April

Welcome to the April 1st Blue Planet update, and wow, do we have big news to share!

Lawyers from Lightstorm Entertainment contacted Biohazard Games in March. Apparently, they became aware of the undeniable similarities between Blue Planet and Avatar: The Way of Water (see previous update). As recompense for ripping off Blue Planet, James Cameron has invited me to co-write the screen play for his next sci-fi blockbuster. It’s an original, standalone story of ecological wonder and native uprising set in a distant part of the Avatar universe. The film is set on a desiccated world inhabited by giant, burrowing, CGI eels that poop priceless, hallucinogenic juice that mysteriously powers space mass transit. The working title is "Dum III," and I can’t wait to start work on this wholly original and unique project!

Ok, now that this important announcement is out of the way, let’s turn our attention to less serious topics.

Crowd-Sourced Perfection?

I wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone who contributed to the proofreading of the various preview chapters. Backers submitted 346 individual error reports, covering everything from mis-used commas and missing words to rules-clarifying suggestions and more vernacular-appropriate German language model names for specific firearms. Most were great catches or suggestions. Many were tricky to enact without affecting the layout. Some were redundant as multiple readers reported the same issue. Some were simply not possible given the stage of the layout, and a few were simply beyond the scope of the error report process.

The process was slow and meticulous as each entry had to be located, confirmed, assessed, corrected, referenced and then explained for the layout artist. In the end, we made 240 corrections based on the errors you found. The process took much longer than I had hoped, but it undeniably improved the quality of the project. Thank you so very much for your help. (And a special thanks to Pawel D, who must have contributed 100 reports by himself!)

Layout

Layout continues apace, focused on stitching together all the chapters we have already previewed into the full core book versions of the Player’s and the Moderator’s guides. Given Robert’s crazy speed, I expect to see drafts of these any day. Once we have approved their final structure, we will start the slow but essential process of replacing all the (page XX) placeholders with the actual page references. Soon after that is complete, we should be able to share at least draft versions of the final PDFs with backers.

Storm Surge Update

March’s playtest sessions were high water marks for fun and consequences in the campaign thus far, and though I would love to spill all the saltwater tea, I don’t want to ruin things for the spoiler-averse. We have come to the part of the tale that is most revealing of the underlying plot and the direction the campaign takes the setting. Accordingly, I fear that as we close in on the end of the campaign, I will have to restrict myself to offering only the occasional story teaser, while talking mostly about the logistics of running such an atypically structured adventure.

For this month's update, it will have to suffice to share that over the course of the past two sessions, the three character groups and their three interweaving timelines came crashing together in an explosive set piece - literally. A harrowing firefight among the giant mangrove prop roots surrounding an abandoned GenDiver facility turned the slowly tightening spiral of events into a raging whirlpool from which no one escaped unchanged... 

In unrelated news...

"GenDiver’s Santa Elena Long John refinery destroyed in surprise chemical attack, devastating the massive Incorporate…

…Incorporate City State colonies across Poseidon on high security alert as terror attack leaves Santa Elena utterly destroyed…

…eye witness reports claim the colony “just melted away over the course of hours,” leaving the surrounding forest in its place just as if “the city never existed…”

…though absolutely nothing remains of the city, initial reports claim there was no loss of life…even pets…

…expert claims aliens teleported Santa Elena to the Z Dimension as stock for human experimentation…

…Peacekeeper forces across the planet are on high alert - standing by in fast response status…

…Colonial administration and Incorporate leadership in special closed-door security session. Many fear war has come to the oceans of Poseidon."

Pledge Manager

We'll be using Gamefound for our pledge manager. Our publishing partner, Gallant Knight Games, has had lots of success with Gamefound and the flexibility of their tools, and we're excited to host the Blue Planet: Recontact late pledges there. To do so, Alan at GKG has to know the weight of each item in the pledge, so he is currently getting fresh quotes as we near printing so we can get more accurate shipping estimates.

A new and related hurdle is that GKG's previous EU and UK fulfillment partners no longer do fulfillment due to complications in the post-Covid economy. Alan is close to sorting EU fulfillment and is still working on it for the UK. Sorting these partners will help us finalize shipping costs and ensure we meet our commitment to VAT-friendly shipping.

We intend to offer upgrades and add-ons for the Player's and Moderator's Guide (upgrading to the slipcase edition, adding on extra copies, etc), as well as any appropriate digital rewards as part of the pledge manager. We'll provide more details as we finish building out the pledge manager, including a walk through on how to use it as we get closer. 

