I had an easier day today than yesterday. I didn't get as much done on Exoworld as I'd hope, but some of it just comes down to inspiration and having enough stuff in my brain to put out on paper. I'm waiting for tomorrow to put some of the rules down on paper, because I'm worried that I'm not formulating them as clearly as I could on better sleep.

Continents

Right now my plan is for Exile to have five continents. They're named after Uranus' moons, mostly because I started with Titania as a name and I've got subtle naming conventions for everything to serve as a subtle mnemonic device.

Titania

Titania is the largest continent, but it's home to the Gray March. The continent's sizes correspond with the sizes of their lunar namesakes, but even if they didn't the fact that titan is in the name makes it obvious that it's big.

Despite being large, most of Titania's colonies center on the coasts. This is partly for the ease of access to the sea, but mostly because the Gray March is a potential hazard and the coastal areas are as far from the nanite hives as you can get.

Titania's settlements feel fairly oppressive. It's the Exemplars' pet continent, in part because the Gray March consumes so much of its surface that the Originals' colonies there are isolated and limited in scope.

Because the Exemplars are there, you're stuck with their control freak nature. They send out Surveyors to serve as spies and covert agents, though some operate openly. The degree of naked force varies between each settlement, but it's clear that one price Titania pays for being entrusted with so much of the Exemplars' resources and technology is the constant interference of paranoid outsiders.

However, it's also one of the first continents to get a settlement. There are more Originals alive on Titania than there are on any other continent, and more than there are on Oberon, Ariel, and Miranda combined. There are few Spurned on Titania, and face constant monitoring and scrutiny. This means that its overall population is less than that of Umbriel, but Titania's greater population density makes it home to the three largest urban centers on the planet.

Gagarin is the crown jewel of the Exemplars and Titania, and home to a space elevator project. They subjected its first generation of Original colonists to memetic programming that went awry, and they still feel the consequences of that in terms of quality of life and crime.

The goal of Titania is to provide a place for high-intrigue campaigns. Unlike the Icarus, where anyone who arrives on a shuttle is going to be vetted before entry and thrown out an airlock if they sneeze funny, there are just too many people to be sure of all their loyalty.

It's probably also the most vanilla sci-fi angle in the setting, feeling straight out of Blade Runner or a dystopian fiction novel. The only real problem that a group wanting to run games set in Titania faces is how to incorporate Spurned PCs. However, they're not explicitly excluded by the Exemplars, though any Spurned on Titania need to earn the trust of the faction.

Oberon

Oberon is a harsh and seismically active continent. Picture Greenland meets Morrowind meets Mordor. It's the sort of place where people only go outside if they have to.

Independence from the Exemplars means that the Originals here have more of an interest in automation and remote operation, two things that the Exemplars find contrary to their aesthetic preferences. As a result, it's a shoe-in for heavy industries, something made even easier by the rich mineral deposits.

Because of the seismic activity, Oberon is pock-marked with strip mines instead of having subterranean mines. They turn many of these mines into dome habitats or the sites for future cities, since building underground is a bad idea but having some shelter from the ash and dust storms is a good idea.

However, the largest city in Oberon, New Berlin, was built in a valley that has limited seismic activity and is far from volcanoes. While geothermal vents are common, the conditions in the city lead it to feel more like cities on other continents, and it has a major port.

Oberon is a faction-neutral part of the setting. You can play from any of the factions and find employment with the practical inhabitants, or have one of the different factions jockeying for interest. Corporate espionage is a common pastime for hired guns.

Umbriel

Umbriel was where the first Spurned gestated, and is home to the wildest flora and fauna on Exile. This includes megafauna that just didn't really have anywhere else to go, given their sheer size.

The biolab used to populate Exile with its own life is now in the hands of the Spurned. They have used it to modify themselves since they forced the Exemplars out, but this isn't to the same degree as the Exemplars play with their own genome. The Spurned are typically content to carry out their original mission, making creatures to fill the ecological gaps on Exile and setting up a functional biosphere.

This isn't much of a problem for them, since they're hardy enough to survive pre-terraformed conditions, but they consider it a matter of pride. It's also how they get supplies from the Exemplars in a sort of Cold War détente.

