Retrostar RPG Review

Retrostar by Barak Blackburn bills itself as "the rpg of 1970's-era sci-fi television." It's from Spectrum Games who publish other niche, genre emulation systems like Cartoon Action Hour.  I haven't had a chance to play it yet (though I plan to give it a try), but these are my thoughts on a read-through.

Its a fairly narrative game whose conception and playstyle probably owe a lot to PbtA games, though it has different mechanics. I find its player character mechanics to somewhat straddle a line between "meta" and diegetic. For instance, characters have three traits: Adventure, Though, and Drama. These could have functioned the same way and been called Physical, Mental, and Social, but I think using the terms they do puts you more in the mindset of thinking of a character's role in the imagined series, not necessarily their capabilities within the world of the show. On the other hand, characters are further defined by "descriptors" for above or below average attributes that are more in-world qualities.

Nonmechanically, characters are described with a Background supplied by the Showrunner (GM) and by Casting notes created by the player. The author of the game wrote up Buck Rogers from the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century this way:

Background: Time-displaced USAF and NASA Pilot from 1987, unofficial captain in the Earth Defense Directorate; cocky, charming, dashing, roguish, ladies’ man; perpetual flirt; attracted to Wilma, who is put off and charmed by his manly nature; frequently gets into trouble because of lack of understanding of 25th century.

Casting: Brown haired, rugged, charismatic smile, playful, wiseass, loyal to his friends.

Adventure: 1 (derring-do) 

Thought: -1 (impulsive)
Drama: 1 (magnetic personality)

SFX: 4
Feat of 1987 Machismo 1/ 2d
Laser Pistol 1/ 2d

The basic mechanics are pretty simple and again, in some ways, reminiscent of PbtA games, but not identical. Players roll at least two dice, and add the results together with results of failure, mixed failure/mixed success, or success. Descriptors, SFX, and situation modifiers alter what you roll. The absolute magnitude of the total modifier determines the number of dice rolled, whereas the valence determines whether ultimately sum the highest or lowest two dice. For example, total modifiers of -1 mean roll 3 dice and take the lowest two, whereas +1 means roll 3 and take the highest two.

To simulate the structure of 70s TV, a session or episode is broken into 5 Acts, with each Act only allowing characters 12 dice rolls. Rather than the typical "actions" (or the PbtA term "moves") Retrostar terms these Intentions. I suspect this is because they want to promote the players thinking in terms of scene resolution rather than task resolution, but it's different. An intention is about achieving a goal within a scene, so one roll might stand in for several rolls in games concerns with more granular representation of actions.

The Showrunner guidance talks a fair amount about helping players to frame intentions and how to adjudicate the results. It also talks about structuring adventures in 5 Acts.

The rest of book is focused on series creation. Retrostar defines series with 5 Dials (Thematic, Plot, Recurring, Cheese, and SFX) with describe roughly how topically socially conscious, serial, formulaic, trend-chasing, and well-budgeted the series is. In its introductory section, there's an overview of 70s sci-fi tv and the dials of a number of real TV series are given. The dial ratings are rolled against in prep to see if that element will play a part during a particular adventure. 

For its rules lite-ness, I think Retrostar will take a bit of getting used to. Its mechanics are sort of novel. Its subject matter is appealing, though, and I think it approaches it in a clever way.

Double Edged Sword & Sorcery

The Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery crowdfunding campaign from Brackenbury Books presents two historical Swords & Sorcery novellas (Waste Flowers and Walls of Shira Yulun) in one hardcover, reminiscent of the style of the old Ace Doubles. I was intrigued by the novels and charmed by the style, and since I knew Dariel from the blogosphere, I reached out to the authors about doing this brief interview.

Thanks to the both of you for doing this! How did you come to be involved with the project?

Dariel: I've been working with editor/publisher Oliver Brackenbury since he launched the New Edge of Sword and Sorcery magazine, for the first several issues of which he solicited/commissioned most of the content. We got to meet through the recommendation of Ngo-Vinh Hoi in the Appendix N Book Club podcast; Hoi mentioned my collection, Swords of the Four Winds, among his recommendations, and that led to Oliver contacting me for an interview on his podcast, So I'm Writing a Novel. 

 At the end of that interview, he invited me over to the Whetstone Discord server. At around the time that I joined, a big discussion had started over what could be done to revitalize the sword and sorcery genre and get new readers in. That led to Brackenbury being tagged to edit and put up a new S&S zine, and I was among the writers who pitched in a story, gratis, for our Issue #0. Brackenbury Books has had several successful crowdfunders since then, lately for NESS 1 and 2 last year, 3 and 4 this year, and an anthology of S&S-meets romantasy, Beating Hearts and Battle Axes. 

 At around the same time NESS 3 and 4 were in production or planning, Oliver had already approached me on an idea to sort of revive the Ace Doubles or do a homage to the Ace Doubles.

