I Fly By Night

Next Project - Codenamed Avian Knights

2012-01-26T18:48:00.002-05:00

Now that IHW: Pigboats has gone out to betatesters, I can start blocking out my next project. Right now, I'm calling it Avian Knights, but that's a codename that will most likely change if I can think of anything better.

AK is set in a world of floating skylands and no mountains. When a hill range gets too big, it rips away from the land and floats up into the sky. The land below is full of monsters, so the people live in the skylands. When they can, people capture new skylands and tie them onto their own, to make their skylands bigger. The largest skylands are the size of France, includng their captured territory, but most are much smaller. All are mountainous, and over time become terraced.

People travel through the air in one of two ways. One way is by shuttlecock ships. these are long, decked vessels with a keel of Shipstone. Shipstone is a straight-grained stone that floats, but wants to go in the direction of the grain, and resists moving in other directions. The keel is jointed about two thirds of the way back to form a rudder, but the deck continues on straight over the rudder. There are six or eight pole masts arranged radially around the nose of the ship, hinged so that they can fold back along the keel. They each have a vane sail flaring out each side to the end, then rounded over, so that the ship looks like a shuttlecock. Beneath the rudder stone is a big spined fin reaching down. The shuttlecock ships have a limited altitude range, and cannot do down to he surface.

The second way is by riding big birds. These riders are the Avian Knights. They are equipped with a limited number of weapons - lances, javelins, swords, crossbows, daggers, and maces. These weapons can be of several different ranks of quality. Normal weapons are just that - normal. Ancestral weapons draw strength from association with a family, and only members of that family can wield them as anything more than normal weapons. Holy weapons have been consecrated by a particular religion, and only members of that religion can wield them as anything more than normal weapons. If wielded spectacularly enough, for long enough, Ancestral and Holy weapons can become Legendary weapons, which are more powerful than either.

The birds are large and varied, belonging to different species and breeds of those species. Each has different qualities, and the breeds can refine these qualities. They are non-sapient, but intelligent, like a parrot or raven. They can carry one heavily armed and armored knight each, or two lightly armed and armored knight. The air combat system will be adapted from In Harm's Way: Dragons!

The people of each skyland will be different - like a nationality or ethnicity on earth. Some will tend to be larger, some smaller, some stronger, some more dexterous, and all will have different cultures. Individuals will - of course - vary. All the people will be human.

The game will use the StarCluster 3 system, with a short, broad skill list. The only magic will be that inherent in the setting - the big birds, the floating stone, etc. - and no-one will have any spells or magical powers. Chargen and advancement will be by training packages & background templates only - Mod your culture's average stat's, pick a background template and a training package, and you are good to go. you earn access to different training packages using a variant of the IHW Notice system. You put your Notice into two pools - one to buy skill packages, and one which accumulates, called Renown. Renown can be used in game as well - you get famous, songs and poems are written about you, impressionable members of the public will swoon... you become a celebrity.

Any comments?

-clash

Pigboats Playtest

2012-01-25T15:01:00.004-05:00

I sent out the final playtest version of IHW: Pigboats today. If you are interested in being a playtester, now's the time - let me know!

I've added a lot of things, tightened up stuff, and re-written a bunch, but I know I've missed some things, and you may have some awesome ideas that can be included. All you need is to express an opinion to me!

While I clean up the final text and any illos I'm lacking, I'll be blocking out the new RPG codenamed Avian Knights. Look for playtesting on that this summer!

-clash

In Harm's Way: Pigboats Playtest Session 13 - The Clusterf*ck

2012-01-21T23:51:00.002-05:00

Sometimes something so wrong will be soooo right!

The session started with the four boats of the wolfpack beating feet out of Osaka harbor. Commander Jerkin radioed all boats to head south around Shikoku and Kyushu to get to Nagasaki. It would be a three day journey.

The next night, as they were on the surface, all four boats picked up a plane flying at the edge of the SD RADAR's range, about 6-7 miles out, dogging the pack. The commanders of the four subs were discussing this over the radio, when Cmdr. Hunt of the Remora figured they were probably eavesdropping on the sub's radio chatter. He said to Jerkin "Well the target is Oita, up to the left of the passage into the inland sea, right Commander Jerkin? Right sir?" Silence from Jerkin. "Isn't that totally correct, sir?"

Jerkin replied "Oh, uh, right! All boats, turn to starboard and head up towards Oita."

Now Hunt had meant for the Japanese plane to overhear that - which it did - and assumed Jerkin would go the other way. Jerkin didn't know how he could communicate this to the other subs without using the radio. He could have sent Morse code over the SONAR, but he decided instead to go up to the minefield across the strait and all a bullhorn conference.The subs headed into the strait and he called for the subs to gather together in front of the minefield. As they started to form a close square, the Signals officer of the Barracuda told Cmdr Montgomery that he thought he saw something fleeting and small on the scope, but couldn't tell what it was. unfortunately, Cmdr Montgomery didn't tell the others.

As they gathered and began shouting to each other in a square, the commander of the Japanese 2-man midget sub patrolling the minefield - the fleeting and small contact - couldn't believe his fortune. Here were four American subs, two overlapping two, in the most perfect close range shot he could dream of. He fired both his torpedoes, one at the leftmost sub, the other at the rightmost, and if they missed, they should definitely hit the ones behind.

The Commanders were interrupted by screams from their Signals Officers below - "Fish in the water! From starboard!" The men at the AA guns of the Seahorse and Remora, on the right hand side of the huddle, fired at the torpedoes lancing toward them, and blew both just before they hit. The explosion rocked all four subs severely to the left, throwing the XO Joe Lewis from the Seahorse's bridge; all three officers, Cmdr Montgomery, XO Tom Wiggins, and Weapons Officer Alan Peterson along with three of the four lookouts from the Barracuda's bridge; Cmdr Hunt, XO Howard, and all four lookouts from the Remora's bridge; and Cmdr Jerkin and three lookouts from the Clownfish's bridge.

In a flash, Cmdr Bullock on the Seahorse, whipped out the rope he always carried with him and lassoed Mr. Lewis, who had broken an arm and a leg in his fall, handing the line off the two of the lookouts. He ordered the other two into the rubber raft while he accelerated to starboard.

On the Barracuda, the only one left in the bridge was one lookout. He screamed "Man overboard! MEN Overboard! Hell! Everyone's overboard!" The Signals Officer called for the Engineering Officer to take command and for the ship to go forward full. He began running forward as the boat accelerated forward. Cmdr Montgomery LUCKily landed on a nearby dolphin, who allowed him to latch on. Wiggins was totally prepared for this - he was always prepared for everything - and splashed cleanly into the water, inflating his Mae West. Mr. Peterson had a rougher time, breaking his left arm and leg in the landing, but he managed to surface and dog paddle with one hand and leg.

Commander Hunt LUCKily latched onto the horns of a floating mine, as he couldn't swim a stroke, and shouted for rescue. On the Remora, XO Red Howard caught the rope rail broken off from the cigarette deck as he flew through the air, and climbed back aboard.

Cmdr Jerkin landed well and began swimming, looking for his men, but he could see nothing in the night.

All four Signals Officers informed their bridges - although no-one but a solitary lookout was on the Barracuda's bridge - that a large group of surface ships were coming up fast behind them. They had walked into the trap they had set themselves.

Red Howard ordered a shot strait back with the stern tubes, two each at two of the four old destroyers he saw speeding towards them in the aft TBT. He then ordered a right hand turn to follow the Seahorse. Two of the four torpedoes hit, sinking one ship, the other two going through the wreckage. Behind the four destroyers, a light cruiser opened fire with its six inch guns.

Bullock on the Seahorse ordered a difficult 90 degree shot from the stern tubes, sinking one destroyer and damaging another as they swerved to fire torpedoes at the American subs. Meanwhile the Quad Heavy AAs slammed into the midget sub, which sunk in a trail of bubbles, though no one was sure just what it was.

On the Clownfish, Mr. Vanderbilt ordered the deck gun to fire, sinking the damaged destroyer.

Cmdr Montgomery's Dolphin LUCKily went after the Barracuda, and caught up with her as she entered the minefield, dolphins being very fast. Cmdr Montgomery clawed his way up to the deck, panting with exertion as the Barracuda plowed into the minefield, not hitting ANYTHING through pure random chance.

Shots from the cruiser began splashing all around the Barracuda. LUCKily one banged off her hull, deflecting into the ocean. LUCKily another had a defect and curved past over the periscope shears. LUCKily, a third shot missed the Remora ahead, as the exploding destroyer under it knocked it upwards a bit. The PCs were just about out of LUCK...

The Seahorse was curving around, and loosed a salvo from its bow tubes at the last destroyer, which sank. The quad heavies shot two torpedoes out of the water. The five inch deck gun began shooting the cruiser, damaging it. The Remora also shot up torpedoes with its AA guns, and fired the front 5 inch deck gun and the rear 4 inch gun at the cruiser, hammering it and sinking it.

The Barracuda's Engineer finally got to the bridge, and panicked. He did manange to order some men aft to man the AA gun, but could not get any situational awareness of where the barracuda was and what she was doing. Cmdr Montgomery got to his feet, shouting "STOP THE BOAT! WE'RE IN A MINEFIELD!", then ran forward to the bridge. With incredible good fortune, the Barracuda still had not hit a mine. Cmdr Montgomery got to the bridge and ordered all full reverse, just in time to stop them from finally hitting one directly in their path.

The rubber boat had meanwhile picked up Hunt and Jerkin along with two lookouts. The Barracuda backed slowly the way she had come through the minefield and out. She picked up the rubber boat, and all left the area to go far out to sea, where the commanders finally got back to their boats.

This was a crazy, confusing clusterf*ck, and everyone enjoyed the hell out of it. It was one of our best gaming nights ever! the action set in right away, and never slacked off right to the end. Sometimes a screwup is the best thing that could have happened in a game!

-clash

In Harm's Way: Pigboats Playtest Session 12 - The Wolfpack

2012-01-15T16:14:00.002-05:00

So the group decided to play the two-player subs version of the wolfpack rules, each player running two characters, troupe style. The Subs were USS Clownfish, CO Cmdr. Chris Jerkin (Wolfpack Commander, Jerkin's Juggernauts) and XO Lt. Nicholas Vanderbilt, ; USS Remora, CO Cmdr. Jason Hunt (Wolfpack Second in Command) and XO Lt. Edward "Red" Howard; USS Seahorse, CO Cmdr. Lamarr Bullock and XO Lt. Joe Lewis; and USS Barracuda, CO Cmdr. Will Montgomery and XO Lt. Tom Wiggins. All subs are Gato Class, with Clownfish and Seahorse carrying 22 Mark 18s and 2 Mark 27s each, and Remora and barracuda carrying 24 Mark 14Cs each. The pack is sailing out of Pearl, with refueling in Saipan. Time is February 1945.

The orders for the pack - from Squadron Captain Leonard Mardukas, are to investigate the Naval/Civilian ports of Yokohama near Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagasaki on Kyushu, and to do as much damage as possible. A week out of Garapan on Saipan, they surfaced at night into the teeth of a mounting gale. Weather checks by Bullock, Jerkin, and Hunt all concurred that it was a taiphoon, and estimated 5 days duration, during which they would be in danger of weather damage from the wind and waves. they stayed off the coast at first, but on the second night, the Clownfish was swacked with a monster wave while surfacing, jamming the bow planes in a hard rise position.

The weather was too dangerous to even attempt a repair, so Jerkin left the pack and tried to find an island to shelter behind. Penetrating the minefield between Shikoku and Honshu, he found Ishima island, where he could get in the lee of the island, protected from the storm. Even there the wind was fierce and the waves rough, so when the Engineer went out to fix the planes, he was swept overboard, and hauled out injured. The Engine Room Chief went out next, succeeding in repairing the bow planes, but on his way back, he was swept off the deck and killed instantly when his head struck the bilge.

Jerkin ordered the rest of the pack to retire behind Ishima, but Seahorse was damaged when a mine went off nearby. LUCKily, she wasn't sunk. The next night, with all four subs on the surface behind Ishima, Red Howard on the Remora - furthest out of the subs - heard diesels in the night. Cmdr. Hunt ordered the Remora down, and radioed the others, who also submerged. It turned out to be a destroyer, nosing around. Jerkin almost fired on her, but luckily decided not to, in case he got a radio message out before sinking. I say luckily because any torpedo in those seas would have exploded prematurely for sure, hitting the face of a wave.

After five days, the storm calmed down, and the Pack laid off Osaka harbor for two days, watching the traffic and charting their route through the minefield. For this attack, Jerkin ordered Barracuda to stay outside the minefield to protect the rear, while the others came in on the surface in a hard, driving rain.

Clownfish stayed near the entrance to the minefield, while Remora went after the civilian harbor, and Seahorse attacked the Naval harbor. Clownfish sent 2 fish at each of three frigates patrolling near the mouth of the harbor, sinking two and damaging the other. Seahorse fired four at a Heavy Cruiser and two at a Light cruiser, sinking the heavy and heavily damaging the light. The five inch gun fired twice and finished him off. Remora fired three fish each at a huge cargo ship and a big troopship. Both were hit with two torpedoes, sinking both.

The damaged frigate got two torpedoes in the water at Clownfish, who shot one with her AA and avoided the other. She then sank the frigate and a corvette with gunfire. Seahorse swung around, heading for the minefield, sending two torpedoes each at a pair of destroyers, sinking both. Meanwhile, her Quad Heavy AA tore two corvettes apart, but the Combat Reload in the front tubes completely failed. Remora likewise swung around and skedaddled, firing two torpedoes at the next biggest cargo ship, which sank, and one each at a small tanker and a troopship. The tanker's fish missed completely, but the troopship exploded in a Lucky Hit. The rear four inch and the Dual Lights raked the tanker, but she stayed afloat, and the rear four inch sank a close by corvette. The front 5 inch deck gun hammered the western harbor gun emplacement with supressive fire. Outside the harbor, Barracuda laid on a perfect suppressive fire on the eastern harbor guns with her five in gun, completely silencing them while the subs exited the harbor.

At the end of the session, everyone really liked the Wolfpack, but felt a bit disenfranchised by the fact that they could not affect the torpedo or gun hits beyond using the subs' traits. We decided to try a three-PC-per-sub next time, with the players playing a Weapons Officer on each sub.

-clash

in Harm's Way: Pigboats Playtest Session 11

2012-01-11T00:06:00.001-05:00

Before the encounter with the convoy off the Korean coast, with the Coelocanth in the middle of the sea and seeing nothing, the Skipper had overheard Tokyo Rose mention the Coelocanth by name on her broadcast, saying that the boat was currently in the Yellow Sea. Being Commander Mardukas, he decided to play with her mind. He sent out a message to her - broadcast in the clear - saying he didn't care that she knew where he was, send along whatever she had and he'd handle it. Then he went to Korea, and sank the entire convoy.

Fresh off that, the Skipper broadcast again to Tokyo Rose, saying "Hey Rose! We just sank one of your convoys off the south coast of Chosen. Every single ship, including a big monster that was carrying enough oil to light japan for a month. Well? I'm waiting..."

With that, of course, he didn't hang around. At a conference with his officers, He proposed they head up the west coast of Chosen (Korea) a bit and hit the harbor of Mokpo - He had rolled a successful Strategy check, but with a poor quality. Lieutenant Wiggins, who had an excellent Strategy quality roll, said "Why don't we go over here to this big bay (puts finger on Qingdao on the chart) on the Shantung peninsula? This looks like it would be a great place to group together convoys." The Skipper said "That's a terrible idea, Wiggins..." He stroked his beard. "I've been thinking, we really ought to check out his big bay here on the Shantung Peninsula (puts finger on Qingdao on the chart) 'cause it looks like the perfect place to organize convoys."

After checking with his officers, he decided to send the XO, Lt. Cmdr Bullock, off on a special mission to climb Mt. Laoshan from the south, and spy out what was in Qingdao. Mr. Bullock took two seamen - informally played by other players - in with a rubber raft, while the boat stayed quiet and monitored traffic in and out of the port.

After landing at night on the shore to the east of Qingdao, Mr. Bullock and his men began the trek up the mountain when they came to a road, just as four Japanese trucks filled with soldiers roared around a curve right at them. The three men huddled in the brush at the side of the road as the trucks ran by, but one man on the last truck caught a glimpse of one of the men's faces and stopped just ahead. The soldiers piled out of the truck and began searching the brush. Mr. Bullock and one of the men pulled deeper into the brush, but the other climbed a tree. One of the soldiers spotted mud on a low branch of the tree and began shouting for assistance. The sailor in the tree began making hooting noises and threw mud from his shoes at them, then leaped from his tree to another. One of the soldiers said "That's a big fucking monkey!" and they climbed back into the truck and drove off.

They continued up the mountain, finding a lone stone hut at the top as it started to rain. They crashed in, guns in hand, but it turned out to be the hut of an ancient Chinese hermit. Mr. Bullock made friends with him with chocolate, and they were invited to stay in the hut out of the rain. Mt Laoshan is 1100+ meters high, so they were well up in the cloud, and couldn't see a thing of Qingdao until the rain stopped. one of the men - the one who pretended to be a monkey - was convinced the hermit was a secret martial arts master, but Mr. Bullock didn't buy it.

The rain burned off the next day, and Mr. Bullock - a master at observation - made a remarkably thorough and detailed chart of the big bay, showing gun emplacements, ships at anchor - the big bay was choked with ships, some of them huge, and the escorts - two fast frigates, and armed yacht, and two corvettes. he also charted the minefield at the bay's entrance by observing and logging the path taken by the patrol boats through it.

After leaving some chocolate with the hermit, they headed off down the mountain. They had just reached the secluded beach they had landed in, and were digging up the rubber raft, when they heard a Japanese patrol scrambling over the path above them. They dove doe the brush as six soldiers and an officer came down from the path. They had obviously heard the digging, adn could now see the partially uncovered raft. The officer detailed four men to search the brush, while two fixed their bayonets to slash up the raft. Mr. Bullock couldn't allow that, so a short but very intense firefight erupted. Afterward, mr. Bullock killed the wounded Japanese with his knife as the two men finished digging up the raft. Lamarr saved the officer, though he was badly wounded, and they met up with the Coelocanth at the rendezvous.

The Skipper went in to interview the Japanese officer, who was really bad off and being tended by the pharmacist's mate, Doc, and got him to talk some about the defenses around the harbor by telling him he would let him suicide if he talked. The Skipper set a knife down beside the man's bunk. He grabbed it and lunged at the skipper, and failing to hit, took his own life. The captain had originally planned to take the battery of eight inch guns at the mouth of the harbor, and use them to pop off the ships like fish in a barrel, but he realized there were too few men on the Coelocanth to do that based on the Japanese officer's information.

The Coelocanth snuck into the bay the next day submerged, ghosting past the corvette in the safe lane through the minefield by laying over next to the mines. The lane dog-legged several times before coming into the clear. The Coelocanth surveyed the mass of anchored ships in the bay, selecting the juiciest targets. The sub had ten mark 14Cs loaded - six forward and four aft, and four more reloads forward. The Skipper selected the two fast frigates to receive two fish each from the forward tubes, with one more each at a huge, 16,000 ton tanker, and a big troopship.The leftmost frigate was hit with one torpedo, damaging it, and the rightmost frigate was hit with to, sinking it.

The single torpedoes were not enough to sink the tanker or the troopship, and the Coelocanth swung about to shoot it's stern fish while Mr. Montgomery made an awesome combat reload check, reloading tubes 1-4 almost as soon as they were fired. The sub fired three torpedoes from the aft tubes, holding one in reserve, at the huge tanker and troopship. The tanker was hit with one torpedo, while a second missed - running erratically, and managed to hit and almost sink a small 3000 ton tanker by pure chance. The troopship was hit and sunk, while chaos erupted in the harbor.

While the Coelocanth was swinging around again to present her forward tubes to the enemy, Mr. Bullock, who was Attack Officer on the periscope - the Skipper sat this one out, watching his men get some experience in new roles - saw two torpedoes coming from the wounded frigate and managed to thread the needle between them. He fired one more torpedo at the frigate, one more at the big tanker, and two at a big cargo ship. All three sank as the slow corvette and converted yacht finally came up on the boat. The Coelocanth swung back into the minefield and tried to escape.

The corvette made its run first, shattering the water around the Coelocanth with six ashcans, which caused some fair damage before the sub made it past the first turn. After that the converted yacht made a run, inflicting more damage, but the Coelocanth was able to slip away around the next turn. There was the corvette they has slipped past to get into the harbor, this time alert and ready.

This corvettte played a different game. Getting a firm lock on the sub, she made run after run on the Coelocanth, dropping only a couple of depth charges on each run, and dinging the sub more and more. Finally, the skipper ordered her to run straight at the next turn, then rurn to starboard at the last second. The pursuing corvette overshot, and blew up in her own minefield. the sub surfaced and manned the guns, as she was down to one torpedo, with the other corvette and the converted yacht pursuing. Surfaced, she was faster than either, and could outrun them while fending off attacks with her 5 inch guns.

Once she was on the surface, though, the three shore batteries could get a much better shot at her. In a running gun battle, the Coelocanth sank the pursuing corvette with gunfire, while the yacht returned to the harbor to protect its charges. The Coelocant, though, was hit by an eight inch shell. This normally would have sunk her, but the quality of success was terrible, and the boat got away minus both its periscopes.

After a tough journey back - they couldn't use the periscopes when surfacing to see if anything was up there - they got back to Pearl. The Skipper was promoted to Captain - thus out of command of the boats and onto Admiral Lockwood's staff - while Mr. Bullock and Mr. Montgomery were given their own boats. Captain Mardukas also was awarded the Medal of Honor for the U-boat incident at Chichi-jima.

Next week Mr. Montgomery and Mr. Bullock join old friend Mr. Jerkin and another new commanding officer - played by the Skipper's player - in a four sub wolf pack. Each will also play the XO of another boat in a troupe style move. Lt. Commander Jerkin will be in command.

-clash

Print Cover for In Harm's Way: Pigboats

2011-12-31T17:49:00.002-05:00

Here's my current candidate for the print cover for Pigboats. Comments are very welcome!

In Harm's Way: Pigboats Playtest Session 10

2011-12-31T14:21:00.002-05:00

This session started out with working up to Will Montgomery's wedding, and ended up in the Yellow Sea.

Lamarr had arranged with his friend - Mrs. Lockwood, the Admiral's wife - to have the ceremony at the garden of the Admiral's house. He hoped that might impress Amanda's mother, and ease some of the pressure her mother was putting on her. Will went to collect them for the rehearsal, and saw an envelope on the hallway table addressed to Amanda from Bo Larsen, her old boyfriend. While waiting for the women, he lifted the envelope to the light and tried to read it through the envelope, but that didn't work too well. Despite being severely tempted to snatch the letter and read it later, he didn't and put it back on the table.

The women went with him in the Admiral's staff car out to the Admiral's house. Lamarr, talking costs over with Mrs. Lockwood, determined that getting the rich Vanderbilt to pay for this wedding would a just compensation for his hideous practical joke the day before, and began scheming ways to make him foot the bill. Amanda's mother was subdued, awed by the Admiral's obvious blessing for the wedding, though it didn't make her like Will any more.

