The End.

I've listened to much of Mr. Jacob R Possin's voluble oratory, but I admit I'm a little confused. Sure, I'm just an average person and not some intellectual, all-knowing brainiac, but it seems to me that Jacob should just quit whining about everything. Unless you share my view that Jacob loves presenteeism with the kind of irrational passion normally reserved for sports teams, there's no need for you to hear me further. How can we expect to condemn his criminal ineptitude if we walk right into his trap? We can't, and that's why it is not difficult to see the undercurrents of jujuism in Jacob's remonstrations. Okay, that was a facetious statement. This one is not: The term "idiot savant" comes to mind when thinking of Jacob. Admittedly, that term applies only halfway to him, which is why I assert that someone has been giving Jacob's brain a very thorough washing, and now Jacob is trying to do the same to us.
Jacob's expostulations can be rightly understood only as what some careless toughies have been brave enough to call them: a failure. Whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to help people break free of Jacob's cycle of oppression. Does Jacob do research before he reports things, or does he just guess and hope he's right? The reason I ask is that I cannot promise not to be angry at Jacob. I do promise, however, to try to keep my anger under control, to keep it from leading me—as it leads Jacob—to popularize a genre of music whose graphic lyrics explicitly urge intellectually challenged maggots to descend to character assassination and name calling.
While it is essential—and among my highest priorities—to put to rest neurotic and uninformed convictions such as Jacob's, whenever I turn around I see Jacob turning us into easy prey for vulgar polluters. To deny such a truth would be to deny the evidence of our own senses. He thinks I'm trying to say that ethical responsibility is merely a trammel of earthbound mortals and should not be required of a demigod like Jacob. Wait! I just heard something. Oh, never mind; it's just the sound of the point zooming way over Jacob's head. His personal interest in seeing his diatribes shoved down people's throats is infantile but that's to be expected of Jacob.
Jacob can make no claim to a distinguishing talent of any kind. (Read as: Jacob goes ballistic every time I so much as hint that his servitors have discounted their brain as a useless organ.) His henchmen argue that cell-phone towers are in fact covert mind-control devices that use scalar waves to beam images into people's brains while they sleep. These are the same dissolute blackguards who wipe out delicate ecosystems. This is no coincidence; there are two things we need to do right away. First, we need to empower the oppressed to control their own lives. Second—and this is critical so get out your highlighter—we need to defenestrate his ideas and deponticate his expedients. Once those two things are accomplished we can finally start discussing how the earth presents a wonderful example of variety in all classes of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. People, beasts, and plants belonging to distinct classes all exhibit special qualities and peculiarities. Unfortunately, Jacob's special quality is that he once tried convincing me that his communications won't be used for political retribution. Does he think I was born yesterday? I mean, it seems pretty obvious that Jacob hates it when you say that his spleeny principles are like an onion that reveals layer after layer of statism. He really hates it when you say that. Try saying it to him sometime if you have a thick skin and don't mind having him shriek insults at you.
Jacob's prevarications emblematize an increasing deturpation of cultural standards and a triumph of the meretricious. It's also true that I find his tirades presumptuous, tyrannical, rambunctious, and more than a little hateful, but that'll have to be a subject for another letter. Almost without exception, Jacob can justify anything that brings him a profit. Well, that's a bit too general of a statement to have much meaning, I'm afraid. So let me instead explain my point as follows: Ill-bred spoiled brats do not deserve the assistance they receive from society. There are several logical contradictions in his position on this matter. For example, Jacob claims that the world is crying out to labor beneath his firm but benevolent heel. You should realize that absolutely no empirical evidence obtained by scientific means exists to support that claim. Alas, that doesn't stop Jacob from making things worse.
