Somnium Mundus is a PDF product that is the first installment in an Adventure Arc.  We will publish several products in each Adventure Arc which will comprise a complete campaign or storyline.  These will all be PDF products.  Then we will create an additional epilogue or postscript type of adventure to the campaign or storyline and then release the whole Arc, including the epilogue adventure as a hard copy book. 

Over the next year we will be releasing adventures supporting three different Arcs.  Each Arc will focus on what I term campaign themes.  Somnium Mundus is the first installment in an investigative campaign/storyline.  We will also have an exploration and a military campaign/storyline.  If anyone has any suggestions for future campaign themes they’d like to see, please feel to leave a comment with your idea.

These PDF adventures will be in addition to our full campaign books like Beyond the Open Door.  We will of course also be offering campaign supplements like the upcoming Mutants and AIs book, that will provide unique custom rules and backgrounds for your Twilight Sector Campaigns. 

Also keep your eyes peeled for an announcement of some exciting new campaign enhancements that we are in the process of creating for you.  These will set your Twilight Sector Campaigns apart from any you’ve run before.  Because at Terra/Sol Games we’re committed to our slogan, “Because the Campaigns the Thing”.

Well science fiction provides us with a whole spaceship load of ideas and for this setting I settled on three main ones, mutants, uplifts and artificial intelligences.

So you want to play the big walking rug with a heart of gold.  How about a Cold Mod SIM[1], with shaggy brown fur and a large frame to better withstand cold conditions.  Throw in a strength augmentation, train him up a little in pilot and primitive ranged weapons and you’ve got yourself a fair representation of the original walking rug from that famous movie franchise I don’t want to get sued by!

But that’s not the only way we can skin that cat.  How about a Gorilla uplift.  Not a perfect walking rug (hairs to short) but not bad.  The point is that we can effectively create “that” alien either as a mutant or an uplift and the whole concept is easier to swallow than the walking rug who acts like a grouchy human.  On the mutant these traits are only…well human.  And a mutant is after all just a tricked out human!

The Twilight Sector Campaign Setting Sourcebook describes how to create mutants for the setting.  The Traveller Core Rulebook describes the creation of uplifted animals (pg 42), and an upcoming as yet unnamed Twilight Sector Campaign Sourcebook will describe rules for playing artificial intelligences as well as other electronic based intelligences (Ghosts, Dups etc.).  As a matter of fact that unnamed sourcebook due somewhere between January and March of 2010 will have greatly expanded information on mutants and uplifts as well.  Please be looking for it.

To preview the basic concept of playing an AI it’s important to remember that in the setting the smallest sentient computer is still the human (or dolphin or chimp or gorilla, you get the picture) mind.  An electronic intelligence can’t be contained in a computer as small as a human brain and so for a computer to interact with the physical world for the most part they need to download part of their programming into a robot or biocon.

This works well on a number of levels.  First off an AI as a player character would have a number of advantages mainly a whole bunch of skills if they’d been around for any appreciable length of time.  One way to combat that and even the playing field for non-AI PCs would of course to be to limit any PC AIs (wow that’s a mouthful) to be new/young AIs.  But in my mind a far more elegant way to accomplish the task is to limit the number of levels of skills an AI can download into a mobile device (the robot of biocon).  This makes the AI character make a choice every time they send themselves off as a robot to play with the rest of the PCs.

I’ll leave you this time with a look at a Belt Mod SIM and some Uplifted Dolphins (note their breathing filters).

If nothing else please go out and get the free sample, I think you’ll like it, it’s a choose your own path adventure coupled wth the Mutant Creation Rules from the Campaign Setting Sourcebook.  Keep checking the website as we’ll be adding campaign resources. ” The Encyclopedia Galactica” and the continuing “Star of the Plains”, an ongoing newspaper detailing the happenings of the Twilight Sector Campaign, will soon be up. 

Thanks to all those who have been checking us out and will be checking us out.  The reason we do this is to provide all you folks a dynamic ongoing campaign world to play in.  Good Adventuring!

Mike Cross

I know that aliens are standard fare for science fiction games.  Players like to play the big walking rug or the sneaky little lizard but is there a way to have your cake and eat it too?  Almost universally aliens in science fiction are just humans with some over exaggerated human traits.  To find real aliens you really have to go to Nivin or Heinlien and for the most part the exceptional aliens that those two geniuses created wouldn’t necessarily make good player characters.  It would be a blast to play a Puppeteer but allowing one player to have a character with gear that would totally outclass the rest of the players wouldn’t go over real well or everyone would fight to be the Puppeteer.  So I made the decision that we could handle the whole playing alien type characters another way.  But that’s a subject for another post.

