Manufactured Mutants - Adding in The 2d6 Details into Hostile's Colony Earth Using Other 2d6 Resources

 Mutation in Cepheus Engine & Hostile has been on my mind lately because of rereading Dragon magazine issue 109 May 1986 which contains in the Ares section  'The Double Helix Connection  Mutants In Traveller Gaming  " By Michael Brown. We've got artificial mutant breeds that have been produced on Earth to help with the ecological collapse. These are self sustaining breeds of mankind. And yes, we're revisiting these themes from here on the blog.

Earth's mega corporations are primed to create artificial mutant strains, copyright & trademark such breeds, and then bring these breeds to term. These are completely different then the proles that are produced for extra solar colonies. 
These strains are produced to work in, clean up, and live in the Hellish conditions of post ecological collapse America and Europe. They are mutations designed to withstand the harshest enviroments that Earth has to offer. 
Why? Why would megacorporations produce such entities?! Simple really and that is that they get to over the long term see the experimentation of such mutants live in thier own laboratories of toxic enviroments. 
Imagine if you will that over the long haul these breeds of mutated mankind allow the mega corporations to set up long haul colonies. These colonies allow the mega corporations to literally own thier own workers right down to the skin on thier backs. Dragon magazine issue 109 May 1986 which contains in the Ares section  'The Double Helix Connection  Mutants In Traveller Gaming  " By Michael Brown has the perfect collection of guidelines and rules for introducing such mutated humanity to Hostile's Earth. 

Copyrighted mutated humanity could be excellent for long term colony worlds for the megacorporations. The ground work for this is being laided on by the megacorporations. These allow the corporations to claim whole worlds. And given the propensity for the worlds of Hostile to be incredibly varied. 
Designing mutations and colony compatibility is a science unto itself. But the crapshoot comes with the genetic defects that come with tempering with genes. 

Some of these genes could be crippling to the mutant strain. However because we're talking about generational mutaions. When we're dealing with generational gene mutation designed to deal with other worldly conditions. Then we're talking about long term designs that can play across generations. And dealing with high speed computer mathmatical models of these species of humanity. What about animal kind?! Afterday has a great 2d6 blend into itself to help to blow out some of Hostile Earth's colonial details. 

Why because of the fact that Afterday represents the colonies that were first put into space during the events of the early part of the Second Recession. 
And this goes right along with Hostile's timeline. Reading through it reveals levels of danger and reckless corporate ventures of exploration. Afterday represents those ventures in spades as failed colonies and even Earthside ecological collapse. 
The events surrounding such collapse extend to technology and even artifacts. Artifacts that link to a higher level of technology that is invaluable to the corporations. 

Adding in The 2d6 Details into Hostile's Colony Earth Using Other 2d6 Resources

 When it comes to Cepheus Engine and we're going Earth side it's important to remember if and when you as a DM have established a previous adventure hook. And in this case it's the fact that Earth has within our games a precident for Mutant stains of artifically created humans. This goes back to June of this past year when the PC's visited several failed colonies established back in the Second Recession. For this we used Gamma World 2nd edition and several Michael Brown's Cepheus Engine. As well as classic Traveller Supplements  because Hostile Earth isn't a friendly place. 
Now let's go back to Dragon magazine issue 109 May 1986 which contains in the Ares section  'The Double Helix Connection  Mutants In Traveller Gaming  " By Michael Brown. We've got artificial mutant breeds that have been produced on Earth to help with the ecological collapse. These are self sustaining breeds of mankind. 

The secomd part of this is Michael Brown's Afterday which has the tools that we'll need for some of the abandoned cities of Earth. This includes random encounters, adventure hooks, and more. 
Afterday has some really useful tools within it's kit to really bring out the details of mutated Earth and it's totally nasty environs. 
These cities and thier locations especially around areas with malfunctioning Hyperspacial drives are going to completely alien and imicial to human life. The possible creatures in those ares could well be horrors that mankind hasn't encountered before. The fact is that Colony Earth offers both Cyberpunk and post apoclapytic play in one package. 

Afterday has a great 2d6 blend into itself to help to blow out some of Hostile Earth's details. 

 In stark contrast is the glitz and glamour of most of the major corporate run cities and thier own shadow cities. And here's where New World: 2d6 Adventures in a Cyberpunk America come into play. Now I've heard some folks complain that the timeline in New World is too 'woke' and that's easy enough to change. The rules and corporations are excellent for adding yet another layer to your game campaign especially on Earth. 

