“If you get on the wrong train, immediately you realize it, get off at the next nearest station. The longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be.” – Japanese proverb
For various reasons, this version of the blog is not working for me, so I’m off to Blogger to try something different.
You can find the new blog here in a day or three, and I hope you’ll join me there.
This is a purchase from 2024 which I didn’t find time to review that year; a three-page aftermarket add-on for Savage Worlds Adventure Edition from Manuel Sambs of Veiled Fury Entertainment, probably best-known for the Sprawlrunners cyberpunk supplement for SWADE.
It’s rare for me to find a supplement from this author that I don’t like, and as a $1 download from DriveThruRPG (here) it’s not much of a risk; that’s not even a single cup of coffee.
This particular item is a genre-neutral rules expansion, adding trading to SWADE.
Here’s how it works:
The first two pages explain all that in more detail, including what happens if the PCs can’t get a contract at all, or if they stoop to illegal contracts.
The third and final page is tables; cargo capacity by vehicle size, modifiers for contract negotiations, contract availability, what kind of goods you’re carrying, how scarce they are, and how much they’re worth, complications, the impact of travelling with no contract.
The one thing it doesn’t really cover is what to do if you’re using the optional Wealth rules rather than tracking money. My instinct is to say that $500 – the usual starting cash for a PC – counts as one Reward. That’s probably a bit generous but it’ll do for now.
Let’s say Arion is moving a Size 13 scoutship from one planet to another and needs a cargo to make some money – notice it doesn’t matter what the point of origin or the destination are like. Size 13 is Gargantuan, so he has a capacity of three cargo spaces – note that these are not necessarily the same as SF Companion cargo spaces. Let’s say the route has a regular port, so we draw three cards to see what cargoes are available; 10 of Spades, 2 of Diamonds, Ace of Diamonds. The suit determines the kind of cargo, the value any adjustments to the standard price.
We now roll his Persuasion (d4 plus Wild Die) and get a 2 on the d4 and a 6 and a 1 on the Wild Die, total 7; there are no situational modifiers, so that’s a success but no raise. That means he chooses one card (10 of Spades, as it makes him the most money) and rolls 1d10 on the Complications Table (7) to see what goes wrong. Something always goes wrong, this supplement is more about triggering adventures than making money.
The card means the voyage will net him $1500 over and above the ship’s upkeep, and the die roll means the goods have a mysterious origin.
It’s all going well until Customs checks the bill of lading and asks him where these luxury items came from. He is unable to verify the integrity of the supply chain to their satisfaction…
At first blush this looks like a dollar well spent. I can’t get an espresso for that, not even in Italy.
“To generate a new site, follow these steps until you feel like you have enough to work with during play.” – The Perilous Void
The third and final look at The Perilous Void, in which we work out a few things I might need later in the Aslan Route campaign.
The initial review gave examples of rolling up a planet, a faction, and a community, taken from the rulebook, and a nonhuman species I diced up myself. The second look documented my current group campaign, the Aslan Route, using the setting overview form and rules.
As a GM, I always need a Development (scenario idea), NPCs, and a site to explore, so let’s generate some of those and stuff them in the back pocket for later. It’s probably worth noting that all the tables are either 1d10, 1d%, or a combination thereof.
Development type: 61, event. Something happens which the PCs notice, but which does not have to involve them – they can decide not to get involved.
Theme: 39 – History. Prompt: 3, 17 – dissent.
That one looks like something playing on the holo set in the corner of the bar, perhaps a documentary on some local protest movement.
On the same tables I could have rolled “assassination ignites open warfare” which would have been much easier to turn into a scenario.
The fact that the GM is bothering to work out an NPC implies that they’re going to play a significant role, otherwise you wouldn’t bother. You may need to retrofit this partway through a campaign; Ahoaki, the Port Authority contact on Sink, didn’t even have a name to start with, but now she’s the PCs’ friend and has quite a detailed personality. (I didn’t expect their base world to be Sink either, but there we are, that’s players for you.)
Fortunately, The Perilous Void allows for that.
First impression: When we first encounter an NPC in passing, we generate their species (43, commonest species in the campaign, for me that’s human) and occupation (0, 94; high priest or cult leader).
Second glance: Add 1-3 details, let’s say two; (2, 71) scars and (8, 73) sarcastic.
Introduction: Now you find out the NPC’s pronouns (9, they/them) and name; for that, I roll on the generic space opera tables, which generate names a syllable at a time, and get Oncan Bolmar, very Star Wars.
What makes them tick? As GM, you use this to work out what they do next, or when they need to make a decision. Until they need to decide on something, you don’t need this. Motivation: (8, 70) pleasure – this NPC is a hedonist.
How do they behave? When the NPC first needs to react to a situation, roll three traits. (0, 52) opportunistic, (1, 45) honourable, (9, 30) devious.
Loyalty: Decide if the NPC belongs to a faction. If so, either pick one of the existing ones or create a new one.
Embellish. Flesh out the NPC further as time and your needs dictate. No tables for this really.
Now, that looks like quite a lot of detail, and it is, but only if that’s what you need. Remember, you’re only adding layers of detail as and when you need them.
There is a different and somewhat faster process for the case when you want to fill a particular position in the narrative with an NPC archetype; an antihero, for example, rolls on the neutral part of the motivation table (53, knowledge) and also rolls for one neutral and two negative traits – let’s say 39 (disruptive), 66 (sinister) and 37 (malevolent).
Roll for type: (99) Ruin.
Roll for theme: (39) Discovery/revelation.
As it’s a ruin, I now need to roll for its origin (84, precursor civilisation), cause of collapse (14, natural disaster), theme (might as well use the one above), and architecture (25, fluidic/floating/shifting).
Sketch a map: Choose or roll key locations from the site’s area tables and establish their relationship with a simple node map, assigning each node a number. Let’s just roll one as a taster; (04) a connective structure or hall.
This step is where the Site Profile form comes in, letting you record the node map, areas, and whatnot; judging by the classifications at top left, it is intended for Communities as well as Sites. It has one of those strange isometric grids though, so not sure what a square is for scale purposes.
