Space Opera 007 Campaign Info
As some of you are aware, I'm considering running an online BESM game that's best described as "James Bond in space". Specifically, space opera, which I define rather loosely to include Star Wars, The Fifth Element, Flash Gordon, and any other science fiction where the good guys are heroic, the bad guys dastardly, the spaceships fast, the settings exotic, the stakes unbelievably high, and the story more important than the science. When you look at it, it's not really that different from a 007 movie, is it?
I've got four players as of right now, either confirmed or tentative, and this post is mostly to give them more background. Feel free to comment if you think you might be interested, though, since I see this being a big campaign.
You, the players, are Alpha Status agents of Imperial Intelligence in service to Her Imperial Majesty Mayumi II, Empress of Human Space. Fortunately for your job security, the term "Human Space" is something of a misnomer- the Empire is in fact bordered by no less than four states that are either hostile, hotbeds of unrest, or both. Even within Her Majesty's domains, there are powerful factions who would see someone else on the throne- or perhaps would see Imperial rule discarded altogether. The Empire has a mighty army and a vast star fleet to defend its borders, but open war would be disastrous in the current situation. So it is that the Empire turns to its "dark guardians", the Alpha Status agents- the elite minority of Imperial Intelligence operatives authorized to conduct any mission, in any location, at their own discretion to serve the Empire.
The galaxy is crawling with threats both within the Realm and outside it. Can you step up to the challenge and protect it?
Individual Planets
The Empire is not a very tightly knit entity. It contains over three hundred star systems, and mostly lets the inhabitants of each star system decide for themselves how they wish to order their society. Pretty much anything goes, within the following limitations:
- The Empire sets foreign policy and has a monopoly on interstellar-deployable troops. Raising a planetary guard is fine, sending them out of the system without permission is a no-no.
- The Imperial Charter guarantees certain basic rights. Governments are not allowed to restrict freedom of speech, the press, or peaceful assembly. They may be religious in character (and many are, from all faiths), but they must tolerate other religions to at least a minimal extent. They may not restrict their citizens from leaving the planet if they choose to do so. They must also accept Imperial courts and off-planet judges from the Ministry of Justice, and while they can have their own legal systems any Imperial citizen has the right to appeal to the Imperial courts if they feel they are being unfairly prosecuted. They must also, at a minimum, allow their citizens to elect the planet's representatives to the Imperial Diet. (see below)
[Note that democracy is not guaranteed, but that the Charter tends to keep the nastier forms of dictatorship down and prevent really bad persecution. If you're unhappy with your planet you're guaranteed the right to either raise up a group of similarly unhappy people or to go somewhere else, and if the government tries to toss you in jail because of your ethnicity or beliefs you have the right of appeal to the Imperial courts. Not that it always works that way in practice, but the machinery's there.]
- The planets may set interstellar trade policy, with three exceptions: they may not close the planet to all interstellar trade, any tariffs or duties must apply equally to all Imperial worlds, and they may not interfere with the zaibatsu's guaranteed monopolies. (see below)
Zaibatsu
Above the planetary level, the Imperial government is heavily intertwined with the interstellar companies known as zaibatsu. The zaibatsu are given Imperial charters to operate in certain aspects of interstellar business, such as starship manufacture, shipping, and mining of rare resources, and control a sizable chunk of the Empire's total wealth. There are two limitations on their business. First, they may not expand their businesses beyond the areas spelled out in their charter, to prevent them from stifling smaller planet-bound companies. Second, the zaibatsu charters are written so that no single area is a monopoly- most fields have between two or three designated competitors, each with fingers in a different pie. For example, Reticuli Drive Yards might be chartered for hyperdrive manufacture and starship construction, while Supernova Lines is chartered for starship construction and shipping- thus, the two companies compete with each other in some areas, but aren't mortal enemies since they have other competitors to worry about in their other areas of operation.
Despite these limits, the zaibatsu have extraordinary economic influence. The "nobility" of the Empire is composed of the Shareholder class, those who have amassed enough wealth to buy stock in the zaibatsu and begin investing on an interstellar scale. Many Shareholders possess hereditary portfolios, handed down through their families for generations, some of which are quite prestigious. Many others, though, got where they are through skill, luck, and cunning. The Shareholders have been carefully inculcated with a spirit of noblesse oblige, and although many do not need to work they usually do, devoting themselves to charity or public service. They see themselves as stewards of the Empire- paternalistic as a class, but largely concerned with the common interest rather than their own.
The Imperial Government
The head of the Imperial Government is currently Her Imperial Majesty Mayumi II. By law she is head of state and of government, originator of laws and justice, and commander of the Imperial Army and Star Fleet. All laws officially originate from her decrees, and she commands the Council of State in carrying out her will.
