First Impressions - Keychron K10 Max

I've been intrigued by mechanical keyboards for a while, mainly driven by memories of the original keyboards that I used when I first started computing. Specifically the keyboard on the Video Genie TRS-80 clone, my old PowerBook 190cs and a variety of IBM keyboards from early PCs.

My daily driver keyboard is a Logitech MX S, wireless, suitable for Windows or Mac (or ChromeOS). It feels light and comfortable to use, and it's very quiet. I can use it for work happily and heavily for a day without any issues. That's important, as I managed to damage a tendon many years ago when I was writing a lot of specifications and doing a lot of CAD drawings. The culprit wasn't actually the keyboard, but rather the very strange lumpy mouse that they produced in the 1990s which meant my hand (and tendon) were twisted when using it. 

I do believe in not skimping of the quality of keyboard that you use. If you're a screen worker, this is the primary element that you will be engaging with so it needs to be comfortable and well built to make sure that you minimise the risk of harm to yourself and get the maximum user pleasure from typing on it. The MX S is a solid quality build. My first lasted four years until I wore out two of the higher use keys enough that they were erratic in use.

However, I miss the tactile feedback and sound of the keys clacking that I remember of old. I remembered something satisfying in typing on a keyboard like that. Was it just nostalgia?

I ended up looking at quite a few keyboard reviews over the last two years, and was hankering after trying one of Keychron's models based on some comments by folks whose opinions that I have time for. So I ended up selecting a Keychron K10 Max. It's a full size keyboard with a numeric keypad. It's reasonably plain, and I went with a dark colour as I have memories of the way that some keyboards build up residues which show if they're lighter colours. 

I selected Brown Switches because they are a halfway house - tactile but quieter than the Blue switches but not a linear response like the Red gaming switches. It took a while to understand exactly how this worked and I found this article really useful.

It took just over a week to get to me from China, and I immediately noticed the heft of the keyboard when I opened the box. I'd happily carry the Logitech MX S with me somewhere, but I think that this is definitely one that is going to stay on my desk. 

The keyboard came configured UK-ISO set up for a Mac. The keyboard can be switched between Mac and Windows but if you want Windows symbols you will need to swap out the Mac specific keys for Windows ones. These are provided, along with the necessary tools and instructions. The keyboard can be used with Bluetooth or directly wired. It will support up to three different devices at once over Bluetooth, which seems to be the norm for the technology. The Mac set up means I will resist the urge to pair it with my work laptop.

The keyboard itself has a white backlight and   you can select how it behaves. Apparently you can connect into it and edit the settings quite heavily, but I've had no need to do this at all. Battery charging is via USB-C, and it either has a smaller battery or consumes much more energy than my MX S as I've had to charge it twice in the last week of use.

So what's my verdict? 

I really like the keyboard. There's a lovely tactile feel from it and the keyclicks are very reassuring and make me feel like I'm making progress as I am writing. The keyboard is more upright than the MX S which means that I will need to watch that I do not twist the tendon in my right hand and maintain proper posture, but it does feel delightful to use. Perhaps the only thing that irks me is the battery usage, but I'll see how that plays out. It's not really a hardship as there's a USB hub immediately behind the keyboard on the desk so I can easily top it up.

I'm happy I've got this, there's no regrets. There may have been some nostalgia in the purchase but using the keyboard shows me that it was more than justified.

Recommended.

19 July 2025

First Impressions - Solemn Vale (Folk Horror RPG)

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. 

Recommended

25 May 2025

Edit: Video of a flick through of the book:

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

First Impressions - The Jägermeister Adventure (Cepheus / Traveller)

A printed out copy of 'The Jägermeister Adventure'.

The Jägermeister Adventure is a 127-page mini-campaign for Traveller/Cepheus by Moon Toad Publishing, which should give around six sessions of play. It is available as a PDF only at the moment - I printed a hardcopy for use at the table shown in the image above because I plan to run this with my gaming group next.

