20 July, 2016

Game Report: Shipwrecked in the Hollow Earth

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We started the evening with a flashback to Lady Zara sneaking back into her home with her Uncle Trevor waiting up. She’s just wrecked her new car racing in nighttime London. One of these days, he predicted, she and her fast friends were going to get into a situation they could not recover from…

That leads her to wake under a pile of bodies in the wreckage of the war saucer Aruna. Gus Hassenfedlt had already been awake for a while, triaging the dead and wounded from the crash. Of the 14 “Atlanteans”, only 8 survived, including Lord Amon and Shria, the pilot. The other characters were pretty banged up, and with Gould giving him instruction, Gus bandaged and treated most of the wounded, while the doctor tended to the party.

Afterward, Shria sounded the ship and found one of the “power crystals” that ran the motor that malfunctioned had shattered — she’s never seen anything like it! There’s damage to the forward propulsion units, as well. The ship isn’t going anywhere.

Gus, Hunter, and Amon set a watch around the saucer, only to aggressed by a herd or pack of allosaurus. In the fray, Hunter is badly injured, but Gus and the others in the fight manage to kill the four towering carnivores. At least now they have plenty to eat.

After a few days, they are discovered by a dozen people in riotous clothing — brightly colored (although the theme of white and red-striped canvas pants, shirts, etc. seems to recur) and adorned with bits of junk and widgets. Led by Zoppo, a brave but stupid man, they learn they are from “the Sanctuary” — only a day’s travel away on the coast. They had come to give offerings and the welcome the Atlanteans in their sky craft! Eventually, they discover they all speak English, the holy language of their “Captain.”

With no other options, they set out to find the Sanctuary, which turns out to be a settlement that adorns the sides of a wrecked two-stack ocean liner, the SS Grand Pacific. The front is opened like a toothed maw, the back is obviously broken, and there are boats tied around the keel. Overhead, a red and white-striped blimp is moored to one of the stacks.

But the real shocker is what’s out to see — a mountain of rock with a city on top, floating over the water. This, they learn from Amon, is the Aerie…the home of the “hawk people.”

Taken aboard Sanctuary, they meet the “Captain”, the last remaining crew member of the vessel, which launched from Liverpool for Melbourne in June 1893. Evan Hollander is the captain, and he is very pleased to receive the Vril/ Gould suddenly realizes they’ve been  played…these are not Atlanteans, but the people that the pirate king, Trihn, had tried to sell him to!

We left off for the night there, with the characters surrounded by cargo cultists, in their hulk of a home, and their Atlantean friends exposed as fakes.

 

14 July, 2016

Flying Saucer Aruna, a Vehicle for Hollow Earth Expedition

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In the course of play last night, the players encountered a flying saucer from Atlantis. This vessel, the Flying Saucer Aruna, is too much fun not to share —

10704740-3d-render-of-flying-saucer-ufo-isolated-over-black-background-Stock-Photo

Flying Saucer Aruna

Size: 4   Def: 6   Strc: 10   Spd: 350   Han: +2   Crew: 2   Pass: 16; Weaponry: Dual Heat Ray Turret — Size: 1, Damage: 10L, Range: 500′   Rate: Beam** Speed: A

** The “beam” rate is the same as autofire; the turret can sweep targets with a steady beam of death. The ray guns will work as long as Aruna has power. Aruna‘s power crystals are sensitive to power foci that effect magical ability.

Aruna and similar light saucers have a diameter of about 30′ and the crew compartment is circular, occupying about half the actual space of the disk. On the Atlantean suacers, there is usually an Atlantean swastika of some form:

atlantean swastika.png

Image of the saucer is copyright Dimitar Marinov and used without permission. No infringement is intended, so if you want it pulled, D, just say so. SCR

 

 

14 July, 2016

Game Report: Return to the Hollow Earth!

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So the characters return to Lhasa and the Eye of Shambala. We had a lot of character interaction with the 13th Dalai Lama and his prime minister, as well as a bunch of descriptive stuff about the night sky. Our inner world has no night, so they drank in the Milky Way in all its glory, as one can at 15,000 feet.

