ChŭbōGōnzō

In Loner, you create story momentum through a repeating loop of prompts:

• Where are you?
• What do you see?
• Who else is there?
• What’s going on?
• What is your response?

Then you can – if you want to – generate random answers to all but the last which, one would hope, you want to decide for yourself.

Loner uses 2d6 in series, which generates values from 1-1 to 6-6, so 36 possibilities, which may seem low, but prompts usually don’t come in isolation, and you are often rolling on more than one table, to get values like “nervous smuggler” or “disgraced soldier”.  IDK the math, but combining tables ups the total possibilities.

And it’s in these tables that you can customize the game to pretty much any milieu you want.  A “Random Vehicle” table in sci-fi is going to be a lot diff from sword and sorcery. 

This is a snapshot of the tables in Kwaidan.

• ADVENTURE SEEDS
• HAUNTED ARTIFACTS
• MYSTICAL LOCATIONS
• RANDOM EVENTS
• SUPERNATURAL OMENS
• CURSED VILLAGES
• WANDERING SPIRITS
• MYSTERIOUS VISITORS
• RITUALS & CEREMONIES
• FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE
• SHAPESHIFTERS & ILLUSIONS
• SEALED AWAY
• SPIRITUAL BARGAINS
• ECHOES OF THE PAST
• GHOSTLY PROCESSIONS
• SACRED RELICS.
• YOKAI CONFLICTS
• BLOOD TIES & FAMILY CURSES
• NATURAL DISASTERS & OMENS
• THE WORLD BETWEEN
• INSPIRATION TABLES

Spacer doesn’t have an index of tables, but it has, for instance, tables for Stars, Planets, Moons and Asteroids and so on.  Very different from Kwiadan’s tables.

(BTW, “Spells” appearing on the Spacer CS/char sheet appears to be a boo-boo, as that is the only hit on Spells I can find in the rules.)

You can also tweak the character structure a little.  Kwaidan adds Chi, Honor and Corruption to the basic Loner character design.  My (eventual) Norse adaptation will add Wyrd and Ond to the characters, the latter being kind of the Norse “mana”.

I wonder how much of this design concept came out of OOP.  If you step back, it’s like the core rules are the interface, and the various genre modules are the implementations thereof.  You can extend the class beyond the interface, but you have to conform to certain loose base requirements.

The number and nature of those tables is not a hard requirement – Kwaidan has many more tables than Spacer, but then esoteric Japanese folklore is not as speculative as sci-fi, there are certain real-world precedents.

Dirge is fun, and Kwaidan is just dripping, potentially, with atmosphere, but eventually I’m probably going to do a Norse-themed mod. 

Phaseways are a trope I toyed with some years ago, inspired partly by the alien transporter tech in Assignment: Earth and partly by The Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys by Mick Farren.

Essentially, they began in my imagination as an immense web of “warp conduits”, but for individuals, not ships.   The phaseways are Forerunner tech, so the current inhabitants of the galaxy use them, but don’t really understand them.  With the proper tech or psionic ability, a person can “phase” from one destination to another, as easily as stepping through a door.  (Which means the concept is also based on The Lion Game by James H. Schmitz.)

I intended it to be extravagant and unlikely, merely a gimmick that briefly infatuated me.

In the Dirge-iverse, I’m recasting the phaseways as the very aforementioned network of warp conduits, used by Affiliation ships to traverse the galaxy. I’m merging this with the concept of “forking” – the phaseways can be seen as an immense highway network, with “on- and off-ramps” forking off of larger, regional arteries.

“I’m forking off to Alpha Cent tomorrow…”

Even for the most advance Affiliation vessels, navigating the phaseways is a bit like riding a flatboat down a frontier river in the 1700s. There are obstacles and dangers that we are barely aware of and have little hope of understanding. Any Forerunner tech that makes forking safer and faster is highly sought by pretty much everyone – governments, cults, corporations, mad scientists and, of course, adventurers at large. (See what I did there?)

I’ve recreated Dirge’s Loner character card, and then expanded on each entry.

Name:	Dirge Darkrune
Concept:	Intergalactic Ne’er-Do-Well
Skills:	Crack Pistol Shot
	Martial Arts Master *
Frailties:	Socially Clueless
	Skua September
Motive(s):	Fame
	Fortune
Goal(s):	Not Getting Caught
	Getting Rid of Skua
Nemeses:	The Treemutes
	Skua
Gear:	Ring Plaster

Intergalactic Ne’er-Do-Well

Dirge’s homeworld and intermittent base of operations is Bev-Arajh, a shabby, run-down former resort world fallen on hard times.  In its heyday, Bev was the Jewel of the Cosmos, but now is more a cosmic roadside attraction with a reputation for tarnished glitz, grimy neon and shady street corner games of “chance’.  (Think AC before the brush-up in the 80s.)  Bev isn’t some kind of Casablanca, some exotic, neutral port of call.  More like it’s just not worth the effort to anyone with the power to matter.  Not that there’s a lot of crime and/or villainy that needs policing – cool and successful criminals do not come to Bev, and if they happen to be born there, they leave almost as soon as they become aware of that fact.  It may be the generally bland, uninteresting and apathetic nature of the place that makes it an idea hideout for anyone who can withstand the crushing boredom.

Somewhat atypically, Dirge did not make the acquaintance of shady people and questionable places until he’d been off Bev for a few years, chasing the dream of government employment, and then only because he made the unfortunate acquaintance of Skua, as described below.

