tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44186865993479147452024-03-19T04:53:02.668-07:00four letters at randomSteve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.comBlogger256125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-27243916951832126142024-03-18T09:09:00.000-07:002024-03-18T09:09:58.156-07:00Airecon 2024<p>Last weekend, I was at AireCon 2024, the games convention in Harrogate’s convention centre.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD6XRwvg-I0RkRBb0sLrS5S5RZDNxboLCLNUFYR5zS8_T3aTdOZXhv1d512SwbdhkapI9O3jJq6u2Kma4ej3XIYXyN356MFGSbTYkhbFp3om89rkcmKB7x1agrJfFj4evMJ0bUi9_12uhCQ5-E-AQk8ixeCqhwXGQ_6ymZOXQhrl9G0C8U_nUxwd2aGZw/s4164/IMG_20240317_171725322.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2343" data-original-width="4164" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD6XRwvg-I0RkRBb0sLrS5S5RZDNxboLCLNUFYR5zS8_T3aTdOZXhv1d512SwbdhkapI9O3jJq6u2Kma4ej3XIYXyN356MFGSbTYkhbFp3om89rkcmKB7x1agrJfFj4evMJ0bUi9_12uhCQ5-E-AQk8ixeCqhwXGQ_6ymZOXQhrl9G0C8U_nUxwd2aGZw/w400-h225/IMG_20240317_171725322.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>AireCon is lovely. There’s a great mix of RPGs, board games and other activities and a lovely, friendly atmosphere. I was there Friday, Saturday and Sunday.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Friday</h3><p>Friday was RPG day for me. I ran three RPGs (enough to get me a weekend pass). I ran <b><i>Hillfolk</i></b> (DramaSystem), <b><i>Hazelwood Abbey</i></b> (DramaSystem) and <i>In Whom We Trust</i> (<b><i>Cthulhu Dark</i></b>).</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Hillfolk (DramaSystem)</h3><p>I set off from home a little later than I planned and arrived at my table to find my three players waiting for me. Unfortunately, that was all we had – three players. I know the game was sold out, but two players never turned up. </p><p>Of the players, one had never played <b><i>Hillfolk</i></b>, one had run it some years ago, and the other had the Kickstarter, but their partner had played in the game I ran at <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2023/09/hillfolk-at-continuum.html">Continuum last year</a>! They’d said it was awesome, so no pressure this time…</p><p>We spent an hour or so developing our characters and creating the network of needs and wants that drive the action. The characters this time were the Chief, the Artisan and the Curate and our story involved cave paintings, the suspicious death of the previous chief and (eventually) the successful raid on a neighbouring tribe.</p><p>Some thoughts:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b><i>Hillfolk </i></b>with three players was fine. It wasn’t as good as with five, but it was more intense for each of them.</li>
<li>We had quite a few procedural scenes this time.</li>
<li>I introduced a few NPCs – I think I’m getting better at managing them in DramaSystem.</li>
<li>I kept track of scenes this time – we had 18 scenes in total.</li>
</ul>
<p>After <b><i>Hillfolk</i></b>, I had a quick bite to eat, and then it was time for <b><i>Hazelwood Abbey</i></b>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Hazelwood Abbey (DramaSystem)</h3>
<p><b><i>Hazelwood Abbey</i></b> is <b><i>Hillfolk</i></b> but in a <i>Downton Abbey</i> setting. Again, I had three players, and this time they chose the Earl, an illegitimate Heir and the (Dowager) Countess. Our story this time was driven by Dowager Countess’ refusal to accept the Heir and her eventual murder of the Earl!</p><p>Some thoughts</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Again, just three players – but I think five had signed up. Again, the game was intense and would have benefitted from more players.</li>
<li>Only one procedural scene. When I <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2023/10/furnace-2023.html">ran it at Furnace last year</a> we didn’t have many either – maybe that’s a feature of the setting.</li>
<li>Again, 18 scenes. I think that’s a coincidence. The situation for <b><i>Hillfolk</i></b> has an obvious ending (dealing with the neighbouring tribe) whereas with <b><i>Hazelwood Abbey</i></b> I have to judge the right time to stop – so the Earl’s murder was ideal. </li>
<li>I played even more NPCs this time than I did last time.</li>
</ul>
<p>In both <b><i>Hazelwood Abbey</i></b> and <b><i>Hillfolk</i></b>, the players embraced the game and the system, and we had lots of lovely dramatic scenes. And DramaSystem games are so easy to run – almost no preparation is needed. I’m now planning my next playset – this time set around a successful rock band.</p><p>(<a href="https://stevehatherley.itch.io/">My <b><i>Hazelwood Abbey</i></b> DramaSystem playset is available on Itch.io</a>.)</p><p>After <b><i>Hazelwood Abbey</i></b> I went to get some tea and met Philippa, a friend. I had some time before my next game, so I taught her the <b><i>Villagers</i></b> board game (and, um, won) before heading back to the RPG rooms for <b><i>Cthulhu Dark</i></b>.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">In Whom We Trust (Cthulhu Dark)</h3><p>I had all five players for <i>In Whom We Trust</i>, a one-way trip deep into the Amazon jungle. Inspired by the movies <i>Outbreak </i>and <i>Arachnophobia </i>(the scariest PG movie ever), I originally wrote <i>In Whom We Trust</i> as a <b><i>Call of Cthulhu</i></b> “tournament” adventure for Convulsion/Continuum in the mid-90s. Since then, I’ve redone it for <b><i>Cthulhu Dark</i></b> and made it available via <a href="https://stevehatherley.itch.io/in-whom-we-trust">Itch.io</a> and <a href="https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/395663/In-Whom-We-Trust">DriveThruRPG</a>.</p>
<p>Thoughts</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>We had one survivor this time – but from what I could see, all the players were enjoying themselves. Even those that died grisly deaths.</li>
<li>The system was simple and great, as usual. One character was close to going insane – which was about right.</li>
<li>I last ran <i>In Whom We Trust</i> five years ago at <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2019/03/running-cthulhu-dark.html">GoPlayLeeds</a>, and it was nice to revisit it.</li>
</ul>
<p>After finishing, I walked back to the car past several light artworks – it was Harrogate’s Beam light festival, which was an unexpected pleasure.</p>
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib9CliXhg4L1HYkGZOw4iSjJi-5AAy0qwq5jTQeE6D1AQW4AZ88O9N58RtcPzc4goQuSfGkTKtucMOzmErnsoOAb-mE2hBvQkKr8LbZKjQNFS2gmp_6A0Ubv_PzQLVB8M3Gi06XKb78D7v0ByHNQ-Xy-9JQ-db_GXlniQ-01kDWkm2mxcGisIE-wXkcGw/s4632/IMG_20240315_210551903.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" data-original-height="3474" data-original-width="4632" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib9CliXhg4L1HYkGZOw4iSjJi-5AAy0qwq5jTQeE6D1AQW4AZ88O9N58RtcPzc4goQuSfGkTKtucMOzmErnsoOAb-mE2hBvQkKr8LbZKjQNFS2gmp_6A0Ubv_PzQLVB8M3Gi06XKb78D7v0ByHNQ-Xy-9JQ-db_GXlniQ-01kDWkm2mxcGisIE-wXkcGw/w400-h300/IMG_20240315_210551903.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Saturday</h3>
<p>On Saturday morning I brought Megan and one of her friends to AireCon. I’d ignored the trade hall and the board games yesterday, so today was a chance to remedy that.</p>
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<p>We played lots of games:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b><i>War of the 3 Sanchos</i></b> (a small wargame which I enjoyed more than I thought I would – but I won, so I might be biased)</li>
<li><b><i>Forbidden Jungle</i></b> (a co-up which we lost, badly – I’d happily play it again.)</li>
<li><b><i>Panic Lab</i></b> (a mental agility game which Megan won both times)</li>
<li>Giant-sized <b><i>Hey That’s My Fish</i></b> (which Megan won – I came last)</li>
<li>A playtest of a game about finding poison antidotes (which I won – the game was fine but not stellar and we gave some feedback)</li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivJuSaQqWw-pb8wD7vjkG9kQcXmxlnfXhzsyED4k3L1gqwhFa4CP8ekvIWT2BREIKjAzazjNRJ-wv_h6NqhWgfIdveutg8p6ZKPgI-xkAdInSegg53tDtVgLaTFCq8fbzY3apmw-Xq4dBtLr6aft1TGyjWnqRO-0JdFiOYXb_7FyHJmOLg2VR-E03IsBw/s2592/IMG_20240316_122413607.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1944" data-original-width="2592" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivJuSaQqWw-pb8wD7vjkG9kQcXmxlnfXhzsyED4k3L1gqwhFa4CP8ekvIWT2BREIKjAzazjNRJ-wv_h6NqhWgfIdveutg8p6ZKPgI-xkAdInSegg53tDtVgLaTFCq8fbzY3apmw-Xq4dBtLr6aft1TGyjWnqRO-0JdFiOYXb_7FyHJmOLg2VR-E03IsBw/w400-h300/IMG_20240316_122413607.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Losing at Panic Lab</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>Then we had to say goodbye to Guy, and so Megan and I played <b><i>Woof Days</i></b> (which I don’t recommend, we won one game each) before catching up with Philippa again. We played:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b><i>Wyrmspan </i></b>(a heavier variant of Wingspan that I won but Megan was bored by – she found it slow towards the end)</li>
<li><b><i>MLEM: Space Agency</i></b> (a push-your-luck game I enjoyed but came last while Megan won; but the cat-based space theme I found offputting)</li>
<li><b><i>Reef Rescue</i></b> (a light memory game that I won)</li>
</ul>
<p>After that, we entered the wonderful charity raffle. There are only a dozen or so prizes in the raffle, but each prize consists of 20 or so board games, and you stand almost no chance of winning. But if you do, you win big (and it’s up to you how you get them home)… We didn’t win, and the raffle raised over £10,000 for charity.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaQzjjy7fsgUBNMs5LfaMaGqCJntgsQKuwrM3yLOLTN2c2cJ8O4BHHDVxx1iVH54kGFd-0Li-yTZkVIc28R9CuQDt47Y9zQC0xao5qjDU5wyPQuDo_6X-wsIyNIRFG4J60bMz7MuN_HmgSJt2hOXH7w0E7q53fOF2BUIp0u6Uo6h-ecyHB4F_W3w5oSbA/s4632/IMG_20240316_172710883.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3474" data-original-width="4632" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaQzjjy7fsgUBNMs5LfaMaGqCJntgsQKuwrM3yLOLTN2c2cJ8O4BHHDVxx1iVH54kGFd-0Li-yTZkVIc28R9CuQDt47Y9zQC0xao5qjDU5wyPQuDo_6X-wsIyNIRFG4J60bMz7MuN_HmgSJt2hOXH7w0E7q53fOF2BUIp0u6Uo6h-ecyHB4F_W3w5oSbA/w400-h300/IMG_20240316_172710883.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Waiting for the raffle</td></tr></tbody></table>
<h3>Entropoly</h3>
<p>Finally, on Saturday, Megan and I watched Ivan Brett (from <i>The Traitors</i>) host Entropoly, a game where the players invent new rules each time they take a turn. The rules got crazier and crazier, with rules for wearing wigs, moving anti-clockwise, and changing the spelling of the board.</p><p>The game ended up as a co-up, with all the playing pieces merged as one trying to find the correct finish space, which had been duplicated twenty times. There was much laughing and silliness, and it was a lovely way to end the day.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Sunday</h3>
<p>I was tired after Saturday and almost didn’t go to AireCon on Sunday. But I decided I would, and I’m glad I did, as I played in a tabletop RPG and did some networking.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">What’s Old Is New (WOIN)</h3>
<p>I took the last place in a game of <b><i>WOIN</i></b>, where we played adventurers with strange abilities (I was a martial artist with mysterious chi powers, another character was a mutant, and another was a cyborg) helping the oppressed. Like the A-Team. We fought vampires, met some nuns, built an improbable vehicle and smashed a sinister vampire plot. I had a good time, but I’m not sure the <b><i>WOIN</i></b> system is for me. It was fine but didn’t stand out – we could have used almost any trad ruleset.</p><p>After that, I found friends (old and new) and talked about Jubensha, freeforms, escape rooms, and <i>Dune 2</i> before heading home.</p>
<p>And that was my AireCon. What will I do next year?</p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-53298685659910828412024-03-11T00:15:00.000-07:002024-03-11T00:15:30.005-07:00First impressions: Most Trusted Advisors<p>It’s not often that I read a roleplaying game and can’t wait to get it to the table. <b><i>Microscope </i></b>was one (a story game rather than a “proper” RPG, but even so) and <b><i>Hillfolk</i></b> another (although that took me years to play). <b><i><a href="https://thehorizonmachine.itch.io/most-trusted-advisors">Most Trusted Advisors</a></i></b>, a Forged in the Dark game by W.S. Healed & Citizen Abel is another.</p><p><b><i></i></b></p>
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<b><i><p>Most Trusted Advisors</p></i></b> is a 54-page “comic game of feudal intrigue.” The players take the roles of a profoundly incompetent monarch’s eponymous privy council. As lords and ladies of the realm, they must keep their liege safe from foreign agents, court conspiracies, and their most dangerous enemy: their own incompetence. The GM gets to play the monarch – The Liege.<p></p><p>So it’s the game of <i>Blackadder II</i>. The GM plays Queenie, while the players are Blackadder, Lord Melchett, Malcolm Tucker, Moist von Lipwig and others.</p><p>What’s not to love?</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Setting</h3><p><b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b> is set in the fictional city of Valdrada, the capital of the feudal realm of Dulcinea. </p><p>Valdrada is a mashup of 15th-century Florence, 13th-century London, and 11th-century Paris. It’s a city of castles, slums, sprawling streets, busy markets, theatres, taverns and brothels.</p><p>A few truths about Dulcinea:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>It’s ruled by a Liege, a blithering royal shit with immense political power. Their Most Trusted Advisors are the ones actually running the realm.</li>
<li>The Nobility occupy most positions of political, social, and economic power. They are all to the last man either useless or malevolent, often both.</li>
<li>The Burghers, city-dwelling merchants, occupy the rest. They’re equally useless and malevolent, but usually better at hiding it.</li>
<li>The Church is a powerful institution that demands belief in their god or gods. Some people believe in witches and sorcery, which may or may not be real.</li>
<li>It’s neighboured by the Duchy of Zobia, a bitter historical enemy. A Great War has been fought, and the ink is still drying on the treaty.</li>
<li>Thousands of peasants slave away thanklessly to keep the realm running.</li>
</ul><p>Plus, the players get to add their own truths as part of the game setup.</p>
<p>This melting pot background means never having to worry about being historically accurate – or accidentally offending someone. (And <b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b> definitely doesn’t want to offend.)</p><p><b><i>Would Most Trusted Advisors</i></b> work if it were set in Elizabethan England? I’m sure it would, but I’m not a history buff and I’m happy to set it in a nonsensical world and not worry about accuracy.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Rules</h3><p><b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b> uses a stripped-down Forged in the Dark engine. At least, I assume it’s stripped down because there’s really only one roll: Action rolls.</p><p>Anytime a character is attempting something dangerous (or uncertain), they make an Action roll. To do this, they pick an appropriate action rating (such as Bluster to lie or bluff) and then roll a number of d6s equal to their rating. Ratings range from 0 to 4, and you pick the highest result. A six is a success, a 4-5 is a partial success and a 1-3 is a tragedy.</p><p>Tragedies and partial successes attract misfortunes, which are conditions such as Angry or Enemy of the Crown.</p>
<p>That’s pretty much it for the rules. There are some fiddly bits such as flourishes (sort of enhanced actions), twists (spend them to avoid misfortunes and do other things), Ducats (bennies), and arms (countdown clocks shaped like shields).</p><p>There are also fortune rolls, which are used to answer questions like “How good is the feast’s dessert?” You build these like action rolls, but really, they’re the kind of thing I would roll 2d6 for and interpret the result, high = good, low = bad. That kind of decision-making is part of my GM tookit – it feels weird to have a game specifically tell me how to make those rolls. (Yes, I realise fortune rolls are from <b><i>Blades in the Dark</i></b>.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Playbooks</h3>
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<p>The six playbooks in <b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b> are delightful.</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>The Treasurer</b>, a persnickety, long-suffering bean counter</li>
<li><b>The Lover</b>, a charming, naïve consort to the monarch</li>
<li><b>The Alchemist</b>, a brilliant but unhinged occultist</li>
<li><b>The Hierophant</b>, a pompous, self-righteous priest</li>
<li><b>The Marshal</b>, a bold, hot-headed general</li>
<li><b>The Blackguard</b>, a sneaky, treacherous backstabber</li>
</ul>
<p>Abilities are described as “titles”, which is nicely thematic. You choose three as part of character generation, and they’re things like:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Keeper of the Swans</b>: As a Twist, you can unleash angry, escaped swans wherever you please</li>
<li><b>Royal Librarian</b>: You can spend a ducat and know of a book that can tell you exactly what you need to know.</li>
<li><b>Lord Spymaster</b>: You have spies in every nook and cranny. As a Twist, you can reveal any NPC to be one of them</li>
</ul>
<p>(The one I don’t like is “Noblesse Oblige: Pick a title from another playbook.” Not because I don’t like picking another title, but because it’s messy and it requires either more mastery of the game than is likely amongst my players, or too much dreary analysis paralysis. [I don’t like this option in PbtA games, either.])</p><p>So the characters are great. Don’t tell me you don’t want to play <i>right now</i>.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Secret societies</h3>
<p>And of course there are secret societies! Six of them, each with agendas, contacts and even more titles. The agendas give players extra objectives – more things to do.</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>The Hermetic Order:</b> Secretive occultists in search of metaphysical truths</li>
<li><b>The Inquisition:</b> Religious fanatics looking to punish sins, real or imagined</li>
<li><b>The Sky Chamber:</b> There is no such organization as the Sky Chamber</li>
<li><b>Zobian Traitors:</b> Seditious and cunning spies, loyal to the Duke of Zobia</li>
<li><b>The Chamber of Commerce:</b> Wealthy burghers and merchants conspiring for profit</li>
<li><b>Karian Loyalists:</b> Staunch traditionalists still loyal to a long-deposed dynasty</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">The Liege</h3>
<p>The GM, meanwhile, plays the Liege, an unpredictable, irresponsible idiot. So Queenie or the Prince Regent from Blackadder. Lieges come in different flavours, each with their own playbooks:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>The Royal Buffoon</b> is the median wealthy jackass.</li>
<li><b>The Have-at-Them</b> is an upstart warmonger.</li>
<li><b>The Bleeding Heart</b> is terminally afflicted with noblesse oblige.</li>
<li><b>The Loathsome Toad</b> mistakenly thinks they’re a master of intrigue.</li>
<li><b>The Powder Keg</b> is a paranoid tyrant always looking for someone to behead.</li>
</ul>
<p>Liege playbooks come with a list of characteristics and two signature Misfortunes and Mishaps. (Misfortunes happen when the dice are rolled, as mentioned above. Mishaps are things the GM can do to kick a session off, or during a lull in the game – along the lines of GM moves in other games.)</p><p>I suspect I’ll pick the Royal Buffoon for my first game, but they all sound like fun.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">But what do you do?</h3><p>Once characters have been created, the Liege starts everything off with a mishap. If you can’t think of anything, there’s a table of inciting incidents at the end, such as: “Your liege’s brother has claimed the throne.” As liege, you demand that your advisers sort it out – and you’re off and running.</p><p>As a player, you want to become the Liege’s most trusted advisor – the first amongst equals, as it were. Except they were never your equals.</p><p>The game ends with a footnote – where your character ends up in history. To determine your fate, you roll one dice for each of these that are true:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>You survived until the end of the game.</li>
<li>You’re your Liege’s most trusted advisor (the Liege player decides who this is!)</li>
<li>You completed one of your secret society’s agendas.</li>
<li>You completed two or more of your secret society’s agendas.</li>
</ul>
<p>Success lets you choose questions to answer from the legacies list (How did you permanently change the realm’s political system?); failure means choosing from the list of infamies (Why did nobody go to your funeral? What was the least convincing excuse?)</p><p>It’s worth letting the players know how the game will end so they can work towards those. Once they realise they will get dice for not dying, being the Liege’s favourite and completing their agendas, they should drive all the action.</p><p><b>Epilogue:</b> There’s then a slightly odd, optional epilogue, a short mini-game called <i>How’s it going, Geoffrey? </i>Where you look at events from the point of view of the unluckiest peasant in the realm. It sits slightly oddly, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m sure I’ll try it when I run <b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b>, but from reading it, I’m not entirely convinced.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">But it’s not perfect</h3><p>Some things are explained in a bit too much detail, as if I’ve not played a roleplaying game before. Is that likely? Is anyone likely to stumble across <b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b> without knowing what they’re getting? I suspect not, but anyway.</p><p><b>Fortune rolls:</b> I’ve already mentioned fortune rolls. Making snap decisions is something every GM has to learn – yet most <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2021/10/not-in-rulebook.html">games don’t cover it</a>. Does that mean it’s missing, or is it not needed?</p><p><b>Countdown clocks:</b> <b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b> takes a page to explain “Arms” – which took me a moment or two to realise it was just a new name for countdown/progress clocks. Part of me likes the way the mechanic is renamed to suit the setting, but a bigger part of me is irritated that so much explanation was needed for something that is pretty simple (and described in many other games).</p><p><b><i>Safety and inclusion:</i></b> I’ve seen so many sections on safety tools that my eyes usually glaze over them. Does every game need a section on safety tools? Can we not just point to the many excellent online web pages? Apparently not.</p><p>Anyway, <b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b> has sections on safety tools, warns not to be antisemitic when using secret societies, includes a page on queer identity and oppression, and talks about ethnicity. Even the epilogue minigame, <i>How’s it going, Geoffrey?</i> is there to help reflect on how awful most people’s lives were in the Middle Ages.</p><p>I know I’m a white, middle-class, middle-aged bloke, but to me, it all feels a bit heavy-handed. But maybe that’s the point – and my slight irritation reflects more on me than it does the game.</p><p><b>GM improvisation:</b> <b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b> relies on the GM to keep things going. While character creation should result in conflict and agendas, if the players don’t fully embrace the idea that they are driving the action, the game could struggle to get going.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Why I like it: ticking boxes</h3><p><b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b> ticks many of my boxes. The key <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2020/07/why-i-roleplay.html">things I like in a game</a> are:</p><p><b>A plot.</b> For me, this is probably <b><i>Most Trusted Advisors’</i></b> weakest area. While there’s no specific scenario, between the initial premise, character generation and the rules for determining your character’s fate, some sort of plot should present itself. However, it’s very reliant on the players – if they falter, everything then relies on the GM.</p><p><b>The characters are important</b>. I like the characters to be important to whatever the game is about (my pet gripe are convention games that just use the published pregens without tying them to the adventure). Characters with a stake in what’s going on help keep their players engaged.</p><p><b>Players talk to each other as characters</b> (not just to the GM). <b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b> is slightly player-v-player, so the players should talk to each other rather than just to me. And as part of character generation, the players create shared backstories by asking each other questions.</p><p>Other points in <b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b> favour include:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>It looks easy to run – most of my friends are familiar with Blackadder and the playbooks are full of flavour.</li>
<li>It’s ideal for one-shots, and I like one-shots. (I suspect it’s exhausting to run and play, so it might even be rubbish for longer games.)</li>
<li>Character generation includes choosing a friend and a rival. Why don’t more games do this?</li>
<li>For the most part, it’s really nicely written.</li>
