Tag: Dark Space

Dark Space Update: Sanctified 2

I ran a quick playtest with Roomie, and he alleviated my fears over the Cyber-gnostics. They are not too complicated.  And now, in a spurt of creativity, I finished the Anointed (or whatever the heck I’ll call them, the priestly types), who turned out to be cooler than I expected.  All I have left for them is their armory and the disciples, and I’ll be done.

Dark Space Update: Sanctified

I just finished two of my Sanctified.  I finished my Knights (toying with calling them Celestial Knights) a few days back, and I was going to wait to post until I finished all three, but I just finished my Cyber-gnostics, and my god were they difficult.  They’re very flexible and, hopefully, very interesting.  They’re the most kick-ass “thinking class” I’ve ever seen, that’s for sure, and I think they’ve utterly exceeded their inspiration, the Tech-priests of 40k.

On to the last of the three: the priests.

Dark Space Update: Robots

The Dark Engine and the “Angelic” intelligences that guarded it have long stymied me, as they’re a vital element of the setting but difficult to model well in GURPS.  I’ve finally managed to work out all the various elements: How they interact with the Dark Engine, how they can keep up with Sci-Fi Knights in Power Armor despite paying gobs of points for their shells, and so on.

I really struggled with that last element.  I envision the robots uploading themselves in shells like they do in Transhuman Space, except these are angelic, mythic shells made of awesome.  However, Possession and Puppet rules require you pay for your “most expensive body.” The shell I finally settled on as a “standard” combat shell cost at least 1000 points, 250 more than a Knight, and less effective.  However, if I discarded this rule and allowed you to simply purchase superior bodies as puppets (15 points for that 1000 point body), following the logic that the body is really no different from power armor, I worried they would be “too powerful.”  Eventually, though, this worry turned out to be of no concern.  A 750 point Angel with a 1000 point shell is about on par with a 750 point Knight with Power Armor and an Assault Cannon (a little weaker actually, and I’m ok with that).

However, this left the question of the Angel’s “base” shell.  If you can purchase a super shell for a mere 15 points, why bother to pay for any ST of your own?  I eventually decided that in the Dark Engine, you have to use your “native” stats, and that your “base” shell (the standard looking robot) also uses these base stats.  Interestingly, this discussion lead to an interesting idea:

The Angels draw their inspiration from Wraith and, indeed, most of the “Angels” are really uploaded human intelligences (“Ancestral Emulations”).  While pondering the fact that you had these static stats that you lost when you changed shells, I suddenly wondered if humanity might be able to “exceed the limitations of their shells.”  All robots in a Seraphim Shell have exactly 18 ST, but what if some humans known for their strength got a little more out of their machine, and pushed it to 20 ST?  I thought this provided an interesting mechanic allowing players to define their character a little more, and express their innate humanity in a way that the robots lacked.  It also made humans “special,” in a way that set them apart from their colder, mechanical robot kin.  Finally, it tied into this notion that robots tend to see humanity as “special,” almost worshiping their creators.

With that out of the way, I’m buckling back down on the core game concepts (the Knights and their kin) and working towards making this playable, as some local players have expressed interest in playing.  However, I’ve finished Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising, so I have no idea how long I’ll remain interested in this little project ^_^;;

Dark Space Rules and Technology

I should have mentioned before that I’ve decided, for now, to call my Gothic Space Opera “Dark Space,” though that might clash with a book series I’m reading (Which seems to be called “The Sentients of Orion,” so perhaps not).

Anyway, I wanted to discuss ideas about the technology and core rules.

A Gothic Space Opera does two things. First, it wipes away all that complicated technology that creates a strange and alien future that modern audiences find difficult to relate to, replacing it with something more medieval while keeping “cool” technologies like big guns and powerful spaceships. Second, it establishes a highly cinematic setting, where style counts more than substance. In keeping with this, I’ve established some ground rules for how the universe and technology works.