New World is especially useful for adding another layer to a DM using Zaibatsu rpg as a sub set of rules to expand thier Earth game campaign. The equipment, rules, options etc. all help and it also fits very nicely into the Clement Sector as well. 

Corporate Wars, Hit Squads, and Corporate Cover Ups - Kosmo 68 & Hostile Rpg Crossover Game Campaign Commentary- Session Report Six

 Tonight's game picked right up from here on the blog.Back on Earth our group of street samurai go into full assault and started quietly doing corporate assassinations. They began to get justice against the underbosses who had orderred thier asssasinations. 

The party in tonight's game recovered many of thier files. The Tanaka corporation's data centers were raided by our 'heroes' & they took out the servers. 
Several lightning raids were made on the various safehouses throughout downtown Toyko. And at least two of our PC's were taken out by return gunfire. No matter the players had two other operatives waiting in the wings. 
And then the hammer came down as a corporate  Chinese hit squad came in. There was some serious fire power brought to bare as a mini cannon carved up one of the party's safe houses. 
What's at stake?! The plans for a brand new energy weapon that could unlock lost technologies from before the 1st Recession. And the rumors are that the party is now on the radar of at least four major corporations. And the Soviet technologies & failed colony locations are at the heart of it. This all gets traced back to Allard Electronics funneling food back to these 'failed colonies' being fostered by the Soviets. Allard Electronics is stepping into the big boys pond. Why?! Because of the facts about Xoldin & other failed colonies should remain buried by the mega corporations.

On the data that the party has intercepted is information about Steele Defiance and it's efforts. Information that the Soviet high command & it's corporate allies wants to remain hidden. 
The player's PC's have already been reported dead by the corporate media outlets and that serious charges were pending against them according to these same outlets. 
Can the players PC's hope to survive into the next several weeks?! Next time the Zhuri and the Allard Electronics sponsored explorers! 

The players PC 's have made contact with Kusma (Kusya) Konstantika Zorin: Leader of Steel Defiance

Hi Tech Ninja & Assassination Raids - Kosmo 68 & Hostile Rpg Crossover Game Campaign Commentary- Session Report Two

 Let's pick up where we left off here. So we've been toying with the idea that back on Earth is the fact that the data from ten years ago is finally reaching Earth from our other Hostile party of 'adventurers'. The data from Allard Electronics  is causing all kinds of issues for our gang of criminals. Kaizu our blind street samuari masseuse/hitman did a number on the Takama gang in a daring daylight one man raid. The dice were with him today. He managed to recover some of the terraforming technology data that the Soviets had shared with Allard. A rival corporation having this data could be catastrophic to Allard & it's partners. 

Meanwhile the rest of the gang got hit by hi technological ninja. And they just barely managed to survive by escaping thier safehouse. And then they managed to survive by blowing it up to cover thier trail frying all of the ninja inside. 

They gang made contact with thier bratva contact & made in roads to switch to thier new safehouse. Here the PC re equipped for that night's raid

 The terraforming technology comes straight from
the https://kosmos68com.wordpress.com/ here. 

The street war went on as our 'heroes' went on a full blown hit raid against the tanaka corporation who had ordered the hit.Thier hacker shut down power for one block and then the team went to work! We lost two of our warriors on the raid as they got taken down by tasers & shot gun blasts. The rest of the teams fared much better and burnt the corpes of thier comrades so they couldn't be traced back to Allard Electronics. 

Nexttime we pick up out in the Soviet sector with Michael Brown's Afterday filling in for our failed colony that we'll be visting in the Hostile leg of the game coming. up. 

Hit Squads & Failed Colonies, - Kosmo 68 & Hostile Rpg Crossover Game Campaign Commentary

 This blog entry is going to tie in with this blog entry here.  The streets of Japan are awash with blood as new corporate data has been illegally been 'liberated' from the Soviets. And thier not happy at all. Can your street warriors smuggle it too the right corporate parties?! 

 

What if the hotest commotidy back on Earth of Hostile is the fact that the Soviets are battling for thier colonies continued existence. What if the Soviets classifed information on the Zhuk lifeforms hit the street. The corporations would be climbing over themselves trying to get that information & thier street hustler & criminal parties would be climbing over themselves to get that information. And this was the basis for a meeting tonight to discuss with my fellow DM's a newer Zaibatsu Rpg mini campaign. 

