In this preview, I have included a beta layout for the Commissioning (character creation) Chapter; this Chapter walks you and your group through Ship and Crewmember creation. While you may notice that Free Spacer’s Commissioning System is a different from most other RPGs, you will probably notice some of its similarities too.

When designing Free Spacer and the Commissioning System in particular, I made many design choices with the goal to be innately science fiction while forwarding the new ideas of lighter more encompassing mechanics. To make the system contemporary and streamlined, I avoided the calculations of most Point Buy systems and used a series of aspects to derive required skills, traits, and other necessary attributes for not just the Player Character (Crewmember), but also a group template and Starship (Ship) in a single game session.

Besides the Commission Chapter, I also included a Crew and Ship worksheet for use in Commissioning. For perspective, I also included a Crew Sheet and one of five Ship Sheets for use in play. Feel free to leave feedback on Layout, Presentation, the Commissioning process, and your experience with the Excerpt as you check it out.

Download (PDF, 1.86MB)

In the far future galaxy of Free Spacer, it is year 362 of the Immortal Age, the dawn of the sixth galactic age. The Milky Way is an archipelago of balkanised Quadrants each with a powerful Cardinal Society at their centres.

Orion Quadrant

In Orion Quadrant, the Cardinal Society is a powerful corporate state known as the CMA, but unlike its rival Quadrants the CMA has little direct control over their rim. Outside the Central Clusters, the Orion Quadrant is a wild place fractioned into rival provinces, independent colonies, and corporate holdings. With laws, currency, and customs that seldom reach beyond a single Sector, the Orion Quadrant is at the heart of the cold war with every faction manoeuvring for power through politics, intrigue, and even blatant military engagements.

You are commissioned as the Crew a Free Spacer Ship, the disposable pawns of a Patron Faction used to perform missions with the safety of deniability. You probably won’t die, few die anymore, but there are worse things than death.

This weekend we took Free Spacer to Fan Expo Canada in Toronto and ran a very successful session in the Toronto Area Gamers Gaming room on the seventh floor.  My session was scheduled at 11 am on Saturday Morning a difficult spot to fill it turns out. Still I found four eager players, Alex, Joshua, David, and Chris, who seemed to have a great time and managed to surprise me with their choices in the game. This session I paid particular attention to balancing NPCs, Challenge Ratings, Stress Track and Gear; I definitely got what I needed to balance the System.

Excitingly, two of my Players happened to be indie game producers in their own right. Second to arrive was Joshua Kitz who had copies of his Simple Super Heroes Game with him; you can check out his open design site too. Last to arrive was David L. Dostaler who is the maker of several games through his Superior Games Books.

All in all Fan Expo was a great experience we got great support from Justin Mohareb, the Gaming Expo Coordinator and I was impressed with all the work Sara, Kate, and all the other TAGers put into making a great event. I can’t wait for next year!

Sci-fi is, by nature, a genre in response to Science or Technology. How a Sci-fi RPG handles the social and cultural consequences of Science and Technology, is essential. There are several general approaches a Sci-fi RPG can take to integrating the Internet into the system and setting:

Star Trek

The Star Trek approach is common for many Space Operas, including Traveller and FASA Star Trek. In this approach, the Internet is divided into a couple of core technologies; the “Ship Computer” and the “Holodeck”. The “Ship Computer” is the exposition machine, available for research, engineering tasks, feeding plot points, and is the ultimate search engine. The entertainment aspect of the Internet is handled by the “Holodeck” including vacations, games, addictions, and plothooks. Neither of these amazing technologies cause great social change, indeed there are few changes to human culture since the 20^th century.

Cyberpunk

The Cyberpunk approach is common for gritty near future Games, including Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020. The Cyberpunk approach has a fully integrated Internet much like our contemporary world, however the Internet has evolved into a place, a virtual world. This is traditionally a fully immersive separate world though, which the PC’s research, hack, and basically dungeon crawl. Technology has had a vast and terrible effect on society creating more problems then it solves.

Transhuman

The Transhuman approach is usually for far future games about the transformation of humanity into our next stage of evolution, including Eclipse Phase, Transhuman Space, and Free Market. The Transhuman approach tries to predict a world where the Internet and other technologies fundamentally change humanity. This approach attempts to essentially merge the physical world and the Internet, the real world now acts much like the internet.

Making a Contemporary Sci-fi RPG

One of the design pillars for Free Spacer is to be a truly contemporary Science Fiction RPG, therefore, we cannot ignore the impact on society of the merging of technologies, it’s mobility, and ease of use. This typifies the 21^st century Internet . One obvious example is that at one time, one would need to buy even the cheapest camera as a separate device, but now most  gadgets have built in cameras. It seems obvious that in the future, most devices will be networked, have infinite data storage, full sensor inputs, allow instant communication, and Hi-speed internet access. In this sort of future you are unlikely to need cashiers, physical banks, or tour guides.

