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21 February 2019
In transition
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05 February 2019
Books in January 2019
This was a surprisingly slow month for me, except I guess I’ve been writing stuff for Lyonesse, and at the same time the book that I’d started over Christmas - Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin - is one that I love and really wanted time savour. Hence not much progress there.
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (Peter Frankopan, narrator Laurence Kennedy)A fascinatingly different take on world history; well worth the time. I listened to this over a month and a half as the audiobook runs to nearly 30 hours. I did find the narrator's use of accents when quoting sources somewhat irritating, but it didn't detract from the content.
What Ho, Frog Demons (Hydra Cooperative)
This is the fourth in the Hydra Cooperative Slumbering Ursine Dunes sequence. This is the one that covers the broader Marlinko Canton, rather than specific adventure sites. That said, there are also two specific sites for players to explore. The setting is Slavic-weird, with War Bears and demon cults. I quite like it and this made a pleasing conclusion to the sequence. It does get a bit odd and icky in places but overall it feels very different and I'd love to get some adventurer's loose in the Canton.
Witchburner (Hydra Cooperative)
A near systemless book but does have very basic stats for D&D clones. The characters arrive in the town of Bridge, an isolated settlement between two cities that have often been at war, and there is evidence of witchcraft. They are drawn into the search for those that cause the trouble. Will they find out who it is, or will the mob lose trust in them and perhaps assume that they are responsible. The scenario effectively gives them a month to solve the crime. Each key NPC (30 odd) has a backstory, and details of their household and secrets, and rivalries. The characters will likely tip the balance between factions, and tensions will escalate thanks to a ticking clock of events that the GM has. I'd like to get this one out at a con, but I'm not sure if it would need a double session to play it out. Impressive stuff.
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (Peter Frankopan, narrator Laurence Kennedy)A fascinatingly different take on world history; well worth the time. I listened to this over a month and a half as the audiobook runs to nearly 30 hours. I did find the narrator's use of accents when quoting sources somewhat irritating, but it didn't detract from the content.
What Ho, Frog Demons (Hydra Cooperative)
This is the fourth in the Hydra Cooperative Slumbering Ursine Dunes sequence. This is the one that covers the broader Marlinko Canton, rather than specific adventure sites. That said, there are also two specific sites for players to explore. The setting is Slavic-weird, with War Bears and demon cults. I quite like it and this made a pleasing conclusion to the sequence. It does get a bit odd and icky in places but overall it feels very different and I'd love to get some adventurer's loose in the Canton.
Witchburner (Hydra Cooperative)
A near systemless book but does have very basic stats for D&D clones. The characters arrive in the town of Bridge, an isolated settlement between two cities that have often been at war, and there is evidence of witchcraft. They are drawn into the search for those that cause the trouble. Will they find out who it is, or will the mob lose trust in them and perhaps assume that they are responsible. The scenario effectively gives them a month to solve the crime. Each key NPC (30 odd) has a backstory, and details of their household and secrets, and rivalries. The characters will likely tip the balance between factions, and tensions will escalate thanks to a ticking clock of events that the GM has. I'd like to get this one out at a con, but I'm not sure if it would need a double session to play it out. Impressive stuff.
10 January 2019
Books in December 2018
Autonomous (Annalee Newitz)
This is cyberpunk, updated. The villains of the piece are Big Pharma and the agency that protects patent rights which is downright brutal in its methods of enforcement. The main character is a bio-tech hacker who moves drugs she’s reverse engineered in a submarine. She’s pursued by a self-aware and indentured robot and its master from the agency, who leave a bloody trial of destruction. She rescues an indentured human (once AI/robots were deemed to be sentient, some humans demanded the right to be indentured too, the only difference being that it’s assumed that humans always start free) who helps her along the way as she tries to correct a mistake she’s made. The robot working for the Agency gains limited autonomy at one point and also choses to identify as a different gender.
So we have freedom and rights for autonomous self-aware beings, gender issues, bio-tech, nasty corporations with aligned government agencies, brave hackers and resistance against the regime, all contributing to a modern take on cyberpunk. If William Gibson had written Neuromancer 30 years later, perhaps this is more what we would have had from him. However, I think that his skill as a writer exceeds that shown her by Newitz, and his broken characters were more real - and likeable - to me. I enjoyed this: I could imagine the RPG scenario or film of it, but it didn’t quite hit that five star rating. I’ll be interested to see where her work goes next.
Lies Sleeping (Ben Aaronovitch)
This is cyberpunk, updated. The villains of the piece are Big Pharma and the agency that protects patent rights which is downright brutal in its methods of enforcement. The main character is a bio-tech hacker who moves drugs she’s reverse engineered in a submarine. She’s pursued by a self-aware and indentured robot and its master from the agency, who leave a bloody trial of destruction. She rescues an indentured human (once AI/robots were deemed to be sentient, some humans demanded the right to be indentured too, the only difference being that it’s assumed that humans always start free) who helps her along the way as she tries to correct a mistake she’s made. The robot working for the Agency gains limited autonomy at one point and also choses to identify as a different gender.
So we have freedom and rights for autonomous self-aware beings, gender issues, bio-tech, nasty corporations with aligned government agencies, brave hackers and resistance against the regime, all contributing to a modern take on cyberpunk. If William Gibson had written Neuromancer 30 years later, perhaps this is more what we would have had from him. However, I think that his skill as a writer exceeds that shown her by Newitz, and his broken characters were more real - and likeable - to me. I enjoyed this: I could imagine the RPG scenario or film of it, but it didn’t quite hit that five star rating. I’ll be interested to see where her work goes next.
