Second-edition romance rules for freeform larps

Writing Freeform Larps has only been out a year, and I already have changes I want to make. One of those changes is to the romance rules.

Following West End Lullaby (which I wrote about recently), I’ve made three changes.

• First, I’ve simplified it. I’ve removed the tracking of “negative behaviours” and changed it so that you simply decide if you want to end your romance. (In my experience, people rarely do this – it’s fun having your characters fall in love, and why spoil the fun?)
• Second, I’ve explicitly made it more flexible should you fall in love with more than one person. It’s up to you how you resolve that – do what you think is appropriate.
• Third, I’ve made the heart colours more LGTB-friendly.

West End Lullaby’s mechanic was actually a relationship mechanic, and you could use it for rivalries and friendships as well as falling in love. I thought about that, but my experience of West End Lullaby is that it didn’t really work as anything other than a romance mechanic.

For friendships, I prefer the “Pardner” mechanic we created for Tombstone. And rivalries? I don’t know, I’m not sure if they need a mechanic.

So here’s my updated romance system.

An example romance system

This is an example romance system that could be added to almost any freeform. Feel free to use it in your own games.

Romance rules

These are the optional romance rules.

Setup

First, decide whether you want to be involved in romance and how flexible you want to be. Get a pen/sticker from the GM desk and mark your name badge as follows:

• No heart: I’m not participating in romance.
• Black heart: I’m being romantic (heterosexual).
• Pink heart: I’m being romantic (queer).
• Gold heart: I’m being romantic (any).

If you’re not involved in romance, you need to read no further.

Second, your envelope contains a romance card with several behaviours you would like to see in a romantic partner. Choose the six you like the look of and cross out the rest.

(It’s probably best if you choose these once you have read your character so you choose behaviours that suit how you want to play your character.)

Third, decide how easily you want your character to fall in love (your “Romance Target”). We recommend starting with a Romance Target of three, but if you want to make things easier or harder, that’s great too.

That’s it for setup.

During play

During play, as people play the game, they will (deliberately or accidentally) behave in a way that makes your character feel more attracted to them (romantic behaviours). To help you keep track, we’ve formatted the tasks in a grid so you can check them off.

(We expect you will only have half a dozen or so people to track. To track more, you’ll need a separate sheet of paper.)

Add the romantic behaviour checks for each character – that’s your romance score. If your romance score equals (or beats) your Romance Target, congratulations, you have fallen in love with that person.

Falling in love

Once you have fallen in love with them. Here’s what you do:

First, tell someone. That might be the person you have fallen for, but it could be anyone.

Second, you have a new goal.

Help the love of your life succeed: You have a new love in your life, and you want them to succeed. Depending on how hard you have fallen, this may involve putting their goals ahead of yours. (You decide – we suggest using your romance score as a guide.)

Falling in love together

If the person you have fallen for also falls for you, that’s fantastic. We look forward to hearing all about it.

Unrequited love

If you’ve fallen in love with someone, but they haven’t fallen for you, well, that’s just how life works sometimes. Deal with it (through roleplaying).

Falling out of love

If your romantic partner does something you really don’t agree with (and you can decide what this is), then you are no longer in love with them. Roleplay it! (And again, tell someone.)

Falling in love with someone else

Keep tracking your scores. If another person beats your Romance Target, then you are in love with them as well! Does this mean you have changed your heart and fallen out of love with your original flame? Not necessarily – you decide! Tell people! Roleplay it!

A few guidelines

Respect other players’ boundaries: If a player doesn’t have a heart on their badge, please don’t track their romantic behaviours.

Don’t talk about the romance mechanics: We prefer it if you don’t discuss the specific dos and don’ts needed to win your heart. It’s OK to talk about them generally, but not to be too specific. Try to keep the conversation natural.

“What does a guy need to do you get you to fall for him?”

“A sense of humour is a good start.”

Ignore all these rules if you want: If these rules aren’t giving you the results you want, please ignore them, particularly if it’s more dramatically appropriate.

Example romance tracker

I would tailor behaviours to the specific freeform – accompany me to the county fair, dance with me at the ball, and so on.

Preparing freeform larps for others to run

My book, Writing Freeform Larps, covers writing and running freeform larps. However, it doesn’t cover turning a freeform from your notes into something that other people can run.

So, assuming that you’ve run your game and incorporated feedback, what else should you do to get your freeform into a state where others can pick it up and run it?

