Broken Space: Space Opera with a Lemon Twist

[Moochava]

Hello all.  Time to help an aspiring game designer whose ideas are too big for his britches, if he were wearing britches instead of plaid comfy pants.  I have here the notes for about ten pages and fifteen years of development for a game I've been kicking around since before I knew there were role-playing games, and I'd like some advice on how to turn a humble space opera adventure into a 400-page opus.  (None of you has to write 400 pages; one or two each will be fine.)

When I was designing Arumo, another game of mine (still short of its 400-page goal by about 300 pages now) I received lots of wonderful advice by posting my ideas on both RPGNet and Gaming Outpost.  Many of the people who gave me such great ideas on GO have since migrated here, so I've decided to repeat the experiment with old faces who've consistently given me good ideas, and new people who no doubt have interesting ideas to add.

Enough rambling, and on with the game.  It's long, so grab some Fritos or something, but it's arranged by handy numbers for reference, so...number your Fritos...I guess.

First, the setting. Know that I'm a setting person; I love 'em, so this is where most of the focus will be, although I'm also hyped on the mechanical and thematic elements of the game.

1) Space Opera.  Vast cosmic vistas, immense starships, thrilling and epic battles, outrageous technology, and daredevil stunts.  For mental convenience, think Star Wars, and diverge from there.

2) A parallel universe with alternate laws of physics, in the vein of Garfinkle's _Celestial Matters_, a novel about a universe in which the Aristotelian laws of reality are in sway, and in which a society has developed appropriate technology for this world.  This laws of this universe resemble the occult, "magical" properties of which Bacon spoke.

4) Theological science and technology.  Expanding from #3, the laws of nature are to be understood through religion and myth.  Most importantly, the religions constructed to explain different parts of reality (gravity, luminescence, biochemistry) are *every bit as accurate* as the mathematical models we use in this world.  This isn't Glorantha with vague myths explaining the world (as much as I admire Glorantha's cosmology): when theologians create myths or gods they do so with the same attention to detail as physicists creating a new equation.

5) A sense of Lovecraftian Wonder.  *Not* Lovecraftian Horror--that's been done, many times over and with many subtle inflections.  I don't want to make a "Pickman's Model" RPG: I want to make a "Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" RPG.  Think the Dreamlands, or the end of _Dying Earth_ (the novel, not the world), or even some of the more "cosmic" episodes of Star Trek.  The players should feel fear, but only because they feel awe at something enormous and significant.  R. Sean Borgstrom's descriptions of the True Gods work well here: Broken Space should be primal, elemental, and epic, and give the players the feeling that they're surrounded by wondrous creatures and things.  Space is Broken, after all: it's torn with multiple realities, worn through by too many horrible technologies, and the stars don't line up.  It's no more wondrously insane than, say, quantum physics, but here and now you can ignore quantum physics--in Broken Space, the wonder and the insanity are right in your face.

