The Dee Sanction #3: The plot thickens

This is part three of my campaign write-up for The Dee Sanction. Jon is playing Margaret Chatwyn, temple clerk, and Terry is playing gardener Samuel Hodgeson. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

Session #8: Lady Viola and the blood crabs

This was a big session. The players burned through a lot of clues and affected the bad guys’ plans in ways I needed to think about.

We started at the Wessex estate, where the PCs met Mrs Brisket and Nurse Staunton (Viola’s nurse from before she was married). Nurse Staunton told them about Viola sneaking off to act, disguised as ‘Victor Smith.’ However, Viola changed after visiting her Suffolk cousins at the end of September. (Viola never went to Suffolk, but the PCs never learned this.)

The Wessex estate

However, before they can meet Viola, the PCs must get past the fearsome Miss Kent.

Miss Kent entered the kitchens with a jug of water, eyeing the PCs suspiciously. Margaret dulled Miss Kent’s senses using magic and brought her into the scullery to examine her for fen fever.

With Miss Kent distracted, Mrs Brisket and Nurse Staunton took Samuel to see Viola. They found her torso heavily bandaged, beneath which were hideous occult scars and horrible blood mite-leech things.

Downstairs, Miss Kent realised something was up, and she and Margaret scuffled. Miss Kent blistered Margaret’s arm and escaped the scullery, locking the door behind her. Margaret tried to magic an escape by corroding the lock, but her magic misfired (Jon rolled a 1) and she instead summoned demonic flies that angrily buzzed about her.

Upstairs, Samuel used a candle to remove the horrible creatures and captured them in a jar. Miss Kent burst into Viola’s bed-chamber, saw what was going on, and fled. Samuel partially blinded her (clouding her eyes) and tackled her on the stairs.  The PCs bound Miss Kent, but she refused to talk. To make her compliant, Samuel tainted her blood—but misjudged his spell and Miss Kent became critically ill with blood poisoning.

Samuel and Margaret were now suspicious of Lord Wessex, who was preparing for a royal visit at Kenilworth. Was Queen Elizabeth in danger?

Samuel and Margaret brought Miss Kent and the creatures back to their base, where Philip (an NPC) had learned that the Golden Rose was often seen at a haberdashery warehouse owned by William Gynn.

And there we left it.

Following that, I had decisions to make:

• With Viola freed of the blood creatures, the School of Night presumably knows something has gone wrong. How do they react?
• If Abaddon, the blood crabs’ monstrous mother, knows what happened, how does it react?
• How will Dee and Walsingham react to anything the players tell them?

Session #9: The creature in the basement

Due to fatigue on my part, this was a short session. The PCs sent a full report of the events at Egham to Dee (via the sulphurous Master Garland), along with Miss Kent and a blood crab.

That left me with a problem, as I didn’t want Dee to solve everything for the players. The PCs were the stars, so I presented Dee as offhand, erratic, and busy with affairs of state. But the PCs have demonstrated a threat to the queen, so I needed to react.

While they waited for a response from Dee, the players visited William Gynn’s haberdashery warehouse at night. There they found a basement containing bodies, occult symbols, and signs that something had been recently moved. They learned that the warehouse was rented by Francis Reed and tried to track him down.

Tell me what goes wrong? At one point, Margaret used her magic to corrode the lock of Francis Reed’s house—and failed. So I asked Jon what he thought might go wrong, and he suggested that the wooden door catch fire. And as it has been raining, it had to be magical fire, so we made it blue. That’s much more interesting than just having the spell fail—and I found that the players were always very creative in what can cause them problems. (I also talk about this approach here.)

You’re on the right track: I try not to let failed die rolls derail an investigation. For example, Terry asked if there was any paperwork in the basement. Unfortunately, he failed his roll (and was out of Fortune points), so he found nothing in the basement. But as the office would be a better place to search, I encouraged them to search the rest of the warehouse. (I’ve touched on this before.)

House rule #2: As this is a long, multi-session adventure, I ruled that Fortune points recharge every other session rather than at the end of the adventure.

Planning for Session #10: I needed to get the PCs to Kenilworth, as that’s where the action now is. Here’s how I’m going to this:

• One of the clues they have yet to find is a wagon carrying a long wooden box bound in chains that left the warehouse five days ago. This tells them that whatever was in the warehouse is on the move. (I couldn’t work out when to work it into the story given they were sneaking around at night—I’ve hinted that they might want to visit the warehouse during the day.)
• Dee will ask them to go to Kenilworth and check that things are okay for the queen’s visit. I will let the players come up with a story they can use, but Dee and Walsingham can provide official details, a letter of introduction, or whatever the players decide they need. Dee will also provide hints to the nature of the monster.

House rule #3: I’ve quietly dropped the Black Seal Amulets (page 31) that allow the Agents to communicate directly with Dee and each other. They’re too modern for me, and advice shouldn’t be only a phone call away.

Session #10: William Gynn’s haberdashery warehouse

These are the events I prepared for this session, with my comments (in italics).

• Captain Tallow is found dead, his throat slit. (One of the NPCs reported this news. ‘Covering their tracks,’ one of the players commented. Indeed.)
• Dee instructs the PCs to go to Kenilworth to see if there is a problem. Walsingham will provide a letter of introduction. (The players had realised that they needed to go to Kenilworth. To give them the authority they needed, they went as Queen Elizabeth’s advance security, checking for Catholic dissidents.)
• Mysterious attackers (the School of Night) attack the chapel while the PCs are out and steal anything there. (I didn’t use this as Jon and Terry have been moving quickly. I would have used this to add pressure were they dawdling.)
• Marlowe visits Viola to work out what has gone wrong with the puppet. Viola refuses to see him, and he is barred by the staff. Viola and her loyal staff then decamp to her cousins in Suffolk to get away from Wessex. (This happened in the background, following the events of Session #8. The players didn’t learn of it as they have shown no more interest in Viola.)

