Thousand Suns: Foundation Transmissions (2009)

Rogue Games, Inc.

Date Reviewed: 6/1/2010

Critical Kobold Rating:    (5 out of 5 Dice)

Hey! We Get WiFi Out Here?!

- - TRANSMISSION BEGINS - -

The Foundation Transmissions sourcebook is the first supplement for the very cool Thousand Suns sci-fi rpg by Rogue Games. (Thousand Suns was reviewed here by this kobold back in ’08. It’d be best to read that review first, so you’re familiar with some game terms and concepts touched on here. That, and it makes me feel like I didn’t write it for nothing.)  Transmissions is a collection of random additional information useable either in parts or altogether for your home campaigns. The authors state that the entire sourcebook is just about options, plain and simple. While I normally dread reviews that walk me chapter by chapter through a rule book, that’s really the best way to review Transmissions, since each chapter is unrelated to any of the others, for the most part.

     So slip into your reactive assembly armor and follow me as we journey again through the Thousand Suns... 

"Admiral? Um, aren't those Boy Scout badges on your lapels?"

   The first chapter presents a system for using military rank and advancement for your campaigns. This is a pretty well-thought out mechanic, but most suitable for milieus that center around all-military PC groups, emulating series like Star Trek, or perhaps Battlestar Galactica or Babylon 5. It could be clunky to try to work in with a mixed group of non-military PCs though, so it may work best when everyone’s a colonial marine or fighter jockey, without a civilian scientist or smuggler along for the ride.  

     In this system, your starting Career Path level (Novice, Experienced, or Veteran) determines your military rank at the beginning of play. Novices will be recruits, cadets, or ensigns, while Veteran PCs may be Specialists, Lieutenant Generals, or Admirals. You can create your own ranks easily enough, but a nice list of example titles for marine, army, and several navy forces is provided for quick use.  

     Basically, you track the overall XP that you earn during play, and when you’ve accumulated enough points, you can be promoted to the next military rank. Even when you spend your acquired XP to buy new skills or improve old ones, the used points still count towards your next military rank, so you have to track your total earned XP separately from your current, “spendable” XP.

     However, there’s a built-in feature which prevents rapid promotion without the battle-honed skill competencies that one would expect a high-ranking officer to have: even if you’ve earned enough XP for Space Force to consider bumping your sorry butt up to Petty Officer 2^nd Class in recognition of the work you did on Omega Delta IV during the Grognoid War, your PC also needs to have minimum skill levels in certain skills of their Career Path to qualify for promotion. In other words, your Novice-level PC can’t receive a promotion to an Experienced- level military rank until they’ve bought their skills up to the base Experienced- level starting stats for their Career Path.

     All in all, it’s a simple mechanic that integrates smoothly into the core level and experience system. Sweet!

"Ok, so first we plant evidence of tribble smuggling in the Chairman's files..."

     The next chapter is about scheming. Grand scheming, that is. The chapter lays out the steps for concocting and carrying out wide-scale, long term “social combat” strategies to bring about something your PCs (or NPCs) want. This could be the overthrow of a government, the election of a particular official, ambassadorial relations to secure trade rights to a foreign star system, corporate espionage, or whatever shivers your timbers. The scale of the scheme can be local, like winning the presidency of the elementary school PTA, or something more ambitious, such as becoming Supreme Lord Emperor of the Galactic Core. 

     The players state precisely what outcome they’re trying to achieve, and decide on a basic strategy they’ll use in their nefarious plot, such as lies, extortion, bribes, media manipulation, spying and infiltration, etc. The scheme can be political, military, social, or business in nature, and can involve a handful of conspirators or several entire star systems’ worth of inhabitants. Once the GM knows all the details of the plan, and decides what resources are available to both sides of the social conflict, she can consult a series of charts to compare statistics for both sides of the scheme (the plotters and the targets). This will give her guidelines as to how effective the plan will be, how long it will take, and any fallout from unsuccessful (or even successful) endeavors, including whether the plotters are revealed.   

