I tried The Yellow King RPG (YKRPG) in 2019 and finally got through all 4 books, mainly because I've been playtesting Cassilda's Song, a campaign for YKRPG.
Chambers wrote The King in Yellow in 1895. He introduced the ideas of the two act play, The King in Yellow, the Yellow Sign, masks, and connections to Carcosa, spawning the a whole mythology about The King in Yellow. Since then, The King in Yellow has been associated with the themes of mental viral memes (not called that at that time), surrealism, and dreams.
Paris is set in 1895 Paris with the PCs being American art students studying abroad. It's the Belle Époque period with Absinthe, Cezanne, Debussy, Rodin, etc. In this golden age, Impressionism flourished. Could the mind bending effects of The King in Yellow intruding into Paris at this time be the cause? I love the setting.
The Wars is set in 1947 Europe during a delayed WWI. The PCs are French soldiers fighting with HG Wells-ian and Jules Verne-ian weapons. Trench warfare, tripod tanks, poisonous gas, ornithopters, wireless typewriters, and strange creatures from Carcosa stalk the PCs. It is a war between the daughters of The King in Yellow. Europe is their chessboard.
Aftermath is set in modern day America (with stunted growth, a mid-1970s feel) after one of the two daughters of The King in Yellow has won their war, but finally overthrown. Various factions fight for control of a new free America. Remnants of the previous rule dot the land such as Suicide Booths, leftover Carcosan entities and artifacts. The PCs are members of the resistance who suddenly found themselves part of the new world order. This setting is based on Chamber's short story: The Repairer of Reputations.
This is Normal Now is set in a parallel modern day America where The Wars and Aftermath didn't happen. But The King in Yellow is slowly permeating reality using modern technology such as memes, the internet, the dark web, Instagram influencers, killer apps, and SRIs (Safety-Related Incidents). SRIs are Carcosan creature attacks which people don't talk about. Facing the SRIs causes mental instability, so there are apps for dealing with this cognitive dissonance. PCs are normal people pulled into the weirdness.
I did find it odd that in This is Normal Now there is advice for running the other time periods and how to run a interwoven campaign. The chapters: The Alien Truth, GM Masterclass, and Entanglement should have been in the Paris book. I strongly recommend reading these before running any of the books. There is also recommendations for linking various PCs from each time period, I'm not sure that's really necessary. As a Player, I would prefer to choose which Investigative Kit (occupation) to take in each book vs having it be dictated based on my choice in Paris, but Aftermath and This is Normal Now are connected as parallel universes, and it does add a dimension to the game if the two PCs have the same name and similar occupations.
In trying to link all 4 books into one campaign, there's a time travel thread that can be used, but I didn't quite like it. Having time travelers go to 1895 Paris just seems really odd to me. A very 12 Monkeys thing. They do recommend other ways to link the four settings. I personally prefer odd historical coincidences and dream connections instead.
Each book gives you a different game. Paris feels like Trail of Cthulhu for the Belle Époque period. The Wars is for those who want war stories. Aftermath is for those who are interested in struggling political factions. This is Normal Now feels like Trail of Cthulhu for the internet age.
There are some design philosophy clunkiness that I have issues with, mainly the Fight system (p.54 Paris). The roleplaying comes to a screeching halt every time I bring out the Fight Tracker (p.241 Paris). I do like the Relative Challenge Table (p.47 Paris, p.24 The Wars, p.19 Aftermath, p.12 This is Normal Now) and the QuickShock cards (though there are too many of them and are unwieldy to use).
The main strengths of the game are the various settings (time period, location, equipment, creatures). They easily engage my imagination on how to bring elements in an interesting fashion to my Players.
Overall, I quite enjoyed the game and do recommend it.
I play tested this in January 2019. It's was available for pre-order May 2020. It finally shipped July 2022.
When I signed up for the play test, I was a bit leery of it. I mean how many fantasy RPGs are out there and what would make this different? On the plus side, this was co-authored by Kevin Kulp, who wrote Timewatch, one of my favorite games.
