Andy, R+1,459

 

"Once I retired… I realised that nobody cared. Nobody was keeping track of what I did! There was no big prize at the end for people like me who followed all the rules and did what we were supposed to do with our lives." - Susan Hayes

It's four years since I retired now, or it will be in a couple of days. Wow. It's weird being the same age as old people.

In theory, I should have a lot more time now to play games and blog about them. In practice, it doesn't feel like that. Partly my wife and I are travelling a lot while we still can; partly I'm not feeling very motivated at the moment. I've been playing RPGs for almost 50 years now, and there are days I feel I've exhausted the possibilities and should hang up my dice. That will probably pass. It always has before.

Progress Towards Objectives

This year I made some New Year's resolutions, which I don't normally do, since it's depressing when I break them. (It stings less if you think of them as experimental observations rather than targets.) Achievements to date:

• Intentionality. No impulse buys; joining new games is within parameters. On track.
• Play with 15 different people: So far it's 14. Ahead of target. The Friendly Local Gaming Shop did ask for someone to run "anything you like", but that turned out to mean "any official D&D 5th Edition campaign you like", and the one available player slot is also for 5E.
• No campaign reboots. This one will fail, as I'm using moving the blog from Wordpress to Blogger as an excuse to reboot my solo SF game.
• Play 300 hours in 100 sessions: To date I've played 96 hours in 30 sessions, so I'm ahead of target. The breakdown is All Things Zombie two sessions and 0.7 hours; Cepheus Engine one session and 4 hours; FATE 3 sessions and 6 hours; Mongoose Traveller one session and 2.25 hours; and SWADE 23 sessions and 83 hours. That puts SWADE in the lead by a long way, at 77% of sessions and 87% of hours played.
• Read 50 books, 5 in Italian: I've read 19 in English, and I'm halfway through the second one in Italian. On track.
• Videogaming: I'm a decade late to the party on this one, but I am absolutely blown away by Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. My 'two games this year' could morph into 'two playthroughs of Skyrim this year', it's that good.

I also added a new goal, boycotting companies which support people and causes that I disagree with; voting and protesting haven't changed anything, but if enough of us reduce their revenue maybe that'll work. Due to existing commitments, it will take me another two years to make all the necessary changes, but I feel better for starting on it.

Finally, I need to figure out how best to use the new blogging platform; likes, comments, and whatnot. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Campaigns

As a GM, I was very pleased with The Pirates of Drinax, The Dracula Dossier, and the various solo games I played over the previous four years or so, but I feel the current batch are not going as well. I thought at the time that Pirates and Dracula would be tough acts to follow.

• 28 Months Later is bulletproof; I never get dissatisfied with the setting, probably because it doesn’t really have a setting, the rules slip on like comfortable old gloves, and none of the characters survive long enough for me to lose interest in them.
• The Aslan Route is tripping over too much stuff from the earlier Pirates of Drinax game; using Charted Space still looks like a good shout, but I should’ve picked a subsector we haven’t used before, maybe moved into a new sector entirely. Going forward, I think each campaign should be limited to a single subsector, probably a different one each time.
• There were good reasons I moved away from the Dark Nebula before, and they’re still valid. Although I'd dabbled in solo SF gaming earlier, I didn't get serious about it until 2008, and that was using a Savage Worlds/Classic Traveller mashup. I've tried a lot of other systems since, but I think that is overall the best combination for what I want to do, and it's a solo game so I may as well do what I like; as Ms Hayes says, there's no big prize at the end of your life for doing what you were supposed to.
• It’s good that I got Hayastan out of my system, as I’ve been meaning to use it for years now; but for the moment Skyrim meets all my solo fantasy needs, and when that changes, I think Gold & Glory and Ruins of the Undercity would be worthwhile experiments – setting-free dungeon crawls are where I started in 1976, and though they have drifted out of fashion, I still miss them.

