Resolutions

 Another year over and not a lot to show for it.

Not nothing, though. I lost my job a few months ago, so I've definitely been in a downer phase. But it did allow me to develop some material to actually try out Ashes Without Number.

I also learned the value of backstory. While I haven't done campaigns for quite some time, I have kept myself busy with one-shots for the local gaming club. So I've written some adventures and made sure to provide pre-gens. But these have always been purely mechanical constructions, a set of stats to roll against as necessary.

Then someone asked on the gaming club's Discord server: How much backstory is appropriate for a pre-gen? I realized that my answer was "None" and that quickly followed the realization "Am I doing it wrong?"

For a game like D&D, the mechanical setup of a character actually conveys a decent amount. Elven fighter, dwarven rogue. Halfling monk. It tells you enough that you can have an idea of what they are like and what they can do without having to read the character sheet in depth. And even though I don't do D&D anymore, that thinking stayed with me. Especially for one-shots, where the character is only going to get a limited amount of "screen time."

This caused me to go back through my collections of pre-gens and try to assemble a few paragraphs of backstory.

For my D20 Modern pre-gens for my "Tabloid World" scenario, I tried to come up with a basic paragraph explaining the character's deal. While it is a class-based system, the classes are deliberately flexible and bland, so just saying "Smart Hero" tells you a lot less than "elven bard." So I went back over the choices I made and tried to tie them together and turned that into a tight paragraph. I then spent another paragraph describing an encounter with the bizarre that led them to working for the Midnight Star (named after the tabloid themed Weird Al song).

Then I went over my Ashes Without Number pre-gens. For now it's just a paragraph for each one giving a rough explanation of their abilities and a bit about how they learned or used them. A little bit to tie them to the local area and/or what made them pull up roots and become a wanderer in the wastes of Humboldt and Del Norte counties might be nice, but I think there needs to be more detail on the current version of the setting for me to have enough of a handle to make those sorts of additions. Maybe filling in those details for the characters will give me more of a hook into the setting. We'll see.

But my crowning achievement would have to be the backstory work for my All Outta Candy Canes Christmas adventure. The All Outta Bubblegum rules don't do character stats. The only stat you have is how much Bubblegum each character has remaining, but the character's deal doesn't involve the rules at all. My previous solution was a character sheet consisting of a photo of a military action hero and a little form inspired by the GI Joe action figure file cards for the player to fill in as they chose.

This year, I upgraded that approach by filling on the file card myself. In some cases, it was very easy, since they were pulled from the live-action GI Joe films. I just used the GI Joe file card for that character. In other cases, I tried to extract the relevant information regarding popular film characters and populate the cards with that. For example, I couldn't not include Arnold Schwarzenegger in my list of action heroes, so I dug up what information I could about his character Dutch from the movie Predator. Since the premise of my All Outta Candy Canes adventure calls for military action, I tended to favor roles that were military in flavor. So Stallone goes on the list as Rambo.

This resulted in probably one of the best runs of this adventure.

Now that I've gone on about my accomplishments this year, what are my resolutions for next year?

Blog more: I'd like to get back to a weekly schedule. Mostly for my mental health. Like I said, I've been in some doldrums lately (and actually for a while) and one thing I can do is imitate Milo from The Phantom Tollbooth and try to escape the doldrums by keeping my mind active. Whether this means this is a gaming blog, and Oz blog or a descent into madness, who can say?

Run a campaign: This has been on my list for a long time, but only rarely accomplished. My usual standard is 2 sessions in continuity with each other. And I haven't always made it.

Ashes: Redux

 Well, I finally got the chance to run that Ashes Without Number adventure I had written.

Someone on my local gaming Meetup group's Discord mentioned that they were interested in trying out Ashes Without Number and I remembered that I had an adventure already written. I offered to run if there were enough interested people, which there turned out to be.

The slamon run was an environmental hazardh rather than an encounter, so I worked up an abstraction of the bridge crossing to work as a minigame. To simplify the scene, I broke down the bridge into only what was relevant. Based on the length of the bridge (this is a real bridge, so I have that information), I divided it into squares equal to the distance a character can move as a Move action. So a character taking a double Move would move 2 squares. Moving only 1 square meant that the character could take another action, such as Defend, offering a defensive bonus against slamon attacks. The slamon themselves would be taking slam attacks, potentially pushing characters off the side of the bridge. Based on AWN's shoving rules, Fernbridge is about 3 shoves wide. 

The players had a good amount of fun with this minigame, though they did also take the effort to secure a slamon for themselves.

