Fully Automated RPG

There was a post on Reddit that praised the ubiquitous "Dear Alice" commercial, and inevitably a comment criticizing praise for a commercial. This led to me to wonder more about who it was that made this famous solarpunk advertisement. The answer is an animation studio called The Line. I went looking at some of their other work, and came across this interesting demo short for what appears to be a proof of concept or pilot for a solarpunky animated monster hunting series.

I don't love the heavy use of guns. But setting that aside, I think the art is interesting. I'm fascinated to see what people are doing with the artistic and conceptual toolset solarpunk offers, and I think this is a use case that I wouldn't mind seeing more of.

Unfortunately, this demo is as far as the project went. But I'm happy to see that the folks at The Line appear to have some broader interest in solarpunk, and I hope they keep putting it into practice in unique ways.

Parable of the Sower is such a good book.

First, it's interesting that it starts right about now. The book starts in mid-2024, and even mentions that its an election year. That was a fascinating experience to read a scifi book in the moment in time in which it is set. It still feels like it takes place about 20 years in the future. It was written 31 years ago, so politically things have seemed to move as many steps forward as backward. It seems like a lot of things have not gotten better and worse than when Butler wrote it, so in some sense I feel like I'm looking at it as a near future in the same way as when it was written a generation ago. I guess I'm glad things didn't go as badly as in the story, but it's rough that the looming threat from 30 years ago feels the same distance away now as then.

Second, it's painful to read. Although the events described in the book haven't happened in the book's setting -- California -- the social collapse and migrations described have happened in Honduras, Gaza, Yemen, and certainly others I'm not aware of. It was really hard to read that and know that it was already real somewhere.

Third, as a solarpunk novel -- and really as general fiction -- it feels like it should be part of a high school curriculum. It's really well written and an engrossing read. Since publishing Fully Automated, I often relate solarpunk stories to that game. What might I have added to the game if I'd read this before? How well does it naturally fit? One thing that struck me is that her emerging in-world faith -- Earthseed -- reminds me quite a bit of elements of Seekerism, a new faith tradition in Fully Automated. I wish I'd known and included direct references to Earthseed, but it's nice when the game has alignment with great works that I wasn't directly familiar with.

Has anyone else read this? What do you folks think?

I finally got around to making a playlist of the music used to score the starter campaign, Fully Automated: Regulation!

I think it's a collection of real bangers. I hope that for people who haven't played these stories, this might give an enticing taste of what to expect. And for people who might've played, perhaps it takes you back to some memorable moments.

Demonstration of Power

• The stakeout: “This DJ” by Warren G
• Fight scene!: “Dare to be Stupid”, covered by The Cybertronic Spree
• Roll credits: “Fine”, by Lemon Demon

Psychonautica

• Opening Sparing match: “Champion” by Buju Banton
• Entering neurospace: “Just dropped in” by Kenny Roger
• The mindscape: “Ghandi, Dalai Lama, Your Lord & Savior J.C.” by André 3000
• Dance battle: “Do the Damn Thing” by Rupee
• The Bathhouse: “Ants to You, Gods to Who?” by André 3000
• Android assault: “Robot Rock” by Daft Punk
• Synthesizing the cure: “The Oligo Separation Verse” and “Analytical Gangster” by True Speak
• Roll credits: “Pony” by Deluxe

Piece of Mind

• Surf Intro: “Cecilia Ann” by The Pixies
• Fighting back: “Headshot” by she
• Starting the investigation: “No Time for Dreaming” by Charles Bradley & Menahan Street Band
• Sneaking around: “The Sensual Woman” by The Herbaliser
• Piecing things together: “Cause for Alarm” by The Heavy
• Research montage, pt.1: “Metrocenter 84” by Sunset Neon.
• Research montage, pt.2: “You Rock Me” by she
• Making a plan: “Drag and Drop” by the Soul Motivator
• Showtime: “Swing Break” by the McMash Clan, feat. Kate Mullins
• Showdown: “Mastermind” by Deltron 3030 and Dan the Automater
• Showdown, cont’d: “Don’t Get In My Way” by Zach Hemsey
• Roll credits: “UNLVD” by Socalled

Olives Fair in Love and War

• Vampire fight: “Dark Entities” cover by Daniel Guerra Caballero
• Roll credits: “Birdhouse in your Soul” by They Might Be Giants

This is the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldjerking/comments/1d92dkp/rate_the_political_factions_in_my_totally/

The vote to elect a new chair of the Pacifica Grid closes in four days, and an auditor thinks there's something suspicious going on. Records of an incident for the lead candidate's past have been destroyed in a cyberattack, and the manager responsible for the files is being mysteriously tight lipped. Keeping power in the right hands requires answers, and it's going to take a few determined problem solvers to get them!

