Cataloging the Indie RPG by Style and Genre

 As I sit here, I am supposed to be studying for some rather onerous testing exams for licensing (work stuff), but it's taking dozens of hours to get through the study process, a thing I have not had to do in some time now, and at my age its just damned tedious. So I am taking a few minutes' break to clear my mind and chill a bit. In doing so I am staring at a giant stack of various indie RPGs, loads of which are pamphlet sized, and almost all of which are 5X9 format in some form or another. 

My plan to write about this in February has been curtailed so it will bleed in to March now, and maybe even April if my busy non-fun RL schedule keeps up. But I can say this: indie RPGs really do seem to fall into a few distinct style categories, and those categories have some characteristics worth noting if you're trying to figure out what style suits your taste. 

The first style category I'll call "utility," which is to say: the book's author(s) value utility and function over everything else. Both Shadowdark and Old-School Essentials are excellent examples of this category. Some other games manage to fit this bill as well, though it may not be so obvious. Old Skull's publications (such as Screams Amongst the Stars and Running Out of Time) are also very utility driven, with the goal being to get the most useful content to you in the limited pages available. Less indie but definitely worthy of mention for this category is Savage Worlds.

Main Traits of Utility Games: ease of use; clear and concise rules; no authorial overtone or assumptions about expected behavior in play

Best Example of A Utility Game: As I wrote a few weeks back, Old-School Essentials is just amazing for its pragmatic, utilitarian approach to codifying the definitive OSR experience. A close runner up deserves to be given to the insanely no-nonsense Shadowdark. 

The second style category I'll call "Atmosphere;" this means the game is focused heavily on conveying its world, thematics or genre to you, and the rules are focused on conveying the atmosphere with as much energy and effort as can be afforded. Such systems are usually loaded with mechanics designed to build out on a specific style of genre. Mothership is a quintessential example, with its atmosphere being SciFi Horror, usually on haunted ships and space stations. Mork Borg is eschatonic fantasy steeped in the graphical interface of Swedish death metal. Orbital Blues is all about replicating a highly distinct blend of Firefly meets 1970's aesthetic style science fiction. Death in Space is about a collapsing spacefaring society that is grimy, dirty and maybe also facing an eschatonic end times. Heroes of Cerulea is about an NES 1988 era fantasy world ripped straight from the earliest era of JRPGS. 

Main Traits of Atmospheric Games: rules built to enforce the rules of the game's universe/genre; thematics designed to enhance and promote the tropes and expectations of the setting

Best Example of an Atmospheric Game: Mothership, of course! With Orbital Blues coming in a close second.

The third style category is a big one, and I will call it, "experiential;" for lack of a better word. These games are providing you with a set of rules and a setting, often closely tied together, with the intent of providing you a unique experience or take on otherwise well-trod genres. Such games are noteworthy for diving in to corners of fantasy or weirdness, often going a bit off the rails, and it can be clear at times that the gameplay loop involves heavy improvisation on the part of both the player and GM (if the game even supports a GM!) Land of Eem, Into the Odd, Outcast Silver Raiders, Troika!, Ultraviolet Grasslands, maybe Liminal Horror and Cairn, can all be said to fit this category. Such games might feel a bit like roller-coasters riding through strange worlds. Some are settings only, such as the Painted Wastelands, Ronin or Vast Grimm which hack other systems into their own weird universes.

Main Traits of Experiential Games: a strong focus on the weird/unusual, emphasis on random generation and improvised play; often focused on very niche and sometimes cartoonish imaginings of their universes

Best Example of an Experiential Game: So many choices, but I feel I have to give this to Troika!, a game which defies easy interpretation for many, while still being so interesting I can't stop trying to figure it out. Runner up could go to any, but I feel the Painted Wasteland (my current favorite OSE setting) has earned it.

The final style I will label "Graphical;" any game in which it appears that the artist is as important to the process as the author or anyone else. Indeed, you might find that the game itself is less of the point than purchasing the cool book full of neat art. Not quite indie, but sort of in this ballpark I feel you could put The Electric State, along with some noteworthy titles like Ultraviolet Grasslands, the Painted Wastelands, CBR*PNK, Cy-Borg, Mork Borg for sure and all its other spin-offs, and amazingly weird and difficult to parse out products like Ballads of Oread. If Exalted Funeral published it, then it might have some lineage in this department. Don't confuse, "Looks cool," for being in this category, though; I would suggest a key component of games in this category is that you might better imagine them as coffee table books than something you can actually figure out how to play!

Main Traits of Graphical Games: they are really interesting tomes to look at (assuming they come in a conventional book format); they are often hard to decipher, or you can tell that the author was playing second fiddle to the artist

Best Example of a Graphical Game: Mork Borg!!! It's a puzzle to decipher for many. Runner up: Ultraviolet Grasslands

Okay! So with all that out of the way, time to get back to some real work. I'll finally (hopefully) talk about some of the newer games I've picked up here in the next few weeks soon.

February Plans: A Return to the Indie, OSR and ALT-RPG Scene!

 While doing a lot of reorganizing in my home office and study I realized I had a metric ton of small brochure and zine shaped RPGs and sourcebooks, predominantly for Mork Borg and Mothership, but Shadowdark came in at a close third, followed in no special order by Cairn, OSE, Swords & Wizardry and sundry other weird abominations, including one of my latest favorites, Outcast Silver Raiders. 

In short: the indie RPG zine-scene is thriving, and it is often blending in interesting and weird ways with the OSR scene thanks in no small part to Old School Essentials and Shadowdark, which is admittedly less OSR and more "5E, after you take a weed-wacker to it." 

So, for February I am going to focus on a medley of the choicest gems to have arrived from this otherworldy dimension of chapbooks, fanznes and weird art experiments that exist like mynocks on the fringe of the giant ship that is the conventional expensive hardcover RPG scene. Should be a blast!

In no particular order I plan to dive in a bit on:

Outcast Silver Raiders (the coolest blend of grimdark, weird and OSR yet)

Cairn Boxed Set 2E

Liminal Horror's latest offerings and where its Kickstarter is at

What's up with Mothership stuff lately

Mork Borg....is there no end to the flood?

The Tenth GM Inspiration: Techniques used in Modern Indie Modules

The Tenth GM Inspiration: Techniques used in Modern Indie Modules

Last blog talked about how I use round outlining (as I call it) to work out scenarios and even whole campaign ideas. This time around I wanted to talk specifically how that technique is in regular, constant use in the indie RPG scene right now, and its a very effective way at creating and running ready to go scenarios. The most effective examples of this technique are found in Mothership modules, specifically the trifold brochures which are an extension of the one-page module designs that started becoming popular a decade or two back (from the One Page Module contests, AAW games adventure-a-day and more). The Mothership modules (and there are also Mork Borg, Cairn and other modules of similar nature) are generally built around packing an entire session (or more) on two pages, which can then be folded as a trifold module. This forces the author of the module to maximize their use of space. 

One way to do this effectively merges the module description boxes, the map and the adventure path all into a single mixed graphic....the Haunting of Ypsilon-14 is the first such module for Mothership, and an excellent example of how to execute this (I do a deep dive on it here). Each area of the haunted space station has a quick series of bullet points on the salient elements of the area to be explored, and line/arrow links showing you where in the space station you can then go to from that location. Some extra page two text covers NPCs, the monsters and encounter timers and events. I managed to get three or four sessions out of this module, it's that good.

These modules my design work best for GMs (Wardens in Mothership) who are accustomed to improvisation, because the space limits mean you will inevitably have descriptions or events that cannot be covered; the design is meant to force emergent gameplay, and a GM running a module in this design would be best aided with a notebook on hand to take notes as you expand upon the module as you go, to keep your plot and detail additions consistent.

Doing this for a homebrew is actually a great exercise in thinking about what the core conceits of the scenario should be. You also don't need to limit yourself to a one or two page format, though that can be fun as an exercise in creativity and design. That said, look to systems like Shadowdark, Cairn, Mork Borg and Old School Essentials for examples of how this concept is expanded upon into multi-page modules that are still, at their core, using the "what matters most in this area" conceit of tight design with outline-focused dungeon design. 

The Eleventh Weird Thing: The SAS Hierophant for Mothership

 The Eleventh Weird Thing: The SAS Hierophant for Mothership

This was the culimnation of a lengthy Mothership campaign I ran online a while back. May reflect 0E stats! Presented unedited from the original notes. Some character references are to actual characters from that campaign.

The SAS Hierophant Re 22178-XZ

Captain: James Gurdy, 23 years as a contractor and salvager for Sector Authority

Three Extra Crew: Engineer Carl Spectro, field agent Tammy Scythe, and Medic android Craiton.

Current Commission: with Syngen CTO James Revan, who has access to FART unit recovered from Megaldon stomach. Has identified in unit’s recordings that KT-223 vessel is in possession of the Phase Wave Shifter, recovered from ISS Somnus.

Need to Know: The crew are seeking out the KT-223, which was last reported adrift by a Belter mining freighter (The SAS Greenlight) which reported the salvage with request for a partial finder’s right. They tagged the drifter with a beacon but refused to enter for reasons not explained.

