Wiki Highlight: Hackers and Bloodsiders

It's been a rough month for my health, and Undercity Noir has dominated my attention, but my blog discipline has been slipping.  My apologies for that.  Even so, I do have more material on the wiki. In case you missed it, or wanted some "Creator commentary" here we go.

Hacker

Fulfilling my last "Release the Balloon People" poll, I've released the Hacker cross-training power-up. This represents a sea-change in how I'm handling cross-training: instead of treating it like the Specialist Skill-Sets from Action, I'm treating them more like the Cross-Class Templates from DF, though not in the sense of literal cross-class training.  Instead, I generally find I prefer creating a list of things you can further invest in.  Rather than construct a character by picking a base template and 5 or so highly determined micro-templates, I'd rather you picked One Big Template and then One Big Power-Up, because this is conceptually simpler.  You might be a Cyborg + Space Knight or Psychic + Con-Artist. Similarly, I'd rather see Hacker + Assassin.  This also works very well for the "side-kick" templates I've built: you can take a 125 point "mini-template" and grab a 50-point power-up template, and then fill out the other 75-125 points with additional skills and advantages from your template.

In my experience, when I make characters with templates, at some point I already know what I want.  Following the details is nice, but eventually I get it and I'm tearing off on my own.  I suspect less experienced players eventually do the same, and they'll want more things from their advantage list than fits into the default value, more skills than they can afford, etc.  So, I feel like hitting fewer "high concept" templates like this works a lot better for this sort of character creation.

So you can see the Hacker template and the new, updated cross-training templates here.

Bloodsiders

So quite some time ago, I released a list of criminal organizations in Psi-Wars, and offered up a poll for who you wanted detailed first, and the House of Bastards won handily, so naturally I did the Bloodsiders first.  Why? Because they were pertinent to Undercity Noir and half the characters took some sort of relationship with them so they needed to be expanded.  The result took more time than I expected, mostly because of their Mythos.  They have street magic that's steeped in their superstitions and urban folklore, so I needed to create the set of stories and oaths they would acquire from this.  This makes it a "minor philosophy," and largely a subset of the Divine Masks.

The Undercity Bloodsiders are descendants of refugees from the Umbral Rim who gathered together to form new bonds in the crowded undercity of Kronos.  They recreated their own vision of the culture of the Umbral Rim in those mean streets, and the resulting criminal gang is a savage group of bloodthirsty punks with a fixation on the occult and their own strange tales of the Undercity.

You can check out their organization here and you can check out their mythology here.

Wiki Highlight: the Psion Template

 As one of Christopher Rice's patrons, I can participate in a regular poll where he releases on of his patreon specials to his blog.  I really appreciate it, and I thought it might be a nice option to do on my own blog, given how many of my specials are explicitly just previews: material that's likely useful or interesting, but isn't yet ready for the prime time for one reason or the other.  However, some tend to collect there for no particular reason, so I thought I'd offer to let people release one, and this month they chose The Psion Template.

Wiki Spotlight: Hacking in Psi-Wars (with Backer Special Preview)

 

Hacking has turned out to be much more important than I originally thought it would when I first put together Psi-Wars back in Iteration 1.  If you watch Star Wars, or even most Space Opera out there, Hackers don't play much of a role.  After all, Space Opera is action where square-jawed heroes punch evil warlords in the jaw and rescue the scantily clad damsel; the pallid nerds who hide from the sun in their basement while hacking even corporations is something more appropriate to Cyberpunk.

But I should have known better.  "Slicer" is a major concept in pretty much every Star Wars RPG I've come across, and indeed I'm pretty sure the term comes from the extended universe, and if you pay attention, there's actually a ton of hacking being done in the Star Wars films, it's just generally by robots. I had originally pushed that concept onto robots, but in practice, I find that it becomes pretty central to the action.  Because all security systems are controlled by a computer, the easiest way to bypass systems is to find a terminal and just hack the systems (open the door, disable the cameras, etc).  This makes the hacking robot much too important to leave to just an NPC, and much too interesting to deny to players.  So, we need hackers.

There's another problem with hacking, which is what made me reluctant to give it much of a treatment: a lot of RPGs that have hacking in them treat it as an entire subgame.  You must invest a ton of resources and time into hacking, and whenever hacking comes up, it takes a big chunk of the game.  I definitely didn't want that: Psi-Wars is a game about space knights dueling, not about a deep exploration of cyberspace that takes an hour.  Fortunately, Action handles this nicely: you just spend an hour and roll Computer Hacking; done.  The only problem with this is we lose some individualization: all hackers have high levels of hacking and everything else (nerdy computer, mischievous anarchist, calculating criminal).  GURPS Cyberpunk (at least as per Pyramid) gets around this with techniques, but those techniques assume the sort of deep investment in cyberspace that I want to avoid.  So I came up with something else: inspired by the magic perks, I thought we could spice up the gameplay with some player-activated perks.  Rather than worry about a ton of details, we just have our base system, and the player can introduce complexity via little bonuses that, ideally, don't take up too much time.

So, where do we get our hackers? Do we have a hacker template? That feels a bit big for me.  The Spy could certainly be a hacker, but that's just one of the spies many skills. So, instead, a skillset feels more reasonable to me, especially if we slather it over something like the Criminal Sidekick Template that I put up on Patreon awhile ago. This left me thinking about Skillsets, as I've been exploring them as an optional set of power-ups, but the more I mess with them, the more it feels like they should be more like the 50-point cross-class templates from Dungeon Fantasy than the Skillsets of Action.  The Action Skillsets are just a slightly chunkier way to build a character.  You can do that, but it tends to blur niche, which isn't necessarily a problem (and not something I worry about in Psi-Wars) and I find that the general thrust of Psi-Wars tends indelibly towards a sort of specialization: if you're psychic, you could easily invest 100+ points in psychic powers; if you're a space knight, you could easily invest 100+ points in your force swordsmanship.  Couldn't skillsets work in a similar way? So I'm going to try an approach of a "50 point" lens, where there's 25 points of minimum investment and 25 additional discretionary points, to allow a little more variety among the characters, and to create a list of things a player might invest in, if they want to dump another 50 points into a particular skillset specialization.

