Designer's Notes

This section contains odd bits of information about the Jovian Chronicles that just didn't fit in the other sections. It also gives us, the authors, a chance to explain the various design decisions we had to make and the compromises that resulted. There is no general organization here -- we will just add material or expand on exiting sections as it strikes our fancy.

Genesis of the Chronicles

The Chronicles' saga began in late 1991 as a project for a serialized novel that would appear in the pages of Mecha Press, an anime and science fiction magazine which we used to publish (it was shut down after issue #17 in 1995). The Chronicles were to be published in two-page installments, in much the same way some science fiction novels are published in Japanese animation magazines.

The original design goal was to make the story as realistic as possible: the machines were not even humanoid at that point, just small chemically powered spaceships with arms and stubby legs. As the story and designs took shape and evolved, we came to realize that the amount of work required to write a good novel, even one episode at a time, was enormous, so we just canceled the whole thing - or so we thought. After all this great background material had already been written, Dream Pod 9 acquired the Mekton game license from R. Talsorian Games, so it seemed natural to translate the existing Chronicles notes into a full-fledged game universe.

The team immediately began work on the design of the book itself. Ideas were put on paper and the artists started translating the designers' loose sketches into tangible mechanical designs. The result was two books, Jovian Chronicles and Europa Incident, both published in 1993. They would develop a small but very devoted following over the next three years. During that time, we decided to make our own way and developed our own game engine, Silhouette. This enabled us to rely less on licensed products, dropping them completely in late 1995, and concentrate our efforts on doing our own material. From 1995 on, we developed Heavy Gear as Dream Pod 9's main line.

The Chronicles, however, were not forgotten. We kept receiving fan mail about it, with people asking when more products would be coming out. We bade our time, making sure that Heavy Gear was well supported, but still doing occasional development work on the Jovian Chronicles. Finally, just before the last GenCon, the decision was made to rerelease a completely refurbished edition of the game based on our Silhouette game engine. The resulting rulebook is available from stores since June 27, 1997, and new books are coming out at a regular pace.

JC History

The JC timeline is decidedly optimistic, a necessary evil to create a space-based society that is not too removed from our own culture (and thus a little too alien to play in). Even if our current political climate and economic will was to change overnight, it is doubtful that we could put a basic space exploitation infrastructure in place before the second or third decade of the twenty-first century (though we'd love to be proven wrong). This is why we have to start thinking about it now!

Game design is a weird two-headed beast. On one side, you have realism. You need at least a bit of it, else the Players won't be able to suspend their disbelief and enjoy the game. On the other side, you've got playability. A game has to be enjoyable, or else it's not a game! With today's other means of entertainment (movies, computer games) providing near-instant gratification, any paper-and-pen game system has to do the same to be competitive.

So we based Silhouette on the following principle: functionalism over structuralism. So what the heck does that mean? Plainly put, this game system is concerned with how useful your combat unit is and not exactly who got shot in the leg. That level of accuracy is nice (especially to us "hard science" gamer types) but tends to bog down games with tons of pointless detail. Let's be honest: in a real battle, most things don't keep fighting after a good hit or two. Vehicles most often blow up when hit by weapons fire. Infantrymen become casualties. Sometimes a shot isn't strong enough to blow up an opponent and just cripples him. Do you really care if his exo-armor's left arm is barely functional? No, you're interested in whether or not he's still a threat to your mission. Thus, the principle guiding this entire system is functionalism. Silhouette is concerned with what a character or vehicle can do in the context of the overall story, not what's in slot thirteen of the record sheet!

Vehicles Design

Most hi-tech gamers love vehicles and other mechanical constructs. Regardless of the type of campaign they play, they want cars, boats, starships, giant robots. More often than not, they also want to put them together to their own specifications, or at the very least fiddle with them to get that extra bit of performance and personality.

The Silhouette system works by placing more and more negative modifiers on the target due to damage. Anything not covered by the standard attributes are covered by "Perks". Perks are what make designs go over budget. You want to add them all -- but they just more and more money. Of course, there are also "Flaws", which lower you expected costs since you cut corners. Obviously, this means that the usual "assign mass and space" method is not going to work... so we got rid of it. If you want something, just put it on the design. Rather than spend hours figuring out whether the laser will fit inside the arm, you let the engineers work it out; just foot the bill at the end and get on with the game.

