Children of the Stars

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

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

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

Writing history

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

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

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

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

A long gap between publishing

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

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

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

But how to publish it?

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

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

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

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

What’s next?

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

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

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

Other London: The rats

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

The Rats

Concept: Rat swarm commended by an intelligent rat king

Trouble: Hunted by those who made Us

Goal: Seek allies and find a safe harbour

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

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

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

Information, rumours, lies

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

Questions

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

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

Allies: None – yet

Location: Anywhere out of sight, underground.

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

Awesome (+4) at: Commanding rats

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

Bad (-2) at: Moving fast

Stress: O O

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

Loyal rat army: Swarm of wriggling rats

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

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

Bad (+2) at: Taking independent action

Stress:  O O O

Consequences:

Mild (2)

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

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

Bad (+2) at: Talking to people

Stress:  O

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

Could AI art be good for some TTRPGs?

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

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

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

Evil AI character portrait
from The Dead Undead

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

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

Stealing copyright

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

I have no idea how true this is.

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

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

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

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

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

Stealing work

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

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

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

Otherwise, you’ll need a real artist.

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

Mediocre artists at risk

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

Mediocre artists like me.

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

Here’s a teabag I did for one game.

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

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

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

But what about Other London’s AI art?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other London’s future

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

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

Consequences 2024

Last time, I was looking forward; now it’s time to look back. So how was Consequences 2024?

(And I should say that, strictly, this was “Quintessential Consequences,” but I prefer to remember them by the year, and as this is my blog, that’s what I’ll do.)

TL;DR: Consequences 2024 was awesome and I’m looking forward to next year. 

Logistics and accommodation

Consequences had a new venue for 2024, Lakeside Holiday Park near Chichester. It’s a five-hour drive from Yorkshire, so I set off early. (I’m not organised enough to take the train, and taking a car meant I could overpack.)

Our 6-berth static caravan. Not recommended for 6 adults.

The accommodation is either in a lodge or a static caravan. I shared a 6-berth static caravan with James, Kath and Matt. That was extremely cheap (it worked out at about £25 per room per night) but there were compromises – the bedrooms were tiny. I wasn’t sharing my twin room, and I wouldn’t have wanted to as the gap between the narrow beds was about six inches. Kath and Matt shared the double room but had no space for their luggage, which they left in the general social area. We did have two bathrooms, although one was so small if you’re any bigger than I am you would struggle.

The static caravans feel like they’re designed for a family (the twin rooms would be fine for kids).

The lodges, on the other hand, are much more luxurious and have much more space. However, there were only a limited number of them available, and we didn’t really need the extra space.

Consequences doesn’t provide meals, but the lodges/caravans have cooking facilities, and meals are available at the bar. I brought things for breakfast and lunch, and had bar meals in the evening.

For owls, not larks

It’s worth noting that Consequences caters more for the owls than it does for us larks. (And for Americans who haven’t adjusted their body clocks yet.) 

As an example, breakfast butties were only available from 9:30 – that’s practically mid-morning for me! And parties start late and carry on into the early hours.

That’s not a gripe, just an observation. If you are a lark, you just need to be wary of who you lodge with. And bring your own breakfast.

Spellbound

Written by Maria & Jeppe Bergmann Hamming and run by Mo Holkar, Mike Snowden and Quinn D.

Spellbound was the game I was most concerned about before Consequences. It seemed to be the most Nordic of the larps, and that’s not something I’ve done before. I don’t really know how Nordic it was, but there were lots of workshops and the game was conducted silently while moving to music. (Eerie non-English folk/rock/indie music. No idea of the genre. Some vocals sounded like Bjork might have sung them, but I honestly don’t know. I didn’t recognise any of it – and it was suitably weird.)

As there were no words, the workshops covered (with varying degrees of success) how to move and how to interact. Broadly we were split into two camps – humans and the immortal undergrounders (in their glorious masks). The broad arc of the story was about how the undergrounders bound humans to their will, toyed with them, and then whether the humans returned to the human world or stayed.

And did I enjoy it? I think I did, eventually. I was way outside of my comfort zone to begin with, but after 20 minutes or so, I was getting the hang of it. It could have been 30 minutes shorter – we could have had fewer scenes, and each scene could easily have been at least one song shorter. 

Talking to one of the human players afterwards (I was an undergrounder), apparently, in one of the early breaks, they quickly agreed on a story and connection between themselves, which helped their game immensely. I might have enjoyed it more if the undergrounder also had more to them.

I’m glad I did it but I doubt I’d rush back to do a game like it again.

Incidentally, the original larp materials are here. And these are the Spotify playlists: Conflict, Party, Seduction, and Sentimental.

Friday

I had a terrible night’s sleep – which is usual for my first night at a games convention. At Consequences, this was compounded by the bitterly cold weather, and the caravan got very cold.

The Stars our Destination

This was my game, and the fifth in my series of first contact games. I don’t have much to say about it other than the players seemed to enjoy it. It went well from my perspective – I have a few tweaks to make here and there, but nothing major seemed to be broken.

