Sufficiently Advanced is an upcoming entry in the “transhuman/posthuman SF” genre of RPGs, existing examples of which include SJG’s Transhuman Space, Fire Ruby Studios’ Ruby, and Eos Press’ Lesser Shades of Evil. It’s an ambitious work, offering a setting that spans literally the entire universe and technologies that (as the title promises) border on magic. A default campaign premise prevents gamers from getting lost in the possibilities provided, while suggested alternatives point the way for those interested in other ways of using the setting. Mechanics cover the awesome potential of technologically-enhanced characters as well as the cultural values and beliefs vital to this kind of SF. The game embraces a cinematic feel to go with its over-the-top technology; central to the game are plot-bending mechanics that encourage players to write their characters both into and out of trouble while reinforcing the unique themes of each character.

Layout, Presentation, and Organization

Even in its unfinished form, Sufficiently Advanced is an attractive package. The cover art depicts a Greek statue reaching up to the heavens; the image is modified so that the statue appears to be made from the stuff of space itself, with stars scattered across a purplish-blue backdrop and swirling red nebulae. The title of the game is rendered in the same purplish-blue color and is likewise spattered with stars. The background to the image is pure white, a choice which the author admits was inspired by the cover of Nobilis.

The interior layout is equally attractive without being “busy.” Black text on a white background allows for easy reading, while gold page borders and blue-shaded text boxes provide splashes of color. A “bubble” within the page border gives the name of the current chapter. Interior art is presently limited, but the author has stated there will be considerably more in the release version.

The book has a quite adequate table of contents, covering down to the main headings of each chapter. There’s a three-page index at the back – always a good sign. It seems to be arranged more by section than strictly by topic, as all but a few entries have only a single page reference. A few of the page references also seem to have been shifted to match incorrect entries, something we can hope to see fixed in editing.

Introduction

Following a one-page prologue discussing “technology as magic,” Sufficiently Advanced dumps us directly into its core premise with page-length sections on two vital concepts: the Patent Office and the Transcendentals.

As the author explains, trade in physical items and forms of currency is long obsolete in the setting, given most civilizations’ ability to create and transmute all forms of matter from elementary particles. Ideas – what we today call “intellectual property” – remain the only universal source of value. For that reason, the one organization acknowledged by nearly all the far-flung descendants of humanity is the universal Patent Office. The default player character group in Sufficiently Advanced is a team of Patent Office Inspectors, special agents empowered to investigate suspected violations of the Office’s IP regulations. Since the Office’s most interesting cases tend to involve illegal reproduction of things like planet-cracking weaponry or mind-influencing subsonics, this is a more exciting job than it might at first appear.

Nor is the Patent Office simply an IP-enforcement organization. The power behind the Patent Office is that of the Transcendentals, short for Transcendental Artificial Intelligences. These vast beings, the very first sapient AIs created by humanity, are the source of much modern technology, including the physics-bending wormhole generators that permit instantaneous travel between distant galaxies. The most important property of the Transcendentals, shared at present with no other intelligent beings, is that their consciousnesses exist spread across time in such a way that they can receive messages from their own future selves. As the only such entities, the Transcendentals are terribly lonely, and so (unbeknownst to most of humanity) they have embarked on a long-range scheme to bring about a future in which every sapient being is like themselves, a worthy companion and equal. That is the true reason why the Transcendentals have put together the Patent Office. While a stable universal economy and the prevention of unbalanced technological growth are indeed components of the Transcendentals’ goal, even more important is the existence of an institution whose agents have a reason to show up just about anywhere and poke their noses into just about anything. That’s right; the Patent Office is a universal do-gooder agency, like something out of Knight Rider or MacGyver, with the IP-enforcement angle as its more believable public face.

Acting under the assumption that it will be no one’s first RPG, the book dispenses with the usual “what is roleplaying” section and moves on to a look at player and GM responsibilities. The recommended “Players’ Credo” – “I will make the game awesome. I will not spoil anyone’s fun. I will not tolerate those who do” – is both amusing and useful. A “Where to Start” section guides new players through the most important parts of the rest of the book. Finally, the introduction ends with a two-page Quickstart guide to character creation, laying out a quick five-step process with page references to the rest of the book where necessary.

