GameHeIsNotPlanningToRun
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[edit] Game He Is Not Planning to Run
A tabletop campaign game that will not happen. Specifically, it will not happen after Santo's Glorantha game ends, when Matt M. is left to contemplate a vast and terrible vista of Sunday afternoons without Rasoi.
This is the page where large-scale, non-secret things about the campaign will accumulate. Since this campaign will never be run, it's irrelevant to note that everything written here is preliminary and subject to change; that fact is nonetheless noted. I'm especially short of names for things.
Type: Tabletop, Campaign
Genre: space opera, tiny bit of grittiness, certain amount of noonah
System: maybe a tricked-out version of proto-MOSSTIL, i.e. the "trait system"
Date: never!
GM: Matt Mitchell
[edit] Setting
GHINPtR takes place in a solar system with two inhabited planets (one substantially less populated than the other), in which no feasible means of interstellar travel has been discovered. There are two fully sentient races: humans, who originated elsewhere, and Shades, who didn't.
[edit] Celestial Bodies and Other Habitations
The main habitable planet is called Earth in most human and Shade languages. It is the second planet in orbit around the Sun, a yellow-white star; it itself is watery (as much so as Real-World Earth) and warm enough to make life at its equator challenging. At present it is very thickly settled by both humans and Shades; its landmasses are divided into about 80 nations (compare to Real-World Earth's 200ish), but in practice they function as states within a well-organized planetary government called the Earth Union.
Also inhabited, though much more sparsely, is the third planet, called Arc of Storms. (That's a Shade name; to long-ago Shade astronomers, the planet's transit through the night sky was somehow astrologically associated with big storms.) Colder and more oceanic than Earth, Arc of Storms is a planet of diverse colonies. There's a loose confederation of its major nations, but generally individual countries on Arc of Storms are much more independent.
The other planets in the solar system are all too poisonous, cold, or atmosphere-less for feasible long-term habitation, though there are a number of scientific bases on them--as well as on their moons, on various asteroids, in orbit of this or that planet, etc. The one exception is a dwarf planet, Nightstar, that's currently near the perihelion of a very long elliptical orbit; it's home to a small colony, mostly Shades.
[edit] Race: Humans
Humans are hairy, warm-blooded, endoskeletal, omnivorous (but also photosynthetic) bipeds, with skin ranging in color from red-brown to purple to cobalt blue to blue-black. As far as anyone can tell, humans were introduced to an almost abiotic Earth--along with about a million other species of living creature--a couple of thousand years ago. They have several close relatives, although the human species is set apart by its intelligence. A couple of other human characteristics are uncommon (though not unheard of) among Earth primates--e.g., forked chemoreceptor-laden tongues, the cyanobacteria that add a greenish-blue tint to human skin, some immune system characteristics that give humans an impressive hardiness and longevity--and are now thought to have been engineered by whoever introduced the race to Earth.
[edit] Race: Shades
Shades are Earth's native sentient species, though the ecosystem that created them no longer exists. The most distinct thing about them, physiologically, is that they have a dramatic two-stage life cycle: a larval (or "playable as PC") phase and an adult/breeding/producing phase. Though Shades are vastly more likely to be genetically engineered into something different from the norm, that two-stage thing has a lot of cultural and pragmatic staying power.
[edit] Larval Stage
Typical larval Shades are pale, boneless, tentacled creatures--they look a little like squids or octopuses, and evolved from something grossly quite similar. Their brains, mouths, viscera, etc.--as well as several of their eyes--are housed in long (~2 feet) narrow trunklike heads. At one end of a larva's head are three powerful tentacles (~3 feet long) that are largely used for locomotion. At the other end are three smaller tentacles (~1.5 feet long) that are mainly used for grasping, holding, and some object manipulation. (One of these tentacles has a powerful cluster of photophores near its tip.) As well, there are a whooooole bunch of much much smaller tentacles growing down one side of the trunk; some of these are used for delicate manipulation, and some are used for ground locomotion. Shades evolved from sea creatures by way of arboreal hunters and grazers--their bodies are shaped to navigate dense jungle in the cool darkness of dusk and night.
More eyes are nestled in the crotches between major tentacles--these guys have a lot of eyes. (Per a suggestion from Katie, maybe they have inflatable pouches that fill with lighter-than-air gas? Not enough to fly, but enough to make getting their boneless asses around a lot easier.)
A Shade generally spends about 30 years in larval form. Medical intervention can easily prolong that period, almost indefinitely; hanging on to childhood in this fashion has been a medical option for ages and ages, though it'll always be stigmatized by some.
[edit] Adult Stage
A Shade's transition to adulthood is a critical, dangerous time, requiring a great deal of preparation. This is because a trained Shade--and Shades without training on this matter are almost unheard of--has intimate, conscious control over its physical transformation.
The "natural," default, easiest-to-develop form is sessile, sturdy (sort of barnacle-like), possessed of an open-ended lifespan, and capable of (hermaphroditic) reproduction. In fact, most adults have those characteristics--but they differ substantially in other ways. It's most common to develop one's body (and brain) in ways that reflect one's vocation or professional role . . .
[edit] Communication, Technology, Psychology, Culture, Blah Blah Blah
[edit] Communication
Shades do not communicate primarily by sound. Thanks to the human presence on Earth, a number of adult Shades have human-type ears and even vocal systems (and might choose to produce larvae with similar adaptations); in general, though, Shades hear vibration through organs in their skin. Their hearing's not nearly as fine-tuned as humans', and they have no way to make vocal sounds of their own.
Rather, they communicate using the chromatophores on their skin--they can produce fast-changing patterns in black, brown, and red. A larva's light-producing tentacle is also flashed for communication, most Shade languages don't use that tentacle for any complex messages--it's largely just for "shouting."
[edit] Technology
Shades are their own greatest invention: the modern
[edit] really rough shade psych/culture notes
- larva-hood associations: freedom to move, not being in charge, obligation to serve, physical and martial action, ticking clock
- adulthood associations: social/political power (freedom to make decisions), obligation to produce, sexuality, rest, non-inevitable change and death
- transition period: heady, manic, but introspective; studying, thinking very hard, last hurrah of the rough-and-tumble pleasures of childhood, most irrevocable and important decision of life, extremely challenging to get transition exactly right
- probably some sort of "transition colleges," monastery-like places where Shades do their thing; different Shade cultures do different things around this idea
- given the reason why they evacuated Earth, there's probably a huge cultural emphasis on caution, monitoring, education re transition--even more so than is practically necessary
- timid-then-pouncing rather than finding-and-grabbing? ancestors probably quite similar though to humans' primate ancestors in terms of ecological niche
- ramifications of being even more primarily visual than humans?
