Re-reading 20th-century science fiction

I’ve been in a retrospective mood lately, and I’ve revisited several old SF novels that have been sitting on my shelf. They’re there because I wanted to re-read them. And now that I have, how do they stack up? And will I keep them?

(I didn’t plan to read one novel from each decade, so that’s a happy coincidence. I even read them in chronological order – also a coincidence.)

Way Station by Clifford D Simak (1963)

Clifford D Simak is famous for his “pastoral SF” – gentle stories about decent people faced with alien mysteries. For me, Way Station is one of his finest.

Way Station is set in 1963 or so and concerns Enoch Wallace, a US Civil War veteran in charge of an alien “way station,” a stopover used by aliens travelling from one place to another. However, Wallace’s unusual longevity has attracted the attention of the US government…

In a modern-day story, attracting the government would be a bad thing – but in Simak’s world, the government merely watches. Wallace has done nothing wrong, so the government just watches. Except it turns out that they haven’t just watched Wallace; they’ve also dug up the mysterious grave (which contains an alien body), and that causes an interstellar crisis.

Anyway, the story also involves teleportation (Simak gets around the teleportation-is-murder problem by giving creatures a “soul”), alien maths that predicts nuclear war on Earth, “ghosts” that Enoch creates to keep himself company, an unruly neighbour who causes trouble, and Lucy with mysterious powers. It also ends on a deus ex machina, which is a shame.

I think there might be a freeform in there somewhere. I certainly like the idea of a game involving a way station, unsuspecting humans, and aliens. So I’m keeping it for now.

(I picked up this copy in a second-hand bookshop somewhere. I am sure I originally read the Methuen paperback with Chris Moore starships (which didn’t suit the story), but I guess I lost that. Instead I have this 1969 US edition with a baffling cover and “80p” scribbled in pencil on the inside cover.)

Who Goes Here? By Bob Shaw (1977)

Oh my, this hasn’t aged well. Bob Shaw was one of the great SF writers of the 70s and 80s, and is probably most famous for 1974’s Orbitsville, which won the British Science Fiction Award for best novel.

He was also a mainstay of the convention scene, with his hilarious SF talks (I managed to see him once at the Brighton Worldcon in 1987). Most of his short story collections contain at least one humorous story.

And Who Goes Here? is his humorous novel, which concerns Space Legion new recruit Warren Peace. Recruits to the Space Legion join the legion to forget – specifically, to have that part of their memories that they are trying to forget removed. And Warren Peace can’t remember anything.

Anyway, it has one good joke (Warren Peace), and I found the rest painful. Apparently there was a sequel in 1993, but I missed it.

My favourite Bob Shaw stories are Other Days, Other Eyes (about slow glass), A Wreath of Stars, and Orbitsville (before it became a trilogy). And I may find Orbitsville a disappointment when I re-read it.

As for Who Goes Here?, it’s destined for Oxfam.

For Love of Mother-Not by Alan Dean Foster (1983)

I was a huge Alan Dean Foster fan in my teens and twenties. I discovered Bloodhype at the school bookshop when I was 12 or so and immediately fell in love with the Humanx Commonwealth, ADF’s mostly-optimistic future.

I picked up this copy of For Love of Mother-Not on a school exchange trip to California – around then it was getting harder to get ADF’s novels in the UK, and I started relying on Forbidden Planet.

For Love of Mother-Not holds up surprisingly well despite struggling with the writing itself (it’s not a punchy, modern style of writing); I kept wanting to read on. I don’t remember my younger self being critical of the writing style, but I’m more alert to it now.

But the ideas in For Love of Mother-Not reminded me why I loved ADF’s Humanx Commonwealth so much. It’s an evocative universe, with colourful worlds, interesting characters, immense creatures and wondrous technology: the Devilope, mudders, skimmers, needlers, duralloy and much more (including mysterious ancient technologies that I just loved, although this novel doesn’t have any of that).

I noted a few uncomfortable topics that are (mostly) glossed over, such as mindwipe and eugenics. And Flinx, the hero, has a lethal pet that occasionally kills – but only in self-defence, so that’s okay. It’s certainly something my younger self didn’t notice.

However, re-reading For Love of Mother-Not has whetted my appetite for more Humanx stories. I’m keeping it for now.

Clarke County, Space by Allen Steele (1990)

The newest book in this (short) list, and only a few pages in, I can tell it’s an easier read. Clarke County, Space is written in a more modern style and is more to my liking.

Set in 2050-ish, Clarke County, Space is set in the first artificial space colony orbiting Earth. It’s the second book in Steele’s “Near Space” series (the others are Orbital Decay, Lunar Descent, Labyrinth of Night, and A King of Infinite Space), which is an optimistic future where we embraced space travel in the 1990s. (So a similar vibe to For All Mankind – without being an alternate history.)

Anyway, Clarke County, Space is a thriller, with a small-town cop, a mob assassin, a mysterious hacker, Elvis Presley’s reincarnation, and a nuclear warhead. Everything is eventually resolved, if a bit messily and with a high body count.

Inevitably, something set in the near future feels more dated than the other novels. There are videotapes, diskettes – and, of course, no internet.

I imagine the Near Space series will be good inspiration for Mongoose’s upcoming Pioneer game. But if you’re going to do that, I would start with Lunar Descent, which is my favourite of the series.