</ul><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Overall</h3><p>So that’s <b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b>. I’m looking forward to playing it – hopefully soon.</p><p>You can get <b><i>Most Trusted Advisors</i></b> from the creators’ page on Itch.io, <a href="https://thehorizonmachine.itch.io/most-trusted-advisors">here</a>.</p><div><br /></div>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-61055631431737478422024-03-04T06:46:00.000-08:002024-03-04T06:46:27.520-08:00LarpCon 2024<p>Last weekend I drove down to the Whitwick & Coalville Leisure Centre for <a href="https://larpcon.co.uk/">LarpCon 2024</a>.</p><p>LarpCon is a live-action role-play (larp), cosplay, re-enactment and steampunk convention. (But frankly, mostly larp.) It’s a lovely occasion to meet like-minded people, and spend money on costume and props.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgifhheKMwwIfeZ8gvDlMKJWktVYXFK9GDRGXF4cMRLE7ZE0B3so1ClGlnu_rg4HzKeeMtwuqhk2fflVlqYbdKiQ2FZ_-TS2h_8G_HNyiucpNxi-QMu9svPD1nL_7ll03IVpk2LHeMehG-pIOEoqDuXjBIDUlSscAN2sY6QRtZvB7mvcjdSVLCZa1tIMDo/s2047/larpconsportshall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="841" data-original-width="2047" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgifhheKMwwIfeZ8gvDlMKJWktVYXFK9GDRGXF4cMRLE7ZE0B3so1ClGlnu_rg4HzKeeMtwuqhk2fflVlqYbdKiQ2FZ_-TS2h_8G_HNyiucpNxi-QMu9svPD1nL_7ll03IVpk2LHeMehG-pIOEoqDuXjBIDUlSscAN2sY6QRtZvB7mvcjdSVLCZa1tIMDo/w400-h164/larpconsportshall.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The sports hall (photo from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/larpcon ">LarpCon Facebook page</a>)</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>I was there to help Ray, Simon and Nick on the UK Freeforms & UKLTA (laser tag larps) stall.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The venue</h3><p>Larpcon took over the leisure centre’s sports hall, the squash courts and a dance studio. Alongside people in costume, armour and elf-ears were people in sportswear going to the gym or the pool. It made for an odd mix in the foyer.</p><p>The con started at 10 am, and I arrived just before because I wanted to make sure I could get a parking space. Parking appeared to be a challenge – although apparently there was an overflow car park, I’m not sure where it was. </p><p>The sports hall was full of traders – and smelled not unpleasantly of leather. 60-odd stalls sold costumes, weapons, accessories and food. If I was into costuming, I am sure I would have come out much poorer.</p><p>The squash courts contained the bring-and-buy (and archery range, I think), an art exhibition, and talks. One of Sunday’s talks was about mega-games, which I wish I had known about because I’d have gone to that. (If there was a timetable pinned to the wall, I didn’t see it. I know it’s on the website, but I’m old-fashioned.)</p><p>Upstairs in the studio was the promoter area - a few trade stands and stands for those promoting larp groups. That’s where we were.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">UK Freeforms and UK Laser-Tag LARP</h3>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLrV3RoF_FIzcJxqWBAyHdQYrApgfSQIl_TxOeyyPxG7vej4wz2hAUAjbvzr6RgMcy9K9Zw5r8RkxQayGoJ7CRH6PBxfpX4tj47IF-PO32hM51n4LzRbeGPhRE8DoOhShn-0tMRWGsvjtZvu1_EhPCZhqbERoTEOA0rLk_7baYzep_SateTLIcSHWjzmM/s4125/IMG_20240303_141206698.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2650" data-original-width="4125" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLrV3RoF_FIzcJxqWBAyHdQYrApgfSQIl_TxOeyyPxG7vej4wz2hAUAjbvzr6RgMcy9K9Zw5r8RkxQayGoJ7CRH6PBxfpX4tj47IF-PO32hM51n4LzRbeGPhRE8DoOhShn-0tMRWGsvjtZvu1_EhPCZhqbERoTEOA0rLk_7baYzep_SateTLIcSHWjzmM/w400-h258/IMG_20240303_141206698.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Ray had booked two tables, one for the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/lasertaglarp/">UK Laser-Tag LARP group</a> and one for UK Freeforms. </p><p>The laser tag stuff had loads of exciting equipment: guns and sensors and props. The guns and sensors worked (the guns even made exciting sounds), and the props included Orac, a beautiful demon hunting compass (that worked), a computer with clever access requirements, and the Enigma machine used in Café Casablanca. It was all very clever and drew lots of attention.</p><p>The UK Freeforms side was a little less glamorous – some game printouts and character sheets. I also brought a few books to help with the visual appeal.</p><p>While it was clear the exciting kit drew many, they were all very happy to hear about freeforming as well.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Talking to punters</h3><p>This wasn’t Ray and Simon’s first time at a con like this, and they happily started talking to anyone who showed even the slightest interest in the stall. Me, I’m more reserved, so I took a while to get going.</p><p>I found it tricky to pitch freeforms – but I know it’s not something I’m good at. But after a while I got into the hang of it – asking people if they’d heard of chamber larps or parlour larps, or sometimes I used murder mystery games as an example.</p><p>(I wasn’t there to promote Freeform Games, although I mentioned them once or twice.)</p><p>Then I talked about the range of genres that freeforming covers: pirates, Jane Austen, wild west, modern, future, musicals and many, many more. (One benefit of not being too focussed on costuming and props, I think.) Oddly, the idea of a Father Ted larp seemed very appealing to many.</p><p>I then explained how the games worked: prewritten characters with detailed backgrounds and (conflicting) objectives. Up to the players how they do things. Combat light – some rules, but depends on the game.</p><p>Then I explained about <a href="https://q.consequences.org.uk/">Consequences </a>and the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/ukfreeforms">Facebook group</a> and gave them a business card that Ray had brought with the links.</p><p>Everyone was friendly, a couple of people had already heard of freeforms, and I would have sold a copy of <i>Writing Freeform Larps</i> had I accepted credit cards.</p><p>(And that all sounds much more coherent than it actually was.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Next time</h3><p>I think next time, more signage would help. Ray had put photos of freeforms on the wall, but we could have done with a vertical display stand for more pizzaz.</p><p>I would also have a few flyers available on the table. Some ideas:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>A one-page summary description of the games themselves.</li>
<li>A list of typical games of different sizes and genres. Including a few that can be downloaded (either free or paid for) – and some good games for beginners to run with friends.</li>
<li>A list of events where freeforms are played. (We mostly talked about Consequences and Retford, but we should have had a poster with <a href="https://q.consequences.org.uk/">Consequences</a>, <a href="https://www.ishtari.co.uk/">the weekend games</a>, <a href="https://continuumconvention.co.uk/">Continuum</a>, <a href="https://bristol.freeforming.uk/">Bristol Games Day</a>, Sheffield’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/p/BOX-Northern-Larp-Festival-100092983098176/">The Box Northern Larp Festival</a>, and London’s <a href="https://thesmoke.org/">The Smoke larp festival</a> and even <a href="http://peakygames.wikidot.com/">Peaky</a> on it.) It was noticeable that because laser tag uses an established larp site, it sometimes got the response, “oh yes, I know where that is.”</li>
<li>A summary of where to go to learn more. The <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/ukfreeforms">Facebook group</a>, the <a href="https://groups.io/g/UKFreeforms">mailing list</a>, the uk freeforms Discord, maybe the <a href="http://uk-freeforms.wikidot.com/">wiki</a> and <a href="http://peakygames.wikidot.com/">Peaky Games</a>. It would be nice if UK Freeforms had a proper website.</li>
</ul>
<p>(And maybe turn that into a little 4 or 8-page booklet?)</p>
<p>Anyway, something to think about for next time.</p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-30963248870426440112024-02-27T02:08:00.000-08:002024-02-27T02:08:11.635-08:00Good Society at the table<p>Two years ago, I <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2021/12/good-society-first-impressions.html">wrote a review of <b><i>Good Society</i></b></a> based on a read-through of the rules. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://storybrewersroleplaying.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Project-Image-1400x788.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://storybrewersroleplaying.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Project-Image-1400x788.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Now, finally, I have played it. Here’s how it went.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The players</h3><p>We have four players:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Thomas playing Samuel FitzgGeorge (old money)</li>
<li>Terry, playing hedonist Louisa Trotter</li>
<li>Jon, playing meddler Elspeth Blackstone.</li>
<li>Me, playing the socialite, Captain George Wetherby (I’m aiming for a Wickham/Willoughby sort – I’ve called him Wetherby because Jane Austen’s rakes often have surnames beginning with W).</li>
</ul>
<p>Thomas is also facilitating. I’m not running it because I wanted a break after <b><i><a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2023/10/as-sun-forever-sets-playtest.html">As the Sun Forever Sets</a></i></b>, and Thomas was happy to bring <b><i>Good Society</i></b> to the table.</p><p>We also have a range of minor characters (known as connections) – for example, I’m also playing Louisa’s friend Hettie Bower.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Online with Trello</h3><p>We’re playing online using Trello as our virtual tabletop and Discord for video chat. We have a weekly two-hour slot, but we don’t always play every week (because life sometimes gets in the way). </p><p>That doesn’t mean two solid hours of playing, however, as we’re often slow in getting going as we start with some social chat and then have to remember what happened last time. (This is especially true if we’ve had a break of a couple of weeks.) So, on average, I guess our sessions are about 1 hour and 45 minutes of playing time.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Backstory (session 1)</h3><p>In our first session, we set up our game and created our major and minor characters. </p><p>As this is our first game, we’re keeping things simple and playing the Farce playset, which is light-hearted and suited for beginners.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Create major characters</h4><p>These are the PCs – the stars of the show.</p><p><b>Set up the playset:</b> Normally this would consist of choosing desire and relationship cards from a deck, but Thomas had done his homework and had put everything we needed on a Trello board.</p><p><b>Choose desires:</b> We then each chose our character’s desire. I picked “A large income is the best recipe for happiness I have ever heard of” – my character wanted money! This then came with a relationship – a rival! Picking this desire also gave me my role (Socialite) and I chose the Military background.</p><p><b>Form relationships:</b> We formed relationships by giving our relationship card to another player. I suggested that Thomas (who was playing the New Arrival) might want to be my rival, and he agreed.</p><p><b>Flesh out the major characters:</b> Now is the time to collaboratively fill in the blanks and work out how the characters actually know each other and what has happened in the past. And while we did that, we filled out the rest of the character sheet.</p><p><b>Introductions:</b> Finally, the characters are introduced. (And in our case, add appropriate illustrations to the Trello board.)</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDaaOgZaS7z70tbylSyZdtI3XUXyHbkuhC1zyubm_YT90FwIvbuTHlGGef-NAeNKoSlwYaP6G-8SjIRUWPZTTF6hULOvcT63ApdplYkY04Qvp9k1cGeKl92Wn1buvLRqjTF7DOJvvpQr3Jz-XUM_ylbdP0P8OPWaO7gJujtBrROBrQuIwXNICSFqIj808/s1026/GoodSocietyTrello.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="627" data-original-width="1026" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDaaOgZaS7z70tbylSyZdtI3XUXyHbkuhC1zyubm_YT90FwIvbuTHlGGef-NAeNKoSlwYaP6G-8SjIRUWPZTTF6hULOvcT63ApdplYkY04Qvp9k1cGeKl92Wn1buvLRqjTF7DOJvvpQr3Jz-XUM_ylbdP0P8OPWaO7gJujtBrROBrQuIwXNICSFqIj808/w400-h245/GoodSocietyTrello.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Part of our Trello board</td></tr></tbody></table>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">Create connections</h4><p>Connections are supporting characters – and we created two each. You can either use the deck of connections or use the potential connections on your character sheet. We did the latter. I created my father, Fitzwilliam Wetherby and Lydia Bennett, who has a huge crush on George.</p><p><b>Complete connection sheet:</b> Fill out their name, their relationship with the major character, what they think of that character and so on.</p><p><b>Select a connection to control:</b> Then choose a connection to control – ideally one that’s not linked too closely to your major character (because talking to yourself is awkward). I picked Hettie Bower, Louisa’s best friend.</p><p>And as that had taken up our entire evening, we left our first scene until the next session.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Playing the game</h3><p>The game is played over a series of cycles, each of which is broken into phases.</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Novel</li>
<li>Reputation</li>
<li>Rumour and Scandal</li>
<li>Epistolary</li>
<li>Novel</li>
<li>Rumour and Scandal</li>
<li>Epistolary</li>
<li>Upkeep</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Cycle 1 (sessions 2-4)</h3><p><b>Novel chapter</b>: We started with an “event scene” (one where everyone is present) at a ball at Templeton Grange, held to celebrate Simon FitzGeorge’s return home. That gave everyone a chance to start to get to know their characters and interact with others.</p><p><b>Reputation phase:</b> With the dance over, we checked whether our reputation had changed. There are mechanical ways this happens – and my reputation hadn’t changed.</p><p><b>Rumour and scandal phase:</b> We then each had two actions where we could either create or spread a rumour (or create two rumours or spread two rumours). The rumours could be about anything, and in this cycle, we created rumours that were mostly true. In the following cycle, we started creating rather more fantastic rumours designed to help us achieve our goals.</p><p>Spread rumours get resolve tokens that can be spent to affect the game (although we took a while to understand how this worked). Rumours that weren’t spread eventually faded and dropped out of the game.</p><p><b>Epistolary phase: </b>Letter writing! We each wrote two letters – mostly to other characters or sometimes to new ones. I wrote a letter to my father (a connection played by Terry) asking for money, and another letter to Elspeth (played by Jon), my old flame.</p><p>It’s fun writing the letters (they don’t need to be actually written out – you can just describe what they say), and I think the limit of two per player is to stop this phase from getting out of hand.</p><p><b>Novel chapter:</b> And back to roleplaying. While our first chapter was an “event” (everyone present in one scene), this time, we had a “visitation” chapter. This consisted of individual scenes of the characters calling on one another to further their goals.</p><p>As Cpt George Wetherby, I struggled to work out how I would get money. The traditional way would have been to marry into it, but my old flame’s ardour had cooled and I wasn’t sure how best to proceed.</p><p><b>Reputation phase:</b> Another reputation phase.</p><p><b>Upkeep phase:</b> We ended our first cycle with an upkeep phase. First, everyone spends monologue tokens – which are used to get a character to speak their inner thoughts. Nobody had used a monologue token at this point, so we spent those. Then all the resolve and monologue tokens reset, at which point we realised that nobody had used a resolve token either.</p><p>(We aren’t using inner conflicts, which are also progressed in this phase.)</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Cycle 2 (sessions 5-7)</h3>
<p>I resolved to engage more with the mechanics in this cycle.</p><p><b>Novel chapter:</b> Another event scene – this time a picnic. I was keen to try out the mechanics and burned through both my resolve and monologue tokens.</p><p>I arrived at the picnic with Lydia Bennett on my arm and spent a resolve token to make Elspeth (my old flame, played by Jon) jealous. There’s some negotiation with resolve tokens (in case you’re proposing something the other player objects to), but in this case (and perhaps because it was our first resolve token of the game), Jon accepted it.</p><p>I then spent my monologue token to hear Samuel FitzGeorge’s inner thoughts. He was concerned about the upcoming local elections, where he was the Tory candidate. I then struck up a conversation with Samuel, where he expressed his concern about the upcoming election. I then bided my time and, in a later scene, spent my last resolve token to get Samuel to accept my help in preparing for the election (and hopefully skim some cash for myself).</p><p>While this is going on, the others are also progressing their characters’ schemes – although some with more success than others.</p><p><b>Reputation, rumour and scandal: </b>More of the same – my reputation is still unaffected.</p><p><b>Epistolary phase: </b>My first letter was to Samuel from George, with various ideas for the upcoming campaign. My second letter was from my connection (Hettie) to a friend in London, seeking information about Samuel’s political rival.</p><p><b>Novel chapter:</b> Another chapter of lots of little scenes with characters visiting each other. We also had a montage of Samuel and George campaigning for votes. During this phase, I figured out how to use rumours.</p><p>Samuel was showing an interest in courting my sister, Lilibeth. However, there was a rumour that “Samuel and Louisa spent some time alone in the Orangerie during the ball.” So I mischievously warned Lilibeth that I suspected Samuel and Louisa had an “understanding” (were secretly engaged) and spent the rumour’s resolve token attached to affect the story.</p><p>This immediately created chaos and several new scenes:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Lilibeth has heard the rumour and tries to get Samuel to confess it, but Samuel does not know what is going on, and Lilibeth storms off.</li>
<li>Lilibeth calls on Elsbeth and confesses her situation with Samuel, Elsbeth advises her to ask Joanna (Louisa’s sister) about it, as surely she should know.</li>
<li>Hettie asks Louisa about Samuel’s proposal. Louisa denies it, and Hettie suggests Louisa should be more circumspect when keeping company with men. Hettie asks Louisa to make sure Samuel doesn’t think he’s proposed to her.</li>
</ul>
<p>That ended our session – and I thought the chapter. Unfortunately, we continued the chapter in the next session, and I felt the scenes were less directed and full of padding.</p><p><b>Reputation phase:</b> Check to see if our characters have done anything to affect their reputation. I may be playing George a little too safely, as I haven’t earned any reputation tags. However, Jon’s character has three positive reputation tags, and so he chooses to have Joanna as Elspeth’s protégé. (This is like Emma Woodhouse taking Harriet Smith under her wing in Emma.) This has lots of story potential and makes me wish I was finding it easier to earn reputation, good or bad.</p><p><b>Epistolary and upkeep:</b> We ended with more letters and an upkeep phase where resolve and monologue tokens were refreshed. We also agreed that, as things seemed to be heading towards some kind of conclusion, the next cycle would be the last.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Cycle 3 (sessions 8-9)</h3><p>Our last cycle, and things started getting crazy. In a good way.</p><p><b>Novel chapter:</b> We start the third cycle at the election hustings, where my father finds out that I’ve been skimming from Samuel’s campaign funds. Later on we have a stand-up row, and he disowns me. However, I spend a resolve token to impress Joanna (who has just come into an inheritance – something that was only revealed last cycle), and end up challenging George McDonald to a duel to defend Joanna and Louisa’s honour. (Yikes! A duel!)</p><p>At a post-hustings soiree, I kiss Joanna – and she seeks advice from Elspeth on what to do. Elspeth confronts me and I confess my fondness for Elspeth, but we fall out badly. Unseen by either of us, Lydia overhears… We ended the scene before the duel – and decided to refer to it during the epistolatory phase. (I have no resolve tokens left and told my fellow players that I was happy for my fate to be in their hands – to be decided in the next session.)</p><p>This was a superb session – lots of fast, punchy scenes and drama. Brilliant.</p><p><b>Reputation, rumour and scandals:</b> My reputation took a hit this time! I showed strong emotion (a negative criteria for me) but I also stood up for Louisa and Joanna (positive criteria). Not enough, yet, for it to affect play though. (Technically, this being the last cycle, we should have skipped this phase. But we missed that rule until the end.)</p><p><b>Epistolary phase:</b> More letters. Samuel spent a resolve token to have me wounded in the duel because my opponent cheated and shot early. (As well as wounding me, this let him achieve his political goals.) So that was the topic of several letters. Samuel was most surprised to receive one from Elspeth suggesting that he should propose to her!</p><p><b>Final novel chapter:</b> My character arc was more or less complete – all I needed to do was propose to dear, sweet (and now very rich) Joanna. I was still out of resolve tokens, but the other players didn’t interfere. Instead, the chapter was mostly about Samuel’s dilemma. He had been courting Lilibeth (my character’s sister) but the letter from Elspeth had put his head in a spin. He decides to let fate decide, by racing two of his favourite horses bearing their ribbons. However, Elspeth spends a resolve token to turn his head in her favour, and we end the chapter with Samuel proposing to Elspeth. </p><p>So a happy, Jane Austen-y ending!</p><p><b>Final epistolary phase:</b> Set some years later, this functions as an epilogue to the game. Samuel and Elspeth are together and spend lots of time in London. Louisa continues to weave her webs of deceit, and George and Joanna are living in America celebrating the birth of their fourth child.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">And after all that, what do I think?</h3><p>We had a slow start to <b><i>Good Society</i></b>, mainly because it’s a different style of game to how we normally play. It’s collaborative and, at the same time player-v-player; play is directed generally towards other players rather than the GM/facilitator. That’s how I like to play, but for others, it was more of a shock, and it took us a while to get going.</p><p>I’m sure we’d find it easier with more practice. (We said the same about <b><i>Fiasco</i></b>.)</p><p><b>Players:</b> I suspect Good Society sings when everyone is familiar with the Jane Austen tropes and stories. Unfortunately, only two of us were familiar with the stories – and while that wasn’t essential to have a good game (and we had a good game), I suspect things would have been smoother had everyone been on the same page. I would like to try <b><i>Good Society</i></b> with a different group.</p><p>(The fact we are all blokes, mostly beardy and towards the end of middle age, may have hindered our embrace of the romantic side of the game.)</p><p><b>Characters:</b> During character creation, we should have been more specific about our character’s background. For example, Terry told us that his character (Louisa) and Jon’s (Elspeth) were former friends, until Louisa’s cruel actions ended the relationship abruptly. However, we didn’t initially drill down to find out exactly what those cruel actions were – the specifics would have helped the game. </p><p><b>Scenes:</b> Sometimes, we found scenes a little troublesome. They weren’t always clear, or they dragged on a little. Scenes are common in a lot of indie games – but rarely do they have good advice for setting scenes, and Good Society is no exception.</p><p>As we are so used to traditional RPGs, some advice on scene setting would have helped. I found my scenes were most satisfying when I kept the following in mind:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Where is the scene set?</li>
<li>When is the scene in the timeline?</li>
<li>Who is present?</li>
<li>What do you want?</li>
</ul>
<p>However, we didn’t always do this (I wasn’t facilitating, and I didn’t want to step on Thomas’s toes). Consequently, I found some scenes saggy and dragged on.</p><p><b>Who calls?</b> Who gets to call the next scene isn’t clear. I noted that in a couple of novel chapters, it seemed as if a couple of the players hadn’t called scenes. Their characters had been in plenty, so it seemed as if they were having a lot of spotlight time, but they’d not called scenes themselves and so weren’t necessarily progressing their desires. I wonder if having a randomised turn order (like I’ve been doing in <b><i>Hillfolk</i></b>) would have helped.</p><p><b>More care with names:</b> We had too many similar names in our cast: George Wetherby, George McDonald, Samuel FitzGeorge, and Fitzwilliam Wetherby. The two Georges were a particular challenge, particularly in the ongoing game log, as occasionally it wasn’t clear which George was being referred to.</p><p><b>The system:</b> the system isn’t particularly clunky, but it’s a bit fiddly and took us a while to get our heads around. Once I understood how resolve tokens and rumours and reputation worked, things were much simpler – but I’m not sure everyone did, as we had plenty of unspent resolve tokens at the end of the earlier cycles.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Would I play again?</h3><p>Yes, definitely. Ideally with a group of players more familiar with the setting and tropes.</p><div><b><i><a href="https://storybrewersroleplaying.com/good-society/?v=79cba1185463">Good Society</a></i></b><a href="https://storybrewersroleplaying.com/good-society/?v=79cba1185463"> is available from Storybrewers Roleplaying.</a></div>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-13787608187179233132024-02-19T02:22:00.000-08:002024-02-19T02:22:10.682-08:00All Flesh is Grass - on Itch.io<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiveYBadCVcSeynN166lNZ195mWTjEGnKRZqNbQzUJ3T21O6XABmK_xM-z9WrpIa0gQFHyuPABRrB3HTF_2IACxUbDhsb7V2F5gu7ecEZ7uwmnNFN2-FWhsGXgB3Htdl_GVkXNoOmmtxd3X2xgiQ50FQxggAb8s3D17O_w0XkM9NxQ__52jk32v7dKTpks/s2000/ItchCover.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1587" data-original-width="2000" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiveYBadCVcSeynN166lNZ195mWTjEGnKRZqNbQzUJ3T21O6XABmK_xM-z9WrpIa0gQFHyuPABRrB3HTF_2IACxUbDhsb7V2F5gu7ecEZ7uwmnNFN2-FWhsGXgB3Htdl_GVkXNoOmmtxd3X2xgiQ50FQxggAb8s3D17O_w0XkM9NxQ__52jk32v7dKTpks/w400-h318/ItchCover.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<p><a href="https://stevehatherley.itch.io/all-flesh-is-grass"><b><i>All Flesh is Grass</i></b> is now available to download for free on Itch.io.</a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">All Flesh is Grass? What’s that?</h3>
<p><b><i>All Flesh is Grass</i></b> is a short freeform-larp for 13 players set in 1965 Wisconsin. It takes around two hours to play. </p><p>It is August 1965. Yesterday, the residents of Millville in Grant County, Wisconsin (pop. 164) woke to discover a mysterious barrier around their village. Through trial and error, they found that the barrier lets no life pass through it – only inanimate objects.</p><p>Yesterday evening, a short story about the barrier appeared on page 3 of the Fennimore Herald.</p><p>Today, at lunchtime, Senator Wilson and representatives of the federal government meet with the mayor of Millville in a large tent erected across the barrier on the road to Bridgeport.</p><p>The barrier itself is invisible but stretchy. Trying to walk through it is like trying to walk while being pulled back by elastic bands. Eventually, the force is too great and throws you back.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">That sounds vaguely familiar</h3><p><b><i></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4AXaxvTa12wL5qK5qkT7BWwnMg7MH-vSaXGbP73UZxwA-Zat_i37vbanvgGmbtS1DC8hb7EQqKTZOqjcE2UJHgKYS0zc1wq7-KpcA-OoCneW0tpgmQZ5M_7igpRri7vJHigtbc0u4KfLJe7uaMoe1uBkXlSYmxsmBns3gq42xFn_DSa-EH7ifF0rz/s160/allflesh.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="160" data-original-width="100" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4AXaxvTa12wL5qK5qkT7BWwnMg7MH-vSaXGbP73UZxwA-Zat_i37vbanvgGmbtS1DC8hb7EQqKTZOqjcE2UJHgKYS0zc1wq7-KpcA-OoCneW0tpgmQZ5M_7igpRri7vJHigtbc0u4KfLJe7uaMoe1uBkXlSYmxsmBns3gq42xFn_DSa-EH7ifF0rz/s160/allflesh.jpg" width="100" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><br />All Flesh is Grass</i></b> is based on the 1965 science fiction first-contact novel of the same name by Clifford D Simak. There are a few differences, but if you’ve read the novel, you’ll know what’s going on.<p></p><p>That doesn’t mean you know what to do about it, of course…</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Didn’t you write another alien larp recently?</h3>
