This is the fourth post in this series in which we work through the expanded setting creation process for the Genesys TTRPG, as published in the Expanded Player’s Guide (1, 2, 3) and the associated setting worksheet.

This week, we’re going to do both steps four and step five. Step four is less relevant for Iron Horizons, as it’s focused on the cosmology, deities, and religions. I’m not Gene Roddenberry, however, so I find it unlikely that taking to space will make religion disappear from the human psyche. Additionally, this is also a future history/alternate history, so it’s based on our own world if technology took a different direction than our own.

As such, the majority of religions will be ones we are familiar with in our own world. So far, I’ve done the most work on what Christianity, especially Episcopalian and Catholic, looks like. I mentioned them briefly last time with the Cupertinan monks and Knights-Stellarum. All other religions also exist, but it feels appropiative to create a future version of religions that I do not practice and only possess a simple understanding. For the future, being able to more fully develop our own world’s religions in Iron Horizons is a goal that is top of my list when I have the resources to work more closely with sensitivity readers and believers.

Step five are where we will once again get our hands dirty, digging deeper into the concepts and ideas we had from last week regarding the different geographic regions. This time, we’re looking at the governments, societies, and other groups within the Alathni System. I touched on them briefly last time, but that is our focus for this stage of the process.

Step 4: Cosmology, Religion, and Deities

This is the framing for the individual religions. Not too in-depth, at least as far as worldbuilding tends to go. Certainly not by Brandon Sanderson standards, but nothing is complex by Sanderson standards. We’ve mentioned one religion in the last post, although they were probably better described as a cult. So let’s make an actual religion real quick.

I won’t touch on any of the real religions that exist in Iron Horizons. There is a table of options that we could roll on if we wanted, but I think I have an idea for one to go with it.

• Religion Name: Children of the Dragon
  • The Children of the Dragon is one of the many religions to develop as humanity has spread into space, each one characterized by the unique ideals of its founders. The Children are among the stranger, as their founder claims to have been saved from a bad spacewalk by a giant space dragon, who gave them a vision of a better and more moral future for humanity.
• Morality: Selfless
• Leadership and Important Individuals:
  • Draconis Vox: The Voice of the Dragon, original identity unknown, location unknown, age unknown. The prophet of the Children, only known to have once been a roughneck working on a remote mining colony whose tether broke and drifted into the void. They drifted and were ready to die when, according to their sermon, a giant space dragon saved them and carried them close enough to be rescued, but sending a telepathic vision of a united galaxy full of benevolence and goodwill.
• Areas of Influence: The Diskward Marches, lower economic status populations across human space
• Relationship with Society: Society finds them outlandish, but appreciates what they do, especially among the poor.
• Relationship with Government: Governments have a variety of opinions- but generally mistrust them and view them as communist provocateurs.

Nice and simple. Not enough room for doctrine or theology, which usually isn’t necessary for a tabletop game. I like how it views the religions primarily through the lenses of how the religion interacts with, or is viewed by, the rest of the society. That’s something a lot of worldbuilding resources for RPGs miss, I think. There’s usually not a need to have doctrinal creeds or theologies in roleplaying games, unless those elements are essential to the narrative experience within the game itself. The evil spider-goddess cult, whether in D&D or Elizabeth Moon’s Paksenarrion world (about which I wrote my dissertation) don’t need theological treatises to fill their role in the story. Undoubtedly, some players and readers would love if they did, but they are a much smaller group of people.

Remember, in this process we’re looking at a minimum viable setting. What is absolutely essential to play in the setting? Not necessarily an extended campaign, but a multi-session adventure, at minimum. For that, we’re looking primarily at places where players and game masters can hook into the world for plots and backstories.

Step 5: Governments & Societies

Societies & Governments

That takes us to the next step- the final one in the worldbuilding process already. The next and final step focuses primarily on mechanical elements. The EPG goes into a lot more detail in this section and includes quite a few tables. I really appreciated that element.

Genesys does a really good job of including mechanics for non-combat encounters, especially in terms of the social and intrigue aspects. For Iron Horizons, that’s pretty important to the overall way the setting functions.

It’s definitely not a sword and sorcery setting where conflicts exist primarily between individuals or small groups, like parties of roving adventurers. It’s quite a bit more organized than that, even in the frontier, and looks mostly at individuals and small groups opposed against systems. As in, social and political systems, not always against an entire star system. That does sometimes happen though.

So, on our sheet, we have two large boxes for societies. You can see an example of them above. Fortunately, we touched on two societies last time, so now we can bring them into more focus and tie more directly into the potential narratives.

• Society Name: No table for this one, but that’s not unexpected given the subject matter. You can pretty easily use names from the geographic regions, or any number of the hundreds of name generators online.
• Society’s Government: This one has a table as well, with a wide array of different government structures, as well as possibilities within results to roll again for more details. In one, for example, the main result is local councils (essentially) with additional rolls to help determine if councils are elected, appointed, or inherited. I like the additional details as it helps push past the cliches into something more unique. One of the best tips of writing advice I ever heard was to never accept the first three ideas that came to mind, due to the recency bias. Unfortunately, I don’t remember where that advice comes from and the internet has not been helpful in tracking it down. Rolling dice can work a similar function.
• Regions it Controls: Also pretty important, but not too much detail here, especially having done the previous step already. It could be as broad as a galaxy or as specific as a city block, depending on the nature of your society.
• Leadership & Important Individuals: The chapter has two versions of developing leaders and NPCs— one using a single dominant personality trait and the other using the same system as player characters with strengths, flaws, motivations, and fears. That helps make very dynamic NPCs that can drive a plot for PCs to interact with.
• Objectives: I really like this one. It’s another table to roll on, and has a huge list of objectives, applicable to both societies and the other factions. Since Genesys is primarily a narrative system, and works a lot with motivation, this is a great way to establish what motivates different groups. They’re fairly overarching and broad categories, which is very helpful.
• Description: The exciting part! This is where we dive into the details and the stories of the organizations and societies that we’ve been building. The early steps were the foundations, but these are where we build the societal structures that provide the bulk of the story hooks.

Let’s go ahead and apply these information to the two societies we discussed last time: Athena Proxima and Old Alathni. After that, we’ll do the same with factions and organizations. For the most part, the tables and categories are the same, just have smaller focuses than societies as a whole. The main difference is the line for the type of organization. The table for this one includes unions, trade groups, scientific groups, criminal groups, and so on. It’s a broad category to use for what these factions do.

