Back in January I teased a new Traveller campaign which will kick off tomorrow evening. I'm running Moon Toad Publishing's The Jägermeister Adventure for some friends using the Roll20 VTT. This a short bounty-hunting based campaign which I think will take 9-12 sessions to complete, based on the book saying six sessions and my typical VTT based gaming session being around 2 hours.
Much of the build preparation has been snipping out the relevant graphics. I'm using a base splash screen which I will add to as the adventure progresses. I've also acquired the Traveller Compendium (Core Rules, Central Supply Catalogue, High Guard and Companion) from Mongoose on Roll20 which look great and will hopefully be worth the purchase.
I've four players, so it should be a good mix. There are long standing gaming friends (Graham, Paul), along with Andy (whose writings in White Dwarf about Traveller helped inspire my passion for it) and Neil (who was one of the people I first played online with, using Skype with Hot War).
Tomorrow's session will be character generation and preparation for the campaign.
I am planning to test Tabletop Recorder with this campaign. After backing the recent crowdfunding, I've three months of trial time to see if it adds any value. This is an AI supported tool that will convert audio into a transcript and allegedly produce effective summaries. It was certainly trying to butter me up with the analysis of the 30-seconds that I trial recorded, although I'm not certain about being called "Dungeon Master" in the context of a Traveller game.
“The Dungeon Master meticulously tested the recording setup for the upcoming Jaegermeister Adventure, making sure all technical aspects were ready for the session. With everything operational, they surveyed the extensive display of maps and character sheets, strategizing how to guide the unfolding narrative and create a challenging yet engaging scenario for the players.”
I am quite interested in exploring AI tools where they help me GM (for example the recent exploration of NotebookLM), but I'm also very conscious that some of these tools are putting creatives out of jobs. It's an uneasy balance. It will be interesting to see how things work out and if they're any real benefit.
Solemn Vale is a gorgeously presented 352-page full-colour roleplaying game that presents a folk horror roleplaying game firmly set in 1970s Britain. A reference would be 'The Wicker Man' and other of its ilk. It is beautifully (and sometimes disturbingly) illustrated, with a simple clean layout. The game uses its own engine, which aims to give light narrative resolution either at a scene level or close to it. That means it's not designed to go 'blow by blow', but usually resolve a conflict with a single roll. It uses six-sided dice. It is published by Dirty Vortex. It is likely that characters will suffer terrible fates as they become entangled in the influence of Solemn Vale, so the game focuses on the journey to those consequences.
It is worth saying that this book is dark; nasty things are explored and will happen, just like the genre it is focused on. This would be an 18-rated film if it was a movie.
TL;DR: I'm impressed with Solemn Vale. It has a light and effective game engine linked to a layered and complex sandbox that perfectly evokes that 1970s British Folk Horror vibe. The setting lends itself well to exploring stories within that space, across a number of different themes, and the example scenarios are good examples of how to hit those different notes.
Beyond the subject, the thing that really hooked me into this game when it went into crowdfunding was the cover of the standard edition softback and the use of an Ordnance Survey style map for one of the add-ons. It's kind of ironic that I ended up opting for the hardcover (which has a different image) and I'm still waiting for the map (after a shipping issue meant that they went missing and subsequent illness from the creator) but I'm really happy with the material that I have received.
The book opens with some fiction where a young lad and his father are driving to Solemn Vale, moving into the old home of a relative who has died. They encounter a young girl in trauma by the roadside, and as they meet the police you get the feeling that something is very off about the place.
The game engine (Wyrd Abacus) is very simple. Characters are defined by a concept three abilities - Body, Mind and Soul. They will have a minimum value of 3, with a maximum of 9. Each ability has two facets associated with it that help build a picture of how the character is and should be played. Each facet has pros and cons listed. There is an extensive list of facets in the book, but you aren't limited to these.
There are a set of online tools for the game, so you can easily see how characters feel by using the random generator on the website. There are also other random generators for the GM there.
Abilities are used to overcome challenges. Challenges are rated between 2 and 10 typically and will focus on a specific ability area. Each ability covers three different types of challenge; the different types have no real mechanical effect and are there to provide clarity on which ability is in play.
