1. Fiasco: Dick Head

Not so much a hack as a playset to vaguely recreate the stories of Philip K Dick, with all manner of weird and wonderful results on the situation tables and a tilt table to pull the curtain back for the second act. Why Fiasco? I dunno, there’s something about the way the situation generator that I think will produce great, weird, Dickesque stories.

2. Hot War: Ultraviolet/True Blood

I think Hot War might be the game I own with the most hackability. Its setup lends itself perfectly for tight-knit, character-driven conflicts and monsters. So what better way to represent one of my favourite settings, Ultraviolet, a show all about agents with mixed agendas hunting vampires, perhaps mashed liberally in with True Blood.

3. Empires of Alexander

Anyone who knows me will know I’m a big ancient history buff, especially when it comes to Alexander the Great. I reckon there’d be a lot of fun to be had playing Alexander’s various generals leading their own armies east alongside the Macedonian King, and for me there’s no better game when it comes to military campaigns – Duty & Honour/Beat to Quarters, collectively known as the Empire system. All it’d take would be a reskinning of skills and character creation bits and bobs and you’re ready to ride to the ends of the world!

4. Remember Tomorrow: Revelation Space

I’ve never got into cyberpunk beyond Ghost in the Shell, but love me some hard scifi, especially Alastair Reynolds and his oeuvre. I think the multi-protagonist, split narrative of his books would map brilliantly to Remember Tomorrow’s varied stories told from multiple perspectives. I’ve got a few tweaks to the situation tables to embed the setting in the game more, but RT does the job admirably out of the book.

5. Smallville: the Walking Dead

I’ve got a real yearning to run Smallville but no great desire to play in the published setting. Instead I want to use it to run a game reminiscent of the Walking Dead, as the relationship-focused nature of the game will capture the complicated character situations of the show. In actual fact I’m going to make the setting Unhallowed, but it’s similar enough, just swap zombies for demons.

6. Lost Days of Memories & Madness: Game of Thrones

This hack will almost certainly be the subject of a future post, but with the fantasy epic about go return for a second series I’ve got a hankering to run a high-stakes political game of intrigue, and would use my own Memories & Madness to pull it off. Instead of memories, you’d have subjects or power bases, and coins would become influence or power. Easy. I’ll dig into that one a bit more another time.

How about you? What are you jonesing to a) play and b) hack?

Now, before the comments thread gets inundated with angry remarks, let me just say that a) no I don’t mean your game b) yes I’ve considered x or y game and c) I’m actually talking about the wider premise of science fiction, so stand down.

The reason me and Gaz inevitably come to is that the problem lies with the question, namely that the genre of science fiction is too vast to be properly captured in a single game, or even a single genre, really. Let me explain.

Do you want a game to replicate Alien or Event Horizon. That’s surely a horror game. How about Star Trek, Firefly or Mass Effect? Well that’s more of an adventure or space opera game. Star Wars? Heroic fantasy. Aliens? Military science fiction. Battlestar Galactica? Political and social commentary. And when you get into the realms of Iain M Banks, Arthur C Clarke or any Philip K Dick-esque sci-fi you’re looking at corners of the genre more esoteric still.

And how can anyone possibly capture so many diverse genres in a single game?

And that’s before we come to the question of science vs. fiction. Are you looking to tell interesting stories and have the science merely as colour, or is the science the driving factor of the story? How do you keep the science from becoming meaningless fluff or dominating the game with lists of equipment or endless made-up on the fly techno-babble?

So with all those questions in mind, I’ll rephrase my search parameters. I want a game to tell exciting stories set in space, with science as more than just colour but less than endless pages of stats for rayguns. I want the feeling of being out amongst the stars without getting swamped by setting or suffering from a planet a week. I want dead civilisations and the hint of aliens. And I want it to all have a used, worn feel, ashtrays in space as Gaz would put it.

In short I want Prometheus: the game please. Don’t make me write it myself.

