Mail Room: Twilight 2000

What a day to have Free League's Twilight:2000 dropped on my porch in a box filled with packing peanuts today. For those of you reading in the future, near or far, it is February 23, 2022, and I am listening to the slow motion Ukraine invasion news in the background as I write this. Planes are turning around from that country's airspace. Cyberattacks are ongoing. There are reports of explosions in cities happening. Politicians are saying the invasion is underway. Some livestreams have the sounds of gunfire on them, and the flashes of explosions. The military operation has just been announced.

Worse of all, people are dying. A game is trivial compared to the terror and suffering going on over there. I feel bad even bringing it up.

I know, what a day for this to arrive.

My first impressions on opening the box?

Okay, do I even want to open the box?

Pandora's box.

Might as well open it, as I would hate to have regrets later.

Wow, what a nice game.

Honestly, this box is heavy and packed with books, maps, dice, cards, SITREP guides, counters, and all sorts of cool stuff. You get a lot with the boxed set and this is an incredible value. I wish there was more to buy, as I would in a heartbeat.

My history with the game? My brother and I played a 20-year campaign using the original rules. This was one of our go-to games and sat alongside the greats of Car Wars, Star Frontiers, Top Secret, AD&D 2nd Edition, and Aftermath at our table. This was one of our great campaigns, and we loved the world and concept. Honestly, with my brother gone, it feels a little bittersweet opening this box, and I bet he would have loved this edition even though we were done with the game and the world.

We played this world to a satisfying end, one of hope and peace.

We were hopeful, and I still am.

And I can't fault the game's designers for the world this game was released in. This game was obviously a labor of love from true fans, and they poured their hearts out into this game. The art, presentation, and materials that come with the game are all top-notch, this is a high-end Euro-game in quality and presentation.

Then again, if you wanted to roleplay a side in a world similar to the one we now live in, I can't think of a better game. For some, they need to escape this world and I would not recommend this game if the subject matter upsets you. For others, you may want to roleplay a war movie or fantasy of being a hero on the front lines, and that experience provides a relief and way to cope with a world that feels strangely similar. In a great referee's hands this game could be very therapeutic to those worrying about the future and give players a sense of control and comfort about current events.

Face your fears by playing them in a game.

To the game's credit, it presents itself as a game of survivors and it does say the game is not a military game. I get it. For our original campaign, it did turn into a military game. One thing I love about this edition is they present the game in a manner similar to Forbidden Lands or Mutant Year Zero, they give you a map (Poland or Sweden), they give you scenarios and encounter cards, and they sandbox the entire world around you.

You can take this game in any direction you want. Rebuilding. Survival adventure. Drama. Humanitarian missions and peacekeeping (a theme I would recommend for players who stress about war). Heists and intrigue. Spy missions. The world is a lot like a traditional fantasy setting in modern times, as central authority has broken down and there are many opportunities for adventures of any kinds. This does not have to be a war game, and even in our campaign we had a lot of different things going on, even adventurous treasure hunting.

Don't let the war setting and bleak presentation intimidate you. What is beautiful here is a modern world that is very familiar to us and a blank canvas for you to craft adventures on. The setting is one of the greats in tabletop RPGs, very much on par with any D&D world or Traveller's Third Imperium.

Where else can you rewrite the modern world with your own adventures, conflicts, and stories? Unlike a spy game where the modern world and all of its politics and rules have to be accounted for, this game gives you a blank slate to change the world to fit any idea or adventure in your head. It is very much like a Car Wars type post-apoc world minus the armed cars, with more of a gritty survival and interpersonal focus.

Yes, you can still play this grim and gritty like a less science-fantasy Aftermath survival game as well. You could focus on crafting, exploring, and scrounging like a hex-crawl adventure game and forget the larger conflicts. You could do a kingdom-building and trading game of reconstruction. You could ignore all of the included SITREPS and lines of battle and just make it all up yourself.

Or yes, you could play this as a World War II type military adventure game with special missions, commando raids, a broken but still operational allied command, and all sorts of fun rescuing POWs, destroying enemy supplies, capturing plans, doing raids, and driving back the bad guys. The difference between this and WW2 is the future has not been written, and those in command (and it could be the players eventually) need heroes since they are in short supply. Also, since all the big hardware and weapons have been destroyed, the focus of heroism and changing the world takes place on a smaller scale where a single hero matters.