Below are examples from the play test.
Character Creation
There's a lot of customization where you can write several phrases ("What is Best in Life?" from Conan the Barbarian) which helps describe your character and give you an edge when needed.
The Adjectives are self selected for flavor and to help you decide how your character would act in a situation when faced with indecision.
You also pick your alliances and enemies right off the bat, so everyone already has built-in drama.
And Character-defining gear adds 1 pt of Grit, but it's also cool that there's an incentive to create character and backstory based on your gear. Below is gear for a proto-Conan.
So, character creation is colorful and full of flavor.
Investigative <==> General Abilities
One of my complaints about Gumshoe is that combat is a bit lack luster. Night's Black Agents has improved this with Cherries, abilities at 8+ give you special abilities.
Swords of the Serpentine solved this by allowing Investigative abilities to be used in combat. For instance, you can use your Vigilance (Notice skill) to note an uneven spot on the floor (Player defined), so during combat, you can force your opponent to step on that crack and give you a bonus.
This adds more storytelling to a combat scene.
Also vice versa, a high general ability would give you Investigative skills. For example, a high Warfare (Combat skill) means that you have Investigative skills pertaining to weapons and armor.
Sway vs Warfare
Warfare is your standard sword combat. Sway is affecting the morale of an opponent or opponents. With enough sway, you can make your enemies flee (or retreat from) combat. You can insult your enemies until they run away crying. Very cool.
Sorcery
Yes, there's magic and you can use magic to affect your enemy's Health or Morale. Minor magic is exactly the same as doing the same action physically such as swinging a sword, firing an arrow, picking a lock, but to an observer, it is done magically and is more done for flavor. e.g. people climb up the stairs, but you just float. You point your finger at someone at a distance and you can hurt them as if you fired an arrow at them. It's all for flavor.
But there are major magics where you spend Sorcery. You increase your effects and cause as a side effect a blight (your choice: randomly, evenly everywhere, focused on an area, or on yourself). Powerful and illegal in the city.
The World - Eversink
But what is best in life? A kick-ass world that's different and new.
The main selling point of Swords of the Serpentine is Eversink. The city is built on a swamp. Think Venice filled with canals where various buildings continue to sink into the earth and new floors are built upon the old. The rates of sinking vary throughout the city, some take decades to sink one inch and others drop ten feet in one day. New construction changes the city everyday. Think Winchester Mystery House where an alleyway leads to swimming pool whereas yesterday it was someone's roof. People aren't buried, but exposed to carrion birds or sunk into the marshes. Their souls are remembered by funereal statues, but if destroyed their spirits return to the land of the living. so throughout the city are multitudes of funereal statues; grand ones for the rich and powerful, small clay ones for the poor.
The city has 12 factions fighting each other for control of the city. So lots of intrigue and missions for the PCs.
The city is old, so there are rules and regulations buried deep in time. My favorite skill is Laws and Traditions where a PC can declare a law on the spot and it would be true for the entirety of the campaign "except on Tuesdays." 😊
The monetary system is Byzantine and deliberately confusing in mockery of old D&D and old British money.
Summary
I'm really excited this is seeing print. I've already paid for my pre-order and I'm excited to see the final product. Do we need another fantasy RPG? Yes, if it's Swords of the Serpentine. 😊
Inside of slipcase as GM screen. Paris book and Shock and Injury Cards. Actual products.
Slipcase on the right is not the actual product, but a mockup, real slipcase is a bit narrower and has no printing or embossing on the side.
This shows the 4 setting books in YKRPG.
GUMSHOE QuickShock
I play tested (as a Player) The Yellow King RPG (YKRPG) and enjoyed it, but I didn't really understand the streamlined aspects of GUMSHOE QuickShock until I ran it as a GM.