And I was joking in my preface. I’m looking forward to all the comments on why I’m wrong, right or where I can find the games me and Gaz have missed all along.

*One day I will write a sci-fi Fiasco playset called Dick Head. Wait till you see the tilt table.

I’m also partial to a ghost story or two, and as my friend Mark leant me an audio book featuring a variety of ghost stories I’ve been scaring myself into the Christmas spirit every night on the way home. So, what better way to mark the yuletide than with a post about running a traditional Victorian ghost story using Dead of Night?

Victorian Ghost Stories

When I talk Victorian Ghost Stories, the short stories that spring to mind are those of MR James (of which his best are Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to you my Lad, the Mezzotint and Number 13), although there are many others who wrote in the genre, such as Walter de la Mare, as well as later authors such as Henry James (The Turn of the Screw) and even Susan Hill (the Woman in Black).

The protagonist in a Victorian Ghost Story is typically a gentleman and a scholar, often a bachelor or widower, alone in some strange place on business. This strange place might at first seem innocuous, but it is oft unsettling and forboding – bleak and isolated, ill thought of and with some dark happenings having occurred in its past perhaps.

The ghost of the piece does not necessarily conform to our traditional view of a ghost – it is not always the apparition or undead creature, as the strange creature made of cloth in Whistle is evident of. And whereas a modern ghost story might demand some manner of resolution or closure, a Victorian Ghost Story rarely ends so. The protagonist often escapes, but badly shaken and scarred, yet the matter is unlikely to be resolved, the ghost not laid to rest. The machinery of the supernatural, as James once put it, remains unseen.

The titular monster is most likely to be a Formless Horror (Dead of Night p68) or Vengeful Dead (p54) although I’d be tempted to lose its Vulnerability and play up the psychological threat over the physical as the ghost does not normally harm its victims. There are exceptions, of course – just take a look at the Woman in Black to see how the threat switches between psychological and physical violence, even if it’s not always aimed directly at the protagonist.

Within a Victorian Ghost Story, survival point loss could represent sanity loss and startling revelations, the entity taking an increased attention to your character or even the untimely demise of other victims (either in the present or, via flashbacks or other ghosts, in the past).

Tension Point Circumstances: can only be spent to increase Identify and Pursue checks – revelations come thick and fast, but there can be no escape.

Intensity: Any amount – the tension in a Victorian Ghost Story often goes from the horrific to the mundane very swiftly indeed.

Starting Tension: 3 or 4, although it starts innocuously enough, the set-up is fairly forboding.

Mood: Claustrophobic, isolated and forboding, with sinister goings on and suspicious circumstances at every turn.

So there you have it – an early Christmas present for all you Dead of Night fans looking to get into the festive mood. And, if ghost stories aren’t your cup of tea, the Christmas-themed slasher movie adventure, Night of the Santa Claws, that I wrote for 1st ed is still available at RPGNow. What’s your favourite ghost story?

We talked about memories last time, so this time I’ll talk about how they fit in with the mechanics of the game when the dice hit the table. Remember in my last post I talked about bidding for memories, and how the amount bid for a memory was its value? Well, in a conflict, you get to roll a number of dice equal to the value of any related or relevant memories, so the more powerful a memory, the more potent it is when you draw upon it in a conflict.

The dice in question are D6s and you roll them as a big pool. Much like in Sorcerer, Cold City and Covenant, you’re looking to get more dice of a higher result than your opponent.  I find there’s something oracular, akin to casting the bones, about fishing through a dice pool looking for high dice and sorting out the result. If you have more dice higher than the opponent, you’re winning the conflict. Note the use of the present tense there, because it’s not a done deal yet.

