The Black Campbell

Last night was our weekly game session, this time part 2 of the episode 3 of our Battlestar Galactica campaign. In this, the characters’ vessel Aegis arrives at Sagittaron with the mission to protect an archeological dig and the scientists there from fundamentalist terrorists who want the planetary government to arrest them for blasphemy and suppress their findings. (They have found the remains of a modern city that would have existed 8-10,000 years before Colonial settlement!)

The characters shuttle down a small marine detachment to provide protection, as well as the ship’s chaplain and commander — who will be negotiating with the local government to try and sort the matter out. One of the issues — Commander Pindarus’ father, a famed vet of the First Cylon War, helped suppress a serious general strike 20 years ago…his family name is not a benefit here. They are escorted to the Colonial military base outside of the capital to avoid possibly being shot down by insurgents. On the post, they find out Colonial servicemen are asked not to leave the post, and when they do to travel in groups for their protection. The commandant is adamant about respecting Sagittaron customs off-post; they are looking to avoid another attempted bombing on the place.

The meeting between the First Secretary of the Sagittaron Planetary Quorum and Sagittaron Security Minister went well, although the presence of the spiritual leader of the  Sagittaron Freedom Movement (Tom Zarek’s “defunct” terrorist group) threw a wrench in the works. Pindarus essentially lies to them: they’ll suppress the findings and get the archeologists off planet when their funding runs out in two weeks, and hints that he’s willing to leave it all in local hands, so long as they don’t pop the trigger on the blasphemy charges…the meeting goes well.

Meanwhile, the military protection detail, in civilian clothes, talks their way past a couple of road blocks by local thugs to the dig and set up security, instructing the scientists on how to act, should they be attacked.

The next morning, Pindarus and his brother-in-law (the priest) head out to the dig site and their convoy is attacked in a rather expert way. They lost a few NPC marines that were guarding them, but all the characters got away with minimal injury. The fight sequence was tense until the lieutenant in charge of the dig site security and a couple of PC NCOs arrived to aid them. They have two prisoners they evaced to the ship (breaking a promise to the commandant of the military base not to fly outside of prescribed areas of operations.)

Pindarus is now going to use this to excuse military action to protect the dig and put pressure on the Sagittaron government — which is obviously looking for the easy way out of the issue — to help them shut down the splinter group that has been threatening the dig.

Next week, we’ll be seeing interrogation, politicking, and more trouble for the crew…

Last week saw the return of our Battlestar Galactica RPG campaign. The first two episodes dealt with the mysterious disappearance of the personnel of a listening station on the Armistice Line, the second was a secret recon to a star system on the other side of the line, where they learned the toasters haven’t gone away…they’re still lurking around out there.

The third episode saw the introduction of two new PCs, Master Chief Ajax Giadis and the MARDET/intelligence officer, young LT Maia Carina. The episode opened with standard combat training exercises, where the command staff was getting a chance to work the crew up to heightened standards, as they are aware of the Cylon issue. They get an order packet from PIcon HQ ordering them to Sagittaron to protect the personnel of an important archeological dig. The dig, on the dry lakebed outside a major city holds the remains of a city that appear to be 10,000 or more years old…long before the historical settlement of the Colonies.

A terrorist grou, the Soldiers of Kobol, has injured one of the graduate students in an attack in the nearby city of Paresis – that victim the daughter of a major supporter of President Adar. The 21 people of the dig have been threatened and there have been called from the SoK and other groups to jail the scientists for blasphemy, and their findings suppressed.

The mission is two fold: the commander is to salve the local politicians feelings over military action on their world, and protect the find and personnel for the two weeks until their funding expires and they return to the University of Leonis.

No way this can go wrong…

As most Battlestar Galactica RPG fans know by now, Quantum Mechanix has done a superb map of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol (I just got mine framed, along with my map of the ‘Verse by the same bunch, for Christmas.) Now the cannon thumpers can agree or no on the map — there’s plenty of people who prefer the one star with 12 habitable planets model, others that like a dual sun, trianary, or the four-star version (QM’s)…but whichever way you go, here’s  something I think is essential to note:

The Colonies’ star system is unusual. And being a star-faring race, they would have done enough exploring the local space around the Cyrranus system to know this. 12 habitable worlds around one star shouldn’t happen. Four stars with multiple planets each in perfect barycentric harmony should not exist. This should be part of the Colonial religious and scientific thinking: the Colonies was blessed with a set-up that is obviously of supra- or supernatural origin. (Especially in light of the cosmology of the RDM version.) For the colonies, their worlds are a gift, perhaps found, perhaps made by the Lords of Kobol. Their exodus to the colonies should seem almost a fait d’accomply…hence their history of a 2000 year development post-exodus unquestioned.

The universe, to the Colonials, seems custom built to their cosmology…and maybe it was.

There’s an old adage that goes something like this: stereotypes are stereotypes because they’re usually true. Recently, a character design for our Battlestar Galactica game brought this home for me. The character is prejudiced, but not toward a particular group…he simply views people through the prism of stereotypes. That made me wonder what the stereotypes were of the various colonies in the BSG world. We see some of it in the series, mostly directed toward the religious worlds, Gemenon and Sagittaron, and with Caprica toward the Tauron characters.