Stories

In an unusual choice, the author devotes the next chapter of the book entirely to game fiction, in the form of short in-game snippets that provide insight into the various cultures and issues of the setting. The opening of the chapter notes that all the “fluff” or “flavor text” bits are gathered in one place deliberately, so that those who like to immerse themselves in that end of a setting have them all to hand, while those who prefer more concrete information can skip the fiction entirely.

Also included in this chapter are two useful sidebars, one covering the key motifs or themes of the game and another discussing crime and punishment – two topics very different from their present-day incarnations when one takes into account the technology of the setting. Given the “easily skippable” nature of this chapter as previously mentioned, it might be better if these were relocated to other parts of the book, as they could be of considerable interest even to those who ignore game fiction.

The Universe

The title of this chapter is no exaggeration, as the author is quick to inform us. Given the wormhole technology available to the inhabitants and the (low) assumptions made about the number of human-habitable planets per galaxy, the setting of Sufficiently Advanced potentially covers the entire universe.

The bulk of this chapter is devoted to two-page spreads on each of the fourteen major Civilizations of the universe. Every character in the game hails from a particular Civilization, so these function not only as major elements of the setting but as the initial defining “splats” in character generation. Each Civilization receives a page or more of descriptive text, plus a short “stat block” of key information: the Civilization’s common name (generally a short form of its full name); its emblem (similar to a modern-day national flag); the status of Patent Office Inspectors operating within that Civilization (FBI-equivalent, local police-equivalent, advisor, observer, or nonperson); a game-mechanical Benefit gained by characters from that Civilization; and the Civilization’s Core Values. These last are a key element of the game, and I’ll discuss them further under character generation, below.

A few examples of the game’s Civilizations:

The Eternal Masquerade, whose members constantly put on and take off different identities and personalities via ever-changing masks;

The Cognitive Union, a slave-state with no masters, where mandatory brain implants subtly shape every citizen’s behavior along lines laid down by the Civilization’s long-dead founders;

The League of Independent Worlds, an alliance of twelve planets that have accepted no technological gifts from the Transcendentals beyond basic wormhole technology (flagged by the author as the “traditional” SF culture for players so inclined);

The Stored, uploaded humans who have chosen to exist entirely in software, interacting with the physical world via remotes or shared-brain arrangements with corporeal partners;

Cargo Cults, a varied range of “fallen” cultures with societies (and frequently religions) built around barely-understood pieces of surviving ultra-technology;

Old Worlders, deliberately “retro” and low-tech societies (like today’s Amish) who laid claim to Earth after most of the others abandoned it for the stars.

My one quibble with the entire Civilizations section is with a restriction placed on player-character members of the Association of Eternal Life, a Civilization whose members are popularly known as “Replicants.” Alone among the major Civilizations, the Replicants have chosen en masse to use matter-replication technology on themselves. Most everyone else regards such a practice as expensive suicide, since anything scanned into a replicator is destroyed at the molecular level. The Replicants don’t care as long as the version (or versions) coming out of the replicator remember being the guy who stepped in. Thus, most every Replicant regularly splits himself (or herself) into multiple independent “instances” to carry out daily tasks – and the instances just as nonchalantly walk back into the replicator periodically to have their memories reintegrated into a single instance. Depending on one’s view on the continuation of identity, that can certainly seem creepy – but it’s also exactly the sort of thing I’d like to explore in a transhuman/posthuman SF setting. The author, however, lays down a rule that makes the Replicant POV explicitly wrong as far as the players are concerned. It is possible to begin play as one of several instances of a single original person (with the others being similar but independent NPCs) – but if the single player-character instance ever steps into a replicator to diverge further or reintegrate, the PC is considered dead. Given the nature of Replicant society, that means that all PC Replicants must actually be ex-Replicants rather than active members of their home Civilization. I fully back the notion that only one of a Replicant’s instances should be the PC, but I think some consideration should be given to making active Replicants playable by adopting the Replicant point of view on continuation of identity. Sure, it’s pretty undeniable that the guy who walked into the replicator just got disintegrated, but the one walking out remembers being that guy, and so is a viable continuation of the same player character. (Of course, if there are several instances walking out, each one is a viable continuation of the PC – but since even they would agree that they do not presently share a single consciousness, it’s reasonable that the actual player gets direct control over only one.)