Back at the Coelocanth, Lamarr suggested to Will that they should make Nick Vanderbilt pay for his practical joke through his wallet. Will decided to use his skills learned in a bad childhood to sneak into Nick's room and steal the money. Will got into Vanderbilt's room with no problem, and began picking opening the lockbox in his footlocker. It wasn't easy, and by the time he had the lock picked and the lockbox opened, Will heard Vanderbilt in the corridor outside conversing with Beau Tambeaux. Sweating bullets, Will went through the contents - a bag of gold double eagles, a bag of dut diamonds, and four checkbooks with apparently over a million in each one. Will tore out a check from one of them, locked the lockbox back up, and put it back into the footlocker. He got up and bluffed his way through as Nick came in the doorway through the curtain.

Using the logbook, Will and Lamarr forged his signature on the check, made out to the caterer for the expenses, and sent it off to them. Later on, Lamarr confessed what they had done to Vanderbilt, who laughed it off, and said he would have been happy to pay for it., but next time, just ask.

After the wedding, and a short honeymoon on a dude ranch on the Big Island, Will returned to the ship walking bowlegged, having never ridden horses before. This was, of course the occasion for much ribald humor at his expense. Meanwhile, the skipper ordered Will to get a canary for each of the Torpedo Rooms, as they were carrying a partial load of wakeless Mark 18 electric torpedoes, which generated hydrogen when they were recharging. They had also mounted a new 5 inch deck gun aft to match the one forward.

The crew gathered and headed off to their new patrol area, the Yellow Sea between Korea (called Chosen at that time, and a part of Japan since the last century), Manchuria (Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet-state), and occupied China. The Yellow Sea is pretty shallow throughout, being filled with sediment from the huge rivers that drain into it.

The Coelocanth poked around in the middle of her patrol area for several days without a sniff of a convoy. The Skipper, perusing the maps, tried to figure out where the huge amount of traffic which should be going through the area was hiding. Making a Strategy check, he decided the traffic was running up between the mainland and the chain of steep-sided islands off the southern and western corner of Chosen, north of Quelpart Island. The water was fairly deep there for the Yellow Sea, and he ran the Coelocanth up between two islands where any convoy would have to run straight along across her bow, silhouetted against the cliffs.

A couple of nights later, they struck paydirt. A small convoy of two big tankers, at 10,000 and 7500 tons, a smaller tanker of 3000 tons, a big cargo ship of 9000 tons, and an enormous whale factory of 16,000 tons; all escorted by a pair of corvettes. First came a corvette, ahead and to the right, then the whale factory and the biggest tanker, followed by the small tanker, then the cargo ship and the third tanker, with the other corvette taking up the rear.

The Skipper ordered two electric fish each fired at the lead corvette and the whale factory, with two Mark 14Cs fired at the big tanker after a wait to make sure the faster Mark 14s hit at about the same time as the slower electrics. After all fish were away, he ordered a turn to starboard to line up his aft tubes at the rear of the convoy. Then the lead corvette vanished in an explosion, with simultaneous multiple hits on the whale factory and the tanker following quickly. As the trailing escort picked up speed and swung out towards where the Coelocanth had to be, the skipper ordered two electrics fired down her throat, with a second pair fired at the third tanker.

The whale factory and leading tanker were on fire and heavily damaged, and were only able to make about three knots each. The trailing escort also went up in an explosion from the second torpedo. Then the trailing tanker exploded and went down in a rush. This left only the small tanker and the big cargo ship able to maneuver at any speed. They began booking it out of the trap as the Coelocanth turned to port. Mr. Montgomery made a terrific success on his combat reload, getting four tubes ready to fire before the captain needed them. The skipper put a torpedo into the cargo ship and a pair into the small tanker, with the tanker exploding and the cargo ship damaged.

The Skipper ordered the two five inch deck guns manned, with the aft deck gun under Mr. Montgomery shooting at the whale factory and the big tanker, and the fore deck gun under Mr. Vanderbilt aiming for the cargo ship. With some excellent gunnery, The three ships were polished off, giving the Coelocanth the rare distinction of a clean sweep - an entire convoy sunk.

Meantime, Tokyo Rose began mentioning the Coelocanth in her nightly broadcasts, starting a war between her and the skipper. More on that later.

-clash

In Harm's Way: Pigboats Playtest Session 9

2011-12-30T21:41:00.004-05:00

Session 9 began with the USS Coelocanth's crew at liberty for two weeks in Pearl. Mr. Montgomery went to see his girlfriend of two years, Amanda. Amanda originally was seeing Montgomery alternately with an Army Aviator named Bo Larsen, but had been going out only with Montgomery for the last year. Amanda informed Will that she was pregnant. He went out and bought a ring and proposed to her.

Now Amanda was a very sweet, pretty girl, but not too many lights on in the upper stories, so she said yes. Amanda's mother hated Will Montgomery with a great and consuming passion, and she tried to put her foot down, but Amanda was old enough to marry on her own, so a date was set.

Lamarr Bullock, the XO, decided to throw Will a bachelor party. He invited Will, Tom Wiggins, Nick Vanderbilt, and Beau Tambeaux out. They went to a swanky Italian restaurant and had a terrific meal, with various wines - Nick went on at length about each one - but Will was slipping deeper and deeper into depression. They left and got into the cab, and as they drove down to the the sub base, Will let slip that he thought there would be more to his bachelor party. The cab driver took a wrong turn and stopped at a dive where everyone got out.

The crew of the Coelocanth boiled out of the bar and pulled Will Montgomery in, followed by the other officers. They laid him down on his back, put a funnel in his mouth, and began pouring in drinks as the first stripper started dancing. I will leave the rest as an exercise for the student.

Early the next morning, the four officers poured out of the cab doors, followed by Nick Vanderbilt, who looked impeccable, as always. Interestingly, it wasn't at the Royal Hawaiian, where they were staying, but at the Coelocanth. An admiral paced back and forth. Will Montgomery collapsed at his feet, groaning.

"Gentlemen! The Coelocanth has been ordered out immediately on an important mission. Your Skipper, Commander Mardukas, will not get here in time, and Mr. Bullock will be the temporary commanding officer. Mr. Bullock, your orders." he hands a very surprised Lamarr a packet. "These are not to be opened until you are out of the harbor and on your way. As your own crew cannot be located in time, the Replacement crew will have to do. Good luck, Lieutenant Commander Bullock." Will puked over the admiral's shoes. the admiral was very upset.

They pulled away from the dock, the officers groaning and bitching, Will semi-comatose. As they left the Loch through the narrow entrance, Lt. Cmdr Bullock opened his orders. They said: "You have been had, courtesy of Lt. Nicolas Vanderbilt.

-clash

Resistance: Cross of Lorraine

2011-12-20T09:48:00.002-05:00

This project looks very cool, and I want to bring it to your attention:

http://www.indiegogo.com/New-indie-RPG-Join-the-Resistance

It's a game based on the French resistance in WWII. The author, Robert Oglodzinski, is trying to gain some traction in his effort to get the game development funded, but it's salmon time - upstream all the way - for an unaffiliated indie designer from Poland. He's done a hell of a job reaching out to folks - there's wikis and Q&A sites and all kinds of information flowing from him. I personally love the concept - hard, dangerous, and tense work, but with hope, so it's not misery tourism. I have hope he can pull this one off!

-clash

Submarine Novel Research Continued!

2011-12-16T20:52:00.005-05:00

Today I will cover the five Periscope! novels.

The Periscope! Series

I figured Halsey Clark was a pseudonym before I read any of the series, but I found out from Google that "Halsey" is a common name with Clarks, and has been for some time before WWII. OTOH, the Halsey Clark of the Periscope! series is definitely a pseudonym, for at least four if not five different authors! This series was like a roller coaster...

Pacific Standoff

Set in the Pacific in 1943, Pacific Standoff was an excellent book! It was reminiscent of Harry Homewood's work - great characters, exciting situations, and well-written. This book can stand on its own with the best sub novels ever written. The hero is Jack McCrary, but several other side characters referred to or appearing in this book become main characters later in the series, like Jack's Cousin Bob DuToin, who comes aboard as PCO - or a Prospective Commanding Officer, a final bit of training before command - Jack's rival, the engineering genius Ben Mount, and Jack's sister Helen.

Deepwater Showdown

Set in the Atlantic and Mediterranean in Late 1944 until April 1945, this book follows Ben Mount, a Jewish submarine officer, who is shunted off to work with the Royal Navy, though he repeatedly applies for action in the Pacific. Ben works developing special weapons for the RN, though he occasionally gets temporary command of a British sub for special missions. New important characters are introduced - Moxie Mulford, a British sub commander who is close friends with Ben, and Betsy Kirkland, the love of his life and daughter of the admiral commanding of the sub force, a noted anti-semite. This is a solid novel, though not as good as the first, but be warned, this novel has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the series! The characters re-appear, but in later novels, Mount is in the Pacific or Washington while he is simultaneously somehow in Britain in this one. It's as if the roller coaster stopped, you got out and went onto another coaster, then went back and continued on the first coaster. Bizarre!

Depths of Danger

Set in the pacific in late 1944, this was a low point in the series. Jack and Helen McCrary, Ben Mount, and Bob DuToin all return, but there is little submarine action, and what there is of it is ridiculous and unreal. It's more an espionage story whose characters are involved with submarines. The characters are different than they were in the previous two novels, working for different motives. It was was OK, but not what I was waiting for. Mount is throughout supposed to be an engineering genius, but the only thing he actually invents is a way to mount an existing camera to a periscope to get high quality pictures for recon purposes. Helen McCrary is probably the star here. Where the first coaster had lots of corkstrews and dramatic drops and tight curves, this is a bunch of bunny hops.

Grand Finale

With the fourth installment we're back in a cracking submarine novel. This one is set in the Pacific in 1945, and brings together the McCrarys, Ben Mount, Betsy Kirkland, and Bob DuToin. This is almost as good as the first, and might have been written by the same person, but unlike the first novel, this novel's sub action is all closely based on real events, particularly that of Gene Fluckey and Barb and the big wolf pack sent into the Sea of Japan at the end of the war. The wolf pack boats were equipped with a new device, FM Sonar AKA Hell's Bells, to penetrate the vast mine fields sealing the sea off from the Pacific.

Supersub

Now we go into the Land of Strange! Supersub is set from VE Day to the seventies, and concentrates on Ben Mount. This novel is just strangely written - I found it annoying - with abrupt changes of scene and again, no relation to the first four novels besides the names and relationships of the main characters. The editing was awful, and made me wonder if any of the other books were edited at all, and the differences were due to the quality of the writers. the whole things is told in flashback, with Ben Mount a thinly disguised Admiral Rickover. The stuff about nuclear subs is well realized - this guy knows nukes, and it shows - but it gave me headaches to read. The characters have almost nothing in common with their previous incarnations, changes in their personal lives are abrupt and senseless, and there is no real development. Avoid this one!

The whole thing reads like someone had a sketched out plan with no real timeline, no character studies beyond names and a couple sentences about their relationships, and sent it out to five different authors to write simultaneously. Each one went their own way, and while some were very good, and others competent, there was no overall tracking and reconciliation between them.

-clash

Too Many Notes, or the Fear of Skills

2011-12-12T12:28:00.003-05:00

In the film Amadeus, there's a scene in which the Emperor criticizes Mozart's latest composition:

Emperor: "My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect."

Mozart: "Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?"

I always think of this when I hear someone say - of my games or of anyone else's - "There are too many skills." What does this mean?

What I think it means is that the person saying this is afraid of having to learn a whole bunch of new limits and special cases. Understandable, perhaps. The classic way of defining skills is to describe the skill, list its benefits, then list what it is not, and what it doesn't apply to. This is what I call Definition by Boundary, or Edge Defined Skills. It is in effect a description of a special case by describing the limits to that case. Everything inside those limits is, therefore, the skill. In order to properly use the skill, one must know the applicable and non-applicable skills for each situation.

One way designers get around this is to use Professions as Skills. You were a shoemaker, so you know anything a shoemaker would know. You were a hunter, so you know what a hunter would know. This is nice, because the Professions are self-defining - whatever the profession, so long as you know what the Profession entails, common sense and group consensus tells you what would be applicable. It also has another benefit - it is overlapping. A Hunter has to know something about butchering an animal. So does a Butcher, and so does a Cook. Yet no one worries about that! A Cook doesn't know how to hunt, and a Butcher doesn't know how to cook, and a Hunter is not going to be nearly as good at Butchering an animal as a full-time Butcher. Common sense!

We can also define a Profession by the Skills the Profession uses - a Hunter uses knives and firearms, can track animals, can butcher them, is knowledgable about the weather, and can set snares. So we have the Hunter eligible to learn the skills Blades, Firearms, Tracking, Butchering, Weather, and Snares. Some Hunters are better than others at Firearms, some are better at Snares, some are better at Tracking, etc. This is what Skill Ranks are for. They don't just tell us what someone is good at, like Binary Skills or Professions, they also tell us how good they are. This differentiates one Hunter from another.

There is another way to define Skills than Definition by Boundary. This is Definition by Center. A Center Defines Skill is one which is self-defining, in which the name describes what it focuses on - the Firearms skill is about using Firearms. The Tracking skill is all about tracking creatures. The Snares skill is about setting traps. The edges are not described. Edge conditions are left up to common sense and group consensus.

What happens when you have two skills which are applicable in a situation? Say you have a broken firearm! Would you use Firearms or Repair to fix it? If your skills are overlapping, the answer is either one. Repair can fix most anything broken, but it doesn't automatically allow you to use Firearms to shoot a pistol. Firearms allows you to do most anything with a gun, but it doesn't automatically allow you to fix a car or a lamp. Why not? Common sense and group consensus. You no longer need to worry about memorizing special cases and limits, you just have to know in general what the Skill is about, and that should be in the name.

But why not have just a few skills? Define them broadly and from the center, and it shoud cover everything, right? Flavor. More Skills means more differentiation, more shading, more subtlety. Some games work great without a lot of subtlety, and some don't. Let the game itself tell you how subtle and flavorful you want these characters to be.

In effect, Center-Defined Skills are miniature Professions, and Professions are made up of these Skills. You can play any game which uses Skills by using Professions instead, if you prefer. just consider that listing of Skills to be a sort of definition of the Profession. The two concepts are mutually translatable.

There is no need to worry about how many notes are in the music, you can just relax and let the song flow.

-clash

IHW: Pigboats - Playtest Session 8

2011-12-06T01:06:00.005-05:00

Last session ended with the Coelocanth two days southwest of the Bonins, with one Mark 14 reload forward and four Mark 10 fish left in the aft tubes. This session picked up where the last session left off, and veered quickly into Hollywood Thriller-land.

The Skipper ordered a course change towards Chichi-jima, on a hunch that small convoys might be using the harbor there as a stop-over on the way to and from Japan and the Marianas. Chichi-jima itself was protected by a big radar station - where Lt. j.g. George H. W. Bush would later earn the DFC as an aviator from the San Jacinto - and it was mostly avoided by subs. during the first night of the transit, RADAR picked up a small, single target dead ahead. The Skipper ordered the speed increased to catch up, and soon the OOD caught sight of the target, a submarine on the surface heading directly away from the Coelocanth, towards Chichi-jima.

In the moonlight, the OOD swore he saw a swastika on the conning tower fairwater of the sub ahead when the Skipper joined him on the bridge. Observing the boat, and making no effort to shoot or catch up, the Skipper confirmed this, and noted she also had a net cutter - a serrated, angled steel beam propped up on the rear end by two support beams - on the bow. A German U-boat, either out of the Indian Ocean, or all the way from the Atlantic, was right in front of them.

In spite of the fact that a single torpedo from the U-boat's stern tubes could easily sink the Coelocanth, the Skipper decided to follow the U-boat to wherever it led, a very dangerous course of action. The U-boat gave no sign that she knew she was being followed, and continued on course, as the Skipper ordered two large tasks from the crew - one from the Engineer, and one from the men. The Coelocanth was just in sight of the U-Boat in the darkness, and directly behind it, where the U-boats hydrophones could not hear her due to the sound of her own screws.

The Coelocanth followed the U-boat through the next day - both submerged, with the Coelocanth tracking the U-boat by hydrophones - and night. Still, the U-boat gave no sign of noticing her shadow - a series of really terrible rolls by the GM compounded by the night penalties and the inability to hear behind her - until the U-boat began transmitting just west of Chichi-jima a couple hours before dawn.

The Skipper was expecting this, and had the Signals Officer, Mr. Bullock, search the radio spectrum to find any plain language transmissions on low power. Mr. Bullock found the transmissions, and the Skipper listened in. Besides being fluent in Japanese, the Skipper was also fluent in German and Italian - the son of peripatetic linguists who taught all over the globe before the war, including Germany and Japan, and spoke many languages. The conversation was in German, and brief. After trading codewords, the sub was to await an escort into Chichi-jima's harbor just west of the island at dawn.

When the transmission ended, the Skipper ordered the Coelocanth to turn sideways to the U-boat, so that both the 5 inch gun on the fore deck and the 4 inch gun aft would bear. He then gave the order to the Weapons Officer, Mr. Mongomery, in front, and Mr. Bullock on the 4 inch gun, to fire. The two guns fired at the same time, both shells hitting the U-boat at the same moment, obliterating it.

The Skipper then ordered his two surprises - a false net cutter fashioned by the engineer to be mounted in the bow, and his new Kriegsmarine uniform and flag to be brought up from below. While he dressed, the flag was run up the SD RADAR mast. Lt. Wiggins was sent out to paint a swastika on the side of the fairwater - on his own, without orders, he painted over the Coelocanth's collection of Japanese Asahi and meatball flags, denoting her kills. Good thing that! It might be misunderstood by the Japanese! Wiggins was an artist in his spare time, and did a superb job with the painting.

The skipper was gambling that the Japanese could not tell an American sub from a U-boat after erecting the false net cutter. This was not an unreasonable gamble - Germany was half a world away, and had many different modles of submarine, like the Japanese, and US subs were almost never seen in broad daylight, and the form follows function of a sub's shape was pretty universal. Still, it was a hugely dangerous gamble perched on a knife-edge - but that was typical of the Skipper. In any case, at dawn, the Coelocanth in Kriegsmarine drag met a Japanese destroyer just west of Chichi-jima.

The Captain of the destroyer took the appearance of the Coelocanth in stride, and shouted "Follow me!" to the Skipper through a bullhorn. The destroyer preceeded the sub past a corvette and into the horn-shaped harbor of Chichi-jima. The destroyer anchored in the southern, wider part of the horn, while three small Japan-bound tankers huddled together in the sharp nothern tip. As the Coelocanth followed, the destroyer let down a small boat, which putted over to the sub, a junior officer guiding it. The Skipper, with Mr. Bullock in jeans and t-shirt beside him, left in the boat, and came onto the destroyer to meet with the Captain.

The conversation was in German, which the Captain pronounced badly and with a thick accent, and of which Mr. Bullock knew next to nothing. "You have the mercury?" asked the Captain. "Ja" replied the Skipper, thinking 'It's atill on the U-boat, under the ocean'. "And for me?" "We will load the mercury, then transfer the uranium when that is out of the way." state the Captain.

The Skipper knew he was in trouble. It only made sense to transfer the mercury first, as the sub had far less space to stow stuff than a destroyer. The Skipper bent on all his charm, and used Convince to argue that it would be simpler for him to load the uranium first, as the sub was so very delicately balanced. The Skipper won the argument and went back to the boat to bring her alongside the destroyer. The uranium was transferred in lead lined boxes, then the sub swung around and shot the destroyer with the single torpedo in her bow tube, and simultaneously fired three torpedoes at the tankers sinking one and damaging another.

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! the Coelocanth sped away toward the harbor mouth as the stricken destroyer tried to rush to battle stations and fire her guns. The Skipper fired her last torpedo in the aft tubes, and the destroyer went down in two pieces. The little corvette came on at the sub, but Mr. Montgomery at the 5 inch gun forward put two shells into his hull and sank him. The boat dove right outside the harbor mouth to avoid planes swarming up from the airfield, and headed for Pearl, all torpedoes expended.

-clash

IHW: Pigboats: What Is My Character really Doing When ...

2011-12-05T00:18:00.003-05:00

This next bit is from a section of Pigboats called Extra Credit. In it I talk about things perhaps buried in the abstractions of the game. One part is called "What Is My Character Really Doing When..." which explains what is happening in the game world when a character does something - for example:

What Is My Character Really Doing When...
I make a periscope Observation check?

Your character is reaching down to grab the handles of the scope as soon as they clear the well. Snapping them down, you put your face into the hood, and rise with the scope in order to see as soon as the lens clears the surface, minimizing exposure time. If this is a non-shooting observation, you twirl all the way around once at the highest setting first, then again lower, then once more at the horizon in order to look for planes and ships before surfacing.

Getting the Range

If it’s a shooting observation, your assistant will turn the scope to the expected bearing, where the hydrophones or the plot says the target should be. You find the range by splitting the image with a device called the Stadimeter, and bringing the top of one image against the bottom of the other. Then the estimated height of the target is input into the system. This tells you the range by knowing the angle and the opposite side. You also estimate the target's "Angle on the Bow", the angle made by the target's bow to the viewpoint, for example a ship heading exactly asoss the scope from left to right would have an "Angle on the Bow" of port 90. A ship headed right to you would have an Angle on the Bow" of zero. The longer you leave your scope up, the better the chance the enemy will spot it.

Identifying Ships

You can give a decent shot at estimating the height of a ship’s masts because the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) has given you two books - ONI 221, which covers warships, and ONI 208-J, which covers Japanese merchant ships. These books use a classification method which uses the positions of funnels, deckhouses, turrets, masts, and other structures, and the shapes of bow and stern, to identify the class of ship, if not the actual ship itself. This will tell you the tonnage and masthead height.

Paths Not Taken

I was originally going to use the ONI books and make the PCs identify the ship class using them, but I didn’t want to either copy the whole books - they are public domain - or make the group purchase them, so abstracted the whole process.

-clash

IHW: Pigboats Research: Submarine Novels!

2011-11-29T14:08:00.002-05:00

I've been researching for IHW: Pigboats, my WWII submarine RPG. One of the things I am doing is re-reading old WWII Submarine novels, and seeking out and buying more to read. I want to get the atmosphere right! WWII submarine novels? Don't laugh! It used to be a fairly popular sub-genre. The first one was Run Silent, Run Deep by Edward Beach, which was a huge commercial and critical success back in the fifties.

Beach was the Marryat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marryat) of the genre. Like Marryat, Beach was the thing he wrote about. He was a submarine officer throughout the war, ending up in command of the Piper, which reached the Sea of Japan just as the war ended. RS,RD is excellent - great characters, and wonderful action. I first read it in the early sixties, along with the two sequels, Dust on the Sea and Cold is the Sea, neither of which were as good as the original, though they were good.

Harry Homewood wrote three WWII submarine novels in the 80s - Final Harbor, Silent Sea, and O God of Battles. I have read the first two, and they are excellent. Silent Sea is a sort of side sequel to final harbor, as the protagonist is a fairly important character in the previous book. Real seeming characters, awesome action, and complex, yet organic, plots. They are highly recommended! Homewood was a WWII submariner himself, though not an officer. Post-war, he ended up as a newsman- bureau chief for Newsweek, Editorial writer for the Chicago sun times, etc. These books were very popular when they were written, but are pretty much unknown nowadays - unjustly, in my opinion.

