When Shadows Fall Quickstart Reviewed

When Shadows Fall is the latest quickstart I've got my hands on (via Kickstarter), so let's take a look.

Content

At 23 pages, this is a rare thing: a quickstart that can genuinely be described as quick.

Section 1 gives a couple of paragraphs on the game setting, then goes straight into the rules.  We get an introduction to character abilities, difficulty levels and how the core dice mechanic works.  There's a full page on combat, another covering physical aspects like armour, injury and fatigue (the latter of which doubles as the system's push mechanic), and a third on mental aspects.  While it's clearly stated that these are not the full rules, there's enough to run a game.

Section 2 gets further into the game's setting, with some more details of what's meant by the Shadow, and a few examples of the kind of antagonists that might be encountered in the game.  It's the briefest of introductions, which gives a good feel for the game's flavour, but not much suggestion on what a scenario might look like. Fortunately this is followed by...

Section 3 is a sample adventure.  It's a simple mission spiced up with a number of complications, which serve as a reminder that this is both a post-apoc game and a horror game.  It's not very long, and probably won't take more than a couple of hours to get through, although it's open-ended enough to be the start of something longer.

Section 4 is a set of sample characters.  These actually provide a bit more setting information - their previous occupations serve as a reminder that the game's apocalypse is a very recent event, and their backgrounds give some examples of recent events.  A slight oddity in the equipment lists is that two of the characters have daggers.  Not impossible (I mean, I own several) but an odd choice compared to a kitchen knife.  Edged weapons aside, the characters are flexible enough to be used in a wide range of scenarios, and have a good spread of abilities, with enough information to play straight off the page.  They're also diverse in gender, race and sexuality - always nice to see.

Presentation

The document is entirely monochrome, using a cloudy grey background for most pages and some black and white photography overlayed with a similar texture for section headings.  While nothing particularly spectacular, it's pretty atmospheric - looking at this I can certainly picture a world of grey concrete and overcast skies.

The PDF doesn't seem to have any bookmarks, but it does have a hyperlinked contents page, which should help reduce the amount of scrolling.  While I'm not sold on the two column layout, it's certainly readable on my desktop screen.  I'm not sure it would be good for printing, as I can't find any way of turning off the background image.  Not much of an issue at the time of writing, when coronavirus means pretty much all gaming is online, but something to consider when things get back to whatever normal turns out to be.

The character sheets are very obviously an early version - not particularly well laid out, but readable enough to be used as-is if you don't mind getting the background image when printing.  I assume the finished book will come with something prettier.

In terms of ordering, I would have liked to have the setting information before the rules, but otherwise no problems here.  If you're trying to avoid reading the adventure because you're going to be playing it, having the character sheets at the end is pretty convenient.

What can I do with it?

You can run the sample adventure.  There's enough information to run it straight off the document.  Unfortunately, it's not really long enough for a convention scenario, so if you want to use it for a convention you'll need to add some of your own material.

You can run your own game.  You can also make new characters, if the five at the end aren't enough.  While you'd have to improvise a lot with the setting, the rules given here, while not complete, are sufficient for actual play.

You can decide whether it's worth backing the kickstarter.  Unfortunately, right now it's only available to people who've backed the kickstarter, but if you're debating whether to back at digital or physical level, it'll certainly help with that.

Conclusion

Ultimately there's not enough setting information to do much more than the sample adventure, but it delivers when it comes to introducing the rules.  As someone who's not a fan of the Savage Worlds or Cortex systems, I was pretty wary of a game inspired by them, so being able to see that it differs enough from those systems to overcome my dislike was definitely useful.

The author has taken inspiration from the Liminal quickstart in putting this document together, and given that Liminal is my gold standard for quickstarts, that definitely bodes well.  While I don't think it's as good as Liminal, due to less setting information, it's achieved its goal in that between this and a sample game I've been convinced to up my kickstarter pledge to a physical book level and am looking forward to playing some more.

Last of the Sith, episode 4: Recontact

Listehol was in trouble.  Gin might not be too popular with her family right now, but she had to try to protect them, even if they would never know about it.  She wasn't sure where the ship had been borrowed from, and she didn't care.  All that mattered was that they had a ship and an astrogation droid to get them to the hyperspace beacon.

Not that that part would be easy, with a swarm of sith fighters in the way.  No way of talking their way past that.  They were all dependant on Dax, who managed to swap their ship's signature with one of the fighters and get the ship into the hangar bay undetected.  Well, except for the team of Sith troopers waiting for them.