And secrets and clues for the players to find:

• A wagon with a long wooden box bound in chains left the warehouse four days ago—by boat upstream and then overland to Kenilworth. (The PCs failed to learn this, through a series of unlucky rolls. However, they worked it out based on what they knew.)
• Francis Reed is an associate of Christopher Marlowe. (Revealed at Reed’s lodging house.)
• Blood crabs react badly to focussed sunlight—use a glass. (Dee provided this information when instructing the PCs to go to Kenilworth.)
• In De Principibus et Regibus Daemoniorium there is mention of a demon with blood-sucking children. The demon’s name is Abaddon. (Dee also provided this.)
• Viola was never at her cousin's. (This clue has rolled over for a few sessions now. The focus moved away from Viola, and the clue was never revealed.)
• A rich lady, accompanied by her maid, visited the warehouse in early October. The witness didn’t see them leave. (The PCs didn’t discover this. This is how Viola was infected with the blood crabs. The maid is Miss Kent.)

During session #10, the Agents revisited the warehouse and Francis Reed’s lodgings. Thanks to terrible rolls, they struggled to find clues. We ended the session with Dee’s instruction to go to Kenilworth.

London to Kenilworth is about 100 miles. Given the poor state of Tudor roads (although they can take a boat to Oxford), we worked out that it would take a couple of weeks to transport a heavy load from London to Kenilworth. However, given that the box only left a few days ago, the PCs should be able to beat it to Kenilworth if they ride fast.

So that’s where we will start next week’s session: Kenilworth.

Next time

So what will our heroes do at Kenilworth? Or will they derail all my preparation and do something different? Find out next time when we conclude our campaign.

Now that we’ve finished, I’ve written up the adventure (Abaddon’s Puppet) and posted it on my Itch.io page.

And here are Tales of Terror suitable for The Dee Sanction.

The Dee Sanction #2: Putting it into practice

Last time I talked about the things I do as a GM at the end of sessions and then between them, including making lists for the following session.

Our Agents are clerk Margaret Chatywn and gardener Samuel Hodgeson (played by Jon and Terry respectively). We’re playing The Dee Sanction online for no longer than two hours using a Trello board as our tabletop.

These are my lists for Session #5, with explanatory commentary in italics.

Part of our Trello board

Events

• Gilbert asks for help—he needs bodies to keep the blood goblin fed. Wants to move into better accommodation, wants help disposing of bodies. Proposes a deal. [Gilbert is from the previous adventure, Ex Libris. I changed the scenario so he could be an ongoing NPC. In the end, he didn’t reappear.]
• Gossip about the bodies washed up on the banks of the Thames. [These are the victims of the currently undefined monster/creature/thing. The bodies appear in session #7.]
• Bodies are being stolen. [Probably stolen by the School of Night and fed to the monster/creature/thing.]
• Report about the fight and the blue eyes [This is a link to Window of the Soul, another published adventure. I didn’t use this event we focussed on Marlowe.]

In the end I didn’t use any of the events, so they will carry over to the next session.

Secrets and Clues

• Children have been going missing
• Marlowe is a government spy
• Marlowe is a Spanish spy
• Bodies have all had their brains scooped out
• Bodies were found when a ship, the Golden Rose, foundered

I used the two about Marlowe but didn’t have a convenient opportunity to bring in the missing bodies so they will carry over. (It’s possible I will never use them—so much depends on what happens at the table. But I have them if I need them.)

NPCs and places

• Theatre – rowdy, bawdy, popular
• Run-down theatre – haunted
• Marlowe’s house – unoccupied
• Theatre pub Rat and Ferret – back street room, cockfights, prostitutes
• Sam Gosse – an actor
• Victor Smith (Viola de Lessops) – in disguise as a young boy actor
• Ralph Bashford – theatrical entrepreneur
• Sam Gosse – an actor
• The de Lessops house – rich merchant

Session #5: Marlowe’s play

We started this by talking about Marlowe, and Wikipedia told me his first play was Dido, Queen of Carthage, first performed in 1585-1587 (which was about the right time). It was performed by the Children of the Chapel (who hadn’t performed at court since 1584, for delightfully vague reasons).

The PCs learned that the Children of the Chapel favour the Rat and Ferret for their after-show refreshments. At the Rat and Ferret, the PCs asked about Marlowe and were directed to Victor (who Marlowe spent time with) and Ralph Bashford, impresario at the Rose theatre.

At the Rose, the Agents found Ralph and learnt that Victor (who has not been seen recently) worked at Lord Wessex’s residence and looked sickly when last seen. (As we played, I realised that Victor/Viola could be under the influence of whatever nastiness was at the centre of the mystery (whatever that is), and so I played it that way. The players worried about vampires as soon as they heard that Victor was sick.

We left it with the players planning to find more about Victor and Lord Wessex.

Session #6: Lord Wessex’s estate

Between sessions, I had that idea that the monster/creature/thing creates doppelgangers and the School’s ultimate aim is to clone Queen Elizabeth. (This isn’t where I ended up, but I mention it here to show that my ideas were changing as we played.)

My preparation for #6 was all about Victor (secretly Viola de Lessops). Where has she been? What has she become? Who else knows?

However, the players headed off in a different direction…

First Margaret went to the palace to find Margaret’s good friend Katheryne Lappage, maid of the queen’s chamber, to learn about Lord Wessex. Katherine told the PCs that Lord Wessex isn’t in favour with the queen as he nearly went bankrupt and married a rich merchant’s daughter (Viola) for the dowry. (Stolen shamelessly from Shakespeare in Love.)

Then the Agents went to Egham and Lord Wessex’s home, where they made friends with under-steward Martin Allington in the Queen’s Arms. Using witchcraft to make poor Martin ill (Samuel tainted Martin’s beer using magic), the PCs took him back to the house and ingratiated themselves with Mrs Brisket, the housekeeper. Mrs Brisket told the PCs that Viola hasn’t been herself recently, which worried them as they were still thinking about vampires.

