The promise of post humanity was a lie. You will not live forever, the Singularity cannot save you. You are your body, conciousness is an emergent property.
It is the dawn of a new golden age for mankind... What will be your legacy?
The Quick Start has been out for a couple of months now. Got about 600 odd downloads... but then it is a free product, everyone loves a freebee!
So I've now got the print proof version for people like myself who love to have hardcopies.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/365808/Halcyon-Stars-RPG-Quick-Start?src=newest
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/365808/Halcyon-Stars-RPG-Playtest
I've just released the Halcyon Stars Playtest document. I'd appreciate feedback on any part of it. Cheers.
Halcyon Stars RPG Playtest - Welcome to the Halcyon Stars play test document. What you will find within these pages is a stripped down version of the
Just to prove I've not been idle, I've been working on a schematic of the 'Tamera' a concern operated research ship.
https://montecook.substack.com/p/conceptual-distance?r=l9sad&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twitter
One of my play testers sent me a link to Monte Cook's blog. Actually a fascinating read. It got me to thinking about 'conceptual distance' for Halcyon Stars. I mean I've aware of the idea, I've just never had the words to articulate it.
Basically how much of a leap is the setting to understand?
I've asked my players to comment in case I've badly miss judged my design, but I'd have to say, not a great distance at all.
For the test game I ran, my players were basically trailer park kids, on a 'gold rush' mining operation in the outback of Larson. The tech on Larson is similar to present day, yes there are some high tech items, but mostly its closely related to present day, robust colonial engineering!
Because they were kids they don't really have any wide ranging insight into the world setting. It's basically a Wild West / Firefly environment, crossed with a trailer park in Arizona!
I have always found it useful to start with a small limited focus for an adventure. In this case some 'Stand by Me' type stuff with a missing kid and a band of school bullies who are willing to push things a little to far. It's all very recognisable, it's all very 80s childhood.
In future play tests I will slowly expand out the game space, eventually as this is science fiction they will get into space, and be able to travel to the other colonies, but for now it's one town on the backend of nowhere.
To make it easy to follow we are using a TV series organisation... I'm thinking 4 episodes in Season 1 which will gradually widen out and through the 'longitudinal' role play system allow the characters to grow from kids into young adults ready to make their own choices and explore the wider world(s) of Halcyon Stars.
Anyway I just thought it was an interesting read for would be designers.
(Part 1)
Second play test with Halcyon Stars is now complete.
Everything went well and my players had a lot of fun. A few things became apparent with the story design for the first drama... maps! I need to draw some maps for future play tests. In fact there is a map that the characters find and it would be really handy to have that as a hand out rather than just describing it.
We did Identify a couple of issues with the Karma system, that after some discussion we came up with a far more elegant solution than I had managed to come up with on my own.
As it worked, Karma is essentially front loaded experience, that can be used for more than just character advancement. By giving the players this resource they can, when their characters fail a skill check use a point of their Karma, either to change the result to a Pyrrhic victory, or learn from their experience and increase their skill level.
My players really liked this concept.
But the idea that you spend Karma on other things and record light or dark on a tracker on the character sheet was just not working out.
So the new solution we came up with is to use a flipping mechanism. Imagine you have tokens representing your Karma, light on one side and dark on the other. When you use your Karma you flip the token, from light to dark.
Now you may have several tokens, so it's not all bad. But the GM or even another player, can flip your dark karma back to light by having something bad happen. The more dark karma you have the more tokens can be flipped and the worse 'your luck' is.
Like so many things it sounds great, in theory... but we will try it out in the next test and see how it operates.
On a final note my testers really liked the pregenerated characters they were given. I had designed 6 characters, but they were designed so that they are given out in a specific order... so if you have two players, they play with the brother / sister combo of Ivan and Gracy, and as you have more players they take on the 3rd character [Jenna], and so on till all 6 are used up.
What they liked was that they had very little over lap in skills. They needed each other and they needed to work together to get stuff done. This is very much a feature of the life path design... in most RPGs, PCs try to cover all the skills they might ever need. In Halcyon Stars you can do this with the points buy system, but Life Path makes it hard to be all things in all situations.
