RPGPundit Reviews: Mindjammer

The following is a review of the Mindjammer supplement, for the Starblazer Adventures RPG, published by Cubicle 7.  The supplement is written by Sarah Newton.

Mindjammer is the first big supplement for the Starblazer Adventure RPG, which long-term readers will know I reviewed quite positively here some time ago. Starblazer is described as the "rock & roll Space Opera RPG", and is very loosely "based" (really, its an SF RPG inspired by) the Starblazer Adventures magazine published in the UK in the 1980s.
So what you get with Starblazer is really pulpy 80s space opera, with all the awesomeness that implies.  You also get a lack of any of the developments of the past 20 years in sci-fi.  On the whole, Starblazer doesn't miss it and doesn't really need it, but in another sense, we are talking about a kind of science fiction from before the Internet existed.

In a way, Mindjammer is an attempt to "update" Starblazer Adventures, creating a setting full of all the stuff that by default could not be in the main book: transhumanism, a more modern take on artificial intelligence, genetic modification, cybernetics, man-machine interaction, etc.

Yes, I mentioned the dreaded "T" word.  Up till now, if you're anything like me, you are likely never to have found an RPG setting with Transhumanism that was truly playable, had a point, and wasn't depressing as shit.

Surprisingly, Mindjammer avoids all of these pitfalls.
It is clearly very playable, and has a point to it, and its completely optimistic about the future.  Its transhumanism for non-Swine.

Whereas Starblazer Adventures had no single default setting, Mindjammer is basically a single setting; which incidentally produces a number of new rules, items, and ideas for the SA game.

The idea behind this setting is that Earth had, for millennia, sent out slow colony ships into space.  Then Earth entered a long utopian stagnation period. But suddenly a couple of centuries ago, the discovery of faster-than-light "2-space" travel created a renaissance on Earth, as it spread out to contact all the colonies it had once sent out, and to bring them together under The Commonality, a galactic civilization.
The players would presumably be people on the front line of that civilizational expansion, their task to help spread the Commonality and all its promise to the dark regions of space.

Characters in Mindjammer can play a regular human but also a variety of other "genotypes". Even the question of what is "human" is kind of different, as the typical lifespan is 500-700 years. Some humans evolved into new "hominid" species, like the low-gravity Javawayn and the amphibious Chembu.

There are likewise all kinds of artificial intelligence, both mechanical and synthetic.  Imperfect copies can be made of people's downloaded intelligence and memories as "eidolons". In theory, a player could even be a starship, one of the AI-starships known as the Mindjammers themselves, interacting outside its limits through an avatar.

There are also uplifted animals, or "xenomorphs"; and yes, there are even aliens, though these are very very alien in their nature and behaviours.

In the game, there is not just exploration and bringing primitives into the Commonality fold to keep one occupied; there is also the Venu.  These were old Earth's most distant colony, that was left in isolation for thousands and thousands of years, and after a renewed first-contact went horribly wrong, they have lunged out into the galaxy in a campaign of destruction and war.  They have an Emperor, they're extremely authoritarian and apparently xenophobic, and they're inferior in technology in most respects to the Commonality, but make up for that with a few military tricks and a total ruthlessness.

The Mindjammer game puts great importance on the theme of culture; how culture spreads, how it evolves, and how it influences.  Every player character is expected to include culture as a very significant element of his character creation process, something at least as important as his profession.

The Mindjammer book introduces a number of interesting new rules and elements. One central element of the sourcebook's additions is the "Mindscape". This is a kind of neural internet, allowing a shared consciousness in all users (who are EVERYONE in the commonality), containing all knowledge and even all memories of all those who are or ever have been a part of the Mindscape.  Characters can access the mindscape with a "skill chip" which give a character a +2 modifier to just about any skill. Tagging the Mindscape also allows someone to search through the mindscape for some desired knowledge or memory.  This all means that essentially, everyone has a basic level of competence in almost any skill; whereas true experts are those who have really remarkable levels of skill.

Plenty of new stunts are provided for the Transhuman flavour of Mindjammer, along with new definitions of how certain skills work. "Hacking", for example, makes very little sense in the conventional definition in a setting where just about EVERYTHING has artificial intelligence. Instead, you have the Technopsi skill, which is where you use the Mindscape to simulate effects that today would seem like psychic powers, including "mind reading", mental attacks or mental domination.

