Traveller’s Wrath of the Ancients: First Impressions review, part 3

This is part 3 of my long review of Mongoose Traveller’s Wrath of the Ancients. This will make more sense if you read part 1 and part 2 first.

If you can’t face reading part 1 and 2, well, the TL;DR is that I think Wrath of Ancients isn’t great. It’s overwritten, badly structured and formatted and makes excessive use of lazy coincidences, signposts and information dumps. Worse, I think it would be hard work to run.

In the last two posts I went into the plot in some detail. This time I'm thinking about railroads and presenting an alternative campaign idea that fits my idea of what an Ancients campaign could be.

Riding the railroad

Wrath of the Ancients doesn’t want to be thought of as a railroad.

Which is odd, because a railroad is exactly what it is. You can see that from the signposts I’ve mentioned - each scene has a signpost leading to the next one. Sure, the PCs may take slightly different routes between the scenes, but it’s still a railroad.

At one point, Wrath even says, “The Referee should not railroad them in any direction...” Except that if the PCs don’t follow the big flashing “here’s the adventure” signpost, the GM has to work overtime trying to get them back on track.

(To be fair to Wrath, it does have a couple of pages of signpost ideas to get the PCs back to the plot. But that only signals its railroad-y nature.)

But if you are worried about your campaign being a railroad, write it so it isn’t! Don’t write a railroad and then lecture the GM about it not being a railroad!

Avoiding a railroad isn’t hard:

• Provide a timetable of events and write the villains so we know what their plans are, and how they and other parties (Imperials, Omicron, Zhodani and others) react.
• Write scenes and set pieces flexible enough that they can be located wherever necessary.
• Give clues to the players so they can decide in what order to investigate them – and at some point make sure they know what the bad guy’s plan is so they can work out how to foil it.

There - a non-railroad campaign.

(And frankly, it’s not the end of the world if your campaign is a railroad. As long as the players are having fun and are making their own decisions, railroads are fine.)

Let’s not upset the boat

One thing I found disappointing about these campaigns is that they don’t really rock the boat. Chartered Space isn’t really changed by what happens. I would have been much happier if, during the campaign, the Ancients had gone on the rampage, carving up large chunks of Chartered Space.

So what would I do?

So, given I don’t think much of Mysteries/Wrath, what would I do?

First, I’d probably keep Secrets of the Ancients entirely separate. Secrets is great and stands on its own. Mysteries and Wrath use the same Ancients canon as Secrets (ie, the Final War isn’t over yet), but they don’t really play well together.

So, some options.

The classic campaign

One option is to go back to Adventure 3: Twilight’s Peak and drop information and ideas into an existing campaign. Work it like Twilight’s Peak, with rumours leading to the Ancients’ base.

And that might be enough - I might never use Wrath of the Ancients.

The Omicron campaign

One of the challenges of writing for Traveller is designing adventures that suit any party. (You can see that in some of the gymnastics that start some adventures.)

But why do that at all? Why not assume that the PCs are members of Omicron Division, seeking evidence of the Ancients. This way, the PCs could visit Research Station Gamma and the blockade at Andor, and meet the Ancient Hunters all before things start kicking off.  

And then it’s easy to give the PCs clues pointing them towards Twilight’s Peak and the rise of Tsyamoykyo.

(And with the PCs involved, I’d make Omicron less inept.)

The Ancient Hunters campaign

For this version, get the players to create Ancient Hunters during character generation. Give the PCs links to other Ancient Hunters, and make them interested in anything to do with the Ancients. This might be more like the standard Mysteries of the Ancients campaign - but give them several clues to follow at once, rather than just giving them the next clue.

Agents of Seven

And if you’ve already run Secrets, then the PCs may be agents of the Ancients and part of the Final War. They’ve got an incentive to follow up leads to other Ancients’ sites like Twilight’s Peak and can get involved that way.

The rise of Tsamoykyo

But what is Tsamoykyo doing? In Wrath of the Ancients, he doesn’t really get started. He supposedly has the goal to do great (but unspecified) works and to meet God (as the creator of the universe) to understand why the universe is the way it is. But the campaign ends before he gets started, which I think is a shame.

So let’s give him a preposterous plan: Tsamoykyo wants to create an Undoing to summon the Creator. To do this, he’s going to rip a huge section of Chartered Space into a small pocket universe and collapse it into a giant black hole, which will then punch back through into the real universe, creating an anomaly that will force the Creator to appear.

Tsamoykyo has already run a trial (on a smaller scale) that has shown great promise. 50 years ago, a mysterious black hole appeared out of nowhere in Reft Sector. (When they become aware of it, astronomers will want to charter a ship to visit the black hole [where there may be clues] and also travel to where they can observe it appear in real-time [ie, overtaking the light emitted by the event].)

The eye of God?

With a successful trial under his belt, Tsamoykyo puts his plan to create a huge pocket universe into effect. So he will take a huge chunk of space - let’s say a 25-parsec radius around Andor (so taking out the Darrians, Sword Worlds, a corner of the Zhodani Consolate and a large chunk of the Third Imperium) and pull it into a pocket universe.

