Psi-Wars Wiki Highlight: February Progress Report

 As usual, I've neglected the blog in favor of the wiki and the discord, as I tend to get a lot of immediate feedback on the discord (plus I'm winding this blog down as I prep to move it to Wordpress, which looks to be stable so far, so I may take the plunge sooner than later).  So the lack of content here doesn't mean I've stopped producing material.  So, let's get into it.

The March of the Slaver Empire

One of the most important, and popular, Psi-Wars races are the Ranathim, and one central conceit is their dead empire. They once ruled a dark part of the Galaxy known as the Umbral Rim, but today, they have been enslaved by another. That's the premise of the Ranathim.

So what is this other race, and what empire do they run? I had tagged them as "Slavers" in my drafts, and the name has stuck around, but I often refer to them as the Temkorathim. They obviously had to rule the Umbral Rim now, right? What were they like? Probably not a major threat, but morally repugnant enough that you'd want to kick them around, even if you never got around to it, but dangerous enough that player characters would find them interesting to adventure in while rescuing Ranathim damsels from a fate worse than death and battling in the gladiatorial arenas of the Slavers. I suspected they would look something like the cinematic depiction of the third-world dictatorship/kleptocracy, like Doctor Doom's Latveria, or Vilena of the Expendables, though probably with even more inferior technology (though not so inferior that characters could steamroll through opposition).

So, in continuing the slow rollout of the Umbral Rim, I released the Oligarchy of Vech, and a Backer-Exclusive supplement that rounded out four of the Council of Seven, including their minions. These were generally well received (though not without some light edit notes). These are follow-ups to last month's Slaver Cartels and the associated backer release. Between them, you should be able to work out quite a lot of Umbral politics, at least between Slavers.

It's not enough to know what they are, but we need to know how they fight, and this section of space is unique enough that we expect a very different technological infrastructure, so I worked on that too!

This month I released Lithian Tech, with is a rolling, unfinished release. This includes weapons, armor and vehicles available in the Umbral Rim, including materiel from Redjack, Orion Arms (which has been around, but is greatly expanded now), and the new Rath Industries, unique to the Oligarchy of Vech. These aren't finished: I need to release the capital ships and ground vehicles from the Umbral Rim, but a highlight of the new vehicles available now are:

• The Flanker-Class Fighter (Orion)
• The High-Roller-Class Battle Yacht (Orion)
• The Pirhana-Class Fighter (Rath)
• The Hammerhead-Class Strike Craft (Rath)
• The Skirmisher-Class Torpedo Corvette (Rath)
• The Toad-Class Heavy Corvette (Rath; really a destroyer)
• The Kodiak-Class Light Cruiser (Redjack; not new to you, but new to the Wiki)

I still need to release ground vehicles, the Mauler, the Spire and the Fugitive, and there's some drafts floating around. I should get to them soon.

Drugs are Bad, Mmmkay?

The Umbral Rim is filled with vice, and drugs are certainly one of them. The Slavers excel at the creation of drugs to addict their victims, and they equip their soldiers with addictive, performance-enhancing drugs. This was an important part of the the Lithian tech release, and something that required some careful balance for future releases (especially since once you have performance enhancing drugs, someone is going to want to use it, and we'll need alchemy/potions at some point for our Inevitable Space Witches).

This also required expanding the Krokuta, who have a special relationship with these drugs. I have all of their unique power sets except Amberdine, which is still in a draft state.

In Memory of the Phoenix Cluster

The backer-led project of the Phoenix Cluster carries on.  The Umbral Rim dominates my attention at the moment, but I did release the last poll result regarding the first Westerly Clan of Phoenix Cluster. The trick here is that I need to write them up, and the other clans, and I'm trying to balance that with this rollout of the Umbral Rim.

Game-On

Both playtests move forward. I did not run Undercity Noir in February, as I was quite ill, but we look good for March.  The other playtest set in the Umbral Rim collapsed under the weight of conflicting schedules, so I recruited a raft of new players for the one player would could consistently make it, and rebooted the campaign.  The Wastes of Dhim now has:

• Raitha Temos, Mithanna Satemo (Ranathim Space Knight), 
• Null Entry, lost Syntech medical robot
• Rena, formerly enslaved Keleni psion afflicted with a dangerous split personality
• Milathum the Devourer, Saruthim Bounty Hunter

 They played through a much more detailed retreat of the first session with quite some success, though naturally some of them required some additional work.

Marching On

For the next month, I'll carry on releasing material. There's obvious things that simply need to make it onto the wiki, such as Krokuta power-ups associated with Amberdine and the remaining Rathian ships. I've been expanding the cultural details of the Umbral Rim and I can edit my material on gladiatorial fights. I also need to clean up what I have on Lithian technology.

