First Impressions - Cartel RPG - Mexican Narcofiction Powered by the Apocalypse

The Cartel RPG and supporting cards

This is a review I really didn't expect to write. 

TL;DR: Cartel is one of the most sharply written Powered by the Apocalypse roleplaying games I've seen; there's nothing wasted and the game is constructed to make players spark off each other and feel like they're caught up in the drugs war. The book is beautifully put together and illustrated. If your gaming table isn't afraid of some character-vs-character conflict, then this is definitely worth checking out.

I first came across Cartel at the Revelation convention, where it was an early release ashcan. I'm not certain if the game had actually been through Kickstarter at that point, but if it hadn't then it would be imminent. We ended up with a small group of players, all ready to try something different, and we had one of the best games that I've ever played. It was plotting, scheming, twists and you were as likely to get stabbed in the front as in the face. There's very much a player-vs-player aspect to this, but actually, it's really character-vs-character. You're looking to generate situations and friction as your characters, all tied to the drug cartels in some way (even if only the spouse of someone who is involved) try to get by in their day-to-day without getting fucking shot. It's brutal, tense and has highs and lows. At the end of the game we played, it felt like we'd just participated in the pilot to a TV series. Kudos to Nigel, our MC, and the other players.

I'm not going to apologise for the profanity before, because that's the name of the one move you don't want to have to make in the game. Getting Fucking Shot is the one move that can take your character out of the game, and it's brutal. The more heat the group around you is facing, the nastier the situation and the higher the likelihood you will die,  maybe not immediately, but soon after. This is not a nice game. This is a game that puts your characters front and centre in the drug war and friction between different cartels in Durango in Mexico. If you can handle that, you're likely to have a fantastic game. 

Cartel is strikingly presented. It's a 160-page hardcover, printed in a square format in bright and shiny colour - red, pink, green, yellow. It has great artwork, and I didn't see a typo throughout the game. It has a pink ribbon.

Cartel was also originally due to be delivered in February 2019. It reached retail in the UK in December 2020, and backers in the UK didn't get their copies until April 2021 due to a shipping error by Magpie Games. As I write this, it has been 16 months since the last update on the Kickstarter, although the author posted a comment on New Year's Eve (31 December 2023) promising an update in January. Magpie have taken payment for PDFs and two extra books from some backers, and they've not delivered. Universally, I've found that lack of information, poor information and outright misinformation are how Magpie behave on kickstarters; I've seen the same with the Urban Shadows 2e kickstarter. I will never back one of their kickstarters again.

Yet, Cartel is absolutely brilliantly done. Tautly written. Packed with advice. Sharply focused. Mark Diaz Truman really gets Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA). Every product I have seen from Magpie is similar; well-written, focused and a great experience. There is absolutely no reason not to pick up this game from retail. In fact, I recommend you do, if the idea of exploring the drug war in a tense conflicted game appeals to you.

The engine is a tuned evolution of the PbtA core. Each character has four stats: Face, Grit, Hustle and Savagery which provide modifiers to a 2d6 roll where you're looking for 7+ (partial success), or 10+ (for complete success). Each player has a unique character playbook. These could the El Cocinero (responsible for drug production), La Esposa (the tie to family), El Halcón (young, naive and wanting to make their way in the cartel), El Narco (the boss), La Polizeta (a corrupt police officer), La Rata (a mole for law enforcement) or La Sicaria (the professional killer). There are actually some additional playbooks that have been shared beyond these, but they're from the expansion material on the CIA and beyond.

Each playbook has some custom moves, and then three Llaves (keys) to choose two from. They're tailored to the playbook; if you act in line with them, you mark experience.  The playbooks include advice on how to play the character and examples of fictional characters to draw upon. Characters get to build relationships with all the other players; these provide the impetus for much of the story; the MC will use these Enlaces as levers if the players don't. Ideally everyone will draw on these to inspire action. There's solid guidance on how to construct a relationship map, something that should be at the heart of a game.

Heat is tracked, marking the attention that law enforcement is giving your character. In a scene, the character with the highest heat will drive the reaction. 

Lifestyle is also set, and drives what cash or assets that you have available. If you can't get the money, you may need to hustle or steal, especially if you can't strain your finances enough. 