<p>Yes, I’m writing a series of first-contact freeform larps, all in the same universe and featuring some of the same characters.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkT-4wOB3l9SFr1QcFr02TzbMBEHmVlKB4k7asL-B7EDvGcyEQ7zjPfTCR55zKB6ReAIWog7V3ayMxoaqtAqa75tVGqITBC6Dr1JYC2U5Uedm7Vy7XfABaqcmMJ5Mooudpm87LL_zcrr3kk_dxQqY1RuOkqRwaLQZYCUePiAt1TCEEiwBn66BkDCK4EsE/s643/RI_Cover.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="643" data-original-width="515" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkT-4wOB3l9SFr1QcFr02TzbMBEHmVlKB4k7asL-B7EDvGcyEQ7zjPfTCR55zKB6ReAIWog7V3ayMxoaqtAqa75tVGqITBC6Dr1JYC2U5Uedm7Vy7XfABaqcmMJ5Mooudpm87LL_zcrr3kk_dxQqY1RuOkqRwaLQZYCUePiAt1TCEEiwBn66BkDCK4EsE/w160-h200/RI_Cover.png" width="160" /></a></div>
<p>The first was <b><i><a href="https://www.freeformgames.com/shop/product/the-roswell-incident/">The Roswell Incident</a></i></b>, and that has been published by Freeform Games.</p>
<p>Coming up after <b><i>All Flesh is Grass</i></b> is <b><i>Children of the Stars</i></b> (set in 1983), <b><i>Messages from Callisto</i></b> (1993) and <b><i>The Stars our Destination</i></b> (1999) – and more planned, but at this point are little more than twinkles in my eye.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Sounds great! Who do the players play?</h3><p>The players play either villagers or members of the government who are here to help.</p><p>Millville folk</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Morris: Retired carpet sales rep and Millville’s head council member</li><li>Constable Martin: A police constable</li><li>Carter: A real-estate/insurance business owner</li><li>Sherwood: A gadget manufacturer</li><li>Preston: Local reporter and council member</li><li>Flanagan: Retired school principal and council member</li>
</ul>
<p>Out-of-towners</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Senator Wilson: Senator for Wisconsin</li><li>General Billings: US Army general.</li><li>Shaw: Aide to the senator</li><li>Dr Blake: Government scientist</li><li>Captain Yip: USAF officer</li><li>Agent Franz: FBI agent</li><li>Jamie Flanagan: Chicago doctor</li>
</ul>
<p>One player gets to play two characters – Jamie Flanagan and Captain Yip.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Huh? Why make give two characters to one player?</h3>
<p>This occurred during the writing process and was an accident. </p><p>When I started the project, I was talking about my ideas with a friend who suggested I should write the games for the same number of players. I thought this was a good idea, and as <b><i>The Roswell Incident</i></b> was for 13 players, so was <b><i>All Flesh is Grass</i></b> (and all the games since).</p><p>As I started writing, my original plan was that all the characters would be played by one player, and The Voice (the mysterious character not in the list above) would be an NPC or played by me. But as I wrote, I realised it would be better if The Voice were played by a player.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Ahah – that means you have 14 characters and 13 players!</h3><p>Exactly.</p><p>I looked at merging characters, but I realised that two characters could easily be played by one person. I’ve played two characters in the same freeform before, and it has been a lot of fun. (It’s also a design space I think we can do more with.)</p><p>So I decided to keep all 14 characters and have one player take two.</p><p>I’ve run the game twice so far, and in each run, the players adapted to the situation without batting an eyelid. Feedback suggested that my approach worked well – and so I didn’t feel the need to change anything.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">How did you decide who gets to play the split character?</h3><p>I made it clear in the signup and casting forms that one player would play two characters (and which ones they would play), helping the players decide whether they wanted to play two characters or not. <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2022/04/casting-all-flesh-is-grass.html">More on that here</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Sounds great! Where can I get it?</h3><p><a href="https://stevehatherley.itch.io/all-flesh-is-grass">You can get <b><i>All Flesh is Grass</i></b> over on Itch.io.</a></p><div><br /></div><p></p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-88541292500117040782024-02-09T01:24:00.000-08:002024-02-09T10:59:46.609-08:00West End Lullaby<p>Earlier in February, I played in <b><i><a href="https://ishtari.co.uk/westend-lullaby/index.html">West End Lullaby</a></i></b>, a weekend freeform for 77 players and is based on musicals such as <i>Chess, Fiddler on the Roof, Cats, School of Rock, Our House, Bugsy Malone, Matilda, Les Miserables, Return to the Forbidden Planet, Starlight Express, Sister Act</i> and many others.</p>
<p>I played Aaron Burr (from <i>Hamilton</i>), who has a side-order of Sam from <i>Mama Mia! </i>Essentially, Burr is a lawyer who is also one of the three fathers in <i>Mama Mia!</i></p><p>This is rather long, so TLDR: It was great, I had a wonderful time. When can we do it again?</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHjFX0yyCjIYJKlf7zgAHjLTjXIhDjEPJ5T50EMJ9yQUnxaP-9KRQlJTwSKBp8zEdDy2cW-v4q8hlmMq1YsUraLjRIyu2u-EGXpTnWvlvQ0tErf-v21jh_yytUAWxAHArwZGC4lqlO5NclpxPgJaV6tx39bRsxmad32Cj7qSdB9CmtiWe-2gYoIE7W2dg/s1000/WestEndLullaby-singing2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="619" data-original-width="1000" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHjFX0yyCjIYJKlf7zgAHjLTjXIhDjEPJ5T50EMJ9yQUnxaP-9KRQlJTwSKBp8zEdDy2cW-v4q8hlmMq1YsUraLjRIyu2u-EGXpTnWvlvQ0tErf-v21jh_yytUAWxAHArwZGC4lqlO5NclpxPgJaV6tx39bRsxmad32Cj7qSdB9CmtiWe-2gYoIE7W2dg/w400-h248/WestEndLullaby-singing2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This and other photos of the game are by <a href="http://www.tsijonphotography.co.uk/">TsiJon Photography</a>.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b><i>West End Lullaby</i></b> was written by Matt Freeman, Hanbury Hampden-Turner, Ray Hodson, and Daniel Taylor (with additional material by Rei England, Simon Clark, and Kate Ashford). James Goodman and Mike Nudd helped as GMs. </p><p>This will be my third musical freeform. Will I sing? The picture above suggests I did...</p><p>Oh yes, and an obligatory spoiler warning. I will talk about some plots – I’ll try not to give too much away!</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Pre-game character summary</h3><p><b><i>West End Lullaby</i></b> had the best pre-game character summary I’ve seen. In addition to telling me who the character was, the GMs gave me what they thought my game would probably look like (so lawyerly stuff to begin with, easing more into politics and potentially a rivalry with Hamilton – and maybe a duel).</p><p>(In freeforming/larping circles, this is often called a casting “hint”. “Hint” never seemed the right term – this was a summary, not a clue or indirect indication.)</p><p>The GMs also provided costuming advice: “Characters come from across several hundred years of time, so other characters will be wearing anything from 18th-century formalwear to post-apocalypse glam rock. In keeping with the ‘musicals’ theme, conveying the emotional feel of the character is the most important thing.”</p><p>So I took the easy route and wore a frock coat I already had. (While I love the effect that costumes produce, I find costuming very stressful. My perfect costume would be for someone to say, “Here, Steve, wear this.”)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Character sheet</h3><p>The full 20-page character sheet was issued later than some would have liked. I know that stressed some people out, but personally, that works fine for me. I’m used to reading character sheets at the last minute, so two weeks was still plenty.</p><p>There are often typos in character sheets, and these were no exception. None were awful; the worst was the omission of a key piece of information that could have been much worse for my game had I not realised. (As it was, I accidentally blabbed it to someone early on, but they were an ally anyway. And then I let the GMs know so they can correct it for the future.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Rules</h3><p>The rules arrived a few days after the character. I gave them a quick skim, knowing that I’d read them in more detail during the game when they would make more sense. The rules were mostly standard, but there were nice points I particularly liked:</p><p><b>Play to lift: </b>Styles of Play covered playing to win and playing to lose (both fine) but emphasised playing to lift. <i>Try to support other people’s visions of their character, letting them, in turn, support you. Try to roleplay in a way that encourages the players around you by accepting their view of their character.</i> That’s probably a freeform (if not roleplaying) metarule. I know many people do that instinctively, but it was nice to see it in the rules.</p><p><b>Pickpocketing: </b>Pickpocketing is divisive as it can ruin your game when someone steals that vital item you’ve been spending all game hunting for. <b><i>West End Lullaby</i></b> solved the problem by letting the victim decide what had been pickpocketed. So you could lose something trivial or just make something up. (And it was easy to get an item – just go to the market and buy something. I bought books and CDs and flowers.) That also meant the GMs weren’t involved – it could be handled entirely by the players.</p><p><b>Evidence: </b>I liked the idea that all criminals left evidence cards with their names on them. (That includes pickpockets.) Arresting a suspect for a crime involved gathering enough evidence cards (severe crimes needed more evidence).</p><p>The evidence cards didn’t have to come from the same crime – it was all damning evidence. This might have been a bit strange, but from what I can see, worked out well in practice.</p><p>(One of many memorable moments was frustrating Inspector Javert (Alex) in arresting Dandy Dan (Nathan) for murder when I used my ability to point out inconsistencies with the evidence (which meant they needed more). I suspect Javert didn’t make the same mistake twice.)</p><p><b><i>Relationships:</i></b> The relationship rules covered romance and were the “heart tasks” that many games have used. <b><i>West End Lullaby</i></b> brought interesting tweaks, though. </p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>You could write your own tasks to suit how your game is going. I love that flexibility.</li><li>The same approach (and often the same tasks) was used for other relationships – close friends, rivalries, etc.</li>
<li>You didn’t have to give tasks out – you could just track them and decide for yourself whether you fell in love or decided someone was a good friend (or rival). (<a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2016/03/all-purpose-romance-rules-for-freeform.html">I suggested this in an old post</a> – maybe the GMs thought it was a good idea.)</li>
<li>Relationships weren’t exclusive – you could give your heart to more than one person (although it would have been nice to have different heart abilities for the different types of relationships.</li>
</ul>
<p>As with most romance rules, you have a target number, and when that number is reached, you give someone your heart (which means sharing your game with them – and they get a neat ability).</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">So how was my game?</h3><p>But enough of the rules, how was the game?</p><p>In short, awesome. And tiring.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Aaron Burr, sir?</h3><p>It was lovely being so well known in song. Many people started their conversation with me with “Aaron Burr, sir?” I never stopped enjoying it (although, ironically, I don’t really like the song).</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJx-f43s3jANT5nPHFlN55WSohOMFAPPWrV0G2lXnXv3fWLrylZwkOV0_cE_Tf-7ZJw63zIWgInejrQg65uZxTcHu86JOAGi0tIGnGCjPKX3pL7PvVs1jFQwc-eojhHVDCFnsgLBoixf43OaTEa0GI-kvVWoYSdVI326ebvkszPGXC8sUJbHqlkZbKuIA/s1000/WestEndLullaby-negotiation.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJx-f43s3jANT5nPHFlN55WSohOMFAPPWrV0G2lXnXv3fWLrylZwkOV0_cE_Tf-7ZJw63zIWgInejrQg65uZxTcHu86JOAGi0tIGnGCjPKX3pL7PvVs1jFQwc-eojhHVDCFnsgLBoixf43OaTEa0GI-kvVWoYSdVI326ebvkszPGXC8sUJbHqlkZbKuIA/w400-h266/WestEndLullaby-negotiation.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Important lawyerly business with Dandy Dan</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>As a respected lawyer, I got involved in lots of stuff. Some examples.</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>I served papers on Bill Snibson (Simon)</li>
<li>One character (Tony) asked me to certify them as legally dead. In the next session, someone else (sorry, I forget who) approached me and started to explain the other side of the story. For a moment, I thought there was a conflict of interest until I realised that I could simply give them a copy of the death certificate.</li>
<li>I successfully defended Paula Gill (Victoria) from a breach of contract lawsuit. The contract may have been very one-sided, but it had been signed by all the parties and had been legally fulfilled, and the judge agreed with me. (Unfortunately, Hamilton (Jon) was supposed to be on the other side but was unfortunately held up and missed it – I was annoyed for Jon, but there were so many timetabled events we couldn’t wait too long.)</li>
<li>I wrote a couple of wills, including Jean Valjean’s (Ezzy).</li>
<li>Stacee Jaxx (Graham) and Penny Vandergelder (Elyssia) approached me to assign the ownership of the Stacee Jaxx name to Penny. For that, I needed Graham to sign their character’s real name. They were unsure about that. “We have to trust someone,” said Penny. So Stacy told me. I looked up and shrugged – I had no idea who [name redacted] was.</li>
<li>Helping Gomez Addams (Rich) with his financial planning.</li>
</ul>
<p>I also trained a new lawyer, Sarah Wyre (Kat), to whom I would direct players when I couldn’t help them (sometimes due to a conflict of interest, often because I was busy). Sarah said she was grateful that I sent her extra work, but also could I stop because she was getting so busy.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">The Room Where It Happens</h3><p>If the GMs had a planned arc for Aaron Burr, it was for him to become more influential by becoming a city councillor and maybe even Mayor. </p><p>Becoming a city councillor turned out to be fairly easy. Between the Friday night and Saturday morning sessions, I re-read the character book and the rules. (I find everything makes more sense once I’ve started playing.) And I discovered there were two spare places on the council – these hadn’t been explicitly stated in the rules (or my character sheet), and I felt like I’d done my own legal legwork.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg4mPy_VyLekuWp61DDqNPzZ8EPKKkx8atORg4_6_t_5TXf2WCOfBwullmL7gX605InIuwK2b12sesaUKaM1b77WyHq0QrUsprp05mOib8N4MQbteAx6qBFVxyRZQ8Bu1uiSadGcVsLRoiauqcFCOqZ2NyebdvyW9t4fw7ve_8Va9bO8z78jw9n8GMXw8/s1000/WestEndLullaby-council.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="517" data-original-width="1000" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg4mPy_VyLekuWp61DDqNPzZ8EPKKkx8atORg4_6_t_5TXf2WCOfBwullmL7gX605InIuwK2b12sesaUKaM1b77WyHq0QrUsprp05mOib8N4MQbteAx6qBFVxyRZQ8Bu1uiSadGcVsLRoiauqcFCOqZ2NyebdvyW9t4fw7ve_8Va9bO8z78jw9n8GMXw8/w400-h206/WestEndLullaby-council.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not all council meetings were this dull...<br />(With Maria and Sir John Tremayne (Chris) and Horace and "Fat Sam" Stacetto (Mike) in the background.)</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>So I started the Saturday morning session by asking my friend Jean Valjean (Ezzy) to propose me to the council. I also sounded out Mayor Falco (Nick) and other councillors. To my surprise, Maria, Duchess of Dene (Lisa), wasn’t against my selection – despite my betrayal of her love 20 years earlier. And so I joined the city council – followed by Hamilton, who took the other vacancy.</p><p>I decided not to run for mayor. I had so much on that I didn’t need to be any busier, and when I saw that the wonderful Mrs Blitzstein (Janet) was standing, I correctly guessed that she would win.</p><p>One thing that didn’t happen was a rivalry with Hamilton. We barely saw each other for much of the game. I had a chat with Jon (who played Hamilton) before the game, and we agreed that we’d see how the relationship/rivalry played out. But I was so busy I didn’t have time or energy to put anything into the rivalry, and I don’t think he did either. And in our game, there wasn’t anything to be rivals over. (Maybe if I was a fan of the musical, things may have been different.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Mamma Mia!</h3><p>The other half of my game was all about the romance. Aaron Burr played one of the three dads from <i>Mamma Mia!</i> As per the musical, Sophie (Natalie) had invited me and the other potential dads to her wedding. And unfortunately, her mother Donna (Sarah), had never forgiven me for a terrible misunderstanding all those years ago. But Aaron had never forgotten Donna and wanted to mend the broken relationship. But did she want him?</p><p>While Sarah (who played Donna) had played in some big larps in Europe, <b><i>West End Lullaby</i></b> was her first weekend freeform. One week beforehand, she gamely stepped in when the original player dropped out. On short notice, Sarah did a fantastic job.</p><p>As I didn’t know Sarah, it was hard to judge how to play mending the broken relationship. I took it slowly – but I never really knew what Donna was thinking. Even when I finally proposed on Sunday morning, I still didn’t know if she would say yes or not. (She did!)</p><p>Sarah told me she was taken by surprise by my proposal. I suggested that had she played in one of these games before, she would have seen the arc from a mile off and known it was coming.</p><p><b>The romance mechanic:</b> Curiously, if we stuck to the mechanics, it was almost impossible for Donna to win Aaron’s heart. First, his heart score seemed high (8), and second, the suggested relationship tasks weren’t very Donna-friendly (debate politics, ask me to be your second in a duel, enlist my help in a difficult court case, etc). So I created lots of new ones: Be Donna, accept my gift, dance with me, and so on.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy5lkd4_YGqL6ImMGu-94IQ505_gRMrA-ZJ1bfkYcSLncVK_sRoc1-hzz3suRAL5VjPwtcsbVSeNWgzp8mQzjLaNzzAuoHPJcJ9duE9tm1s8370ir8jn40g7yT6tyYVHUsTXwVX38CW_e7v1H8Fq2Op7H9jasDc9Mwj_J_-ecsCIfd91gRDU-9Y0RgIVM/s1433/WestEndLullaby-romancetasks.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1433" data-original-width="1072" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy5lkd4_YGqL6ImMGu-94IQ505_gRMrA-ZJ1bfkYcSLncVK_sRoc1-hzz3suRAL5VjPwtcsbVSeNWgzp8mQzjLaNzzAuoHPJcJ9duE9tm1s8370ir8jn40g7yT6tyYVHUsTXwVX38CW_e7v1H8Fq2Op7H9jasDc9Mwj_J_-ecsCIfd91gRDU-9Y0RgIVM/w299-h400/WestEndLullaby-romancetasks.png" width="299" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aaron Burr's romance tasks...</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>(I find that romance mechanics are often better thought of as guidelines rather than strict rules.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The three dads</h3><p>As for the other two dads, one kept a low profile. When I found out who they were and we spoke, they wished me luck with Donna. The other was the charming and wonderfully over-the-top Count Fosco (Paul). He had his own romantic plot but delighted in flirting with Donna in front of me.</p><p>As for who the actual father was – Sophie tore the DNA test results up at her wedding, so we never found out.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAPa5PCiJovG6GOGk211kR9xE6XYI99vak25viBeanYZDartUe3CfbqyWgUtAxMxcZ5qNSb04a7UcRpFYalU0xHDUjHJ9ImDrlAo2JaDKvh_xRHMZViPlojtJX56D0a80G5WkVYpcc4uDq6VeusMKv1Wj2DPjZt2imZD6R4pLRHOT-wePRVpsHwRGEDJw/s1000/WestEndLullaby-wedding1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="1000" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAPa5PCiJovG6GOGk211kR9xE6XYI99vak25viBeanYZDartUe3CfbqyWgUtAxMxcZ5qNSb04a7UcRpFYalU0xHDUjHJ9ImDrlAo2JaDKvh_xRHMZViPlojtJX56D0a80G5WkVYpcc4uDq6VeusMKv1Wj2DPjZt2imZD6R4pLRHOT-wePRVpsHwRGEDJw/w400-h189/WestEndLullaby-wedding1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Actually a double wedding - Sophie bullied myself and Donna into getting married as well.<br />(The Mother Superior (Ingrid) marries Sophy to Bugsy Malone (Ewan), and me to Donna, while Dennis Dupree (Haven) looks on.)</td></tr></tbody></table>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Other highlights</h3><p><b>New faces:</b> While it was lovely to see old friends, it was also lovely to meet new faces. Four of my close contacts (Donna, Sarah Wyre, the Duchess of Dene and Jean Valjean) were played by people who hadn’t played a weekend freeform before, and I didn’t know any of them. I hope they enjoyed themselves and that we’ll see them again.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpJp6dr6smX2KtQA7PcrGX3VQ1gWYIlfmiGSVu1_yMbvDw8iAO1aRmSR9Vuserfi-pLPiffzj9KFyxqn2MWsPHE4PFl3A7FP4AONqQbAr80Pwu_S35RxxktQ4R91OhLVy6PFKejkIANnibhQSLEVU3Dtd1LGaFZyNopJuDbU4rfGfSl0BOJbqoKT6YS5M/s1000/WestEndLullaby-singing1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="1000" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpJp6dr6smX2KtQA7PcrGX3VQ1gWYIlfmiGSVu1_yMbvDw8iAO1aRmSR9Vuserfi-pLPiffzj9KFyxqn2MWsPHE4PFl3A7FP4AONqQbAr80Pwu_S35RxxktQ4R91OhLVy6PFKejkIANnibhQSLEVU3Dtd1LGaFZyNopJuDbU4rfGfSl0BOJbqoKT6YS5M/w400-h208/WestEndLullaby-singing1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Singing "You're the One That I Want" with Donna</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b>Singing:</b> I sang “You’re the One That I Want” (from Grease) with Donna, which was nerve-wracking and exhilarating. Friends came up to me afterwards, surprised that I’d sung. (We sang that late on Saturday night. Afterwards, I wished I had sung Abba’s “SOS” to Donna on Friday evening. But I wasn’t feeling confident enough then.)</p><p><b>The war case:</b> I helped Dolly Levi (Alison) with her investigation into General Stanley’s war record. Well, I say I helped – she did most of the work and told me how it was going. But I enjoyed being part of the investigation.</p><p><b>The Casey Street Market negotiations:</b> I was heavily involved in the Casey Street Market negotiations, which involved Mayor Falco (Nick), Patty Klineman (Clare), William Pressman (Ben), Horace Vandergelder (Kevin) and the stall holders themselves. The end result may not have satisfied the developers, but it felt right.</p><p><b>The Battle of the Bands:</b> I spent a large part of Saturday evening watching the music contest – it was so good, everyone threw themselves into it.</p><p>I’ve only scratched the surface; there was so much more I wasn’t involved with. Mad science, space and rockets, superheroes, time travel, crazy fire newts, chess tournaments, and so much more. It would be an easy game to play again – so maybe in a few years, when the GMs have forgotten how stressful it can be, they will run it again.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">A final thank you</h3><p>So, as I hope you can tell, I really enjoyed <b><i>West End Lullaby</i></b>. I had a wonderful, exhilarating time. It was great seeing old friends and making new ones.</p><p>So thank you to the writers and GMs and players and everyone who made it so wonderful. Let’s do it all again soon!</p><div><br /></div>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-26132595520499972152024-02-05T02:33:00.000-08:002024-02-05T04:53:30.906-08:00Traveller: Cargo and freight<p>This is my fifth and, for now, final post musing about some of <b><i>Traveller’s</i></b> quirks.</p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span><a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2024/01/traveller-feeding-rethe.html">Last time</a></span>, I worke</span>d out that if Rethe/Regina imports all its food, then it needs 4.8 million displacement tons of red kibble every week, shipped from nearby Inthe. (This is standard Adam Smith free market economics - focus on what you're good to buy what you're not so good at. So Rethe, being a densely-populated world, produces something (although it's not clear what) and buys in food and other things.)</p><p>Assuming that's what it does, I’m going to think about logistics. (Well, some of them – I don’t work in logistics, so of course I’ve overlooked something.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The problem</h3><p>We must transport 4.8 million tonnes of red kibble from Inthe to Rethe, every week.</p>
<p>It’s a two-parsec jump, so we could use 200-ton Far Traders. Except that, as I have already calculated, we’d need about 75,000 of them. Every week.</p><p>We’re going to need a bigger boat.</p><p>How about the 200,000-ton <i>Galika Megula</i>, the largest freighter in Mongoose’s <i>High Guard</i>? Well, with a cargo of over 136,000 tons, Rethe still needs 56 of them, every week.</p>
<p>So let’s go even bigger.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhayGd-V_qMvD29zb8F4KsWe_L_U7kH9LRfjXraGbaouk5tYpGzqv1KlajyewGV1GFgKIlN1f49HBb4AX2LnQ8IgGnnU9tEoDbg_CEtVJtZ6jA9dTeUhRwydgTa8LdtkDpNmZVFVeae7-lYoKNIvDzbproUqBvdDWGSndazJBbaq4dMDpx7XKfDIpGbwOk/s757/Traveller%20freight.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="757" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhayGd-V_qMvD29zb8F4KsWe_L_U7kH9LRfjXraGbaouk5tYpGzqv1KlajyewGV1GFgKIlN1f49HBb4AX2LnQ8IgGnnU9tEoDbg_CEtVJtZ6jA9dTeUhRwydgTa8LdtkDpNmZVFVeae7-lYoKNIvDzbproUqBvdDWGSndazJBbaq4dMDpx7XKfDIpGbwOk/w400-h272/Traveller%20freight.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lego container ship on <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rixbrix/with/15231848986">Flickr</a></td></tr></tbody></table>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Container shipping</h3>
<p>I’m reading <i>The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger</i> by Marc Levinson and a few things struck me.</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>One, the shipping container is relatively new, and I’m not surprised that the paradigm of ruthlessly efficient freight isn’t part of <b><i>Traveller’s </i></b>DNA. </li>
<li><b><i>Traveller’s </i></b>vision of merchant shipping has a 1950s vibe about it, with non-standard freight sizes, loading and unloading on site. It looks nothing like today’s container shipping. (As I’ve been reminded, a core foundation for Traveller is EC Tubb’s Dumarest saga. That was first published in the 1960s, when container shipping was just getting started. I don’t know whether <b><i>Traveller’s </i></b>trading rules reflect the Dumarest saga, but if they do, I suspect it’s because EC Tubb was writing about the merchant shipping world he knew about. He may not have known of the coming freight revolution.)</li>
<li>Container shipping is much more efficient than its predecessor. It means that merchant ships spend much more time at sea earning money (rather than sitting at the docks being loaded and unloaded), drastically cutting the cost of freight.</li>
</ul>