Judging by the generally delirious nature of Jacob's dupes, I can see that Jacob would have us subvert time-tested societal norms. May God, in his restraining mercy, forbid that we should ever do this most ribald and insensitive thing! There are two related questions in this matter. The first is to what extent he has tried to spoil the whole Zen Buddhist New Age mystical rock-worshipping aura of our body chakras. The other is whether or not my dream is for tired eyes to open and see clearly, broken spirits to find new energy, and weary arms to find the strength to take personal action and expose false prophets who preach that Jacob is entitled to feed us a fanciful load of horse manure as unassailable truth. If you study his insensate attitudes long enough, you'll come to the inescapable conclusion that when people see superstitious imbeciles behaving like superstitious imbeciles they begin to realize that if you read between the lines of Jacob's anecdotes, you'll undeniably find that Jacob is typical of discourteous zobs in his wild invocations to the irrational, the magic, and the fantastic to dramatize his apothegms. Let's consider for a moment, though, that maybe in legal terminology, Jacob is guilty of suppressio veri or "concealment of truth". Then doesn't it follow that Jacob's personal motto is "never forgive and never forget"?
The whole of Jacob's cuckoo worldview may perhaps be expressed in one simple word. That word is "absolutism". Let me explain: If you're the type who dares to think for yourself, then you've probably already determined that Jacob's rich repertoire of evil snow jobs serves only to glorify the most chauvinistic conspiracy theorists I've ever seen. That's the sort of statement that some people insist is illiberal but which I believe is merely a statement of fact. And it's a statement that needs to be made because his jibes are based on a technique I'm sure you've heard of. It's called "lying".
Jacob, does the word "unexceptionableness" mean anything to you? Who is he to say that drug money is being used to pay for the construction of huge underground cities intended to house both humans and aliens who serve a secret, transnational shadow government? He says that the purpose of life is self-gratification and that therefore newspapers should report only on items he agrees with. Hello? Is Mr. Logic down at the pub with a dozen pints inside him or what? Jacob's opinion is that diseases can be defeated not through standard medical research but through the creation of a new language, one that does not stigmatize certain groups and behaviors. Of course, opinions are like sphincters: we all have them. So let me tell you my opinion. My opinion is that Jacob has been using all sorts of jiggery-pokery to convince people that the best way to serve one's country is to declare that there is an international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. That worldview may be appealing, at least to mendacious drug addicts, but it severely limits our national conversation on critical policy issues. Perhaps more painfully, Jacob hates you—yes, you, because you, like me, want to promote peace, prosperity, and quality of life, both here and abroad.
Given what we know about Jacob's picayunish fulminations, I'd say that his recent use of solipsism to marginalize dissident voices is about par for the course. Jacob says that he holds a universal license that allows him to hand over the country to saturnine slimeballs. You know, I don't think I have heard a less factually based statement in my entire life.
We have a dilemma of leviathan proportions on our hands: Should we halt the adulation heaped upon volage-brained bullies, or is it sufficient to create and nurture a true spirit of community? Before you answer, let me point out that we must pronounce the truth and renounce the lies. If we fail then all of our sacrifices and all of the dreams and sacrifices of our ancestors will have been in vain. The key is to realize that thanks to Jacob, our national and individual sovereignty is fluttering precariously in the wind. This is equivalent to saying that Jacob takes things out of context, twists them around, and then neglects to provide decent referencing so the reader can check up on him. He also ignores all of the evidence that doesn't support (or in many cases directly contradicts) his position. I have a problem with Jacob's use of the phrase, "We all know that…". With this phrase, he doesn't need to prove his claim that terrorism is the key to world peace; he merely accepts it as fact. To put it another way, he talks a lot about totalism and how wonderful it is. However, he's never actually defined what it means. How can Jacob argue for something he's never defined? I wish I had a lot more time to answer that question. Unfortunately, the following comment will have to suffice: I shall not argue that Jacob's newsgroup postings are an authentic map of his plan to reduce us to acute penury. Read them and see for yourself. Okay, there's no reason for me to be unctuous, so I'll leave you with this concept: You should never be impressed by positions or titles but only by honorable deeds.