6) Awesome, alien aliens.  A brief list.
* Asmids: Ancient, prescient manipulators, now nearly extinct.  Look like brightly-hued praying mantises with foldable butterfly-like wings, and a face that can morph into anything: when around humans the face often looks like a beautiful human boy.  (Liberated from: the Sumerian chapter of the old Deities & Demigods.)
* Bomaugs: A philosophical race of vicious carnivores who, as they grow old, lose their intelligence and become the reproductive members of their race.  (Liberated from: Alien's alien, but one willing to explain why it does what it does.)
* Chakturs: Another ancient race, a hierarchical theocracy of crystal-like critters that delight in what they construe as an "ordered" universe--a view of order, though, that they cannot explain to other races, much to their frusteration.  (Liberated from: every damn sci-fi novel with crystal critters.)
* Mendats: Vaguely "gray alien" in appearance, but with different colors.  A mendat "self" is spread across several bodies, all of whom are directed by the unified psyche.  Once three or more unintelligent mendat drones get together, their psychic interaction spontaneously creates a mendat self, which controls them and which can add new bodies to its control--up to twenty or so.  (Liberated from: some guy's website where he had this really cool star system creation program--the "Ragamuffin universe" I think.)
* Moochava: A race of small furry bipeds from an icy world with militaristic tendencies, most like humans in mind-set except that they cannot handle sorrow: evolving in cramped conditions, their psyches developed such that anyone who displays sadness is slaughtered to prevent contagious bad feelings.  (Liberated from: I used to draw guinea pigs when I was six.  Tolkien has his elves; I have my empire-spanning space guinea pigs.)
* Vocavo: An autotrophic (photosynthetic) race, not entirely unlike mobile plants.  They look with disgust upon the races that must consume life to live.  However, their solitary evolution means that they are incapable of any but the most rudimentary empathy: they would not harm a flower, but will watch unblinking as a trillion people die if they can gain no benefit from their survival.  (Liberated from: Switzerland.)
* Wekri: A race of creatures looking kinda like three tails on a stalk that forms a snakey head.  Their rear tail once extended and buried itself deep into the crust of their planet, where the tails linked together, forming a network of mind-to-mind communication.  Each Wekri remained in his little crater, thinking along with his fellows and eating rainbow food that fellow from the sky, until their world was destroyed and they were cut off from one-another.  Now they journey the Cosmos, looking for a way to re-unite.  (Liberated from: A Skittles commercial, Plato's Symposium.)
* Quite a few more.

7) A small Cosmos with big starships.  Broken Space is relatively small: stars are within convenient sublight ship travel distance, and celestial objects always loom large and bright in the sky.  There's breathable air in space--what would have been called "aether" five years ago, until I realized that everyone who designed a second-tier RPG called his mojo "aether."  Planets orbit stars and moons orbit planets out of occult principles, explained by understanding the divine (as in #4 above).  Further, this occult principle can be exploited to make starships by "tricking" the Cosmos into "believing" that a ship is in fact a planet--of course, ships have to be of sufficient size (about corvette-sized, let's say) for the "trick" to work.  I imagine enormous vessels graven with runes describing the theology of the god who commands what we would call gravity soaring through space, the glyphs shifting (and the god-story changing) under the manipulation of a helmsman to change the vessel's course.  Of course, when I was 12 and read the Death Gate Cycle, I thought that runes were pretty cool--of late, they've been overdone, so I want to emphasize the theological angle of the ships' transit.

8) Theological technology in general.  Magitech's been done to death ever since, say, Final Fantasy III (FF VI for those of you who aren't cool), so I've moved away from the original magitech image.  Instead, it's theology, prayer, faith, and mystic thought that power things.  What's the fuel supply?  Faith!  Thousands of worshippers, converging on a cathedral-slash-power plant, praying in a great wheel of faith like at the heart of Mecca, their hopes and divine thoughts being transferred into kinetic motion that's stored in huge mechanical cogs and gears that are woven artfully into the graceful architecture of the grand temples.  Likewise, all technology requires a silent prayer to the appropriate god-image to function properly: it doesn't matter if you can pull the trigger on a Moochava's telekinetic pulse gun if you don't understand the nature of the Moochava gods of war and gravity and so can't focus your thoughts correctly.  This also prevents mass-production in all but the most limited forms: every created thing is an act of both construction and prayer, and requires a craftsman-priest (somewhat in the vein of Norse blacksmiths/runemasters) to construct things.

9) Theological magical technology.  Mouthful, eh?  By that I mean that I don't want traditional mumble-mumble-BOOM magic.  However, I also don't want the New Age "realistic" magic--that's more overdone than the Vancian stuff.  I want magic that is technology that is religion.  I look to Tolkien, actually, for this sort of influence: a lot of his "magic" isn't magic in any normal sense.  Is Sam's rope magic?  Are the elvencloaks magic?  Is Sauron's dark cloud magic?  No; it's just what those things are.  I want to capture that feel in Broken Space: people don't cast spells; they do what is natural to them, whether that's taming a horse or killing with a glance.  Exalted did a very good job of making "magic" that was entirely natural, and I want to recreate this, for both people *and* things.