Lies Sleeping (Ben Aaronovitch)
Book 7 of the Rivers of London series, so this was like an easy pair of slippers to get into. DC Peter Grant continues on his beat, and the simmering conflict with the Faceless Man starts to draw to a close. The book moves quickly (although there is a section which deliberately pauses) and comes to a satisfying ending. Not the best in the series, but a good book and one that leaves me wanting to read the next (a novella) which comes out in July 2019.
Forbidden Lands RPG (Fria Ligan)
Forbidden Lands RPG (Fria Ligan)
The Forbidden Lands RPG comprises two hardbound leather-effect books; the Player’s Handbook (character generation, the game engine, combat, spells, journeys, strongholds) and the Gamesmaster’s Guide (principles of the game, history, gods, kin, a bestiary, artefacts, encounters, creating adventure sites and three sample locations). There’s also a large map of the Raven Lands and stickers to go with it, plus a more detailed handout guide to give characters a deeper background.
The game uses the Year Zero engine, as seen in Coriolis and Tales from the Loop. Like both those games, it has been tweaked to fit the setting. In this case, it has become significantly more lethal and dangerous. Characters are fragile, like those in early D&D. The dice pool rolls generate negative outcomes which can seriously mess your character up, making them ‘broken’ and vulnerable to critical. The game engine also moves away from just D6s. Although these are the standard dice, you can sometimes roll a D8, D10 or even D12, all of which can bring much more successes than the D6. You’ll need to be clever and alert to avoid injury.
The game engine also generates willpower points, which are a limited currency. They fuel spells and talents and can only be obtained by failing a roll in certain circumstances. If you don’t fail, you don’t refill your points pool.
There is a big focus on the exploration side of the game, and it is definitely influenced by The One Ring. Players take different roles, and you need to ensure enough food and - especially - water or treks across the wilderness can go horribly wrong. The map doesn’t assume the location of any of the adventure sites in much detail from those presented in the book or in Raven’s Purge. The GM can position them, and use the stickers to mark up the map. If you clear an old ruin or watchtower, you can turn it into a stronghold, creating a mini-game not unlike high level D&D or Pendragon. Of course, setting up a stronghold is only the start of the story; holding on to it is the challenge.
The rules have random tables for the creation of adventure sites, using a D66 in many cases, and wearing the OSR movement inspiration on its sleeve. The usage dice concept from The Black Hack is also adopted for consumables. The principles section would not seem out of place in a Powered by the Apocalypse Game
All in all, the game is a thoroughly modern take on a wilderness D&D style game, with hints of Stormbringer. It reminds me very much of many of the early Fighting Fantasy games, especially with the gorgeous B&W art (which is in a similar style to that which I grew up on). I would like to run this, and I hope to play in First Age’s game.
Forbidden Lands: Spire of Quetzel (Fria Ligan)
The game uses the Year Zero engine, as seen in Coriolis and Tales from the Loop. Like both those games, it has been tweaked to fit the setting. In this case, it has become significantly more lethal and dangerous. Characters are fragile, like those in early D&D. The dice pool rolls generate negative outcomes which can seriously mess your character up, making them ‘broken’ and vulnerable to critical. The game engine also moves away from just D6s. Although these are the standard dice, you can sometimes roll a D8, D10 or even D12, all of which can bring much more successes than the D6. You’ll need to be clever and alert to avoid injury.
The game engine also generates willpower points, which are a limited currency. They fuel spells and talents and can only be obtained by failing a roll in certain circumstances. If you don’t fail, you don’t refill your points pool.
There is a big focus on the exploration side of the game, and it is definitely influenced by The One Ring. Players take different roles, and you need to ensure enough food and - especially - water or treks across the wilderness can go horribly wrong. The map doesn’t assume the location of any of the adventure sites in much detail from those presented in the book or in Raven’s Purge. The GM can position them, and use the stickers to mark up the map. If you clear an old ruin or watchtower, you can turn it into a stronghold, creating a mini-game not unlike high level D&D or Pendragon. Of course, setting up a stronghold is only the start of the story; holding on to it is the challenge.
The rules have random tables for the creation of adventure sites, using a D66 in many cases, and wearing the OSR movement inspiration on its sleeve. The usage dice concept from The Black Hack is also adopted for consumables. The principles section would not seem out of place in a Powered by the Apocalypse Game
All in all, the game is a thoroughly modern take on a wilderness D&D style game, with hints of Stormbringer. It reminds me very much of many of the early Fighting Fantasy games, especially with the gorgeous B&W art (which is in a similar style to that which I grew up on). I would like to run this, and I hope to play in First Age’s game.
Forbidden Lands: Spire of Quetzel (Fria Ligan)
The Spire of Quetzel is another book for Fria Ligan's Forbidden Lands RPG. This is a homage to the OSR movement and presents four adventure locations. The title adventure, written by Patrick Stuart, has the characters entering a spire to face a Demon-Queen. The blurb claims that it is very Moorcockian, and I think that's right as I could easily imagine running this with Stormbringer. The second adventure, 'The Bright Vault', sees the characters entering a vault that imprisons demon-spawn that could threaten the world. The sibling spawn all have different needs and motivations which can be played against each other.
