The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part XVIII: Electric Bastionland

Electric Bastionland - Deeper into the Odd

$19 in PDF on itch.io 

$60 in print+PDF on Exalted Funeral

I actually found Electric Bastionland before I snagged Into the Odd. Chronologically this is a sequel to the latter, with Electric Bastionland taking place roughly a century or so after Into the Odd, moving the technomantic steampunk era of Bastion to the electric age. Despite the book's large size, it's probably only maybe twice the word count of its prequel; the game is heavy on illustrative art, a black-and-white minimalist design that is at once evocative and well-done, without being too abstract. The tonal consistency of the tome is welcome.  

The System: It's the same core mechanical design as Into the Odd, which is a system that appears now in quite a few other games. This system is defined over six pages which includes to pages of examples. For a refresher, you roll three stats (strength, dexterity and charisma in this case) on 3D6, then hit protection (HP) on a D6, some cash and equipment in hand, and then a failed career (about which more in a moment). When you roll to succeed (a save), its roll low with modifiers. When you fight, you go right to rolling damage and applying against hit protection. When that is gone, it goes to stats and bad things are immediately likely to happen if you fail a save. Very basic system, the same one in many other zine rpgs (Into the Odd, Liminal Horror, Old Skull Publishing's trilogy of RPGs, etc.)

The main variation in the character generation is rolling a failed career. This is similar to a profession or background as in other variations on the system, but your choice is based on looking at a chart and comparing your highest stat to your lowest stat....so yeah, players who want to choose what they play are out of luck here without spending a nontrivial time rolling up new stats to get just what they want. (Yeah, I have a player like that lol). In addition to your low and high stats determining failed career, your D6 in cash and your HP roll determine other details.

The failed careers are just that: something your PC is or did and of course wasn't so good at for various reasons. Each entry provides a visual reference and four distinct items to jot down on your character sheet, one for special equipment, your debt source, and then two variable details based on your starting cash and hit points. It's very important to note that most of the book is failed careers: 220 pages, to be exact! In a sense, much as with Troika! before, Electric Bastionland informs you of a lot of its flavor through this inexact process. Unlike Troika!, EB provides an additional 95 pages of guidance and setting material for the GM (called the conductor here)....so it's not all purely in descriptions. Also, unlike the other game, EB's careers have a greater level of consistency for the setting; in other words, there is most definitely a setting here, and it has its own internal logic to follow.

Some examples of EB characters for you to consider, noting that these are 100% random, and names are from the suggested choices by career:

#1 Pearl; Starting Stats: STR 10 DEX 13 CHA 11 HP 4 Cash 2 - Rural Tax Collector. Has a taxman's pistol. What did the tax office provide you with? An ornate baton. What do you hate most about Bastion? Bureaucracy - you have a portable shredder.

#2 Bushka; STR 10 DEX 9 CHA 8 HP 3 Cash 2 - Professional Gambler, who owns a slug gun and a pack of gum. What's Your Game? - one-car bluff, take a pocket full of tiny mirrors that stick to any surface. What did you win? - Anti-Matter Key, when placed in a keyhole it utterly annihilates the door and itself.

#3 Risper; STR 14 DEX 14 CHA 6 HP 4 Cash 6 - Urbalist (you're both into herbs and urban stuff, I think), a saber and three doses of hallucinogenic herbs. What do the walls tell you when you're herbed up? You can put some fragments of the wall into your ear to know a trivial fact about a being (if any) that calls this place home. What do the floors tell you when you're herbed up? You spit on the floor to learn the name of the person who thinks they are in charge.

So yeah....that's a modest sample of what characters can look like in EB. One item I left out is the debt. Each group starts 10K in debt to some group of individual. Each career has a source of this debt, but the determining factor as to who that debt belongs to is based on who the youngest player at the table is. 

There are a lot of interesting failed careers, and seeing any of them will be down to the fickle nature of the dice. The careers strongly suggest that Electric Bastionland is very much a cyberpunk game, just with less cyber (sometimes) and more of that electric part. It's what a steampunk world might one day look like with the onward march of science. Plus...as we shall discuss below, this is the direct sequel to Into the Odd, which means there's a lot more going on in this strange world to inform it, too.

The Setting: Bastion is the future of the same city from Into the Odd, now much advanced and with at least a century (or more) since its predecessor. Where Into the Odd evoked a quaint sense of victorianism and rugged exploration of an unknown world and the underground, the Bastion of EB is a dystopian, sprawling nightmare and the book conveys this by primarily giving tools and instructions on how to design your own city. It covers Bastion, the world outside called the Deep Country, the world below (underground) and then the mystery of the Living Stars. 

Before getting to the setting I should mention that the conductor's section provides a complete set of rules to build a scenario, including a macguffin for the PCs to pursue and a range of  ideas on setting up encounters, events, threats and choices for the group to make. It's only a few pages but its some incredibly brilliant stuff, worth reading for anyone who would like to see an elegant process outlined for a GM to use for any system, not just this one.

