1. February 2010 by admin.

It’s been a long time since there have been really tough decisions on GEARS. Tough work, sure, with all the rules that have to fit snuggly together and make sense! But tough decisions are a different beast altogether, and one essential decision has been showing its teeth these last few days.

It relates to the last post, really. I’ve been a bit psyched about the Intransigent Design setting, especially with some very positive commentary arriving from playtesters. It’s a complex world, with a lot of deep philosophical choices and concerns. It’s provocative and makes you think. But in the end, those are not necessarily good traits for a game world. For an intellectual debate, perhaps, but game worlds are not pensive documentaries.

The main setting for GEARS has always been Alice 2.0. This has not changed. The question is, is GEARS going to be the source of all the game is, or is Alice? Is this about a new kind of game rules, or about a new kind of game world? Which will be on top?

It might seem a bit redundant. After all, if both are made and both are published, who cares what the intented focus is? But the decision is rather serious, simply because it will influence both the publishing model and the later supplement line. As mentioned before, GURPS is a big inspiration for GEARS, but GURPS also had what some would perceive as a problem, namely that it had game worlds made left and right, with little cohession and followup. Its 4th edition put a multi-world setting at the center, but the philosophy still seems unchanged. Is that what’s ahead for GEARS? Or should the game simply stand up and proclaim that the rules are solely there to flesh out Alice 2.0?

Lord knows Alice allows anything to be used, and poses the kind of challenge to the system that GEARS was made to tackle: Diversity, flexibility, coherence, all the goodies. But Intransigent Design was not made in Alice’s image. If everything is about the core setting, that could be considered a problem, or at least a divergence from the bigger plan.

So… What do we want? A set of rules to rule it all, or a settingfor the rules to serve? Divergences are still possible, no matter what the choice, but the exceptions to the rules (no pun intended) cannot be what carries the system.

I am leaning towards making Alice the focus, and creating the best possible rule system to flesh her world(s) out. Intransigent Design is still in my heart, but I can actually see it as ‘the rebel’, the one setting that defies the mischievous mayhem of Alice and Babylon, by being deep, dark, and foreboding. The sinister cousin of the lovable rogue.

Yeah… I can imagine that!

Posted in Game worlds, Intransigent Design, Genre, Fourth Draft, Alice, Playtests | 1 Comment »

27. January 2010 by admin.

Rules are still being crunched, verbalized and streamlined for the upcoming Fourth Draft. On the downside, there is so much that it sometimes seems impossible to ever get done. On the upside, a lot has been done in a short time, and things are looking so good there are whispers Sixth Draft might be the last draft before a true First Edition rolls about! Nothing for certain, but things look better and sturdier than expected, so hopes are high…

What is looking pretty sure now is a line-up of what the first roll-out of GEARS settings will be, and they are looking juicy, very juicy…

Alice 2.0 remains the default ‘core setting’. Using it will be optional, but it binds all other settings together very nicely. As is already in Third Draft, Alice arrived to our world in 2007 in an explosion of the coast of Morocco, and promptly swam, ran and commandeered transportation to get her into the Saharan desert, where she founded Babylon. Now, Babylon is a mysterious city, full of secrets, madness and intrigue, the center of worldwide conspiracies and espionage, and very secretly home to super-scientific Resurrection Machines and portals to other worlds. Nobody knows who this Alice is, what she wants, or how she does what she does and knows what she knows, but the world is watching her, and the Iron Ring barricade the UN tries to keep from imploding at the edge of Babylon. And wouldn’t you know it: The player characters are smack in the middle of it all! Lunacy ensues!

Broken Pattern is a post-apocalyptic world set after technological marvels became humanity’s fall. Society did not explode; it imploded, tearing itself apart when we could no longer govern ourselves. The cities are still there, and our technological remnants are fought over greatly, especially by those who gain their power from applying what can be salvaged. In the desolate and destroyed New World, technology like battered exosuits and fickle AI is not a forgotten artifact, but the key to True Power! Broken Pattern is gritty and harsh, but at the same time shows what kind of hope can be built from knowing your past…

Hybrid Elite, set in a far future, has powerful aliens holding Earth in a military/diplomatic deathgrip as humanity accepts their new overlords, getting in return powers beyond belief. Galactic superhumans maintain the seemingly benevolent alien rule, while rebellious powers try to find their way in to deal a much needed blow against the new ruling class. Combining dark, ultra-powerful superheroic adventure with breathtaking transhumanistic ideas, Hybrid Elite is a setting of tremendous powers, to those willing to fight for their species’ survival in the name of another race entirely.

Stone Sky Kingdoms is GEARS’ contribution to the fantasy genre. But it is not fantasy as you may know it; it’s both darker and grander, as powerful sorcerers try to make the stars fall to the ground and build mighty cities around them, draining the power of these fallen pieces of the ’stone sky’. A power so great that few dare go too close, and the lands around the fallen stars warps with magic only tapped by the most insane. Stone Sky Kingdoms explores fantasy as a large and bewildering tapestry of magics, faith, arcane torment, chaos, and immense beauty and heroic values that may be the last defense against those who want the sky to truly fall!

Ectopia, “the outer place”, is a cyberpunk world of the near future. But something is wrong. There is something lurking in the artificial realms our technologies have created. ‘Ghosts’ seen only through bionic eyes and in data archives, entities wanting to reach out to us, for reason we cannot, perhaps dare not, understand. And as material greed and carnage claw at society, in a world that has not come to terms with the power it has attained over such a brief age of progress, something new is being born in its blind angles…

These five will all get a treatment in GEARS Fourth Draft, and presumably in the final First Edition. The following two, however, are slated as the first settings to get separate treatment as supplement:

Intransigent Design, where our world is rocked to its very core in a not so distant future. As humanity looks on, God returns, bringing with Him the armies of Heaven, a civilization of unimaginable power, loyal to a Plan so far beyond the understanding of humanity that we have, inadvertedly, strayed from it. The loyal and devout will submit, the rebellious will fall. But God has adversaries, both human and other, and as the realms of Heaven and Hell and the intricacies of the human soul becomes the stage of the greatest battle faced by either of those fighting, the world is changed forever.

Reich X is picked as perhaps the truest of Evils, a world in which Hitler claimed victory and subdued the world… by magic, alien saucer technology, mythical creatures and advanced inventions. Inside Neuropa, brains in jars plan the war of a Third Reich armed with sorcerers and cyborgs, ravaging unconquered lands with vampires and werewolves, and hunting Qabbalist rebels with saucers before the spirits of the slain Hebrew people can give the Underground a foothold in the glorious Nazi empire.

Posted in Intransigent Design, First Edition, Hybrid Elite, Broken Pattern, Ectopia, Stone Sky Kingdoms, Sixth Draft, Game worlds, Reich X, Magic, Superpowers, Fourth Draft, Races, Aliens, Alice | 1 Comment »