I've got some work on Tyrannic space craft which would be nice to get out as a backer release, but it's very much in a draft state (as it involves a lot of new technological design and a rather unique sort of write-up).

I'd also like to do a poll on one new Slaver Cartel for the backers to explore, so you can get a sense of how to build your own.

And finally, I need to write up the five Westerly clans of the Phoenix Cluster, which also involves settling on how I want to write them out.

All of this is tentative, of course, and depends on how much time I have, but we'll see how far we get.

Wiki Highlight: Slaver Cartels

 I've been hard at work on the Umbral Rim and the organizations, technology and monsters native there. I've finally worked out detail on the Slaver Empire and the sort of organizations the Slavers, aka the Temkorathim, naturally form, which I call "Slaver Cartels."  I've described them in detail on the wiki.

For Backers, I've offered up additional details for four sample Cartels, the ones described in the wiki entry itself.  I may eventually release these to the wiki as well, but I feel like the wiki has enough of an information overload and I'm not sure how necessary this level of detail is. But in any case, as a thank you to all $3+ Backers (Fellow Travelers) I have uploaded the Book of Hunger

• The Book of Hunger -- Subscribestar
• The Book of Hunger -- Patreon
  

Wiki Highlight: Aliens!

My, I posted a lot less in December than I thought!  Most of my attention has been on the wiki, and I wanted to finish up the basic alien templates, so people have at least something to work with.  There are more aliens! But this gives a pretty good overview of the aliens of Psi-Wars.  I've added:

I've added:

• The Karkadann, the mutant technologists from the Zero-Template Challenge
• The Vithanni, the blacklit, aura-clad slaved from the Zero-Template Challenge
• The Nehudi, the primal, nature-bound natives of the Sylvan Spiral
• The Sathran, the cannibalistic snake-people from Iteration 5, updated to be more like the Kaa and the Serpent-Lords.
• The Keverlings, adorable-but-dumb beetle workers of the Umbral Rim, and result of a backer poll.

I've also updated:

• The Gaunt, to be a little more forgiving on modifiers
• Slavers, with lots of additional information

You can always find all the details of the aliens of Psi-Wars on a dedicated page here.

Backers can see more of what I've worked on in the backend (Patreon, Subscribestar). 

I don't expect to get more done in December, as it's the holidays and I'll likely be busy, but we'll see where life takes us!

Wiki Update: Dreamy Assassins

 

It's not all been Fun and Space Bestiaries at Mailanka's Musings; I still have a wiki to run, after all, and promises to fulfill to backers.  So I wanted to take a moment to quickly highlight a couple of major updates to the wiki.

Releasing the Balloon People: Dream Control

Every month, I offer a poll on what Patreon exclusives to release, and once again we have another "rare psionic power", this time an expanded version of Dream Control, which puts us up to three rare psionic powers! 

I worked out Dream Control as part of the creation of House Harrow, as I wanted to explore alternate Psychic Vampires, one that would feel distinct from the Ranathim, so I found myself delving into Dream Theft, but if we're going to have Dream Theft, we might as well get into the rest of the Dream Control powers, and this suggested a willowy, dreamy Maradonian Noble that didn't quite fit what I had in mind for House Harrow. This resulted in them becoming a genetic muddle, with the hidden Orphean bloodline lurking in their mutt DNA.  I also wanted to integrate some of the Labyrinthine imagery, as Akashic oracles seem to often dream of the labyrinth which provides them with insights. This doesn't literally send them to the physical labyrinth, of course: this isn't astral projection, though that's an interesting idea.  

In any case, what came out is what I would consider a fairly modest set of abilities, and one you could use for a character.  Unlike Probability Manipulation or Machine Telepathy, I don't think I've seen anyone take it; it is, after all, fairly niche and largely amounts to telepathy with a less convenient vector.

Assassins

And this is likely the one you've been waiting for.  Assassins could have gone in numerous directions, but I wanted them to be the Space Ninja to the Space Knight's Space Samurai.  Where the Space Knight was mystical, psychic, and focused on defense and forthright defense of the innocent, the Assassin was focused on stealth and murdering targets from the shadows.  This could be done with a blaster rifle from afar, but that feels too easy and not especially ninja like, at least not in the cinematic sense of the ninja. We expect someone who uses nunchucks or kusari or shuriken to defeat their opponents: the cinematic ninja uses exotic weapons, and each ninja is often different, specializing in their own particular weapon.  Shouldn't space ninjas do the same?