Players – all of them, not just you and your opponent – can then get involved influencing the outcome, reflecting the long, drawn out Machiavellan back and forth of elven intrigues. Influence is applied by spending coins – the other currency aside from memories, gained as tribute for winning conflicts or selling memories – and for every coin spent a dice on either side can be added in or re-rolled. Only once every player has passed his turn to apply influence is the winner determined. But it’s not just blind coin pushing and dice rolling, as each time a coin is spent the player must narrate how his elf influences the conflict, no matter how distant and removed the influence might be, creating this slowly building narrative intrigue potentially spread over years.

The final twist is that once the winner is determined, both sides take one last look at the dice pools for any 6s and 1s. 6s garner bonus coins, whereas 1s… oh 1s are treacherous , they bring nothing but madness. Madness reduces the value of a memory, turning it into a madness coin on your character card. Short term, madness coins can be used against you, opponents able to spend them as though they were their own coins, but long term madness is where the whole tragedy kicks into a higher gear.

When an elf has more madness coins than the combined value of his memories – and this might happen swiftly, for an elf might find himself without many memories all of a sudden if picked upon by his fellow courtiers – he descends into madness, forever going insane and exiting the story. But that’s not the end for the player, for they get to take on a far more delicious role… that of the creeping ruin about to befall the Eternal Court.

And that’s what I’ll be talking about next time.

In other news, although I’m out of print copies in the Steampower shop, you’ll be able to find it in all good online retailers (I recommend Leisure Games in London), and of course the PDF is available from RPGNow.

As I described last time, at the heart of elven culture are their memories, some of which are their own, some of which are stolen, traded or otherwise acquired from others. These memories make up the core of the game as well, defining your character and what he can do in a conflict in much the same way as a skill, trait or aspect might in other games. The difference is, memories are written on index cards and over the course of the game can be traded, stolen or lost, so not only do the elves change what they can and can’t do, they also change what they know and who they think they are.

Memories are all created collaboratively at the start of the game in a process known as Memory Creation. Each player takes it in turns to write a memory on an index card and these are then put in the middle of the table. Players take it in turns to bid coins for them, with the winner not only getting the memory, but also setting its value as the amount he was prepared to pay. The higher the value of the memory, the more dice the player gets to roll when it comes into a conflict, so these memories can become highly desirable and the subject of frantic bidding.

Almost all of the game play centres on these memories, whether it’s an elf’s hunt for new, exotic memories or his quest for answers to the questions a memory might have posed, a player attempting to ‘acquire’ a memory from another character or an elf’s descent into madness as he slowly loses his memories over the course of the game, and whenever a player gets to take his turn it’s inevitably to the memories around the table that he’ll turn his attention first.

And it’s how a player goes about this that I’ll talk about in my next post, when I’ll give a quick run down of the conflict system and how those juicy memories can be leveraged to assist an elf in his ambitions.

I’ve posted it up in full colour because I wanted to share George’s awesomeness, but the book is in black and white. You can see for yourself now – I’ve put the PDF up on RPGNow for sale.

The elves of the Eternal Court stem from a thought that had rattled around in my head for a while, and that was the notion that in fantasy elves tend to be presented as a race past their prime, creatures fading from the world, their glories firmly in their past. I wanted to find out what they were like in their golden age. The answer, it turns out, is not nice.

In this respect they borrow a fair bit from the Ancient Eldar in Warhammer 40,000 or the pre-Sundering Elves in Warhammer, not to mention unwitting comparisons with the Melniboneans from Elric! All gothic grandeur and darkly decadent ways, living out their long lives seeking pleasure and indulgence in all its forms.

But when you’ve got a long life behind you – and an eternity ahead – lounging about the palace becomes tediously dull, so the elves seek out new, exotic pleasures in the form of the memories of others, exotic lives vicariously experienced through magic and memory. And it’s these memories that are at the heart of elven culture and – as I’ll explain when I come to talk about the mechanics – the game itself, as the elves trade, steal and otherwise acquire new memories.

There’s a downside to obtaining the memories of others, however, and that’s the inevitability of insanity. Having all manner of often conflicting memories – some yours, others not, and the inability to tell the difference between whose is whose – leads to eventual madness, and it is this madness that will bring the elves to ruin and destruction.