Destination: Alpha Persei, the Demon Star (Mirfak) (511 LY from Terra)

Local worlds: Alpha Persei I (super gas giant) (6.8X Jupiter’s mass) – an ominous world with three immense red superstorms larger than some small gas giants that look like eerie eyes.

Colony: L774 New Haven – 13^th moon of AP I (the primary world has 123 moons accounted for)

New Haven was founded in 2673 by the now defunct AE Expansionists. The colony was abandoned in 2710 and not recolonized until 2754 when the colony was purchased by World Systems MC for terraforming. Since then the colony has done well and the terraforming has been a success; the planet is earthlike as of 2901.

Governance: the Independent Colonies charter; subscribe to Sector Authority protection (but behind on payments)

Noteworthy Recent news: the system’s FTL Beacon System has had issues and has been down for six months pending repairs. The KT-223 was carrying necessary goods for the repair. No news has gone in or out of the system in six months not carried directly by visiting freighters, though only three are on record (including KT-223) as heading to the system.

 

The Mystery:

The Hierophant arrives to find a colony that is not responding, and a gigantic research ship in orbit that records say was reported lost or destroyed twenty years ago. They need to decide which to investigate first…and neither is responsive.

The Starship Hades, a currently unregistered Hecate Class Research Vessel, formerly registered to Stygian Development MC, an old Megacorp which operates outside of the Coreworlds almost exclusively, though it is said to have close ties and funding from Persephone Industries, headquartered on Earth. Many suspect Stygian Dev. Is a front for Persephone to carry out illicit and unregulated research in the Rimward Regions. Stygian Dev. Claims the ship was lost twenty years ago.

The ship is parked in orbit around L774. It is currently the last known source of the broadcasting tracker placed on the KT-223 by the belters. The signal is absent from the sensor readings of any ship in the system until Hades is approached, and then the signal begins to ping again….

Inside the hold of the Hades, now ensconced in a docking bay in a Classified Research Module, is the remains of the KT-223. The ship is experiencing a full meltdown. No one seems to be in control. Attempts to hail the Hades are met with a response from Dr. Crystal Matavos, a cyborg researcher who appears to be in charge and will state that any vessel which approaches is at risk of retaliatory destruction, and to depart immediately. But, the ship seems largely offline and neither shields nor weapons are online according to scans….

While in orbit, the vessel suddenly exhibits a massive power surge just when the Hierophant decides to land, briefly bringing the Hades ship to life. Everyone makes a Body check, and if anyone fails they have a momentary blackout and out of body experience on the Hierophant. If anyone critically fails their spectral essence is ripped from their body!

Phase Wave Specter Instinct 30 Combat 25, touch deals 2D10 chilling radioactive tissue damage. Energy weapons can harm the specter (HP 30).

Complication:

The pilot, 1^st lt. Trish August, is hit by the energy and her specter is ripped out. The ship veers abruptly into the station, crashing into the main landing bay. It will take 2D6 hours for remaining crew to disentangle the ship and repair the thrusters to manage a fresh take off.

 

Inside the Ship:

The sudden surge of energy is only the latest, brought on by a slow alien cancer which has torn through the guts of the ship, converting those it touches into phasewave creatures. The device known as the Phase Wave Shifter has been recovered. Dr. Matavos was experimenting on the device when the interred crew, including DOS, who was found strangely cocooned in a metal embryo of exotic matter nanites, awoke, and began converting crew into phasewave forms. The research conducted in Research 1-3 was all part of their assessment of the PWS. The Classified module contains the ship and embryo from which a new DOS awoke, shedding the mundane parts as she proceeded to use exotic matter nanites to build a machine which directed the phasewave energy at L774 below.

Since then of the three hundred crewmen on the ship more than 80% have been turned into different sorts of phasewave creatures:

Phasewave Soldier – basic units of protection; Instinct 50 Combat 55 Damage energy attack 1D10X10, Health 40

Phasewave Rupture – the phasebonding did not go well; Instinct 35, Combat 55, Damage 3 attacks 3D10 each by tentacles, Health 50; Can also spit once instead and if it hits the target must make a body save or be invaded by exotic restructuring nanites. If killed by one of these, you see your spectral ghost form ripped free and devoured. The body drops and animates as a soldier 1D10 minutes later.

Phasewave Exterminator – the final form of a successful conversion; Instinct 70, Combat 70, attacks 1D10X10 energy or direct matter conversion attack Body save or take 2D10X10 damage and turn in to a phasewave soldier. Only two are on the ship right now.

Phasewave Hybrid Speaker – These intermediary units retain communication skills and speak the voice of the Destructor, the Final Manifestation. Occasionally they will address individuals directly, and speak of the dead they have known. Instinct 40, Combat 40, Attack 1D10 claws, HP 25.

The Final Manifestation – this colossal beast is located on the planet below and has already annihilated the colony, converting all it finds into exotic matter servants. It is the first of the Final Solution by ancients to eliminate the Baryonic Plague which has crippled the universe. Instinct 100, Combat 100, Attack 1D10 tentacles or stomp, all 3D10X10; Health 1,000. It is pure exotic matter and can only be harmed by energy weapons or antimatter.

About 60 humans and androids survive on the ship, ensconced in Research Modules 1-2, the Bridge, and a handful in other areas. These include some soldiers, researchers and damaged androids; the phasewave pulses are slowly shredding the synthetic skin of the androids.

They are led by Dr. Crystal Matavos, who has been infect (as DOS was) by the exotic matter nanites. She wants to see what the final machine is, and realizes that the aliens may represent an exotic species that exists between normal baryonic matter and non-baryonic dark matter. The potential for the weapon being built is enormous, as it seems capable of opening a wormhole in space to any other star system to “fire” upon, though so far it has only targeted New Haven.

The Corrupted Regions:

Engineering – the source of the Phasewave Shifter Engine/Weapon

Classified Research Bay – where KT-223 and the crew were stowed; heavy corruption

Each other region has a 25% chance of corruption, which goes up by 10% for each hour the crew remains on the ship. The energy pulse takes effect once every 5 hours, but after each new pulse the next one is 1 hour sooner. Dr. Matavos believes the pulse, when it hits zero, will unleash the true effect of the weapon. She wants to record it all.

Complications:

The Mutineer:

Commander Alan James was head of Special Security for the Hades and watched most of his men convert or perish. He’s damn pissed and is located in a brig off the Commons. He wants out, and he knows a hidden chamber into the locked down Engineering section. He has the codes to reactivate the ship’s weaponry, including antimatter warheads.

KT-223 Stowage:

DOS (android) and Tennl (android) are awakened by the latest phasewave surge, which is strong enough to spontaneously recharge them, though they have only 1D10 minutes before the ambient energy subsides to find replacement power cores. DOS is a skeletal wreck lying in front of the opened cocoon, and her memories are a wreck. The other crew remained in stasis lockdown, but the power surge overwhelms the lockdown protocols and initiates an emergency thaw. This includes the PCs and some extras:

Space KT-223 Crew: Senior Technician Alan Spencer; Teamster Extra Morris, Labreu, Chester and Dwight. Backup Pilot Mike Hondo, and backup Navigator Archie Loam

The ship appears flyable, but the tendrils of exotic matter winding from it like blood vessels need to be cut. The good news is, this is bended exotic matter, and so can be damaged; pure exotic matter forms are only harmed by energy weapons.

The Cat:

Miraculously Prince is still alive and wandering around somewhere on the ship. A second prince is also in the ship. This one, if inspected, appears to be a clever simulacra and its body hosts a small faraday cage, as it is a clever robot designed by Fart to hide the PWS. Unfortunately it was found by the crew of the Hades. The cat was disabled, but reanimated with the first phasewave surge that hit the colony some days ago.

Docking Bay One and Two:

The secured docking bay still contains two shuttles, though one is flyable but missing some parts and will fail if it enters atmosphere. The second docking bay appears to have had a catastrophic accident, and three of four shuttles are wiped out, with a fourth one intact but also resting in vacuum as the bay integrity was compromised. A Phasewave Exterminator waits within.

There is clear evidence at least 2 shuttles are completely missing.

Research Station 2: This is where Dr. Matavos is operating, and she has 6 security guards with her, all androids. She has a half dozen additional researchers with her, monitoring the activity of the manifestation and recording everything. A hyperlight probe is recording all and ready to fire in the aft sensor array section, which is where another dozen scientists and security are trying to keep the area held from the incursion.

Communicating with the Manifestation:

The speakers are the only way the entities can communicate. They seem to draw on the emotions and memories of whoever they are near, and speak with the voices of dead relatives. They refer to the Final Manifestation as the Purest Light and the Phage. They claim it will exterminate the bacterial infestation that is baryonic life. They otherwise seem irrational and have no reasoning skills though they can mimic voices and try to convince people to do things like open sealed doors and such.