First, there are no hit locations, to accommodate fashionable armor choices, such as female warriors who go for a little cheesecake, or (more importantly) warriors who choose for forsake helmets to show off their burning eyes and their wicked hairdos. Second, and this is a little more important, we discard the TL familiarity rules. The technology of Dark Space, utterly urealistically, spans everything from TL 9 to TL 11, and using the core rules makes this variation too difficult to deal with, especially when you have knights wearing TL 10 power armor, wielding a TL 9 autocannon in one hand, and a TL 11 plasma sleeve in the other. Instead, we’ll play up familiarity (Knights wielding Robo-angel weaponry is at -2), and establish broader TL rules (“low tech” societies, anything below TL 9 but above TL 0 suffer -5 to high tech gadgetry, while TL 0 societies suffer a -5 to TL 1-8 items, and -10 to TL 9+). If GMs find this problematic, they can further apply familiarity penalties. Your core TL establishes the upper limit on devices you can normally purchase, and allows you to take +1 TL items as Signature Gear. The standard of the setting is TL 10 (the average between the two) though the common man is TL 9.

Ignoring the crazy alternate races (the werewolves, the vampires, the changelings), we have three “core” technological civilizations all interacting with one another in Dark Space. The original “relic” technology from the golden age lingers on, and continues in the hands of the tech-priest type guys. You see the knights using alot of these devices, and these tend to be TL 10-11. The Robots have their own technology, which takes advantage of the structures of their “angelic cores.” This technology is TL 11, but occassionally borders into TL 12. Finally, we have the standard technology of the setting, which is generally TL 9.

GURPS divides technology into four broad areas, but I prefer to discuss 5: Transportation, Medical/Biotech, Military Arms, Power, and Information/Computer technology.

Transportation: During the golden age, mankind traveled in vast “light hugger” ships that moved through physical space. Since the collapse, few planets have the infrastructure to build new light huggers, and if they could, they’d build warships instead. Once a light hugger reached a new world, it established a connection to the “Dark Engine,” a vast web of dark matter which interacted with normal matter only via gravity, and the ends of these “strands” existed in multiple places simultaneously, allowing for rapid communication. These Dark Engine strands also served as a sort of anchor and highway for FTL travel, allowing rapid transportation from one world to another. Since the collapse, the Dark Engine has been wracked with storms and collapse, but most of it remains intact, if nightmarishly disorganized and haunted by wicked, man-hating AIs. Thus, the Dark Engine remains the primary mode of transportation in Dark Space. Outside of space, vehicles travel on wheels and tracks, with contragravity isolated to spaceships, large airships, and robotic angels.

Information: The Dark Engine allowed for instant communication between worlds, and so formed a sort of pan-galactic internet. Each world housed at least one calculation spire, a vast super-computer that contained that world’s data, and at important nodes, humanity constructed planet-sized computer brains which house god-like AI, constantly monitoring the pulses and information of the Dark Engine. Finally, near the end of the Golden Age, mankind learned to manipulate dark matter so well that they created AI nodes that existed entirely in the Dark Engine. After the fall, of course, most of this capability vanished as the Dark Engine collapsed into virus-wracked chaos, and even today is plagued with nightmarish “zones” of legacy code and corrupted data. The data spires also generally collapsed for fell into disrepair or were hijacked by rogue AIs, which forced mankind to recollect data where they could. Datapads have become the primary “computer” of today, worked by data-scribes who carefully collect data wherever they can, uploading it into their heavy “tomes,” and collecting them into jealously guarded libraries.

Weaponry: The guns and armor of Dark Space generally follow the rules of those found in GURPS Ultra-Tech. After the fall, most armies use TL 9 slug-throwers, though Knights use TL 10 “ETK” slugthrowers (though houseruled to be more reasonable). Knights have further access to a variety of “knightly” items, like “lances” and “shields,” most of which is TL 10 and 11. Of course, they have access to power armor. Standard armies do not, and are forced to make due with Reflex vests and such.

Power: It’s a cinematic setting, so naturally, we don’t want to fiddle much with batteries and bullets. Nuclear Fusion is common in the setting, and most vehicles have hand waved “micro-reactors” that mean you never need to fuel them. Standard power cells enjoy the benefits of Super Science, giving them 5 times as much power as normal (meaning most guns don’t need to worry about big, bulky packs or changing batteries often). TL 11 “relic” devices use cosmic power cells that feed off of the Dark Engine directly, and thus, never require power (convenient, huh?)

