Flashbacks and overlapping investigations

In The Dead Undead, I created a flashback. The investigation starts with a dead vampire, at which point I tell the PCs that this is very similar to an unsolved case a few weeks ago.

At which point we skip backwards in time and pick up that investigation. 

This worked really well – except the players forgot that this was an unsolved case. That was my fault – we played the flashback over a couple of sessions, and because the flashback was effectively no different to how we normally play, the players forgot that this was an unsolved case, and I had to remind them.

(Perhaps we should have played in black and white, or something.)

I’m thinking about this because the next case, The Orphan Room, also has a flashback. Or at least, it could have a flashback, and I’m thinking about how I want to run it.

(I suspect both investigations have flashbacks is because I started The Orphan Room ages ago, and while I was mulling it over, The Dead Undead dropped into place and I pinched the flashback idea from The Orphan Room.)

It takes me time to craft an Other London investigation, and so my regular group plays Other London only rather intermittently – between games of Kingdom, Good Society and more. So we do one investigation, then the next. And so on.

Overlapping investigations – probably a bad idea

Real life is rarely so ordered, and part of me would like to run an Other London game where the investigations overlap.

So the flashback from The Dead Undead occurs before (say), Murder of a Templar. And then the second murder in The Dead Undead occurs as Murder of a Templar is wrapping up. (And the flashback in The Orphan Room might even happen before all of that…)

But.

The problem with the flashback in The Dead Undead was that the players found the lack of leads frustrating. (Obviously, it didn’t help that they had forgotten we were playing a flashback. I should have reminded them.)

I suspect it would be equally frustrating if I started overlapping investigations.

We’re not good at leaving things unresolved, so there’s an inherent danger in trying this.

While unsolved cases are a feature of everyday policing, I can’t think of any examples in fiction. I’m sure there’s a reason for that.

So, I think for now, this remains an idea for the shelf.

I’d still like to do it, but it will need the right group of players. And I’ll explain what I’m doing – and hope they trust me enough to go through with it!

Always playtesting

It never ends, does it?

I recently re-ran The Fallen, a short Fate Accelerated Edition investigation for a couple of friends. It’s set in modern-day London, with the characters working for Desk 17, the weird department of the Metropolitan police.

The Fallen scene 1: Victoria Station Burger King

As was inevitable, the PCs did something slightly different to previous runs. Something I hadn’t thought of.

As this is a scenario on my website for publication, I felt I needed to update it. 

And so, I have. (You can download it here.)

Similarly, I am preparing Perfect Organism, my ALIEN scenario, for Furnace. And I’ve already spotted a few changes I need to make—and that’s before it hits the table. Once I’ve run it, I have no doubt there will be more changes.

The same goes every time I run a freeform.

Always improving

In a sentiment credited to numerous people, scenarios are never finished—they are abandoned. And each time I pick them up to rerun them, I find something to improve.

It never ends.

ALIEN: Perfect Organism design notes

 I have written a scenario for Free League’s ALIEN roleplaying game, called Perfect Organism. 

Knowing how my brain works, that probably means I’ve scratched that itch, and I may be done with ALIEN. If so it will join Achtung! Cthulhu, Liminal and The Dee Sanction in the pile of games I’ve enjoyed but am unlikely to run again. We’ll see.

Anyway, here’s how the scenario came about.

More investigative, less shooty

So far I’ve run Hope’s Last Day, Chariot of the Gods and Destroyer of Worlds. (The links go to my reviews and reflections.)

I found Destroyer of Worlds too heavy on combat for my liking and knew I wanted a more investigatory game.

But an investigation into what?

Tied to the movies

I wanted to do something tied to the movies—more than simply reusing the xenomorphs and Weyland-Yutani. And of the movies, only Alien and Aliens interest me—I was disappointed in all the films after that. I’ve seen them, of course, but they never caught my imagination the way Alien did. (And Aliens, to a lesser extent.)