The Jägermeister Adventure has the characters as a bounty hunting team who end up in pursuit of fugitive who may ultimately threaten the well-being of tens of thousands of people. However, when they start the chase, all they know is that the individual, Eric Voss, was on the defeated side of a war that ended with a strategic exchange of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, a war which rendered the planet Valkos a Red Zoned radioactive hell-hole, and that he is wanted for theft of documents from the Grand Imperial Library of Kahn. Lethal force has been authorised and he is believed to be armed and dangerous. 

The book is set in the Minerva Cluster, somewhere on the fringes of the Imperium. Key maps and background are provided for the star systems, planets and locations likely to be visited during the campaign. These are all produced to an excellent standard. There are deckplans, illustrations and statistics for four different starships including the Jäger-Class Bounty Hunter vessel that the players will be using as they take their roles as shareholders of Assured Couriers GmbH, a courier and package retrieval (aka bounty hunting) service.

The various worlds that the campaign visits are all very distinct and a degree of wits will be needed to succeed in the hunt for Voss, if only because they have limited legal authority. The campaign is not shy about presenting hard moral decisions or showing the realities of the aftermath of total war. Although Voss' motivations are understandable, it doesn't make them palatable and the consequences of failure are high stake.

The book repeats some elements of Moon Toad's Bounty Hunter Handbook. I'll be reading that and the Mongoose Publishing Bounty Hunter book over the next month as I prepare to run the campaign. There are references to a couple of other ships that Moon Toad have released as supplements, but they aren't key to the plot so you don't need to own them (but may well want to).

Written and illustrated by Ian Stead, Tom Price and Neil Grant, this is the kind of Traveller adventure I like, grounded and gritty, but with spaceships and the future.

Overall this seems excellent and I look forward to trying it out at the table.

1 March 2025

First Impressions - GURPS Traveller Starships

This review was originally posted on RPG.net by myself on 30 September 2000. I'm adding a copy here to preserve it for posterity.

GURPS Traveller Starports (just 'Starports' hereafter) is the second book in the mercantile and starships operations set of sourcebooks published by Steve Jackson Games, Inc. This second volume follows the impressive 'Far Trader', released twelve months before, and precedes the as yet unreleased 'Starships'.

The subtitle of the book, 'Gateways to Adventure' summarizes the key role that starports play in a Traveller campaign, a role discussed in depth within the book. The back page blurb heading, 'Anchors of the Imperium' describes the key role that interstellar trade, starports and the Imperial Starport Authority (SPA) play in holding the fabric of society together.

Description.

Starports is the usual 8" x 11" size of a GURPS supplement, and 128 pages long. It is the first of the supplements for GURPS Traveller to benefit from the increased print quality recently adopted by Steve Jackson Games, Inc. The cover is glossy, and seems to resist damage better than previous books.

However, what is most immediately striking about the cover is the near photo-quality image of a starport produced by Jesse DeGraff (see http://www.vision-forge-graphics.com/ for more of Jesse's work)

His work has previously only graced the insides of the GT supplements and GURPS Space 3rd Edition, and has lost the benefit of the color with which it is prepared. The picture itself shows a merchant vessel being loaded with cargo, and has many interesting touches including a number of real people's photographs integrated into the cover as starport and ships personnel. Other aspects, such as the translation from the Vilani text font on the cargo container are equally interesting, with hints towards Traveller folklore.

After looking at the cover it's easy to feel jaded by other images, but the black and white illustrations inside the book (by Glenn Grant and Jesse DeGraff) help set the scene and feel of starports very well.

The Contents:

Starports is divided into 6 chapters, with two appendices. There are frequent sidebars with flavor text, background information and details of organizations such as Brubeks (for which a deckplan is included!).

