My name is Felicia, and I am the creator of Breakaway. I've always been interested in world building, history, linguistics, fantasy and science fiction, so after almost 20 years of playing tabletop it was only a matter of time before I made my own game.
On the surface, Breakaway is a fantasy-meets-scifi game with modular parts. Deeper down, it's about exploring what it means when you strip away what people see as 'humanity', and what that could mean. Is humanity how we look, how we act? Is it our culture, our languages? I think a lot of humanity's problems stem from who we see as "like us" and "not like us". Breakaway and the Port City are filled with people that do not look remotely human - even though they really are.
A lot of research went into finding the most interesting looks and abilities from animals, plants, machines and software and turning those into character features. Inspirations range from the intimidating anglerfish to the roadrunner, from C++ to the humble mushroom.
I have to be completely honest, getting as many animals, plants, fungi and so on...wrapping all that into just 6 Sharyshan cultures was a study in compromise. There are so many cool things on this earth, and I wanted to include them all.
For the future, I'm still working on trying to get a podcast going which will cover creating the game, making systems, playing the game (with liveplay sessions), lessons learned and other bits and pieces. Beta is coming to a close very soon (hopefully), and I'm playing around with book layout.
Also, I've included a last-minute selfie because I haven't posted one here before. Inconceivable.