Am I keeping it? No, I don’t think so. While I found it arguably better written than the other books here, there’s not enough in it for me to keep it.

Tyrannical hobbies

Earlier in the year, Mrs H complained to me about her “tyrannical” hobbies. She likes gardening and has an allotment, but at certain times of the year (notably spring), the garden and allotment become very demanding. If you don’t stay on top of them, then the weeds run wild, and the seedlings wither and die.

At the moment, for me, it feels like freeform larps have become tyrannical and are squeezing out ttrpgs.

This is all self-inflicted, of course. But here we are.

So these are my tyrannical freeforms.

The Highgate Club

As I recently wrote, I ran The Highgate Club at Continuum. It went well, but it’s not a case of just printing out a freeform and running it. There were a few other steps:

• Printing the game and stuffing 14 character packets.
• Creating a casting questionnaire and then sending it to the players and waiting for them to complete it. And nagging those who didn’t.
• Casting the game.
• Populating individual player folders on Google Drive with their character information and then sending it to them so they can read their characters in advance. (I use the YAMM mailmerge programme, which is pretty nifty and lets me track whether everyone has seen the emails.)
• Dealing with player queries. (Fortunately, there weren’t any this time.)

Then I ran the game.

I could have left it there, but during the game I realised there were a few improvements I could make, so I did. (And I also decided to try ChatGPT as an editor, and it picked up dozens of inconsistencies. So that was useful, but obviously more work for me.)

I’ve now re-pdfed The Highgate Club, so at least that is out of my head.

The Deadly Library

The Deadly Library is a game I’ve been preparing for Freeform Games. It’s pretty close to being ready for publication, and we’re in playtesting (by our customers). So that means getting the files ready for playtesting – and then updating them as comments come in.

Megan and her friends playtested The Deadly Library a few days ago, which was great but meant going through much of the pre-game rigmarole described above. (Although I didn’t cast in advance, so there was that.)

Following the game, I had plenty of edits to make – and that meant informing the other playtesters as well.

Playtesting is due to finish at the end of September, so that’s going to drag on for a while.

(By the way, if you are interested in playtesting one of our games, we advertise playtesting opportunities in our newsletter.)

The Enigma Machines

The Enigma Machines is episode seven of my series of SF first-contact freeforms. I spent the first half of 2026 writing it, and now I’m running it online next week and then again at Consequences in November.

So for the online game, I don’t need to print and stuff envelopes; I have all the casting and populating folders to do. Plus I also have to promote it and get players to sign up. (I really hate that bit; it’s the main reason I’ve never tried to form a Leeds larp club or a local board games/ttrpg club.)

With the game a few days away, there are a few things I need to sort out:

• Send an email to the players reminding them of the game (it wouldn’t be the first time that players have forgotten about an online game…)
• Deal with any last-minute dropouts
• Redecorate my Discord server for the game
• Prepare my notes and make sure I’m ready

Plus, as ever, there will be amendments. And in September, I need to think about getting it ready for Consequences (which means repeating the steps I did for The Highgate Club).

Read about the series here.

Assassination in Space

Assassination in Space is a 24-player murder mystery for Freeform Games. It’s the next game I’m working on, and I’m slowly working through the characters and providing feedback to the author.

Once The Deadly Library is published, Assassination in Space will be my focus for Freeform Games.

Café Casablanca

Café Casablanca is a 75-player weekend freeform larp that I’m helping to GM. It was written about 35-40 years ago, and it shows. It was last run in 2014, and it needs a bit of TLC to get it into shape.

There are seven of us working on this, so it’s not all on my shoulders. That’s fortunate. Anyway, right now I am in charge of sorting out relationship abilities for every character.

We are running Café Casablanca in February 2027. As we approach that date, I expect it will demand more and more attention.

(Register here – there’s a good chance you’ll get a place.)

So what?

So all this freeform activity leaves me with less headspace to do some of the other things I want to do.

Such as…

• Write a Traveller scenario. I have ideas, but I need time to figure out the details. (I had hoped to run this at Furnace – but not this year.)
• Finish a partly-written Other London investigation.
• Finish updating my Good Society one-shot based on my notes from Continuum.
• Revisit Hillfolk.
• Run other ttrpgs – I have Urban Shadows burning a hole on my shelf, and Cold City/Hot War are expected to land soon. Plus I have other games I’d love to run.

But not until I put those tyrannical freeforms to bed.

Continuum 2026

 The last weekend of July saw Megan and me at Continuum for a weekend of gaming. Mostly freeforms, with some ttrpgs and a few board games. Plus seeing lots of old friends and talking nonsense all weekend. What’s not to love?

Playing Mycelia in the atrium

TL;DR: We had a great time!

Here’s what we did:

Friday

We arrived mid-afternoon and didn’t do much other than check in, chat to a few friends, and have a bite to eat.

Four Gods and a Funeral

Four Gods and a Funeral is an 18-player fantasy game written and run by Megan Jones. It is set in the world of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Five Gods books, which I’ve not read. Luckily, I didn’t need to know anything about the world as it was all contained in the game materials.

I played Sarlos, the 18-year-old heir to the Vardo empire – and my mother’s puppet. And not just my mother’s puppet – I had been kidnapped twice and used in other players’ machinations. So I was a fairly useless kid and pawn to the real powers.

