Monday, October 20, 2025

60 Years in Space: The Finale

What a wild ride.

TLDR Version

I had fun
It scratches a particular itch no other game (that I know of) is scratching
I wouldn’t recommend it

Now if some other mad bastard really wants to try playing it, I'll gladly encourage them to do so and point at my play reports as an example of how, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to rec it to anyone who isn’t a certified Sci-Fi Sicko with extreme patience and or an extremely specific compatible hyperfocus.

I like highly-procedural solo games

This series has really made that clear, and it’s probably why I stuck with 60 Years far longer than I did with the more mechanically-polished Ironsworn. If everything is loosey-goosey make-a-narrative there's no real draw for me, because that is already the default setting of my waking hours.

Characters feel irrelevant

I don’t think I would have lost much if the Hayashida’s crew had been fully elided, or reduced to brief bits of fluff. For the amount of work it took to make and maintain the characters, zoomed-out play rarely gave individuals something to do, and those times it did felt like unwanted intrusions.

Solo play for 60 Years sits in a weird middle ground between playing as a single character and playing as the faction: for this kind of game I prefer the latter and I think 60 Years is stronger that way.

Additional complication is that most of character generation is stuff that doesn’t really apply once you get into the late game. Like I'm not entirely sure how you even make a character for later eras, because clearly the starting archetypes aren’t going to cut it, and family and nationality aren’t relevant. I guess you’d use A Facility With Words?

A Lot of Zeroes bypasses the character issues by letting you choose what kind of funky transhuman your crewmembers are via their Lifestyle, and then just not really using them further - the shortest Operation in that game is 12 years long, so there’s not a lot of room for granularity. This, mixed with FWs approach would probably be the best way to roll with a faction-level game in earlier eras.

BSUs still don’t work, but they probably could

They work better when you’re in Sci-Fi Sicko territory, but in early phases when you’re still using real-world organizations the limitations are apparent.

A potential patch would be to swap out the real-world organizations with thematically-appropriate fictional ones, and use them as default/invariable starting options. While this goes against the spirit of the game somewhat, using broad-brush trope-based factions to fill the broad-brush trope-based BSU colors works. I cooked up with three sets just as an example, using Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, Mass Effect (you can just pretend the aliens are just like, countries on alternate Earth or something), and the SCP wiki.

Red - Human Hive or Spartan Federation
White - Lord’s Believers
Green - Stepdaughters of Gaia
Purple - UN Peacekeeping Forces
Orange - Morgan Industries or University of Planet

Red - Batarians
White - Turians
Green - Elcor, Volus, Hanar, Drell
Purple - Asari
Orange - Salarians

Red - Daevite Empire
White - Adytumite Sarkics
Green - Fae and / or Bigfoot
Purple - Ortothan Kingdoms
Orange - Mekhanite Orthodoxy

None of these would work for the game proper in the books, but it’s extremely easy to cook up alternatives: Atlantis, Mu, Kin-Yan, Lemuria, Carcosa. Writes itself.

Issues of Scale

A lot of the friction in 60 Years comes from the fact that it’s five different games in a trenchcoat: a game about the astronauts of a single crew, a game about factions expanding and exploring, a future-history worldbuilding simulation game, a colony building game, and a deep space / deep time exploration game.

The last two are mostly self-contained, and it seems that this is the direction the bulk of the game is going to be taking in the future, which is a very welcome shift: A Lot of Zeroes, A Facility with Words and the heretofore unmentioned A-Base D-Landing are designed to be more or less standalone - unfortunately for me, I wasn’t using any of that material. CR and SI are still married-but-separated to each other and keep leaving their things in each other’s apartments, and AE is clearly marked as a supplement so while not a standalone game it does live in its own world and that’s fine.

Proceduralism and Design

The game works best when there’s a procedural outline to follow, and its biggest flaw is that the books aren’t laid out to support that. This isn’t unique to 60 Years, of course; ttrpgs in general have inherited a lot of bad design from the 90s and early Aughts, and have been playing catch-up to the board game revolution ever since.

The current version is better than it was at launch, but still nowhere near where it should be: the core loop should be contained within a single book, whatever form that will take, and the mechanics should be presented in the order they’re relevant.

Ultimately, I don't think that the layout and information presentation issues in 60 Years are fixable while it’s still being laid out in LATEX. That program can automate a whole hell of a lot, but sometimes you just need to be able to click and drag something manually.

A Map, a Map, My Kingdom for a Map

60 Years, as written, has an enormous amount of content entirely dependent on having the High Frontier map on hand; this experiment would have been unplayable without the online planner someone made.

The only alternative presented in the book, which I brought up in Post 2, doesn’t really fill the mechanical gap left behind if you remove the map. This puts the game in a weird limbo where neither option is fully functional: the intended experience is missing its central component, and the alternative is so lightly sketched that I’m certain it will break other mechanics later on down the road.

This doesn’t have to be a one or the other thing, the game could include both play options and I think it should; I also think that its current state doesn’t help anyone.

A pared-down, printer-friendly version of the High Frontier map is possible with a bit of creative re-interpretation: I’ve seen solar system maps laid out as subway lines, so it’s entirely possible to get more compact. End of the day you’re just dealing with lines and shapes and abstracting the rest.

[Aside: I am one of those extremely unhelpful people who says “figuring out how to get somewhere is easy, because there are only ever three options: turn left, turn right, and go forward.”]

By that same token, if the no-map travel rules are going to be an option, I think they need more than just a single roll: I’m bought in to a certain amount of complexity, I'm playing 60 Years in Space here; I'm willing to do a bit of math.

A happy medium, I think, would be sitting down, crunching the numbers, and making a table of “it takes X burns and Y turns to get from Point A to Point B”. If we were calculating this for all 50-some destinations it'd be way more worth than what's worth it, but if we group those sites by region and let generalization carry the rest of it we can cut it down to 13 regions and 156 potential routes, which is much more manageable. It's still a lot of work up-front, but the end result is that the player doesn’t have to fiddle with anything if they don’t want to; they can find more efficient routes on their own if they have the map and the desire, but if they don't they can just check the table for an average route and calculate the fuel consumption and mission turns from there.

The thirteen regions being:

Mercury
Venus
Near-Earth Asteroid
Earth
Mars
Main Belt
Jovian moons
Jovian Greek asteroids
Jovian Trojan asteroids
Saturnian moons
Uranian moons
Neptunian moons
Trans-Neptunian Objects

Might squeeze in some extra categories for Centaurs and individual comets, but even with that it's not going to get too much worse, at least compared to the 2400+ of everything to everything.

This would, at the cost of a few additional tables (for readability, I would go with one table per page per launch point, since routes have to be listed with burns, turns, and transfers in order and that will take up the whole row) bypass the issues caused by there not being a map WITHOUT having to jettison the entire shipbuilding system. It’d work fine with both full granularity and simplified transit.

Proofing Note: One of the Inner System Expansion destinations is “Himala” - I cannot find any asteroid by that name, anywhere. Not on Wikipedia, not on the HF map, nowhere. Another reason to include the number.

I do think that the in-depth travel rules and ship builder should probably be segmented off into their own booklet - not as an individual purchase, but as an easier organizational thing.

All Errors My Own is Peak

This is where the Sci-Fi Sicko Shit lives, and it’s the main reason that this game won’t leave my head. You will also notice that I have barely mentioned it in this series of posts; which is something of a problem considering how much I am hyping it up.

AE is the book of factions, player character options, enemies, equipment, and setting / adventure / module defining elements. 658 pages of supplemental material, most of which will not be seen in a game of 60 Years even if you manage to play it through beginning to end. Its mix of hard science with absolutely bonkers extrapolations positions it orthogonally to the genre conventions that chain most sci-fi ttrpgs to the millstone, like the alien at the end of Annihilation.

Despite being so alien, it’s also not some monolithic, set-in-stone lore dump - 60 Years uses these for procedural future-history building. They’re a springboard, a box of Legos, a sandbox where you and the dice can build something at random or at whim. Each faction has options for its origins and doctrines, plus its various upgrades and potential social impacts, allowing for extra variation on a theme and providing you alternative jump-off points. Not too hot on the idea? Five other options just in that category, pick the one you like.

The temptation to just build a setting with all of them and incorporate every single damn thing in this book, while foolish, absolutely exists. I think the game’s inbuilt limiting factor helps avoid that pretty nicely: If you’re playing the game all the way from 2040 to 2115 RAW and replacing the Trends every time it’s mechanically possible (once every 8 years), you’re still only going to get like, 9 of them for a single type. 18 total. As alien as this can get, you have to go out of your way to make it truly overwhelming.

That’s a lot of words without an example, so you know what, here's just a big list of cool shit I like from the book.

