Tagline: A very strong package, suitable for framing or for reference.

The CEGA Fleet Blueprint Files are the second blueprint files Dream Pod 9 produced. The first were the Jovian Fleet Blueprint Files, which I am reviewing simultaneously.

Everything I said about the various strengths and weaknesses of the Jovian Fleet product are true here, with three exceptions:

1. The blueprints found in this file are a Bricriu-class corvette; a Tengu-class escort carrier; a Hachiman-class destroyer; an Uller-class missile cruiser; a Poseidon-class Battleship (General View and Cutaway); a Valhalla-class Station; and a Wyvern (exo-armor).

2. The repeated text from the core rulebook is found on the Tengu-class escort carrier.

3. Since there’s no main bridge mentioned here, that is not a strength for the product (it would actually be a weakness since that possesses no interest a second time around with minor changes). The Valhalla-class station blueprint performs admirably and is very well done.

A couple other notes:

1. Consistency between product formats is generally good. Here it is bizarrely bad. On the table of contents located on the cover of the envelope for the Jovian Fleet Blueprint File there are six general categories – with a paranthesisized comment noting the three different blueprints for the Valiant-class ship. This makes sense, since there are six ships being covered (with the Valiant-class ship getting three blueprints). Here in the CEGA Fleet Blueprint File, however, seven different ships are being covered (with the Poseidon-class ship getting two blueprints). Despite this the table of contents on the front of the envelope has only six categories… apparently a Valhalla-class station is somehow a part of a Poseidon-class battleship. Very poorly done.

2. The Uller-class background text has a fascinating plot hook thrown in.

Again, these blueprint files are strongly recommended if you’re a Pod-phile, a Chronicles-phile, or just like this type of product.

Style: 5
Substance: 4

Author: n/a
Company/Publisher: Dream Pod 9
Cost: $10.95
Page Count: n/a
ISBN: n/a

Originally Posted: 1999/08/24

Recently found something of interest over on the Wizards forums: Session Zero.

The thread itself never really took off, but:

(1) There are some good links to be followed.

(2) The specific term “session zero” strikes me as a useful one.

Exactly what the session zero for a given campaign will look like — and the things it’s trying to achieve — is likely to be quite variable. But the basic idea that there’s usually work to be done before “go time” in the campaign is a valuable one which frequently gets overlooked.

Last year I posted a thought of the day concerning “Disarming Magical Traps”. Although this particular thought of the day was most specifically and immediately prompted by Numenera, it’s also something of a sequel to that earlier thought and equally applicable to magic items in a typical fantasy campaign.

As I mentioned in that earlier thought, I think it’s important that a GM not allow any interaction at the table to become purely mechanical. Partly this is just an aesthetic preference on my part (it keeps things interesting), partly it’s ideological (rules are associated for a reason), and partly it’s because specificity and detail usually leads to creative gameplay.

In Numenera, as the title suggests, a great emphasis is put upon the leftovers of the older (and almost incomprehensible) civilizations that predated the Ninth World: “The devices, the vast machine complexes, the altered landscapes, the changes wrought upon living creatures by ancient energies, the invisible nano-spirits hovering in then air in clouds called the Iron Wind, the information transmitted into the so-called datasphere, and the remnants of visitors from other dimensions and alien planets—they call these things the numenera.”

Particular significance is given to the cyphers: Single use items that function according to forgotten sciences, proliferate throughout the Ninth World, and (from a purely mechanical perspective) serve to constantly vary and refresh the abilities available to PCs.

Before cyphers can be used, however, they have to be identified. Mechanically speaking this is straightforward: The character attempting to identify the cypher attempts an Intellect task with a low difficulty. If they succeed, they now know what the device does and how it can be used.

It can be difficult, however, to visualize or describe how this process of identification takes place: Consider the example of a pill you can swallow which will then allow you to teleport to any location you can clearly visualize with your mind. There’s no self-evident way to “experiment” with the pill short of swallowing it; and if you do that, it would be consumed and gone. So what does the mechanical resolution of the identification task look like in the game world?

Ultimately, it’s a combination of lore and/or limited experimentation. In the case of the teleporter pill, for example, options might include:

• There’s a sigil on the side of the pill. You recognize that as a sign associated with teleportation in other artifacts that you’ve used.
• Or you cross-reference the sigil using a lore book and discover that the armies of Salla Izirul once discovered a cache containing millions of these pills and used them to teleport entire legions behind defensive lines before his supply ran out.
• You scrape a little bit off the side of the pill and feed it to a mouse. The mouse vanishes and reappears next to a piece of cheese on the far side of the room. Guess it’s a teleporter.
• Yes, it’s a pill. But there’s a small metallic nodule attached to one end of it. And, yup, that’s definitely a transdimensional regulator. The only reason you’d be swallowing one of those is if this thing was going to teleport you.
• You’re a nano and you’re using a low-powered Scan to determine the energy signatures locked inside the physical matrix of the “pill”.
• The pill is actually encoded with a psychic memetic mesh. If you can just manipulate the articulated junctures of the pill correctly, it will basically download an instruction manual into your brain.

And so forth. My point is that there’s not a single or precise method that the character can use to identify the object, so you should feel free to get creative.

FAILURE

 Conversely, a failure on the roll might indicate that:

• There is no way to identify this featureless pill: All they can do is swallow it and see what happens.
• They’ve misidentified what the pill does.
• They’ve misidentified how powerful it is.

