Second thoughts - Svalbard - Lovecraftian Modern Day Horror [Spoilers]

Reading Svalbard just before I ran it at North Star.

The final slot at North Star 2023 saw me running Svalbard, a standalone scenario and game set on the Norwegian Arctic Island of the same name which I've previously reviewed back in August 2021. I'd backed this at Kickstarter and it seemed like an ideal convention scenario. I'm going to discuss the experience of using this at a convention so there will be spoilers after the break. The creators told me that they had tested this at conventions, so I had high hopes that we could complete a run in one of the longer game slots.

The game is a #roguelike, meaning you respawn upon death, finding out more each run you do. It was interesting, because the players almost made their characters too accepting that they'd been reborn back at the start. I know several of them were kicking themselves after the second respawn, but overall I don't think that they should have because it meant we got on with the game pretty quickly. 

Pre-work

Despite being a stand-alone one shot scenario with its own system, Svalbard doesn't have any regenerated characters or backgrounds. The character sheet is incredibly basic.

The basic character sheet

I decided that I wanted more, and rather than generate characters or use a different system, I drew upon some session 0 ideas from various indie roleplaying games. The character sheet became a question set to explore the character and build links between the players emotionally so the puzzle nature of the scenario didn't dominate.

You can find the original sheet I used on Dropbox here. However, the first thing that the players got to do was to pick an image of their character. I printed off quite a few images of modern day soldiers, male and female and a variety of ethnicities which I'd got from web searches, and the players got to pick the one that resonated with them. Interestingly, several of the players wanted to take their image with them at the end.

The character images at the start - picture kindly shared by Remi Fayomi, as I forgot to take one.

I also had a copy of the story games name book at the table as a reference for players if they were looking for inspiration.

The questions were as follows:

1. Who did you serve with and why is this image important to you?

This was to establish background (which armed forces) and also an event in the past.

2. Why did you volunteer for the UN rapid reaction force (and if you aren’t from a NATO country, why did your superiors let you do this)?
This one was about motivation.

3. What three words would others use to describe you?

The players said this was the hardest question - I wanted them to have something to hang their character on in play that was simple and focused. 

4. What’s your biggest strength?

Something to lean into.

5. What’s your biggest weakness?

Something to drive roleplaying (and it did in several cases).

6. What role do you usually undertake in the unit?

This was to establish if the player had a preference for a type of character (eg a sniper).

7. How do you usually solve things? (circle the appropriate one)
Strength (BOD) or Agility (DEX) or Smarts (INT)
This was the mechanics question at the heart of the game engine - whichever one you picked meant that kind of activity cost no time units. Time units are the heart of the game, because there is only a limited time until the big bad manifests.

8. Who is waiting for you at home?

Trying to draw some character depth - one character had 'none of your damn business', which also told a story about them.

9) Finally, what’s your name (and perhaps your rank)?
This was the final question in the initial generation; what they didn't realise was that they were self-selecting for command.

I then got everyone to share what they'd written, before answering the final few questions:

10) Who is your best buddy in the unit, and why?

Building a relationship and a bond. You could have several. The squaddies decided that they weren't really going to have any relationships with officers.

11) Who irritates you in the unit, and why?
Again, a relationship. The Italian Officer copped a lot of flak in this one.

This took around 30 minutes, but it made a significant change to the investment level that the players had in their unit.

Running.

I didn't like how open the game was about its Lovecraftian nature. Instead, I redid the introduction. I took all the private contractor bits out and only played the audio of the Russian distress call in Russian. This meant I could tweak the translation. The immediate references to Azathoth were changed to Project Azatot (which the military intelligence took to be a reference to a project for mass destruction rather than the Lovecraftian mythos. This meant the players could give a sly wink to the nature of the game.

This was where a gap in the background becomes apparent. It's not clear when the scenario takes place; I'm guessing late 1990s / early 2000s but I ended up tweaking some dates to bring the background forward by a decade as it seemed much more reasonable. If I had not done this, then some of the ages of NPCs would have defied belief as they were dates given in the 1950s for their backgrounds for arriving at the location.

The next issue is that it's not entirely clear how much of what has happened remains with the base NPCs every time a respawn occurs. By the time that they encounter the players, many of them will ahem died several times. The background doesn't assume this, but that's how we treated it.

Generally, the layout is sound and the book is well edited. However, the user experience as a GM was not the best - there was friction when using in play. In at least one example, the details of who is inhabiting a location sits over the page break. It could do with having a good look at how adventures for Old School Essentials and Dungeon Age Adventures are written; succinct and focussed reference layout. The material needs to draw out the key, essential points quickly and easily. 

The map is flawed. Using squares for the point crawl (which is what this really is) made them feel like rooms so confusing for both me and the players when the description was wildly different. I'd have preferred to have seen that as circles with references on key occupants, clues and keys shown on it. We did start with the players mapping the adventure but it slowed things down and eventually I shared the maps to ensure we finished on time.

The Time Unit mechanic works well, and the players engaged with it. They could see when decisions were costing them, but the general tolls never tripped them over the edge to respawn, that was mainly driven by character deaths, in one case by suicide to force a respawn.

Aftermath.

We finished with 15 minutes to go in the slot. The players all seemed to have a good time and I know at least one bought a copy of the scenario afterwards.

I enjoyed this, and I would run it again. I think I'd want to do some more prep to minimise digging for references in play though.

16 May 2023