypse which shattered the Terran Federation in the 19th Aeon.  The fragmentary surviving histories suggest some sort of weird cosmic cataclysm that triggered widespread warfare and panics and drove many artificial intelligences insane.  Some condemn the works of “wizards” who sought to harness power from other dimensions, others blamed science and computers run amok; no one has identified a specific culprit with any certainty.

There are seven planets in the Zhontaar system as well as quite a few moons, planetoids, asteroids, and artificial satellites; the majority of the populated worlds are ruled by aristocratic descendants of pre-apocalyptic noble houses and megacorporate boards of directors.  There are other inhabited systems in the sector, but the Zhontaari factions have yet to re-establish any other colonies of the Federation.

Humans constitute the majority of the population of the Seven Planets, but they are not the only sentient species.  There are also many strains of “para-human,” genetically-engineered hybrids of human and Old Terran animal stock (such as various subspecies of beastmen, lizardmen, birdmen, etc.).  The Draala, an amoeboid race, have colonies on several worlds but rarely involve themselves in interplanetary affairs.

Something borrowed from Fading Suns (one of my favorite published sci-fi RPG settings) is the idea that although plenty of high technology remained after the galactic apocalypse, people lost much of their ancestors’ advanced knowledge– tech can still often be repaired or recharged, but not necessarily replicated.  This latter bit applies principally to starships, complex robots and computers, and ultratech weapons (such as plasma cannons).  As a result:

• Spacecraft, although still fairly plentiful, are highly prized by all factions.  Because no one can build new ships, it is common to find older ships that have taken on a ramshackle look from year of heavy service, repair and jury-rigged “upgrades.”
• Space combat is largely reduced to boarding actions, as no one wants to damage a spaceworthy vessel or its cargo.  For the same reasons, ship-mounted weapons are generally either antipersonnel in nature (machine guns, fragmentation/flechette “piercer” rockets designed to penetrate the hull and explode inside) or temporarily disabling the enemy ship to facilitate boarding (grappling harpoons, ion/EMP projectors).

A schizophrenic guy I used to interact with at the library would occasionally let loose these these fascinating stream of consciousness rants filled with all sorts of bizarre fantastic imagery, with references to “Earth Solar Law,” pit fiends, fear spells, “tone bursts” as weapons, being sentenced to “Solar Prison” for committing crimes against other “energy groups,” alien invasions through black holes, magic crowns, the supremacy of the Head Knowledger, government access to the invisible/invincible/investable security level and so on. I often thought his ramblings would make for a fascinating story or game setting, so here’s my chance…  Maybe he wasn’t crazy after all, he was just haunted by visions of a crumbling interstellar civilization aeons in the future!  A couple bits I’ve worked out so far:

• Solar Prison is an extra-dimensional space inside Zhontaar’s corresponding star in the Shadow Dimension, where the System’s worst criminals were imprisoned.  The theoretical underpinnings of interdimensional travel is sketchy at best, but many devices — including the means of incarceration in and extraction from Solar Prison — still operate at varying levels of efficiency.
• The Head Knowledger (HK) refers to a pre-Fall artificial intelligence responsible for archiving all the knowledge of the known universe.  According to the histories, the HK was constructed in its own special ship completely staffed by robots and computers with the mission of travelling through the galaxy, cataloging and storing information.  Its current status and whereabouts are unknown.  Scholars now consider the HK to be a sort of Rosetta Stone or Holy Grail that would enable them to restore civilization to the shining, utopian level of pre-Fall Galactic civilization.
• The most obvious possibility for “Tone bursts” as weapons would be a Weirding Module or some other means of sonic warfare.  Details still hazy, check back later.

Not much about Boarding Actions or X-Plorers in this one, but there’s more still to come!

Boarding Actions and Zhontaar re-re-(re?-) revisited, part 1

I’m sure I’ m not the only person who does a lot of stumbling and bumbling around the Internet.  Searching or browsing through a site then following a random hyperlink to something else, then something else, and on and on until you’ve found yourself in a previously unknown part of the virtual galaxy of information.  That’s how I discovered Boarding Actions, a recent X-Plorers project by Mike D., who blogs at Sword +1 (which incidentally features one of my favorite Star Frontiers illustrations as its banner!)

