In my previous post I looked at Tales from the Loop & Things from the Flood, part of a new pair of offers on the Bundle of Holding. Today I want to offer some ideas and resources for Coriolis. I have less to offer on this side, but I love the promise of the setting. It’s wonderful to see a science-fiction world which doesn’t just start from Western elements and tropes. It’s an oversimplification to say that it’s Fading Suns, but Middle Eastern rather than Medieval European trappings. It does feel a little like that, but the Coriolis setting is richer.

I think there are few current space sci-fi games out there as different, vibrant, and coherent. The Transhumanist future of Spacejammer’s great, for example, but it feels more like a toolkit. You don’t get the visuals and premise of the setting like you do with Coriolis. Then there’s something like Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells which has a great feel but doesn’t come across as a deep setting with a rich specific history to interact with. There’s something about the way Coriolis offers a new take while keeping the world grounded.
 
Coriolis also provides a ton of great story hooks right out of the gate. The Factions offer a ton of color and possibility immediately. Getting the characters hooked into those at the start really helps fuel things. The idea of the Icons as important and present forces in the world helps to color everything. I love that there’s an emphasis on art, design, and appearance over strictly functional, Spartan design. Enough of the building frame aesthetic of Firefly, instead ships and places reflect a culture and belief way.

The supplemental materials are great—each planetary blurb sparks new ideas for adventures. I’m less found of the adventures and campaigns. They’re locked in fairly tightly. But if you’re willing to tear the best bits out to make you own stories, you’ll find a lot there.
 
Incidentally here’s my Coriolis Pinterest board

That being said, I’m not a fan of Coriolis’ rules. I’ve run quite a bit of the Mutant Engine (Coriolis, Tales/Things, ALIENS, Forbidden Lands, and Mutant: Year Zero). I think this dice system works best when it plays into the risk and scarcity of the setting. So I honestly think MYZ’s the best implementation of that, with FL and ALIENS coming in close behind. Tales/Things gets away with it because you’re rolling more rarely and it’s more of a meditative games—plus the way to clear conditions is story-driven rather than just a mechanical process.

There’s a great post Paul Beakley wrote about closing down his Coriolis game after only a few sessions. It’s sadly lost in the great G+ Vanishing. (WRONG! Paul's longer and more cogent analysis of Coriolis can be found here). But he broke down the system’s problems and it made me rethink my approach to the game. I’d backed the base Kickstarter and the first campaign module. But in Coriolis missed the mark in its implementation. At first it didn’t bother me, but I’ve come to realize why the system worked OK for me: because I wasn’t running it. Instead I was forcibly tweaking it as we played.

Beakley provided a cogent analysis of the absurdity of the risk/reward for making interstellar jumps in the game. Over any serious distances they became prohibitively expensive and dangerous. If you looked at the raw mechanics, that’s what would occur. But the fiction and the described play didn’t match that. So I was changing things on the fly to try to fit with that.

If I were going to play Coriolis from the book again, I would make these changed.

1. Increase the skill ranks. The game as it stands now has significantly weak starting characters. It doubles down on that by making different classes have different staring attributes and skills.
2. Allow for rerolls, but remove the idea of each one being a “prayer.” If you’re paying any attention to the fiction, that looks goofy. It weirdly mechanizes faith on a constant basis. I like the idea of pushing your roll and the fates. That works for me. To include the Icons, each player may choose to pray to one at the start of a session. From that point forward they get +1d when they roll a skill associated with that Icon. If you want to be more liberal, give them +2d if they had a ship shrine.
3. One success is enough to do anything. Extra successes get spent for results. There’s no success with cost for a single 6. All of that should come from the Darkness Point economy. Follow the lead established in MYZ and TftL.
4. Completely rework the economy. It’s trashy right now and stupidly restrictive. I understand there’s a line of sci-fi thinking which comes from old Traveller about the character’s finances driving everything. And that’s a little OK with me, but it’s so granular here. It’s effing nuts. Instead take the whole thing out and rebuild it ala Blades, with a simple Coin economy that allows for easy tracking and spends. Take out stupid parts—like having to pay to go through jump gates and such.
5. Add more and more interesting psychic and other talents.
6. Simplify combat. It means ditching some of the talents and a bunch of the details. Stick with MYZ’s basic approach. We don’t need an action point economy. Ditch some of the fancy. Stupid stuff like the automatic weapons rules. I’m not going for realism or even verisimilitude. I’m going for fun at the table.
7. Reconceive Darkness Points. Yes, the GM gets them for players taking rerolls. But other sources get eliminated, like jumping through gates and shit. I might even extend that to Psychic powers and talents, replacing that with a usage die or stress cost (especially since some of these are rolled). What do GMs use Darkness Points for then? Activating special abilities works—with a higher cost for more potent ones. Calling on flaws or problems with characters and the ship. These cost more than one point since they’re significant. Ditch NPC rerolls or bonuses, breaking items, etc. as stand-alone shit. Instead use DPs to do GM Hard and Soft Moves. I’m going to leave that deliberately vague for the moment.