Stress is tracked; it's at the heart of the game. If you fill the track it limits how your character can respond; they're vulnerable to pressure and struggle to justify their behaviours. The only way to lose stress is to take a specific move to do so, all of which will cause a mess. Verbally abuse or shame someone, dish out a beatdown, confess your sins or lose yourself in a substance to recover; but be aware that there are consequences. You always begin a session with two of your five stress track boxes filled, so it's easy for things to escalate and for your character to become overwhelmed.

Cartel's agendas are pretty focused:

• Make the drug war seem real.
• Keep the player character's lives exciting
• Play to find out what happens

The principles are also strong (comments like this mine):

• Ground the story in Durango, Mexico
• Speak to the characters, not the players
• Make your move, but never speak its name
• Name everyone, give them drives and instincts (ie NPCs)
• Treat everyone as expendable and suspicious
• Fill the character's lives with secrets
• Make the authorities a persistent presence
• Be a fan of the PCs and their schemes
• Embrace the language of la guerra antidrogas (violence)
• Sometimes, declaim decision making (and let the dice decide)

The game makes less distinction of which MC moves are hard or soft (and explains that you can choose how this plays out). Moves include:

• Escalate a situation to violence
• Shoot someone
• Threaten someone's interests
• Disrupt someone's routine
• Offer a difficult compromise
• Turn their move back on them
• Lean on a secret
• Demand someone play their part

Although there's some overlap with other PbtA games, these are all very pointed and focused on escalating and pressuring the situation. 

The book has a good introductory section on the drugs war, combined with a strong section for the MC on how to run the game, which has an extended example. Throughout, there are sidebars which link actual events to the text described.

The book wraps with a decent index.

There is a map of Durango available separately (not sure if it comes as part of the PDF package if you get this retail) and also some really good location cards with specific moves for each. I'd recommend these if you can get hold of them.

Originally, I thought I'd never write this. I've quite often flipped and sold on delayed or poorly communicated kickstarters, but having played Cartel, I didn't want to sell this on. I knew I'd really enjoyed it. What gave the the impetus to read it was a decision to potentially run this at Revelation in February 2024. I figured that if I did that, then it would make me read it and make a decision about whether I keep the book. Having read it, I definitely want this in my library, and I'm going to run it.

In conclusion, Cartel is one of the most sharply written Powered by the Apocalypse roleplaying games I've seen; there's nothing wasted and the game is constructed to make players spark off each other and feel like they're caught up in the drugs war. The book is beautifully put together and illustrated. If your gaming table isn't afraid of some character-vs-character conflict, then this is definitely worth checking out.

But I'm still conflicted over Magpie Games and won't back another Kickstarter from them.

6 January 2024

Music in 2023

 

So this is what I played most that was released in 2023 according to iTunes (or rather the Apple Music app). As previous years, I've not managed to work out how to do this for music played in 2023, as I can't see how to filter on play count for only that year. 

I'll rank this by the highest play by album.

1. Hats Off Gentleman, It's Adequate - The Light of Ancient Mistakes

Fantastic new album, the early released songs got a lot of play. 3 tracks in top 25 for the year. Love the SF flavour, and use of the flute makes this something special.

2. Grandbrothers - Late Reflections.

Very chilled out album (the cover is Cologne Cathedral). I think I stumbled on it from a report in the Guardian. 10 tracks in top 25. It is great music to work to.

3. Andre Soueid - Echoes of the Past EP

Bizarrely, I stumbled across Andre Soueid when the local cinema played on of his tracks before a film. I loved it - the violin is fantastic in a fusion that comes towards EDM / trance. 2 in top 25.

4. Depeche Mode - Momento Mori

I still don't know what I make of this album. A single track places it in the top 25 I played (Ghosts Again) but nothing else. 

5. Steve Wilson - The Harmony Codex

A late entry in the year, I really like this album which is different in feel to Porcupine Tree. 2 tracks out of 25. I was surprised it was so high, but like it a lot.

6. Orchestra Manoeuvres in the Dark - Bahaus Staircase

Another late entry, with 5 tracks in the first 25. I have no doubt that this one will continue to rise as I love it. 

On reflection, the track count may be a more reliable measure of which releases were more popular and played for me. It's worth adding that this misses a chunk of plays when I go swimming, as I use an SD card on the headphones rather than Bluetooth from my phone.

Some good albums this last year.

2 January 2024

State of the Blog update 2023

 

Overview for the year…

I’ve posted less to the blog this year, mainly due to the end of the Curse of Strahd campaign. I also severely dropped off in the last quarter as work and life became busier. That said, the overall engagement and views on the blog are sharply up, with this year having 72.5% of the overall views I’ve had since I moved to Blogger some years ago.