(Centring it on Andor explains why Tsamoykyo has to rescue the Droyne.)

The new pocket universe will only be a parsec or so across, and compressing all those systems into a tiny space will create an enormous black hole which will punch back into normal space. So that’s the plan.

So why is Tsamoykyo doing this now? (Rather than, say, a thousand years ago, or 200 years in the future?) Because of Twilight’s Peak. 

Tsamoyko stored his pocket universe-creating device at Twilight’s Peak, and when he learned that the base had been disturbed, he sent an agent (Tellsadiu – from Mysteries of the Ancients).

Tellsadiu teleported the device back to Tsamoykyo and began to warm up the base.

A timetable

With that as a rough idea, here’s my (equally rough) timetable:

984: Twilight’s Peak is disturbed (121 years ago, during the Third Frontier War) by Mercedes and her crew. The alarm is triggered.

1050: Tellsadiu arrives at Twilight’s Peak and returns the device to Tsamoykyo.

1052: Tsamoykyo creates a test black hole in 1052 (in the middle of Reft, where light will take 30+ years for the black hole to be noticed in the Third Imperium).

1060-1105: Tsamoykyo starts setting up ship teleporters at the edge of his planned area. He needs 30 (say). These will all be in deep space, placed there by his ships, and will be networked.

1080+: The mysterious black hole is observed in Reft from the Third Imperium.

1106: Twilight’s Peak is destroyed (as per Mysteries of the Ancients)

1108: Tsyamoykyo takes secret Droyne cache on Andor.

1108: Tsyamoykyo establishes a forward base at a location on the edge of the rip where he expects the Creator to arrive.

1109: Tsyamoykyo triggers the Undoing, creating a monstrous black hole brimming with exotic energies.

1110: Tsyamoykyo meets the Creator!

Okay, this is a bit rough and ready, and I suspect needs fixing in places. But it’s a start.

I haven’t really worked out how the device works, but I think it needs teleporters to be “around” the area to be pinched off. They then become portals into the universe. And the bigger the bit of the universe you are pinching off, the more portals you need. (Ideally, I want the PCs to use the teleporters to zip quickly around the map.)

One thing this does is highlight Tsyamoykyo’s arrogance. He considers the Third Imperium and other empires utterly beneath him and can’t conceive of them interfering with his plan. That’s his mistake…

Other factions

I also need to think about potential other factions that might be involved. They include:

• Omicron Division
• Imperial Navy
• Zhodani Consulate
• Other aliens – such as the Darrians and Sword Worlds
• The friendly Droyne from Mysteries of the Ancients
• Seven and/or Grandfather (if I bring them in)

They all have their own objectives and will react accordingly. (I might even need a timetable for each.)

Getting the players involved

I can see several entry points, depending on what sort of campaign I’m running. Some ideas:

• The PCs are recruited to investigate the black hole. There they uncover signs of Ancient technology, leading them to investigate further.
• The PCs are asked to investigate mysterious signals coming from deep space and discover a portal in deep space.
• The PCs are drawn to Twilight’s Peak as per Adventure #3.
• The PCs get involved in the adventure on Callia (in Mysteries) and are drawn into the Ancients that way.

As part of the campaign, I want the PCs to discover Tsyamoykyo’s plan and understand how they may foil it. So I’ll need clues – maybe captured intelligence from enemy Droyne, information from friendly Droyne or Omicron, theoretical research from a scientist studying the black hole, or even decoded messages from Ancients’ artefacts.

I also like the idea of the PCs having to convince the Imperial authorities to take action. If they’re successful, maybe we’ll see fleet action against one of the teleporters.

And we can end with a final confrontation in Tsyamoykyo’s pocket universe as before. (Although it’s been pointed out to me that Wrath of the Ancients and Secrets of the Ancients have very similar endings, so perhaps we should do something different.)

Return of the Ancients

So I think that’s what I’d do with Mysteries/Wrath of the Ancients.

That’s assuming I do anything with them – it’s much more likely they’ll just stay on my bookshelf, unplayed.

Traveller's Wrath of the Ancients: First impressions review, part 2

Wrath of the Ancients is a campaign book for Traveller. I suggest you read part 1 of my review before continuing. (And if you are hoping for things to get better, maybe just stop now.)

And more spoilers!

Across the sector

As part of the last section of the adventure, the PCs were given two words as a clue to the next piece of the puzzle: Omicron and Gamma. “Omicron” refers to the Omicron Division, whom they crossed paths with during Mysteries of the Ancients. “Gamma” refers to Research Station Gamma, which is located on Vanejen. (If your players aren’t seasoned Traveller fans, you might have to help them with “Gamma” as a clue.)

Oddly, it’s entirely possible for the PCs to reach Research Station Gamma before the Omicron snatch team. The PCs have a TL25 jump-6 ship that requires no refuelling nor resupply of provisions and can (probably) use empty space between jumps. The ship that Omicron uses is never stated, but it’s unlikely to be anything like jump-6, and even if it is, it has to refuel and resupply regularly. As the PCs are probably only a week or two behind Omicron at best when they set off for Research Station Gamma, they could arrive weeks before...

