User:Peel

Mage 2012

The major factions are defined by their attitude to reality.

The Technocracy

The Technocracy believe in a single, unified, material, mundane, knowable and limited reality. They have subordinated themselves to the idea of an external world and heirarchy to give them objectively correct knowledge and objectively correct actions, rather than seeking these things for themselves.

From a tradition (Hermetic) perspective, a Technocrat is one sort of broken Mage - a prince of the earth who refuses to rule. They have abdicated their rights as a Mage. Psychologically they are a loss of the sense of wonder and the will to power and freedom.

Marauders

Marauders believe their own thing, damn everyone else and damn the world. They have tremendous power to define the world but because they have lost any perception of the remaining limits on this power or the ways in which they world does not conform, they cannot exercise it.

From a tradition (Hermetic) perspective, a Marauder is another sort of broken Mage - a master of the world who denies the world. They have abdicated their responsibilities as a Mage. Psychologically they are delusional schizophrenia.

The Traditions

Whatever their internal frictions the Tradition theme as a group symbolise a middle path between the above, either incoherent and doomed to failure, or a synthesis fated for success, depending on your point of view.

The traditions will succeed if they can find a way out of the relativist trap, and embrace their diversity and freedom without rejecting others.

Nephandi

Nephandi are not all rapists and paedophiles and sadists. Though they have a somewhat higher rate of such, it doesn't define them except in enemy propaganda. Their fundamental idea isn't 'evil' or 'corruption', it is 'suicide'. They think the world is broken and must be destroyed. In some this manifests as sadomasochism and lolevil, in others it manifests as the gentleness of euthanasia.

From a tradition (Hermetic) perspective, a Nephandus is the last and worst type of broken Mage. Rather than merely rejecting themselves (technocracy) or the world (Marauders) they cannot abide either and resolve to destroy one or both. Psychologically they are suicidal despair and nihilism.

SRPG

Just getting this down. There's a lot of failed RPG ventures out there. It's not a forgiving industry. If we are going to do this we need to consider objectives. Are we trying to:

• 1. Just get our creative product out there?
• 2. Sell enough to recoup costs?
• 3. Make Sphere a popular option for SF gaming?
• 4. Get into the game business professionally and long term?

4 is almost certainly unworkable and is the doom of many so let's shelve that unless several of us are willing to turn our lives upside down on a wild gamble. 1 is just a matter of getting the product out, but is the path of a great many irrelevant blips of noise in history. 3 is potentially possible with luck and skill. 2 is (I hope) the same, especially if we can push down production costs without too much sacrifice of production values. The cheapness of epublishing and the fact that making the game is a volunteer activity for a lot of us helps on this front.

Any objective other than 1 raises the question:

• Why would anyone play Sphere rather than a different SF game?

We say EP is too clunky and limited, but clunky rulesets can flourish. If we think we can pick up people alienated by EP's setting, how do we distinguish from or outcompete the established more generic SF games? We think the Sphere setting is interesting but our interior perspective is unreliable and a few sigs on SB doth not a groundswell of interest make. This brings us to another question:

• If it's just a setting we're selling, why not make a setting book for some other system?

Speaking of the setting, what's going to grab people about it immediately on description, rather than make them think it's just another generic space setting?

And we need to abandon sacred cows. The 'start in the Rim' idea needs serious examination and I think it should be stated outright that not every PC world will get a prominent position in setting material, or be the same place it is in the SD. An RPG is a different beast to an SD.

Aberrant: Rebirth

Europe is in the throes of the Renaissance. A great flowering of culture and innovation is taking place, and everyone knows why: the New, men (and women) gifted with powers not seen since the Lord walked the Earth. Dozens of Aristotles, Alexanders and Herculeans vie to change history. The Catholics have declared them gifted by God, but with a caveat - they must accept the authority of the Pope as the head of His church, or they are in rebellion against Him. The Reformers have adopted a myriad doctrines, from condemnation of the demons to proclamations of the return of the Christ.

The world will never be the same again.

Making a Character

Super-low NP but reduced Quantum prerequisites. Transport powers are nerfed due to different conceptions of speed and distance in this era. A bunch of abilities will change around and of course equipment changes a bunch.

update: on reflection Adventure! would work better

P3

Significant: +1 all

Idoru: +2 Per, +1 Kno, +1 Psy, +2 Cha

Plate Worlder: +1 structure environment

Important: +2 Per, +1 Kno, +3 Cha. Defining Event: Clout.

