The R-3 system is completely at the mercy of its neighbours. It absolutely requires imports to avoid rapid degeneration and must be prepared to either fight for those im- ports, pay far too much for them, or fail. At R-3 a system is desperate.
r-4 no resources
R-4 systems have nothing. It is so very unlikely that a system will have absolutely no resources that it demands an extraordinary explanation. Who swept this system clean? Using what technology? Or is it devoid of minerals for natural reasons—perhaps this region of space is somehow brand new, and this is a first generation star presenting no opportunity for heavier metal production. If it was swept clean, why?
Why does a culture exist here at all? If it has positive values for technology and/or environment, what does that mean? How is the technology sustained—or is it?
Other Kinds of Clusters
The cluster creation system can be extended to other uses, perhaps in other games. It can construct fantasy city-states and their trade routes. It can con- struct political parties and their allegiances. All you need to do to make that work is to redefine the core three statistics of the cluster’s nodes. Consider the pos- sibilities of:
Magic Order Liberté Weather Science Warfare Compassion Égalité Barbarians Sorcery Trade Economics Fraternité Priesthood Sanity
examples
This cluster connects six systems, one of which is capable of FTL travel. Does it rent ships? Sell them? Or just let you book passage? The most resource-rich system in the cluster is Old Glory—how does it get taken advantage of?
Gaetan T0 E2 R0 Heinlein’s Folly T0 E-3 R0 Cobblestone T2 E-2 R0 Destiny’s Moorng T-2 E-1 R1 Bonaparte T-1 E1 R0 Old Glory T-2 E2 R2 No planets left Every man for himself Something big happened here
Too comfortable for progress The king likes roses Lush cultivated jungles
Be careful what you think You will never leave Everlasting youth Might as well live in space
We export pilots
Every man by his own labour
Best guns in the cluster Honour and territory All that static (stellar wind)
Thinks life started here Moving to the moon Hide our scars
There are other ways to represent the links between systems within a cluster: the line is handy for the generation process, and looks cool, but it may be desirable for some to maintain the links but represent them in another way graphically. This sample cluster, for example, could also be diagrammed more this way:
Gaetan T0 E2 R0 Heinlein’s Folly T0 E-3 R0 Cobblestone T2 E-2 R0 Destiny’s Moorng T-2 E-1 R1 Old Glory T-2 E2 R2 Bonaparte T-1 E1 R0
To demonstrate the flexibility of interpretation, here are four distinct stories for the same system statistics (T2 E-2 R0) as above in Cobblestone, as told by each of the authors.
diocese
T2 E-2 R0
Diocese has been greater than this. In fact, this system bears evidence of no fewer than seven distinct Collapses. In the course of this long oscillating history much of the system resources have been spent, but in their place is the detritus of ten thou- sand years of culture exploring and exploiting space before inevitably failing from war, famine, plague, or just plain hubris. The primary world of the system sits well inside the biozone of its brilliant blue-white star (a star that makes naked exposure on the surface of the world lethal), and the atmosphere is full of irritants and carcinogens. No one goes outside any more except the farmers, and they only go out at night or in spe- cial suits. Mineral exploration is as likely to turn up complete and partially functional ancient technology as simple ores, and so there is a technical branch of archaeology (closer to mining than any form of academic research) that goes on throughout the sys- tem. Find an old T3 station out there in the deep black and you could strike it rich.
It doesn’t seem likely that Diocese will get another chance. The culture here has recently recovered the capacity to slip and uses it regularly, but the next time this place collapses it will likely be the last time.
Diocese has the distinction of being very near some galactic core, and its night sky is more brightly (and certainly more colourfully) lit than any other system’s days.
• On our last legs • Lethal actinic glare • Applied archaeology
flicker
T2 E-2 R0
The single planet in this system is a gas giant, Garamond, in a close orbit, and around it spin a dozen moons. The largest of those moons, Flicker, has an atmosphere, which means that it keeps the heat it gets when it is on the sunward side of Garamond. But nobody lives on Flicker. Instead, the population resides in one of the dozen stations that orbit Flicker, orbit Garamond, or are based on one of the vacuum moons.
Flicker should be habitable, and many stations have ambitions for settling it first. The atmosphere is breathable, the water from the moon nourishes all those in the
system. But the corrosive spores in the atmosphere accumulate in the lungs, and are almost always fatal. Rarely, radiation can save individuals, but nothing has proved effective on the moon itself. And so the fish swim freely, relatively undisturbed, and Flicker continues its silent existence.
Each station at Garamond is autonomous, administering its own laws and gov- ernment. Interests of the system are determined by a board of representatives, but the only common interest is in keeping the system clear, except around Garamond. Both slipknots are unregulated, and will stay that way. Four stations have active shipyards, and these ships feed the cluster.
• All life is in orbit
• Spores have taken our world • Each station for itself
patience
T2 E-2 R0
All of the planets are barren here, except for one. Patience.
This planet doesn’t have a breathable air, at least by humans. It’s mostly hydrogen sulfide.