Now she was on familiar ground.  The sight of one of those accursed protocol droids was something of a distraction, and it was all she could do to resist shooting the droid instead of the troopers, but with the rest of the team on side they were soon on their way.

No unpleasant distractions when stronger opposition appeared.  The way the sith kept fighting despite limbs flying in all directions was terrifying, but they clearly hadn't counted on an angry jawa with a vibroaxe.  More material to bring up next time the crew needed a bit of motivation.

Dax turned the computer systems off and on again, which was enough to reactivate communications and allow Master Reshi to communicate with the Jedi Council again.  And yet he didn't seem satisfied.  Or maybe she was just having trouble reading his expression.  Cybernetic eyes were confusing.

Back to Listehol.  Back to solid ground, and she'd managed to leave the protocol droid alone on the way out.  Dax was off to find his sister, and Gin wasn't about to let him wander off on his own.  Mnessas and Track-u-bot both had racing rontos, and could get to Master Reshi a lot quicker than she could.  It was sweet, the way Dax cared for his sister.  Gin hoped she appreciated it.

With the group back together, Master Reshi updated, and the invading forces kept at bay, there was nothing left to do but watch the fireworks.  And very confusing fireworks they were too.  Which ship was which?  Who was fighting who?  Who were the bad guys, anyway?  If there was one thing Gin knew about, it was deception.  Maybe it was time to start looking for the truth.

The Path to Eden, episode 2: The Early Bird

After skipping a week due to technical issues it was great to be back in the Big Smoke.  We were back up to four players, and the session began with a bit of housekeeping as we sorted out PC relationships with the new player and explained the absurdities of the Seven Sisters Ark.  We might be desperately low on food, defense and technology, but at least we can read!

The Early Bird

Chronicler Venno had no trouble assembling an audience after the cliffhanger he'd left them on last time.  The only difficulty was getting them all to be quiet as they fired question after question at him.  Only the threat of not continuing the story was enough to bring silence.

"'Hands up!'  The lead ghoul shouted at Katin, who immediately complied.  Fighting three ghouls had been bad enough, and there were definitely more than three here.  Possibly even dozens.  'Drop your weapons and come with us.  We know about your friends.'

Katin hadn't been able to stop herself glancing up at the tower, where Lenny and Zippo were now rapidly descending.  'How about if I come with you without making a fuss and I get to keep hold of my weapons?'  They did not find her argument convincing.  The same suggestion from Lenny carried more weight.  Or possibly more spikes.

The three of them were taken over to the large pools, where they saw a familiar face.  Or rather two familiar faces, as in a pair of cages they found Ren, the final missing member of the first expedition, and his dog Stimpy.

The zone ghouls demanded to know why they were there and if they were trying to steal water.  Of course they told them that they were looking for their previous group, and managed to distract them from too much further questioning by demonstrating their ability to read the signs on the walls, something the zone ghouls couldn't do.

Finally a compromise was reached.  They would be allowed to go free and given some grub and water on the condition that they dealt with the bird from the tower.  If they dealt with a previously unmentioned worm infestation, they would be allowed to return for more water.  And if they provided reading lessons, then the Seven Sisters water pipe would be connected to their supply and the Ark would have fresh water again.

Before they could do any of that though, they needed to rest.  After a night's sleep and some water and grub, they were feeling ready to take on their list of tasks.

The bird was back in the tower.  They discussed the possibility of climbing up there to attack it in its nest, but finally concluded that the risk of falling off the tower themselves was too high.  Waiting for it to leave and ambushing it when it got back was also too risky.  They were going to have to attack it on the ground.  For that they needed bait.  Maybe they could use the worms?

They went to ask the zone ghouls where the worms were, but found almost all of them engaged in some kind of ritual around the water pools.  One of them seemed to be in charge, speaking words from what must have been their sacred teachings, but learned by rote instead of from a sacred tome.  Only a few smaller ones, possibly the hobbits spoken of in our sacred tome, were able to answer questions.  The hobbits told them that the worms lived in the water and sometimes came out and snatched people away.

They conducted a thorough search of the pools, but none of them contained any worms.  Only when the ritual was complete could they ask the ghouls' leader to show them where to find them.

They were taken to a separate round pool, away from the main pool.  It was indeed full of unpleasant looking worms, with mouths full of sharp mandibles.  While they wondered what to do about them, Stimpy made the decision for them by barking angrily at the worms.

A swarm of the hideous creatures came slithering out of the pool towards them.  Lenny immediately started smashing them up with his spiked bat and Katin managed to impale a couple with her arrows, but it wasn't long before the huge bird joined the fight, snatching up clawfuls of worms.

