First Impressions - Svalbard

 

Svalbard - system agnostic modern horror

The PDF and print codes for Svalbard dropped over the weekend, and I ended up reading through the whole scenario as it's on the shortlist I have as potentials for Furnace.

This is a 96-page scenario with a different and clever feel to it. Set in the modern-day, the characters are members of a small strike team who have been sent to investigate a Russian owned mine complex on the island of Svalbard. The complex has potential links to super-weapon development and a warning has been received that something dangerous has happened.

The character's job is to infiltrate the complex, find out what is going on and stop it. There's more, but I'll put it below a spoiler break below.

The game is written with a very lightweight game engine included but has guidance on converting to other systems, with Call of Cthulhu being the most notable. I think it would work well for Delta Green, but I think that I'd prefer to use the game engine as presented as it would focus on the story.

I like the way that this is set up; the locations within the complex seem well structured and it looks like it could be quite good fun to play. The artwork is good and the layout clear. The supporting GM screen is really useful as a reference. Svalbard is certainly on my list to try.

Spoilers follow the break...

Back down the Hole in the Oak (OSE)

Back down the Hole in the Oak.

Last week we had our second taster session for Old-School Essentials, with the characters returning back into the dungeon which had claimed the lives of two of their retainers and nearly killed two more. We agreed that they'd managed to escape the hole and make it back to town overnight, where they'd had a slap-up meal and recovered. They decided to head back into the Hole to 'deal with the Ogre'. Obviously, the snoring offended them. This time they added some useful items like iron spikes and a crowbar to their equipment.

Blurring the edges between fog of war and VTT mapping

Role worked well, once again, and the only thing that I was really missing was 'fog of war' for the map. I know that this is coming, but it's important for games like this, where exploration is an important part of the experience. I created a copy of the map and painted a white layer over what they hadn't seen last time, then we blended on-screen mapping with the main map, as shown above. It seemed to work, but would have been better if I'd had a graphics tablet or stylus to draw better. However, I'd happily use this again.

The characters made a good haul this time, with plenty of gold and treasures. Having been drugged and subsequently defeating the enemy who knocked them out, they then cleverly used the spare herbs to do the same to the 'ogre', having dropped off the remains of a previous victim which they'd found in the pantry and laced with the sleeping draught. It all worked swimmingly.

They were lucky at points; the thief backstabbed one of the enemy leaders, which took magic out of the battle, but overall they worked together much better. I do think that First Age's character was a little out of it, but that's what a single spell and huge vulnerability do to you. It pays off once you hit higher levels, but the life of a low-level magic-user is a life of fear until then. 

In honesty, I'd forgotten how fun it is to run a game like this. As a DM, you don't have to worry about complex plots and moving parts, nor manage how you respond to avoid killing the characters in quite the same way you do in more modern games. There's a different feel; this is the world of bumbling novices, trying to make a living and become heroes. Most modern games - including D&D5e - start with characters who are competent and well on that path. OSE captures that feel from the early days that RuneQuest and other games shared, a feeling of vulnerability and danger, a feeling of the unknown and a chance to explore and the ever-present likelihood of dying in some dark hole you're trying to pillage for loot.

This was the last of the taster sessions; we only played for around 2 hours because we'd had two significant encounters and the next likely one would easily have taken us past the 10:30pm cut off that had been requested by the players. I'll admit that I'll happily run this again if they want to do another session, but the rest of August is out as it gets complicated with holidays.

Running 'The Hole in the Oak' definitely made me want to run more of this style of game, some kind of less serious drop-in session with a large dungeon. In my mind, there'd be a way for players to leave messages or reports on what they found so future adventurers had hints and tips beyond the basic rumour table. I'm torn between continuing to build 'Castle Xyntillan' on Roll20 or waiting until Role gets fog of war.

OSE nails its objective of emulating B/X level D&D near perfectly. It's not a style of play that I want to dip into often, but it was more fun than I had hoped.

16 August 2021

#RPGaDay2021 - 14 - Safety

 

Safety

I used to be skeptical about safety tools, but then I became responsible for running a convention and dealing with the fallout of interactions between people whose expectations, needs and comfort zones weren't aligned.

When we proposed and implemented tags for scenarios, we got attacked and accused of taking the fun out of games and ruining it for GMs. Yet we'd seen players in tears from the fallout of games that were completely different from what they'd expected from the blurb.

