An unusually epic game

Yesterday I played a nine-hour game of D&D 5e with eight players.

It's part of an ongoing campaign with very irregular meet-ups.  This was my second session.  My character is an arcane tricker rogue forest gnome called Marian - I believe I was thinking about Maid Marian and her Merry Men when I created her.

Rather than a full write-up, I've just done some edited highlights...

D&D 5e game about to start. 8 players. No idea who anyone is, IC or OC. Should we do name badges?

My character sheet has gone missing but fortunately I have a copy on my phone. Fifth edition character app is excellent. But you can't write the other characters' names on the back.

There is about 6 feet of 3D terrain on the table. It looks amazing. We are here to convert the orcs to the worship of Bast. We are the Bastards.

Currently rolling to see what happened on the journey to our current location. Thanks to a number of failed rolls we have visited an orc brothel, got on the wrong side of an elf gang, and are being pursued by an angry badger.

The badger has caught up with us. It's an angry MUTANT badger. It's trying to eat me! It's fine. The dragonborn has my back.

Now engaged in an epic battle with some giant crabs, unhappy that we ate their friends for breakfast. I am now using one of the half orcs as an artillery platform, having remembered that I can cast fire bolt.

Apparently that was the orcs' meat farm. Whoops. Now for a swim. Can we make flotation devices out of dead arachnid parts?

This boat has a safety rail. I find this immensely suspicious. Since when has anything health and safety related existed in D&D? The wizard is making friends with the boat. It's working better than I expected.

My argument that we have not taken this boat because it has not moved did not prove compelling. Now we have to fight 37 orcs. What a funny time to find out the cleric has no healing spells.

I'm starting to think this boat is evil. Just saved a half orc from sirens with a minor illusion. Now back to the orc brothel for a long rest. I hope they'll accept the loan of an unseen servant and some prestidigitation as payment. Bast is not impressed with our performance.

 

"Oi, Fenris! Fetch!" We are now on driftwood, floating towards some rocks, where a bunch of sirens are waiting. Damn.

What impressed me most is that D&D 5e can actually handle an 8 player game.  Part of it is the highly structured combat, combined with the GM using combat order markers on the GM screen, which meant we could not only see whose turn it was but also see how many people there were to go before our next turn so we could be prepared.  I thoroughly recommend these for any game using initiative order, even if it's just slips of paper with the character names hung off the GM screen.  Every game I've played with them has been better for it.

The Everlasting Reviewed

Generally I'd like to play a game before I review it, but realistically this one's never getting to the table.  So here goes.

Setting

I've recently been introduced to the concept of heartbreaker RPGs.  Games that were clearly a labour of love by someone trying to improve on some aspect of their favourite game.

I suspect most people who've played World of Darkness games will at some point have had the same thought: since all these games have the same setting and system, could we combine them all together to make one great big awesome game with vampires, werewolves, mages and changelings all together.

Those who've tried it will know that the answer to this is no.  Changeling magic is embarrassingly underpowered compared to mages.  Vampires are completely incapable of getting along with werewolves.  I've played in an online chat and forum based game that wasn't a disaster, but only because the four games were ultimately kept pretty distinct with only minimal crossover.

The Everlasting is a heartbreaker intended to fix this.  While it's split into four individual games, each of them is compatible with all the others by design, while at the same time still working as a standalone.  The setting is the Secret World, parallel to the real world but full of magic and supernatural beings.  It's pretty similar to the World of Darkness, obviously, but the wider variety of player character types forces it to expand further.

The four books each focus on a specific area of the Secret World.  The Book of the Unliving has the vampires you'd expect, subdivided into different types depending on bloodline.  What's particularly interesting here is that the author has done his research, and the bloodlines are all based on different vampire myths from around the world.  It gives them a grounding in the real world that I found was missing from Vampire: The Masquerade.

As well as vampires, this book also has revenants and ghuls, again based on real world mythology, and giving a bit of variety to the creation of your undead horror-hunger character as you find yourself needing to feed on human flesh or human life force rather than blood.

The Book of the Light introduces a variety of divine character types.  You can play an angel, a minor deity called a daeva, or a grail knight, which brings in Christian theology, a whole bunch of Pagan mythology and the legends of King Arthur.  For some reason this book also includes werewolves, which stick rather closer to traditional tales than the complexity of the WoD werewolf.

The Book of the Spirits provides options for sin-eating gargoyles, Native American inspired manitou, and spirit possessed people.  The Book of the Fantastical has the faeries, dwarves and orcs you'd expect.

The meta-fiction doesn't get in the way too much, just stating that a recent event called the death-knell (which coincides with the Chernobyl incident) has released a bunch of demons onto the earth.  From there you're pretty much free to create your own story.  Or rather to...no, we'll come to that later.  For now, I'll just note that as modern fantasy settings go, this one is incredibly detailed and very well researched.  It's obvious how much love the author put into this, and it's got loads of potential for telling interesting stories.

System

For this section I'll be primarily looking at The Book of the Undead, as a lot of this is repeated pretty much verbatim in each book.

It starts out well enough.  You've got attributes and skills, which determine how many dice you have in your dice pool...

Wait.

This game doesn't have one system.  It has five.

System 1 is your standard WoD style dice pool.  Roll x dice, count successes, ones cancel out successes.  The biggest problem here is that it uses d12s.  As any RPG enthusiast will know, dice come in standard sets.  The 7 dice polyhedral set, blocks of twelve standard or thirty-six small d6s, or a set of ten d10s.  d12s just aren't something your average gamer owns in significant quantities, unless it's part of a truly massive set of dice.  I've been a gamer for about 15 years now, and I have a whole bag of d6s and d10s, a bunch of specialist dice like fate dice, but only four d12s because they're part of the polyhedral sets I own.  Sorting out dice for this game is going to mean having to buy a bunch of individual dice.

Not that this matters, though, because the system that the author actually wants you to use is card draws.  Never mind that drawing 5 cards from a deck has radically different probabilities than rolling 5d12, plus there's a whole different thing that happens if you draw a King.  Still, you probably own a standard deck of playing cards, so there's that.

There are also rules for using percentile dice, because that's totally comparable to a dice pool, and for complete freeform with no dice or cards, simply comparing your combined stat to a difficulty modifier to see how plausible something is.

And then there's tarot, which is pretty much the same as the standard card draw except you all have to have your own deck because you're going to start by drawing three of the major arcana and use them over the course of the game to steer events.  This I actually like, as it gives the potential for narratively interesting things.  The bit where it tells you the proper uses for the cards, and how players should be punished or shut down for using them in other ways, not so much.

So this is all completely bonkers.  You're being clearly pushed in the direction of card draws over dice, but at the same time it says that each player can use whichever system they prefer.  So it's entirely possible to end up with all five going on at the same table.

The game is trying to be all things to all players.  As a result it's just an incoherent mess.

But leaving that aside, we have character creation.

Here the book does something right.  A brief, step by step summary of character creation, with chapter references for the different 'races' within the game.  It's succinct, easy to follow, and should have been front and centre instead of being inexplicably relegated to a set of sidebars, but nevertheless it's excellent.

Characters are built on a point-buy system, except when they're not.  Number of points are given for each section, but there's also an option to do a card draw, do some maths with the result, and use that instead, should you want to make things considerably more difficult for yourself and run the risk of wildly imbalanced PCs, which given that the whole point of this game is to create a set of PCs that don't have the wild power imbalances of the different WoD games seems like a strange approach to take.

Card draws aside, the character creation is really focussed on creating a character who's more than just a set of stats, giving you a set of questions to consider, and a selection of example beliefs, outlooks, passions and other aspects to really flesh them out.  It fits the kind of game this is intended to be.

One thing that's pretty innovative for a game that originally came out in 1997 is the destiny and backlash points.  Destiny points work like fate points in Fate or bennies in Savage Worlds.  They can be awarded for good roleplaying, and are used to improve rolls or alter events in the PC's favour.  Backlash points are used by the GM to turn successes into failures or cause trouble, and are awarded when the PCs do evil things with magic.  There's a certain amount of accountancy required, as each PC has their own individual pool of backlash points, but it's a workable system.

Things turn wonky again when we get to the combat system.  Every character has a speed rating.  This does not determine initiative order, however, but tells you which turns within a combat round you can act upon.  A round has 10 turns, and a character with, e.g. speed 4, can act on turns 3, 5, 8 and 10.  Which could be just about bearable, if it wasn't for the fact that different actions take different numbers of turns.  Then there's opposed roles, difficulty modifiers (just in case you really need to have a sword fight while swimming) and a set of base difficulties for different weapon types, because if you thought this was going to be like WoD with a set target number to beat on your dice pool, you are sorely mistaken.

Naturally there is also a page of rules for freeform combat, plus instructions on how to make this involve far more maths than necessary.  At this point, I've had enough.

Style and Substance

Physically, The Everlasting is in standard large RPG size.  Unusually for large books, they're all paperbacks (although I understand later editions were available in hardback).  The covers have nicely detailed colour paintings.  The internal art is all black and white line art, nothing special but all perfectly servicable and quite respectable for something this old.  All except the Book of the Fantastical have nicely decorated page borders (and that book is a bit of an oddity, having basically been produced as a fan project when for some reason it wasn't going to get released).

But now we get to the actual text.  And if you thought the rules were kind of nutty, this is the point where the game goes totally off the rails.