The Empress is far from a despot, however. The Imperial Diet, a body of representatives elected from worlds throughout the Empire, must ratify all of her decrees, must approve her choice of heir (currently undesignated) by a 4/5 majority, and by a unanimous vote can depose her. In practice, the Imperial Loyalist party has commanded an overwhelming majority in the Diet for decades and enjoys a pretty chummy relationship with the rest of the government, but the potential is always there. Diet members can (and often do) initiate legislation through back channels by gathering their colleagues to respectfully petition Her Majesty to issue a decree on a certain subject.
The Council of State is the effectively the Empress' Cabinet, and consists of various Ministers who head the various departments of the Imperial Civil Service. The cabinet consists of at least ten voting members: the Prime Minister, the Imperial Treasurer, the Head of Household (who manages vital infrastructure and industry), and Ministers of War, Foreign Affairs, Justice, Internal Affairs, Science, and the Arts. By tradition, there is usually at least one Minister Without Portfolio to break ties, and frequently there are more that serve as the highest possible trouble-shooters. The Prime Minister must have the confidence of a majority of the Diet, but other than that has little real power and is more like a chief of staff than a head of government.
Informally, the uniformed heads of the armed services also have a great deal of influence, as do the genro, a council of zaibatsu chairpeople, and the manager of the Imperial Portfolio- an extensive collection of stock that is also a way for the Empress to exert "soft power" in the economic sphere.
Finally, and perhaps most pertinently, the Head of Intelligence traditionally has the right to attend any State Council meeting he wishes, although he may not vote. The Head usually does not attend a meeting unless summoned, but if he feels he must demand to meet with the Council and share information, the Prime Minister is required by law to allow it.
Floating around somewhere in all of this are the Imperial Armsbearers. When the Empire was founded, the Armsbearers were the Emperor's personal followers, and after Imperial rule was established they were given certain privileges, including being addressed as "Armsman" or "Armswoman" in addition to their normal titles and carrying military grade weapons. The burnsword, a melee weapon that uses contained plasma to cut through virtually anything and even deflect blaster fire, is considered the symbol and "soul" of the Armsbearer.
These days, pretty much anyone can become an Armsbearer for the right donation in court, and in practice it's often used as a point of entry into polite society by those on the way up.
So, while we don't exactly have the Evil Galactic Empire here, it should be pretty obvious that the Empire isn't all sweetness and light- at a macro level, it's basically a monarchial corporatist state. So why fight for it?
Let's run down the states that border the Empire, shall we?
1. The Rimward Authoritate- The Authoritate started out as your basic military dictatorship, and then took a turn for the worse. The government sponsored extensive research into human genetic engineering, and began to operate a "lottery" in which newly conceived children were assigned to one of a number of genetically adapted castes, biologically tweaked for their ordained role in life.
Fifty years later, the Authoritate's rulers control their subjects by a combination of engineered pheromones and mass media, supported by a "middle class" of specially adapted managers, scientists, and soldiers. Their combat bioforms are highly deadly in hand to hand combat, and their spy morphs are notorious throughout known space for their ruthlessness and ability to blend into any population without a trace. Needless to say, any dissent by genetic inferiors towards their superiors is carefully squashed. The Authoritate is highly expansionist and has its eyes on either the Empire or the Free Stars' League.
2. The Antares Cybersocial Alliance- A few years ago, an academic named Daniel Pell had a dream. All previous experiments with Communism had failed miserably, but he knew why- people at the top had been corrupt, and goods hadn't been correctly distributed. With proper application of expert systems to both run the economy and monitor the behavior of those in authority, utopia should be within reach.
Now, the economy runs at least somewhat right, so one out of two isn't bad. What Pell forgot, however, was that his electronic guardians would last only until someone managed to hack one without being noticed. The Alliance is ruled by an apparatchik class that's had quite a few years to work around their watchman AI programs, which means they operate essentially without accountability. Promotion into the lower ranks of government is often a punishment used for minor opponents of the regime, since it allows them to be fitted with uncompromised monitor AIs and their activities tracked. Recently, the regime's medical council has redefined dissent as a mental illness, and new political hospitals have opened to help the "afflicted" overcome their conditions. The Alliance is less militarily aggressive than the Authoritate, but has long sought to use infiltration to shape Imperial policy towards its own ends.