The first chapter, 'Outposts of the Imperium', describes the facts about starports: that they are often the only permanent Imperial representation in a member system, and that they are key to trade in Imperial space. This is discussed in respect to Imperial policy (bear in mind that that the Imperium grew out of a response to trade issues in the Sylean Federation) and there are a few notes on how this policy interfaces with the local system. This is expanded on with the difference between Imperial and local Starports and the impact of competition between then being mentioned. By 'local' Starports is referring to ports run by organizations in the planetary system other than the SPA. Such systems may be beyond the Imperial border.

The history of the SPA and its growth out of the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service is given, before the text moves on to describe the likely facilities and key points of Imperial Starports of each class from I (Traveller type E) to V (Traveller type A). The ports of the various Imperial services (ranging from naval and scout bases through to Way Stations and Depots) are also detailed. Finally, the chapter concludes with a brief description of research stations and privately owned starports.

Entries in the sidebars discuss such areas as the differences between Imperial Starports and those of other races, economics of ports, and the standard operational plan for capturing a starport. This is interesting, but seems to neglect operations against the Highport. However, as an orbital facility with little maneuverability it may be assumed that it will either surrender or be destroyed. Focus within the book as a whole does tend to be more on the downport than the highport, perhaps understandably. Sea and air ports in 21st Century Terra can be used for models of the downport whereas there are no true analogies to highports. 'Inside the Starport Authority', the second chapter, is unsurprising in its contents which are a description of the structure of the SPA and how this translates to the operational structure at each port. This is where the book really beings to shine, with plenty of descriptive text about each department which a referee can use to make a starport come alive for their players. The Adminstration Department ranges from the executive (the Port Director, a very powerful individual), the line office (planetary liaison), to Concessions, Personnel and Public Relations. The Traffic Department handles all the aspects of managing starships, cargos, passengers, security and customs. Other departments include medical, emergency services and physical plant. The few paragraphs given on each office describe their activities so a referee can develop a port beating with the trade lifeblood of the Imperium. The organization described does not mirror the narrow, small teams of 'Babylon 5' or 'Deep Space Nine'. Rather, it mirrors the complexities of real air and sea ports today.

Chapter 3, 'Planetary Relations' describes the way that the SPA and each Port's Director deal with the governments and population of systems in which they are based. This ranges from Imperial systems through to starports on those worlds actively opposed to Imperial contact and in a state of war. The Extra-territorality (XT) of the starport, and the infamous XT line are discussed. The people and organizations that a starport may have to deal with are also mentioned, including groups such as business and unions, environmental lobbies and special interest groups. One of the areas favoured by player characters, 'Startown' is described. This is the down and seedy area just outside the port, often a grey area between Imperial and planetary authority. Extensive notes are given on law enforcement, doing business and the ever present opportunities to get into, and out of trouble with both the law and the locals.

Sidebars give nuggets of information about such widely different people as 'floaters' (people who reside at ports and have no visible means of support - a little like those in the 'Downbelow' of Babylon 5) to Embassies and Trade Stations. Chapter 4 is the first entirely GURPS specific section of the book presenting a number of character templates relating to starport operations. These differ slightly from those presented in the GURPS Traveller Sourcebook in they are intended for characters actively working in the SPA (rather than retired or mustered out characters). The templates range from the Port Director, to Imperial Consul, to dockworker, security officer or crime boss. There are two pages describing how specific advantages and disadvantages need to be approached in a Starports campaign, and notes on the new skill for handling hazardous materials.

If you are interested in developing active campaigns in other versions of Traveller you will have to use the existing character types with a little modification, or seek out a copy of the paper JTAS 19 with John M Fords' earlier work ('Skyport Authority') on the SPA and characters for Classic Traveller.

The next chapter, 'Starport Design' presents an expansion of the modular design system used for starships to allow the construction of starports. However, before the design sequence starts there is a section in common with Far Trader, detailing the generation of the 'world trade number'. This provides data on the likely trade and passenger volumes to allow the design of an appropriate sized port. There are notes on how to use the increased level of detail of Far Trader in this design sequence. The text then takes the reader through the design sequence step by step using the Mertactor system in the Spinward Marches as an example.

