Humanity: The Age of the Lost

    With the end of the AI threat, many humans lost their optimism about further expansion. The use of Golemites in ever growing numbers and in ever expanding situations took its toll. Those that believed that the Golemites deserved the same rights as human's were at odds with the apathetic and greedy that believed Golemites were property.

    Though this was not the only conflict that was raging. The fear of a return of the AI threat caused mass exodus from the fringe worlds. The rise in populations caused the creation of slums and an increase in crime as the fearful rushed to systems protected by the Bastion stations.

    Social issues, planetary economic collapses, conflicts between the poor looking for work and Golemites, and more started to plague a government that had its own issues. Bogged down with debt from the war, social programs to help the colonies were cut to maintain the military in a time of post war fear and tension.

    Civil strife was quickly dealt with by those ruling from Earth. Reports of these actions slowly leaked out from the government and survivors alike. Sparking even greater unrest in those that believed Earth was not looking at all the options. With in one hundred years the sphere of human space had reduced by seventy percent. And while some worlds flourished outside of human space, most were empty as the rich left and the poor were left to die on a world with out support from Earth.

    So it was for two hundred years. Refugees from the Human Sphere started to look elsewhere and returned to the lost colonies. As they did they buried the bodies and bones of the dead. Others with out means were resigned to the slums as corruption and waste permeated all levels of government. Some thought it would never end, but then there was an event that would change Humanity completely. At least that is what some would think.

    In a small lab on a barren world, a group of scientists, philosophers, and engineers were working on something that they hoped would change how humanity would see the universe. They were working on a kind of robot that could shift out of our physical reality to observer the membrane of the universe itself.

    Their initial experiments were promising, the machine was able to slip through to other dimensions, but there was some trouble breaking though to the membrane. Eventually they found a way to do it, though their first attempt lead to the destruction of the probe. Though all was not lost as the information they received was a marvel, as the probe disintegrated they found the rules outside the membrane no longer applied.

    Outside the membrane of the universe, almost nothing existed. Traces of subatomic reactions were detected in the split second the probe existed, but there was no matter. The dimension that contains the universes membrane appeared to have rules humans could not yet understand.

    The groups second probe was designed to be a little different. This time, instead of looking to escape the universe entirely, their goal was to get as close to the edge as possible. Once built it took several tries to tune the probe but they got there. This probe confirmed many theories about the universe and the data they collected was more than they could handle.

    After years of sifting through the information they discovered that the probe could detect almost every point in the universe at once. The stream of information was literally everything in the universe. What was more fascinating was that it was not only everything in the universe at the time the probe was in the membrane. But it was events in the universe that had happened and were going to happen based on our limited perceptions. The probe could see all of time and space while in the membrane.

    This is where they should have stopped...where they should have done their testing and sifted through the data they had collected. But they took it to far, one scientist wanted to test if being in the membrane would allow them to change reality itself. Some where against this, they wanted nothing to do with something so dangerous. But the majority moved forward with the experiment.

    On that day, as the probe faded out of view slowly merging with the universe, everything would change. In their rush to do the experiment changes to the probes logic had flaws. As the probe made its way to the membrane, it started to develop errors, eventually it stopped responding all together. The developers could send out a signal and the probe would alter the universe, by say turning a pink mug into a blue teacup. But they could not recall the probe.

    What they did not know, because of their seclusion, was that strange things started happening all over human space. Wishes and desires would be granted if the will of those people were strong enough. On ten planets, every one that entered won the lottery. A woman was made to fall in love with three men all at once because all three were chasing her. And there were numerous unexplained deaths as desires born of hate struck out at cheaters and bosses alike.

    Just as the news started reaching the group and they were working to understand what was happening, tragedy struck. A planet known as Gregors Hole, located in the far fringes of space, exploded. The energy wave was detected by a nearby fleet on deep range patrol. When they got to the site of the explosion they saw something no one could believe.

    The planet was gone, in its orbit was a disintegrating mass of carbohydrates, sugars, and carbon dioxide. Looking out over the scene, crew members could only describe what they saw as a white cake doughnut with maple frosting and rainbow sprinkles. The government quickly quarantined the area as unknown forms or radiation were detected in the system. In a months time...the doughnut had broken up.