     The scheming system sounds like a nice tool for long-term, behind the scenes campaign plots. While PCs may be involved in certain adventures relating to the scheme (breaking into an opponent’s office, obtaining incriminating holovids of the subject, sabotaging industrial facilities, etc.), the playing out of the scheme is also something that could be left entirely in the background of a game while the sessions deal with unrelated adventures.  

"So... no space helmets for you guys, then?"

     Chapter 3 introduces a new NPC alien race, the aurigan. This is basically a floating, flippered, 600 pound headless turtle. Their home system was made unlivable by some catastrophe, and they’re now traveling in giant lumbering nomadic generation starships towards the core of the galaxy. Basically friendly, this ancient race enjoys meeting with other species, but they still remain aloof and disinterested in long-term relations. They’re very adept at mechanical tinkering, at a skill level which other races would love to master, if they could get the aurigan to teach them.

     Unfortunately, this is the only new alien race to be described. I'd have liked to have a few more pages of strange new species to populate the sector with, but making up your own is easy enough in Thousand Suns that this isn't a big deal. It just strikes me as odd that there's only one new race, ya know?

"Look, we're lost! Just pull the shuttle over and ask for directions!"

     The next chapter provides a nice chunk of material for beginning campaigns by looking at the Meridian Sector. Meridian is the central world of the Thousand Suns pre-fab campaign, and this chapter outlines that capital planet and about 18 more Core Worlds within the Sector. Basic planetary statistics are included for each, such as primary terrain, gravity, climate, atmosphere, government, tech level, and population. Each planet has a bit of text describing the notable points of interest, though this might be a few paragraphs or even just a few sentences. This is a fantastic start for new GMs, who may not have designed an interstellar campaign area yet. And even existing campaigns can pop this sector whole into the mix, or simply use the planets individually in their own stellar maps.  

"I made it. It's a cheese slicer with night scope and retractable graviton inducers."

     Chapters 5 and 6 are totally gnarly, especially for the techies in your party. While standard weapon stats were given in the core 1kS rulebook, these chapters allow you to customize or design your own armaments and defenses from the ground up. Inventors start by choosing a type and level of technology the weapon uses to inflict damage (firearm, cleaving, puncturing, explosive, particle projection, etc.), then simply add Refinements to develop the lethal instrument they desire. Refinements will determine the final weight, damage, maximum damage, range and cost of your weapon.

     For example, you can choose “Slashing Edge” as your tech type, and "Melee Weapon" as your base design. That might be a switchblade, hatchet, battle axe, or glaive, to name a few options, so next we narrow that down a bit.

        We’ll decide to make it a Medium weapon, so let’s say it’s a machete-like sword. You can then add Refinements such as Vibroblade, Collapsible, Voice Recognition, and Sensor Baffling.You now have an easily-concealable weapon hilt from which a high-velocity vibrating blade can spring, but only when activated by the command word spoken in your voice, and the whole thing is fairly easy to smuggle past basic weapons sensors. By adding up the Refinement stats, you’ll get a weapon cost, weight, damage and tech level. Awesome, and easy.  The same can be done for protection, such as armors, force fields, energy shields, and reinforced fiber attire. Example items are given for both weapons and defenses, to get you started.

"Hey, does that robot look like Robert Patrick to you?"

     Aaaaa-HA! Finally, we get to a chapter devoted to robots and androids! For those of you who bothered to read my original Thousand Suns core book review (ahem), my biggest gripe was the lack of robot rules in a sci-fi rpg. This chapter easily makes up for the dearth of info in the first book, so I’m finally happy with my 1kS system as a complete set.  