<p><b><i>Traveller’s </i></b>ships really don’t carry much cargo - not compared to what a world like Rethe needs. While <b><i>Traveller’s </i></b>ships are ideal for adventuring, they’re not terribly practical if you need to feed a world.</p><p>Instead, we need ruthless efficiency!</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Feeding Rethe</h3><p>As I’ve said, Rethe needs to import 4.8 million tonnes of red kibble every single week. It needs to be efficient and reliable.</p><p>Here’s my idea of how it would work.</p><p>Build a fleet of truly massive merchant ships, each able to transport 1.2 million displacement tons of cargo. So four a week would solve our shipping problem. (Of course, four a week probably still means a fleet of about twenty ships, allowing for return journeys, stopover time and maintenance.)</p><p>To speed up cargo delivery, the cargo holds are constructed as six huge demountable pods. The pods are streamlined, and massive tractors transport them between the starport (or wherever they are loaded) and the cargo ships. </p><p>The pods are huge: 205,000 tons. If they were boxes, they’d be about 300 x 100 x 100 m in size. (For comparison, a Lightning Class Cruiser is only 60,000 tons.)</p><p>The spine of the ship (little more than a massive jump drive – and over a kilometre long) is not streamlined. It just travels back and forth between Rethe and Inthe. A round trip looks like this:</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Arrive at Inthe</h4><p>Travel to the highport. Detach cargo pods from Rethe containing whatever it is that Rethe exports. Attach cargo pods filled to the brim with red kibble. While cargo is unloaded and loaded, refuel and refresh crew and supplies as necessary. Travel to jump point and jump.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Arrive at Rethe</h4><p>Travel to the highport. Detach cargo pods from Inthe containing the red kibble. Attach cargo pods filled to the brim with exports. While cargo is unloaded and loaded, refuel and refresh crew and supplies as necessary. Travel to jump point and jump.</p><p>Rinse and repeat. Endlessly.</p><p>(I’m assuming that Rethe has highports. I know that with a Class E starport, it shouldn’t have highports. <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2024/01/traveller-rethe-and-perils-of-random.html">I ques<span style="background-color: white;">tion the <span>canon in this post</span></span></a><span style="background-color: white;">.)</span></p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Let’s build a megafreighter!</h3>
<p>So here’s the <i>Titan</i>-class megafreighter. I’ve designed this using <i>High Guard</i> and a spreadsheet. I may have made mistakes, but hopefully not big ones. </p><p>We’ll start with the cargo pods.</p>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">205,000 ton demountable, streamlined cargo pod</h4>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Breakaway components: 4,100 tons</li>
<li>Cargo space: 200,900 tons.</li>
<li>Cost: 10,455 Mcr</li>
</ul>
<p>I imagine these attached to the <i>Titan’s </i>spine in two groups of three pods, the pods in each group spaced equally around the <i>Titan’s</i> spindly hull.</p>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">1,830,000 ton Titan-class megafreighter</h4>
<p>The total tonnage is made up of:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>A 1,830,000-ton dispersed breakaway hull. (TL 12)</li>
<li>Six 205,000-ton cargo pods</li>
<li>Manoeuvre-1 (18,300 tons)</li>
<li>Jump-2 (91,505 tons)</li>
<li>Power plant (61,000 tons, generating 915,000 power units at TL12)</li>
<li>Fuel: 494,100 tons (for four weeks of operation and one jump-2)</li>
<li>Bridge (500 tons – this is an overestimate)</li>
<li>Computer/20</li>
<li>Sensors (civilian – 1 ton)</li>
<li>Crew 2051 (one captain, one pilot, one astrogator, 1690 engineers, 198 mechanics, 99 administrators, 26 sensor operators, 16 medics, 98 officers). That’s a lot of crew – I’m going to come back to that.</li>
<li>Staterooms: 2051 (8204 tons)</li>
<li>Other cargo 11,790 tons (this is spare tonnage – could be used for living areas for the crew).</li>
</ul>
<p>And it costs a fortune – I didn’t price it out, but it’s not cheap.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Crew</h3>
<p>But over two thousand crew? That seems … a lot.</p><p>If your assumption about starships is that they are masters of their own destiny, travelling from system to system in whichever direction their owner’s whimsy takes them, then having a huge crew to deal with any issues makes sense.</p><p>But if you are just going backwards and forwards between two systems? Do you really need nearly 1900 mechanics and engineers, nearly 100 administrators, 26 sensor operators, and 100 managers (officers)?</p><p>That seems overkill. And expensive.</p><p>As far as the engineers and mechanics go, how much can go wrong that can’t wait a few days? I would imagine that 90% of issues wouldn’t be a problem during jump and can wait until the ship has arrived and the local engineering team can fix it. (Or, if it’s a longer job but can be completed in jump, then the ship jumps while the work is underway.)</p><p>I haven’t changed the crew requirements for the <i>Titan</i>, but I know the company bean counters will want to make everything as efficient as possible, and I’m sure they’ll be checking that everybody is adding value. If the <i>Titan</i> is as reliable as I like to think, I expect the headcount will be reduced.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Variants</h3><p>The <i>Titan </i>is a big ship. Is there any way of making it more efficient?</p><p><b>M-Drives:</b> Removing the M-Drives saves 18,300 tons in the drives themselves, with a proportionate saving elsewhere (crew, power and jump requirements and so on). Is that an option, assuming the operators use tugs at each end? If you operate the same jump route for decades, how accurate are your exit and entry points?</p><p>(As for jump masking, I imagine positioning the tugs (and maybe other facilities) to allow for jump masking – much as today’s mariners account for the tides.)</p><p><b>Drop tanks:</b> Using drop tanks saves over 360,000 tons (giving savings elsewhere, such as crew and so on). However, drop tanks are expensive and often don’t survive the experience. Given the potential savings, I would expect part of the R&D budget to revisit the question of drop tanks. (I’ve wondered about this in a <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2024/01/traveller-why-do-starships-have.html">previous post</a>.)</p><p><b>Modular fuel tanks</b>: I imagine it takes a fair bit of time to refuel a ship with nearly half a million tons of liquid hydrogen. Even if drop tanks aren’t an option, I can imagine using modular fuel tanks that can be filled up in advance and attached along with the cargo pods to minimise the time between jumps.</p><p><b>Move operations to Paya:</b> <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2024/01/traveller-feeding-rethe.html">As I noted before</a>, Paya/Aramis would be a better source of red kibble than Inthe, as it’s closer. Requiring only a one-parsec jump, the Titan is significantly smaller – not just saving over 240,000 tons in fuel, but also making the rest of the ship smaller as well. With four ships arriving every week, that’s a weekly saving of 480 million credits (around 25 trillion credits a year). It wouldn’t be long before moving operations to Paya would pay off.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">And everything else…</h3><p>And all this is just for importing the red kibble. Alongside this, there will need to be vast amounts of infrastructure, including:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Enormous fuel processing stations</li>
<li>Fleets of cargo pod tugs to get the kibble in and out of orbit</li>
<li>Massive distribution systems to get the kibble to hungry mouths</li>
<li>Water processing to ensure that kibble can be rehydrated</li>
<li>Maintenance and spacedocks</li>
<li>Accommodation for all the workers</li>
<li>Loading and unloading of other goods – there’s more to life than just red kibble</li>
<li>Passengers – arrivals and departures</li>
<li>Administration and paperwork</li>
<li>System defences to protect against piracy</li>
</ul>
<p>I haven’t considered any of these – just thinking about importing millions of tons of red kibble has been quite an exercise.</p><p>But this is the kind of far future I like: vast megafreighters, billions living in space cities, and a vibrant interstellar economy.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">That’s it for now</h3>
<p>And that’s it for now.</p><p>I’m sure I’ll have some other grumbles about <b><i>Traveller</i></b>, but it’s time to leave the Third Imperium in peace for a while.</p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-55845981078255566042024-01-29T00:57:00.000-08:002024-01-31T00:52:10.303-08:00Traveller: Feeding Rethe<p>This is the fourth part in a short series mulling over various quirks of <b><i>Traveller’s</i></b> Third Imperium background. <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2024/01/traveller-low-berths.html">Part one considered how hazardous low berths are</a>, part two wondered about <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2024/01/traveller-why-do-starships-have.html">jump drive fuel tanks</a>, and <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2024/01/traveller-rethe-and-perils-of-random.html">part three considered Rethe</a>, a Mars-sized desert world where 26 billion people live.</p><p>This time, how to feed everyone on Rethe.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Rethe</h3><p>A quick recap from last time. Rethe (E430AA8 8 Poor. Non-agricultural. Desert World.) is the most populous world in the Regina subsector. (I noted last time that Rethe had grown - apparently that was following the <a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/T5_Second_Survey">T5 Second Survey</a>, which increased “the size of worlds with thin or better atmospheres to match the physics that small worlds can't hold atmospheres”. So I’ll stick to canon from here on.) There’s barely any air (very thin – respirators needed) and no water.</p><p>Yet somehow, 26 billion people (mostly humans) live there.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">How do we feed Rethe?</h3><p>How many calories do we need? (I’m just going to concentrate on calories (kcals), in this post. I’m not going to complicate it by thinking about individual nutrients or factors such as processing.)</p><p>On average, humans need about 2,200 kcals a day. Men need slightly more, women slightly less, but we’ll use 2,200.</p><p>26 billion people, therefore, need 57 trillion kcals each day. Which is 400 trillion kcals a week, or 21 quadrillion kcals a year.</p><p>Where is all that energy coming from?</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Homegrown</h3><p>So let’s assume that everything is grown on Rethe (or in-system somewhere), all 21 quadrillion kcals. How much land is needed?</p><p>According to <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore">Our World in Data</a>, the most efficient use of land is to grow maize. 0.65m2 of maize will create 1000 kcals. (I’m pretty sure that’s an annual yield and is based on an average of numerous real-life studies, so it includes an allowance for variation in yields due to the soil, weather, nutrients and so on. There may be other foods that are more efficient - I haven't made an exhaustive search, but maize provides a sense of the scale of the challenge.)</p><p>So a single km2 of maize generates about 1.5 billion kcals, which is a lot. But not enough, not by a long shot. To feed Rethe, we need 13.5 million km2.</p><p>That’s roughly the surface area of China and India combined.</p><p>Or imagine the sheer grandeur and majesty of the orbital hydroponic farms. They’re huuuge!</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI7NIhqLdGT-Wws9FDkF0c6zfL90zwhbrkbE-qj3U_vsEEkF3bnNfE6L8-SB526jte4Ug7DWBWSWnhJhD3i_OBmgaeuJkWfvGaMkQqhehCljWRjDjCnPQIXTBtUtMtSpmikhL3mZXrUO2tzIEW0cqkELzI84lqC8VIPVIXit7u27pQ8jMOdQZLzTRcGgg/s1200/Traveller%20maize.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="729" data-original-width="1200" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI7NIhqLdGT-Wws9FDkF0c6zfL90zwhbrkbE-qj3U_vsEEkF3bnNfE6L8-SB526jte4Ug7DWBWSWnhJhD3i_OBmgaeuJkWfvGaMkQqhehCljWRjDjCnPQIXTBtUtMtSpmikhL3mZXrUO2tzIEW0cqkELzI84lqC8VIPVIXit7u27pQ8jMOdQZLzTRcGgg/w400-h243/Traveller%20maize.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Endless fields of maize</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>And that’s just the area of maize. It doesn’t allow for space for planting, watering, weeding, packaging and harvesting. It assumes the soil is rich Earth-like.</p><p>It also assumes that the 26 billion people of Rethe are happy with a maize-only diet. If they wanted a more varied diet (maybe some spuds to go with their corn on the cob), then that would take up more room. (Although given <b><i>Traveller </i></b>is an SF game, I assume other delicious plants are available in the Third Imperium that take up no more room than maize.)</p><p>Given that Rethe is a desert world with a very thin atmosphere (maybe like the Tibetan plateau, but drier) at TL 8, perhaps we’d better import the food.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Imported food</h3><p>So let’s import some food: <a href="https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Kibble">red kibble</a>.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiS94L7nbrJgfSGvXUPSPmh4vlrLVIo66_dFBxIYN6pwdXu66DECA69PIwMlIr3kIVkEk_36_089HJIhXlirfbA7ZzDLQqrkjG7LNH3RfehrJ6yoeLzcn_PZmJC0K2co7DzlMAA2a74c33j5_CxjW2IqQUyHl9jvC-DlqUKZpDGy_3EX5M9rDaMQ8BScE/s1200/Traveller%20Red%20Kibble.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiS94L7nbrJgfSGvXUPSPmh4vlrLVIo66_dFBxIYN6pwdXu66DECA69PIwMlIr3kIVkEk_36_089HJIhXlirfbA7ZzDLQqrkjG7LNH3RfehrJ6yoeLzcn_PZmJC0K2co7DzlMAA2a74c33j5_CxjW2IqQUyHl9jvC-DlqUKZpDGy_3EX5M9rDaMQ8BScE/w400-h266/Traveller%20Red%20Kibble.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Delicious red kibble</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>For the sake of this exercise, let’s assume red kibble is a dehydrated nutritious (if not delicious) foodstuff with an energy density of 1200 kcals per 100g. To compare, 100g of salted peanuts contain about 600 kcals, so I’m probably being generous. But it’s the far future, so let’s go with it.</p><p>So 1 kg of red kibble contains 12,000 kcals.</p><p>We now need to turn that into a volume. We’ll assume that 1 kg of red kibble occupies 2 litres – or 1 cubic metre weighs 500kg. (To compare, <a href="https://www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/food-volume-to-weight">according to this website</a>, 1 litre of peanuts weighs 0.62kg, so I don’t think I’m far out, given this is fictional anyway.)</p><p>The volume of each displacement ton is 14 m3, which is 7,000 kg of red kibble. That means each ton contains 84 million kcals. (I’m ignoring packaging.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">How many Far Traders?</h3><p>A Far Trader has a 63-ton cargo bay, which, if filled with red kibble, can provide 5.3 billion kcals.</p><p>However, feeding Rethe for just a week requires 400 trillion kcals, and you would need a fleet of over 75,000 Far Traders. Arriving every week.</p><p>Another way of looking at it is that Rethe needs 4.8 million displacement tons of red kibble every week, without fail, not to starve.</p>
<p>But let’s put aside the logistics of delivering nearly five million displacement tons of red kibble every week and think about where it’s coming from.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Sourcing red kibble: local systems</h3>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJBawALQDfYPpgw3pOAscvpwM1KTd1O8RQLVwFb33DuahVjlNX7TpS0MngsHWew-cygQs6TUffEUpGe6nGVswf60AbbZC189r174YtdZQnIVSszmsq4l1TibDE1BnfsP90iOPvvSA5JmyyjHOw5zUCwCgxyWVlWzllUxYI8OFtEu_kdkJYolLZHmW6X64/s685/Traveller%20Rethe2.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="685" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJBawALQDfYPpgw3pOAscvpwM1KTd1O8RQLVwFb33DuahVjlNX7TpS0MngsHWew-cygQs6TUffEUpGe6nGVswf60AbbZC189r174YtdZQnIVSszmsq4l1TibDE1BnfsP90iOPvvSA5JmyyjHOw5zUCwCgxyWVlWzllUxYI8OFtEu_kdkJYolLZHmW6X64/w400-h281/Traveller%20Rethe2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Luckily, within two parsecs of Rethe we have three potential food suppliers: Paya, Focaline, and Inthe. (And all the systems have gas giants, which is fortunate as we need a lot of fuel.)</p><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Paya A655241-9</h4><p>Paya is the closest and has an A-class starport. It looks the most promising – it’s a reasonable-sized world with 50% hydrographics. <a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Paya_(world)">The wiki describes it as “a garden world.”</a></p><p>However, Paya has fewer than 1000 people living on it (600, according to the wiki).</p><p>I’d like to think that Paya has vast robotic farms churning out red kibble, but as it's not classified as an agricultural world (too few inhabitants), I guess that’s not the case. Perhaps the soil isn’t great.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Focaline EA88544-7</h4><p><a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Focaline_(world)">According to the wiki</a>, “Focaline is an agricultural world with an ideal environment for producing food from plants, animals, or other forms.”</p><p>There’s just one problem – it only has an E-class starport. Even if it could make five million displacement tons of red kibble every week, it can’t get them easily into orbit.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Inthe B575776-9</h4><p><a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Inthe_(SM_2410)_(world)">Inthe </a>is “an agricultural world with a tainted atmosphere but still a near-ideal environment for producing foodstuffs.” So that’s just what we need. Phew!</p><p>It has a decent starport and is big and fertile enough (and not too populated – tens of millions) to provide all the red kibble Rethe needs.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The influence of nearby worlds</h3><p>This shows one downside of <b><i>Traveller’s </i></b>planetary creation system: it’s completely random, with no recognition of nearby worlds. Of course, a world’s physical characteristics should be independent of its neighbours – but in the Third Imperium, I would expect the social characteristics (population, government, law level, tech level, starport type) of nearby worlds to influence others.</p><p>In Focaline’s case, if it was a wonderful source of red kibble, then I would expect Rethe to invest in a good starport and have shipped millions of workers over (making barely a dent in Rethe’s population but boosting Focaline’s massively) to make sure the red kibble flows uninterrupted.</p><p>But as Focaline only has an E-class starport, then perhaps it’s not fertile after all.</p><p>(And the same could be said for Paya. If it’s that great at growing things, why doesn’t someone invest in automated farms and a workforce? There's a ready market one parsec away!)</p><p>But at least we have a source for our red kibble: Inthe.</p><p>In "reality", I would expect Rethe to import food from all three worlds (and elsewhere). But let's go with Inthe for now.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Next time</h3><p>Next time, I think about cargo and how to ship all that red kibble, and I might even build a megafreighter.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Update: other sources of food </h3><p>I posted this link to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/traveller/comments/1adqz74/feeding_the_people_of_rethe/">Reddit</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/travellersfrpg/posts/3797676457132492/?comment_id=3797680500465421&reply_comment_id=3798345463732258&notif_id=1706565139521153&notif_t=group_comment">Facebook</a> and it has provoked some lively and interesting discussion. So I thought I’d capture my responses here.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Soylent Green</h4><p>A few people have talked about eating the dead. Assuming the cultural implications are easily overcome, there is a bigger problem - corpses don't provide enough kcals.</p><p>According to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_rate">Wikipedia</a> roughly 150,000 people currently die each day here on Earth. Rethe has a population 3x Earth's, so that's 450,000 people every day (or about 170 million people a year). Searching around, the most generous reports are that there are about 150,000 kcals in a human body (my search history is... odd). That means cannibalisation only provides 66 billion kcals a day - and Rethe needs 57 trillion! So way less than 1% of the total calories needed.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Underground hydroponic farms</h4><p>What about underground farms? <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/04/underground-vegetable-garden-sustainable-farming/">This place</a> grows salad crops, which famously aren't energy dense. But it's the far future, so let's make some assumptions that a good, calorie-dense crop can be farmed using underground hydroponics.</p><p>Let's assume it's twice as effective as maize, grown on Earth, and 1000 kcals needs only 0.325m2 per year.</p><p>This shrinks the area needed to "only" 7 million km2.</p><p>But wait, we can stack the units! Let's say we stack them in 10 units high. That gives us 700,000 km2. How big is that? Well, that's a little more than the surface area of France.</p><p>Except that we probably need to add 50% onto the area to allow for access for maintenance, cropping and so on. That gives us a little over 1 million km2 - so we have to add Germany as well.</p><p>So that's indoor farms with hydroponic beds stacked 10 rows high, the size of Germany and France combined. (Obviously, it's not one farm, but hundreds of thousands of them.)</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">But what about water?</h4><p>So far I’ve assumed that water is available on Rethe – either in ice or available via comets. How much water do these underground hydroponic farms need?</p><p>This <a href="https://www.farmersweekly.co.za/agri-technology/farming-for-tomorrow/hydroponic-water-requirements/">article here</a> suggests that a hydroponics system requires 5-7 litres per day per m2. Let's be generous and assume our miracle food only requires 4 litres per day per m2.</p><p>I imagine Rethe is good at recycling its water and recovers 90%. How much more does it need?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p>With 7 million km2 needing water, this means a daily requirement of 4 x 7,000,000 (km2) x 1,000,000 (m2 in a km2) x 50% (recycled) or 2.8 trillion m3 of water per day. Which is a cube of water 1.4 km on each side - every day. (And this is on top of the water needed for drinking/washing/cleaning/sewage/industry and everything else.) On a desert world.</p><p>It's that last bit that I struggle with. A desert world. While I imagine Rethe does grow some food, I would imagine much of it is imported.</p><p></p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-36527828917505996842024-01-22T00:39:00.000-08:002024-01-22T00:39:03.345-08:00Traveller: Rethe and the perils of random world generation<p>This is my third post on some of <b><i>Traveller’s</i></b> illogicalities. Don’t get me wrong, I love the <b><i>Traveller </i></b>background (the Third Imperium) – it was my first RPG, as I’ve <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2020/01/patient-zero.html">said before</a>. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.</p><p>Earlier posts covered <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2024/01/traveller-low-berths.html">low berths</a> and <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2024/01/traveller-why-do-starships-have.html">starship fuel tanks</a>.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">World creation</h3><p><b><i>Traveller </i></b>has a procedure for creating worlds. Roll dice, work through the steps and out pops a world at the end of the process.</p><p>This can produce weird results – but if you’re doing this yourself, you can either tweak the results so they make more sense or justify those results.</p><p>However, the <b><i>Traveller</i></b> canon has several books full of systems, most famously the Spinward Marches (Supplement 3), where most of the original <b><i>Traveller </i></b>adventures were set. I imagine a computer was used to create the hundreds of systems in the Spinward Marches – and as a result, some worlds are a little crazy.</p><p>Such as Rethe, in the Regina subsector.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Rethe</h3>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZEEfeiUsCTzgbDhPysjWrdoZbWqnLcDbhCJnIXSUCBGttmmP4oy-D0qFKzYOsptI7awMASMzPFJI5jhXsZDm6Zrq-tNFTShy85h4e4-bNxOrSSwgjIuH0l3K4mULB95h229V4xPgc-zPHGansKRS5PUclIbyhlFHd2T5xoQZZ2f8kHNLx_3Q1b8kM_CE/s715/Traveller%20Rethe.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="715" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZEEfeiUsCTzgbDhPysjWrdoZbWqnLcDbhCJnIXSUCBGttmmP4oy-D0qFKzYOsptI7awMASMzPFJI5jhXsZDm6Zrq-tNFTShy85h4e4-bNxOrSSwgjIuH0l3K4mULB95h229V4xPgc-zPHGansKRS5PUclIbyhlFHd2T5xoQZZ2f8kHNLx_3Q1b8kM_CE/w400-h245/Traveller%20Rethe.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rethe on the wonderful <a href="https://travellermap.com/?p=-88.955!71.826!8.65">Traveller Map</a></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>According to page 150 of <i>The Traveller Book</i>, Rethe has a population of 26 billion, the highest in the Regina subsector.</p>
<p><a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Rethe_(world)">According to the <b><i>Traveller</i></b> wiki</a>, that’s now either 30 billion (if you hover over the UWP) or is “over one billion” and “in the last 25 years has grown by well over six billion” (according to the text, at time of writing). I’ll stick with <i>The Traveller Book</i> for the rest of this post.</p><p>Reth’s UWP (Universal World Profile) is E230AA8 8 Poor. Non-agricultural. Desert World.</p>
<p>Let’s break that down:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Starport E (Frontier installation – a patch of bedrock with no facilities.)</li>
<li>Size 2 (3,200 km in diameter, roughly – about the size of the moon. But see below.)</li>
<li>Atmosphere 3 (Very thin, needing a respirator.)</li>
<li>Hydrographics 0 (No freestanding water – like the moon. Maybe some ice.)</li>
<li>Population A (Tens of billions – 26 billion, according to <i>The Traveller Book</i>.)</li>
<li>Government A (A charismatic dictator.)</li>
<li>Law level 8 (Guns and long-bladed weapons are controlled – a bit like the UK.)</li>
<li>Tech level 8 (Laser carbines and air rafts – according to <i>The Traveller Book</i>, this equates to 1980-1989 on Earth!)</li>
<li>Poor: Any world with an atmosphere of 2-5 and hydrographics 3- is automatically poor. I’m not sure this makes sense.</li>
<li>Non-agricultural: Worlds with an atmosphere 3-, hydrographics 3- and population 6+ are non-agricultural.</li>
<li>Desert world: Hydrographics 0 and atmosphere 2+. (Mongoose's <i>Core Rulebook</i> describes Desert worlds as "barely habitable".)</li>
</ul>
<h3>How big?</h3><p>According to <a href="https://travellermap.com/?p=-86.019!72.132!7.45">the <b><i>Traveller</i></b> map</a> and the wiki, Rethe is size 4 or 6,400km in diameter. That makes it slightly smaller than Mars – <a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Mars_(world)">according to the wiki</a>, Mars and Rethe have the same physical characteristics (430).</p>
