What will introduce new people to Sci-fi TRPGs like Traveller/Cepheus Engine?

 In MechWarrior Online, I maintain a channel with my team called tier5MWOplayer, and one of the most awkward conversations is around people asking to join our team—my team is also my TRPG group and my Airsoft group. Reflecting back on my experience and recalling my 12-year-old son’s experience making friends, I largely forgot about the many people who don't have a friend group to play and hang out with. When I look back at the people who ask to join games, and of course how playing often with a certain group of people in the intimate game of TRPGs can form strong bonds of friendship—which is the same for other games like MWO and other online games—it makes me reconsider my initial hypothesis that some Critical Role meme will get people into the hobby. My thesis is now finding people who are emotionally available to have new friends and their interests align—even if it’s just virtual time.

I was hoping that Game in the Brain and its open-source nature will make an impact, as I’ve clarified that the assets and material are Creative Commons Attribution and Share Alike 4.0—but unfortunately, it will only help someone who doesn’t have the time and effort to make 3D assets or artists to make their own works. Basically, it will help other up-and-coming artists and writers who want to start out. Publishing my earnings and knowing my break-even point already give away my costs—seeing me market and peddle my wares also shows the work that goes into getting mind space for people to consider getting our product.

I want to grow the hobby, but at my position, having more people give it a try and find a game system to write for and tell stories with is probably my contribution. I love the support though—but as I slowly add on to these projects and experiment, I won't know what 2-3 years of me and Nicco constantly adding to the books people already bought will do. What will spending 2020-2030 developing Game in the Brain as our abilities decline as we turn 50? Already, I am getting used to not being able to see clearly since my progressive glasses cost 160 USD/8,000 PHP a year. The months it takes for me to recover from something and the additional months to get back to where I was with compromises to my abilities compared to last year. By the time I’ll be 50, I probably will have spent 7,000-10,000 USD on material for Mneme and GITB, far from breaking even. But that 7-10k USD investment will have yielded software for character generators, world generators, 3D character builders, etc., all open source and creative commons. And probably, my audience, who are my peers and close to my age, will be in a different life circumstance.

There should be enough material for someone to make a detailed novel in hard sci-fi, or Nicco and I will start writing hard sci-fi adventures as we can generate worlds and scenes in 3D, and have people understand the concepts since the 3D assets are there to be manipulated. Is that growing, or just us changing?

Success is earning 10,000 USD a year (30,000 USD total from 2021 to 2030) and spending it all to grow and pay for services—and of course, being the one to dictate the spending—make science more accessible and imagine and game a future where automation improves the quality of life for all. Success is me and Nicco earning enough to train a new batch of OJTs in 3D, GODOT, writing, science communication, and developing game engines—and they go off and do their own sustainable passion project with skills that are cutting-edge for the Philippines. That my open Sci-Fi document has a wiki and an AI to help track changes for continuity and consistency.

That’s the unlikely but at least non-zero chance of happening by trying. I guess I am like my gambling grandfather and dad—except I don’t gamble with the future of my kids.

Can't Draw Painstaking Details anymore - 3D models is the way to Go.

In Adventure, where we played ourselves in the Genre of Isekai in college (in 2000) I played the Illusionist. If I could manipulate perception the things I would do - which would be an interesting character: the Scientific honest-faced Illusionist. 

I can draw, but I can't draw the painstaking details needed to do a hard scifi. Particularly the way the body moves in a space suit that tries to be realistic. This means I will be focusing not on drawing but in modeling bodies and faces and rigging them.  

Created with Dalle3

2-Parsec and Mneme Variant Combat will be re-aligned.

2-Parsec (Or Parsecs from Sol Series)

 an Adventure where I populate the nearby star systems to Earth and produce a 3D star map of these worlds and Create worlds using Mneme World Generator - I and Nicco will model and create 3D models of the Characters and NPCs. basically a rigged (meaning a Posable and Animatable model) of the NPCs. 

Enough assets that If I had the money I can probably Animate a Scene and make a broke-budget Sci-Fi show. Thankfully I've covered the other side of this equation: A supply of young 3D animators who need a project. 

Mneme Variant Combat 

I will apply the same skills but make 3D printable combat figures and 3D Assets. People will buy it because - not only do we fix the rules in a way that it a sustainable update cycle. 