Societies & Governance of the Alathni System

• Society Name: Athena Proximans
• Society’s Government:
  • The Alathni Company, subsidiary of Aldottorai Colonial Trade Company, representing the Aldottorai Republic. The colony is run as a company, with a mixture of regular employees and what they call “Prepaid Employees,” which is essentially their term for indentured workers. The company pays for their transport, move, and initial settlement, with the understanding that they will work off their debt (and interest) over an amount of time specified in the initial contract. There are very few, if any, independent colonists on Athena Proxima, as the ACTC holds monopoly rights until the initial purchasing cost is repaid. As a result, the colony operates as a business, overseen by a Chief Colonial Director, overseen by a board of directors appointed by the Aldottorai Republic and ACTC, with various departments beneath them to ensure the colony functions.
• Regions it Controls:
  • Athena Proxima
    • Initial colony is named Athena Proxima, with the smaller subsidiary settlements having a combination of numbers and letters to designate when they were established and the initials of the department that founded them.
      • Athena Proxima C-7: The seventh smaller settlement to be established, along the shores of the continent, turning it somewhat into a vacation town and the crossing point to the islands between Athena Proxima and Old Alathni. Most illegal business that happens between the two societies passes through here, adding a distinct air of danger to what would otherwise be an idyllic and temperate beach town.
      • Athena Proxima R-19: The main research and development lab of Athena Proxima, this settlement is run entirely by the security and science departments, making it very difficult for outsiders to gain access. The only people permitted to live in this town are the lab employees, their families, and those necessary to support them. Nobody is entirely sure what’s being worked on inside the lab complex, but there are many rumors, some of which claim that the ACTC found alien technology in the alleged ruins in the moon, and are secretly studying them here.
• Leadership & Important Individuals:
  • Chief Colonial Director Conrad Lilly
  • Finance Director Leandra Peters
  • Corporate Security Director Devi Cox
  • Operations Director Hilda Rao
• Objectives:
  • Economic Development: The primary purpose behind the Aldottorai’s colonization efforts is to turn a profit. The Athena Proxima colony and Alathni asteroid mines are no exception. Purchasing the rights to own and colonize a planet are incredibly expensive, and the Republic wishes to pay off their bonds and loans as quickly as possible. This means Athena Proxima is structured to minimize costs to increase the profits for a better return on investment.
• Description:
  • Athena Proxima officially (at least according to the Aldottorai government) covers the entire planet of Alathni Major, but in reality only applies to the one continent. Like most Aldottorai colonies, it operates as its own subsidiary company owned first by the Aldottorai Colonial Trading Company and then, through the ACTC, the Aldottorai Republic. The vast majority of its inhabitants are colonist-employees of the company with the job of turning a previously uninhabited planet into a profitable world to boost the finances of the Republic. As a result, the vast majority of the colony settlements are cheaply made and utilitarian places meant to give workers a place to live, a place to work, a place to spend their company scrip and not much else. real money, Aldottorai dollars, are hard to come by, except when brought in from off world, and most of it goes straight to the Alathni Company as tariffs and taxes. The people of Athena Proxima are pragmatic optimists, however, seeing a future they can build with their own labor and, eventually, their own money. Once the colony pays off its debts, it can be officially integrated into the Aldottorai Republic with all the rights (and strong economy) thereof. At the local level, most decisions are made through unofficial consensus, but anything beyond that scale goes through the district and regional managers. As a result, most people on Athena Proxima prefer to keep their problems in-house or, at least, solve them through unofficial means, especially off-worlders who aren’t afraid to risk the wrath of the ACTC.

• Society Name: The Old Alathni
• Society’s Government: Local Rule— elected elders and society wide Folkmoot for decisions affecting the entire society, as well as resolving conflicts between communities. The Moot Speaker is elected by representatives from all of the communities and serves for life, presiding over each Folkmoot and acting as a mediator.
• Regions it Controls:
  • Old Alathni
    • Herald’s Town: The capital of Old Alathni, and the largest population center, built within and around the ruins of their generation ship using scavenged and repurposed technology, added onto through the black market trade of colony tech and the official support of the Cupertinans, despite the protest of the Aldottorai government. Herald’s Town is a bustling metropolis compared to most settlements on the Diskward Marches, given that it had several additional centuries to grow and adapt.
    • New Ohio: As the Old Alathni spread out from Herald’s Town, they began to settle new towns. New Ohio is the Old Alathni counterpart to Athena Proxima C-7. Sitting along the mouth of a slowly growing river running down from the mountains, it made for easy access from their mountain heartland to the coastal settlements and then, eventually, to the Islands and Athena Proxima. Unlike the dangerous current running beneath Athena Proxima C-7, however, New Ohio is a relaxed and easygoing place, with lots of trade and tourism moving through with little difficulty.
• Leadership & Important Individuals:
  • Moot Speaker Salman Nye
  • High Priestess Astride Georges
  • Militia Commander Duncan Boone
• Objectives:
  • Social Development: The goal of the original Herald colonists were artists, thinkers, and scientists. Utopians, to be precise, who believed they could create an ideal society in the stars. While that proved impossible when the ship was damaged too badly to continue, they pushed forward regardless, making the best of what they had, and still with the goal of creating a prosperous, free, and flourishing society for all.
• Description:
  • The people who inhabit Old Alathni were from the first wave of colonists, even before the Cupertinans began their process. With their generation ship having gotten lost, they ran their ship aground on the first planet they found that was close to habitable. They didn’t know at the time, having been a generation ship, that the Cupertinans were in the process of terraforming the world or that the Aldottorai Republic (whose home system had not even been discovered when the ship first left Terra) had begun the purchase process for the system. Given that it was the very early days of the process, the Cupertinans were unaware that the ship had been in the system or landed on the planet, as that would have voided the Aldottorai claim. Over time, the inhabitants of the ship began to expand as the terraforming gradually brought the world closer and closer to being Earth-like. They grew and flourished, creating their own culture and syncretic religion, ruled over by a high priestess and hereditary priestly class. Each community chooses their own leaders and chooses representatives to go to the annual Folkmoot, whose Moot Speaker serves as a de facto head of government for all the Old Alathni. They did not have an easy time early on, however, as successive waves of disease and climate instability wreaked havoc on the colony early on, and technology failures became more and more difficult to repair. They believe these trials made them resilient, however, and feel there is no challenge they can’t overcome, especially after discovering their neighbors’ expansionist itch. The communities are relatively isolated from each other and the overall population is rather small, so they often turn to outsiders for advanced or technical skills that did not survive to be taught to the following generations.

Factions & Organizations

The Holy-Mendicant Order of St. Joseph of Cupertino (Cupertinans) & the Knights-Stellarum

• Type of Organization:
  • Religious-Scientific-Humanist & Military
• Leadership and Important Individuals:
  • Abbess-Bishop Dr. Greta Roy: head of all Cupertinan monasteries, operations, and activities in the Alathni Sector
  • Knight-Commodore Saeed Michel: Senior captain of the Knights-Stellarum flotilla responsible for this sector of the Diskward Marches
  • Friar Dr. Laszlo Hume, scientist in charge of maintaining Alathni Major’s climate and completing the ecoforming of Alathni Minor

• Objectives:
  • Act as spiritual shepherds and physical protectors of humanity on the edges of human space, mediate between warring parties, and help life flourish across the galaxy in partnership with their Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, and other fraternal orders
• Description: The Holy-Mendicant Order of St. Joseph of Cupertino and their smaller, minor Order- the Sovereign Military Order of Christ and the Heavens (Knights-Stellarum) are a religious order founded under the auspices of the Coalition of Terran Religions, serving as Christianity’s representative order, dedicated to exploration, humanitarian, and scientific work, known primarily for their role in exploration and ecoforming new worlds for human expansion. Comprised of a combination of religious, technical, and military experts, they are often the ones that new worlds first look to for help. Working closely with their interfaith counterparts, these Coalition Orders are often the only source for assistance, mediation, or defense along the frontier. While the bulk of their work in the Alathni System is complete, they maintain a maintenance monastery on the planet and continue to work on Alathni Minor, making them a frequent (and welcome) presence in the system, as they are the only non-Company military presence to ever make an appearance. That doesn’t deter all pirates and organized crime, but it deters most of them.

Alathni Asteroiders United Laborers (AAUL)

• Type of Organization:
  • Labor Union
• Leadership and Important Individuals:
  • Chloe Frank: Lead union organizer, asteroid miner, and ore hauler
  • Noah Alwin: Lead union organizer, smelter, and engineer
  • Max Merle: Lead union organizer, pilot, and prospector
• Objectives:
  • Better pay, safer working conditions, and more freedom for the crews who work the asteroid mines.
• Description:
  • The Aldottorai Republic does not like unions. As a republic keenly focused on its financial growth and profitable colonies, they try very hard to suppress unions among their colonies, even making them illegal on systems owned and operated by the Aldottorai Colonial Trade Company. That hasn’t stopped the labor movement though, especally on the hardscrabble, brutal asteroid mining camps, where they work twelve hour shifts for company scrip and in extremely hazardous conditions. The AAUL has been a long simmering idea until pushed into reality by Chloe Frank, Noah Alwin, and Max Merle following an ore-smelting disaster in which cheap construction and fatigue caused a catastrophic collapse. Technically illegal under the ACTC, the AAUL tries to stay underground in the process of their organizing and avoid the ACTC agents hunting the leaders. They rely on the Cupertinans and Old Alathni for most of their support, as well as the “prepaid employees” of Athena Proxima, as well as no small amount of connections to ore smugglers.

