'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 2

WROTE Podcast

Hey all! I am once again on the wonderful Writers on the Edge podcast, this time to talk about Hi-Lo—and how you get Hi-Lo into the right hands—YA in general, the awful that is Neutrality Movements. Dogs Don’t Break Hearts and Stuck With You, both from Lorimer.

As always, S.A. and Vance are wonderful to chat with, and you can even get a glimpse of what I’m trying to work on next…

Tabletop Tuesday — When the Fun Stops (or, Why We Swapped to Earthborne Rangers from Frosthaven)

It’s Tuesday, and normally I have a nerdy gaming blog locked and loaded, but I didn’t this week, the clock is ticking, and while I don’t often do this, I realized part of what had me blocked was our recently weekly board gaming group’s ongoing frustrating with Frosthaven and…

That’s the topic. That’s the topic that wants to be written about, so even though I do my absolute best around these parts to be pretty “it’s just not for me” about games I don’t connect with, Frosthaven has been this ongoing spiral and I think it’s worth breaking down what… well, broke down.

Starting on a High

My weekly board-gaming group loved Gloomhaven, and that’s saying something. For one, we’d just come off various D&D games that had been going for years, and as the forever-DM, I was ready for someone else to tell the story. One of the other players is a number cruncher who likes figuring out optimal load-outs. My husband doesn’t love the “Be spontaneously creative and role-play your character right now!” parts of RPGs, but likes the stories and settings and the crunch of building characters. The fourth in our group was just kind of done with D&D.

Gloomhaven felt like playing a TTRPG without playing a TTRPG, if that makes sense. Your character is a deck of cards from which you make choices, but you personalize that deck over time, as well as the combat deck (the equivalent of rolling dice), and you also choose your equipment, which further makes the character yours, and there was an over-all story about figuring out what the “Gloom” was, and defeating it. We were all aboard, enjoyed how the “retirement” worked to then unlock new character options, and by the time we got to the final adventures, it’d been a solidly good ride, with only a few scenarios here and there stymying us in any way, and a few hitches (like character goals that required us to back-track because we’d drawn them later on in the game).

So, when an expansion was announced—Forgotten Circles—we nabbed that right up and… had a horrible time.

Oof, Forgotten Circles. I’ve written about that before, and I don’t need to do it again. When we saw a second version of Forgotten Circles was released (with a lot of the issues we’d faced corrected, and an almost entirely re-done character) it still didn’t tempt me, but I’m glad other people won’t have the first version experience we had. Jaws of the Lion came next for us, and was a positive experience, even though it was amusingly now meant to be the game you played before Gloomhaven, as a way to learn the game. Streamlined, shorter, and with a narrower plot-line with a couple of branches to get you from beginning to end. We played Jaws of the Lion and it rekindled the joy of Gloomhaven that had been somewhat soured by Forgotten Circles.

So, when Frosthaven was announced, I was intrigued. I didn’t immediately click a kickstarter pledge, but I did watch and listen to updates, and it sounded like they’d course-corrected from where Forgotten Circles went so wrong, so eventually I did back it, and it arrived, and we broke open the box and started playing and it was fun.

At least, at first.

Maybe Just an Outpost Phase We’re Going Through?

Last February, I talked about our ongoing game of Frosthaven and said we were still enjoying it and continuing to play even despite the list of caveats and that’s… no longer true? Or, more to the point, we decided to take a break with Earthborne Rangers, and said we’d alternate, but haven’t gotten back to Frosthaven because no one really wants to. So, what changed between February and now?

Only a few things, but wow were they impactful.

Two buildings: As you unlock buildings in Frosthaven, you gain access to new things. For example, you can enhance cards, or grow your own herbs, or purchase lumber or metal or hide as different buildings unlock. During the Outpost Phase (which, as I mentioned before, we delayed at the end of one game so we could always just do it at the start of our next session when we gather to play because it was such a slog after we’d finished a scenario and felt more like homework and an anti-climax than a reward for completing an scenario) you can visit the buildings to do whatever it is the buildings do, and they’ve been pretty cool. Except, alas, we unlocked two buildings whose function is to make scenarios harder. Thematically, I’m not even sure of the reason they do this (I’m trying to talk without spoilers here) but for one of the buildings, you have to draw a number of cards from its own little deck of ways to modify your upcoming scenario and then choose (at least) one to affect your next scenario. Perhaps it’s getting pushed every time you get hit, or perhaps the enemy has some other advantage, but regardless, it makes the scenario harder. The reward for completing these cards is slowly modifying the Town Guard deck that you use when the town is invaded by monsters, and that’s already a part of the game we found frustrating.

More to the point, this is just one more thing to remember during a scenario—”Wait, did you remember that you get pushed when you get hit? Because if you stay there, you’re going in the trap when it’s the enemy turn.” “Aw crap, I didn’t. No. Okay, I’m not going to do what I thought I was going to do, because you’re right, that’s a bad move. Hold on…”

It got to the point where when we weren’t allowed to go back to town between scenarios, we were excited, because it meant we didn’t have to draw one of those damned cards.

Then we unlocked another building, and it, too, handed out little cards (this time one per player) that—I’m sure you can guess what’s coming—made things more difficult. Or at least, that’s the reaction most of us had at the table, since they’re kept secret from each other until you fulfil the requirement. They’re all different. Also, fun-fact, there was errata with the deck: it’s set up backwards, but we figured that out quickly enough. So now I have this “Trial” card I’m carrying that (spoiler) means I’ll take damage every time one of the other players loots a token—that’ll be fun to keep track of, he said sarcastically—and making my gaming session that much more un-fun as I try not to die because the other players are picking up loot. Which hurts me. Because… uh… trial, I guess?

And when I survive a scenario where we succeed, then I get to… draw a new trial card. Yipee.

The Puzzle Book: We realized we still had a few character classes locked after we retired the last new-to-us character from Frosthaven, and in frustration, we decided to look online (at spoiler-free posts) to see the scenario paths we’d need to follow to finally unlock said classes. We’d actually been pretty much on the right path, it turned out, it’s just a long freaking path and by design that you don’t get to unlock the character classes earlier rather than later, but we course corrected a little to get ourselves there faster and… oh. This unlocks a “puzzle book.”

One of the four of us doesn’t mind puzzles, so we handed her the first pages (which was a cipher) and then she translated it and got back to us and it told us to turn the page and it was another puzzle and repeat a few times but—and this is important—with multiple missteps because there are errors in the puzzles. Now, I’m Mr. Forgiveness when it comes to game errata because I’m an author and I know how that shit gets past dozens of eyes, but oof, this did not bring the fun.

It also started to become harder to keep track of, and the puzzles don’t just have errata, they’re also—to be blunt—poorly designed. The kerning makes them harder to decode, things that involve drawing lines to solve don’t line up correctly, and that’s just the first few we’ve gotten through before we just… stopped. They look or read like escape room puzzles, but worse. Then we hit our limit when it turned out one of the solutions involved remembering text from a scenario we now played over a year ago. We play once a week, and yes, sometimes skip a week to play something else, but there’s no way we would have recalled that information (and there’s only a vague image in the puzzle book to guide you back to it), and it’s beyond unrealistic to assume your players are so involved in your game that they’ll notice a background image kinda/sorta might relate to one of those scenarios we played and maybe we should try and find the conclusion text to that scenario and re-read it?

Hell no.

That’s when we decided the puzzle book wasn’t worth the frustration, and went online to just find the solutions, skipping it entirely. And at that point, my husband said, “Maybe we should just play the scenarios, and skip the whole Outpost stuff all together?”

We all eyed our “Trial” cards and decided… yeah. Let’s just do that.

And then we didn’t. We started playing Earthborne Rangers instead.

Will You Finish Frosthaven?

I don’t know. At this point, it feels unlikely. It’s unfortuante. It went from being a game we were enjoying to a game with some frustrations, then more frustrations, and then even more frustrations. And none of the added complexity that the game rolled out to us as we played landed as more fun for any of us. We are four different gamers who enjoy four different styles of games, but somehow, the longer we played Frosthaven, the more it managed to find new ways to disappoint all four of us.

We still have four locked character boxes, and a lot of side scenarios and the like, but when we gather and talk about setting up a game and we consider Frosthaven? Mostly we just sigh, and then suggest other games.

Maybe we’ll circle back when we feel like we’re ready for the frustration. But that just doesn’t feel like the way you should be approaching a game, no?

Tabletop Tuesday — Lighter Fare

I had a pretty wicked headache and migraine last night overnight, which made me think of how sometimes we gather our gaming group on a Tuesday and we all admit we’re so not up for Frosthaven or Earthborn Rangers and in fact, need an easy go of it.

That’s when we break out the lighter fare games, ones that don’t necessarily require a great deal of braining, or require a different kind of braining that’s way, way less intense and makes us laugh. We had one of those gaming weeks last week (well, we finished off a day in Earthborn Rangers and then decided we just didn’t have it in us to start the new day) and brought out two tried-and-true boxes to play with.

Um, Actually… It’s hard to see in this image, but the airbrushed nature of his face, and the oddly shiny-and-over-pink of Mike Trapp’s face make us believe he wronged the graphic designer who came up with this box.