Thank you for your patience. 

Backer Online Games

Just after the Kickstarter campaign closed, I reached out to those backers who pledged at levels that scored them online games run by yours truly. Those who responded asked to wait until the books were available. Given that at least the PDFs are imminent, I encourage those who would like to schedule their games to reach out via the KS message system so we can get them on the calendar.

March

Even in a leap year, a short February almost caught me out, but here I am, getting the March update out just under the wire!

Layout Preview

Turns out that I lied to you all last month. I touted that we had reached the significant benchmark of finishing the layout for every chapter. After doing a final audit however, I realized that I had somehow left the whole World of Hurt chapter – about Earth in 2199 – sitting in my drafts folder, and never sent it to our layout artist! Luckily, I caught the oversight and with Robert being as super-fast as he is, the section is done and ready to share.

So now, barring each book’s introductory chapter – containing stuff like the table of contents, which has to wait for final page numbers – I can pinky swear that all the content has been laid out. No, seriously. This time it’s true…

Per usual, a backer's only KS post will follow this update and you can get the full preview via the link shared there.

Storm Surge Update

It’s hard to express without pages of text and too many spoilers just how fun it’s been running this playtest campaign. It’s a story I have wanted to tell for 25 years – since the earliest days of Blue Planet. The three-party approach has been a blast and has done so much heavy lifting in creating verisimilitude and player investment. It has been increasingly challenging however, to keep all the gears meshed, and one of the players even ended up having to use a timeline visualizing app just to help the table keep the overlapping chronologies straight.

I am coming to realize that given the 20k word limit on this stretch goal campaign, I am going to have to approach the write up with a fairly non-traditional presentation structure. Rather than detailed descriptions of a specific party entry point and a network of possible and detailed encounters, I am going to have to instead create a spare and skeletal network tracking ongoing faction activities and events, into which the participants will then have to actively plug their own characters and motivations. This will be a uniquely interesting scenario writing challenge - one I was originally apprehensive about, but for which I am now pretty stoked. 

This all said, we have started to hit some pretty big spoilers, so I have had to implement some GEO-approved security measures in the following summary...

In the last update, I shared how the GEO Internal Security agents had successfully made contact with the Songless and begun ingratiating themselves with this band of freedom fighters. I also shared how they had been brought into the investigation of the EMP bombing of Haven, as experts on the insurgency. In a complicated series of intertwined flashbacks, they learned that the attack on the Sprite was a deepfake frame-up of their own native characters, and gained kinesics data that implicated their own Incorporate characters and linked them to the EMP bombing as well.

Several of the PCs spent the majority of this month's first session gaining trust of the Songless by [REDACTED]. These agents subsequently spent most of the second session trying to convince the rest of their teammates to also [REDACTED]. Now they are all irrevocably allied with the Songless and have successfully connected those fighters with Bataku’s warband on Baffin Island. This three-way alliance between the GEO, Baffin Island and the Songless is quickly changing the balance of power on the planet, and a world-changing [REDACTED] will be the focus of the next session.

I fully anticipate that the next session of the playtest will utterly change the fundamental socio-politics on Poseidon (at least this group’s current instantiation of the game) forever. And I for one, can…not…wait!

Pledge Manager

Though we are not ready to offer a date for its launch, I do want to offer a heads up about the forthcoming pledge manger. If you are one of the many folks who have reached out about missing the original campaign but are excited to get to Poseidon, this is your chance. If you are already a backer and want to upgrade your pledge, that will be possible was well.

If you have changed addresses in the interim, but have not already reached out to us about that, the manager will allow you to share that information. The pledge manager will also be where we lock down and charge for shipping. I realize this is probably not a happy reminder, but we want to be fully transparent. It is really the only way we could be fiscally responsible with this necessary but unpredictably volatile aspect of the project. 

Thank you for your ongoing support and understanding.

February

New month, new update – and it’s a sweet one, marked by the last of the layout drafts!

Layout Previews

The previews below are the last of the chapter layouts! We just need to string them together, and we’ve got books. I realize that’s not as simple as it sounds since we still have to correct all the errors you’ve reported, replace all the page XXs with actual references, construct the table of contents, build a comprehensive index and so on, but we are finally coming in for a landing.

These final previews include both the cetacean future history and character chapters, which contain the best material from Ancient Echoes and some of my favorite artwork in the new books.These previews also include an all new, albeit short, chapter on what I think is important when playing RPGs and running Blue Planet in particular. Nothing groundbreaking I suppose, nothing old Poseidoners don’t already know, but worth reviewing, especially for those newer to the hobby.

