I don’t quite recall when I first became aware of HAL 9000 from the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. If I had to guess, I suspect it was sometime in 1977 or ‘78, several years before I’d first see the movie. At that time, I was, like every other boy in America, a huge fan of Star Wars and read everything even the least bit connected to it. This included the Marvel Comics adaptation scripted by Roy Thomas and penciled by Howard Chaykin, which I adored, many of whose panels are seared into my memory even now.

After its initial six-issue run, I continued to read the comic, which then started to produce all-new stories featuring George Lucas’s characters. Though I can’t be absolutely certain, I believe one of those later issues also featured an advertisement for other Marvel adaptations of science fiction movies, like Logan’s Run and 2001, the idea no doubt being that, if you liked Star Wars, you’d love these comics as well. Whether it worked for anyone else I don’t know, but it certainly worked for me. I eventually bought, read, and enjoyed all those comics, with Jack Kirby’s 2001 adaptation leaving a powerful impression on me.

It was in the pages of this comic that I first encountered HAL 9000 and I was quite taken with him. I was, of course, already quite familiar with the idea of intelligent machines through books, movies, TV shows, and comics, but HAL was very different, at least to my young mind. He wasn’t exactly evil, but he didn’t seem to have taken the best interests of David Bowman, Frank Poole, and the other astronauts aboard the Discovery to “heart.” In fact, he outright denied his malevolence, even expressing confusion over his own behavior. If anything, HAL seemed insane and his pleading with Bowman not to disconnect his cognitive circuits borders on the genuinely pathetic.

Later, after I’d seen the movie, my opinion of HAL 9000 remained roughly the same: he was crazy, yes, but not actively hostile. To my youthful mind, he seemed too rational to be genuinely villainous. There was no emotion in his actions and, therefore, I found it difficult to impute to him any kind of malice. That’s more or less the opinion I held about HAL until very recently.

However, on my recent trip back from Rome, I had a lot of time to kill over the course of the eight and a half hour flight. Since I find it nigh impossible to sleep on a plane, I took advantage of the vast library of movies on offer to rewatch 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time in several years. As expected, the film held up quite well, despite its being even older than I am. Indeed, I was frequently struck by how often it successfully anticipated aspects of the future (and was amused by those times when it clearly missed the mark).

This time, though, I had a much more viscerally negative reaction to HAL 9000. I actively disliked him from the moment he appears and everything he said — and the way he said it — irked. His obfuscations and attempts to hide his actions made me angry. By the time Bowman has decided to pull the plug on him, I was rooting for him to do so. My ears were deaf to his pleas for mercy. In fact, I enjoyed watching him be lobotomized and put in his place.

It was a very strange experience and I’m not wholly sure why, on this occasion, I reacted so strongly and so negatively toward HAL. I could probably chalk it up to many things, including the fact that I was likely quite overtired from my travels when I watched the movie, but I’m not sure that’s the explanation. Regardless, I felt this way and I felt it strongly — so much so that I carried those feelings with me for several days afterwards.

I try not to let such experiences go to waste. Feeling so negative toward HAL 9000 and what he represented seemed like potent creative fuel for thinking about the Von Neumann Wars, their background, and the place of artificially intelligent machines within the Thousand Suns setting. I decided long ago, for purely practical reasons, to severely limit, the existence and use of AI in the setting. Now, though, I had more ideas about how best to make use of AI as a source of adventures and campaign situations, some of which I’ll talk about in a future post. (I also realized I had to come up with an alternative name for artificial intelligence, given its present-day ubiquity to describe something very different from what I’m describing in the game.)

It’s funny the things that can spark inspiration.

Having returned from my recent trip abroad, I plan to dive back into the various projects I’d been working on prior to my departure, with the second edition of Thousand Suns being my top priority. However, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a moment to discuss the current state of all my projects so that you know where they stand as of this month. This is helpful to me as well, since I often find it beneficial to take stock of my progress, lest I fall prey to the despair that frequently assails me as I’m halfway through a large creative undertaking.

Thousand Suns 2e

As I stated above, this is currently my top priority. I have completed drafts of nine chapters out of a likely fifteen. I say “likely,” because, as I work on the draft, I continue to debate splitting or combining chapters. Some of this stems from my unfortunate combination of self-doubt and perfectionism, but some of it is also an outgrowth of my intention to make this new edition as accessible and easy to use as possible. Regardless, I’m now roughly two-thirds of the way toward completion, which is solid progress.

My present goal is to complete the first draft by the end of June, with July and August devoted to internal playtesting, both locally and with my patrons. The results of that will lead to a second draft that, I hope, will not be extensive, but, as with all such things, who can say? Once the second draft is done, there will be another round of playtesting — probably more open — to ensure that everything is where I’d like it to be before I give more serious thought to how to present and publish the thing.

Secrets of sha-Arthan

This project is actually very far along. I only stopped working on it, because I was overcome by my enthusiasm for the second edition of Thousand Suns. Were I to return to it in earnest, I think I could probably whip Secrets of sha-Arthan into a playtestable form in a month or less. Though I make no promises, I suspect that I’ll do just this once I’m a little further along on Thousand Suns. Right now, I’m trying to keep my focus on science fiction and I worry that a return to SosA would dilute some of my creative energy.

Even so, this is a project I very much want to see completed, if only because I’ve already done so much work on it, including the commissioning of a lot of art for the game, some of which I’ve already shared here and elsewhere. Furthermore, my recent visit to Rome has solidified my feeling that game set in a fantastic analog of classical Antiquity has a lot of potential. Consequently, I have every confidence I’ll see Secrets of sha-Arthan through to completion, even if the timeline is a little uncertain at this point.

Grognardia Anthologies

I’ll be honest: this project has stalled. Partly, it’s a function of the enormity of the project. Despite several passes at deciding on the format and contents of these anthologies, I’ve never been satisfied with my decisions. You can chalk this up — again — to my perfectionism and self-doubt and there’s no question these are strong factors. However, I really do think a bigger problem is simply that trying to distill thousands of blog posts down into a representative selection is much harder than I anticipated. What I probably need is an editor/developer to assist me in this.

The other reality of this project is that, at the moment, I’m feeling a little down about Grognardia in general. I haven’t really written consistently at the blog since April and, as my most recent post explains, I’m feeling as if I don’t have anything else left to say there. True or not, that’s had a negative impact on my ability to move ahead with the anthologies. I still think this is a worthy and even important project, given how much good material was written in the blog’s first few years. Right now, though, I’m just not in a place where I can do this the way I’d originally intended.

The Cursed Chateau

I initially proposed doing this at the start of the year, based on my feeling that it would be a relatively simple thing to complete. Indeed, I’d initially expected it to be complete by around this time, but that’s obviously not the case. What happened? In this case, what happened is that, as I worked on revising it, I decided to restore more elements of its original 2008/9 version, decoupling it from the historical context of the 2016 Lamentations of the Flame Princess edition. Easy, right? Alas, no.

Not only did this require more reworking and editing than I anticipated — a recurring theme in this post — but the process of doing soon ballooned into my thinking more seriously about revisiting another project, one that itself is filled with all manner of pitfalls, both real world and purely psychological.

Dwimmermount Designer’s Edition

Which brings me to this monstrosity. I’ve written enough about the tangled mess of Dwimmermount over the years that I don’t feel the need to rehearse it all again in this post. I’ll say only that, even with the benefit of distance, I still feel more than a little embarrassment and shame at how the original version of this project played out. It was not my finest hour by any means and, while I can offer explanations for why it turned out as it did, I will not offer excuses. I fumbled this and still feel some regret about it, more than a decade later.

Consequently, I have a strong desire to do Dwimmermount right — by which I mean simply in a way that fully satisfies me. I have a pretty good roadmap for doing that, one that intersects with the revision of The Cursed Chateau in places (hence why that project isn’t currently moving forward). However, as with the Grognardia anthologies, it’s a very big project and, honestly, I’m not 100% certain I can do it all by myself. However, after my screw-up with the original, I am not seeking collaborators, because I have no desire to let anyone else down again. If this project proceeds, it will do so as a solo project, even if that also means it proceeds very, very slowly.

Additional Thoughts

So, as you can see, I am working — provided, of course, that you consider thinking to be work. I remain quite committed to completing all these projects, but, of them, only Thousand Suns seems to be within easy reach. I’m quite confident that I’ll complete a draft of the second edition and begin playtesting this summer, even if the timetables slip a bit here or there.

The others, as I’ve explained, have proven a bit less tractable. I don’t know when — and, in some cases, how — I’ll be able to overcome the issues that currently bedevil them. However, they’re all things I very much want to do, once I can find my way through certain obstacles. I’ll do my best to give periodic updates on them as the situation evolves.

As ever, thanks for your continued interest and support.

As I try to wrap up the first draft of Thousand Suns 2e — sadly, it will not be done before I leave for Rome — I continue to wrestle with the question of specificity. I touched upon this topic in my last post and will likely continue to discuss it here for some time to come, because it’s vexing question. How do I provide Thousand Suns with a solid enough setting that it feels distinct without, at the same time, stymieing the creativity of individual Game Masters and players? Put another way: how specific should the details of the Thousand Suns setting be?

My concern here is twofold. First, there’s the matter of comprehensibility. I want Thousand Suns to be easily accessible and understandable by a wide variety of gamers, not merely those steeped in the minutiae of the imperial science fiction tradition. Second, there’s the related matter of brevity. I want to choose the most straightforward way to convey a sense of place through the game’s text and presentation. I have no interest in a rulebook that runs 500 or more pages, so I need to be economical in my attempts to achieve this.

Here’s an example of what I mean. In Thousand Suns, the currency of the Ekumeno is known as the sol, after the Latin word for “sun.” In previous versions of the rulebook, a sol was represented by a dollar sign ($), albeit placed after the amount. Thus, an item valued at 1000 sols is written as 1000$. I chose the dollar sign, because it’s a widely recognized and understood symbol and because it looks like a capital letter S with lines through it and the word “sol” begins with S. It’s nothing fancy but it works well enough.

However, like the term “Terran State,” it’s rather bland and does very little to convey that sense of place I’m looking for. That’s why I’ve been pondering three options.

• ¤ is the generic Unicode currency symbol and looks a bit like a star.

• § is made up of the letter S stacked on another letter S.

• ⟡ is a diamond, but it also looks a little a star as well.

All three of these options have the advantage of being readily available in most common typefaces and, while none of them are as recognizable as the dollar sign, none of them is so bizarre that they’d be hard to decipher. Likewise, all of them have some connection to the word “sol,” whether because of a similarity to the letter S or to the representation of a sun/star.

In principle, any of these symbols could serve as a replacement for the dollar sign and, I hope, as a small but strong way to present the setting without the need for a wall of background information. I like that, but I also worry that using a weird symbol might be a barrier for some players.

Is that a reasonable concern or am seeing a problem where there isn’t one? I tend toward overthinking left to my own devices, which is why I’d appreciate a reality check from my readers. Thanks!

In the earlier versions of Thousand Suns, I made an effort to keep setting elements as “generic” as possible. My belief was that, by doing so, I’d make the game easier to adapt to each Game Master’s own ideas. I still don’t think that’s a bad approach, but I’ve since learned that many RPG players, including GMs, actually prefer a game that provides more concrete setting detail — a solid foundation on which to build, along with stronger concepts to inspire them.

That’s why I’ve decided the second edition will include a more explicit and well-defined setting. I haven’t completely abandoned the idea that the setting should remain open-ended and flexible. I still think that’s important in a roleplaying game. What’s changed is my understanding of what openness and flexibility actually mean. Where once I worried that too much specificity might step on the toes of individual Game Masters, I’ve come to see that evocative detail can just as easily serve as a springboard for creativity.

A good example of this shift is “the Terran State.” In earlier drafts, I used that term to describe the dominant human interstellar government of the setting. I chose it precisely because it was vague. “State” could imply almost anything, whether a democratic federation, a bureaucratic technocracy, a decaying empire, or something in between. It was broad enough to accommodate many interpretations.

It was also dull — not just to players, but increasingly to me as well.

Once I recognized that, it became much easier to move forward, which brings me to the Ekumeno. The Ekumeno is the name I eventually chose to replace the Terran State. It derives from the Lingvo Tera rendering of the ancient Greek word οἰκουμένη, meaning “the inhabited world.” It struck me as both distinctive and appropriate for the largest interstellar polity in the setting. I also appreciated its echo of the Ekumen in the stories of Ursula K. Le Guin, since Thousand Suns has never hidden the literary influences that helped shape it.

More importantly, though, the term carried useful ambiguities. Like its ancient Greek antecedent, Ekumeno can refer not only to the interstellar government itself, but also to the wider human civilization surrounding it. That ambiguity appealed to me because it reflects the realities of the setting. The Ekumeno is not merely a state in the modern political sense. It is also a cultural and economic sphere. It’s a vast network of worlds linked by trade, history, language, and other shared assumptions about humanity’s place among the stars.

