RPGaDay: Past, Present or Future? When is your favourite game set?

The present.

OK, I'll elaborate.

My favourite genre, as I've mentioned before, is urban fantasy, which almost always takes place in the present day.  Changeling, Scion, The Dresden Files and eventually my current favourite Liminal, they've all been modern day settings.  And I think it works best in the modern day because it presents the fantastical world of fairies/gods/magic/etc. as a contrast to the mundane.  And nothing is as mundane to a present day player as the world of the present day.

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

Vaesen is a lovely game, and hinges on the clash between the modernisation of the 19th century and the traditions and folk tales of the past.  But the setting itself is already a little fantastical to me here in the 21st century, with radically different technology, social attitudes, and even little things like food and clothes.  The mundane is something that's gradually making its way into the world of Vaesen, via industrialisation, rather than something that's already there.

There's something of an overlap between urban fantasy and horror, but again my favourite is the present day.  Kult is my favourite horror game, and while you can do period settings for Kult games and I've played a few like that, I find what really brings the horror is the intrusion of the supernatural aspects of the Kult setting into what should be the reassuring familiarity of our real world.  The same goes for Call of Cthulhu, where I like the classic 1920s setting but much prefer the games I've played set in the modern day.  To me, the sanity blasting effects of contact with the mythos are far more terrifying juxtaposed against our own normality.

One argument that seems to finally be being put to rest is the idea that technology in general and mobile phones in particular make it difficult or even impossible to do horror. Sure, there's scenarios set in earlier periods where the ability to instantly contact people at a distance would be an issue, but there's more to horror than not having a phone.  Playing in the modern day provides the opportunity for technology to be part of the horror.  Japan had that figured out back in the 90s.  I can't think of any more iconic scene from Japanese horror than Sadako crawling out of the TV screen in Ring.

Modern day settings also avoid a few minor issues with historical settings, such as accidental anachronisms due to different levels of historical knowledge, or having to work around historical gender roles.  Similarly they avoid the zeerust that can occur in futuristic settings, Cyberpunk 2020 being the most obvious example (although sometimes the zeerust is part of the charm).  And I still like playing these settings - but my love of urban fantasy and horror means the modern day is my favourite setting.

RPGaDay: When did you start Gamemastering?

After playing rather sporadically with the friends who got me into RPGs, due to them living in a different town, I finally joined a regular D&D group in 2007.  These guys were long term RPG nerds, and some of them had been playing since the early 1980s.  Despite that, they weren't 100% committed to D&D.  They'd played other games from time to time, including Cyberpunk 2020 and various Warhammer RPGs, although they all agreed they were never playing Shadowrun again after what happened last time.  D&D was definitely the main game though.  I had no thoughts of GMing, not with this highly experienced group who'd been playing D&D since childhood.

Then in April 2007, White Wolf released Scion.

I got invited to play with the long distance group.  Having been thoroughly immersed in Greek mythology from an early age, I created Kallista Malekides, a scion of Apollo, skilled in both medicine and athletics.  I played a game or two.  But then it dawned on me.  I knew a lot about Greek mythology, and had a solid grasp of Norse as well.  The rest I could (and did) pick up easily enough from library books.

A few weeks of reading later, I decided I was ready.  The D&D campaign came to an end, as things normally did with that GM, with everyone dead after accidentally destroying the moon, and I asked if people would like to give this new game a go.  They said yes.

So I ran my first campaign.  I drew heavily on my knowledge of mythology to send them on a globetrotting campaign, encountering different challenges themed to whatever country they were in.  It introduced a few themes that I've come back to on future campaigns, in particular the importance of having proper toilet facilities in your secret underground lair.  After all, if you're building a temple to the Aztec goddess of filth and childbirth, she is absolutely going to want a few loos.

It took me a few weeks to really get into the swing of things, and my descriptions were pretty lacklustre to begin with, but it was all a learning experience.  In particular I learned a lot about the unpredictability of player actions, when one of them suddenly decided a certain NPC must be some massive monster and attacked him, only to kill him in one hit because he was actually just a Daily Mail reader in a Darth Vader voice changer helmet.  And I learned how to incorporate things like that into the plot, where the players now had to do a mission to deal with the fallout of killing the aforementioned Daily Mail reader, which had upset some powerful entities.

And that was how I got started. I ran a second Scion campaign before we collectively decided we couldn't deal with the janky system any more and moved onto other things.  (I'm told the second edition has overhauled it extensively and is probably a lot better.)  I was now part of the group's GM rotation, with a particular focus on urban fantasy games, and went on to run campaigns of Victoriana and The Dresden Files.