Of course the Karma system allows you to obtain a skill by learning through failure, but there is only so many times you can do this before you have a lot of bab juju to pay off.
Overall, very pleased with the results!
First playtest on 'iteration 15'
I can report that the basic system mechanics work. They are quick and simple and the players grasped them very quickly. We didn't get into combat, so that will get a test drive next session.
I did run through an explanation of how it should work and the way the initiate queue changes with actions and reactions... but actual play will be theory meeting reality.
My two players took on the characters of Ivan and Gracy. A brother / sister duo on the hunt for a another kid who has gone missing. We had a lot of fun with the character dynamic between the pair.
Gracy being younger and a bit of a wild card, not afraid of anything, and Ivan the older protective brother. They avoided ritual humiliation of the school bullies and buncked off school to set off on a 'Stand By Me' style adventure across the dunes of Larson, close to the settlement of 'Thomson's Folly'.
So far so good.
Larson
Larson is primary populated by colonists and settlers drawn from North America. As such, it has many of the cultural memes what we associate with America. In many ways it has become a modern day reflection of America’s wild west. It is mostly lawless, populated by tough people who believe that they need to show strength in order to have respect. That what is theirs is theirs to protect from anyone who might think to take it, and a general distrust of government and authority.
Larson’s first colonies were established 50 years ago, and how has a great many second and third generation colonists. The planet also has a large cloned population. The initial colonial strategy pursued by the United States was that to claim a world as their own they needed to settle it rapidly. With the limited number of first generation colonial vessels available the most viable way to populate a world was to include a human cloning facility and gene-banks with each lander. This would allow rapid population expansion.
The UN laws on human cloning only account for replication of existing individuals, the American strategy by-passed this restriction by creating unique individuals from large numbers of donors – UN law has since been updated to outlaw this practice. The strategy lead to a massive ‘baby boom’ in the decade following the first arrivals. Though the relatively small adult population meant that education and supervision was lacking and many of the clone children simply ran feral.
The new-comer generation have now mostly died out, but a few of the oldest members [80-90 years old] still remember their emigration to Larson. The first generation settlers were born in the decade following the landings and are now in their late 40s. The vast number of feral clones are degrading due to accelerated decrepitude and degradation of their of their genetic code.
"The genetic legacy of human / clone and clone / clone breeding will leave a lasting legacy of short lived humans as the inheritors of Larson. Future generations will call this the Larson Curse."
– Dr Rashindra Chad, Larson Survey
"Some of clones had early human gene mods, early experiments in what would later called the ‘Tuscan’ gene patterns that adapted them for desert survival."
– Osawa Kozakura, author ‘Genetic Legacies’
Larson has three major settlements, all based around the shores of the southern hemisphere seas, First Wave on the banks of Blue Lake, Hope on the shore of the New Sargasso, and Fisher’s Point on the Azure Sea. There are many hundreds of unregistered settlements scattered across the face of the planet. Most survive on a mixture of hydroponics and small scale terrascape farming that involves stripping back the sand and dust layers to access the ‘Larson soil’ below, with fertiliser and nutrient treatments genetically modified terrain crops can be propagated with some effort.
Environmental contamination of Larson’s native mycelium, and water sources – specifically on the shores of the New Sargasso – has led to ‘wilding’ of terrain plant species. The lack of insects on Larson has meant the only plants crops capable of wind pollination have been able to spread.
A number of small scale industrial processes have also been devised to allow human digestion of Larson mycelium. This involves crushing the mycellium in to a paste, then treating it with customised enzymes and filtering out the silicates before packing, flavouring and drying the resulting slurry into pellets that can be eaten or mixed with other food stuffs. The dried pellets are often refereed to as ‘kibble’ can sustain humans, it is typically used to feed cloned live stock.
A gene modded variety of the Terran goat has proved to be hardy and highly adaptable to conditions on Larson. Other forms of cattle have also been cloned and reborn, but have been far less adaptable to the rigours of silicates in the digestive tract.
