De Havikmannen, bounty hunters working out of the Nieuw-België space station, have been spent to GLX-α3 to hunt down the source of numerous violent uprisings among the worker-bots in Sector A10F. Who is behind the robots running amok and why are they doing it? Also just generally a discussion of (partial) return to old formats.

SPAAACE! [just playing around with GIMP to try out some new things]

[NOTE + DESIGN] Wat is dit?

De Havikmannen is a bit of an experiment to fill in a gap of time. Due to a huuuuge stack of things going on IRL, I am devoid of any backlog to post for my solo RPG stuff (and rarely have time to sit down and play out a full session in my ongoing campaigns and might not for a week or two). That combined with wanting to play around with some tools and ideas that have been in the back of my mind for a long time, I thought it might be nice to develop a standalone series using some ready-made mid-20th century science fiction tropes.

Then I can focus on a few old-and-new concepts for this blog.

GAME CONCEPTS

Game features will include:

  • Faster notation where game mechanics will be in bullet-point lists (like this), "game master" elements will be in italics, dialogue will be written in bursts and trimmed down, and other player-facing elements will be given in short paragraphs.
  • Notation will be very "in-line" with frequent bounces between creating the scenes ([PLAY]) and design/meta ([DESIGN]) and personal notes/interjections ([NOTE]). This will match my earliest style of solo roleplaying notes when I would record in an ever longer text document (originally in Google Docs).
  • Return to Tricube Tales (in this case, "Interstellar Bounty Hunters" as the one-sheet) though a fairly modified use of Tricube Tales Solo. Image oracles will be heavily used, via my new "in alpha" tool.
  • Using aspects of a yes/no oracle I've had in the back of my mind for a long time. It will be a work in progress and possibly get changed hugely between sessions or even individual rolls.
  • Adventures will use something like a {3-5} Locations, {4-6 + Background} Characters, {1} Goal, {1-2} Problems type, {1-3} Features set-up. This will wibble and wobble. Like a classic sci-fi | genre show where an entire planet is from four different sets and four speaking roles + background characters.
  • It will give me a chance to play at using Dutch/Nederlands since I need more practice, though the bulk of the page will be in English/Engels.
  • Besides the stuff from Tricube Tales itself, and the oracle below, I will almost definitely bring back Random Realities to do all the rest I need. That should be plenty.

SETTING CONCEPTS

Setting ideas include:

  • Galaxy will be divided up into 100s of sectors noted by a hexadecimal "grid" of some sort. Some are uncontrolled. A few are now empty after the war. Some are joined by a larger block.
  • The space station Nieuw-België is the governing center Sectors A10F, A11F, and A00F. No, I don't know how they fit together, yet. All three are relatively at the "edge" of the human's controlled "Slice" of the galaxy.
  • It is currently the 32nd Century. In the 28th century a huge number of planets were terraformed In the Universal Earth Project [Pax UE]. Pax UE broke down a century later and then for two centuries (30th and 31st), the Corporation War destroyed a lot of infrastructure. Non-aligned groups pushed further out from the central Slice while other Sectors never recovered.
  • Though the CorpWar has large ended, it is still fairly present in people's minds and especially their technology. In fact, it is technically still going on in some parts of the Slice.
  • A lot of robots, cyborgs, mutants, new-Humans, cybernetically-enhanced humans, and human-animal hybrids are available. Some aliens. I'll figure out a few species as I go.
  • The flavor is vaguely retro-future with heavy references to the 1950s and 1960s.
  • Planets will stick to the classic though slightly unrealistic trope of being "of one type" throughout: ice planets, desert planets, planets covered in mono-cities. I will not be consistent.
  • Some version of FTL which I will just call "The Lamark Drive" [TLD] will be used. I will, at first, not work on any details.
  • There will be a sense of stuff running down in the aftermath of the Corp War. The Sectors remain distrustful of one another.
  • The galaxy will probably be relatively densely populated. Stuff going on across a variety of places [not hundreds of lightyears between habitable planets, etc].
  • There will be asteroid belts and moons and strange gas clouds. Dang it.