Of course, all of this was inspired by the Undercity Noir adventure, as we have at least one Hacker in the mix (and, I noticed, a lot of NPC hackers as sysads).  Thus, I wanted to get this out sooner than later.

The biggest change made to gear and the hacking rules is the removal of "superior" hacking gear that grants a bonus.  As I worked on the rules (especially using the surprisingly superior Thinking Machine rules which I had previously unfairly dismissed) I noticed that the typical computer that players would hack would ultimately be mainframes, which meant you need a pretty powerful machine to even attempt to hack.  This also eliminates one of my complaints with UT, which is that money can buy skill and character traits.  Now, your ability to hack is determined entirely by skill, not the wealth necessary to buy superior hacking hardware.

• The slightly updated hacking rules are found here
• The hacker gear is found here
• The Hacker skillset is going to be a Backer Exclusive for now, with a bonus "Mechanic" sidekick template.
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Backer Preview -- The Psion Template Draft

The more I’ve messed with Psi-Wars, the more obvious it is to me that psionics is different from the Force. The Force is closer to magic: A jedi doesn’t use his power, he calls upon the force to perform a task for him. In principle, this means any force user can perform any feat, and we see this often in the films, where a Jedi with no dark-side training will wield the powers of the dark side powered only by their rage. This suggests that “unique” powers should not be possible. We do see unique powers, but they’re never adequately explained, sometimes described as “rare gifts.”

Psi-Wars uses a different approach: people have their psychic power, and this grants access to Communion, which means they have the room for a quirky, unique power as a gateway to the more universal power. While most psionic abilities are fairly similar (TK-Grab is TK-Grab) there should still be room for weird and unique powers (“I kill people in their dreams!”). The more we go down this route, the more the Psis of Psi-Wars look less like Jedi and more like the characters from Push, or the X-men.

This template is an attempt to embrace that character aesthetic. It isn’t the Mystic template: while you can make a fortune teller or a healer with this, the idea is more of a strictly sci-fi feeling psychic character, typically a kid whose strange powers have erupted, or a powerful psychic on the run from the conspiracy, etc. There is some crossover with other psychic templates: some of the innovations with Secrets, Enemies and Licenses should be ported over to Space Knights, and this should be balanced and contrasted with Mystics, and I’m not sure where edge cases, such as Zathare sorcerers should go. However, this is a good start, and we can start exploring the idea now, and solidify it more fully later.

This is a Backer Post for Fellow Travelers ($3+)

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Psi-Wars Wiki Update: Welcome to the Wild Side Edition

• Planetary Peril 
• The Survivor Background
• The Frontier Marshal
  

When I last asked the community for what Template they wanted wikified, they chose the Frontier Marshal. I found that an interesting choice, given its intersection between law enforcement, gunslinging and wilderness adventure.  I spend most of last month (and the first half of this month) working on the gunslinging part.  The last half of this month has been on the wilderness part.

See, the Frontier Marshal is the ranger of Psi-Wars.  He's a skilled ranged combatant, but he applies that skill while out in the wilderness.  He rides his steed over the plains and the desert, but a grim man on a boat in a swamp with a rifle resting on his shoulder is as much a Frontier Marshal.  They represent the sort of character that understands the wilderness, and the people that live in it.  They share this a bit with the Bounty Hunter: they're a liminal class that walks the boundary of rim and core, but in their case, it is civilization and wilderness

This naturally meant I had to explore the wilderness rules.  I've actually had them sitting around, updated somewhat, since Iteration 5, and I had most of them written out already.  Thus, this turned into a review, especially as I referenced them for my updates to the Frontier Marshal.  Satisfied with them, the Planetary Peril rules now on the wiki.

Once I had those in hand, the next question I needed resolved is what sort of traits I wanted for survivors to have.  This turned into a natural review of the Survivor background.  In previous iterations, I included a few additional traits associated with a particular form of survival, and I intended to expand that further this time, but I found that overwrought and instead I turned into creating a set of advice for players.  I also experimented with a new concept: "Where am I from?" Before, the backgrounds could afford to be vague: you were an aristocrat from some lineage, or a survivor from some world. Now we have setting specifics, so you can be an aristocrat from this lineage, and now you can be a survivor from this world.  Let me know if you like the idea.  You can find the Survivor (and the Primitive, the more important aspect of the backround IMO) here.

At last, the Frontier Marshal.  I integrated a cut down set of survivor traits here, bundled in the "power-ups" from the previous iteration and integrated the gunslinger styles and offered some advice.  The biggest change, of course, is integration into the setting.  What is a frontier marshal and how do they differ from group to group?  I've included 4. The generic Frontier Marshal remains what he was: a generic lawman on a generic world answering to some higher authority (the Alliance or the Empire) to enforce the law on less sophisticated locals.  But for more specific marshals, we now have the Maradonian Reeve, the Shinjurai conservationist and the Westerly Rim-Walker.  The Reeve and the Conservationist focus more on preserving nature, and more closely resemble the modern, real-world ranger.  The Reeve protects the lands of his lord, while the conservationist protects regions set aside by interstellar law as nature preserves.  The Rim-Walker is shifts back to the more cowboy nature of the role, and changes the template into semi-legendary figure of Westerly lore: wandering gunslingers who make use of their powerful blaster fu to set the law right.  They're technically not Law Enforcement, but so many people treat them as law enforcement that they often get a pass from the governing powers.

