Lunch Time at the RPG Cafe

Welcome to Blue Shift, an RPG set in a strange far-away future. The game itself is meant to be played in short episodes of an hour or less, and it is both comic and absurd. Think Heavy Metal meets Futurama, but with more folks talking with mouths full of leftovers. 

Setting: City X

A vast semi-organized collection of stuff stretches from one end of this old, rundown universe to the other, and semi-organized, semi-sentient things live all along the way, from hive minds of dust mites to humans, more or less, to mounds of waste suddenly become aware. Everything is coming together in a beautiful blue shift, blue being the background color of our universe on its way to becoming the next singularity, the next Big Bang, the next universe. This is City X, the largest sprawl that ever was, ever will be. 

Where Characters Come From

Perhaps you were born in this manner: a female took information from the universe, sometimes the old-fashioned way, in the form of semen, but sometimes much more postmodern, such as a meme, and sometimes really old-fashioned, such as a virus, added it to her own information, grew you in a nutrient sac in her body, and then when you were just too damned big, expelled you in a scream of bloody torment. 

Or perhaps you simply emerged from the terminal ooze and muck of a decrepit, waste-filled universe. 

That the second is possible points to a huge difference between the far, far future and now. A trillion years in the future, everything in the universe has been used and reused by intelligent beings, by great interstellar empires whose technology verged on the magical, who had mastered the art of assembling and reassembling matter. When these empires fell apart, as all empires do, some of their technology, rather than fall apart, went feral. The beautiful bacteria that turned toxic oils into flowers might have overrun a planet where those “toxic oils” were actually an important part of the ecosystem. And sometimes, the feral tech met other feral tech, and even stranger things happened. Another society might have genetically engineered some of its people to accept certain bacterial changes to their DNA to allow them to better accept medical treatments. Those genetic changes were never undone, and some of their descendants might one day sprout flowers due to the mix of the two techs.

Thus in the garbage mound that is the far future, accountant Stanmek Lobacum, might be reborn as something strange and twisted. The original Stan had come from a great hyperspatial empire that had encoded his genetic structure and skills on to a few pieces of light, and that little bit of Stan met a nano-computer that could read anything, including stray light waves encoded with enough data to build a person, and then some --DNA Plus. The nano-computer, desperate to be useful again, finds the detritus of a society that used autonomous birth sacs as weapons of war. These sacs grow super-soldiers, and are supported and fed by anything organic. The sentient AI miniature computer activates such a sac. It is tiny at first, devouring insects and plants and discarded food and such. And then as it gets bigger, it attaches to a tree or an animal or even a person. And thus, a copy of Stanmek Lobacum’s genes and skills grows inside it, and, if it is successful, he comes out fully formed, an accountant super-soldier. 

But it doesn’t end there. Other societies created memes, drugs, and more insidious methods of control. Stanmek, upon being born, might hear a jingle that invades his brain and tells him what he must do: Become a talk show host. That is his destiny. And if the jingle has affected a few more people, the local TV station (or its equivalent) might even accept him. On the other hand, he might wander the universe in vain, seeking but never finding his destined role as a talk show host, taking jobs as a merc company’s accountant, holding court during breaks where he asks his fellow mercs to talk about their dysfunctional lives. 

Character & Group Creation

To create your character, your group must first decide on its premise and several other factors. The group should briefly answer the following questions:

•	Is your group a mercenary company, smugglers, an artists’ colony, a family of nitwits?
•	What are your ultimate goals as a party? 
•	What entities (single or groups) work against your player crew? 
•	How well do the players get along with one another?

Once the group dynamics are established, players take a few minutes to describe their characters. Unless a player specifies it or a GM asks for it, each player character should be considered powerful or skilled in their own right, sometimes a little foolish, and (relatively mortal). To complete the characters, each player should write down something for each of the following:

●	A name
●	A general descriptor that provides an umbrella of skills or powers and contacts
●	A couple of specific descriptors, which could be powers or additional skills or allies
●	A secret that each character keeps from the other non-player characters but which must be told to fellow players
●	An emotional need that your character has
●	A tangible goal that your character has that reflects that need
●	An enemy (not a fellow PC)

First Session

Now that the characters have determined what brings them together and who they are, it’s time to briefly start the group upon their missions. As the players are creating their characters, use the information they provided in building their group dynamics to provide an initial scene. As the players introduce their characters, you may add notes to help you flesh out the beginning scenes. Optimally, the GM should plan three scenes to fashion a rough beginning, middle, and end to a beginning adventure. The players may quickly stroll through this adventure or struggle in one part. Thankfully, the group can use this early planning to quickly start the next session another day. 
Doing Stuff

Any action, like lunch, should be a short and fleeting thing. Along with last night’s leftovers, lunch with Blue Shift requires three random number generating devices of multiple colors (3d6’s in two different colors for the luddites among us) and a small handful of tokens. In rolling, for a particular action, we will both test our skills in a given situation and determine the grandiosity of the outcome. Only two numbers are needed for the gamemaster (GM) to describe how the flow of events. 