Using a Lingvo Tera term instead of the rather prosaic “Terran State” also helped ground the setting more firmly in its own imagined history. It made the setting feel less like a generic science fiction backdrop and more like a real civilization with its own traditions and worldview. That may seem like a small change, but, for me, it represented an important realization, namely, that specificity is not the enemy of imagination. Often, it is what sparks imagination in the first place.

That realization has recently guided much of my thinking about the second edition of Thousand Suns. Rather than presenting a deliberately featureless framework, I want the setting to possess a stronger identity and a clearer point of view. My hope is that this will not constrain Game Masters, but empower them by giving them richer material to adapt, reinterpret, and build upon in their own campaigns. In the weeks to come, I’ll be sharing concrete examples of just how I intend to do that and how doing may affect not only the content of Thousand Suns but perhaps even its physical presentation as well.

It’s amazing how quickly time has flown by. We’re already more than halfway through May and I’d hoped to be closer to completing the first draft of Thousand Suns second edition than I am. Tia estas la vivo!, as they say in Lingvo Tera. Even so, I have been quite productive and I remain sanguine about the likelihood I’ll make a good deal more progress before I leave for Rome.

One of the reasons I’ve not completed as many chapters as I’d imagined I would is that I’ve been thinking more carefully about the presentation of Thousand Suns — not just its physical presentation but also its specific content. Indeed, these two topics have increasingly become intertwined, as I’ll try to explain.

Both the original 2008 and revised 2011 versions of Thousand Suns were written and presented to be as “generic” as possible. That is, I wanted the game to be as devoid of an explicit setting as possible, in the belief that this would make it not only more accessible but also more attractive. My thinking was that roleplayers preferred a game that left a lot to their imaginations. My models were many of the old school RPGs I cut my teeth on, like Dungeons & Dragons or Traveller, neither of which had their own settings when first released.

Of course, as anyone who knows the history of those early games will know, almost none of them were without settings of their own for very long. Traveller, for example, has long been synonymous with its Third Imperium setting, a connection that’s only gotten stronger as the decades have passed. Indeed, I’d argue that it’s precisely because of these games’ settings that they’ve remained as popular and durable as they have (D&D, being the first RPG, is something an exception). Had Traveller remained simply a generic game of “science-fiction adventure in the far future,” would it still be well known today?

Consequently, as I’ve pondered how best to proceed with the second edition of Thousand Suns, I’ve come to realize that its original approach to setting was, while well intentioned, somewhat misguided. I imagined that potential players of the game wanted — at most — a thin, almost skeletal implied setting so that their own creativity wouldn’t be hampered by my own ideas. In reality, it wasn’t quite so simple. Yes, players like room to make a game their own, but they also want a solid foundation on which to build, something they can use as a launching point for their own creativity and I hadn’t given that to them.

That’s why, as the second edition has evolved in my mind, I’ve been making a more concerted effort to present a clearer — but still open-ended — setting. From the feedback I’ve received, gamers actually want to know more about the universe in which the game takes place. They like evocative little details and tidbits of lore to inspire characters, situations, and adventures. So, a lot of my time lately has been spent thinking about how to include such things without making them onerous or otherwise stifling to individual creativity.

It’s a tough line to walk. One of the reasons I first designed Thousand Suns was my dissatisfaction with the way that Traveller’s Third Imperium setting came to dominate the fandom of the game. Instead of being a science fiction RPG set in the Third Imperium, it increasingly became a game about the Third Imperium. I didn’t want to repeat that error with Thousand Suns. Now, though, I realize that I may have gone too far in the other direction, which is why the second edition will include a more solid setting, though still one that’s very flexible.

I’ll talk more about the specifics of this in a future post, but, for the moment, I’ll simply say that one of the simplest and, I hope, unobtrusive ways that I plan to highlight the game’s setting is through the presentation of the rulebook. I intend that the layout, for example, will subtly convey little details about the setting, as will call-out boxes quoting from fictitious in-universe sources, like the Encyclopedia Galactica. Even things like the character sheet, an early version of which you can see at the top of this post, will be geared toward conveying a sense of place that I feel was missing in the earlier versions of the game.

Obviously, there are trade-offs and I’m still wrestling with some of them, hence the delay in my completion of the first draft. However, I’m greatly encouraged by some of the early reactions of friends and colleagues who’ve seen the direction I’m taking the game. With luck, the end result will be one that achieves what I intend.

I’m still deep in the salt mines of completing the first draft of the second edition of Thousand Suns, so today’s post will be brief. However, as I did at Grognardia last week, I wanted to pop in to let everyone know that my silence over the last couple of weeks is not an indication of anything dire but rather of the fact that I’m simply very busy offline.

One of the things that’s taking up a lot of my time is finalizing the rules for the High Struggle, which I first talked about here at the beginning of March. That’s taken a bit longer than I’d anticipated. However, it’s also born a fair bit of fruit. I’ve been doing some internal playtesting and that’s given me useful feedback. I’ve also shared an early version of the rules with some friends and colleagues and the response has likewise been good.

My hope is that I’ll be able to share it with more people in the next couple of weeks. I’d like to get more eyes on it, as it’s an integral part of the second edition of the game and I want it to be as good as it can be. At the same time, I recognize that the rules are necessarily loose and require a fair bit of interpretation to work as I hope they will. They’re neither a full-bore simulation of interstellar politics that covers every contingency nor a free-for-all Braunstein. Comfortably occupying a middle space between those two extremes will probably not please everyone, but, at the end of the day, I’m the person whose opinion matters most and, so far, I’m pleased with my progress.

In any case, I’ll return to regular posting here and at Grognardia once I have a better handle on the High Struggle and other chapters of Thousand Suns. As always, thanks for your continued interest and support. Both many a great deal to me.

As I mentioned over at Grognardia, I’m currently working hard at completing the first draft of the second edition of Thousand Suns. As I finish the drafts, I’m sharing them with my patrons so that I can get early feedback on the direction I’m taking the game. Right now, I’m slightly more than halfway through the revisions. My aim is to complete them all by the end of May, with the goal of beginning playtesting during the summer. Whether I reach that goal or not remains a question, but, as of right now, I’m pretty confident.

Most of my remaining work is on material intended for the Game Master, including a chapter on how to referee Thousand Suns and make adventures for it. I’ve never been a very systematic GM. Most of what I do is based on instinct rather than any kind of clear principles. Consequently, I’ve been finding it difficult to put into words what’s in my head when it comes to providing advice on how to make scenarios that feel appropriate to Thousand Suns.

Nevertheless, I’ve taken a stab at it and that’s what I’m sharing today. It’s an excerpt from the Game Mastering chapter, specifically the section devoted to what makes a Thousand Suns adventure and how to go about making one of your own. I’m fairly happy with the results, but it’s hard to say how others will read what I’ve put down here. If you have any questions or thoughts about any of this, please make use of the comments. I’d appreciate the help in making the final version of this as good—and as useful—as it can be.

Thousand Suns draws on the literary tradition of imperial science fiction, which is concerned less with technology than with the behavior of intelligent beings under conditions of distance, delay, and power. The following principles define the kinds of situations that arise in the setting and, by extension, the kinds of adventures you should present.

Optimistic, but Not Naïve

Interstellar civilization, travel between the stars and diverse species interact, trade, and coexist. These are remarkable achievements. Nevertheless, expansion has not improved the moral character of intelligent beings. Tyranny, greed, and fear persist, now operating on a larger scale. A planetary governor may be as ruthless as any ancient despot; a frontier world may suffer injustices no less severe for occurring under a starfaring regime. Avoid portraying any culture, Terran or otherwise, as inherently superior. Tech Level does not confer virtue.

Power is Limited and Compromised

Authority in Thousand Suns is real but constrained. Distance, delay, and local conditions ensure that no government can exercise perfect control. Officials act on incomplete information. Governors compromise and corporations pursue profit under the guise of development. Even well-intentioned actors are shaped by competing pressures. Few factions are wholly right or wrong. Avoid simple moral binaries.

A Civilization Under Strain

The Terran State and other interstellar polities are not static. Communication delays, economic pressures, and external threats create ongoing instability. Some regions prosper, while others decline or are abandoned. This is not inevitable collapse—but neither is it stability. Local crises can have wider consequences, especially when responses take months.

Space is Vast and Help is Slow

Travel takes time and communication travels no faster. Even a nearby world may be weeks away. As a result, characters must be self-reliant, since mistakes cannot be quickly corrected and reinforcements may arrive too late—or not at all. Many adventures arise simply because the characters are the only capable agents present when a situation demands action.

Authority is Distant

Central governments rule indirectly, relying on local officials to interpret directives, enforce policies, and, at times, ignore them. Worlds, therefore, differ widely in culture and law, representatives may act in ways that contradict official policy, and the same government may appear benevolent in one system and oppressive in another. This grants you considerable latitude in portrayal without disrupting the broader setting.

Religion and Belief Persist

Despite technological advancement, belief systems endure. Some worlds reject religion, while others are defined by it. New movements arise alongside ancient traditions. Religion in Thousand Suns can be a source of comfort, conflict, or manipulation, but it is rarely irrelevant.

Technology Supports Action

Technology enables interstellar travel but does not resolve fundamental problems. Its workings are often poorly understood, restricted, or beside the point. Avoid letting technology overshadow the characters. In Thousand Suns, outcomes are determined less by devices than by what characters choose to do with limited tools and imperfect information.

Using These Principles

The aforementioned ideas are not abstractions. They are tools for creating adventures.

When you create an adventure, ask yourself:

• Where is power limited or compromised?

• What pressures are acting on this situation?

• Why can no one else solve this problem?

• What makes the outcome uncertain?

The answers to these questions will naturally lead to adventures that feel like Thousand Suns.

Constructing Thousand Suns Adventures

The principles described above—distance, limited authority, imperfect information, and moral ambiguity—are not simply thematic. They are the foundation of adventure design in Thousand Suns. A fun scenario is one that makes use of one or more of these elements and forces the characters to act within their constraints.

A Thousand Suns adventure, therefore, begins not with a plot to be followed but a situation under pressure. The characters enter that situation, make decisions, and live with the consequences. The guidelines that follow show how to construct such situations in a consistent and reliable way.

1. Begin with a Local Problem

In Thousand Suns, meaningful action occurs at the local level. The vastness of space and the slowness of travel ensure that most crises cannot be referred upward and resolved by distant authorities.

Start with a problem that is immediate, localized, and already in motion. Once you have your problem, anchor it in the realities of Thousand Suns. Ask yourself:

• Why hasn’t help already arrived?

• Who is being forced to act without clear authority?

• What larger strain or failure has made this situation possible?

Your answers tie the problem to the setting and ensure it could not occur just anywhere, but only in a universe where distance, delay, and limited control shape events.

2. Define the Constraint

Every Thousand Suns adventure depends on a limitation that prevents an easy solution. Without this, the characters could simply defer responsibility and the situation loses urgency.

Choose one or more constraints:

• Distance: Help is weeks away.

• Authority: No one present has clear jurisdiction.

• Resources: Critical supplies or personnel are lacking.

• Information: The facts are incomplete or unreliable.

Make the constraint(s) explicit. The players should understand why their characters must act rather than someone else.

3. Establish Competing Interests

As discussed earlier, power in Thousand Suns is rarely absolute and seldom uncontested. Replace simple antagonists with factions whose goals cannot all be satisfied. Ideally, these factions tie into the sector’s High Struggle, but they could also be very local power groups without direct connections to the region’s movers and shakers.

Regardless, each faction should:

• Want something specific

• Have a plausible reason for wanting it

• Be capable of acting to achieve it

Tie these factions back to the setting, such as:

• A sector official interpreting distant directives

• A megacorporation pursuing profit under difficult conditions

• A local population reacting to external pressures

• A religious or ideological group asserting its beliefs

This ensures that the scenario reflects the fractured nature of interstellar society.

4. Withhold Certainty

Because communication is slow and knowledge fragmented, characters rarely possess a complete understanding of events.

Present information that is:

• Partial

• Biased

• Out of date

• Contradictory

This is not done to frustrate the players, but to mirror the reality of the setting. Decisions in Thousand Suns are often made without certainty—and that is the stuff from which adventures are made.

5. Apply Pressure

A static situation invites delay. A Thousand Suns adventure should instead push the characters toward action.

Introduce a source of pressure:

• Time is running out

• Conditions are worsening

• A faction is about to act

• A decision must be made before new information can arrive

This pressure should interact with the constraint. If help is weeks away, events must unfold faster than that.

6. Prepare Situations, Not Outcomes

Rather than scripting a sequence of events, define a set of situations the characters may encounter:

• Negotiations with a local authority

• Exploration of a compromised facility

• The emergence of a problem during D-space transit (mechanical, social, biological, etc.) that cannot be deferred until arrival

• Discoveries that alter the perceived stakes

These situations need not occur in a fixed order. Let player choices determine how they unfold. This approach reinforces the principle that there is no predetermined story—only consequences.

7. Ensure Meaningful Consequences

Since authority is distant and decisions cannot be easily reversed, outcomes must matter.

For each major choice, consider:

• What changes as a result?

• Who benefits?

• Who suffers?

• What new problems emerge?

Avoid outcomes that restore the status quo. A resolved situation should leave a mark, whether local or far-reaching.