Populate areas using detail and prop tables. Let’s just look at our sample area; detail 87, structural damage/cracks (might be how we get in), prop 06 ancient armour/defence (maybe a force screen protecting the inside from sand blowing in through the crack?).
Establish threat, bearing the site’s type and theme in mind. 28, energy surges. Maybe the force screen is starting to overload and occasionally sheds sparks?
Finalise content.
The downside of using random tables like these is that you get quite of lot of results which are not immediately useful for the kind of pulp action-adventure games I prefer to run, which mostly use melodramatic stereotypes. I think The Perilous Void probably works best when you have some ideas already and use the generators to flesh them out.
Of the tables I’ve looked at so far, I found the Development and NPC ones a bit meh and probably wouldn’t use them in play myself. However, I did like the setting overview and site generator and you may see those again later.
Overall, I think The Perilous Void is closest to Ironsworn: Starforged in feel, although the latter is a complete solo RPG. You probably don’t need both; the former gives you a broader range of setting options but assumes you’re using something else as the RPG engine.
Previously, on the Aslan Route: Investigating the monastery on Sink, the PCs discover it has a gold mine and jewellery shop supporting a hospice. Their former free trader contact has probably been impressed into the Drinaxian Star Guard, so the Macavity offers to take over that run. At night, Vila breaks into the monastery and copies all their digital data. Something strange is going on here, and the PCs are set on finding out what. Now read on…
Analysis of the stolen data reconfirms that the monastery is what it claims to be, with only a few points of interest. Why did they buy a jacuzzi? What is the enigmatic House of Shrouded Mirrors on Pourne? Why do meeting minutes sometimes record the meeting was adjourned so the abbot could ‘ease a patient’s passing’? And finally, who is eating all that curried goat?
The purloined records indicate this cult is an offshoot of Buddhism, but the monks believe being buried in the swamp allows one to pass directly to nirvana without all that tedious death and rebirth.
Discarding the idea of deliberately hastening the demise of a hospice patient so they can observe a swamp burial, the crew set up remote surveillance cameras to watch the swamp and the monastery, then return to the abbott, explain that they’re off to Byrni and points coreward, and would he like to send some missionaries with them? He agrees, and thus it is that Sister Raquel embarks.
Most of this jump is spent getting to know Sister Raquel, who it turns out is a hacker from Pourne who joined the cult as a way of getting offworld when the police got a little too interested in her ‘difficult data retrieval service’. Dr Matauranga makes sure her inoculations are up to date and takes DNA samples. She easily finds the bugs in her cabin and sets them to pipe cat videos into the system. Vila arranges to pay her for hacking lessons. She accepts the cult’s views, but seems too hard-headed and rational to go along with the ‘magic fairy in the swamp’ side of things, leading the crew to believe that whatever is in the swamp, there’s a rational explanation.
Everyone except Mazun decides to wear their ayloi, following the trend set by Vila, who decides that being easily identifiable as an honourable aslan female (he’s an engineer) under the protection of the Iuwoi clan is worth the risk of being expected to defend his honour in a duel if challenged. While Mazun is bogged down in paperwork, the others go with Sister Raquel to meet the cult’s agent on Byrni, Brother Christian. They explain to him that they are replacing the Russell’s Teapot and why; Brother Christian presses them for details, and seems concerned, muttering that ‘the Fury is on the move again’. He asks for passage back to Sink, and the crew agree to take him so that they get a chance to interrogate him en route.
Mazun further establishes his cover as a reputable merchant captain by briefing the local government and the GeDeCo pirate hunters about what’s going on at Torpol.
The Macavity now travels from Byrni to Ergo, Tech-World, and Paal, before returning to Sink.
Ergo has the population of a small city spread over an entire planet, and despite the radioactive wastes, cannibals and pirate bases, the Macavity – which limits itself to orbital and low-altitude surveys – manages to identify some sites where a small group of enterprising ihatei could carve themselves a home out of the wilderness, although they might have to fight a few cannibal pirates for it.
At Tech-World, Sister Raquel disembarks, unsure whether to spread the word or shed her nun’s habit and return to a life of dubious morality. The crew goes shopping for armour, state of the art drones, including some hunting targets for the Prince, and psionic shield helmets, as Vila is convinced that he narrowly escaped psionic cultists on Blue and tells an embellished version of the story in the solitary starport bar. Mazun sends off a report to his handler on Cordan and says the best place to contact the team for the foreseeable future is Sink.
With almost two months for the crew to wheedle secrets out of Brother Christian, they dig out of him that the swamp is not, as they suspect, a hive mind, but something closer to a data storage unit, hungry for information-dense input; the monks recruit terminally ill patients, explaining to them that they can live forever (sort of) in the nirvana of the swamp. The swamp records their personalities, which it considers valuable items, and they live on, after a fashion; their memories and personalities are not entirely part of a hive mind, but nor are they entirely individuals. Sometimes, the swamp decides it needs more direct contact with the monastery, and it repairs and regurgitates one of the hospice patients; this is how abbots are made, or as Brother Christian puts it, they are blessed by the swamp.
However, certain of the swamp’s data is highly confidential, and is maintained in a secure satellite facility on Pourne: The House of Shrouded Mirrors. This, the excitable Brother Christian informs them, is where the information on the Fury is held. His knowledge and instructions are limited to this: If worlds start developing human-purist fascist tendencies and an inexplicable liking for black and silver uniforms, Something Bad is about to happen, and he is to alert the abbot as soon as he can. The abbot will know what to do.
Naturally, as soon as I abandoned the Space Plague storyline as the players didn’t want to pursue it, they became interested in it and started to pursue it. That’s okay; I build the campaigns around their decisions, starting with the PC builds and then using their decisions and questions to drive it, and they know that.
What’s going on here is one part Pattern Jugglers from Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space series, one part Schlock Mercenary, one part mind flayer elder brain pool, and three parts unused adventures from Heart of the Fury for the Bulldogs! RPG, which I tried running a few years ago – one of the players has already been through the first five adventures, so I can’t use those again, but then the campaign folded. That happens quite a lot lately.