And for those who'd rather play the engineers, you *can* spend hours defining how the mechanisms work and what the fuel consumption is -- just use your favorite physic reference book(s) or game design system to generate the "real world" numbers. Then spend about a minute writing the result down as Silhouette game stats.

The Silhouette Space Engine: Vectors

The Silhouette space rules are entirely vector based. That is, they respect the laws of physics as we know them. Vehicles at rest will remain at rest while vehicles in motion will remain in motion. Thrust is required to change both speed and direction. We wanted to have this in the game to keep the hard science edge of the rest of the JC universe. But vector-based systems have their own set of requirements and restrictions.

Using a vector-based system normally means a lot of bookkeeping because vector adjustments and facings are carried on from turn to turn. This goes against our design philosophy, which puts the speed of the game system ahead of every other consideration -- after all, it is too easy to lose the mood of the game while the Gamemaster thumbs endlessly through his rulebook to find an elusive formula or table.

Instead, we designed a clever (well, we think) way to handle all the vectors using just one counter per vehicle. You can even transform the regular two-dimensional play into full three-dimensional space combat simply by adding a second counter for vertical movement.

(Ah yes: some players have asked why we use three vectors even in 2D play. That's because a wargame hex has three axis. If you don't want to play on an hex map (miniature play, for example), just get rid of the third vector. It won't affect gameplay much, and makes life much simpler for the players.)

Campaign Styles

Movie characters often succeed at outrageously difficult tasks that would be impossible for real folks. In reality, even elite troops and world-class professional have their failings. Most roleplaying games fall in between the two extremes, allowing Player Characters to accomplish great feats but still putting limits on what they can do.

Normally, a set level of heroism is built into the game system. We wanted to provide tools so that players could choose it themselves, playing the game anime-style or 2001, as their personal preference go. The system we've come up with makes playing groups choose how heroic their version of reality is by allowing them to select their game's Reality Distortion Level (RDL).

Gritty: this is the lowest RDL. At this level, fire fights are very dangerous and heroes are just brave people taking great risks.

Adventurous: heroes and villains tend to stand out just a bit more than Joe Average and death is easier to avoid. This is the standard "default" Reality Distortion Level of the game world.

Cinematic: this is the highest reality distortion level. This is Japanese animation adventuring where the laws of physics are temporarily on vacation, heroes and villains are larger than life and puny screen extras are only so much cannon fodder for the lead characters. The odds are heavily skewed in favor of powerful characters, and even the most outrageous action has a chance of succeeding as long as it looks good.

Each RDL allows you to interpret the rules as required by the style you like to play. If you like hard-edged realistic science fiction, use Gritty: your character had better check his oxygen gauge often, and he's dead if he's ever caught in vacuum for longer than a few seconds. The same situation using Cinematic will turn out entirely differently - the helmetless character will actually remain conscious long enough to get to safety, dodge the villain's shots and break the code on the external airlock. Same rules, same die rolls, different results.

A New Sourcebook Concept

We wanted to do something different when publishing additional material for the series: the traditional dual approach of sourcebooks and adventure modules just did not seem to fit within the high-action style chosen for the Chronicles. Instead, we once more drew our inspiration from the Japaneses and devised what we named Campaign Books, which are similar to OVAs. In Japan, an OVA is an Original Video Animation, an anime that goes direct-to-video without first being presented on television or in movie theaters. Each OVA tells a complete story, which may or may not be linked to other stories set in the same universe. The Campaign Books work in much the same way, and are in many way similar to Mooks (Movie bOOKs) the Japaneses are so fond of.

Each Campaign Book is a manual that details or advances the overall setting of the Jovian Chronicles through a series of linked adventures and situations. Each adventure features sections that explain how to customize the action and locales to suit the gaming group's current campaign, taking into account what they do and who they are. A little over half of each book is detailed background material relevant to the overall story. There are also new exo-armors, ships, characters, equipment, and much more.

Putting source material in adventure books has been done before. Too many campaign sourcebooks tend to force players to replay the designer's own campaign or to just stand on the sides while NPCs do all the work. The difference here is that each Campaign Book includes information and links that allow individual Gamemasters to use the feature story as background material rather than just a straight "canned" adventure. The Player Characters can become involved as much as they want; if they are not interested, they will hear about the events mentioned in the sourcebook, or they may come across elements that were used in the adventure. The Gamemaster may choose to ignore the story format completely: each adventure includes hints and tips to use it as possible background complications in the current campaign or to prepare future story hooks.


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