After releasing the core game manual a week ago, we've now released our first playable adventure. It's a concise little one-shot that can be played in 2-4 hours, written specifically as an easy entry point into the game's world and rules.

Like the game itself, it's FREE! So check it out, tell your friends, and if you like this weird little story of hard-science sci-fi intrigue, please leave us a rating and review!

Guess what?

WE'RE LIVE!!!

Fully Automated RPG is now available for "purchase" on DriveThruRPG!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/481979/Fully-Automated-Solarpunk-RPG

If you haven't yet had a look, check us out now! The book is free as in speech, and free as in beer! And if you like what you see, please rate us, review us, and tell your friends! (or foes!)

I've been thinking about Five's excellent comments about states and the borders of a post-state world on one of our previous discussions. And since this Lemmy community is intended partially as a repository of resources for players and GMs, I thought I'd gather up some of the cool maps I've been looking at, and organize them into categories of options/inspiration for anyone who is thinking about what a region outside the more-lore-established Nation of Pacifica might look like.

Five suggested a few really cool options, the first of which was the overlapping zones of the historical lands of indigenous peoples. The setting already features a massive, successful Land Back movement, so it would be quite reasonable from a lore standpoint to restore these wherever possible, or to establish a sort of hybrid mix with modern landmarks. This interactive map is also very useful: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/10/1127837659/native-land-map-ancestral-tribal-lands-worldwide

The next was Watersheds and I really love these maps. To paraphrase Five: in a world where states no longer exist, borders that still have importance are those drawn by nature. People still need to coordinate over land and water management. They give some wonderful world building suggestions though I'd also suggest that as Fully Automated! Is in the transition to a post-state world, but is not there yet, that there's excellent potential for factions, feuds, drama, and plot hooks in the existing states losing relevance to watershed organizations that overlap their territory and authorities, but don't necessarily encompass all of them.

The cool thing with watersheds is you can aim for huge nation-sized chunks of land, or tiny town-sized boundaries, all depending on your needs.

The last one I'll include is biomes. These are another natural boundary, though often a softer one than the watersheds.

And there's no need to restrict yourself to just one new way of redrawing the map. Societies are messy, and often slow to change. It wouldn't be unrealistic to end up with a mix of all of the above, along with existing cities and state or national borders too. Here's one example, though it's alt-history rather than scifi.

I hope this is useful, and if someday you're playing the game and redrawing the map, I'd love to see what you come up with!

I was just standing around in my building's garage while my kid practiced riding a bike (with training wheels) and my mind wandered to what it would be like to learn if you could do it fully in virtual reality.

I think a key requirement would be a means of simulating acceleration and balance. In FA!, VR systems use a "floatie" which is a handwavey device that spoofs acceleration in the inner ear.

If we had this, I imagine a set of VR exercises where the degree of tilt of a bike is magnified, or a kid could practice biking in Martian gravity, where you'd fall 3x slower. And you'd never have to take a hard fall! Learning to ride a bike would be so much less scary if you never had to hit the ground to learn how not to.

That made me think of a training center full of two and three year olds learning to ride bikes in VR and then practicing in a padded lot, perhaps with a suspension wire above to catch them and automatic braking on the bikes while they're still learning. That'd be a neat setting for a conversation to take place.

I just finished re-reading Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted which was my favorite from the first time I read the books awhile back.

On this pass I was surprised to find that the the economy and system of Individual Mutualism briefly outlined in the second half of the book actually looks a bit (to my uninformed eyes) like the economy from FA! with a dash of Walkaway's philosophy thrown in. I don't think it's enough to reference it as a work in the genre or anything, I just thought it was neat. Harrison was quite progressive so I wonder if he pulled inspiration from anarchist works of the time.

I thought I'd post an excerpt of the text. To be clear, this isn't presented as a complete and actionable philosophy. In the story, the Rat is out to kill the guy who got his mentor killed, it turns out that guy is top general of an army. While infiltrating the fascist nation that that military rules, he accidentally gets himself drafted. That's all good with him - his target's in the army, he's in the army, he can make this work. Shenanigans ensue. During that time, he's part of an invasion of a society the book presents as bafflingly peaceful, which follows a largely incomprehensible philosophy called Individual Mutualism. This makes it both an excellent target for an invasion and an excellent resource for the Rat. Here's a scene of some locals trying to explain it to him (apologies for the quality of the photo):

Their emphasis on passive resistance and just leaving whenever possible reminds me a lot of parts of walkaway, but this section in particular reminds me of the economy section of FA!, where money is mostly used to track short term trades, and investment for a profit is banned.

One of the other devs asked about the description of the "Independent States of America" in the following passage. They asked if allowing for a southern succession was offensive or inappropriate. How does this read to others?

...

