I didn't post anything on the roleplaying games I'd played in January as there were none, but things took off in February. I had 10 game sessions in total, five from regulars and five from Revelation which I have covered in another post earlier.
The final picture from Shadows of Atlantis as we wrapped up.
The regulars were two sessions of Trail of Cthulhu's Eternal Lies and then three sessions of Shadows of Atlantis for Achtung! Cthulhu. Those were the last sessions of the Atlantis campaign, which came to an end after 28 sessions having started back at the end of 2023. Overall, I enjoyed the campaign but I've no hunger to run any more of the setting and system, so I've started to sell it off (just the core rules left now). I'm working out what to run next; Traveller is leading the list.
Eternal Lies in full flow.
Eternal Lies continues to delight, and it is the most intense roleplaying that I have done, and something I look forward to. I feel disappointed when we have to postpone sessions. We're 52 sessions into this campaign, which has slow burned as we started it in 2021!
I'm drawing on face-to-face versus online this year. The online is either Roll20 or Zoom at the moment.
I've been playing 2D20 for a while now; First Age ran Conan and I followed up with Achtung! Cthulhu which is wending its way towards a conclusion, most likely in the new year. I've also had flirtations with Star Trek Adventures (1e) and Dune along the way.
I'd consider myself competent enough running the game now, but I do find that the fiddly differences between the games a little frustrating. The core mechanic is sound and I quite like the meta-game elements like threat and momentum and fortune points, even while I wish that the application of them was consistent between game systems.
I do have Dune 'Fall of the Imperium' which looks like a fantastic campaign (I reviewed it here) but I don't think that it's going to be what I offer next, as I'm feeling fatigued with the 2D20 engine. I think I've played too much of it recently. I will potentially offer Star Trek Adventures at North Star next May if Dr Mitch and I come up with a third part to the 'Echoes' game we ran previously, but I've no other definitive plans at the moment.
Although I like the core mechanics, I do find that the games struggles to really threaten the characters. Across the 20-odd sessions this year, there's probably only been two that have felt that I was putting them in any form of peril; I know that Achtung! Cthulhu is meant to be pulp derring-do, but sometimes it seems to either assume that the characters haven't really developed or that they need to succeed with relative ease. However, I do suspect that the feeling from the other side of the screen may well be a bit different and the players may well have been feeling higher threat levels.
My feelings on this aren't anything to do with the way that Shadows of Atlantis is constructed, despite my previous moaning. I do think that this is a different and interesting campaign which I've enjoyed running, despite the challenges with the writing and structure.
I will return to the game engine, I just feel that it's time to step away for a bit.
I'm about to start Chapter 7, the penultimate scenario for Shadows of Atlantis. Preparing the chapters has become a bit of a chore, only made easier by the fact that I have access to the first edition version of the book that has the useful history extras and lots of extra maps that have been pretty essential for me as a GM. I think they've helped the players visualise this as well. So prep involves opening both sets of documents in Affinity Publisher and extracting images and text as needed to create handouts on Roll 20, the VTT I fell back to after the debacle of Role losing AV.
Yes, I know that Role has AV back but I wasn't migrating all the material back across after four completed chapters.
I started reading the chapter for tomorrow's game and realised I'd not flow sheeted it (as it was optional so I missed it on the initial run through); that was no bother until I realised that some of the opening act didn' hang together, especially if you used the same team that you'd had in play from the start. Now, the characters in our campaign have been in play since early August 1939, and I was going to pick up the story early 1940 at Section M's headquarters. However, I realised that the loose-goosey way that the campaign (and Achtung! Cthulhu overall is written) means that there will be gaping holes if I just went ahead as things are.
I figured I'd check out the original version to see if I could fix this, which was when I discovered that the scenario was set in Peru originally and had just been translated across to a new country. It explains why there was even less information than previously expected. Oh, and there was a good chance that you could actually be playing the Nachtewolf (German Occultist) operators if you ran it as written. So no real hope there.
The fallback position was that I needed to get some alternative characters in play, which meant taking the ones for the NPCs already available, creating new sheets and getting some nice pictures. As I was rushed, I raided Artflow.ai again and just added the character descriptions into the engine. The results look really nice.
