Traveller: Why do starships have internal fuel tanks?

Last time, I mused over the lethality of Traveller’s low berths. This time, I’m grumbling about starship fuel tanks.

Jump drives

Back in 1981, when I first read Traveller’s little black books, I didn’t fully understand how jump drives worked. I imagined they were like the hyperdrives in Star Wars – and were used throughout to keep the ship in jump space.

Except they don’t work like that.

I realised something was amiss with my concept when I got my hands on Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats and, in particular, the Gazelle class Close Escort.

The Gazelle class Close Escort

The Gazelle then: From Traders and Gunboats

The Gazelle included a new feature: drop tanks.

“The L-Hyd Tanks: The close escort carries a large fraction of its fuel in droppable tanks mounted longitudinally. With the tanks attached, the ship is capable of jump 4 and 4-G acceleration. When the tanks are dropped, the ship burns the fuel and can achieve jump. Once the tanks are dropped, they must be replaced at a starport or naval base; until they are replaced, the ship is capable of 5-G acceleration, but only jump-2 (due to lack of sufficient fuel capacity).”

This crashed up against my assumptions, and it took me a while to work out what this actually meant: jump drives spent all their fuel before entering jump. And then they could drop their tanks, which is important because, in Traveller, a ship’s volume (measured in, er, tonnage – more on that below) determines how far it can jump.

This was the first time I had seen this. It wasn’t in my little black books, and it wasn’t in The Traveller Book.

It’s not even particularly clear in Mongoose’s latest rules.

The Gazelle now: From High Guard (2022 update)

Core Book 2022 Update

While providing a much clearer explanation of what’s going on during jump, Mongoose’s Core Rulebook Update 2022 doesn’t clearly say that jump drive fuel is consumed to create the jump bubble before entering jumpspace.

And the amount of fuel spent creating the bubble is 10% of the ship’s tonnage x the distance jumped, in parsecs. (While this is implied, I don’t think I’ve seen it in the core rules, although I may have missed it. It’s covered in the Traveller wiki.)

Why is this important?

Because in a world where tonnage is money, why would you ever have internal fuel tanks for your jump drive? Once you enter the jump bubble, those tanks are empty…

In fact, for most ships, the J-drive fuel tanks are empty for most of its life. You normally only need to fill them when you’re about to make a jump – otherwise, it is best to keep them empty.

The cost of an empty fuel tank

So, if we look at a humble 200-ton (or rather, 2,800 m3 volume) Free Trader, its jump-1 drive requires 20 tons of fuel. If a Free Trader had droppable fuel tanks, those 20 tons could be turned into cargo space which would be potentially an extra Cr 20,000 every trip (assuming it was filled with standard cargo).

Why wouldn’t you do that?

Now, drop tanks may only work in civilized places – perhaps only at class A and B starports or where there is a steady trade. I can imagine renting standard drop tanks much in the way you’d rent a skip today. (So that will eat into that Cr 20,000.)

And you might want internal fuel tanks if you didn’t know whether you would be able to refuel at the other end. However, most Traveller ships don’t have the fuel capacity for more than one jump, and the assumption is that fuel is pretty easy to get.

Are there other options?

Alternative fuel tanks

High Guard gives us more options for fuel tanks:

Collapsible fuel tanks: A huge bladder that sits in the cargo space and can be filled (and emptied) with fuel as needed. It's a good idea, but there’s no time to use the cargo space productively between forming the jump bubble and entering jumpspace.

Collapsible fuel tank from High Guard

Drop tanks: As fitted on the Gazelle Close Escort, above. However, they bring a penalty to the jump drive roll, and the tanks themselves have a less than 50% chance of surviving the experience. (I find it odd that they aren’t more reliable – I imagine Toyota kaizen-ing the hell out of these and making them safe and reliable and cornering the market as a result.)

Fuel/Cargo container: Allows fuel to be stored in unused parts of a ship.

