5MW Rokaner Report #1, with Marco Serrano

RR#1, Yukwanine, Jan 2024, Free Bifold World

Happy new year, folks. A new year, and a new name for the 5MW Newsletter: the Rokaner Report.

Why Rokaner? As some may recall from issue #2, this name is an homage to the exo-enthographists of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle. Within 5MW RPG, Rokaners tend to voyage solo, live within the communities of the diverse peoples of the 5 Million Worlds, and send their reports through the local Ansible (another Le Guin borrow-word meaning superluminal communication device).

In this Rokaner Report, I interview Marco Serrano of SpicyTuna RPG. After the interview, we brainstormed a world: What if a Greenhorns planet was found in the 5 Million Worlds?

Read on to find out, and snag the free bifold, exclusive to the Rokaner Report!

Greenhorns from SpicyTuna RPG

Check out Greenhorns, now funding on Kickstarter! 

Chris: Heya Marco! I’m so glad to have you on the first issue of the 5MW Rokaner Report. Before we get to the fun nitty-gritty of building worlds, I know you’ve got some great science fiction (sf) lit chops, and wanted to ask you about the sf inspirations behind your newest project, the weird space rpg Greenhorns.

Marco: To be honest, Greenhorns is mostly a giant what-if type of setting. What if a seemingly omnipotent, benevolent, and lonely god-like entity chose a group of people and allowed them to use a fraction of its power? What if it showed the people it could create countless worlds and they could help? 

In the framework of building worlds with infinite possibilities, I’ve mostly been inspired by various mythos, Monsters-of-the-Week shows like Power Rangers, and superhero comics like Hell Boy. A lot of sources have inspired singular items or enemies, such a !!Boss!! in the Quickstart inspired by Master Hand from Super Smash Bros. or spray-on boxing gloves inspired by Flint’s spray-on shoes in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

Chris: I hear that. The PCs we made were reminiscent of Saturday Morning cartoon heroes, but with a more dangerous (and fragile!) edge. Can you give our readers a quick run-down of who the Greenhorns are, and what their job is?

Marco: Players are humanoid aliens called Kruxians were chosen by The Creatora Machinika. Throughout the centuries of living in close proximity to The Great Machine Kruxians have evolved, multiplied their intelligence, and developed powers.

Greenhorns are newly trained operatives who are deployed on planet creation missions. These missions feel like dungeon diving as they delve into the forming planet through a tunnel system in an attempt to stabilize the chaos and allow the planet to settle into real time.

Greenhorns can also be bounty hunters, seeking to eliminate threats to their home planet. The Wanted are past creations that see Kruxians as their evil creators, the ones that displaced them from their world and everything they loved and knew.

It’s the most dangerous job in the universe. Senior planet builders and retired veterans are rare, but Kruxians replace their lost and retired 10-to-1 with greenhorn recruits.

Of course, I played as this Samus-like Discipline. How could I not?

Chris: When I first played Greenhorns, I was reminded of the Cosmic Marvel comics. When I later read the free Quickstart, the book enhanced that feeling. The PC, NPC and Threat generation encourages larger-than-life character generation that I found liberating and loads of fun to interact with. What, if any, sci-fi characters inspired the Kruxian Greenhorns and the PC Disciplines?

Marco: There’re a lot here! Conjure Mage is heavily inspired by the Lantern Corps from DC comics. Force Flyer is a mix between The Flash, Slingshot/Yo-yo, and Jean Gray. Cosmic Ghosts have an equivalent to Luke Skywalker’s force projection. Blast Masters have grafted and cybernetic weapons and their skills are inspired by Zoids and Gundams. Potion Doser can temporarily give themself or allies powers inspired by the Human Torch, Clayface, and Mr. Fantastic.

Chris: And Greenhorns gain these crazy powers directly from the Creatora Machinika. In barely two pages, you paint a landscape of hubris and power befitting the grounds for a space opera tragedy. The Kruxians elected themselves as sentinels of the Creatora Machinika, and set out to build worlds. The parabalistic parallels aren’t lost on me, as it’s a frequent theme in many sf works. What was your drive behind making the Creatora Machinika an integral, present piece of this game? 