The above was our game. The one me and my brother enjoyed so much. It was both an homage to our favorite WW2 heroic movies and action serials as it was an escape from the paranoia of the 1980's and Cold War nuclear fears. We could take back the night. We could play Rambo or Chuck Norris. We could have moments of gritty survival. We could have tragic stories of loss, balanced by moments of hope and redemption.

The game is yours.

Free League went with the blank canvas model for this game and I feel it works very well. It gives you the freedom to rebuild the world for your adventures and stories, and your players a say in this new world as well.

Highly recommended, with a warning that the game may feel too real at times given current events. Know your players and talk to them. Don't force those uncomfortable with the concept to play, but if they are interested, offer them a humanitarian and peacekeeping option for a campaign. But give the game a chance if you are interested, and realize the power of conquering our fears through safe and play that lets us discuss the world we live in.

As for this world, I am hopeful we will avoid ending up in this reality. Hope springs eternal.

...Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world. 

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore!
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

~An Essay on Man, Alexander Pope, 1734. 

First Look: Star Trek Adventures

I spent some time last night reading through the starter set for this game and I had a couple thoughts.

They call this the 2d20 system, but pushing your roll allows you to roll up to 5d20. It seems odd, especially since the game only comes with 2d20. Now, if you play tabletop games, you have extra d20s lying around, but I thought this felt a little strange. Now I am trying to build a decent 5d20 set to play the game with.

The game has six primary ability scores. Six secondary scores act as skills and can be combined with any ability score given the type of roll. Granted, some will be more common than others, like Control + Security for ranged combat, or Daring + Security for melee combat. It leads to some strange combinations, such as Security + Fitness for climbing or swimming, which feels like an easy one to forget.

The rules are simple, and the combining of primary + secondary is the heart of the system.

Two pools are tracked, one for momentum and another for threat. Momentum is a beneficial pool that caps at six points, is reduced by one point per scene, and is refilled by excess successes at skill rolls. Immediately I thought "do not try to game this pool" and would enforce a "meaningful skill rolls only" rule at my table, as the natural incentive is to game the pool by making lots of easy rolls and banking momentum. Threat starts at two per player, and is increased by critical failures, hazardous situations, or if the players push their rolls and opt to increase the threat pool instead. Momentum is used to add dice to rolls, remove complications, create advantages, create problems for enemies, and obtain information about the scene. Threat works sort of in reverse as a hinderance pool doing roughly the same things, but penalizing the characters.

The momentum and threat pools are the mechanical guts of the system and the storytelling engine. I can see how some B/X fans would be like, "You don't need all this fiddly mechanical stuff! Make it up and just tell a good story!" This was my first reaction to this part of the 2d20 system, and it made me wonder if a B/X system that relied more on just making it up as the situation called for would be a better call. I will hold off a final judgment on this part of the game until I try it, and I can see how it creates that "TV reality" of overcoming a huge threat pool and building up a bonus pool to fight through an impossible situation.

Yes, while in B/X you are solving a situation presented in an adventure, the momentum-threat system starts your "TV episode" off at a disadvantage and lets you pare that down and build up successes to push the tide in your favor. And all specialties can contribute, such as a science officer analyzing a poisonous flower, so the system is not just combat-focused in contribution and usefulness. It also feels appropriate to the "many coming together to solve problems" theme of the show and movies.

The small font on the black pages is hard to read. The PDF version has a printer friendly version without the black background.

Where are the cover rules? I can't find them.

The starter set covers a lot of ground, and even includes ship combat rules. It comes with dice (but not 5d20) and is a good deal.

I am looking forward to having fun with this, and those are my first impressions.

Mail Room: Tales from the Loop

 

Got this in the mail today, a sort of interesting "kid-adventure" RPG in the spirit of movies like ET, Super 8, or Stranger Things. I like the concept, and it is an interesting shift away from the typical "violent party RPG" mentality. These are kids with families, school, chores, homework, and responsibilities - but latchkey enough they can get together for adventures into the strange and unknown. Here, the strange and unknown comes from the giant government-corporation particle accelerator facilities built under their hometowns (one in US, one in Sweden, but easily locatable anywhere in your own hometown if you would like).

This game is set in an alternate 1980s with all sorts of robots, anti-gravity, and other technology floating about while the world of the kids still is rooted in the familiar 80's technology level and mindset. The kids here are in an age range from 10-15. This is a game of wonder and amazement at the unknown as told through a kid's eyes.

