A (Very) Brief Guide to Making a Quantum Index

The quantum index (Q-dex) is a classification system for realities, or Quantum Zones (Q-zones). In its most basic form, the Q-dex describes just two things: how technology works in a Q-zone, and how magic works in a Q-zone. Technology and magic are classified into twelve basic types each. A particular Q-zone uses exactly one type of technology and one type of magic. Here are the types of technology and magic:

Note that I just made up the descriptions given here based on what I've read in the RPG beta rules and on the listserve. Individual players may have slightly different interpretations, but I believe that this captures the gist of things.

It can be fun to pick a technology/magic combination at random, and try to imagine what the resulting reality would be like; a few people have even come up with the idea for an empire this way. But most players have already created an empire, and want to figure out how it fits into the Q-dex scheme. While doing this, remember that the descriptions given above are not absolute. The categories are meant to be fairly broad, with lots of individual variations allowed. Just try to find the one that best matches the way your empire's particular reality works. If you've invented something entirely novel, there is another category not shown, for both technology and magic, called "abberant". Zones which are labled abberant are likely to be really, really, wierd, so do your best to figure out which category your empire might fit into before deciding on abberant.

So at this point a Q-dex might look like this: Astrological/Golem. If you haven't already noticed, technology always goes before magic.

The tables here are not just in any random order. The basic idea is that technology and magic designed for one zone won't work quite as well in another. The tables are supposed to be ordered in such a way that techs and magics which work in similar ways are closer to each other. The tables also wrap around, so Biological technology would work quite well in either Biomass or Acid zones, but quite poorly in an Etheric zone. Technology and magic are considered independantly. Thus, theoretically, if a ship which used both technology and magic from an Energy Flow/Weave zone moved into an Atomic/Thaumaturgical zone the technological parts of the ship would be cripled, but the magical parts would be left only slightly worse off.

One of the most common extensions to this system is to give a rating describing how "powerful" technology and magic are in a Q-zone. This isn't necessarily meant to convey the "flash-bang" potential of technology or magic, but rather of how many things can be done using technology or magic. In a high power technological zone, practically anything can be done with technology, from space travel to medicine to virtual reality entertainment. In a low power magic zone, magicians can do only one or two things with magic, but they might be able to do those one or two things really well (like Tim, of Monty Python fame, who could only blow things up, but was able to blow up mountains just by pointing at them). The choice of just what can be done with magic or technology is left up to the player. For this reason I prefer not to use a numerical scale for this rating (e.g. a number from 1 to 100, or 0 to 9), but instead just using "low", "medium", "high", or similar adjectives.

So now a Q-dex might look like this: low tech/high magic, Biomass/Spirit.

One neat trick you can use with this system is to assign a medium power rating to both magic and technology, but have them do entirely different things. So space drives and communications might be based on technology, while weapons and life support are based entirely on magic. Another thing you can do is assign a very low rating to either technology or magic if it is not used in your empire (Earth would be an example of an empire where magic is unknown. The technology is, of course, Atomic).

For the Advanced Player

To make your Q-dex even more precise, you can define how similar your technology and magic is to the other types. The usual way to do this is to pick a number between 1 and 100, where a number close to 1 indicates similarity to the table entry above, a number close to 100 indicates similarity to the table entry below, and a number close to 50 indicates no bias either way. Example: a zone that uses Life Force magic is assigned a similarity rating of 15. This indicates that magic in this zone, although still druidic, places less emphasis on Theistic styles of magic (Gaia, worshipping a goddess of nature, etc.) than average. Instead, magic in this zone tends to be about personal control and acting in harmony with nature, somewhat like Willpower. Note that this example zone still has Life Force style magic, no matter what similarity rating is assigned.

Now a Q-dex might look like this: high tech/medium magic, Elemental(93)/Extraction(44)

Using this system players can get an even better idea of how well their magic and technology will level into each other's Quantum Zones. For example, without a similarity rating an Atomic tech zone and a Primal Clay tech zone would be two zone types apart (where 0 makes for almost perfect leveling and 6 almost guarantees failure). But if they were both assigned similarity ratings, they could be as far apart as 2.99 zone types with Atomic(1) and Primal Clay(100), or as near as 1.01 zone types with Atomic(100) and Primal Clay(1). Also, players whose empires have the same type of technology or magic (such as Atomic tech, the most common type of technology) should find similarity ratings usefull in defining how well technology or magic levels into each other's empires.

You may have run accross even more complicated guides to Q-dex creation, using many more fields of information and condensing everything into an incomprehensible string of numbers and letters. You're free to use this system if you wish, although many newbies (and even some long-time players) won't understand the result. The simplified version shown here is what most players want to know when they ask what your Q-dex is. You can still provide all the other information, but, IMHO, it would be better to put it into a more readable format, like this one. Also, these systems often mix information about a Q-zone (such as information about the severity of quantum weather) with information about the empire found in that Q-zone (such as the infamous life-forms code). I strongly advise the separation of these two types of information, since a Q-zone can contain more than one empire, and an empire can span more than one Q-zone.