Blog: Worlds Beyond Earth

[ericthered]

Tech Paradigms in the Grand Cluster


Kitchen sink settings are hard. Not in the least because you want the broccoli to still look like broccoli and the steak to still look like steak, not 100 slightly different colors of optimized health puree. For my last kitchen sink setting, I used an approach I call tech points, to manage which parts of the enormously diverse technologies in ultra-tech a character could have. In this post I lay out how it works, because I thought it worked rather well...

[ericthered]

Create Visible Light


The Create advantage makes 1000KJ of energy, at least if you take one level of it. But how much light is 1000KJ? this question has been asked a few times before, but no one has really answered it... so I'm giving an answer now.


I hope you find this useful!

[ericthered]

The Planet Crimson


Possibly the most memorable world of the grand cluster, the Planet crimson features an omni-present sinister red mist, floating factories in the sky, ancient ruins, and rare psionic-boosting drugs...

[ericthered]

Control (Shaping)


A quick proposal for a version of the control advantage that's cheaper but doesn't have the potential to give a bonus to everything. I'll be using it soon, so in a year or so we might have a follow-up post.

[ericthered]

Smooth Operator Should be [10] points a level


During character building I was very enthusiastic about warning a newish player from taking smooth operator, because its really not a very good deal. One of my players said "If its such a bad idea, can I take it for 10 points a level?"

I let them do it, and the above post is why you might want to price smooth operator at [10]/level as well.

[ericthered]

Retrospectives: Egg of the Wyrm


Where I reflect on impulse buys, my first time running a heist, and spending a lot of time prepping for a short campaign.