Free Spacer will be accepting some of the consequences that Transhumanism predicts, but not all. A major design pillar of the game is to not allow technology to compete with the players, it can’t act on its own. For Free Spacer the Transhuman approach pushes things too far, yes the internet will change the galaxy and how people live their day to day lives, but it won’t replace people’s fundamental needs.

Still the internet becomes a difficult design problem, destroying balance and punching holes in plots by doing too much for the players. To solve this problem I made some fundamental decisions about the science available in the galaxy. I decided that true AI impossible, anisable (faster-than-light Communications) is short range, and gave everyone encrypted networks. The future of Free Spacer embraces the internet, but it is not the internet.

My players wanted me to attack them.

Free Spacer is a system that supports all kinds of dangers, from combat to hacking to intimidation to exposure; pretty much every sort of conflict you might see in your favourite Sci-fi show. I was GMing a group of new players in a session I have run at least five times. This session was filled with hooks, encounters, and mystery, but the PCs always had a way out. Most of the time, the PCs quickly get in trouble, they pick fights, make deals, and choose sides, but not this time. These PCs seemed to refused to take the bait; I’d prod them, but they would not engage. The Players were passive, they did not want to take a stand, break the calm, or make a wrong choice.

What do I do about the passive group? Attacking players has always felt like railroading. I feel like I’m making the choice and I’m forcing the story. Shouldn’t Conflict be driven by Player choice?

Here are some possible remedies I thought of that may help me next time with passive PCs:

Extreme NPCs

Adding a troublemaker NPC, so the players will feel justified in taking extreme actions. In a down to earth setting (Pun intended) with realistic NPCs, players seem to react with less extremes especially if they realise the consequences for their actions.

Force a Choice

Encounter hooks that force a choice one way or the other earlier in the scenario should unblock the Players. This should break any patterns that maybe forming and re-engage the players with the story.

Situation’s PC Cannot Ignore

Create an encounter that is immediately life threatening to the players themselves, or threatens something they care deeply about. It forces the PCs to engage. The Players get a choice, but must act.

I’m not sure any of these options will help, perhaps you have some better ideas. In retrospect this was a very interesting Session, I’ve never dealt with a group that were so timid. My big hope is that I didn’t block them in some manner. Hopefully, next time this situation arises, I will be able to engage them and bring them out of their shells. As  a Gamemaster much of my fun comes from the players engaging in the world and surprising me with new and fun ways of resolving the conflicts. Every new group leads to a different outcome to a situation, even with passive players.

The ongoing overwhelming success of this Kickstarter is incredibly intimidating. The “Do” Kickstarter has raised over $20K out of an asked for $4K and over 400 contributors; by anyone’s judgment that is a huge success.

So, how did he do it and what can we learn from that? Daniel Solis has been very open about what made his Kickstarter a success and how Kickstarter converts his social currency into financing for his game. The question becomes, how did he generate this social currency in the first place? The simple answer is strategic marketing and hard work in the mines of the internet. Of course, the simple answer won’t help us create that same success, so I’ve looked around and here are some of the details:

• A full game: “Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple” is a full game, not just a setting or mod. Most Gamemasters create their own content, to make your game something they want it has to beyond content.
• Allies with strong voices: Fred Hicks & Evil Hat are powerful allies they have their marketing and distribution lines. The also provide a sense of assurance to the audience.
• Podcast Exposure: Multiple guest appearances on Jennisodes, Podgecast, &. Podgecast again. Podcasts are the media of the RPG community and getting the ear of their audience is valuable.
• Convention Exposure: Dreamation & GenCon; Conventions are the places where the community meets and are valuable places for people to meet you and get their hands on your game.
• Web Community exposure: Story-Games; The community communicates a great deal with the many different forums out there.
• Twitter: Twitter is a great way to get your message out their 146 characters at a time. People who want to know about your game can follow you with the touch of a button.
• Previous Successful works: Happy Birthday Robot
• Longtime Coming: Daniel Solis has been talking about his game for a good percentage of the 4 years he has been working on it.
• Playtesting publically: Do was playtested by many people, including a Podgecast Actual Play.

Kickstarter leverages this social currency extremely well and many of these methods are available to you and I. At any point in game production, we can write a blog, tweet, become involved in a forum, or start making friends. Once the game has advanced far enough even for playtesting, we can playtest the game publicly online and at Cons. After all that hard work, maybe, just maybe that social currency will turn into some earnings for real publication.

One other thing I have learned while designing Free Spacer is that many people are putting together games, but few people have a finished game. I believe a finished Game will open many doors and make generating social currency far easier.  A finished game can be played, previewed, and kickstarted; once these are underway, you can get on to podcasts. Even the biggest podcasts are looking for the new and fresh content and interview with an indie game publisher has to offer.