I have a pet peeve in RPGs, and it's games that use their own terminology instead of industry standard terms.  Everyone knows that unless you're playing D&D (in which case you have the DM or dungeon master), the person running the game is the GM, or game master.  There's no need to mess with that.  And yet many games do, whether it's World of Darkness with Storyteller, Call of Cthulhu with Keeper, or Apocalypse World with MC.

And yet, while I don't like it, I can see why they did it.  WoD was trying to demonstrate that it was a different type of game to D&D, one focussed more on stories than killing monsters.  CoC, which also renamed PCs to Investigators, was trying to tell you something about what kind of character and story the game involved.  AW was trying to indicate how the GM plays a rather different role in that game to what they do in a more conventional RPG.

The Everlasting, however, has absolutely no excuse for what it does with standard RPG terminology.  The GM is now a Guide, and the PCs are Protagonists and that's only the start of it, because this game doesn't have rules, it has guidelines, it doesn't have campaigns, it has Odysseys, and lest you were thinking this is some kind of game you're playing, it's not an RPG, it's an interactive legendmaking experience.

Mind you, to know what you're in for on this front, you only have to look at the credits page.  Rather than the usual writers, artists and designers, you will instead find credits for things like Limner of Tome Cover, Illumination Administers, and Wise and Noble Oracles.

At this point you won't be surprised to find that each book contains multiple lexicons: a general one, one for the rules (sorry, guidelines), and one for each different type of character, erm, protagonist, as apparently absolutely nobody in the Secret World can just use normal words for anything.

And it spells magick with a k.

There's a few pages of fiction at the start of each book, and as game fiction goes it's OK - although somehow I thought that the one from the Book of the Unliving might actually be about unliving characters, rather than focussing mostly on daevas.

Credit where credit's due, there is a nice section about how to construct stories which translates pretty well to any RPG.  In accordance with how this book normally works, it's relegated to a sidebar.

And finally, the bit where the game, OK, legendmaking experience isn't just off the rails, it's off the cliff and into the sea.  Chapter 13: Legendmaking.

To truly do justice to how completely batshit this chapter is, I'd have to reproduce the entire thing.  As it is, I'll just share a couple of things.

Multiple pages are given over to the subject of lucid dreaming, with explanations of why you should, and instructions on how to achieve it.  All this is somehow supposed to help you...honestly I'm not sure.  I think you're supposed to do your own story in your sleep?  It doesn't seem to have any link to the rest of the book.

And then there's the ritual.  This game genuinely includes an opening and closing ceremony for game...legendmaking sessions.  Everyone has lines to say, and significantly coloured candles are to be lit.  A sample:

Guide:
Let us walk now, past the shadows of the flame that cast upon the cave's wall, beyond our mundane world.  Our protagonists shall be our representatives.  They shall symbolize a deeper truth than our everyday activities.  Let us close our eyes.
There is more to reality than what we see.  More than what we hear.  Can feel it?  Look with your imagination. Listen for the spirits in the air.

Any Single Participant:
And so it begins.

If I tried this with my regular gaming group, I think I'd be eaten along with the takeaway.

Summary

There are some great ideas in this game.  The setting is exceptionally well researched and full of potential.  But the whole thing is so bogged down by both its desperate attempts to appeal to everyone and the layers upon layers of jargon, mysticism and overall pretentiousness that the idea of actually taking it off the shelf and playing it is unthinkable.

Someone liked it, enough to get the Book of the Fantastical out there when it wasn't going to happen, plus the two add-on books that I don't own.  The setting has enough going for it that you could probably extract the character types and import them into a different game engine and end up with a half decent game.

But as it is, it will remain, forever, a heartbreaker.

Although doubtless it would have its own word for that.

Playing Delta Green

Last night I played a playtest of a new Delta Green adventure, Black Thumb.  Some thoughts:

Roll20

I've never used Roll20 before.  It seems to have the basics down - the screen where you can drop pictures, draw things, have a battle map, etc. all seems excellent, and the built in dice roller is great too.

Less great is the AV.  We all logged in with our headsets, and in every case except mine, cameras.  I could see and hear only one person.  I was not the only one having problems.  We rapidly gave up and switched to Google Hangouts for the AV, while still using Roll20 for everything else.

So my preference for online play remains Discord with a dice roller bot, unless you actually need a battle board.

Delta Green

I absolutely love Delta Green.  I grew up watching The X-Files, and while Delta Green's alien threat isn't quite the same, it brings me the same kind of joy.

I've only played it as one-offs, but would like to do a longer campaign some time.  While its stats and skills system is nothing unusual, what really interests me is the bonds, and how you can lean on them to hold off insanity.  The gradual damage you do to your relationships to try to keep your mind together is one of the most interesting parts of the game to me, and not one that you can do much with in a one-shot.

Not that that's made the one-shots any less fun.  Delta Green remains my favourite Lovecraftian horror game.  It takes the brilliant Call of Cthulhu and adds in a whole extra layer of conspiracies with a different style of characters.

The Game

There's nothing like basing your scenario on something real to make it particularly uncomfortable.  Serial killers and the Highway of Tears in Canada made for a great set-up, especially with a GM with a fascination with serial killers who knows how to make them feel authentic.

(I also have an interest in serial killers, but my reading has been almost exclusively on British ones, who tend to be a bit different to American ones.  Interesting stuff to compare.)

Not much else I can say without massive spoilers, but I did enjoy the way things built up to a climax, and the moments of humour especially earlier on before the real horror took hold.  And I particularly liked the moment when [redacted] and the answers to a bunch of questions suddenly slotted into place, but at a moment when my character was absolutely unable to deal with any of that.

I lost seventeen sanity points over the course of the adventure, which I consider a win.

A Monday night well spent, and many thanks to Bud's RPG review for taking a chance on a random Twitter person he'd never met.

A Year in Gaming

2019 was the year when I decided that one weekly game was not enough.  I joined the MK RPG club, went to three game days, played a couple of one-off games with the lovely people behind Pear of Geeks, and ran my first online game.

Games I've run this year:

• The Sprawl
• Scum and Villainy
• Liminal

Games I've played this year:

Campaigns

• Pathfinder 2e
• Coriolis
• D&D 5e
• Star Wars: Edge of the Empire
• Warhammer FRP 2e
• Night's Black Agents
• Blades in the Dark

One-offs

• Dungeon World
• Fiasco
• Ten Candles
• Trollbabe
• A Penny For My Thoughts
• Zombie World
• Delta Green
• The Shab-al-Hiri Roach
• Rapscallion
• Shadowrun
• The Code of Steam and Steel
• Blue Planet Recontact
• The Outhere
• Call of Cthulhu

And there's still a week of the year to go so I might be able to fit one more in there.

To anyone suggesting that I have no life, I would counter that I've had at least twenty-one this year, and that's not counting the eight different LARP characters.

Goals for next year:

Attend more conventions.  I'll be doing the usual Concrete Cow and Spaghetti ConJunction, and have booked for the Dudley Bug Ball and the Northampton RPG day.  Hopefully going to North Star and Owlbear as well.

Run some Delta Green.  The home group are deeply embedded in Pathfinder 2e right now, but hopefully they'll be up for a few weeks of X-files style investigation between campaigns.

Run a Liminal campaign.  There's a bunch of pre-written adventures so I've got plenty of material to get started with even before I start writing my own stuff.

Write and publish some adventures of my own.  Because I've run plenty of good games, and I should write that stuff down.  If a scenario is good, there's no reason not to run it multiple times.

Finish my cyberpunk novel.  Because the world is descending into a cyberpunk dystopia, and this might be my last chance to release it as sci-fi and not general fiction.

Ylva Talks to the Fairies, part 8: The Heartbreak of Remorhaz

It...wasn't so bad.  I sent a lightning bolt through two hobgoblins and the lesser wendigo. That and Aunold's fireball meant the others had little difficulty taking down the hobgoblins.  Even my little sprite managed to help.  We didn't get the wendigo though.  It disappeared, and Aunold said it ran away.

We're still not sure what to do with the wendigo, but we might be able to transfer some of its power into magic items.  That's what our ancestors were trying to do, but didn't do well enough.  We have to succeed where they failed.

We thought about going to Tonk's home on the Isle of Dreams in the hope of having visions, but that would mean a trip across the sea in treacherous waters, or else a walk across thin ice.  So first we decided to visit Gallia again.

There's so much going on here.  I can hardly take it all in.  There's talk that the warlord is leading an army towards Gallia, which we're sure isn't true.  Lord Vexil is getting married.  There's a plague of the undead.  And the Enchantress had to leave an important meeting because her people were being attacked by a manticore, although now we're actually at the enchantress's house, she says it's not a manticore but a remorhaz.  Both ridiculous looking creatures...yes, I know, you have the back end of a grasshopper, but at least your bum isn't on fire.

I'm sure there's something suspicious going on with the wedding.  It all seems far too complicated.  From what little we know of Lord Vexil, he doesn't seem the type to marry a commoner, so I think his bride is secretly a witch.  Yes, I am a witch.  So I should know.  And doesn't Mittens look lovely in her new hat?

We dealt with the enchantress's ghost problem, although it hurt me badly and nearly killed Turgut.  I was afraid we might have to kill him too, but we finished off the ghosts just in time.  We hoped that we might be able to deal with the remorhaz the same night, but with the state Turgut is in that's not going to happen.  We all need rest.  We'll just have to hope we can find it in the morning with enough time left over to get back into town for the wedding.