There were three lenses I considered and discarded.  The Frontiersman would be a a generic "gunslinger from the wilderness," someone without any law enforcement or rank.  I still like the idea, but it starts to feel like excessive detail to discuss it (basically, just spend your 30 points for your lens on your advantages; done). I considered a Guide, or a Tribal Guide: someone who knows the wilderness and will agree to guide people on a safari, or join up with someone else. I still like this idea, but a generic guide doesn't have that much setting them apart, and a Tribal guide would be very different skill-wise, so perhaps best left until I'm farther along with such cultural groups.  Finally, I considered a Ranathim "Beast master" who would go into the nature preserves of world like Hekatomb or Sarai and find the great beasts there and capture them for use in the gladiatorial arenas.  An interesting concept, but a very different one when it came to combat and very focused on the Ranathim, so I parked it for now.  The four I've had feel like they cover enough ground to make the concept work without watering it down too much.

And with those three, we have a glimpse into the more wild parts of Psi-Wars.  I still have a lot of unfinished material (such as some rough drafts on some space monsters), but it's time to move onto the next expansion of Psi-Wars, particularly the criminal world.

Template Highlight: the Bounty Hunter

So, I had a poll running on Patreon about which template you guys would like me to wikify next, with a focus on "Rim" templates, though this highlighted to me just how few of the original Rim templates I have left to wikify!  In any case, you guys let me off the hook and chose Bounty Hunter, which was especially easy because it's already done.

What will follow will be a discussion of how the Bounty Hunter template has evolved and what I've added to it. This will kick off "the month of the Bounty Hunter," because one of the reasons I've been so quiet lately is I've been building up material on the Bounty Hunter.  It's still not completely done, but you go to campaign with the material you've written, so here we are!  I have plenty of material to show, so I think we'll be busy for awhile!  But if you'd like to skip all that and just look at the template, here it is:

The Bounty Hunter.

Wiki-Showcase: the Scavenger 2.0

One of the requests I had for Tall Tales was an update to the Scavenger Template. This caused a bit of controversy, because the purpose of the original is as the Psi-Wars "tech expert."  The original complaint about the Scavenger template was that "the name was wrong," given that if you wanted to be a robot builder or a ship's engineer, "Scavenger" wouldn't be the first template you'd think of.  My counter to this is that the problem with the generic tech guy is that he needs a reason to get out of his lab.  I've seen many an "engineer" character who would rather downtime in their lab creating crazy gadgets than going on adventures that get them killed.  Whatever the tech-specialist was, he'd need to be practical on an adventure in some capacity.

I conceived of the Scavenger in this context. If you wanted to mess with cool technology, you need to go out into the world and find it.  This means you need to be good at adventurer and survival skills.  After all, your tech might be in space, or in some horrid, radiation-blasted wasteland.  "The Scavenger," then, makes a good adventurer. He's someone who knows of the dungeon you want to explore, can get you there, and has a reason to be there.

The problem, though, is that a scavenger isn't actually a tech-guy.  I dove into the After The End's take on the scavenger, and studied around, and what I came back with was that the idea of someone who goes places and finds stuff is solid.  You can actually create a neat blur of associated lenses and templates: sure, a junker, but also a ship salvager, or a ruin-delving archaeologist, or even an asteroid miner: they all tend to share similar skills, and might begin to blur together a bit as they start to do "a bit on the side." And they might use what they find to repair or rebuild machines, but they might also just sell them, or reasonably use them in weird, occult rituals.  They have some connection to the idea of a tech-expert, but it's not really their core mission.  So a lot of that was dropped, and we instead have this focus on "a guy who goes to old, out of the way places and finds stuff."

Is there room for a "tech-specialist" in Psi-Wars? In Star Wars, that "boring stuff" gets handed off to the droids, and we see it more front-and-center in Star Trek, which might suggest that it doesn't.  But Firefly had a dedicated engineer, Killjoys features a character who's very good at fixing machinery and getting along with robots (and cyborgs). As I watch the Psi-Wars community and the sorts of characters they seem to want to build, I find more of a push towards cyberneticists and engineers, so maybe there is room, but I'd need to think about how to keep them in the adventurer, rather than in their lab.

You can see the updated template here.

Wiki Showcase: the Fighter Ace

If you're a Disciple or better on Patreon, you already know that I've announced the coming playtest for the Action Vehicular Rules: Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt. I'll detail more as we come closer to the first session. Naturally, to run this playtest, I need to work out the sorts of characters that would use all these fighters we've been builing, and that means working out the Fighter Ace and putting it on the Wiki.

This was actually the first of the new templates I revised for Iteration 7. I started working on it after I finished the Action Vehicular Rules, because it changed a lot of how they functioned, and I wanted to capture that.  That said, it's probably changed the least of the new templates; mostly, I just migrated the advantage/disadvantage choices based on who they worked for to lenses, and updated their techniques to use the new techniques.  I've removed the "Maverick, Wingman, Bomber" distinctions of their techniques as I expect everyone to be adult enough to understand what to do with that, and I've discussed that in their customization notes (this could be expanded, though).  I've integrated their "Power-ups" into the template rather than leave them as distinct, "Fighter Ace only" upgrades (this means they lose their "fighter gizmos," but we can bring that back if people really miss them).  I do intend to create a "cross-class" fighter ace specialization, so people who want to play as space knights who can also fly fighters can do so.

Wiki Showcase: the Space Knight

"Where is the stuff on the "REALLY not Jedi, leave me alone Disney lawyers!"?" - Kevin Hudgins

Space Knight by Kriz Villacis,
Owned by Daniel Dover

Ah, the Space Knight. Perhaps the most iconic element of Psi-Wars.  We've had Dun Beltain, our resident space knight, since Iteration 1, and we've added new space knights, such as the dark lord Vesper Tane and the holy warrior Rafari since iteration 3, and they've remained some of the most popular elements since Psi-Wars began. This is unsurprising, as they stand in for our "Jedi," and thus have all the appeal of samurai, wuxia and fantasy paladins.

My Patrons finally asked me to to make this the focus of this month's Template revisions, and I've cautioned them on it, because the Space Knight is tricky to explore.  So, with expectations managed, I've released my current version of the Space Knight.