Uplifted manta rays
Resurrected prehistoric human species (Including the vampires from Blindsight)
Blue goo (medical nanotech) symbiotes
Mutant strain of toxoplasmosis that triggers aggressive cat-worshiping behavior.
Cyborgs that carry around a team of AI and swap them in and out of their head depending on task.
Living spaceships that skim fuel off of the upper atmospheres of the gas and ice giants
Postsingularity beings who want to move Earth into orbit around Neptune, and then turn Neptune into a fusion candle for interstellar transit.
Sapient ecosystems where all biological components are actually distinct phases of a single organism's life cycle(s).
Parahumans with exoskeleons decorated with bright, friendly colors and patterns.
Mass-scale insect farming to offset Earthside food shortages.
Morlocks - humans modified to spend their entire lives underground or underwater - they're got an explicit reference to Deep Carbon Observatory in their writeup.
Six different ways for slightly-changed microbes can trigger catastrophic environmental collapse.
"Surprise! There was an alien civilization inside Europa the entire time!"
Hyper-compartmentalized cell-based conspiracy where no one in the group knows that they're actually part of the group.
Gentlemen! BEHOLD! Martian bigfoot!
The Alpha Centauri colony mission is absolutely fucked in 6/7 origin stories
Eusociality emerges due to the pressures on small, extremely isolated populations.
Postsingularity entities that encoded themselves into the interactions of extremeophile microbes.
Predatory space habitats that eat other space habitats for resources
LS4D - the drug that allows you to visualize in more than 3 dimensions

I desperately want this book in a system-neutral form. Or a form that has permissive licensing so it can be easily adapted to other games. Something that allows it to spread outside of 60 Years. Take the factions et al from this book, combine it with the solar system / planet builder from AE, the life / ecosystem designer, and some other bits from the rest of the books, strip out the 60 Years mechanics, and you have a system neutral hard-science rpg toolkit that isn’t afraid to get weird with it: That is an extremely undeserved market in this field.

It'd be really nice for the uplifted manta ray, the prehistoric vampire, and the medical nanite symbiote to be in a game that isn’t such a hassle to play.

Finale

I say it often and it bears repeating: Flawed art with vision is more engaging than 'good' art that remains safe. This is one of those cases. I haven't had this much fun with an RPG (sans the one session of Mothership I've run this year) in ages, but it's also a mess of a game that gets in its own way constantly and is nearly, but not quite, unplayable. Both can be true. And the great thing about text in a pdf is that it can be changed: mechanics can be adjusted, cruft can be cut, elements can be re-arranged and reformatted and we've seen that already happen with this game.

I've gotten my fill for now, but might return in the future, either if there are revisions that streamline the play process of the main game / split off the history simulation aspect, or if I get the itch to run A Lot of Zeroes. But for now, we return to the regularly unscheduled programming.

Thursday, October 16, 2025

A Failed Review of the Ultimate Alien Anthology

"Boots off the counter, sir!"

I have, by hook and by crook, come into possession of another copy of the Star Wars Ultimate Alien Anthology (the first RPG book I ever owned, and then sold). For old times’ sake I wanted to give it a read and write something about it for the blog; it’s legitimately terrible. I say that with some amount of affection but that doesn’t stop it from being bad on just about every criteria you can judge it on. 13-year-old me didn’t care, of course, I barely knew what TTRPGs were when I got this as a birthday gift.

I’d considered for a moment doing a Marsworms-style alien-by-alien review series, but abandoned that very quickly when the double whammy of Star Wars’ bedrock dependency on “stock-character-as-species” combined with a book that is trying to convert all that into RPG material without the page space or editorial leeway to expand on anything would result in a review where most of the entries would be “they’re just a type of guy and there is fundamentally nothing interesting or engaging about them.”

Then I considered taking advantage of that type-of-guy-ness and reverse engineering all those aliens to Mothership NPCs, but that fell prey to a similar issue; Star Wars aliens are already stock characters, so translating them into stock characters is redundant. I could do it, and probably pretty easily, but I don’t think the end result would be all that interesting.

Then I was was spurred by an aside of Austin Walker’s in A More Civilized Age, where he talks about how Star Wars is historically and presently disinterested in portraying culture. That aside lives rent-free in my head, because I suffer from a particular kind of cognitive dissonance where the cantina scene in A New Hope is simultaneously my canonical conceptualization of What Sci-Fi Is and one of the most egregious examples of what I hate in the genre. But it got me thinking - if I were to compile the scraps of Star Wars cultural world building that exist (for example, in this book), could I remix them into a single actually interesting fictional culture (or group of neighboring cultures)? Even if I couldn’t, what patterns would I find in the corpus? It would be an interesting look (well, for a given value of interesting) as to what gets classified as the Other in Star Wars when one strips out “stock-character-as-species” from the equation.

Well, that fell apart swiftly as well, for similar reasons: there’s only the barest crumbs of material to build with in this book, which means that any sort of transformative synthesis is more work than it’s worth. Source material that doesn’t support that sort of reading filtered through a book that doesn’t have the space to do it justice even if it did. Everyone knows Star Wars doesn’t give a shit about this sort of stuff, Austin was stating a truism that we all, to some degree, already know. But man, it really sinks in when you try to read a Star Wars book and you’re specifically focusing on those details. It’s like watching the rubber pseudoflesh rot off the animatronic.

So, in lieu of all that, I’m just going to do a regular-ass ol’ review of a book from over 20 years ago that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone.

The Regular-Ass Review Portion

The UAA was published as part of the Star Wars Saga Edition RPG, being the adaptation of D&D 3.X. It was released between Episodes 2 and 3, and so doesn’t include aliens from Revenge of the Sith, Clone Wars, or the tail end of the old EU books. Still, it includes over 200 species from the films, novels, some games, and some ported over from the WEG RPG. Not all of them are created equal.

What in the actual hell is Kit Fisto doing on the cover. What is this stance? Who approved this?

I’ll give the book credit for having art for all 183 aliens, split into lineups of 4-5 species at a time. I appreciate that the artists have distinct enough styles that, if you showed any two lineups side-by-side it’d be clear that they were made by different people without being particularly distracting. They don’t get a lot of room to play around, all the poses are pretty stiff, and many of the designs are aggressively mid even by rubber mask alien standards, but still.

Layout is what you’d expect for the era: two column with small text and standardized templates for each species: overview, personality, physical description, homeworld, language, example names, age grades, adventurers, species traits, and commoner stats. Then there are some prestige classes and feats at the end.

Age and commoner stats are 3.X-isms I am exceptionally glad people stopped wasting page space on. Like at the very least if you're going to have all this cruft, have the decency to use standardized keywords like MtG.

Overviews are very inconsistent in terms of length, with some species getting over half a page and some getting barely a paragraph despite the book being long enough (223 pages) that you could conceivably dedicate an entire page to each if you were smart about your spacing and cut out the cruft.

If there is a recurring theme to be had in the species overviews, it’s that first contact scenarios tend to go absolutely belly-up in Star Wars. Everyone’s getting conquered by their neighbors, or destabilized by rapid technological advancement via contact with the greater galaxy, or exploited by offworld economic forces, or enslaved by the Empire, so on and so on. It’s the antithesis of Star Trek and its Prime Directive, not only in content but in how much focus is given to it. This all comes with the territory of Star Wars as a Wagnerian Western, no surprise there, and I point it out primarily for how good it serves as a teaching example of how narrative focus and bias can elide or silence themes that are explicitly in the text.

In a turn of opinion that would likely shock and appall 13-year-old me, rereading this book has brought me round to the idea that Star Wars shouldn’t have aliens at all. Or at least you would lose nothing with an all-human cast.

It's an odd experience to go through this and see everyone put on the same level of importance vis-a-vis their positioning in the galaxy: extras in the movies, big players in the novels, weirdos from comics no one remembers and some more weirdos from WEG modules are all treated with more or less the same amount of attention, to the point where if this book was the only exposure someone had to Star Wars, they'd probably be disappointed in how many entries are one-offs in the actual franchise.

Playing as the Yuuzhan Vong get an entire appendix (entire = 3 pages); I still remember being shock-and-awed by feelings of "oh shit there's this huuuuuuge thing going on after Return of the Jedi!", because when you're 13 getting that info from secondhand sources like this or the Essential Guides series it sounds so, so much cooler than the actual content. Got a real oral history type thing going on, severed from the EU novels.

Anyway, the YV are what happens when you have a potentially good setup and then coward out: they should have been fucked up modular fleshbeast chimeras bearing no resemblance to anything else in the franchise, and that version of them absolutely should have shown up out of nowhere during the Takodana battle in Force Awakens.

Instead of the usual shotgun-commentary on the aliens themselves since there are so many of them, I'm just going to do 12 that I like (from this book specifically) in no particular order. You could get a solid fantasy setting out of these ones, I think.

Ithorian - Fucking iconic. Instantly recognizable silhouette, they live in giant floating cities above the planetwide jungle they worship as a god. If Ithorians aren’t in your top tier we cannot be friends.