Final Character Sheet

Speaking of final previews, I also wanted to share the most up-to-date version of the character sheet. Barring the discovery of any oversights by our loyal error-hunters, this should be the sheets' ultimate forms.

With the sheets and these final drafts, you now have access to everything you need to dive headfirst into a fully formed Recontact campaign! Enjoy!

Per usual, the full previews will follow in a Kickstarter, backers-only update. 

Storm Surge Playtest  

It’s hard to express how much fun it’s been running the playtest of the Storm Surge adventure. The way the three story lines have become increasingly interwoven is making it challenging to keep things on course, but it’s lending such texture to the story that it feels more real than anything I have ever run before.

Through a clever ruse, the GEO agents managed to free the Songless prisoner they themselves had captured, posing as the transport crew and staging an in-flight attack that left them crashed in the sea. They carefully positioned Ocean Gate as an essential ally as they rescued and transported the boy home.

A rare night off in Haven turned into a tumultuous emergency when the EMP blast from the Incorporate thread blacked out the city. They were quickly recalled, becoming part of the HCIS investigation. Specifically, given their recent mission, they were ordered to determine if there was any native connection to the bombing. It was a great moment when they were able to collect biometrics on one of their own Incorporate characters and make themselves the target of a massive manhunt.

The campaign has become so immersive that the players spent an hour of game time using their GEO operative characters to investigate their Incorporate security characters, even though as the players of both, they already knew everything that had happened! It seemed like they just wanted to experience that part of the story from the alternate perspective. They enjoyed making clever use of the future tech and techniques at their disposal, and it was super-fun to watch them get so into it that at one point they actually seemed to forget they were hunting themselves.

Another highlight was when the Songless freedom fighter they had liberated reached out and invited them to a clandestine rendezvous. Given the unique resources of the Songless (see last month’s Campaign Archetypes preview), what they really want is good PR, and this is something HCIS can absolutely pull the strings to get. As it turns out, quite un-coincidentally, they have the ideal voice in their vlogging character from the native thread, providing the perfect opportunity to restart the cycle in returning to that thread.

Can’t wait for next week!

January

Happy New Year! However you celebrate, I hope you and yours had a meaningful Planetfall and that 2024 brings a little more gaming into your life and a little more peace into the world.

Production Previews

I am super excited to share this month’s layout previews because the biggest section is a wholly new chapter that represents some of the best of what Recontact has to offer.

Campaign Archetypes - Over the history of Blue Planet, the only consistent criticism the game received was that it was such a big, open world, moderators didn’t know where to start - there was no default campaign structure. To address this, Recontact presents 12 different campaign archetypes by eight different authors spanning the breadth of the campaign possibilities the game best supports. From the classic Red Sky Charters Firefly-esque job-of-the-week to The Argonauts' take on Jules Vern and Chrome’s Incorporate intrigue to Night-Shift’s alien menace, First Responders' emergencies, and the military thriller Operation Polypod, there is something perfect for every gaming group. I hope you dig this new content as much as I do.

Alien Legacy – This chapter includes everything about the mysterious Nereids collected in one place. As always, I suggest that players refrain from reading this chapter as it's intended for moderators and presents information that I think is more fun to encounter in play than via text. 

Beyond the Frontier – Though some may find this section too deep a technical dive for an RPG, as a former oceanography teacher, I have always found this chapter to be particularly useful given Blue Planet’s setting. It offers a valuable resource for those less familiar with the marine environment, so is of particular help to moderators.  

Per usual, please watch for a backer’s-only preview following this one, where you can download these previews (and all the others to date).

Storm Surge Update

Despite the holiday season, which is traditionally hard on gaming schedules, we were able to get both our December playtest sessions in, and a lot happened. 

We created characters for the third of the three campaign threads – operatives for the GEO's High Commission of Internal Security. In the first session, they were charged with developing a working relationship with the Baffin Island insurgents and establishing the secret training camp described in the original BP canon. They were particularly sly and discreet, operating through a dummy NGO from Earth. They took several in-game months to gain trust and get the camp up and running. Their clandestine approach was so cold and manipulative that it reeked convincingly of real-world regime-change tactics and political manipulation. 

In the second session of the thread, they were charged with locating and recruiting the Songless (see page 42 of the Campaign Archetype chapter above). Much clever planning and a smidgin of alien body horror later, they have set things up to break one of the Songless they themselves captured out of the Fort Solitude brig in a bid to win his trust and be led to the troupe. What could go wrong?