​OR BE IMPULSIVE
Or there’s another option as well. In 2019 I ran a long series of Coriolis, but using an adaptation of Impulse Drive. ID’s probably my favorite sci-fi PbtA iteration. You can see the character keeper for that here. If you want to run this you’ll need the Coriolis materials (helpfully in the Bundle of Holding right now) and the Impulse Drive rules.

Here's an online character keeper for that. 

A few words about this hack. It works pretty well—I mean it holds up decently. However it has two colliding issues that would need another round of tweaks to fix. First, Impulse Drive is made for the long haul. The Calamities system adds really interesting choices for the players. These are playbook-unique storyhooks that you take when your stress builds up they’re a super interesting part of the game. If you’re not playing for a long time, these won’t come into play. The same thing with certain elements of the ship rules for maintenance and stress.

But on the other hand, if you do play a long game, you’ll hit up against one of the design issues in the game. A lot of the playbooks—both in the original and in my hacked form—have moves which let you do what you’re good at better or in another way. They have a fairly narrow focus in what they can do. Characters can take moves from other playbooks, but that feels a little like a cop out. If I ran this again, I'd spend some time tweaking this first. 

By Lowell Francis, Gauntlet Gaming Community Manager
There’s a new set of great offers up on the Bundle of Holding, featuring Tales from the Loop, Things from the Flood and Coriolis. Offer 1 and Offer 2. Having run and tinkered with all of these games, I thought I’d pull together a couple of posts which have some resources for online play, thoughts on running them, alternate mechanics, and even an adventure. Today I start with Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood. 
 
TALES FROM THE LOOP
I wrote a post with a mini-review and some thoughts about running the game back in 2017. You can see that here.
Since then I've run Tales another dozen times and I think it holds true but a couple of other points have stuck with me.

• First, go simple with the mysteries. I know that seems obvious, but try to have a clear through-line for the plot. This might not be for the reason you think. You want to keep them simple because you want to give the players space to do those home, family, and school scenes. If everything revolves around the mystery and there’s tons of plot points to follow, then those entanglements draw away from the life of these characters.
• Second, your kids’ hideout is one of the most important factors in the story. Take time to describe it and get the players to contribute how their kid makes this place their own. Location’s important here as well—ideally the hideout’s not far away from everyone. It should be accessible.
• Third, make it clear early on that adults aren’t helpful. Yes, the characters may have connections to adults in their backstory, but even these NPCs are prone to misunderstanding, having other obligations, or foisting them off on someone else who they think might be better suited to helping them.
• Fourth, you really want to take the time to build your own setting, your own locale for the Loop. Find an area you know, trace & rework an existing map, decide for yourself how far out things range. Write down the names of local places you recall. Re-write the Relationships to NPCs sections of the character templates. This last one is important. Just creating those will build a universe of stories and ideas. You’ll have a stronger sense of your setting.
• Sidenote: it isn’t that the US or Norwegian settings are bad. They aren’t. But they’re very particular and I think hard to generalize. This is even more true in Things from the Flood, but it’s also in play here. Make your own 1980s. If that isn’t your era, then find a good film or series set in those days and use that.
• Fifth, one of the biggest issues kids will have in these stories—unless you a) have great public transport or b) the town’s really small—is getting from one place to another. It’s worth hitting that once or twice, but don’t keep leaning into that factor. It’s a challenge when it pops up once or twice, but an irritant when it keeps recurring.
• Sixth, have a list of media from the period—songs, movies, games, etc. Having each kid pick their favorite song is a really fun exercise—but some players won’t know the period and you don’t want to leave them out. Here’s a sample list
• Seventh, some players will go to violence as an option. It makes sense as you have a couple of the Iconic items which could feasibly be used as weapons. But the system doesn’t really support that. Any move to violence—especially against other people should be costly. Make a kid mark a condition if they want to lash out like that, and give them the option to reframe it in terms of intimidation or something else. This is especially true if kids want to use violence against older kids or teens.
• Eighth, it can be easy to forget that tales takes place in an alternate reality with some differences in tech. Remember to describe the airships, robots, and other weird devices which are completely mundane and ordinary. Especially in contrast to massive, bulky tech like VCRs and portable phones.
• Ninth, if you’re comfortable with improvisation and play, just start the characters in the middle of a hot summer day and something weird happens. In my session, they found a big, buzzing frog with cicada wings. That kicked everything off.
• Finally, here’s a link to a decent starter mystery I wrote for Tales from the Loop. I’ve run this online and at conventions.