Why the change?

1) Mastodon - my experience of Twitter was that it was like shouting (sometimes angrily) into the void. I’ve had much higher engagement on Mastodon, especially when I use the right hash tags (eg #ttrpg #vtt etc). I see less in the way of comments on the blog, but more in the way of responses to the shares when I toot them out. I suspect being on @dice.camp helps as well.

2) Charles Stross - when I read Season of Skulls and mentioned it in my monthly books post, Charlie boosted the toot. That drove a huge amount of traffic, with the end result that the post is the second most read overall and the most popular in 2023.

3) Reviews - I still do reviews of roleplaying books that I like, and often they’re either reasonably new, or somewhat more obscure OSR books, and just something that interests me. I don’t tend to review books I don’t like, partly because I don’t think that it’s nice to say bad things (I can get that entertainment on Bryce’s tenfootpole.org posts), but more because I don’t want to waste the time. I try and be objective and express how I feel. One of these posts will usually do between 100 to 150 views. Probably not stellar, but nice to know they get looked at.

Of course, the reason for the blog isn’t about the number of views, it’s just been a way of replacing the personal website that I have had since the dial-up days (note to self to redirect the domain from that to here) to record what’s going on. It’s just nice to see that it gets read.

This year’s top ten posts

So the top ten is half full of reviews, and then a comment piece on GM’s screens. RPGaDay2023 had three entries (game you’d like a new edition of, weirdest game played and favourite character sheet) so definitely drove traffic. Interestingly, several of that top ten have only been written recently. 

(The views on the post on GM Screens were also helped by Xaosseed sharing the post on the Shiny TTRP links post they do.)

I’ll be continuing into 2024; perhaps I’ll even get the final few posts from the old site migrated. 

What interests you that I post here?

1 January 2024

Books in 2023

2023 - 103 books!

Time for a quick overview of the books that I read in 2023. This year, I read 103 books, for a total of 27,892 pages.  If you follow me on Goodreads you'll only see 75, as that platform doesn't make it easy to add small press books like roleplaying books. I've moved all my day-to-day tracking to The Storygraph, which seems to be a better fit for me. Day-to-day tracking is right, as one of the things I've tried to do is read a little everyday, usually before bed, whatever is going on. As I type this, I've been doing that for 358-days, a habit which seems to have paid off with more books read. I've not broken 100 books since I started recording again on Goodreads in 2016.

The months I read the most both involved travel; July and August saw me away in Africa with work so several long-haul flights, and August saw me away for the family holiday in Cyprus.

Most Read Authors

My most read author was Mick Herron, as I worked through the Oxford Investigations, having finished the Slough House books in years before. That said, my highlight from him was The Secret Hours, which came out towards the end of 2023 and is, in effect, a prequel to the Slough House books.

Highest placed SF/Fantasy author was Aliette de Bodard. I finally read the Dominion of the Fallen trilogy, which was great. Bizarrely, I'd approached this from the perspective of having read several of the short stories related to it first. My favourite from her this year was The Red Scholar's Wake, and I'm happy that I've her latest sitting read to read in January.

The Modiphius 2d20 team sit high in my reading, driven by my foray into several of their game systems which I mentioned in the earlier post on Gaming in 2023.

Joe Abercrombie is in there, driven by the 'Read along with First Age' book club we had on the Tavern (which seemed to peter out in the last quarter of the year unless I missed the posts). I enjoyed the books, grim-dark though they were; I'd completely missed The First Law trilogy when it came out. I'm not certain I'll rush to read any more though, which is a similar feeling to the Hanna Jameson books. The London Underground books are brutal crime fiction, which I enjoyed but I very much need to be in the right mind to dig into. High energy, intriguing and messy, they do give a pay-off, often at the cost of reading about deeply dislikable characters.

Old favourite Ken Macleod was there again, with two books from his new Lightspeed trilogy, and a novella, The Human Front. 

I also enjoyed Charlie Stross' latest New Management book, and the third of Charles Cumming' Box 88 series. Gareth L Powell's Continuance books were great, giving me the kind of buzz I got when I first discovered Banks, MacLeod and Reynolds. I loved Nick Harkaway's Titanium Noir (which reminded me of Richard Morgan's work), and also should give a shout out for Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törz, which had me musing how to using the magic described in it in the Liminal roleplaying game, a blog post that kind of got lost in the middle of the #RPGaDay2023 frenzy.

