It Slices! It Dices!

It was war.

War was never declared, never spoken in a, "This means war," sort of fashion. No gauntlets were thrown, no politicians made speeches creating enemies of the wraiths of slavery and allies of the golems of solidarity. No leader spoke of righteousness. Only the uniforms and the casualties that paraded across the screens were given words by those of shallow celebrity status. It was war, never declared, but known by all.

I served. All of us did. First my laboratory was raided, and my knowledge was requested by the autarch in power. His name was known but meaningless. I was given the sublime carrot, the ability to practice on subjects that such things as law and humanity would not allow. I would be able to get meaningful results, if I could provide what my leader required.

My leader required soldiers. Soldiers without the will to protest their enlistment. Robots with the processing ability, the survival ability, of the human brain. I was to twist desire into loyalty and provide pleasure for it. It was an easy task. One that allowed me time for my own projects.

It was a terrible war, and there was no one to stop it.

The world of "Illegal Gods" is in the recovery period of what amounts to a holy war that nobody won. It's a science-fiction genre, and thus allows for some level of exploration: there are plenty of planets where one side or another still holds the pockets of believers in one faith or another... but that's not what you are. You're pirates. You're one step up from space debris: you're deserters and renegades.

Because you transport illegal gods. You smuggle religion under the noses of the Inquisitors, the tall gold-clad forces of the God-Emperor that no one knows if they are men or machines. You worry that your next crew of pilgrims doesn't consist of any Missionaries, the spies of the God-Emperor.

And sometimes you escape by miracles.

I kind of see it really loosely as a cross between In Nomine and Star Wars.

Who are your enemies in this game? Well, besides rival clans, people who interpret your particular holy writ just a leetle beet deeferently and, well, any military patrol you come across (because even if they're quasi-military, they've probably got a better ship) you've got the special forces of the God Emperor, "Himself."

I see PCs as playing any of the following kinds of characters:

1) God Merchants (selling, buying, trading gods...think a cross between slave trading and missionary work.)

2) Pirates (because every interstellar story ought to have pirates!)

3) Alien Observers (um, see "pirates" above.)

4) Members of the Enemy (particularly Missionaries)

5) Quasi- or decomissioned Military for the "other side."

6) Scavengers and Salvage Artists (because "Alien" is one of the influences.)

7) Tribal Priests, Demon Summoners, and Shamans being Transported

8) Ex-members of the decomissioned Human Science Experimentation League. (See my gaming fiction for Illegal Gods.)

9) Translators and other professionals.

10) Bureaucrats

Benjamin Stryfe Enterprises. A small transportation agency with roots in the mid 1980s of Earth, always the source of rumours...some of which they transported themselves. The story starts with the mysterious General Benjamin Stryfe, whose son in creating the company named as his greatest hero, as they took the company into military specification. It takes a strange twist upon the health of his grandson, who was rumoured by the locals to be a vampire.

The Human Science Experimentation League was decommissioned nearly seven years ago (Galactic Standard.)

Of the professionals who worked in the HSEL, 40 percent are still missing. Of the remaining sixty-percent, five percent still await trial. The rest have been found guilty, and sentenced to death.

Most were executed on the spot. The primary troop deployment included teams from the First Humanist League, the Slave Unions, and the military branch of the United Planetary Confluence. It was the investigatory arm of the First Humanist League that uncovered a great deal of the "research" being done. The acts were defined as "a horrifying display of sadism," where the HSEL had "deliberately ordered the destruction of the mental facilities essential to life and physical productivity," with "no regard to moral choice." The FHL fought for many years to bring the HSEL's atrocities to the attention of various governmental interests to no avail, finding most promoted the HSEL's products and innovations as a "benefit to society."

Then came the infamous, "Blue Paper," which demonstrated in no uncertain terms the conditions under which developments had progressed. Thousands of caches of "Medusa," the military-grade adrenaline alternative were destroyed by the UPC. The Slave Unions indicated a professional interest in monitoring the situation, and under some pressure from corporate sponsors, they agreed that the situation needed aggressive resolution. Once the outpost at Circle Primus was attacked, it was destroyed by internal processes within hours. All ties to the HSEL were denied under plausability standards, and all monies frozen.

MaBarry had written...

The next step in true technological evolution (according to my dream) is that once humanity has figured out the basic puzzle pieces to matter, that there would be these shrouds or skins which would be fed to machines to create what humanity needed.

These machines were called "Spiders" because of the way they looked, and they were tossed out into space to use all the raw materials of asteroids and the like. However, their limited AI heard the name "Spiders" and the creatures started taking some odd characteristics. For example, they would slowly develop huge egg sacks of mini-spiders, and the minispiders, when "hatched" would fight each other program-to-program in order to devour the materials of their fellow siblings and become huge, planet-sized spiders in space.