Players conferring in groups: how a typical freeform looks

Next year I plan to bring episode 6. Assuming I can figure out how to make it work.

All You Need Is Love

Written and run by Laura Wood and Ruth Trenery-Leach.

2024 has been my hear of song/band larping (and it arguably started in 2023 with That Difficult Second Album at Peaky 2023). So there’s been West End Lullaby, Backstage Business, Success2Soon, All You Need Is Love, and (later on), Do You Hear The People Sing.

Anyway, in All you Need Is Love we were a newly-formed band that went through a defined arc that included singing Beatles songs to each other.

As the arcs were predefined, it felt more like theatrical improv rather than a “game”. So one scene included something like, “F is angry that their more experimental work is not being released by the band.” So we improvised and acted that out. So, on one hand, we weren’t given any agency in choosing the direction, but we did have agency in how we played that out.

Critically, though, this also avoided the dreaded freeform compromise. F argued that he only wanted one song on the next album, just one. And it would have been so easy to compromise and say yes, we’ll give you one song. But the directions didn’t let us do that, and so we couldn’t compromise – which was a very pleasant change.

Another oddity about the game was that we had 12 players, split into two groups of six. Each group had exactly the same instructions, with the same character packs, arcs and songs. But we fleshed out the details. It sounds like it shouldn’t work – but it did. There was no crossover between the groups, and while it’s tempting to suggest that might be something to try, I think it’s fine that there was no crossover.

As for me, I played “C”, who I named Charlie, who struggled with fame and unrequited love. I had a great time playing them with my fellow band members (played by Mo, Nickey, Karim, Dave and Ben).

And of course, it’s a lot of fun singing Beatles songs together.

The Koenig Dead

Written by Tony Mitton and run by Tony and AJ Smith.

I played Captain Alix Orban and wish I’d spent longer absorbing my 20-page character pack. As I mentioned last time, I found the character sheet a bit confusing, and during play, I struggled to look anything up in the heat of the moment. But unfortunately, I got distracted and didn’t do as much homework as maybe I should have.

Anyway, the game was fine. As the captain, I was always being called upon, but of course, I didn’t know that much – even if I’d memorised my character sheet, much of the detail was known by others. I had a lovely time interacting with my crew and Steve Bassett’s sinister Armari Thrace who gave me a hard time about the last time our character’s paths had crossed.

Other than the flow of the character sheet, my minor criticisms are:

• The game space was slightly too small for our 14 players. That was a surprise as The Stars our Destination also had 14 players, but didn’t feel cramped in the same way. (Maybe the extra GM made all the difference.)
• The game has content warnings, but there are a couple of occasions where even I thought, “ew” and wondered if they were necessary. (If the game were actually about those issues, then that would be different, but I didn’t expect it in a game based loosely on Firefly.)
• For new players to the crew of the Kestrel, I think twenty minutes at the start of the game for the crew and passengers to get to know each other and understand what happened last episode would be time well spent. I’m sure the game is much smoother when those playing the continuing characters have played them previously.

Saturday

I had a slightly better night’s sleep (helped by the warmer weather), but it was still not brilliant, and I woke as usual at around 6 am.

Do You Hear The People Sing?

Written and run by Alex Helm, and subtitled “How the GM got their friends to perform Les Miserables for them”.

Photo by Tsijon

I played Franky Jackson who plays Thenardier (and a few other minor roles) in Les Mis. And it was a hoot. It was chaos, with singing and wild accusations, songs tanked, and I even brought the plate of sardines on stage for Master of the House. The actors playing Cosette and Eponine switched roles halfway through, but luckily the audience didn’t notice.

Definitely the highlight of Consequences for me. If you get the chance, play it.

I’d happily play it again, and I’m also hoping it creates a new genre of farce-musical crossovers that I can play. Mamma Mia, anyone?

Batukh Hungers!

Written and run by Alex Helm.

As I suspected before the game, Batukh Hungers! is a balloon debate: someone has to sacrifice themselves to the dark god, but nobody wants it to be them.

And to my surprise, it ended up being me!

I had a lovely game, particularly the angst and philosophical discussions on the nature of love with my wife (played by Elina), but it wasn’t until the last thirty minutes that I suddenly realised that I didn’t want my wife to be destroyed by the dark god. That led to a great finale – I could see other cult members persuading Elina to sacrifice herself, so I stepped forward and offered myself, and she tried to stop me. But failed.

A lovely ending to the game – nice and dramatic.

Sunday

I had a much better night’s sleep. I got back to the caravan at about 11:30 pm and had a decent wind down before going to bed. That seemed to work.

Hillfolk

On Sunday morning, I ran Hillfolk. I gave the players (JD, Martin, Clare, Heidi and Graham) a choice of the setting, and they chose Hazelwood Abbey (Downstairs) – which is the servants' playset I created for Hazelwood Abbey. This suited me as it’s the playset I hadn't run.