When it came time to rescue the doctor, they decided to pursue a negotiated solution instead of the tactical scenario that I had planned for. While my intention had been to curtail that option, I hadn't built it up as effectively as I should have. When they approached the Town Watch guarding the Death House, the guard responded "I'm not the person to talk to" which led them to try to track down the person who they should be talking to and then talking them into releasing the prisoner.

As always happens, if the players go someplace that I don't plan for, they unlock my "easy mode." It took some rolls, but they made all of them and were able to talk the mayor into letting the doctor go.

There was a time after that where I considered adjusting the adventure  (As a one shot, there's no need to assume that I can't run it again, or that this outcome is canon to any eventual campaign) so that the "talking solution" was more viable. But I got some feedback from the player who requested the session that they were disappointed that they didn't get to test out the combat system.

So I'll be coming up with a few lines for the guards to more effectively block the Interaction approach and push it into Combat/Exploration as intended.

Another very important lesson: Get feedback from your players!

Ashes Part 5

 Just a couple more things to make sure that everything is ready to go.. 

In the strict order laid out by the book, I'm jumping around a little bit. The reason for that is that I wanted to have an adventure ready to go for my local gaming Meetup, so I moved that step a bit further up the list. Nobody wanted to play my adventure, so it's still waiting and might get a little polish as things proceed.

Since I do seem to be going with the Crisis campaign structure, one of those skipped steps is determine the first and second crises the party's home base will be dealing with.

 Crisis

Communications

A relay or node collapse has turned local comms into one or more islands

Law Enforcement

Law enforcement has retreated to defend only itself and its immediate supporters 

Now, the book says that I should use the first crisis as a hook for my first adventure, using the Starting Adventure Generator tables, then foreshadow the second crisis for the next adventure. But I've already written an adventure. What should I do?

I think for now, I'll keep that adventure in my back pocket. Try to run it as a more standalone adventure for an introductory one-shot. Sort of like the TV movie that would serve as a "backdoor pilot" for a series.

So what would the first adventure in the ongoing campaign look like?

Let's consult our Crisis Adventure generator tables and see what we get.

A Friend has suddenly lost a critical Thing and needs to get more from a Place. 

Friend: Canny old artisan or tech

Thing: Fuel for vehicles or generators

Place: Semi-active battlefield

Now let's see where these results lead us.

Our home Enclave is Eureka, primarily the Old Town region. The setting is a ways past the apocalypse, so more like a Fallout than a Walking Dead, so this might be a failure in the old, wired telephone system that has been brought back to life, or it might be a new system using slightly futuristic (or retro-futuristic) methods. But there's a link somewhere that means that some part of town can't reach out to some other portion. That link can be restored by refueling something, but the necessary fuel is near a semi-active battlefield.

Let's assume that there's some sort of transmitter that's gone down. A repeater tower like modern cell phones use to stay in the network. It can be repaired, but it needs to be refueled. This fuel takes the form of an atomic (or some other bafflegab) power cell. Every power cell in town is working hard keeping other repeaters and other technology powered, so the party will have to find one that's not being used. The most likely place is salvaging a semi-active battlefield, full of the wreckage of various war machines.

The battlefield itself is within the Ruins of Eureka, where the local Beastmen (whom I've decided are Ratfolk) fight to keep their territory. I like Fort Humboldt for this, since it's a good defensible location, within the Ruined portion of Eureka, and it's close to the highway, which means that it might be useful for controlling traffic into and out of the civilized portion of Eureka.

What we have here, then, is an escort quest: The party must protect a canny old tech as they scout out vehicles, either along the highway or along the only road into the Fort, for ones carrying functioning power cells, while the ratfolk attack with ranged weapons at their leisure from the bluff.

The only thing left is to foreshadow the second crisis that we rolled up. On the one hand, without adequate communications, it seems very likely that law enforcement would become very cautious and defensive. But once the communication crisis is resolved, that should resolve itself, right? Unless something happened during the communications blackout that got them good and scared. And the cause of the failure isn't something that's been discussed, so it might have been a deliberate act of sabotage rather than a random failure. 

But that's for next session... 

Ashes Part 4

It's just a skeleton of a setting, but that's fine. The flesh of it can come as we play and create scenarios.

Now we need to decide which of the campaign structures that the game provides are we going to use.

 

The two options are Exploration and Crisis.

 

Exploration is very much in the mode of the Fallout games. The characters wander the wasteland and see what new hope or horror lay over the next hill.

 

Crisis is closer to something like the Walking Dead. Things are actively happening and coming for the players, who are likely attached to a community of some sort.

