Meeting a Mossie

In 1942, an eighteen-year-old John Hatherley (my father) joined the RAF and spent the next three years racking up over 500 hours and flying anti-shipping sorties in World War 2.

He was a navigator rather than a pilot (and at the end of the war went on to become an instructor) and joined 143 squadron based out of Banff in Scotland. There, he flew in Bristol Beaufighters before, in October 1944, De Havilland Mosquitos replaced the Beaufighters. The Mossie was definitely his favourite.

He flew in the FB Mk. VI, the one with the rockets under the wing. (I remember building a 1/72 Airfix Mosquito Mk VI when I was a kid.)

(The video above is an RAF propaganda film explaining the kind of missions that Dad flew.)

So, of all the WW2 aircraft, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Mossie. Not only was it arguably the most successful aircraft of the War (depending on how you measure success, of course), but it just looks right – clean and elegant. The fact that Dad flew in it is a bonus.

Seeing the Mosquito in flight

Although we went to numerous air shows when I was growing up, I don’t remember ever seeing the Mossie in flight. There was one still flying back then, RR299, but I don’t remember seeing it at an airshow.

I was lucky enough to see RR299. In the mid-90s, I was working on a site building the Flintshire Bridge over the River Dee near Queensferry, and I remember hearing the roar of Merlin engines and seeing a familiar silhouette banking above me.

That was only a day or two before its tragic crash at Barton Aerodrome.

And that was the last example of an airworthy Mossie anywhere in the world, until New Zealand’s Glyn Powell restored KA114 in 2012. There are now three (I think) airworthy Mossies in the world. There are none in the UK, though. At least, not yet.

Mosquito experience

Which brings me, eventually, to last week and the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre’s Mosquito Experience day that my brother Phil and I attended. The museum is now the home to Tony Agar’s restored Mosquito NFII HJ711, a night-fighter variant, that he has been working on since 1971 (so over 50 years!). And now the museum offers experience days to get up close and personal with the machine. (And if you really wanted, you could sit in the navigator’s seat while the aircraft was taxying.)

(Yes, I’ve spelt taxy correctly. That surprised me as well.)

We arrived at 9:30, just in time to see their part-restored Lancaster, Just-Jane, being wheeled out of the big hangar. Phil and I checked in and enjoyed our complimentary pot of tea (and a magnificent breakfast bap, which wasn’t free) before heading to the Sergeant’s Mess for a Mosquito talk.

There were 50 of us in total, almost everyone my age or a little older. And mostly men, with a couple of supportive partners.

The talk was very entertaining, covering the Mossie’s history and key operations (which I suspect pretty much everyone in the audience knew inside-out). The discussion about Mosquito movies was interesting, but there are so few of them. I made a note to watch The Bombardment (aka The Shadow in My Eye, on Netflix) and The Shepherd (on Disney+).

Then an ex-RAF pilot dressed up in the kit that a typical Mossie crew would wear. (He was actually dressed as a navigator - so what Dad wore.) That was fascinating – it’s so bulky. I hadn’t realised that the pilots would have to attach their parachutes to their harnesses before leaving the aircraft!

After that, it was time for the first taxy session, when we watched the Mossie fire up its throaty Merlin engines and trundle up and down the airfield. (It wasn’t as loud as I was expecting, but then it didn’t get anywhere near full power.)

Then lunch, a very nice ploughman's which Phil and I dutifully ate, despite not being even remotely hungry. We sat next to another Mossie fan – he was here because it was "the best," which we didn’t argue with.

After lunch, we got up close and personal with HJ711 and poked our heads in the cramped cockpit. This was done in small groups, and while we waited for the other teams, we looked at the rest of the museum, ate a complimentary cream tea (cream first – we are Devon born and bred!), and leafed through Dad’s logbook, which Phil had brought.

Then, HJ711 was wheeled into the main hangar and its owner, Tony Agar, gave a talk explaining his journey in restoring his Mossie over the last 50 years. HJ711 isn’t just one Mossie – he thinks it’s made up of 50 different Mosquitos.

Finally, HJ711 was wheeled out for the second taxy session of the day. Phil and I watched it fire up and taxy away, and then we headed out and home.

Other links

Here’s another Mosquito restoration project, the People’s Mosquito.

And here’s news about a Mossie FB. VI  that may be taking to the skies in the UK in the next year or two.

And even more photos

Because the Mossie is just beautiful…

The Lords of Midnight

I have become slightly obsessed with The Lords of Midnight, an old computer game from 1984 that I remember playing on the ZX Spectrum. I found an excellent adaptation on the Google Play store, and I’ve been playing that on my tablet.

And it’s excellent. And hard.

By World of Spectrum, Fair use, Link

A little history

The Lords of Midnight was written by Mike Singleton and originally released in 1984 for the ZX Spectrum (and was soon converted for other computers). The game featured an innovative 3-D effect that made playing the game feel like you were exploring a world. Features would appear on the horizon and get larger as you approached. It was amazing. 

The game is clearly inspired by The Lord of the Rings. You start by controlling the Fellowship of the Ring, er, I mean four characters: Aragorn, Gandalf, Elrond and Frodo. Sorry, I mean Luxor the Moonprince, Rorthron the Wise, Corleth the Fey, and Morkin, Luxor's son.

Against them is Doomdark the Witchking (ie Sauron), who has locked the land of Midnight in perpetual winter.

There are several paths to victory. Morkin can seek Doomdark’s ice crown (rather than the one ring) and destroy it (there are several ways this can be done). Or you can try for a military victory by recruiting the titular lords and winning on the field of battle, which is much harder and takes much longer.

The map (from here)

As for Doomdark, he wins if both Luxor and Morkin are dead, or if Morkin is dead and he conquers a particular citadel.

The game in 1984

I loved The Lords of Midnight, and remember playing it long into the night, in the corner of our lounge where our ZX Spectrum was plugged into our television. I think this must have been during the summer before I went to university, so I had time to spare.

I don’t remember the game being particularly difficult – I remember winning twice: the easy way and the hard way. But my main memory of the game was exploring the land, watching mountains and forests and keeps and armies appear before me.

The game in 2025

Mike Singleton passed away in 2012, but The Lords of Midnight lives on as Chris Wild continues to support the game and bring it to Android, Windows, iOS and OSX. His site, thelordsofmidnight.com, is full of useful information about the game. (And hints and tips, which I found useful as I’m too impatient to want to have to learn everything from scratch.)

The game plays well in 2025 – assuming that the 8-bit graphics do not put you off. For me, as long as the game is good, I don’t really care about the graphics. And is the game good? I think so.

On Android, the game seems a bit slicker than back in 1984. Certainly, it’s faster. But it also seemed harder.

State-of-the-art 1984 graphics

It took me a couple of games to win – I made a couple of mistakes in the first few games, as I was learning how to play again, running around the map, recruiting lords and trying to remember where things were.