Here's a revised set of the character archetypes from my campaign setting. 

THINGS FROM THE FLOOD
Things is a strange beast. Even more than Tales, is it baked into a really specific culture feeling and place. I talked a little bit about that on the Gauntlet Podcast here. The bottom line is that there is a huge difference between the early 1990s in Europe and the United States. Massive—and the Things from the Flood setting’s built on a certain cultural feeling of change, despair, and Economic anxiety, that just isn’t present in the US during those years. So you have to consider that if you set your Flood locale somewhere else.

• You can see my “Things to Know About Things from the Flood” document here. It’s a mix of the book’s advice for players and my own taken on the cultural situation which tries to split the difference.
• Here’s my maps for the Midwestern City I used before and after the Flood.
• Sample list of music from the period
• Adapted character archetypes for TftF
• A combined online character keeper for Tales and Things

Thoughts on Things from the Flood

• I cannot stress this enough. If you want a great Things from the Flood game, run a Tales game and then move the story forward. The book doesn’t offer much in the way of guidance for doing that—essentially it’s make a new character and give them the same name. But I will tell you having that experience together as younger kids and then figuring out what has happened in between the two campaigns just makes things rich and deeper. It’s really good.
• The conditions from Tales from the Loop don’t fit for the teens in Things from the Flood. Teens have more complicated reactions and emotions. Instead we created a short list which players could pick from when they marked a condition (Anxious, Bruised, Confused, Exhausted, Frustrated, Isolated, Saddened, Shaken).
• Things from the Flood focuses on teens—but what that means can vary wildly. Your safety definitions and tone discussions need to be robust.
• I haven’t really talked about it, but I generally take a “mystery landscape” approach when I run Tales and Things. Where I use the scenarios and materials from the books, I tend to scrape out the pieces I want to use. Often the scenarios presented either feel overly elaborate or off tone. I think that’s even more true with Things where your characters are about living day to day and trying to survive in strangeness. Find the bits you like and just use those. 
• I mentioned above the question of violence. In Things from the Flood, there more room for those kinds of actions and stories. But I still think you need to be cautious. Teens are not adults—they may think they can do things like intimidate 20 somethings or build a bomb, but that has to be put into the context of the character. It’s a tone discussion and you need to be willing to stop to negotiate that in play if someone takes actions which feel wildly off from the reality you’ve established.
• Things from the Flood is about decay and the breakdown of the promise of technology. In some ways it’s about the betrayal of adults selling out the future of our teens. And wow that could be dark. But I don’t think it has to be. I think the stories are better when they’re about the teen’s growth and coming to terms with how they approach adulthood and responsibility.

I’ve put together a starter list of scenario hooks for Things from the Flood. You can see that here. Some of these are my own, some are drawn from published materials, and some reworked from online groups. When we played, I gave the players the list and had each of them pick one as a potential hook for a story, either now or in the future. That worked OK—but it did mean that we had some stories we were sitting on for several sessions.