Other Notes on Phasewave Events:

During the countdown, when a new phasewave event happens the ship’s systems all spontaneously power up, even ones not attached to a power grid, as if ambient energy is bleeding in to them. When this happens, the androids briefly gain advantage on all rolls for 1D10 minutes. The phasewave creatures go insane, however, and begin rampaging and attacking at random, sometimes even each other. This feral behavior also lasts 1D10 minutes. There is a 10% chance one lesser type will mutate into a greater type, or that a recent corpse will turn in to a rupture.

Resolutions

There is a chance the crew can detonate the antimatter warheads in the ordnance bay. They can simply flee the system and hopes the Doctor’s belief that the PWS device opens wormholes is false. They can abandon the station for the planet and end up stuck.

Key to the Hades – Unique Location Details

For each location, roll D100 to determine contamination level on arrival; increase by 1D10 for each energetic event. In each location there is a 1 in 10 chance Prince is nearby, increase by 1 every two locations searched.

Shuttle Bay 1                   Corruption:

              Two working shuttles, but one is missing parts and will fail if it enters atmosphere

Shuttle Bay 2                   Corruption:

              1 working shuttle, in vacuum; an exterminator is in the chamber

              Other shuttles wiped out in a crash by looks of it

Forward Gunnery           Corruption: 35% start

              Contains forward particle accelerator cannon; heavily corrupted; 1D6 soldiers

Medical Bay                     Corruption:

              Most are compromised; 1D6 specters are in the area

              One Medical chamber is locked and contains Dr. Richard Warren and 3 nurses, 2 patients.

They have captured a speaker which is locked in partial stasis

Commons and Crew Quarters    Corruption:

              Will have one random creature for every 5% corruption rolled

              Searching brig reveals Commander Alan James trapped

Forward Sensor Array                  Corruption:

              Contains three speakers working to graft an exotic tech device to the sensors

Secondary Sensor Array

              Lt. Ray Golds is hiding out here in access tubes playing cat and mouse.

Bridge Controls                             Corruption:

Captain Dearing of the Hades is holding out here with a dozen bridge crew. Will let anyone In if proven safe, but are suspicious as the speakers have been taunting them for entry.

Dearing has a plan to force the ship into LEO and crash it, as a last ditch effort, but engineering is cut off; he considers the Doctor to be mad

Engineering                      Corruption: 85% to start

The heart of the corruption; what appears to be the Phase Wave Shifter is connected to the engine here, which is fueling energy to the device.

Two exterminators are here.

The corruption has sealed off all normal access.

Research Bay 1                              Corruption:

              A chamber with multiple cells, containing evidence of horrid mutations perpetrated on prisoners

A laboratory filled with more mutations, apparently caused by research on the PWS before the “cocoon” awoke

              A stasis chamber with a specter held in place; appears to be pleading for release

              Dr. Afram Zellar hiding in a chamber, he’s gone quite mad.

Research Bay 2                              Corruption:

This is where Dr. Matavos is operating, and she has 6 security guards with her, all androids. She has a half dozen additional researchers with her, monitoring the activity of the manifestation and recording everything. A hyperlight probe is recording all and ready to fire in the aft sensor array section, which is where another dozen scientists and security are trying to keep the area held from the incursion.

Munitions Storage                        Corruption:

Sealed, high security, location of 6 antimatter warheads locked in stasis and magnetic bottling powered by fusion cores

Docking Bay                                   Corruption: 0% to start

              Crash site of the Hierophant

              Clear of corruption at the start

Back of the entire bay has been cordoned off behind steel shielding and a heavy security entrance.

Quarantine Zone                           Corruption 40% to start

Contains the KT-223 remains. Includes the cargo left over from the planetary visit that did not happen. This includes a working hyperlight jump sensor ready to go.

              Location where DOS and others wake up following latest surge of power.

              3 destroyed androids can be gutted for power cells.

              A phasewave soldier is on patrol

Escape through main doors impossible due to corruption; access tunnels lead to Aft Controls and Research Bay 3.

Aft Controls/Sensors                   Corruption:

              The location of the sensor and communications array, as well as a backup aft bridge

A message on the comms relay is captured indicating that the military cruiser Chiron is inbound. And should reach the outer rim of the star system in 1 week. The message is 5 days old.

Dozens of desperate messages asking for help from the colony New Haven about two weeks ago, suggesting they were attacked

Storage Dock 1                              Corruption:

A lot of useful equipment though short on armament. Includes vacc suits. Careful searching reveals orbital re-entry suits, designed to drop into orbit, survive re-entry with ablative shielding, then pop parachutes.

Classified Bay                                 Corruption:

Hidden in the Classified Bay is a Scimitar Class Assault Ship, stowed away. It will take 2D5 hours to assemble and prep. It appears to have Jump 3 capabilities and while it has a particle beam weapon and torpedoes it lacks ordnance (which is in the ammo dump).

Rack of training weapons and a testing ground in this bay. Weapons are loaded with blanks.

Research Bay 3                              Corruption: 100%

This contains the Initiator, a speaker of particular cunning, and a dozen other creatures.

There is a wall of techno-hybrid machine flesh in which a dozen humans are embedded, and they are being used like a computer by the phasewave entities.

Another phasewave shifter is here! It is linked to the webwork of corruption and seems to be recently grown.

All in the chamber feel constantly distorted as if moving in and out of their own bodies (SAN check or 1D10 stress)

Initiator Instinct 70, Combat 50, Damage 1D10X10 can “push” spectral soul from target, HP 20

             

The Ninth Weird Thing: Perdido City Station for Mothership

 The Ninth Weird Thing: Perdido City Station for Mothership

Station 472 Perdido City 

Public Housing

Visitors can get cheap housing here, with metered facilities (20 CR/day)

About half a dozen habitat centers here, but only two are active, the rest appear semi abandoned

Some out of work locals hanging out will talk about the weird murders going on (They’re calling it the Plasma Torch Killer because the victims appear to have been instantly incinerated with a high intensity heat source).

A back alley contains some clues to the last killing, a scorched area, and strange writing that looks geometric and indecipherable. Locals say its borrowed from the “old ruins.”

KT Corporate Branch

A gratuitously expensive corporate office nestled in a district filled with shuttered travel agent shops and smaller corporate offices hidden in the afterglow of KT’s neon holographics.

Operation center for KT in the Outer Rim. CMO Alan Durns is in charge, but he’s a frayed and maddened sort of personality, clearly hooked on stims and stuck out here to avoid embarrassment. He will try to dock the PCs for not salvaging the experimental ship Somnus, but if he learns of the sphere will promise to “remove as much of the penalty for failure as possible” in exchange for the artifact.

Guarded by a Wolf-337 glimmerhound, and two robot guards.

Aeroflight

A large sub-domed facility within the complex laden with launch pads for the ultralite aerogliders used by locals for most travel.

Local independent travel service, provides rental and purchase of the light airframe gliders used by colonists to get around on Wolf-337. Run by Paulo Marquette. He will mention that the station has a problem with the “Sirius Nine” pirates on the independent cruiser Adelaide.

Public Markets

Half of this vast stretch is wreathed in semi-darkness as a medley of mostly shuttered businesses, like a dead mall, stretch out, punctuated by small clusters of active shops, and lots of bars. About 20% of the sky grid holograms are working. Among the victims of time is a vast casino, now all but shut down, collecting dust as its floors are graced by a handful of patrons. Mold fills the air.

Maybe only 20% of the markets are active, but there’s no limit on what to find here. Drugs and guns are to be found at the black market, however.

Sector Authority Offices

This monolithic structure appears to be a bastion of regional authority, but the large number of holographic signs advertising cheap insurance rates suggests that the local authorities are just another scam business.

Outer Rim Sector Authority represents itself as a for-hire police force but is really no better than an insurance company which likes to look the other way when premiums are past due.

Captain Samine Weathers is in charge, and she is secretly on the take from both KT and the Mining Corp. if they ask here to guarantee no interference.

Ship Yards

This vast area holds no pretenses, as multiple vessels have been towed in from outside and are undergoing repairs, overhauls or special installs. Most of the laborers appear to be machines of various types.

A handful of independent and corporate-backed shipwrights work in this area, surviving on the trade of repair and replace. A couple used ship dealers are also present, but their wares are deeply suspect.

Rimward Museum

Run by a dour android named Scott Selman (formerly a casino droid), this quaint affair was built with public funding in the early days and somehow continues to survive on Academy donations. The museum charts a slightly biased take on the discoveries of first explorers Thomas Gorman and Selina Rausch, and their discovery of the Wolf-337 ruins, evidence of a once thriving civilization nearly 1.5 million years ago, preserved due to the extremely low level of geologic activity on the planet. It documents the failed terraforming events and the take-over of independent miners, followed by the rise of the Tyber-Morgan Mining Corporation today.

Scott Selman can attest to the fact that the mystery markings sprayed like grafitti around the city do match the enigmatic symbols of the prehistoric ruins. “Thesallonians” are what they were called, and he will talk a bit about it, showing samples of artifacts. He explains the name came from Selina Rausch, who in her later years claimed to be able to communicate with the ghosts of the dead species. He mentions in passing that the radioactivity of the ruins caused unfortunate and often fatal mutations in the original colonists.

