For general interest, here’s a first cut at an outline for the Fourth Millennium core book. This is going to be my working outline while I start writing sections of the rough draft. Naturally, this outline will be subject to change while I develop the project.
As a review: this is planned to be a Basic Roleplaying (BRP) sourcebook, relying on the BRP Universal Game Engine book under the ORC license. It will be the first of (possibly) several sourcebooks detailing the Fourth Millennium setting. Fourth Millennium is a universe centered on the Mediterranean region of Earth’s classical antiquity, but with an alternate history and fantastic elements built into the setting.
I’ve been doing a lot of back-of-my-head design work for the Fourth Millennium universe this weekend.
To recap: Fourth Millennium is an alternate-historical fantasy setting, somewhat resembling the situation in and around the Mediterranean basin in middle antiquity. There are a lot of divergences from our history: a Minoan successor state in Sicily that’s a counterweight to both Rome and Carthage, an Alexandrian empire that lasts for several generations before finally breaking apart, a Carthaginian empire that lasts much longer than the real one did, and so on. There are some subtle fantastic elements too, such as working ritual magic, the intervention of gods, and philosophical schools that open the door to special powers of body and mind.
I’ve written several pieces of fiction in this universe, and will probably write more. It’s an ideal setting for me to apply all the time I’ve spent studying the world of antiquity.
It’s also going to become a tabletop RPG setting at some point, and that’s what I’ve been spending a lot of time on over the last couple weeks.
At this point I think the canonical setup for a Fourth Millennium campaign will be a group of young but well-connected characters, firmly embedded in the social and political environment of a given civilized state. In a Hellenistic state, for example, the characters might be born to wealthy or noble families, starting out with obligations to king, home city, family, philosophical school, and so on. Characters will adventure to earn dóxa (glory) and arkhḗ (authority, social power), with the ultimate objective of “everlasting fame,” the kind of historical legacy that people will still be talking about centuries or millennia later. Adventures may involve:
Political intrigue
Fighting against brigands, pirates, barbarians, or other civilized states
Recovering treasures
Exploring strange lands
Gaining standing in a philosophical school through debates and writing learned treastises
Producing great works of art or architecture
Making scientific discoveries or inventing wonderful devices
Becoming a very important figure won’t be out of the question – a prominent strategos, a city or provincial governor, even a king or ruling queen. All of this will hopefully get game-mechanical support.
The models I’m looking toward here are in the Basic Roleplaying (BRP) arena, especially Pendragon and Runequest. I’ve already been doing some design work with BRP, and the system seems adaptable to a game such as I have in mind, so it’s a decent fit.
One neat feature did occur to me today. I suspect the “core book” for Fourth Millennium will focus on the Hellenistic kingdoms, from Sicily in the far west to the receding frontier of Alexander’s empire in the far east. Lots of focus on Hellenistic society, its structure, its customs, and so on. But if the core book does at all well, I could very easily write “splatbooks” describing other parts of the setting – the Roman Republic, the Carthginian Empire, the Parthian kingdom, Egypt (outside Alexandria and the Hellenistic core), and so on. Similar mechanics for each, but differences in character design and social structure. It would be easy, after a while, to mix cultural backgrounds and have a truly globe-trotting campaign.
I suspect I’ll be starting to outline the Fourth Millennium core book this month, and maybe even writing a few sections of the rules or setting background. We’ll see how much I have in hand by the end of July.
Incidentally, if you’re reading this post and you’re interested in seeing more about Fourth Millennium, you might consider signing up for my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/Sharrukin. Patrons get regular updates on all my creative projects, including interim drafts of books in progress. For the past couple of years, my patrons have mostly been seeing work on Architect of Worlds, but if you’re more interested in TTRPG development now might be a good time to sign up.
(Image credit: Angus McBride, cover image for Osprey Publishing, The Thracians: 700 BC-46 AD. I really wish Mr. McBride was still with us, and that I could afford to commission him for art for this project . . .)
Purely for amusement’s sake, here are the GURPS Spaceships writeups for four spacecraft in the Human Destiny setting. I’ve been finding it useful to draw up these ships using the GURPS rules, because they’re a pretty clean (and appropriately generic) system for spaceship design. Naturally, I’ll be adapting these to more system-agnostic terms as I write them up for the Human Destiny sourcebook. You’ll notice I’m already converting certain measurements to the metric system . . .
