I’ve decided to add this page as a version control. As time goes on and as I refine this vision I find that I’m updating old stories with nuances. Perhaps this or that sentence missed the mark; perhaps some kind comments from a reader prompted me to correct an error; perhaps what I wrote then no longer fits the evolving vision.
22 September 2024
As I restart this retro-future concept, I return to the inspirations that drove it. Forgetting for a moment the entire political and economic framework and focussing on the technology, I get Cassette Futurism. There was a period of time, so brief, between analogue and digital. After building a collection of cassette tapes as the NEW THING and thinking vinyl was old hat, I was oh-too-quickly confronted with CD’s. Cassettes suddenly seemed tawdry. Hand written cardboard that showed the collections of things I loved. Suddenly my tastes and collections were rendered inferior. So I dumped them… not quite all, I kept a very select few. But the ‘kitchen tape’, the one I played over and over is long gone.
And of course CD’s were rapidly replaced by fully digital. And physical menu ceased to exist. Nothing was concrete anymore.
But astonishment! It appears that others have discovered the delight of cassette tapes. Behold: https://www.chalkpitcassetteclub.com/
What does this have to do with Kosmos 68? I’m glad you’ve asked.
This retro-future development hinges on a few historical events and an attitude that today must seem laughably naive. In the 1960’s when our timeline diverges there was a pervasive belief that, sure the Soviet Union might be able to produce material goods in plenty and give everybody a job, but were they really making everybody HAPPY? Was a lack of competition a path to misery? Surely for there to be winner there needed to be losers.
As we know the mass production idyl was illusionary. The Soviet Union was unable to provide abundance. Why that is is beyond the scope of this discussion. But take it as read, everyone BELIEVED that the USSR was going to overtake the West. And so that’s what happened in K68.
And yet, the cassette tape was a gateway into the real USSR as it collapsed. Pirate tapes made their way across the Wall. The ability to mix and share musical art was magic. Literally magic. As magic as the invention of writing.
And so, here we are in 2168. This is a Cassette Futurism imaginarium. Technology got about as good as it needed to get by the 1970’s to early 1980’s. The attitudes are 1960’s. The technology is what was imagined in the 1970’s editions of Popular Mechanics.
15 September 2024
- A lot has happened since the last blog entry, none of which will be interesting to anyone
- I’ve spent a lot of time fleshing out a Dark Age setting using Forbidden Lands rules set in the Hârn setting
- And, of course, the world continues to conspire to make fact stranger than fiction
- For this burst of activity I’m consciously going to be mining old stories and scenarios and repurposing them, as well as continuing to perfect the command prompts to generate thematic images. Thanks for coming on the journey.
22 February 2024
And now you can order groceries online and a man (sexist!) in a truck delivers them to your door. How modern! How outre! How things have changed.
When I was a boy I was raised on a small farm near a small town in a small country. And once a week (I guess, maybe it was fortnight) a van would come past and stop at the gate. And Mum would go out and buy groceries. What did she get? I don’t recall but, purely logically, it must have been the things Dad couldn’t grow. And I recall that if I’d been ‘good’ whatever that meant, maybe I’d get a 5 cent mixture of lollies (or sweets, or candies for our foreign guests). This was a small paper bag of a few tooth pulling treats. Don’t let me bore you with the types.
How my mother must have railed over the inflation. Why, only a few years ago that would have been threepence, and even at that it was daylight robbery.
What has this to do with K68?
Because people think the future will be sexy and inexplicable. And to a certain extent I concede that must be true: how would an aircraft appear to people of the 1600’s? But on the other hand, as long as our backsides point down I’d bet good money that many things will stay the same, but perhaps get new clothes. Emotions are hard-wired. They may express in different ways depending on culture, but humans are forever doomed to remain humans… as long as they remain humans.
There is no point to this diary entry except to say that K68 is an expression of that belief that the future will look a lot like the present. More or less. This isn’t body-swapping cyberpunk.
7 November 2023
I’m going to start a new page for suggested procedures since I reckon I now have enough setting to allow me to actually play and make the experience distinct from any other RPG. These will not be rules, because the rules are and remain Cepheus Engine with a preference for Faster Than Light.
This thinking has been influenced by the work of Free League and the many solo game advices out there such as Solo by Zozer.
I’ll start by describing what I’ve found are the main Campaign Styles. K68 is not Star Wars. It’s not Gamma World. It’s not 3rd Imperium Traveller. It’s not Fading Suns. The list is endless of what it’s not. So what is it? I think I’ve distilled it. And within those campaign styles I’ll create tables that can assist in generating stories from scratch. Also important are Mishap tables. Cepheus and the original 2d6 Science Fiction Roleplaying Game had the early conception of dice rolling and task resolution. You either succeed or you fail. It was up to the GM to figure out what might come next. Since then many, if not all, RPGs have introduced the ideas of ‘failing forward’. Essentially it means that a failure is an opportunity to advance the story and not a full stop on the action. What happens when a character fails a task? A mishap distinct to the task occurs, which drives further PC opportunities to engage in the story.
The risk is that these tables of mishaps will lead to roll playing rather than role playing. That’s not my intention.
6 October 2023
Greetings, dear comrades, greetings. The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated, though I have had a close call with the surgeon’s knife. A half a year has gone by, I see (that’s a half year in MET), and much has happened in the world.
Is it time to get back to work on this work of fiction? Very probably.