Katin saw straight away what had to be done.  Her first arrow went wide, but the second pinned down the bird so Lenny could get in with his bat.  While the others dealt with the remnants of the worms, Lenny spat acid onto the bird, and at last it was defeated.  Lenny handed the remains over to the ghoul leader.

One item off the list, but the worm problem remained.  They'd only managed to deal with a small number.  They couldn't possibly kill them all one at a time like this.

Zippo had the answer.  After some more rest, he got to work, using scraped up bird droppings and other bits and pieces to construct an explosive.  All they needed to do was to drop it into the pool and then run away.

Katin volunteered.  Once the others had retreated to a safe distance, she dropped Zippo's bomb and ran.  Moments later there was a massive explosion with water and worms flying in all directions.  And Katin was still inside the blast radius.

The others came running, ignoring the rain of worm guts.  The blast had caused few external injuries, but had done enough damage to cause internal bleeding.  Without help she would be dead in minutes.  Lenny cradled her to hold her still while Ren got to work.  With some help from Zippo, and Stimpy ready to lick wounds, he did his best to stabilise her before she bled to death.

A few tense minutes passed, but at last they could all breath easy as Katin's blood stayed where it was supposed to be and Ren could patch up her remaining injuries.

And so the group returned victorious.  Having defeated both the bird and the worms, they were able to bring back both the previous expedition members and some fresh water, and we sent back chroniclers to teach the ghouls how to read their sacred text.  And that is the story of how fresh water was brought to the Seven Sisters."

Zenno sat back, basking in the applause.

(If you want to watch the actual play of this game, you can find it on Twitch and a few days later on YouTube.) 

Last of the Sith, episode 3: The Eye of the Womp Rat

Metal detected.
Metal detected inside a womp rat!  A womp rat!  Was there nothing those force-forsaken creatures would not eat?  Retrieving a small metal object from inside one had not been a pleasant experience.  All the same, the ring she held in her hand was worth something.  Maybe not the ten thousand credits that Dax's sister had claimed, but she reckoned she could probably sell it for half that.  After letting the buyer negotiate her down, of course.

Things were getting exciting in town, with huge crowds arriving for the upcoming pod race.  Mnessas had a great idea, and a prolonged game of charades and dirt sketches later, they'd come up with a plan.  Unofficial pit fights were always a big hit, with off-worlders wanting to show off their skill, and nobody expected a jawa like Mnessas.

This kind of thing was certainly raising her profile, and the trouble with a raised profile is things tended to get caught on it.  Like a small group of local thugs, who for some reason had chosen her as their leader.  Much to her surprise they proved to not be completely incompetant, and despite a tendency to commit crimes if not otherwise directed, she had to admit she didn't completely hate having her own gang.  If she ever needed to retrieve something from inside a womp rat again...

Odd things were happening in town though.  While the flow of information between intra-planetary sources was unaffected, nothing was getting in or out via the hyperspace satellites.  It wasn't long before word reached her that the hyperspace lane itself was closed.  For the moment, Listehol was effectively cut off from the rest of the galaxy.  And then Mnessas and Z1 Track-u-bot (freshly back from some firmware updates) brought news of a very unusual bounty.

A Jedi master was in town.  Word on the street was that Master Reshi had turned a Sith lord to the light side by winning his heart, and once eaten someone for disrespecting her.  Gin suspected that the latter must be an exaggeration.  Ewoks were quite small, after all.  It would take her a while to eat a whole person.

The bounty was for a quarter of a million credits, and was apparently being offered on Master Reshi by the Jedi Council.  Dax smelled a womp rat, and looked into it, returning with disturbing news; not only was the bounty faked, but capital ships had appeared in the area before the hyperspace lane closed.

Trouble was coming, and the Baron needed to hear about it.  There were trade deals going on for the ownership of Listehol, which was normal enough, but trade deals didn't involve capital ships.  Gin accompanied Dax to one of the local haunts where the Baron's men could be found, before rejoining Mnessas and Track-u-bot looking for Master Reshi.  How lucky that she taken the time earlier to follow the jedi and find out which part of town she was staying in.

Conversation with Master Reshi was going well until Gin heard a familiar voice - one of her gang.  Of course, Mnessas and Track-u-bot weren't the only bounty hunters to have seen that bounty, and who wouldn't want a piece of a quarter million credits?  She gave the others a quick pep talk, and prepared to not get involved in the fight.