(Even though Ancients ships are TL25, and even though they have sector-spanning teleportation technology (I’ll get to that), their ships are only jump-6. That seems oddly underwhelming.)

As far as I can tell, it is never explained why (or how) Omicron Division evaded the Andor interdiction fleet, landed on Andor, kidnapped some very specific Droyne, and then dropped them off at Research Station Gamma. And the NPCs at the station have no idea what to do with them - they’re just a plot McGuffin to attract the PCs.

Research Station Gamma

Anyway, the PCs arrive at Research Station Gamma, grandly described as the “crossroads of the campaign”. If you’re familiar with the original Adventure 2: Research Station Gamma, you’ll recognise much of this part of the campaign. The design of the station is similar (even down to the submarine dock); there are Chirpers and unethical experiments are taking place.

On the submarine dock, I did wonder why it had one as it didn’t seem to make much sense. So I went back to Adventure 2 and found that it talks about the storms and ice on Vanejen, prompting the development of submarine travel. So, it is not the secret lair I first thought, but it is not explained by Wrath either.

Unlike Adventure 2, there are NPCs present that the PCs have already met - from Mysteries. One of these, Mercedes (whom we last saw giving the PCs directions to Twilight’s Peak), arranges it so the PCs have access to the station, posing as Omicron agents.

(These books make the Imperium security services seem utterly incompetent. Research Station Gamma is conducting secret research and has powerful Ancients’ technology lying around - and yet the PCs can just waltz in. It was the same in Mysteries in Hell at Perihelion. It’s most peculiar.)

Anyway, the PCs can wander around and talk to everyone and nobody really gets curious. Mercedes tells them about the Ancient that has returned and where they should go next (lazy signpost #4).

And then, the Ancients attack (timely coincidence #5). It’s a really underwhelming attack by Tsyamoykyo’s standards (given what he unleashed at Andor). Given that their objective is to destroy the kidnapped Droyne, he really didn’t put much effort into it. You’d think the least he would do is drop a planetbuster on the station. Just to make sure, as another franchise might put it.

It’s also not at all clear how Tsyamoykyo knew to come here. None of this is explained - I can’t help but feel that it would be much better if the PCs knew there was a clock ticking and they were on a deadline to rescue the Droyne. As it is, Tsyamoykyo’s forces attack only when the PCs have done as much as they need to do.

Once all that is done and dusted, according to Wrath, “The Travellers now know that events are unfolding on Braudel in the Trojan Reach” Really? There’s nothing in the previous chapters that suggests that to me. Instead, Mercedes merely says that the hidden Oytrip on Braudel may hold the clue to defeating Tsyamoykyo. There’s no sense that “events” are doing any sort of folding or unfolding.

So anyway, it’s off to the Trojan Reach we go.

Braudel

Some weeks later, even in their jump-6 Ancients ship, the PCs arrive at Braudel where they find that events have indeed been unfolding and Tsyamoykyo has invaded the planet. Luckily, there are a few friendly Droyne ships hiding in the outer planets. Even more luckily, Mercedes is there - and she has a plan! (Is this a coincidence or a lazy signpost? I’ve lost track.)

How did she get to Braudel so quickly? By a sector-spanning teleport jump! 

(I find Traveller’s teleportation a bit confusing. The core rules talk about teleportation as a psionic power and note the problems of conserving momentum. Teleporter portals get around that by dumping excess energy into a pocket universe. But occasionally, Wrath uses a portal to teleport to somewhere that isn’t another portal. How does that work? Anyway, the Ancients have sector-spanning teleporter technology but the campaign doesn’t lean into that.)

Tsyamoykyo has created a forward base on Braudel in advance of pushing into Imperial space. (Why? Well, Tsyamoykyo wants to take control of Chartered Space and use its population to create great works and maybe even meet God!)

Mercedes’ plan is to sneak onto the planet, seize control of the ship teleporter Tsyamoykyo has handily left on the planet (which is at the top of the ugly 4km-high war machine they’re building), and teleport into Tsyamoykyo’s pocket universe - and somehow kill him.

This complicated plan uses a ship caught in the blast from a temporal dislocation device. That ship, the Rustic Idyll, not only contains one of Mercedes’ old crew mates but also doesn’t have long before it is completely out of phase with the universe and is unavailable. So that’s a mega coincidence combined with yet another plan the players haven’t had to come up with!

The lack of player agency in this campaign is horrific. All the main decisions, ideas and plans are given to the players. They don’t need to work anything out - they just follow the signposts and do the things the NPCs tell them to do.

The next 60 pages (!) cover the first part of this plan - up to entering the pocket universe. Challenges include getting onto the planet without being detected, persuading whatever locals haven’t been subjugated to help fight back and raise an army, storming and taking control of a 4km high war machine (which is oddly ugly, compared to most other Droyne/Ancient technology) and using the Rustic Idyll (somehow) to take a strike force into the enemy pocket universe.

This is so epic that I have no idea how I would run it. 

To help the players, the campaign introduces “advantages” that the PCs can set up to help them in the final battle. Things like a loyal friend who might sacrifice themselves or understanding the villain’s psychology to give them an edge. Suddenly, we’re playing Fate!