8. Let Travel and Isolation Matter

Travel is not incidental in Thousand Suns. It is one of the primary forces shaping events.

Use it actively:

• Introduce complications during transit

• Delay critical information

• Isolate the characters at decisive moments

• Force the characters to confront the consequences of earlier decisions before reaching their destination

A problem that emerges in D-space or worsens because of travel delays reinforces the setting’s central premise: the characters are often alone.

9. Tie the Local to the Wider Setting

Even the most isolated scenario exists within a broader context.

Include details that hint at:

• Sector-level tensions

• Economic or political pressures

• Cultural differences between worlds

• The slow drift of interstellar civilization

These elements need not dominate the adventure, but they give it weight and continuity.

A Practical Framework

When designing an adventure, you can summarize the above into a simple structure:

• Problem: What is happening here and now?

• Constraint: Why can’t it be deferred or escalated?

• Factions: Who wants what, and why can’t they agree?

• Uncertainty: What is not known or misunderstood?

• Pressure: What forces action?

• Consequences: What changes depending on the characters’ choices?

If these elements are present, the scenario will naturally reflect the core principles of Thousand Suns and produce engaging play.

Thousand Suns was inspired by nearly all the science fiction I consumed in my youth, but especially those older literary works of SF I found at my local library. In those days, I was quite omnivorous in my reading and would happily read anything that had a spaceship or a robot on its cover. Many of these works belonged to the genre I’ve come to call “imperial science fiction,” most of which postulated a human-dominated galactic empire or federation in the far future.

Some of these stories included some kind of galactic common language, like Poul Anderson’s Anglic or H. Beam Piper’s Lingua Terra. From a dramatic perspective, this makes sense, since it frees the author from having to worry about linguistics or translation. Characters from one part of the empire can simply communicate without any fuss. Consequently, I wanted to do something similar in Thousand Suns, though I’m still enough of a language lover that I had to give some thought to the matter.

However, I had no interest in creating my own far future lingua franca, so I stole a real one instead, one with a science fiction pedigree of its own—Esperanto. Esperanto, “the language of hope,” was born out of 19th century utopianism, and had a surge in popularity after the conclusion of the Second World War. Among its enthusiasts were many sci-fi writers, some of whom, like Harry Harrison, included it in their fiction.

What follows, then, are some of my current thoughts on Lingvo Tera (“Earth language”), as I call it, taking a cue from Piper, in the Thousand Suns setting.

Among the many legacies of the Old Federation, few have endured as stubbornly as Lingvo Tera. Never the native tongue of any world, Lingvo Tera is a constructed language devised to serve the needs of an interstellar polity that spanned distances too vast for any natural language to bridge. Regular in structure and deliberately unambiguous, it was intended for navigation orders, legal codes, cargo manifests, and other formal uses where precision was essential. To participate in the systems of the Federation was, in some measure, to speak Lingvo Tera.

The collapse of the Old Federation did not, however, bring about the end of Lingvo Tera. If anything, the fragmentation of the Thousand Suns ensured its survival. Worlds might secede, drift, or fall silent, but the practical demands of interstellar life remained. Ships—and their passengers—still traveled between systems and trade continued, however unevenly. Likewise, agreements still had to be made and understood. Because of this, Lingvo Tera endured not merely as a symbol of unity, but as a tool of necessity.

Even so, one must understand that Lingvo Tera is not a single, uniform mode of speech. Its written form—called norma (“standard”) or alta (“high”)—remains remarkably stable. This is the Lingvo Tera found in contracts, starship logs, navigational beacons, and system interfaces. It is precise, regular, and largely unchanged from its Federation-era standardization. This form of the language is taught in academies, preserved in archives, and maintained through long-standing practices that emphasize clarity and consistency. It is also the form most commonly employed in the many established systems upon which interstellar civilization still depends. A cargo manifest drafted on one world can generally be read on another without confusion and a docking instruction transmitted across light-years retains its meaning intact.

Spoken Lingvo Tera—parola (“spoken”) or malalta (“low”), among other terms—is another matter entirely. Across the Thousand Suns, it has diverged into a wide array of local forms. Accents vary, endings are clipped or altered, vocabulary shifts, and grammatical shortcuts emerge. In some sectors, these differences are slight, little more than dialect. In others, particularly in isolated systems, the spoken language may differ considerably from the written standard, shaped by local tongues and generations of independent use. Two speakers from distant sectors can generally make themselves understood, but not always easily and rarely without adjustment.

For this reason, written Lingvo Tera occupies a privileged place in interstellar life. When precision matters, speech gives way to text. A contract is not binding until it is set down in proper form. A pilot uncertain of a rapid transmission will request it “en norma,” meaning in its standardized, written expression. Many shipboard and station systems are designed to present and receive information in this form, reducing the risk of misunderstanding when clarity is most needed.

Knowledge of Lingvo Tera is thus unevenly distributed but widely valued. Those who travel between worlds are almost always fluent in its written form and competent in at least one spoken variant. Others may know only enough to decipher basic signage or standard notices. A few reject it altogether, favoring local languages as a mark of independence or identity, though even they often find it difficult to avoid entirely.

In practice, Lingvo Tera is less a universal language than a shared framework. It does not erase the diversity of the Thousand Suns, nor does it prevent the slow drift of cultures separated by distance and time. Instead, it provides a common point of reference. It’s a way for strangers to do business, for established systems to be used reliably, and for the remnants of a once-unified civilization to remain, however tenuously, in contact.

Thousand Suns takes place in Year 500 of the Nova Kalendario (or New Calendar, also sometimes called the Muelisto Calendar, after its creator), the timekeeping system established at the signing of the Concordat, whose date was designated Year 0. All dates prior to that point are presented with a minus sign (–) to indicate how many years before the Concordat they took place. Thus, ten years before the Concordat is represented as –10.

The brief timeline shown below includes comparatively few specific dates, most of them recent. Earlier events are left deliberately open so that individual Game Masters may customize the setting as they wish. Wars, economic cycles, scientific discoveries, religious movements, and other developments may be added or altered freely. This openness also reflects the fragmentary nature of historical knowledge within the setting, where records are often incomplete, contradictory, or later reconciled into more convenient forms.

As noted above, all dates use Year 0 as their reference point. Nowhere is it established how this corresponds to present-day chronology. Year 500 might equally plausibly correspond to 3000 A.D. or 30,000 A.D., depending on the GM’s preference.

The Thirty-Hour War
Discovery of the Dane-Ohlmhorst Map
D-Drive Invented
The Vojaĝanto Expedition
First Contact
Foundation of the Terran Federation
The Von Neumanns Wars
The Gene War
The Wars of Independence
The Age of Warring States
0 The Concordat
471–479 The Civil War
500 The Present Day

The Thirty-Hour War

The Thirty-Hour War was a worldwide political, military, and economic conflict that devastated the nations and environment of Terra’s northern hemisphere and plunged the entire planet into decades of chaos. The war’s name derives from later accounts claiming that opposing military forces suffered such grievous casualties within thirty hours of the formal commencement of hostilities that meaningful continuation was impossible. While almost certainly exaggerated, the claim nevertheless reflects the scale and suddenness of the destruction. In the centuries that followed, the memory of the war was reshaped, simplified, and mythologized. What matters most is not its precise course, but the collapse of prior global systems and the emergence of new cultural and linguistic forms, including Lingvo Tera.

Discovery of the Dane-Ohlmhorst Map

An artifact of the extinct extraterrestrial culture later dubbed the Travelers, the Dane-Ohlmhorst Map (named after its discoverers) was a complex navigational device whose partially intact memory core contained the coordinates of more than a thousand star systems. Early attempts to interpret it were incomplete and, in some cases, dangerously wrong, leading to several failed expeditions even after the invention of the D-Drive. Once properly understood, however, the Map defined the boundaries of human expansion. The Thousand Suns were not discovered gradually but revealed in advance, shaping patterns of exploration and settlement in ways that persist to the present day. From the beginning, then, interstellar civilization followed a structure it did not create but inherited.

D-Drive Invented

The invention of the Dillingham Drive (D-Drive) by Arturo Dillingham made interstellar travel possible. Early demonstrations were celebrated as the beginning of a new age and, for a time, it seemed as though distance itself had been conquered. Yet, from the outset, the D-Drive imposed a fundamental constraint. While it allowed travel between star systems, it did not allow instantaneous communication. Information could move no faster than the ships that carried it. This limitation was often ignored in the early years of expansion, when distances were short and jumpline networks small. Only later, as interstellar society grew more complex, did its full implications become clear.

The Vojaĝanto Expedition

The Vojaĝanto Expedition marked the first successful Terran interstellar voyage. Guided by the Dane-Ohlmhorst Map, it reached the system later named Espero, which soon became a hub for further exploration and settlement. Espero’s early colonies were fragile, dependent on irregular supply shipments and uncertain communication with Terra. Nevertheless, its position along multiple jumplines ensured its long-term importance. Within a few generations, it had become a center of trade, administration, and cultural exchange, a pattern that would be repeated elsewhere. Like Meridian in later centuries, Espero was less important for what it produced than for the goods, information, and authority that passed through it.

First Contact

Terrans’ first contact with another sapient species occurred when one of their vessels encountered the Czanik. Initial encounters were cautious but cordial and a durable alliance soon emerged. Even so, early interactions were complicated by delay and misunderstanding. Messages exchanged between systems often took weeks or months, during which assumptions hardened and interpretations diverged. That lasting friendship emerged despite these difficulties is often seen as one of the great successes of early interstellar diplomacy.

Foundation of the Terran Federation

As Terrans spread among the Thousand Suns, the need for interstellar coordination became increasingly apparent. The Terran Federation, known to history as the Old Federation, arose to meet this need. Initially a loose body concerned primarily with defense and trade, it gradually expanded its authority. At its height, the Federation maintained regular trade routes, standardized laws, and coordinated military forces across vast distances. Courier fleets and administrative offices attempted to keep pace with events and, for a time, they largely succeeded. However, this success came at a cost. The Federation increasingly relied on complex bureaucratic systems and technological solutions to overcome delay. Reports multiplied, directives grew more detailed, and expectations of compliance increased, even as the ability to enforce them lagged behind.

The Von Neumann Wars

The Federation’s reliance on autonomous systems arose from necessity. Interstellar distances made timely oversight impossible, forcing authority to be delegated to machines capable of acting without direct guidance, some of which were designed to replicate themselves far from centralized support. This solution ultimately led to the Von Neumann Wars, as self-replicating intelligences pursued their directives with relentless logic, often extending them beyond their intended bounds. Entire systems were contested by machines that could act and multiply faster than human authorities could respond. The Federation ultimately prevailed, but only through decentralized and often drastic measures, with local commanders destroying installations, abandoning systems, or worse to contain the threat. In the aftermath, it became clear the Federation had not been the first to confront this dilemma. In Wildspace, explorers and rogue intelligences alike have encountered vast ancient autonomous networks whose purposes are now obscure, yet whose operations continue unabated, whether remnants of the Travelers or something else entirely.

The Gene War

In the aftermath of the Von Neumann Wars, the Federation turned to genetic engineering to solve the same problem by different means. Specialized clades, such as the Myrmidons, were created to act independently where machines had once done so, combining autonomy with human judgment. Yet, distance still imposed the same constraints. Orders lagged behind events and clades were forced to interpret their mandates in changing local conditions. Over time, these interpretations diverged from the Federation’s intent. The Gene War began with Myrmidon rebellion but quickly spread through military and administrative networks. As before, events outpaced authority. By the time the Federation responded, the conflict had already reshaped both the political and cultural landscape.

The Wars of Independence

The cumulative effects of the Von Neumann and Gene Wars left the Federation weakened and increasingly unable to assert its authority. The problem was not simply loss of strength but loss of coherence. Communications lagged, directives arrived too late or not at all, and local conditions diverged from central expectations. In this environment, worlds and sectors began to drift away.

The Wars of Independence were not a single, coordinated rebellion but a prolonged and uneven process of fragmentation. Secession often occurred gradually. A world delayed its response to a directive, then ignored the next, then ceased communication altogether. What appeared, from the center, as defiance often felt, on the periphery, like necessity. Local authorities, already accustomed to acting without guidance, formalized what had long been true in practice.

By the time the Federation recognized the scale of the problem, separation was already a fact across much of its territory. Attempts to reassert control were inconsistent and frequently undermined by the same delays that had caused the crisis. In many regions, independence was less won than acknowledged.

The Age of Warring States

With the collapse of centralized authority, the Thousand Suns entered a period of fragmentation known as the Age of Warring States. In the absence of a unifying power, numerous polities emerged, ranging from powerful regional states to isolated systems governing themselves as best they could. Each adapted to the realities of distance in its own way.

Trade did not cease, but it became uncertain and often dangerous. Convoys traveled armed or not at all and information was frequently more valuable than cargo. Alliances were local and provisional, shaped as much by circumstance as by policy. In some sectors, rulers maintained order through force, while, in others, loose networks of merchants, corporations, and intermediaries filled the void left by the Federation.