Ancient Artifacts?
The first target for human expansion into the solar system was Mars. The first colonies were established in the mid-21st century, and many hardy pioneers took the opportunity to be the first settlers to establish outposts and survey operations. It was always the plan to change the lifeless red orb into a life sustaining world.
The first terraforming operations had begun when a major mining disaster struck. A massive cascading collapse opened a 30km long crack in the Martian surface. Destroying one of the recently completed domed cities. Over a hundred thousand perished as the dome broke apart, most of the structure crumbled and fell into the 5km deep pit.
"The terraforming dream has yet to be realised. Yes we’ve made a start, thickened the atmosphere a little, but it still remains toxic without breather. There is enough of an ‘atmosphere’ now that you don’t require a full vacc suit, but it’s still inhospitable in comparison to the colonies."
– David Jax, Terraforming Engineer
In the aftermath, recovery services began the difficult search of the new canyon system, recovering the bodies of the dead. What they discovered, damaged and buried in the rubble was not of natural origins, nor of human manufacture. An ‘alien machine’ long lifeless buried deep below the Martian surface. The so-called ‘Abyssal Device’.
The ‘alien machine’ did not give up it’s secrets quickly or easily. There were small incremental revelations, advances in materials science, and quantum structures, until two decades later a second and then a third abyssal machine was uncovered. Within a further decade fourteen more were located along the Marian meridians.
"They were terraforming devices, discarded by some ancient race? I think not! Their placement was not precise. In fact there is nothing about these ‘devices’ that suggests any manufactured purpose. They are simply great big chunks of crystal. Many are pitted, damaged, and one was even discovered shattered in hundreds of pieces.
"Which is more likely? They were planted by some great and unknowable ancient race for us to find, or they are simply highly unusual crystal formations that occur naturally on Mars?"
–Tishanna
The nature of the Halcyon Stars universe, fracture points and what they represent?
Imagine that you hold glass sphere in your hand. That the centre of the sphere represents the moment of creation, the big bang, and that the outer surface represents the inevitable heat death of the universe.
Now suppose you dropped your glass sphere, and it did not break, but was riven through with tiny cracks. These are the fractures that allow transit within our universe. They allow movement in space and time, forwards and backwards, even sideways.
Fracture points therefore are transport possibilities outside of space and time, that connect two or more points of space time anywhere in the universe. Although the anchoring fracture points may be anywhere in space time even in different temperamental spacial frames of reference there is a temporal continuity between the fractures. If a year passes on Earth, a year has passed on Larson.
That said, there are possibilities that are yet to be exposed in the setting of Halcyon Stars. The temporal continuity exists because of the fracture link. It is possible that two different fractures might lead to the same place but if different frames of reference. This will be exposed in future meta-plot.
Fractures don’t always have just a single point of destination. Some fracture have multiple destinations. At this time mankind lacks the necessary tools to be able to discover and navigate these branching paths. This too will be looked at in detail as the meta-plot advances.
Snapback
Snapback is an effect of a limited consciousness trying to experience something beyond it’s comprehension. The possibilities of no-space are so vast, so multi-dimensional that a mind rooted in only three dimensions has no possibility of describing what it has experienced. Like a man who has been blind all his life being asked to describe ‘red’, it is equally impossible for a human mind to understand the experience of no-space. What remains after the instant eternity is a fleeting grasped after image, a partly remembered dream, like a lost epiphany you remember being more, but not what that more was.
This is why snapback causes people to loose their minds, have psychological breaks, divine epiphanies and to develop the capability known as the strange. The strange is a form of extra sensory perception. Something that the trauma cased during snapback can awaken. It is the basis of many abilities currently being pursued by a few major characters in the back story of Halcyon Stars, principally ‘The Lost’ and the ‘The Oracle’ who both have strange affinities with no-space. These are super perceptions brought on by a growing ability to perceive space time in ways that others cannot.