The idea is that Allard Electronics transmissions have been intercepted by certain mega corporate information brokering houses.The street hustlers got a hold of this info. And now Soviet street samurai & assassins are looking to kill the information quite literally. 

The kosmos68com.wordpress.com/ goes deeply into the state security & spies in this section. 

Is this situation actually far more explosive then the corportations far more explosive then thier letting on?! 

Could the entire Outworld sector be in actual danger as the interviews with General Turov recently  within Soldiers & Sins magazine proports. 

As street warriors are dropping like flies. The streets of Toyko are awash with blood. And this ties in with the Soviets providing the American corporations intel on the menace coming thier way. The real issue is the fact that that the A.I. horrors that the corporations have been afraid of for decades has been encountered by the Soviets. The American corporate entities are afraid of the PR nightmare that could happen if the failed colonial history & abandonament. These failed colony worlds have been modeled   Michael Brown's Afterday & Stellagama Publishing's Cepheus Atom.

This plays into the latter issues that we see Earth sector & Clement sector campaigns. 

The Rise of A.I., & Failed Colonies, - Kosmo 68 & Hostile Rpg Crossover Game Campaign Commentary

 Bare with me here because we pick up from here on the blog. Over the last couple of days there's been something that's been bugging me and that's the Soviet robots with Kosmos '68. Over on the https://kosmos68com.wordpress.com/ site there's a great article about robots & cybernetic lifeforms in the USSP here.  My question becomes why would the USSP be using clunky advanced robots when the US corporations are running slick android bordering on full blown cybernetic human beings or life forms?! And yes, I know its a conceit of the Soviety style of design & Science Fiction genre's focus esspecially of the Kosmos '68 cold war setting. And it got me thinking about the rise of A.I.. And  how it's possible that in the one hundred & twenty five years between Orbit 2100 & Hostile something rather nasty happened. 

Maybe it's no accident that the Soviets don't use Androids and thier ilk. And perhaps the Soviets are so gun shy about A.I. that it drove them to start investigating alternatives such as psionics. And the fact is that the Americans & the rest of the world have sorta learned. And the answer to this comes from Japan within the Hostile Setting book;"With controlled immigration from within the Asia-Pacifi c region, and renewed focus on automation, robotics and artifi cial intelligence technologies to increase productivity, Japan was looking boldly into the future. As China entered its time of crisis and First Recession began to bite, Japan was able to show leadership in the region and formed the Asia Pacifi c Partnership in an attempt to weather the storm. China had lost its lead in the region – Japan once again dominated the Far Eastern area." Between this time & the Second Recession A.I. flourished but it was short lived because of the Oil Crisis of the Second Recession; "Oil was desperately needed, not for fuel, since most vehicles ran from hydrogen fuel cells and power-stations were fusion-based and required helium-3. Petroleum was needed by the plastics and the chemicals industries. Bioplastic was in use, but its reliance on vegetable matter grown in fi elds that could otherwise be used to feed starving millions, meant that oil, tried and tested over centuries and understood by all chemical engineers and plant designers, remained the primary choice. Now oil reserves on distant moons and on harsh planets would have to provide a source for that oil. The Oil Crisis of 2200 initiated a Second Recession lasting for 15 years. Some colonies and outposts were temporarily abandoned due to cost-saving exercises." All of this history can be found on page 15-16 of the Hostile Setting book. This peroid is when A.I.'s life forms and minions step in. And for a bit it looked grim but then the rise of A.I. was cut short by the lack of raw materials. Colonies were literally abandoned on certain back water worlds. And this got me thinking about Hostile's shift from the cybernetic into the bio technological. These 'abandoned' colonies had me thinking about Michael Brown's Afterday & Stellagama Publishing's Cepheus Atom.

And yes, Stellagama Publishing's Cepheus Atom is based on Cepheus Quantum rpg system. It's really not that hard too cross them over. That being said it would stand to reason that the Soviets  & the Americans would be very gun shy of anything smacking too much of the fully sentient A.I. intelligence. 
Once the A.I. genie was out of the bottle the rapid rise in colony disasters only came to a halt with the Earth & her colonies being abandoned. There might still be colonies out there where exotic A.I. indused cybernetic life forms are the rule not the exception. 

