KILL SIX BILLION MOTHERSHIPS: PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS ON HOW TO HANDLE SPACE KUNG FU

MOSH's combat is designed to be a highly lethal fail state.  Squaring that with a game where players also have magical space kung fu (or combat sleeves) that set them apart from a random NPC with a gun presents some challenges.  With sleeves, I've addressed this issue by giving players better tools in the fail state in exchange for risking permanent death and a panic death spiral that makes combat harder to avoid.

Space kung fu presents a slightly trickier problem but here's a preliminary set of rules (note that I'm assuming the rules on hits and weapon damage released on the MOSH discord are in play -- players have hits and weapon damage is more constrained:

SOME SIMPLE RULES FOR SPACE KUNG FU:

1. Remove all stat bonuses for combat sleeves and the like and let players describe their cybernetic implants however they want.  All the players are similarly powerful.  In the grand scheme of things they're still nobodies: the background ninjas, axe gang mooks, etc., but relative to a random NPC on the street they're tremendously dangerous.  Some NPCs probably warrant reduced hits and stats.
2. Give everyone a single extra hit with HP generated as normal (Marines will have 4, everyone else will have 3).  Unlike a player's other hits, losing this one has no consequences and doesn't entail a roll on the critical hit table.
3. Permit players to defend against ranged attacks with an opposed combat roll and counterattack against any opponent they're aware of and can see.  You could view this as a Jedi deflecting blaster bolts but you could also view it as Jackie Chan making creative use of his environment or a combat sleeve's superior reflexes allowing it to shoot someone popping out from behind cover before they get a shot off.  
4. Abstract weapons and damage a little more; gear really shouldn't matter as much except for certain standout specialist weapons like the smart rifle and combat shotgun or a sword with a legendary pedigree.  
5. Permit combat maneuvers (2 successful combat rolls) 
6. All players have a "style" (it needn't be a formal martial art but you should probably name it like one because space kung fu and give a brief description).  When performing combat maneuvers consistent with their style, players roll 1 of their 2 combat maneuver rolls at advantage.  A player may learn other styles as they would an expert skill  
7. Adjust narrative permissions to reflect more capable characters; they can jump higher, run faster, do ridiculous parkour, etc.  

SCRATCHING THAT K6BD ITCH WITH WORLDBUILDING THROUGH INVENTORY

 

 Combining Kill Six Billion Demons with MOSH has been a persistent itch (and Lancer really isn't my speed).  At a certain point you just have to get writing and worldbuilding through inventories is a great way to start.  Broadly, the goal is a setting with characters who are powerful compared to a random person on the street but dwarfed by real threats.  On some level that's consistent with my approach in my implied meatpunk setting: combat sleeves, bonesuits, and cybermagic set player characters above a random NPC but don't really change the fundamentals of combat against real threats.  There's no particular reason you can't add magic swords and space kung fu to that mix (and human/meat horrors who also know space kung fu is certainly a concept with legs).  But my instinct is that this is a separate setting even if those other elements also stay.   

Probably, space kung fu requires some rules supplements but I aspire to keep it about as light as sleeves and lighter than the GLOG magic hack.  But that's a problem for another post.

So without further ado and with credit to Phlox and deus ex parabola for the sword names:

WHAT DO THEY HAVE IN THEIR POCKETSES?

Naringit, Fourth Lion of the Golden Dome:

1.  God From Ellipses, an elegant tulwar with an oilslick sheen and a cedar scabbard covered in brass charms; its wounds are ideograms that foretell calamities.

2.  Nineteen Broken Seals Treatise on archival-grade pulp-paper; margins carefully annotated in black pen

3.  Quilted impact suit with a cermet breastplate; filled with titan rocsnake down and thousands of fingernail-sized silicon wafers etched with paracausal ideograms; offers excellent protection against both DEWs and paracausal dangers.  

