We might get Gar to write about the GUMSHOE and Fear Itself implications of the great Netflix series "Stranger Things" soon. Before that happens I’d like to sneak in to highlight one particular moment. Without delving too far into spoilers for those who have yet to binge, a point comes where rumpled police chief Jim […]
Category Archives: Ashen Stars
A column about Roleplaying by Robin D. Laws At the height of the Combine’s prosperity prior to the Mohilar War, recreational drugs had been rendered safe by technology. All manner of pleasurable sensations could be delivered as viral treatments encoded with anti-addictive measures. Physical wear and tear on the body caused by their side effects […]
An Ashen Stars scenario hook Interstellar commodities magnate Agnes Moro wakes up in an unfamiliar, disabled ship floating in space near the planet Bifrost. Its primary holo screen plays an audio-only recording on loop. The electronically distorted voice says: “Search your recollections and you will find that you have none. We have confiscated your memories. […]
Once again we look at a common small ship of the Bleed and see what your Ashen Stars characters can typically deduce about the people who drive it. Whenever your console pings the presence of an approaching small vessel, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s going to be a hauler. Ninety-eight of those times, […]
The Accretion Disk supplement for Ashen Stars (available from Pelgrane’s shiny new webstore) contains detailed writeups for six common Laser ship designs – the Runner, Hammer, Rampart, Speeder, Porcupine and Hauler. It’s also got deck plans for, er, seven ship designs. Some meson shrapnel interference unaccountably scrambled communications, so the Mandible got a set of deck […]
In space, the darkest day of the year is every day. Nonetheless, five of the Combine’s seven major species evolved naturally on home planets before reaching for the stars, and to various degrees remember rituals and holidays that marked the turning point between encroaching and receding night. Before the war, human secularism confined Christmas celebrations […]
Your freelance law enforcement crew may have formed and then found a ship with which to ply the justice trade out in the Bleed. Or perhaps you joined an existing laser gang that already had a ship. Whether or not you had a say in the class of ship you crew on, it has an […]
A nufaith For Ashen Stars After the disaster of the Mohilar War, new religious movements swept the ravaged region of galactic civilization called the Bleed. Among these so-called nufaiths is a belief system dependent on the personal detachment inherent in long-distance electronic communications. Onandeteria, named after its balla founder, Onandeter, teaches that great spiritual force […]
An Ashen Stars scenario premise Before the Mohilar War, many of the Bleed’s planets were settled by proponents of the Synthculture movement. They created worlds to replicate past periods of human and alien history, often filtered through a pop culture lens. The self-described film noir world of Lost Angeles (spelling intentional) functioned surprisingly well until the […]
Continuing Ken’s theme of looting 13th Age for GUMSHOE twists, let’s talk about monsters. In 13th Age, monsters have a sort of rudimentary AI – instead of the GM deciding to use their special abilities in advance, they’re triggered by the result of the attack roll. So, for example, if a ghoul gets a natural […]