10) The forbidden.  Broken Space isn't just far-out anything-goes space opera.  To appreciate its wonder, I think you need to know its limits, and to know what to exclude.  Some things just don't belong in Broken Space.  The setting is vaguely Da Vinci clock-tech--think Space 1889.  Automatic weapons, gunpowder, traditional "magic," plastics, computers (other than clacking Babbage-type-things), radio communications (all those sci-fi starships are covered in blinkie-lights; might as well make use of them), FTL travel--all those thinks are simply verboten.  They're not there.  They don't belong.

Okay, we'll stop with the setting for now, because I think I've given an adequate summary.  The excitement of Star Wars, the epic sweep of Lensman, the horrific beauty of Nobilis, the wonder of Lovecraft's Dreamlands, the uncharted vistas of Traveller, all while you battle evil blue-nosed guinea pigs that shoot lightning bolts.  Now, it's time to move on to System, part two in that wobbly three-legged stool that is a complete game.

11) A system that explains the setting.  I can't stress this enough: I want a player to create a character, and by doing so understand the world.  Most players--in fact, I'll say almost all players--don't want to read 200 pages of background (oh, and this setting will weigh in at 200+ pages) before they can play--they want to *make a character* and *play the game*--as well they should.  We're here to game, right?  So, I want a character creation system that, coupled with maybe five pages of explanation, gets to what the setting is, and allows you to understand it.

12) Blatant theft.  I'll be honest: I'm going to blatantly rip off Traveller 4 and Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing here.  Traveller for its character generation; Warhammer for its character advancement.  They're cool.  They're fun.  They *explain the setting with the system.*  Create a character in Traveller and you know what Traveller is like, both in setting and (to some extent) in theme.

13) Random but equal.  I'm not normally a random-character-creation kinda guy, but for this game, I think it fits.  The characters will, to some degree, be randomly created.  Ability scores will be random (though you can flip-flop some; I've got a nifty mechanic for this).  Though you can choose what profession you want, whether or not you gain admittance is based on a die roll.  It's a give-and-take; you try for your first choice, and if you roll well, you're golden--if not, time to try something else.  It's a bit like real life, I suppose.  However, starting characters are given a point-limit; let's say 40 (a nice number if ever there was one).  Every attribute point is worth 3.  Every skill point is worth 1.  Special powers are worth from 1 to 10.  You go about creating a character, choosing professions, rolling for admittance and so on, until you hit the limit--then, you stop creating a character, and it's time to play.  And if you don't like random character creation, fine: the point values mean that you can create a character using points--just go through the process and choose, rather than roll.

14) Neat background rolls for character creation.  I loved these in Traveller: you'd roll up what your home world was like, and your social status, and fun stuff like that, and they'd influence your scores.  So, you could find out that you come from a world with a tainted atmosphere, and get -1 Stamina and +3 against inhaled toxins, or come from an Ice World (like Hoth), and get bonuses vs. cold and penalties vs. heat.  Also, some parts of your background--your homeworld's society and your social position--can allow you to flip-flop attributes.  You have a Charisma of -1 and an Endurance of +3, but you want to be a suave con artist.  No problem, because you rolled for your home world culture Diplomatic World, or for your family status Merchant--either allows you to swap Charisma with a better stat, if you so choose.  Just flip-flop and *poof*, you have a Charisma of +3 and an Endurance of -1.  You're not guaranteed to get what you want for every stat, but it certainly makes it easy to flip to what you want.  See, me am clever!

15) Profession-based character creation.  Sure, professions can be artificial and all, but they *really* give a feel for the setting.  Being a member of the Moochava Space Patrol (ah, the few, the proud, the Bubbleheads), or a Star Merchant really gives you a feel for the world.  So, once you're done with early character creation, you pick a career.  You roll to see if you get in.  You spend 1d6 years or so there.  You roll 1d6 + Intelligence to see how many skill points you get in that time.  For every skill you get, roll 3d6 on the appropriate chart to determine what skill you get.  (Occasionally you can bump the roll up or down if you're aiming for something.)  Keep rolling up new professions until you reach the Starting Character Point limit, and you're good to go.