I think I won my third game (the easiest way), but then spent several games (and more hours than Mrs H knows about) trying to win militarily. This seems to be much harder than I remember – but maybe I didn’t win militarily last time? Or perhaps I just got lucky?

Anyway, the military game consists of running around the map, recruiting lords (and getting them to recruit more) and their military forces. There are more than 30 characters, and they’re scattered all across the map.

Along the way, Doomdark’s ice fear grows – characters grow demoralised and tired and can’t always continue. But as you win more and more victories against Doomdark’s forces, your troops’ morale improves.

Things I liked

Reliving the 80s: It’s such a good game, and challenging. It’s not easy to win the military victory. And it feels epic, despite its 8-bit origins.

Winning: And finally, I beat Doomdark on the battlefield. It took a long while – victory came on day 73. This time, I retreated to the fortress in the south and waited for Doomdark to attack, and then headed north. I may try something else next time and see if I can do it sooner.

The automap: This is a huge improvement from the old days. Back in 1984, we had to take copious notes. Now, the game creates a map as you go along, so you can see where everything is. It’s a huge help – I wouldn’t want to play The Lords of Midnight without it.

Finding all the lords: I used this page to create a rough map so I knew where to find them. Even then, it’s not easy. (Korinel the Fey is particularly hard to recruit, as they are under attack early in the game. I spent one game fruitlessly searching for them, not realising they had already been killed.)

Grouping: The game is much easier when you can group the lords and move them by controlling their leader. It’s only a shame I didn’t discover it earlier!

The Lord of Midwinter: After Mike Singleton died in 2012, Chris Wild added The Lord of Midwinter to the game as an Easter egg. I saw him a few times.

Things that could be better

User interface: While the user interface is undoubtedly better than we had back in 1984, it could do with a couple of improvements. For example, I would like to have the map button (which I used all the time) on more screens. Maybe all of them.

Battle reports: It would be nice to read a single battle report, instead of going through each character to see how they fared. (I quickly stopped.)

Lords without armies: I carelessly lost a few lords to wolves and skulkrin because I had forgotten they weren’t travelling with an army. (Or maybe they had lost their army in battle.) Lords with armies cannot be killed by the random monsters roaming the land, but lone lords can. And so I lost a few lords while clearing the map of critters, which was annoying. An indicator to show that they weren’t travelling with an army would have been very useful! (This was before I discovered the group feature.)

Gender: The character gender split is very 1980s—all male. (Although I think an update may change that at some point.)

But Chris Wild is a one-man band and supporting The Lord of Midnight for the love of it, these are very minor niggles and I thoroughly enjoyed my return to Midwinter.

What’s next?

And now I’ve done it? Do I try a couple of the harder options (such as switching off the ability for troops to cross mountains)? 

I don’t know, but first I’m going to tackle Doomdark’s Revenge, the sequel. I remember this being much harder…

Aurora Horizon on Discord: after action report

Last week, Aurora Horizon had its world premiere, held on Discord with thirteen players worldwide. (Well, mostly UK-based, but with one player in the US and another based in, well, I don’t know.)

(Aurora Horizon is part 6 of a long-running first-contact series of freeforms that I’ve been writing. You can read more about the design process here.)

Playing on Discord

TL;DR – it was a success!

As ever, though, I had a few things to think about and reflect on.

Before the game

YAMM: I decided to try a new programme, YAMM (Yet Another Mail Merge), to send out character sheets and background info. That turned something I find to be a bit of a drudge into a learning exercise, making it much more interesting for me.

YAMM is a Chrome extension that lets you use mailmerge in Gmail. This is how I used it:

First, I created shareable folders in Google Drive for each character. Into those I put their character sheets and other information.

Second, I set up a Google sheet with columns for email address, first name, character, and a link to the 

Third, I drafted an email in the correct format, with curly brackets denoting the fields from the Google sheet. (I’m skipping the bit where I got the format wrong and had to send it twice…)

Fourth, I used YAMM to turn all that into personalised emails. (This is easy – just pick YAMM from a menu in Google Sheets.)

The free version of YAMM lets you send 20 emails per day, which was more than enough for me.

YAMM also saved me from remembering to bcc my emails, which I occasionally forget to do.

Recruiting players: I have a list of about twenty players who have played the earlier games on Discord, so I try and fill my game from them before looking further afield. What I should have done was use a Doodle poll to choose the date, but instead I picked a couple of dates far enough ahead that I thought wouldn’t cause problems. I then swapped to a Doodle poll when the dates I had chosen were causing problems…

When I had thirteen players, I stopped the poll, announced the date and asked everyone to fill in the casting form. And interestingly, people who I didn’t think could make the date (based on the poll) completed the form, and I ended up with a short waiting list.

I had a player drop (the game wasn’t for her), but I filled it quickly.

And unfortunately, I had a player who wanted to play but had forgotten to complete the casting questionnaire, which felt awful when she got in touch/

Player queries: A couple of days before the game, I could tell the players were reading their character sheets as I started getting queries. (Which was helpful for me, as I’d put the game to one side for a few weeks and was already getting rusty.)

I’m always happy to field queries, although some suggestions I pushed back on where I felt they were deviating from what I was after.

The game involves a mission to investigate an alien spacecraft on Callisto, but when the game starts, the players’ ship (the Aurora Horizon) has suffered some damage. This forces them to curtail their stay drastically, and they must prioritise what they want to achieve. So the game has difficult decisions, and I felt that some of the initial queries were attempts to try to circumvent those decisions.

If this were a tabletop game, I might have said yes (because I generally like to reward player initiative), but in this case, I said no because I knew it would affect at least some of the other players.

Errors and glitches

And as always, the players picked up a few errors and glitches. There are always errors, no matter how hard I try. I’ve learned not to take it personally, but accept that players will always spot something my tired eyes have missed.

If the error was spotted soon enough, I would change the shared documents. But as the game got closer, I just updated the master documents and made a note to adjust things during the game if needed.

On the day

Aurora Horizon was due to start at 7:30 pm, but I was online from 7 pm (and had told everyone that). Several people joined just after 7, and we chatted and caught up. At about 7:25 pm, I chased the last two, and we started at 7:30 pm.

I carried out a short briefing, and then we started play.

Starting positions: In hindsight, I should have given everyone a starting position where they spend a few minutes roleplaying in small groups. That seems to be particularly important when playing on Discord.

Instead, everyone moved to the galley and started talking.

(I’ve now changed that and created four starting positions, each with three characters. The last character, the computer, can start wherever they want.)

But I must remember this for the next game: Start the game with everyone in small groups.

The game unfolds

The first hour for me was relatively relaxing. I just listened to everyone roleplaying and answering the occasional query.

Then we had the first EVA period.

This was always going to be a challenge, as I had to give each away team their own briefing (which I posted to them via the Discord chat). This took a bit longer than I expected (and I made mistakes as the Discord interface was clunkier than I thought). And then, once I had given everyone their documents, I had to answer queries.