Making the game feel even more like Fate, the PCs should be pretty powerful by now. As they’ve been “enjoying” the uplift process for some months, they are likely to be powerful psionic adepts. The campaign probably isn’t feeling much like Traveller any more. This is all to prepare them for the final battle. (Hopefully, the GM is equally prepared.)

The pocket universe

Having taken control of the teleporter on Braudel, the PCs can break into Tsyamoykyo’s pocket universe for the final battle. (Some minor pedantry: according to Adventure 12: Secret of the Ancients, the only way in and out of a pocket universe is via portals (effectively teleporters). Wrath, however, suggests that pocket universes can be accessed via their anchor points. Luckily it’s a minor point and can be safely ignored.)

This involves getting into the pocket universe, wandering around until they find the right bit (luckily, nobody back on Braudel has thought to raise the alarm), and then confronting Tsyamoykyo in his lair.

Then there’s another dream battle, and either the PCs defeat Tsyamoykyo, or they don’t.

If they fail, well, it’s bad luck Chartered Space. If they succeed - they have an entire Ancients workshop to play with! The universe really is their oyster - what they choose to do with it is up to them.

But either way, that’s the end of the campaign.

Overall

As you can probably tell, I don’t think much of Wrath of the Ancients. My review of Mysteries of the Ancients was pretty scathing, and I think Wrath is worse. Which is a shame, because I’m a fan of Traveller’s Ancients: I like wonder and mystery in my science fiction.

I’m not quite finished, though. Next time I will think about railroads and think about changes I might make.

Traveller’s Wrath of the Ancients: First impressions review (part 1)

Wrath of the Ancients is the finale to Mongoose Traveller’s Ancients trilogy, which starts with Mysteries of the Ancients and follows with Secrets of the Ancients.

I’ve only read through Wrath of the Ancients; I haven’t played or run it. And to be honest, Wrath needs so much work that I couldn’t run it as written. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

TL;DR Wrath of the Ancients is . . . awful.

And before we start, there will be spoilers ahead.

First impressions

Based on Mysteries of the Ancients (see my review here), I wasn't expecting much from Wrath of the Ancients. Given it’s the same team as Mysteries, I was taking as given that it would have the same flaws: overwritten, badly structured, an unhelpful layout and an adventure full of unlikely coincidences and clues just given to the players.

Would Wrath be the same? Oh yes - and on so many levels is much, much worse.

Before I even started reading I was surprised to find there were no handouts. I was expecting a pdf with handouts. But no, there’s not even any library data. So that was a bad start.

The first 48 pages

As with Mysteries, the first 48 pages of Wrath consist of background and rules. Again, much of this is presented before you really need to know it. Again, most of it is overwritten and mostly tedious - and would be better written more concisely and tucked away in an appendix for reference.

Having said that, the first few pages start well. Wrath of the Ancients starts with a good summary of the overall plot, claiming that the war between the Ancients is over and promising that the war against the Ancients is about to start! That’s quite a promise.

That’s followed by a discussion of the real history of the Ancients (and what happened to the Droyne), which was mostly new to me. It explained what happened to the Droyne and why Grandfather introduced the coyns. 

That’s followed by essays about the Droyne on Andor, the Imperium and the Ancients, Ancients technology, psionic dreams, and an uplift process. Only once we are through all of that, on page 49, do we finally encounter anything that looks like an adventure.

We are also introduced to the villain of the campaign: Tsyamoykyo, “least of the Ancients”. It’s a shame he has such a forgetful letter-salad name – Secrets of the Ancients had the sense to give its villain a much more memorable name: Seven.

Cold Moon

Cold Moon is the campaign’s first “adventure”, if adventure is the right word.

Wrath suggests that the campaign begins “in media res”. It really doesn’t. Star Wars begins in media res. Wrath begins with a confusing muddle.

It’s confusing because Cold Moon is barely more than an outline and the GM (sorry, Referee) has to put a lot of work in to unpick everything and figure out how to use it at the table. It reads like an outline submitted for approval to work up in detail. Only, instead of the author figuring out how it all works, it’s up to the GM.

So, Cold Moon involves a Droyne ship that has been destroyed by something awful. The PCs first see the attack in a dream sequence, and then they are working through the actual wreckage, where they are attacked by G482 monsters (the ones from Mysteries). How the PCs got there is unexplained. (This is what is meant by in media res - in this case, “we’re starting in the middle of the scenario because we don’t know how to get the PCs there - you’ll have to figure it out on your own.”)

As well as failing to explain how the PCs get involved in this situation, Cold Moon doesn’t explain where the adventure takes place, other than it’s a cold moon somewhere. It doesn’t say who the Droyne are. And it doesn’t explain why, in the centre of the wreck, there is an intact TL25 Ancients warship. (Yes, really. Why didn’t the Droyne use it to escape?)

It does say who/what attacked the ship, but as is normal with this terrible narrative approach to writing, it says it at the end rather than put it up front so the GM understands what’s going on from the start. (And it’s no surprise that it’s Tsyamoykyo’s forces that are behind it all.)