There is a companion game called "Things from the Flood" set in the 1990s where the technology hard crashes with a "machine cancer" and has a more biological component, some horror themes, with older teens from 14-19. This feels more like a survival experience (of both the environment and the metaphors for a changing world and place in society) told through the lens of teen angst and adjustment.

This looks fun, sort of a throwback to the boxed games of the 80's and 90's like Paranoia with a clear setup and story, a sandbox world, a fun hook to jump into, and lots to do and explore - with a character driven focus.

More on this soon.

Mail Room: Coriolis

Firefly. Alien. Dune. Blade Runner. Event Horizon. The Fifth Element. Call of Cthulhu in space. The Expanse. Cyberpunk. A bit of the good seasons of Game of Thrones. Babylon 5.

Mysticism. Monsters. Strange spirits. Patron spirits to pray to. Ancient ruins nobody understands. The darkness and evil surrounding them all. What happens on a tiny spot on a world could affect the entire universe.

A ship full of diplomats, traders, or entertainers feels like it could get into just as much trouble as a ship full of mercenaries. Play as anything, go anywhere.

Strong, detailed factions. Political intrigue. Those from beyond. Shifting alliances. Betrayals and opposite sides finding themselves working together for a tense limited time. Newcomers and long-termers. A clash of cultures.

Space travel with limits and problems. A serious tone. Lore you can spend months or years digging into.

I can see why this is many people's sci-fi game of choice.

More on this soon, but all of a sudden many of my traditional sci-fi games feel almost too clean and sanitized compared to this. This is the game I wish Star Frontiers or Traveller could be, just in terms of depth of lore and play options. I feel like I could pick an option, any option, and begin my exploration of this universe from there, and still never see it all.

Amazing stuff, very inspiring, and a game I will be coming back to.

Index Card RPG: US Orders Shipping Soon!

Just a note, I got this email earlier today and it looks like the US orders for Index Card RPG will be shipping soon to the US! This is one of those orders I have been wondering what happened to the books, I have printed out the PDF and been playing with that, but I love my physical copies and consider this one of my top-shelf games.

We do live in an upside-down world these days, and shipping delays happen. I am not faulting the company at all and I know they feel just as bad as everyone about this. I am patient, and I have the PDF and a printer, so I am only inconvenienced a little. This is the price we pay for the non-POD high quality books that we love.

It is great Modiphius is up-front and got this message out on a Saturday, and they are a great company I trust to make things right. This company and Free League are quickly becoming my favorite non-OSR publishers, and I am happy to support them both during these tough times.

Mail Room: Star Trek Adventures Starter Set

This is another cool starter set for the Star Trek Adventures game. Yes, I know I wanted to use this for horror (and I have the Alien game), so I will give this a look-over as it is intended. This is a great party-based problem-solving and mission game, and the presentation has heightened the action-oriented combat and danger elements. You see this in the art, everyone is "doing things" like combat, dodging collapsing rubble, exploring, or in the middle of a situation. I like that focus, and the art makes a lot of smart choices in setting the mood (and is way better than static TV still image grabs).

Action Oriented

I feel Star Trek has always had this "sit on your butt in the bridge" sort of reputation. That is partially a problem of TV with the limited budget of sets, action, destruction, cool fights, and special effects. It is important not to let that TV budget limit your adventures, since you can show an entire universe with cool places, sweeping vistas, giant sets, cities, giant space stations, underground installations, labs, mysterious shipwrecks, and fantastic places from beyond your imagination. It is hard to break away from the trope, because what people see and remember is what they expect.

Your adventures should look like a big budget movie, and the art reflects that idea, which is nice. I do like that break from what we expect, and this elevates the game into more of a cinematic feeling, which is nice.

Mission Based

I like this game's "party based" approach, and while the Alien RPG also assumed a military unit or starship crew, this game has more of a structured "get a mission from Starfleet" approach which makes giving and taking adventures easier than a sandbox game. You have this structure in place, your goals are clear, and how you solve it however your group decides. There is a danger of railroading with a bad adventure author, but a good referee knows how to work around this and give a group room to explore and modify an adventure a little to allow for player choice.

This game actually reminds me of the classic Paranoia game, where players are a group of "troubleshooters" and they get a mission from the Computer to solve some problem, investigate some mystery, find a lost ship, check on a distress signal or remote outpost, and the classic "go somewhere and do something" plot setup. Along the way a lot of unknown complications happen and the players need to use their wits to figure out how to adapt and still get the mission done. Unlike Paranoia, this game is a lot more serious in tone and with a lot less dark humor.