That's never changed, really.  While I occasionally branch out into GMing sci-fi and other genres, and will play pretty much anything, urban fantasy is where I started and what I always go back to.

RPGaDay: How would you get more people playing RPGs?

That's a tough one.  But I think it needs a two-part approach.

1. Raise awareness of RPGs as a fun and popular hobby.
2. Raise awareness of RPGs that aren't D&D.

For part 1 I think Stranger Things is probably doing something, especially in season 4 where we see it played by characters like Eddie who's significantly older than Mike and friends, and also portraying it as just as exciting and memorable as a sporting event.  The upcoming D&D movie could also be a positive, if it can refrain from being terrible, but really just more media with RPGs shown as a normal thing that normal people do for fun.  Unfortunately it's not always that way.  What I've seen of The Big Bang Theory seems to portray playing D&D as more of a thing weird nerds do than normal people.

And yes, the hobby does have a substantial number of weird nerds, but it's also played by actual cool people like Vin Diesel and Tom Morello, so yes, more celebrities talking about their hobby could help overcome the nerd stigma attached to this game.

Part 2 means addressing the sticky point that there are a lot of people out there who might love RPGs but don't like fantasy, and because D&D is the big name, don't realise that there are other options.  So that's what I'm doing to get more people playing RPGs: attempting to promote my own game that contains no fantasy, sci-fi or horror elements and attempts to emulate an extremely popular genre.  I've heard from several married gamers who've managed to convince their wives to give RPGs a go with Matrons of Mystery.

And the bit I can't do, but I hope others are doing, is teaching kids how to play.  I'd like to think that kids aren't encumbered by a bunch of stereotypes and misconceptions about who RPGs are for, and encouraging young people to play not just D&D but games like Doctor Who means that when my generation are all in nursing homes, there'll be people out there willing to smuggle us in some dice and character sheets.

RPGaDay: Where would you host a first game?

I'm writing this in mid-2022 and covid infections are soaring.  Online.  I'm hosting online.  Discord and Roll20.

But there will come a time when regular in-person games become a thing again.  So what you're really looking for in a game venue is a decent table and not too much noise.  I'd probably go to the Olde England, a local pub that does real ales and nice coffee, doesn't play music, and has some decent size tables.  Unlike game shops, which will usually, and quite reasonably, charge you for table space if you're not also buying a bunch of collectible card game boosters or Warhammer minis, the pub was always happy to have us there as we bought lots of drinks, and that's the point of a pub.

The pub's also a nice neutral sort of venue.  Game shops are kind of weird to walk into for the first time, especially as a woman (many of us have stories) but a pub is a pub and a normal place to be walking into.  There's other people around.  You can even go and check the place out in advance if you want to.

My first game of D&D involved walking into a stranger's house full of strange men, and that's not something I'd generally advise people to do, and definitely wasn't something I was comfortable with.  While someone's house is generally my preferred venue for an RPG, a first game for potentially new players is something I would definitely take to the pub.

RPGaDAY: When were you first introduced to RPGs?

A more complicated question than it sounds.

As a kid I watched the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon on TV, but didn't have much concept of the game on which it was based.

I think the games first entered my consciousness while I was at university.  Someone brought a copy of Call of Cthulhu to a Discworld event.  Discworld got its own game.  But I never played anything.

While doing my postgrad course I went into an antiques shop, and found an old D&D box set.

Moldvay Basic Set (1981) #DnD #TTRPG pic.twitter.com/BZ5qbLMucO

— D&D Daily (@dnd__daily) May 9, 2022

 I enjoyed reading it, and thought one day I'd like to play.  But I never played it.

After I graduated I moved in with my boyfriend, who loaned me his copy of Planescape: Torment, from which I developed a deep hatred of THAC0.  I followed that up with Neverwinter Nights.

Then finally I got into actual RPGs, starting with a play-by-forum game that basically went nowhere, and then an invitation to a MUSH (Multi User Shared Hallucination), which differed from play-by-forum in that it happened live so you didn't end up waiting days for a response.  But I'd still not played any actual tabletop RPG.

And then the owners of the MUSH invited me to visit them and play a game.

We played Everway.  Character creation was low on numbers and high on concept.  I came up with Cinder, a fairytale princess who'd decided at the last minute she didn't want to marry the prince and live happily ever after, but to live her own life instead.  And equipped with nothing but a pair of magic running shoes and a winning smile, she set out in search of adventure.

