andrewrgross

Mayhem is a super-tough MMA fighter anarchist. He's very into Anarchy. If you have a friend who is really into anarchy (and/or MMA), we've got the premade character for them!

Link to full character sheet

Joaquin Krikorian was born to Melissa Krikorian and Alexandar Keith in Slab City in 2093. Melissa was a programmer and musician, and Alexandar was a busker, traditional story-teller, mime, and philosophy professor at Reed College.

Joaquin’s family split their time between Portland and Tijuana for most of his childhood. In 2108, when he was 15, Melissa’s band was eager to see and perform on Mars, and at the same time the Reed Philosophy Department was looking for professor to visit and attend a philosophy conference. They invited Joaquin, but he preferred to stay with family friends in Los Angeles. He spent this time dating, and getting to know himself and the land of Southern California. He delighted in sports from a young age (a passion that would be hard to satisfy during a trip to Mars) and began to get increasingly active in martial arts, along with meditation and psionic mental discipline training.

In 2111 Joaquin got his endurance upgrade mod, and a year later got a brain trauma resistance mod. Joaquin reunified with his mother when she returned that year, though she returned without Alexandar, who stayed on Mars for another Martian year. By 2113 Joaquin was 20 and starting to compete seriously in mixed martial arts when he wasn’t doing Ayahuasca with his girlfriend Nahr. Mayhem (as he’d come to be known in the ring and out) and Nahr then accompanied Melissa on a musical tour of Patagonia, continuing to fight and love and expand his mind, both with books and also with drugs.

Alexandar returned to Earth in 2114. The family made Portland their home base for the next few years. Over this time, Mayhem got his short-duration athletics boost mod and his armored skin mod. Mayhem got more active in social organizing with the Oregon Anarchist Party. In 2117 Mayhem and Nahr adopted a young Canaan dog named Poodle.

In 2119 Mayhem followed Nahr back to Los Angeles for her to join a prestigious documentary film production collective. Mayhem decided to try serving their community as a protector, but after a few months with the LA Protector League there was a mutual agreement that it wasn't a great fit. Now he serves as a protector with the more ideologically aligned Free Protector Network.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/7767375

@sarenaulibarri@wandering.shop is teaching a seminar that looks very cool. I'm excited to hear what she's saying. Ticket start at $25, but are on a generous sliding scale.

I'm teaching a seminar for Clarion West on April 4th! Drawing on my experience as an anthology editor for World Weaver Press and a story reviewer for Imagine 2200, I'll go over some of the most common issues that I see in climate fiction slush piles.

#solarpunk #lunarpunk #ClimateFiction #ClimateWriters #ScienceFiction #SciFiWriters #ClarionWest #WritingClass #Imagine2200

https://clarionwest.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/clarionwest/eventList.jsp

@sarenaulibarri@wandering.shop is teaching a seminar that looks very cool. I'm excited to hear what she's saying. Ticket start at $25, but are on a generous sliding scale.

I'm teaching a seminar for Clarion West on April 4th! Drawing on my experience as an anthology editor for World Weaver Press and a story reviewer for Imagine 2200, I'll go over some of the most common issues that I see in climate fiction slush piles.

#solarpunk #lunarpunk #ClimateFiction #ClimateWriters #ScienceFiction #SciFiWriters #ClarionWest #WritingClass #Imagine2200

https://clarionwest.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/clarionwest/eventList.jsp

This company is proposing a design in which magnets are used to repel the train car away from standard iron railroad tracks, and small side-wheels keep the skids aligned. It doesn't use electromagnetic alternation to drive the car, it's just essentially an ultra-low friction alternative to wheels.

Interesting idea. I'm naturally skeptical, but I find the idea neat. I have no idea how you use passive magnets to create a repulsion force, but as the poets say, "Magnets: how the fuck do they work?"