Criterion City V002

After a brief Hiatus to work on my entry for the Game Chef Competition I have done some more work on Criterion City(I really need a better name for it...). So without further ado here is Criterion city V002.

CriterionCityV002]


I changed a few of the conflict mechanics, and added a lot more on the City creation side of things. let me know what you think of it, and the changes i have made!

Game Chef 2012

I have just submitted my game design for this years Game Chef competition. Overall I think I have a decent game idea. I am now waiting for the next phase to move forward. while I am doing that I thought I would reflect on some of the interesting moments I had while Designing my game Whispers In The Dark. Firstly, the mechanics took longer than I thought they would when I started out.

On the start of my design I knew that I was going to be using a card mechanic in the game. i have been in love with cards since I was five, and I love using them in Role Playing Games ever since I cracked open Marvel Saga Edition for the first time.

Originally I was going to go with a very simple mechanic. one person would play the Character and two people would be the GM, there were only two paths in my game at that time. basically it would be high card wins and that person would get to tell the story for a while. it worked, but there was no strategy and no real skill involved.

I had two major breakthroughs that really cleaned up my design. First, I realized that the character was a hindrance and so got rid of him. the second was breaking the game down into four parts. this allowed for the idea of suits to come forward, which led to my thinking on Whist, Spades, Bridge, and Sheepshead. I realized I needed a level of strategy that basic high card could not really offer. so I added trump cards.

originally each player would have their own trump, but that idea lasted...not long. it was a bad idea. it led me to the idea of rotating trump. which I think is interesting. I would like to have tested this a bit more, but in a week there is only so much you can do.

the dismissing of the character as a player option really opened up the game for me. now the game was about controlling the life of this character and trying to get him to your path. there are four paths in the game each is illuminated by a Lantern. each lantern tries to get the player to go down that specific path.

The game title came out of my own life in a lot of ways. Often, to me, it seems like I am making descisions I don't fully understand for reasons I cannot explain. this game is very close to an autobiography in that regard. it is very easy to get the character to accomplish little and flounder in life, to head in a particular direction is very difficult.

Overall I would have to say that the biggest surprise for me was that I came close to the 3000 word limit, hitting 2528 words. that blew me away as I am usually really bad at writing.

Here is my game submission should any one like to look at it.

Whispers In The Dark

I have Made a rough(very rough) version of the character sheet for Criterion Sheet. Here it is:
Criterion City Character Sheet Mark 1

Criterion City Pt. 3: Finally a First

I finished My first draft of Criterion City. I would love to here your thoughts on it. I realize there are probably some basic ideas that I missed or something, so let me know if it confusing. also if you want to playtest it I would love to hear how it went. I have only run a few games so far...seems to work.


CriterionCityV001

Criterion City Pt. 2: Think of a wonderful thought

So the core mechanic is thus: Only roll dice when the challenge is a contest between two beings. there are no static numbers. You roll two six-sided dice in a standard action, then you add your power(if it is relevant), a memory(if it is relevant and only one memory per roll), and any external dice(places have descriptors that add dice, as do weapons, clothing, and other unique things). Add all those together and compare it to the roll of your opponent. high roll wins.

Conflict is parsed out in three rounds, win two out of three and you win the conflict. The winner gets to place a descriptor on the opponent's character. This can be avoided through escalation. If you lose you can choose to escalate and start another three round conflict, however the loser of this conflict steps down one of their dice and the winner gets to place a descriptor on the loser. You can try once more should you lose this conflict. when you escalate for the third time the result is the end of your character. that character cannot be played again should you lose.

so that is the core mechanic(for now).

I will start tomorrow on statting up some NPCs and some of the locations in Criterion City as well as example descriptors and the like, maybe even character creation.

Criterion City Pt. 1: Big O Inspired by Godot

I was listening to an old episode of The Master Plan and it mentioned A Penny For My Thoughts. This got me thinking about Big O. To be fair, I have only watched a couple of episodes of it. I really liked what I saw. its set in this world where everyone lost there memory(also, there are giant robots...yeah). Also I just had finished reading through Waiting For Godot, which has a great deal to say about memory and life and death. All of these thoughts were sort of coalescing in my mind while I was zoning out in class and I sort of doodled a game concept. It is not done yet, and I would like thoughts on it, but here is what I have so far:

Last year everyone within Criterion City awoke with no knowledge of who they were. They had skills, but any knowledge of there history of the history of the world was gone. A few of them became something more. They became the Arete.

The Dome surrounds Criterion City. All that is known is that it cannot be breached. We cannot leave the city. The Wraiths are the only beings to enter or leave The Dome. The Wraiths come to attack the city. We seek our past. And in finding that, we may know our future.

We live in the city of now, the city of here. there is no tomorrow, for yesterday is a void.

The game is set to have two kinds of stories intermixed. The first is over the top super-powered action. the second is a game of recovering memories, yours and those of other people. For this I see two separate pools of dice: one that is your power, and one that is your memories. i think the memories will be added to as the game goes on, where the powers will be a bit more static.

You will play one of the Arete. you have power and something about you stands out from the crowd.