Instead of managing resources for Investigative Abilities, Players are just given 2 Pushes, floating points that can be used with any Investigative Ability. This got rid of a lot of unnecessary resource management that happens with GUMSHOE 1.0. So, instead of having various Investigative Ability points and having Players trying to decide if they want to spend any, that is all gone. They just have 2 floating points to spend. Much easier to keep track of and it ups the importance of the two points. I handed out physical tokens for the points which have to be turned in when spent.
In the game I ran, 3 Pushes were spent. One to make an exceptional sculpture of a tuberculosis patient, just because the PC had "some people I sculpt die suddenly" as That Deuced Peculiar Business. Another spent a Push on convincing a NPC to tell more about a Blackmail that was happening. Another spent a Push after the scenario to author (spoiler, hover over green fairy box to display):
The Phantom of the Opera.
The new single round Fight system also streamlined combat into one round and makes it more narrative. A great improvement to the old lackluster combat from Trail of Cthulhu. What is impressive is that Night's Black Agents added complexity to combat to spice it up, but YKRPG went in the opposite direction and simplified it even more. My mind is blown that you can do that and succeed.
In combat, Players first decide their desired outcome: kill, escape, other (subdue, take an item, etc.). Depending on their desired outcome, the difficulty level is adjusted. Non-lethal is easier than lethal outcomes. Then each PC spends Fighting points and add 1d6. If the total equals or beats the secret target number, it is a success and the margin of success is recorded. If the total is below the target number, it is a setback and the margin of success (failure) is adjusted. In the end, a negative margin of success means the PCs failed (and the GM narrates what happens); otherwise they succeed in their declared outcome. As each PC spends points, they must describe what action they're taking, their 1d6 + Fighting spend determines how successful they are. This is how the narrative part kicks in. After every PC describes their action and each action is either a success or setback, we get the final resolution.
In combat, any failure results in an Injury represented by an Injury card. A -1 margin of success results in a Minor Injury. A -2 (or worse) margin of success is a Major Injury. The Injury cards have flavor text, mechanical penalties, and rules on how to get rid of the card. This also adds a narrative twist to combat.
For other tests, there are either physical Injury cards or mental Shock cards.
In the game I ran, a NPC had a gun and was going to shoot at a PC. The goal: take the gun away. One PC wanted to restrain the NPC; one PC wanted to slap the NPC's gun hand away, so it can't aim at the other PC; the last PC wanted to wrestle the gun out of the NPC's hand. They all succeeded and dog piled the NPC and took the gun away. This turned out to be a lot more cinematic than "Ok, each of you roll combat skills; roll 1d6-2 for damage; he's still up; roll attacks again; he finally goes unconscious; you take his gun." And this new Fight system only took one round of dice rolling.
For tougher creatures, a fight always takes a Toll. Some creatures automatically costs points in Athletics, Fighting, and/or Health (combination determined by Player). This mainly just wears down the PC and may result in an Injury if the PC can't pay the Toll.
In the new QuickShock system, the Injury and Shock cards describe the physical and mental health of the PC. When the PC receives their 3rd Injury or 3rd Shock card, the PC is either dead or insane (this is for Horror mode; in Occult Adventure mode, it's the 4th card instead of the 3rd that knocks you out).
Overall, I really like this new streamlined GUMSHOE QuickShock. It's more narrative and more cinematic. Gone are the dull multiple rounds of rolling a single d6 and wearing down an opponent.
QuickShock Injury and Shock Cards
I ordered the cards and they came in handy. Of note, the cards came in a weird unsorted order. The first thing that I did was to sort all the cards alphabetically. Having the cards is really useful for face-to-face games. If you're just running your game online, then the PDFs work great and you don't need to spend extra money for the cards.
PARIS - Character Generation
Character generation is quick and simple with the selection of an Investigator kit (Investigative Abilities where you can spend Pushes) and a General kit (General Abilities with points such as Athletics and Fighting). The 7 Investigative kits are based on area of study such as Sculptor, Painter, Poet. The 9 General kits are based on background or previous training such as Farm kid, Factory worker, Former med student, Former cadet.
