Kimanjano libre

[Anders]

I thought it might be interesting to present my current campaign, a rebel campaign set on Kimanjano:
http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/Game/2300AD/

It is right now nearly canon as far as I know (with the exception of a changed atmospheric composition of the planet - I did not use that explosive and somewhat unlikely mixture of methane and oxygen). Some files that may be of interest:

Les Années Folles, my take on the 2320AD universe
Kimanjano, my take on the planet.
Cybernetics, a big compilation and extension of enhancement methods.
Provolution, my take on them.
More equipment
On smuggling
RFID tags
Interstellar velocity adjustment, an interesting problem for stutterwarp discharge

The PCs form roughly three interlinked groups. One is led by Rafael Zeeman, an Azanian engineer out for revenge (French troops killed his family) and who is now running a rebel cell funded by smuggling involving several technologically oriented characters. The second group is essentially a Provolution offshoot, enhanced but slightly unstable fighters who fight the good fight for independence (think volunteers in the Spanish Civil war). The third group centers around Directeur de l'hébergement Napoleon Benzecri, a megalomaniac former HR boss who now runs a refugee camp and styles himself godfather; this group are the politically and ideologically active players who try to influence the refugee situation. Or just profit from it.

So far so good: the players have run a few smuggling runs and guerilla raids, including a thrilling race against time to free one of their own from captivity before he was tortured to talk. They just have to figure out how to really hurt the General-Governor and his henchmen and help the planet become free. As well as dealing with the doubleagents (including at least one PC), loansharks, pentapods [*] and gangs who make Kimanjano such an exciting and lovely place.


[*] This might be my major deviation from canon history in the campaign, the pentapods have just decided to put an enclave on the planet for various vanilla-juicy-ectoderm reasons. They are of course on the parsley side of the conflict.

 

[Colin]

You've got some pretty good stuff there. I especially like your take on ProVolution.

 

[Anders]

Thanks! Given that my players may be more pro-provolution than most players it is fun to try to flesh the group out further. Of course, the players help quite a bit too (or force me to think up secret signs, smuggling networks and cell structures).

One of the characters is a true provolution believer from a middle-class Tirane background, essentially the kind of young woman who once would have joined the Baader-Meinhof gang. A self-taught urban guerilla with a fondness for seeing massive destruction - a very bad accident just waiting to happen.

Another is an over-cybered Texan. Serving on Aurore he got got a replacement limb after a disastrous mission - a mission that likely did something to his mind too. He got into his head that he should turn himself into something that can wrestle with kafers. Over the years he has sold his soul for all kinds of enhancements and is now quite a monster. Who still insists he is not addicted to surgery or that his... ahem... attraction to pentapods has nothing to do with experimental symbionts living inside him. He is by no means a bad man (he does send child support payments to his daughter on Earth and very successfully entertained the refugee kids this Christmas as Santas Little Helper) but he is clearly no longer his own man.

I hope over the span of the campaign to expand my writeup further; Provolution is so fun! Hmm, given the scene last session where three drugged up provos started singing during a fight (blame a broken nitrous oxide cannister) I better figure out their (r)evolutionary songbook too.

 

[laurent]

Your french slangs for kimanjanian are well found. I like it !

Laurent

 

[Anders]

Making local slang was tremendously fun, although rather tricky since I do not speak French. Fortunately some of my players do.

Overall, I think 2320AD needs much more French slang terms - the Empire has been the dominant cultual power for a long time, so its slang ought to be everywhere too.

 

[Colin]

I certainly wouldn't disagree. And as it happens, we're in the process of a rewrite to get it ready for print. Maybe a sidebar on slang terms, one sidebar for each Arm of space, and one for the Core, would be in order.

I did have a bit more material on life on the Frontier, but I had to cut some of it for reasons of space and poor organization. Maybe I'll see what I can shoehorn back in. Hunter is gonna hate me...

 

[Anders]

I think understanding the differences between the Core and frontier mindset is important. Core people live in a densely connected society where everybody and everything is close. You have to consider what the neighbour thinks, societal pressures are strong, there is a very dense web of information, business, social links and rules. People are living in a well defined social matrix. Outside, distances suddenly matter, you can't get everything you want even if you can afford it, people are very sparsely distributed, self-reliant and often make up rules as they go along. There is (to use Geert Hofstede's culture dimensions) a lot more uncertainty avoidance in the Core and higher levels of individualism towards the frontier even among people nominally of the same nationality.

