This was a cool project to work on. Not only did Mike and Chris deliver some astounding artwork for the book, I just got a huge kick out of working on it.
Probably the most fun (for me) was putting down on paper the “top secret” game master notes I had hidden up my sleeve regarding some bits and pieces of the Rocketship Empires universe…the things my own player group has never-ever seen.
Little details like…Hegemony jump drives traveling through the z-axis of probability space and being a multi-dimensional VAST empire. This information is completely unknown to the Humans and is one reason why I heavily stress players only playing human characters. The rubber science and sudo physics of the Rocketship Empire world brings home just how far advanced the Martians and their Empire is over the technology level they have shared with Mankind. Details like the Hegemony Abyssal drive is shared…-the notion of Martians having long, long ago traced the “thread” connections between the gravity wells -not only between all of the star systems in this neck of the galaxy but hundreds of alternate galaxies as well.
The rubber science also explains why so many habitable planets are available in the setting. The reason being (of course) that the Hegemony has selected the most viable alternate world across multiple dimensions for building their standard trade lanes. Humans are justly clueless monkey men when it comes to how absolutely far flung and into what alien alternate dimension they have gotten themselves by merrily following the routes spelled out for them by their Martian keepers.
Of course all this is going to grate heavily on the players (even in my game) and I can already hear the calls of “Viva La Revolution!” and the grumbling and lighting of torches as readers everywhere get ready to give the Martian’s their just rewards.
How this all ties into Psi abilities is fun as well. It creates an amazing world where Psi = Space Travel only on a personal and very limited level. Shifting into a very slightly alternate probability. It also reveals just how massive the potential for use and abuse is for individuals able to wield the massive cosmic energy pushing all of creation forward through the geography of time and space.
not to mention that the write ups for the ships were fun.
Battleships…
I made the decision to staff the Battleship example purposely very, very low in crew. The Battleship I have in mind is almost an over size version of the Jules Verne Nautilus. What I envisioned here is the possibility that a group of player characters and oh…maybe only twenty or thirty mercenaries could actually stage an assault against a Battleship and take control. So bringing everything down suddenly takes a ship which would otherwise be far beyond the realm of player involvement into something the characters could actually meddle with…and meddling characters usually have a lot of fun.
Short Story
My first attempt at showing one of my story ideas. Could it be better? Well. Probably. Like anything you can always rework it another ten times after the first ten. After a certain point I feel its time to start putting the work out there, get feedback and learn to improve. Having it sitting gathering dust in my desk is certainly doing no one any good.
Plus it really makes for nice campaign fodder. It also definately fleshes out life on New Kansas which just happens to be a colony world a few hops removed from Spain..right on the main campaign map.
…more to come
Ed