The best parts of this latest arc are all the Easter eggs that I planted during the native and Incorporate security threads are finally being realized. From realizing these operators were the ones pulling GEO strings to help their native characters in the first arc, to being the source of the uncanny specimens their Incorporate security characters stole during the EMP heist, to having to deal with a depressurization emergency aboard GEO 1 when debris from Lesear Station (which those same characters destroyed) intersected its orbit, these call-backs, flashbacks and crossovers are giving the game an uncommon verisimilitude. As fun as this has been, I do worry I may not be able to capture the intent in the written product in a way others can effectively replicate. Fingers crossed.

OrcaCon

Just a reminder that I will be running both Blue Planet and Upwind at OrcaCon in Bellevue, WA, next weekend. When I last checked, there were still seats available in both games, so if you are local to the Seattle area and interested in playing, consider attending!  

OrcaCon 2024

Just a quick update to let any local Blue Planeteers know that Biohazard Games will be at OrcaCon24 the first weekend of January. I'm running a couple of events - both Blue Planet: Recontact and Upwind - and as of this morning, there are still a few spots left at each table. Would love to play with some backers, so if you are attending the con, jump on the site and sign up!

December

Time again for a Blue Planet update. And speaking of time…

Timeline

The first of this month’s layout previews is the timeline. I shared in an earlier update that I dig a good timeline, and I love Blue Planet’s in particular. Relevant historical events add essential context, plausibility and realism to a game’s setting. I think I also mentioned how the BP timeline was the very first text written for 1st edition. In an unsolicited, creative frenzy, Jason Werner stayed up late the night I first pitched him the premise and presented me with the first draft the very next day! 

For Recontact, Jason not only updated the timeline but punched up the content as well. He included the past 25 years of real-world scientific advancement and sociopolitical change. He leaned into the future effects of Earth’s ongoing ecological crises, dirtied up the GEO’s white hat and further complicated the situation on Poseidon. The end result is plausible historical context that complements the hard sci-fi of the BP setting.

The second preview is of the future history chapter itself. This chapter puts the outline presented by the timeline into prose that sets the stakes for present-day Poseidon. The history details how the colony world’s present came to be, focusing on the Athena Project, the Blight, the rise of the GEO and the Incorporate, the discovery of Long John and the factionalization of Poseidon - essential background for the living setting that is Blue Planet.

As usual, a backer’s-only update will follow this one, containing links to these previews. Also as usual, if you want to hunt typos and layout issues, please use the form linked therein to report any you find.

As I put the finishing touches on this update, Robert shared the draft layouts for the View from Orbit and Wild Wet chapters. At first glance, they look great, but I want to give them a good once-over before sharing them out - probably after the weekend.  

Final Files

I know there are concerns about how long it is taking to get Recontact to the printer, but I promise I am more anxious for that than any backer on this blue planet. That’s why I am super excited to share that we have only a handful of chapters still in final proofreading – two cete sections as well as the nereid and the Sol system chapters. That’s it! Once Rachel sends those back and I get them reviewed, Robert will have everything he needs to finish the layouts, and we will finally be able to share out full drafts of the books. We're so close I can smell the salt air…

Storm Surge Update

This month, the campaign playtest was back on pace, and wow, did a lot of stuff happen. The fact is, however, the players’ decision to use an EMP took their Incorporate security arc characters well beyond the charted waters of the campaign as written. I can’t overstate the impact detonating the EMP had in our current instantiation of the setting – the chaos, destruction and loss of life in Haven was massively impactful to the stability and economy of Poseidon. It took months of in-game time for them to escape immediate pursuit and get back on course. Even now, they remain uncertain if they have ultimately evaded the authorities (spoiler: they haven’t). To avoid actual campaign spoilers, I won’t even go into how – unrelated to the EMP – one of the characters also managed to accidentally destroy Lesear Station!

Turns out genestealers make pretty good proxies for niños muertos...

 Like I said, however, they did finally get back on track. They infiltrated Baffin Island and after an uncannily coordinated attack by a hunting pack of niños muertos, discovered why the island is opaque to remote surveillance. They figured out that GEO Internal Security appears to be training and equipping the Baffin Island insurgents. They also closed the story loop I opened months ago with a mission to eliminate their own native arc characters. We paused the action at the moment of their attack, and next week we will start the third of the interwoven story arcs with the first session playing their GEO HCIS operatives.

