So what is there to do around here? Leisure and Art in Psi-Wars
For a lot of people "Culture" means the fine arts: ballet, museums full of beautiful paintings, exquisite sculptures and the height of fashion. Thus, if we speak of a "cultural familiarity," some...
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Leisure in Psi Wars Part 2: Fun and Games
In designing our distancing mechanisms, we need to be careful not to clutter up our setting. The point of Psi-Wars isn't to explore exotic cultures, but to have exotic cultures as a backdrop for a...
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Blogging, One Year On
In retrospect (ha!) I really should have posted this last week, but I wanted to be close to one year on the nose as I could.Last year, I committed to running one blog post per week for the rest of the...
View ArticleMailanka Rants: It's okay to like bad movies
So, a friend recently linked me to this guy's channel on movie editing and criticism, and he gets into some pretty deep stuff, but the one that leapt out at me, that I felt demanded greater discussion,...
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The Ways of Psi-Wars: Cultures and their values and literature
Most of the distancing mechanisms we've discussed have, ultimately, been very superficial: how a culture dresses, how a culture plays, how a culture speaks. When you peel back the surface, though,...
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The Philosophy (and Religion) of Psi-Wars
Philosophy is devoted to rational discourse, whereas mysticism tries to reach beyond the limits of reason to what cannot be said or even thought.- Peter Adamson, the History of Philosophy Without Any...
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A Psi-Wars Cultural Checklist
The point of all of the previous posts in this mini-series is to give you ideas on what do for a new and unusual culture in your setting. The point of an unusual culture in psi-wars is to remind the...
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Building the Con Artist and the fine art of Forgery
I trust he needs no introductionLando Calrissian remains one of my favorite characters from Star Wars, not just because he was so stylish, but because of what he represented. For the most part, the...
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Pulling Rank in Psi-Wars
The next step in looking at our Social Engineering rules is to take a deeper look at Organizations. This would be the bit where I would first try to argue against Organizations, but I cannot. First,...
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Designing Organizations
Building OrganizationsThe two books together give us plenty of ideas as to how we might build an organization. We need to simplify, though. In a Psi-Wars scenario, PCs are largely concerned about the...
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Status as Pulling Rank
Social Engineering brought up some interesting points regarding Status that might be pertinent to Psi-Wars. Action doesn't deal with status, but Action operates in a meritocratic world with a flat...
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Building the Diplomat and a Matter of Law
Everything I've done over the past few weeks has been building up to the diplomat. Cultural distancing mechanisms provide more than just interesting flavor for new cultures, they also represent...
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Plan for the Patrons
Are you one of my patrons? If you are, there's a new post for you: the Plan for the Patrons. In it, I discuss the plans for my Patron-only content in the coming month, as well as the direction that...
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A plan for my Patrons, redux
One of my more valued readers criticized my recent post, and I think he had a top-notch point. Why is my plan for my Patrons patron-only? Wouldn't it make sense to tell everyone what the plan is,...
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Planetary Environments: an Introduction
You know Star Wars happens in space not because it literally happens in space (I've only seen characters don space-suits and take a space walk in a few cases in the extended universe), but because it...
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Planetary Terrain: Arctic
HothArctic environments are any place where the temperature hovers around the low end possible for that type of life. For Earth life, it’s places where it’s often below freezing.-GURPS Space, page...
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Planetary Terrain: Desert
TatooineDesert environments are any place where the necessary solvents or nutrients for life are scarce. There’s often plenty of energy, just no stuff to use. Deserts also tend to extremes of...
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Planetary Terrain: Island/Beach
Ahch-ToIsland/Beach environments are an interface between land and sea, and as such are especially suited for amphibious beings... Islands in particular can support isolated micro-ecologies where...
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Planetary Terrain: Jungle
Yavin 4 Jungle settings are lush, dominated by huge autotrophs (trees, on Earth). They support lots of life, but often that life has evolved an array of defenses. Jungles offer many specialized niches...
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Planetary Terrain: Mountain
MustafarMountain environments are often poor in resources for life, simply because fluids drain away downhill and erosion scours away the soil. At very high altitudes, even air is scarce! Mountains...
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