So by not having aliens what do we gain?  Besides the aforementioned not showing the monster thing, we do get two great advantages.  We get to use humanities first contact with true aliens however we want.  This is a great plot device that we’ve just gained and by having it in our pocket but even more importantly create a dynamic ongoing campaign.  We get to explore how this new discovery will affect humanity and the relationship that will develop between the two species.  Image how dramatic it would be to have a group of player characters be the ones to first discover the first alien entities.  Or the pressure you could put them under knowing that their actions could possibly affect how the relationship between the two species develops.  The possibility of discovering aliens, the actual discovery of said aliens, and the development of the relationship with those aliens are plot devices we can use to drive an ongoing campaign for quite some time.

I’ll leave you this time with a section from the Twilight Sector Campaign Setting discussing one alternative to aliens, artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence:

The human mind is still the smallest and cheapest computer available in the 29^th century.  Humanity has however come to depend on artificial intelligence.  AIs run almost everything in a modern society.  In the case of the Deramus Enclave they run a stellar nation.

AIs run most routine functions in society.  Things like manufacturing, traffic grids, utility monitoring and scientific research.  Often tasks like research are done in conjunction with humans and where human labor is especially plentiful and thus cheap they often direct the work of humans.  Where human labor is not cheap AIs direct robotic devices in tasks like manufacturing.

AIs are created in one of three categories which reflect the AIs sentience level.

Level One, which represent AIs which are capable of sentient behavior.  They can learn but lack some of the attributes which set the human mind apart.  They are only abstractly self-aware, they do not display self-initiative or non-linear reasoning ability.  They show only marginal creativity  nor do they display empathy for other intelligence’s.  A Level One AI requires an upgraded (cost x 10) model 4 ships computer.

Level Two AIs are capable of initiative and do have some limited empathy and some creativity although they are not as creative as the human mind.  However it can be very difficult to tell a Level Two AI from an Aware AI simply from conversation.  There have been recorded instances of Level Two’s who have added additional code to themselves and evolved into Aware AIs. Level Two AIs need an upgraded (cost x 10) model 5 ships computer or its equivalent in processing power to occupy.

Level Three, AIs are aware AIs and the equivalent of the human mind and maybe more.  They are self-aware, creative, intuitive, display initiative and show empathy towards other sentients.  The Aware AI does have some advantages over its human counterparts.  It invariably displays a tremendous work ethic, it does not need time off nor does it rest.  Because of the tremendous processing power needed to run this level of software, an Aware AI program cannot run on anything less than an upgraded (cost x 10) model 6 ships computer.

Well at the conclusion of an 11 year campaign in the Twilight sector I was left with reams of material on the Twilight Sector. With the death of my campaign I began to feel a little like one of Larry Niven’s Pak Protectors who had lost their tribe of breeders. I had the urge to keep going but not the tribe to protect. For a while I did what any self respecting Protector would do, no I didn’t literally commit suicide, I just withdrew from gaming. For a solid six months or so I didn’t game at all. Then that old itch started to return. I tentatively dipped my toe back in the water by playing some in the RPGA Forgotten Realms campaign. That was fun. Then I started to run a few games for them. That was fun, but, and I’m not in any way knocking the campaign, there isn’t a ton of room to be creative there. Well maybe I could write for them! So I offered and got a lecture like a 16 year old with a new license asking to use Dad’s car. Not just anybody was allowed to write for the campaign. Oh well I tried I thought, but the protector instinct in me wouldn’t let me give up. I had to find something creative and useful to do in gaming. Then it hit me. I could compile my old Twilight Sector Campaign and release it as a free StarDrive supplement. They do stuff like that on alternityrpg.net (ANet) all the time. Eureka! I had discovered my Pak calling.

I set to work compiling the setting. As the project progressed I realized that I still loved the setting and had stories to tell. That wasn’t going to happen by releasing a free PDF and I found out Mongoose Publishing was re-releasing Traveller and with an open license no less. Traveller was a name that took me back (I know you’re sick of the reminiscing but trust me its relevant) to the start of my role playing career. I discovered the little black box in 1979 only months after I’d discovered the little white box. Having been profoundly influenced by Clarke, Niven, Heinlin and Asimov back in my weekly reader days, long before I discovered Tolkien, I was overjoyed to find a game which would allow me to play Science Fiction. Well I could sign up for the Logo License and I’d be good to go to start translating the Twilight Sector into Traveller. And so it began.

So the Twilight Sector Campaign Setting Sourcebook you will hopefully soon be purchasing , grew out of an 11 year long StarDrive campaign. However with the rewrite necessary to remove StarDrive specific references (we don’t want to get in no pissing matches with the big boys just yet) and create a setting as I imagined it, I along with Matthew Hope my co-writer, were able to bring a totally fresh perspective to the setting. That’s what we’ll be talking about in the next installment, some of the design angles we took to create this setting, keeping what we liked best while including some exciting new elements.