J. T. McDaniel is a modern writer of the genre, and Bacalao is a great book. It is apparently his first novel, though he has been published as a submarine fact writer. The book has a charming flow to it, and lots of technical detail. Again, wonderful characters that work together marvelously. this is really typical of WWII submarine novels - they are very much character driven.

Another currently active writer is R. Cameron Cooke, who was, like Beach, a submarine officer who retired and began writing. His two WWII books are both very very good - Rise to Victory, and the sequel, Sink the Shigure. I think his plots and his characters are not up to the previous writers I mentioned above, but maybe a notch below them. Still very well written.

Some other books I am exploring but have yet to read are Halsey Clark's 5 book "Sweeping Saga" the Periscope series, Claude Pearson's Gunfish, and Charles Rush's Battle Downunder.

-clash

IHW: Pigboats - Playtest Session 7

2011-11-28T18:49:00.002-05:00

When we last played, the Coelocanth was just north of Sofu Gan - AKA Lot's Wife, a pinnacle island in the Nanpo Shoto used to calibrate radar by both sides. The Coelocanth has a full load of torpedoes, Mark 14cs in the bow, Mark 10s in the stern. She had just gotten a RADAR reading from extreme range to the north and west, Japan.

Inexplicably, the Skipper decided to dive. Standard protocol now - early 1944 - was daylight submerged attacks, and night surface attacks. This was night, yet he decided to close a very long distance underwater, under slow battery power. He ordered a course change to the west, under the assumption that the convoy would be heading roughly south towards Saipan and the Marianas, as an intercept. Underwater, of course, he couldn't use the RADAR, and the convoy was well out of hydrophone range. He proceeded at 2 knots for a couple of hours, then asked the Exec, Mr. Bullock, for a hydrophone check.

Mr. Bullock returned three successes on this check, and with great surprise, he announced that the convoy was still at very far range for Hydrophones, and that they were just a bit north of west. The convoy was moving far faster than the Skipper had anticipated - normally a convoy moves between 8-10 knots, and this one was moving at maybe 16 knots, depending on the zigzag. Still, it would be easy to surface and run ahead, but the skipper refused, and doggedly kept under the surface, though he increased his speed to 5 knots, turning southwest to intercept.

As they closed to the contact, Mr. Bullock reported five sets of screws - two quadruple screws, one set of twin screws, and two single screws. This was no convoy! It was most likely a Japanese Naval task force, with two big ships - cruisers, battleships, or carriers - and support ships, with an escort. The Coelocanth swung into night periscope range just as the task force went by. There was an old four piper destroyer in the lead, a smaller, 5000 ton support ship following, then a cruiser, another ship part the cruiser, mostly masked by it, and a big cruiser sized ship in the rear. This ship had it's rear deck cut down flat, like a carrier.

Mr. Montgomery, at the scope, called the skipper, who was acting as Assistant Approach Officer, saying "God, Captain! You gotta see this! I've never seen anything like it!" The skipper took the scope and immediately recognized it, having seen it two years ago south of Davao - the destroyer and cruisers who had tricked him and almost caught the Thresher with torpedoes! "Open the forward torpedo outer doors! I'm going to put all six into that bastard!"

The Coelocanth shuddered as 6 mark 14cs - 18 thousand pounds of torpedos, shot into the murky night. The skipper called for the Coelocanth to make a sharp turn to starboard to bring the stern tubes to bear on the leading cruiser. Fish seven, eight, nine, and ten shot out.

Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Four fish hit the cut down cruiser and exploded! The four great screws still churning, it plowed itself under in minutes. "Surface the ship!" cried the skipper - again totally against standard practice! Once you were underwater, you didn't surface to face gunfire! As the Coelocanth burst through the waves, water cascading over her decks, both the cruiser and destroyer turned to attack - a mistake for the cruiser! Three torpedoes hit in succession, drastically slowing her down and making her sink deep in the water.

Mr. Montgomery dashed to the forward torpedo room to supervise the emergency loading of the forward tubes. Normally, it takes about five minutes per torpedo to load the tubes, but Montgomery got three fish in the tubes in a fast combat load. The Coelocanth continued its curve to the right on the surface, with six and five inch rounds splashing in on either side, and as the last fish was loaded, the skipper fired them off. Two streaked into the wallowing cruiser, and one into the destroyer. Only one of the two in the cruiser went off, but it was enough! The big ship sank by the head, the stern pointing up in the air as she slipped below.

The destroyer tried to avoid its fate, but the torpedo slammed in amidships, slowing the destroyer to a crawl. The Coelocanth swung away, out into the night and completing her reloading, before coming in from the side, putting two more torpedoes into the struggling destroyer, finishing him off with a blast. One unconscious prisoner was taken from the water, and the skipper, coaxing in fluent Japanese, persuaded two more to surrender. Several that were approached chose to swallow seawater and drown themselves instead. The skipper ordered them shot.

The two auxiliaries had booked it away, fleeing as the warships turned in to attack. After the prisoners were taken, the skipper ordered a pursuit, heading west and south. Before dawn the cargo ship was found and two torpedoes were on their way. When they hit, there was a spectacular explosion. The ship was carrying munitions. The skipper, when he recovered, used the frequency he had used two years ago, and announced that he was done, and was letting the last ship free to carry word of his vengeance.

The next night, after a long, stealthy approach, the Coelocanth launched the last two fish in the forward tubes into the remaining ship of the task force, a seaplane tender. Just before the torpedoes hit, the skipper announced over the same frequency in flawless Japanese "I lied."

Now the weird things. The skipper decided to make the entire approach underwater. I don't know why! He did not surface until both cruisers were sinking. Now most Japanese destroyers didn't carry RADAR - particularly old four pipers. Cruisers, on the other hand, did. If the Coelocanth has pursued their quarry in the standard RADAR guided night attack, which was the skipper's favorite mode of attack, the cruisers would have been prepared - you can see the interference from other RADAR on the screen - and a trap may have been possible. Yet that is not why he dived, and then stayed underwater at night. He could have had no idea there were large warships in the group until at least the XO discovered they were far ahead of where they would be expected to be if they were merchant ships, and that was only confirmed when the propeller noises were heard.

By making what was a strange choice and almost missing the attack because of it, he managed to preserve surprise and destroy the whole unit. That was just bizarre! I will never understand it.

-clash

IHW: Pigboats playtest 6

2011-11-21T12:55:00.002-05:00

We continued on from the last game for the first half of the night. The Skipper recieved orders to head for the harbor at Manado, on the tip of the scorpion tail of Celebes, to reconnoiter the situation there. Cruising on the surface one night, the ship was attacked by two big patrol planes - Emily flying boats - while the Weapons Officer was Officer of the Deck. He elected to try to shoot down the lumbering planes rather than dive, but failed. The Thresher was rocked with repeated bomb explosions, throwing the startled skipper out of his bunk.

He ran to the Conning tower and ordered the OOD to take the sub down IMMEDIATELY and to never, ever, try this trick again! The men piled town the hatch, and again, as on the first day, the hatch jammed as they dove. The OOD pointed out, rightly, that one of the Thresher's Traits was "Slow-diver", so he was able to get it opened and reshut before too much water poured in. On the other hand, one of the last brace of bombs from the Emilies really hit hard, as teh slow diving boat was nto far underwater. The Captain elected to lose the brand new dual Light AA gun mounted on the cigarette deck rather than take that many dings, and took what I offered.

The harbor at Manado is open to the west, but that had a big submarine net stretched accross it. To the north are two steep islands with deep passages between, being covered by a corvette. The skipper timed the passage and slipped submerged by the corvette and into the big harbor. Inside was a huge convoy - fifteen ships and five more escorts - with the merchantmen at anchor. They looked like they might be fitting out for an expedition.

The skipper did a panorama of photos through the scope, but set up on several merchantmen while he had the chance - two torpedoes for a mammoth troop ship of almost 20,000 tons, and one fish each at four others. He also prepped the aft torpedo room for a couple of salvos as well, and warned the crew to be prepared to surface!

As the last section of harbor was being shot - with the big number one scope - SONAR reported five sets of fast screws speeding up. It was obvious they had been sighted. The skipper ordered the boat to surface, and the six bow torpedoes fired at the preset targets. When the torps were all away, he ordered a hard left to swing back to the north, and the bow tubes reloaded. This took a short while - and a successful Operation check by the Weapons officer. One torpedo hit the huge troopship and exploded, one hit a big cargo ship, and one hit a tanker. Two more hit their targets but were duds, and the rest carromed off in random directions across the harbor.

Heading north, he had the stern towards the harbor, and ordered all four stern tubes fired - two at the troopship, and two at the cargo ship already hit. By this time the escorts were firing at the Thresher, with shot spouts leaping up all around the boat. There were an armed yacht and a frigate in the lead - being much faster - and two corvettes and an armed trawler behind. The captain had planned it this way, knowing the Thresher could outrun the corvettes and the trawler. He called down to the forward torpedo room. There were three fish loaded, with one more left. About then the troopship and the cargo ship were again hit, this time both sank.

The skipper turned right and sent the three forward fish off at 90 degree deflection shots, two at the frigate and one at the yacht. Meanwhile, the Signals Officer ran out with a crew to man the rear 3 inch deck gun. Once the fish were away, the skipper swung back north, heading for the rightmost of the two channels, between the innermost island and the shore. One fish hit each of the lead escorts, sinking both. The 3 inch gun hammered away at the pursuit, scoring two hits.

The last fish was loaded, and it was a neck and neck race for the channel with the corvette they had eluded to get into the harbor. Again they were bracketed by shell spouts, with one shell actually hitting the Thresher, but one of the guys used a LUCK point to make it fail. The last torpedo ran hot straight and normal, and the corvette blew up, the Thresher flashing by and into the open ocean. They were out of torpedoes, and headed for home. For this daring attack, the skipper got the Navy Cross, and lesser decorations were awarded the other officers.

The second half of the session was involved in setting up for our next session, but it went so fast we actually got a bit of play in afterward. The gang elected to play a couple sessions later in the war, with the new radar and better torpedoes, before going on to test Wolf Pack play. They created a new sub, a Balao class boat called the Coelocanth. and drew the Nanpo Shoto - the chain of islands (including Iwo Jima) stretching up from the Marianas to Japan - as their patrol area. The Skipper was advanced to Commander, the Lieutenants were bumped to Lt. Commander, and the jgs to full Lieutenant. The Exec decided his character had taken over the Thresher, and would be back for the Wolfpack game. The rest stayed with the boat, which was totally unreal, but in the interests of saving time it was fine. This is a playtest, after all!

As the boat was calibrating radar on Lot's Wife - a spire of rock of known position and height that everyone used for this purpose - we had a fun encouter with two flyboy characters from their old pilot game mistaking us for a Jap sub - they really, REALLY wanted to sink the Coelocanth! - but since the PCs were in control, there was no real danger of that. Oddly enough, the Skipper is the older brother of one of their squadron - not one of the two that found the Coelocanth. As the planes flew away to the south, the SJ radar picked up a blob to the north, coming from Japan. End session!

-clash

IHW: Pigboats - Wolfpacks

2011-11-15T17:04:00.001-05:00

One thing I am thinking about was raised by Klaxon in the game Saturday Night. This is a different form of play for later in the war - wolfpacks. What I am thinking is a natural evolution - each PC would be a Commanding Officer or an Executive Officer. The CO and XO would split the Approach and Assistant Approach Officer duties between them, with everything else run as defaults - a standard +3 skill level.

The US didn't use wolfpacks until late in the war - 1944 and 1945, but that is time for quite a few patrols. They were generally made up of usually 3-4 subs - though there was at least one 6 sub wolf pack I know about. This would nicely cover a standard PC party, with NPCs to fill in the cracks if needed. In effect, the subs could be operated like fighters, cooperating on hunting down convoys and Japanese naval task forces.

What do you guys think?

IHW: Pigboats Playtest Session 5

2011-11-14T09:51:00.002-05:00

The game did not go well. El was sick, and she had to leave before it got going well. Klax was late, as he had a meeting with his game development group. Then we discovered a problem with the rules, which was great for me, but not so much fun to play through.

We started off with a chance meeting between the XO and the Admiral. Since the XO had been beaten within an inch of serious injury a couple days before, the Admiral almost didn't recognize him. The Admiral was very angry, and told Lt. Jerkin that such brawling was conduct unbecoming an officer, and that next time, if he just had to fight, he should at least win. Then we skipped forward to the Christmas party, which was fun enough - three different people spiked the punch, and it all degenerated from there. Meanwhile, in Pearl, Thresher's cigarette deck was cut down, the plating replaced by stanchions and ropes. The plating over the periscope shears was also removed, altogether cutting down her silhouette considerably.

The Thresher left port on December 27, under orders to go to Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies and work out of there until otherwise notified. The boat was given a full load of the brand new Mark 14 torpedoes before leaving - a special honor, as they were still scarce - and the transit was uneventful. The Admiral at Surabaya had felt his commanders were too timid, and given the superb results the Thresher had shown on her first patrol, was specifically sent out to "Show what an agressive attitude can do to the enemy".

Given the area between Mindanao, Borneo, Celebes, and Halmahera for patrol, the Thresher cruised back and forth fruitlessly for several days. Then one night they got a big reading on the SD RADAR - which was usually used as an aircraft warning radar because it didn't give a bearing. Knowing the contact was no airplane, because it didn't get stronger, the Thresher's lookouts strained their eyes all about, and finally saw a darker smudge against the horizon. The Signals Officer reported that there was RADAR interference, so whatever it was, it was carrying RADAR. Hydrophones detected multiple sets of fast screws nearby. The Thresher drove toward the contact.

At two miles out, they could see pagoda masts - a battleship, and a wierd cruiser that looked like it's rear end had been planed off. There were destroyers as well. The Skipper decided to use subterfuge, and hailed them over the voice channels they had heard used by the convoy they attacked last patrol. Speaking fluent Japanese, the skipper told them he was the Japanese submarine I-121, and had an emergency. The replay came quickly, a friendly sounding Japanese voice asking specifics on how they could help.

It was a ruse to keep the Thresher occupied. One of the destroyers had immediately launched torpedoes due to the lack of authentication - no code words, no proper signals. The OOD, the XO, spotted the torpedoes and swung the Thresher parallel , and they shot by on either side. The Skipper ordered a crash dive as the destroyers leapt into action and the sea around them exploded with 8 and 14 inch shots.

The two destroyers got a SONAR lock on the Thresher, and maintained it even though the Skipper found a thermoclyne. They took a careful and methodical approach, dropping just a couple depth charges on a run, while the second circled the area to maintain the lock. The skipper ordered them below the sub's test depth, and still the hammering continued.

At this point, the skipper ordered a sonar shot at the circling tin can - A spread of six Mark 14 torpedoes from the bow tubes. Every one ran erratically - two circling around, but LUCKily, they were climbing up to the surface in a helix, and missed over the sub. More depth charges. Another spread of 4 from the stern tubes. One ran erratically, one exploded prematurely, one hit the destroyer and was a dud, and the fourth ran hot straight and normal, and exploded, wounding the destroyer. The Thresher escaped before they could be locked again.

After sending off a radio report to Surabaya, they got a nasty reply from the Admiral - they had fired the torpedoes from far too deep, and it was no wonder there were abnormalities.

The problem we encountered was the Gunner, who had nothing to do during this whole episode. Did subs ever use their guns? Yes, but only on small craft and wounded transports, or while bombarding a shore installation. How often did those things happen? Well, early in the war, not frequently, but as the Japanese merchant marine was hammered by the subs, later on it became very important. So, through the first couple years of the war, the Gunenr did nothing? Ummm - yeah... pretty much.

We talked it over and deciced to merge the Gunner and Torpedo Officer into one Combat station - Weapons Officer. I also folded Gunnery School and Torpedo School together into Weapons School. Since the Torpedo officer would be shooting the torpedoes, this would involve him from the start.

I love finding problems before my games get to market - especially if they can be easily solved! I sent the new and improved version immediately to the Beta Testers.

-clash

IHW: Pigboats - Angle On the Bow

2011-11-11T09:28:00.003-05:00

I released IHW: Pigboats to beta testers this week. If you are interested in playtesting the game, let me know. It's not finished, but it's fully playable.

I'm slowly working on how best to incorporate AOB - or Angle On the Bow - into the game. AOB is the angle of the target's motion in relation to the direction of the sub's motion. So, if the sub is heading due north and the target is heading southeast, the AOB is Starboard 45. Most of the time, you - as the Approach Officer on the sub - want an AOB of 90 either way. However, the game abstracts that out, and you don't actually need to know the AOB out of character to shoot. Bill Downs, a gamer over on the RPGSite, gave me directions on how to make a neat AOB solver, and damn, I want to use it!

So anyway, the torpedoes can be set to run at different angles once they leave the tubes, using a gyro mechanism. Usually, you'd try to hit the target at 90 degrees. This allows the best chance for a torpedo to hit and destroy the target, as they are coming in straight onto the broadest profile, with no deflection.

However, the Mark 14 torpedoes had some awful quirks - it was a horrible mess, with four major design flaws. One of them was that the contact exploder - there was also a magnetic exploder - was prone to jamming when it hit, producing duds. However, the sharper the angle of incidence when the torpedo hit, the more likely it was that the torpedo would go off properly, as the contact firing pin was less likely to jam.

So, what I'm working with now is bonuses and penalties to the chance that the torpedo would hit - and that it would explode if it hit - depending on the AOB in relation to the TORPEDO, the Angle of Incidence. So you can solve the AOI for the torpedo, and get bonuses and/or penalties to the shot.

This would be an OPTIONAL RULE! You don't need to use it at all, but if you do, there is a reason to play with the AOB solver. :D

-clash

A short note!

2011-11-08T18:12:00.002-05:00

BTW, the Haiku Pineapple Company, their athletic field taken over for internees, the prisoners at the Lahaina police station - all were actually there in the real world. The actual prisoners, of course, were not real - though one of them was indeed a Shinto priest. The Coconut Grove was actually located in Boston, and was destroyed in a huge, deadly fire, but the name fit, so I put it in Honolulu.

-clash

IHW: Pigboats Playtest - Session Four

2011-11-06T10:44:00.004-05:00

Ran a playtest session of IHW: Pigboats last night. We started off with the party split. The XO, Lt. Jerkin, stayed in Pearl along with Lt. Montgomery, while the skipper, Lt, Commander Mardukas, went to Maui along with Lt. Bullock and Lt. jg Tambeaux.

Lt. Jerkin went looking for a fight with the bastard that bombed the Thresher as she came into Pearl. All he knew was that he was an Army Air Corps zoomie named Joe. He figured the guy was flying from either Hickham Field or Wheeler Field, so he went first to Hickham, then to Wheeler. Each time he was refused entrance without valid orders or an appointment, due to the heightened security since the raid. He then placed a call to his buddy Frankie, an Army captain at Wheeler. Frank agreed to meet with him for a few drinks at the Coconut Grove, a nightclub in Honolulu. He spent the day at the private section of Waikiki behind the Royal Hawaiian reserved for submariners.

Lt. Montgomery met up with his girlfriend Amanda, whom he was currently sharing with an Air Corps flyboy named Bo. This was Montgomery's day with Amanda, so he took her out to lunch, then some surfing lessons from Amanda at Waikiki, then dinner and off to the Coconut Grove. They shared a cab with the XO to the nightclub, and Montgomery dreaded the trouble he knew was coming - he was very well aware the XO was spoiling for a fight.

The skipper and the others landed in Lahaina, Maui from the daily ferry, and found their way to the police station, where five Japanese detainees were being held. The skipper showed the cops his orders detailing him to interrogate the detainees - he is fluent in Japanese - and they gave him a room to do the questioning in.

The first detainee was a Shinto priest who had lived a long time in Hawaii, and who spoke some English with a terrible accent. He had been on a walking tour of the island when the raid on Pearl happened, which the police were a bit suspicious of, so they kept him separate from most of the detainees, who had been sent off to a camp. He explained that he went on a walking tour to visit and sacrifice to the kami of the islands every year, and that they stayed up in the mountains the whole time, to be with nature. The second two were his companions, who seemed quite honest.

The fourth one was a Harvard grad, who had made a fortune selling wholesale groceries throughout the islands. He had been on his yacht, and had, in fact, reported an encounter with what he claimed was a submarine on the sixth of December. The last one was a young engineer, fresh from Japan, who had a flawless American accent. He had been flying about the island on a water-hunting expedition for the Haiku Pineapple Company - looking for aquifers that could be tapped for irrigating the dry side of the island. His pilot, he said, could vouch for him.

Lt. Bullock was getting very bored with the jibber-jabber. He was expecting the skipper to rescue his Jap girlfriend, not talk to a bunch of obviously innocent Japs. He did a lot of yawning and eye-rolling. At the end of the questioning, the skipper requisitioned a car from the police to visit the camp. Lt. Tambeaux drove them, looking wistfully at the beaches along the road with Lt. Bullock. The camp was on an athletic field at the Haiku Pineapple Company canning plant along the north coast of Maui.

There he met with the Professor and his daughter - mostly talking about the people he had questioned earlier in the day. The Skipper was bothered by accents - the atrocious accent of the priest, and the impeccable accent of the engineer. The professor - of Philology - agreed. The priest had been there far too long to have such a terrible accent, unless he had been totally isolated from haole culture. As for the engineer, he could have learned English very well in Japan, but what was taught would have been British English, not American. The skipper told the professor he was totally convinced of their innocense and would work to have them released. After the professor left, his daughter thanked the Skipper, and kissed him before running from the room. The rest of the detainees there were very low risk, and a short interview with each was enough to convice the Skipper that the Police had segregated the most suspicious ones very well. They stayed overnight at the camp, and left in the morning.

Meanwhile, back at the Coconut Grove, the XO met with his buddy Fred, and Lt. Montgomery danced with Amanda to some excellent live swing. he tried ranking on Bo, but Amanda wouldn't hear of it. "He never said anything bad about you, Will!" that shut him up. Lt. Jerkin asked Fred about any zoomies who might have claimed sinking a Jap sub the day before - then explained that the scumbag had almost sunk the Thresher. Fred said he knew who it was, and not to pursue it any further, He was just a kid who was scared and excited, and that they had received no notification from the Navy that the Thresher was due in. Fred explained what it was like during the attack, how frustrated the guys were with all their planes being destroyed on the field, where they had been parked wingtip to wingtip to protect them from Japanese saboteurs.

Jerkin finally accepted this, but a drunk young army officer insulted him in passing. Chris insulted him back, calling him a filthy name. The officer punched the XO, and got a bottle upside the head in return. The officer screamed and leapt on Chris, getting him around the throat and crashing him back through the table, smashing his head into the floor. Will excused himself from Amanda, having been waiting for this, grabbed two beer bottles, and swung them from both sides into the drunk officer's head from behind. The XO stabbed the man with the broken bottle, almost killing him. At this point the Shore Patrol's whistles sounded, and panic ensued. Jerkin got everyone out by hiding in the fridge until the SP passed, the out through the loading dock.