I realised that my story about Viola was becoming muddled, and I needed to get it straight for the next session.

Viola’s backstory

Before session #7, I worked out Viola’s backstory and the overall plot.

Here’s what Jon and Terry said they wanted to explore:

• Research Blood Goblins. (They were concerned that Gilbert’s blood goblin had caused Viola’s illness. It hasn’t, but they don’t know that yet.)
• Ask Dee for the Book of Dead Names. (I have kept Dee at arm’s length, so the players are working on their own, but the book won’t hurt.)
• Samuel to research herbal medicine to help lady Viola. (They convinced Mrs Brisket they know herbal medicine and to let them look at Viola, when Lord Wessex is out of the house in three days.)
• Discover what Marlowe is doing or set someone to watch his movements. (Marlowe has gone to ground, so they will struggle with this.)
• Return after three days to Wessex’s estate and behest of Mrs Brisket to attend to sickly Lady Viola. 

Session #7: Bodies in the water

This session, I introduced the bodies of the monster’s victims, thrown overboard from the Golden Rose when it foundered and caught up in one of the water wheels on London bridge. I changed my mind about having their brains scooped out—the bodies are withered and shrivelled instead. 

This session involved them following that up. They found the Golden Rose but not its captain. The PCs also researched blood goblins (which I took from the rulebook), leaving them with more questions than answers.

House rule #1: I introduced a house rule to The Dee Sanction (agreed with Jon and Terry first). Any roll of 6+ is an extraordinary success. While 3-5 is successful, 6+ is a great success. And conversely, a roll of 1 is a bad failure indeed.

Before I ran The Dee Sanction, I had thought the PCs were relatively low-powered; ‘ordinary people with tainted history’ as the book says. However, most of the time, they are extremely competent. With a d6 in each resource (attribute), a ‘standard’ PC succeeds on a typical challenge 66% of the time.

Next time

Next time Margaret and Samuel visit the Wessex estate and meet Lady Viola.

Download Abaddon’s Puppet (the adventure that this campaign eventually became) on Itch.io.

And here I've chosen a few appropriate Tales of Terror.

The Dee Sanction #1, Between Session Moves

I’m currently running a mini-campaign of The Dee Sanction. I started with Lost in Translation (from the rulebook) and Ex Libris and followed that with a longer investigation of my own invention.

My well-thumbed copy

This is how I ran the game, including my thoughts on preparation and reflections on how each session went.

I had two players, Terry (playing gardener Samuel Hodgeson) and Jon (playing temple clerk Margaret Chatwyn). We played for about two hours a week using Facebook Messenger for chat and a Trello board as a virtual tabletop. We roll dice physically.

A base of operations

The Dee Sanction doesn’t provide any details about the organisation that the players work for, so we made that up.

We decided that the PCs’ friends and family believed that the PCs had been executed for witchcraft. That’s what the record shows—and the PCs are now full-time agents of Dee, living in a secure location in London.

The players chose the crypt of The Chapel of St Thomas on London Bridge to be their base of operations. The chapel was repossessed during the Reformation and while it is still used for services, the crypt is now Dee Sanction property. At low tide it has access to the river.

A vague plan

My original plan was to play through the published scenarios and maybe tie in something about the Spanish Armada in 1588 as a big finale, taking 12-13 sessions.

I also had an idea about some monstrosity under London with an appetite for sacrifices. (I was inspired by Scarlet Traces by Edginton and D’Israeli, with a horror that provides something good but at an awful cost.)

I had no idea if or how the two would link up; I was sure that something would come along and make it work.

Episodes #1 to #4

Session Zero and Lost in Translation took up the first two episodes. During episode #3 we explored the PC’s base of operations on London bridge and started Ex Libris.

At the end Ex Libris (in episode #4), the PCs encountered Kit Marlowe and the School of Night. When they reported back,  Dee instructed the Agents to learn more about the School of Night.

And that put things in motion.

End of session moves

When I run a campaign, I use end-of-session moves (as PbtA might put it) to prepare for the next session:

• I ask the players what they are planning for the next session: what are they interested in following up? Who do they want to talk to? Where do they want to go?
• I also now use Stars and Wishes to celebrate the good bits and influence the game’s direction.

At the end of session #4 my players said they planned to check the theatres (and the taverns where theatre-folk hang out) to see if they could track Marlowe down.

Between session moves

Between sessions, I think about what may happen, and make lists.

• Events: Events that may happen during the session—such as things the bad guys may do or the ticking of a countdown clock.
• Clues: Stuff the PCs may learn. I don’t decide where or how the PCs will find the clues, just draw from the clues when needed.
• NPCs and places: Ideas for NPCs that the players may encounter and places they may want to visit.

I create these as checklists within a card on another Trello board. I include previous list items if they are still relevant.

Even though I’ve gone through this exercise, my players will probably veer off in a different direction. But by prepping something, I have something to fall back on.

(I believe Michael Shea does something similar in The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, but I’ve yet to read that.)

Next time

Next time I will talk about how that worked in practice for Session #5.

Ask questions first, roll dice later

We roll the dice a lot when playing RPGs, but we don’t always roll them well.

I find there are two kinds of rolls: those where the rules cover exactly what you’re trying to do (most often in combat), and all the other times.

Some recent examples from a recent game of The Dee Sanction:

• Recapturing a fleeing prisoner.
• Persuading suspicious guards to trust you.
• Magically setting fire to a wet door.
• Trying to stop a maid from running down the stairs.

The sheer number of options available to players (what S John Ross calls tacticalinfinity) means that the rules can’t cover everything. Yes, it’s usually easy to identify the correct attribute or skill to apply to the roll, but you still need your judgement to evaluate the results.

What does success look like? What about failure?

I used to roll the dice and then try and interpret the results. Often that worked (usually when the result was a clear success or failure); sometimes it didn’t.