Otaku: +2 Kno +10 MBP

Duel Court Page: +2 Rea, [+2 to a weapon style of choice, +1 Hard to Kill]

Socialite: +3 Cha, +2 Per, +1 Kno

Noble: Noble: +2 Cha, +2 Kno +20 MPB

????: Yet to be unveiled!

Statistics

Bod: 1 + 3

+1 Hard to Kill

Rea: 3

Per: 7 + 2

+2 Trick Shot

Kno: 8

Psy: 2

Cha: 11

0 + 3 Figurines

Plus floating points

Avatar

+30 MBP

League Blurb

The League is a smaller faction in an isolated region of space called the Sea of Solomon. It was isolated during the Breakdown but brought together by the need to oppose the invasion of the Magnates. The defence lasted two decades of crash industrialisation, ruthless warfare and tremendous sacrifice, but was ultimately successful and the Magnates were forced to retreat. The League was left staring across the lines, with a mighty war machine and war governments painfully converting to civilian life. The naive idealism of space colonisation is theirs no longer. They know the alien dangers that lurk beyond their tiny bubble of civilisation, and the sacrifices that are required to deal with them.

Currently the League is stranded somewhat distant from the affairs of the Inner Sphere, on the very edge of the Rim. Their defining policy issue is their cold war with the Magnates, but the riches and mysteries of the Rim beckon in a much more imminent sense than for the inner factions, and eventually the League will be forced to respond in some way to the political upheavals and encroaching might of the Interior.

The League has in general the weakest technical base of any major bloc, but can get a lot out of 'primitive' technologies, and has the greatest body of theoretical and practical knowledge of xenotech. Nevertheless, they are generally qualitatively inferior. Their equipment tends to be simple, rugged and mass-producible, with a design heritage running back to civilian and pre-breakdown designs. However, long-serving machines will have been extensively patched and modified, and systems incorporating significant Velan-derived elements may have an almost cybernetic appearance.

Inspirations: Stalin's USSR, Afghan insurgents, the Alien series, ????

Solar System Generator

Note: If you roll up a garden or terraformable world, roll again unless you have a particularly good reason why it wasn't colonised.

• A conventional solar system has 2d6 bodies (including your planet)
• Planets: rocky planets may be asteroid belts

1-3: rocky

4-6: gaseous

• Mass: gaseous planets add 4 to the die roll

1: Sublunar (Asteroid belt, 0.0005)

2: 0.01 Earths (the Moon, 0.0123)

3: 0.1 (Mars, 0.107)

4: 1 (Venus, 0.815)

5: 5 (5 Earths)

6: 10 (Uranus, 15)

7: 50

8: 100 (Saturn (Saturn, 94)

9: 500 Earths (Jupiter, 318)

10: Superjovian (HAT-P-2b, >2500)

• Composition (gaseous):

1-3: Hydrogen/Helium (Jupiter, Saturn)

4-5: Methane/Ammonia (Uranus, Neptune)

6: Hydrogen/Water

• Atmosphere (rocky):

1-3: Carbon Dioxide (Mars, Venus)

4: Nitrogen/Oxygen (Earth)

5: Methane/Ammonia (Titan)

6: Hydrogen/Helium (Mercury)

• Atmospheric density (rocky):

1: None/trace

2: Very low

3: Low (Mars)

4: Moderate (Earth)

5: High (Venus)

6: Extreme (Titan)

• Temperature: planets with thinner atmospheres have greater temperature variation

2-4: Deep Frozen (Pluto, <100K)

5-6: Frozen (equator dozens of degrees below freezing point)

7: Icebox (Mars)

8: Temperate (Earth)

9: Hothouse (Terranova)

10: Severe (water boils on the equator)

11-12: Extreme (Venus)

• Wackiness?

1-5: No

6: Yes

• Wackiness!

1: Tidally locked

2: Tidally locked

3: Fossils

4: Xenolife

5: Commercially inviable precursor dust

6: Posthuman structure (or possibly Velan ruin)

Snail (final statblock)

Race: Classic (+1 universal)
Occupation: I-tech (+1 education)
Traits: Obsessed (research) [+3], Dark Past [+5], Obscure Knowledge (AI programming, xenopsychology, esoteric computing, mindstate engineering) [4]
Stats:
Physical 1 [0]
Smarts 11 [55]
Education 6 [10] specialise Systems Theory 4 [10]
Integrity 4 [6]
Perception 2 [1]
Charisma 4 [6]

Skills:
Conditioning [0]
Intrusion 2 [3]
Technology 2 [3] specialise Computers 5 [15]
Cacophony Tech 1