Bathtub Biotech

[squinky]

OK, fine. Zubon-Do gave me enough trouble about it and I feel I need to post my draft. I'm still wrestling with the game mechanics a little, and will hopefully post that and a full set of cards in the morning. Mind the [fixme] stuff, spelling and grammar errors, and so forth. Please be gentle.

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=The Story=

By the year [something], biological technology became humankind's greatest achievement. Food is abundant, a simple treatment can reverse cancer, and whole replacement organs can be grown in a vat in under a week.

Our abilities with genetic engineering also gave us the power to create things that were less acceptable: scaly hissing war-creatures, animals with a human brain, and appliances made out of bits of a goat or something.

The Ladies' Consolidated Sewing Circles Against the Manufacture of Godless Abominations took it upon themselves to oppose these advances. Over the course of the next five years their massive protests took on a religious fury far beyond their original intent, and caused many to see all forms of genetic and biological technology, beneficial or not, as a sin in the eyes of God.

The Global Congress passed Amendment 18,242(b) to their most fundamental book of laws, "Johnny Explores his Citizenship," the official easy-to-read illustrated guide to civil rights. In the amendment, Johnny learns through a brief parable that it is not right to fool with Mother Nature.

The vague wording of the new law went to the highest court for interpretation, and it was soon determined that all sciences involving modifying or duplication of biological material from pre-embryonic gene alteration all the way down to selective breeding was un-Johnnylike.

The Bureau of Biological Enforcement was formed, and they immediately made a public show of demolishing the labs of massive (and now ruined) biotech companies in front of cheering crowds. Doctors were soon stripped of their most potent medicines, patented seed stock was burned in huge bonfires, and the owners of show poodles were forbidden by law from stopping their them from mating with any dog they wanted to, to the horror of breeders and the delight of mixed-breed mongrel dogs.

To keep lawbreaking to a minimum, a lesser-known feature in the mandatory Digital Rights Management (DRM) software in every computer was used to destroy all digital copies of any text dealing with bio-engineering. Since few paper books were still in circulation, the only documentation ever seen anymore on the subject are the occasional torn-out page from "Johnny Makes Bugs in his Bathtub," a fifth-grade textbook on the simplicity of modern genetic engineering, written in the standard "Johnny" format typical of all government texts.

Early resistance in the form of protests from biologists and other scientists were met with tear gas and imprisonment. Those biologists not found protesting were encouraged by the government to change to a career that would be more useful to society, like sports.

With the most prominent biologists and genetic researchers in prison or busy learning how to throw a baseball, anyone still involved with this banned science went underground. Whether in the noble pursuit of rebuilding mankind's knowledge of biology, or the even nobler pursuit of making money selling contraband, they soon joined the growing ranks of organized crime.

Outside of the laboratories of these dissidents, biological technology has been set back to where it was before the turn of the century.


=The Game=

The player characters are a band of bio-scientists, criminal thugs, and intellectual freedom-fighters. They may operate independently, or be part of a larger organized crime empire.

To play, you need paper for character and party records, a set of Action and Data cards, and at least three standard six-sided dice.


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That's as far as this draft goes. The cards cover the actions of the party at the campaign level, like finding a new hideout, committing a crime, or breeding a giant insect to guard their squishy mammalian bodies.

The bit that has me excited is that the roleplaying can be driven (at GM discretion, like everything) by the cardplay. Like if the players spend their turn picking up a Ranch for a hideout, the GM may decide that their next adventure will cover preparing it for use by ridding it of mutants, or getting the local townsfolk to accept them.

The game mechanics are fairly simplistic and I'm hoping to ensure that it's all nice and balanced, or at least interesting enough to still be playable.

Comments?

[Doug Ruff]

Comments? The setting is intriguing, and I like the humour a lot. Please write more!

[squinky]

Here is a rather more up-to-date version of the game:



The cards are located here:

This is playable, but without some of the background material I wanted to fill in (there are lots of placeholders at the end).

There's a lot more I need to do still. A bunch of cards need to be added, and I'd like to do some extra artwork for it. I am really having fun with this.

[monkeyking]

[Doug Ruff]

The game text says that it's inspired by Prohibition - and in a particularly clever way (the rules didn't say that last bit by the way, I did.)

[squinky]

[Rossum]

[Andy K]

[PlotDevice]

[squinky]

Hmm... wow, I suppose I will finish it, then...