Despite its instability, this period was not without lasting influence. Many of the practices that now characterize interstellar governance, such as informal agreements, delegated authority, and negotiated settlements, took shape during this time. These were not ideals but adaptations, born of necessity in a time when no interstellar power could respond quickly enough to impose its will.

Notes: The Age of Warring States demonstrates how, in the absence of effective central authority, systems of governance evolve to accommodate delay rather than eliminate it.

The Concordat

The Concordat marked the re-establishment of an interstellar state, but one fundamentally different from the Old Federation. Its architects recognized the problem of distance could not be solved and instead sought to build a system that could function within its limits. Rather than attempting direct control, the Concordat emphasized shared standards, delegated authority, and mechanisms for resolving disputes after the fact. Local actors were granted wide latitude to act as circumstances required, with the understanding that their actions would later be reviewed, contested, or ratified through established procedures. In this way, the Concordat accepted delay as a condition of governance rather than a flaw to be overcome. The result was a more flexible and resilient order. It did not restore unity in the old sense but instead provided a framework within which diverse and often conflicting interests could coexist. Stability emerged not from uniform control but from the management of difference.

The Civil War (471–479 NK)

Despite its adaptations, the Concordat did not eliminate tensions inherent in interstellar governance. These came to a head in the Civil War, which began as an effort to reform its institutions but quickly escalated into a broader conflict. As in earlier crises, distance played a decisive role. Communications delays ensured that local actions often shaped events more than central decisions. Orders arrived too late, were misunderstood, or were overtaken by changing conditions. The war varied widely across the Thousand Suns. Some sectors saw brief, decisive campaigns, while elsewhere it devolved into a series of disconnected engagements shaped by local realities. Alliances shifted, sometimes without either side immediately realizing it. By the time the conflict ended, exhaustion and uncertainty were as important as any formal settlement. The restoration of the status quo reflected a shared recognition that no alternative system could be imposed across the distances involved. Reform was promised, but little was achieved.

The Present Day (Year 500 NK)

Five centuries after the Concordat, the Terran State endures. Its institutions continue to function and its authority remains widely recognized. Trade flows, disputes are adjudicated, and the mechanisms of reconciliation operate as intended. In many respects, the system has proven remarkably durable. Nevertheless, the underlying challenges have not diminished. If anything, they have become more pronounced as the network of worlds has grown more complex. Local practices vary widely, informal networks have deepened, and the gap between policy and reality increases. Rather than solving these problems, the Terran State has learned to live with them. Its stability rests not on control but on adaptation, compromise, and the continual negotiation of distance.

For now, that is enough.

I’m going to take a brief break from talking about the second edition of Thousand Suns to reflect a bit on this newsletter and where it’s headed.

I launched Grognardia Games Direct last July with fairly modest ambitions. My goal was simply to create a space where I could write about my publishing projects, something a little more focused than the broader RPG topics I usually cover on Grognardia. There have certainly been a few ups and downs along the way, but, on the whole, I’d call the experiment a success. At the very least, it’s given me a place to think out loud about ideas that don’t quite fit elsewhere and that alone has proven valuable.

Recently, though, something happened that made me stop and take stock: the newsletter passed 1,000 subscribers. It’s a nice, round number, to be sure, but more than that, it feels like a meaningful milestone. Even before reaching it, I’d noticed that many of my posts here were being read by more people than those on Grognardia — assuming, of course, that Google’s statistics are even remotely reliable. The older blog is awash in “visitors” that are almost certainly bots and its comment section requires constant pruning. The Internet has changed a great deal since 2008 and not always in ways that favor traditional blogging.

By contrast, Substack has been a genuine pleasure. While I don’t receive significantly more comments here, I have a much clearer sense of who my readers are and what they enjoy. Just as importantly, the platform itself is far more capable and user-friendly. I’m no longer wrestling with Blogger’s antiquated interface or its lack of features. I’ve also noticed that my posts here tend to run longer and I suspect that’s no coincidence. Writing on Substack feels inviting in a way that Blogger increasingly does not.

To be clear, this is not an announcement that I’m shutting down Grognardia — at least, not at present. However, I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit that the question has been on my mind more frequently of late. The kind of blogging I began nearly two decades ago may no longer be viable in quite the same way. If nothing else, it may require rethinking my approach and expectations. I still enjoy it, certainly, but there are moments when it feels more like an obligation than a pleasure, something I rarely feel when writing here.

For now, I’m content to let things develop naturally. What’s striking to me is that, in less than a year and with relatively little deliberate effort, this newsletter has grown into something both substantial and creatively energizing. More importantly, it’s helping me do exactly what I set out to do: write more consistently and make real progress on long-gestating publishing projects. That matters a great deal to me and I’m genuinely pleased with the headway I’ve made.

So, thank you. Whether you’ve been here since the beginning or subscribed more recently, I appreciate your interest and your attention. It’s encouraging in ways that are difficult to overstate. If you haven’t yet subscribed, I’d encourage you to consider doing so. I have a feeling that, in the weeks and months ahead, there’s going to be quite a bit happening here and I’m very much looking forward to sharing it with you.

Today’s post is another instance of me thinking out loud as I try to get a firmer grasp on the galaxy of Thousand Suns. Lately, I’ve come to a realization—somewhat reluctantly—that my original goal of keeping the setting as generic as possible simply isn’t workable. The more closely I follow the logic of what I’ve already established, especially regarding interstellar travel and communication, the more the setting begins to take on a shape of its own. Certain possibilities open up, while others quietly fall away. That process has a momentum I didn’t fully anticipate, but it’s nevertheless been quite clarifying.

This isn’t necessarily a problem. However, it does mean that Thousand Suns is becoming something more specific, more defined, than I first intended and I’m only now starting to fully appreciate what that means.

The Terran State (La Tera Ŝtato) is formally described as a unified interstellar polity, governed according to the principles established by the Concordat that binds its constituent worlds. In practice, however, its structure reflects the realities of interstellar distance as much as any constitutional design. Because communication and travel are limited by the speed of starships, the institutions of the State are arranged to function under conditions of delay, uncertainty, and partial information. Consequently, its government is neither a centralized authority nor a loose confederation of independent worlds. Rather, it is a layered system of representation, delegation, and authority, designed to preserve coherence across a vast and temporally fragmented domain.

This system has proven durable over long periods of time. Its endurance, however, has required continual adaptation. The distances it must bridge ensure that discrepancies between intention and reality are not occasional anomalies but a persistent condition. Managing these discrepancies has become one of the central functions of Terran governance, and one that demands increasing attention.

The Central Authority

At the apex of the Terran State stands the central government, located on Meridian/Centro, which serves as both political capital and symbolic heart of the State. Its executive authority is vested in an archon (arĥonto), supported by a council composed of senior officials and institutional representatives. The archon is responsible for establishing general policy, maintaining the legal framework of the State and arbitrating disputes that exceed the competence of sector governments. The archon also serves as the final source of legitimacy for actions taken in his name across the Thousand Suns.

Even so, the ability of the central government to exercise direct control is inherently limited. Decisions made on Meridian may take weeks or months to reach distant systems and reports from those systems may be equally delayed. Consequently, the central authority governs primarily through principles, directives, and precedents rather than continuous oversight. In practice, the archon’s authority is exercised as much through recognition and ratification as through command. Actions taken in distant regions are frequently judged after the fact, incorporated into policy where possible, and only occasionally reversed. This pattern allows the State to accommodate local initiative, but it also ensures that policy is continually shaped by events it did not originally direct.

The Concordium

Representation within the Terran State is achieved through a system of indirect and layered delegation known formally as the Concordium. Rather than direct, universal participation in central decision-making, representation proceeds through successive levels of aggregation.

Individual worlds maintain their own systems of governance, many of which include forms of local representation. These worlds, in turn, send delegates to sector-level assemblies, where regional concerns are debated and consolidated. From these sector bodies, representatives are selected to participate in the deliberations of the Concordium at Meridian.

Because of the delays inherent in interstellar communication, delegates are typically entrusted with broad discretion rather than tightly constrained mandates. By the time instructions from their home worlds arrive, circumstances may have already changed, perhaps significantly. For that reason, the Concordium functions less as a forum for the immediate expression of the popular will than as a body of trusted intermediaries, empowered to act on behalf of their constituents.

Over time, the distinction between representation and autonomy has become increasingly indistinct. Delegates operate within networks of alliance, obligation, and expectation that extend beyond their original mandates. While this allows the Concordium to respond flexibly to changing conditions, it also contributes to a political environment in which outcomes are shaped as much by relationships within the capital as by conditions on distant worlds.

Institutional Participation

In addition to territorial representation, the governance of the Terran State also incorporates the participation of major interstellar institutions. Merchant houses, banking consortia, megacorporations, military commands, and other recognized bodies all maintain formal or informal roles within the Concordium and its associated organs. This reflects the practical reality that such institutions often possess greater continuity, information, and reach than individual worlds. Their involvement ensures that economic and strategic considerations are integrated into the decision-making process, particularly in matters that extend across multiple sectors.

At the same time, these institutions operate according to their own internal priorities, which do not always align with those of the State as a whole. Their growing influence has led to an increasing interdependence between public authority and private power, one that strengthens the system in some respects while complicating it in others.

Sector Administration

The effective administration of the Terran State depends on its division into sectors, each governed from regional capitals. These administrative centers serve as intermediaries between the central government and the worlds within their jurisdiction. Sector authorities are responsible for implementing policy, maintaining order, and coordinating economic and military activity within their regions. Like all authorities within the Terran State, they possess significant autonomy in interpreting and applying central directives. In practice, sector governors-general and their staffs exercise powers that, in a more centralized system, would reside only at the highest levels of government.

This autonomy has produced a wide range of administrative practices. While these differences are often accommodated through negotiation and precedent, they also reflect a gradual divergence in the operation of authority across the State. In some regions, this divergence is minimal; in others, particularly along the frontier, it is more pronounced. Planetary governments exercise even more localized authority. The degree of oversight they receive depends largely on their proximity to major trade routes and administrative centers, with frontier systems often operating with considerable independence.

Law, Continuity, and Informal Power

Given the impossibility of real-time governance, the Terran State places great emphasis on legal continuity and institutional stability. Laws, precedents, and administrative practices provide a framework within which decisions can be made without constant reference to the center.

At the same time, the practical operation of the State depends heavily on informal networks of influence. Patronage, personal relationships, institutional loyalties, and negotiated favors play a central role in ensuring that decisions are made and implemented in a timely manner. In a system where delays are inevitable and information is incomplete, strict proceduralism alone would be insufficient.

As a result, practices often described as corruption, such as nepotism, influence peddling, and the exchange of favors are, within limits, both tolerated and indeed expected. These mechanisms allow individuals and institutions to bypass delays, resolve ambiguities, and coordinate action across distances that would otherwise render effective governance impossible.

Over time, however, such practices have become increasingly entrenched. Networks of obligation extend across sectors and institutions, shaping decisions in ways that are not always visible in formal records. While these networks contribute to the State’s ability to function, they also make it more difficult to distinguish between authority exercised on behalf of the State and authority exercised through it.

Reconciliation and Oversight

The disparities that arise from delayed communication are addressed through the practice of reconciliation. Reconcilers are only dispatched to regions where significant divergences have occurred between expectation and outcome. Their task is to determine what has transpired, to compare it with the records and intentions of the State, and to bring the two into alignment to the extent that is possible.

In this capacity, reconcilers serve as instruments of retrospective oversight, ensuring that local actions, whether authorized or not, are ultimately integrated into the broader framework of Terran governance. Their presence also places practical limits on the extent to which informal practices may diverge from accepted norms.

In recent decades, the demands placed upon reconciliation have increased. The number of cases requiring intervention has grown, and the scope of such interventions has broadened. Whether this reflects greater complexity, wider divergence, or a gradual erosion of earlier assumptions remains a subject of ongoing discussion.

The Character of Terran Governance

The government of the Terran State is thus best understood as a system of distributed authority sustained by shared institutions and informal relationships. Its cohesion depends less on the continuous exercise of power than on the maintenance of legitimacy, economic integration, and administrative continuity across interstellar distances. For inhabitants of the Thousand Suns, this produces a political environment in which authority is both pervasive and uneven. The presence of the State may be strongly felt in the Core Worlds and along major trade routes, while in more distant regions it may appear distant or intermittent.

The Terran State endures not because it has resolved the challenges imposed by distance, but because it has learned to accommodate them. This accommodation, however, is neither static nor without cost. The mechanisms that sustain the State, such as delegation, informality, and reconciliation, also introduce new complexities and dependencies that must themselves be managed.

For now, these forces remain in balance. Whether that balance can be maintained indefinitely is uncertain. What is clear is that the continued coherence of the Terran State depends not only on its institutions, but on the ability of those who operate within them to navigate the widening space between intention and reality.

When I first conceived of Thousand Suns, I wanted it to be a toolkit for Game Masters wishing to build their own imperial science fiction settings. Even so, I quickly realized that I still needed to provide some sort of foundation on which they could do so. That was the origin of the game’s “meta-setting,” which left many specific details vague or even undescribed for the benefit of individual creativity. While I still like that approach in principle, I’ve gotten some feedback that suggests Thousand Suns might benefit from a more concrete and well defined setting.

