Fully Automated RPG

This looks really good, and really interesting.

It's also really long, though. Time to start working through it.

Just a poem someone mentioned that I found touching.

Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to format the line breaks on Lemmy. Oh well.

I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky.

I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms.

I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.

With the release of campaign 1, we've now released all the starting content planned within phase 1!

Check it out, tell your friends. and consider leaving a review!

This came up on Discord, and I thought it was with sharing more broadly:

Anyone have advice on handling a U-wolf PC? Anthropic bias is heavy. ... ok, got a coherant backstory from them, Third Generation from initial uplift, not all Aunts/Uncles are in the S5 range, and lifespan improvement is generationally incrementing upwarsd. All of the pack that raised them are at least S4+, Moms are Foresters/Wilderness managers, Dad is a radio astronomer and hobbiest fisherman. Walter Brown (the PC parawolf), is an informal coordinator using a BCI to keep connected to networks, and taking advantage of a very high Dunbar Number to maintain lots of distinct relationships.

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/11678529

Happy Free RPG Day!

I saw this post last night just before the sale ended, and grabbed a free copy of the Star Trek Adventures RPG core rule book.

If anyone would like a copy, message me and I'll share my copy with you (which I think is acceptable: as a rule, I don't encourage piracy of RPGs because I want to respect the creative work of others, but I got this free on sale yesterday, so it seems reasonable to share copies person-to-person).

Having spent the morning reading it, I'm very impressed. I've made it a priority to try and learn from other RPGs, especially any that take place in some kind of positive future. And I'm especially interested in ones like Traveler, this, and The Expanse, because eventually I'd like to release a space-based companion to the core manual.

This is a very cool game book. It's really rich in lore, and does a great job making the world seem intelligible to play in. Contextualizing the technology and making sense of the conflicts and player experiences in such a world is no mean feat, but this RPG does a really good job, imo, demonstrating ways of doing that.

Our indie dev group just released our third playable adventure! This is the climax of a four-part set! It is now available for free on DriveThruRPG!

It’s for a free, open-source game system/setting we made that’s like cyberpunk in a post-scarcity society. Check it out! Honest feedback is appreciated.

A gang of whitehat biohackers suspect they're being targeted. That threat is about to get very real.

On a sunny summer day, your help is needed escorting a eccentric researcher to a meeting with their collegues. It's been six weeks since unknown actors staged a daring armed robbery on their laboratory, and tensions are running high. But when this mysterious adversary puts their plans into action, it'll take all your skills and judgement to avert a nightmare.

This story continues to build on the previous two in its scope, complexity, and challenges to give diverse player and character types opportunitites to see more places, meet more characters, and find ways to use their specialities to help their communities in a story with around 8 - 10 hours of content.

Our second playable adventure is now available for free on DriveThruRPG!

An adventurer is facing a mind-bending medical crisis. Are you prepard to join the rescue party?

Psychonaut Psilosybe Vulgaris has fallen into a catonic state while testing a new psychadelic. Now her doctor and friends need the aid of some daring and capable first responders ready to do whatever it takes to find a cure, before her mind dissolves away to nothing!

As the second published adventure within the Fully Automated! solarpunk game catalog, Psychonautica is written for new players who are ready for a more free-form adventure. Unlike the short and simple demo mission, this one has twists, turns, and opportunities for GMs and players to tell stories with a bit more freedom.

Respond to a medical emergency! Explore the wild mental dimension of neurospace! Meet a wilder, wider world of characters in a story that stands on its own while planting the seeds for an even more climactic sequel!

Firebreak! A game of directable fire. With it's origins in the burning years and needing to train children to handle PPE for smoke, it's gradually evolved into a more playful mode. Over several days the competitors build quickwood structures and an artificial forest. The teams have "home trees" to protect and defend, and a limited supply of water to extinguish it. The central artificial forest is ignited and let spread before the teams can leave (leaf) their home trees. The sport supports a variable amount of teams. In some rural areas It's also considered a coming of age ritual in forested areas, which imparts valuable lessons about life and rescue work.

I found this story on Mastodon, about a maritime shipping disaster and the first-on-the-scene, questionably-legitimate emergency responders who rescue crew, contain the ecological impacts, and restore infrastructure damaged by a megafreighter crash before the official response can get into gear. And who take a bunch of loot when they leave.

Fully Automated's setting is generally more responsible than the capitalist one suggested in this story, so there might be less of a vacuum for a group like this to fill. But the world is big and varied, and it has a messy history, with plenty of war and strife, in which groups like this could thrive. Some of them may still be around. And some regions might just genuinely need someone to step up and respond to disasters, regardless of legitimacy.

Either way, I think it's a neat concept with decent execution.

This is the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldjerking/comments/1d92dkp/rate_the_political_factions_in_my_totally/

I love everything about this, especially the gear and tactics. So badass.

I've been talking with folks about what might be the best tools for sharing photos for use when running games. In addition to maps, I enjoy showing players art and photos as backgrounds. We usually play on Roll20 virtual tabletop, and it acts like a little dollhouse or stage background.

Here are four photos I took outside the California Academy of Sciences, which is a museum in San Francisco with pretty solarpunk architecture. Does this seem like a useful way to collect up visual assets and make them easy for folks to find?

