Flashbacks and overlapping investigations

In The Dead Undead, I created a flashback. The investigation starts with a dead vampire, at which point I tell the PCs that this is very similar to an unsolved case a few weeks ago.

At which point we skip backwards in time and pick up that investigation. 

This worked really well – except the players forgot that this was an unsolved case. That was my fault – we played the flashback over a couple of sessions, and because the flashback was effectively no different to how we normally play, the players forgot that this was an unsolved case, and I had to remind them.

(Perhaps we should have played in black and white, or something.)

I’m thinking about this because the next case, The Orphan Room, also has a flashback. Or at least, it could have a flashback, and I’m thinking about how I want to run it.

(I suspect both investigations have flashbacks is because I started The Orphan Room ages ago, and while I was mulling it over, The Dead Undead dropped into place and I pinched the flashback idea from The Orphan Room.)

It takes me time to craft an Other London investigation, and so my regular group plays Other London only rather intermittently – between games of Kingdom, Good Society and more. So we do one investigation, then the next. And so on.

Overlapping investigations – probably a bad idea

Real life is rarely so ordered, and part of me would like to run an Other London game where the investigations overlap.

So the flashback from The Dead Undead occurs before (say), Murder of a Templar. And then the second murder in The Dead Undead occurs as Murder of a Templar is wrapping up. (And the flashback in The Orphan Room might even happen before all of that…)

But.

The problem with the flashback in The Dead Undead was that the players found the lack of leads frustrating. (Obviously, it didn’t help that they had forgotten we were playing a flashback. I should have reminded them.)

I suspect it would be equally frustrating if I started overlapping investigations.

We’re not good at leaving things unresolved, so there’s an inherent danger in trying this.

While unsolved cases are a feature of everyday policing, I can’t think of any examples in fiction. I’m sure there’s a reason for that.

So, I think for now, this remains an idea for the shelf.

I’d still like to do it, but it will need the right group of players. And I’ll explain what I’m doing – and hope they trust me enough to go through with it!

A treasure hunt in four mistakes

We had a few friends over for New Year’s Eve this/last year. We ate, drank and played a few games.

I also created a short treasure hunt, which was well received but suffered from four mistakes. Oops.

The first mistake

First, I planned for five players. That was my Mrs and Miss H, along with three friends who were joining us for NYE.  So I built a treasure hunt that had five parts.

The idea was that each part would lead to a letter, which could then be formed into a word that would lead to the hiding place for the treasure.

That final word was Volvo (the treasure was in the boot of my car).

To make it a little harder, I gave the letters as shapes, like this:

And then Mrs H reminded me that one friend wouldn’t be joining us until about 11 pm, after she had finished her shift at The Crown. Oops.

The second mistake

To make the final puzzle a little easier, I put the letters in age order. So the oldest player would get a V, the next oldest would get a O, and so on.

That meant that the clues for each letter were player-dependent.

Rather than write the name of the player on each clue, I created a code for them to crack. So, taking A=1, B=2 (and so on), I took the letters of each name and added them up.

So Steve would be 19+20+5+22+5 = 71.

(You can probably see where this is going.)

Unfortunately, it was only after I handed the players the clues that they told me that two of the numbers were the same! I genuinely hadn’t spotted my error before that.

(Luckily, it was easily fixed – once they solved the clues and worked out which set of clues was whose, I made sure they went to the right place.)

The third and fourth mistakes

For the next part of the hunt (the main part), the players had to answer questions that would lead them all over the house. The answer to each question was a letter – either an actual letter (“Eighth letter of Dunstanburgh Castle artist (in the kitchen)”) or a number that would give them a letter (“How many coat hooks are there by the front door?” – there are five, which gives E using the code as above).

Answering those clues led the players to where they would find the final clue (the shapes described above).

Only, as ever, there were two mistakes in this part of the treasure hunt… Again, they were easy to fix – but they were a little annoying.

No playtesting

It’s not the first time I’ve let (very avoidable )errors slip into my treasure hunts. In fact, I can’t think of a hunt that hasn’t had an error in it.

But that’s because I don’t test them. Inevitably I leave them to the last minute, so I don’t check them thoroughly.

And as my treasure hunts are one-and-done events for my family, anyone who could test them is inevitably playing them.

So I suspect the errors are here to stay.

2024 in games

And suddenly, it’s the end of 2024. Last time, I thought about 2024 in terms of song, this time I’m looking at it in terms of games.

