I’m a developer for an open-world tabletop RPG called Fully Automated! The goal is to create a free, open-source game that can be to solarpunk what D&D is to fantasy and Shadowrun to cyberpunk. And the first version is mostly done. It’s got:
- A flexible, easy-to-play system similar to a d20 game!
- A massive open world!
- An easy character creator along with a dozen pre-made example characters!
- A high-stakes three-story campaign with over 14 hours of content! …And a lot more!
I’m looking for more play testers, both as players and (if you’re game) GMs! We’ve got a Discord server where we’re running games on a rolling basis. The goal is to release it for free by the end of the year. I’d like to get as much feedback as possible before then, and if possible build a community around this totally free, open-source tool for making and sharing diverse solarpunk adventures!
Fully Automated! Campaign 1: Regulation
Share these freely!
EDIT: I should have included the link to our Discord server. You can join here or spectate if you like: https://discord.gg/tjscrvjd
Image credit: “Exploring Los Angeles”, a concept image by Sean Bodley
I don’t know a lot of solarpunk. The most would be star trek, and it works by focusing on exploration.
Fantasy works well IMO because it features a broad diversity of scenarios and possibilities. Monsters can be akin to natural threat or opposing factions. You can work an utopian city or a distopian one. It’s familiar because it’s culturaly rooted for centuries.
To get the equivalent, you would need a universe where solarpunk lives with cyberpunk and many other kinds of futures. Which is kind of what star trek does: by focusing on exploring the fringes of the federation, they get to meet independent planets and hostile empires that will fuel the stories. Andromeda works quite a bit like that btw.
So my point here is first that by focusing on the solarpunk aspect I feel like you make it harder start a story. The document should have something to start the stories, so an imperfect society or one that is a beacon of hope in the galaxy for example.
And the second is the exploration aspect will be very important for that. Both for investigation and exploring. But reading more, it’s actually grounded, no space exploration. So it’s oriented toward investigation. But there are no specific rules for that either.
There is an odd thing too: how do you justify characters with combat training in an utopian solarpunk society? I guess the organisation would provide the formation.
I am personally not found of the setting being rooted in the US and limited to the solar system, but that’s a matter of taste. Likewise the 2d10 roll bellow and the classless system. But it seems to work. I like the medium crunch but the card system is new to me, it’s interesting.
Something to consider is a tie between the mechanics and the universe. For example in dnd you have the alignment and the planes. In cyberpunk you have the humanity versus the augments. These do a lot to build an identity. For solarpunk, maybe it could be that dying is easy but reviving is also. There could be a corruption similar to alignment that would reflect how progressive vs capitalistic/selfish a character is. Something for your system to be less “generic with some solarpunk lore dump”. Something that would make the system mechanically solarpunk.
There’s definitely a lot of challenges, but it’s what myself and my friends wanted to play, so we made it.
The nice thing is that since it’s open source, people can take the parts they like and toss what they don’t.
I am willing to take part if low quality mic is ok.
Depends on how bad, but if I can hear you it’s probably fine. We also have a text game starting.
I airways wondered why people don’t just get a better mic. You don’t need to spend a lot of money, a $20 headset will work
In 18 days I will be homeless. I am currently unemployed.
Complete newbies allowed?
Absolutely! Here’s the link: https://discord.gg/tjscrvjd
I’ll be honest, I was a bit nervous when you compared your game to D&D and Shadowrun. Both have famously bad mechanics that shoot themselves in the foot compared to what the absolutely marvelous worldbuilding can do and are only the staples they are because they’ve been there decades ago…
But from a quick perusal this looks rather promising. I would love to commit some of my time to this project and its community but will have to see whether I can manage to free up some first. So, no promises at this point I’m afraid.
I really love the way you approach this, not as a commercial product but as hopeful community building. Can’t give you enough kudos for this! :)
Thanks!
I just recently learned that a separate group of writers made a solarpunk game for FATE if you prefer that system. Overall, I’m writing towards the play system that appeals to me, but I think a lot of the content could be used in one’s system of preference: http://solarpunk2050.de/
Here’s the Discord link, which I forgot to share: https://discord.gg/tjscrvjd
We organize games here and have a channel for development discussion, so if you’re interested you should join the server and drop in when time allows.
I’m not sure that I can help with play testing but if you want any more art, I’m already working on solarpunk photobashes and releasing them CC-BY so if you need any scenes you can’t find, let me know and I’ll add them to the to-do list.
That sounds appealing. Can you share a link? Also, what’s your approach? I’m assuming you’re talking about synthetic photography, right?
https://jacobcoffinwrites.wordpress.com/postcards-from-a-solarpunk-future/
https://pixelfed.social/JacobCoffin
Photobashes are kind of digital collages with the goal of making a specific scene out of chopped-up photographs and textures, often mixing in a lot of painting.
I start with a sketch, then start scrounging up images that fit my goal. If I’m doing line art, I trace or convert each piece to lines before working with it, if I’m going for something like a render, I find relevant textures and use them to sort of clad the sketch, slowly building a scene.
I’ve been playing with a few styles from renders to line art comics; the level of realism tends to determine the amount of time it takes.
That sounds great! Right now I’ve got a lot of placeholder art that I need to replace. I need to make a wishlist of art and get back to you.
What kind of conflicts usually happen in solarpunk? I am aware of the genre, but haven’t actually read or seen anything that would constitute solarpunk.