Human Protectorate Heavy Utility Lander (TL10)
Built on a 1,000-ton (SM+8) 60-meter streamlined hull, this large vehicle was a workhorse of the development of the outer Solar System.
Front Section
[1]: Advanced Metallic Laminate Armor (dDR 10)
[2]: Passenger Seating (60 seats)
[3-6]: Cargo Hold (200 tons)
[core]: Control Room (C8, C/S 7, 4 control stations)
Center Section
[1]: Advanced Metallic Laminate Armor (dDR 10)
[2-6, core]: Cargo Hold (300 tons)
Rear Section
[1]: Advanced Metallic Laminate Armor (dDR 10)
[2-3]: Cargo Hold (100 tons)
[4-5]: Fuel Tank (100 tons hydrogen fuel, 30 mps delta-V)
Built on a 1,000-ton (SM+8) 75-meter streamlined hull, this large spaceplane can be found all across the Hegemony. It can ferry passengers and cargo to and from the surface of inhabited worlds, make short journeys in interplanetary space, or serve as auxiliary craft for a starship.
Front Section
[1]: Exotic Laminate Armor (dDR 30)
[2]: Passenger Seating (60 seats)
[3-6]: Cargo Hold (200 tons)
[core]: Control Room (C10, C/S 9, 4 control stations)
Center Section
[1]: Exotic Laminate Armor (dDR 30)
[2-6]: Cargo Hold (250 tons)
Rear Section
[1]: Exotic Laminate Armor (dDR 30)
[2-4]: Cargo Hold (150 tons)
[5]: Engine Room (1 control station, 1 workspace)
[6!]: Reactionless Engine (1 G acceleration)
[core]: Fusion Reactor (de-rated, 1 PP, 3,000 years endurance)
Features
Exposed Radiators
Wings
Crew Requirements
Pilot (Lieutenant)
Co-pilot (Sublieutenant)
Communications Operator (Enlisted)
Sensors Operator (Enlisted)
Technicians x2 (Enlisted)
Details
dST/HP 70. HT 13. Hnd/SR -1/5. Move 1G/c. Air Speed 4,000 kph. Air Hnd/SR +3/6. SM+8. Loaded mass 1,000 tons. dDR 30. Occupancy 6+60SV. Load 606.6 tons. Cost $73.6 million.
Human Protectorate Heavy Utility Vehicle (TL10)
Built on a 100,000-ton (SM+12) 200-meter unstreamlined hull, this ship has a deep and rich history in the development of the Sol system. One of these vehicles, named Enterprise, was the first (and for a long time the only) Hegemony spaceship ever placed under human control.
Under human command, Enterprise spent decades journeying tirelessly through interplanetary space. The ship was used to set up asteroid-mining bases, to place industrial colonies on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, even to venture out to the Kuiper Belt and harvest comets for the terraforming of Mars. Along the way, the ship gave thousands of humans experience in deep-space operations using Hegemony technology. This cultural experience stood them in good stead when the Hegemony unexpectedly opened the way to the stars in the early 23rd Century.
This starship, built on a 30,000-ton (SM+11) 150-meter unstreamlined hull, is a mainstay of the Hegemony’s mission to explore and monitor interstellar space. Thousands of ships in this class are constantly on the move throughout the wilderness spaces supervised by the Khedai Hegemony. In particular, ships like this began to fan out from Sol soon after the Conquest.
Early in the 23rd Century, the Hegemony began to recruit human crew for these exploration missions, permitting them to contribute to surveys within ten parsecs or so of Sol. Later, Aminata Ndoye (one of the first humans to earn officer’s rank in the Interstellar Service) worked aboard several ships of this class. Indeed, she was the first human to command one of them, the Challenger, during its history-making expedition toward the stars of Orion.
Here’s a first cut at a Human Destiny character under the evolving Basic Roleplaying (BRP) design. This is my occasional protagonist, Aminata Ndoye, as she first appears in the novelette “Pilgrimage.” At this point she is sixteen years old, having just finished her primary education, and she is starting to consider what she plans to do with her life.