But that’s a story for another time.

First up, here is a look at the awesome cover – the picture is by George Cotronis, whilst the design is Paul Bourne, and combined they make for a very striking piece of art.

The interior art is all in the same vivid style, and Paul has used each of the pieces as chapter heads. I’ll post them up over the course of the week too.

They then fled the flat, where they ran into a group of rioters including the now-infamous Billy Hunt, who tried to bully Alan into holding the big tv he’d just nicked. This scene was great, as it set up Billy as a hard case, as well as putting Alan’s own bluster and bullish manner into perspective (Billy bullies Alan, so Alan bullies Ollie). Cops arrive, coven flees, only to find Simon’s body crucified in an alley, his phone filled with frantic voice mail messages from Julianne telling Simon she’s hiding out in the derelict flats.It’s about this time they first notice the car with blacked out windows and an Italian number plate following them.

After tipping the cops off, the coven catch the bus to the flats but are accosted by an elderly blind man who shouts “Witch! Witch” at Raven. The group respond with bluster and are all chucked off the bus, whereupon the man rounds on them once more, this time with a demonic voice. Raven pushes him over, accidentally killing him… or was he already dead, as his body is cold? Despite the horror of the situation, the coven remain teenagers and Raven takes a certain amount of pride in her violent accomplishment.

At the flats, Alan goes in on his own, only to find a smashed widescreen TV on the floor, a dead guy crumpled in the stairwell and Billy Hunt cowering in a corner, scared of something he’s seen. Alan talks to him, Billy persuades him to give him his knife, and then he slits his own throat! Alan flees, but tries to make himself look hard and tells the others he had to knife him.

The group then notice the Italian car is back and head into the flats together. They find Julianne in one of the empty flats, a pentagram on the floor and the book floating in the middle. She persuades them to help her cast out the demon, getting each of them to cut their own hands and bleed on the pentagram. Raven then hands her Billy’s knife and Julianne then cuts her own throat! The players can’t believe they’ve just fallen for the same trick twice!

The disbelief is brief, however, as the blood starts to pool unnaturally and the demon – now cast out of its host – starts to pull itself free of Julianne’s throat. The coven start to flee, but Raven desperately flips through the grimoire to find the proper banishment spell, and a tense combat ensues as the coven try to distract the demon long enough for Raven to complete the ritual. She does and the demon vanishes.

The group retreat back to Raven’s house where they fail to take much notice of the Italian car parked further up the street. They get in, and after Ann-Marie decides to go upstairs to get showered (she’s covered in blood at this point) she finds a well-suited gentleman wearing a large crucifix holding a silver gun to Louise (Raven’s little sister)’s head. He demands the witch be brought forth, at which point (no pun intended) all hell breaks loose. The witch hunter starts chanting, people hurl themselves at him, several people get shot and Raven tries to cast a spell. On the inquisitor. I blow through much of the tension accrued during this scene (mainly accrued by Elaine, Raven’s player, spending survival points to cast spells), bouncing Raven’s spell back on herself and nearly killing her, not to mention a few of the others too.

They finally manage to kill the inquisitor, after he tells them the demon was not banished but was cast out into a blood relative of the coven. He hints that his cane has a splinter of the true cross in it too. Cue Louise’s entry, full-on possessed. Survival points get spent to grab cane and silver gun and the coven wade into action. The demon is slain, finally, but not before I get my hands on a player – poor Josh has his head neatly screwed off.

We finish with an epilogue, as each player wraps up their own story. Raven goes back to being Rachel, magic well behind her, Ollie goes properly mad and ends up being institutionalised for his ramblings about demons, Carver gets to stake his claim on being a real hard man and takes over Hunt’s gang, and as for Ann-Marie? Well, we last see her getting off a plane in Paris, a rather weighty tome in her hand luggage…

… to be continued, perhaps?