Marco: The first thing I’ll say is that Greenhorns is not a commentary on human fallibility or on God. The drive really came from becoming obsessed with the gamification of human fallibility, how humans consistently botch having power, and how a benevolent god doesn’t interfere with free will, all of which have been a large part of my upbringing and part of my collegiate studies. 

You nailed it on the head with “The Kruxians elected themselves as sentinels.” 

“Creation is beautiful, but becomes lonely as millennia pass. For the sake of joy, and some amusement, the Creatora Machinika gifts itself to a people…They [the chosen people] push themselves to be gods. They put the weight of the worlds on their frail shoulders and send their young and able on dangerous missions in pursuit of filling the void.”

It’s all been really cool to see how players interact with this bit of context. Some PCs die from hubris or disregarding fear to fulfill their duty, others act as acolytes, and others try to communicate with the Creatora Machinika throughout the mission which has worked out to be a huge source of comedy.

Chris: In Greenhorns the PCs hold the fate of worlds in their hands. They create the world by visiting each chamber, eradicating the !!Boss!! or fulfilling its wants, finding NPCs who need assistance, or even emergent narrative reasons fulfilled during the crawl for the planet’s creation. This open choice is a great format for a session. I love how the tables for the world layers encourage curiosity in PCs and help tell the story of the planet they’re building. Could you talk about the creative influences that led to these level design choices? 

Marco: Down We Go was a huge influence! Maybe obviously since it is a hack of the Together We Go system. Specifically Lore as Loot and the variable dungeon structure really caught my interest. The variability along with my interest in building planets shown in my past work crashed together for the whole structure of the game.

Lore as Loot expanded into a mini-game after a planet creation mission. I had heavy influence from Diogo Nogueira’s Cave of Our People, an introductory Primal Quest adventure to thank for that as well. The Rocketeer (GM) may ask questions to help facilitate these stories such as, “What was a lesser known creation myth that resurfaced as a core belief of many inhabitants?” or “What energy source did the people learn to harness? What was the result of the discovery (positive or negative)?”

The wonderful and constant discussion of how to implement horror and wonder into games through the balance of expected and unexpected was also a large influence on how I write the planet layers, and how the “Filling the Chambers” rules are written. I try to be very intentional with how the two maps for a planet layer and the suggested options for filling each chamber interact.

Building Worlds with Marco Serrano

Following the interview, Marco and I built a world using the Uncanny Layer in Greenhorns as inspiration. He shared a brainstorm method to create NPCs, Locales and Creatures. He builds five d6 tables–sparks, landmarks, things–all themed along a similar motif, and draws an image: a MTG card or random comic book page, for example.

So I rolled and clicked (eyes-closed!) in my sf art inspirations folders and got this:

Art by Andrew “Boog” Faithful.

Arresting, Extreme Confidence, Maze of Mirrors, Optic Eye Implant, Phasing Horror

Marco was immediately struck by the image of a world that hadn’t wholly healed. Bleak survivors hounded by ghosts of demons past, lingering in the world since its inception. A memorable NPC from our Greenhorns game last November came up: Screwtooth, a wingless gargoyle-like fella.

From this initial seed, we developed the World, its People and their problems. Out of this excellent chassis, the first 5MW RPG World Bifold was written up and laid out to bring you Yukwanine, a Greenhorns and 5MW RPG Crossover Planet:

Download Yukwanine: A Crossover Planet here (includes plaintext version) !

This World Bifold contains Planetary Zones, Peoples, Factions, and adventure complications in the form of Push Tables. These 5MW supplements will always be free for subscribers to the Rokaner Report, so please to spread the word!

Otherwise, I’m hard at work on a couple writing commissions, and drafting the 5MW Avatar Builder. I’ll share how that’s panning out for the next Rokaner Report.

Signing off,

Chris Airiau