Aminata Ndoye
Female human, age 16
Height 1.72 m, mass 60 kg
Deep brown skin, dark brown eyes, close-cropped black hair, solid athletic build
Resident of Dakar, Haute-Guinée du Nord
Mixed Wolof and Egyptian Arab descent
Sunni Muslim with Sufi influences
Social Standing: 22% (Gold card)
Characteristics
STR 13 (Effort roll 65%)
CON 14 (Stamina roll 70%)
SIZ 12
INT 17 (Idea roll 85%)
POW 12 (Luck roll 60%)
DEX 16 (Agility roll 80%)
CHA 13 (Charm roll 65%)
EDU 11 (Knowledge roll 55%)
Damage Modifier: +1d4 Hit Points: 13 Fatigue Points: 27 Power Points: 12 Experience Bonus: +9% Movement (MOV): 10 units/round
Skills
Only those skills that have been improved from their default value (based on skill base values and category bonuses) are specifically listed here.
Communication Skills (+9%)
Language
Wolof (native) 90%
Arabic 40%
French 60%
Persuade 50%
Manipulation Skills (+10%)
Mental Skills (+8%)
Knowledge (Literature) 20%
Science (Astronomy) 30%
Technical (Computer Use) 40%
Perception Skills (+10%)
Physical Skills (+7%)
Pilot (Small Aircraft) 30%
Combat Skills (+10%)
Personality Traits
Sympátheia – 60% kosmos, 40% khaos
Logismós – 70% kosmos, 30% khaos
Prónoia – 50% kosmos, 50% khaos
Prokopé – 50% kosmos, 50% khaos
Andreía – 70% kosmos, 30% khaos
Evexía – 50% kosmos, 50% khaos
General Commentary
In my opinion, this exercise didn’t turn out too badly. It took me maybe an hour to draw up this character, and that’s with me being out of practice with BRP character design and without a paper character sheet to work with.
At this point in her life Aminata is clearly very talented and she has started to develop some skills, but she is far from being a world-class expert on anything. She’s just the equivalent of a precocious high-school student, after all. Her personality traits seem reasonable – Aminata tends to be cool and rational, but she has a sympathetic streak, and she’s also quite brave in a tight situation.
This would be a good example of a very young Human Destiny character with exceptional characteristic rolls, just starting out on an adventuring career. I’m thinking that the character-design rules are on the right track so far.
While I continue to make incremental progress on Architect of Worlds and Twice-Crowned, I also keep thinking about what’s likely to be my next big tabletop RPG project, beginning later this year. That’s a full-fledged historical-fantasy game, probably published under the Cypher System, with the working title of Fourth Millennium.
The premise is that this is the ancient Western world, centered around the Mediterranean basin, but it’s not exactly the world we see in our history books. There are fantastic elements: spirits that can be bargained with, gods who may or may not be kindly disposed toward mortals, magic that works more often than not, strange creatures that lurk in the wilderness beyond the borders of civilization. It’s also an alternate history, with several points of divergence: a survival of Minoan civilization, a Hellenic world that didn’t commit suicide in the fifth century BCE with quite so much short-sighted enthusiasm, an Alexandrian οἰκουμένη that managed to survive its founder’s death. The setting is divided between two incipient world-empires and a whole host of minor kingdoms and barbarian peoples, each with their own distinctive flavor.
One thing I’ve been thinking about is the “canonical adventure” for the setting. My past experience with RPG design tells me that this is really important. Potential players and game-masters need to be clear as to what they can expect to do in a setting. Dungeons & Dragons centers around the dungeon crawl. Traveller centers around doing odd jobs to survive on the fringes of interstellar society. Transhuman Space, when we first developed it, was a lovely rich setting that didn’t have a clear answer for “what do the characters do?” and that handicapped it for a long time.
So what will player characters in Fourth Millennium be doing? I think that boils down to the motto for the setting – something that may end up being the core book’s subtitle:
The future is in your hands.
The idea is that player characters will be thoroughly involved in history as it unfolds in this alternative world. They’ll start out as agents for powerful people – an ambitious Roman senator, a powerful post-Minoan priestess-queen, a provincial governor in the Alexandrian empire, that sort of setup. At first they’ll be carrying out missions for their patron – accumulating rewards of wealth and treasure, sure, but also gathering social standing and authority. Eventually they’ll become more independent, becoming movers and shakers in their own right. They’ll feel as if they’re making a mark on the future of the world – although, to be sure, Fate and the gods will have their own say.