Aldottorai Colonial Trade Company & The Alathni Company (an ACTC subsidiary)

• Type of Organization: Commercial-Political
• Leadership and Important Individuals:
  • Chief Colonial Director Conrad Lilly
  • Finance Director Leandra Peters
  • Corporate Security Director Devi Cox
  • Operations Director Hilda Rao

• Objectives:
  • Profitability & Stability
• Description:
  • The ACTC, and the Alathni Company, which manages the Alathni system, is the primary commercial and colonial arm of the Aldottorai Republic. They manage all colony projects outside the Aldottorai home system and are the primary trade arm of the Republic for the Diskward Marches. They hold a monopoly with all frontier sectors for Aldottorai trade. And Aldottorai sits as the heart of a massive trade network, so that monopoly carries a lot of power and influence. They guard this jealously and with force. The Alathni Company is one of the smaller and less profitable subsidiaries, as the Old Alathni prevent the company from fully colonizing the world effectively. Additionally, the fact there’s only one planet limits their capacity to raise revenue. Being assigned to the Alathni Company is usually a sign that a Company employee has disappointed the leadership. It could have been failure, mediocrity, or simply not extracting enough profit from a richer colony. This results in the Alathni Company being staffed mostly by screw-ups, black sheep, and those who could cause a scandal, adding more corruption than normal to the operations of this department, which is structured identically to the larger company, albeit at a smaller scale.

The Maturin Ring

• Type of Organization:
  • Criminal/Pirate
• Leadership and Important Individuals:
  • Jack Maturin (Alleged): Head of the family, known to be leader of a mining company in the neighboring Kais Sector. Thought to be the leader of the Maturin Ring as well, given his position, but nobody has ever been able to prove it or find a rock solid connection.
  • Abigail Maturin: Jack’s wife, known to be a ship captain hauling ore, thought to be the actual leader of the pirate activities, or at least a spy for them.
  • Elizabeth Maturin: The eldest daughter and family heir, considered a pampered socialite who does not appreciate being dumped in the Islands to oversee the family business interests
• Objectives:
  • Profit (Presumed)
• Description:
  • The Maturin Ring is not an official name of the pirate ring, but it is suspected to be related to them, as the pirates tend to make appearances not long after the Maturin Mining Corporation begins operations in a sector and the company has unusually high profits given what is known about its mining claims. Of course, nobody has ever managed to prove a connection, and Jack Maturin has always been very good at explaining how he manages to cut costs and sell high. Most people agree this is bogus, however, and they make their profit through plundering other cargo vessels and remote mining claims. The Maturin Mining Company has recently set up shop in the Alathni system and now everyone in the know is braced for the inevitable arrival of pirate raiders.

Alathni Minor Scientific Research Association

• Type of Organization:
  • Scientific & Archaeological
• Leadership and Important Individuals:
  • Dr. Mirza Sandeep, Director & Founder
  • Dr. Thor Ferri, Chief Archaeologist
  • Dr. Amit Lacey, Chief Biologist
• Objectives:
  • Scientific Discovery: Unravel the secrets of Alathni Minor’s strange geologic features and identify other possible sites around the system
• Description:
  • Considered kooks and eccentric by the mainstream scientific establishment, the Alathni Minor Scientific Research Association is a group of researchers across all fields of physical and social sciences committed to solving the mystery of the strange ruins beneath the surface of the moon. Ostensibly neutral and acting solely in pursuit of truth, the publications of the members indicate that, as a whole, the group firmly believes that the underground structures were created by intelligent, pre-human life. While a small group, living primarily on an old station in stationary orbit around the moon, they have enough wealth and backing from across human space to conduct extensive expeditions across Alathni Minor, the Alathni System, and the asteroid field, which they believe to be the ruins of a destroyed planet. Not many people from Alathni will work for them, so they often hire outsiders to conduct the more dangerous missions, or to guard the researchers in the process.

Reflections

Oh, boy. This was a long one, wasn’t it? It’s taken me… close to three weeks to get all the way through this post, even being able to pull from a lot of the work I’ve already done for this setting. I can definitely see why this comes near the end of the process. This is the sort of thing that really catches my interest and gets me very in-depth. Even with this one, I was having more and more ideas, so I had to cut myself off where I did and force myself to not go into as much detail, which you probably noticed with the last few examples.

I do like how they have this structured and explained. I didn’t use any of the tables, but if I were doing a much larger area, I probably would have. The tables have really good stuff in them that I found got the wheels turning for possible future additions. The focus on objectives, leadership, and important individuals really helped with that, as it kept the focus on who and what the players would be interacting with.

That perspective was one I focused on for the entire process— how will these factions and societies interact with the player characters? What are the plot hooks that I can seed into them for other game masters to use? Where are there conflicting motivations between factions that would hire people to resolve? I could have come up with a lot more factions (I have close to two dozen factions in a Notion database right now), but not all of them made sense for this specific portion of the setting. I also didn’t want to do a faction or society that was too big, because I want to keep the focus within the Alathni system. Adding more factions would easily begin spilling over into more star systems. We don’t need that at this point. When I start working on a full setting book, then yes, I will include many more. But again, this is a minimum viable setting. I have to keep reminding myself to focus only on what is essential.

For these factions, I picked the two societies that inhabit the main planet, a law enforcement/military/religious service faction, a commercial/military faction, a science faction, a criminal faction, and a rebellious social change faction. That touches on all the different themes of the setting and gives different groups many opportunities to engage with the different factions and the story lines they could generate.

But that’s all for this week! Up next is the final step, which focuses on the mechanics and setting-specific rules. Fortunately, I’ve already done the bulk of the work on that one, so that should take much less than three weeks to write.

If you’re visiting for the first time, this is the third post (1, 2) discussing my Iron Horizons setting, which is a dieselpunk space opera, and continues on from the two post series trying to define dieselpunk (part 1, part 2). At this point, we can get our hands dirty and start worldbuilding our RPG setting using the Genesys Expanded Setting Sheet and the Expanded Player’s Guide.

The Expanded Setting Sheet- Step 3

The entirety of step three on the worksheet is one page with boxes to fill in. The smallest, top section includes spaces for the world name, the world structure, the world climate, and the three most notable features of the world. The rest of the page is divided into six boxes that focus on regions. Each box includes six sections to help flesh them out in more detail, which are described in more detail in the EPG itself.

• Region Name: This is self-explanatory and they don’t go into very much detail about this in either the worksheet or the EPG. Give it your best shot! It can be quite fun! There is no random rolling on a table here. You have to come up with names by yourself.
• Description: This is a broad section that looks be focused more on the overall impression or picture the region, but also touches on the physical characteristic of the world. The table, for example, includes moons, planets, artificial constructs, and such. This one could be particularly interesting depending on if you were switching genres. Perhaps playing a fantasy game that takes place on an artificial construct or the moon of a gas giant. There is also an option for an Earth-like world to keep things simple, as many of the others add setback/boost die to different skill checks.
• Location: At its most basic, this section asks where the region/world can be found. Pretty simple and depends on what you want to go with, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time on this one.
• Environment: This one comes with a table as well! It’s looking primarily at climate and ecosystem types. There was a brief discussion in this chapter about single ecosystem vs. multi-ecosystem worldbuilding, but this is mainly designed to have one dominant ecosystem for each region or location, choosing simplicity over realism. This one includes both climate (primarily temperature) ranging from searing temperatures to frozen waste. Additionally, there’s a table specifically for environments. These are smaller, more narrow ecosystems— forest, plains, oceans, etc.
• Population: This one looks mostly at the general number of inhabitants, if I’m reading this correctly. This also comes with a random table based on how densely populated the region feels. Much easier to work with than some TTRPG games that use actual population numbers. These ones range from uninhabited to megalopolis, with everything between.
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities: This is where things get very interesting. Essentially, this one focuses on what makes this region unique compared to the rest. We’re back to a good old d100 table here with a wide array of options. We’ve got monastery as one option, warlike wanderers as another, sky islands, dragons, and something ominously called The Hunter.