Caamasi - They have a one-note deal as the super-nice empath guys who are friends to everyone (and are predictably fucked over by the Empire), but to the point of other species using their name just to denote far-away friends, and this one works for me. The empath thing is sufficient justification for Star Wars: yeah, if you can feel other people's negative emotions you're going to try and avoid being a jerk.

Togruta - Canonically (according to this book), Ahsoka (who did not exist at the time it was written) has echolocation, eats live alien rats by snapping their necks with her teeth, and has to deal with microaggressions insinuating that she is venomous. Stop being cowards, Disney! Let Ahsoka eat alien rats! Anyway, striking design, the rat thing is a fun bit of weird, there's some broad motions at a collectivist society and having to avoid major predators on their homeworld, which are not developed but are at least something.

Kel Dor - Yes, they look like a shriveled ballsack with a gas mask; No, I do not care. I’m with Filoni on this one, Plo Koon is sick. Picked Kel Dor as my PC in Jedi Academy. Sure, they don't have a whole lot going for them from a lore perspective but they are cool fucked-up guys in space and sometimes that's enough. Also apparently they're related to the Tognath from the Disney films i.e. those two cool motherfuckers that Saw has in his crew.

Jawa - They deserve better. They’re weird little guys who love garbage, they should have some incredible goblinmode fits, not just uniform brown robes. Obvious squandered potential. Gimme the garbage goblins. Star Wars is nearly 50 years old, and the idea of having the signature Weird Little Technically Savvy Guy alien pop out of a maintenance hatch and go “No can do, bossman, the flim-flam’s been shmeckledorfed” is still fully beyond the series’ imaginary. What are we even doing.

T'surr - Deepest of the deep cuts, these guys first appeared in some kid-focused books published by Scholastic which I had never heard of before looking up where they first appeared right at this moment. They're big fucked up blue bad guys and you know what, why not. Fucked up space orcs. The color and the being huge give me vibes of the Koloss (though they would not come later and this is me projecting into the past like it's fucking New Sun), which are one of Sanderson's creations that I really like.

Arcona - These guys actually have enough material to qualify a basic fantasy culture: communities of large extended families, men acting as primary domestics, group decision making, common use of noisms in even casual speech, and a society that was nearly destroyed by the introduction of highly addictive drugs by outside forces looking to economically exploit them (a la opium in China) - there's stuff here to work with, and they're not Just One Thing. Welcome surprise, I wouldn't have put them on the shortlist before now.

Hutt - As far as giant space slugs go, not a great design compared to the wild shit that earth slugs can get up to. As far as coding, not the greatest. But they do have a lot of interesting parts: an ancient space empire that's not a particularly great place to live but has remained functional for longer than anyone else, mafia-style inter-clan politics, profiting off of the dysfunction of their neighbors. Yeah they're "what if the idea of a drug lord was also a slug", but they're closer to the drug lords in House of the Scorpion - they're so well-established and so entrenched that they can operate in the open and no one else can do anything about it. Good antagonist fuel.

Noghri - God, could you imagine if Leia rolled up in Force Awakens with a couple of Noghri bodyguards? People would lose their shit. And for good reason, Noghri are cool. They have a good gimmick (planet was fucked by space battle during the war, Empire rolled in and basically extorted service for ecological aid that never came), they give Leia something cool to interact with that's specific to her, you can easily get some good comedy out of them (they are serious little guys, good to play off of), they're all-around solid.

Ortolan - Apparently, Max Rebo is supposed to be playing the organ with his feet, but you can’t see it because of how he’s positioned. Anyway, a fat little blue alien elephant guy is a fun muppet alien and you gotta have one good muppet in the crew.

Duros - I love that they’re just Gray-ass Grays. They have a very vintage 70s sort of vibe, inherited from back when Star Wars drew from sources that weren’t Star Wars - “here are the Grays, they were one of the first species to start exploring the galaxy and they absolutely obliterated the environment of their homeworld so nowadays it’s basically just a giant radioactive dump.”

So there we go. Not a good book, Star Wars is fucking weird, sometimes you have to go through four drafts before something clicks. I'll save the one-by-one reviews for a better book.

Tuesday, October 14, 2025

60 Years, the Return: Part 4

Let's get right into it.

Service Risk Triggers

Cosmic Ray (Applies if no cosmic ray protections)
Extended Ops (Applies if 2d6 < mission years)
Lifespan (Always applies; roll twice if Augmented+)
Maintenance (Always applies; roll twice if AWOL)
Microgravity (Applies if size/thrust < 10 and Crew Quality < High)
Psychological (Always applies: roll for result first time only)

2041 (Era 1, Year 2)

Blue 4

Planning Phase

Service Risks (SI 57)

Noi - 2: Extended Ops

2 = 2, no effect

Shin - 4: Maintenance

2 - Implant Aging (no implants, does not apply)

En - 2: Extended Ops

11 > 2, no effect

Fujita - 4: Maintenance

6 - Unlicensed items (does not apply) , Aging/ Mental (1(d6) + 1(era) , 3 (character age in decades). No effect yet, Fujita now has Mental Aging 1.

Public pronouns (CR 103)

Dependency (FW ??)

Move / Operation Selection

Completed in Part 2

Faction Event (SI 44)

4 - Faction Accident (Green) - The Southern Alliance suffers another setback as one of their shifts suffers a thruster accident in LEO; the entry on SI 316 says to destroy the thruster and a “support card” which is a board game component not otherwise mentioned or explained in the book.

Solar Cycle Event (SI 44)

7 - Trend (Does not apply)

Trends (AE 12-17)

Execution Phase

Resolve Interceptions (SI 98)

Move (CR 206)

Green Line Merge Point through Jovian flyby through Saturn band

Encounter (CR 246, SI 13, AE 18)

11 - 3rd Wave Crew

(1, 3) + (5, 11) : GISTDA (Thai national space agency)
Communication Origin: Shackleton Crater, Lunar South Pole
Encounter Prompt: Propaganda

The Hayashida picks up self-congratulatory and spin-doctored broadcast from GISTDA’s lunar facility about recent manufacturing developments.

Operation (SI 270 & 274)

Research - 3! A plain success. We research the 3 remaining components for our upcoming ORION rocket.

Held Move (CR 206)

Gain skill points (SI 270 & CR 119)

Going to handwave these again, except for Fujita; going to use his skill point to negate his Mental Aging penalty and bring him back down to 0.

Dysphoria penalty for AWOL Modded / Converted / Exospecies crew (CR 163)

Mission Results (SI 41)

Year 2 Wrapup

3 major factions

JAXA (White)
Planetary Society (Purple)
The Southern Alliance / SACU + MERCOSUR + ASEAN (Green)

2 minor factions

Zero Family (Earthside criminal syndicate, Purple)
GISTDA (Thai national agency)

3 factories

10 Hygeia (Planetary Society)
Arsia Mons caverns, Mars (Southern Alliance)
Shackleton Crater, Lunar South Pole (GISTDA)

Faction finances: 1 debt, capital 5
Research queue: 5/5 ORION components researched

2042 (Era 1, Year 3)

Yellow 1

Planning Phase

Service Risks (SI 57)

Noi - 3: Lifespan

6 - Sleep Companions + Aging/Physical (5 + 1 > 4, no effect)
Since I am not really caring about sleeping arrangements, part 1 does not apply.

Shin - 6: Psychological

1 - Autonomization: Shin has developed a tendency to doubt the competence of anyone outside of mission control and the Hayashida’s crew: he will take a penalty on all skill checks where someone from outside the faction attempts to help.

En - 3: Lifespan

2 - Mission Contacts
I understand the point of the contact risks: having your contacts die while you’re out on a mission is good storytelling fodder, but contacts and all that are a part of 60 Years that is very easy to let fall to the wayside.
Proofing Note: AFAIC, Delta Green still remains the king of contact mechanics for a good reason - they get you a lot of material (ie, see how someone’s relationships change over time) for an easily-grasped and always relevant mechanic (ablative SAN armor) - there are just one or two moving pieces too many here.

Fujita - 3: Lifespan

6 - Sleep Companions + Aging/Physical (3+1 > 3, no effect)

Public pronouns (CR 103)

Dependency (FW ??)

Move / Operation Selection

Completed in Part 2

Faction Event (SI 44)

3 - New Factory + Faction Mission

New Factory 6 (Space Politics = Purple) - The Planetary Society gets a new factory up and running at… 1d6 = 1, +1 because they already have a factory, Glory destination, 1d6 again… 3: Mars North Pole.
Proofing Note: The faction mission result says to generate using the faction mission table, which I cannot find in CR or SI; it also does not specify if the d6 I am presumably rolling as usual for the Faction Events is the faction that is undergoing the mission, or the faction that is giving me the mission. Since the mission control trend I roll for this year gives me a faction, I am folding this into that by fiat.