So yeah, fighting monsters, but more often human foes: cutpurses and assassins, pirates, brigands, barbarian raiders. Exploring the uncivilized wilderness, traveling in strange foreign lands. Solving mysteries, making scientific discoveries, writing books that everyone wants to read. Making brilliant speeches, intriguing to discredit or eliminate political rivals, persuading people to vote one way or another. Making a fortune in trade or loot, or just collecting the revenue from big land-holdings. Fighting in wars, even commanding armies. Winning elections, holding political office, governing whole provinces. Eventually reaching the top of the social pyramid in whatever republic, kingdom, or empire you call your own. The end-point of a successful long-term campaign might be to gather such fame and glory that people will still be talking about you at the end of the Fourth Millennium.
One major inspiration here might be games like Pendragon or Paladin – games that aren’t just richly imagined settings, but structured campaigns that encourage play across years and even generations.
I know, I know. Ambitious as all hell, especially for a one-person development shop. Well, a man’s reach should exceed his grasp. And you never know, maybe the Muses are thinking kindly of me.
Alexandros III of Makedon, called “The Great,” first Great King of the Argead dynasty (2702-2735 EK) (Image by Arienne King, original found here)
By the reckoning of years used in the Danassan Hegemony, the date is 3000 Ἔτος Κόσμου, the three thousandth year since the creation of the world. A new millennium is at hand, an age of prosperous cities and growing empires, new gods and ancient mysteries, science and darkest magic. It seems likely to be an age of conflict as well. Ambitious generals and kings struggle for power, and barbarian peoples look with envy on the wealth and sophistication of civilized lands. What history will reveal next, not even the gods can know for sure.
Fourth Millennium has been conceived as a game setting, derived from some of my own fiction: short stories set in the Greek “Heroic Age” as well as the novel-in-progress Twice-Crowned and its eventual sequels. It’s grown past its literary beginnings, though, taking on shape as a rich alternate-historical fantasy world.
Fourth Millennium echoes the Mediterranean world of our own history, in the first century before the Common Era . . . but fate has taken its own turns here. An offshoot of Minoan civilization survived, creating a neo-Hellenic culture in which women hold religious and political power. The Peloponnesian War may have taken place, but its outcome was less viciously harmful to the Hellenic civilization at its peak. Alexander the Great may have died young, but his son survived and came out on top of the civil wars that followed his death. The Roman Republic is on the rise, but it faces tough competition in the East, in the form of an Hellenistic world that is stronger and more unified.
Adventurers can come from a variety of origins: Greeks of several varieties, Romans and other Latins, Celts, Germans, Berbers, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Judeans, Persians, and many more. They may be warriors and soldiers, oracles and seers, legates and senators, or philosophers and scientists. There will be a variety of possible campaign structures: military stories, politics and intrigue, high-stakes commercial ventures, mysteries, exploration, possibly all of these at once.
The concept in my head is for a Cypher System game, published under the Monte Cook Games open license. I can already see the broad outlines of the game, and a lot of details that will fit the setting. I’m still debating whether to write one book or two here – there may be so much setting detail, so much to suggest a variety of structures for campaigns and adventures, that it won’t all fit in one volume.
Best guess is that I’ll be pulling together notes for Fourth Millennium while I work on getting Architect of Worlds out the door in the first half of this year. I might post a few fragments and notes here, or push them to my patrons as small freebies. Once Architect is finished, assuming my muse is still engaged by then, serious work on this project is likely to get under way.
Have to say, the more I think about this project the more excited I am for it. The ancient Mediterranean world has been a personal fascination for over half my life; it will be nice to get back to it as a game designer. Not to mention I’ve learned a lot since I wrote GURPS Greece, coming up on thirty years ago . . .
Here’s a small sample of material for the Human Destiny setting and game book that’s slowly taking shape. In the Cepheus Engine and related tabletop games, there’s often a system of “technology levels” that helps characterize what kind of gear and weapons one might expect to find on a given world. The concept has its problems, but it’s a quick shorthand that’s useful for game purposes. Since Human Destiny is eventually going to be published as a Cepheus Engine game, it seems useful to put together a set of “tech level” tables for the setting.
Here’s a first very rough draft for that section of the Human Destiny sourcebook.
Technology Levels in the Human Destiny Setting
The Khedai Hegemony maintains a sophisticated scheme for classifying the technological and social progress of emerging civilizations. The following system of “tech levels” is a (vastly simplified) shorthand for the Hegemony’s scheme.
General Technology
As is the standard in any Cepheus Engine game, Technology Level or Tech Level is a measure of the social, scientific, and industrial progress of a given world or society. In Hegemony documents, each TL has an evocative descriptor, and can be associated with an approximate era in human history.