Nobody had played Hillfolk before, but they soon got the hang of it, and we had a dramatic story that featured a broken mirror and the blandest of bland pies. Nobody had chosen the butler or housekeeper roles, so I told everyone the old butler had left, but that the family were looking to replace him. I later told the housemaid that they would be happy to consider her for the position of housekeeper instead of a butler, creating a bit of competition.

We ended up with three procedural scenes – trying to fix a new mirror into the old frame (fail!), making a sauce (success!), and the housemaid and valet competing for the position of housekeeper or butler.

We talked about dramatic poles at the end, but everyone found the actual mechanic for determining who gets the bennies to be far too cumbersome. So we ignored that. I think in future, I will end by asking each player what we see their character doing in five years’ time. 

Interestingly, the more I run Hillfolk one-shots, the harder it is to imagine it as a longer-form game. Maybe that should be a goal for 2025.

The Roswell Incident

And finally, I ran The Roswell Incident. This is the first game in my multi-game first-contact series of freeforms, and the start of what I am calling Timeline 3. (The Stars our Destination was episode five of Timeline 2. Timeline 1 is online.)

For me, this was probably my least favourite game of Consequences. I made a couple of poor GM calls, and while I think most of the players had a good time, not all of them did. I’ve got a pile of notes to reflect on.

I think one of the problems is that I’ve published The Roswell Incident through Freeform Games, and more of the secrets come out during that (as it’s a one-shot) than is probably ideal for the start of a series of games. But maybe that doesn’t matter – I guess I find out next year when I run part 2, All Flesh is Grass.

Getting back

I think I may have figured out my problem with sleep.

At gaming cons, I think I get over-stimulated with the games and people and conversations and ideas, and I need peace and quiet before I try and sleep. I probably need more than I think – so maybe at least 30 minutes on my own. And I think I need to read a book, something unrelated to the event; reading calms my mind and tells my brain that it’s time to go to sleep. Which is what I did on Sunday night, by making sure I was back in the caravan shortly after 10 pm and having time to wind down. I will try and remember this for Shogun in 2025.

And so on Monday, after the best night’s sleep so far, I drove back, listening to the splendid Aldritch Kemp and the Rose of Pamir on BBC Sounds.

Looking forward to Consequences

Next week, I’m off to Consequences, the freeform larp convention. I went last year, and you can read about that here.

I’ll do a post-con report after Consequences, but I thought I’d start things off with a pre-con preview covering some of my thoughts, hopes and fears. Hopefully, there won’t be spoilers.

Consequences this year in the Lakeside Holiday Park in Chichester. So there’s a bunch of logistics in getting there that I’m not covering here. I’m just talking about the games.

So the games, in order.

Thursday

Spellbound (Bjergtaget)

Written by Maria & Jeppe Bergmann Hamming and run by Mo Holkar, Mike Snowden and Quinn D.

According to the organisers, “Spellbound (Bjergtaget) is a non-verbal black box larp for 10-30 participants. The participants play either humans or creatures of the Underground. Through symbolic gestures and movement to music, a night in the world of the Undergrounders is played out. The humans are lured by and bonded to an Undergrounder, and in a series of scenes, the relation between the human and the Undergrounder is explored. Through workshops the participants learn the symbolic gestures and how to move to the music, before we all enter a world of magic and myth.”

I really have no idea what to expect. It’s a long way outside my comfort zone I have no sense of whether I will love it or hate it. (Tune in next time to find out!)

Happily, there are no costuming requirements, other than comfortable clothing with pockets. They suggest wearing contact lenses rather than spectacles, but given that if I wear contacts, then I need reading glasses to read anything, I suspect I’ll just stick with glasses. Or maybe I won’t – I haven’t decided yet.

Friday

Three games today. There’s a risk that’s too many, but I’m running the first one (and I find running games less tiring than playing them), and the middle game doesn’t need any prep.

The Stars our Destination

Written and run by me!

This is part 5 of my first contact saga (is currently called The Dark Forest). I’ve got everything printed out and ready to go, I just need to remind myself of what’s going on before I get started. (I’ll do that a couple of days beforehand.)

This is its second run – the first was online, back in June. As it’s the second run, that means it’s Timeline 2 (as I think of it), which means some of the things that were true in the first run are not true in this run. (For example, this timeline has vat-grown host bodies for one of the aliens!)

I haven’t really talked about The Stars our Destination here yet. I’m not sure why. I suspect I’ll have more to say after this run.

All You Need is Love

Written and run by Laura Wood and Ruth Trenery-Leach.

I had originally planned to have a break in this session, but this game was struggling to fill, and it didn’t look like it needed a lot of homework (or costuming), so I thought I’d give it a try.

“The larp will explore themes of music, fame, and relationships of all kinds. The setting is an alternative 1960s without sexism or queerphobia. If you have any 60s-inspired accessories, feel free to wear them, but they’re not required.  On the day, you’ll be able to choose from skeleton characters, which we will workshop together before we begin.”

So it’s another larp that’s outside my usual comfort zone (skeleton characters and workshops), but it does involve singing Beatles songs, so that’s a plus.