Posthuman Dawn
In the last decades of the 21st century mankind was entering a new era. The capitalist economics of individualism were going the way of trans and posthumanism. The ancient nation states still existed, but they were increasingly irrelevant, as humanity willingly gave away more and more of its decision making to the power of synthetic analytics and artificial intelligence. This was not a revolution, but a gradual evolution and merging of the human with the burgeoning infoSphere.
By the close of the 22nd century mankind had reached far across the solar system. War, disease, and famine were all but eradicated. Resources beyond Earth were plentiful, space was infinite, synthetic intelligence had risen to govern the infosphere, and by extension the lives of human beings, balancing the needs of individuals with the needs of the whole. A golden age was flowering.
Within all populations there exist a minority, the statistical outlier. These throwbacks craved free will and freedom and so pushed ever outward on the fringes of human expansion as posthumanism ideals advanced. Eventually these misfits were overtaken as first generation ships began their journey to new stars.
What is Human?
Humanist thought placed mankind at the centre of the universe. A single person being an indivisible unit. Transhumanist analysis of the human condition has long since pushed past this limited concept. A single human is a complex hybrid of many biologically based algorithmic systems working together symbiotically. Each person has value because each is a unique consciousness formed from interlinked biophysical systems.
While it is possible to make an exact copy of a person, complete with the memories of the host original. That entity is both more and less than a replica. Although the copy would remember being the original, the original would not be able to extend its continuity within the new copy. Hence the idea of replicating into a new body turned out to be a false proposition. Over time the copy (or multiple copies) would, though their own experiences become increasingly distinct from one another.
"In essence, consciousness, the bit of you that thinks of you as you, is the by-product of many interacting biological algorithms. Remove one of those systems and you cease to be you. Consciousness is not something that can be scooped out of one body and dropped into another, it ‘is’ the body."
– Toat
In the past the human species had many racial phenotypes often differentiated by skin pigmentation. To a degree this continues, but has been overridden by modern morphologies brought about by living under various environmental and gravitational conditions, largely these are identified by the physical build of the person. Those born and bred in microgravity have a considerably lighter physical frame than those born and raised under 1G ‘standard’ conditions. Some of the new colonies have higher gravity and denser atmosphere than Earth standard and the bodies of the colonial born are often noticeably stockier or place different levels of stress on different organs of the body bring about noticeable developmental changes.
"The long and the short of it is that people from different places are shaped by their environments. They still look human, the same number of arms and legs and stuff. Most people are accepting, but a few ‘purists’ get bent out of shape by these things."
– Infoghost143
Although it initially only plays a very small, background flavour element of the setting. No-Space and experience of space/time, and strange will all progressively come together.
No-Space
Our reality is supported by a subspace quantum structure that defines the basic laws of spacetime. No-Space can be thought of as a ‘space’ or ‘realm’ outside of the basic laws of reality, a ‘place’ between the superfaces of subspace. In No-Space there is no space, nor any time, however, human perceptions are rooted within our basic perceptions and reality, attempting to experience no-space with limited spatial perceptions is at best a futile undertaking.
To experience no-space though spatial perceptions brings about a profound state of confusion, often experienced as the ‘infinite instant’, those with close held religious beliefs often interpret this experience as ‘looking upon the face god’. Snapping back into reality, the mind cannot fully comprehend the memory of its experience, and this can bring on feelings of some half perceived or remembered truth, and a yearning to repeat the experience in a bid to re-experience the oneness of the cosmos in that moment.
Chronos and Kyros
The Pilgrim in his many writings on no-space and snapback adopted the ancient Greek concept of there being two temporal modalities. Chronos the absolute time within the physical universe, and Kyros the experienced time of human perception.
The Chronos taken to cross no-space from one side of the wormhole to the other is zero. The jump duration is instantaneous, monitoring systems do not record no-space, it simply doesn’t exist.
The Kyros of the jump is highly variable depending on the individual, some people experience a Kyros lasting only a couple of seconds, while others recount hours of tortured experience. Two people experiencing the same jump through no-space can have radically different Kyros experiences. Interestingly, sophisticated AI systems are also affected by no-space and have recorded elapsed time anywhere between several seconds and several hours to cross the wormhole.