Similar to the Conductor section, each region overview provides a range of charts, ideas and concept points to use in building your own take on Bastion, the Deep Country and the Underground. Notably absent from this book is something from Into the Odd, which includes a bewildering array of artifacts you can find; here it is mainly a discussion on setting the treasure for your group with a chart of six examples.

The Inhabitants of Bastionland comprise entries on the people of Bastion, things called Mockeries (animated stuff given life by the technomancy of the city), Machines, which manage the underground and may or may not be the instigators behind the ever changing city, then the Aliens, which appear to visit with enough frequency not to be seen as extremely unusual, even though they are. Finally there are the Monstrosities, creatures made not born and ultimately too destructive or threatening not to have to resort to lethal force to exterminate. The rules for each group here is primarily providing guidance on making your own unique types of each group, rather than giving you a concrete stat block.  

The last 40 or so pages of the book are the Oddendum, which contain optional rules, a lot of discussion by the designer Chris Mcdowall on how he runs games and feels they should be run, and a number of sections on example content for specific campaign ideas. This is really interesting reading because Chris has some interesting takes on game design and running games. His one page on Big Impact is especially interesting reading, as it argues that allowing PCs to make a save against a risky effect simply diminishes the impact of the effect. I can't argue with this logic; I just ran my Saturday night D&D game and yeah, it's easy to see monsters once known for being tough opponents cave like a house of cards in the 5th edition system due to the fact that saves are mainly an efficient way for PCs to (usually) sidestep consequence. In a nutshell, the Big Impact argument as framed here is that saves get in the way of the interesting stuff, and the interesting stuff is where consequences and decisions come from. So don't have a "save to resist becoming a fish-man" effect...just have the PC turn in to a fish-man. The logic extends to other player-driven actions, as well: its about impact and consequence. I can see some counterpoints to it, but I can deeply empathize with the core conceit, which is that sometimes bad things really should happen, because the results make the game more interesting.

The Supplements: I don't know of any supplements for it, but EB is part of a subgenre of games powered by the same system, so the cross-compatibility exists. It is by far the most robust of the games within this niche, so consider that. You won't run EB right away, for example; it's going to require a bit of time to sit down and assimilate all this info and design a scenario.  There is also a blog out there (located here) which you may be able to scour for more ideas and content.

Who is this for? Electric Bastionland is an interesting experiment and pushes the indie/zine rpg format into a more mainstream product, at least on the surface. Underneath it is loaded with interesting ideas and useful tools which, even if they don't directly translate to the game or genre you want to use them for, will still inspire you toward thinking about new ways to approach setting and scenario design. I think this game could prove to be fun to play for a lengthy campaign or three with the right group, and a GM who could craft the sometimes specific and other times vague elements of Electric Bastionland into a more concrete setting of their own. It definitely provides plenty of basis for inspiration, and I suspect that playing in the campaign of the author is probably an amazing experience. So yeah....get this if you want to see something that manages to be neat looking, artsy, functional and innovative all at the same time, even if you only use it as a springboard for inspiration in your own preferred setting or ruleset.   

The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part V: Into the Odd

Into the Odd (Free League Publishing)

$39.99 (give or take for the SK to USD exchange rate) print plus PDF

Before reviewing Into the Odd, it is worth mentioning the history of this particular game system as I have stitched it together. Into the Odd's mechanics appear in the original game, and the one we are looking at is the revised version published through Free League Publishing. Into the Odd is a sort of prequel to another, larger game with the same core rules called Electric Bastionland, which takes place in the future of Into the Odd. In addition to these two titles, we see the mechanics pop up in a trilogy of games by Old Skull Publishing, including Screams Amongst the Stars, The Dead are Coming, and Running out of Time. Into the Odd's core mechanics are also the driving ruleset of Liminal Horror from Exalted Funeral, which is where I first ran in to it. I was initially thinking to myself of Liminal Horror "these are some bold choices for a horror game, I like it," but when I got Into the Odd and discovered that it stems from this more pragmatic decaying arcane steampunk universe, I found it utterly fascinating, for the intent and feel of the rules unique in how it likely drives player engagement, as you shall see below.

What it is: Into the Odd  is a game about an old world, with an ill-defined past that is either forgotten or best not spoken of; things called the arcana, curious devices and relics of either a forgotten age or another realm, are sought after by the adventurers of this world, which centers on one specific corner: the city of Bastion and its environs. Bastion runs on a steampunk pseudo/quasi-Victorian age of unusual technology with a bit of magic fused in, creating a not-quite-19th century and not-quite-D&D universe feel to the setting. It is its own beast. The adventurers of this world the power of these mysterious arcana, and find them in expeditions. When not on expeditions they build up their power base and reputation within the city. All of this is handled in about 57 pages total including the referee section, and the next 100 pages are setting, scenario locations, and an appendix of interesting optional rules and nonhuman player character options. 