I read 30-odd roleplaying books (and need to keep that up to make a dent in the gaming reading pile), but always find that the rules books take me much longer to read. Graphic novels were significantly down; although I did finish the year with finally reading The Umbrella Academy. 

I've also built a habit of listening to more factual and political books when travelling to the various offices and sites that I work up. As most of these journeys involve more than 4 hours in the car return, that's a great opportunity to dig into a selection from Audible. I find it easier to listen to some of these books than read them. Katie Mack's The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) was my favourite of these.

Overall, a good year for reading. I did let myself down at the back end of the year on my monthly blog entries on what I enjoyed, so I'll try to get into that rhythm going forward.

1 January 2024

Setting up clocks on Roll20

The clocks...

This one is more of a note for future reference on how to set up the clocks of Roll20 for the future. I used clocks I'd bought in the marketplace from Lazarus the Cartographer.

• Add in the clock elements using the "Game Addons" on the launch page for the game.
• Launch the game. The clock elements will have their own pages you can ignore.
• Make sure you're on the token layer.
• Go to "Collection" on the right hand menu.
• The clock elements will be under "Rollable Tables".
• Click on the table entry and click the check box "Players can roll from Table".
• Click on Token, which will add a multisided token to the page; position and scale how you like.
• Click on the Token and then the Gearwheel icon
• Give control to "All Players".

And you're done. 

Anyone in the game can now adjust the clock using a right-click on the token, selecting multi-sided and choosing the table entry displayed. It's nowhere near as simple to do as the Role VTT but works fine.

31 December 2023

Gaming in 2023

 

Final Doughnut of the year

I don’t think that I’m going to have any more game sessions this year (as the Mausrítter one that the kids had been planning has fallen through, and it looks like I won’t get enough players for the Cepheus Orbital 2100 game I’ve pitched for the holidays), so here’s the update on the year. 

I played 48 sessions (slightly down from 2022), 13 of which I was GM for and 11 of which were face-to-face. The big change was the drop in my GMing; it’s almost a complete reversal of the previous year’s numbers and that’s driven by the end of the Curse of Strahd campaign.

The most played game I for me this year was Trail of Cthulhu, as we returned to the Eternal Lies campaign that we started back in 2021. Currently in Malta, this is proving to be epic and scary, with the irony being that all of us involved have read the campaign at some point. We briefly went from two players to three, but have since dropped back to a duo as Nigel couldn’t make it for medical reasons. I’m hoping he returns but then again the intensity of having two players is great. Rich runs a great game.

The second most played game was Conan 2d20, ably run by Graham as we went through the Shadow of the Sorceror campaign. This captured the feel of the books really well, and had such a strong flavour that it influenced the Achtung! Cthulhu game that I have started to run by making me choose to run a different campaign to the one that I originally planned.

Those systems have been the story of my game year; Gumshoe and 2d20 have dominated. I’ve played and run both, with 16 games of each. This has been the 2d20 breakout year for me. I ran Star Trek Adventures at North Star (in an incredibly fun interlinked game with Dr Mitch) and have started running Shadows of Atlantis since. After years of playing Gumshoe, I ran my first ever game at Furnace using Swords of the Serpentine and it was great fun. It was a bit disappointing that we didn’t manage to restart the Yellow King campaign, but hopefully that will happen at the start of the 2024.

Graham ran a short playtest campaign of Heroic Fantasy 2e, which was fun, but I eventually had to drop out of.

Worth noting that City of Mist and D&D5e are the only other games with more than one session. City of Mist is becoming a perennial for me and will be one of my offerings at Revelation 2024. Great setting and system. 

Standout games for me this year as a GM have been The Zone (at Furnace) and Echoes (STA) at North Star, plus the climax of Curse of Strahd, which hit me hard emotionally. I almost didn’t run the campaign closure due to friction in our Discord group chat as we prepared it souring things for me, but I’m so glad I did. I know that I need to post the final write up for that, which is half written.

Overall a good year, but I’m glad I’ve got Achtung! Cthulhu running as I was missing GMing. I think I may also try and get something else started, depending on the games I’m playing in.

VTTs in play have been Role (less of that in 2024), Roll20 (more of that in 2024), Foundry (still leaves me cold as a platform) with Discord and Zoom filling most of the gaps.

