Broken: The Memory of Solaris

Broken Podcasts

Podcast #1

What is Broken?

If the world broke up into pieces, how many people would survive; lucky people who weren’t injured and ended up with some air to breath. Let’s say it’s 1 in a million. With 10 billion people on the planet, that’s still 10 000 survivors. Now add a little magic to keep them alive. That’s Broken.

Broken is not a happy place. It’s you on a rock floating in space with a couple of spells; one for food and the other for air. Comfort is having the third and fourth spell; something for heat and just maybe some kind of illusion for comfort.

I wanted to take a very realistic look at surviving in space. How many plants would you need to provide enough oxygen? How does heat work in space? How long can someone survive unprotected in space – would you freeze or suffocate first? (The answer is suffocate, by a wide margin.) Did you know you can drown in carbon dioxide in a weightless environment?

A lot of these real problems are solved with magic or fantastic steam technology because this is a fantasy setting but mundane solutions are included as much as they can be. Broken is about really truly having nothing, not even a roof over your head or dirt under your feet.

Podcast #2

The History of Broken

My first book was a massive 300 page monster on time travel written in 2001. Impossible to submit, I learned I had to start smaller. So in 2002 I wrote a little 10 page work in a big hurry to create a writing sample which I sent to 75 publishers. One asked me to develop it into a book but went out of business without publishing it. So Broken was written, but unpublished.

I playtested and edited it from time to time, but it sat on my desk for a few years while I worked on other projects. In 2005 I had a gap between projects and took it to The Le Games and talked myself in doing the art and layout. It meant a lot of work. I logged up to 13 hour days and went back to school to learn more about Photoshop and Indesign.

Much of the work was learning how to write the book. Everything from connecting two pages in Indesign to how to create a PDF and format it for Print on Demand through Lulu.com. It would be considerably easier to do it all over again – so I’ve started on the sequels.

Podcast #3

Destroying Solaris and its Future

I don’t reveal what destroyed Solaris. It’s the work of forces beyond the Players and while there are hints the DM’s best course might be to leave it that way, unknown; perhaps the work of the gods, perhaps some natural disaster, perhaps something else.

The future of Solaris lies in expanding some of the more interesting locations and adding new ones. I’m working on two books; Broken: The Lost Book and Broken: The Pipedream.

The moon has plenty of resources. The problem is rampant lycanthropy. The Pipedream is about steam technology and returns to the problems of limited resources. Eventually I would like to visit the Temple of Zakume Pyramid and create an adventure module out of it but that will be a future endevour.

Podcast #4 The Multicorp

Broken is about the survivors of Solaris, a medieval era world that was destroyed. Broken: The Multicorp is an expansion that deals with the world-spanning mega-corporation in the next universe over which looks in on Broken and decides to film their suffering. When that doesn’t prove entertaining enough they start sending people to Broken die in the void.

Multicorp is all the worst traits of big business combined into one entity. They are so large they can cast aside morality in their worship of marketing genius. The rising stars in Multicorp are people so cut throat they can rise up and stand on the backs of the mob clamoring for their blood and thrive in that position. Vor and his Void Survivor show is one such example. Despite his budget and fame, he is just a small part of the overall Multicorp.

Could Multicorp just swoop in and save the survivors of Solaris? Maybe but they never will. Multicorp is amoral but not stupid. Besides the astronomical cost, they are deathly afraid of whatever caused the end of Solaris. As a result Vor and his show are strictly forbidden from bringing anything back from Broken. If a contestant from the show was to be brought back, even the molecules from the food he has eaten locally would have to be removed from his body.

Multicorp is not intended to be a major part of the game unless you Game Master wants it to be. It is just one of many curiosities survivors may encounter.

Mark Charke