This is what I do. 

Files and formats

I usually publish games as pdfs, and I assume the buyer will print the game at home. If I’m happy for my work to be edited, I’ll give away the MS Word files. (In either case, I embed the fonts I’ve used.)

My game files for All Flesh is Grass

File naming I usually do like this: GameName_XX_Name_of_File. Where:

• GameName is the name of the game – or an abbreviation
• XX is a number, starting at 01 for the instructions
• Name_of_File is the name of a file, such as a character name or “Setting”

The instructions file is file 01 because that’s the first thing I want the GM to read. It introduces the game and explains how everything works. More on instructions below.

The setting and background file is (for me), normally file 02. It contains the overall setting and probably a cast list. It’s the pre-game stuff I will send out when I’m advertising the game.

Individual files for each character. These are individual files so they can be easily emailed to players in advance. If you don’t expect your GMs to do that, you can put all the characters in a single document.

I might have separate files for cards, name badges, contingencies or handouts, depending on how complex the game is. (If the game is relatively straightforward, I will put these in the instructions file.)

At Freeform Games, we have a separate summary file of key things for the host (so the timetable and answers to key questions) that can be used to run the game on the day (rather than the much longer instructions file). But I’ve not done that for other games.

One thing that’s been brought to my attention recently is that if someone is using a print service, it’s worth keeping stuff that needs printing single-sided in different files from anything printed double-sided. (That’s not something I’ve thought about before.)

Fonts and layout

Fonts: I use fonts from https://fonts.google.com/ as they have a good range and don’t have any copyright or licensing issues. I like EB Garamond as a body font, and then I use something suitable for headers. (I should probably try and find a font that I like that is more dyslexia-friendly, but I'm not there yet.)

Justified or ragged right: I find ragged right (ie, text aligned left, like this blog post) easier to read and looks better if you use Word to prepare your files. (If you know what you’re doing, then go for justified text. If you don’t know what I mean by “if you know what you’re doing,” then stick with ragged right.) 

Line length: The ideal line length is 50-70 characters. Long lines are harder to read, as are short ones.

One column or two: That’s personal preference, and you may find the line length and paper size dictate your options. 

Font size: As I age, I usually prefer a larger font that is easier on my eyes. I usually use EB Garamond at 14 points for body text. Or even bigger if I expect character sheets to be printed at two pages to a single sheet.

Page numbers: I put the file name and page number in the footer on each page. (Such as “Instructions page 1 of 12”.)

And use “curly quotes/apostrophes” (like these) rather than straight quotes or apostrophes.

Consistency and proofreading

If several authors contributed to your game, they almost certainly have different writing styles. Some might be verbose, others terse. Maybe someone types two spaces after a full stop, while others don’t. Maybe there are spelling differences, such as realize/realise (and many, many more.) Perhaps one person writes in active tense and others write in the passive tense. These differences all stand out.

I recommend that one person give everything a final polish, and they also arrange for a proofread by someone who hasn’t read the game before.

(Apps can help - I use Wordrake, Grammarly and PerfectIt. They’re not free, and you have to learn how to interpret them rather than follow them blindly, but they’re a great start and highlight things to look at.)

Instructions

What are you including in your instructions file? This is important - if GMs can’t follow it, they can’t run your game. This is how I structure mine:

• Intro: A brief introduction explaining the game in broad principles. This is an elevator pitch, including how long the game is likely to take and how many players and GMs are needed.
• Contents: A list of all the files that come with the game and a brief description of what’s in each. (For example: “AFiG_02_Setting – the setting and cast list for All Flesh is Grass. I also use this as pre-game publicity.”)
• Printing and preparation: What needs printing and preparing for the game.
• Casting: How to cast the game, including optional characters, if any. (This may need its own files or an appendix if you have casting forms or casting is complicated.)
• Venue: notes about the venue or game space – what does the game need?
• Game timetable: The timetable for the game, first in summary (perhaps as a table) and then each section in detail, finishing with how the game ends and debriefing.
• Rules: Talk about any game rules or mechanics - such as contingencies.
• Plots: Talk about specific plots – particularly details the GM needs to know. Give the GM an overview of what’s going on; don’t force them to read through all the characters to figure out what’s going on.

Other points

Try to make things easy for whoever is running your game. Remember, they’ve never seen it before – and they don’t know the game the way you do.