Technology is different too, from SA's default. The assumptions in this setting are explicitly outlined: AI is almost ubiquitous, but there's no such thing as a "computer" per se (there's no need!); there's no real limit to storage capacity for information, the real problem isn't holding data, its being able to search effectively; interface can change as needed; there's abundant power (essentially limitless, and free); faster than light travel but no faster-than-light communications; anti-gravity technology is abundant (now); extreme levels of miniaturization are available; matter can't be transported, but it can be created with a "makepoint" (replicator).  There's also a no-money economy in the core of the Commonality, though the Commonality has reintroduced money for the frontier where its sometimes necessary.  Space Travel in the time of the Commonality works based on something called 2-space, a kind of hyperspace that allows for faster-than-light voyages.  The Commonality is also just starting to develop "3-space" star-gates but so far these are in the core areas only, meaning that for right now, the frontier is still a faraway and exciting place. There's lots of new rules about starships and starship sentience, how travel through 2-space works, etc., and a number of sample Commonality and Venu ships. Extensive lists of weapons, armor, vehicles and some other gear are provided. In fact, if I were to criticize the tech section for something, its that they put more than enough weapons armor and vehicles, and could probably have put some more miscellaneous gear than they did.

I should pause here to make some notes about the physical structure of the book.  Mindjammer is a softcover book, with a full-colour cover (and a very awesome cover illustration).  Its 196 pages long. It has some spectacular maps on the inside covers, and quite a nice layout overall, with some good diagrams and novel illustrations. The majority of the illustrations, however, appear to be from the Starblazer magazine itself, which in some cases looks appropriate (you can tell they were trying hard to cherry-pick the ones that were not tied to the 80s), but in more than one occasion just seems to fail by looking too anachronistic and not at all capturing the feel of the setting itself. That's my biggest beef with the layout part of the book.

Anyways, carrying on:  the setting of the commonality is FAR in the future. I mean extremely far. So far that most racial distinction among humans has long since disappeared. If I read the timeline correctly, the setting's default is about fifteen thousand years into the future (or roughly the 170th century).  In some respects, this is where the setting fails a bit because they want their cake and to eat it too. Everything is supposed to be radically different, but there are worlds based on 20th century California or 18th century France. This seems silly to me, something they should have left out.

You will note that I said that the story of Mindjammer is optimistic. Its also imperialist. The commonality is presented as a great and benign force that is really a utopia for its citizens, but they are not going around giving the option of membership to the worlds they expand to. Their goal is to bring everything into the commonality, be it willingly, by cultural invasion, deception and political maneuvers, or by military force if necessary. Some particularly toxic cultures, that could be viewed as a kind of threat of infection on the commonality, are contained until they can be changed, but mostly, its either join or die when push comes to shove.
But is the Commonality the bad guy, then? Not as presented in the default of the setting, because the Commonality really is the greatest thing that has ever happened to humanity, and most of the kinds of worlds that would not want to participate in it are shit anyways. It doesn't offer oppression or even control, only participation, and all it wants in return is to share all the knowledge and experiences of the cultures it encounters. But I could see it as pretty easy to turn this whole campaign on its head; if the Commonality was just a little less free-thinking, they could easily be fascists (though I think the implication is that the nature of how data and technology works in the commonality would make this kind of thing very unlikely). Still, if someone really wanted to, they could run a campaign of the Commonality as the bad guys and the PCs are part of the brave colonial rebels resisting joining the mindscape.

Its not that everything is perfect in the Commonality though, even if you play it at face value: the commonality is growing faster than it can change, and this leads to a lot of potential chaos and political intrigue. Its also vulnerable to certain cultures and ideas developing which can spread like a cancer, threatening civilization itself. There are lots of groups within the Commonality, everything from "governmental" groups to weird cults, and a great amount of detail is provided in the sourcebook to deal with this material. The SA rules for organizations and civilizations make it very easy to take full advantage of this element of play. Some additional material is provided to elaborate on these rules, with things like a "meme attack", where you essentially engage in civilizational-combat not with traditional resources and warfare, but with the infection of ideas.

Lots of information is also provided for the types of planets one is likely to encounter in Mindjammer, and types of cultures. Known space being incredibly vast in the setting (10000 light years in diameter), it is impossible to detail or even name all the worlds in the setting. Instead, some very broad information is provided, plus the guidelines for creating your own setting-appropriate worlds, plus a sample region, the "Darradine Rim". The latter is an area of the Commonality expansion, that borders with Venu space and is thus a place rife with potential conflict.  Even in this section, only 20 or so worlds are actually detailed, though these get full-page statblocks and another full-page description along with a planetary map.

