After a time with the blog unatended (you know, you make plans and life takes them apart or change them when you least expect it) I'm again returning to it to talk about the patronage carried out right now to fund Brana at Verkami, a science-fiction sandbox world for Fate system settled in a near future.
Brana has been created by the following authors:
- Alejandro A. Rodríguez Simón, also known as RolHypnos (Web | Google+), author of the adaptation of the role-playing game Walhalla for Fate system and the setting Mandato del Cielo and the adventure Rebelión en Yizhou.
- Ignacio Sánchez Aranda (Google+), creator of the role-playing game Walhalla (winner of Premio Poliedro 2015 for the best role-playing game created in Castillian).
- David Lanza (Google+), graphical designer and illustrator coauthor of the Roleage line and artistic director of publisher Nosolorol until he founded his own bussiness LANZAestudio.
- Daniel Hidalgo Verzobias (Google+ | Adobe Portfolio | Patreon), illustrator participating in projects for HT Publishers, Nosolorol and small American role-playing publishers.
Brana is harrd science-fiction based in actual science theories
Fundamentals in which Brana background is based are sustained by actual theories used to try to explain our universe and reality structures, so it is possible to find references to the Superstring Theory, the M-Theory and the branes...
Yes, I know right now some of you might think if it's necessary to be a quantum mechanics specialist 😰 to enjoy and understand this game world but I assure you it's not absolutely needed 😛, in fact you only need to know that parallel universes exist in this setting, and this was discovered thanks to the destruction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in June 5th of 2017 in what will be known afterwards as the Wagner-Sancho incident (named for the couple os scientists criticising the LHC experiments).
This event is what unleashes all of Brana's background (some say it was an incident in which the LHC refrigeration was difficult to control but others also talk about sabotage, but that has not been proven...) and it's effects are certainly spectacular because it is estimated that the energy unleashed during the explosion was equal to 10 times that of the Soviet bomb RDS-220 (a simulation of its effects can be read in this Nukemap link), mostly known as the Tzar Bomba (Wikipedia | Atom Central) in the West. So here we have a 100 x 10 = 1,000 megatonnes explosion which completely destroyed Geneva and greatly affected France and Switzerland as well as Italy and Lichtenstein.
When evaluating the devastation provoked by the incident it was discovered that in the site of the instalations of the LHC the Portal had appeared, a seemingly random dimensional singularity connecting the Earth with other places of the Universe which is producing replicas all over the rest of the planet...
The world nowadays and The Arrival
The Study of the Portal has caused Humanity to increase its scientific knowledge and it has embarked in the study of new disciplines, leading to the confirmation of the existence of alien species thanks to the event known as The Arrival, occurring in June 7th of 2018 when two ships of unknown origin attacking each other crossed the Portal.
The first of the ships, belonging to Fermi (the typical grey short big-headed aliens), entered orbit shortly after and remains there establishing sporadic contacts with United Nations, the second one, belonging to Kardash (with humanoid scorpions aspect) ended up crashing in North Africa and its crew had carried out an aggressive campaign of conquest occupying all West and North Africa, reaching Egypt and Sudan, being stopped in Chad by a Blue Helmets plurinational military force.
Leaving aside these two examples of alien penetration there's also a third one taking place which is also more more subtle: beings from another universe are beginning to get integrated in human population and are not easily detectable, the long term consequences that this may have are not known...
Regarding the actual geopolitical situation the planet is divided in the following main blocks:
- European Block (the European Union with Japan and South Corea as associates): it's the main block with access to the Portal and its control and study.
- Anglo-Saxon Block (USA and United Kingdom as well as much of its former colonies): trying by any means to gain major access to the Portal and the technologies derived from studying it.
- Independent Confederacy (directed by Russia, China and North Corea): have repeatedly been denied access to the Portal and are therefore opposed to any decision by the United Nations regarding this and the aliens.
- Arab Block (formed exclusively by Middle East nations): very weakened by the new energies discovered thanks to the study of the Portal and the Kardash attacks, almost all of its economy is devoted to sustain its military forces.
- Southern Cone (formed almost by all South America and headed by Brazil, with Argentina, Chile and Venezuela as important partners): it's experimenting an important development thanks to great economic compensations asked for accessing the Portal replicas appearing in its territory.
What offers Brana as a gaming world and rules
As I already had explained at the beginning of this post Brana is a gaming world to be used with Fate so it's designed in an analogous way to any Fate Worlds by Evil Hat, which are being translated and put on sale in Spain right now by Nosolorol in the subscription campaign announced in September 2016, so to play and referee it it's necessary to get the Fate basic book, although it's also possible to get it free as an English-written pdf from the downloads zone of the Evil Hat website and in Castillian from the Nosolorol website in its Fate basic, Fate Advanced and Fate Accelerated versions.
In the document that I have been able to read there are also all the organizational characteristics of the groups present in the setting as Factions with points in Styles (Covert, Financial, Military, Political, Scientific, and Alien), as well as Aspects like Beliefs (opinions about a situation or given themes of the setting) and models (sample characters), so it's possible to play aliens or humans (and every political or economic group will have some distinct characteristics).
There's also the description of the Equipo Especial de Investigación y Control (EEIC) or Special Team of Investigation and Control (STIC) in English, the main organization tasked by United Nations with the investigation of the Portal and its replicas distributed all over the planet as well as intervene on the ground if needed (in fact I'm sure that players will like to embody researchers from this organization as this setting is perfect for playing investigative sessions).
And since I have talked to you about investigative campaigns, I can also say that the work document also considers the necessary steps to organize unique gaming sessions according to the Dangers that can be presented in these and that can be of the Current type (such as the death of several members of a research team when discovering a Kardash colony) or Latent (which may manifest any time from now, such as the future failure of mathematical algorithms predicting the appearance of a replica of the Portal).
| +8 | Legendary |
| +7 | Epic |
| +6 | Fantastic |
| +5 | Superb |
| +4 | Great |
| +3 | Good |
| +2 | Fair |
| +1 | Average |
| +0 | Mediocre |
| -1 | Poor |
| -2 | Terrible |
| Scale of adjectives and numbers used in Fate | |
Conclusions
Brana is an interesting setting which can go far if ending successfully the funding patronage, in fact I think that, hopefully, it could become the Eclipse Phase of the Spanish role-playing scene and the setting could also be used as a campaign manual for games derived from Fate, like Cacería de Bichos and its older brother CdB Engine (both created by Zonk PJ) and Sistema Hitos, published by Nosolorol.
So now you know, if you think it can be interesting collaborate if you can or help spread the patronage campaign (in fact, I would say that there should be publishers interested in Brana and wishing to talk with its authors in case the patronage does not prosper since they may be missing a rough diamond...).
This entry it's also available in the following languages:
Castellano Català
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