#RPGaDay2025 - 8 - Explore

It's RPGaDay season again. Here's a link to the blog post with the current year's prompts.

Today's prompt is Explore. 

Recently, my forever game Traveller has started to produce some great campaign supplements for exploration, at a completely different scale to what it's done before. Deepnight Revelation is an epic, multi-decade exploration campaign into the unknown to understand an interstellar phenomenon. It's probably the closest Traveller has got to Star Trek in feel since it came out. Rim Expeditions does something similar, but different, allowing you to play Solomani Explorers pushing out towards the rim of the galaxy (or at least our spiral arm). 

What was really different for both of these was that they looked at exploration at a high level, whereas previously Traveller had focused at the macro-level, zoomed in on a planet, or an artefact, or a ship. The way that it was previously done in Shadows or Mission on Mithril was great for getting to the immediacy of a game, but there was not necessarily a long term driver. Perhaps the mini-campaign sets like Tarsus and Arrival Vengeance got closer to this (and the latter is definitely a voyage of discovery across the shattered Imperium), but it wasn't so deliberate. The new approach is a definitely aimed at a multi-year voyage of discover, boldly going into the unknown (or partly known).

However, I've written pretty extensive reviews of Deepnight Revelation and Rim Expeditions, so I don't propose to go back to them. The links will take you to them.  It's worth adding that I've since read the extra six volumes beyond the core box set for Deepnight Revelation and I would consider them essential if I ran the campaign.

There's another aspect to explore when it comes to roleplaying games. Inherently, roleplaying games give you the chance to be someone else and explore their worldview and how someone very different to yourself would react. Yes, it will always be a stretch to really push away from your own world-view, but it's fun to try. Many of the scenarios that I've written have been triggered by the thoughts of 'wouldn't it be interesting to explore that'?

Delta 3 is Down* was written having read the GURPS Traveller Zhodani Aliens Volume, which made me wonder what a Zhodani crew would make of the Imperials if they were forced to interact with them. 

Cold Dark Grave* was partly about exploring a close family business and how the interactions would play out if they found themselves doing something potentially illegal but with the potential to save them from bankruptcy. How far would they go?

Wolves at the Door** was all about playing teenagers and exploring how they would react if their world was threatened by raiders. Could they be Spielberg style heroes? 

The joy of roleplaying games is that they let you try something different, to explore the character you have created and also the situation that you are in. We can do things we couldn't in real life and explore the consequences. I think that's what has kept me roleplaying for forty years; the chance to explore something different from the mundane.

8 August 2025

* Both of these are currently being reworked into Mongoose Traveller second editions with BITS.

** There's also another plan to bring this out with another Traveller publisher.

#RPGaDay2025 - 7 - Journey

It's RPGaDay season again. Here's a link to the blog post with the current year's prompts.

Today's prompt is Journey. 

You might be relieved to hear that I'm not planning to link to Traveller again today. I did consider discussing Rim Expeditions or Deepnight Revelation, but I think that perhaps there are other prompts coming up where they would fit better...

Journey takes me right to Tolkien. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings both have journeys at the heart of their stories, but editions of the various Middle Earth related roleplaying games didn't put them front and centre of the game, and as a result were something less than they could have been. The One Ring makes travel, and the finding of refuges and places of sanctuary outside the wilds, really important and as a result, feels much more like the fiction it seeks to emulate.

Yes, earlier takes on Middle Earth had wonderful mapping and fantastic gazetteers (I'm especially thinking of Iron Crown Enterprises' work here) but somehow it was incidental. 

In The One Ring, travel will bring fatigue, encounters and threats. Outside of the points of light, Middle Earth is a dangerous place, and each members of the party will make rolls to progress safely. One character will take the role of the guide, leading the fellowship on its travels, and using the all important Travel skill. Others will be the Look-Outs, rolling Awareness to keep watch. Scouts will roll Explore to find trails and set up camps. Finally, the Hunters will find food in the wild using the Hunting skill. Not everyone will have to roll every part of the journey; who it is depends on the event that happens.