4.  Nice robes (still in the drycleaning bag)

5.  Travel meditation pillow; buckwheat filling

6.  The address to their hotel written on the back of a scrap of paper

7.  All-day subway card decorated with tourist-friendly art

8.  Black nylon duffel bag

9.  Monthly public net terminal subscription 

10.  Half-eaten faux egg salad sandwich in a takeout box

11.  Pine resin (for chewing)

12.  Two pairs of sandals

13.  Gold necklace depicting the Black Abbess

Tirangle, escaped clone nun:

1.  Secondhand OWRE 4300 tapecomp, controller peripheral, and three tapes of bootleg arcade games

2.  Flatpack submachinegun still in its vacuum sealed bag along with three single-use magazines

3.  Good Noodle! gift card (129 kWh on the card)

4.  Secondhand field jacket (standard issue among the forces of the Iron Garden); all insignia removed and small hole in the elbow (badly mended); doesn't match the rest of her outfit

5.  Patch (false firefern frond)

6.  Spacer's utility knife; prying tool is well-used, blade isn't

7.  Zero-gee sleeping bag; rolled tightly

8.  Silver nose piercing (she hasn't got around to getting her nose pierced yet)

9.  One-way OTV ticket (downwell)  

10.  Shopping bag full of fresh vegetables and cleaning supplies; it's her turn in the hostel kitchen

11.  Hairpins (package of 12)

12.  Velcro slippers 

13.  Small foil sachet of hand cream (a free sample)

Ras the Tailor, wandering blade:

1.  None Save Saviors, well-used boarding axe decorated by colorful ribbons; the blackbox cell in the haft drives a highly illegal inertial spike; presently slung over his shoulder
2.  Short barreled Iskra 994 automatic pistol in a travel case.

3.  Batik shirt; stylized geometric flower pattern

4.  Personal inertial compensator concealed in a cloth pouch worn at the waist

5.  13,500 kWh in large-denomination physical tokens

6.  A pocket full of energy bars and instant coffee packets and a plastic cup

7.  Smart sunglasses connected to a portable computer with a coil cord

8.  The receipt from his last night out; folded to fit into his wallet

9.  A nice pair of real leather boots (needs a new pair of laces)

10.  Cannabis infused gum

11.  Military surplus backpack

12.  Illustrated Ten Thousand Arrayed Iron Horrors Style manual 

13.  Well-used sewing kit and a handheld sewing machine

50 PLANET NAMES

 

d50 PLANET NAMES

1. And Then Some
2. Aramida
3. Ashwind
4. Belphegor
5. Broken Oars
6. Creche
7. Contact!
8. Dale
9. Dragonsteeth
10. Dreaming of July
11. Elkwood
12. Failsafe
13. Fins In The Surf
14. Foxhole
15. Gar
16. Gale
17. Giant's Neck
18. Hayek II 
19. Hands Down
20. Iris
21. Juliette 
22. Justice
23. Kallash
24. Kepi 
25. Kilo
26. Libera
27. LVXI
28. Make Haste
29. Mantou 
30. New Marie Byrd Land
31. New Omsk
32. New Wollongong 
33. New Zeeland 
34. Orthanc
35. Oscar
36. Painted Rock
37. Qullasuyu
38. Red Sands
39. Rest At Last
40. Roscoe
41. Saltsea
42. Simla
43. Sunset
44. Tailsitter 
45. Uralia
46. Ushanka
47. Vindication
48. Westward Track
49. Zarephath 
50. Zeal

13 ITEMS IN THE ALIEN'S POCKETS (PART II)

 

THE TINY TYRANT SPECIES: [QUICK HANDS (SYSTEM 0506)] 

As a matter of official policy, the largest TTS polities view their citizens as machines; so one's occupational designation usually follows their creche-name.  Quick Hands is a 'system' that performs administrative auditing tasks and oversees public health projects.  This gives him a degree of autonomy that laborers and clerks generally lack but exposes him to considerable danger.

1.  Juice box (berry-flavored in a plastic-lined cardboard container).  Unopened.  Branding is subdued but the label indicates it was made at an industrial plantation outside a neighboring city-tower.  This is practical food; Quick Hands eats fresh fruit but is careful not to flaunt that fact in public. 

2.  Koenig-Seidel B24 backpack computer.  A copy of TTS computer technology manufactured in human space as a trade good.  Handheld-sized for a human.  It's designed not to reveal any technological developments to TTS polities but humans can apparently make devices like this for a fraction of the price.  