I worry I may have bitten off more than a Greater White can chew with the three converging arcs structure of this campaign, but it’s been a blast so far, and I am excited to see where it goes. Wish me – and more importantly my players – luck!

November

Despite not having much to share in terms of new layout previews quite yet, October has been a busy and productive month. 

Editing Efficiency

We have made some changes to the editing process in hopes of streamlining workflow, thereby expediting production. The changes already seem to be increasing output as we now have five sections in the layout queue rather than our typical single file input. Given Robert's speed, I therefore anticipate sharing a whole batch of layout previews in the next few days. 

Bonus Art

Poseidon's number one citizen, Pawel D, has done it again, donating a series of character commissions portraying the crew of Red Sky Charters. RSC is the playtest campaign from the original first edition Blue Planet and one of the campaign archetypes provided in Recontact. Pawel's vision of the world of Poseidon is spot-on, and I regret not having been able to afford to hire him as art director for the project. Even so, Pawel has strongly influenced the look of the game with his art donations. The project is much better for it, and we are deeply grateful. 

Red Sky Charters crew - to scale

Storm Surge Update

Unfortunately, school conferences, soccer games, a case of COVID and a new granddaughter all conspired among my players to prevent any progress in the playtest campaign this month. However, these things have not prevented me from working on upcoming encounters, and the longer those get to percolate, the more dangerous they become. I guess my crew can only blame themselves if things go aquatically pear-shaped...

Can of Worms

The ongoing editing process and playtest campaign downtime have given me the chance to finally put some words to paper (screen?) on the Wormhole stretch goal. I don't want to spoil anything, but I will share that including the supplement in your Blue Planet games will fundamentally change the nature of the setting and likely alter the tone and focus of subsequent campaigns. Accordingly, I recommend moderators and their players consider carefully before making Wormhole canon at their tables. 

Don't Panic and Thank You!

I anticipate a number of layout previews arriving in the next week. I will post them to backers as they come in rather than wait until next month. That way the dedicated among you can continue hunting errors, helping us make Recontact perfect. Thank you to the many intrepid readers who have been making error reports. You are awesome and we are deeply grateful for your submissions.

October

Fall is here, and it's time for the October update. It's a couple days early as I will be offline this weekend. At least, that's my excuse. In truth I think I'm just excited to share this month's chapter preview. 

Hardcore Hardware

Blue Planet has always emphasized the technology of its setting, and the earlier editions dedicated many pages to what we hoped were plausible, hard science descriptions of speculative hardware.  Since it's an RPG, we wanted plenty of cool toys for characters to play with, but more importantly we wanted to evoke the setting through its technological context. This remains an essential intent, so thoroughly updating the technology was a primary focus in Recontact. 

Though it could be argued that modern game design has deemphasized the traditional "gear chapter," we have opted instead to lean into it, spending significant time researching real world advances in technology and updating our speculative tech. From where we got it wrong in the first edition - like separate devices for every function - to where we got it right - like the proliferation of drones - we have cut and consolidated items, updated or upgraded gear and even added whole new classes of tech. From smart materials to quantum computing to bioreactors and direct air capture processors, we have included advanced technologies that weren't even speculative when the first edition of BP was published over 25 years ago. 

All these upgrades and additions have made me particularly excited to share this month's preview of the Hardware chapter, and I hope you enjoy what you see. Don't worry about the lack of vehicles and cetacean gear in the preview - they are in the layout queue.

As usual, a backers' only update will contain a link to the previews and the error reporting form.  Give it a read and let us know what you think!

Storm Surge Update

Anymore I prefer my RPGs to be theater of the mind. There was a time, however, when maps, miniatures and tactical play were my jam - as evidenced by the kludgey but well-intentioned first edition BP combat rules. My RPG and tactical play have diverged over the years as I've gained a love of sci-fi miniature games like Core Space, Zombicide: Invader and the OOP classic, AT-43.  

I have been feeling a little old school of late, so I decided to use all the toys I've collected for these various minis games to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the GenDiver Security thread. I planned a big tactical set piece to challenge my players - and to see how far we could push the new BP rules.  And what makes for a better tactical challenge than a reverse heist into a heavily defended HCIS island black site, camouflaged as an automated cargo depot?

Though I left plenty of openings for them to use stealth, remote intrusion or social engineering, I also wanted to offer the option for tactical play if they chose - or if subterfuge failed and the site went hot. I wanted to really test the limits inherent in the technological tools and defenses of the setting and to that end told them they could utilize anything they wanted from the hardware and weapons chapters - actual tech or implied - but that as the moderator, I was going to do the same. Suffice it to say, things got pretty warm. 