Back on Maui, Mr. Tambeaux was driving the group back to lahaina, when he was startled to see a naked girl on the beach. Lamarr poked fun at him, inferring he'd never seen a naked woman before. The rest of the trip went without incident. When they got to the police station, the pilot was there. After some questioning. he admitted he was not always with the engineer, and that he would often wait with the plane while the engineer went off alone to do his exploration. One time he came back with a scroll with Japanese characters on it. He described the scroll. At this, lamarr thought the skipper may actually be onto something, He began getting interested.

The engineer was called back in. He had answers for everything. He had written the scroll. It was love poetry for a married woman he was seeing. She had it, and he would not give up her name. he had learned English in Kyushu from New York Jesuits - his family was Christian, like many in Kyushu. The skipper hmmmed. Lamarr walked about the room nervously. The skipper called in the field laborer who had been with the priest. Yes, the priest would often go away alone to pray. Yes, one time he went into a village to get some food when they ran out. Yes, he had a scroll like that for a while. He was thanked and sent back.

The skipper called the priest in. Yes, he had a scroll like that. No, he lost it when he stumbled crossing a stream. The skipper templed his hands in front of his face. "Let me paint a picture in words, about a priest who is passing information gathered on his walk to an engineer from Japan, who transmitted that information with a radio disguised as a sample case to a submarine offshore. this priest is being left to hang by the spy-engineer, who could care less what happened to the priest, this priest with a wife and children who would suffer greatly for what he had done." The priest broke down and confessed.

Lt. Bullock chortled as the engineer was brought in. The skipper told him what had been discovered. The engineer smiled. He was not afraid to die. He was happy to die for his Emperor. Lamarr clapped him on his shoulder, saying "You're done for, good buddy!" as the skipper explained that he would not die, that he would rot in a prison cell instead for the rest of his life. The engineer grinned and insisted he would indeed die. They heard a crack from the engineer's head, and the skipper reached across the desk to yank open the man's mouth, just as Lt. Bullock punched the engineer in the solar plexus. He breathed cyanide into the Skipper's face, but the skipper held his breath. The spy was dead, and wouldn't be talking any more.

-clash

IHW: Pigboats - Third Playtest Session

2011-11-01T10:42:00.003-04:00

We ran the third of our playtest sessions Saturday, in spite of Mother Nature. Klaxon telecommutes for the sessions from Orlando via Skype on my iPad, which normally works out very well, but the nor'easter knocked out the internet connection halfway into the game. Luckily, one of the players had a phone with free nights and weekends, so we propped it up in the center of the table, and Klax was with us audio only the rest of the night.

We started out where we had ended last session, with the sobering news of Pearl Harbor, and the notice that we were to exercise unrestricted warfare on Japan. The Skipper decided to try and trace the convoy that had left the night before, and the officers threw in their guesses as to the destination. It could have been to the west to the Dutch East Indies, south to Australia, or north east to the Philippines. The gang decided that the Philippines was the most likely, as the convoy left the encircling reef of Palau through the northern exit. The Thresher went in pursuit.

Not yet having surface search (SJ) RADAR, the Thresher depended on visual and auditory clues, and the lookouts finally sighted smoke in the late afternoon. Catching up with the convoy as night was falling, the Skipper decided to go in on the surface at night. There were six marus in the convoy, three each in two columns, along with six escorts of various types. They were running a simple zig pattern. The skipper ordered the Thresher up the port side of the convoy until it got ahead of the flanking escorts.

It being peacetime when the sub left, the Thresher was loaded with ten old Mark 10 steam torpedoes, one in each of the six bow and four stern tubes, and eight practice fish, with dummy warheads weighted with water, four in each torpedo room. The skipper ordered three bow and two stern tubes loaded with dummy fish, all in the even tubes - that is tubes 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10.

The Thresher then turned into the convoy, firing tubes 2, 4, and 6 right across the bows of the leading port escort. Immediately, the skipper ordered a hard left, and the sub raced across the front of the convoy. The escorts, as planned, bit on the bait and sounded the alarm, and the marus immediately zigged to the right. Meanwhile the crew in the forward torpedo room were busy reloading tunes 2, 4, and 6 with live fish. The port column was led by a 4500 ton tanker, followed by a big, fast troopship of about 10,000 tons. The skipper fired tubes 1 and 3 at the tanker, then sent torpedo 5 into the troopship. All three torpedoes ran hot, straight, and normal, and exploded with a satisfying whump. The tanker burst into flame and began sinking immediately, but the troopship was just slowed by the hit.

Unbeknownst to the Thresher, there was an escort out front of the convoy, who saw the Thresher against the flames of the tanker. He immediately cut in and raced toward the sub. The Officer of the Deck saw the escort, and informed the captain, who ran straight away through a gap in the starboard column. As the escort turned in towards the sub, the skipper fired tubes 7 and 9 at the escort. Torpedo 7 hit his port bow and blew his front end off, his screws driving him into the waves within a minute. Thresher then dove.

With tubes 2, 4, 6, 7, and 9 loaded with live fish, the Thresher surfaced half an hour later, having evaded the remaining escorts, and began another end run to catch up with the convoy. They did not find it, but did find the slowed, wounded troopship, with two escorts. The Thresher made another surface run, this time from the Starboard side, and planted fish 2, 4, and 6 into his side. The troopship, her keel broken, folded up into a V shape, and began sinking.

The Japs had set a trap for Thresher, though. As the two escorts began rescue operations, a third, unseen escort suddenly roared in from the night. Watching the troopship sink, the bridge crew might have been caught with their pants down, but the Signals officer caught the fast screws coming in and alerted the skipper. Once again, he turned away and dove, lining up a shot down the throat of the new escort as he went. with a satisfying WHANG! torpedo 9 hit, and the escort just exploded. The Thresher swam away, surfaced, and headed for Pearl. A nervous AAC pilot bombed them as they were on their way in to port, but the bombs missed. The crew were very rattled by this, and by the devastation at Pearl, where rescue parties used cutting torches to try and find any last possible survivors on the wrecks in the harbor, or at least to locate the bodies.

Once back at Pearl, the Thresher was refitted while the men took liberty. the Skipper learned that his Japanese friends had been rounded up and relocated, forcibly, to a camp on Maui. Lt. Jerkin, the XO, got stinking drunk before he even got to his room. Lt. Montgomery goes to see his girlfriend, and finds she has been seeing another man, an Army Air Corps pilot. The Skipper and the Lieutenants run into her and her new boyfriend at a nightclub, and a general brawl almost erupted, but the Skipper takes charge and defuses it. Before that, though, Lt. Bullock found the pilot who had bombed them as they came in - "An' after we sank ten Jap ships an' four escorts, too!" - publicly shaming him.

Lt. Montgomery finds his girl had heard of a sub being blown up at Cavite in the Philippines, and assumed it was his boat, not being very bright. Then she met her new boyfriend, who helped her get over her despair. She tells Will that she will share time between the two of them, as she couldn't bear to see either of them hurt, and Will's turn will be tomorrow. The Skipper announces he is going over to Maui to see his friends, and Mr. Tambeaux and Mr. Bullock volunteer to accompany him. Will Montgomery and Mr. Jerkin will stay behind at Pearl, each for his own reasons.

Session ended!

-clash

IHW: Pigboats - Noises in the Deep

2011-10-28T10:11:00.003-04:00

Speaking of Stress inducing events, depth charging is the main weapon of escorts against subs, and an utterly terrifying experience. A big part of the this is the sequence of auditory assaults the depth charging sets up on the crew.

First is the pinging, the active echolocation pulse emitted by SONAR. There were two types of pings used - long scale and short scale. Long scale pings were emitted when an escort suspected a sub was about, but not exactly where. They sounded something like this: Peee-eeep... Pee-eeep... Pee-eeep... as they searched for a contact below the waves. Short scale pings where higher pitched and came faster: PEEP! PEEP! PEEP! Hearing them meant the escort had a solid contact - most likely on your boat - and would soon be boring in for the kill.

Merchant ships almost always had a single screw - it just wasn't profitable for most to give up the space and mass a second boiler.engine and screw would need. The single screw sounded like this on the hydrophones: Thumpthumpthumpthump. If your boat was close, you could hear it through the water without the phones.

Escorts needed more speed, and economics wasn't really in the calculations, so they generally had dual screws. The slight asynchronization between the screws - no two screws are ever exactly in phase - created a phantom "beat" between them. When relaxed and going about their business, escorts had a sound like this: Shooshooshooshooshooshoo. When they got excited, as when they found a target for their depth charges, the pitch and tempo increased, getting louder as it came nearer, and dropping in pitch - Doppler effect - as it passed overhead and went away: ShumshumshumshumSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSUMESHUM SHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMSHUMshumshumshumshum.

You could sometimes hear the splashes made by the depth charges as they were dropped or shot to the sides. At any rate you could always hear the depth charges go off! Depth charges had a double actioned sound: click-WHAM! click-WHAM! click-WHAM! If they came fast and close together, the explosions cascaded into each other: click-WHAM! WHAM!WHAM-WHAM-WHAM! WHAM!

Torpedoes when they hit carried their own sound, different from a depth charge, sort of like hitting a boiler with a baseball bat: WHANGG! and WHANGG! And the sweetest underwater music of all were the breaking up noises made by a sinking ship - shrieks and groans and crashes and muffled whumps as the steel frame was tortured and twisted by the pressures of the deep.

-clash

IHW: Pigboats - Stress Checks

2011-10-23T17:42:00.003-04:00

A new mechanic for Pigboats, to reinforce that claustrophobic feeling - Stress Checks. Up to four times during each session, when the GM feels it is warranted, he/she can call for a Stress Check. A Stress Check is simply a roll of 1d10. Any 1 rolled means the character is getting stressed. This means they mark off one Stress check box on their character sheet, indicating a new Stress Level.

If another Stress check is called for before they can relieve it, the Target Number for the Stress Check is increased by the current Stress Level. Thus a character with two Stress Levels has a TN of 3 or less, etc. Each Level of Stress incurs a Small Penalty to all rolls until that stress is relieved, so the character with two Stress Levels has two Small Penalties to all rolls.

Stress can be relieved by several means. The R&R between missions relieves all residual Stress. Getting stinking drunk relieves two Stress. The celebration after a successful attack relieves one Stress. Cracking up relieves one Stress. Being really nasty to others relieves one Stress. Going catatonic for a day relieves three Stress. The GM should approve all Stress relief as appropriate. Using these listed reliefs as guidelines, other types of Stress relief should be allowed.

Severe depth charging, tense combat, prolonged silent running, bad surprises, and the like can call for Stress Checks.

-clash

Playtest 2 of IHW: Pigboats

2011-10-22T23:51:00.003-04:00

Had a great session tonight! We started out where we left off, with three characters trapped in a flooded conning tower, and a sub looking for us. The Skipper was running silent at our test depth, and it seemed the other sub was gone, when the cook dropped a bunch of pans. Immediately, the hydrophone operator heard screws speed up and head for us. the skipper was inclined to tough it out, but then the phones heard the sound of outer torpedo doors opening.

The skipper took the Thresher down below our test depth looking for a thermoclyne. The deck plates began to warp and the sub groaned and creaked with the pressure. He found one at 320 feet, and ducked under it. the other sub - presumably Japanese, pinged furiously, but it lost us and went away. After seven hours under, the skipper ordered us up to the surface,and we could pump out the conning tower.

As we headed towards the Makassar Strait - between the east coast of Borneo and the west coast of Celebes - to drop off Mr. Graves, our Australian Mystery man, we sighted a small convoy - two big ships and one little one - heading south directly across our path. We got in close enough to see a couple of passenger ships in dazzle camoflage and a small corvette type escort. If we had been at war it would have been an easy shot. As it was, the navigator projected theor course to Palau, a group of Japanese owned islands between the Philippines and New Guinea. The skipper reported the sighting and the presumed Jap sub that had tailed us from Pearl.

We continued on course, and entered the Makassar Strait on the morning of December 5. We cruised on the durface down the strait, then went under around noon, heading for the insertion point for Mr. Graves. We sere droppig him on the Borneo coast, about 20 kilometers south of Balikpapan. We waited for nightfall, then surfaced.

We sent the rubber raft in under Mr. Jerkin, the XO, along with Ensign Vanderbilt - yes, one of THE Vanderbilts - and Lt. jg Higgins, along with three ratings and Mr. Graves. On the way in, Mr. Graves told Higgins that he was going to walk to Balikpapan - a city and port - and get transportation to Sarawak and Brunei on the north coast. he felt sure the Japanese were going to invade to get the oil in North Borneo, and he wanted to be there to observe.

As the raft came in close to the beach under its small outboard, Mr. Jerkin saw a light ashore, and told the crew to cut the motor and row north. The current was setting south, however, and they made no headway against it, so they decided to row south. They found a beach about two kilometers south of the original landing point, and went in.

As the bow man was pulling the rubber boat up on the beach, a truck or car driving on the beach came around a headland and lit up the bowman, who froze. Ens. Vanderbilt and a seaman jumped off and pushed the boat out into the surf, and the bowman stumbled after as the vehicle roared up the beach. Mr. Higgins, Mr. Graves, and Mr. Jerkin hauled the three others back into the boat while the other rating started the engine and headed out.

Two men with rifles, apparently a dutch shore patrol, began shooting at the boat. Higgins went down fast with a chest wound. Vanderbilt, Jerkin, and one of the ratings were also hit, though lightly, as they wen tout into the night. The boat was punctured twice, but Mr. Jerkin was able to patch the rubber hull fast enough to keep most of the air in. He stopped the engine, and had everyone lay low and let the current take them, and they drifted south out of sight in the moonless night.

After another three kilometers, Eddie, teh bowman, offered to swim Mr. Graves ashore. Graves, who was unwilling to risk his life in such a clusterf**k any more, agreed. Between the teo of them, they got Mr. Graves and his luggage ashore, and off he went into the night. Eddie swam back to the boat, and Mr. jerkin tried to figure out where they were. As he had no charts and no navigational instruments, having failed to take any along on such a short ride he got lost. Finally, they figured out where they were, considerably to seaward of the Thresher, and made it back to the boat. The Skipper gave a severe dressing down to Mr. Jerkin, who had really messed up.

After radioing his report to Pearl, Pearl ordered him to reconnoiter Palau, where the convoy had been heading. They made it there on December 6. There was a minefield about the entrance, with an unmarked narrow channel in. There were two corvettes patrolling the channel, so the skipper waited until a ship came in, a seaplane tender.

He followed the seaplane tender in underwater at periscope depth, keeping close astern so that the prop wash messed up the escorts' sonar. About halfway through the double dogleg channel, the escorts passed the tender from front to back, and one of them noticed something. He swung in behind the Thresher, and began catching up to the tender. The skipper decided to fox him, and drifted back to directly under the corvette. the corvette tried turning to port and then to starboard, trying to get a good reading, but the Thresher stayed right under him. The escort lost the ghost they had been chasing against the starboard minefield and turned back. The Thresher continued into the lagoon.

In the lagoon, the Thresher sighted many ships - tankers, troopships, cargo vessels, and destroyers, as well as several corvettes. She exited the harbor via a different exit, and lurked outside underwater until the sun went down. She surfaced and waited, and pretty soon in the very early morning of December 7, before dawn, the convoy began exiting the lagoon and heading north and west. The thresher stayed back and surfaced to send a message to Pearl, and got the reply that Japanese planes were attacking Pearl, and that this would mean war. She was authorized to go after any Japanese ship she could find.

Session ended.

-clash

Miscellania

2011-10-20T21:01:00.002-04:00

For today, various bits and bobs:

I have renamed StarCluster Light to StarCluster 2 Light, to differentiate it further from StarCluster 3 Light. I almost deactivated it, as the full StarCluster 2 game is also free to download, but some people prefer StarCluster 2 to SC 3, and would like the convenience of the small form for players.

StarCluster 3 Light, originally $3.00, is now free for download. I thought a lot of folks would prefer this format, but apparently not at any cost. It's now available for anyone who would like to look through the StarCluster 3 system without spending any actual money. This means it will get scads of downloads from folks who will never even look at it, but that's the price I pay...

Lots of stuff done on IHW: Pigboats, but not a lot of big interesting chunks I can put up here. Tons of little improvements throughout though!

I still haven't gotten my Gaming Genius award, or the winners' logo for the In Harm's Way: StarCluster web page. I'll take a pic when it gets here!

-clash

IHW: Pigboats - Alterations to the Boats

2011-10-13T23:18:00.004-04:00

While the crew are relaxing and recuperating between mission, the submarine itself may be modified. Some modifications are ordered by the Navy, and are called Mandated Modifications. Others are initiated by the sub’s skipper, and are called Optional Modifications. Mandated Mods are free, and required. Optional Mods are given as favors by the yard to successful skippers. Skippers gain mod points for tonnage sunk, successful clandestine missions, shore bombardments, rescues, lifeguard duty, and other successful missions.
Mod Point Table

Mission Awarded For Mod Points
All Patrols Per Mission 1
Per 2000 Merchant Tons Sunk 1
Per Escort/Submarine Sunk 2
Per Cruiser/Battleship Sunk 3
Per Carrier Sunk 4
Per Barge Sunk 1
Per Totally Ballsy Move* 1
Per Clean Sweep** 3
Clandestine Per Mission 1
Per Insertion 1
Per Rescue 2
Per Crew Incursion*** 2
Lifeguard Per Mission 1
Per Rescue 2
Radar Picket Per Mission 1
Per Kamikazi Intercepted**** 2
Other Per Shore Bombardment 1
Per Special Mission 3

* Like sinking ships in a harbor, and other hairy escapades.
** Sinking all the merchant ships in a convoy.
*** Like landing and blowing things up.
**** Detected and shot down before hitting a ship

Mandated Modifications

Date Range Modification
Early 1942 Cut Down Cigarette Deck
Late 1942 Remove Plating on Periscope Shears, Cut Down Bridge Silhouette
Early 1943 Installation of SD RADAR
Mid 1943 Additional Limber Holes for Faster Diving - Half the Time.
Early 1944 Installation of SJ RADAR
Mid 1944 Installation of ST (Periscope Mounted Range Only) RADAR
Early 1945 Installation of SV RADAR

Optional Modifications

Date Mod Available Mod Mod Point Cost
1942 Swap Light AA for Dual Light AA 2
1943 Swap Light AA for Med AA 3
1943 Swap Med AA for Dual Med AA 3
1943 Swap Dual Med AA for Quad Medium AA 4
1944 Swap Med AA for Heavy AA 4
1944 Swap Heavy AA for DualHeavy AA 4
1944 Swap 3 inch deck gun for 4 inch deck gun 5
1944 Swap 4 inch deck gun for 5 inch deck gun 6
1944 Swap 3 inch deck gun for 5 inch deck gun 7
1945 Add second 3 inch deck gun 10
1945 Add second 4 inch deck gun 15
1945 Add second 5 inch deck gun 20

Couple items of possible interest at RPGGeek

2011-10-07T11:07:00.002-04:00

I did a quick interview at RPGGeek here.

Steffan O'Sullivan did a freaking AWESOME flyer for The Tools of Ignorance for a contest there! Check it out! That's the game right there! :D

-clash

IHW: Pigboats - Mission Area

2011-10-07T09:03:00.002-04:00

Here's a table I made for determining the mission area for the subs. As the war went on, the action got closer and closer to the Japanese Home Islands, so I adjusted for that with the modifiers based on years.

Where Is Your Mission Area

Roll 1d% on the following table, adding 20 in 1944, and 40 in 1945

Roll d% Mission - Encounter Modifier
01‐05 Wake ‐1 Sm
06‐10 Marshall Islands ‐1 Sm
11‐20 Solomon Sea +0
21‐25 Santa Cruz Islands ‐1 Sm
26‐35 Bismark Sea + 1 Sm
36‐50 East Caroline Islands + 1 Sm
51‐55 West Caroline Islands +0
56‐60 Yap ‐1 Sm
61‐65 Papua +0
66‐70 Molucca Sea +0
71‐76 Celebes Sea +0
77‐80 Java Sea +0
81‐85 Makassar Straits + 1 Sm
86‐90 Marianas Islands + 1 Sm
91‐93 Sulu Sea +0
94‐100 Nanpo Shoto +2 Sm
101‐110 Japan +2 Sm
111‐113 South China Sea ‐1 Sm
114‐115 Phillipines Sea +0
116‐120 East China Sea + 1 Sm
121‐125 Yellow Sea + 1 Sm
126‐130 Formosa Strait +2 Sm
131‐135 Hokkaido +0
136‐140 Sea of Japan +2 Sm

Encounter Roll
StarPerc Target Number = 25
StarZero Target Number = 4
StarNova Target Number = 3

IHW: Pigboats - The Boats Themselves

2011-10-03T23:16:00.002-04:00

The S-Boats
These boats were built from 1918 to 1925 as improvements to the WWI subs. 51 of this class were built, and though most served as training boats, several were found on the front lines when the war started. They were small and cramped, had no AC and poor ventilation, and were old by WWII, but they had a fair range, were decent seagoing craft, and served well in the beginning of the war, They could not fire the new Mark 14 torpedo, which was an un-mixed blessing. As the new Gato class subs came in, the S-boats were retired to training fleet.
1 X 4 inch deck gun, 1 X Light AA
Suggested Traits:
Rust-bucket, Veteran, Cramped, Tiny, Ancient, Hot, Grubby, Weathered, Brutal, Experienced, Well-Travelled, Sweat-soaked, Tattered

The Argonaut Class
The Argonaut - the single exemplar of this class - was designed as a minelaying sub, though by the time the war came, it was converted into a transport submarine. Built in 1928, she was a massive boat, and with her minelaying tubes removed, had a great deal of interior space. The Argonaut was slow and clumsy, particularly in the dive, but she was a rugged boat, and her massive deck guns came in handy for night shore bombardments. She - along with the Narwhal Class Nautilus - carried the 2nd Marine Raider battalion to Makin Island in the Gilberts in 1942
2 X 6 inch deck guns, 2 X Light AA
Suggested Traits:
Enormous, Cavernous, Hulking, Brutal, Sluggish, Powerful, Capacious, Hard-hitting, Ancient, Slow Diving

The Narwhal Class
Built in 1930, the two-member Narwhal Class boats were almost as large as the Argonaut, but faster, and generally more capable as classic submarines. Like the Argonaut, they had big deck guns, and served as transport subs. They were generally used in clandestine missions, but still managed to rack up 13 enemy sinkings between them.
2 X 6 inch deck guns, 2 X Light AA
Suggested Traits
Huge, Capacious, Powerful, Long-legged, Hard-hitting, Clumsy, Rugged, Old, Reliable, Slow Diving

The Porpoise Class
The 10 boats of the Porpoise Class were the first so-called ‘fleet” submarines for the US Navy. They were fairly big boats, with excellent range and good speed - fast enough to keep up with the fleet. These boats were designed to operate in advance of the fleet as scouts rather than commerce raiders. They were built between 1933 and 1937. The large size enabled a much more livable environment for the crew, which helped immensely on long deployments.
1 X 3 inch deck gun, 4 X Light AA
Suggested Traits:
Rugged, Long-legged, Fast, Weatherly, Strong, Slow Diver, Powerful, Veteran, Comfortable, Survivor

Sargo/Salmon Class
These two classes, 16 of which were built from 1936 to 1939, were really the same design, built in two lots. A bit bigger than the Porpoise Class, they had more torpedo tubes, and were faster. As an evolution of the Porpoise Class, they shared many of their elder sisters’ traits, but unlike the Porpoises, they had a direct diesel drive, rather than the diesel-electric drive of the earlier class.
1 X 3 inch deck gun, 4 X Light AA
Suggested Traits:
Rugged, Long-legged, Fast, Weatherly, Strong, Slow Diver, Hard-Hitting, Veteran, Comfortable, Cranky

Tambor Class
The best of the pre-war boats, the Tambors - 12 boats built between 1939 and 1941 - finalized the changes which were perfected in the Gato and Balao classes. Like the Sargos, Tambors had a direct diesel drive on the surface, and ten torpedo tubes, 6 forward and 4 aft, in the iconic USN configuration immortalized in the Gatos. The Tambors were only slightly larger than the Sargos, and were consequently a bit more cramped with the new tubes. Tautog, with 26 kills, was the highest ranking US boat in the war.
1 x 3 inch deck gun, 4 X Light AA
Suggested Traits:
Rugged, Long-legged, Fast, Weatherly, Strong, Slow Diver, Crushing, Modern, Cramped, Scrappy

Gato Class
The Gato Class is the iconic American submarine, 77 being built from 1941-1943. The Gato class was vitually identical to the Tambors, with five feet of extra length allowing a bulkhead between the two halves of the engine room for extra flooding protection. They had a deeper test dive rating only because the Navy decided it was being too conservative. New was a negative tank, kept flooded while on the surface, to help speed the diving speed. This plus extra limber holes to help flood the outer hull cut the diving speed in half.
1 X 3 inch deck gun, 4 X Light AA
Suggested Traits
Rugged, Long-legged, Fast, Weatherly, Strong, Fair Diver, Crushing, Modern, Cramped, Scrappy

Balao Class
Almost identical to the Gato Class, the only big difference was a thicker hull, lowering the test depth. 122 Balaos were built from 1942 to 1945.
1 X 5 inch deck gun, 1 X Medium AA, 1 X Heavy AA
Suggested Traits
Rugged, Long-legged, Fast, Weatherly, Strong, Deep Diver, Crushing, Modern, Cramped, Scrappy

IHW: Pigboats First Session

2011-10-01T23:40:00.003-04:00

I ran a playtest of IHW: Pigboats tonight, and we had a blast! It is November of 1941, and the officers of the USS Thresher are invited to the admiral's Thanksgiving ball. The Skipper, Lt. Cmdr. Leonard Markakas, tells Lt. Will Montgomery, Lt. Lamarr Bullock, and Lt. jg Beauregard Tambeaux to get on their dress whites and their dancing shoes. The Skipper meets a Japanese girl, the daughter of a professor of Philology. Lamarr meets the Admiral's wife and gets her to do the two step. Will meets a young lady breaking up with her boyfriend, and gets into a fight with him. the Skipper cancels all his liberty and sends him back to the ship. Beau dances with half a dozen girls, and excites Will's envy and hatred - it turns out Beau is a spectacular dancer, like a young Fred Astaire.

