Pyramid #3/62: Transhuman Space II

[Kromm]

Upgraded software
A shell of my former self
Ready to serve you

— Some hacker

We gamers spend so much time imagining a future with psionic powers, FTL travel, and space aliens that we often overlook just how rapidly the present is unfolding. The near future may well see us blur the line between man and machine, enabling the mind to achieve amazing things at the speed of thought – and blur the definition of "human," yielding as much alienness as anyone could want – right here in our solar system. This is the future of Transhuman Space, and the subject of the latest e23 release, Pyramid #3/62: Transhuman Space II.

• With Mars' frontier spirit, mesh of cultures, and tense political situation, it's no surprise that many Transhuman Space campaigns are set there. Phil Masters' Three Offices, Port Lowell explores a "corporate town" on the Red Planet by focusing on three distinct services there – the U.S. Marshal's Office, the E.U. Embassy, and the (corporate) Granadine Partnership Office – and showing how each can jump-start Martian adventures. Four detailed NPCs (including a classic marshal and a K-10A postcanine figurehead) help to ensure that the PCs have interesting friends, foils, and more.
  
  
• Transhuman Space features so many wonderful, even unique elements that it can overwhelm new players. Just as GURPS Lite makes GURPS more accessible by paring it down to key rules, PK's We Are the 9.9% aims to reduce Transhuman Space to the key concepts needed to run a disenfranchised/"fringer" campaign set in transitional Los Angeles. With five templates, setting advice, and an entire campaign arc of adventure seeds, your group will be bucking the system in no time.
  
  
• Not everything about Transhuman Space is optimistic. In particular, world peace remains a pipe dream. In this month's Eidetic Memory, David Pulver details the Weapons and Units of the Honduran Civil War. Discover the Third- and Fourth-Wave compromises that this poor Central American nation uses, like the Perico drone, Parang UCAV, Pickett battleshell, Vengador truck, and Montero "mule." Gear isn't the whole story, though! Learn about the political machinations behind the war (who's backed by the CIA and who's supported by the TSA), and use the adventure seeds to involve your PCs in current events.
  
  
• Do you really need your body for your entire life? Hand it over to Indentures Inc. for just a few years and you can sleep peacefully while earning a ton of cash! Admittedly, sometimes the Puppeteering implant acts up, or you're sent into a warzone instead of a construction site – but doesn't the payoff justify the risk? Use Indentures Inc. to kickstart a new campaign ("You all wake up somewhere unexpected . . ."), or retask the copious adventure seeds to serve as part of the setting's background, providing everything from thrilling self-mind-heists to space horror.
  
  
• Ah, to be the idle rich . . . which is actually rather common in 2100! In Eloi Games, William Stoddard looks at the lives of these quasi-aristocrats, from their Wealth and Status to their constant jockeying for social position (and in doing so, he effectively sneaks in a mini-expansion for GURPS Social Engineering). Learn how things change when hobbies become deadly serious, knowing the right person is everything, and you can ping your reputation network to know exactly how popular you are at the moment.
  
  
• And the future wouldn't be so bright if we didn't include our usual features, like a Random Thought Table that boldly embraces poor predictions, and an Odds and Ends that explores the darker side of bioroids on the street.

— PK & Kromm

[PK]

Since I've seen two comments elsewhere along the lines of, "Looks interesting, but I don't run Transhuman Space," I'd like to pop in here to stump for GURPS' versatility. The beauty of a universal system is that things written for one GURPS setting will often drop right into a different setting in a similar genre; e.g., using Banestorm templates for a completely unrelated fantasy game.

So for those who don't run TS games, let me offer counterexamples to Kromm's post as to what these articles are good for:

Three Offices, Port Lowell features three different organizations (and their head NPCs) that are easily dropped into any near-future or sci-fi game: a lone U.S. Marshal, relying on a team of dumb robots, serving as the only Law on a distant planet (or spaceport). Or a canny ambassador/diplomat here on Earth who tries to finagle the system to ensure that "her people" are properly taken care of. At heart, the reason this article works so well is that these are believable organizations staffed by believable people -- even the corporation fronted by a Postcanine (uplifted dog) can work in most settings by swapping him with another clueless figurehead.

We Are the 9.9% was specifically written to be accessible to new players, which means very little work to use it as a modern, near-future, or cyberpunk "life on the streets" campaign. Imagine a loudmouthed anarchist, a gangbanger who wants to keep his neighborhood safe, a disillusioned cop, an opportunistic repo man, and a streetwise blogger who never turns his phone-camera off, all walking the line between "getting mine" and doing the right thing. When a new gang starts taking over the streets, will they be able to figure out who's backing them and why?