Crack Pistol Shot

Oddly enough, Dirge is an authentic crack shot, a Trinity-level savant with a handgun.  Due mostly to the fact that there just isn’t a lot to do on Bev that doesn’t cost exorbitant amounts.  A stolen, solar-powered pin-blaster (or plaster) – the Saturday Night Special of the day – can provide hours of diversion, practice and sometimes income.  But the less said about that the better.  They can even stun an opponent in a pinch.  As non-lethal as you can get and still be mildly unpleasant, the proliferation of plasters on Bev led to a duelist culture among the youth and young adults. If you didn’t want to get plastered, you better be fast on the draw.  And Dirge really disliked the post plaster hangover.*

Martial Arts Master

He is not, however, an authentic Master of the Martial Arts.  Rather, he is yet another deluded punter who joined the notorious Black Dragon Fighting Society, founded in the distant past by the near-mythic Count Dante himself!  Needless to say, Dirge would lose a lot more fistfights if it weren’t for Skua.

Socially Clueless

As a young, aspiring bureaucrat and politician, Dirge wasn’t all that socially awkward, more like trying too hard to be cool, and a little too narcissistic to read subtle social cues.  He came to feel that he needed an edge to get ahead in the Skein, the vast tangle of governmental entities that somehow allowed the Affiliated Worlds to live and trade in relative peace.  (“Affiliated Worlds”, because “Allied Worlds” was just a step too far.). Unfortunately, the solution that found him only made things worse.  Social situations become intolerable when you might become a raging space pirate at any moment.

Skua

In his search for that edge, Dirge ran afoul of rogue tech.  A pirate-themed personality analog chip that was supposed to help him be more daring and assertive ended up moving in beside his native consciousness and setting up business.  Skua September, as it calls itself, usually manifests in those moments when Dirge’s normal clueless bravado falters, such as when he’s confronted with a beautiful woman or a dire threat.  Then Skua emerges, and becomes the very incarnation of Blackbeard himself.  But Skua is also highly erratic and unreliable.  It can’t be depended on to pull Dirge out of a tight spot on-demand, as it were.  Sometimes it just doesn’t give a fuck.  It’s a construct, basically an autonomous trope, and doesn’t think like we do.

Fame and Fortune

Do a character’s motivations always have to complex or inscrutable?  Financial security and social recognition have motivated humankind since its origins.  Dirge grew up in poverty, and managed to turn a potential disaster into a career of sorts.  Not the one he initially wanted, but certainly one that is way more exciting and profitable than driving a desk.

Not Getting Caught

As with the Stainless Steel Rat, it’s not just not getting caught, it’s avoiding capture with panache.  Skua has a big Robin Hood complex, and Dirge sometimes finds it hard to keep money in the bank.  While he lives comfortably, his alter ego’s profligate charity makes it necessary to seek income more often than he’d like.

Getting Rid of Skua

As implied above, living with a space pirate in your head can be a bit of a detriment to an early, comfortable and secure retirement.  While Dirge has developed something like affection for the construct, the fact remains that, like early AI, it is not sentient, merely capable of mimicking sentience.  Therefore, it cannot truly learn or grow, and so remains immature and virtually feral.  It has, sadly, outlived its usefulness, and Dirge knows he needs to be shed of it.

The Treemutes

Treemutes are a species of genetically engineered lifeforms that resemble trees the way Jame Arness resembled a carrot in The Thing From Another World.  They are somewhat more willowy than The Thing – see what I did there? – but no less lethal and grumpy.  They appear like a somewhat smaller and leafier Groot, with long, highly flexible willow whips sprouting from their upper bodies and backs.  While these thorn-studded whips are fast and dangerous, the creatures cover ground with all the speed of a gouty Tree Ent, and so are relatively easy to evade in close encounters.  Dirge incurred their racial enmity during a particularly risky raid on Old Folks ruins.

They are the Daleks of Dirge’s story.

Skua

Honestly, there are times when the Captain is a greater threat to Dirge than the Treemutes.

Ring Plaster

One of Dirge’s somewhat unique pieces of gear is his ring plaster, a large, somewhat gaudy-looking ring that is in fact a kind of plaster derringer.  Like most plasters, it can stun, and seems  to recharge itself from any ambient electromagnetic source – sunlight, radio emissions, heat, etc.  However, it is difficult to aim at any distance, and gives no indication of it’s current charge.  Dirge has estimated that, at any given time, he has 7-12 shots.  It is an artifact of Old Folks tech, and no one really knows how it works.

Notes

The Elder Peoples

The Elder Peoples – or, in the vernacular, the Old Folks or Codgers – are the highly advanced races that have populated the galaxy on and off over billions of years.  There were several epochs or waves of Old Folks, and the galaxy is littered with their cast off late-night infomercial appliances.  Most are simply more sophisticated versions of “Whippersnapper” or Younger Peoples’ tech, performing relatively mundane functions in weird and amazing ways, like quantum laser pruning shears or personal force-field umbrellas.  Occasionally something actually worthwhile surfaces, like a sentient, telepathic universal healing module, or an ultra-miniature power source.  Sometimes, people stumble on an Old Folks’ weapon.  Whole solar systems have been know to wink out of existence shortly after the announcement of such a discovery.  Much more common, but still rare to the average citizen, are body-weapons like ring plasters and thumb lances.

Thumb Lances

Thumb lances are a type of Old Folks device that might be a tool or weapon.  In general, it is a featureless metal cylinder approximately 2-3cm in diameter and 10-12cm long.  It responds to the thoughts of the holder, and will extend a needle or lance of indestructible metal using molecular nanoextrusion, the length of the lance conforming to the holder’s thoughts, but rarely exceeding two meters.  Given enough force, the lance can theoretically pierce any substance known to the Younger Folks, but such requirements limit its use by average humanoids. The negligible weight of the “miracle metal” makes it nearly useless as a club, so the debate continues as to its original purpose.  It could be a dueling weapon, a fruit skewer or a tool for spearing trash on the ground.

The term thumb lance refers to the impression of the lance springing from the thumb when held by a standard humanoid.