16) Character advancement after play follows much the same pattern as character creation: you choose careers, try to get in, and spend a few years there.  (You see: Warhammer's just the flipside of Traveller--Warhammer advancement's like Traveller chargen, and vice-versa; I just keep the process going.)  However, rather than rolling randomly, it's part of the adventure to get into new positions in society.  Further, as a GM it makes a good plot-hook: if the character fails he loses something meaningful (an opportunity to get into that career), but he doesn't die a horrible screaming death.

17) Still iffy on the actual mechanics.  I'm leaning toward a zero-average system, with a die roll of 2d6: one die's positive, one's negative.  You roll both and take the lower result, and use that to modify the ability score.  If the dice come up the same, don't modify the ability score.

18) For things like combat, I actually want the system to be gritty and nasty, more like Warhammer than D&D.  To keep things slightly more safe, I want to use in-game fate points in the form of faith--the character's faith and understand of the divine allows him to manipulate the world in subtle ways--in system terms, probably canceling the negative die so he only rolls ability +1d6.  It seems like a good way of allowing for really gritty games while still allowing regular PCs to do all sorts of cinematic swashbuckling stuff.

Okay, we'll leave the system for now, because the key idea has already been presented: Traveller + Warhammer + Random but Equal = Much Fun.  Now, it's onto the big question that Jared likes to ask: what's it about?  This is the theme/mood/setting/premise/purpose thing, the third part of a complete game.

19) The PCs start play as the Broken: their lives just got royally screwed up.  Not like regular "whoops, lost my job" screwed up.  I mean, the Cosmic Forces(tm) just aligned and for dimly-understood reasons every single god-concept of misfortune and crappy luck just converged on some poor bastard's lifeline and kicked it in the nuts.  Your final roll for character creation, once you've reached the maximum point score, is the What Went Wrong roll.  This is the all-important plot hook, the I Failed A Smuggling Run and Now I Have a Bounty On My Head, I Just Accidentally Killed a Man, I Just Stopped An Important Person from Hurting Me/My Family By Breaking His Neck type of thing that explains (in part) why their life is very nearly over.

20) This isn't just for the rich thematic potential: it's a fun plot element.  A GM can sit down with his players, look over their character sheets, see what's Gone Wrong, and spend five minutes coming up with how the characters will collide as each of them finds their life spiraling out of control.  The individual crises can be used to kick off the campaign, as well as to provide the GM with ceaseless hooks, both for adventuring and thematic purposes.  This is how I personally run my games, and I'd like a mechanic to help me along.

21) Yeah, thematic purposes: that's the kick.  Broken Space is about Dragging Yourself Back Up.  Campaigns begin with the characters' lives broken and ruined; the thrust of much of the campaign is to fix that: to recover or to put it all behind you and start fresh.  But that's not the end: the act of fixing or moving past the Break means that the characters can get on with their lives, function in society again, and start gaining new Professions.  However, the character isn't done: this isn't *just* a game about falling down and getting back up again.  It's about using that experience to define yourself as you return to society and start living a life again--not normal, of course.  Most PCs are gonna be bounty hunters or starship captains or acrobatic assassins or some such, but they're now part of a society, however strange, and as a campaign progresses, it will always be tinged by what happened to them when the web of reality got yanked out from under them and they had to weather the storm and drag themselves back up again.  Too many games keep their characters in perpetual adolescence, unattached to society: I want character eventually to grow up, to come back to society, and to return to the world wiser because of their period of social adolescence.

Okay, there it is: Broken Space, in all its rambling glory.  I'd appreciate comments, questions, advice, ideas, and irate flames on any one of the game's three elements--setting, system, and theme.  I know it's a somewhat ambitious project that I've started here, but I have the advantage of having thought about it for many years now, and I'd like to at least get the game into a playable state.