Bryn: Like Dariel, I’d written for Oliver Brackenbury’s test issue of NESS, which was put out free in digital and at cost in physical formats. When NESS proved a success, we both went on to write further stories in further issues. There’s a New Edge Sword & Sorcery Discord server where I chat daily, and where Oliver, I guess, lays his evil schemes to expand in sword & sorcery publishing. I said a quick yes, of course, to his first ‘want to write a novella?

I think part of the appeal here is that two-in-one format that does remind fans of the Ace Doubles. So that was the publisher's idea? How do you feel about it?

Bryn: It was Oliver’s idea to put us back-to-back: two tales that kick off from the medieval Mongols and the great Mongol himself, Chinggis or Genghis Khan. Oliver got to know us, know our past work around Mongols, and thought it neat to have "steppe siblings" in a Double. 

I think it works wonderfully well. Dariel and I have similarities, and we have contrasts too – you won’t feel it’s same-samey as you move from one novella to the other, since we have such different styles, but our stance, our position, the kind of thing we are concerned with, have a harmony and common ground. 

We’re both set on the frontiers between the steppe of the nomads and settled societies, with the frontier issues that arose in history – and still arise today. Both of us take a nomad’s perspective on that history. Our heroes may be far apart as people, but each is very conscious – and fired up about! – the encroachment of settled civilizations onto the steppe, the creep of towns and cities into the free grass. I believe sword & sorcery is its most essential self when it sees from the less privileged point of view, which has often been the figure of the barbarian up against the ills of civilization. Both of us give what is resolutely a "nomad’s eye" on the world. If Goatskin and Orhan Timur met, they’d understand one another, they’d thrill to the same call. They’d be steppe brother and steppe sister, too. 

In style, though, you get dishes quite distinct from one another. You won’t be bored. Dariel writes a strong, swift, propulsive story, and lists his influences as Robert E. Howard and David Gemmell: he has everything most classic about S&S, cast into a new sensibility for areas of Asia neglected in fantasy. Me, you can probably tell I’ve loved most a few fringes and odd edges of sword & sorcery, that I am attracted to the rich aesthetics of M. John Harrison’s Viriconium or Tanith Lee’s Tales from the Flat Earth. What excites me most about New Edge Sword & Sorcery and now Brackenbury Books is an openness to innovation within the genre. 

Dariel: I loved all aspects of the doubles idea, of course, so I said yes, I don't think I even asked how much he was going to offer. But Oliver's very decent about that, he credits his parents, both freelance artists, with instilling in him an ethic of making sure creatives get paid their due, so it's a decent deal. Even better, I know from experience Oliver is good and active at promotion, so that level of attention I think makes working with a small press really worthwhile. 

And doing a homage to the Ace Doubles of yore (haha, yeah, I feel old enough to say that!) is a special kick for me. I had quite a few of those, hunted for them in bargain bins all over the seamy side of downtown Manila and the old American airbase in Clark -- back in the 80s they were treasures, as prized as the DAW yellow spines. So given the chance to do that, and with Bryn's work as my novella's companion, it was a golden opportunity. I think Oliver's idea to do a 'steppe siblings' themed set for the first Double Edged book gave it a strong platform, and also fits very much what I want to do with S&S, which is to weave tales about and highlight what I call Forgotten Asia. 

The project looks well on track to fund. What's next for you after that?

Dariel: I'm actually set to deliver two stories, because if we hit at least 250 backers all backers will receive my bonus story, The Shaman's Blood Price. That story is about Orhan and Jungar when they were still young and still brothers - kinda like an Obi Wan-Anakin teamup, and also features their first meeting with the villain of Walls, Qara Erke. As of 16:23 today, Manila time, we’re just thirty backers away from that. And we're already talking about another set of novellas for next year.

I also want to work on more Wali and Khalid stories. These are comical sword and sorcery stories patterned after the adventures of Sindbad. Khalid is dashing, handsome, brave as a lion, swift as a falcon...and thick as a city wall. Fortunately, he has Wali to do the thinking for him. Problem is, Wali is a lecherous failed sorcerer cursed with the body of a monkey! The Wali and Khalid stories are like palate cleansers for me, since I tend to write dark stories otherwise. I'll also be continuing work on my sword and planet novel Warrior of the Lost Age, and in between, tinkering with the Swords of Maruzar RPG and its setting.

Bryn: I hope we fund, because what comes next is highly exciting for me. Oliver has said in public that if this book works out, it’ll be the first of novella series for both characters, Dariel’s Orhan Timur the Snow Leopard and my Goatskin. I’m a slow writer so I am at work well ahead of time. Yesterday I sent Oliver a ten-page outline for the next novella, and today I wrote the first sentences. It has the working title What Rough Beast?, which I’m pretty committed to already. 