Body has Obstruction, Pursuit and Threat challenges.
Mind has Logic, Pressure and Wits challenges.
Soul has Foreboding, Invocation and Taint challenges.
You resolve a challenge by describing what you are going to do and rolling a D6 to try and equal or exceed the challenge rating. For higher ratings, you will want to spend ability points, which one-for-one increase the dice roll. Spending points removes them from the pool associated with that ability, so there is a degree of resource management to think about, similar to Gumshoe. If you run out of points in an ability, it drops to zero, meaning you cannot influence a challenge outcome beyond the whims of fate from the dice roll. In most challenges, a single character will take a lead and make the roll, with any others involved being able to spend points to boost the result.
Failed challenge rolls often cause additional damage to abilities, reducing them further. If they would be reduced to zero or less, they are 'scratched out'. The next time that ability would be reduced your character will be defeated and taken out of action (killed, driven insane or some other appropriate narrative ending). There are rules for keeping a player involved should this happen and there isn't an appropriate way to introduce a new character.
Instead of damage, a character could suffer a narrative consequence (for example turning a faction against them). Alternatively, the 'stage rules' related to the challenge could require a character to immediately scratch out an ability or suffer some other kind of effect. Consequences to groups are spread between them at the discretion of the players involved.
You can recover ability points. If you have faced a challenge in a scene, you can recover a single point in an ability of your choice between scenes. There is an optional rule that allows you to recover an additional point between scenes if you have strongly role-played a facet. Finally, if you rest and recover in an appropriate way, you can make an influence roll (see later) and restore a number of points. However, you can only recover points in a scratched out ability with an appropriate narrative means (such as visiting a hospital, having a witch's blessing, having therapy).
In the event that you don't have enough points in an ability to boost a roll to pass a challenge, you can draw a Wyrd point from the Wyrd Pool to use a different ability to spend from, so long as it makes narrative sense. If your character isn't present in a scene, they can draw a Wyrd point to allow them to have done something that helps those present (usually addressed with a flashback) and add points to a roll. If you've failed a challenge, you can also opt to draw Wyrd points, one-for-one, to increase the roll you made so it is successful. All these points go into your own personal Wyrd pool.
Each scene has a Wyrd Pool, the level set by the number of characters involved. This represents the entanglement of the character's fate with what is happening in Solemn Vale. Players draw from it, and the points go into their personal pool. As well as using the points to use alternative abilities or boost the end result of a challenge roll, Wyrd points can be sent to introduce an allied or friendly denizen of the Vale into a scene, or to affect the outcome of a Wyrd roll. The Wyrd Pool regenerates at the end of a scene, but the character's personal pools remain.
Influence rolls are used to resolve minor contests or to see who is affected by a twist in the tale (for example, who is targeted as a victim). You get a number of dice equal to your ability pool maximum, and roll them, and take the highest value scored as your result. If the ability is scratched out or at zero, your result is set to a '1'. Bad things will usually happen to the character with the lowest score. Some influence rolls will look for a roll of '6' or '1' to trigger something, for example a countdown clock.
Wyrd rolls work in a similar way, but the number of dice is based upon a character's Personal Wyrd Pool. However, as this represents the entanglement of the character in the influence of Solemn Vale, a high roll may not be a good thing, as it means the focus is upon the character.
Magic is real in Solemn Vale, and usually handled abstractly through a Soul (Invocation) challenge. However, there are some more detailed rules for creating wards, charms, casting spells or making a conjuration to summon something. The text is clear that these are only there for special circumstances.
Overall, the rules are quite light (and are expressed in two pages in sister game Summer of Strange). Immediately after they're presented, a scenario is presented, where a BBC TV crew arrive to do a surprised visit with a child who has written in to them and find the house abandoned with bloody footprints and a compelling reason to follow up. The scenario - "Footprints" - showcases the Vale and the way that scenarios are constructed. They begin with an overview of the scenes, then the denizens involved, then specific 'stage rules'. Stage rules are elements that tailor the scenario from the baseline, and may escalate or drop away depending on where and when the characters are in on their story. Finally, each scene has example challenges and consequences listed, followed by suggestions for handling the outcome of the final scene and any epilogue. Overall, this is a great introductory scenario and serves to demonstrate the rules well.