I paid many more visits to my friends, who introduced me to many more games after that.  But it was that one game of Everway that started me on the path that's lead me here.

RPGaDAY: What is a great introductory RPG?

To be a great introductory RPG, I think a game needs two things:

1. Rules that are easy to learn.
2. A genre or setting that the new player is familiar with.

Which means that great introductory RPGs very much depend on the the new player.

With that in mind, I do think that Matrons of Mystery is a potentially great introductory RPG, both for its uncomplicated rules and its cosy mystery genre.

Romance is consistently at number one in genre fiction, but mystery comes in second, with cosy mysteries being a popular subgenre.  Agatha Christie is of course the best-selling fiction writer of all time, with over two billion sales.  M C Beaton, known as the queen of cosy crime, sold more than twenty-one million books and was one of the most borrowed authors from UK libraries.  If someone reads, there's a very high chance they read mystery.

And then there's television.  Midsomer Murders first aired in 1997 and twenty-two series later, it's still going.  Maybe it's not as popular now as when it first aired to 13.5 million viewers, but shows don't run for twenty-five years unless someone's watching.

Then there's the somewhat participatory nature of mystery fiction, whether on the page or the screen.  There's the invitation to the reader or viewer to look for clues, consider the evidence, and attempt to solve the crime for themself.

Furthermore, murder mystery evenings are a popular activity in Britain.  A lot of pubs and hotels put them on as an event with a meal, and there are box sets you can pick up to play them in your own home.  A lot of people who've never played an RPG in their life may well have played a murder mystery evening and be open to the idea of a mystery game.

In short, cosy mysteries are:

• Hugely popular in Britain
• Something that encourages participation
• Something people may have already participated in

So I'd like to think that if you want to introduce someone to RPGs and you know they're an avid fan of cosy mysteries, Matrons of Mystery might just be the way to lure them in.  It's a murder mystery evening.  Just like on TV.  You know how to play.

RPGaDAY: Who would you like to introduce to RPGs?

Theatre people.

I guess I should elaborate on that a bit.

By theatre people I largely mean actors, although of course that includes voice actors, comedians and other performers.  And I want to introduce them to RPGs partly because many of them seem to really enjoy it when they try it, and partly because there's a lot I can learn from them.

Gamers who are also theatre people tend to be good at bits of roleplay gaming that I, an extremely shy person, am not so hot on.  Character voices, emotion, accents, that kind of thing.  These things aren't necessary to be a good gamer.  They're pretty insignificant compared to things like treating your fellow players with respect and engaging with the plot.  But they are things that can add a bit of extra fun to a game, and seeing the way theatre people play has helped me feel more comfortable with adding more character expression to both my PCs and NPCs.

Occasional conventions aside, the vast majority of my gaming has been done with one small group in my home town.  It's only in the last few years, initially at the MK-RPG club and then over lockdown in the Good Friends of Jackson Elias discord that my horizons have been broadened and I've had the opportunity to play with a much wider range of people.  And that's been a constant process of learning, as every person has brought something new to the table.

So right now it's theatre people who have the most to teach me, but really I don't know who I'd like to introduce to RPGs.  Because none of us will know what they're bringing to the hobby until they get here.

On a slightly more serious note, I'd also like to introduce more women to RPGs.  Because even though the gender balance is improving, it's still sufficiently rare for me to sit down at a table where the number of women equals or exceeds the number of men for it to be a notable experience.  I'd like to see that change.  I think it will.  And I hope that by being visibly female and a gamer, I can help that happen.

RPGaDay: Simplicity

I could talk about simplicity in game design, but everyone else has already done that.  Instead...

Simplicity!

As an occasional amateur costume maker with absolutely no skill in pattern drafting, I'm a big fan of Simplicity costume patterns.  They do a number of licensed patterns for Disney and DC, but they also do some things that are legally distinct while at the same time hauntingly familiar...

Nothing familiar about these dresses...

A completely original elf.

So obviously these are fantastic for LARP.  My elf's party dress is modified from one of Simplicity's totally original medieval dresses that definitely aren't a rip-off of Arwen's dresses in LOTR.  My husband's vampire character wears a coat that's totally just a coat and not a John Constantine copy. 

Pictured: a man who is definitely not John Constantine.