TOMORROW: CORIOLIS

This is the alpha-draft of a storygame about creating a set of fortune or divinatory cards, ala the tarot, for a fantasy setting. It's an idea I've had for a while-- dating back to creating a set for my ongoing fantasy setting and using that to generate NPCs. This version's inspired by Microscope and Before the Storm. It's rough, but we're going to try a play through of this next month. Thanks to Chris Newton for the name and to Sam Zimmerman for feedback. 
​
SET UP
This is a game about creating a unique tarot for a fantasy world, and using a group of companion’s journey to help illuminate the world and the cards.

This is a game for four players.

Palette
Each person should add things (if they wish) to two lists: Things We Don’t Want to See and Things We’d Like to See. These refer to elements of the fantasy setting, rather than Lines & Veils (which would have come before Set Up). So if you don’t dig Dragons, you can say “I don’t want to see Dragons.” Players can negotiate about these choices or ask for clarification.

Suits
Our tarot deck is set up like a conventional deck: four suits of face cards which run Ace through King, with Page and Knight as face cards (Note: might switch out the gendered names King/Queen), and a Major Arcana of unique cards which run 0 through 21.

Going around the table, each player will come up with a name for one of the suits (Nails, Scythes, Crowns, Hopes, Nothing, Roads, etc). They will then choose up to two themes which their suit revolves around. A list of suggestions will be available, or players can come up with their own.

Characters
Next, going around each player will name a character and give a brief description of who they are. They’ll also pick what that person wants. Again, there will be a list or players can choose their own.

These characters will be the comrades in our party. They’re not exclusive to a player and may get picked up to play by anyone later in the game.

We don’t have to delve too deep and it’s better to work in archetypes here.

Next, as a group, decide the purpose of the fellowship. What’s their big quest or journey? Again, list will be offered or they can make their own.
 
We should be all set for play.

PLAY
The game is played in two-three rounds, depending on the time you have. In a round we take four turns, one for each player. Over the course of a round, everyone will have the chance to play each of the roles.

Play begins with the FORTUNE role.
The Fortune gives a name to a card, either one of the suit they named or a Major Arcana. They describe a little of what the card looks like and what it means. If the player chooses to name a suit card in the first round, they must name a Major Arcana in the second. If there’s a third round, they can name whichever they choose.

Play then moves to the READER role.
The reader first describes a little more about what the card looks like. The can describe a detail or element which was unobvious on first glance. Then they can choose to DELVE or REVERSE.

If they DELVE they describe a little about what the card’s imagery means in this fantasy world. Do it reflect a real world object? It is commenting on a political situation? Is it saying something about what is present or lost in this world? Basically they have the chance to explain some of the symbolism.

If they REVERSE, they describe the inverse meaning of the card. Based on the meaning described by the FORTUNE, they describe an antithesis or a complement. This doesn’t have to be the negative of the original meaning, but it should be transformed.

Play then moves to the HISTORY role.
The History then describes a situation or event which happened to either one of the Comrades or the party as a whole. This should describe an obstacle, problem, choice, or challenge to their quest and/or their desires. The situation should reflect some element of the card named by the FORTUNE—in meaning or physical details. (i.e. if there’s a cat on the card, the scene could revolve around cats).

Play then moves to the QUEST role.
Here the player takes plays out a scene of a comrade (either the one named by the HISTORY or their choice if the HISTORY described the party in general or more than one companion). They say how they faced the problem presented by the HISTORY. They can choose to narrate the solution/decision or they can play out what happens in character. If they latter, then the HISTORY can add elements or answer questions the QUEST has. The FORTUNE, the READER, and the HISTORY can play other comrades or NPCs as desired here.
​
Ideally these scenes should be short, 5-10 minutes at most. When the scene feels finished, someone says, “We turn over the next card.” Play then shifts clockwise, with the QUEST becoming the FORTUNE, and so on.

Once everyone has played each role, we begin a second round. It’s a good time to take a break, comment, etc. to signal the restart. If time permits, you can play a third round (or more).

Once that finish the rounds, we move to the READING.

READING
We now do a kind of epilogue in which we build a short reading based on the cards we’ve created. You should let people volunteer for order, or if uncertain then follow the existing order shifting one position from the last scene of the previous round.