Passage to Old City

This area includes evidence of a large construction zone and an incomplete corporate works project dedicated to “Eon Industries” but the sign is twenty years old. A passage through the dig site leads to a carfully repaired structure which opens up to a heavy airlock to one of the underground tunnels that runs seventy kilometers north to the location Old City, which was the original colony site that failed. Warnings at the airlock indicate that there are no resources and no breathable atmosphere past this point.

CDF Rimward Recruitment Center

The Colonial Defense Forces have a large building manned by a skeleton crew, seeking mainly to try and encourage incoming spacers to jump contract and join their ranks since few locals show any interest these days. The recruiting officer in charge is an aging fellow named Cmdr. Walter Kellerman.

Kyle Razor’s Retreat

This private section of town is dominated by long city blocks between transit passages, each one extremely well secured and private. As you reach Razor’s retreat, you find that the outer door opens easily enough to reveal a wonderland within, a private holodome of a suny California beach, beneath which a similuated beach house and what appear to be genuine (but probably synthetic) flora and fauna scamper about. A seagull with grey, mechanical eyes lands on a pole and watches you. The wide entry door to the lush retreat is guarded by a Mantis Guardian class bioroid, which appears to be extremely pissed that it must tolerate your presence.

Kyle Razor got wind of the ship’s cargo before the crew ever arrive thanks to the transmission network bringing word just ahead of their arrival. He’s here, with two clones named Dolly and Brianna, as well as his two bodyguards, “Crane” and “Skillshot”. Skillshot appears to be a former augmented marine, sniper trained, and Crane appears to be an ex-corporate fixer turned bodyguard. Lurking on the premesis is a cloaked fellow who refuses to show his face, a scarred mutant named Cordon who is one of the original colonists, mutated and given extended life by an encounter with the Thesellan ghosts, though he tells few of his encounters with them, or that he can still see them….and that they are all around the city!

Kyle will offer the group 1 million credits or their own ship in exchange for the artifact. He is a “retired” media personality and former musician from the core who fled to the outer rim after his time as a pop star turned into a cult leader for the Cult of the NU. which in turn led to accusations of mass murder when he fled the scene of the crime following the dead of his entire cult when the star Rapsody-1515 went super nova. If pressed, Kyle admits he thinks the artifact is actually a vessel for the voice of the NU, and he intends to commune with his dead flock and especially his wife, Cryseta.  

Abandoned Districts

Large swathes of the complex are completely abandoned, lived in by transients waiting for a new mining gig or seeking some fortune to buy their way off-planet. Dangerous gangs and criminals roam here, and multiple murders from the “Plasma Torch Killer” have happened here though Sector Authority ignores it.

Many abandoned buildings are covered in the mystery writing.

Perdido Research Facility

This facility is receiving about one third of the PC’s cargo, the rest going to the mining corporation. The facility is headed by Director Anton Birch, a wiry man who cares little for spacers. The facility appears to be focused on establishing a better approach to eventually terraforming the planet, but it also seems to have an unusual number of ancient artworks on display from the indigenous ruins.

Gorman-Rausch Preservation Site

This site is open-air, in the incredibly thin and toxic local atmosphere. The site is mostly off-limits, but nothing is around to stop people from going into the deep ruins, made of a soft, crystalline material similar to chalcedony in appearance but in fact an extremely complex molecular design which is nearly impervious to damage. The material has been dubbed Rauschium in honor of the discoverer.

A self guided tour of the “safe zone” is available.

There is a 10% chance of spotting one of the elusive Thesellan ghosts during the visit, which appears briefly like a strange floating after-image from staring too long at the sun before disappearing into rock. The tour mentions that it is believed that these are actually holographic augmentations caused by still functioning embedded circuitry within the rauschium ruins, which seem to occasionally garner energy from sunlight and reactivate programs which have somehow sustained functionality after 1.5 million years. The constructs are believed to be harmless and non-interactive from exhaustive studies, allegedly.

Anyone who scopes around the site will see a large aerocruiser parked a half kilometer away under a camouflage tent. This is the Sirius Nine vessel, where these rogues have been scouring the ruins lately looking for artifacts to sell to core world bidders. Drawing their attention could quickly escalate to a fight. Entering the ruin tunnels could also lead to an encounter.

Tyber Morgan Mining Corporate Offices

The head of mining operations, Gale Forran, runs everything from this secured complex reachable from the city dome by underground tunnel. This may be the only complex in the region that is bustling with activity and fully staffed. They seem to garner a lot of work from mining technetium and vanadium, valuable for use in superconducting technology, as well as raw deposits of promethium ore for jump drives.

The First Weird Thing: A Plot Where the Party Discovers Earth

 I finally figured it out! My 12 Weird things will focus on 12 weird plots that can be used in the RPG of your choice. This first one is suitable for scifi in your prefered flavor and system:

Weird Plot One: The Party of Galactic Explorers Land on a Strange World - But it's Really Earth

So here's the premise, ripped straight from Planet of the Apes: the party belongs to an expedition which is surveying new star systems and looking for habitable worlds. They are part of an alliance of star systems united under a common galactic rulership, the Orion Consortium, so named for its center of power in the Orion Star Cluster. Their starship is a competent vessel with the resources (shuttles) to land on suitable planets. They have just discovered an inhabitable world with ideal gravity for Orions to dwell on.

Investigating the planet they discover that the world has traces of ancient, vast ruins that appear to have been abandoned tens of thousands of years ago. The curious thing is that no direct evidence can be found as to what catastrophe led to the sudden abandonment of this ancient civilization. Even more impressive, the planet's current sentient civilization has risen from the ashes of what came so long ago, and the strange aliens, a species which is (1D6: 1-cephalopodic, 2-canine, 3-ursine, 4-feline, 5-evolved birds, 6-completely alien) potentially a lesser species which appears to have been genetically evolved and now thrives in the absence of its creators. They are either indifferent or either outright hostile to the explorers. Indeed, with some time and effort the explorers may win some trust, or may research the ruins independently, only to discover that the surviving graven images of the ancient extinct species look exactly like the Orion explorers! The ancient records, once transcribed by the explorers' AI system reveal that they called themselves humans and the world was called Earth.... 

Mysteries to Solve:

Is the lost civilization evidence that there is a lost age of space exploration among the Orions? Are the Orions descended from these Humans?

Are the current ruling sapient species descended from genetically uplifted animals, or are they the survivors of a species that conquered and defeated Earth?

Is there evidence of extrasolar activity elsewhere in this solar system that can piece together the mystery? Relic space stations in orbit or on the Moon?

Is it possible there is an even greater threat lurking in the darkness of the system, waiting for evidence of visitation, causing the ancient enemy to awaken and respond to the appearance of another spacefaring civlization?

 

The 27th Day of Horror: Ash (2025)

 

Ash (2025)

I got to watch this movie on its limited theatrical release, making me very glad I decided to go see a random movie on a lark on the one weekend it was out in theaters. Ash was released by Shudder, which if you don't know about them, Shudder is a fantastic horror-focused curated streaming service. In fact, these days I only subscribe to four streaming services, and Shudder is one of them. The other three are Curiosity Stream, Magellan TV and Hulu, thought the last one is technically free as part of my phone deal. Shudder however is the best, especially if your tastes run in a "weird and horror" vein for films. 

The setup for Ash is immediately intriguing as a woman named Miya awakens with a concussion and memory loss on a research station on an alien world. She finds the rest of the crew dead, brutally murdered, and outside an alien landscape. She quickly figures out that the atmosphere, while somewhat breathable is actually mildly toxic and she flees back into the ship after witnessing a bizarre "mirroring" image of herself in the hazy distance. Soon, as she begins to have flashbacks of her memory of the living crew on the ship, a second crewman who was on the orbiting ship named Brion arrives in response, apparently, to a distress call.

As the mystery of what happens unfolds, Riya begins to remember the events, and image sof herself killing her fellow crewmates. Evidence is uncovered of an alien artifact, a tunnel network that the crew was exploring, and an unexpected death while doing so. Brion meanwhile remains focused on the next window of opportunity for the lander to break orbit and return to the ship. As daylight falls, a hull breach diverts their attention from the mystery for a moment, though the actual breach appears to have been sabotage, suggesting a third person is still alive....and there is a missing body, or so it seems...

Ash does an amazing job of building paranoid tension and as escalating mystery with only two actors, accomplishing a vibe not unlike The Thing in terms of the "Who's really causing these problems?" kind of sense. By the third act it goes completely off the rails....and I will absolutely not spoil it, but take note that all of those amazing creature effects at the end are practical effects, a real spectacle when the "truth" is finally revealed. 

Much of this film has an eerie, dreamlike quality. There are a lot of impressive establishing shots for the planet's environs, and some eerie dream sequences. Some of the graphics feel like they might be using some AI elements, but the mix with practical effects works very well. The soundtrack is also incredible, deeply unnerving and mood setting.