Weapons and Units of the Honduran Civil War focuses on Honduras, which (by 2100 standards) is a poor backwater. This means that the combat drones, vehicles, and other weapons here -- low-tech by TS standards -- are cutting-edge in a modern game. Drop any of these into a modern military game to show off the future of warfare, use the cybershells to trick out the bad guys in a Reign of Steel game, or make the battleshells intelligent and throw 'em into a Supers game as the mad scientist's latest invention.

Indentures Inc. is a concept more than anything -- what if some people loaned their bodies out for a few years in return for riches? This doesn't require modern tech and would even work great in a Fantasy or Banestorm game: Wizards are using a variant of Soul Jar to borrow bodies, with permission, for use as menial slave labor; what could go wrong? The adventure seeds here transfer over easily -- just replace "construction on a distant space station" with "digging a distant mine" for a weird, twisted mystery.

Eloi Games looks at the idle rich: how much money they need to qualify, how things like hobbies and politics become incredibly important for them, how their Status helps them in a game, the difficulty of getting into certain social circles, etc. Obviously, this applies to pretty much every setting that exists! Use it in a fantasy game to add flavor to the King's Court, in a modern game for that one player who wants to be a celebrity, in a Traveller game to give the PCs a challenge when meeting a contact on a planet, etc.

I don't want to underplay the Transhuman Space angle of this issue, mind you -- I just think the portability is worth emphasizing.

[Celti]

I don't play Transhuman Space (although I'd like to someday), but several parts of this issue are going to lend some fantastic flavour to the cyberpunk game that I'm running right now — especially Eloi Games, as the PCs get richer and richer. Well worth the subscription price.

[JP42]

And to piggyback on this thread, if one were to want to try a Transhuman Space campaign, what materials are considered essential (assuming a 4e game), what would be considered important and very useful, and what would be secondary or otherwise peripheral?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by JP42

And to piggyback on this thread, if one were to want to try a Transhuman Space campaign, what materials are considered essential (assuming a 4e game), what would be considered important and very useful, and what would be secondary or otherwise peripheral?

Basic Set and TS are absolutely essential. Changing Times does a lot of the edition conversion work for you. Anything else will depend on campaign focus/foci.

[Phil Masters]

Indeed. To expand on that, the Transhuman Space main book defines the setting in broad but very adequate detail, and Changing Times was designed as the 4e update guide, with a side-order of being a GM's guide to the setting. You almost certainly will want books beyond those, but which are nigh-essential depends on what you want to do with the setting. Some cover particular physical areas (e.g. In the Well), some cover types of game (e.g. Transhuman Mysteries), some in effect provide more character options (e.g. Martial Arts 2100), and so on.

[JP42]

Thanks, Phil. I wonder about the utility of other non-THS specific books - High-Tech, Ultra-Tech, Bio-Tech, etc...

[RyanW]

Dammit. Take my money already.

Why do you always put out an issue I want right when my subscription ends?

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by JP42

Thanks, Phil. I wonder about the utility of other non-THS specific books - High-Tech, Ultra-Tech, Bio-Tech, etc...

Ultra-Tech and Bio-Tech, with adaptation (one such effort by somebody who knew what they were doing presented here and here*), will be useful (and, in fact, TS was in a way the prototype for GURPS 4e TL chart). The "outer core" books (Powers and Martial Arts) will be useful but not necessary additions. And most others will have bits you will no doubt get some use out of, but probably not enough to recommend them for TS in general (for example, Tactical Shooting would be very useful for some games, useless for others).

* These predate Changing Times, I believe, so there may be things that are not compatible.

[SCAR]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Ultra-Tech and Bio-Tech, with adaptation (one such effort by somebody who knew what they were doing presented here and here*), will be useful (and, in fact, TS was in a way the prototype for GURPS 4e TL chart). The "outer core" books (Powers and Martial Arts) will be useful but not necessary additions. And most others will have bits you will no doubt get some use out of, but probably not enough to recommend them for TS in general (for example, Tactical Shooting would be very useful for some games, useless for others).

* These predate Changing Times, I believe, so there may be things that are not compatible.

Those Ultra-Tech and Bio-Tech for Transhuman Space were written by Phil Masters the author of Changing Times, and the current Line Editor for Transhuman Space!