The First Reader: The True Challenge
This person reads the prompt: “While we know something of what faced the quest, the true challenge which faced them was this.”
They then announce an established card, telling us how it represents what really stood in the way of the companions: a force, an institution, bonds, history, distrust, etc. The player may choose to narrate the card’s upright or reversed meaning.

The Second Reader: The Final Leg
This person reads the prompt: “While we have heard about the travels and path the quest took them on, the final leg of the journey cost them this.” They then announce an established card, telling us what was lost, sacrificed, or stolen in the final steps. This could be something concrete, it could be a character, it could be a land which fell because they weren’t fast enough. The player may choose to narrate the card’s upright or reversed meaning.

The Third Reader: What Comes to Pass: Hope/Fears
This person reads the prompt: “While we know why they wanted to complete the quest, in the journey they realized something new about their desires which was this.” They then announce an established card, telling us what new hope or fear came upon the quest as they reached the end. This could be a revelation, a revealed cost, a new possibility, or the like. The player may choose to narrate the card’s upright or reversed meaning.

The Last Reader: The Outcome
This person reads the prompt: “But in the end this is what happened.” They then announce an established card, telling us what it means for how the quest ended. They can narrate a little or a lot. The player may choose to narrate the card’s upright or reversed meaning. This narration has the highest stakes, so the player should feel free to check in with the table.

​I’ve run Free from the Yoke a couple dozen times now. It’s a generational low-fantasy Slavic-mythology inspired game built on Legacy: Life Among the Ruins. That’s an rpg I’ve run and talked about at length on the podcast and the blog (you can see my guide to Legacy here). I think Free from the Yoke’s my favorite iteration of the Legacy mechanics for several reasons.

First, it’s a simple and clear version of Legacy. It has a more straightforward and obvious economy. Only one of the House playbooks has changes to the basic engine of the game. Second, it has a theme and a framework. Other Legacy games require intense player world building without scaffolding. FFTY has lots of building, but there’s a shared basis to work from. Third, FFTY has clearer objectives for the players. If you’re not sure what to do, you can engage with the Arbiter’s project. That provides a goalpost for competition and development.

Note: this hack requires some knowledge of Free from the Yoke or at least Legacy (and why aren’t you trying that out? I also toss around some of the L5R backstory without fully explaining it.
​
FFTY STRUCTURE
Stripped down to the bone, Free from the Yoke has a basic premise. There was a unified state (nation, country, empire, etc). A crisis occurred which disrupted that state for a long period of time (invasion, occupation, ongoing war). That crisis has ended in greater part due to a leadership figure and their associates (called the Arbiter). The Arbiter now rules and sets the agenda for the land. Players take up the role of factions of the original state. They want to have the land thrive, but also pursue their own agenda. At the same time they also have to obey the Arbiter (at the moment) because of the power they wield.

This simple structure’s adaptable to several existing settings. You could easily do an Arthurian or Great Pendragon Campaign, following Arthur’s claim on power. Alternately, Fading Suns could be good—and would require coming up with some cool space travel and management systems. If you’re into Runequest, there’s Dragon Pass after the rise or Argath or the various Lunar Territories after the defeat of Sheng Seleris. But the one I immediately began thinking about after my first FFTY campaign was Legend of the Five Rings.

ROKUGAN’S CHALLENGE
Rokugan appeals to me as someone who started with the card game, wrote a set of miniature rules to play out skirmishes (twice), worked through most of the editions of the rpg, and ran games set there but always with homebrews. I like the concept of a high fantasy game which borrows samurai-era tropes.

That’s not to say L5R isn’t problematic. It’s a mish-mash that ignores cultural and historical differences over a multiple ranges. It fetishizes aspects of the culture. It gets the details wrong in too many places (like the names). Asians Represent has done a great overview and read through of the most recent edition of L5R. See here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbQUmmaVBxqrHrVZFBiuGSHBYx-KlhmAU

My adaption then borrows the large scale, more high fantasy concepts—especially since I want folks not familiar with the source material to play. It will echo L5R but not simulate that. Within that, two elements were hugely important to me, especially because the gameplay moves between high level and character play.

1. Regardless of how the various groups, clans, and institutions present it, honor is a social construct and not concrete. It is not an absolute and has no existence outside of society. In fact it is a tool used to support the existing order and constrain challenges to it. The different clans value different things and use the idea of honor as a means of enforcing that. While many might claim to adhere to the codes, honor is a concept that changes to suit the whims of those in control. It is a weapon of social control and power.

