Lankhmar beckons (a possible campaign)

I'm not sure how I missed Barbarians of Lemuria. I'd kind of registered it in the background with several friends expressing a like for it but never played or picked it up. Recently, that changed.

First of all, this isn't a review. The author of Barbarians of Lemuria kindly pointed me at this review of the current edition and Andy Slack has reviewed it in the past on his blog. They were both responding to my question "Tell me about Barbarians of Lemuria" on the Gaming Tavern* which I'd posted having seen the (at time of writing current) kickstarter for some expansions for the Mythic+ edition, which had in turn prompted me to pick up the past Legendary Edition** to see what this was all about.

*Sadly, the Tavern is currently closed to new members because of the UK online safety act (as there's no really viable age-verification solution that is cost effective for a small hobby not for profit website). 

** A steal at around £3.

In essence, it's a really well tuned 2D6 engine that appears like it would be a great fit for the Swords and Sorcery genre it's aimed at. Now, I was never really a big Conan fan (it's only in later life that I indulged in reading the canon in the lovely Black Book edition), but I absolutely love Moorcock's Elric, Corum and more, along with Fritz Leiber's Fafhd & the Grey Mouser stories, mostly set in the city of Lankhmar.

Stormbringer and Hawkmoon were superbly done by Chaosium and Mongoose, but aren't roleplaying properties in the English speaking world in effect at the moment (there is a Quickstart for a conversion of the French edition, but nothing more yet).

Lankhmar has been done well by TSR (for 2nd edition AD&D) and by Pinnacle for Savage Worlds. I didn't really indulge in those, but I have picked up the more recent Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar books. These are wonderfully done; there's a lovely core box set which featured on the Bundle of Holding (and led me down a similar path to the Traveller bundles), plus more than 15 modules and a boxed tournament adventure.

The thing is, Dungeon Crawl Classics doesn't make my heart sing. I've played it and read it, and it's really well done but not really for me. But the setting material is gorgeous and the game is close enough to the lingua franca of gaming, D&D, to make it easily transferable.

I now am hatching plans for an irregular, episodic, Lankhmar campaign where players can drop in and out. It would be built around the DCC Lankhmar adventures and material but powered by Barbarians of Lemuria. I've a bit more reading to do, but overall this is exciting me. Swords and Sorcery Shenanigans in a City and setting I love. I think some web searching is needed to see if anyone has already trod this path! Hopefully I can get this to the (virtual or physical) table soon.

You can get the Mythic+ edition from Ludospherik Editions here.

24 April 2025

Traveller - Reflections after finishing Far Horizon (minor spoilers)

This is a follow up to the post I made after the first session running Far Horizon, a Traveller/Cepheus Hard SF scenario using Zozer Games Orbital 2100 setting (itself a prequel to Hostile). 

Yesterday we finally managed to have the second session of the game as we'd repeatedly failed to get the whole group together. We played from 0930 to just after 1300, so overall the game took about eight hours in play. I don't think that a face-to-face session would have been especially faster. Sadly, two of the five players couldn't attend. One of the players who did attend shared the maths on why this was such a challenge to schedule, which was quite enlightening.

https://youtu.be/0pc9Uf3vFDU?si=U4sAP93z4X7eOcQy

The characters managed to unlock the key secrets of Tartarus and escape in good time for their two-and-a-half year return trip to earth. Overall, I had a fun time as a GM and the system almost faded into the background (which is what Traveller is good at when you do it right).

We did use a lot of task chains during the game, as it was a great way to show a science and engineering team working together. These allow people to carry out tasks that will support another character's actions to addressing a challenge. The success or failure of the initial tasks will shift the outcome of the final task. As this was a Cepheus adventure, it was using the slightly less generous Mongoose Traveller 1e task chain bonuses and penalties. However, it would have been simple to switch them around. I found that the task chains gave a great feeling of scientific and engineering endeavour, with a team working together.

One of the players did suggest this was a bit like the D&D 4e skill challenges rules (which I like and cannot understand why they weren't taken into D&D 5e - either 2014 or 2024, but I don't think that they're exactly the same. In the D&D system, each successful task gives you a success that takes you towards success, but in Traveller, they give the person making a subsequent check an increased chance of success. 

* If you want to take a look at these in D&D 5e, this is a good hack of the mechanics into that version.

Anyway, back to Far Horizon. 

The objectives of the mission are really clearly set out in a mission success sheet in the module. This details the kinds of surveys that can be done from orbit, and then has space for a record of visits to site on the surface where the away team are expected to take imagery, measurements and samples. Naturally, there is a KPI success table at the bottom and each type of survey results in points so you can quantify how successful your mission has been. This worked very well in practice, and the players were keeping a close eye on it through the mission, as it kind of defined the cut points for when they could break away and feel that they had done enough work.

Minor spoilers if expanded.

Far Horizon is a hard-SF scenario. There are some great descriptions of the ship, the technology and the planet, but the key challenges at the heart of the mission all relate to resource management. There are twelve characters, all with different skills and roles. The mission has a set safe window of ninety-six hours to be completed in, otherwise there is an increasing likelihood that the ship will not have enough fuel to turn and burn for home. Landers have limited fuel (3 burns), most of which needs to be used getting up and down to the surface. Space suits have limited amounts of oxygen, and are quite fragile when doing heavy work.