     Robots have “tech classes,” which designate the general tech level at which they were produced. Class V ‘bots are the first semi-autonomous type, having limited AI for simple problem-solving. Robots of this tech level are usually limited to use in specific fields such as space exploration or custodial and construction duties, and are not truly mainstream appliances. In more advanced societies, there are also “synthetics,” which are Class VII creations. These are more sophisticated androids modeled after their creator race, and are accepted in everyday society in goodly numbers as laborers, teachers, caretakers, soldiers, clerks, etc. (The automatons in the movie I, Robot come to mind.) In their most advanced stages, synthetics can so closely resemble and imitate a life-like counterpart that it’s difficult to tell them apart from a biological organism. (These would be similar to the Nexus-6 series in Bladerunner.)  Eventually you get to Class VIII ‘bots, which are liquid-state shape-changing entities with complete self-awareness and advanced AI, and most likely their own personalities (similar to the T-1000 Terminator.)  

     And yes, PCs can indeed now be robots, androids, or synthetics. There are full guidelines for creating your artificial person, built from the ground up. You can chose body size and type, manipulators and locomotion, armor, equipment, sensors, skill packages and processors. Exxxxxxcellent! And the most fun? If you get lasered into pieces, your party can try to upload your robot brain into another body! (“RX-7, can you hear us? Whew, we thought we lost you there, pal! The bad news is… um… you’re currently a fax machine…”)

"Ralf! Ixnay on ootingshay the oidray with your asterblay!"  

     Foundation Transmissions wraps up with a very short chapter on lingua terra, the standard form of speech across the human occupied sectors of space. The authors use Esperanto throughout their books to give an exotic flair to some of the names of equipment or places or things in the 1kS meta-universe; this chapter provides you with a crash course in the pronunciation of Esperanto and terra lingua, and a few pages’ worth of useful words to sprinkle throughout your campaign. You can use these words for PC or starship names, geographical features, ranks or titles, or whatever trips your thrusters, Sparky. It’s not a language guide, since there are no phrases except a few greetings, but it’s a handy list of single vocab words to give flavor to your game. Now you can call someone a ‘scoundrel’ and sound all alien-y as you pull your blaster and open fire. (“Kanajlo!” pyew! pyew!)

The GOOD

     I’m a fan of 1kS as a rules-light, fun system for pulpy or cinematic game play, and this sourcebook adds a little bit of everything good to the original game. I especially like the addition of robots, and the equipment customization material, but with the sector planet guide, military rank rules, being able to count to a million in Esperanto, and everything else, there’s not a useless or bad chapter of material in the book.   

     And, if you prefer your material shot to you through the ether, you can download the PDF instead of the soft cover version, but either one is priced to make you happier than a Jawa in a junkyard.

The NEUTRAL

     They’re still giving me goofy aliens. First walking palm trees, now floating decapitated turtles? Really?

The EVIL

     Holy.

     Crap.

     While the core book could have used a good editing, both for layout errors and typos and the occasional odd bit of mangled grammar, Transmissions actually made my brain cramp a few times. There are certain chapters where it’s hard to get through a single page without at least one obvious typo. And while I can appreciate the chapter on scheming, it reads as though written by someone for whom English was not their first language. And before any kriilkna reading this throw a fit, for the record I of course have no issue with a non-native speaker working in the industry. Heck, my first tongue is a goblinoid dialect. But if that’s the case, you get an English speaking translator/ editor to slap your work into shape for the finished product.

     The most rampant problem lies in the second chapter. The explanations of some aspects of the scheming mechanics are jumbled and confusing, and some of the charts poorly explained to the point that I’ve read the chapter many times, and I’m still not sure exactly what I’m supposed to do with some of the material, or what the author of the chapter meant with certain terms or phrases. There’s obviously a great idea at the core, and it can still be used easily enough by ignoring the confusing bits, but it could have used a serious re-write to make it snappy and clear. Perhaps if I read it in the original Esperanto? 

And so...

     I’ve read very few rpg supplements that are packed with as high a percentage of good stuff (as opposed to semi-useful filler) as this book is. While at first glance each chapter seems very compact, the sheer flexibility of the game system means that the material given is worth far more game use than the page count would seem to indicate.  Remember, 1kS is a toolkit, so the great majority of Transmissions is bare-bones usefulness instead of campaign-specific fluff. I really, really like that in a sourcebook.  

- - TRANSMISSION ENDS - -

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