Mechanically this means that being “dishonored” is purely a social status imposed on persons. It puts persons as a disadvantage for social interactions.

2. Likewise the “Celestial Order”-- with its system of castes and hierarchies-- offers another method of control. It is not an absolute thing. Even if we accept in the fiction that it came from the Kami themselves, that does not make it true. It makes it a mythology that the potent Kami established to gain and cement their role. Like honor, what the Celestial Order is depends on who is invoking it and what they need in that moment.

PREMISE
The hack is set following the Second Day of Thunder, a big event in the long timeline of Legend of the Five Rings. That’s the immediate aftermath of the very first CCG cycle from the mid-1990s. The Empire has finally thrown off the yoke of the Dark Emperor, Fu Leng who held the throne for several years. The Shadowlands and corrupted forces which overwhelmed the land have been thrown back.

A new Emperor, Toturi I, has taken the throne in the aftermath. He represents the start of a new Imperial Dynasty and oversees the process of rebuilding. There are eight major clans. We keep the general feel and theming of them but not the specifics. Some of that shapes the history questions for the clan playbooks. I reference specifics (like family names and places) sparingly. The full history of L5R doesn’t matter—instead players have a decent starting point and can build their clan as they like.

History questions revolve around customs (rule, others see us as, but we are); the Time of the Void (during the clan wars); and After the Day of Thunder (the recent aftermath)

MECHANICAL CHANGES

• Several of the clan themes map fairly directly over to L5R. The Mantis are the sailor house; the Unicorn are the horse-riders; the Phoenix are the church. In some cases like the Crab, Crane, and Lion I had to make some major tweaks and swap moves around. In a few cases I modified moves from other Legacy games.
• For the character playbooks I added a couple of new roles. The Shugenja and the Priest/Monk share elements of the Loremaster. The Magistrate and the Daimyo have the largest changes.
• Gear remains largely the same with additions and changes to some of the tags. The same with the resources for Needs & Surpluses. The Ritual rules have been tweaked to make it clearer how one learns and uses rituals. I increased the number of sample rituals and gave the Shugenja an advantage in casting these. These are big, potent spells and not things you throw around idly.
• The basic moves remain largely the same. I added a Duel move for use against NPCs and also a move for resolving PVP duels. This differs from the FFTY mechanics. I added a mechanic for Dishonor to make it clear it’s purely a social consequences. The basic House moves remain the same.
• Because I didn’t want to do too much work, I only went with one form of the Arbiter (as opposed to the three from FFTY). The projects remain mostly the same and the Arbiter’s Agents are just renamed versions with a couple of tweaks.
• You can see the character keeper with all of this here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18ok5krSHXzQVLqzUAwUBWGBIaSrx5K2u3Ex0U_zimHI/edit?usp=sharing    The Emperor Playbook here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qhnGVseSDfPTKUaDEx_roetnNGfvnK72oFnUVqaUtm4/edit?usp=sharing  The Emperor Project Playbooks here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14iHcAdSe4cbMDIkH1iRcUw0Alnjp1853PoctoxaaBzg/edit?usp=sharing  The Agents of the Emperor document here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gT17qsdcMjMtEeWkvlXOidSnsAfO8Zv-5su42femapQ/edit?usp=sharing

PLAY
We did eight sessions as a first live trial of this hack. We had four players who chose the Crab, Crane, Phoenix, and Unicorn Clans. The other Clans, as well as Imperial Houses and minor clans, served as NPC factions. In eight sessions we got through two projects. For the first they chose a grand project of building a series of bridges. This had tensions about where they would be placed and what kind of access they would offer. The second project involved the bringing of greater numbers of folks into the ranks of the buke and samurai. That was interesting as it added an ethical dilemma about the existing hierarchies.

The players chose the Master of the Masterless as the Emperor’s form, which implied the existence of a large body of warriors demobilized following the victory against the Shadowlands. They chose the Emerald Magistrate as the Emperor’s Agent. Players played this Agent twice in the Zoom Ins we did.