This is followed by an essay on the decay of 1970s Britain and how it will change as the 1980s arrive. It's a good overview, but some reading around could easily supplement it if you didn't live through parts of it! The book then moves into describing the heart of Solemn Vale.
Solemn Vale is a remote town set on a valley near the coast in Cornwall. It is surrounded by hills and forest. The town itself is surrounded by smaller hamlets and farms, and it seems stuck in the past. The first area described is the heart of the town, beginning with the Green and the Bowler's Arms and including such places as the local nightclub. Each location has the background, secrets, agenda, appearance, allies and enemies described, followed by potential challenges, stage rules and key denizens at that location. Denizens, for example, the pub landlord, are described in a similar manner. These are all evocatively illustrated, and the writing starts to trigger ideas and thoughts for how you could run a game. Although any given scenario will have a plot behind it, the setting is very much a sandbox with lots of levers to pull.
After the town, the book moves onto 'The Manors', the powerful families that hold land and control the Vale. These include Lord Lowen Wellman's Guiding Star Commune, the Moore-Hollow family (whose wealth comes from mining) and the Blythes (established farmers). These families have been here a long time and have a number of simmering feuds. A number of locations where these may play out are described for the Gm to draw upon.
After 'The Manors' come 'The Estates'; the council housing and civic centre built to the north of the town. This is where you'll find the Library, Pharmacy, and Sports & Community Centre. There's the ice cream van, which does a roaring trade with specials. These are the places where you'll meet the Browns, Brownes and Brownlees, an intertwined and interrelated set of families who have lived in the Vale for a long time. If you have time, you could join the Bridge Club, or the Paranormal Investigation Club, meet local artist Mark Robinson and his 'Tea Party', the Masoods, Arkwrights or the Taylors. In much the same way as the early chapters, some key locations are described.
The book then moves to the second scenario, 'The Crisis of Father Aloysius'. Whereas 'Footprints' is focused around nature spirits, this scenario shows a different aspect, exploring a tortured Christian priest facing threat from pagan beliefs, and having a crisis of faith that could go very darkly. Again, a very effective exposition of the themes within the game.
The next chapter, 'The Meat of the Earth' starts a deep dive into the true nature and dangers of Solemn Vale, along with the farms, mines and families who could make life very uncomfortable for the characters. We get to meet Old Blood like the Holloways (traditional farmers with a tendency to violence and intimidation, linked to the Omega Cult), the Havers (again traditional, but with strong pagan beliefs), the Sykes (scrap merchants, petty thieves & criminals and sometime agents of the Holloways) and the Fenmoors (fiercely independent and self-sufficient). We also get to meet New Blood like the Walcotts (who returned from London in the 1800s), the Leightons (the latest tenants in a farm with a dark reputation) and the Crowes (hated once the collapse of the local Quarry was attributed to run-off from their farm). There are also independent families like the Rhodes (whose heritage goes back to Norman times) and the Gardeners (a family with roots from Nigeria who came to Britain with the Empire Windrush in 1948). The chapters rounds out describing locations like the local quarry, the defunct Moore Tin Mine, the abandoned Vale Copper Mine, and the local abattoir.
The next chapter explores the boundaries of the Vale, the woodlands, cliffs and caves and fields, along with key locations like the Stack (an old, abandoned brick chimney), the lonely Ere Rock, the Old Train Station, St Roch's Lighthouse, the Atlas Tin Mine, the old Courthouse, the perilous but beautiful river by the Ryswell Straight, the Witch's House, the old Bunker and tourist locations like the Shrike Hotel and Happy Acres Lumber Mills. There's also places of potential occult significance like the Druid's Circle, Skal's Folly and the Menehary Campgrounds where a brutal crime occurred in the past.
A short chapter describes the Omega Cult and how to use it in play. I won't describe more because of the potential spoilers, but it is a very different kind of horror.
This is followed by the final scenario; 'The Hounds Unleashed". This puts the characters in a situation where one of their party has gone to get supplies but not returned, and they are stuck in a caravan in the middle of bleak cold and frozen moorland. The plot riffs on a traditional folklore threat in such locations and again leaves plenty of opportunities for roleplaying and peril. It draws on several threads established in the chapters after the previous scenario. Overall, I liked this, but I think that it could be messy.
