Cough, Sneeze, Poop, Space

Last night's sleep was particularly disturbed. Our daughter is feeling a bit under the weather (nothing too serious, but when you're only ten months old and you can't articulate how you feel to your sleep-deprived and worrying parents it must seem bad), and this got me thinking about illness in the Oort Cloud.

I don't think that disease will be a big portion of the setting, but there is always something particularly "What do we do?!" about a plague or a sickness that is going around. So it's at least fun to think about it.

We know that bacteria and viruses evolve quickly (relative to our own evolution, and even relative to our technological evolution). So it is reasonable to assume that there will be some infectious diseases in the future. Organisms want to propogate (in as much as they might have "motivations") so there are two options for thriving diseases hundreds or thousands of years from this point on (as I see it at the moment for the setting; I'm a doctor, but I'm not  that kind of doctor, just thinking).

Option 1 is that there are diseases which are essentially symbiotic or at least non-problematic for people. Contagious colds that don't really bother people, but which stay around long enough to be passed on. Option 2 are things which we might liken to Hyper-SARS, things that get passed on, have a relatively high lethality and are really infectious. People die, quarantines are imposed - and that is a neat adventure hook perhaps, because there are all kinds of wants and needs that a quarantined population might have - and all kinds of problems that thrillseekers might need to work around to get paid.

There is a third option: I recall reading a few months ago about a bacteria that had been found in a space centre clean room. Shortly after the same (or a very similar) organism was found in another clean room at a different space centre. There was no possibility of any kind of cross contamination. The analysis was that this bacteria had evolved to survive in the aggressively sterile environments of clean rooms - and had evolved twice at two different locations.

Simply put, as I understand it, this bacteria had been trundling along for millenia, just there and then a niche came along when it could thrive. What kind of bacteria, I wonder, will thrive in habitats at the edge of space when they are given the opportunity? And how will they impact the humans in those environments?

In space no-one can hear you drink your own urine

And thankfully people don't pay too much attention.

It must be true, when you really think about it, that atoms in the water that you drink, have been through the digestive systems of other humans - and other living things. They've gone in one end and come out the other. I have an inkling that xkcd has even run a strip or a What If about it... But in space, in the Oort Cloud, needs really must, and out of necessity, people drink their own pee.

Recycling of basic, rather than processed resources, must be an absolute societal basic at the very edge of interstellar space. With the exception (probably) of cometary mining, there's no more water around unless you have alchemical processors - and those things don't run cheap.

I guess most places wouldn't begrudge thrillseekers and travellers some basic water rations (apart from despotic asteroids or criminal waystations); they might not include showers or baths as part of basic accommodation though. Going a step further, a simple bath might be considered a luxury - a spa retreat might be half a day just having a good soak.

If you have the rights or the firepower to defend a cometary ice body - or some other source of water - then you might be on to a winner economically... Or you might have painted a big target on yourself.

Where do you go to relax?

So I'm on holiday now, for the next week. This morning was just excruciating - despite all of our best laid plans for getting away handy, we were hampered at the last minute by things not being packed that we thought the other had packed, forgetting things, checking oil and water in the car at the last minute, needing to fill up the car with fuel...  Travelling anywhere on hoilday with a small child takes forever, even when you're just driving 90 minutes to a caravan park.

Still: six days away from the house and whatever normal dramas unfold there (every day I seem to notice one more thing that needs fixing, replacing or decorating) will be nice. I have to work one day, but the rest is all picnics, trips to the zoo, trawling around the English seaside and eating at least twice at the best fish and chip restaurant in the UK (official!).

But when I woke up in the night this got me thinking about adventurers and thrillseekers, the people in whatever kind of party in whatever kind of setting that you might run. How do they relax? What do they do to just get away from it all? That might not be the most exciting thing to roleplay, maybe people want to be murderhoboes and look for monsters, treasure, vaults to break into, crimes to pull off - but what's the use of getting all of that money, fame and awesome stuff if you can't just get away from it all once in a while?

I'm really racking my brains, thinking about all of the different games I've played over the last three years or so, and I'm really struggling to think of any times when the party just went to relax. I remember going to a casino in Cyberpunk, but it was business - (as I recall, Patrick's character died that night...) - and even though some money was made, there was no R&R.

The next occasion was in Pendragons of Mars - but there the jousting and feasting was intrinsic to the setting and the season, we couldn't not be there. It was fun, no doubt. It was no holiday.

Heh, I'm not looking for "Vacations & Vagabonds, the crime-fantasy RPG of going on holiday" - I'm just wondering if anyone ever has an in-game getaway? Do you not do it because it's not interesting? If you do have them, what sort of stuff happens?