Simplicity (and other commercial patterns like McCalls and Butterick) are a great way for amateur sewists to make something cool and unique for their character.  You can copy the original colours and details to make a cosplay, but you can also mix it up with different colours and combinations to make your character your own.  This applies just as well to tabletop games.  If you're stuck for a character idea, taking an existing character and adding your own twist is a great way to start.

They also demonstrate how things can overlap.  Elements from pattern 1010 are used to create dresses inspired by both Tauriel from the Hobbit movies and Daenerys Targaryen.  Where things overlap well, games can do the same.

Scum & Villainy is a game I love to run Firefly in.  While it does have its own setting, what its writers also did is note the overlap between three different settings: Firefly, Star Wars Rebels and Cowboy Bebop.  And the end result is a game that you can use to run any of those settings.

There's a Terminator RPG on its way.  If you read my quickstart review you'll know I didn't think much of the system, but I still backed the book.  Because just like I use the official Serenity RPG for useful material for running my Scum & Villainy Firefly games, I'm hoping I'll be able to use it to run Terminator games using my favourite dark scifi RPG, Alien.

RPGaDay: Foundation

Most years on the run up to Christmas I see an image on facebook about how when Rihanna releases a lipstick everyone rushes out to buy it but won't buy from their friends' small businesses.  This annoys me for three reasons.

First, this is inevitably about some multi level marketing business, not an actual small business.  Second, I do support my friends' small businesses.  I've bought a bunch of mini painting stuff from friends with gaming shops, and skincare from a friend with her own hand made cosmetics business.  And third, bringing things to the subject at hand, the reason people rushed out to by Rihanna's Fenty Beauty range isn't just because it's got her name on it.  It's because of this.

I'm not a habitual make-up wearer, but for the occasions when I do want to wear it, I'm lucky enough to be a colour where pretty much every high street brand makes a foundation that's more or less OK.  A lot of people aren't, especially people of colour.  Rihanna's aim with Fenty was to cater to everyone, regardless of skintone, and that's why people rushed out to buy it.  She made makeup accessible to everyone.

So what's the connection with RPGs?

First of all it's a reminder of the benefits of diversity - not just in the players, but in the available games.  The foundation I use, available in six shades of beige, is like the D&D 5e of makeup: ideal for some, good enough for others, but far from a universal solution.  Different people have different wants and needs, and having a bunch of different games out there means more people get to have fun.

One of the most baffling things I've seen on Twitter is people complaining when a new game isn't exactly what they want to play.  Fate of Cthulhu not having a sanity mechanic springs to mind; there were people who seemed actively offended that it did something different to Call of Cthulhu.  Personally I enjoy sanity mechanics so wasn't particularly interested in Fate of Cthulhu, but one game not having them doesn't stop me playing the many others that do.  There are people who don't like sanity mechanics and this game is for them.  Complaining about it would be like complaining that Fenty shade #430 doesn't match my skin.  Gaming should for everybody, but individual games don't have to be.

(I say baffling.  Of course I know where it comes from.  When you're used to being the target audience and everything catering to your tastes, it's easy to conclude that something that doesn't is bad, rather than just not made for you.  See also: the entire history of video games.)

And second, if you're appearing in videos or live streams, even if you've never worn makeup before you might want to wear some for the camera.  Bald headed men, in particular, have mentioned filming difficulties when the lights reflect off the shiny bits of their scalps.  A bit of matt foundation and/or powder will sort that right out.  And if you're having trouble finding a suitable shade to match your skin, maybe try Fenty?

RPGaDay: Theme

Matrons of Mystery has instructions on how to write an adventure.  The first one I tried to write was a bit of a struggle.  When I saw the adventure one of my playtesters had written, I realised that that was because I'd failed to follow my own instructions.  I tried it again, and this time got it right.

Step one is to pick a theme.  Everything else flows from there.  So I've been wondering how much this applies to my scenario writing in general.

Most of my Liminal scenarios come from some specific piece of geography or history and thinking about how that might interact with the Hidden World and what problems it could cause.  But at some point, a theme will become apparent that helps put the details together.  Sometimes the theme is that piece of history or geography; sometimes it's something related, even if the link is a bit tenuous.

Alien as a game has pretty strong themes of its own, and making use of them has proved useful in writing my scenarios.  Both my scenarios have started in the same way: by looking up some obscure bit of nature, and figuring out how Weyland Yutani could attempt to monitise it, and how that could go wrong.  Keeping my scenarios tied into this theme of rampant capitalism is how I try to keep the games feeling like Alien without necessarily having to include xenomorphs - backed up, of course, by an excellent system.