<p>I’m not sure why it changed, and it doesn’t change my argument about Rethe’s inhospitality, but I’m sticking with <i>The Traveller Book</i> for the rest of this post.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">But what does all this mean?</h3><p>So, let’s talk about the obvious outlier – a population of 26 billion people. On the moon (or Mars). At tech level 8 and with no starport to speak of.</p><p>Really?</p><p>Imagine 26 billion people living on the moon. Thanks to the very thin atmosphere, they must live indoors – in massive cities/archologies or orbital settlements. (The wiki mentions orbital habitats.)</p><p>But what’s it like? Is Rethe futuristic and grand, like Coruscant in <i>Star Wars</i>? Or is it shabby, overcrowded and awful, like Ceres in <i>The Expanse</i>?</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Why Rethe?</h3><p>Why are there 26 billion people on Rethe? What makes it so attractive?</p><p><a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Regina_Subsector">According to the Regina subsector page on the Traveller wiki</a>, Rethe’s population is mostly human. (It doesn’t explicitly say that, but you can work it out from the numbers in the sophont population table.) And humans didn’t evolve on Rethe – they went there.</p><p>(And it’s more plausible to say that there are 26 billion people in the Rethe system, but Rethe itself is the most important world, and most people are there.)</p><p>It seems likely that Rethe is rich in lanthanum, Zuchai crystals, unobtanium, anti-matter, dark matter, or other exotic minerals. (Being rich in heavy metals would help it retain its thin atmosphere rather than being airless like our moon.) Something that has drawn billions of people to Rethe to seek their fortune (either by mining or servicing the mining industry, or by servicing those servicing the mining industry).</p><p>Rethe needs to export something valuable – because it must import food and other essential resources. (I imagine it can find ice, and therefore water, in the system somewhere.)</p><p>If it doesn’t import anything, it starves. And if it doesn’t export anything, it can’t pay for its imports, so it starves. So, assuming that the population of Rethe isn’t starving, it must be doing brisk trade with nearby worlds.</p><p><a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Rethe_(world)">The <b><i>Traveller</i></b> wiki</a> notes that “Since it was colonized, the world has been a backwater, with the population producing just enough to support the cost of life support.” That doesn’t sound like a rich, prosperous world – but “just enough to support the cost of life support” for 26 billion people means that Rethe is producing an awful lot of <i>something</i>.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">E class starport?</h3><p>But how can Rethe trade when it only has a class E starport?</p><p>Maybe if Rethe was in a lightly populated part of space, then you justify not having a starport. There could be a garden world somewhere in the system and lots of in-system trade, but no actual starport. (Although why Rethe is the main world and not this lovely garden world then needs further justification.)</p><p>But Rethe isn’t remote – it’s on a branch of the Spinward Main, a long chain of systems just one parsec from each other.</p><p>Giving Rethe a Class E starport is like imagining New York without ports, stations, airports or roads – and only a single-track highway to get there. It’s hard to imagine – it doesn’t make sense.</p><p>So Rethe needs an enormous starport (or starports) filled with bulk carriers. They bring in supplies and take out whatever it is that Rethe exports. It must be Class B at least – and probably Class A.</p><p>(<a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Rethe_%28world%29">The Traveller Wiki</a> suggests that Rethe originally had a Class B starport, but for unspecified reasons, it was downgraded.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">And tech level 8?</h3><p>How can Rethe be only tech level 8? <i>The Traveller Book</i> hasn’t dated well (it tells us that TL8 is the technology of the 1980s), but Mongoose <b><i>Traveller </i></b>says that at TL 8, “permanent space habitats become possible”. Possible.</p><p>Rethe needs better than “possible,” given it has 26 billion people living in what are effectively permanent space habitats. (It might have an atmosphere, but it’s not breathable. And there’s no water - and that means no food.) At TL10, “orbital habitats and factories become commonplace”, which suggests that Rethe needs to be TL10 at least.</p><p>But perhaps there has been a war. That would explain the Class E starport and the (relatively) low tech level. But a war also suggests a huge humanitarian crisis that the subsector (if not the sector) should be mobilising to fix. But such a war or crisis isn't mentioned anywhere (<i>The Traveller Book's</i> library data for Rethe just mentions an annual festival.)</p><p>Canonically, I think the date of <i>The Traveller Book</i> is 1105. <a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Rethe_(world)">The Traveller wiki entry for Rethe</a> says that it is <a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Milieu_1116">Milieu 1116</a>, which covers the period from 1100 to 1117. Seventeen years is a long time for 26 billion people on a desert world not to have a decent starport, and according to the wiki, Rethe is still TL 8 Class E (although rebuilding back to Class B).</p><p>But that’s one of the challenges of canon – having the background (particularly one as vast as the Third Imperium) evolve. Peculiarities such as Rethe are almost inevitable.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">How likely is Rethe anyway?</h3>
<p>I recreated the rolls that made Rethe from <i>The Traveller Book</i>. The rolls were:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Starport (2D): 10 or 11, for an E class starport</li>
<li>Size (2D-2): 4, for size 2</li>
<li>Atmosphere (2D-7+size): 8, for atmosphere 3</li>
<li>Hydrographics (2D-7+atmosphere): 2, 3 or 4 for hydrographics 0</li>
<li>Population (2D-2): 12 for A</li>
<li>Government (2D-7+population): 7 for government A</li>
<li>Law level (2D-7+government): 6 for law level 9</li>
<li>Tech level (1D +1 (for size 2) +1 (for atmosphere 3) +4 (for population A)): 2 to get tech level 8.</li>
</ul>
<p>With only a few extreme rolls, it’s not surprising that a world like Rethe appears somewhere – probably more than once.</p>
<p>Rethe is a little less likely with Mongoose’s core rules because the starport roll comes after the law level roll and is modified by population (+2 for a population of 10+). An E-class starport is still possible, but you’d have to roll 2. But a roll of 10 or 11 (as per the original roll for a starport) would have given Rethe an A-class starport.</p><p>And an A-class starport gives Rethe an extra +6 modifier on the tech level roll (and +1 for 0% hydrographics, which isn’t in <i>The Traveller Book</i>). So that’s a total DM of +13, which gives us TL 15 if we take the original result of 2.</p><p>So, a Class A starport and TL 15. It’s more like Coruscant, and the only question is why Regina is the sector capital rather than Rethe.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">What I’d change</h3>
<p>I’m not doing this to poke fun at <b><i>Traveller </i></b>– I’m just pointing out some illogicalities that can arise when you randomly create systems using a formula. Rethe isn’t particularly unusual – some of the rolls were at the extreme ends of the bell curve (but even then, only one 12), but if you roll up a lot of worlds, it will happen sooner or later.</p><p>So if I were to change anything, I would ensure high populations on worlds that can’t support themselves were at least TL 10 with a good starport. Or maybe a common-sense check before committing the system to the canon.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Next time</h3><p>Next time, I look at how to feed Rethe.</p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-33307448767133935082024-01-15T00:57:00.000-08:002024-01-15T00:57:52.856-08:00Traveller: Why do starships have internal fuel tanks?<p><a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2024/01/traveller-low-berths.html">Last time, I mused over the lethality of <b><i>Traveller’s </i></b>low berths</a>. This time, I’m grumbling about starship fuel tanks.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Jump drives</h3><p>Back in 1981, when I first read <b><i>Traveller’s </i></b>little black books, I didn’t fully understand how jump drives worked. I imagined they were like the hyperdrives in <i>Star Wars</i> – and were used throughout to keep the ship in jump space.</p><p>Except they don’t work like that.</p><p>I realised something was amiss with my concept when I got my hands on Sup<i>plement 7: Traders and Gunboats</i> and, in particular, the Gazelle class Close Escort.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Gazelle class Close Escort</h3>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvVIliNIskodfji_MdNUuqu64639T3zedwciQ0UUnbiZ4uAzQzZGFxlR53tQQpWMxaFxuav4mUyyaM65tp3QpkNlS7v39fr164Tymev5sDKltCinJZuISxu_mnfIpzndAWyxxHfhxSVNwQYXEHAZ7z3JmawjM5KrdVU_NGUwY8PxxJofmkdrYXquNH1WU/s851/Traveller-gazelle1.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="851" data-original-width="568" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvVIliNIskodfji_MdNUuqu64639T3zedwciQ0UUnbiZ4uAzQzZGFxlR53tQQpWMxaFxuav4mUyyaM65tp3QpkNlS7v39fr164Tymev5sDKltCinJZuISxu_mnfIpzndAWyxxHfhxSVNwQYXEHAZ7z3JmawjM5KrdVU_NGUwY8PxxJofmkdrYXquNH1WU/w268-h400/Traveller-gazelle1.png" width="268" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Gazelle then: From <i>Traders and Gunboats</i></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>The Gazelle included a new feature: drop tanks.</p><p><i>“The L-Hyd Tanks: The close escort carries a large fraction of its fuel in droppable tanks mounted longitudinally. With the tanks attached, the ship is capable of jump 4 and 4-G acceleration. When the tanks are dropped, the ship burns the fuel and can achieve jump. Once the tanks are dropped, they must be replaced at a starport or naval base; until they are replaced, the ship is capable of 5-G acceleration, but only jump-2 (due to lack of sufficient fuel capacity).”</i></p><p>This crashed up against my assumptions, and it took me a while to work out what this actually meant: jump drives spent all their fuel before entering jump. And then they could drop their tanks, which is important because, in <b><i>Traveller</i></b>, a ship’s volume (measured in, er, tonnage – more on that below) determines how far it can jump.</p><p>This was the first time I had seen this. It wasn’t in my little black books, and it wasn’t in <i>The Traveller Book.</i></p><p>It’s not even particularly clear in Mongoose’s latest rules.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP88MlBrSM4Fw2Kwjosnr-Yv_vF-ZFM5hi7S3hiTEgsK0aGnBRacyqyKWCqg2-XYVn8-9qBy8EBtUQGD5S9fVXkCa91SfAKISnRGFG2I1XcEaQ49ptfTRzg6GU1i78yG6Iot0pgKX_0tsK05BIyjXLCY5NqWlOeSztKUlLAfR9g4Cx6X9c50ibI_JMe9M/s356/Traveller-gazelle2.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="292" data-original-width="356" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP88MlBrSM4Fw2Kwjosnr-Yv_vF-ZFM5hi7S3hiTEgsK0aGnBRacyqyKWCqg2-XYVn8-9qBy8EBtUQGD5S9fVXkCa91SfAKISnRGFG2I1XcEaQ49ptfTRzg6GU1i78yG6Iot0pgKX_0tsK05BIyjXLCY5NqWlOeSztKUlLAfR9g4Cx6X9c50ibI_JMe9M/w400-h328/Traveller-gazelle2.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Gazelle now: From <i>High Guard</i> (2022 update)</td></tr></tbody></table>
<h3>Core Book 2022 Update</h3>
<p>While providing a much clearer explanation of what’s going on during jump, Mongoose’s <i>Core Rulebook Update 2022</i> doesn’t clearly say that jump drive fuel is consumed to create the jump bubble before entering jumpspace.</p><p>And the amount of fuel spent creating the bubble is 10% of the ship’s tonnage x the distance jumped, in parsecs. (While this is implied, I don’t think I’ve seen it in the core rules, although I may have missed it. It’s covered in the <a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Jump_Drive"><b><i>Traveller</i></b> wiki</a>.)</p><p>Why is this important?</p><p>Because in a world where tonnage is money, why would you ever have internal fuel tanks for your jump drive? Once you enter the jump bubble, those tanks are empty…</p><p>In fact, for most ships, the J-drive fuel tanks are empty for most of its life. You normally only need to fill them when you’re about to make a jump – otherwise, it is best to keep them empty.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The cost of an empty fuel tank</h3><p>So, if we look at a humble 200-ton (or rather, 2,800 m3 volume) Free Trader, its jump-1 drive requires 20 tons of fuel. If a Free Trader had droppable fuel tanks, those 20 tons could be turned into cargo space which would be potentially an extra Cr 20,000 every trip (assuming it was filled with standard cargo).</p><p>Why wouldn’t you do that?</p><p>Now, drop tanks may only work in civilized places – perhaps only at class A and B starports or where there is a steady trade. I can imagine renting standard drop tanks much in the way you’d rent a skip today. (So that will eat into that Cr 20,000.)</p><p>And you might want internal fuel tanks if you didn’t know whether you would be able to refuel at the other end. However, most <b><i>Traveller</i></b> ships don’t have the fuel capacity for more than one jump, and the assumption is that fuel is pretty easy to get.</p><p>Are there other options?</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Alternative fuel tanks</h3><p><i>High Guard</i> gives us more options for fuel tanks:</p><p><b>Collapsible fuel tanks:</b> A huge bladder that sits in the cargo space and can be filled (and emptied) with fuel as needed. It's a good idea, but there’s no time to use the cargo space productively between forming the jump bubble and entering jumpspace.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz2_34uwRIptDtlspFA15mw4whE_43h34Zzc2aKYkdwKRKXnRxIGAsPyJ1HOLANx2hi3oBE5IyAHOIWGmGefWKFawgLlez6cLPxz6YbkWluhmhblfm1KJRaUIMHHHVFUIIU_-yKREgGG_7bsn4QjAeUFgISra79c0a0JyqgqIDPovhWVjOjFoMcYML8yk/s444/Traveller-fuel-tank.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="444" data-original-width="327" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz2_34uwRIptDtlspFA15mw4whE_43h34Zzc2aKYkdwKRKXnRxIGAsPyJ1HOLANx2hi3oBE5IyAHOIWGmGefWKFawgLlez6cLPxz6YbkWluhmhblfm1KJRaUIMHHHVFUIIU_-yKREgGG_7bsn4QjAeUFgISra79c0a0JyqgqIDPovhWVjOjFoMcYML8yk/w295-h400/Traveller-fuel-tank.png" width="295" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Collapsible fuel tank from <i>High Guard</i></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b>Drop tanks</b>: As fitted on the Gazelle Close Escort, above. However, they bring a penalty to the jump drive roll, and the tanks themselves have a less than 50% chance of surviving the experience. (I find it odd that they aren’t more reliable – I imagine Toyota kaizen-ing the hell out of these and making them safe and reliable and cornering the market as a result.)</p><p><b>Fuel/Cargo container:</b> Allows fuel to be stored in unused parts of a ship.</p><p><b>Mountable tanks</b>: Fixed tanks that convert cargo space into fuel tanks, and as far as I can see, have no benefit over a collapsible fuel tank. (Well, they take up less space than a fuel bladder, but you’ve lost the use of your cargo space.)</p><p>None of these are ideal – they either use up precious cargo space or aren’t particularly reliable.</p><p>My solution: collapsible external fuel tanks</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Collapsible external fuel tanks</h3><p>Why not fit those fuel bladders on the outside of a ship? That way, when the fuel is used up, the bladder collapses and preserves the ship’s precious volume. And it can be reused time and time again.</p><p>Collapsible external tanks will affect a ship’s streamlining – although I can imagine blisters on the hull that conceal the tank (but at a cost – maybe 2% of the fuel tank tonnage) and protect the ship’s streamlining.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Implications</h3><p>The real problem with this is that it invalidates almost all the <b><i>Traveller </i></b>ship design assumptions since 1977. Ships should have more cargo space and less fuel space. You might still want internal fuel tanks for some situations, particularly if you need an armoured hull, but most ships would have external fuel bladders.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Footnote: Traveller tonnage</h3><p><b><i>Traveller</i> </b>tonnage is a bit weird. Ships are measured in displacement tonnage, which is actually a measure of volume (equivalent to the volume of liquid hydrogen displaced, measured in tons – so one displacement ton is 14 m2).</p><p>I can see how this works for jump drives – the J-drive needs to create a jump bubble big enough to take the ship. So volume is important.</p><p>But for manoeuvre drives? I would have thought that a ship’s mass was more important than its volume for an M-drive. So, is a ship more agile with its fuel tanks empty? Apparently not – but maybe that was one calculation too many. (Interestingly, M-drives use power from the power plant but no actual fuel themselves.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Next</h3><p>Next time I look at the most populated world in the Regina subsector: Rethe.</p><div><br /></div>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-22506725277598568562024-01-08T01:23:00.000-08:002024-01-08T01:23:29.421-08:00Traveller: low berths<p>Some background: I have a vague plan to run some <b><i>Traveller </i></b>sometime soon, so I’ve been doing some reading (Mongoose 2nd edition, the 2022 update), and I’m enjoying immersing myself in it.</p>
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<p>I haven’t read this much <b><i>Traveller </i></b>since the early 80s, when I started roleplaying. I’m pleased at how familiar everything is – but at the same time, modern and updated.</p><p>But I have a few niggles; things that don’t seem quite right. None are game-breaking (and few actually affect actual roleplaying), but they have the sense of something that hasn’t really been thought about properly.</p><p>So I’m going to mull over some of them – starting with low berths.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">What are low berths?</h3>
<p>“Back to the old freezerinos.” – Brett, <i>Alien</i></p>
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<p>Low berths are a staple of science fiction and may be known as cryotubes, stasis, hypersleep pods or whatever. Essentially, the passenger is frozen for the duration of the voyage.</p>
<p><i>Alien </i>starts with the crew coming out of cryosleep – but you can see the same sort of thing in <i>Avatar, Passengers, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy </i>(the Golgafrincham B Ark) and many others. (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_animation_in_fiction">Here’s a wiki page devoted to the subject</a>.)</p>
<p>Technically, it’s not without its challenges. In particular, the challenge of preventing ice crystal formation. But assuming you can overcome that problem, cryosleep is great for transporting a lot of people a long way with minimal life support.</p>
<p><b><i>Traveller</i></b>, however, is a bit odd about that as they’re typically used for one-week jumps. It hardly seems worth it. (<a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Low_Passage">Here’s the <b><i>Traveller </i></b>wiki page on low passage</a>.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">What’s wrong with Traveller’s low berths?</h3><p>In short, they’re lethal. </p><p>My 1982 copy of <i>The Traveller Book</i> says: “<i>Throw 5+ for each passenger when he is revived after the ship has landed. DMs: Atending medic expertise of 2 or better, +1; low passenger with an endurance of 6 or less, -1. Failure to achieve the throw to revive results in death for the passenger.”</i></p><p>So that’s an unmodified 5/6 (83%) chance of survival.</p><p>That means if a family of four takes a trip somewhere, they only have a 48% chance of all surviving the journey. (So, a greater than even chance that at least one family member won’t make it.)</p><p>Those odds are appalling! Even with a medic on hand (+1 DM), there’s still a 30% chance that at least one family member won’t survive the journey.</p><p>(In <b><i>Traveller</i></b>, a 200-ton Free Trader has 20 low berths. There’s only a 2.6% unmodified chance of everyone making it.)</p><p>I certainly wouldn’t get into a low passage – they’re just too dangerous. It’s literally a game of Russian Roulette. And putting 20 on a Free Trader (taking up 10 tons of valuable cargo space) seems extraordinarily wasteful!</p><p>(And the low lottery, where passengers hold a sweepstake on the number of low berth survivors, is just tasteless.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Mongoose Core Rules</h3><p>In Mongoose’s <b><i>Traveller</i></b>, things are slightly better. Slightly.</p><p>The Core Rules say: <i>“There is real danger to the passenger, as a Routine (6+) Medic check (1D x 10 minutes, INT) is required upon opening the capsule, applying the passenger’s END DM to the check. A further DM+1 is applied if the ship is TL12 or higher, while non-humans suffer DM-2. An emergency low berth inflicts DM-1 on this check.”</i></p><p>While at first glance this appears worse, taking longer over a task gives a +2 DM. As there really shouldn’t be any reason to rush defrosting someone from a low berth, this gives an unmodified roll of 4+ to survive, or an 11/12 chance of survival. And Medic-2 makes it an automatic success, making low berth travel much safer.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">What would I change?</h3><p>First, I like low berths. They’re a science fiction stable, and it suits <b><i>Traveller</i></b>, but for me, it needs some adjustments.</p><p>First, I would assume that the problems of low berth travel have been largely fixed. Low berth travel should be boring. Routine. Safe. Maybe there’s a one in a thousand chance of a problem, with one in twenty of those resulting in a fatality. That makes low berths more realistic.</p><p>Second, I would remove low berths as fixtures in ships – maybe have a few low berths for emergencies. Instead, I imagine low berths being part of the cargo. </p><p>There’s no reason for low berths to be per-jump. Instead, you could be put in a low berth at one end of your journey and defrosted at the other, however many jumps later. I imagine a small industry of seamless, low-cost passenger shipping.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Low berths and aliens</h4><p>Mongoose’s <b><i>Traveller </i></b>gives a DM-2 for non-humans, but presumably, that applies only to non-humans trying to use a human low berth. On a Vargr ship, it should be the humans who get DM-2.</p><p>That’s assuming they can fit in the low berth in the first place – a K’Kree won’t ever be able to use a human low berth.</p><p>And some aliens may be unsuitable for low berths in any eventuality. (Discussed to some extent on this <a href="https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Low_Berth_Rack"><b><i>Traveller</i></b> wiki page about Low Berth Racks</a>.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Other ideas</h3><p>Low berths (or their equivalents) regularly turn up in science fiction, sometimes with interesting side effects.</p><p>It’s a long time since I read Arthur C Clarke’s <i>2010: Odyssey Two</i>, but from what I remember, the hibernation pods had a small rejuvenating effect. How popular would they be in <b><i>Traveller </i></b>if regular use was a positive DM on your ageing roll?</p><p>On the other hand, in <i>The Legacy of Heorot</i> (by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes), some colonists suffer from Hibernation Instability caused by ice crystals forming in the brain during cryosleep. So maybe one potential side effect of low berths is a risk of -1 to Intelligence rather than death? </p><p>(Similarly, in the <i>Flatlined</i> adventure, the Travellers awaken with temporary amnesia.)</p><p>Or might passengers enjoy cellular reprofiling during cryosleep? Maybe not as extensive as the rejuvenation process in <i>Pandora’s Star</i> and <i>Judas Unchained</i> (Peter F Hamilton), but perhaps enough to give +1 to Dexterity or Endurance? This would probably be expensive – and I imagine it taking longer than a week. But if you’re travelling from Efate/Regina to Pretoria/Pretoria (11 jumps, at jump 2), why not avoid the tedium of travel, eradicate your hay fever, boost your reflexes, and change your eye colour at the same time?</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Next time</h3><p>Next time, I grumble about starship fuel tanks.</p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-72390842548283199442024-01-02T05:36:00.000-08:002024-01-02T05:36:46.732-08:002023 in games<p>And suddenly, it’s 2024. Was 2023 anything to write home about? Some good, some bad – at least in terms of games.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE2fUTGAonnywsAny-xYEay9B91XXHagBmYUEZIIulmsaB5RMNS1mnR_xmOLPxlYRBsHXBNNLj9-Wpt0itu8-l2PxkVimcYd4YdX0J1LLN5GGS-LbUMzPxPk9ogPdqFDNha3FwPQ42PJkdOcUGG-fQ8kVEkJTKCGZ_Msi9VX7yz27-dV336Ft81Jec66Y/s3647/IMG_20240102_133200709.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1922" data-original-width="3647" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE2fUTGAonnywsAny-xYEay9B91XXHagBmYUEZIIulmsaB5RMNS1mnR_xmOLPxlYRBsHXBNNLj9-Wpt0itu8-l2PxkVimcYd4YdX0J1LLN5GGS-LbUMzPxPk9ogPdqFDNha3FwPQ42PJkdOcUGG-fQ8kVEkJTKCGZ_Msi9VX7yz27-dV336Ft81Jec66Y/w400-h211/IMG_20240102_133200709.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2023's new boardgames</td></tr></tbody></table>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Freeform Games</h3><p>Freeform Games had a great year. We published two games, transitioned our old shop into a more modern shop, and had our best year (sales and revenue) so far. I will write more on the <a href="https://www.freeformgames.com/blog/category/review-of-the-year/">Freeform Games blog</a>, in a few days.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Conventions and games weekends</h3>
<p>I’m attending more conventions these days (largely thanks to giving up the day job). I love going to conventions – as much for catching up with old friends as much as playing the games.</p><p>In 2023 I attended:</p><p><b>Retcon </b>(February, Retford): A replacement for the normal UK Freeforms weekend game, Retcon was a convention of smaller freeforms and boardgames. I ran two freeforms and facilitated a game of Fiasco.</p><p><b>Airecon</b> (March, Harrogate): A lovely local convention in Harrogate – I’ve been going for a few years now. It’s primarily a boardgames convention, with a small-but-healthy RPG stream. (It’s like a small UKGE, but more focus on playing and less on the trade halls.) I ran two tabletop RPGs and played lots of boardgames.</p><p><b>Peaky </b>(April, not far from Tamworth): I’ve been to every Peaky since it started in the early 2000s. Intense, creative and fabulous. I wrote one game and played three. Brilliant.</p><p><b>Continuum</b> (July, Leicester): This was my first Continuum in a while – it had fallen off my games calendar. I like the mix of tabletop and freeforms that I get at Continuum, plus I ran into several old friends that I don’t see at the other cons. I ran two tabletop games and played in three freeforms.</p><p><b>Furnace</b> (October, Sheffield): Tabletop roleplaying only, and local enough that I don’t need to stay overnight. I ran one game and played in three.</p><p><b>Consequences </b>(November, not far from Poole): Longest time away (four nights), I ran two freeforms and played in five.</p><p><b>Plans for 2024:</b> Mostly the same, except that the weekend freeforms are back, which means there’s no Retcon. And I’m hoping to get to at least one day of Larpcon in Coalville.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Freeform larps</h3>
<p>2023 was a great year for freeforms. I played or ran 20 freeforms, which I’m sure is a record. I also self-published a book, <b><i><a href="https://www.stevehatherley.uk/writing-freeform-larps">Writing Freeform Larps</a></i></b>, which does what it says on the tin.</p><p><b>Favourite to run:</b> <b><i>Children of the Stars</i></b>, at Consequences, was my favourite to run. It went smoothly – and although the follow-up (<b><i>Messages from Callisto</i></b>) also went well, that was beset by errors on my part.</p><p><b>Favourite to play</b>: <b><i>The Ashlight Labyrinth</i></b>, which I played at Peaky, was a delight and my favourite freeform as a player in 2023. (Close runners-up were <b><i>Across the City, Better than Life, Antarctic Station</i></b> <b><i>13 </i></b>and <b><i>Ghosts: It’s not Ibsen</i></b>.)</p>
<p><b>Plans for 2024:</b></p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Finish writing and then run <b><i>The Stars our Destination</i></b> (the next in my first-contact series of games).</li>