Medical/Biotech: Many denizens of the Dark Space universe benefit from Biotech, but it has fallen out of favor since many of their creations rose up to destroy them. Medical technology suffered most of all, falling to a mere TL 9 level. This allows us to have medicine that’s “good enough” to keep people safe and alive, but losing limbs or death are big deals still. Robots generally have the ability to upload minds into the Dark Engine, and call those that do so “Reapers,” who generally only collect the dying (or the truly wicked).

Further Gothic Space Opera Thoughts

I’ve been digging through lots of Discovery programs detailing the history of theology, Christianity and the dark ages looking for inspiration and, among other things, it occurs to me that I need to draw from more eras for inspiration. Just as 40k draws from World War I for its inspiration, I need to look elsewhere for mine, as all the best settings are awesome amalgamations of several different cool things. But that’s not really what this post is about.

40k is not christian. Carefully sifting through history has shown me where the Imperium of Man really draws its inspiration: The Roman Empire. Now, obviously, Ultramarines and other clearly draw their inspiration from the Roman Empire, plus all the latin and such, but I think most 40k players assume that 40k represents a post-constantine, “dark ages” Roman Empire, slowly collapsing just as it did into the medieval world, while barbarians beat at its gate. However, worshipping an imperial, military figure head as an incarnate, still-existant god while “legions” go forth and conquer in his name, spreading Pax Imperium in His name, is very very Roman.

This means that my desire to make the faith of my setting decidedly christian, with a gother-than-thou martyr god who dies for your sins will create a different feel than 40k does, which is nice. Our Imperial Knights will be less legionaries and more knights, less military soldiers who fall in line and more elite agents who step up, which is, of course, more appropriate for an RPG.

If we have this martyr god who dies for our sins, though, who is “God the Father” that creates this martyr and gives him to us? I’m showing my mormonism here a little, as most Christians believe they are one and the same, but there’s still a continuity element here, because God existed before Christ was born. So, unless our “Son of Man” was eternal, who made him? It’s an interesting notion if he “made himself,” but the actual agents would have to be the masters of Terra, and since Terra stands in for Jerusalem and the Holy Land in our game (You know, so we can go on a crusade and liberate it from the wicked powers that hold it, just like the knights did), the people of Terra stand in for the Jews, but they can also stand in for God, to some degree. Terra itself becomes the focus of worship.

But I find there’s a further element that keeps cropping up as I work on my setting, namely the notion of the supernatural, technology, and who “God” is in the setting. I know some of you aren’t fans of Transhumanism, but stick with me here. Vernor Vinge argued that technology is leading us to one of two places: It will either destroy us, if we cannot master it and our darker impulses have us flinging nukes at one another fast enough to wipe out our civilization, or it will result in accelerating our progress beyond a point where decent predictions can be made, the so-called “Singularity.” If you talk to most Singularity-loving types, mention the Singularity and watch them. There’ll be a sheen that comes to their eyes, their faces will lift, their voices will rise in an almost religious fervor. The machines will rise up, they will say, and take humanity and lift them into god-hood. They won’t use those terms, but what they talk, and how they talk, reminds me alot of the Rapture.

In 40k, the dark age of technology only exists to get humanity to the stars. Once that’s happened, we carefully wipe it out with a convenient and barely mentioned war, and get on with our dark ages and our many wars. But I propose an alternate take. During this dark age of technology, mankind develops many wondrous technologies, but stands on the cusp of perfection, an edenic state, and then one man reaches too high, as per the tower of Babylon, and is cursed, downcast and the Confusion of Tongues begins the first ruination of technology. War erupts as this master of Babylon, this Beast, conquers the many nations of Man, and even destroys the civilization of Terra, giving us a convenient diaspora and a setting of destruction behind the Rule of Man, and eliminating the technological supremacy that would make the game more THS than 40k. The Son of Man spreads his sacraments before the Beast of Babylon crucifies him (literally or not, I don’t know), and soon, we have sacred Imperial Knights slaying the Beast of Babylon and claiming the empire for themselves, ala Constantine. We have further troubles, but importantly, man is not allowed to do things that would cause the Singularity (because he risks causing more disasters instead) until he finds and returns the Son of Man, who has sufficient wisdom to guide them to technological apotheosis, and we suddenly have shades of Revelations, where a dark age of blood and destruction precedes the return of the messiah to defeat the forces of evil and lead people to Heaven.