The first is a kickstarter game I backed based on a YouTube series my husband introduced to me by the same name. Um, Actually… is a nerdy trivia game that’s got a very simple premise: a statement or two about a particular nerd-beloved thing made by one player, followed by the other players jumping in to correct what’s wrong, but much like Jeopardy where you have to phrase the answer in the form of a question, in this case, you have to start with “Um, Actually…”

There’s two things about the tabletop version of this game I really enjoy. The first is an in-born rubber-banding effect where whoever wins a particular round reads the next statement, which allows those who didn’t score the last point a round to catch up, helping to fight what we only semi-jokingly call the “Brennan Lee Mulligan” effect (we skip any episode of “Um, Actually…” he appears in because he’s way too competitive, wins every time in a way that’s just not enjoyable to watch, and his schtick rubs us the wrong way).

The other cool thing is you get to pick your own categories as you put together the rounds of the game, with everyone taking turns, so if you’re solid in your Cartoon lore, you can pick Cartoon cards, while the Horror junkie of the group can chose their forte, and so on. This also leads to laughter when—as seems to always happen—you end up being the Judge on the turn the card you chose comes into play, but them’s the breaks.

The game does also have Shiny Questions and actual real-life applicable knowledge questions, just like the show. The markerboards are used to track points as well as answer those shiny questions, and we almost always, unilaterally, fail the life-applicable questions, to much amusement.

Game-play is quick, and fun, and it’s fun to guess at random on ones you have zero knowledge of (especially when you win doing so).

The Foot Explosion Game

The second “let’s just do this” game in our group’s arsenal is Monikers, which I don’t own but the other people in our gaming group bring over (I think they also have the Serious Nonsense expansion). This is a fun charades-esque game played over a number of rounds where first you each choose a certain number of cards from a deck that forms the pile of cards you’ll be playing through. Those cards have people, pop-culture references, or the like (and also a scoring system of how difficult they’ll be, though we almost never bother keeping score) and so, for example, you’ll end up with a deck of cards like: Slimer (from Ghostbusters), Khan! (from Star Trek), Sad Keanu Reeves (from the meme), Rapunzel (of the fairy tale), and Teddy Ruxpin (the creepy ass bear with a tape-deck in his back).

Once you build a deck you begin a number of rounds. The first time through the deck, you can use any words other than the actual words listed in the card. So, to use a not-so-random example, “that creepy ass bear with a tape-deck in his back” was, indeed, enough to get the other people at the table to say “Teddy Ruxpin!” Once all the cards have been guessed, they go back into the deck, get shuffled up again, and you start over.

Only this time, you only get to say one word. You can be emotive, you can certainly ham it up, but you’ve got one word to make the others guess. Now, they’ve already heard each of these cards once, so there’s also that level of familiarity involved, and given everyone contributed to the deck, there’s also that memory involved as well, but it’s fun as people try to remember said cards if the clue isn’t working for them. (Though everyone got “Teddy Ruxpin” again when I said, “CREEPY.”)

Then you shuffle all the cards up a third time and do charades. No words at all. Finally, if you’re up for it, there are truly strange cards giving you even weirder options for a fourth round—such as “reverse charades”—where only one person gets to guess and everyone else does a group charades activity to try and get them to guess the card. We don’t always do those, but when we did—and did that exact one—Max the husky got very excited to be involved, jumping and barking as the three of us tried to get the guesser to say “Teddy Ruxpin” while I mimed putting a tape in my husband’s back.

It’s low-stress, funny, and has led to a recurring joke or two among our group. The most recent time we played, we had “The Shoe Bomber” as one of the cards, and during the charades round, I stared in confusion at my husband as he mimed things and said, “Foot explosion?” and the look on his face as he realized I was SO CLOSE but hadn’t figured it out made me wish I’d had a camera for the moment.

And we totally call it “that foot explosion game” now.

What about you? What are your low-stress, go-to games for when everyone is ready for something light and easy?

Tabletop Tuesday — Origin Edition Hero’s Handbook

As is likely obvious if you’ve been around this here blog (or my social media) for any amount of time, I’m a big fan of Mutants & Masterminds. Now, I came to it late—I only climbed aboard at the 3rd Edition—but as of this month, there’s a new edition in town (or, well, it’s coming), and I have a copy of the Origin Edition release for the playtest, and… unsurprisingly?

I love it.

What Do You Get?

The Origin Edition Hero’s Handbook is a 240-odd page playtest version of the 4th edition rules, and honestly it’s the prettiest playtest I’ve ever had access to.

It’s so pretty.

After an introduction, you’ve got The Basics. This covers the thematic and narrative elements of the superhero genre as a game; breaks down the notion of “ranks” as the main measurement of pretty much everything in M&M; offers up the core mechanic of the game. That mechanic is the “check.” Generally, most things in M&M come down to a roll of a d20, adding any applicable modifiers or penalties, comparing the final number rolled to the Difficulty Class (DC), and hoping you beat it. For a great many checks in M&M, that’s it.

Sometimes, however, you need to know how well you succeeded. For this kind of check, there are also “degrees” of success or failure in M&M—a neat mechanic whereby your success becomes more successful when you beat a DC by 5, 10, 15, and so on, and the reverse being true when you fail by 5, 10, 15, etc. These “degrees of success” or “degrees of failure” hold hands with rolling natural 20s and 1s as well—called Added Successes or Added Failures—where after you do the math and see how well you did (or didn’t do), you then nudge it up one level of success (for a 20) or down one level of failure (for a 1) and this means those 20s and 1s can turn “almost made it!” into a success, or “just made it!” into a failure.

You also learn about Hero Points here, which is kind of your “I’m going all in!” character resource during a game—allowing you re-rolls or other unique uses of your character’s abilities so your character can really shine when you need them to do so.

I Need a Hero

In Hero Creation you get the shorthand of getting right to the table: a walkthrough of archetype heroes, each with a few choices to make for you to customize said heroes, and I’ve talked about how even the same archetype can be utilized to very different and enjoyable thematic effects before, but as an entry point to getting people around the table and playing, I can’t suggest the archetypes highly enough. There are fifteen archetypes included in the Origin Edition playtest, though five of the archetypes (Metamorph, Mystic, Primal, and Speedster) offer two or three major “sub-types” thereof, functionally offering even more choice, even before a player tweaks their chosen hero, so in a way, it’s more like twenty-two.

There’s still more than enough customization to be done—including the all-important choosing of your hero’s Motivation(s) and other Complications, which is one of the main tools in the game master’s box in crafting narrative moments specifically for the heroes in question—and can also be a way you earn more of those Hero Points.

If you do want to start from the ground up, the chapter also outlines the Power Point system, which is basically the currency you use to build every single part of a character from scratch at various points-per-ranks expenditures, and one of my favourite things about Mutants & Masterminds is the notion of the Power Level—an overall limit to just how strong certain combinations of powers, abilities, skill rolls, and the rest can possibly be, to denote an overall level of danger that keeps the players (and plots) all within the same general bracket while still allowing them a huge amount of leeway in designing the character they want to play.

Power Points are also how you improve, earning and spending them with the same rules as character creation as the game moves on.

The chapters on Abilities breaks down said scores: Strength, Stamina, Agility, Intellect, Awareness and Presence; and also gives a quick chart to roughly explain how “0” is your average human, and then how each rank compares from there (with 5 being the best in a nation—think an Olympian—and 7 being the pinnacle of what a non-powered, regular-type human might attain).

iThis chapter also introduces “new” Abilities to 4e: the Combat Abilities: Attack and Defense, and also tucking in Initiative as one of the Combat Abilities as well. Fans of 3e M&M will notice the lack of Dexterity and Fighting, and if you’re anything like me, once you read through this section, you’ll cheer at the changes, which are quite streamlined and feel much easier to explain to a new player than the difference between Agility and Dexterity (which my brain could never hold onto).

Basically having a singular Attack as a Combat Ability stands in for the absolute catch-all of fighting, but it costs 2 Power Points per rank, just like all the other Abilities, making it the most expensive way to gain each +1 on an attack roll—later, you’ll have options for adjusting all of your close-range attacks (ie: melee) or all of your ranged attacks, and then even more options for adjusting your attacks with specific powers or weapons—and each layer of specificity comes cheaper than that flat 2 Power Points per rank. Similarly, your Defense will apply to everyone taking any sort of shot at you, and you’ll have ways of making it more effective against certain types of incoming attack later via Skills, Advantages, or Powers.

The short version, though, is I really appreciated seeing this particular bit of streamlining from 3e to 4e—it felt like a natural improvement, the balance feels solid, and did I mention I could never remember the difference between Agility and Dexterity?

Resistances are also covered in Abilities, and your hero will have four of them: Dodge, Fortitude, Toughness, and Will. Dodge is getting out of the way of things you might be able to avoid; Fortitude is resisting things like poison, disease, or other things you might resist via your health; Toughness is more basic durability such as how you handle taking physical damage like a punch; and Will handles all the things that bypass the physical and go straight to your brain or mental endurance. These are where those “degrees” of success or failure often come into play, where you’re trying to shrug off as much of an effect that has already landed on you as possible. You’re in the explosion, but how well did you take cover? The psychic has managed to get into your brain, but how much of her influence can you resist? That powerhouse just landed an uppercut that launched you off your feet, but are you down for the count, or still swinging? And so on.

Next comes Characteristics, which includes size, movement speeds, a discussion of senses and how they work in M&M 4e, and most of this will feel familiar—and I really appreciated the very straightforward breakdown of all the qualities inherent to typical human senses. Size, I believe, also got some clever tweaking, especially in how it relates to characters with growth or shrinking powers.

