5 Million Worlds Newsletter, #2
Issue 2, Oct 2023
In this October 2023 issue of the 5MW Newsletter (I gotta come up with a cooler name than “Newsletter” at some point), I’ll be responding to the poll from last time. A full third of the votes went to the Hainish Cycle, so let’s dig in!
What is the Hainish Cycle?
The Hainish Cycle is a series of eight novels and thirteen stories by the author Ursula K. Le Guin published between 1964 and 2000. Unlike many sf series, the Hainish Cycle is not one continuous story, but mostly standalones set within the same universe. Each work explores a different facet of humanity as within the frame of a planetary romance, discovering the world and most importantly, its people.
The stories are often about reconnecting with the descendants of Hain. Hain is the origin of a vast human empire that seeded our lil part of the galaxy tens of thousands of years ago before falling apart, regrowing, and being like, “Oh damn, we were shits.” In the stories, a central character is often a cultural ambassador who doubles as an anthropologist, sometimes incognito, sometimes not. I thought they were called “rokaners” but apparently I made that up? If anyone knows if “rokaner” is a real thing, gimme a shout.
The “God is an Astronaut” part of the narrative doesn’t interest me at all (good band though), but the wild human variation among Hainish descendants does. The books heavily imply these biological changes are the result of Hainish experiments, but biology is only a lens for focusing on how this altered existence impacts human society.
Hainish Influence on 5MW RPG
The base idea in the 5MW setting is that known space has been inhabited by Earth-descendants for millions of years. In this far future, Earth is forgotten–a legend at best. Essentially, that is what Hain is to most characters in Le Guin’s novels. But in all of the 5 Million Worlds, Earth is not among them. This design decision is an echo of Mothership RPG’s anti-canon approach. Guides and players decide what their sector of space is like, not me.
As a call to the Hainish Cycle, the “aliens” in 5MW are Earthling in origin. Their “alien” biology is rooted in post-human experiments, in the same way as a Gethian, Athshean, or Terran were Hainish experiments. Most progenitors of the 5MW “aliens” I’ve written so far chose to become what they are, but similar to Octavia Butler’s Oankali (Lilith’s Brood) some chose hybridization over extinction. The main basis for this design decision is to push PCs towards establishing meaningful contact despite difficulties in doing so, as in the end, all beings belong to the same cradle of existence.
Another point from the Hainish Cycle that inspires me is the planetary romance: the deep exploration of what a planet’s peoples and cultures embody. This ties into the aliens above, for sure, and creating a solid planetary map that evokes all the differences in cultures on a single world would be a dream to add to the game.
The final influence I intend to focus on from Le Guin’s work is nonviolent conflict resolution. I’d like the driving force for a 5MW game to be exploration not exploitation, creating that meaningful contact, and building a community (and fucking up fascist regimes, but that’s a commentary for when I cover Banks’ Culture novels). I still have a lot to research on meaningful community building, and a lot to test out to make this work the way I envision.
OK, what does this mean for play?
Loads of sector and planet generation tables already exist, from Classic Traveller to Starforged to Hull Breach Vol. 1’s Rimspace Planet Generator. I won’t say we have enough tables (who doesn’t love a good table?), but I’m wary of making sector generation a focus in 5MW RPG. I’m more interested in how players can interact with the people of a world, and how those people are unique because of their world’s weird atmospheric make-up, or what-have-you.
This might seem a bit left field, but I’m a frequent listener of the RTFM Podcast and they talk a lot about how “Move” questions in some PbtA games can inform play and change the direction of a game. As someone who hasn’t yet played any PbtA–or even read any, except Patchwork World–this is a bit of an intriguing design mystery I’d like to investigate. This talk also reminds me of how questions prompt play in solo journaling ttrpgs (forefront in my mind is Dwelling by Seb Pines). I’m of the mind that it’d be a fool’s errand to attempt some sort of completionist table-for-every-possibility in a science fiction game. But providing the right kinds of questions, or prompts, and follow-up Push Tables is the idea I wish to pursue first.
These questions would have to be rather specific to be meaningful, and not just a series of tables. I’m leaning towards putting questions and Push Tables in adventure/setting books, rather than as a “generation” toolkit. Perhaps I should take a page from David Blandy and Iko’s design philosophy and make this part of a 5MW Adventure Creator’s guide or something. Or maybe I’m full of shit and a series of mega-detailed d100 tables is where it’s at, haha. All part of the journey of creation, I suppose.
What I definitely want to lean into are the Push Tables, which I feel replicate a “random encounter” style of play. The game world developing in totally unexpected ways for everyone at the table is key to the experience of discovery I’d like to evoke with 5MW. Having planet and cultural generation tools feed those tables could be a great resource for any sf game, so maybe I will pursue those. Still, I'm gonna read Pasión de las Pasiones and try to play some PbtA to see if those mechanics may hold some answers.
What’s cool rn?
An Infinity of Ships
An Infinity of Ships is an extensive sci-fi ship writing toolkit packed with gorgeous art and tons of tables to deliver evocative spaceships with fun attitudes and tensions to seed adventures and spark play. This Kickstarter launches Tuesday, October 17th, and has nearly 1000 followers.
Adam STATION is the writer on this book, and we’re very much on the same sci-fi wavelength, here. So much so that I’m writing a week of deck plans inspired by An Infinity of Ships for my delayed (but still free until it’s finished!) Spaceshiptember zine, A Buncha Spaceship Deckplans. Adam also invited me to write a mini-adventure spread in An Infinity of Ships, which features one of those upcoming deckplans, so keep an eye out and follow the Kickstarter for its imminent launch!
VR DEAD
Daniel Hallinan has released his newest Mothership RPG adventure, VR DEAD through Space Penguin Ink and frankly, it’s phenomenal. VR DEAD manages to accomplish so much all within 32 pages, it’s inspiring and making me rethink my approach to revisions on my next Sleeper Crew Adventure. We have a disturbing sci-fi horror scenario, compelling and concise NPCs, poignant social commentary all woven into an adventure that pushes PCs to engage with the environment in a completely novel way I’ve seen nowhere else, even in sf literature.
In VR Dead, there are two worlds: the VR world and the real world. Escaping alive requires players to navigate their PCs through both, almost in a horror version of A Link to the Past. Of course, parallels can be drawn to The Matrix too, but the simulation world in this module is not distinct from the real world, it’s the same station but shiny and idyllic. Reading it sent all sorts of fireworks off through my head as to how I’d run it online, so it has catapulted up my to-run list. I highly recommend you check it out.
Short Updates and Next Month
This past month, I played in and recorded two Actual Plays for the Outer Rim Uprising campaign. For the first, I was a player in a duet of They Won’t Cage Us with Pierre-Philippe Renaud as Warden over at Coup Critique for their Les Valses de la Crypte series–note: this video is in French!
The second AP was with Samantha Leigh, author of Amanesis and one of the editors on Outer Rim Uprising. Together we played Iko and Nyhur’s Sentience Assessment Procedure on The Lost Bay Podcast’s Youtube channel.
Since Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels came in second in the poll, I’ll cover that next month. Mainly, that has to do with the focus on conflict with the baddies, and hopefully I can cover that a bit more briefly, haha. I’ll also touch on the next Sleeper Crew Adventures zine I’m working on.
Thanks for reading, and be well.
Really excited for what you've got cooking here. I like how much thought and consideration you are putting into it, and looking to past examples as good inspiration.