In the first session, we used a table in Roll20 to manage who was where and when. This worked well, but it was pretty awkward to use. For this session, the players cut and pasted the HTML table into Google Sheets, and we had a shared document that everyone could edit. Now, this may sound a little dumb, but I think that it actually helped with the feel of the scenario. There was a serious amount of discussion between the players who were playing the ship's captain, the chief engineer and senior mission specialist as to who was best placed to go on what bit of the mission. Layer onto that the fact that fatigue starts kicking in after a character has been up for 16 hours continuously, so sleep windows need to be planned (in four or eight hour blocks) to avoid this. Vulnerabilities had to be considered (for example, only two characters could pilot the ships or landers) so you don't expose yourself to significant risks.

In practice, the location and sleep restrictions, and the fuel on the landers proved to be the most problematic resource constraints. Oxygen on the surface was managed by having the lander close-by, which was in turn driven by the choice to leave the 'Honda Snowmobile' on the orbiting ship. The lander had reserve O2 and they always carried a spare hard vacuum suit with them. This meant a damaged suit was addressed by a character taking an hour out of surface operations and swapping into new kit.

We had four moments of real peril on the mission. The first involved an off-gassing geyser just before a landing which resulted in some minor damage to the lander (fortunately nothing too bad). We then had a suit puncture when digging, followed by a second suit failure which was causing the helmet to fog badly. Finally, an event happened towards the end which put the lander at serious risk of collision with the ship, but great piloting rolls from both the players involved on each ship addressed that. Obviously, there was no combat. Mostly planning meant that things went well.

There were two other items that proved useful: an organisation chart for the Far Horizon (which I'd created as a handout from the descriptions in the book) and a list of the character's skill sets. This helped quickly identify who was the correct crew member for a task. If I ran this again, I'd do the skills in a matrix versus names to make things easier.

Minor spoilers if expanded.

I also added a second page to the VTT to allow the players to annotate potential landing sites. Initially, it was just the map, then I made the potential sites appear from where they were hidden on the GM layer after the relevant surveys were completed. The players then annotated the map based on descriptions and what they felt was the best target site.

All in all, these tools made the scenario feel very different to the usual Traveller adventure that I've run. It did feel hard science. It did feel as if you were exploring (bizarrely, the planning exercises the game needed drove this). Roleplaying tended towards little vignettes in key scenes, partly also because people had multiple characters.

Roll20 performed better this session; it is very dependent upon people's hardware and connections for the video side. I must also call out the official Traveller character sheet for Roll20. It was simple enough to use with Cepheus and worked really well.

Quoting one of the players, Andy, shows that he was getting the same feel as me from the other side of the (virtual) table. 

I enjoyed it very much, not least because it was very different. The clear mission objectives and need to track each character's oxygen levels and sleep cycle made it feel like a genuine scientific mission (as far as I can tell without having been on one). However, the only constraint which actually was a constraint was the limited number of fuel burns available; we were able to set things up so that everyone got enough sleep and oxygen was recharged in time without too much thought, thanks to the spreadsheet, but right up to the end we were thinking hard about who was on which lander and how to allocate fuel burns.

Tom's comment also made me chuckle:

It was great. We focused in since we had the rhythm of the projected management tools, achieved good work/sleep balance, met our KPIs, achieved mission bonus, and yet were sadly sidelined by management when we got home almost 3 years later.

The more things change...

At the end, I did ask the players to give me a short outline of what they thought their character would do on their return from the mission. I think that this rounded the session out nicely.

Reading and running this scenario is one of the reasons I started to explore Mongoose's Deepnight Revelation and Rim Expeditions. I think that these scenarios are going into an area seldom approached in Traveller unless you used the original framework for universe creation. Perhaps Leviathan touched on this, along with Arrival Vengeance's tour of the shattered Imperium. Milieu Zero's Pocket Empires also gave some scope, but it's not often an area addressed.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend this scenario and I would happily run it again with a different group of players. Thank you to Graham, Hattie, Tom, Steve and Andy for playing, and to Paul Elliott of Zozer Games for an excellent scenario!

19 April 2025

Some minor spoilers if you expand this.

Update: Another quote from Tom, reflecting on the game.

It was an excellent adventure. I'd nuance the idea that it was hard science -- it was hard science and operations and engineering -- which when you think about it, is the stuff that gets things done in SF. Stories like For All Mankind or the Mars trilogy are wonderful because not just because of the science but the application of technology by organised people. So it was three times more brilliant than the usual bang bang shooty stuff!

AI and the Games Master

There's a general backlash against AI in a lot of the gaming space, but I think that it could be extremely useful, especially if you're the GM.

Recently, I've been trying out Google's NotebookLM to analyse text. The T&Cs state that the data you upload isn't used to train the AI and that it remains private. I've experimented with Shadows of Atlantis for Achtung! Cthulhu. I struggled throughout the campaign that I ran because it was very overwritten and some of the editing between editions lost elements. I often found myself hunting for a reference in the text. The natural language queries allowed me to pull out some very succinct summaries. Unfortunately, I found it when I had a two sessions left to run.

More recently, I have uploaded the books for the Traveller Deepnight Revelation campaign (see screenshot). There are 11 books (4 from box set, 6 expansions and an adjacent adventure) and this is a game changer in how you can find things. Think of it as semi-intelligent search and summarising. NotebookLM shows were all the summaries come from so you can check it and you can produce timelines, mindmaps and more.