Solar Cycle Event (SI 44)

10 - Spacecraft Glitch + Earth Disaster
Since the ship isn’t AWOL, we’re up to date with our computer patches and this is a minor glitch, which is supposed to be taken care of with a DevOps skill check. Since this ship is something we have Chrome for that’s 1d6, a 4 means no complication.
Disaster roll is 11 - American-Carribean earthquake. No disruption of Mission Control support.

Trends (AE 12-17)

Social Trend: 8 + 1 = Sustainable Development Goals

Somehow, human civilization starts getting its shit together.

Proofing Note: as is commonly the case in this series, I am second-guessing myself despite superficially-clear description: I think that you don’t get an impact when a trend is rolled. I think. I’m going with that. But it feels wrong.
Mission Control Trend: 6 - 1 = Upported Colonists

Rolling a 2 for the White column, I then roll 1d6+6 and get 12: Svalbard Caretakers.
Fun! These guys have a writeup in AE.

Svalbard Caretakers (White)

They maintain the Svalbard seed vault, the secure backup vault of genes and seedstock for as much of the world’s flora as they can fit in there.

Majority Doctrine: Conservationists

What it says on the tin

Majority Origin: Food security piracy

Mass food shortages and crop failures have brought some nations knocking, with guns to get the point across. Our caretakers are fleeing to space because the continued safety of the Terran vault is no longer a given.

Minority Doctrine: Acclimatisation Societies

Controlled introduction of non-native flora into environments bolster damaged ecosystems.

Minority Origin: Svalbard conspiracy theorists

The outside pressure is fueled in large part by the online conspiracy ecosystem; people are certain that there is more in that facility than just seeds, and some of those people are enough political power to act on their suspicions.

Upgrades

(4, 4) Orchard Ecology (Mass 1 biosphere) - The Caretakers are looking to set up a food-production operation, both as a backup in case the earthly vault is lost and as support for the growing extraterrestrial human population.

Here’s where I tie in the Faction Mission from earlier: rolling on the goal and destination table I get Long term colony - Ceres. The caretakers aren’t fucking around on this one. Since the Hayashida can’t do anything here, another crew will handle this, arriving at Ceres in (using my simplified transit houserule) 2 years / 2045.

Proofing Note: With Political trends and impacts getting cut, I don’t know how or when crew replacement is supposed to take place. These weren't relevant right now, but looking at the faction section in AE reminded me that they exist.

Execution Phase

Resolve Interceptions (SI 98)

Move (CR 206)

Uranian band into the first half of THE TERROR ZONE

Encounter (CR 246, SI 13, AE 18)

2nd Wave Crew
Communication Origin: 2d6 - 5 = 0, they’re Earthside
2, (6,10) - POLSA (Polish space agency)
Encounter prompt: Praise for gov’t.

I’m presuming that’s our gov’t. maybe JAXA and POLSA are starting up some king of joint project, something with a lot of ribbon-cutting and speeches that run on too long.

Operation (SI 270 & 274)

Since we have the research we need, I’m going to do an Income operation to cancel out our debt.
6 - Success with complication - 2d6 = 7, Rapid Operation: we get to do an extra operation this year! But since we’re stuck in transit there’s not much to do, so I’m going to Research again.
Research 8 - Success at cost. Going to fiat that we can bank 1 point of debt clearance into a rainy day fund to cover future shortfalls. We research 1 additional technology, which will remain banked until narratively relevant.

Held Move (CR 206)

Gain skill points (SI 270 & CR 119)

I could fix Shin’s penalty, but that one is not liable to crop up in this demo mission so I’ll pass.

Dysphoria penalty for AWOL Modded / Converted / Exospecies crew (CR 163)

Mission Results (SI 41)

Year 3 Wrapup

3 major factions

JAXA (White)
Planetary Society (Purple)
The Southern Alliance / SACU + MERCOSUR + ASEAN (Green)

4 minor factions

Zero Family (Earthside criminal syndicate, Purple)
GISTDA (Thai national space agency, White)
POLSA (Polish national space agency, White)
Svalbard Caretakers (Partnered with JAXA, White)

4 factories

10 Hygeia (Planetary Society)
Arsia Mons caverns, Mars (Southern Alliance)
Shackleton Crater, Lunar South Pole (GISTDA)
Mars North Pole (Planetary Society)
Ceres (Svalbard Caretakers, not yet constructed)

Faction finances: 0 debt, capital 5
Research queue:

5/5 ORION components researched
1 banked research project

2043 (Era 1, Year 4)

Yellow 2

Planning Phase

Service Risks (SI 57)

Noi - 1: Cosmic Ray

5 - Smart device glitch; 5 - Safety failure
One of the ship’s smart devices glitches, causing it to no longer be safely usable. There’s no roll to determine what asset is effected, so I’m just going to roll with “personal computer develops dangerous overheating issue and needs replaced”.

Shin - 4: Maintenance

4 - Robot aging - I don’t know where the aging rules are for robots, so I am just going to say “yes, this happens”. Poor spider-bot is beginning to slow down.

En - 5: Microgravity

Does not apply to high-quality crew

Fujita - 5: Microgravity

Does not apply to high-quality crew

Public pronouns (CR 103)

Dependency (FW ??)

Move / Operation Selection

Completed in Part 2

Faction Event (SI 44)
New Factory (White)

Goal & Destination: (6, 7) Industrial - Karin B

I can’t find a listing for any asteroid named Karin B, but there is the Karin family and 832 Karin. I’m just going to go with 1079 Mimosa because it was the second of the Karin group to be discovered.
Proofing Note: Please include asteroid numbers

1079 Mimosa gives us an S-class factory: combined with the C-class factory on Pholus, this gives us the opportunity to build Europa class Promoted spacecraft. Eventually. I’ll put our extra research towards one of those, though it won’t really matter for this demo.

Solar Cycle Event (SI 44)

No event

Trends (AE 12-17)

Execution Phase

Resolve Interceptions (SI 98)

Move (CR 206)

TERROR ZONE, part 2; landing on Pholus.

Encounter (CR 246, SI 13, AE 18)

12 - 3rd Wave Crew

(2,2) + (3,2): Red - National Military (India)
Communication Origin: Long-Term Colony - 588 Achilles
Encounter Prompt - Was originally “survey questions”, which i felt didn’t make any sense, so I went with the nearby “news report”

The Hayashida receives a news report from the inner system that the Indian Space Force has been deployed to quell unrest at their facility on Achilles.

Operation (SI 270 & 274)

Technically, I have to spend this on a Prospect operation before I do anything else: the Prospect operation exists purely as a fuck you to the player, because you’re forced to waste a year on the chance that the site is busted and you can’t make a claim on it, which means you can’t build your factory.
MAJOR PROOFING NOTE: The Prospect operation, if it absolutely must be retained, should be moved to mission selection. Handwave it with probes or drones or whatever is needed. Having a player wade through all of this to yank the rug at the last moment is extremely aggravating: sudden bad fortune and difficult rolls are not bad design in and of themselves, but they will be more aggravating for the player (and the player will be more likely to avoid the mechanic or the game entirely) if those elements are judged to be at too great a cost in time / in-game resource investment is too high. This is why lunchbreak-sized roguelites are an extremely popular genre: you’re going to lose, but it won’t take long and you’ll probably get something from it.
Industrialize Operation - We have Chrome, since we’re stripping out our ship components: 5 gets me a plain success.

Held Move (CR 206)

Gain skill points (SI 270 & CR 119)

Going to have Noi and Shin spend their points on fixing their gear.

Dysphoria penalty for AWOL Modded / Converted / Exospecies crew (CR 163)

Mission Results (SI 41)

Since we have 2 operational factories, we are technically at the Advanced tech level, I think. Which feels wrong, I think that the lucky “New Factory” event might have broken the flow of the game somewhat, since looking at the Tech Levels on CR 147 it says that we’re normally supposed to get here midway through Era 2. I’m going to go with my gut and just roll on the ET Produced column instead

1 - 1: All four crew get 5 points to put into their Social stat, which may now be raised to 6… but since raising it to 6 costs 6 points (CR 81), Noi is the only crew who can even use these points and goes from 4 to 5.
Proofing Note: The generic faction upgrades are not rewarding. All the factions in AE have cool stuff they’ll give you if you do missions for them; I got skill points I can’t even use.
Proofing Note: It’s possible to Jump to Advanced / Dual Technologies by the end of your first mission due to background faction activity.