An important thing to note about Into the Odd is its layout: this is a game system and scenario set which is deeply entrenched in a modern aesthetic using the economy of design to both get to the point of what you need to know and evoke the sense of the exotic without overwhelming you with unnecessary detail. This game, similar to Mork Borg, Mothership, Death in Space and Old-School Essentials wants you to play it and build on it; it does not want to dictate unnecessary information to you, or hamstring your ability to creatively expand the world as you see fit. 

The System: Into the Odd's system is dirt simple. Players roll three stats (strength, dexterity and willpower), determine Hit Protection (a different concept from hit points), and some equipment. if they are lucky the PCs get an arcana. Determining your starting powers is done by cross-referencing your highest ability score against your hit protection. Interestingly, you will only get unique powers or arcana if your highest ability score is low or average; the game assumes a high stat is reward in itself to start. This will cause no end of angst to players who seek to min/max things.

Arcana are things of various natures with short descriptors, ranging from utilitarian to incredibly potent. Some negotiation is expected, and this is the point of the system, to get players and referees thinking outside of the box. Arcana are effectively Into the Odd's magic system, and anyone can benefit from it.

Combat in the system is going to be a make-or-break for some gamers. It is readily one of the most interesting approaches to combat I have seen, and worth noting that it fundamentally changes the core conceit of many RPGs: within Into the Odd, when you engage in battle there are no rolls to hit, you just do. When you attack something, you go straight to rolling your damage dice, and your enemy must roll any armor or protection dice. If damage is dealt after subtractions, then it applies first to hit protection and then to your strength for physical damage or willpower for mental damage. When you take any damage to a stat you must make an ability check against the modified stat, and if you fail you are critically injured and will die eventually if not tended to. If you take a critical injury against willpower you are mentally broken until you get proper rest. If strength reaches zero you die right away. It is a simple and elegant approach, but it also means that because any engagement is almost certain to lead to harm for the combatants, one may consider carefully whether the combat is worth it. Luckily, recovering most damage is fairly quick....but surviving long enough to have time to recover is hard. 

The rest of the rules include the basic mechanics, which are roll-under for saves, and various basic spot rules. Samples of useful things including a handful of weird monsters, traps and lengthy rules for broader engagement and social buildup of the characters during downtime. Worth noting is that the rules provide plenty of information for new players and referees, so this book, while minimalist, has enough information (including play examples) to help new players figure things out.

One oddity is the level up mechanic, which starts at a novice rank and goes through several levels that require adventuring and later engagement within the city to advance. On the one hand it is neat in that it prompts players to do stuff outside of exploration, giving them a motive to build up a reputation and power base in Bastion or elsewhere. On the other hand, the "meat and potatoes" of the book is the exploration, and while there are rules for this downtime engagement, it is not quite as exciting as the exploration part, meaning some players may be facing a lower rank cap if they don't want to build a stronghold/go to war/engage in mercantilism or what-not. YMMV I suppose. 

The Setting: The bulk of the book is detailing the world in a series of regions written to provide exploratory crawls. Surprisingly little information is given on the city of Bastion, though Electric Bastionland which is set in the future provides a vast amount of information, but by virtue of its future setting point that won't be overly useful here. 

The book outlines a series of scenario locations. The format is concise and to the point, within the barest minimum of exposition. This sort of scenario is closer to an outline of an adventure than an actual adventure, but it is the sort of design that works extremely well for gamemasters who wish to riff on what is provided. If you are the sort of GM who prefers to have this exposition provided for, this is probably not going to work for you.....but if you much prefer to have the important elements up front and the exposition left to your own devising, then this is going to be a very comfortable format.

Lastly an appendix provides mechanisms for running mutants, simple folk, unhumans and alternative gear packages. This is a welcome addition worth adding once players are comfortable with the basic stuff, or right away if you have experienced players. 

Supplements: none so far as I am aware, though many other games as mentioned earlier use exactly the same rule system. 

Who Should Get This? Honestly, Into the Odd is a tight book which provides enough material for a lengthy campaign of exploration, and a surprising amount of "down time" reputational/power development for character position and status in Bastion. It is still very skeletal in its setting, despite having so much evocative imagery and descriptors. Much of the flavor will come out of the unique organic experience of play and interpretation....a thing which I rather admire and like, thus why I have this high on my list of game I would like to play with my group. 

I do not recommend this game for players who wish for deeper mechanical contrivance, elaborate exposition, and clear and unambiguous goals. If, however, your group likes setting their own goals, exploration for its own sake, and mysteries aplenty where the GM can riff freely, then yeah, try this one out. In fact....I'll talk about Electric Bastionland at a later date, but its really interesting contrasting Into the Odd against its successor. Into the Odd is, in my opinion, the better of the two books in so many ways, and maybe down the road its sequel can get a revision that brings it more in line with Into the Odd's economy of design.