I was also in love with a queen, and was trying to work out how to marry another character. (Unfortunately, that other character was played by Megan, which made that side of my game somewhat awkward and we just didn’t go there. That was a casting goof by Megan J, but wasn’t a huge problem.)

Anyway, the game was good – political and angsty. There was a whole side of the game (magic) that I didn’t know about and, amazingly, I think I was still the heir to Vardo at the end of the game. That’s probably because I was no real threat to anyone…

Game material reading order

One thing that I noticed when reading my character information was that my character made much more sense after I had read the game background material. It did make me wonder if we ought to spend a little more time thinking about the order in which players read their characters.

For me, most of my games have a “setting and cast list” document which I send to players with the casting questionnaire. That way the overall setting is the first thing they read, and that puts everything else in context.

(Hopefully they haven’t forgotten that when they receive their character – but I do always give them another copy of that initial document.)

Similarly for Freeform Games, the front cover of the character booklet has the same short boilerplate text roughly setting the scene and explaining the setting. Hopefully players read that first.

When a freeform character pack contains several documents, it's not always clear in which order to read them, and I find that can cause some confusion. Anyway, something for me to ruminate on. 

Saturday

After a hearty breakfast, we had nothing scheduled, so Megan went back to bed, and I played a few light board games. After a meal deal from the Co-Op, it was time for our first proper game.

Hades Plan

In Hades Plan (for 12 players and written/run by Ray Hodson and Simon Clark), we were Greek gods who were putting together the third series of a reality TV show that involved lots of puzzles. So while being bickering gods, we had to come up with ideas for a show. (Ray and Simon provided lots of props.)

I was Demeter, the ancient Greek goddess of agriculture, the harvest, and grain. (I’ve just looked that up; I know next to nothing about Greek gods.) We chose the gods pretty much at random, and ironically I ended up being one of Megan’s parents. (Megan was playing Persephone.)

The game was silly and energetic, but not really my cup of tea. It’s the kind of larp where the players bring the game (characters were two paragraphs long). That’s okay, but I have two issues with games like this:

First, they rely on the players having a common understanding of the game world. As already noted, I know next to nothing about Greek gods (or Norse gods or Roman gods for that matter). That’s less of an issue when nobody knows anything about Greek gods, but in this case we had a lot of players who knew a lot about them. So less fun for me.

Second, the games often work on the basis that whoever is loudest gets their way. And I’m not a shouty type.

So it wasn’t really my kind of game, but those for whom it was their kind of fun seemed to have a good time.

With that done, it was time for tea.

The Highgate Club

After tea, I ran The Highgate Club, a game I co-wrote at Peaky back in 2010. I ran it with Alan Paull, one of the authors, who brings the Continuum board games library.

The Highgate Club is a private member’s club filled with weird people – aliens, elves, immortals, zombies, Atlanteans, cyborgs – even an angel. It has lots of crazy plots, and while I expected it to take about two and a half hours, the players were still going strong at three hours in. 

It definitely needs two GMs, though. So I’ll update the guidance. (Along with a load of other tweaks – as always, I found lots of little things needed improving.)

Megan told me she enjoyed it, which was a relief as she influences which games I run at Continuum.

The Highgate Club before the players got their hands on it...

Sunday

We had another free morning on Sunday, so Megan and I played Mycelia and Sanctuary, a couple of weightier board games. We preferred the sprouting, fruiting and decaying mushroom fun of Mycelia over the zoo-building fun of Sanctuary.

Good Society

After lunch, I ran a tabletop session of Good Society while Megan played in a horde larp.

For Good Society, I had four players and used the pregenerated playset I talked about here, updated to use the second edition reputation consequences.

My four players were all blokes but had no problem playing female characters. One had run a swashbuckling game of Good Society the day before, and agreed that trying to create a coherent backstory at a convention takes a long time.

As is often the case with Good Society (and Hillfolk), the game took a few scenes to get running, but it didn’t take long before the players were busy creating drama and interfering with each other. Most of the time I just listened, occasionally suggesting scenes between characters or jumping in when I felt that a scene was over. (That last skill is important – players are often so caught up in their characters that they don’t spot the obvious end to a scene.)

I had been slightly hesitant to bring Good Society to Continuum, as it’s very different to many other ttrpgs (and Hillfolk was a bit of a struggle last year). But unlike last year, where I got the impression it was the last choice for at least one player, all my players were keen to play Good Society – and wanted to play it because it was so different from the other games on offer. And as a result, we had a great game.

(Good Society is like Fiasco and Hillfolk in that it is very dependent on the players. With the right group, these games are brilliant. But with more reserved players (or players who expect more direction from a GM), they can struggle.)

A few thoughts

So much going on: With four main characters and eight minor characters, I found it hard to keep on top of everything that was going on in the table. There were main arcs, yes, but there were also a lot of minor things happening that didn’t always get picked up later.

(I couldn’t now, for example, tell you much about what the story – and it’s only 48 hours later as I write this.)

I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but worth bearing in mind. I think I’d need to take a lot of notes were I playing a game over several sessions. (My recent online game of Good Society only had three players, which probably made it easier to hold in my head.)

Perhaps I need to figure out a way to take notes.