Overall, this page of the sheet is well designed, easy to use, and I think it’s a great framework to use for a minimum viable setting. Six regions is enough to have a variety of climates and cultures without being overwhelming for either players or game masters. There’s no giant setting book to read through to comprehend the gist of the world. It’s clean, simple, and has all the essential information to create a plot.

The Expanded Setting Creation Process

This section is much longer than the previous two and has several tables that can be used as inspiration or random generation. There is an important disclaimer at the beginning of the section about how the information in the process is meant to create a single world or perhaps, ideally, an even smaller region.

The book goes on to describe how it could be used to scale up to do multiple planets, but they recommend simplifying the planets to a primary defining ecosystem. Yes, they suggest doing what so many people criticize Star Wars for. And you know what, both they and George Lucas are correct. Unless the worldbuilding project is meant to be encyclopedic, there’s no need to have a completely fleshed out ecology for an entire planet that will only be seen for a short amount of time.

That puts us in a bit of a pickle. Do we stick to one planet and thus ignore the interplanetary and interstellar aspects? Or do we broaden the scale at the expense of detail? Let’s return to our earlier steps— what is our overview? What is the most important element?

For Iron Horizons, the space travel is a critical element that makes the setting what it is. That’s not something I would abandon if I wanted to give potential players a taste of the setting. We have to include space travel in that case.

Yes, that does mean we will lose the ability to go into great detail. It’s unfortunately one of the trade-offs that has to be made. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, however. Genesys is a narrative-first game rather than a simulation-first game. It is neither designed nor intended to be a perfectly accurate simulation of the real world. It focuses on how mechanics influence the feel and flow of the story created during the game. We can pick a few themes that we want to explore and create a location to explore each of them.

Space exploration is a big part of the setting, so we should include something along those lines. Space travel is key, so definitely some regions that have lots of opportunities for pilots and ship captains. On the more ambivalent side, colonialism is one of the primary antagonistic forces, which should certainly be included. That suggests a frontier of some sort, so let’s go for something with a lawless wild west vibe. With that, we can also tie into the themes of labor rights and capitalism with some sort of mining operation.

Let’s find a middle ground between the options and pick a small star system. We can call it the Alathni System. That will to the top of our sheet as the world name and the world structure will be a star system.

Let’s give it one inhabitable planet to cover half of the regions on the sheet, a somewhat inhabited moon with what some eccentric archaeologists believe to be underground ruins, a massive space station, and an asteroid mining colony. The planet is the largest, so let’s leave that for last, and start by focusing on the fringes of this system’s society.

Region 1

• Region Name: Station Forlorn Hope
  • Forlorn Hope is a term used to describe a detachment of soldiers who volunteered for an impossible mission. I first ran across it in the book Sharpe’s Company by Bernard Cornwell, in which the forlorn hope is a group of volunteers who are the first into the breach at Badajoz. So, for this space station, let’s say it was an old defensive picket station with no real chance of holding the system, but had to try anyway. Then perhaps it was abandoned and it was taken over and repurposed as an orbital habitat by enterprising squatters. Perhaps colonists on the planet needed government approval before they could settle, so those who wanted to get in, took to staying on the station to wait, but never made it to the planet, adding dimension to the name Forlorn Hope.
• Description: Ramshackle, cobbled-together space station with hulks and decrepit ships bolted together to make a vast orbital habitat.
• Location: In orbit around Alathni Major
• Environment: Oily, greasy, recycled air. Inhabitable and strictly climate controlled to be livable with the smallest amount of resource expenditure as possible. Chilly, poorly lit, low atmospheric pressure (like high altitude).
• Population: Densely Populated
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities:
  • No one knows how to access the original core of the station anymore. It’s been lost beneath the accumulated layers of ships and modifications. Legend speaks of a naval payroll still in its vault somewhere in the original station.
  • Faith of the Forlorn: A syncretic religious group has developed on the station as people have flowed in and out, praying and hoping for a chance to settle on either the moon or the planet, with some viewing it as a genuinely sincere religion while others view it as a cult meant to steal money from the desperate. Once joined, it is very difficult to leave, and concerned friends and relatives have been told their missing person has left the Forlorn and been giving settlement on the planet’s surface, but nobody has been able to prove or disprove.
  • Rival Gangs: As more and more people have crammed into the station, gangs have formed between the different groups, with different ones claiming their own territory. Several of them have been noted to be acting more and more eccentric recently, eschewing violence in favor of dance competitions, and song instead of speech. Nobody is quite sure why, but many are worried there might be something wrong with the environmental systems in their sections, some new drug or other contamination.

Region 2

• Region Name: Aldottorai Colonial Trade Company Mining Outpost 7394B (Alathni-Aldot Mines, ACTC Mines)
• Description: An asteroid belt filled with small mining camps distributed on the surface of asteroids, as well as dug within the mined out asteroids. The mineral rights for the entire asteroid belt are owned by the Aldottorai Colonial Trade Company, so most of these are company camps, but there are still plenty of outlaw mining camps hidden in different parts of the belt, with various levels of criminality.
• Location: Edge of the inhabitable zone in the Alathni sector, spread across dozens, if not hundreds, of asteroids in relatively close proximity to each other.
• Environment: Vacuum, with dome settlements on asteroid surfaces and small settlements buried inside asteroids.
• Population: Sparsely populated
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities:
  • The Graveyard: A region of the belt known for its unsettlingly tombstone-shaped asteroids surrounded by the wreckage of multiple ships, and attendant human remains. Nobody is sure when this was created, or by whom, as it was there when the first recorded expedition reached the system. Whether it was an earlier survey expedition that didn’t make it back, smugglers who were killed by their own hideout, or Nazis fleeing Terra, nobody knows, but there are always those who will pay to find the answer, and those who might pay to keep it hidden.
  • The Comet Chaser’s Union: A burgeoning labor rights movement thought to have ties to the growing Kais Independence Movement, the CCU is a grassroots unionizing effort among the Company miners, lobbying for safer work conditions, safer living conditions, and better pay. Still in the process of organizing, the ACTC has begun to bring in mercenaries to protect their assets and prevent strikes or other disruptions to their profiability.
  • The Rock Robbers: One of the more notorious outlaw mining groups in the Belt, these are believed to be a single group of pirates whose ships are camoflauged with asteroid debris to avoid notice, suggest they are a single, coordinated organization. There’s been no discernible pattern in their targets- going after both ACTC claims and the independent outlaw claims, leading both the ACTC and the nominal governments of the Alathni system to offer rewards for information leading to their capture or destruction, or at least the retrieval of the stolen ores.

Region 3

• Region Name: Alathni Minor
• Description: The temperate moon of Alathni Major, Alathni Minor is a mostly-complete ecoforming project overseen by the Holy-Mendicant Order of St. Joseph of Cupertino. They aren’t able to ecoform most moons, but Alathni Minor is an unusually dense moon, giving it enough gravity to hold onto an atmosphere, although this has left the world very swampy and humid.
• Location: Orbiting Alathni Major
• Environment: Ecoforming in process, but still requires sprawling dome cities with a warm, humid internal climates due to the external environment not being entirely habitable without support yet. The oxygen-carbon dioxide cycle is not yet complete, meaning the atmosphere lacks enough natural oxygen to breathe unsupported. This density has led to the development of plant-rich swamps
• Population: Moderately Inhabited
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities:
  • The Holy-Mendicant Order of St. Joseph of Cupertino (Cupertinans): The official owners and rulers of the moon, to the displeasure of the contesting governments, the Cupertinans are well known through human space for their effort in settling uninhabitable worlds and making them habitable over the course of generations, while their smaller order, the Knights-Stellarum, maintains the closest thing to a consistent law enforcement and defense presence in the fringe sectors of human space. The Alathni Minor monastery is the main habitation on the moon, functioning as the primary city, administrative center, and ecoforming headquarters. Many of the people who live on the moon are Cupertinan monks and their families (both inside and outside the order).
  • Cavern Site #9056: Discovered by an independent survey team dispatched by a collection of groups interested in purchasing and colonizing the moon once it is habitable, the cavern caused an immediate stir in the Diskward Marches. Within the cavern are large, angular stone features that occur in a regular pattern that many laypeople interpret as being ruins of a civilization that once dwelt on the moon. Most astrogeologists, however, say that it’s simply a case of naturally occurring lattices within the rock structure. Debate has remained heated and numerous expeditions into the underground cavern have brought no additional clarity, although the scientific pursuit of evidence to seal the argument either way remains fierce.
  • The Swamp People: Not formally recognized as inhabitants of Alathni Minor, the Swamp People are the colloquial name for the people decide to live on the moon by themselves, without regard for the dangerous atmosphere or transitional legal status of the moon. They live in the swamps of the moons, isolated from the main monastery and the smaller, satellite hubs that oversee different regional ecoforming progress. Some regard them as eccentric, others see them as dangerous, but they are the ones making a living from an uninhabitable world, living off the plants and algae they can harvest.