This would have been easy if we had been playing a tabletop rpg (as I had considered earlier), and easier if we were face-to-face (as the briefings would all be printed out and ready to go), but Discord just slowed everything down.

In a sense, I was trying to run four different tabletop rpgs at once. I do like a challenge, and I don’t think it was awful, but I don’t think I’ll be repeating the experience in a hurry!

(It’ll be easier in person, I tell myself!)

I’d scheduled the EVA period to take 15 minutes. That was always optimistic, but I don’t know if that was the challenges of Discord, or lots of discussion, but the first EVA period took over an hour, and we ended up not having time for a proper second EVA period.

We overran a little, and from the discussion afterwards, players were saying they could have continued roleplaying for another hour. But it was a school night, and I was conscious that some people needed to be up early the next morning.

As usual, not everything came out, and as usual, the game went in directions I hadn’t anticipated, but overall I was happy with how it went.

Highlights

A few highlights:

• Rich as CORA 9000, who used the HAL image as his Discord avatar and spoke in a robotic manner throughout the game.
• Tom playing Dr Halvorsen, who creeped out all the other players by playing the ship’s medic completely straight-faced and yet somehow managing to be sinister. 
• Alex’s sacrifice! Well, two sacrifices. I don’t want to say more, but I’m really pleased with the direction Alex took Lt Osborne.
• Elyssia, Daniel and Tony renaming their Discord names so that they would always be grouped on the Discord screens.
• Nathan as Commander Archer trying to keep a grip on everything.
• Chatting afterwards. I didn’t need to rush away, and chatted with some of the players after the game for about half an hour. I think there was a little frothing going on, which is one sign that they enjoyed themselves.

(I probably have more highlights, but those are the ones that come to be right now.)

Overall

So overall, the game was a success. I have a fair bit of feedback to incorporate before running it at Consequences, but I’m on with that.

As always with post-game amendments, I have to decide whether to address the bits of plot that didn’t emerge. Did that happen because we ran out of time, or were my clues too subtle? Or was it just how the game ran that time? It’s hard to say, so I’m not planning on making too many changes.

As for Episode #7, I have some vague ideas. But I’m not thinking about that too hard just yet.

Alien War

I stumbled across this video on YouTube recently, which brought back memories of a trip to London and a visit to Alien War in the Trocadero Centre in Leicester Square.

My memories of Alien War are a little hazy, which isn’t surprising given it was thirty years ago.

The conceit is straightforward enough – you take the role of VIPs being guided around a Weyland-Yutani facility by a colonial marine. It starts quietly enough, as you see eggs and things. But things go wrong when the alien critters escape.

I remember…

I was working on site, and was wearing a bright yellow high-viz coat. (I think it must have been winter, hence needing the coat.) High-viz was a novelty back then; there’s no way I’d wear something like that today.

I can clearly remember an alien appearing in a dark corridor beside us. It felt like it was pitch black, but I suspect we had all been blinded, and the alien appeared while our eyes were adjusting. It was very impressive – and surprisingly scary.

I don’t remember much about the lift sequence. The video talks about one of the VIPs being taken by an alien, but I don’t remember that – I think I was squashed in the far corner, away from where the victim was taken.

At one point, we all sat in a drop ship, all lined up in seats facing a central aisle. My brother and I were first in, and were against the wall, furthest from the door. Then an alien attacks through the roof (the queen, if I remember right), right above us! My brother was first through the door…

And other than it being really good, that’s about all I remember. It’s a shame it was damaged in a flood and closed. 

Anyway, here’s the AVP page on Alien War.

North Star 2025

North Star is a science fiction ttrpg convention held yearly in The Garrison Hotel in Sheffield. It is one of several ttrpg conventions held in The Garrison, but this was my first visit to North Star.

I don’t normally attend this one, because it’s a little close to Peaky. But as Mrs H was away, I decided to attend the Sunday of North Star. (So that was, for me, an unprecedented three weekends being away playing games!)

Anyway, I had a lovely time catching up with old friends and making new ones, and I played two games: Triangle Agency and Space: 1999.

Triangle Agency

Guy ran Triangle Agency, an investigative game. According to the blurb, “Player characters work at the Triangle Agency, an international corporation with influence in every industry. As Field Agents, players investigate and capture supernatural Anomalies that threaten the lives and comfort of normal citizens.”

So it’s pretty much like all the other investigative games out there, from Delta Green, the Laundry Files, Esoterrorists and even my own Other London. Triangle Agency does all this with a good dose of Dilbertesque office bureaucracy nonsense.

I played Jim, the intern, and Guy ran us through an investigation involving a noise-hating anomaly. It was very enjoyable and we wrapped it all up in good time.

Things I liked

Easy to roleplay: Triangle Agency characters are easy to roleplay. The character types are obvious tropes that were easy to work with.

NPC connections: To my delight, each character has three connections – people who are important to you. Even better, each connection is played by another player (rather than the GM). So one of the Intern’s connections is a “long-term situationship,” which I asked John to play, which was delightful. (I am a big fan of characters having connections, and I’m always surprised that so few games do this.)

Fail by default! In Triangle Agency, it is always assumed that you will fail at a task unless you can come up with a bizarre series of coincidences that mean that you succeed. (So to stop part of the anomaly getting away, we invented it getting tangled up in a dustpan and brush.) The agency will then warp reality to make those coincidences happen. And then you roll the dice.

While the result is much the same as just rolling the dice to succeed, narratively it’s very different – and contributes to the craziness and Dilbertesque vibe.

Things that made me scratch my head

Two huge hardback books! While the production quality is undoubtedly fabulous, it also seems rather over-produced. Guy’s boxed set included a sturdy box (with sections for the dice) and two hardback books. Given that I can’t imagine playing Triangle Agency more than a few sessions, it felt a little overdone to me. Yes, it’s gorgeous, and the game is good, but I doubt I would ever get my money’s worth.

Chaos: As we rolled the dice, Guy built up a stock of something called “chaos” that let him do things. The more chaos Guy had, the worse things were for us. It would have been nice to have seen a more visual representation of that, but my main issue with this (and I’ve now seen it in a couple of games) is I’m not quite sure what purpose it serves, as a mechanic. Isn’t it the GM’s job to put obstacles in our way? Do we need a mechanic to manage that? It feels a bit board-gamey, and although I like board games, I’m not that keen on them in my ttrpgs.

Anyway, I haven’t worked out how I feel about that kind of mechanic yet. (Slugblaster has bite, and that’s on my to-run list, so maybe I’ll figure it out then.)

Space 1999

Andy ran Space: 1999, the new Modipheus game using their 2d20 system, using the draft rulebook from the Kickstarter. He ran Project Arrow, an adventure from the rulebook, and this was his first time running Space: 1999.