This is a tricky project, and you need to see it as a work in progress, one that will likely continue for quite some time.  While I wouldn't call the space knight the "central" template to the game, as one can play entire Psi-Wars campaigns without ever touching one, the template is deeply bound up in legends and history, which makes it something profoundly tied into the setting, which means you can't talk about any aspect of the setting without touching on the Space Knight and vice versa.  That means there's a lot to unpack, and that means we can talk about them for a long time, which means we won't be done for a long time, which means you'll have to settle with what we have at the time until I expand on all the things.

For me, one of the key goals of the Space Knight project was variety.  A frustration I had with Star Wars gaming when I was younger was that they were all the same.  This was more true back when it was just the original trilogy (yes, I am that old), because you had essentially three archetypes: the young, idealistic apprentice, the old and bitter teacher, and the former student who had fallen to the Dark Side.  Since then, especially after the prequels, we've seen a greater variety of lightsaber fighting techniques (though these are woefully underrepresented in Star Wars RPGs) and hints of unique powers, but we still find ourselves exploring the same tropes.

I wanted Psi-Wars to be a game where everyone could play as a Space Knight and not feel like they were stepping on one another's toes.  I wanted numerous sorts of space knights, from your "not a Jedi, I swear" to your straight up "I'm a knight, in space" space knights and in between.  As an avid fan of kung fu movies and wuxia stories, I wanted them to explore martial arts and discuss which strategies are best, and why, and to differentiate from one another based on their preferred approaches to combat.  I wanted them to all have unique psionic powers, as well as a unifying set of power in the form of Communion.  And I wanted them to have varying philosophies behind their powers and behind why they fight.

Put all of this together, and we have a lot to talk about.  My patrons have asked me to talk about Communion, and that's all ready to go, it's just a matter of posting it; I've already discussed martial arts in broad outlines, and I'll be slowly releasing those as power-up sets and, given time, I may go more deeply into the Templars and the Cults of the Mystical Tyrant.

One last comment: if you're expecting to play as a Jedi with one of these, understand that these templates were built to balance with Smugglers, Commandos and Diplomats.  They're action characters with a little bit of psionic power, and a few points in Martial Arts. They've actually seen a downgrade since their last iteration, though I've made them better generalists (DX 13 rather than DX 12).  Their best Force Sword skill is 16 (17 in the case of Swift Form users), down from 18, but they have a little more psionic abilities and they can always invest in more martial arts.  If you want to play as the space knight who slings around True Communion like nobody's business and has 100 points in psionic powers and is the master of a force sword form, you're looking at closer to 500 points and, yes, I do have ideas for such a template, but that will need to wait!

The Smuggler Template Revisited

The New Smuggler Template (This will be its final home, so any new revisions will happen here)

Every month, my Patrons get to vote on a template to revisit and update to integrate them into the setting and any rule-changed I've made.  This month, they voted on the Frontier Marshal, of all things, until the Smuggler snuck in and snatched the win out from under him.  Seems about right, if you ask me.

Nonetheless, I find it interesting that the Frontier Marshal and the Smuggler both did so well (as did the Bounty Hunter) given that they're both Rim templates, after the Diplomat won so handily.  I suspect it's because seeing how the Diplomat integrated into the setting was an eye-opener for a lot of my patrons, and now they're curious how the Rim templates will work.

Alas, they won't be as tightly bound as the "Core" Templates.  The point of the "Core" templates is that they represent templates that work for a powerful organization in the setting.  They are the soldiers of the Empire, the diplomats of the Alliance, the spies of the Cybernetic Union.  The "Rim" templates, by contrast, represent the underbelly of the criminal underworld of the Galaxy.  As such, they are inherently more generic than "Core" templates.  Consider, for a moment, how different a human smuggler would be from a Ranathim smuggler.  Both of them have fast ships, loose morals, and an itchy trigger finger.  Thus, there's no real need to tie them to a specific entity.  There's no such thing as an "Imperial" smuggler who is different from an "Alliance" smuggler.

Or... is that so?  As I thought more about the Frontier Marshal, back when I thought he'd win, I found that I could come up with multiple different variants.  And then, when the smuggler won, I found I could come up with variants for that one too.  These variants need to represent "must have" guides for trying to build specific, weird examples, like Duty or Rank or some unusual  benefits from a particular odd race, as well as pointers to interesting ideas someone might not have had before, while still maintaining the option to "create your own."

It seems I had quite a bit to revise after all!

Notes on Revisiting Templates: the Diplomat

In an effort to revise and distill my rules on the Wiki, I asked my patreons which template they'd like me to revisit and you'll never guess what they chose... or you wouldn't if you hadn't just read the title, but I sure was surprised to see the Diplomat top the chart!

I see the average player of Psi-Wars as seeking an action-oriented character: a space knight, a bounty hunter, a smuggler, a commando.  Yet they chose for the most political, least action-oriented character they could. Why?  A few patrons chimed in on why, and it seems to boil down to:

• It's the closest we'll get to a "princess" class and some people really like princesses
• It's the most culturally bound template, which means working on it will necessarily require me digging into the culture of Psi-Wars.

This last is key.  I don't really have a problem with the Templates as they stand, for the most part.  I'm sure I could nitpick at them.  However, the old, Iteration 5 templates were generic. They were "a" space knight and "a" diplomat, and you can still play that way.  But Iteration 6 and 7 seek to build up a detailed, specific setting.  We've gone from the generic templates of GURPS Action and Monster Hunters to the more specific templates of GURPS Cabal, Transhuman Space and Banestorm.  I want to maintain the idea of fairly generic templates (a diplomat is a diplomat), but I'd like to be able to ground them in a specific culture of concept native to Psi-Wars.

To do this, I needed to dive into the cultures of Psi-Wars, at least a bit.  I'd like, at some point, to write down these cultures in more detail, more akin to the level of detail I've posted about Aristocratic Culture and Imperial Culture, as well as the Patreon Special on the Traders.  These are, of course, subject to change, and will likely be revisited once I do settle down and dig into the cultures of these various groups.  Of course, the Diplomat would only tackle a specific subset of those cultures: the things he needs to know to survive those cultures (language, how to avoid dangers) and ways of collecting reaction modifiers with the right sorts of people (the right social skills, connoisseur, current affairs, etc).

