Day 9: Blue Planet - Neva Gros

Day 09: Blue Planet - Neva Gros

Next up I will create a crew for the game Blue Planet: Recontact. Blue Planet is a bit of a white whale of mine - I discovered the previous editions just as life forced me to drop ttrpgs as a hobby for a long time, and I never got to run it. Although the background is a bit too much my thing - the game is set in a future in which humanity nearly wiped itself out with badly understood technology and wanton destruction of Earth’s ecosystems. Shortly before things came to a head a probe discovered a stable wormhole on the outer edges of the solar system, with a planet suitable for human life on the other side - the water planet quickly named Poseidon. Colonists were sent and managed to set down, just as the aforementioned disaster struck, and Earth stopped thinking about any colonists out there. Decades later, after humanity managed to somehow claw back from the brink, they remembered. New vessels were sent and discovered that the previous colonists survived and thrived, establishing a kind-of-solarpunk society. Small groups of humans living while minimizing their impact on the environment, meshing old and new technologies. The newcomers also discovered a weird substance that turned out to be a massive multiplier in boosting genetic engineering, including human longevity. A gold rush for this ‘Long John’ has set in. An organization was founded to organize mitigation of the consequences of ecological exploitation of Earth as a quasi-Earth government, and they have a strong presence on Poseidon as well. Alas, the planet is very large, and there are still very few people here. In other words, the GEO cannot be everywhere at once. The setting is pro-environmental protection, anti-colonialist, suffused with cool ideas about alternate ecologies and lifeforms, and is a heady mixture of cyberpunk, solarpunk, horror, Wild West, you name it. For the purposes of this specific set of PCs, I will ramp up the already present anti-colonialism themes quite a bit, by the way. Just a fair warning.

The third edition of the game, featuring a modernized system and background, was kickstarted a while ago, and while the publication is still some time of -. I am hoping for later this year - a lot of content has been released to the backers. A QuickStart exists for the edition and is freely available for example at DrivethroughRPG.

Anyway, I am thinking about a crew of people who find themselves in bad situations, a varied mix that have one thing in common - reasons to massively dislike or even hate one of the companies spearheading the exploitation of the planet. Their enemy will be Anasi, a company specializing in various genetic treatments that is a big player trying to get as much Long John into their hands as possible, no matter the consequences to ecology and people. Our crew will consist of Exceptional people, which is the middle of the three possible starting tiers. The others are Everyday and Elite. Exceptional means our characters get 1 bonus attribute rank, 1 bonus focus attribute rank, 6 skill sets, and 18 skill set ranks. They also get up to 125,000cs worth of biomods.

The first character will be Neva Gros. Originally, she is a marine ecologist who was hired as a consultant to ‘advise on ecological matters’ for their efforts on Poseidon, on the recommendation of her supervisor in grad school who is close friends with a geneticist at the company Anasi. Bright-eyed, motivated, ink on her diploma still wet, she was admittedly a bit blinded by the very flattering hiring process, the promise of unique research opportunities on the first planet humanity ever settled, and a very nice salary. It took Neva several months to allow herself to see what she was actually hired to do: provide a thin green/blue veneer for rampant ecological exploitation and destruction. And then she was sent along on a prospecting trip, and witnessed what would later appear as a line item in a company report on the acquisition of site LH_T3  that read ‘altercation with local terrorist forces, 8 guards KIA, 2 researchers and 3 guards MIA, 40+ native elements removed.’ 

During that event, she was made fully aware of how brutal the company she works for actually is in the worst possible way. How she changed sides at the time will become clearer in later entries. Important for now is that she is one of two people who ditched Anasi and decided to side with the fledgling insurgency that started that day.

Neva is an unmodified human. The system and background have various genetically modified varieties of humans and uplifted species, all of whom can be played, but she is just a plain old baseline human. She didn’t realize it at the time, but part of the reason she was chosen was her charisma and appearance, the ideal person to roll out and tell a story about all the good things the company does - pale, tall, with long blonde hair and a good if cost-efficient fashion sense, and charismatic in a slightly self-conscious way. During her time on Poseidon, she has developed a strong tan, her hair tends to be a bit wild and kept in a strict ponytail to stay out of the way. Clothing-wise she goes with whatever is practical, something that comes easily to someone with the amount of field experience she has. People who meet her tend to like her immediately, and she has an assuredness in her manner she didn’t have before. But some also see her other side, the one that comes out when she has had enough, the nasty, take-no-prisoners side. There is little middle ground.

She is angry that she believed the lies she was told and wants to find and punish those responsible. On a larger level, she has no idea how to protect Poseidon and is too aware of how monumental that task is. But something has to be done, and she can’t look away anymore. 

Reputation-wise, few people in the frontier know of her. Some know she switched sides, but many do not. Those who do not tend to see her as a harmless egghead with dangerous bosses.