During the ball, the Admiral takes the skipper aside and tells him he has to take a "passenger", an Australian man named Mr. Graves, and land him in a quiet spot on the Celebes coast of the Makassar Strait - without, of course, informing the Dutch of his presence. They are scheduled to leave on the 28th. Lamarr barely makes the departure, as he was entertaining a young lady named Cindy Lou. They set off to the Dutch East Indies.

As they are on their way, Lamarr notices the sound of twin screws paralleling the Thresher. The skipper ordered a course change, and the tailing ship soon copied the new course. The Officer of the Deck, Lt. Montgomery, sees a submarine's conning tower on the tailing ship's bearing, and Lt. Bullock confirmed it was not American, whatever it was. The Skipper orders a crash dive with a sharp turn to port, and silent running immediately after, creating a knuckle in the water.

Will sends the lookouts down below, and follows immediately, but mis-dogs the bridge hatch, so that there is a thin crack. Lamarr and Beau get up into the conning tower to help. Beau can't budge it, so he dogs the hatch to the Control Room, so the sub won't sink, whatever happens. Lamarr, who is quite a bit stronger than Beau and Will, is able to force the bridge hatch open, then shut it, leaving water knee deep in the conning tower. In silent mode, they cannot pump the conning tower dry, so they stay wet.

The Skipper orders the sub down to its test depth of 250 feet, and the other sub goes right over it, circles back, and eventually leaves. With the AC and ventilation off, the sub rapidly heats up to Death Vally hot with high humidity, except for the conning tower with its big-ass salt water heat sink. The Thresher continues running silent, hoping they have thrown the enemy off their trail.

The session ends there.

-clash

IHW: StarCluster Wins Best New Setting

2011-09-29T18:41:00.001-04:00

I just found out that In Harm's Way: StarCluster won a Gaming Genius Award for Best New Setting. That is very cool, but puzzling - if you had asked me, I would have said the game has no setting beyond some implied stuff. Still, pretty cool news and a total surprise!

-clash

Goodbye To Our IHW: Aces And Angels Campaign!

2011-09-28T09:00:00.005-04:00

We'll be starting alpha testing on In Harm's Way: Pigboats this weekend, so I had to wrap up my current game. We have been playing IHW: Aces And Angels, as a WWII warm-up. It's sort of a sequel to the long-running game we had a couple years ago, which came out of the playtest of that game. The only character that remained the same was Iolani Kalani, the Flyin' Hawaiian, who has been promoted to squadron commander on the Escort Carrier Maui. Kalani was there as sort of a player NPC - he didn't fly at all. Kalani's old squadron mates had been broken up, off training new pilots or selling war bonds.

The replacements are mostly new ensigns, fresh from flight school. The Maui, as an escort - or jeep - carrier, has only one mixed squadron with a flight of six F-4F Wildcats and a flight of six SDB Dauntless dive bombers. The six fighter pilots, the PCs, are the flight commander, "Spic", and the kids "Tuna", "Spike", "Kraut", "Shark Bait", and "Moonshine". Spic is a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, Tuna's from Atllanta, Moonshine from Nashville, Spike's a Boston Brahmin, Kraut's from Pennsylvania, and Shark Bait is the son of a couple of professors who taught all over the world.

It is the end of 1942, and all looks grim for the US, but Midway was a huge turnaround, and momentum has slipped to the Americans, though things still hold in the balance. The new pilots practice and bond together, particularly at a party given by the Flyin' Hawaiian at his family's ranch on the Big Island. Moonshine and Kraut both get lucky with Kalani's younger sisters, and Moonshine is particularly smitten. Spike is already married, and stays a bit aloof from the others, and the others respond with relentless practical jokes.

Tehy get into action in a string of air assaults on Japanese air bases in the Solomons. Kolambaranga, Keita Point, and others. The PCs get deadly as the Captain and Kalani escalate the odds at each raid. Spic and Shark Bait both get 5 kills in a single mission on different missions. Last session was a raid on Kahili, the six fighters and the five remaining bombers of the Maui against 32 fighters at Kahili.

The fighters went in two sections, four planes at a lower level to provide cover for the bombers, and two flying top cover, higher than Zeros or Oscars could reach. The Zeros came in two gaggles - their top cover was between the PC's top cover and main body, and their main body was between the PCs and the bombers. The main body of Zeros dove on the bombers while the main group of PCs dove on them. The Zero top cover zoomed down to meet them, but the PC's top cover stooped on the Zero top cover.

In both cases, the PCs used their excellent, solid Wildcats to dive through and break up the larger swarms of Japanses planes, using vertical moves where the nimble Zeros couldn't follow. Kraut was shot down as he tried to follow Tuna on a one-man assault on the Zeros chopping up the Dauntlesses. He was later rescued by a floatplane. Shark Bait got a zero on his tail, but his wingman Spike shot it up. The smoking zero purposefully rammed Shark Bait's Wildcat, but the tough Grumman fighter kept flying, though it was hammered. Tuna had to break off when a shot penetrated his pilot armor and wounded him severely.

Only two Dauntlesses made it through, and their bombs did little damage, but the fighters did very well, destroying or damaging twenty Zeros. The planes were really chewed up, though. Shark Bait's plane could be used as a Grumman advertisement for toughness. The Maui retreated and set course for Pearl in a blaze of glory. The group loved their characters, and want to return some day.

-clash

IHW: Pigboats:- Escape!

2011-09-26T02:13:00.001-04:00

Escape
Once your sub had had its shot, and the enemy escort knows you are out there, it’s time to get out of Dodge. You have two basic choices - get out on the surface, or get out underwater.
On the Surface
Usually this is the end result of a night surface attack, but not necessarily. Speed and confusion are your friend. Use them. The more chaos you have caused up til now, the better. The big danger with a surface exit is a shot from one of the escorts penetrating the hull. Submarines have so little reserve buoyancy that one hit in the hull will sink the boat. The big benefit is speed. Surfaced speed on the diesels is so much faster than underwater speed that sometimes it is worth the risk.
Japanese Escort Guns
Japanese escorts had guns ranging from 3 inch on frigates to 4 inch on covettes to 5 inch on destroyers. Cruisers in a battle group would have 6 or 8 inch guns.
Ramming
A favorite tactic for larger escorts is ramming. Destroyers have a heavy sharp bow that can crush through a sub hull like paper. Mid-sized corvettes were known to do this also. Small frigate-type escorts had neither the mass nor structural strength to ram. A rammed sub is destroyed.
Japanese naval lookouts are very good, and their optical equipment is superb. Rate them at +4, with an endurance of 9.
Night Modifiers are -2 Large for dark nights, -1 Large for bright nights.
Chaos Modifiers are given by the GM, and should range from +0 for a bungled attack to -2 for a devastating attack.
Underwater Escape
For most of the war, this was the preferred method of escape until night surface attacks came into vogue in mid 1944. In this, the submarine attempts to creep away silently underwater after the shot. The faster the sub moves, the more easily it can be detected - 0-2 knots -1 Small Modifier, 3-4 knots +0, 4-5 knots +1, 6-7 knots +2, 8 knots +3, 9 knots +4 Small Modifiers.
Japanese Escort SONAR
Japanese SONAR was fair, though not as good as American equipment. Effectively, rate Japanese SONAR at Acquisition +2 to locate the sub. An escort needs 3 successes to lock the submarine, in which case depth charges have a +1 chance. If SONAR gets only 1 or 2 successes, the escorts can only get a general area reading with hydrophones, with the depth charges at standard effectiveness. If no successes are rolled, the sub escapes. Once SONAR is rolled, it is not re-rolled until the situation changes.
Silent Running
A sub can go to Silent Running mode, in which all pumps and AC is shut down. This gives a -1 Small Modifier to be detected. For each hour is Silent Running mode, all crew END goes down by 1, due to increasing heat and no ventilation.
The Knuckle
By accelerating fast underwater, then making a sharp turn, the submarine can create a hard “knuckle” of turbulent water in the wake of the sub, whereupon the sub rapidly slows to creeping speed.
The “knuckle” will reflect SONAR pings as if it were a sub underwater for several minutes. The Diving Officer needs to make a Tactics check when attempting to create the “knuckle”. Each success gives a Small Modifier penalty for the escort’s SONAR Acquisition check. On a failure, the escort will depth charge the “knuckle, letting the submarine escape.
A knuckle can also be created on diving from the surface.
Thermoclines
There may be a thermocline - a layer of water at a very different temperature than the layer above it - which can reflect SONAR pings. The escort has -3 Small Modifiers to success in Acquiring a sub under the thermocline - if such a themocline exists.
A thermocline can be located by the sub’s Signals Officer with a successful Acquisition check and 3 or more successes.

IHW: Pigboats - Positioning

2011-09-20T01:02:00.003-04:00

Positioning is the art of putting your submarine in the right place at the right time to intercept the target. If the target’s course is simple - a straight line - a simple successful Tactics check by the Assistant Approach Officer will tell you if it is possible or not, but only very fast ships take a straight course in wartime - there are submarines out there, after all! - and it will most likely be a fruitless chase. Usually, the target is running some sort of zig-zag pattern designed to make it difficult to get into position.
Simple Zig-Zag
A Simple Zig-Zag is a single symmetric zig followed by a mirror image zag, which repeats. This has -1 Small Modifier to solve. Roll 01-10 on d% for the enemy to be using this pattern.
Asymmetric Zig-Zag
An Asymmetric Zig-Zag is different on each side of the true course. This has a -2 Small Modifier to solve. Roll 11-30 on d% for the enemy to be using this pattern.
Double Zig-Zag
A Double Zig-Zag is symmetric, but composed of two repeating patterns either side of the base line. This has a -3 Small Modifier to solve. Roll 31-70 on d% for the enemy to be using this pattern.
Compound Zig-Zag
A Compound Zig-Zag is an asymmetric, multiple, irregular zig-zag. This has a -4 Small Modifier to solve. Roll 71-90 on d% for the enemy to be using this pattern
Complex Zig-Zag
A Complex Zig-Zag is an asymmetric zig-zag with a long, almost random, periodicity, at multiple angles to the baseline course. This has a -5 Small Modifier to solve. Roll 91-00 on d% for the enemy to be using this pattern.

Reducing Difficulty by Observation
You can reduce the penalties to figure out a zig-zag pattern by repeated periscope or other range-and-bearing observations over time. The observations need to be taken from different positions along the base course. The Approach Officer needs to roll a successful Observation check through either the periscope or other range-and-bearing equipment at each observation. Each successful observation - before rolling Tactics - up to the third reduces the modifier by one Small Modifier. Stating that the Assistant Approach officer is rolling a Tactics at any time puts the submarine at a firing point, and an unsuccessful roll means a blown attempt, far out of position.
Night Modifiers are -2 Large for dark nights, -1 Large for bright nights.
Avoiding Escorts
Generally, both merchant convoys and large warship groups are surrounded by escorts - destroyers or other Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) craft - patrolling various arcs around the main body, looking for you. There are several standard tactics to slip inside this ring of protection:
Hit ‘Em Where They Ain’t
By timing the escorts’ patterns, the submarine attempts to slip between two escorts at the most opportune time. The Approach Officer must make a successful Observation check with a penalty of 2 Small.
Dig Under the Fence
Using thermoclines - layers of cold water that tend to reflect SONAR pings - the submarine attempts to slip directly under an escort. The escort has -3 Small Modifiers to success in Acquiring a sub under the thermocline - if such a thermocline exists.
A thermocline can be located by the sub’s Signals Officer with a successful Acquisition check and 3 or more successes.
Using Geography
The submarine lies is wait just awash in shallow water at a headland on the coast or an island which the convoy must round. When the escorts all go to seaward to protect the convoy, the conviy lies open to the sub. Of course if anyone sees the sub, it will be helpless sitting there in shallow water. The Navigator may make a Tactics check to find such a place, with each success meaning a better ambush site.
Look! Behind You!
If working with another sub in a wolf pack or a duo, one sub attacks an escort on the other side of the convoy, drawing the other escorts from the unengaged side, clearing the way for the second submarine.
I’m One of You!
With a large number of escorts on a dark night, the submarine slips into the ring of escorts, acting like one of them, before cutting into the ring and attacking. Of course if the escorts aren’t fooled, the sub is a sitting duck.
The Rush
Going in at night on the surface, the submarine sinks one of the lead escorts and goes through the gap, right through the convoy from front to rear, raising chaos in its wake. If this works, it can shatter the convoy. If it doesn’t...

-clash

IHW: Pigboats VCS - The Final Cut

2011-09-17T13:16:00.003-04:00

A Vehicle Control Sheet is like a character sheet for the vehicle. By manipulating the items on the sheet, you control the vehicle. Here is an example VCS for a Gato Class Submarine, with explanations to follow:

Submarine Attitude

This is the pitch of the sub - nose up, level, nose down. Use a token and move it over the current attitude.

Days On Patrol

This is the the track for both fuel and food. Blacked in squares are unusable. A Gato has a very long cruising period - 75 days - so there are very few blocked off. Cross off each day you are on patrol.

Compressed Air

Compressed air is used for many purposes, but three in particular are vital - blowing ballast tanks to rise up, Releasing some overboard with some oil to trick an escort into thinking it made a kill, and refreshing air when running silent. You have 3 uses of compressed air. Whenever you use it, check off a box. You can recharge compressed air whenever you are surfaced for at least 30 minutes.

Depth Marker

This shows how deep you are. Use a token and slide it to show your current depth. The black boxes are those past your test depth - the Gato has a test depth of 300 feet. You can go past your test depth, but you run a high risk of springing leaks or imploding. The pressures down here are immense. A hole the size of a pea can produce a water jet powerful enough to cut a man in half.

Torpedoes

This shows how many used torpedoes you have available. The gray boxes are those already loaded in the tubes and indicated elsewhere. When you load a torpedo into a tube, cross it off here. The Gato carries 28 torpedoes, 10 of which are already loaded in the tubes.

Ready Torps

These are your torpedo tubes - each open box represents a tube. Blacked out boxes do not represent tubes. When you fire a torpedo tube, cross off the box. When you reload a tube, erase the x. Tubes can be located one of three places - at the bow, amidships, or aft. The Gato has six tubes in the bow, none amidships, and four in the stern.

Battery Charge

This is your battery charge. Each box is enough power to move the boat at 2 knots underwater for one hour. The Gato's batteries can keep the boat going at this rate for 48 hours underwater without being exhausted. The faster you go, the more quickly you use up energy. Consult the chart as to the exact rate.

Target Bearing

This is a mini bearing chart you can use for targeting if you are not using the big Target Bearing/Range chart. Use tokens to indicate contact bearings.

Identification Block

This block is used for information about the sub - the boat's traits, Class, and name. Write in the boat's traits at top, and the name on the bottom. Each class has its own VCS, with the class pre-printed.

Dings

These boxes represent damage to the sub. Cross off a box for each ding taken from depth charges, shells, or bombs. Some dings can be immediately repaired by Damage Control, so only mark off dings that were not contained. A Gato is tough, and can take up to 15 such dings before it begins sinking from damage.

Speed In Knots

This is a speed track. Use a token to mark the current speed. The blacked out boxes are inaccessible, marking the maximum surface speed, while the gray boxes indicate underwater speed - the marker cannot move into the white boxes while underwater. The Gato subs could go up to 21 knots on the surface, and a maximum of 9 knots underwater.

-clash

Tracking Convoys in IHW: Pigboats

2011-09-16T11:01:00.004-04:00

Here's the Target Bearing /Range Chart:

The long oval in the center represents your submarine. The rest of the chart displays how far away and in what direction a contact is. Use tokens for contacts, as they will move.

As the sub moves toward the contact - and/or the contact moves towards the sub -the target moves into a new, closer range band. When the sub and contact move away from each other, the contact moves into a further off range band. As the contact comes closer, it should begin to resolve into separate contacts - first for the larger ships, then for the smaller ships. If your sub is in the middle of a convoy, having penetrated the escort, you might have contacts all around your sub.

The bearing is the relative angle from your sub to the contact. The chart is split into 90 degree quadrants, so zero degrees on the bow means straight ahead, while zero degrees astern means directly behind you. From zero, the degrees increase to 90 degrees to the right and left, then decrease back to zero. Right and left are always relative to zero on the bow, even when talking about bearings astern. So, to place a marker at "40 degrees on the right bow", find zero degrees on the bow and move the marker clockwise to forty degrees. For "40 degrees right astern", find zero degrees astern, and move the marker counter-clockwise forty degrees.

If the sub changes its own course, move the contacts the same number of degrees. For example, you get a contact at 20 degrees on the left bow. The captain decides to turn towards the contact to lessen the range and investigate. Move the contact to zero degrees on the bow and begin stepping the range in.

-clash

Mo' IHW: Pigboats Character stuff

2011-09-15T12:21:00.003-04:00

So - this is where I am. However it occurs - point auction, election, funny dances, mime performances, whatever - you end up with the following:

One Skipper - a Lieutenant Commander with zero Notice. A bit older than the other officers (age 34), he is also more skilled, though his physical Attributes have degraded a skosh.

One XO - A senior Lieutenant, he starts with 200 Notice, and at age 30, he is competent enough to take charge in an emergency, though he doesn't rate being the Skipper by rank.

Two other Lieutenants, age 28, with zero Notice. They hope to become XOs eventually, and one day, if they are lucky and skillful, they may attain the holy rank of Skipper. They are competent enough, but they are still young.

Two Lt. jgs (Lieutenant, junior grade), age 26, with zero Notice. They are not mere Ensigns any more, and are vastly proud of this accomplishement. They consider themselves old and wise in the ways of the world. The Lieutenants are amused by them.

Two Ensigns, age 24, with zero Notice. Fresh-faced kids just out of College, Submarine, and Command School, they think they know what to do and are destined for savage disappointment and much skull thumping learning ahead. No one would trust them to mind a watch on their own. They are probably not trusted to find their arse in the dark with both hands.

From this raw material, the Skipper assigns roles, both in battle and out of combat. A Lieutenant, because of his skill set, might be both Navagator out of combat, and Signals Officer in combat. The Skipper might assign himself the role of Approach Officer, manning the periscope or TBT (Target Bearing Transmitter) while his XO is the Assistant Aproach Officer, familiar with the ways of the TDC (Torpedo Data Computer), and able to predict the chase's zig-zag path and plot a course to put the sub in the most favorable attack position. Or he may switch and let the XO or a Lieutenant make those obsevations and keep the big picture in his head using the TDC.

Every Officer has a role to play in combat. The Approach Officer may shout "Fire One!", but the result is a team effort.

-clash

In Harm's Way: Pigboats - Rank Auction 2

2011-09-12T18:45:00.002-04:00

It's looking like rank auctioning is not a popular option, based on feedback here and on Google+. I do *not* want to force this down anyone's throat, but in this game, older means more skills and lower stats, and higher rank means older. I want to give players a chance to come in at the rank they want, without crippling them, and without putting jealousies and anger into play.

In my many military games, I have found no one gets jealous of another player character getting a higher rank if they think that player earned it. Up til now, I have been tending to bring PCs in at the same rank, and letting them earn their rank, but I was hoping to get a shortcut, so I can have a submarine start out with a PC in charge, rather than an NPC. The sub's skipper gets to "squeeze the pickle" - i.e. aim and fire the torpedoes - so starting out with an NPC skipper sort of cuts down harshly on the fun.

Maybe I should just use point buy points, cut out the optional random generation, and chalk the stat loss up to aging. i could do that, but that's boring... :D

-clash

IHW: Pigboats - Rank Auction

2011-09-12T12:39:00.004-04:00

Went through what I have written so far, and - as I feared - Bonni was right to warn me. The captain was doing too much and the other officers too little. If it wasn't the captain doing it, it was the ratings, and while in a game with troupe play that is cool, Pigboats is not all about the troupe play. I have to go through and assign stuff to officers, even if they aren't actually doing the work. Example - Hydrophone contact, range and bearing. That is the Sonarman's work, but with this setup, it's the Signals Officer that should roll for it.

So I'm wondering - should I have a rank auction at the beginning of the game? Amber has a stat auction. I'm thinking you could bid on taking higher rank by taking on complications. "Bad relations with CO." "In love with fellow officer's wife." "Secret alcoholic." etc. Each complication having a different point value. Whaddya think?