The book rounds out with some fiction from the perspective of a young Police Constable who has been assigned to Solemn Vale. This, like the opening piece, does a good job of giving the oppressive feel that the place gives off if you're a stranger.
The book has several appendices with lists of facets and example stage rules for challenges, denizens, locations and encounters. The latter four lists are also available as decks of cards. I have them, and they're nicely done on good quality card.
Overall, I'm impressed with Solemn Vale. It has a light and effective game engine linked to a layered and complex sandbox that perfectly evokes that 1970s British Folk Horror vibe. The setting lends itself well to exploring stories within that space, across a number of different themes, and the example scenarios are good examples of how to hit those different notes.
I was preparing my next Traveller campaign on the Roll20 VTT and got sidetracked into Roll20's Dungeon Scrawl product. The map above is the output of perhaps 20 minutes messing around and I have to say that I'm impressed with the flexibility in the system. I was using the free version of the tool which includes the ability to export PNG, import your own images and .ds files and even create isometric maps. You can create an unlimited number of maps. There are multiple styles; above is one very similar to Dyson Logos house style, the one below in the TSR blueprint style.
The 'Pro' version costs $5 a month and adds the ability to export in PDF, add lighting and permission to use the output commercially.
As it stands, this is a fantastic tool for creating maps. If I was running VTT a dungeon-based campaign then it would be really useful. Certainly, it would allow for live mapping with one of the VTTs that allows screen sharing, but also simple preparation of maps. It would have definitely helped when I ran OSE some time back!
I've had a lot of fun over the last few years playing both 2d20 engined games from Modiphius, and Year Zero Engine (YZE) games from Fria Ligan. However, this does present a challenge. I find that the more of the games that I've played, the more confusing I find them (especially if I am playing they in close proximity). This is particularly bad with 2d20.
I find that the problem is that the core of the game remains the same (roll 2d20 under an attribute and skill, build & spend momentum or roll a pool of D6s looking for at least a single '6' for success) but all the parts around it have been heavily tweaked to tailor the game to the setting in use. You can have similar mechanics in different versions of the same system that are driven by different meta currencies which are called different things and work in subtly different ways.
I know that this isn't just my issue; I've had the same conversation at conventions with folks, most recently during John Carter of Mars (2d20) at North Star. The YZE game I played at the same convention - The Electric State - was less of an challenge, as the mechanics were very stripped back.
I've reached the point that I'm actively ignoring any new 2d20 games that come out because I just don't want to deal with this blurring of mechanics between systems. I suspect that the copy of Cohors Cthulhu which is due to march into my house sometime this year may just be sold on unplayed.
I think that there could be a simple solution; one that could easily be done by the publishers or the fan community. Both of these engines have SRDs (system reference documents). I'd find a simple one page overview of how each of the games differs from that SRD really useful. It doesn't have to detail all the mechanics, just the key changes. That would make it a lot easier as a player and as a GM who needs to guide players through the differences in the game they're running.
Anyone else think this is a good idea? How do you cope with playing multiple variants of the same system?
20 May 2025
Postscript
As I took the picture that heads this post, I realised that I've quietly got rid of a lot of my 2d20, whereas I still have all YZE games I've ever bought. The only 2d20 game I'm missing above is Conan (which is in the to-sell pile, to be replaced by Barbarians of Lemuria). I've sold off Homeworld, Achtung! Cthulhu, the first edition of Star Trek Adventures (twice) and John Carter of Mars. I actually have more YZE games, but they aren't as quickly accessible; Vaesen, Coriolis,Things from the Flood, Twilight 2000, MYZ: Mechatron and Forbidden Lands. It looks like I've subconsciously made that decision between the two engines. Strange, as I do like the way that 2d20 plays.
As ever, the first thing I'm going to say here is that I'm one of the organisers of this convention, so my opinions are going to be biased. However, once I get there, I'm playing or running games in every slot like the rest of the people attending. I just get to do other things around the day!