Tell everybody where we can see more of your work.

Bryn: My website is Amgalant. That’s mostly about my historical fiction on Chinggis/Genghis Khan, and the research for it. I have a storefront where you can buy direct from me: my historical novels, my Voices from the Twelfth-Century Steppe, an essay on how to listen to the Secret History of the Mongols, my source, and a few short stories. 

Previous Goatskin tales can be found in the pages of New Edge Sword & Sorcery #0 and 1; and in A Book of Blades II from Rogues in the House Podcast. Another is on the way in Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes, an anthology that crosses sword & sorcery with romance, from Brackenbury Books, edited by Jay Wolf. 

Dariel: For my self-published collections Swords of the Four Winds and Track of the Snow Leopard, there's my Amazon page. 

 

 My stories also appear in issues 0, 2 and 4 of New Edge of Sword and Sorcery Magazine, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly issues 7, 54, 58 and 61, DMR Books' Die By the Sword 1, Rakehell Magazine 1, and Broadswords and Blasters 13: Futures That Never Were.

Wednesday Comics: DC, December 1983 (week 3)

My mission: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics on newsstands around September 22, 1983.

Power Lords #1: A tie-in with the short-lived toyline, written by Fleisher with art by Texiera and Dee. The cover completely sold me on this issue as a kid, and overall, Texiera does a good job working with the sometimes-challenging character designs by Wayne Barlowe. Shaya, trusted bodyguard for the Toranian royal family, flies to Earth purused by the forces of an alien alliance, to recover Adam Power, who is unaware he is actually a Toranian Power Lord. A jewel removes Adam's amnesia, and he remembers everything about himself, his family--and also remembers how his homeworld fell to dictator Arkus and his allies. Shaya and Adam are attacked by two of Arkus' henchmen, Raygoth and Ggriptogg. While Adam and Shaya defeat both those two, Arkus ambushes them.

Thriller #2: This issue drags out Dan Grove's introduction to the Seven Seconds so some background on those characters can be given to the reader. There are a number of things unexplained, including why there is a bank robber called "Molluskan" and Scabbard's girlfriend Mallochia seems to be Scotty Thriller's nanny under the name "Molly Lusk"--and what either of these people have to do with Edward Thriller's old colleague, Moses Lusk. Von Eeden's panel layouts are as difficult to follow as last issue. We do learn that, thanks to a lab accident during his attempts to harness the power of the so-called "rogue cell" lurking within every human, Edward Thriller and his wife Angeline got merged, so that Angeline exists a noncorporeal being tethered to Edward's body. Or something like that. We also so the fire that killed Angeline's father and blinded her mother--a fire her brother Tony accidentally started while playing with matches. I like the setting and characters, but there was probably a better way to go about this.

Supergirl #14: Indicia and cover title now agree that this is Supergirl. We pick up where last issue left off with Supergirl battling Blackstarr. Supergirl manages to hold her own, but eventually Blackstarr just decides to escape. Back at her building, Linda is talking with Mrs. Berkowitz, and they discover that Blackstarr looks uncannily like Rachel, Berkowitz's daughter who she believes died in the camps in 1941. 

That night, Blackstarr's followers fire-bomb a synagogue. Supergirl gets the rabbi out, but the old man dies of smoke inhalation. Angry, Supergirl takes to the skies and calls out Blackstarr. The villain shows and the fight is on. Blackstarr boasts she has comprehended Unified Field Theory which is the source of her powers.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Berkowitz heard about the fight on the radio and rushed to the scene. When she sees Blackstar she exclaims "Rachel!", and Blackstarr stammers out "M-momma?"

Batman and the Outsiders #5: Barr and Wolfman continue the story from last week's New Teen Titans, this time with Aparo on art. The two teams barely escape drowning in Gotham Harbor after Psimon destroyed the underwater base, but thanks to Terra they manage it, bringing Dr. Jace with them. Whiny Dr. Light is on the outs with the Fearsome Five, so Psimon sends the mudmen to get him, but he winds up captured by the heroes. This issue plays up the tension between Batman and Robin, and Batman assumes leadership and makes Robin feel like a junior partner. Robin eventually asserts himself, countermanding Batman on strategy, but when it works out, Batman commends his leadership and the part with mutual respect. It's interesting how aligned the Batman books, BatO and NTT are on the whole two potential Robins and Batman stuff. It does really feel as if these are all events happening at the same point in the characters' lives.

