My week off from thinking is over. Let's overthink. In this scrap heap:
- War-Torn Ice Moon, now live on Kickstarter
- My Cataphracts campaign
- Ideas for play-by-post campaigns
- Some blog posts I like
Let's start with the big news.
WAR-TORN ICE MOON
On Monday, the Kickstarter for War-Torn Ice Moon went live!
And funded in 6 hours!!!
I could try to wax poetic about how crazy that is, or crazy this all is, but it's too crazy for even that!
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| Mockup made with permission using Europa art by Finn (@Sharp_Sticks)! He's working with us on the book! |
Countless little ideas mentioned in those funny chat log posts, or mentioned in those gritty anecdotes, or spontaneously born from the flood of public interest, have been expanded on and rolled into the book. Dozens of throwaway thoughts and "Woah What If"s have been made into gameable, interesting, unique components. (When I say gameable, I mean incorporating it into an RPG campaign should yield interesting narrative and/or mechanical interactions...) It's all been discussed and iterated across many full days and full nights at my computer, my writing partner's place, or a coffee spot. This thing is full.
The book is very fun, at the risk of having to eat my words later. We're making sure nearly every distinct "thing" on Europa has 1. something Cool about it and 2. something Funny about it. That standard has paid dividends towards fun factor. There is a very large, very busy world waiting for you to tear into it in a few months.
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| Eagle-eyed readers will notice this cover is slightly different from the cover in other pictures. This is because I had better design ideas After everything went live. Fail |
It's unreal to imagine holding the final book. Multiple times, I've gone to the local game store JUST to hold other books and better imagine what holding mine will be like. Literally I'll go in, grab 8.5" x 11" inch paperbacks with similar page counts, and just hold them in my hands. A dozen or so and then I leave. I study the weight, the texture, the presence it takes up on your person and in your vision.
Sidebar. I obsessively tell people at the store that I'm in one of the books. Have you heard of Planegea? It's a 5E setting and campaign book in a prehistoric composite of the Forgotten Realms, when it was just the one plane of existence. (Hence Pangea + Plane!) I won a sweepstakes to work with the writing team to add an item to the book. One advertisement of Planegea in a server = One entry in the raffle; so obviously I made myself a nuisance. I was something like 60% of the entries.
I can't help myself since my local store stocks Planegea. (Maybe it's been the same copy all this time, and no one has bought it? Scary to think about) I just tell people "By the way, I'm credited in that book over there." It's a ridiculous thing to do, and I earnestly can't stop. It usually goes like this: An employee asks if I'm finding everything alright, I say that I am, and then I spring the trap. My writing partner hits me in the head with a big club. Repeat in two weeks.
I am bolding the start of the paragraphs to see if that works as little headers that are also part of the sentence. I'm a sucker for useless bullshit. On that note, while I'm thinking about it, I don't talk like this in real life or online. Not at all. I'm shooting for the bluntly sharp, world-weary, laugh-at-yourself kind of tone usually found in the autobiographies of comedians. This is my blog voice.
There is a cost to going beast mode on a single idea for so long. I'm tired. I don't post on Twitter anymore! I don't write for other stuff anymore! My idea well has dried up. When I have time to sit and think, I don't go somewhere new, I go to Europa. When my buddy and I have time to collab, we don't have Creative Nights, we have Europa Nights. I love what we're doing, so this isn't really a problem. But it also kind of is a problem- how will the Europa stuff stay fresh if I'm not stretching my brain muscles correctly? Well, it's my fault for shutting out everything else. It's because I wanted to keep the ball rolling at all costs. But now it's rolling!
Now that victory is assured, I'm taking steps to make sure that I'm not smothering my spark. The project is funded, and we've got a nice stretch of time to bag this thing. I feel safe thinking about other stuff, and even spending some time on that other stuff. Which is part of why I'm making this post! I think that does it for my Europa Commentary. I have a lot of other stuff I want to talk about.
CATAPHRACTS
I am in a game of Cataphracts and it is awesome. Sam Sorensen has made a real-time play-by-post operations level roleplaying wargame, and it is surprisingly approachable. (Believe me, if I understand it, it is approachable.)
- Real-time: a day in the game world equals a day in the real world. Travel takes days or weeks, certain things take a month.