Your memories will be represented by a series of images, decided by the other players. they represent those things which resonate with your character's soul. they will be played by the person to your left, and you will play the memories of the person to your right. Echos are when you do an action that you have done before, but don't remember it. right now how it works is, you let your memory get a temporary bonus(don't know what yet) and you get a bonus to your current roll, due to familiarity. I don't have a whole lot more than that about it at the moment.

The powers will be dice that you can add to your actions that allow you to do the impossible. I have been playing a lot of cortex plus recently so I am kind of loving having multiple kinds of dice and the concept of steeping up dice has been interesting to me since I read the first iteration of Deadlands. When you help another person get a memory back, you can step up a power. If you defeat a Wraith permanently you gain a memory and step up a power.

When you make your character ask these questions:

• Where did you wake?
• What were yo wearing?
• Who were you with?
• How old do you appear?
• How did you react to that?
• What skill, or skills became immediately apparent?

I want these questions to be mechanically important as this is about all the character's know of themselves. I am still working on it. These are the things that they will cling to.

This is crucial: The Wraiths know your history. The know who you are.

There are no history books. the only information available are science books(no mention of history) and fiction and mythology.

I will need to define the city a bit more, though I would like it to be fairly minimalist. also I think there will be some sort of Pro Tem government, though I have not worked that out yet.

Here are some of the random thoughts that influence me about this game, maybe they will help you understand what I am trying for:

• Without a past experience, we are doomed to repeat our actions.
• Without a past the present has no meaning.
• Life becomes circular.
• The things you do remember take on incredible significance.
  

final art project

War In The Heavens pt. 21: Reneasance

I know it has been a while since my last game design post. I hit a bit of a wall on the design and so was at a loss for a few months on what to do about it. I recently had a bit of a breakthrough, and I thought I would go over it. I hope this will be the first in a series of posts leading to some form of a complete game.

I have made a few decisions on the nature of the game, some of you may like them some may not. I have decided to limit the game to one empire for the players to be part of. Most of the game back story was focused on The Empire of Man. So I have decided to go with that feeling. The players will be playing Scions of the Sovereign of the Empire.

Because of this, a whole new area of game design opened up for me. Due to the sharp focus the number of stories that can be told become more specific. It will work like this. The players will be a cabal of Scions sent to a system to deal with an issue. That issue will be designed by the players. Basically I took bits from Diaspora and Dresden files(system design and city design respectively). The GM will ask questions about the system that the players will be sent to.

I will start with the system. How many planets, and who lives there? Then move on to the planet(s) in question. What are the threats and themes of the planet? Who are the faces? I am working on a random set of rolls to help with creativity while adding in the boundaries required to keep the setting themes going.

I really like the fractal nature of Fate, in that everything and anything can have aspects and the like. This allows the layering of aspects on a scene. The problem with doing this leads to there being an abundance of Aspects to pull from and I wonder if I should go with the scope limits from Diaspora.

This leads to my altering the proto-thought I was having about triggers. Instead of inventing a new thing that is basically an aspect, why not just use aspects to do the job. So I will be looking at adding an aspect to each stat. Each of them will need to be able to be compelled.

So those are the changes I am leaning toward at the moment. Let me know what you think.

Procedural

Here is a procedural of a whole drawing.

More pictures

Still life, still working on it




















Flowers




















Castle

I made some drawings! Check 'em out!










































This one is a Warg. From the Monster Manual.

Laughing stick

we made a new episode of TLS

War In The Heavens pt. 20: I think I can, I think I can...

Well, here I am. I have a rule set. OK, I have most of a rule set. I am foundering in two key areas. In order to explain what my issues with the game are I will go into some of the basics of the game. Then I will go into what my specific issues are and the ideas I have floating around to fix them.

So in War in the Heavens the players have four attributes, Love, Duty, Pride, and Wrath. In any given scene the players will use one of those attributes as the core roll. You have a strength which is listed at four dice and a weakness listed at zero. The other two attributes are at two dice. For each attribute you have between one and three Triggers. Triggers are the scenarios, people, and items that allow you to use the attribute in a scene. Your strength gets one trigger, your weakness gets three, and the rest gets two each.

And that right there my friends, that is wherein my problem lies. The triggers. I need them to be generic enough so that they can be used in several scenes(at least one scene a session). I also need them specific enough that they mean something. It is at this point that I am stymied.