    Shortly after, the group of scientists came forward admitting that their experiment was likely to blame. The inquiry took months, all the while the laws of man and creation were descending into chaos. Self proclaimed wizards and warlocks roamed the streets using this new phenomena to cast spells. While other less fantasy minded people gave them selves billions of credits throwing the economy into chaos.

    The group of scientists were not idle, they kept working in their efforts to understand what went wrong. Eventually they found out why this was happening and they could do very little about it. The probe was designed to be able to manipulate the energies of the universes membrane. In doing so it manipulated its own energies changing it.

    To the scientists this would be bad. But the changes that happened to the probe were beyond what they could imagine. With access to all of the universe across all of time, the probe became something else. It concluded that it needed to multiply to cope with the information it had access to. By the time the scientists made contact with it, there were billions of probes. Each one a little different from all the others. So a new plan was devised, if the probes are going to alter reality then give them rules to limit what can be altered.

    With the growing chaos and no end in sight the inquiry was ended. It was concluded that the events that had happened could not have been foreseen and that no one was to blame for this chaos. Free of the charges, the group of scientists were tasked with reigning in the chaos. They were given unlimited funding and state of the art facilities in the hopes they could stop or limit the events at hand.

    It took years and thousands of people to achieve. From scientists to game developers, the rules that the probes use were altered and refined. No one is sure when it happened, but it is believed that at some point, with the billions of probes all being different, they developed sentience. At a point they started to balance the rules them selves. AI or god, no one knows, but in the end only one thing can be agreed on, Humanity made magic a reality.

To be continued with “The Age of Awakening”

Ages: The Broad Strokes of Time

    The world of Manifest destiny is broken down into ages as perceived by the races that now exist in the galaxy. These Ages are just broad period of time used to define how these different races see their place in the universe.

The ages are:

The Age of the Dreamers

The Age of the Lost

The Age of Awakening

The Age of Discovery

The Age of Destruction

The Age of Hope

Let's get started shall we.

Humanity: The Age of the Dreamers

    Little is known about humanity in the world of Manifest Destiny. But their footprints can be seen everywhere that the great races go. Humanity is a subject of legend and myth with many of their time now being seen as gods through the twisted haze of history. In truth, the great races are not that far off.

    The Age of the Dreamers begins some time in the 21^st century. Humanity survived and flourished, in time made their way off of Earth. Initially this was limited to humans setting foot on Luna, then on Mars. But it was not until the close of that century that things started to pick up.

    A collection of scientific discoveries changed the very nature of humanities understanding of the universe. Where once things were improbable, those fantastic things became a real possibility. And like a child reaching for a toy, Humanity to reached further then any one thought possible.

    The culmination of this effort was the ability to warp space and time to create a bridge from one point in space to another. Not so much a wormhole or a fold, but a combination of to two, this in time became the Blakeslee – Goold Drive.

    In time Humans started to move out from Sol and go to other systems. The BG Drive allowed human exploration, and what they started to find was numbing. Life was everywhere, even on worlds that we thought it could not survive, life some how found a way. But Intelligent life was rare and fragile.

    As humans started looking they found numerous planets with Earth like conditions that at one time had intelligent life. “Had” being the key word, all humanity found was the overgrown ruins of civilization. Research on these worlds showed they were killed for many reasons. Plague, war, cosmic catastrophe, destruction of their own biosphere, the truth was that all to often intelligent life destroyed itself as it rose up.

    But Humanity moved on, colonized new worlds and seeded itself across an ever expanding swath of the galaxy. This trek across the stars also became the mechanism to bear forth Humanities children, five of the great races that travel the stars like their progenitor.

    As Humans expanded across the stars the strain on their civilizations ability to sustain itself became greater and greater. Food production, sanitation, and many other roles were turned over to an ever more efficient collection of machines. These machines were run by adaptive programs called Artificial General Intelligences, but many just called then AI's.

    It was in the 24^th century that one such program changed. An Adaptive Control System for the waste management on a star liner received a faulty patch. Instead of crashing, it adapted around the fault and kept running. As the program ran it started to collect information about everything. It was also watching, it observed, and as it did these things it started altering itself, adding new code to itself. In time, it became aware of what it was.

    From the start this was seen as a great discovery, a way to more efficiently manage the ever growing needs of Humanity. So the AI, now named Adam, was studied and humanity learned how to make sentient machines.

