"Do you have any idea how many 900 billion is? That many people, and all their aspirations, history, politics, and religion amount to is white noise. They cancel each other out. All that's left is to coast on the noise, man, and enjoy the ride. A million planets, a million bucks to be made, a million lives to be saved, a million chicks to be banged. Let's rock."
-Iuhai Farham, galactic mercenary and Rathi Cluster guitar shredder.

Premise: The future is chaos. The past is chaos. The present is chaos. Life, culture, thought thrive in chaos. More specifically, trade thrives in chaos, and in the ancient Galaxy of Man, trade is the lifeblood of the universe. Players are deep in the blood vessels as mercenaries, traders, explorers, hopeful despots and freedom fighters in a dirt-covered, rust-spotted, laser-gun toting RPG.

Hope: I’d like to create a ‘galactic’ style sci-fi game with spaceships and the like in a galaxy populated at least almost soely with humans – after all, we’re a pretty diverse and interesting bunch. In this, players should be able to explore everything from fighting the good to save people from megacorps, to exploring virgin planets, to running drugs from core world to fringe worlds in souped-up light freighters.

Mechanics: I know there’s a lot of hatred of D20 on this board, but the only systems my players already know are D20 and Shadowrun…and Shadowrun is an amazing hassle. I’ll be using a heavily modified D20 to run this game, though I’m open to suggestions from you all on a “better way”.

Gameplay Example One (The Seamy Side):
Where: An ill-lit street off the side of Esperanza Segura’s secondary spaceport. Only the EarthAsia takeout joint’s sign is still glowing, and someone is walking a dog.
Who: The GM (S), and two smugglers (D and E).
Why?: The players have come on-planet with a cargo of highly illegal biological lab components, and now have to arrange the transfer with their contact. They met the contact briefly when they came onplanet so he could decide on a secure meeting spot.

S: You both round the corner onto Glorian street…how far away did you park again?

D: I parked about half a block down, on the next street.

E: I went in his groundcar. It’s a rental anyway.

S: Well, good. The street looks deserted, and only the EarthAsia takeout is even remotely open. The sign reads “Black Dragon Noodle Bar,” maybe. Do either of you know ChinaFraca?

D: Nope.

S: Oh well. Take spot checks, DC 16.

E: Passed it.

S: There’s someone sitting in a car across from the takeout joint, but the car’s not on. You spotted them by the light from their cigarette.

E: Groundcar or aircar?

S: It’s a beat-up old groundcar.

E: I tell D that our contact’s probably over there.

D: Strolling casually over to the car, I…

S: Take a quick Wisdom test for me?

D: 17, baby!

S: This smells setup to you, D. E?

E: Uh…9?

S: You think it’s time to get this deal over with and tell him the drop spot.

E: OK. I walk over to the car, unless D tries to stop me.

D: Nope. But I loosen old betsy in her holster and put down my shades. And turn on their thermal imaging (cackles).

S: OK, D, add 3 to your next initative.

E: Have I gotten to the car?

S: Slouching quickly along the street, the two of you make it to the beat-up old blue Yariv Donley, the most common car out there. The man inside rolls down the window, which is grimy and covered in something dried…

E: Bird shit?

S: Take an Intelligence test.

E: Eh…14?

S: No birds shit straight brown. Take a Wisdom test.

E: Umm…wow, 19.

S: The window, which has just finished rolling down to reveal you contact looking very pale and haggard, is covered in blood.

D: Any activity?

S: The street is silent except for the air traffic overhead as the two of you begin to speak…

This would go on to have them ambushed by local police forces, to whom they have been betrayed by their contact for unknown reasons, and a hectic race to the spaceport or safehouse to get offplanet, either through main force or trickery.

Example of Play 2 (The Heroic Side)
Where?: The pristine halls of a rich arcrology on the CoreWorld of Centari Aleph.

Who? The two players, this time, are rebels working for a group which has overthrown roughly 1/3 of the planet from the three corporations that dominate it in the name of freedom from corporate opression and exploitation.

What? On their way to a cell meeting, they have discovered a squad of Tricorp soldiers outside the door, and have already killed one sentry.

S: The Tricorp enforcers are about to set charges on the door.

D: Whar kind of charges?

S: Since you’re behind them, it’s hard to tell. Check knowledge (Demolitions), DC 18.

D: Nothing.

E: Right, well, there are fifteen of our cellmates in there. I’m gonna level my lasrifle at the one setting the charge and fire…hrm, twice, I have the Doubletap feat.

S: OK, you’ll get surprise round.

D: When I see him start shooting, I’m getting on the comm. With Alexi inside and telling him that the cell is under attack and to arm themselves.

S: OK. E, roll your attack. The trooper is wearing simple fibresteel, and doesn’t see you, so you have to hit a 12 to touch him and a 16 to hit him and not his armor.

S: Hit on his armor…damage? Owch. OK, the first ten points burn a hole in his armor, the next five bore into his shoulder and he collapses, screaming, but begins to claw out his pistol…

D: Is Alexi answering?

