Cold City 2e: First impressions review

Following a recent Kickstarter delivery, I now own the second editions of Cold City and Hot War, and so I’m turning my attention to Cold City. I’ve had the first edition for years, but for some reason I’ve never got it to the table.

I plan to run Cold City soon, so these are my impressions based on reading the book. Once I’ve run it, we’ll see if anything changes.

What is Cold City?

Cold City is a ttrpg of monster hunting, trust and betrayal written by Malcolm Craig and published by Handiwork Games. It is set in 1950 Berlin, in the ruins of a city shattered by World War II.

During the war, the Nazis experimented with “border science” and created twisted technology and monsters. Now the victors are picking over the spoils.

What do the PCs do?

The PCs are members of the Inter-Allied Scientific Liaison Commission (ISLAC), an international body investigating leftover Nazi technology and border science. So basically, the PCs hunt monsters and twisted technology in 1950 Berlin.

Each PC belongs to one of the four Allied powers: Russia, USA, Britain or France. And none of them truly trust each other, as everybody has hidden agendas – national and personal.

So it’s monster hunting, with a layer of betrayal and distrust. Lovely!

Who are the PCs?

Typically, they are military intelligence personnel seconded to ISLAC. PCs have three attributes: Action (physical stuff), Influence (getting folk to do stuff), and Reason (thinky stuff). I like this; that’s more than enough, and I find many games have too many. (In Traveller, I find it’s never clear when to use EDU rather than INT. I’d much rather have one stat.)

Attributes rank from 1 to 5, and players have eight points to spread among them.

Traits are talents or quirks and might be positive or negative. Characters typically start with four – two positive, one negative and a fourth which might be either. (“Incisive mind, at home with quick reasoning, terrified of monsters.”)

PCS then have two hidden agendas, one national and one personal. (National: “I have been ordered to build relationships with the American agents on my team, suborn them, and turn them to our side.” Personal: “I will perform such a great service to the Motherland that I will be made Hero of the Soviet Union.”)

Finally, characters have Trust with each other. Again, these range from 1 to 5, with a higher number representing more trust. For each level of trust, you must state a reason for that level (eg “He gave me a pack of cigarettes when I had none. He saved me when I was attacked by a creature in the U-Bahn.”). So that helps create bonds and backstory between the characters.

NPC contacts

NPC contacts (“friends, allies, old enemies, family members, lovers, or colleagues”) are created during situation setup (#7 Who else features in the game?). Unfortunately, this happens before players have created their characters. That doesn’t make sense – players don’t know who their characters are yet, so they don’t know which NPC relationships they might want.

While step #7 might help identify interesting NPCs players want to see, Cold City needs a separate step in character generation for connections the PCs already know.

(The worked example even calls this out – as one of the fictional players suggests that they create contacts after they’ve created their characters. I’m not sure how this survived development/playtesting.)

How do they do what they do?

In Cold City, you roll dice to resolve a conflict. Conflicts work as follows:

1. Set goals – each side decides what they want out of the conflict.
2. Create dice pools – each side assembles their dice pools. PCs use their relevant attribute and add dice for appropriate traits, trust and tools. (The GM, or Control, takes dice from a central pool.)
3. Roll the dice – identify the highest dice on each side. Then count each die on the winning side that is higher than the losing side to determine successes.
4. Consequences – the winner has narrative control over the outcome of the conflict, and there are mechanical effects such as gaining or losing traits or attributes.

The rules also include a few special rules, such as using negative traits in conflicts, adding extra characters, and what happens when an attribute reaches zero (a crisis occurs).

My first impression from reading the rules was that conflicts didn’t happen too often. I thought this for two reasons:

• First, there are no re-rolls. If you fail the conflict, the narrative moves on, and you deal with the consequences. You don’t get a second go at fighting the monster – at least, not in the same scene.
• Second, consequences can be character-changing (and Control can run out of dice).

So my impression was that you don’t roll dice too often in Cold City. However, after watching the Unconventional GMs’ video, it’s clear you shouldn’t be afraid to roll the dice. (Note that Unconventional GMs is a playtest – it looks like some rules changed in the published game.)

1950 Berlin

Cold City includes a chapter with information on life in 1950 Berlin, the tension between East and West, and a timeline of events since the end of the war. The game also includes details of notable locations, including the U-Bahn (underground), huge concrete flak towers, Spandau prison, and more.

Cold City also includes details on the organisations PCs might work for or encounter, such as the British Experimental Rocket Bureau, CIA, Gehlen Organisation, GRU, Secret Intelligence Services, French Forces in Berlin, and more. Each has a sample hidden agenda you can use for characters from that organisation.

Cold City’s Berlin chapter finishes with details of key ISLAC personnel – the officers likely to brief the players on their missions.

Situations

And what sort of missions are those? Generally, they involve monsters and border science. Cold City includes five different situations. Each situation consists of several sections:

Tone: Cold City can be played in different styles – my preference is for dark horror, but pulp, black comedy and arthouse are options.

Control dice groups: Identifying which of Control’s dice groups should have the most dice.

Key words/phrases: I’m not quite sure what purpose these serve. As part of set-up, the group suggests key words and phrases to “add definition, nuance, and colour to the wider feel of the game”. But I’m not sure how they help here.

What are we doing? The bulk of the situation: the initial setup and what’s going on.

Who are the antagonists? The characters behind the situation and their goals.

Who else features? Other notable NPCs the players might encounter. (Although see my comment above.)

Scenes: Suggested scenes that might be used by Control.