Mountable tanks: Fixed tanks that convert cargo space into fuel tanks, and as far as I can see, have no benefit over a collapsible fuel tank. (Well, they take up less space than a fuel bladder, but you’ve lost the use of your cargo space.)

None of these are ideal – they either use up precious cargo space or aren’t particularly reliable.

My solution: collapsible external fuel tanks

Collapsible external fuel tanks

Why not fit those fuel bladders on the outside of a ship? That way, when the fuel is used up, the bladder collapses and preserves the ship’s precious volume. And it can be reused time and time again.

Collapsible external tanks will affect a ship’s streamlining – although I can imagine blisters on the hull that conceal the tank (but at a cost – maybe 2% of the fuel tank tonnage) and protect the ship’s streamlining.

Implications

The real problem with this is that it invalidates almost all the Traveller ship design assumptions since 1977. Ships should have more cargo space and less fuel space. You might still want internal fuel tanks for some situations, particularly if you need an armoured hull, but most ships would have external fuel bladders.

Footnote: Traveller tonnage

Traveller tonnage is a bit weird. Ships are measured in displacement tonnage, which is actually a measure of volume (equivalent to the volume of liquid hydrogen displaced, measured in tons – so one displacement ton is 14 m2).

I can see how this works for jump drives – the J-drive needs to create a jump bubble big enough to take the ship. So volume is important.

But for manoeuvre drives? I would have thought that a ship’s mass was more important than its volume for an M-drive. So, is a ship more agile with its fuel tanks empty? Apparently not – but maybe that was one calculation too many. (Interestingly, M-drives use power from the power plant but no actual fuel themselves.)

Next

Next time I look at the most populated world in the Regina subsector: Rethe.

Traveller: low berths

Some background: I have a vague plan to run some Traveller sometime soon, so I’ve been doing some reading (Mongoose 2nd edition, the 2022 update), and I’m enjoying immersing myself in it.

I haven’t read this much Traveller since the early 80s, when I started roleplaying. I’m pleased at how familiar everything is – but at the same time, modern and updated.

But I have a few niggles; things that don’t seem quite right. None are game-breaking (and few actually affect actual roleplaying), but they have the sense of something that hasn’t really been thought about properly.

So I’m going to mull over some of them – starting with low berths.

What are low berths?

“Back to the old freezerinos.” – Brett, Alien

Low berths are a staple of science fiction and may be known as cryotubes, stasis, hypersleep pods or whatever. Essentially, the passenger is frozen for the duration of the voyage.

Alien starts with the crew coming out of cryosleep – but you can see the same sort of thing in Avatar, Passengers, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (the Golgafrincham B Ark) and many others. (Here’s a wiki page devoted to the subject.)

Technically, it’s not without its challenges. In particular, the challenge of preventing ice crystal formation. But assuming you can overcome that problem, cryosleep is great for transporting a lot of people a long way with minimal life support.

Traveller, however, is a bit odd about that as they’re typically used for one-week jumps. It hardly seems worth it. (Here’s the Traveller wiki page on low passage.)

What’s wrong with Traveller’s low berths?

In short, they’re lethal. 

My 1982 copy of The Traveller Book says: “Throw 5+ for each passenger when he is revived after the ship has landed. DMs: Atending medic expertise of 2 or better, +1; low passenger with an endurance of 6 or less, -1. Failure to achieve the throw to revive results in death for the passenger.”

So that’s an unmodified 5/6 (83%) chance of survival.

That means if a family of four takes a trip somewhere, they only have a 48% chance of all surviving the journey. (So, a greater than even chance that at least one family member won’t make it.)

Those odds are appalling! Even with a medic on hand (+1 DM), there’s still a 30% chance that at least one family member won’t survive the journey.

(In Traveller, a 200-ton Free Trader has 20 low berths. There’s only a 2.6% unmodified chance of everyone making it.)

I certainly wouldn’t get into a low passage – they’re just too dangerous. It’s literally a game of Russian Roulette. And putting 20 on a Free Trader (taking up 10 tons of valuable cargo space) seems extraordinarily wasteful!