Versions

I dont like the business model of creating a New Version to make more money. I'll try to stick to continuously improving Mneme and GITB products until we reach platinum (which is never - this is never going to be mainstream). I'll try to re-invest all the money back into improvements - improvements I get to decide how to apply our limited resources on. 

If Platinum is achieved - with how far I can make money go in the Philippines (as we have a minimum wage here of 1.5usd/hour and 1usd/hour in the provinces; I love bragging how much money I save and earn my company ) I can probably have the power to bring in more talent who will develop under us to hopefully found something better than us. 

Lets see if this can work. 

Radio Drama. 

With the VTuber Tech, AI-voices and Gamers who can do accents and impersonations: When am I going to see a Radio Drama with Vtuber Avatar animations running characters and AI voice changers and a Virtual projected Backdrop of the Scenes. 

Dalle3

How many Ships in a System… Human Development Index

Dalle generated this when i asked it to create an image based on my article

When we Jump into a System, or even before that - we look at the Context “How many ships are here? “ 

 These should depend on the following factors (typically measured by a governing body or large sponsors of trade and available to the  PC)

How much Trade?  Which is determined by The Size of the Economy and its Needs (What does it trade with and for. The Size of the Economy - measured in GDP, abstracted for the game, is based on the Key indicators of  HDI, Population, and Technology Level. The size of the economy determines Gov’t size, Size of the largest Entities and Organizations. Note that in Mneme World Generator has a d66 Cultural Table that throws a curveball to Economic Aspects - a bit of Weirdness and Irrationality or Hyper-rationality.  

 In Mneme World Generator and the World building tools looks at Human Development Index to understand the human condition. Just because people have a good HDI it doesnt mean people are Happy - Development means there is a Problem that needs solving - a group of people (that can be the majority or minority) that is underserved. The Philippines has pretty low HDI but always reports as “Happy” which is a frustration for me and something I understand as a Filipino. Happy to survive? Happy with the unfair status quo? Happy because we have no responsibility in building the future or fixing injustice? Happy cause we benefit off injustice? 

I wonder why HDI is not covered in Games much, but when I think of Social Status - I think of HDI as an essential measure - the way a Numerator needs a Divisor for context. HDI is a usuful measure - and the HDI of the PRESENT day world helps put context to what society we are looking at - as well as Economy. 

Development is in the metric of HDI - It can come to represent Change. and With Scarcity being ever present then an unchanging, relative to others, is something to measure - and its context is to be used to look at the world and our circumstance and those of others. 

In a Fantasy Medieval World or in the Worlds with Clones or Artificially born sepient slaves: What is their HDI like? Or Anarchist egaletarian communes, or Coprorate Distopian Megacities? How much education and opportunities come into their life, how stable are the various stages of their life, and how much of people who make the “best choices” society expects, still come up short. Then the outliers, how much are the PCs outliers and how relevant are they in the settings history and narrrative? Do they shape the narrative of a society or theirs is a story just for them? 

VSCodium and Github - for the TRPGamers who will automate

So I made a tutorial - after probably 20 recording - how to set this up. I couldnt have done it with ChatGPT4 helping me research the errors (copy paste the errors) to figure out what went wrong.  

Its the Age of AI - where the AI is going to help us leave the comfort of our core disciplines and branch out. Gaming it the hobby of exploring the world with a curious and playful mindset - allowing us to take on challenges undaunted. 

note my age and those older than me who do still attempt to learn skills outside their discipline. Still we can't do this full time. Playing with Code is about 4-5 weeks in a year and I forget so much - if feels like a dream. AFter this long holiday I will probably be doing Network (Pfsense) Problems - note that I'm primarily a project manager - organizing work and trying to make small wins (as compared to an operations manager who tries to create a sustainable cycle if they were mindful of the literature of what operations managing does) 

I really hate how market forces try to squeeze the life out of people - i dont like having so many to juggle that I sometimes feel like I lose myself and forget chunks of me - but thats the demands unless we change the system (obviously a systems nerd - found in world builders )

How to fit all these tasks? Procrastrination or Caution?