If you are a fan of horror in general, scifi horror in particular, or want some inspiration for your next Mothership campaign, this movie is well worth a watch! It is another one of my guilty pleasure faves, but is also a genuinely good film. About the worst thing I can say about it is: why don't they have, like, better surgical machines, or even anesthetic in the distant future? You'll know what I mean when you see it! Anyway...solid A, totally worth a watch. 

The Thing From Another World in Mothership

I don't think anyone has done this exactly, but I think it's time to do a series on adopting various famous monsters to the Mothership rules. Let's start with one of the greatest of all time: the Thing!

Love this Alt Poster!

The Thing's key traits:

An alien creature that is in fact a cell colony with the ability to absorb and replicated/replace the cells of any other creature, taking on their appearance, abilities and even their identity. 

The Thing's original appearance is difficult to discern, and it may have no consistent appearance (even the description of what it might have looked like, with three eyes, could just be the current form it was mimicking).

The Thing is intelligent, and presumably retains knowledge from prior assimilated victims. This includes the ability to craft and pilot something as sophisticated as a starship.

When absorbing a creature, it takes the Thing about 45 minutes to completely convert a human sized target into its own. 

The Thing exhibits a weakness to fire, though this could be better described as "it burns like anything else." But due to its malleable, ever-changing nature and ability to remember and mimic any life form it has previously absorbed, the Thing can sustain and recover from most damage with only modest initial impact. Fire and energy damage that can destroy it at the cellular level is most effective at destroying the Thing.

The Stats for a piece of the Thing depend heavily on what it is mimicking and/or what sort of amalgamation it forms in the moment. Several stat blocks will be provided to reflect different sized/focused forms of the Thing as a result. 

Special Qualities: The Thing has these traits in all forms:

Infectious. All Things have an infectious trait, and skin exposure to the Thing leads to assimilation when exposed. PCs who take any damage or come into any skin contact with some portion of the creature, even at the cellular level, must make a BODY[-] check or they are infected and have 45 minutes to assimilation into a Humanoid Thing.

Malleable and Resilient. The Thing takes damage from kinetic weaponry, but it rapidly heals, repairs and restores function. It regains 1 Wound and equivalent health every minute, and as a special feature may heal even sooner (per combat turn). It is unable to use this feature if it takes fire or energy damage for one minute, and is "dead" if it loses all wounds from such damage, with only a slight chance a portion of its mass survives.

Head Crab Thing: C: 25%, 1D10 DMG, I: 50%, AP 1D5-1, W1(10) - may have 1D5 additional appendage features (EX: 1-crab legs, 2-extendable tongue with a grasping feature, 3-eye stalks, 4-spits acid, 5-whip tail with poison barb)

Humanoid Thing: C 50%, 2D10 DMG, I: 60%, AP 1D5-1, W2(20) - may have 1D5 additional surprise features (EX: 1-claw arm, 2-head splits for attacking maw that does 4D10 DMG, 3-infecting tendrils, 4-chest maw (4D10 DMG), 5-exotic eyesight); Special: indistinguishable from the humanoid it mimics until exposed.

Monstrous Form Large Thing: C 75%, 4D10 DMG, I: 90%, AP 5+1D5, W3(30) - will have !D5 additional features (EX: 1-multiple limbs (1D4) for extra attacks, 2-infectious tentacles, 3-vomiting infectious attack, 4-wings (if local atmosphere and gravity support it), 5-spines (50% chance they shoot))

Exposing The Thing: In the film, it is revealed that the Thing's individual cells are engrained with a survival instinct, so jamming a hot wire into blood samples reveals what is real and what is imitation blood. Creative PCs may find other interesting ways to reveal imitations in their midst. For example, The Thing often has an exterior form that mimics the appearance of the human it just assimilated, but may have an internal morphology that hides appendages intended for attack or other special purposes. An x-ray may reveal these internal differences.

It is Settled (for now): Mothership and Tales of the Valiant

 So I have at last wrapped the D&D 5.5 campaign (we have loose plot threads, so who knows, maybe it will be revisited eventually) and Wednesday night formally begins with a Mothership ongoing campaign. I am plotting for around 5-10 sessions, but maybe we'll get more out of it; who knows! Mothership is a very fun game, but it is easier to do one shots and short campaigns with it than it is to do protracted campaigns....similar to Call of Cthulhu, the group can only sustain so much horror before it transitions from spooky fun to "wow how aren't we dead yet."*

I have had an infrequent Friday group as well, which my son was occasionally running Pathfinder for (and I ran Shadowdark for them before that). The group expanded to six players with last week's return to form, and I began running Tales of the Valiant at long last! It was a good session 0.5, with some char gen followed by a bit of gaming. I am introducing the variant concepts to them as we go (such as lineages and heritages, luck, doom, dread and so forth) bit by bit, in a completely new world setting I devised jut for TotV. I had initially planned to use preprinted modules but after reading through everything I had I decided most of them sucked for purposes of my GM style and what I wanted out of the game, and so I devised my own low level intro campaign module instead. I meticulously followed the encounter design rules outlined in the Gamemaster's Guide and have so far found them more satisfying than 5e/5.5E's traditionally more vibe-based guidelines.

Anyway, this mix seems to work for now! I have plans soon to try out Cairn 2E, Fabula Ultima, Outgunned, The Electric State** and possibly a return to Savage World's Pathfinder edition. We shall see.....but the important thing is, lots of options that require no further engagement with D&D 5.5.  

*Or, alternatively, "We have all lost multiple PCs, does anyone have a living PC who remembers why we landed on this haunted space station in the first place?"

**RPG and the original book only, we will not speak of the Netflix movie. 

Reinvigorated! Or maybe Reanimated?

 Well I am feeling less burnout this week! But also sometimes more burnout. I did a deep dive into various systems and found that I was definitely starting to sense a pattern in my interests. Here's what I realize now; noting that this isn't a unchanging constant; just what my tastes seem to be running to in the moment:

Verisimilitude Over Abstraction: I prefer somewhat more simulationist systems, which favor verisimilitude over "rule of cool" as a natural recourse. I liken this to the difference between a movie where our hero drops 10-15 feet and seems to take injury or has trouble getting up from such a fall, vs. other movies (Marvel films come to mind) where same hero seems able to drop 30-50 feet and is unphased, even without having super soldier serum to explain his massive invulnerability.

This means systems like BRP, GURPS, Mothership, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Cyberpunk Red and Dragonbane are standing out to me because they provide meaningful engagement levels with some sort of baseline "reality" but some other systems....even ones I like....aren't feeling too good to me at the moment because I am not presently "vibing" with the idea that the abstractions on the character sheet and in the system are really just numbers and have more to do with "did this look cool?" than anything else. That rules our D&D 5.5, Cypher System, Fantasy AGE, Tales of the Valiant, and no doubt others.

Pragmatic Character Info: I'm preferring systems which communicate clearly what you rcharacter is about, without a lot of rule-flipping and holistic interpretation. Pathfinder 2E is not a good example of this; it is laden with weird feats, obscure conditionals, and a balanced mechanical process which means skill sets are very "meh" in figuring out how your character looks different from another similar character. Contrast with BRP, which narrows the character generation to a set of common baselines defined by genre expectations for powers (if used), but in general you can look at a character sheet and understand what it means to run that PC without having to crack the book open constantly. 

The System Respects Theater of the Mind: lots of games these days lean in to the popular desire for maps and minis, and I get it; those can be fun (I suppose). But I have run RPGs for most of my life without such gimmicks, and the sorts of stories I want to convey through gaming these days (and most days) work better when the players aren't focused on the ancient wargame element that remains embedded in conventional takes such as D&D. Admittedly GURPS, as an example, supports elaborate hex-based movement and suggests this can be useful; I have played in GURPS games where the GM used this to effect, and I get it. But I have also run (and played) in countless GURPS games where it was all theater of the mind, and the experience was always more creative and superior. So systems which either implicitly or explicitly support TotM play are preferred.

No Authorial Overtones: I won't single anyone out, but if the system has a heavy authorial overtone which tries to tell you how to play, either explicitly or implicitly, that can be a real turnoff. The author does not trust you to play the game the right way for you, the end-user, and that is just not cool. I can be in 100% agreement with the game writer's viewpoint and this will still piss me off because it is an attempt by the author to control the narrative on the end user experience.* 

There are quite a few RPGs on the market today that like to talk about how their source of inspiration was, shall we say, a racist person in his time, and then denigrate his works, even as they then proceed to write an entire system around said works, implying there was still merit to the man's creations, enough for them to exploit for money. Hypocrisy! It makes it very hard to take such works seriously. Either you acknowledge that you are, indeed, inspired by the creative works of said author which means you feel his imaginative developments have merit and inspiration beyond the unpleasant bits you did not like (okay, yeah, I'm talking about Lovecraft here) and will expand upon his vision despite your dislike of his century-old racist attitude, or you maybe should decide that its ethically better for you to go write a different game and leave well enough alone. I'm looking at you, Age of Cthulhu and Arkham Horror. 

