This new 2D roleplaying game has been released. Cepheus Universal is designed to be used for science fiction tabletop roleplaying games in a variety of SF genres.
I'm convinced. I want to set up a Cepheus Universal tabletop roleplaying sourcebook for a setting based on the philosophies of Carl Sagan and Ursula K LeGuin, among others.
The need for me to design a kinder, gentler science fiction setting where exploration and self-discovery, not conquest or profit, are the driving raison d'être.
Poached from my Substack blog:- https://open.substack.com/pub/passingforhuman/p/rpgaday-2023-day-2
And so we come to Day 2 of the RPG A Day challenge, and this time it’s the first RPG I gamemastered.
That could mean “the RPG I prefer to GM” or “the first time I GM’ed.”
I think I’ll go with the first option, and I’ll list the second option some time down the lane.
If I do GM a game, chances are it would be either a Lightspress Media game such as DoubleZero / Fantasy Manifesto / System Neutral, or Frostbyte Books’ Comae Space.
I love Mythras, M-Space, Traveller, and Onyx Path’s World of Darkness, among many other game systems - but they do tend to lean heavily towards crunchy numbers-based combat, rather than stories where the characters lead with their, well, character.
I want a game where I let the players’ decisions lead the story, where they get caught up in the drama and care about the characters, and the crunchy game mechanics don’t get in the way all the time. Game rules only establish an approximation of life. I like to GM a system which allows the narrative to beat the rules and crunch every day.
Lifted from this post on Substack:- RPGADay 2023, Day 1 - by Alex Greene - Alex’s Substack
Welcome to RPGADay 2023, the annual celebration of tabletop roleplaying games.
This has been going on for decades, now - but this is the first year I’ll be attempting the challenge myself.
First RPG I played this year … It was a freeform, narrative game, not using any specific rule set. I was using this systemless game to simulate an adventure of The Chronicles of Shirae; the results were going up on my blog, The Spiral Room.
Halfway through the story, events took on a life of their own. Master Axan, the sorcerer protagonist, and Princess Rathi, end up having to live with one another for a month as a married couple, without rank or privilege.
Needless to say, this was not a situation which I could resolve with swordplay and hit point counting.
ID: Because something seems impossible, we try. It doesn't work!
We try again. We learn. We improve. We fail again, but better. We make friends. We learn to trust. We help each other. We get it wrong again! We improve,together, then ultimately succeed.
Because this is what being alive is - and it's better than the alternative!
So come on, you brilliant humans! We go again. And we win!
- The Doctor, Doctor Who
- also, coincidentally, Campbell's Hero's Journey
This post is a list of alternative episodes of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, if I were given the task of writing the episodes from scratch.
The Starfleet officers introduced in the first episode of the aired show were all sort of superheroic - an android, a psychic, a Klingon, a badass superwarrior, a cyborg with impressive visual acuity. Oh, and a child prodigy to appeal to the yoof vote.
So I’d change that up completely.
The First Officer is Deanna Troi. She starts as she means to go on - command red, right from the start. Drop the Imzadi stuff which was a holdover from The Motion Picture and Star Trek Phase II. No Will Riker, no past history or old flames, *at all*.
Troi is a full telepath. Her Dad was Starfleet, and gave her the exotic Greek accent.
The Chief Medical Officer on board is one Doctor Beverly Crusher. She starts in Sickbay, on her first day assigned to the flagship, assembling the medical staff. No mention of her “walking like an erotic dancer” crap. Gates is one hell of a dancer, but Trek is better than that.
Doctor Crusher mentions that they need to take on more medical staff and also general science staff. She notes that the new Science Officer ought to be interesting, as is one of her doctors awaiting her at the outpost to which they are heading.
No Wesley. Crusher is Beverly’s maiden name. Jack, Picard’s old friend, was her brother. She and Picard have a past, but not romantic - that can develop, but even if they never get it on, Picard would happily give Beverly one of his kidneys, their friendship is that strong, as is Picard’s obligation to the Crusher family, who saved his life at the Battle of Maxia where he lost The Stargazer.
No mention of Q - not until the episode titled “Q”, episode 10. Give everybody time to establish themselves as people, not walking superpowers.
