69 Minutes into the Future
The book clocks in at 320 pages divided into three main chapters, I will not be doing a chapter per post and will just stop at a reasonable stopping point. Fields’s the lone credit for the writing of this setting, but not as editor. Most of the art is from stock photo’s and various art packs, the only drawn art is by Fields himself and still bad.
You know what it really awesome, when a book has no table of contents. Oh this book has an index, but for some reason there isn’t a table of contents. This pdf also doesn’t contain any bookmarks either, so navigating through this book is a pain in the ass. The layout of the text has problems too, text runs right to the edge of a box and sometimes over it, the tables a squashed and makes the text a bit hard to read. Now there is a printer-friendly version of the pdf, which I also own and the formatting is just as janky as the original.
This supplement uses the d20 Modern system so...yeah. Let’s get this train a chuggin’.
Chapter 1: Sexually Transmitted Future
So before this chapter starts we are greeted with some quotes that work as world building, the first is from a “future” wikipedia page about the beginning of the Second American Civil War, the next is a from an actual book “The Truth about Women” that is put under as being part of another in world book called “A Solider’s Book of Shadows”, and the last is a quote from
Neal Horsley which is part of the in world book “The Manual of Pro-Life Tactical Doctrine”. If any of the names or book titles make you raise an eyebrow, you know that uneasy feeling that something heavy-handed this way comes, well just trust that feeling for now.
So the Second American Civil War officially known as the The
American Abortion War started January 22, 2061 ended 30 years later which divided the nation into two main camps: the Lifers and Choicers. The Choicers won the war, barely. Now the year is 2107 the Choicers are the dominant social force and the Lifers are the oppressed class. Now if this was anyone else besides Fields I would think that they were trying to set up some Martyr complex with the Lifers, but then I remembered Black Tokyo and know that everyone will lose in this scenario. So the Choicers are rebuilding society their way and the Lifers are still struggling. The war isn’t really over just gone cold. Each side killing important figures of their opponents.
Then there is short section about adding integrating other products into the setting, don’t care.
The first chapter will be about civilian life in this new nation. The other two chapters will go into the life each camp.
Now the chapter starts with a three page story about a Choicer woman, during the Abortion War, in a birthing pool giving birth with aid of a priestess-midwife in front of her Covenant mates. The story goes it a lot of unnecessary detail about the birth that it hits levels of Harlequin Romance. Here is an excerpt:
Tendrils of liquid plastic exactly the same
shade of crimson as her blood crawl across the
straining, sweating woman’s belly. These tendrils
caress the pregnant woman’s brown skin with a soft,
pneumatic hiss, and as the tendrils move and writhe,
and push painlessly into the woman’s abdomen,
gently shoving aside muscle and fat deposits to view
the precious cargo within that distended belly, their
colors and patterns change.
The tendrils pulse with
yellow and red and orange and ochre light; their
colors match the flickering illumination of the candlelight
perfectly. And as these tendrils continue their
diagnosis and inventory of the brown woman’s
body, other tendrils slide beneath the bloody water
of the birthing pool, to hold the birth canal open.
He goes into detail about parts I guess we the audience are suppose to get squeamish about but since I watch way too much educational television, it just makes it look like he trying too hard too shock with detail overload.
After this story we are given a quote from I am going to assume an in world character name Alex Ross because I could not find the actual quote from a real person with that name.
“I tried to apply that kind of thinking to
all the characters… how they would breed, and
what would result.”
It does sorta sounds like something he would say.
We are given more information about the world, the genome is completely mapped and by the mid 2010s most of the fatal genetic diseases were eliminated in utero. Disease immunity was encoded into peoples very genome and tailor made viruses, based upon sexually transmitted diseases so that immunized people could pass it along to their sex partners. This was done since it was the cheapest and quickest way. Fucking title drop.
This leads to our first bit of crunch, technically, the new player species
Homo Sapiens Panacean, same as regular humans (which are now rare), but with disease resistance which makes them immune to all non-magical terrestrial sexually transmitted diseases and +4 on Fort saves for getting other diseases. Also if they fuck unprotected any human or humanoids with similar genetics that person get the trait as well and can pass along as well. Oh and also
Modern Panacean humans look identical to
their non-modified human cousins. However, the first
versions of the genemod had several minor flaws,
which were quickly corrected during later immunizations.
Some older Panaceans bear minor physical
mutations associated with the genemod; in most
cases, these deformities are limited to blue-green
striations, resembling tiger stripes, which cover the
mutant’s face and chest.
Only a handful of modern
Panaceans retain this unique visual trait.
During the 2010s and 2020s, “Panacean
Stripes” were an especially desirable trait- they
marked a potential lover as an absolutely safe
partner, and heralded a new post-AIDS era of
sexual freedom. Even those who didn’t manifest the
stripes naturally used make-up, tattooing and
cosmetic genemods to imitate the appearance of
those who did. Today, the fad for striped lovers is a
thing of the past, as society has grown to accept
(and take for granted) this omnipresent gene-mod.
Why even put this in the game, Chris? You are not getting paid by the word. It’s not good fluff just pointless.
Then we get a new starting Occupation,
Genetic Licensor, unmodified humans that sell their genome to genetic engineers as a control group. Generally found in the Lifer nations. So what do you get:
- Choose a permanent class skill among a small list with the only good one being Diplomacy.
If was already a class skill you get a +1 competence bonus to it.
+2 wealth bonus
That’s it. The only prerequisites are being unmodified human to get in the occupation, but you can get mods later.
Well we made it to page 10 of 320… shit. Don’t worry the next part will have more crunch to go through and the holes can be seen, logically and mechanically.[/b]