As is my usual habit, when a player started getting close to the real explanation, I gave out a Benny; players in SF games often spend hours whacking the bushes in their search for clues, and I find it useful to reward them with Bennies when they’re onto something, so that they don’t wander off after random shiny bits of irrelevant fluff.
The NPC names come from an online random generator, and their personalities come from Mythic GM Emulator 2E.
Our schedules dictate no more Aslan Route sessions for the next 2-3 weeks, so no more “Traveller Tuesdays” for a while.
Here, I’m using the Big Picture approach to setting creation from Perilous Void to codify the Trojan Reach in its terms. Think of this as an experiment with the Perilous Void, or perhaps another part of my review of the product. Normally, the table would do this as a joint effort involving both discussion and dice-rolling, but here I am documenting what the group has already agreed, as a way of gaining insight into Perilous Void.
A blurred and shadowy summary of what we work out below; I do better with screenshots than photos. What can I tell you, it was a dark and stormy afternoon.
We begin on page 14 of Perilous Void. I’m deliberately doing this from memory, so that it focuses on the big, bold, colourful strokes of the setting, rather than the minutiae which have built up over almost 50 years of Traveller‘s Charted Space.
Looking at the current campaign in the Trojan Reach, the three potential frames that stand out for me are Cosmic Cold War, Trade War, or Space Plague. Cosmic Cold War is essentially what we did in The Pirates of Drinax, and the players have politely informed me that they’re not interested in the Space Plague storyline I was setting up. That leaves us with Trade War; “mercantile conglomerates and megacorporations are vying for supremacy. PCs might be free traders, mercenaries hired for protection, or pirates on the hunt.”
Of the technologies mentioned, Traveller jump drive is closest to hyperdrive; “technology permits passage through a parallel dimension where distances are compressed, enabling ships to cross vast distances quickly”.
While Charted Space is rife with sentient species, the Trojan Reach has only three that travel extensively; humans, aslan and florians. We’ll come back to that when we look at societies and their interactions, but for now we’ll check the basic profile of the latter two for Perilous Void, which means deciding the archetype, descriptor, and special ability for each.
Aslan: Feline warriors, clawed tan humanoids, natural weaponry.
Florians: Diminutive mystics (at least the Barnai are, the Feskals are more like giant artisans), pink humanoids, no special ability. I couldn’t see a suitable “Other” descriptor, so I left it blank; you could perhaps make a case for many-limbed or multicephalous. Depending on which publisher’s version of them you’re using, you could perhaps argue for a kind of telepathy as a special ability, but let’s not go there.
I would always suggest three of these; more is confusing, and fewer doesn’t give my players their preferred option of playing them off against each other.
Conveniently, each of the species has an interstellar state, although none of them align especially well with the society types on page 19; the ones listed are more like Stars Without Number Factions than whole societies. But we do the best we can, and get:
Aslan Hierate: Interplanetary Alliance.
Florian League: Religious Order (my view of Florians is now indelibly coloured by the Guvnor’s Darrians in Spaaace campaign).
Third Imperium: Interplanetary Alliance.
The Florians are largely Indifferent to both the Imperium and the Hierate, while the Imperium and the Hierate are Wary of each other. Interestingly, I can show those relationships by drawing the main trade routes on the Setting Overview worksheet, and when I do that, the relationships join together at Cordan, reinforcing my belief that Cordan should be the base world for the campaign.
I think the points where the relationship lines intersect are good candidates for places of interest at the interstellar level, and I’ll be actively looking for them from now on.
For this outing I’m sticking to the Setting Overview worksheet, and it stops at Society Relationships.
To develop a full campaign from scratch, we would now create a sector, locate home systems, and establish the main jump routes; those already exist, and in more detail than would be necessary for Perilous Void.
We can easily tag systems in the Imperium or Hierate as Core systems, and those in between the two as Frontier ones. We’d then pick a system and zoom in on it as the focus of initial adventures, and determine an inciting incident; I think the most appropriate one for the group’s initial adventure was Diplomatic Sabotage – “Peace talks between hostile factions are on the verge of collapse. What factions are involved? Who’s the saboteur? Whose side are you on?”
This flows easily enough, but trying it out emphasises a couple of things that didn’t leap out at me during the initial review.
Perilous Void is aimed at a smaller setting, or at least one with few places of interest. You’d probably finish the initial session with thumbnail sketches of 3-5 worlds and details only for the one the PCs begin play on. Interstellar societies also feel quite small, controlling perhaps a handful of systems, maybe not even having complete control of one; they are cults, syndicates, or guilds rather than massive interstellar empires.
So, while you can certainly use this for Traveller‘s multi-thousand world feudal empires, if you follow the Rules As Written you will build something closer to the pocket empires of Stars Without Number or Ironsworn: Starforged.
Previously, on the Aslan Route… The Crew of the Macavity fail to successfully conclude marriage negotiations between Prince Hteleitoirl’s clan, the Iuwoi, and that of Elehasei, the Aftei. They leave to carry the Prince into his one year exile on Sink. Now read on…
The crew get to know Elehasei’s chaperone, Akoi, and the handful of staff sent to help the Prince settle in on Sink.
Arriving on Sink on 134-1105, the Macavity lands and is greeted by the aslan Port Authority, a female called Ahoakhi who is part of the Prince’s clan, the Iuwoi. They met her on their last visit and know that she is amicable and fond of gossip. She reports that Koal was retrieved without incident and one of the males sent to get him – Ftoilakh – stayed at the factor’s house to maintain clan ownership.
Ahoaki is puzzled by goings-on at the monastery, although it would be improper for her to pry. Every so often a free trader called Russell’s Teapot delivers low passengers who are collected by the monks. The monks also collect assorted supplies in exchange for a small number of heavy crates. What puzzles Ahoaki is that as more people join the monks, she would expect the amount of supplies to increase (it doesn’t) and extra housing to be built (it isn’t). Since the monks always wear their silver masks and brown robes, it’s hard to tell if they are always the same ones or not.
Ahoaki says that when the low passengers disembark, they seem unhealthy, and the free trader captain (one Maryia Liimaangi) doesn’t treat them or her crew well, but the monks who come to collect them seem solicitous enough. Ahoaki is an alert and observant type, and provides detailed information on how often the Teapot arrives, what it’s carrying, and so on. She also advises that it’s easy to gain access to the monastery trading post, but trying to go beyond that results in encounters with stout but polite monks who explain the rest of the monastery is not open to the public.