I would really like to write adventures for Kult.  Given that starting with a theme and building on seems to be an effective way for me to work, it's about time I gave it a go.  Matrons of Mystery is pretty much the opposite of Kult, but the lessons I've learned from it can still be put into practice.

RPGaDay: Write

One reason I GM as well as play is because I love to write.

I didn't love writing too much as a small child, because it took so long compared to reading.  Writing was something that actively got in the way of reading because after I'd read something, I was then made to write about it before I was allowed to do more reading.

Five year old me would be quite surprised by today me.

Long before I'd even heard of RPGs, I was writing fiction.  Mostly short stories; I like being able to tell a whole narrative in a compact form.  (I like reading them too; some of the largest books on my shelves are anthologies of horror, thriller and crime short stories.)  With most TTRPG adventures being a similar length to a short story, one might wonder if writing the one prepares you well for the other? 

And the answer is...kind of.

While it might not appear that way on the surface, writing adventures for TTRPGs is a very different business to writing fiction.  When I write fiction, I'm writing a story where I control all the characters and every aspect of the narrative.  Writing an adventure, I control very little.  So what I write isn't a story; it's a situation.  In my previous post that's what I was doing.  The situation may incorporate a story, in this case Rihanna's bloody revenge against a scheming accountant, but that's not the story of the adventure.  It's just the events that have lead to the current situation of a house where a horrific murder took place and a group of people who want to pay it a visit.  The story is going to depend on what they do when they get there.

I've definitely played in games where it felt like the GM had written a story rather than a situation.  I still enjoyed them, since they were good stories, but part of the fun of TTPRGs is the feeling of being part of the story, and of having an active effect on how things go.

Coming up with the situation is close to the best part of adventure writing for me, because it flows smoothly, similar to fiction writing.  The bit I have to do next for that Kult adventure where I start thinking about scenes and events is going to take much more work.  But the best part of all is when I get to a point in adventure where the only thing I have to write is 'See what happens.'

RPGaDay: Trap

With hindsight, it may have been a mistake to attempt RPGaDay in a month where I also had a three day convention to participate in.  Anyway, trap.

The obvious thing is to talk about traps in D&D like games but since a) I rarely run that kind of game and b) rarely use traps when I do, let's go for a different kind of trap.  The musical kind.

Rihanna ventured into the trap genre with the controversial Bitch Better Have My Money, accompanied by this bloody violence and nudity filled video.  Music videos are getting increasingly sophisticated, often being short films in their own right.  This video, seven minutes long, starring Mads Mikkelson, and with its own IMDB page, is a fine example.  Movies and TV shows often inspire RPGs, so why not music videos?  Trap in particular, with its overall dark tone, feels like a good fit for horror.

The game system that springs to mind for this video is Kult.  The story is a revenge fantasy.  Rihanna has been cheated by her accountant, and reponds by kidnapping and tormenting his wife, before returning to his home to murder him and get what she's owed.  The influence of Yesod, archon of the principle of avarice, is easy to see here in the actions of the accountant.  Not just cheating Rihanna, but every aspect of  his life is an act of worship to Yesod.  But his actions are having an influence on Rihanna as well, driving her towards Inferno.  Powerlessness and rage have left her susceptible to the will of Samael, death angel of the principle of vengeance.  Ultimately his influence has guided her to carry out the events of the video.

So with the higher powers defined, at least one threat immediately appears.  The accountant's house, site of the murder, now lingering on the borders of Inferno.  A strong draw for a PC party made up of people who met on a true crime forum.  Their actions could free the place from Samael's influence (albeit at the risk of placing it into the hands of Yesod) or drag both it and themselves into Inferno for good.

Music videos aren't something I initially thought of as RPG inspiration, but I've got a pretty good basis for a scenario there, and one I'll probably expand on further.  If trap isn't your thing, there's a whole world of music out there.

RPGaDay: Move

Today I will do the obvious thing and talk about PBTA, not least because that's what I'm using for my own Matrons of Mystery game.  But first, Pathfinder 2e.

One thing I'm enjoying in PF2 is that my character has a list of skills, and then there's a list of actions you can take using those skills.  The actions mean there's more of a focus on the actual thing you're doing, not just which skill you're using to achieve it.  It's an extra level of crunch to think about, but if you're not into crunch then boy have you picked the wrong game with PF2.