Preparation that went straight out of the window when one of them shot Dax in the eye.  She was surprised to find herself stepping straight outside to return the favour.  Apparently all the target practice she'd been doing had paid off, as the blaster fire went straight through the bounty hunter's eye.

Master Reshi was safe for the moment, without having to reveal too much of what she was capable of.  All the same, Gin wasn't about to relax.  Something about this situation stank even worse than a womp rat.

The Good Friends of Jacks-con Elias 1

I was supposed to be LARPing.  A gothic horror LARP, where a desperate group of survivors huddle together in their small bastion of safety while a disease-ridden miasma blankets the world around them and memories of life before the plague are distant and faint.
Damn it.

Anyway, with LARP off for the foreseeable future, I signed up to play some games at The Good Friends of Jacks-con Elias, a convention based around the podcast of almost the same name.  With a couple of 'celebrity GMs' present in the form of two of the podcast's hosts, game sign-up was done via a lottery system.  I was lucky enough to get into one of the hosts' games, and several more besides.  Given the nature of the podcast, almost all the games running were horror, or at least horror-adjacent.

Game 1

I wasn't expecting to be playing in the 12 noon slot on Friday, but game slots were opening up throughout the weekend as people had to drop out, and I was there at the right moment to jump into Runoff, an Unknown Armies game in which I found myself playing an agriculture-based wizard trying very hard not to get killed with only his tabletop gaming group to help him.

The scenario was based around an entirely mundane environmental problem - a cyanobacteria bloom caused by agricultural runoff - and then blended small-town politics with some seriously dark magic. I was genuinely surprised when my character made it to the end of the story without getting killed.

Being thrown straight in at the deep end with no real idea how Unknown Armies works, I'm not sure I played the character to his full potential, but nevertheless I was playing with a supportive group and a GM who provided guidance when I was getting lost. It's a system I'd be interested in playing again.

Game 2

Knowing I'd have serious competition to get into Scott Doward's game on the Friday evening slot, I made sure I had a backup choice in my lottery selections.  I chose Exquisite Crimes Goth Detectives based almost entirely on the name and it certainly lived up to it.  If you want to play a goth detective, this is the game for you.  I was going to buy it, but when I logged into DTRPG it turned out I already have.

It's a two-page RPG, consisting of one page for the players with random tables to generate your goth detective, and one for the GM to generate an exquisite crime for them to solve.  A few dice rolls later, Morrigan Shroud, an exquisite goth able to alter her outfit at will and perform feats of mesmerism, was ready to make an entrance.  Which she did, at every possible occasion.  She may not have been the most useful member of Girk Dently's Gothic Detective Agency, but she certainly knew how to cause a distraction.

We played a scenario set in the Victorian era, starting with a murder in an absinthe bar and drawing on classic literature (including one of my all-time favourite novels, The Moonstone) for a suitably gothic adventure.  We found creative uses for our goth powers, had amusing manifestations of our goth hauntings, and overall did awesome goth crime solving.  I would watch this TV show.

Game 3

I bought Kult: Divinity Lost a while back, and have also spent far too much on their latest kickstarter, but had never actually played it before.  As a game focused on 'mature themes' it's not the easiest game to find a group for.  But at a convention full of horror fans, there were plenty of people keen to play, especially with Matt Sanderson as the GM, so I was very lucky to get in.  We were playing Matt's own scenario, Judgement, which is in the new scenario collection from the kickstarter.

Fortunately I had time to prepare for this game, as the character I'd picked was quite a challenge - an evangelical Christian.  Even with the chance to have a good read of the character in advance, it still took me a little time to get into her mindset, and it was hard to work out how credulous she should be of the weird things happening around her.  Things started to fall into place as the game went on though, and with a stellar group of players around me I think we did the story justice.

Game 4

I went straight from one game of Kult to another, this time the scenario Oakwood Heights.  This one is free to download from the Kult website, so I'd previously skimmed through it, but was confident I'd forgotten enough to still enjoy playing it.  Fortunately I was right, and the minor details that started to come back to me towards the end in no way affected the game for me.

This time I had a much easier character to play.   Without giving anything away about the scenario, none of the pre-gen characters in it are particularly nice people, and I'd picked one of the worst.  An uncomplicated kind of motivation, compared to the conflicted nature of my character in the previous game, and one I completely embraced.  It helped that the GM was doing a superb job playing the main NPC, giving us all the chance to play off this brilliant character throughout the game.

Having finally got the chance to play the game, I have absolutely no regrets about how much I've spent on Kult supplements.