The third scenario, Hexenwald, has witches and necromancy, set in an area of forests and lakes not unlike the Black Forest or Russia. The NPCs all have interesting motivations and rivalries that leave plenty of opportunities for adventure. The final scenario, The Graveyard of Thunder, has the characters drawn to an adventure site where one of the last of the Thunder Lizards prepares for its death. They face orc rivals and the threats of a guardian.
I liked this collection, my favourites being 'Hexenwald' and 'The Spire of Quetzel', both of which I'd like to run. This is a short collection of good adventures that will certainly be remembered by the players.
The third scenario, Hexenwald, has witches and necromancy, set in an area of forests and lakes not unlike the Black Forest or Russia. The NPCs all have interesting motivations and rivalries that leave plenty of opportunities for adventure. The final scenario, The Graveyard of Thunder, has the characters drawn to an adventure site where one of the last of the Thunder Lizards prepares for its death. They face orc rivals and the threats of a guardian.
I liked this collection, my favourites being 'Hexenwald' and 'The Spire of Quetzel', both of which I'd like to run. This is a short collection of good adventures that will certainly be remembered by the players.
Forbidden Lands: Raven’s Purge (Fria Ligan)I read Raven's Purge, for Fria Ligan's new Forbidden Lands RPG, at the start of December. This is the default adventure campaign for the game, but don't think you are getting something like The Temple of Elemental Evil or one of the other epic TSR sets. Instead, expect a pretty well written group of adventure locations which mesh together in a unique way for every GM as they will have to place artefacts and use rumours and NPCs to draw the PCs into the heart of the plot. This has more in common with GDW's Twilight's Peak for Traveller than the old epic D&D scenarios.
There's a lot to draw on here, nicely presented. That said, I think the GM will have to put some work in getting this ready (or be ready to manipulate it on the fly). There are a lot of core NPCs which can have varying motivations at varying places. I think the key to this would be to bring it in as a slow burn; ultimately, the characters may end up leading an army to attach the evil Sorcerer that dominates the Forbidden Lands, but they need to grow into that.
The only concern I have is that the game is very lethal, so the chance of playing through with the same characters may be lower than you'd like. That said, this is good stuff.
There's a lot to draw on here, nicely presented. That said, I think the GM will have to put some work in getting this ready (or be ready to manipulate it on the fly). There are a lot of core NPCs which can have varying motivations at varying places. I think the key to this would be to bring it in as a slow burn; ultimately, the characters may end up leading an army to attach the evil Sorcerer that dominates the Forbidden Lands, but they need to grow into that.
The only concern I have is that the game is very lethal, so the chance of playing through with the same characters may be lower than you'd like. That said, this is good stuff.
07 January 2019
Review of 2018 Books
65 books read including 4 re-reads and several on graphic novels
Best novel read
Winner: The Labyrinth Index (Stross)
Runner-up: Thin Air (Morgan)
Stross pips this one by keeping me up all night with an absolute page turner. Lyonesse is not on this as I read the first two books originally at the end of 2017
Best gaming book read
Winner: The Sword, the Crown and the Unspeakable Power
Runner-up: Delta Green Handler’s Guide
SCUP wins this by underpinning my best gaming experience this year.
Notable point - I’ve read hardly any graphic novels this year.
Science Fiction (14)
Urban Fantasy/Horror (7)
Fantasy (9, 1 graphic novel, and 4 re-reads of Lyonesse books so 13 total)
Spy Novels (3)
Noir/Detective/Crime (2)
Biography (1)
Contemporary literature (2)
Gaming (15 but misses out re-read of SCUP and lots of short books = 16)
Non-Fiction (7)
7 January 2019
Best novel read
Winner: The Labyrinth Index (Stross)
Runner-up: Thin Air (Morgan)
Stross pips this one by keeping me up all night with an absolute page turner. Lyonesse is not on this as I read the first two books originally at the end of 2017
Best gaming book read
Winner: The Sword, the Crown and the Unspeakable Power
Runner-up: Delta Green Handler’s Guide
SCUP wins this by underpinning my best gaming experience this year.
Notable point - I’ve read hardly any graphic novels this year.