(And the low lottery, where passengers hold a sweepstake on the number of low berth survivors, is just tasteless.)

Mongoose Core Rules

In Mongoose’s Traveller, things are slightly better. Slightly.

The Core Rules say: “There is real danger to the passenger, as a Routine (6+) Medic check (1D x 10 minutes, INT) is required upon opening the capsule, applying the passenger’s END DM to the check. A further DM+1 is applied if the ship is TL12 or higher, while non-humans suffer DM-2. An emergency low berth inflicts DM-1 on this check.”

While at first glance this appears worse, taking longer over a task gives a +2 DM. As there really shouldn’t be any reason to rush defrosting someone from a low berth, this gives an unmodified roll of 4+ to survive, or an 11/12 chance of survival. And Medic-2 makes it an automatic success, making low berth travel much safer.

What would I change?

First, I like low berths. They’re a science fiction stable, and it suits Traveller, but for me, it needs some adjustments.

First, I would assume that the problems of low berth travel have been largely fixed. Low berth travel should be boring. Routine. Safe. Maybe there’s a one in a thousand chance of a problem, with one in twenty of those resulting in a fatality. That makes low berths more realistic.

Second, I would remove low berths as fixtures in ships – maybe have a few low berths for emergencies. Instead, I imagine low berths being part of the cargo. 

There’s no reason for low berths to be per-jump. Instead, you could be put in a low berth at one end of your journey and defrosted at the other, however many jumps later. I imagine a small industry of seamless, low-cost passenger shipping.

Low berths and aliens

Mongoose’s Traveller gives a DM-2 for non-humans, but presumably, that applies only to non-humans trying to use a human low berth. On a Vargr ship, it should be the humans who get DM-2.

That’s assuming they can fit in the low berth in the first place – a K’Kree won’t ever be able to use a human low berth.

And some aliens may be unsuitable for low berths in any eventuality. (Discussed to some extent on this Traveller wiki page about Low Berth Racks.)

Other ideas

Low berths (or their equivalents) regularly turn up in science fiction, sometimes with interesting side effects.

It’s a long time since I read Arthur C Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two, but from what I remember, the hibernation pods had a small rejuvenating effect. How popular would they be in Traveller if regular use was a positive DM on your ageing roll?

On the other hand, in The Legacy of Heorot (by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes), some colonists suffer from Hibernation Instability caused by ice crystals forming in the brain during cryosleep. So maybe one potential side effect of low berths is a risk of -1 to Intelligence rather than death? 

(Similarly, in the Flatlined adventure, the Travellers awaken with temporary amnesia.)

Or might passengers enjoy cellular reprofiling during cryosleep? Maybe not as extensive as the rejuvenation process in Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained (Peter F Hamilton), but perhaps enough to give +1 to Dexterity or Endurance? This would probably be expensive – and I imagine it taking longer than a week. But if you’re travelling from Efate/Regina to Pretoria/Pretoria (11 jumps, at jump 2), why not avoid the tedium of travel, eradicate your hay fever, boost your reflexes, and change your eye colour at the same time?

Next time

Next time, I grumble about starship fuel tanks.

2023 in games

And suddenly, it’s 2024. Was 2023 anything to write home about? Some good, some bad – at least in terms of games.

2023's new boardgames

Freeform Games

Freeform Games had a great year. We published two games, transitioned our old shop into a more modern shop, and had our best year (sales and revenue) so far. I will write more on the Freeform Games blog, in a few days.

Conventions and games weekends

I’m attending more conventions these days (largely thanks to giving up the day job). I love going to conventions – as much for catching up with old friends as much as playing the games.

In 2023 I attended:

Retcon (February, Retford): A replacement for the normal UK Freeforms weekend game, Retcon was a convention of smaller freeforms and boardgames. I ran two freeforms and facilitated a game of Fiasco.

Airecon (March, Harrogate): A lovely local convention in Harrogate – I’ve been going for a few years now. It’s primarily a boardgames convention, with a small-but-healthy RPG stream. (It’s like a small UKGE, but more focus on playing and less on the trade halls.) I ran two tabletop RPGs and played lots of boardgames.