While the aslan move into the clan estate, the Macavity relocates close to the monastery which constitutes almost all the population of Sink. As Mazun points out, with a law level of zero they can’t be breaking any laws, as there are none.
A quick flyover on approach reveals the following points:
Mazun and Vila approach openly and enquire about trade. The trading post manager explains that they have an arrangement already with the Russell’s Teapot, although it is somewhat overdue, and the crew explain the situation on Torpol and that the Teapot has probably been pressed into service with the Drinaxian Star Guard. They go on to discuss the Macavity as a potential replacement, and the manager lists the supplies they need – food, spares, medicines and so forth – and what they have to trade for them; quartz and gold mined from the edge of the caldera, and gold jewellery handmade by the monks. He doesn’t have authority to agree a deal, but he can arrange a meeting with the abbot the next day. Vila and Mazun ask about the low passengers, and are told that the monastery also serves as a hospice for the terminally ill.
Late that night, Mazun provides Vila with some parts which are suspiciously easy to assemble into a grav belt, and Rex is strapped into it and sent on a low-level reconnaissance where he encounters high concentrations of marsh gas and is forced to turn back for medical attention.
Rex remembers that the monks on Sink are said to sink valuable items in the swamp. Further conversation with Ahoaki reveals that they do occasionally venture out onto the swamp in flatboats, and dump boxes over the side. It’s logical that these are coffins containing the bodies of dead hospice patients – after all, the monks have to put them somewhere – and Dr Matauranga suggests that they may be a hidden genetic engineering facility, a gang of organleggers, or both.
At tech level 5, the monks’ sensors are limited to the Mk I Eyeball so it’s a simple task to take the air/raft out over the swamp undetected. There’s a ground-penetrating radar in the ship’s locker, and parts that a suitably skilled person could assemble into a sonar; judging by the swearing and occasional explosions from Engineering, Vila is not that person. However, it’s a fine day for an outing, and those aboard the air/raft notice that the vegetation swirls into patterns which seem to follow the air/raft when it’s flying low and slow enough. Perhaps the swamp life has learned that big boxy things mean food? Rex swears that at one point he saw the shape of a human face in the muck, but everyone knows methane poisoning affects one’s vision.
There is no sign of whatever the monks are sinking in the swamp. Eaten by wildlife?
Later, Vila, Mazun and Dr Matauranga return to the monastery, the latter to offer his services to the hospice as a cover for checking out what’s going on there. It turns out that the apparent hospice is really a hospice, and that no-one is going to die in the next few days, so there is no imminent opportunity to see what happens at a swamp burial. The good doctor buys some jewellery at the trading post with the intention of taking DNA samples from both that and the hospice toilets.
Mazun and Vila negotiate a supply agreement with the abbot, and despite their best attempts at finding out his Dark Secret, he doesn’t seem to have one. Although he does have a curious speech impediment, as if his mouth were not the right shape for speaking human language. Hearing the recordings, Rex wonders if he has mouth tentacles? It’s hard to tell anything about the monks, as they are permanently masked (against the methane, perhaps?), robed, and gloved, and greet each other by bowing.
However, when they repreat the story about Torpol being taken over by Drinax, the abbot is intensely interested, asks a lot of probing questions, and generally gets more out of them than they would usually admit. Almost as if he were a trained interrogator. The team retires, puzzled.
That night, Vila dons the grav belt and a rebreather mask and breaks into the southern building, easily bypassing its insultingly ineffective security (a paint tin full of nails rigged to a tripwire). He wanders around until he finds the library/office, where there is a tech level 10 laptop, a printer, a large filing cabinet and a collection of medical and history texts. He clones the laptop onto a thumb drive and takes pictures of some sample hardcopy records and the spines of the books.
Hearing music starting to play from the rooms behind the southern balcony, he decides that’s enough for one evening and exits the facility vertically. Once back at the ship, the crew can join forces to analyse what he has found.
As he goes, he catches a glimpse of a pensive figure on the balcony, leaning on the railing and looking out over the swamp.
To be continued…
I worked this one out before I got Perilous Void, then didn’t use it for a few weeks because of scheduling issues. I started by wondering what the monks could be using for offworld exchange. Not likely to be bog iron, but I discovered that some swamps form in old volcanic calderas, and some calderas also have reasonable gold deposits in the surrounding fissures and quartz veins, so we’re off to the races.
The players asked lots of intriguing questions as always; I welcome these, as the questions and the Mythic GM Emulator‘s responses do half the work for me.
The monastery site was created in four steps:
I’ll explain what’s actually going on once the PCs figure it out.
Thanks to Soypunk for the recommendation drawing this to my attention…
172 page PDF of genre-agnostic procedures and random tables for SF gaming. Available here for $20 + VAT (in my case another $4) from Lampblack & Brimstone. I daresay it will turn up on DriveThruRPG eventually, but I didn’t want to wait for that.
As a European, I dislike this US habit that the price isn’t really the price and you have to add something more at checkout which you were not expecting, but that’s not the publisher’s fault.
Q: What problem do I have currently (not in some hoped-for future) that this product might solve?
A: I’m not sure where to take either my group or solo SF games next, and none of the products I already have are helping – I’ve tried them off-camera.
Two files; the Perilous Void itself, 172 pages, and the Campaign Dossier, 5 pages of printable (but not form-fillable) forms.
Campaign Dossier first. Blank forms for the Setting Overview, Sector Chart (10×10 hexgrid with space for 14 things in the hexes), System Profile for individual star systems, World Profile for individual worlds, Site Profile for individual sites – outposts, towns, ruins, whatever. Of these, the one that looks most interesting and different is the World Profile, because it tries to show the world as two sides of a sphere with checkboxes for the various statistics. The recommendation is one Sector Chart, one Setting Overview, and an appropriate one of the others for each element (world, site etc) as needed.
Next, the main document, which has a number of sections.