The design sequence proceeds by calculating the volumes that need to be handled, and then the likely income from these operations. Using these figures, the design sequence proper is approached working in much the same way as that in the GURPS Traveller Sourcebook. However, the system is more flexible than that for starships, as scope is left for the designer to flavor a port's facilities. Using the GTL10 and GTL12 standards of the modular system is the only area that disappointed me in the sequence - it would have been nice to have the option to design spun habitat stations and ports, if only as older, local, stations. (In writing this I haven't tried the design sequence seriously as I tend to handwave starport designs as my players don't usually want to do things like attack them; in addition, I don't like GURPS meld of metric and American units).

Another area that's annoying is the decision that all starships dock in bays like Star Wars, and that runways aren't used at Imperial Downports. Both of these restrictions differ from my vision of the Traveller universe.

This chapter has a number of interesting side bars describing types of port varying from the pirate havens of 'Ports Royal' to the 'Grand Central' communication hubs. There are notes on exchange rates, construction times for starports, typical sizes of naval and scout bases and the variations in local starports with technology. There are further notes on the XT line and on starport facilities such as casinos and chapels.

One of the most interesting discussions is on how traffic control of space vehicles varies by Port Class. This is very useful for any campaign where players control a starship, and have to interface with the starport control. Further flavor is given on the different stages in the lifecycle of a starport. In many ways, these sidebars are more immediately useful to a game than the design sequence itself.

The final chapter is entitled 'Campaigns' and provides sets of ideas on how to run a campaign based at a starport. It admits that in most campaigns the port would only serve as a backdrop for adventure, but, as well as some ideas on how to use a port as a backdrop, the chapter also looks at ways in which to style a campaign in the manner of series such as 'Babylon 5' or 'Deep Space Nine'. Events suggested vary from interesting visitors to local issues to disasters.

The other campaign types suggested include those based at a highport and those where the player characters are the directorate (the Port Director and rest of the command crew). The more intriguing campaigns include those where players are the SPA Inspectorate (effectively an investigation team with wide ranging powers) and those involving corporate espionage. One thing that would have been nice to see would have been a sidebar suggesting fiction, films & TV Series that would be good sources of ideas, as there are plenty out there for a referee to use. The first appendix details equipment for use in and around starports; these include rescue vessels, cutters and the Blakeway First Response Vessel first seen a couple of months ago in SJ Games electronic version of JTAS. Cargo handling equipment is included, along with the new habitat modules for large ships and starports. There are four sets of deckplans, drawn up clearly and detailing some of the ships in the section.

Expanded standard ship design modules including bunk rooms, traffic control, battledress morgue and bars are also detailed.

The final section, Appendix B - Port Samples, includes 18 pages of deckplans and maps for starports and facilities within them. These are cross referenced with keys, given separately from the image as they may have information that the referee wants to retain as secret from the players. Again, the plans are clear and well drawn, and should prove useful in supporting a campaign.

The last two pages of the book are a detailed index.

Conclusion.

Starports is a worthwhile buy for both GURPS Traveller and the other Traveller rules editions. The book is not as immediately useful for a campaign type as, say, Far Trader, but it is an excellent resource. The strengths of the book are in the background information and small details which can be used to make your Traveller universe come to life. It is well presented, and comprehensive.

GURPS Traveller players will find the whole book a good addition to their collection, as the design sequences and character templates are immediately usable in addition to the background material.

Users of other Traveller editions should be able to use the background information and deckplans as valuable support material for their campaigns, with the possible exception of non-Regency based Traveller: The New Era games.