The visit to planet Deneb IV (“the biggest market for evewrything for ten sectors”) gets cut short soon after the arrival of the Second Officer, William Riker, and the new Chief Engineer, Chief Science Officer and Assistant CMO, namely Lts Cmdr Geordi LaForge, Data, and Worf, respectively.
There is a sector-wide alert: activity along the Romulan Neutral Zone. Newcomer Riker, handsome chap with a beard, has been on patrol in the Neutral Zone - that being his last assignment on the USS Hood - and he sighs as he realises he’s going right back to the patch of space he was patrolling before. Troi mentions something about “It’ll be like going home,” and Riker replies “The family reunions suck.”
The Enterprise is assigned the section of the Neutral Zone whose capital is a planet on the border of a region known as The Triangle, a badlands between the Federation, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Star Empire. The outpost is called Farpoint Station.
By now, you’re probably guessing that the title of the pilot episode is going to be exactly the same - “Encounter at Farpoint”
In fact … with one exception, they all are.
"Encounter at Farpoint" : The Romulans come back, but they bring a warning about a terrifying new unnamed race from the Delta Quadrant.
"The Naked Now": The Away Team (Troi, Riker, LaForge, Crusher) lose their inhibitions and nearly their minds while investigating the loss of 180 lives from a Federation cruiser.
"Code of Honor": The Klingons make their first appearance. Worf meets his estranged father, Captain Mogh, while hunting down a crew of rogue Klingons who have been raiding outposts in The Triangle. Riker consoles Worf, explaining how his own Dad has all but disowned him. Worf explains that, to the Klingons, "joining Starfleet" is the equivalent of a parent describing their kid as "running off to join the circus." He mentions clowns, and Riker shudders. Data discovers a new life form.
"The Last Outpost": The Federation encounter an ancient outpost, whose automated systems nearly destroy the Enterprise, until one of them translates the ancient T'Kon language.
"Where No One Has Gone Before": An unexplored region of space is filled with an odd gaseous anomaly. The crew begin to suffer their greatest fears. Troi fears isolation, light years from the nearest human mind. Worf and Riker confront their rejection. Picard and Crusher relive the day they lost Jack, and so on.
"Lonely Among Us": Riker learns that his father has died, and he keeps vigil. Troi forms a close friendship with Riker, who opens up about the animosity between him and his Dad which had led to his estrangement. An impetuous alien ambassador nearly sparks a war between two planets.
"Justice": A terrifying episode, where Geordi is accused of murder, and he must defend himself as the crew track down the true perpetrator. Worf conducts an autopsy, and clues reveal the identity of the real killer.
"The Battle": The Enterprise returns to the site of the battle where he lost the Stargazer. He finds the hulk of the ship, and the hostiles reappear. Picard battles his inner demons to bring a different outcome to this encounter: a diplomatic solution.
"Q": Picard's nemesis appears here for the very first time, bringing mischief to the Galaxy. Q takes Picard to a strange homeworld in a distant part of the Galaxy, where he meets a strange species of tall, imposing, quasi-reptilian aliens he has not met before. His First Contact is tense. When he returns to the Enterprise, Picard realises that he has met these aliens before, only they were dressed in encounter suits. They are the enemies of the Romulans, and their name "Renki" has been mispronounced as "Ferengi."
"Haven": Troi's mother, Ambassador Lwaxana Troi, arrives at Risa at the same time as the Enterprise. Deanna is bothered by Lwaxana's attempts to matchmake her with a Betazoid male. She tells her mother to keep Betazoid politics out of it, and refuses to be married off "like some Old Earth Princess" to cement an alliance between Betazoid dynasties. Worf meets a Klingon, K'Ehleyr, on Risa. Data discovers Jamaharon. LaForge reveals that he is an asexual.
"The Big Goodbye": An odd episode, where Picard finds himself living out a 1940s hallucination, where he meets characters who are played by members of his crew. This turns out to be a vision by Q, to teach Picard the value of optimism in the face of cynicism or something.
"Datalore": Data comes to the rescue of Doctor Bruce Maddox, who is a mentee of Data's creator. Bruce shows Data his creation, Lore, and Data helps Lore to escape Maddox when Data learns that Maddox builds androids with short lifespans, transferring Lore's programming into new bodies. Despite assistance from LaForge, Lore dies in Data's arms - Data transfers Lore's "soul" into his own positronic matrix..