 PARTIAL SUCCESS

A partial success (perhaps succeeding at a difficulty one-half the required difficulty to fully identify the object) might yield some useful information:

• How to activate the device, but not necessarily what the device will do. (This would obviously be more applicable to cyphers that aren’t self-evidently pills. Although maybe this “pill” only works if it’s a suppository or stuck up your nose or surgically placed under the skin or ground up into the user’s eye.)
• A general sense of what the item does, but not its specific function. (“It has something to do with non-Euclidean travel” instead of specifically indicating that “it will teleport you X distance”.

My point with all this is that you shouldn’t be afraid to discover (or define) features of the world as the world is being explored.

 ARTIFACTS

More powerful technologies of the old world in Numenera are referred to as artifacts. These devices can be used multiple times (although there’s a risk that any given usage will be the object’s last) and it’s far more likely that the PCs are just using one of the many possible utilities the original device had. (The other functions may be inexplicable, irrelevant in this dimensional space, broken, only intermittently available, more likely to deplete the device, or dangerous to the user.)

On page 299 of Numenera you’ll find a really fantastic random chart for determining random quirks for an artifact: I recommend taking it to heart.

The Ninth World of Numenera exists a billion years in the future: Eight civilizations of galactic prowess, capable of restructuring the laws of physics and engaging in mega-construction projects of staggering scope, have risen and fell. The modern inhabitants of Earth live in the shattered ruins of the masterpieces: Vast features of the landscape (on a scale larger than the tallest mountains) are utterly artificial extrusions from the dim recesses of a forgotten prehistory. Even the dirt beneath our feet is, in fact, artificial — particles of plastic and metal and biotechnical growths which have been eroded by incomprehensible aeons; each bucket of soil filled not with stone arrowheads, but with compact power supplies and the cracked crystals of ancient data storage devices.

One thing the Numenera rulebook doesn’t talk much about, however, is the moon. Mercury is missing (some prior civilization stole it away or pounded it apart), but we know the moon is still up there: Slightly smaller than we’re accustomed to (because it’s a little farther away), but still possessed of its familiar phases. But does it look the same? Earth has been utterly transformed. What do the men and women of the Ninth World see when they look up into the night sky?

The answer I came up with is a little different.

MOON OF GREEN

First, it should be noted that the moon is no longer tidally locked. It rotates.The idea of the “dark side of the moon” is, literally, a thing of the past.

One side of the moon is green and verdant: It has apparently been terraformed and is now covered by vast forests. A huge, silver-blue ocean formed from two overlying circles (possibly ancient craters) lies in the middle of the northern hemisphere. (This ocean is known by a number of names: The Mare Sea, the Spider’s Eyes, the Infinity Brow, the Babe in the Moon, and so forth.) Those possessed with the proper telescopic tools or numenera have observed citadels poking up through the canopy here and there, although it’s unclear if there are any signs of life.

And then, from time to time and on no regular schedule that anyone has been able to ascertain, this happens:

No one truly knows what it means, although scholars have noted that many of the fractal mandala circles have been fading over time. Some mandala constellations appear to have gone out completely.

SHEEN OF SILVER

The other side of the moon is a desert of pale, silver sand.

In other words, it looks much like the moon does today: Was it restored to a “pristine” condition? Never touched by the terraforming? Is the terraforming nothing more than an illusion? Or is the “untouched” side of the moon the true illusion?

The key point is that the light you see the Ninth World by depends on the turning of the moon: There are nights of green and there are nights of silver.

And there are also nights of red.

NIGHT OF RED

Between the green side of the moon and the silver side of the moon, there is a desert of red. Telescopic examination of this portion of the moon reveals vast, ruined cities which are constantly being buried, revealed, and buried again by the shifting lunar winds. This red desert often provides no more than a lurid, backlit glow to the green or silver moons. But upon occasion the lunar phases and rotation will turn right and a violent, crimson scar will hang above the Ninth World.

The red nights, when the world is viewed through a haze of blood, are times of ill luck and foul fortunes.

Tagline: A beautiful product, suitable for framing or reference.

I’ve read a couple of reviews of these blueprint files previously, and they all have contained a similar comment: “This isn’t what I expected at all!”

Which is odd because, folks, there’s nothing to be surprised at here. The Jovian Fleet Blueprint File comes packaged in an 8.5” x 11” white envelope. On the front of the envelope is the title and a sort of “table of contents” – which tells you that there are eight 19” x 15” blueprints folded inside the envelope, and that these blueprints are of: A Javelin-class missile cruiser; a Thunderbolt-class cruiser; an Athena-class destroyer; a Godsfire-class supercarrier; a Pathfinder Alpha (exo-armor); and a Valiant-class Strike Carrier (Block II Design, Cutaway View, and the Main Bridge).

On either side of this table contents are eight miniature versions of the blueprints. You were wondering what these blueprints are? Look on the cover. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Each blueprint comes with some background text on the design, plus various specifications and explanatory passages. They are elegantly suitable for either framing or for reference to these crafts.

There are some weak points to these blueprints: First, the verbiage for the Pathfinder Alpha is copied straight out of the core rulebook. Uh, guys at the Pod? If I bought this, it’s a good bet I already own the core book.

Second, there were a couple of editorial errors. A product of this length just shouldn’t have any errors in it.

Finally, the ships are not too useful.

The particular strength of all this are the cut-aways for the Valiant-class strike carrier. It’s a useful reference for anyone using the mini-campaign in the core rulebook, and I also enjoyed the three-dimensional holographic bridge design shown and described on one of the blueprints.

In short: Take a look at the cover in the store. If it looks like the type of product you’re going to get some use out of, pick it up. If not, don’t. You’re not going to be missing anything.

Style: 5
Substance: 4

Author: n/a
Company/Publisher: Dream Pod 9
Cost: $9.95
Page Count: n/a
ISBN: n/a

Originally Posted: 1999/08/24

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.