As a player, the lion’s share of my time is going to Deadlands, and I enjoy it immensely; it turns out I like to play SWADE as much as I like to run it. It's early days for Leaves of Chiaroscuro, but I suspect it is going to focus too much on narrative for me; I like a certain amount of crunch in my games, and FATE steers away from that.

Where Next?

By this point, I have a pretty good handle on what my players enjoy, and the Aslan Route should continue to provide it for a while yet.

It seems logical, then, to use my solo games to explore aspects of gaming which I enjoy and my players don’t. That list includes survival horror, combat, magic and psionic powers, and dungeon crawls. I'm also tempted by the Nimble 5E-adjacent RPG, and might pick that up later in the year.

Adding new rules to my group games needs to be done sparingly, and on the GM’s side of the screen.

The Aslan Route: The Story So Far...

"Traveller is a game about space truckers that sometimes solve murder mysteries." - Rick Stump

This campaign has been rolling for a few months now, and rather than repeat the session writeups so far, here's a quick summary. (If you want the full details, you can find them here under the Aslan Route heading.)

The rules are Savage Worlds Adventure Edition, the setting is the Trojan Reach of the Official Traveller Universe, Charted Space; we finished The Pirates of Drinax campaign a couple of years ago, and now we're playing in the sandbox.

The first phase of the campaign was based on Reach Adventure 5: The Borderland Run, and it has just taken a sharp left turn into the Bulldogs! campaign Heart of the Fury. Who knows where it'll end up?

Dramatis Personae

• Captain Mazun Ashran, an IISS agent posing as the captain of the far trader Macavity.
• Vila Restal, ship's engineer, on the run from the Shugaka crime family.
• Dr Theosopholous Matauranga, ship's doctor, exiled from Tech-World for breaching the Council's ethical standards, such as they are.
• Grrrrshagrikrigggggrrsh AKA “Rex”, Vargr ex-corsair. Or so he claims.

Episodes

Time periods shown include jumpspace travel, takeoffs and landings.