Game 5

Sunday afternoon was my turn in the GM's chair, running my own Liminal scenario, Mother Said I Never Should.  I originally used this as part of my campaign at MK-RPG where it took two sessions to complete, but I was confident that with the tweaks I'd made to it that I could fit it into a 4 hour session.  And I got it pretty much spot on, ending with about 15 minutes to go before the next slot.

I don't normally write pre-gen characters for adventures.  Most of my convention games have been things like Scum & Villainy where I've had people create characters at the table, or the Liminal quickstart adventure that comes with its own pre-gens.  I could have just used the pre-gens from the core book, but for some reason I decided to make things harder for myself.

After dithering about names for a while during game prep I decided to let the players choose the names, which resulted in characters being taken in directions I didn't expect - which was naturally far more fun.  They threw several more surprises at me, meaning things went fairly differently to the previous run.  And that, of course, is the joy of RPGs in general and Liminal in particular.  I'm running this scenario again at my next convention (BurritoCon) and I can't wait to find out what's going to happen.

Post-Games

I hadn't booked any Sunday evening games, as I was expecting to be playing our Mutant Year Zero game.   With that cancelled due to technical issues, I went back to the discord server and noticed that the Bar channel appeared to be quite lively.  I dived in, and had a lovely chat with some lovely nerds that could only have been better if we could have done it in person.  A wonderful community has sprung up around this podcast and I'm very happy to be part of it.

Reflections

I really like themed conventions.  Sci-fi themed North Star was excellent.  While this one didn't have an official theme, the strong focus on horror gaming meant I got to do a lot of the kind of gaming I rarely get to enjoy.

I got to play with some amazing GMs and players from around the world.  Reports on the discord server suggest that I'm far from being alone in being thrilled with the people I got to play with.  As one of my fellow players remarked, it was also nice not being the only woman at the table for several games.

The organisers had a tough job, wrangling a pretty huge number of players.  (While I don't know the total numbers, the most popular game had 70 people wanting to play, so presumably more than that.)  The lottery system may not have been a perfect solution, but with several ridiculously over-subscribed games, I can't think of any better approach than the lottery and wait lists.

My one recommendation would be to have some gaps between the slot times - I was pretty worried about having two back-to-back games on the Saturday in case the first one overran.  Fortunately the only game I was in that overran was Friday night, where I had nothing booked in the following slot.  A half-hour or hour gap between slots would allow for a bit of overrun and also give people a chance to do things like eat dinner.  I was lucky enough to be brought dinner during Saturday's Kult game, but that still meant muting myself for a few minutes so I didn't subject everyone to crunching noises.

The organisers have rejected requests to do it all again a month from now, but I've put 1 in the title because while this was the first, I very much doubt it will be the last.

Right now I'm in that strange post-convention mood of being both very sad that it's over and absolutely buzzing about how great it was.  And there's no better sign than that.

Well, maybe the Elder Sign.

Last of the Sith, episode 2: The Better Part of Valour

Life back on Listehol had settled into some kind of routine.
Gin couldn't bring herself to go home.  The thought of facing her family after everything she'd done was too awful to contemplate.  The little jawa Mnessas had offered her space in his hut - at least she was reasonably sure that was what he was offering - and she accepted gratefully.

She needed money.  Without Mnessas's more practical skills she fell back on the one thing she was sure of.  Talking.  People in bars talked about things they needed, and things they were planning to get rid of in a hurry, and there was always a use for someone who could fascilitate transfers of property.  She wasn't the only person in the game, but a talent for discretion could get you a long way.

And now it had got her a job.

A break-in at Listehol Industries wasn't the kind of thing she'd normally involve herself in, but this job wasn't coming from the top, but from Hulo Tamii, rather lower down in the organisation.  A quiet investigation, with all property returned before the Baron who owned the place learned anything about it, was what was being asked of her.  And at the price offered, she couldn't afford to turn it down.  She made an appointment to meet her contact at the site of the break-in that evening, and then recruited a little help.

Getting info out of people was one thing.  Getting it out of machines was quite another, but if she could drag Dax away from that old wreck of a spaceship for a while he could probably handle that.  You couldn't beat the new Track-u-bot droid if you needed someone followed, and it just made sense to bring Mnessas along in case of trouble.

At the appointed time she met her team at Listehol Industries and got to work.  A fence cut with some kind of heat based cutter, a broken door, and a large piece of digging equipment missing its critical industrial gemstone.  Four corpses wearing overalls; two shot with some kind of energy weapon, one with a slug thrower, and one riveted to the wall.  All workers, not droid guards.  The guards had been elsewhere dealing with a fire started by an incendiary device on the other side of the building, clearly a ruse to draw them away.