I decided to flesh this out because, while I’m not stumping for stereotyping people, it is a common cultural factor. First off, stereotypes are based not just on the culture of the group being characterized, they are characterized through the prism of the culture viewing them…what the stereotype says about those creating the image is as important as those being characterized. Much of what we saw in the Galactica series were through the eyes of Capricans, and even Baltar’s rant about Arelon and Caprica in season four was Caprican — he might have been from Arelon, but he adopted the ideals and prejudices of that adopted world.

Secondly, all of these viewpoints are created allegory for Earthly nations and groups, however vague, and viewed through the prism of educated Western sci-fi writers from North America. To this end, to make things more accessible, I’m going to shift back and forth, occasionally providing real-life stereotypes to explain those of the 12 Colonies

Arelon — The impression Baltar gives us is of a mostly agrarian world that is somewhat culturally backward. To this end, the actor chose to use an accent that typifies rural England. I chose to use this as a basis for the view of Arelon as a rough world of practical, hard-scrabble types, similar to agricultural and suburban Britain — primarily the Midlands, Yorkshire, Borders Scotland. The world might have cities and urbanites, but it is typically viewed as a world of dirt farmers and sheep herders — uneducated, cheap with a cubit, suspicious of outsiders and their culture. They’re the rednecks of the South as viewed by those “better” folk in New York and Los Angeles; they might be folksy and neihgborly to each other, but you worry about getting lost in banjo country while on a river rafting trip.

Arelonians, however, see themselves as honest, hard working folk, and view the wealth, science, and culture of offworlders through that prism — that they are effete, and get ahead not through honest work, but fiscal and legal trickery. A good way to look at this would be the view most Southerner outside of urban centers view the two coasts of the United States.

Aquaria — This low population, inhospitable planet is never really explored by the series, so the obvious parallel is Scandinavia: a sea-faring people who are as cold as their world, hardy and tough, but otherwise mostly ignored as a population. At worst, most of the stereotypes (as is often the case) would revolve around food: pickled fish and other horrific (to the discerning Virgonian or Caprican palette) present the notion of a quaint but ultimately forgettable people.

Aquarians, of course, very the outside worlds as soft, spoiled brats that squabble over everything, instead of pulling together — as you have to on their rough world — to survive. Whether it is a family, a small boat crew, a village, or one of their small, picturesque towns, Aquarians understand you have to work together to make things world. That requires altruism, self-reliance, and shared sacrifice. Having that moral superiority over the other colonies is a point of pride for these people.

Canceron — The “Largest Democracy” of the 12 Colonies is home to people who are arrogant, loud, greedy and violent, self-centered and fecund…or if you listen to them, confident, exuberant, motivated to improve themselves, and self-reliant. They breed without restraint to civilized eyes, but the Canceron consider procreation one of their inalienable rights, along with the right to speak their peace, make a cubit, and be left the hell alone. Their independent streak makes them stubborn and smug in the eyes of the uncharitable. Their claim to the oldest democracy is often challenged by Capricans, who borrowed many of their ideas of government from the Canceron, but it is a historical fact.

Those that admire Canceron tend to over-hype their love of freedom in everything — since the Articles of Colonization were signed, Canceron has begun to see a growth in economic regulation and laws bounding personal freedom with “responsibility.” They might recognize that these are a friendly, charitable, and creative people, and see them as undisciplined, rather than anarchic (a popular view.)

Those from Canceron view themselves as free people, first and foremost, and the criticism of them as sour grapes. They  point out that Caprica adopted many of their ideas of privacy, free speech, open markets, and popular consent over the government, but that the Capricans quickly sullied these grand ideas with a preference for security over liberty, big government welfare over personal charity, and a distrust of religion in general (and monotheism in particular.) They see worlds with tight cultural controls like Sagittaron and Gemenon as repressive and dangerous, and often push for the Colonial government to “open” these cultures…often missing the irony of their coercive desire to make people’s lives better.

Caprica — Capricans are viewed with respect and contempt, depending on the world. Older cultures that have influenced this prince of Colonies point to their effects with pride and view the Capricans as a logical conclusion of cross-pollination of ideas between the twelve worlds. Virgonians can point to their cultural influence (and superiority), Librans to the use of much of their legal structure in the Colonial government, Leonis to the notions of economics (although Canceron had just as much of an effect), Canceron to the notions of self-ownership…. Many respect, but envy, Caprica its natural resources, its recent success, its position as leader of the intercolonial government.

Envy is exactly what Capricans would point to in response to their detractors. Leonis and Virgon both had grand empires int he past, but could not sustain them; Canceron was too undisciplined and governed by selfish personal interests to be successful (this, of course, ignores Canceron being the second largest economy in the world behind Leonis); Gemenon — always viewed through an imperial eye — and Sagittaron are filled with backward, superstitious and violent religious fanatics; Tauronese are all part of organized crime (see the American view of Italians from New Jersey and New York. Be assured, they’re not all extras from The Sopranos or Jersey Shore.) Caprica likes to think they invented republican government and industrialism (Leonis) and democratic ideals (Canceron), that they don’t borrow and “improve” on Virgonian art, architecture, and literature; or that their legal system is the recipient of Libran jurisprudence.