They managed to negotiate the use of five mules for the trip and gear up, ready for a big scientific expedition. Coming through the Eye, they almost immediately are set upon. The mouth of the cave where the Eye resides is blocked by a log-weighed net, and a dozen armed and armor-wearing men dash out of the trees. They’re carry strange-looking rifles, and are backed by a large flying saucer!

The commander of the flying machine is a “Lord Amon” — a Vril, although he’s claiming to be Atlantean. (Are they the same? We don’t know yet!) The characters pleasantly surprised me by not fighting or running — what I had planned for — but patiently trying to communicate. Hunter, the Terra Arcanum overseer, managed to get a great Linguistics test that allowed him to use his Trait Atlantean Language — he’d only read the language, never heard it spoken, but was able to quickly make himself understood.

Amon seemed pleased to have found Gould, whom they identified with some kind of crystal that would glow when in proximity to an Atlantean. (So shouldn’t it have been glowing while Amon was holding it..?) After some cordial talk, an invitation to them to come with him to Atlantis is rendered and they all hop in the “war saucer Aruna.”

The craft is amazingly futuristic, with a metal skin that allows them to see out as if it were glass from the inside. The controls are different, seemingly easy, and the woman flying it, knows her stuff. But in short order, they realize there is a problem. The one engine is kicking out way too much power! Gus Hassenfeldt, the big game hunter, quickly surmises it is Olga’s ability to amplify psychic or magical power that is messing with the ship. They attempt to mover her away from the offending engine, and this causes instability. A botched roll by another character leads to the pilot being distracted and jostled just enough that she biffed the control test, and Aruna spins out of control!

The characters all get tossed about at the flying saucer comes out of the sky at high speed, and crash lands in the jungles! With that, we ended for the night, with a cliffhanger (as one should in a pulp game.)

 

14 July, 2016

Playtest Disappointment

Posted by blackcampbell under Books, General Ramblings, Roleplaying Games | Tags: , , |
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So, we’re on the Modiphius playtest for the upcoming John Carter of Mars RPG, and finally got a chance to play the packet of rules they’d sent to us. My interest and hopes for the game were quickly dashed by an absolutely disastrous experience.

Straight off, the packet did not specify how the main core die mechanic worked; I had to open the Conan quickstart file, which — while indisputably beautiful — is a monstrously large file due to this and was absolutely killing the iPad, speed-wise. I thought I had that simply basic rule down, but the players were continually asking the same question about it, so I second-guessed myself and that was that. What had started out at a good clip quicklyy bogged down to my flipping back and forth and trying to read through the dense colors of the highlighting the design team had throughout the playtest file.

Professional tip for developers/editors of any type #1: when sending something to a group of people, keep the highlighting colors as low contrast as possible. It’s damned near impossible, for instance, to read black type through a deep red highlight.

Professional tip #2: When describing a process, be specific, be simple, and assume congenital idiocy. No, most of your audience isn’t stupid, but they might be busy, as many of us are, or they’re former PhD students who no longer can stomach reading after 400 books in 3 months, and they’ve only skimmed the file. “That’s their fault!” you cry. Nope. Be simple, direct, and specific. How does the die mechanic work, in this case.

So, 2d20 is actually relatively simple, but describing it might be hard. In the case of this game you add two stats and try to get below their total. If you do, it’s a success; if you’re below the highest attribute on any die (or is it on all dice — this is where they fell down) you gain two successes; below the lowest stat, three successes. Say you need four successes (which they did not bother to explain was what D4 meant), you roll two dice and hope you get low enough on one or both dice to get four successes. So you could, in theory, get upwards of six successes on 2d20, or more with use of “momentum” (More on that in a moment.)

Really not that complicated. Any extra over what you need is “momentum”, which can be spent for yet another d20 on a following action, on damage, or a number of other things. Damage comes off of the attribute/stats you used to defend. The mechanics aren’t that bad, but the packet was a hot mess to read through. You should not have to go to another playtest book on another related game to understand what you’re doing. (Yes, it’s a work in progress, but assume no one has read your other stuff.)

Strangely, my five year old immediately grasped the rules. She wanted to play desperately, but when things bogged down, she got bored and wandered off. Shortly after, I pulled the plug on continuing and we pivoted to Hollow Earth Expedition for the rest of the night.