A native micro-organism lives in the water, however, and so the colonists have established massive granular sludge beds that create methane gas from organic efflu- ent. The methane is used to produce electricity in abundance with plenty to spare for breaking water down into something breathable.
A perfect cycle.
There is danger in the seas, however, as the CO2-saturated water forms a danger-
ous layer over pressurized solutions of water and gas—a lot like a bottle of soda. The deepest waters have trapped enormous amounts of gas at the bottom: the water’s dark depths are a time bomb. Any disturbance of the water bed could have an explosive effect.
Patience’s population is thriving, and self-sufficient, with guaranteed jobs at the methane mills, if you want one.
Electricity runs everything here, with no need to waste the precious atomic ma- terials. They are needed for the spaceships which can finally make it to other worlds, looking for some place more hospitable.
• The government knows something the population doesn’t • Newly exploring other systems with government ships • Go back to sleep; it’s just the ocean exploding
bundang
T2 E-2 R0
The settlers of Bundang received false information about this system. Whether this fault stems from political maneuvering or technological malfunctions remains unclear. The settlers expected to find a lush world with a pure atmosphere and multiple exploit- able resources.
The resources are there but Bundang isn’t. Not exactly. Bundang once might have been a complete planet but it is now a ring of varying sized asteroids orbiting around a temperate star. Through a quirk of space, the destruction of the planet of Bundang Proper allowed a handful of planetoids to retain a wisp of atmosphere and freed up billions of tons of heavy metals—essential to building and maintaining slipships.
Bundang Slipstream Shipyards runs a brisk business, pumping out ships to the cluster and helping the population import food and necessities.
Due to the hazardous nature of the planetoids, population control is essential and the planetoids have reached their maximum density. Robots run many of the factories and the population is stringently controlled. Attempts to colonize the smaller asteroids have met with minimal success and now most youth who aren’t the best and brightest are shipped out-of-system to live in the rest of the cluster. Exiled Bundangans resent their home system and now many of the emigrants from Bundang resent the ones cho- sen to stay. The entire cluster seems to be splitting along factional lines and the power
balance is in constant flux.
As long as the heavy metals remain and the atmospheric filters continue to func- tion Bundang will continue to prosper, and likely continue to rile up the cluster.
• Easy exploitable heavy metals. • A finite amount of inhospitable space. • Stirring up the cluster for profit and revenge.
3. characters
Rebekah’s hand hovered over the keyboard, looking one last time at the code she had banged out in the past hour. It would work. It had to work. The mass that had ejected into the slipknot would doom six billion souls in a little over four months’ time, as it shifted the barycenter of the whole system, throwing off all the habitable orbits forever. Her shipmates had the locals convinced they could just retrofit a bunch of in-system min- ing vessels and rescue everyone, but it would never be fast enough. She had to use the Old One’s tech to reverse what it had already done. Only she had the knowledge to untangle the astromechanics, the quantum en- tanglement gravitic topology—she knew them better than anyone else. She’d skulked around the edges of academia and shoehorned her way into the Syndicate so that she could learn about the Old Ones and their remaining technologies. This one, she was sure, would pull the mass out of the system’s center and disperse it into the slipstream. She’d get it right, this time. Her hand dropped to the keyboard, stopped, caressing EXECUTE. And then her index finger pressed down that last critical centimeter, as she drew in her breath…
Creating a character uses a process that creates significant interaction in each others’ stories. No Diaspora game begins, “You all meet in a space bar,”—how all the charac- ters know each other and even what dirty secrets they share will all be considered as part of character creation. By this stage you may already have selected a referee from your group to run the game. That’s cool and natural. Resist, however, the temptation for the referee to not make a character. There are several rewards to the inclusion of the referee in this process.
who do not necessarily know each other except as a “friend of a friend” and this is cool.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, it creates the opportunity for players to change roles as the campaign progresses—if a player has a story in mind and an urge to referee a game to trigger that story, it’s a great deal of fun if the prior referee can grab his character and join a new game in a familiar story line. In fact, you might find that the process creates referees out of players that normally would never be interested, and having all the tools available to accommodate them is awesome. Your sessions don’t need to involve all the characters you generate (in fact it can sometimes be a bad move for the referee to run both a character and the game at the same time—we prefer to avoid it), but you can’t go too far wrong by anticipating the possibility and making sure everyone has a character who is organic to the cluster and the group.
Character creation is ideally done as part of the first session: characters develop naturally out of the system development, and the process of making characters in turn elaborates crucial details about the cluster.
Characters are composed of four mechanical elements: their Aspects, their Skills, their Stunts, and their stress tracks (Health, Composure, and Wealth). Aspects are short, evocative statements that describe the character in ways that can be used mechanically both for and against the character as well as being points at which the referee can sug- gest actions to players for their characters. Skills are the basic abilities of the character, chosen from a list provided later in this section, and used mechanically to add to the basic roll during any conflict in which the Skill is relevant. Stunts are new rules that apply to the character. Stress tracks are indications of how stressed the character is physically, mentally, and financially. Aspects derive from the character’s story. Skills and Stunts are selected after the story is constructed. Stress tracks have a basic rating modified by some Skills and Stunts.