Introducing the Bioformer

In September, science fiction let me down. In Dune: Prophecy, the Sisterhood (proto Bene Gesserit) have started their millennial plan for genetically engineering humanity. The Strange New Worlds’ episode “Four and a Half Vulcans” embraced nature over nurture. And Star Trek: Khan decided the supervillain of the Eugenics Wars need an audio drama.

To be clear, fuck fascists, fuck eugenics. 

But all of these made me realize that I may have let my readers down. In a recent one shot, I was unhappy as I described the Augment. This background was originally inspired by Bashir in Deep Space Nine and Laan and Una in Strange New Worlds. Given the far right's obsession with genetics, I decided to drop it and replace it with a new background, “Bioformer: You bioengineered your body to survive on an alien world.” This is the opposite of a Terraformer, who changes the planet to fit their biology. I was inspired mainly by Strange New Worlds’ Illyrians, but I shifted this from something that was done to you, to decisions you make about yourself.

Other revisions:

• Stats – Rewrote the Stats overview to be a better introduction.
• Character Creation – Rewrote some of the questions for other backgrounds and specialties.
• Skills – Downsized the list from 47 (!) skills to the most popular 20 skills across our campaigns and one-shots. Rewrote their descriptions.
• Stress – Added the concept of Stress, which typically causes Health to be reduced by 1. Certain moves, such as Medic, now cause 1 Stress to the PC instead of 1 Harm. Other moves now offer benefits against Stress.
• B Story – Both Jump Cut and Commercial Break now encourage pursuing a B story from something established during Opening Credits. As one player said, “the B stories now make it feel even more like a Star Trek episode!”
• Delta Shift – Simplified and rewrote this rarely used move, to be easier to play.
• Damage – Introduced new Starship Damage and Shuttlepod Damage moves with mechanical effects to items that need repaired.
• Shuttlepod Details – Expanded and rewritten from a simple bullet list, not providing providing a table of the shuttlepods available as well.
• Usability – Moved the Background and Specialty move sections to the end, so readers don’t have to skip over them to get to the information in common to all players.
• Move refinements:
  • Diplomat’s Summit has been streamlined.
  • Uplifted’s Primal Sense is now simpler and more universal
  • Veteran’s Shape Up or Ship Out and War Stories moves have been simplified. Added the Interrogation move.
  • Translator’s Lost in Translation rewritten.

Check out the revised GM Guide as well.