1. Self-Loading Cargo. Fist, 001-1105 to 003-1105. The crew of the Macavity are chartered to take an aslan ihatei, Prince Hteleitoirl, from Fist to Tyokh. They discover that several other parties are looking for him, with unknown intentions, but eventually track him down and sneak him aboard. Vila recognises him as the leader of the recent failed conquest of Arunisiir, thwarted by mercenaries.
2. Blue-Skinned Space Babes. Iilgan, Exocet and Blue, 006-1105 to 035-1105. The Macavity delivers a cargo of tailored bacteria to a vegetable grower on Iilgan, which cargo they know has been tampered with. The crew come up with a scheme which allows them to leave without getting embroiled in the investigation. Dr Matauranga is kidnapped by blue-skinned space babes on Blue.
3. Death by Snu-Snu. Blue, 036-1105 to 043-1105. Rescuing Dr Matauranga from the temple of a nymphomaniac cult on Blue, the Macavity lifts off without an approved flight plan and jumps to Clarke. The crew are now wanted on Blue for traffic violations, contempt of court, and suspected aiding and abetting of known terrorists.
4. Scavs, Bounty Hunters, and Mercs. Clarke, 044-1105 to 054-1105. While looking for cargo on Clarke, the Travellers encounter bounty hunters looking for their passenger, Prince Hteleitoirl, who offer to split the bounty with them if they turn him in. Returning to the ship, they find the Prince about to fight a duel with a member of a rival clan, and assist him in obtaining an honourable draw. Later, in hyperspace, he talks about the abortive attack on Arunisiir; it seems likely he was set up, and the leak is either from a clan factor on Sink or some old friends on The World.
5. Black is the New Black. Torpol, Drinax, Hilfer and Sink, 056-1105 to 090-1105. Relaxing on Torpol is interrupted by the appearance of the Sindalian Empire Reborn, which annexes Torpol and the Grehai Movement by unknown means. Moving on to Sink, the crew of the Macavity sneak into the residence of the aslan factor while he and the Prince are out on a sightseeing tour. Vila, Mazun and Dr Matauranga are discovered by the household staff, but Rex remains hidden.
6. Unclogging the Sink. Sink and The World, 091-1105 to 103-1105. Escaping the household staff, the Macavity arrives at The World, where Prince Hteleitoirl’s old friends are on a security contract. His fiancee Elehasei secretly explains to the crew that they are taking the Prince home to be executed, and asks them to take him somewhere else instead. While everyone else is at a feast held in the Prince’s honour, Vila is working on the ship. A shadow falls across him and a slurred voice accuses him of snubbing the Prince by staying away from the feast.
7. Cui Bono? The World and Tyokh, 104-1104 to 112-1105. Vila talks his way out of trouble. The crew of the Macavity deliver Prince Hteleitoirl to his family estate on Tyokh in the nick of time, and convince the independent arbiter that he was betrayed by rivals in the Htyowao clan. He is declared innocent, and Rex fights the clan champion to first blood so that the people who came to see a duel are not disappointed. The Prince’s father, the Iuwoi clanlord, gives them prosthetic duelling claws they can wear to demonstrate their honour, and asks to meet them privately to discuss future employment.
8. Attempted Betrothal. Tyokh, 113-1105 to 126-1105. The crew of the Macavity fail to successfully conclude marriage negotiations between Prince Hteleitoirl’s clan, the Iuwoi, and that of Elehasei, the Aftei. They carry the Prince into a one year exile on Sink.
9. Monastic Disorders. Sink, 127-1105 to 136-1105. Investigating the monastery on Sink, the PCs discover it has a gold mine and jewellery shop supporting a hospice. Their former free trader contact has probably been impressed into the Drinaxian Star Guard, so the Macavity offers to take over that run. At night, Vila breaks into the monastery and copies all their digital data.
10. Swamp Thing. Sink, Byrni, Ergo, Tech-World, Paal, and back to Sink, 136-1105 to 210-1105. The Macavity takes over cargo runs from Sink. The purloined records indicate the cult is an offshoot of Buddhism, and believes being buried in the swamp allows one to pass directly to nirvana without death and rebirth. The missionary on Byrni, Brother Christian, is concerned by the Sindalian Empire Reborn, saying "the Fury is on the move again" and asking to be taken back to Sink. With almost two months for the crew to wheedle secrets out of him, they learn that the swamp is not a hive mind, but something closer to a data storage unit, hungry for information-dense input; the monks recruit the terminally ill, saying they can live forever in the nirvana of the swamp, and it records their personalities; they are not entirely part of a hive mind, but nor are they entirely individuals. Sometimes, the swamp needs direct contact with the monastery, and it regurgitates one of the hospice patients; this is how abbots are made. Some stored data are highly confidential, and kept in a secure satellite facility on Pourne: The House of Shrouded Mirrors.

Clean Slate

It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life for me
And I'm feeling good
- Nina Simone, Feeling Good

Welcome to the fifth and latest incarnation of my roleplaying blog!

This is where I share my thoughts on roleplaying games, partly because some people find them useful, and partly because the act of writing them down helps me clarify them.

My science fiction games are the most enjoyable for me and the most popular with others, so I'll focus mainly on SF RPG material; I expect the blog to have these main categories...

• 28 Months Later: A solo campaign of life in the zombie apocalypse; the rules and characters change periodically, and there is no setting to speak of.
• The Arioniad: A solo campaign about the ongoing adventures of Arion the scoutship pilot, which are not only fun but also let me experiment with things before inflicting them on my players. The characters in this game are constant, but the rules and settings change from time to time.
• The Aslan Route: Savage Worlds adventures in the Official Traveller Universe; session reports from my current group game.
• Experiments: Prototype rules and trial sessions; these may be "promoted to live" later.
• Reflections: Occasional thoughts about gaming and life in general.
• Reviews: Reviews of gaming products old and new. This is the most popular section by far.

Normally there will be posts twice per week, "Traveller Tuesdays" and "Solo Saturdays".

Let's be about it, shall we?