System doesn’t matter: Once again, I found that we didn’t use many resolve tokens. One or two, perhaps? The game flows brilliantly without needing the tokens, and for most of the game they sat on the table, ignored. (At least with Hillfolk, a drama token is at stake in each scene – even if they don’t really have much use either. Perhaps I should try mashing the two systems together?)

So that was Good Society. While I was doing that, Megan thoroughly enjoyed her larp. We had tea, another game of Mycelia (where Megan thrashed me), and then it was our final game.

Plan 8 from Outer Space

Plan 8 is an eight-player game written by Mike Young and run by Ezzy Pearson and Vikki Sterling. It’s an extremely silly game of aliens completing a post-mortem of their previous plans for dealing with Planet Earth, and preparing their 9th plan.

Broadly, the game consists of being in a ghastly business meeting (it even has a PowerPoint deck), trying NOT to take the blame for the previous plans, and then coming up with daft ideas for the next one.

It’s lots of chaotic fun, with a lot of laughter. It’s not a good game for wallflowers, though – be prepared to be loud and argue your corner.

I played the Head of Marketing, while Megan played the Head of Accounts. Her costume was so much better than mine, but that was true of most games. It was about two hours of frantic fun.

Head of Accounts

(The game takes its name from the legendarily bad movie, Plan 9 from Outer Space. I’ve not seen the movie, so I can’t say if it is in any way relatable.)

Locked in

We had one final bit of excitement on Sunday as the bathroom door handle broke and trapped Megan in the bathroom. Luckily, I was able to get help from reception, and it was sorted, but it could have been serious had I not been around. I don’t know how easy it would be to raise the alarm from inside the bathroom.

Monday

And after breakfast on Monday, we headed home.

Touched by Darkness: a megagame

In July, I travelled down to Patriot Games in Sheffield to play my second megagame, Touched by Darkness.

Touched by Darkness

Touched by Darkness is a megagame for up to 47 players designed by Ben Kanelos and run by Paddy Rose and three helpers. I think we had around 40 players, most of whom had never played a megagame before.

Here’s the pitch:

The Dark One's eclipse has blotted out the sun. Darkness has swallowed the Empire and is coming for your outpost next! You and your teammates must gather resources, perform arcane rituals, and attempt to survive. But beware! The shadows that attack your outpost are not the only threat. The Dark One may have corrupted the mind of a teammate, meaning you can no longer trust them. Can you hold this last bastion of humanity together and banish the Dark One?

Pennine Megagames run three games a year, usually one in Leeds, one in Sheffield and one in Manchester. I went to Fae’s Anatomy last year in Leeds (read about it here).

Logistics

I went with Megan, who hadn’t played a megagame before. We drove down to Meadowhall and took the train to Sheffield station, where we walked to Patriot Games (about a 10-minute walk). We got there just after Patriot Games opened, which gave us time to browse the store and have a cup of tea and cake in the café, before joining the other megagame players.

(Patriot Games is really lovely. Possibly the nicest games store I’ve been to – large, airy, with a café and plenty of tables for playing games.)

Luminarians - Temple of Light

Megan and I were playing Luminarians. Our faith was the primary religion of the Empire, and our clerics purged the Dark One during the last Eclipse.

The Luminarians had two subfactions – Mistfalls and the Temple of Light. Megan was a steward in Mistfalls, while I was the Chaplain (a healer) in the Temple of Light. As my boss failed to turn up, I promoted myself to Chief Physician.

We were the main healers in the game. Some other factions had some limited healing, but we could heal more people at once. (Or at least, we could once I had trained enough clerics. My first few turns involved training clerics.

Action time at our faction board - some players wore costumes.

Other factions

Other factions included the Stonegrip Clan (the source of ore), the Rosethorns (irritating druids), the Alchemists Guild (the only source of crystals, needed for the magic rituals to banish the Dark One).

Oh, and there were an unknown number of traitors, working for the Dark One to foil our rituals.

Turns and phases

Turns were roughly 30 minutes long. They started slightly longer, and as the game progressed and we knew what we were doing, they all got a little shorter. I’m not sure how many turns we had during the game overall, but we played from 11 am to about 4:30 pm with a short break for lunch.

Each turn was broken into four phases.

Action time

The longest phase, where everyone can move between locations, activate their boards, trade and negotiate with everyone else, and perform rituals to banish the dark. The council sits during action time, and a Shadow attack can happen during this phase (at which point those with military powers move to the battle board while everyone else returns to their table).

Faction time

A short few minutes at your faction table to discuss what happened during the previous phase and to plan for future phases. (Often a good time to take a comfort break.)

News

Megagames include heralds, players whose job it is to find out what’s going on and report that to everyone during news phases. At the end of the phase, Control awards bonuses to various factions based on the reported outcomes.

(I like this – it’s something that freeforms could probably learn from. Players often dislike being reporters – but reporters become more interesting when they have a mechanical effect on the game.)

Resolution

An upkeep phase. Reset your workers and make your morale check. And if morale slips too far, start making riot rolls.

Morale checks are modified by events such as Shadow attacks or damage to your boards, and more significantly if you fail to feed or water your people. (Trading water and food is a big part of Action time.)

And then it all goes around again.

Freeform actions

All that sounds like a gloriously complicated board game. What makes a megagame different are the freeform actions that people can take. Which are literally anything. In ours, the druids began to grow a sacred tree while the Stonegrip clan held a morale-boosting rock concert and the alchemists seceded from the Empire. We started creating paladin cavalry units to help defend against Shadow attacks.