Which bring me to a sidenote, as I am working through product development, myself: Conan, both the Quickstart packet and the book in development are beautiful. A lot of the new RPG books are full-color, loaded with graphics, art, and high-quality layout work. They really are gorgeous. But they are 1) expensive, 2) staggeringly heavy on the pdf file sizes, and 3) for all this is supposed to help set the tone for players…I’m not so certain this isn’t working against some of the publishers.

The expense of making these books is high. The art costs, the layout costs, the fine paper and full color costs, the hardcover costs, and they’re often bloated 300+ things of late, so they’re heavy — which makes shipping (especially international) cost-prohibitive in the extreme. (Drop over to Fred Hick’s blog to read more on how shipping can crush a successful Kckstarter.) I love to love and feel of these books, as well as others…but part of me wonders if this focus on the aesthetic over the substance isn’t becoming a problem.

Some of these fancy products mean counter-productive color choices where contrast between text and background color or patterns interrupt the ability to read the rules. The focus on sounding appropriate to the setting (Firefly was a good example of this) can help set the mood, but make understanding how the hell the rules work difficult. You don’t want to sound repetitive or boring to the reader, but you are also describing a process — it’s technical writing, really — and clarity, brevity, and simplicity rule the day when teaching something to a person.

So I suppose my question is — do we need all these gorgeous books, or do we need a return to more simple layouts, good clear writing that cuts the size of a game book from a 300 page, $60 tome to something more in lines of 150 pages and $25-30? Maybe grayscale will do. Maybe black and white, save for a few color plates, will do. (It would certainly make the pdfs easier to use!) Maybe softcover will do.

 

13 July, 2016

#RPGaDay 2016 is Coming….

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August has been RPGaDay month for the last few years. Autocratik started this three years ago, and the Black Campbell’s friend Runeslinger picked up the baton for this year. Starting in August, a collection RPG bloggers, podcasters, video bloggers around the net will be answering the following questions…

rpgaday-2016

Let’s talk games.

 

23 June, 2016

Enter the Reds — More Hollow Earth Fun

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The group got together tonight for the next installment of our Hollow Earth Expedition game. We had left off with a cliffhanger, three of the characters being ambushed on the way to a secret Terra Arcanum location by a half dozen Indians, who has faked a broekn down car to stop them, then bracketed their car with a pair of motorcycles…

We replayed that sequence, then jumped to a few hours earlier, when Lady Zara received a surprise visit from the Lloyds underwriters in Calcutta that her claim was finalized; the pay was quite generous, and they had even arranged for them to see a new seaplane sitting out at RAF Dum Dum. She quickly grabbed Olga and headed for the airport, while the boys joined Majors Thomilson and King (both Terra Arcanum) for a ride out to a cotton plantation that the organization was gifted by a member whose heirs had died in the Great War.

The Indian driver took the ladies out to the hangar where they inspected a Sikorsky S-38 and a Douglas Dolphin, but it turned out to be a ruse to get Olga away from the group…the Indians were local Comintern agents, and they were led by “the Ghost” — a GPU agent that can “cloud men’s minds”, and Galina Obreva, a powerful telepath and mind controller. This led to a desperate fight between the two women and the commies, some bullets winged their way, and a hair’s breath escape in the 1932 Terraplane that they’d been driven to the field in.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group was surprised when Major Thomilson gunned the Alvis Speed 20 they were in and ran straight at the two gunmen who were by the Wolseley Hornet, spooking them. He cut around the car and ran for it, but the pair of Ariel 500cc motorcycles were right with them. Dr. Gould managed to drop one of the riders and his armed pillion rider, while Gus Hassenfedt — deeply offended by the attack — slid off the back of the car, cold-cocked the pillion from the downed bike, then gathering up his pistol, took up the motorcycle to get in the action.

While the Alvis and second motorcycle roared away up the dry dirt road, throwing dust everywhere, Gus dropped one of the rifle men from the Wolseley who were firing on the rest of his party, then intimidated the other into laying down his arms and waiting for the authorities. Moments later, the Terraplane arrived and Zara ordered him in.