The current version of Reaver's Hand

Melee Weapons in Psi-Wars

There's another reason to want to stop and focus on exotic melee weapons: Psi-Wars is a melee oriented game.  Oh, sure, people have blasters and shoot at one another, but they often do it no farther than about 20 yards, often much closer: you can shoot someone in a space port bar, but chances are, with a little effort, they can punch you too.  And the Space Knight is more iconic of Psi-Wars than the Bounty Hunter (though not by that much I think), so as fun as shootouts between bounty hunters and criminal scum would be, so would a duel between a space knight and some weird assassin wielding a strange, alien weapon.  More than that, we expect to see ax-wielding primitive aliens, or gladiators armed with dual alien khopesh and so on.  

So melee weapons matter in Psi-Wars.  Which means I should put some effort in thinking my way through useful melee weapons, and I even wrote a post about it ages ago.  The core conclusion, based on feedback from my readers, was that we needed a solution that made melee weapons awesome.  Rather than just give melee weapons special treatment (though it should be noted that the tight confines of Psi-Wars and other rules do already heavily favor melee weapons), we should make melee weapons that justified their place on an ultra-tech battlefield.  Weapons like the Force Sword and the Neurolash baton already did this. Vibroweapons somewhat justified it, but mostly as a cheap alternative.  What else could justify it?

The answer has been an ongoing series of ideas that have mostly been geared towards assassination, because that was the template I've been working on, but I've been coming up with a mess of ideas, some more practical than others.  As a result, the melee weapon has been slowly broadened out and now has its own specific page.  The biggest change are new rules for weapon breakage, mostly to simplify force swords striking targets, and a heavily updated section on the Psi-Sword (so updated I've considered making it IT its own section).

As noted, this has been mostly geared towards the Assassin so far, but I don't think every melee weapon would necessarily fit the Assassin, who focuses on stealthy, glass cannon, one-hit kills rather than heroic last-stands or battlefield tactics. I also think there are melee weapons, and specialists that would use them, that don't fit as either assassins or space knights.  The staff-wielding, temple-guardians of the Keleni, the gladiators of the Lithian arenas, the spears and war-axes of the Nehudi, the vibro-wire halberds of the Jackalmen of the Umbral Rim, the Pit Fighters of the deep undercity of Kronos and so on.  I think there's room for a Warrior template: if the Assassin is the ultimate realization of a DX-focused melee fighter in Psi-Wars, perhaps the Warrior would tilt the balance more towards ST (though not completely; even the Big Guy of Action 3 had generous DX).  They'd need some work, though, and they're not the focus of today's post.

The Assassin's Weapons

So what do we have for the assassin? I showcased a lot of ideas for backers over the past few months, and these were the ones that stood out and seemed to fit the niche the best... for now.

Monowire

The most successful of the backer posts had to do with my worked version of Monowire Mugging. But where Monowire Mugging focused on the stasis switchblade (which is a very interesting weapon) I wanted to explore the "razor floss" depiction we often see in anime and sci-fi.  The result was the Gossamer Art, which has a strong emphasis on traps, entanglement and strangling people with razor-sharp wire.  Of the new styles, I'd say it's the most unapologetically ninja-like. The rest either borrow elements from other niches or could be used by, for example, a Warrior or a Space Knight in the right context.  The Gossamer Art, though, is a style that only really works for an assassin. It's not great at parrying attacks or attacking a hardened target that's prepared for your attack, though it does deal surprisingly well with groups of (unarmored) opponents.  To me, it also evokes a certain amount of terror: a Gossamer Assassin, and their razor wire, could The current version of Reaver's Handbe lurking anywhere!

The Monowire Whip is an interesting weapon that I hadn't really looked at before. Even Monowire Mugging doesn't really look at the Monowire Whip as a whip. Which is a shame, because there are all sorts of interesting things you can do with a whip.  Hopefully, this art will give that humble weapon a little more attention.

The Ceramic Katana

One of the reasons I started working on melee weapons was to find some way to get a cybersamurai in the game. The proper katana is so embedded in the imagery of space opera and sci-fi that it even managed to make it into Star Wars Visions which featured a Sith Hunter who inexplicably wore sheaths just to maintain the proper image of a katana!  

The core benefit I saw to a proper katana was the ability to apply strength directly, which meant it could reach higher levels of damage than the force sword (well, to a point; ST damage does cap out, after all, at triple the ST value).  Monowire also has an armor divisor of 10, rather than 5, which means it has superior armor penetration, though a monowire sword looks more like a cheese knife than a katana, but we can fudge and call it a monomolecular edged weapon (Nanothorn is probably even more accurate, but I didn't want to mess with corrosive damge). The only remaining problem is that the weapon needs to stand up to the force sword's destructive potential, and we can justify that with some form of beam adapted armor coating the blade.  Why not make Beam Adapted armor if that's an option? Let's not think about that too much right now, other than to note several forms of Psi-Wars armor (like Battleweave) is already optimized for dealing with blasters and force swords. But the result is a sword that can leverage the ST of a genetically engineered super-samurai, or a cyborg, into higher armor penetration than a force sword and can deflect blaster bolts without being destroyed. 