Free Spacer is on the path to completion and I am more energised than ever to start building that social currency, are you?

FtC4 had many firsts for us. I ran my first public play test sessions, which incidentally were my first Con games. This was also our first road trip into this part of the US; being, up until recently, west coasters, we have had little chance to visit the East Coast.

I am happy to report that the Playtest sessions went off without a hitch. Free Spacer and the scenario I ran were well received. I thank those players that came out and tried it. I was extremely nervous, but both sessions went smoother than I hoped. The Players quickly understood the game mechanics and some even figured out the fastest way to gather and sort the dice without me suggesting it. Now that I’m confident that the base mechanics are fun and accessible, even to those who never saw the game before, I’m ready to move onto to polishing Advanced systems and the rest of the book.

It was great meeting all the people at the Con and I love to continue to get know all those Booters out there. I like to send special appreciation to those that played my sessions of Free Spacer and would love to get feedback comments from you all. We will be active in Fear the Boot Forums. You can find us there under our forum handles: LisaSapinsky and Christoph.

There are so many things to do to ready for our first preview convention game sessions. I have rules to tweak, an adventure to finish, Maps to make, and character sheets to finish.

The convention looks to be a lot of fun and we’re seated to play some sweet looking games. We are especially excited to play several sessions run by some of my favourite Podcasters at Fear the Boot, the Podgecast, and RPPR.

As for my Game, I will be running a session each morning using the same scenario. I’m hoping to get a lot of eyes and opinions on the game. Really, my big hope for the Con is to meet a lot people and show them my soon to be finished Sci-Fi RPG.

While we’re there, I’m hoping to tweet the convention, but I’ll need to use my iPhone on Wi-fi to avoid some wicked Roaming charges. If I can find some good Wi-fi it would be great if you want to follow me and I’ll keep you up to date.

If you’re coming, drop by to say hi, and give Free Spacer a try. I hope to see you all there.

PDFs are cheap because they Suck

As many people are aware, a PDF is a document format created by Adobe to create a standard document format for Printers. The biggest trouble with it is, it does not and was not meant to replace print products. There are barely any advantages to reading a book in this format. I for one have never read a full book as a PDF. Most users use PDFs for reference purposes and as a way to store backups and reference books digitally, rather than leisurely reading.

The reason PDFs cannot replace books is because PDFs do not read well on screens. They are not setup to read on any specific devices and more importantly, PDFs are not Reflowable Documents. A reflowable documents is “a type of electronic document that can adapt its presentation to the output device. “ Reflowable documents automatically warp the text of the document to match the device. The user doesn’t have to zoom in or out, turn the screen horizontal, or lose their place on the page.

eReaders

eReaders have been around for a long time, but in the last few years they have really started to take off in their own right. There are many different eReaders, most with their own eStores. The Kindle and the iPad are very popular.

One interesting point about the Amazon Kindle is its popular following; some even prefer to read books on the Kindle to hardcover books. This may be partially due to Amazon artificially lowering the price of books for the Kindle to drive up its popularity. This makes it very expensive for publishers to sell in the Amazon store. These

There is a good chance that someday, Digital book formats will replace print books if they are done right to improve the reader’s experience and as eReaders become more common, PDF could start to disappear in favour of more eReader compatible formats. There are several challenges foreseeable for RPGs in this format:

• There are less options and control for layout making Images and tables awkward.
• Referencing while you are playing may be slower on devices as not all formats support interactive linking.
• eReaders cannot be both in colour and have an easy to read Matte screen.
• eBooks make little money for Publishers due to distributors control of the market.
• Due to international copy write issues, Digitial Books are often difficult to purchase internationally, even if you own one of these devices.

Imagine for a quick second all these issues were resolved. You could download and read a core RPG book on a digital eReader that looked great and was easy to use. So the million-dollar question for publishers is, would you pay around full price for a digital RPG book if the experience was better or equal to reading a print book?

The great myth about PDF distribution is that it is free and the publisher receives close to 100% of the profit from the book sale. Once we looked into it, PDF distribution turned out not to be that simple, at least not any more. There are still many costs to consider as well. To set up even the most basic PDF Distribution you need three things:

1. Storefront – a website for your customer to purchase your RPG PDF on
2. Transaction – you need a method to accept, handle, and process payment
3. Fulfillment – you need an automated system setup for the customer to receive the PDF immediately after purchase

Storefront; the Website

For us, the Storefront seems like the easiest part of the PDF Distribution, we already have a website. If you don’t have your own website, getting and setting up a website is a big process and depending on your level of technical expertise, you may even need to get help from someone more web savvy. Explaining how to build a website is far beyond the scope of this post and while a quick Google search should help you out, don’t forget to check out new systems like WordPress or Squarespace.

