Cosmo Runway

Premise

The year is 7331, and humanity has spread out into a galaxy populated by diverse alien races, some of its own creation and others uplifted with the arrival of Earth's firstborn. The galaxy is at an unpleasant standstill between various factions vying for prestige, resources and power. Beyond the glimmering towers of the great ecumenopoli and in the dark corners of space yet unexplored, dark things stir.

Thankfully, this has nothing to do with you.

Cosmo

Cosmo Milan is the centerpiece of human civilization in this far-flung region of the Milky Way, a massive world-spanning city built over what was once a lethal swamp world. It mostly exports and imports vice and entertainment in its various forms, and is recognized as the center of fashion in all human civilization. Every era and expression of fashion is represented, from neoclassical smartfiber bodysuits to petrocotton school uniforms or nothing at all with AR overlays. Of no particular strategic importance other than being a major financial player (with no sign of slowing down), Cosmo has gracefully evaded becoming one among thousands of battlefields across the Milky Way.

Living on Cosmo

People on Cosmo Milan live in relative abundance thanks to the mass distribution of fabricator permissions, with the poor often living in small communes in the Undercity and Middlecity, regions, where most services can be obtained. The Overcity wealthy distinguish themselves primarily with vast amounts of open space and majestic architecture. It's a pervasive democracy built on the ideas of self-expression and morphological freedom, featuring all clades of the sapient community showing off through exotic body modifications, AR and their personal style.

Due to widespread fabricators and robotics making most of the workforce obsolete, the Cosmo Milanese maintain an economy based on reputation and barter, obtaining IP permissions for exotics and luxuries by providing services or creating property that other people find desirable. Communities often barter collectively due to limited influence, enforcing internally to maintain bankable reputations. The most famous and powerful of these in Cosmo Milan are the fashion houses and their respective progettista (or designer), due to the unique cultural institution known as the Runway.

The Runway

Combining martial contest, military engineering and art, the Runway is a competition which features massive twenty-foot tall combat machines woven from exotic smart materials known as dresses (also robes or suits for the macho) engaging eachother on rectangular battlefields known as catwalks. A design team consisting of a tailor, DJ and promoter assist the primary operator of the suit, a posthuman warrior known as the model.

Fights are not to the death of the pilot or destruction of his unit, but until all aesthetic elements of the dress also known as features have been vandalized or stripped away. As a consequence, the sport is as much about finesse and elegant design as it is about power and overwhelming aesthetic elements.

The sport is primarily used to gain reputation for a specific fashion household, and advertise their specific styles in order to increase owed favors and buy themselves to better living standards. Despite the intention of being nothing than an advertising plan for fashion houses, the Runway quickly grew to eclipse other media exports (and entertainment on the planet in general) to the degree that nearly everyone is an afficianado and off-world broadcasts often net trillions of credits (which is a lot in pre-scarcity green).

Character Generation

Your character is defined by a combination of attributes and skills granted by backgrounds. For attributes, each character receives 15 CP to establish their basic aptitudes. Up to 5 CP can be banked from buying attributes or put into upgrading the skills granted by Occupations, Talents and Hobbies.

Stats:

• Strength: Ability to perform physical actions, which includes acrobatic performances and hand to hand combat. Also affects how good you look in athletic (or material-light) fashions.
• Style: Ability to perform social actions, which includes deception, vocal performances and battlefield coordination. Also affects how good you look in thought-responsive smart fiber clothes, or similar multipurpose outfits.
• Nerve: Ability to perform mental actions, which includes technical skills, instrumental performances and ranged attacks. Also affects how good you make anything vaguely out of fashion but vintage (like dumb-fiber clothing or chromed cybernetics) look.

Costs:

• 1: 1 CP - Notably (but not overwhelmingly) deficient. You're frail, a little dense or have bad eyesight, but it's nothing that keeps you from doing your job.
• 2: 3 CP - Average. You're good enough that the attribute isn't considered a weakness.
• 3: 6 CP - Adept. You're stronger, smarter or faster than most of the population, but not off the bell curve.
• 4: 10 CP - Peak human. At this level, you're performing incredible feats with very little effort.
• 5: 15 CP - Notably (but not overwhelmingly) superhuman. What others can do with incredible effort comes to you naturally.
• Skills: Skills round out a character's abilities and add bonus dice. These are bought as normal attributes, and have a maximum of 5.

Occupation

Every character in Cosmo Runway has an occupation or calling of some sort, and is assumed to have learned the abilities relevant to them. They are considered to have a skill rating of 4 in any of the actions relevant to their occupation, equal to spending 10 CP on a Hobby or Talent (detailed bellow). Occupation skills may later be upgraded with XP, up to a maximum of +5, although each upgrade costs the new level in XP (so gaining +1 costs 5 XP, +2 costs 6, etc.)

In the case of Cosmo Runway characters, each player assumes a different role in a design house, offering their talents, charisma or bodies to assist in advancing the group's reputation. There may be no duplicates of any single occupation until all of the primary slots are filled.

Occupations:

• Tailor/Seamstress: The Tailor of a fashion house is often considered to be the most important member (short of really important models), charged with repairing dresses mid-battle with a mobile nanofab hovercraft known as a spindle. In the absence of tyrannical designer, the tailor is often in charge of battlefield modifications and conceiving various upgrades to its equipment.
  • Skills: Pilot (Spindle), Craft (Armor, Armaments and Dress)
• DJ: The DJ is the backstage man to the Promoter's face, managing thousands of subsystems to ensure the dress holds together. Electronic warfare and artillery strikes called by the DJ allow them to shift the battle in the favor of their team's model, or subtly minimize the amount of camera exposure a rival model receives.
  • Skills: Electronic Warfare, Performance (Any) [x2], Artillery
• Promoter: A team's promoter acts as their face on and off the stage, guiding the hearts and minds of audiences and investors into the house's reputation. On the battlefield, the promoter is also charged with operating the team's (often weaponized) camera drones to maximize their model's exposure.
  • Skills: Performance (Oratory), Marketing, Strategy, Drones
• Model: The heart and soul of any Runway outfit is the model, a disciplined posthuman warrior and stage performer who has practiced how to don an outfit in all the right ways. Their backgrounds tend to be exceptionally diverse, although all generally are unique in their possession of a look that sets them apart from the other members of a house.
  • Skills: Athletics, Pilot (Dress), Chosen Weapon [x2]