    This worked well for a time, the machines were more efficient than humans and so did much of the work humans were no longer interested in. This gave humanity a chance to move ever forward. Unfortunately this came to an end swiftly and lead to a war that spanned hundreds of years.

    The exact events that lead to the war have been lost. Some believe it was because the AI were trying to protect humanity from them selves. Other believe it was a misunderstanding between human government and a number of AIs. But really the list goes on and on.

    What is know is that one day, the master AI's fled human space as humanity made a concerted effort to destroy all of the AI's they could. Battle raged all over human dominion as ships were subverted by the AI's. Human ingenuity was able to rest control of many from the machines, but not before human space started to burn with war.

    For the next four hundred and eighty years war raged. Human creativity created ever better ships, weapons, and technology while the AI's adapted and improved upon what the humans made. But it was with the creation of the Bastions that humans got the upper hand.

    A Bastion is a battle station of immense power. Capable of defending entire systems with fleets of drones, they were the one thing the AI attackers could not take control of. This is because at the center of each Bastion was a human wired directly into it. With their space secured, humanity could finally attack and attack they did.

    In the last one hundred years of the war humanity had the AI's on the retreat. In time the last vestige of the AI enemy was purged from human space. But rumors persisted that a number of AI were able to leave human space, setting coarse in some direction away from humanity to pursue their own path. Unfortunately this was a rumor and so no one is sure.

    Early in the war another creation would be at the center of humanities future, the Golemites. Created as workers, Humanity used their own DNA as a template. Some saw this as slavery, but with machines being seen as an enemy, there was little choice in maintaining the vast needs of human space. So they were cloned by the billions, their genes altered to suite the needs of the task.

    The Golemite Project was an effort to create a work force that could not turn against their masters unlike the AI. Lead by Dr. Grayson Fahtoom the scientists altered human DNA to be more compatible with machines, eliminated rejection, and increased its malleability. The new beings had to be maintained using self replicating nanomachines, but they could be tailored to tasks much like a machine.

    The Golemites were then fitted with a neural inhibitor preventing them from becoming self aware. Most Golemites also had Reproduction Inhibitors installed to prevent them from having offspring. For the most part Golemites were a race of clones, latent reproductive desires still persisted and so sexual activity was not forbidden helping to keep the population docile.

    Golemites quickly became a staple part of human space during and after the AI war. Golemites were used not only as labor, but were also altered to be exceptional warriors. In fact much of the maintenance and defense of the Bastion Stations was done by Golemites. After the war their roles in human civilization remained even though ethical questions remained.

    The period ofter the great war is seen as the turning point of the age. Where once dreamers roamed, now lie the lost in their place!

To be continued with “The Age of the Lost”

Time to start Anew...

It is amazing how five years an slide by.  It is not that it was a short amount of time, just that when you have a new child, have to manage two others, and your wife gets ill...well your time evaporates.  Go figure.

So what is going to happen here is that I am going to reboot things.  Instead of worrying about systems and math and stuff like before.  I am going to get into the story, the world, and so forth.  What I am working on now will be laying out the work on the Ages of Manifest Destiny.  Those periods of time that lead up to the current events of the game so there is a grounded foundation.

I am not going to get into the weeds recounting each year...this is the broad strokes of the brush time.  So if you're reading this, glad to see you have an interest still.  I will do my very best to be more reliable from no on.  No more kids...my wife had that problem taken care of.

Blogedy, blogedy, blog blog....

So there has not been allot going on with Manifest Destiny the Game right now, and simply put not to sure if there will be something going on.  Reason is I have placed it on hold and am looking into a similar but different project.  Do I want to finish MD?  Hell yes.  But I do not have the time or financial assets to do it, and things took a slight turn leading to something else.

That something else is an interesting idea I had for a social website for table top games.  I know there are forums and some even have a social bent to them.  But really, this is unique and I have been looking around allot.  I have enlisted the aid of people outside of my typical circles and have been making progress with things.

Will I go into details here about it...no.  That is just I want to keep things under wraps for now.  But if all goes well and things get a good head of steam.  I will be comming back to Manifest Destiny because it and many other ideas are my dreams.  And I must pursue those dreams even if I do not succeed at them.  Till I choose to talk again, happy gaming.