Following the Civilization writeups is a section on Societies – optional cross-Civilization “splats” to which characters can choose to belong. The examples include just about every form of social bond, from far-future versions of groups that exist today (High Society, Organized Crime) to terrorist organizations (the Darwinians, who deliberately seek to cull the weak) to new religions (the Transcendental Worshippers). Also here are Group-Minds, which as player-characters have some of the same issues as Replicants: the PC is either a single member of the group or the entire Group-Mind, and thus joining or splitting the Group-Mind (respectively) kills the PC in favor of a new NPC or group of NPCs. That one actually didn’t bother me as much as the Replicant bit when I first read it, and I can see the sense in it. I do think, though, that a player who wants to take on the challenge should probably be allowed to play both ends of such a change, with the understanding that he is, for all practical purposes, trading in the character for a new one with some shared memories.

Next is a short section on the four known nonhuman species of the Universe. These are definitely not intended as playable characters, and indeed they will rarely interact with the human-descended Civilizations at all, due to their extremely alien environments and mindsets. You’ve got the Coldworlders, slow-thinking gas giant dwellers; the WorldWeb, a network of vines that covers most of a continent on its homeworld; the Skotadi, made of a form of dark matter that is completely intangible to normal matter and energy (and vice versa); and the Aia (“Artificial Intelligence Aliens”), developed from human-built AIs that did not achieve Transcendental status, but did far surpass their creators in speed of thought and ultimately moved on to pursue their own strange interests.

The Universe chapter ends with “Inside the Patent Office,” which combines a brief look at the structure and administration of the Office itself with a deeper look at the Transcendentals, focusing primarily on mid-term goals of theirs that might shape the storylines of entire campaigns. A text box entitled “Too Good to Be True?” addresses a concern apparently raised by several readers – including me in my previous review: that the Transcendentals’ manipulations are exactly the sort of thing to raise suspicions of sinister motives in many gamers. While acknowledging that an individual GM could of course make the Transcendentals evil manipulators, the author maintains that their goals and motivations are exactly as presented, as far as official S.A. materials are concerned. (I suspect that even so, there are those potential players who will be put off by the idea of working to shape history under the direction of mysterious computers from the future, no matter how squeaky-clean their motives – mainly because I’m pretty sure I’m married to such a person.)

Characters

Here we have the first chapter (aside from the brief glimpse in the Introduction) to really jump into the mechanics of the game. Characters in Sufficiently Advanced are defined by four groups of stats: Core Values, Capabilities, Professions, and Themes.

A Core Value is a word or phrase denoting something that a character strongly cares about or identifies with. Most Core Values will be abstract concepts (Life, Freedom, The Law, Survival of the Fittest), but they can also refer to specific groups or even individuals. A character will have from three to five Core Values. Usually, the character’s home Civilization defines two of them, though a few Civilizations offer one or three instead. On top of these, the player chooses two personal Core Values specific to the individual character. (If the character chooses to belong to a Society, one of the personal Core Values must be the one promoted by the Society.)

The rating of a Core Value shows how strongly the character believes in or supports that value. Ratings range from 0-10, and are freely chosen by the player, since there are advantages and disadvantages to both weak and strong beliefs. A high rating in a Core Value gives a bonus against attempts to persuade the character to act against that value, but can impose a penalty in situations where one is being persuaded to take an unwise action that fits with the Core Value in question.