Introduction (1 page): How to use the book. Key ideas: The tables provide prompts, not perfect answers; you can either choose or roll for a result; don’t prepare anything you don’t expect to need or enjoy creating; create the upper levels of the setting as a collaboration with your players.
Overview (6 pages): This explains how the various setting components relate to each other, noting that an interstellar setting is necessarily vast, but PCs interact with things on a personal level, so the components are divided into physical and social organisation networks. The physical covers a nested collection of areas – a galaxy made up of sectors, in turn composed of subsectors, jump routes etc. and so on down to individual sites – while the social is likewise nested into species, societies, communities, and so on; each of these may be associated with one or more physical regions.
Interstellar societies occupy multiple systems, which are grouped into core, frontier or wild. The core contains relatively safe base areas, the frontier is where most adventures take place, and wildspace is uncharted and unclaimed.
Setting Creation (18 pages): This allows for three approaches; pre-written, big picture, and frontier snapshot. The latter two are intended to be co-operative endeavours undertaken in Session Zero, but neither has many star systems; the big picture has 3-5, the frontier snapshot only one. Jump routes are divided into safe, unsafe or dangerous, which are 1, 2 or 3 hexes in length, respectively; whatever your FTL technology, it can go one hex safely, two hexes are a challenge, and three is risky – you may need to adjust the scale to suit your game.
(Something which initially confused me here is that the term “subsector” is used to mean a single hex on the sector map; I’m used to the Traveller interpretation, where a subsector is 8×10 hexes, about the size of a sector in Perilous Void or Stars Without Number. A hex also has no fixed size per se.)
If using the big picture approach, this is the point at which the players determine which campaign frame, FTL technology, nonhuman species, and interstellar societies the campaign will use. The society step also includes how the societies interact with each other.
The frame is the overall situation the PCs find themselves in; cold war, rebellion, piracy, invasion, discovery and so on. This is what Mongoose Traveller refers to as the “campaign idea”, one of a number of common campaign types. By default, Stars Without Number and Ironsworn: Starforged are focussed tightly on one of these frames, Post-Apocalyptic Fragmentation.
The nonhuman species generates aliens with a two-part archetype, descriptors, and special ability. Rolling one at random to try it out, I got a species of Chitinous Historians with a feathery, pink, hexagonal body form, able to travel backward or forward in time. Time-travelling hivers perhaps, manipulating history for their own purposes? Maybe that’s how they got the pink feathers, that’ll teach ’em to mess with destiny.
The big picture next dips out to create a sector, before returning to decide core and frontier systems, jump routes, and the inciting incident for the campaign, perhaps a biohazard outbreak. Session Zero now ends and the GM uses the rest of the book to prepare the first session. The big picture approach reminds me most of Diaspora.
The frontier snapshot begins with three interstellar societies, one of which is the main presence in a single system. The system is then fleshed out using the relevant chapter, before determining the opening scene, perhaps a crash landing.
Throughout this process, there’s a lot of “discuss until you reach consensus” and “does anyone want to make any changes”.
Sector Creation (6 pages): Beginning by marking two central points of interest, players take it in turns to randomly locate more points of interest until there are at least 20. This is pretty much the way that SWN does it, but I have to ask, if placement is random, how much does it matter who rolls for it? Anyway, moving on, we now roll for what’s in the hex (sorry, subsector), which might be a star, a nebula, or an anomaly. I found it helpful to keep in mind that hexes have no fixed scale in this process, and that where the statistical likelihood of specific items seems a bit off (multiple star systems, I’m lookin’ at you), that is probably in the interests of skewing outcomes towards something useful in a game rather than an astronomy text.
System Creation (8 pages): This seems to be where we switch from group consensus to GM fiat; the GM is strongly and repeatedly advised only to develop those systems the PCs will spend time in or be affected by, and then only when that happens. The process involves working out the various bodies and population centres orbiting a specific star on the sector map; at this level, each body has a descriptive type and a notable feature.
World Creation (28 pages): Here we start into world stats. Position relative to the star, climate, size, gravity, resources, atmosphere, water, and life, each rated as one of 4-5 descriptive terms such as “large” or “plentiful”. In keeping with the theme of not preparing more than you need at any given time, which is stressed even more here than in Stars Without Number, worlds can generated in stages; initial scan (“we looked it up in Library Data”), data analysis (“we scanned it and analysed it personally from orbit”), or backfill (“we lived on it for three months”). Depending on how much detail you want, you work through sets of tables for each of the initial factors, which might tell you (for example) that this medium-sized world has a diameter of 12,000 km, moderate gravity, one moon and 12 different regions. It looks to me as if some of these results potentially clash with those developed in an earlier stage, but I’d have to work through it in more depth to be sure.
Here’s the statblock for the example in the chapter to give you some idea what to expect:
GLANOS IV: Oceanic planet, far, large, cold, G moderate, A medium (nitrogen), W maximal (98%), L simple, R ultra-rich. Deep-sea trenches interconnected by vast tunnel networks, violent storms, mutated marine life with electric defences.
One thing I do welcome is the guidance on atmospheric composition, which is something most games gloss over beyond saying “wear a mask”.
Lifeform Creation (12 pages): The GM is advised to generate 3-5 signature lifeforms for each world or region thereof you know they will visit, shortly before they do so. A life form may be microbial, simple, complex, or sentient, with up to five tag characteristics to generate depending on complexity. Complex or sentient lifeforms may also have random adaptations to various features of their homeworld. This chapter looks like Ironsworn: Starforged, with tables on tables of information; it’s bigger than I expected because it takes the trouble to explain the table entries with a sentence or two each.
Society Creation (6 pages): Each society has a tech level, condition (nascent, stable, collapsing etc), and political system; if it has a parent society, it influences these but does not dictate them. The condition might indicate a disaster, shortage or other problem which can be a scenario hook.
Faction Creation (6 pages): Factions are organised groups, from street gangs to cults to interstellar governments. Each has a name, a base, a reach, a goal, a leader, assorted assets, and a scenario-generating complication such as “crisis of leadership”. Here’s the example:
THE WAYKEEPERS: Traditionalist, B New Manu (moon of Farsid IV), R System, G To preserve the Old Ways of Yorn, L Waymaster Vutar Lamaris (he/him, survival; daring, irreverent, thoughtful), A Charismatic idealogues, effective propaganda, informants/moles (+5 more).