Skills are next, and there’s a lovely tweak or two here, too. Most of the skills are exactly as you’d expect, such as Athletics, and cost 1 Power Point per 2 ranks (and you can split those ranks over multiple Skills). Other Skills require you to pick a Focus when you take them—such as the Close Combat Skill, where you need to choose what that training applies to: say, one of your Power Arrays, or Blades, or Unarmed.

But beyond the notion of a Focus, there’s also the option to use Specializations now. Specializations are narrower focuses that exist within a more general skill, and gain 4 ranks per Power Point (and, again, you can split those ranks over multiple Skill specializations). So, while I could represent my hero’s love of swimming with 2 Power Points in Athletics and gain 4 ranks of Athletics, I could also be clear that he is a swimmer, not a general athlete, and those same 2 Power Points could give him 8 ranks specifically when he’s using his Athletics check for swimming—but no other use of Athletics. Similarly, in the above Close Combat example, 2 Power Points would give my hero 4 ranks in Close Combat (Blades), but I could instead decide to go the specialization route and those same 2 Power Points could give him 8 ranks in Close Combat (Dagger). You could also split the difference: applying 1 Power Point to Close Combat (Blades), and 1 Power Point to Close Combat (Dagger) would create the sense that your character has trained in swordplay, yes—that’s the +2 with any bladed weapon—but when he uses a dagger, that would jump by another +4, and show off how much extra time he’s spent specifically working with daggers in particular. But, again, you don’t have to get this fiddly if you don’t want to. If you just want to make a character who’s good at fighting, no matter what he’s using, you sink those Power Points into your Attack Combat ability (or in Advantages, which come next).

Advantages are very familiar from 3e (some are Ranked in that you can have levels of them, some you simply have or don’t have), but the 4e tweaking here includes breaking them down into types named after the general type of benefit they provide: Combat, Command, Fortune, General, Heroic, Reaction and Skill. Combat and Skill are exactly what you’d think: they add benefits or bonuses in combat or with skills sometimes letting you use skills in new ways. Command Advantages let you lead or direct others in interesting ways. Fortune Advantages are all about Hero Points (your “I’m going all-in!” currency in Mutants & Masterminds, most often used for re-rolls but there are more options here), Reaction Advantages specifically utilize your reaction, broadening the things you can do in response to outside effects (or enemy actions), Heroic Advantages are a very cool category that are specifically limited by Power Level and give the characters options above-and-beyond what they might normally manage otherwise (such as editing a scene to their advantage, or shrugging off a truly bad roll), leaving General as a catch-all for everything that didn’t fit in one of the other categories.

Advantages are where things like grappling, tripping, and disarming happen, as well as breaking down Attack and Defense Combat Abilities into Ranged or Close at a 1-for-1 Power Point cost (a mid-way cost between a Skill and the full Ability itself), and so many more options it can be really overwhelming to try and pick and choose them when you’re first starting out, but—again—this is why I’m all about using the Archetypes for new players. For 3e fans, the Improved Effect Advantage has taken on the heavy lifting of covering both magical and technological creations (either on the fly or prepared ahead of time), and it’s a much smoother process.

“I want to throw a grenade made of gravy so good people have to stop and eat it!” “Okay.” Kevin’s character, “Pestle.”

Powers come next, and is a massive chapter denoting all the various powers of Mutants & Masterminds, how much a rank of each power costs, and typical ways those powers can be tweaked or used with various extras and flaws. The sheer flexibility of Powers in Mutants & Masterminds was always its strength, but you can feel how streamlined and consistent the 4e offering is—I love building characters for M&M, but even my first time through the 4e process I felt the difference here. A lot of it comes down to how powers have been broken down into specific starting points: Damage, say, for the most obvious “this power deals damage” but then how clearly example options are then laid out: Blast (Damage, Ranged), Mental Blast (Damage, Perception Ranged, Resisted by Will), or a Weapon (Damage, Strength-based, Removable). The parentheticals can seem overwhelming at first, but the consistency is there, and after a trip or two through the journey of character creation, it tends to gel fairly quickly. It all just flows nicely, with the formatting and layout further lending itself to ease of comprehension.

And—because I need to say it again—you can make anything. I’ve yet to bump into a player’s concept for a power they want that I didn’t manage to put together with the M&M rules. It’s that flexible. Seriously, one of the people I play with, Keven Hearne (yes, that Kevin Hearne) wanted to create a Quebecois mystic hero who specializes in making potions who throws “gravygasms.” That would be gravy bombs that make people drop everything to stop and eat the gravy they just got spattered with. I went to the rule book and… well, really, that’s a Sphere Area Affliction, Resisted by Will… Okay. Done.

After Powers comes Equipment, though there’s quite a bit of overlap (after all, a Grenade is really just an object that does Sphere Area Damage) and which some of it is about providing players and game masters a menu of commonly offered equipment, it also covers things like Installations and Vehicles. I really liked how M&M 3e handled coming up with player headquarters, and Installations really does this justice, complete with ready-made examples to pick and choose from.

“I’m Dazed and I’ve taken three hits, but I’m willing to risk it!”

Action and Adventure rounds out the chapters with the meat of playing the game—everything from scenes (broken down by some archetypal greats) to rounds (when things shift to combat mode). I really like how a character’s options for a round is now broken down: one standard action (something complex they need to focus on), one simple action (the “doesn’t need a lot of thought” action, such as moving), as well as free actions (yelling “Look out!” to someone, or hitting a light-switch, or dropping something, or any other number of things that are incidental at best). You also get one reaction per round, which happens in response to something or someone else, and doesn’t happen on your turn—and those Reaction Advantages are great for this.

This chapter also goes over how fighting works in M&M, and it’s often one of the stumbling blocks when I introduce new players to the game. There’s nothing like hit points in M&M. Instead, when you get hit (someone makes a successful attack against your Defense Class) you then make a resistance check (most commonly it’s a Damage effect, which you resist with your Toughness) to see how hard that blow landed. If you succeed, you get a “Hit” condition (which is basically an “owie!” that gives you a -1 on further resistance checks against damage), but if you really blow it—say three degrees of failure—it’s possible to be out in one punch, as you’ll get a “Hit” condition as well as the “Staggered” and “Incapacitated” condition. Functionally, even when you roll well, those “Hit” conditions start to stack up, and soon you’re rolling with enough of a penalty that the next hit could be the one that takes you out, which represents the back-and-forth trading of blows really, really well, without the meta-game surety of “well, I’ve got fifteen hit points left, and the worst she seems to be able to dish out is eight points of damage, so I’m good for another round.”

This area is another spot where the streamlining and adjustments from 3e to 4e are visible: the explanations of how people who have specific kinds of invulnerability-based powers react to various Damage effects is clearly laid out (they might not even suffer a “hit” if they have enough degrees of success). Similarly, recovering from various Conditions is also clearly laid out, with examples (alongside how people with Regeneration or Healing powers affect said recovery).

Basically, Conditions are where it’s at from the point of view of the heroes and villains smacking each other around in Mutants & Masterminds, and while they can be a lot to digest your first time out—I use cue-cards, physically handing out the various conditions to players as they’re affected—once you get the hang of them, they’re really great at setting the tone. And hey, narratively they’re a gold mine for the players and game master alike.

I’ve no doubt I’ll be talking more about Mutants & Masterminds here as the playtests continue, but if you’ve got the third edition under your belt and are looking at the Fourth Edition and wondering, I’d suggest making the leap. The streamlining is there (Advantages, Powers, Conditions), as are all the little quality of life adjustments (goodbye Dexterity and Fighting, hello Attack and Defense), and I don’t think I bumped into a single moment where I frowned and thought, I liked it better the other way. I don’t think that’s ever happened before with a new edition.

If you’ve never tried Mutants & Masterminds before? This is a great time to hop on board. And while we’re still waiting for the Masterminds Manual, you can absolutely use the Hero’s Handbook here to put together a quick try-it-out session, as one of the best parts about those Archetypes?

The game master can use them for the villains, too.

Tabletop Tuesday — Pre-Game Knowledge (or avoiding “I say that.”)

Hey all! It’s Tuesday, which means a nerdy gaming post! I was working on some game prep yesterday for one of my Star Trek Adventures games, and it occurred to me that one of the things that’s difficult in pretty much every TTRPG is the “info-dump/I-say-that” problem, and I thought I’d share how—in Star Trek Adventures, Mutants & Masterminds, and even D&D 5e, I’ve done my best to counteract it somewhat.

Sorry, the What Problem?

Info-dumping is a term I’m borrowing from my writing life, and it basically means when you’re reading something and suddenly the author jumps into a major list of facts, qualities, descriptions, or what-have-you that can be somewhat overwhelming and often disrupt the flow of the narrative. The reader needs just enough information to get what’s going on, and that can be a difficult balance. “You arrive in the city of Neo Toronto, so named because…” followed by a long monologue of information that has all the players doing their best to listen but fading fast because does it matter what year the original Toronto was ransacked by the Rapacious Fordites? Probably not. Unless the Rapacious Fordites have returned, that is…

Adjacent to this is the “As you know, Bob,” problem, where you try to smooth it out by having characters discuss things that make no sense for them to discuss in-character in that moment, solely to educate the reader. Like two guards discussing the exact timeline of when their relief arrives. They already know this, why are they talking about it? Because the players listening in need to know when to take advantage of their distraction, of course.