Region 4

• Region Name: Athena Proxima (North-Central continent on Alathni Major)
• Description: A small continent in the north-central part of the planet, split down the middle by the Scar, otherwise featuring pleasantly temperate, if storm-ridden climate for settlement.
• Location: With the southern edge of the continent touching the equator and the northern edge ending well before the north pole, Athena Proxima is the primary inhabited region of the world, with a large capital city, numerous smaller cities and towns, and a rapidly developing agricultural industry to support further growth.
• Environment: Temperate scrub land, rolling hills, young forests, ancient and worn down mountains, with regular, if infrequent, massive storms blowing across the landscape.
• Population: Densely Populated
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities:
  • Alathni Prime Sinkhole: The original Cupertinan Monastery-turned-city is a dome city built inside a massive sinkhole, whose origins are still unknown, but the sinkhole releases enough geothermal energy to keep the temperatures comfortable and power the city at the same time. Now administered by the Alathni Company on behalf of the Aldottorai Republic, which views all other colonies in the system as illegitimate, and so keeps an extensive military garrison to push its claim.
  • The Scar: A large tectonic rift valley that connects to the Alathni Prime Sinkhole, stretching eight hundred miles and close to a quarter mile deep. The intensity of the storms has encouraged much of the populace of Athena Proxima to dwell within the Scar, beneath where the worst of the winds can reach. Most of the colony’s towns and cities can be found within the Scar or along the small fractures breaking off from the main Scar.
  • The Greenwood: One of the more extensive projects on this continent, the Greenwood is a carefully tended attempt to recreate an old-growth oak forest. Started as soon as environmental conditions allowed, the Cupertinans used forestry to help sustain the monastery. The slightly higher gravity allowed for denser, if shorter, trees, whose lumber served excellently for construction. This forest, now covering tens of thousands of acres, is a rich, if juvenile, forest, with the oldest sections being close to two hundred years old, and the home of a gradually increasing number of wild creatures brought from Terra and helped to adapt to their new environment.

Region 5

• Region Name: Old Alathni
• Description: A series of equatorial mountain ranges, whose valleys enclose the first non-Cupertinan settlers. While the equatorial region is very hot near to sea-level, the valleys are protected against the heat by their altitude. These mountains also house small glaciers that began to reform as soon as the water cycle began moving, which feed the valleys with numerous small lakes that help feed the colonies.
• Location: In the northeastern continent, right along the equator, in a long range of mountains.
• Environment: Cold, brisk, high-altitude taiga, tundra, and colder scrub land.
• Population: Moderately Populated
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities:
  • The First Alathni: Descendants of Terrans who joined the first wave of generation ships meant to settle space, the First Alathni consider themselves indigenous to the world, despite their home being the long defunct generation ship at its crash location. They are stockier than typical humans and have more unique coloring, but are otherwise exactly the same as Terrans. They dwell in Old Alathni, where they built their own society high in the mountains without realizing there were others also settling the world.
  • Wreck of the Herald of Humanity: A massive generation ship, built in the early days of space travel, when the were uncertain about using the -Nth dimensional drives, this ship dates to shortly after humans settled every planetary body in the Terran system. It has since crashed into the mountains, leveling a significant portion of the nearby hills and mountain ranges. It acts as a central meeting point and refuge for the Old Alathni.
  • The Crystal Caverns: Not far from the wrecked ship, there is a network of caves running beneath the valleys and surrounding mountains. One of the earliest shelters for the people from the generation ship, this cavern system is well-charted and well-lit, its small number of lights reflected outwards by thousands of clear crystals with line the walls of the system. Not permanently inhabited, the Crystal Caverns are a wonder of human space and visited by mane of those who dare travel beyond the edge of colonized space.

Region 6

• Region Name: The Islands
• Description: Between the continent of Athena Proxima and the mountains of the Old Alathni like the endless archipelagoes of the Islands. Straddling the shallow sea between the two continents, these are a hot, sultry, and tropical environment surrounded by shallow, heavily salted seas inhabited mostly by plankton, algae, and other micro-organisms necessary for food.
• Location: Along the equator, between the north eastern and north-central continent, running north/south and east/west.
• Environment: Tropical archipelagos, small floating towns, tropical desert
• Population: Sparsely populated
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities:
  • The Smugglers: Officially, trade and communication between the Old Alathni and the Athenian Proximans is banned by the Aldottorai Republic, which recognizes neither the islands nor the Old Alathni. Unofficially, it’s very easy to get around the letter of the law by doing trades through the islands. As a result, many of the islanders are employed in smuggling or other criminal enterprises between the two governments. Predominantly laid back and easy going, there is an occasional burst of violence from them, but that is rare and usually taken care of by combined government forces and the Cupertinans, none of whom acknowledge the cooperation.
  • The Lagoon: The main heartland of the Islands, the Lagoon is a massive, artificial lagoon that was created when the early dredgers and ecoformers dumped the spoils from their work in a large semi-circle, which eventually flooded as the sea-basins began to fill in. Only a few feet deep for the most part, the Lagoon is the main hub of commerce and habitation in the Islands, with the sandbars constantly shifting as new work is done to expand, the still-rising sea levels swallow older parts, and so on. Most of the planet’s gray market commerce occurs here in the lagoon, as there’s a solid floating landing platform for small freighters to land and unload. Much of the off world trade happens here, evading the tariffs of the Alathni Company, while also dodging the ban on commerce with Old Alathni.
  • Bioluminescence: The waters of the islands, including in the lagoon, are densely populated by ostracods that are bioluminescent after Alathni Minor has its full moon phase. These turn the entire seaway between the two colonies into a glowing light show that draws people in from the entire system and beyond to see the unearthly glow fill the night sky and mirror the constellations above. It happens one night a month, only for a few hours, but that’s usually enough to make something like a truce between the various factions. It’s also the monthly festival/market, which draws people from across the system to stock up on supplies, sell small amounts of valuable ores, and socialize in an environment that at least resembles Terran environments.

Reflections on Step 3

This was a pretty intensive step in the process! It took me close to three weeks to get through everything here, including reading the chapter, examining the sheet, and then filling out the regions. If you’re following along at home, I would definitely give yourself plenty of time for this one, even if you’re using the random tables (which I did not). While the tables were helpful, I have a hard time using them for anything because I dislike the sometimes chaotic or incoherent results. In this case, I’m leaning toward something more consistent and grounded. If I was making setting purely for a Genesys game that didn’t need to fit into a setting, I could see them working really well. The different combinations would also lead to some interesting possibilities.

The one part of this step that I had a more difficult time with was the other inhabitants/oddities table and its section. It seemed a bit at odds with the rest of the step’s focus on a wide angle perspective on the physical aspects of the world. In the random table especially, the first result was warlike wanderers, the final result was The Hunter, but there were also things like flying islands and landmarks. My guess is that this step was meant to create plot hooks.