The Koenig Dead

Written and run by AJ Smith and Tony Mitton.

Phew – a “regular” freeform with 20 pages of detailed background and character stuff and 13 other characters with their own agendas.

This is part of a series of games set aboard a spaceship in a universe that seems suspiciously similar to Joss Whedon’s Firefly. I’m playing Alix Orban, the captain of the freighter Kestrel. I fought on the losing side in the war, which makes me Mal from Firefly. Except I’m not, there’s more to it than that.

In The Koenig Dead, we’re taking the Kestrel to the Koenig base where, hopefully, I can get my uncle the medical attention he desperately needs. What could go wrong?

Interestingly, I haven’t been given character objectives/goals – instead, I have a list of suggestions to roleplay my character, help others have fun, have fun myself (and then two game-specific suggestions – one a GM note and the other a reminder that I need to get my uncle the medical attention he needs). Was that a spoiler? I don’t think so, as my uncle’s condition is not a game secret.

The Koenig Dead follows The Linfarn Run, which is the first in the series featuring the Kestrel and many of the same characters. I’ve not played The Linfarn Run, and the character pack (character background, recent events, basic history) felt a little disjointed as it referred to events in that game before explaining them properly. I’m sure if I had played in the previous game, it would make more sense.

I notice this sort of thing because I’m taking a similar approach with my first contact series (such as The Stars our Destination, above). Hopefully, my character sheets flow – but I’m not the best person to judge. (Nobody has mentioned it as an issue, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got it right.)

There are some nice ideas in the background – I particularly like the idea of warp sinks, which affect FTL and make it harder to travel away from some stars. I have no idea if it’s inspired by anything, but I like it. (I’m pretty sure it’s not in Firefly, although it has been many years since I’ve watched that.)

I haven’t worked out costuming yet. I think I just need to look different, and captain-y.

Saturday

Two games today – I can have a lie in! (As if; I bet I’m awake at 6 am as usual.)

Do You Hear The People Sing?

Written and run by Alex Helm.

Remarkably, I think this will be the first time I’ve played in one of Alex’s games – and I’m playing in two of them this year. Alex often writes games set in the Warhammer 40K universe, and while I gather they are splendid games, I don’t know anything about 40K, and it doesn’t really appeal.

Do You Hear The People Sing is not a 40K game. Far from it – it’s a mashup of Noises Off and Les Miserables (and inspired, I gather, by this year’s West End Lullaby, where Alex played Javert.) It sounds fabulous.

I’m playing Frankie Jackson, who plays Monsieur Thenardier in Les Miserables. So I get to perform some great songs as Thenardier – but I’m also playing several minor characters and get to perform other songs as well.

The game takes place both backstage (where the character stuff happens) and on stage (where the performances happen – miming or karaoke or whatever). I’m not sure how the balance is maintained between the two (if, indeed, balance is the right word), but I’m looking forward to finding out.

Do You Hear The People Sing has the best advice on gender, race and age I’ve seen. In short, none of the actor characters are gendered – everyone chooses their gender. And the in-game amateur dramatic society’s casting policy means that anybody can play any role regardless of gender, race or age. So that means we will have a crazy range of people just playing the parts – and that will be great.

Batukh Hungers!

Written and run by Alex Helm. 

Two Alex Helm larps in one day! In Batukh Hungers, devoted followers of Batukh the Hungering God gather to conduct the holy rites and ensure their deity is appeased for another year. But times are hard for this dark cult – membership is falling, willing sacrifices are ever harder to come by, and internal plotting and divisions could spell the end. And if Batukh is not satisfied, the current age of humanity will end in blood and flame.

I’m playing “Coyote” (we all have code names), and from what I can see, it’s going to be interesting choosing a sacrifice.

Sunday

And two games to finish off. The closing ceremony happens shortly before my second game – and Sunday evening is spent unwinding.

Hillfolk

I’m running a game of DramaSystem – it could be Hillfolk, it could be Hazelwood Abbey or even Success2Soon. I’ll let the players decide.

Hopefully I’ll remember my revelation about dramatic poles!

The Roswell Incident

And finally, I’m running The Roswell Incident. This will be its third outing and will be the start of Timeline 3. (So if all goes well, next year I will run All Flesh is Grass, and the year after that, Children of the Stars, and so on. So that’s me committed to Consequences for the foreseeable future!)

Interestingly, a couple of players who have signed up for Roswell have played in later games (in Timeline 2 last year). I suspect there has been enough of a gap for it not to matter, but I am looking forward to finding out how that worked for them.

Monday

And on Monday I drive home.

Adventure Crucible: Review

Adventure Crucible: Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG is a Kraken chapbook by Robin D Laws.

Physically, Adventure Crucible is a 52-page A5 booklet with very thin covers. (I’m keeping mine in its plastic cover.)

Adventure Crucible concentrates on “trad” RPGs – it excludes “story games” (which in this case seems to mean anything that isn’t trad). But that’s okay; it keeps the book focused.