Peaky (April, not far from Tamworth): I’ve been to every Peaky since it started in the early 2000s. Intense, creative and fabulous. I wrote one game and played three. Brilliant.

Continuum (July, Leicester): This was my first Continuum in a while – it had fallen off my games calendar. I like the mix of tabletop and freeforms that I get at Continuum, plus I ran into several old friends that I don’t see at the other cons. I ran two tabletop games and played in three freeforms.

Furnace (October, Sheffield): Tabletop roleplaying only, and local enough that I don’t need to stay overnight. I ran one game and played in three.

Consequences (November, not far from Poole): Longest time away (four nights), I ran two freeforms and played in five.

Plans for 2024: Mostly the same, except that the weekend freeforms are back, which means there’s no Retcon. And I’m hoping to get to at least one day of Larpcon in Coalville.

Freeform larps

2023 was a great year for freeforms. I played or ran 20 freeforms, which I’m sure is a record. I also self-published a book, Writing Freeform Larps, which does what it says on the tin.

Favourite to run: Children of the Stars, at Consequences, was my favourite to run. It went smoothly – and although the follow-up (Messages from Callisto) also went well, that was beset by errors on my part.

Favourite to play: The Ashlight Labyrinth, which I played at Peaky, was a delight and my favourite freeform as a player in 2023. (Close runners-up were Across the City, Better than Life, Antarctic Station 13 and Ghosts: It’s not Ibsen.)

Plans for 2024:

• Finish writing and then run The Stars our Destination (the next in my first-contact series of games).
• Publish All Flesh is Grass on Itch.io. Start work on getting Children of the Stars ready for publication.
• Maybe start writing another freeform for Freeform Games.

Tabletop RPGs

I played in and ran fewer ttrpgs in 2023 than in recent years. My regular groups are fairly small (usually just four of us), and if someone can’t make it, then we cancel the session rather than struggle with just three of us. Unfortunately, we had lots of cancelled sessions in 2023.

My 2023 top games in terms of numbers were As the Sun Forever Sets (nine sessions as GM), Good Society (four sessions as a player – this is ongoing), Kingdom (three sessions as GM/facilitator). 

I ran two sessions of Hillfolk, which I’ve been meaning to run ever since it came out in 2023. So it only took me ten years. It was as good as I hoped, and I want to run more.

I published Other London: Desk 17, along with a couple of adventures. They’re not setting the world alight, but I find the whole process very satisfying. I like sharing my stuff.

Favourite to run: The two sessions of Hillfolk, which were a delight.

Favourite to play: The session of Fiasco I played (and facilitated) at Retcon – we had a great group of players and it was one of the highlights of the con.

Plans for 2024:

• Run more Hillfolk (at Airecon – and maybe see what it’s like online).
• Playtest the two scenarios I have written up (one for the Department of Irregular Services, one for Desk 17) and then publish them.
• Finish writing up two half-finished scenarios and playtest them as well.
• Maybe run a bit of Traveller, which would be very old school for me. At the very least, I will buy Mysteries of the Ancients and Wrath of the Ancients, which are completely in my wheelhouse. (I know I can get the pdfs right now, but I’m saving myself for when the hardbacks are ready.)
• If the Urban Shadows 2.0 Kickstarter appears, I’d like to take it for a spin. It’s very late (the campaign was back in 2020), but I’m relaxed about its tardiness. I don’t have room for another game, and I’d rather it was right and late than wrong and on time.
• And perhaps most important, I’d love to meet more gamers and play more games. Maybe run a few one-shots online or find a semi-regular face-to-face group.

Boardgames

In 2023, I played more games of My City than any other game. I played on boardgamearena a fair bit, which has been a lot of fun. While I’ve had a couple of online evenings with friends, most of my games have been turn-based against strangers. It’s been more fun than I had expected, and I’ve tried a lot of new games.

