Space BRP: Fractured Hopes

[Trifletraxor]

Originally Posted by Charles Green

Fractured Hopes is a space fantasy book for BRP. It's in the early stages of composition, and should be ready some time in 2008.

Tell us more! Is it you who is writing it? For Chaosium or on license? Is it a setting book or more of a space supplement book?

SGL.

[Charles Green]

The design goal for Fractured Hopes was to develop an exciting setting in which nearly every option available in the Basic book was not only available, but made logical sense. It should support a wide variety of player concepts. Basically, anything you can construct with the new rules has a place in the world.

The setting itself is largely a pulp space opera, on a small scale. During a war between a machine race and bio-tech aliens, the world on which humanity lived was shattered, broken into thousands of large chunks of rock which float through empty space.

Players will have access to a ship designed to travel between fragments, looking for loot, helping refugees or battling killer robots. I'm including a vehicle design and combat system to account for these ships. It will be on the light side of rule crunch, aiming more towards cool scenes and stunts over realism and calculations.

I'm writing the text, and Jeff Preston and Paul Baker (both of whom contributed art for Gods of Law) will be handling interior art and possibly the cover. This is not a license; it will be published by Chaosium.

[AikiGhost]

Sort of like a Pulp "Space 1999" meets Flash Gordon where you have evil robots instead of ming the merciless?

Sounds like a lot of fun to me

[Trifletraxor]

Yihaa!! More stuff for BRP (and the news module)!!
What size will the book be? Plans for follow up books? Will there be any scenarios included? Alien races?

SGL

[Charles Green]

I'm aiming for 60,000 words, maybe a bit more if I need the room. The idea for the book was for it to be more or less self-contained, since it's mostly fluff and little rules (because the rules are on the basic book.)

However, I have some ideas for additional books, and whether or not I do them is largely dependent upon how well the main book does. I'd like to do a campaign in the setting, or perhaps a series of non-linked adventures.

As far as aliens go, the only really "alien" beings are extinct. However, there are remnants of their science in the form of mutants, bio-weapons (like the xenomorph) and something I'm calling RELFs (Rapidly Evolving Life-Forms), which are natural creatures genetically modified to adapt to environments other than their own (so, you might find sky-sharks, space whales, or water-chickens.)

[badcat]

You know Pinnacle is coming out with a fantasy game that has a similar setting early next year? It's called 'Sundered Skies'. It sounds very similar except that it has elves and such, a high fantasy version essentially. I wonder if they would be similar enough to be in direct competition. Pinnacle is putting out some really top-notch if expensive books right now, too.

[Trifletraxor]

Originally Posted by badcat

You know Pinnacle is coming out with a fantasy game that has a similar setting early next year? It's called 'Sundered Skies'. It sounds very similar except that it has elves and such, a high fantasy version essentially. I wonder if they would be similar enough to be in direct competition. Pinnacle is putting out some really top-notch if expensive books right now, too.

But that's not BRP is it? If not, then it's not much of a competition.

SGL.

[Simlasa]

Sounds a bit like Citys In Flight...

Also, there was is/was that animated show on... Cartoon Netword/Nickelodeon/Something... I can't remember the name... where the Earth has been reduced to floating chunks... with huge skyships prowling around and fighting each other.

No elves or dwarves but the 'physics' of the setting are purely fantasy...

In a way it reminds me a bit of the old High Colonies game... though there were not aliens in High Colonies and it was probably 'harder' sf.

[Enpeze]

Originally Posted by Charles Green

The design goal for Fractured Hopes was to develop an exciting setting in which nearly every option available in the Basic book was not only available, but made logical sense. It should support a wide variety of player concepts. Basically, anything you can construct with the new rules has a place in the world.

The setting itself is largely a pulp space opera, on a small scale. During a war between a machine race and bio-tech aliens, the world on which humanity lived was shattered, broken into thousands of large chunks of rock which float through empty space.

Players will have access to a ship designed to travel between fragments, looking for loot, helping refugees or battling killer robots. I'm including a vehicle design and combat system to account for these ships. It will be on the light side of rule crunch, aiming more towards cool scenes and stunts over realism and calculations.

I'm writing the text, and Jeff Preston and Paul Baker (both of whom contributed art for Gods of Law) will be handling interior art and possibly the cover. This is not a license; it will be published by Chaosium.

Sounds interesting. Does humanity still exists? If yes, how did they manage this? And how does the inhabitants of the "earth-shards" survive from a technical point of view? I mean if earth breaks apart then having such junks with survivors on it would be not very plausible. At least not without high tech support. I would be pleased to learn more about it. Thanks.

[Charles Green]

Originally Posted by Enpeze

Sounds interesting. Does humanity still exists? If yes, how did they manage this? And how does the inhabitants of the "earth-shards" survive from a technical point of view? I mean if earth breaks apart then having such junks with survivors on it would be not very plausible. At least not without high tech support. I would be pleased to learn more about it. Thanks.

Well, humanity does still exist. The short answer is that this is a space fantasy setting, not a science fiction setting. Particulars about how people survive really shouldn't be an issue unless it comes up in play. So, they survive through the magic of handwavium.

For the long answer, what I'm working on right now is the fact that each fragment is not just a chunk of rock-its a piece of the previous world, and contains a fragment of the god of the original world. In most fragments, this deity functions in it original capacity, providing the human inhabitants what they need to survive (air, water, food and shelter). This is also the place for magic users and sorcerers in the setting; they intercede with this spirit on behalf of the people.

In some fragments, the spirit left behind has become bitter and twisted, leaving large sections of the world uninhabitable, which come out as rumors of "haunted" fragments. Healing these fragments of their torment will allow adventurers to recapture land and set up bases and petty kingdoms, possibly even forging them into a mighty empire to push back the killer robot regime.