A faction can have a lot of assets, but the GM is advised to treat the first three as its signature assets, adding more in play as necessary. Stars Without Number focuses on factions in a similar way, but it has complex rules for what the factions are doing and why; Perilous Void takes a much more loose and fluid approach.
Community Creation (21 pages): There are seven types of community, ranging from outpost to megacity. They have a society, a tech level and a political system, each possibly self-contained or possibly part of a larger one; multiple locations such as hangar bays; multiple types of inhabitants, such as miners; a community profile composed of a theme, an appearance, and a complication; and a problem needing PC interaction. Larger communities can have multiple districts, each a community in its own right. The numerical population is a dice roll based on type, and ranges from 50 to one billion, but remember a world can have multiple communities. Again, here’s an example from the rulebook:
GREEN HEIGHTS: District (Glanopolis, city), TL 3, C Nascent, P Elder council. Newest district of Glanopolis, built on a platform extending into the Green Sea. Multi-tiered, skeletal, unfinished structures. Invasive marine species (giant barnacles) have recently brought construction to a standstill. Workers and residents alike are restive, district council strives to maintain order.
This chapter is also reminiscent of Ironsworn: Starforged in its depth of tables.
Development Creation (16 pages): So far, we have been looking at the static form a setting might take before the director calls “Action!”. Developments bring a narrative which changes over time, in the form of accidents, commissions, and random events. These introduce changes whether the PCs address them or ignore them. The GM rolls up a few developments and presents them to the PCs as options; these may be situations (context that happens around the PCs), an incident or encounter (something that happens to the PCs), an event (which they notice happening), or an offer, discovery, or job (which presents itself to the PCs or they actively seek out). Tables for all of them, obviously.
NPC Creation (8 pages): The GM is encouraged to focus on significant NPCs; those met in passing get a species and an occupation, if PCs talk to them they get a descriptive detail, but as soon as they need to make a decision, they need a motivation and some traits, as well as possibly an archetype (perhaps “sympathetic ally” or “heartless monster”) and maybe a faction they are aligned with. Again, the level of detail depends on how much you expect the PCs to interact with them; first impression, second glance, introduction, and so on. Tables for all of them.
Site Creation (8 pages): Sites are specific locations important to an adventure. The GM should focus on overall concepts, as details are easier to improvise; you might have a node-based diagram or floorplans, but less-interesting areas are best treated as a narrative montage between the cool bits. Each site has a type and a theme (the paragraph for this seems duplicated); a sketch map based on the areas it contains and the connections between them, with each area having a detail, a prop, and/or a threat. Tailored tables are given for derelict ships, facilities and ruins.
Other Tables (15 pages): Random tables for miscellaneous things not covered elsewhere; robots, spaceships, artefacts or gadgets, details of setting elements, names for people, places, and factions. These answer three questions: What does it look like, what is it called, and what does it do?
I was expecting this to be just a collection of random tables, but actually there is quite a lot of procedure tying them together. I’m pleased to see it allow for either top-down or middle-out generation, and also for prewritten settings. Of the numerous products I already have which overlap with this, it reminds me most of Ironsworn: Starforged, but is about one-quarter the size (probably because it is a supplement rather than a full-blown RPG) and not specifically tied to a post-apocalyptic society of multiple tiny outposts.
I quite like the idea of supporting each review with a couple of “actual play” posts going forward, so let’s do that. I’ll begin by using it to set up the various aspects of the Aslan Route campaign, and see where that takes me.
“People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.” – Matthew @CrowsFault
Blumental is walking southeast down a long, dusty road, when he sees another figure up ahead, sitting in the shade, back to a tree and pistol held loosely in her lap.
He approaches to a conversational distance, and calls out.
“Hello,” he says. He can’t tell her nationality, but a third of the world speaks some kind of English to some level, so it’s the best language to start with. Plus, he doesn’t actually know any others. Unless you count swear words.
She turns towards him and gestures limply with the pistol. Wary. Tired. Haunted expression.
“Don’t get any ideas,” she says, dully. “I just buried a baby I didn’t want to have in the first place next to her father. He was the last guy to get ideas. I’m not in the mood for anyone else with ideas.”
He squats in the dirt, rifle carefully non-threatening, and tries to place her accent.
“No ideas being got over here,” he says. Then it comes to him. “You a Kiwi?”
“Yeah. West Island?”
“Uh-huh. My name’s… well, never mind, everyone calls me Bluey.” He gestures at the cartoon dog on his shirt. “I’m walking back to Melbourne. I reckon it’s about five thousand miles that way.” He gestures for clarification.
“You’re mad.”
“Probably. If I make it, though, it’s a lot closer to Wellington. You want to come with? Safety in numbers. I promise not to get any ideas if you promise not to murder me in my sleep.”
She thinks about that for a long time, while he scans the horizon for threats, not pressing the issue. Even if they make it, it’s another thousand miles to New Zealand, across open ocean; but he’s right, it’s still a lot closer to home, and there’s no point worrying about the last step until they’re somewhere near Hobart.
“All right then,” she says finally. “But if you do get any ideas, I promise you, I will murder you in your sleep. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Fair enough,” he says. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Hope,” she says. And he smiles at how appropriate that is.
Blumenthal first spends a unit of Food for the start of a new month. He’s still in the boonies, so one encounter.
No Why card this time as it’s not needed. Note the two sides facing each other head to head, and the weapon cards stacked underneath them. I’m too cheap to print the backs of the cards, so they’re still white.
I draw a Who card and get the same number of humans, and a What card of Talk the Talk. Rolling on the Grunts table tells me this new person is Rep 4, with the Slow to React attribute, a B-2 and a unit of Food. I’ve already separated the Survivor and Zombie cards into sub-decks and draw a random Rep 4; and there she is. I decide to call her Hope.