Unfortunately, the situations aren't particularly detailed. There’s no suggested clue trail, so Control will have to improvise. I don’t mind that too much, as too much detail can be constraining, but my initial impression is that there isn’t enough detail for me to run them from the book. 

And looking at Cold City through the eyes of someone new to the game, I think that’s a mistake. When I buy a new game, I want to run it straight away, and the situations provided don’t give me the confidence that they’re all I need.

Differences between 1e and 2e

While a few terms change between the first and second editions of Cold City (the Reserve Police Agency is now ISLAC, twisted technology is now border science, and the GM is now Control), the main differences are in the system and the look and feel.

System changes

Essentially, the second edition of Cold City is simpler than the first edition.

For players, it’s pretty similar. However, Control (the new name for the GM) now draws dice from five pools: Monsters, Berlin, Internal Enemies, External Enemies and the Cold. 

In first, NPCs and monsters all had stats, and Control built their dice pool in the same way as the players. Now, however, Control simply draws dice from the relevant pool, depending on the nature of the conflict.

(Cold City doesn’t advise how many dice to use, but I’ll get to that.)

Better look and feel

Second edition Cold City is much more polished and professional than 1e.

Cold City is now a full-colour hardback, instead of being a black-and-white softback. It comes with its sister game, Hot War, in a smart slipcase.

What’s missing – an introductory investigation

I think where I struggle with Cold City is that while I understand the rules, I can’t see how it plays at the table. Yes, there’s all the 1950 Berlin background and the hunting for border science technology and monsters – but there’s also the agendas and trust, and I didn’t find it clear how it all meshes together.

What I feel Cold City lacks is a good introductory adventure that explains how it plays.

Yes, Cold City includes example situations, but as I said, none feel developed enough for me to run easily from the book, and it’s unclear how hidden agendas would affect them.

I can also imagine running them with a trad ruleset such as Call of Cthulhu. In fact, I find it easier to imagine running the situations with a trad ruleset. 

What makes Cold City different is trust and hidden agendas, but it looks like they might easily take control of the narrative and pull it away from the investigation. Is that how Cold City is supposed to work?

(Some PbtA books have a section describing what happens in your first session – perhaps Cold City needs something like that.)

I guess I’ll find out when I run it.

Things that made me go hmmmm?

Oddly, for a second edition, some fundamental sections are missing. Such as:

• How many players is Cold City for? It doesn’t say. Apparently the sweet spot is 3-5 players, but why not make that clear?
• What sort of dice do you need? And how many? That's in the book, but it’s tucked away on page 47. (You need lots of D10s.)

(For comparison, both editions of Hot War have a “Stuff you need to play” section early in the book that covers the dice needed, although it still doesn't say how many players the game is for.)

Dice questions

Reading through the new rules also raised questions about dice.

First, it's not clear how many dice Control adds to a contest. Players have a strict formula to follow, but Control just grabs some. They are advised to “play hard,” but there is no guidance as to what that actually means. Control can make things easier or more complicated – but that seems odd when there’s no guidance on how many dice to roll in the first place.

(First edition actually has advice for building a dice pool – three dice for weak opposition, five dice for moderately challenging, seven dice for challenging, and nine dice for very challenging. That will probably be my default starting point.)

(Interestingly, this is something that Gaz struggles with in the first contest in the Unconventional GMs video)

Second, it’s not clear what happens when a dice pool runs out. Presumably, if Control has no dice left in a particular Group, does that end that Group's threat? So if Control has no Monster dice left, are there no more monsters until the dice reset?

Third, how does a one-shot end? In other games, investigations end when the narrative ends. In Cold City, a one-shot ends when Control’s dice start running out. How does that work if you’re not at the end of the investigation? And what happens if you reach the narrative end and Control has dice left?

I assume this becomes clear at the table, but these are obvious questions, and the book doesn’t answer them.

Anyway, I’ll find out because I plan to run Cold City soon.

Overall

So at this point in my review, having read the book and thought about play, I find myself both attracted to Cold City and fearful of it.

The concept of hunting Nazi occult science, technology, and monsters in 1950s Berlin is appealing, but the game's 2000s-era indie storytelling system seems opaque. 

I’m left with a nagging feeling that Cold City is trying for a narrative, player-led story of agendas, trust and betrayal. But it’s shackled to a fertile Cold War backdrop and traditional mission-based horror-investigation mode, which I suspect often smothers the narrative, player-led game.

But I will find out soon.

Adventure 13: Signal GK

Signal GK is GDW’s last LBB (little black book) adventure for Traveller. It was published in 1985 and written by Marc Miller, with additional design from J Andrew Keith.

1985 is over 40 years ago. Why am I reviewing it now? Well, I recently ordered Adventure 14: Travel Hazards from Mongoose. I’m waiting for the physical booklet to read the adventure in detail, but I couldn’t resist taking a peek at the pdf. And I noticed something slightly odd about the layout – unnecessary indents on paragraphs that follow a heading. 

I’m sure Mongoose know better than to do that to a layout, so I got Signal GK down off the shelf, flipped it open, and sure enough, Mongoose appear to be replicating the old GDW format exactly – even down to the pregenerated characters and the unnecessary indents.

And having taken Signal GK off the shelf, I started reading, and here we are.

So, anyway, this is a first-impressions review. I haven’t run Signal GK – and as we’ll see, I probably won’t. 

Oh, and spoilers ahead.

A physical copy of Adventure 13? Really?

Some years ago, probably longer than I care to admit, I got rid of most of my old Traveller LBBs. I wasn’t playing the game, I wasn’t reading them, and they were just taking up space. So I got rid of most of them.