The first component of an action, or Challenge Roll, is the success. Success is based how skills the player is and what the context or environment of the action is like. These factors combined, will be represented by one or two d6 (preferably the same color).
When the player describes a task they would like to perform or when the GM determines a challenge is present, the first thing the GM does is set a Challenge Rating for the task. The Challenge Rating ranges on a continuum from 2 to 7 and is wholly dependent on the skills of a player character based on their character description (or lack thereof). A success on a given challenge is meeting or beating the challenge rating. In setting the Challenge Rating, the GM should conceptualize a task’s difficulty in terms such as easy (2-3), challenging (4-5), possible (6), and nearly impossible (7). In some situations, a particularly difficult task may exceed a player character’s chosen skills and be relatively hard. For instance, a player might be a world renowned martial artist, but today they face the world’s greatest and the once easy act of fighting becomes merely a pipe dream. 
 
The Context of a Challenge is also important. The Context of a Challenge may put one at a Advantage or Disadvantage due to present environmental factors or previous narrative events. For instance, Valek successfully bought a map of a sprawling psychic-media broadcasting facility from a crooked employee. Valek will now be advantaged in sneaking around guards using her knowledge of guard routes or hiding spots. On the other hand, Valek might be at a disadvantage if her attempt to bribe the employee failed and they notified the facility guards to be on the watch for intruders. Advantages and Disadvantages are not always present. Sometimes a Challenge simply is. When there is a Disadvantage/Advantage, have the player roll 2d6 instead of one. When the context or past events give a player Advantage, the player may choose the best of 2d6 ( b[2d6] ) against the Challenge Rating. When the Context of the Challenge works against the player as a Disadvantage, have the player take the worst of 2d6 on their Challenge roll           ( w[2d6] ). Once again, the results of only one die will determine the Success or Failure of a Challenge in the end.

The second component of an action is the Intensity of the outcome. Think of the old kid game Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots with its robots engaged in hurricanes of flying fists. One hit might simply stagger your opponent, where another may separate the opponent from their head in dramatic fashion. This is where our third d6 (of a different color than the first two preferably), will come into play. The Intensity roll will determine if a success or failure is Light (1-2), Moderate (3-4), Strong (5-6). The Intensity roll cues the GM in how much to embellish the outcome of the Challenge roll. 

Upon failure in a Challenge Roll, players may want to attempt further challenge rolls in a given task, but time, vitality, and patience are often limited. In a given task, players will be allowed up to four Failure Points (FP). Failure points are assigned depending on the level of the Intensity Roll. Light failures will take 1 FP, Moderate failures will take 2 FP, and Strong Failures will take 3 FP. If players choose, they will be able to attempt a given challenge at least twice before being overtaken, exploited, facing the consequences, or simply tucking tail (or tentacle) and running. Players take note, one failure might influence the Context of the proceeding Challenge Rolls. Players may retreat from a Challenge Roll prior to any roll and determine another action that may get them to a similar goal. Once players have reached four FP or higher, the route of action is permanently closed and a defeat is marked for that character. Until that player is able to rest or resolve the effects of their defeat, the player will take a -1 forward on Challenge Rolls. The repercussions of a completely failed action should be determined by the natural consequences of the rolls and the action itself. In other words GM’s, failure to parley with the local exotic gene broker does not result in death, but their new ‘adjusted’ prices may make your players yearn for death. 

Tokens in Blue Shift represent Shift Points (SP). A player may mitigate a challenging situation through preparation or good play choices, but Shift Points allow a player to directly alter Challenge and Intensity rolls. Whenever a player rolls a Strong Failure or Strong Success naturally (without modifying the roll), they obtain 1 SP. A player may pay the GM to affect their fates. Multiple SP may be used to add +1 per SP to a Challenge Roll up to +2. A single SP may be used to change the Intensity roll by one level in a positive or negative direction (Light to Moderate Intensity or vice versa for instance) depending on the need. Between play sessions or when a player character is allowed sufficient time to rest narratively, a player may spend 2 SP in order to describe a new power or skillset they have obtained.  

Death and Defeat

Death is not so dire. In this universe, death is often a transformative experience rather than an absolute ending. If your character dies, you may either bow out, create a revised version of your old character, taking into account the manner of death and the means of resurrection, or find a creative way to explain why you didn’t die at all. Players that have died during one session may come back at a later session as well with their newly cultivated skills.

And if they choose, truly dead players can always steal the uneaten snacks of their neighbors while the others continue to roleplay. Then again, the GM may decide to let players cooperate to guide the rest of the group through narrating non-player characters or helping to determine Challenge Ratings.

Stage 1 Note to the next designers: The character creation rules are mostly from Over the Edge, with a dash of Hillfolk. 

Stage 2 Notes from 15127 – Blades in the Dark helped me cultivate Advangtage/Intensity. I’d like to think this piece could really take on a breath of its own with a little more love and time. Enjoy and I’m excited to see what parts you keep, remove, expand, and add. Hopefully I left this piece in better shape than before. Cheers, mate!!!!