The path is planned on the hex maps and the distance you travel without an event is determined by the Guide's skill roll. 

Events will affect one of the roles, who will have to use their skill to try and avoid consequences. The Loremaster (GM) is given guidance on the types of event that could happen but it is tailored to the fellowship that is making the journey. Events will typically cause fatigue, but they can also bring dread (through shadow points) or restore hope. You can also be injured. Having pack animals will reduce fatigue along the way. 

It's a mechanistic approach but it works really well and uses a simple procedure to manage the process. 

When we played The Darkening of Mirkwood, journeys across the forest were very dangerous until we helped restore the Dwarven Road, and crossing the mountains even more so. We had one journey across what remains of Angmar where we ended up dumping lots of equipment as we were so fatigued. When we finally emerged into Eriador, we were incredibly relieved. The loss of fatigue really drives tension.

If you fancy a more generic version of this, Cubicle 7 took the mechanics that did for the first edition's D&D 5e line and turned them into a decent book called Uncharted Journeys, which I recommend.

In summary, I love the way that The One Ring has made each journey an important and memorable part of the game, using simple procedures that evoke the feel of the books that the game seeks to emulate.

7th August 2025

#RPGaDay2025 - 6 - Motive

It's RPGaDay season again. Here's a link to the blog post with the current year's prompts.

Today's prompt is Motive. 

I could make this about Traveller again? Oh, go on then.

Traveller introduced many different things to the roleplaying game sphere, but Adventure 11: Murder on Arcturus Station did something that has seldom been adopted elsewhere. It presented a murder mystery on a lonely mining space station, along with a great selection of non-player characters. all with motives for murdering the victim. Released in 1983, there weren't that many investigative games out there yet, but this adventure dared to go beyond a simple chain of clues.

Instead, it tells you how to build your own murder mystery, allowing you to tailor the challenge to your players. You can have a simple mystery with three suspects, or perhaps all nine if you love complexity. Each suspect has their game statistics, reasons to be involved, known and hidden background, a clear Motive which can be discovered, and then the means. There are options given for how they could kill the victim (a somewhat obnoxious hard-nosed businessman) and also how they could be a suspect. Each has an alibi with reaction modifications depending on which lines of questioning are taken. There's also some final notes of elements that may be useful to the referee.

You can even set up a character as a murderer. This requires some work between the player and the referee before the game begins. There's some guidance on how to handle this (by encouraging the party to split and notes about information being passed around as a norm). The starter for the adventure gives all the characters a reason to dislike the victim (he refuses to pay them for their previous work), so there's some motive there already. 

Mongoose re-released this adventure with a prequel (the job that they don't get paid for) as Mysteries on Arcturus Station. The new prequel is a more traditional investigation, but the second adventure is pretty much the same as the original, except that it gives a way to have a player as the murderer without prior collaboration, which I think would work very well. However, they won't know their motive unless they solve the reason for the murder.

So there you are. A flexible adventure, bundled with Motives.

7 August 2025

#RPGaDay2025 - 5 - Ancient

It's RPGaDay season again. Here's a link to the blog post with the current year's prompts.

Today's prompt is Ancient. 

Another Traveller reference, I'm afraid. 

Traveller's setting makes reference to 'the Ancients', an alien civilisation of great power and technology which wiped itself out some three hundred thousand years earlier. When I came across the game, it resonated with me because of the many Andre Norton books that I'd read prior to discovering roleplaying, particularly the Solar Queen series. In those, there is a similarly lost and mysterious civilisation called 'the Forerunners', which served a served a similar plot purpose. I've no doubt that this was an influence on the game.

That sense of mystery and wonder was also there in one of my favourite books, "Rendezvous with Rama", by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, which has a crew exploring an ancient alien vessel which was passing through the solar system. Alastair Reynolds also did this really well with his Revelation Space series, although opening the mystery box results in dire consequences for humanity.