Gould and Hunter, along with the majors, found themselves in a gunfight where they could barely see the enemy behind them for the dust. Bullets were exchanged, the pillion rider on the second bike jumped onto the running board of the Alvis only to get knocked out by Hunter (and run over by the three ton car.) A hard braking maneuver by Thomilson put the Ariel into the back of the car, sent the last or their attackers into the vehicle, after which he was subdued…

However, the downed bike was left in the middle of the road, where moments later, Zara — speeding like a rally racer in the Terraplane — spotted it just a moment too late, clipped the wreck, and promptly rolled the big Hudson off into the jungle. Everyone inside was injured in the roll-over and the car caught fire. They also discovered the real Lloyds adjusters body, thrown from the wreck during the crash.

After, the group joined up and made it to the plantation, where they got fixed up by the kansamah (butler) of the place. King and Thomilson got Hunter to try and get Gould to join the Terra Arcanum(an easy sell, as he wants to return to the Hollow Earth.) They also found out the man they’d captured was an agent connected to “Sonny” Velasco, a COMINTERN agent from Gao, and that the Russians had all disappeared as mysteriously as they had arrived.

Arrangements were made for their gear to be stowed and the sale on the S-38 finalized by the next morning. The characters were safe on the plantation in the middle of the Indian jungle for the moment…or were they?

Had the Russians gotten a hold of Olga, I surmised that the characters would most likely go after her, which would have led to a rescue adventure in the Soviet Union. As it is, there are a few options for the next few adventures, but it looks like the crew is headed back to the Interior World.

 

 

14 June, 2016

Plane for Hollow Earth Expedition: Sikorsky S-38 (Revised)

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Sikorsky S-38 Air Yacht

This flying boat was  premiered in 1928 and became known as the “Explorer’s Air Yacht” for it’s reliability and ability to go just about anywhere.  It was a popular plane with Pan Am, which had Charles Lindbergh in an S-38 for his exploration of South America, but also with the Johnson Wax family (one was called The Spirit of Caruba) — Martin Johnson and his wife Ona used one to fly about the world doing wildlife and ethnographic films; and Howard Hughes was going to use one for an aerial circumnavigation of the globe.

The flying boat features the same boat hull fuselage suspended by trellising from the wing and tail structure of the S-34 and S-36, but can carry ten passengers (twelve for the S-38C), and has stronger Pratt & Witney R-1340 Wasp engines turning out 400hp each. It can carry about 4500 pounds of passengers/cargo.

 

SIKORSKY S-38B   Size: 4   Def: 4   Str: 10   Speed: 125   Ceiling: 16,000′   Rng: 860 mi.   Hand: 0   Crew: 2   Pass: 10 (12 for the S-38C)   Cost: $30,000 (when new), ~$12,000 in 1936)

Sikorsky-S-38

sikorsky S-38A diagram 1928

And the interior…

sikorsky-s-38-cabin_pics244-24451

The cockpit:

s38b1

 

11 June, 2016

GM Burnout Hits Hard

Posted by blackcampbell under Life Unconstructed, Roleplaying Games | Tags: |
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So…I’m having no issues with game prep, even though I’ve been having trouble making time for it. The game is fun, the ideas are flowing…but for the last three months, I’ve been trying to keep the game running due to scheduling conflict. Everyone, it seems — myself, included — has had some kind of issues. I’ve had a spate of last minute no-shows. Rarely have I had scheduling issues crop up like this outside of when I was in the service.

So when I got another “Hey, I can’t make it Thursday” email, even though I kind of remembered there was another conflict this week, or next, or both, I realized — looking at my calendar — that I was “the guy” that usually/always coordinates these things.

We’ve got a family health emergency that puts pressure on the spouse’s scheduling, and she has work obligations — I’m not the only one that gets affected when we can’t keep a schedule; I’m trying to start a new business and get product ready; I have an attention-hungry five-year old who, during school time, needs time stability. This week, for the first time, I was tired of being “the guy.”

It really surprised me how hard this hit.

I told the others to work it out and let me know. I feel guilty about dropping the ball on them, and it probably came off snarky, but I’m a bit overwhelmed with all the other life shit. Maybe people just got so used to me saying, “Sure, whaddya need?” that they assume I don’t have stuff to do.