The new games to my collection:

My City: Reiner Knizia's legacy game with 24-episodes, plus an “eternal” game once you’ve done with the legacy game. It's a tile-placing game that takes about 15 minutes to play - so easy to play a few games in one sitting. I’ve played the eternal game quite a bit on Boardgamearena. The campaign is okay – although, toward the end, it can be demoralising if you get too far behind in the overall score.

Mottainai: a small card game by Carl Chudyk with a lot of gameplay. It’s the spiritual successor to Glory to Rome (one of my favourite games), and I like it a lot. It's tricky to get your head around and has some of the craziness that Glory to Rome has – but in a smaller, quicker package.

Daybreak: A cooperative game of decarbonising to solve climate change by Matt Leacock & Matteo Menapace. I gave it to myself as a Christmas present. I’ve played it solo on Boardgamearena a few times, but my first in-person game with Miss H ended in a loss. Don’t put the fate of the planet in our hands!

The Traitors Card Game: A Christmas present from Miss H. A tie-in to the wonderful TV series. I wondered if it was just a reskinned Werewolf (which is all The Traitors is), but it brings in elements from the TV series, such as shields and gold. It's for four players or more, and so we haven't tried it yet.

Plans for 2024: More of the same – no doubt the games collection will swell. Already on order is Kavango (drafting African animals, Kickstarter) and Innovation Deluxe (more card-based craziness from Carl Chudyk, Backerkit), but I should restrain myself. (I try and cull it every now and again, but not always successfully.)

Other games

And as usual, I played the usual assortment of video games: too much World of Tanks Blitz, plenty of Star Realms and Race for the Galaxy.

And overall?

So overall, 2023 was not so good for tabletop roleplaying, about average for boardgames, and excellent for freeforms. So I can’t complain.

Treasure Hunt 2023

 This year’s Christmas treasure hunt:

Add together the fifth and sixth prime numbers. Then subtract 1.

Find the three consecutive odd numbers whose sum is 27. What is the middle number?

The first letter of the capital city of Myanmar.

Decrypt this using a caesar cypher with a shift of 3: “Wkh dqvzhu lv wkh ohwwhu g.”

What is the number of the chapter titled “The Forbidden Forest” in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone?

The ninth prime number.

The first letter of the name of the artist who painted three castles.

A bat and a ball cost £1.10 in total. The bat costs £1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost, in pence?

The first letter of the name of the artist who painted a wine bottle and two glasses.

A score.

Changing my mind – Fate

Last time I talked about the change I’d make to Fate Accelerated – I’d add a seventh approach, Charming.

Vodkashok pointed out some errors in my thinking on The Tavern discussion forum (where, through the magic of Interwebs, my blog was automatically posted).

He wrote:

I'd humbly suggest falling back onto my old favourite Fate Accelerated adage - Approaches say how you do something, not what you do. So each one can be applied to anything. So, if you are trying to charm someone

Quick - rapidly bombarding the listener with words, not letting them get a word in. Literal fast talk

Forceful - power of charisma or fear, like a drill sergeant

Flashy - a staged performance, ala Donald Trump

Careful - slowly and steadily picking your words to make the most impact

Clever - long words, complex sentence structure, introduce some Latin phrasing and the occasional 'Whaar!'

Sneaky - Laying down linguistical traps, boxing someone into a corner where they cannot do anything but agree, the weasel words salesperson

He’s right, and that’s helped my Fate Accelerated thinking.

How you do it, not what you do

Vodkashok is right to remind me that approaches are how you do something, not what you do.

It seems odd that I had forgotten that, as when I teach Fate Accelerated to new players, that’s exactly what I tell them: you tell me what you’re trying to do, and I’ll tell you which approach that is.

Can you forcefully charm someone?

But I’m not sure about all of Vodkashok’s examples (they appear to be persuading someone rather than charming them), but it’s a good example of how something like persuasion works in Fate Accelerated. 

And “charming” might even be part of your high concept aspect, allowing you to spend a fate point to invoke it for a bonus. Or it could be a stunt.

How do you charmingly open a door?