These days, I ask questions before the dice are rolled:

• What does success look like?
• What does failure look like?
• The absolute best result?
• And the worst?

It’s always worth asking the players:

• They know what they’re trying to achieve better than I do, so letting them specify what success and failure means we avoid any misinterpretations.
• Describing success and failure gives players ownership in the roll and helps make the game more collaborative.
• When describing failure, players are almost always more horrible to their characters than I am. I’m often too nice.

So today’s gaming tip: ask questions first, roll dice later.

Chariot of the Gods #2 - ALIEN

 With my preparation for Chariot of the Gods complete (see last post), it was time for action.

Warning: here be spoilers!

First off, wow. It’s a rollercoaster ride. I had four players and Chariot of the Gods took 4.5 sessions (each 2.5 hours long) to play through. So that’s 10-11 hours of play, given that there’s a bit of admin at the start and end of each session.

Introducing the game

I took this slowly and followed the checklist I had prepared myself. I had four players, two very familiar with Alien, one who had only seen Alien and one who had seen none of the films (at least at first—they all caught up).

I had shared with them the general background for the game that I had created, and I then ran through the situation for Chariot of the Gods, explaining what the ship was, what it was carrying, and where it was going.

The players then chose characters—and I only asked that they pick Miller (the captain) and Wilson (the company rep) as I knew there was friction there (and I didn’t want the senior officers as NPCs). The others picked Davis (the pilot) and Cham (the roughneck), leaving me with technician Rye and science officer Alder as NPCs.

Buddies and rivals: Although I used the buddies and rivals set up in Chariot of the Gods, I asked them to describe how their buddy and rival had helped/hindered them in the past, which set up some great inter-player friction.

Banter

I started the game with the crew fresh out of hypersleep, having their post-sleep breakfast. The “banter” that I’d included on the character sheets was a good way to get the players talking in character and reinforcing some of the information I’d already explained. I also chipped in, playing the two NPCs.

Discord and Google Drive

I didn’t enjoy running Hope’s Last Day using Roll20, so I went back to basics for Chariot of the Gods. I used Google Drive and Discord (with the awesome Sebedius dice bot that automatically rolls on the panic table if you roll a facehugger).

I used Google Drive to hold all the background information and a document where I tracked things like stress. (In hindsight, I wish I had used Trello. But, I’ll know that for next time.)

Chariot of the Gods: the good

Chariot of the Gods was a lot of fun to run. Act 1 is a slow build and ends bloodily, Act 2 increases the tension, and in Act 3 it’s just crazy as things come to a climax. Here are some highlights.

• Everyone died. I had no survivors as everyone was in the reactor room when it overloaded. Happily, this was down to player actions and not the NPCs or monsters, so it was satisfying for everyone. It was very cinematic.
• The monsters are great. The players quickly nicknamed the Abominations “space zombies”, and the neomorph was effective (and tough!).
• We had several tense moments with the creatures. I killed two NPCs offscreen, and a neomorph killed Captain Miller in Act 2. (The captain then took over the new science officer I created, Alder.)
• The agendas worked well and created lovely conflicts and roleplaying.
• The player playing the secret android had missed that I’d sent her two characters, so it was only halfway through that she started acting suspiciously. I thought she had simply been roleplaying her persona to avoid suspicion.
• The players worked out there must be at least another creature on board as they hadn’t found the thing that had taken Ava out. I’d forgotten about that, so it allowed me to drop in another Neomorph. I didn’t use it, but I did have the players find a weird, recently-hatched cocoon I figured it had spent that last however-many-years hibernating in. So they knew there was something else out there…

The players told me they found the game tense, and even when they weren’t offscreen (the players split up a lot), they were happy to sit and watch. I think because the system is so brutal, everyone kept watching (rather than being distracted by the internet) because they knew things could turn nasty in a split second.

Chariot of the Gods: the not so good

A few things that Chariot of the Gods could have done better: 

• As I mentioned last time, the adventure could be organised better. In one session, I couldn’t find where the elevators were described. They weren’t on the deck descriptions where I expected and only found them by searching the pdf. Deck plans annotated with page numbers for the GM would have helped.
• I also found myself flipping rapidly between the events and the locations. Events would happen, and players would move around the ship which meant flipping back to the room descriptions. In hindsight, I should have created myself an event sheet for each act. (I did this with the monsters and found that helpful.)

I don’t think I played the NPCs effectively. I’m not sure that’s Chariot of the Gods’ problem, but mine. There was so much going on, and the players were (rightfully) in the spotlight that I often forgot to include the NPCs in scenes. On reflection, I should have created a Trello board—at least the NPCs would be in our eye line during play.

(I didn’t use the Sotillo. Things were racing to a climax in Act 3 and I didn’t need the extra complication.)

Stars and Wishes

I have recently started listening to The Gauntlet podcast, and I was taken with their stars and wishes. At the end of a session, you award a star to any other player for something they’ve done well. And a wish is something you’d like to see more of in the game.

Chariot of the Gods was the first time I tried stars and wishes. Everyone got the hang of awarding stars really quickly, praising other players (and me!) for things they enjoyed. Wishes took a little longer to get the hang of—it’s too easy in Alien for the players to wish for an easier, less creepy game. But I will persevere as it’s a great way for everyone to give feedback.

System

As I said when I wrote about Hope’s Last Day, I find the Alien system fiddly. It’s much crunchier than I prefer. Happily my players were forgiving and helped me look up some of the less-used rules. (For example, only when I described the reactor room did I realise I needed the radiation rules.)

However, I found a few quirks frustrating. 