And this goes back into something that our group discussed tonight. Have all of this history simply be swept under the rug by Earth's corporations & the USSP?! In a short answer yes. Long answer is that there may be still functional colonies still struggling out in the void. 

And there may be cybernetic lifeforms that have adapted & become another menace in the darkness to plague PC's. Now that  Transdyne Cybersystems and Haruna Biolabs have cornered the market within Synthetics. Events are moving to expose some of the hidden blunders made during the days of the Second Recession. And with that exposure comes the increasing horrors that lurk in the darkness.

On the Soviet side the  Special Purpose Fleet (SPF) & the MiningRegulatory Agency Base organization on the American corporate side are responsible for the exploration of the sectors. The leadership of these organizations know that the cybernetic life forms are still out in the Black. What they don't know is where they are. 

This is where Stellagama Publishing's Cepheus Atom comes in very handy. There's already a number of warbots & other cybernetic lifeforms that can give even the hardest marines pause. The Rise of A.I. events leads up to the real cybernetic horrors  & that's next generation synethics that are living out in the void. We encountered these horrors within our own Tanhauser gate mini campaign. We would later on encounter these horrors within the Earth sector & Clement sector campaigns. 

'Build & Go' - Alternative Timelines & 2d6 Time Travel Campaign Session Report Update.

 The PC's made their way across the ruined landscape. No sun rose, nor did the sound of a single person reach their ears, and all around them was ruin. Yet their target trugged on. This blog post is going to pick up from here. 
So its been a rather busy day & I got together with one of my players & long time friends today. And we started talking about his old Cepheus Engine rpg PC. And we spoke at length about his PC poking around the time quake. And the other party following his historian/historical anthropologist through time. The other party got lost in the mix within the local time space continuum's break down. 

The party was separated & ended up in two different time periods on the same Earth's line. But it took days for one time line to catch up with the other. So while the player's PC's were occupying the same space they were not in the same time. The party's psychics were reading that all of the PC's were in the same location but not the same time line. 

The party finally got the idea that they had to leave as the time line deteroirated around them. As they left Earth they found a single hyperspace bouy pointing towards Io. 
Around Io they found a Trade Empire-class Commercial Transport  a massive 4500 tonne superfreighter in low orbit. As if the starship had been there for years it was coated with a massive waft of sulfur and other atmosphere dust coating its outer hull. 
The party's sensors could not detect the contents of the Trade Empire ship! The crew of PC's  was forced to go aboard. And once aboard to find out that there were the prefabbed buildings,food,  & supplies for building several colonies on board! 

And there was also a time drive in place aboard this ship. The PC's activated the drive and where whisked into the middle of a huge fire fight around Mars! And the ships were targeted by several 2nd men starships! They immediately left the area & stablized the starship! But now the 2nd men are aware of the party! They left the Trade Empire in a stable orbit and everything on board intact. The party copied the ship's computer drives and one of the places that the nav computer mentioned was 

Turquoise Valley. 

Drinking some whiskey in the saloon in New Liberty is a historian whose recording some of the local legends. We'll pick it up next game coming up! 

The Future Martian War of Ten Million Years & Lovecraftian Extinction Events In Alternative Timelines & 2d6 Time Travel Campaigns

 “But Ransom, as time wore on, became aware of another and more spiritual cause for his progressive lightening and exultation of heart. A nightmare, long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off him. He had read of 'Space': at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not known how much it affected him till now-now that the very name 'Space' seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it 'dead'; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean all the worlds and all their life had come? He had thought it barren: he now saw that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with so many eyes-and here, with how many more! No: Space was the wrong name.”

― C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet"

Let's pick this up right from here on the blog.  If Mars is the destiny of mankind then in several million years are we going to be the Martians or have we already been so according to those famous ancient astronaut theorists!? The struggle to colonize Mars might be more then we realize. Now let's backtrack here for a moment. If the Yithians have gone uptime then it stands to reason that we're looking at epochs of time for other human species to evolve. And this is where the   real nasties are  so to speak. Let's flash forward ten million years after Zozer Games Outpost Mars. 

Let's say that in ten million years from now a terraformed Mars is home to a race of Martians that were once mankind. And by this same token a highly evolved race of humanity takes umbridge with these Martians & covet Mars as their own?! Such is a very small part of the plot of the Science Fiction classic  W. Olaf Stapleton's 'Last & First Men' 1930.  W.Olaf Stapleton's 'Last & First Men' isn't in the public domain at all. But it's one of those Appendix Science Fiction classics. 

