Signal One: High Tech. Low Life.
The streets smell of sulfur and rotted meat. All around you there is a constant buzzing and you can’t tell if it’s from the monorail or the neon signs. It’s always dark here. The sky is obscured by buildings, skyways, and smog. The air lingers heavy, literally, and you have to choke just to get oxygen. Everything around you is covered in grime and what isn’t re-enforced steel is crumbling brick. You live here, but you still dream about someplace better.
The halls are pristine and smell faintly of lavender. Your shoes make a soft click on the synth-marble walkway. The windows open to beautiful blue sky, just above the cloud-line. Everything here is soft hues, pastels and whites. Not a glaring white but a soft, easy on the eyes, white. The climate is perfect and even in your suit you are comfortable. You live here, but you still dream about someplace better.
The market is loud, both in sound and style. Riding the glass elevator down you can see a hundred different booths setup, in different languages, with different people hawking different wares. Thousands of people pulse and melt around the stalls. On every intersection sits a steel poll lined with floodlights and security cameras. The elevator stops and the decontamination processes ends, perfectly timed. The doors open and you’re assaulted by a hundred different of odors. The air becomes thin from everyone breathing off one filter. You shop here, and you hate it.
The store pipes in soft music while a sales representative stands behind you. He is not being pushy, just waiting to help you with anything you need. He was assigned to you the minute you walked through the doors. The shelves are pristine, very little product actually sits out because everything is custom tailored. You can look around all day and not see a single security camera but you know they are there. You can not even find where the lights are but the room is perfectly lit. You shop here, and you hate it.
Your apartment is called a ‘Efficiency Sub-Loft Studio’ which just means ‘really damn small’. You have a kitchen in your bedroom and your toilet and shower sit next to the couch. Still, these two rooms seem like a mansion compared to your sleeper-pod you rented for the last three years. The windows are barred but you never risk lifting the security cover. Your best furniture is third-hand and the rest is barely above dumpster quality. This is your home, but you’ll move up to someplace nicer soon.
Your condo is called a ‘Single Inhabitant Luxury Living Space’ which means you would never leave if you did not have to. Your massive bedroom has a top of the line sleep-chamber. It allows synaptic projections of the latest video entertainment to be streamed directly into your subconscious while you sleep. Your kitchen is full of appliances equip with the latest Virtual Intelligence upgrades. Even your patio has state of the art laser enforcement grid to protect you from slipping off the rail-less edge. This is your home, but you’ll move up to someplace nicer soon.
The tram is late, as usual. The whole tube smells of piss and shit, just like it has ever since it was deemed more economically viable to route sewer lines through the sub-stations. Everyone around you wears a mask, some just to block the smell and others so they don’t breath in the fumes from leaking gas lines. Finally the tram pulls up and everyone shuffles inside. The car isn’t much better than the tube, most of the seats are broken and the grab bars are missing. It won’t be a problem though because everyone is crammed in so tight they can’t move. It’s not your ideal way to travel, but it’s the one you have.
You arrive at the station and exit your pod directly onto the carrier. You make your way to a full synth-leather recliner with build in heating/cooling unit. You recline and a small video screen slides out from the ceiling and adjusts itself to your optimum viewing distance. The retinal scanners read your eye movements and notice that you are interested in seeing sports scores. A flight attendant checks on you and tells you that should take just over an hour for your flight from New York to Tokyo. You order a drink and see that the Cubs have lost again. You sigh and decide to just take a nap. Your chair, sensing this decision, slides backwards and forms into a small sleep chamber for the duration of your flight. It’s not your ideal way to travel, but it’s the one you have.
What is Signal Zero?
At the end of the day, Signal Zero is a table-top role-playing game. Hundreds of people have written “What is Role-Playing” sections in thousands of different books. I can’t tell you any better than they can, but I’ll give you my spin. If you already know, feel free to skip the next paragraph.
What I can tell you is what a table-top role-playing game means to me. Table-top role-playing is sitting around a table with a handful of your friends playing a game that tells a story. There isn’t any part of that equation that is optional, in my mind. If you’re not at a table, than its something different. If you’re not with your friends, then you’re missing out. If there isn’t a game than you’re just telling a story and if there isn’t a story you’re just rolling dice.
What about the setting of Signal Zero? It’s a dystopian/utopian future where humanity struggles to find the place of artificial augmentations inside a world gone capitalistic and corporate. The majority of the world is filled with massive urban sprawls stretching both horizontal and vertical. The lower you go the more dystopian everything gets while the higher levels are a utopian paradise. Everyone must decide if they want to graft high-tech machines into their flesh or focus on remaining ‘pure’. Governments collapsed and were reborn as corporations. Economically, everything is cheap up front but then you have to pay more to get everything to its full potential.
The tagline I wrote to keep looking back at while I design and write this game is:
“Make Decisions, Get Augments, and Manage Reputations.”
Hopefully you’ll see those principles reflected in both the flavor of the setting and the mechanics of the system.