Freeform Games

Freeform Games had a good year. In some ways it was not quite as good as 2023, but in other ways, better. I’ll write more about it on the Freeform Games blog, when the final numbers are in (so sometime in January).

Conventions and games weekends

I love going to conventions – I think my gaming high points have all been conventions. I enjoy them as much for meeting old friends as playing the games – and doing both is best.

In 2024 I attended:

West End Lullaby (February, Retford): The annual weekend-long freeform is back in its usual home, Retford. I played Aaron Burr and had a whale of a time in this crazy freeform based on West End musicals.

Airecon (March, Harrogate): A lovely local convention in Harrogate. I ran three tabletop RPGs and played lots of board games. As far as board games go, it’s my favourite convention.

LarpCon (March, Coalville): A convention all about larp. Mostly full of people selling stuff. It was okay, but reminded me that the freeform community is terrible at selling ourselves. I am not sure I want to go again.

Peaky (April, not far from Tamworth): I’ve been to every Peaky since it started in the early 2000s. It’s my favourite gaming weekend of the year: intense, creative and fabulous. I wrote one game and played two.

UK Games Expo (June, NEC Birmingham): UKGE is at the back end of the summer half term holiday, and because we’re normally away that week, I rarely go. This time I knew I was free, so I drove down for a day. UKGE is tiring, busy and crowded. It was okay, but I don’t feel the need to go back anytime soon.

Continuum (July, Leicester): Continuum was exciting for me for two reasons. First, Continuum moved to the Cranfield Management Centre – perhaps the best space for a convention that I’ve been to. Second, I took Megan with me. Luckily, she had a great time and wants to go to Continuum next year.

Furnace (October, Sheffield): Always a delight, Furnace is tabletop roleplaying only, and local enough that I don’t need to stay overnight. I ran one game and played in three.

Consequences (November, Chichester): Longest time away (four nights), I ran two freeforms and played in five and ran a game of Hillfolk. Too much gaming? Maybe.

Plans for 2025: Mostly the same, although I won’t go to UKGE, and I’m unlikely to go to LarpCon.

I also feel there ought to be something in Leeds. I wonder who I have to talk to about starting something up?

Freeforms

I played in or ran sixteen freeforms in 2024, which feels like a good year but is nowhere near the record of 20 in 2023. This year I ran six freeforms and played ten.

Best photo of me this year - taken for Home of the Bold at Continuum

In terms of writing, I finished and ran The Stars our Destination twice, once online and once at Consequences. I also got Backstage Business published for Freeform Games (and ran it at Continuum). I have also put together a short freeform, The Show Must Go On!, for Freeform Games that I have just sent out for playtesting. And I published All Flesh is Grass and Children of the Stars.

Favourite to run: The Stars our Destination at Consequences, which went really smoothly. I also ran Murder on the Istanbul Express for Megan’s 18th birthday in our garden, which went really well.

Favourite to play: Do You Hear The People Sing by Alex Helm was just so much fun that it was my favourte freeform of 2024 by a mile.

Plans for 2024: 

• Write and run the game that follows The Stars our Destination – set on Callisto. (It doesn’t have a title, yet.)
• Then start work on getting Messages from Callisto ready for publication.
• Publish The Show Must Go On! via Freeform Games.

Tabletop RPGs

2023 was a little hit and miss in terms of TTRPGs. My regular group had to cancel rather often due to health issues – something I suspect will only increase as we all get older. 

In terms of numbers, I played more Fate Accelerated than anything else in 2024. Good Society came second, with Most Trusted Advisors and DramaSystem (Hillfolk and others) tied for third place. 

I playtested and published The Dead Undead, an investigation for Other London: Desk 17.

Favourite to run: I loved running The Dead Undead – it was very satisfying, although it took a lot longer than I expected.

Favourite to play: Good Society, which we started in 2023, was so much fun, and I had some of my single favourite sessions this year.

Plans for 2024:

• Playtest the two scenarios I have written for the Department of Irregular Services (for Liminal) and then publish them.
• Write an investigation for The Dee Sanction.
• Continue working on The Orphan Room for https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2022/11/liminal-department-for-irregular.html. It would be nice to get it to a point where I’ve tested it. But I’m aware I’ve got a lot of other projects going on.