Thinking about it further, charming doesn’t work as an approach because it’s so limited. How would you “charmingly” open a door or drive a car? You can’t. It doesn’t work.

Now, I’m not sure that every approach should be used in every situation (I probably wouldn’t let someone forcefully charm someone), but adding niche approaches probably isn’t the way to go.

So, I won’t add Charming to Fate Accelerated after all.

What would I change about my favourite RPG system?

While I participated in RPGaDAY back in August, I found the questions a bit frustrating as I would have liked them to be more reflective.

As I was going through the month, I came up with a few questions I would like to answer. This is one of them.

What would you change about your favourite RPG system?

My favourite system, the one I find easiest to run and play, is Fate Accelerated.

I find Fate Accelerated absurdly simple. Characters are defined by:

• Aspects (“Hotshot pilot” “Rugged archaeologist” “Bull in a china shop”) which are always true. (Aspects can be applied to anything.)
• Approaches – how the character does things. Approaches come in six flavours: Forceful, Quick, Careful, Clever, Sneaky, and Flashy.
• Stunts – special abilities that work in certain circumstances, often giving a +2 bonus to a roll.

There are no skills – if you want skills, you should use Fate Core or Fate Condensed. (But I’m not a fan of Fate’s skills list, as I mentioned in my Fate of Cthulhu writeup.)

Doing stuff

So, to do something in Fate Accelerated, a player rolls four fate dice and adds the relevant approach. If they are smashing down a door, it’s probably Forceful. If they are picking the lock, it might be Careful.

The difficulty with approaches

Sometimes, I find it tricky to work out which approach should be used. Clever and Careful often seem to have an overlap. I don’t worry too much, but if I’m struggling, I do two things:

First, I consider what the result will be (and what might happen if they fail). If the player is carefully defusing a bomb, then that suggests a methodical approach. If they fail, they’ve probably taken precautions against taking too much damage. But quickly defusing a bomb suggests a certain recklessness.

Second, it’s sometimes helpful to think of the approaches as D&D attributes. While this works for Forceful (Strength), Quick (Dexterity), and Clever (Intelligence), this doesn’t work so well for the others. (This doesn’t work for every case. If a PC was trying to intimidate an NPC, I could imagine them rolling Forceful.)

I guess I could argue that Careful might equate to Wisdom, but I suspect that the blurriness between Clever and Careful is like that between INT and WIS.

But there’s no approach in Fate Accelerated equivalent to Charisma or Constitution. That’s fine for Constitution – there’s no need for a “healthy” approach as that’s covered by stress boxes and consequences.

But Charisma? That’s the bit in Fate Accelerated I miss. My players often try to befriend or get to know NPCs, and I find the approaches let me down in Fate Accelerated. So, I’d like to see a “charming” or “charismatic” or “likeable” approach for social situations.

Just one change

So that’s the change to Fate Accelerated I’d make: a seventh approach – Charming.

Reflections on a campaign larp

So from what I could tell and what the players told me (and others afterwards), the players enjoyed my two freeforms at Consequences. Several players want to find out what’s coming next, and other players (who missed one or both episodes) want me to run them again.

Which has me in a bit of a quandary.

The big idea

So a recap.

I’m writing a series of connected freeform larps set in the same universe. The freeforms are based on the science fiction first-contact novels and movies (and other media) that I have always adored.

Some characters appear in multiple episodes. Some characters appear only once. The games are always written for 13 players (although I’ve managed when Life has interfered). The games are also designed to be independent – you need not play in the previous episodes, but I hope you’ll get more out of them if you do.

The games so far are:

The Roswell Incident: Kind of a prequel. Sets the scene and introduces some of the main themes. This is now published by Freeform Games.

All Flesh is Grass: Based on the 1965 Clifford D Simak novel of the same name.

Children of the Stars: The players grapple with another alien race. Friendly or not?

Messages from Callisto: A mission to Callisto has unsettling news.

The Stars our Destination: The next game, which I’ve started, is set on Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

So far, I have run each game twice – so I have two alternate “timelines” taking place.