Adventure Crucible looks at five common RPG scenario structures: the Dungeon, the Mystery, the Chain of Fights, Survival and Intrigue. (Two others, Picaresque and Drama are lightly touched on.) I’ll be honest, I hadn’t even realised there were so many different scenario structures – but that’s probably because, for me, some of them are almost indistinguishable from each other.

Obstacles

But before we get to that, one key element of the book is the obstacle, which is broken down as follows:

Dilemma: The expression of the obstacle

Choices: The choices the players are presented with.

Consequences: The consequences of those choices.

Rooting interest: Why the players should care. (“Rooting interest” doesn’t feel like a helpful name to me.)

All RPG scenarios have obstacles with choices and consequences, and Adventure Crucible recommends that scenario designers ensure their obstacles offer meaningful choices with consequences that the players care about. Well, yes.

Scenario structures

So, the scenario structures. Below, I go into the basic structures in more detail. They can, of course, be mashed together (and often are, as a dungeon becomes more compelling when mixed with a mystery).

Dungeons

In dungeon scenarios, the characters explore a discrete physical space; obstacles are monsters, traps and physical hazards.

And I’ll be honest, I can’t imagine anything worse. I’m not a big fan of dungeon-crawling board games, but at least they have the decency to be a board game.

Tellingly, Laws opens this section with “People who tire of the Dungeon format can tire of it hard.” I don’t ever remember actually liking the format. For me, dungeons lack one of my three key pleasures of roleplaying: a plot.

Chain of Fights

In a chain of fights, characters fight a series of enemies (the obstacles). For me, there’s such an overlap between this and Dungeons that it hadn’t occurred to me that they might be different. (But then, I’ve never felt the need to run Feng Shui.)

As far as I can tell, the main difference between the dungeon and a chain of fights is that in the latter, each fight contains a clue leading to the next one. (Rather than just going into the next room, as in a dungeon.) At least chain of fights does have a plot, which is a step up from a dungeon.

Survival

In a survival scenario, the characters encounter dangers while defending something or someone, which is kind of a backwards chain of dights. Obstacles include getting whatever it is the group needs to survive.

I don’t have much to say about dungeons, chain of fights, or survival structures because I don’t find them interesting to play. They’re basically adventures about combat, and if I wanted to do that, I’d play a miniatures war game. (And I don’t enjoy miniatures games either…)

Mysteries

In mysteries, the characters investigate something.

My favourite type of RPG scenario activity is the mystery. That’s probably because Call of Cthulhu was one of my early RPGs, and Cthulhu is all about the investigation. I also create a lot of scenarios, and as an author, I find mysteries the most satisfying type of scenario to create.

Obstacles are finding clues and, in a horror game, mental distress from experiencing the supernatural.

Adventure Crucible spends longer on mysteries than any other type of scenario structure, claiming that they are the hardest to write. That’s probably true, and I’m currently wrestling with an investigative scenario that seems to be causing more problems than it really should. They certainly seem to have more moving parts than other types of structures. For example:

• You need a villain with a plan. Adventure Crucible notes that players (and GMs running the scenario) expect the bad guy’s plan to make sense – which isn’t always as easy as it sounds.
• You need to know what they want, and what they are planning to do if the PCs don’t get involved. (So a countdown clock or timetable.)
• You need to know what the antagonist has done so far, so you can seed clues for the PCs.
• And depending on how you write your adventure, you need locations and NPCs where clues may be revealed. (The book doesn’t really mention this, but clues don’t have to be fixed in any one location. A clue can pop up anywhere.)

The climax or resolution of an investigation can often be the trickiest section to write and run. Mysteries don’t always suit a pitched battle as a finale – PCs who are good at investigating aren’t necessarily going to be strong in combat. And if you want your villain to react to the PC’s actions, it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly where and when the resolution takes place.

Intrigues

In an intrigue, the characters vie for influence and power. Obstacles are getting favours or stuff from other characters, usually at a cost.

Games of Amber and Vampire are described as intrigues – along with something described as “Gloranthan Freeforms.” But I’m not sure how many freeforms (Gloranthan or otherwise) Robin Laws has played, because while I would agree that some are intrigues, many are not.

I don’t really know how to write a pure intrigue scenario (unless we are talking about freeforms, in which case I’ve written a book about that), and I’m not sure Adventure Crucible explains it properly. I happily add factions and hidden agendas to characters to create an element of intrigue, but that’s often overlaid onto a mystery (see my Perfect Organism scenario for ALIEN).

Picareseque and Drama

Two more adventure structures are mentioned in Adventure Crucible but are only lightly covered:

Picaresque, in which the characters amble around and cause trouble. (Sounds like sandbox murder hobo-ing to me. Also not my style.)

Drama, which appears to be an excuse to cram a reference to Hillfolk into the book. I’m not sure you can write a scenario for Hillfolk, as it's so player-driven.

As an aside, when I look at what I like in roleplaying games and the scenario structures presented in Adventure Crucible, I seem very limited in my enjoyment of what makes a good game. But that’s because I think most scenarios (especially one-shots) are mysteries: there’s usually something going on, a plot of some sort.