[Ben Morgan]

I like a lot of the things here. Sounds to be very Sim-friendly, which is something I can relate to (not having really had any practical experience with Nar-play yet).

I'd go with guidelines for the GM/players to create their own alien races, but that's just me. :)

But I really really like the "What Went Wrong" roll idea. Being a big Cyberpunk fan (especially street-oriented campaigns), I can appreciate the whole, "clawing our way back up out of the muck" angle.

[Bankuei]

Your background has got a lot of cool ideas, but lots of people here are system monkeys(ook! ook!), and you can probably get a better bit of help if you drop some more details of the system on us.  

Also, if I'm understanding you correctly, the idea of the game is to "Get out of trouble", correct?   I really like the idea of kickers being put into the character creation process, and I kinda like the wild out of control part of randomness, but perhaps you'd give 3 charts(Trouble with- Crime and or the law, Friends n' family, Whacked out problems, pick 2...) and give the player some choice in how they want it.

A GM can sit down with his players, look over their character sheets, see what's Gone Wrong, and spend five minutes coming up with how the characters will collide as each of them finds their life spiraling out of control.

Unless you give really good advice, or make it so that all the possible problems link well to each other, this is going to be hard on the GM.  Do understand that with a massive background, the GM's job is going to be more than hard enough without having to link the players together also.  

Perhaps you can put this into the player's hands, by making it a requirement that each player knows at least 2 other players, and perhaps they have to rely on each other for help.  Another option you might want to incorporate, is perhaps each "Gone Wrong" has an advantage, or a key that would help out a lot, but that another player always has it, so that the players have to rely on each other.  For example-"Mistaken identity, you look just like the witness who's busted half the mob, Key- Someone else has disguise skills"

Also, on the note of 400 page rpg...you'll find it easier if you communicate your world in less words, not more.  Yes, people hate to break it up into supplements, but then again, too much is confusing, and the main points of your game get lost in the details.  Use pictures, use a bit of fiction, work on capturing the feel more than the details.  It is a very different thing to watch 2 hours of a samurai movie than to read a sociological study on the Japanese.  One gives you the feel of the culture, another gives you details.

Chris

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Wow. I have to ask, why the fixation on 400 pages? I'm reminded of something James Wallis once said to John Wick. Wick said he saw Orkworld as being about X number of pages long. Wallis said "Why?"

The point is, just write the darn thing. Make it as many pages long as it needs to be. It could be 200, 400, 1000, or just 20 pages long. But if the whole thing is there, then you know what? You're done.

You have an awful lot of setting. You can look at the "another fatasy RPG- doomed to fail?" or whatever thread for some of my opinions on that.

What I basically mean is, with all of this stuff (200+ pages as you say, but see above on that number) you have followed in Tolkien's footsteps. That is, with Lord of the Rings I am given to understand that Tolkien was less interested in a good story than in creating a history for a fictional world. That is, he wasn't a writer. He was a historian.

Well, let's not go too deep into the Tolkien thing, since this isn't the topic for this thread.

So you've got a whole world, all fleshed out and lined up and over 200 pages. But to use any of it, someone has to plow through those 200 pages or so of encyclopedia-like informative text. And you know what, some people will not like this or that part and then they will change it. All that work wasted.

Well, maybe not wasted, but in many cases it is.

So, I suggest you provide broader strokes for your world and let the players fill in the rest. Because, believe you me, they will anyway, even if they have to erase what you've written.

18) For things like combat, I actually want the system to be gritty and nasty, more like Warhammer than D&D.  

I don't understand how WFRP is more "gritty" than D&D unless you're refering to the critical hit table. I would advise agaist a critical hit table. I have found those things to be a poor tool. Often repetative results occur, making humor in these situations.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey there,

I finally got the chance to go over this one. First comment - that was a way funny and pointed post. The kind of material that's funny because it nails something really hard with a minimum of words. If your game is written like that, sign me up for a copy right now.