3. The Independent Zone- The Zone was originally conceived by a group of anarchocapitalists who wanted to live free of government, protected by a group of private companies and independent judges against the depredations of "statists" and their own criminals. Things worked well for a while, until a pair of companies started becoming dominant over the others, garnering more and more subscribers until they merged, driving their competitors out of business and cornering the market on private security. Anyone without their insurance were left to their own devices for self-protection and could bring their claims to a neutral arbiter- but then people and businesses who held out started suffering mysterious fires and accidents, and arbiters just happened to see no merit in their claims. There were allegations of bribery, arson, and assault, but no one ever managed to convince an arbiter of the merits of their claim, and the people making the claims always retracted them or disappeared in fairly short order. By the time anyone put the pieces together, the Combination (as it came to be called) ran the whole Zone.
The Combination's not a bad neighbor in terms of territory, but they've got a fairly aggressive spy program aimed at stealing salable information from their neighbors and reselling it to others, and they're more than willing to assist or run interference for someone else's operations in return for a fee. Of course, that goes for Imperial agents as much as anyone, and the Combination bosses are generally smart enough to stay bought. The Empire is also increasingly annoyed with their persistent refusal to rein in independent businessmen allegedly engaging in so-called piracy in zones of free space that some statists misguidedly claim is part of the Empire.
4. The Free Stars' League- The League was once the most powerful state in the immediate area, with envoys from hundreds of worlds meeting in congress to hammer out policy and protect their borders. Over time, though, the central government became degenerate and infested with the corrupt and incompetent, until it ceased to be capable of exerting any control over member worlds. The League is not a player on the interstellar stage- it is a failed state, where every world goes its own way and seeks its own advantage as best it can. It is a seething cauldron of a dozen crises, all of them exploited by other powers for their own ends, and all with the potential to boil over into Imperial space.
Just a few quick notes here for flavor:
- Starships work pretty much like in Star Wars. They fly like planes, and travel from star to star using a hyperdrive which sends them into an alternate dimension.
- Weapons are generic "blasters" for the most part. There are stun guns, and Gauss weapons do exist where stealth is needed.
- Computers are fairly common, as is AI, but machine sapience does not exist. Hand computers are around, computers built into your shirt a la Transhuman Space are not. Of course, there's always hacking...
- Likewise, genetic engineering can do a lot in this setting, but it's tricky work and nobody does it on a large scale outside the Authoritate. There's a fair amount of prejudice against it inside the Empire, and in any case Imperial genetic engineers aren't really up to the same level as the Authoritate's bioformers. That's not to say you can't have a gene-spliced character, but most people from the Empire are going to look more or less human.
- James Bond gadgets a la Q are encouraged.
Aaand...that's all for now.
I've got four players as of right now, either confirmed or tentative, and this post is mostly to give them more background. Feel free to comment if you think you might be interested, though, since I see this being a big campaign.
You, the players, are Alpha Status agents of Imperial Intelligence in service to Her Imperial Majesty Mayumi II, Empress of Human Space. Fortunately for your job security, the term "Human Space" is something of a misnomer- the Empire is in fact bordered by no less than four states that are either hostile, hotbeds of unrest, or both. Even within Her Majesty's domains, there are powerful factions who would see someone else on the throne- or perhaps would see Imperial rule discarded altogether. The Empire has a mighty army and a vast star fleet to defend its borders, but open war would be disastrous in the current situation. So it is that the Empire turns to its "dark guardians", the Alpha Status agents- the elite minority of Imperial Intelligence operatives authorized to conduct any mission, in any location, at their own discretion to serve the Empire.
The galaxy is crawling with threats both within the Realm and outside it. Can you step up to the challenge and protect it?
Individual Planets
The Empire is not a very tightly knit entity. It contains over three hundred star systems, and mostly lets the inhabitants of each star system decide for themselves how they wish to order their society. Pretty much anything goes, within the following limitations:
- The Empire sets foreign policy and has a monopoly on interstellar-deployable troops. Raising a planetary guard is fine, sending them out of the system without permission is a no-no.
- The Imperial Charter guarantees certain basic rights. Governments are not allowed to restrict freedom of speech, the press, or peaceful assembly. They may be religious in character (and many are, from all faiths), but they must tolerate other religions to at least a minimal extent. They may not restrict their citizens from leaving the planet if they choose to do so. They must also accept Imperial courts and off-planet judges from the Ministry of Justice, and while they can have their own legal systems any Imperial citizen has the right to appeal to the Imperial courts if they feel they are being unfairly prosecuted. They must also, at a minimum, allow their citizens to elect the planet's representatives to the Imperial Diet. (see below)
[Note that democracy is not guaranteed, but that the Charter tends to keep the nastier forms of dictatorship down and prevent really bad persecution. If you're unhappy with your planet you're guaranteed the right to either raise up a group of similarly unhappy people or to go somewhere else, and if the government tries to toss you in jail because of your ethnicity or beliefs you have the right of appeal to the Imperial courts. Not that it always works that way in practice, but the machinery's there.]
