The Villages Infinite

The villages of the countryside are too small and too numerous to count on a map. They are infinite, stretching out in all directions, so long as crops can grow and livestock can feed. They are not important enough to name. Without them, nobody eats. They are home to almost everyone.

For a three-mile hex with arable soil, there is always at least one village.

For a hex with marginal soil or unfavorable terrain, there is a 3-in-6 chance of a village. In the deep wilderness, that chance is 1-in-6.

For a hex along a river or road, on particularly good soil, or near a town, there is a 3-in-6 chance of two villages.

Roll 2d100 for the village’s adult population. They are almost all subsistence farmers, fishers, or herders. Many of them might be tenants or unfree laborers working on a landlord’s estate.

Roll 1d8 for the appearance of the village to passers-by.

1. Wretchedly poor and desolate. Only a few villagers are strong enough to work in the fields.
2. Burnt and broken. A conflict recently took place, and the villagers are recovering from the damage.
3. A husk of its former self. Villagers live amongst the ruins of an older, larger settlement.
4. Quiet and spooky. The villagers glare at each other and at outsiders with suspicion.
5. Struggling, but not destitute. There are too few hands for all the work that needs to be done.
6. Prosperous and growing. The villagers are hard at work bringing new land under cultivation.
7. Generous and welcoming. The villagers cheerfully welcome visitors to their community.
8. An oasis of pastoral beauty. The fields are humming with activity, and folk look happy and well-fed.

This village has a distinctive feature which immediately sets it apart from its neighbors. Roll 1d12 to determine what that feature is.

1. A lodging house sits at the center of the village, offering food, drink and rest to travelers.
2. A small river cuts through the village, dotted with fish traps and canoes.
3. The local landlord’s estate is impressive in its size and prominence. The building oversees vast tracts of land worked by the village population.
4. A stone stele towers over the village, carved with the decrees of a long-dead king.
5. The village shrine is unusually large and meticulously maintained by a few custodians. People come here from miles around to say prayers and make offerings to the local spirit.
6. Just outside the village lies the ruined columbarium of an extinct aristocratic family. The site has fallen into disrepair after decades or centuries of neglect.
7. The village is surrounded by a wooden stockade — an adequate defense against brigands, but poor protection against a committed force of arms.
8. A layer of gardens surrounds the village, where people grow fruits and vegetables.
9. A large number of bees, birds, cats, bugs, or other small animals are kept by the local population.
10. The villagers live and work amidst the skeleton of a long-dead giant. They’ve painted the exposed bones, wrapped them in cloth, and hung lanterns off them.
11. A small monastic society sits just outside the village. There, the monks tend to their gardens, educate children of noble families, make dedications to their saints, and live out a strict code of ethical conduct.
12. This community is a seasonal home for semi-nomadic herders, who live here for part of the year and graze their herds of sheep and goats in the nearby grasslands.

The village is ruled by one or perhaps two large landowning families, each with a sizable farmstead. They have draft animals, storage facilities, political standing, and market contacts in the nearest town. They probably employ a few millers, bakers, butchers, brewers and distillers, plus some (free or unfree) domestic servants, and a handful of armed retainers.

Roll 1d6 for the general character of each landlord in the village.

1. Cruel and spiteful
2. Generous yet patronizing
3. Industrious yet greedy
4. Lazy and self-absorbed
5. Bitter and hot-tempered
6. Gruff and unrefined

There may be one or two craft specialists in the entire village. They are employed by a nearby landowning family. Roll 1d20 to determine who they are.

1. Armorer
2. Blacksmith
3. Bowyer
4. Candlemaker
5. Cooper
6. Chef
7. Embroiderer
8. Furrier
9. Glazier
10. Jeweler
11. Painter
12. Poet
13. Physician
14. Ropemaker
15. Saddlemaker
16. Sculptor
17. Shoemaker
18. Tailor
19. Tanner
20. Witch

The village is currently dealing with a problem. It could be trivial or severe, but it is mundane, beneath the notice of most adventurers. Roll 1d12 to discover what ails the village.