Make things easy to print. Group sections together where possible to make it easier to manage.

If your game has many handouts, make sure they are identified at the top of the page so they are easy to find during play.

A nice cover helps your game stand out. (I’m not an expert at this - I mostly just fumble around a bit.)

Publishing

If you’ve done all that and everything is ready, the next stage is deciding where to host your files. Broadly, four options.

Your own website: This is the easiest, if you have one. If you don’t have server space on your website, you can always link to a shared file on Google Drive or Dropbox or whatever.

Larp libraries: There are a couple of larp libraries keen to host your files. They include larplibrary.org and https://alexandria.dk/en/ 

Itch.io: I find Itch.io easy to use but there’s so much on there that it’s hard to stand out. My Itch.io page is here: https://stevehatherley.itch.io/

DriveThruRPG: The best source for all things RPG online – but there’s so much on it. You can also get your game published in hard copy, but you need to know what you’re doing. DriveThruRPG has stricter rules than Itch.io. I haven’t put any larps onto DriveThruRPG – just some tabletop RPG stuff and my Writing Freeform Larps book. My DriveThruRPG page is here: https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/21683/steve-hatherley 

Getting the word out

Then get the word out. This is something I’m not so good at…

Most Trusted Advisors at the table

A few posts ago, I said how much I was looking forward to playing Most Trusted Advisors. How did that work out?

As this was my regular group, we were playing online using Discord and Trello. We play for about two hours – more than that, and I get tired. (This seems to be an issue online, I can cope with longer sessions when face-to-face.)

Character creation

Character creation took us 90 minutes, which was longer than I expected, but I think that was an artefact of playing online. The playbooks seem straightforward to me, and I copied the key sections to Trello. However, a couple of my players struggled with some concepts, and everything took longer than I expected. I’m sure it would be quicker if we played face-to-face.

Our characters were:

• Margrave Hildegard of House Kolero (The Marshal) – a Zobian Traitor
• Earl Mikolas the Just of House Arachnia (The Treasurer) – an Inquisitor
• Count Lorentz the Surreptitious of House Blackgammon (The Blackguard) – a member of the Sky Chamber

Session #1 (what’s left of it)

With 30 minutes left, I kicked things off with the Liege bringing worrying news to his advisors: he’d heard the ruler of arch-rival Zobia has two birthdays. So he wanted another birthday, with the next one in two days’ time. Arrange it!

The Treasurer suggested a three-day holiday, which the Liege liked very much. (Actually, the Liege might have misunderstood the Treasurer, but three days it is…)

So, rather than raise money for the celebrations (which haven’t been decided yet), the Treasurer bought all the beer on the docks (to sell it back to the inns later). The beer is now in a marquee on the dockside, which is where we ended the session.

I felt it was a bit of a rocky start. I’m not sure why, but my players seemed to struggle with their characters. Although I felt they had lots to go on (character creation created plenty of links and agendas), it took a while for them to warm up. I don’t know if that was me, the game, them – or a mixture of all three.

After the session, I looked through their characters. I pulled together a short list of events, based on what came up during character creation, that I could use in future sessions. Where things were undecided, I filled in the blanks.

For example, the Marshal had the following agenda: “A notoriously lecherous and gullible noble knows a vital state secret. Discover it by any means necessary.” I decided who the noble was (Sir Oscar) and what secret they knew. Then, I added an event to my list: a message from the Zobian traitors asking for an update on progress.

I’m glad I took the time to do this, as it’s not something I could have done easily on the fly at the table. If I ever run this at a convention, I will need to think of how I do this. (I suspect the answer is to use cards. The game has tables, but cards are a physical reminder to refer to.)

Session #2: Planning the birthday

In session two, the advisors determined the outline of the birthday party. Day one will be a blessing of the realm, day two will be a tournament, and day three will be a grand ball. The players start to slot their various plans and machinations into the celebrations.

The Blackguard persuaded the wife of Lord Hawett (Lorentz's bitter enemy) to host it at their enormously extravagant mansion on the outskirts of the city.

The Treasurer’s money-making scheme worked (ish), but dockers complained about the high prices, and the innkeepers were unhappy. The Blackguard tried to steal the money, but The Treasurer spent a twist and foiled it.

I pushed an agenda by appearing as the Liege and asking that Father Brian (whom the Inquisition wanted to stop spreading radical messages of kindness and tolerance) speak at his birthday service. The Treasure arranged for Father Brian’s death, but this backfired by turning him into a martyr! (The roll was a partial success).