And is it more or less exciting than hurtling up the M6 motorway, dodging awful drivers and praying to MANPAC that we get to our destination before the baby wakes up?

Ships in the Oort Cloud, part 1

A night idea. I suppose in reality this is a couple of ideas that have been floating around for a while. On a recent train journey I started thinking about travel time between places in the Oort Cloud. I did some calculations on a series of Post It notes; I assumed that there was no instant travel, that unaltered humans wouldn't want to be subject to more than 1g of acceleration or deceleration. I also assumed that the drive in the ships wouldn't be explained using massive liquid fuel tanks (i.e., it will be totally hand-wavey in game; although some concept of range would be good).

These were in my head, have been for a few days. But at 2am when the baby woke up, the main thing that popped in was dice.

I like Zak S's Popomatic concept: so to come up with a random ship (not necessarily a ship owned/used by a group of PCs) why not roll a d4, d6, d8, d10 and d12 together, with the five numbers signifying different attributes or aspects of the ship.

There are a couple of things which dice could randomly select: weapons, armour, range, style of ship, cargo/berth capacity, maximum acceleration/deceleration. Off the top of my head this morning, I'm thinking:
d4: acceleration/deceleration (1g, 1.5g, 2g, 2.5g)
d6: berths and cargo
d8: armour
d10: weapons
d12: range

I'll have to expand on some of these ideas in the coming days. This is a departure from the way ships are handled in Machinations of the Space Princess, where the concepts/mechanics are much more closely aligned with the stats of PCs. That game as written is more sci-fantasy than I'm thinking for the campaign in the Oort Cloud. So: while I'll continue to do little "night idea" posts, it seems like last night's idea has nudged me in the direction of resolving this little gap that I currently have in my setting schema.

I'll see what the next night idea is, but the next part in this Popomatic Ships series will be saying more about acceleration - which will also, I guess, say more about where I'm coming from in the harder sci-fi setting. More later/tomorrow!

Aliens are Magic

A night time idea. In the campaign setting I'm preparing for, aliens have been and gone a long, long time ago. Humanity lives and breathes recycled air at the very edge of the solar system; some live in religious seclusion, others mine for rare elements, while some prepare for the eventual journey to the stars.

And then there are the thrillseekers.

Aliens left behind things. There are disc-shaped structures of impervious exotic materials, bigger than any human-made habitat. On an asteroid, while digging for a probable vein of uranium, some miners found a cache of odd, metre-high clear cubes. All floating an inch off the ground, with no clear signs of how they were doing it. (When one was eventually placed in a large enough scanner, then scanner reported that there was nothing there) Then there is the religious order based in an abandoned military communications satellite that teaches true enlightenment can eternal life can only be found through hugging (what one scholar described as) alien skittles.

The order's members have no body hair of any kind, and require no food. They also have horrendous halitosis.

Alien tech is magic: sometimes the effects of objects and items can be guessed, but often the mechanism is completely opaque to even serious researchers. Alien tech has mundane properties as well. A perpetual light source, a sheet of "paper" that negates all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, a bag of sand that organises when poured into one of seven different configurations.

Alien tech is magic in a magic-free universe: resourceful thrillseekers will find uses or buyers for what they find. It's not the aim of the setting to find alien tech, but it is an option; and who doesn't like exploring a perfectly static alien-death-cube in orbit around a comet?

Baristas in the Oort Cloud

If you listen to A Gaming Podcast About Nothing, you might know that my current pet project is running a campaign set on the various communities in the Oort Cloud of some future time. Probably using Machinations of the Space Princess, although it started off in my head as a Dogs in the Vineyard hack, I've been making notes, creating tables, even a sample grid of space two light-minutes by two light-minutes across.

At 3:30 this morning while I was waiting with my daughter something just popped into my head: Baristas.

At the edge of the solar system, alcohol isn't so much banned as it is severely frowned on. There's a time and a place for a good time, and you can buy beer if you want it - but it's not the done thing. Coffee on the other hand - well, it's a natural stimulant, keeps you alert, and even in the safest of safe places, there's always a chance of a micro-meteor causing a hull breach, or a cometary ice storm to weather. Coffee is good.

And the Exalted Order serve the best coffee. Some people scoff and say that the machines they use are a sham, that the taste and smell from the resulting coffee is all about perception. Others say that the machines came from Earth, have been lovingly restored or preserved over many generations, and that the Baristas are near-alchemists, turning dials, grinding beans just-so and applying water of the correct temperature to two decimal places without computer aid.

