Difference between revisions of "SWN: Prismatic Spray"

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=Character Creation=
 
=Character Creation=

Revision as of 01:45, 16 February 2020

Prismatic Spray is a Stars Without Number (Revised) game using the Codex of the Black Sun supplement.

Setting

Opening Crawl

It's been 15 years since the Third Great Metastorm subsided, since the State of Grace was defeated, since the Prism arrived from their distant star.

The Lieges of the Real are ascendant after the war, academic Arcanists who promise a return to a more civilized age of magic and good government.

The Mountain lurks in the shadows, fallen Sunblades who have pledged their magical guns to bounty hunting and criminality while holding to a heartless code.

The Prism stands poised to break the old cycles. Self-created synthetic beings with strict discipline and seemingly endless resources, their transhuman potential and striking fashion sense inspires and frightens humanity and posthumanity alike.

Moresnet still remembers its fight for freedom with the help of the bygone Iris Arrows, champions of the later Weave, and wonders what's become of them now...

A Moresnet Gazetteer

Moresnet looks like this.

32 million people, breathable atmosphere, hybrid biosphere, temperate-to-warm climate, TL4. Relatively isolated from the wider sector due to metadimensional "bad weather."

  • Picture humid air, three moons in the sky, rocky coastlines and volcanic islands, jungles dense with hybrid ecosystems and nonhuman others, pastel-colored settlements connected by silent maglev train, cloaked sages meeting with hard-hatted technicians in a rural factory courtyard, revelers holding fans and colorful glass cups to feel the bass-heavy music at a festival, teens in padded armor practicing stick fighting under their teacher's eye, and megalithic pretech installations looming on the horizon.
  • The common language is Wika, which grew from Filipino Sign Language, and many other signed and oral languages are used at the community level. It is considered polite to sign or use text in public settings, out of consideration for language variation and widespread deafness. Filipino names are typical.
  • Moresnet has no central government. Communes and convocations representing dozens to hundred-thousands of people are a vehicle for collective decision making, resource management, and mutual aid. Trade syndicates emerge from individual factories and workshops, regional communes from villages and settlements, city assemblies from neighborhoods, and so on into the night. Conflict between communes is usually resolved without serious violence. The communal system has been widely established on the planet for about two centuries, after several governments of varying levels of tyranny were dismantled.
  • Magic and psionics are widely-known (with misconceptions: like ska musicians, or mayors), and it’s not difficult to find training by joining the appropriate commune-school. Like deafness, MES is generally seen as a different way of experiencing the world, not a mysterious gift or curse. Individuals have a right to their own magic, but like other valuable skills, there is a strong sense of community obligation. In bygone days, magicians were associated with martial rebels and tyrants, but the modern stereotype is of a performer or creative type. Psychics have consistently been seen as disciplined community workers: telepathy, healing, and disaster preparedness for example.
  • Jungles, river caves, and the hidden corners of cities have hosted magical beings called Shadows (and sometimes their mortal followers) since the time of the Weave. Not all Shadows are malevolent, but they usually aren’t part of public life. Some communes and individuals have long-established patron or guardian Shadows, or other ritualized relationships. Others ask strong fighters and canny magicians to clear out the cruel spirits that bedevil them.

Prismatic Spray Sector

Sector Map

This is only a local map - now that the Metastorm's subsided, there are always further places to come from or seek out star maps to.

Some Notable Worlds

  • The engineered gardens of Amity are overseen by the grand magical academy of the Lieges of the Real, drawing students and social climbers from across the sector.
  • The asteroid habitats of Evergreen have turned a shattered planet into a rich trade hub and popular refuge from interplanetary chaos.
  • The floating islands of Hanseong see nomadic Harpies and other cyber-magical societies bickering high above the toxic cloud sea that buried the surface.
  • The defeated world of Grace has been blockaded by the Prism, banning all passage on or off the populous former suzerain-planet of the State of Grace.
  • The ocean planet of Aeaea hosts surface platforms and itinerant sailors, but the reclusive Nereid group-mind is most active in the gleaming world beneath the waves.
  • The bubble cities of Vuor have at last ended their bitter civil war, leaving the new generation to piece something together from the wreckage.
  • The frigid desert of Stoke powers massive industrial complexes from its underground canyon cities, manufacturing best-quality tech with artifact machinery.
  • The gas giant of Cirfant fuels the sector, and the greed of its ruling families and pirate vassals, with its irreplaceable web of floating dioxis distilleries.
  • The Gaolers of Tayn keep their own company, and the sector breathes a sigh of relief.