There are no real decisions for the PCs to take during this section, other than whether to take the TL25 ship or not. (And why wouldn’t they? It’s literally priceless.) Instead, they have woken up from their psionic dream with the knowledge that something is happening on Andor.

(So that’s one signpost given to the PCs without them having to work for it. I may keep a running total.)

Retconning Secrets of the Ancients

At the end of Secrets of the Ancients, the PCs witnessed two Ancients going head-to-head. They influenced the outcome and decided who won. However, as far as Wrath is concerned, the victor (if there was one), disappears and is never seen again.

As a reward for surviving Secrets, the PCs get access to the Dart, a TL25 Ancients scout ship. Then, at the start of Wrath, they get access to a TL25 Ancients warship. The ship in Wrath makes the Dart irrelevant in almost every sense.

It’s almost as if the events in Secrets are completely retconned out. The Dart is replaced by an even more powerful Ancients ship and their powerful patron just disappears.

It’s like Secrets never happened.

As I read Wrath of the Ancients, I find myself wondering about roads not taken.

Would it be better if Mysteries/Wrath took place after Secrets? The start of Mysteries would be much easier if their mysterious patron had charged them to track down any Ancients technology as part of the Ancients’ shadow war.  They could even be directed straight to Callia? Other changes would be needed, but I can’t help but feel that would make it more interesting.

Disaster on Andor

So the PCs arrive at Andor (in the Five Sisters subsector), 36 hours after Tsyamoykyo’s forces have ripped through the Imperial defences and assaulted the planet. (Timely coincidence #1.)

Hang on a minute - 36 hours? So that means the earlier sequence was premonition? Which might be okay if it were presented like that - but it isn’t. (But then this is one of the challenges of Traveller. Given the vagaries of jump travel and the routes they might take, getting the PCs to a particular place at a particular time is always going to be forced. But maybe it doesn’t have to be.)

The PCs’ ship emerges from hyperspace on a collision course with a huge piece of wreckage. Wrath then gives us nearly 1000 words and two pages of confusing rules to avoid the crash, which involves matching speeds, and even though I’ve read it twice, I still can’t figure it out. Surely it would have been easier to say, “Make a very difficult pilot check to avoid taking damage to the ship.”

However, all that assumes that the PCs are jumping into Andor close to the planet. Andor is a red zone, and according to Wrath’s library, data is interdicted by the Imperial Navy. Surely the PCs would exit jump somewhere in the outer system so they can plan their approach?

Anyway, the PCs then receive a telepathic call for help from a piece of capital ship (lazy signpost #2). They could ignore it (and the adventure warns against railroading), but frankly, they will miss a lot if they don’t go and help. Aboard the wreckage, they find a Droyne diplomatic party and senior Naval officers - and then they are attacked by enemy forces (timely coincidence #2).

These attacking Droyne are heavily armed and are leftover forces from the Tsyamoykyo’s earlier assault. The Droyne don’t seem to be particularly well armed for Ancients forces - they only have fusion weapons rather than disintegrators. But I think that’s supposed to reflect Tsyamoykyo’s erratic approach.

The blockade at Andor

Andor down and the history-dream

Down on Andor, battles are still raging between the local Droyne and the intruders. Assuming the PCs can persuade the locals to let them land (and rescuing the diplomatic party from orbit will probably help), the PCs are brought to the Chamber of Hidden Knowledge and Andor’s leaders.

And another dream: the history-dream of Eskayloyt. 

According to the text, “The Travellers witness the entire history of Andor over what is for others just a few minutes.” However, the text is over 4000 words long! It takes more than “just a few minutes” to read, let alone convey to the players.

I genuinely cannot imagine how to present this to the players without either an awful lot of work or just giving it to them as an information dump.

As well as being an information dump, the history-dream contains several decision points. The PCs can play the part of historical figures/factions and influence ancient (and Ancient) history. That would be nice, if it were presented in a sensible fashion that I could use at the table. As it is, it’s a lot of work for the GM.

At the end of the dream, it is revealed that “just a few days” before the assault, an Imperial ship landed, took some Droyne specimens, and left. A telepath picked up two words: Omicron and Gamma. (A double whammy here: another signpost just given to the players and another timely coincidence. That’s three apiece.)

As the PCs come out of their dream, they find themselves and the leaders under attack by more of the invaders. Hopefully, the PCs can see them off - good job they arrived at the end of the dream! (Timely coincidence #4)

(In many ways, the history-dream is reminiscent of chapter 6 of Secrets of the Ancients, during which the PCs explore the history of the Ancients. Except Secrets does it so much better – why didn’t Wrath take a similar approach?)

Uplifted Travellers

If this sounds like a very high-powered Traveller campaign, that’s exactly what it is. And the PCs are being uplifted to cope with it. The uplift process started at Twilights Peak, paused while they had fun in Secrets (although possibly should have had a big impact on that campaign) and continues in Wrath. The PCs are becoming powerful psionics.

I’ll leave it there for this time.

Next time, I get frustrated by what happens at Research Station Gamma.

The Dead Undead: After action report

We’ve just finished The Dead Undead, my latest investigation for Other London: Desk 17. The mystery has been solved, and we’re taking a break while we do something else.