Gemenon — The first colony to be settled by the exiled of Kobol, Gemenon is a rather inhospitable world, although it was not in times past. The reason is not fully understood. The people are known to be highly religious, even fanatical, and were a common strawman for the security services of Caprica in the lead up to unification. Theirs is a world that is strong on family and tradition. They are viewed as anti-technological, although this is not the case; they simply do not have the investment necessary for that sort of industry — outside of resource cultivation, most modern industry is lured off to Caprica due to better tax incentives and connections to the market.

The Gemenese have gotten the short end of the stick for centuries, know it, and make a point of whining about it often. They see their relationship with the other colonies through the prism of colonial oppression, and they satisfiy themselves by looking on the other worlds — Caprica particularly — as arrogant, decadent, deceitful, and ultimately, sinful. Gemenese give themselves a feeling of moral superiority, not just for their religious faith, but as that of an oppressed people morally superior due to their political weakness.

Leonis — A world of bit-pinching workaholics with a stratified class system based on wealth, Leonis is a world of racists that wished to rule over all of Man — that would be the view of many of the other colonies that were, at one time, the imperial charges of Leonis. It was the first world to recover their industrial base after colonization, and the first space-faring world. They view everything though the prism of money, and see success as evidence of divine grace (and some do think this.) They are considered to be cheats, clever, and litigious. (The real life parallel is obvious, and just as full of crap.)

Leonine people see themselves as hard-working, honest brokers. They might work an average of 10 hours more a week than the average Colonial citizen, but they see this as a sacrifice that will eventually pay off — either in a better standard of living, a better start for their children, or a chance to influence the future. They see other colonies as lazy grousers who would have done as well as Leonis did in the past if they had applied themselves, or been smarter than they were. Many are still proud of their imperial heritage, even if they decry some of their past methods.

Libran — The seat of intercolonial justice is seen as irredeemably corrupt by many of the colonies. they are a world of libertines and lawyers — never a good combination. As one of the primary sources of illicit drugs, and having one of the most liberal political asylum laws prior to the Articles of Colonization, Librans are seen as criminal, or at the very least soft-headed supporters of illicit activity. Post-Articles, Libran continues to have cornered the market of “sanctuary cities” — where criminals can escape other worlds and find legal cover to prevent arrest and extradition, particularly to those world that still have the death penalty (Caprica, Gemenon, Picon, Sagittaron, Tauron.)

Librans see themselves as the heirs to Canceron liberty, using rule of law to protect the powerless from governmental overreach. (Canceron citizens would tend to agree.) They view drug laws, and other victimless crimes through the same liberal prism as Canceron, but are more actively aggressive about bucking Colonial authorities by decriminalizing much of these “crimes.” Librans think of themselves as much more cosmopolitan than other colonies, mostly because of the world is mostly a hodge-podge of people from the other worlds.

Picon — The stereotype of Picon as “Little Caprica” is so pervasive that even its own people use the nickname for their world. A smaller world than Caprica, it’s like they’ve distilled all of the ideas of Caprican society and concentrated them. Their economy is built on Colonial central government largess following the Cylon War — it is the home of the Colonial Fleet, has the largest training base, as well. This has earned them the image of being whores for the military and central government. The massive wealth redistribution from the other colonies to Picon for their massive military-industrial complex and very generous welfare state makes the world unpopular with nearly all of the other worlds, who view them as spoiled and lazy. It is hard to argue this, as Picon workers receive almost twice the vacation and sick time as other comparable workers around the colonies, and the average work week is 30 hours with 40 hours a week pay.

In reality, Picon is a melting pot of the other 11 Colonies. Piconian culture was long ago subsumed by Caprican media conglomerates — many of which now produce their television and data-net programs on Picon due to excellent tax incentives (Virgonian and Caprican artists haven’t missed that their media companies have exported jobs to Picon, and made their populations pay for the honor.) Picon society is split on the military — over half of the industry is connected in some way to the Colonial Fleet — and a strongly anti-military portion on the population. Most of the latter is connected to the artistic community and the massive, powerful unions in the public and private sectors. The military tends to view these civilians as weak and spoiled, without realizing it is the masive graft and waste attributed to the military sector of the economy that makes the generous benefits to Piconians possible.

When others complain about the lifestyle of Picon, the citizens tend to se this as sour grapes, and believe that it is simply bad management and “evil” corporatism on worlds like Leonis (known for their hard-working, vacation-eschewing workers) that is why they don’t have what Picon has. To them, the point of life is leisure and self-actualization. None of them think it could come to an end, but Picon bonds are overly inflated and the welfare state is on a tipping point as the central government looks to cut the massive expenses connected to the Fleet.