My dream talked about how some of the Spiders went bad, and would grab passing ships to harvest the material.

Some of the planets called the instructions "skins," and some of them "shrouds," which was interesting in consideration of the use of each... both materials of the dead. When I saw one in my dream, it looked like a map more than any kind of blueprint. They were offered up to the Spiders almost as if in prayer.

"He's dealt with divinities before - if you let them think they're going to find a new worshipper in you, they never let up."

"There are, of course, rules I must follow." Huli explains.

Drake's grin turns a bit more rueful. "Drawback to divinity," he agrees.

"The benefits are good, but the paychecks are generally terrible. I think the God of Wealth Distribution may be senile."

Drake laughs. "You know, I think my first real clue the God-Emperor was on the wrong track was when I found out the wages of sin are actually pretty good."

"Fancy a game of chess?" Lilt asks. She almost always loses.

Marten lays back on the bed, closing his eyes. "Alright," he agrees, and then, referring to some of Lilt's `house rules', suggests, "And your knights may be of the Silver Lake, but rooks cannot fly, and do please consider playing such that your King and Queen are getting along."

Alright, I figured I'd try to do this right...and not just facetiously.

1.) What is your game about?

Buying, hiding, moving, and selling Gods. Oh, and making a quick buck, and pursuing freedom, truth, and love in spite of the evil Emperor.

2.) What do the characters do?

Make arrangements with the aforementioned Gods, and attempt to become more than pawns on the chessboard of faith, politics, and where those ideas collide. Also, they transport (read "smuggle") Gods and holy objects under the evil Emperor's watch, possibly even to the extent of gaining power to overthrow the Emperor himself.

3.) What do the players (including the GM if there is one) do?

I discussed my problems about taking this one seriously on my livejournal. My original answer was:

Roll dice, eat munchies, bother the GM with inane questions, explore religious themes, research old rituals, call things man was not meant to know (call them things like "Bob," no doubt), hatch evil plots, do obscene things with pencils, and become the kinds of people about whom your mother warned you.

I am indebted to users "cappadocious" and "pjack" for their input on this answer!

4.) How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

The problem with doing these one at a time is that I have to refer back to what I've already written. Not that I really blink and ask, "Huh? What's my game about?"

Let's ask the first question. What is the setting of Illegal Gods?

I have been trying hard to work on question #5 of the Power Nineteen for IG, which deals with character creation. While I know what I'd like, I'm kind of stuck with building issues. So instead of finishing that up immediately, I'm offering (courtesy of the LintKing) some of the character types and examples of things I want to be able to do with it.

Captain Drake Hazley is not entirely the typical pirate captain I expect to see in Illegal Gods, but he's not far off from the option. Please note that the first initial run of the game was used with the BESM system, so while I'm trying to make the references more generic, I might not catch everything.

Name: Captain Drake Hazley
Race: Human
Occupation: Space Pirate/Scavenger/God Merchant
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Height: 5'7
Weight: 150

Captain Drake Hazley is a man with a very fuzzy past. He's worked for a lot of people...enough that even he can't remember all of them. He finally went `pirate' because that's really what he's always wanted to be. HE considers himself strictly pirate, but could very easily be described as `scavenger' or `god merchant', too. He does have an image of himself as daring, romantic, and `essentially a good guy', but a lot of it is just that - self image, more than reality. (ala Grosse Point Blank: "I like the lone gunman thing...look at the way I dress.") He's actually fairly average looking, a trait that's served him well; average height, dark hair and eyes, and it takes his eyepatch holo to build these into a good `swarthy complexion'.

Some Advantages:
Skills: Piloting - (space), Mechanics, Electronics, Gun Combat - (blaster), Heavy Weapons - (ship), Navigation - (space), Military Sciences - (Clergy), Acrobatics - (falling), Business Management - (piracy), Cultural Arts - (occultism), Police Sciences - (Inquisition), Gaming - (gambling), Ranged Defense - (ship),

Mechanical Genius
The big note on this is that it lets you modify mecha and items of power ("technologically based", but I'm assuming we'll adjust the envelope on that for the genre...I suppose he's more of an `occulto-mechanical genius' or something...) as long as the point totals stay the same - so do expect him to swap out components on his eyepatch and the D.S. Malfeasance as we go.

Some Disadvantages:
Easily Distracted by Gambling, maintaining a "Dashing & Romantic" Image, Adventure, and Gadgets

Owned by Gambling Debts
He had literally just transported Lady Luck halfway across the galaxy when he had the chance to join into a high stakes game. He was actually doing quite well for the first half of the game, but he started taking chances, and not all of them worked out...