Sometimes it feels like these games were written by authors fearful that their audience would get mad at them for not appearing cognizant of these perceived injustices or social issues. The best head-scratching example I can provide is in Liminal Horror, which has a paragraph about how its not cool to play cops, authority figures or people with wealth or means. This, of course, is actual nonsense; part of the point of RPGs is the ability to explore roles beyond most people's grasps....and horror as a medium is excellent at skewering all sorts of professionals and the wealthy with equal aplomb; its not merely the purview of the poor and downtrodden to be murdered by eldritch cults. But if you were writing this game a few years ago when there was a strong push on social media to "strike back at the man" or you are a younger author (spiritually or physically) enmeshed in antiauthoritarian counter cultural values, then this might feel like a sensible paragraph to put in, no matter how utterly stupid and counterfactual to the actual genre of horror it is. 

Important: despite this minor rant, I really like Liminal Horror as a mini-system; it occupies a unique concept space and I look forward to the Kickstarter backed future edition coming out soon. Also, I find that entire rant ironic given that the best module produced for Liminal Horror so far, the Bureau, is entirely about a fictional authority organization inspired by the Bureau of Control from the eponymous video game. So one of the system's first modules directly contradicts this angry little countercultural paragraph that demonstrates a woeful lack of imagination and genre understanding right off the bat. 

Okay, rant off! Tonight I plan to close out the D&D 5.5 game, and am proposing we tackle Dragonbane or Mothership next (because that's what I packed for).

*Note that I am not talking about games which have advice on "know your audience," sections, or talk about the use of the X card. Those are just practical advice (don't run a game for 9 year olds with Kult, m'kay? or if you are running for a diverse crowd of Gen Z players, an X card may be quite revealing if you are not good at reading a crowd as a GM). Admittedly, if a game tells me to "remove the spiders if a player is offended" my internal advice is: don't run a game with spiders for someone who is scared of imaginary spiders, you know? Maybe find different players?

Death Bat's 2025 Gaming Plans: Dragonbane, Mothership, Savage Worlds and the Usual Suspects

Here it is! The short and sweet outline of what I plan to do for 2025....at least in theory:

Part I: The things I am certain to be running this year:

Dragonbane

Starting next week we are going to finally start a campaign in Dragonbane. I am really looking forward to this, as until now if you wanted to play BRP Fantasy, the only real options were: find a copy of the out of print (albeit POD) Magic World, customize Runequest, or finnagle Mythras. Actually those are all good options, but Dragonbane has a astyle, character and odd mix of OSR and modernity that resonates well with me. I am looking forward to this.

Savage Worlds

We started Savage Worlds this weekend, using Supers/Horror mashup for a sort of Planetary/Hellboy/Horror Comics inspired campaign. I think this is going to be a fun, long prospect for a campaign as I get to lean in to my secret obsession I never usually write or talk about: the comic genre and all its quirks! I also plan to offer up more SW genres down the road, and am really looking forward to the new Science Fiction Companion when it ships in February.

Mothership

I plan to run more Mothership intermittently throughout 2025, and may warm up to a short or long campaign again at some point. I realize with Mothership it is as much about the player investment in the experience as anything, so how much Mothership I get to run will depend on the group I assemble.

Part II: The things I expect to run or try to run this year, but there are caveats:

D&D 5.75

The new D&D is on hold until the Monster Manual comes out. I have to see how the final tome in the revised books looks so I can assess my feelings on the new revision, and how it all comes together. Right now, using existing monsters with new characters makes the characters feel a but overpowered and I can't tell if that's by design, or because we're missing the appropriately revamped monsters to accompany them.

Tales of the Valiant

I really want to run this, but I need to detox a bit from having run way too much 5E in 2024. If the final book in the D&D 5.75 set doesn't really live up to expectations, I may just insist that any future 5E in 2025 be via Tales of the Valiant.

GURPS

I would love to get a chance to play GURPS again, but it's thunder may be stolen by Savage Worlds in 2025, which is honestly a better fit for my regulars. I may get to run GURPS with my son and some new players, though, if I can find them.

Mork Borg and Vast Grimm (and Maybe Death In Space)

This is all part of the Mork Borg universe. I anticipate running more one shots and short 2-3 session games here at some point, especially if this year is not monopoloized by protracted D&D campaigns. That said, which flavor and variant (and I also just got Ronin, another Mork Borg spin off that is amazing) depend on mood, I guess.

Part III: The Fever Dreams

I can sum the unlikely candidates up like this: Runequest (because I can't quite invest in Glorantha); Mythras (because as soon as I start diving in to relearn it I remember why I stop); Vaesen (I really want to, but the cute approach to the art is at odds with my ability to convey a horror atmosphere); then there's Pathfinder 2E, which I actually fully expect I may be playing in as a player, but do not think I will get around to GMing this year, but who knows! I often say that then prove myself wrong for at least one session. Also Traveller, which I wouldn't mind running, but I need a shift in my group dynamics before I will consider it (e.g. honest die rollers only please). That last one applies to a lot of these games, actually. 

I didn't mention Cypher System because I can't quite pin down what I want to do with it, but that could change in 2025. I also can't quite bring myself to offer it up right now (despite loving the system) because the die rolls are all player facing, and when you may have one or more suspects in your group who like to cheat on their die rolls, it can be very demoralizing. Yes, I likely need to have a chat with the specific person(s) about this. If you wonder why I don't just kick them, keep in mind I am gaming with a group of players who have in some cases been together as gamers and friends for 18 or more years, so these are not just randos, or people I don't know (or want to know), or pickup gamers. So at some point an honest talk is a better approach. Also, we're all really old now, and so one would think age would make us better people, both on how to approach this and (yes) why on earth would anyone at this stage cheat? It is frustrating....but it is not like 20+ years ago when when the cheating was generally unheard of among those I gamed with, as we all took the experience more earnestly. So yeah, I do need to decide what to do about this and how to approach it, and maybe I am doing so in too nuanced a fashion, but age has a way of doing that to you I guess.

Anyway, See you all on the flip side in 2025! Some predictions to come next. 

Death Bat's review of Last Year's Projections

 Well here we are again! Another year, another review on last year's predictions and projections for the outgoing year. How did my plans and predictions stack up?

Predictions:

D&D 2024 Releases but Beyond Isn't Ready - near as I can tell I am spot on about this; that demo with fully 3D figures that looked like a CRPG? I don't think there's any evidence that exists right now, so far as I can tell...

Tales of the Valiant - I predicted it would be successful and might eat some of Pathfinder's market share but not penetrate the core D&D crowd. I think I am wrong on the first count and right on the second count. Instead, it looks like TotV will be its own niche corner, and won't really eat anyone's market share, instead becoming yet another variant with its own core crowd thanks to Kickstarter.

D&D-Spin Off Fatigue - I expected this to happen in 2024, and I think to some degree it has happened, as the "alternative to D&D" market has indeed fragmented into something like a dozen different variants from Daggerheart to Tales of the Valiant, Pathfinder, Shadowdark and all the existing D20 variants out there. It's so bad that I think D&D 2024 is effectively succeeding by being an anchor with the most common ground in the middle of it all. 

Fewer new IP and Gaming Properties - I am not sure this is true. It seems like there are a metric ton of new IPs and games out there, or on the way, but what I am missing is where people are collecting their information. I rely largely on ENWorld for my gaming news, and they are only "so so" at things not related to D&D. 

Goals:

Mothership - I wanted to run more Mothership in 2024. I did run a one shot in January and a two parter at the end of the year in December. I did not run another lengthy campaign, however. I forget offhand when the Mothership Boxed set finally arrived, but I recall it was sometime in May. That waiting for the new edition to release proved to be part of why it didn't take off; it finally came out, and as is often tradition for Kickstarters it took me a while to get back in the mood to deal with it. I also realized that my last really successful online Mothership game was a bit of lightning in a bottle; you sort of need the right kind of group to really pull off Mothership. I don't know that I currently have that sort of group right now. Some of my players, sure! But others.....hmmmm not so much.

Dragonbane - Despite wanting to run this, I have not as yet gotten around to it. 2024 was a year where I found little time to mess with new mechanics, and ended up sticking to the "familiar and easy," which is to say, lots of D&D 5E.

Traveller - I did run a short Traveller campaign early on. I stopped running Traveller for one very specific and disappointing reason, about which I won't dive too deeply here, but let's just say that I wish players would let the dice roll and not fudge crap all the time (read: cheat). I am unsure of how to fix this problem other than to run games of somewhat more complexity, making it harder to easily cheat on die rolls, or to take over some dice rolling (which I really prefer not to do). In general I sort of assume that this happens on occasion from certain people, but it was a bit excessive in the last Traveller game I ran, and was substantiated by others. As a result, I really lost my taste for running the game for my group. And honestly....it's impacted me kind of hard ever since, and I am extremely reluctant to run certain game systems with entirely player-facing die roll mechanics as a result. If certain players (and there are only certain ones here, mind you; others in my group are great and honest!) desire to cheat to insure their "victory" then why not just play a video game, watch a movie or read a book? 

Post More - Pssh 'nuff said! I totally slacked off on posting for most of 2024.

Pace Myself - I think I did okay here. I have gamed less often on Saturday, which is often a trouble night for me, especially now that I live a 25 miles south of the city where the gaming locations we meet are at.