A solarpunk society is going to have many of the conflicts any human civilization tends to see. By working on fundamental inequalities and striving to provide safety nets and stability, we can remove a lot of motivations for crimes, but there’ll always be people who’ll try to cheat others, take harmful shortcuts, or commit crimes for reasons other than necessity. Serial killers spring to mind. Even within a fairly equal society you may have people who feel they could have had more, that they’ve been cheated out of a birthright of capitalist millionaire-hood or some good-old-days existence, real or imagined
How do you handle law enforcement, how do you contain genuinely dangerous people?
There’ll also be groups outside solarpunk communities. People who ascribe to old world values, who prioritize extraction and hoarding of resources, who push their externalities like waste onto others or their environment. They might be upstream, poisoning your water. Personally I see it as a fairly postapocalyptic setting, focused mostly on people rebuilding in a more thoughtful, deliberate, and inclusive way, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to say bandits and accelerationist survivalists will still be around on the fringes. Perhaps someone wants what you’ve built and they don’t want to share it with you, perhaps they disagree with the entire premise of your society and want it to stop existing.
How do you negotiate with these people? How do you work out some kind of arrangement that improves things? Can you avoid violence when the other people glorify it?
Even if you don’t think that stuff fits, that it’s not utopian enough, any community will be plagued with conflicts over the best way to accomplish something, even if most members agree overall on the goals. Environmental movements are full of disagreements over which tradeoffs to accept.
Here’s an example from something I’ve been thinking about recently: society needs a certain amount of steel and concrete, especially when rebuilding. You can reduce the overall amount, but that has other tradeoffs, you might need to harvest more lumber, deforesting certain areas, or cut back on housing or civil services, worsening peoples’ lives. Or you meet the required amounts - steel and concrete both take tremendous amounts of heat to produce. Your community could build a solar furnace using a ton of pivoting mirrors, and a parabolic concentrator, or a traditional fired furnace/kiln. The former will cover much more land, destroying habitats, and any birds who cross through the solar flux. The traditional system will produce lots of CO2 and other pollutants, and require fuel whose extraction process also damages habitats and will cost money or trade goods for as long as it runs. This kind of conflict is almost worse because most people involved want to do the right thing and have considered the options, they just prioritize different aspects of the problem.
That’s a great summary of how I think about it. I don’t like broad-brush utopianism, I like realism, and I think a more just, sustainable world is something that CAN exist, but would be really interesting and complicated to actually navigate.
The genre is new enough that there isn’t really a cultural collection of recognizable tropes. Which is really a big reason why I made this.
In the first campaign, there is one story about a high-stakes medical emergency and two stories that are similar to conflicts you might find in cyberpunk fiction, but reframed by the context in which they take place. You can read through the stories in the campaign module. Or join a play session. I think you’ll have fun.
May take a look at the material later, though probably not going to participate in the game.
TBH my initial thought is that it would make more sense to produce source material for an existing genre-neutral system like the Hero System than to create a whole new system unto itself. Still, I guess if the system is going to be FOSG (Free and Open-Source Gaming 😉) then it would still make sense to do the extra work.
Yeah, it’s a reasonable take. Personally, I have enough issues with all the systems I’ve tried that I homebrewed enough rules that it’s easier to just describe the rules than reference anything else.
The rules started with the Corporation RPG, which uses 2d10s for skill checks, and you try to roll below your attribute + points in a skill, and the skills are all selected to be genre-relevant.
The combat system is totally custom. I get that it’s kind of risky and hubristic, but I’ll just say it: I’ve never found a combat system that worked for my interests. The most fun systems I’ve played are Gloomhaven and Unmatched, which are both board games, not RPGs. So I made my own based on what I like.
The goal was to make something that had a feeling like fights in real life: it should feel somewhat tactical, but also be very fast and impulsive rather than slow and methodical. The solution is that it’s a played on a hex grid map, and the players have a very simple set of actions: they can move, they have one or two attacks, they can defend, and they can aim. It acts like rock-paper-scissors: everyone picks their action at the start of the round, then reveals at once. If you want to get tactical, there is plenty of room, but generally it should feel like a real fight: if someone has ranged attacks, you want to take cover. If someone is very aggressive, you should probably play defense. If they are very defensive, take advantage by using aim, which doesn’t work if you get attacked in the round you play it, but makes your next attack devastating if you play it successfully. There are some nuances like fudge dice to avoid it all being determination, but overall it feels fast, easy to pick up, and fair.
Personally, it’s my favorite combat system. Which is funny, because the game isn’t that combat heavy, but it’s an example of why I just went ahead and made custom rules system. If i thought I could tell the stories better with another one I would’ve, but I didn’t. So this is what i did.
As you said, it’s FOSG, so people can take the stories or lore and use them in FATE or GURPS or whatever they like. But it started as a game for friends, and I wrote the manual around the game as I ran it.
Nice. Love to see people contributing both to this genre of source material and to FOSG. And doing it with a good set of players as you go is definitely the best way to do it. Keep on gamin’!
to solarpunk what D&D is to fantasy and Shadowrun to Cyberpunk.
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Shadowrun to Cyberpunk.
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Cyberpunk.
?
Oh, I capitalized it by accident.
I fixed it.
Are you being deliberately obtuse
No. Your comments are vague.
I thought you were pointing out that I capitalized cyberpunk, which looks like a reference to the game of that name instead of the genre.
If I misunderstood, please explain what you are trying to tell me with a clear full sentence. Communicating exclusively through quotes is not an effective way to let me know what you’re trying to say.
DND is to fantasy what Cyberpunk is to cyberpunk.
Okay, I see what you mean. I think Shadowrun is a more popular system for running cyberpunk games than the Cyberpunk RPG, but thank you for explaining that.