- Play-by-post: (How WE do it at least) In a Discord server, every player has a private channel with the game master. They submit their orders (we march here, we attack them) and when those actions resolve they submit new ones.
- Operations level: No need to concern yourself with the actions of single people. Your strategy is grand. Six mile hexes, a huge game area, supplies a major concern.
- Roleplaying wargame: It isn't a wargame like you might first imagine. You definitely want good units like Epic Horsemen and Elite Spearguard, but you are a character in a fictional world, not an all-seeing strategist. You parlay at meetings, discuss with advisors, write letters. It's a game of war.
I can't say a whole lot about my campaign, because sharing actionable intelligence is obviously forbidden. So here's some general stuff that all commanders know. This should give you a good idea of the life of a commander.
- An army marches on its stomach, and some days they make a really big fucking stink about it
- Intercepted messages are fun to mess with, almost as much fun as the intercepted messengers
- Listen, sometimes you gotta sack your own town. Just try not to make it a habit
- You are a maker of war and a bringer of death. You don't have to say please when giving orders
- If you to complicate everything and make your game master hate you: give peace a chance
- Don't bother with tactics or maneuvers, just only fight battles you'll win #SunTzu
Our game master has added a tasteful amount of custom material to fit the setting, like faction-specific units. Marsh-trained pikemen, elephant riders, civilian militia turned berserkers, the works- all genius and exciting. Each empire also has their own religion, and I'm like 90% sure that each religion is just actually true. Like God, Allah, and Brahma just hover above their respective loyal nations, occasionally blessing a virtuous follower with +1 At War Rolls and other boons. (These are all perversions of the truth to avoid actionable intel leaks.)
A year-long war of push, pull, love, death, blood and glory could be yours... the only obstacle is having a good game master. Honestly, the pressure seems to come from how many people are involved, not the complexity of executing any specific order. It's easy to file 1 guy's command and move him on the map. Now do that 25 times, and answer all their questions, get them to answer yours, and remind them of shit, and get 2 people's attention when it's time for them to kill each other, and so on, ad infinitum.
I love the real-time aspect more than the big armies or being the head honcho. I love how long the different actions take, the anticipation across days and weeks as your plan comes together. You sit with certain ideas for a long while (The enemy is over there, we are the superior force, these 2 groups are aligned, etc), and then find them uprooted or disproven, and now that's your life.
The possibilities are for real endless. The bulk of the rules' page count is procedures that account for all the little scenarios you'll come across, like morale tests and sieges and food shortages and such; the core mechanics are as forward and simple as possible. That means you can take this system anywhere. And boy, do I want to take it places. Like so many others in this sphere of the hobby, this game has lit a fire in my mind.
Check out At Your Order by one of my favorite blogs, Garamondia. It reframes everything as being on giant vehicles.
And now...
IDEAS FOR OTHER REAL-TIME PLAY-BY-POST OPERATIONS LEVEL GAMES
Post-apocalypse setting
Mad Max-adjacent (isn't it all?) for those vehicles and crazies.
You are the warlord of a warband. Rove, raid, raze, trample. Maraud.
In place of armies, great hosts of thundering engines.
In place of detachments, vehicles. War rigs, dune buggies, technicals, sandrails, tanks, bikes bikes bikes.
In place of triple digit troop counts, maybe single digit crews of war boys?
Fervor over Morale. Largely the same, but with new complications if it gets too high. If your underlings are TOO eager to serve you, they might get twitchy and pull a Witness Me at a bad time.
Rumor has it there is a "Green Place"-like oasis in this corner of the desert. Warlords from all over have come to search for it, or kill the ones looking for it and take their shit.
War parties criss-cross the wastes, skirmishing and colliding and crashing and burning. The few struggling settlements are the only sources of gas, bullets, men, steel, and hope. Goods have to get from A to B somehow, so intrepid car-jockeys and engine tamers take to the sand to move supplies and keep the wasteland alive.
You might be...