Project Arrow is set three days after the event that rips the moon from Earth’s orbit. In that time it has accelerated 200 gees (!) and has now left the solar system (!!). It took us a while to figure this out, but I found it in the wonderful Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual that Andy had brought.

Anyway, I played Team Commander Carlos Rodriguez, one of the pregens. The game was okay – the group was great, but the adventure was a little railroady, and we struggled with the mechanics at times. 

Things I liked

A friendly table: I think most of the players were new to me, and as ever, everyone was welcoming and we had a good time.

Space: 1999: I didn’t watch Space: 1999 back in the day. I guess I must have seen an episode or two, and I know the basic premise, but I enjoyed playing in the ludicrous setting. Part of me wishes the game leant more into the trauma of leaving Earth behind, but that would be a very different game.

Things that made me scratch my head

2d20: Andy wasn’t that familiar with 2d20, and some of the players were very familiar with other 2d20 variants, so we weren’t always sure we were following the rules correctly. As I haven’t played a 2d20 system in seven or eight years, I couldn’t really comment.

A railroad: As I said, the scenario was very railroady, and some dice rolls didn’t seem to matter. We failed many of the early rolls, but that seemed not to affect the actual adventure. It also seemed to consist of more dice rolling than roleplaying.

Character stats: The choice of character stats and skills seemed a bit strange. From what I could see, characters don’t have a skill to roll when trying to do something physical (like get into cover from a meteorite shower). Maybe I’m missing something, but the skills are Command, Flight, Medical, Science, Security and Technical. It’s not immediately clear what we should use. (We didn’t consult the rules. Perhaps we should have.)

North Star themes

So while North Star has an SF theme, it had a couple of other themes for me as well.

Not my dice: In neither game did I get my dice out – because I didn’t have the right dice! Triangle Agency just uses d4s (madness, I know). I don’t own any d4s, so I used Guy and Declan’s official Triangle Agency dice instead. (The system is fine – you roll six d4s and look for threes. The official dice have red points to indicate success, so you’re really just counting the red points.)

And I only own one d20, so I didn’t bother getting that out but just rolled Andy’s d20s.

Running for the first time: For both games, Andy and Guy were running the system for the first time using a prewritten scenario. That’s something I’ve never done – I always feel like I’m on show when I’m running a con game, and so I usually run something that I’m familiar with.

But as far as I know, nobody cared that this was Guy and Andy’s first run at the game, so perhaps I should be more relaxed about running games I don’t know so well.

And next time?

I hope so. I enjoyed my brief visit to North Star, and hope to return again next year.

Fae’s Anatomy: a megagame

I’ve played a megagame! They’re great fun!

The first Saturday of May saw me at Leeds Armouries with 31 others, playing Fae’s Anatomy, a megagame written by Patrick Rose, John Keyworth and Holly Wall.

The game was organised by Pennine Megagames, who run megagames in Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield. It ran from 9:30 to 4 pm, and cost about £30.

Fae’s Anatomy

Here’s the pitch

"There's an epidemic of Green Fingers, the hospital porters are demanding more mana, and the head nurse keeps turning into a cat. Just another day in the world's premier magical hospital."

Research ancient magical secrets, embark on quests for rare herbs, or balance the departmental budget - then head home to your magical commune to plan the next community celebration. Fae's Anatomy is a relatively co-operative megagame with strong elements of resource management, creativity, and communication.

I joined the mailing list a couple of years ago, but this is the first megagame I’ve been able to play. (About a third of the players were new to megagames.)

I wasn’t that bothered about the setting. I just knew I wanted to play a megagame, and having one on the doorstep was too good an opportunity to pass up.

And what is a megagame?

According to Pennine Megagames, a megagame is “an activity for upwards of around 20 people, usually in teams and featuring both cooperation and competition amidst a historical or fictitious scenario.”

It’s similar to a freeform larp, but there’s more focus on rules and mechanics (resembling interlinked board games) than the pure character and roleplaying of a larp. (There is a lot of overlap. Chatting to some of the people I met, many had larped and some even wrote all-day murder mystery larps for their friends. One of the GMs [known as “Control” in megagames] recognised me from the Retford freeform weekends.)

One difference between a larp and a megagame is that in the latter, you are given a role rather than a character. So I was part of the Swanshire Maker commune (crazy steampunk engineers) and I worked in the Outer Souls Facility (basically a university doing research).

How Fae’s Anatomy works

Fae’s Anatomy was played over nine 35-minute rounds. Each round consisted of:

Commune phase (10 minutes). During this phase, we ran our commune board, which meant extracting mana and building things. This was also the time to swap information and resources with the rest of the commune. We also had to manage our morale and food, which we happily balanced.

Our commune board

Medicine phase (10 minutes). In this phase, we separated and played a different set of minigames. In my case, I went to the Outer Souls Facility and used researched artefacts and spells that my team could use in their games.

I could “upgrade” some of our workers by putting them through college.

This was fun – it meant meeting people from other teams and cooperating to complete research projects. (This was a very cooperative game.)

The Outer Souls Facility

Negotiation phase (10 minutes) – this was an opportunity to wander around the room and try to deal with some of the other problems, or enter into a commune festival.

Our problems included dealing with a goblin that was stealing names, an outbreak of sneezing that appeared to cause earthquakes (we implemented strict masking protocols), and dealing with a dragon that we ended up swearing fealty to.

Each commune had a festival and invited others to participate in silly games and activities. We had a paper plane competition, and asked others for blueprints for household appliances. Other communes’ festivals involved modelling fish out of clay, singing songs and dancing. (The festivals were optional, but lots of people joined in.)

Press phase (5 minutes). During the press phase, we returned to our communes, and the two reporters told us what was happening.

Compared to a freeform larp, this made the reporters really useful – they got their moments in the spotlight and were useful in sharing the news. And the fact that we had to sit at our communes and listen really helped – nobody was allowed to continue negotiating during this phase. (I’m sure there’s something here that freeforms can learn from.)

And there were no breaks. You could nip to the loo, but the game continued without you. We were encouraged to bring a packed lunch, and I ate mine during the commune and press phases.

But what was it like?

Busy. Hectic. Confusing. Loud. Friendly.

Other players said they found it stressful. Perhaps because it was my first megagame, I didn’t find it too stressful. (Maybe being cooperative made it less stressful as well – I don’t know.)

I came away quite tired, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Things I liked

Lovely people. Lots of lovely people, all playing a completely daft game. Many in costume, some (like me), having only made a token effort. Everyone was friendly, and I didn’t see or hear any arguments despite the stress.

Production design. The production design was good – the game rules and background information issued ahead of the game looked professional, and the many decks of cards had been properly designed and printed (they felt like cards from a regular board game). Some of the boards (such as the commune board and the faculty boards) were less polished, but none of it felt cheap.

The location. I liked the Royal Armouries as a location. We had a medium-sized room – we pretty much filled it, but even with 40 or so gamers in it, it never got too hot or stuffy.  And the Armouries has good public transport links and a large car park (which I used) nearby. Had there been a nearby tea and coffee vendor, it would have been perfect, but bringing a packed lunch wasn’t the end of the world.