- The planets may set interstellar trade policy, with three exceptions: they may not close the planet to all interstellar trade, any tariffs or duties must apply equally to all Imperial worlds, and they may not interfere with the zaibatsu's guaranteed monopolies. (see below)
Zaibatsu
Above the planetary level, the Imperial government is heavily intertwined with the interstellar companies known as zaibatsu. The zaibatsu are given Imperial charters to operate in certain aspects of interstellar business, such as starship manufacture, shipping, and mining of rare resources, and control a sizable chunk of the Empire's total wealth. There are two limitations on their business. First, they may not expand their businesses beyond the areas spelled out in their charter, to prevent them from stifling smaller planet-bound companies. Second, the zaibatsu charters are written so that no single area is a monopoly- most fields have between two or three designated competitors, each with fingers in a different pie. For example, Reticuli Drive Yards might be chartered for hyperdrive manufacture and starship construction, while Supernova Lines is chartered for starship construction and shipping- thus, the two companies compete with each other in some areas, but aren't mortal enemies since they have other competitors to worry about in their other areas of operation.
Despite these limits, the zaibatsu have extraordinary economic influence. The "nobility" of the Empire is composed of the Shareholder class, those who have amassed enough wealth to buy stock in the zaibatsu and begin investing on an interstellar scale. Many Shareholders possess hereditary portfolios, handed down through their families for generations, some of which are quite prestigious. Many others, though, got where they are through skill, luck, and cunning. The Shareholders have been carefully inculcated with a spirit of noblesse oblige, and although many do not need to work they usually do, devoting themselves to charity or public service. They see themselves as stewards of the Empire- paternalistic as a class, but largely concerned with the common interest rather than their own.
The Imperial Government
The head of the Imperial Government is currently Her Imperial Majesty Mayumi II. By law she is head of state and of government, originator of laws and justice, and commander of the Imperial Army and Star Fleet. All laws officially originate from her decrees, and she commands the Council of State in carrying out her will.
The Empress is far from a despot, however. The Imperial Diet, a body of representatives elected from worlds throughout the Empire, must ratify all of her decrees, must approve her choice of heir (currently undesignated) by a 4/5 majority, and by a unanimous vote can depose her. In practice, the Imperial Loyalist party has commanded an overwhelming majority in the Diet for decades and enjoys a pretty chummy relationship with the rest of the government, but the potential is always there. Diet members can (and often do) initiate legislation through back channels by gathering their colleagues to respectfully petition Her Majesty to issue a decree on a certain subject.
The Council of State is the effectively the Empress' Cabinet, and consists of various Ministers who head the various departments of the Imperial Civil Service. The cabinet consists of at least ten voting members: the Prime Minister, the Imperial Treasurer, the Head of Household (who manages vital infrastructure and industry), and Ministers of War, Foreign Affairs, Justice, Internal Affairs, Science, and the Arts. By tradition, there is usually at least one Minister Without Portfolio to break ties, and frequently there are more that serve as the highest possible trouble-shooters. The Prime Minister must have the confidence of a majority of the Diet, but other than that has little real power and is more like a chief of staff than a head of government.
Informally, the uniformed heads of the armed services also have a great deal of influence, as do the genro, a council of zaibatsu chairpeople, and the manager of the Imperial Portfolio- an extensive collection of stock that is also a way for the Empress to exert "soft power" in the economic sphere.
Finally, and perhaps most pertinently, the Head of Intelligence traditionally has the right to attend any State Council meeting he wishes, although he may not vote. The Head usually does not attend a meeting unless summoned, but if he feels he must demand to meet with the Council and share information, the Prime Minister is required by law to allow it.
Floating around somewhere in all of this are the Imperial Armsbearers. When the Empire was founded, the Armsbearers were the Emperor's personal followers, and after Imperial rule was established they were given certain privileges, including being addressed as "Armsman" or "Armswoman" in addition to their normal titles and carrying military grade weapons. The burnsword, a melee weapon that uses contained plasma to cut through virtually anything and even deflect blaster fire, is considered the symbol and "soul" of the Armsbearer.
These days, pretty much anyone can become an Armsbearer for the right donation in court, and in practice it's often used as a point of entry into polite society by those on the way up.
So, while we don't exactly have the Evil Galactic Empire here, it should be pretty obvious that the Empire isn't all sweetness and light- at a macro level, it's basically a monarchial corporatist state. So why fight for it?