All it needs is a style that teaches its use: Seven Vector Swordsmanship. The "Seven Vectors" is inspired by Musashi's five circles, but used in a Shinjurai-coded context. I originally called it "Seven Vector Kendo" but that overemphasized Japanese origins, and "Seven Vector Swordsmanship" has a nice alliterative quality to it.  It's a deeply traditional style with a great deal of focus on meditation and repetitive, almost ceremonial trademark moves, as one might expect for a largely obsolete art.  I understand that a force sword is a superior melee weapon in most cases, and so Seven Vector Swordsmanship reflects that. It also has a strong emphasis on predicting the outcome of one-on-one combat (predictionism being a signature Shinjurai  trick) and on defeating force swordsmen, which suits the role of an assassin as a Space Knight spoiler.

Is it really an Assassin Art, though? Well, we tend to imagine ninjas as wielding katanas, so in that sense, yes. It also has an emphasis on one-on-one combat, which is ideal for an assassin, and it's a silent and dark weapon, which is useful for an assassin. Some have pointed out that it could stand to have a "disappear" trick, though I have a harder time justifying it for seven vector than I did for Combat Geometrics, as it's more focused on small scale combat rather than analyzing the sight-paths of everyone in a room.  So, yes, a warrior or a variant space knight could certainly stand to use Seven Vector Swordmanship, but that's not a deal breaker for including it on an Assassin.  After all, more than one character template can use a martial art.

The Psi Blade

It's a shame that the force sword is already the ideal assassin's weapon -- Shinanoki

Far in the past, I made Janura, a martial art for the Keleni inspired primarily by the Sicarii zealots of the last days of the Roman Occupation of Judea, but also by the Hashashin and the Assassins of Assassin's Creed: a style of brazen, daylight murder that risks the martyrdom of the assassin and has strong, religious connotations to it.  It was largely for this style that I included the Psi-Bade, the shorter Psi-Sword, in Psi-Wars at all. The Janura on the wiki is mostly just a power-up update of the old Iteration 6 version.  We have a Janura user in Undercity Noir, so there have been updates based on his feedback too.

Some people have pointed out that Sefelka Sonostra, the martial art of the Lithian Satemo, would make a great assassin martial art, and that's true!  It's actually my intention to include it in the Assassin Template at some point.  I'd like to do a small pass on the style first.  As noted with Seven Vector Swordsmanship, it's possible for a martial art to be available to more than one template.  The only real problem with Sefelka Sonostra is that it relies on you having psychic powers to power its precognitive defense, which the Assassin isn't guaranteed to have.

Psychic Vampirism

Of course, some assassins will have psychic powers!  I've always liked the idea of a psychic assassin, and the Ranathim, with their innate psychic vampirism, seem especially adept at it.  Christopher Rice wrote a psychic martial art for Psychic Vampirism and I, as a backer, got it, and I loved it. It deserved a power-up suite!  Which I gave it, here. It deserved to be in Psi-Wars itself, but it proved too unwieldy to do as written, and it's not practical to expect someone to emphasize every aspect of Chris's work.  So, as with other examples of me borrowing inspiration from his material, my final version got "cut up." In particular I focused on Reave itself, rather than grappling, steal life, etc.  The result is very much a Death Touch style. I have one move in the style that still references Chris's original and I claim for the style itself, for the original composition, that you need Chris's stuff. This isn't strictly true, as what I've done branches off from his original content and does some new things.  But please don't fault me for trying to funnel traffic towards one of the creators who regularly very useful material to Psi-Wars!

The current version of Reaver's Hand is an attempt to integrate the power directly into the martial art, as opposed to requiring you to get it before buying the style.  That makes it more self-contained.  I may expand on this with other styles too, so that a psionic martial art is actually its listed cost: if a 300-point assassin can be an Adept of one style, he can be an Adept of Reaver's Hand as well without needing to go hunt down the points for Reave on its own.  It's also different from the backer version, which emphasized pressure points and pressure secrets, which is still a concept I like very much, but it pulled the style in too many directions and required me to make questionable mechanics, such as perks that were probably okay, but mostly in the context of the character already possessing a means to bypass armor and if that means exists, why not just use that means, rather than trying to justify making other skills useful? Alas, this probably means we'll never see Pressure Points or Pressure Secrets see use in Psi-Wars because a psionic power is better and more appropriate, but that's also rather the nature of Psi_Wars and its emphasis on advantages over magical skills.

But What About...