Convention attendance was limited to the Garricons (Revelation, North Star & Furnace). I think I’m done with Dragonmeet (too expensive and too much phaff for the payback) and Continuum continues to fall across family commitments. Hoping we can get TravCon 2024 up and running, as Traveller is a game I’ve missed running and playing.  

Thanks to all the GMs who ran for me and the players who’ve played with me.

Game System	Count
Trail of Cthulhu (GS)	12
Conan (2d20)	11
Achtung! Cthulhu (2d20)	4
The Yellow King (GS)	3
Heroic Fantasy	3
D&D5e	2
City of Mist (PbtA)	2
Svalbard	1
Star Trek Adventures (2d20)	1
Paranoia XP	1
Kult (PbtA)	1
Genesys	1
Cortex Prime	1
a|state (BitD)	1
A Town called Malice	1
Things from the Flood (YZE)	1
The Zone	1
Swords of the Serpentine (GS)	1

30 December 2023

Achtung! Cthulhu - forced changes as the Role VTT downgrades

 

Some disappointment just before Christmas. Three sessions into the campaign (four if you count the Session Zero), changes force me to migrate VTTs. You may recall that I was minded to use the Role VTT for the game, as it's very much video chat first with a nice character sheet building tool and dice roller. That was the route I took, and I've spent a couple of evenings populating it. The time on Role blurs with time in the Affinity suite building handouts, as unfortunately Shadows of Atlantis uses chunks of the artwork and material from the previous edition which means that it isn't really VTT ready, unlike The Serpent and the Sands.

Fun on the Role VTT, people front and centre.

In building the game, there were a few things that I was missing; the dice roller didn't yet have custom faces, and the assets could do with folders to allow you to sort them. The music player was also a bit flaky (but I had routes around that) and had I been using the maps, it would have been very basic. However, apart from minor niggles and one of the players struggling a bit with the interface as it was new to him, it worked really well. Gaming is fundamentally a social activity and putting your players front and centre is works really well.

Move on to the shock announcement from Role, which one of my players (who is active in the Role community) pointed me at. 

This brought the shock news that the AV (audio-visual) part of Role was shutting down imminently. Their service provider Twillo had decided to refocus on what services it delivered and was sunsetting its third party AV provision in December 2024. I can only assume that the Role team have chosen to exit quickly to avoid spending on a platform that they won't get any long term benefit from.

One of the founders/ developers, Elle Dwight further expanded on the Discord:

There are many great video providers out there. The issue is that swapping them out is labor intensive no matter who we go with. There is a lot of custom work and tuning that goes into getting video to run smoothly and consistently on a platform like ours. Since our team is quite small, we have decided to prioritize Open Source and finalizing release of our Owlbear integration first. But beyond that, there are many options we could explore!

and:

We tried to take an honest look at how various groups use Role. And while it might sound surprising, we actually found that many rooms play without video at all, and instead use our basic map tools or just use the middle area for imagery. We recognize that some games are very video-centric, but we also want to focus our limited resources on a path that benefits the widest range of play groups. Our hope is that developers within the community will likely make various video plugins that will allow video-centric groups to choose their favorite option for play. Video integration and optimization is time consuming, and we don’t want that to block people’s ability to create with Role. We’ll have many more details on Open Source early next year. In the meantime, we hope you’ll use Discord or other video chat tools to augment your games.

I can see the logic for the developers (who are small team) but ultimately this pushes me away from the platform. Graham introduced me to it around the lockdown, and immediately it struck me as a perfect replacement for the Google Hangouts with dicebot I'd used for all the games that didn't need battle maps and a heavy degree of crunch. People front and centre, and a nice stable platform. Once early access became available, I signed up as soon as I could. I also loved that it ran on Safari on macOS and iOS without issue, something that Foundry and Roll20 don't do. It means I can travel light to play, just using my iPad.

The comments about many rooms running without video is interesting. I know that about half the rooms I have in Role haven't used video, as they were builds for games which either didn't happen or I was using to develop and experiment (for example, when I built the officially approved Mausrítter and Cthulhu Hack sheets). I've asked the developers if they account for this.

Over the last three years I've used three different VTTs (Role, Roll20, Foundry) and two other video platforms (Zoom and Discord).

Roll20 got progressively better over the time period; originally, we didn't use the AV features as they were flaky, but the update around 18 months ago changed everything. It became stable and effective.