Goals

I had three goals.

• Playtest the scenario before putting it on DriveThru and itch.
• Use the players’ characters as the basis for some more pregen playbooks.
• Have fun.

So I achieved the first goal – I made a few tweaks to the investigation, but it didn’t need a drastic reworking, and it’s now for sale.

However, the second goal is a work in progress. As I described some time ago in this post, the players took their characters in weird directions and turning them into Desk 17 pregens is not quite as straightforward as I hoped.

Luckily, the last goal was a total success – I had fun, and the players told me they also enjoyed themselves. (They were certainly very engaged.)

It also took us a lot longer to solve than I expected. We took 11 sessions to play through, which, given we are easily distracted, probably meant about 16-18 hours of play, which is pretty good.

Other London lore

I also learned a few things about Other London.

Desk 17’s offices: We decided during session zero that Desk 17’s office was in the old London Necropolis Railway station building on Westminster Bridge Road (above the café and bookshop). I didn’t know that was a thing, but you can read about it here. (It led to a lovely moment when they brought in a witness who thought their offices were so cool!) The office stairwell is haunted by a spook who appears to be feeding on the magic of one of the PCs – that can only go badly.

Vampires and their reflections: "Can I see her reflection in the polish?" made me wonder about vampire reflections. I decided there and then that vampires didn’t reflect in silver-backed mirrors, but other reflections (puddles, chrome, modern mirrors) were fine. And the same for cameras – they show up on digital cameras but not wet film.

Vampire servants: One NPC in the investigation has a prolonged life because they drink vampire blood. I decided to keep the exact benefits vague – it depends on who you drink from and how often you drink.

Vampire funerals: What does a vampire funeral look like if vampires don’t explode in a shower of dust (and in this investigation, they don’t)? I created a vampire family plot.

Folk songs: As part of session zero, the players created the EFDSS as an ally. They visited the library and found an old folk song that told the story of a fae gang who burnt down a windmill that was blocking their view of the sunrise, killing everyone inside. That’s the first time I’ve dropped clues and history into a folk song.

Aspects-only Fate

I run Other London using Fate Accelerated. Not that we lean hard into its narrative approach, but because I find Fate to be a simple, lightweight system that is fine even if your style is mostly trad (as mine is).

However, I’ve found myself irritated by approaches recently, so I thought I’d give aspects-only Fate (from page 26 of the Fate System Toolkit) a try. In essence, a character’s aspects give them a +1 to rolls where they apply. +1s are cumulative.

I liked it. Typically, players rolled the dice with a +1 or +2 bonus instead of their usual +2 or +3 with FAE. It toned down their power and made more rolls uncertain. (I usually set the target for an overcome roll at +2, making rolls more chancy.)

Having said that, we didn’t roll dice very often – maybe two or three times a session. We only play for two hours (often much less as we are easily distracted by other things) and don’t roll many dice (lots of conversations with NPCs, but they rarely need dice).

I also tweaked a couple of other things.

Rather than refresh fate points to three each session, I’ve started them all with three fate points, but they only refresh one each session. (They can still earn them through invokes as normal.) So this means they can’t spam them as much as they might otherwise do.

In practice, this didn’t have much effect – nobody ran out of fate points.

My other change had no impact, largely because we didn’t get into combat. Instead of the usual (slightly counterintuitive) FAE stress boxes, I was going to cut them down to three single-use boxes. That would have made the PCs less robust in a fight, but we didn’t actually have a fight (the investigation’s climax resulted in a standoff in a park, but we didn’t break into combat).

The Dead Undead

I’ve put The Dead Undead onto DriveThruRPG and Itch – and also created bundles on each where you can get everything Other London related at 50% off.

Other London: The Dead Undead on DriveThruRPG

Other London: The Dead Undead on Itch.io

The Orphan Room

I’ve started the next investigation, and I know it’s called The Orphan Room. I sort of know what’s going on, but I haven’t worked out the details.

Time to get my thinking cap on.

Where is Desk 17’s office?

As part of session zero for Other London: Desk 17, I get the players to create Desk 17 itself. I’ve created a worksheet where the players answer simple questions (Where is Desk 17’s office? What’s weird about it? And so on.), choose their support team and select a couple of stunts.

And it crossed my mind that I could give players a menu of options for the location of Desk 17’s offices.

Ideas for where you might find Desk 17

Inside Marble Arch. This has form, as three small rooms were genuinely used by the police from 1851 to 1968.

The London Necropolis Railway station on Westminster Bridge Road. We are using this in our current game.

Mappin Terraces in Regent’s Park Zoo. Constructed in 1913-14, the hollow spaces inside were once used for the aquarium – but are they now Desk 17 offices?

Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Above Mornington Crescent tube station. Mornington Crescent has pedigree – it not only houses the secret entrance to Charlie Stross’ Laundry but also the Peculiar Crimes Unit (from Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May series) is located in offices above the station (until they are destroyed in a bomb blast).

In Centre Point. Converted to residential flats, much of the tower is now empty (led to its being called one of London's "ghost towers")

In the BT Tower. In the old revolving restaurant, perhaps?