With the evidence from the bodies she was confident that the team would get the job done, especially with Z1 Track-u-bot on the case, but Dax had managed to throw a metaphorical spanner into the works.  His sister had been given a valuable ring by her owner, Rica Obrik, and had managed to lose it.   He managed to borrow a duplicate off another of Obrik's girls, and wanted a replacement made.  Gin had done her best to negotiate with the jeweller, but ultimately couldn't convince him to drop his price.

She had more important things to worry about than the bizarre romances going on between Obrik and his girls though.  Z1 had come through on finding the thieves, and some borrowed speeder bikes would soon get them there.

Things got a bit hairy in those caves - meaning, of course, that she could barely keep the rippling of her fur in check as she found herself far closer to the action that she'd intended.  Only Z1's quick application of a stim-pack, almost at the cost of his own structural integrity, had saved her.  But ultimately they succeeded, and returned to town with the stolen gem, evidence of the culprit's deaths, and a number of other useful bits and pieces about which nobody needed to be asking too many questions.

The job was done.  Quietly, discreetly, and fast.  The money was enough that she could stop imposing on Mnessas and get her own place with a slightly higher ceiling.  And if Dax chose to spend all of his share on bailing out his sister, that was his choice.

Of course, that meant there was still a very valuable ring out there somewhere.  Perhaps it was time to take up a new hobby as a metal detectorist?

Discreetly, of course.

The Path to Eden, episode 1: A Canoe Over Troubled Water

Mutant: Year Zero kicked off properly last night, and while we were down a player, we still had a great time.

It's fascinating to me how the Year Zero Engine gets modified for every new game Fria Ligan produces, and getting to see how it started out has been pretty exciting.  This is probably the most complicated implementation I've seen, requiring three different colours of dice, and it's the only one where I'd actually be tempted to buy the official dice for tabletop play.  Fortunately there are some decent character sheets and macros available on Roll20 as this would be a struggle with a more basic dice roller app.

There's a lot of moving parts, and we're taking a little time to get used to it all, but the parts all work, and add to the overall experience.  It feels like the effort is paying off.  Post-apoc is a new genre for me, but I'm starting to get a feel for the overall desperation of the setting just from the way the rules work.

So here's how things went down...

A Canoe Over Troubled Water

Education and culture was valued highly in the Seven Sisters Ark.  Many of the inhabitants could read a little, even if it was only the words 'Seven Sisters' written on the walls, and everyone enjoyed listening to stories.  The audience that Chronicler Venno had gathered today were not high status enough in the Ark to hear the readings of the Sacred Tomes, but they were all ready to hear one of his tales from outside.

"It was when the water was running out.  There were rumours of a place out in the zone where we would be able to find all the clean water we needed, enough to support the Ark for years.  An expedition went out in search of it.  When they didn't come back, a second group went out to look for them.

There were three of them in the second group.  Stalker Katin, to guide them through the zone, Gearhead Zippo, to examine the machinery they hoped to find, and Enforcer Lenny, to keep the other two safe.  Lenny also carried Zippo's artefact; a vessel that would carry them across the lake that lay between them and the mysterious Pure Plant.  Lenny was sceptical of the craft's ability to keep them all afloat.  Zippo gave Lenny permission to punch him if it failed.  Katin assured everyone that the lake was not deep, and instructed them that in the event of them falling in, they should run for the shore.

As they took to the water, Lenny was reminded of the journey of Frodo and Sam from one of the Sacred Tomes.  A short paddle later (with Lenny sitting at one end of the canoe and Katin and Zippo attempting to balance his weight at the other) they pulled up at the jetty and started to look around.  Katin headed into a small building, while Lenny and Zippo waited outside.  A slight mist hung over the lake, but even through that they could make out movement in the distance.  They were not alone on this island.

Katin returned from scouting.  The building was empty, apart from a bit of old furniture and a lot of bird droppings, but she had found two things - a baseball bat and some muddy footprints.

They picked up the trail, Katin's sense of smell taking over once footprints failed, and made their way to a larger building.  Signs of a fight weren't hard to find.  Katin silently pointed out the blood splatters to the others.  A blocked door lay ahead of them, and they prepared their weapons...

And then realised that whoever was behind it was probably hiding from something dangerous outside, rather than the other way around.  Katin knocked on the door.  After introducing themselves as members of the Seven Sisters Ark, the barricaded door was opened and they were allowed inside.