How the game went

The game was busy. During the first few sessions, I built up my team of clerics. I started with one and a couple of workers, and could train a worker each turn. Then, after the first shadow attack (where we had a lot of casualties), I could help heal them.

Megan, meanwhile, was negotiating and trading madly to get us the food and crystals she needed. She would berate me when I was too generous with first aid, telling me to drive a harder bargain. (That really didn’t work. I’m not as ruthless as she is.)

As the game progressed, I had no problem keeping the Temple of Light’s morale up, but we were losing ground to the druids in the battle of the faith. We discovered they had converted almost everyone else, and we couldn’t convert anyone back.

We had a second shadow attack, which we fought off more successfully. Towards the end of the game, I had expected a third attack, which never materialised. (Control ran out of time – too many other things going on.) That was a shame, as I was poised to assist for a battle that never arrived.

Start of a shadow attack

But apart from waiting for a battle that never arrived, Megan and I had a great time. The day was busy, and we met loads of lovely people. Lots of people had clearly signed up in groups, or had started plotting and scheming beforehand. (We signed up about 10 days in advance, when I realised that the weekend was going to be free after all.)

I think I was probably the oldest player – I would guess most players were in the twenties or thirties.

Did we win?

Honestly, I don’t know how we did. As a faction, not so great. All of the other factions converted to the druidic faith (they were very convincing with their sacred tree – we should have countered with a burning bush, or something).

And I’m not entirely sure whether we beat off the dark. Not that it mattered – we had lots of fun trying, which was the main thing.

Overall

Anyway, Touched by Darkness was a lot of fun, and both Megan and I would play a megagame again.

Next time, I will try and think about potential freeform actions before the game. I know I’m unlikely to imagine them during the chaos, but perhaps I can think of something beforehand.

The next Pennine Megagame is Henry VI Part 1 in Manchester in October. I’m not sure if I can go yet.

Good Society: second editon

A second edition of Good Society, the ttrpg that lets you create Jane Austen-style stories, is coming to Kickstarter soon. You can read about it here, and if you follow their campaign, you can download the playtest packet and see some of the planned changes.

So that’s what I did, and this week we wrapped up our short but very satisfying two-cycle story. These are my thoughts.

First edition revisited

I’ve written about Good Society before on my blog. I played in a game a couple of years ago, and I’ve run one-shots at Furnace and AireCon, with a third one-shot (with the updated rules) planned for Continuum next week.

Much as I like Good Society, it’s not perfect, and I found a few issues with it:

Resolve tokens

Two problems with resolve tokens. The first is that there are too many. You can get resolve tokens from characters, rumours, reputation tags and more. It’s not long before the table is covered in resolve tokens. Worse, I find I often don't use them. Resolve tokens are used to “force” a character to do something they might not otherwise want to. But in so many cases, the players I play with quickly see the drama in whatever is presented and say “that’s a great idea,” and so spending the resolve token becomes unnecessary.

(I do wonder if that’s a structural problem with meta tokens like this. Resolve tokens work fine with players with a “my character wouldn’t do that” mentality – but I haven’t seen anyone like that in many, many years – if ever. Most players I see are happy to put problems in their character’s way – especially for a light game like Good Society.)

That means (for us at least) a surfeit of rarely-used resolve tokens.

Reputation

Reputation doesn’t do very much. Characters can gain a reputation, which has a mechanical effect (more resolve tokens), but is mostly just a roleplaying aid. But only if you pay attention, and in my experience, reputation isn’t something anyone pays much attention to. 

Fiddly character sheets with teeny font

I found this when I ran Good Society at Furnace (I mostly play online), but goodness, the character sheets are fiddly. They look nice, but each character consists of a basic character sheet, a family sheet, a desire card, and a relationship card. Oh, and two connections (more cards). And the font on the cards is tiny – my ageing eyes struggle to read it.

The table at Furnace. It's all a bit chaotic. And hard to read.

Part of the problem is the huge image – which is lovely, but condenses everything else. For AireCon, I completely rewrote the character sheets to be more legible. (And moved the image to a table tent.)

Second edition changes

So while the second edition preview does nothing about the character sheet (although it did introduce a very nice online Google sheet character keeper), it does change resolve tokens and reputation (and some other points).

Resolve tokens

While the rules for resolve tokens have not changed, there are fewer of them because they are no longer generated by reputation or rumours.

Reputation

The biggest change is reputation. There’s an alternative way to earn reputation tags, and during the reputation phase, they now trigger reputation consequences that might be good or bad. (These are great, more on them below.)

Rumour and scandal

Rumours now start as whispers, and the main change is that there’s a new action: overhearing a rumour. So you can roleplay hearing the rumour, which works well. You can also spend a resolve token to turn a rumour into “the talk of the ton,” which is a nice touch.

Epistolary phase and upkeep

These are tweaked slightly but didn’t affect our game much.

Play materials

Finally, the pack includes revised characters, family backgrounds and a playset.

Our game

Our game ran for five two-hour sessions. One session zero, followed by four sessions of play. We completed two full cycles, and we were in our third when we reached a satisfying conclusion.

We had three players: me, Thomas and Terry. I facilitated the game and played a major character. We played online, using Discord and the new Good Society character keeper.