Something stinks in this town.  I wish I was back in the Greenwood, but the only way we can keep the Greenwood safe is to stop the wendigo.  And right now it seems the best place we can be is here.  Stay with me, little ones.  The ghost hurt me.  I need to remember my home.

Backstreet Magpies, part 3: Everybody

Sadly I missed episodes 5 and 6 due to larp.  We've now regained our fifth player, and things resume at a dramatic moment...

EPISODE 7

Interior: the basement of the leaky bucket. In the next room a MAGISTRATE is tied up. GUNNER is quite keen to get rid of him but the basement is already haunted by one ghost and nobody wants to make that problem any worse.

PSYCHO THERAPIST: Shut up, Clav!

PSYCHO THERAPIST and SWITCH are reminiscing about their university days and how it was totally unfair that they got thrown out. It's the start of a new term - a perfect time to steal tuition fees and blow stuff up. They could use some help getting in there though, and turn to the newly arrived gang member, PACT.

Interior: the grand hall at the university. The fresher's ball is in progress.

PACT attempts to schmooze with the vice-chancellor to get access to the area where the money is kept. It turns out the time he's spent talking to his architect friend has paid off, as he discusses architecture and the benefits of university renovations with an eloquence not often observed amongst members of the Backstreet Magpies.

Interior: the chancellor's office. PACT has managed to convince the vice-chancellor that SWITCH and GUNNER should join him. The camera lingers for a while on a door with a most complicated looking lock mechanism.

PACT makes conversation for a while, but rapidly gets tired, picks up the bottle of wine on the table and takes a swig, unexpectedly revealing the concealed gun he carries as well. There is a moment of dramatic silence as the background music shuts off. And then begins again as SWITCH pulls out a phial of glittering blue powder and blows it into the chancellor's face and GUNNER draws his own guns to aim at the vice-chancellor.

Interior: the grand hall. The commotion in the office has attracted attention from the porters. PSYCHO THERAPIST and THE NARRATOR move to intercept. It goes...poorly. One porter is disabled, but the other is not and PSYCHO THERAPIST has now hit himself in the crotch with his blackjack.

Interior: the office. PACT has convinced everyone that he is the 'gentleman thief' that people are looking for. The chancellor is happily disabled by SWITCH's trance powder. GUNNER holds the porter and vice chancellor at gunpoint while SWITCH works on the lock. It's a complicated mechanism, with traps and catches, but SWITCH takes her time and opens it without incident. Except for another interruption, this time by a maid, and the arrival of THE NARRATOR and PSYCHO THERAPIST. The office is getting quite crowded.

Through the door is a staircase leading down. Those not engaged in gun based intimidation head down to find the safe. SWITCH gets to work again, and soon has the lock open. There is some disappointment that the safe itself is too heavy to lift. They load up with the tuition fees and make their escape.

Interior: the Leaky Bucket basement. They've made a decent amount of money on the score, even if ultimately they weren't able to cause much architectural damage at the university, but recent actions have caught up with them, and by the end they're in much the same condition as they were before. PSYCHO THERAPIST has not yet recovered from the beating he took from the bluecoats, and has picked up some additional injuries along the way, including the earlier crotch injury and an ankle wound from where it was bitten by a prostitute.

SWITCH: You should get some better prostitutes.

SWITCH applies some dubious medical tinkering to PSYCHO THERAPIST, after which he feels a lot better. GUNNER pays a visit to his orphans, then with the help of THE NARRATOR and SWITCH finds an old factory that will serve as a new base for the Backstreet Magpies, the landlord having finally decided that having the gang in his basement is more trouble than it's worth.

EPISODE 8

Interior: the basement. The gang are looking for a quick score. They've discovered a secret local gang, the Church of Ecstasy. PSYCHO THERAPIST is offended that he hasn't been invited to join. He calls his demon girlfriend for directions.

Interior: the sewers. The team make their way to a particularly well scrubbed section of sewer where they find the temple, containing a bed/altar with some dubious, yet familiar stains. They've been lucky with their timing; nobody is home.

GUNNER and SWITCH search for anything sellable, avoiding going near the bed or the small demon statues around it. PSYCHO THERAPIST finds the communion wine he was looking for, and opens one bottle to take a drink. It's fairly potent stuff.

Footsteps are heard down the tunnels. It's time for a hasty departure. GUNNER lays down covering fire. SWITCH throws a smoke bomb, but unfortunately this is a particularly well ventilated bit of sewer and the smoke rapidly starts clearing.

THE NARRATOR takes the lead, dragging the spaced out PSYCHO THERAPIST with him. He finds an exit through the tunnels that avoids the pursuing figures, if not a large amount of sewage. GUNNER and SWITCH follow. PACT decides sewage is for suckers, and goes in search of a different exit.

Once cleaned up again, THE NARRATOR goes to visit his favourite prostitutes with some new novels for them to read to him. SWITCH practices moving silently, in the hope of not causing THE NARRATOR quite so much stress in the future.

They've made some cash off the communion wine and other bits stolen from the temple, but when the bluecoats show up on the doorstep, demanding to arrest one of them, they're forced to pay a hefty bribe to get them to go away. The money situation is not going well.

And here, alas, we leave the Backstreet Magpies.  I like to think they eventually got the one big score that allowed them all to retire, but given the setting...probably not.

First time running The Sprawl

Today's post was supposed to be about how my Christmas cyberpunk game went, but since due to lack of numbers/interest it didn't go, here's a previous cyberpunk game instead.

We started out with four players last week. A hunter, a reporter, a tech and an infiltrator. I sent them off on the sample mission from the book (The Kurosawa Extraction) which they carried out rather efficiently.

However, having borrowed an armoured limosine from a contact, they decided to keep it. So this week's mission began with Boone the hunter getting an email from Kendall the limo driver contact, saying that he'd been fired and the only way back into Weyland Yutani's good books was an email full of names. Or Boone and his team (now down to 3 as the reporter was off sick) could do him a little favour...

Over soy chicken substitute and worm burgers, they discussed the job with Kendall. He didn't want to work for Weyland Yutani any more anyway, but he did need a job. There was one going at Peppa Pig Pharmaceuticals, but there were a few issues, including the front runner candidate, the reference from WY which would no doubt have something about how he'd totally lost a limo, and the drug test that Kendall was definitely not going to pass.

"Why do you think you're not going to pass the drug test?"

"Why do you think?"

Boone's initial idea for dealing with the frontrunner candidate, one Radislav Braelynn, was to kill him. Kendall didn't mind what happened to Braelynn so long as he got the job, and ultimately another plan was hatched.

Some initial research revealed that while PPP had some pretty decent security, their IT was terrible, with computers running on Vista.

Loe Qi the infiltrator and Topper Harley the tech both headed into PPP's lab facility, with the help of some forged passes, claiming to be temps. Topper went to the server room to 'fix' the computers while Loe Qi headed for the labs, where he was sent to work by the supervisor technician to process 300 lab samples through the mass spectrometer.

He was able to find Braelynn's sample pretty fast, and got in contact with Topper. With the help of some YouTube tutorials they were able to figure out how to use the mass spec and run Braelynn's sample. As they suspected, he was completely clean of drugs.

Now they just needed Kendall's sample. Topper managed to figure out which lab it was in, but the nurse on duty was unconvinced by Loe Qi's requests and told him to come back with proper authorisation.

With nothing else he could do until the supervisor came back, Loe Qi got to work on the samples. By lunchtime, he'd processed all 300, and was told to take a lunch break while the supervisor got the next batch. He hung out in the cafeteria listening in on conversations for half an hour, then went back to work.

Kendall's sample was in the second batch. He'd been right to be concerned, with the test revealing a truly horrific amount of drugs for someone who was supposed to be responsible for a moving vehicle. Still, it wasn't their job to make moral choices, and soon the RFID tags on the samples had been updated so that Braelynn's clean sample now registered as belonging to Kendall.

Loe Qi got back to work running samples, while Topper dug deeper into PPP's computer systems. While getting into the security systems had been a cinch, the database was apparently rather less incompetantly programmed, and it wasn't long before he'd attracted the attention of the system's blue ICE and was kicked out of the system. Getting in for the second time was more of an effort, but at last he managed to get into the HR database and change Kendall's reference. Rather surprisingly, it was largely positive - Kendall had apparently been an excellent employee up until the limo incident. Soon the reference was suitably glowing.

Topper took one last dig into the database and managed to hit paydata - the formula for an oncology drug that had proved pretty useless for treating cancer but which did get you high.

Topper and Loe Qi left the facility (with Loe Qi leaving his paypal account details so that he could get paid for the day's work he'd done). There were no further incidents, except that the cameras that were no longer under Topper's control all seemed to be moving to look at him as he left.

Back at the bar, they met with Kendall again, who'd got the job and was willing to pay them in addition to not sending any emails. Things were looking good - although they did now owe a favour to Miss Smythe the forger, and had drawn a certain amount of heat from PPP in the process.

---

We got to use the matrix moves in this session. It went pretty well - Topper is a tech, not a hacker, so doesn't have access to all the stuff a hacker can do, but with his cyberdeck he can still get stuff done in the matrix, and it didn't drag things away from the main game the way netrunning apparently does in Cyberpunk 2020 (I've never played in a game with a GM who allowed netrunners so I've never seen this in action.)

