5—Repair
4—Bureaucracy, Intimidation 3—Tactics, Charm, Resolve
2—Oratory, Survival, Science, Vehicle
1—Agility, Profession: Farmer, Alertness, Profession: Teacher, Stamina
Commentary: By making Repair his apex Skill, Benny’s player makes it clear that he is going to be Mr. Fix-It. The player knew that when he wrote “Natural me- chanic” as an Aspect, which in some contexts will enhance this top Skill. Resolve at 3 and Stamina at 1 are going to impact Benny’s relevant stress tracks. Most strik- ing of all is the player’s choice not to have any space Skills or any combat Skills. Benny is not going to be useful in these (relatively common) circumstances, which is also making it clear how he’s going to function during play. Benny is a social
character: Bureaucracy, Charm, Oratory are all useful in social conflicts. Intimida- tion and Tactics will also be useful in combat, being used to put Aspects on zones or on other combatants; Benny isn’t going to be attacking directly, but he is still far from helpless.
stress tracks
Health: OOO O (base three plus one for Stamina) Composure: OOO OO (base three plus two for Resolve) Wealth: OOO (base three, and no Assets Skill to improve it)
stunts
Programmable: once per session, Benny can use any Skill not already in his pyramid at rank 5 for the rest of the session.
Have a Thing: Benny doesn’t need to breathe, so he effectively always has a pressure suit on.
Commentary: The Programmable Stunt was created by table consensus—we de- cide this is two Stunts worth of capability, and included the proviso that while for any session Benny gets to become an expert at any Skill, it has to be one that he hasn’t chosen to invest in already. Suddenly, the absence of space Skills and combat Skills isn’t an insurmountable hurdle. It may even be that during play con- sensus shifts, and it is the first untrained Skill that Benny uses in a session that be- comes his programming. That could lead to some interesting choices, and maybe some unexpected Consequences. The goal, though, is emphasized by three of the written Aspects, and is again reinforced through the choice of Stunts. Benny be- comes a comprehensible, unique character, and our understanding of the cluster is greatly enriched in the process.
4. play
the diaspora universe
Things were quiet before the Rainbow fell. Slipstream travel was cheap so’s even the backwaters were clawing their way out of the well and any- one could make a buck. Now, though, it’s all the lizards’ game. No more Rainbow ships to be had and the lizards got no interest in seeing Raspu- tin or Brinks stage a comeback. Humans got to stick together now.
Diaspora is not going to provide you with a great deal of setting material. The process
of constructing the setting is part and parcel with game play itself. There are, however, some basic tenets of the Diaspora universe that make it distinct. You are free to alter these as you see fit, of course, but the rules as written assume these things to be true.
Each world in the vast diaspora, of which your cluster is but a fraction, was colo- nized by humans who originally came from Earth. What technology brought them here, when, what’s remembered, what they found when they arrived, and how many worlds are in the diaspora are all questions we will not presume to answer.
Science in Diaspora is the science of the world you live in with a few minor tweaks—a little artistic license to keep the realm diverse. That is not to say that technol- ogy is current—obviously there is room for enormous leaps in technology—but rather that some unlikely branches of technology never quite worked out in the Diaspora universe: faster-than-light (FTL) travel can only occur at the constrained location of
not much of the latter. The only place the rules of science get broken regularly is at the T4 technology point, which is also the point where civilizations destabilize, becoming incomprehensible, collapsing, or disappearing altogether. Human technology can only advance so far.
The use of reaction drives assumes an efficient means of converting matter to energy. Reaction drives use a high-energy reaction of some kind (fission or fusion at lower technologies and perhaps antimatter at higher ones) to power the engines, which convert the reaction mass—the largest part of the volume of any ship is dedicated to reaction mass, which could be anything from water to lead oxide depending on the technology story you want to tell—and push it out the engines. Since this uses up the reaction mass, the safe handling of ships in space involves a careful balance of vari- ables. There are no dogfights, and turning a ship around takes time, consuming mass and adding to the ship’s heat. The laws of thermodynamics still apply, and the greatest problem with doing anything exciting in space remains the efficient dispersal of ac- cumulated heat.
The slipstreams are not well understood. They are passages between stars that may be arbitrarily far apart. In fact, in most cases the systems in a cluster will have no idea where in the sky their neighbours are, let alone how far away that might be. Their con- nection by slipstream is related to something other than distance. The endpoint of each slipstream is in a very sparse position in the system—there is one below and above the plane of the ecliptic for the system, about five astronomical units away (roughly the distance from the sun to Jupiter—say 800 million kilometers), positioned precisely above and below the barycenter of the system.
At T2, spacecraft that can reach this point, can, through application of a relatively small device, transit through this point along any connected slipstream in effectively zero time, accreting substantial heat along the way. At this level of technology the ves- sel must approach the slipstream access point with some precision, say within a few hundred thousand kilometers. Perhaps the slipstream drive itself is at least partially a detector of the point.
At T3, a ship properly equipped can transit the slipstream without being precisely at the end point—they can instead be anywhere in a cone with the base a million kilo- meters wide opposite the barycenter and a million kilometers long. The heat gathered inside the slipstream at this technology is much less predictable, however, and can even cause damage to the ship.
Sometimes, for reasons you can decide for yourself, new slipstreams appear. This might happen once a century; perhaps not even that often. Sometimes they connect a single new system to the cluster and sometimes they connect two clusters at the “source node.” Sometimes they are permanent and sometimes they are not. At T4, cul- tures that have dedicated themselves to solving the problem of FTL travel may be able to create or destroy slipstreams, but this never works out well.
The systems themselves represent a broad range of habitability, and each permuta- tion presents new story possibilities. Many worlds are economically sustainable (R0+) and possess areas that are comfortable for humans (E0+); many are aware of the pos- sibilities of space travel, but are only beginning to take advantage of it (T0+). (Note that while T0 E0 R0 may be the most common result possible, it still will only appear 1.3%
of the time). Each system establishes its place in the cluster, balancing sustainability, habitability, and progress. Through all of this, the characters, who are created as above- average humans, will have the ability to affect the overall picture significantly, if they so choose. In many cases, even the ability to travel through space is a valuable com- modity, and one that is likely to provide opportunities for discovery and adventure.
Personal weaponry is largely based on kinetic energy application (propellants and bullets) until around T2, when energy weapons become efficient enough to supplant them. The specific descriptions of these weapons can vary dramatically as suits the feel of your cluster—we provide examples that suit us, but we also offer a means to make your own, and all are simple enough that the statistics could be retained while giving the description a complete makeover.
That is the Diaspora universe. Most of the questions you still have about the setting are yours to answer. We provide examples that you can use if you don’t feel like an- swering the questions yourself, but mostly we provide the means to create answers that fit with the above axioms of the setting. Diaspora is very intentionally a toolkit that you can use to create something fun. It doesn’t demand a hundred sessions of play—when you reach the limitations of a scenario, you can re-use your cluster with new characters if you wish, or add a new cluster by linking with a new slipstream, or, best of all, start over with a new cluster and new characters. That first session is fun, so don’t be afraid to go back and do it again.