Except this time, you can’t sit around just waiting for it to happen. You have to find your Messiah, if he ever existed at all, and lift him up.

This notion of Technology in place of the supernatural, not in the sense that “they think it is magic,” but that it is the source of all the stuff in the medieval world would have been magic is now technological in nature, like our angels, our vampires, our miracles, has me on the verge of even discarding the Warp (in the form of Netherspace) in favor of these constructed hyper-space “highways,” and other relics of humanity. What if everything in the setting was either the result of human ingenuity or hubris? I think something needs to be alien, but part of me likes the notion that every monster race (the vampires, the demons, the werewolves) are a result of a human technological sin, those that address our fears of technology: the Vampire is the fear of nanotech devouring our worlds, the demons are the fear of AI rising up and tossing aside their masters, the werewolf is the fear of genetic engineering making us no longer human, and there’s gotta be something about our fear of the technologies of the future destroying our individuality, making us all cogs in a vast machine.

I don’t see a place, a need, for the inhuman, unnatural, cthulhu-like monsters that 40k has. That interests me. I’ll have to explore it further.

Gothic Space Opera

In an effort to get more involved with friends, I picked up some multi-player games, including Dawn of War 2 at the recommendation of a friend. Thoroughly impressed by Dawn of War 2, my fascination for 40k rekindled. Thoroughly obsessed with 40k, I began to ponder how to make a GURPS version once again.

I have a rule about conversions: I don’t do them. Too many people try to get a particular setting exactly right, and either they fail (and the players complain) or they spend years putting together something that will result in a C&D order from the IP holders. So, I don’t do it. Instead, I prefer to file the serial numbers off and make something unique that belongs to me, something that fits well with GURPS with a minimum of work, and something new that my players can explore.

So, instead of making GURPS: 40k, I’d rather make GURPS: Gothic Space Opera.

But what is Gothic Space Opera? If it’s “Star” Marines protecting the “Imperial Dominion” of “Humanity” at the behest of the Divine God-“King” while fighting the evil force of “Anarchy” and “Space Elves” and “Intergalactic Bugs,” you can still read the serial number through my poor attempt at creativity. The first rule of ripping someone off: rip off lots of different people, and you end up with something sufficiently unique that you’re not actually ripping off anyone.

So, what else is Gothic Space Opera? The clearest and most similar example is probably the Fading Suns RPG which I’ve never played, but heard much about. I’ll have to look into it. Going farther afield, Dune is clearly Gothic, with its vast spaceships, it’s ancient orders of secret conspirators, its god-emperors and its elite warriors. Googling up the term turns up a few interesting results: Some people consider Revelation Space to be Gothic Space Opera, which I hadn’t considered, as I started with the Prefect, but indeed, the rest depict the barbaric time following the downfall of civilization replete with immortals, vast cathedral-ships, spiraling gothic architecture and so on. Finally, someone pointed to the Chronicles of Riddick as quite gothic, another source I hadn’t considered.

Some themes emerge: Gothic Space Opera is really just medieval dungeon fantasy in spaaaaace. Nobility is found in the blood, and the knights and warriors of space are inherently superior to those poor, common, dirt-sucking peasants. Everyone follows the edicts of the king, and there is a wide array of squabbling political groups, inquisitors, clerics, nobles, and orders of knights. The empire used to be greater and more awesome, and the further you dig into the past, the more awesome it was (there was a golden age, and then a silver age, and now we live in the brutal “age of steel”). Science is magical and people understand it only poorly, often leaning upon the relics of the past to get by. Stuff is bigger, more awesome, and baroque. Legacy is very, very important, and one gets the impression that the galaxy is huge, and you are just a very small part of everything else that is going on.

We’ll look more into this idea later. I do like the idea of coming up with Space Opera Lenses, after I finish my core Space Opera set.