Strange
Strange is what happens when spacial perceptions are opened to no-space. There remains a lingering connection long after the experience. Most colonists cross the void in 'stasis pods', sometimes called 'cold sleep' or 'hybernationsleep'. This is done mostly for economy of resources on colonial arc ships. But it also has the additional effect that it shuts down consciousness and limits exposure to no-space.
For those who fracture jump while awake, there are usually drug or cybernetic inhibitors to reduce the effects of 'snapback' when reality re-imposes itself on the mind.
Sometimes, just sometimes, something doesn't go as expected... something is lost, or something is gained...
Halcyon Stars is a 'hard' sci-fi setting, but no extrapolation of human culture is possible without accounting for belief, faith, and religion. Mankind may have gone to the stars but it has exported its culture and prejudices with it.
On Earth, Islam is now the most popular world religion, narrowly surpassing Christianity for the number of people who profess to follow its tenants. The UN Global Assembly is composed of Earth national governments, interstellar corporate concerns, and also grants seats to the major world faiths.
In last 50 years a new faith has begun to emerge. A westernised form of Islam, called al'Islam. This radical reinterpretation of Islam is largely shaped around the writings of one man... David Sharma, aka "The Pilgrim".
Sharma is Mars born of mixed European / Indian heritage and was raised in a muslim household. He served as an engineer on belt survey scout 'First Pilgrim' until that ship was repurposed to make the first fracture transit to Farside. During the jump Sharma experienced a profound religious awakening, and began to write about his experiences, slowly gaining a following.
No-space, the 'space' between apertures of the fracture has no space or time. When the human mind [or any consciousness of significant capacity], experiences no-space, it experiences the 'infinite-instant', a mind expanding, consciousness breaking glimpse of the universe. Then as the ship re-enters real space, there is the crippling shock of 'snapback'.
Sharma was one of the six crew aboard the First Pilgrim. The snapback shock killed two others, a third took her own life rather than experience the return jump. Of the three survivors, Sharma, the Pilgrim is the best known. But the other two also had profound experiences that changed them forever.
"The Lost" [Jason Astem] a former star naval fight officer and test pilot escaped a high security military medical facility and vanished in a stolen ship... many spacer's tales have emerged over the decades about his actions and whereabouts, but none have ever been substantiated.
"The Oracle" [Lorette Eriksdottir] went on to discover many of the fracture points that now link human space together. She has claimed that she can hear them sing to her. Her current whereabouts is unknown.
What sets Sharma apart from his two compatriots is his extensive writings on the nature of no-space, and relationship between 'chronos' and 'kyros'. Though some claim that 'The Pilgrim' is the next Prophet, Sharma has denied this claim, and preferred the title 'Pilgrim', stating that he is not a teacher, nor a guide, he is simply a man walking the path towards god. He is a strong advocate for a direct personal experience of god through fracture jump... many others have since had similar visions and experiences leading to a flourishing of variants of all the major Earth religions [be they muslim, christian, buddhists, hindu or morman], though al'Islam is the most popular.
Let's take a quick look at combat and conflicts Halcyon Stars.
Combat is specifically physical combat... fighting or shooting, conflict is much wider and includes mental, social, mesh and even possibly strange conflicts.
Conflicts use a dynamic actions test, so two characters oppose each other. The winner maybe able to impress a 'state' on to the loser. A state can be any reasonable condition... charmed, intimidated, fatigued... depending on the intent and they type of conflict.
Combat in most RPGs involves determining the initiative order and then working along the order, with each character being able to move and hit something... that kind of still happens in Halcyon Stars... but more involved.
It can really help for the GM to have some little plastic tokens [I like the wipe clean ones you can write on]... Once initiative is determined line the tokens up in order... because combat is a dynamic system, the character who's action it is announces what they are going to do, and who they are going to do it too [so far that is all normal], however, the target gets to declare a reaction.