North Star is our annual roleplaying game convention focused on science-fiction games. This was the ninth convention, and the seventh face-to-face, as two of the conventions ended up being online during the COVID-19 lockdowns. It has a special place in my heart, as it is something that Graham and I conceived of after attending one of the TravCons. Initially, we were looking at a northern Traveller based convention, but there wasn't an appetite from BITS, so we decided to do a more general science fiction based convention, which has proved popular. This ranges from science fantasy like John Carter of Mars, through to horror (form example Delta Green) through classics like Traveller and Cyberpunk, and on to post-Singularity based games.
PREPARATION
We started planning for North Star straight after the last convention in 2024. As a convention, sits in the middle of attendance levels between Furnace and Revelation. We had 52 sign ups this year, up six on the previous year. However, we continued to see the challenge that we've had with very late decisions to attend and respond to things like game pre-booking. That can be pretty challenging; we have four different channels we use for communications; the email address people provide when signing up, and then the Discord Server, the Facebook Group, and the Gaming Tavern. All key updates get sent out across all channels. However, some folks we only realised weren't coming because they didn't reply to anything. That makes things very difficult when doing game allocations.
Of course, we always assume that we'll get some drop outs, usually around 10%. That's real life. People get sick, family events happen and life intervenes. If we know this, it's manageable. Throughout the process, we're trying to balance number of seats at gaming tables offered (ie the GM + players) against the number of attendees in that slot during the convention. I say in that slot, because one of the changes we've seen increasingly is that some slots (for example, Saturday night) get less player demand. We now ask a question during sign-up to try and manage this. I try not to have GMs preparing for games that won't run.
If a player drops out, it's usually simple to address, provided it doesn't take us below three players in a game. When that happens, we initially check if the GM is happy to run with two people. If they are, we then check if the players are happy to play with two players. If anyone says 'no', then we're trying to find all three of the people involved spaces in another game.
If a GM drops out, it's more challenging. We do have some people who will act as reserve GMs or offer to run twice, but the numbers involved and complexity jumps in getting people into another game. We used not to care so much about this; I'd bring a big bag of board games, and the sign up was a free-for-all at boards (well, this was Furnace's original method). If you didn't get into a game, there was space to play and enjoy yourself. However, this also meant people didn't get into games they wanted to, hence we moved to pre-booking, which Elaine championed (despite the extra work), something that North Star adopted from the start.
During the preparation, we all have different tasks. Hattie (who joined the team a couple of years ago) is preparing marketing material to pitch the convention, I'm doing the forms for registration and managing games, and Graham is handling most of the comms and the liaison with the hotel. It generally works smoothly.
Hattie did a fantastic job with the new marketing material and finding alternative spaces. It was nice to have some variety, and to try new channels for people to find the convention. We haven't asked people how they found us in the registration process, so we don't know how effective it was, but the numbers were up, which helped. It was a real shame that she couldn't attend as she had to be in the USA with work the week of the convention.
The numbers meant we opened up a second space in the bowels of the hotel (the main space handles around 38 easily, and can go to 45 at a push), which meant we ended up with a feeling of space on the Upper Jailhouse and the alternative area. That's great, because it means that noise from other games doesn't tend to impact the adjacent tables.
The fortnight before North Star was pretty crazy for me; working had moved some reporting periods forward, so it was pretty full on. At the same time I was juggling preparing two Traveller scenarios to run and trying to finalise the game allocation. I think I had to redo it three times in the last week. I took Friday off and dedicated to preparation. Fortunately, I'd bought extra paper 'just in case' as I ran out (it's either that or toner usually) while printing the badges for attendees. The main annoyance was that I couldn't find my 'stationary bag', the Furnace con bag with my dice and lots of different goodies from All Rolled Up and others.
I finally finished all the prep after midnight; not what I planned, but the various changes and work had put my on a back foot. However, I felt ready to run and I knew that the material for the convention was ready, and that Graham had checked the venue the night before so that we had minimal effort to do in the morning.
SLOT 1 - THE ELECTRIC STATE - INTO THE BLACKWELT
I arrived early enough that it wasn't a problem, and immediately found out that another player had dropped out due to illness. That pushed three games below two players, so there was some shenanigans that went on past the opening speech while I made sure everyone had something to play in.