Year 4 / Mission Complete Wrapup

3 major factions

JAXA (White)
Planetary Society (Purple)
The Southern Alliance / SACU + MERCOSUR + ASEAN (Green)

5 minor factions

Zero Family (Earthside criminal syndicate, Purple)

GISTDA (Thai national space agency, White)
POLSA (Polish national space agency, White)
Svalbard Caretakers (Partnered with JAXA, White)
Indian Space Force (Red)

3 factories

10 Hygeia (Planetary Society)
Arsia Mons caverns, Mars (Southern Alliance)
Shackleton Crater, Lunar South Pole (GISTDA)
Mars North Pole (Planetary Society)
Ceres (Svalbard Caretakers, not yet constructed)
588 Achilles (Indian Space Force)
1079 Mimosa (JAXA)
5145 Pholus (JAXA)

Faction finances: 0 debt, capital 5
Research queue:

5/5 ORION components researched
1 banked Europa-class research project

Proofing Note: There should be bookmarks for individual operations instead of just the section header; it’s tiresome to scroll everywhere constantly.

Proofing Note: To cut down on swapping between books, I ended up going through each element instead of each year ie, I rolled the faction events for all 4 years, then the solar events for all 4 years, etc.

And there we have it: Hayashida's Pholus mission is done; the white whale is slain, perhaps. A gargantuan accomplishment, yet still somewhat hollow feeling - there’s all this stuff about upgrades and progression and whatnot, but it’s so opaque and scattered throughout all of the books that it never kicked in. There’s huge lists of stuff to manufacture, but I’m playing zoomed-out: if it’s not rocket-related or interesting flavor, it doesn’t really apply. The ending is a flat note, though that is likely to be expected when I've played a fraction of a full game.

The social simulation & worldbuilding elements - developing new factions and watching as they spread across the solar system - were a lot more satisfying once I got the procedure down. Those parts are, ultimately, the lion’s share of why this game has remained in my head for so long, so I suppose that means the experiment is something of a success. I'm certainly happy with the amount of actually game-related writing it spurred me to do, and I won't say that I didn't have any fun.

My full thoughts will be in the fifth and final post in this series: stay tuned.

Saturday, October 11, 2025

60 Years, the Return: Part 3

With our astronauts made and our course plotted, all that remains is to go out and do it.

As before, our ship is the Hayashida and her crew:

Noi Shimada, Pilot; Callsign DEADLIFT
Shin Zaha, Mission Specialist; Callsign HAMMER
En Hajime Astronaut; Callsign TOADSTOOL
Fujita Avakian, Astronaut; Callsign TENGU

Goal is to establish an automated factory on the outer-system centaur asteroid 5145 Pholus.

9. Order of Operations

Each turn has a set order, found on SI 40. Planning Phase steps don't have any inherent timing, Execution Phase steps must be done in order.

Planning Phase

Service Risks (SI 57)

Every crewmember rolls on the table every year, though each risk type has prerequisites that need to be met in order for it to trigger.

Public pronouns (CR 103)

Era start year only

Dependency (FW ??)

A feature that comes into play when new species start being developed: it's not going to be relevant for this game, though if it was I wouldn't be able to do anything with it since the current version of A Facility with Words has cut that segment and I deleted my older copies of the books (and it doesn't look like older versions are available on Itch)
Andrew told me he is working on something to bring this back in.

Move / Operation Selection

This is for games with multiple players that need to agree on the next actions - since I’ve already planned out my route, it doesn’t really apply.

Faction Event (SI 44)

Random event focused on one or more of the major factions (not always your own).

Solar Cycle Event (SI 44)

Random event affecting the solar system at large; the list of events will change depending on what phase of the 12-year solar cycle is active (see below.)

Trends (AE 12-17)

Long-term changes to The Way Things Are for your mission control, and society at large (see below)

Execution Phase

Resolve Interceptions (SI 98)

In-transit encounters, which are scheduled in advance due to the necessities of spaceflight. Might be a quick chat, might be a resupply, might be a boarding action.

Move (CR 206)

You can hold your move until after the year's Operation.

Encounter (CR 246, SI 13, AE 18)

This is what it says on the tin, but it’s also a bit confusing in that there are three slightly-different versions of the encounter table in CR, SI, and AE - I’m using the one in AE, because I’m using social trends, but this comes with some issues you’ll see below.

Operation (SI 270 & 274)

A year-long action involving the entire crew - this is the core of each turn. I’m 99% positive this is from the board game, and I appreciate the structure it provides

Held Move (CR 206)

If the year's movement was held, it goes here instead.

Gain skill points (SI 270 & CR 119)

All crew participating in an Operation get a skill point; they get an additional down-time point if they end a year at a site instead of in-transit.

Dysphoria penalty for AWOL Modded / Converted / Exospecies crew (CR 163)

Only relevant for later eras / crew augmentations.

Mission Results (SI 41)

On mission completion receive either faction rank up (SI 41), or an upgrade from the relevant faction. (CR 160)
The SI directions leave out faction-specific upgrades, which are present in CR; I'm also double-guessing if it's actually supposed to be "rank up or upgrade" rather than "rank up and upgrade".

Proofing Note: The sections for these steps should be presented immediately after the listed order of play, in the order of play, preferably with internal hyperlinks.

In line with upcoming updates to the game, I'm not going to include political trends and impacts.

9.1 Solar Cycle

The color + number codes below are in reference to the solar cycle, which runs in three four-year chunks (Blue > Yellow > Red) and determines one of the yearly events and a few other factors here and there.

9.2 Trends

Trends are where all the truly wild sci-fi stuff lives, and I would be lying if I said my attempt to play this game was anything beyond an excuse to get to this specific mechanic. When laid out over the course of an entire game, trends give you a future-history simulation with some true sci-fi sicko tier Big Idea, and you know how much I love a Big Idea for Sci-Fi Sickos.

Unfortunately, since Trends don’t kick in until 2042, this mission is only going to get the first pair and I won’t roll Impacts for them. At default you only roll for Impacts once every four years, which means that comparatively little of the big list of Big Ideas for Sci-Fi Sickos is going to feature, even if you play all five eras.

While this is somewhat disappointing on the surface, something that isn’t a current Trend can still exist, it’s just not the dominant Thing at the moment.

I had tried, a couple years ago now, to do a run-through of only trends where I triggered Impacts twice a cycle: this technically worked, but it didn’t work well, and I hadn’t realized at the time that all the cool factions (You know me, I love a faction) that are difficult to land on with Trends are much easier to invoke with the encounter table. Lesson learned.

Clarification needed: I still don’t know if trends carry over between Eras. Do they automatically end when the year turns over, or do they keep going in tandem with the new trend until it fizzles out according to the usual mechanic?

Anyway, here’s how Trends work with the rest of the cycle.

Year 1: Roll d6 for each Trend: if lower than the number of Impacts the trend has generated, a new Trend is rolled.
Year 3: Roll a new Impact for each active Trend. Upgrades, crew replacements, and anything else directly involving the crew will take effect the next time you have a layover at a site or factory.

9.3 Encounters

Encounters need a dedicated section here, because as-written they’re kind of a mess.

The baseline version on CR 246: roll d6 to determine which color faction you run into, no muss no fuss. SI and AE expand (and explicitly supersede) that by adding more options (and increasing the range of your roll as era progress), but the underlying chassis of colors and factions wasn’t built for more options. New factions are also rolled on this table as well.

CR 288 tells us directly that:

"There is a limit of 5 major (on map) factions including yours, one of each BSU color...The major factions will change as time passes, evolving into new factions and even species as time progresses."

and

"Any additional factions are considered minor factions, which can build infrastructure and supply missions, but do not have a significant presence on the map."

We then get 3 categories of factions

Crew Factions = Factions that have a mission control, ships, and are equivalent to player factions.
Colonist Factions = Groups that want to go out and live in space, usually minor.
Social Factions = Broader social movements and trends, which can provide crew members and sometimes replace major factions.

This trichotomy, to the best of my search ability, does not get mentioned in SI or AE, despite being pretty vital to juggling all the factions you're going to be making. Trend and Colonist factions are pretty self-explanatory, but Crew ones have some confusing category overlaps that were giving me issues.

Here's the two tables for reference, just before I go any further.

SI Encounter Table

AE Encounter Table

We're told that major factions are only generated by New Faction or Faction Replacement event; rolling a color that doesn't exist for an encounter means there's no encounter. Robots, splinter factions, and most new species have a Major Faction they're associated with, which is easy enough.

But there's a Problem: The expanded encounter rules don't have any indication as to whether or not an encounter is with a new faction or an existing one.

Worked example, directly from my mission reports. I roll a 3rd Wave Crew as a New Faction event in 2040 and they take up one of my major faction slots. But I also roll 3rd Wave Crew for the random encounters in 2041 and 2043. This has led to several questions I have been unable to find answers for.