When we started to recommend tools like the X-card, we were once again told we were over-reacting.

The Harassment and Inappropriate Behavior Policy had a similar response.

And now all of these are norms, ways that we give a consensual space to play fun games with people who often become friends.

I'm not skeptical anymore

14th August 2021 (belatedly)

#RPGaDay2021 - 13 - Flood

 

Flood...

Best RPG involving a flood?
Fria Ligan's 'Things from the Flood', which unfortunately has a bad reputation for UK cons after a certain incident at Expo. A great game none-the-less.

Best scenario with a flood?
‘Deep Carbon Observatory’, especially in the revised edition. I do note that the alternatives for today - improvise, doom and pool - do describe that adventure in some ways! 

Worst flood in gaming?
The d20 flood that consumed everything. it made the magic CCG impact on gaming look tame, and tried to turn everything into D&D. Now, I love D&D, but there are things that it excels at and things that it doesn't. I fear the current se compatible wave is a similar, albeit smaller, bubble. I do recognise that TTRPGs have D&D and everything else, but there's such a thing as too much of a good thing.

13th August 2021 (belatedly)

#RPGaDay2021 - 11 - Wilderness

 

Into the Wilderness

Wildernesses have been part of my roleplaying experience from the start. The first gaming module I used was 'B2 - The Keep on the Borderlands' where the characters are located at the furthest edge of civilisation, the last bastion of authority before the wilderness.

I never much found wilderness treks in D&D that interesting - they seemed an exercise in rolling dice for rolling dice's sake. I was ambiguous about hex crawls; although my favourite game of all time - Traveller - is arguably built around a SF hex-crawl map!

I was impressed with the way that the Dungeon World supplement 'The Perilous Wilds' treated wildernesses, but the game that finally gave me an experience that made wildernesses unique, expansive, and terrifying was 'The One Ring'.

Between the characters, roles were shared out as to who led what activity as we crossed the wide open spaces of Middle Earth. All of a sudden, journeys became epic and challenging. The first time we crossed Mirkwood was terrifying, but that fell into insignificance compared to the journey across the wastes of Angmar where we were pursued by the enemy, and started to drop equipment as fatigue bit into our capabilities. We all began to expect the worst, but somehow pulled through with a story to tell.

I love the way montages are used to pull together aspects of journeys in modern games, something 13th Age also embraced. It no longer feels like an exercise in random numbers, but something that the party pulls together to get done.

These days journeys out into the wilderness are something unique & different. And I love it.

11th August 2021 (belatedly)

#RPGaDay2021 - 10 - Trust

 

Trust no-one, keep your laser handy?

Trust sits at the heart of what we do as tabletop role players. There's an implicit social contract between the am and the players, and also between the planes themselves. When it is built on shaky foundations, games go bad.

Ironically, PVP games often need a higher level of trust around the table than normal games. The conflict needs to be between characters, not between players.

Games that address sensitive topics also need trust. When playing with strangers, the ability to use safety tools such as 'lines and veils' helps to give a foundation to that trust. At Furnace, we've adopted the use of tags because it avoids nasty surprises for players. When you don't take a sensitive approach, you run the risk of a 'Things from the Flood' UK Games Expo style incident. And no-one wants that.

You could make an argument that the older style of gaming requires less trust, especially as early dungeons could put the GM in an antagonistic mode. However, I don't believe that this is the case. You still need to believe that the GM is impartial in such a situation. If you felt the GM will cheat, why bother playing?

Trust is a fundamental part of tabletop roleplaying, and always has been.

10 August 2021 (belatedly).

#RPGaDay2021 - 9 - Medium

 

Medium?

Let's start by noting that the first association I have with the word "medium" comes from World of Tanks Blitz, where it refers to the kind of tank that developed into today's main battle tanks. Vehicles like the T-62A, the Centurion and the Pershing. That said, what does it evoke from a roleplaying perspective?

There's two areas that spring to mind. The first is the medium by which I consume RPGs. The second is the way that I play them.

I adopted the use of PDFs quite early, especially once I got my first iPad back in 2010 (64GB first generation iPad with WiFi only). Although I continued to buy dead tree versions of games, most of my reading was done using the iPad (and the still excellent Goodreader app?).