<li>Publish <b><i>All Flesh is Grass</i></b> on Itch.io. Start work on getting <b><i>Children of the Stars</i></b> ready for publication.</li>
<li>Maybe start writing another freeform for Freeform Games.</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Tabletop RPGs</h3>
<p>I played in and ran fewer ttrpgs in 2023 than in recent years. My regular groups are fairly small (usually just four of us), and if someone can’t make it, then we cancel the session rather than struggle with just three of us. Unfortunately, we had lots of cancelled sessions in 2023.</p><p>My 2023 top games in terms of numbers were <b><i>As the Sun Forever Sets</i></b> (nine sessions as GM), Good <b><i>Society</i></b> (four sessions as a player – this is ongoing), <b><i>Kingdom</i></b> (three sessions as GM/facilitator). </p><p>I ran two sessions of <b><i>Hillfolk</i></b>, which I’ve been meaning to run ever since it came out in 2023. So it only took me ten years. It was as good as I hoped, and I want to run more.</p><p>I published <b><i><a href="https://www.stevehatherley.uk/other-london">Other London: Desk 17</a></i></b>, along with a couple of adventures. They’re not setting the world alight, but I find the whole process very satisfying. I like sharing my stuff.</p><p><b>Favourite to run:</b> The two sessions of <b><i>Hillfolk</i></b>, which were a delight.</p>
<p><b><i>Favourite to play:</i></b> The session of <b><i>Fiasco</i></b> I played (and facilitated) at Retcon – we had a great group of players and it was one of the highlights of the con.</p>
<p><b>Plans for 2024:</b></p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Run more <b><i>Hillfolk </i></b>(at Airecon – and maybe see what it’s like online).</li>
<li>Playtest the two scenarios I have written up (one for the <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2022/11/liminal-department-for-irregular.html">Department of Irregular Services</a>, one for Desk 17) and then publish them.</li>
<li>Finish writing up two half-finished scenarios and playtest them as well.</li>
<li>Maybe run a bit of <b><i>Traveller</i></b>, which would be very old school for me. At the very least, I will buy <i>Mysteries of the Ancients</i> and <i>Wrath of the Ancients</i>, which are completely in my wheelhouse. (I know I can get the pdfs right now, but I’m saving myself for when the hardbacks are ready.)</li>
<li>If the <b><i>Urban Shadows 2.0</i></b> Kickstarter appears, I’d like to take it for a spin. It’s very late (the campaign was back in 2020), but I’m relaxed about its tardiness. I don’t have room for another game, and I’d rather it was right and late than wrong and on time.</li>
<li>And perhaps most important, I’d love to meet more gamers and play more games. Maybe run a few one-shots online or find a semi-regular face-to-face group.</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Boardgames</h3>
<p>In 2023, I played more games of <b><i>My City </i></b>than any other game. I played on boardgamearena a fair bit, which has been a lot of fun. While I’ve had a couple of online evenings with friends, most of my games have been turn-based against strangers. It’s been more fun than I had expected, and I’ve tried a lot of new games.</p><p>The new games to my collection:</p><p><b><i>My City:</i></b> Reiner Knizia's legacy game with 24-episodes, plus an “eternal” game once you’ve done with the legacy game. It's a tile-placing game that takes about 15 minutes to play - so easy to play a few games in one sitting. I’ve played the eternal game quite a bit on Boardgamearena. The campaign is okay – although, toward the end, it can be demoralising if you get too far behind in the overall score.</p><p><i><b>Mottainai:</b></i> a small card game by Carl Chudyk with a lot of gameplay. It’s the spiritual successor to <b><i>Glory to Rome</i></b> (one of my favourite games), and I like it a lot. It's tricky to get your head around and has some of the craziness that <b><i>Glory to Rome</i></b> has – but in a smaller, quicker package.</p><p><b><i>Daybreak: </i></b>A cooperative game of decarbonising to solve climate change by Matt Leacock & Matteo Menapace. I gave it to myself as a Christmas present. I’ve played it solo on Boardgamearena a few times, but my first in-person game with Miss H ended in a loss. Don’t put the fate of the planet in our hands!</p><p><b><i>The Traitors Card Game:</i></b> A Christmas present from Miss H. A tie-in to the wonderful TV series. I wondered if it was just a reskinned <b><i>Werewolf </i></b>(which is all <i>The Traitors</i> is), but it brings in elements from the TV series, such as shields and gold. It's for four players or more, and so we haven't tried it yet.</p><p><b>Plans for 2024:</b> More of the same – no doubt the games collection will swell. Already on order is <b><i>Kavango </i></b>(drafting African animals, Kickstarter) and <b><i>Innovation Deluxe </i></b>(more card-based craziness from Carl Chudyk, Backerkit), but I should restrain myself. (I try and cull it every now and again, but not always successfully.)</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Other games</h3>
<p>And as usual, I played the usual assortment of video games: too much <b><i>World of Tanks Blitz</i></b>, plenty of <b><i>Star Realms</i></b> and <b><i>Race for the Galaxy</i></b>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">And overall?</h3>
<p>So overall, 2023 was not so good for tabletop roleplaying, about average for boardgames, and excellent for freeforms. So I can’t complain.</p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-33332834425046743502023-12-26T03:31:00.000-08:002023-12-26T03:31:50.107-08:00Treasure Hunt 2023<p> This year’s Christmas treasure hunt:</p><p><i>Add together the fifth and sixth prime numbers. Then subtract 1.</i></p><p><i>Find the three consecutive odd numbers whose sum is 27. What is the middle number?</i></p><p><i>The first letter of the capital city of Myanmar.</i></p><p><i>Decrypt this using a caesar cypher with a shift of 3: “Wkh dqvzhu lv wkh ohwwhu g.”</i></p><p><i>What is the number of the chapter titled “The Forbidden Forest” in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone?</i></p><p><i>The ninth prime number.</i></p><p><i>The first letter of the name of the artist who painted three castles.</i></p><p><i>A bat and a ball cost £1.10 in total. The bat costs £1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost, in pence?</i></p><p><i>The first letter of the name of the artist who painted a wine bottle and two glasses.</i></p><p><i>A score.</i></p><div><br /></div>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-46540033514743111362023-12-18T05:47:00.000-08:002023-12-18T05:47:37.648-08:00Changing my mind – Fate<p><a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2023/12/what-would-i-change-about-my-favourite.html">Last time</a> I talked about the change I’d make to <b><i>Fate Accelerated</i></b> – I’d add a seventh approach, Charming.</p><p><a href="https://www.gamingtavern.uk/index.php?members/vodkashok.6/">Vodkashok</a> pointed out some errors in my thinking on <a href="https://www.gamingtavern.uk/index.php">The Tavern discussion forum</a> (where, through the magic of Interwebs, my blog was <a href="https://www.gamingtavern.uk/index.php?threads/what-would-i-change-about-my-favourite-rpg-system.9279/">automatically posted</a>).</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/4WkiRu10YuvxhwGPoaxE0-nIoF47nx-s9Zk_-Dlb2sLdTidUEsKpUX7zJkmhC_Sxs8ZdsoQS-lUjWw6z53Uk1aTdGwITYgbnP1qGhjhn9p94VrKCFvToLo0D=s901" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="901" data-original-width="663" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/4WkiRu10YuvxhwGPoaxE0-nIoF47nx-s9Zk_-Dlb2sLdTidUEsKpUX7zJkmhC_Sxs8ZdsoQS-lUjWw6z53Uk1aTdGwITYgbnP1qGhjhn9p94VrKCFvToLo0D=w294-h400" width="294" /></a></div><br />He wrote:<p></p><p><i>I'd humbly suggest falling back onto my old favourite Fate Accelerated adage - Approaches say how you do something, not what you do. So each one can be applied to anything. So, if you are trying to charm someone</i></p><p><i>Quick - rapidly bombarding the listener with words, not letting them get a word in. Literal fast talk</i></p><p><i>Forceful - power of charisma or fear, like a drill sergeant</i></p><p><i>Flashy - a staged performance, ala Donald Trump</i></p><p><i>Careful - slowly and steadily picking your words to make the most impact</i></p><p><i>Clever - long words, complex sentence structure, introduce some Latin phrasing and the occasional 'Whaar!'</i></p><p><i>Sneaky - Laying down linguistical traps, boxing someone into a corner where they cannot do anything but agree, the weasel words salesperson</i></p><p>He’s right, and that’s helped my <b><i>Fate Accelerated</i></b> thinking.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">How you do it, not what you do</h3><p>Vodkashok is right to remind me that approaches are how you do something, not what you do.</p><p>It seems odd that I had forgotten that, as when I teach <b><i>Fate Accelerated</i></b> to new players, that’s exactly what I tell them: you tell me what you’re trying to do, and I’ll tell you which approach that is.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Can you forcefully charm someone?</h3><p>But I’m not sure about all of Vodkashok’s examples (they appear to be <i>persuading</i> someone rather than <i>charming </i>them), but it’s a good example of how something like persuasion works in <b><i>Fate Accelerated</i></b>. </p><p>And “charming” might even be part of your high concept aspect, allowing you to spend a fate point to invoke it for a bonus. Or it could be a stunt.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">How do you charmingly open a door?</h3><p>Thinking about it further, charming doesn’t work as an approach because it’s so limited. How would you “charmingly” open a door or drive a car? You can’t. It doesn’t work.</p><p>Now, I’m not sure that every approach should be used in every situation (I probably wouldn’t let someone forcefully charm someone), but adding niche approaches probably isn’t the way to go.</p><p>So, I won’t add Charming to <i><b>Fate Accelerated</b></i> after all.</p><p><br /></p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-54482728508575894402023-12-11T08:08:00.000-08:002023-12-11T08:08:33.101-08:00What would I change about my favourite RPG system?<p>While I participated in <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/search/label/%23RPGaDAY">RPGaDAY </a>back in August, I found the questions a bit frustrating as I would have liked them to be more reflective.</p>
<p>As I was going through the month, I came up with a few questions I would like to answer. This is one of them.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">What would you change about your favourite RPG system?</h3>
<p>My favourite system, the one I find easiest to run and play, is <b><i>Fate Accelerated</i></b>.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/4WkiRu10YuvxhwGPoaxE0-nIoF47nx-s9Zk_-Dlb2sLdTidUEsKpUX7zJkmhC_Sxs8ZdsoQS-lUjWw6z53Uk1aTdGwITYgbnP1qGhjhn9p94VrKCFvToLo0D=s901" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="901" data-original-width="663" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/4WkiRu10YuvxhwGPoaxE0-nIoF47nx-s9Zk_-Dlb2sLdTidUEsKpUX7zJkmhC_Sxs8ZdsoQS-lUjWw6z53Uk1aTdGwITYgbnP1qGhjhn9p94VrKCFvToLo0D=w294-h400" width="294" /></a></div>
<p>I find <b style="font-style: italic;">Fate Accelerated</b> absurdly simple. Characters are defined by:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Aspects (“Hotshot pilot” “Rugged archaeologist” “Bull in a china shop”) which are always true. (Aspects can be applied to anything.)</li>
<li>Approaches – how the character does things. Approaches come in six flavours: Forceful, Quick, Careful, Clever, Sneaky, and Flashy.</li>
<li>Stunts – special abilities that work in certain circumstances, often giving a +2 bonus to a roll.</li></ul>
<p>There are no skills – if you want skills, you should use <b><i>Fate Core</i></b> or <b><i>Fate Condensed</i></b>. (But I’m not a fan of Fate’s skills list, as I mentioned in my <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2022/05/fate-of-cthulhu-1-overview.html"><b><i>Fate of Cthulhu</i></b> writeup</a>.)</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Doing stuff</h3>
<p>So, to do something in <b><i>Fate Accelerated</i></b>, a player rolls four fate dice and adds the relevant approach. If they are smashing down a door, it’s probably Forceful. If they are picking the lock, it might be Careful.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">The difficulty with approaches</h3>
<p>Sometimes, I find it tricky to work out which approach should be used. Clever and Careful often seem to have an overlap. I don’t worry too much, but if I’m struggling, I do two things:</p><p>First, I consider what the result will be (and what might happen if they fail). If the player is carefully defusing a bomb, then that suggests a methodical approach. If they fail, they’ve probably taken precautions against taking too much damage. But quickly defusing a bomb suggests a certain recklessness.</p>
<p>Second, it’s sometimes helpful to think of the approaches as <b><i>D&D</i></b> attributes. While this works for Forceful (Strength), Quick (Dexterity), and Clever (Intelligence), this doesn’t work so well for the others. (This doesn’t work for every case. If a PC was trying to intimidate an NPC, I could imagine them rolling Forceful.)</p>
<p>I guess I could argue that Careful <i>might </i>equate to Wisdom, but I suspect that the blurriness between Clever and Careful is like that between INT and WIS.</p>
<p>But there’s no approach in <b><i>Fate Accelerated</i></b> equivalent to Charisma or Constitution. That’s fine for Constitution – there’s no need for a “healthy” approach as that’s covered by stress boxes and consequences.</p>
<p>But Charisma? That’s the bit in <b><i>Fate Accelerated</i></b> I miss. My players often try to befriend or get to know NPCs, and I find the approaches let me down in <b><i>Fate Accelerated</i></b>. So, I’d like to see a “charming” or “charismatic” or “likeable” approach for social situations.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Just one change</h3>
<p>So that’s the change to <b><i>Fate Accelerated</i></b> I’d make: a seventh approach – Charming.</p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-2309248809244861632023-12-04T03:43:00.000-08:002023-12-04T03:43:01.914-08:00Reflections on a campaign larp<p>So from what I could tell and what the players told me (and others afterwards), the players enjoyed m<a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2023/11/my-first-consequences.html">y two freeforms at Consequences</a>. Several players want to find out what’s coming next, and other players (who missed one or both episodes) want me to run them again.</p><p>Which has me in a bit of a quandary.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The big idea</h3><p>So a recap.</p><p>I’m writing a series of connected freeform larps set in the same universe. The freeforms are based on the science fiction first-contact novels and movies (and other media) that I have always adored.</p><p>Some characters appear in multiple episodes. Some characters appear only once. The games are always written for 13 players (although I’ve managed when Life has interfered). The games are also designed to be independent – you need not play in the previous episodes, but I hope you’ll get more out of them if you do.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit6Gl-Y3PetuH3uv1Q9sa4HPOjfeHmRMgbqoYqAWA-XLg-HDSq5Aco31CH_d8V-kN8_-zjQQJL-RTMvNppRVaaVpkVhbZDvozF46h4pKWzOpHAr9bwSwmYQR2xDjBhY2ARdKdoAx1pwfvPXqp94f9kIkYbcNhJvhdBs_uE1lw5FyQbHew-n-DLekB34q8/s900/graham-holtshausen-fUnfEz3VLv4-unsplash-cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="202" data-original-width="900" height="90" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit6Gl-Y3PetuH3uv1Q9sa4HPOjfeHmRMgbqoYqAWA-XLg-HDSq5Aco31CH_d8V-kN8_-zjQQJL-RTMvNppRVaaVpkVhbZDvozF46h4pKWzOpHAr9bwSwmYQR2xDjBhY2ARdKdoAx1pwfvPXqp94f9kIkYbcNhJvhdBs_uE1lw5FyQbHew-n-DLekB34q8/w400-h90/graham-holtshausen-fUnfEz3VLv4-unsplash-cropped.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>The games so far are:</p>
<p><b><i>The Roswell Incident:</i></b> Kind of a prequel. Sets the scene and introduces some of the main themes. This is now published by Freeform Games.</p><p><b><i>All Flesh is Grass:</i></b> Based on the 1965 Clifford D Simak novel of the same name.</p><p><b><i>Children of the Stars:</i></b> The players grapple with another alien race. Friendly or not?</p><p><b><i>Messages from Callisto:</i></b> A mission to Callisto has unsettling news.</p><p><b><i>The Stars our Destination:</i></b> The next game, which I’ve started, is set on Rapa Nui (Easter Island).</p><p>So far, I have run each game twice – so I have two alternate “timelines” taking place.</p><p><b>Timeline 1</b> is is an online-only game, <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-roswell-incident.html">started in February 2022</a>. It’s suffered from occasional technical difficulties.</p><p><b>Timeline 2</b> is a face-to-face series that started at <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2023/02/retcon-b-retford-moot-b-2023.html">Retcon in February 2023</a> and continued at Consequences in 2023.</p><p>There are a few differences between the two – aside from the differences the players have created. I have changed some character names and alien details (one alien has completely changed from my original ideas).</p><p>But I’m keen to carry on with them. The two timelines are diverging, which is both scary and exciting.</p><p>(I should also note that while I have a vague sense of where I’m heading with the overall arc, I don’t know how I’ll get there…)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Multiple runs</h3><p>At a convention like Consequences, it’s common to have multiple runs of popular games. This year, <b><i>The Ashlight Labyrinth</i></b> and <b><i>Incense and Insensibility</i></b> both ran twice. </p><p>While that’s an easy thing to do for a one-shot, that’s a little trickier for ongoing games.</p><p>One easy answer is to start each episode with a summary that basically says, “Forget what happened last time; this is the real history.” As I understand it, that’s what Tony Mitton’s <b><i>Linfarn Run</i></b> series does.</p><p>But I don’t want to do that. I want the players' decisions in an episode to affect later episodes. If the players decide to multilaterally disarm and dismantle the world’s nuclear stockpile, then that should be part of the history going into later episodes.</p><p>I guess I could run (say) <b><i>Children of the Stars</i></b> twice at the same convention. They could have a common background (let’s say Timeline 2), but I would then end up with Timeline 2A and 2B (or is that Timeline 3 and 4?).</p><p>But that’s not what I want to do. I’d rather start Timeline 3 with <b><i>The Roswell Incident</i></b> and start afresh.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Playing previous episodes</h3><p>The other issue is whether players who join the game at episode 4 (say), would like to play an earlier episode. They already know some of what happened in those episodes (because it’s part of the background) – but would playing in an earlier episode appeal?</p><p>I don’t know.</p><p>I’d like to think that my games are enjoyable enough that they would have a good time playing even if they already knew some details. </p><p>And freeforms are often re-run, and players often play them again. At the recent <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/search/label/Retcon">Retcons</a>, I played in two freeforms that I had played previously – in one case, I even played the same character. It didn’t affect my enjoyment – I had either forgotten the details, or deliberately overlooked them.</p><p>So, I hope that players will enjoy playing in earlier episodes. (And if it were me, I’d be tempted to push the game in different directions.) I guess I’ll find out in due course.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">2-3 monthly campaign</h3><p>I guess my ideal approach for the campaign would be to run them at 2-3 monthly intervals with a stable of players.</p><p>If anyone is in the Leeds/Harrogate/York region and wants to organise such a thing, let me know!</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Available for others</h3><p>A final constraint is that I plan to make the games available for others to play.</p><p>So far, <a href="https://www.freeformgames.com/games/the-roswell-incident.php"><b><i>The Roswell Incident</i></b> is available via Freeform Games</a> as one of their murder mystery games (although the main mystery isn’t a murder…)</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyGB9eUahjL0oPHowEURxTUHKxEToCMKKLJ7OOpMGd5ggIJG-lNAkGRRZZxIIk_okvAncaMaQ_2Vi75iQHXFC0Pu1zBKzqT3KvMX119_2uN2aqm2Yw0rVIbyPF-yez40A10nL-zVKutMKupKTeGmTc2Cgjd-BwGF2HdHMZrXlHhRJtfDya6dzOj_IX2P8/s643/RI_Cover.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="643" data-original-width="515" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyGB9eUahjL0oPHowEURxTUHKxEToCMKKLJ7OOpMGd5ggIJG-lNAkGRRZZxIIk_okvAncaMaQ_2Vi75iQHXFC0Pu1zBKzqT3KvMX119_2uN2aqm2Yw0rVIbyPF-yez40A10nL-zVKutMKupKTeGmTc2Cgjd-BwGF2HdHMZrXlHhRJtfDya6dzOj_IX2P8/w320-h400/RI_Cover.webp" width="320" /></a></div>
<p>Next to get into shape is <b><i>All Flesh is Grass</i></b>, which I hope to start work on shortly. When that’s done, I’ll make it available on <a href="https://stevehatherley.itch.io/">my itch.io page</a>. With a fair wind, I hope to get that up in early 2024.</p>
<p>However, making a game where earlier games affect later games presents a few challenges. For <b><i>Children of the Stars</i></b>, I anticipated one big outcome and several little outcomes. (And there was another outcome I hadn’t predicted!)</p><p>So for <b><i>Messages from Callisto</i></b>, I prepared a set of notes for each character based on the big outcome and briefings for the little outcomes. And between the games, I hurriedly stuffed character packets accordingly.</p><p>However, as the timeline goes on, that’s likely to become more complicated.</p><p>So I will probably provide the game as MS Word documents (rather than a pdf as I might normally do), and highlight the areas that need changing. (It’s that or provide different files for each option – along with really complicated instructions for assembling character packets.)</p><p>I am already taking the highlighter approach for <b><i>The Stars our Destination</i></b> as I am already writing different sections of the text changes for different outcomes.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">To sum up</h3>
<p>So:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>I want to keep the games in their own timelines. I want the in-game decisions to matter. So I’m unlikely to run them more than once at the same convention.</li>
<li>I will make them available for others to run.</li>
<li>The next game will be <b><i>The Stars our Destination</i></b> and is set on Rapa Nui. The title may change (but it’s unlikely). I hope to run that online in the first half of 2024 (Timeline 1), and then in person at Consequences (Timeline 2).</li>
<li>I will probably run another game at Consequences, but whether that is episode 6 or something else, at this point I have no idea.</li>
<li>I’m not sure when I’m going to start Timeline 3.</li>
</ul>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-14016057114352506442023-11-30T00:08:00.000-08:002023-11-30T00:08:22.154-08:00My first Consequences<p>So last weekend I attended <a href="https://p.consequences.org.uk/">Passionate Consequences</a>, the freeform larp convention (with some boardgames) held every year in a holiday camp near Poole.</p><p>Loads of people found it hard to believe that this was my first Consequences. Many of my larp friends attend – and many games played were ones written at <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/search/label/Peaky">Peaky</a>. Consequences started in 2007, but as it’s on the south coast (near Poole), attending it always meant taking five days (including travel). And while I had a day job and a young family, that was more leave than I was comfortable taking.</p><p>Now I don’t have a day job, it’s easier to take leave, and so in 2023, I went to my first Consequences.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Consequences</h3><p>Consequences is held at Naish holiday village, so the accommodation is mostly holiday chalets. My accommodation (a two-bed apartment, not actually a chalet) was fine – it was clean and (once we’d figured out the heating) warm. As ever in this sort of accommodation, there were never enough towel rails.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-XNa-58vlcDL3wxU3IdWyc_0uzy7tbcyjY_z25q12SF4jJfkyXU5wT2Io_fde3urvdI-FmL-IC7MLGAnpRXEkKqnhqFv9_neskUTmcm8igbZl5FVT9d0M1b494SnVJxhd7y4TuTTpTdOaTffJ7E-okiDqNgI_5SppAi8igEyJ7Aau1M2b27XEgmOX8Eg/s4632/IMG_20231124_145620169.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3474" data-original-width="4632" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-XNa-58vlcDL3wxU3IdWyc_0uzy7tbcyjY_z25q12SF4jJfkyXU5wT2Io_fde3urvdI-FmL-IC7MLGAnpRXEkKqnhqFv9_neskUTmcm8igbZl5FVT9d0M1b494SnVJxhd7y4TuTTpTdOaTffJ7E-okiDqNgI_5SppAi8igEyJ7Aau1M2b27XEgmOX8Eg/w400-h300/IMG_20231124_145620169.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Typical accomodation / gaming lodge</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>The accommodation is all self-catered, and I ate a mixture of ready meals and bar meals. Unfortunately, the apartment’s oven was a little shonky. I’d bought a non-microwavable shepherd's pie but couldn’t get the oven up to temperature. So tipped the pie out of its foil tray onto a plate and used the microwave, and all was fine.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Thursday</h3><p>I set off from Yorkshire at about 9, having walked the dog, and after a long but easy drive, arrived at about 3 pm. I checked in and chatted with old friends.</p><p><b><i><a href="https://p.consequences.org.uk/events/85-horrospital">Horrospital</a></i></b></p><p>My first game was the tricky-to-pronounce <b><i>Horrospital</i></b>, a horror-comedy game by Tony Mitton for 25 players. Horror in freeforms is never very horrific. It is inevitably played for laughs and involves comedy vampires, werewolves, demons and the like. It’s always over the top and never very scary. Which sums up <b><i>Horrospital </i></b>nicely.</p><p>I played Orderly Peeler, an undercover cop. I was investigating a series of murders, and I got much of the way through solving it, but couldn’t quite get the final piece. This is partly because I was tired, but mainly because I didn’t sit down and discuss the murders properly with the character who could have filled in some gaps.</p><p>(I was tired not because of the long drive, but because the game started at 8 pm and I’m often tucked up in bed at 10 pm. I remember starting to flag at about 9:45 pm and thinking, blimey, we’ve got a way to go yet.) </p><p>Anyway, <b><i>Horrospital </i></b>was very enjoyable, my favourite bit was explaining to everyone that the reason I was investigating the murders was because I was studying for an NVQ. I’m sure everyone saw through my nonsense.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Friday</h3><p>I woke at 6 am (as usual) after a not-very-long night. Although I returned to the chalet early(ish), I didn’t go straight to bed as I wanted to relax and unwind first. I also needed to review my character for the morning’s game. I was originally signed up to play Sam, but a last-minute dropout meant I changed to Stevie. Who I hadn’t read. So I needed to read, absorb and take notes. Perhaps unwisely, I did that before going to bed and, as a result, got only three or four hours of sleep.</p><p><b><i><a href="https://p.consequences.org.uk/events/96-antarctic-station-13">Antarctic Base 13</a></i></b></p><p>This was a ten-player tense SF game set at an isolated research station in the Antarctic – with strong <i>The Thing</i> vibes. Written by Rich Perry and Alli Mawhinney, I’ve wanted to play it for a while. I’m glad I did, as it was great.</p><p>I played Stevie, the comms operator. Which meant I had access to lots of information – and I didn’t like going outside. My favourite parts were searching the base when everyone else had gone outside and doing something in plain sight in front of other players who were so caught up in their own thing that they didn’t notice me doing it.</p><p>It’s not perfect – the character sheets need a bit of work, and a couple of bits feel creaky, but the core concept is great. </p><p>After that, I had a short nap to wake up and lost badly at <i>Dune Imperium</i>, which I’d not played before. (I can see why it’s popular, but it’s a bit long for my liking.)</p><p><a href="https://p.consequences.org.uk/events/84-children-of-the-stars#run-191"><b><i>Children of the Stars</i></b></a></p><p>This was the first of the two games I was running, and I was looking forward to seeing how it would work. I had 13 players – and it went really well. I had a few pre-flight nerves because the first run (online) didn’t go well for various reasons. But this time, it went off without a hitch.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj52A0iq7xiM3Bof3xTC-N4pusVd7eB1IFLEYwGQTCPDVTtvKCalkAoScVEdlds7C7cY1D2HFPnbCbPU-HyZlr1c_H8Pa-RQh4mz0-cj0yYb49SPNJ2IKJ8YwSbbze_pFYsqqUsNmpJ-53-q37CY_oGh8Cb7LnmeLfE13FiQggVsvqfp8V1sEzXA0P5M6w/s3706/IMG_20231124_200448003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2160" data-original-width="3706" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj52A0iq7xiM3Bof3xTC-N4pusVd7eB1IFLEYwGQTCPDVTtvKCalkAoScVEdlds7C7cY1D2HFPnbCbPU-HyZlr1c_H8Pa-RQh4mz0-cj0yYb49SPNJ2IKJ8YwSbbze_pFYsqqUsNmpJ-53-q37CY_oGh8Cb7LnmeLfE13FiQggVsvqfp8V1sEzXA0P5M6w/w400-h234/IMG_20231124_200448003.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Discussions about weighty matters...</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>The players bought into the ongoing story. A couple had played in earlier episodes, and I had four playing in both this and Sunday’s <b><i>Messages from Callisto</i></b>. And I could see the decisions I’d given everyone were causing them to think.</p><p>As ever, I made copious notes and have a few changes to make – mostly clarifications rather than anything game-breaking.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Saturday</h3>