Users of GURPS Space may find this book of use for core developed star systems especially. Other games systems may find it useful to mine for ideas.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

First Impressions - Creatures and Cultist (Eos Press)

I originally posted this review on 27 October 2024 (so twenty years ago today!) on RPG.net and I've decided to put a copy here on my blog so it doesn't disappear for posterity.

Creatures & Cultists was originally released in 1992 to 1993 in both the fourth issue of Pagan Publishing's Call of Cthulhu magazine The Unspeakable Oathand as a stand-alone game sold at GenCon & Origins and by mail order. It is written by Jeff Barber and John Tynes, and is best described as Lovecraftian Cthulhu Mythos silliness in a card game.

I'd not really been aware of it until I looked at Eos Press' website to find out about the forthcoming release of Pagan Publishing's Delta Green in a d20compatible version. I saw Creatures & Cultists there with some cool art, so decided to pick it up at GenCon UK this last weekend. Interestingly, the old zip-lock bag version was on a second hand trader's stand at £75 GBP, somewhat higher than this version's £11.99 GBP.

Components The game is supplied in a 7"x5"x1" box, with an amusing cover by John Kovalic showing Cthulhu, a cultist and a Shoggoth playing the game. The box is sturdy and the lid a little difficult to remove as it is tight. The cover picture has slight wear marks on it - this was common on all the stock at GenCon UK and may be a shipping issue.

Inside the box are: - 128 colour cards (approximately the same size as a Magiccard so you can use standard deck protectors if you want to). - 3D6 - a sheet of rules - a number of cult sheets (additional copies of which which can be photocopied or downloaded from the Eos Press website ).

All the component are good quality - the cards include 4 reference cards for play and 6 blanks to add your own madness. The cards are all illustrated by John Kovalic and are very amusing, especially if you've played or read Call of Cthulhu.

Gameplay

The game can play with 2 or more players but is recommended for three to five people. Less than this and it looses the fun of interaction. More than this and it could go on for aeons!

A group of four of us tried the game late one evening, none of whom had played the game before.

The game starts with everyone picking a cult name (e.g. the 'Cult of Cthulhu', or the 'Order of Wheeltappers and Re-animators Social Club') and a slogan (e.g. "Ia! Cthulhu Phtagn!" or "Whacking wheels and dead bodies for over 2000 years"). You also pick a symbol, which really needs to be easy to draw (more later). This is written on your cult sheet. Once this important stage is done, you roll three statistics – Conjuring, Sorcery and Thuggery – on 2D6+3 and record them on your cult sheet.

Everyone is now ready to play - the cult sheets are placed in front of you.

The sheets have sections for the information just mentioned, a score track for 'Fuggly points' and 24 cultists laid out in three rows of eight. These cultists are either 'Thugs' or 'Conjurers' with strengths in magic or being violent. The rows are important because you can only attack a cultist on the front-most row, and as they are more whittled away more powerful cultists become available when a complete new row is exposed by the deaths of all the cultists on the outermost rows. Each cultist is worth a number of 'Fuggly points' if they are killed.

The aim of the game is to either kill off all the opposition's cultists (very hard) or get to get enough fuggly points to successfully summon your own Great Old One to bring on the End Times and kill everyone else off.

The game is played in rounds, during which each player has a turn. Turn order changes each round and is determined by the roll of a D6. The lowest rolling player is the 'favoured by the stars' and goes last in the round. Being favoured means that your skills are effectively 2 points higher, and that you can attempt to summon your Great Old One if you have enough Fuggly points.

Once the favoured cult is chosen, all players draw cards to a total of 6 in their hand. There are six types of card (seven if you accidently mix the blanks in like we did!):

1. Mondo cards. These must be played at the start of your turn if you have any, and the card is immediately replaced (very like the 'Secret' and 'Top Secret Cards' in Nuclear War by Flying Buffalo). Most of these have good effects on your cult and have weird titles like 'Girl Scout Raid', 'Herbert West' and 'Special Delivery'. They can sometimes have a bad effect on you.