Things that felt like they needed a bit more attention

There were, however, a couple of things that could have been clearer.

Did we win? In a purely competitive sense, I have no idea whether we won or lost. The overall winning or losing conditions weren’t particularly clear – I never really knew if we were winning or losing. I know the Outer Souls Faculty got nearly 200 prestige, but I don’t know if that was enough to be the best.  (I think it was, but anyway.)

It didn’t seem to matter very much, as everyone was having fun, but it was possibly an oversight. Or maybe I just missed an important announcement during the confusion.

Upgrading boards. It seemed really hard to upgrade both our commune board and my faculty board.  Commune upgrades were both expensive and underwhelming, so we didn’t upgrade anything. And I struggled to upgrade anything on my faculty board, either. (I did play some of that wrong – it was easy to miss stuff, not that it mattered much.)

The lack of upgrades was a surprise. From reading the rules, I could see that the boards could be upgraded, and because in regular board games, upgrading your board is normally key to winning, I had expected Fae’s Anatomy to be similar. But it seemed not. I know I got some rules wrong, but from what I could see, nobody had much success at upgrading.

After the game. The pub we convened in for a post-game natter was a little small, and we were mostly outside, which was a little chilly. I hung around briefly, but I got cold and didn’t stay long.

And overall?

I thoroughly enjoyed Fae’s Anatomy and would happily play another megagame. I’m not sure how far I’d travel for one, but I’d definitely play another in Leeds or York.

Peaky 2025

The last weekend of April saw me at the annual Peaky Games writing weekend, where 30 or so crazy fools gather to write and play freeforms. It’s my favourite gaming weekend of the year – friends, food, creativity, stress – and not enough sleep.

This year five games were written, Enemies of the Federation, On a Hot Summer’s Night, Miss Maypole: A Study in Saffron, Nodding Donkeys, and Ldrbrd.

Spoilers ahoy! (Perhaps just think of this as something to whet your appetite.)

Enemies of the Federation

Enemies of the Federation is for nine players. Criminals’ personalities have been extracted from their cryosleeping bodies to operate repair mechs to save their stricken prison ship. But things aren’t exactly what they seem.

I co-wrote Enemies of the Federation with Kath Banks, Megan Jones and Peter Jones. The core idea was Peter’s – the game is partly a balloon debate as the players discover that although there are nine personalities, they only have three bodies to return to. (Each personality has been extracted three times.)

Although the personalities weren’t identical (we made slight personality differences to each - althought this didn't really come out in play), it meant that there were three core characters. As the others were happy to write the characters (and to be honest, I suspect my terse writing style would not have been to everyone’s taste), I stepped back from that job and wrote the background document.

I was rather pleased with my background document. Instead of writing a normal background, I wrote it in the form of three year 5 lesson plans: the history, the geography, and one covering unhappy people. This let me write the background in bullet points, while hinting at the dystopian future the players would find themselves in. (The Federation is more Blake’s 7 than Star Trek, and each lesson plan finishes with an instruction to sing the Federation anthem.)

So that didn’t take me much time, so I had enough time to reformat an old game, An Ecumenical Matter, into a more polished format. That’s something I’ve been meaning to do for years, so it was nice to get that finally done.

The game seemed to go well, and the players said they enjoyed it. It ran for about 90 minutes, which seemed about right. I’m not sure what I would do to make it a longer game – we’d need more events and stringing a few discoveries out.

Then it was time for Nodding Donkeys.

Nodding Donkeys

Nodding Donkeys was written by Dave Collis, Adam Hayes, Kevin Jacklin, Michael Jones, Ezzy Pearson and Julie Winnard. Inspired by Slow Horses, it featured washed-up spies on a training course. For 8 players.

I played agent Possum, one of the Nodding Donkeys, spies who have been put out to Croydon House, where they can do no harm. Possum was an old-school spook, a little like Slow Horses’ Jackson Lamb, but without being as scarily competent (or gross) as Lamb is. So I embraced my inner Gary Oldman and enjoyed being old-fashioned and pretty obnoxious.

One thing I really liked was that each character had “superpowers” (abilities) and flaws, but to use a superpower, you had to display (somehow) one of your flaws. That seemed to work really well.

It was a lovely game, with a few rough patches here and there (but that’s always true of Peaky), and was my favourite game of Peaky 2025.

With the spies put to bed, it was time to go all Agatha Christie.

Miss Maypole: A Study in Saffron

Miss Maypole: A Study in Saffron was written by Graham Arnold, Nickey Barnard, Clare Gardner, Heidi Kaye, Sue Lee, Christi S and Mike Snowden. It is the third (and apparently the last) of a series of murder mystery freeforms written at Peaky, and is for 14 players. 

Anyway, I played the village verger, campanologist and budding archaeologist. While I had a few goals, none of them (I think) related to the murder, but that was okay – this was a game with a lot of convoluted plots, which I always enjoy.

Unfortunately, the verger felt a little underwritten. The stuff I was interested in was fine, but it felt tangential to the main plot (the murder and the film crew). I had a lovely time, but noticed that during the last third of the game, I was waiting for something to happen. I imagine that’s just a reflection of Peaky – a balanced 14-player game is hard to write in so little time at Peaky. Once polished and tightened up, I’m sure the verger will have enough to carry them through the game. (I don’t know if abilities are planned for the game, but a few might help.)

Interestingly, I wrote about the previous game back in 2016, and noted that I ran out of plot during that one as well. 

And with that, Peaky was over for another year.

On a Hot Summer’s Night and Ldrbrd

I didn’t play either of these games, but I heard good things about both.

On a Hot Summer's Night was written by Natalie Curd, Nick Curd, Phil Dall and Tym Norris. It’s a 1920s Buffy the Vampire Slayer game with vampires and a hellmouth, for 10 players, but I know little more about it than that.

Ldrbrd written by Jenny Donne, Kirstine Heald, Tony Mitton, Ewan Munro and Malk Williams. Ldrbrd features arcade game characters who are competing to avoid deletion, and is for 12 players.

Far Horizon: an after-action review

Far Horizon is a near-future hard-SF scenario for Cepheus published by Zozer and written by Paul Elliot. It is set in Zozer’s Orbital 2100 universe, although it’s fully self-contained and you don’t need that book to run Far Horizon.

I recently played the scenario online over two sessions. I bought the scenario between sessions, and now that we have completed the adventure, I have read it.

(I’m unfamiliar with Cepheus, but I do know Traveller, which I gather it’s based on. So if my comments on the mechanics are slightly off, that may be why.)

I’ve tried to keep this review spoiler-free, but I expect a few minor spoilers have crept in. (Think of them as teasers!)