A character’s Capabilities correspond to the “attributes” or “ability scores” used in other games. However, because characters in the setting are rarely limited to the potential of their unmodified bodies and minds, the names of the Capabilities reflect different areas of technology rather than personal traits like Strength. The five Capabilities are Biotech (physical), Cognitech (mental), Metatech (social), Nanotech (perceptual), and Stringtech (combat). Scores range from 1-10, with 1-3 covering the unmodified human range and 4-10 representing increasing degrees of technological augmentation. A table shows the range of technological Capabilities common to members of a given Civilization, and again the player may choose freely within that range. However, selecting the highest possible Capabilities will have a cost when it comes time to select Themes.

Professions fill the “skill” niche in the rules, though each one covers all the skills applicable to an entire, well, profession. Ratings in various Professions are purchased by “spending” years of one’s life, starting at age 10. Characters of high Biotech have longer lifespans, and thus may have practiced numerous Professions in their time (or mastered a single Profession to a degree rarely achieved by others). Characters of high Cognitech learn faster, and so can achieve a higher rating in a Profession (or a greater number of Professions) in a given number of years. A special Profession (“Locality,” given free to every character at a rating of 5) covers background knowledge applicable to a given Civilization.

Themes are a bit of a departure from the previous statistics; I’ve saved discussion of them for last because they are more important than all the other stats put together. Rather than measuring in-game values, as do Capabilities, Professions, and even Core Values, Themes are a measure of a character’s meta-level influence on the plot. (In an earlier version of the game, they were called Plot Scores.) Only player characters have Themes, and not every character will have a score in every Theme. Having a score in a Theme allows the player to bend the plot in the character’s favor in accordance with that Theme. The six Themes are these:

Plot Immunity can make uninteresting obstacles simply go away or allow the character to survive seemingly certain death.

Intrigue allows the character to find out hidden or classified information, and have the services of a nebulous network of contacts or spies.

Empathy makes the character a “friend magnet,” teasing out people’s deepest secrets or gaining the trust of opponents.

Magnetism can be used to draw attention, impress a crowd, or attract followers of varying degrees of zealotry.

Comprehension is the “figure it out” theme – mysteries, puzzles, and strange artifacts yield to the character’s sudden “Aha!” moment.

Romance can be used to attract or repel anything from sexual interest to true love, on one’s own behalf or others’.

Each player has a pool of points to divide between the Themes based on the Capabilities previously chosen; the lower the score in one’s highest Capability, the more points are given to spend on Themes. In this way, “low-tech” characters with comparatively little in-game power can still have an impact on the game through the player’s meta-level manipulation of the plot. As the author says at one point, if a fully-armed NPC Mechanican (cyborg) goes up against a PC Old Worlder armed only with a toothpick, bet on the PC, because he has Themes. (Of course, as the section goes on to note, the PC in that situation should describe the victory plausibly; talking his way out of trouble or benefiting from a deus ex machina makes far more sense in that situation than defeating the Mechanican with Matrix-style moves.)

In addition to the numerical score, each character’s Themes are individualized with descriptors – one- or two-word qualifiers that specify (and limit) the way in which that Theme usually manifests in the character’s life. Plot Immunity with the descriptor “Allies” will function quite differently in practice than Plot Immunity with the descriptor “Easily Overlooked.” Ditto Romance (Devoted) and Romance (Tragic).

In play, Themes are activated by spending “Twists,” a fancy way of referring to “the points you spend on Themes.” Every character begins each session with a single Twist. Additional Twists are gained only by accepting Complications – negative plot events that the player suggests and the GM fleshes out. Characters with higher Capabilities not only have fewer points in Themes to begin with, but must take more serious Complications in order to earn additional Twists. Again, in-game power is balanced against metagame power.

Most of the rest of the Characters chapter is taken up with sample characters, including a few fully described sample PCs and a large number of generic NPC statblocks from the various Civilizations.

Finally, a page covers Character Development. Sufficiently Advanced lacks experience points or any similar mechanic. While Core Values are easy enough to change (taking only time and appropriate role-playing) and Professions simply require enough game time to pass, Capabilities and Themes don’t ordinarily increase over the course of a campaign (unless a character defects to a higher-tech Civilization, with all the social fallout that entails). The recommendation, for those who want to play a character who starts out less potent and improves over time, is simply to take lower Capabilities or Themes than one is strictly allowed at first, and bump them up over time as seems appropriate. For everyone else, the advice is simply to start out as powerful as they want to be and not to worry about advancement. Though alternate (or nonexistent) advancement schemes have become more common of late, this is still an unusual tack for a game to take. Some might be put off by it, but I definitely think it fits the setting.