2. Event cards. These can be played at any time in your turn on other cults and usually do nasty things to them.

3. Thuggery cards. These are used to make Thuggery attacks and include the mundane ('a Scimitar' or the 'Tommy Gun') to the ridiculous ('Blam Keg' or 'Big Honkin' Truck').

4. Conjuring cards. These are used to summon creatures to make an attack. Most of the famous Cthulhu mythos creatures are here, ranging from Cthugha to Deep Ones.

5. Sorcery cards. These are spell cards which can attack or defend, and can be played at any time in your turn.

6. Defense cards. These are specific defenses against 'Thuggery' and 'Conjuring' attacks. Examples include 'It's a Bluff' (where an innocent party gets killed instead of your cultist), 'Dodge' (where you, err, dodge the attack) and the 'Elder sign' (which wards against the mythos creatures).

With the cards in their hand, each player takes their turn. They play their Mondo cards, and then can play any event or sorcery cards. Sorcery cards require a successful roll on 3D6 under your Sorcery number to make sure the effect happens.

Each cult can make two attacks per turn – one conjuring, one thuggery – and either type can be done by either kind of cultist. However, thugs are better at thuggery, and and conjurers are better at conjuring. In both cases, the attacking player nominates a cultist on their frontmost row to attack a cultist on the enemy's frontmost row by either method. 3D6 are then rolled, with the result needing to be under their 'Thuggery' or 'Conjuring' skills to be successful.

Victims of a 'Thuggery' attack make a defense roll under half their 'thuggery' or are killed. Victims of a 'Conjuring' attack must roll 3D6 under the monster's rating to survive. In both cases, a successful defense allows a counter-attack immediately.

If a cultist is killed, the cult attacking writes its symbol on the cultist on the victim's cult sheet entry to show they killed them (Bwa-ha-ha!). They also get the Fuggly points from the victim.

Play continues around the table until the 'favoured of the stars' has their go. The main difference here is that if the 'Favoured' has enough Fuggly points they can attempt to summon their Great Old One to end the game. If this doesn't happen, the round ends and the whole process is repeated.

Game design

The description of the gameplay above shows how the game works. The section below details the key mechanics which add to the fun.

Fuggly points: Fuggle points act as a limit to when you can summon your GOO, and also can be used as a way to boost your target number to roll under. If you have spare Fuggly points you can increase your target number by +1 for every Fuggly points you sacrifice.

Spooges and Boofs: These are a critical and a fumble mechanic. If you roll 3,4 or 5 you 'Spooge'. This means something good happens (e.g. Spells can be more powerful, or if you are attacking, the attack can automatically succeed). If you roll 16,17 or 18 you'boof'. This is bad. If conjuring, you can be attacked by the creature you summoned. In the absolute worst case you can put yourself out of the game.

In the game we played this happened twice. In the first instance a player had summoned their Great Old One successfully, then another player played a special event card ('Dr Armitage suspects') that converted the success to a boof. The Great Old One turned up and duly ate the cult that had summoned it. But, showing what goes around comes around, the player who had used the event card tried to summon their GOO a couple of turns later and boofed naturally. So the same thing happened, resulting in the player in the weakest position winning!

Boofs effectively limit the number of Fuggly points you'd want to spend on boosting any individual roll. There is very little point in boosting a skill above 15 (unless its being used to defend against thuggery and would be halved) as if you roll a 16 or more you'll fail.

Onion Layer effects: The onion layer effect of having to wipe out all the cultists in one row of the cult sheet means that you have to balance protecting the last few cultists to protect the rest of your cult with getting the more powerful cultists into play. There are some cards (the worst being 'the Seed of Azathoth' ) which will attack rows further back, but generally it takes time to work through the rows. However, some 'thuggery' attacks like 'dynamite' and the 'big honking truck' attack several adjacent cultists. The 'Tommy gun' allows you to attack a whole row so can be devastating.