I grabbed the free version of David Bezio’s X-Plorers game a couple months ago and thought it was clever and well-made, a great example of how the Swords & Wizardry rules can be bent and shaped into new and exciting forms.  I’ve since kicked around the idea of running a one-shot adventure or a single-session conversion of our Traveller game, but nothing happened and my mind moved on.  But recent readings – the Dragon article about Gamma World’s Moon; the Star Frontiers rulebooks; the science-fantasy awesomeness of Planet Algol, Athanor, and Quantique; references in Songs of the Dying Earth to the colonization of other worlds in previous Aeons; a bunch of Leigh Brackett’s Solar System tales; and, most recently, Mike D.s Boarding Actions posts — have gotten the wheels spinning in unexpected ways.

One thing led to the next, and now the question that’s now dominating my gaming-mind is “What if Zhontaar isn’t a post-apocalyptic, science fantasy planetary setting, but a post-apocalyptic solar system/subsector?”  More on this soon.

Malaz: a tale of two authors

When I was in college, I made it six books into Robert Jordan’s bloated Wheel of Time series before its plot ground to a near-halt and I gave up.  I read the first two books of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth and quit while I was ahead.  George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire was considerably more interesting, but after the third book I had no motivation to pick up the fourth.  Which leads me to Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen, the latest Tor doorstop-series to fall by the wayside.  I made it through seven books and enjoyed each one more than the last, but I’ve hit the wall.  As I went through my book collection last month I realized that I’ve been sitting on Toll the Hounds for months.  I just haven’t been able to muster up the enthusiasm to slog through its 800+ pages, only to wait another eight months or more before I could pick up the next installment.

I don’t remember what prompted me to check out Esslemont’s Night of Knives, but I’m glad I did.  It has the same atmosphere and rich fantastic elements that draw me to Erikson’s books — the war-torn landscapes, strange magics, crumbling ruins and ancient races make for good fun escapist fantasy reading.  What’s more, it reads very different from the Malazan Book of the Fallen.  The pacing is faster, the focus tighter, with the sort of economy of words that, judging from the bloated size of much of today’s fantasy literature, seems to have been forgotten or ignored by many mainstream fantasy novelists.  This (dare I say it) “pulpier” approach translates into a book that is a third of the size of one of its Eriksonian cousins — Night of Knives weighs in at a slender 284 pages.

Another thing that’s nice is that I didn’t have to wrack my brain to try to remember all the various powers, factions, and characters of Erikson’s Malazan series in order to enjoy Esslemont’s tale. While there are obvious connections to characters and events detailed in various volumes of the Book of the Fallen, knowledge of those aren’t a prerequisite to enjoying Night of Knives, merely an enhancement.  The events described in the book fit into a historical continuum of the shared Malazan world, so technically it is part of a broader series; however, the novel works just as well as a stand-alone.  It may prompt new arrivals to Malaz to explore Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen and companion stories, or it may re-inspire burned-out veterans (like me) to pick the series up again…

this intrusion by reality brought to you by Front Porch Republic

I don’t really go in for national politics; the whole Democrat-vs-Republican, liberal-vs-conservative partisan games seem ridiculous to me since it’s apparent that all these politicians are principally focused on serving themselves and the corporate sponsors who fill their campaign coffers.  I couldn’t resist pointing this bit out here though, courtesy of John Médaille at Front Porch Republic:

‘Each congressman will be required to wear those NASCAR suits which prominently display the names of their corporate sponsors. So the typical congressthing might have Big Pharma on his chest, Exxon on his ass, and the big banks running up and down his arms. Each politician would be required to begin and end each speech with the statement “This message brought to you by …” and list the names of his three top contributors. And each bill will be required to bear the logos of its corporate sponsors. This won’t make politics any more democratic, but it will make it a lot more fun. And a lot more honest. We can dispense with the fictions of “liberal” and “conservative” and go directly to the real issues: “I favor the big banks” or “I favor the manufacturers,” and such like. We can debate the size of the subsidy, the magnitude of the tax break, the height of the barrier against competition. These are the real “issues.” Everything else is rhetoric.’