I got some good use from queries like: 

• Give a summary of the named crew members on the Deepnight Revelation, their motivations and how they impact the plot.
• Give a breakdown of the locations on Alpha in Deepnight Legacy and include the information that can be learned and threats at each.
• What steps should the Travellers take to ensure that they succeed and survive the events of Deepnight Legacy?
• What are the key locations that Deepnight Revelation can use for resupply?
• Summarise the events in the Riftsedge Transit 
• Compare the way that characters can resolve the events of 'Deepnight Legacy' and 'Deepnight Endeavour'.

I think that this would also be useful for large tomes like Ptolus or perhaps the recent Forbidden North OSR tomes. Of course, there's part of me that would love to upload all the Traveller canon to get that searchable like this, but it would break the limits.

I've also seen Tabletop Recorder, which is on Kickstarter at the moment.

https://tabletoprecorder.com/

This is designed to take an audio recording of your game session and produce a summary, cutting the meandering side conversations and allowing you to produce output at a variety of levels. Initially I scoffed, but now I think about it, it would be useful for longer campaigns or more episodic games as a reference. When I think how long I spent taking notes during Curse of Strahd, it makes me wonder if this would have been a useful investment. I suspect that it would have been really useful for Eternal Lies too, with all the threads that has. I may trial back it to see how it works.

The part that will make and break it will be how well it handles names etc and how well it filters out the cruft. I've seen some alpha test output and it looks pretty good.

Have you experimented with some of the AI tools out there? Does anything look like it may change the way that you play or GM?

13 April 2025

First Impressions - Rim Expeditions (Traveller)

Rim Expeditions is a 160-page full colour hardcover for the Traveller RPG from Mongoose Publishing. The hardcover also includes a poster-sized star sector map of Kruse sector. I was attracted to it because of the exploration theme and also because it explores something that has fascinated me since I first read about it in Digest Group Publications' Solomani and Aslan supplement for MegaTraveller, the Solomani Rim Expeditions.

TL;DR: Rim Expeditions is great; it's a very flexible framework to run a variety of campaigns set against the background of sparsely explored space. You can have diplomacy, conflict and pure exploration. However, very much like Deepnight Revelation, the referee will have to put in some hard work here, especially as there are less of the systemising tools that support that campaign. Overall, this has been done well, and could provide the foundation of an ongoing campaign or some fun one-shots based off the various wonders and anomalies mentioned.

The Solomani are the branch of humanity (humaniti)  that stayed on Earth (Terra) while others were transplanted by the Ancients across Charted Space. What would become the Terran Confederation encountered the Vilani Imperium (Ziru Sirka) on their first long distance interstellar journey. Ignored at first as lower technology barbarians, eventually war broke out. A series of interstellar wars were fought, and the Terrans eventually overtook the Vilani in technology, hastening the collapse of their empire. The Rule of Man (also known as the Ramshackle Empire or Second Imperium) was founded, but the inertia of the collapsing Ziru Sirka meant that the Rule of Man did not endure and humaniti was plunged into the Long Night. 

Eventually, the Sylean Federation formed the Third Imperium and started to expand again, eventually recontacting the Old Earth Union which had endured. Humans from Earth had by then become known as the Solomani, and the two powers merged. However, there was ongoing friction as the influence of the Solomani began to reign. An autonomous region was formed, which then declared independence. The brutal Solomani Rim War was fought, and although the Imperium 'won', conquering Terra, it did not defeat the whole of the Solomani Confederation, so an uneasy peace persists with both sides knowing the cost of war.

Throughout this history, the Solomani sent expeditions Rimward towards the edge of the Spiral Galaxy Arm in which they lived. This was in the opposite direction to the Vilani and later the Third Imperium. Waves of exploration and long range missions, some with Slower-Than-Light technology departed. The Rimward Corridor was developed and an ongoing way of colonisation and exploration continues, waxing and waning dependent upon the level of threat that the Confederation faces.

I loved the idea of this, and once worked with a friend to develop a scenario based on this with a lost colony being encountered that had originally departed before the Long Night in an STL ship. This was used to demo GURPS Traveller when that was released and was a lot of fun. So I really like the idea of exploration, wide open spaces and something that hasn't really been explored in detail before. What I saw when I skimmed the Bundle of Holding PDFs meant I wanted a copy of this book and I wanted it to be one of the first that I read.

This isn't a campaign as such; it's a toolkit to build a campaign. Two areas of space are detailed - the whole of Kruse Sector, some six full sectors rimward of the Confederation, and the slightly closer Lubbock Enclave, a subsector only three sectors rimward which serves as a refuge and manufacturing centre to support missions travelling further out.

Unlike the Classic Traveller supplements, there's a fair bit of material that supports the development of a campaign through the book.

The book opens with a discussion of the urge to explore, and an author's note about the Solomani. The latter discusses how to avoid using a cliched "Space Nazis" approach to the culture, which I think is a useful guide and an approach that I agree with. It then follows up with a history of exploration from the Solomani perspective, starting with the exploration of Terra, and then moving into the exploration of interstellar space, initially via sub-light expeditions, and later via jump-drive. Contact with the Vilani led to exploration of the Ziru Sirka, initially via traders and later - as the Imperium started to collapse -  by the Terran Confederation Navy. During the Long Night period, many expeditions departed to establish new colonies, but most were unsanctioned by the government and little was known about their success or failure. The Old Earth Union maintained reconnaissance forces used around its borders, but sanctioned exploration rimward only started again once the Union joined the Imperium. Much of this was done with private concerns, as the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service was focused on the space occupied by the former Ziru Sirka, and later into the spinward region 'behind the claw'. Data was shared as a matter of course, until the split between the Solomani and the Third Imperium. Since it achieved its independence, the Solomani Confederation has pursued a policy of rimward exploration, going so far as to launch expeditions to the Perseus Arm, crossing the gap to the next spiral arm. 