According to the 'Last & First Men' wiki entry; "Stapledon's conception of history follows a repetitive cycle with many varied civilisations rising from and descending back into savagery over millions of years, as the later civilisations rise to far greater heights than the first. The book anticipates the science of genetic engineering, and is an early example of the fictional supermind; a consciousness composed of many telepathically linked individuals."

The Second Men of 'Last & First Men' evolved out of the remains of mankind; "

Second Men. (Chapters 7– 9) The Second Men came into existence ten million years after the fall of the First Men. "Their heads, indeed, were large even for their bodies, and their necks massive. Their hands were huge, but finely moulded...their legs were stouter...their feet had lost their separate toes...blonde hirsute appearance...Their eyes were large, and often jade green, their features firm as carved granite, yet mobile and lucent. ...not till they were fifty did they reach maturity. At about 190 their powers began to fail..." Unlike our species, egotism is virtually unknown to them. At the acme of their highly advanced civilization, just as they are about to create a superior human species by genetic engineering, a protracted war with the Martians finally ends with the Martians extinct and the Second Men gone into eclipse." This genocide creates the perfect cover for the flying polyps to set off a series of extinction events against both the second men & the Martians. What impact does this have for an Empire of Time campaign?!  Quite a bit actually. The Empire of Time rpg PC's have the option to interfere in the Martian genocide. 

If you get into variations & alternative time lines of the events of the Martian genocide then the PC's might find themselves face to face with a very nasty technologal level 9-11 civiliazation in the form of the second men! 
And this brings up the fact that  British writer and lay theologian C.S. Lewis not only objected to W. Olaf Stapleton's 'Last & First Men' 1930.

C.S.Lewis objected strongly to ' Last & First Men' with the following coming out; "C. S. Lewis in his own preface to That Hideous Strength, notes: "I believe that one of the central ideas of this tale came into my head from conversations I had with a scientific colleague, some time before I met a rather similar suggestion in the works of Mr. Olaf Stapledon. If I am mistaken in this, Mr. Stapledon is so rich in invention that he can afford to lend, and I admire his invention (though not his philosophy) so much that I should feel no shame to borrow".

The reference to objecting to Stapledon's philosophy was no accident. In particular, the Christian Lewis objected to Stapledon's idea, as expressed in the present book, that mankind could escape from an outworn planet and establish itself on another one; this Lewis regarded as no less than a Satanic idea – especially, but not only, because it involved genocide of the original inhabitants of the target planet. Professor Weston, the chief villain of Lewis's Space Trilogy, is an outspoken proponent of this idea, and in Out of the Silent Planet, Lewis opposes to it the depiction of the virtuous and stoic Martians/Malacandrians who choose to die with their dying planet, even though they possessed the technology to cross space and colonise Earth."

So the last human descendants die out or do they?! In deep time we've got many alternatives to this except for the fixed point of the flying polyps awakening. Adding in  the virtuous and stoic Martians/Malacandrians to a time travelling crew in Empire of Time is an option. Mars may or may not be able to be saved but it can add a twist or two.
 Could far future corporations actually be the ones developing the 2nd men sealing our own fate?! The 2nd men could be far more important then they seem & it could be them who actually awaken the flying polyps! 
The tangling of timelines could kick off a time quake that destroys the barriers between history & dimensions kicking off an apocalypse that leads to a post apocalypse wasteland kicking off the events of Afterday rpg. 

This might be the far future of Shadowfall as time breaks down as history unravels. There is far more to this then at first it seems. We'll get into this next time. 

The Horror In Time - Timelines & Alternative 2d6 Time Travel Cepheus Engine rpg Campaign Action

 ".the basis of the fear was a horrible elder race of half-polypous, utterly alien entities which had come through space from immeasurably distant universes and had dominated the earth and three other solar planets about 600 million years ago. „
 ~ HPL , The Shadow Out Of Time

This blog post is going to pick right up from here. We know that the flying polyps caused the mass extinction of a huge number of species at various early stages in  time on Earth. This is  according to HP Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time. The flying polyps those Lovecraftian horrors finished off anything that crossed their paths in past epochs. According to the H.P. Lovecraft wiki; "Around 70 million years ago (during the Cretaceous era), the Polyps rose from their subterranean haunts to exact revenge by exterminating the Yithians in one fell swoop." They lost because the Yithian's minds had alreay jumped ahead in time according to the novella. 
But this leaves quite a few more  questions then answers. Dire questions of mass extinction events going back to the formation of the Earth. Everyone thinks that Cthulhu & it's ilk are the worst. But the flying polyps may be the real home grown alien  horrors that lurk on the fringes of Earth's solar system. 
In the 2d6 time travel rpg Empire of Time there are a number of alien life forms from the very early stages of Earth. These races know fear through the very thought of the polyp monsters lurking just below Earth's surface. 