I kept the books I really liked. Twilight’s Peak. Secret of the Ancients (not that I liked that one, but it had Ancients in it). IISS Ship Files (in my opinion, the best Traveller deck plans ever). The alien modules. And Signal GK.

I’m not sure why I kept Signal GK. I certainly never ran it. I can only think that the central premise in it (the silicon-chip lifeform) was sufficiently appealing that I wanted to keep it. Or maybe it was that those lifeforms led directly to the controversial Virus and the destruction of the Third Imperium. I really can’t remember, but either way, I still have my original copy of Signal GK.

All this is preamble! Where’s your review?

Patience, I’m getting there. 

Before starting to write this, I thought I’d check and see what other reviewers had to say about Signal GK. And the answer is… nothing. At least, not in text. I found a single video review of Signal GK – and that’s it.

So this is my text review of Traveller Adventure 13: Signal GK. Maybe the only one on the Internet.

Overview

Signal GK is a 48-page booklet for Traveller set on the border between the Solomani Confederation and Third Imperium. The adventure is broadly in three parts. First, the PCs must help Dr Roshorin, a Solomani researcher, defect to the Imperium. Then the PCs accompany Dr Roshorin to Cymbeline to confirm his theories. There, they find an intelligent silicon-chip-based lifeform. Finally, the PCs accompany Dr Roshorin to Terra aboard the Ad Astra, a 600-dton Subsidized Liner, where a Solomani agent tries to kill Dr Roshorin.

(Signal GK is also the Vilani interstellar distress call. I imagine that the title of the adventure refers to the Ad Astra’s distress call after the bombing.)

Maps, deck plans, library data

As well as the adventure, Signal GK provides plenty of supplemental information:

The Ad Astra: 14 pages of details of the Ad Astra liner, including illustrations, room-by-room descriptions and deck plans. This is rather nice, and I imagine that back in 1985, many referees bought the adventure just for the deck plans.

The Solomani Border: A two-page spread showing the area in question. The map is subsector-sized, but straddles four subsectors to show all the worlds it needs for the adventure.

Library data: Two pages of library data.

The Biology of Natural Chips: Four pages about how natural silicon chips evolved on Cymbaline. This is lovely – I’m all for weird alien lifeforms.

All that adds up to 22 pages. And when you include the contents page, the front matter, and a boilerplate introduction (another five pages), that means less than half of the book is actual adventure material. Not that I’m complaining; as I’ve said before, I find a lot of adventures are overwritten. Signal GK isn’t one of them.

The adventure

The set-up is that after failing to find gainful employment on Scandia (just because…), the PCs are hired by Colonel Joachim Sanchex, the head of the Imperial Army Intelligence, to secure the defection of an important Solomani scientist. They are well paid and given a Type S scout for the mission.

Now, quite why Sanchex would choose a group of ne’er-do-wells like the PCs isn’t well explained. Deniable assets, perhaps. I think this is so that GMs can just drop Signal GK into their regular Traveller campaigns – although that has never made sense to me. The number of Traveller groups running campaigns in that neck of the Solomani Rim was probably in the low tens. If that.

I imagine that if anyone did run Signal GK, they either moved it (in which case they’d be rewriting all sorts of stuff) or ran it as a one-shot (which is what I would do). And with a one-shot, we can let the players create Imperial Army agents with the skills they think they will need. 

(I would start the game with Sanchex briefing the players and instructing them to plan the mission and assemble a team. The players would then create and equip those characters to suit the mission profile – and then play them.)

Pedant’s corner: The introduction on page 5 says, “the players may use pregenerated characters supplied later in this adventure. A complete roster of available characters is supplied in a specific section of this booklet; these can be used both as player and non-player characters.” Unfortunately, there is no such section. The only characters in Signal GK are the main NPCs.

Structure

Before I get into the adventure proper, I just want to comment on Signal GK’s weird structure. I’m sure it made sense to GDW, but it doesn’t make sense to me. These are the sections:

1. Introduction
2. Referee’s synopsis
3. Characters (actually the NPCs)
4. On Ochre (the first part of the adventure)
5. The Ad Astra (14 pages of description and deck plans of the Ad Astra)
6. The Solomani Border (the subsector map)
7. On Cymbaline (the second part of the adventure)
8. Disaster (part three of the adventure)
9. The Biology of the Natural Chips
10. Library Data
11. Referee’s Notes

That’s not how I would structure the book. The section on the Ad Astra, in particular, breaks the flow of the adventure. I would rearrange it so that the adventure is kept together and the supplemental information (Ad Astra, Chip Biology, and Library Data) is pushed to the back.

I would move the Solomani Border section directly after Characters, as it helps explain the overall political situation.

Anyway.

High-tech adventure

One thing that’s striking about Signal GK is how high-tech it all is. Well, it would be striking if it actually felt high-tech…

Looking at the map, pretty much every world is TL 9 or higher – often much higher. Signal GK starts on TL 15 Scandia and moves to TL 14 Ochre and Cymbaline. By 2026 standards, these are magical worlds full of technological miracles. TL 15 has black globe generators and anagathics. TL 14 has cloning and robots. And that’s just what I can find in 1982’s The Traveller Book. Mongoose’s core rules add floating cities, implants and high-energy weapons and probably more if I looked a little harder.

But Traveller in 1985 hasn’t quite worked it out. (As an example, on Ochre, a research facility is described as being reachable via a dirt-track road, which is used as a visual aid by grav vehicles. I’d change that. In a TL14/15 society, why would there be any roads at all?)