I also needed to double check the template itself, to see if any of the various changes I've made impact the Template itself.  Of course, I find I lose track of some of the more specific changes, so this might require another revisit once all the rules get collated, but I doubt it'll be much.

You can find the current state of the Diplomat Template here on the wiki.

Psi-Wars Alien Races: the Traders

Homeworld: None (Sterilized during their war with humanity)
Other Worlds: Jubilee Station and the Trader Belt.

The Traders earned their name through commerce, but they earned their place at the galactic center through innovative navigational techniques. Early Traders mastered higher mathematics that allowed them to envision and interact with hyperdimensional space. Using these techniques, they were among the first races to travel to the stars. They soon found other races, even ancient empires, and but rather than swap blaster fire with these new species, the Traders chose to swap trade goods.

When those ancient empires fell, the Traders discovered that the only humanity, a new-comer to the galactic scene, competed with them for dominion over the galactic center. If a few battles had gone differently, if luck had favored the Traders, history may well have gone in a very different direction, but instead, for their foray into empire-building, the Traders found their homeworld destroyed and their race scattered across the galaxy.

Today, Traders ply the stars with their great and vast arks, vast dreadnoughts that house entire cities of Traders within them, including housing, restaurants, hospitals, industry and ship-repair facilities. These great arks collect together into great “Guild fleets,” which used to act as roving industrial centers and corporate headquarters, but with the destruction of their homeworld, these guild fleets have devolved into extended clans, serving to guard and protect the remnants of the Trader people. Traders have only one permanent settlement: Jubilee Station, a huge space station/space colony in the Trader elt that acts as a permanent Trader marketplace, a home for myriad alien cultures, and a point to which all Guild Fleets return every 20 years for their grand Trader Jubilee, where they swap stories, star charts, and even family members, and then set off to explore something new.

Traders blend humanoid features with strange and alien traits to create an alluringly exotic combination that many other aliens find both intriguing and repulsive. They mostly resemble hairless, green-skinned humans with liquid black eyes, and wear tight-fitting skin-suits that underline just how feminine or masculine the more attractive members of the species might be. Beneath and along their supple, dark-green lips lie the tell-tale signs of the “Trader grin:” a thin black line that goes from their mouth down their chin and deep into their cheeks. When a Trader isn’t politely offering another alien a close-mouthed smile, their faces split open to reveal a split pair of mandibles lined with rows of teeth; their unhinged jaws allow the to gulp down slithering, still-living prey, like leather eels. Self-conscious Traders hide this feature behind a face mask or filter mask.

A Trader’s intellect truly sets him apart from other species. While no smarter than other species, they think faster than everyone else. For them, seconds drift by as slowly as minutes do for others. They read a page at a glance, and they speak a language called Klik, which allows them to convey a minute’s worth of conversation in a mere second, and at an exceptionally high pitch that’s barely audible to normal species. Most Traders master Galactic Common at a young age, and even prefer its poetry to the dry logic of Klik, but they’ll sprinkle Klik into their conversations in a series of seemingly unimportant clicks or short, high-pitched, stuttered whines that seem nothing more than an odd affectation to other species but is, in fact, an entire second layer to a conversation mostly incomprehensible to anyone but a fellow Trader.

Traders suffer from frailty. They have delicate physiques and their life aboard starships make them prone to disease. To compensate for this, Traders have mastered the arts of cybernetics and robotics. They often sport spidery and baroque cybernetics, and rather than battle their foes directly, they make heavy use of robotic assistance.

Traders usually prefer to be Diplomats or Smugglers, both of which allow them to bring their superior deal-making skills to the fore. Trader society frowns upon Con Artists, but Traders who choose to go this route tend to be very good. Traders make excellent cyberneticists, and such often end up as Scavengers. Finally, Traders don’t generally engage in war, but they do worry about their own safety, and so some Traders become Security Agents.

Most Traders have the Wanderer background; Traders who grow up on Jubilee Station have the Humble Origins background. Those who run Trader arks or guild fleets have titles and are thus Aristocrats.

Psi-Wars Alien Races: the Gaunt

Other names: Ghouls, Stiffs, Tarvathim, the Vat-Born

Homeworld: Tarvagant (the Umbral Rim)

Other worlds: The Gaunt can be found almost everywhere in the Umbral Rim and wherever aliens can be found in the Galactic Core, but tend to be especially common in Moros, Samsara and Grist.

When the Ranathim first faced the great armies of the Eldoth, they despaired, for they would never be able to gather an army great enough to defeat them, until one of their great science-mystics stole the secret of Thanatokinesis from the Eldoth and created the Dead Art. Using her newly crafted synthetic flesh, the Ranathim were able to forge numerous monstrosities to hurl against the armies of the Eldoth and, eventually, triumph.

One of these monstrous warmachines were the Gaunt, or “Tarvathim” in the Lithian language. This race served as the disposable footsoldiers and servants of the Ranathim. The have a pallid, pasty appearance from their unliving “synthetic flesh,” though older gaunts have a leathery appearance as exposure to various suns toughens the upper layer of their synthetic flesh. They have milky eyes, gaping nostril slits, and their lipless faces expose sharp, jagged, black teeth; similarly black claws extend from their hands at feet. The Gaunts are born via a mass-production process called “Flesh Vats,” and inconsistencies in the creation process leaves numerous discolorations, boils and deformities upon the Gaunt, which do little to inhibit their functionality, but make them a most unpleasant race to look upon.