Boardgames

In 2023, I played more games of My City than any other game. (That’s the same as 2024!) This year I played a legacy campaign on Boardgamearena, which I enjoyed. (The full campaign is 24 episodes, and it took the four of us about six months to play it.)

An honourable mention goes to Ticket to Ride: Legacy of the West, a legacy game. We’ve got two more games to play, but I’m really enjoying it. (Yes, the criticisms are valid – the early games are very short and the later games are very long. But I’m still enjoying it.)

New games to my collection:

Kavango: Collect animals for your reserve in this drafting game with similarities to 7 Wonders. I backed this on Kickstarter, and have enjoyed the handful of games I’ve played with the family. It’s got a nice theme and design – but takes up quite a bit of space on the table.

The Crew: The Quest for Planet 9. A Father’s Day gift, and one I took on holiday over the summer. It’s a cooperative trick-taking game which we enjoyed, but curiously haven’t played since we came back. (Kavango took over.)

The Mind: A deceptively simple game about emptying your hand without communicating. Really good filler with the right group.

6 Nimmt: Excellent game that plays with up to 10 players (!) – simultaneously. I’ve played this with friends but not with the family yet.

D-Day Dice expansions: D-Day Dice was the first game I ever Kickstarted, and I backed the second edition as well. D-Day Dice is a dice-rolling push-your-luck game of storming the beaches on D-Day.  It plays really well solo, and I enjoy it a lot. This year, several expansions turned up for it – I now have enough D-Day Dice goodness to last me for years. (But there’s more planned…)

Plans for 2024: Play more games! Always! No doubt my games collection will swell – at least until I get rid of some of it. Already on order is Innovation Deluxe (card-based craziness from Carl Chudyk), due early next year. And D-Day Dice: Pacific Kickstarts in January. I expect I’ll back that.

Video games

And I played more World of Tanks Blitz than is probably healthy. It’s probably time I uninstalled it again.

And overall?

2024 was great for games. I feel very lucky I’m able to play so many games.

2024: The year of song

For me, 2024 was the year of song.

Yorkshire Voices

First, it was my first full twelve months of being in a choir. I’d been in a couple of short-lived choirs before, but I started 2024 in Yorkshire Voices, and I ended 2024 in Yorkshire Voices.

It’s been really good – we’ve learned loads of songs, we put on free concerts quite a few times a year, and there’s a nice social scene. It’s lovely.

West End Lullaby

In February, I played in West End Lullaby, a weekend freeform based on various UK and US musicals. (I was Aaron Burr from Hamilton, with a dash of Pierce Brosnan’s character from Mama Mia!) More singing and much laughter.

Backstage Business

After West End Lullaby, I developed and published Backstage Business for Freeform Games. Backstage Business is all about a band after their first tour – and whether they continue or not.

No actual singing is required by anyone.

I ran it successfully at Continuum, and we published it shortly after that.

Success2Soon

Success2Soon is another band-related game, this time a Hillfolk playtest. I created this because as I was working on Backstage Business, I realised how well it would suit Hillfolk.

So I ran this at Furnace and then put it on Itch.io.

All You Need Is Love

Then, at Consequences 2024, I played in All You Need Is Love, another game about being in a band. This time, I was a player, and as part of the game, we sang Beatles songs.

Do You Hear The People Sing

And finally, also at Consequences, I played Do You Hear The People Sing, which is about an amateur dramatics society putting on Les Miserables. Lots of songs from Les Miserables, and I played Thenardier, so I got to sing lots of good ones.

A year in song

So there we go. A year in song.

I wonder what 2025 will bring.

Children of the Stars

I’ve just put Children of the Stars on Itch.io.

Set in 1983, Children of the Stars is a science fiction first-contact freeform set in an alternate timeline where aliens are secretly on Earth. Decisions made during the game will affect future games – and maybe even the future of humanity itself!

Children of the Stars is the third in the series, following All Flesh is Grass (also on Itch) and The Roswell Incident (published through Freeform Games.

Writing history

I wrote Children of the Stars in 2022, and because I was preparing Writing Freeform Larps, I found it useful to work through the process again.

And I wrote about writing Children of the Stars here, on the blog, in four posts.

• Part 1: The game’s genesis and the first part of writing.
• Part 2: Developing the characters and background.
• Part 3: Writing plots and pulling everything together.
• Part 4: Running Children of the Stars.

I have so far run it twice, once online and once at Consequences 2022. Assuming that I stick with my current plan, I expect I will next run it at Consequences 2026. (I want to run All Flesh is Grass in 2025.)