But I think the very high-tech environment has interesting implications for smuggling defectors.

Part 1: Ochre

Ochre is a small desert world with its population clustered around the polar regions. It is two parsecs from the nearest Imperial world (Tamarind), and being so close is a focal point for traffic (and smugglers) between the Solomani Rim and the Third Imperium. The local government is relaxed about smuggling (despite its strict law level) because of the income it brings in from passage fees and inspection duties, and the Solomani Confederation tolerates the smuggling because it is a channel for acquiring Imperial goods and technology. So it’s a leaky border.

So the PCs must cross the border, arrive on Ochre, find and make contact with Dr Roshorin, convince him that they are genuine, and then smuggle him out across the border without the Solomani authorities finding out.

And while Signal GK describes the overall situation on Ochre, it gives no details on how any of that is to be done. I think that’s for the best – letting the GM and players define the world of Ochre will lead to a memorable game. If nothing else, it gives the players huge freedom in how they approach their mission – they’re not constrained by preplanned set pieces or scenes.

Traveller's politics

The Solomani are the bad guys in Signal GK. So who are they?

It’s 1110 now, and the Solomani Rim War was in 990-1002. So 108 years ago, which by coincidence is how long ago WW1 ended, measured from 2026. So the Rim War is pretty much in living memory – particularly given the anagathics users present on all those TL 15 worlds. (I would make Colonel Sanchex a veteran of the war.)

The war erupted when the Solomani attacked the Imperium in a land grab. However, the Imperium fought back and won, and now occupies half of the previous Solomani territory. (So Scandia, our starting world, is, to many eyes, an occupied world.)

The Solomani Confederation is described as having “belligerent and extremist policies,” but Signal GK says little more than that (and I’m reluctant to dig into the wider Traveller background just for this review).

I have the impression that the Solomani Confederation is a bit like the Cold War-era Soviet Union or East Germany. (Although the Imperium are the occupying force here…) And that’s probably how I would play it.

Defection

Defection is a loaded term. Dr Rushorin doesn’t want to leave the Solomani Confederation; he wants to defect. That reinforces the sense of East/West Cold War tensions that I get from the politics.

So while smuggling might be easy (as discussed above), defecting must be harder.

Presumably, the Solomani Confederation considers Dr Rushorin a valuable asset that they don’t want to lose. And having valuable assets working near the border means he will be watched (with TL 14 surveillance). And presumably, he is prohibited from leaving Solomani space.

One of the challenges that real-life defectors faced was what happened to their families. (Although I say this as someone with no personal experience of this!) I imagine defection is much harder if you suspect your family would be threatened.

Unfortunately, Signal GK lacks this dimension. All we know is that Dr Rushorin is a professor at a university on Aquitaine, and is on sabbatical. He is on Ochre, working on an electronics research project and wants to defect to the Imperium before he has to return to Aquitane. Still, it would be easy to give Dr Rushorin a small family that he has brought with him to make the PCs' task harder.

Back to Scandia

Anyway, after all this, the PCs smuggle Dr Rushorin across the border and to Scandia. Solomani Security are soon in pursuit, however… (How soon depends on how effective the PCs have been.)

Part 2: Cymbaline

Dr Rushorin has another reason to visit Imperial space – he wants to go to Cymbaline to prove a theory about naturally occurring semiconductors. So Colonel Sanchex greenlights this (probably to keep the professor out of trouble), and sends the PCs to keep an eye on Dr Rushorin.

Cymbaline is a massive world with a thin atmosphere – the only human-habitable land is at the bottom of vast canyons. Rushorin’s chips, though, aren’t to be found at the bottom of the canyons – his theory puts them on the slopes of outgassing volcanoes.

So this part of the adventure is an exploration into a hostile environment. Unfortunately, Signal GK provides no support for hazards, encounters, or events. Fortunately, Rushorin finds exactly what he is looking for in little over a week – naturally occurring semiconductors etched onto crystal wafers!

(The speed of their discovery by Dr Rushorin suggests that these natural semiconductors are common across Cymbaline.)

Introducing 10987

Remarkably, not only are these naturally occurring semiconductors alive, but some of them are intelligent. And one of them, 10987, is in one of Dr Rushorin’s samples. At which point Signal GK becomes a first-contact scenario, with the PCs meeting a brand-new lifeform.

I’m a sucker for first-contact stories, and classic Traveller didn’t do this very often.

Anyway, obviously, the PCs report this to the authorities (via Colonel Sanchex), Cymbaline is promptly quarantined so that the chips can be studied… Er no. Well, that could happen, but probably doesn’t. Signal GK is silent on the Imperium’s reaction when they learn of the chips, which is a shame.

Instead, the PCs are ambushed by Solomani Security forces intent on capturing Dr Rushorin.

Rather optimistically, Signal GK assumes that the PCs will connect 10987 to a computer. 10987 then warns of the attack moments before it happens. Except that, who in 2026 is going to connect 10987 to a computer? Even in 1985, I’m not sure players were that naïve – that was the era of The Terminator (1984) and Wargames (1983), not forgetting 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). We weren’t short of warnings about intelligent machines!

So I’d probably change this and have 10987 already connected itself to a computer before the PCs discover it.

Assuming he survives, Dr Rushorin states that he has confirmed his theories and wants to return to Scandia – and part 3.

Part 3: The Ad Astra

Back on Scandia, Colonel Sanchex decides things have become too hot for Dr Rushorin and sends him straight to Terra. But before the PCs can take him on their Type S, it is blown up by Solomani terrorists. So Colonel Sanchex books them all onto the Ad Astra, which leaves the following day.