I didn’t use the included playset because it’s the one we played last time, so I chose Family Matters from the rulebook. That was slightly awkward as Family Matters uses the Heir (not part of the 2ed pack), and so I replaced the Heir with the Hedonist from the second edition preview.

We spent a full session on session zero, and we needed that to get the characters and background sorted properly. (I reflected after Furnace that creating a coherent backstory in under 30 minutes is a challenge; I’m not going to try that again!) Even then, we ended up revisiting part of the background later on.

Family matters

The heart of our story was a feud between the Bainses and the Hardwicks.

Terry played Captain James Baines (Careerist, New Money).

Thomas played Solomon Bains (Dependent, New Money), the disinherited son (and previous friend of Eleanor).

I played Eleanor Hardwick (Hedonist/Heir, Old Money), who wanted to bring the families together.

Our minor characters included:

• Arthur Bains (played by me), stern father of James and Solomon
• Marley Jones (played by Thomas), James’ assistant
• Horatio Flinders, Lord Mountwick (played by Terry), Solomon’s benefactor
• Henrietta Bourbon (played by me), Solomon’s friend
• Lizzie Hardwick (played by Terry), Eleanor’s younger sister
• Miss Charlotte Collins (played by Thomas), Eleanor’s friend

Our story

Over our three cycles of play, our story involved Solomon and Eleanor repairing their relationship (after the slight that Eleanor caused), James and Eleanor getting engaged (yikes – she’s engaged to the wrong brother!), Solomon impressing his father and regaining his inheritance, and, finally, James breaking off his engagement to Eleanor (at his father's behest), leaving Solomon to propose to Eleanor.

Along the way, minor characters Lizzie and Marley threatened to steal the show by courting and becoming talk of the ton. 

It was delightful to play, and it felt like a proper Jane Austen-style story with setbacks, complications, and a happy ending. Towards the end, I was aware that I was thinking “And now we need a scene with these characters…,” as if I was an author, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

The new rules and mechanics

Resolve tokens

Even with fewer resolve tokens, we rarely spent them.  Maybe two or three a session? Most often we used them to seal a decision already made. I think that’s fine, and it’s useful to have them in the rules as a fallback – as long as you’re not expecting them to be a big deal.

Reputation

We used the new “reputation by fashion” rules, which sound great in theory but were a bit odd in practice. These work by selecting two reputation tags which represent the current fashion in the ton. The playset includes a table of sixty tags (eg plain or rigid), from which we randomly chose. This meant some headscratching to work out which character best embodied them. Maybe choosing tags shouldn’t be random.

On the other hand, the reputation consequences were great, adding drama to our story. For example, at one point I decided that Eleanor’s father had cut off her allowance, forcing her hand. (I found the consequences that cause your character trouble are more interesting than the others.)

We found that as we approached the game’s climax, we didn’t want to trigger new consequences because they didn’t support the flow of the story. (We had four reputation phases, but only triggered consequences once each, early in the game.)

I don’t think that matters (triggering consequences is always optional), and I wonder if that’s a common experience – focusing on the story rather than the rules as the story approaches its climax. (We did the same with one epistolatory phase as well, when we realised we didn’t have any letters to write.)

I guess if the trajectory hadn’t been so obvious, or had we wanted more complications, we could have triggered more consequences to see what would happen. But it felt unnecessary.

Rumour and scandal

The new rules worked well, particularly having a character overhear a rumour.

My thoughts

So that was Good Society second edition. The new rules are an improvement, especially reputation consequences. I’m not sure how much I would want to play a longer game of Good Society – the game we played felt just about right. 

So, am I going to get the second edition? I am torn between wanting to support the publishers, but not wanting more stuff that I don't actually want (like a book that is 80% the same as I already have, or the alternate settings in Good Society's second volume, which don't interest me much and no doubt will be part of the new set).

And while I would like to play more Good Society, it’s not the only thing I want to play.

So we’ll see. I suspect I'll end up backing it, but probably only at the pdf level.

Adventure 14: Travel Hazards

Travel Hazards is Mongoose’s first LBB (little black book) adventure for Traveller. It was published in 2026 (41 years after Adventure 13!) and is written by Thomas Jones-Low, Matthew Kerwin, James Kundert and Robert Eaglestone.

Physically, Travel Hazards is almost identical to the original LBB adventures. The cover is a little thinner and the paper a little shinier, but that’s about it.

This is my first-impressions review of Travel Hazards; I haven’t run or played it.  And spoilers ahead.

Location and overview

Travel Hazards focuses on Double Sun in the Lemish subsector of Corridor. Double Sun is in a neutral stretch of space known as the Corridor Marchland, established by treaty centuries ago following border skirmishes between the Imperium and the Irrgh Manifest. Corsairs from the Irrgh Manifest and their hated rivals, the Glory of Taarskoerzn, patrol the Marchland to counter each other’s operations.

It took me a good while to figure that out. The library data is towards the back of the booklet, and the map doesn’t show the Glory of Taarskoerzn at all. But thanks to the wonderful Traveller Map, I figured it out. I’m not sure why Travel Hazards doesn’t introduce the situation with a big-picture overview, but perhaps it’s targeted at Traveller-grognards, rather than casual players like myself.