Rimward of the Solomani Confederation (only as far as the Lubbock Enclave)
(Image ©2023 Mongoose Publishing)

Confederation exploration policy is described in some detail. The navy retains responsibility for exploration and astrogation records, and requires any private expeditions to share their data. Much exploration is carried out by warships that have been withdrawn from front-line service, in some cases converted to support long duration operations. However, the ships remain part of the Navy, with the full duties of any other Confederation warship. SolSec - Solomani Security - is also an active part of such missions. Their political officers are responsible for supporting loyalty and morale, providing intelligence analysis and advice in contact situations. Corporations and universities are often represented on military and non-military expeditions. 

The Confederation maintains active surveillance operations up to 20 parsecs beyond its borders (although this is done covertly in hostile states such as the Third Imperium), and does look for expansion opportunities. Medium range exploration is focused on setting up chains that link valuable hubs / clusters. The Confederation focuses on the value it will get from a world rather than claiming every system that it charts. Some operations into Gateway and Crucis Margin sectors near the Imperium near the K'Kree, Hivers and Third Imperium as much about showing the flag and supporting friendly powers as they are about exploration and survey.  

The general process for exploration is described, as the level of effort used will vary depending upon the speed of advance wanted and the level of science and exploration required. Rapid advance effectively means minimal science, typically being used in known space. Exploratory advance is significantly slower and will involve searching systems in detail, exploring the system and perhaps making contact with the natives. There's a discussion about the implications of long duration operations on starships, but this is not at the level of detail that Deepnight Revelation has.

A variant method is presented for the generation of star systems, minimising the need for the referee to produce significant amounts of detail unless it is needed and definitely meeting the map only as necessary principle. This starts with the presence of stellar bodies (but there's no method for determining which kind are present), then gas giants, then a main world, before other bodies. The World Builder's Handbook would be a good companion to go with this section. The different types of planetary environments are described, outline the kinds of challenges that they present Travellers, hopefully giving the referee ideas and situations that can be used during the game.

This is followed by a section describing 'finds and points of interest'. This starts with a random table that a referee can use for inspiration, with details of the various results following. They range from stellar anomalies (such as jumpspace reefs) through to encounters or echoes of other beings, along with interesting aspects of star systems. I'd probably use this as a reference and pick one rather than roll an encounter. After this, there's a discussion on how to deal with aliens and populations encountered, including consideration on whether they have FTL capability and how they obtained it if that is the case.

The Universal Research Mechanic is described, a method of conduction scientific and investigative research. Progress is tracked using a 'Breakthrough Index', which measures how much is known about a subject. Tasks such as remote reconnaissance, theoretical research and planetary surveys can be carried out to raise the level of the index, typically linked in some way to the effect of the roll made. A Breakthrough Index (BI) of 0 means that nothing is known, with full knowledge needing a BI of 10. A table gives an example of the kind of detail that each level gives in terms of Interstellar Exploration and Survey or Scientific Investigations. Frustratingly, you've got to dig into the text to find the effect of each kind of activity on the BI; it would have been good to have had a short summary block for each kind of activity on the same or adjacent page to the master table. However, this seems to be a very effective mechanic for handling scientific investigations.

After these sections, the book starts to detail the regions rimward of the Solomani Confederation. The information about these areas forms the bulk of the book.

The area closest to the Confederation (the Close Rimward Region, the space within 200 parsecs of the Confederation border) is described quite lightly at sector level (see the map above for an example). Details are given on which areas are on travellermap.com and what can be considered canon. There are close trading links with the systems up to about ten parsecs from the border, and much information is known about that area of space. Beyond that, details are much more sketchy. The Confederation maintains the Rimward Corridor, a route from which exploration is staged. This can be as much as six-parsecs wide, and traffic is steady in this area, but typically much more heavily armed. The Confederation doesn't operate a policy of annexation, and has not sought to bring the nearby star systems under its control. However, around a hundred parsecs out from the border, it has established the Lubbock Enclave, a secure and settled base for operations established in the 750s before the Confederation split from the Third Imperium.

The Enclave acts to deter the territorial ambitions of the Aslan, and comprises twelve star systems. Military assets are based here, typically second line vessels and those of former Imperial design. The Enclave can support Tech Level 13 vessels but has limited capacity, so Tech Level 12 designs such as former Imperial Scout Ships are often used. The key subsector where the Lubbock Enclave is located (Horden/Lubbock) is detailed, including short write-ups of Avebury (the capital of the Enclave) and Hallstat (a system that was settled in the Rule of Man, but has subsequently collapsed and regressed to the equivalent of the Iron Age). There's a short section giving some ideas of what kinds of missions could be carried out in the Lubbock Enclave.

The Rimward Corridor has been scouted out for a further two hundred parsecs, but information beyond the corridor is limited. The next significant Solomani Confederation presence is in the Kruse sector, where a dedicated Forward Base as been established to support the exploration of the anomalies in the Ruthless Veil, Darkly Veiled and Strange sectors. The base has limited capacity and is a long way from home, so will be careful around local powers.

