Two Weeks

Curious about the background of this banner? Well, every good game book needs a fantastic cover…

We are just two weeks from the launch of the Blue Planet: Recontact Kickstarter and are super-excited for everyone to get involved. To mark the moment in the countdown, I thought I’d share a few teasers.

Teaser #1 - Here’s a current work-in-progress by our amazing interior artist Stephan Shoz - the finished version of which I can’t wait to see.

Step 1

Step 2

Teaser #2 - Instant rewards! The day after the end of the campaign, every book reward level will get PDFs of the previous editions of Blue Planet, and if you pledge for a book set (both Player’s and Moderator’s Guides) you will receive PDF copies of everything ever published for Blue Planet! That’s over 1700 pages of waterworld wonder, as soon as the Kickstarter closes!

I know this might not motivate the hardcore Blue Planet fans out there who already have access to Poseidon, but since one of the goals of this campaign is to bring the game to a new generation of players, I’m psyched to get folks through the wormhole on day one!

Lambda Serpentis II

Teaser #3 - Here is a draft of one of my favorite reward levels. I’m excited about this one because it will allow backers to plant their own little flags on Poseidon. Note in particular, the last line below…

Reward Level - Book Set and Naming Rights

• One physical copy of the new Blue Planet: Recontact Player's Guide

• One physical copy of the new Blue Planet: Recontact Moderator's Guide

• Blue Planet Recontact PDF set

• All funded stretch goals

• PDF versions of all 10 previously published, 1st and 2nd edition Blue Planet books the day after the campaign ends.

• Naming rights for a previously unnamed cartographical feature of your choice - landmass, surface or sea floor element. You provide the name and we will add it, like an aquatic easter egg, to one of the new, in-game maps.

One Month

I am excited to share that in exactly one month (April 6th), Biohazard Games will return to Kickstarter to fund the production of a new edition of our flagship roleplaying game, Blue Planet. If you want to dive right in and explore, you can download the Blue Planet: Recontact Quickstart Guide here. This 80+ page, full color primer is free and contains the new version of the rules, a setting introduction and a demo scenario called "Trouble in Paradise," complete with ready-to-play characters.

If you'd like a more casual introduction, please read on...

Short Premise:

Blue Planet is a compelling RPG journey into humanity’s precarious future on a distant planet where sociopolitical unrest and a hungry alien ecology threaten the nascent colony effort. A world where GEO marshals struggle to maintain peace, Incorporate mercenaries wage amphibious proxy wars, and native insurgents fight for their adopted planet. A frontier where human desperation and corporate greed ravage an uncanny ecology, threatening to plunge humanity into a war of survival with an ancient, alien legacy.

Though the original Blue Planet predates many of these titles, the setting is evoked by the movies Avatar, Blade Runner and Outland, the television series The Expanse, Firefly and Earth II and the books Legacy of Heorot, Songs of Distant Earth and the Mars Trilogy. 

If Blue Planet interests you, watch this space for a reminder when we launch, or follow on Twitter at BiohazardJeff for more frequent updates. 

Full Premise:

Blue Planet's uniqueness and enduring appeal are in its deep, realistic, hard science fiction setting, and to really describe it requires more than a few sentences. For those new to the waterworld, we recommend exploring the more detailed premise here.

The project includes...

• Production of two beautiful, 300-page books - player's and moderator's guides.

• A complete evolution of the core mechanics, taking advantage of two decades of RPG development. 

• All new, full-color artwork bringing the waterworld to life in stunning, evocative imagery.

• Full-color world and regional maps, including submarine geography, redesigned and rendered by professional cartographer and game designer Mark Richardson (Green Hat Design).

• A series of campaign archetypes to help moderators jumpstart their games in the vast adventure space of Poseidon (see below).

• Updated speculative technologies.

• New sociopolitical systems, organizations, institutions and conflicts.

• New locations, settlements and facilities.

The project does not include...

• Fundamental changes to the core sociopolitical tensions - the themes will remain staunchly pro-environmental and anti-colonial. If you don't share these sentiments, this is likely not your game.

• Timeline advancements - the setting was originally, intentionally, poised on a sociopolitical precipice, rife with plot and storytelling potential, and we want to maintain that same narrative tension.

• Global rewrites of the setting material - though updates, sensitivity edits and additions are being made throughout, we believe Blue Planet’s deep setting is why the game has endured, and so we are not making major alterations to that essential content.