Unfortunately, the Solomani bad guys are thinking ahead and are already on the Ad Astra…

Partway through the journey, in the middle of skimming fuel from a gas giant, the Solomani agent makes his move. He captures Rushorin and escapes in the launch while detonating three bombs that cripple the Ad Astra, condemning it to crash into the gas giant…

GM advice here is painfully thin, and Signal GK breezily says, “The referee must generate a number of different passengers (and insert the <Solomani agent> among them, and then have the entire group interact with the adventurers and Rushorin.” That’s it – no suggestion for potential scenes or ideas for characters or anything else. (And the poor referee has to invent the crew as well – they’re not described either.)

The big problem with this section is that players are reacting to events. They don’t really get to be proactive. As written, the PCs have very little to do until the agent makes his move. And then, once that’s over, while they can help the crew fix the damaged liner, they’re unlikely to be in charge of repair operations because, well, it’s not their ship and the crew is presumably better qualified than they are at fixing the Ad Astra.

(It’s probably telling that Signal GK spends longer on repairing the Ad Astra after the bombing than it does on the characters aboard the liner.)

To be fair to Signal GK, it does say “…the adventures will probably be monitoring their fellow passengers in order to protect Rushorin.” But that’s all it says.

I would make this stronger – just before they enter jump, they receive a message from Colonel Sanchex saying he has intelligence indicating a Solomani agent is on board, but he doesn’t know who.

But then I’d also need summary details of passengers and crew, along with scenes and events. (I’d have one crewmember be suspiciously new, as well.) 

And to prevent the PCs from just hiding in their staterooms for the whole trip, I would have Colonel Sanchex instruct the PCs to identify and capture the agent for questioning.

I don’t know how I’d run this. Previously, when I’ve run Traveller, we’ve skipped most jumps. I ask the players what they’re doing for the week they’re spending in jump space, but we don’t go through it in detail. Managing 20+ NPCs and making the journey interesting? That might be beyond me. (Might be the basis for a fun larp, though.)

What do I think?

It’s probably best to think of Signal GK as three linked adventures. You could run them completely independently.

Defection on Ochre

The first adventure, “Defection on Ochre”, interests me most. It’s the adventure where, as written, the PCs are actually proactive.  And it’s fascinating thinking about TL 14 surveillance and countermeasures, and how the players might help Dr Rushorin defect.

I can’t even imagine how TL14 systems would work, so my approach would be to have my players help set the scene – and have some fun in the planning session exploring future systems and how to beat them. And then we’d run the mission.

Expedition to Cymbaline

Part 2, on Cymbaline, is the weakest. There are few opportunities for roleplaying and few decisions the PCs have to make. This section only gets interesting when 10987 appears – followed by the firefight. (This is potentially an exciting high-tech firefight with plasma weapons and battledress. I mean, Solomani Security are hardly likely to be armed with SMGs.)

So to make this more memorable, I’d introduce events and scenes and maybe even a random table or two. And perhaps a map of the volcano slopes for the PCs to explore.

Signal GK

And the final part, which I would call "Signal GK", could be about flushing a Solomani terrorist out from the crew or passengers from the Ad Astra. But you’d need NPC details and ideas for scenes and events to make it more interesting at the table.

Conclusion

I can’t remember what I thought of Signal GK when I first got it. I never ran it, never used the deck plans, so I don’t think I was that impressed.

Re-reading it 40 years later, and I find myself intrigued by the ideas it contains, but frustrated by how much is missing. How much the referee needs to invent just to make the game work at the table.

Am I asking too much of a 40-year-old adventure? Maybe. I mean, I am reading this with 40 years more life experience than I had when I first read Signal GK. But all of this is stuff that popped into my head when I read it again. I’ve not spent 40 years thinking about Signal GK.

Anyway, it’s unlikely that I will run Signal GK. Or if I do, it will probably only be the first part (on Ochre), because I can see how to run that with minimal prep. Which is a shame, as with a bit more work it could have been a cracking little adventure.

Masters of Dune review

This is a first-impressions review of Masters of Dune, a campaign for the Dune: Adventures in the Imperium rpg. I’ve only read Masters of Dune, and below I explain why I’m unlikely to ever run it.

Masters of Dune is a 166-page campaign for the Dune rpg. Set over nine chapters, it continues directly from the Agents of Dune starter set (which I reviewed here) and puts the PCs in charge of Arrakis in a distinctly hostile universe.

Each campaign chapter consists of three or four acts, and between them, they cover all the elements you’d expect from an epic Dune campaign: the emperor, the Harkonnens, the Bene Gesserit, the Fremen and so on. The chapters are designed to be experienced in almost any order – bookended by Chapter One (the campaign’s start) and Chapter Nine (its finale).

Along the way, the PCs must deal with Harkonnen treachery, scheming houses, broker deals with powerful factions, learn the ways of the Fremen, and more. As they progress through the campaign, their actions will cause various indices to rise and fall, charting their house’s success and influence. Masters of Dune is everything you’d expect from an alternate-universe Dune campaign.

But I have no interest in running Masters of Dune. 

Why don’t I want to run Masters of Dune?

To be honest, there are a range of reasons. But these are the key ones:

I don’t really like Dune’s 2d20 system. As I explained in my review of the starter set, I’ve bounced off Dune’s system. It’s not the 2d20 system itself, it’s the combination of drives, skills, threat and conflicts that I find hard to grok. In the hands of an expert, I imagine the system works just fine – but it feels like a steeper learning curve than I can face.