3.  Screw-top plastic jar full of powdered soap.

4.  PPE kit (respirator, face shield, and several sets of gloves.

5.  Child sling (no child in it)

6.  Vitamin supplements (label written in English, Hindi, and several local languages).

7.  Leather document pouch made from recycled Tiny Tyrants (indicates that Quick Hands is an auditor and a symbol of high status).  While people eatin' is frowned upon (as a public health hazard), sanitary recycling of corpses is an important part of life in a city of several tens of millions packed into a space the size of a a few human city blocks.

8.  Plastic bag full of water. 

9.  Elaborate bead-and-string map of the major thoroughfares of the city-tower when strung between the hands just so.  A very efficient way of representing a complex 3d space.

10.  Pamphlets (propaganda, public health advice, and best practices for proper document control)

11.  Belt with several pouches (lightweight nylon).

12.  Ledger stick (also usable as a cudgel)

13.  Ballpoint pen sized for a 4kg Bat Fascist.  The improvements in industrial processes that made this pen possible were licensed from humans but the pen was made locally.  Quick hands prefers pencils but the Health Department switched to pens and its archival unit punishes severely for reports written with improper media. 

8 BANDS FOR YOUR CHARACTERS TO OBSESSIVELY COLLECT PATCHES FROM

 

8 BANDS FOR YOUR CHARACTERS TO OBSESSIVELY COLLECT PATCHES FROM

бо (aka. бытовой отсек, "BO" or "orbital module")
Spacers don't listen to shanties (don't be silly).  But they still need music to focus while doing the plumbing and electrical work that keeps everybody alive and breathing and distract them from the constant ambient noises aboard a spacecraft.  BO often performs over helmet frequencies at shipyards, spaceports, and asteroid mining sites while in spacesuits themselves.  An ambient synthwave concert where everyone including the band is in a spacesuit is definitely an experience.   

Bugalow Deathsquad

A radical anarchist take on corporate subliminal pop music.  Banned in Corp space because it's subversive.  Despised by real revolutionaries because revolution by mind control isn't a revolution at all.  Despite the controversy, the band is only really popular among edgy teenagers.    

EATING THE TREE

Extremist Neo-Shugendo ascetics who have decided to spread their take on the correct path to enlightenment through music.  Despite numerous accusations that their music is a supernaturally-enhanced memetic hazard, they just make a really compelling case for ritual suicide by self-mummification. 

Get Out Of My House.

Music derived from gibbons' territorial marking calls.  A small following among other non-gibbon ape uplifts but it's really a niche genre.  They make some iconic fight songs (at least if you're a gibbon).  

[SKINFLAP]

Canid uplifts are very rare and also don't care for space travel.  They don't have much in the way of common culture.  [SKINFLAP] is a rare exception.  The band advocates a rejection of human (ape, strictly speaking) language among canids.  Have created their own language and begun popularizing it through music.  Banned as subversive as a result.   

Corpse Extruder

28th century retro death metal based on the collection of original Old Earth metal music and reference material in the Neocatholic Church's archives.  Strong focus on historical authenticity and known for their respect for Old Earth traditions such as the Mosh Pit Ritual and use of historically accurate instruments and recording techniques.  Responsible for a revival of certain ancient styles of electric guitar and a lot of modern music using ancient guitars.  Strong ties to the NCT and independent academia; a very respectable band.  

EMAG

The equivalent of the narcocorrido genre for corporate operators.  Set to acoustic guitar and with lyrics lionizing corporate violence.  Sponsored by a number of large security corporations including, most notably PanSec, which views itself as a patron of the arts.

Entity 7

A one-man band made of Meat.  Performed by a single custom-made sleeve/musical horror created by ex Horizon Neurogen engineer Raheem Chen.  Entities 1, 4, 5, and 6 have been retired due to . . . technical issues but the other sleeves still make an appearance when Raheem wants to shake things up.  Great variety of noisemaking abilities and many, many different throats, sacs, and bony protrusions.  While many expected Horizon to shut Raheem down, they have instead embraced his pet project.