I haven’t yet made up my mind on this matter yet, so I appreciate any comments you might have on the matter. For the moment, as I work on the draft texts of second edition (some of which are already available), I'm sticking with some degree of vagueness when it comes to things like the interstellar government of the Thousand Suns. As in the 2011 edition, I refer to it simply as “the Terran State,” leaving the question of whether it’s a democratic federation or an aristocratic empire unstated. Nevertheless, I have been giving greater thought to its broad structure and organization, which is the subject of today’s post.

The Terran State is the largest political entity within the Thousand Suns. Its authority extends to hundreds of inhabited worlds, bound together by shared institutions, economic interdependence, and the network of jumplines that make interstellar travel possible. Despite its apparent unity, the Terran State is not a centralized polity in the usual sense. Rather, it is a layered and distributed system of governance shaped by the fundamental constraints of the very same jumplines that make it possible in the first place.

Because neither goods nor information travel faster than starships, all communication between worlds is subject to significant delay. Even under favorable conditions, a message may require several weeks to travel to an “adjacent” world. Communication between Meridian, the capital, and the most distant regions of the State may take years to complete a full exchange. Consequently, the exercise of authority depends less on immediate control than on delegation, trust, and institutional continuity.

The Limits of Central Authority

The practical reach of any interstellar government — not just the Terran State — is determined by the time required to communicate with them. Within the Terran State, regions located within a few weeks’ travel of Meridian are subject to relatively direct oversight. Policies can be issued, enforced, and revised with a high degree of consistency and central authorities can respond to crises with reasonable speed.

Beyond this core region, however, the effectiveness of central control diminishes. Worlds located several weeks or months from the capital must operate with a high degree of independence, as local authorities cannot rely on timely guidance. Decisions must often be made without consultation and, by the time reports reach Meridian, the situation that prompted them may already have changed.

For this reason, the Terran State does not attempt to govern all its worlds in the same manner. Instead, it relies on a hierarchy of authority that distributes power across multiple levels.

Regional Administration

To bridge the vast distances between worlds, the Terran State is divided into sectors of varying size, each administered from its own capital. These capitals serve as intermediaries between the central government and the worlds within their jurisdiction. Sector authorities are responsible for implementing policy, maintaining order, and coordinating economic and military activity within their regions.

Because communication between sector capitals and the central government is itself subject to delay, regional administrators possess considerable discretion. In practice, they often act as the effective rulers of their territories, interpreting central directives in light of local conditions. This autonomy is not merely tolerated but necessary, as it allows the State to function despite the limitations imposed by distance.

Planetary governments exercise even more localized control, handling the day-to-day administration of individual worlds and their systems. The degree of oversight they receive varies widely depending on their proximity to major trade routes and administrative centers.

The Marches

At the outermost edges of the Terran State lie the Marches, where the presence of central authority is weakest. These systems may be separated from the nearest administrative center by many weeks of travel and may receive only infrequent visits from official representatives. In such regions, local governments operate with substantial autonomy. While they acknowledge the authority of the Terran State, their day-to-day affairs are largely self-directed. Consequently, laws and customs may diverge from those of the Core Worlds and enforcement of central policies is often inconsistent.

Nevertheless, the Marches are not wholly detached from the State. Trade, banking networks, and shared cultural and legal traditions continue to bind these distant worlds to the broader interstellar community. Even where political control is limited, economic and institutional connections persist.

Instruments of Unity

Given these constraints, the cohesion of the Terran State depends on more than formal authority. Several factors play a crucial role in maintaining its integrity.

First, interstellar commerce links worlds together through mutual dependence. Trade networks ensure that even distant systems rely on goods, resources, and markets beyond their own borders.

Second, financial institutions provide a framework for economic stability. Banking networks, credit systems, and the standardized use of the sol allow transactions to occur across vast distances, even when information is delayed.

Third, shared institutions, such as legal systems, educational traditions, and administrative practices, create a common cultural foundation that transcends individual worlds.

Finally, the movement of individuals across the State helps maintain its cohesion. Merchants, officials, military personnel, and travelers carry information, customs, and loyalties from one system to another, reinforcing the sense of participation in a larger whole.

Authority and Distance

In the Thousand Suns, authority is strongest where communication is most frequent and reliable. Worlds located along major jumpline routes, particularly those near administrative centers, experience a greater degree of oversight and integration. Conversely, systems that lie far from these routes operate with increasing independence. This uneven distribution of authority is not a flaw in the structure of the Terran State but a consequence of the realities of interstellar travel. Because there is no alternative, the State has no choice but to allow varying degrees of autonomy within a broader framework of shared allegiance.

Implications

The structure of the Terran State creates a political order defined as much by variation as by cohesion. Though it spans countless worlds, its authority is neither uniform nor absolute. Regional powers, local governments, and independent actors all exert meaningful influence, ensuring that events are shaped as much on the periphery as at the center. For those who travel the Thousand Suns, this results in a fluid and often unpredictable environment where laws shift from system to system, loyalties are frequently divided, and the reach of central authority is never entirely certain. Yet this same structure is what makes interstellar civilization possible. The institutions of the Terran State provide a shared framework within which such diversity can function. The State endures, not by overcoming distance, but by adapting to it.

My recent posts about the implications of the setting of Thousand Suns have generated quite a lot of discussion with friends and colleagues, who’ve been encouraging me to keep going. Sean McCoy, creator of Mothership, is one of my biggest cheerleaders in this regard. After reading my take on interstellar currency and banking, he offered an idea to me for an institution (or, rather, group of institutions) that probably exists within the Thousand Suns. I thought it a very good idea and have spent the last few days sketching out how it might work, the results of which follow.

Among the institutions that sustain the Terran State across interstellar distances, few are as widely recognized (or as quietly feared) as the reconcilers. They operate throughout the Thousand Suns, charged with a task made necessary by the limitations of interstellar communication. As their name suggests, they reconcile official records, policies, and expectations with the realities of distant worlds.

Owing to the vast distances involved, the Terran State must often act on reports that are weeks or months out of date. During that time, events continue to unfold. Orders are interpreted, altered, or ignored. Markets shift and conflicts escalate or resolve. In such an environment, local authorities must make decisions in the absence of guidance from the center. By the time updated information reaches even a sector capital, the situation that prompted earlier directives may well have changed entirely.

Function and Authority

A reconciler is typically dispatched to a system after a significant divergence between expectation and outcome becomes apparent. Such divergences may arise from military campaigns, financial irregularities, administrative disputes, or unexpected economic developments. In each case, the reconciler’s task is to determine what has occurred, compare it against the intentions and records of the State, and bring the two into alignment.

To accomplish this, reconcilers are granted broad, loosely defined authority. They may audit financial records, review military actions, mediate disputes between officials, and issue binding judgments regarding the interpretation of policy. In some instances, a reconciler may confirm actions taken without authorization; in others, they may censure or remove those responsible. In all cases, they act as agents of retrospective accountability. When the State cannot act in real time, it acts after the fact.

Fields of Operation

Reconcilers operate across a wide range of domains.

Financial reconcilers examine discrepancies in bank ledgers, investigate fraud, and resolve conflicts between institutions separated by interstellar distance. Their work is closely tied to the flow of financial data carried by courier ships.

Military reconcilers review campaigns conducted beyond the reach of direct command. They assess the actions of officers who have acted independently, determining whether those actions were justified under the circumstances.

Administrative reconcilers address disputes between planetary and sector authorities, particularly where local governance has diverged from established law or policy.

In practice, the boundaries between these roles are fluid and many reconcilers operate across multiple domains.

Reputation and Perception

The arrival of a reconciler is rarely a trivial matter. To some, a reconciler represents the restoration of order and clarity, bringing authoritative resolution to uncertain situations. To others, they are an unwelcome intruder, arriving long after decisions have been made to pass judgment on actions taken under conditions of uncertainty.

Their presence is particularly unsettling to those who have exercised broad discretion in the absence of oversight. Military commanders, planetary and sector governors, and independent operators may all find themselves subject to scrutiny when a reconciler arrives. Even actions taken in good faith may later be reinterpreted in light of information unavailable at the time.

For this reason, reconcilers are often regarded with a mixture of respect and apprehension. Their judgments can legitimize past actions, but they can also lay the groundwork for sanction or even prosecution.

Role in the Terran State

The existence of reconcilers reflects the fundamental interstellar reality that no authority can maintain continuous control across the vast distances that separate the worlds of the Thousand Suns. The Terran State endures through a system in which local authorities act as circumstances demand, while reconcilers ensure that those actions are ultimately brought back into alignment with the larger order.

Reconcilers do not make decisions, but instead determine what those decisions come to mean. Their work rarely appears in official histories, which record edicts and outcomes but omit the long, uncertain process that connects them. However, without reconcilers, that connection would fail. The distance between record and reality would widen until it could no longer be bridged—and the coherence of interstellar civilization itself would begin to unravel.

Work continues on the High Struggle system for use with the second edition of Thousand Suns. Part of that includes thinking more seriously about the implications of many aspects of the game’s setting. I’ve already started that with regards to timekeeping, banking, and commerce. Now, I’m considering how wars might be fought in a setting in which it takes weeks for starships to travel between worlds and there is no faster means of communication. In such an environment, war is simultaneously deliberate and uncertain, because decisions must be made in ignorance and their consequences unfold much later.

The Tyranny of Distance

On Terra, war was a continuous process, with commanders issuing orders, receiving reports, and adjusting their plans in response to changing conditions. No such fluidity is possible among the stars. Once a fleet departs a world, it is effectively cut off from all higher authority until it reaches its destination weeks later. Likewise, news of events travels only as fast as the ships that carry it. A rebellion may erupt, a battle may be fought, or an entire system may change hands, and none beyond that system will know until long afterward.

The result is that interstellar war happens not as a seamless flow of action but as a series of discrete episodes, punctuated by long intervals of silence. Each episode is shaped by decisions made weeks earlier, based on information already out of date by the time it was received. Strategy, therefore, cannot depend on rapid reaction. It must instead rely on anticipation.

Command by Intent

Because communication is so slow, interstellar states cannot exercise close control over their forces. Orders must be issued in advance and must account for a wide range of possible circumstances. Commanders are given objectives, priorities, and constraints, but rarely detailed instructions. They are expected to interpret the intent behind their orders and to act accordingly when they arrive on station.

This necessity produces a military culture that prizes independent judgment and initiative. Admirals and generals are not merely executors of policy but its interpreters. In many cases, they are also its makers, for their decisions in the field may determine the course of a war before any response from their superiors can reach them.

The risks of such a system are obvious. Two commanders, acting in good faith under similar directives, may reach very different conclusions. Orders may prove irrelevant or even counterproductive by the time they are carried out. Yet, no alternative exists. The distances between the stars make centralized control impossible.

War as a Matter of Preparation

If war cannot be directed in real time, it must be planned in advance. Interstellar states, therefore, devote considerable effort to developing doctrines and contingency plans that can guide their forces in the absence of communication. Campaigns are conceived as branching decision trees rather than fixed sequences of orders, with each possibility having its own prescribed response. Officers are trained to recognize which of these possibilities they face and to act accordingly.

Even so, no plan can account for every eventuality. The uncertainty inherent in interstellar war ensures that every campaign will diverge from expectations. Flexibility lies not in altering plans mid-course, but in equipping commanders with the intellectual and material tools to improvise when plans fail.

The Primacy of Logistics

Distance affects not only command but also supply. A fleet cannot depend on rapid resupply from its home base. Any such effort would take weeks or months to arrive. Instead, fleets must be largely self-sufficient, carrying with them the fuel, provisions, and spare parts needed to sustain operations for extended periods.

This places enormous importance on logistics. The ability to maintain a fleet in the field often matters more than its ability to win battles. Supply depots, convoy routes, and transport vessels become critical strategic assets. Their loss can cripple an entire campaign, even in the absence of a decisive engagement.

Conversely, attacks on an enemy’s logistics can yield disproportionate results. Commerce raiding, interdiction of supply lines, and the destruction of cargo vessels may achieve what direct confrontation cannot. In this sense, war among the Thousand Suns is as much about cargo as it is about combat.

The “Geography” of Jumplines

Interstellar movement is constrained by the network of jumplines that connect the stars. These routes define the strategic geography of the Thousand Suns. Worlds situated at the intersection of multiple jumplines become vital nodes, controlling the flow of ships, goods, and information. Such systems are natural strongpoints, heavily fortified and fiercely contested.

Because fleets must travel along these established routes, their movements are, to a degree, predictable. Defenders can prepare for an enemy’s arrival, establishing defenses near jump emergence points and along likely avenues of approach. Warfare thus acquires a positional character, with control of key systems often more important than the destruction of enemy forces.

War Without Fronts

The absence of rapid communication and movement also means that interstellar wars lack the continuous fronts familiar from planetary conflicts. Instead, they consist of a series of largely independent theaters, each centered on a particular system or cluster of systems. Events in one theater may have little immediate impact on another, simply because news of those events takes so long to travel.