You pay a price for this devotion, but it's often rewarded. The movers and the shakers, the high and the low, they all pay at the temple-cafes of the Exalted Order. There are even stories of the Baristas of the Exalted Order, in their simple black shirt and trousers (forearm sleeve tattoo optional) entering trances, uttering things about patron-worshippers that they couldn't possibly know. Who knows?

Start Over

I don't remember the last time that I slept through the night. I used to, all the time, sleep for six to eight hours at a stretch every night without fail. Now, my rest is piecemeal, two hours, then three, then 45 minutes, then whatever is left until the morning.

(Parenthood ladies and gentlemen!)

I also don't remember the last time I wrote something of substance on here, but the clock tells me it was probably over three months ago. It hit me a few days ago, when reading Warren Ellis' new "blog" morning.computer that there was an opportunity here to connect two "problems" and create an opportunity.

Even at two or three in the morning when I swing out of bed, stumble into the nursery and shush CJ or lie her back down (tangent: she learning a new trick this week, how to go from lying on her back to sitting up; this has been an intellectual leap for her. The next day she started crawling) and help her fall asleep, even when I am actually struggling to remember what day it is, or whether I have work or whatever - even then, my brain is ticking over ideas.

So: when I wake in the night, brain kicks in, ideas ideas ideas - when I get back to bed, before I lie down, make a note of them, when I get chance in the day after, write something - anything, even if (like morning.computer) it is just a short idea or observation.

Let's see where this leads.

A Gaming Podcast About Nothing

Dave, aka noisms, and I are doing a podcast. We've been talking about doing it for ages, and finally found the time. It was so much fun to record that we're going to make time to record more regularly (although not on an official schedule just yet).

A Gaming Podcast About Nothing is here! And we talk about lots of things related to role-playing games, our lives and nothing really. Listen to it, and tell us what you think.

PRISM/AGENT

PRISM/AGENT is a hack of GHOST/ECHO that I am working on which is inspired by Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. It has been rolling around in my head for a while now to create something "complete" - something that is done and I can play it and move on. Not just to have ideas in my brain all the time with no escape. I think PRISM/AGENT (which is a name-in-progress) is the first way to defuse that creative bomb which, if it explodes, will make me bitter and annoyed and sulky.

I love GHOST/ECHO. I think I've said that before on here. It's just beautiful. Two pages, some inspirations, some simple mechanics that create rich stories. PRISM/AGENT is an ugly little runt, built out of the best bits of other things, but hopefully it will be playable. I see it one way in my head, and others might play it totally differently.

Core ideas are that PCs are agents with colour codenames, as the Captains in Spectrum are; agents have been freed/released/rescued from aliens/others, but as a result have gained Influences (equivalent to Channeling the Ghost Field move in G/E). These Influences are based on the powers that the Mysterons show in Captain Scarlet, but that's it: the agents can use these powers, but if they lose control of them something bad happens. Basic moves are similar/identical to G/E, which of course are based in part on moves in Apocalypse World I think. The Listening For Echoes move is translated to trying to uncover the intention of the Others (Obscurons?) - and if you fail at that then something bad happens (the Others become aware of you, or you face some kind of mental assault).

But here's what occurs and which I am excited about: PRISM/AGENT has the possibility to be really neat in that you can take the basic premise and transplant it to so many different locations and time periods. A retro-future like Captain Scarlet? Check. A 1920s gangster backdrop with Others/Invaders? Check. Straight pulp heroes? Check. This was something that GHOST/ECHO did beautifully - you don't need lots of stuff in order to play it, and to play it in so many different ways.

Anyways! PRISM/AGENT - or something similarly (or not) named. Coming soon. Playtesting over G+ maybe by the end of April, or in person in Liverpool (Liverpool Game Nerds Assemble!). Comments and questions very welcome!

Kait Legendary - a Kamikaze Librarian

Later today I'm playing in my first game in months (wife's online Masters is cancelled for tonight and am FLAILSNAILing for the first time into a game I've heard is good). I've also wanted to play as a Kamikaze Librarian ever since I saw Patrick's post last year.

Kait Legendary ("KL") was in a knowledge cult for a little while - the Burning Order - but realised that they were deliberately hoarding to deprive others. The name Burning Order comes from their imperative to rule and to destroy the scholarly treasure troves of others (after making sure they have a copy for themselves). Anywho, KL left before she took her novice exams, but was seriously bitten by the scroll-bug, and loves to collect scrolls, parchments, maps and books for her own personal library. When she has enough she plans to exhibit and set up shop in the University District of Wetham.

Until that time she adventures! Either she finds interesting and useful things on her travels or she finds the means to buy interesting and useful things on her travels. It's all the same to her. She looks like a hulked out Scarlett Johansson (because why not).


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