  

CARGO CULTS: WARSHIPS AND THE MILITARIZATION OF SPACE

STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS

The People's military planners do not, as a rule, view space (and especially space beyond Low Home Orbit) as a very important theater.  Second-generation manned reconnaissance stations are useful but hardly worth expending enormous resources to protect.  To some extent, this is because most decisionmakers have embraced a singularly bleak approach to nuclear deterrence.  In the face of a catastrophic threat, a defending polity will detonate dozens nuclear bombs buried on the leeward side of mountains.  With yields between 50 and 100 megatons, these bombs would be sufficient to collapse Home's fragile biosphere and starve the entire population.

This grim reality has freed up many resources previously devoted to maintaining a robust ballistic missile-based nuclear deterrent for exploration efforts.  Incidentally, colonizing the other (much nicer) inhabited worlds provides for continuation-of-government (and civilization) in the event of an apocalyptic nuclear war on Home.  

Military activities in space provide a safe way for polities to posture and bluster without unduly threatening their rivals.  Among cultures with rich traditions of solving problems with low(er)-stakes ritual violence, this is an appealing state of affairs.  ISRU platforms and transport ships are expensive targets, and while nobody has pulled the trigger yet, the ability to threaten surface colonies, space infrastructure, and the posturing leading up to an attack are regarded as an important tool.  

Increasingly critical is the ability to carry a nuclear deterrent to Emerald and Sapphire.  While the People's small colonies on those worlds are not big enough yet, allowing continuation-of-government/culture on those worlds is unacceptable.  In the meantime, the People's colonies are critical prestige projects that justify some measure of protection.

All told, there are only nine vessels that can fairly be regarded as dedicated "warships" split between several major polities.  These ships are all broadly similar in performance.  Each mounts a handful of autocannons and carries between 6 and 16 nuclear missiles (this is surplus ordinance shipped into orbit).  These ships are generally on patrol or based on or near one of the Eye's smaller bodies but they steer well-clear of LHO to avoid a sucker punch from a surface-launched antisatellite weapon.

As yet, there has not been a shooting war and the economic boom and optimistic mood triggered by major colonization efforts has reinvigorated cultures exhausted from a decades-long period of brutal conventional warfare and healed some old wounds.   

WARSHIPS

e pi'i Gbi -- the Shining Basin Polity's first warship, named for the 

first Person to set foot on Sapphire shortly before the Cataclysm.   

Shining Basin Polity (SBP): 2 dedicated warships, armed transport, one armed research vessel

Great River Polity (GRP): 2 dedicated warships, one armed research vessel

Western Highlands Coalition (WHC): 1 dedicated warship

Equatorial Valley Polity (EVP): 3 dedicated warships, 2 armed transports

Southern Alliance (SA):  1 dedicated warship, 2 converted HLV boosters, one armed research vessel

 

A WORLDBIULDING POST: CARGO CULTS

 

CARGO CULTS: A HARD SCI-FI SETTING

In a shocking twist, I am writing non-MoSh content on my blog! Cargo Cults is a hard-SF setting/worldbuilding exercise in a setting that's perfectly suited for low-tech space exploration.  Obviously, coming from somebody who's mostly writing for TTRPGs and doing art, this is a setting that's at least somewhat 'playable' as an RPG (though that is not the focus) and that produces interesting art.  

THE LOCAL SYSTEM

Cargo Cults is set in the orbit of a large gas giant called The Eye orbiting in the habitable zone of an F-class star.  The original human settlers terraformed three of the moons in the system before regressing into primitivism.  

HOME:

The smallest inhabited moon in the system, with an orbital period of about 200 hours.  Wracked by tidal forces and covered in towering mountain ranges, Home has a surface gravity of about .5g and a thin oxygen atmosphere with a considerable quantity of trace volcanic gasses and CO2.  Originally settled by humans engineered to survive on a paraterraformed Mars, the lowlands would be marginally habitable for a baseline human (with supplemental oxygen).  Due to long days and nights and aridity, Home experiences 40-degree C temperature swings between noon and midnight. The midlands are demanding even for Homo Sapiens Martinensis, and the highlands require a full pressure suit.  Historically, Home's inhabitants were confined to a single large basin in the Eyeward hemisphere by impassible mountains but technological developments have enabled Home's inhabitants to settle other isolated lowland areas.