The Gaunt have fantastic strength and durability, being functionally living “machines.” They can shrug off blows that would kill a human, and their synthetic metabolism makes them virtually immune to metabolic hazards like disease, poison, even vacuum. They do not eat food, but instead, must consume more synthetic flesh or, barring that, the flesh of the dead (preferably the flesh of sapients, as their inherent necrokinetic nature responds better to that than to the flesh of animals, but that will do in a pinch). On the other hand, they lack the originality or ingenuity of natural races and they tend to be slightly clumsy or slow. Their synthetic metabolism works badly with most drugs, requiring them to have uniquely crafted serums for their metabolism. While most diseases find it difficult to harm a Gaunt, they can still infect a Gaunt, and many Gaunts act as unintentional carriers for insidious diseases. They may appear humanoid, but they are not: they cannot breed, they’re born from their vats “fully grown” and they die after a few decades: few Gaunts live more than 40 years. Finally, these were designed to be the servile minions of the Ranathim and, as such, are susceptible to psionic powers.

With the fall of the Ranathim Tyranny, most flesh industries collapsed, but the Gaunts did what they could to collect the last few flesh vats and use those to replace their numbers with old, run-down machinery. They’re a surprisingly common race, and their disgusting features can be found frequenting underworld cantinas or lurking in the bowels of some arcology where only the dead lurk. They tend to take on the culture of whatever civilization they live in, though some remember the old Ranathim ways and speak Lithian or practice the Divine masks (especially Navare, Zathare and, of course, the Dead Art).

Psi-Wars Foundation Races: The Eldoth

Eldoth

Homeworld: Sepulcher
Other Worlds: Elysia, Acheron, Tartarus

Before the Alexian Dynasty, before the Ranathim Tyranny, before humanity even reached for the stars, the ancient and enigmatic Eldoth set the foundations for the first known pan-galactic Empire. They arose on the now frozen world of Sepulcher near the rim of the Arkhaian Spiral of the galaxy, and while exploring those far reaches, they encountered some great and terrible menace, something that drove them to the brink of extinction and that forced them to innovate and adapt, fighting an existential war for their very survival and in so doing, harnessed the very power of Broken Communion with their Deep Engine to defeat it.

The mad paranoia of the clinical and technologically unparalleled Eldoth drove them out into the galaxy, to gather resources and to ensure that nothing threatened their survival again, for they feared that the great galactic menace would one day return. Their pursuit for the safety of the Galaxy led them into direct conflict with, first, the Keleni Temple Worlds and then the budding Ranathim Tyranny. The sacred spaces of the Keleni threatened the integrity of their Deep Engine, and the Ranathim sacred spaces injected strange chaos into the order of their Deep Engine. The Eldoth sought to eliminate both threats. The drove the Keleni from their Temple Worlds, broke their power, shattered their temples, and dragged them off as prisoners to experiment upon them. In return, the Keleni turned to zealous assassination techniques to fight for the very survival of their species, and the Ranathim lent their power to the cause, uniting the worlds under the first Tyrant's banner and shattering Eldothic supremacy and taking the fight to Sepulcher itself, ridding the Galaxy of the dread Eldoth once and for all.

But the Eldoth have proven a tenacious species. Far from dead, they have rested in their regeneration sarcophagi in the catacombs beneath Sepulcher. A few of their number still roam the galaxy, some seeking to restore their slumbering queen to her throne and to rebuilt their fallen Empire; others concern themselves exclusively with preparing the galaxy for the return of the ancient menace that they once fought, whose presence drew the great galactic invasion to it; yet others seek to betray their race and the galaxy to that ancient menace, out of revenge of need for power.

The Eldoth are a tall and slender race, with long, lean limbs and necks. Male Eldoth have no hair on their head, though female Eldoth may have some, though usually at the back of their head. They have utterly black, calculating eyes, elongated skulls, and narrow ridges or furrows running along their features. While substantially taller and stronger than most races, they are not as strong as their size would imply, due to the lankiness of their physiology.

Broken Communion haunts the Eldothic homeworld of Sepulcher and so they, as a race, have learned to live with its strangeness. They have the natural ability to see ghosts, to pierce illusions, and they have a natural resistance to the corrupting nature of Broken Communion. This gives them an innate connection to Broken Communion, but forever separates them from natural psionic ability, or from other forms of Communion. This also means they have a very alien outlook on the world, and have a particularly poor grasp of emotions and have difficulty empathizing with others, especially other races.

Psi-Wars Foundational Races: The Keleni

Homeworld: Anmārwi (however, no Keleni live there today)
Other Worlds: Samsara, Temjara, Covenant, Sable, Moros, Wyrmwood

The much persecuted Keleni come from a largely inconsequential part of the galaxy, the Hydrus Constellation of the Umbral Rim, were it not for their worlds being on a direct path between the galactic core and the Umbral Rim, making them a highway for conquest. As a result, they have been scattered and scattered again and cling to what identity they have.

The Keleni homeworld, Anmārwi, is a particularly wet world, known for its swamps, jungles, rushing rivers and shallow seas. The Keleni people are, unsurprisingly, an aquatic people. They move as easily through the water as they do through land and can hold their breath for 25 times as long as other races. They appear remarkably human, with blue or blue-green skin, pointed ears, flat noses or mere slits where their noses should be, and long, silken white or silvery hair. Older male Keleni often sport facial hair. Keleni have bioluminescent patches of skin, often in unique patterns on their body or on their palms or the base of their feet. While this can prove useful in the dark, it also helps to signal one another in the water; Artists often try to capture the beauty of the Keleni as they swim, with their hair flowing behind them like ribbons and their soft glow creating a colorful aura in the water. While nothing forces them to remain in the water, they are more vulnerable to dehydration than other races, which tends to keep all but the most ascetic tied to their watery homes.

The Keleni are naturally telepathic and deeply attuned to the life energies of others, making them naturally adept at psychic healing. While they do not exclusively communicate telepathically, many Keleni develop deep bonds that allow them to know what the other is thinking and any Keleni, with some effort, can read the minds of others. They even develop bonds across time and Keleni have a natural, if generally uncontrolled, connection to their ancestors. The consequences of the race’s innate connection to one another and all living things has given rise to an innate reluctance towards violence except in the defense of themselves or their loved ones, and gave rise to the first steps towards Communion. Communion, or Annāra in native kelen, is their faith. As they explored their connections with one another, they gained a connection with the universe itself, and their power with it is one of the few things that have kept their race together and alive after conquest after conquest.