The follow-up to the Infodump or “As you know, Bob” in a TTRPG setting is the “I say that.” Your science officer leans over the cool hooded scanner-reader that makes absolutely no sense but does make them look nifty because of the way it shines a blue light across their eyes and says, “What do I have on sensors?” You explain the sensor readings are showing radiation bursts that are off-the-scale, and the enemy vessel seems to be in danger of an imminent hull breach, but the radiation will make transport impossible! And the player turns to the rest of the group and says, “I say that,” or “I tell them that,” or “I explain the situation…” because you’ve already said it all.

Method One: Stacking the Deck with Pre-Game Knowledge My folder of pre-game knowledge in the campaigns thus far…

Games like Star Trek Adventures have a lot of lore. It’s a massive IP, and while I’m a giant Trek nerd, I can’t (and don’t) expect my players to be. And in fact, in both of my groups, I’ve got a few players whose exposure to Star Trek has been one or two of the shows, not all of them, and its different shows to boot. This is actually great, to be honest, since we’re currently in 2372, and things are going poorly with the Klingon Empire and only about half the characters know what’s coming from having watched this time period play out on DS9. I’m enjoying that, even as I’m doing my best to make sure the stories I’m telling are happening alongside the canon timeline, in different areas of space for the players to play in and make a difference in, even if the larger strokes will still play out as they did.

So, one of the ways I counteract the “I say that” and info-dumps is pre-game knowledge.

In Star Trek Adventures, every character starts with Talents, Values, and Focuses (and one Pastime). Before each game session, I look at my adventure, and try to think of where those Values will interact (they’re the driving force of character growth in STA, and I’ll admit I’m not as good at remembering to challenge them as I should be because my players are just so wonderful with their characters), consider the Talents as well, but then really sit down with the Focuses (and, occasionally, Pastimes).

Then I send each character information they’d know that might be relevant for the adventure that’s about to drop. This works as a great equalizer for the player knowledge vs character knowledge thing, especially for the players who aren’t as familiar with Trek as I am. Here are two random examples from various sessions:

Astrophysics—Plasma drifts, which are more common near places like the Badlands, can spin off and pass through whole star systems or large areas of space for days at a time. They’re generally disruptive, blocking sensors and communications, but don’t often pose a major threat to starships or starbases, though they can cause atmospheric issues on planets, dim sunlight somewhat, and block out the stars at night while passing through a planet’s orbit. Starbases faced with plasma drifts tend to run on skeleton crews for the duration, with their shields up until the storm passes, as the storm makes any normal starbase activity borderline impossible. Communications and scans aimed through a plasma drift are similarly disrupted, which can mean the path of a plasma drift can cut off communication for even longer if the storm happens to be moving on a vector between the two points attempting to communicate. [A plasma drift happens in the DS9 episode “Invasive Procedures.”]

Transporters & Replicators—It’s possible to line up multiple transporter platforms into a series, and to “pass the baton” from one transporter to the next, either from one starship’s transporter buffer to another or from one shuttle to another, for shuttles fitted with transporters. Transporting people this way carries a small risk of a minor synaptic shock from the extended transporter sequence—no real health trauma, but a headache or in more extreme cases unconsciousness once rematerializing is finished—but in cases where the signal might otherwise not carry far enough, a string of shuttles can be the solution. [We saw this in the two-part VOY episode “Future’s End”]

Now, in the episode with the plasma drift (our first game, actually) I mentioned “there’s a plasma drift moving through space around Surplus Depot C-9,” and the player of the Science Officer took the baton and ran with it, pointing out the problems they’d likely have with sensors and communications, and that their best bet was to take their runabout in and see if the plasma drift was the entire reason the depot—operating on a skeleton crew—had gone quiet or not. It wasn’t, of course, but it was way more immersive and fun for the science officer to explain the situation to the crew than me.

Ditto when a dense field of asteroidal debris heavy with gallicite particulates limited transporter range and the crew needed a way to beam survivors from escape pods from within the churning field of asteroids before said escape pods were smashed to bits. The Ops officer knew they could maneuver small shuttles amongst the rocks in a kind of chain and get people out that way, since the ship itself was too large to get close enough without getting pummelled by asteroids.

What’s even better? It all comes with their own character voices. The way Steve’s Lt. Xon explained the plasma drift was nothing like the way Lin’s Ensign Grix explained the transporter solution. I love that.

I also love that I can pepper in some pre-game knowledge that isn’t useful as a red herring or two, which I try to keep to a minimum, but if the crew are going to come up against some individuals injured by ion radiation, I might give them a list of causes of ion radiation. One of them will be correct in the instance they’re about to face, but the rest won’t. But they’d know this as the competent Starfleet Officers they are, and they can investigate.

These examples are from Star Trek Adventures since that’s what I’ve been working on most recently, but I’ve always done this with other game systems as well. For Mutants & Masterminds, I use the character’s Skills (and especially their Expertise Skill, if any), and for one of my players, Evan, who’s hero “the Corvid” has a kinda-sorta-precognitive ability where things that will be important are “shiny” to him, I hand him a list of stuff he’s bringing with him that’s shiny. He tends to find a use for all of them, though sometimes not the use to which I figured they’d likely be put. (For example, if I know he’ll facing off against invisible assailants, I might pass him a bag of glitter to fling into the air so they’ll be visible by omission.) In D&D, I’d look at the skills in which the characters are proficient, as well as maybe passing along some class-related information that makes sense. I made sure Kevin’s ranger knew about the local flora and fauna with his Nature knowledge, for example, and I love giving Marie’s bard information through sonnets and poems and songs. I don’t usually write the songs, to be clear, but I do describe them and their narratives, and it’s a lot of fun to have Marie’s character deliver the information to the rest of the group because she’s so brilliant at improv and seeing the rest of the players react to, “Oh, hey, I know a sea shanty about this—want me to sing it?” is always a treat.

Method Two: Direct Messages (or “The Telepath Problem”) Ah Lt. Stadi, we barely knew you. Your brother, however, is the tactical officer of the USS Bellerophon in my campaign…

Another parallel issue that pops up all the time in both of my Star Trek Adventures games—because both of my groups have Betazoids—is the telepath problem. They can read minds. Reading minds can derail a great deal of narrative options, and planning for it is always a major consideration before a session. For a lot of plots, it doesn’t directly matter, though it can provide an edge I hadn’t considered.

Rescue operation? “Can you sense anything, Counsellor?” Interrogation? “Is he lying?” First Contact? “Can we trust them?” And so on. Now, I promised myself at the start of the campaign that I’d not allow myself more than one episode a session where the group encountered a new species that was telepathically unreadable. In canon, Ferengi can’t be read, and the same is true of a number of other species, but I didn’t want to just cheat and say, “Oh hey, how about that? During this investigation it turns out you just happen to be talking to people you can’t read. Huh.”

But one of the best things about my campaigns being remote-played over the internet is the ability to send a direct message. I try to cut down on the “everything is silent while I’m typing” problem with some pre-game prepwork—situations where I think the telepaths in the two groups will want to get a read on people I pre-write in my notes, so I can just cut-and-paste them into a chat—but sometimes the best option is just to type in that little window.

I also keep a handy “That was a lie,” and “They’re telling the truth.” nearby to cut-and-paste as well. Sometimes I’ll just say it, but there are often situations where the telepath is in a room full of people—other players, NPCs, and more—where they shouldn’t just blurt out “she’s lying!” Having one character have the knowledge, and the other characters know they’ve got it but not having it themselves can make for a much more dynamic and enjoyable scene.

Othertimes, I might just say “He’s lying,” sure. It depends on the moment and what’s going on and if I think it’ll adjust the tension in a good way.

Similarly, any time I’m faced with a sensor scan, tricorder reading, or other information that’s on the other end of a roll, I can simply cut and paste the result from my notes into the correct character’s private message box, and then they’re the one relaying the information to the rest of the crew. Especially with pre-printed adventures, this is so immersive and the work is already done for me!

It’s even kind of cool to watch the players on screen eyeing their screens while they read the information because that’s what the characters are doing, right? You can totally pretend they’re looking at their panel readouts.

(Listen, I already said I was a Trek nerd, okay?)

Oh, and the analog version of this works, too: in face-to-face games, I’ll often prepare notes or handouts or drawings. I had a whole thing in a Mutants & Masterminds game where a town called Evansville’s “Welcome to Evansville” sign kept… changing. I’d pass what the character saw to them on a piece of paper. Also a child drew the monster they were seeing. And so on…

Method Three: Blue-booking

This one can be a lot, but it can also be super-rewarding. Blue-booking could be a huge blog post all of its own, with its origins and practices—and, oh, hey, it is!—but the short version is sort of a group writing project or shared little snippits from characters or NPCs the players can read and work on between sessions.

(I may or may not have written them an entire novella once, but that was Evan’s fault for something his character set in motion but anyway I digress…)

Both of my Star Trek Adventures groups take part in this—it’s likely not surprising given my groups are made up of mostly authors—and it’s honestly some of the most fun I’ve had in gaming ever. I also did it with my Mutants & Masterminds group a few times, with news reports and this social media account known as “Hero Tracker!” where they discussed superhero news.

Star Trek has a built-in go-to for Blue-booking via logs. Both my player groups have NPC captains, so I often have the captain make a log or take part in a blue-booking session between episodes, but I can use those blue-booking moments to deliver more pre-game knowledge for future episodes, or just flesh out some characters, or locations, or other bits of lore so when the next session starts and I mention someone or something, the group already knows about it.