So how do others handle this?

 

8 June, 2016

New Car for Hollow Earth Expedition: Alvis Speed 20 SA

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One of the group’s contacts in Calcutta is driving a 1932 Alvis Speed 20SA with coachwork by Vanden Plas. It’s a gorgeous machine, the sports 4-seater, in the classic racing green, with a straight-six 2511cc motor producing 87hp, a 4 speed transmission, and stopping with 14 in. brake drums.

1933_Alvis_Speed_20_SA_IMG_2773_-_Flickr_-_nemor2

Alvis Speed 20     Size: 2   Def: 6   Strc: 8   Spd: 70   Han: 0   Crew: 1   Pass: 4   Cost: $2500 (£500)

 

6 June, 2016

Return From Argatha

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So the characters had returned from “the World” that they’ve assumed is the Interior World of a Hollow Earth due to the way the horizon bent upward and seemed to continue into the haze of atmosphere, and the perpetual sun hanging overhead. They returned through the Eye of Shambala to Lhasa, finding out their 40(ish) day ordeal seemed to take 3 days on Earth.

They found out that the Soviets and Nazis that had been fighting over Gould (and by extension the party) had led to a lot of injuries among the monks, as well as the two sides. A few Naizs had survived, and with their Luftwaffe pilots were jailed by the locals; one Soviet — the massive Dolph Lundgren-esque soldier — was also incarcerated. They recounted some of their adventures to the Dalai Lama, convinced him to release the Germans into Gus Hassenfeldt’s custody, and then they surveyed the damage wrought on Bernadette, their Sikorsky S-36, and Sperling, the Fokker F.XII the Nazis had borrowed from Lufthansa.

Eventually, after much debate about returning immediately to “the World” to make their meeting with one of their contacts there, hence risking the Germans getting the jump on them for their discoveries; or returning to Calcutta to present some of their world through letters and reports to the Royal Geographical Society, they chose the latter (Lady Zara’s desire for fame and fortune, and Gus’ desire for recognition got the better of them…) Working with the Germans, they cannibalized Bernadette to aid in fixing Sperling for the 400ish mile flight to Calcutta 9the nearest real airfield.)

A good roll allowed them to fix one of the damaged R-1350 Wasp Cs, and replace the forward motor with the still operational R-790 Whirlwind from the S-36. They managed to get off the ground with the remains of the German expedition and their own, but the adulterated fuel (they mixed the 50 octane from the Sikorsky and the 90 from the Fokker) led to the eventual failure of the little Pratt & Whitney, and the craft ran out of fuel on approach to RAF Dum Dum, outside of Calcutta. Some good rolls put the plane down intact(ish.)

The British authorities quickly secured their prizes from the Interior World, while seeing to the injured Germans. They did, however, release them as they had committed no crimes in the Empire. A Major Thomelson of the General Staff of the Governor-General of India invited them to meet with the Governor of the Bengal Presidency and the later sidelined Hunter to reveal that the Terra Arcanum knew they were back, and were worried about what they had found. Hunter proceeded to do some fancy talking and convince the major that he could control the group, and that using them to investigate the Inner World while containing their stories would be the best option for all.

They bought it.

The next morning, the insurance claim on Bernadette sailed through, and an agent of the company even directed Lady Zara toward a replacement, while the boys when to see what had become of their relics brought back from the Inner World. In the process, however, they were waylaid by a stalled Wolseley Hornet in the middle of the jungle-lined road. Two Ariel motorcycle came at them from behind and their Alvis Speed 20 was quickly surrounded by armed men!

I’ve had to do a bit of tap-dancing on the narrative and shift the focus from the lead of the game toward other characters, due to absences, but so far it seems to be holding together. We’ve continued the trend of a cliffhanger ending to the night, much to our collective delight.

On a side note, one of the players had asked it I had considered doing a ’30s noir-style game, and on further reflection, we may need a second set of characters for a differently flavored noir game set in late Prohibition LA or Shanghai. The other option discussed was a sci-fi police procedural with a noir flavor.

 

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