Overview

Broadly, Travel Hazards presents an unusual star system for Traveller, complete with a system map, organisations and NPCs. And to draw the PCs (I note they are not called “Travellers” in the adventure, except on the back cover) in, it offers five patrons to hire the players to help them explore Double Sun.

So let’s explore the Double Sun system.

Double system

As the name suggests, Double Sun is a binary star system – a smaller red dwarf orbiting a larger one. The primary star is unstable, not helped by a heavy ball of iron and nickel orbiting extremely closely, enough to interact with the primary and throw dust and flares into the rest of the system. Further out, the companion red dwarf emits bursts of radiation and plasma, and farther still, the turbulent gas giant makes skimming for fuel a challenge.

All this messes with ship sensors, meaning there’s an effective top speed for piloting craft around the system. And although it isn’t defined in terms of the damage a ship might take, there is a table of hazard events. I would have liked full rules for travelling through the system, which would let the players take calculated risks on how fast they travel.

And with that restricted top speed, if you’re travelling more than 2AU, it’s quicker to jump. However, that assumes that you’re outside the various jump shadows…

The system information is presented in Book 6 Scouts format, but is still easy to read if you lack that book. (I didn’t need it.) Unfortunately, the system diagram is confusing, as it shows the companion much farther out than it actually is – and it doesn’t show the jump shadows, which would have been useful given the need to jump around the system.

So it’s an interesting system, which is lovely to see, but slightly let down by the lack of rules for travelling around it and the wonky map.

Anyway, all this means that Double Sun has been classified as a Red Zone due to “Travel hazards.” Quite.

Inhabitants

Double Sun has around 100,000 inhabitants in several groups.

Spiderweb

Spiderweb is an inhabited 550-km-diameter asteroid with 90,000 xenophobic inhabitants. It is the result of two separate mining operations, the first of which (Web Mining LIC) arrived in Double Sun 100 years ago. 90,000 people is a lot – it’s the population of a medium-sized UK town like Hastings or Burnley. Not everyone is a miner; others include families and support teams. The miners extract metals, gems and crystals, which they then barter.

It’s not clear, however, what they live on. The description of the buildings mentions lots of balconies laden with plants. That doesn’t sound quite enough, so maybe there are underground farms somewhere. NPCs for Spiderweb include the dockmaster and a magistrate.

Unfortunately, Spiderweb is on the verge of collapse – equipment is falling apart, and they are getting desperate.

The Icy Manipulator: The Icy Manipulator is Spiderweb’s only ship, a 1,000 dton patched-together cargo hauler with a cargo net capable of moving up to 3,000 dtons of cargo. It’s falling apart, and something critical goes wrong every six weeks or so (throw 10+ every week). It’s frankly a miracle it’s still flying at all. NPCs include the crew, one of whom is a robot.

Vargrholm

Newcomers to Double Sun, Vargrholm is a twelve-year-old mining settlement run by Ungareen VC, with 5000 miners and support staff. NPCs include the mostly-Vargr representatives and admin staff. Vargrholm trades with Spiderweb via the Icy Manipulator.

Unfortunately for Vargrholm, they must pay protection money to Iron Paw. Speaking of which…

Iron Paw

Iron Paw are a group of Vargr corsairs loyal to the Irggh Manifest. It’s not clear how long they have been based in Double System, but their secret base is hidden in a comet, which is fun. Iron Paw are led by the memorable Grand Admiral Beo, a large male Ursa. 

Others

There are a few other small groups dotted around, most of them being malcontents from Spiderweb.

Visitors

Other than the PCs, visitors to Double Sun might include the IISS, archaeologists, and Vargr naval forces. 

Patrons

Travel Hazards details five different patrons, five ways the PCs might end up in the Double Sun system. Job offers include crewing a supply ship, solving a family mystery, and more. The patrons are a bit of a mixed bunch, but there’s plenty in Double Sun itself to keep the PCs busy.

References

The rest of the book is filled with reference material:

• Library data: Two pages of library data, including a useful description of Lagrange points.
• Ships: Six new starships (in addition to the Icy Manipulator) as well as new ship components such as jump nets (well, new to Book 3, they’re not new to Traveller itself).
• Worlds: A non-standard subsector map.
• Contact Ursa: Genetically uplifted bears. New to me, but I believe they have been in the background for many years.
• Generating Characters from Double Sun: A page on creating characters from Double Sun.

What I liked

I found plenty to enjoy in Travel Hazards.

The Double Sun system: It’s lovely seeing an interesting and dynamic star system full of flavour. Whenever I watch Brian Cox talk about the wonders of the solar system and beyond, it’s immediately obvious that the universe is much stranger than it often appears in Traveller, and it’s nice to see that reflected in Travel Hazards.

The Icy Manipulator: I like that it has much more character than most Traveller ships.

Conflict and drama: The system is full of potential drama, from the failing colony to the rickety ice hauler to the secret pirate base extorting protection money from the miners. Plus, of course, the sheer danger just in visiting Double Sun.

Campaign material: And if you don’t fancy running Travel Hazards as written, it contains loads of material that can be used elsewhere: the Ursa, a cool pirate base, a failing mining colony, and more.

Things that made me go hmmmm…

But a few things struck me as I read Travel Hazards.