And it’s not me saying, “The USS Hydrus is a Constellation-class starship captained by someone your Captain seems to know well…” Instead, here’s a part of one of those little blue-booking interludes:

They were due a supply delivery from the Starfleet Corps of Engineers after Delta Station 8—they’d have enough room in the Cargo Bays after their visits to the first four stations were done for the next batch—which meant someone was bringing them the next set of deflector emitters, EPS conduits, and everything else…

A slow smile spread across her face as she read information she’d only barely managed to glance at at the start of her mission—no point in getting ahead of herself, she’d thought at the time. But the answer to the question “who are we meeting for our supplies after Delta Station 8?” turned out to be a good one.

USS Hydrus. 

She smiled. She eyed the chronometer, then tapped her a comm to the Bridge. “Lomar, can you get me a channel to Captain Wert on the Hydrus?” She wondered if her request had paused whatever music the Lieutenant had decided to expose the swing shift to, a habit she found a little charming, honestly. 

“I’ll transfer it through to your Ready Room as soon we’ve got it, Captain,” Lomar said.

She didn’t have long to wait, and her smile returned at the sight of the human with his mostly-dark hair, which greyed to either temple, and the dark brown eyes that had a way of making her feel particularly seen. 

“Koria,” Captain Douglas Wert said.

Also? She really liked the way he said her name. Which reminded her…

“For the record,” she said. “My tactical officer noticed that, back when you dropped off Nizin.” Kerev crossed her arms. “She’s been asking me about ‘Captain Doug’ ever since.”

“I’d had over a week with that man on my ship, can you blame me for taking some pleasure in the sight of you?” Wert’s lips turned up at one side.

“Save me from charming humans,” she said, but she knew she was flirting right back. “I have a question.”

“I hope I have answers,” he’d shifted from flirty to all-business, and she appreciated it.

Way more fun than me telling the group there might be something going on between Captain Wert and their Captain, and I get to throw in little reminders about the Support Crew (Lt. Lomar, one of the night-shift bridge officers who has a love of music; Lt. Tanan, the security officer having a close enough relationship with the captain to tease her). And since I’m planning on including the Tactical Campaign Rules once things really go poorly with the Klingons at the end of 2372, now when the players are assigning the USS Hydrus to one of the Points of Interest, there’s a bit more weight to it.

I mean, that’s the Captain’s boyfriend they’re sending out into danger.

What about you? How do you face down the challenges of the info-dump and the “I say that” in your campaigns?

Dogs Don’t Break Hearts — Now Available Wide!

Hey all! It’s August 1st, and that means that Dogs Don’t Break Hearts is now available everywhere, not just in Canada! Huzzah for queer boys and rescue dogs! I loved writing this book, but don’t just take my word for it.

“An impactful story about taking accountability, the perils of letting others control your narrative, and, most importantly, the healing power of dogs. Dogs may not break hearts, but this book mended mine.” — Kristopher Mielke, author of Losing Hit Points and Lonely in Happy Town

“This heartfelt story crackles with authenticity and sparkles with joy. The characters are people you want to be friends with, the feelings are utterly familiar to anyone who has ever felt like they’ve messed up everything, and the message is one of acceptance and celebration. Plus, it has dogs, and dogs make everything better.” — Michael Thomas Ford, author of Suicide Notes and Every Star that Falls

“Dogs Don’t Break Hearts is for anyone who has had their own heart broken, anyone who roots for the underdog, or anyone who has found love in a cold nose and warm heart. Readers will commiserate and cheer for Beck after his relationship goes to the dogs and he stumbles into a second chance alongside some rescue canine counterparts. Two opposable thumbs up from this human and four dewclaws up from my pups.” — Paul Coccia, coauthor of On the Line and author of Leon Levels Up and Recommended Reading

After being gaslit by his ex-boyfriend and losing his friends’ trust, Beck volunteers at a pet shelter, where he finds canine comfort and a new romance.

A gentle romance about a teen, gaslit by his former boyfriend, who takes solace in volunteering at pet rescue—where he finds his life brightened both by a special dog and a promising new relationship. With the help of his loyal canine friend, he learns to trust again and open his heart to love.

This gentle romance is a journey of healing, friendship, and the transformative power of connection—both with animals and with someone who sees him for who he truly is.

Edited by Allister Thompson; Cover Design by Tyler Cleroux

This is my second Hi-Lo queer YA for Lorimer’s Real Love series. If you don’t know what a Hi-Lo is, worry not! I didn’t know either, until I was introduced to it by author Paul Coccia (who you should check out because he’s fabulous). Hi-Lo is short for “High-Readability, Low-Complexity,” or—to put it easier, which is the whole point—fun to read stories that are accessible for readers who might be below the typical reading level for a young adult their age. This can be for a multitude of reasons—English as a Second Language, reading disabilities, or just being a reluctant reader, among others—but Dogs Don’t Break Hearts and all the Real Love line books are still about queer young adults like them, with stories that mirror their lives.

This time, we meet Beck, a young man who was all set to join the rest of his high school queer friends as a group when they chose where to go to earn the volunteer hours needed to graduate. That was the plan, but unfortunately a bad break-up with his boyfriend derails everything. He has to come up with a plan B and lands on working at a dog rescue, where he meets Coffee (the brown husky on the cover), some other volunteers, and thinks he’s got at least that one part of his life all worked out right up until he learns the guy his boyfriend dumped him for? Yeah, he also volunteers there. Super.

But not everything is as it seems—or even as you’re told it is—when you’re a young adult figuring all this stuff out for the first time.

Dogs Don’t Break Hearts includes some of the unique frustrations of queerness and dating: specifically, the “small pond” problem when you realize everyone knows everyone in the smaller subset of the community, and how a breakup can also mean shattering the rest of your support network since your friends are often entirely shared in that same pond. It also deals with gaslighting jerks, awesome dogs, and how sometimes you can accidentally give one person too much space and focus in your life.

You can find Dogs Don’t Break Hearts via the publisher, your local brick and mortar, via Books2Read, or anywhere queer YA is sold.

Tabletop Tuesdays — Mutants & Masterminds 4e: “Sound & Fury”

Hey all! It’s Tuesday, and recently, Green Ronin announced the fourth edition of Mutants & Masterminds. To say I am excited would be understating, and I’m lucky enough to have gotten a sneak peek or two, and I’ve been skeeting on Bluesky about how much I love the Archetypes included in the 4e Origins playtest as and example of how Mutants & Masterminds’ flexibility is done so freaking well: even when you start with the Archetypes (which I totally suggest doing as an ease-of-entry point), you can do so much. And you’ll be able to see that for yourself on July, 31st (by visiting the Green Ronin Gen Con Booth 101), or heading to DriveThruRPG, or The Green Ronin Online Store to get your copy!

Soon my collection will grow again!

Mostly, what I mean is this: When you want to try out a new tabletop role-playing game, creating characters is often the most frustrating process. Archetypes let you offer shorthand to the players (ideal for their first go) but even if two characters decide to use the same Archetype? No worries, they aren’t going to be identical even if their numbers are almost exactly in synch.

Even better? As a GM, you can use the Archetypes to create villains on the fly, too. Add a layer of theme or “flavour text” to the various stats, and… you’re done with all the crunch. No, really. You can spend the majority of your prep time on motivations, plot, and all the rest. I freaking love that about M&M.

Let me show you what I mean, just with the Blaster, which you can visit there with a simple click.

Sound & Fury

I’m a big fan of using a phrases and idioms for superheroes and supervillains, so allow me to introduce “Sound & Fury,” a pair of villains who aren’t exactly big on subtlety or cleverness, but have the power to pull off being a challenge owing to the fact they’re masters of blasting with fire and sonic energy.

Energy—When you look at the Blaster M&M Archetype page, the first note about customizing is choosing your energy type, so with this duet, we’re going with Sound and Fire. Sound is going to be the more subtle of the two—I’m picturing her as being more sensitive to sound itself, where as Fury is a simple guy: he likes to watch things burn.

Skills—No specific choices to be made here as written on the template, gaining Acrobatics (show-offs), Deception and Persuasion (I mean, when you can throw fire and sound around, people tend to listen to you). Insight and Perception round out the bunch, which makes sense for characters who are relying more on their powers than any real training. They’ve learned to keep their heads up. You can always nudge skill points around, but both Sound and Fury tend to rely on being quick and mobile and a bit scary, so leaving them be as is would be fine.

Advantages—So, hopping up to the start of the start of the template you see Blasters have Ranged Attack 4 and Ranged Defense 4, then get to choose two Advantages for the character. For Sound, I’m thinking Evasion and Improved Initiative to give her that sense of “I felt that coming” through soundwaves in the air. For Fury? Critical Shot (where if you land a Critical Hit you get to use your Reaction to fire again) and Split Shot (because sometimes you want to burn two things at once).

Powers—Both Blasters get an Energy Aura, which provides them with a damaging layer of protection (in Fury’s case, it burns; in Sound’s case, it vibrates). This has no customization or choices as written in the Archetype, but even just by virtue of the two different energy types, you can see how it would play out differently in a game. For one thing, Fury is quite literally on fire. But Sound? I can picture her reaching out and touching a giant window just to watch it shatter.

