WOTB - Forest Witch - Mastery - Himmelsdorf

Forest Witch Mastery - it really is a bully.

4,339 damage, 535 assist, 1830 blocked, 4 kills, 1,475XP

https://youtu.be/SzwXNsAioS0

Ghosts of SF RPGs past

Like comets, they keep on coming back after a long period in the outer darkness.

About ten years ago I got rid of several complete game systems that I didn't think that I'd be playing again any time soon. Much as I loved them, I just couldn't see them getting to the table fast. 

They were:

• Blue Planet v2
• Fading Suns 2e
• Transhuman Space

Blue Planet I quickly got buyers regret and bought it all back after a couple of years, although that's in the 'to sell' pile again. I absolutely love the setting, and the first version of the Synergy system was okay, albeit very 1990s and fiddly. I mentioned previously my excitement at the upcoming release of Blue Planet Recontact, excitement driven by having play tested and enjoyed the new edition. So why am I selling the previous edition again? Quite simply because I have all the books in PDF, need the space and realise that I don't actually need hard copies. I plan to run this and Dr Mitch will hold me to that!

Fading Suns was always the slightly dark not-Dune, not-Warhammer and very different. I'd always struggled to get people to table for it, but I liked the setting. When I was doing the cold hard take on things, I sold it on. However, recently First Age and I were talking and I ended up picking up pretty much everything that is in print for the new fourth edition at a steal on eBay. Unfortunately for First Age, I pulled the trigger on the 'buy-it-now' before he did, although he's regularly reminding me that he will take the books off my hands. That may well be an opportunity that he gets if I don't really get on with what I'm reading at the moment.

Transhuman Space was the odd one out. A standalone GURPS game, it explores transhumanism in the near future when humanity has spread across the solar system. It's packed with decent writing and loads of ideas but I could never grok how to run it. Unlike a lot of other games, ideas didn't spring up easily, the issue being the setting not the mechanics. It was one of those rare games that I liked (well, aside from GURPS* as an engine) but just couldn't work out what to do with. I don't think that I was the only person who had that issue with it. Anyway, it came up for a steal on the Bundle of Holding so I snagged all the PDFs. Skimming them, I may use them for a source of ideas, but I can't quite see myself using it as is.

So there's a trio of games that I've stepped away from, which have come back to me over the last year. Have you ever stepped away from a game but then regretted it? 

18 December 2024

* I don't mind the point design or 3D6 mechanic in GURPS but the use of American Imperial measurements does my head in...

WOTB - Fanrïk - Mastery - Fort Despair

 

Fanrïk Mastery on Fort Despair in World of Tanks Blitz

3,340 damage, 4 kills, 1,055 assisted, 1,512 XP

https://youtu.be/fI5OI0HUPR8

WOTB - Vz.55 - Mastery - Mines

Sometimes in all goes right. Unexpected Mastery in Vz.55 on Mines in World of Tanks Blitz.

5,694 damage, 1,631 assisted, 350 bounced, 2 kills, 6 damaged, 1,619 XP

https://youtu.be/REgSuHxdN48

Blue Planet Recontact - looking good

Looking gorgeous.

Possibly my most anticipated game for 2025 is the final offset print version of the new edition of Blue Planet, Blue Planet Recontact. The team producing the new edition just shared the picture above on Kickstarter in an update. It's not the final offset printing, but preparation for a POD version on DriveThruRPG. However it just shows how gorgeous this looks. The interior is just as good, as they've shared sneak previews of that too and now there are PDFs available to backers.

I did some playtesting on this edition and then revisited it with a follow on scenario at another convention. It plays really well, and the Synergy systems is similar to that in Blue Planet v2 but thoroughly modernised. I do intent to offer an episodic campaign once the final books arrive. One of the things they added in this edition was a set of campaign frames to make it easy to kick off a game (as the level of lore in Blue Planet often had people wondering how to go at it). I ran the Red Sky Charters frame and it felt like the kick off to a TV series.

I do recommend this as a great product; there's enough in these two books for more than one campaign, it's beautifully created and very unique.