Sagittaron — This world is one of the most maligned of the Colonies as a world of violent and uneducated bigots, religious zealots, backward anti-technologists. And a quick look at their judicial code would suggest this is a correct view: dancing and other frivolity is banned in some municipalities; it has the death penalty on more crimes than any other colony; many people do eschew technology and medical care in favor of prayer; they do view the other colonies with suspicion and occasionally open hatred.

Sagittaron is also a harsh, deserty world that has suffered repeated invasion and colonization by the Leonine and Virgonian Empires. They suffered  heavily during the Cylon War, when the toasters used it as one of their primary bases of operation. With this in mind, it is easy to see the desire to remain free of ties to the other worlds. More over, the prevalent religious doctrine suggests that life is a dream of the Gods — nothing is truly real, a story that cannot be altered by mortals. With this in mind, much of their culture makes sense. The view of Sagittarons as violent comes mostly from small political and religious groups known for disproportionate amounts of carnage, but in fact, most Sagittarons are fervently pacifistic; violence toward another will not alter the will of the Gods, but paradoxically, when it occurs it is also seen as the will of the Gods.

Scorpia — This world is an odd one. A relatively small population of Scorpians still exists due to the use of the world by the Cylons in the War. A policy of extermination led to the collapse of the urban centers of the planet. As a result, like Libran, Scorpia is a world of immigrants and a mishmash of cultures and attitudes. The prevelant view is of Scorpians as open-mined and cosmopolitan, but that depends solely on the neighborhood you are in. There is much ghettoizing of the immigrant groups — Caprican neighborhoods, Gemenese neighborhoods, etc. It is, like Picon, a heavily militarized world and is one of the main shipyards for the Colonial Fleet, making it a strong supporter, in general, of the Colonial experiment.

Original Scorpians still exist and they are a culture of hedonists and layabouts,in the minds of the newly emigrated. The colony is blessed with incredible natural beauty, and has been known for centuries as “The Playground of the Colonies.” Outside the cities, Scorpia had a reputation for being a world of childlike natives that were much slower to redevelop technology due to their world’s climate. This view is based on a very select experience with the world, and most people do not realize it was an artifice created by the Scorpians themselves to bring people to their world to spend money, as well as create the impression of the world as non-threatening.

Tauron — Commonly seen as a world of gangsters, oppressive corporate entities, and corrupt politicians, Taurons still have that stigma throughout the Colonies (but most intensely on Caprica, a long-time rival.) Their highly ritualistic ways regarding rites of passage, death, and tattooing lend an air of the exotic and dangerous to them, and their very violent, balkanized politics have stigmatized them. they wee, however some of the most effective fighters against the Cylons. Post-Articles of Colonization, the world has sought to strengthen its position, politically and economically against the other eleven worlds, but most particularly Caprica. This has led them to institute policies that have irritated the central government — from lax tax and incorporation laws, to allowing other Colonial ships to fly the Tauron flag (with very low registration requirements), to actively committing corporate espionage on competitors.

To the Tauron, family and community come first, and that includes their world over the other colonies. They vew outsiders with a combination of disdain and avarice — but once befriended by a Tauron, they are hard to sway from their loyalties; you, in effect, become part of the family (but there is still always that last hurdle of not being family…) They view foreign law, like that of the central government, to have no hold over them and surreptitiously engage in small acts of rebellion. When abroad, they will obey the laws that are convenient, and if the risk of punishment is minimal. They respect the ideas of freedom and independence of the Canceron, but see their rabid individualism as dangerous to familial and community order; they prefer levels of hierarchy they trust with overseeing the running of things.

Virgon — When Colonials think of Virgon, they see arrogance, class stratification, imperialism, and libertine social attitudes. One of the first big powers in the past, the Virgonian Empire was highly successful and spread its culture and language throughout the 12 Worlds. Virgonians (if you are from the world) or Virgonese (if you are not) are cultured and snooty, elegant and sissified, sexually promiscuous and prone to all manner of deviant behavior. If they’re not big-spending aristocrats, they are artists, actors, writers, and prostitutes. Their buildings are beautiful, their food delicious, and their arts very smart. They are alternately despised or aspired to.

A lot of it is true — Virgon was the center of the arts for a long time, until they were overtaken by Caprican popular media (Virgonians would deny they art and literature are in any way inferior to Caprican competitors. Capricans would say sales figures don’t lie, but Virgonian critics view Caprican art as “low culture” and point out Caprican is based strongly on their language.) They still have a vestigial arsitocracy that does earn those with a title some influence; poor aristocrats (and they are legion) usually are the face of various business entities, their breeding assumed to give them more respectability. Actors, artists, writers, and architects flock to the Royal Academy of Art in Lydisius (known as “the Great City of Lydisius”) but once you get outside of the major cities, this stereotype falls apart.

The sexual mores of the Virgonian people, however, are also somewhat salacious and overblown. Homosexuality and group marriage are not considered deviant, as on some worlds, and outside of the urban areas, some of the more lewd practices are not common at all.