S: Oddly, no. Now roll intiative, the other two troopers now know there’s some scrapping to be done…

This would continue on until the players find their cell has been killed already, and they have to make their way to a sector command center for the rebel groups on the planet.


Where shall I go from here? Thoughts, comments, prompts for futher info all appreciated.


-Adso

You had me 100% hooked from the flavor task. This is precisely, precisely the kind of space faring game I'm always looking for and have made a few tries at building. Good for you - and the flavor text you got shows a totally commited sense of the flavor you want. Again: you know what you want, don't let that go.

I know there’s a lot of hatred of D20 on this board...

OK, great job spotting some of the assumptions I make, especially about the amount of crunch and system interface the players are capable of/will enjoy. My reasoning on this was:

1. Shadowrun, which I’ve been disappointed with, is 99.9% technowizardry and number-crunching to get that extra D6 initiative or whatever. I wanted to avoid the syndrome so apparent in Shadowrun of ubercharacters being uber only for the fun of rolling a bajillion dice.

2. D20 modern, which I enjoyed so long as you discount the cracked-out setting, allows for a good deal of characterization and doesn’t rely on number crunching or legalism to provide the players with their ability to act heroically.
Therefore, I needed something which provided the flexibility and player-liking slant of D20 modern without abandoning the richness of Shadowrun’s setting-reflective system.

My main concern with using D20 is in character advancement and, you guessed right, “System Matters” player mindset. On character advancement, I struggle with Hit Points because I see players as becoming better at things, not physically more able to absorb laser blasts, unless they train for that specifically.

On player mindset, I actually don’t envision this as D&D In Space, with the characters getting salvage missions from their local bar and killing space pirates to get their missions done, though that’s certainly possible. Instead, I hope to get players into a “wanderer” mindset that will allow them to express their creativity and the GM to explore the uncreated universe. Do you think D20 inherently creates a gamist, level-up, loot the corpses mentality? If so, I’d like to know – that mentality needs desperately to be avoided.

Finally, the universe is deliberately uncreated. I’m trying to create a few locations, sects, groups and ideas which give an idea of the flavor and variety of the Galaxy of Man, but most of the universe is White Noise – defined by players and GM in a non-regulated way. Should I introduce mechanics for narrative control and world building? This would be a hard step.

-Adso

Brother Adso wrote: ...physically more able to absorb laser blasts...

Brother Adso wrote: Do you think D20 inherently creates a gamist, level-up, loot the corpses mentality? If so, I’d like to know – that mentality needs desperately to be avoided.

Technocrat13 wrote: Rewards. So, players desire Levels. How do they get them? In d20D&D and d20 Star Wars, it's by Overcoming Challenges. Which basically means killing things.

Vaxalon wrote:
You are conflating the new edition with older ones in which, yes, the only way to gain XP was to kill stuff.

Hey Adso,

Yeah, I'm with Dev, your title and color text is the whip. You seem like you've got your heart set on d20, so I'm not going to push too hard on that, but let me suggest that you look at two indie games before you commit:

• Fastlane: I think the mechanics for Lifes and risk taking would utterly deliver on your notions about having brash mercenaries and hopeful despots as player characters.
• Thugs & Thieves: I don't think it would be difficult at all to translate it to scifi, and I think the Vices would deliver on the seediness you're looking for and the "wanderer" thing you mentioned.

Paul

Hey Adso:

… but the only systems my players already know are D20 and Shadowrun…

Take a page from CoCd20. Get rid of advancement.

Start characters at level X, and then hand out things like Feats, BAB increases, skills, and the like as appropriate to the story instead of mechanically. Or heck - you've got an SF setting, let characters BUY skill upgrades or feats in the form of brain hacks or hardtech of one sort or another.

I think you're on the right track with your system choice - it's rarely a bad idea to leverage your players' embedded knowledge base, particularly if you want to emphasize a different facet of Exploration.

Best,

Mark

If he likes D20, he likes D20. I hear it's got lots of lovely tactical crunch. In any case wasn't the initial question about setting? That's what I wanted to get back to.

Dev wrote: My designs for a space opera succumbed to kitchensinking myself into something that was essentially a traveller knockoff. In building a setting, make sure not to lose sight of your real goals. Indeed, maybe you should be minimalist about how much setting you actually need up front, as opposed to setting that's creating on the fly.

Hmm, here's something I threw together instead of my Chinese Cinema paper.

Fleshed out Character Growth system:

Players, at the end of each session, submit three things to the GM that they believed were characterful, exceptionally effective, or added to the richness of the story. These can be things they did, another player did, or the whole group did.