The basic moves in most PBTA games seem to be more or less equivalent to actions.  They're not the only things you can do in the game, but they're the things that require interaction with the rules, usually in the form of a dice roll.  I wonder if calling them 'actions' instead would cut down on the misunderstandings about this aspect of the game?  Probably not.

The water gets muddied by other moves though, particularly the stuff that shows up on playbooks.  My Killer in The Sprawl, for example, had a move that let her use her Synth attribute instead of Meat for violence.  And that doesn't feel like a move.  The Soldier has a move that lets them pick more of the favourable outcomes when negotiating taking a job.  That doesn't feel like a move either; it's making them better at a basic move.

So while I very much like moves as a concept, I also very much dislike when they subsume a bunch of different concepts that would be called different things in most other games.  But of course, the great thing about writing your own game is that you can do it your own way.  Matrons of Mystery has a set of moves, PBTA style with different success levels, but for other aspects of the game I took inspiration from the approaches in Fate Accelerated Edition and the occupation die in Cthulhu Dark.

This wandered a bit.  I guess what I'm saying here is that while jargon is annoying and unhelpful, moves (or actions, or whatever else you choose to call them) are a useful and fun way of thinking about a game system.

RPGaDay: Supplement

I don't buy a lot of supplements, but I'm more likely to buy them for games I GM than games I mostly play.  Pax Londinium, a supplement for Liminal, was an excellent buy.

As a GM, what I really want from a supplement is ideas, and this book has a ton of them.  It introduces new factions to the game, like the Hidden, inspired by Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, and Queen Rat and her horde of wererats (possibly also partly inspired by Neverwhere).  It also expands considerably on existing factions, going into a lot more detail about the Mercury Collegium and providing a number of NPCs that can be introduced into your campaigns.  And it sets up a number of potential conflicts between all these factions that could easily provide the basis for an adventure.

It includes both broad and narrow features.  There's a whole section on what London is as a city, what makes it distinctive, what themes you can use to make your adventure rooted in London.  And then there's things like an occult bookshop that's actually totally mundane.  I've used that shop for adventures unrelated to London, putting their name on a carrier bag to tip off the players that an NPC knows nothing of the hidden world despite his pile of 'magic' books.

And there is something for the players in there: a new school of magic.  But crucially it's one that fits in with the existing character options.  An interesting choice that gives you some different abilties but which doesn't overshadow anything else.

In short, if you're a GM running Liminal, and are thinking of using London in your campaign, this book is a must-buy.  And it's available in hardback or PDF.

Take a look inside with Bud's RPG Review:

RPGaDay: Safety

When it comes to safety tools, the x card and lines and veils both have their place, but I'm personally a huge fan of the content warning.  Being able to have a hard stop at any time if something comes up is good; avoiding it coming up via a pre-game discussion is better.  But particularly for convention one-shots where tailoring content to the players is rarely possible, nothing beats being able to self-select out of a game before it even happens.

Back in January I was pitching games for A Weekend With Good Friends and had the following conversation (names removed):
Me: Please can substance abuse and cannibalism be added to the content warnings for The Toxic Jewel in slot 6?
P1: now you're just marketing your scenario...
P2: I shall now view any scenario that doesn't include cannibalism and substance abuse as a failure

I've occasionally heard edgelord types complaining that content warnings 'spoil the surprise'.  I've never found this to be the case.  While the players in The Toxic Jewel all know that cannibalism is something that's in the scenario, what they don't know is who, when or where, so it's just as much of a surprise as if I hadn't mentioned it.  And the added bonus for me is that I can be reasonably confident that the people playing are going to enjoy this part of the scenario as the content warning meant they knew what to expect.

Because content warnings aren't only a safety tool.  They're also an enjoyability tool.  Content warnings let me avoid games that would be unsafe for me, but also let me avoid games that wouldn't be fun.  The teen romance aspects of Monsterhearts, the...everything of World of Darkness - knowing what's involved means that that seat can go to someone who'll have a good time with that content, and that's better for everyone.

Content warnings aren't a perfect solution.  After all, people are complex, and may not even be aware that a certain type of content is a problem for them until it actually comes up in game, which is why the x card is still important.  It puts me in mind of rollercoasters.  On the ground under a rollercoaster when it's in motion is an incredibly dangerous place to be, and YouTube has plenty of horror stories about what happens when the trains hit people.  Rollercoasters have safety features like emergency braking to stop the trains if there's someone under the track.  But they also have tall fences to stop people getting close to the track when the ride is active.  The x-card is the emergency brake, while the content warning is the fence.  You need both, but using the latter significantly reduces how often you're going to need the former.