Babylon 5 also had a similar theme with ancient civilisations with an ongoing war.

My heretical thought on the Ancients in Traveller is that they lose some of the reason that they fascinate once you know the story. Discovering the answer to the mystery makes it mundane. That's the paradox; we want to know, but when we find out, the magic goes away.

5 August 2025

#RPGaDay2025 - 4 - Message

It's RPGaDay season again. Here's a link to the blog post with the current year's prompts.

Today's prompt is Message. I've answered this previously in the 2020 RPGaDay.

I'll do something different this time. My forever game, Traveller, had a message on the box set front cover which still resonates with me today.

This is Free Trader Beowulf,

calling anyone... 

Mayday, Mayday... we are under attack... main drive is gone...

turret number one not responding.. Mayday. .. losing cabin pressure

fast... calling anyone... please help...

This is Free Trader Beowulf...

Mayday...

It still sends a shiver down my spine when I read it, as the message sits there, pregnant with potential for adventure.

Much later, GURPS Traveller did a lovely thing with it's advertising campaign which went something like 

Hang in there Beowulf... Help is on the way...

That was a clever play on things at the time as Traveller was between publishers, and the GURPS edition reverted back to the classic / golden era before the Imperium is shattered by the second civil war as described in MegaTraveller.

That's my favourite gaming message.

Books in July 2025

July was a quiet month for reading for me. Lots going on with work and some time spent on writing projects that nearly made me miss my ' read every day' objective.

I read five books, for a total of 1,788 pages. That brings me to 70 books and 17,627 pages for the year. This month I read two non-fiction books, one roleplaying book and two novels.

The non-fiction books were The CIA Book Club by Charlie English and Liftoff by Eric Berger. The former was a fascinating tale of how the CIA funded and helped organise the sharing and sale of literature that was banned in the communist block. The story is focused on Poland, explaining how vital the sharing of literature and ideas was to Solidarity's success. 

Liftoff was a gripping tale of how SpaceX transitioned into becoming the leading provider of rocket launches. It was gripping, tense, and reminded me of why I respected Musk's drive (although I really dislike his management approach and values) and the achievements that were made. Unfortunately, that's all tainted by his foray into politics. However, this book captures the feel of a start-up business really well.

The roleplaying book was Tales of the Old West, which is the first historical take on a Western based roleplaying game. It uses Fria Ligan's Year Zero Engine and is really nicely written. I hope to run this at Furnace in October. Having run and played YZE games before, this looks like a great one.

I revisited the past this month with Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave. This is her Romano-British Arthurian Merlin trilogy's first book. It has a special place in my heart as my Grandmother introduced me to it and I have read it multiple times. This was a return after more than a decade, and it was as wonderful as ever. I recommend this series if you fancy something Arthurian but a bit different. The series definitely influenced the way that I ran the Pendragon roleplaying game in the past.

Finally, I read Paul Vidich's The Poet's Game, a modern day spy story set mostly in Russia and the US. A former spy finds that he cannot escape his past as he's asked to help make contact with a former asset by the CIA. I found this a bit of a page turner, and look forward to the next book from the author.

I'm on holiday in August so the reading rate may accelerate again.

3 August 2025

#RPGaDay2025 - 3 - Tavern

It's RPGaDay season again. Here's a link to the blog post with the current year's prompts.

Today's prompt is Tavern.

Tavern's don't immediately spring to mind when I think of gaming, but I do have to admit that my recent foray into Bree and The Prancing Pony during LongCon was a delight (but real ale lovers should also check out The Lamplighter Inn at Straddle, which had a much more relaxed feel). The gaming purpose that they've traditionally served was covered by Patrons for me. The venue didn't matter, and if I needed one quickly then there was always 101 Rendezvous to find somewhere to meet. 