Why have the slave trading time traveling empire woven their agents throughout history into every organization, guild, club, etc. they can?! Simply to empire build across the time & space contiuum? No, that's wasteful or have they done it out of sheer desparation?! They know of a few fixed points in time where the polyps have done their dirty work but not all. The Yithians may have kept exacting records but they didn't leave backdoors so that the polyps could find them. Our slave traders may have found a few answers & their not sharing with the rest of the time travelers. But the Yithians are the masters of time travel & deep time, their not the nicest of the alien races that Lovecraft created. And even their scared of the flying polyps. The Yithians abandoned thier own timeline to the polyps after holding them at bay for millions of years. 
Imagine that time travel drives are invented & this event triggers the reawakening of the flying polyps. Why?! Because of the fact that the Yithians machinations of time travel may have attracted the flying polyps in the first place. And things went from bad to worse. So do the PC's stand any chance against these horrors?! In the short term yes & in the long term no. They can destroy the polyps with electrical weaponry ala Yithians. We're talking about an alien species that can sleep for millions of years, whose numbers are unknown, and whose agenda we don't really even understand. 
The fact is that if the flying polyps have colonies & cities below the sands of Mars. A time traveling mission maybe to save the time colonists on Mars before the polyps wake up! Outpost Mars may become more then a casual rpg template. The real horror begins to awaken.

Lovecraftian Horrors In Timelines & Alternative 2d6 Time Travel Cepheus Engine rpg Campaign Action

 This is going to pick right up here from the last blog entry as this campaign comes together.  Could the Earth have ended as time travel basically makes a mockery of physics if it goes wrong!? The answer is a resounding yes! A time apcocalyse brings to mind Michael Brown's Afterday and Cepheus Atom . Trying to escape such a reality & timeline could be the focus for an Empire of Time game unto itself. 


For most of the day I've been gone to a local car repair shop & thinking about the implications of 'Deep Time' for an upcoming Empire of Time campaign. The Earth at the beginning of its formation is going to be a place of very valuable commodities geologically speak. Ancient Earth is also going to be an incredibly alien place vastly different from anything we're used to. 

Perhaps the barbarians are not the ones that we're used to?! We know that in Empire of Time there are several species of alien on Earth even up to the time of the first life forms on Earth. But were there other alien species  that the player's PC's could encounter say around 750 million years ago?
"...the basis of the fear was a horrible elder race of half-polypous, utterly alien entities which had come through space from immeasurably distant universes and had dominated the earth and three other solar planets about 600 million years ago." HP Lovecraft 'The Shadow Out of Time' 
The Flying Polyps are some the most dangerous & underrated alien horrors that most dungeon masters wouldn't think to use out of context. The players stumbling upon the Flying Polyps black bisalt cities would be in incredible danger. Shadow Fall from Baggage Books has a really solid set of Flying Polyps stats; "Flying Polyp 100kg Killer (Carnivore), Underground, Fly, A78672, #App: 1-3 Athletics-1. Ranged Weapons (Natural)-2, Recon-0, Survival-1. Gravity 1D6, Hide-6 and see below; Speed: 6m A polyp’s gravitic attack has two effects: it pins a target in place unless it makes a Difficult STR role (Instantaneous and Repeatable) and it creates a strong wind of energy-deficient (i.e., freezing) air that causes 1D6 cold damage. Those killed by a flying polyp will freeze to death. Attacking a polyp is difficult, as their non-material nature makes them essentially immune to physical violence: any such attack must kill it in one combat round, otherwise it heals completely by the start of the next round. Energy attacks such as bombs, flamethrowers, and actual energy projectors supplied by Elder Ones or Mi-Go cause damage in the usual manner: cumulative as more successful attacks are made."