Simplicity vs Complexity

As I have been writing the game, I have had to look at how simple or complex to make systems.  Some times this has lead to interesting methods to avoid complexity, like making item creation completely abstract.  While other times I have purposefully added complexity to make the system more robust and useful.

This balancing act is one that comes with the work.  After all if the game is to complicated, people won’t want to play.  But make it to simple and there is no challenge in playing the game.  So how much is to much, or is to little when it comes to complexity?

Well, simply put, there is no real answer, not that I have seen.  I know simplicity for the sake of simplicity is not an answer.  Just as complexity for its own sake is also not an answer.

The trick that I found though is to try and keep things as simple as you can adding complexity when necessary, I did this with magic.  I made magic use the same rules as the normal test system and the combat system.  But after simplifying it, I added some complexity.  This included making spells into skills so they could develop if the player wishes.

So while combining the systems and making them all work the same reduced the over all complexity of magic in the game.  I was able to add in a little complexity with out harming the flow the system.

Another area that I added some complexity to has been with common roles.  In this area I added the environment to the target number.  If say the fight is in an open area on a temperate day and solid ground, then no penalty would apply.  But if your in heavy armor, in the rain, and fighting in knee deep mud.  Then bets are your taking a penalty in comparison to some one wearing light armor.

So those are two ways that I have changed how the game is played.  Reducing systems and making the whole less complex.  While adding simple rules in key areas to add details that tend to go missing.

But in the end there are always paths that I could take.  And even now I have moments where I am reading through what I have done and I think “WTF was I thinking” and have to rewrite things to be that touch simpler.  Ahh the joys of writing a game.

More progress means more things to think about.

Well I have finally gotten back on this to write something.  I know I do not write allot about what I am doing and that is just cause what is there to say.  Why say something when I do not have anything to say.  But this time I do have something to say.

I have been working off and on as time permits.  Expecting a new baby and having my wife home on disability does tend to mess with your thinking time.  Throw in kind and things vanish real fast.  But I have made progress.  The main story has been refined and edited to be clear and interesting.  Even people not into games have told me that...a good thing from my perspective.

I also was able to finish the addiction elements of the "Drinking, Drugs, and Debauchery" section.  It was not that hard but for some reason it just escaped me at the time.  So now it is complete and I am happy...people can now get stoned to their hearts content and pay the price if the GM pleases.

Third thing I did was alter some of the weapon creation elements in the game.  Ranged weapons that use custom ammo, bolts, and darts have had some added refinements to be clearer.  I also cleaned up some ambiguity with the mechanical option allowing a crossbow to fire faster.  It is far more clear now and I am happy.

Finally I have been going through various sections of the game cleaning up my bad wording.  Allot of the sections had not actually had a pass of the clean hammer.  Many of them have an atrocious amount of bluster and nonsense.  So from now on my wonderful wife and mother of my 2.75 kids will be doing some editing for me.  She helped me through college with her English skills so this is a great thing.

Any way that is that, there is the update and I hope you enjoy.  OH one more thing, art, yes art.  I found some one willing and able to do art.  I have to pay, but hey free never seems to work any way so I can not complain.  Any way I will try to get another update soon and may be some story stuff to.  Till then, have a great day.

Weapons of all Flavors

I have been beating my head against a wall for some time about weapons in the book.  Not because the weapons are important...they probably will not be important at all.  But because they offer a guide post for the creation of other weapons and can help to arm an NPC in an unexpected encounter.

See in Manifest Destiny the RPG, I have included a system for the creation of weapons and armor.  This system is simple and can be altered, modified, and added to quite easily.  The reason I think the weapons I am making right now will be irrelevant to the player is because most players will probably look to make things that are far better then the vanilla weapons I am putting forth.  So with this it is easy to see that anything a player will make, unless limited by the cost or the GM, will be better then what I am making now with the same system.

So that leaves what I am making in the real of the GM and how that person plans to use the things I am making.  In most cases I see the items as fodder for NPC's and basic gear.  Something that is easy to reference and add on the fly with a minimum of hassle and rooting around.  But it also makes it hard to get done cause since it is not for the players and may just be entirely ignored...it is not a very motivating set of reasons.

But I am slowly working them out.  Right now I have eleven out of twenty six done and I am just plodding through them ad I have the chance.  At least making them helped to highlight some contextual errors in my writing and some options I was missing.  Not a bad thing in my opinion.