cyber-modules and mutations in SPACEWARRIORS 3e
so right now it looks like i’ve put a third edition of SPACEWARRIORS on the backburner for the forseable future, but i thought i might share one part of it that I was reasonably proud of: the system of cyber-modules and mutations.
SPACEWARRIORS 2e has mutations, of course, but they’re done in a pretty ad-hoc fashion. one of the many things that i wanted to do in the 3rd edition was to create a more coherent system. in particular, i wanted some way of filtering out mutations that were inappropriate for a certain species (for example, lizardmen should not be able to have a mutation that gives them a tail: they already have a tail) without drawing up a separate tables for everyone. what i settled on looked like this:
the two parts important for determining mutations are: genetic hardness and chromosomes. you roll a number of dice dependent on the number and the type of careers you have had for your “radiation exposure.” for every die that rolls above your species’s genetic hardness, you will either have a mutation or a point of genetic damage (which negatively impacts your health but gives you latent psychic powers that can be manifested later on). the specific rule is:
roll a die on your species’s chromosome table and then another die on the mutation table associated with that chromosome table (chromosome tables are found in section A.1).
If either of those rolls is a 6, or if the result conflicts with another mutation or cyber-module you already possess, you gain a point of gene damage instead of a mutation.
the chromosome table was mentioned above. for a human, it’s most likely to get a chromosome B mutation, less likely to get an A mutation and least likely to get a C mutation. the tables for the individual chromosomes look like this:
(there is a seventh table but that’s not important right now.) mutations are either simple or systematic. you can only have one mutation or cyber-module affecting a given body system: bones, fibers, nerves, skin or vessels. if you roll a conflicting mutation on the table, you get genetic damage instead of the mutation.
what i was really proud of was: 1) how this gave me a very clean way to make some mutations species-specific and 2) the way that this system interacted with the system of cyber-modules. previously, cyber-modules had been pretty limited; they were basically a mutation that a mechanic can swap out for another one if you wanted. that felt pretty flat in terms of flavor to me, and didn’t give a lot of character options.
3E greatly expanded this system. if a character is cyberized, they can have either or both of replacement and enhancement cyber-modules. for replacement parts, we have a long series of old-school random tables:
after a little bit of explaining what to do with the unspecified cyberlimbs and cybersensors, we have possibly the most arcane instructions i’ve ever written:
If you rolled 3–11, roll two more dice. If the higher of the two is 5 or 6, you also have cyberguts. If your first roll was 3–6, consult the left-hand column of following table with the lower of the second dice. Similarly, if you rolled 8–11, consult the right-hand column.
BUT WE ARE STILL UNFINISHED. we need to define what exact kind of cybereyes, cyberears and cyberlimbs you have:
good gravy i had forgotten exactly how much of this shit i had written. anyway, with your replacement cybernetics figured out, the question is now: what about enhancements? mercifully, that is simply a d66 table:
anyway, that’s the lowdown on how cyber-modules and mutations got handled in SPACEWARRIORS 3E. revisiting these for this post, i’m struck by how much time i spent on what was actually supposed to be a pretty ancillary part of the game. maybe if i take this stuff off the backburner, i’ll re-frame it in a way that allows this stuff to really shine.