The Tavern that I associate with gaming is the Gaming Tavern. This is an old-style Bulletin Board Forum that's mostly focused on roleplaying games but with space to discuss most things. It's lightly moderated (I'm part of that group now) and tends to be slower than the conversation in spaces like Bluesky and Mastodon. Mostly, I prefer it to the more social media as I can engage with it at my own pace and I never get that anxiety that I'm missing stuff when I get behind on my feed. Then again, I prefer blogs to YouTube videos so perhaps it's just a generation thing.

The saddest thing was when we had to close to new memberships because of the UK Online Safety Act. That requires age verification to be carried out but didn't put in place anything to do this pragmatically. If you're running a free service, then it's not easy to make that viable. We do still admit new folks, but generally that's because we've met them at conventions and have verified the individual's age. 

Anyway, that's my favourite Tavern.

#RPGaDay2025 - 2 - Prompt

It's RPGaDay season again. Here's a link to the blog post with the current year's prompts.

Today's prompt is Prompt.

Well, first of all, you'll have to forgive me if not all my posts during RPGaDay2025 are prompt. Sometimes they need a little thought, sometimes real life will get in the way of them.

There's a thing in the OSR (and in that, I'd include early editions of Traveller) where a random table is suggested for encounters, events and more. I've only ever really used these for encounters (typically because they're there in a scenario, in D&D or early SF adventures like Mission on Mithril or Shadows) but I do like a good book of them because they're wonderful idea seeds for a GM. Reading through them gives prompts to your brain on how you could flavour or pitch an adventure.

Any of Sine Nomine's 'Without Number' books are great for this (and they have free versions), and there's other great material out there like Cubicle 7's Uncharted Journeys or Mythmere's Tome of Adventure Design. I have far too many of these books, and mostly they sit there, pregnant with potential for adventure. But when something emerges from them, it's wonderful.

These kind of books and lists are fantastic prompts for the mind. Anyone got any recommendations for others?

2 August 2025

#RPGaDay2025 - 1 - Patron

It's RPGaDay season again, so I'll give it a go. Here's a link to the blog post with the current year's prompts.

Today's prompt is Patron.

In many ways, this is an easy one to talk about, as the word 'Patron' in a roleplaying game context immediate takes me to my forever game, Traveller. I long loved the utility of the Classic Traveller supplement, 76 Patrons. This is a fantastic collection of short plot hooks with a variety of options for resolution that could easily fill in a full play session. I guess that they'd be referred to as adventure seeds or hooks these days. When I was running a sandbox style merchant campaign in the Spinward Marches (broadly influenced by Twilight's Peak and others), I'd regularly go to this book and JTAS (The Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society) for ideas to slide in around the main plot, and it was rare that they ever let me down as a source of ideas. 

Each Patron encounter was defined by a role for the Patron, the Required Skills & Equipment, and then had two short paragraphs giving Player's Information and Referee's Information. The latter was a selection of options on what was going on, numbered against the roll of a six-sided dice. There weren't always six options, but you always had an option to randomise.

You can still get 76 Patrons from Drivethru RPG.

Skipping forward, I was proud to coordinate the book 101 Patrons for BITS. This was initially designed to replace 101 Plots, but it grew legs. It has a lovely cover by Jesse DeGraff (RIP), and some fantastic guidance on using the 4Ps (Plots, People, Places and Props) when working out a scenario, followed by some lovely work on the 36 dramatic situations (by Andy Slack if I recall correctly). This is followed by 48 Patrons in the same format as 76 Patrons along with 27 situations (again in the same format but not necessarily directly linked to a patron), 6 elaborations and a huge number of 'starport chatter' and 'world seed' entries. It's a really useful book for a Referee, particularly if you're in a hurry. In fact, the whole 101 line takes this approach.

You can still get 101 Patrons on Drivethru RPG, but there's also a bundle with all the 101 books. 

I don't get any benefit if you do pick a copy up, but you'll definitely have a useful aid for running a science fiction game!

1 August 2025