Keleni misfortune has resulted in their scattering. One can find Keleni in enclaves in most well-populated worlds of the galaxy. The most common background for Keleni, then, is Outcast, as other races tend to regard a naturally telepathic race who refuses to bend to the local religions or customs with suspicion. The notion of Keleni, especially those who have the temerity to become financially successful, secretly ruling the world is a popular myth among the downtrodden of other races. Their natural beauty and elegance makes them popular Slaves, especially down in the Dark Arm. Finally, in such circumstances where they do manage to retain self-direction and live among their own kind, their religious tendencies makes Sequestered a popular background. Keleni tend to prefer peaceful solutions that allow them to deal with others, and often become Diplomats or Mystics. Criminal Keleni prefer to be Con Artists. Keleni who get over their aversion to killing or dedicate themselves to the protection of their people or others generally either become Assassins or Space Knights.

Patreon Post: the Security Agent

Have you enjoyed Imperial Security?  Have you thought "Wow, it'd be totally cool to play one of these guys."  Well, what are your options?  Now, you have one more: the Security Agent, a new Patron-preview Template, available to all $1+ Patrons!

If you're a patron, check him out.  If you're not, I'd love to have you.

Building the Diplomat and a Matter of Law

Everything I've done over the past few weeks has been building up to the diplomat.  Cultural distancing mechanisms provide more than just interesting flavor for new cultures, they also represent obstacles that the diplomat excels at overcoming.  She masters languages and traditions so as to present herself and her position in the best possible light when negotiating with a strange culture. She also understands organizations, in part because she belongs to one (a diplomatic corp), she represents another (typically her government) to another, more hostile organization.  She is a creature of law, negotiation and cultural niceties, the picture of elegance itself (er, after a manner of speaking).

Anakin Skywalker: So this is what you call a diplomatic mission?

Padmé Amidala: No, these are "Aggressive Negotiations"

Except we don't want to play that character, do we?  This is Star Wars, not Star Trek!  I'll take a look at the more honest assessment of a diplomat later when I do Heroes of the Galactic Frontier, but the point here is to have an awesome action character who happens to be a diplomat.  Leia blasted storm troopers and killed a mob boss while in her unmentionables, and Amidala took on monsters in a gladiatorial arena and retook her homeworld with an army of frog-people and a kid.  The "diplomats" of Star Wars aren't really diplomats in the classic sense.

Thus, we must pull the same trick that we did with the Officer: We must understand the rules for negotiation, to know what the Diplomat should be good at, and then find ways to make those same skills equally useful to an action scenario, thus building a diplomat who is actually realistically decent at negotiation, if a GM ever wanted to use it in his game, but then ensure that she's equally useful in a typical action scenario.  The Officer turns his strategic excellence into making master plans, foreseeing unexpected twists, and foiling distractions and ambushes.  We need to understand how being a good negotiator can be turned to your advantage in an action scenario.

Building the Con Artist and the fine art of Forgery

I trust he needs no introduction

Lando Calrissian remains one of my favorite characters from Star Wars, not just because he was so stylish, but because of what he represented.  For the most part, the core invaded the rim, with great imperial vessels descending on backwater worlds, or the rebels bringing the politics of the core with them out to the desolate worlds of the rim.  But with Lando, the criminal sensibilities of the rim dived into the elegance of a core world.  He danced a delicate line between honest governance, real politick and rapscallionry and he made it look good.

The con-artist definitely fits Psi-Wars even better than Star Wars, though, because Psi-Wars is about Action, and Action needs a faceman.  Who better to be that than someone like Lando Calrissian?  But more than Lando, I want someone who not just defines elegance, but undermines it.  He's a confidence man, sure, but he's also a card-sharp, a gambler, and a forger.  He knows how to rub shoulders with the elegant, how to pretend to be like them, how to pawn off his forgeries as the real thing.  I want le Comte de St. Germain, or for those a little more up-to-date in their references, I want Neal Caffery. In spaaaaace.

The Officer 1.0

Officer 250 points

The Officer excels at command and control. He’s mastered the art of planning, and can plan so well that he features the use of Foresight, allowing the player to retroactively declare that his character had prepared for some presently occurring eventuality. Furthermore, his high rank and administration skill makes him top-notch at Pulling Rank, ensuring that he and his group gain required resources when they need it most. Finally, Psi-Wars doesn’t support Mass Combat out of the box, but should your game include Mass Combat, the officer’s high levels of Strategy, Administration and Intelligence Analysis make him particularly well suited to it.

The Officer is at his strongest when he’s analyzing existing data, engaging politicians and bureaucrats, and when he’s planning. Outside of situations, he has decent knowledge-gathering skills and social skills (and the option of gaining access to considerably influential contacts), and reliable, if not great, combat skills. He’s no front-line soldier.

Most officers are either naval (taking Shiphandling) or army (taking Soldier), but both are strictly optional. Technically, an Officer can belong to any group, any branch of the military. However, he must belong to some group. His signature is his high rank, thus he necessarily serves a duty.