INHABITANTS:

The People represent a significant departure from ordinary humanity.  They are covered in thick white body hair and have blue-black skin (coloration is due to a combination of melanin and various transgenic plant-derived pigments such as athrocyanin).  They are well suited to tenuous atmospheres and extreme swings in temperature and maintain a relatively constant bone density in between 1g and microgravity.  Extremely low sex dimorphism and appalling infant mortality rates into the Early Modern period; the original Martian settlers' genetic tweaks assumed that they would have access to modern medicine.  

CULTURE:

The People are a grim bunch defined by a uniquely demanding environment.  The presence of two beautiful blue-green worlds in the night sky has inspired the belief in many cultures that they are a cursed or a damned people.  Funerary cannibalism is common in Southwestern cultures and involuntary human sacrifice persisted in some cultures into the Urbanization Period (voluntary sacrifice persists into the present day).

TECHNOLOGY:

Urbanization Period -- The People developed crude pressure suits along with gunpowder and the printing press.  The early modern period was characterized by small-scale mountaineering expeditions, which discovered several other habitable basins.  Due to the desperate scarcity of fuel and lack of pack animals, early modern polities developed rocket artillery instead of cannons.  The early modern period was characterized by a protracted conflict between several southwestern super-polities and the development of major land improvement projects such as dams and irrigation megaprojects that made large scale urbanization viable.  Most southern cultures were also shaped by clashes between large rural landowner/hunters and urban polities. 

Early Modernity -- Characterized by the development of electricity and the large-scale use of volcanic natural gas in industry and near-constant.  Electric railroads enabled polities to mobilize armies without marching them overland and large-scale military conflicts disrupted smaller-scale ritualized warfare that persisted well into the Urbanization Period.  The tail end of this era was characterized by the development of early liquid-fueled ballistic missiles, semiautomatic firearms, and the radio.  The use of ballistic missiles The first space exploration efforts were launched at the end of this era.  These missions used clusters of ballistic missiles to carry a capsule and a photographer into orbit.  Pilot recovery was at best an even chance but these missions made a compelling case for space travel and validated many critical technologies.  

Cataclysm -- First manned expeditions to other moons begin.  The first missions were one-way trips to Sapphire with a satellite in orbit to enable explorers to relay their messages to Home.  Success rates are low but some explorers survived and made contact with other humans.  Emerald remained out of reach.  Early analog computers developed and liquid fueled ballistic missiles carrying large chemical and conventional warheads are a mature technology.  Major efforts to colonize isolated basins in the anti-Eyeward hemisphere begin to bear fruit thanks to massive high-altitude rail projects.  The first airplanes developed (almost 70 years after the first Person in space).  Short term orbital reconnaissance stations.  Persistent tensions in the Southwest come to a head in three major wars that reduce the global population by almost 30%.  Destruction of major railroad, power, and irrigation infrastructure in missile attacks shifts balance of power to the anti-Eyeward colonies and natural-gas rich Southeastern polities.  Major social reforms but a major technological and economic backslide as a result of famine and small-scale conflicts.   

Present Day -- Major religious reforms unify Southwestern polities for the first time in nearly 300 years but precipitate conflict with ethnic minorities and client states.  Southwestern extended adoptive family structures spread globally into legal analogs to corporations but the balance of power continues to shift East and anti-Eyeward.  Rural elites and low-level ritual violence experience a resurgence but the first nuclear weapons dramatically reduce conflict between large polities and usher in an era of relative peace.  Rebuilt infrastructure and mature electrical generation herald in an age of optimism and relative plenty, at least in larger polities.  First microprocessors developed.  Major space exploration efforts based on the findings of the first explorers of Sapphire begin again after a decades-long hiatus and most major polities maintain permanent settlements on Sapphire and Emerald supplied by nuclear thermal shuttles and ISRU outposts harvesting propellant from minor bodies.  Those non-spacefaring societies begin to experience major social disruption as a result of the People's imported culture and technology.  Conflicts over these two remarkably rich biospheres and their inhabitants simmers but has not boiled over.  Most large states and some powerful non-state actors manage multiple yearly RHLV launches.  The largest polities manage 5-10 RHLV launches per year, enough to support robust orbital ISRU infrastructure, several large stations and OTVs, and a small defensive military presence.