TL
Descriptor
Approximate Date or Typical World
0
Era of Stone Tools
Paleolithic, Mesolithic, or Neolithic society
1
Era of Metal Tools
3000 BCE
2
Era of Exploration
1500 CE
3
Era of Mechanization
1750 CE
4
Era of Electricity
1900 CE
5
Era of Radio
1930 CE
6
Era of Atomic Power
1950 CE
7
Era of Space Exploration
1970 CE
8
Era of Information
1990 CE
9
Era of Crisis
2020 CE
10 (A)
Low Interstellar Society
Minor human colony world or outpost
11 (B)
Low Interstellar Society
Major human colony world or outpost
12 (C)
Average Interstellar Society
Maximum level for the Human Protectorate
13 (D)
Average Interstellar Society
Maximum level for a second-tier client society
14 (E)
High Interstellar Society
Maximum level for a first-tier client society
15 (F)
High Interstellar Society
Maximum level for the Khedai Hegemony as a whole
It may not be immediately obvious, but the Hegemony’s scheme for classifying technological progress includes two singularities, each of which creates a discontinuity in the above table.
The normal pattern for any newly evolving technological civilization is to progress from TL 0, passing through the higher levels in order, finally reaching some maximum level of social and technological progress. At this point the civilization invariably suffers an existential crisis that, at a minimum, forces all its component societies back to some lower TL. This may happen multiple times before the sapient species in question is finally driven into extinction. The highest point of independent development is almost never higher than TL 9. In fact, civilizations that reach TL 9 on their own almost always suffer particularly deadly collapses, likely to cause immediate species extinction – hence the term “Era of Crisis.”
The transition from TL 9 to TL A represents the first discontinuity or singularity in the scheme. Very few civilizations manage to pass the Era of Crisis on their own. Almost all societies that survive the transition and attain interstellar status do so only because an older civilization intervenes, as the Khedai Hegemony did with humanity.
Under the Praxis observed by the Khedai Hegemony, newly discovered sapient societies at TL 0-3 are observed from a distance under a strict non-interference policy. Societies at TL 4-9 are subject to close observation, and possibly annexation if (as in almost all cases) they appear unlikely to survive on their own.
The interstellar levels that follow (TL A through TL F) do not represent a hierarchy of new technologies that appear one after the other in a progressive fashion. Instead, they represent an array of mature technologies, all millions of years old, which are all available throughout the Hegemony. The TL of a world which falls in this range represents the kind of technology that is widely available on that world, because it is locally manufactured and can be supported by existing infrastructure. Items from a higher TL will also be available, but possibly at a higher cost in social credit, or with specific limitations under the Praxis.
Humans know nothing about any technologies above TL F. Humans may speculate, and the khedai doubtless know what technologies might be possible, but under the Praxis such possibilities are cloaked in silence. A few humans suspect that this silence conceals a second discontinuity or singularity, beyond which even the Hegemony dares not go.
Energy Technologies
The Hegemony’s scheme for classifying technologies is most strongly determined by a society’s ability to harness and direct energy to carry out the work of civilization.
TL
Typical Developments
0
Muscle power Domesticated animals Slave labor
1
Hydromechanical power Water wheels
2
Wind power Windmills
3
Steam power Exploitation of fossil fuels (coal) Crude electrical transmission and storage
4
Widespread use of electrical power Exploitation of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas) Oil refining to produce high-quality fuels Hydroelectric power
5
Rural electrification Urban power grids
6
Nuclear fission reactors Regional power grids
7
Increasing use of solar power Continental power grids
8
Mass application of renewable energy
9
Crude “smart grids” Possible abandonment of fossil fuels
10 (A)
Advanced “smart grids” Advanced fission power Superconducting power transmission Hyper-efficient power cells Solar power satellites Complete abandonment of fossil fuels
11 (B)
Nuclear fusion reactors
12 (C)
Advanced fusion power
13 (D)
Antimatter generation and transport
14 (E)
Advanced antimatter power Portable fusion power Catalyzed fusion
15 (F)
Miniaturized fusion power
Communications and Information
This category covers technologies for generating, transmitting, storing, and applying information. It also includes various forms of artificial intelligence and artificial sapience.
