Sparks and Flows of Imagination: Blue Planet
There are many things which I find compelling and satisfying about Blue Planet as an RPG in all of its editions, but near the top is how it manages to give me at least part of an answer to any particular question I might have about a future setting of speculative science fiction grounded in a spirit of verisimilitude over fantasy and depth vs vibes.
Blue Planet – Recontact: An Orbital Lifter for a New Age
Each time I get into Blue Planet, I feel myself compelled to add, as I did with BattleTech and tons of other games before, new and different machines and tech to those offered in the books. Taking them as a template, as boundaries, as averages, as beacons, and as warnings, getting into the game has come to mean (to me) adding the ‘also rans’, prototypes, knock-offs, rivals, and later refits and refreshes which help make the world of the game feel more complete. While the authors often have tight page counts to serve, our imagination as players of the game is without limit or a publication time constraint. Within this post is one of the first such things I have chosen to pull from my imagination and the inspiration of a few lines in the Recontact Players Guide. I hope you enjoy it. It has touched off a series of related creations of tech, of character history, of business plans, and rivalries – and it’s not done, yet.
Recontacting Blue Planet with gusto~
Over the past few weeks, during my commute, I have been spending a lot of time putting my imagination to work inhabiting the world of Poseidon and all that that entails. I have been paying particular attention to the little details that matter to a character’s perspective, like what biocrete might feel like and sound like underfoot, and what tang a saltier ocean might carry. I wonder at the feel of loss the absence of gulls might evoke, and if the folk music of natives and newcomers alike might try to fill that void. I put my mind’s eye under a sky with two moons and nightly flares of launches to orbital stations. It’s not just that. It’s a world where uplifted cetaceans from earth vie with humanity for work and happiness. It’s a world with not just uplifted species, but three species of humanity we have created with blind luck, boldness, and more than our fare share of callousness. It’s a world we are in a rush to despoil with toxins and bloodshed.
It’s a world where the dream of immortality can be achieved… or at least, believed.
Behind the Lines: Instigation
Not long after the initial scenario pitch requirements for Parallel Lines were given to us, I found myself latching on to a set which would put the Agents against a backdrop of what they might at first see as someone else’s war. I hoped that I could provide a framework for the GM to work … Continue reading