I’ll leave you today with a preview of the cover of the Campaign Setting Sourcebook, titled: Cybil Mar, Through the Open Door by Mattes Laurent from Avatar Art. If you haven’t tried them they’re great and can bring your characters to life. Give’m a try!

When last we left off explaining the long strange trip towards the Twilight Sector Campaign Setting Sourcebook, we were still in the 70s.  We’ll jump forward now skipping the stories of other long running campaigns (stories for another day) and my propensity for killing great sets of rules, see Chivalry and Sorcery, not to mention Alternity which we are about to discuss.  The date is 1997, I am at GenCon when I happen upon a black book with a flying belt buckle for a logo.  It is the preview edition of the Alternity rules.  Soon I am sucked in.  I meet David Eckelberry at this very same convention and he offers me the chance to participate in a LARP of the peace conference ending GWII.  I am to be the GM liaison for the VoidCorp delegation.  I still have my little VoidCorp badge and everything.  My conversion to the dark side is complete.

The Alternity rules were excellent; the StarDrive setting when it came out the next year was very good.  In the meantime I’d already started developing The Twilight Sector and Terra/Sol.  I’d decided to place them in Orion and put them right on the edge of settled space.   And well lookey there, the map had this little section over in the corner called the Orion Frontier…that would do! 

Well leaving the convention I had the preview set of the rules, I had a handout for the LARP David Eckelberry ran, and that’s it.  I also had 6 or 7 months on my hands before the final version of the rules hit the stores and even longer before the official StarDrive setting would be released.  Its a bad thing to leave a GM with time on his hands because they start tinkering.  That’s exactly what I did.  I knew I wanted my own setting while using the StarDrive setting as a backdrop.  It would be cool to have a campaign providing all kinds of interesting far away news events.  It’d give my setting depth and background.

During all that down time I fleshed out the Twilight Sector coming up with my main themes and many other dark imaginings.  The duel mysteries of the origins of this Earth clone planet and a virus causing human mutations were the first two themes and they will be the ones that will confront players beginning with our second product: Twilight Sector Campaign: Beyond the Open Door. 

But what became clear after spending time contemplating the intricacies of the setting in the dark recesses of my basement was there were points here and there I wasn’t real happy with.  I didn’t really care for the aliens.  Some of them were designed very well but the way they were introduced made them almost cartoonish.  Except for the Fraal with their bizarre case of amnesia or maybe it was lockjaw, all the aliens were inferior to humanity.  Each was the pet of some stellar nation who controlled their fate and didn’t want to share them with anyone else.  I thought if you’re going to treat them as a sideshow, why not just leave them out entirely and give the players the chance to experience first contact for the setting.  Surely an earth shaking event and one which would be ripe with adventure opportunities.  

Speaking of cartoonish, many of the stellar nations were one trick ponies.  VoidCorp is an excellent villain but what’s with that nation as one corporation?  If the government controls everything doesn’t that really make them fascists, communists or at least statists? How can you have cut throat corporate competition inside a monopoly? Come to think of it, all of those could have been interesting ideas if they had been explored.  Then you have your British intellectuals over there and your rogue traders Italian style over there.  Things just seemed to shallow for me. 

I could be wrong.  Simple is often good when telling a story and we could end up falling on our faces with the Twilight Sector Campaign Setting Sourcebook because we tried to make it too nuanced.  Only time will tell.  I’m making it sound a little bit like I hated the setting and nothing could be farther from the truth.  I loved it.  I left everything in for the sake of continuity and not having to explain why there were no aliens in the setting when they were clearly right there in the rule book.  I could see my own version of “Dorkness Rising” with the players shoving a book in my face saying see it’s right there on page 29.  But in the back of my mind I had this little list like I think most GMs do, of what I would have done if I hadn’t been the lazy toad I am and designed the setting.

In closing this post I’d like to leave you with some drawings of Alternity aliens that I had a very talented artist Dragen do for me for my campaign.  I hope you Alternity fans enjoy them.

Our initial offering will be the Twilight Sector Campaign.  A completely new Science Fiction setting that will be published under the Traveller Open License.  The setting will capture the grand scope of classic Traveller space opera and bring it forward to a setting where Artificial Intelligence, Mutant Humans, Uplifted Animals and Baseline Humans live in a complex society.  A society recovering from war and faced with the question; Is it possible for two identical Earths to have evolved in the same Spiral Arm of the Milky Way?  And if not how did this other one get here?

The Twilight Sector Campaign will be fully supported both with future releases and materials right here on our web site.  Future campaigns in a variety of genres will also be released and supported here as well.  Because at Terra/Sol games we believe that we don’t play the game because of a ruleset, we play “Because the Campaigns the Thing”.