Players then choose Drives and Relationships between PCs. That's to add flavor and to prevent PCs from turtling and avoiding investigations.
The best innovation is That Deuced Peculiar Business, a strange eerie event that has touched the PC. The Player picks or invents one for their PC. It became easy to weave this Peculiar Business into the start of a scenario. I took elements for each PC's Peculiar Business and inserted it into a poster for an upcoming event. That really kicked the PCs into gear.
PARIS - 1895 Setting
The Paris Exhibition (World's Fair) was in 1889 and the controversial Eiffel Tower was built for it. Famous authors, composers, scientists, and artists flocked to Paris. This was a golden age where you can run into Cezanne, Degas, Debussy, Gauguin, Proust, Renoir, Rodin, Mme Curie, Louis Pasteur at your local cafe, bookshop, theater, or bar. The book lists pages and pages of NPCs. Unfortunately there were no photographs or examples of their work in the book, so I went crazy Googling everything that was mentioned.
The slipcase that turns into a GM screen is amaze-balls. It's held together with hidden magnets and works really well. It's a really beautiful product. See above pictures.
Due to having a new print house, there were issues in having the product delivered in time, but the wait was worth it. A minor issue was that the non-native English speaking printers had a typo on the spine of the Aftermath book ("Aftremath"). But I haven't spotted any typos in the Paris book.
I rushed getting my Shock and Injury cards from DriveThruRPG and that was a mistake. There were a few typos and errors found, but the PDFs have been corrected and if you order these cards now, they've been corrected. But be wary of secondary market cards (eBay) and make sure you're receiving the corrected ones. The incorrect cards can easily be spotted. The Shock cards have the word "Injury" on the detail side of the card instead of the word "Shock."
Conclusion
I really love this new iteration of GUMSHOE and the Paris setting is wonderful and perfect for The King in Yellow. Absinthe, Impressionistic Art, the Can-can, Moving pictures, Cafes, all make an interesting soup of science and art.
p.s. I haven't gotten to the other 3 books yet: The Wars, Aftermath, This is Normal Now.
I ran "Operation: Aladdin's Cave," a play test of The Fall of DELTA GREEN in March 2017. I was under blackout rules and couldn't talk about it until pre-orders were available. This is a review of the play test materials, not the final published book.
I found this a great translation of the Delta Green (DG) rules to GUMSHOE. All the new rules in DG showed up in The Fall of DELTA GREEN: Bonds, Lethality, Adapting to Trauma, Automatic Weapons, etc.
What's new for GUMSHOE?
Rules for generating characters belonging to the military and intelligence services during the Vietnam Era. Also templates for other professions such as an Activist (protester).
New Modern Skills such as Criminology, Military Science, HUMINT, Data Retrieval, Fringe Science, SIGINT, Traffic Analysis.
Lots of new combat rules and options: Critical Hits, Called Shots, Disarming, Evasion, Sniping, Suppressive Fire, Autofire, Walking Fire, Shot Dry, Weapon Jams, Heavy Weapons (such as grenades, mines, mortars, bombs, missiles). These new rules add needed flavor to the generally dry GUMSHOE combat rules.
Rules for Drugs and Addiction. I mean, what's the Vietnam War without drugs and alcohol?
Chase Rules including Multiple Pursuers, Ramming, Attacks During Chases, using Investigative Abilities during the chase.
I loved the combat options and how Lethality was implemented.
The play test didn't have pictures or any setting material on Vietnam, so I can't comment on those things, but I do hope they'll add setting and background material for the Vietnam War. Otherwise, you'll have to watch Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Good Morning Vietnam, The Deer Hunter, We Were Soldiers, Hamburger Hill.
The play testers went through "Operation: Alladin's Cave" pretty quickly and enjoyed it. It was a good introduction to the game.
Overall, I found this a good solid book and highly recommend it.