Miscellaneous:

I made some offhand comments, and wanted to mention those:

Rivers of London - Chaosium has not done much new with it, but its still there being promoted. In this day and age a game with maybe one sourcebook in a year or two is becoming increasingly common. I did buy the first novel in the series the game is based on, but haven't read it yet. 

Esper Genesis - They actually came through! The print edition of the Technician's Guide arrived a few months back, so kudos to them for getting this out at last. A pity it arrived in the wake of a new edition of D&D and took so long I suspect it will be harder for Alligator Alley to get the trust of Kickstarter backers.

GURPS - I suggested GURPS could have a new edition but won't. In their defense, they did get a good reprint with nice binding. I think, based on my observation of the market and the interesting directions it has gone, that GURPS is probably best off as a niche game system with a core fanbase that can remain ignored by the broader community.

13th Age 2nd Edition - I suggested it won't come out in 2024 and I was right. Another Kickstarter waaaay behind deadline. I am looking forward to this one when it comes out. Will it come out in 2025? Maybe, but it will arrive to a saturated market. Unless WotC releases the new Monster Manual and it turns out to be garbage for some reason, causing a wave of dissatisfied DMs to look elsewhere.

Pathfinder - I suggested maybe Pathfinder's increased costs will lead to a shrink in market share. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I know I have fellow players who have commented on how Paizo's books are getting too expensive to keep up with now. I think the costs are driven by the unionization of their workstaff, which is a good thing, but also a rough spot to be in a largely non-union, low-profit corner of the business. I suspect 2025 could be a make or break year for Paizo. 

Okay, next I'll make some predictions for 2025 and set some goals!

The Economy of design in a Tri-Fold / One-Sheet Module (Or: Not All Tri-folds are Created Equal)

 Last night my group returned to Mothership, which I haven't run since January. It was fun! But it was a tad bit frustrating for me, as I picked a tri-fold module to kick things off which, on an initial reading, sounded fun....but in actual play I realized it was maybe too skimpy, too brief in its presentation and details for me to work comfortably with. On the plus side, an important component of running this sort of tiny module is that you as GM must out of necessity be ready to riff and improv, and I immediately started doing so, but as I was, I had to wonder to myself if I couldn't have just saved myself a bit of grief by simply writing my own scenario instead. 

And then I remembered The Haunting of Ypsilpon-14, a benchmark of quality in this sort of module design. I wrote more about that module here, and now that I've had a lot of Mothership scenarios under my belt, I realize that there is a special and unique art to designing a compact adventure that fits on two sides of a page and somehow gives enough detail to a Warden to comfortably run the adventure and extrapolate new directions and details without much effort. 

So why does one tri-fold module succeed and others fail? The module I was working with last night is called "Tombship of the Lich" and comes from a boxed set of 5 modules called Terrors from the Cosmos. The thematic elements of the modules are essentially a blend of futuristic horror with more primal, magical (technomantic) horror. They have thematic similarities, and a chunk of the modules are driven by the style and presentation, including extra monster cards, art pieces (in the deluxe set) and a "off color on black background" design aesthetic. So....a lot of flashy weirdness, as has come to dominate the new wave alt indie zinerpg scene, in other words.

Taken at its own value, the Tombship of the Lich module is a short set up (investigate an anomaly and the tombship) with a timer countdown, and a description of half a dozen key locations. The module offers guidelines and links to connect locations, and some guidance on the big bad (the lich Nekrul) and his reanimated alien skeletal cyborg army. It is simple enough. I think if I did not have high expectations, and did not have the GM/Warden narrative style I have (where I like to make sure there is consistency in the underlying plot and universe, and like to convey through description what is going on, and want to make sure the PCs have a reason and interest to be involved and have agency) then maybe this module could be run really simply, and without any real effort at preamble or expectations. But it really doesn't work that well without adding a lot to it (for what I need, anyway). It is like the barest outline. 

Contrast with The Haunting of Ypsilon-14.  Like all tri-fold modules it's got only so much space to work with, but it provides an alarming amount of interesting detail that you can extrapolate a universe from without much effort. It's economy of design maximizes the connectivity of the setting, and the text is effectively embedded in a diagramatic map which allows the Warden to spatially understand what is going on and where things are happening. If you run it on Roll20 the module even comes with an actual map with a retro aesthetic that works very well for this purpose (you can find it here, in fact).  That map really helps, but the tri-fold's diagrammatic layout works quite well. The one in the Tombship module is far more basic and doesn't entirely clarify how it relates to the text. 

The Haunting module also provides a myriad of NPCs for the game, with just the briefest but most useful bits of information as well as some nice metrics to keep track of who dies by the creature next. It is not afraid to put a lot of text in a small space, and it (smartly) puts black text on a yellow background, which is far more readable than blue text on a black background. Little things like this are important! 

At every point of design the Haunting module extrapolates just a bit more detail, and provides it in a succinct, often bullet-point like manner, giving the Warden what is needed without burdening unnecessary additional details. The Tombship module in contrast uses a much larger font, skims over some conceits that would be useful to have clarified (at a certain point it becomes unclear why the party even needs to board the Tombship when they could arguably maneuver their ship to "throw" the quantum payload in to the warp) and honestly, my players were just being good spirits about it and didn't start questioning some of these detaile (even as I was pondering them and working out arbitrary excuses in my head). 

This has got me to thinking: I should review some of these! There are good tri-fold modules and bad. Another good one: Dinoplex Cataclysm. I think maybe this is a new thing I can do on the blog to have fun with. More to come!

Mothership 1E Ditched Levels (Which is a Shame)

I have a rant about Mothership. Here it goes...starting with a regression to Traveller:

For better or worse, Traveller 2nd Edition and prior editions have a long history of front-loading your character's skill history into the terms you serve before you retire in middle age and decide to go adventuring. Traveller is all about spacemen resolving a midlife crisis through adventure, essentially.

Mothership 0E, however, was a game about frightened average Joes out on a routine job discovering horrifying alien threats. The average Mothership character is someone generally early in their professional career in Traveller terms, suddenly thrust into a deadly limelight and having to build instincts to survive and learn.

Mothership 1E, however, got some notion going that levels are too gamey for it and decided to go with a more Travelleresque approach, one in which you can improve skills through learning and cash over time. The problem is its a pretty simplistic and arbitrary approach, and as a result feels just as gamey as levels did, because under this system, as an example, getting good at something like firearms takes 4 years of study--not because anyone in their right mind thinks it really takes that long, but because that's how long an expert skill takes.

I guess this is a roundabout way of saying that sure, when you choose to analyze a system in a game, it can and will come off as gamey. The question is: does the system serve a good purpose toward the type of game and story you are telling? And the answer is that yes, leveling as a mechanic does serve that purpose, but inconceivably long periods of training time do not. In the former, your characters can semi-organically grow with experience, and you could refine the level process if you so desired to let the improvements reflect the type of experience gained (if you want to drill down enough for that level of granularity). But the other system will arbitrarily restrict the chance of growth in skills and learning to a much smaller percentage of gamers, those who play Mothership like a long-term multiyear campaign with characters who aren't at near constant risk of death and therefore somehow have time to train for 2 to 6 years. I don't know who's running the game like that, sorry.

What Mothership 1E needs is both systems: a training mechanic (and the save improvement through shore leave mechanic) and a leveling reward system that identifies that the stuff the characters are actually doing at that moment in play is what actually matters to the game and experience, not "set your PC aside for 6 years to do nothing so you can improve." Alas, I don't get involved in development on stuff, I generally trust those in charge to make good choices, but I feel like maybe this was a missed chance to let the devs of Mothership know that whoever told them a slower system of advancement for their fast-passed horror game was a good idea were maybe not speaking for all of us? 

Well, there's a huge 3PP community out there for Mothership, maybe one of them will (or has) hacked the level mechanic back in. I know I'm awarding "skill points" that can go toward skill improvement in my game. No one is ever going to learn the good stuff otherwise, and I am not going to restrict myself to boring, slow games where survival is paramount just to aid them in growth; that's what Traveller is for.

The 2023 Death Bat Year in Gaming and Looking to 2024

 What a weird year it has been for me. I spent a lot of this year overworked and with less free time for fun than I would like, but on the plus side I got a bit better at managing what free time I did have. My son, who is now 12, monopolizes a fair amount of that, but he's also very into D&D now and plays in a school group as well as my Wednesday night group....which doesn't play D&D as often anymore, but hey, we're starting a new campaign this week, so there ya' go.

This year kicked off with Wizards of the Coast annihilating trust in their shepherding of Dungeons & Dragons through the OGL, resulting in numerous spin-off games appearing under a creative commons or new license (ORC) through Paizo, including the revamped Pathfinder 2E v2, and the imminent Tales of the Valiant from Kobold Press. It's a boost for existing products like level Up! A5E RPG, though honestly Morrus and his ENWorld crew are not really the sort to dramatically capitalize on the negative hype aimed at WotC, and they continue to do their own thing. 