1. Someone’s run off with all the pigs! The local lord has arranged a search party to retrieve the stolen animals and apprehend the pig thief.
2. A troll has migrated into the area around the village, devouring livestock at night. Attempts to scare it off have thus far failed.
3. A dispute over land boundaries has erupted into a full-blown feud between two peasant families. The lord stepped in to adjudicate, but the animosity lingers, threatening to devolve into open violence.
4. An outbreak has left half the village bedridden and miserable. A witch or priest might heal them, but there are none to be found in the village.
5. The local landlord is double-taxing the peasants, taking over the farms of anyone who can’t or won’t pay. The villagers are furious, but none dare to challenge the landlord’s power — yet.
6. A villager is inert in their home, eyes rolled back, speaking in tongues — possessed! The spirit responsible refuses to let them go until it is placated with gifts of wine, silver, and slaughtered animals.
7. The nearby river is flooding, threatening to wash away part of the village unless the water is contained.
8. Some herders’ sheep got loose and trampled a farming family’s crops. The peasants demand restitution for their losses, but the local landlord is unresponsive. Exacerbated, they’ve turned their anger toward the herders, threatening their lives if they return to the village.
9. Bandits on the road are harassing travelers to and from the nearby town. They’re stashing their ill-gotten goods in a safe house somewhere in the wilderness, a place the local lord’s retainers haven’t found yet.
10. A child has gone missing after straying too far into the wilderness. The village organized a search party to find the kid, but to no avail.
11. A fire burned down a few homes in the village, leaving several peasant families homeless. They need wood to rebuild, but good timber is hard to find.
12. The lord’s teenage child accidentally killed a local villager after a heated night of drinking. The peasants demand punishment, but the teenager is legally protected as a scion of an aristocratic family.

There’s almost no real commerce in the village, but itinerant merchants do circuit the countryside, buying whatever looks likely to turn a profit and selling at each town and market along their way. Their wares are limited beyond agricultural produce and maybe meat, but they might carry some odds and ends.

At any given time, there is a 2-in-6 chance that an itinerant merchant is in the village, driving 1d4-1 donkeys or other pack animals.

Roll 1d10 twice to determine what other goods the merchant is carrying.

1. Alcohol
2. Clothing
3. Glassware
4. Furs or leathers
5. Jewelry
6. Pottery
7. Rugs
8. Rope
9. Spices
10. Weapons

November 21, 2022 D&D Fantasy

The Restitution Project and the External Service

The year is 2321. Humanity has been an interplanetary species for the better part of 200 years. There are cities in the clouds of Venus, along the canyon walls of Mars, amid the rings of Saturn, and in the inky black of the Kuiper Belt. Nearly a hundred million people live somewhere beyond Earth’s immediate orbit, from Mercury to Pluto and beyond. Spaceflight, once a marvel of cutting-edge science, is now routine.

But Earth itself is a dying world. Three centuries of uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions have let loose the fastest mass extinction event in the planet’s history, killing off thousands of species and rendering vast swaths of the planet’s surface uninhabitable to humans. Once-vibrant oceans are sterile. Once-fertile farmland has withered. Whole nations have been devoured by the steady advance of sand and sea. Catastrophic shocks to the world’s food supply led to mass death on a scale not seen since the arrival of Europeans to the Americas in the 16th century.

The survivors’ vow to rebuild has taken life in the Restitution Project.

Simultaneously a world government, an economic system, an infrastructure project, and a cultural north star, the Restitution Project purports to be the revolutionary remaking of human society. It brings together every nation, every religion, and every culture toward the goal of rebuilding Earth’s devastated biosphere and preserving it for future generations. Emerging out of the planetary turmoil of the 22nd century, the Restitution Project supersedes the nation-state as the dominant system of human political and social organization. Wielding power as a worldwide government, the Restitution Project has set off to outer space to make possible the dream of a reconstructed Earth.