I play tested Cthulhu Confidential and really enjoyed it. It uses GUMSHOE One-2-One; one GM, one Player. This review is based on the play test, not the pre-order published material. The game is in pre-order, so I can now talk about it.
GUMSHOE One-2-One is an interesting new take on the GUMSHOE system. It's a close cousin to GUMSHOE. You have your investigative abilities just like in Gumshoe, but you have a set number of Pushes which you can spend for additional information or effects.
General skill tests, called Challenges, require a die roll, but instead of spending general points and rolling as in GUMSHOE, each general point equals 1d6 and you roll one die at a time and sum your result. If you have any remaining d6s after a successful test, you gain Pushes equal to the unused dice. There are also Edges and Problems which affect your die roll, those are gained and lost through play and are listed on cards. If after rolling all your dice and you fail, you can opt to take a Setback for an extra 1d6. The Setback generally gives you a Problem. The level of success or failure gives various outcomes to the investigator's action. A really good success gains you an Edge and bad failure, a Problem. I really enjoyed this modification to GUMSHOE.
Since the game is a one-on-one game, there's no fun if the investigator dies in the middle of solving the mystery, so the investigator cannot die until the end of the scenario. During the scenario, the investigator can gain various Problems and if at the end of the scenario, the Problem such as "Bleeding Out" is not resolved, the investigator can die after solving the mystery.
Since there's only one investigator, the investigator can't have all the skills necessary to solve the mystery, so the investigator has Sources who are trusted NPC contacts with specialized investigative skills and contacts.
Each scene has various Leads the investigator can find and if there's an action scene, there's a Challenge card with the success and failure levels and their outcomes listed. Each scene also has an Lead-In and Lead-Out which helps with keeping track of the network of scenes.
The game plays like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure games, except there's a GM and character interaction with NPCs.
I ran all the games online and it worked very well. I did have to do a lot of digital cut-and-paste of Edge and Problem cards in order to play online, but once that prep work was done, running the game was easy. The Challenges are also well presented, much like a 3x5 card, listing the success / failure levels and outcomes. Each Lead also points to a specific new scene.
I play tested the three scenarios included in the book: The Fathomless Sleep, Fatal Frequencies, and Capital Colour. The play test also included other scenarios which will probably come out at a later date.
The Fathomless Sleep is set in 1937 Hollywood with the Player running Dex Raymond, a hardboiled detective. This was my favorite scenario. The background for 1937 LA was very well done and well used in the scenario. Hollywood has gangsters, power brokers, and of course, movie stars.
Fatal Frequencies is set in 1930s New York City with the Player running Vivian Sinclair, a tough newspaper reporter. There's options with dealing with sexism in the 1930s. The GM can dial up or down the sexism depending on what type of game is desired. Again the background for locations and the politics of the area are very well done.
Capital Colour is set in 1943 Washington DC with the Player running Langston Wright, a black ex-soldier. Again, there's options dealing with racism in the 1940s. The background info for locations and politics during war footing in Washington DC is also excellent. This scenario was my second favorite of the three.
Cthulhu Confidential is perfect for one-on-one games and it works for online play. All of the people I play tested the game with really enjoyed it. Even if you're not going to play the scenarios, the wealth of background information for Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington DC are useful for other period games.
I'm a big time travel fan, so when TimeWatch was a Kickstarter project in 2014, I immediately backed it. Like most Kickstarters that keep on adding content as stretch goals, the final book was delivered 1.75 years later than scheduled. The good news was that upon pledging, we got a preliminary PDF, then a PDF version for copy editing, then a PDF with full images and corrections, then a final PDF and hard copy version. And several books with campaign support material. Multiple contributors for content (needing editorial changes for consistency of tone between writers) and art (switched from B&W to color as a stretch goal) were reasons for production delays. The final book ballooned in size to 392 pages.