Here's the covers of the two-parter combined:

Green Lantern #171: Feels like another fill in issue while we're waiting for the new creative team house ads have been telling us about (Wein and Gibbons) to take over. We've got Alex Toth on pencils here, at least, and Austin on inks. The writer is "Noel Naive" which is a pen name and here apparently represents Giffen, Snyder, and Cavalieri. Jordan and Dorine visit desert world are are captured by the "Caretaker" of an alien race. He plans to siphon their life energy in an attempt to cure his people of their "sleep sickness," just like he's doing to his own wife. Jordan intervenes when the alien's wife cries out in pain, and destroys the machine, causing the Caretaker to die of shock. His sadden wife explains that their race was not sleeping, but already dead, and she only let her husband keep believing they could be saved because his struggle to find a cure was the only thing keeping him alive.

In the Tales of the Green Lantern Corps backup by Klein and Gibbons, mustachioed GL Deeter, explains to a young boy how he too was given a hard time by a woman: a caustic princess whose rescue he botched by failing to understand the situation. In the end, he reveals he got his revenge by marrying her as the princess arrives on dragon back to pick him up after her errands.

Sgt. Rock #383: The main story by Kanigher and Redondo is a bit of a surprise in that idyllic, isolationist community Rock discovers in the Alps isn't destroyed or forced to accept the grim necessity of fighting the just war at the end of it. They stay hidden and Rock leaves, managing to catch so G.I.'s looking to loot some Nazi booty and defeat some German ski-troops on his way back to Easy. 

There are "Battle Album" entries on the F-14 and Cromwell's heavy cavalry, then a morality play by Harris/Lindsey about a German soldier on the Russian Front who murders a fellow soldier to get his fancy boots only to lose his feet to frostbite. 

Legion of Super-Heroes #306: While awaiting the returns in the election for Legion leader--one where Star Boy hopes his girlfriend Dream Girl loses--he passes the time by filling Wildfire in on his origin. Giffen draws the frame sequence, but the flashback is handled by Curt Swan and recaps incidents from recaps incidents from Adventure Comics #317, #342 and #350.

Warlord #76: I reviewed the main story here. In the Barren Earth backup by Cohn and Randall, something appears to be blocking the pipe taking water from the subterranean sea to their reservoir. Jinal dives down to take a look and finds an ancient, space battleship, which she manages to salvage but only after defeating some automated guardians.

Space: 1999 the Role-playing Game

I pre-ordered the Space: 1999 role-playing game coming from Modiphius not because I am a big fan of the show (the only complete episode I've seen as an adult I reviewed here) but I do like retro-sci-fi in general, and I am always at least curious about another instantiation of the 2d20 system, which I like a lot in Star Trek Adventures. With my pre-order I got the quickstart and with it a window into what the game is going to be like.

First off, they get the aesthetic right. There is a lot of beige and orange in this pdf. Unlike the Trek books, they use stills from the show in this one, though there is some original art.

Characters are defined by Skills and Attitudes. The Skills (Command, Flight, Medicine, Security, Technical) seem analogous to STA's Disciplines (Command, Conn, Medicine, Security, Science, Engineering), but they also serve an attribute function with the rules telling us Command has to do with "charm" and Flight with "athletics," for example. Attitudes (Bravery, Compassion, Dedication, Improvisation, Mystery, Perseverance) are essentially approaches as used in Fate and other games (the 2d20 Dishonored game calls them "Styles"), though they don't work as well conceptually for me because they seem to be a mix of character traits and traits and motivations, but they probably will work okay. One problem I forsee is that with approaches/styles doing things one way means you probably aren't doing it another way, e.g. if you are Quick you aren't Careful or Sneaky. It's less clear to me that the Attitudes have that sort of exclusivity.

Beyond Momentum and Threat, which are in most 2d20 games, Space: 1999 characters have Spirit which serves the functions of both Determination and Stress in STA.

There are some sample characters in the quickstart and a short adventure, but no real gear, aliens or monsters. Still, from what's shown it looks like a good 2d20 riff on the lower crunch side. I'm looking forward to seeing the full game.

Take Me to the Pilot!

I'm a bit behind in my session reports, so I've got two to cover from our 5e Land of Azurth campaign. The party has been making their way up the floors of the mechanical titan that the rebels against the Wizard hope to use against him, but at the moment it's in the hands of mercenaries who stole it to sell to the Wizard.

In the first session, the part reached the auxiliary control room in the solar plexus area of the construct. Erekose fell prey to a trap that dropped him into the trash furnace, then the party had to contend with a minotaur armed with a magic hammer.

In the second session, the party finished exploring the auxiliary control room level, then made a gnome technician call the elevator for them. The next level is a weird gallery with a dinosaur, an elf woman, a weirdly intense, muscular man, and a horrible mass of protoplasm held in some sort of stasis. A sneaky gnome tries to drop the stasis fields, but the party stops him. They do free the elf who reveals she was kidnapped for ransom.

There is a curving, steel staircase to the head and the next level. There is also a towering construct standing at the top of them. The party rushes into battle and manages to defeat it surprisingly handily. In the head, they find the actually control room and two spellcasters who are prepared for them. Glym, Bok's primary technical consultant, is a wizard, and there is also a sinister looking cleric.