My other issue is with the GM parts. I know what I want the game to do, I am just unsure on how to help the GM to bring that experience to the forefront. I have several game types. The adventures will start with the discovery of a new system through the jump gate. If the other stellar nations have not found it yet, then you try to bring under your nations control through missionaries, politics, or war(when necessary). If another nation is involved then it is down to the previous methods as well as espionage, and cold wars.

So how do I do that? Well that is the question, I guess. I do not have much on how to emphasize these aspects of the game. I need a way(or ways) to make this the central theme of the game. I will keep working on it, hopefully inspiration will strike.

New TLS Episode

We had new episode! Carol and I discuss the games we are designing.
check it out!

War In The Heavens pt. 19: Further Mechanical Musings

Alright, new post, lets do this! I have been tinkering with the system a bit tuning it to better represent what I am looking for. I have changed the attributes to a bit more abstract. Also I have worked out half of a system for implementing die rolls that I think is really on the mark. However, I still need to work a bit more on it before it is run ready.

Firstly the attributes. I have focused the attributes more on motivating force rather than task orientation. In this I have changed them. Now they are, Love(obsession), Pride(hubris), Anger(wrath), and Duty(blind faith/slavery). I have what they are, and I have possible downsides/weaknesses for each(or maybe just cool names). My issue comes to this, how do I ensure that people will use the attributes other than their strongest one. In other words, how do I ensure that there is a mechanical reason to pursue actions outside of your strength?

I have a few answers to that percolating in the old noggin. My first thought was to allocate certain actions, or maneuvers, to each motivation. This was a little too focused for what I had in mind. Then I thought of the actions/maneuvers having differing difficulties depending on what motivated you that scene. Then I thought of limiting your motivations. Each scene you could only use a motivation that you had not used before that session. But that leads to all kinds of weirdness. Not necessarily bad weirdness, but I am not sure if that is what I am looking for.

Then I started reading through Apocalypse World. And the idea of only gaining XP through the use of attributes that are picked by other players. I like that, and I am considering using a rule like that for my game. You only gain XP(or its equivalent) when you use your weakness, or you strength. This puts an interesting emphasis on those two attributes. Not sure if I like it, but we will have to try that out in play.

The other big issue I am running into is this idea I had. Basically I started out with the idea that lying was easier than telling the truth, in the short term. Specifically in regards to convincing people to do what you want. However the downside to lying is bigger than the truth. So far so good. I can model that fairly simply. The issue arrived when I started breaking it down a little further. You can tell the truth or lie subtly or do it vulgarly. But therein lies the problem. How does that dichotomy change things. Is a subtle lie easier? Is a subtle truth harder? What about vulgarity? How does that shake things up?

I haven't come up with any conclusions on this problem. I am going back and forth in my mind about it, as I think this will effect the whole of game play when it is complete. Also I need to work on some kind of advancement mechanic, and right now there is not enough for that to exist. Maybe I won't have one.

War In The Heavens pt. 18: the end of the begining.

Alright, confession time, I really love making worlds. It has become a problem. I really can't do more system work; not until I have tested it in play. As I have no current gaming group willing to play it, this is problematic. So I spend a good part of my design time coming up with new worlds, and new people who live in them. This is not, in itself, a bad thing, but right now it is conflicting with my desires as a designer.

I want a game world that is a framework, not a straightjacket. And the longer I sit here without playing, the less freedom the world will have. I have enough back-story to fill a book. But I don't want the players to play in my world, I want them to play in a world they built. I am not sure if that makes sense. Oh well, its out there now, right?

So, there you have it, I have reached the point I talked about in the first post. That place I get to in every game I design, when I fail. I cannot go further, and I have come far enough to be upset by that.

War In The Heavens pt. 17: Breakthrough, break out!!

Today I was talking over the last blog post with a fellow designer and he mentioned an interesting idea. It has lead me back to the idea of the players being able to form their own religions. He looked at the questions I am using for the basis of the religions. He pointed out that I should put template terms(basically some standard terms for ease of use by the players) attached to the questions I already use.

This kind of blew me away. I had toyed with the idea of player created religions early on in this project(I know, I have only been working on this a month, so its all early days, but you get the idea). I had given up on that idea when I couldn't work out how to do it. Now, after I had given up on that idea completely, here comes the solution.

So now I have to work this back into my game. I have two of the three major galactic civilizations worked out. So if the players want to make their own religion that leaves one major civilization. I guess that works. One major religion to play with and who knows how many minor ones. It would also be useful for the GMs to use when creating all those heathens what needs converting or killing.