The overarching game world for this will be "The Slice" representing a future where around 1/3 of the Milky Way Galaxy has been mapped though the human-containing bits will probably be something like....1/3 of that 1/3. Still, human egos and all that.

CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Finally, Character ideas include:

  • Willem Havik: A Brawny Pilot who is a Human-Hawk Hybrid a bit Trapped By His Own Personal Code.
  • Natum Five: A Brainy Bounty-Bot who is a Walking-Research Lab but who is Too Bound By His Own Programming.
  • Roos Ellim: An Agile Scout with Super-Human Senses but is Trigger Happy.
  • [as of yet currently undisclosed commander/handler type]

[NOTE + DESIGN] Testing a New Oracle

Way back when (I want to say June 2024, give or take), back when this blog was started in its original form to be a note-keeping device for my The Bloody Hands campaign, I mentioned working on new oracle based on I Ching with tweaks. The plan, then, had been to use The Bloody Hands to test it. It never happened.

However, these 2ish years later, it could still be fun to test.

THE BASICS ARE PRETTY STANDARD:

  • Roll three dice (one, at least, of a different color, or at least somehow designated as the SWING DIE)
  • Even = Yes. Odd = No.
  • Majority of Yes = Yes. Majority of No = No.
  • IF the SWING DIE is 3|4 and agrees with the overall (e.g., Even and Evens are Majority) then AND... but disagrees = BUT...

Here is where it starts to invoke more I Ching and get more complicated:

  • If ALL THREE DICE MATCH, then the state of the answer is in transition. This is NOT the same as a "But...," it merely indicates that the answer is not stable.
  • Three Yes = "Yes, but will transition to No." Etc.

[NOTE: In traditional I Ching, the "yes/no" is actually more about the rhythm and flow of Yin and Yang. Also, in the more well known versions of the coin-flip method, the three-match designates that it is the opposite but transitioning (3 "heads" = the same result as "tails" but becoming "heads"). I'm taking some liberties and a half, here.]

Finally, once I get a good feel for this, I will start integrating the building of Tri-Grams and Hexagrams. The idea is to build up a series of lines, bottom up, and then you read the top three for one element and the top six for the other. In principle, this means you would start each session by building up an initial hexagram which sets some starting elements.

Tri-Grams will be used to find general states of things, a quick look.

Hexagrams will be used to answer twists and complex questions.

This aspect will require some thought and is far beyond the scope of this post, but I will play with the best way to note it and develop it as I got. For simplicity of text, I will probably use something like...

  • -------
  • -- --
  • -- x --
  • ---o---

Then append a & or ! or a yes or but notation. For instance, getting a "Yes, But..." would look like:

  • --------!

[NOTE + DESIGN] Dice to Determine Attribute Check

I've used the traditional Tricube Tales Solo card deck and I've used modified versions, but for this campaign I am going to be using a new dice version that involves two dice:

FIRST DIE (Trait):

  1. Agile
  2. Brawny
  3. Crafty
  4. Agile + Brawny
  5. Brawny + Crafty
  6. Agile + Crafty

This is taken from Tricube Tales Micro Edition. Credit to Richard Woolcock for this table.

Note that this will have a fair number of two-Attribute checks. I like using multiple Attributes in this regard because it helps to add flavor. A Brawny test is one requiring just strength or physical power. A Brawny + Crafty test can be solved through either, and plays out differently.

There will then a be a SECOND DICE (Difficulty):

  1. Easy
  2. Standard
  3. Standard
  4. Standard
  5. Standard
  6. Hard

This gives a decent swing. Things that should be harder could rolled at "Advantage" or with a +2. Opposite for things that should be easier.

Of course you could match a similar distribution as the cards and just use {Agile | Brawny | Crafty} on a d3 with {Easy | Normal | Hard} and even roll 2d3 on the first to generate dual attributes [which sometimes match].

The above just matches what I have traditionally liked to see in distribution.

For those that require multiple Effort, I am going to be just playing that more by ear, but I have some ideas.