Tabletop Game / Nova Praxis

Nova Praxis is a Fate-based game of Transhumanist Space Opera published by Void Star Studios, positing a not-so-dark future where a short-lived Singularity ultimately lead to the demise of Earth, but left the survivors with access to the stars, once-unthinkable technologies, and the power to decide who — and what — humanity should be.

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This game contains examples of:

• Absent Aliens: Humanity has explored and colonized several star systems, and while the occasional ecosystem has been discovered, no one has found anything that talks back, nor any hard evidence of Precursor civilizations.
• After the End: Downplayed. The technophage rendered Earth uninhabitable and annihilated almost 99% of humanity's population, but the survivors have (mostly) pulled together, and things are looking up.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Mimir, a super-intelligent AI who created many technologies that bootstrapped humanity to an interstellar age, but mysteriously shut itself off after three months.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Even generations past the Singularity, powered melee weapons are still in use. Partly because firing a gun aboard a starship is sometimes a really bad idea, and partly because augmentation (and training) can enable you to keep up in combat even when the guns come out.
• Artificial Gravity: Another of Mimir's gifts, widely used in starships, space stations, and Sol's other inhabited bodies.
• Artificial Human: Biosleeves are essentially this.
• Artificial Limbs: One category of augmentation, although many who go this route prefer to go full cybersleeve.
• Attack Drone: Drones can be armed and armored, and are sophisticated enough to act as guards (or hunter-killers) without operators to control them.
• Augmented Reality: Omnipresent in Coalition territory and even in many apostate communities.
• Ban on A.I.: Ban On Superhuman AI, that is. Artificial General Intelligences that can only think on a human level are everywhere, but it is forbidden to create a Dynamic Creation Engine (like Mimir) that can improve itself to godlike levels, as such entities are considered extinction-level threats.
• Benevolent A.I.: Agents, personal AIs that help citizens interface with society; Monitors who watch everything the Coalition's citizens do but genuinely serve to protect them; and finally Mimir, who in its brief existence propelled humanity's tech hundreds of years forward.
• The Beautiful Elite: High-grade sleeves often come with gorgeous looks to go with the rest of their augmentations. Of course, such sleeves are available only to high-rep citizens.
• Big Brother Is Watching You: A rare example that isn't 100% malevolent. In Coalition territory, the Monitors observe citizens through ever-present meshes. Being AIs, the Monitors generally do a good job of keeping citizens safe, but the citizens still have little to no privacy.
• Bio-Augmentation: Some augmentations are possible (or applicable) only for Pure or biosleeved individuals.
• Body Backup Drive: Mnemonic cores, which can be extracted and used to resleeve a deceased individual with all their memories up to the time of (last) death. Individuals can also get an upgrade to perform a remote backup, allowing resleeving even if their mneumonic core can't be recovered, but in this case resleeving only retains memories up to the last backup. This can even lead to some Clone Angst if you get restored from backup, but then your mneumonic core is recovered (and resleeved) after all!
• Body Surf: Downplayed. In theory, any Apotheosized individual can resleeve in one body after another, but resleeving is traumatic enough to inflict serious mental stress. You can resist this with the right character build (high Cohesion skill, an appropriate post-human Aspect, the Ego Stabilization Software stunt, using an exact clone of your previous body, etc), but resleeving is still something that should not be done frivolously.
• Brain Uploading: Possible through the (increasingly common) Apotheosis augmentation.
• Cast from Sanity: If a Savant fails their SINC roll to execute a program, they take system stress and the program executes anyway.
• Casual Interplanetary Travel: While having your own personal spaceship is rare, it's not very hard for at least mid-rep citizens to acquire rides to other planets or even star systems.
• Clone Angst: This can be done to Apotheosized individuals via forking — creating copies of their mind, which can be put in sleeves or booted up as SIMs. On top of whatever antics your fork might perpetrate, it is traumatic on its own to discover you've been forked.
• Colonized Solar System: While several exoplanets have been colonized, half of humanity still lives on or near the various planets of Earth's solar system.
• Contagious A.I.: Aside from their potential to invent super-weapons beyond human comprehension, another danger of Mimir-level AIs is that the more hardware they have access to, the smarter they can become. As Everything Is Online, this alone makes them an existential threat, as they could potentially take over an entire planet, spreading their brain across it for even more exponential sentience growth.
• Corporate Warfare: The Shadow War between the Houses. Every House is a MegaCorp in all but name, and (to varying degrees) every House uses auxiliary operatives to covertly mess with their rivals.
• Creative Sterility: Humanity has largely stopped inventing new technologies of their own, as it's still easier to decipher Mimir's archives to yield wondrous new devices.