These guys are no joke, but there's only two of them and there are 5 party members. In a few rounds they are down, though not before Erekose is banished to some nether realm. He comes back though when Glym goes down.

Wednesday Comics: DC, December 1983 (week 2)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! Today, I've looking at the comics released the week of September 15, 1983. 

Batman #366:  Great cover here by Simonson. Moench and Newton/Alcala continue the story from last issue. Despite the destruction of his site model and Batman's escape, the Joker moves ahead with his plans to foment even greater conflict between the rebels and the military. Batman is pretty much apolitical here. The rebels expect him to be against them, but it isn't, even after one of their number tries to kill him. His main goal seems to be preventing further violence by letting both sides know they are being played. It's shallow from a real-world political context, sure, but it's not really the Batman you would expect from social media discourse that paints him as an authoritarian figure. 

Somewhat unrealistically, Jason Todd manages to make it to Central America just in time to help defeat the Joker dressed as Robin. Given that the Robin identity isn't one Grayson has given up yet, Batman is angry about that.

New Teen Titans #37: Wolfman and Barr co-write this team-up between the Titans and the Outsiders. It starts when the Fearsome Five breakout of prison and go after Dr. Jace to get her to empower some minions for Psimon. The two hero teams initially start to fight, but it doesn't go on long enough to stretch credulity. Too much. The dynamic between Batman as leader and Robin as leader is interesting and not as forced to create tension as Wolfman has written the two in the past. Terra worries having to interact with her brother may reveal some of the lies she told the Titan, and Changeling at least does note some discrepancies. All in all, a solid team-up whose resolution will come in the Outsiders.

Superman #390: Bates is joined by new scripter Elliot S! Maggin. As seen last issue, Vartox is on his way. He was inside a comet but has no memory of how he got there. He's intent on resuming his relationship with Lana Lang, though he seems take it ok when he finds out she's seeing Clark Kent now. Well, except he keeps getting struck with these vivid, intrusive daydreams where he kills Superman. Meanwhile, Lana is dealing with a serious stalker. Like, when the guy surprises her, she accidentally kicks him off her balcony, yet he finds a way to survive but keeps on pursuing her serious.

Arak Son of Thunder #28: Riding animated statues supplied by the priestess Dyanna, Arak and Satyricus are spirited far away from Byzantium to the ruins of the Temple of Diana in Ephesus. Dyanna enters the forest and warns them not to follow but gives them a golden arrow for their trouble. While Arak uses the arrow to get them some horses (he plans to go to Baghdad to secure passage to the New World), Satyricus wonders off. Arak goes looking for him and winds up in the middle of a strange grove, where he's forced to kill a raving man protecting a golden bough. Turns out he was a priest, and according to the Amazons, Arak can't leave the sacred grove and must assume the priest's duties as protector.

In the Valda backup by the Thomases and Randall/Yeates, it turns out Creston was killed not by an archangel but by the evil wizard Baledor, who has taken over the monastery at Mount Saint Michael. Malgigi heads there to fight the wizard, sending Valda to report to Charlemagne. The King is too busy in war to listen, so Valda heads Mount St. Michael herself, but gets attacked by evil monks.

Omega Men #9: Slifer and Smith/DeCarlo lay bare the trouble with a lot of rebellions: the folks that are good fighters to overthrow a regime aren't always good at follow through. While the Omega Men try to get their individual lives back in order vulnerable worlds are again conquered or drawn under the influence of the resurgent Citadel masterminded by Harry Hokum. In the end, many Omega Men have been captured, and Primus' only recourse seems to be to make a deal with Lobo that may mean his death. 

Flash 328: Similar to last month's Swamp Thing, the story here gets dragged out--delaying Superman's response on the Flash's expulsion from the League--another month while the Flash has a flashback. Which means we get a reprint of Flash #165 by Broome and Infantino/Giella with a brief frame. The night before Barry is to marry Iris, he's transported to the 25th century by Professor Zoom. Zoom disguises himself with Barry and switches places to wed Iris. Meanwhile, the real Barry is in Zoom's cell in the future. Barry escapes, of course, and the Flash and Reverse Flash do battle, until the future law catches up with Zoom and takes him back to his own time.

G.I. Combat #260: The cover story (which is the second Haunted Tank story this issue), finally addresses the issue of Stuart's Raiders flying the Confederate Battle Flag. It's doesn't go anywhere satisfying, but some acknowledgement of the issue is, I guess, better than none. We finally get a window into the feelings of Gus, the only black member of the crew, about that flag. He isn't happy, and coincidently, neither is a visiting general who demands they remove it and destroy it. Stuart isn't happy about that particularly, but he's a soldier and will do as ordered. Gus volunteers to burn it, but before he can, the wind (actually J.E.B. Stuart's ghost) whisks the flag away. Later, the ghost drops the flag, so it obscures a Panzer gunner's vision, allowing the Haunted Tank to prevail in a firefight. After their victory, the general drops his objections to the flag and Gus isn't consulted but suggests it must be God's will or something. Of course, the reader knows it was the actions of a racist ghost so I don't know how Kanigher expects us to feel about all that. It feels like a lampshade of a story, but an ineffective one.