I’m not a Dune fan. Masters of Dune rewards fans of the Dune books. I’ve seen the recent films, and I read Dune many decades ago. It’s fine, I’m not really a fan. So there were a lot of things that didn’t make complete sense.

So it was clear I was missing some things (what is kanly?), but I didn’t care enough to look them up.

However, as important as it is for the GM to understand the Dune universe, it’s as important that the players understand it as well. The PCs play the head of House Nagara – and I would expect the characters to be fully familiar with the politicking and negotiation that such positions bring. And yet, on several occasions, I felt that the campaign would let unwary players make decisions that their characters would never make.

Deeply political: On occasions, the campaign is deeply political, presenting numerous NPCs with their own agendas for the PCs to interact with. Not only do I find this a challenge as a GM, but it’s also a challenge for the players. It also reminds me that while I really like political games, I like them as larps, where each faction is played by its own player (or players). I struggle with political ttrpgs, just because I find it hard as a GM to keep everything in my head.

Flawed structure: Masters of Dune’s structure is such that the chapters are self-contained and address a single faction: the Bene Gesserit, the Harkonnen, the Emperor, and so on. They can be played in any order (some chapters contain triggers that happen when certain conditions arise), and some chapters might not even be used.

This is all very well, but it makes no sense to me to play the campaign this way. I would want to break the chapters up so that they are intermingled. So I would introduce the early parts of some chapters early in the campaign, and slowly introduce more complications leading to a climax.

There’s nothing stopping me from doing that, of course, but it means dismantling the whole campaign and rebuilding it.

Unhelpful layout: At first glance, there’s nothing wrong with the layout: two columns on each page, lots of headers and subheaders, a smattering of nice artwork. It’s only when I got into the details that I found a few problems.

Namely, the bullets and bold text are used inconsistently. Sometimes the text is broken up into bullet points (making them stand out and easier to read), but at other times it describes several different scenes the GM might present, hidden behind a wall of text. Bullet points would make them clearer, and I’m not sure why Masters of Dune is so inconsistent.

And the “map” on page 65 is so small and faint it’s virtually unusable. Why wasn’t this given a page of its own? (To be fair, the map is clearer in the pdf, as you can see below. Physically, the map is printed in grey and I found it unreadable.) 

Errors: Masters of Dune contains more errors than I expected:

• There are a lot of “see p.XX” errors – possibly more than I’ve seen in any other book.
• Most of the text on page 135 is repeated on page 136.
• At the end of the first chapter, on page 27, Masters of Dune describes the next steps the players might take and directs the GM to different chapters. Except that’s not how most of those chapters work. For example, while the players might want to seek an alliance with the Fremen, the Fremen chapter starts with the PC’s ornithopter crashing in a remote spot on Arrakis and then befriending some nearby Fremen. They can’t really choose to do that. And the Spacing Guild only becomes involved when the spice supply is threatened.

Overall

So, Masters of Dune isn’t for me.

It’s certainly an epic campaign, and in the hands of a good GM, I expect it’s brilliant. But for me, I would need to overcome my disinterest in Dune’s system and setting and rewrite the campaign’s structure. And I have other games I would rather play.

Secrets of the Ancients: First Impressions

I recently bought the 2022 edition of Mongoose Publishing’s Secrets of the Ancients campaign for Traveller. These are my first impressions—I hope to run it one day, but it’s a long campaign and a significant time investment.

When I talked about the 2012 edition, I compared it with GDW’s 1984 Secret of the Ancients and noted how epic the new campaign was.

Well, the 2022 edition feels even more epic than 2012!

First impressions

So my first impression of this 256-page hardback book is that it’s heavy. It also looks stunning—it’s full colour throughout with some lovely artwork and deck plans. 

As for the campaign itself, while it follows the basic structure of the GDW’s original Secret of the Ancients, everything is described in so much more detail. Although, as I said before, I was originally disappointed with 1984’s Secret of the Ancients—I’m not disappointed by Secrets.

Secrets of the Ancients is split into 10 self-contained chapters, each an adventure in its own right. The introduction suggests each chapter will take 2-4 sessions to complete, so that’s around 30 sessions, or the best part of a year. When (if) I run it, Secrets will be the longest campaign I’ve ever run.

I don’t think that will be a problem, though, as there’s plenty of variety in Secrets. There’s an NPC-heavy meet-and-mingle session, a starship chase across Regina, Ancient sites to explore, Vargr to negotiate with, and even a prison to escape.

How am I going to run Secrets of the Ancients?

Secrets of the Ancients has a definite story, and a helicopter view suggests that it’s fairly linear. However, when you get into the detail, the players will have plenty of decisions to make (in parts, the adventure gets quite sandboxy), so I’m hoping the players won’t feel like they’re being railroaded.

Some of the leaps from location to location are not always super clear to me. I’ll need to summarise each section with bullet points for the overall plot, but I would need to familiarise myself with it anyway.

There’s also a fair amount of boxed text to read aloud. I’m not a fan of that, so I’ll see if I can do something different. I’m in a dilemma because the boxed text is often excellent and sets a good atmosphere, but I’m not a fan of reading to the players.

I may see if I can use Banter, which I used for Destroyer of Worlds. 

What’s going on with the handouts?

One thing I found a bit weird was how Secrets deals with handouts. Handouts are provided in a separate pdf rather than in the text, which is odd. Presumably, that’s to save space, however, it does mean that if you pick up a physical copy of the book, you need to get the handout pdf somehow. (The text doesn’t tell you where you can get this.)