The use of stereotypes is not something that you use to define the people of these worlds as a game master — some NPCs will conform to these viewpoints, some will not, just as people do not conform to cultural stereotypes in the real world. But the player characters might hold these views, and it could color their interactions, or at the very least provide some semblance of a living culture for them, in-game. Your campaign will, of course, have its own flavor, but adding elements like this to your game can enrich the setting and provide a bit more realism to the setting, pre and post-attacks.

I’ve been a bit quiet on the new Battlestar Galactica campaign we’ve got running, partly because our China-based Hollow Earth Expedition game has been a blast and is just charging along, and partly because I’ve been retooling some of the ideas I’ve had. I’ve got to be a bit careful about saying to much, lest I drop spoilers for the gamer or two in my group I know read this blog (so stop now, you!)

The game is set roughly a year to two before the Cylon attacks. I did this last time to develop the background of the characters and the Colonies so that the players would have something to miss when it was gone — family, friend, places. This time, however, it’s also to give the initial “seasons” a new flavor. Whereas last time the Cylons just showed up out of nowhere, as in the new show, this time the toasters are out there, we know they’re out there, and we know they’re still sniffing about the Colonial space.

The flavor is more of a combo of Cold War tension — the characters are stationed on an “expeditionary” craft that is ostensibly on exploration missions out of the solar system (I’m using the Quantum Mechanix four-star cluster idea. I know some don’t like it, but it look pisser on the wall when referring to places.) The rest of the time they are on detached duty doing political flag-waving, military assistance of policing, etc. On that side, I’m pushing an erosion of rights and heightening inter-Colonial tensions flavor. Troubles from within and without.

The Cylons are probing Colonial space and outposts: ships and outpost personnel go missing. Strange ships are spotted only to jump away. The Fleet is returning the favor, slipping around the Armistice Line from time to time to do surveillance. But the goal is to avoid any escalation, especially as the public is convince the threat is gone (and the politicians are pushing the meme as a way to shift Colonial expenditures to domestic priorities) and the Fleet stands to be fiscally gutted.

Overlaid on this is another major subplot modified from the show: All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again. There are old ruins being found on the colonies that predate the Kobol exodus…could the scrolls be wrong? Or could this cycle have played out more times than thought? To that end I’ve created a few other “prophecies” — there’s the Scrolls of Pythia, which tell of great migrations; there’s the Sibylline Prophecies, which tell of another cycle, that of resistance and triumph; and there are the prophecies of Dione and Trophonius — which I’ve yet to flesh out.

The goal is to find evidence that humankind and Cylon had preexisted in the past, fought, run, refought, died over and over again, and that the Colonies themselves have been populated multiple times over the millennia as the story has played out on Kobol, Earth, the Colonies, and other places.

UPDATE: Didn’t get to this, and thanks to Runeslinger for giving me a nudge on it — Cylons. The new campaign is going to have a bit of mystery concerning them. As with the new show, there’s humanoid Cylons, as there were in the First War, but these were obviously android/gynoids — silicon skin polymers, very close to human-looking but still somewhere in the “uncanny valley”. There were classified reports of the Cylons doing strange experiments on humans near the end of the war, possibly an attempt to create something like the Terminator-style cyborg, skin over metal.

There will be the new improved Cylons, the old ones will be around, as well — no point in decommissioning them; they’re just not front line troops. There will be moto-centrions, similar to the motorcycle-Terminators (love this idea — why stick bipeds? They’re not exactly efficient for certain tasks.), Cylon tanks (similar to the heavy raider), and a host of other smaller devices for spying and scouting. The toasters aren’t going to stovepipe their design philosophy.

There will be a “big 12”, as in the show, but none of the Final Five nonsense — the 12 are the governing body and they will do the multiple copies thing, regularly uploading their consciousnesses to synch their knowledge. They will be similar in character to the Greek gods/Lords of Kobol — part of the cycle of time. How did they make the jump to biomechanical technology? They’ve had 40 years, they’re smart, and they don’t have regulations, scientific oversight boards, and politics to interrupt improvement of their design…they could very well have just ‘evolved.’ They also might have had help from older machine races…or possibly their God (I’ve not decided if this is a manifest creature — maybe the “jealous god” from the War between the Lords of Kobol [possibly older Cylons?] and Man [possibly older humanoid Cylons?].)

The big difference: the Cylons can use cloning and invasive cybernetics to create copies of actual humans. These humans are still Cylon-human hybrids, and depending on the length of time they have to do the work, they can get very very close to recreating a person (theoretically, they could create a Cylon that is so perfect a copy, it would not know it was a Cylon, and they would be completely unable of their nature…perhaps spying for the enemy without ever having to actively work for them [uploads of sensory data only.)

Now the big change I’m planning — the Cylons will still have to attack through stealth. Despite their 40 years to rebuild and prepare, they are numerically inferior to the Colonial Fleet, and they will be acting in response to something that happens in the game; they act a bit ahead of their ability to win out over the Colonials without subterfuge. They will be using the CNP, as in the show, but the first strike is not nuclear, but using mundane technology against the Colonials (ala Robopocalyse.)