 

To help make up my mind, I used the Starting Adventure Generator tables for each structure and went with the adventure prompt that seemed the most promising.

 

Exploration
A Friend is being threatened by a Complication, with the source somewhere out there at a Place
Friend: Wandering Peddler
Complication: The zone of interest has been contaminated by a recent disaster
Place: Toxic waste disposal site

Crisis
A cunning Enemy is responsible for provoking a Complication in order to harm a Friend
Enemy: Aggressive refugee leader
Complication: Flooding has trapped a Friend or the PCs for the immediate present
Friend: Harried medical worker

 

I wound up going with Crisis because the idea of flooding hooked me. Knowing a bit of local history, I knew about the flooding of the Eel River and other waterways back in 1964. Since this is a location that's between two of my Enclave locations, Eureka and Ferndale, it felt like an opportunity.

 

It also gave me a chance to incorporate something else. As I've been musing about this post-apocalyptic version of my hometown, one thing I thought of was mutated versions of local creatures. One thing that the region is notable for is salmon. Make a salmon bigger and more dangerous, and you've got a slamon, capable of overturning boats. A flooded river with immense slamon swimming upstream could make for a fun encounter.

 

The idea of a harried medical worker also played into this being about Ferndale, since we know there's some sort of illness plaguing the town. And this is actually the point where I decided that the plague was radiation.

 

So a refugee has come to Eureka seeking medical help for the plague afflicting them, but things didn't go to plan, so they are now planning to get revenge on the medical professional who treated them, flooding the Eel River to prevent rescue.

A little more thought and the backstory started to come to me: The refugee had actually come from Ferndale with a family member to get radiation treatment in Eureka. The family member was too far gone and didn't survive the treatment. In grief, the survivor kidnapped the doctor and took him to Ferndale to be afflicted by the radiation and die of radiation sickness.

 

In order to make sure that the doctor gets the strongest dose possible, I decided that there was probably a location that was particularly radioactive. If I had gone with mutant cowpox or something, this location might have been a hospital. Since it's radiation, I thought there might be a place with a significant concentration of radioactive materials.

 

So I came up with the Death House. Built with the materials traded from scavengers who looted the old nuclear power plant, the people of Ferndale built a house as a wedding gift for a newlywed couple. But all of the radiation from the building materials meant that the couple didn't live long after their wedding. Once they realized what was going on, the house became a method of imprisonment/execution for the community's criminals. 

The interesting thing is that the thrust of the adventure is a rescue operation, so a confrontation with the main villain is not guaranteed. They may not stick around, since they have been treated for radiation and would only pick up more the longer they stayed. The Death House is operated by the Ferndale town watch, who were told that their prisoner was a raider who had murdered the family member, so the villain doesn't have to stay to ensure the execution.

The possibility of a continuing or recurring villain could definitely be interesting.

Going too much farther along the plot line is getting ahead of myself, since this is supposed to be run in a sandbox style, with the players making choices and taking action on their own.

Ashes Part 3

 Now that I've got my Enclaves in place, it's time to roll up some Tags for the Ruins.

 Arcata

Tags: Political Gulag, Highshine Concentration

The Highshine Concentration is actually a bit serendipitous. While "Highshine" is specific to the sample setting, which we may or may not be using, it refers to a high potential for mutation and weirdness. Which lines up with my thoughts about weird science going on at the University that's there. The Political Gulag is something that I didn't expect. One of the other Enclaves (Eureka is closest) is using it as a sort of exile prison.

Crescent City

Tags: Zombie Swarm, Psychic Stronghold

Both of these tags are about things that I haven't ruled out, but also haven't really engaged with previously. It suggests to me that there is a population of psychics who have mental control over a larger population that is largely passive, but not actually undead.

Eureka (Ruin)

Tags: Disguised Purpose, Beastmen Lair

Another thing that I didn't really delve into is the idea of mutant beastfolk, like mutant ninja turtles and such. The Disguised Purpose is interesting as well. It could mean that the beastfolk are more civilized than they present themselves as and have some advanced resource that you wouldn't think that they could use.

Hoopa

Tags: Black Site, Hidden Site

On the one hand, this is kinda cool, like Humboldt County got it's own Area 51. On the other hand, this site was going to be an excuse to go inland, since everything else is along the coast, so having it too dark and hidden would be no fun. Another thing to keep in mind is that this is a reservation today. Making it a government or corporate site might make it another example of exploitation of Native Americans.