Blue Planet has received broad acclaim, particularly for its deep, detailed, and realistic setting, and the game has remained well regarded since its original publication. However, that publication was almost 25 years ago, and in the intervening decades, all versions have gone out of print and game design has evolved dramatically. We are therefore excited at the prospect of giving the game system an overdue overhaul and the opportunity to share Blue Planet with a new generation of players.

More personally, Blue Planet features critical environmental themes, presenting a precarious future shaped by the dire consequences of ecological collapse. If issues like biodiversity loss, ocean acidification and climate change were only obscure concerns within the scientific community when Blue Planet was first published 25 years ago, they are now clear and present existential threats to the human species. This new edition will let us add our own small voice to those demanding true stewardship of our original blue planet.

Compelled by these reasons, the original creators at Biohazard Games (www. BiohazardGames.us) have teamed up with Gallant Knight Games (www.gallantknightgames.com) to produce a fresh new edition of this classic RPG.

Recontact is the in-game term for the fateful day in 2165 when the UNSS Admiral Robert Perry entered orbit around Poseidon, “reestablishing contact”  with Earth 69 years after the original colonists were abandoned. Given that more than two decades have passed since the publication of the first edition of Blue Planet, RECONTACT seemed a fitting subtitle for this new version of the game. 

Correction

Turns out Three Beasts is not produced via Lightening Source and so will remain available for print-on-demand from DriveThru RPG. Incursion however, will still be discontinued at the end of the month, so if you want a hard copy, get your order in by 2.26.

Upwind PODs

I just learned that DriveThruRPG will be discontinuing their Lightening Source saddle-stitched book print-on-demand services at the end of February. Accordingly, if you've been planning to order a physical copy of either the Three Beasts mini-campaign or the sky ship combat game Upwind: Incursion, you should get your orders in before it's too late and the paper books become as rare and valuable as Masters' artifacts!

April 6th, 2021

Blue Planet: Recontact Kickstarter Launch Date - April 6th, 2021

I know word has already gotten out, but I just wanted to make it official. It wasn’t really a secret or anything, it’s just that a couple of family health crises and the pandemic have made this a hard year to plan anything. That said, this is it! I’m not putting it off any longer and it’s going to happen - come hell or high tide.

Tuesday, April 6th, 2021, Biohazard Games and our publishing partner Gallant Knight Games will launch the Kickstarter for Blue Planet: Recontact, the new edition of our acclaimed science fiction RPG.

Check out the free quickstart guide here, and watch this space for further updates and announcements.

Promoting Blue Planet Kickstarter

Hey RPG Peeps! If you’ve got a gaming podcast or actual play and want to talk Blue Planet: Recontact or have me run a game for your crew, I would love to make that happen! Kickstarter coming soon!

Indie Bundle

If you've been wanting to try out Upwind (and other awesome indie RPGs like Flying Circus and Thousand Year Old Vampire) you won't get a better deal than this Bundle of Holding!

A Game Designer's Mind...

An occupational hazard of being a game designer is that sometimes ideas for new projects get stuck in your head, and for me at least, they can only be unstuck by doing some work on them. I’ve been obsessing over this one for a while, and I finally just had to run a playtest to unclog the pipes. It’s an almost 1 to 1 hack of our Q-System from Upwind, inspired by Stegmaier Games’ Scythe board game and the incredibly evocative 1920+ art series by the incomparable Jacob Rozalski.

BP Progress

Heartbreaking societal pain, COVID, bad politics, family health crises and a demanding day job may have slowed me down, but just wanted you all to know I'm still plugging away on Blue Planet: Recontact. Here's a first draft of the character sheets - by Upwind artist James Stowe.

A Small Thing...

I know it’s a small thing in the face of such heartbreaking societal events, but it’s a small thing I can do. 

For every donation of $20+ to your choice of social justice organization, I will send you a link to a PDF of a Biohazard Games product. Organizations that support Black Lives Matter, fight border detention, support medical workers, campaign for democracy or protect the environment - wherever you want to donate. 

Just send me an email (biohazardgamesemail@gmail.com) or a dm through Twitter (@BiohazardJeff) sharing where you donated and the product you want, and I will send you the link(s) to the book(s) of your choice. Anything in the Upwind or Blue Planet (1st &2nd ed) product lines is available.

Please take care of each other. 

Three Beasts

Check out the latest Upwind update. The Three Beasts mini-campaign stretch goal by Ross Payton is finally out!

Upwind Update

Check out the latest update on our Upwind project. It contains links to all the stretch goals we’ve completed and info on the status of the final two. And speaking of, here is a teaser from the forthcoming Three Beasts mini-campaign…