I’ve often wondered what happened after Alien. My impression is that the company diverted the Nostromo to intercept the distress call. (I am unsatisfied by the explanation that every company ship contains special order 937, and encountering the beacon was just chance.) So how did they know, and what did they do when the Nostromo disappeared?

So there’s a scenario there. But I didn’t want to stray too far from the canon, and the ALIEN rpg is set after Aliens and Alien3. 

But what about the Sulaco?

What did the USCMC do when the Sulaco didn’t return from LV-426?

And that gave me the basis for the scenario.

Perfect organism

The title came from Ash’s “Perfect organism” line in Alien (repeated by David in Alien: Covenant). For an android, the xenomorph really could be a perfect organism—it predates humans and leaves synthetics alone. And the line made me wonder if there was a secret android rebellion. (Is David recreating it to overthrow his human masters?)

And if there is a secret android rebellion, maybe that’s motivation for one character. (This is probably where I’ve gone furthest off-canon, certainly regarding the movies.)

(Perfect Organism is also the name of a wonderful podcast dedicated to the Alien saga. If you’re an Alien geek, it’s heaven.)

A room full of facehuggers

Back in 1979, before I saw Alien (I was too young to see it at the cinema the first time around), most of the pre-publicity photographs showed the facehugger, but nothing else. The facehugger is creepy—and elegant. It’s wrapped around Kane’s head, doing something. The camera dwells on it; we have plenty of time with the facehugger.

(Later movies don’t do the facehugger justice. Aliens showed them moving, yes, but we’ve not spent time with someone who has been facehugged since the first movie.)

As I was developing ideas for the scenario, I had a vision of a room full of bodies lined up on operating tables, each with a facehugger. While I didn’t use that exact vision, I kept the idea of bodies with facehuggers—only I put them in cryotubes instead.

Characters

I decided on five characters: two members of the investigation team (a USCMC major and an ICC lawyer), their company minder, the captain of the spaceship they’ve hired, and the scientist in charge of Kathar Station. 

(Oh yes, Kathar Station. I found Kathar Station in the ALIEN rpg book—although it is called Odobenus at one point.)

All the characters have conflicting agendas. While the published scenarios so far normally have one or two characters with very secret agendas, all my characters will rub up against each other. Hopefully, this will bring them into conflict. If I’ve done my job right, the players will proactively drive the action as they react to events.

(In many ways, this is almost a tiny freeform. A freeform-tabletop rpg hybrid?)

Events and Acts

Cinematic games have acts, so tension can’t only come from the PCs. It also needs external events—in this case, a combination of escaped xenomorphs and a hostile spaceship.

The acts in ALIEN drive characters’ agendas—as events unfold, the characters’ objectives can change. I found that in writing these, they were more focused versions of the original agenda—adjusted, given the new information.

The Coyote approaching LV-426 by Steffan Guldevall 

As for events, I realised that I needed to inject some outside interference to create the acts. So while I hope the players will create much of the drama, I’m adding tension in the form of a hostile ship on approach and a planetside facehugging operation that has gone wrong.

I find the events in the published scenarios somewhat overwritten and hard to improvise around. So the events in Perfect Organism are bullet points for the GM to expand as they see fit. (I know this isn’t for everyone—it’s already been suggested that I should flesh the bullet points out.)

Making it easy to run

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about how published adventures aren’t easy to run (see here for the summary), so I’ve tried to make Perfect Organism easy to run. At least, easy for me to run. So I’ve repeated a few essential rules, such as:

• The radiation rules (because of the radiation cloud created by the explosion at the end of Aliens)
• Fire rules with the incinerator units
• Synthetic rules for the secret android.
• Story points and Stress for each player.

If you play a lot of ALIEN, you can ignore this. However, if you play a lot of systems as I do, it helps to have relevant rules to hand when you need them.

I also worked out the base to-hit rolls for anyone with a weapon to save me from working them out in the heat of battle.