Backers have been treated to the Nuclear Knives of Acheron, and some people on the discord may have heard rumors of Sliverblade, aka the "Riddick can kill you with a teacup" style.  I have others too. These four are where the Assassin begins, but it won't be the end. When will I get to them? I don't know, my plate is pretty full, and the Assassin has taken long enough, and these styles take a long time to write, and I didn't want to slow down the release of the Assassin. But I do intend to revisit them!

The Assassin

So here we have it: the Assassin. With this release, we have only the Spy, Commando and Mystic to catch up to the original Iteration 5 templates.  Templates like Occultist or Warrior may come later.

The point of the assassin is, of course, to showcase these exotic weapons and to combine it with stealth.  There's really not much more to the character than that, other than the ability to think ahead, trap foes, and possibly to be gorgeous for no real reason (If you can see the assassin to know how hot she is, she's not doing her job! But the "sexy ninja" is a time-honored tradition by this point, I suppose, and Psi-Wars unabashedly embraces the naughty aesthetic of old pulp novel covers, so I can hardly complain about sexy ninjas. It likely comes from eyebrow-waggling discussions of a ninja's flexibility, or perhaps some vague assertions that they might seduce their target to get close to them to kill them).

I've had some complaints about the "Pet Ninja." No, they don't murder your space dog or space cat.  I've often heard the term "pet" applied to a character who is devoted to a particular character, and very useful to that character: "Your pet bounty hunter" or "your pet assassin." Assassins seem the most likely to find themselves in this role, answering directly to some powerful character, and I created a lens to reference that.  I've also heard the term "pocket" to describe that sort of character too, so I might change it to that, but for now, I like the term.

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: Federation Remnant Culture (Galactic Culture)

 The winner of this month's "Release the Balloon People" poll was Federation Remnant Culture, a lengthy document detailing the "standard" Galactic Culture of Psi-Wars.

I wanted to write it for a few reasons.  First, whenever I read up on a sci-fi game, I find myself at a loss as to how the world works.  With a fantasy setting, I assume it works like every fantasy novel ever written unless told otherwise (for example, I do not need to be told that taverns exist or how they work). For games set in the modern world, I can draw on real world experiences and cultures (and likewise, I can research historical settings).  But when it comes to sci-fi settings, I need to be grounded in how the day-to-day life works. Do kids go to school in Trinity: Aeon? What's a day of work look like in Transhuman Space? What does romance look like in Eclipse Phase? How do people dress in Sufficiently Advanced? And so on.

The answer to these questions in Psi-Wars are "pretty much just like you'd expect," and I wanted to emphasize that, to set the reader's mind at ease. Psi-Wars is to space opera what D&D is to fantasy, after-all, but I find it helps to be told that explicitly, so I don't have to worry.

That said, there are almost certainly in-universe things that tend to be very specific that players would like the option of name-dropping.  What TV shows do people watch in Psi-Wars? What drink does Space James Bond what shaken, rather than stirred? What game does a smuggler get caught cheating at? In principle, these don't matter: the character likes some TV show, the spy likes some drink, and the smuggler plays some game, and we can abstract this away (Current Affairs (Pop Culture), Connoisseur (Alcohol) or Gambling) but players often like to name-drop.  So the last section of culture mostly references these things and consists of a variety of names and simple concepts and some traits that a player might tie into them.

I released it as a draft to my backers rather than on the wiki because the real reason I wrote it was to settle on a baseline before I started writing Lithian culture, which is the next big project (and likely most important non-standard culture in the setting), and I wanted to know what I was contrasting it with, and what topics I should cover.  So I wanted that written up, and then once I had Lithian culture written up, I could compare, contrast and edit them to work better.  But once my backers overwhelmingly chose this as an option, I realized they're probably right: I can always go back in and edit Federation Remnant culture, it's extremely useful already, and it's going to serve as inspiration and a foundation for Lithian culture anyway.

So, I hope you enjoy it.  You can read it 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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Wiki Highlight: Psychic Vampirism Power-Ups

 

I've been pretty busy behind the scenes working on Undercity Noir; the PCs are beginning to come together, but I feel like I'm still behind on a lot of elements.  One of those elements was psychic power-ups.  I wanted to have both Psychic Healing and Psychic Vampirism up, as the Ranathim and Keleni were going to feature prominently in the one-shot (though I didn't realize how prominently until I saw the proposed PCs), but my goodness are these power-up sets exhausting and time-consuming.

Why Psychic Vampirism and Psychic Healing? You're not buying the Keleni/Ranathim argument above? Well, I find that the act of writing material teaches you how to write better material.  The best RPG material of an edition tends to come more towards the end, rather than the beginning.  If I started with beloved abilities like Telepathy and ESP and ended with abilities most people don't care about, like Psychic Healing, then the most loving detail and cool ideas would end up in the least used abilities, so I'm trying to "learn the ropes" with these less popular abilities.