Tone and Genre

Prismatic Spray is space fantasy! There's room for different styles on different planets, but here are some rules of thumb:

  • Space travel is relatively accessible. Individuals and small groups can acquire spacecraft of their own, not only merchants and trading companies.
  • Worlds that are fully cut off from the wider sector are uncommon. The overall tech level is usually high, even aside from psi and magic. Most systems have their own culture, but shared interstellar cultures exist; empires and magical orders have come and gone.
  • Spellcasters often exist in formal groups with a known presence in the sector, even if they're small or scattered. Like Jedi, worldly people broadly know what magic and magicians are. Sunblades always have an order, but Arcanists and Magisters have teachers and schools of thought as well.
  • Earth does not loom large in most peoples' imagination. Humanity and posthumanity has grown in new directions, including the possibility of deep physical changes through magic and tech, and encounters with fully nonhuman Shadows and now AI. A lot has happened since the Scream.
  • Think: possibilities, curiosity, escaping cycles, making something new with what you've been given. And laser swords.

Characters

Character Creation

As per the 2E/Revised rulebook (Page 4), with these changes.

  • Roll 4d6 drop lowest for attributes, arranged as you like.
  • Instead of rolling HP at level 1, set your first d6 to 6 and modify with Constitution as normal. When you reroll HP on level up, continue using 6 in place of that first d6. Reroll further hit dice that roll 1.
  • All PCs know Novesperanto, the auxiliary and technical language of the old Weave. You also know the language(s) of your home culture(s). You may know additional languages as per page 24.

Character Options

You can spend one of your starting foci to play a posthuman character, like a Harpy or Nereid, or a nonhuman Prismatic AI.

Human

Adaptable folk who live on many different worlds. Humans may or may not modify themselves with magic, cybernetics, or gengineering, but more often as individuals than whole cultures. They effectively have one extra focus to spend however they like.

Harpy

Winged folk from Hanseong who live among diverse and squabbling floating islands. In their home societies, wings are given to travelers, messengers, and explorers. Harpies can fly under normal gravity conditions with their move action and never take more than 1d4 falling damage while conscious. They have integral low-light and thermal vision, as per Panspectral Optics cyberware.

Nereid

Sea-dwelling folk from Aeaea who are connected to a powerful psychic group-entity in their home ocean. They prize their collective and rarely travel alone, but some have the urge to leave. Nereids can breathe and move freely underwater as well as on land. They can naturally communicate telepathically with one willing person per scene, as per Telepathy-1: Transmit Thought. They are automatically aware when their minds are targeted by psi or magic.

Prismatic

Purpose-built synthetic minds from the Prism who move their core between bodies. They take colors as their names, which reflect their personality and function within the stratified Prism. Some Prismatics desert their posts, or even rebel against their own makers, to "protect organic life" and "pursue peace and love," if you can believe that. True AI are created as per Revised Edition page 285. Choose Jack or Synth (page 257) as your starting armature.

Classes

Available classes are (Arcane) Expert, (Arcane) Warrior, Psychic, Arcanist, Magister (any), Sunblade, Yama King, and Adventurer (combining any of the above). Note that Arcane Expert and Arcane Warrior are exactly the same as the core versions of those classes, just with the option to choose Arcane Foci to represent minor magical talents.

Prismatic characters are True AI, or may be Adventurers with Partial AI and Partial Expert, Warrior, Psychic, or Arcanist.

What's Your Deal?

Write about 150 words of backstory. It can be a bit more or less. It's usually more fun to expand and improvise once we start playing and know the world, anyway. Think about goals, wants, and open questions. Concise doesn't have to mean humble or mundane origins!

Advancement

We're using SWN Revised experience points as written, but I want to adapt the guidelines of Mark Hulmes (@sherlock_hulmes on Twitter) for when XP is awarded. This is currently a work in progress, but it will look something like this:

When one of the following happens during a session, the party gets 1 XP. Each item can only give XP once per session.

  • a character completed a short-term goal
  • a character attuned to a new magic item
  • a character invoked their bond, ideal, or flaw to make a meaningful impact during gameplay
  • a character developed a new or existing relationship in a meaningful way
  • a character discovered a piece of interesting, useful, and/or secret lore about the world or an NPC
  • a character used a skill or spell to solve a problem in an interesting or meaningful way
  • the party undertook a perilous journey that took time to complete
  • a character took actions that made a major impact in the world or local area - for better or worse

Style and Posting

  • When taking action, post both what you want to do and how you want to do it. The Wyzard wrote a great guide to this here.
  • Aim for concise posts that focus on things that other people can see and respond to. Inner monologues and flashbacks aren't verboten, but try reframing them as things that are said or done out loud.
  • Be bold! To do it, do it! Play to find out what happens! Take action and narrate up to the point that you don't know what happens next. Avoid if-then instructions. If you're not sure whether the group will want to do something that affects everyone, ask in the OOC thread first - but if it fits, plunge ahead and drive the action forward.