And because I find combat dull, that rules out the first three structures.

Building stronger scenarios

So has Adventure Crucible helped me build a stronger scenario? I’m not sure it has, but it’s made me reflect on some scenarios that didn’t really work and why that might have been.

Where I have struggled to engage with scenarios (and this isn’t always me running them) is often where the core activity isn’t clear. If you’ve heard Robin D Laws speak, you’re probably familiar with the term “core activity” – it’s what players do in the game: “You are X, who do Y”.

When that’s not clear, scenarios can stumble.

For example, I once played in a very short Star Wars game that didn’t make it past the first session. I can’t remember what characters we created, but they weren’t the usual Star Wars characters – they weren’t rebels or bounty hunters. Our core activity was never defined, and the game collapsed when we didn’t react the way the GM expected us to. While we really could have used a proper session zero, the lack of a core activity for Star Wars didn’t help.

Some games don’t have a single core activity (RuneQuest, Traveller), making things more complicated. For example, I don’t really know what a typical Traveller adventure is. (Unlike a typical Call of Cthulhu or Liminal investigation, which I can easily imagine.)

Other London

In terms of Other London, so far, my scenarios have all been mysteries with a hint of intrigue. (Faction power plays are happening in the background – the PCs focus on the mystery.) 

One reason faction splatbooks aren’t on the horizon is that I’m not sure what the core activity of other factions would be.

For Desk 17 it’s clear: you are police detectives investigating supernatural crimes.

But for a fae court? Or a vampire gang? Or the Custodians of the Echo? I’m not sure, and until I can figure that out the fae, the vampires, and everyone else are staying as NPCs.

Overall

So overall, while I’m not sure it’s made my scenario writing any stronger, I found plenty of food for thought in Adventure Crucible.

The Haunter of the Dark: a first impressions review

The Haunter of the Dark is Paul Baldowski’s guide to writing Cthulhu Hack investigations using Lovecraft’s story of the same name as an example.

Physically, the book is a lovely 76-page A5 book that feels like the right size for a roleplaying supplement. While written for Cthulhu Hack, the ideas and process for creating an investigation work for any investigative game. (This is the only Cthulhu Hack book I own, so I can’t tell if other adventures also use this advice.)

The Haunter of the Dark is split into four parts: Hacking at the Darkness, Horrible Abysses, Random Tables, and The Haunter of the Dark.

Hacking at the Darkness

This is the book’s introduction and explains the basic principle, which is to take a story and create an investigation around it. Hacking at the Darkness explains the basic Cthulhu Hack investigation structure:

Fascination: Hooks that lead the PCs into the investigation.

Discovery: Uncovering clues and working out what’s really going on.

Conflict: Conflict isn’t only fighting – it includes reaching hard-to-find places, or tracking down clues. It happens in parallel with Discovery.

Resolution: The final scene, where the investigation is resolved. 

Coda: The last bit of the story – a moment to reflect. (Sadly, this isn’t expanded on in the book, but I’ve found getting the players to describe what their characters are doing in an “end of credits scene” is a good way to capture the spirit of a coda.)

The introduction also covers annotating the original text of your source material. The book uses different colours of highlighter to differentiate the different types of annotation:

• Information – revealed by a Flashlight roll
• Stories – revealed by a Smokes roll
• Threats
• Unsettling imagery to repurpose
• Background and motivation
• Seeds and hooks

Horrible Abysses

Horrible Abysses, is the meat of the book. This is a sample (outline?) investigation that follows the events in The Haunter of the Dark. The hook is that Robert Blake has been found dead (as per Lovecraft’s story), and the investigators are investigating.

So Horrible Abysses takes the structure above, details various locations and shows how you might add clues that lead to a resolution where the investigators face the Haunter!

Locations include Blake’s apartment, Federal Hill, the Providence Journal, the police station, the library, city hall – and, of course, the sinister church where Blake found the Shining Trapezohedron.  The resolution, however, happens elsewhere – the Haunter has moved.

As for the Haunter itself, Lovecraft doesn’t say, and five entities are suggested: an avatar of Azathoth, insects from the void, a proto-shoggoth, an avatar of Shub-Niggurath, or a Mi-Go weapon. 

Unfortunately, the investigation doesn’t feel easy to run. (I’ve only read it, I’ve not tried to run it.) While it’s a great example of the thought processes that you might use when creating an investigation based on a story, I would need to do a fair bit of work to bring it to the table.

Random tables

Following Horrible Abysses are eight pages of random tables – contents of a desk drawer, things found halfway up a staircase, newspaper names. 

These feel a little unnecessary. There are some lovely entries in the tables, such as “Oddly arranged formula set down in soft pencil: won’t add up,” or “Ring with a dozen keys, all snapped off bar one.”). But for me, they would be better in an investigation so they can be rolled at the appropriate time.

The Haunter of the Dark

This section reprints Lovecraft’s The Haunter of the Dark, highlighted and annotated to indicate gameable sections.