A long gap between publishing

There are many reasons for the long gap between finishing Children of the Stars and getting it ready for publication. These are some of them:

• I’m easily distracted. I’m usually working on three or four projects at any one time. It would have come out quicker if I’d been focused only on Children of the Stars. But I like the variety.
• Before I could publish Children of the Stars, I wanted to first publish the two games earlier in the series. The Roswell Incident was published in 2023, and All Flesh is Grass earlier this year, in 2024.

I also worked on the next episodes, Messages from Callisto (first run in 2023) and The Stars our Destination (first run in 2024).

But how to publish it?

It’s taken me a while to figure out how to publish Children of the Stars. As I’ve mentioned before, decisions made in earlier games affect what happens in later games. So, in All Flesh is Grass, the players can set up situations that affect later games. (Indeed, the decisions affect whether certain characters actually appear.) 

I’ve run Children of the Stars twice so far, and in both cases, a particular solution was chosen. So as part of getting it ready for publication, I’ve had to write additional material for those alternative timestreams. That’s been fun, but has meant that getting Children of the Stars ready for publication hasn’t been as simple as just top-and-tailing it.

My first idea was to create lots of alternative files for the alternate timelines – but that got confusing really quickly. So, instead, I’m using coloured text in MS Word files to denote different timestreams. The GM will then have to choose which of the coloured text suits their campaign so far.

Luckily, my friend James G ran All Flesh is Grass recently, and I’ve shared Children of the Stars with him. He gave me some good feedback and confirmed that the coloured text approach works well.

What’s next?

Now that Children of the Stars is done, I will start working on episode 6, which involves a mission to Callisto. It doesn’t have a title yet.

Once I’ve run that, I’ll get it ready for Consequences 2025. And then, I will start to work on getting episode 4 (Messages from Callisto) into a publishable stage.

So that should keep me out of mischief for a good while.

Other London: The rats

I had an idea for an Other London faction led by a rat king. I’m not sure it will fit into the current investigation I’m working on, so I’m parking it here so I don’t lose it.

The Rats

Concept: Rat swarm commended by an intelligent rat king

Trouble: Hunted by those who made Us

Goal: Seek allies and find a safe harbour

In a laboratory somewhere, researchers conducted unethical experiments and created a rat king. Unknown to the researchers, their new creation was intelligent and was learning as much about them as they were about it.

When the rat-king had learned enough, it escaped the laboratory and fled through the sewers. It now hides from those who hunt it in London’s underground places: sewers, drains, cellars, tunnels.

The rat king, who calls itself Seven-as-One is no longer alone. It leads an army of rats, plus it now has a few human allies. However, it still searches for a safe space – and it still seeks human allies.

Information, rumours, lies

• Rats have recently behaving strangely in London.
• Rats are everywhere, watching, listening.
• Someone or something is controlling rats.
• A rat king has come to Other London.
• Rat kings have a gestalt intelligence formed from several stupid rat brains.
• Rat kings can direct and control other rats.

Questions

• Who made Seven-as-One?
• How was Seven-as-One made, and is it repeatable?
• What happens if one of the seven dies - can it be replaced?
• What does Seven-as-One really want?
• Can Seven-as-One find a home?

Enemies: Fae (for whom rats are unclean vermin), their creator

Allies: None – yet

Location: Anywhere out of sight, underground.

Seven-as-One: Nervous rat king made of up seven laboratory rats linked by their tails, gestalt intelligence, quick learner, I learned more from my creators than they realised

Awesome (+4) at: Commanding rats

Good (+2) at: Computers, electronics, languages, subterranean London

Bad (-2) at: Moving fast

Stress: O O

Seven-as-One is always thinking ahead, fearing the worst and expecting danger around every corner. Their caution isn’t just paranoia, the scientists who created Seven-as-One would dearly like their creation back. Seven-as-One learned computers and electronics from the lab they were kept in, and communicates with their human allies through and old laptop. (They find touchscreens hard to use; their claws get in the way.)