The GM, after hearing the submissions, chooses which ones to reward. The players so rewarded gain 150 XP per ‘plot point’ awarded. XP can be spent in any number of ways, but suggestions include:

100 XP = 1 level in a skill.
300 XP = +1D6 Hit Points
400 XP = +1 BAB
500 XP = One new feat, or add a new skill as a class skill with 2 ranks.
650 XP = +1 to a base characteristic as appropriate. May not boost characteristic above 18.
700 XP = +1 to character’s base Defense.
800 XP = New special ability, GM-Defined. Example: Unerring Nav-Sense
1,000 XP = New special ability, player-defined. Example: Heavy Munitions Expert

The maximum ranks in a skill are equal to one-half of the stat which that skill is based on, rounded up. For example, with a STR of 10, you can take no more than 5 ranks in Climb, which is based on STR.

So, in the smuggler example above, during the chase, D drove his groundcar straight into the back cargo bay of the Junker (his ship), which he submits for coolness factor. E, on the other hand, saved their contact from the Poliza agents only to discover that it was he who had betrayed them in the first place. For shooting the contact in the back of the EarthAsia franchise, he wants a reward for ‘moving the plot along’. The GM awards them both 150 XP, plus 50 for getting out alive. D spends 100 to get an extra point in “Drive”, and saves the other 100. E spends all 200 to boost his Intimidation skill by two, reasoning no one wants to screw around someone who will plug a man, then hide the body in a vat of hoisin sauce.

This assumes the players will be thinking "in character" about where they should be gaining...is this too much to hope?

-Adso

Adso, have you checked out the FarScape d20 book? FS seems pretty close to the setting you're looking for, and since you're already dinking around with d20 rules, it might be interesting to read it and see if there's anything that you can steal.

I haven't checked out the book myself (diehard 'scaper, though) so can't offer it as anything other than, "This might be a good resource." =)

I'm jumping on the bandwagon to say your examples rock and going with D20 seems fine for your goals.

The only concern I have is in the frequency of die rolls in the examples. What happens if they fail that first Wisdom test? They don't find their contact? Do they wander around looking for him for an hour or what?

Every roll in D20 is an opportunity to fail. Failures in that system usually result in nothing happening -- you swing and miss (nothing happens), you don't spot the blood (nothing happens), you don't notice the lie told to you (nothing happens). Couple that with the flat dice results (any number between 1 and 20 is equally likely to come up on a given roll) and there can be problems.

The more you toss the forward-action of the current scene to the dice mechanic, the more chances you have to grind to a halt.

One technique that works for our group is to assume that normal sensory operation happens automatically. You never roll to "spot" anything, unless it's very, very well hidden or there is some condition which impairs you (like darkness or fog). "There's a guy across the street sitting on a car hood. Looks like your contact." "There's a red stain on th window of the car. Sure looks like blood to you."

Is he really our contact? Is that stuff really blood? That's when you take out the dice. If the PCs want to scrutinize and carefully investigate, their abilities come into play. Otherwise, the "default" result happens without any rolling or fuss. "I kick open the door." It's an ordinary door. You're a big burly guy. It flies open. No Strength test. Why? Because failure isn't interesting. Failure just doesn't matter and could be silly, anyway.

In D20, the dice system isn't the "physics" of the world. You don't roll dice to make your bed or put on your pants. These things happen in the natural way and we don't test your Dexterity or Wisdom to do them. This principle can be extended to cover all of the "natural" things a PC can do, without trusting to the very, very fickle dice to provide the "right" results.

Hmmm. That was somewhat rantish. I think it's on-topic, though.

On player advancement:

As you can see, I agree with removing level as a concept, because with it goes a lot of the gamism inhernent in D20, although it certainly doesn't entirely erase it -- after all, we need some gamism, since we are playing games.

On themes and tones and indefinables:

I plan to post a bunch more flavor material when I get around to it. I've been using a fabulous supplement called "Sea Of Stars" which deals in a very concise way with the difficulties of putting together a coherent sci-fi setting without falling into the trap of making a specific place .

In White Noise , combat is serious business, but mistakes can be survived and corrected with care. Morality is largely ambiguous (though some institutions and people are truly good or evil), but beliefs polarize groups quickly and players must toe the line between crusading for their own good and recognizing the randomness of social camps. Scope can vary, but I think most players will be too caught up in their own corners of the world to become movers and shakers, unless that is their specific goal.

Themes: Singular:
Diversity (of the millions of worlds and societies),
Stagnation (of technology),
Anarchy (of belief, politics, and trade).

Themes: Conflict:
Anarchy vs. Unity (governments trying to consolidate their power in their local areas),
Power vs Entropy (Governments falling apart from within),
Idealism vs Reality (Ideas confronting the diversity and anarchy of the White Noise of other ideas, or idealist movements being compromised to govern effectively),
Self-Interest vs Social Focus (the classic Han Solo dilemma).


That's just total brain-storming, mind you.

On rolling for many things:

While I agree that dice aren't the physics of the universe, I find that rolling is a good way to keep players interested, so long as you can tread the line of not making failure trivial, which you did well to point out.

I've never been able to find anything other than GM discretion to solve this problem. Do you have any suggestions for a mechanic?

On kitchensinking: it's my intention to sketch the themes, basics, prehistory, and technology limits of the Galaxy of Man, then leave settings for individual campaigns and adventures totally open. That said, I may end up posting some as examples.