The Blaster also starts with an Array where you choose three different versions to define the character’s core ability of, well, blasting. This is where the major choice of the Archetype is placed. For Fury, the choices seem pretty obvious: Energy Blast, Blinding Beam, and Blinding Flash, but he’s far, far more likely to do the Blast thing than faff about messing with blinding people. Still, when Sound is around, maybe she can talk him into it a bit more. Speaking of Sound, choosing Energy Blast, Stunning Blast immediately strike me as the obvious choices, but down at the bottom of the page, it points out you could swap out Dazzle Sight for Dazzle Hearing with the Blinding Beam, making it a Deafening Beam, and yes, I wish to do so for Sound. When you’ve got the two of them coming up against a hero, their one-two punch can be to blind and deafen said hero, and that’s going to be trouble for a lot of heroes.

Finally, they can both fly.

Options—Every Archetype comes with two extra points to nudge some stats around with. For Fury, I’d spend one on another Advantage: Snap Shot, so he can snipe at anyone who moves within range of him as a reaction (once per round, of course), and the other on a +1 to his Fortitude (making him just that little bit tougher). For Sound? I’d add +1 to her Will (making her just a little bit steadier) and +2 ranks to her Perception skill, which I’d again explain as her sound sensitivity just tuning her in (no pun intended) to her surroundings.

Boom. Two villains, ready to rumble (literally, in Sound’s case). The players won’t really have any idea that the two characters are almost identical as far as their stats go, only that one of them is trying to burn them to bits and the other one is beyond loud, and their initial one-two punch means one member of the team is already stumbling around blinking and yelling “I can’t hear anything!” really loud because they can’t hear anything.

Roll for initiative.

A Little More Customization…

As they are Sound & Fury are totally ready to go toe-to-toe with some heroes, but if I had more time, and I wanted to tweak the characters even more, I’d probably take those Archetypes and adjust a few things:

For Skills, I’d shift Fury’s Persuasion into Intimidation, and his Insight into Athletics. He’s a bully and a jock, and given how Mutants & Masterminds has those lovely Social interaction options, even in battle, I’d rather him do his version of those tricks via intimidation.

Under Powers, at the bottom of the Archetype page, it mentions how you could have a character transform into energy instead of having the energy shield, and I really like that for Sound, so I’d swap out her Energy Aura for Sound Form (Insubstantial 3; which leaves her with two more points to spend elsewhere, meaning she’d get two more options). I’d also be tempted to swap her from being a flyer into something more sound-based: splitting the Flight 8 (2 points per rank) into Speed 8 and Leaping 8 (both of which cost 1 point per rank), with the idea that she can make sonic-powered jumps, or create a kind of sound-wave she rides along a surface.

The options—which Sound now has two more points for—I’d put another +1 into Will (again, because she’s the steadier of the two by far, and also when you can turn insubstantial—and thus aren’t going to be hurt by a punch—heroes tend to try attacking you with mental attacks) and then put one point into Enhanced Senses for Ultra Hearing (letting her pick up sounds beyond the normal range of human hearing).

Tabletop Tuesday — Earthborne Rangers (Introduction)

It’s Tuesday, my head feels like it’s going to snap in half, and mostly it’s the weather’s fault, which is why today’s topic feels particularly on point: a game where our damage to the earth has been ridden out, people are returning to exploring the planet post-recovery (though things are still not perfect, people have definitely learned to work with Mother Nature, not against her) and thus, the players are brand new explorers known as Earthborne Rangers.

Why Only an Introduction, ‘Nathan?

I wanted to have a much more thorough review of this game by the time I talked about it, but see above re: headache, and also something else happened: almost our entire scheduled play time was taken up by… getting ready to play.

I need to preface here with one thing: once you get going, I think the game will absolutely drop into a groove, but something—iconography, word choice, the way the instructions are written, just… something—about this game doesn’t seem to slip into intuitive at any point during the initial learning curve.

It’s a deck-builder, and your character is created by first choosing “aspects,” which are the currency of all actions. Basically, you’ll get a 3, two 2s, and a 1 in four aspects of Awareness, Spirit, Focus, and Fitness. Now, choosing this felt a little “Am I supposed to know what the difference between Spirit and Focus and Awarness is?” and so we had a few minutes of reading and discussion of the rules and mostly it came down to “vibes”—which, I think, ultimately is probably the way to go for your first game. Just… choose.

Then you choose your Ranger’s background (how they grew up, and we all just sort of decided “meh, pick one” here and then chose more-or-less at random from the options of each background in more of that going-with-vibes way). After that, it’s time for character specialization (I’d liken this to their character class or profession: what they’ve learned to do—easily the most overwhelming as you’re trying to choose cards that will be giving your character its core functionality, but… what does any of the text on the cards mean? It’s hard to tell when you haven’t played yet). This was a pretty big stumbling block, but we let our backgrounds guide us here. I was a Traveler as my background, so I nabbed Explorer as my profession. Each profession also comes with one of two roles you can play under (represented by a single card that just stays in play).

It took us so long to get this far. So long.

I chose the one that seemed less complicated, because by the time we’d all chosen our cards from the specialty, we’d glanced at the clock and realized we might not even get to actually playing at the rate we were going. Again, I think this came down to not understanding what choices we were making in the context of the cards we’d already chosen from earlier: I was left with the impression that my aspect of 1 in Awareness would mean playing the Awareness cards would be pretty darn rare for me, so I really hemmed and hawed over which of the green cards I’d be adding to my deck, if any. Everyone else seemed to have a similar sticking point of not quite getting how to balance their deck and which cards to choose (because you don’t just get all of them, you choose from the pile and leave some behind).

Next comes their personality (some adjectives, basically, and another set of cards with iconography that had us all scratching our heads and re-reading the rules), and finally, their outside interest—which is kind of clever, it’s left-over cards from other people’s specializations. Because we had four players, eventually, all the piles were empty.

If I have one criticism to level at Earthborne Rangers right off the bat, it’s this: one more page of instructions with suggested character builds for two, three, and four player campaigns. We all would have cheerfully accepted a “just try this” approach from step one. We could have undone it after if we wanted to try building a character from scratch after, but it felt like a glaring omission to have no “if you want to get started, try this character load-out.”

All that to say, our ranger deck generation took us ages. We had to keep re-reading the instructions, weren’t sure we were doing it right, one of the players realized they had to have “Conduit” cards or their character wouldn’t work at all, and I had the very wrong idea about how my aspects would work even after I read and re-read the instructions, but eventually, we were ready to play the introduction scenario of… delivering cookies.

Game On

In the end, we only had time to play the introduction scenario of delivering said cookies, but it was pretty obvious from the start that one of the strengths of Earthborne Rangers is in the fluff and the artwork. Everything is gorgeous, the text is somewhere between amusing and meditative, and while we were quite literally delivering cookies, we started to get the hang of the turns, how (some of) our cards worked, and I had my lightbulb moment of finally understanding the symbols and iconography and how the cards worked alongside the aspects—icons denote which cards can be used to boost or add to the overall cost of any given action, which means I wasn’t truly locking myself down as much as I thought I was way back when I picked my aspects card—and also we soon realized the “basic” actions weren’t “also-rans” but actually ones we’d be using quite a bit. It’s odd to have a hand full of cards and just as often think, “I should just use these to do a basic action,” especially coming off Frosthaven, but the basic actions often seemed to be the way to go.

That isn’t to say we didn’t have flavour and feel to each of our characters. I started to “get” some of my card combinations, and it’s really enjoyable to have a little run of “okay, I’m doing this, which means this, but also, I get to boost your attempt to do that and we’ve made more progress here, too.”

The “progress” mechanic of putting tokens on a card until you’ve got enough on it to clear it, explore it, or otherwise have dealt with it is a core mechanic that quickly lends itself to the group focus, and since it’s a co-operative game where you don’t even have to take turns in a particular order (but no one can go twice in a row), there’s a great deal of flexibility and cross-table chatter with “Okay, if you did that first, and I helped, then he could do that, she could do this, and finally, I can finish up with this, and I think we’ll have it sorted?”

The randomness comes from a deck of cards that have four modifiers to each aspect on them, as well as one of the “trigger” symbols that activates special abilities of the various locations and creatures currently in play on any given turn. But mostly, you’re all aimed at a particular goal, and working together to get there in this strange new Earth.

It’s a legacy game, in that you track your progress on a campaign sheet, your decks change as you play (I’m told, we’ve not gotten that far yet), and there’s a story unfolding (so far it’s been a story about cookies, but I trust that will perhaps get deeper in time). That said, it’s clear you could undo everything and start over without too much effort—just putting all the cards back where they belong in their little holders and starting anew.

I think we choose some pretty standard options in the combinations (One of the players paired Artisan with Artificer, for example; and I’ve got the Traveler background with the Explorer profession), but you could definitely shake things up thematically by altering the core options of character creation, and I definitely imagine even from just our short time with it that two players would have a different experience than four.

Initial Thoughts

They’re very initial thoughts, but so far, so good, with the caveat of the learning curve. I originally tried to watch a how-to video, but bounced off two different videos after finding both just as confusing as the rule book itself. This one really does feel like a game where until I played, I didn’t get it, and people talking me through it and reading the rulebook just wasn’t enough. It’s an odd feeling, and a rare one—I usually understand easier from having people explain things to me, but something about the iconography and the perhaps-too-much-vibes in the terminology chosen for the various components and aspects of the game just seemed to make it beyond my grasp until I was doing the thing. After that, it clicked in pieces at a time, but was much, much easier to parse.