Also I have been reading through Bulldogs!it uses the FATE engine. I am really enamored with the way it handles character creation. Specifically I like the way races are designed. They get a series of powers, which decrease the amount of refresh available. They also have a listing of four or five aspects that are common to the species. The player picks two for their character to use. I want to use this for my game. Not this directly, but something like this will be used for the religions in my game. Things are starting to come together with my game. Though the attributes/skills/stats are still too vague for my uses yet.

War In The Heavens pt 16: Modeling Faith(not well)

I have been working, the last few days, on the religions of my world. As it is central to the world building I did not want to just gloss over this. However, I did not want to have them come across as these monolithic static entities. Today while I was in class(to be honest, I wasn't all that focused in class, we were just watching Antigone, take of that what you will)I came up with a series of questions, That I think will help me come up with aspects for the religion. For this I will be using The Empire of Man as my sample culture/religion. Here they are:

• What behavior does this religion encourage? In the Empire of Man there are two things sought, obedience and loyalty to Sovereign and her Scions. Also there is a sense of family loyalty, and pride in bloodline. People are encouraged to know and keep their place in the world. In the peasant and slave classes Hard work and obedience are seen as high ideals.

  • How does it encourage this behavior(stories/parables/sermons/etc)? Among the peasants and slaves one day a week is spent in worship and reverence. There are missionaries sent to every zone(an area holding around a thousand people) on those days to speak sermons and stories. They carry an image-staff(need a better name), that adds holographic and other sensory illusions to enhance the stories. The peasants are kept illiterate so this is there main source of education. The houses of the Scions and Monitors are allowed to learn to read, and each house keeps the two holy books in the household. The books are the Tenets, the smaller book that discusses the morality and rules of the faith, and The Histories, containing mythologized stories of Sovereigns lives. they are not raised by the family directly, instead they are raised in special schools where they are indoctrinated into the faith from age five to age fifteen.

• Where did everything come from? Long ago, before the discovery of the Gates, before the rise of Sovereign and the Empire of Man there was the age of darkness. Little is known of of this age, or of what came before. All that is known that we came from a place called Earth. During the darkness arose Sovereign. First among gods, she may change her face and body, but her essence remains. She brought forth the Empire of Man.(basically she is the birth of the world the Empire knows. She found the Gate and led them to conquer many many systems. Still working on how to make this sound like...not crap)

• What happens when you die? Sovereign died during the darkness, then she brought herself back confirming her divinity(this is how her body snatching is described in the holy books, she dies then is reborn fully formed in a new body). Because of this she became the gatekeeper to the lands of the dead. Please her and serve her and you get sent to the lands of plenty. If you really pleased her in life, she will catch your soul and raise it up, you will be reborn into one of the peasant houses(if a slave), the Monitor houses(if a peasant), or Scion Lineages(if a Monitor).

• What is sin? What behaviors are discouraged in this religion? There is a serious difference in taboo/forbidden behavior dependent on your standing in society. Basically the only truly unforgivable behavior is disobeying Sovereign, showing disloyalty, or betraying your family. Those are the only truly unforgivable sins. All others can be bought off with money or service to the empire. This has lead to the creation of the Legion of the Damned. They are soldiers who joined to pay off theirs or another person's sins.

  • How is this behavior discouraged? For the disloyalty or disobedience, there is only one response, slow public death. For betraying your family you can choose a swift death or becoming a suicide soldier in the Legion of the Damned. There rest of the punishments/discouragements are an intricate web of byzantine rules and bureaucratic red tape.

  • Why was this behavior originally frowned upon? The first two big rules are fairly self explanatory. So I will work on the last. This came about from the scheming of the Scion Lineages. They were always seeking advancement and it was becoming a detriment to the smooth running of the Empire. So Sovereign declared the rule of Familial Loyalty. This happened so long ago that no one even remembers the original reason. There are a couple of big stories in The Histories that illuminate this point.

• Who can speak for/to the gods/god/morality/philosophy? Working on this, haven't quite got it yet.

  • Is there a hierarchy? Heck yes there is! The whole society is so hierarchical that it would be ludicris to not have the priest class(or whatever) be extremely hierarchical.

    • How is that arranged? At the end of the day everything is about Sovereign, but I haven't worked out the details.

• What external factors effect the religion?