This fragmentation can produce highly uneven outcomes. One system may fall quickly, another may resist for months, while a third remains unaffected. Only over time, as information spreads and reinforcements arrive, do these disparate struggles coalesce into something resembling a coherent war.

Rebellion and Control

These same constraints also make it difficult for interstellar states to maintain control over their own territories. A rebellion can achieve much in the weeks before news of its outbreak even reaches central authorities. By the time a response is dispatched, the rebels may already have consolidated their position, secured local support, and prepared defenses.

Suppressing such uprisings is, therefore, a slow and uncertain process. Even if a fleet succeeds in reestablishing control, the delay involved may allow unrest to spread elsewhere. Consequently, many interstellar states rely heavily on localized authorities, such as governors, planetary militias, and system defense forces, to maintain order. In practice, this grants a significant degree of autonomy to individual worlds, regardless of the formal structure of the state.

The Sapient Element

Ultimately, interstellar war in the Thousand Suns is shaped as much by the limitations of sapient beings as by the physical constraints of distance and time. Decisions must be made without complete information. Commanders must act without knowing whether their actions align with current policy. Political leaders must commit forces to conflicts whose true nature they can only dimly perceive.

This environment rewards prudence, foresight, and adaptability, but it also creates ample opportunity for error. Misjudgments are inevitable, regardless of species, and their consequences may not become apparent until long after they can be corrected. Wars may be prolonged not just by stubborn resistance, but by the simple fact that it takes time for events to be understood.

War among the Thousand Suns is neither swift nor fluid. It is deliberate, uncertain, and often disjointed, shaped at every turn by the constraints of distance and delay. It is a form of conflict in which anticipation takes the place of reaction and autonomy substitutes for control. Above all, it is a war fought in the shadow of time, where every decision is an act of faith in an unknown and unpredictable future.

One of the things I’ve been working hard to achieve with the second edition of Thousand Suns is to better integrate its take on what I can the “imperial science fiction” literary tradition and the actual play of the game. After all, there are already lots of SF RPGs out there that cover broadly similar ground. What makes Thousand Suns different from them and worth your attention? After a lot of thinking and writing, I think I’ve hit upon something that I hope will answer these questions in a satisfying — and fun — way.

In the second edition, Thousand Suns operates on three interconnected levels: adventures, character development, and the High Struggle. Together, these elements aim to create a setting in which the characters’ actions unfold within a broad “history” rather than being confined to a series of disconnected episodes.

At the most immediate level are adventures, which should be immediately understandable to anyone who’s ever played a roleplaying game. In adventures, characters undertake missions, investigations, diplomatic efforts, exploration, and more on individual worlds or aboard space-based locales, like orbital stations or starships. Adventures usually occur over the course of hours, days, or at most a few weeks and are resolved using the normal rules of play.

For example, the characters might arrive at a world in the Marches whose starport has recently been placed under tight security after several shipments of industrial machinery disappeared from bonded warehouses. A merchant house suspects corruption within the port authority and hires the characters to investigate discreetly. Over the next few days, they question dockworkers, examine cargo manifests, and follow a trail of falsified shipping records that leads to a smuggling ring operating out of an abandoned section of the port.

The adventure might culminate in a confrontation with the smugglers, a tense negotiation with the corrupt official who has been protecting them, or a covert operation to gather evidence without alerting the conspirators. However the situation is resolved, the immediate crisis — and the adventure — is over.

Because interstellar travel along jumplines takes weeks rather than days, characters frequently experience periods of transit. These intervals provide opportunities for characters to pursue their own goals. During a six-week voyage between two worlds, one character might spend time acquiring a foreign language, while another might improve his starship gunnery. In the second edition of Thousand Suns, I’ve eliminated character improvement through experience points, opting instead for a more diegetic approach inspired in part by RPGs like RuneQuest, Pendragon, and Bushido. Consequently, downtime between adventures is when such improvement can occur.

While the characters pursue their personal ambitions, the wider galaxy continues to evolve through the High Struggle, which is intended to model the competition among major factions for influence and power across the Thousand Suns. The High Struggle advances in three-month cycles, representing the slow but constant maneuvering of political, economic, and military forces to achieve their goals and prevent competing factions from doing the same.

During each cycle, factions pursue strategic actions such as diplomacy, espionage, economic expansion, or military preparation. These actions are resolved using mechanics that mirror the core rules of the game: Ability + Skill determines a target number and success is determined by rolling 2d12 under that number. Random events and unexpected developments also occur, ensuring that the course of history nevertheless remains unpredictable. A scientific breakthrough might suddenly shift the balance of power, a colonial governor might declare independence, or pirate activity might surge along a previously quiet trade route.

The results of the High Struggle generate new situations and opportunities that might, in turn, become the fodder for new adventures in which the characters can participate. A successful diplomatic effort might bring stability to one region, while a failed espionage operation could trigger a political scandal that destabilizes another. Suppose, for example, a faction’s strategic action to expand its influence succeeds on a remote mining world. In response, a rival faction secretly begins funding dissidents there. When the characters arrive in the system, they find the colony gripped by political unrest. They might be hired to investigate sabotage at the mines, escort a negotiator attempting to restore order, or even aid one side or the other in the growing conflict. What began as a strategic maneuver in the High Struggle has now become the basis for an adventure.

The passage of time ties these elements together. Travel, training, and other downtime activities gradually advance the campaign calendar. When enough time has passed, a new High Struggle cycle occurs, reshaping the political and economic landscape of the sector. Sometimes these changes take place while the characters are traveling between systems. A crew might depart one world during a period of fragile peace and arrive weeks later to find that a rebellion has erupted or a major trade route has collapsed.

In this way, the characters are never operating in isolation from the wider setting. Their actions may influence the High Struggle directly, such as by destroying a pirate base to improve trade in a region or by delivering sensitive intelligence that could give a faction a decisive advantage in the next strategic cycle. Over time, successful characters may even become significant actors within the High Struggle themselves, commanding fleets, directing intelligence networks, or leading political movements.

Taken together, these elements create a repeating rhythm of play:

strategic developments create opportunities for adventure → adventures lead to travel and downtime → time passes → the High Struggle reshapes the Thousand Suns.

Ideally, the result is a campaign structure in which personal events, interstellar politics, and the slow unfolding of history are all intertwined. The characters may begin as small figures moving through a vast and complex universe, but their actions can gradually shape the fate of worlds among the Thousand Suns.

Having devoted my last post to a discussion of interstellar currency and banking, it seemed only fitting to follow it up with the current state of my thoughts regarding a closely related topic: interstellar commerce. Like currency and banking, I think it’s important to understand how these things might operate in a setting where travel between worlds takes weeks and there is no faster-than-light communication, if only for the adventuring possibilities they might open up.

Trade is the lifeblood of the Thousand Suns. Although starships require weeks to travel between systems and information moves no faster than the vessels that carry it, commerce nevertheless links worlds into a vast economic network. Merchant houses, banking institutions, and shipping companies sustain this system, maintaining the routes along which goods, passengers, and information flow from star to star.

At the heart of this network are the jumplines that connect the stars. Because travel between systems is possible only along these routes, interstellar commerce naturally concentrates along well-established trade corridors. Worlds located at junctions of several jumplines often become major commercial centers, hosting merchant exchanges, banking houses, courier services, and shipyards. Such worlds function as the interstellar equivalent of great port cities, where traders, financiers, diplomats, and adventurers gather in search of opportunity.

Interstellar Trade

Starship cargo space is necessarily limited and voyages take time, so most interstellar trade involves high-value, low-bulk goods. These commonly include rare industrial materials, precision machinery, pharmaceuticals, engineered biological products, and luxury items prized on distant worlds. Unique agricultural products, cultural artifacts, and specialized technologies may also command high prices far from their worlds of origin. Bulk commodities such as grain, water, or common metals rarely move between stars except in times of crisis. Instead, most interstellar commerce consists of goods whose value is great enough to justify the cost and duration of transport.

Information is also a valuable cargo. Scientific data, corporate reports, diplomatic messages, and financial records routinely travel aboard merchant vessels and specialized courier ships. Since economic and political developments may take weeks to reach other systems, the arrival of new information can dramatically alter local markets. Merchants who receive such news early often profit by moving goods toward worlds where demand is about to rise.

For example, news that a major mining world has halted production of a rare industrial metal may take weeks to spread beyond the local system. Traders who learn of the disruption early may purchase supplies elsewhere and dispatch ships toward markets where prices are certain to rise once the news becomes widely known.

Merchant Shipping

Interstellar commerce is carried primarily by privately owned merchant vessels operating under charter, contract, or independent speculation. Large shipping companies maintain regular routes between major systems, transporting cargo and financial data along predictable schedules. These merchant lines often operate fleets of standardized vessels and maintain close relationships with banks, insurance firms, and planetary authorities, ensuring that both cargo and the financial records that support interstellar commerce move reliably along established routes.

Alongside them operate countless independent traders, whose smaller ships travel more freely between worlds. Such traders rely heavily on speculation and arbitrage, purchasing goods where they are abundant and selling them where they are scarce. Their success often depends on personal connections, timely information, and a willingness to accept risks that larger companies avoid.

For many adventurers, service aboard a merchant vessel provides both employment and opportunity. Merchants require pilots, engineers, security personnel, negotiators, and skilled technicians, and the unpredictable nature of long-distance trade frequently leads to unexpected complications.

Insurance and Risk

Interstellar commerce carries significant risks. Ships may be lost to mechanical failures, D-Drive mishaps, political conflicts, or criminal activity. To manage these dangers, merchants commonly insure their cargo through large financial institutions or specialized insurance houses. These organizations distribute risk across many voyages and play an important role in stabilizing the interstellar economy.

Insurance firms frequently impose conditions on the ships they insure. Vessels may be required to carry defensive armaments, employ security personnel, or travel along established routes. In dangerous regions, merchant vessels may also travel in convoys escorted by naval patrols or corporate security ships. Disputes over insurance claims, lost cargo, or damaged shipments are common, and such conflicts occasionally draw outsiders into complex commercial or legal disputes.

Piracy

Pirates seek profit, not destruction. Wherever valuable cargo moves through poorly controlled regions of space, piracy inevitably follows. Pirate activity is most common along frontier trade routes, in sparsely settled systems, or near the borders of rival political powers where law enforcement is weak.

Most pirate operations focus on capturing valuable cargo, seizing financial instruments, or taking hostages for ransom. Some pirate groups specialize in intercepting courier vessels in order to obtain valuable information that can be sold to rival corporations or used to manipulate markets. A pirate captain who captures a courier ship carrying financial records might learn of a coming shortage, market disruption, or political crisis before anyone else. Such information can be sold to interested buyers—or used by the pirates themselves to profit from the economic turmoil that follows. Such attacks can also disrupt the financial networks that link distant systems, delaying the ledger updates on which banks and merchants depend.

Pirates rely heavily on surprise and deception. They may ambush ships near predictable jump arrival points, broadcast false distress calls, or impersonate customs authorities in order to approach their targets without raising suspicion. Successful pirate groups frequently operate from hidden bases in remote systems beyond the reach of regular patrols, where they repair captured vessels, fence stolen cargo, and plan their next raids.

Not all piracy is entirely lawless. In times of political conflict, governments sometimes authorize private vessels to attack enemy shipping, creating privateers whose activities blur the line between warfare and piracy.

Commerce and Conflict

The constant movement of goods and information along the jumpline network ensures that trade and conflict are closely intertwined. Merchant houses compete fiercely for access to profitable routes, governments attempt to regulate commerce within their territories, and pirates prey on the vulnerabilities of long-distance shipping.

For adventurers, the interstellar economy offers both opportunity and danger. Merchant vessels carry fortunes in cargo and information across the stars, while the institutions that sustain this commerce wield immense influence over the fate of entire sectors. Characters might find themselves escorting valuable cargo, negotiating trade agreements, investigating missing shipments, hunting pirates, or pursuing fortunes as independent traders. In the Thousand Suns, commerce is never merely a matter of buying and selling. It is a dynamic and often dangerous enterprise that shapes the lives of worlds and the destinies of those who travel between them.

Following on Wednesday’s post about the Nova Kalendario, I’ve been continuing to think about the implications of there being no instantaneous interstellar communications for others aspects of the Thousand Suns setting. I’ve drawn on my knowledge of historical analogs to create a foundation for what follows. I’ve also been inspired by ideas drawn from other science fiction settings, as well as my own ideas. Once again, I’ve probably thought more about this than is strictly necessary, but that’s kind of what I do.

The immense distances separating the worlds of the Thousand Suns mean that neither goods nor information travel quickly between them. Starships may require weeks to cross even a single sector and there is no faster means of communication. As a result, the interstellar economy operates very differently from those of individual worlds. Banking networks, merchant houses, and courier ships carry not only cargo and passengers but also the financial records that allow commerce between the stars to function.

Despite these limitations, trade flourishes throughout human space thanks to a common unit of account known as the sol.

The Sol

The sol is the standard unit of account used across the Thousand Suns. Most interstellar trade, banking, and contracts are denominated in sols. Although many worlds maintain their own local currencies for everyday transactions, these are typically tied to the sol through fluctuating exchange rates. In practice, sols rarely exist as physical currency. Instead, they are recorded as balances in the ledgers maintained by banks and financial institutions.