The thought of politicians in logo-swathed jumpsuits made me think of some of the wackier political elements in the Dark Conspiracy setting.  Truth-in-labeling would be a wonderful thing…

Belated rant: Avatar and the state of movie soundtracks

The Missus and I went to see Avatar on New Years’ Eve.  The verdict: as I expected, the movie was long on style and short on substance.  I’ve been a fan of sword & planet and planetary romance tales for years, and even though Cameron’s wasn’t entirely original it was still exciting to see how beautifully it was visually realized.  (It gives me great hope for future works, such as the upcoming John Carter of Mars…)

Easily my biggest complaint about Avatar had to be the dull, uninspiring soundtrack.  James Horner had a grand opportunity not many composers get: to really stretch out and create a new music, one that reflects the sounds of an alien culture.  (A shining example that comes to mind is Jerry Goldsmith’s Planet of the Apes score.)  So what does this top-tier, award-winning film composer do?  He phones in the same junk he’s been writing for the last twenty-five years.  Seriously, it sounded like he recycled some themes from Glory, Last of the Mohicans, and Titanic for the majority of the music and added in some token ultra-cliche pseudo-Qawwali singing during the slo-mo battle agony moments.  As Chris Berman and his Monday Night Football crew would say: “COME ON, MAN!!!”

This leads me to a broader issue I have with Hollywood movie music… 

***

Dear bigwig Hollywood film composers,

You guys are killing me.  I’m tired of hearing the same stuff over and over.  I know it’s hip these days to recycle, but not when it comes to trash like the stuff you’ve been churning out for the past couple decades.  No more rip-offs of Stravinsky or Holst’s “Mars, the Bringer of War” for battle scenes, please.  No more pseudo-Qawwali singing for somber, drawn-out slow-motion sequences, I beg you.  And most of all, please, please, PLEASE: if you’re writing a score for a “period” historical film – any historical era – please pay the same amount of lavish attention to detail as the visual folks do.  All the painstaking historical research that goes into a late-Renaissance costume drama like Elizabeth: the Golden Age is destroyed if it is accompanied by a soundtrack based on late-19th-century harmony and stylistic practices.  (An aside to directors: save big budget bucks by ditching these losers and using authentic period works!) 

It’s a good thing I’m not in charge down in Hollywood, because you so-called A-list guys who insist on recycling the same neo-Romantic dreck would be reduced to doing commercial jingles.  There are thousands of hungry young composers out there with fresh ideas.  Maybe you should listen to them and learn some new tricks.  If you’re unwilling to do so, maybe it’s time to start thinking about retirement.

Sincerely,

Gnombient, a concerned listener

PS: I saw The Book of Eli yesterday, and I thought Atticus Ross’s soundtrack was awesome!

Star Frontiers recommended fiction list!

I was sitting down with my new used copy of the Alpha Dawn Expanded Rules, and I noticed something on the back inside cover I never paid attention to as a kid: the recommended reading list.  Since I’ve made my way through Appendix N, it’s nice that now I have a new reading list to wade through!

Here’s the fiction list; titles (and series/parts of series) I’ve already read are marked with an asterisk:

Anthony, Piers — Macroscope

Anderson, Poul — Ensign Flandry series*

Asimov, Isaac — Foundation trilogy*; I, Robot; The Gods Themselves

Asprin, Robert — The Cold-Cash War

Bester, Alfred – The Stars My Destination*

Blish, James — Cities in Flight

Bradbury, Ray — The Martian Chronicles*

Brown, Frederick – What Mad Universe

Brunner, John — Stand on Zanzibar

Budrys, Algis — Rogue Moon

Chandler, Bertram A. — Commodore Grimes series

Clarke, Arthur C. — Rendezvous With Rama*; The Fountains of Paradise

Clement, Hal — Mission of Gravity; Close to Critical; The Nitrogen Fix

de Camp, L. Sprague — Krishna series*

Dick, Philip K. — Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Dickson, Gordon R. — Dorsai series

Drake, David — Hammer’s Slammers

Farmer, Philip Jose — Riverworld series*

Garrett, Randall – Starship Death

Goulart, Ron — many short novels

Haldeman, Joe — The Forever War*

Hansen, Karl — War Games

Harrison, Harry – Bill, the Galactic Hero*; The Stainless Steel Rat*; Deathworld series*