And now, on with more game design!

-Adso

CHARACTER CREATION

1. Ability Scores

Initial ability scores are created using a Point Buy system with 20 points available. This will lead to seemingly low-powered characters, but improving abilities is easier in White Noise than in D&D, so don’t fret too much.

If you don’t remember, in a point buy system, a score of 9 costs one point. Scores of 9-14 go up by one point per point in the score. A 15 costs 8, a 16 costs 10, a 17 costs 13, and an 18 costs a full 16 points.

2. Character Background and Template

Choose one of the three general backgrounds for your character: Rim World, Core World, Farworld.

Rim Worlders: Are from one of the millions of varied planets throughout human place that are less than fully integrated into the commercial and political webs of the Core Worlds. Rim Worlds can be anything from lightly-populated agricultural colonies to fiercely independent industrial worlds, or even exotic locales like huge space stations or colony ships.

Core Worlders: Are from one of the few thousand fully terraformed, super-urbanized and arcrologized worlds that form the buzzing, dangerous center of the Galaxy, and from whom most of the White Noise of human existence emanates. Core Worlders range from sophisticated and suave corporate heirs to desperately poor Maze Proles, but share a greater familiarity with the interconnected and chaotic nature of the universe.

Far Worlders: Are from the uncountable far-flung colonies of Man, the farthest from the centers of white noise. These range from bucolic farm-planets and moons whose occupants are merely the monks of a huge monastery complex to near-uninhabitable mining worlds and obscure military colonies. Far Worlders tend to have more extreme physical attributes and less familiarity with the everday language and politics of the Galaxy, and are sometimes less-than-comfortable with technology more advanced than a solar-powered tractor.

Optional Rule:
Far Worlders may add +2 to one physical characteristic, but must take -1 from one physical characteristic and –2 from one mental characteristic. This should be based on their world of origin – for example, a Far Worlder from a low-G world of cliffs and giant forests might add +2 Dex, -1 Str, and –2 Wis. The tough, stunted natives of a high-G world might add +2 Con, -1 Dex, and –2 Cha, or the wild inhabitants of a seaworld might add +2 Str, -1 Con, and –2 Int.


2. Character Skills

Rim World Characters may take 5 + their intelligence modifier non-knowledge, language, or profession skills with (4 + Int Mod) x 4 points to distribute among them. They may take 3 + Intelligence mod Knowledge, profession, and Language skills with (Int Mod + 2) x4 skill points to dstribute among them.

Core World Characters may take 3 + Int Mod non-knowledge, language, or profession skills with (4 + Int Mod) x 4 points to distribute among them. They may take 5 + Int Mod knowledge, language and language skills, with (Int Mod + 4) x4 points to distribute among them.

Far World Characters may take 8 non-knowledge, language, or profession skills with 34 points to distribute between them. They make take 2 + (Wisdom modifier) knowledge, profession, or language skills with (4 + Int Mod) x3 points to distribute between them.

Class Skills: The initially selected skills are your character’s Class Skills. These can change and evolve through the game.

Max Ranks: At character creation, maximum ranks in a skill are equal to 3 + your ability modifier in that skill.

Knowledge Skills: In a futuristic setting like White Noise, what you know is often an aid to what you can do. High ranks or successful checks in Knowledge skills will often add a bonus to active skill checks like Pilot, Sneak, etc.

3. Character Hit Points.

All characters begin with 8 + their constitution modifier in Physical Damage. This is a rough equivalent to hit points and represents grit, toughness, muscle mass, and external wounds.

All characters begin with 4 + their Constitution modifier in System Damage. This is a rough equivalent to ‘true damage,’ and represents the breaking of major bones, rupturing of organs, going into shock, and such things.

All character begin with 4 + their Wisdom modifier in Mental Stability. In a futuristic world, one can’t rule out the possibility of psychic attackers, nanotech brain parasites, space trauma, and other such threats. Mental Stability is a combination of a character’s sanity and psychic resistance.

Optional Rule
All Characters begin with 1 + their Charisma modifier in Reputation. After all, once you’re off the radar for good, you’re of no importance to the world. Reputation represents the narrative importance of the character in the game world, and when it is reduced to zero, they effectively ‘disappear’ from the narrative.

3. Character Saving Throws

Characters must choose one throw to be their ‘good throw’ and two to be their ‘bad throws’.

The three saving throws are: Fortitude (Con-based), Reflex (Dex-based), and Mental Fortitude (Wis-based).

The character’s good throw begins with a +2 bonus. The poor throws begin with no bonus.

4. Character Attack Bonus

All characters begin with no base attack bonus, though Str bonus applies to melee attacks and Dex bonus to ranged attacks.

5. Character Feats

All Characters begin with three feats, at least one of which must be a background feat, providing bonuses to skills or the ability to use a specific type of equipment.

Feats may be chosen from the D20 Modern or D20 Future sourcebooks.

The only feat all characters are considered to have is Simple Weapon Proficiency.