2077 - The American realignment

Following the third contested election in a row, the new governor of Florida declared that the state would no longer send taxes to DC, and began restricting the flow of goods from its coastal and space ports until its preferred candidate was seated as president. DC mobilized the military and national guard, and the governor of Florida demanded the backing of neighboring states. Internal conflicts within the military ranks began to rise as states began taking sides. Alabama’s governor immediately took the side of Florida and other states began forming alliances. Texas and Oklahoma declared joint neutrality. Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia allied in rejection of Flordabama, despite recognizing many of the same grievances and demanded a peaceful solution. Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, WV, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska formed a block in support of the US, as did New England. Mississippi and Louisiana were the most conflicted until an attack on US-loyal soldiers at Camp Powell began a civil war, and Louisiana and Mississippi joined the Texan alliance. The result was a transfer of power from the federal government to four regional state collectives:

Pacifica, made up of the west-coast: California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona.

Oyate Ni’na Tan’ka Makobdaye ka Heitanka (ONTMH), made up of Colorado, The Dakotas, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming, and parts of Alberta, Iowa, Manitoba, Minnesota, Missouri, and Saskatchewan.

The Independent States of America, made up of most of the coastal south: Florida, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, etc.

The United States of America: the remaining states of the north east and central continent remained within the United States, although many formed regional state compacts and much of the authority of the federal government was shifted to these states and their state collectives.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/8382697

I love seeing this. I'm not quite ready to by this particular bike, but I'm definitely going to share the info with my husband and see what he thinks. This could suit our needs in the next year or two.

What does healing look like in a solarpunk game?

We've tried to adapt some classic conventions -- healing positions & med kits -- for the setting.

• First, there isn't a price to them. (Obviously, right?)
• Second, we've tried to wrap a bit of science around this magic: inflammation-responsive growth factors, wound-closing growth factors, vascularization growth-factors... you get it.
• Third, we've tried to bring the themes of embodiment and connection to the physical world into healing. Instead of dispassionate medibots or jabbing yourself with a needle full of nanobots, healing is literally hands-on: users rub a messy clay-like substance into major wounds, and the drinkable tonic requires heat to activate, either applied with heating pads, hot water, or massaging action.
• The effect of healing is based on a combination of skill points in the Medicine skill and the Care skill. This means that players need points in at least one of these to use the medputty, and need points in both to be an effective healer build. Healing actions are also only half as effective when self-administered as when done by an ally.

How would you like to see healing represented in a solarpunk adventure?

Healing

Healing players can be performed in a variety of ways. Here are several:

Med Putty

Med putty is a complex, viscous emulsion of proteins, angiogenic growth factors, and MEMS suspended in a stabilizing biopolymer substrate. This putty is used for rapidly stabilizing biological damage. It can close wounds, reduce inflammation, relieve extreme pain, and otherwise remedy major bodily harm, at least until further intervention can be provided. It has a consistency like toothpaste and is stored in squeeze tubes. Once open, a tube must be used immediately, and typical use requires an entire tube per treatment. In this way, tubes of Med Putty serve as the primarily in-game med-pack. A key gameplay function is to allow a player to perform a healing action as a single action within a round of combat.

When a player uses a tube of med putty, they don’t need to roll. The number of HP restored is equal to their skill points in Care + Medicine + either Intelligence OR Dexterity.

The effect is cut in half if players are using medputty to heal themselves.

Restoration Tonic

Restoration tonic is a liquid potion that contains a complex of anti-inflammatories, analgesics, and repair agents coupled with targeting agents. The targeting agents allow the biochemical packages to migrate to regions of damage and release appropriate agents to quickly mend soft tissue injuries. Its use relies on heat and gentle physical mediation to help reach target regions and to mediate biochemical repair. This is typically provided with the application of hot water under a massaging showerhead or massage with heated gloves, but most applications of heat and gentle pressure will suffice.

Within the game mechanics, restoration tonics are often used as a versatile health potion for restoring a character’s Endurance stat worth of lost HP outside of combat. The tonics are not rare, but because they take around 10 minutes to use and 20 minutes to take full effect and require facilities like a shower, they serve to allow players to recover HP once a dangerous encounter ends, rather than in the middle of an action scene.

As with any healing practice in game, the damage which is being healed should make sense. In most cases, the rapid healing can be explained as a bit of an illusion: the damage doesn’t disappear, but the pain is relieved and the effects of the injury are resolved sufficiently that they can heal more fully with rest or with further medical attention later.

GM’s can choose to limit the use of restoration tonics to once per day if desired or offer special advanced healing tonics which provide Endurance + 4 points of HP or Endurance x2, or have players roll for Endurance + Athletics (perhaps as a favored check) and receive whatever value they pass by in HP.

Hydration

Drinking water will restore a character 1 HP once per day. It’s also recommended for players.