Mind you, you will want the pdf copy anyway, even if you get a hard copy. That’s because there’s loads of stuff you’ll want to share here, such as numerous deck plans and pictures of people and creatures.

Comparing 2022 with 2012

Comparing the 2022 edition with the 2012 edition is like comparing chalk with cheese. With better layout and good use of colour and illustrations, the new edition is so much easier to read.

2022 (left) compared with the same page from 2012 (right)

I don’t often say this about modern coffee-table book RPGs, but I find the new Mongoose Traveller format clean and easy to read. The 2012 edition isn’t as easy to read, and the 2022 edition will probably be easier to run as a result.

This has made it longer—Secrets is now 256 pages compared to 198. And as a result, it’s more expensive, but even if I never run it, I don’t regret buying it for a moment.

2022 (left) compared to 2012 (right)

As well as colour and illustrations, the new edition has more (and nicer) deck plans--a smuggler’s station, Far Trader, Heavy Scout, a Kinunir-class ship, several Vargr ships, two Ancient ships. Some of those were in the 2012 edition, but none were as good looking as they are here.

Too many words?

As I’ve said before, I find many RPG supplements and adventures are dreadfully overwritten. So at 256 pages, can I say the same of Secrets of the Ancients?

In short, no. While long, and while I didn’t read every word (I skipped some animal descriptions and star system descriptions in the more sandboxy bits—I’ll only read those if I need to), I didn’t find myself wading through unnecessary verbiage or padding.

The could-do-better department

There are a couple of areas I’d like to improve.

• I would have liked more character portraits. I know they’re a luxury (and key NPC portraits are provided), but they’re a nice luxury.
• From what I can see, there are times when the game could stall (or die) due to some unlucky dice rolls. Yes, there are some understandably tricky challenges, but in a couple of them failing means ending the campaign prematurely—so I know I’ll be generous.

I also spotted a couple of errors:

• The section on Shimmersuits doesn’t explain that energy weapons do only 1/16th of their damage (a fairly big omission given the high-energy fights that the Travellers will get into).
• The deck plan on page 33 doesn’t match the description in the text.

Overall

I want to run Secrets of the Ancients, but the question is whether I have the patience for it. I like short games because I like playing a variety of games. So I need to ask my players if they’re up for a 30-session marathon. We can take breaks between chapters if we find it too heavy going.

Good Society – first impressions

I picked up Good Society as part of Storybrewer's recent Kickstarter. While the pdfs were delivered earlier in the year, I waited until I had the physical books in my hand before reading them. So these are my first impressions; I’ve not played it yet.

Good Society is a Jane Austen roleplaying game. It has a modern-day approach focussed on telling Jane Austen-like stories. While it can be hacked (and there’s a volume of variations, Expanded Acquaintance, which I’ve yet to read), if you’re using Good Society to run an investigative horror game, you are doing it wrong. (And that’s not something I like to say.)

As I’m a fan of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and (to a lesser extent) Emma, Good Society was pushing on an open door.

Physically

Physically, Good Society is a 6x9 hardback with pleasing layout and art. There’s lots of white space, giving the text plenty of room to breathe. The writing is engaging and easy to read—at first glance the game looks fiddly, but everything is explained clearly and I feel like I’m in safe hands.

I found the font a little small and I need good light to read it by—particularly the green flavour text where the contrast is reduced. (As I get older, this is a more common complaint and one of the benefits of pdfs.) It’s a shame the font couldn’t have been a touch larger—the margins are wide, and I’m sure a larger font could have been accommodated without additional pages.

Good Society also comes with a deck of cards (desires, relationships and minor characters) plus pdfs for character roles (kind of like playbooks), family background, connections and public information.

Characters

Characters are created as a group. Each player controls a major character with a:

• Desire—what they want (to marry, to get revenge, to deal with a scandal)
• Relationship—to other characters (siblings, secret betrothals, rivals)
• Role sheet—who they are (heir, socialite, dowager)
• Family—how they were brought up (old money, new money, foreign)

Good Society is set up so that the characters’ differing desires create conflict and drama. Desires and relationships are provided as cards, and Good Society collects them into playsets to suit different styles of game.

A Jane Austen character needs more than just major characters—it also has a cast of minor characters. Therefore, each player also creates two minor characters. Minor characters are played by the facilitator (if there is one) or by other players.

One thing missing from character generation is any sense of numbers. Thankfully there are no skills or attributes—there aren’t even any dice. Which brings me to system.

System

Good Society is one of these new-fangled games without dice, attributes, or skills. Characters can do whatever they like, given they are characters in a Jane Austen novel. There are no scenarios or adventures—instead, the players create conflict (and the story) by advancing their characters’ desires.

Mechanically, Good Society uses two types of tokens: resolve tokens and monologue tokens.

Resolve tokens shape the story in significant ways—they feel a bit like Fate tokens (for compels or using them to state a fact—not for adding +2 or re-rolling the dice). Although as I said, I have yet to play Good Society and they may feel different in play.

Monologue tokens are played on other players to force them to reveal their character’s inner thoughts in a monologue. (Not so you can use that knowledge, but simply because it suits the genre.) I’m looking forward to trying monologue tokens.