Ms Serena Falconer - Aviatrix & Socialite
Frank Ambrose, Antiquarian
Sgt Bertrand Ross, former French Foreign Legionnaire
Elizabeth Soames, Field Explorer
I'd never touch AI for anything professional, but this was so easy to use for producing character portraits for the game that we're playing. That was fortunate, because I didn't have the time to scan the net for old images that would fit.
Anyway, all the handouts are done and uploaded, the characters built, and we press on. Shadows of Atlantis may be badly organised and hard to use, but the adventure is fun!
I do think that there's a significant chance that the party could be killed on this mission, but then again, this is not the character set we've all been invested in for the last year or so.
I could have answered this for yesterday, but I figured it'd give the same answer two days running. So, leaning into the fact that GMs are players too, the game I've played and run most this year is Achtung! Cthulhu with the Shadows of Atlantis campaign. We've had 12 sessions this year, and travelled from Vienna to Rome to Cairo and now to Ishafan in Persia.
I'm enjoying the campaign despite the poorly structured book (it is very badly written for quick reference and has elements missing that were in the first edition like maps that should have been included). 2d20 ticks along; the system works well, but I like it rather than love it. I do find it goes slow when we hit anything mechanics heavy like combat, which means that the game doesn't have quite the pace I'd like. Part of that is the VTT support; the fan-made character sheets on Roll 20 are fine but slow. However we had to bail from Role at the end of last year when they dropped support for AV. Even though that's now available again, I'm too invested with the material uploaded to Roll20 to change now.
Great bunch of players too, with some churn this year with one and one out.
We're coming towards the end of the third chapter of Shadows of Atlantis, as the plot-line in Egypt winds down. There's been some interesting developments along the way. There are some minor spoilers below, so if you don't want to have hints of what happens in the campaign, don't read on.
The move to Roll20 has mostly been fine; the sheets are a bit clunky but they work. The AV has mostly been okay, but it's very bandwidth dependent and I've had to cut back any use of music because that seems to finish off one of the player's connections. I've also noticed that lag has been variable at times for different people and that has had the odd moment when people talk over each other.
I'm loving the way that the desktop in the VTT looks; I've made a collage of maps and key images from each chapter as we play them and it works as a great aide memoire for me and the players. The Role VTT does have AV back now (6 months or so on) but I'm not moving back as I've spent too much time putting assets into Roll20.
We've had some player changes; Duncan has joined with a British Indian Army officer who has instantly changed the party dynamic, but, unfortunately, Guvnor has decided to leave the game as he's not feeling it and doesn't like the Cthulhu aspects. That did give me a moment of self-doubt about how I was running the game, but the others all want to go on, so a trip to Persia beckons for the next chapter. The dynamic is interesting, as we have some very dynamic, engaged players and some who are quieter and more reflective, which means I need to keep an eye on who gets the spotlight.
The Cthulhu aspect has been very low-key; they've encountered reanimated corpses courtesy of Nachtwölfe, including a villain they originally killed in Vienna which gave them quite a shock. They've also met serpent-people (and machine-gunned them to death). I loved that Simon held back and didn't use a spell until we reached Egypt, when he summoned the shadows from around and terrified a local gang that was trying to steal the car. We had a dream sequence in the Egyptian underworld which had me mentally envisaging Moonknight (Disney+), and then the horrifying death of a private soldier who was guarding the artefact which they'd retrieved. This resulted in the first mention of a mythos entity, because the party's sorcerer wanted to know what kind of spell had been used. The roll made for information was sufficient to establish a link to Yog-Sothoth.
I've just built up the next chapter into VTT. This mainly involves either screenshots for handouts, or extracting images from the book having loaded it into Affinity Publisher, pasting them into Acornand exporting as PNG files. I've also done the cut and paste for some of the reference material.
Shadows of Atlantis is a great campaign, but it isn't well written for use at the table. Having tracked down the original version for Call of Cthulhu and Savage Worlds, there's a lot of material which has been omitted in the new edition, including a number of key maps and references. I've ended up extracting text and the maps to use as handouts. Unfortunately, I'd already googled and found references and images on the web, so I'm tending to blend both sources together.