Narrative Healing Actions

Narrative healing is the best kind of healing. This consists of having players describe the specific medical remedy they’re applying (or repair, for a synth). They then must roll for success on that action. Typical skill checks may include Dexterity or Intelligence + Care or Medicine. Examples would include applying a splint, suturing a wound, or performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation. GMs and players are encouraged to use future technologies like healing putty in conjunction with narrative description if they’re capable.

Synth Healing

For synths, healing is justified in game as “temporary repair”. Temporary repair allows a synth to isolate and bypass damaged components and rely on backup systems to return to restore functions and delay the need for full repair. Synths require 25 minutes to perform a temporary repair, though they can speed this process up by performing an Endurance + Machines check and subtract however much they pass by from the 25 minute diagnostic time.

Synths are much less defined in game than organic creatures, so a lot of the narrative and mechanistic decision-making lies with the GM. GMs may wish to heavily limit temporary repair, instead forcing machines to replace modular components. Or, they may choose to use advanced self-repairing micro-machinery to afford synths and cyborgs greater healing capabilities than organic creatures.

We're editing down the manual, and I'm sharing some backstory to the world that didn't make the cut in the manual. This is the kind of silly microfiction that players are encouraged to write and share. This particular piece I wrote because I was trying to imagine where gorillas would live in the US, and why, and how.

In writing the backstory for Ewan Reinhart, I decided that the Gulf Coast was probably the most ecologically sensible place to try to establish a population of gorillas, and then started imaging the circumstances under which the US would do so. Surprise: it's the military industrial complex working hand-in-hand with border control!

The Establishment of the Gulf Coast Gorilla Population

Starting in the 2030s, Northwestern State University in Louisiana began trying to create a stable population of gorillas within one of Louisiana’s wildlife preserves. Among the project goals were tests of whether uplifting would improve the ability of the gorillas to thrive and assist humans in optimizing their survival. Several years after transplanting heirloom gorillas from US zoos and administering enhancement programs, the US Department of Defense began piloting Project Primal Warrior: a project to test the feasibility and performance of gorilla shock troops. In 2042 the DOD invested heavily in the Louisiana Gorilla Sanctuary project with the goal of creating 1,000 gorilla infantry soldiers by 2050 and the goal to produce 10,000 u-gorilla soldiers by 2060.

Herman Ducharme was among the early cohorts to undergo Army training. In 2042, at the age of ten he began keeping a journal at the request of his handlers. Concurrently, he began keeping a private diary in addition to one his handlers reviewed. It documents Herman’s exploration into unscreened literature at the fort library and conversations among the other gorillas about their situation. Ducharme’s secret diary would go on to establish a historical record of an emerging political consciousness among the early gulf coast gorilla troops. In 2048, the military began deploying army-trained gorillas along with Customs and Border Patrol agents. In 2049, the Bureau of Land Management began establishing gorilla habitats for mixed populations of maximally and minimally enhanced gorillas along most of the eastern third of the US-Mexico border. Though the pretext was for gorilla conservation, contemporary news coverage recognized the motivation to try and surveil and control the border.

By 2052 the Department of Homeland Security began the top secret project Simian Sentry. Under the program, DHS began incentivizing, manipulating, and pressuring the population of 8,000 gorillas living directly along the border to discourage crossing attempts through violence against humans who passed through their territory. Around the same time, residents of the southern Gorilla sanctuary became acquainted with members of the nascent parahuman rights movement through their contact with Veronica Sandoval’s production team, who were working on “Voices of the Unheard”.

In 2056, the brutal murder of a family camping in Louisiana brought national attention to the danger the gorillas living along the gulf coast posed. In the midst of the furor, a young gorilla investigator named Whisper Dubois and a human partner broke the story on the clandestine militarization of the southern Gorilla sanctuary by the DOD and CBP under Simian Sentry. The program was canceled following heated congressional hearings that took place amid a fierce public debate over the public perception of Gorillas. The DOD began phasing out Project Primal Warrior soon after. Attempts to evict 6,000 u-gorilla infantrymen from the barracks in which they’d lived since they were children led to riots among both gorillas and humans. The military eventually completed the move-out by offering a generous severance package and investments in gorilla infrastructure. Because of the gulf of trust between the Gulf Coast Gorillas and the US government, these monies were directed – on the gorillas’ insistence – to the Circle of Nations for management and disbursement. By 2060, the weakened US government had lost interest in managing the complicated situation they’d created along the gulf coast. To the gorillas’ delight, the federal government eagerly left matters to the states and the Circle of Nations as much as possible going forward.

Hey! Our game tries to integrate into its vision of the future an assumption of the restoration of Indigenous culture and agency on Turtle Island. As we're getting ready to release, we'd really appreciate getting more eyes on it and letting us know how it reads and if there are any changes we can make to improve its quality.

The main section which I'd like thoughts on is below. This is taken from the section of the World Guide describing major historical events and turning points. Constructive feedback would be appreciated. Feel free to copy, share, repost, ect. to any other forum where it may get attention, and direct folks to contact us through any social media or email channels on our website (https://fullyautomatedrpg.com). And thanks!

