0.9.5 and the project outline

People of Earth:

A look behind the scenes! This game began as a personal use hacks and houserules and errata and experiments, but once I retooled almost ALL of the stats in Cepheus Quantum (Revised), I recognized I was building my own game. I'm very grateful to Stellagama Publishing for licensing CQ with the Creative Commons 4.0 license that Stars Eternal also uses.

With the shift to becoming a publicly-distributed project, different things are coming into focus. Some of these are surprising to me! For example: as a tabletop gamer, I think immersion is incredibly important, and a little bit goes a very long way. Think of how iconic and important the exposition in title sequences, posters, and trailers is in mass media sci-fi. The easiest place to start is to pick a theme song to go with the game. A generic game needs this even more. For example, "Umthandazo (Radio Edit)" is an Afro House track with elements that could be really evocative for a particular kind of moody, grim sci-fi game with hopeful elements...whereas another contender I found, Johnny "Guitar" Watson's single "Space Guitar" (1954) would be a hell of a backbeat for totally retro, very party on the flying saucer, and very different game.

You can play either with Stars Eternal.

This is the kind of challenge -- trying to make a very evokative game, but without heavily relying on specific settings and stories. This is meant to be a game that remixes and blends from across all of sci-fi fandom -- fandom, not media corps -- allowing you to own the galaxy you put together.

So I'm giving up trying to assign a theme song to Stars Eternal; this is something the GM *needs* to do and it will go into the GM kit, coming up after SE:JDR First Edition is complete. Choosing between the game *I* want to play and the game I want to give to *everyone* is a really interesting balancing act.

The complete First Edition of Stars Eternal will consist of:

• 16-page A5 zine, printable in color or black and white. (The game is at its page limit and is now being revised to completion.)
• Basic character sheet on the back page of the zine (currently an advanced character sheet is being used as a placeholder).
• Equipment and other tables on the inside front and back cover, printable as a single A4 page suitable for a GM screen insert or a player handout.
• Full color A4 outside front/back cover illustration (no AI; looking for artists currently).