TL
Typical Developments
0
Oral communication
1
Written communication Printing press (block printing) Crude cryptography
Radio broadcasting Massive special-purpose computing devices
6
Television broadcasting Massive general-purpose computing devices Information theory
7
Early packet-switched networks Personal computers Industrial automation Advanced cryptography (digital) Public-key cryptography
8
Global Internet Advanced personal computers Advanced ICS/SCADA systems Large-scale public-key infrastructures
9
Miniaturized personal computers Early natural-language interfaces Early automatic translation Sophisticated robots and drones “Cloud” computing Crude quantum computation
Sophisticated personal assistants Advanced expert systems Advanced cybershells Sophisticated personality emulation
12 (C)
Early Virtual Sapience systems Fully Turing-capable systems Undirected machine learning “City minds”
13 (D)
Advanced Virtual Sapience systems
14 (E)
Early Artificial Sapience systems Proof-of-consciousness systems “World minds”
15 (F)
Advanced Artificial Sapience systems Transapience threshold
Environmental
This category covers technologies that can alter or maintain planetary environments. It also covers common developments in environmental awareness – the process by which a civilization learns how its own activities can impact the environment upon which it relies for support.
TL
Typical Developments
0
Agriculture and pastoralism Early trade networks Forest clearing Overhunting Megafaunal extinction
1
Early cities Basic aqueducts and sanitation Advanced trade networks Continental empires
2
Global trade networks Transcontinental empires and colonization
3
Indoor plumbing Advanced sanitation Large-scale use of fossil fuels Large-scale habitat destruction begins
4
Super-cities (>1 million) Large-scale water treatment Sophontogenic climate change begins
5
Super-cities (>10 million)
6
Megalopolitan regions (>50 million) “Green Revolution” in agriculture Awareness of global harms from pollution
7
Megalopolitan regions (>100 million) Sophontogenic mass extinction begins Awareness of sophontogenic climate change
8
Gene-modified crop species Awareness of sophontogenic mass extinction
9
Crude geoengineering Civilizational collapse
10 (A)
Organic urban reserves Advanced geoengineering Climate and ecological remediation De-extinction
11 (B)
Domed cities Artificial species to fill ecological niches Type I (Mars) terraforming
12 (C)
Advanced climate and ecological remediation “Biome minds” monitor wild ecosystems
13 (D)
Type II (Venus, Mercury, Luna) terraforming
14 (E)
“World minds” monitor global ecosystems
15 (F)
Type III (extremal) terraforming
Medical
This category covers medical and biological technologies.
TL
Typical Developments
0
Herbal remedies Crude surgery and prosthetics
1
Diagnostic process Basic understanding of anatomy
2
Advanced understanding of anatomy Crude immunization techniques
3
Germ theory and bacteriology Epidemiology Antiseptic surgery Advanced anesthesia Crude psychiatry
4
Antibiotics X-rays and other internal imaging Public health measures Mass vaccination
5
Blood transfusions Discovery of transplant rejection
6
Eradication of some infectious diseases Discovery of the structure of DNA
7
Theories of molecular evolution Crude genetic engineering Advanced prosthetics
Here’s another teaser for the Cepheus Engine hack I’m putting together, for the new version of the Human Destiny sourcebook. This is part of the character design rules – the draft list of available “careers” for characters to indulge in during the lifepath generation process.
Again, this list is kind of atypical for a Cepheus Engine game. A few of the careers here are somewhat analogous to the ones you’ll find in the classic space-opera RPG that the engine emulates. Others are not – again, Human Destiny stories are likely to be heavily social-interaction-oriented, in a context of post-scarcity economics and a strong interstellar state. That sets different parameters (and constraints) on the kind of “adventures” that are likely to happen.
Careers List
Activist – Individual who pursues a cause, agitating for social or political change.
Artist – Individual who pursues celebrity status and supplements the Citizen’s Allowance by producing and selling works of art or handicraft.
Athlete – Individual who pursues celebrity status and supplements the Citizen’s Allowance by taking part in one or more competitive sports.
Bureaucrat – Official in an organized bureaucracy, either under the Hegemony or in an éthnos, charged with following the details of administrative process.
Citizen – Individual who subsists almost entirely on the Citizen’s Allowance, and who spends most of their time on entertainment or socializing.
Colonist – Individual who has settled on a more-or-less Earthlike (or terraformed) world and works to support the human community there.
Counselor – Individual who provides psychological care or social services.
Dissident – Individual who has rejected Hegemony society, but still uses some technology and lives in a Free Zone.