The Haunter of the Dark, annotated

As I hadn’t read The Haunter of the Dark in about 30 years, I was pleased to read it again.

Overall

I do like seeing how someone might use a short story to create an investigation. It’s not quite how I would do it, but that’s ok. (I am more likely to take the broad strokes of the story and transplant them somewhere else – but I already know how to do that!)

It’s interesting to compare this with Graham Walmsley’s Stealing Cthulhu. The two work well together, as while Stealing Cthulhu takes a big-picture look at adapting Lovecraft’s work for gaming, The Haunter of the Dark takes a more detailed look at a specific investigation.

However, the one thing that I felt is missing is a final investigation that a Keeper can run with minimal fuss. In my mind, Horrible Abysses is too much of a proto-scenario; a fair bit of work is needed to get it to the table. I would have liked to have seen a final, tightly written investigation stripped of the discussion and options. To keep to the existing page count, this could replace the random tables.

So that’s The Haunter of the Dark. A lovely look at how you might adapt a story into an investigation.

Interviewed!

I've been interviewed on Geek Native! Which feels very odd.

The interview is here.

Dramatic poles in Hillfolk one-shots

I’ve run five or six sessions of one-shot Hillfolk/DramaSystem now, and I’ve never given dramatic poles much attention. 

Mechanically, they don’t do much. Their interaction with the rules only occurs at the end of a session.

According to the rules: 

At the end of each episode, each player in turn (in seating order) makes a brief statement, highlighting how he entertainingly brought out his character’s dramatic poles over the course of the episode, in relation to the episode’s theme.

Any story with a theme inherently includes the opposite of that theme. A story about war is also about peace; a story about hunger is also about nourishment; and a story about love also threatens the possibility of lost love. Therefore, you can describe your character as either reinforcing or undermining the theme.

You might describe yourself moving from one pole to the other, or bringing both poles into your characterization at different points.

…

All participants then vote, ranking the other players in order, with #1 the best score, #2 second best and so on. The argument is just a reminder: voters base their rankings on how well the players brought out their dramatic poles in relation to the theme, not how skillfully they made their cases. Moving from one pole to another in the course of an episode is a good thing. Vote against players who, episode in and episode out, stress a particular pole and ignore the other. Players do not rank themselves. No one ranks the GM, who never gets bennies. The GM votes, too, ranking all of the players.

The GM then totals each player’s vote tally. The number of drama tokens a player has in hand is then subtracted from this number. 

The two players with the lowest scores gain one bennie each.

Bennies are the campaign currency, and are kind of like super drama tokens. In a one-shot they’re worthless, of course. 

And so, as a result, I hadn’t paid dramatic poles much attention.

However, I now think that was a mistake.

DramaSystem and Furnace

A couple of things happened at Furnace when I ran Success2Soon, my pop group playset.

First, Paul Baldowski was playing and joked that he felt that Robin Laws specialised in designing RPGs that fixed things in gaming that didn’t need fixing. In Hillfolk’s case, it’s challenging players who say, “My character would never do that.”

Second, at the end of the game, I asked the players to highlight how they brought out their dramatic poles over the course of the session. And we voted on them, with the person with the most votes “winning”.

That was interesting, and worth doing again. But next time I run a DramaSystem game, I’m going to emphasise dramatic poles even more.

Because they help roleplaying.

“She’s rich…”

The example I always use of a dramatic scene is in Star Wars (as I still think of it), or to give it its full title, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

We’re on the Death Star, and Artoo has just told Luke that Leia is in the detention centre. Luke tries to persuade Han to help him rescue Leia. It’s a dramatic scene – Luke is the petitioner, and Han is the granter.

Luke initially fails, but eventually succeeds by appealing to one of Han’s dramatic poles: money (paying off the bounty on his head). Han’s other dramatic pole at this point is loyalty to his friend, Chewbacca. 

(Luke’s dramatic poles, on the other hand, are duty [responsibility to his uncle and aunt] versus adventure [running off with Ben to join the rebellion].)

My character would do that

Dramatic poles help explain why characters do things that appear to be against their self-interest (like sneaking into the detention centre in the heart of the Death Star).

And that’s why there’s space on the character sheet for other character’s dramatic poles. It means you can use them when petitioning, and help create the drama.

And another thing: procedural scenes

While I’m on the subject of Hillfolk, I stumbled across this AMA on Reddit. To save you the effort of wading through the questions, I found an interesting point about the design of Hillfolk’s procedural system (which seems clunky written down, but works fine in practice).

Question: Hillfolk is a game I have been wanting to play for a long time now, as soon as I can find the right group for it. The procedural resolution rules seem to be quite a divisive subject among players. Were there any particular design considerations that led you to implement the system the way that you did? What kind of impact do you feel that replacing the procedural resolution rules with rules from another system (as many people seem to do) would have on Hillfolk's overall gameplay?

Robin’s answer: The procedural system is designed to do what it needs to do without pulling focus from the central feature of the game, the dramatic scenes.