The good news was that I was able to play TimeWatch in 2014 with the preliminary PDF. There weren't any scenarios written yet, but I found an amazing scenario written by Michael Rees: The Buffalo, The Pirate and the Consulting Detective. He has other scenarios on his website and his scenarios were so well loved that he was asked to contribute to the final book. See what happens when you have a time travel Kickstarter? Someone writes stuff for a game that hasn't been published yet and it winds up in the published game.
TimeWatch uses a modified Gumshoe system. I have mixed feelings about Trail of Cthulhu due to Gumshoe, but for TimeWatch, I LOVE the system.
What's different about TimeWatch?
Well, if the PCs can time travel, then most ordinary crimes can be easily solved, so the antagonists that the players face are always other time travelers. There are a variety of bad guys listed in the book, but there are two that are extensively show cased: Sophosaurs and Ezeru.
Sophosaurs vs Ezeru
The Sophosaurs are intelligent dinosaurs from the past who want to prevent the Asteroid from wiping them out, so the reign of dinosaurs continues into the future. The Ezeru are giant cockroaches from the future who rule Earth after humanity wipes itself out with nuclear weapons. They want to start WW3 early.
In between the Sophosaurs in the past and the Ezeru in the future are humans. Both races want to squeeze humanity out.
Most of the games are investigative. Instead of following clues forward, in this game, you follow the clues backwards in time. There's always some instigating event far in the past and its effect ripples out forwards in time until things change in a massive way. An example is a story written by Ray Bradbury: A Sound of Thunder. TimeWatch is tasked to fix these disruptions to the "real" timeline.
How does TimeWatch know when something has gone wrong? Well, they have detection equipment seeded throughout time and when something changes suddenly like high levels of radiation or the equipment suddenly goes dead, they know something has gone wrong and they send a TimeWatch team to check it out and fix it.
E of TimeWatch
At the beginning of time, before the Big Bang is the Citadel, where TimeWatch HQ sits. TimeWatch agents are dispatched from there. In my game, the players' handler is E, he gives the mission briefing to the PCs. I also love James Bond, so I made a reference to it by using letters as titles (M and Q). I know, MiB also does this except they're referencing people's names.
How do they time travel? Each agent has an Autochron that allows them to time travel. You set the time and location and it takes you there in a few rounds. The Autochron will adjust your location so no locals can see you arrive. The more you travel in time, the less accurate the Autochron is, so if you travel thousands of years, you might arrive a decade too late. The Autochron creates a personal time bubble much like what happens in The Terminator.
Terminator Time Bubble
In my games, I like the idea of a watch being a time machine, so my Autochrons look like wrist watches. And I have a fondness for the story: The Girl, The Gold Watch and Everything.
How do you know what in the timeline is broken? Well, the PCs have a device called a Tether that's like a local version of Google/Wikipedia. When you arrive, you can talk to people or check libraries and newspapers for deviations from your local knowledge store. In my games, the players are allowed to look up facts on their smart phones. This generally takes no more than 5 minutes and it enhances the role play experience. Their smart phone is a low tech version of a Tether.
Instead of the Stability/Sanity metric in Trail of Cthulhu, TimeWatch has Chronal Stability. Each time you time travel or create a paradox (when you do something that contradicts a known fact), you might lose Chronal Stability. If you annoy time too much, it might subsume you and merge you into the current timeline, modifying your memories, like skin growing over a splinter. If you do something totally bad, time may erase you from time, then even your TimeWatch team members won't remember you and no one can bring you back.
How do you know you've fixed everything? You can time travel back to beginning of the adventure and see if everything is back to normal. In one scenario, the PCs are given a device that can detect time drift and when the needle is in the green section, they know they've finished the mission. A bit meta and odd, but that works too.
In my games, E doesn't give out too much information and doesn't want to know how the agents solve the problem because if you know, then history is set and you're subject to paradox. It's the unwritten history missing from their Tethers that allows TimeWatch Agents to act freely.