26 May 2023
New work in induced torpor for space travel: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/25/hibernation-artificially-triggered-in-potential-space-travel-breakthrough
5 Apr 23
A long break due to some time in hospital.
What is it?
It’s a big building where there are ill people. But that’s not important right now…
******
This has caused an article to be sitting on the launch pad for a very long time. All I need to do is finish the story hooks and then press the ignition button.
Meantime, enjoy this YouTube channel I found on those long lonely nights in the cardio ward. Here’s someone who grew up in the USSR and was old enough to understand, witnessed the collapse, and now lives in the US. He has a unique and entertaining perspective. https://www.youtube.com/@UshankaShow
11 Mar 2023
As I searched for more fodder for my upcoming story on the strange artefacts of the Architects (and generally trolled for inspiration), I remembered a short story from 1968. It was called The Seven Wonders of the Universe, appeared in a Gollanz collection of short stories in that year, and was penned by Mose Mallette. As far as I could tell Mr Mallette was born in Atlanta (USA) in 1940 and wrote only three short stories. I wanted to track him down and thank him for his work. Seven Wonders has been in a back of my mind since I first read it in the very early 1980’s. But no sign. Should anyone have any clues…
And in that search I found this cool site that reviews old science fiction as if it’s fresh today. And draws together some fascinating what-ifs as well. Check it out.
5 Mar 2023
Nice article on the psychological benefits of having a hobby: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/04/the-joy-of-mediocrity-we-need-hobbies-even-if-were-bad-at-them-to-free-us-from-perfection
1 Mar 2023
Eric over at Swords and Stitchery is using this material to inform part of his own campaign. Thanks for your interest, Eric. Hope the sessions are fun. Please keep posting so I can find out what happens.
24 Feb 2023
The latest issue of the Cepheus Journal is out. If you’ve never looked before, go and check out all the back issues and make sure you follow it into the future. Personally, selfishly, I’m thrilled to get a guernsey as well.
23 Feb 2023
Kosmos-68 received a review at Alegis Downport the other day. Nice to think that someone might be finding these ideas useful.
The number of articles has not getting to a tipping point where I can start to draw threads together. There’s still several easter eggs to go – mysteries still hinted at in Paul’s original work. But once I’ve covered those the bigger pictures can start to emerge. I have an overarching story in mind, and every article contributes a thread.
10 Feb 2023
Musical accompaniment for the Kosmos Trucking article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHOrpFeXUao
9 Feb 2023
Humorous amateur short story that could so very easily be a Kosmos-68 documentary: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0PSmnyAuNpsq8TZRzXnGPoHNjxC9RrKikGV6gyW4G97ceN5K1NDXaz4xccynWygJrl&id=100063952777375&mibextid=kdkkhi
6 Feb 2023
While thinking about rules and whether I need to write some from scratch in light of the current OGL debacle, I asked myself what is the focus of these stories. Because the rules should facilitate the style of play, not merely scratch the itch of rules-nerds. To answer that question I categorised the adventure hooks I’d already written to discover what style of play I am writing about, with the intention that this will inform what the rules need to cover.
I classified each hook against six categories, giving a score of 4, 3, 2, & 1 (meaning two categories have scores of 0). So a score of 4 meant this was the primary focus of the hook, with 3 being the next most important aspect, and so on. The results are as follows:
- Investigation; Politics – 187
- Combat; Military – 165
- Discovery; Trekking – 162
- Survival – 143
- Criminal; Smuggling – 128
- Routine; Transport – 76
This tells me that my stories are predominantly about the social and political realities. This includes police and detective work, spy and espionage work, and navigating complex hierarchies and bureaucracies. Least important is what is traditionally seen as core Traveller: transporting goods from planet A to planet B.
But perhaps that last conclusion is an over simplification. After all, it’s likely that adventures start with something mundane and then escalate out of control. Or do they? Isn’t the advice to start as close to the action as possible?
In any case, any rules applied to these stories need to specifically facilitate, or at least not make it harder, to conduct investigations.
21 Jan 2023
IL-25 still in service in North Korea 70+ years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFmFbKvNBFk
And here is a nice piece on the Tu-128. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1iiYfgP2lM This is my thinking for K68, and why we got our arses kicked. In fact, for that 1960’s inspiration, have a look at the glorious U.F.O. from Gerry Anderson. The Lunar Interceptors. The USSP specialised in long range interception, but the Zhuki did something else.
16 Jan 2023
You know you’ve made it when your kids, in their 20’s and still at home, complain about the music being too loud because they have work tomorrow.
I built a time machine. Components of 1980’s tech to play cassette tapes of that era. Hits of ’83, etc. Many parts. A frankenmachine. To hear the sounds of the 80’s as they were heard in the 1980’s.
14 Jan 2023
For your listening pleasure, mid sixties magic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z0pP8FqYvk
And here is a modern playing of another classic piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsAeHdBIPAM
13 Jan 2023
YouTube video about the Tu104: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqhtkG6glug
YouTube video about the Mil V-12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOApFeEgHcE
4 Jan 2023
2001: A Space Odyssey was released in 1968. It has been 55 years since, as at the time of this writing, and we are no where near this level of tech yet. 2168 is not that far away. Or, or perhaps from a different perspective, we DID have the technology but lacked the political will.
1 Jan 2023
- Added Selected Bibliography to References page
- Updated details in entry on psionic powers to give a numerical feel for the incidence of powers in the population.
KOSMOS 68 