Afterverse Game System
Game System
Afterverse is a hard sci-fi tabletop roleplaying game. It consists of equal parts storytelling and gameplay. The storytelling consists of characters, worlds, cultures, and motivations. The gameplay consists of dice rolls, hit banks, and skill tests.
Within the story, most conflicts are resolved by a combination of roleplaying and dice-rolling. The [player will roll a large number of 6-sided dice (known as a "dice pool"). The numbers on the dice are not added mathematically. Rather, any dice that display a five or a six count as "hits", and more hits means a greater probability of success.
Some tests, especially repetitious ones, use hit banks, whose value is usually determined by rolling dice. Hit banks consist of a number of counters which will the player will use across a series of subsequent actions. The initial number of counters in the bank is often determined by a die roll, but after that, no further die rolls are needed for a given amount of time. The most common example of this is initiative. In that case, each player makes an initiative roll and banks these hits to their initiative bank. The player then spends hits from that bank over the course of a combat turn to act and react. At the beginning of the next turn, they roll initiative again, adding their hits to the existing bank.
What is a roleplaying game?
If you've never played a roleplaying game before, the best way to approach it is as creating a collaborative work of fiction between approximately 3-7 players. One player, the gamemaster or GM, is chosen to be in charge of setting up the general story and running most of the minor characters and adversaries. The other players play as the story's protagonists. At its core, that's all roleplaying is.
Many of the rules remaining in the "System" section of this book govern the balance between these characters. You'll start by choosing a specific setting from one of the History chapters. The next step is to create characters for the players using the Character Creation chapter. Finally, you'll throw those characters into various situations and see how they respond. Congratulations! You're roleplaying.
Using This Book
This book is organized between three types of chapters: system, history, and reference. The System chapters will guide you through creating a character and playing through the events of the story. The History chapters contain all the information needed for the background of your campaign, complete with all of the historical, cultural, and technological information it contains. Finally, the Reference chapters are intended to be read mostly upon demand, when someone is visiting a particular place, encountering a kind of alien, looking for a particular piece of gear, and so on.
Adventure Styles
There are an unlimited number of ways to play a character in Afterverse, and at least as many ways a group may run. Typically, a style of adventure will involve some means of motivating the player characters, of driving them from the beginning of the story to the end (or more likely, from the middle to a further middle). There are many ways of doing this in Afterverse: XP, money, orders, threats, and blackmail, to name but a few. Most campaigns will involve some mixture of all of them or more.
The most effective means of motivating players lend themselves to straightforward game sessions. The characters will be contacted by someone - an employer, a commanding officer, someone who has dirt on them - who will outline what the mission will entail and send the players on their way to accomplish their goals. Players will earn XP as they fulfill their various motivations, but it will be largely incidental - the motivations should inform the manner in which the players choose to accomplish the mission. This style of campaign is well suited for gaming groups who prefer structured, well-planned stories, with a defined scope and objectives all along the way.
Of course, simple survival may be the goal of any given adventure. While the characters’ lives can be put in jeopardy for any plot purpose, this should not be the sole means of motivation. Characters will earn XP for their Motivations even in a game mostly driven by survival, adding nuance and character to their decisions. As a GM, you should play off of these motivations even in a survival-driven game.
Special notice should be given to particularly XP-motivated campaigns. Characters in Afterverse earn XP via a system known as the Motivation system. Each character is driven by certain set of motivations, and when goals relating to these are met, the character will earn XP. XP-driven characters may be self-driven and opportunistic, responding directly to the world around them rather than being given a set of mission objectives. These campaigns tend to be very freeform, suited to GMs that can respond and adapt especially quickly to unpredictable player actions. This style of campaign is often better suited to more experienced roleplayers, the kind of players who can get into character as a second nature.
Realistically, every campaign will include many different styles of motivation, at different scales and magnitudes, and even occasionally at odds with each other. A player may be forced to choose between their motivation of environmentalism versus the job's requirement of setting fire to a nearby forest. Character motivations may even on occasion be in direct opposition to each other, whether between characters or within a single character; this sort of situation can lead to some great role-playing opportunities.
Hard Scifi
Afterverse is fairly “hard” scifi, meaning it flies fairly close to the rules of the real world - that means it’s more 2001: A Space Odyssey than Star Wars, or more Larry Niven than Douglas Adams. Most space travel, combat, weapons, and so on, are based either on the known real world or reasonable extrapolations thereof. The only known loophole for faster-than-light travel is the existence of wormholes, in the form of the Warp Bridges. Traveling from one body in space to another is more about managing speed and orbits than it is about simply going to a place. Rules for hacking are modeled on real-world hacking techniques, involving elements like escalation of access and social engineering. More often than not, when there is a break from reality in Afterverse, it is an intentional design decision made to simplify calculations or speed up gameplay.