OK, stuff ....

1) I don't get the page count biz either. Seems to me that's a very counter-productive standard of operations. Granted, on the other hand, some notion of overall size is a good idea. Still, 400 pp is a lot like "build it and they will come," in the sense of, "set it high, and it will be written."

OK, let me start this point over a bit. Given that no one can tell you not to set a page-length goal, and that you already have, my question is, why that particular length?

2) Your "Lovecraftian Wonder" really hit the hardest in your setting material. I love Kadath and all the other wacked "old myths" type stuff that Lovecraft wrote, and I often think that role-playing tries to retrofit all Lovecraft into Cthulhu, Cthulhu, Cthulhu, losing the content of his other work. So, cool. That nailed your setting for me, especially since "space" in these terms is not, not, not "space" in the modern sense. Alien = alien both physically and metaphysically. I get it.

3) For "theological magical technology," I suggest roaming through some of the principles of Hero Wars, if you haven't already. That game does a wonderful job of combining both the physicality and the meaning of a thing into one easy effectiveness/resolution step.

4) That's related to my main concern, which is system ... at this point, I think you're working two ends against a middle. The two ends are Resolution and Character Creation - since each depends on the other to make sense, you might want to find the "middle" and work outward toward each end.

Let's take a look at that 2d6 dice system you described. Unfortunately, the subtraction is bells & whistles on a straight [2d6, sum them, add to ability, check target number]. Feng Shui, The Babylon Project, and other games do this - do all the arithmetic with the dice, blah blah, and you discover that they are still working off the same distribution of probabilities and might as well have not bothered.

See, if you roll 2d6, add ability, and check against a target number (as opposed to using just the one die), all your target numbers go up by a factor of 3-4, which means that the "result table" changes, but otherwise the impact on play is exactly the same as the system you currently have, it's just easier.

5) I very much like your approach to constructive randomization of characters. I've been looking and hoping for a good use of randomizing character creation for a long time. I also like the way that you combine the randomized scores with the randomized events of the "lifepath" tables.

That lifepath thing has been a tricky issue in RPGs for a long time. They go all the way back to Traveller, if I'm not mistaken, and they saw a major boost in Cyberpunk, and then it was ... hmmm, Mutant Chronicles, I think, that had'em too. In my experience, they seem to break down when they get too split up across too many "boxes," so my suggestion is to keep them fairly simple - neat, certainly, but not pages and pages.

6) Oh look, Kickers! Randomized Kickers, at that. Interesting. Given all the randomizing so far, what do you think of having players choose the Kicker from the list, rather than rolling? It's kind of the "I am investing in my character now" step without the "the dice made me do it" being involved.

7) Your thematic purposes section (#21) is very well stated ... but then I go back to the Lovecraftian Wonder and it kind of jars.  Redefining oneself during recovery from disaster ... OK, OK, then that fits with "theological magical technology" how? Is one's theology related to the re-self-definition? If not, then theme is getting disconnected from effectiveness, which is a dangerous gap ...

Anyway, not to say that every smidgeon of the game needs to dovetail and reinforce every other smidgeon, but theme (if it's to be important) and effectiveness do, in my experience, need to have a pretty strong connection.

Cool stuff!

Best,
Ron

[Jared A. Sorensen]

6) Oh look, Kickers! Randomized Kickers, at that. Interesting. Given all the randomizing so far, what do you think of having players choose the Kicker from the list, rather than rolling? It's kind of the "I am investing in my character now" step without the "the dice made me do it" being involved.

You could do a Dying Earth-kinda thing where you can choose one but yer also rewarded for "letting the dice decide."

[Matt Machell]

Sounds neat. I particularly like the theological angle, whcih seems different enough to make it stand out. I've been reading a book on John Dee of late, which has some cool stuf on how mathematics/theology and conjuring were tied together in Elizabethan times. Reading your description I was thinking of the diagrams in that book, and how they might relate to starship tragetory calculations......