The Icy Manipulator: While I like the idea of a heavily patched ship held together with spit and sealing wax, I do wonder where it gets its fuel. It isn’t streamlined, so it can’t skim fuel from Double Sun’s lone gas giant (which is notoriously turbulent – I wouldn’t want to take a rustbucket like the Icy Manipulator anywhere near it even if it were streamlined). So, presumably, the Icy Manipulator uses a fuel processor to extract liquid hydrogen from ice, even though the book makes no mention of it. Let’s hope the processor doesn’t break.

Ursa: I found the Ursa slightly underwhelming. Despite weighing 150 to 500 kg, they get a mighty +2 to their STR roll. They’re also shown standing on their hind legs (the portrait of Grand Admiral Beo suggests an upright position) – which feels wrong and a bit too human-y. (Plus, “…but they can usually squeeze into human vehicles and ships with minimal modifications.” I think that depends on the size of the bear!)

And as for personality, they are as varied as humans – just wary of Humaniti.

I would have made Ursa less human: much stronger, quadruped, and with some interestingly bear-ish personality traits to roleplay. (Curious? Quick-tempered? Clumsy, in a bull-in-a-china-shop way?) And “minimal modifications” be damned; if you have a bear crewing your ship, you’d know about it!

AI illustration of a bear crewmember aboard a ship.
I asked for it to wear a harness with tools, but instead it looks
like it’s into bondage!

Spiderweb: Described on page 20 as a “fully functioning colony”, the whole Spiderweb situation snaps my reality suspenders. It just doesn’t make sense to me. 90,000 xenophobes hiding in a rock, with virtually no outside contact. I mean, what are they doing about a sewerage system? Or an air supply? Or their clothes, or any of the thousands of things that a viable colony needs? And why is there only one airlock to the whole place? 

I would make Spiderweb less xenophobic and have them trade (via the Icy Manipulator) with both Vargrholm and systems beyond to get what they need. (The minerals are valuable enough for the original mining companies to ship so many miners to Double Sun, and I can imagine regular trade with Spiderweb.) I’d still have Spiderweb failing – there might be an adventure there, with the miners seeking help to negotiate support from the Imperium, Irrgh Manifest, or elsewhere.

Mining operations: Although many inhabitants of Double Sun are miners, there’s no actual description of how asteroid mining works. Presumably, Spiderweb and Vargrholm do it differently, but you wouldn’t know.

The biggest problem

The main problem I have with Travel Hazards is its confusing structure.

What we get

Travel Hazards is structured so that first we meet four NPCs, and then five different job offers (sometimes from those NPCs, sometimes not – and presented in a different order to the NPCs).

Then, in “The Double Sun System,” we get a description of the system and its groups, followed by a series of events or options (“The Course of the Adventure”) for each part/group in the system.

After that, in “Concluding the Adventure,” are the outcomes for the various patrons – although not in the order the patrons are presented, nor referring back to how they were originally presented. (For example, “The Corporate Historian” is the third patron, yet this chapter starts with that patron’s outcome in a section titled “Wandering Eye”.

This chapter also describes hidden stuff the PCs might encounter. They might be encountered as part of any patron, so they really ought to be in the overall description of the system.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I just have a different brain than most roleplayers, but I found it extremely confusing to read. I’d hit a section and wonder who it was relating to, so I would have to flip back and forth to try and puzzle it out.

What I wanted

Instead, it would have been much clearer if the book had a simpler structure:

• Introduction (with a clear one-paragraph summary of the overall political situation, and maybe a high-level map of the area)
• The Double Sun System (with the description and events grouped – so the description of Spiderweb is immediately followed by its events)
• Patrons (with everything for that patron in one place)
• Reference material (the Library Data, subsector map, new ships, details on the Ursa and so on)

I suspect that would make the adventure flow more easily and be much easier to run at the table.

Bonus: Close Orbit Interceptor

As a nice bonus for ordering directly from Mongoose, they included a four-page booklet describing the Korpen Aerospace/Close Orbit Interceptor. I can’t imagine ever using it, but it was a lovely treat to find in the envelope.

Overall

So that’s Adventure 14: Travel Hazards. It’s nice enough, but it doesn’t compel me to run as written. Perhaps if the situations/patrons were more tightly written, I could get into it. So instead, I’m more likely to mine it for parts.

But I’m delighted that it exists – I think it’s wonderful that Mongoose is supporting Classic Traveller. I prefer the LBB format over the modern coffee-table books (although I appreciate that the latter keeps Mongoose in business), and I look forward to Adventure 15 whenever it arrives.

Toxic fandom

In this week’s Geekerati newsletter, Christian Lindke looks at The Eye of Argon and toxic fans in fandom.

This is a slightly depressing read, and it argues that toxic fandom is just fandom - and mainstream fandom has always been toxic.

The article made me think about my reviews of ttrpgs, which are often critical (in the negative sense). But toxic?

While I often find problems in games, I’d really rather not find them. Yes, picking them apart can be fun, but it stems from frustration: I want those gamebooks to be better.

I’m also aware that gamebooks are very personal things – what works for me may not work for everyone. (But I rarely find anyone disagreeing with me.)

I don’t think my negative reviews are toxic, but I can imagine slightly awkward conversations should I ever encounter those authors in person.

A positive review

In case you thought I only wrote negative reviews, here’s my review of a game that I couldn’t find anything to complain about: Lady Blackbird.