The New Military

For In Harm's Way - StarCluster 4, we have re-imagined the military from the ground up. AS Klaxon said, "with space travel, the Space Navy will eventually encompass everything else. The Navy == the military." So we divided that giganto-navy up by function into six internal services:

Deep Space Service - (Offense) These are the people and ships that go to other stars to project force as required

There are 5 branches of DSS: Fighters,Cruisers, Fleet, Scout, and Specwar
Fighters are the small, highly armed but replaceable ships dispatched in swarms to destroy opposition

Cruisers are those ships typically dispatched in small squadrons

Fleet are the big ships, held for a smashing blow

Scouts are small ships sent out to explore and reconnoiter

Specwar are the Special Warfare ships, sent out to do irregular missions

Expeditionary Force - (Offense) These are the people and craft used to take and hold the world surface in other systems

There are five branches of EF: Drop Troop, Vehicles, Infantry, Recon, and Intruder
Drop Troops are the highly armored shock troops dropped from orbit

Vehicles are grav vehicles of various sorts, including drones, suitable for any environment

Infantry are those who take and hold ground

Recon are the ones how find out what is where

Intruders are those who go beyond enemy lines and disrupt, destroy, and blow shit up

System Defense Service - (Defense) These are the people and ships that protect the home systems

There are five branches of SDS: Defense Pilot, Line, Stationer, Military Police, and Sapper
Defense Pilots are the small, highly armed but replaceable ships dispatched in swarms to destroy fighters

Line are the big defensive ships built to protect against system invasion and intrusion

Stationers are the stationary defenses built to protect resources and worlds

Military Police keep everyone in line

Sappers lay out minefields and other passive defenses

Ground Defense Service - Defense) These are the people who protect each world in the home systems

There are five branches of GDS: Aerospace, Surface Craft, Militia, Artillery, and Enviro Troops
Aerospace are the swift and agile aircraft that protect the skies

Surface Craft are the ground and/or water based craft that fight invaders and intruders

Militia are defensive troops for holding ground

Artillery are large rail guns and missiles used in point defense

Enviro Troops are those trained to work under the specific environmental conditions of the world

Logistics & Repair - These are the people and ships who support all the others with supplies and fixing things

There are five branches of L&R: Engineering, Repair, Allocation, Transport, and Medical
Engineering builds facilities and counter environmental problems

Repair fixes broken things

Allocation distributes items and vehicles where needed

Transport brings things and people from one place to another

Medical fixes broken people

Intelligence Service - These are the people who figure out what is going on in other places and disseminate propaganda

There are five branches of IS: Humint, Sigint, Analysis, Osint, and R&D
Humint are the field agents, working under cover

Sigint are those who intercept communications and encrypt and decrypt as needed

Analysis are those who collect, collate, and route information where needed

Osint are those who use available public resources to inform on culture and disseminate propaganda

R&D researches and develops weapons, vehicles, armor, ships, and anything used by the other services

It's Decided!

It's decided. I am doing In Harm's Way: StarCluster 4.

Music and Roleplaying Blend

Weirdest thing yet. I ended up writing a song in character about another character, both NPCs. It's like my two worlds have overlapped! :D Song

General News

I released my third album, Kaiju Love, this month. Here's a link to the youtube playlist if you are at all interested. I assume not! :D

I have 10 songs recorded intended for a fourth album, Plush Universe, but two of them are cover songs, and that's a hassle to get rights, so figure 8 songs finished out of about 12.

StarCluster 4 - In The Beginning is in beta, waiting for feedback from the beta testers. I examining my options for what I do next gaming wise. There is nothing burning a hole through my skull trying to get out, so I have several major possibilities:

1: I could do a new version of In Harm's Way: StarCluster using the StarCluster 4 mechanic.

2: I could work on converting the Blood Games trio of games (Blood Games II, OHMAS, and Outremer) using the new Psionics toolkit to create a magic system.

I have been running on Discord a mash-up of Volant and Sabre & World which has been going great. I may make that a published thing!

I also need to begin changing all my In Harm's Way games over to StarCluster 4. Most of them are SC 2E, with a couple being SC 1E! Yikes! That will be a huge task!

Anyways, for anyone still listening after my forgetting about this blog once again, thank you! You rock! :D

Beta Testers Needed!

I'm looking for Beta playtesters for the RPG StarCluster 4 - In The Beginning and the board game The Great Game. Beta playtesters run the games themselves, not playing with the designer, as in Alpha testing. The Great Game starts in 2020 and ends in 2120, playing through decade by decade as space is colonized. Players use a deck of normal playing cards for play. In The Beginning starts in 2120, using the end condition of The Great Game as its start condition, though there is also a random generator that can be used instead. The GM/playing group is intended to expand the end condition of The Great Game into a playable setting, using included rules. Please contact me by reply or PM.

Putting Meat On The Bones

So Klaxon and I are filling out the solar system we ended up with after playing a game of The Great Game, which is a board game I designed, basically to do just this, although this is the first time we have played it in it's real intended role. We have played it several times as a straight board game, and really enjoyed it. The big difference is in writing everything that happens down, in a way that the GM can make into a history of the setting.

We are undergoing the process of 'fleshing out' the final state of the Great Game, which starts in 2020, and ends in 2120, leaving a slew of settlements all over the solar system. This involves looking at who settled this colony - maybe it was started by South Korea, then continued by Brazil and brought to stability by Indonesia.

This polyglot community is probably unique, with its own strange amalgamations of holidays, customs, and languages. What do they work on here? What do they export? What do they PLAY at? How did they get to this point?

Klax and I have got all the way to Mars. From here, things thin out rapidly! But there are still some hugely important places left to do - Ceres, Oberon, Titan, and Pluto all have massive independent nations, with multiple markets and diverse populations, and they all have a story, created in the Great Game. Researchers on Titan found the cure for Mega-AIDs, and grew from a tiny, hardscrabble scientific community to full independence in a single decade. All due to actions the players took in The Great Game.

Now we put it all together, and make it all work!

Play Testing StarCluster 4 - In The Beginning

I have begun playtesting In The Beginning. We created a setting using The Great Game board game, and now have started to fill it out from those origins. Immediately I found that the notes each player took for each round (a decade per round) of their play A: do not have the same information in each, and B: supply the wrong information. I need to re-create the Player Sheets to give the GM the information needed. The headings should be Decade/Range (Supplied), Cards Played, Who Was Affected +/-, What Happened?, Consequences In Space, and Points Scored. The same with the Colony Tracker - the headings should be Colony (Supplied), Date Founded, Date Failed, Date Independent, Status, Owner, and Population Origin.

Then I began fleshing out the colonies. The first two were a tiny unstable colony on Mercury, and a failed colony on an orbital. The fleshing out process (Determine Exports, Infrastructure, and Movers & Shakers, went as expected, except we (Klaxon and I) determined non-independent colonies would have a governor appointed to rule over them in addition to the native movers and shakers. No problem! Then we hit Venus! Venus is a world with perhaps hundreds of highly mobile floating cities, so the single list of cultural infrastructure generated by the tool I had made would not work well. So we had to divide the colonies into ones we could do with a simple setup and ones which needed a more flexible arrangement. That took some time! Then we made up a method that used the same infrastructure components in a different way, giving some things EVERYBODY had, some things shared across the world (Broadcast media, banking system, etc...) and a list of PROBABLE items. That worked much better! We finished Venus and ran out of time, so we will continue fleshing things out tomorrow, but the hard work is done and the modifications needed are in place!