The Blackguard then spent a twist to get the Treasurer’s execution order and blackmailed The Treasurer with it in return for details of a secret passage into Lord Hawcett’s mansion.

Finally, the Marshal contacted the Zobian ambassador to arrange for the finest Zobian food for the birthday celebrations.

Session #3: The Blessing

Session #3 flowed smoothly as everyone’s plans started coming together:

The Marshal failed to negotiate down the quote for the Zenobian food, and the ambassador challenged the Marshall to a duel. It will be settled at the jousting.

The Blackguard, in disguise as Father Honeyfeather, gave a blessing on day 1 of the birthday celebrations. (I asked the player what he planned, and he gave such a long and detailed description of the service that I didn’t have the heart to make them go through it all again, so we cut straight to the end of the service.)

At the following cheese-and-wine event (held on the prince’s pleasure barge), Judge Strauss handed The Secret History of the Sky Chamber to the Treasurer. The pages were blank, but the Treasurer successfully concocted a potion that revealed the text. 

Over cheese and wine, the Marshall convinced Sir Oscar (see above) to reveal his secret: the name and location of the true Liege! (That the Liege was an imposter had been decided during character generation.)

Session #4: The Tournament and the Grand Ball

Our last session, and the players seemed to really enjoy themselves. Key moments included:

• The Blackguard married his many daughters off – some successfully, others less so.
• The Marshal killed the Zobian ambassador in a duel.
• The Treasurer foiled a plan by the Blackguard to steal The Secret History of the Sky Chamber.
• The Treasurer created false documents implicating the Zobian ambassador’s widow (who was getting much too cosy to the Liege).
• The Blackguard created a scheme to poison the wine for everyone except for his rival and the Zobian ambassador’s wife, then prevented that plot to turn himself into a hero and expose his rival and the ambassador’s wife as enemies of the state. The plan succeeded, although sadly, some nobles died because they were too eager to drink the wine.

We ended the game there, finishing with the PC’s legacies:

• The Treasurer became the Witchfinder General.
• The Blackguard became known as the famous figure in folklore, “The Black Count.”
• The Marshal changed the political system by installing the true heir to the throne.

Finally, we played ten minutes of How’s it going Geoffrey? This short minigame explores recent events from the perspective of the unluckiest peasant in the land – my players enjoyed this immensely.

So what did I think?

We enjoyed Most Trusted Advisors. We played for about five or six hours (excluding character generation), over four sessions.

While it started slowly, once my players got into their characters and pursued their agendas, things motored along smoothly. I suspect there’s more I could have done to get things going at the start, but at this point, I’m not sure what.

We found it extremely collaborative, with the players chipping in suggestions throughout.

I had a few issues with the rules.

Action ratings: I struggled with action rolls because, often, there wasn’t an appropriate action rating that suited what we were trying to do. Some examples:

• The Treasurer implemented a plan to kill a troublesome priest and make it look like the Marshal was to blame. This was carried out by underlings, as obviously, the Treasurer wouldn’t dirty his own hands. However, there isn’t a “scheme” action rating. We used Ruin for this action, but at a few times, we scratched our heads trying to work out what action rating to use.
• Our characters persuaded NPCs to do things several times. However, there isn’t a “persuade” action rating. We fell back on Appease and Bluff rather too often.

Maybe we were playing it wrong, but it took less than an hour of playing for us to hit some of these issues. So following session 2, I changed the action rolls:

I replaced Ruin with Scheme, merged Survey into Study, and introduced Persuade and Scheme. I grouped the abilities by “base ratings”:

• Physical: Balance, Duel, Shadow, Skulk
• Mental: Bewitch, Concoct, Study, Scheme
• Social: Appease, Bluster, Disdain, Persuade

The players put 3 points into the base ratings (Physical/Mental/Social – no more than 2 points in any one base rating) and then 3 points into the specialisms (no more than one each). Their action rating was their base rating + specialism.

Doing it that way meant that if there wasn’t an appropriate specialism, I could use the base rating. This system worked well – I had no problems with dice rolls for the rest of the game. 

Twists: Twists are powerful; they let the players avoid conditions and introduce new elements into the game. Players started each session with three, but because our sessions were short, my players always seemed to have plenty. Next time I will reduce the number of twists.