I'm pretty comfortable with 2d20 now, but I am suffering from some bleed from different edition's variations. Fortunately the players don't mind me checking a reference every now and again (and Duncan is quickly falling into the space that Alex occupied in my Curse of Strahd D&D 5e campaign, retaining references to the rules much better than I do). I enjoy the 2d20 engine, but sometimes I wonder if the players feel that their characters are really threatened. Certainly, they've dealt with everyone that I have thrown at them.
I must give a shout out to Dr Wynand De Beer's "Parallel Chronology of the Second World War"; this has been invaluable as a source of what is happening when across the politics and theatres in the war. It's structured really clearly and easy to reference.
Perhaps the biggest frustration is that we remain fortnightly; this brings the usual challenges of remembering what happened previously, and it can mean we miss a month if something comes up. Originally, one of the players had a game that was alternating; by the time this finished, the others had got a game going in the gap between so it remains fortnightly. We've had eight sessions this year, and four last year. Sometimes the pace can drop a little, but that's naturally in a game with investigation; also we're only getting 2-3 hours in each session.
Overall, I'm enjoying this, but I'd like to get something else up and running too. Hat tip to my players (Simon, Duncan, Paul, Graham and Tom) for being great sports.
Some disappointment just before Christmas. Three sessions into the campaign (four if you count the Session Zero), changes force me to migrate VTTs. You may recall that I was minded to use the Role VTT for the game, as it's very much video chat first with a nice character sheet building tool and dice roller. That was the route I took, and I've spent a couple of evenings populating it. The time on Role blurs with time in the Affinity suite building handouts, as unfortunately Shadows of Atlantis uses chunks of the artwork and material from the previous edition which means that it isn't really VTT ready, unlike The Serpent and the Sands.
Fun on the Role VTT, people front and centre.
In building the game, there were a few things that I was missing; the dice roller didn't yet have custom faces, and the assets could do with folders to allow you to sort them. The music player was also a bit flaky (but I had routes around that) and had I been using the maps, it would have been very basic. However, apart from minor niggles and one of the players struggling a bit with the interface as it was new to him, it worked really well. Gaming is fundamentally a social activity and putting your players front and centre is works really well.
Move on to the shock announcement from Role, which one of my players (who is active in the Role community) pointed me at.
One of the founders/ developers, Elle Dwight further expanded on the Discord:
There are many great video providers out there. The issue is that swapping them out is labor intensive no matter who we go with. There is a lot of custom work and tuning that goes into getting video to run smoothly and consistently on a platform like ours. Since our team is quite small, we have decided to prioritize Open Source and finalizing release of our Owlbear integration first. But beyond that, there are many options we could explore!
and:
We tried to take an honest look at how various groups use Role. And while it might sound surprising, we actually found that many rooms play without video at all, and instead use our basic map tools or just use the middle area for imagery. We recognize that some games are very video-centric, but we also want to focus our limited resources on a path that benefits the widest range of play groups. Our hope is that developers within the community will likely make various video plugins that will allow video-centric groups to choose their favorite option for play. Video integration and optimization is time consuming, and we don’t want that to block people’s ability to create with Role. We’ll have many more details on Open Source early next year. In the meantime, we hope you’ll use Discord or other video chat tools to augment your games.
I can see the logic for the developers (who are small team) but ultimately this pushes me away from the platform. Graham introduced me to it around the lockdown, and immediately it struck me as a perfect replacement for the Google Hangouts with dicebot I'd used for all the games that didn't need battle maps and a heavy degree of crunch. People front and centre, and a nice stable platform. Once early access became available, I signed up as soon as I could. I also loved that it ran on Safari on macOS and iOS without issue, something that Foundry and Roll20 don't do. It means I can travel light to play, just using my iPad.
The comments about many rooms running without video is interesting. I know that about half the rooms I have in Role haven't used video, as they were builds for games which either didn't happen or I was using to develop and experiment (for example, when I built the officially approved Mausrítter and Cthulhu Hack sheets). I've asked the developers if they account for this.