The biggest challenge running this game is keeping the spotlight balanced across the players. The hunter had plenty to do in the legwork phase, but as should be obvious from the above, didn't get to do much in the action phase. But last week I didn't feel I involved the tech and reporter as much as the hunter and infiltrator, so a mission that called for tech skills wasn't a bad call - things just worked out with less for a hunter to do than I'd hoped.

I thought running the book mission would be a nice easy start for me. No; things got easier once I was doing my own material. To the point where I'd be up for continuing this campaign some time if I've got enough interested players. The fact I was able to run it despite having been literally offline from Thursday to Tuesday bodes well.

Backstreet Magpies, part 2: Backstreet's Back

 EPISODE 3

Interior: a private booth at the Leaky Bucket. GUNNER, THE NARRATOR and SWITCH are planning their next move. PSYCHO THERAPIST is absent.

GUNNER: We should hit the Red Sash again! Show them we mean business!

SWITCH: How about we don't kick off a gang war just yet?

Switch is keen to engage in some espionage, but ultimately the plan is not quite the daring raid she was envisioning, but a slower, more carefully thought out plan involving prolonged observation and study. Not being good at that kind of thing she make another suggestion.

Exterior: the roof of the Lamp Blacks' warehouse. Switch is attempting to open a skylight, but it turns out to be connected to a series of alarm bells. Getting it open without alerting anyone is not going to be easy.

SWITCH: Whoops.

Bells ring, and the crew run. They can stay out of sight - providing they can convince the guards that it was a false alarm.

GUNNER: I'll leave my flying cat by the skylight as a distraction.

The flying cat is very obviously a hawk. THE NARRATOR and SWITCH don't argue. It's obvious it's not the first time this has come up.

With the guards pacified, THE NARRATOR leads the other two in making their way silently into the building. SWITCH has not got any stealthier since Episode 1, and THE NARRATOR is visibly stressed from the effort of keeping her quiet.

Interior: the mezzanine. This floor is full of offices, and is extravagantly lit. There are still a lot of people around, so SWITCH causes a distraction by knocking over an oil lamp in an unoccupied office to start a small fire.

In the resulting chaos, the crew head downstairs. The main floor of the warehouse doesn't contain anything particularly interesting, unless you're unusually fond of mushrooms. They pass uninterested workers, and make their way through the doors into the second part of the warehouse. Still no sign of what they're looking for, but they do find more offices, one containing a trapdoor and a sleeping guard.

They descend silently through the trapdoor. Now they've hit paydirt. The Lamp Blacks' drug lab is down here, with both processed and unprocessed Bone Dust. There's also an alchemist, busily working.

THE NARRATOR runs round one side of him to get his attention, while SWITCH approaches from the other side and jabs a syringe full of StandStill into his neck. It's a dangerous manoeuvre​, and it's a few moments before the drug takes effect, during which time he's probably noticed that three dodgy types in masks have broken into his lab.

The crew get to work, adulterating the Bone Dust (and removing some of the pure drug so that the same amount of powder is left behind.) Not wanting the Lamp Blacks to guess what they were down there for, they also steal some blood, before making their exit via the sewers.

Interior: The Leaky Bucket. They find out where PSYCHO THERAPIST has been all this time - not on the massive bender they'd all assumed, but getting a kicking from CONSTABLE MYRA from the Bluecoats. Failing to wear a mask on the previous mission has done him no favours. Unfortunately for him, SWITCH is not interested in helping him recover, as after the stress of the score she feels a pressing need to go whoring.

GUNNER and THE NARRATOR, feeling rather more relaxed, instead go to work on the espionage project, following and studying the Lamp Blacks' leadership.

EPISODE 4

Interior: The Leaky Bucket. SWITCH, GUNNER and THE NARRATOR are joined by the landlord, MARDIN GULL. He puts a round of drinks on the table, including a bottle of his finest rum, a substance easily mistaken for drain cleaner but nevertheless appreciated by the Magpies.

He has a problem with another tavern - The Murdered Demon. Apparently they've got a slate roof and well crafted tables and chairs.

SWITCH: Well look at them with their fancy furniture!

This, along with serving decent food and drink and not having a cellar occupied by a gang of thieves, means they're taking a lot of business from the Leaky Bucket. MARDIN hands over a folded paper with instructions not to open it as it's a curse rune. The crew tactfully don't ask anything about where it came from, but agree to take it to the Murdered Demon and hide it, so that it can bring ill fortune to the owners.

Interior: The Murdered Demon. This tavern is indeed a lot nicer than the Leaky Bucket. They resist the urge to steal furniture, and instead formulate a plan to hide the rune in the pantry.

Interior: the pantry. The tavern gets regular food deliveries, and with a little bribery, SWITCH has got herself added to the delivery team. She hides the curse behind some old jars of herbs and spices. She's within moments of being caught, but manages to step away and act inconspicuous just in time.

Interior: The Leaky Bucket. The crew reassembles to share out the coin the landlord paid them, before SWITCH heads out to the brothel again and THE NARRATOR settles down with some more books. GUNNER heads out for a chat with CONSTABLE MYRA to try and reduce the amount of heat the crew have attracted.

The episode ends with the news that JEFF, unimpressed with what happened to STEVE in episode 2, has left the Magpies to join the Billhooks.

Liminal Reviewed

Given the number of games I've played, it's about time I had a go at this review business, and since I've just run my second game of Liminal that seems like a good place to start.  I'm going to look at three areas: Setting, System, and Style and Substance.

Setting

Liminal is an urban fantasy RPG whose primary influences are very obviously Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.  Look a little deeper and you'll see hints of The Dresden Files, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Alex Verus, and a bunch of other urban fantasy works from both page and screen.  Chapter 1 has a list of inspirations, including quite a few I haven't read or seen.  As well as urban fantasy, there's also a section on non-fiction and folklore.

All of this adds up to an author who loves urban fantasy even more than I do, and has really done the research.

The player characters are the liminals of the title.  The internet tells me that liminal means 'occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.'  An accurate description for characters who exist at the point where the hidden world of fairies, magicians and monsters meets the mundane world we all know.  The types of characters you can play will be familiar to anyone who's played the Dresden Files RPG - clued up mortals are joined by changelings, werewolves, wizards and dhampirs.  Where I think it scores slightly over that book is that it gives multiple suggestions for human characters and how they might fit into the hidden world.  Humans really feel like a viable character concept here, on equal grounds with the weirder stuff.

The setting is what I'd call 'generic urban fantasy' except in one key respect: it's heavily rooted in the UK, in a way you won't find in The Dresden Files.  With both key influences being set in London it's no surprise that there's a lot going on there, but the game doesn't neglect the rest of the country.  Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast don't normally get much of a look-in in either RPGs or urban fantasy, but here they are alongside the more obvious choices of London and Oxford.  And it's not only cities.  The UK is full of weird little places - Portmerion and Puzzlewood are just a couple of examples from the book.

What all this adds up to as I'm reading is a world that feels lived in.  The hidden world sitting side by side with the mundane.  This isn't Buffy, where pretty much everything takes place in one small town.  While London is big enough that you could run a full campaign there, the design here immediately makes me want to send characters travelling around the country, because there is nothing generic about the locations here.

What is rather more generic is the design of the vampires, in that you can pretty much design your own, assigning them whatever abilities and limitations you see fit.  There's a few standard models you can use, but there's nothing to stop you going full Dracula, or just making up your own.  Having run a pre-written adventure featuring vampires, I felt I could have used a little more guidance on how they were supposed to work, but for your own campaign there's nothing wrong with a bit of flexibility.

In summary:

While the urban fantasy elements are nothing you couldn't find in another game, and could sometimes benefit from being a little more specific, the way the whole thing is rooted in the UK is what makes this setting distinctive and compelling.  And with upcoming supplements based around fleshing out different parts of the country, this seems likely to only get better.

System

The entire rules section of the game takes thirteen pages.  At its heart is an uncomplicated mechanic.  2d6+skill versus a target number, normally 8.  Two dice, for me, is the right balance between overly swingy and overly normalised.  A skilled character will succeed most of the time; a character using their particular speciality is unlikely to fail.  Beat the target by 5 and you get a critical success, and the book gives examples of interesting bonuses beyond just 'you do it really well'.  The same applies to failure, which doesn't necessarily always mean not succeeding in the task if something else would be more interesting.

Players always want to assist each other with rolls, and there's a simple mechanic for both individual assistance and group tasks.

Combat is all reassuringly familiar.  Initiative rolls, attack rolls and damage rolls are all present and uncomplicated.  Beyond that, pretty much anything is handled by +2 or -2 modifiers.  Various examples are given, but ultimately it's the GM's call.

And finally, the push mechanic, which is a feature I'm seeing more and more in games recently.  You can spend will points to add successes to a roll, and best of all, there's none of that nonsense about having to apply them before you make the roll.

Character creation is a simple point buy, with separate pools for skills and traits.  An initial skill cap (plus diminishing returns from a 2-dice system) ensures players start with a reasonable range of skills.  Three pages cover the basics, with the rest of the character creation chapter giving details of the skills and traits, plus the set of character concepts mentioned above - anyone unsure about creating a character can use these concepts as templates, but full customisation is equally viable.  The only reason I'm not already coming up with character concepts is because I know I'm going to end up in the GM's chair for this one.

In summary:

A system that's familiar enough to pick up quickly and as complicated as it needs to be, while using the dice you already have.