Attributes: ST 10 [0], DX 12 [40]; IQ 14 [80]; HT 11 [10]

Secondary Characteristics: Damage 1d-2/1d; BL 20 lbs; HP 10 [0]; Will 14 [0]; Per 14 [0]; FP 11 [0]; Basic Speed 6.00 [5]; Basic Move 6 [0] 5

Advantages: Born Warleader 4 [20]. Foresight 1 [10], Luck [15], Rank (Any) 4 [20]; ● Choose a total of 30 points from the following: improves IQ [20/level] or HT [10/level], Ally (Robot, 50%, almost all the time) [9], Charisma +1 to +4 [5/level], Cheaper Gear (Any) [1], Contacts (Aristocrat, Corporate Supplier, Lobbyist, Mercenary, Spy, Skill 12, 15 or 18, 9 or less) [1, 2 or 3], Contact Group (Corporation, Military Branch, Intelligence Agency, Mercenaries, skill 12, 15 or 18, 9 or less) [5, 10, 15], Eidetic Memory or Photographic Memory [5 or 10], Favor (Any) [varies], Hard to Kill [2/level], Higher Purpose (Against Impossible Odds) [5], Looks Good in Uniform [1], Penetrating Voice [1], Rapier Wit [5], Reputation (Conqueror, War Hero, almost everyone) +1 to +2 [5 or 10], Reputation (Good Officer, military men only,) +1 to +2 [3 or 5]; Serendipity [15/level], Signature Gear (Any) [varies], Voice [10], Wealth (Comfortable or Wealthy) [10 or 20], Improve Luck to Extreme Luck [30] for 15 points, Rank to 5 [25] for 5 points

Disadvantages: Duty (Almost Always, Extremely Hazardous) [-20]; ● Choose -30 points of ST -1 [-10], Basic Move -1 or -2 [-5 or -10], Bloodlust [-10], Callous [-5], Chummy or Gregarious [-5 or -10], Code of Honor [Varies], Bully [-10*], Fanaticism [-15], one of Overweight, Fate or Very Fat  [-1, -3 or -5], Greed [-15*], Honesty [-10*], Intolerance (Rival Faction or Aliens) [-5 or -10], Jealousy [-10], Laziness [-10], Lecherousness [-15*], No Sense of Humor [-10], Obsession (defeating a specific foe) [-5], Overconfident [-5*], Secret (Unsanctioned missions or war crimes) [-10 or -20], Selfish [-5*], Sense of Duty (Team or Faction) [-5 or -10], Skinny [-5], Trademark (Characteristic tactics) [-5 or -10], Trickster [-15*], Workaholic [-5], Unfit or Very Unfit [-5 or -15],

Primary Skills: Administration (A) IQ [2]-14; Intelligence Analysis (H) IQ+4¹ [4]-18; Savoir-Faire (Military) (E) IQ+4¹ [1]-18; Strategy (H) IQ+4¹ [4]-18; Tactics (H) IQ+4¹ [4]-18; ● Choose one of Public Speaking, Propaganda, Teaching all (A) IQ+1 [4]-15, Expert Skill (Military), Psychology or Shiphandling all both (H) IQ [4]-14.

Secondary Skills: Beam Weapons (Pistol) (E) DX [1]-12; Stealth (A) DX+1 [4]-14; ● Either Brawling (E) DX+2 [4]-14 or Karate (H) DX [4]-12; ● Either Judo (H) DX [4]-12 or Wrestling (A) DX+1 [4]-13; ●Choose one of Savoir-Faire (Any) IQ+2 [4]-16, Politics (A) IQ+1 [4]-15, Diplomacy (H) IQ [4]-14 or Intimidation (A) Will+1 [4]-15; ● Choose five of Beam Weapons (Rifle or Projector), both (E) DX+1 [2]-13; Area Knowledge (Any), Current Affairs (Headline News, Politics, Regional) both (E) IQ+1 [2]-15, Architecture, Cartography, Public Speaking, Propaganda, Research, Soldier, Teaching, Writing all (A) IQ [2]-14, Engineering (Civil or Starship), Expert Skill (Military Science), Law (Galactic), Psychology or Shiphandling all (H) IQ-1 [2]-13 or Hiking (A) HT [2]-11.

Background Skills: Computer Operation (E) IQ [1]-14; Navigate (Hyperspace) (A) IQ-1 [1]-13; Pilot (Starship) (A) DX-1 [1]-11; Vacc Suit (A) DX-1 [1]-11; and 20 points chosen from a background lens.

1: +4 from Born Warleader

*Modified by Self-Control Rating

Officer Power-Ups

Personal Army 25 points

Advantages: Spend 25 points on Ally (75 points, 150 points, 300 points, almost all the time (15 or less)) [3, 6 or 15], Ally Group (BAD 2, BAD 5 or BAD 8, x5 members, almost all the time (15 or less) [5, 12 or 24] or Ally Group (BAD 0, BAD 2 or BAD 5, x10 members, almost all the time (15 or less) [4, 8 or 18] or choose one of the following packages:

• Hero and minions: Ally (300 points, almost all the time) [15], and Ally Group (BAD 2, x10 members, almost all the time) [8] and two points from Officer advantages.
• Lieutenant and Elite Squad: Ally (150 points, almost all the time) [6] and Ally Group (BAD 5, x10 members, almost all the time) [18] and one point from Officer advantages
• Heroic Guard: Ally Group (BAD 8, x5, almost all the time) [24] and one point from Officer Advantages.

Career Officer 25 points

Career Officer shifts the focus of the officer from war to politics. He sacrifices exceptional ability with strategy, tactics, intelligence gathering and leadership for superior administration, politics and current affairs, as well as improved ability to Pull Rank.

Advantages: Charisma +1 [5] and replace Born Warleader 4 [20] with Intuitive Statesmen [40] for 20 points;

Assassin 2.0

So far, M'elena has proved that the Assassin template works well enough.  The assassin has Stealth 18, and sufficient DX and skill to hit an 18 in any combat skill she chooses to focus on.  The only remaining concerns are power-ups, and three immediately spring to mind.  First, just like the Bounty Hunter, there's certainly a "stealth component" to appearing helplessly beautiful, so she also has access to the Femme Fatale power-up, exactly as the Bounty Hunter.  Second, some players might prefer to see the assassin as a sniper.  While I want to keep the assassin focused on melee, the base template has a minimum of 20 points in melee skills which means someone who takes the Sniper power-up will still be competent at hand-to-hand combat.  Finally, some assassins might want to focus on the most traditional of assassin techniques: Poison.