Rules and layout changes

There are a few things about the standard ALIEN rules and layout I don’t like. So I made changes.

Stat blocks: The standard ALIEN stat blocks omit key information, and don’t make it clear which skill works with which attribute. I’ve talked about this before, and I’ve made it clearer in Perfect Organism. (Again, if you play ALIEN frequently, it’s not a problem. But I don’t understand why Free League penalises new players.

NPC stats: I haven’t given the NPCs the “proper” stats. Instead, I’ve given them “Scientist: 7 dice” or “Starship Captain: 8 dice”. So when the technician NPC does something technician-y, the GM just rolls their dice. All NPCs have an “Other” rating (usually three dice) for rolls outside of their speciality. I find that simpler and easier.

Story points: I am more generous with Story Points—players can earn up to two by either having a refreshment scene with another character or by taking actions to further their agenda. (A refreshment scene is roleplaying—I took it from Lady Blackbird.) Players can spend story points to change the result of a single die they have thrown or reduce their Stress Level by two.

Rivals and buddies: I dropped rivals and buddies for Perfect Organism—the character backgrounds explain everything they need to know about the other characters.

Format and layout

I asked for feedback on Reddit, and as a result, Jonathan Pay helped me with the final layout—it looks much better now. In addition, Jonathan created the cover image using Wombo.art.

I used Steffan Guldevall’s Hepatica class deckplans for the Coyote, which I found on the ALIEN RPG Facebook group. I contacted him and he kindly allowed me to include them in the game—he also created an image of the Coyote approaching LV-426 that I’ve used.

And a playtest?

And at some point I will run it myself, possibly at Furnace.

Running other people’s adventures: Prodigal Son (Liminal)

This is the first in what may be a series of my thoughts in running other people’s adventures. As I've mentioned, it’s not something I normally do as I prefer to run my own. So this is a departure for me, and I’m probably overthinking it.

(As this has ended up being three posts long, I'm definitely overthinking it...)

This time it’s Liminal’s Prodigal Son, written by Sheffield’s own Dr Mitch (and Liminal author).

Spoilers ahead!

Making it my own

Prodigal Son is a short, three or four scene case for Liminal. The Crew are given a case, fight vampires, and enter a ghost realm. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the broad outline.

In terms of running the adventure, I need to make it my own. So I printed it out and went through it, making notes as I did. And as I did, I realised that I had a handful of questions I needed to resolve so the case made sense.

I am sure I could have asked the good Dr Mitch for his thoughts on these, but I’m sure he’s got better things to do than answer my pedantic questions. More important, answering the questions myself gives me some ownership. It means I will internalise it more, making it easier for me to run.

So, I have questions…

Why doesn’t Sir Tatton realise who took his books?

Sir Tatton has noticed that some books have gone missing from his library—but his guardian spirit didn’t react to the thief and it would react to anyone other than a family member. As the players will immediately put two and two together (because they’re playing an RPG if for no other reason) and work out that Mark Northcott took them, it makes sense for Sir Tatton to know that as well.

So when I ran it, Sir Tatton knows that his son took books from his library (he doesn’t know how many). Prodigal’s Son doesn’t name the books, but the players will probably ask, so I made them up: A History of Sheffield Castle, Wolf Legends, and Bronze Age Myths.

The books aren’t mentioned again, but I dropped them in the ruined farmhouse that the Heirs of Osbehrt use for their base. If the vampires wipe everyone out, then they’ll take the books back to Ariadne (but if that happens then it means the investigation is already over). If they don’t then they’ll end up in the hands of the players—which is as it should be.

What was the deal between the Mark and Ariadne?