Kruse was originally settled in the Long Night, around -1750 Imperial, and the remnants of those missions now comprise two pocket empires; the Interstellar Republic and the Sovereignty. There's also a smaller polity - "The Rule of Man", established by a slower-than-light colony ship which departed in the early Second Imperium and only arrived after the Solomani started to agitate for independence from the Third Imperium. Presently at Tech Level 9, the colonies are on a slow path of technological development; they do feel entitled to the technology that the Confederation has (as they see it as a successor state to themselves) but it is reluctant to transfer advanced technology to them. 

There is an alien race, the Rammak, who can be found trailing and spinward in the sector. Humanoid egg layers, it is unknown whether they have expanded beyond Kruse. They have been star travellers for at least a thousand years, most likely on the back of technology recovered from a Rule of Man vessel.

Finally, Solomani commercial interests have established a de facto independent polity known as the Eberhardt Corporate Republic. The Confederation has condemned the state of affairs but any action against it has been deferred thanks to large donations of resources and declarations of loyalty to the Confederation.

All subsectors in Kruse are described in detail with the usual points of light approach to a few key worlds. There's good detail here to run a campaign from.

Next up is the Midrim area of interest, the destination for missions from the Lubbock Enclave. Ruthless Veil ad Darkly Veiled sectors contain Hoydell's Veil, a nebula and the infamous Hoydell Chaos, an area of space where jump drives are unreliable, misjumping in some form be it by distance or extended-duration. Both astrographic features are named after the commander of the first expeditions in this area who was posted overdue in 1002. Cautious exploration continues, trying to understand the phenomenon and its extents. 

RimReach and OutReach are being explored to understand potential threats. RimReach is considered potentially seriously dangerous with all ships entering and leaving meant to go through a quarantine and science base in OutReach sector. The reason for this caution is the presence of a polity that seems to comprise humans (and potentially other species) infested by some sort of parasite that both controls and kills its host. 

The Strange region comprises two sectors, partly dominated by the Flous Nebula. There are many protostars with some at the T-Tauri stage without planetary bodies. Experiments are ongoing with interstellar ramjets to harvest hydrogen for fuel. The region beyond the nebula is known for its astrographic anomalies, unique ecosystems and the ruins of what appears to have been a slower-than-light star-faring civilisation.

The Rimward Corridor continues onward, currently terminating some 400 parsecs beyond the Confederation in the Xuanzang sector. At typical travel speeds, it will take a ship around four years to reach the end of the corridor. The Forward Base in Xuanzang is building up its industrial capability to remove the need for full rim runs from the Confederation to supply key parts and equipment. The government is encouraging emigration to both the Lubbock Enclave and Xuanzang, with some key systems between on the Rimward Corridor also gaining colonies. Xuanzang was first settled in 907, part of the Rimward 3 project. However, the project lost some momentum during the Rim War, and there is the beginnings of an independence movement if things don't improve. 

The sector has a crablike sentient species, the Vdknwbo, who have a past history of slower-than-light travel and are found in two systems. They're presently around Tech Level 6, but have enthusiastically embraced working with the Xuanzang Enclave. There's a map and details of the Moksadeva subsection where the Enclave is located.

The book then moves on to the history of Solomani Rimward Extremely Long Range Expeditions which began before the Third Imperium as the Old Earth Union pushed out into the Rim, partly because of the Aslan Border Wars. The next big push came before the Old Earth Union joined the Imperium, and focused on updating the charts for the Close Rimward Expedition. The First Frontier War and the subsequent Imperial Civil War resulted in resources being pulled into the Imperium rather than outward into the Rim. 

The establishment of the Solomani Autonomous Region led to a resurgence of interest in the frontier, with the Lubbock Enclave being established, with further work going on the establishment of a Forward Base in Kruse. Once these facilities were established, a new push began to create 'Lubbock 2' in Xuanzang. Part of the focus was to enable the exploration of an area of low stellar density known as the Spinner. 

The Rim War stopped exploration, and when it restarted there was a focus on getting a return post war, and also a quiet war against the Aslan to spinward of Lubbock. A project ('The Great Backfill') exists to bring charts up to date and visit systems that have not yet been properly charted. Project Perseus is mentioned, an ambitious project to cross to the next spiral arm, but remains the subject of speculation as it is highly classified. There have also been significant missions both to spinward and trailing, with one heading towards the mouth of the Great Rift towards the gravitational anomaly  QX-07012. There are rumours that the Imperial Deepnight Corporation is preparing a similar mission, and the Confederation wants to gain the knowledge first. There's also a well-funded private expedition with significant investment aimed at 'Object Venturi', but much of the details aren't in the public domain. 

The book then discusses some of the wonders and mysteries of the Rim. Some are astrographic, some are about aliens and others ruins of past civilisations. I won't describe these for risk of spoilers, except to mention Point Cetus, 200 parsecs spinward-rimward of Xuanzang Enclave, on the edge of the spiral arm. There is a Solomani base here, perhaps the launch point for Project Perseus. They're all good ideas to frame a campaign around. It's apt that this section rounds out with a discussion on how to run a campaign using this setting. 

The book then wraps up with a High Guard section, detailing unique Solomani technology for the design sequence followed by a selection of small craft and starships. These include a support ship and a light exploration vessel built off the same hull and the Tenzing class exploration vessel, a 2000-ton explorer. There's also a 20,000 ton explorer converted from a light carrier, the Michigan class. Finally, there's a selection of all-terrain vehicles and an index.