Ecological Reclamation Service –Member of the Hegemony’s scientific corps, overseeing wilderness reserves to support and protect the natural ecology.
Entertainer – Individual who pursues celebrity status and supplements the Citizen’s Allowance by performing before an audience.
Feral – Individual who has escaped the Hegemony entirely, by rejecting all technology and living in the deep wilderness.
Guard Service – Member of the Hegemony’s paramilitary force, enforcing the Praxis on planetary surfaces, also (rarely) carrying out annexation against pre-stellar civilizations.
Influencer – Individual who advocates for ideas, products, or services, primarily on the global information grid.
Interstellar Service – Member of the Hegemony’s interstellar paramilitary force, carrying out missions involving peacekeeping, enforcement of the Praxis, and exploration of deep space.
Mediator – Individual who provides negotiation or conflict-resolution services.
Physician – Individual who provides medical care.
Rogue – Individual who frequently engages in deception and subterfuge, whether in violation of the Praxis or not.
Scholar – Individual who is engaged in and has expert knowledge of a science, or some similar formal body of organized knowledge. Also, anyone attending or teaching at an institution of higher learning.
Service Specialist – Individual who provides personal service to others, most often in the hospitality or leisure industries.
Spacer – Individual who works aboard a deep-space outpost or colony, usually on an asteroid or moon.
Technician – Individual who is skilled in designing, building, maintaining, or repairing complex technological systems.
Now that I’ve blocked this out, the rest of the character generation rules should follow without much trouble. We’ll see how much progress I’m able to make over the next week or two.
I’ve been working on a Cepheus Engine kitbash for my Human Destiny setting bible and game.
One thing that became obvious fairly quickly is that the usual skill sets for Cepheus Engine, as derived from Traveller, may not work well in this setting. The typical premise in the older games is a band of misfit characters trying to make a living through some combination of troubleshooting, mercenary work, or tramp-freighter trade. Those are a lot less likely in Human Destiny stories, which are more likely to be heavily social-interaction-oriented in the context of post-scarcity economics and a fairly strong interstellar state. Think Star Trek or the Culture, rather than Firefly or The Expanse.
So here’s the tentative skill set for the new game. I anticipate task and conflict mechanics to work in a standard manner for Cepheus Engine, but this is distinct enough from the SRD that the game will certainly be presented as “An Alternate Cepheus Engine Universe.”
Incidentally, I spent a lot of time reviewing other science-fiction games in my library to remind myself how this was done elsewhere. It’s actually rather amusing how many games, published across four decades of time, have taken very similar approaches to this problem . . .
Tentative Skill List
Artistic Skills
Fine Arts (Specializes to Architecture, Body Art, Calligraphy, Drawing, Interior Decorating, Musical Composition, Photography, Poetry, Pottery, Sculpting, Video Production, Virtual Production, Woodworking, or Writing)
Handicrafts (Specializes to Basket Weaving, Brewing, Blacksmith, Bookbinding, Carpentry, Cooking, Gardening, Glassblowing, Jeweler, Leatherworking, Masonry, Needlework, Sewing, Winemaking, or Woodworking)
Performing Arts (Specializes to Acting, Dancing, Singing, or a specific musical instrument)
Athletic Skills
Athletics
Free Fall
Observation
Riding
Sports (Specializes to a specific sport)
Stealth
Unarmed Combat
Interpersonal Skills
Carousing
Debate
Deception
Diplomacy
Games (Specializes to Gambler, Virtual Gamer, or a specific game)
Instruction
Interrogation
Leadership
Negotiation
Personal Service
Persuasion
Public Speaking
Operations Skills
Battle Dress
Demolitions
System Operations (Specializes to Comms, Computers, Security, Sensors, or Telepresence)
Vacc Suit
Outdoor Skills
Animal Handling
Navigation
Survival
Tracking
Professional Skills
Admin
Broker
Forensics
Law
Medicine
Memetics
Politics
Profession (Specializes to a specific career)
Protocol
Strategy
Streetwise
Tactics
Scientific Skills
Research
Science (Specializes to Anthropology, Archaeology, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Ecology, Economics, Geology, History, Linguistics, Literature, Mathematics, Metallurgy, Meteorology, Paleontology, Philosophy, Physics, Physiology, Planetology, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Theology, or Xenology)
Starship Skills
Astrogation
Engineering (Specializes to Drive, Life Support, or Power Plant)
Gunnery (Specializes to Bay Weapon, Orbital Bombardment, Spinal Mount Weapon, or Turret Weapon)
Pilot
Technical Skills
Civil Engineering
Construction
Cybernetics
Electronics
Gravitics
Mechanics
Vehicle Skills
Air Vehicles (Specializes to Airship, Grav Aircraft, Rotor Aircraft, or Winged Aircraft)
Ground Vehicles (Specializes to Cycle, Hovercraft, Tracked Vehicle, or Wheeled Vehicle)
Water Vehicles (Specializes to Motor Ship, Sailing Ship, Small Craft, or Submarine)
Weapon Skills
Guns (Specializes to Archaic Guns, Energy Guns, Gravitic Guns, and Stun Guns)
Heavy Weapons
Melee Weapons (Specializes to Fencing Weapons, Impact Weapons, Knives, Staves, or Swords)
Missile Weapons (Specializes to Bows or Crossbows)
Current status of the project: I had vaguely hoped to have a new partial rough draft for my patrons by the end of December, with the character rules more or less finished, but designing this list took a lot longer than I expected.