Let's run down the states that border the Empire, shall we?
1. The Rimward Authoritate- The Authoritate started out as your basic military dictatorship, and then took a turn for the worse. The government sponsored extensive research into human genetic engineering, and began to operate a "lottery" in which newly conceived children were assigned to one of a number of genetically adapted castes, biologically tweaked for their ordained role in life.
Fifty years later, the Authoritate's rulers control their subjects by a combination of engineered pheromones and mass media, supported by a "middle class" of specially adapted managers, scientists, and soldiers. Their combat bioforms are highly deadly in hand to hand combat, and their spy morphs are notorious throughout known space for their ruthlessness and ability to blend into any population without a trace. Needless to say, any dissent by genetic inferiors towards their superiors is carefully squashed. The Authoritate is highly expansionist and has its eyes on either the Empire or the Free Stars' League.
2. The Antares Cybersocial Alliance- A few years ago, an academic named Daniel Pell had a dream. All previous experiments with Communism had failed miserably, but he knew why- people at the top had been corrupt, and goods hadn't been correctly distributed. With proper application of expert systems to both run the economy and monitor the behavior of those in authority, utopia should be within reach.
Now, the economy runs at least somewhat right, so one out of two isn't bad. What Pell forgot, however, was that his electronic guardians would last only until someone managed to hack one without being noticed. The Alliance is ruled by an apparatchik class that's had quite a few years to work around their watchman AI programs, which means they operate essentially without accountability. Promotion into the lower ranks of government is often a punishment used for minor opponents of the regime, since it allows them to be fitted with uncompromised monitor AIs and their activities tracked. Recently, the regime's medical council has redefined dissent as a mental illness, and new political hospitals have opened to help the "afflicted" overcome their conditions. The Alliance is less militarily aggressive than the Authoritate, but has long sought to use infiltration to shape Imperial policy towards its own ends.
3. The Independent Zone- The Zone was originally conceived by a group of anarchocapitalists who wanted to live free of government, protected by a group of private companies and independent judges against the depredations of "statists" and their own criminals. Things worked well for a while, until a pair of companies started becoming dominant over the others, garnering more and more subscribers until they merged, driving their competitors out of business and cornering the market on private security. Anyone without their insurance were left to their own devices for self-protection and could bring their claims to a neutral arbiter- but then people and businesses who held out started suffering mysterious fires and accidents, and arbiters just happened to see no merit in their claims. There were allegations of bribery, arson, and assault, but no one ever managed to convince an arbiter of the merits of their claim, and the people making the claims always retracted them or disappeared in fairly short order. By the time anyone put the pieces together, the Combination (as it came to be called) ran the whole Zone.
The Combination's not a bad neighbor in terms of territory, but they've got a fairly aggressive spy program aimed at stealing salable information from their neighbors and reselling it to others, and they're more than willing to assist or run interference for someone else's operations in return for a fee. Of course, that goes for Imperial agents as much as anyone, and the Combination bosses are generally smart enough to stay bought. The Empire is also increasingly annoyed with their persistent refusal to rein in independent businessmen allegedly engaging in so-called piracy in zones of free space that some statists misguidedly claim is part of the Empire.
4. The Free Stars' League- The League was once the most powerful state in the immediate area, with envoys from hundreds of worlds meeting in congress to hammer out policy and protect their borders. Over time, though, the central government became degenerate and infested with the corrupt and incompetent, until it ceased to be capable of exerting any control over member worlds. The League is not a player on the interstellar stage- it is a failed state, where every world goes its own way and seeks its own advantage as best it can. It is a seething cauldron of a dozen crises, all of them exploited by other powers for their own ends, and all with the potential to boil over into Imperial space.
Just a few quick notes here for flavor:
- Starships work pretty much like in Star Wars. They fly like planes, and travel from star to star using a hyperdrive which sends them into an alternate dimension.
- Weapons are generic "blasters" for the most part. There are stun guns, and Gauss weapons do exist where stealth is needed.
- Computers are fairly common, as is AI, but machine sapience does not exist. Hand computers are around, computers built into your shirt a la Transhuman Space are not. Of course, there's always hacking...
- Likewise, genetic engineering can do a lot in this setting, but it's tricky work and nobody does it on a large scale outside the Authoritate. There's a fair amount of prejudice against it inside the Empire, and in any case Imperial genetic engineers aren't really up to the same level as the Authoritate's bioformers. That's not to say you can't have a gene-spliced character, but most people from the Empire are going to look more or less human.
- James Bond gadgets a la Q are encouraged.
Aaand...that's all for now.