Psychic Vampirism was especially frustrating, as it forced me to confront overpriced afflictions, deal with weird, overly broad detection abilities, and a difficult cost structure that puts most "work horse" Psychic Vampirism beyond the budget of casual, minor psychics. In particular, I still find myself struggling with Power Theft and working that into more affordable categories.  Sure, I know, some people point out that if something is powerful, it should cost a lot of points, but a lot of people like the "Zero to Hero" journey of discovery their psychic powers and then slowly unlocking their abilities with them.  The cheapest you can possibly get for Steal Power is 55 points, which means you go from Weak Latent Psi (Psychic Vampirism) to absolutely minimum Steal Power with a little skill in about 12 sessions at 5 CP per session (which is pretty generous) without getting anything else.  There's a reason I break down upgrades down into 25 point chunks, and a lot of people still find that overly chunky.  So I'd like to break down Steal Power too, if I can.

I ran out of time.  I wanted to have more Rare Powers (Karmic Theft and Unstable Power Theft) but the end of the month is racing up at me, and it's better to have something than nothing.  I can always go back and add some more abilities.

You can check out the new psychic vampirism power-ups here.

Wiki Highlight: Psionic Gear

 "Did we ever decide what Psi-Tech was available in Psi-Wars?"
"It varies from tradition to tradition, from world to world."
"Yeah, sure, all technology does that.  But, like, what can my psychic character buy for Undercity Noir?"
"I... uh..."

That's a good question.  What Psi-Tech is available? To be sure, there are highly specific items, such as memory crystals or resonance staves, that relate to a single group or culture.  But broadly speaking, what can people get?

So I sat down to think about this, and I came up with the following psychic tech as fundamental to Psi-Wars:

Psychic Testing Gear: Obviously, you need Zener cards and weird EM sensors that go beep and white noise machines that one can attempt to hear voices in, etc.

Psi-Damper Collars: We need a way to capture rogue psis, so we need Psi-Damper collars.  This one combines the neuronic restraint with the electronic collar for a full suite.  There's also a helmet for that cool, cyberpunk psi-look of a rogue psi in a helmet that covers their eyes to prevent them from using their evil eye on you.

Mind Shields: Obviously, people will want to protect themselves from psychic attack.  Rather than a lame helmet, let's go with a mask. I've also added the mini mind shield, because the idea of someone shielding themselves with a token or a jewel is cool.  I've not included Mind Shield Circuitry: it exists in Psi-Wars, but you get it as part of a pre-built helmet, generally.

Sensory Deprivation Chambers: More of an Akashic thing, but anyone can use them, and it's a signature of Psi-Wars that reminds you that the "magic" of Psi-Wars is closer to cold-war psychic powers than it so the space magic of Star Wars.

Psi-Amplifiers

This is what it's really about, isn't it? So let's give it its own section.  The headband is the go-to default, but I tend to see the headband as more of a crest however; while it didn't make it into the final art of the Maradonian lady, a crest or halo behind her head was in the art notes.

However, I noticed in the Psi-Tech notes that the rules for the amplifiers is that they halve the cost of extra-effort, which is no doubt why our resident psychic was so insistent on knowing if they're available.  Alas, I don't think I can allow this particular rule, because the rules for Psi-Tech never assumed you were going to be using Godlike Extra Effort, and I think that might break the rules. I can, however, add ER to them, integrating psychotronic batteries into the design.

Of course, if we're going to talk about different traditions, why not several different amplifiers? I've created the default "maradonian crown" added a wild, psychic super-collar/harness that's battery powered, a gauntlet drawn from Pyramid #3/69, and a Ranathim crown.  They have slightly different rules for where the ER comes from, but in all cases, it's about 10 points, or enough for 5 techniques or increasing your godlike extra effort up to 5 times.  I'm not sure how well that'll play out, but we'll see.  The prices are a bit high, but they're based on psychotronic batteries costing $10,000, a headband clocking in at $6000 (or a helmet clocking in at $25,000), and then adjustments either for an inferior product, variant ER regeneration rules, and styling, and then capped about about $25,000 because that's one signature gear point.

All of this together should cover our bases and give players a few things to play with.  You can check them out here.

Wiki Highlight: the Criminal Organizations of Psi-Wars

 Man, this has been a thing I've been thinking about for literally years now, so it's nice to finally get it down on paper, so to speak.  At last, I have a sketch of the Criminal Organizations of Psi-Wars up and available. Not all of them, of course: rebellions and pirate fleets will (probably) have their own discussion, as will occult conspiracies.