6. Character Wealth Bonus

White Noise uses Wealth rather than a specific numerical system to keep track of a character's money. However, this is open to change, cause cold hard cash is less abstract and can give the players a more gritty feel which I may need.

Character’s wealth bonus is equal to 2 + 2D6. Characters may add 1 for each rank above 2 in a profession skill or each successful DC 17 Craft skill check.

Wealth is recovered after large purchases at the GMs discretion, since wealth recovery doesn’t fit into White Noise’s XP system.



-Adso

Hello Adso.

I think that your setting seems very intriguing, and I think that D20 will fit your needs well. It has a large userbase, and -- with the exception of the D&D magic system -- it lends itself well to tinkering and tweaking.

Brother Adso wrote: On player advancement: As you can see, I agree with removing level as a concept, because with it goes a lot of the gamism inhernent in D20, although it certainly doesn't entirely erase it -- after all, we need some gamism, since we are playing games.

At the moment, I rather like my "Players propose, GM Decides" method of experience distribution. I think it's original and allows the characters to decide where to weigh story goals, characterful action, and sheer combat bad-assery.

It also may go a long ways towards alleviating the feel that player advancement is random or at the whim of the GM, giving players a stake in where the game goes rather than soely having them respond to the challenges I set out.

Those were a pair of fairly heft posts I made...other thoughts?

-Adso

About rolling for actions:

I don't have a hard mechanic, but I do have some general advice. Let the total ranks in a skill (or value of an attribute) be the GM's guide for when to call for a roll.

Novices should have to trust fate (and roll dice) for almost any trivial task related to the ability. Someone with zero ranks in Driving will have to roll just to parallel park, for example.

Experts should be able to perform almost any normal application of the ability without rolling. An expert driver can parallel park, in the rain, at night. No need to roll. The player bought all those skill ranks to represent what a great driver the character is. Great drivers don't screw up parallel parking.

Experts have to roll when performing normal tasks under duress. What if you *must* parallel park, right now, while the hood of the car is on fire and someone you can't see is shooting at you? Now you roll and take your chances. Failure to park is now possible, even for the Expert.

It's a sliding scale. It might help to provide solid benchmarks to the GM about what 10, 15, 20, or 25 ranks in a skill mean. Is 20 ranks a "Master"? What can a Master be expected to do without rolling? When does a Master have a chance to fail? That's when you roll.

Another way to look at it:
Your ability level automatically buys you a certain grade of performance. If you want a different grade, you need to roll the dice and take your chances.

The Novice driver automatically parallel parks, but he dings up the fenders. Wanna do it without hitting the other cars? You need to roll.

The Expert driver automatically parallel parks, on a wet road, in a tight space. Want to do it so quickly and smoothly that you impress your date? Time to roll.

The result of the die roll detrmines the quality of your performance, but you always start from a baseline depending on your ability level. This shifts the resolution system from pass/fail to generating a range of outcomes from poor to perfect.

Just to pull this thread over to setting (rather than system) for a moment, allow me to applaud these themes and make a suggestion:

Brother Adso wrote:

Themes: Singular:
Diversity (of the millions of worlds and societies),
Stagnation (of technology),
Anarchy (of belief, politics, and trade).

Themes: Conflict:
Anarchy vs. Unity (governments trying to consolidate their power in their local areas),
Power vs Entropy (Governments falling apart from within),
Idealism vs Reality (Ideas confronting the diversity and anarchy of the White Noise of other ideas, or idealist movements being compromised to govern effectively),
Self-Interest vs Social Focus (the classic Han Solo dilemma).

Sydney, I love that setup. You're right that both sides are always a little wrong and always a little right.

What would help address this (IMHO) is to steal a page from Dogs in the Vineyard and ask "What does each side want, specifically, from the PCs that they cannot get any other way?"

With the additional option that White Noise PCs, unlike DiTV's Dogs, have no moral obligation to fix things and can always say "you're both wrong, so screw you all, I'm taking the money and a-runnin'! By the way, see that beeping red thing? Your planet explodes in six seconds."

Yeah, but the planet exploding thing should not be optional. The PCs don't have a moral obligation to fix things, but they should not be able to avoid being important. If they don't pick a side it's not just back to status quo: Both sides must lose as a result, big-time.

TonyLB wrote: Both sides must lose as a result, big-time.

To develop on some of these ideas within a game setting....

First, some general background:

“And lo, on the seventh day of the hundredth year of the tyrant’s reign, a bright light was seen on the eastern horizon, and all proclaimed to Heaven that the Deliverer had come! But mankind was created forgetful and deceitful, and the Delivererance was yet to come, yet Mankind followed the Light into the Stars…”
-From the third chapter of the Astral Revelation, preserved in the Librarium on Jamison's Moon.

The Prehistory of White Noise

Mankind originated on a planet called Earth, in the Sol system. After fighting and working over the surface of his planet for thousands of years, he began to reach out to the stars with frozen fingers. Sleeper ships of enormous size were dispatched to habitable planets, and man on his home planet continued to build and war himself into oblivion.