The scenario

Far Horizon concerns a deep space mission to the Kuiper Belt. The crew have surveyed Pluto (their planned mission) when mission control tells them that a rogue xenoplanet (given the name Tartarus) will pass through the Kuiper Belt, giving them a 96-hour window to explore it. So six months later, our heroes emerge from cryosleep with the ship in orbit around Tartarus and 96 hours to complete their mission.

The conflicts in the mission are primarily environmental – the PCs will be battling time pressures (balancing the mission with their need to take breaks) and the sheer peril of exploring an exoplanet at -180C.

Far Horizon shares many similarities with the Aurora Horizon freeform larp that I’ve been writing since January. They both involve sending a manned mission into the icy depths of space, with crewmembers coming out of cryosleep and the opportunity to explore a cold icy world. So I was keen to both complete the adventure and buy the book. (I wonder if Far Horizon influenced my ship title? It’s possible.)

The DRV Far Horizon

The first part of the book concerns the DRV Far Horizon itself. The ship is a TL9 1000 dton deep space exploration vehicle. Although the book has Traveller/Cepheus stats for the ship, it really feels like a genuine Earth ship. I could imagine it popping up in a future series of For All Mankind or Allen Steele’s Near Space series. (Or in an ALIEN scenario, come to think of it.)

13 pages are dedicated to the DRV Far Horizon, including ship stats, a tour by one of the engineers, four pages of deck plans and the two auxiliary craft. These details are worth the price of admission, even before you include the adventure.

The only downside to all this material is that we didn’t actually use much of it during the game. (At least as players, maybe the GM was referring to them more.) I don’t think I ever looked at the deck plans.

The crew

The DRV Far Horizon has a crew of 12, and stats for each are provided, making it easy to run as a one-shot with each player controlling two or three characters.

When I played, we were originally going to have six players, each controlling two PCs. When it came to the second session, only three players could make it, so while we controlled our two original PCs, we controlled the others as and when we needed to. (It might have been smarter to have divided them all up between us at the start of the second session, but we didn’t do that.)

As is usual in Traveller games, the characters are just stats. There’s nothing to help a player bring the character to life. If I were to run Far Horizon, I’d ask open questions to create bonds and backstory between the characters: Who do you admire? Who irritates you, and why? Who is your closest friend? What happened on Pluto? That sort of thing. (And had I published Far Horizon, I would have included that in the adventure material.)

The characters are a bit odd, though. Given that these are specialists who have trained for years for this mission and are presumably the cream of the crop, there are a few peculiarities.

For example, one of my characters was Mission Specialist Shireen Langstrom: 648AB8 Age 38 Terms 5 Survival 1, Geomorphology 1, Mechanics 2, Engineering 1, Vacc Suit 0, Comms 0 

Shireen has a dexterity of 4. That gives her -1 on Dex rolls. And if she’s in a vacc suit, that’s another -1 (because in this world, vacc suits are cumbersome). I don’t see how Shireen passed the medical! (And Shireen isn’t the only one with a low physical stat.)

I brought this up during play (when I needed to make a Dex roll and discovered my penalty to roll), and one of the other players suggested that maybe it was a glitch from the cryofreezers. Maybe Shireen had the shakes or nerve damage from spending so long in the state-of-the-art-but-ever-so-slightly-experimental cryofreezers. That would have been a great part of the scenario – starting the game with the post-cryosleep medical and discovering that some characters have suffered some sort of damage. (I have used this idea in my Aurora Horizon freeform larp, although with memories rather than physical characteristics, as discussed here.)

Skill redundancies

Another slight oddity is that some skills are in short supply. Notably, there is only one medic. I am pretty sure that flight training would have covered all sorts of skills that the team might conceivably need, and I would expect several people to have Medic-1 or Medic-0.

Similarly, there are only three characters with pilot skill. The scenario talks about the lander needing a pilot and a co-pilot, so three characters with the pilot skill aren’t enough. One lander catastrophe and you’re down to only one pilot!

So I would rebalance the skills a little.

Vacc Suits

Far Horizon goes into some detail on vacc suits, and customising your suit is part of character creation.

Fundamentally, wearing a vacc suit makes doing almost anything harder. They’re cumbersome and awkward, and wearing one means you get a penalty for many rolls.

There are also general rules for working in a vacuum suit, along with rules for donning and doffing a suit in a hurry, and rules for carrying out hard work in a suit. Failure isn’t necessarily fatal – Far Horizon includes a table of suit malfunctions that range from inconsequential (erratic suit instruments) to irritating (visor keeps fogging up) to more consequential (suit puncture).

I liked the way the vacc suit rules add to the hard-sf atmosphere of working in an unforgiving environment.

Tartarus and the mission

The xenoplanet, Tartarus, is then detailed. This comes with a minigame involving how much the players can get done in their 96 hours, with criteria for success.

Early scans result in areas of the surface being highlighted for further analysis and exploration. The crew won’t have time to visit them all, however, so they must pick and choose. And as they do so, Tartarus will slowly reveal its secrets.

Far Horizon is very much a resource management game. As well as fatigue, players must balance the skills of the away team, the lander’s fuel reserves, oxygen supplies and more.

Exploring Tartarus is hazardous, and rolls are needed during descent and for landing (and for taking off, once the players are finished with an area). And more hazards await on the surface: Tartarus does not give up its secrets easily.

Failing a roll doesn’t necessarily result in disaster – many complications may result in the away team needing to cut short their mission, or becoming stranded.

Finally, there’s another problem that those left behind aboard the DRV Far Horizon must deal with. I’m not going to talk about it because I don’t want to reveal too much.

Getting home

Far Horizon wraps up with an explanation of what’s really going on and rules for getting home, which get harder the longer the crew overstay their 96-hour deadline.

Playing Far Horizon

I played Far Horizon over two online sessions, taking about eight hours in total using Roll20. We had five players and the GM in the first session, and three plus the GM in the second. I much preferred the second session, but I found Roll20 was struggling with six of us. (I prefer smaller groups.)

So during the first session, we conducted the initial surveys and landed on Tartarus. Our commander put himself in charge of managing time and resources – I was struggling with dropping out, so it was good that he could do that. We visited two sites on Tartarus and had to deal with the lander icing up.

In our second session, Roll20 worked better for me, and I helped with the planning. I don’t normally enjoy tracking things like encumbrance, but doing it as a team was fun.

I had decided that one of my characters wanted to make a mark, so while on the ground, I was winched into an ice canyon in search of strangely-coloured ice and explored a strange cave. I paid for my troubles – I twisted my knee getting out of the canyon, but the doc put me on painkillers so I could carry on.

Our game finished with our pilots making tricky piloting rolls to deal with an unexpected situation, and we left Tartarus for Earth in good time to get home.

One thing I really liked was Traveller’s skill chains. One of the players suggested we use them for several of the tasks, and the GM readily agreed. So we used them a fair bit, whenever we were working as a team. (I’m surprised that sort of approach doesn’t appear in more games – I will certainly use it more in future.)