Science Fiction (14)
- Autonomous (Annalee Newitz)
- Thin Air (Richard K. Morgan)
- Runcible Tales (Neal Asher)
- Mason’s Rats (Neal Asher)
- The Parasite (Neal Asher)
- The Expert System’s Brother (Nicolas Tchaikovski)
- Owning the Future: Short Stories (Neal Asher)
- Dogs of War (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
- Bridging Infinity (Ed. Jonathan Strahan)
- Noumenon (Marina J. Lostetter)
- Noumenon Infinity (Marina J. Lostetter)
- Lifeboat (Marina J. Lostetter)
- Elysium Fire (Alastair Reynolds)
- Ironclads (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
Urban Fantasy/Horror (7)
- Lies Sleeping (Ben Aaronovitch)
- The Labyrinth Index (Charles Stross)
- Witches of Lychford (Paul Cornell)
- The Lost Child of Lychford (Paul Cornell)
- A Long Day in Lychford (Paul Cornell)
- Wyntertide (Andrew Caldecott)
- Delta Green - The Way it Went Down (Dennis Detwiller)
Fantasy (9, 1 graphic novel, and 4 re-reads of Lyonesse books so 13 total)
- Norse Mythology (Neil Gaiman)
- Through the Woods (Emily Carroll)
- Collected Folk Tales (Alan Garner)
- The Letter for the King (Tonke Dragt)
- Alice (Christina Henry)
- The Red Queen (Christina Henry)
- Lyonesse 1: Suldrun’s Garden (Jack Vance) x2
- Lyonesse 2: The Green Pearl) (Jack Vance) x2
- Lyonesse 3: Madouc (Jack Vance) x3
Spy Novels (3)
- The Trinity Six (Charles Cumming)
- The Man Between (Charles Cumming)
- The Swiss Spy (Alex Gerlis)
Noir/Detective/Crime (2)
- Rupture (Dark Iceland #4) (Ragnar Jónasson)
- Whiteout (Dark Iceland #5) (Ragnar Jónasson)
Biography (1)
- The Princess Diarist (Carrie Fisher)
Contemporary literature (2)
- The Reservoir Tapes (Jon McGregor)
- Reservoir 13 (Jon McGregor)
Gaming (15 but misses out re-read of SCUP and lots of short books = 16)
- Delta Green Agent’s Handbook (Dennis Detwiller)
- Delta Green Handler’s Guide (Dennis Detwiller)
- The Forbidden Lands Player’s Guide (Beta)
- Forbidden Lands RPG (Fria Ligan)
- Forbidden Lands: Spire of Quetzel (Fria Ligan)
- Forbidden Lands: Raven’s Purge (Fria Ligan)
- The Journal of Reginald Campbell Thompson (Cthulhu Britannica)
- The Journal of Neve Selcibuc (Cthulhu Britannica)
- Tremulus (Sean Preston)
- The Sprawl (Hamish Cameron)
- The Sword, The Crown and the Unspeakable Power (Todd N. & Tom J.) x2
- The Cthulhu Hack (Paul Baldowski)
- The Dark Brood (Paul Baldowski)
- Cthulhu City (Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan)
- Dark Albion: The Rose Wars
Non-Fiction (7)
- A Brief History of Time (Professor Stephen Hawking)
- The Storm before the Storm (Mike Duncan)
- Surviving AI: The promise & peril of artificial intelligence (Calum Chace)
- Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History (Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, Sam Witwer)
- Stranger Things - The Companion (Nick Blake)
- Notes from the Upside Down (Guy Adams)
- Stranger Things - The Ultimate Guide (Stephen Smith)
7 January 2019
26 November 2018
Fencing - Harrogate November 2018
The boys had fencing success at Harrogate in November, at their home competition in the Yorkshire Youth League
Aidan
Nathan
Tea and Medals
Aidan
Nathan
Tea and Medals
24 November 2018
Some notes on running SCUP
At Furnace XIII this October I decided to run ‘The Sword, the Crown, and the Unspeakable Power’, a ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’ based game that is designed for player-vs-player (PVP) gaming. Clearly, it was promoted as being a way to play ‘Game of Thrones’ style games but it’s much broader than that. I used it to set a game in a city that dominated trade, being based in the middle of fertile plains and on the main navigable river network, rather like a Russ City-state. To be honest, my pitch was pretty simple:
“The defeat was shattering, and your armies were consumed by the advancing hordes. The first riders arrived bearing the grim tidings this morning, and the city is poised, breath held, awaiting word from the court. People are preparing their valuables and families to flee. The court meets tonight. Will you stay and fight, embrace the coming jihad or flee from your ancestral home?”
I stole a line from ‘The End’ by The Doors and called the set-up ’The End of Laughter and Soft Lies’ as it caught my imagination for the feel of the game I wanted. The nobility and the elite playing their petty games as they prepare to be consumed by the approaching threat; a fin-de-siècle feel as everything they know disappears in the churn.
The last element I threw in were some tags, as Furnace has guidelines that require a GM to flag potentially contentious content for the players in advance: PVP, dark fantasy, adult themes. As the game doesn’t shy from sex and violence (indeed, there are moves for both) it needed to be clear at the start.
The scenario was in the second slot, which is three and a half hours long. I reckoned that it needed four, but there was enough of a gap for a small over-run.
I spent a lot of time thinking about the scenario content and also sought some advice from the creators, who shared my question on their Google plus group. I took some of it to heart, and then did my own thing for the rest.
The first area to consider was whether to allow all the playbooks into the game. In the end, I decided not to use ‘The Crown’ or ‘The Gauntlet’, as they are the ruler and their enforcer. I wanted a power vacuum to open up right as the enemy approaches. I did keep the ‘The Hex’ (a witch/outcast magic user), but advised the players that this was a character which was a true outsider and would need to be pushed. I gave the players the option to have ‘The Screw’, the torturer character. They kept it in the selection, but we agreed that any torture would be off-camera. That said, no-one picked that playbook. I was a little worried that ‘The Bloodletter’, a dark Doctor character, would be a bit like the Hex, and perhaps disengaged, and it proved true for the first half of the game.
I decided that the playbook would start with an extra move, and 2 advancement points so it was easy to unlock another move by playing the characters hard into the plot. I also increased the honor rating by one, as this fuels some cool moves. The idea here was to help the players have cool things to do.
The creators had advised me to present a mythology and setting for a convention game, but this is when I decided to go my own way. I’ve run many PVP scenarios (especially with Conspiracy of Shadows, an early indie game) and I think that it is key to get the players bought into the world. Also, I love the co-creative way that many of the Apocalypse Engined games have adopted for world-building. I decided to do world creation at the start of the game; I figured it would take up to an hour, but that we should be able to have some fun if we were really focussed for the rest of the time.
There are some standard questions you ask as you build relationships and factions that the characters are aligned with, but I wanted to go further than that. There’s a great tool for building the mythology of the world (surprisingly not a template in the handouts) which I thought would resonate. I also decided that I wanted the players to flesh out their city so that they owned it and believed in it, so I started to build a list of questions which I went around the table in turn to get answers from.