A number of rules and pieces of equipment is to allow for better game play. I always bring this up because some new players would say some things don't make sense. And I would explain the mechanical reason for it and that would end the argument.
To prevent PCs from having to learn every possible language and infinite costume changes, the PCs have universal translators and Impersonator Meshes (in my world, they're holographic disguises). This mainly aids in game play when PCs jump from time to time and geolocation to geolocation.
Since killing someone in the past might erase your future, the agents are given stun weapons and MEM-tags. The MEM-tags sends an unconscious body back to the Citadel for memory wipe/modification. Once processed, the body is returned, so as to not disrupt the time stream.
What is fun about the game is that you get to play with history, learn history, and interact with it.
So far, I feel it is a daunting task to write a scenario from scratch. The good news is that the core book has 3 complete scenarios and 32 Time Seeds (inspirational ideas for your own game). The Kickstarter included a campaign "Behind Enemy Times" which contains 6 connected scenarios. "The Valkyrie Gambit," 3 stand alone scenarios. "Book of Changing Years," a faux history/diary of TimeWatch to be used as inspiration for your own games, in the spirit of "The Armitage Files" and "The Dracula Dossier." And I've a run several of Michael Rees' scenarios that he's posted on his website.
I definitely got more than my money's worth from the Kickstarter and I'm glad Kevin Kulp spent the time and care to get the books right.
The devil is always in the details. For example, it took me a long time before I noticed the following detail on the cover of the TimeWatch core book:
Battling Civil War Armies
As an aside, I originally thought Chronal Stability checks were only done for time travel and paradox checks, but in "Behind Enemy Times" one scenario stated that any teleport with the Autochron also required a Chronal Stability check. So, I contacted Kevin Kulp and he explained that using the Autochron even for teleportation requires a Chronal Stability check. The rationale is again more of a mechanics thing where it would be more interesting if the PCs had to take local transport to get things done, but if they really, really had to teleport, then they can still do it by using the Autochron with the possibility of a Chronal Stability loss.
"Future Ted told me, Present Ted, that later, you dudes should run."
"Be excellent to each other."
"Party on, dudes."
I hide spoiler sections with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript turned off, you can skip the spoiler sections I have marked.
In the spoiler section below is:
Behind Enemy Times or why I got so excited that I had to write this blog post
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Behind Enemy Times
In "Behind Enemy Times," the scenario "Time Will Tell" brings in the idea that some rogue TimeWatch Agent is modifying history to be nicer and is revising the main database, so that his revised history is "correct." In this history, the PCs are told the correct history is that Abraham Lincoln is supposed to live and the PCs are sent to accomplish this mission. The players in my game felt very uncomfortable with that, but rolled with the punches and completed their mission.
The whole idea is whether TimeWatch should make the world a better place or whether history should be left alone. One of TimeWatch's punishment details is making sure Hitler isn't assassinated.
A later scenario in this campaign is "Rebel Heart." In "Rebel Heart," the PCs are "burned" and told that they were to be stopped by other TimeWatch Agents because they're going to become traitors if they go on their next mission. This of course is supposed to be a trick, unbeknownst to the PCs, to get the PCs recruited by a Rebel TimeWatch group.
As published, after the PCs are recruited, they're told by the Rebel group to save Abraham Lincoln again. So, what has transpired is that TimeWatch finds out that the "correct" history was incorrect and Abraham Lincoln is supposed to die and have corrected it. So, basically, the PCs would have to save Lincoln a second time.
Well, this didn't seem right to me and didn't seem that interesting. So, instead I reversed it.
Instead, TimeWatch has left Lincoln alive as their "correct" history. And the Rebels who are Restorationists (true keepers of history) have asked the PCs to have Booth kill Lincoln at Ford's Theater. The Restorationists also tell the PCs that they have discovered that some people high up in TimeWatch are indeed modifying history and hiding it.
After given this new mission by the Rebels, I sent a message to the PCs from TimeWatch congratulating them for infiltrating the Rebels and asked them to turn the Rebels in.