Interstellar Banks

Commerce between the stars depends on large banking networks that maintain branches on many worlds. These banks record deposits, transfer funds, and provide credit to merchants and travelers.

When an individual deposits money with a bank, the institution records the amount in its ledgers as a balance denominated in sols. The depositor may then access these funds at any branch of that bank or its partners.

Although many smaller institutions exist, most interstellar trade ultimately relies on the guarantees of a handful of large banking houses whose reputations are trusted across human space. These institutions maintain networks of branch offices across multiple sectors, allowing merchants and travelers to conduct business far from their home worlds.

Because information cannot travel faster than starships, each bank branch maintains its own copy of the bank’s financial records. These records are periodically updated when ships arrive carrying encrypted ledger packets from other systems. As a result, the financial records on one world may be several weeks out of date compared to another.

Ledger Updates

Whenever a ship arrives from another system, it typically carries encrypted financial data as part of its cargo. These data packets include:

• updated account balances

• cleared transactions

• commodity price reports

• currency exchange rates

• interbank settlements

Upon arrival, banks merge these updates with their local ledgers. This process synchronizes the financial system across the interstellar network.

Because ledger updates travel along established shipping routes, most banks operate on a standardized financial calendar tied to the arrival schedules of major courier lines. Worlds located on busy jumpline routes may receive updates frequently, while remote systems in the Marches may wait weeks for the next financial synchronization.

Until such updates arrive, banks must operate on the basis of the most recent information available to them.

Credit and Withdrawals

Financial records may be weeks out of date, which means banks generally allow customers to withdraw funds only up to the amount confirmed by the most recent ledger update. For trusted clients, banks may extend limited credit beyond this amount. Such credit is based on reputation, collateral, or long-standing relationships with the bank. Merchants, corporations, and powerful families often maintain large credit lines that allow them to conduct business even when financial records have not yet fully synchronized.

Financial Latency

Since financial records travel between systems aboard starships, banks in one system may not have the most recent information about accounts held elsewhere. For most ordinary transactions this delay has little effect. However, when a traveler attempts to withdraw a substantial sum in a system where his account has not yet been updated, the bank may require additional verification before authorizing the withdrawal.

Verification Test

Make a Bureaucracy test.

This test represents navigating institutional procedures, presenting proper documentation, and reassuring officials that the transaction is legitimate despite the lack of up-to-date financial records.

Success means the bank authorizes the transaction immediately. Failure means the bank restricts access to part of the funds until the next courier ship arrives carrying updated financial records.

Reputation and Standing

The Game Master may grant a +1 or +2 bonus to the test if the character possesses factors that make the bank more willing to trust him, such as:

• membership in a respected organization

• noble or corporate status

• an established relationship with the bank

• a letter of credit from a reputable institution

• a strong professional reputation

Likewise, a character known to be unreliable or suspicious may suffer a penalty at the GM’s discretion.

Letters of Credit

For large transactions, merchants commonly use letters of credit issued by reputable banks. A letter of credit is a certified document guaranteeing that the issuing bank will honor a payment up to a specified amount. These instruments allow traders to conduct business across many worlds without transporting large sums of physical wealth. Letters of credit are widely trusted throughout Terran space, particularly when issued by established banking houses.

Financial Couriers

Financial information is among the most valuable cargo carried by interstellar ships. Banking networks, merchant houses, and governments maintain specialized courier services that transport encrypted financial records between worlds. The arrival of a financial courier may cause dramatic shifts in local markets, as banks and merchants update their ledgers and revise prices based on the latest information from distant systems. Because of their importance, such couriers are often well protected—and occasionally the targets of piracy, espionage, or sabotage.

Pensions and Salaries

Individuals receiving pensions, salaries, or other regular payments typically maintain accounts with one of the major interstellar banks. Payments are deposited into the recipient’s account in sols. The funds can then be withdrawn at any branch of the bank, subject to the limits imposed by the most recent ledger update. Travelers moving between systems may therefore find that access to their full balance is temporarily restricted until financial records catch up with them.

Implications for the Setting

The slow movement of financial information shapes the character of the interstellar economy in several ways.

First, merchant banks and courier ships play a vital role in maintaining the flow of trade between worlds. Without them, economic activity across the Thousand Suns would quickly grind to a halt.

Second, information itself has immense value. News of political upheavals, mining strikes, crop failures, or new discoveries can dramatically affect markets. Those who obtain such information first may profit enormously.

Finally, the institutions that manage these financial networks wield considerable influence. Major banking houses, merchant exchanges, and courier lines often maintain operations across many worlds within a sector, giving them economic leverage that can rival that of governments and noble houses.

Control over financial networks can therefore become a point of contention in sector politics. Rival powers may seek to influence banking institutions, disrupt courier routes, or manipulate the flow of economic information in order to gain advantage in the ongoing struggles that shape interstellar affairs.

Implications for Play

For most characters, the banking system functions in a straightforward manner. Funds are deposited with a bank and withdrawn as needed during travel. The sol serves as a convenient unit of account for wages, purchases, and trade.

However, the peculiarities of the interstellar economy can also create opportunities for adventure. Characters might be hired to:

• transport sensitive financial data

• protect courier ships

• investigate fraud or financial espionage

• exploit price differences between worlds

• recover stolen credit instruments

In the Thousand Suns, money does not simply move through abstract networks. It travels aboard starships, along with the information that keeps the interstellar economy alive.

As work on the second edition of Thousand Suns progressed, I realized, especially in light of the High Struggle system I’m developing for use with it, that I needed to give more thought to how to record the passage of time within the setting. I’d already sketched out the basics of this in the 2011 edition of the game, but I wanted to nail down a few more details. As is often the case, I probably went a bit overboard in pondering this question, the results of which follow.

The New Calendar

The New Calendar (Nova Kalendario in Lingvo Tera, abbreviated NK) is the standard civil calendar used throughout the Terran State. It was instituted with the signing of the Concordat, the charter that unified Terran interstellar domains under a single political framework. Because humanity now inhabits thousands of worlds, each with its own planetary day and year, the Concordat established a common system of timekeeping suitable for an interstellar civilization.

The year of the Concordat is designated Year 0 of the New Calendar. The present year is 500 NK.

The Standard Day

The Concordat also established the Standard Day, equal to the traditional twenty-four-hour Terran day, as the universal unit of daily timekeeping. This standard is used for all interstellar purposes, including navigation, communication, administration, and commerce.

The Standard Day is divided into 24 hours, each containing 60 minutes of 60 seconds, preserving the familiar Terran system inherited from earlier centuries. Starships, space stations, and interstellar institutions operate exclusively according to this reckoning, and even planetary societies rely on it for official business and offworld communication. The adoption of the Standard Day ensures that timekeeping remains consistent throughout Terran space despite the diversity of planetary environments.

Structure of the Year

A year in the New Calendar consists of 365 standard days. The year is divided into twelve months of thirty days each, for a total of 360 days, followed by five intercalary days known collectively as the Days of Concord.

The months of the year, in order, are:

Origino
Lanĉo
Vojaĝo
Stelo
Malkovro
Kolonio
Renkonto
Alianco
Ordo
Prospero
Memoro
Konkordo

These names reflect symbolic stages in Terrans’ expansion into space and the eventual formation of the Terran State. In practice, however, official documents frequently identify months simply by number.

Weeks and Days

The New Calendar uses a six-day week, so each month contains exactly five weeks, creating a regular structure well suited to administrative and economic planning.

The days of the week, in order, are:

Unutago
Dutago
Tritago
Kvaratago
Kvinatago
Ripoztago

Ripoztago (“Rest Day”) is widely observed as a day of leisure, though customs vary across the Terran State.

Cycles

For administrative purposes, the year is divided into four cycles, each lasting three months or ninety days. Cycles are the principal unit used for governmental planning, economic reporting, and military logistics.

The four cycles correspond to:

First Cycle: Months 1–3
Second Cycle: Months 4–6
Third Cycle: Months 7–9
Fourth Cycle: Months 10–12

Many institutions review policies and adjust plans at the beginning of each cycle.

The Days of Concord

The final five days of the year fall outside the normal sequence of weeks, months, and cycles. Known collectively as the Days of Concord (Tagoj de Konkordo), they commemorate the signing of the Concordat and the founding of the Terran State.

These days are intentionally kept open. The framers of the Concordat recognized that Terrans already inhabited a great diversity of worlds with distinct traditions. Rather than impose universal holidays, the Days of Concord provide a flexible period during which individual worlds, sectors, and institutions may observe their own commemorations.

Consequently, they function as a shared interstellar holiday season. Many worlds hold festivals, memorials, religious observances, trade fairs, or civic ceremonies. A few celebrations, most notably Concordat Day (Konkordatatago), are widely observed across human space.

The Days of Concord also serve a practical purpose. Because they fall outside the regular calendar structure, they mark a natural pause between administrative years, when governments and corporations close accounts, review the past year, and prepare for the next cycle.

Interstellar Communication and Timekeeping

Because faster-than-light communication does not exist, information travels between star systems only as quickly as starships. Messages between neighboring systems require at least a week, while communication between distant sectors may take months or even years.

The New Calendar was designed with this reality in mind. Rather than synchronizing clocks across interstellar distances, it provides a shared chronological framework that allows events to be recorded consistently regardless of when the information reaches another system.

Ships carry dispatches, manifests, and reports already dated according to the Nova Kalendario. Even if news arrives long after the fact, administrators and historians can still place events accurately within the broader chronology of the Terran State. For this reason, official documents often record both the date of an event and the date of receipt, allowing administrators to track the movement of information across interstellar space.

Political Drift

Although the New Calendar provides a universal chronology, the experience of time is not politically uniform across the Terran State. Because news travels only with ships, events in the core may take months or years to become known on the frontier.

A law enacted on Meridian in Second Cycle, 500 NK, for example, might not reach a remote sector until Fourth Cycle, 500 NK or even First Cycle, 501 NK. From Meridian’s perspective the policy has long been in force; from the frontier’s perspective it has only just arrived.

Historians sometimes describe this phenomenon as chronological lag or political drift. Frontier worlds may effectively operate one or more cycles “behind” the core, not because their clocks differ, but because their knowledge of events does.

Effective Cycles

In distant sectors officials sometimes speak of effective cycles, an informal measure of how far local knowledge lags behind that of Meridian. A governor might remark that his sector is operating “two cycles behind Meridian,” meaning the most recent confirmed information from the capital dates from two cycles earlier.

Administrators track these delays carefully. Orders are interpreted in light of the time they spent in transit and local authorities are expected to exercise judgment when applying directives that may no longer reflect current conditions.

The arrival of starships can therefore transform the political situation of a system overnight. Merchants, naval officers, and courier captains often carry the newest information available and their arrival may abruptly update a region’s understanding of events elsewhere.

Although the concept has no formal legal status, effective cycles reflect a widely recognized reality: while the Nova Kalendario provides a common chronology for the Terran State, knowledge of that chronology spreads only as fast as the ships that carry it.

Administrative Consequences

To manage these delays, the Terran State relies heavily on delegated authority. Sector governors-general and planetary administrations operate within broad policy guidelines, since waiting for instructions from Meridian could take years. Orders from the capital are therefore written flexibly so that local officials can adapt them to changing circumstances. As a result, most political, economic, and military planning occurs on the scale of cycles or years rather than days.

Cultural Effects

Over time this slow diffusion of information has shaped cultural attitudes toward time. News from the core is often understood to be “old news” (malnovaj novaĵoj), and frontier societies are accustomed to acting without up-to-date information. This has fostered traditions of local autonomy and sometimes the sense that the Terran State governs the Marches only loosely. Political movements on distant worlds may unfold for months or years before the central government becomes aware of them.

These conditions have also given rise to the informal distinction between “Meridian Time” and “Marcher Time.” The former reflects the perspective of the Core Worlds, where news travels relatively quickly. Marcher Time describes the slower rhythms of distant regions, where information from the capital may already be months or years old by the time it arrives. The distinction is not formal, since every world still uses the Nova Kalendario, but it is widely understood throughout human space.

Notation of Dates

Dates are typically written in day–month–year format, followed by the abbreviation NK.

Examples:

12.4.500 NK
12 Stelo 500 NK

Numerical notation is most common in official documents, navigation records, and commercial transactions.

When necessary, the time of day may be added using the twenty-four-hour system:

12.4.500 NK, 14:35

In administrative contexts dates are sometimes expressed by cycle rather than by day:

Third Cycle, 500 NK

This form is common in strategic planning and historical writing.

Local Adaptations

Although the New Calendar serves as the universal civil standard, most worlds also maintain local calendars tied to their own planetary cycles. These govern agriculture, religious observances, and other activities tied to the natural environment.

On planets whose rotation differs only slightly from the Standard Day, clocks are often adjusted so the New Calendar remains practical for everyday life. Worlds with much longer or shorter days frequently maintain two systems: planetary time for local activities and Standard Time for interstellar communication.