Are all three of these meant to be three different factions?
Is my 3rd Wave major faction encountered only if I roll Major Faction, or is it possible on a roll of Major Faction and/or 3rd Wave Crew, since it's both of those things?
Am I supposed to be building up a bespoke encounter subtable specific to my game i.e. if I roll 3rd Wave Crew, do I then roll a second time to see if it's an existing faction or not?
Does the New Faction event trigger multiple new factories in later eras for all groups, or is that just for new Major Factions?
Am I supposed to just make new factions for encounters until I roll the exact same result on the subtables?
Do minor factions generated by encounters get factories or colonies?
Do 1st and 2nd wave crews automatically qualify for major factions if their color hasn’t been claimed?
For encounters that generate a new faction, do I use the original roll or the black highlighted one?
What determines if a colonist faction is independent or not? Are all colonist factions independent, and all other colonies are just considered part of a major faction by default?

For the time being, my hasty patch-job is re-ordering the encounter procedure:

The bulk of encounters in 60 Years are via long-distance communication (I love this, gracefully squares the circle of how to have random encounters when you're in an empty void millions of miles away from anything else), part of the process entails rolling for its origin point; I rolled for origin point first, which would would allow me to check against existing factions and their factories to see if the encounter is with a new or existing faction.

Houserule: For long distance random encounters, roll for origin point first; if location has been claimed, use that faction for the encounter. If it hasn’t been claimed, roll on the encounter table and treat as a new minor faction.

Now, finally, it's time for the Pholus Mission; I’ve kept the steps that aren’t applicable for this mission anyway as a model / memory aid.

2040 (Era 1, Year 1)

Blue 3

Planning Phase

Service Risks (SI 57)

Since we're still on Earth, I'm skipping this step for this year.

Public pronouns (CR 103)

Since this is an era start, I roll 8 on the table and add +1 from Purple Space Politics: They / Them / Their, indicating a greater mainstreaming of gender neutral language in the general culture.

Dependency (FW ??)

Move / Operation Selection

See Part 2

Faction Event (SI 44)

10 - New Faction x2

Solar Cycle Event (SI 44)

6 - No Event

Trends (AE 12-17)

Not applicable

Fun! I get to make two new factions. I roll 2d6 on the encounter table, since I'm in Era 1 / Upported, twice each and take the higher, and get 6/6 and 7/11. That gets me Space Politics Major Faction, which would be Purple, and a Third Wave Crew.

Rolling on the Purple Mission Control subtype table on CR 39 I get 2, so it's the Planetary Society. New factions get 1 factory per era, and rolling on the goal/destination tables I get Long-Term Colony - 10 Hygeia. They're 99% definitely going to name it Sagan.

Rolling on the 3rd-wave factions table in the supplement, I get a joint venture between two regional organizations. Back to CR 39, I end up rolling SACU and MERCOSUR (South African Customs Union and the Southern Common Market). They're green, but we already had a Green Major faction from earlier with ASEAN; I'm actually going to fudge things a bit and say that these are the same faction, being a sort of unified front for the global south vs American & Chinese military / economic domination. Maybe the failed mission to Wilson-Harrington was the signal for the other members to step up, maybe they already had this factory up and running.

They also get Long-Term Colony for their goal, with a destination of the caves and lava tubes of Arsia Mons on Mars.

This is fun, it's actually falling into place now.

Execution Phase

Resolve Interceptions (SI 98)

Not applicable.

Move (CR 206)

See Post 2: the Hayashida launches from LEO into a lunar fly-by and coasts along until it merges onto the Green Line.

Encounter (CR 246, SI 13, AE 18)

9 - Earthside Colonist (It was originally Upported Colonist, but I counted it as a new faction just because it is still just Year 1.)

Operation (SI 270 & 274)

The Hayashida is a fine ship, but we need something faster. Much faster. We're going to set up a D-Class factory, so I bop on over to the spacecraft table on SI 244 and oh would you look at that! One of our options is PROJECT ORION, and that's an easy choice. Go big mode or go home, why not strap ourselves to some nukes and use them as propulsion? A full overhaul of the Hayashida into a Project Orion rocket requires 5 new patents, so this year's operation is going to have to be Research.
This will involve the first actual skill roll of the game, which I will detail below.

Held Move (CR 206)

Gain skill points (SI 270 & CR 119)

All crew gain a skill point for participating in the Research operation, which can then be used on the skill used in the op, on a mission control contact with the relevant skill, chrome for a component used in the op, or recovering from a penalty.
These cannot be banked.

Dysphoria penalty for AWOL Modded / Converted / Exospecies crew (CR 163)

Mission Results (SI 41)

First things first, the encounter. I roll 2d6-5 on the Goal table to determine where the signal is coming from and end up with -1, so the new faction is on Earth. Makes sense for an Earthside Colonist. Earthsiders are one of the Primary Colonist Types (SI 187), I roll 2d6 on that table and get 6: Criminal Syndicate (Purple)

A few sub-tables later, I get a name (Zero Family), two doctrines (Cybercrime for the majority, financial crime for the minority) and an origin (Social Control: Very easy to get around the law when you are no longer within the territory of a nation-state.) So they're running some massive fraud from orbit, possibly by hacking communications satellites. Using crypto for money laundering, all that stuff.

The actual encounter prompt roll is 4-5, which gives me "Approached about business" and oh buddy we are COOKING. For now I'll say that (rolling...4) Fujita receives a message as a response to one of his many science communication videos shot aboard the Hayashida regarding a potential sponsorship/partnership deal with an up-and-coming media group, which is slightly sketchy but not entirely. Normally this would involve making a skill roll, but I have ignored skills thus far and will do so for as long as I can, so I'll just split it odds / evens: 2 is a No; Fujita rejects the offer. Will this have repercussions? Unknown.

For the Research Operation, I'm going to need to make a roll with the Research skill - since operations use the entire crew, they're treated as having a default skill level of 5. Mission control will give us a +1 for a total of 6.

An extremely important aside: The basic skill roll in 60 Years is roll 2d6 under your skill level. This is increased to a whopping 3d6 for flat ability score checks, and reduced to 1d6 in cases where it is extremely easy or if the crew or crewmate has relevant Chrome - Chrome is not super well defined, but it applies to rolls using technology you have patents for (i.e. have researched and produced), medical specialities, language fluency, and some very vague Crew Certifications and Player Certifications, which seem to be intended almost as a kind of achievement system but only appear in a literal printed certificate for players after character generation, giving them Chrome with crew modules. There aren't any other mentioned or lists of certifications anywhere else in CR or SI.

A second important note: 60 Years operates on the principle of "Failure is Not an Option" (FINAO), which boils down to "you're always going to succeed at your rolls, but succeeding at cost will build up flaws and defects in your crew and equipment that, if not treated, will eventually cause an Accident and that will very likely fuck you up royally, because it's space."

Under your skill is a plain success, under half your skill allows you to choose a complication (since some complications are bonuses), exactly at your skill level is a random complication, higher than your skill but less than 2x skill is either a Partial Success (Which is not well defined, appearing in only 2 other places in CR and nowhere in SI) or Expedited Abort and Retry (allowing you a second shot if you take 2 penalties), and greater than or equal to 2x skill is Mandatory Abort (plus one defect, debt, point of stress, or consumable tally)

I really like this a lot in principle: very good use of the dice mechanic to reinforce themes: your characters are still astronauts, they need to be extremely good at their job and failure will very often mean near-instantaneous death.

In practice, though, I'm still figuring out how much I like it wrt the actual dice rolls and how Chrome works.

I don't see any way for the Hayashida's crew to have Chrome in this scenario, since the tech is all going to be new, so I'm going to roll 2d6: I roll an 8, which puts me in the normal fail zone. Stress (as mentioned in Worldbuilding from Scratch's posts) is a bit of a non-downside for Operation-scale actions as it stands. I don't want defects, so I'm going to go with debt.

Normally, debt is per-crewmember, I'm going to change that.

Houserule: debt incurred by FINAO rolls is faction-wide; bankruptcy still works the same, if debt = Capital ability score we clear the debt but permanently reduce Capital by 1. If I would ever end up dropping to 1 Capital, I would treat that as game over.

So despite the costs, we are succesfully able to scrounge up 1d6 new patents. I only roll a 2, so we're going to have to do another Research op next year and hope we don't go into further debt.

Notes for Year 1

3 major factions

JAXA (White)
Planetary Society (Purple)
The Southern Alliance / SACU + MERCOSUR + ASEAN (Green)

1 minor faction

Zero Family (Earthside criminal syndicate, Purple)

2 factories

10 Hygeia (Planetary Society)
Arsia Mons caverns, Mars (Southern Alliance)

Faction finances: 1 debt, capital 5
Research queue: 2/5 ORION components researched

Wrap-Up

Whew! Went longer than expected on this one, but now things are finally taking shape and falling into place. At last, the big picture is revealed and all the pieces are fitting together. It took far too long to get to this point, but suggestions for how that might be addressed will be saved for the final installment.

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

100 More Facts About Mother Stole Fire

Sequel to a post I wrote nearly four years ago on the dot. Been away for far too long.