However, I started to travel with work, and ended up switching to an iPad mini. Even when the retina version of the iPad became available, I never found the mini, a satisfying reading experience. It was just too small for my eyes. These days, I'm tending to use Xodo (an Android app) on my Chromebook, which gives a decent view of two-page spreads. As I have a 2-in-1 Chromebook that flips to a tablet this works well.

However, I find it harder to learn a game system via reading PDFs. Books stick in my mind better as a medium but, even so, I usually have to couple that with writing notes to summarise what I've seen.

The other medium is the medium I use to play. Originally, this was always face-to-face, but these days most of my gaming is by VTT. This isn't a pandemic thing - it was already happening before. COVID-19 just added gaming conventions into the mix.

I do enjoy playing online; it gives me a chance to game with people I'd only see a couple of times a year otherwise.

The play style is a little different, but it's still fun. I find that 2.5 hours is optimal rather than the 3 to 4 I'd usually do face-to-face. All changes to match the medium.

9 August 2021 (belatedly)

#RPGaDay2021 - 8 - Stream

 

Day 8 - Stream

Today we have 'Stream'.

I can't get streaming actual plays. I know that it's done wonders for the hobby through channels like 'Critical Role' but it leaves me cold. I guess that it fits with the part of me that prefers blogs and podcasts to vlogs. 

I guess I'm a dinosaur in some respects. Give an enchanted stream like the one in 'The Hobbit' over an actual play any day. I'd rather be 'actually playing'. 

That said, if you don't have an active gaming scene, or conventions to go to, streaming does give you an idea of how a game actually works. I have deliberately selected games at conventions to see how they run before now, and I suspect that streaming gives a different route for people to do the same.

8 August 2021 (belatedly)

Books in July 2021

 

Closing on 52

July saw large gaps in reading fiction, as I was either working through RPGs or running RPGs and then a burst of reading at the end of the month. My fiction reading had a very East German feel as I ploughed through David Young's Stasi series.

Stasi State aka A Darker State

Stasi State (Karin Müller #3) (David Young)

The third Karin Müller book dives even darker as Karin and her team investigate a teenage book who is found dead in a river on the border with Poland. The Stasi are more obstructive than ever (and seem to be in conflict internally) and the investigation ends progressing unofficially. This didn't make pleasant reading as it brought out prejudices against LGBTQ people within the state despite their official acceptance.

I was initially confused as I bought this as 'A Darker State' and it was renamed 'Stasi State' subsequently to align with the rest of the series.

Stasi 77 (Karin Müller #4)

The fourth of the Karin Müller series, this story finds her team investigating murders that tie back to the end of the Second World War. It fills in the backstory of several of the supporting characters. Overall I enjoyed this; the tension between the Stasi and the Kripo has a different motivation to usual, and I enjoyed the story much more as it explored how people left behind their past in the Nazi regime.

Marvel 1602 (Neil Gaiman)

An impulse purchase after hearing it being discussed on the Fictoplasm podcast. Although I've enjoyed the MCU, I've never been a massive comics fan(*), so I suspect that there may be Easter eggs in this that I'm missing.

Neil Gaiman tells an interesting tale of a multiverse where heroes manifest 300 years earlier than they do in the main Marvel timeline, and they become embroiled in the conflict between Elizabethan England and the Catholic European mainland. Under all this turmoil, a threat has emerged that threatens reality. I enjoyed this and would happily read more in this setting.

Stasi Winter (David Young)

The fifth of the Karin Müller books sees her team put into an impossible situation when they are sent to investigate a murder during a brutal winter on the Baltic coast of East Germany. The situation accelerates rapidly out of her control, and the inherent tensions in her team come to the surface after the revelations of previous novels.

Hansel & Gretel (Neil Gaiman)

A starkly but evocatively illustrated take on the Hansel and Gretel story penned by Neil Gaiman. I enjoyed this.

The Stasi Game (David Young)

The final (for now) Karin Müller story sees her drawn into a murder investigation in Dresden which uncovers links back to the firebombing of the city during the Second World War. Demoted after the outcome previous story, she is increasingly disillusioned with the way that the DDR is being run. Tensions raise between the Stasi and MI6 as Müller's team become pawns between the intelligence agencies. I enjoyed this but there are elements in the final denouement that didn't seem to make any sense. Fortunately, they don't undermine the story and could be written off to someone taking an irrational emotional judgement at the last moment.

A Study in Emerald (Neil Gaiman)

A clever twist on Sherlock Holmes combined with Lovecraftian mythos.

8 August 2021