- a survivor with a small band of like-minded have-nots
- an iron despot with a legion of hot-blooded maniacs
- a mercenary escort party accompanying a water tanker
- the bandits ambushing that tanker at Ambush Ridge
- the tar striders giving chase when the fighting spills into the tar-lands
- the township just trying to eke out an existence
Oh shit, imagine playing as the keepers of the Green Place, springing ambushes on any who learn of your secret paradise. Wondering who to trust and who to make an example of. You could set a bunch of traps in the wastes, plant false clues leading people away from you... Maybe your ultimate campaign goal is not to stay hidden forever, but to move enough of your green / biofuel / pure water / whatever before you're inevitably uncovered, so that by then it's all already safely elsewhere. Or maybe your goal is to find someone worthy of the secret and the mantle of Steward, protector of the last fertile soil on Earth.
Imagine being a demagogue with a flock of sycophants (I love those words so much), cooking up the perfect lies to further your legend and get them to give their lives for you. You could use downtime to mythologize yourself, having your historians tell tall-tales around oil drum campfires under the desert sky. The crazier your war boys, the better they try to serve you... as long as the charade is maintained!
Remember the Motorfliers from Furiosa? God
Does it make for good Real-Time Play-by-Post Operations Level gameplay?
(Can we think of a better name for this? Phract-like? Phractal?) It sounds fun to live out the struggle of vast distances, and the delirium of post-everything scarcity. I really want to drive across the desert with a big horde of cars, even if its aimless.
There'd be a focus on getting a good Inner Circle for your faction- a little cadre of NPCs that help with the upkeep and round out your capabilties. Think of all the whack jobs you can acquire; engineers, lorekeepers, warrior trainers, number-crunchers, deluded soothsayers and such. Lieutenants and enforcers that keep your rabble in check.
Hmm, I guess battles could take place on the move? In fact, they all should, it's the ideal battle in this world. Maybe motorcycles, being very maneuverable but frail compared to a car, receive both an attack bonus and a hit point reduction during high speed chases.
The golden age of piracy
You are the captain of this fine vessel and her crew. Maybe even a small fleet, depending on your faction and standing, or your desire to cooperate with other players.
Spitballing a situation
Ok, it takes place in an Arc of islands within sailing distance of some kind of mainland, which is occupied by a big snobby Empire. This Empire is plundering faraway lands, and wants to put ports on the Arc islands (Who do they think they are?) to service their returning treasure ships- great vessels of war, full to bursting with stolen gold.
Besides ports, they've offered (or threatened) to "grant" the Arc all the benefits of Empiredom in exchange for full authority.
The Arc islands have troubles of their own; they are plagued by pirates (many of which are criminals or exiles from the Empire), who view the island societies as vulnerable and their trade ships as free game- not to mention that the islands aren't even united under one government yet, and thus one cannot speak for all.
Also, the plundered lands called, and they want their plunder back. And maybe a nice little colony of their own, to help them put pressure on that there Empire?
Things are busy here.
You might be...
- daring outlaw with a crew of criminals on a stolen merchant ship, living in pursuit of freedom
- the same but much more murderous and explicitly seeking wealth, possibly so you can bury it
- sailor in the Arc militia trying to rally the various islands together and repel foreign adversaries
- imperial captain of a galleon; bristling with cannons, trained soldiers, and plunder from faraway
- privateer from faraway, come to intercept imperial ships and recover goods stolen from your lands
Imagine being an imperial criminal in a prison hulk, freed by pure circumstance during the escape of a much more notorious pirate captain. You go to the local cities in disguise, gathering your former associates and slowly building a new crew. You earn a nickname like Steel Nick or Loathsome McCorquodale, and eventually meet the captain you escaped with, earning his respect. You sail up and down coasts, zigzag between islands, evading imperial patrols and militia hunters to keep sticking up merchants. Life is good.
Imagine being a were-kraken. You got cursed by a sea witch for your misdeeds committed in the name of the law (or chaos), and on the 31st day of the game, you wake up on the beach among splintered driftwood and green blood. Your ship is moored nearby, a hole in the side where you burst out from while transforming. Nearby, a coastal village burns in the wake of your rampage. I don't know, this idea is out of nowhere but really grabbing me.
Does it make for good Real-Time Play-by-Post Operations Level gameplay?
This is the same spin At Your Order! puts on Cataphracts' simple RT PBP OL G blueprint- put them in a vehicle. Your vessel is your home, your weapon, and your sole method of locomotion in the setting. Sailing is a great fit for real-time travel, and a single boat can very easily be abstracted into manageable systems and qualities to oversee. Find a good ship doctor, a carpenter, some generals to compliment your plans, or scurvy dogs to stab huge knives into maps for you, and to help with your ship ops.