This is an extremely imperfect analogy, and a better one might be having the track clearly visible so coaster wusses like me don't accidentally end up on something with inversions, but my point is, content warnings are a win-win.

RPGaDay: Flood

The obvious thing to do here is talk about Things from the Flood.  Shame I've never played it.

Mindstar Rising is a sci-fi novel by Peter F. Hamilton, and unlike a lot of Hamilton's books it's possible to lift it using only one hand.  It has two sequels of similarly reasonable size, so if you're interested in getting into Hamilton without first taking up weightlifting, it's a good starting point.

The setting of Mindstar Rising is England in the near future, where global warming has had a significant impact on the climate and landscape.  Specifically, significant areas of the country have been flooded by rising sea levels, and Peterborough is now a seaside town.  What's left of the country is suffering the aftermath of collapsing financial markets and ten years living under a tyrannical communist government.

This book came out in 1993.  Aside from the fact it's more likely to be fascists than communists at this point, this book just gets more and more plausible.

The titular Mindstars were a unit of soldiers bioengineered to give them psychic abilities.  The lead character, with powers of intuition and detecting emotions, now works as a psychic detective, and the first book is about him working for a corporation beset by industrial saboteurs.  So obviously I think this would be an absolutely brilliant RPG setting.  The theme of investigation gives a solid framework to build a campaign around, and the dystopian setting feels simultaneously fantastic and close to home (plus it's always nice to have a modern day game set somewhere outside the US).

So the question is, which system to run it with?  It's a sci-fi setting, but one that doesn't fit into a neat category.  It's pretty close to cyberpunk, but not in a way that works with classic cyberpunk RPGs - hacking, implants, etc. aren't what it's about.  It's certainly not space opera or space western, the sub-genres where psychic powers do often show up.  Not a spaceship in sight.

A generic system like Fate or Savage Worlds could probably handle it well, but the game I'd look at first is probably Judge Dredd.  While it's a very different setting in many ways, it's got the key elements of investigation, a dystopian future, and psychic powers, so should have everything required to create a Mindstar character.  However, since I haven't read any of the four Judge Dredd RPGs, I don't know how tied into their setting they are.  So rather than risk having to do a lot of conversion, perhaps a generic system is the way to go?  Simon Burley's The Code of the Spacelanes works with Judge Dredd, so if I ever decide to run a Mindstar one-shot and haven't picked up a more suitable system by then, that's likely to be where I start.

RPGaDay: Think

A big part of writing RPG adventures for me is reading stuff until ideas fall out, but I really shouldn't neglect the part that is just pure thinking.

In the before times, my primary thinking time was my commute.  A good hour and a half each day when I couldn't actually do anything except listen to podcasts, and if I wasn't in the mood for a podcast, the time was often spent just thinking.

Queues were another great thinking opportunity.  My Alien adventure, The Toxic Jewel, was largely written while queuing at Taco Bell.  A Christmas adventure that I really should finish before next Christmas, was also largely developed in the queue at Taco Bell.

Here in the end times, where I no longer commute, nor queue for fast food, it's getting increasingly difficult to find thinking time.  My brain has not been informed of this, however, and sometimes insists on doing its thing anyway, meaning that I've frequently found myself trying to get to sleep, but unable to do so because my brain insists on running through plot points for an RPG scenario.

So what do I think?  I think I made an excellent choice buying my husband a lot of fancy coffee for his birthday.

RPGaDay: Wilderness

Bit of a weird one this.  As fellow Brits have rightfully pointed out, Britain doesn't exactly have much in the way of wilderness besides some bits of Scotland.  Last year I wrote about forests, and how the forests I'm familiar with are sites of industry and tourism, not wilderness.

Actual wilderness requires looking further afield, and by chance I recently learned about the Nahanni Valley, in Canada's North West Territories.

It's spectacular. And terrifying.

And by 'terrifying' I'm not talking about the normal reasons I'd find a place that's accessible only by boat or flying boat to be a scary thought...

In 1904, two brothers named Willie and Frank McLeod headed into Nahanni Valley in search of gold.  They found some, but due to boat trouble, didn't manage to bring much back.  The following year they headed back - and weren't seen again until 1908 when their brother Charlie went looking for them and found their two headless corpses.

