Whoa...this is the 100th Blue Planet Kickstarter Update. Never would have imagined, but here we are.
Storm Surge
As hoped for in the last update, I spent much of July finishing the first draft of the Storm Surge campaign. Despite the challenges of writing such a structurally unconventional campaign, I think I have a workable draft. All that’s left is to figure out how to present the final resolution options. Not so much of a creative challenge as much as a practical exercise in effective technical writing. We’ll see.
I may have a draft, but by no means is it done. There are still a bunch of ways I want to add to the the texture that makes it uniquely Blue Planet, and I want to provide more expansive advice on how to run the unorthodox format. The hard part is done however, and I am relieved that I was able to find a way to present the campaign in a cogent way. I’m still pretty sure it’s not going to be every group’s sort of game, but for those who are into it, I promise a unique experience.
Here are a couple excerpts from the set-up section:
Player Characters
Though the moderator should feel free to incorporate any character parties they wish into Storm Surge, the campaign as written assumes there are three player character groups - native freedom fighters, GEO agents and Incorporate operators. The structure is designed and the moderator advice is written based on the interactions of these three parties.
The Natives - The native party is assumed to start the campaign as everyday (P291) level characters. As much as any native can be, they should be unassociated with the insurgency, though they probably know people who are involved. At most, some of them may be sympathizers, perhaps considering more direct action. Starting out more involved than this robs the narrative of the characters’ introduction to the insurgency and obviates their “origin stories” as freedom fighters.
The characters can otherwise be any sort of native community members. They could all be part of an extended family, or they could be crew on the same fishing boat, players on a local hydroshot team or just a collection of village residents brought together by the random circumstance of riding home on the same ferry.
Players are free to start as committed members of the insurgency if that suits their interests best. Just note that this would require some modifications on the part of the moderator. Doing so will also shorten the campaign by skipping some of the plot nodes and flatten the narrative arcs of the native characters.
The Agents - The GEO agents are assumed to start the campaign as elite (P291) level characters. They should have ranks or roles high enough in their organizations that they have considerable resources and the authority to plan and execute significant operations with only minimal oversight. The characters could be senior agents in the GEO High Commission of Internal Security assigned to the Northwest Territories (M77) desk. They could be deputy marshals (M233) staffing an anti-terrorism task force working the same region. They could be military intelligence officers assigned to the Crusoe Island Military Base (M93) or to the Peacekeeper company conducting Operation Polypod (M40).
The Special Operators – The GenDiver operators are assumed to start the campaign as exceptional (P291) characters and should be well and diversely trained, but with limited agency regarding their orders - unless their players decide their characters eventually have dramatic changes of heart and abandon their mission to escape lives of ruthlessness or even support the insurgency. They can be internal security officers working undercover or paramilitary marines serving on a shipboard post. Alternatively, they could be actual mercenary or criminal operators outside the circle of GenDiver citizenship, hired by and given missions through a third-party handler.
Syncing Threads
One of the most significant challenges in running Storm Surge is keeping track of how each of the three party’s threads intersect with each other. This is a challenge both in terms of tracking the ripples caused by one party’s actions impacting another party, but also in terms of the placement of events on a single campaign timeline.
Playtesting recommends the moderator should avoid rigidly pinning events to fixed dates. Rather than saying something like “the break-in occurred on October 12th and the boat sank on the 16th,” the moderator should keep some narrative elbow room by instead saying something like, “the break-in happened well before the boat sank.”
It is also likely that many scenes in the campaign may occur as either flashbacks or even flashforwards. This can be for the purpose of intentional foreshadowing or in response to a complicated series of choices and actions by the players. Either way, the moderator should be ready to use these storytelling techniques to adjust events chronologically and enhance the drama of the campaign.
Flashbacks and flashforwards are particularly valuable in allowing the moderator to present given scenes without initially fixing them to the established timeline. This means they can stage inciting events or even essential resolutions without knowing exactly how they will tie into the potential future actions and events from the other party threads. All they need to do is say something general like, “Several weeks ago,” or “about a month from now.” This allows the moderator flexibility and space to be creative when weaving the three story threads together and ordering specific events in one timeline.
For example, during playtesting, the author chose to open the agent thread with the meeting on GEO 1 (XX) - an emergency evacuation initiated by a collision with space debris. Later in the campaign, the operator party destroyed an Incorporate space station, providing the unanticipated but otherwise narratively perfect source for the orbital wreckage.
Note – If the interweaving of multiple character parties and timelines feels daunting, confusing or just unnecessary, moderators should feel free to run Storm Surge in a more traditional way. The participants can choose which of the three character threads they want to play with, and the moderator can use the material supporting the other threads as reference, background, plot points, complications and NPCs, in an otherwise more traditional and straightforward – albeit much shorter – campaign.
World of Hurt
And just in case that’s not enough stretch goal goodness, here’s a teaser from Graeme (POCGamer), author of the Earth sourcebook...
"Hi everyone! Graeme Barber here (no relation to Jeff!). World of Hurt is the largest project I’ve taken on, and the most exciting by far. It’s been a long time in coming, and it has the most unique process I’ve had to use to date. Blue Planet is what I’d call a medium sci-fi setting - it’s got its soft components, but it has deep roots in real-world climate science and politics. But what does that mean? It means I need to make sure I can justify some of my wilder actions on Blue Planet’s Earth with some real-world science.
And it’s not just looking through climate science to figure out how much polar ice needs to melt and how fast in order to raise the sea level by 16m. There’s some sociology, political science, and anthropology in there too, and reflections on the darker spots of Canadian and Commonwealth history. And balancing this is the need for some hope, because there are plenty of crapsack settings out there and, to me, Blue Planet has always been a game about a hopeful future fighting to break free from the shackles of a terrible past.
Approaching the project, Jeff already had the word count broken down into rough sizes per section, emphasizing his vision for the book. Fortunately, World of Hurt is a supplement, so I don’t need to reinvent the wheel and re-write the baseline history presented in the core book. Instead, I get to add and expand on it. I’m digging into the shades of grey GEO and the Incorporates operate in. I’m speculating on how the population would be dispersed and concentrated on a planet post-Blight and suffering from the long-term effects of unchecked climate change and capitalist greed. Then there’s the cultural aspects, like what shifts have happened, how have people adapted, and what kind of political fallout there is.
Basically, I have 20k words to work with, 60k words worth of ideas, and I’m going to make it work!"
GenCon
I posted this update a couple of days early as I am leaving for GenCon in the morning. I am super excited since I never feel as whole as I do at a gaming convention, surrounded by my people. Can’t wait!
Looks like both the registered and off-books Blue Planet sessions are full, but if you are still interested in a seat, let me know in the comments as things change and openings often come up. I am, however, signed up to run an Upwind game (another Biohazard RPG) on Thursday afternoon. For some reason, it was posted late in the event registration process, so at the moment it is still wide open if anyone’s interested.
Excited to see some of you at the show!