The first set were all about the city the game would take place in. I wanted the players to be invested in this.
Is it walled?
Does a river run through it, and if so, how difficult is it to cross?
What do other people say about the city?
Where do the poor live?
What are its neighbours and what relationships are there?
What are the main locations you know and frequent?Where do the Council of Electors meet?
I went around the table asking the questions to each player in turn. Sometimes the other players suggested builds on the ideas that others had come up with. The answers were captured on some self-adhesive flip charts which we put on the walls around the gaming table. This was surprisingly effective as it acted as a prompt for me and the players during the game.
https://flic.kr/p/2c2Kwny
We ended up with the City of Wheel, a walled city on a critical trade route crossing of a river, which was crossed by many bridges. The city dominated trade between the ’savage nomadic horsemen’ on the plains and the Archipelago downriver and was ruled by an Emperor and Council of Electors.
Some key locations like the Palace, the Arena and the towers where the aristocracy lived came out of this.
The next section explored religion and the supernatural.
The City has spires and minarets.Are the gods active?
What gods are evil?
What gods are good?
What else?
Which god is the city’s patron?
If the gods aren’t active, who cares for the people?
What happens to the religious?
Do the people believe in evil?
What is the Unspeakable Power?
How does it interact with the World?
How are people who interact with it treated?What festival is it today? How do people celebrate it?
https://flic.kr/p/2c2KwMb
We established that the Emperor was a God-Emperor who protected the ‘People from Evil’ and was worshipped by the official state religion. We also established that the Unspeakable Power came from Demons. Oh, and that it was the Emperor’s Birthday.
The final set of questions explored the city in more detail. This was aimed more at getting flavours and hooks the players could use.
The City is a stronghold?Is it truly strong? Why?
Does it dominate? If so, what? Trade, crops, transport routes...
What was the most famous defeat?
What was the most famous victory?
Would people care if the city fell?
Where would you go to carouse?
Where would you go for peace?
Where would you go shopping?Where would you go to sleep?
This worked, as details were drawn on during the game. I’m sure that a longer campaign style game would have used them more.
The mythology was completed giving us:
In the Beginning there was peace with all, but then we meddled with what we should not. This resulted in poverty, famine and plague overtaking us and because of this there was fear, dread and panic until heroes stood mightily and now we must live our lives in constant vigilance.
https://flic.kr/p/2bKbqpe
I was fortunate that the player group I had were all really engaged with the game. Indeed, many of them were quality GMs who I’d happily sign up to play with without sight of the system or scenario before. Everyone shared an interest in the style of play, and the flagging before the game was opened to sign up made sure that we had players who wanted to drive the action.
I’d built myself a checklist for kicking things off with the players at the start.
1) Introduce self, players, tea and toilets.2) First of all, have you played PbtA games before? Explain if needed.
3) SCUP is a game that embraces PvP, much in the way that Game of Thrones or The Death of Stalin does. Expect to attempt to double cross, betray and even attempt to murder other characters.
4) SCUP is about the characters being in conflict. It is not about the players. You should be working together to make this as messy as possible, to point your characters at each other. This is power politics written in blood.
5) We will use the X-Card (explain).
6) SCUP has Sex Moves, again like Game of Thrones. They give both characters involved benefits. I am assuming that there will be a veil drawn over any use of this. Does anyone have any issues with this?
7) One of the playbooks is a torturer - is everyone cool that this is included as an option?
8) There are a variety of playbooks available for the game
The Adept - effectively the Mage
The Beloved - a prophet, usually from the people, has followers
The Black Hood - a master assassin
The Bloodletter - a doctor with capabilities close to the supernatural
The Hex - a witch (although I would recommend you think twice)
The Lyre - a performer, rabble-rouser, inspiration
The Screw - a torturer
The Spur - a militia leader, horseman and tear-away.
The Voice - a whisperer in the shadows, the power between the throne.Which playbooks do you fancy?
This led me through it quite efficiently. We ended up with the Adept, the Beloved, the Black Hood, The Bloodletter, the Lyre and the Spur, which was an interesting mix. We did discuss the X-Card but it was never used in play for real.
We finalised patrons, factions and relationships between the players. This worked really well. Again, it was all visible on the wall so we could bypass the slow learning that a more campaign focussed game would work with.
patrons: https://flic.kr/p/R12TZq
factions: https://flic.kr/p/2anhTZC
relationships: https://flic.kr/p/2bKbpSn
My final step before we started was to add two countdown clocks to the wall, in the style of Apocalypse World1, one for Riot and the other for Revolution. Riot was all about when actions the characters took upset or panicked the people. Revolution was about things that would make the mob want to rise up and throw down the aristocracy.
https://flic.kr/p/2bKbrw4
The whole process took close to an hour. Fortunately, because of the group and the co-creative process it paid dividends. Everyone knew the setting and everyone was empowered and involved in it.
I started the game In-Media-Res, at the celebratory feast for the Emperor’s birthday, with news of a great defeat arriving and the players immediately starting to plot to achieve power and engage with their enemies.
I also had a set of beats that I could draw on, ideas that would allow me to keep things moving. However, these mostly proved unnecessarily, as the players really ran with it2, making my input as the MC mainly constrained to stirring it up and explaining mechanics. I think I could have pushed it harder, but I didn’t feel the need.