• How do players tell if another character is lying? I ruled that it required an opposed Manipulation roll.
• Speaking of Manipulation, the option of a manipulated character attacking you seemed odd. We didn’t do that, but I couldn’t work out the logic of how that worked.
• There’s no Science skill! We’d have rolled that several times if there had been one.
• We never rolled for Stamina, Mobilty, Observation, Survival or Medical Aid. Instead, we used Comtech and Heavy Machinery a lot. (I’m not saying this was bad, but something I noticed.)
• I struggled with air supply rolls—I couldn’t get them out of their suits! The consumables section (and why isn’t that in the index?) suggests a roll every Turn. Unfortunately, I forgot to do that (it’s dull tracking such stuff, and it’s not usually how I run my games), so most players didn’t have an air supply problem. The PCs checked for air on the Cronus, but I ruled that the 70-year-old bottles didn’t work with their gear, so Cham and Davis went back to the Montero for more air. But I still forgot to get them to roll. (I worked out that the air supply would only have lasted a Shift at most, but it would have been nice if the game had made that clear.)
• I do like the Panic rolls, but they don’t always work out. We had a situation where Wilson (on 5 Stress) tried to manipulate Cham over the commlink and he panicked and rolled Seek Cover--which made little sense. Seek Cover works fine when you’re in a firefight or up against monster, but less so in other situations. So my advice is to hold the Panic Table lightly—and maybe some non-combat alternatives are worth considering.
• Initiative for combat is clunkier on Discord than in person. We rolled d10s, and I fudged it when players had the same number. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it wasn’t as easy as drawing cards.

I do like the random monster attack tables. They’re exciting and graphic—and each monster behaves differently. So I’ll use that elsewhere.

Unfortunately, my books are now showing signs of wear. Black pages are all very well, but they show wear quickly. And the perfect binding for the starter rules set is feeling loose. It hasn’t come loose yet, but it doesn’t feel as sturdy as it once did.

System changes

I was pleased with the changes I made.

• Banter: I liked how banter got the players talking in character from the start, and it helped get the game moving. I’ll use banter again—it’s a painless way to start a game, especially a one-shot.
• Buddies/rivals: The Session Zero questions helped establish everyone’s buddies, which got those relationships working. The players then built on that to help them earn Story Points.
• Story points: My change to Story Points did what I wanted them to - it encouraged the roleplaying I wanted to see (supporting buddies and undermining rivals) and helped keep Stress from becoming too debilitating. Was two Story Points too many? Possibly, but I will try that again before changing it. The change didn’t eliminate Stress—Wilson was often in the wrong place at the wrong time and constantly seemed to be on four or five Stress.
• Armour: My armour change sped up combat (slightly). I still made players roll for their suits, but I will keep the change for the future.

Final thoughts

We had a wonderful time with Chariot of the Gods. The adventure is tense and creepy—and with Alien’s lethality, it becomes a rollercoaster ride.

It is a complex scenario with many moving parts and could be easier to run. You will need to put the work in if you will run Chariot of the Gods. But it’s worth it.

And now I’ve finished Chariot of the Gods I can start reading Destroyer of Worlds.

Chariot of the Gods #1 - ALIEN

After reflecting on Hope’s Last Day and Lady Blackbird, I’ve started preparing Chariot of the Gods (from the Alien Starter Set). The scenario is a mash-up of Alien, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Chariot starts like Alien aboard a Nostromo-class commercial vehicle receiving a distress call, but the call leads to an old starship full of horrors from Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. As with Hope’s Last Day, it’s a matter of survival.

At first glance, the scenario looks good, with the characters set up as rivals and buddies. But in looking at it in more detail, it needs a lot of work before I can run it.

As always, spoilers ahoy!

Aside: I’m not sure how much sense all this will make if you haven’t read it. As with others in my running other people’s scenarios series, I will talk about the published scenario first (including my changes) and then run through how it played. As I write this first section, I’m still in the middle of preparation.

The good

So here are the things I like about Chariot of the Gods:

The scenario: I haven’t had to think about the scenario or prepare characters. The scenario is a haunted house in space, but it looks like it should be good to run with lots of inter-player conflict.

The deckplans: The deckplans are good. The general production design is good and, like all the Alien materials, looks lovely.

The bad

Unfortunately, a few things about Chariot of the Gods don’t work for me—including layout, structure, characters and GM aides.

Layout

As lovely as the Alien layout looks, I find it awful to use in play. The font is awkward and the dense blocks of text make it hard to find critical information in the heat of battle. So I will have to put a fair bit of work in so I can run it. (I had similar issues with Hope’s Last Day.)

Structure

Structurally, Chariot of the Gods is a bit of a mess. The book lacks clarity in places, and critical information isn’t always front and centre.

Three act structure: Acts 1, 2 and 3 consist of a series of events. While an event defines the end of act 1, moving from act 2 to act 3 isn’t so obvious. Act 2 has four mandatory events—is it over as soon as they are over? I guess so.  (This may make more sense in play, we’ll see.)

Synthetic advice: Advice on androids and how the critters react to them is tucked away on page 32. Given that there’s a synthetic in the party, this is important information, and I need to make sure I have it to hand.

Tainted cure: The inoculation against the neomorphic motes is contaminated, but it’s unclear how that works. It’s left up to the GM—is it better to infect players or NPCs? My first instinct is to infect the NPCs first, but I’ll see how that goes.

Clayton’s samples: According to her character sheet, Clayton wants a sample of 26 Draconis Strain to take back with her. But the only way the GM knows where they are is by carefully reading the scenario (samples are in the Med Lab and one of the storage units on C-Deck). Ideally, that information would be repeated on Clayton’s character sheet (as you may give Clayton to a player after their character is, er, retired).

Deadly situations: besides the monsters, there are several situations that, if things go wrong (ie a die roll fails), the characters can die. While that’s appropriate (thinking of the scene in Alien: Covenant when the shuttle explodes), I will keep an eye on that. I’m not that keen on swapping characters during play as a character—I am usually invested in my starting character, who I like to see as one of the heroes in the story. While I will have NPCs ready as backup characters, my preference is to keep the PCs alive until the final reel.

The science module: The Cronus deckplan shows a science module on B-Deck. The module is missing, but there’s no mention of it in the room-by-room deckplan description. Instead, it’s mentioned elsewhere and easily missed (I only caught it by chance, between sessions).