The other Haunted Tank story involves them loosing 2 commanding officers in a row to repetitive trauma as they crack having to send men to their deaths and write so many letters to families about it. Beyond that, there's one about a pacifist medic who saves a soldier by accidentally (and unknowingly) killing a German gunner, and one where a soldier from a future World War III helps his ancestor in World War II.

Saga of the Swamp Thing #18: Pasko and Bissette/Totleben provide a framing sequence where Swamp Thing, Matt, and Abby are overwhelmed by the monsters from Matt's brain and Arcane tells a captive Kripptman the story of his last encounter with Swamp Thing--which is a reprint of Swamp Thing #10 (1974) by Wein and Wrightson. That story involves the ghosts of mistreated slaves attacking Arcane and his Un-Men.

The Other "Good Lore"

There has been some discussion in various places over the last couple of weeks regarding "lore," which isn't a great term, maybe, but one we all understand to mean background, mostly nonmechanical elements of a setting in all their myriad forms. A lot of time is spent separating good lore from bad. Ben Laurence wrote this great post last week. I wrestled with the issue in regard to history, one of the most vexing parts of lore, here.

Anyway, I think what Ben says about "good" lore and its creation and use is smart, but there seems to me a missing category, which was the impetus for this post. One type of actionable lore that Ben neglects to mention is the sort of detail that aids the GM in conveying the world to the players at the table. This isn't "actionable intelligence" for the players particularly, but rather things that help set the scene and convey the subtle textures that might differentiate one world from another. Things that should appear in (or at least inform) the GM's description of the world, not facts to be memorized in anyway.

A good way to do this is sensory-impressionistic descriptions. Jack Shear of Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque presented a brief style of locale description that included as one of it's headings "A Taste, A Sound, an Image." I've borrowed this presentation myself, as has Miranda Elkins of In Places Deep. These sorts of details help set the mood both for the players and for the GM who must great more details and could use the imaginative springboard.

Note that these can be diegetic and nondiegetic, though going nondiegetic runs the risk of the reader not getting the "vibe" because they don't know the work referenced or took something else from it.

It might be fair to say, that's not really "lore," and I guess in the strictest since that's true, but I've got more! Ben mentions "banal facts about cuisine" as irrelevant lore, and I agree, but only in regard to the "banal" part. One of the things I did with my recent Gnydrion game was go out of my way to give a description of the meal being offered when the character's had a chance to eat. This isn't something I usually do, but Gnydrion is a very Vancian setting, so I wanted to lean into that. The players weren't expected to remember these meals; it was just a bit color, but I think it helped convey the feel of the setting. The players seemed to enjoy it in that spirit. All I had to do was make a list of like 10 dishes and I wasn't concerned if what I said in play was exactly what I wrote down.

I think these sorts of details like this can at least suggest actions. Knowing that bronze can be mined from the buried bones of dead Storm Gods could be something players do something with in Glorantha, but at the very least it sets Glorantha apart from say, the Forgotten Realms. 

At the end of the day, "good" lore is going to make your setting more memorable and interesting. This may be because the players can use that knowledge strategically, but it may also because it helps the world come alive for them.

When In Inaust

Gray, misty Inaust on Whulggan Sound is a place few choose to visit except on the most important of errands. If by some strange fortune you should find yourself in that city, here are several ways to pass the time:

• Enjoy a meal of grilled slug skewers with fermented fish sauce. We recommend the establishment Respa's Hearth as a superior venue for the dish. If your finances allow for such luxuries, the salt-cured glount roe makes a sublime antipasto. The glount roe trade can be cutthroat, and sabotage of a competitor or attempting to gain an advantage by substitution of roe of less desirable fish can occur. The glount themselves are edible, though it is considered lower class fare.
• Marvel at the spectacle and clamor of the mating combats of the morhuk on several sandbanks and islets.  The bellicose and lustful creatures pose a risk to navigation at such times, but the local nobility view them as totemic and forbid their harm under serious penalty. The fishers and boat operators are less favorably disposed toward the creatures and sometimes hire groups of ruffians to hunt the beasts with clubs under cover of night. 

• Acquire a coat, cape, or hat of fur and be the talk of the town in more Southron climes as you cut a figure of exotic, rustic fashion. Be sure to consult your furrier (we recommend Omer Zwirn & Sons) regarding the current status of sumptuary ordinance. The upper classes reserve some pelts for their own use, and the most prized varieties change frequently.

