Art by Rick Guidice

It’s about time for me to swing back to working on the Human Destiny setting bible and RPG sourcebook, and that project is going to get a new approach this time around.

I submitted a partial draft of the setting to the Chaosium design challenge last year, and it didn’t do well. Didn’t even make the short-list, in fact. Which honestly doesn’t surprise me too much. I suspect they were looking for material that was narrowly focused on a working RPG, not the fragmentary setting bible I handed them. Lesson learned.

(Ironically, this is the same problem we ran into on a previous RPG design project I was involved with: Transhuman Space. Our team produced what I still consider a brilliant piece of world-building, but we didn’t develop a clear concept of what the “canonical adventure” would be in the setting. As a result, for too many readers it wasn’t clear what player characters were supposed to do in that universe. Later designers had to come back and provide that kind of on-ramp into the setting, so potential players had something to work with.)

So the project has been simmering in the back of my brain for a while now, while I’ve been working on the Atlas of the Human Protectorate. That project in turn has been causing me to do some more world-building in the setting. I think I have a high concept for that narrow focus:

Adventurers in the Human Destiny universe will be human agents of the Hegemony, charged with promoting human maturity and participation in the interstellar community. This will usually involve supporting human exploration of the galaxy, colonization of new worlds, and enforcement of the Hegemony’s guiding principles (the Praxis).

So human characters will usually be members of the Hegemony’s core services, such as the Ecological Service (planetary exploration and biosphere protection), the Guard (enforcement of the Praxis), or the Interstellar Service (interstellar exploration and colonial support). Most missions will involve trouble-shooting and problem-solving.

Missions will usually be set away from Earth. Earth is too “civilized,” too sedate. Humans on Earth are in a post-scarcity environment and subject to constant surveillance, so there’s little room for “adventure.” By moving the focus of the RPG away from Earth, I can set aside many pages of world-building detail that aren’t germane to the adventuring life.

Meanwhile, out on the frontier, resources are more limited, space and untamed wilderness are dangerous environments, there are worlds to explore and mysteries to solve, and human colonists are more likely to find ways to bend or break the Praxis. More problems to solve, more room for conflict, more adventure to be had.

The assumption will be that adventurers are loyal to the Hegemony and the Praxis, although the right way to interpret the Praxis won’t always be obvious. As adventurers develop their capabilities and successfully solve problems, they’ll earn social capital within the Hegemony, providing a reward structure.

If I were to come up with an elevator pitch for this RPG, I would probably say something like “Star Trek meets David Brin’s Uplift stories.” Adventurers will resemble Starfleet officers in some ways: competent, motivated, idealistic people, working in a loose chain of command but with a great deal of independence. The Hegemony and its Praxis would fill a dramatic role similar to the Federation and its Prime Directive. On the other hand, the details will be very different, especially since humans are very much not in charge in the Hegemony as a whole, and human independence has strict limits.

At this point, I’m not sure if I’m going to stick with the Chaosium BRP system for this project. I’m tired of being a game-system nomad with it. BRP is something like the fourth or fifth rules system I’ve considered for Human Destiny, and I really need to settle on one and push forward with it.

On the other hand, lately I’ve been messing with the Modiphius 2d20 system, current home for the Dune, John Carter, Space: 1999, and Star Trek RPGs. That system has a lot of features that I like, and it’s also under a very third-party-friendly licensing scheme, so there’s that.

More to come.