2042 - The Yurok People v. The Bureau of Land Management

In 2028, congress passed the Federal Ordnance for Restoration of Environments for Sustainable Territories (or FOREST) Act. The FOREST Act was a massive compromise legislation which created new programs to encourage forestry management. It included terms to make preserving and expanding forests as carbon sinks financially competitive with logging and mineral extraction by allowing companies to sell carbon offsets; funded construction of new parks; relaxed limits on hunting; and provided dozens of other favors for the various stakeholders needed to secure passage. One of its 35 sections even contained a largely symbolic gesture to American Indian tribes which would return neglected land to them under conditions which were believed unlikely to ever be exercised.

The effects were mixed. By 2038, millions of additional acres of land had been set aside as protected reserves. Many policy experts believed that the reduction in drilling and fracking that occurred was driven more by local bans and a rapid decline in financing as the banking sector began to recognize that new carbon infrastructure had become such frequent targets of sabotage that their risk wasn’t worth the declining returns. Eventually, the carbon offsets market crashed in 2041 following the Second Paradise Fire. A lawsuit followed.

During Our Children’s Trust v. Green Growth Climate Solutions, the climate advocacy group Our Children’s Trust showed that Green Growth Climate Solutions had purchased hundreds of square miles and contracted with the Federal Bureau of Land Management to be responsible for forestry management of thousands more of federally held land in order to sell worthless carbon offsets. At the same time, they’d neglected to perform any meaningful sustainable forestry services as contracted. During the trial, experts testified to the well-known fact that carbon offsets were a junk science that did not meaningfully address the climate crisis, and that the fire danger created by hundreds of thousands of acres of neglected land was well known.

The judgment put Green Growth Climate Solutions out of business and crashed the market for carbon offsets. It also created a scandal for the Bureau of Land Management, which was wholly under-resourced and unequipped to fulfill their legal responsibilities to manage the vast tracts of land that now returned to their oversight. A solution came in the form of The Yurok People v. the Bureau of Land Management in 2042.

As soon as the Green Growth case wrapped, the Yurok People brought a suit to enforce section 33 of the FOREST Act of 2028. In the trial against Green Growth it had been shown that the land belonging to the Bureau of Land Management that they’d contracted to Green Growth and the land privately held by Green Growth (which reverted to BLM following Green Growth's desolation) had been left fallow for nearly a decade. In a crowning achievement for the First Peoples’ legal movement, a judge concurred that these circumstances fulfilled the conditions outlined in section 33, and granted them 8,000 square miles of territory.

Green Growth’s practices had been common throughout the industry, and as the market crashed and more suits were brought in other states, native groups reclaimed millions of acres more. Though the judgements were stinging, the federal government saw a silver lining. Responsibility for the ever-growing problem of wildfires now rested with the native groups who’d won their cases.

Over the 2040s, the various nations of the first peoples managed to surprise the doubters. They formed the Circle of Nations to assist in inter-tribal management of their expansive returned territories.

They turned land assumed to be of low value into productive food forests, nature reserves, scientific centers, parks, and traditional hunting preserves. While reducing uncontrolled fires, they turned the land into a source of wealth and influence. They granted permissions to communes which met their strict qualifying requirements to live upon the land and learn their techniques. They fed and housed themselves and then thousands upon thousands more.

By the 2060s, the Circle of Nations and the first peoples had become a highly influential force within American science and policy. As society at large underwent a radical rethinking during the years following the Treaty of Antarctica, many of the values and practices of the first people finally saw overdue adoption within the wider culture of the second people.

Windrush is an aguamodo: a human with aquatic augmentations. She's a ship and port inspector, a proud member of the ILWU 122 (the International Longshore & Warehouse Union), and a mom. She has skills in inspection and healing. She also coaches underwater hockey at her kid's school.

Full character sheet: link

Bio:

Gillian Phong was born to Linda Phong and Melody Beridze in 2191. Linda was an aguamodo conservationist and documentarian, and Melody was a ferry pilot.

From an early age, Gillian wanted to be an aguamodo. She took swim lessons, got her scuba certification, and began breath and heart-rate training as an adolescent. In her teens, a friend of her mother Melody began taking her along on offshore windmill inspections. Soon, she added to her love of the ocean a fascination with the industries that took place within it. She went on to get her bachelor's degrees in Oceanography and in Supply Chain Infrastructure. It was during this time she met Sogobe, who she’d marry three years later in 2112.

Before she’d even graduated she’d started apprenticing with the longshoreman, and by 2114 she was a proud journeyman. She then applied for the union’s Martian cultural and tech exchange program and was accepted. She and Sogobe spent 27 months sailing out, working in Utopia Basin, and sailing back. This was where they met and fell in love with Amir. It was also during this trip that she trained as an emergency medic with the Mami Wata Medical Network.