I’ll come back with a more detailed walkthrough later, once we’ve played more, but I will say that it definitely felt like a breath of fresh air after being so repeatedly frustrated with Frosthaven (which is a whole other post for another day). If nothing else, we’re looking forward to a game set in a vibrant world with wonderful flavour with a truly different feel.

Tabletop Tuesday — Nyberrite Alliance Mission Brief: “With Open Arms”

It’s Tuesday, so I’m here chatting about gaming nerdery once again, and I’m here at the end of my series of eight Mission Briefs centred around the Nyberrite Alliance I hope you might find of use for your own Star Trek Adventures games. This one jumps ahead to 2385, specifically at the point in time where the attack on Mars has just happened, and everything around the refugee crisis unfolding in Romulan space is suddenly left uncertain. This episode returns to the R’Ongovian Protectorate, one of the key players in my version of the Nyberrite Alliance.

It also gives the players a chance to finally face down a recurring villain through these eight episodes, and to highlight that even in the worst of times, the smallest acts of aid are still important.

I originally wrote these while I was fleshing out the Nyberrite Alliance for the Shackleton Expanse Campaign—I wanted to have more political influences in the Beta Quadrant while the Khitomer Accords were collapsing in 2371 to 2373, and the Nyberrite Alliance was a great throw-away line from DS9 that suited my needs.

I decided the Nyberrite Alliance included the Nyberrites, the Balduk, the R’Ongovians, and the Halee (at least to start with), and then came up with the eight mission briefs that touched on each of those four main member species twice each. “Tradition,” “A Plague of Forgetting,” “Caught Red Bladed,” “Neutrality Helps the Oppressor,” “Red in Tooth and Claw,” “A Classified Incident of Diplomatic Sensitivity,” “Still Waters,” and now this one, “With Open Arms.” I hope you enjoyed this little trek. (Sorry.)

With Open Arms

Suggested Era of Play: The Next Generation era, 2385

Tactical Officer’s log, supplemental: “The attack on Mars has left Starfleet—and the Federation at large—reeling, and the I have no doubt the fallout will be felt across both the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, but I don’t have time to contemplate possible futures. Right now, the news is out about the destruction of the Romulan rescue fleet, and fear, anger, and desperation are all running hot. 

We’ve been sent to the border between the Qiris Sector and the R’Ongovian Protectorate at the request of the Nyberrite Alliance—they need an escort for their local effort to aid the Romulan relocation efforts, and given no one knows when—or if—the Federation will be able to mobilize more aid, our actions will be a much-needed sign of Starfleet presence in these uncertain times. 

The Nyberrite Alliance has managed to get permission for us to join them into the Romulan Neutral Zone long enough to pick up refugees at Lambda Hydrae II, officially as an escort for protection given the instability in the region. The Klingon, Romulan, and Federation borders are all nearby, as are the eyes of a dozen different independent worlds. Everyone will be watching us to see what happens next. We can’t afford to do anything wrong.”

Suggested Spotlight Role: Security Officer, Conn Officer

Synopsis
The Synth attack on Mars has destroyed the Federation’s plan to move the massive numbers of Romulan system refugees away from their unstable star. With the plan in tatters and the Sol system still trying to make sense of what has happened, the players find themselves sent to aid the Nyberrite Alliance in one of their efforts to move some Romulan refugees from a temporary relocation facility on Lambda Hydrae to T’Onfai III, a R’Ongovian colony world within the R’Ongovian Protectorate itself. The R’Ongovian Protectorate is an area of space “above” the Qiris sector on the galactic Z-plane, and where the borders of the Federation, Romulan, and Klingon empires meet in tense tetrahedron of neutral territory currently made all the more unstable by the disastrous attack on Mars. 

On arrival, the crew learn that the Nyberrite Alliance corsairs aren’t up to the task of the volume of displaced Romulan citizens currently flooding to the outlying systems of the Romulan empire by any means available to them, and are prevailed upon by the always empathetic R’Ongovians to take on passengers of their own. 

The journey begins, and the crew learn just how unstable this area of space has become when the threats the R’Ongovians had feared prove to be all too true, and the players ship is called upon to defend the trio of Nyberrite corsairs from a group of opportunists. Once the would-be thieving bullies are dealt with, however, it appears someone used the crisis moment to cover violence on the players’ ship, and they’ve got a murder investigation on their hands, and a ship full of suspects.

Solving the murder, keeping tensions from boiling over, maintaining the diplomatic relationship with the Nyberrite Alliance, and delivering the Romulan Refugees to T’Onfai III will give the crew more than enough to do, all while an uncertain future looms over the Romulans, the Federation, and the future of this part of the galaxy.

Directives
Support the Nyberrite Alliance in their efforts to relocate Romulan refugees from Lambda Hydrae II to T’Onfai III.

Major Beats

Breaking News—The attack on Mars has thrown Starfleet and the Federation into a tailspin of uncertainty, and the Admiralty contacts the players ship to put them on high alert for any signs of further hostile activity. At the same time, the Nyberrite Alliance reaches out to request an escort for their efforts to move a number of refugees from Lambda Hydrae II, and Starfleet decides it’s an excellent opportunity for the crew’s ship to show the flag and send a message of stability. The crew meet the three Nyberrite corsairs at the edge of the R’Ongovian Protectorate, and learn they’ve been granted permission to enter the Neutral Zone, strictly as an escort vessel for the trio of corsairs, and the ship is soon underway. The Captain invites the leader of this particular trio of vessels, Commander Rani L’Sir, to meet with the crew, and the R’Ongovian woman is as empathetic to any of their concerns—especially reports of increased piracy in the Qiris sector—but notes the situation is most dire for the Romulans. When the ships arrive, however, it’s immediately apparent there are far more Romulans present on Lambda Hydrae than expected—it appears many Romulan and Reman refugees have been making their way away from their homeworlds by whatever means they can, but this is as far as many of them were able to come. 

All Aboard—Commander L’Sir prevails upon the crew to take a reasonable amount of Romulan and Reman refugees aboard as possible without unduly taxing their vessel’s security or environmental capabilities. Give the players chances to role-play against the uncertainty and anger of the refugees, who’ve been promised the Federation and Starfleet would be coming for them all, and now have no way of knowing if that’s true; similarly, this isn’t likely what the crew were intending to do, and operations and engineering and medical officers will have to scramble to prepare the vessel for taking on passengers. Once the crew are underway alongside the three corsairs—likely with a sense that they’ve done all they could and it still might not be enough—sensors pick up incoming ships with weapon signatures, and the crew find themselves staring down the weapon ports of a group of opportunists who think a convoy of refugees will make an easy mark for quick profit—especially with a Starfleet vessel to blackmail for their safe passage. The leader of this group of thugs requests photon torpedoes and some antimatter pods in exchange for safe passage, and while normally their vessels would likely not pose a significant threat to a Starfleet starship, defending the other three corsairs—which have been outfitted for moving people, not engaging in tactical encounters—skews the odds in the favour of the pirates. Allow the crew to come up with whatever solution they’d like to the demands, be it finding a way to protect the corsairs while disabling the pirates or outflying them, outwitting them, or some other diplomatic or barter-style resolution. If it comes to blows, however, and things start to look dire, consider allowing the arrival of some Fenris Ranger vessels to scare off the pirates, perhaps creating a new relationship for the crew to build upon later. However it’s resolved, this face off with the pirates turns out not to be the worst of it, however, as a report comes in that one of the crew has been found dead and mostly disintegrated—it appears someone killed them and tried to use an EPS relay to destroy the evidence, but wasn’t wholly successful.

Murderer Among Us—Attempting to uncover a murderer with the limited time remaining in the journey to T’Onfaii III is difficult enough; but with tempers high and a ship full of Romulan and Reman refugees who believe the Federation is about to turn its back on the promises it made to the families and friends they’ve left behind, there’s also no shortage of suspects, either. When investigating motive, the murdered crew member should turn out to have been involved in the events of “Tradition,” “Caught Red Bladed” and/or “Red in Tooth and Claw” (preferably more than one of the previous missions) and going over the identities of all the Romulan and Reman refugees on board picks up an inconsistency: someone is travelling under the ID of a Romulan biologist who is—at least according to Federation intelligence—already settled on Vashti. With the clock ticking on the arrival at T’Onfaii III, the crew should piece together they’re looking for an old friend: Talina, the former Tal Shiar agent who apparently made it all the way back to her home territory only to find out she’d need to evacuate it. The dead crew-member recognized her, forcing her to act quickly. This time, Talina has few options available to run, and depending on how the crew choose to act, she might attempt any number of desperate actions in her attempt to escape to T’Onfaii III. If captured, the R’Ongovians would prefer to try her and return her to their legal system for her previous crimes, which the crew might struggle with given her previous escape and the fact she has killed one of their own. A legal and diplomatic discussion, assuming Talina is captured alive, should underscore just how complicated this area of space has become.

Minor Beats
If the crew have made any solid relationships with other members of the Nyberrite Alliance throughout these Mission Briefs, have one or two particularly favourite characters join Commander L’Sir on the three corsairs, taking part in the relocation effort mission and granting the players an opportunity to both reconnect with old friends as well as raising the stakes if those vessels are in danger. Random interactions with other Romulan and Reman refugees—some humbled by their situation, some angry—can offer red-herrings, and opportunities for the players to role-play Starfleet officers living up to their ideals while interacting with former enemies.