Because drama is more about dealing with the repercussions of disaster than chalking up wins, the system also imposes a much higher failure rate than you'd tolerate in the procedural-focused games we're all used to.

So if you replace it with a rules system you find aesthetically alluring and like to play around with, you'll likely:

a) call too many procedural scenes

b) succeed too often at them

(Remember that if everyone wants to succeed, you just say you did, with narration, and then get back to the interpersonal interactions.)

Which I found interesting. Hillfolk’s procedural system is harder because in a dramatic game, failure is more interesting than success. I wish the rules actually said that.

Next time on Hillfolk

So next time when I run Hillfolk I will:

• Make sure dramatic poles get the emphasis they deserve.
• Stress that the procedural system is tough because failure is more interesting than success.

(And next time will probably be at Consequences, at the end of November.)

Furnace 2024

A couple of weekends ago I attended Furnace, the RPG convention in Sheffield. As usual (previous reports here), I ran one game and played in three others.

Furnace is a lovely, friendly convention and would be the highlight of my gaming calendar if it wasn’t for all the other lovely events I go to.

Anyway, here’s what I played and ran.

Kids on Bikes

Fergus ran Swallows and Elder Things, an investigative scenario for Kids on Bikes where we played WW2 refugees sent to the country to stay with our uncle. (We were effectively Enid Blyton’s Famous Five – including a dog. I played Bea, nine years old and the youngest.) We uncovered dark secrets of an expedition to the Antarctic where our uncle had brought back something he shouldn’t. And thanks to some bad rolls, we all died in the climax to the ancient creature we really shouldn’t have reawakened…

Lots of lovely details (tongue sandwiches, ribbons, throwing sticks for Tommy the dog) – and everyone leaned into their characters. In fact, we had so much fun roleplaying kids that the scenario overran the slot a little – but it didn’t matter. Neither did the TPK ending.

DramaSystem (ie Hillfolk)

After lunch, I ran Success too Soon, a game for DramaSystem (ie, Hillfolk). My four players played members of a successful pop band who had reached the end of their first tour. We created the characters as usual in DramaSystem, and then their manager told them their record company wanted them to sign the next contract tonight, which kicked the game off.

While the band argued about what to do with the contract, I raised the stakes by introducing a parent who wanted to remortgage the house (and was relying on their income), and a music journalist looking for a scoop. We ended up with the band fracturing and one member going their own way.

This was the first time I had run this playset and it seemed to go well. As ever when I’m running a DramaSystem game, I felt drained at the end of it – I find it a very intense game.

Anyway, I’ve now put the playbooks on Itch.

Liminal

Elaine ran The Forgotten Station, a Liminal investigation into an old book which led us to a forgotten underground station and a dangerous magical ritual. I played Morgan, one of the Hidden, those who are easily overlooked (and inspired, I think, by Neverwhere).

As always, Liminal was a lot of fun. Lots of inventive London magic by our geomancer, and plenty of in-character chat, which I always like to see. We ended with a climactic battle against the forces of darkness (we won) and finished pretty much on the dot.

Mouse Guard

For my last game of Furnace, Guy ran Mouse Guard, where we had to track down a grain peddler who was suspected of being a spy. We faced terrible hazards including rain and a mink. I played Lillye, an enthusiastic guard mouse. (It’s fun being given an enthusiastic character – you just volunteer for everything!)

This was my first time with Mouse Guard. I had the book a while ago (a rare raffle win from a previous Furnace – it’s not the sort of thing I would normally buy), but I never got it to the table because it didn’t really make sense. And although it made some sense when Guy ran it, I felt the lack of system mastery when it came to the challenges – we were nearly defeated by the rain, and in the final battle, when two of us went up against a mink, we lost. I’m not regretting getting rid of Mouse Guard, but I’d like to play it again.

As for our adventure, we had a nice time, although it would have been nice to have a bit more time for some character stuff - we were all done a couple of hours or so.

Until next year

And that was Furnace 2024 for me.

There are other conventions at The Garrison (see them all here), but they are all too close to other gaming weekends, so I give them a pass.

Next on my calendar is Consequences, the freeforming convention in November.

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

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

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

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

Riding the railroad

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

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

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

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

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

Avoiding a railroad isn’t hard:

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

There - a non-railroad campaign.

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

Let’s not upset the boat

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

So what would I do?

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

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

So, some options.

The classic campaign

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

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

The Omicron campaign

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

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

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

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

The Ancient Hunters campaign

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

Agents of Seven

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

The rise of Tsamoykyo

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

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

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

The eye of God?

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

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

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

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

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

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

A timetable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1108: Tsyamoykyo takes secret Droyne cache on Andor.

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

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

1110: Tsyamoykyo meets the Creator!

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

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

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

Other factions

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

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

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

Getting the players involved

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

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

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

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

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

Return of the Ancients

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

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

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

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

And more spoilers!

Across the sector

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

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

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

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

Research Station Gamma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Braudel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The pocket universe

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

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

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

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

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

Overall

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

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