Over the last three years I've used three different VTTs (Role, Roll20, Foundry) and two other video platforms (Zoom and Discord).
Roll20 got progressively better over the time period; originally, we didn't use the AV features as they were flaky, but the update around 18 months ago changed everything. It became stable and effective.
Foundry was done through LiveKit and I found it a pain; it broke when I used it in some hotels (despite trying running in a VPN and other solutions). When it worked it was great.
Discord was randomly flaky; we ended up abandoning some sessions as we couldn't hold a stable connection (although we did use it for Roll20 before we went full into that platform).
Zoom had rock solid AV and, well, nothing else.
Role had the same kind of rock solid AV, and useful tools.
Ordinarily, I'd have been really excited about the announcement of the move the open source the code (as I suspect that it will accelerate development), and the integration of OwlBear Rodeo would have solved all my challenges over mapping for games where it's front and centre (for example for OSR clones).
However, the loss of what was originally presented as the platform's raison d'être means I'll be pulling away for now. It's not an easy decision, as I've advocated publicly for the platform and built official sheets for a number of RPGs, and I like what the team has done. I'll keep a weather eye on development and see if there are changes that will bring me back, but I'd rather not kludge two or three services together for what will probably be a subpar outcome.
I realise that Twillo's announcement has led to the Role team having to make a whole series of decisions quickly, and hope that the open source approach sorts AV quickly.
Rebuilding the campaign in Roll20
So what does this mean for our Achtung! Cthulhu campaign?
I've decided to migrate the campaign to Roll20; there's a workable sheet on that platform, and fortunately, the way I prepared the material for Role means that I don't have a huge amount of work to migrate the material. I do lose the flexibility to do preparation on the iPad, but I gain a stable music player and a stable AV platform.
Ultimately, I did consider Discord with Role, but the stability of that platform has been variable in my recent experiences.
I'm part way through now; most of the important material from the first mission (Vienna) is uploaded and I'm about to dig into Rome. Still, it's a chunk of time that I'd planned to use to complete the build of Castle Xyntillan in Roll20 as a drop in game.
I guess, ultimately, you get what you pay for. Role has resisted the need for subscriptions, and Roll20 is funded by theirs.
We have a team of four players. I've added some thumbnails of images generated by myself (artflow) and Tom and Simon once we'd done character creation.
Ark Kozlowski, back when he was a policeman (Artflow image)
Arkady "Ark" Kozlowski, a former Polish policeman, now working for Section D.
Archetype - infiltrator
Background - police
Truths - Hard-Boiled Investigator, My War Started Early, Calm, Cynical, Polish, from Poland
Player: Graham (First Age / Eladrin)
Jan Novák, former black market dealer and criminal (Artflow)
Jan Novák, a former Czech black marketeer and criminal, now working for Section D.
Archetype - con artist
Background - criminal
Truths - Black Market Dealer, From Czechoslovakia, Czech, My War Started Early
Player: Paul (Dr Mitch)
Charles Mocata, a British Occultist leader who freelances for Section D (Stable Diffusion)
Charles Mocata, a British occultist leader, now working with Section D
Archetype - occultist
Background - mesmerising cult leader
Truths - British, English, Mesmerising Cult Leader, Owns an occult artefact, Glimpsed what mortals should not know
Laurenz Trimme, a Jewish mechanic who escaped from Austria (Pixlr).
Laurenz Trimme, a grease monkey, now working for Section D
Archetype - grease monkey
Background - engineer
Truths - Escaped Jew from Europe, diligent mechanic, Austrian, German
Our game begins on 25 August 1939, with Europe on the cusp of war.
Recent Events
January
Spanish Nationalists capture Barcelona
On his 6th anniversary of coming to power, Hitler's Reichstag speech predicts the annihilation of the Jews in Europe if 'international finance Jewry' should torment another world war.
Chamberlain declares that a German attack on France would be viewed as an attack on Britain
February
The German battleship Bismarck is launched at Hamburg
German Jews ordered to hand over all their valuables to the state with no compensation
Britain and France formally recognise Francoist Spain
March
Cardinal Pacelli becomes Pope Pius XII
Czechoslovakian president dismisses Slovakian PM, who flees to Vienna and requests German protection, while Czech troops occupy Bratislava
Hungarians occupy Ruthenia, Slovakia declares independence from Czechoslovakia
Hitler declares Protectorate of Bohemia & Moravia, Ruthenia declares independence as Carpatho-Ukraine.