Bluey rolls 1, 4 vs Rep 5 on the Talk the Talk table and passes 2d6, while Hope rolls 2, 5 vs Rep 4 and passes 1d6. As Bluey passed more dice, he can choose to barter with her or recruit her, and given my thinking about optimum party size last time, he decides to recruit her. Checking the rules, no further dice rolls are needed for that, he just does it. Since he didn’t take anyone Out of the Fight or find more Loot, he gains no Fame Points this month and his lifetime total remains 2.
In this post and the last, we’ve exercised all the basics except Run or Gun and melee, so let’s consider two alternate timelines where those come into play.
First, one where Blumental rolls 6, 6 and blows the Talk the Talk badly. It goes to Walk the Walk and Hope rolls 3, 3 (pass 2d6 against Rep 3, down one because she’s Slow to React) against Bluey’s 3, 6 (pass 1d6). With a total of 6 to his 3, she shoots first and rolls 2, 5 (pass 1d6); her passing dice total is less than his Rep, so she misses, and he rolls on the Run or Gun table. He rolls 4, 4 (pass 2d6) and returns fire; but 2, 6 results in a miss (pass 1d6 with a passing total less than her Rep). She scores 3, 5 against Rep 4, which is reduced to Rep 3 because she is Outgunned, passing 1d6, so rolls again; this time she rolls 2, 6 – that would pass 1d6, but as she has already failed once, it’s reduced to pass 0d6 and she runs away.
Second, one where instead of meeting a lone survivor, Blumental met three zombies. He rolls 4, 6 (pass 1d6, total of passing dice 4) for Walk the Walk against their 1, 2, 3 (pass 2d6, counting the highest two; total of passing dice 5). The zeds won that check so charge into melee; they roll 1, 3, 5 and pass 2d6, Bluey rolls 5, 6 and passes 1d6. The zombies passed more dice, so in this timeline Bluey goes Out of the Fight, and the zombies feast. However, he can Cheat Death at a cost of 10 Fame Points, and does so; enter Hope to rescue him, or some other improbable circumstance. He only has two Fame Points, but total FP can never go below zero, so he’s back on zero; a bargain.
That game took ten minutes, and could’ve been done in less if I hadn’t looked up a couple of things.
I’m surprised at how effectively such a simple game generates stories; I shouldn’t be, of course, as first generation RPGs did that with random encounter tables, which are much the same thing; the only difference is that probabilities don’t change on a table, but they do in a card draw, as each card drawn shifts the probabilities for the ones left in the deck.
I can see myself using this as a travel game due to its fast play and small tabletop footprint, but if I do, I’ll be tempted to try turning the card deck into a couple of random tables for Who and Why and a 50:50 die roll for What, although it is admittedly pleasantly tactile to draw cards. That would give it an even smaller footprint, specifically 9 pages of A5 in a display book and a scrap of paper to take notes on. It doesn’t get much smaller than that.
I’ve grown surprisingly attached to Hope and Bluey, as I always do with solo PCs, but as my intention was simply to review the game, let’s leave them walking towards Queensland for the moment. With attitudes like theirs, I’m sure they’ll make it.
This could be the last solo gaming post for a while, as I’ve finally got around to playing Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which has been lurking on my hard drive for some years now, and it’s remarkably good. More of that later, perhaps.
“There was one thing no one considered, however: Australia was populated by Australians. While the rest of us were trying to adapt to a world that suddenly seemed bent on eradicating the human race, the Australians had been dealing with a hostile environment for centuries. They looked upon our zombie apocalypse, and they were not impressed.” – Mira Grant, How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
Blumenthal was used to everyone calling him Bluey, after the cartoon dog mascot on his T-shirt. Thirty days after the outbreak started, he’d realised his short visit to the UK was quickly turning into something more permanent, and if he ever wanted to get back to Heather, he’d better do something. So he collected what he thought he’d need, and started walking. It’s only, what, ten thousand miles from London to Melbourne? He was a fit guy, once he got used to it he could probably do twenty miles a day, he’d be there in a year or two. Less, if he could hitch a ride.
Of course, it turned out it wasn’t that simple. The first big obstacle had been the Channel Tunnel – and hadn’t that been fun, dodging zombies through thirty miles of service tunnels in near-total darkness – then as he headed southeast through France, Austria, Romania, Greece, and Turkey, the pace gradually slowed. He’d had to keep stopping to rest, to heal, to barter his unskilled labour for food and ammunition, to replace stolen items. He’d been enslaved twice and had to escape. He’d stopped counting how many people and ex-people he’d killed. Almost none of the terrain was flat, it was harder than he’d expected figuring out where he was and which way to go, and there seemed to be a global conspiracy aimed at stopping him travelling in a straight line.
At some point he’d realised his Star of David wasn’t welcome in a lot of places, and it became one more thing he sacrificed in the name of getting back to Heather. He tried not to think that she might be dead, undead, or just with someone else by now. Anyway, while some people weren’t big on the Star of David, almost everybody knew and loved Bluey the Australian cartoon dog. So that’s who he was now. He’d been called worse things.
He was, he thought, somewhere near Delhi. A bit further, then take a left into Myanmar, down through Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea. Then a boat to Queensland, and a carefree amble round the coast to Melbourne. She’ll be right, he told himself. Got to be halfway there by now. Can’t be more than another two years.
His reverie was interrupted as he walked past an isolated shed when a zombie erupted out of the door. Without conscious thought, he slid his rifle from a cradle carry into active use, and dropped the zed with a short, controlled burst. He’d had no training to speak of, but he’d had a lot of practice; anyone still alive could use and maintain a gun by now, the people who didn’t know or couldn’t figure it out were long gone. Kicking the shed door open, he looked inside. A sleeping mat that had seen better days, and a plastic crate full of tins. He couldn’t read the Hindi script, but since the pictures showed a smiling woman holding something up on a plate, he figured it was probably food.
Yeah, no worries, mate. She’ll be right.
I start working through the step by step guide on page 14 of the rulebook. Setup and character generation cover steps 1-9 of 25 steps.