Conditions: I found the conditions suggested in the rules (angry, bankrupt, scandalous, etc) hard to apply to our dice rolls. I found it easier to create story-based misfortunes and complications, but I didn’t ever inflict a condition on a PC (although the players used twists to avoid a couple).

While I felt the rules were okay, they didn’t support play particularly well, and I was fighting them before I changed action ratings. 

Scenes: I recently ran a couple of games of Hillfolk at AireCon and have been thinking about the difference between the two games. While I don’t think Most Trusted Advisors needs Hillfolk’s dramatic focus, I wonder if it would benefit from scene discipline. I ran it as I would a traditional TTRPG, and in hindsight, that may have been a mistake.

Revisiting the pdf, I discovered today that Most Trusted Advisors uses the word scene liberally (“scene” appears 25 times in the pdf). But it never explains what it means by “scene”, nor how to set/frame/close them – and whether scenes are framed by the players or the GM.

So what works best? A fluid trad-like approach, or defined scenes? Next time, I’ll try more formal scene framing.

(Bizarrely, even though I’ve done scene framing in other games, I didn’t think to try it. I’ve only thought about it now. I’m not sure what that says about me.)

Overall

For me, Most Trusted Advisors wasn’t quite as good as I had hoped. While the characters and background and secret societies were wonderful, I found two areas let it down:

• Getting started: It took us a while to get properly into our stride. Was that the game, or was that us? I don’t know, but I think the game could have done more (or offered advice) to get things going.
• System: Given its lightness, I found the system fiddlier than necessary (and that’s aside from making a mid-game patch). 

I can’t imagine ever running Most Trusted Advisors as anything other than a one-shot (even though we took four sessions, I regard our game as a one-shot), and it could be simpler and fine-tuned to make that easier.

Most Trusted Advisors

You can get Most Trusted Advisors from the creators’ page on Itch.io, here.

Pardners

For the Once Upon a Time in Tombstone freeform larp, we created a mechanic for non-romantic relationships. We called it Pardners, and this is how it worked.

Pardners

Butch and Sundance. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. The Lone Ranger and Tonto. They’re more than friends – they stick with you through thick and thin. They’re people you can rely on. We call them Pardners.

Pardners help each other out and come to each other’s aid in times of hardship. A Pardner won’t let you down. A Pardner will help you achieve your objectives, as you will help them achieve theirs.

Everyone has at least one Pardner ability card. You can’t use your own Pardner ability – you must exchange it with someone else. You’re now Pardners!

It’s up to you whom you choose as your Pardner, but we recommend waiting for a suitably dramatic moment before offering to become Pardners with someone. Perhaps they have intervened in a fight to help you, loaned you a poker stake, or even just bought you a whisky.

A Pardnership may be broken at any time – just return the Pardner ability and ask for your own back. It must be returned immediately. However, you should only break a Pardnership with good reason, and don’t be surprised if your ex-Pardner holds a grudge.

If you break a Pardnership, you must give your ex-Pardner a reason why. Then, act out the breaking of the pardnership – preferably in front of other people.

Romance between two Pardners automatically supersedes, and breaks, the Pardnership. Return each other’s Pardner ability cards.

Pardner abilities

Each character then had a special ability that they gave to their Pardner. Some examples:

Bill Cobb's Pardner: Bill Cobb's reputation extends to his friends. Whoever has this ability may not be arrested for any reason, provided Bill Cobb is still Sheriff.

Jessica Drummond's Pardner: Jessica Drummond's pardner may use this card instead of tearing up or checking off one of his/her abilities.

Johnny Ringo’s Pardner: Play at the start of combat. If Johnny Ringo is in the gunfight, add +1 to your Accuracy. If Johnny is not present, subtract 1 from all your opponents' Speeds (they need to watch their backs...)

Kit Shelleen’s Pardner: When competing against somebody with a cut of the cards, one use of this ability will make your 'cut' exactly one rank higher than theirs. You cannot use this ability to beat an Ace.

About Once Upon a Time in Tombstone

Once Upon a Time in Tombstone is a weekend-long freeform for 60+ players. It’s based on various Westerns, including Tombstone (of course), Silverado, The Big Country, Maverick, Pale Rider, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and many, many more.

I co-wrote Once Upon a Time in Tombstone, along with Heidi Kaye, Tony Mitton, AJ Smith and Paul Snow. 

I’ve written about it here.