For those who arrive in Inaust in a state of embarrassment regarding their finances, we offer the following means of acquiring funds which are somewhat unique to the region:

• Compete in a birling contest. There are gambling establishment in the coarser areas of town where the woodsman's diversion of trying to stay standing upon a free-floating log while pushing an opponent from theirs. Entrants are paid a sum for competing and may win larger purses for performance. Would-be competitors are urged make every effort to discern the parameters of the any contest they may participate in, as some entrepreneurial-minded hosts have enhanced their offerings by pitting traditional contestants against wild beasts.
• Find employment as a boatman. No extensive knowledge of sea or maritime lore is necessary to serve as a cranksman or treadman on one of the many paddle wheel boats that ply the Sound. Stamina is the only prerequisite, though you would do well to pay the modest dues for membership in the Propellers Union, lest you face a beating and dunking from those toiling with you.

Wednesday Comics: Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

Volume 11 of the manga Frieren: Beyond Journey's End came out in English this week. I've mentioned the anime adaptation of this series before but I thought it was worth giving a shout out to the manga by writer Kanehito Yamada and artist Tsukasa Abe, which is ahead of the anime--and may forever be, given that the first "season" has completed and it's unclear if there will be more. The manga could be one's only chance to see the end of the story.

I'll try to be light on the spoilers for later events, but as I mentioned before, Frieren is a nigh immortal elf adventurer on a long, meandering journey to retrace the steps of her original party's journey into the demon-haunted North to find the place where the dead can speak to the living, so she can talk to one of her old party members. Her companions are her apprentice (a child adopted by her old party's cleric) and a warrior who was the protégé of another one of her former comrades.

This goal led to a storyline where Fern (the apprentice) and Frieren attempted to gain status in a wizard organization who controls access to the North. The current storyline involves some of the characters and situations from that one and centers around a town turned to gold by the actions of a demon, Macht, which the wizardly organization has been "containing" for decades.

Now, the containment has dropped and the diagoldze spell threatens to spread. Macht is being aided by another greater demon named Solitär. Several mages (including Fern) have already been defeated by them. Freiren arrives, but she's armed with the counterspell to diagoldze. Still, she has two powerful demons to defeat.

The manga, like the anime, finds its strength in its characters. In the somewhat alien outlooks of the demons and the extremely long-lived elves, it also considers human relationships and their meanings. It's an unsual series, and one I highly recommend.

80s Action Cartoons Were Very Gameable

I'm not just talking about the usual suspects like Thundarr the Barbarian or The Pirates of Darkwater; or ones that already have games like G.I. Joe, Transformers, or of course, Dungeons & Dragons. Even the deeper cuts are great too. Let's take a look at a sampling and the gaming inspiration they provide.

Sky Commanders (1987)

If you're a fan of hexcrawls or even pointcrawls, could I interest you in high elevation, feature-to-feature exploration? The premise is a new continent has arisen in the Pacific thanks to some weird energy source, and a multi-national group of mountaineering-specialist good-guys fight the baddies via flight, or by using "laser cables," a fancy rappelling line shot from combat backpacks. There are all sorts of environmental hazards to contend with too, and some monsters.

Spiral Zone (1987)

The high concept takeaway here might be G.I. Joe meets the Walking Dead. In the show, an evil scientist and his Road Warrior refugee have released a weird, bioactive mist (the Spiral Zone) that turns the people in it into mindless zombies. A crack team of agents and their tricked-out vehicles and protective suits do battle with the badguys. A twist is that both sides want to limit civilian casualties as the bad guys want to use them, and the good guys want to save them. 

Defenders of the Earth (1986)

While this team-up of several King Features Syndicate characters against Ming the Merciless might seem like a low-powered supers thing (and in some ways it is), the takeaway here, I think, is genre crossover. You've got a sword & planet guy, a pulp hero (or two), and a wizard who get together to take out a villain.

Wednesday Comic: DC, December 1983 (week 1)

My ongoing mission: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of September 8, 1983. 

Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld #8: Mishkin/Cohn and Colon give us a bit of the history of Gemworld, and we discovered that the humans originated on Earth and fled to another dimension as magic began to fade. Citrina, it turns out, was the one that led the ritual. Meanwhile, the mysterious Emissaries of Varn, working as mercenaries for Dark Opal, attack and destroy the House of Diamond. Amethyst and her allies are unable to stop the Emissaries and their magic absorbing power, but they are given a reprieve by the sudden appearance of one of the priests of Diamond.