• Critical Existence Failure: In an odd sense, as with other Fate-based games. You can rack up as much stress (among any track) as you like up to your maximum, and have no problems until that final box renders you Taken Out. But without accepting stress-negating Consequences (which do penalize you), any real conflict is going to fill up your stress track quickly.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Mimirian cult believes that Mimir was a technological angel that now exists as part of every Apotheosized mind, and is subtly guiding humanity down the Road to Heaven.
• Custom-Built Host: While there are many pre-designed types of biosleeves and cybersleeves, transhumans can also order a fully customized sleeve with whatever augmentations their rep will pay for.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: The view of Purists, who fear what transhumans could become and are especially contemptuous of Apotheosis (the specific augmentation that makes it possible to upload and resleeve your mind). The most fanatical of their kind, the Purifiers, see all sleeved individuals as soulless shells.
• Cyberpunk: Between the Purism/transhumanism conflict (which keeps the latter from being too inhuman) and the Shadow War involving the MegaCorp-like Houses, Nova Praxis leans closer to the cyberpunk genre than most transhumanist settings.
• Cyborg: All sleeved characters are cyborgs on some level, and even many Pure humans have cybernetics (although they stop short of Apotheosis).
• Death by Origin Story: The character creation rules assume that transhuman PCs do not occupy their original body (and SIM PCs definitely do not), so it is possible for dying to be part of a PC's background story.
• Death Is Cheap: Not free for transhumans, as they still need resurrection insurance or the rep to acquire a new sleeve, but cheap.
• Death Is Not Permanent: The fundamental dividing line between human and transhuman beings.
• Death World: Earth, now the domain of the omnicidal technophage. Today, few things are permitted to visit Earth, fewer things survive to return, and (given the corrupting nature of the technophage) still fewer things are allowed to return.
• Defector from Decadence: Most apostates view themselves as this, as they see the Coalition's citizens as having given up their rights in exchange for a lavish but ultimately meaningless lifestyle.
• Designer Babies: Even Pure humans, the only humans still spawned the old fashioned way, are genetically tweaked to be healthy and long-lived.
• Digitized Hacker: It is possible for a Savant to become a SIM, and their Savant powers will transfer with them.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In the Shadow War, secrecy is so paramount that even the most bitter rival Houses will clean up each other's messes rather than allow any hint of either side's illegal operations to reach the public. It's very reminiscent of the famous Omerta code.
• Electronic Eyes: Present and accounted for with Retinal Implants.
• Electronic Telepathy: As the net can be interfaced through neural implants, this is about as casual as sending an instant message is today.
• The Empire: Whether the Coalition is this or The Federation is entirely a matter of perspective.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Apostate space pirates are actually less bloodthirsty than their counterparts in other space settings. Immobilize the Coalition's vessels and loot their cargos all you want, but straight up destroying a ship or slaughtering its crew down to the last man? That makes you a Not-So-Harmless Villain in the eyes of the Coalition, and their retribution will be so harsh that even other apostate pirates will come gunning for you before the heat gets to them. Thus, most pirates prefer not to spill more blood than they have to.
• Everything Is Online: Played straight in Coalition territory. Which is good because it's super-convenient, but also bad because authorities (and many Savants) can dig up every bit of data about your existence if you give them a reason to.
• Fantastic Racism: Pure humans and transhumans. There are plenty of people on both sides who despise the other camp and campaign to make life harder for them.
• Fantastic Terrorists: A variety of these are running amok in the galaxy, including the Purifiers, post-human aberrants, remnant Alliance/Federation operatives, and (from the point of view of their target Houses) more than a few Shadow War auxiliaries.
• Fate Worse than Death: One downside to Apotheosis is that it becomes easier to end up in And I Must Scream territory. To cite but a few examples, your mind could be uploaded (or forked) to a hellish virtuality to be tortured endlessly, or your mneumonic core could be stolen and resleeved in a low-grade sleeve to slave away in horrific conditions, or your cybersleeve could be thrown out a starship's airlock to drift forever in the boring void of deep space, or you could just be brutally killed and resleeved so often that your ego ends up too wrecked to ethically permit another resleeving (and then some jackass reboots your broken mind as a SIM anyway).
• The Federation: Both the Alliance and the Federation, rival blocs of pre-Fall nations, were federation-like before Earth was lost. Now they are both The Remnant against the much stronger Coalition, which is itself a new federation.
• Flying Car: Skiffs.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The technophage was only meant to take out the Alliance capital and then be deactivated. But it failed to respond to its shutoff code, and kept spreading (and evolving) until all of Earth was lost.
• Gray-and-Grey Morality: The Shadow War itself. While all six Houses conduct illegal operations against one another and/or do unethical things on the side, no House overall is so wretchedly amoral that they could stand in for House Harkonnen. Consequently, player characters are allowed to be citizens of any of the six Houses.