Recurring Nightmares
There ARE downsides to being psychically linked to a demon, and subconscious glimpses into its home are one of the big ones...

Wanted By the Authorities
Pirate! Also demonic tinkerer, smuggler, and deserter. No one's quite clear what side he deserted from, actually, but there are people from several factions (including the Clergy) who are, at least, convinced that he had been working for them in such a manner that he should have been more loyal. His response is, "I don't know HOW I got in their records, I've never been the military type," but...the astute will notice that this response does nothing to explain how he got a demon ship, or how he knows so much about their protocols and tactics.

Skeleton in the Closet
As noted, he HAS worked for a lot of different factions...there are people all over the galaxy who think he's on their side, or was on their side, or whatever, and if nothing else he'd really rather they didn't necessarily find out about each other. It's gotten too tangled for him to keep track of, and he's occasionally recognized by someone he doesn't quite remember.

So we have our pirate captain example. How about something across the aisle? (Again, courtesy of the LintKing who designed all of these characters.)

Name: Amnesty Corazon
Race: Human
Occupation: Inquisitor
Age: 24
Gender: Female
Height: 5' 5"
Weight: 135

Amnesty's ancestry is something we would qualify as perhaps hispanic and asian mixing, giving her a creamily-tanned skin, chocolate brown eyes, and very rich black hair. Her home planet exemplified these blended cultures, but she was remarkable even there.

When she isn't actually turning on her intimidation factor, she looks quite adorable. When she does try to look scary, however, she's good at it, and she knows some very creative threats.

She has a tattoo of a cobra-like snake that starts at her left ankle, circles up the leg, and ends poised across her back.

I had a brief brainstorm (no doubt helped by my indulgence in cold medicines) last night before bed as to a possible methodology for character creation in Illegal Gods. I can already see some holes in it, but I'll write it down anyway so that I have something to use as a basis.

I'm thinking of something both point and dice-size based. A character would be designed with points, but points would relate to dice size. Now, my original thought had been 5 points for a d20, 4 for d12, 3 for d10, 2 for d8, and 1 for d4, but then I thought, what about reversing that for better odds? I haven't looked it up, but presuming we're going with percentages, a d4 gives you 25 percent jumps, and then d8 is 12.5% (a number I learned working at a welding supply), d10 is, of course, 10%, d12 is, um, 8 1/3rd %, and d20 would be 5% segments.

Which means?

Nothing, absolutely nothing. Yet.

There's been an explosion of discussion lately about appealing to gamers who happen to be women, and I wanted to note my particular spin on it, especially as I design Illegal Gods, and as a woman.

Cheesecake Art

I like to look at curvy women, and I probably wouldn't be able to tell you what changed it from good looking to cheesecake. I envision cat girls in skin (fur?) -tight spacesuits.

Actually, I do that regularly. In fact, I got distracted for a moment because I was thinking of something whisker-lickin' good.

I also don't imagine them on the cover. Sure, my marketing director may disagree with me, but... My game isn't about the cool of playing sexy cat girls. (Right now, for the temporary "internal" version, there's that big astronomical picture we've all seen with the nebula that looks like an angel. I've been thinking that if I was going to have a separate "GM" section for folks, I'd get rights for a good picture of the Helix Nebula...) Maybe a ship shaped like some ancient goddess art? Oooh. Anyway, I don't really see any particular characters on the cover. It's not any pre-existing characters people are looking to play in my game, it's their own, so why limit imaginations?

Summing up, I can't force sensitivity on people, but I will not abide harassment. That's my goal; something where 'the guys' aren't suddenly saying, "Oh, a girl/an individual of Asian descent/a triffid, gotta watch our language," but, "Hey, we're aware of you being a woman/Asian/carnivorous alien plant, but we're only going to make as much a deal of it as you do." Awareness and acknowledgment, not artificial action.

I had written previously:

The "standard" (by which I mean, "described and suggested") character types for Illegal Gods are: Pirates, Ambassadors, various members of Military Forces, Spies, Asteroid Miners, Priests, God Merchants, Soul Jockeys, Demigods, Scientists, Bureaucrats, and Droids. Most of these are fairly self-explanatory, but there are some professions (God Merchant, Soul Jockey) that are unique to the setting.

Pirate is pretty non-gender specific, right? Same with Ambassador, Military, Spy, Asteroid Miner, God Merchant, etc.

So it's only "Priests" and potentially "Demigods" that hit my (broken) feminist sensor. The problem I have there is whether or not to change them to "priestesses" and "demigoddesses," the latter of which is clunky at best. I don't want to presuppose that only those two classifications are feminine, which changing them (in my mind) would suggest. Should I shift "Priest" to "Cleric," and risk the D&D connection? Probably wouldn't hurt, but I don't know what to do with "Demigod."