Given the nature of Deep Time is it any wonder that the alien & semi material nature of the Flying Polyps makes them a real hazard where dealing with traveling the eras around 750 million years ago. There are schools of thought in the Lovecraft fandom that think the Flying Polyps may have extreminated a number of interstellar species. There are those believe the Polyps were in point of fact seeking to settle colonies on Mars, Neptune, & Venus. To put this in perspective those colonies if they are still there could be one of the greatest dangers that the player's PC's might run into exploring the 'Deep Time' around those worlds. 

Imagine a Deep Time  mission to Mars to stop mankind from stumbling upon a sealed up well of the Flying Polyps?! We know that the Great Race of Yith's consciousness  left the Earth's 750 million year old  timeline to jump far into distant future. But the Polyps were so dangerous that they left them behind and this is a perfectly dangerous opportunity for the PC's to come across them! Because of the Empire of Time's Deep Time rules on time travel paradox & complications there's opportunity to deal a harsh blow to these Lovecraft invasive alien species. But is there really anything the PC's could do?! 

Could the PC's stumble upon an Earth timeline where physics is breaking down because of the Flying Polyps colonizing Earth as they were always meant to. These horrors have been released from their slumber by the chronal particles of time travel drives themselves?! 

Review & Commentary On Afterday: 2D6 Adventure After the Apocalypse From Michael Brown For The Cepheus Engine & 2d6 Old School Science Fiction Rpg Campaigns

 Everyone who goes to the Southwestern United States loves ghost towns & the remains of mines from the centuries of the Old West. The tourist industry thrives on them out there and by default players love 2d6 post apocalpyse adventuring & playing. And when wants to visit a failed colony world in the Clement Sector?! There are a number of 2d6 options on the table for the Cepheus Engine. But Michael Brown's Afterday: 2D6 Adventure After the Apocalypse isn't usually on the lips of players & DM's.

 And this is something that I'm counting on. You see  Afterday: 2D6 Adventure After the Apocalypse is only 26 pages long & hits that 2d6 sweet spot for post apoclapytic game play. Why because it hits that sweet spot with more 2d6 skill, career, & more for post apocalyptic adventuring. And it does this by creating variations on existing Cepheus Engine careers & skill paths. But where  Afterday: 2D6 Adventure After the Apocalypse excels is the fact that it builts on the existing rules by giving more options at the table top rpg level. Is  Afterday: 2D6 Adventure After the Apocalypse  able to stand on its own?! Yes! But where it shines is when its paired with other existing Cepheus Engine products and this comes across especially with the Cepheus Engine rpg rules. Because stumbling upon a post apocalyptic world or failed colony is always both a puzzle & a hazard.

 Afterday: 2D6 Adventure After the Apocalypse isn't Gamma World, if your looking for that I suggest another set of 2d6 Cepheus Engine rpg rules in the form of Stella Gemma's Cepheus Atom. Then you're going to get a far more gonzo set of parameters for your 2d6 campaign settings. This is a greatr pairing but if we slide to the right a bit more with  Afterday: 2D6 Adventure After the Apocalypse & say Barbaric! then things begin to warp & become even weirder ala Thundarr The Barbarian. 

The failed colony has slid down the laddar of barbarianism based on old half remembered video games, legends of fantasty role playing games and more. The colonists have evolved into the roles of video game classes. 
If we go down the rabbit hole of the Clement Sector then the failed  colonists could take the pace of the American Indians ala something out of Firefly for a Space Western setting. The failed colony world describes some of those who have remained behind to transcend into the orbital remains of the space stations and fueling stations in orbit around the planet. And this really gets into the flexibility of  Afterday: 2D6 Adventure After the Apocalypse. The rules are crisp, easy to use, and plug into the very heart of some of the ideals of 2d6 Science Fiction rpg's.  Afterday: 2D6 Adventure After the Apocalypse is a classy, solidly done, and easy to use set of rules. 

Review & Commentary On Michael Brown's New World: 2D6 Adventure in a Cyberpunk America For Cepheus Engine rpg or Your Old School 2d6 Science Fiction rpgs

 Oh, beautiful for spacious skies

Skies that are colored gray, not like that of a dead channel, but from rain trying in vain to wash away the grime and evil of the streets below.

For amber waves of grain

Grain used to make “food” to feed America’s 430+ million people; and of course, the fatcats still get the first — and sometimes the only — mouthfuls.

"For purple mountains’ majesties

That the average person will never get to see, because they’re too busy with their noses to the grindstone, pleasing their corporate masters. If the skies were even clear enough, that is.