In 2118 she gave birth to Aquemini, and in 2020 Sogobe gave birth to their second child, Hueiwoo.

I’m not sure why but I’ve always found the Civil Defense to be really cool, and I often try to work it into my stories in one form or another (though none of those have been published yet). When I was helping with reorganizing FA!’s box text on the military, I thought it’d be a good addition.

It fulfills the role of being an organized, primarily civilian, primarily voluntary disaster relief organization. It has a long history in dozens of countries, in one form or another, all around the world. Its provided training, search and rescue, preventative measures, emergency response, and recovery, in everything from wars, to natural disasters, and even the Chernobyl disaster. And the different formats used in all those countries give us a historical precident for almost any organizational structure we choose. Want to make it an auxiliary of a military branch? The US did that at some points. Directly part of the military? Some Soviet countries ran it that way. A purely civilian volunteer charity? Britain has recently revived theirs and is running it like that. They can even function as a volunteer militia, like the British home guard, or the American Civil Air Patrol who Wikipedia claims once dropped bombs on axis submarines.

And they have history. People like that kind of lineage, the sense of being part of something that dug people out of rubble in the blitz, that cleared radioactive debris in Chernobyl. There's a long history of sacrifice and service to draw on. And one with comparatively few atrocities on the record.

They're even pretty cool visually. They have the iconic blue triangle motif common in most countries, and a blue and white color scheme not really associated with combat.

Whether you need someone to respond to wildfires, to assist paramedics, to build levees in a flood, or to distribute and build tornado shelters, it's not a far leap from what they've already done. Like Noir said on the discord, given the scale of the Global Climate Wars in the game’s backstory, it seems pretty likely that every government on the planet would start handing out shovels and white helmets again.

And I think it fits the anarchist influences in solarpunk. Putting some of the responsibilities and capabilities for disaster relief back in the hands of the community. It's also a decent role for a varied cast of characters in a RPG. People with regular lives and skills who can be tasked with a quest and be granted some degree of official legitimacy.

When I wrote up the Civil Defense section for the game manual, I tried to provide enough flexibility to allow players and GMs the option to adjust the local Civil Defense chapter to fit their campaign. I like the idea of modern chapters tracing their lineage to different local groups, a postwar militia here, a wildland fire fighter unit there. Like the Defense served as a way to bring various factions (especially armed ones) into the fold, providing them with improved legitimacy in trade for increasing oversight and standardization. So while they’re supplied and trained by the same organization, at the unit level they have some leeway in how they operate and what they specialize in, which can conveniently fit any campaign that wants to use them.

Mayhem is a super-tough MMA fighter anarchist. He's very into Anarchy. If you have a friend who is really into anarchy (and/or MMA), we've got the premade character for them!

Link to full character sheet

Joaquin Krikorian was born to Melissa Krikorian and Alexandar Keith in Slab City in 2093. Melissa was a programmer and musician, and Alexandar was a busker, traditional story-teller, mime, and philosophy professor at Reed College.

Joaquin’s family split their time between Portland and Tijuana for most of his childhood. In 2108, when he was 15, Melissa’s band was eager to see and perform on Mars, and at the same time the Reed Philosophy Department was looking for professor to visit and attend a philosophy conference. They invited Joaquin, but he preferred to stay with family friends in Los Angeles. He spent this time dating, and getting to know himself and the land of Southern California. He delighted in sports from a young age (a passion that would be hard to satisfy during a trip to Mars) and began to get increasingly active in martial arts, along with meditation and psionic mental discipline training.

In 2111 Joaquin got his endurance upgrade mod, and a year later got a brain trauma resistance mod. Joaquin reunified with his mother when she returned that year, though she returned without Alexandar, who stayed on Mars for another Martian year. By 2113 Joaquin was 20 and starting to compete seriously in mixed martial arts when he wasn’t doing Ayahuasca with his girlfriend Nahr. Mayhem (as he’d come to be known in the ring and out) and Nahr then accompanied Melissa on a musical tour of Patagonia, continuing to fight and love and expand his mind, both with books and also with drugs.

Alexandar returned to Earth in 2114. The family made Portland their home base for the next few years. Over this time, Mayhem got his short-duration athletics boost mod and his armored skin mod. Mayhem got more active in social organizing with the Oregon Anarchist Party. In 2117 Mayhem and Nahr adopted a young Canaan dog named Poodle.

In 2119 Mayhem followed Nahr back to Los Angeles for her to join a prestigious documentary film production collective. Mayhem decided to try serving their community as a protector, but after a few months with the LA Protector League there was a mutual agreement that it wasn't a great fit. Now he serves as a protector with the more ideologically aligned Free Protector Network.