Conclusion

Being the first time that we played this, we took some time to get into it. At first we were worried that it was going to go on forever (like the end game of Zombies we played the night before). However, we soon realised that the aim was to summon your GOO rather than win by wiping the enemy out, which speeds the game.

The interesting thing is that you can't call the play's conclusion. The player who won was in the weakest position. Two of the other cults died in failed summonings, and the first cult to die was wiped out by all the others the turn they tried to summon their GOO as everyone worked together to finish them off. At the start of the game we'd been skeptical about it, but by the end we all thought it was great. It took around three hours to play with four people. It was faster towards the end when we were all fully happy with the game. If you wanted to play faster you could probably knock out a few columns of cultists.

It was a fun – and silly – game. If you've read any Call of Cthulhu and have a sense of humour about it you'll enjoy it. (You'd also like the Goomi's Unspeakable Vault of Doom comic which has similar humour, but that's a different story). However, knowing the mythos isn't critical - the game is fun and quite fluid. It's a bit more involved than Munchkin (for example) but not particularly complex.

I recommend it - I can see it being played again with my friends and players, unlike some games that just sit on the shelf gathering dust. Fuggly Fun!

First Impressions - Cepheus Universal (Traveller SRD)

Cepheus Universal

First of all, this isn't going to be an in-depth look at Cepheus Universal, as I've not really got the time for that at the moment. I'm also probably not the best person to do that as I've been playing Traveller in its many forms for far too long.

Secondly, the book you see in the image above isn't what you'll get if you order a copy from Zozer Games.  I find the layout used by Zozer too big, so I have printed a personal copy as a digest sized hard cover to use at the tale. I anticipate that you won't see the green boundaries around a directly ordered copy.

This is Paul Elliott's take on the Cepheus Engine, informed by the work done on the Hostile Roleplaying game. It is a weighty book, coming in at 443-pages, containing everything you'd need for an extended campaign in a setting of your own choosing. It is more complete mechanically than Mongoose Traveller's core book in any of its editions.

The book is clearly laid out; as I mentioned above, I find the typeface too large and the font irksome, but it is an extremely clear mainly single column layout that's easy to read. The book was perfectly legible when I reduced it down in size. Examples are given in boxed text with a specific colour-fill, and tips and advice in others. There are almost no typos.

Cepheus is built from the SRD for Traveller that was available under the OGL, so it is slightly more crunchy than the current edition of Mongoose Traveller, but not significantly so. The core game mechanic is, as ever, roll 2D6 and achieve 8+ on your roll. Damage is applied directly to characteristics, as per Classic Traveller.

Things I like about Cepheus Universal:

• Character generation includes a simple point build option which I'll be using this weekend to create the characters for my games at TravCon.
• The game covers TL1 through to TL18 (so non-technological through to ring worlds and matter transfer which would seem like magic to us).
• There are coherent and simple design rules for robots, vehicles and space-going vessels, and thought has been given to scaling between the different scales involved.
• The spacecraft rules draw on Orbital 2100 to have lower technology slower-than-light vessels.
• Factions treated as characters.
• There is a light discussion throughout on how the rules would fit with various settings from media.
• It's a fast read; because it's written clearly and the sub-systems like starship combat etc are modular, the game can be reviewed and understood quickly. You don't need to dive into the detail until you need it.

Things that I'm not so hot on;

• The typeface used for the layout.
• The removal of the jack-of-all-trades skill
• The level of crunch (lots of little modifiers in combat for example - but this is no worse than Mongoose Traveller)

In short, this is a very complete game which has everything that you need for a campaign. You could easily pick up anything written for Classic Traveller, MegaTraveller, Marc Miller's Traveller (T4), or Mongoose Traveller and run it easily. Or you could easily grow your own. It is more complete than Mongoose Traveller.

Recommended. 

Hardcopy available here.

Digital copy available here.

28 September 2024