No Swan So Fine, CC BY-SA 4.0 &lt;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

50 Berkley Square is supposed to be the most haunted house in London. Desk 17 would fit right in.

The Kingsway telephone exchange, hidden in tunnels deep below Chancery Lane tube station.

Or some less salubrious ideas (particularly when you’re channelling Slow Horses):

• Below a Soho massage parlour
• Above a chicken shop
• Behind a candy store
• On a barge in Surrey Quays.

Scenes in RPGs

I started roleplaying in the 1980s, went into a deep freeze in the late 1990s and didn’t come out until about a decade ago. “Scenes” were one of the new things indie games brought to TTRPGs, and I still find them tricky.

It doesn’t help that many RPGs don’t explain scenes properly. It seems like “scene” has become a specific piece of TTRPG terminology that is subtly different from its usual meaning. And everyone assumes that everyone knows what is meant when they talk about “scenes”.

As a result, it can be a bit of a muddle. This is my attempt to unravel that puzzle.

Dictionary definition

According to Google, there are two meanings to scene:

• The place where an incident in real life or fiction occurs or occurred.
• A sequence of continuous action in a play, film, opera, or book.

The first definition is straightforward, but when you start thinking about the play/film/opera/book definition, it gets a bit trickier.

Back when I helped out with the local pantomime, everyone knew what scenes were. Scene one was the big opening scene. Scene two took place in front of the “greys”, the grey curtains pulled across the stage that hid the backstage crew changing the scenery. When scene two ended, the greys opened to reveal scene three. And so on. A two-hour pantomime might have no more than nine or ten scenes.

In movies, scenes are often shorter. So rescuing Princess Leia in Star Wars becomes many scenes: the room where Luke persuades Han to rescue her, the turbolift, the detention centre, Princess Leia’s cell, and so on. Again, these are all location-based as they are different sets.

But in a roleplaying game?

Well, they vary. Some use scenes, some don’t. Some use scenes in a specific way, some use the term but don’t really define them.

Trad and other games

Broadly, in RPGs, trad games don’t use scenes. They might mention them, but they’re using them in the sense of the first dictionary definition: they’re a place or location.

So in Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Liminal, D&D, Runequest, ALIEN, and the like, scene doesn’t have a particular meaning.

Scene-based games

Some games build scenes into their mechanics. Many of these are GM-less, and the term ‘scene’ is used when a player controls what’s happening.

(I’m sure many other games use scenes. These are the ones I am familiar with.)

GMless games

Games without a GM often use scenes as a way for each player’s character to have spotlight time. Other PCs may be in those scenes, but everyone at the table knows who the spotlight is on during the scene.

Fiasco: Each character gets four scenes where they are in the spotlight. Fiasco confuses things because players can decide whether to “establish” their scene (set it up – who is there, what’s going on) or “resolve” the scene (decide on its outcome – the other players establish the scene). Much as I enjoy Fiasco, I find this fairly counterintuitive in play – particularly when a player chooses to resolve.

Follow and Kingdom: Ben Robbins uses scenes in his games to “… shine a spotlight on your character to see what they think and do…” In both games, the player decides who is in the scene, where it takes place, and what’s going on. Then, you play to find out what happens.

Unfortunately, these games don’t clearly state the one piece of advice that I find makes a scene really sing: to know what your character wants from the scene. (They may not get it, of course.)

GM-ed games

Hillfolk and Good Society both use scenes.

Hillfolk has a strict player turn order. When it’s your turn, you create a scene involving your character. You establish it as with other games (where, when, who and so on) – and if it’s a dramatic scene, you decide on the emotional reward you want from another character.

(Hillfolk also has other types of scenes, but dramatic scenes are the main ones.)

Good Society uses scenes for roleplaying, but fails to explain clearly what they are or how to manage them. As a result, scenes felt directionless and saggy and dragged on too long.  I talked about this when I played Good Society.

Most Trusted Advisors uses “scene” liberally throughout the text, but it doesn’t explain what they are. However, from my experience of running Most Trusted Advisors, I think it would benefit from more rigorous scene discipline.

Tips for scenes

So for these types of games, these are the questions that whoever is establishing the scene needs to consider:

• Where is it?
• When is it?
• Who is present?
• What is going on?
• What do I want?

And for me, the last point is the most important in helping to keep scenes punchy. If you know what you want going into a scene, it’s much clearer when the scene is over. (And I find it helps to tell the other players what you have in mind, so they can react accordingly.)

Games that get muddled

Some games use scenes liberally in their text (e.g. Blades in the Dark and Monster of the Week), but they don’t have much of a mechanical effect, so the fact that they’ve not defined what a scene is doesn’t matter too much.

Unfortunately, the same isn’t true for other games.

Fate Core defines a scene as “A scene is a unit of game time lasting anywhere from a few minutes to a half hour or more, during which the players try to achieve a goal or otherwise accomplish something significant in a scenario.”

