SWN: Prismatic Spray

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

Characters

• SWN Character Blank

Character Creation

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

• Roll 3d6 for attributes (or the array) as described. Assign your results in the order you prefer. If playing the attributes you rolled would make you miserable, even after changing one to a 14, use the array instead!
• 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.
• Languages: All PCs know Novesperanto, the auxiliary and technical language of the old human polity. You also know the language(s) of your home culture(s). You may know additional languages as per page 24.

Character Options

You may spend one of your starting foci to play a posthuman character, like a Harpy or Nereid, or a True AI from the Prismatic Fleet.

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 who live among diverse and squabbling floating islands. Their home societies use cybernetics to fulfill different social roles, and those with wings tend to be travelers 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 connected to a psychic union in their home ocean. They highly value the collective and rarely travel alone, but some of them leave, anyway. 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 minds who move between bodies. Whether dwelling in a starship, a pack of drones, or a stylish humanoid shell, their function and general personality is reflected in their color-name, which their soulstone glows with. True AI are created as per Revised Edition page 285. Choose Jack or Synth (page 257) as your starting armature.

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. This should be a seed you can look back on for inspiration, not a full biography. Concise doesn't have to mean humble or mundane origins!

Style and Posting

• Post both what you want to do and how you want to do it. (Download the secret plans by hacking the hidden database. Get to the palace by asking directions from the shopkeeper. Learn more about the henchman's home by talking about recipes.) 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's not beyond the pale, plunge ahead and drive the action forward.

Advancement

I'm still deciding exactly how XP will be awarded. I'm leaning toward "achieving group-defined goals" as a way of structuring play. I also like the idea of the group getting XP when someone achieves a moment of grace, encouraging everybody to set each other's characters up for time in the spotlight. It probably won't be based on collecting credits, but maybe pieces of magical lore. We'll see what the group dynamic ends up being - watch this space.