It'd be fun moving and selling cargo, and executing the dance of a robbery, and amassing and losing crewmates... On the pirate side of things, you'll want to gobble up small-time crooks for your crew, but small-timers get locked up or killed fast, so stage breakouts and interrupt executions for that sweet loyalty bonus. Keeping them in line means appealing to their vices, so steal plenty of rum and stop at plenty of really shitty ports. And don't let them get delusions of grandeur, or they'll try to break away with a crew of their own.
On the imperial / civilized side of things, building manpower is less of an ordeal, as the Empire has no shortage of sailors to send you. While insurbordination is rare, it's simple to keep them in line when it does happen: you can simply have the offender's family sent to a penal colony for hard labor. Easy. A bigger concern is probably officials just below you in rank, who want to see you fail so they can have your job (and living quarters).
POSTS THAT I LIKED
Here are some posts I read recently that are doing things to me.
Six Dungeon Gods
Some lovely gods or animist spirits for dungeons. I'm a big fan of Locheil's art for each one.
A terse, evocative post that has set my mind on fire in a different way: procedures-as-NPCs.
It's quick and amazing, read it.
The Powers-That-Be of the city, the essences that make life there so exhausting and exacting and maddening and deadly, the very things that make the concrete a jungle, are also NPCs. The Hustle, the Grid, the Noise, the Dark are somewhere between characters, forces, and gods. Presences? They are avatars of the principles of the city setting. Honestly, trying to pin it down with words dullens it.
They're there, and they're also literally "there."
Their whims are the way of life in the city. You have to learn how to appease them, or you'll drown in their retribution. Their desires and fixations are the mechanics of the setting. You can invoke them, proffer and plead to them, placate them, scorn them, make wagers and trades with them, but you can't change them, and you certainly can't get rid of them. You might as well worship them.
I don't think the Evil City 4 march in and introduce themselves when you first get an apartment in the city, and I don't think The Dark holds press conferences about increasing murder. I think they're more subtle and unreal than big known faces. Still, making use of these Presences calls for a level of personal involvement, I think, or else they don't really need to be NPCs.
In my head, they'd be best used as muses of sorts; maybe they're voices in your head, or shadows looming over you while you mull over your current crisis. Figures of otherworldly, mercurial beauty (or ugliness) that show up during an ordeal to give you a costly way out, or a warning, or unwanted advice. You can call upon them, but it's fun to imagine them coming to you, like a devil with a bargain. But they do also need you; they're man-made, in a way. You can use that to your advantage.
It makes me want to do procedures-as-NPCs for everything. They work uniquely well for a city; the one described in the post is a place of body modding and feverish self-fascinations, but its 4 presences articulate what's tempting and scary and powerful in any fictional city. Have you seen Seven (often stylized Se7en)? That vision of a city is good. Nauseating, suffocating, hungry... meticulous and well-oiled, but the oil is sewage and blood. Anything where the environment gets lots of characterization and narrative presence can have Powers-That-Be.
Giving it a shot for that pirate setting... What are the omnipresent forces at play there? We don't want it to just be a spirit presiding over each faction, but the actual pillars of the setting personified. What things or actions color the area and the things going on there?
So... for one, the anarchic force of whimsy and vice that seafaring enables, a force that pirates are tuned in to very well. It likes when you take, taste, and disobey, and it wants freedom and honor (in a thief way). The Dance, the Jig?
Maybe one for the allure of wealth and land urging on the imperialist countries, like a kind of manifestation of manifest destiny. It likes when you seize, overcome, and convert, and it wants materials and people. It wants more. The Call?
One for the sea, infinitely vast and capricious. Everything depends on it, and it knows that. It likes when you explore, confront, and flow, and it wants to be respected. The... Sea.
Do we need 4? We've got the Sea, the Dance, the Call... Davy Jones, Jolly Roger, Victoria.
Sort of a different thing than the original post, but a very fun excercise.
Going back to Cataphracts, this is an awesome setting for it. A boatload of unique units and special mechanics for each of the Peoples.
ENOUGH
Holy shit, I accidentally 3,635 words about what's on my mind lately.
Good! Now I just need to purposefully 15,000 more for War-Torn Ice Moon.