Chamberlain declares the 1938 Munich agreement as 'no-longer binding', and later declares that Britain will oppose 'any German effort to dominate the world'.
German troops occupy Bohemia & Moravia, and Hitler visits Prague
German troops occupy Presov in Slovakia, as Hungarian troops occupy the Ruthenian capital Khust
London conference on Palestine fails with lack of common ground between Arabs & Jews
French parliament votes to give government dictatorial powers - accelerated rearmament and partial mobilisation of receivers follows
Ribbentrop issues ultimatum to Lithuania for return of Memel, subsequently Lithuania signs treaty with Germany.
US recalls its ambassador from Berlin
Britain and France propose forming a united front with Poland and USSR against Germany, but the Poles reject the initiative.
Hitler demands the return of Danzig to Germany and a corridor to link it to East Prussia. The Poles reject this and talks break down. Poles threaten war if Germany should attempt to change Danzig's status unilaterally.
Memel annexed by Germany, Hitler visits to rapturous welcome.
UK declares willingness to fight any German move on the Netherlands, Belgium or Switzerland
Hungarian troops enter Slovakia.
Germany & Romania sign economic treaty
Nationalists launch final offensive in Spain and capture Madrid after a 3-year siege
Rome issues ultimatum to Albania to accept Italian occupation
Chamberlain announced Anglo-French war guarantee to Poland in the event of a German attack in House of Commons speech.
April
The German Battleship Tirpitz is launched at Wilhelmshaven.
Franco announces victory in civil war and is recognised by the United States
Hungary & Slovakia sign peace treaty
Albanian government rejects Italian ultimatum
Italians invade Albania on Good Friday, Albanian royal family flees to Greece with good reserves.
Hungary withdraws from the League of Nations
Albania falls, and parliament votes in favour of union with Italy
Anglo-French war guarantees issued to Romania and Greece
USSR proposed 10-year alliance with France and UK - rejected by the UK.
Limited conscription announced in UK
Hitler repudiates 1935 Anglo-German naval agreement and 1934 German-Polish non-aggression pact in Reichstag speech. Offers renewed terms over Danzig.
May
Slovakia deprives 30,000 Jews of citizenship
Poland rejects Hitler's new terms in negotiations over Danzig
Spain withdraws from the League of Nations
Clashes on the Manchurian/Mongolian border between Japanese and Soviet supported forces.
Britain & Turkey sign mutual assistance treaty
Hitler inspects the Siegfried Line at Aachen
Ravensbrück concentration camp opens for women prisoners
Sweden, Norway and Finland reject Germany non-aggression pacts
London announces plans for Palestinian independence within 10 years - Jews and Arabs to take part in government.
Germany and Italy sign ten-year 'pact of steel' for mutual support in the event of war, and invite Japan to join the alliance.
General Zhukov ordered to Mongolian-Manchurian border.
Soviet-Mongolian forces defeat Japanese troops each of the Khalkhin-Gol
Germany and Denmark sign a non-aggression pact.
Celebrations in Hamburg for 5,000 Germans returning from combat in Spain
June
HMS Thetis, Royal Navy Submarine, sinks on sea trials off Liverpool, 99 killed.
Danzig Senate president complains over sharp increase in number of Polish customs officials in city since May
Germany signs non-aggression pacts with Latvia and Estonia.
Japanese troops blockade British concession at Tientsin, China, for harbouring fugitives
French submarine Phenix sinks off Indochina, 71 killed
Goebbels tells Danzig crowd that reunification with the Reich is inevitable
Bomb explosion in Haifa market kills 18 Arabs
Japanese erect barricade around the British concession in Tientsin.
Danzig Senate sets up SS Home Guard unit.
France and Turkey sign mutual assistance treaty
Japanese 2nd Air Brigade attacks Soviet airbase in Mongolia without permission
Halifax declares in London speech that Britain will fight any new act of aggression in Europe
Italy extends restrictions on Jews.