Scenes are important in Fate mainly because a character’s stress boxes clear after each scene. But what is a scene? That’s left to the GM, and isn’t always clear, despite the advice above. I don’t know if rescuing Princess Leia from the Death Star is one or many scenes in Fate. Is rescuing the princess enough of a goal? Or can you break it down into smaller scenes? (Such as blagging our way into the detention centre, escaping from the detention centre, and getting back to the Falcon) As far as recovering stress goes, this difference could be critical. (I might do it either way, depending on the tone of the game.)

Lady Blackbird allows characters to refresh their dice pools by having a “refreshment scene” with another character. Lady Blackbird doesn’t explicitly say what these are but suggests that they’re quiet moments with other PCs. (I really like these as a way to encourage roleplaying between characters – it’s such a lovely design.)

Going back to Star Wars, Leia’s moment with Luke aboard the Millennium Falcon just after Ben Kenobi’s death is the sort of thing I imagine when I think of a refreshment scene. (And Luke has clearly refreshed his dice pool as he mans the Falcon’s gun turret and blasts away at the incoming TIE fighters.)

And it’s not just me

And it’s not just me! This recent post on substack and this thread on RPGnet suggests others are thinking about this as well. I had already earmarked this as something I wanted to reflect on after playing and running Good Society and Most Trusted Advisors earlier in the year. These posts have, however, prompted me to finish this post.

The Dormant Accounts

I was listening to Writing the Universe (BBC Sounds) and Robin Ince was talking with John Lloyd about The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. They played a clip from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which talked about depositing 1p in your own time and using compound interest over billions of years to pay for your meal at Milliways. And that made me think that if that was the case, there would be bank accounts here and there, slowly accumulating interest.

And then I wondered what that would look like if you stumbled on some of those accounts today. Then I wondered what sort of story you might generate from that, which is when I decided to turn it into an Other London idea.

As I didn’t have the answers, I decided on a faction. (I have no idea if or how this will ever make it into a game, but it’s a fun idea to noodle around with.)

Trent & Rochester & Associates

Concept: Legal firm managing the estates of the dead

Trouble: A troublesome heir who wants what’s rightfully theirs

Goal: Maintain the accounts until their owners return

Trent & Rochester & Associates (“the firm”) is a small firm of lawyers specialising in managing the investment accounts of those “no longer around” (a euphemism) to manage them. The accounts themselves are held in banks and other financial institutions. The firm merely manages them. The firm does not disclose how many “clients” it has, but charges handsomely for its services.

At least one account has been managed by the firm since it was founded in 1766. The firm has reportedly managed many others for over 100 years. These are not ordinary accounts.

Trent & Rochester was founded in 1766 by Thaddeus Trent and John Rochester after they graduated from Cambridge. They set up business in London, providing discreet financial services to specialist clients. In 1812, shortly before Mr Trent died at sea, the firm changed its name to Trent & Rochester & Associates. Rochester welcomed a new associate, Thomas Taylor, shortly after.

Since then, the firm has only ever had two partners. Currently, these are Timothy Thwaite and James Rochester (no relation).

Mr James Rochester (no relation): Wealthy aristocratic lawyer, partner in Trent & Rochester & Associates, skilled bureaumancer, recluse

Awesome (+4) at: Probate law, investment law

Skilled (+2) at: General law, bureaumancy, knowledge of Other London factions, wine, 

Bad (-2) at: sports, youth culture

Stress: O O

Rochester went to Harrow and studied at Cambridge. He spent ten years working in the City for a variety of investment bankers and law firms, where he was a promising high flyer. However, in an unexpected move, Rochester joined Trent & Rochester & Associates. Since joining the firm, he has become a recluse and no longer sees his family or old friends.

The inheritor

Seraphina Black is an art student studying at West College London. She has learned that her great-grandfather, Peregrine Black, was extremely wealthy and that his assets should have been hers – but instead, they are held by Trent & Rochester & Associates.

Unknown to Seraphina, Peregrine was one of the original members of the Golden Dawn. Peregrine was a Seer and predicted the rise of modern technology. His account includes detailed instructions for investing his wealth - for example, his last instruction was to invest in "Googol" in 2005.

Seraphina Black: Streetwise art student, I’m older than I look, I grew up in Tower Hamlets – of course I’m carrying a knife, I may have latent Seer powers inherited from my great-grandfather

Skilled (+2) at: Art, London street culture, surviving and scavenging, scrapping 

Bad (-2) at: Following rules, listening to my parents

Stress: O

Questions

• Who owns the accounts?
• How many accounts are there?
• Will they return? If so, when?
• Why do they need so much money?

Information, rumours and lies

• The firm only ever has two partners, and its “associates” are little more than fake identities for Trent and Rochester (unliving immortals who take different names over the centuries)
• Clients include vampire lords, angels, sleeping fae, or King Arthur
• Isambard Kingdom Brunel had an account with the firm
• The firm steals money from “dormant” bank accounts – there are no clients
• The firm is struggling with anti-laundering laws and needs computer specialists to help with modern accounts
• Some old accounts have been recently closed

Location: One Canada Square, Canary Wharf

Enemies: Modern banking laws, HMRC, The Order of the Gilded Reflection

Allies: The City of London, Lord Slyke, Lord Boston, The King of the Tangled Wood