They might choose not to react. they might choose to react defensively or aggressively. The defenders reaction governs and the type of action test, determines not only who hits who and who takes damage but also who is pushed down the initiative queue [this is why tokens are handy, you can just slide them about].
If the defender doesn't react they keep their place in queue, but are more easily hit. If they react. both the aggressor and the defender will move to the back of the queue, with the winner of the action test taking the leading position.
It is possible that a character who reacts to every incoming attack might never get to take an action... kind of like being pinned down by shooting while your enemies move up on your position. But the reaction system, means that although you might not be setting the pace of the fight, you still have a chance to take out an opponent.
Yeah it sounds like a bit of a head twister, when I write it like this. But it does work... rather elegantly, and tokens make life easier, especially with a hand full of bad guys to deal with.
Damage uses the 'states' system like other forms of conflict, with the each state provided progressively nastier and more debilitating injuries.
The states system is designed to be used as a card deck [optional] so when a condition is applied the card with its associated rules can just be handed to the player. When the state no longer applies the card is returned. Simple, no tracking hit points.
So what makes a character in Halcyon Stars?
The most important part of creating your character is the concept, having an idea and fleshing out that person in your head. In game terms this is done choosing a Persona and Motivations.
The Persona is a role-playing guide, much like 'Nature' the World of Darkness games. Persona is double edged, it has a light side and a dark. This is actually a concept that some friends and I wrote in to our live action 'Preludes' Game some twenty years back. Playing to the light or dark side of your persona gains light and dark Karma [I'll talk about karma in a future post].
Motivations represent more immediate things that the character wants or needs, and each should choose three. Motivations are there to provide direction when you're unsure about what your character want to do, or strive for.
There there are the more usual game mechanical; attributes, skills and quirks. This can be done with a either a points buy system or life path... life path is recommended for first time Halcyons Stars players.
This is where things start to get odd... character generation is NOT balanced or equal! Depending where your character is in the life cycle determines how many points they have. So an older character will have more life experience and better skills than a younger character. This is a deliberate design choice and it feeds into the longitudinal play concept I mentioned in previous posts. This is balanced against how many adventures the character will be able to have. An old character is very skilled but might only be playable for a single 'season'. A young character will have many more 'seasons' of play in them, will get better over time... but starting out they aren't going to have much experience in the world.
This can also give rise to interesting role-play dynamics, with older more experienced characters acting as mentors to younger ones... or perhaps even parents of?
There are only 5 attributes, and not every character will have all of them. Typically rates between -1 and +1 but can go as high as +3. The first three are Physical, Mental and Social... all of which should be fairly obvious what they do. These can be paired with any skill to make an action test.
There are two more 'optional' attributes... Mesh and Strange.
Mesh represents the degree of augmentation the character has that allows direct interface with localNets. Used for remote operations of vehicles or cyber shells, augmented reality interface, datamining and social networks. Increasingly modern systems rely of meshing the mind with the machine... and a lot of people on the frontier worlds just don't have access to these types of augments.
Strange is well... strange! It represents a form extrasensory perceptions. It is NOT psychic powers... no telepathy or levitating objects with the power of the mind. It is perceptual only, and is very rare in the human population... though more common on the frontier worlds... strange is strange and it has a part to play in the story of Halcyon Stars.
Skills are fairly standard, notably there are only two combat skills [fight and shoot], and three environment / movement skills [athletics, aquatics and freefall] and more science skills, because the focus of Halcyon Stars in on exploration and discovery rather than combat.
Quirks come as pros and cons and add specific conditional or physiological advantages or disadvantages.
And every character also gets a Destiny... where they are headed whether they know or accept it.
Character generation can be completed in 5 to 10 minutes based on concept and familiarity with the system.
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The Quick Start has been out for a couple of months now. Got about 600 odd downloads... but then it is a free product, everyone loves a freebee! So I've now got the print proof version for people like myself who love to have hardcopies. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/365808/Halcyon-Stars-RPG-Quick-Start?src=newest
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