Purchasing cheap web space and a single domain name comes with yearly costs. You can expect to pay between $60-100.00 annually to maintain a cheap, low traffic site.

If doing the website yourself is daunting and you want to go cheap, there are free options out there that are already setup for you. Most of the best ones are blogs like blogger. Going with this does allow an immediate and cheap website to sell your PDF. However, free sites don’t come with your own domain name, you have less bandwidth, and do not migrate to new webhosts easily.

Transactions; Processing Payment

Accepting money is straightforward and fast. A few big services out there will do this for you with only small fees. The leader is PayPal and it is very common, reliable, and trusted. You will usually need a business account, which is free to setup. PayPal only costs you money when you make the transaction. They take a flat fee of $.30 plus 2.9% of each transaction you make.  They provide you with several options to setup payment, including money requests or a Pay Now button. Google Checkout is a similar process and has the same fee per transaction. They both provide a convenient widget like system for you to put on your website.

The big catch is that PayPal and Google checkout do not actually fulfill your order. They won’t send your PDF to the customer. For all the widgets and buttons they give you, you won’t be able to use them to sell PDFs directly. Instead, they merely send a customised message to the customer upon to inform them how they will receive their purchase. You could use this message to manually fulfill the order, we explain this bellow in the Cheap Way section.

Fulfillment; Getting your PDF to the customer

To automatically send your PDF to the customer upon payment, you will need a 3^rd party shopping cart. There are hundreds of different services with a variety of options, but most of them work the same way for similar prices. Most allow multiple payment processors, hosting and even coupons.

E-Junkie and Pulley are common shopping carts that act as fulfillment services working with your Storefront and Transaction service. When you sign up, you enter your PayPal or Google account information and they hook you up automatically. You enter your product information and upload your PDF into their service and you receive code to put on your website.

3^rd party shopping carts are pretty easy, but they do cost money. They charge by the amount of different products you want to sell and the amount of hosting space you need. PDFs are small, so it is unlikely you will go over the space requirements with a couple PDFs.  On E-Junkie 10 products and 50mg of storage will cost $5.00 a month and because you pay the payment transaction fees, E-Junkie does not charge you any fees per transaction.

Another option besides Pulley or E-Junkie is to sign up for a whole shop at a service like Shopify. This is the most expensive type of cart and is more useful to people selling a large number of products.

All in one services

If these three steps are too much work, you can take the easy way out with an all in one service, but they are much more expensive to use.

If you want to have your own customised service, but with less hassle services such as Payloadz offers a method of selling digital goods online including the Payloadz store. You get simple code to place wherever you want to sell and you can post this in multiple locations, including your own website, EBay, and social media. Even better, you only need a PayPal personal account to claim you money later with all transactions handled by Payloadz. All this is great, but it comes at a cost, a monthly cost of $14.95. On top of the monthly fee, you also have to pay a transaction flat fee of $.49 per sale plus 5%. This could work really well for those that do not want to have a website as the cost for hosting a website is similar, if not more expensive. It would also work well for publishers selling on their free blog even. Payloadz doesn’t include web hosting though, so if a website is part of your marketing plan the prices will mount up quickly.

Another popular all in one service option is the PDF store, such as RPG Drivethru or the Indie Press Revolution. These services give you a page for each product, handle transactions, and fulfill any orders for you. It is low risk and there is already a large group of RPG customers ready to purchase your RPG. While it is a solid option for getting your PDF out there fast, costs are relatively high; they usually take 30% or more and often have standard discounting systems or suggestions that lower the price of your RPG PDF over time. They don’t provide webhosting for your marketing and the biggest disadvantage is that your PDF is buried in the mountain of other cheap PDFs.

The Cheap way

There is of course a cheaper way to do this, it is less than Ideal, but still worth considering. To cover transactions you can use a Free PayPal Personal account. Once the customer finishes paying, they receive an automated message saying how they will get the PDF; we mention this in the Transaction Section.

Once the customer finishes paying, you send them the PDF by email. Although this works well, there are a couple issues. This method can seem unreliable to many potential customers. Customers might worry that the seller could easily be offline for a week on vacation or worse, putting up an account to scam people out of a few bucks. It will be a challenge to ask people to send a large cash sum to a personal account so they can receive the PDFs later at some unknown date.

You can also put up a download link for your PDF on your webhost. Once the customer pays, they get an automated message with the link in it. This gets them the PDF right away, however, there is nothing stopping them from sending that link to their friends or putting it online in a forum. If security and piracy are not large issues for you, this is one of the cheapest and fastest methods of getting your PDF out there.

Next Time

With PDF distribution pretty much figured out, there are still several important services and options for distributing your RPG to the Gamers out there.  Next time I will talk about distributing to eBook readers and the many advantages and pitfalls to the various services out there. So stay tuned!