The session opened in media res, with the crew attempting a tactical entry through the shipping container stacks. When this was inevitably foiled by robotic sentries mowing them down, I reassured the shocked players that the scene was only one of the many virtual simulations they had run.  This intentionally put them on their toes for the "real" thing, but also gave them the chance to assess other options in character, via AI sims rather than fall prey to the dithering that often stalls party planning sessions. 

In the end the reverse heist was successful, but what they encountered in the warehouse - and inadvertently released into the wild - was not what they expected and is a whole lot more dangerous than they know...

 Delivery Date?

This month marks a year since our original estimated delivery date of October 2022. I know the old joke that Kickstarters are always late, but for me the delay is no laughing matter. We continue to work as fast as real life and the various production challenges we have faced allow, and we are rapidly completing the layout - as evidenced by the previews we have been sharing. As soon as possible, we will share out the digital versions of the books and head to press. In the meantime, all I can ask is for your continued patience and enthusiasm. It's that support that has kept me and the project going, and I hope you can trust that we are working as diligently as possible. 

September

A new month and a new update. My teacher's summer break has come to an end and that's a bummer, but wow, am I pleased with how productive a summer it was for Blue Planet! I was able to work every day and keep pace with Rachel's proofing and Robert's layout. I feel great about how much we got done, and even though the start of school usually means a slow down for me, I am now in a position to keep production rolling smoothly along.

Waterworlders

This month's layout preview is the "Waterworlders" chapter, and it describes each of the major factions on Poseidon - the natives, the GEO, the Incorporate and the newcomers. Don't worry, the nereids have their own chapter. "Waterworlders" also includes a mostly new section on Poseidon culture, covering everything from family structures and the social perception of genetic modification to examples of social media personalities and generalized AR environments in 2199.  

Per usual, a second, backers-only update will follow this one and contain a link to the draft file. If you find any errors to report, we encourage you to log them via this form. 

Storm Surge Update

As promised, we recently resumed playtesting on the Storm Surge campaign, shifting to the Incorporate security arc of the intertwined trio of story threads. Per that intention, we created a truly despicable group of terrible human beings for the arc. They are in fact so bad that they were each variously "drummed out" of GenDiver's security division, only to find themselves "recruited" into a team of deniable special contractors who ultimately still work for the notorious Incorporate through various cut-outs and shell companies. The  players ironically decided that their front company would be called Sunflower Industries. Accordingly, their handler is Mr. Seed and they each took on flowery code names:

Poppy - The team lead and true believer. Think Miles Quaritch from Avatar, but constantly justifying his actions with quotes from historical philosophers. 

Foxglove - Doc to the rest of the team, this evil man is an expert field medic and a chemical weapons "enthusiast." Enough said. 

Dalia - The socially detached remote operator who sacrificed a past teammate to save his combat robot (and best friend) Dandy Randy's "life." 

Buttercup - A ruthless killer who simply likes cruelty. An evil version of Amos Burton from the Expanse - but more murdery. 

Given the intent, I started our session zero by leaning hard into safety tools, and after making some truly awful paper people, we played the introductory scenario.  I don't want to give away spoilers, so suffice it to say it turns out the characters are - quite intentionally - responsible for the precipitating event that was used to frame the players' other characters in the native arc. What I found most compelling about the session, however, was the ease with which the Recontact character creation rules allowed us to create such evocatively monstrous people. 

Character Sheet

Another cool thing to come out of the playtest is that the artist who created the character sheet (and GEO/Incorporate logos in the images above) is playing in the campaign. As a result, he is getting some good, first-hand feedback about the character sheets. He is fine-tuning their design, and I am looking forward to sharing out the final version soon. 

Current version of the character sheet - final playtest update pending...

Pledge Manager & Shipping Reminder

I hope it's not long before we have the Blue Planet pledge manager up. This will allow anyone who wants to upgrade their pledge to do so and allow the many folks who missed out on the original campaign but now want to get to Poseidon to hop aboard the wormhole express. 

As an associated reminder, I am compelled to note that the pledge manager will also be how we charge for shipping. As you are probably aware, shipping has become the bane of small game companies, and I just wanted to make sure that - as shared during the campaign - everyone remembers that the plan is to charge shipping closer to the shipping date to best manage the actual costs.  Thank you for understanding the economical reality. 