Above the fruited plain

At least those plains that haven’t been devastated by the worsening weather events brought on by climate change.

America, America

No longer exists in a recognizable form, ever since becoming a mere fascist shell of itself under the boot heel of an ascendant China."

"God shed his grace on thee

The gods now live above the masses in their mighty towers of polycarbon and glass, imposing their will through tyrannical (and compliant) politicians and legions of armored federal agents.

And crown thy good with brotherhood

There’s very little good in the world anymore and “brotherhood” is a joke. There is only destroy or be destroyed, succeed or fail...and the system is rigged to make you fail.

From sea to shining sea

Which (also thanks to climate change) comes a little closer every year, flooding once-habitable land"

"New World is a cyberpunk campaign framework based on the Traveller SRD (which is itself based on The Original Science Fiction Roleplaying Game published in the 1970s) and the Cepheus Engine SRD. Set in the middle of the 21st century in an America rendered almost unrecognizable by past events, the campaign features many of the tropes commonly expected in a cyberpunk world, along with some developed expecially for New World:

• A timeline based on and extrapolated from real-life events
• A familiar lifepath character generation system
• A generous selection of cybernetic modifications, mundane equipment, and vehicles
• Simplified rules for computer use and cyber-combat
• A discussion of mid-21st century American life and culture, including a glossary of slang terms
• A look at the changes wrought on America and the rest of the world
• A system for mapping sections of the “Net (aka cyberspace)
• A system for determining spontaneous radicalization, one of the worst scourges of the future age
• And much, much more

It’s a new world, just around the corner. Welcome to the future, daoren…hope you survive it!" 

Someone once told me that all good cyberpunk rpg's are a political statement. And this is true but not in the way that you might think! Michael Brown's New World: 2D6 Adventure in a Cyberpunk America does what some games take pages & pages to do in sixty eight pages of Cepheus Engine rpg goodness. And it does it by hitting all of the usual  Cepheus Engine & Traveller notes. 

And Mr.Brown lays it out in the first campaign overview; "The High Concept: The heroes are high-tech lowlifes navigating precarious existences in an authoritarian, China-influenced United States. Setting: America, in the near future (within the next 50 years.) America is a “soft” vassal state of China, now the world’s premier superpower. Social and financial breakdowns have produced a dystopian society of haves and have-nots, overseen by megacorporation executives in their mighty towers and preyed upon by organized crime and a puppet US government. However, America still views itself (and behaves) as a mover-and-shaker in global politics; the general public is unaware that the impetus for American policy often begins in the halls of Beijing. Scope: (Suggested) Local at first (one or two cities), perhaps becoming international as the party gains more power and influence and begins tackling larger and more complex adventures." 
Make no mistake New World: 2D6 Adventure in a Cyberpunk America  isn't your usual cyberpunk style game setting. This is an America that is past its prime, seen better days, & is very dangerous. The setting is part action movie & part thinking man's cyberpunk campaign. Brown's design & writing is tight, solid, & easy to incorporate into a 2d6 campaign. Michael Brown is easily one of the least appreciated Cepheus Engine rpg designers using the 2d6 rpg platform today in my opinion. And that's a true shame. The man know what he's doing and  New World: 2D6 Adventure in a Cyberpunk America  shows this.  New World: 2D6 Adventure in a Cyberpunk America   is expansive and very well done.  New World: 2D6 Adventure in a Cyberpunk America  showcases the strengths of the 2d6 system with solid career paths, an extensive cyberpunk array across the board. And a very dangerous setting. In point of fact one could add in either Cepheus Atom or Mr. Brown's Afterday to show areas that have broken down in society. While you don't need either of these products they can easily slot in.

Michael Brown's New World: 2D6 Adventure in a Cyberpunk America uses its cyberpunk aesthetic to its advantage taking carefully created & crafted rules that are perfect for a short beer with pretzels game night. Or as a part of an extensive cyberpunk campaign that could last years. I highly recommend  Michael Brown's New World: 2D6 Adventure in a Cyberpunk America.  New World: 2D6 Adventure in a Cyberpunk America  is a reliable, playable, easy to run, & fun game campaign setting. At eight dollars this is a steal for a fun & very dangerous cyberpunk rpg campaign setting to add to your Cepheus Engine rpg collection! 

Michael Brown's New World: 2D6 Adventure in a Cyberpunk America is  available right here.