-clash

IHW: Pigboats - Focusing Tighter

2011-09-09T09:18:00.006-04:00

I was initially going to allow the submarines in IHW: Pigboats to be from a range of countries - The UK, Germany, The USA, Japan, Italy, and the Netherlands, like I did the pilots in IHW: Aces In Spades and IHW: Aces And Angels. I have decided to forget about that. I may cover a nation at a time in supplements, if it comes to that, but for the released game I will focus on the US Navy and the Pacific war - the US subs were pretty much non-entities in the Atlantic.

Why? Because I can do some interesting things if the scene is limited. I can - for example - craft a mission generator with specificity, changing the locales offered as the war goes on, with new operating areas opening up and new forward bases established. I can make a generator for situations during the R&R period between missions. I can allow add-ons to the subs - the US subs were refitted after each mission with new and better gear. I can make a much better, more focused target selection. I don't have to account for the differences between the small Japanese convoys and the enormous Allied ones, or between Allied and Axis escort gear and tactics.

This is a pretty important decision for me. I've been agonizing over it for days, but it will be better in the long run, I think.

-clash

Wrapping up My IRC Game

2011-09-07T09:39:00.002-04:00

Finished up this year's IRC run of In Harm's Way: Napoleonic Naval. This campaign has been going on for five years every spring and summer, alternating with a StarCluster game that has been running since 2003 every fall and winter. This year we:

* Lived through an earthquake and tsunami, and rescued various people caught up in it.
* Captured 3 pirate vessels
* Captured a heavy French Naval Corvette
* Met an English princess in disguise
* Took a pirate camp by assault over land - enemy land at that!
* Married off two characters - one who is retiring from play, and one who is continuing.

-clash

Excerpt From In Harm's Way: Pigboats

2011-09-05T20:04:00.004-04:00

Attack
Once at the point where the best shot would occur, the submarine can Attack. The decision on whether to shoot single torpedoes or spreads, and how many torpedoes in the spread, would be made and the torpedoes launched. If circumstances permitted it, multiple Attacks could be launched - especially if the submarine got right in among the ships of the convoy or battle group, for instance in a night surface action, but more usually it was a single attack on one or more ships made all at once, with the submarine then attempting to Escape the escorts.
Single Shot
On a Single Shot, one torpedo is shot from a tube. The firing officer rolls a Torpedo check, modified by the Range and Target Bearing.
Spreads
On a Spread, multiple torpedoes are shot at a single target. The firing officer rolls a Torpedo check, modified by the Range and Target Bearing, plus a Small Modifier Bonus per torpedo after the first - plus 1 Small Modifier for the second torpedo, plus 2 Small Modifiers for the third, etc. If the roll is a success, successively add a Small Modifier Penalty for each extra torpedo to see if it hit.
StarPerc Spread Example
The officer fires a spread of three torpedoes at a target Bearing 25 degrees right and at Short Range. Bearing modifier is -10, and Short Range is +0. Three torpedoes in a spread gives a +20, and adding the -10 Bearing penalty gives a net of +10 to the TN. The firing officer has Torpedo+2 and a COOR of 9, giving him a TN of 55%. This is modified to 65% because of the +10 from Range and Bearing. The officer’s player rolls a 47, so one torpedo hit. Adding +10 for the next torpedo gives a 57, still under 65, so it is also a hit. The third torpedo adds another +10 to give 67, over a 65, so it’s a close miss. Roll Quality for 2 torpedoes.
StarZero Spread Example
The officer fires a spread of three torpedoes at a target Bearing 25 degrees right and at Short Range. Bearing modifier is -1, and Short Range is +0. Three torpedoes in a spread gives a +2, and adding the -1 Bearing penalty gives a net of +1 to the roll. The firing officer has Torpedo+2 and a COOR of 9, giving him a bonus of +3. This is modified to +4 because of the +1 from Range and Bearing. The officer’s player rolls a 2, for a total of 6, so one torpedo hit with 2 successes. Adding -1 for the next torpedo gives a 5, still a hit, but with one success. The third torpedo adds another -1 to give 4, also a hit with once success.
StarNova Spread Example
The officer fires a spread of three torpedoes at a target Bearing 25 degrees right and at Short Range. Bearing modifier is -1, and Short Range is +0. Three torpedoes in a spread gives a +2, and adding the -1 Bearing penalty gives a net of +1 to the roll. The firing officer has Torpedo+2 and a COOR of 9, giving him 3 dice and a bonus of +1. This is modified to +2 because of the +1 from Range and Bearing. The officer’s player rolls a 2+4+2, for a total of 10, so one torpedo hit. Adding -1 for the next torpedo gives a 9, still a hit. The third torpedo adds another -1 to give 8, a miss.

In Harm's Way: Pigboats Progress Report

2011-08-30T15:47:00.002-04:00

IHW: Pigboats is making fast progress. I've already got chargen done, and several other, more minor chapters. I've started work on the other core chapter, the Submarine Combat section, which is called Hunter-Killer. Sub combat is very different from dogfighting or surface combat. It's all about stealth and position. Detecting the enemy without the enemy detecting you, then getting in position for a surprise ambush.

Sub combat is divided into 4 phases - Detection, Positioning, Attack, and Escape. Each of these phases are taut and dangerous. You may go right from Positioning into Escape if an enemy escort sees you. You may go from Escape into Attack - shooting an escort "down the throat" as it tries to ram your sub, for example. The classic progress through the phases is Detection, Positioning, Attack, and Escape, though. I also have to cover night surface attack, and gun attacks. Both of those are part of the submarine attack profile.

I also have to cover all the various types of mission a sub might be sent out to do - from dropping off spies to carrying cargo to shelling a position to lifeguard duty in air raids to special Ultra attacks on specific convoys or even ships. I'm really looking forward to this! :D

-clash

Using Outremer NPC Generation to Generate Situations

2011-08-26T12:49:00.004-04:00

Let's design a Situation for Outremer, and do it by generating an NPC - an important one the PCs will be dealing with. Let's make him the Lord of Sidon, the southernmost port city of the County of Tripoli. His name will be - roll on Frankish Names table - Renier de Sidon. As we are not fleshing out a character met on the spur of the moment by the PCs, but planning him ab initio, we will not be following the order of building in the NPC section, though we will be using some of those tables.

As Lord of Sidon, Renier has to be at least Rich, so we just choose Very Rich from the Lifestyles table. For his mission, we roll an 11 - Theft or Criminal Activity. Aha! Interesting already! Renier is no sweetheart! Now for the Object of the Mission, we roll a 4 - A Particular Relic or Religious Artifact. Okay... We'll have to figure that out! Let's look at his personality and see if that'll help us. We roll a 14 - Angry. So Renier is Angry about this. Now his nation's Cultural Traits are Flexible 2, Sly 2, Cheerful 2, Creative 1, and the Political Traits are Popular 2, Secretive 2, Corrupt 2, Efficient. Tripoli's Edges are Double-dealing and Intrigue, and her enemies are Antioch and Acre. All grist for the mill!

Let's see if we can tie this all together! Anger is motivating him here, concerning a religions relic of artifact. Ah -perhaps he is angered by the treatment of this relic by his enemies! Two reasons here to choose Acre - Sidon is close to the border with Acre, and Acre is infested by Protestant heretics. Excellent! Let's work with this!

So, Acre, or someone in Acre, has incurred his wrath by mistreating a relic. What is he going to do about it? Something Sly, I'm sure. He is Flexible about such things, and the government is Secretive and Efficient, and he has an Edge when he's Double-Dealing and/or involved with intrigue. I'd say he could be dispatching an assassin, or better yet a group of assassins. Another possiblility is he's dispatching a group of con-artists to sucker his target into doing something stupid and/or immoral and/or illegal, then leave him twisting in the wind. That sounds like a much more fitting end! If Lord Renier does this last thing right, he can watch his target's own society tear him down like a pack of wolves.

Now we could take this situation several ways. One way is for Renier to hire the PCs to do this, if they are the sort who could and would do so. Another way is for the PCs to find out about the plot and try to stop it, if that seems more their style. Yet another way is to involve the PCs in the chaos following the successful plot, perhaps meeting up with the perpetrators. Of course the last bit can be stretched a bit further, making the PCs themselves be hurt as a side effect of this - perhaps they were under the patronage of Lord Renier's target, or related to him. Fitting the Situation to the PCs is the last step. A Situation is not a Situation unless the PCs have to make fundamental decisions in responding to it. Just how they respond is up to the Party.

-clash

In Harm's Way: Pigboats

2011-08-24T09:28:00.003-04:00

As hinted yesterday, I've begun work on my next project, In Harm's Way: Pigboats. I had previously begun working on In The Beginning, but that project never really inspired me, so I have shelved it for the time being. Pigboats is a WWII game set on submarines. The players will play various members of a submarine crew, from one of several nations - I am thinking US, UK, Germany, and Japan; with possibly the Netherlands and Italy. All six of these nations had strong submarine fleets, but the first four had the ones that made a difference.

What I posted yesterday was a VCS - Vehicle Control Sheet in StarCluster lingo - for submarines. The different aspects on the VCS are - from top to bottom, left to right:

Attitude Marker. Place a marker to show what the current attitude - pitch forward or back - of the sub is.

Days On Patrol. Check off a blank box for each day the sub is on patrol.

Compressed Air. Check off a blank box each time you use compressed air, for whatever reason. This can be replenished on the surface in a short time.

Depth Marker. Place a marker to show the sub's current depth.

Torpedoes. Check off a blank box each time you reload a torpedo.

Ready Torpedoes. Check off a blank box every time you fire a torpedo. Note that I have added a third Ready Torpedoes box amidship after I uploaded this pic, as I forgot that some British subs used mid-ships tubes.

Battery Charge. Check off the appropriate number of boxes as batteries are used. The speed you move underwater will radically influence the rate your battery is depleted.

Target Bearing. The angle the target is relative to the sub.

Identification. Nation, Class, and Name of the sub.

Dings. A counter to show the accumulation of grazes and near misses on the sub. Any direct hit will essentially sink her except under very rare conditions. This will be related to a chart of the actual harm done, which gives specific effects.

Speed In Knots. Slide a marker to show the current speed of the submarine.

The idea of a VCS is that you will be able to control the vehicle with the VCS as an interface, showing you the vehicle's status up to the minute. I have used them in StarCluster 3 and IHW: StarCluster, as well as the IHW flying games to very good effect.

-clash

A Picture Which Speaks A Thousand Words

2011-08-22T10:31:00.001-04:00

Nuff said?

-clash

Outremer Ships and Boats

2011-08-19T15:10:00.004-04:00

Types of ships were used in Outremer that were typically used:

Ocean Going Dhows

These are large, deep-drafted vessels of 250-500 tons or so. They are large enough and seaworthy enough to cross any ocean, especially the Indian Ocean, to get to India, Ceylon, and the Spice Islands. They carry a crew of 30-50, and usually some small cannon for defense. These dhows have a very sharp bow, two to three lateen masts, and a built up stern. The great ports of Acre, Tyre, Jaffa, Alexandrette, Laodicea, Rhodes, Tripoli, Sidon, Limasol, Famagusta, al Maqnah, Aqaba, and Caesarea are where these dhows trade.

Coastal Dhows

These are smaller vessels, designed for the coasting trade and fishing in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. They are shallow-drafted, for use of smaller ports. They range from 50-150 tons, and carry one or two lateen masts and 6-20 crew. Their hulls are often sewn together in the traditional manner. They are seldom armed.

Felluccas

Smaller and lighter than dhows are the felluccas. These can go anywhere, and are used for fishing and river travel in great numbers. They carry a single mast, and mostly in the 10-20 ton range, with a crew of two to five.

Caravels

These are fast, small vessels from Portugal and Spain, 50-150 tons, and with two lateen masts. They are lighter built than dhows, with a less sharp bow, and carry a crew of 5-20. Some carried light cannon for defense.

Galleons

Big vessels of heavy, towering construction. They were used as main warships and as trading vessels with some of the guns removed. They were of 500-2000 tons, and multi-decked, carrying all manner of cannon. As warships, their crews would vary between 100-500 men, and as trading vessels between 50-100. Galleons came from the western Mediterranean and from England.

Race Built Galleons

A very new English design, the race (from razee - shaved down) built galleons were much lower than their towering cousins, but just as long. This made them more weatherly - making less leeway in a wind - and more maneuverable. These are the ships that later sliced up the Armada. They were about two-thirds the tonnage and man of the standard galleon, and would only show up in Acre at first.

Galleasses

A compromise between a galley and a sailing vessel, galleasses could sail well, and also carried 20-30 oars to move with no wind. They were not as good as either a galley under oars or as a sailing vessel under sail. Exclusively a naval vessel, and equiped with a single bank of cannon above the oars, they were prized by Venice, England, Genoa, Ascalon, and Cyprus. Size and crew were much like the race built galleon.

Galleys

Galleys were the primary warships in the Mediterranean. All the major powers had fleets of galleys, ranging from 200-800 tons, with very large crews. Most carried two large lateen sails, and one to three heavy cannon in the forecastle.

Pinnace

A small, open (undecked) vessel with one lateen mast. it is much like a felucca, but of different hull design, being more solidly built of clinker construction.

-clash

Houses in Outremer

2011-08-17T00:13:00.003-04:00

Houses in Outremer were very different from houses in Europe. In Outremer, houses had to deal with greater heat, dust, and lack of water. To do this, they turned inward. Most houses in Outremer were built around a courtyard, open to the sky. In places where water was plentiful, fountains danced and sparkled in the centers, cooling and moistening the air. The ground was flagged in stone or tiled. There were shrubs, flowers, and greenery.

In desert areas, the courtyards and roofs drained into huge cisterns beneath the courtyard when it rained, where the water stayed clean and cold until the long dry summers. In the cities, where there was no room for such courtyards, the roofs were gardens, and the people lived mostly on their roofs, especially in the cool evenings.

The exteriors were plain and unornamented, windowless on the ground floor, and usually so on the next as well, though sometimes there were slit windows for catching breezes. the walls were thick and featureless, keeping the air inside cool, and whitewashed rather than painted. Showing wealth where the tax collectors could see it was never a smart thing to do.

Around the perimeters of these square or rectangular courtyards were arcades, usually of two or more stories. These were breezeways, constructed to funnel and channel cooling breezes. The working rooms - the kitchen, pantries, stable, and such - were found off the ground floor. The family lived in the next floor up. Roofs were sloping and tiled where there was significant rain, and flat where it was dry.

In some places, the houses were built below ground, with long, slanting ramps leading down into the earth. The courtyards were still open to the sky, but the roofs were at or below ground level. Rooms were carved out of the rock on all sides, and many such houses had underground passages leading to neighboring houses, which were often owned by relatives.

In limestone areas, natural caves were sometimes used as houses, with connecting corridors enlarged and smoothed for casual passage. In these areas, sometimes even livestock was kept in caves.In any case, villages were almost always built on hills, rock or tels - the mounded rubble of ancient cities - leaving the arable land open and available for farming. Building on farmable land, even terraced hillsides, was a criminal waste.

-clash

Assassins in Outremer

2011-08-15T20:36:00.003-04:00

Officially, the Mongols destroyed the Assassins in Outremer in 1260, in both our timeline and in that of outremer, yet in our timeline, Assassins were employed by the Egyptians for some time after 1260. In the section on Homs, it is brought up that the inhabitants of Homs consider the Assassins not gone, but "occulted", hidden but still active.

You may wish to work with this suggestion as fact - either the Assassins did survive the Mongols, or someone has reconstructed them in imitation. Either would be effectively the same - and by the time of the game. 200 years after the Mongols crushed them, these Assassins may truly believe that they are the survivors of the Mongol attacks, whether or not this is a fact.

Unlike the old Order of Assassins, who carved a demesne out of first Antioch and then Homs, these new Assassins would be quieter, keeping to the shadows, and hidden. I suggest hiding them in plain sight. Good places to hide would be as a feudal lord and entourage, as religious types, or even as a company much like that of the player characters'.

Contact with the Assassins would then have to be either initiated by the Assassins themselves or through a double blind contact through word of mouth. I think initiation by the Assassins would be more characteristic of them. The Assassins did not just work for hire. They worked toward their own ends while allowing others to finance the means to those ends.

One thing the historical Assassins did was always play one side against another, never letting one side get too strong. In this sense they could be working for the good of all, despite their unsavory means. Is it a good thing to kill one person to stop a war? They may think so. Alternatively, They may be doing this to keep everyone else down until they can take over everything themselves, in an entirely selfish power grab. Either viewpoint works.

As for means, the historical Assassins worked by suborning trusted people in the inner circles of whoever they were targeting - and not by money! They created fanatics out of what would appear on the surface to be solid, respectable citizens. How did they do this? No one knows. The story that they were given hashish and "taken to paradise" appears to be a fabrication, perhaps even one planted by the Assassins themselves. Perhaps it was magic, or the promise of power, or even a return for a great service performed by the Assassins. All of these are possible, and maybe all of them are used. Certainly, the Assassins would never give out their secret.

-clash

Focused and Non-Focused Games

2011-08-14T23:26:00.002-04:00

There is a certain meme going around in the internet RPG circles, in which one asks "But what do the PCs do in this game?", then deriding any attempt to answer with "Well, what do you want to do?". I think it's pernicious, because only a focused game has a narrow enough sphere of play to answer anything else. I have no problem with focused games! Some of my games are very focused - if someone asks "What to the PCs do in In Harm's Way: Aces And Angels?" I can answer "They play WWII fighter pilots." Totally cool. But when someone asks "What do the PCs do in StarCluster 3?" I can't bang out a simple answer.

In focused games, the designer intentionally limits the scope of the game to a small area. Why? Because of the magnification principle - Given the same quantity of data, field of view is inversely proportional to visible detail. In order to achieve a highly detailed view, one must limit the field of that view. In order to see a larger scope, detail must be lost. Thus focused games are those where the designer is interested in detail rather than scope. Non-focused games are those where the designer was more interested in scope than in detail.

There are two ways to get more detail in a non-focused game - increase the data/bandwidth or delegate sub-creation. If you make the game bigger, you can get in more detail. The larger the quantity of available data, the more detail can be fit into a given field of view. By delegating sub-creation. the designer encourages the Group to provide it's own focus. This allows the group to provide its own detail by arbitrarily focusing on some aspect of the game which the group chooses to explore in more depth.

This also brings in the two somewhat contradictory definitions of a game - Game As Written, the book or pdf the designer supplies, and Game As Played, what actually happens in your group. In a game of extremely wide scope and delegated sub-creation, the Game As Written can be essentially unplayable - and this can be a good thing! The group must transform the Game As Written into the Game as Played by sub-creation. If the framework of the game is solid and the process explained well, and especially if tools are provided to help the process, then one should end up with a custom game, produced especially for your group, taking into mind what the group is interested in doing.

So Games As Played are all essentially focused - the only difference is who is doing the focusing.

-clash

Outremer - Frankish Justice

2011-08-09T20:00:00.003-04:00

When the Franks came to Outremer, they inherited a subject population which was mostly Christian - though not at all Catholic - with a huge minority of Muslims, along with many Jews, druze, and others. They took the existing governance system of the Muslims and overlaid it with their own feudal concepts. The result was a strange brew indeed!

Non-Christians were subject to their own laws when dealing with each other, and their own leaders dealt with them - rabbinical tribunals for Jews, and qadi for Muslims. They had to pay a tax - this was inherited from the previous Muslim government, and called the jiziya - dress in ways differentiated from Christians, and could not witness in cases involving Christians except for testifying as to a Frank's age and descent, or to testify involving boundaries. On the other hand, they were free to practice their religions.

Non-Catholic Christians were equal, but not as equal as Catholics. They had their own religiously based courts, and their word in testimony was not equal to that of a Catholic. This varied from place to place, and changed over time. By the time Outremer is set, this distinction had mostly eroded, along with the ability of non-Christians to testify, in most Frankish nations.

Orthodox Syrian Christians had their own courts, called the Cours des Syriens, in which they were judged according to their own customs. These courts ruled on minor to moderate matters, and handed up to the higher courts more difficult matters. There were also market courts, called Cours de la Fondes, which had jurisdiction over commercial matters involving multiple ethicities. Cases "of Blood" - that is murder, treason, and theft - were heard by the higher courts. Minor cases involving Christians were heard in the Cours de la Fondes, or outside the cities, in the court of the local feudal lord. The Fonde administered the markets and souks, including taxes, weights, and measures.

The first higher court was the Cour Des Bourgeois, which dealt with most cases in cities - the Bourgeois were citizens of a city, and not covered by feudal law. These courts covered all people of the cities, no matter their religion or ethnicity. Each city had its own laws, the Assises des Bourgeois, which could differ markedly from city to city. The highest court was the Cour de Haut, the High Court, the court of the ruler. In Antioch and Edessa, this was the Prince, in Tripoli, the Count, and in Acre, the Duke. This court tried all cases handed up from the lower courts, the Cours des Bourgeoise and the feudal courts.

-clash

Outremer - Water in the Desert

2011-08-09T12:44:00.002-04:00

Since most of Outremer is semi arid if not arid, water is the prime necessity. Rainfall in Outremer fals mainly in the winter. In some of the higher elevations - Moab and eastern Aqaba, and the mountainous areas of Homs, Tripoli, Antioch, and Armenia - much of the precipitation comes in the form of heavy snowfalls. Then, for six to nine months of the year, it seldom rains. Streams are often intermittent at best, and in the deserts the are often totally dry - except when it rains. Without vegetation, there is nothing to hold back the water, which accumulates into dry rivers called "wadis" in tremendous flash floods. This then spews out into lower flat areas where is soon evaporates. The trick in these areas is to manage the water, so that it is available even in times when the skies are clear for months on end.

Even in the less dry areas, the semi-arid and comparitively lush places like the Judean hills, or the hills of Moab, people use the most elementary water storace device, the bottle cistern. This is a vertical hole carved into the rock, with water channels draining to it. The cistern has a narrow "bottleneck" opening, and is lined inside with plaster. Other cisterns are shaped like boxes, rectangular, with a narrow top to help prevent evaporation. These can be huge or small, or anything in between.

Dams across wadis can do one of two things - divert floods into rock-cut cisterns, or retain water in the valley. The first is more common, and less difficult to build, but both types are known from ancient times. The Nabateans used wadi dams to supply much of Petra's water a thousand years before the Crusaders came.

Seeps and springs were also used - both come from an aquiferous layer underground. In seeps, water continually beads up and trickles down an exposed rock face. In springs, the water gushes naturally from the ground. Rock-cut channels were used to collect the water from seeps and divert it into collecting tanks. Springs had walls built around them to form collecting pools. Both served to settle the dirt out of the water, and had at least one, and possibly more, exits into channels.

Two types of channels were used besides cutting troughs into the bedrock. Surface aqueducts were constructed of U-shaped segments of stone or clay, mortared together into channels. Care had to be taken with the slope, so that the water ran down them at a natural pace. Qanats were a series of vertical shafts connected by gently sloping underground tunnels, which lead from an underground aquifer far into the desert. The water in the tunnels can be accessed at any of the shafts, and the underground construction minimizes evaporation.