There are seven dogs in the world whose loyalty is so great that death will not claim them. They remain by the graves of their companions, aged but immortal. The eldest of these is a red wolf who, judging by the grave goods found within the cave, has kept his watch for nearly 45,000 years.
Lilu cuisine has a culinary tradition of extremely flavorful food in very small portions, born of having to make do with very little.
The oldest living mortal being in the world is a tree named Great Tuung, estimated by wizards to be 2.9 million years old. Several other similarly ancient trees are known - Pando, Old Jikko, and Kalavay have all reached a million years.
Hespermontane theater loves stock characters and audience interaction. There's a very porous fourth wall and a lot of improvisation involved (since established characters have established behaviors, riffing on those traits is a necessity to keep the audience interested).
One of the greatest honors for a storyteller is the adoption of one of their creations into the wider stable of popular stock characters. Sometimes the character will have their creator's family name appended to their own.
Abolitionism was not unheard of in the Second Empire, but its supporters never grew beyond controlled opposition in the senate. Some slight restrictions might get passed every few years, enough to mollify them with a functionally-identical status quo.
Wheelchair-bound Goa is the patron god of those with physical and mental disabilities, as well as Tubalkhan’s nephew and one of his workshop assistants. “Give a man what aid he needs, hand him his tools, and let him work as he knows best” goes the saying.
The proper name for the third gender in the Longhouse Culture literally translates to “they are always running back and forth” - a reference to their original social function as go-betweens for the men and women’s lodges.
A common Belt story: A ship is hit by a sudden storm of such intensity that the weatherworker cannot prevent the ship from sinking. But they are able to weave a spell of wave-marching, and the crew proceeds to walk to the nearest island by its power. While clearly exaggerated into folktale (the distance walked, power of the spell, and number of crew are well outside of reality), there is precedent for fishermen whose canoes capsize making their way home by this method. "If the ship sinks, we will walk to shore!" is a common refrain of the 'Belter Spirit'.
As there is little economic impetus for sex work in the Hespermont, pornotekton is more accurately treated as a religious vocation
The four most renowned of Tubalkhan's named hammers are Thunderer, Ringing Bell, Iron-Shaper, and Chain-Breaker.
Lady Rust is the third sister of the Black and White Queens of Tanniclen; she departed for Pelai during the War and hasn’t been seen on this side of the ocean since. Her sisters don’t talk about her and she’s been dropped from the wizards’ historical records, so it’s fair to presume that the parting was on bad terms.
The following historical and pseudohistorical personages exist in MSF with only minor alterations of name and circumstance: Boudicca, Hubaba, Zheng Yi Sao / Ching Shih, Gilgamesh & Enkidu, Enheduana, John Brown, Benjamin Lay, Adolphe Sax, Fred Rogers, Emperor Norton.
To "throw the book" at someone means to solve a problem, usually one caused by an officious and equivocating person, through unexpectedly direct means; the phrase originates in a popular Pelaian folktale of a cruel magistrate undone by the hero simply beaning him in the head with a law codex hard enough to knock him out.
The city of Qhauya hosts a yearly celebration of the ousting of the wizard-king Bahg, wherein young men dressed as the tyrant are released from the cathedral after morning services to be chased down and hauled back by the townsfolk. The last contestant to be returned gets to open the ceremony the following year, and is given Bahg’s actual (if disenchanted) hat as a trophy until then.
A Hespermontane meal: rice and beans with corn and greens, smoked cavy, and a pumpkin-based chili sauce.
Municipal gadugi (volunteer collective work teams) are the backbone of Hespermont communities; they’re responsible for trash pickup, snow removal, public space maintenance, community events, festival preparation, and so on.
The guilt that comes with addiction is prime feeding ground for demons; treatment entails robust ritual support from the community and focused support from friends and family.
The many small island and fleet nations of the Belt are tied together by a complex and longstanding series of treaties and agreements. If a party violates these agreements and oversteps what is considered acceptable hubris, it is now one’s appointed duty to invoke the Trickster Wind and divest them of their wealth; this invocation of swashbuckling piracy as spiritual practice Is the driving counterforce to historical invasions of the Belt by continental powers, and the source of the invaders' repeated failures.
In Hespermontane languages, "our ancestors" is always used in the inclusive first person, regardless of where the speaker or audience is from.
A prayer to Tubalkhan: "Praise to you, Father of All Peoples, for you teach men and women to make things well."
"tok-tok" is a filler particle marking a pause in speech to collect one’s thoughts. An onomatopoeia for knocking a smoking pipe against a wooden block to remove the ashes, originating with ceremonial tobacco during lodge meetings. May also be used as a nonspecific measurement of time.
Neckties are only really fashionable in Dis, as the image of wearing a noose as a symbol of one's employment is considered a non-starter outside of Hell.
A common insult accusing the target of being an unskilled or inconsiderate lover is derived from the name of a mythic hero notorious for declining an Amazon war-queen's flirtations out of fear of emasculation, and has thus become synonymous with cowardice and poor moral character.
Preserved corpses are prime targets for malicious spirits, and so there is a common cross-cultural taboo against embalming or mummifying the dead. The body must be returned to the earth through burial or cremation.
Cheap clay vessels are often stamped with “shatter, and return to the earth".
The association of cats and witchcraft goes all the way back to Hecate, who is commonly portrayed alongside the nekomata triad of Pangur Ban, Cait Si, and Greymaulkin.
Parliament of Birds vs. Magnaclowder is still taught in the legal schools of the Dragon Republics as one of the Five Landmark Cases. While not a full cessation of hostilities, the final ruling of the nine-year-long suit does severely limit the number of birds any given cat might catch per year.
The largest heist in modern history involved the theft of 941 tomes from the private library of the wizard Thanagar the Illuminated. The culprits were never identified and the local government declined to investigate, claiming that since the theft took place on the wizard’s property it was outside their jurisdiction. Facsimile copies of the stolen texts, supposedly derived from “newly discovered original manuscripts” began public library circulation the following year.
Red Heron is the largest of the “in-between” / open clans (those that may be joined without marriage or an internal recommendation); the bulk of its members are migrant workers, immigrants, and those who have for whatever reason left their home clans.
Competitive pepper eating is a common display of machismo / nonviolent way to settle disputes in the Belt.
Nut allergies are rare, thanks to common use of peanut / tree nut paste in baby food.
The alchemical quest to turn lead into gold is not undertaken to produce gold, but to destroy lead. Even in distant antiquity it was known as a worthless and dangerous metal, and in several ancient law codes the knowing usage of lead is classified as centumicide - the legal equivalent to the murder of 100 men.
Alchemist’s Gold: a dull, mottled, copper-colored metal that retains the softness and low melting point of lead while losing its toxic interactions with living bodies. It’s useful in nearly all the ways gold is useful, though generally considered ugly. Metalworkers specializing in it are called dunsmiths.
Always knock before going to the bathroom at night; there might be an akaname in there, and you wouldn’t want to startle them. Scum lickers might be gross, but they’re ecologically important!
Communities will sometimes string the year’s weddings together during the spring or summer and stretch out the collective celebration for days.
Spells to aid with sleep compose one of the oldest and most common schools of magic. While nearly all of the traditions began as lullabies for infants and small children, they have diversified radically in the ages since and variants exist for the elderly, couples, oneself, the sick and the dying, and so on. The nonsense words used by many of these songs are occasionally believed to be the remnants of archaic languages by scholars who get a kick out of making non-falsifiable claims.
The Maid was once asked what she would do after the War. She responded that she would return to the woods behind her family’s farm, find a fallen tree to sit upon, and listen to the birds and insects for a while.
Violence is considered wholly against Tubalkhan’s nature. Even in those stories where he participates in a battle against demons, he’ll be depicted as supporting the other gods, overseeing evacuations, protecting mortals, or aiding the wounded.
Two popular saints: Ndoni, patron of lost objects and the people who have lost them; Damhnait, patroness of the mentally ill.
Monopods are found on a few small islands in the Belt. These sagani are not fond of company, and hide their homes through illusion, weather magic, or thought-clouding.
In antiquity, it was believed that the Astomi tribe from the mountains south of Janashkut could live on smells alone. This has never been true, but they have cultivated myrrh trees for as long as they appear in the historical record.
Tomás and Tama are extremely popular railway gods, acting as the twin patrons of engineers and stationmasters, respectively.
Regardless of region, buildings are immaculately designed for temperature control according to the needs of the local climate. It’s just good architecture.
Hippopotami can and will fight, kill, and eat demons. Those that do so regularly gain a pronounced red and black coloration.
The city of Gran Laguna, casino-ridden den of sin and vice, is under the de-facto control of the cetacean mob and its kingpin, the Dauphin. He’s got city government eating right out of his flipper, so take care not to stick your snout where it doesn’t belong when you head down to the marina for a day at the races.
Some popular games: chess, hanafuda, tarocchini, tafl, rummy, kōnane, Wizard’s Hand.
Lacrosse was used as a way of avoiding conflict in the old days; it would allow the war societies of the opposing tribes to blow off steam while their councils met to hash out the diplomacy while the matches went on.