I’m positing a Colonial culture that is on the cusp of attempting to recreate artificial intelligence ( a concern to the Cylons), but at this time they only do high-end expert systems: cars that drive and park themselves, heavily networked data systems, household butlers as in Caprica, etc… There are people that don’t like this trend, and a few of the planets have outlawed machine labor (Sagittaron, Gemenon), others control it heavily (Canceron, Virgon, Arelon), and others don’t use it because their populations are low enough that mechanization hurts the work force (Aquaria.)

The Cylons will use backdoors and software updates to create mass malfunctions (again Robopocalse) putting the Colonies off balance and distracted when the Cylons jump in. The CNP will disable much of the fleet, but they’ll still have a fight on their hands. Use of nuclear weapons will be focused on command and control areas — places like Picon and Caprica will get hit hard, but other colonies not so much.

The goal is to give the players a chance to win against the Cylons, but it would be a hard fought win. The Cylons aren’t interested in saving Mankind (although I might change this if I decide their God is an actual being), but they do want the real estate in good condition for the biomechanical Cylons (the humanoids and other quasi-biological critters.)

If they have to run, they’ll be able to find out that this has happened before, and that Earth isn’t the only human Colony left…but neither are the Cylons the only mechanical race out there.

Our Battlestar Galactica campaign has been on hiatus while we power through a very amusing Hollow Earth Expedition game, but soon we’ll be rotating back to BSG. For one of the adventures I put together I start fleshing out the Colonies with loads of background tidbits — sort of narrative greebles (the SFX slang for the loads of stuff on models to give them a sense of scale.)

Our Sagittaron is the site of an ancient set of ruins outside the city of Parises (originally I was going to call it Petra.) The ruins are well known to the locals, but they aren’t talked about and have never had an archeological expedition explore them due to the religious proscriptions of the Sagittarons. In the mission, the characters learn the carbon dating suggest the site is thousands of years older than the Colonies’ settlement — are they wrong? Is this the birth place of Mankind? Or have humans colonized these worlds over and over again across time?

Tauron transportation authorities frequently “false flag” vessels, much like Liberia today — giving them “legitimate” letters of ownership, etc. Smugglers, terrorists — often their vessels fly the Tauron flag.

Virgon’s royal family still exists and are titular heads of the government, but are nothing more than figureheads. The aristocracy isn’t as powerful as they once were, save for the ones that have managed to maintain their fortunes.

Colonial shipping have specific areas — bullpens — which the various shipping companies use for their jumps between the stars in Colonial space. This is to prevent vessels from jumping on top of each other. These bullpens are chartered from the Colonial government (and before that were governed by the various Colonies’ orbital traffic control.) These bullpens are usually a few hours travel from the various worlds to prevent accidents. Colonial Fleet bullpens are usually closer to the worlds. The schedules of bullpen use are leased out to other vessels.

Life on a battlestar is primarily one of routine. Training drills, physical exercise, work details — all are scheduled in such a way that the Colonial soldier has something to do most of his or her day. Here are a few things that one can expect:

WATCH SYSTEM

All colonial vessels run on a watch system — six four-hour blocks of time. Most vessels will run a 4 hour on/4 hour off/4 hour on/ 8 hour off watch for their divisions — usually three (first, second third; or blue, grey, and green [the colors of the service]; or some other color designator.) This means all divisions rotate through the business day and night throughout their service.

The 4 hours “off” in the middle of the day are ordinarily used for personal matters — including meals, and/or administrative duties or requirements (like urinalysis for drug use, report writing, classwork, physical fitness training, etc.) The two “on” watches the personnel are at their scheduled posts.

WATCH NOTICE

At each watch there is a “watch notice” or “action notice” posted to inform the crew of changes in duty roster, any pertinent information that they need to know like uniform of the day, new directives or regulations, and the like. They are posted throughout the ship and often read over the intercom at the beginning of watches or sometimes simply the changes are read.

Speaking of…

INTERCOM

This frakking thing never shuts up — morning, noon, night — there’s an announcement: do not radiate equipment because of EVA on the hull, vessels being recovered, vessels being launched, pass the word for the [insert name or title], action notice changes, reveille…the intercom alert tone is always going off on a battlestar.

PHYSICAL FITNESS TRAINING

Enlisted crew train together by division and by compartment (for instance, 3rd division portside maintenance crew, 1st division sickbay crew, etc.) They are ordinarily called together in the middle watch of their shift (the “off” shift) for their PT at which time their officer in charge or NCO in charge will take attendance (the “report”), then lead them in exercise. Officers like pilots, etc. often train together separate from the enlisted, or individually if their PT scores are high enough. “Remedial” PT or “fat boy” PT is usually every day, while normal PT is every other day.

Ordinarily, the compartment will find a place large enough for the massed personnel to conduct PT — the flight line, a causeway that sees little traffic, or a cargo hold. Sometimes they will break down to squads or teams so that they can find more usable space. There are weight rooms and gyms on the vessel, but usually these are snagged up on the schedule by the pilots and senior officers and enlisted.