@sarenaulibarri@wandering.shop is teaching a seminar that looks very cool. I'm excited to hear what she's saying. Ticket start at $25, but are on a generous sliding scale.

I'm teaching a seminar for Clarion West on April 4th! Drawing on my experience as an anthology editor for World Weaver Press and a story reviewer for Imagine 2200, I'll go over some of the most common issues that I see in climate fiction slush piles.

#solarpunk #lunarpunk #ClimateFiction #ClimateWriters #ScienceFiction #SciFiWriters #ClarionWest #WritingClass #Imagine2200

https://clarionwest.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/clarionwest/eventList.jsp

This company is proposing a design in which magnets are used to repel the train car away from standard iron railroad tracks, and small side-wheels keep the skids aligned. It doesn't use electromagnetic alternation to drive the car, it's just essentially an ultra-low friction alternative to wheels.

Interesting idea. I'm naturally skeptical, but I find the idea neat. I have no idea how you use passive magnets to create a repulsion force, but as the poets say, "Magnets: how the fuck do they work?"

Recap from our developer meeting this morning:

I) The core manual:

• We're going to try to cut down the editors note to one page
• We're all going to go through and copy edit each section for final release. When you're satisfied, Comment that you're signing off on the section.
• Once everyone's signed off on each section, we'll make separate documents for the major sections. That means a PDF of a quickstart; rule book; world guide; and player/GM resources, plus character sheets
• Then post it on Itch.io and DriveThurRPG!

II) Campaign book:

• Set it aside until the manual is done, then basically do the same thing for it. Try to finish by mid April.

III) Promotion

• Until the manual and campaign release, keep doing what we're doing: talk about it on social media and such.
• After the game releases, directly contact a large list of writers, podcasters, game critics, etc. and make sure we've told anyone who is interested.
• Target timeframe: April and May

IV) After that

• We'll see. I'd like to get a bit of distance. Take a break and see what I feel like doing.
• Future steps are obvious: more playable adventures and the space expansion.
• If anyone else wants to be lead dev, I'll eagerly support a change in dev group leadership.

Share your thoughts!

One of the devs has been filling in a table of random NPCs. They've made a few dozen, and they're already really incredible in their variety and fit into the setting. You can see a handful of them below.

I thought I'd share some and solicit and try to crowdsource some more. More NPC suggestions would be highly appreciated!

...

Chorus of Wires, a synth who cares for the Vivarium at Lincoln Heights. They are fans of unusual semi-edible fruits.

Jumping Colour, often found with one of her long haired dogs at the Paws Salon on Clifford Street. She does animal work sessions at Preschools all over the city.

Port Fraxinius, runs the haberdashery on the corner of Gateway Boulevard. He’s a good listener, although sometimes secrets bubble up at his Poet’s corner performances

Garter Buffman. Involved in several camping and outdoor clubs in Azusa. Unusually suntanned for a non-humanoid synth.

Rhussel Olean. Spends three days a week on his Bike Kitchen drifting up and down Adobe Avenue. Is also Building resident union rep for the ‘Production artists and designers bikeshop’

Skates von Spikes. Knowledgeable manager of Clean Sheets Drug Space at Del Ray. Off duty she can be found at her building resident union, or the Baha’i temple.

Questionable Skunk. Operates out of a room opposite the Sculpture Garden, Cosmo Street. He doesn’t ask many questions. He doesn't welcome them either.

Cactus Bronzefinger. Performance set builder at the FabboWoodo workshop, West LA. He has a couple of lemur themed augmentations, that he claims are helpful backstage.

Punchcard Stipa. A synth that uses ‘his’ pronouns. He helps out at the Thermophile Spa, Hollywood hills, and has been adapting his chassis to act as a safety officer. That’s an ambition currently unfufilled.

Diskrhust. They split their time between the animal shelter, teaching self defence at the local recreation hall, and monitoring orbital shifts at the Union of Skylands on Norwalk Boulevard.

Coyote Ace. A name they might yet grow out of, Coyote is at highschool, but has their eye on a empty space on Holt Avenue that they dream of running their own wired haberdashery from

TurbineThyme is a synth who lives in the basement below New Theater on New Avenue. She’s still exploring what her body can do, and where that might lead her.

Bolt Chitalpa. A coder by arrangement on Hilliard Avenue. He also writes periodically for the Circle of Nations.

Chappie Arral. Purveyor of soap and other homegood chemicals off Whittier. He attends a church of latter-day saints group that meet early mornings in the park.

5 Steps, as he is known, is a wandering preacher, tracing a route between the Hindu Temple, Baha’i church and Protestant Chapel in Culver City.

Ohm Tatsoi is a practicing doctor and muslim. They are currently feuding with the Vivarium staff over alleged class snobbery.

Friendly Marguerita is a synth and coach at a boxing gym at Culver City. They are studied at projecting an authoritative calm amongst angry teenagers.