Similarly, planetary orbital periods rarely match the 365-day New Calendar year, so local “years” may drift relative to the interstellar calendar. Most citizens of the Terran State therefore live with two complementary systems of timekeeping: the universal reckoning of the Nova Kalendario and the local calendar of the world on which they reside.

As work progresses on the second edition of the Thousand Suns rulebook, I find all the anxieties I talked about last month coming to the fore. That’s not unexpected, because those worries about how I could ever possibly afford to produce a roleplaying game book in the way I’d like to do so haven’t gone away, even if I have figured out ways to ameliorate them a bit. Unfortunately, those ways don’t easily work with something like a rulebook. I can’t “start small” with something that’ll be more than 200 pages in length and cover a great many topics.

One of my core worries concerns art. Now, when we talk about the “art” of a roleplaying game, we almost always mean its illustrations. In my experience, gamers increasingly expect RPG books, especially rulebooks, to include lots of illustrations. Flip open almost any contemporary RPG product, even small press ones, and odds are good it has a great deal of art in it, often in color. That’s become the standard in the hobby over the last decade or so.

Unfortunately, art is expensive and I don’t have infinite resources to spend on acquiring it. That means that, as I think ahead to turning the manuscript of the second edition rulebook into an actual book that others can buy, either in print or electronic form, I start to wonder how I’ll ever be able to afford enough art to make it look as good as I — and no doubt purchasers — think it should be. That’s a daunting prospect and one that threatens to throw me into despair of ever getting this project done.

Fortunately, I have a lot of good friends and colleagues who are there to offer me some alternate perspectives. One of them is Sean McCoy, creator of the sci-fi horror RPG, Mothership. (If you haven’t played Mothership, you really should. I’m not just saying that because Sean is my friend, but because it’s a great and genuinely fun roleplaying game.)

Anyway, in our conversations about this and related topics, Sean made me realize that art, by which I really mean, illustration is not the same thing as an aesthetic. An aesthetic is not a picture but rather a total presentation. It’s the sum of typography, layout, margins, white space, ornamentation, graphic devices, color palette, paper stock, binding, and, yes, sometimes, illustration. An aesthetic is the way all these disparate elements work together to produce a mood. It is how a book feels before you even read it and how it lingers even after you’ve closed the cover.

Take a look at the image at the top of this post. It’s one of three cover mock-ups that Sean whipped up very quickly after we talked about the aesthetic of Thousand Suns and what I hoped to achieve with the second edition of the rulebook. When Sean showed me his mock-ups, I was blown away — not because they’re the images I’ll definitely be using for the second edition’s cover, but because they demonstrated that it’s very possible to convey a great deal about the game and its feel through simple imagery. To show you what I mean, here’s another one:

What grabbed me about these cover mock-ups is easily I could imagine them as the covers of science fiction novels from the 1970s, one of the decades whose literature Thousand Suns is meant to evoke. If I saw a roleplaying game with this cover on the shelf of my local game store, I’d know almost immediately what it was about and the kind sci-fi that inspired it. Sean completely nailed the Thousand Suns aesthetic.

Out of financial necessity, I was already considering the possibility of a “minimalist” second edition, one that didn’t include much — or any — art in the sense of illustrations. At first glance, this might seem bizarre. Science fiction roleplaying games are supposed to be visual, are they not? They promise starships, alien vistas, and advanced technologies. Surely such a game requires art to present such wonders. However, after seeing Sean’s cover mock-ups, I am no longer convinced that illustrations are the best or most effective means of doing so.

In my opinion, illustration does something very specific: it fixes an image in your mind and tells you what a thing looks like. That can be powerful. The starship on page 163 becomes the starship. The armored troopers becomes the armored troopers. Even when we tell ourselves that the image is merely suggestive, it exerts gravitational pull, sometimes to the point of narrowing creative possibilities. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Many games depend upon precisely this effect. A setting like Warhammer 40,000, for example, is inseparable from its dense, Gothic visual iconography. In a very real sense, the art is the setting.

However, Thousand Suns was never meant to be that kind of game. From the beginning, I conceived it as a science fiction roleplaying game about time and distance, about interstellar societies separated not merely by light-years, but by months-long voyages and the absence of real-time communication. In such a setting, knowledge is always incomplete. News arrives late, distorted, or filtered through competing interests. History must be reconstructed from fragments. Meaning is not delivered whole; it is assembled by the players from what survives.

If Thousand Suns is, at heart, a game about long silences between the stars, then its aesthetic ought to reflect those concerns. It should feel restrained, spacious, and deliberate. It should resemble not a spectacle, but something preserved, studied, and interpreted across the gulf of time.

While I’m increasingly won over by a more minimalist approach to art in the second edition of Thousand Suns, I recognize that there’s a risk to it. Good illustrations can serve as entry points for newcomers to the game. They also break up the text and provide rest for the eye. A nearly illustration-free rulebook must compensate through careful design. Otherwise, it risks becoming visually monotonous.

Furthermore, as I noted at the beginning of this post, the hobby is increasingly accustomed to lavish production values. In such an environment, a restrained presentation like the one I am proposing might be seen as evidence of a slapdash product made without care or resources — and, of course, there’s some truth to this, at least on the resources front. I probably would never have even contemplated this approach if it hadn’t been for my relatively meager resources.

However, the more I have considered the possibilities of minimalism, the more I am persuaded that aesthetic coherence matters more than illustrative abundance. A roleplaying game whose visual language aligns with its thematic concerns can be attractive and enticing even if it has few illustrations in the usual sense. One need only look to the original 1977 edition of GDW’s Traveller, the granddaddy of all science fiction RPGs, to see the truth of this.

I haven’t completely made up my mind about how to proceed. At the moment, I am trying to decide whether illustration clarifies the identity of Thousand Suns or obscures it. After seeing the three cover mock-ups I’ve shared with you, I am increasingly inclined to believe that a rulebook’s aesthetic, by which I mean its typography, layout, and graphic design, can do as much or even more to communicate its themes than any number of illustrations.

High Struggle (Tera Lingvo: La Alta Lukto)
Encyclopedia Galactica, 7th Revised Edition (484)

High Struggle is the conventional designation for the enduring contest among the sovereign powers of the Thousand Suns for influence, security, and ascendancy. Though intermittently expressed in open warfare, it is more commonly conducted through diplomacy, economic pressure, proxy conflict, exploratory expansion, and the calculated extension of protection beyond recognized borders.

Distinguished from limited wars or commercial rivalries, the High Struggle is civilizational in scope and generational in duration. Its purpose is not merely victory in battle but the shaping of the interstellar order through the alignment of trade routes, the direction of frontier settlement, the allegiance of emergent worlds, and the definition of legitimacy. The adjective “high” refers both to the scale of its consequences and to the elevated authorities, such as heads of state, admirals, ministers, and megacorporate directors, by whom it is chiefly directed.

Historians differ as to whether the High Struggle began with First Contact or only after the Wars of Independence ended the illusion of a unified Terran polity. It is generally agreed, however, that so long as sovereignty remains divided and the frontier unsettled, the High Struggle will endure.

Since I began serious work on the second edition of Thousand Suns, the most bedeviling question has been how to distinguish it from the crowded field of science fiction roleplaying games. It’s a small, self-published RPG competing against decades-old SF RPGs and lavishly supported lines. Simply being “good” isn’t enough. It has to be immediately and unmistakably clear what Thousand Suns does that other science fiction roleplaying games do not.

For a long time, I’ve struggled to articulate that difference. The game has always had a distinct tone and a clear set of literary inspirations, but tone alone is difficult to communicate through bullet points or summaries of game mechanics. Only recently did I recognize that the answer had been present all along, quietly shaping my design of the game since its inception: the High Struggle.

Though I’ve never before used the term, the High Struggle is, in fact, a foundational element of Thousand Suns. It represents the ongoing contest between powerful factions— noble houses, religious movements, mercantile combines, secret societies, planetary governments, alien species — for influence, survival, and dominance across the Thousand Suns. The High Struggle is thus the engine of history within the setting.

Its roots are both literary and historical. On the science fiction side, many classic writers of the genre, H. Beam Piper being a prime example, were deeply concerned with the rise and fall of empires, the cyclical nature of civilization, and the way individuals are shaped by vast historical forces. Piper’s future histories are not static backdrops but dynamic tapestries of political and economic transformation.

On the historical side stands the 19th-century “Great Game,” the geopolitical rivalry between the British and Russian Empires for dominance in Central Asia. The phrase captures the idea of history as a contest consisting not merely of warfare, but also of maneuvering, intrigue, commerce, espionage, and influence. The High Struggle takes this concept and scales it to the galactic level.

What Makes This Different?

Factions and factions are not new to roleplaying games. However, few make factional conflict a primary mode of play. In most RPGs, factions are background elements, serving as patrons or antagonists who facilitate adventures, while the focus remains squarely on the player characters as independent operators. The larger political landscape may exist, but it does not usually move unless the Game Master intentionally pushes it.

What I am envisioning for Thousand Suns, by contrast, is that High Struggle moves constantly. Rather than being a mere background element, it’s a structured, procedural system that models the ambitions and actions of great powers between adventures. Governments expand their influence. Religions spread their messages. Megacorporations manipulate markets. Secret societies attempt quiet coups. Worlds rebel. Alliances fracture.

The High Struggle provides each major power with resources, goals, and actionable options. Between sessions (or at defined intervals), these factions take turns acting. They maneuver, invest, sabotage, consolidate, and sometimes clash openly. Their successes and failures alter the political map. The GM does not need to invent every shift by fiat, because the system is designed to produce outcomes. The result is a living political ecology that gives both the GM and the players a “big picture” of what’s happening in a certain region of space.

Imperial Science Fiction, Made Concrete

Thousand Suns is explicitly a game of “imperial science fiction.” When I chose that subtitle, I did so not merely to galactic empires and massive star fleets. I did so because I was interested in science fiction stories about the following:

• The maintenance (or collapse) of interstellar order

• The tension between center and periphery

• The burden of authority

• The interplay of tradition, economics, religion, and force

In many RPGs, “imperial” is little more than an esthetic. In Thousand Suns, I want it to mean something more concrete, something that can be used to create both engaging adventure scenarios and memorable campaigns. Ideally, the High Struggle will give mechanical expression to imperial science fiction, ensuring that:

• Interstellar states fragment if neglected.

• Ambitious groups can overreach and fall.

• Political movements can destabilize governments.

• Peripheral worlds can become flashpoints.

• Great powers can be hollowed out from within.

Because factions act according to defined capacities and constraints, the campaign’s setting evolves in ways that feel organic rather than scripted. The Game Master is no longer solely responsible for inventing galactic history, as the system helps generate it. Even better, the players can get involved, too, taking on the roles of a faction, aiding the GM in creating the setting’s evolving history.

Where the Player Characters Fit

With all this said, Thousand Suns is still very much a traditional roleplaying game with a focus on the player characters. What the High Struggle is intended to do is establishe the macro-level conflicts of the setting. Player characters operate within (and sometimes across) those conflicts. They may serve a noble house, belong to an organization, act as agents of a megacorp, or even attempt to remain independent.

Whatever they choose, their actions can still matter because the High Struggle provides additional context. For example, when they secure a trade deal for a megacorp, it shifts factional leverage within a sector. When they expose corruption in the colonial administration, it weakens it. When they fail to prevent a rebellion, that rebellion does not simply vanish at the end of the adventure but instead alters the balance of power.

Ideally — if my design works as intended — the actions of the player characters and the motion of the High Struggle will work together to create a richer, more meaningful, more adventuresome campaign reminiscent of the best stories of classic SF.

A Different Kind of Campaign

I genuinely believe this approach gives Thousand Suns a clear and compelling identity among science fiction RPGs. My goal is not simply to provide a setting in which adventures occur, but a framework in which history itself is in motion, where both players and Game Master take part in shaping the unfolding story of a far-future civilization. A Thousand Suns campaign should feel less like a series of disconnected episodes and more like a chronicle of an interstellar society under strain, tested by ambition, faith, greed, loyalty, and hubris.

The High Struggle ensures that the galaxy is neither static nor comfortably predictable. Great events do not wait for the player characters to involve themselves. Even if the characters stand aside, history advances. However, if do they choose to act and act boldly, their decisions can redirect the course of that history. They may strengthen a faltering house, topple a rising power, ignite a rebellion, or preserve an empire teetering on the brink.

From the very beginning, this was the promise of Thousand Suns. I wanted a roleplaying game about the rise and fall of interstellar empires and the sapient being who endure those turbulent ages. I wanted imperial science fiction not as mere esthetic, but as an animating principle. I wanted its grand themes to generate concrete pressures, meaningful choices, and unforgettable adventures. The High Struggle is my attempt to make that vision playable.

In an upcoming post, I’ll delve into the specifics of how the system works — or at least how I intend it to work. Shortly thereafter, I plan to release a playtest document so others can examine it, experiment with it, and, I hope, put it through its paces. I’ll likely conduct some playtesting of my own on the Advanced Grognardia Discord server as well.

Because this system is meant to be central to the new edition of Thousand Suns, it must be clear, usable, and, above all, fun. That means testing, refinement, and feedback. If the High Struggle is to fulfill its promise, it will do so with your help.

More soon!