Recap from our developer meeting this morning:

I) The core manual:

• We're going to try to cut down the editors note to one page
• We're all going to go through and copy edit each section for final release. When you're satisfied, Comment that you're signing off on the section.
• Once everyone's signed off on each section, we'll make separate documents for the major sections. That means a PDF of a quickstart; rule book; world guide; and player/GM resources, plus character sheets
• Then post it on Itch.io and DriveThurRPG!

II) Campaign book:

• Set it aside until the manual is done, then basically do the same thing for it. Try to finish by mid April.

III) Promotion

• Until the manual and campaign release, keep doing what we're doing: talk about it on social media and such.
• After the game releases, directly contact a large list of writers, podcasters, game critics, etc. and make sure we've told anyone who is interested.
• Target timeframe: April and May

IV) After that

• We'll see. I'd like to get a bit of distance. Take a break and see what I feel like doing.
• Future steps are obvious: more playable adventures and the space expansion.
• If anyone else wants to be lead dev, I'll eagerly support a change in dev group leadership.

Share your thoughts!

One of the devs has been filling in a table of random NPCs. They've made a few dozen, and they're already really incredible in their variety and fit into the setting. You can see a handful of them below.

I thought I'd share some and solicit and try to crowdsource some more. More NPC suggestions would be highly appreciated!

...

Chorus of Wires, a synth who cares for the Vivarium at Lincoln Heights. They are fans of unusual semi-edible fruits.

Jumping Colour, often found with one of her long haired dogs at the Paws Salon on Clifford Street. She does animal work sessions at Preschools all over the city.

Port Fraxinius, runs the haberdashery on the corner of Gateway Boulevard. He’s a good listener, although sometimes secrets bubble up at his Poet’s corner performances

Garter Buffman. Involved in several camping and outdoor clubs in Azusa. Unusually suntanned for a non-humanoid synth.

Rhussel Olean. Spends three days a week on his Bike Kitchen drifting up and down Adobe Avenue. Is also Building resident union rep for the ‘Production artists and designers bikeshop’

Skates von Spikes. Knowledgeable manager of Clean Sheets Drug Space at Del Ray. Off duty she can be found at her building resident union, or the Baha’i temple.

Questionable Skunk. Operates out of a room opposite the Sculpture Garden, Cosmo Street. He doesn’t ask many questions. He doesn't welcome them either.

Cactus Bronzefinger. Performance set builder at the FabboWoodo workshop, West LA. He has a couple of lemur themed augmentations, that he claims are helpful backstage.

Punchcard Stipa. A synth that uses ‘his’ pronouns. He helps out at the Thermophile Spa, Hollywood hills, and has been adapting his chassis to act as a safety officer. That’s an ambition currently unfufilled.

Diskrhust. They split their time between the animal shelter, teaching self defence at the local recreation hall, and monitoring orbital shifts at the Union of Skylands on Norwalk Boulevard.

Coyote Ace. A name they might yet grow out of, Coyote is at highschool, but has their eye on a empty space on Holt Avenue that they dream of running their own wired haberdashery from

TurbineThyme is a synth who lives in the basement below New Theater on New Avenue. She’s still exploring what her body can do, and where that might lead her.

Bolt Chitalpa. A coder by arrangement on Hilliard Avenue. He also writes periodically for the Circle of Nations.

Chappie Arral. Purveyor of soap and other homegood chemicals off Whittier. He attends a church of latter-day saints group that meet early mornings in the park.

5 Steps, as he is known, is a wandering preacher, tracing a route between the Hindu Temple, Baha’i church and Protestant Chapel in Culver City.

Ohm Tatsoi is a practicing doctor and muslim. They are currently feuding with the Vivarium staff over alleged class snobbery.

Friendly Marguerita is a synth and coach at a boxing gym at Culver City. They are studied at projecting an authoritative calm amongst angry teenagers.

EriDuct is a surprisingly old synth usually found holding court at Poet’s corner, Torrance. On a good day, she’ll tell you about her old lives.

