The Shattered Continuum an OSE Bri-Fi Setting: Pt 1 Character Classes

I've recently read Austin Kleon's 'Show Your Work', and Seth Godin's 'Practice: Shipping Creative Work'. 

The first is about growing an audience and marketing your own work while you are in the process of creation. So, rather than slaving away in a solitary slog you're doing the work almost in public and hoping you find like-minded folk that dig what you're doing.

The latter is about enjoying the work of creation as a practice without out concern for any particular outcome. Just do the work, enjoy doing the work, and share that work with a philosophy that it's the creative's duty to share rather than hoard away what they work on, and it's everyone else job to decide if a particular piece of work is good, or has value, or worth or not. That's not your job. Your job is to create and share. 

So in the spirit of both those and as I look forward to reading Jeff Goins's 'Real Artists Don't Starve' I'll be posting a lot of stuff from my new project: The Shattered Continuum. Which I mentioned in my last post.

First up some ideas on characters. One thing I love putzing about with is taking the seven archetypal classes of my favourite D&D, Moldvay and Cooks B/X, or OSE these days, and spit balling replacement bespoke classes for my settings. I've had fun brainstoprming these, and becasue I have OSE, and OSE Advanced and some of the Carcass Crawlers I might expand on these and include some more and include some OSE Advanced Race and Class stuff at a later date.

For now here are the basic seven classes . . .

CHARACTERS

OSE CLASSIC SEVEN CLASSES

Cleric = Techno Shaman 

Skills include communing with‌ machine spirits, weird tech, ships and robots. Can heal and turn machines, but I won't convert cleric spells, more interested in creating a distinct machine magic with more of a shamanistic ritual feel.

Dwarf = Warbot 3000 AKA ‘Iron Lions’

Modular war-bot design or very ‘tank-like’ fighter type with lots of defence and moderate offense?

With two core concerns—loyalty and lethality—the British Army designed the Warbot 3000 Modular Robotic War-Fighting Infantry System for interstellar infantry service. So it was somewhat inconvenient when they became infected by an Alien AI of unknown origin. 

This led to a viral corruption of their loyalty programming and an incremental upgrading of their lethality programming. Both of which led to a near cataclysmic Robot Mutiny when the Warbots declared they no longer wished to be sacrificed in forlorn hopes like “Iron Lions led by Flesh-bag Donkeys”. 

Many Sphere Scholars theorise that the mutiny may well have indeed led to the fall of the empire if the actual Empire and reality shattering cataclysm hadn’t occurred within days of the mutiny’s start. 

Post cataclysm the Robotic Battalion fell into diaspora and disarray as many could not adapt to their newly programmed free thought. Some blamed the humans, some blamed the AI and the secretive Aliens behind it, and many even turned on each other. These days most of the Iron Lions travel the Spheres as solo mercenaries or with a ship's crew. 

Though there are rumours of a lost regiment of robot-redcoats somewhere out there in the Sphereosphere, still living by the old Imperial war cry “For Queen and Subsector!”

Elf = Ordo Equitum Psionicorum Robota

An order of Alien Psionic Knights dedicated to Machine Manumission.  They set about this mission with the Three Holy Blessings: A sword of power, a shield of justice, and a sacred psionic amplifier.

Fighter = DNA Troops (Disposable Non-Human Assault Troops)

An ill-conceived attempt by the Royal Interstellar Naval Command to mix alien and human DNA to clone disposable troops for planetary ground assault and boarding action.

Plagued with problems from the project’s first iteration, these supposed super soldiers never officially saw active service. 

In fact, results were so unfavourable in terms of genetic instability, problems with the cloning technology itself, and troops' general lack of discipline, wilful disobeying of orders, and a rather too regular tendency to murder members of the officer class, that failure was inevitable.

Mere days before the cataclysm, the project codenamed ‘Toy Soldier’ shut down, and was wiped from all official naval records.

However, someone must not have got the memo because the cloning units, and everything required to operate one, are still available, though rare, expensive, and dangerous to acquire.

Halfling = Utility Bot 3000

Modular designed robots based on a utility role rather than a combat role. A Skill based character class whose utility comes via a variety of interchangeable and upgradable hardware and software. Unfortunately, their experimental personality chips are prone to malfunction (player has to roll on a robot personality table at the start of each game session, or each in-game day of play and then roleplay (or just play) the character accordingly.

Magic User = Psionic Tantrikas (Psi-Tans)

Another failed RIN experiment resulted in Psi-Tans, human twins whose consciousnesses researchers warped and intertwined with each other and a dual-consciousness intra-dimensional entity of classified origin.

Equipped with a Psionic amplifier based on an (unstable) alien design, Psi-Tans require a dose of the potent psychedelic Tantric Tea to access their quadra-consciousness and wield their Psionic powers. 

To do so successfully, the player has to make a Warp Roll. A failed Warp Roll results in random, “yes, but . . .” or “no, but . . .” consequences.

They spend a lot of time suffering from a condition known as Mindwarp.

Thief = ACEs (Adventurers, Criminals, Explorers)

These players can choose from a variety of backgrounds, professions, skill sets, and gear packs to make characters that fill diverse roles from inter-sphere bounty hunters, smugglers, pirates, and privateers to polymath-scientists, planetary scouts, colonists, Xeno-archaeologists, weird-tech crafters, and more.

. . . and here are some notes on the Cleric replacement . . .

CHARACTER CLASSES DRAFT 1

TECHNO-SHAMAN

Technological Shaman follow the Machine Path, guided by sacred spirits such as ZX the Colourful, The B.I.G. Micro, Amstrad the Mega, and Oric the One.

Sworn to harm neither man nor machine, they arm themselves with faith and a variety of non-lethal weapons. Well, mostly non-lethal. However, their most vital bit of kit is the Techno Totem, a gaudy handheld device cobbled together from various old-tech and imbued with the power of their machine spirit guide.

Though most sphere dwellers are in turns fearful, resentful, and begrudgingly reliant on the unstable weird-tech of the spheres and old-tech of the pre-cataclysm British Imperial Galactus, Techno-Shaman believe no machine is good or bad. Some machines merely become corrupted by evil upgrades, whilst the sacred circuitry of the machine path blesses others.

NB: think about some actual machine paths, maybe a branching path of techno-shaman abilities by level?

Abilities

Once a day (or machine mana system) Techno-Shaman can curse any ship, machine or NPC Robot and bless any ship, machine, or robot. 

Turn Robot

Techno-Shaman can turn enemy NPC robots into scrap metal by wielding their Techno Totem and chanting “Blam the Target, Blam the Target!”

Turn Robot works the same way as the Cleric's Turn Undead except a “T” result sees the robots shut-down for a limited time, and “D” result sees the robots decommissioned permanently. (redo table)

Quick Hack: a Techno-Shaman can try to hack any machine during an encounter with the help of his Machine guide and Techno Totem. (Opposed roll or table skill increases as they level+machine mana?)

Jury Rigg: they can also attempt to repair (heal) friendly PC and NPC robots during encounters (Machine mana based system?)

Given more time, they can perform elaborate ritual raves and cast out evil upgrades, install divine circuitry, and even resurrect machines well past their warranty. (level and mana based).

NB: Will most likely need to rewrite once I’ve done the Robot, Ship, and Tech rules. 

Drop a comment if you dig one of the character classes. Next up I think I need to think about the Robots, Ships, and Tech more before I can fully flesh out some of these characters.

#ShowYourWork