I spent a lot of time this year deep diving into the alternative and indie RPG market that I dub "zinerpgs" because most of these seem to have spun out of the zine scene where small publishers and authors (usually one and the same) along with their art-generating college buddies create elaborate, minimalist, starkly artistic and utterly weird entries into the market. I stalled out a bit on that project of reviewing all I had found but need to get back to it. Maybe 2024 will be a slower year for me....sheeya right!

This year I did manage the following:

First and best, I got the Wednesday group back to live nightly gaming again. This has been a welcome relief, as I tend to associate facetime on web events with work; it is not fun for me. My Saturday game remains on Roll20 out of necessity, but even then I am thinking about making Roll20 a bi-weekly deal and interposing a live event every other week.

As a player I got actual action in this year. I played in a campaign of Pathfinder 2E run by a friend; found that being a player in this edition is more frustrating and unfun (imo) than being a GM. Another friend in Seattle has managed to run a lot of Victorian Gaslight Call of Cthulhu for much of this year until unfortunate circumstances led to that group collapsing (temporarily; three of us wish to resume it in January). He has also run a fun bi=weekly D&D 5E game I have played in for the better part of the year using the Kobold Press Southlands campaign.

I have run live games this year of BRP in a near-future hard SF/Cyberpunk setting, Pathfinder for Savage Worlds, D&D 5E at very high levels (levels 15-20), a couple D&D mini-campaigns on Roll20, an aborted Pathfinder game (what I like to call "the one that made me gun-shy over Pathfinder"), Vaesen (a game I'd describe better as Dark Fantasy and less horror), Call of Cthulhu (both modern day and Cthulhu Dark ages, using the 6th Edition of the Dark Ages rules), Mork Borg (which was a blast but I have not been sure what to do with it next; it is most decidedly a beer & pretzels dark metal RPG), and at the start of the year we had a 1st edition Gamma World holiday campaign wrap up. Fun stuff! I may have blogged less this year, but at least I kept the gaming up. There might have been a game or two I forgot about....OSE maybe? I think I ran that all last year, though.

Of those games I ran, I came away a bit cool on Vaesen (fun but hard for me to get in to, which is damning if you're the GM), happy that Mork Borg was so fun (but also realizing it is best used sparingly), excited for the Call of Cthulhu games, but also realizing I need to give it a rest a bit so my idea engine can recharge, and for BRP I am now intrigued at the idea of exploring how many oddball genres I can get out of it. I really enjoyed the Savage Worlds Fantasy and Pathfinder adaptations, but I am not 100% sure my group did as when I suggested returning to it they all seemed "m'eh" so I think the joyful simplicity of Savage Worlds may not be as endearing to them as it is to me. As for Pathfinder.....man, I want to, but I've had some issues and bad experiences with running it now and that is proving tough for me to get over. D&D remains viable and my energy to play it is recharged, thankfully, but I plan to ditch it entirely for Tales of the Valiant unless whatever WotC pumps out for new editions next year knocks my socks off. My suspicion is it will be a product aimed to steer me toward their online platform, and that will be a no deal situation. Meanwhile, Kobold Press is more or less continuously making smart and fun books and their grip on Shard Tabletop is where I'll put my online money. I am confident the Kobolds won't forget their analog wood-grain table crowd.

My biggest issue this year has been wrestling with GM burnout. Playing more helped a bit, but I have never been very good as a player (I know too much how the cheese is made, so it can be tough to feel invested unless the GM is shockingly good at running things). I got pretty tired of D&D for a bit, but I feel more interested now, especially as I did get a chance to explore other games there, and that, if anything, helped hammer home that the grass is not greener on the other side, and what really makes things fun is what I put in to it more than what system I am using. Getting to play D&D 5E for once was a godsend, and my friend Mike runs a mean, tight game in the Southlands, loads of fun.

For 2024, I hope to run a good long fun D&D 5E game in my Pergerron setting. I think the Roll20 Saturday group would like to do part 2 to an older Pathfinder campaign in Oman'Hakat, and I may be up for that. I have strong plans for a Traveller campaign, maybe before we do D&D or Pathfinder on Saturday, especially now that it seems they finally have some real character sheet support. The 2022-2024 revisions of Traveller have been great books, not really necessary but welcome nonetheless, and I may even use them to continue the campaign concepts I started in the BRP campaign earlier this year. 

Beyond that, I have some hopes of experimenting with Dragonbane, which I almost ran but never quite got to this year, as well as Mutant Year Zero. I'm hopeful that Friday Knight Games finally coughs up the gigantic Kickstarted boxed set of Mothership 1E this year so I can resume running that. Steve Jackson Games is making a big monster book for The Fantasy Trip, too, and I am thinking about what sort of logistics it would take to give TFT a spin. And, of course, Mork Borg and its evil cousins Death in Space, Vast Grimm, Pirate Borg and Cy_Borg call for my attention the next time I have a week with nothing better going on. 

I'll try to do more blogging, too! I have found lots of RPG bloggers on Substack, may forge a new blog over there as well to see how it goes, but I am reluctant to abandon this one as I have so many years behind it now. We'll see, who knows.

Sidequest: The Role of Improv in Indie Zine RPGs

 While reviewing this various indie zine RPGs, I realized that an important component of this subgenre/style of RPG is the need for improv and emergent gameplay features. Most of the indie games I have explored in this style of game have a heavy focus on providing tools for unanticipated/unplanned gameplay elements, whether that be from randomized charts you roll on to programmed adventures which include very minimal detail to deliberately allow the GM to riff on the content. All of this leans in to the dominion of the field of improv, which of course goes beyond RPGs, but using improv with these kinds of games is facilitated by also aiming for simpler mechanics; fewer moving parts mean easier improvisation without rules causing a contradiction.

Improv is a necessity in any RPG, but for a lot of bigger name RPGs with more complexity in design and setting an emphasis is on providing a sandbox full of toys. While you can improv a random new monster design in D&D 5E by throwing out some stats real quickly, it's going to be mechanically harder to make it interesting than, say, concocting a new random monster in Mork Borg, Mothership or Into the Zone. 

Likewise, many pre-published modules for games like Pathfinder, Traveller, D&D and other big name RPGs are loaded with enough details that the GM often only needs to consult the module to get the needed answers, and we all are familiar with GMs who are not terribly good at thinking off the cuff and as a result tend to try and hedge the players in to "recognized" actions within the module. Honestly, not everyone is good at improv, and in my many years of gaming I can say that this is a key reason there are far fewer GMs than players out there. 

The indie zine scene modules are emphatically directed in the opposite direction, of course. I think part of this is because there's a large segment of the hobby that consists of gamers who do not actually find satisfaction in muti-hundred page tomes filled with elaborate and preset details. Improvisation in gaming can be immensely satisfying, and for many having a starting point from which to riff off of is much more satisfying than having to parse out an elaborate scenario where all variables are accounted for. I know this is what grabbed me when I ran the Haunting of Ypsilon 14, a tri-fold introductory module for Mothership 0E. The "aha" moment for me was realizing that the tri-fold was taking what amounted to exactly the same level of outlined module details I might make for my own game design, then repackaging it into a format that used the economy of design to improve its utility while necessarily requiring the GM to improv; a room might contain only one sentence with the key information you need to know about it, requiring the GM to elaborate as they see fit on extra details. The monster is basically described, primarily a stat block, so my version of the haunting creature is probably not exactly the same as another GM's would be. But the module goes even further in providing randomized events, including where the monster is in the complex in a given turn, who the next victim is, and so forth. It means that any time one runs the module, the play through will be different. In the end, a double-sided tri-fold module generated nearly four sessions of playtime for my group. I think the expectation is it will be good for one night of gaming....but between the sort of group I have and the level of improv I engaged with on it, the module lasted us much longer. 

In contrast, I tried running some Starfinder and Pathfinder Adventure Paths a while back and found them intensely limiting and restrictive. People complain about railroad type modules an gameplay, and unfortunately Adventure Paths tend to do this. Linear gameplay in this sort of module can be satisfying to a certain kind of player or GM, but it may not work well at all for players who are accustomed to having more directional control over their futures, or GMs who want to be surprised at what happens in play as opposed to preprogrammed narrators who might as well be reading from a pick-a-path programmed adventure book for all the lack of freedom the adventure path allows.

I guess what I am saying is that I can see why this new market of indie zine RPGs lean heavily into playstyles that actively encourage improv and emergent, unanticipated gameplay experiences. This is a market that I think has been underserved for a while now. It's not enough to say something is "OSR" anymore, as OSR gameplay, while it can encourage a certain level of improv and emergent gameplay is still also incredibly restrictive in that most OSR products are slaved to a specific feel and approach of the early hobby defined by original D&D or AD&D, and is why so many OSR games are just different reskins of the same OD&D rules interpretations. In the end, with an OSR game you're still dealing with orcs, goblins, elves, dwarves, magic missiles and any myriad of OGL compliant D&D tropes. The new indie zine RPG wants to build into spaces untouched by game setting convention, and the best of these indie zine RPGs do exactly that. 

Okay, next week I'll review Into the Zone, Screams Amongst the Stars and probably Death in Space!