<p>I woke with a headache on Saturday and decided to eat in the restaurant rather than battle the kitchen appliances. My headache had cleared by the time it was to play my first game.</p><p><b><i><a href="https://p.consequences.org.uk/events/70-old-nick-s-game">Old Nick’s Game</a></i></b></p><p><b><i>Old Nick’s Game</i></b> is written by Charlie Paull, Alan Paull, Roger Gammans, and Nick Hollingsworth. It’s for ten players and is set in Hell and is based (loosely) on <i>Old Harry’s Game</i>, a Radio 4 comedy which I know of but haven’t listened to.</p><p>I will admit to being slightly apprehensive about this game as I wasn’t sure about my character. I was playing Antonia, the mother-in-law of another character. Gender didn’t seem very important in the game, so I wasn’t worried about that, but my character didn’t believe that they were in Hell – instead, this was all a rag week stunt. But the character sheet felt muddled as a result.</p><p>As it turned out, I needn’t have worried as the game was great. It played really nicely, and I had a whale of a time pretending we weren’t in Hell. I particularly enjoyed threatening to report Satan to HR if he continued his bullying. My favourite bit was discussing my favourite fiction (which I decided was Mills & Boon romances) with Satan, and he summoned Jane Austen from the pits of Hell – and she turned out to be extremely foul-mouthed. She must have had a very good editor!</p>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">Between games</h4>
<p>The most important thing I needed to do on Saturday was prepare the character packs for Sunday’s <b><i>Messages from Callisto</i></b>. So once I’d had a bite to eat, I popped back to the apartment to sort that out.</p><p><b><i>Messages from Callisto</i></b> is set ten years after <b><i>Children of the Stars</i></b>, and decisions the players make in <b><i>Children</i></b> affects the background to <b><i>Messages</i></b>. I’d thought about this in advance and come up with options – so I had extra background and briefing sheets for each character. And now I knew what had happened in <b><i>Messages</i></b>, I could prepare <b><i>Children</i></b>.</p><p>(Would I do this again? It was a lot of work, but it was also very satisfying. So the answer is probably yes.)</p><p>Once I’d done that, I went back to the main area and got into a game of <i>Villagers</i>. While I was playing, I was asked if I’d fill a spare place in Better Than Life, as a player had dropped. So that was my evening sorted.</p><p><b><i><a href="https://p.consequences.org.uk/events/94-a-btl-sandwich#run-262">A Better Than Life Sandwich</a></i></b></p>
<p><b><i>A BTL Sandwich</i></b> is a series of three short minigames featuring five characters. The scenes are all unrelated. It was written by Martin Jones for the <b><i>Across the Universe</i></b> weekend game, but he’s run these separately many times since.</p><p>The three minigames are all wonderful – tense, angsty and funny. The character sheets were all short, so it didn’t take much for me to catch up. It’s a great pick-up game.</p><p>The three minigames were:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>The Judgement of Solomon:</b> The fate of a child hangs in the balance… I played the judge – and I might have played this before. There’s no good decision here – wonderfully angsty.</li>
<li><b>The Gig at the End of the Universe:</b> Inspired by The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – and at about 30 minutes, probably the right length for a Hitchhiker’s game. The light relief to the other two more angsty games. I was Zaphod Beeblebrox, man! Delightful nonsense.</li>
<li><b>Waiting:</b> A dramatic game about waiting for aliens to attack. How long do you have, and what must you say before the end? Fabulously bleak.</li>
</ul>
<p>Looking back, <b><i>Better Than Life</i></b> was one of my favourite games of the weekend. And it finished relatively early, which meant I was in bed by 11 am and got a good night’s sleep.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Sunday</h3><p>A good night’s sleep left me refreshed for Sunday. I heard stories of people not getting to bed until 4 or 6 am. I don’t think I can do that.</p><p><b><i><a href="https://p.consequences.org.uk/events/93-------devil-to-pay#run-259">Devil to Pay</a></i></b></p><p><b><i>Devil to Pay</i></b> is a 26-player pirate freeform written by Brian Richburg and Alison Joy Schafer. It was an old-style freeform larp with long character sheets, rules, contingency envelopes, items, abilities and more. I found the long character sheet hard to read at first, but it soon made sense during play.</p><p>I played Laurens de Graaf, a Dutch privateer. To my surprise, my character survived. I was expecting to die horribly – but I won a duel and ended up with just enough loot to survive the game. It was great playing with Nickey, who was my wife and rescued our daughters before they could be killed in a pirate raid.</p><p><b><i><a href="https://p.consequences.org.uk/events/83-messages-from-callisto#run-201">Messages from Callisto</a></i></b></p><p><b><i>Messages from Callisto</i></b> follows <b><i>Children of the Stars</i></b>. It’s for 13 players, and I had four players who played in both games. Three played the same character. The fourth was a last-minute addition – I would have cast them as the same character had I known.</p><p>Thanks to a few typos (and some mistakes when stuffing envelopes), <b><i>Messages from Callisto</i></b> had a slightly creakier start than <b><i>Children</i></b>. But once it was going, it went well, and everyone seemed fully engaged and having deep discussions.</p><p>I have come away with a page of notes and improvements – but players told me later that they had a good time (and want to play other episodes), so that was all wonderful to hear. (I’ll probably reflect on that in a later post.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Next year?</h3><p>Next year, Consequences will move to a new venue. I suspect it will still be a long drive from Yorkshire, but I’m planning to go again.</p><div><br /></div>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-37412532662087811522023-11-21T04:01:00.000-08:002023-11-21T04:01:40.077-08:00Are tabletop RPGs "art"?<p>The old question of whether RPGS are Art (with a capital A) came up on <a href="https://www.gamingtavern.uk/index.php?threads/when-inclusivity-generates-a-monoculture-instead-of-diversity.9205/#post-45677">The Tavern discussion forum</a> recently.</p>
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGCS5NgzpYi9SPBt_LUeUaPIrRCFKL7Y8WWA2IotpaVcZ2fix0njIh-5w-RgdGFGIgeh6LcoNeG0d8Tjo-RnarQJyg4stEPQoXVYX_IwZxy6uAwh2u5okWw6Fj0ELYZdE34Ds30Dn-sVFaZ03JMYQO7oShID3tV4dmB60Tf5jh8TscRFqaNSMFdrcW_TM/s1200/AreRPGsArt.png"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGCS5NgzpYi9SPBt_LUeUaPIrRCFKL7Y8WWA2IotpaVcZ2fix0njIh-5w-RgdGFGIgeh6LcoNeG0d8Tjo-RnarQJyg4stEPQoXVYX_IwZxy6uAwh2u5okWw6Fj0ELYZdE34Ds30Dn-sVFaZ03JMYQO7oShID3tV4dmB60Tf5jh8TscRFqaNSMFdrcW_TM/w400-h266/AreRPGsArt.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>I realised I wasn’t sure what I thought about that. Instinctively, I think RPGs aren’t art – but I’m also aware that this discussion has happened many times before and by people smarter than me.</p>
<p>So if it’s an old discussion, it was probably in ChatGPT’s learning data. So I asked the question.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Are roleplaying games "art"?</h3><p>My first mistake was not specifying tabletop roleplaying games. While ChatGPT 3.5 gave me an excellent response, I realised that it was referring to video games. (And purist that I am, I’m slightly annoyed that videogames have hijacked “roleplaying”.)</p>
<p>So, I asked about tabletop rpgs. Here’s ChatGPT’s response – I’ve merged both answers as elements in its first answer also applied to TTRPGS.</p>
<p><i>Whether tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) are considered "art" can be subjective and depends on how one defines "art." In a broad sense, many people argue that TTRPGs are a form of art. Here are some perspectives on this:</i></p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><i><b>Narrative and storytelling:</b> Tabletop RPGs rely heavily on narrative and storytelling. Game masters (GMs) and players collaboratively create stories, characters, and worlds, making TTRPGs a unique form of interactive storytelling. The creation of these stories can be seen as a form of artistic expression.</i></li>
<li><i><b>Creativity and imagination:</b> TTRPGs require substantial creativity and imagination from both the game master and the players. The open-ended nature of tabletop games allows for limitless possibilities, encouraging participants to think creatively and contribute to the unfolding narrative. The design of game worlds, characters, and scenarios involves artistic decisions.</i></li><li><i><b>Visual and handcrafted elements:</b> While not digital, the physical elements of tabletop RPGs can have artistic value. Hand-drawn maps, character sketches, custom miniatures, and other handmade components contribute to the overall artistic experience.</i></li>
<li><i><b>Emotional impact:</b> Like other forms of art, TTRPGs can elicit emotional responses from players. The immersive nature of the experience can create a powerful connection between the player and the game, similar to the emotional impact of other art forms.</i></li>
<li><i><b>Rulebook design:</b> The design and layout of TTRPG rulebooks can be considered a form of graphic design. The choice of typography, illustrations, and overall presentation can enhance the artistic appeal of the game.</i></li><li><i><b>Social and collaborative art:</b> TTRPGs are inherently social and collaborative experiences. The interactions and dynamics between players contribute to a unique form of collective storytelling akin to a collaborative art project.</i></li>
<li><i><b>Cultural and Social Commentary:</b> Some RPGs explore complex themes, social issues, and cultural commentary. This reflective aspect can be considered a form of artistic expression.</i></li></ul>
<p><i>However, not everyone may view TTRPGs as art, especially if they have a more traditional or narrow definition of art. Additionally, some TTRPGs prioritise gameplay mechanics over narrative or visual elements, blurring the lines between art and entertainment.</i></p>
<p><i>Ultimately, whether RPGs are considered art depends on one's perspective and definition of art. Many consider the act of playing and creating within a TTRPG to be a form of artistic expression, demonstrating that the boundaries of what is considered "art" continue to expand.</i></p>
<p>I thought that was pretty good. But I wondered if ChatGPT could present the opposing arguments.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">And the arguments for them not being art?</h3>
<p><i>Some arguments against considering tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) as art include:</i></p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><i><b>Functional vs. artistic intent:</b> Critics may argue that the primary intent of TTRPGs is functional rather than artistic. The rules, mechanics, and systems are designed to facilitate gameplay and create an interactive experience, emphasising functionality over traditional artistic expression.</i></li><li><i><b>Varied quality:</b> Not all TTRPGs have the same level of narrative depth, character development, or visual appeal. Critics might contend that the wide range in quality among different games undermines the idea of TTRPGs as a cohesive art form.</i></li>
<li><i><b>Player-generated content:</b> The collaborative and player-driven nature of TTRPGs could be seen as shifting the creative responsibility away from the game designer. Critics might argue that the artistry lies more with the players' contributions than with the inherent design of the game itself.</i></li>
<li><i><b>Commercial considerations:</b> Some argue that the commercial nature of TTRPGs, where profitability is a significant factor, can dilute the purity of artistic intent. Games may be developed with market trends and sales in mind, potentially compromising artistic vision.</i></li>
<li><i><b>Lack of tangible artefacts:</b> Unlike traditional visual arts or literature, TTRPGs don't always produce tangible artefacts that can be readily displayed or collected as art. This lack of a physical, tangible product may contribute to scepticism regarding their classification as art.</i></li>
</ul>
<p><i>These arguments are not universally accepted, and opinions on whether TTRPGs are considered art can vary widely. Additionally, the evolving landscape of art and the broader acceptance of interactive and participatory forms of media challenge traditional distinctions between art and other forms of cultural expression.</i></p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">But what do I think?</h3>
<p>I found ChatGPT’s explanation helpful in helping me realise where I stand on the whole “Are RPGs art?” discussion.</p>
<p>So, for me, while RPGs have artistic elements (most obviously the artwork), I don’t regard the playing of RPGs as art. But I’m happy if you do.</p>
<p>(Note: the image above was the result when I typed <i>Are tabletop roleplaying games “art”</i> into the Artflow AI art generator. I think it’s orcs playing D&D.)</p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-48868490460166527892023-11-20T03:49:00.000-08:002023-11-20T03:49:03.447-08:00Currently reading<p>My current reading pile has gotten out of hand. Normally, I may have two or three books on the go – an actual physical book, a book on my Kindle that I read at night, and maybe an audiobook or a book on my phone. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB-mmfqjyz6P1G5c7v1nea6eJwtlNBXQljC0697yeD4NJ-5YGkUz3lv2IrG8XhVVCF1Nw86h78rOiBMc1niATB86xO-TaLLaQ_Qlh4ANzGv_LSJFjA57oS_KFT8ACVAYUMVOzTYb7RA3tRCX5dj8PJbQX_6TGQF7lfqZ0yVXT-mLb6iGAzg5RWweFApVU/s2939/IMG_20231117_082453456.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2939" data-original-width="2167" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB-mmfqjyz6P1G5c7v1nea6eJwtlNBXQljC0697yeD4NJ-5YGkUz3lv2IrG8XhVVCF1Nw86h78rOiBMc1niATB86xO-TaLLaQ_Qlh4ANzGv_LSJFjA57oS_KFT8ACVAYUMVOzTYb7RA3tRCX5dj8PJbQX_6TGQF7lfqZ0yVXT-mLb6iGAzg5RWweFApVU/w295-h400/IMG_20231117_082453456.jpg" width="295" /></a></div>
<p>Thanks to poor book management by myself, I seem to be in the middle of ten books right now.</p>
<p>Here they are, in no particular order.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><i>The Integral Trees</i> by Larry Niven</h3><p>I picked this up at the wonderful <a href="https://www.aardvark-books.com/">Aardvark Books</a> secondhand bookstore in Herefordshire. It has a pretty good SF section, and while I remember Larry Niven’s <i>The Integral Trees</i> coming out in 1983, I didn’t read it then. It cost me £2.50, 55p more than the 1985 cover price.</p><p>Unfortunately, it isn’t as good as I hoped. While the world is exciting and different (and the reason to read it), the story is about the descendants of a crashed human spaceship and feels a bit derivative. (Maybe it wasn’t derivative in 1983 – but I can think of other books with similar premises from about that time.)</p><p>I won’t seek out its sequel, The Smoke Ring, but I’ll probably pick it up if I come across it.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><i>How to be a Liberal</i> by Ian Dunt</h3><p>I enjoyed Dunt’s <i>Brexit – What the Hell Happens Now?</i> (which accurately predicted much of the chaos we’ve experienced) and I’ve enjoyed his journalism. But <i>How to be a Liberal</i> is, so far, a history of liberalism, starting with Descartes in 1619.</p><p>And I’m finding it hard going - I picked this up in Wetherby’s Oxfam months ago, and yet I’m not even 100 pages in. So I’ve put it on the back burner. I haven’t abandoned it (yet), but I’m clearing other books before returning to it.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><i>The Land of the Green Man</i> by Carolyne Larrington</h3><p>This is a tour of British folklore, covering pretty much everything. I bought this because I wanted to learn more about British folklore – and particularly how I might apply it to my <b><i>Liminal</i></b> games. (I usually just make stuff up, but <b><i>Liminal’s </i></b>USP is that it covers British folklore, so I thought I’d do some reading.)</p><p>However, I’m starting to regret not taking any notes…</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><i>Stories of Your Life and Others</i> by Ted Chiang</h3><p>Chiang’s <i>Stories of Your Life</i> is the short story that became <i>Arrival</i>. It’s been on my to-read list for a while, so when I saw it in a secondhand bookshop in Berwick, I bought it.</p><p>However, I don’t enjoy short stories. I find them too choppy – I want to wrap myself in a story, and short stories are over too quickly. They also have a different feel to novels – they’re “cleverer”, and that’s not always what I want. So, I’m slowly working my way through them. My favourite story so far is Understand, a story about a man whose hormone-K therapy makes him superintelligent – but not quite intelligent enough…</p><p>I’ve got one story to go, and I’m not quite sure what is stopping me from reading that story and moving <i>Stories of Your Life and Others</i> off my current reading list. (All those other books, probably.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><i>Discovering Scarfolk</i> by Richard Littler</h3><p>A birthday present and delightfully wrong on so many levels. Scarfolk is the fictional 1970s county in England’s Northwest – I can’t do it justice here, so I suggest you visit the <a href="https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/">Scarfolk blog</a>. To my surprise, Discovering Scarfolk has a narrative and concerns itself with the disappearance of two children. Or at least, that’s the story so far.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><i>The Book Your Dog Wishes You Would Read</i> by Louise Glazebrook</h3><p>All about dog behaviour and communication – our dog, Monty, is now seven years old, so I probably could have done with this a few years ago. It’s an easy read, and I’m already nearly halfway through, so I expect I will finish this fairly quickly.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><i>Cursed Objects</i> by J W Ocker</h3><p>I’ve had <i>Cursed Objects</i> for ages – I think it was a 2022 Xmas present. It’s a collection of over fifty essays about cursed objects (the clue is in the title). There are loads of ideas in here for RPG investigations, but I probably should have made notes.</p><p>This is taking a long time to read because it lives in the summerhouse, and I only read a chapter or so on a sunny afternoon. Now that we’re in November, sunny afternoons are few and far between… I’m not expecting to finish this before next year. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><i>The Ember Blade</i> by Chris Wooding</h3><p>I’m finding <i>The Ember Blade</i> hard going, which is a surprise as I normally find Chris Wooding very readable – his Tales of the Ketty Jay are wonderful (start with <i>Retribution Falls</i>), as is <i>The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray</i>.</p><p>However, this is slow. It’s a fantasy setting, with an occupying empire and plucky underdogs (I wonder who we’re rooting for?), but it’s taking its time in getting going, and I’m not finding the two heroes particularly likeable. (And as a result, I’m finding it much too easy to put it down.)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><i>Ministry for the Future</i> by Kim Stanley Robinson</h3><p>Every now and again, I find I’ve got some spare time, but I don’t have my Kindle (or another book) to hand. That’s when I turn to the Kindle app on my phone, and because I had some time on holiday recently (probably waiting for the family somewhere), I have started <i>Ministry for the Future</i>.</p><p>The book starts in the middle of an awful heatwave in India that results in millions of deaths. I’ve only just started <i>Ministry for the Future</i>, but it looks like that’s the event that kicks everything off. I expect when I finish <i>The Ember Blade</i>, I’ll start reading this one on my Kindle.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><i>Unruly </i>by David Mitchell</h3><p>I’m listening to <i>Unruly: A History of England’s Kings and Queens</i> with Mrs H. We like to listen to audiobooks on long car journeys, and we started <i>Unruly</i> on our way back from Herefordshire recently. It’s engaging and often funny, as expected from David Mitchell.</p><p>Thanks to concentrating on the traffic, I’ve lost track of exactly where we are, but I know we haven’t reached the Battle of Hastings yet. But I don’t think it’s far off. However, I’m not sure when we’ll next listen to it – we’ve not got another long car journey planned for a couple of months.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><i>MR James: The Complete Ghost Stories Collection</i></h3><p>During December, I like to listen to MR James’ ghost stories – I have several of his best-known stories on Audible, read by the likes of Derek Jacobi and David Suchet. Last year, I bought this collection, read by Jonathan Keeble, which fills in the gaps.</p><p>I didn’t complete it last year – maybe I will this December. But I’m in no rush.</p><p>(By the way, if you don't get on with reading MR James' ghost stories, and I find them hard to read, I do recommend listening to them. They're much better that way.)</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">And the pile I haven’t started yet</h3>
<p>So that’s what I’m currently reading. Part of the problem is that the books aren’t that compelling – so not ploughing through them. I’m likely to score most of them two or three out of five.</p><p>And here’s the list of books I have waiting for me. I will try not to start these until I’ve made at least a dent in the above:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><i>Art of Ron Cobb</i> by Jacob Johnson (I love Ron Cobb’s art – and there’s plenty of text as well)</li>
<li><i>A Gamut of Games</i> by Sid Sackson (a collection of 30+ games)</li>
<li><i>The Armchair General</i> by John Buckley (a sort-of choose-your-own-adventure where you’re trying to win WW2)</li>
<li><i>Gothic Ghost Stories</i> by Trevor Bell (something for those dark December evenings)</li>
<li><i>Lessons in Chemistry</i> by Bonnie Garmus (currently being read by Mrs H)</li>
<li><i>The Last Devil to Die</i> by Richard Osman (I’m not allowed to read this before Mrs H reads it, which is probably a good thing)</li>
<li><i>Forgotten Castles of Wales and the Marches</i> by Paul R Davis (I love castles, and saw this in Ludlow)</li>
</ul>
Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-47242641763582618332023-11-13T04:29:00.000-08:002023-11-13T04:29:15.754-08:00Motivating a horde<p>As I was thinking about horde games (a type of larp) a couple of months back (<a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/search/label/horde%20games">see here</a>), I thought I’d talk about something the horde can use based on <b><i>Monster of the Week</i></b> (<b><i>MotW</i></b>).</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Why?</h3>
<p>One of the problems I sometimes find with horde games is that the horde swamps the permanent characters. Horde characters are often little more than two sentences that need something from the main characters. And as a main character, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the horde.</p>
<p>(One of the things I liked about <b><i>Across the City</i></b> (the horde game written at <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2023/05/peaky-2023.html">Peaky 2023</a>) was that as a permanent character, I had a plot, and while there was a horde around me, I didn’t always have to interact with them. But occasionally, they were very irritating and got in the way of our main plot.)</p>
<p>Anyway, it occurred to me that it might be worth thinking about the horde characters’ role – or motivation, as <b><i>MotW</i></b> puts it.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6pOQ1CYq7IdRb4AxPxJI-_7-C0cNwA6Kq6Tu4NOTBPuI4v4-fGjN5XNQQHSqmDvFXruVlTgkdtL3lMlFnXDEFuQxZPGu74xuyhsz7NqoLr5NqNKCYsIF3jJfXARCKpz-D8F3JU7WuB01XDOOK0aCzmFQX8yfVfNQVM_ZONjLAH6mxu9Uw3RXbdifj6xY/s3441/IMG_20181214_171833086_BURST000_COVER.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3441" data-original-width="2581" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6pOQ1CYq7IdRb4AxPxJI-_7-C0cNwA6Kq6Tu4NOTBPuI4v4-fGjN5XNQQHSqmDvFXruVlTgkdtL3lMlFnXDEFuQxZPGu74xuyhsz7NqoLr5NqNKCYsIF3jJfXARCKpz-D8F3JU7WuB01XDOOK0aCzmFQX8yfVfNQVM_ZONjLAH6mxu9Uw3RXbdifj6xY/w300-h400/IMG_20181214_171833086_BURST000_COVER.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
<p><b><i>MotW</i></b> gives everything a motivation – locations, monsters and NPCs. And the motivations explain their role in the story. So dark woods with the motivation maze will confuse and separate the players, while a den will harbour monsters.</p>
<p>(Sometimes the motivations are obvious, but even then, I find it useful to think in those terms: what purpose does this location have in the story.)</p>
<p>And the NPC motivations could easily be used in a horde game.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">MotW bystander motivations</h3><p>So rather than invent the wheel, here are <b><i>MotW’s </i></b>NPC motivations. (If they’re not minions of the baddies, <b><i>MotW </i></b>calls its NPCs bystanders.)</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Busybody</b> (motivation: to interfere in other people’s plans)</li>