Crew test two times a year to see if they meet the criteria set by Colonial Fleet HQ: a certain number of pushups, sit ups, pull ups, and a 2 mile run (usually conducted on the flight line or on the longest straight corridor or accessway available.) Scoring is by age groups, getting easier as the crewman gets older. CMC requirements are higher than the normal fleet, as are pilot standards. Males and females are required to achieve the same minimum, but scoring is easier for females in the upper body categories beyond that — a point of contention for most of the males in the fleet.

CHOW/MEALS

Meals are available 24 hours a day at the mess halls. There are several throughout the vessel, so that the crew do not have to travel too far from their work stations. Serving the food throughout the day allows for larger batches to be made and cuts down on spoilage and prep time. There are general mess halls for anyone in the crew, and officers’ messes for the officers. There is also a “chiefs mess” that is for the senior enlisted only. Invitation to the chiefs mess is considered a great honor for the officers.

Crew eat as they can.

FITREP (FITNESS REPORT)

This is the twice yearly review of the crewman’s performance. It’s damned lucky if they get done more than once every year. Crew are rated on their physical fitness, their work performance, any commendations/reprimands, and other aspects like doing outside training to improve their readiness.

Bad FITREPs can get a crewmember bounced from service at their reenlistment. Often they will be honorably discharged, but “other than honorable” is also possible. Dishonorable is reserved for serious attitudinal problems or criminal behavior. Even honorable discharges can be barred from reenlistment if they are deemed unable to adapt to service life.

FRATERNIZATION

It’s against the regulations, but everyone knows it happens. Crewmembers will flirt, make friends, and have sexual relations with each other. Among the enlisted, so long as there is no perception of impropriety or favoritism, command will look the other way. In the case of romantic relations, the two are usually reassigned to different divisions or work gangs.

Fraternization between the enlisted and the officer corps is a serious offense. It creates an atmosphere in which good order and respect for the officer tends to break down. (One can hardly expect obedience from the partner in last night’s debauch!) Officers are the ones that bear the brunt of this breach of protocol and can be court martialed for it. Enlisted rarely receive more than a reprimand, as the fault is expected to lie wit the officer who is in a position of power.

Relations between officers is handled much the same way as with enlisted. If it does not present a breakdown in the chain of command, it is grudgingly overlooked.

Realizing the realities of service on a battlestar, Colonial Fleet strongly suggests the use of contraceptives for servicemembers, but only requires it in time of war.

TRAINING

This is a constant in the service — from launch and recovery drills, to fire fighting drills, to combat and gunnery simulations — battlestars are usually engaged in some level of training. FTL training is a bit rarer — most battlestar groups tend to stay in a particular region of the colonies, but will do jump operations a few times a float.

“FLOATS”

Most battlestars will stage operations or maneuvers, called floats, two to three times a year. These floats require train-ups for the train-up for the training for the float. Once on maneuvers, a battlestar group is ordinarily on patrol or doing major combat exercises for two to three months, depending on the size of the exercise. There is TRAINEX (Training Exercise) AEGIS every six months, in which on of the battlestar groups will be pitted against Picon OPFOR (Opposition Force) — a group that is considered the best-of-the-best, as they train near constantly. OPFOR is often the full force, or a slice, of battlestar group Atlantia, and the exercise area or “box” changes every few years and the scenario is usually the training battlestar group vs. OPFOR as Cylons. For a few years prior to the Fall of the Colonies, OPFOR often played the role of separatist groups or pirates, rather than Cylons, showing the changing focus of the government and fleet in those days prior to the attack. No one really expects to win, and it’s the rare ship or group that does…but it can happen.

Between floats, the battlestar group will head into orbit to maintain guard of a Colony world, or put into spacedock for repairs and refit. Leave is only given when a vessel is not on maneuvers, and often not during the train-ups for maneuvers.

EXPECT THE STUPID

No matter how well-trained and run a vessel is, the crewmember can expect to run into stupidity. When reporting aboard a new vessel, the crewmember will be expected to learn the history of the vessel, learn its individual rituals, holidays, and other miscellany. There will never be a quartermaster around when you need bedding. The armorer is unlikely to be found during his “off” watch (the same goes for the mail room guy!) You have a boat full of young kids who often will get into the most obvious bits of trouble — setting up a still, smuggling contraband aboard, getting into relationships they shouldn’t, getting into fights over the same (or nothing), and doing mischief.

The same goes for your equipment — it’s the best the cheapest bidder could provide. 10 bit fuses go out and leave whole frames of the ship dark, or trip an O2 sensor and lock you in a room for no reason. Munition hosts fail with spectacular results, and that damned phone cradle won’t hold the phone for some damned reason, no mater how many times the maintenance crews fix it. Should there be security cameras everywhere? Sure, but there’s not enough money or they couldn’t get enough of the things, or somebody forgot to rig the units during the ship’s construction. Sometimes, things just aren’t the way they should be.

You can complain about it — in fact, that’s another constant: bitching and tall tales telling — but who would listen?