The strangest part of the preparation on the day is standing on a chair taping baking paper to the window. When the hotel refurbished, the hotel got rid of the curtains upstairs, and sometimes the sun will come in quite strongly. We have improved with baking paper to let light through but take the brightness and heat down. By Furnace this year we should have some proper coverings sorted.
Badges, X-Cards, signs and everything was out, and we were off, with Graham opening the event with his well-trained patter.
My first game was Robin's The Electric State, which I was really looking forward to. I've read the Simon Stålenhag artbook that it's based upon, and have the roleplaying game. However, I'd not had a chance to read or run it, so this was an opportunity to explore the game and the setting. I played a Nevadan Veteran of the War that tore the United States apart. We were a group of misfits with past history who didn't really know each other, but were on a road trip to try to get out of Pacifica to Tonopah, Nevada. Each of us had troubles that were pursuing us, and the journey became an exploration of our back histories. Robin kept on throwing in things that hooked to our stories. We managed to reach Tonopah, and also to resolve a few character's goals, but for me the journey was the thing. I loved the way we got to find out about each other and the interactions as we crossed this very broken USA. This version of the Year Zero Engine just faded into the background. A fun game with great players.
After the game, I nipped to Morrisons for lunch, and spent a bit of time reading my scenario for the evening.
SLOT 2 - FADING SUNS 4e - A ROAD SO DARK
The next slot brought Fading Suns, run by Graham. We've both got history with this game, and ended up inadvertently going for the same bundle of books for the current edition on eBay. I won that, but Graham beat me to the table. The fourth edition rules read as quite complicated, but in play they're really smooth and easy to use. At the heart of the engine, you're rolling a D20 to get under a target number, but you want to score as high as possible because that gains you action points that allow you to overcome resistances to your action and get better results.
The setting is very Dune-like*; in the future, humanity expanded using alien jump gates but the representative democracy of the Second Republic collapsed a long time ago. The stars are fading, and darkness threatens. The Prophet brought worship of the Pancreator, the source of light. Worlds are dominated by major and minor houses, counterbalanced by the Guilds. Society is balanced on a tripod of Guild, Nobility and Church, and the Emperor tries to keep it all in balance. The Emperor Wars only ended recently. Into this, our party was a group of House Decados nobles and their retinue. Decados are the sneaky but decadent house. They aren't quite as bad as the Harkonnens but there is an edge to the game that they play.
*Also shades of the set up in Dan Simmon's Hyperion books.
It started with a party (don't all the best adventures?) where the Decados had been invited to the 'coming out' party for the daughter of a minor noble house. Tom played a metro-sexual Decados noble to the hilt, with intrigue, flirtation and little sharp daggers. John played his much more 'honourable' cousin, a questing knight, but still underneath a Decados. Tim had the noble's personal cleric, a Sanctuary Aeon healer, and Guy and myself playing the Guild representatives. I was the Charioteer (responsible for starships and piloting, and some mercantile aspects) and Guy was the Muster mercenary. I had to pick that character as it had the same name as I do!
We ended up with a great dynamic, and chewed the scenery between us for the first hour or so. I could see Graham starting to think that the scenario may not actually happen, but to be honest, that wouldn't have mattered from the player's perspective as we were loving it. However, somehow we managed to get back on track and broadly achieve success. I really enjoyed it, and if Graham had offered to carry on a mini-campaign then I would have been up for it.
After the game, Keary, John and myself set off for our usual Garricon bookclub meet up at the local KFC. Increasingly, we've other folk joining us for this, which makes it a great opportunity to share what we've read that we've enjoyed. Of course, part of this was ambushed by discussions about Andor, partly spoiler free as some people hadn't seen the new series.
SLOT 3 - TRAVELLER - THE HUNT FOR SABRE IV
This was the first of two Traveller scenarios that I was running at the convention; it was the first that I'd settled on and comes from the recent Mongoose Traveller revamp of the Classic Traveller scenario. Murder on Arcturus Station. The updated version has two scenarios; the first one was a prequel that sets the scene, in which a team run by the players gets brought in to investigate a missing mining ore carrier.