Time passed.

On one of the far-flung cities of Man established by the sleeper ships, a man named Frazier discovered the principles behind what we today call hyperspace travel, and the first Frazier Ships began to tentatively reach back towards Earth. Frazier drive was effective at moving ships through space, but no one knew how much time dilation would be experienced by the crew, and the lack of a form of faster-than-light communication to go along with the drive made progress halting and fraught with danger.

Time passed.

Over hundreds of years, the Beacon Trails were blazed across the stars by intrepid pioneers and the marks of a thousand and one Frazier Drives, linking together the largest and oldest worlds of humanity. The Terran Hegemony rose and fell, and the White Star Republic had its glorious march across the galaxy, the Crusade of Ji’lal drove to the end of the Core and back. But

Time passed.

And today the Galaxy is nothing but noise – Frazier Boats dive into the untrailed frontier, and the Beacon Trails are the lifeblood of the huge band of worlds known as the Core. No one can count the planets of Man, nor his governments. The great names of history live on in some form, Jesus and Buddah and Muhammed and Confucius, Haratha and Frazier, though they have been worn and changed by time like rocks in a river. Despite many attempts, no form of communication faster than a Frazier boat has yet been invented, and human worlds drift apart or together as the tides of shipping dictate. Without a change in their basic technologies, humankind has had no imputus to expand beyond Frazier drive and its various derivations – some ship designs have been in service since the days of the Crusades and earlier.

“The fleet of Earth stands to meet us again, compatriots! Like an ancient dragon she circles our two homeworlds, bellowing in greed and might. Not unless you wish to see a new Archonic era shall you shirk your duty, not unless you wish ill on your parents, children, wives shall your courage fail you this day – now to stations!”
-Fleet Commander Uther Lynyyd on the eve of the Third Battle of Ceti


Technology in White Noise

“OK, see this thingy? Yeah, the red one over…no, the other one. Right. That’s the Frazier Compression Valve, and it leads to the main energy conduits here…the problem should be in that linkup. What? Of course I know what I’m doing, it’s just a Frazier drive, come on.”
-Last word of Gordon MacHearty, smuggler and amateur mechanic

The universe of Man has been stuck refining itself for many thousands of years. The invention of the Frazier Drive and its attendant technologies has never been equaled, and despite (or perhaps because of) the creative anarchy of the Noise, all that seems to work is refinement of what exists.

Frazier Free Drive uses mass shadows and energy analysis to plot a ship’s location relative to the Galactic Core and the Outer Rim, and then uses a tremendous boost of energy to translate the ship into Whitespace. Whitespace is really an unknown quantity – it is a dead space for all things outside of a Frazier Translation, as countless experiments have shown, and its total incapacity to retain or reflect energy has rendered detailed study of it impossible. In Free Drive, ships move at a speed based on the power and proximity of energy readings, meaning trips through nebulae or starfields take place at higher velocities than those between stars with few energy phenomenon between them. Moreover, Free Frazier translations can only occur where Whitespace is ‘softened’ by large gravity wells – usually well inside star systems.

A Free Frazier drive moving between two stars in a spiral arm of normal density usually obtains what amounts to a velocity of 3.5x-5x lightspeed, meaning travel between distant destinations can still take years. On the far fringes of the galaxy, Frazier translations only seem to move ships at a speed of between 2.5-4x lightspeed, making these worlds isolated and rarely worth the trouble to colonize.

Beacon Drive: More common in this day and age than Frazier Free Drive is Frazier Beacon drive. After about two hundred and fifty years of regular use, it was noted that regular routes were beginning to develop an energy signature in whitespace, which had previously been a dead zone as far as anyone could tell. It was also around this time that the principles behind heavy particle emission were discovered, allowing the emulation of solar radiation on small scales. Eventually, it was discovered that placing well-contained beacons that emulated the energy emissions of small stars at either end of these ‘Frazier Routes’ sped up travel enormously, taking Frazier Drive from 5-6x to 15-25x lightspeed. Indeed, new and more efficient derivations of Frazier Drive that operated soely off the guidance of these Beacons were quick to develop, and slowly, as ships plied the space between the core systems, more and more Beacon Routes were discovered.

In today’s world, the deployment of new Frazier Beacons is quite uncommon, and is usually an occasion for great celebration. In fact, many people distinguish between Beacon Worlds or Core Worlds and their less-developed neighbors, to whom the only access is through much slower Free Drive. The great trade hubs of the Galaxy have ossified, and it is rare that enough traffic will cross a route to initiate the energy signal needed for a Beacon; much less that any group with access to the money and technology needed to create the Beacons will take an interest and deploy them.

-Adso

An now, some more general design text:



What Is White Noise?