Tell me more than once: This leads me to my biggest frustrations—you need to tell me more than once, and you need to make the game easy to play. If you’re describing the plans, make them complete. If your NPCs have critical knowledge, then include that their background as well.

Characters #1: Game background

Scenario writers seem to forget that the PCs live in this universe: they will know about their colleagues, the ship and the universe. If it’s a one-shot, you need to provide this information as you can’t rely on the players already knowing it. Unfortunately, Chariot of the Gods lacks this information.

So here’s what I’ve created: 

• General Alien background (taken from the rules – pages 11-13, plus a bit about the corporations and a hint of Engineers.)
• A background sheet for the Montero – about the ship, a list of the crew, the deck plan, the next steps (assuming they’re arriving at Sutters world).
• I’ve also used the Nostromo Operations Manual from this excellent site. The players won’t need any of it, but they don’t know that.

I’ll send this out in advance so the players can come to the session prepared. (Links to these are at the end of this post if you want to try them yourself.)

Characters #2: The Science Officer

I decided I wanted a sinister Science Officer aboard the Montero, in the same vein as Ash in Alien. So I’ve added a sixth character. I only plan to have four PCs, so there will be two spares.

Alder’s background: You’re an ambitious Weyland-Yutani scientist looking to further their career. This is your first trip as Science Officer on the Montero, a run-of-mill freighter with an average crew. If you impress the Company, then perhaps you’ll get a better run next time. Your job as Science Officer is to monitor the tritium in the hold. It’s perfectly safe if stored and handled correctly but can be highly volatile.

Alder’s Starting Agenda: Do your job well and get noticed by the Company. The best way to do that is for Wilson to give you a good report, so stay on their good side.

(Character sheet in the files below.)

Character’s #3: NPCs

As ever with Alien, the NPCs are there either as meat shields or as backup PCs. However, if they are backup PCs, they need a handout explaining what they really know (instead of what they may choose to tell.)

(Plus, there’s that PVP rule where players become NPCs when they act against the group. So you need NPCs for them to take over and play.)

So I created a character sheet (with background information explaining what happened to the Cronus) for two NPCs, Clayton and Reid. (With four players, that gives me eight potential characters for them to use. Hopefully that will be enough!)

Characters #4: Character sheets and Session Zero

In my experience, one-shot games live or die on their characters. And something I realise Alien does badly – Session Zero for cinematic games. (It’s not great for campaigns either, but I care less about that.)

While the Alien Starter Set includes character sheets, they aren’t great, and I’d be unhappy if I received them as a player. So here’s what I’ve done:

• Re-created character sheets for all the PCs in Word. I removed genders and added a section with brief details of what they know about the other PCs.
• Put three talents on the sheet to allow players to customise their characters a little.
• Added their agenda (and fleshed that out ).
• Added summary rules for Story Points (more on that below) and regaining Stress to save time at the table.
• Added a section on what they know about Hadley’s Hope and Space Beast (if anything).
• I created a separate sheet for Lucas, including the damage table and general rules for synthetics. (That’s me sharing the burden of learning the rules.)

For Session Zero itself, I’ve included questions for each character’s buddy and rival:

• Why do you trust your buddy? Describe a recent situation where you put your trust in them.
• Why do you distrust your rival? Describe a recent situation where they acted against your interests.

With luck, this will make the players feel more embedded in the game.

Finally, to get everyone started, I will use banter, which I found on 1shotadventures.com (itself taken from the Macdeath adventure). While I’ve given everyone the background introduction, this is a handy way to reinforce some critical background points.

GM support

I have also created a few documents to help me when I run Chariot of the Gods.

• I summarised the acts onto a single sheet I can use to check off as they occur.
• The creature details are spread out over several pages, which is a pain in play. I like my monsters to be on a single reference sheet, so I’ve created that for easy reference during play.
• Similarly, I like to see my NPCs at a glance. So I’ve put them into a separate document I can refer to.

Learning from Lady Blackbird

Based on my experience running Lady Blackbird, I want to make a couple of changes to the system to encourage the things I like to see in my games.

So I want to encourage the players to earn Story Points by driving their agendas and roleplaying their buddy/rival relationship. I need to do three things:

• Make it easier to earn Story Points by changing how they are earned
• Raising the number of Story Points that it’s possible to earn
• Making Story Points a little more useful

So I raised the maximum number of Story Points a character can have at any one time to two, and added this to the character sheets.

Story Points: Earn Story Points by:

• taking actions to further your Agenda
• supporting your buddy
• undermining your rival

You can spend Story Points to:

• Change the result of a single die you have thrown
•  Reduce your Stress Level by two

I will admit that I’m slightly nervous about this change. I hope it’s not too drastic.

Bonus rule change: easier armour: I also found rolling for armour for the monsters frustrating in play. It slowed things down and felt unnecessary. So for the monsters, I won’t roll for armour, but instead assume that their tough hide automatically absorbs 0-2 hits, depending on their armour rating.

Armour rating	Damage reduced by
1-3	0
4-8	1
9+	2

(So I’m effectively pre-rolling my armour rolls to save time later.)

I’ll use the usual rules for other situations requiring armour rolls (such as when the PCs are in their suits).

Next time: Getting ready to play

While this sounds like a lot of work, I hope to reap the rewards when I run Chariot of the Gods. I’ve done more work here than I did for Hope’s Last Day, and I’m hoping the game will go better as a result.

I wish I didn’t have to do all this, and that Chariot of the Gods was easier to play straight from the box, but it has given me ownership—and I’m much more familiar with the adventure now.

Resources

You can download the files I created for Chariot of the Gods here. They include:

• Alien background
• CotG Background
• Characters
• Miller
• Rye
• Cham
• Davis
• Alder
• Wilson
• Lucas
• Clayton (backup)
• Reid (backup)

Other resources

Here are other resources I used for Chariot of the Gods from elsewhere on the Internet.