Recommended!

8 December 2024

Traveller - Geomorph cache (great resource for SF roleplaying games)

 

A fantastic resource for SF roleplaying

I just wanted to give a shout out to Eric Smith's site where he has converted and hosted Robert Pearce's fantastic Starship Geomorphs as transparent PNG or higher resolution PSD files so you can use them with virtual tabletops.

The site is here.

If you've not come across Geomorphs before, they're modular tiles that you can tesselate and manipulate to build a map (or in this case a deck plan for a starship or installation). The site includes links to the original PDF files as well.

I did find the site pretty low bandwidth when I downloaded the files, but definitely worth a visit. 

7 December 2024

The Starship Geomorphs book

Travelling to the Motherlode

A motherlode of scenarios to plunder...

I'm edging back into Traveller, my forever game. Running two new scenarios and playing another at TravCon left me with an itch that I'll continue to scratch over the Christmas break when I run the Far Horizon (Orbital 2100) scenario with Cepheus. 

Listening to First Age's recent musings on Traveller on his podcast left me wondering why I've really not played or run the game for a while, and also why I've not picked up more of the current Mongoose line.

The not running or playing is probably more easily explained than why I haven't picked up much of the new material released. Effectively, I've played in two big campaigns (Eternal Lies and Shadow of the Sorcerer for Conan) since the pandemic and ran two others (Curse of Strahd and the current Achtung! Cthulhu Shadows of Atlantis game). With work, I don't really have time to do more each week than play in one and run one game. But what about conventions?

I've tended to shy away from Traveller recently at conventions as I've been exploring other systems. When that's combined with the lack of TravCons, it's really easy to just not run it. The daft thing is that running Traveller is easy for me; like comfortable shoes, I can just slip into it and go. I've tended to use conventions to run something that I may not run elsewhere, or to run something fun and different like the linked Star Trek Adventures TOS and TNG games that Dr Mitch and I did at North Star.

My reticence for purchasing Traveller material recently has a number of factors at play. I've been reluctant to pick up the updated core rulebooks for Mongoose Traveller 2e (202x) on because they started coming out not long after I had finished collecting the core books for Mongoose Traveller 2e (2017). Mongoose has started to focus on quality and the end result is that the books are towards the high end of pricing. As I'd hardly used the previous cut of 2e, I didn't really have the urge to pick up the same game rules again. I suspect I will at some point, but I've no urge right now.

I haven't tended to pick up the campaigns and adventures as I don't like the writing style of one of the go-to authors Mongoose use, although I've seen loads of positive comments about Pirates of Drinax and others. I know my friend Tom has run a fantastic campaign in the setting. I don't like the more detailed sector books that Mongoose produced (caveat - this is based on 1e) because they provide too much detail for me, having a lack of spaces to breathe. If you've ever seen the GURPS Traveller books, I prefer what was done with Rim of Fire rather than Beyond the Claw.  There was also the matter of the amount of changes and ignoring of previous printed canon (which could easily have been addressed with search of PDFs).

I have picked up some compatible material; Cepheus Universal (which feels like a cleaned up and condensed version of Mongoose Traveller 1e with all the supplements in a single book), Hostile and Orbital 2100 have all found their way onto my shelves. I also purchased all the Scoundrels of Brixton zines, and more recently The Jägermeister Adventure  from Moon Toad, all of which are really nicely constructed.

However, I realised that a lot of my interest has been drawn to another game that has echoes of Traveller; Mothership. It may be a percentile based system, but it has a similar format to Classic Traveller's Little Black Books, and some fantastic scenarios, both in-house and third party. Although Mothership was built to play science-fiction horror like Alien, it works fine in the same niche as Traveller, and increasingly there seems to be a wide selection of third party books that aren't pure horror. When I read them, I start to mentally translate them into Traveller, and I know a lot of them could be picked up and run off the cuff by an experienced referee. 

I see more experimental, exciting material coming out in this space that's worth exploring, and I'm happy that it is. There are new riches and ideas to be plundered; a veritable motherlode.

