FFoorrggootttteenn FFuuttuurreess TThhee SScciieennttiiffiicc RRoommaannccee RRoollee PPllaayyiinngg GGaammee BByy MMaarrccuuss LL.. RRoowwllaanndd FFoorrggootttteenn FFuuttuurreess THE SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE ROLE PLAYING GAME By Marcus L. Rowland Copyright © 2006, portions Copyright © 1993-2006 This document is copyright, but you are encouraged to make copies and print-outs as needed. You may make modifications for your own use, but modified versions MUST NOT be distributed. Art comes from a variety of copyright-expired sources, or has been created by the author. Larger versions of most pictures can be found on the Forgotten Futures CD-ROM or on line as part of the resources available for this game. This PDF has been published as a free download – if you are asked to pay for it please contact the author! Introduction 1 Role Playing 38 About This Release 1 Running Adventures 39 Example of Play 2 Setting The Scene 39 Game Requirements 4 Plot 41 Game Terms 4 Non-Player Characters 43 Acknowledgements 5 Props 47 Characters And Rules 6 Game Worlds 49 Character Record 7 The Real World 51 Character Points 8 Currency, Wages and Prices 51 Equipment and Notes, Weapons, etc. 10 Timeline 1890-1914 54 Characteristics 12 World Leaders 1890-1914 56 Using Characteristics 12 Improving The Odds 14 Common Characteristics Rolls 15 APPENDIX - Units and Dates 57 Skills 15 APPENDIX - Children and Animals 58 Using Skills 16 Children as Adventurers 58 Temporary Skills 17 Dogs as Adventurers 59 Projects 17 APPENDIX - Adding Melodrama 60 Improving Skills 18 Heroes 61 Adding Skills 18 Anti-Heroes 63 Free Skills 20 Romantic Leads 64 Skill list 20 Villains 66 Wounds 23 Everybody Else 70 Medical Skills, Recovery, and Death 24 Acting the Part 74 Combat 25 APPENDIX - It's a Kind of MAGIC... 76 Combat Round 25 Character Generation 76 Resolving Attacks 26 Magical Basics 77 Armour 29 Magical Techniques 78 Weapons 29 External MAGIC 82 Non-combat injuries 34 APPENDIX - A Gallery of Gadgets 89 Animal, Vegetable, Mineral 35 APPENDIX - Sources 94 Animals 35 APPENDIX - Some other game systems 101 Plants 37 APPENDIX - About the author 103 Everything else 37 Publishing History 104 Double sided printing: Print the front page and this table of contents single sided, then print the remainder of the document double sided. The last page should be used as the back cover. Forgotten Futures ~ The Scientific Romance Role Playing Game Introduction I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. Thomas Jefferson Draw the blinds on yesterday and it's all so much scarier.... David Bowie HAT will the future be like? Every generation has its own set of ideas and predictions. At the turn of this century most pundits W thought that the mighty power of steam and electricity would usher in a new age of peace and prosperity. In the fifties the future was mostly seen as doom, gloom, and nuclear destruction. In the nineties we are obsessed with computers, and convinced that the future will revolve around information technology. Each of the earlier views was valid for its era; each was at least partially wrong. By looking at earlier guesses we may be able to discover what is wrong with our own vision of the future - and make even worse mistakes when we try to correct it! Forgotten Futures is a role playing game based on these discarded possibilities; the futures that could never have been, and the pasts that might have led to them, as they were imagined by the authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Role playing games (usually shortened to RPGs) are story-telling games. One player is the referee who runs the game, and has an idea of what is to happen in the story, while the other players run characters in the story. Characters are defined by a name, a description, and a list of characteristics (such as 'MIND') and skills (such as 'Marksman'). Players describe the actions of their characters, while the referee describes everyone and everything they encounter. This may sound like an impossible job for the referee, but it's easy if players are prepared to co-operate. The Forgotten Futures rules work well when dealing with the activities of normal people, but don't easily stretch to deal with magic, superhuman powers, and the like. Some of the appendices deal with magic, exceptional characters, melodrama, and other matters that the core rules don't cover; mostly this is material that was originally written for one or another of the Forgotten Futures settings, but seems to have more general application. One aspect of the Forgotten Futures rules may annoy players who prefer high levels