EriDuct is a surprisingly old synth usually found holding court at Poet’s corner, Torrance. On a good day, she’ll tell you about her old lives.

Hoof Rust is a kite dancer synth, usually found high above Altadena. His broadcasts on high altitude biochemistry are well respected, although his body is far too large to allow access to a regular lecture theater.

Slick Basil. Street seller of whatever needs selling, they sometimes can be found with a flower tray outside the Hindu temple in Agoura Hills, although just as often selling chits at the Union of Skylands, or mouthwash at Granry16.

... and so on.

decided to do some research on a world without stock markets, maybe these articles would be useful to FA's world, which bans making money from money

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-stocks-didnt-exist-john-m-paul-aif- this deals with the history of investing and argues futures markets would exist even without a stock market

https://www.thebalancemoney.com/what-if-the-stock-market-didn-t-exist-2637105 this is a capitalist argument for the stock market but may detail potential issues to be worked around (low key hilarious that it laments the loss of walmart in such a world)

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/what-if-there-was-no-stock-market.260638/ a forum debate about the stock market which mentions alternative financial systems. alludes to the public goods game (libraries) and co-ops in a lot of ways.

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/stock-markets-no-longer-fit-purpose this points out the flaws in the stock market and also mentions a field guide to regenerative economies, though said field guide was created by something called "The Capital Institute", so idk http://fieldguide.capitalinstitute.org/evergreen-direct-investing.html

this describes a market socialist economy that may be a stepping stone to FA's communism or a satisfactory state on its own (assuming proper governance mechanisms) https://www.reddit.com/r/SocialDemocracy/comments/olqi4a/are_there_economic_problems_with_locally_owned/

Marigold was adopted at birth by Carol and Georgie Sinclair in 2108. As the oldest of five, Marigold has always been a leader in their large household. They’re the product of their mothers’ inquisitiveness, their father’s confident passion for service, and a general love of taking things apart. In school, communication and writing were long their favorite subjects, narrowly beating out applied science and engineering. After a class field trip to the KNOCK LA newsroom when they were 12, Marigold became captivated by the sense of heroism they associated with investigative journalism.

On their school newspaper (Toypurina’s “The Recruiter”) they made a beat in looking for undisclosed potential conflicts of interest in procurement processes (they found five over two years) and performing other investigations into administrative oversight. Their greatest achievement was an expose on the fraction of school district travel opportunities which were provided to administrators versus educators. Marigold’s discovery that educators only received one sixth of the district’s off-world travel opportunities compared to upper level administrators when adjusted for group sizes received passing coverage from all the major municipal papers and earned them an angry letter from the school district’s head office, which Marigold framed and hung up in their room.

Knowhound spends their time hanging out with their friends Shoshana, Rocco, and Goat; going on adventures around Torrance with their younger siblings (where they’re equal parts protector and bad influence); and chasing leads for stories that either make it into an article for the school paper or wind up as microreports on the neighborhood Community Post.

Character sheet link

I'm reading "The Lost Cause" by Cory Doctorow. I'm about half-way through, so I don't know what it's like in the second half, but so far it feels so apiece with the vision in my head when playing games of Fully Automated, and that's really exciting.

The book takes place in Burbank, California, in an unspecified year that sounds like slightly less than one generation removed from today. Around 2040, I'd say.

It's been a few presidential administrations from now, and the US has implemented a Green New Deal, and Climate Corps are commonplace internationally. But also, things are tense. The world is still on fire, and a lot of conservatives are not pleased to see this new world taking shape. And within this context, the story is very communal. The protagonist knows all their neighbors, and everyone is always doing things for one another and relying on each other. Mutual aid is just integrated in to everyday life.

It's a great book, with an interesting plot and good characterizations. But there's another level of enjoyment, because I feel like reading the story makes me think of all the ways its tone, locations, and conflicts could be appropriated the way you do when running RPGs. It hits especially hard, because for anyone who isn't familiar, Burbank is a suburb of Los Angeles, and the intensely local sense of cultural pride that is a theme of the book is so familiar to my attempts to present that same feature when playing Fully Automated! with friends. I think the rich culture and patchwork nature of LA inspires that in a lot of people.

And also, I'm thinking of how much more I want to see this genre of writing expand, and how sharing a game like this can do a small part to add to getting people into writing more of these stories. And also, obviously the feedback loop that happens when people make more stuff that inspires other people to make more stories themselves.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm really liking this book on three levels:

1. "I'm really enjoying this good book."
2. "I could steal so much stuff from this book for running games."
3. "This seems like further proof that at lot of people are working in this idea sandbox, and I can't wait to see where that cycle of inspiration leads."

Pulsação aka Pulsa aka Aide Fuentes is a Capoeira master who loves dancing and defending anyone in danger as a member of the LA Protectors League.

Full character sheet