Random lifepath/career generation can create some interesting results, which can lead into great stories. The problem is balancing the random generation with the players desire to "play what they want". This is why I kept getting exasperated with Cyberpunk and Traveller. As jared mentioned, some kind of system to reward people for choosing to take the random option might work better.

Keep us posted.


Matt

[Moochava]

Thanks for the responses, everyone.  Some thoughts:

As for the randomized kickers at the beginning of play, well, let me explain that: mostly it's an extension of my GMing style.  I'm happiest at the beginning of the campaign when everyone comes to the table with a couple of goals, a couple of contacts, and a couple of motivations.  Unfortunately, most of players are develop-in-play sorts, usually taking at least a half-dozen sessions before they get into character.

In other words, everyone at the table is too lazy to come up with stuff.  I'll admit it; I'm not proud: everyone wants everyone else to come up with the initial plot, and it usually takes a month before someone bothers.

The random kickers/lifepath sytem is one possible solution for the lazy groups of the world.  What I'm aiming for is a list of possible events based on your last profession--kinda like the mustering out benefits from Traveller, but instead of getting a revolver your wife gets eaten by wild dogs or something.  What I'd be tempted to do is have a randomized list of Stuff That Can Happen, then allow the players to choose how they'll respond.

But regardless of how, precisely, it's organized, the random What Went Wrong table gives players an immediate goal--it basically gives them their entire first "adventure."  All the GM has to do is look at the pile of goals, figure out how the characters'll end up together, and run with it.  It's not everyone's style, but it works for me and a lot of GMs I know.

I think I've mostly worked out the "playing what I want" problem.  Part of it's simple: if you want something in particular, don't use the random system.  I'd prefer to avoid mechanical incentives to using the random system: some people come to the table with an idea and some people don't, and I don't think the game needs to favor one over the other.  But for those who have an idea of where to go, but who still want the random system, I have what I feel is a pretty decent solution: a few parts of your life, like your social position and the social situation of your homeworld, allow you to swap stats if you so choose.  This gives you a pretty good chance of getting, say, your highest score in Intelligence, if that's what you want.

As for the Dee angle, yeah, that's partly what I'm going for.  Most of my Dee stuff has already been absorbed into my British Civil War-era kung fu mystic sorcerer game (just mention that in a bar--great way to pick up chicks, really), but I've been re-reading some Bacon and Porta to get into the proper mystic mindset, and I'll eventually pick up Hero Wars.  Trying to figure out a science that works around mysticism rather than mathematics'll be tricky, but I think I can pull it off with a minimum of Lovecraftian beyond-man's-comprehension handwaving.

And I know that the 1d6+/- system is identical to 2d6: it's really an aesthetic thing.  I like zero-average systems, and I like knowing how well someone did on any given roll.  In this system, if you roll a +3, say, you did just as well as a person with a +3 in the ability usually does.  It's like Fudge, where you can say your result was Good or Terrible or whatever, but without those evil dice.  Although I'm not committed to a mechanic: I might even move to a dice pool system, if I can keep the pools below 6 or so.

The overall theme/premise/mood/etc. is still in a great deal of flux.  I prefer to make a setting with so much detail that themes and story-stuff emerge naturally from the world.  Blue Planet and Tribe 8 both do a pretty good job of that, and I'd like to see if I can do something similar.  So far, the setting offers Cosmic wonder in the Unknown Kadath/Billions and Billions way, and the system (I take no responsibility for my systems; they build themselves if I just sit in front of a computer for long enough) wants some sort of beginning-of-game crisis thing, so I'm working with those two elements.

And as for the 400-page thing, that was more horror than anything else.  I wrote up a table of contents before posting, and the thing just kept growing and growing.  It reached 600 pages, and so far I've managed to trim it back to about 200, but I fear that it'll just grow again.  I should really finish that smaller D20 Apprentice project--that's only 50 pages--but oh well, I go where the ideas take me.

Thanks for the commentary!  Back to working out plot hooks concerning Bomaug mating habits.

--------------
Kyle Marquis