Herbert, Frank — Dune series*

Laumer, Keith — A Plague of Demons; Retief series*; Bolo series

LeGuin, Ursula K. — The Left Hand of Darkness

Lem, Stanislaw – Solaris; The Cyberiad

Longyear, Barry — Circus World

Niven, Larry — Ringworld*; Ringworld Engineers; Tales of Known Space

Niven, Larry and Jerry Pournelle — The Mote in God’s Eye

Norton, Andre — Star Rangers

Pohl, Frederick — Gateway*

Pournelle, Jerry — The Mercenary

Russel, Eric Frank –  The Great Explosion

Saberhagen, Fred — Berserker series

Silverberg, Robert — The Man in the Maze*

Smith, E.E. — Triplanetary; Space Patrol; others in the Lensman series

Stapleton, Olaf — Last and First Men

Vance, Jack — Big Planet*; The Gray Prince*; Tschai, Planet of Adventure series*; Demon Princes series*

Van Vogt, A.E. – The Weapon Shops of Isher; The Silkie; Voyage of the Space Beagle

Varley, John – The Persistence of Vision

Zelazny, Roger — Lord of Light*

It’s an interesting list that, as one might expect, shares quite a few literary inspirations with Traveller.  There are a few Trav influences that surprisingly aren’t on the Star Frontiers list (Tubb’s Dumarest series and Norton’s Solar Queen series immediately come to mind), and there are some on the SF list that seem… odd.  Riverworld is inspiration for Star Frontiers?  Who would have thought?  Lord of Light?  Really?  Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  I know Blade Runner and Star Frontiers came out the same year, but still…  Those are all good SF books by great authors, but I just don’t see those titles’ connection to Star Frontiers’ space opera setting.  Some other questions: Why are the Dune books the only Herbert listings?  Star Rangers the only Norton?  Ensign Flandry the only Anderson?  I’m sure the game writers weren’t shooting for comprehensiveness here, but their list seems awfully half-baked.

Unlike Appendix N, which was a laundry list of all the F&SF that influenced the Gygaxian vision and development of (A)D&D, the Star Frontiers list seems to have been populated in a very different way.  I can almost picture the Star Frontiers production team sitting down for a meeting, and everyone being asked to provide a list of their top 5 science fiction books.  Those lists were merged into the Star Frontiers “master list” and sent along the pipeline, without the benefit of an editor checking those favorites for relevance to the setting… Seriously though, I would be curious to learn why some of those titles were included as recommended reading and how their list came to be.

Well, despite some questionable choices there’s certainly some good stuff there, and it certainly doesn’t detract from the fine game of Star Frontiers as a whole.  I’m looking forward to checking out some of these authors I’ve never read, and tracing the lines of influence.

sci-fi megadungeon: the Moon

This afternoon I’ve been reading James M. Ward’s article “A World Gone Mad” in Dragon #86, where he details the Gamma World version of the Moon, its colonization history and adventure ideas.  The latter aspect focuses on Tycho Center, a pre-apocalypse Cybernetic Installation rich in processed duralloy and Ancient artifacts, but infested by mutant plants and microbes, robots, and hostile Cryptic Alliance exploration and salvage teams:

Tycho Center consists of a surface landing area with underground docking facilities, a surface storage area, the computer complex for the Tycho CI, an underground storage area, two hydroponics labs (both infested with mutant plants), two biological laboratories (infested with macrobes), a nuclear power plant, an engineering and repair center that now houses most of the robot manufacturing equipment and spare parts, and several small housing centers and business zones for the human colonists. Three mining zones
branch away from Tycho Center, each worked continually by robots and avoided by the plants and macrobes. Some sections may have been sealed off by the plant-macrobe war or by computer error.

This base sounds like a locale worthy of adventure to me!  The only question is, how to run it?  Gamma World as intended?  Teleportation or some other transport from Zhontaar?  Perhaps as an exploration or rescue scenario for Traveller, Star Frontiers, or X-Plorers?  “Captain, we need to talk.  We’ve lost contact with the science team at Tycho Center…”