Overall everyone ended up happy with the play and wanted to return to it. Three of the players had experience with the Legend of the Five Rings backstory. The player with the least experience played the Unicorn Clan and made it their own. It felt right—and we managed to only go down the rabbit hole of lore a couple of times.

You can see a playlist with the session videos here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUKV1MEOXoTVvsVp9Qvc4Ku8_iQ0tZQW0

FUTURE CHANGES
While I’m happy with the hack, there are some things which need fixing or tweaking.

• More Arbiter types—to expand the choices the players have.
• More Projects—this is actually more important to me than more Arbiter types. These are key to shaping play and I want more variety. I’ve done the same ones several times, because they’re easy to grasp (the construction one in particular).
• More and clearer paths for gaining and using Influence. The current default influence gain move for the clans are decent, but often get forgotten. It would be nice to make that sub-system feel more important, especially for the clans which have more social power.
• More options available for the Subterfuge move. Some additional consequence choices for the Claim by Force. One way, though it might be more complicated than its worth, would be to have clan unique costs and/or 12+ results.
• We never really tested out the duel or PVP moves in any meaningful way. Need to do more of that—also need to test out the Open Battle move. Despite having run the game multiple times, I haven’t really seen it used by players.
• Want to go through the Clan playbook moves and look for ones which are weaker, hard to trigger, or don’t come into play based on the way I run the game. We tweaked the “Know the True Nature of Your Partners” move for the Crane Clan in play. A few others felt like weaker choices. The “Trade Networks” move (Crab Clan) has the same problem that I’ve seen with it in the sessions of Free from the Yoke I’ve run—we tend to abstract things on the map, so this doesn’t feel appropriate.
• Would like to create an event generator to add some additional threats and wrinkles. On a related note, I would need to do a GM guide to the kinds of hard moves and reactions which are appropriate.

OVERALL
This was great fun--- both to play and to write. Free from the Yoke’s one of my favorite games. It has the advantage of PbtA in that prep is really about just reviewing the situation and looking over player requests from the last session. But it’s one of the most intense GMing experiences I’ve ever had. You constantly juggling things as you run.

This hack could easily work as the basis for an expanded fantasy game, samurai or not. I think you could easily file of the serial numbers from what I’ve got here. There’s lots of other Legacy family games which could be inspiration for that. I probably will do another pass on this and run it again, but I’ll also be thinking about a Fading Suns or Dune-like version as well. 

The Metabarons (2001)
After their West End Games’ collapse, Yeti Entertainment purchased them to form a new company. But Yeti was in turn owned by Humanoids Publishing, making it part of an even larger European comics publisher with Heavy Metal magazine in its portfolio. They hoped to expand into the American market. There was perhaps a time in the 1980s when a Heavy Metal rpg might have grabbed real attention, but that was past. Instead the publishers gambled on one of their most popular properties: Metabarons. 

Which would have been great-- it had amazing art, a strong backlog of material, and was written by filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. Not surprisingly, it had a Dune-like vibe. They released a striking corebook with gorgeous illustrations, a refined version of the d6 system, and contributions from veteran designer Aaron Allston. 
But no one really knew Metabarons in the US, outside comics collectors and those who followed avant-garde sci-fi. The lack of interest led to the publisher shutting everything down. A few French-language supplements supported the line, but it ultimately went nowhere. 

Guardians of Order
The prolific and problematic publisher GOO released three anime sourcebooks in this period: Serial Experiments Lain, Parallel Dual!, and Hellsing. All of these were compatible with GOO’s house system: Big Eyes, Small Mouth. While the first two came in single 112 page editions, GOO split the Hellsing supplement into two volumes. Like the other products in this line these leaned more towards being fan guides than gamable material. They had mechanics, but those very much took a backseat to providing setting background. 

While online fan sites for these series existed at this point, they hadn’t grown into the archives and phenomenon that they would in the decade to come. The GOO fanbooks offered one of the few good ways to find out more about these series. The publisher clearly hoped these products would expand their reach into bookstores and mass distribution, but they never reached that level. Throughout the late 200s and early 2010s you would find many of these sourcebooks in the bargain bins of shops at conventions. 

A reminder that that you should google the publisher, Mark C. MacKinnon, before buying or supporting the new edition of BESM.