August

It’s August. August? Where is the summer going?

Production

Layout on Blue Planet: Recontact is sailing along, and soon we should have complete digital versions of the books to share. In the meantime, you will still get preview drafts of each of the sections as we finish them up. This month it’s the biotechnology chapter. I know I had promised it in July, but I did such a good job of botching the subsection order and nesting in the original text file that poor Robert, our layout artist, ended up having to do the whole thing over again. I take all the blame and thank you for your patience. In the end, I think it looks pretty dang sharp.

As usual, I will follow up this post with a backers-only update that contains the preview. Also as usual, if you are so inclined, please point out any errors you find via this form.

Speaking of layout changes, we have decided to change up the chapter heading design. As keen as I was to use details from the topographical maps, readability and graphical cleanliness was becoming an issue. We have therefore opted to go with what might be a simpler, but I believe a sharper, more striking chapter header. Hope you like it.

Mahalo Pawel

I want to give another big shout-out to Pawel, who continues to be the single most supportive Poseidoneer on either planet. Not only did he write some fantastic contributions to the new edition, but he has also been an essential continuity director, particularly regarding the cartography. He also continues to donate additional art assets from his own private collection of Blue Planet commissions, most recently a series of character illustrations that I think nail the BP ethos. Here are a couple of examples.

Thank you, Pawel – your contributions, support and enthusiasm have been essential to Recontact.

GenCon

A few folks have asked, so I wanted to share. Sadly, Biohazard will not be at GenCon this year. As much as I love going to the convention, meeting backers and playing games with all my con friends, I figured my summer holiday time would be better spent working on finishing up Blue Planet. Our publishing partner Gallant Night Games – in the person of Alan – will be at the convention, however. Stop by booth #2029, say hi and have a chat about Blue Planet.

Storm Surge Playtest

Given the various summer travel plans of the folks in my playtest group, we took a break from Storm Surge for July, so I don’t have the typical update on how that’s going. I can say that we will be starting the Incorporate security thread when we resume later this month, and I am excited for the chance to run a game featuring some truly awful characters. The fun will be seeing if we can redeem them by the end of the campaign, or if they will go down with the rest of the Despoilers…

Heart of the Muse 

Ladysmith Harbor, British Columbia, Canada, Earth

If you ever have the chance to visit the San Juan Islands of Washington State or the Gulf Islands of British Columbia, you absolutely should. They are some of the most beautiful places on earth and provide endless inspiration for ocean people. Who knows, perhaps I could even show you around…

July

July is here, and though the summer is hot, this update is pretty cool...

Layout

Blue Planet: Recontact is coming together fast as Robert blasts through the layout. This month there are two big chapters for you to preview (and proofread).  The first is the largest section of the Moderator's Guide. It's the Archipelagos chapter and features all of Poseidon's regional gazetteer information, as well as the all new Outback section.  

The second is the Biotech chapter, covering all the cybernetic implants and genetic enhancements available to characters, including the new stretch goal Skink and Xenos mods.

As with previous layout previews, this update will be followed with a backers' only post on Kickstart that contains links to these chapters.  Please note: We are making a couple of last-minute adjustments to these section layouts, and I will send that follow-up update asap. 

22 Years!

Despite the books being tardy, I can't overstate how much of my time and effort have gone into to this project, and I therefore occasionally wonder why I'm doing it? Then, I get a note from someone who loves the game reminding me. A few weeks ago, a post on our publishing partner Gallant Knight Games' Discord shared what is perhaps the most touching such reminder I have ever received, so I thought I would repost it here. 

"I just want to share with you that in 2001 I bought Blue Planet (v2) and my group who just had met the 2nd week of my freshman year of University decided to play a small campaign in this system as we all loved sci fi games. We really loved the setting and one of the girls in the group decided to be the storyteller and we all sat down and decided that we wanted to play a small Lunar company who had invested in a small underwater laboratory on Poseidon. Yesterday, almost 22 years later, our campaign came to an end. We have seen so many fun things in the storyteller's interpretation of your game and we have seen so much together:

• I met my then girlfriend-now fiancee and mother to my daughter in the gaming group

• We have gone to cruises in the Baltic sea and between Copenhagen and up around Iceland and back, and we brought our RPG with us and borrowed a conference room and played

• People have met their loves of their lives

• One of them got a divorce and later found a new love, whom they married in April this year

• A few of us have had children

• We lost one of our players to a disease in 2019 and our game will forever be a memory to all the fun that she brought us

• We have had our children sit by the table and join us when they grew up and wanted to join. Later we have waved two of them off to university

• We have had so much fun, sadness, joy and laughter

• After 22 years of playing, we are still 6 people who enjoy hanging out together and being there for each other when life is good, bad or in between

All this thanks to you. In a way, you gave us 22 years of fantastic fun. So whatever happens in your life, or if you have one of those days when you are not sure why you are working on this project, we all want you to know that you gave us so much meaning and happiness together. So from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you from a very sunny Sweden! 