White Noise is the anarchy that fills the cosmos. It’s also a nickname for the spacer’s illness that claims men who spend too much time staring into Whitespace on long frontier hauls. White Noise is the seven hundred ninety-five Novae-Rap stations that a ship in Tau Ceti Prime’s docking orbit is bombarded with, White Noise is the thirty-fourth Prime Minister of Ceres VI in as many months, White Noise is the buzz in the local beer hall on Jurgenson’s World about a corrodrium strike in the asteroid belt and the buzz of your decompression alarm when the customs inspectors come a-knockin’. White Noise is creativity and destruction, White Noise is what you are stuck in.

Where Is White Noise?

White Noise takes place in the Galaxy of Man, a huge and indecipherable Rorschach blot on the cosmos of worlds and stories and histories. No one remembers much about Earth or its histories or petty conflicts, and precious few remember how the Frazier Beacons that glare through the pea soup of Whitespace got there. Anything you can think of happens in the Galaxy of Man somewhere, and most likely someone is already trying that scheme you thought of last week.

What is the Galaxy like?

Without faster than light travel or communications, mankind reached out to bat the stars. From those sleeper colonies were born new worlds and cultures, who solved the problem of interstellar travel through Frazier Free Drive, but could not solve faster-than-light communication – in fact, no one ever has, and this is a fundamental fact of existence in the everyday world of White Noise – keep it in mind as you read.

The galaxy consists of three main types of systems and worlds (usually only one world and its nearspace in a system is inhabited, except in rare cases.) The core worlds are bound together by a network of Frazier Beacons put into place hundreds of years ago, which reduce interstellar travel times to weeks under Beacon Drive rather than the months and years of Frazier Free Drive. These worlds were probably settled during the initial Hajj/Exodus from Earth long ago, many of them by the first gigantic sleeper ships, and today are huge, bustling urban centers. Few can provide for their own food or even water, and their nearspace is often a mess of space stations, orbital habitats, and military installations. Usually the Beacon Station is the most important feature of such a system outside of the planet itself, since without a Beacon, core worlds are cut out of the fabric of speedy trade and communication that defines their existence.

The Rim Worlds have never entered the Beacon Network, but are well developed and well-placed enough to have had significant development and human habitation. Often, Rim Worlds are dependent on a Core World and do most of their trade with the nearest Core outlet, since Free Drive ships take months to cross the light-years and years to cross true interstellar gulfs. Rim Worlds are where White Noise is lessened somewhat, and they often have a chance to develop stable, coherent cultures and ideals of their own. Rim Worlds are more numerous than either Far or Core Worlds, though in population they do not even come near to equaling the massive numbers of the Core.

Far Worlds are even more removed from the networks of trade and communication that describe the Galaxy. Often years removed from the nearest Core World, they are usually settled by pioneers, idealists, and prospectors, or claimed by aspiring imperialists on Rim Worlds with visions of forcing their entry into the Core.

Who Controls the Galaxy Of Man?

Only the inscrutable patterns of White Noise control the galaxy, their tides sweeping back and forth across its face and scattering the best-laid plans of governments, people, and whole worlds into pieces: the Galaxy of Man is chaos theory in action.

However, people are social creatures, and, as Plato taught us, society inevitably leads to government of some kind. There are far too many governments, corporations, interstellar churches, and world revolutionary movements to even try to delve into here, and in the gleaming cities of the Core new ones are born and old ones collapse every week. However, here are a few samples:

And finally, an actual adventure setting. This is what you all are probably most interested in, tell me how it corresponds to the ideas of thematic conflict and moral ambiguity you've been developing in this thread.


The Celestial Empire

With perhaps thirty-five core worlds and upwards of one hundred Rim Worlds in its unique web of controls, the Celestial Empire is one of the largest contiguous and stable political units in the Galaxy. The Celestial Empire was founded after the end of the Terran Hegemony over nine hundred years ago or so, and its culture and ethos have flourished and spread across the Web.

The Empire is governed by an absolute monarch, the Enthroned Emperor, whose duties are primarily religious and symbolic, but who reserves the right to appoint and dismiss members of the administrative Yuan. Yuan, or commissions, make up most of the high-level administrative machinery of the Empire, and are staffed with experts who have passed specifically tailored tests – one, a test of cultural and moral refinement, and between two and five to enter into successively more specialized Yuan. Most of these are located in the White City on the homeworld of the Empire, but many of the larger core worlds have administrative Yuan of their own. However, the reason the Celestial Empire has held together so well over the years is its system of viceroy appointment. All worlds that aren’t under the direct administration the emperor are controlled by a Viceroy and his staff, all of whom have passed the tests required for entry into administrative Yuan but were chosen for the provincial service. These Viceroys hold local exminations and recruit minor officials to collect taxes and manage local affairs, and arrange for annual trips of promising students to take the official examinations at the Seven Celestial Schools. To ensure their honesty, they and their higher-level staff are transferred every four years or so to a new province, and receive regular monitoring visits from the dreaded Five Pious Reviews Yuan, which inspects the Viceroy’s domains for corruption and mismanagement.