That’s a great idea, and would fit really well if the table included only natural elements and not the cultural ones. We don’t really get into cultures and people groups until later in the process, so this felt a bit like leaping without looking. I think it would be a great contribution to the later steps, but I had a hard time keeping the focus on the world itself rather than getting diverted by the social or political contexts. Part of that is because I rarely split the plot, character, and setting elements apart from each other and most often view them together, like molecules rather than atoms. So, for people who are better able to view the elements separately, it shouldn’t be an issue.

Otherwise, I think this is a super useful step. In many ways, it reminds me of the agile worldbuilding method put together by the folks over at World Anvil. Not entirely the same, because this is essentially the opposite from what they describe. Genesys’ expanded setting process seems to take a big picture to small picture approach, while World Anvil’s is a small picture to big picture (assuming I understood it correctly). I particularly appreciate how it ties everything together with the game elements. The different types of worlds can have add Setback or Boost die to skill checks due to planetary sizes affecting gravity, or other physical conditions. That’s a kind of narrative-mechanical integration that I really appreciate. I’m not sure how deeply I’ll use that for Iron Horizons yet, but it is something to keep in mind.

That’s all for this week! Check back again next week as we dive into the steps of the process!

So, we’ve discussed a minimum viable project and what it looks like for the Genesys tabletop role-playing game. Now, let’s take a close look at their expanded setting sheet from the Expanded Player’s Guide. We’ll only focus on the overview and first two steps this time: tropes & themes, and technology levels.

I briefly discussed tropes in my first two posts on dieselpunk in exploring what made a genre, and I talked briefly about the ideas of themes in dieselpunk, steampunk, and cyberpunk. For this, I’ll address them generally and specifically refer to how Genesys uses them.

To start, the top of the sheet asks for the Setting Name and Setting Type. We already have a name (Iron Horizons) and a type (dieselpunk space opera). The worksheet is explained in more detail on page 40 of the Expanded Player’s Guide. I won’t copy the explanations over, but I might summarize and explain.

Setting Overview

Overview is an interesting one, because it’s a one-paragraph (roughly) summary of the setting. Other possible terms are elevator pitch, blurb, or north star. If you’ve done worldbuilding in the past, you know how challenging this is. How do you squeeze an infinitely large universe into an itty-bitty box of text?

Prioritization.

I am aware that it doesn’t make things easier. So, in this case, we need to narrow the focus to the core of the setting. What makes this setting unique? What makes it special? What separates it from the thousands of other settings out there? Iron Horizons is relatively fortunate in this regard, as there are very few, if any, settings that embrace both the dieselpunk genre and the space opera genre. So, calling it a dieselpunk space opera is descriptive and uniquely identifiable. I could just use that phrase to keep things appropriately generic, or I could go a little deeper.

A dieselpunk space opera in an alternate future where humanity spread across the stars with grit and diesel to build a better future, but carried the ghosts of humanity’s past with them in their search for wealth, power, and influence. Former colonies become colonizers, economic liberators become the next trade empires, and scrappy underdogs become the corporate giants that decide the fate of systems, all while the ordinary people try to build lives for themselves, either planet side or amongst the stars aboard a spaceship through trade, piracy, and hard labor.

That adds a lot more to themes and tropes that will be the next sections, but that captures the key ideas and drivers in Iron Horizons. Retrufuturistic tech drives humanity’s expansion into the stars, but can’t escape old ways of thinking, and so destructive patterns from the past are recreated— colonialism, imperialism, fascism, etc. It also emphasizes the focus on the ordinary people rather than Chosen Ones or Magical Dynasties. That takes us to the next part of the page: tropes and themes.

Tropes and Themes of Iron Horizons

These are the meat of this post, as this is where I think Genesys’ sheet really shines. It’s broken into five different parts: tropes that are played straight (for lack of a better term), tropes that are subverted, themes that are played straight, themes that are subverted, and the single element that most defines the setting. I’ve touched very briefly on this in the past, but I love a thematically consistent world, especially one that doesn’t simply relabel tropes and themes from a better-known world. Those tend to feel hollow to me, if that makes sense. They have all the trappings, but something at the heart of the setting is missing.

Anyway! Back to Genesys.

Tropes in Genesys

“Tropes are common storytelling devices, clichés, or both. They can help define a genre, like steampunk or alternate history, or they can define morality, like good versus evil. Tropes can be refined all the way down to specific elements within classic stories, but you should stay more general when developing a setting.” Genesys Expanded Player’s Guide, p. 42

They use the standard definition of tropes, which I appreciate. It emphasizes that the focus is on the story more than the mechanics. They also include a d100 table, with 32 different tropes. Then, at the end, they add a note encouraging people to use tropes from anywhere. They do talk about going through the entire process via random dice rolls, to come up with some truly fascinating concepts. (Post-apocalypse, knights, and underwater, anyone?) Each entry has a sentence or two of description, highlighting its multi-genre nature and how it might appear in settings.

Magic is a particularly interesting case. Its description reads: Magic is an element in the setting, and the acquisition of magic is the goal of most major characters. Now, magic exists in Genesys. It’s a clever mechanical system for player characters that I haven’t had time to examine too closely, but it escapes the D&D problem of massive lists of spells. By having magic as a trope, however, we see that this isn’t focusing on the Magic as a game mechanic. It focuses on magic as a narrative element.

Many wizards have magic, but not all settings include acquiring magic as one of their major goals. Gandalf never tries to acquire more magic, after all. This tells us something about the type of story the world focuses on. It makes me think of Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. Yes, the story’s main focus was on Ged’s maturation, but much of Ged’s motivation was to acquire magic or to prove his greatness. So, by using this theme, we’re telling players that much of the narrative will be about how their characters learn or discover new forms of magic. In many ways, it reminds me of anime like One Punch Man where the goal is to be more powerful as a superhero. It creates a defined progression system that can be very rewarding to play. I suspect a lot of LitRPGs have some aspect of this trope, as it’s similar to the idea of leveling up.

All of the example tropes have that same broad, cross-genre perspective. The entry on knights, for example, includes traditional knights, modern knights in a secret society, and futuristic knights whose mounts are giant robots. This is one of my favorite examples of how they separate tropes from genres. In the case of building an RPG setting, it’s important to distinguish between individual elements and the setting overall. Eberron, for example, is fantasy, but also has trains (because Eberron is the type of setting that needs fantasy train robberies).

Importantly, it asks for tropes that are used in the setting and tropes that are subverted in this setting.

Tropes in Iron Horizons

Now, for Iron Horizons, there’s some tropes on their chart that I can just grab and use.

The first is Alternate History (described as ‘What if’ real-world scenarios with a few changes that, over time, have resulted in major divergences from our reality”). Now, the biggest change in the historical timeline is that Nikola Tesla invented a way to negate gravity, allowing for the much earlier development of flight technology, and then he gave it away for free as he wanted to do with some of his other inventions. The second is that Albert Einstein created a new mathematical theory that helped eventually access faster-than-light travel. Now, amusingly, this is also one that I am subverting, because Iron Horizons takes place in the future. For this, I borrow a term from the Golden Age of Sci-Fi— future history. I could use that as a trope, but I’m not sure how I would define that quite yet. It’s something that still needs more thinking on.

The second trope would be New Frontier, described as “the setting takes place at the edge of civilization and beyond, whether in space, the deep ocean, or a new dimension” (EPG 43). Space, of course, is the frontier. This one I do play pretty straight, as it’s sort of the underlying assumption of the setting that helps make it space opera. The other trope in the chart that ties into this is Interplanetary Travel. Which, in this one, is exactly what it sounds— travel between worlds. The description does include descriptions for genres as diverse as steampunk, fantasy, and modern-day.

If I wanted, I could combine these into a single trope: dieselpunk. It would be paired with the preexisting Genesys trope/setting of steampunk. I suppose this might count as being a subverted trope, if I wanted to use steampunk instead. Instead of being steampunk Victoriana with steam-powered technology, it’s based on the 30s and uses diesel. Since I already wrote two posts on dieselpunk (part 1, part 2), I don’t particularly want to get into the weeds again. I will, however, make a quick description based on the steampunk one.

