Time for the February update, though truth be told, we are in that stage of production where there is not much to share. Accordingly, I pass on these brief words from Alan...
From Gallant Knight Games
"At the moment, the printer is on their Lunar New Year holiday, so progress is quiet. But we’ve received all the final templates, so we’re using the downtime to verify and review the bleeds, ink coverages, and all the other little details that go into making books. As soon as the printer is back at the presses, we’ll be off and running. At that point, we'll have some details to share on shipping schedule estimates to GKG HQ for the splitting of shipments for fulfillment."
Red City
Unfortunately, work schedules have kept us from continuing the backer mini-campaign I teased in January's update, but I hope to be able to share more of their Coen Brothers-style adventures in the next update.
I can, however, share about another Blue Planet-adjacent one-shot I have run a couple of times now as proof of concept, exploring both an expanded setting idea and a new core game mechanic.
The setting is a future history version of Mars in the Blue Planet universe. The tropes and tone are inspired by Bladerunner, Cowboy Bebop and Detective Miller from The Expanse, and they are intended to tell gritty, sci-fi noir stories. The mechanics are my attempt to apply 'bag-building" from board games to roleplaying, where the bag is your character sheet and its contents are all you need to mechanize your character.
I'll admit that the mechanics are not quite there yet, and I have sort of stalled in refining them. The setting, however, still excites me, so for those who might actually be interested, I offer the introduction from the one-shot I've been running as a sort of primer...
Mangala Landing. The Martian capital. Most just call it Red City because of all the dust. Or the blood. I guess it used to be something. Now it’s a just another Martian shithole, slowly choking to death on bad air, corruption and fear. Two million stories on its dusty streets and none likely to end well.
Terraforming’s slow, so the planet’s still arid, cold and red. Don’t go outside without a respirator. Under the leaking domes, if it’s not depressurized, obsolete or broken down, it soon will be. The mostly abandoned Perimeter rings the city. The subterranean warrens of the Old Colony are haunted by the ghosts of the desperate. Sand Gate, Scour, Crimson and Noctis Hives separate the Perimeter from the Core and the Haves from the Have-No-Certificates. The farther in or out you go, the higher the risk of running into one kind of crazy or the other. The farther out, the more likely you get caught out by Remnant. The farther in, the heavier the Directorate’s boot on your throat.
Martians used to have hope. They were proud. Believed the terraforming was making a new world for humanity. Sure, the Families were arrogant, decadent pricks, but they mostly kept things running. Then came the nano and everything changed. Nanotech gutted the Belters’ economy overnight. Mars orbit emptied out, and terraforming became self-sustaining - at least until the tech went feral. The Meltdown killed a quarter of the population before the Public Authority’s counter swarms fought it to a standstill. The Remnant still kill thousands every year, but I guess that’s a price we just have to keep paying.
When the off-worlders put up the Blockade and shut – or shot – down all travel to orbit, that’s when things went from bad to worse. I was just a kid, but I remember the riots over food, water and fucking printer access. The Families expanded their militias and abandoned all pretense of being Mars’ benevolent caretakers, desperate to keep control over vital resources in what could have been a post-scarcity world.
The Martian Directorate is just more Family bullshit – an executive arm, used to legitimize their control over every aspect of life on the planet. The Martian Senate, their political puppet, is all but powerless. The People’s Authority – the Directorate’s municipal services branch – has become just another corrupt extension of their control. PA departments, like Sanitation, care less about feeding people and protecting them from feral nano and more about enforcing printer certificates and raiding unlicensed fabricators.
And then there’s me. Just another tool of the PA. I thought becoming a Public Attendant would mean I could make a difference. Help some people. Sort the right from the wrong and maybe get those who needed it some of that post-scarcity promise. I was an idiot. Still am, I guess…
