5 Minutes into the Future - Issue 4 - NextMind Interface

Horizon scanning real tech for your game

Join us Five Minutes into the Future and see what your game could be like!

“Top notch... Solid, clear and extremely cool.” Meguey Baker (Lumpley Games, co-creator of Apocalypse World) about issue 1 of 5MF.

“I highly recommend checking it out… great work and it's great to see more awesome sci-fi!” Gunnar Roxen (creator of Broken Shield) about issue 3 of 5MF.

What is Five Minutes into the Future? (5MF)

5MF is a zine. We scan the horizon for real-world cutting edge technologies in development right now. Each issue will present one piece of nu-tech and some ways that you can use it in your roleplaying games.

This Issue: The NextMind Interface

Issue 4 features NextMind, a wearable brain-computer interface that allows you to control computer programs, games and more with your mind. By detecting brainwaves from the occipital lobe NextMind knows what you are looking at and can activate all sorts of programming.

Inside you’ll find how the technology works in real life, plus lots of setting ideas, including;

• The Con Game – We explore how the interface creates secure 'mindprint' biometric locks, and how con artists and thieves get around it.

• MechaMind - We look at what it takes to control a WarMech through the interface, hint - crazy strong emotions or serious drugs. The future of warfare is big robots, druggies, psychos and misfits.

• The Gifted – We look at gamers who use the interface to train their brains to think differently to beat their game of choice... and develop psychic powers in the process. And how a shady game development company tries to weaponise them for its own devious ends.

• Does a Poem Dream in Verses - The new internet of virtual environments, or 'verses' (called the Poem) are created by Dreamers who use the interface to gamify every aspect of modern life from banking and movie watching to business and hacking.

• Terrors of the Id - The brain-computer interface picks up all our darkest thoughts and fears and puts them on the net, causing dark doppelganger reflections of us to arise like computer viruses that stalk us and twist everything we try to do.

• Editable Spies - We look at how spies can be made from anyone into anything by uploading personas, skills and memories using a brain-computer interface.

• In Spaaaaaaace - In the future, the interface helps special areas of the brain develop that are sensitive to exotic matter, and help people navigate Einstein-Rosen bridges (wormholes in space-time) to achieve humanity's first true interstellar travel.

And lots more!

With added crunch for using the technology in your:

• 5e D20,
• Fate,
• HexDNA, and
• The Veil (Powered by the Apocalypse) games.

Other Issues of 5MF

Check out our other 5MF issues about real technologies and how to use them in your games:

Issue 1 - the Photosheet - a golden coloured sheet that, with no wires, uses just sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to produce liquid fuel.

Issue 2 - the Dream Incubator - a sensor and app that can add themes to and manipulate your dreams.

Issue 3 - Shape Memory Material - a textile that can be folded into any shape, but when hydrated will transform into other complex shapes.

Most of 5MF is system neutral. We present ideas to inspire you, suitable for a variety of modern and near future genres, including:

• modern,
• heist, 
• espionage,
• technoir,
• near future,
• superhero,
• cyberpunk,
• modern horror,
• hard sci-fi, and
• (post)-apocalyptic.

Join us as we explore what is just 5 minutes into the future.