This is one of those posts that leaves me feeling like it's simultaneously "too much" with too many "example" organizations with too much detail included, but at the same time, not enough, as people will doubtlessly want to know more about particular organizations, and want more organizations.  That'll come though.  As an extra treat, Subscribers and Patrons can vote on what organizations I give greater detail to, and later, if the stars align, I'd like to do a poll wherein we create our own criminal organization.

Enjoy!

Psi-Wars Corporate Briefs: Orion Arms

 

Some eagle-eyed fans have noticed the slow additions of Orion Arms gear to the wiki. I wanted to stop and take a moment to talk about them.  While I don't have "corporations as organizations" worked out yet, I think it might be something I focus on later, because a lot of it has been coming into view.

Every arms manufacturer in Psi-Wars has a theme: Syntech has the coolest, cutting edge-gadgets; Wyrmwerks goes beyond cutting edge and into prototype tech, with all the attendant issues; ARC is the High Street of arms manufacturers (it wouldn't surprise me if they had literal butlers taking your measurements before manufacturing your armor to spec), etc.  The original intent of Orion Arms was to be where I parked the arms manufacture of the Umbral Rim, the Slaver aliens and their associated races and the technology they produce to wage their wars.  I intended to base them on the military industries of "the third world," any place that produces military equipment that wasn't cutting edge, and part of the less stable, more chaotic parts of the world, as that's what I wanted to emulate with the Umbral Rim.  So I dived into my research, and didn't find what I expected.

Quick Wiki Update: Imperial Marksmanship

 I've wanted to tinker with Imperial Marksmanship for awhile.  Mainly, I wanted to add the Samsara Drill, but I also wanted to streamline the style.  While it makes sense for them to teach both rifle and pistol, I think in the long run, most player characters would want to specialize, and if you allow someone to choose only one weapon with the second power-up package, you can collapse all of Expert and Elite into a single, 20-point upgrade.  This should make it a little more attractive for the inevitable Security Agent in the coming Heist game.

Quick Wiki Update: Blaster Ballet Updated

 The Martial Art formerly known as Undercity Noir has been renamed, cleaned up slightly, its formatting improved, and it's Power-Up set improved to 20 points/level (on par with the "Big" pistol-based styles), with the new version of how we handle assault blasters integrated.  So for those who you intent on playing a highly kinetic Asrathi blast-slinger, there you go.

I've had a question about the Rite of Luck, and how it was "constructed."  Originally, it was a highly limited version of Higher Purpose with Preparation Required, Limited Use, Requires IQ roll etc, but eventually I realized it was just a classic example of the extremely limited bonus used under race circumstances. It's sort of a deferred "Occultism or Religious as Complementary Roll" with enough limitations placed on it that I felt it was acceptable to increase the bonus to a +2. I originally liked the idea of adding the bonus after the roll, but I thought this might be too powerful.  However, on reflection, I've decided to give it a try: I've reduced it to a +1 bonus, but you're allowed to apply it after you've made a roll, but the ritual, whether you use the bonus or not, can only be used once per day, and it runs out after an hour.  I think this makes for more interesting play, as you'll "say your prayers" before a big event, and it might do nothing, as there may be no roll that would benefit from a +1 improvement in margin, but if there is, well, it helps you luck out.  We'll see how it plays.

Hey Guys, Let's Plan a Heist!

 

Sorry I've been quiet for the past, what, two weeks?  I'm on vacation, which means a lot of time for the kids and, of course, Cyberpunk 2077 came out (No, I haven't experienced any bugs, yes, it's an amazing game.  I haven't had this much fun with a game in a long time), so I've been distracted.  But I knew I would be! That's why the next playtest is meant to be a heist, and also why the last few polls have focused on this particular element.  While I still have some bits from the last polls to finish, my main focus will be on the criminal world of Psi-Wars.

But before I get to that, we need to know how to do a heist.  That is, we need our rules in place.  Of course, we have those rules and we've had them since Iteration 2: we just use GURPS Action Exploits, which is essentially the GURPS Heist Handbook, with some updates for our new setting.  The old Iteration 2 version mostly takes Action 2 wholesale, except for some advice on how to integrate psionic powers with the Exploit rules.  I think that's still a valid case, but I'm going to hold off on it a bit, because that might be better discussed in the pertinent psionic powers themselves (A non-psychic character doesn't need to know that a Telepath gets +4 to intimidation with a successful use of Instill Fear, but a Telepath sure needs to know that!).  However, as I go over all of these, I realize the extent to which technology plays a role in all of this, and how it raises some interesting questions.

The technology of Psi-Wars, of course, is inspired by pulpy space opera which are, themselves, just typical stories from the 1950s and earlier, reskinned as sci-fi.  Thus, they typically don't explore the more mind-bending aspects of sci-fi, and instead give us a familiar world: if we have clones, for example, it's to explain the faceless soldiers of the evil overlord, rather than to discuss the nature of genetics and identity. This makes the setting easier to handle, in that you don't really have to ask what weird technology is in place, you can just assume that they have familiar technology that's reskinned ("Do they have cell phones?" "No. They have comm devices that are holographic." "So... space cell-phones" "Yup!").  However, the more I dig into it, the more I see a need for a discussion.