Before the case begins, werewolf Mark Northcott has made a deal with vampire Ariadne. His gang (the Heirs of Osbehrt) are being pressured by the Jaeger family to join them, and they want to remain independent. So Mark makes a deal with Ariadne to put the Jaeger family “in their place”. (I imagine this is done by Ariadne killing the Jaeger Face that has been negotiating with the Heirs—that saves me inventing a character…)

But what does Ariadne get from the deal? The case notes don’t say, so here’s what I decided:

• In return for protection, Northcott offered Ariadne a powerful ancient knife he knew he could get.
• Northcott had no intention of giving Ariadne the knife (the Knife of Lethe). Instead he intends to use to raise the Wolf’s Head, which he can use to see off both Ariadne and the Jaeger family.
• When Ariadne realises that she has been tricked (she has access to Diviners), she attacks the Heirs, trying to find Northcott and the knife.

What are the watchers doing and do the watchers know about the ghost realm?

Jaeger watchers

Prodigal Son isn’t clear what the two Jaeger watchers are doing in Sheffield. They’re watching… but how? Are they in a car, just hanging around, or do they have some kind of cover? Do they run a nearby newsagent? I made them security guards for the derelict site, which adds to their nerves (they are nervous because they know Ariadne and her gang are around) because they can’t just leave.

And do they know about the ghost realm? While the adventure suggests no, I decided that one of them does.

(And I renamed one of them—Sean Daley is also the name of Sir Tatton’s butler in The Haunting and if all goes well I’ll run that next.)

What happens if Mark Northcott raises the Wolf’s Head?

And what of the Wolf’s Head, the mythical werewolf outlaw gang that Mark Northcott is trying to raise? What happens if he succeeds? What does that look like? Prodigal Son is silent, but it feels like an own goal not to summon the Wolf’s Head, so…

Knife of Lethe: If the wielder of the knife kills another being, then they draw the spirit of the Wolf’s Head into them. This costs 2 Will and happens automatically unless they don’t have enough Will. 

This gives them +2 Melee, +2 damage and +4 Endurance. However, it also drains 2 Will.

A wielder may do this multiple times, providing they have enough Will. Each time they kill, the spirit of the Wolf’s Head gets stronger and they get more powerful. The effect lasts until the following sunset—at which point the wielder drops unconscious for 48 hours. (And given this may fall into the players’ hands, there’s probably some awful long-term effect if the knife is used often.)

What is Ariadne’s plan

I decided I needed a countdown clock for Prodigal’s Son—events that will take place whether the players are present or not. It all hinges around Ariadne…

1. Ariadne’s vampires attack the Heirs, but Mark is no longer there. (At this point the PCs enter and thwart their final attack.)
2. Ariadne tracks Mark to Castle Market in Sheffield.
3. Ariadne kills one of the Jaeger watchers and tortures the other to learn about the ghost realm.
4. Ariadne and her gang enter the ghost realm.
5. Ariadne and Mark fight—Mark wins, using the knife to kill one of Ariadne’s vampires and summons the Wolf’s Head into himself. He becomes the legendary Wolf’s Head and destroys Ariadne. As he continues to kill the vampires he becomes more and more powerful—but loses more and more Will. By the end of the fight he has no Will left, and eventually passes out.
6. With no Will remaining, Mark fades and becomes a ghost in the ghost realm himself...

Why are Mark’s stats so high?

Finally, for someone who has been in a ghost realm, Mark’s stats need adjusting so I dropped his Will to 6 (from 12). I also found his drive, vengeance at all costs, confusing as I wasn’t sure who he wanted vengeance on. The Jaegers? Ariadne? So I changed it to Summon the Wolf's Head and make the Heirs of Osbehrt great which is clearer in terms of gameplay and his objective for the scene.

Can I make fights more interesting?

Recently I talked about using scenario design to make the fights better. As Prodigal Son has several potential fights, I considered how I might make those more interesting.

The vampires: Prodigal Son’s first battle is with some vampires picking on a young werewolf. That’s their objective—if outmatched they will flee and report back to their boss, Ariadne. (And if they can’t flee, they will surrender.)