One of the things I play up in the Kimanjano setting is how the Armée Métropolitaine troops and colonists don't get along simply because of their cultural differences. To the soldiers the locals are disloyal yokels, a decade or more backwards in style, ungrateful for the help they are given. The locals, many who have far too much experience of warfare up close, find the soldiers inexperienced, arrogant and dependent on high-tech.

If stutterwarp tugs link up the arms more strongly with the Core, the cultural conflict will in many places be enormous.

 

[oletheros]

one of the things that i'm always reminded of in the 2300 setting is the fact that instant communication between planets simply cannot exist. for example: i'm used to being able to communicate with friends in austrailia or the united kingdom on a pretty much realtime basis. however, if i was living on beowulf and i had a friend on beta canum, i would have to deal with the fact that conversations would take weeks, if only because it takes that long for a message to go back and forth.

for that reason, i sometimes think of information in this setting as something akin to ripples in a pond - by the time news of an event gets to the core from the frontier, it's already old information.

 

[Anders]

The slow communications affect a lot of things. Military commanders and heads of branch offices far out in the arms have to be fairly independent and hold much discretion since they cannot wait for orders from Earth. Core headquarters will set out overall strategy rather than give detailed orders.

In an ongoing conflict like Kimanjano, every success and failure will take a few weeks to reach Earth (35 lightyears, with quick efficiency 3 couriers it would at the very least take 12 days). That means that the response will be several weeks out of date - direct orders can seldom be obeyed, a good situation can have turned bad or vice versa. So at best I guess messages from Earth would be encouragements/reprimands, general advice and - if they wanted a real policy change - a replacement officer.

It also means that public opinion is lagging a lot. The views and reactions of the public can be quite delayed. Something happens, and a few weeks later a lot of support appears for a cause - even when it has become irrelevant.

Another fun thing I noticed was when a PC tried to search for a piece of information. I decided that it existed, but on Earth. Nobody had bothered exporting or requesting it in the past, so it was not available out on the arm. But just send a query, pay a few centimes, and wait three weeks for your search result. You can google the local Link quickly, but often deeper research requires a week as a set of queries are transmitted across the local solar system and to the neighbours before returning.

Hmm, this sounds like the ideas about persistent queries discussed by information management people today. People and companies have agents/search requests that continue day after day about their interests, flagging when they find something new or interesting or when something changes. A change in information somewhere will trigger reactions in various queries and agents that are interested in that particular piece.

When you apply for marriage the computer checks that you are not already married and gives an OK when it can't find anything in the local records. But the query remains. Two months later hell breaks loose when the information from Paulo arrives about that *other* marriage...

I think interactive letters, sub-AI chatbots with encrypted databases of relevant knowledge, might be a way for some people to communicate. The letter explains what the sender wants, and can based on its database give simple answers to questions. This might be useful for simpler business transactions (the letter is allowed to OK a contract if it fulfils certain conditions, but will not reveal what these are to the recipient), but is likely too much work for everyday use.

 

[Peter Schutze]

"When you apply for marriage the computer checks that you are not already married and gives an OK when it can't find anything in the local records. But the query remains. Two months later hell breaks loose when the information from Paulo arrives about that *other* marriage..."
the old "posting marraige banns" would likely come back meaning 3 month (minimum) engagements become the norm while all impediments are cleared. then again marraige is likely to morph into several forms depending on religion, colonial laws and your citizenship etc so it might be that under kimunjano custom the paulo marraige is regarded as a contract that is automatically voided .... once you get to paulo though their (modified) catholicism is still likely to see you in jail for bigamy !

"I think interactive letters, sub-AI chatbots with encrypted databases of relevant knowledge, might be a way for some people to communicate. The letter explains what the sender wants, and can based on its database give simple answers to questions. This might be useful for simpler business transactions (the letter is allowed to OK a contract if it fulfils certain conditions, but will not reveal what these are to the recipient), but is likely too much work for everyday use."
The other thing most likely to occur is things like webcrawlers that you set to gather items in searchblocks for you ie "US Marines" would have eventually got that news article on the kimunjano fighting and any related pics / linked items and sent it to you .... an excellent way of feeding news and rumours to the players as well as keeping the universe "living" is to have a summary of (player designated) interested items ready with adventure related stuff mixed in every couple of game days eg someone they are looking for is referenced as the only brother of major Chapman who is getting the Marine star of valour