Timeline 1 is is an online-only game, started in February 2022. It’s suffered from occasional technical difficulties.

Timeline 2 is a face-to-face series that started at Retcon in February 2023 and continued at Consequences in 2023.

There are a few differences between the two – aside from the differences the players have created. I have changed some character names and alien details (one alien has completely changed from my original ideas).

But I’m keen to carry on with them. The two timelines are diverging, which is both scary and exciting.

(I should also note that while I have a vague sense of where I’m heading with the overall arc, I don’t know how I’ll get there…)

Multiple runs

At a convention like Consequences, it’s common to have multiple runs of popular games. This year, The Ashlight Labyrinth and Incense and Insensibility both ran twice. 

While that’s an easy thing to do for a one-shot, that’s a little trickier for ongoing games.

One easy answer is to start each episode with a summary that basically says, “Forget what happened last time; this is the real history.” As I understand it, that’s what Tony Mitton’s Linfarn Run series does.

But I don’t want to do that. I want the players' decisions in an episode to affect later episodes. If the players decide to multilaterally disarm and dismantle the world’s nuclear stockpile, then that should be part of the history going into later episodes.

I guess I could run (say) Children of the Stars twice at the same convention. They could have a common background (let’s say Timeline 2), but I would then end up with Timeline 2A and 2B (or is that Timeline 3 and 4?).

But that’s not what I want to do. I’d rather start Timeline 3 with The Roswell Incident and start afresh.

Playing previous episodes

The other issue is whether players who join the game at episode 4 (say), would like to play an earlier episode. They already know some of what happened in those episodes (because it’s part of the background) – but would playing in an earlier episode appeal?

I don’t know.

I’d like to think that my games are enjoyable enough that they would have a good time playing even if they already knew some details. 

And freeforms are often re-run, and players often play them again. At the recent Retcons, I played in two freeforms that I had played previously – in one case, I even played the same character. It didn’t affect my enjoyment – I had either forgotten the details, or deliberately overlooked them.

So, I hope that players will enjoy playing in earlier episodes. (And if it were me, I’d be tempted to push the game in different directions.) I guess I’ll find out in due course.

2-3 monthly campaign

I guess my ideal approach for the campaign would be to run them at 2-3 monthly intervals with a stable of players.

If anyone is in the Leeds/Harrogate/York region and wants to organise such a thing, let me know!

Available for others

A final constraint is that I plan to make the games available for others to play.

So far, The Roswell Incident is available via Freeform Games as one of their murder mystery games (although the main mystery isn’t a murder…)

Next to get into shape is All Flesh is Grass, which I hope to start work on shortly. When that’s done, I’ll make it available on my itch.io page. With a fair wind, I hope to get that up in early 2024.

However, making a game where earlier games affect later games presents a few challenges. For Children of the Stars, I anticipated one big outcome and several little outcomes. (And there was another outcome I hadn’t predicted!)

So for Messages from Callisto, I prepared a set of notes for each character based on the big outcome and briefings for the little outcomes. And between the games, I hurriedly stuffed character packets accordingly.

However, as the timeline goes on, that’s likely to become more complicated.

So I will probably provide the game as MS Word documents (rather than a pdf as I might normally do), and highlight the areas that need changing. (It’s that or provide different files for each option – along with really complicated instructions for assembling character packets.)

I am already taking the highlighter approach for The Stars our Destination as I am already writing different sections of the text changes for different outcomes.

To sum up

So:

• I want to keep the games in their own timelines. I want the in-game decisions to matter. So I’m unlikely to run them more than once at the same convention.
• I will make them available for others to run.
• The next game will be The Stars our Destination and is set on Rapa Nui. The title may change (but it’s unlikely). I hope to run that online in the first half of 2024 (Timeline 1), and then in person at Consequences (Timeline 2).
• I will probably run another game at Consequences, but whether that is episode 6 or something else, at this point I have no idea.
• I’m not sure when I’m going to start Timeline 3.