Ariadne and her brood: Ariadne plans to be a player in the Hidden World, and will not risk her life foolishly. Her brood isn’t indispensable either—so she will retreat and regroup if things don’t go her way. (She may not even attack if the odds aren’t in her favour.)

Mark Northcott: Sadly, Mark has gone crazy and is driven by his lust for power. He wants to summon the Wolf’s Head. He will fight to the death.

Next: Session Zero

Even for a one-shot I like to do some Session Zero stuff, and I’ll cover that next time.

Fighting in RPG scenario design

I regularly listen to two podcasts on RPGs, The Grognard Files and What Would the Smart Party Do. Both are interesting and thought provoking, and sometimes they both cause me to want to respond in more detail.

Smart Party Episode 128 was all about fights, and it got me thinking about how scenario design can help make fights more interesting. I’m not going to cover whether I think fights are a good or bad thing, but instead think about what scenario designers can do to make their fights more interesting.

A few things caught my eye.

Not to the death

In my experience, many RPG fights consist of a long slog of dice rolls to slowly whittle away a creature's hitpoints. I know I've been guilty of doing that—but I am also aware that in a fight I’m often too busy thinking about the rules and mechanics that the foes don’t always act in an intelligent manner. (The fun combats are when players act intelligently and set things up to succeed—which is one of the things I really like about Fate's use of create advantage.)

So not all fights should be to the death, and sensible foes should surrender or flee when outmatched.

This has (at least) two advantages.

First, fights should become shorter and more memorable.

Second, your foes will seem more intelligent. No longer will they continue to fight even when clearly outmatched.

Third, dealing with prisoners gives the PCs some interesting decisions and roleplaying opportunities.

Objectives

In real life, fights usually happen when two sides have conflicting objectives. If you're playing a wargame you normally have a missions to achieve--take that hill, knock out those 88s. You are rarely expected to kill absolutely everything in your path.

Similarly the opposition has their objectives.

So when you have NPCs that the PCs are likely to fight, it's worth clearly stating what their objectives are.

For example, in the Liminal game I am running in a couple of days, the PCs encounter vampires intent on taking out a werewolf gang. So the vampires want to kill the werewolves. But they shouldn't be suicidal, and the scenario isn't clear either way.

So if I were writing this adventure up, I would describe their objectives as:

Vampire Objectives:

• Kill all the werewolves
• If outmatched, try to flee and return when stronger
• Failing that, surrender.

Now I've never done that before. I like to think my foes have had a modicum of intelligence, but I'm probably flattering myself. For example, when I think back to The Crasta Demon, the first battle is a razorlin raid on a caravan that the PCs interrupt. It's a straight fight to the death, the razorlins don't act sensibly and simply try to attack the players. 

Razorlin warband objective:

• Attack the caravan and raid it for booty
• If outmatched, retreat to den, using archers and spear-throwers to cover the retreat.

That's much better! I even have time to think of some simple tactics for the razorlins—something I probably would have time to do when I'm running combat.

I've got plans to revisit The Crasta Demon, so maybe I need to include the razorlin camp in it. (It's possible I've already done this by the time that you read this.)

(Monster of the Week has a similar approach and gives its NPCs, monsters and locations motivations, which is the story-purpose for that NPC, monster or location. I've talked about Monster of the Week previously.)

Dialogue and Clues

My final takeaway is to remember that even though combat is a highly mechanical part of the game, we’re still playing a roleplaying game. While fighting, what information can the bad guys blurt out while trading blows? This might be clues as to who they’re working for (Ariadne sends her regards!), what their motivations are (Give us the books now!) or a clue to the next scene (Fall back, fall back! We’ll get them at Skull Rock!).

But as I can never remember that sort of thing in the heat of the battle, it’s worth thinking of them in advance. And if you’re designing a scenario you can clues for the monsters to say in battle.

Next steps

And now to put it into practice—first by revisiting some of my old scenarios…