Three survivors were sheltering in the building: Enforcer Nelma, Gearhead Lambda and Grunt Eriel.  Katin hugged Eriel and asked what was going on, and Nelma explained.  There were dangers on the island.  Zone ghouls.  A number of them.  A number that was definitely 'some', probably 'quite a few', possibly 'dozens' and maybe even 'at least fifty'.  However many of them there were though, it was enough to cause trouble.  But they weren't the only danger.

A tall tower stood nearby, and in the top nested a huge bird.  It had captured their stalker and taken him to its nest.  He was probably dead, and almost as bad, all his gear was up there too.

There was only one thing for it.  They were going to have to get up that tower to the nest and retrieve the stalker's gear.  Fortunately Lenny was familiar with the passages in one of the Sacred Tomes about the proper health and safety precautions to take when climbing.  Another of the Sacred Tomes mentioned how eagles sometimes rescued people from the tops of towers rather than taking them there, but perhaps the bird had not read the text?

Katin scouted outside, and spotted three zone ghouls that had wandered into the area.  They could try to sneak past them to the tower, but with Lenny on side, a more direct approach seemed viable.  It would also reduce the number of zone ghouls they would have to deal with later.

Katin passed the baseball bat she'd found to Zippo, then dived into some solid cover.  While she traded arrows for slingshot pebbles with one ghoul, Zippo threw himself at another.  Fortunately he had Lenny for backup.

The fight was gruelling, and by the time all three zone ghouls had been put down (and additionally smashed by Lenny to make sure they stayed down) the three of them were injured and exhausted.  They debated resting for a while, but that would risk more zone ghouls showing up and then they'd be in an even worse position.  They had to go now.

Lenny began the climb up the rickety ladder, closely followed by Zippo.  Katin found her tired arms refused to support her, and waited at the bottom.

Armed with the knowledge of the Sacred Health and Safety Manual, Lenny and Zippo reached the top of the tower and began searching.  Many treasures revealed themselves: a gun, bullets, water, and two exciting artefacts - some kind of hand written book and a device with a pointing needle.  They loaded up and prepared to leave before the flappy bird returned.

Meanwhile, at the base of the tower, Katin heard footsteps.  More zone ghouls - far more than she could take on by herself.  And then one spoke."

There was a collective sigh and some disgruntled mumbling from the audience when they realised Zenno had finished.  Zenno just smiled.  They could wait until next time.

(Thanks to some internet woes, not all of this game is on Twitch but it should appear more or less intact on YouTube if you want to watch it later.)

Liminal Continues

With rather less technical mishap this time, we dived back into Liminal for the end of Paul's new scenario, The Oak and the Amulet.

With a firm goal in mind, specifically all getting out of the current situation alive and in one piece, we then proceeded to have the most spectacularly awful group athletics roll I've ever seen.  100% failure and 50% fumbles.  Having rolled only 1 under the target number myself, I was invited to spend a will point to make it a success, but under the circumstances I didn't think it was worth it.  The idea of a group roll is that if someone in the group is really good and gets a critical success, it cancels out someone else's failure.  In this case, that didn't help.

Ultimately, despite a rather undignified exit from Ilkley Moor (baht'at, of course) we did solve the case and do some good.  And we had so much fun, we're hoping Paul will return with another scenario for us to try out.  Being an urban fantasy enthusiast, I've hardly ever had the chance to play a game like this because it's always been me in the GM's chair.  Getting to play this game is brilliant.  I hoped I might get to play it at a convention some time, but so far the only person offering it at the conventions I've signed up to has been me.

Rather to my surprise, I'm really enjoying the streaming.  Part of it is getting to play with some lovely people.  Part of it is being able to go and look at the previous game's stream to remind myself what happened - part of the reason I do game write-ups on this blog is because I can't remember what happens from one week to the next.  I've managed to find a level of makeup that I'm happy with, and I think my microphone use is improving.  The only thing I'm considering changing is the camera.  Currently I'm using the DroidCamX app and have my camera in a holder above the monitor.  I'd like to have it set so it's showing my face a bit straighter on rather than giving a good view of the top of my head, but I'm not sure if that can be achieved with the current setup.  And I don't know if having a webcam on top of the monitor would improve that.  Maybe I just need to make my chair taller.

Streaming adventures continue tomorrow as we dive properly into Mutant Year Zero.  Tune in at 7pm on Twitch or catch up later on YouTube where you can also catch up on the story so far.