Dieselpunk: A pseudoscience fiction in which advanced technology is replaced with equivalent machines inspired by, or based on, technology that existed approximately from 1900 to 1950.

Easy enough, I suppose? So, that gives us a set of tropes that we are using (from the chart, anyway) and one that we are sort of subverting (steampunk). Good vs Evil is also a trope that is in the chart (one in which there are objectively morally good and objectively morally evil elements), which would be another one that we are subverting, at least compared to what many people expect from space opera after Star Wars. Dieselpunk, I suspect, lends itself well toward subverting the trope. Space opera is an interesting genre, because depending on the era, it could mean anything from fantasy-in-space to hard-boiled cosmic noir in space. That might be a future blog series as well, but we’ll have to see.

Themes in Genesys & Iron Horizons

Themes are similar to tropes; however, they speak to the types of stories you want to feature. Themes are primarily broad ideas or questions, often tied to specific conditions and emotions. (EPG, p.42)

There is, unfortunately, only a small section about themes, and the definition likely feels familiar to anyone who struggled with identifying themes in high school. To try and make the Genesys definition simpler, a theme is what the setting is about. Not what’s in the setting, but the ideas and feelings the setting explores.

Yeah, clear as mud. The EPG describes themes as questions that the setting explores, or the kinds of stories that the setting focuses on. I like the idea of viewing RPG settings through the lens of questions. It adds focus to the world that would otherwise be lost. This, I suspect, might be one of the reasons I dislike “kitchen-sink” settings. They lack a thematic center, which means the entire setting feels loose and disconnected.

For Iron Horizons, there’s a couple ways we can approach this question. One is the World Anvil setting primer. Another is the post from earlier this month introducing Iron Horizons in a little more detail. Those, however, take a big picture view that is primarily oriented around the fiction aspects of the setting.

For this project, we’re looking at the expanded setting guide in view of a role-playing game setting. TTRPGs are a different medium than fiction, which means the rules and foci are also going to be different. I’ve talked about what the overall project is about, but we haven’t asked what the RPG is about.

Like the Star Wars TTRPG that preceded Genesys Core Rule Book, a space opera setting has a vast amount of options. For comparison, just check out the various supplemental books for the first edition of Stars Without Number. They had a source book for merchant campaigns, one for naval campaigns, one for military campaigns (especially as mercenaries), one on alien ruins, one on space magic, and so on. Now, we don’t have space magic in Iron Horizons right now (and I’m still undecided if it ever will make an appearance).

That is way too much for our idea of a minimum viable setting, however. Like we did with the overview, it’s time to zoom way in. What is the minimum amount of content that a group would need to play? Let’s assume a small group of players and their characters, with their own ship/in the process of acquiring their own ship, and a way to pay for expenses. Bit of a space trucker vibe in that case.

In that case, this could be a theme: “What is it like to be an ordinary person in an extraordinary world?” It keeps the emphasis on the blue collar, everyday person, while also acknowledging and exploring the fantastical nature of a diesel-driven space faring society. It’s small scale, and easily manageable. It puts the player characters in a broader context of the setting.

Another possibility, focusing on the external conflicts: “How do ordinary people react to the collision of extraordinary forces that sees them as assets and not people?” That one adds a very punk vibe to the setting, which I like. It creates a PC vs Social Systems dynamic that catches many of the different elements. Or, perhaps, in the broadest possible theme, Iron Horizons is about the struggle between the individual and societal power brokers. Power of the individual versus the power of institutions.

With these themes, we’re looking at an RPG that’s about making a living in a difficult societal structure, even one that is interstellar in scale. I like that. It’s very punk and matches our discussions of dieselpunk that we had in the past. It’s manageable to put together the content and manageable for players and other game masters to set some basic campaigns in place. So let’s focus on that theme.

Step 2: Technology Level

I roped this in with the first step because of the alliterative opportunities, but also because it’s very short. Additionally, it is also the last step of what I call the meta-setting. Essentially, external ideas and aspects about the setting as a whole rather than material that exists within the setting. The EPG includes a quarter-page discussion of technology levels, noting that it affects the gear, equipment, vehicles, and, more importantly, the feel of the setting. There’s nothing in this section that particularly stands out as being exceptional, but I appreciate the acknowledgement that tech affects how a setting feels.

The rest of the technology level section is composed entirely of a table of possible technology levels. Now, this isn’t as standardized or formally consistent as GURPS’ tech level system, but this has a narrative-first approach that I appreciate. Again, it is a d100 table that you can roll on if you don’t know specifically what you’re looking for. We start with the stone age and advance through technology levels, mostly sticking to the real world (roughly speaking, the information age), and then expanding into futuristic levels, ending at what they call the “Psychic Awakening” in which technology is replaced by psychic powers. Before this is the quantum age, which involves manipulating reality through quantum technology, and the intragalactic age, which is the traditional space opera idea of easy FTL travel and a galaxy-wide society, with seemingly impossible, perhaps even magical, technologies.

Iron Horizons is in a bit of a weird spot for this one, as it doesn’t fit easily into any of the listed categories. If anything, I would say it’s a combination of the Late Industrial Age (which focuses on the 20th century and the development of petroleum powered vehicles), the interplanetary age (space travel is possible, but not magical, and takes large amounts of time), with the scope of the intragalactic age, although humanity in Iron Horizons has only explored a tiny fraction of the galaxy surrounding Earth.

Like the tropes and themes, the book acknowledges that are infinite possibilities for a fictional setting, so they suggest mixing and matching, taking parts from multiples, or having different tech levels simultaneously depending on societal focus.

I’ve talked a couple of times about the technology in Iron Horizons so far. For this, the sheet includes technology levels, unique and notable technologies, and technologies deliberately excluded (just like the tropes/themes included the section on subverting themes).

So, filling out the sheet, the technology levels section reads “Early intragalactic, with late industrial revolution-based technology, that leads to an interplanetary setting spread across a portion of the Milky Way.” Pretty chill, and I think it’s specific enough to give people an idea, especially when using the term dieselpunk to give a sense of what this looks like aesthetically.

The second question (unique and notable technologies) would be fairly easy, as I’ve already established the key technological concepts. The first is the –Nth Dimensional Engine, based on Einstein’s theories of negative dimensional space, which is what allows for faster than light travel (average speed is 1 light year per 1 Earth-day, for context). The second is Nikola Tesla’s process for countering gravity, and the process for creating ultra-refined diesel. Basically, the technology needed to get humans into space, get them traveling between planets efficiently, and then, the ecoforming process, which makes planets habitable. With those basic technological concepts, the setting is plausible and all other concepts can be derived from them. Nice and simple.

The final one is technology that is purposefully excluded. Not forgotten or overlooked. Excluded. On purpose. Or, in other words, removed to accomplish a specific effect. For Iron Horizons, that technology is transistors and digital computing. With those two, the technological path would have ended up looking significantly more like ours, which I wanted to avoid. As the digital computer is the most defining piece of technology in our era, I opted to exclude it to ensure a distance between Iron Horizons computer tech and our own.

And that’s it for today!

Up next, we have step 3- building the world! At this point, we’ll be transition into the setting itself, first looking at the geography (or perhaps astrography) of the setting, and getting into the fun stuff of properly building the setting.

Welcome back to the third part of my discussion and thoughts on dieselpunk. I have no specific plans for the length of this series, as it’s probably going to be an ongoing conversation as I find new things or have new thoughts. Today, focusing in on my dieselpunk project- Iron Horizons. If you’ve seen my older posts, you likely saw this one, which briefly touched on it. I haven’t made much progress on the TTRPG setting, but I’ll be working through the process and sharing information about working through the expanded setting sheet from Genesys Expanded Player’s Guide. That will come a bit later.

What is Iron Horizons, and is it dieselpunk?

In a nutshell, Iron Horizons is a dieselpunk and space opera setting that houses several different projects that I am working on, only one of which is titled Iron Horizons (the TTRPG setting).