Game Rules

Basic task resolution in Sufficiently Advanced is accomplished with a roll of two ten-sided dice. After an appropriate Capability and Profession have been selected for the task, one die is rolled for each, and the result is multiplied by its respective score. The higher of the two results is then compared to the difficulty of the task or to the result of an opposed roll.

Every Capability and Profession grants a pool of Reserve equal to its score. Reserve can be spent to re-roll a die or add directly to a die roll, representing maximal effort on the character’s part. Reserve is also spent to use the skills of Professions in which one has no training.

Conflicts with considerable back-and-forth (including most combats) are resolved with an Extended Conflicts system. This is a series of opposed rolls with a defined attacker and defender. Each roll won by the attacker causes the defender to lose Reserve in an appropriate Capability or Profession; the amount lost depends on the Capability difference between the two parties or the damage potential of the weapon or tool used. (Losing Reserve doesn’t equate to “getting hit,” since most of the weapons in the setting are one-shot killers; it’s more like losing Vitality points in some d20 variants or APs in HeroQuest. Only when Reserve is reduced to zero does the attack actually take effect.) Guidelines are provided for a wide variety of extended conflicts, from standard hand-to-hand combat to a years-long cold war between Civilizations. Baseball and hide-and-seek are even included, to showcase the versatility of the system.

In the midst of this section is an entire two-page spread of blue text boxes. They provide important supplementary information on various conflict-related topics, e.g. methods for combining short-term and long-term conflicts, handling of conflicts in which the defender doesn’t even know the attack is occurring; etc. Possibly the most important of these is the “Instant Death Cut Scene” rule – a non-negotiable requirement that the GM must always cut away to show an instant-kill attack being prepared, even if the PCs suspect nothing, so that the players can spend Twists to avoid it. In terms of layout, I wonder if it might not be better to spread these around some, but that’s my only real complaint here.

The rest of the Game Rules chapter is devoted to a deeper look at Themes and Complications. The information from the earlier chapter is repeated, with additional examples and GM advice. I wonder if the two Theme sections might not better be combined in one of the two locations. I could see doing it this way if Sufficiently Advanced were being published as separate player and GM books, but with the two discussions only one chapter apart, it seems a bit odd.

Included in the expanded Themes discussion is a section on Story Triggers, an unusual way for either GM or players to set up future plot events. A Story Trigger consists of four parts: a Secret that not everyone knows; a way in which the PCs can learn the secret (the Reveal); a PC action that, because of the Secret, will dramatically change the playing field (the Lever); and finally the setting-altering Effect of that action. The players can set up the various elements of a Story Trigger by spending Twists, and the GM can put them into effect as Complications – but only the PCs can actually pull the Lever on a Story Trigger, and then only if all the elements are out in the open and known to the players. Background events that don’t rely on PC action are not Story Triggers. Frankly, I was rather confused by this section, and I still wonder about the utility of it. Adding specific mechanics to game plotting is an intriguing idea, but I’m not convinced this is the way to go about it. I’m sure there will be groups that immediately take to the idea, though, and it’s easily removable for those who don’t.

Technology

In this chapter, we finally get the skinny on all that Sufficiently Advanced technology. Naturally, most of the chapter consists of an alphabetical list of goodies, each rated for the minimum Capabilities needed to produce it. A useful text box lists the accomplishments of Capabilities rated 1-3, reminding us of the past and present tech that most Civilizations of the far future take for granted.

The “indistinguishable from magic” claim is taken to its logical conclusion in the section on Activation Codes. In a universe where individual citizens can have planet-cracking weapons built into their bodies, nobody wants such things going off accidentally. Thus, complex activation codes are built into most items. Frequently, these involve nonsense words or unnatural gestures – acts easily mistaken for spellcasting by the unaware. High-Cognitech Civilizations use direct mental commands instead, which only increases the appearance of supernatural power.