Style and Substance

Being in possession of some bloody heavy RPG books (I'm looking at you, Pathfinder 2e) I very much appreciate a book that doesn't require additional luggage to transport around.  The print version of Liminal is a 285 page hardback in trade size rather than the 'this is literally bigger than my laptop' size of most RPGs, so will fit very nicely on the shelf next to Blades in the Dark.  At this size, reading it cover to cover is entirely realistic.

It feels well-manufactured, with a lovely matt finish on the cover and a ribbon bookmark.  The internal art is gorgeous, with full colour plates starting every chapter, and a mix of colour art, black and white pencil-style work and modified photographs illustrating the text.  This is a seriously good looking book.

I ordered the book from Modiphius, who immediately sent me a PDF download.  The quickstart guide and character sheet are also available as free downloads.  The book itself doesn't include a character sheet, but realistically, none of us are photocopying our gamebooks any more and the separate download is a sensible choice.  The PDF version is fully bookmarked and has linked page references, and the trade format means it's a good size for online reading.  I often like to have multiple pages open simultaneously so a PDF that's as easy to use as the book is a win for me.

The quickstart does exactly what it says, with enough information about the setting to get you started, and an adventure with pre-gen characters.  I've run this adventure twice now, and it's both entertaining and a good introduction to the rules.  There are two more adventures in the main book, plus several more in PDF form for very low prices.  On top of that, the book has a chapter on how to be a GM, including guidance on how to construct an adventure.  When it comes to running this game, the bar to entry is pretty low.

In summary:

A good looking book that you'll want to show off, with all the utility features it needs.

Conclusion

If you like urban fantasy, you're going to love Liminal.

Backstreet Magpies, part 1: The Iruvian Job

The same awful people you've previous seen in Noghri Death Squad and Diversity Hires take on Blades In The Dark.  For some reason I decided to write up this campaign as a script for a TV show.  Forget Peaky Blinders and get ready for the Backstreet Magpies.

Cast:
GUNNER, the Hound.  Skovlander, talks slowly and loudly due to accent.
THE NARRATOR, the Cutter.  Talks about himself in the third person as much as possible.
PSYCHO THERAPIST, the Whisper.  Dating some kind of demonic entity.
SWITCH, the Leech. Iruvian, enjoys being mysterious.

EPISODE 1

Exterior: a rooftop. It is dark. Four figures are crouched around a skylight. One speaks in a whisper.

FIGURE: I thought we were supposed to be going in through an unlocked window?

Title card: 6 hours earlier

Interior: part of a warehouse run by the Red Sash. PSYCHO THERAPIST and SWITCH are attending a private art exhibition. The former is looking dapper in tweed and a top hat while the latter wears the traditional mask and robes of an Iruvian.

SWITCH: I think you'll find these are Iruvian dildos. And I very much appreciate the opportunity to admire the historical artifacts of my culture.

PSYCHO THERAPIST is attempting to jam a window catch to enable it to be opened from the outside. Unfortunately he slips. The window remains functional, while the table he was balancing on does not. Guards appear.

PSYCHO THERAPIST: Terribly sorry, I was attempting to smoke heroin out of the window to avoid damaging the artifacts.

Somehow they get away with it.

Back on the rooftop, GUNNER has brought a set of burglary tools, which SWITCH uses to silently open the skylight. They all descend on a rope. THE NARRATOR leads them silently through the warehouse to the special exhibition, a stressful experience for him given that SWITCH is not remotely stealthy and GUNNER isn't much better. A small child is in the exhibition room, presumably as a guard, but not very effectively since they're asleep. The crew load up bags with ancient erotica and make for the exit. The guards have become aware of their presence, but Gunner throws his grappling hook at the skylight and they all climb to freedom.

Later, the crew have fenced the haul but have got word that one of their gang (STEVE) has been doing inappropriate things in public with historical dildos. They are forced to take a hit to their reputation by dealing with him rather than risk the wrath of the Red Sash. THE NARRATOR recovers from the stress of dragging these unstealthy people around by reading some penny dreadfuls.

EPISODE 2

Disappointed by the lack of violence in the dildo heist, THE NARRATOR and GUNNER plan an assault on the armoured coach that carries the money from the Red Sash's gambling dens.

Exterior: a bridge, where GUNNER and THE NARRATOR are waiting for the coach. SWITCH and PSYCHO THERAPIST wait in the shadows nearby. The coach arrives, and THE NARRATOR and GUNNER jump down onto the roof. Guns blazing, they start taking out the guards as the coach comes to a halt. PSYCHO THERAPIST joins the fight. Noticing that the coach is armoured and locked, SWITCH pulls out a grenade.

CHORUS: You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

SWITCH proceeds with precision accuracy to blow the bloody doors off. THE NARRATOR jumps inside to deal with the guards inside. GUNNER continues shooting from the roof, narrowly avoiding shooting his own feet off. PSYCHO THERAPIST and SWITCH take out the rest of the guards.

The noise they've made has attracted unwanted attention and Red Sash reinforcements are on their way. The strongboxes are heavy - too heavy to carry away, and attempting to flee with the coach isn't exactly stealthy. Fortunately, PSYCHO THERAPIST has a plan.

Title card: 2 hours earlier

PSYCHO THERAPIST is studying the area with a map of the city.

PSYCHO THERAPIST: So the bridge is here and the nearest access to the sewers is here, so if we can stop the coach here...

Fade to: the current time

The sewer grate is hauled up and the strongboxes are dropped down to where STEVE and JEFF wait with a raft to carry them away.

Interior: the basement of the Leaky Bucket that the crew calls home. They divide up the money, reserving enough to pay their tithe to the Crows. They discuss how they're going to recover from this very stressful job. THE NARRATOR has got some new books to read. GUNNER is off to spend some time with the horde of orphans he cares for. PSYCHO THERAPIST is planning some kind of weird ritual. SWITCH thinks they're all mad, and is off the the brothel for some proper stress relief.

Cut to: Upstairs in the pub, where STEVE is boasting about how the crew have taken on the Red Sash twice now and kicked their arses. The crew grab him and drag him outside where he is publicly shot. It's another hit to their reputation, but at least the Red Sash are mollified - for now.

Ylva Talks to the Fairies, part 7: Dream Guided

A slight gap as I had to miss a session.  We pick up as the PCs are heading, as so often happens in RPG towns, into the sewers.

Towns are very unhygienic.  Why would you build special tunnels just for poo?

We met some Blood Druids, hiding behind an illusionary wall.  There was nearly a fight, but they wanted to talk, so I let the fairy I summoned go without causing any dance parties, and we had a conversation instead.  They said the leaders of the Blood Druids had gone insane.  Not in a cannibalism type of way, but they were so desperate for a new king they were trying to put everyone through the ritual to determine whether someone was fit to be king.  Since that involved nailing people to trees, they'd decided they'd rather leave.

Yes, quite understandable.  And the time I've spent studying the common language has paid off.  I can mostly understand the cloth wearers when they talk now.

The Blood Druids we'd just met had been hired to smash the library windows and then set fire to it.  So we hired them not to, and then we all went to see the enchantress again.

Something strange had happened at her house.  It was all black inside.  The guard was very confused.  Something wasn't working.  I asked Mittens to fly up and have a look through the windows, but she said it was all black in there too.

Some of the others went inside, and found themselves in a huge featureless black space.  I stayed outside with Tonk.  After a while the blackness disappeared, along with our friends, and the enchantress showed up.  It was all very confusing, but she did bring them back again.

The others explained what we knew, and then we headed back out of the city, with the newly renamed Blood Bears in tow, because Tonk had had a dream about where she came from and wanted to talk to the elf in the dream.  We met him at the meeting place and learned that her dream had been true.  She had come from the Isle of Dreams on a boat.  Most of the gnomes had died, but someone had carried her through the snow until he died too.  And then the elf had found her.

It is good to know where you came from.  I feel more at peace since meeting my mother, even in all this confusion.  And we have had a lot of strange dreams recently.  I dreamed about a hobgoblin giving a very inspirational speech, and so did the others, except for Aunold.  He had a dream about hobgoblins gassing us all, so we made some masks to keep ourselves safe.

We went to the big meeting place.  Everyone was there - all the tribes, and the hobgoblins.  We showed the other Winter Bears and the people we knew in the other tribes how to make the masks.  Somehow Taint ended up offering to be nailed to a tree.  It was either that or get pushed off a mountain, I think.  His dreams have also been very strange.

The hobgoblins told us their plan, which was to make the wendigo ascend to godhood, so that it would be the gods' problem instead of ours and we could go back to warring with each other again.  We weren't completely convinced by that one.

Then a lesser wendigo arrived, and the clouds of green gas appeared, so we went and fought some trolls.  Trolls burn very easily.  Even my little sprite managed to hurt one.  He was very brave.  The lesser wendigo is waiting.  I will be brave too.

Pre-written adventures

Something I realised after the Liminal game: I don't generally run pre-written adventures.

My two Scion campaigns were entirely my own material.  My first Victoriana campaign started out with the pre-written adventure The Marylebone Mummy, but quickly moved onto my own story, and the second campaign was all original.  I ran one pre-written adventure for The Dresden Files before switching to my own stories.  I wrote my own material for Don't Rest Your Head.  I tried running The Kurosawa Extraction for The Sprawl, but struggled with it and have only run my own material since then.  My Scum and Villainy games are all my own, as is the cyberpunk Christmas adventure I'm hoping to run next week.