Anyway, the slow gravitational pull of my forever game continues, and I find myself musing on trying to run Hard Times, or The Jägermeister Adventure, or perhaps even The Flaming Eye.

Happy Travelling.

7 December 2024

Why my next campaign won't be using 2D20

Last Night's 2d20 game

I've been playing 2D20 for a while now; First Age ran Conan and I followed up with Achtung! Cthulhu which is wending its way towards a conclusion, most likely in the new year. I've also had flirtations with Star Trek Adventures (1e) and Dune along the way. 

I'd consider myself competent enough running the game now, but I do find that the fiddly differences between the games a little frustrating. The core mechanic is sound and I quite like the meta-game elements like threat and momentum and fortune points, even while I wish that the application of them was consistent between game systems.

I do have Dune 'Fall of the Imperium' which looks like a fantastic campaign (I reviewed it here) but I don't think that it's going to be what I offer next, as I'm feeling fatigued with the 2D20 engine. I think I've played too much of it recently. I will potentially offer Star Trek Adventures at North Star next May if Dr Mitch and I come up with a third part to the 'Echoes' game we ran previously, but I've no other definitive plans at the moment.

Although I like the core mechanics, I do find that the games struggles to really threaten the characters. Across the 20-odd sessions this year, there's probably only been two that have felt that I was putting them in any form of peril; I know that Achtung! Cthulhu is meant to be pulp derring-do, but sometimes it seems to either assume that the characters haven't really developed or that they need to succeed with relative ease. However, I do suspect that the feeling from the other side of the screen may well be a bit different and the players may well have been feeling higher threat levels.

My feelings on this aren't anything to do with the way that Shadows of Atlantis is constructed, despite my previous moaning. I do think that this is a different and interesting campaign which I've enjoyed running, despite the challenges with the writing and structure. 

I will return to the game engine, I just feel that it's time to step away for a bit. 

You can have too much of a good thing.

3 December 2024

Books in November 2024

 

November's reading - cover collage.

Seven books and 2,841 pages in November. Two non-fiction, one roleplaying and the rest fiction. Apparently I'm down by one book but up 32% on pages on October. I'm on 92 books and 28,240 pages in total for the year so far.

The first non-fiction book was Empireland, by Sathnam Sanghera, which explores the impact of the British Empire on Britain. Absolutely fascinating and demonstrates that our multi-cultural society is a reflection of the way we went about conquering large swathes of the globe, and we can't really step away from that. It also explores around the strange way that the UK ignores the British Empire in its school curriculums. Recommended.

The second non-fiction book was Checkmate in Berlin by Giles Milton. This explores the history around the occupation of Berlin at the end of the Second World War and then follows the story through to just after the Berlin Airlift. It's part of my ongoing reading around this space, and will definitely inform any games of Cold City that I ever run! Again, recommended.

The roleplaying book was the Faded Suns Character Book, the second core book for the game. I did find this heavy going as there's loads of lists, but the system itself is pretty simple. I may post some comments about this in the future once I've read the GM's Book.

I re-read The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Alan Garner) and enjoyed it as much as ever, describing as it does one of my favourite places in my home county with a cracking tale of adventure. 

I enjoyed Francis Spufford's alt-history Cahokia Jazz, set in a world when much of the Native American cultures haven't been wiped out by disease. It presents as a murder mystery, but it also explores the ways that the colonial immigrants to the USA set about wiping out native cultures and influence. An enjoyable story, well worth exploring.

Service Model is one of Adrian Tchaikovsky's latest. I can't believe how prolific he is. The story tells the tale of a robot valet trying to find purpose when his master dies in suspicious circumstances. It expands out to explore the collapse of society in a story that had me hooked.

Finally, I read Jeff Noon's Vurt, which was recommended to me by my friend John. Partly cyberpunk, partly, partly weird reality, the book drew me on all the way through a surreal tale of adventure. I'm still not a hundred percent certain what happened, but I definitely enjoyed it. I will look up the sequel.

Overall, it's a toss up between Cahokia Jazz and Service Model as my favourite new reads.

1 December 2024