The Legacy of Zorro (2001)
Zorro’s a series which has never gotten it’s due. Despite Disney TV series, comics, movies, and references in other media (like nods to it in Batman) it hasn’t lit a fire of excitement. It’s too bad as it open sup another angle to “Wild West” stories both in culture and heroism. 

Gold Rush Games released this short, stand-alone rpg using their Fuzion system. The book itself clocks in at only 32 pages and is clearly intended as a starting point rpg. It has complete rules, pre-gen characters, and cut-out figures. GRG only ever released this product, leaving Zorro on the shelf until 2020’s Zorro: The Roleplaying Game from Gallant Knight Games.  

The Judge Dredd Roleplaying Game (2002)
The second of the four (so far) Judge Dredd rpgs. Mongoose's first whack at the setting uses d20, and requires the Players Handbook to play. Players choose between Street Judges, Psi-Judges, and Citizens for class. The last choice seems to be on offer if a group wants to play a criminal game set in Mega-City One. If someone pitched me on a Dredd game where we didn't play judges, but instead the people who get killed by Judges I'm pretty sure I'd less-than-politely decline. As you can imagine there's a plethora of new feats, crunchy combat options, and lots of equipment from robots to guns. The line did well enough for Mongoose to publish many supplements, the majority in the Rookie's Guide series. They released the last books in the series in 2004; several years later they came back with a version based on Traveller.

Red Dwarf: The Roleplaying Game (2002)
Comedy is hard, but rpg designers keep making comedic rpgs. The Red Dwarf rpg has the advantage of being built on an existing and beloved franchise. It smartly avoids the fact that there are only really four characters in the universe by having the players make up alternate reality versions of the Red Dwarf crew. 

The production isn’t that great-- with black & white interiors and promo images. Surprisingly for this time, it isn’t a d20 game. Instead it builds on a simple 2d6 attribute+skill vs. difficulty test. It’s workable and simple and lets the focus be on the characters and absurd situation. 

Deep7Press only released three products for the line: the core book, a GM screen, and a series sourcebook going over every episode. 

Slaine: The Roleplaying Game of Celtic Heroes (2002)
Slaine’s a 2000 AD property I’d never heard of. Then husband and wife Pat Mills (Nemesis the Warlock, Marshall Law) and Angela Kincaid (The Butterfly Children) created and wrote the series. Slaine’s a barbarian fantasy series based on Celtic mythology with a distinct heavy metal and neo-pagan vibe to it. It’s a d20 game, requiring the use of the D&D PHB. 

Most reviews for it are pretty positive-- liking the game’s classes, new character elements, and general feel. This, alongside Judge Dredd mentioned above, was one of the first two rpgs produced by Mongoose though they’d been turning out d20 products for a while before this. They supported it with nine supplements over this and the following year-- with a strong focus on splat books covering the different tribes of the setting. 

The d20 Bust hit them in 2003 and they closed this line down along with several others. In 2007 they returned to Slaine, offering it as a setting book for their line of Runequest products produced under license from Issaries, Inc.   

Star Trek Roleplaying Game (2002)
The Star Trek license had been going great guns under Last Unicorn when they lost the license to Decipher. As mentioned on a previous list, the change came suddenly with many LUG titles cancelled despite being almost finished. This version took a combined approach—lumping all eras of play together into a single ruleset. Modiphius would follow this lead with Star Trek Adventures.

Decipher released eight core and sourcebooks, including ones for the Mirror Universe, Creatures, and Starships. The final releases came only three years later in 2005, though it wouldn’t be until 2007 that they gave any official notice of shutting down the line. ​

By Jason Cordova
This is the second post in a series about running Brindlewood Bay. The first, “Revealing a Clue in Brindlewood Bay,” can be found here: https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/blog/revealing-a-clue-in-brindlewood-bay

At first glance, the Day Move and the Night Move in Brindlewood Bay seem like standard Act Under Pressure/Defy Danger/catch-all type moves you might find in other Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) games, but with the novelty that one is used during daytime scenes and one is used during nighttime scenes. However, these moves are extremely intentional in their design—they are meant to create a very specific type of experience at the table—and so they’re worth spending some time to understand. 

The text of the moves are below; this blog post assumes you otherwise understand the basics of Brindlewood Bay.