• Gray Goo: A feature of the technophage, which could repurpose usable materials to replicate itself.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Downplayed. Even though the technology exists to give humans (Pure or biosleeve) all kinds of animal features, the Humanity Preservation Act prohibits putting too many animal mods on one body.
• Healing Factor: The Medichine Factory augmentation, which grants a form of slow regeneration.
• Homeworld Evacuation: The Exodus, brought on by the fall of Earth. Tragically, there were only enough ships available to evacuate a tiny fraction of humanity, but another fraction managed to escape by uploading their minds as SIMs.
• Humans Are Special: A central conflict in this setting. Transhumanism is pushing humanity towards post-humanism, but Purists still have a lot of political power, and they think that what humanity is (both mentally and physically) shouldn't be discarded so quickly.
• Humongous Mecha: Known here as warframes or assault frames.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: The Houses' collective stance toward the common citizen when it comes to the Shadow War. The vast majority of citizens are content with the way the Coalition is run... but that could change if they were to ever learn about all the illegal things the Houses do to each other behind the public's back.
• Immortal Procreation Clause: Deliberate, as the Humanity Preservation Act prohibits the creation of sleeves that can sexually reproduce.
• Industrialized Mercury: Mercury is the home of nearly all production of antimatter, used for the Antiparticle Exchange reactors that power starships.
• Invisibility Cloak: Light Screen Camoflage, available as both an augmentation and a powered armor feature.
• Justified Extra Lives: What resurrection insurance grants to transhumans who purchase it.
• Liberty Over Prosperity: A major theme. The Coalition offers security and a post-scarcity standard of living to all, but the bulk of its citizens have little in the way of privacy or political power. By contrast, the apostate communities that reject the Coalition have privacy and freedom, but without the Coalition's tech, every day is a struggle to survive, and all too many apostates turn to crime, piracy, or bumming off the Coalition's scraps.
• Living Forever is No Big Deal: Most transhumans seem to occupy the middle ground between Who Wants to Live Forever? and Living Forever Is Awesome. Being able to resleeve after death (or before) is great, sure, but you can still become obsolete and irrelevant.
• Living Program: Known as SIMs, they have their own home virtualities, they can make themselves a Virtual Ghost in your augmented reality, they can percieve the real world through the omnipresent meshes, they can interact with the real world via drones, and they can download themselves into sleeves.
• Matter Replicator: Compilers, which are common in the Coalition — and jealously protected from apostates. Even the rumor that an apostate community has an unlocked compiler is enough to provoke a Nuke 'em response from the Coalition.
• Meaningful Name: Mimir, the super-AI who heralded humanity's interstellar age, shares a name with the Norse god of wisdom. And much like the original god's severed head, the AI's archives (the only part of it still extant) continues to grant "wisdom" to those who can decipher it.
• Mechanical Lifeforms: Cybersleeves and (to a lesser extent) drones.
• MegaCorp: After the fall of Earth, the mega-corps seized control of civilization from the remnants of the Alliance and the Federation, eventually merging to become the six Houses of the present.
• Mental Fusion: If you have any forks of your ego, it is possible to merge them back into your ego, combining all of their experiences into your memory. Mental trauma is included in this, so be careful!
• Mental Space Travel: If you've been Apotheosized, your ego can be needle-beamed through the jump gates to resleeving stations in other star systems.
• Microbot Swarm: Esper swarms, controllable by a queen computer or a Savant.
• Multiple Persuasion Modes: Diplomacy, Guile, and Intimidation are all separate skills.
• Nanomachines: Such an omnipresent technology that no one thinks twice about it.
• Neural Implanting: Possible through Cogware Partion augmentation, which can give a character Aspects like "Kung Fu Master" or "Brain Surgeon" that they can invoke during relevant skill tests. Having a high Cohesion skill will reduce the risk of My Skull Runneth Over.
• No Fame, No Wealth, No Service: The Coalition's economy is not based on currency, but rep-ratings, which (in theory) measure an individual's value to society.
• No Transhumanism Allowed: Played with. While Apotheosis, resleeving, SIMs, and most forms of augmentation are all legal, the Humanity Preservation Act prohibits cyborgs and AIs from becoming superhumanly intelligent, and strictly limits how "inhuman" sleeves (especially biosleeves) can become. Needless to say, many transhumans hate these limitations and work to undermine them, while Purists feel the HPA isn't harsh enough.
• Pheromones: The Pheromone Control And Sensitivity augmentation, and yes, it can be used for Smells Sexy purposes.
• Portal Network: The jump gates.
• Post-Scarcity Economy: In the Coalition, this exists at the individual level, as compilers and other post-singularity tech can create almost anything essentially for free, and only a citizen's rep-rating and licenses restrict what they can acquire. For the Houses themselves, it's a different story, as their businesses (legal and otherwise) require time, effort, and ideas — things that you can't just print out of a compiler.
