While not making space a big part of it, since it’s not a big part of the game.
Good point.
What’s that term for Toyota Hilux trucks with a jury-rigged pintle-mounted machine gun on them? “Technicals”?
Something to convey the bureaucracy but not make it absurd? Like the sleek folks need to shown to want something or be issuing a citation but not be begging or writing a Paranoia-esque traffic ticket for orbital weapon testing.
Another approach could be Top Secret SI, show the collected tools used in play and a form with a bold headline to give an idea of PC group goals when the thumbnail is expanded. Like datapad and pistol and quipus and planetary system readout and headdress and research drawing of native formal and recreational dance differences and body modification example photo.
There’s more tell than show and less dynamism to this approach I readily admit.
Hmm. Maybe some sort of ambassadors meet the emperor at court scene? Where the ambassadors are foregrounded to make it obvious that these are the PCs.
Some sort of ‘Cortez meets Montezuma’ or ‘East India Co officials meet the Mughal Emperor’ or ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume’. But with high tech stuff and locals/courtiers looking snooty or giggling behind their hands/fans at the PCs?
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More than half of the Flat Black campaigns and adventures I have run, including most of the successful and popular ones, have been about PCs working for the Empire. And since most of the detail I generated to supply to players either supported the imminent needs of my adventures or answered the curiosity of players arising out of games, the great mass of material I have presented over the years consists embarrassingly much the of minutiae of working for the Empire, or at least for the Independent Commission for Justice. But that’s more or less an accident: the first campaign was a Justice Department one, it worked well, and it produced detail that attracted attention. It wasn’t meant to be that way, and one of the undesirable consequences is that many players and onlookers have the impression that Imperials are or are supposed to be the good guys.
I meant and would still prefer that Flat Black should be open to, and seen as presuming, a far wider range of possible PC group concepts, mostly lacking any sort of authority to exert and not concentrating on pursuits and concerns that are objectively more important than the colonials’ motives in being difficult. In this iteration of Flat Black briefing material I’m trying to derogate the idea of playing Imperial Servants a bit, and put forward the possibilities of playing “effectives” of the various NGOs, travel vloggers and other wanderers, and even scoundrels such as art thieves, as being at least equally suitable campaign ideas.
The Flat Black fanciers are still fond of the accumulated detail of Imperial service, and I do intend to collect and organise it for them. But my plan at the moment is to write and “publish” a book about being effective for your NGO before rationalising and reissuing the stuff about working for The Man.
All that being the case, I’d like to leave it unstated on the cover what the WEIRD PCs are doing in their meeting with the bizarre colonials. One idea I have is that they might be wearing the Red Symbol of the Humanity League, and arguing about a case marked “VACCINES — do not open”, but anomalously wearing sidearms.
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I like this image. This offers a lot of good questions.
I’m thinking of a “Flylux” air-pickup mounting a Gatling or Maxim gun, so the genericity doesn’t sting too much.
It might do the job, though. It has worked for a lot of mystery and thriller novels.
Let’s consider it.
- A vademecum (high-tech successor to the smartphone) displaying the Popular Revised Handbook of Planets app
- A double-barrelled, blued-steel, percussion-cap pistol with chequered ebony grips
- A handful of fake IDs, including a Tau Ceti passport
- A spaceliner ticket or boarding pass (ought to be recorded on the vademecum?)
- A sheaf of Imperial banknote cash
- A few scattered orange-yellow transparent gel capsules.
Are we in the ballpark?
I think so but it loses the culture as problem feature that seems important to convey.
Some thing or things to show the strange culture interactions ahead seems important. I said quipu earlier because it’s a distinct extinct branch of information technology. Outside of daily experience but intended at design to carry daily information. Not proscribing here but continuing the brainstorm example maybe a strange material? Like a weird feather or cat5 cable
tied into the knots?
It’s hard to think of something strange and distinctive and not already part of another culture.
Well, we can start with decorative motifs, I guess. The butt of the pistol carved into a stylised parrot’s head. A carved mother-of-pearl amulet of an astronaut? Carved ceremonial mask with mirror lenses?
The best way is to depict someone with bizarre clothes and grooming, and this approach doesn’t favour that.
I like the ceremonial mask idea.
An existing SF game, Fires of Amatsumara from the d6 Space line, took a similar design approach:
I think it runs into a potential problem in that you need to have identifiable yet futuristic and exotic items (You’re probably looking at that cover and thinking "Mini-Discs! How quaint!). Spy novels and thrillers can just use guns, knives and passports because everyone knows the world.
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Also “manual controls on a tablet, how quaint”. 
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How would that look with a laser sight on it? Or an accessory rail?
Alas, all the vendors of such things I can find on a quick image search want to make them look interesting so they display them at a 3/4 angle…
Perhaps what we ought to be looking for, for an equipment catalogue at least, would be one of those snazzy aluminium attaché cases with the foam linings that have special cut-outs for each thing, containing a cap-lock pistol tapped for sights, a laser sight, a screw-on suppressor, cleaning gear, and little boxes of “Blue Sky® 10mm Minié balls” and “Sun Hill® №1 quality hand-picked pistol cartridges”.
The “Flylux” technical air-ute with pintle-mounted swivel-gun can go on the main book.
I’ve just had an idea for a really irritating innovation of which I feel sure the time will come soon:
- animated or video cover art on electronic books
I ought to patent this business method, right? Right?
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Well, that’ll stop anyone else using it, so yes.
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