Anyway, I had a good time. There was perhaps a little less inter-character banter than I prefer, but Far Horizon really did feel like a hard-science SF game, and I’ve not played one of those in a long time.

Pedant’s corner

And because I’m me, I can’t help but be a little pedantic. Now that I’ve read the book, I spotted a few typos and other glitches, such as unfinished quotation marks and inconsistent paragraph breaks.

On page 37, Tartarus spends “millions of years of interstellar wandering”, but on page 56, it’s calculated that it’s been travelling for less than a million.

I found the layout slightly unpleasant to read. Text is formatted into a single justified column about 90 characters long, which is longer than typographers advise (this Wikipedia page suggests 66 as an ideal length). And being justified (and some of them are many lines long), I sometimes found it easy to lose my place.

The crew sheets starting on page 24 don’t include the characters’ zero-rated skills.

So it could do with another proofread – and ideally reformatting the pages to be easier to read.

Overall

Overall, I’m really pleased with Far Horizon. A great ship and an intriguing hard-SF adventure.

Am I going to run it? Probably not, but I’m pleased I bought it. I expect I’ll use the Far Horizon deck plans and stats at some point in the future.

Get Far Horizon here.

FTL in the Harvesters universe

In science fiction, each “universe” has its own FTL travel.

Star Trek has warp.

Star Wars and Larry Niven’s Known Space have hyperdrives.

Babylon 5 has hyperspace.

Alan Dean Foster’s Commonwealth books have the KK Drive.

Tim White's KK-Drive starship

Dune has space folding. 

Allen Steele’s Coyote series has star bridges.

The Mote in God’s Eye (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) has the Alderson Drive.

Traveller has jump drive.

John Scalzi’s Interdependency Series has the Flow. (And here’s a short story about its origin.)

The Expanse has the ring gate and its slow zone.

So each universe has its own way of breaking the rules of physics and travelling faster than light.

And many of them are the same kind of thing, just relabelled.

The Uplift Saga

Then there’s David Brin’s Uplift Saga. While the first book doesn’t really mention FTL travel, when it came to the second, Startide Rising, I was amazed to discover that the various alien races (and there is a multitude of them) use a wide range of FTL drives to suit their temperaments.

I can’t remember the different types of FTL drive (Startide Rising is on my to-reread list), and I can’t remember if I still have GURPS Uplift, or where it is if I do still have it.

So I did the same with my series of first contact freeform larps. Here’s the current list:

• Hyperdrives, which use hyperspace as a shortcut. Hyperdrives may still take many months to travel between stars, however.
• L-points are nexus points between stars. Travel is instantaneous, but the points are often close to (or sometimes within) stellar masses.
• Wormhole drives create wormholes between different parts of spacetime. Travel through the wormholes is instantaneous, but time is taken getting to and from where the wormholes can be created (deep space).
• Star bridges are stable wormholes constructed between two locations. Travel across the star bridge is instantaneous.
• The flow is an n-dimensional current that flow drives access. Travel using the flow is in one direction only.
• Teleporters convert a ship and its contents into information sent through spacetime (at the speed of light) or a wormhole.
• And some races even use slower-than-light travel.

Travel through conventional space is only possible at speeds below the speed of light. As a result, species that use STL often put their crews into cryosleep.

And we have a date for Aurora Horizon’s premiere

And we now have a date. After a bit of too-ing and fro-ing, I’m running it at the end of May.

The game files are mostly prepared, so between now and then I’m casting, sending out characters, redecorating the game space (a Discord server) and preparing the game instructions for when I run it again.

So I’ll have to think about something else to write about until then.

And after that: Consequences 2025

I’ve also submitted Aurora Horizon for Consequences 2025. That will be face-to-face in November, which means changing the format of handouts and contingencies, so I will do that over the next couple of weeks.

Aurora Horizon design notes

You can see other parts of my design notes here:

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 (this one)

Aurora Horizon design notes #4: The magic and the dip

I’m at that point in writing Aurora Horizon where I’ve written all the plots (in their own separate Word documents) and I’m now copying the text into the blank character template.

And it’s magical.

The process

Here’s what I do:

1. Make a copy of my blank character sheet template. (Or, just as likely, take the last character I did and just delete all the old stuff.)
2. Change the filename, title and footers to the new character.
3. Copy the opening paragraphs that introduce the character and set the scene for everything that follows. (Although I deviated from this point, as noted below.)
4. Go into each plot document and copy the relevant text (in this case, plot background, other people information and/or goals). As I do this, I colour the original text in the plot document purple, so I know I’ve copied it.
5. Rearrange the text so it’s in an order that makes sense to the character. So the “important” background is covered first, with incidental bits coming later. I put the list of other characters (Other People) in cast list order. Goals are ordered roughly in line with the background, so the goals that I think are most important to the character are first.
6. Read through the whole character and make sure it flows properly, editing and correcting as I do.

It’s amazing; each character is finished as soon as you’re done (and it only takes 15-20 minutes or so).

And because the work of writing the plots was done sometime in the past, it feels like the characters are popping out, fully formed, with barely any effort.

And suddenly, before you know it, you have a freeform larp virtually ready to run.

The dip

I haven’t found Aurora Horizon an easy freeform to write.

Many projects go through a challenging phase, a dip. Writing a freeform larp can be no different.

And I hit a dip with writing Aurora Horizon, which is probably the biggest dip I’ve had when writing any of these larps.

I think that maybe because Aurora Horizon has been a difficult freeform for me to write. I’ve not written an exploratory game before, so much of this is new to me. There are things I have ideas for, and some that I can’t figure out how to do. 

(As an example, I wanted to have some kind of memory overlay plot going on, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it justice. So I’ve canned it, which is a bit of a shame. And at one point I had a dead co-pilot, but I dropped that sub-plot as well.)

And there will be exposition dumps that I can’t see a way of avoiding.

Pushing through the dip

What I do know is that my process for writing freeforms works.

I knew I needed to “simply” push through the dip. Keep following the process. Write a plot. Then another one. Then another one.

But perhaps I shouldn’t have deviated from the process as much as I did. Before I start writing plots, I usually write the opening paragraph for each character so that I know something about them and how they fit into the game.

But I didn’t do that, mainly because I was struggling to figure out how to make the memory-loss-overlay plot work. So instead, to give me a boost, I wrote an easy plot first (stuff about exploring Callisto). And once I did that, things started to flow. And once things started flowing, I didn’t want to go back.

But as a result, I juggled character stuff with mission stuff, and invented the mechanics for exploring the alien ship as I went along. And I didn’t write those character introductions until after all the plots had been done, which wasn’t ideal.

Do the easy stuff first

Which brings me to a useful tip that helps me get through dips: do the easy stuff first. 

Doing the easy stuff first means I get in some early wins and start seeing progress. And with a little momentum, the trickier stuff won’t seem so daunting.