Key Non-Player Characters
Commander L’Sir can be presented by Taris, Vorta Overseer, but adjust her Values to “Understanding Others is Understanding Ourselves” and swap the Deception Focus out for a Focus in Logistics; change her Special Rules Diffuse the Tension (as the Talents of the same name), and Radical Empathy (available here). Talina can be represented by Major NPC Major Verohk, Tal Shiar Agent, with the addition of a Sabotage Focus. Use any Romulan or Reman NPCs you’d like to create red-herrings, angry background characters, and to up the tension. For the Pirates vessels, use the stats for B’Rel-class Birds of Prey (without Cloaking devices, and representing heavily modified freighters and transports turned to piracy) but use a number of them that would stretch the player ship’s ability to counter. The pirate leader can be represented by Daimon Skel, swapping his species out for any other humanoid you’d like and giving him a Values of “A bully and opportunist, but not (yet) a murderer.” 

Conclusion
As the Federation enters a shaky, unstable time, if the crew manages to get some of the Romulan and Reman refugees to their new home in the R’Ongovian Protectorate it might feel like a very small win indeed, but taking the opportunity to show the importance of doing what one can in the face of impossible situations should ultimately feel triumphant. As for Talina, depending on how often she has come out on top against the players, finally bringing her to justice (either of Nyberrite Alliance or Federation in nature) should hopefully grant a measure of closure. If the crew had to compromise some of their usual values to pass the pirates, or find handing Talina over to the Nyberrite Alliance in the name of diplomatic relations a bitter pill to swallow, perhaps making sure to have a Romulan or Reman take the opportunity to genuinely thank them for their aid might take the sting out. If former  enemies can be humble, perhaps the future isn’t so dark after all. 

 

Tabletop Tuesday — Nyberrite Alliance Mission Brief: “Still Waters”

Hey all! Sorry this was late—I’ve had multiple migraine days in a row, and am getting this in under the wire. This is the seventh of eight planned Mission Briefs for my Nyberrite Alliance series. These Mission Briefs follow the typical format for Star Trek Adventures game from Modiphius, across a decade or so with the intention of revisiting the people of the Nyberrite Alliance and adding their influence on Alpha and Beta Quadrant space. This one takes place in the early 2380s, when Romulans are being evacuated, but before everything goes to hell on Mars and things fall apart. It takes place on a mostly oceanic world, where the semi-aquatic Nyberrites have a Colony, and have made space for the Romulans.

Hope you enjoy!

Still Waters

Suggested Era of Play: The Next Generation era, early 2380s

Science Officer’s log: “Our patrol mission has been cut short by a request for aid from the Ril II Colony. Ril II is a Class O world, with only seven percent terrestrial surface located almost entirely in equatorial island chains, where the Nyberrite Alliance has built a major temporary and permanent habitation centre for their efforts in aiding the local Romulan relocation effort. 

The Nyberrite colony has been utilizing oceanic chute-drones to create the currents in order to create the agricultural yields projected to be necessary as displaced Romulan citizens begin arriving. Something has taken multiple drones offline, and if they’re not restored soon, the effects on the aquatic crops will mean Ril II—and the Nyberrite Alliance—won’t be able to uphold their planned support of the relocation efforts.”

Suggested Spotlight Role: Science Officer, Conn Officer

Synopsis
Arriving at the oceanic world of Ril II, the crew learn they’ve been called by the Nyberrite Alliance to aid them with an ongoing technological failure that threatens the Nyberrite Alliance’s aid to the Romulan evacuation.

Ril II has only 7% terrestrial land in equatorial island chains, but the Nyberrite Alliance has built temporary and permanent settlements there as a staging area for Romulan refugees to settle or to move further into the Nyberrite Alliance territory. 

This settlement has been utilizing massive chute-dragging drones to adjust the natural currents of the oceans to create more favourable sea-farming options in order to feed the large number of Romulans living on or moving through Ril II, and something has gone wrong with those drones, which threatens the crops and the viability of the settlements and evacuation plan.

The crew have to track down the drones, which have gone offline and drift with the tides, restore their function, and figure out what happened to them in the first place—which appears to likely be sabotage.

Local ecologists are opposed to the drones for the impact they’ve had on the local ecology—and appear to make easy suspects, but the alternate option is even more damaging: permanent constructs in the oceans and gravity-adjusting satellites that will be far, far more impactful. Tracking down who stands to profit from the harsher technological solution, as well as facing-off with the saboteurs in the depths of Ril II’s oceans, will make for a different environment than the crew is used to exploring. 

Directives
Aid the Nyberrite Alliance in understanding what took the drone-chutes offline, and in restoring them to function.

Major Beats
Current Events—The crew arrive at Ril II and meet the governor of the Ril’Orna Island resettlement project, Governor Oletta Q’Q’Qolt (“Koult”), and the head of the Oceanic Current Maintenance Project, Kish-V’R’Yin (“Yeen”), where they learn of the ongoing problem with the chute-drones. While normally Nyberrite Alliance vessels and crew would be assigned to aid, a not-insignificant number of their vessels are aiding in the evacuation of Romulan citizens, leaving the Alliance spread thin—the Romulan Empire has given the Nyberrite Alliance ships permission to take direct routes through Romulan Space, something Starfleet has yet to negotiate. As such, Starfleet is very keen to have Ril II succeed, as any failure here will only set back the entirety of the massive undertaking. Unfortunately, the offline drones have dropped from scans and aren’t responding. Science officers will need to model current and drift patterns to target ship’s scanners to locate the errant chute-drones, which should still be on the surface given their floatation superstructures, and then the crew will have to take aquatic-capable shuttles (or utilize Nyberrite surface-craft) to do repair work on site at the various offline drones. The drones are a local invention of Yeen’s people, and while they’re not as effective as installing larger, gravimetric satellites and undersea turbines to create stable currents, they have far less damaging effects on the local sea life, especially at depths. That said, if the drones can’t be brought back online, Governor Koult is ready to install the more permanent—and ecologically impacting—solution given the need, and has sourced the technology out of Freecloud.

Dead in the Water—Upon arrival at the first drifting drone, examinations reveal all the automated navigational systems and algorithms used to calculate real-time course-corrections in the offline drones have failed, apparently overwhelmed to the point of crashing—and it appears their networked guidance systems are causing a cascade failure. No cause is immediately apparent. All the internal logs in the manual control interfaces are gone, with no record of anyone coming aboard other than the usual routine systems checks, and while the drones could be brought back-online with manual software updates one by one—and set on live remote control from land] in the meanwhile, it will take much time and effort. While the crew work, another drone goes offline, and then another—the cascade failures are picking up speed. Sabotage begins to look more and more likely, and with no greater suspect than preservationist Nyberrite ecologists who believe even the “lesser” impact of the chute drones is too much—and while they’re not taking credit, they’re happy to hear of the failure, and obstructing in other ways. If anyone points out that the failure of the chute drones will actually mean the harsher, more environmentally destructive option is likely to occur, they change their tune and swear they had nothing to do with it.

Tides of Fortune—Science or Conn officers will have to consider looking for a pattern in the failures to get a jump ahead of the saboteurs, and eventually locate—and detain—a shielded aquatic vessel has been utilized, with comms equipment specifically designed to interfere and overload the chute drones. Fighting in an ocean is not much different from fighting in space, but whatever vessels the crew are working with are likely going to be less maneuverable and the saboteurs are far more used to aquatic operations. Starship weaponry would be massively damaging to the very ecosystem the crew are attempting to minimize the damage to with the chute drone method, so backup from orbit shouldn’t be anything but a last resort. Ultimately, the saboteurs attempt to disable the crew’s to the point it requires a rescue mission and flee while the players’ ship is otherwise engaged, but either way, the technology of the vessel is enough to point the finger at the consortium on Freecloud who have the alternate current-modifying technology ready to be sold to the Nyberrite Alliance, an attempt to turn a profit on a situation where people might otherwise starve.

Minor Beats
If the crew previously encountered the Nyberrite Ambassador in “Neutrality Helps the Oppressor,” they should make a return here, especially if the Ambassador had not wanted to get involved in protecting the Federation and its allies from the Dominion, and they swayed him—this rescue of the Romulans is only possible because the Federation prevailed in the Dominion War, and the ambassador will admit it. Any crew who are oceanographers, environmentalists, or just interested in seagoing vessels should have a moment to shine here, as well as discuss the environmental ethics of adjusting the course of the ocean currents of Ril II.

Key Non-Player Characters
For the chute-drones, use the stats for shuttle pods, but adjust them to function in ocean environments with their massive parachute-like enclosures that quite literally create ocean currents by working in streams. For the saboteurs, you can use the stats of a Runabout if the players are using a shuttlecraft or equivalent, but whatever the players end up using, ensure the saboteurs have the technological edge—victory for the crew should come from outwitting, not outgunning. Maquis NPCs can represent the ecological enthusiasts, while Orion NPCs can stand in for the Saboteurs.

Conclusion
Uncovering the method of sabotage and restoring the drones to do their work is the minimum, but the ideal would be taking the saboteurs currently on Ril II into custody, and allowing the Nyberrite Alliance to try them for their attempt to profit off the Romulan refugees. Those in charge back on Freecloud are likely to escape conviction, if only because Freecloud exists outside anyone’s jurisdiction, but their company will be persona non-grata with the Nyberrite Alliance, Federation, and Romulan Empire, which will likely stymy their bottom line.