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Rethinking the “Human Destiny” RPG

Rethinking the “Human Destiny” RPG

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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.

Echoes

Echoes

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While I continue rooting through my basement, boxing up the last scraps of small items I don’t want to discard, I’m coming across some interesting items.

Back in the 1995-2005 timeframe, I kept many handwritten notes in small notebooks. At the time a lot of my creative thinking happened at the office, or in other places where I didn’t have access to my computer or the Internet, so handwritten notes were very useful. Apparently I still have all of those notebooks, salted away on low shelves or in boxes that haven’t been opened in many years; very few of these got water-damaged in the recent disaster. So, for example, just today I found:

  • An extensive set of notes titled “Life after Steve Jackson Games,” in which I started planning an independent creative career. Most of that plan doesn’t seem to have survived contact with reality, but a few of its features do seem to have been implemented.
  • Huge piles of notes from when I was helping to develop setting material for GURPS Traveller, including the Interstellar Wars setting. More piles of notes that eventually went into Transhuman Space.
  • My own version of the Aldebaran Sector for Traveller, along with a contract (never completed) to write a GURPS Traveller sourcebook titled Grand Frontiers.
  • Notes and hardcopy of the rules for the Game of Empire system I developed for realm-level play in Traveller. This is the game that I refereed for a bunch of GURPS Traveller fans about 2000, developing a ton of background information (including months’ worth of Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society news items) for the Solomani Rim.
  • Notes for a new generic RPG system. Apparently I was already thinking in terms of developing my own rules mechanics so as to publish game material without running into licensing issues. Probably never going to be developed now, but still interesting.
  • Notes for a realm-management game set in Bronze Age Greece. I think this did get deployed in a GURPS campaign I was running back in the day, although one of my players reacted so badly to the system in its first session that the campaign disbanded almost immediately afterward.
  • Extensive notes for at least three genre settings. One these eventually gave rise to my first complete original novel (the unpublishable one). Another looks very much like an early version of my Human Destiny space opera setting. A third was a fantasy setting I had forgotten about entirely and might now think about revisiting.
  • Extensive musings on philosophy and theology. I’m almost afraid to re-read these in detail. I’m a cheerful solitary regarding such matters, so it doesn’t concern me that my ideas aren’t in lockstep with any extant school of thought. Still, I suspect the me of 2023 might find the me of circa 2000 kind of hard to take.

Quite the treasure trove. Hard to say whether any of it will ever see the light of day again – it’s not as if I don’t have enough creative work to do already – but it’s still interesting reading. All of it’s going in boxes to be preserved.

Thoughts on Fourth Millennium

Thoughts on Fourth Millennium

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“Battle of Pydna 168 BCE,” by Peter Connolly

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.