The process of reversing catastrophic climate change — in effect, terraforming planet Earth — is an immense undertaking. It requires rare minerals and gasses sourced from the furthest reaches of the Solar System. It requires the construction of hundreds of habitats, thousands of ships, and all the secondary infrastructure to support a large population living and working in space.

Today, more people live in orbit around Earth than on the planet itself. Billions live in a gargantuan orbital ring wrapping around Earth’s equator in low orbit, connected via cable train to nearly every major city. Earth’s orbital space is a dense constellation of stations, ships, drones, telescopes, factories, solar power collectors, laser brooms, and more. Nearly 16 billion people — over 99% of the human population — live on or around Earth. Whether they live on the planet’s surface or in its orbit, they are Earthers, united in their work toward repairing a planet ravished by debilitating climate change.

But those who live further afield experience the Restitution Project very differently to their Earthbound cousins.

The Spacers, as they’ve become known, are the descendants of Earthers who set out beyond the comfort of their home planet to work for Restitution. Those settlers spoke hundreds of different languages and practiced dozens of different faith traditions. They learned to live side-by-side with each other, adapting to the challenge of inhabiting the most hostile possible environment to human life. As a result, the Spacers are defined both by their remarkable diversity and their unifying experience of life deep in interplanetary space.

Millions of people now live, work, and die in space, never once setting foot on planet Earth. That separation has alienated the Spacers from the Restitution Project and the planet they labor to keep alive. For them, Restitution isn’t the promise of a revolutionary reconstruction of the human species’ shared home. It’s an exploitative weight extracting their wealth and funneling it back to the metropole. Spacers experience the Restitution Project as an empire — life-saving resources flow in toward Earth, while Restitutionary authority radiates out.

The interplanetary arm of the Restitution Project, the apparatus of empire in outer space, is the External Service. Conceived in 2250 to standardize and rationalize the colonial administration, the External Service has become an outlet for the careerist ambitions of politically-connected Earthers, ideologically conformist and unsympathetic to the needs and wants of the people they’re responsible for. Even educated, skilled Spacers are shut out of the ranks of the bureaucracy.

Restitutionary propaganda appeals to the shared humanity of Earthers and Spacers, imploring them to come together as one for the survival of the home planet. But in practice, the External Service sees Spacers as a sinister other needing to be controlled, managed, and policed. A culture of paranoid xenophobia has taken root in the External Service, whose agents see existential threats to the Restitution Project everywhere they look.

Working-class Spacers suffer from widespread poverty and terrible conditions on the job. Low pay, long hours, and abuse by the bosses are rampant, as is an appalling level of neglect from the authorities. Spacers struggle with a number of health maladies ranging from weak hearts to skeletal deformities to appallingly high rates of maternal mortality. Many Spacers organize into unions to press for improvements to their living and working conditions, but labor organizing is met with violent repression from the Restitutionary authorities.

Middle-class Spacers are no more reconciled with the External Service. As the respectable leaders of Spacer society, many feel they are best equipped to identify and solve the problems that plague their brethren. Their demands for democracy and good government are met with silence from the insular, conformist External Service. Denied a voice in the regime, they’re left to complain amongst themselves. Some advocate for an accountable, responsible Restitutionary administration, while others urge for full independence and a reorientation of the interplanetary economy toward Spacer — not Earther — needs.

The External Service sacrifices the needs and wants of Spacers on the altar of planetary reconstruction, ironically putting the entire Restitution Project in danger. While limited in number, the Spacers are well-positioned at the heart of the Restitutionary industrial machine. Their dissent could very well doom the cause of Restitution. In reproducing the crimes of the colonial past in the name of order, the External Service alienates its victims from Restitution altogether, and risks revolution.