July
Ongoing warfare at Khalkhin-Gol - Zhukov launches counter offensive, subsequently given command of 1st Army Group and given operational freedom.
Chamberlain reaffirms British support for Poland in the event of war with Germany
Italy recalls its ambassador from London
British troops going in French Bastille Day parade
British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley calls for UK hands-off policy in Eastern Europe in London meeting with 20,000 attending
RAF Bombers make return flight from London to Marseilles to demonstrate British AirPower
General Wavell appointed British C-in-C for Middle-East
Poles announce economic reprisals against Danzig firms
Chamberlain informs parliament of agreement with Japan on security of forces in China.
Japanese offensive at Khalkin-Gol halted after failure to break Soviet lines, Canton river closed to foreign shipping for two weeks.
US government renounces 1911 trade agreement with Japan
5 bombs explode in England, killing one person.
UK parliament approves bill to summarily deport suspected IRA members. 19 deported immediately.
UK & France announce coming talks in Moscow on alliance with USSR.
August
5 - Warsaw warns Danzig not to interfere with Polish customs officials
5 - Firing squad executes 13 young women socialists in Madrid
7 - Danzig refuses to recognise untrained Polish officials as customs guards.
8 - Air defence tests in UK featuring 1,300 RAF warplanes
9 - Polish ambassador in Berlin warned about interference in the internal affairs of Danzig
10 - Poles declare willingness to fight Germans on Danzig issue
10/11 - Trial blackouts for half of England and London in the event of war
11/12 - Italian FM Ciano meets Ribbentrop in Salzburg and Hitler in Berghof
15 - Norwegian freighter sunk by mine off the mouth of the Tyne, 9 crew killed.
15 - 13 Stuka's crash in air display at Neuhammer, crews killed
20 - Soviets commence offensive at Khalkin-Gol
20 - British hand over Chinese fugitives to Japanese to end Tientsin stand-off
21 - German heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spee sails from Wilhelmshaven.
21 - Hitler orders military mobilisation
24 - 10-year non-aggression pact between Germany & the USSR announced
24 - German heavy cruiser Deutschland sails from Wilhelmshaven.
24 - UK parliament approves emergency powers bill and reservists are recalled back to active duty.
[Very minor spoilers below, but you’d guessed this was about Atlantis, hadn’t you?]
Starting to work my way through the campaign with a focus on running it. The set up is good, but there are aspects that could be improved, especially around the exposition to the GM. For example, the past location of Atlantis isn’t ever called out, despite it being implicit from the final mission. The backstory is a little vague.
The overall plot arc isn’t really outlined, except in terms of locations. Again, you need to draw what is doing to happen at each location out from the missions themselves. Knowing how the story is supposed to go, and the objectives for each mission really should have been called out at the start as it’s key knowledge for the GM to understand what is going on. Having read this previously, one of my objectives in reviewing this is to pull it together as I go along, along with key clues and interlinks between missions.
There’s nothing that’s bad about the way that this is put together, but it lacks sharpness. This is done much better in The Serpent & The Sands which has a top level bullet point overview of each mission in the campaign preamble. It draws the big picture together at the start.
I may also read the works by Plato that reference Atlantis - Timaeus and Critias - as they’re on Gutenberg and provide part of the deep backstory.
The other thing I noticed was that although the text says only missions 1, 2 and 8 are fixed in time and the others can be run in any order, the campaign as presented does assume that they are run in sequence. Two of the missions felt like they should have been run with other characters when I read the book originally, I’m going to be interested if I still feel the same when I read them again.
It would have been useful to have had a paragraph on travel routes and methods between locations and potential times (especially as the campaign is expected to run from August 1939 to June 1940, before the Phoney War ends). I realise that this may have been avoided because of ‘run in any order’ idea and concept, and is quickly fixed, but again it would have been helpful. I do wonder if that this is a deliberate pulp play-style choice (the camera pulls back as our brave heroes board the vehicle they’re leaving on) but I was left wanting to have this easily to hand. I suspect there’s enough information in the Gamesmaster’s Guide or one of the many Call of Cthulhu books gathering dust on my shelves if I need to do this myself.