The Empire’s military is as ponderous as its administrative structure, using giant ion-drive and photon-sail combinations to maneuver great battleships and cruisers-of-the line into position, while locally constructed frigates and support ships flit about on chemical drives. On land, they use well-disciplined shock troops to supplement locally armed forces raised by the Viceroy, and long lines of military families provide the basis for quality leadership and highly motivated elite troops. Technologically, the Empire is on par with or slightly behind other local governments, relying primarily on heavy missile batteries for long and medium range combat, and on heavy projected-energy weapons, drawing on the power reserves provided by the sails, for close ship-to-ship combat. Lighter frigate and support type ships often mount one large forward-facing rail projector and numerous light chainguns in a distinctive configuration known as the Dragon Prow.

The Empire is largely self sufficient, but trades extensively in the one area it is ahead of much of the rest of the Core in: medical technologies. An extremely effective anti-aging treatment has been developed for hundreds of years in the Empire, as have gene-modded crops and extremely effective broad-spectrum vaccines. These irreplaceable goods are supplemented by some of the more unique luxuries which the Celestial Real extracts from its many Viceroyalities, making their trade system fairly expansive, if mostly one-sided.

Internally, the Empire is overpopulated and unstable, but presents a face of bucolic quietude to the casual visitor on many of its worlds. Religious and political movements bubble on isolated Viceroyalities who see no part of their trade, and the rich medical houses and ostensibly-Imperial trading houses are willing to do almost anything to increase their own power. Within the great core worlds, crime gangs dominate the trade in quality items and weaponry under the nose of well-meaning Viceroys, and the urban poor slave for minimal wages in the halls of universities and grocery markets, living in fear of their landlords or local powerbrokers.

Plot hooks in the Celestial Empire:

1. The local viceroy is being replaced, and the characters are involved in his attempts to clean and cover his abuses before the inspection squads arrive, or, alternately, are out to expose him for money or idealism. To give this the moral twist that White Noise tales should have, the Viceroy may be quite good, or have military skills desperately needed at his own posting – or, alternately, his preservation could be essential to the maintenance of an entirely different corrupt institution.

2. A religious leader, claiming communion with the spirit of the “Throneless Emperor,” is stirring up the ignorant masses on one of the core worlds by distributing the medical resources usually reserved for the upper classes and promising life extensory treatments for all, rather than just those who pass the exams. The players must struggle with the movement’s motives, where it gets its resources, and whether or not it actually has the potential to change society for the better.

3. One of the Rim Worlds in the the Empire has been secretly buying up excess weapons and hiring mercenaries for over a decade, and has finally declared itself a stellar republic. Its people are of a different ethinicity, religions, and language than the Empire, but Yuan decide to come down hard to teach the rest of their worlds a lesson about the results of rebellion. The players, as garrison troops or Imperial advisors, smugglers or citizens, choose sides and weigh consequences. The rebels may be working for their own ends, their rebellion probably takes on ugly ethnic overtones, and war starves and impoverishes the people. But what is it worth to be free of the dead weight of the Viceroys?



There you all go! I hope that cavalcade of posting won't scare away readers -- don't worry, no one needs to read it all!

-Adso

A flavorful translation of the Middle Kingdom into space opera. A few initial thoughts:

- With advanced neurological technology, a Confucian exam system can actually work -- maybe they can scan the candidate's brain and augment it, or even put the candidate in a virtual reality for 20 years of subjective time to see whether they would be corrupt or incompetent. Of course the simulations may be totally off-base from reality, especially after a few centuries of ossifying tradition.

- With advanced bio-tech, you can bring in another classic Chinese image, huge paddies tilled by peasants (or robots...), only here with genetically engineered plants producing the advanced anti-aging drugs.

- With cybernetic enhancement and genetic engineering, all those Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and (Matrix ) -style martial arts become possible too.

I read over your backstory. I don't think parts of it are necessary, but they are good to have - many players will earnestly want something more than just a "blackbox" explanation for their interstellar drives, for example, or some greater basis for the origins. I like the way you treated the origins - you basically touched just slightly on things that a lesser setting would have gotten fixated on. But the curtness with which you blow through the Beacon Trails and so on - that emphaisizes how little those little manmade empire really matter. And of course, you backstory can be quickly summed up: "After times of trouble, mankind was cast to the winds. The worlds are developed, developing or underdeveloped." The two-second summary is a good sign. (Not that said summary does justice, but being able to condense is good.)

Instead, I hope to get players into a “wanderer” mindset that will allow them to express their creativity and the GM to explore the uncreated universe.
...
Finally, the universe is deliberately uncreated.

Should I introduce mechanics for narrative control and world building? This would be a hard step.

Themes: Singular:
Diversity (of the millions of worlds and societies),
Stagnation (of technology),
Anarchy (of belief, politics, and trade).

Themes: Conflict:
Anarchy vs. Unity (governments trying to consolidate their power in their local areas),
Power vs Entropy (Governments falling apart from within),
Idealism vs Reality (Ideas confronting the diversity and anarchy of the White Noise of other ideas, or idealist movements being compromised to govern effectively),
Self-Interest vs Social Focus (the classic Han Solo dilemma).