First impressions: Mysteries of the Ancients (part 2 – writing, layout and structure)

This is the second post about Mysteries of the Ancients. Last time I talked about the campaign, this time, I’m looking at the writing, structure, and layout.

Okay, a quick warning. In this post, I am hugely critical of Mysteries of the Ancients – in particular, how it’s written and laid out and the structural decisions that don’t help a GM understand it.

I think a lot about this sort of thing. Making things easy for our customers is a key part of what we do at Freeform Games, and when something I care about gets it wrong, it presses a lot of my buttons.

(And if you think I’m singling out Traveller, check out my reviews of ALIEN’s Destroyer of Worlds and Heart of Darkness, where I’m equally critical.)

So if you are a fan of Mysteries of the Ancients, you may want to look away now.

TL;DR: Overwritten, badly structured, unhelpful layout

I found Mysteries of the Ancients hard to read. I felt it was overwritten, had a bizarre structure that didn’t help comprehension, and would have benefitted from a layout that helped separate background information from adventure text.

So let’s look at each of these in detail.

Writing: less is more

I had three issues with the writing in Mysteries of the Ancients. First, it has a lot of padding – it’s not concise and clear. Second, it’s often vague when it should be clear. Third, there’s too much unnecessary information.

Overwriting: Adventure writing isn’t fiction. It needs to be concise and clear, conveying enough information to the reader so they can run the game for their players. Unfortunately, I found Mysteries of the Ancients neither concise nor clear.

As an example, I edited the text about the enhanced security case (page 56) from 432 words to 225. The result was concise and readable, and it included everything I needed without the superfluous waffle. Similarly, I reckon the section on Omicron Division (pages 24 and 25) can be cut from over 1300 words to around 400 without losing anything important to the campaign. 

So with a good editor, I reckon Mysteries of the Ancients could easily be 50% shorter. Shorter, punchier, livelier and a more enjoyable read.

(It is not lost on me that Secrets of the Ancients is a shorter book but has more playable material in it.)

Vague when it should be clear: In many places, Mysteries of the Ancients is far too vague. It drops hints rather than clarifies. Sometimes explanations turn up later, and sometimes they don’t. It's okay to present the players with puzzles - it's not okay not to tell the GM about them.

Some examples:

• Page 73 contains the first description of a village. It says, “One building stands out, much bigger than the others…” A page or two later, we learn who owns this building, but why not be clear and refer to the page where the building is described? Or use the map reference?
• Regarding an Ancient artefact, page 90 says, "For the present, the purpose of [redacted] remains decorative only." But Mysteries never resolves this. There’s not even a hint as to where or when the artefact’s true purpose might be resolved, whether in this campaign or a later one. I found this tone irritating – why not just explain it to the GM?
• Page 94 refers to a ship that seems to travel without using a J-drive but says, "Either [redacted] was carried aboard another ship during these movements or she travelled by some mysterious means." This is never explained.
• Chirpers are mentioned several times without explaining what they are. (There isn't even library data for them.) I know most GMs will know what a Chirper is, but given the exhaustive detail about trivial items elsewhere, their omission is odd.

Unnecessary information: Mysteries of the Ancients is full of superfluous details that aren’t needed for the campaign. For example, a short scene (maybe one session max) on Egypt starts with around four pages of unnecessary background detail. This includes two paragraphs on the 100th fleet, which does not feature in the campaign.

It’s like this throughout Mysteries. So much of the detail is irrelevant and could be summarised, leaving the GM to improvise should the PCs go off-piste. Instead, I imagine some GMs will be paralysed by the detail, worried that they will get it “wrong.” I appreciate that some might enjoy detailed descriptions of a particular starport or the composition of the 100th fleet, but if it's not relevant to what's going on, that's not me. (I would have less of an issue with this material if it were clearly separated from the adventure material – as I discuss below.)

Structure: creating clarity through structure

Mysteries of the Ancients’ structure is bizarre, so say the least.