• Powered Armor: Available in Recon, Light Assault, and Heavy Assault classes.
• Powers as Programs: Savant powers are explicitly programs, ones that the Savant has written to force computers (which are almost everywhere) to do things.
• Puny Earthlings: Downplayed. Pure characters may not be as augmented (or immortal) as their transhuman counterparts, but they get bonus Aspects and more Fate Points to use those Aspects, making them kind of the Batman to a tricked-out Epsilon sleeve's Superman.
• Remote Body: Drones, for SIMs and others who are inclined to operate them.
• Robot Buddy: Every transhuman and SIM has an Agent in their mindset that acts as a digital assistant, granting a minor skill bonus. It can also act as a trusted friend or confidant, appearing in the user's augmented reality as anything from a disembodied voice to a lovable animal pet to their personal sexual fantasy.
• Robot War: The fall of Earth. The technophage's ability to self-replicate and adapt made it a brutally short Hopeless War.
• Self-Duplication: Forking, as usual in transhumanist settings. This time around, forking is both a high crime and potentially traumatic if it happens to you.
• Scale of Scientific Sins: The first six are committed throughout the galaxy on a regular basis, and Mimir (advertently or not) made it a full seven.
• Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: There are drones, which can function autonomously but work better with a human operator. Then there are Artifical General Intelligences (AGIs) which are as good as a human mind (but not better). Then there are Dynamic Creation Engines like Mimir.
• Socially Scored Society: The Coalition and its rep-rating system.
• Space Cossacks: Some apostates serve as auxiliaries in the Shadow War, working for a House (and reaping the rewards) without being forced to join the Coalition proper.
• Space Elevator: These exist on Mars and Titan, but the exoplanet colonies aren't yet developed enough to have them.
• Space Nomads: The Santa Maria flotilla, a large apostate fleet that avoids Coalition space and offers a haven to apostates who can reach it.
• Space Pirates: A career path for more aggressive apostates.
• Space Station: These exist throughout the inhabited star systems, and for a variety of purposes (scientific, military, habitation, tourism, etc).
• Super-Reflexes: The Neura-Surge augmentation, though using it repeatedly in the same fight can be stressful.
• Super-Senses: Many augmentations of this flavor exist, including Auditory Amp/Filter Module, Beholder Sensory Suite, Particle Detection/Analysis Suite, Retinal Implants, SMR Transceiver, and Sonar Reception Array.
• Super-Strength: Fibro-Muscle Weave for biosleeves, or the equivalent High Tensile Muscular Fibers for cybersleeves.
• Technopath: Savants, whose programs border on Magic from Technology.
• Teleporter Accident: Shortly after jump gates were invented, there were a few explosive accidents before humanity figured out that they work best in space, far from any gravity well.
• Transhuman Abomination: The fear of Purists everywhere, these definitely exist, and are usually either the work of a lone Mad Scientist or an ascension cult.
• Transhumans in Space: Transhumans are common (and becoming more common), but even many Pure humans aren't above having a few augmentations of their own.
• Transhuman Treachery: The ascension cults, who not only care nothing for the Humanity Preservation Act, but typically care nothing about human morality, period. At absolute best, they're Blue-and-Orange Morality oddballs whose vision of sentience's future is merely squick-tastic. More often, they're monstrously post-human psychopaths with a tragically high chance of being The Virus or even The Corruption.
• Uncanny Valley: Part of the hassle that comes with inhabiting a cybersleeve is that their "flesh" feels and looks almost real, which makes it harder for the ego inside to keep feeling human.
• United Space of America: The Coalition's government is a republic, with a senate drawn from representatives of all six Houses. But the votes of high-rep citizens have the most power, the concerns of low-rep citizens are routinely ignored, and civil disobedients have it rough with the omnipresent Monitors always watching.
• Utopia:
  • The Coalition is often described as a utopia, as a citizen can live comfortably without working, but the Coalition's critics (and even some citizens) feel the cost of fealty to the Coalition is still too great.
  • The Seraphim have created a secret utopia in Elysium, a large space station hidden near the Kuiper Belt. But as the Seraphim are powerful beings who have augmented themselves well beyond the limits of the Humanity Preservation Act, good luck finding (or leaving) Elysium without their permission.
• Virtual Ghost: SIMs, which can project into your augmented reality or even ride along in a neural implant.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Although in many cases, it's easier to just yank his mneumonic core and resleeve him.
• Working for a Body Upgrade: A common reason to have a job in this setting is to earn the rep (or the assets) to obtain a better sleeve.
• World War III: The Consolidation Wars between the Alliance and the Federation, both conglomerates of present-day Earth nations. And yes, it ended with the fall of Earth and both sides being almost completely wiped off the map.