Loyal rat army: Swarm of wriggling rats

Awesome (+4) at: Escaping, wriggling, scavenging, scaring folk

Good (+2) at: Biting, gnawing, climbing, following Seven-as-One’s orders

Bad (+2) at: Taking independent action

Stress:  O O O

Consequences:

Mild (2)

Marky P: Young agent of Seven-as-One, quiet and watchful, a runaway

Good (+2) at: Scavenging, taking care of rats

Bad (+2) at: Talking to people

Stress:  O

Marky P is a runaway kid who stumbled across Seven-as-One and is now their human hands. Marky ran away from his abusive father and had been living on the streets for a few days before meeting the rat king. Seven-as-One recognised a fellow runaway, and the two now help each other.

Could AI art be good for some TTRPGs?

I had lots of lovely conversations at Consequences, but one that stayed with me was one that I had with Kris that covered all sorts of topics and inevitably stumbled on to the subject of AI.

And, as is often the way, I realised later what I should have said at the time. So here I am.

While we mostly agreed, I found the conversation slightly awkward because I’ve used AI art for character portraits in my Other London RPG books. I don’t hide the fact, or try to pass them off as anything other than AI art. But they’re there and it was clear that Kris disapproved.

Evil AI character portrait
from The Dead Undead

As I understand it, the two main arguments against using AI art are copyright and employment.

(There’s also an argument against AI about their huge energy costs, but I don’t know enough about it to argue either way.)

Stealing copyright

So, one of the complaints about AI is that it steals the copyright of real artists.

I have no idea how true this is.

I have a vague sense of how ChatGPT and text-based AI tools work (they’re a bit like suped-up predictive text on a smartphone), and as a result, to me, they don’t feel like a breach of copyright. (I am sure my words have been used to train the models at some point, and I’m relaxed about it.)

But AI art? That seems like magic to me. Maybe it’s exactly the same, maybe it isn’t. I don’t know.

So I genuinely don’t know if AI art is stealing copyright. (And when you dig into what copyright actually is, things aren’t much clearer.)

But I’m not a lawyer, and it’s been ages since I played one in a game. Right now, as far as I am aware, all that the courts have ruled is that AI art cannot be copyrighted. (So if you want to steal the character portraits in my books, I can’t stop you.)

They’ve yet to decide whether using art to train an AI model is theft – but that’s a matter of time before that decision is made.

Stealing work

The other argument is that AI art puts real artists out of a job.

That may be true. But in playing with AI art, I’ve learned that it’s very hard to get exactly what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a consistent vision, or if you have a particular idea of what you want illustrated, you’re better off with a human. (At least, for now.)

If you just want generic fantasy art and you’re not too fussy, then AI will suit you fine. 

Otherwise, you’ll need a real artist.

(For the rest of the art in Other London, I took photos and played around with them in an art package. I couldn’t get what I wanted from AI.)

Mediocre artists at risk

Much in the same way that artisan bakers exist alongside mass-produced sliced bread, I don’t think talented artists have much to fear from AI art – as their art will always be in demand. However, I think mediocre artists have more to worry about. 

Mediocre artists like me.

I create the art for most of the games at Freeform Games. I create a pen-and-ink sketch for each item, scan it in, tidy it up, then print it out and colour by hand, before scanning it in. I’d be so happy if I could replace that with AI art.

Here’s a teabag I did for one game.

So for the purposes of this post, I tried to get an AI programme to give me a picture of a teabag. Here are the results:

These are what Artflow's AI thinks a teabag is...

I admit that my prompting skills need work, but I don’t think I’m out of a job just yet.

But what about Other London’s AI art?

I tried to argue with Kris that no artists were hurt by my use of AI art in Other London because I was never going to use human art anyway. If AI art hadn’t been an option, there would be no character portraits, and the book would be a little less attractive.

However, I think there may be a deeper point that I only thought of afterwards.

Without AI art, Other London might not exist at all.

Now, I can’t remember my thinking at the time, but I’m pretty sure that without being able to use AI for the portraits, Other London would still just be a pile of notes on my hard drive. 

So maybe AI art isn’t the destructive force it’s often taken for?

Maybe, like word processors and DTP software, it creators like me bring their work to a wider audience.

Yes, some of that work may be mediocre (I hope Other London isn’t, but your opinion may vary). And yes, AI art has a certain “look” that isn’t always appealing.

But if AI art means that people like me can bring their words to life, then surely that’s a good thing? 

At least, I think it is. But maybe I would say that.

Other London’s future

Should Other London become a success (and it’s not even sold 50 copies yet), then I’m happy to find an artist to work with to replace the AI portraits.

But right now, it’s either AI character portraits or no portraits, and I like to see what my NPCs look like.