Giant pandas exist, though not in the way you think. Their bumbling, helpless exterior hides one of the most cunning and vicious ambush predators in the known world. The original species is long extinct, and now only the parasitic mimic remains.
Red pandas, on the other hand, are clever little bastards much more like their bandit-masked cousins.
Chocolate is predominantly consumed as a sweetened or spiced beverage; its candy form is a luxury.
Though the name and exact form differs, Pen and Tam can (and do) go out for pizza and ice cream; the former is any kind of toasted flatbread with toppings, the latter is typically eaten mixed with nuts, fruit, and spices.
Hespermontane sign language (“hand-speaking”) originated as an inter-tribal auxiliary language and has been used as the default communication for deaf persons since antiquity. Children are taught it as part of their schooling, and a modified form is used for human-elephant communication.
Everyone knows that lions don’t lick their young into shape (only the shagga-cat does that), but this didn’t stop one philosopher from trying to document the process and getting mauled to death for his trouble.
The omnipresence of minor mending spells means that clothing and household objects can last for generations if cared for. Fashion trends tend to move slowly due to this
Sea serpents aren’t related to snakes at all, but are actually a surviving archosaur lineage from the age of dragons.
Tubalkhan is considered the father of the sciences for his careful observation, attention to detail, and use of direct experimentation.
Medicinal magic rarely provides an immediate cure to an affliction, as such a rapid change in bodily condition causes its own problems. Instead, magic is used for prevention, symptoms management, and gradual healing.
The traveling circus originates with migrant workers and monster-hunters; busking and talent shows are an easy source of extra cash during the off season.
Calico cats practice a unique school of magic among felines; human witches of particularly high experience and skill are often called ‘Old Calico’ accordingly.
There are no police, but there are detectives. All of them are absolute weirdos in their own special ways, both because the trade attracts those with unusual ways of looking at the world and because the magics used in evidence collection tend to further reinforce those traits.
Most city-states will have a robust civil engineering core in place of a standing military: wars are occasional, but the roads always need fixed.
Community fire and emergency aid teams are easily identified by their flame-resistant jackets, which are dyed a deep indigo.
Deer are semi-donesticated in the Hespermont, and commonly raised for meat in the place of cattle.
Acephavara is an exonym (“land of the headless men”) originating from stories of the Thandatra people, whose typically dark skin will often be broken with patterns of lighter color on the chest or back that resemble a face.
“Love potion”: a soup, stew, curry or sauce with no additional magical properties; used as a way to teach lovesick young men a useful skill, as well as the value of good food and pleasant conversation in courtship.
“Potion of attraction”: triggers an episode of disassociative self-reflection where the imbiber will see themselves as others see them, highlighting the habits and behaviors that make them so unpalatable as a romantic partner.
There are few omens on the sea worse than a thin (and therefore hungry) mermaid, and so sailors across the Mare call hard times “the ribs”.
War is an extremely efficient means of mass-producing angry ghosts; part of what makes wizards so dangerous is that they can and will use them to their own ends.
The Ang-Ket trade league connects cities all along the circumference of the Mare Interregnum; it’s named after a type of circular fish trap (“ring” or “enclosure”).
There are seven planets visible with the naked eye: the sun and moon are cosmologically grouped with earth and not included in the count.
Intelligent life can be found on multiple bodies in the solar system, though sustained meaningful contact between any of them has yet to occur.
Blues music emerged during the hardships of the post-War rebuilding period, and has since diversified into several robust regional styles.
Nerve-linked prosthetic limbs (autobrachia) were first developed ~15 years ago, with many veterans of the War in the North volunteering as first-run recipients.
Saffron is relatively cheap and widely used - not because it’s any easier to harvest, but because of widespread small-scale cultivation.
In cases where the cause is unclear, a low-intensity exorcism ritual may be used to determine if an individual is possessed by an evil spirit or suffering from mental illness.
The standardized system of weights and measures is base-12, and peacefully coexists alongside local nonspecific systems.
Apes (and similarly intelligent relatives of the other Thinking Peoples) have triggered debates of categorization for centuries: most cultures group them under “they can’t really participate in society, but they’re enough like people that killing them is still murder”.
Ngata Long-Tusk is an anomaly in the magical world: an elephant that practices human-style goetic wizardry. Has a tower and sigil tattoos and everything. Has not yet caused an international incident but it’s probably only a matter of time.
There is a variety of orca (or an orca-like magical being, the line is fuzzy) capable of changing their shape and taking humanoid or wolflike forms. While primarily associated with the northern amazons, they might be encountered all along the northern coasts and islands and they are regular visitors in the city of Redgate.
The whalers of Tin Jacobstown might be better thought of as a decentralized mercenary army, profiting off of the war between the illhevi and the other whales. The practice is sustainable only through staying on Orca’s good side through sacrifice and soul-pledges.
Ol’ Dunk: legendary sea monster, described as a gigantic fish with an armored head and fused, beak-like teeth.
There is a prehistoric Dayrdani method of exorcism still practiced in the modern day; it requires only a circle drawn in the dirt, the sign of the horns, and a series of prayers in an unknown and otherwise extinct language performed with overtone throat singing.
Jails are ideal spawning grounds for demons, and thus tend to be limited to the more tyrannical pockets of the world or the ruins left behind by such. In some instances they will reach a critical mass of suffering and transcend into a demonic genius loci, which will then attempt to lure in and entrap life from the surface to feed upon. If this can be prevented, the dungeon will starve and be rendered inert in two or three generations; if it gathers sufficient population, the demonic locus will become self-sustaining and specialized delvers will have to be called in to destroy its heart. The depths of Kulvakh tower were one such location.
Interpretation of languages is another keystone magical tradition with prehistoric origins, developing independently in many cultures across the world. A “talkabout” was the period where the parties’ respective cunning-men would speak to each other before official intertribal negotiations.
Without some means of cathartic release, trauma and self-repression can develop into a form of demonic possession that will rot a person from the inside.
The town of Machaggan is famous throughout the Low Country for the giant orb made of lustrous blue-silver metal that floats above the central plaza. Its implications are menacing.
It was once thought that the Questing Beast would lead those it thought worthy to an elixir of immortality; in reality, their hunting strategy is to lead unwitting humans back to their den to be ambushed by their hatchlings.
The Dadu-Qon of the southeastern deserts say that their ancestors copied down a revelation from an angel; they have yet to decipher it, but believe that it will usher in a new age of peace and prosperity to the world when it is at last translated. A few fragments of the being are housed as relics, but the main crash site has not yet been found.
It’s said that killing the white stag is is the true sign of kingship in the Northlands; that no one has ever done it is subsequently the true sign that the Northlands needs no king.
All a wizard really needs to kill someone, when you get down to it, is eye contact for just long enough to trigger a fatal blood clot. Everything else is just theatrics.
The Megapharmikon was the pre-eminent medical text of antiquity and has remained relevant into the modern day thanks to its detailed anatomical diagrams and surgical procedures. The book’s author, the doctor-philosopher Eutukhos, wrote the text as a reflection on his 20 years serving as the surgeon-necromancer of a mercenary company.
In the old Longhouse Culture, a village’s chief served primarily as resource manager; great wealth disparity in one’s community was seen as a shameful display of incompetence, and from this came the modern social staple of the public fund.
Illuminated manuscripts look like that monk’s gravestone I saw in Kilkenny.
By some horticultural miracle, there is a popular strain of marijuana with a pleasant, woody smell. With the right preparation, it smells like the inside of a barbecue pit.
Divinatory practices can’t tell the future, but they do provide a framework for thinking about an event (past, future, or present) from different / previously unconsidered angles.
The valkyries of the far north are said to be beautiful shield-maidens who usher the spirits of warriors up into the heavens. This is technically true, but only if one is looking at the proxy body and ignores the primary, which looks something like eight women fused together inside a gold-and-steel carapace.
Attempts to catalog the many types of tutelary spirit that act as playmates and protectors of small children have universally met with failure; there are simply too many of them.
One of the early confirmations of the world’s sphericality was by a Jantoo wizard who achieved enough height on his flying carpet while trying to catch a migrating phoenix that he was able to observe the curvature of the planet. The extreme cold and negligible air caused him to fall off and plunge nearly 20 miles: he survived the impact unscathed thanks to a spell enacted before he lost consciousness, with the unintended result of widely-visible and extremely funny physical comedy.
The Gray Witch saw the War of the Bull and the emergence of Hell firsthand, and since then has worked in secret towards a grand design: she believes that if Hell cannot be defeated then it must be mastered, and that she alone is the one able to bring all its demons to heel. She is opposed by the King of Wands, though his own motivations are obscure.