The last part of the book is a set of four adventures, that link together into a short campaign, entitled the "Black Zone Campaign". Each of the adventures are fully detailed, with lots of maps, sample characters, and useful information, featuring the Venu as a central antagonist.

I can tell you that I am currently running a Starblazer Adventures campaign, and its not a Mindjammer campaign, but I have ended up using a great deal of material from this sourcebook, which arrived just in time for me to do so.  I think that even if you are going to run a very standard and run-of-the-mill SA game, there is material in this book that you will find useful. And if you want your SA game to be "updated" to any degree to some of the newer concepts in sci-fi, this book is invaluable.  On the whole, it is an excellent first supplement to the Starblazer game.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Stanwell Deluxe Bent Billiard + H&H's Namaste

Thanks for the review.  The 'Commonality' certainly sounds like it was inspired by Ian Banks' 'Culture' setting (at least from the Consider Phlebas era).  If so, I'm intrigued.

Maybe the Cubicle 7 people on here, or people who've read that setting, could confirm with more certainty, but I do believe that Banks' setting was a direct inspiration.

RPGPundit

Hi Pundit,

Thank you very much for reviewing Mindjammer, and especially for taking the time to produce such a detailed and considered review.  I hope you won't mind us linking to it from the Starblazer and Mindjammer webpages!

I think you're spot-on to describe Mindjammer as an "updated" Starblazer Adventures - that was exactly the intention, to take the action-packed but very 80s Starblazer core and charge it up with all the cool stuff that's happened in science-fiction *since* the original comics were written.  

Obviously that includes all the awesome Transhuman stuff you find with people like Banks, Simmons, and co, although the intention was never to write a purely transhuman setting - I think good modern scifi is by definition packed with transhumanist ideas these days, so anything reasonably up-to-date in that area has to have lots of transhuman concepts floating around in it.  

Mindjammer's genesis began about 10 years ago.  I'd always wanted to play scifi RPGs in a setting which was both believable, but also stuffed full of all the action-packed space opera adventure that makes for a really good game.  Lots of scifi settings seemed pretty firmly rooted in a kind of "pre-Blade Runner" mindset; on the other hand, lots of modern scifi RPGs seemed bogged down with a self-limiting and pessimistic "cyber-dystopia" world view. I'd always wanted something which "filled that gap" - which is where the Commonality came in.

Bizarrely, I'd never actually read Banks' Culture novels until about a year ago - actually *after* writing Mindjammer.  Chris Birch at Cubicle 7, when he first saw the manuscript, said "Hey!  Have you read Iain Banks?  Or Dan Simmons?  This is just like it!"  Naturally I crashed through Amazon's front doors and ordered up

I think actually my own scifi thinking and writing has some pretty ancient, Golden Age roots - Olaf Stapledon and Cordwainer Smith are two of my personal all-time favourite writers, period - not just in scifi, but in literature in general.  The optimism, the strangeness, and the simple acceptance that the future of humankind is going to be so massively *alien*, and yet all the same full of wonder and very "human" and positive, is awesomely liberating from a writing standpoint. Like Wells, neither of them obsesses about technology or gear - rightly (IMHO) reasoning that far future technology is going to be as far beyond our understanding as an iPhone is to a caveman.  I wanted a scifi setting that actually deals with the things good scifi deals with - *ideas*.  Gadgets and technology are just gravy - it's the mindblowing concepts that are the meat.

I completely take your point about the Culture Worlds, BTW - those worlds in the Commonality where 20th century American culture still thrives, or 3rd century Roman, or 76th century Yarpeen, or whatever. That they came across as "silly" is entirely mea culpa - I definitely will try harder next time! :-)  

The fact is, the Culture Worlds are *weird*. They're one of the strangest things about the Mindjammer setting, imho, but also potentially one of the most fruitful. They were born in all those old Star Trek episodes - you know the ones, where Spock and Kirk land on a planet and it's *just* like 1920's Chicago.  "Fascinating - parallel evolution...," mutters Spock, and away they go...