As a Star, Bluey automatically has Rep 5, a gun of his choice (an A-3, I think, which from the illustrations looks like some kind of military rifle), one Food unit, and optionally, two attributes, one chosen by the player and one rolled at random. I choose Hard as Nails, a personal favourite, and roll Crack Shot; excellent, but I realise Crack Shot is not much use in play; it boosts his Rep, which is already 5, and as a roll of 6 always fails, it won’t do him any good. Hard as Nails lets him ignore the first disabling wound, which could be very helpful for a character on his own.
That’s it. This version of ATZ has no skills.
“Bluey” Blumental: Rep 5 Survivor, Crack Shot, Hard as Nails. A-3, Food 1.
I decide Bluey is in the boonies in north-west India; ‘boonies’ means he has one encounter this month.
End of encounter. Top right card is a zombie, card below that represents Bluey. Note the weapon card tucked underneath him. Card backs not printed because ink is expensive. Apologies for poor picture quality!
I begin by drawing a Who card to see who I’m up against; the same number of zombies as people in my band, namely one. For illustrative purposes only I draw a What card; Talk the Talk, so if the opposition were survivors we could negotiate, but since they’re zeds, we go straight to a fight – in ‘proper’ play I wouldn’t bother with a What card as it’s pre-ordained for zombies.
Both sides now roll on the Walk the Walk table; Bluey rolls 2d6 for 2, 4 and as both of those are his Rep or less, he passes 2d6 and has a total of 6. The zed side rolls 1d6 per zombie and gets a 2, passing 1d6 against its Rep of 3. Characters now act in descending order of totals, so Bluey goes first and opens fire; moving to the Shooting table, he rolls 2d6 again for 4, 4 and passes 2d6. The total for passing d6 (8) is higher than the target’s Rep (3) so it is hit and goes Out of the Fight. No need to roll for Run or Gun at turn end, since the encounter is already over.
I now roll 1d6 to see if the gunfire attracts zeds; a 6, so no, it doesn’t. As I have defeated zeds, I draw a single Why card for loot, and get a unit of Food. Happy days.
At the end of the first encounter, Bluey has gained one Fame Point for taking a character Out of the Fight, and another one for gaining some loot. Total so far, two.
That encounter took half an hour and used no figures. I could probably get it down to 15 minutes with practice and familiarity.
Things I noticed in this game:
Blumenthal started off as “What should I call the blue pawn in my set?” That sounded vaguely Jewish as a name, then got mixed up with my youngest grandson’s current obsession with Bluey the cartoon dog and the opening quote about the resilience of Australians, and finally a book I read a few years ago; As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me by Josef Martin Bauer, the story of a POW who walked from Siberia to Germany to get back to his family. It was once thought to be a true story, though that now seems doubtful; but it doesn’t need to be true to inspire one of my little scenarios.
“All Things Zombie won the Origins Award for Best Miniatures Game in 2005. From then until now gamers have changed multiple times, and All Things Zombie has changed with them, each time.” – All Things Zombie: Luck of the Draw
Schedule clashes mean no Aslan Route for a couple of weeks, so let’s do a three-part review of All Things Zombie: Luck of the Draw, first my usual review based on reading the game through, and then a couple of posts of actual play. Full disclosure: The author, Ed Teixeira of Two Hour Wargames, sent me a free copy of this, no strings attached. Thanks Ed!
If you haven’t noticed my fondness for THW games in general and All Things Zombie in particular, you haven’t been paying attention; but let’s make that bias clear upfront, all the same.
As the author says in the introduction, over the last 20 years gamers have changed, and ATZ has changed with them. This has led to a gradual simplification of the rules, especially the combat rules, and two oscillations which intrigue me. First, a pendulum swinging between figures on a tabletop and counters on an abstract battleboard; second, a swing between looking at the early days of the outbreak and a few years later.
Luck of the Draw is a solo game which looks at the situation several years after the outbreak, and swings even further away from figures on the tabletop, replacing the scenario generation, tabletop and figures (or battleboards and counters) in the full rules with draws from card decks. This makes it extremely portable, and it would probably have been very handy in the limited space I had last summer; I printed the cards at 48 x 66 mm, 16 to a page, and laid everything out comfortably in a space 40 cm on a side. You’d need a bit more space for the rulebook, but my experience is you don’t need that for very long as almost all you need is on the quick reference sheet; the exception in most THW games is the scenario generation rules, and this edition doesn’t use them.
The game consists of a 22 page book (PDF in my case), including a Quick Reference Sheet, and a deck of cards, or pages you can print to make cards; you also need at least two normal dice, although a few more wouldn’t hurt; but I used to play Shadowrun and W40K, so there’s no shortage of d6 in this house. Let’s look at the cards first.
The cards are divided into Who, What, Why, and Survivors and Zeds. In play, for each encounter you first draw a Who card to determine whether you’ve met zombies or other survivors, and how many of them, ranging from one less than your band to two more. Second, if you met survivors, you draw a What card to determine whether they want to parley or fight; zombies always fight. The Why cards are potential loot, the reason for the encounter. Finally, the survivor and zed cards show the Reputation of the being encountered; no Rep 5 though, all NPCs are either Rep 3 or Rep 4, only your PC is Rep 5. Oh, and there are two cards you can cut up to make chits numbered 1-10, to track who goes next in larger battles.
The rules are a cut-down version of current-generation ATZ. Survivors and zeds have a Reputation ranging from 3-5; the basic mechanic is whenever you try to do something, roll 2d6, and each die which is the Rep or lower “passes”, more passes give you better results, but the sum of the passing dice also matters for initiative order.
Player characters (“stars”) have two advantages over NPCs; Star Power, which allows you to downgrade disabling wounds to something more bearable, and Free Will, which allows you to choose the outcome on the Run or Gun table, effectively choosing the results of a morale check.
If playing a campaign game rather than a stand-alone one, you track fame points won by gaining loot or taking out opponents, or lost by losing band members or using Star Power. You have 1-3 encounters per month depending on where you are. What are they? That’s up to you.
It’s a cut-down version of ATZ which ought to work well for when you don’t have much time or room and still want a quick solo game. I like the artwork, and the cards have good use of colour to differentiate the sub-decks; zombies are red, What cards are blue, survivors are green, and black is for Loot. It even almost rhymes.
Let’s try it out over the next couple of posts.
Halfway Station Phase 4 