Umbriel's home to a lot of tourism, though its economy is diverse when its various settlements are taken into account. The Spurned do little in the way of external economic activity, and the Originals find the more robust ecosystems of Umbriel to require a novel approach for each site rather than a continent-wide specialization.

Umbriel's also home to anti-Exemplar guerillas, the New Sun organization that wants to return to Earth, and all sorts of people who don't play well with others.

If you want to run a game set in surviving the environment, choose Umbriel. It's also got political intrigue and freedom fighters. I really feel like any 80s sci-fi action/horror movie from Alien to Predator (disclaimer: I've never seen either and don't know when they were made) could serve as an inspiration for a game set in Umbriel. Stalking through the jungle with a motion tracker looking for a particular niche's apex predator? Have fun with that. It's also a fun place to reenact Jurrassic Park.

Ariel

Ariel is the second smallest continent on Exile, and it's sort of a failure to launch. It's sufficiently cooler than the other continents, so most of the flora and fauna from Umbriel can't survive there.

The result is a rocky, barren wasteland. It doesn't have the extremely lucrative deposits of Oberon or the Exemplar ties of Titania, but the advantage is that the land's basically free for the taking and there's not much competition over the resources that are there.

If you don't mind setting up your own aquaculture, you can live easily in a habitat and go undisturbed. You won't get torn apart by angry megafauna or turned in by your neighbors to earn table-scraps from the Exemplars.

And that holds appeal for many people, especially the descendants of those Originals who were skeptical of governments and institutions.

Ariel is space Alaska. Large with broad swathes of undisturbed territory, it's a great place to go out and do research or clandestine activities. It's also home to exotic political structures and systems, since there's almost no centralization. I haven't yet figured out a hook for it.

Miranda

Miranda is the smallest continent, but it is surrounded by island chains. Being a relatively pleasant place to live with a pleasant balance of naturally occurring wildlife and nothing trying to kill its inhabitants, it's popular for Originals.

The small size of many of the islands and limited space to build will eventually result in some growing pains, but people have only been on Exile for a little over four centuries and there's not much concern about that right now.

Miranda has an entirely independent political body, a democratic federation made up of the largest islands and the mainland's three provinces. This doesn't mean that the political station is stable. Piracy is a major issue, since naval shipping is a major source of trade and the backbone of Miranda's economy.

On another dark note, Miranda is also on the cusp of civil war, with active peacekeeping operations in many of the federation's member states. It is only a matter of time until the expenses and atrocities of the brush wars become everyone's problem.

Miranda plays into the sort of action that one might expect to see from the likes of The Expanse or Altered Carbon, with political intrigue punctuated by overt acts of violence.

Backgrounds and Expertise

I'm wondering if the Background system I conceptualized when outlining the character process is necessary. The idea was to give some basic underlying bonuses, but I'm not sure what they would be. The idea was to make a semi-classed system so that players could just choose the style of character they want.

But they can do that perfectly well without that. I'm not sure if I'll keep the Background system at all. If I do, it'll probably be very minimal.

I split Expertise more explicitly from Traits. It still functions as it did, and still costs Trait points to advance, but it has a more distinct third-layer function since I'm not going for the same hyper-minimalist approach. This isn't necessarily the final state for Expertise.

The rationale behind Expertise as an intermediary between Attributes and Traits is that it provides a way for a character who's good at something to still do it well, though I'm not entirely sold on the necessity of the system. I might make it an Original exclusive Trait.

The justification for this is simple: the Exemplars and Spurned use biology over mental acumen. They have augmented themselves so that they're purpose-fit to their task, rather than receiving long training and specialization. The Reaction doesn't get access to it because the Reaction is so different from humans and thinks/learns/groks in different ways.

I'm still weighing it over, but I like the idea. The third layer approach to Expertise is utilitarian, but it's very unoriginal and it could also cause confusion and delay.

Wrapping Up

I'm getting an obvious idea of each of the places that I want to cover and how they tie into my goal of making the game and putting it together. One challenge that I've always faced when writing for settings is feeling like I don't have reasons to make over one place for players to explore because I can't pinpoint the themes and type of action that each caters to.

I think these continents are outstanding examples of different campaigns waiting to happen, and they're all within adjacent enough spaces that they belong under a single system.