The only game where I've used a lot of pre-written material is Pathfinder.  I know why this is.  The games I tend to run have a pretty strong focus on story over mechanics, but Pathfinder is a crunchy game with levels and hit points and stuff, and actually requires proper encounter design.  I trust myself to pull a good story together, but have less confidence in my ability to build an encounter that's the right level of challenging and interesting.

So besides Pathfinder stuff, I've only run three pre-written adventures before, and only as an initial adventure before switching to my own material.  The same goes for Liminal.  While I'm tempted to pick up the four pre-written adventures available for it, what I'm really excited about is writing my own campaign.  And the more a game emphasises building the story around the PCs, the less likely I am to run pre-written material.

Oddly enough, with Delta Green I do actually want to run the pre-written scenarios from Nights at the Opera.  Probably because it's a horror game, and while I'm quite happy doing urban fantasy and space opera, horror is a bit outside my comfort zone.  I've played several Call of Cthulhu one-shots but I've never run a horror game and I feel like I'll do a better job if I've got some great writers to help get me started.

So given how much I enjoy writing RPG adventures, my RPG goal for next year is to publish some of my own scenarios.  Even if it's only as free downloads on here, it'll be an interesting experience trying to create something someone can run without being inside my head.

Diversity Hires, part 13: Yan Again

We last saw our heroes exploring a particularly disgusting haunted mansion.

After a cursory look at the rest of the house, which was mostly covered in shit and chaos bees, we left. Mormacar set the building on fire, and we headed for the hedge maze.

The first few layers of the maze were incinerated by Gildiril's fireballs, but after we disturbed some surprisingly belligerent flowers, Burlok took over and navigated to the centre. There we found a hideous domed fleshy mass, which opened at our approach like a giant sphincter, something none of us wanted to see.

There was no other option for getting into the plague temple though, so we followed Mormacar's example and dived in. The initial horror was followed by a significantly less awful stone staircase. We proceeded cautiously through a series of rooms, carefully avoiding touching anything (we had quite enough diseases between us already, not that any of us knew that yet) except for a crazed prisoner in a cell. We put him out of his misery/insanity without getting too close and continued on our way.

At last we reached the temple itself, where some kind of ceremony was happening involving Karl, Yan (who was somehow still not dead despite having definitely been killed before) and some other guy, presumably the high priest. There were also a bunch of mutants. We paused briefly to plan our attack and for Gildiril to magic up our weapons.

The high priest proved rather unpleasant to attack, covering Mormacar in bees when he tried it, so we focused ranged attacks on Yan while the melee fighters took out the various mutants. We’d made significant progress when two more vampires showed up. They weren’t Sophia’s friends - in fact they were from two different vampire teams. Making the fight into a sort of bizarre five-way with us, three different vampires, and the plague cultists.

By the end, the high priest was dead, Yan had done his turning into a monster thing again and left through a hole in the wall, and we were left negotiating terms with the three vampires regarding Karl. There was some kind of truce between the vampires preventing them attacking each other, but none of them were comfortable leaving Karl with any of the others. Finally it was agreed by one of the new arrivals that Karl would stay with us, providing one of the party acted as the vampire’s agent, and that Sophia left. Burlok, who was interested in vampirism but had been rejected by the sexy lesbian vampire clan for reasons, volunteered.

All three vampires departed (much to Frida’s disappointment) and we were left with Karl.

What next?

And that's where we left things, with most of the party infected with multiple diseases, and Frida...well, that's between me and the GM.  However you're supposed to play this campaign, I'm pretty sure this wasn't it.  But we had a bloody good laugh.

Crew of the Aliya, part 11: Doing Good

Tahir flew the Aliya close to the Sogoi village and made his usual perfect landing.  Gurgeh and Alqadi made themselves look as medical as possible, and accompanied by Lila and Sayah in case they needed better conversationalists, went out to meet the locals.

The smoke turned out to be from funeral pyres.  The village was suffering from blood fever, a disease that was disproportionately targetting children.  We met with one of the warriors and the shaman, who were a little suspcious of the two obvious Zenithian women, but Gurgeh and Alqadi managed to convince them we were there to help and got to work examining the sick, while Lila and Sayah worked on sampling and analysing the well water.

Tahir noticed another Zenithian in the area, and went to talk to him.  He was a priest, there as a missionary to attempt to convince the Sogoi to update their icon worship.  Tahir was rather suspicious of him, but he didn't appear to be actively hostile at this point.

Testing revealed the well water to have parasites that we definitely shouldn't be drinking, but which the locals were most likely adapted to.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  The medical team were getting more useful results, discovering an abnormality in the bone marrow that seemed to be affecting blood production.  Alqadi was taking a spiritual approach to things as well, and found out that a shadow creature similar to the one we had encountered at the towers had been in the area.  Could there be more to this disease than the merely physical?

Sayah suggested using the spirit glasses, so Lila put them on and went to take a look at things.  There was a shadow clinging to many of the sick children.  Something here was badly wrong.

Tahir went for a look at the riverside grove where the children were known to play, accompanied by Sayah in accordance with the four eyes protocol.  He used his jetpack to fly across the river, leaving Sayah behind on the other bank and was starting to take a look around when he heard a shout from behind him.  "Look out!"  He was being rapidly pursued by nahangs - large reptiles that had crawled out of the river.  Under the trees he couldn't fly straight up to escape them, but he still managed to use the jetpack to evade them and land back on the opposite bank with all his usual flair.

The final verdict regarding the disease was that the proper treatment was a combination of broad spectrum antibiotics and an exorcism.  We asked the shaman to take the lead, but also invited the Zenithian priest for some extra spiritual power, offering him the chance to endear himself to the Sogoi.  We watched the shaman as she lit a sacred brazier, and all prayed to our own icons while offering up the talismans that Tahir had made.

It was a long and grueling process.  The shadows were eventually driven out, but by the end we were all exhausted, and our two mystics, Alqadi and Lila, had been particularly drained.  As Gurgeh was attempting to do something about their nosebleeds, we got a message.  People on grav bikes were heading our way.  That had to be the Asturban guards.

At Sayah's insistence we made a hasty return to the ship, leaving the grateful Sogoi behind.  Once we were all safely aboard, Sayah was finally convinced to explain why she was so afraid of the Asturban.  She explained that years ago she'd been vetting some potential suitors her parents had found for her.  After reading their Spinder profiles and Spoogling their names she'd next turned to the Web Between the Stars, where she discovered evidence of strong connections between the noble family of one of the suitors and the Syndicate crime organisation.

So the space mafia were after her?  Sayah hadn't even considered that, although now she came to think about it it was another thing to worry about.  The problem was that she'd found that information in places that she absolutely should not have been djinned into, without even having used a VPN.  She'd packed her bags and fled, convinced the Asturban would be on her tail at any moment.  Recent events suggested they were finally starting to catch up with her.  The ship from the plateau was also heading our way.

Gurgeh turned off the ship's transponder and channeled power into the engines.  Lila, as first officer, took command, while Tahir took the helm.  When the pursuing ship failed to get a target lock on the Aliya, Gurgeh redirected power from the sensors and weapon systems into the engines, and with Tahir taking evasive maneoevres close to the planet's surface, we escaped and headed away from Kua.  We needed to refuel and resupply, and set a course back to Coriolis.

Once we were well clear of the planet and Gurgeh had turned the transponder back on, Sayah took Alqadi and Lila to the arboretum for some R&R through the medium of oud music and recreational substances.  They enjoyed the music, but both declined the offer of opor.  Gurgeh was more receptive.

Once we arrived at the station (and Sayah and Gurgeh had both come down from the opor high) we got to work, selling the supplies we'd picked up on Kua, maintaining the ship, purchasing new equipment, updating Doctor Wana, and in Sayah's case, restocking on opor.  We had a long journey ahead of us.  The Rimward Reach was waiting.

First time running Liminal

I was pretty nervous.  I'd never run this game before.  I'd never run a game online before (and it was only my second time playing an RPG online).  I'd never run for this group of players before, and one of them was the GM for one of the best games of Call of Cthulhu I've played.  The game book had only showed up a couple of days earlier so I was still effectively running off the quickstart PDF.

However...

The system underneath Liminal is easy to get to grips with.  Roll 2d6 plus skill level and any additional modifiers against a target number, normally 8.  Two dice means less swingyness than a straight roll without normalising the probability curve too much.  A PC rolling their speciality skills is going to succeed most of the time.  And in line with my previous comments on embracing failure, the game gives several options for what happens on a failure.

The only points where I felt I tripped up on the rules were criticals and combat.  With critical successes, I wasn't always sure what to tell the player on top of what I was already going to give them for a success.  With combat, I think I just need a thorough read of the rules now that I have the book.

Some of the characters' special skills and traits were a little vaguely worded.  I'm not sure if this is intentional.  On the one hand, it's nice to have clear guidance on what an ability is supposed to do.  On the other hand, having a bit of flexibility to make it work the way you want in your game isn't a bad thing.  We rolled with it.

The quickstart provides a set of four pre-gen characters and an adventure tailored to this specific party, the rather unexcitingly titled 'The Dead'.  If I offer this one at conventions I might instead go with the name of the crew, 'The Fang Gang'.  Name aside though, the adventure is well put together to make use of the characters' various skills and is very solidly grounded in modern day London, to the point that we were using the satellite images on Google Maps for locations.