I think this book is great; it's a very flexible framework to run a variety of campaigns set against the background of sparsely explored space. You can have diplomacy, conflict and pure exploration. However, very much like Deepnight Revelation, the referee will have to put in some hard work here, especially as there are less of the systemising tools that support that campaign. Overall, this has been done well, and could provide the foundation of an ongoing campaign or some fun one-shots based off the various wonders and anomalies mentioned.

Recommended

12 April 2025

First Impressions - Otherscape RPG (City of Mist Engine)

In this first impression, I'm not going to use my usual approach of going section by section, but rather discuss the significant changes that I see from Otherscape's predecessor, City of Mist*. These observations are based on having read the game through twice, along with Tokyo:Otherscape, and having run the game at Revelation this February. 

*I previously reviewed City of Mist here.

Once again, Son of Oak have delivered an extremely high quality package with glorious artwork and well written text they have taken the learnings from producing the City of Mist Starter Set and baked them into the core rulebook. As a result, you can run the game having read a minimal number of pages. I had all the quick reference pages printed out as a handy guide at the table.

Mechanically, the game shows the same roots as City of Mist, a love-child of Powered by the Apocalypse and FATE. However, it's now stepped a little further away from its original inspirations. The core mechanic remains rolling 2d6 and adding the power rating you get from your characters relevant tags to the result. A roll of ≦6 is a failure and a roll of ≧10 a complete success. In between, a roll of 7 to 9 means that you succeed but with a complication. Your power tags come from the three themes that define your character plus some extras you can draw on from your inventory and your crew theme.

Rather than the two theme types that City of Mist uses for characters, Otherscape has three. You have two that equate to the mythos and logos (called 'Self' in Otherscape) themes in the original game, but also a third one called 'noise' which is your cyberware and technology.

Both books are full-colour hardbacks with high quality artwork that evokes the setting that they are describing. Metro:Otherscape is 368-pages long and Tokyo:Otherscape is 320 pages long. A third book is included, the action database. This is a full colour 106-page softcover full of examples of the effects that you would use with different actions. The boxed set also came with status cards, dice and a GM screen in a large box, along with the trademark A3 double-sided dry-wipe character folios which instantly give you a feel for the game.

 

Having run Otherscape, there are a couple of things that stand out for me which are distinct improvements from the City of Mist. The most significant of these is the change from PbtA style moves to choosing the effect that you wish to achieve from the action you take. This was the standout change for me at the table, as you no longer have to search for the most appropriate move when you hit an edge case. Instead you have to ask yourself, "what am I trying to achieve from this action?", and then match that to one of twelve options (see the right of the image above). This works really clearly and quickly at the gaming table, albeit at the cost of extremely tailored moves.

I am pondering whether it will be possible to roll this back to City of Mist. Some of the discussions on the Discord forum for the game indicate that there may be some challenges with tailored moves used in theme progression that make this more difficult.

The other notable change addresses some of the perceived weaknesses in City of Mist where players overuse power tags. Otherscape makes it very clear that you cannot use tags again to face danger if they have already been used in the initial move that made the player vulnerable. Having recently reviewed the City of Mist core rules to produce an updated quick reference sheet, I was surprised to find that this is actually in them but not so explicitly or obvious as it is here. That may be on my own head, as I came to the game having use the starter set for quite some time.

I'm not certain about the need for the action database, but I did find myself referencing it when considering how I may tailor the response to certain player actions. Part of me felt that this should've been included the core rulebook, but I can see the case for splitting it out; the book would be massive if it was included. I don't think it'll be referenced as much, and I believe that there is a plan to create a digital version.

I loved the game in play, but it hasn't yet given me the same spark and passion that City of Mist does. I think this is a me-problem rather than a Son of Oak problem. I've never really been that much into Japanese cyberpunk, so the Tokyo book doesn't excite me the way I'd hoped. It is written really well, but it failed to give me the GM tingles. The core book, Metro:Otherscape, drew me in more. I wish the example Berlin setting was developed further. However, what's present is more than enough to run a generic myth-fuelled cyberpunk setting. I'm tempted enough to explore the forthcoming Cairo setting, but if that doesn't press my buttons, I suspect I'll be selling this off to someone else who loves it more.

Overall, Otherscape has rolled a 7-9 result for me, a 'yes-but'. That's more about my engagement with the setting than the mechanics, artwork or presentation. If you love Japanese-style cyberpunk and anime, then I wholeheartedly recommend this game. If you like the idea of a myth-fuelled cyberpunk setting then the core book will work for you too.

Recommended.

Edit: One thing that I forgot to mention above is the status cards and how tiers are now managed. It is far less fiddly and much more intuitive than City of Mist. I do suspect that it may mean that characters are a little more fragile, but I'm not certain, and it will work both ways. 

5 April 2025

First impressions - Traveller - Deepnight Revelation Core Box Set (some spoilers)

Deepnight Revelation is an epic campaign for Traveller, presented as a core box set with a further six hardback books that expand the detail available plus one adjacent adventure module as part of the Great Rift set's supporting material. 

TL;DR: Deepnight Revelation is a grand, sprawling epic space-exploration campaign, the likes of which Traveller hasn't seen before. It provides the start and end of the journey, plus the mechanics to run the steps in between. However, there will be a significant amount of work for the Referee to do for that journey, unless they purchase the expanded material. Highly recommended.