Blackhawk #265: The editorial a few issues back was just a preview as Evanier and Speigle final get around to dealing with some of the lingering racism in Chop-Chops portrayal in story. Unfortunately, it also culminates in him appearing to get written out of the story. As the Blackhawks try to track down Merson through his finances, Chop Chop is uncharacteristically irritable, feeling like he's a second-class member of the team. His attitude forces the other Blackhawks to reflect and realize he has been treated differently. After playing a pivotal role in their capturing Merson, Chop Chop makes a formal announcement that he wishes leave to go fight the Japanese invaders in his home country. Blackhawk presents him with his on Blackhawk uniform for the first time and the group salutes him, addressing him under his real name for the first time in print, Wu Cheng. 

In the Detached Service backup by Evanier and Boyette, Chuck's plane gets stolen, and he's stranded in Europe for a couple of days, while he tries to get it back. He finds some of his plane in a black-market warehouse being run by a sleazy black marketeer Dmitri Hocking. He forces the man to help him retrieve the other parts, but things don't go smoothly, and they run into Nazis. Chuck is forced to assemble a patchwork plane of disparate parts for a dogfight before it's all over.

DC Comics Presents #64: Scientist and TV host Victor Epoch's (his show Astro seems a Cosmos stand-in) time experiment brings portions of the After Disaster future to present-day Metropolis, including Kamandi. He teams up with Superman to fight off the time-displaced Great Caesar and his tiger troops. This is Kamandi's last appearance prior to Crisis, courtesy of Evanier and Saviuk/McLaughlin.

Justice League of America #221: Conway is back again with Patton/Marcos and a particularly violent and bloody story for the JLA. The JLA members individually encounter and seem targeted various sorts of anthropomorphic animal people, and those guys don't pull punches. A rhnio man impales Flash on his horn, a flock of birds push Elongated Man into a press, and scorpion men fighting Hawkman impale a bystander bloodily. Firestorm meets the only animal woman, a cat woman named Reena, who seems opposed to the others. He convinces her to come back to the satellite and tell her story. We don't hear what that is this issue, but we meet the mastermind behind this all: a lion man named Maximus Rex who's ordering around a scientist named Dr. Lovecraft.

Wonder Woman #310: Mishkin and Beachum/Marcos have Wonder Woman considering revealing her secret identity to Steve Trevor and talking it over with Black Canary during a game. Canary is against it, but Wonder Woman tells a story of the Amazon Artemis and how Ares was able to manipulate her through her love of a Greek soldier Cleon into opening up Themiscrya to attack.  

The Cavalieri and Burgard/Rodriguez Huntress backup continues the story of the baby-selling ring run by Earthworm, but not a lot happens this installment other than we see how Earthworm prays upon the desperate and addicted to get the infants he sells.

An Adventure Path like a Dungeon

B1-9 flowchart

Recently I was reading the rpg Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo (1977). The usual take on this game is that it is less an rpg and more a boardgame. That's likely the way it will strike most people on first blush, but I think Christian Lindke makes a reasonable case that it is a roleplaying game of its era (and underwritten even for that) with a definite campaign path, almost like some story games of today.

I don't see any reason why a game couldn't have a definite campaign arc. I think that would work with a lot of licensed properties, and I think the "adventure path" style of modern published adventures is a way to do just that. Unfortunately, these sorts of adventures suffer conceptually, I think, from a couple of flaws. One is the desire to have the campaign arc come as a surprise to players or at least to appear to arise naturalistically from the earlier campaign events. This requires the GM to be deceptive. Two, if the players weren't getting railroaded to get them into the adventure, they certainly are once it starts because the path through the adventure tends to be fairly linear.

I think it can be done better. This is an idea akin to my previous one about running an adventure point-crawl--in fact, it's really just a slightly different approach to the same basic idea. 

Both involve a goal to achieve, a geography to cover in doing so, and certain events or scenes that might occur. These locations and their events/scenes form the "rooms" in a conceptual "dungeon," or more accurately the points in a conceptual pointcrawl. An adventure of this sort would have a conceptual/narrative map and a physical geography map, not unlike the actual Mongo mmap compared to the "Schematic Map" of Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo:

How would this differ from a standard, old adventure path? Well, in at least a couple of ways. As much is possible, nothing is supposed to happen. Certain events would make completing the task of the campaign easier, but only rarely would there be no other way to get it done.

Like in a pointcrawl, players are permit to just follow the physical geography. Nothing forces them to stay on the path, but the locations on the path have special features analogous (or perhaps literally, sometimes times) to secret doors, teleportation disks or what have you that allow quicker, easier travel between "points." "Solving" a "point" might unlock other advantages like allies or items that make completing the goal of the campaign easier. Just like finding certain items or meeting certain NPCs in a dungeon.

This break from linearity would mean the points would have to have less of a causal relationship than the events of adventure paths typically do. It would work best, I think, for certain sorts of campaign arcs. A rebellion (like Star Wars or Flash Gordon) would be one, but something like Pirates of Dark Water with episodic exploration in search of plot coupons would work well, too. Anything more like a broadcast era episodic TV series with a throughline and less like a feature film.