The one thing that I’d have done better was to have engaged the Bloodletter character more. I noticed over the first 45 minutes or so that the player, Steve, was struggling for an in. I did try and throw in a few hints to help, but I don’t think the player-led plot was necessarily going the way that was easy for him to engage with. That said, all of a sudden he became the reanimator and it all got very complicated. Steve does suggest in his blog that a more formal scene structure like that used in Hillfolk (a game I have the PDFs for but haven’t read) may have worked better. He may well be right. I did try and move scenes around the players if they weren’t involved but perhaps was too passive. I could have thrown more challenges at individuals to drive this more - and to be fair, the rules do suggest that.
Overall, I really enjoyed the session and would love to try the game again. I think it works very well. I’d definitely be interested in hearing Guy’s thoughts on the preparation and execution here, with his expertise on one-shot games as he was one of the players.
Finally, just a shout out to the creators of this game as I really enjoyed the experience, and I think we all went away satisfied by the experience.
My original prep-notes can be found on Google Drive: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1onB0WcZ8r4rGAu11UO7V7jk8xNPLe9nVHllGyd8CYYY/edit?usp=sharing
24 November 2018
[1] All though I first encounter countdown clocks in The Sprawl
[2] Steve Hatherley blogged about the game and called this out. By nature, I am quite hands off as a GM, so if the players are driving plot I won’t tend to over-ride that as I think driving my vision would lose engagement in this kind of scenario. You can read his take here: http://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2018/10/furnace-2018.html
01 September 2018
Books in August 2018
Quite a few books, boosted by a holiday for 10 days.
Suldrun’s Garden (Jack Vance)
The Green Pearl (Jack Vance)
Madouc (Jack Vance)
More of a skim read this time, but I went back through the whole of Lyonesse to tag out the elements I’m responsible for writing about using a textual analysis tool called CATMA. Every time I read this trilogy I love it more and more.
Cthulhu City (Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan)
I enjoyed this; the ideas are different and evocative but ultimately the book doesn’t deliver what I expected. It’s very much a gazetteer of Great Arkham and details the individuals that tie it together. Every individual has three options; victim, sinister or stalwart, and each location can be masked or unmasked. Cults are detailed with some motivations and frictions. It’s a toolkit to build a sandbox.
I’d have liked to have seen some more guidance on running a Cthulhu City campaign and how to make it distinctive, perhaps with some ideas for plot arcs and using the noir/pulp feel within the setting. The introductory adventure is good, but it doesn’t really feel tied to the themes within the text. I expected to see more that keys into the backstory and the characters arrival into the city.
The cover art is great but the internals less so.
All in all, I liked this book and will run something set in it, but it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.
Surviving AI: The promise and peril of artificial intelligence (Calum Chace)
A reasonable short overview of artificial intelligence including the work that has been done so far, current fields of study and then extrapolation on what the consequences could be. A good primer.
Runcible Tales (Neal Asher)
A collection of short stories set in Asher’s Polity Universe. Good fun. I read a paper copy four years back, Goodreads tells me.
Mason’s Rats (Neal Asher)
Three short stories about how a farmer deals with the situation when he encounters super-intelligent rats. This amused me.
The Parasite (Neal Asher)
A novella by Asher set in the future. A comet miner comes back with something in him, and the corporation he works for tries to dispose of the awkward and financially damaging evidence. This is classic Asher, black and white, Bond-flavoured action thriller full of technology, space, sex and violence. Hints of the Polity, even if it’s not part of that series. I enjoyed this a lot. Fast paced action thrills.
Collected Folk Tales (Alan Garner)
A pot-pouri of folk tales and poems brought together by an author I love. I enjoyed the collection, and all along the way was seeing the potential of some of the plots and creatures for roleplaying scenarios. It is a mixture - some of the stories evoked more of a response with my than others - but overall worth the time.
The Expert System’s Brother (Nicolas Tchaikovski)
I like Tchaikovski’s work, and this is a cleverly written and plotted story of humanity colonising another planet. However, it didn’t really land with me as I found myself very detached from the protagonist. That may have been deliberate, based on the plot, but it doesn’t draw me to read it again. I may reconsider the 3 stars I gave it on Goodreads though.
The Lost Child of Lychford (Paul Cornell)
I enjoyed the first in this series so have come back for more. This didn’t disappoint. A short/novella length piece, this has similar vibes to the Rivers of London series, with the supernatural touching the real world. It’s just before Christmas at Lychford and foul deeds are afoot. The three witches have to find a way to understand the threat, defend themselves and reality, and save the life of a young child. Good fun.
A Long Day in Lychford (Paul Cornell)
The third book has trouble caused by disagreements between the witches, threatening the threads that bind reality and Lychford together. This accelerates rapidly from one of the witches having a serious disagreement with a local over Brexit triggered by the colour of her skin. Enjoyable, if there are more, I’ll read them.
The Sword, the Crown and the Unspeakable Power (Wheel Tree Press)
A re-read in depth of the PbtA game that I’ll be running at Furnace this year. Good stuff.
Owning the Future: Short Stories (Neal Asher)
The last of the short story collections that I bought recently. I enjoyed this most of the selection we had, especially the expansions on the Owner universe.
Wyntertide (Andrew Caldecott)
This is the sequel to Rotherweird and it works very well. It could have done with a plot summary at the start for what has gone before but it came back to me as I plunged in. The story escalates nicely, but ends in a very Empire Strikes Back moment with the forces of good at a low point. And I need to wait until June 2019 to find how this ends. Great book.