• The Alien RPG Facebook group
• Some great images on Sgt Perry’s Heroes
• A video intro from foxtrot charlie
• Images and deckplans for the Sotillo (here, here and here)

Lady Blackbird

Lady Blackbird is the easiest published one-shot I have ever run.

Lady Blackbird is in disguise on the run from an arranged marriage and is fleeing to secret love, the pirate king Uriah Flint. However, she and the crew of The Owl (her hired smuggler skyship) have been captured and are now held in the brig of the Imperial cruiser Hand of Sorrow.

And that’s where we start…

What you get

Lady Blackbird is a one-shot scenario expecting to last 2-3 sessions for (ideally) 4-5 players. It was written by John Harper and you can download it for free here.

The whole adventure is 16 pages long:

• One cover
• Two pages of background (the general background, and the PC’s spaceship)
• Five one-page character sheets (half of which is devoted to the rules)
• One page on running the game
• One page containing extra traits that the PCs can spend experience on
• Six more pages – one for each character and a blank for the GM to use. But I didn’t use these, so Lady Blackbird is really only 10 pages

I ran it online using Facebook Messenger (for video chat) and Google Drive (to hold documents). We rolled real dice and trusted each other.

So definitely not too many words.

Characters

I’ve mentioned before about how important it is to get the characters right in a one-shot game. I believe that 50% of the fun comes from having great characters. And the characters in Lady Blackbird are perfect – all with goals and drives (called ‘keys’) that move the scenario forwards.

• Lady Blackbird wants to find her secret love
• Naomi Bishop is Lady Blackbird’s bodyguard and hates the Empire
• Cyrus Vance is captain of The Owl and is in love with Lady Blackbird
• Kale Arkham is the loyal first mate
• Snargle is the wisecracking goblin sky-pilot

While Lady Blackbird’s main goal of reaching Uriah Flint drives everything along, the other characters are neatly interwoven and react well together.

The scenario

As you may have noticed, there’s not much in the way of a traditional scenario. No complicated dungeon maps, no monster stats, no detailed NPCs. In fact, there’s barely what I would normally think of as a scenario at all – simply a few ideas for obstacles between the brig and finding Uriah Flint.

I was fine with this – I didn’t need complicated deck plans, or city maps or stats for monsters. Although I would have liked some colourful NPCs for the PCs to meet. (I can make them up, but having them there means I don’t have to.)

In terms of flavour, Lady Blackbird feels very diesel punk. (I’ve heard that it’s set in the same universe as Harper’s Blades in the Dark, but I’m not sure.) In terms of inspiration, it feels to me to be in the same spirit as Christopher Wooding’s excellent Tales of the Kitty Jay series. At least, that’s how I’m imagining it.

System

The system is explained on each character sheet, and takes up less than half a side. The section is titled ‘Rules Summary,’ but that’s misleading: these are the entire rules. There are no more.

The system is a dice pool system, with success being 4+. (It doesn’t explicitly state this, but we’re using six-sided dice. It would be weird if it was anything else.)

The system is a great example of rewarding the behaviours you want to see.

• First, experience points are earned by taking actions that further your keys (your goals and objectives)—and double points are earned if doing that takes the character into danger. So they rapidly ramp up, and there’s lots of new things to spend the on.
• Second, you get more dice by having a ‘refreshment scene’ with another character. This promotes in character chat—something I like to see in my games.

The only problem I’ve seen with the system so far is that it’s too easy. Despite setting challenge levels as recommended, during my first session the PCs failed none of the rolls. (They did fail rolls in later sessions, so maybe that was just luck.)

The refreshment scenes are inspired, though. They work well in play—it's a pleasant change to have a mechanic that rewards the players for actually roleplaying.

So how does it play?

Lady Blackbird is easy to run, provided you don’t mind thinking on your feet. The combination of the system and keys makes the characters very proactive, so as a GM you’re reacting to their plans and thinking of obstacles. We start in media res with the PCs locked up in the brig, but the are resourceful enough that it’s not long before they’re out causing havoc.

As I said above, 50% of the fun in roleplaying games comes from having great characters, and Lady Blackbird gets them very right indeed.

I ran it over four 2-hour sessions, using Facebook Messenger for video chat and Google Drive for the documents.

Session 1 Prison Breakout: The PCs escaped the brig, sabotaged the Hand of Sorrow and reached the hangar where The Owl was held.

Session 2 Goodbye Hand of Sorrow, hello Succulent Grub: The PCs dealt with the guards, refuelled The Owl and fled the Hand of Sorrow. They made their way to the Succulent Grub bar in the city of St Judasberg on Haven, where Lady Blackbird believes she can find a route to her lover’s lair in the Remnants.

Session 3 The Fight: Westor Snow (owner of the Succulent Grub) proposes a wager to the PCs: directions to Uriah Heap’s lair in exchange for the The Owl, to be settled with a pit fight between his champion (The Humungus—inspired by Mad Max 2) and the PCs’ champion. Naomi is the champion, and the PCs undertake a madcap scheme to rub a sedative ointment into The Humungus’ skin, boosting Naomi’s chances. It all works, and Naomi beats The Humungus.

Session 4: The Dark Promise. The PCs make their way to the Remnants, which we’ve learned are the remains of an ancient civilisation (their sorcerers reached too far…) and contains a graveyard full of derelict spaceships. The PCs find Uriah Flint’s pirate ship, Dark Promise, and a bounty hunter ambush… The bounty hunters are defeated, the Dark Promise stolen, and our heroes head off into the wild blue with a new career as sky pirates…

I found Lady Blackbird a lot of fun to run. I found my players were coming up with loads of mad ideas I mostly had to respond to. It was a very collaborative experience—much more so than many other games.

Given the very minimal prep I did, it did at times feel like I was walking a tightrope without a safety net. But that’s only in my mind—everyone approached the game in the right spirit and I’m sure that we could have dealt with any problems that might have arisen.