Hoof Rust is a kite dancer synth, usually found high above Altadena. His broadcasts on high altitude biochemistry are well respected, although his body is far too large to allow access to a regular lecture theater.

Slick Basil. Street seller of whatever needs selling, they sometimes can be found with a flower tray outside the Hindu temple in Agoura Hills, although just as often selling chits at the Union of Skylands, or mouthwash at Granry16.

... and so on.

I'm looking for books, games, movies, etc. that are set in a relatable, high-tech post-capitalist solarpunk world.

I've got a few of the most popular novels, but I'm looking especially for ones that I haven't seen.

There are a lot of stories within anthologies, Solarpunk magazine, and the Grist's 2200 collections that I haven't seen before, for instance.

Can folks throw out suggestions that fit this tone across any media? Bonus points if it could be described as action/adventure.

This is one of those things that wouldn't exist in a fully realized solarpunk world, but might be useful during a transition.

This camera assesses drivers behind a cyclist to let them know when someone is coming up behind them, and other driver behaviors. One idea I particularly like:

A major bonus is that data gathered from Copilot devices can prove useful to aid local authorities and road safety organisations seeking to make cities and towns safer for cycling. “We are in the middle of starting a partnership with the city of Pittsburgh,” says Haynes, “where we’re going to deploy dozens of these Copilots with people that bike to work and use that to actually inform where do we need to improve the bike infrastructure?”

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/7550276

Marigold was adopted at birth by Carol and Georgie Sinclair in 2108. As the oldest of five, Marigold has always been a leader in their large household. They’re the product of their mothers’ inquisitiveness, their father’s confident passion for service, and a general love of taking things apart. In school, communication and writing were long their favorite subjects, narrowly beating out applied science and engineering. After a class field trip to the KNOCK LA newsroom when they were 12, Marigold became captivated by the sense of heroism they associated with investigative journalism.

On their school newspaper (Toypurina’s “The Recruiter”) they made a beat in looking for undisclosed potential conflicts of interest in procurement processes (they found five over two years) and performing other investigations into administrative oversight. Their greatest achievement was an expose on the fraction of school district travel opportunities which were provided to administrators versus educators. Marigold’s discovery that educators only received one sixth of the district’s off-world travel opportunities compared to upper level administrators when adjusted for group sizes received passing coverage from all the major municipal papers and earned them an angry letter from the school district’s head office, which Marigold framed and hung up in their room.

Knowhound spends their time hanging out with their friends Shoshana, Rocco, and Goat; going on adventures around Torrance with their younger siblings (where they’re equal parts protector and bad influence); and chasing leads for stories that either make it into an article for the school paper or wind up as microreports on the neighborhood Community Post.

Character sheet link

Marigold was adopted at birth by Carol and Georgie Sinclair in 2108. As the oldest of five, Marigold has always been a leader in their large household. They’re the product of their mothers’ inquisitiveness, their father’s confident passion for service, and a general love of taking things apart. In school, communication and writing were long their favorite subjects, narrowly beating out applied science and engineering. After a class field trip to the KNOCK LA newsroom when they were 12, Marigold became captivated by the sense of heroism they associated with investigative journalism.

On their school newspaper (Toypurina’s “The Recruiter”) they made a beat in looking for undisclosed potential conflicts of interest in procurement processes (they found five over two years) and performing other investigations into administrative oversight. Their greatest achievement was an expose on the fraction of school district travel opportunities which were provided to administrators versus educators. Marigold’s discovery that educators only received one sixth of the district’s off-world travel opportunities compared to upper level administrators when adjusted for group sizes received passing coverage from all the major municipal papers and earned them an angry letter from the school district’s head office, which Marigold framed and hung up in their room.

Knowhound spends their time hanging out with their friends Shoshana, Rocco, and Goat; going on adventures around Torrance with their younger siblings (where they’re equal parts protector and bad influence); and chasing leads for stories that either make it into an article for the school paper or wind up as microreports on the neighborhood Community Post.

Character sheet link