Noumenon Infinity (Marina J. Lostetter)
This is the sequel to Noumenon which I read earlier in the year. It takes the story of the original Noumenon multi-generation mission forward with its return to the web, and adds in the story of another Convoy Mission. Three separate threads twist around each other and then finally meet in a slightly confused ending. It works, but it was a little complicated at the end (even though I’d guessed one of the reveals a while earlier. I’ll look for more by Lostetter in the future.
Suldrun’s Garden (Jack Vance)
The Green Pearl (Jack Vance)
Madouc (Jack Vance)
More of a skim read this time, but I went back through the whole of Lyonesse to tag out the elements I’m responsible for writing about using a textual analysis tool called CATMA. Every time I read this trilogy I love it more and more.
Cthulhu City (Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan)
I enjoyed this; the ideas are different and evocative but ultimately the book doesn’t deliver what I expected. It’s very much a gazetteer of Great Arkham and details the individuals that tie it together. Every individual has three options; victim, sinister or stalwart, and each location can be masked or unmasked. Cults are detailed with some motivations and frictions. It’s a toolkit to build a sandbox.
I’d have liked to have seen some more guidance on running a Cthulhu City campaign and how to make it distinctive, perhaps with some ideas for plot arcs and using the noir/pulp feel within the setting. The introductory adventure is good, but it doesn’t really feel tied to the themes within the text. I expected to see more that keys into the backstory and the characters arrival into the city.
The cover art is great but the internals less so.
All in all, I liked this book and will run something set in it, but it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.
Surviving AI: The promise and peril of artificial intelligence (Calum Chace)
A reasonable short overview of artificial intelligence including the work that has been done so far, current fields of study and then extrapolation on what the consequences could be. A good primer.
Runcible Tales (Neal Asher)
A collection of short stories set in Asher’s Polity Universe. Good fun. I read a paper copy four years back, Goodreads tells me.
Mason’s Rats (Neal Asher)
Three short stories about how a farmer deals with the situation when he encounters super-intelligent rats. This amused me.
The Parasite (Neal Asher)
A novella by Asher set in the future. A comet miner comes back with something in him, and the corporation he works for tries to dispose of the awkward and financially damaging evidence. This is classic Asher, black and white, Bond-flavoured action thriller full of technology, space, sex and violence. Hints of the Polity, even if it’s not part of that series. I enjoyed this a lot. Fast paced action thrills.
Collected Folk Tales (Alan Garner)
A pot-pouri of folk tales and poems brought together by an author I love. I enjoyed the collection, and all along the way was seeing the potential of some of the plots and creatures for roleplaying scenarios. It is a mixture - some of the stories evoked more of a response with my than others - but overall worth the time.
The Expert System’s Brother (Nicolas Tchaikovski)
I like Tchaikovski’s work, and this is a cleverly written and plotted story of humanity colonising another planet. However, it didn’t really land with me as I found myself very detached from the protagonist. That may have been deliberate, based on the plot, but it doesn’t draw me to read it again. I may reconsider the 3 stars I gave it on Goodreads though.
The Lost Child of Lychford (Paul Cornell)
I enjoyed the first in this series so have come back for more. This didn’t disappoint. A short/novella length piece, this has similar vibes to the Rivers of London series, with the supernatural touching the real world. It’s just before Christmas at Lychford and foul deeds are afoot. The three witches have to find a way to understand the threat, defend themselves and reality, and save the life of a young child. Good fun.
A Long Day in Lychford (Paul Cornell)
The third book has trouble caused by disagreements between the witches, threatening the threads that bind reality and Lychford together. This accelerates rapidly from one of the witches having a serious disagreement with a local over Brexit triggered by the colour of her skin. Enjoyable, if there are more, I’ll read them.
The Sword, the Crown and the Unspeakable Power (Wheel Tree Press)
A re-read in depth of the PbtA game that I’ll be running at Furnace this year. Good stuff.
Owning the Future: Short Stories (Neal Asher)
The last of the short story collections that I bought recently. I enjoyed this most of the selection we had, especially the expansions on the Owner universe.
Wyntertide (Andrew Caldecott)
This is the sequel to Rotherweird and it works very well. It could have done with a plot summary at the start for what has gone before but it came back to me as I plunged in. The story escalates nicely, but ends in a very Empire Strikes Back moment with the forces of good at a low point. And I need to wait until June 2019 to find how this ends. Great book.
Noumenon Infinity (Marina J. Lostetter)
This is the sequel to Noumenon which I read earlier in the year. It takes the story of the original Noumenon multi-generation mission forward with its return to the web, and adds in the story of another Convoy Mission. Three separate threads twist around each other and then finally meet in a slightly confused ending. It works, but it was a little complicated at the end (even though I’d guessed one of the reveals a while earlier. I’ll look for more by Lostetter in the future.
06 August 2018
The One Ring - Season 6 -The Passing of Beorn
 |
| The End of Season 6 |
We finished the sixth season of our One Ring campaign run by Paul Mitchener tonight. After a quiet fifth season, this saw our fellowship of four hunting down the Werewolf of Mirkwood, and entrapping its spirit in the body of our Wood Elf.
We travelled to take advice from Beorn, as a shapechanger and ended up travelling high into the Misty Mountains where the shapeshifting spirit of the Werewolf was taken away by the Hunter as he crossed Middle Earth. Unfortunately, Beorn disappeared at the same time (Eye of Sauron), sacrificing himself to free the world from an ancient evil.
