I didn't really have time to work on Exoworld yesterday because I had a blood donation and took care of a lot of other things, but I got back to it today.

Every time I return to this setting I like it more and I have a clearer vision of what it is. I've hit 12,000 words of text, and most of it is in setting or setting-adjacent content with only a small portion being rules.

The downside is that I really need to get my butt in gear and work on the rules so I can start playtesting. The upside is that I've gone a long time since writing out a setting I enjoy, and I think I'm going to like this one.

The Spurned

The Exemplars created the Spurned to settle Exile. They share more in common with the fauna that were modified for or created for Exile than they do with humans in terms of morphology.

And many of them have weird features to help them survive in pre-terraformed conditions or specialize in certain tasks, though there isn't as much diversity between Spurned in an underlying sense as there is between Exemplar castes.

The Spurned special attribute is Adaptation, which reflects this ability to deal with natural environments. They're capable of surviving almost any hardship without shelter, and many of their abilities are outright superhuman. Thanks to the character traits system, some Spurned can climb up sheer rock surfaces. Some can sense electrical wiring with magnets. Some are aquatic.

The goals from this are two-fold.

From a gameplay perspective, Spurned can be utility characters that do things that the Exemplars and Originals can't do. They move in ways that others can't, tolerate conditions others can't, and make Exile seem like home in a way that more human characters can never hope for.

This is nice for anyone who wants to play an equivalent of a ranger archetype, since they're very handy in the outdoors. But a character who invests in Adaptation can become an apex predator or a hardcore survivalist with trivial difficulty.

The Spurned have a special mechanic where they can buy Adaptations during character creation. These abilities are narrative in focus. Each character gets one Adaptation for free, and can buy others for one Trait point (cheap for what most of them are!). Right now I'm locking them to character creation, but there will probably be some item available to let the Spurned gain more adaptations, since they're all in the genetic template and only express based on prenatal circumstances.

This would be something that requires some effort from players to have it work, and it would still require the investment of a Trait point, but the goal is to prevent choice anxiety. I might also provide a way to gain more as a reward for increasing the attribute, but that seems like it's helping something which is already on the powerful side as far as special attributes go.

Vision

I mentioned the other day that I lacked a vision for the Spurned, and that's still true in the sense that I wouldn't be able to describe one to you. But I think the archetype's turned into something quite nice.

The Spurned are capable at any background, despite their Adaptation mechanics. From a narrative perspective, I want to include things that show their legacy as the first people on Exile, but I also want to give them great flexibility.

Things like the aquatic function are immediately and obviously useful, but the goal is to provide at least a dozen options, with a half-dozen of them catering to characters who will not be trying their hand at wilderness exploration.

My first focus here is to draw from exotic animal traits. Things like gecko grip pads and shark electroreception are real things that make for straightforward game mechanics. They're also cool and novel in a way that you won't see them overlapping with the Exemplars, who focus on becoming better than human rather than different from humans.

However, I want to avoid the "animal people" stereotype. Not only do the Exemplars not have that frame of reference for creating the Spurned because they live on a spaceship with no natural life, but they would consider it gauche.

The Spurned are definitely humanoid, but also distinctively non-human. Because they have a high degree of phenotypic drift and they're manipulated to have more extreme developmental responses to environmental effects, the normal rules don't apply. While Spurned will adapt to the regions they inhabit, this occurs within a single generation, so there's not much in the way of distinctive populations.

They're not horrifying by design, but they make the Dunmer of The Elder Scrolls look like ordinary humans so that naturally creates some friction between them and Originals, even if there's no bad blood between the two groups like there is between the Spurned and the Exemplars.

Character Traits

One thing I need to consider with traits is how to balance them so that making choices still feels important, and since traits tie to faction selections that's going to be a major part of how the game works.

I've already broadly categorized this in the first post for the project that morphed into Exoworld, so I won't go into trait-level specifics here.

Instead, I want to talk about how I'm grouping the traits and the way I make it relevant.

General Traits

General Traits are available to all characters. My focus with them is to provide options for general development.

I want to avoid the perception of this as a "bland" category, but it's going to focus on utilitarian workhorses rather than the more exotic fare.

Some limitations here are that I don't want to give General Traits access to a couple things.

1. No resource pool boosts, because I want these to be very rare in the setting and in the system. I might relent based on what the final resource system looks like.
2. Exotic mechanics. This isn't so much because of a principled objection, but because these are both perfect candidates for the other Trait categories and because I don't want characters to be subject to three pages of special event handling that players won't remember and which fall outside the purview of the core rules.

Exemplar Traits

Exemplar Traits are open to Exemplars. However, buying more than one Exemplar Trait requires a character to also take an Exemplar Drawback. Most Drawbacks are not game-changing, but they have point values relative to their effects.

All Exemplars have a couple free Traits (vision and access to gene-locked equipment), but these don't do a lot and I also grant the vision to the Spurned.

Exemplar Traits focus on three things:

1. Boosting a character's Magnitude rolls, including direct damage bonuses in combat (very nice, and would be expensive if not for how exclusive Exemplar Traits are).
2. Superhuman abilities that are based on enhancing existing human functions.
3. Spending resources to get advantage in situations.

Original Traits

One weakness of the Originals as a faction is that they're just slightly augmented humans, so it's difficult to give them cool stuff without trampling on the Exemplars' turf.

One advantage for the Originals is that they're much more likely to have broad educations and life experiences, whereas the Exemplars' rigid caste system means that most Exemplars can't do anything they weren't bred for without having a minor crisis.

Original Traits are probably going to focus on four things:

1. Social and expert features that go beyond those appropriate for General Traits.
2. Taking full advantage of situations where versatility is an advantage (re-rolls?).
3. Surviving against all odds. Originals will have access to boosts for each Resource pool.
4. Functioning in complex and dynamic societies, unlike the rigid or smaller societies of other factions.

Spurned Traits

I've already mentioned the Adaptation system, which itself focuses on giving the Spurned a lot of individual trait options. Of all the factions, the Spurned are going to be the easiest to come up with traits for because they're capable of such diversity within their own ranks.

Spurned are hardy survivalists, even if they can move beyond that distinction to become so much more than what the Exemplars intended them to be.

Spurned Traits focus on three things:

1. Biological features that would make sense for humanoids, but not humans.
2. Pushing things up to 11. They'll probably have the best options for Health of anyone.
3. Replicating the effects of things that other people would need to carry gear for. This can be simple like weapons, or advanced like chemical analysis.

Reaction Traits

I'm still not entirely sure how I want to play the Reaction out as an in-universe entity, but I can sketch out a few ideas.

1. Focus on active traits that function kind of like spellcasting, albeit with greater limitations.
2. Resource manipulation.
3. Nanomachines doing weird and unnatural things.
4. Extrasensory things that are hard to explain but work along consistent rules.

Wrapping Up

I feel like the outline for Exoworld is coming along quite nicely, and what I've got left to do is just to execute on it. There's a lot of gray area and wiggle room, of course, because I just have the outline.

But every time I look at the project I like it more and more, and that's a wonderful place to be.