Last of the Sith, Episode 1: Life Finds A Way

We're starting a new Star Wars campaign, set around halfway between the events of Knights of the Old Republic and the movies, which has the great advantage (to me) that I know about as much about the setting as the rest of my group, despite not having assimilated the entire sum of Star Wars extended universe material into my brain the way some of my group seem to have done.

System is Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars, funky dice and all, and we're playing on the Foundry VTT.  I'm pretty impressed so far - the character sheets look good and link up well with the dice roller.  I don't know if this is official or fan-made, but it's well worth a look if you're playing FFG Star Wars, as I actually prefer it to rolling real dice.  As a player it's easy to access through a browser window, and it took us only a few minutes to get the hang of the tools.  I'm not sure what it's like at the GM end, but the GM hasn't rage-quit so I assume it's not too bad.  Actual character creation was done with the OggDude character generator, which remains vastly superior to anything I've seen on a VTT, with the information then manually copied to the character sheets.

I'm playing Gin Daalaro, a Bothan Smuggler / Charmer.  We're using the obligation system rather than morality (far more fun), so my character has a backstory full of angst and betrayal that definitely won't cause any trouble down the line...

Life Finds A Way

Gin didn't think that life could get any worse, but apparently life finds a way.

The transport ship that was supposed to take her back to Listehol had been suddenly wrenched out of hyperspace and boarded by Sith forces.  Some of the other passengers had made a valiant attempt to fight them off but it was all for nothing.  She was captured and sedated, and when she woke up she was on a shuttle, in restraints and stripped of almost all her possessions.  Destined for slavery, no doubt.

She glanced blearily at her fellow prisoners.  That hulking dashade was headed for the fighting pits, no doubt.  What use the Sith had for the rest of them she could only guess.  She mentally ran through a variety of dreadful fates, wondering if this was as bad as life could get.

And that's when the shuttle caught fire.

Life finds a way.

The tumbling ship had loosened her restraints, and if the oversized human beside her could wriggle out of them, so could she.  The tiny jawa on the other side had no trouble.  He'd been given additional restraints, and seeing him use them to decapitate a droid explained why someone had felt they were necessary.

They soon had the upper hand, but what use was that in a crashing ship?  "If anyone knows how to fly, this would be a great time to be a hero," she called out, and it seemed the human was listening.  There was some saying about good landings and walking away, and by that standard it was a good landing for her and her fellow prisoners.  Except that walking away was going to have to wait, as the tracker droid was now surveying the area and apparently everything was coming up spiders.

"Guys, it would be really embarrassing to survive a ship crash, only to get eaten by spiders," she called out as the droid hauled her onto the roof of the ship, out of reach of the spiders.  She'd grabbed a small pistol off one of the dead guards when leaving the ship, and was able to take out one of the spiders with it, but when everyone else's weapons started to fail she handed over the battery pack to the jawa.

Even with the spider threat temporarily dealt with, it was clear they couldn't stay put.  The droid lead them through the jungle until they reached a small village of small furry sentients.  The human and droid hung back, along with the still unconscious dashade.  She stepped forwards, along with the jawa, and spoke with the village elder.  She could only pick out a few words of his speech, but she quickly noticed his fur rippling in a way that she was a lot closer to understanding.

She negotiated medical care for the group in exchange for finding them electric lights from the crashed shuttle, and instructions on how to charge them from the ship's power cores.  With everyone feeling better and with their weapons recharged, it was time to move on.

The furry sentients gave them directions to the nearby Sith base, while warning them of a large spiky monster in the jungle.  Scouting the base revealed some fairly useless fighter ships initially, but further observation saw the arrival of a ship with hyperdrive engines.  It didn't look like much, and it would be a tight fit, but it would be enough to get them off this planet and back to Listehol.

The jawa came up with a plan, and explained it via a series of pictures of spiders in cages.  The human mentioned how useful a protocol droid would be, and she felt her heart break all over again.  But there was no time for tears.  Using the jawa's plan to lure the spiky monster to the base meant they had a window of opportunity while most of the Sith were distracted.  A small number of guards remained on the far side of the base, but between them they were quickly taken out.

The ship wasn't going to let itself be stolen without a fight, and she soon found herself head down with the human, breaking the security systems to get the engines to fire up while the droid and jawa made sure they weren't interrupted.

And then they were airborne, with the human in the pilot's seat while the rest of them squeezed in wherever they could around the still unconscious dashade.

When she'd boarded that transport ship a few days earlier, she'd felt like her life could never get any better.

But life finds a way.