Between the large swaths of rewilded land in Fully Automated's setting (which is protected from any permanent development/dwelings) and the general availability of high tech stuff, I could totally see slow, wandering, nomadic houses being a thing (for good or ill, depending on who in the setting you ask).

The vote to elect a new chair of the Pacifica Grid closes in four days, and an auditor thinks there's something suspicious going on. Records of an incident for the lead candidate's past have been destroyed in a cyberattack, and the manager responsible for the files is being mysteriously tight lipped. Keeping power in the right hands requires answers, and it's going to take a few determined problem solvers to get them!

After releasing the core game manual a week ago, we've now released our first playable adventure. It's a concise little one-shot that can be played in 2-4 hours, written specifically as an easy entry point into the game's world and rules.

Like the game itself, it's FREE! So check it out, tell your friends, and if you like this weird little story of hard-science sci-fi intrigue, please leave us a rating and review!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/482551/fully-automated-a-demonstration-of-power

I've been thinking about campaigns and discussing possible plotlines with my SO, and while we were talking about options for investigations and the reasons people might commit crimes even in a solarpunk society where everyone has enough, and they reminded me of this podcast which focuses on white collar crimes, their impacts on society, and the investigations around them.

Especially if your players are interested in playing investigators, I think there's a lot of potential in learning about the motivations and tactics of the rich and powerful in everything from taking shortcuts that make unsafe buildings, to illegally dumping chemical waste.

If you'd like to do that learning by listening to an entertaining podcast read by a fellow with a remarkably dry sense of humor, I'd very much recommend it.

Semi related, I'm currently planning a session or short campaign around searching for a decades-old illegal dumping site so it can be remediated, while providing useful inputs to geopolymer manufacturing.

Guess what?

WE'RE LIVE!!!

Fully Automated RPG is now available for "purchase" on DriveThruRPG!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/481979/Fully-Automated-Solarpunk-RPG

If you haven't yet had a look, check us out now! The book is free as in speech, and free as in beer! And if you like what you see, please rate us, review us, and tell your friends! (or foes!)

A GM play tester posted this on the Discord, and I'm very excited by this feedback. I think it's a great testimonial to share, and also a confirmation of our overall approach. Making the game system-flexible was a priority, so I'm really glad to hear that it works in actual use that way.

@andrewrgross when I joined this discord like half a year ago or more, you asked me to share my thoughts on the game. I have finally had a chance to play. Or well, a completely overhauled version of the game, so I'm not sure if my thoughts are still worth much, but here it goes.

I read the entire setting and came up with some more details for my own region, the Netherlands. I found some friends in my neighbourhood and we played in our own neighbourhood in the year 2124. Most were new to rpgs in general. I used my own monstrous homebrew mechanics that are a mix of Pathfinder2e and Powered by the Apocalypse, but extremely rules-lite. I made some pregens heavily inspired by the pregens in this game but turned to a more Dutch setting. I also came up with my own one-shot adventure about finding a missing sabretooth tiger (scientists were restoring extinct animals, not sure if I made that up or if it was in the setting already), including a neurodive/skidoo in a sabretooth tiger.

All players absolutely had a blast. The new players had some trouble thinking of what was possible, but they asked a lot of questions and were very enthousiastic of being able to do anything. Two players were DnD veterans, but they really enjoyed the light tone of the setting. The light atmosphere was not a downside, as there was still tension (would they be able to find the tiger in time? would the neurodive go wrong?). We even had some combat in neurospace, which was just resolved like any other encounter and more freeform. I explained that a cyberdeck to the players was just like what a smartphone would be like for someone from 1924, and they got really creative with it, contacting their social media followers and looking up information, etc.

We will probably turn it into a campaign, and next time they will make their own characters. For me as a GM, the whole setting really came alive from the rulebook. I think I will make the campaign about extinct animals being brought back.

We've released the game on itch.io!

Next, we need to post it on DriveThruRPG. But after 18 months, it seems we're finally ready to release!

Stay tuned as we release our many files across locations in preparation to begin promoting the game!

Files are here: https://thangs.com/designer/3DPrinty/3d-model/Braille%20Training%20Cell%20-%206MM-1037863

If anyone has seen the character Voidstar in the premades and wasn't aware, this YouTuber/Streamer is the real-life guy Voidstar is based on.

Antagonist "Gehirnwäsche" (Brainwash)

Cinnamon Telosa, attorney

The Trypnotist

Blind concert promoter Kellsey Vanezulla

In one encounter, the players are attacked by a squad of mysterious masked shock troops of some kind. Here is the cyberpunky look I gave them, along with distinct face plates meant to give the characters a way to easily distinguish and describe them.

Here are the other three:

Big thanks to @poVoq@slrpnk.net for setting us up with a wiki!

Right now, this is just a repository for game assets. Maps needed to run the first campaign can be easily found on this wiki, along with some other useful files.

If the game happens to be successful enough to inspire people to share their own stories, maps, and other content, this wiki could provide an invaluable central repository of any independently generated content. We'll see.

For now though, I'm really grateful to have such a resource. Again, @poVoq, thanks!

This is Deiter Gerhardt, aka "Mentok the Mindtaker!"

Mentok is a primary antagonist in our first collection of adventures. He picked his nom de hack by looking through a list of mind-controlling supervillains from classical literature and chose Mentok because he didn't really understand the contemporary context of who Mentok the Mindtaker is.

I give great thanks to @jackgross@slrpnk.net for this fantastic portrait.