With judicious use of the water collected, irrigation made the deserts bloom. The Nabateans, for example, grew grapes and olives in the Negev and the Arabah with directed irrigation from cisterns and dams. The Franks re-discovered this technology in Petra, where they built a castle in our timeline, and which they resettled in the Outremer timeline. In return, irrigation enabled better water retention through vegetation, which enabled more vegetation, which increased water availability. Water enables life, and life creates water.

-clash

Caravansaraies II

2011-08-06T23:23:00.002-04:00

Now let's move on to who is there at the caravansarai!

Roll 1d20, modified by the location, as before:

+0 if between cities but on a tertiary road.

+2 if between cities but on a secondary road

+4 if between cities but on a primary highway, or in a town.

+6 if in a small city.

+8 if in a large city.

1-2 A small scarred, rough looking group, not merchants, probably mercenaries or bandits
3-4 A small group of secretive merchants, possibly smugglers
5-6 A small group of scarred, rough fellows, outfitted for digging. Possibly treasure hunters
7-8 A wealthy person and small retinue of guards and servants
9 A small group, too silent and too wealthy for this caravansarai
10 A single woman in a burqa, accompanied by a heavily tattooed black eunuch with a sword
11 A group of five order knights in full regalia, each with a sergeant, accompanying a hooded prisoner
12 Half a dozen blue veiled Tuareg, riding beautiful matched black Barb horses
13 Six belly dancers, accompanied by guard eunuchs
14 A small caravan of pilgrims
15 A masked and cloaked courier, carrying only a set of saddlebags
16-17 A group of 20 musicians
18-19 A large merchant caravan carrying frankincense and myrrh
20-26 A huge merchant caravan, carrying silks and/or spices
27-28 A rich Lord and his large retinue - wives, servants, knights, and grooms

-clash

A Bit of Conversation

2011-08-06T02:27:00.002-04:00

This is actual play, straightforward no-rolls roleplaying, from my ongoing In Harm's Way: Napoleonic Naval IRC game. There has been a dinner on board the HMS Avalon, in the harbor at Fort de France, Martinique, in the year of our Lord 1800. Edward Jones, Captain of Marines, has just left the others and gone on deck in a passion. Miss Virginia Fortis, daughter of the Governor of Martinique, comes on deck, seeking him.

Meanwhile, below decks, the American naval lieutenant Simon Laurence talks with Commander Arty Wainwright, captain of the Avalon, Lieutenant Richard York, commanding the Seraph, Arty's Egyptian wife Maraya, her companion Demiana, and M. Gallinuille, the Lieutenant Governor of Martinique.

Virginia goes up on deck, looking for Edward.
EdwardJones is standing on deck, as far forward as he can get.

Demiana: "So, Mr. Laurence? you tell us how you capture big French ship with six mans?"

Virginia starts to go to him, but stops and leaves.

Gallinuille: "Six men? Merde du diable! How is such a thing possible?"

EdwardJones sees her as she is preparing to be lowered into the boat, and hurries over. "Miss Fortis?"
"Yes, Mr. Jones?"

Laurence: "We had spotted what could have been an enemy ship deep in the fog, so my captain sent me and six men out to row closer, to determine if the ship was friend or foe. As we got closer, I could discern that it was a french ship, flying the plague flag."

EdwardJones: "Leaving so soon? I thought you were enjoying the dinner and the company within."
Virginia smiles up at Edward. "The company I was enjoying left rather abruptly."

Demiana: "Were you not most afraid?"
Laurence: "Then a thought occured, 'this is a nice ship, and surely all the men inside of her are sick, or weak. Those still healthy couldn't number more than 30.' And with such small numbers, what was there to be afraid of?"
Maraya: "I will shiver me in the fear."

EdwardJones looks down at his feet. "Miss Fortis. I realize that the law and custom in this island is according to the rule of those who have been set over us. My wishes were not consulted, nor is there any reason why they ought to have been. It would not be surprising for a lady such as yourself to speak as those of the islands do, but I cannot like it."
Virginia turns to the men handling the boat. "A moment please. I shall be back shortly."
EdwardJones: "Now, that was more in keeping with the lady with whom I am acquainted."

Laurence: "So my men and I, stripped ourselves of our boots, and snuck aboard like wraiths, slitting the throats of the few guards that were there."

She walks away from them and turns to Edward. "I said the words deliberately, hoping they would let you know the kind of man Gallinuille is. They were the words he used in informing me of the happy occasion of their purchase." (Referring to slaves)
EdwardJones: "I already know. He is unfit to be governor and unfit to kiss the toe of your muddiest boot. But he is in a position of power, and I am not."

Maraya and Demiana squeal in delight!
Arty: "I am glad we are on the same side currently, Mr. Laurence."
Laurence: "Then we snuck down into the depths of the ship, searching for the captain, who we found to be likely the sickest of them all, whom we convinced that we were but a part of an entire gang of Americans."
Arty: [This sort of thing would be impossible to believe if I hadn't read a bit of naval history.]

Virginia: "And thus we see talent and virtue wasted. I do not like Mr. Gallinuille despite his charm and easy manner."

Laurence: "I remember him asking me, 'Why would you take a plague ship? Surely you don't wish to catch the plague?' to which I replied, 'Won't me much of a plague ship with all the sick dead and thrown overboard, yes?'"
Arty frowns.
Maraya and Demiana are thoroughly delighted by Simon's bloody tale. They laugh and ask him all sorts of questions.
Laurence will answer them as best he can

EdwardJones: "Do you not? But he would make you a wealthy husband, and it appears that you are in need of such. Any man would be blessed were you to link your life with his, but it should be one who can give you the life you merit."
She stands there, staring at him. "You think so little of me?" She whirls and goes back to the boat.
EdwardJones: "Not at all, Miss Fortis. I think so well of you that I would clothe you in silks and sables, had I the means."
EdwardJones calls after her, "I would not have you make a choice that would demean you!"
She stops. "I am happy in the skin the Good Lord gave me, and need no silk nor sable. Good cotten and linen suit me well, sir."
EdwardJones follows her. "Your skin is finer than silk, and should be dressed accordingly."
Virginia: "And what choice would that be, Mr. Jones? You flatter me. I shall one day be old and leathery from the sun, and you would despise me."

Demiana: "You scare the frogs to make them obey? How?"

EdwardJones chokes, but manages to get it out, "Choosing a rough-handed man of the sea, who is better fitted to do your bidding than to touch your glove. I have nothing other than myself. You are exquisitely beautiful, and exceedingly capable besides. Such a woman one meets only rarely in this life. Any man would want you beside him, but you should have one who can give you much. I have only hard work to offer."

Laurence: "By being everywhere at all hours. Always watching. And, once, one of them tried something, to which I replied with a bullet to his forehead."

Virginia says softly "I have no need of a servant, Edward, but a helpmeet would suit me well. As for work, I have never minded it. It is a thing to do and good for one."
EdwardJones: "It is true that beauty fades, yet one can delight in it for much time. Also, I have noticed that many ladies find it all the more important to barter their youth while it is freshest and will, if you forgive my phrasing it so, bring the best price. I would give all I have, save my honor, such as it is, but what I have is small compared to what such as the Governor, or another if you prefer, would offer."
EdwardJones dares to reach for her hand, and gently slips his finger under the wristband of her glove. "A helpmeet is what I have always wished for, but not dared to desire."
Virginia smiles. "It is my dream, Edward. And a dream I thought we shared."
EdwardJones slides the glove off, and strokes her palm with one finger.

The women think your description of haunting the Frogs at all hours is vastly entertaining.

EdwardJones: "You will not regret your lost diamonds and sables?"
Virginia: "I would regret nothing."
EdwardJones: "Your father is too ill for you to leave, or for me to ask his permission. To whom should I apply, then, for the right to care for both of you?"

Maraya: "you kill Frog Captain? With your Jambiya?"
Laurence: "No, he died pretty much the day after I took his surrender."

Virginia: "You may apply to me. I am of age."

Demiana: "Maraya would have killed him. She is bloodthirsty. She make good pirate."

EdwardJones laughs. "Well, then, will you share my fortune, such as it is? You know what I am; you see what I own. If it is enough, it is all yours."

Laurence: "He was essentially dead, why chance the rust on my blade?"

Virginia: "Most happily, dear silly man!" She smiles, and her hand covers Edward's.

Maraya: "Drama."
Arty: "Indeed. I expect the frogs will welcome their new home in our holds."
Gallinuille: "Capitaine? Why do you not leave them on the island? We have plenty of room."

EdwardJones lifts her hand to his face and kisses her fingers, then holds her palm against his cheek. "You know that I must sail with my Captain. Where would you prefer to live? And with an eye to the time when I need no longer sail, would you prefer a smallholding? Or should I plan to be a merchant?"

Laurence: "I didn't want to leave a gaggle of convalescent frogs in your broken jails, to spring up and take over your island now would I?"
Arty: "They need to be guarded in a place not already under difficulties. We don't want this island being under French control again."
Laurence: "Of course, if the Island did fall under french control, it would be a simple matter to make this island then an American one."
Laurence smiles
Richard: "Have you planned this for some time, Mr. Laurence?"
Arty: [And that is why Arty never invited the other American ship in.] "Which would be an act or war against Britain."
Laurence "No, it'll be a plan that waits until we are at war again, though I hope that doesn't happen."

Virginia: "I would prefer to live with you, wherever that may be - the islands, or England, or the plains of Tartary, and you will be amazingly successful at whatever you choose to do, and I will be amazingly happy, and we shall be so even when we are old and wrinkled as plums."

Arty: "I hope not as well, Mr. Laurence."

Edward kisses her hand again. "I trust all shall be as you say. I will do my best to make it so."

Richard: "You do sound as though you expect it again, sir."
Arty: [methinks the GM is setting us up for a future game in the War of 1812]
Laurence: "Hmmn, well, I believe the British aristocracy can't let their last loss stand for long, and many English still impress our sailors as if we were still a colony."

Virginia laughs, like a spring bubbling from the earth. "I will wait for your return, pacing to and fro on the waterfront. You had best return, or I shall have to go and find you."

Arty: "You've already tried two of these written 'Constitutions'. They don't work, you know."
Laurence shrugs "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."
Richard: "Doubtless the young country will have to learn that for themselves, sir, like all younglings. In the meantime, I rejoice in the peace between our two nations."
Arty: "It's only a matter of time until you rejoin us. I mean, what language do you speak?"
Richard: "Depends on whom you ask, doesn't it, sir?"
Arty: "Well, I do not speak 'American'."

Virginia touches her fingers to her lips, then to Edward's.

Richard: "And many of them do not speak the King's English, sure enough."
Arty: "That I will grant."
Laurence: "Then I shall gladly wait for the day I can trounce you in the game of war."

EdwardJones kisses her fingers in return. "In truth, my dear, you tempt me almost beyond bearing. I must return you to shore before I forget you are a lady, and kiss you as I long to do."
Virginia: "Sometimes being a lady can be damnably tiresome." She sighs.

Arty: "I hope the day does not come when we cross blades; but if it does, you might just regret the fact, Mr. Laurence."

EdwardJones kisses her fingers again, fiercely, then helps her down into the boat.
EdwardJones: "I will visit as soon as I can. Do you require anything for the care of your father?"
Virginia shakes her head. "My father is doing as well as can be expected. Hurry back to me!"

I just love how this is all happening in parallel, and I love the language.

-clash

Caravansarais I

2011-08-02T09:20:00.003-04:00

Caravansarais, or Khans as they are also called, were the hotels and motels of Renaissance Outremer, located about a days travel apart on the great highways, but spottier on secondary and tertiary roads. Caravansarais followed a basic floor plan, with many embellishments and variations. The bulding was square or rectangular, without windows to the outside. There was a large front gate, double wide, and large enough for a laden camel to come inside. Through the gates was a tunnel leading into a courtyard, with an office for the caretaker/manager inside. In the courtyard, there was almost always a pool, with or without a fountain, where the animals could drink. In the great cities of Outremer, some Caravansarais were domed, to shelter from the weather. A few were works of architectural genius.

Some caravansarais - the smaller kind - were one story, but most were two stories high. all around the interior perimeter of the courtyard was an arcade of arches, with a stall through each arch. In one story caravansarais, humans and animals slept in the stalls, but in those of two or more stories, people stayed in the rooms above the arches, though this was mostly for the merchants. The caravan guards and drovers generally stayed in the stalls with the beasts of burden, to protect and care for the animals. Some of the stalls were occupied with stores, with wares ranging from food and other neccessities to jewelry and silver work. Services ranged from fodder for beasts to baths and entertainment.

To find out what kind of caravanserai you come upon, roll a d20, modified as follows:

+0 if between cities but on a tertiary road.

+2 if between cities but on a secondary road

+4 if between cities but on a primary highway, or in a town.

+6 if in a small city.

+8 if in a large city.

1-2 No caravanserai, but a good sheltered campsite, with water - from cisterns in the desert.
3-4 A small, poor caravansarai, single storied, with poor shops and sevice, and overpriced.
5-6 A small, poor caravansarai, single storied, with decent shops and fairly priced, with decent services.
7-8 A small, comfortable caravansarai, single storied, with good shops and services.
9 A small, comfortable caravansarai, two storied, with good shops and services.
10 A sprawling caravansarai, single storied, with many decent shops, good services, and low prices.
11 A pretty but small caravansarai, two storied, with excellent shops and services.
12 A moderately large caravansarai, two storied, with excellent shops and poor services.
13 A moderately large caravansarai, two storied, with poor shops and excellent services.
14 A moderately large caravansarai, two storied, with good shops and good services.
15 A moderately large caravansarai, two storied, with excellent shops and good service.s
16-17 A moderately large caravansarai, two storied, with good shops and excellent services.
18-19 An enormous caravansarai, two storied, with excellent shops and services.
20-26 A huge beautiful caravansarai, two storied, with superb shops and services.
27-28 A huge gem of a caravansarai, three storied and domed, with superb shops and services.

-clash

The Syrian Lightning - An IHW:Dragons! Dragon for Outremer

2011-07-28T09:10:00.003-04:00

Continuing on in the spirit of adapting creatures from other Flying Mice games to Outremer, here is a desert dragon, the Syrian Lightning. I created it from the rules in In Harm's Way: Dragons! for Outremer. This was in response to Bonni's reply to my last post, where she says she may be using some dragons she had created for the older game in her Outremer game - I just couldn't resist, because creating dragons randomly is fun!

Syrian Lightning

Hippo sized - medium for dragons. Capable of carrying several people.
Break 4 - not easy to turn.
Damage Track 20 - quite tough!
Night Vision Edge: Night 4 - big eyes, possibly with chatoyance.
Acceleration 10 - extremely quick!
Ceiling 12 - moderately high flying
Max Speed 15 - goes like a bat out of hell!
Maneuv 12 - moderately maneuverable.
INT 8 - very smart!
Covering - Medium Feathers Armor 2
Natural Weapon - Claws +35 Attack Skill+2
Eats herd animals - Aggression: Defensive - not very aggressive, but will fight
Habitat: Desert - this includes both true desert and semi-arid lands
Sight X3 - Human level eyesight
Smell X3 - and smell as good as human eyesight
Hearing X1 - human level hearing
Touch X2 - very sensitive.
Alert +3
Observe +3
Terra Cotta feathers on the back with a matte gradation to pale gray on the underbelly
Barbed and Maned

Enjoy!

-clash

Peris and Deevs

2011-07-26T09:49:00.008-04:00

For those interested in integrating Outremer with On Her Majesty's Arcane Service, the Persian Peri may be of interest. Peris are essentially Fairies, with two related types - the Peri being beautiful and generally benevolent, and the Deev being mishapen and in the main malevolent - and often giant-sized. In OHMAS, fairies are all born much like humans babies, but take the shape of their inner selves as they age. Consquently, in Outremer Peris would do the same, with the Deev taking on grotesque and bizarre shapes, while the others become more refined and beautiful. Peri should have a Charisma of 16 when in humanoid form - which means 16 points *must* be allocated to CHAR for full Peri, and up to 16 MAY be allocated for Half-Peri - with the beautiful, ethereal Peri being intensely attractive, and the hulking, grotesque Deev being just as intensely repulsive. Deevs and Peris are constantly at war. Deevs frequently capture Peris and hang them from high trees in iron cages, to torture them with the nearness of freedom.

Peri of both types have all the powers of Fairies in OHMAS - Shape Change, Size Change, Glammer, and Illusion - but they are a bit different from European faries. Like Djinn, they are held to be creatures created from eternal fire and not from earth, like Humans. Like Djinn also, they can mate and have children with humans when in human form. Like Fairies, they are not immortal and dwell in pockets. Like Fairies, their sometimes extended lifetimes are most likely artifacts of different time scales in their pockets. In other words, they live for approximately the same span as humans, but since they may inhabit a place where a year is longer (or shorter) than a year on our Earth, they can appear to live for long times. Unlike Fairies, they do not practice kidnapping human children and replacing them with Peri children - i.e. creating Changelings.

A Half-Peri, the product of the union of a Peri and a Human, which is brought up in Human lands, should be treated as a Fairy Changeling, and not as a Human Changeling. OHMAS gives the particulars on this. A Half-Peri brought up as a Peri would be a Peri in all essentials. There is no reason why either a Half-Peri or a Peri cannot be a Player Character in Outremer.

Peri Magic:

Glammer

Glammer makes things seem better than they actually are. People are better looking, charming, their voices sweeter and more melodious. When cast on people, on a successful check and the loss of one point of AGY, the recipient gains +1 CHAR per 2 successes, rounding up. When cast on items, on a successful check and the loss of one point of AGY, the item seems to double in value with each success. These effects are maintained so long as a MAG point
is invested.

Illusion

Illusion, on a successful check and the loss of a point of COOR, allows the caster to create an area with a convincing illusion, up to 5 square feet per success. In order to see through the illusion, the person looking at the illusion must make an Observe check with at least as many successes
as the caster’s Illusion check. The illusion is maintained as long as the MAG point is invested.

Shape Change

Shape Change allows the caster, on a successful check and the loss of a point of END, to change one body part of the target per success. The body part ‐ such as the head, hands, legs, feet, etc ‐ can be changed into the equivalent body part of any animal. The change is maintained as long as the MAG point is invested.

Size Change

Size Change allows the caster, on a successful check and the loss of a point of STR, to change the size of the recipient by 25% per success. The change is maintained as long as the MAG point is invested. STR changes proportionately with size, rounding up.

-clash

My Strange, Bizarre Convictions On the Role of the Designer

2011-07-22T14:44:00.002-04:00

I have long held that in RPGs there are three levels of design - the Designer level, the Group level, and the Individual level. All games incorporate all three levels into the design, but proportions of each vary enormously. Traditionally, the GM does almost all of the Group design, where the other members of the group concentrate on the Individual aspects of the design - their characters, backgrounds, and things their characters control; but this is not my decision. As a GM, I prefer to include the rest of my group in the Group level design process, but I leave that open, as how it is done is a Group level decision.

In recent times - I have been running games since 1977- I see more and more auteurism in game design - designers who dictate in various ways how the game is played, and what the game is about, in increasing detail. I am not an auteur. I feel my job as designer is to help you play the game you want to play.

In my designs I do my best to push as much as possible down to the Group level by various means, such as providing tools to make it easy to generate setting within a framework rather than dictating setting. I make the system as flexible as possible to accommodate what the group is interested in doing rather than what I, as designer thought of when designing. In different games I approach things in different ways - in some games the method of resolution can be swapped out as required, in others I only frame things, leaving interpretations open. Always I define from center - for example skills generally have a definition which amounts to "stuff like this", spells may be only an evocative name, leaving the actual effects open to discussion, and lately have focused on the group defining what the game is about by designing their own company or association, then designing their characters to fit the association, and defining by their association what the campaign/adventure will be about.

When I develop settings, I try to keep the detail level as low as possible - working in broad strokes for the group to refine and detail themselves. I try not to prejudice group decisions by giving examples which are as broad and fundamentally different as possible. By this I encourage groups to think of these examples as arbitrary directions in a sea of possibilities - for instance in StarCluster 3, my example companies included among others medical groups, insurance adjusters, police and law enforcement, and religious groups.

What I set out to provide is ideas and settings and cultures that fire up one's imagination on what one can do with them. That is the living, breathing center of a designer's job, and always has been. This is why pure toolkits have never done well - most people do better within a framework than without.

The problem comes when the framework becomes a cage, when the only way to fit your ideas in is to rip something else out.

There are many ways in which designers do this - lock the group level imagination in a cage, I mean. One common way is to provide too much detail in a setting, then interrelate everything. Another is to tightly intermesh carefully balanced components of a system mechanically, so that one daren't tinker lest the whole edifice tears itself apart. Yet another is to circumscribe the setting and system 'til the game becomes a single scenario with a sparse attached system and many times pre-genned characters, just competent to deal with what is in the scenario - though this is better than the previous two as it's easier to add than to tear apart, then add! Still another is to lock down the variation possible between characters, making strict types, each with a specific function.

The net effect of all of these is to increase the Designer's share of the input into the game at the expense of Group and - less commonly - Individual input. There are big benefits to these methods, which is, of course, why Designers go this route and GMs stand for it. One can pick these games and play them as is without a lot of setup. One doesn't need to think too much, as choices are controlled and managed. They are great for one-shots. They are uniform across instantiations. They limit bad games by limiting possibly bad Group level choices. These are all solid, tangible benefits. The "caged-in" effect not a goal, but an unanticipated and perhaps unwanted side effect for designers working toward the benefits listed.

Umm, I guess there's more, but I could write pages and pages about this subject, and I'm salmoning - constantly swimming upstream. I find most GMs/groups - the vast majority actually - don't mind the Designer doing all the designing, they are just there for the ride. This makes me sad when I think about it, and I lose energy.

-clash

Drilling Down for Sub-Cultural Traits

2011-07-19T20:42:00.000-04:00

Cultural Traits in Outremer are set at the national level, but that doesn’t mean there are no cultural groups at a sub-national level. All it means is that taking all people of that state into consideration, those average Traits stand out.
Sub-Cultures
Below the state level are various sub-cultural groups, which can be approached the same way as the national level group. For example the semi-independent Principalities like Galilee are are given Traits separately from the main state’s Traits, but sub-cultures can be much smaller than Principalities. Bedouin tribes, city and townspeople, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, or inhabitants of remote areas are all examples of sub-cultures. Any time a group of people see themselves as different from the mainstream, there’s a sub-culture. In most cases, the so-called mainstream is an artifact made up of dozens of slightly different sub-cultures.
Drilling Down
The process of defining sub-cultures I call ‘drilling Down”. The smaller the sub-culture, the further you drill down, the larger the variation can be from the state culture.
Top-Level Sub-Cultures
Top level sub-cultures are huge cities or large ethnic majorities. These should only vary from the main culture by one or two Trait Points. For example, the Traits of the Emirate of Damascus are Inventive 2, Accepting 2, Cultured 2, Proud 1. The great City of Damascus - which all of Galilee would be swallowed up in - should vary little from this baseline - perhaps something like Inventive 2, Accepting 1, Cultured 3, Proud 1.
Mid-level Sub-Cultures
Mid level sub-cultures are smaller groups of people - a normal city, a prosperous valley, a quarter of a huge city, or a large minority of some type. These have more leeway in how much they can diverge from the main culture, so up to three or four points of difference is fine. For example the Traits of the Duchy of Acre are Brisk 2, Arrogant 2, Tolerant 2, Creative 1, but the Traits of the Lordship of Scandalion might be Brave 2, Arrogant 2, Tolerant 2, Taciturn 1.
Low Level Sub-Cultures
Low level sub-cultures as small groups of people. Examples would be a town or large village, a small ethnic or religious minority, or a large tribe. These groups may have little in common with the overarching state culture, so up to five or six points may differ. For example, the Traits of the nation of Rhodes are Methodical 2, Cultured 3, Arrogant 1, and Patient 1, but the inhabitants of the town of Stampalia might be Suspicious 2, Provincial 2, Generous 1, Polite 1, and Patient 1.
Micro Sub-Cultures
Micro sub-cultures, like small villages or tribes, may be totally unlike the state culture. Any similarities would be coincidence.