The dice pool system and lack of stats/attributes/hit points worked well. Rather than a blow-by-blow recreation of the PC’s attempt to bluff their way into the pit fighter stable and rub ointment into The Humungus (yes, really), I reduced that down to a single (difficult) roll.

Rolling the dice less often made the dice rolls much more important—and raised the tension. It also meant that we crammed a lot into our two-hour sessions. Instead of chipping away at The Humungus’ hit points over twenty minutes, we resolved the battle in a single dramatic roll of the dice.

Improvements

I wouldn’t do much to improve Lady Blackbird. I’d get rid of (or explain) the blanks at the end of the game as I’m still not sure what they’re for. And I’d like to see a few more NPCs, places and creatures described—yes, I can make them up, but it’s also nice not to have to.

Overall

Of all the published scenarios I’ve run so far, Lady Blackbird has been both the easiest to run (almost no prep required) and also the most fun. 

Being a better player

I don’t think I’m very good at playing roleplaying games.

I think I’m a good GM (although you shouldn’t take my word for it), but playing? I need all the help I can get. So here are the things I do to improve my roleplaying skillz.

Better roleplaying

A selection of RPGs that (mostly)
don't tell you how to roleplay

I don’t think I’m very good at roleplaying. Most of the time, my approach to roleplaying is to play myself (or a version of myself) but set in another world. It’s okay, but it could be better.

And RPGs themselves aren't much help. They're noticeably short on advice on how to actually roleplay.

The Angry GM has some help here. I rather like The Angry GM. He’s a bit ranty (okay, he’s very ranty) but is never dull and always has something worth saying. He talks a lot about D&D, but that’s okay as what he says often applies to other games.

In a recent post, The Angry GM talks about how to play a character. To save you the 3000-word rant (which is good but long), he suggests (via a Star Trek Trill analogy) that to roleplay your character, you need only to come up with a ‘seed’ and give them motivation.

Then you ask yourself: ‘What would I do if I was a role with a motivation?’

There, roleplaying.

That’s not the first time The Angry GM has talked about roleplaying. In this post, he talks about two-note characters, in which you choose a motivation (ie as above, but he’s provided a list this time) and a colourful character detail.

So combining them both gives us:

• A role
• A motivation
•  A colourful character detail

You take that and over time you will settle into your character, and you’ll do it without thinking about it. (I don’t think I’ll ever reach that stage—I like variety too much.)

I like this. It’s short enough for me to remember, it’s system-agnostic, so I can use it anywhere, and hopefully it gives me enough to work with.

Putting it into practice

So recently I was playing in Tales from the Loop. The kid playbooks give you a good start for most of this. I am playing Slash:

• Role: 14-year-old boy
• Motivation: Trying to impress a girl
• Detail: Guns N’ Roses fan

I wrote ‘What would I do if I was a 14-year-old boy trying to impress a girl' at the top of my character sheet to remind me how to play Slash.

Take risks: play like an NPC

Sometimes, as a player, I get to play NPCs. Occasionally, when my character is absent from a scene, the GM has an NPC to hand I can play.  When playing NPCs, I take more risks, mistreat them, insult other characters…

Sometimes, I can play my characters a little too safely, and I have to remind myself to play my character as if they are an NPC.

(This differs from playing NPCs as a GM. As a GM, my NPCs serve the story and I’m concentrating on too many other things to play them particularly well. As a player, I can have fun with NPCs because I care less about their fate.)

So as a player I need to remind myself to take risks and play like an NPC.

Wrapping up

So all I need to remember is:

• What would I do if I was a role with a motivation?’
• Act like an NPC

If I can do that, then that should make me a better player. And maybe if I do it enough it will become second nature. 

Three murder mysteries

One of my favourite parts of The Gauntlet podcast is the section where they talk about what gives them life—ie, what have they been enjoying. I like this because I like to hear what other people are enjoying, and it’s a lovely celebrating thing that people are enjoying.

So here are three murder mysteries that I’ve recently enjoyed.

I should start by saying that, for me, the point of a murder mystery isn’t to solve the murder—the plots are much too convoluted to do that. Instead, it’s to spend time with characters I enjoy.

Troubled Blood

Troubled Blood is the fifth Strike book by Robert Galbraith (pen name for J K Rowling). And it’s a whopper—the longest Strike book so far (over 900 pages). I found it gripping though—not particularly the murder plot, which twists and turns as you’d expect—but the ongoing will-they-won’t-they nature of Strike and Robin’s relationship.

The TV series starring Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger is also good (and is how I was introduced to the series).

London Bridge is Falling Down

London Bridge is Falling Down by Christopher Fowler features a couple of a different sort: Bryant and May, London’s elderly detectives working for the Peculiar Crimes Unit. This is their twentieth and last adventure and is as chaotic as ever. I first fell in love with Bryant and May in Darkest Day, a glorious zombie horror novel. Bryant is the anarchic detective with a unique train of thought, while May is his more respectable counterpart.

While the PCU and Bryant and May feature in many of Fowler’s novels (including Rune and Soho Black), in 2003 they starred in their own detective series with Full Dark House. I didn’t find that particularly easy to follow, so to find out whether or not you like them, I’d start with the second, The Water Room.

The Appeal

The Appeal by Janice Hallett is a little different. Presented as emails, reports and WhatsApp messages, it takes some getting used to. But the conceit is fun—two law students look through the papers of a murder case and are asked to work out what’s going on. And as a reader, all you are presented with (initially) are those messages, with the occasional WhatsApp conversation between the two students.

The plot concerns an amateur dramatic production and a charity fundraising appeal. I struggled initially to get into it, but a few pages in everything clicked as the characters in the emails came forward and the bitchiness and backstabbing began. I then found I couldn’t put it down.

Unable to solve the murder

Of the murders,  the only one I was close to solving was The Appeal. But even then, I didn’t know who the actual murderer was.