Some common elements in softer scifi (teleportation, time travel, cloaking devices, etc) are either nonexistent or extremely uncommon in Afterverse. You won’t have lightsaber battles or venture off in a time-traveling police box in this game, but you will encounter aliens, black holes, and starships. Afterverse is designed to inspire with the true beauty of a fully realized universe.
Eras
Afterverse is designed to be played at any point along the entire time spanned by the setting, ranging from the mid-21st century through the 22nd century. A broad, complete, and detailed history of the world is provided, including huge, monumental events and small year-to-year changes. This book contains a chapter for each era, which can span anywhere from 15 to 40 or more years in duration. As with most history, the eras are mostly defined by war and peace — that is, what we call it when we’re waiting for the next war.
Largely for convenience, era lengths are all divisible by five-year increments. This makes it easier to run long-term campaigns and generational stories. Similarly, the key ages for the various species (puberty, middle age, etc) are usually listed in increments of five for the same reason.
Each era's chapter begins with a fictional account from an in-universe perspective indicative of the times. This fiction is followed by an introduction to the era designed to be read by someone with no knowledge of Afterverse - this introduction is a good way to bring your players into the universe without needing to read an entire book's worth of history to get there, especially in the later eras. Following this is a brief guide to making the most out of a campaign set in that era.
By and large, Afterverse games get more complex and involved as you move farther into the future. Most eras involve at least one new gameplay mechanic that was not available to the previous eras. This is one good reason for starting new players in a campaign near the beginning of the history - it allows players to learn rules as they go. In addition, characters in later eras are likely to be more powerful and capable than those in early eras; they have better technology, a larger world to roam, and more, in addition to the XP they may have inherited from previous generations of player characters.
Further History
A future sourcebook will contain additional history, completing the main mytharc of the Afterverse canon and bringing the timeline up as far as the 24th century. This sourcebook will contain additional worlds, races, and technologies appropriate to the discoveries of that time.
Generational Stories
Because the setting spans such a wide time period, it is possible to run a campaign that spans not just the galaxy, but also across generations. Rules for long time-skips are provided in the March of History chapter, as are rules for character creation for descendants of previous characters.
It is through this inheritance of characteristics that campaigns may progress and advance in power beyond the timespan of a single generation. Some adventures will take advantage of this fact and may well encompass an adventure across the entire history of the world, hitting many of the landmarks and key events of the world. Other adventures will span shorter time-frames, spanning the time of a single war or an era of peace. Still other adventures will involve no time-skipping at all, occurring in a single unbroken adventure. All kinds of stories are valid, so play whichever of them appeals the most to your gaming group.
Canon
Afterverse’s handling of time and history means that it is important to keep a watchful eye on canon. That's not to say there is nothing that players can do to change history, only that it should not be easy, and certainly should not happen on accident. When using the Knowledge is Power ability, for example, a player should not be permitted to state a fact which causes canon (including future canon) to become invalid. The gears of history are heavy and not easily thrown off their tracks.
If the player characters do change the future, it is recommended that the gamemaster try to steer history close to its original course, fudging events as needed to get things back on track. If Curt Redland is killed during the Occupation, someone else will need to take his place in history; this may either change the naming of the "Redland Planets", or maybe they will be named in his memory rather than being named after their founder.
If history does not inch back toward its natural course, the other option is to create a whole new history as your group advances into the future, using the canonical history as mere inspiration for your own universe. Have at it! It is a lot of work, though, which is why it is generally not recommended.
Space Travel
In Afterverse, as in the real universe, interplanetary space travel has as much to do with velocity as location. It involves manipulating orbits and gravity to cover vast distances, and a good pilot knows how to do both efficiently.
Space travel, early in the history, is time-consuming and impractical for many reasons. At first, interplanetary travel is restricted to the cutting edge of military and government tech, followed by the entire military, as well as early commercial endeavors. As technology marches on, it gradually becomes accessible (and even casual and convenient) to the public at large.
Warp Bridge Networks
Faster-than-light travel is a pipe dream, with one exception: wormholes. In particular, there exists a type of wormhole known as Warp Bridges. A given warp bridge connects two (and only two) points in space, and it requires special technology to use without being summarily crushed by the singularity in the center. A network of warp bridges has been found and charted largely during the Expansion Era (among other times). No one knows who built this network or where they went, but as the network is studied it becomes evident that it was built for a purpose.
The technology required to utilize these Warp Bridges is another relic of an unknown civilization, known as a BTD, or Bridge Traversal Device. For the duration of this history, Bactarans are the sole suppliers of BTDs (it is later learned that they discovered an ancient BTD fabrication device).