I always wondered - how *could* such a world exist?  That's where the Culture Worlds come from.  They have two roots: the first is that the generation ships *do* have cultural "preferences" in their populations, and when a colony is established, it will have certain features from the cultures of its original colonists.  Naturally over thousands of years these cultural influences will twist and distort madly - you're just not going to get 1920's Chicago that way - but you might get some weird refraction of some past Old Earth culture.

That's where the Commonality comes in - the second "root" for the Culture Worlds.  Culture Worlds have "strong" cultures derived in some strange way from ancient cultures - they're often bigoted, convinced they're right and everybody else is wrong, and very resistant to external influence.  On the front line of cultural conflict, they're like castles or strong-points - areas where cultural attacks on the Commonality from outside can founder.  Therefore the Commonality actively *encourages* these Culture Worlds - even to the extent of deliberately manipulating certain worlds to "resurrect" past cultures.

IMHO this is where the fun can come in.  New California isn't a world which just happens to have a lot in common with 1960's America: it's a world which the Commonality thought had its own culture which was very strong, well-defended, and could do with fostering and reinforcing in certain directions - and the SCI Force decided that 1960's America was the perfect template.  Now, that's 15 millennia in the Commonality's past; what the Commonality *imagines* 1960's America was like is probably *way off* in several key areas - and that's where you have scope for fun and a bit of satire in a self-contained sandbox for one of those "Star Trek" episode moments if you like.

Likewise the Culture Worlds don't just draw on our past: they can draw on anything up to the Commonality's present, so you can have worlds which have cultures based on the Shinean Empire, or the First Fall of Man, the weirdly mutated societies of the Devastation and Ice Age, and so on.  It's a way of letting Mindjammer's obsession with culture spill over into the "history of the future", too, without having to get caught up in that timey-wimey stuff

I think your comments about artwork are very true, too.  For now, Mindjammer and Starblazer Adventures are supplements which use the artwork from the licensed comics - that's simply a design decision.  I think probably that won't be able to continue for ever, simply due to the quantity and appropriateness of the artwork.  We have enough pictures for the upcoming Mindjammer Adventures, and maybe for Planeships and Slowboats, but ultimately we may end up branching out into more modern design.  

I loved your comment about Mindjammer being imperialist!  In fact, I'd like to quote you:

Quote from: RPGPundit;380886You will note that I said that the story of Mindjammer is optimistic. Its also imperialist. The commonality is presented as a great and benign force that is really a utopia for its citizens, but they are not going around giving the option of membership to the worlds they expand to. Their goal is to bring everything into the commonality, be it willingly, by cultural invasion, deception and political maneuvers, or by military force if necessary. Some particularly toxic cultures, that could be viewed as a kind of threat of infection on the commonality, are contained until they can be changed, but mostly, its either join or die when push comes to shove.

But is the Commonality the bad guy, then? Not as presented in the default of the setting, because the Commonality really is the greatest thing that has ever happened to humanity, and most of the kinds of worlds that would not want to participate in it are shit anyways. It doesn't offer oppression or even control, only participation, and all it wants in return is to share all the knowledge and experiences of the cultures it encounters.

That's such a good description. Even writing Mindjammer, I could never decide whether I *liked* the Commonality.  I *admire* it, but I think it's also staggeringly and terrifyingly powerful, and should it ever go "bad" there'd be hell to pay. Having read Iain Banks, now, I think there are *definite* parallels with the Culture here. This whole aspect of Mindjammer is something that really fascinates me, and I'm hoping we'll be able to say more about it in upcoming supplements.  "Mindjammer Adventures", which I'm just finishing up now, really goes to town on the "transhuman space opera" thing in four completely different directions (and scenarios), plus a bunch of rules expansions and heaps more setting material. It's a bit of a balancing act providing a Starblazer setting - you want to keep it loose enough to let the GM get right in there and fill it out with his own ideas (and those of the players, if you play it that way ), but at the same time you want to give enough detail and shape so that it doesn't become diffuse and generic.  With Mindjammer Adventures we've looked at four transhuman "themes" in detail, without getting too prescriptive about the setting, so you can play the scenario material how you want, without having to commit to a particular vision or "canon".  We'll see how that goes

Thanks again for an excellent review, Pundit - it's a joy to see such thoroughness, and I'm over the moon it's proving a useful supplement in your games!

Cheers,

Sarah

Thank you very much, and yes, feel free to link or repost it everywhere you like.

RPGPundit