Foundry was done through LiveKit and I found it a pain; it broke when I used it in some hotels (despite trying running in a VPN and other solutions). When it worked it was great. 

Discord was randomly flaky; we ended up abandoning some sessions as we couldn't hold a stable connection (although we did use it for Roll20 before we went full into that platform).

Zoom had rock solid AV and, well, nothing else. 

Role had the same kind of rock solid AV, and useful tools.

Ordinarily, I'd have been really excited about the announcement of the move the open source the code (as I suspect that it will accelerate development), and the integration of OwlBear Rodeo would have solved all my challenges over mapping for games where it's front and centre (for example for OSR clones). 

However, the loss of what was originally presented as the platform's raison d'être means I'll be pulling away for now. It's not an easy decision, as I've advocated publicly for the platform and built official sheets for a number of RPGs, and I like what the team has done. I'll keep a weather eye on development and see if there are changes that will bring me back, but I'd rather not kludge two or three services together for what will probably be a subpar outcome.

I realise that Twillo's announcement has led to the Role team having to make a whole series of decisions quickly, and hope that the open source approach sorts AV quickly.

Rebuilding the campaign in Roll20

So what does this mean for our Achtung! Cthulhu campaign?

I've decided to migrate the campaign to Roll20; there's a workable sheet on that platform, and fortunately, the way I prepared the material for Role means that I don't have a huge amount of work to migrate the material. I do lose the flexibility to do preparation on the iPad, but I gain a stable music player and a stable AV platform. 

Ultimately, I did consider Discord with Role, but the stability of that platform has been variable in my recent experiences.

I'm part way through now; most of the important material from the first mission (Vienna) is uploaded and I'm about to dig into Rome. Still, it's a chunk of time that I'd planned to use to complete the build of Castle Xyntillan in Roll20 as a drop in game.

I guess, ultimately, you get what you pay for. Role has resisted the need for subscriptions, and Roll20 is funded by theirs. 

The Secret War will continue.

24 December 2023

First Impressions - Vaults of Vaarn Deluxe Edition

Vaults of Vaarn - a blue world

Vaults of Vaarn is a full roleplaying game inspired by the likes of the Book of the New Sun, Dune and Hyperion. As these are novels that I’ve enjoyed greatly, this was a factor in my decision to pick up a copy. That, and the book is published by Games Omnivorous who always produce really good quality product.

The books compiles the three Vaarn zines that Leo Hunt produced previously into one lushly produced digest volume. It’s very blue, strikingly so. The cover is embossed and the 144-page digest sized hardcover has a ribbon to keep your place. The text inside continues the blue theme; everything is blue on white (or the reverse).

The setting has a Dying Earth vibe. Vaarn is littered with the ruins of previous cultures, and much knowledge was lost in the Great Collapse. The sky-blue sands of Vaarn have buried treasures and hidden secrets; its a hinterland far from the New Hegemony to the south, a place people come to hide, explore or just exist beyond the controls and strictures of society. The sun is a dying red giant; it won’t go out soon but, as the book says, synths (robots) may be concerned. Technology sits alongside fantasy tropes. And yes, there are sandworms.

The game engine has six abilities, but the non-physical stats have different names (Intellect, Psyche and Ego). Resolution mechanic is the save. You roll 1d20, looking for 15+ to succeed. Opposed rolls go against the ability defence score of a character. Advantage and disadvantage can be granted.

Encumbrance is limited by Constitution modifier, and characters will want to use some of this for water or they will ultimately die. Mystic gifts (often driven by nanotechnology) can be obtained, but take item slots. Exotica, the strange relics of older civilisations, are the McGuffin that drives the characters to do things. You need to find them to progress and raise in level.

Initiative is a d6 roll off to see who goes first; on a tie, it’s the players.Damage consumes hit points, and then cause wounds. The wounds consume item slots; if you hit zero slots you die. There’s a short and long rest mechanic. If ability defences have been depleted, they recover slowly, needing a long rest for each point.

Abilities are rolled on 3d6 in order. The lowest dice gives the ability bonus. You can swap two abilities around. Defence values for each are generated by adding 10 to the bonus.

There are a number of ancestries to choose from: The first is the True-Kin (humans who are unchanged by the Great Collapse because their ancestors were sealed in hidden archologies during the Great Collapse). They get a bonus dealing with other true-kin and also have a chance that pre-Collapse systems will recognise and obey them. There are useful tables to randomly generate a look and background (something that’s repeated for all ancestries).