Attributes

As all characters, she has four Attributes (Cognition, Psyche, Coordination, and Physique). As an unmodified human, she starts with 0 in each and gets to shift up to two ranks around. Mmhhh. Cognition 1, Psyche 0, Coordination -1, Physique 0. As an exceptional person, she also adds one rank and increases Psyche to 1. She also gets to choose two focus attributes for each of the four, which are 1 rank higher. As an exceptional person, one of these eight focus attributes is actually two higher. She goes for:

• Cognition 1 ->  Knowledgeable 2, Resourceful 2
• Psyche 1  ->  Charismatic 2, Strong-Willed 2
• Coordination -1 ->  Agile 0, Sure-footed 1
• Physique 0 -> Adorable 1, Healthy 1

When attributes are rolled the player rolls a D10 and has to be below or equal to 5 + the (focus) attribute.

Strain

There is mental and physical strain. These are not hit points, but points that can be used to indicate additional effort, and therefore can be spent to either slightly nudge a target number or reroll a failed roll. With Psyche 1 she has 2 Mental Strain, and Physique 0 means 1 Physical Strain.

Skill sets

As an exceptional character, she gets six skill sets, with 18 ranks to distribute among them. Each skill set has three levels described by words, roughly sorted by increasing specialization. When rolling against a skill, the most focused specialization determines the amount of d10 to roll. The lowest die has to be lower or equal to an applicable attribute + the skill set rank.

Her skill sets will be:

• 4 Researcher -> Biologist -> Marine Ecologist
• 2 Earth Culture -> Central European -> Middle-Class
• 3 Outdoors lover -> Survival -> Sailing
• 2 Corporate Orientation for Poseidon -> Basic Combat Training -> Small Arms Training
• 4 Public Speaker -> Negotiator -> Presentation
• 3 Hobby athlete -> Team sports -> Hydroshot

Hydroshot is a sport that emerged on Poseidon, a more aggressive and faster version of Water Polo.

Tags

Each character gets two tags (the PDF says two or three, another says two, and it was clarified a few days ago on Discord that two is correct). Tags are words or short phrases that describe beliefs, old wounds, political clout, or whatever. They can or cannot have mechanical meaning. 

Neva has Distrustful of corporations (+2 when resisting corporate social maneuvers) and Eco Defender (cannot ignore serious harm to the environment).

Tracks

Characters start with one or two tracks, which can be determined by the campaign/GM. They represent concepts that PCs can move towards or away from, like goals or moral stances. Complicated, I know. The bottom line is that they have a normal state, and then two steps towards opposite ends. Each state has two numbers that represent a bonus and malus to target numbers that might apply to actions involving that stance; the normal state has 0/0. So, let’s say we have a character with a track from Sell-out (-4/+4) to Insurgent (+4/-4) via Centrist (0/0), and they are at Insurgent, they could get a +4 when trying to convince other insurgents to help them with something, and a -4 if they would try to convince some government or corporate official. Tracks can be shared between PCs, for example for a group goal.

I will give her Wanted (Underground +4/-4, Trail gone cold +2/-2, Wanted 0/0, Hunted -2/+2, On the Run -4/+4) and omit the group one for the moment.

Ties

Every character has ties, people they are close to. Typically, a PC should have two of them, though depending on the narrative more can be made. Each tie has a name, a description of how they connect, and an obligation. The latter described what the PC does to maintain that relationship. Relationships can also be to organizations.

Not counting people on Earth (and therefore years of travel away) and PCs Neva has ties to:

Vanya Matthai, off-and-on girlfriend she had in Haven, the largest settlement of the planet where she lived until the day, she went AWOL. Since this is a mostly broken relationship, I will not give it a way to maintain, not count it, and just note it here.

• Sierra Nueva Insurgents         Allies               Provide information and analysis
• Iker Collazo                            Friend              Emotional support, blowing off steam

Biomods

This one should be pretty straightforward. Biomods are modifications of the body. 

Neva has:

• A Neural Jack with Uplink (allowing her to connect directly to machinery that has the counterpart, wirelessly).
• An Implanted Micro-Toolkit with medical tools, though she used it mostly in her scientific work.
• Swim Bladder, small pockets along the body that allow control of buoyancy and add +1 to swimming/diving rolls.
• Immunological Symbiotes, which help the immune system and accelerate healing a bit.

We are well below the 125k, but I think that is a fitting set for her. I think only the Neural jack is usually visible, since even with the uplink a port will still exist to connect to anything that can’t receive a wireless signal.

Finally, she would get some gear, but that depends on the GM and the campaign. I will omit it here, and note that she’d have typical field equipment, be part of a ship crew, and therefore would have access to more. She also would have a small gun.

Since there is no character sheet available yet outside a low-resolution image of one, I will link you to this Google doc instead.