The strangest element of Good Society’s system is the phases of play. Good Society takes place over 3-8 cycles of play (decide how many cycles to play before you start). A cycle includes:

• Novel chapter: actual roleplaying, typically based around an event or a visitation.
• Reputation: assess characters’ reputation and assign tags.
• Rumour and scandal: Creating and spreading rumours.
• Epistolatory: Writing a letter. (You don’t actually write a letter, just describe who you are writing to and what the letter contains. I guess you could write a letter if you wanted to.)
• Novel chapter: Another bit of roleplaying.
• Reputation: assess characters’ reputation again.
• Rumour and scandal: More rumours.
• Epistolatory: Another letter.
• Upkeep: Refreshing tokens, and so on.

Each cycle should take 2-3.5 hours of play, so about a session’s worth. From an old-school roleplaying perspective, these cycles of play look very strange. But the bulk of time appears to be spent in the novel chapters, which is roleplaying as we know it.

Five things I like

In no particular order:

• Good Society is well-written and presented. Although I’ve not played it yet, everything is explained clearly and I don’t think I will struggle with it.
• I like the monologue tokens—I’ve played in a Shakespearean larp that had done something similar, but I’ve not used it in a tabletop game.
• I like stories driven by the characters’ desires. (That’s very like Lady Blackbird and freeform larps.)
• Characters are created collaboratively as a group. As a result, character creation looks like it will be fun.
• Good Society can be played without a facilitator, which I am looking forward to trying (once I’ve got a few GM-ed games under my belt). I want to play too!

And one thing I don’t

One jarring note in Good Society occurs exactly three times (four if you count the index): the game is set in the fictional town of Habershire. Which would be fine, except that a name ending in -shire is an English county, not a town. It seems an odd mistake for a team that clearly love Jane Austen.

Overall

Good Society is full of intriguing ingredients (cycles of play, resolve and monologue tokens, desires, major and minor characters, cards, playsheets). It’s hard to judge what play will be like (possibly harder than most RPGs), but I suspect it makes for a satisfying game. I hope to find out sometime in 2022.

Further viewing

While on the subject of Jane Austen (not something I normally talk about on this blog), may I also recommend Bridgerton and Belgravia, which are Austen-adjacent and cover many of the same themes. I’ve only seen the TV shows, but there are novels for each.

Then there is the wonderful Lost in Austen, my favourite time-travel story in which our modern-day heroine swaps places with Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth and the story is never the same again.

2024 update: I've now played it! Click here to see what I thought.

First impressions: Traveller Explorer’s Edition

Mongoose has just released their Traveller core rules in a 75p 74-page “explorer’s edition”.

This contains:

• Character creation—scouts and scientists only
• Skills and tasks
• Combat
• Encounters and dangers
• Equipment
• Spacecraft operations
• Space combat
• Common spacecraft (a Scout/Courier with deckplans)
• World creation

So that’s very like the original little black books I started my roleplaying journey with, way back in 1981.

I picked it up because I’m thinking about running Traveller next year, and I wanted to see what the latest rules look like. Although I wrote about Secrets of the Ancients a few years ago, I haven’t played Traveller since the mid 90s, and I haven’t run Traveller since the early 80s. (And when I read Secrets of the Ancients, I ignored all the actual stats.)

Initial impressions

Traveller Explorer’s Edition feels very like the original Traveller. The system is still 2D6 with a target (usually) of 8. Character generation is still a mini-game (and there’s still a survival roll, but you don’t die). The weapons still include cutlasses, autorifles and backpack-powered laser rifles. Starship combat has been improved (thankfully), but everything else feels very familiar.

I like the clean layout. Two columns, lots of white space, clean illustrations, ragged-right text. It’s really nice to read, which is a very pleasant change compared to some recent games.

The skill list brings back many memories—it doesn’t look that different from what I remember. New to me are skill specialisations (so Pilot is subdivided into Small Craft, Spacecraft and Capital Ships) and level-0 skills (basic awareness).

Character generation is slightly more involved than I remember, and includes events. I tried it, taking the risky route of Scholar (Field Researcher specialising in archaeology). In my first term I was betrayed and gained a rival; in my second term I was put on some advanced training (but didn’t gain a skill—I must have flunked the exams). During my third term I was severely injured during a disaster, forced to leave and gained another rival.

Traveller Explorer’s Edition doesn’t include a character sheet and I don’t know if Traveller still uses the old 6-figure “UPP” (Secrets of the Ancients doesn’t), but in old money my character would be:

7B74A8 Science (Archaeology 2), Investigate 1, Medic 0, Diplomant 0, Electronics 0, Driver 0, Streetwise 0, Medic 0, Flyer 0, Admin 0. Cr 10,000. Age 30.

I have no idea if this is a good character or not. It feels light as they have only three actual skills. However, if I was doing this as part of session 0 I would have more skills—I could have two free skills from the Connections Rule, plus some from the “Skills Package” (Astrogation 1, Electronics 1, Gun Combat 1, Medic 1, Pilot 1, Recon 1, Stealth 1, Survival 1) which I assume is there to make the group more playable as whole.

On the other hand, my character already has an interesting backstory with a mishap and two rivals.

However, there’s no advice on creating GM characters. I don’t want to go through that rigmarole for every minor NPC that the PCs encounter, so I hope the main rules include guidance for generating simple NPCs on the fly.

It also feels weird to create a character with no idea of how they will turn out. That’s very different from all the games I’ve been playing lately, where players choose the attributes, skills and abilities their characters get. (Unless they’re playing pregens, of course.)

I haven’t tried spaceship combat or generating a world. Yet.

Overall?

So overall, I’m impressed. There’s enough here for me to run a game of Traveller (although I will get the core rulebook), and it makes it even more likely that I will run Traveller in the near future.