It's probably best to assume that the Native American communities there built it up. Maybe the lead up to the apocalypse included a fragmented United States, so you not only get states seceding (and maybe further fracturing), but also Native American nations and communities asserting themselves. Whether Hoopa tried to make a go of it as an independent micro-nation or was a member of a confederation of Native American states is undetermined at this moment, but they clearly took every effort to keep what power and independence they could.

McKinleyville

Tags: Failed Community, Mass Grave

This is freaking dark. Something terrible clearly happened here. Something to think about.

Ashes Part 2

 Now that I have my Enclaves chosen, it's time to roll up some Enclave Tags and see how that informs the setting.

Eureka

Tags:  Splinter Group, Evangelists

The idea of them being evangelists of some stripe does open the door to post-apocalyptic religions and the potential for ironic humor. People picking through the ruins of the Before Times and misinterpreting the relics left behind.

Ferndale

Tags: Miasmatic Zone, Hunger

This threw me for a loop. I had envisioned Ferndale continuing as a breadbasket community. A lot of the land in that area is being used for dairy farming now, so I assumed that it would continue to be farmland.

After a good bit of thought, I decided that the area is irradiated, killing the people and the soil at the same time. There is a decommissioned nuclear power plant not far from there. With no one to keep them away or tell them what they had found, it's possible that some post-apocalyptic scavengers loaded up on irradiated and nuclear materials that were being stored there. By the time they realized what they had, the materials had been used all over town. Radioactive metals had been worked into tools. Homes had been built with irradiated materials.

Squatch-Ville

Tags: Reckless Complacency, Nobility

I think making Sasquatch the nobility would make this fun. They were living secretly in the redwood forests until everything collapsed. The fall of Crescent City pushed so many people inland that there was no way the Sasquatch could hide any longer.  So they shared their knowledge and resources with the humans, who elevated them from saviors and guides to rulers as they built Squatch-ville. 

But now that they've grown accustomed to the adulation of their human subjects, they are determined to keep it. I haven't decided exactly what trouble is on the horizon in Squatch-ville but the Sasquatch are determined to keep it quiet.

(One possibility for Eureka is that the Splinter Group splintered from Squatch-ville, trying to tell the people there of the coming danger, but were exiled. Will anyone in Eureka listen?) 

Ashes Part 1

 As I expected, I wasn't able to get it together to get ideas for all 31 prompts for RPGaDay. What I didn't expect is that a whole new set of ideas did jump out at me.

 I've been a fan of Kevin Crawford and Sine Nomine Publishing for quite some time. I found Stars Without Number in a Bundle of Holding and was very excited by it. I've since backed Kickstarters for other games in the line, most recently Ashes Without Number, the post apocalyptic game.

 Once that Kickstarter fulfilled and I got that book in my hot little hands, which happened just a few weeks ago, my brain has been burning with the idea of building an AWN post apocalyptic sandbox setting based on my hometown, Eureka, California.

The first thing to do was assemble the map. I was able to put together a nice map of the area at https://www.map.army/ complete with 5 km hexes. The suggested map dimensions wound up covering all of Humboldt and Del Norte counties.

The second step was placing my Eclaves (communities) and Ruins (adventure locations). For the suggested map area, AWN recommends 4-6 Enclaves and 10 Ruins. This gave me some trouble. That area is distinctly rural, so there's just not enough "there" there for all that to fit into. I could make some stuff up, make some places more important than they really warrant, but I ultimately gave myself permission to do less. I cut those suggested values in half. 3 Enclaves and 5 Ruins. Much more doable.

 My Enclaves were:

1) Old Town Eureka (The city center, the oldest part of the city and home of one of the most photographed buildings in North America, the Carson Mansion) 

2) Ferndale (A farming community that felt very likely to continue into whatever apocalypse there might be.) 

3) Squatch-ville (This is the Pacific Northwest, which is Bigfoot Country. Are they atomic mutants, or did the apocalypse force them to reveal themselves? Who knows! This is located in Del Norte County, not far from Gasquet, just so there would be some bit of civilization.)

My Ruins were

1) The rest of Eureka (my map split the city between two hexes, so this felt very natural)

2) Arcata (home of Cal Poly Humboldt, pioneer in marine biology, eco-friendly technology and marijuana.)

3) McKinleyville (home of the Eureka-Arcata Airport)

4) Crescent City (As much as I was chagrined with how little there is to Humboldt County, Del Norte County has even less. This is the only city they have and it's right on the coast and it's easy to imagine it getting swept by a tsunami in just about any apocalypse.)

5) Hoopa (This was a stretch. Everyplace else of any note was already an Enclave or a Ruin. Also, everything else is very close to the coast, so putting something inland felt right.)

 More to come!