In "Rebel Heart," one subplot was the Rebels getting a British secret agent swapped for captured Russian agents. But the British agent is really a double agent and he's supposed to infultrate MI5 a la Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
This was earlier revealed to the PCs by the Restorationists. The Restorationists are doing bad things in order to restore order.
In the published scenario, this causes great harm to Britian, but in my revised plot, it doesn't and things happen as they should.
The PCs after getting their message, realize they were now double agents.
So, the question comes in as to whether the PCs will turn in the Restorationists or kill Lincoln and indeed turn traitor. Well, the PCs picked killing Lincoln and turning traitor.
As a GM, this was such a great moment for me. The PCs did turn traitor and the mission they weren't supposed to go on was indeed the mission that made them traitors. Wow!
The Restorationists have a plan to create a stable time pocket and use that as their base of operations; this will be something similar to the Citadel at the beginning of time.
In "Time Will Tell," the PCs are told that any paradox in the Citadel has a chance of destabilizing it and causing the Big Bang. Because of that, in "Rebel Heart," their Autochrons can't return to the Citadel and their MEM-tags are deactivated. In my game, I put up a red warning symbol on their Autochrons that they've never seen before. When they checked their user's manual, the icon was the "Your clearances have been revoked. Please contact TimeWatch." In my game, the PCs captured all of the TimeWatch Agents sent to capture/kill them and striped them of their equipment. And in the rest of the scenario, they used the kill team's equipment instead.
So, my upcoming plan is that after the Restorationists have created their stable time pocket, they're going to ask the PCs to cause a paradox at the Citadel and start the Big Bang, so that the Restorationists' TimeWatch would be the only TimeWatch. And you know that eventually the Citadel will have to go because if it doesn't, there's no universe.
June 18, 2016 was Free RPG Day. I went to my local game store which I had to find online and found they were running Night's Black Agents (NBA). I wanted to try it again because I was interested in running The Dracula Dossier and I wanted to try it again. The game went from 3-6pm. I enjoyed the game and learned about "cherries." When a General Ability is 8 or higher, special skills and options opens up for the character. The "Double Tap" supplement adds even more cherries. These cherries basically adds more "moves" in Apocalypse World parlance. I really loved the cherries because they added a lot to the action-spy-feel of Night's Black Agents.
The Van Helsing Letter was a fun scenario and definitely runs longer than the 3 hour time slot allotted to the game. I had fun. At one point some mooks confronted a shop owner and as my other wet work buddies started to strong arm the mooks, I opted to do something different and as the mook in front of me started to pull a gun out of his pants pocket, I reached in and pulled gun's trigger, shooting him in his leg. Ouch. Outside of the shop, our Parkour expert got into a chase and fight. As a side note, what I did wasn't a cherry, it was something I wanted to do and spent enough General Ability points to succeed in. One thing I was thinking of doing, grabbing the mook and using him as a shield, I was prevented from doing this because it was a cherry and I didn't have a high enough skill to get that move. So, what becomes odd is that when you want to try something unique, but it's codified into the rules, you're not even allowed to try. But if I try something that isn't codified, I can actually try and succeed. Sort of odd.
I enjoyed the game, but I'm still a bit luke warm on Night's Black Agents. With the cherries, it felt like a toned down version of Feng Shui 2. In that case, I'd rather go full bore Feng Shui 2 instead.
As a side note, one of the players in the Night's Black Agents game was very well versed in the game and is a big fan of the game. He pointed me to other starter scenarios and podcasts of NBA sessions.
I also watched a little bit of the 13th Age game, Swords Against the Dead. It was another combat heavy fantasy game. What was funny was there were two chaos mages in the game and their random spell effects basically messed a lot of things up. I can see the attraction of running them because they're fun to play and their randomness adds a bit of humor and wonkiness to the game. Thus there were two and too much wonkiness.
A bonus was I was able to pick up a hardcopy of The Derelict.