So I put the memory stuff on the back burner, and returned to it at the end. (It wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, but I’ll save that idea for another time.)

Online contingencies

I do have an idea for online contingencies, though.

I’ve struggled with online contingency envelopes because I haven’t worked out how to do them so players don’t read them before the game. 

But I’ve realised that I can give them a Word document with the text covered by black highlight, so it looks like it’s been censored. That way, they can only read it if they remove the black highlight, which they would have to do deliberately. 

And for those players who like to open their contingency envelopes before the game, it doesn’t stop them from reading them in advance.

It seems like such a simple solution that I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to think of it.

(The one catch is if a player doesn’t have MS Word, but I can do the same with a Google Doc if necessary.)

The light at the end of the tunnel

At this point, I can also sense that the game is almost finished. After the characters, I have a few handouts to compile and a timetable to flesh out – but that’s about it.

Then I will need to think about arranging its first run…

Aurora Horizon design notes

You can see other parts of my design notes here:

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 (this one) – Part 5

Aurora Horizon design notes #3: Inspiration

I wish I could remember where all the inspiration had come from for some of the other games in the series. So for Aurora Horizon, I’m writing it down.

The Aurora Horizon

The overall design of the Aurora Horizon (as in the overall ball-on-a-stick look) is taken from the Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick). 

(In researching this, I thought I read somewhere that Discovery used a nuclear pebble-bed reactor, but I can’t find the source now.)

CORA 9000

CORA 9000 is the name of the Aurora Horizon’s computer system (a player in the game). The name is inspired by HAL 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey, again) with a hint of Blake 7’s Orac.

Does CORA 9000 have an agenda of its own? I couldn’t possibly comment.

Aerobraking

The aerobraking manoeuvre in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere was inspired by Leonov doing the same in 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

It’s only in the background (although it causes serious damage to the Aurora Horizon), but still. That’s where the idea came from.

Cryosleep

Cryosleep has been a feature of SF ever since I started reading it (probably most influentially, ALIEN).  2010 also has cryosleep, and if I remember the book (2010: Odyssey 2) correctly, actually reversed the ageing process for the characters, which I liked.

The idea that cryosleep might cause harm was taken from The Legacy of Heorot by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes. (Plus, of course, Traveller has its often-lethal low berths, which I’ve discussed before.)

Names of characters

The names of the human characters are either inspired by characters or their actors in 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The Year We Make Contact or are taken directly from them.

For example, Commander Archer was inspired by Bowman.

The three Tau characters (Huey, Louie and Dewey) are named after the robots in Silent Running.

The ROV, VINCENT, is named after the robot in Disney’s The Black Hole. (Technically, VINCENT isn’t a character in the game, but anyway. That’s where I got the name from.)

Other influences

Some influences are a bit spoilery, so I will just list them here. You can read into them what you will.

• Stark by Ben Elton
• Europa Deep by Gary Gibson

Aurora Horizon design notes

You can see other parts of my design notes here:

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 (this one) – Part 4 – Part 5

Aurora Horizon design notes #2: Contingencies

One of the things I’m thinking about for Aurora Horizon is having some characters with missing/faulty memories.

So part of the game would be about them recovering their memory – and coming to terms with things that aren’t as they originally thought they were.

The two main approaches that I can see are:

• Putting the information in contingency envelopes (or GM handouts)
• Providing all the information in advance and letting the player roleplay recovering memory.

Player preferences

I started a discussion on the ukfreeforms mailing list, and it became clear that some players prefer the surprise of in-game reveals, while others prefer to know everything in advance, as it allows them to think about how to play the character and integrate the information into their roleplay. 

So while some may enjoy the rollercoaster of unexpected twists, others prefer to know the key points ahead of time.

(And me? I don’t know – I’ve not done either. I suspect it depends on the game. I’ve written about it before, though.)

Should I ever create a second edition of Writing Freeform Larps, I will update the section on contingency envelopes to reflect this.

Contingencies

Contingency envelopes can be triggered by in-game events, by other players, or by time. (Or they may simply be handouts from the GM.)

Contingencies are a popular way of dealing with hidden information – I’ve used them.

For many players, opening a contingency is great – it’s like a small reward, and it’s exciting to find out what’s inside.

However, contingencies aren’t perfect:

• Sometimes, the contingency is a disappointment and doesn’t contain anything new.
• Reading lengthy information mid-game can be overwhelming for players with dyslexia or those for whom English is a second language.
• Interrupting roleplay to read an envelope can disrupt the flow of the game.
• Players might forget triggers and miss vital information. (I’ve certainly done this! Backup triggers may help here.)
• If other characters reveal information before a player opens their envelope, it can be deflating.

Full disclosure

Providing all information upfront means putting all of the information in the character sheet in advance and explaining (through GM notes) how I imagine the character might be played.

This approach:

• Allows players to plan their roleplay.
• Enables players to foreshadow and create a richer character experience.
• Reduces the burden on GMs.
• Allows players to role-play their character’s surprise when appropriate.

However, not all players like this approach – especially those who enjoy being surprised by twists and turns.

I often use a full-disclosure approach for minor bits of information. So rather than use a contingency, I will often now write: “GM note: If you see item 25 (a painting), you recognise it as one that your grandfather painted and used to hang in your study. What is it doing here?”

I’ve yet to see a player abuse this, and it simplifies packing character envelopes.

Hybrid approaches

Of course, it is possible to combine both methods.

Players who like full disclosure can open their contingencies in advance. (The opposite isn’t quite so easy, of course.)

I may decide to have some parts of the game as full-disclosure but also have some contingencies for what I think are key secrets. (And if I really don’t want players to open them in advance, I could do them as GM handouts.)

Memory loss specifics

Amnesiac characters require a few special considerations.

• Reveals should enhance a player’s experience, not detract from it. A contingency that completely changes a character’s nature should have some foreshadowing so it doesn’t feel too jarring.
• It’s worth thinking about how the reveal is staged – giving it space and making it memorable. As a result, I am considering adding a psychologist/therapist character who can be the focus for recovering memories to give it a sense of importance.
• Players should know that their character has lost their memory. Otherwise, they may assume that a lack of information indicates a badly written game. (We’ve all been there!)
• Given the nature of memory loss, a single contingency could include too much information for a player to read and absorb while actively playing. So if possible, time “heavy” contingencies to suit any breaks.
• Some players may not like receiving lots of new information during the game – something to consider as part of casting. 

Aurora Horizon

My plan is that Aurora Horizon is played over several scenes, and between the scenes, there will be time to open contingencies. So, as far as breaking the flow of the game and reading additional information, I’m less worried about that (but it’s still something to watch for).

I’ll probably end up with a mix of full disclosure (especially for low-impact stuff) with a few contingencies for the bigger secrets. 

Or I may bin this idea completely. We’ll see. I’m still writing.

Aurora Horizon design notes

You can see other parts of my design notes here:

Part 1 – Part 2 (this one) – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5