September 13, 2022 Rockhoppers Sci-Fi Space Worldbuilding

Adventures in Open Table Roleplaying

HER MAJESTY, CHILD OF THE IMMORTAL SUN, has little interest in this distant land. She sees its people as mere barbarians, only valuable so long as they respect the empire’s authority and supply it with furs, amber, ivory, and metals. The empire maintains a single outpost here, in the town of Vallo’s Bridge.

You are criminals convicted of high treason. You were given a choice — accept Her Majesty’s justice at the end of a noose, or be exiled across the sea to do her bidding.

See, Her Greatness has given a small fortune of silver to the Scrylings, a debt she needs reclaimed. One problem: the Scrylings were decimated by the dragon Bandradaim. It is up to you, then, to recoup the Empress’ investment — to delve into forgotten tombs, monster lairs, and haunted forests to find as much treasure as humanly possible.

And of course, you plan on making a fortune of your own in the process.

That’s how I began, about three weeks ago, my very first “open table” RPG campaign. As far as I’m aware, Justin Alexander of The Alexandrian coined the term, but the concept is old. The gist is that instead of running a grand narrative campaign with the same group of players, I run a more episodic adventure with a large pool of potential players, only some of whom show up for any given session. Players can drop in and drop out as they please, with no expectation that they have to show up week-after-week. Instead of running D&D 5th Edition, I’m running Knave, a game with a much lower barrier to entry (and also much easier to run on my end).

This way, I’m not wrangling schedules to try and find a time that fits for 4-6 busy adults. I don’t have to worry about disrupting narrative continuity by introducing new characters, and I can easily introduce new people to the hobby. Over the course of three weekends, I’ve already had two players at my table who’ve never played a roleplaying game before. I’m gaming more often now than I have since high school, and I’m having a ton of fun in the process.

The key to making this work is Vallo’s Bridge. All the exiles — all the player characters — live in that town, and they venture out from there to explore abandoned mines, wizard’s towers, ruined villages, ancient temples, and other places. At the end of each session, everybody returns to town to rest, recover, sell their loot, and level up. This means that any combination of characters can set off for adventure each week, which makes the open table work.

I’ve coupled this with a silver-for-XP system to reinforce the default goal of the campaign — steal treasure and give it to the crown — with a twist: only the silver turned into the authorities gets traded for experience points. This gives the players a choice between spending their money on XP and spending their money on anything else, which I think is interesting.

I have my own rules for hexcrawling, a calendar to track time, a rumor table I have new players roll on when they make their character, and a growing collection of adventure locations I’m plopping onto the map. It’s gonzo — one player’s character is named “Georgebush McCrimble” and another is named “Curmudgeon” — but that’s all part of the fun. This isn’t a grand epic adventure, it’s casual gaming over drinks and snacks.

It’s been a good few sessions! One group of players explored an abandoned mine where they dodged boulder traps, threw bar soap at goblins for lack of a ranged weapon, and did battle with a living crystal statue. Another group met an elf witch-poet in a prehistoric henge, learned of his goal to map ancient locations of Fairy myth, and recruited him to plunder an old wizard’s tower.

I might post some post-session reports as the campaign continues. If you’re struggling to line up players’ schedules for a normal D&D game, I highly recommend trying an open table.

August 19, 2022 D&D Fantasy Knave Open Table

The Mission Control Model for Spaceships

Inspired by this post from Atomic Rockets and these four (1,2,3,4) posts from Blue Max Studios.

Spacecraft very greatly in size, most having between 20 and 100 crew members. Some rock-hopping vessels can have very small crews — possibly fewer than ten — while the most massive ships can have several hundred, not including personnel who are not involved in the day-to-day running of the ship such as onboard marines or civilian passengers.

So what are all these crew members doing? What are their roles and functions? Who do they answer to? What are their titles, obligations, and privileges? The answer varies across the Solar System, but the predominant paradigm, established by the first interplanetary vessels so many years ago, is the Mission Control Model.