We started back down to tell the Beornings the sad news, and quickly stumbled into a large patrol of orcs, led by an Orc Captain, two Uruk-hai from Mordor, a Mountain Troll and about two hundred orc soldiers and archers. On the plains below we saw a Nazgul riding towards the Beornings. Improvising, we split the vanguard from the main body by means of an avalanche (stonecraft use) which partly blocked the route down from the High Pass. My Dwarf despatched his Raven friend to warn the Beornings and we prepared to fight a desperate battle. We killed the orcs, but constant arrow fire and the Troll battered us back, and our Ranger collapsed unconscious from his wounds, to be saved by our Woodswoman. The whole fellowship was weary by now and had very little endurance left.
Fleeing down the mountain, we hid and rested in a cave, securing the entrance and then breaking into the orc tunnels behind as the troll broke through. A challenging scramble through the dark got us outside on the Eastern side and we made it to the resting house by the Old Ford. Use of Courtesy and Song inspired our Beorning hosts, and drove off the dire influence of the Nazgul. We rested our weary bodies, drinking ale and filling our pipes. The Raven returned, having warned the Beornings and also travelled to inform Radagast, who was on his way...
---
We really thought we were going to have character fatalities tonight. Far too many Eyes of Sauron! The troll was nearly our undoing. This season felt really epic.
The good news is that the campaign will return in October, for Season 7. We're really loving the Darkening of Mirkwood...
The One Ring image - By Xander - own work, (not derivative from the movies), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1953341
02 August 2018
Books in July 2018
Dark Albion: The Rose Wars
This is RPGPundit’s take on the War of the Roses, effectively giving a Dark Fantasy Game of Thrones type setting for D&D. I’ve been impressed because it walks that line between too much and too little detail. It does need a good proof read and perhaps some light editing, but I could easily imagine playing or running this. There are some subtle jokes in the text as well, but they don’t harm the feel. It’s presented with a minimal of unique rules and could easily be run for any version of D&D.
A Brief History of Time (Professor Stephen Hawking)
I had never read Hawking’s book, having started with Kip Thorne’s Black Holes and Time Warps but decided that I need to correct that after the announcement of his death. I picked up a copy on my Kindle, and then the audiobook from Audible as a cheap upgrade, so I listened to the unabridged edition on the commute. It was fascinating; initially, I was let down by the delivery of the narrator but eventually started to appreciate his style which fitted the book. Definitely worth checking out if you haven’t dipped into it.
Bridging Infinity (Ed. Jonathan Strahan)
The fifth in the Infinity short story collection, this one presented views of the future for humanity. A number of them were climate change scenarios, but there was a good deal of variety. I only found one story that was a struggle but it was worth it once I pushed into the main thread. I’d definitely recommend this sequence of books.
The Storm before the Storm (Mike Duncan)
This was the unabridged audiobook version of the book covering the period of Roman history from the Gracchi Brothers through to the death of Sulla by the presenter of the History of Rome podcast12. It is read by the author, so feels like a more formal version of the podcast. This is a deep dive into the Roman politics and the conflicts that set the stage for Pompey, Crassus and Caesar’s wars and then the collapse of the Republic into an Empire. There are really scary parallels to some of the things happening in politics in the UK and USA right now. I enjoyed this book a lot. It would be a good period to set a historical RPG scenario in with chaos, conflict, confusion, greed and rivalries both individual and political.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
1 Run, do not walk, to listen to the 170 odd episodes of this. It is truly excellent.
2 As is the Revolutions podcast series he has followed The History of Rome up with.
This is RPGPundit’s take on the War of the Roses, effectively giving a Dark Fantasy Game of Thrones type setting for D&D. I’ve been impressed because it walks that line between too much and too little detail. It does need a good proof read and perhaps some light editing, but I could easily imagine playing or running this. There are some subtle jokes in the text as well, but they don’t harm the feel. It’s presented with a minimal of unique rules and could easily be run for any version of D&D.
A Brief History of Time (Professor Stephen Hawking)
I had never read Hawking’s book, having started with Kip Thorne’s Black Holes and Time Warps but decided that I need to correct that after the announcement of his death. I picked up a copy on my Kindle, and then the audiobook from Audible as a cheap upgrade, so I listened to the unabridged edition on the commute. It was fascinating; initially, I was let down by the delivery of the narrator but eventually started to appreciate his style which fitted the book. Definitely worth checking out if you haven’t dipped into it.
Bridging Infinity (Ed. Jonathan Strahan)
The fifth in the Infinity short story collection, this one presented views of the future for humanity. A number of them were climate change scenarios, but there was a good deal of variety. I only found one story that was a struggle but it was worth it once I pushed into the main thread. I’d definitely recommend this sequence of books.
The Storm before the Storm (Mike Duncan)
This was the unabridged audiobook version of the book covering the period of Roman history from the Gracchi Brothers through to the death of Sulla by the presenter of the History of Rome podcast12. It is read by the author, so feels like a more formal version of the podcast. This is a deep dive into the Roman politics and the conflicts that set the stage for Pompey, Crassus and Caesar’s wars and then the collapse of the Republic into an Empire. There are really scary parallels to some of the things happening in politics in the UK and USA right now. I enjoyed this book a lot. It would be a good period to set a historical RPG scenario in with chaos, conflict, confusion, greed and rivalries both individual and political.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
1 Run, do not walk, to listen to the 170 odd episodes of this. It is truly excellent.
2 As is the Revolutions podcast series he has followed The History of Rome up with.
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