Nine years later in 1917, Martin Jorgensen went prospecting in Nahanni Valley.  He sent word back that he had struck it rich, but when people went to look for him they found his hut burned to the ground and his headless corpse.

In 1945, the body of an unnamed miner from Ontario was found in his sleeping bag without, as you might have guessed by now, his head.

Not every death in Nahanni Valley ended in a headless corpse.  Others included burning to death, flash freezing, and just plain disappearing, along with tales of mysterious white figures roaming the area, and a woman seemingly possessed as she ran naked across the landscape.  All the same, the place did pick up a number of nicknames including 'Headless Valley'.

Realistically, it probably all comes down to some combination of murder and local wildlife.  All the same, mysterious white fairies with a penchant for decapitating anyone who tries to steal their gold is one hell of an adventure hook. 

RPGaDay: Trust

If you want to see trust in the RPG sphere, take a look at Kickstarter.  It's also a great place to see trust being broken.

When Free League put up a kickstarter, and it's for something I want, there's no hesitation.  It's a pre-order, effectively.  It'll show up, when it says it will.  The only exception has been the Tales from the Loop board game, but given that board games have had even bigger pandemic-related manufacture and distribution problems than RPGs, I'm not surprised it's been pushed back, and it's still on track to show up this year.

But then there's the companies who went too far on the stretch goals.  John Harper springs to mind; the actual Blades in the Dark book was delivered within a reasonable timeframe, as far as I know, but the stretch goals are another matter.  Scum and Villainy is sitting on my bookshelf right now, but the one I was really excited about, Null Vector?  Well, I've given up being excited about it.  I'll buy it, if and when it ever appears, but I certainly won't be trusting anyone - especially not John Harper - to deliver a list of stretch goals like that again.

Zinequest also affected my level of trust in kickstarters.  I back three zines during Zinequest 2020.

• The Black Pyramid, an adventure for Mothership.  The PDF was in my inbox on 9th April, barely a month from the end of the Kickstarter, and physical copies were going out not long afterwards.
  
• Mycelium and Other Horrors, a set of incursions for Trophy Dark.  This took literally a year to deliver the PDF; 16th February, the anniversary of it funding.  Physical copies took even longer.  The nine months they'd allowed for delays was nowhere near enough.
• Space Seeds, a set of encounter ideas for sci-fi games.  The PDF was due in June 2020.  In May, a few pages were released.  I'm still waiting for the rest.

These three radically different experiences have made me a lot more cautious in my Zinequest 2021.  I backed...checks notes...no zines.

And then there's Leviathan Rising, which ran a kickstarter in 2019, and have only just sent out the books.  Not that that's made anyone happy.

What I've learned from this is that trust on Kickstarter is a fragile thing and easily broken.  I plan to run a kickstarter myself for my game Matrons of Mystery, so I need to make sure I hold onto that trust.  Accordingly, when the kickstarter launches it will be after I've finished writing the book, and I'll have a basic PDF copy ready to send out immediately, even if it is the unedited version.  And if there are any stretch goals, it'll be for things like art, not physical things like dice.  I've got to give people every reason to believe they can trust me to deliver.  And then prove them right.

RPGaDay: Medium

While there's nothing inherently wrong with the size chart from D&D/Pathfinder, it can make it rather hard to talk about things.  Particularly things that are medium.

Here, for example, is Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, a.k.a. Thor, a.k.a. World's Strongest Man 2018, although probably better known in nerd circles for playing Ser Gregor Clegane, The Mountain that Rides, in Game of Thrones.  Standing at 6'9" and weighing 397–441 lb, I would not hesitate to describe him as huge.

But by D&D standards, Thor here isn't huge.  He's not even large.  Despite being fifteen inches taller than me and three times my weight, he is still firmly in the category of 'medium'.  In fact, if you dig up the old height and weight charts from D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder 1, 'medium' also encompasses his co-star Peter Dinklage at 4'5" and 110lb.  'Medium' is doing a lot of work here.

So how exactly do you indicate to players that they've encountered something of Thor-like proportions?  It's been an issue in our games.

"You open the door to see a huge werewolf staring back at you."

"Holy shit!  How did it get through this narrow doorway?  How is it fitting under that low ceiling?  Is that room it's in even fifteen foot across?"

So the solution we've come up with, when we need to describe a medium creature of exceptional size, is to describe them as 'really medium'.  Sure, maybe being attacked by a really medium werewolf doesn't have quite the same impact, but it's certainly made things a lot clearer.