- Amanda, Elenya, Marcus, Mathias, Tia, Veronika"

Storm Surge Playtest Update

In the ongoing playtest, the characters, sobered by their too-close encounter with the Greater White (see June post) arrived at their destination - a notorious site known among the Northwest Territory natives simply as "The Mangrove." This towering marine forest hides an abandoned Biogene facility with an ominous reputation - one that leads the superstitious to claim that it's haunted. The truth is perhaps less supernatural, but certainly no less ominous. 

-Spoiler Alert-

The plan was for the characters to execute their propaganda sting by meeting an investigative journalist at the site to conduct a live interview. The unique location would allow GenDiver search algorithms to ID their location, hopefully luring away security forces from another regional installation and the insurgency's actual target. 

There was a lot of roleplaying among the family members around recent events as they set up perimeter sensors and planted the anti-personnel mines they'd brought along. The RP was interrupted by an enigmatic and ultimately terrifying midnight encounter with what the characters now suspect was a Nereid. They simultaneously discovered that the old Biogene facility was being used as a weapons depot, but that something stranger still was going on at the site when their exploration revealed that most of the structure's interior seemed to have been "melted away."

Their investigation was cut short by the arrival of the journalist and her cameraman and the roleplaying of the in-character interview. Having estimated potential response times for the security forces, the characters were not surprised when their perimeter electronics alerted them to intruders and the first explosions went off. As I closed the latest session with this cliffhanger, the players realized that their non-fighter characters had not really planned an escape route...

We are taking a break through July as several of us will be traveling, but we will resume playtesting in August with the GenDiver security thread. 

June

Welcome to the June update. Hope you are excited because there's a new chapter layout to share...
Art, Text and Layout, Oh My!
I've realized that with the layout well underway, the old format of these updates has become obsolete. Where I used to share an image preview or two and a text excerpt from one section or another, sharing whole chapter previews is offering even more of both.  

Layout has continued at an incredible pace, and Robert is turning Recontact into a book faster than I can get him the text - it's amazing.  He's currently blasting through the very long gazetteer chapter which covers the Pacifica Archipelago and the all new Outback section.  Earlier in May, he completed a draft of the "Bio-Survey," and though we are still tweaking a few things here and there, I am excited to share the current version of the field guide with you as part of this update. 

If you are a backer, check out the backer-only update on Kickstarter for a link to the full Bio-Survey chapter preview. As a reminder, if you are the kind of waterworlder who likes to hunt typos and wants to help with production, please consider submitting an error report for any issues you find via this link.

Storm Surge Playtest Update
As promised, here's another update on how things are going in our playtest of the stretch goal campaign. The family of budding insurgents spent several months on Baffin Island, training with the freedom fighters and cashing in their accumulated character improvement points on new skill sets - online propaganda, electronic countermeasures, sniper training and clandestine logistics. 

-Spoiler Alert-

They got pulled deeper into the intrigues of the island and the movement, discovering the settlement's secret lava tube refuge and GEO Internal Security's secret training camp in the mountains. Against their will they were teamed up with an ex-Incorporate soldier-turned-insurgent when a new player joined the table. I contrived a series of problematic introductions that left the characters extra salty when the offworlder was charged with leading them on their first actual mission.  That mission is ostensibly a propaganda operation meant to generate public sympathy, but actually intended to draw Incorporate security forces away from a critical long john refinery, allowing for both an ambush of said security and an insurgent strike against the unguarded installation. 

The highlight was when their double-hulled, ocean sailing canoe "ran aground" on a massive Big Round Thing (see the Bio-Survey preview) that surfaced beneath them unexpectedly. The exciting bit subsequently came when, while struggling to un-strand the party orca and re-launch their boat, the BRT was attacked by a hungry Greater White intent on an easy meal. The resulting chaos and desperate action made this one of my favorite Poseidon wildlife encounters of all time.

Can't wait to see what happens during the ambush next week, and I can't wait to share more layout next month. Thank you for all the patience and support.