New Players Guide

"A streak of green light across the sky lasted no more than a moment and was gone just as suddenly as it had appeared, but its impact has left a legacy on my people. Our scientists were fascinated and tried to isolate what it could mean. Our artists were inspired, and an entire art form, Beaconism, arose, marked by momentary invocations of green light. Great Theologians explained the symbol as a sign from the Deities, some considering it an ill omen, yet others claimed it was the promised land. Politicians muddled the debate even more, controlling significant investments in identifying this phenomenon. In the end, none of the above enabled our great flight to the sector but the acceptance of our own planet's demise and the lure of the promise of a new place to establish our community. And now, after a long journey, we arrived only to discover just how many people had arrived first."
 * ~ First-hand account of the Beacon Activation from initial arrival to Beacon Space

Welcome to Beacon Space. We're glad you've joined us. This wiki page aims to summarize the information you likely want to know about the structure of the Game and World Building community. If you have any questions feel free to ask on Discord or on the discussion page.

Layers of the Game
Beacon Space is a sector constructed of multiple meta-layers to create an engaging world-building community around a central board game. In addition to the core Faction Turn, a tabletop role-playing game is run in the sector via the world of the Penumbra, where Agents interact with the world below the Factions, exploring the morally grey operations they undertake. Adjacent too these two organization-run events, the community constantly creates new lore and engages in scenes with their own characters.

Faction Turn
A custom version of the Stars Without Numbers Faction Turn System, designed for a multiplayer experience through Faction membership on Discord. Modifications to the system evolved from a playtest into what is used by the community today. While the complete rules are long, the basics are simple. Each Turn, approximately once a month, Factions submit a Turn Slate, which contains all the actions the Faction takes for a given turn. These are then processed by the Game Facilitator, who runs through the actions on the Faction Turn Spreadsheet in a Twitch stream.

This meta-layer game provides the impetuous behind lore building in Beacon Space, fleshing out the sector through the whims and machinations of the factions involved. The Facturn also impacts the structure of the Discord, limiting individuals from changing their Faction via Faction Tag in the Discord to once-per-turn. Such times of change are announced in advance and always occur for at least 48 hours after the Faction Turn Stream. The best way to learn the game is by participating in a Faction and helping steer its course. All factions are welcoming to guide those interested in learning the game! For more details check out Faction Turn.

Free Agents - Table Top Role Playing Game
Free Agents are individuals who have, in one way or another, slipped through the cracks of regular society. They live paycheque to paycheque, score to score, mission to mission, operating under the couch cushions where nobody wants to look. Inspired heavily by Shadowrun, Blades in the Dark, and the heist/organized crime genre in general, they band together to achieve goals that they could not accomplish individually. The TTRPG, based around the Cypher System, is framed as an episodic TV show where each episode is a “complete” show, but questions may be left unanswered for future crews to discover.

More details can be found by joining the ‘Free Agent’ role on Discord, which will give you access to channels used to organize the game, including scheduling, job posts, and other inter-agent discussion spaces. The game is run in a shared Roll20 instance, and audio is available over a Discord stage channel for other community members to listen in to the active sessions.

Lore Writing
As a component of the game, Factions develop fictional positioning to better describe the sector and/or themselves. This lore takes a variety of forms however ideally resolves into either (1) articles on this wiki that expand the known fiction or (2) propaganda or missives for the Beacon Space Tonight lore stream. While Factions differ in how their process works all follow a similar strategy of developing documents in-house discussing in Discord. After collaboration most factions vote (either informally or formally) on accepting the lore before the document is conferred to the wiki. This process can mean that Factions have elements of themselves defined in information not on the Wiki, however such internal lore should be conferred to the wiki for public consumption if you want others to know the cool facts about yourself!

Role Playing
As a component of Lore Writing many individuals within Factions will write in-fiction scenes through a collaborative role play experience. These stories may or may not involve dice rolls but they allow exploration of the fiction at the individual's scale rather than the bird's eye-view of a Faction. If you're new to role playing but want to give it a try, you should join the always open Cacti Oasis Bar Scene as the pinned thread in the beacon-rp discussion forum on Discord.

Factions
Factions populate the world of Beacon Space and contain members on Discord who actively contribute to the turn slate submitted for the Faction Turn, write lore, and develop their fictional position. As individuals, members can become Free Agents joining the world of the Penumbra or engage in Role Play, developing the world through scenes. Each Faction has provided a pitch below granting an overview of their lore and links to additional reading.