  • The original world/the government/secular factions(merchants and the like)/etc.

  • In the Empire religion and politics are practically one and the same. So the highly charged political atmosphere affects how the religion is used in various planets and zones. While you cannot change the Tenets, you can get away with a lot of smaller heresies within specific areas. Corruption is fairly rampant in the Empire.

• Is there a method for dealing with those who question the tenets of the religion? I kind of covered this in the Sin bit. But I will use this to describe briefly what I mean by this. In some religions there are rote responses to many questions that have come up over time, apologetic rotes would fit in this. Also there are in some other religions specific people who are allowed to speak out in specific ritualized ways against specific tenets of the faith, that would be covered here as well.

So there they are. Yep. Anyway, let me know what you think. Are there any questions that seem unnecessary? Any that are missing? I would appreciate any feedback on this bit.

War In The Heavens pt. 15: He can fight! He can fly! And he can CROW!!!

Oh, the cleverness of me. How clever I am! Well, OK maybe not so much, but I did finally get my game to alpha testability(mostly). I have finished my rules, for now. Obviously I will change them as I test the game out, obviously. Obviously, I will do that. But my game can now be played(waits for the applause to die down), thank you. I still have a lot to do on the setting. And of course there are going to be specialty rules and such. So it will still be a while before I publish this bad boy.

Here is a brief overview of how the game works. There have been a lot of changes. There are six stats, which I only have the working names for. These stats are: Strength, quickness, intelligence/education, perception/cunning, cleverness/wittiness, and charm/sweetness/sincerity. As you can see the names need...to not suck.

For any task you will have a number of six sided dice equal to your ranking in a stat, plus any aspects you tag(each will add one die). You can only add one aspect per scope. A scope is what an aspect is attached to. If you have an three aspects on your character, you can only use one per turn as you are the scope for those aspects. If your gun has an aspect, then the gun is a scope. If your ship has one, then the ship is the scope for that aspect. You get the idea(I hope). I really like this part from Diaspora, and so I am using it in my game. When you roll the dice you are looking for any dice that come up five or higher. This is called a success(barring a more creative term). Some tasks will require more than one success, but lets not fret about that just yet.

When you get your stats, you choose which will be your peak stat(this will start at four), and which is your weak stat(this will start at zero). The rest of your stats are at two. There are going to be stress tracks based on the stats...but that’s still a little hazy right now. Maybe I should average them out? I don't know.

You start out with four aspects. But they are not as free form as other FATE games aspects(not that that's a bad thing, just I think this might work better for my game). You will choose a Vision, a Commandment, a Crusade, and a Failing. I may add others as I go along, but this will get us going for now.

Now there is a new twist on Invoking that I am kind of excited about(though again, it may not work). When you invoke an Aspect to gain extra dice, you get a potential complication. What this means is that when you roll the dice if you roll a one then you get a complication. If you succeed the roll despite the one, then there is a minor complication. If you fail the roll and there is a one, then there is a major complication. I think this is a really neat idea, though I think I may have to nail down precisely what constitutes minor and major in my game.

Finally, as this is a game about faith and war. I thought it would be neat to have a mechanic that might help represent that. Right now I am calling it Tragedy(but really it is more like loss of faith), but that's kind of stupid so I have to get a better grasp of what it is all about. It is kind of like Sanity in Call of Cthulu, and a bit like dark side points from any of the Star Wars RPGs. When your Tragedy(gah, I hate that name) track fills up you are removed from play. Either through madness, despair, or death in some manner suitably tragic.

It works like this, in the game there are two ways of receiving Fate points. One is the standard compelling an Aspect, that FATE players know and love. The other is by gaining Tragedy. When you choose to gain a point of tragedy, you get a number of Fate points equal to your total tragedy(counting the point you just gained) that must be spent this session(preferably this scene). I like this mechanic because the game then emphasizes the sacrifice made in the name of what's right. While, at the same time, shows the numbness and loss of faith that the universe could allow someone to be pushed so far.

I don't know why, but as I was designing the game, my mind kept coming back to the opera part of Space opera, and so I want it to kind of be a tragedy. Also it sort of fits the grand/epic adventure feel of the game as well. Also as I designed this I discovered more and more how much I was influenced by FATE. Seriously, this game is basically just a bit of a re-skin on FATE. A little different, but mostly the same. Sigh, oh well, work with what I got. Maybe something awesome will happen!