The box set is presented with a picture of a former Imperial Star Cruiser approaching a singularity, represented with a version of the striking image of a black hole that scientists have recently achieved. Inside the box are four perfect-bound full-colour soft-back books and a double-sided poster map which shows an outline of the journey of exploration on one side and a layout of the Deepnight Revelation on the reverse.The box has a ribbon to allow you to lift the books out of the box easily, and there is space for additional material to fit inside. I've added the Great Rift adventure that links to this campaign - Deepnight Endeavour - into the box. Illustration and layout is good and there are a refreshing lack of typos.

Deepnight Revelation is a truly epic campaign, with the characters embarked on a voyage of exploration that will take them the best part of ten-years to reach their destination. They'll travel along the edge of the Great Rift, beyond Charted Space and into places the Imperium has not reached, then they will find a way to cross the Rift, before proceeding to their ultimate destination, a unique and unusual gravitational source at the edge of the spiral arm. The route chosen avoids crossing other potential hostile polities such as the Solomani Confederation and the Aslan Hierate. This is a voyage of discovery and exploration the likes of which we haven't really seen in Traveller before. The campaign has links to the Ancients, but it goes much further back than that, with an Entity that has existed from the early days of the galaxy at the heart of the story.

I do feel that there are echoes of MegaTraveller's Arrival Vengeance in style, which is a good thing, but this is something different. Obviously, in concept there are also echoes of Star Trek - The Original Series, but only in the sense that this is a long duration voyage into the unknown. If anything, the Deepnight Revelation is going much further than the Enterprise ever did, in a manner that's far more exposed. There are no subspace communications in Traveller and no-easy way to call for help or rescue. This is a journey far beyond the frontier, and it is entirely possible that the Third Imperium will never find out the fate of the ship if things go wrong*.

*Followers of canon will also know that there are a series of events coming in the timeline which mean that the Third Imperium will likely have changed significantly by the time the ship makes its way back with the coming of the Rebellion and Virus.

The Deepnight Revelation is a decommissioned Element Class Cruiser, converted for use on a long duration scientific voyage. Deckplans, ship details and more are all provided.

The first book, Deepnight Legacy, is a prequel to the campaign and gives a reason for a group of Travellers to be recruited or seek employment with the Deepnight Corporation. You could also use the Great Rift Adventure 2 - Deepnight Endeavour as a gateway to the campaign. The book is 32-pages long, and presents a scenario where the characters are part of an emergency mission responding to a supply starship that is overdue returning from a mission to a refuelling station in the Great Rift. They take one of the sister rift haulers of the missing ship and jump nearly 20 light years into the emptiness of the Rift to a planet orbiting a lonely brown dwarf failed star. 

The adventure is presented is a sandbox investigation which has strong horror themes. There is a useful but basic map but it would have been nice to have a world or region map to go alongside the base map.  There are statistics and deckplans for the Rift Hauler. There are also a number of NPCs to interact with and find out what is going on.

If the Travellers are successful then they will gain some insight into the threat that the Entity presents and its location, information that will make them natural recruits for the Deepnight Revelation expedition. 

The Campaign Guide is 112-pages long and provides the key elements to set up the campaign (unsurprisingly). It starts with guidance on how to integrate existing Travellers into the mission and the roles that they could take. I do think that an opportunity was missed here to provide some guidance on troupe play more explicitly. There is a get out clause to bring the existing Travellers into key roles, by having them part of a Special Advisory Group because of prior experience.

The guide follows this section with an outline of the whole voyage, starting with the opening journey to Marshalling Point Demnan, a journey of 30 months or so. This is a previously established base of forward operations, and the last chance for crew members who change their minds to turn back. 

The guide then gives some key background information for referees on the mission and the nature of the Deepnight Entity, including the risk of infection and the threats that will be faced as it develops. After this, there are eighteen pages of background about the ship itself, including isometric deckplans (the poster map has a more traditional top down view). This is followed by a discussion of the crew and the Travellers' role in it. The ship, a decommissioned Element Class cruiser, does retain her spinal particle accelerator for scientific purposes, but other weapons have been reduced.

The crew section includes departments, operational structures, ranks, quick crew member creation (skills and naming) and, interestingly, factions. Broadly, the crew is split into three factions; the Imperial faction (do what's best for the Third Imperium), the Deepnight Loyalists (do what's best for the company) and the Researchers (science, baby!). Other factions can develop over time; the glory hounds, the disaffected, and potentially mutineers. The chapter ends with a set of six NPCs with short biographies; all a pretty interesting and can add in extra threads to the campaign.

There is an understandably large section (25 pages) on the craft and equipment carried by the Deepnight Revelation, especially as once the ship passes Point Demnan, that's all they have. Details are given ranging from Scout Ships to ground and grab vehicles, from crew uniforms to armoured exploration suits, and from translators through guns to nuclear demolitions charges.

After this, the book has a section on the preparation for the voyage (in which the players get a choice to outfit and supply the ship, and flavour how the crew is). This includes setting the initial Crew Effectiveness Index, the related modifier to that index, and the related departmental effectiveness. There's also a morale rating. These are explained in more detail in the Referee's Handbook, but in summary are used to abstract resolution of tasks at a ship or departmental level.

The penultimate chapter covers the initial stretch of the voyage with opportunities for diplomacy and getting the crew into the right place. Travel is planned in reaches, and this one is outlined in detail. The initial journey takes them to Tobia and then on to Point Demnan. This example section gives a good idea of how the campaign should play out. There are deliberate vague points and the Referee is encouraged to map only as necessary.

The final chapter discusses the expansions of the book - broadly the key things that should happen in areas of space but you need to buy the extra books to flesh these out, before describing two space dwelling creatures; Leviathans and Leachers, both adapted to life in space.