We’ve already had a multi-thousand-word discussion on dieselpunk and what I think about it, but I’ll go a little deeper here, as well as space opera. Radio Retrofuture would probably call this space opera with a dieselpunk aesthetic, which I disagree with. Refer to my previous posts on dieselpunk for a fuller discussion of what I use to define dieselpunk (science fiction based on the technology and aesthetics from 1906-1947 that shares a rebellious, critical view of society originating in the punk counterculture).

For Iron Horizons, it began with a question that lingered for several years— “Why is there no space opera with a 30s aesthetic?” George Lucas pulled heavily from World War II for Star Wars, including using footage from dogfights and WW2 movies to choreograph the space battles, the term stormtrooper, and the guerrilla-style fighters of the Rebel Alliance. He went with what we would now call a “retrofuturistic” style, or a vision of the future as imagined by the people in the past. Or, in this case, what Lucas seemed to think that people might have thought the future looked like. There were hints and insinuations of stuff like wrenches and engine grease. But it was still very much a vision of the future. I wanted a space opera with more engine grease, diesel fumes, and mechanics.

So, in 2020, following the completion of my dissertation, I started work on a dieselpunk space opera for NaNoWriMo (RIP) titled The Pilgrim’s War. Pilgrim, in this case, held multiple meanings- the ship was named The Pilgrim and captained by Roland O’Carroll, and the other protagonist was a monk named Athanasius. I did not succeed that year, as I had no plot, very little worldbuilding, and no idea what I was aiming for beyond Vibes. Essentially, the plot dealt with the fallout of a war for independence and the colonizer’s violation of the peace treaty and attempt to regain their lost colonies. I was also considering introducing aliens later on, but that felt momentous enough that it should have its own story.

The foundational question of the setting is “What might have happened if humanity discovered space travel shortly after flight and faster-than-light travel shortly after?” I call it an alternate future because while its history starts in the past, most of the setting occurs in the future. In that way, I think I’m solidly in the realm of science fiction, perhaps not hard science fiction, but science fiction nonetheless. And for the punk, the stories so far have focused primarily on the inhabitants of the Kais Alpha system in their struggle against colonial rulers. In this case, it deals specifically with technological oligarchies, state capture, and the combination of state power and profit-driven interests as they intersect in interstellar chartered joint-stock companies.

What exists in Iron Horizons so far?

Most of it is notes, ideas, and drafts of two stories. You can read everything that has been shared on World Anvil here. Additionally, I have an earlier post discussing it very briefly in the context of the Genesys RPG system. If you want to dive into the setting, World Anvil is currently the best place. I’ve toyed with adding a wiki to this website for worldbuilding material, but I haven’t figured out how to make that work.

What will exist in Iron Horizons?

That’s a great question! I don’t think I’ve talked about it publicly, but I have a few irons in the fire. The first one I’m likely to finish is the TTRPG setting. Now, by finished, I mean something along the lines of a minimum viable product. Genesys is a generic, toolbox kind of system, which makes it very easy to construct settings and campaigns for it. They even have fantastic worksheets to streamline the process using the rules and system materials. I’ll be writing and sharing that process on the blog once I get a strong start on the process to avoid stalling out partway through. I’ll start with the minimum viable setting and then flesh it out into a complete setting source book.

If the basic setting guide is well-received, then I’ll continue developing it further. I may even experiment with other systems (not D&D, however). The first few rounds will focus on different locations in the setting that highlight the variety of thematic elements.

I have story pitches written up for both characters and plots. Narrative fiction will likely be the most prevalent form of material that I create for Iron Horizons. I have the aforementioned Pilgrim’s War idea simmering on the back burner. The other project under development is a series of novellas that focuses on a colonial sector’s war for independence. That one is more episodic like Horatio Hornblower and Honor Harrington. I have a bunch of other character concepts that I intend to develop as the first one begins to wrap up, to show different perspectives on the events, both in time and place.

The first ones focus on young Roland O’Carrol several decades before we meet her in The Pilgrim’s War, as she’s entering into young adulthood in a society shaken by conflict. Other than the TTRPG setting, this is my initial focus.

Okay, but what is it actually about? Or at least, what inspired it?

Dieselpunk, of course, is the biggest inspiration and theme, but another big inspiration was the Tumblr trend of “humans are space orcs.” If you’re not familiar, this was essentially an inversion of the trope that humans were the boring species in space. While there are not (yet) alien species, I wanted to play with humans coming from a death world as this indomitable warrior species.

For the alternate future aspect, Einstein develops the theory of Negative Nth Dimensions. Essentially, these are dimensions of negative space folded within the positive-dimensional space. With this and the creation of hyperdiesel and electrogravitic engines, humanity flings itself into space with astonishing rapidity, fueled by colonial and imperial ambitions, across the solar system to claim the resources necessary to rebuild after World War One. Shortly after this, World War Two (called the Solarian Anti-Fascist War in this case) which spread across the Solar System, lasted ten years, and ended with the invention of the -Nth Dimensional engine followed by the disappearance of the Nazis into faster-than-light travel.

That finally shattered the old status quo on Earth, with the Great Powers exhausted, broke, and unable to maintain their terrestrial empires. As a result, we have a period of optimism and cooperation that pushes humanity beyond the Solar System (in the opposite direction of the Nazis) as the world’s religions make peace with each other, colonial subjects are liberated, and the post-war United Nations take a much more proactive and positive role than in our own.

Brief Summary

The main time frame is several centuries later (roughly 2500s) when that cooperation and unity have faded as humanity expanded to hundreds of stars, with greed and ambition returning in force. Here we have a combination of two tropes that I focus on: space as the final frontier and nautical fiction. I very much approach the borders of human space as a frontier. The planets are newly settled, their terraforming may not be entirely complete yet, and they are often ruled by their colonial masters. These are places where fortunes might be built, with a great deal of luck and apathy toward ethics, but for the most part, wealth flows out of these regions into the richer ones.

That is where the nautical fiction comes into play. I’m a huge fan of the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. As a result, I have put a lot of thought into the economics of interstellar trade, the impact of FTL travel without FTL communications, and I try to bring as much of that as I can into the setting.

The colonial governments in Iron Horizons are, by definition, extractive entities. They use their colonial holdings to generate wealth for themselves, and that wealth has to move back and forth between star systems. It moves in starships, and while there is faster-than-light travel, journeys are still relatively lengthy. The journey from Earth to Proxima Centauri (4.25 light years) would take just under a week, meaning ships travel roughly one light year per day. That means it would take 76.75 million years to reach Earendel. Or, for a better grasp of scale, it would take 274 years to go from one side of the Milky Way to the other (estimated 100,000 light years). To go from Earth to Bellatrix in the Orion constellation would be 244 days, or around eight months. A perfect trip for a clipper ship, isn’t it?

With all that wealth moving back and forth across vast distances, less scrupulous types take advantage of that. Privateering is a major element in Iron Horizons. Where there are privateers, there are pirates, naturally, and bounty hunters, and those trying to hide. Much of the material will focus on the interstellar aspects, aimed at the smaller crews of frontier traders, privateers, and explorers.

So, what’s next?

Well, the first thing is going through the Genesys Expanded Setting Sheet from the Expanded Player’s Guide. The next post will discuss the idea of a minimum viable setting and the Genesys system. Fortunately, the main rule books for Genesys have some excellent examples of settings. I’ll look closely at those and what they include as a model.

Otherwise, I’m still trying to work out the plot outline for the first novella. It starts as martial law is declared following the outbreak of organized hostilities and the burgeoning organization of the revolutionaries. I think it has to do with some double crosses and daring espionage gambits. That’s where I’m leaning so far, anyway.

Beyond those, much of what you will see coming down the pipeline will be happening here. We’ve finished the two dieselpunk posts to establish a groundwork. This one will be the introduction to Iron Horizons and, next week, we’ll dive into the setting creation process for Genesys.

If you want to check out the World Anvil, you can see it here.

If you want to join the Discord, it’s at this link.