of violence; it is easy to get hurt or killed in all forms of weapon-based combat, it takes a long time to recover if you are wounded, and most wounds require medical treatment. This seems more realistic than the systems offered by some other RPGs, in which a character can be shot three or four times and still come back for more. If you dislike this approach please feel free to amend the injury system, but please DO NOT distribute modified rules. About This Release INCE Forgotten Futures was originally published as shareware in 1993 there have been nine on-line releases, Sprinted versions from two publishers, and numerous conversions to pdf and html format. In all this the actual rules have stayed much the same. This release isn't going to change that; it's mainly tidying things up a little, adding in material originally written for one or another of the game settings which seems more generally useful, fixing some errors, improving layout, and generally making things more user-friendly. Most of the new material is in the www.forgottenfutures.co.uk ~ 1 ~ www.forgottenfutures.com Forgotten Futures ~ The Scientific Romance Role Playing Game appendices, but a few changes appear elsewhere. Where it's important the change is pointed out, one way or another. But you can still use any version of the rules to run anything written for the game. An important change is an acknowledgement of something that many referees will already know. In Forgotten Futures actions are resolved on a table which opposes “attacking” and “defending” skills, characteristics, or difficulty. Most referees find that they don't need to refer to the table after a game or two, since the rule behind it is extremely simple, and that it can even slow things down. This time around the text explains the rule, and a few references to the table have been changed so that they are applicable to both methods. The actual game mechanics - the values of skills etc., and the way that they interact - are unchanged. All of the material previously released or published for the game can be used without modification. All of the illustrations used come from the Forgotten Futures CD-ROM or one or another of the game releases, or were created for use with this release of the rules. Most have been cropped, reduced in size, or modified in other ways. Example of Play HE easiest way to understand an RPG is to see it played. In this example Bert is the referee; he's using these T rules and a game background which assumes that the American Civil War ended in the formation of separate Confederate and Union nations. Eric is playing Captain Kirk T. James of the Confederate Zeppelin Squadron, Judy is Ella Mae Hickey, apparently a resourceful Southern belle but actually a resourceful Yankee spy, and Aaron is reporter Horace Mandeville of the Times (that's the London Times for American readers). They are heading towards a mysterious South American plateau, on the trail of the missing British explorer Professor Challenger (see Forgotten Futures III), but there have been problems: Bert The airship is starting to rock from side to side, and pitching up and down in the cross winds from the hurricane. Eric I'll try to steer towards the eye of the storm. We'll drift with it until it ends. Bert How do you know where the eye is? Eric In this hemisphere storms spin anticlockwise. If I veer to the left, sorry, I mean port, while moving with the wind, I should go towards the eye. (Eric isn't sure, but it sounds plausible and is the sort of thing a real pilot would know. Bert isn't sure either, but knows that 'Kirk' should understand these things.) Bert Make your 'Pilot' roll, difficulty six. Eric (Rolls dice and consults table) No problemo. Gritting my teeth, I wrestle with the wheel and force the dirigible to its new heading. Aaron I pick up my pocket phono-recorder, slip in a new wax cylinder, and describe the captain's desperate duel with the elements. Bert Good idea, except you're still feeling airsick in the aft cabin and don't know what he's doing. Aaron I'll dictate a mood piece about airsickness instead. Let's see, how many different synonyms for the word “vomit” can I use... (starts to write list) Judy Ugh. Don't read it out loud. Bert Definitely not. Judy Once we're moving with the wind there should be less turbulence. Bert Yes, after a few minutes things seem to be getting quieter. Judy Kirk cut his head when the windscreen broke, didn't he? Bert You weren't in the control room, but yes he did. Judy Then I'll go forward and bandage Kirk's wounds. Bert I suppose he calls for your help through the speaking tube? Otherwise you wouldn't know.