(This turns out to be one of the advantages of online roleplay - being able to all have Google Maps open, plus dropping links in the chat with useful details.  For convention play I'll have to print out some of what we used in this game.)

In around two and a half hours of play we got to the halfway point in the adventure.  Once I'm more up to speed on the system and know the adventure better I think it'll go faster and I'll be able to fit it in a 3.5 hour convention slot.  I'm running it again next Sunday so I can see how it goes with a different group and a slightly more experienced GM.  And the first group will be back for part 2 at some point.

I thought I would love this game and I do.  I've previously run urban fantasy using The Dresden Files RPG, which is excellent but just a shade too complicated for my tastes.  Liminal is a slimmed down system that gets the job done, doesn't require specialist dice, and is easily adaptable to the urban fantasy setting of your choice.  Vampires, for example, are easily customisable to whichever version of vampire mythology you want (except the stupid sparkly ones, I'm glad to say).

Liminal has gone almost straight to the top of the 'games I want to run' list, with only Delta Green ahead of it.  I'll be working on a campaign soon.  If you want to try it yourself, the quickstart pdf is available free from Modiphius.  (Obviously don't read that if you're playing my game.)

As as for the online aspect...

I figured what worked for the Coriolis game would work for me, and set up a Discord server.  Googling supplied me with a link to the Sidekick bot, which easily handled all the dice rolling requirements.  Apart from a bit of panic earlier in the day when Discord itself went down, and some minor issues getting everyone connected to the voice channel it went very smoothly, and the ability for everyone to change their nicknames to their character names made it easier to keep track of what was going on.

Overall it was great, and while Discord is never going to fully replace face to face gaming for me, having it as an additional option to faciliate gaming with people I otherwise wouldn't be able meet up with is excellent.

Diversity Hires, part 12: Vampire Visit

We last saw the team dealing with a slight cultist problem. Despite the fact they had a plague bearer with them, we were victorious.

Gildiril and Frida missed the next encounter with the vampires, due to having a quick nap, but the rest of the team encountered the vampires again and put in a good word for Frida.

We needed to get to Wolfenburg, and with no river or carriage available we had to walk. The journey was proving fairly uneventful until a snotling carrying a rattly stick and a kettle jumped out at us.

The initial snotling proved easily flattenable, but his one hundred friends took a little more effort. Gildiril let loose with his magic, giving himself a nosebleed and causing unsettling cold drafts with the magical fallout as he set fire to multiple snotlings. Burlok squashed many of them with his pick while Armando skewered them on his sword. Frida largely missed with her flail, despite the target rich environment, but did annihilate them when she actually made contact.

Then one of the snotlings actually survived a hit from Mormacar, and while the others bowed down to worship him, he climbed up Mormacar and prepared to do obscene things to his face. Mormacar responded by biting the snotling's penis off.

(At this point there was a brief OC discussion about whether Mormacar could use his Mighty Blow ability on this particular attack, with the final conclusion being that Mighty Blowjob was sufficiently funny to be allowed. I swear we are all adults.)

At last the final snotling was splattered into mush, and we continued on our way, stopping off briefly for a wash in a river. Unfortunately, these lands were heavily tainted by the chaos war and the river water gave several of us green pox. Not that any of us know that yet.

We made it to Wolfenburg and headed straight for the pub as usual. We were in search of somewhere described as a 'plague temple' and the Hahn house a few miles out of town seemed like the best place to look for it. Once again the vampires were present, and Lady Sophia Margrave joined us in the pub. She mentioned something about pet humans, and one of us asked her if she'd ever have a pet halfling. She had not. Frida asked her if she'd like one.
 
Having decided that we would be visiting the Hahn house at night, the better to catch evil cultists doing their evil cult stuff, Frida invited Sophia to join us. Rather embarrassed, she explained that she would have to ask her mum.

We set out after some food, assuming that Sophia would have no trouble catching us up. An hour or so of walking (perhaps a little more at dwarf speed) brought us to the Hahn house. It was not a pretty sight. Overgrown, with clouds of flies buzzing around, but clearly recently in use given the wheel ruts leading towards the wrecked gates. The whole building seemed to be coated in some kind of oil, unpleasant gases emerged from the ground, and a feeling of general malaise seemed to hang over the whole estate.

Sophia, who'd caught up with us by this point, thought it was great.

We ignored the suspicious maze and dread gazebo and headed straight for the manor itself. We entered through the double doors, ornamented with the symbol of Handrich, god of commerce, and found ourselves in a building covered in mould and hornets. Some muddy tracks lead us into the main hall.

From there we explored the house. In the dining room was a ghost, rather unhelpfully telling us to 'kill the killer' without offering any guidance on who that might actually be. Fortunately the ghost in the wine cellar proved a little more forthcoming, and told us about his sons, one of whom had been a great disappointment. He also had a giant beetle on his back, which we disposed of in our usual style.

Upstairs we found a room with a small girl crying, a disturbed looking adventurer, a mutilated dead woman, and a horrifying mass of inchoate flesh that appeared to be made of two people fused together into a tentacled monstrosity covered in flies.

We attacked the flesh monster, which promptly responded by paralysing Frida (and incidentally giving her a case of nurglish rot). Mormacar picked her up and took her out of the fight, delivering her into the waiting arms of Sophia, while the others flattened the monster.

We'd had enough of the manor. There was no sign of any plague temple here, just a lot of goo and spoiled wine. We decide to investigate outside instead.

Will the team discover the plague temple in the hedge maze or the gazebo? How long will it take for everyone's diseases to manifest? Has Frida succumbed to Sophia's vampiric embrace? Find out next time on Diversity Hires!

Diversity Hires, part 11: River Cruise

We last saw the team boarding a river boat in the hope of making it to Ruhrhoff before the vampires.

The journey was for the most part uneventful. We passed a town consisting mostly of wineries, but inexplicably weren't able to stop. We also saw a chaos troll on the side of the river, but given that it was a mutant with only one leg it seemed unnecessarily cruel to go attacking it, and we left it hopping along. We also saw a tree with several corpses hanging from it, but decided we didn't want to get involved with whatever that was.

We did stop to deal with some mutants who had some bandits tied up and were taking them to make them touch a warpstone. Burlok had ambitions to become an outlaw chief, a profession that naturally required some outlaws to be the chief of. Accordingly we rescued the bandits from the mutants and took them with us on the boat, a process that involved Armando leaping dramatically off the boat, firing his pistols as he went, in a spectacularly display that may even have included successfully shooting someone as well as looking cool.

Eventually we ran out of river and had to continue on foot. We were very glad to find the village of Kietchdorf, which had an inn that served beer, and decided to stop off for a drink. Burlok sent his outlaws to the general store to buy a weapon for them to share. On discovering the village was afflicted by plague, Frida donned her leather doctoring outfit and went out to investigate. Having observed that the landlord and other inn dwellers seemed unaffected by the plague, she recommended to the afflicted that they should stop drinking water and drink beer instead. And also rub themselves with raw onions. Because medicine.

In the inn, we learned about a missing teenager who was wearing a family ring. It appeared he was most likely in Ruhrhoff, and we made a note to look out for him when we got there. We also paid a visit to the well, so Gildiril could check it for magic. It wasn't, but on a hunch we decided to keep watch at night and see if anything happened.

Something did indeed happen. We caught the culprit, who continued to deny having done anything despite the fact we literally saw him pouring something into the well. Frida finally got to use her manacles, but he didn't seem to mind being tortured. Eventually he was persuaded to talk by more ethical means, and we learned that it was indeed a plot by Nurgle cultists to try to convert the villagers to the ruinous powers.

Frida prescribed more beer for everyone and we continued on our way.

The town of Ruhrhoff was something of a disappointment, having been ruined at some point. We made our way to Schoenstrasse and found the house we were looking for. It was similarly a ruin, and we headed straight for the cellar. The cellar was appalling, covered in blood and bits of dried flesh, with an outline showing where the necklace had once been. Frida left immediately, feeling a little unwell. Naturally this was the moment when the cultists showed up.

Will Burlok's outlaws stay with him after having to fight Nurgle cultists? Will the team catch up with the vampires, the cult, or whoever has kidnapped/stolen who/what at this point? Find out next time on Diversity Hires!

Why not Cyberpunk 2020

I'm hoping to run my cyberpunk one-sho, The Riot Before Christmas, using my Lasers and Feelings hack rather than actual Cyberpunk 2020.  When I mentioned this on Tuesday, someone asked me why I didn't like Cyberpunk 2020 as a system.

There are a number of reasons, but the primary one is combat algebra.

When you play D&D or Pathfinder, combat is pretty simple.
Roll d20, add my attack bonus.  Did I beat the opponent's armour class?  Yes?  Then I hit.
Roll damage, let's say it's d8+2.  I rolled 5 so that's 7 damage.  The opponent takes 7 damage.

In Cyberpunk 2020 however...
Roll d10, add appropriate skill.  Did I hit?
Roll to see where I hit.
OK, the head!  Cool.  Now roll to see if it was the face, because the target is wearing a helmet but not a visor.
Not the face.  OK, now they've got skin weave as well, plus kevlar under the helmet so how much of that stacks?  Right, there's the final armour value of that location.
Roll damage.  Was I using dual purpose bullets?  (When would I ever not be using dual purpose bullets?)  Does my katana have a monoblade?  Was the target wearing metal gear?
Crank everything through the algebraic formula, taking into account multiple variables, to finally arrive at some amount of damage that seems to be entirely unconnected to the initial value.
Roll to see if they're stunned.
Roll to see if they're dead.