"Angel One": The Enterprise is sent into The Triangle to recover a probe which was sent by the Federation in the year 2181. The probe is the site of worship by a pre-warp civilisation, and the Enterprise must reverse the violation of the Prime Directive without violating it themselves.
"11001001": A binary signal sent across the cosmos has been received by the Argos Array on the border of The Triangle. It turns out to be sent by a species called the Bynars. Their planet has suffered a climate catastrophe. It transpires that the Renki have accidentally triggered an ice age. Troi has to draw upon her experiences from her childhood as the daughter of an Ambassador to negotiate with the Renki. At the end of the episode, a second Renki ship arrives with a diplomat and a team of climatologists to reverse the deterioration of the planet's climate, and to offer reparations when the Enterprise succeed in reversing the damage with no aid from the interlopers. The Renki diplomat expresses her admiration for Troi's diplomatic skills. At the end of the episode, she puts in a private subspace call to her mother.
"Too Short a Season": Admiral Mark Jameson is on a pilgrimage to Lerodis, a site of high holy pilgrimage for members of a group called The Foundation. Jameson is dying, and wishes to complete his pilgrimage before he dies. Some scientists from The Foundation scan Jameson's brain and copy his engrams and memory patterns before the Admiral's death: despite misgivings from Riker, they take the mind pattern of the Admiral to store it with millions of worthy souls, recorded in memory banks for posterity. Data connects with the collective, and learns some vital information from Admiral Jameson's personality about The Renki - it turns out that he may have initiated First Contact with them more than forty years before, but due to an error of judgment on the Admiral's part, that encounter did not go well.
"When the Bough Breaks": Beverly's sister Jennifer drops in, with Beverly's nephew Wesley in tow. Wesley is headstrong at first, but finds his true calling in medicine when he helps an Away Team to rescue trapped crew on a stricken Federation ship.
"Home Soil": A dying Romulan is rescued from a ship drifting on the Federation side of the Neutral Zone. She reveals the extent of the takeover of the Romulan Star Empire by the Renki. A Renki ship turns up, demanding the Romulan's return. The Romulan dies, however, and all the Renki et back in a corpse. The Renki tell Picard that it is practically "the Renki Star Empire" now.
"Coming of Age": Worf is disconsolate as he receives news that his brother Kurn has received the nentay, a Klingon coming of age ceremony which Worf never went through. Captain Mogh offers to help his firstborn to grow up, but there is a price - Worf must return to Qo'noS to stay.
"Heart of Glory": The Klingons turn up again - this time, fighting the Renki, who have now commandeered Romulan ships.
"The Arsenal of Freedom": Almost identical to the aired episode, only with a "Captain Logan" whose ship was crippled by the Echo Papa space probe. "Symbiosis": The first time The Trill turn up in the Star Trek universe. Dr Crusher has to call upon the assistance of a Trill medic, Doctor Felias Odan, to help a young Trill host whose symbiote is rejecting her. Odan and Crusher develop a passionate relationship. Dr Odan comes up with an ingenious solution - they swap symbiotes. The Odan symbiote begins their new life in the new host, but at seventeen years of age she is now way too young for relationships, and Felias Anax (the new name of the host with the symbiote) must look for a new career, since her medical credentials went with the Odan symbiote.
"Skin of Evil": An odd alien species is enountered, which sheds its darker emotions and impulses each time it moults. One of the crew comes into contact with a piece of shed skin, and is infected by its dark, murderous impulses.
"We'll Always Have Paris": Picard in the holodeck, living out a Forties fantasy. Riker and Troi join him. Data expresses his desire to explore the various genres of literature, and comes up with a bizarre AI-generated "detective novel" with hilarious results.
"Conspiracy": The Renki are a threat. A rogue cabal of Federation citizens team up with an old skool Romulan to develop a biogenic weapon.
"The Neutral Zone": The Renki, Klingon, and what remains of the Romulan fleets mass on the borders of The Triangle. The Enterprise arrives - and so does Q, to announce that the Federation is "to be judged."
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