In essence, the Mission Control Model takes the ground segment of 20th and 21st century spaceflight operations and brings them onboard. The External Service (we’ll get to the Service in another blog post), its corporate allies, and Earther civilians all hew closely to this model. It establishes a clear hierarchy and a division of responsibilities, and makes sure everybody knows what to do and who to turn to in a crisis.

The following list of departments and positions is not exhaustive, nor is it always followed the exact same way. While a ship can get by perfectly fine with just the listed positions (or less!), many crews employ additional support staff.

The Four Departments

Every spaceship can generally be split into four departments, each staffed by its own crew and responsible for a basket of related ship functions.

• Command sets high-level objectives, supervises all aspects of the ship’s readiness, enforces discipline in the other departments, and maintains morale among the crew.
• COMAST (short for communication and astrogation) oversees all interior and exterior communications, including all functions that keep the ship pointing in the right direction, sending the right signals, and seeing the right things. COMAST is the ship’s eyes, ears, and mouth.
• Engineering is responsible for all maintenance and repair needs, as well as the operation of the reactor, the maintenance of the ship’s internal atmosphere, and the management of temperature inside the ship.
• Payload keeps track of everything the ship has, uses, and needs — including weapons, if it has any. Payload maintains the ship’s cargo stores, operates its guns, and addresses any injuries the crew sustains.

Traditionally, the COMAST, Engineering, and Payload departments are divided into two teams. Each team alternates 8-hour and 4-hour watches as follows:

0000-0800: Team 1 on watch

0800-1200: Team 2 on watch

1200-1600: Team 1 on watch

1600-2400: Team 2 on watch

Teams spend their “off-time” sleeping, drilling, training, cleaning, relaxing, and doing whatever else needs doing. With the exception of the Mission Commander, one of the Command staff will be in charge of each watch.

A ship with two watches and only the listed positions filled will have 39 or 40 crew members, depending on if a Mission Commander is present: three or four Command staff members and two teams of 18 people in the COMAST, Engineering, and Payload departments.

EDIT: It’s worth noting that these positions are not all equal in terms of training and pay. Command staff are almost always salaried and given generous benefit packages by their employer. The other personnel are probably paid wages instead of salary, with department heads paid more than their subordinate crew.

Generally, positions listed here are going to be compensated better than miscellaneous support staff. But even these roles probably pay worse than you think — a lot of Spacers are qualified to be a sensor operator or cargo technician with no formal schooling. There’s a lot of variation here between Spacers and Earthers and between departments and employers, but it’s safe to think of these jobs as mostly “unskilled labor” (as misleading as that term is).

Command

In multi-ship functions, the Mission Commander (MCOM) is the overall director of the entire operation. They’re the one who leads a task force into the Asteroid Belt to crush pirates, or oversees a settlement mission to a sparsely-populated moon. They’re the Big Boss, equivalent to an air force general or an admiral in a naval task force.

The Flight Commander (FCOM or Flight) is in charge of a single spacecraft. This is the archetypal captain, the one who supervises all aspects of the ship’s readiness and ability to perform the mission outlined by MCOM. Their job is to set objectives — it’s up to subordinates to carry out those objectives.

The Executive Officer (XO) is in charge of all tasks, drills, exercises, and inspections onboard the ship. While the FCOM oversees the big picture, the XO manages day-to-day administrative details and enforces discipline on all the other departments.

By contrast, the Head of Personnel (HOP) assists with the crewmembers themselves, ensuring good order and serving as a link between Command and the rest of the crew. The HOP also maintains all service records, including pay and benefits for the crew.

Communication and Astrogation (COMAST)

The Integrated Communications Officer (INCO) is in charge of the COMAST department and oversees all exterior and interior communications. They manage all the software functions that keep the ship pointing in the right direction and sending the right signals.

The Guidance Procedures Operator (GPO or Guidance) is the primary pilot, and second in command of the COMAST department after the INCO. They monitor the astrogation of the spacecraft, make sure that guidance control software is functioning as normal, and keep tabs on the velocity and vector reporting done by onboard systems.

