AI Rights, Bodies and Mortality: a Game of Shock:

To my tastes, science fiction in RPGs and television is too often about adventure and excitement. The scifi that grabs me, though, is about ideas and their impact on life and society and thought. Joshua A. C. Newman‘s RPG Shock: Social Science Fiction is built on this very premise. I tried it out with a couple of people I’d never played with, and who hadn’t had any experience with games as Forge-y as this. The experience was two-sided: fun and cerebral on the one hand, heavy and somewhat disconnected on the other. Continue reading

[Eldritch Sigils] Is Transhumanism > Being Human

New season for Eldritch Sigils is on. This time we will play in the end of the 22nd century where the PCs are member of the organisation trying to keep the reality from shattering. It’s less than hundred years from “now” but Cyberpunk (as a time and style) is still a thing in the past and that means some changes in the way things work. And during the first session we had an interesting conversation about transhumanism.

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[Uncharted Worlds] Creating a Character

Last week we managed to play the first prelude mission for our upcoming Uncharted Worlds campaign. We plan to start the campaign quite soonish. And since I already have a character concept in mind I decided to build it in advance. I have no idea if it is something that we will be able to use but we will see. In this post I will discuss the creation of the said character and include some thoughts behind the process.

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Trying Out: Uncharted Worlds

spiliaprime1Short version: Uncharted Worlds is an Apocalypse World hack by Sean Gomes. It is a game for a space opera in the style of Firefly (amongst other things). It’s a complete game not requiring the understanding or ownership of the Apocalypse World by Vincent Baker. And it is a good hack with a lot going on.

Long version: After a number of times failing to get the group together we finally managed to sit down for a game of Uncharted Worlds. Sami (our GM) has been talking about this and has prepared for it by running the Out of the Abyss-campaign. He has even vowed to write about running it at one point. With 20+ sessions I would imagine he has quite a bit to say about it. Once he actually does it…
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Battle for New Jersey Preview

Note: This is a preview. The game is not yet published, so much of what I say might change, and I was asked to not divulge anything too specific about the system.

Note 2: The designer of the game (Teemu Vilen) is a member of the guild and thus there might be some bias. I’d like to think there isn’t much, but you never know. Also, I let Teemu read this before publishing.

Battle for New Jersey is a game set in near future, where colonizing aliens have landed on earth in order to strip the planet of its resources. I guess they could be characterized as evil, but that would be shortsighted. But not to worry, a small group of humans have banded together to use their disparate skillsets to take back their neighborhood.

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Reaching Tartarus

As summer draws close our gaming group tends to wander of to different oneshots, random gaming and cabins. As this is inevitable I have decided to wrap up our Wayward Sons game to a satisfying end (or at least that is my plan). As I am constantly trying to create something (might be just because I need to prove myself something) I now have a plan for the possible future.

I think I’ll be running a scifi campaign with a set goal.

The games and campaign I have been running for the past few years have all been linked together. There might have been a background story to begin with but now it has eroded away. Now I’m only taking what I get from the players and evolving their ideas and random thoughts into something I would like to run.

This next phase is a science fiction game. It might even be space opera. But it will still be tied into what we have done. It might not even be that apparent even to my players but I believe they will see the cause and effect of their actions.

REACHING TARTARUS

Reaching Tartarus will be a game about likeminded individual trying to escape the god-like A.I. Omnipresence from the inhabited worlds of our Solar System to the one place their ancestors abandoned a long time ago – Earth.

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