First, as noted above, post Iteration 6, Psi-Wars has evolved into a distinct setting, which means there are some core assumptions that may differ from the "simple space opera" assumptions noted above.  Furthermore, however hard we try, there really are distinct technological differences that we have to account for because of the nature of our setting.  Psychic powers are real and well-known, many people armor up in vacc suits, and they travel through the space of an entire galaxy.  How do people defeat psychic powers? How do you handle zero-G? How do interstellar homing beacons work?

More than that, Action assumes deep interest on the parts of the players to cutting edge technology.  GURPS Action is more Burn Notice than pulp action from the 1950s. It goes far deeper into electronics and intrusion techniques than the average player knows or cares about.  I prefer to limit what people need to know or understand to jump in, and "detailed spy gear" is fairly low on that list when compared to signatures like martial arts, psychic powers, space battles and Communion.  So not only do we need to tackle our ultra-tech, but we need to simplify available spy-tech too.

Thus, one of the things I've been doing is going over Action 2 in detail and working out these differences, "translating" the document to Psi-Wars.  I still find Action 2 invaluable, and I don't think I can remove it entirely from the Psi-Wars canon (I also don't mind telling you to buy it to play Psi-Wars, because it's cheap, it's a great book, and it will help you run far more than just Psi-Wars), but I think there's more than enough differences that we can have quite a discussion, a lot of which is already on the wiki.  So that's what today's post is: a discussion of what I looked at and what changed.  This will be review and revision for those of you who have been following Psi-Wars from day one!

Psi-Wars Wiki Update: Medicine in Psi-Wars and a new primer!

So, the big announcement is I've updated the landing page of the wiki in a big way.  I recently introduced some of my friends to Psi-Wars, and they found it a little difficult to navigate.  I wanted to create more of an essential starting point as the default entry, and here it is: the Psi-Wars Primer. Those more familiar with the Index will find it stripped down and still relatively easy to access. For those familiar with the wiki, you can navigate to both in the side-bar and the top-bar.  I've also updated some of the side-bar and top-bar elements, though not all the scaffolding for the wiki has been removed just yet. 

The other big announcement is the addition of Medicine for Psi-Wars. This took quite some time to get right, and I thought I would discuss some of the finer points of my choices here.

The Mogwai: the Techno-Monkeys of the Arkhaian Spiral

Back when I first laid out what sort of aliens I wanted in Psi-Wars, I set out the broader "diagram" of what niches races would fit.  The core races, the Eldoth, Keleni and Ranathim all illustrated some profoundly important aspect of the setting; you cannot really have Psi-Wars as a cohesive setting without them.  Other races matter less, but still fit important niches.

I wanted to have "comedic" races, silly races that made players laugh or helped relieve tension in the game; while not a wildly popular set of races in Psi-Wars, you can see their use in the form of the Ewoks, Jawas, the Gungans and the Ardennians/Lantero (who rally should be a single species).  These tend to be smaller, cuter races, so they're non-threatening and can afford to be "silly" in a way that the "serious" races cannot.

I also needed races for the Arkhaian Spiral, whose theme is "Technology."  I knew I wanted a race that practiced Ergokinesis, but I wanted a different take on Ergokinesis than what House Grimshaw had: rather than a dread race that shoots lightning, I wanted a technologically savvy race that used its power to gain an intuitive understanding of engineers.  I code named them "Techno-goblins," and imagined them occupying a similar niche to gnomes in most fantasy games.

With the need to expand Cronus Kronos, I wanted to add the races of the Arkhaian Spiral to Kronos so it didn't feel like Umbral-Rim-Lite.  The point of Kronos is to mash up the alien races of all the parts of the galaxy into one place, thus these "Techno-Goblins" needed to be detailed.

And now they are: the Mogwai of the Arkhaian Spiral, and with them, a new "rare" power, Machine Telepathy

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.

Psi-Wars Wiki Highlight: Navigation Revised

 A Backer, Mavrick, had many questions and complaints about how Navigation was handled in Psi-Wars.  This might seem like a small complaint, something easily handwaved away... right up until you have those questions! So I've tried to address it in a new update to the wiki, found here.

 EDIT: I've been reorganizing the wiki a bit.  It's actually here now.

If you're a backer, I have a design diary that outlines how I came to the conclusions that I did, including tables and a discussion of outdated, historical hyperdrives.  This is available for Fellow Travelers ($3+) Backers.

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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.