The campaign starts with an overall summary but goes quickly downhill after that. In the 45 pages of dense writing that follow the introductory summary, we have:

• The Legend of Twilight's Peak.
• Who and What were the Ancients – the truth about the Ancients.
• Ancients Hunting, which describes the Ancients Hunters community and how the Travellers might come to the authorities’ attention. However, there's no list of the Ancient Hunters themselves – they’re scattered throughout the book (it would be much better if they were in one place). Also missing are the various theories that they believe.
• Omicron Division, a secret Imperium department.
• Droyne and the Ancients, which is mostly about the Droyne and not really about the Ancients. (This should have been an appendix.) It refers to someone called Yusote, but we don't know who they are yet.
• Project Gannessa, which starts talking about Research Station Gamma but then morphs into a black project run by Omicron. There are also a few pages about [redacted], which is nasty, but why is it here? This section has paragraphs that start with things like, “This adventure is initially about…” which suggests it was written to go later in the book.
• Glisten subsector and District 268. Well, mostly Glisten – almost nothing about District 268 (which is awkward as one adventure takes place in District 268).
• Incidental characters. Five pages of incidental characters that a GM can use for colour. Why isn’t this in an appendix?

Finally, we get to the start of the campaign itself. Apart from the sheer drudgery of wading through it all, the main issue with all this early material is that it lacks context. Why do we need to know about these things? It’s just dry, overwritten background material.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the structure of the individual adventures is also unhelpful.

In Fleeting Memoriam: This adventure is a monster hunt, starting on page 70 and finishing on page 91. Unfortunately, its complicated structure makes it hard to follow. For example:

• The first three pages describe the planet and could be cut right down. Most of it isn’t relevant to the adventure and could be moved to library data or made clear that it’s background material (more on that below).
• The details of the village are on pages 73, 78 and 81-83. Put it in one place!
• The adventure timeline is covered in several places, making it hard to follow.
• The equipment (the guns and the medical device) could happily fit on one page. (They could even be combined with other equipment in the campaign game in a “Ship’s Locker” section elsewhere in the book.)
• The section about how the investigation proceeds is on pages 80 and 90-91.
• Very little is cross-referenced. There are maps, but apart from the initial description, they’re not cross-referred to at all.
• The adventure is split in the middle by a room-by-room description of a locked starship and its deck plan. While its contents are important for the campaign, the only space relevant for In Fleeting Memoriam is the cargo hold (which is open – internal doors are locked). There’s then more detail about the ship after the adventure – which is where I would put the deck plan and room-by-room description (other than the open cargo hold). In Fleeting Memoriam should focus on the monster hunt – not the extra stuff needed for the campaign.
• Information about the monster hides in several places in the book. I wanted to find out where the monster came from and I knew I'd read that one of the NPCs had tracked it down, but could I find it? It wasn't in In Fleeting Memoriam (which has several "What happened in..." headers), and it wasn't in the chapter describing the monster (and its origins) in great detail. I eventually found it on page 13, which talked about the Legend of Twilight's Peak!

This uncoordinated approach isn’t limited to In Fleeting Memoriam. The whole book is like this.

Layout: making things easy to find

Overall, I like Traveller’s current graphic design and layout. The two-column text is clean and usually easy to read. However, in Mysteries of the Ancients, I found it hard to differentiate between adventure text and setting text. That made it difficult to identify key points that move the adventure on. 

This, for me, is a key element in writing RPG adventures: keeping setting material separate from the adventure. It's not always easy, particularly with a detailed, fictional world like Traveller. But using layout to separate adventure material from setting material would go a long way to making the Mysteries easier to comprehend.

And I don’t mind the background material. There’s more than I need, but I appreciate that some GMs might like the extra detail. What I object to is not being given a choice as to whether I need to read it or not. Keep it separate!

Some easy examples of things Mysteries could have done:

• Made more use of handouts. Mysteries has a couple, but I would add the books (Professor A’s work and the analysis of Twilight’s Peak, perhaps by a student at Regina University) and much of the world background data (perhaps as extracts from travel guides). Some of this could also be library data.
• Provide all the maps as player-facing handouts without the references.
• As I said, I would put the equipment in its own section and cross-refer to it when needed.
• Highlight key sections of the adventure – material the PCs need to progress to the next stage – instead of hiding it in the text.

Overall

“I apologize for such a long letter—I didn't have time to write a short one” – Mark Twain

Fixing the writing, structure, and layout isn’t hard. But it takes care and effort – and the ability to recognise that a campaign book is a game manual to be used by a GM, not a story to be read. It’s a shame we’re in 2024 and still haven’t learned that.

Am I going to run Mysteries of the Ancients? Probably not – it seems too hard to run.

Will I get Wrath of the Ancients? Almost certainly, because I want to see how everything wraps up, and I still like the Ancients.  But I’ve lowered my expectations.