I'm told that Friday Night Firefight is one of the most realistic combat systems out there, accurately recreating the level of injuries and fatalities that take place in real gunfights, according to the FBI's own records.  And I'm absolutely looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077, where there's a computer that will do all the combat algebra in a matter of microseconds and I can be a transhuman badass carving people up with monobladed power wolvers without having to take a full inventory of everybody's clothing and equipment before the fight.

But when I'm at the table with my dice and character sheet, I don't want combat algebra.  I want to know if I hit, and if so, how much damage I did, and D&D had that nailed down from the start.

This is why I'm keen to see reviews of Carbon 2185.  So far all I've seen is a quick look through someone else's copy, but knowing it's based on the D&D 5e system means that it should have enough crunch to be interesting for my friends who enjoy crunch, enough balance to avoid the min-max issues that plague 2020, and still leave room to tell the kind of stories that I want from a cyberpunk game.  I hope I'm right.

Diversity Hires, part 10: Library Truce

We left our heroes fighting a particularly disgusting wizard...

Gildiril continued to stare blankly into space. Burlok concentrated on taking out Yan's henchmen. Armando fired at the vampire, but did nothing useful. Frida threw rocks ineffectually. And then Mormacar rejoined us, and things got weird...

Yan, apparently not wanting to fight a vampire any more than we did, vanished from sight. Mormacar also vanished, although in a more prosaic manner, by being blasted out of the window in a manner that would definitely have killed him had he not had the fortune to land in a tree. Yan reappeared, tripping over the edge of the curtain that he'd teleported behind, where Burlok gave him a good thumping and Frida deployed an unusually vigorous rock, leaving him on the point of death, at which point he decided to leave properly.

The vampire turned out to be slightly more reasonable about things than Yan. With the team of dodgy witch hunters approaching, a temporary truce was called. With the special books room now open (without party intervention, as for some reason we really wanted plausible deniability), she began searching for the book, along with Burlok, although his inability to read made him less than useful. Frida followed them in and found it immediately, unfortunately lacking the skills to keep this in any way a secret.

The team left, via the window. The vampire carried Frida to help break her fall. Gildiril had his happy reverie broken, and Mormacar was retrieved from the tree, now with a white streak in his hair, which Frida immediately offered to dye the colour of his choice.

We wanted to go somewhere out of the way to examine the book without interruption from witch hunters. The book shop cellar that we'd previously visited seemed like a good choice, but the moment sewers were mentioned the vampire refused, and given that she was carrying both Frida and the book it didn't seem like a good time to argue. We went to the pub instead, with Frida restyling the vampire's hair along the way.

After a few beers, we read the book. We learned that the house where we should look for the necklace was on Shoenstrasse in Ruhrhoff. We also learned that the necklace apparently didn't do what it was supposed to do, being prone to turning the subject into an enraged murder beast instead of making them love you - or at least, that's what happened when Ansel had tried it.

We made some notes to ensure we didn't forget anything important, and the vampire left with the original, much to the disappointment of Frida who'd grown quite attached in the brief time they'd spent together.

The fastest way to get to Ruhrhoff was by boat, and Frida reckoned that if vampires couldn't cross running water they might not do too well with boats, so we could potentially get a head start. We booked passage on a boat, and did some shopping in Altdorf while we still had the chance. Some of the group bought some nicer clothes. Burlok and Mormacar hired an entertainer to keep them occupied during the voyage. Frida bought a disguise kit, four pigeons and some pink hair dye.

Can the party survive all being on the same boat for so long? Will they make it to Ruhrhoff before the vampires? How fashionable will Mormacar look with a pink streak in his hair? Has Frida found love in dubious vampiric form? Find out in next week's thrilling episode of Diversity Hires!

Crew of the Aliya, part 10: Monkeying Around

As the creature dissipated in a cloud of smoke, Lila collapsed to the floor, unconscious.  While Sayah panicked unhelpfully, Gurgeh rendered medical assistance until she came round.  Utterly confused, she didn't remember anything after putting on the spirit glasses.

Attempts to patch up Alqadi from the creature's assault proved less successful.  The armour got in the way.  Instead Gurgeh retrieved his crushed drone and recruited Hamsa to help him get it up and running again.

We realised that despite the shrieks we'd heard from the monkey, there was no body.  Tahir went looking, and found it, alive and well, in the workshop.  It had got the lid off one of the cylinders of presumed grey nanite goo and was now wearing it on its head.  Gurgeh threw a piece of jerky at the monkey to see what happened.  Not much.  Tahir removed the cylinder and the monkey ran off.

There was one unopened door left, and with some work and fervent prayers, we got it open.  Inside were a number of storage containers with radiation symbols, their contents confirmed by the clicking of the environmental scanners.  One container was open and empty.

In the corner of the room was a lift shaft.  Alqadi and the archaeodrone went down first to scout, and reported that there was a reactor down there.  Gurgeh and Hamsa followed to investigate the machinery.  With some effort they got things working and lights started switching on.  It seemed a bit unstable, but Gurgeh managed to get it stabilised.

Lila and Sayah went back to the temple so Lila could meditate with the memory stone.  A series of visions flooded her mind, showing the people who had once been here going about various activities.  Following their example, Lila went back to the workshop and got to work with the CNC machine and the nanites.  An error message flashed up, mostly incomprehensible, but mentioning dwarves.  Was that a reference to the monkeys?  There was a strange buzzing in the air, but soon Lila had produced a hollow cylinder and a carved cube.

Zhar Baghram had mentioned being short of hot dust.  Sayah had assumed that meant nanites, but perhaps he was referring to the radioactive fuel?

Alqadi, now returned from the reactor room, decided it was time to finally let the monkey go.  After all, no possible harm could come from releasing a monkey with a head full of nanites onto an unsuspecting planet, could it?  He opened up the hatch and shoed it outside.

Lila and Sayah went back to the office to think about solar system calculations.  Sayah pulled a date off the computer - it was 350 years since anyone had been here.  Lila took off the spirit glasses, and started drawing on the whiteboard, running her fingers through the dirt.  Sayah recognised the state she was in as similar to when she was meditating with the stone.  Was this another memory surfacing?

Gurgeh was concerned for her health, and despite not being able to identify anything wrong with her, decided to take the stone off her.  She woke up again, confused, and tried to take the stone back, but Gurgeh stepped out of reach.

Sayah looked at Lila's drawing and recognised the solar system once again, as seen in the other caves.  Lila assured Tahir that she was fine, which was enough for him to order Gurgeh to give the stone back.  Drawing resumed.

The lights were getting brighter.  Hamsa and Alqadi went back to the reactor.  It was making odd noises, as if something wasn't quite right with the machinery - something clogged or misaligned.  They returned to the control panel to try to get some control.  Was it time to leave?  Not with Hamsa and Gurgeh's skill.  They managed to return the reactor to its original state, and while the lights went out again, all seemed quiet.

We decided to get some sleep.  While the mattresses in the bedrooms had long since disintegrated, the rooms were more comfortable and provided a little privacy - although we all still shared rooms to keep an eye on each other.  It was not a restful night.  Everyone had strange dreams.

When we awoke, we got a message from Professor Elhana.  Strange things were afoot at their dig site.  Our ship had been surrounded by Astûrban guards.

We established communication with Suleiman and started transmitting the information we'd retrieved so that he could start computing.  He assured us that the Astûrban guards had not been inside the ship.  Sayah had locked the doors really well.

What next?  There was some debate regarding whether the guards were real guards or pirates, although Sayah, who'd been getting increasingly twitchy, seemed pretty convinced they were real.  Suleiman informed us that another ship had landed nearby, on the plateau where we had originally landed.  Tahir suggested using the ship's remote control to fly the ship to the towers.  Given the alternative meant a walk through the jungle and then confronting the Astûrban guards, this suggestion got universal approval.

Sayah took control of the ship, and with Tahir's help, guided it towards them.  As it came close, Tahir used his jetpack to fly into it and drop a ladder.  Everyone climbed up, except for Lila with her still recovering arm, who got hauled up on the end of the ladder in a thoroughly undigdified fashion.

With everyone aboard, Tahir flew the ship a little closer to the towers, in the hope of knocking off more of the sandstone cladding to test his theory.  Lila and Sayah yelled abuse about this being bad archaeology until he finally decided to fly away from the towers.

Gurgeh took blood samples from everyone, concerned about potential exposure to nanites.  He got inconclusive results from Lila and himself.  Tahir, Alqadi and Hamsa were all clear.  Sayah was free of nanites, but he did find traces of illicit substances.

Tahir took the Aliya back towards the plateau, where we saw a smaller, class 2 ship.  Long range scanners detected another ship approaching at range.

Tahir was finally persuaded that the best thing we could do was leave.  But then the sensors picked up signs of combustion around the Sogoi village.  Was someone attacking the native people?  We had to rescue them!  But then Suleiman spoke up.  He'd fitted together the information we'd transmitted.  The people here had been attempting to find a good communication window to the Lady of Tears sector of space.  They were trying to make contact with something or someone on the outer rim.

Despite Sayah and Lila's enthusiasm to follow up on this, we agreed we would at least check on the natives first.  We weren't the kind of crew who would leave people to die.  But after that, the cloud awaited.