Overall, the campaign looks great. The one concern I have is that the maps may not be useable with the players, as this was published before VTT support versions became common. Hopefully, if that’s the case, they can be edited with Affinity Designer.
Anyway, these were my main take outs from reading the first chapter again. I have a couple of pages of scribbled notes on my reMarkable now.
I've only run five game sessions since Curse of Strahd finished at the start of the year, which is odd for me as I'm usually running something. All those sessions have been at conventions, and I've enjoyed them immensely. Running at Furnace a fortnight ago confirmed to me that I really wanted to start again.
The Wednesday group - Graham, Tom, Dr Mitch and Alex - continued after we left Barovia with the Shadow of the Sorcerer campaign for Conan 2d20, run by Graham (another eternal GM). It was great fun as we carved our way across Hyperborea, in a quest that involved cultists, serpent people, ancient magics and enemies rising again, and lots of genre appropriate fun. We finished on Wednesday.
Conan 2d20 is an earlier iteration of the 2d20 engines and it shows it, as the edges are still a bit rough. It's not as smooth as later iterations, but in play that wasn't a barrier. The talents for characters stack up to let you do crazy things. I'd focussed my character as a rogue type, a burglar and liar, rather than going for a strong fighting build. There were times when I kind of regretted not building the character with a bit more focus on combat, then I had moments when her ridiculously good acrobatics talents kicked in and it made it all worthwhile. Anyway, I digress.
We'd agreed in principle that we'd run another campaign once the Conan game finished. I'd pitched Mutant Year Zero: Elysium and Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20. We opted for the latter, as one of the players didn't fancy the character-vs-character shenanigans that come with that setting, plus you get to punch Nazis. Pulp WW2 felt like a good option. Achtung! Cthulhu does a good job at holding the mythos at arms length, and then shooting it repeatedly with a Sten gun (you can read my review of this here).
I had two options; Shadows of Atlantis (the first campaign released) or the more recent The Serpent & the Sands. Reading both of these, there's a slightly different design ethos from other settings. Some of the scenarios feel very episodic, and quite often they're constructed with a particular end-game in mind (the villain escaping having shown some more of their threat is quite common). Initially, this jarred for me as I read Shadows of Atlantis, but once I imagined this playing out as a Saturday morning cinema drama with something like the Pathé News fanfare at the start and a voice over, it worked. I had been looking for more direct connections between the missions, but in some cases it's just the boffins back at Section M who use the material the characters find to get them their next mission. The Serpent & the Sands does have much more taught interlinks between missions, but sometimes it is a clear plot direction from the GM.
In the end I've opted for Shadows of Atlantis as the players gave me the choice of which to use. I think that The Serpent & the Sands is a stronger campaign narratively, but it has too many echoes of the Conan game we just played. Deserts, Serpent-People, Ancient threats rising again, they're all there. It's set chronologically after Shadows so I'm going to keep it in reserve in case people want to revisit the setting later. That said, Shadows of Atlantis is a fun campaign which does a grand job of showcasing the difference from the traditional Lovecraftian mythos, so I'm really looking forward to it.
Sadly, Alex has decided to take a break from the group, so we've looked for a new player. Simon (who also does the admin for the Tavern) has expressed and interest, so I hope we're sorted. Alex has said he intends to return, once he's had a little time and space.
Now the campaign is decided, the next choice is the VTT. At the moment, I'm leaning towards using Role, as it's a nice, light and rock-solid platform. It's probably my favourite VTT. There appears to be a good sheet on Roll20, but at the moment Paypal and Roll20 have managed to lock my account(*), so I don't think I'll explore that further. The plus for me with Role is that it runs happily on my iPad Air, so I don't need to take the MacBook Pro with me if I'm travelling for work. I did consider Foundry (there's a good unofficial set up there), but I've come to the conclusion that I'd prefer to stick to something I know. Although there are character sheets on Role, I'm going to suggest that the players use the form-fillable PDFs and we just have a shared set of sheets for journals and meta-currencies (threat and momentum). I'll probably post more on this as I finalise.