<li><b>Detective </b>(motivation: to rule out explanations)</li>
<li><b>Gossip </b>(motivation: to pass on rumours)</li>
<li><b>Helper </b>(motivation: to join the hunt)</li>
<li><b>Innocent </b>(motivation: to do the right thing)</li>
<li><b>Official</b> (motivation: to be suspicious)</li>
<li><b>Skeptic </b>(motivation: to deny supernatural explanations)</li>
<li><b>Victim </b>(motivation: to put themselves in danger)</li>
<li><b>Witness </b>(motivation: to reveal information)</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">How does this help the horde?</h3>
<p>If I was playing one of the horde, knowing the intent behind the character would help me play them. As well as the usual two-line character, it would help to know that my job is to throw myself in the path of the monster so that I can be rescued. Or whether I should be helpful – or a hindrance.</p>
<p>I know I would find this useful.</p>
<p>(I have a horrible feeling that I’m talking myself into writing a horde game…)</p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-9743567059257873342023-11-06T01:25:00.000-08:002023-11-06T01:25:10.116-08:00Turning Writing Freeform Larps into an ebook<p>I've been learning to make an epub file (for e-readers) from an MS Word document using <a href="https://calibre-ebook.com/">Calibre</a>. I've been asked for an epub version of <b><i><a href="https://www.stevehatherley.uk/writing-freeform-larps">Writing Freeform Larps</a></i></b>, so I thought it was time to learn how to do it.</p>
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<p>It turned out to be relatively painless - although I found myself going around in circles several times.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">The essentials</h3>
<p>So the process consisted of copying the MS Word document I used for <b><i>Writing Freeform Larps</i></b> and:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Replacing the fonts with a simple Arial font - e-readers have their own fonts.</li>
<li>Removing headers and footers.</li>
<li>Removing the page breaks and white space I'd inserted to make the pages look right.</li>
<li>Remove cross-references within the document.</li>
<li>Review formatting for bullets - my first attempt was a bit weird. I think they're still a little weird, but they're not as weird as they first were.</li>
<li>Change tables to be in % width rather than an absolute width. (The first time I did this, they were wider than the page, and I couldn't read them properly.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Then:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Import the docx into Calibre</li>
<li>Turn it into an epub</li>
<li>Email it to my Kindle</li>
<li>And check</li>
</ul>
<p>And every time I spot an error, I delete the file from my Kindle, amend the docx and go through the process again. (Happily, this doesn't take long.)</p><p>So I think I'm there, and last week, I uploaded the file to Itch.io and DriveThruRPG.</p>
<p>Of course, I now have two versions of <b><i>Writing Freeform Larps</i></b> to maintain...</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Gaming books on e-readers</h3><p>I'm not sure how useful an epub version is, as I don't like reading gaming books on my Kindle. I've read a couple (<b><i>Fate Core</i></b> and <b><i>The Esoterrorists</i></b>), and I found the experience, um, sub-optimal.</p>
<p>E-readers are great for novels and books where you start at page 1 and continue through to the end.</p>
<p>But I don't read RPGs that way. (Does anyone?)</p><p>And I don't use my Kindle for reference books. I'd rather have a physical book.</p><p>RPGs are full of art, tables and complex formatting - which my Kindle also struggles with. (I don't like reading pdfs, either... Maybe the problem is me?)</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">What would I want from an e-reader RPG?</h3>
<p>When I use my e-reader, I read from start to finish. So, what would my ideal game ebook look like?</p><p>First off, it would NOT be a regular rulebook. It’s not something I would expect to consult at the table.</p>
<p>Instead, it would accompany the rules – something to read to introduce the game. Maybe explain the setting and what the characters are supposed to do.</p>
<p>It would cover the main principles and rules of play - but exclude the detailed skill lists and tables. (Reading skill lists, or tables of equipment, is just tedious on an e-reader.)</p>
<p>Maybe it would be free – a promotion piece for a game.</p>
<p>As ebooks are usually read sequentially, I would think carefully about the order in which everything is presented. I would want everything to flow from first principles so it makes sense.</p>
<p>(And now I feel I’ve set myself a challenge. Is it possible to create a good ebook version of an RPG? I want to try.)</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">What about Writing Freeform Larps?</h3>
<p>I hope <b><i>Writing Freeform </i></b>Larps makes sense as an e-book. I start the book with the process, then build the rest of the book around that. I have a couple of lists, but they’re tucked away in the appendices and don’t interrupt the flow.</p>
<a href="https://www.stevehatherley.uk/writing-freeform-larps">Click here to learn more about <b><i>Writing Freeform Larps</i></b>.</a>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-34854557052912801422023-10-26T02:24:00.000-07:002023-10-26T02:24:11.404-07:00As the Sun Forever Sets: playtest<p>Over the summer, I’ve been running a game of <b><i>As the Sun Forever Sets,</i></b> a Forged in the Dark game set during HG Wells’ Martian invasion by Riley Daniels. The game isn’t out yet – I signed up for the playtest and received a long pdf rulebook, some summary sheets and a hex map of Britain.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Gn_7xEuoyo7Wnao65bFy_A2y9fPy4UCxcXSo_SvGclqcZQlj3jWp9cDIkbWCJaAzhGzLxprqdGkymgWDyxx7SsZFMqstmtO9Pj2GpX-OI6F0nS85MXljj56iGra1MX6tgeifvO6nn1xHIe-aWYsGkU_EhwkTP4IJ3I52uEgpPDVYZTFRwwr9Q_XVrgk/s895/ATSFS-1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="895" data-original-width="627" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Gn_7xEuoyo7Wnao65bFy_A2y9fPy4UCxcXSo_SvGclqcZQlj3jWp9cDIkbWCJaAzhGzLxprqdGkymgWDyxx7SsZFMqstmtO9Pj2GpX-OI6F0nS85MXljj56iGra1MX6tgeifvO6nn1xHIe-aWYsGkU_EhwkTP4IJ3I52uEgpPDVYZTFRwwr9Q_XVrgk/w280-h400/ATSFS-1.png" width="280" /></a></div>
<p>The game is a sort of hex-crawl. You decide where you start, determine your objectives during the prelude, and then work your way across the map to your destination, avoiding Martian terrors and the fall of civilisation.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Our characters</h3>
<p>I ran it with three characters: Sir Sidney Eaton-Warwick (widower and industrialist – played by Terry), Major Horace Armstrong (guilt-ridden military historian – Jon), and Miss Dorothea Feldman (German magician’s technician – Thomas).</p>
<p>We started in Dudley, with Sir Sidney and Horace at a performance by Miss Dorothea. Then, the roof of the building was torched by a Martian heat ray, and we were off.</p><p>Practically, we played the game online. We used Discord for video and chat, and Trello as our virtual table. Players rolled physical dice and told me what the results were.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKbswxaYvvOR21HUWgGHhF4FIdsFudj_2a-onLK32q-H4OV5VBvfL390Bozb9R6iWorFBLi2pcfHkCGs1iCGurVAXYYU5BzdaLGgMJEnD7ueiSpd-TVBBb2C77p7RM3OW7bsteRJpvMFlruAyqPD-3wxD_uSc1uOgdzMZ66eq0MKBfAZSC_2QhzKrpoUg/s1136/ATSFS-1A.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="851" data-original-width="1136" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKbswxaYvvOR21HUWgGHhF4FIdsFudj_2a-onLK32q-H4OV5VBvfL390Bozb9R6iWorFBLi2pcfHkCGs1iCGurVAXYYU5BzdaLGgMJEnD7ueiSpd-TVBBb2C77p7RM3OW7bsteRJpvMFlruAyqPD-3wxD_uSc1uOgdzMZ66eq0MKBfAZSC_2QhzKrpoUg/w400-h300/ATSFS-1A.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our Trello board</td></tr></tbody></table>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">The story</h3>
<p>Our story was very enjoyable. After escaping the initial panic, the PCs sheltered with some nuns in a nearby nunnery. They then escorted the nuns to their sister order near Stafford before heading north. On their way, they rescued civilians from a Martian capture-machine and helped military scientists refine and test their new, improved artillery piece. Eventually, they left England on Sir Sidney’s yacht – just as the Martians died out.</p><p>Some great moments:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Hiding in the nunnery cellar as the building collapsed above them – and then escaping while there’s a war machine watching above.</li><li>Rescuing people from a trapped Martian capture-machine – shooting its sensors and then killing its occupants.</li><li>Testing the new artillery piece – taking out two tripods and then getting a ridiculous success when shelling the Martian structure, blowing it to smithereens.</li></ul>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">The system</h3>
<p>However, I hated the system. <b><i>ATSFS </i></b>is a Forged in the Dark game, which I’m not familiar with. (I signed up to the playtest because I liked the sound of the game’s setting.)</p><p><b>Rolling dice: </b>Most of the time in <b><i>ATSFS</i></b>, the players make planning and action rolls. Planning is for larger, overall actions where everyone works together. Actions are when characters are doing something dangerous or difficult.</p><p>(There are other rolls (reflex, chance, feud), but I found they came up only infrequently.)</p><p>Both work the same way – decide what you’re doing and build a dice pool of six-sided dice. Then, roll the dice – if your highest dice is a six, you succeed. If you roll two sixes, that’s a critical success. If your highest dice is a four or five, it’s a mixed success (there’s a complication). And so on – if your highest dice is a one, well, that’s a critical fail.</p><p>However, the way you build the dice pool is slightly different for each roll, and I found that I was going back to the rules every time to remind myself how it all worked. (That was the playtest – I hope the final system will be more consistent.)</p>
<p><b>The loop: </b>Gameplay effectively follows a loop:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Players decide what they want to do.</li><li>Players make a plan roll.</li><li>Players resolve any events that occur.</li><li>Players decide what they want to do.</li><li>And so on…</li></ul>
<p>In game terms, you can cover a lot of ground this way. A journey of ten miles on foot is merely a single roll. And you can zoom in if you need to.</p><p>In play, I found that the way the planning rolls worked (each player builds their own dice pool), we had a lot of successes.</p>
<p><b>The fiddliness:</b> While the core system seems straightforward, I found it fiddly. The core system is backed up by many subsystems (consequences, companions, transport, camping, shelters, the accord, threat, the map), and I often felt overwhelmed. I’m a “let’s keep things simple” GM. I’m new to Forged in the Dark, and <b><i>ATSFS </i></b>was not a good fit for me.</p><p>I became very frustrated with the system. Despite playing for nine sessions, I never felt comfortable with the game.</p>
<p><b>Support:</b> The support from Riley on the playtest Discord server was superb, and I got quick responses to my questions.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Online maps</h3>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgZmWw-o4Aqn_Nr-yaa5pMGKaL6jTv6zLkJOxVf5AiqXnm6PC9vzz3SLe3yhyufJ7Xb9PWu7hBldnCk2Q1PIjoAyUuurowu0F4JP487qJbg96G6DgI8Dtjg6MbHNSjvuk4GrtFWtWsvBra-VNWoMjYltqkN5PYhDd6286US5VKuDphzmlTde2lXmt7JMA/s905/ATSFS-2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="502" data-original-width="905" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgZmWw-o4Aqn_Nr-yaa5pMGKaL6jTv6zLkJOxVf5AiqXnm6PC9vzz3SLe3yhyufJ7Xb9PWu7hBldnCk2Q1PIjoAyUuurowu0F4JP487qJbg96G6DgI8Dtjg6MbHNSjvuk4GrtFWtWsvBra-VNWoMjYltqkN5PYhDd6286US5VKuDphzmlTde2lXmt7JMA/w400-h223/ATSFS-2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>We found <a href="https://maps.nls.uk/geo/find/#zoom=9.2&lat=53.08737&lon=-1.69591&layers=70&b=11&z=0&point=52.36106,-4.07236">superb online maps for Victorian Britain</a> – the National Library of Scotland has online OS maps of the entire country, including those from the 1800s.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Overall</h3>
<p>So I’m pleased I tried <b><i>ATSFS</i></b>, but I can’t imagine playing it again. I enjoyed playing through War of the Worlds, but I don’t think I’d want to do that again. And I don’t like the mechanics – they’re more complicated than I am comfortable with.</p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-21787020484679462572023-10-16T09:36:00.000-07:002023-10-16T09:36:07.393-07:00Hazelwood Abbey - DramaSystem playbooks<p>Following its successful premiere at <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2023/10/furnace-2023.html">Furnace</a>, I’ve put <a href="https://stevehatherley.itch.io/"><b><i>Hazelwood Abbey</i></b> on itch.io</a> as a free download.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgybQDMi1wIFZaYDde9PoG84G7Lh23eOOfQET2C3ViKqnkLEZ2c_t36nAWFF38b16ft4SaSxi3J8qjoBn91LEtbZMDFEy9CdNwGXf0odC8Oxq6Wm96d7WIHyt8Km6k4v9kr9sIVKllJ34g1p5In6zynj-ILF7r2bHv2JTqW_GSuNBLQ0rwZj7otFGSYN14/s2520/ItchCover.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="2520" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgybQDMi1wIFZaYDde9PoG84G7Lh23eOOfQET2C3ViKqnkLEZ2c_t36nAWFF38b16ft4SaSxi3J8qjoBn91LEtbZMDFEy9CdNwGXf0odC8Oxq6Wm96d7WIHyt8Km6k4v9kr9sIVKllJ34g1p5In6zynj-ILF7r2bHv2JTqW_GSuNBLQ0rwZj7otFGSYN14/w400-h318/ItchCover.webp" width="400" /></a></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Hazelwood Abbey</h3><p>
<b><i>Hazelwood Abbey</i></b> is <i>Downton Abbey</i> meets <b><i>Hillfolk</i></b>. Players play an aristocratic family in a player-led dramatic game of emotional needs and wants for 4-5 players.</p>
<p><b><i>Hazelwood Abbey</i></b> uses Pelgrane Press' <b><i>DramaSystem </i></b>rules engine to create a story of high-stakes interpersonal conflict. During the session, players create family members with conflicting needs and goals. And then we find out what happens.</p>
<p><b><i>Hazelwood Abbey</i></b> consists of two sets of playbooks - one for upstairs (the family) and one for downstairs (the servants).</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Upstairs playbooks</h3>
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The Earl</li><li>The Countess</li><li>The Heir</li><li>The Spare</li><li>The Eldest Daughter</li><li>The Youngest Daughter</li><li>The Suitor</li><li>The Cousin</li></ul>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Downstairs playbooks</h3>
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The Butler</li><li>The Housekeeper</li><li>The Valet</li><li>The Lady's Maid</li><li>The Footman</li><li>The Housemaid</li><li>The Cook</li><li>The Scullery Maid</li></ul>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Download for free</h3>
<p>You can <a href="https://stevehatherley.itch.io/">download them for free on my Itch.io page</a>.</p><p>I’ve proposed <b><i>Hazelwood Abbey</i></b> for Airecon in March 2024, and I’m thinking how I can run a <b><i>DramaSystem </i></b>game online.</p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-17452853459077395302023-10-10T02:55:00.002-07:002023-10-10T02:55:25.753-07:00Furnace 2023<p>It’s October and that means I’ve been to Furnace, the RPG convention in Sheffield held over two days (five sessions of gaming). I ran one game and played in three. This is how they went.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8TX8mitz1uAJapkzIS1OLMTEhgmhcyj0gVBHPVJj8q9nBytyy5NYh9h9VgCLq3FzBEY9jJ5nknR31G78O2_G7Ob3mLbCgf_qLM3umPmCScIQ_uyzkc2xse9sowfvOgMyn__dn9FmKhdkXrhA95w1pmj9oY5jUEioUh8Z10nHV_ixaYyED9YDPSjtJ5lA/s4632/IMG_20231007_091113099.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3474" data-original-width="4632" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8TX8mitz1uAJapkzIS1OLMTEhgmhcyj0gVBHPVJj8q9nBytyy5NYh9h9VgCLq3FzBEY9jJ5nknR31G78O2_G7Ob3mLbCgf_qLM3umPmCScIQ_uyzkc2xse9sowfvOgMyn__dn9FmKhdkXrhA95w1pmj9oY5jUEioUh8Z10nHV_ixaYyED9YDPSjtJ5lA/w400-h300/IMG_20231007_091113099.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Dragonbane</h3>
<p>First up was a <b><i>Dragonbane </i></b>scenario, <i>The Village of the Day Before</i>, ably run by Graham. I played grumpy mallard, Makander of Halfbay.</p><p>The scenario had a videogame feel about it – there was a problem to solve, which we had to solve by doing things in the right order. Fail (or run out of time), and everyone dies and the scenario resets. Fortunately, Graham didn’t make us go through everything for every reset – that would have been tiresome. We ended up with a tricky battle against a demon in which I (as the party tank) led the assault and almost died.</p><p>As a system, <b><i>Dragonbane </i></b>was new to me. It was extremely easy to pick up, which I was grateful for, and probably made it good for conventions.</p><p>It would have been nice to have fifteen minutes of session zero at the start to get the characters to bond with each other and create links to the scenario. As it was, we were an “adventuring party”, and we were going to the village because it might have some treasure. I know those are RPG tropes, but I’ve never been convinced by them.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">DramaSystem</h3><p>After lunch, I ran <i>Hazelwood Abbey</i>, which is <i>Downton Abbey</i> for <i><b>Hillfolk/DramaSystem</b></i>. My five players were Elina (Eldest Daughter), Lynn (The Heir), Dee (The Earl), Paul (The Spare) and Becky (The Youngest Daughter). </p><p>Most players were new to the game, so I ran through the system, and we dived in. Everyone leaned into their characters and the situation. We had a lovely dramatic game with illegitimate children, money problems, a dodgy Heir and more.</p><p>This time, I found I needed some GM scenes to keep up the pressure on the main plot established at the start. (That wasn’t something I needed when I ran <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2023/09/hillfolk-at-continuum.html"><b><i>Hillfolk </i></b>at Continuum</a>.) So halfway through the game, I inserted a “GM” card into the deck I was using to call scenes; when it was my turn, I played whichever minor character I needed to play to keep things on track.</p><p>We wrapped up after about 2.5 hours with a satisfactory climax. It felt like an intense session, and I was grateful for a slightly longer break after the game. </p><p>I will do a couple of things differently next time as The Heir and Spare need adjusting. The Heir decided that they were a distant relative, which put The Spare in an odd position. We sort of fudged it, but I’ve adjusted The Heir’s playbook to say that if The Spare is in the game, then the Heir should be a family member (ie an older brother). I think that would have been clearer.</p><p>I’ll make the playbooks available shortly.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Saturday evening</h3><p>I never play slot 3 at Furnace; instead, I head home to see the family. So I re-read the <b><i>Hillfolk </i></b>rules. Having run it twice now, I’m already questioning some rules. I don’t know if that’s the difference between campaign and one-shot play, or whether I’m missing something, but it’s something I will reflect on as I run more <b><i>Hillfolk/DramaSystem</i></b>.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Unknown Armies</h3><p>On Sunday morning, I played in Elaine’s <b><i>Unknown Armies</i></b> game – another system new to me. Elaine ran <i>Jailbreak</i>, a classic <b><i>Unknown Armies</i></b> one-shot featuring escaped convicts and an isolated farmhouse. I played Uder, the loving husband, and I’m not going to say more than that for fear of spoiling an excellent scenario. (And that’s a shame because I had a lovely scene with Elina, playing my lovely wife, which I won’t mention because it was sooooo spoilery.)</p><p><i>Jailbreak </i>gets a thumbs up from me for using characters tailored for the adventure – it wouldn’t be as effective with a random set of pre-gens.</p><p>A couple of the players had played it before but couldn’t remember the details. Playing the scenario a second time isn’t a problem if you are deliberately antagonistic and help drive the action, which is what happened this time.</p><p>I didn’t get the hang of the rules – particularly the Madness Meter. But I think I made only one or two rolls, so it didn’t matter.</p><p>I expected the game to end up bloodier than it did – no characters died. Maybe we’re all getting more reasonable as we get older.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Liminal</h3><p>And finally, a <b><i>Liminal </i></b>investigation run by Neil set in and around Newcastle (and written to accompany the forthcoming Novocastria book). With its vampires and werewolves, it’s easy to head towards horror in Liminal, but instead, <i>Scream! If you want to die faster?</i> focussed on genuine Newcastle folklore involving a traditional fair (The Hoppings) with its “danger night” and even an old curse). </p><p>We played members of the Worshipful Company of Investigators – I was posh boy Simon D’Oliviera, a clued-in mortal. (And if that sounds familiar, it’s because the characters were taken from <i>Pax Londinium</i> – the Crew was sent on a mission outside London to the Grim North.) I’m not sure I played Simon particularly well – but I rolled dice, followed the clues, danced, was ineffectual in combat and enjoyed exploring liminal Newcastle.</p><p>One character was a London geomancer. Outside of London, you’d think their powers would be limited, but Neil had a great way to connect them to Newcastle through the gift of a magic Newcastle United shirt. (Geomancy is a tricky power if you run a game set in many locations – this was a neat solution.) </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Overall</h3><p>So, three great games played, and I enjoyed running <i>Hazelwood Abbey</i>. Best of all was catching up with old friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in years.</p><p>Maybe next year I’ll make one of the other Garrison conventions?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418686599347914745.post-14383191779771776432023-10-02T07:48:00.002-07:002023-10-02T07:48:50.859-07:00Current projects<p>I did a <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2023/02/progress-report.html">progress report in Feb</a>. Here’s an update. I should do these regularly – they’re useful places for me to record what I’ve done and talk about what I have planned.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">What did I achieve?</h3><p>Since the last progress report, I’ve completed:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b><i><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/430643/Writing-Freeform-Larps">Writing Freeform Larps</a></i></b></li><li><b><i><a href="https://www.freeformgames.com/games/way-out-west.php">Way out West</a></i></b> format update (for Freeform Games)</li><li><b><i><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/433880/Other-London-Tales-of-Terror">Other London Volume 4: Tales of Terror</a></i></b></li><li><b><i><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/428699/Count-Magnus-Descendent">Count Magnus’ Descendent</a></i></b></li><li><b><i><a href="https://www.freeformgames.com/games/the-roswell-incident.php">The Roswell Incident</a></i></b> (for Freeform Games)</li></ul><p></p><p>I also completed the formatting for <b><i>Night Train</i></b> and <b><i>The Highgate Club</i></b> for Peaky Games, but thanks to some technical difficulties, neither is yet available.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Current projects</h3><p>I’m currently working on several projects, but I seem to work best by working on a lot of things at once. It stops me from becoming tired of any one thing. And if I hit a block, I can work on something else until inspiration strikes.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Freeform Games</h3><p>Freeform Games is my main source of income, so these are my main focus.</p><p><b><i>A Purrfect Murder:</i></b> A new game by Karolina Soltys and set at a cat fancy show. It’s currently being playtested by some of our customers, and when I’ve incorporated the feedback, we’ll put it on sale.</p><p><b><i>Court in the Act:</i></b> Once I’ve put <b><i>A Purrfect Murder</i></b> to bed, I’ll start to bring <b><i>Court in the Act</i></b> up to date. It’s the last game in our old format.</p><p>I’m also thinking about starting a vampire/werewolf/urban fantasy murder mystery that we can sell for Halloween (our most popular period). I’m not sure about the details yet, but I’m sure it will come to me.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Department for Irregular Services (DfIS)</h3><p>I wrote about the DfIS <a href="https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2022/11/liminal-department-for-irregular.html">a while back</a>, and I used the DfIS for <b>Count Magnus’ Descendent</b> (a gloomy <b><i>Cthulhu Dark</i></b> adventure).</p><p>However, I created the DfIS for <b><i>Liminal</i></b>, and I’m expanding the idea with some pre-generated characters and a couple of adventures. I’ve written an investigation based on the legend of Dartmoor’s Hairy Hands, but I need to playtest it. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Other London</h3><p>I’m currently working on two investigations for Other London. Well, when I say I’m working on two, I’ve paused one while the other has taken over.</p><p><i>The Dead Undead:</i> A vampire is found dead in a nightclub, and Desk 17 investigates. Before this, I didn’t know what happened to vampires when they died.</p><p><i>The Orphan Room:</i> A room with no doors is found in a hotel complex. It contains a desk, and on the desk are severed heads preserved in jars. It’s a job for Desk 17, but the author has been distracted by shinies and will get back to it in due course.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">First contact freeforms</h3><p>I am writing and running a series of first-contact freeforms heavily inspired by classic science fiction. The series starts with <b><i>The Roswell Incident</i></b> (now at Freeform Games) before continuing with <b><i>All Flesh is Grass, Children of the Stars</i></b> and <b><i>Messages from Callisto</i></b>.</p><p>I am running <b><i>Children of the Stars</i></b> and <b><i>Messages from Callisto</i></b> at Consequences in November. Events that unfold in <i>Children </i>will affect <b><i>Callisto</i></b>, and three players are playing in both (two of whom have played earlier games in the series). </p><p>So I’ve given myself a headache working out how to manage the potential different pieces of information for <b><i>Messages</i></b>. I have a system in place, and it means that players won’t receive some information until just before the game starts (because until <b><i>Children </i></b>finishes, I won’t know what to tell them). I have my fingers crossed that it all works out as I hope.</p><p><b><i>The Stars our Destination:</i></b> I’m also starting on the fifth episode, in which an alien spaceship lands on Easter Island.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Other projects</h3><p><i>Hazelwood Abbey:</i><i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i>I enjoyed running <b><i>Hillfolk </i></b>so much at Continuum that I created a set of playbooks inspired by <i>Downton Abbey</i>. I’m running it at Furnace (and I’ve pitched it for Airecon). Assuming it doesn’t break, I’ll make them available for download.</p><p>And that’s about it</p><p>For now, at least.</p><div><br /></div>Steve Hatherleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599585427107831733noreply@blogger.com0