Synths (robots) are the next option; survivors from the Great Collapse who were freed from the need to serve humanity. Their synthetic flesh is resistant to damage, but they are vulnerable to electrical and code based attacks. 

Newbeasts are uplifted humanoid animals, who tend to live at the edges of human society. Their animal nature can give them advantage or disadvantage dependent upon the situation that they find themselves in.

Mycomorphs are a fusion of humanity and fungi, a being remade from the corpse of a human. Sometimes they can remember their past life, and can eat most organic matter, gaining a bonus on recovery if it is rotted.

Cacogens are the mutated descendants of humans who didn’t have a safe refuge in the Great Collapse. They outnumber true-kin by an order of magnitude and believe themselves to be the true inheritors of Urth after the Collapse. Their mutations give them a wide range of advantages and disadvantages, dependent upon the situation.

Each character starts with a mystic gift (or a cybernetic implant) and an item of exotica. Base equipment is obtained by rolling on a table for weapons, gear and armour. 

The referee rules are short (mainly on how to deal with NPC reactions and how to creat adversaries). There’s a focused set of principles on how to play and how to bring out the best of the setting. The bestiary is novel and different, and has an encounter table to use with it. A table of d100 exotica is given as an example. There’s a section on travel with procedures and transport options (ranging from camels to dune buggies, to wind barges. Alongside this is a system for the weather and the changes it makes on the sands. The section rounds out with a quick NPC generator, a table for what you find in the sand and another table to randomly generate the petty gods of Vaarn; the myriad of forgotten and abandoned faiths.

The next major section deals with creating a region to play in. This has a dice drop method, with locations drawn from a table (access to certain levels of which can only be done through using dice with a higher number of sides). The locations are interlinked as a point crawl, and there are extensive tables to generate each. It’s a quiet way of establishing a sandbox to play in. 

Vaults are the next stage, as characters will want to seek them out to find exotica. There’s a procedural system to guide you in creating them (and an example Vault at the end of the book). These are the ‘dungeons’ of the setting. Random tables are included to generate ideas, and look useful.

The next major section describes Gnomon, the city that stands at the edge of the Vaarn badlands and may well serve at the base from which the characters head out from on expeditions, although there are suggestions for other reasons to visit the city. Water is a significant currency in the city, with the source controlled by the Water Baron Ancamulla. The New Hegemony Consul, a member of House Lonrot, has not seized control of the water because the Water Baron claims to have the power to destroy the source, which would cause the city to fail. It’s not known if this is a bluff, but the New Hegemony does not want to risk the loss of the city and has settled for a free water ration for the Consul and his forces. 

There’s a short and evocative description of the various quarters of the city, along with key sites to see. After this, the various factions are explored, along with the benefits of joining them and how to use them as an ally or a villain. As well as the Water Baron and the Consul, Vaults of Vaarn also offers the Fifth Hegemony Legion, the Church of the Promised Sun, the criminal Prieval’s crew, the Friends of Jak and the Crimson Court as significant factions. There’s some guidance on how to use the factions. Minor groups are also discussed, and there are tables to build conflicts with and between Noble Houses, Trade Cartels, the Urban Shrines of Minor Gods, and the Philosopher’s Guilds which can act as plot ideas for scenarios.There are also random tables for ongoing drama, hassle on the streets, buildings and their histories, street merchants, mercenaries and pit-fighters, taverns and criminal gangs. Plenty of sparks to bring life to a campaign. 

A section explores potential significant changes in Gnomon, which could be the over-arching plot for a campaign (for example, the Hegemony sends an Inquistor to establish a new branch of the House of Corrections and ensure the city is run appropriately).

The book wraps up with four vaults and locations to explore, all of which should give a good evening of play. There’s an appendix on the long dead Titans, and another on the languages spoken.

All in all, this is an inspiring book, with plenty to use to build a campaign at the table. The rules are light enough that you could easily use another system if you preferred (for example, I’m thinking parts of this would work well with the Ultra-Violet Grasslands). It feels very OSR in style, in the sense that it presents a setting and plenty of tables and ideas to build from rather than a default fully developed campaign. It nails the feel of a Dying Earth, and mixes some great inspirations together to form a cohesive and unique setting of its own. 

22 December 2023 

WOTB T95E6 on Oasis Palms - highest damage to date

Sharing this as my highest damage ever. I was surprised that 1625 XP didn’t get a Mastery though.