The third book, the Referee's Handbook, is 96-pages long guidance document for the campaign. It covers how to handle large scale resolution, including setting up a resolution cycle for each reach. This is effectively objectives and a set of orders for each stage of the reach. There's detailed guidance on how to resolve this, with some suggestions for events and points of interest. Missions within a reach get broken down into stages and are resolved as needed. This give opportunity to zoom in and out as things happen. Incidents can, especially if the ship has been flying for a long time without major maintenance, result in a crisis which could prove catastrophic. This encourages the players to think of when to replenish and maintain. The ship has been modified and carries the equipment to overhaul itself, but this is a time consuming process. Supplies are critical, and a simple system is given to manage this. Similarly, maintenance has a simple set of mechanics to manage.

There is a large section on using the Crew and Departmental Effectiveness Indexes, forming teams, impact on morale, and how Travellers can rise or fall in esteem. The latter could be very important if factional squabbles develop. Fatigue is also addressed; like the ship, the crew need rest and recovery beyond what they can get from the ship itself. This can be mitigated by taking time to give people reduced duties, success on missions, or seeing wonders, along with wholesale rest and recuperation on a planetary surface. 

There's guidance on using different aspects of star systems in making interesting environments. The book does recommend using the quick system generation rules from the Great Rift campaign, but you can get by with the guidance in this book and the core rules. As this predates the release of the World Builder's Handbook, there is no reference to that volume. 

The book then discusses how shipboard life will typically work, with watches, duty stations, security, in-system operations and deep space operations, plus small craft and planetary operations. After this, there is a chapter on exploration; how to survey systems and plot your routes, plus how to carry out planetary exploration with surveys and expeditions. Science and research is covered with a route to research and make breakthroughs. These chapters are followed by one that talks about the types of world that can be found and the related ecosystems. The book concludes with some brief guidance on contact with aliens. This is fleshed out some more in the final book and also in the expansions, several of which deal with first contact situations.

Terminus Point (72-pages) is the epic conclusion to the campaign and dives back into detail. The book has more detail on the Deepnight Entity and the place that it resides. This includes the challenging final deep space transit to Terminus Point, and what they find. The conclusion is epic and deadly, but there are many ways that the Travellers could succeed. If they fail, they ultimately will put the rest of the galaxy, not just Charted Space, at risk. I'm not going to say any more as it would be a huge spoiler, but I do think that the journey will have been worth it; there will be moments of awe and terror and chances for heroism and cowardice. 

In conclusion, Deepnight Revelation is a grand, sprawling epic space-exploration campaign, the likes of which Traveller hasn't seen before. It provides the start and end of the journey, plus the mechanics to run the steps in between. However, there will be a significant amount of work for the Referee to do for that journey, unless they purchase the expanded material. I was impressed enough to start picking up the additional material, as this is more my kind of campaign than Pirates of Drinax, fantastic though that is. 

Highly recommended.

5 April 2025

Books in March 2025

March was a very focussed reading month, with a lot of science-fiction and a lot of the Traveller roleplaying game. I read 2,900 pages and twelve books, bringing me to 34 books in the year, and a total of 8,424 pages. The reading streak is at 814 days.

I'll start with the roleplaying books. I worked my way through the epic Traveller Deepnight Revelation campaign, which comprised four shorter books. This is very much a taster for the campaign; there's enough here to run it and give you a good understanding of what is going to happen, but there's a fair bit of work for the referee. The start and finish of a truly epic campaign are covered in detail, and the mechanics are given for developing the road trip between. I suspect that most referees will be tempted to pick up the extra books that Mongoose have written that flesh out the journey between; I know I will.

I also worked my way through three books which will support my next campaign; Mongoose's Bounty Hunter, and Moon Toad's The Bounty Hunter Handbook and The Jägermeister Adventure. The latter two complement each other well. The Mongoose book is shinier & glossier, feeling more like The Mandalorian with lightweight mercenary tickets. The Moon Toad book is gritty, detailed & realistic, feeling like a procedural TV series, and edges it in my preference. I've detailed The Jägermeister Adventure elsewhere.

I also finished Conflict by David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts. This was a good overview of how conflicts have developed since 1945. I enjoyed the book, but found the difference between the chapters written by Petraeus and Roberts jarring. Petraeus' sections were much more detailed but lost the big picture and key themes that are throughout the rest of the book.

Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shroud was an interesting read. I found it more like a thought experiment in a first contact situation. It also cleverly threaded three different perspectives together. I did find it hard going in parts, but it came to decent conclusion.

Caimh McDonnell's A Man with One of Those Faces was an enjoyable crime romp, with a sharp wit and use of language set in Dublin. A case of mistaken identity spirals out of control. Recommended and I'll be reading the next book.

I read Max Barry's Providence which follows the crew of an AI-controlled space warship in a ware with an alien species. The quirk is that the ship is so automated that the crew are almost there for PR purposes. We get to find out their quirks, and how things play out when everything goes sideways. I enjoyed this.

Finally, after a gap of perhaps 40 years, I returned to Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World series, with The Anvil of Ice. This is slow-paced but well written fantasy novel about a young thrall who becomes a Smith capable of wending magic into that which he creates. We follow the start of his journey, as he is apprenticed to a dark and mysterious Master Smith, and then his story when he leaves. I really enjoyed revisiting this, and look forward to reading the next!

3 April 2025