EVERYBODY’S GOT A STORY

Life in the service is routine and boring most days, so people gab to make their days interesting. Sometimes its BS stories that never actually happened, but have come to be accepted as “truth”. Sometimes its gossip. Often it’s complaining when the chief and the lieutenant can’t hear. Most of your day is spent doing mundane tasks and bleating off with your mates.

I restarted my Battlestar: Galactica campaign a few weeks ago, now that the new gaming group has gelled. Right off the bat, I wanted to do something different than the last campaign, which was a “second fleet” scenario that was running alongside the at-that-time new series.

For that, I decided to follow the Caprica model and do some serious retconning on the setting: while it is still a few decades after the first Cylon War, and most of the trappings of the new show are still around, i started tinkering with the basic premise of the first few “seasons” — instead of jumping straight to the new sneak attack, as with the last campaign, I’m starting a few years prior (undefined for the players, but hinted at if they’re paying attention to the background material — the CNP is nearing initial rollout, Galactica is slatted to be turned into a museum.)

I am using a lot of the material from Caprica and Quantum Mechanix excellent Map of the Twelve Colony of Kobol for the setting — fleshing out the rest of the 12 Colonies, instead of sticking with just Caprica, Gemenon, and Tauron. Most of the characters are from the lesser colonies — Arelon, Scorpia, and Canceron.

As with last time, the characters are heavily crafted with background hooks: family and friends, favorite locales, homes, etc…all the stuff they could lose later.

New to the setting, but what could be inferred from the two shows: there are still robots a-plenty in the Colonies, but they are non-AI; artificial intelligence is banned, according to the miniseries, and I have special squads of Colonial Security Service personnel whose job is to stop illicit AI development and manufacture…but they have butler bots, sexbots (but heavily controlled — in my campaign, I’ve inferred the Cylon rebellion started with the sexbots and caretaker androids — the stuff they were trying to make as self-aware and responsive as possible), and the like. There are self-driving cars. There’s virtual reality gaming and augmented reality similar to the stuff in Caprica (or on your smartphone, for that matter.)

The Colonial Fleet has been steadily forgetting the lessons of the Cylon War and modernizing their ships with heavily firewalled networks for faster response and more precise control of the vessels. There’s a compartment of people whose jobs are computer security and the safeguards on the ships are much improved — the Cylons won’t just cut through their electronic defenses like butter…but they will, in theory, eventually win out. (Hence the need for the CNP back door.)

The Colonial government has been expanding quickly and taking it on itself to dictate to the various colonial worlds — think the European Union vis-a-vis its members. Some of the worlds are “deadbeats” (like Greece or Portugal), others are the financial engines of the colonies (these are Leonis, Caprica, and Tauron), and some are like Brussels or the District of Columbia — purely government sinks of support (Libran and Picon.) These worlds aren’t over their tribal identities, and they aren’t working together as well as the federal state in Caprica City would like. They smuggle, they play fast and loose on spending and taxation, and there’s a sense in the younger Colonials that the Cylons are gone, no longer a threat…a position the government has been fostering for political reasons for years. The fleet is always on the edge of downsizing.

The beginning episodes are dealing with the Expeditionary Task Force — a group of detached duty battlestars and militarized civilian exploration vessels that are charting the surrounding star systems, setting up mining and science stations, and conducting deep-range early-warning missions to watch the Armistice Line (and occasionally breech it.) They know the Cylons are doing the same, but neither side has caught the other outright. There are also pirate activities that muddy the waters, so that Cylon presence hasn’t been proven. There have been outposts that have gone missing — crew, cargo, ships…pirates? Cylons?

One of the things we’ll see is that people and their personal effects — diaries, media libraries, etc. go missing — but not the tylium they’re mining, not the ships and buildings. Why would pirates steal people and not the valuables? Why would Cylons kidnap people that are relatively low on intelligence value? The point is to play up a much more mysterious Cold War scenario, coupled with the sorts of internal political intrigue that make governments too slow to respond to threats — even obvious ones.

Added to this, Colonial archeological teams have been finding evidence that there was an older, advanced civilization predating the Colonies foundings by tens of thousands of years…was it the Lords of Kobol? Are their history and scriptures wrong? This is causing backlash from the religious community and portions of the political apparatus — could Colonial society have existed before Colonization? Aliens? What’s going on..? (All of this has happened before and all will happen again…maybe the gods play out this scenario over and over through time?)

The goal: eventually the characters will discover the Cylons are either training people to act as agent provocateurs or are possibly recreating them in android form…but using biological means to disguise them. There will be more than the 12 models, but they are usually not perfect copies, mentally; the 12 are the leaders and will vaguely resemble the Lords of Kobol (the whole historical cycle thing again) in their personalities, but will be monotheists. No “Final Five” stuff.

After managing to find a pretty good hi-rez scan of the Quantum Mechanix map of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, I decided to take another pass at my unofficial guide to the twelve worlds for the BSG role playing game. Some of the material is still specific to my campaign universe, but it’s as close to the material that’s out there as I could get.