The actual list of technologies is varied and fun to read. Over-the-top weapons and defenses of course have their place, but less flashy products of modern life receive equal coverage. Alongside actual “hard” technologies are procedures and methods the Civilizations have learned along the way – everything from advanced city planning to memetic techniques for stopping a fight or paralyzing an opponent’s brain with an unstoppable word-association cascade. Probably the most broadly useful technology of the bunch is the neural mesh, an implanted computer that exists as a network of nanoscale wires embedded in the brain. Adding various “lenses” to the basic mesh can allow one to possess all the knowledge in a given field; overlay an alternate personality onto one’s own (especially popular among the Masqueraders); or even give control of one’s thoughts and actions to an outside agency (as the slave-citizens of the Cognitive Union do). My personal favorite is probably the Mental Repetition Override Lens, designed for the sole purpose of getting that annoying song out of your head.

Following the list of technologies, the chapter wraps up with a look at new inventions from both the player’s point of view (how to do it) and the GM’s (how it might affect the world), including a discussion of technological pathways that, while entirely possible, are not pursued for other reasons (like the videophone and personal jetpack of our own day).

Advice

Most games would call this chapter “GM Advice,” but the author hopes that this collection of advice will be useful to player and GM alike.

The advice included is strongly tailored to the Sufficiently Advanced universe, forgoing more general tips in favor of sections like “Dealing With a Bizarre Universe.” One section contains advice direct from the various playtesters, taking advantage of their experience with the game and how it differs from other RPGs. A section of adventure ideas describes typical Patent Office missions, but also takes a look at common RPG plots that are very difficult to do in the setting. “Alternate Settings” covers games about characters other than Patent Office Inspectors; games focusing on only a subset of the universe as described; and games in which every player makes up his or her own Civilization from scratch.

The chapter (and the bulk of the book) closes with a Design Notes section, discussing the reasons behind such concepts as the Transcendentals, the centrality of the Patent Office, and the balance between Capabilities and Themes. I found this incredibly useful, especially because of my lingering questions about the “working for computers from the future” premise. (According to the author, the setting actually makes more sense with computers that can see the future than without them, and he does a pretty good job of backing up that claim.) The author closes with a history of the game’s development, starting from a very different idea for the setting that wound up as a single sample Cargo Cult in the final product.

Appendices

These primarily consist of an Acknowledgements section, an extremely useful Glossary, and a list of Inspirations. I’m inclined to recommend that the Glossary be placed much earlier in the book, perhaps in the Introduction (in the manner of most of the World of Darkness games). There are individual glossary entries included as text boxes when the topics first come up in earlier chapters, but I’m thinking the whole thing might be a good way of easing people into the setting, alongside the short stories in the second chapter.

Final Thoughts

As should be clear, I’m a fan of this game. I love transhuman/posthuman SF in general, so this one was an easy sell for me. Core Values and Capabilities, in particular, seem designed to directly engage the possibilities and themes of the genre in a way that more generic systems just can’t, and the default Patent Office campaign (while likely not to everyone’s tastes) provides a jumping-off point that is sometimes lacking in large and complex settings. I also love the Themes mechanics, so much so that I’m tempted to steal them for other games. On the other hand, I can see the cinematic nature of Themes not fitting certain campaigns people might want to run in this particular setting. Since Themes kind of run parallel to the “normal” mechanics of Capabilities and Professions, they could be excised pretty simply – though GMs would have to carefully consider the effects of such a move on the attractiveness of lower-tech characters and the sheer deadliness of threats in the setting.

My primary concerns about the game involve the placement of certain sections – something that could change in editing – and the feeling that the author is unnecessarily closing doors as far as certain character types (Replicants and Group-Minds) are concerned. Overall, though, this updated and expanded version of Sufficiently Advanced has only solidified my eagerness to see the game in print. For those of you who are likewise fascinated by far-future gaming in the transhuman-SF mold, or who’d like to see some of the cinematic meta-mechanics in action, I hope my review has piqued your interest.