 The tasks for Game in the Brain: Mneme is plenty. Of course now that a large hurdle has been overcome: releasing a book - I can focus on smaller projects that incrementally increase the value of the book. The book is 50% off right now, its value is comparable to the 20usd compared to all the other things out there that give such tools. Especially when you factor the automation and the access to editable assets - the tools mean that someon can easily BUILD over the work. 

Work and Home is plenty with a lot of repairs - I have a leaking aircon that was just serviced 3 weeks ago (probably the slime clog was not properly fixed since all the insulation is intact), then there are the work problems - particularly NETWORK - create the overlapping VLANs - allowing a downstream sub-network access PCs of a upstream subnetwork (NAT) with PFsense. Oh then there is the Project Sponsorship to have someone assigned in being a Project Coordinator to a data center expansion in time for Jan - with barely any funds to hire a Project Manager or Coordinator. I have to do it with Students and our professionals only reviewing and giving their feedback - Interpretting the Data and formulating the Next Actions and Technical approaches will be up to me. 

But it is in my Personal Projects with Game in the Brain that I get to study Github, VS codium, Blender, and my personal Home projects where I use FreeCAD, Networking, VMs, Containers/Dockers, and Dynamic DNS and Hosting my WIKI and Projects. I found someone who I can hire to help me set up a dedicated Website for Game in the Brain.org GITB.org will be where I will test out self hosting, NextCloud and have the entire infrastructure of my Side business ideally in Containers that Can be easily replicated using a container-hub in another machine. GITB allows me to R&D - which later on I teach students. 

I’m gonna ask my mom if I can borrow the 3d Printer at work to prototype the 3D printed products and will hire my students to prototype the Spaceship models and the Combat Caracters (For Mneme Variant Combat).  Mneme Variant Combat will have Minuature Figs for Army, Marines, Barbarians, Drifters, Rogues, and the combat Careers in Cepheus Engine. Complimentary will be the CE Character Gen Github I’m working on - people can generate NPCs quickly - for that 10usd and of course CE SRD and basic stuff - you can print out of use rendered Tokens of soldiers for combat scenarios. 

One of the Scenarios you can use in Mneme Variant Combat is fully utilizing the Superiority mechanics  to manage SQUADS or Platoons - and have a session where the attrition is not in HP but in casualities. You can have a Town, Habitat, Mine, Lab, a Base, or Fortress being inflitrated by a Platoon or Company - each PC has special leadership charactersitics that make their Squad or Platoon operate differently: assaults, scouts, support, and special. 

Once these Modules are set up in Mneme Variant Combat, I will raise it to 20usd (with a temp discount fo 10usd) so that early investors get rewarded and the New people who got into it know the value of the product is much higher as compared to others. 

GITB has a recurring goal of: Run the Game Conveniently - dont get too invested with the details, but provide the details that take work to make and let the dice fall where they may. the details that are created can be discarded when convenient or can be used. Thats the funny thing about TRPGs - details help with immersion but we have to choose or discard these as we see fit.    The more invested we are in the details, the more we force it to work - instead of looking at the game at a Higher altitude and make sense of the bigger picture. 

Will there be enough people who will like the product? I’ll know from the marathon of Plugging my products every month and posting about new features. I guess after 1 year of posting a lot - will i realize if people like this Software + Book + 3d Asset approach. This is exactly like my Graduating Project in College: A game I wrote, I drew, I layouted, and Printed and Sold. Wearing all the hats: pretty much the set up of all the many Indie gamers - a cheap ass set up with a lot of compromises that is net better than the alternative for a small niche. 

MNEME SPACE COMBAT, a good start to a marathon and time to study.

Have had some Rest. 

• Had my Executive Checkup - ok for my age. 
• Had my wisdom tooth removed partial success, we settled with just the crown because I was too old for the root to be removed... which is actually the recommendation for guys my age. 
• I'm on antibiotics, all of us with a cough, as a wave has hit most people around us (including us). 

To date 9 people bought 

Note I'm still in the hole, paying for the blender modeling and art. We had some serious rework of the design.
 
This is the breakdown of World Gen Sales.

WEEKS

MONTHS

BLUE: is earnings (after DTRPG gets its 35% Cut)
RED is the UNITS sold. 

WEEKS chart.

