Blue Planet
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Blue Planet is a fascinating near-future hard-sf game with a premise of ecological awareness and biotechnology. This page contains a few original articles:
- A description, inspired by Iain Banks, of what multiglands can do for you.
- A short essay on the Darker Side of Hydrospan (a corporation run by uplifted dolphins).
- The 30-hour day length can be confusing. Here's my take on the rhythm of typical day on Poseidon.
- The 331-day year can also be confusing, not helped by what I think are some spurious data on the orbital mechanics in the Serpentis system. Here's my take on the calendar on Poseidon, including siderial and synodic periods of various celestial bodies and the rule for leap years.
- A (very) few house rules.
Longshore Campaign
A Blue Planet campaign, The Longshore Crew, recently ran at the Milton Keynes Role-Playing Club. I have a number of resources for this game here.
- A list of characters
- A description of the town of Longshore
- Details of the NIS AeroIndustries NA-235 Medium Range Transport seaplane
- An almanac of tide times for the first few days of the campaign
- A rundown on a few groups important in and around Longshore
The writeups of the campaign are here:
- Session 1: a body is found (0730h - 1900h, 013.99)
- Session 2: bugs and bodycomps (1900h, 013.99 - 0400, 014.99)
- Session 3: poison, beatings, and shootings (0400h - 1000h, 014.99)
- Session 4: putting it all
together (1000h - 1600h, 014.99)
This makes reference to what's happening in Keepsake - Session 5: rumble in the jungle (1600h - 1900h, 014.99)
- Session 6: flight and fight (1900h, 014.99 - 1000h, 015.99)
- Session 7: hotels and Hanover (1000h - 1900h, 015.99)
- Session 8: sea, air, and land (1900h - 2800h, 015.99)
- Session 9: chasing hither and yon
(2800h, 015.99 - 1400h, 016.99)
This makes reference to what's happening with Hanover
Reference
I also have developed a number of reference documents for the game. These simply repackage information available in the various rulebooks.
- An expanded version of the table of contents for the Player's Guide [ Gzipped RTF ]
- An expanded version of the table of contents for the Moderator's Guide [ Gzipped RTF ]
- A spreadsheet of the flora and fauna of Poseidon, catergorized by biome [ Gzipped CSV format ]
- Various charts concerning the Synergy game system used in Blue Planet v2
- Statistics for the PCs for the scenarios Things to do in Dyfedd When You're Genlifted and Treacherous Waters (the scenarios themselves are at GameEire and don't have any statistics for the PCs in them).
Links
There are few Blue Planet websites out there, but their quality more than makes up for a lack of quantity.
Biohazard Games are the original creators of Blue Planet (though Fantasy Flight Games did the publication for BP v2), and their site contains all sorts of useful and interesting snippets. I find it easier to find things by starting from their site map.
The Dark Water site has links to a great number of Blue Planet websites. It's also got archived copies of two great resources, the OceanView periodical and Mike Z's Blue Planet notebook. Unfortunately, it's a frame-driven site, so I can't give direct URLs, but look in the 'Misc.' and 'Links' menu items. OceanView really brings the world to life, and gives that sense that there's a lot more going on than just what your little group is doing. Mike Z's notebook contains all sorts of useful snippets of information and quick-reference tables. SeaHawk also has some larger (PDF) files on Geocities, including the first chapter of the Player's Guide, an excellent introduction to the game and the world.
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