Sandbox? I don't think this would play as well with aimless exploration and uncovering hexes. I feel classic Star Trek is this "present an impossible situation" sort of adventure, where if you played it you would just want to give up in frustration and disgust (and I had one of those adventures in old FASA Star Trek), but with enough angles and avenues of exploration that the more information you gather and sub-plots you complete, the situation begins to feel easy.

Almost.

Degrees of Success

Where the Alien game feels like more of a survival experience where winning means getting out alive (and completing optional sub-goals), this feels more objective based with degrees of success. You are sent to provide security for a peace conference between two planets and saboteurs try to stop the agreement. Failure means the talks fail and war breaks out again. Partial success means a less-optimal agreement is reached and the hostilities continue. A little more success means a case-fire holds, or an armistice is declared. A great success means peace is declared and both sides come together.

Completing different objectives brings you towards those outcomes. The player's own ingenuity also could come into play as they figure out a better solution than the ones in the adventure or presented to them by the referee.

In my old FASA experience we played this module that was some impossible situation with a Romulan ambassador, the ship helpless, some colony under threat, and us players could not figure a way out since the module was so railroaded and one solution. If you did not follow the module's script, the only way you could end the night was getting court-martialed for phaser-ing your way through the Romulan diplomats.

Which is how it ended up.

That entire game was a train wreck.

But it does highlight what NOT to do in a Star Trek adventure and how NOT to write one. If you are writing a script for a TV series with one answer and one set path, even down to the things you should ask about and say during the social encounters, you have failed miserably because players will likely never figure that out. You will either be winging the adventure and coming up with alternate solutions yourself, or the player's brains will turn off and their phasers will turn on.

Solo or Party?

This feels like a better "party game" than a solo one, since a lot of the dynamic elements of problem solving should come from a group of players that brings different ideas to the table. Alien, being a lower-level survival experience feels like a better solo game, though party play feels strong as well. Alien I could play like solo survival Monopoly, completing objectives on a ship or station map, managing resources, and doing the best I can with a dwindling crew.

Star Trek I really want to play with a group, since that party dynamic with personalities and different viewpoints and solutions feels like a part of the genre. It feels harder to play Star Trek solo since I don't want a single hive-mind controlling my crew. I want other people in this experience to share and enjoy, and frankly, that is what a great Star Trek experience is in the TV and movies. A diverse crew of different minds coming up with solutions together.

This also looks like a fun game, and yes, I still may mod it for horror, but playing it as-is feels fun as well. More on this soon.

Mail Room: Alien RPG Starter Set

This is a very cool starter set. You get plenty of dice, cards, counters, some beautiful maps and deck plans, and a starter rulebook and adventure. You do not get the full Xenomorph as the adventure's monster, but once you consider the broader Alien-Prometheus sort of background the Xenomorphs should only be a small part of the equation here and all sorts of monsters should be able to mutate and morph from this alien DNA and the monster they do give makes sense.

"Alien DNA mutates humans and/or creates new creatures" - that is my game's tag line. This generic "alien DNA" doesn't even have to be "Xeno/Prometheus DNA" either - there could be many strains from different sources, and it honestly just a reason to infect anything and create a creepy bio-monster out of it.

You should feel free to create any monster given this background, from huge crawling brains with tentacles, a spider eyeball, anything from The Thing movies (a huge influence on my ideas as well), a snake with a human head, a mutant hellhound with tentacles, intelligent vines with human blood, monster crabs, icky triped grabbers, giant boring beetles, monster worms, or anything that creeps you out. I like "expanding the monster list" for this to the "DIY monsters" that the games like Lamentation of the Flame Princess or Dungeon Crawl Classics use.

You make your own monsters. They are unique and not like any other. They are not in a tired old bestiary. You do not know what they can do or their powers, attacks, defenses, or weaknesses. Every time you have an adventure, this is both the first time anyone encounters the beast and the last time anyone will.

If a monster is in a bestiary, it is not a monster anymore.

These have to come from your imagination, fears, and inside your mind.

This is very much an "Expanded Universe" view of the Alien universe, and I feel one that suites a role-playing horror game a lot better than just having week after week of Xenomorphs. I am not even as tied to the time or the technology, if I wanted to run a few one-shots in different times with different technology levels that would be cool as well. The system is pretty rules-light and you could create pretty easy stats for new gear and weapons quickly (or reskin the existing items).

This is one I am really excited about, and more soon!