• The most I've sold in a week is 29 copies of Mneme World Generator - I dont know if Mneme Space Combat will beat that metric. I'll be good if 10 is sold because when Mneme world Generator was first launched it was at 5usd, 10usd per unit - given how Demand vs Supply curves work - Mneme Space Combat would need to be way more superior in its ability to capture the market. 
  
• You will notice there is no "Endurance" as Once I've made a world and all the planets - there is not much value to people. Sure I automated one of the most tedius tasks and made it way more realistic but "Who cares?" how many Referees and World builders look at DTRPG and ask: I want to proceedurally generate a world? I'm sure its less than a hundred (Mneme World Generator is up to 96 sales as of today). Unlike Mneme Space Combat as I detail ships with Ship-Maps, Tables of Stats, Scenarios, 3D Models etc...  I can run a marathon every month: starting Jan producing these items. I HOPE that I can push the purchases per week to within 20-50% of my best week when I release Add-ons. if you look closely at WEEK after the initial Push i could barely climb back to 7 or 24% of our best week. if I can have a week that has 50% or 5 people buying Mneme Space Combat once a Month - it would be better than the performance of Mneme World Generator. 52 weeks or 12 months of pushing this x 5 would be at least at Copper.  

The youtube Videos 

• 2023 10 28 Blender file Navigation Customizing with Decals 
• 2023 10 18 Mneme Space Combat Sample
• 2023 10 28 Adding Planets to the Ships Background
• 2023 10 28 How to Add Text and a simple burn trail 

Learning to use GITHUB and continuing my Javascript Studies. 
I took pgorman's' Classic Traveller Character Generator and started to learn to tweak it 

I had to copy it instead of branch or fork it since I didnt want to accidentally break his version and i'm going a different direction with Cepheus Engine. Here is the current minor tweaks I made (https://justinaquinogitb.github.io/cepheus_engine_character_generator/index.html?history=verbose) 

TO DO LIST: make CE More ACCESSIBLE. make sure people who get into the hobby dont need to memorize a whole lot of things. 

1. Change the stats from the CODE to something more verbose - strXX(+X) (converts the stats back to something more reasonable). 
2. Option to Roll Any Career vs Combat Careers. 
3. 1 Career at a time, slowly update the tables. Starting with the Combat Careers. This is going to take pretty long. ?I dont know how long this will take? 
4. COMPLIMENTARY script Tools: 
1. Instant CREW - randomly generated and their current Disposition (Dysfunctional or with with good professional morale).
2. NPC encountered and PLOTS in space encounters. 
3. Passengers and backstories, and hooks. 
   
5. >> BRANCH for MNEME character generator.   
1. DND like stats: str, dex, end, int, wis, cha + SOC and PSI. 
2. Stats are 5 to 15, but median is still 6-8. 
3. Mneme Combat Equipment - best when using Mneme Variant Combat - which allows combat across many tech levels. 
4. TL Range - allowing for Low Tech Characters and Careers. 

 I figured out what will make Mneme Variant Combat work. To have the success elements that made Mneme World Gen and Space Combat work: 3d printable miniatures of combatants made by me and nicco, the software to make the stats of these combatants, the tokens, the combat maps, the scenario generator, the SOLO Play elements aided by our software tools. 

Blender, Some programming, Spreadsheets, and a Wargaming and Hard Scifi background making Cepheus engine materials. With Open source this is possible, even if the Niche is really tiny. Hopefully, people can find the material enjoyable. 

The marathon is the obvious Strategy that we will keep adding improvements and value to our 3 books: Personal Combat, Space Combat, and World Generation. We hope to reach Silver and the break-even point of Gold. Wow imagine a book that was made pretty much at cost 😂 anyway I cant quit my main job anyway.

Game in the Brain is not as pretty since we focus on the technical aspects: Modeling, Scripts, and Editing. Its too niche - as we are slowly making our way to Hard Scifi and making it accessible. Its a two man operation of people who are juggling a lot of things. I have to say that at least I accomplished my dream to write Scifi + TRPGs and help some people out along the way.

I teach students and we started up a small Arduino and Maker section (3 students in partnership with National university) - my personal life experience is that people with the same interests are too rare and too weird.  I shouldn't be surprised- at the same time - how weird would it be if your Cepheus Engine game writer dabbled in all of this, and did all this tech stuff professionally.