I'd turned the entire scenario into a mind map for easy reference using Scapple, and also extracted a timeline (the mindmap is above and obviously includes spoilers). The other key preparation was getting all the handouts and pictures of people available for the players to have in hand, and generating characters.
I used the alternative package based character generation from the Traveller Companion 2024 Update. That was really useful and allowed me to half the time I usually spend building characters. It does this by having you create the ability scores for the character's UPP, after which you choose a background (eg Belter) that may modify the abilities and give you some initial skills. You then choose a career package (for example Agent) which give you more skills and some benefits. Finally, there are some options to tweak your skills at the end, either to give a high score or to boost across a number of skills. It works really smoothly. The characters were set up a franchise Hortalez et Cie audit team who were delayed in systems while a part was delivered for their starship.
I created the character sheet as half an A4-page, then went on 'thispersondoesnotexist.com' to generate a set of random images for character portraits. I turned them black and white. While doing it, I realised that there seemed to be an unconscious bias in the way that the model had been built. If I remember correctly, it had been done by analysing images of people on the net for patterns, enabling it to produce random portraits. The model's training clearly didn't have a large number of black subjects as the output was predominantly White, Asian and Hispanic. This may well reflect the source data used but it took about thirty refreshes before a black person's face appeared. However, after lots of refreshes, I had a decent selection of images.
The reason I did this was to slip the two items into an A5-menu stand - one site with the character sheet, the other with the image. I also created a random table of names for inspiration. I gave each character a short paragraph bio, but I wanted to have the players own what their character looked like, and what they were called. Implicitly, they also got to choose their own age, which works quite well with the package character generation as it doesn't define the number of terms served. I let the players choose anything between late twenties to early fifties, pretty much in line with the character images I'd generated.
I'd gone with an already published scenario as it minimised the amount of work that I needed to do before the convention. The main plot was there and it was all about becoming familiar with it. I had a really engaged group of players, and they successfully navigated their way through the plot, pretty much uncovering the whole conspiracy. It was great to see how they approached it. As I had five players, the party did end up split, but it worked along the niches that the characters had on their character sheets, with the generalists backing up the specialists. We had a forensics team, an interview team and an undercover agent (Steven leaned hard into using his character's backstory of 'Profession (Belter) 2' to fit in with the asteroid mining workforce. I really enjoyed watching them crack the case and avoid some of the potential problems that would have meant that they didn't get paid. Thanks to Steve H, Steven P, Paul, Dr Mitch and Eugene for an enjoyable evening!
I only regret that I forgot to take a picture with all the bling on the table during the game, which is why you got the mind map above.
Initially, I was going to head straight to bed, but then I decided to nip up to the bar to be sociable and have a good natter with Dr Mitch, amongst others. We play regularly but rarely get to meet face-to-face. I did get to sleep at a reasonable time.
SLOT 4 - JOHN CARTER OF MARS - YOU ARE THE HEROES. YOU?
Morning came around quickly enough and I enjoyed the usual fantastic Garrison cooked breakfast. Perhaps my only disappointment was the lack of tinned grapefruit! That may sound weird, but they've always had it before and it reminds me of visiting my grandparents back in the 1970s. I think it has gone with the modernisation. I nipped back to my room and read the whole of the Traveller scenario that I was running in Slot 5 to make sure it was fresh in my head, as I knew that the lunch break would be pressed for time.
I owned John Carter of Mars for a while, but never got it to the table. I sold it at the bring and buy stand at another Garricon to Keary. Keary brought it back to run at North Star and a thought it would be rude not to. It was a simple pulp tale of derring do. Our characters were co-opted into trying to rescue a young princess who had disappeared, potentially abducted by Green Martians. As a Green Martian myself, my character was very concerned about this. We investigated and quickly found a trail, and then we had an exciting air ship chase followed by a rescue that the young lady wasn't that impressed with and then we managed to survive being shot down. We drove off or killed our attackers, realising that this was in fact an evil Zodangan false flag operation to drive division between the races of Mars!
Overall, it was a fun game, with 2d20 doing its thing. I was suffering from bleed between the various different versions of 2d20 that I've played, but enjoyed it all the same. My conclusion was that I was glad to play, and would happily do so again, but I was also content in my decision to sell.