The Spacecraft Communications Operator (SCOM) is the secondary pilot, and acts as the single, unified voice of the ship. They direct incoming messages to the proper departments, send outgoing messages in the proper format to the proper channels, maintain the transponder, and communicate between the ship and its auxiliary elements.

The Sensor Operator (SO) is the tertiary pilot, and is responsible for detecting, tracking, recognizing, analyzing, and identifying objects.

The Information Technology Operator (IT) monitors all aspects of onboard computer systems, including network and systems administration, security, hardware and software management, troubleshooting, and more.

Engineering

The Chief Engineer (CE or Chief) is in charge of the Engineering department and supervises all engineering systems on a spacecraft. Their job is to manage all function, maintenance, and repair of the reactor, computers, atmospherics, electronics, and communications systems.

The Assistant Engineer (AE or Second) is second in command of the Engineering department after the CE. They serve as a special assistant to the CE, and are expected to help with any problems faced by the other engineers. They might also be in charge of systems not assigned to other engineers, including radiators, solar panels, reaction control systems, electrolyzers, LOX and LH2 tanks, and more.

The Propulsion Engineer (PE or Prop) is in charge of the ship’s engine, which is usually but not always a fusion reactor. They monitor the ship’s delta-V and helium-3, and make sure the drive is working properly.

The Electrical Engineer (EE) operates and maintains all onboard electricity generation and distribution equipment.

The Atmospheric Engineer (AE or Atmos) makes sure the air’s safe, the temperature’s warm, and the pressure’s normal.

The Robotic Engineer (RE) maintains all onboard robots, robotic arms, and associated systems.

Payload

The Payload and Logistics Officer (PLO or Payload) is in charge of the Payload department and oversees both the ship’s cargo stores and its fighting ability. It’s their responsibility to keep track of everything the ship has, uses, and needs.

The Weapon Systems Operator (WSO or Wizzo) is second in command of the Payload department after the PLO. They direct all weapon and fire control systems aboard the ship. In addition, the WSO assists the PLO in cargo-related tasks. On an unarmed ship, the WSO is referred to as the Supply Operator.

The Missile Technician (MT) maintains both guided and non-guided missiles as well as their launching systems.

The Gunnery Technician (GT) maintains the ship’s kinetic weapons, such as railguns, coilguns, and shrapnel weapons, as well as the ship’s point-defense guns.

The Laser Technician (LT) maintains and calibrates the ship’s directed-energy weapons.

The Cargo Technician (CT) sorts and monitors the ships’ supplies, loads and unloads cargo, and makes sure that the cargo’s mass is evenly balanced.

The Flight Medical Doctor (FMD or Doc) is a jack-of-all-trades doctor who monitors the crew’s routine health and, in the event of injury, deals with everything from bone fracture to radiation sickness to an emergency appendectomy.

Small Ships

The smallest ships break the above dichotomy down to its bare essentials, potentially placing an entire department on the back of just one person. The smallest feasible crew size is four, outlined as follows:

The Flight Commander (FCOM or Flight) sets objectives, guides the rest of the crew, and supervises all aspects of the ship’s maintenance and readiness.

The Guidance and Communications Operator (GCO) governs the astrogation of the ship, its internal and external communications, and its sensor systems.

The Flight Engineer (FE or just Engineer) is in charge of maintaining the spacecraft, including its reactor, electrical systems, internal atmosphere, and robotics.

The Payload and Logistics Operator (PLO) supervises all cargo, including proper mass distribution, and any weapons on the ship. The PLO may also have medical training.

Under normal operations, the GCO, Engineer, and PLO will rotate eight-hour watches, with the FCOM assuming overall command. Under high-stress situations, all four crew members will be on duty.

August 15, 2022 Mission Control Model Rockhoppers Sci-Fi Space Worldbuilding