I’ll have my formal “planning for January” blog post in a few days, but I suspect my main efforts for next month will involve finishing this game-design task so I can push a version 0.4 draft to my patrons, and possibly writing a new Human Destiny novelette. A murder mystery, oddly enough, although murders are vanishingly rare in the Human Destiny setting . . .
One piece of my game-design history that doesn’t get out much today is that I used to design LARPs (Live Action Role-Playing games) for local conventions. The idea is that with character packets and minimal rules, players move freely around a big room to interact, rather than sitting around a table with paper, pencil, and dice. Games like this tend to be big, negotiation-heavy political things, and you often need two or three GMs to make them work.
Probably my best work was a “first contact” LARP, set in the late 21st century, in which half the players represented human factions – nation-states and such – and the other half were all factions from a Galactic Empire that had just met humans. The result was a four-hour social furball, as alliances formed and shattered, and everyone did their best to scheme their way into an advantage given the rules I had designed for them. The game almost ran itself, and it was wonderful to watch.
Today that piece of my creative brain woke up with a vengeance, while I was listening to my audiobook of The Silmarillion in the car, as one does.
Working title: “The Fall of the Noldor.”
The game would be designed for about 20 players. It would start with each player handed their character packet and a cheap flashlight. Players find that they are to take the roles of children or grandchildren of Finwë – only Fëanor himself is played by a GM. After everyone has a chance to read over their material, the lights are turned out and the next few scenes are played out in complete darkness, to simulate the confusion after the death of the Two Trees.
The game properly begins with a GM walking in and calling the Noldor to a meeting before the king’s house in Tirion. Once the players gather around, probably using their flashlights to see, the GM delivers Fëanor’s speech, in which he kicks off the rebellion against the Valar and the exodus back to Middle-earth. He closes with the Oath of Fëanor.
The rest of the game follows the debates and conflicts that follow while Fëanor leads the Noldor to Middle-earth. Who will follow Fëanor in swearing his Oath? Will all the Noldor agree to follow him, or will some or all of them remain behind? Will they recognize him as king, or will they choose another descendant of Finwë to follow? Will they travel light, or try to bring some of their treasures? Will they negotiate with the Teleri for their ships, or will they try to take them by force? What happens when the Valar intervene? How will the Elves survive, marching thousands of miles in the dark wilderness? How will they make the crossing to Middle-earth? What will happen when Fëanor himself turns against the people he regards as insufficiently loyal?
There should be a web of cross-cutting loyalties and resentments among the characters. I’d want to distribute specific resources among them, so they have to share and trade in order to succeed – also, so there won’t be enough of anything for everyone to succeed. I’ll probably need mechanisms for each Elf-leader to gather and keep a following among the Noldor population, carry treasures or supplies, and meet natural challenges during the march. I’ll need a mechanism for combat against anyone who might try to stop the Noldor – or, if worst comes to worst, among the Noldor themselves.
Since a lot of players probably know the story already, I might need to throw a few curve-balls into the plot. Hmm.
. . . Well, I’ll probably never actually design this in full, and if I do I’ll probably never get the chance to run it. Still, it’s a neat thought-exercise. Besides, any excuse to recite some of the speeches from The Silmarillion is welcome! Tolkien had a gift for dramatic dialogue.