Lunch was from Morrisons again, and then we had the raffle (for Patriot Games vouchers) and a birthday cake. We'd had an attendee contact us to let us know that it was Tim's 60th birthday the next day, and asking if we could do a cake. We arranged that with the hotel, much to his surprise. Tim is an absolute stalwart of the Traveller community and has some great scenarios and other supplements that he's published. It was nice to be able to do this; it's the second time we've been approached like this for members of our community, and it's lovely to see the care.
SLOT 5 - TRAVELLER - DEEPNIGHT LEGACY
My final scenario was Deepnight Legacy, one of the two published scenarios that lead into the epic Deepnight Revelation campaign that I've reviewed previously.
Deepnight Legacy is a sandbox with the potential to kill the whole party. The set up is that they are a crew that's been flung together to travel into the Great Rift to an Imperial outpost as a ship is overdue. The outpost needs resupply and they're also tasked with checking for any news of their sister vessel. There are potential elements of body horror and links to the Ancients.
I actually used the same initial builds for all the characters (attributes and background package) and then selected different career packages. It was amazing how much difference that it made. Graham had the resupply ship's captain, Keary had one of the engineers, as did Tom. They were backed up by Tim's Scout who was working passage, and an academic who had a twelve month sabbatical at the Outpost was played by M.
I loved the way that the players leaned into their roles, and despite knowing the type of scenario that they faced, they acted with a realistic level of ignorance until they had evidence that something was not right. After that, they took the right decisions and managed to rescue the remaining survivors of Candling Station, before turning tail and heading back to report the disaster to their home naval base. There was some nice interplay with the characters, but this was very much a game of cautious exploration and information gathering followed by some dramatic rescues.
I'd prepared maps (strangely missing from the scenario as published), using the Travellermap.com site, plus the linked T5 world generator. Characters were presented in a similar way to the previous scenario, and again it seemed to work quite well. Overall, a good scenario which would definitely be an opener to a campaign if you wanted it to be.
With that, the convention was over, and after some tidying up, I headed home to the family.
A belated post on last month's reading, mainly as work and preparation for North Star consumed all my free time.
I read 14 books during April, for a total of 2,673 pages. That brings me to 47 books and 11,072 pages this year. As I belatedly write this, I've already broken through the target of 52 books for the year. The month's reading was dominated by roleplaying games as I continued my way through Deepnight Revelation for Traveller, and also two other Traveller related books for scenarios I was running.
Overall, I really liked what I read with Deepnight Revelation. I read through all the expansion books, which would be invaluable if you wanted to run this epic campaign. I also read the alternative route in the campaign (Deepnight Endeavour) and Mysteries on Arcturus Station. The latter takes the Classic Traveller murder mystery, adds a prequel and updates it for the current version of the game. It still allows you to set up one of the players as a murderer, which is cleverly managed. I also read Far Horizon again so that it was fresh in my mind before I returned to the game after a four month gap. I wrote about that experience last month in this blog entry.
I had a single non-fiction book this month, a profile of Volodymyr Zelensky called "The Showman", written by Simon Shuster. Now, I've seen criticism of this in some of the reviews out there, but it seemed to come across as a pretty balanced and human account of a person placed in an extremely challenging situation and rising to it. It certainly didn't make me any less sympathetic to him or Ukraine.
I managed two novels this month, with two novella collections as a tasty side-dish.
The first novel was Nick Harkaway's Sleeper Beach which is a future noir SF detective story, a sequel to the excellent Titanium Noir. Great writing and story, and a continued contrast of the lives of the effectively immortal Titans (rich folks with access to rejuvenation treatment) to the rest of humanity. I highly recommend both these books.
The second was Andrew O'Hagan's Caledonian Road. This is probably best described as a tragedy as you can see the metaphoric car crash coming as you follow the life of a pundit and art academic as he mixes with the landed gentry and brushes shoulders with Russian Oligarchs. Very much a sharp take on modern London and our elites, this was an impulse buy and I found it quite hard to put down.
The two novellas were The Drop and The Catch by Mick Herron, both set in the Slow Horses world. They were enjoyable and exactly what you'd expect if you've read any of the series.
My favourite for the month was Harkaway's Sleeper Beach.