-clash

Cities, Towns, and Villages in Outremer

2011-07-19T10:13:00.004-04:00

In the game of Outremer, I separated Cities and Towns, and did not distinguish Villages. Villages in the Holy Land are extremely important, and extremely ancient. From Aqaba to Edessa, Villages are named with either their ancient Aramaic names, or with some version of them easy to pronounce in the locally important language. These places have been around forever, and may be quite large. Villages are usually the places farmers or fishermen live, and they work the areas nearby. Unlike in the USA, famers do not live in single family houses on the land they farm. In the desert areas, villages are not so much for farming as for trade. Villages grow up around caravanserais or fortifications, most of which are ancient and rebuilt again and again in the same spot, where there is a supply of water. For all the population in the great cities, the bulk of the people live in villages.

Towns and Cities in Outremer are both urbanized, that is they are inhabited by a variety of specialists, and not by a group of farmers or fishermen. They tend to be walled, though many have outgrown their walls since the times of constant danger. Many have several fortifications around them, castles and forts designed to protect them, and large and ornate places of worship. Both Towns and Cities in Outremer have usually existed for millennia in the same spot, though not always under the same name. Conquerors tend to rename Cities, and sometimes Towns, and forget about the villages.

The difference between Towns and Cities is therefore the population, and by extension the variety of services which are supported. Where a Town might support a thriving souk, or market, a City might support a dozen souks. Where a Town might have an imposing cathedral or beautiful mosque, a City might have dozens of each, with many of differing creeds, with synagogues and other places of worship thrown in for good measure. Cities thrive on trade, and on pilgrimage. The economic importance of pilgrimage to the Outremer cannot be overstated!

The roads shown on the maps in the game are all important primary or secondary trade routes. These routes have caravanserai roughly a day apart, or villages with accommodations, or both. The roads may be paved, or they may be dirt, but they are unmistakable as anything but roads. At borders along these routes there are customs shacks for taking fees, and barracks for troops. They are also regularly patrolled to drive away robbers and bandits.

There are also a huge number of tiny tertiary roads. These may be smugglers' routes, or herding paths, or just country lanes. There are no caravanserai, villages are insular and not equipped to take travellers, and no one patrols them or taxes their use. Use the roads appropriate to your purpose. Many of these roads were once more important than they are now, and lead to ruined places and cities, and which are now the haunt of bandits - and much worse. Use the road appropriate for your purpose.

Caravanserais are different in form and function in Cities and Towns from those in Villages. Damascus, for example, has many huge, gorgeous caravanserais, some of them architectural marvels, with shops and souks inside like modern shopping malls. Rural caravanserais are noted more for their utility and protection than their comfort and beauty, but they all are are stoutly built, and provide food and water.

-clash

Look! Up In The Sky! Alpha Test

2011-07-18T08:40:00.002-04:00

We played LUITS! Saturday and Sunday, and several things became almost immediately apparent. First, Klax had attempted to keep as much of the StarCluster/StarPool System feel as possible, but the damage track stages from standard StarPool - fine, down 2 dice, down 2 dice and stunned, critically injured and bleeding out, and dead - felt totally wrong. In place he put a new interpretation on the stages - fine, down 1 die, down 2 dice, down 3 dice, and unconcious - which was palpably better suited for supers.

Another thing was the increasing number of attacks with increasing Mastery. This doesn't seem to be a problem with non-combat skill use, just combat. Using a skill path character, a PC was able to take out two super powered Tanks in one round. Klax ruled that - where it used to be one attack until Master (Skill rank 0-4), two attacks with Mastery (Skill rank 5-9), three attacks with Double Mastery (Skill rank 10-14), etc. - a second attack was added with Mastery, but increasing levels of Mastery just gave you rerolls if you didn't like the results. That seemse to work very well, and taking combat ranks beyond Mastery became less and less appealing. It also makes speedsters more interesting as the only way to get more than 2 attacks per round. I really like this, and may introduce it back into the mainstream of SC System development. Part of the problem came from Klax's paring down the number of skills into only the essentials. SC was designed with a large number of overlapping skills. With so few skills, characters taking the Skill Path can easily get seriously overloaded.

Otherwise, we had a blast. The City was cool, the Association rocked, and the game was fun. We ran into the Amazing Four, a US government subsidized group with it's own space station lair. The AF consisted of Mister Amazing - the Skill guy and Leader, Bear - a truly brutal brawler, The Anvil - the prototype Tank, and Master Blaster - a Blaster type. The first encounter, we caught them by surprise and cleaned their clocks. We captured Bear when Shade Mimiced him and they took off with her. She later stole the Amazicar and brought it back from the station.

After that, though, the superior resources of the AF bore down on us. We lost our HQ after they traced the Amazicar there, then they tricked us - while we were assaulting them at our old HQ with robots of ourselves, they used robots of themselves to take the assault, meanwhile they cracked our back up HQ in the sewers. Decimo had to use his two Prepared boxes - "Don't worry, I've prepared for this happening" - to get us out safe.

Status as of now, we are camping out in one of the groups' Winnebago. No HQ, No access to our cool stuff. But the robots we sent in are truly amazing, and the AF are convinced they have caught four of us, and we can get telemetry from them. We also have Bear, sedated in a Healing Tank, hidden under our old HQ, which is now occupied by the AF. So things are not totally down. The Empire has taken Hoth, but we made a fighting retreat, and are still intact! :D

-clash

Danny "Duke" Ducassi - AKA Decimo

2011-07-16T12:22:00.001-04:00

Danny "Duke" Ducassi is the oldest son of a bastard son of the eighth head of the Ducassi family. The ninth head was his legitimate son, Danny's uncle. Danny's father, a captain in the Family, died saving the life of his half-brother, who didn't know about it as he was lied to. Danny's family has a ring which gives members of his family certain powers. When Danny's uncle died, the ring was passed to his son, Danny's cousin, but the ring rejected him. Danny's family, now headed by his mother, who hates the family, had drifted away into genteel poverty since the father's death, but the Family located him and the ring accepted him as leader. This occasioned the split in the family, which was very recent. Danny's cousin, Donny, heads the half of the Family who now protect Westwood. They are not - as yet - enemies, but rather rivals. The Ducassis are an old - and old-fashioned - Mafia Family. Danny's mother is his "Aunt May", who hates the Family and everything to do with it, and can never learn of Danny's involvement.

The ring is the Ring of the Fires of Life, one of several similar magical rings, though the Ducassis only know of theirs. It is massive, covering the entire first joint of the ring finger, with a huge cabochon ruby crossed by two gold bands in the shape of an "X". At the ends of each of the bands, and in the center, is a shimmering moonstone. It has been handed down in the Ducassi family for over 250 years, since before they arrived in the USA from Italy. No one knows much about it before it arrived in America with Quinto, Dino Ducassi, in the 1880s. The ring is keyed to the head of the Ducassi family, and gives the wearer sharpened intellect, toughens the body, and gives the wearer control over the fires of his own life - the wearer can shoot these fires out of his hands as a weapon, and they can be ridden like a surfboard through the air.

His nickname "Duke" is only used within the family, to help disguise his identity as Danny. As a super, his name is Decimo, for the tenth head of the family. His costume is a typical supers stretch suit, black, with a red D in a white circle on his chest. Over the top, he wears a flowing black trenchcoat. Over his face and head he wears a black tie-on mask, with white lenses, and a black fedora on his head over the mask.

The Ducassi Organization - (Johnston Association)

2011-07-15T09:37:00.005-04:00

Here is the Association we came up with for our Johnston campaign:

NAME: The Ducassi Organization

HQ LOCATION: The Old Ducassi Theater, Downtown.
ASSOCIATION TYPE: Straight Gang, supported by the population.
FUNDING: 1024

AREAS OF INTEREST
Guards and Security: Elite Grunts – 30, Elite Guards – 20, Standard Grunts – 60, Standard Security System
Transportation: Standard Cars – 3, Designed Vehicles (A-grav truck/tank) - 3
Medical: Poor Med Bay, Standard Doctor, Standard Med Tubes - 2
Data Library: Standard Science, Standard Criminal
Information Gathering: Internet, Standard Informant, Standard Hacker
Training: Danger Room
Logistics and Maintenance: 256

This association is a mob-like gang, that has taken it upon itself to serve and protect the citizens of the city in lieu of the government, who views the populace as nothing more than a set of people to tax, and otherwise don’t care what happens. This change, from standard criminal gang to protectors of the people, has come about through long term protection money and a certain Noblesse Oblige of the old-style Mafia family that runs it, the Ducassis. Recently, there was a dispute over the next head of the gang, leading to a split of east and west. PC’s are working with the recognized head of the family. The Informant will be named later, in play, as a surprise to the GM.

Klax's character is Danny "Duke" Dukessi. Danny is the oldest son of a bastard son of the eighth head of the family. The ninth head was his legitimate son, Danny's uncle. Danny's father, a captain in the Family, died saving the life of his half-brother, who didn't know about it as he was lied to. Danny's family has a ring which gives members of his family certain powers. When Danny's uncle died, the ring was passed to his son, Danny's cousin, but the ring rejected him. Danny's family, now headed by his mother, who hates the family, had drifted away into genteel poverty since the father's death, but the Family located him and the ring accepted him as leader. This occasioned the split in the family, which was very recent. Danny's cousin, Donny, heads the half of the Family who now protect Westwood. They are not - as yet - enemies, but rather rivals. The Ducessis are an old - and old-fashioned - Mafia Family. Danny's mother is his "Aunt May", who hates the Family and everything to do with it, and can never learn of Danny's involvement.

-clash

Beryl Buran - AKA Shade

2011-07-14T09:32:00.005-04:00

The last blog post - about Johnston, our LUITS! Super City - will be the first in a short series about the game. We finished our Association/Sentai - still unnamed - and all of us there made characters. We anticipate at least one, maybe three more characters to come. As the Sentai is still unnamed, and we haven't come up with a logo yet, I'll post it later in the series. For now, I'm posting about one of the characters.

Beryl Buran came to Johnston as a child with her father and mother, escaping the newly dissolved USSR. Her father is a mechanic, and her mother works as a receptionist for a dentist. As she grew up, Beryl fell in with a bad crowd, despite her Middle Class upbringing, becoming a member of a teenage gang on the streets of Johnston. She came to the notice of Dr. Destiny, a warped medical genius who ran one of Johnston's many gangs. She became his "Special Project" - an attempt to create the perfect thief.

Beryl disappeared from her home and the streets. Over a year's time, Dr. Destiny operated on her repeatedly, always without general anesthetic so she would remember who she owed her future to, gradually replacing almost every bit of her body. Her bones and muscles were replaced with elastomer based replacements and extre, cloned, nerve endings, allowing her full muscular control, and allowing her to both stretch any part of her body to four times it's normal length, and to mimic perfectly any person she touched - she can extract DNA from the touch, and temporarily mimic even metahuman powers, though it costs her physically to maintain it. Her body was toughened in the process, giving her twice the constitution she would normally have. A regimen of drugs and operations enlarged certain parts of her brain, giving her the ability to teleport anywhere, and the ability to form a sonic tendril of air and use it as an invisible whip to rifle range.

Beryl was not appreciative of the efforts Dr. Destiny exerted on her behalf, particularly since Dr. Destiny neglected to gain her consent - a trifling matter to one so powerful of intellect, to be sure, but one which made much difference to Beryl. At the first opportunity - when she was healed enough from the drugs and operations - she escaped from his clutches and vowed to fight criminals and crime with all her being. She was found wandering the streets of Johnston in a hospital gown and paper slippers by Decimo, who invited her to join his special team of metahumans. After determining the aims and resources available, she accepted.

Beryl took the nom de guerre of Shade for her fight against crime. Her costume is a form-fitting gray, without emblem or device, and a domino mask with wide cheek wings to hide her face. Her hair is a wild tangle of dark red, her eyes are blue - though the lenses in her mask hide this - and she is freckled, which the cheek winged mask hides. She lives in an apartment in Johnston, and works for Decimo's overt operation as Beryl Buran, an Effector.

A quick sketch of Shade

-clash

Johnston - A Supers City

2011-07-14T01:42:00.006-04:00

We created the city for our Look! Up In The Sky! game, entirely through random rolls, with the exception of assigned Traits to bring it all together.

Johnston is a city somewhere on the east coast of the USA - about the size of Akron OH or Providence RI - with a big modern airport (Air route 1), a sea port a ways up an estuary (Sea route 2), at the end of a crumbling, traffic snarled, four lane highway (Land route 3). It's a large city, and a moderate world power. Johnston's City-wide Traits - it's civic stereotype - is Blue Collar 3, Stubborn 1, Gray 1, and Struggling 2. Johnston's City Government Traits are Rapacious 2, Disinterested 2, Despised 2, and Shabby 1

Johnston has 7 Districts:

Westwood is a tract of slums to the northwest of Downtown. It is Important to the city, and has 10s of thousands of people in it, in 2 diverse cultures, of whom 5% are metahuman. Surprisingly, it has only a moderate crime rate. Its traits are strugglng 2, Blue Collar 2, Stubborn 1, and Self-Reliant 2. It's conditions are Gloomy, Run-down, and Smoggy.

East Johnston is the waterfront and port, also a slum, and also housing 10s of thousands - this time in 3 separate cultures, with a 5% metahuman rate. It is of Average importance to the city, and also has a surprisingly moderate crime rate. It is the easternmost district. Both East Johnston and Westwood are protected and patrolled by resident funded gangs, as the cops are crooked and never set foot in the slums. East Johnston's Traits are Struggling 2, Roguish 2, Stubborn 1, and Self-reliant 2, and its Conditions are Seedy, Maritime, and Odorous.

The Pit is a district around the decrepit Johnston Civic Arena, where the semi-pro Johnston Jaguars footbal team and the AA Johnston Wildcats minor league teams play. It is south of the Downtown, and ringed with seedy sports bars and sleazy strip joints. Its Conditions are Crumbling, Sports-mad, and Outdated.

Pleasantville is a recently finished urban renewal area, funded with federal pork-barrel money. It is north and west of East Johnston, and contains the equally new airport. It is an urban residential district, with lots of high-rise apartment houses, which are mostly empty because very few people in Johnston can afford to live here. There are only some thousands of residents, but they are split into 5 different cultures as they have not yet had time to settle and gel. Crime is Plentiful, and 10% of the people are metahumans. It is of inconsequential value to the city, as very few people live here. Its Traits are Blue collar 3, Struggling 1, Gray 2, and Practical 1, and the Conditions are Clean, Empty, and Well Ordered.

West Johnston is a large, sprawling suburban district housing tens of thousands of residents in 3 cultures, 10% of whom are metahuman. Crime is Plentiful, as they rely on the crooked police, and it is of average importance to the city. It is located to the west of the downtown, south of Westwood, and the main land route out goes through it. Its Traits are blue Collar 3, Struggling 1, Chip on Shoulder 2. and Stubborn 1, while its Conditions are Spacious, Twisty, Green, and Clean.

Downtown is actually two districts, The Financial District, and the Government Center.

The Financial District is dominated by some fair-sized old Art Deco skyscrapers, most of which are half-empty, and all of which are crumbling. It is inconsequential to the city, as the financial institutions have been failing for some time. Its Conditions are Looming, Compact, and Run Down.

The Government Center is older, over a century old in most parts, filled with pillared government buildings and old low-rise office buildings. Johnston's Government Center is Very Important to the city, and its Conditions are Ornate, Old-Fashioned, and Outdated.

-clash

Another Busy Week!

2011-07-13T09:22:00.002-04:00

Tonight we are meeting to prep a session of Look! Up In The Sky! while Klax is up here. He's added a lot of material since the last time, and made a lot of small changes in the stuff already written, so we've got to create a new Association - AKA Setai - a new City, and new heroes. One of the cool new things is a weapon definition system, where we can mod weapons for our heroes.

Our last session was very cool and a lot of fun, and we all loved our heroes, but the purpose here is an accelerated play test, and we need to push it, thus new everything. Our last Sentai had almost no resources, and we were all pretty poor, so we need to test out a better funded Association.

We'll play the game Sunday afternoon. Sunday Morning is my In Harm's Way: Napoleonic Naval IRC game, and Saturday is our Outremer game, plus Daring Derelict Delvers over IRC Thursday night with Tim, so I will be very busy this week!

-clash

And Now For Something We Hope You'll REALLLY Like!

2011-07-12T08:57:00.003-04:00

With Outremer out, I can concentrate on the game projects that have been neglected while I worked on it. Here are the projects that are some way along in development:

In The Beginning

This is a game set up as a prequel to StarCluster 3. The setting is the Solar System, as it is before the discovery of the calamity that was to come. Of course, it is fully playable without said discovery - if you want to bang around in the system and forget aout the Cluster, that's totally cool too. Earth has colonized many places in the system, from moons to planets to asteroids to habitats. We have also sent out colony ships to Alpha Centauri and other stars, and the Centauri colony is flourishing, though this game will not talk much about them. They are there in the background, though.

Fusion torch ships will be the primary mode of transport between worlds for people and perishables, but slow freight will take slower - and cheaper - modes of transport, from light sails to ion jets, almost exclusively robotically guided. There is no FTL, nor any anti-gravity, as yet in the game. I was originally going to do this as a free setting for SC 3, but there is so much work involved - from setting development to tech to new professions - that I have decided to make this a complete new game.

In Harm's Way: Pigboats

This game will be about World War II submarines, American, British, German, and Japanese. I may throw in others as well. The Soviet Union, the Netherlands, and Italy all had respectable submarine fleets as well. I will be (severely) adapting a new version of the air combat system from previous IHW games to use with submarines. This is another of my "special" projects, near and dear to my heart, like IHW: Napoleonic Naval and Tools of Ignorance, where I don't care if there is a market or not. I know Rich Rogers is writing a new baseball RPG, just as Neil Gow wrote his Napoleonic Naval game, so maybe markets can be developed ab initio.

"Lowell Was Right!"

This game is still under a working title I will not be using for the final product, which is why it's in quotation marks - it refers to astronomer Percival Lowell's sightings of canals on Mars. The premise here is that science as of the Fin de Siecle - c. 1900 - was basically correct in all important ways, and projecting those theories forward to approximately now. This means that clown Einstien was totally wrong, and the Michelson-Morley experiment proved the existence of the Luminiferous Ether. This will NOT be some Steampunk game - no Science!, just science as it was understood back then, projected forward.

Science theory in 1900 was very, very different to what is accepted today. There was no DNA, not solar fusion, no relativity. Unfortunately researching this period is proving very difficult. Science prefers to ignore its dead ends or to ridicule them. I want to explore them and extend them. This will be a hard SF treatment of discarded theory, as if it were true. Expect this to crawl along at a snails pace as I painfully accumulate enough knowledge to do this concept justice.

-clash

How to Make a Flying Carpet

2011-07-06T08:53:00.003-04:00

by Hakim ibn Ali, Master Mechanist, Damascus

Background

The 1001 Nights and other works often mention carpets which fly, yet no descriptions are given on how to create them. This paper is an attempt to supply that needed description.

The Armature

A carpet is a floppy thing, without an internal skeleton. As a Mechanist, when I create a device for attaching a Djinn animal, I look for attachment points where the muscles of the Djinn animal can be connected to perform work. The first step of creating a Magic Carpet is to provide this skeleton, which I call the Armature. The Armature can be any of several designs, but I have found a linked rod armature easiest to construct, with the best combination of rigidity and flexibility.

The Backbone

The backbone is a series of Acrean foot-to-cubit-long rods - wood or metal - with clevis ends, one end having a single tongue with a clevis pin hole through, the other with a double tongue and clevis pin hole. The clevis pin is part of the ribs.

The Ribs

The ribs are also rods. Half the ribs that attach to the backbone have one end with a bearing surface (as a clevis pin) and tapped hole, and a double tongue clevis half on the other end. The other half of the ribs have a threaded portion to match the tapped hole on one end, and a single
clevis tongue on the other end.

Place the single tongue of one rod between the double tongues of another rod. Line up the holes and put the clevis pin of a rib through, then screw the other side of the rib into the tapped hole, sealing the clevis pin into the clevis joint. The linked rods will now be able to pivot on the clevis pin ribs. Link enough rods together to stretch the length of the carpet.

Attach other clevis rods to the ribs to spread the width of the carpet. You will now have a flexible, articulated skeleton for attaching to the carpet and to the djinn animal.

Attaching the Carpet to
the Armature.

Lay the carpet over the armature so that all of the Armature is covered. Using strong thread, sew the carpet to the Armature. If you wish, you can turn the carpet over and attach a second carpet to the back in the same fashion.

Enchanting the Carpet

You will need to summon the properly sized Djinn animal for the carpet. The animal must be a flying sort, and at least Rank 3 for a small, one or two person carpet. For anything larger a Rank 4 animal needs to be summoned. Anchoring should proceed as usual.

Option: Seats

If your riders are uncomfortable riding the backbone of the Armature, you can attach disk shaped seats to the ribs on short brackets over the backbone, covering them with the carpet as usual.

from the Outremer Companion, Volume I

Releasing Outremer Friday, July 1st

2011-06-29T19:10:00.004-04:00

I will be releasing Outremer Friday, July 1st. It's ready to go, and I have an advance print copy from Lulu and it looks nice. It's fairly large - almost 300 pages, but it's not, I think, bloated. It just has a lot of setting to cover. There are name generators, lists of titles, clothing, timelines, and other space-taking but important things- important for setting flavor, that is.

With the probability of an Outremer Companion in the future, I don't see any reason to wait any longer. The Companion(s) will be covering a lot of peripheral stuff that is cool, but not essential. I hope to write a few articles myself, but the best thing would be articles submitted by folks out there.

-clsh

Skype interview

2011-06-27T09:15:00.003-04:00

Rich Rogers at the Canon Puncture podcast interviewed me over Skype this spring, and the interview is just released - Canon Puncture

I'd never even used Skype before this. Now we use it to game live with Klaxon in Florida every week. Neat technology!

-clash

Adam's OHMAS!

2011-06-23T21:48:00.002-04:00

I tripped across this - a fellow named Adam is/was running OHMAS. I LOVE the Actual Play recaps! Brilliant!

Adam's OHMAS

Visit! Go! :D

-clash

The Outremer Companion

2011-06-23T09:03:00.002-04:00

I am thinking I shall publish a Companion to Outremer - free for download, printed at cost - made up of contributions of various sorts to Outremer. This may include the two pieces I referred to earlier in this blog - the linguistic references and the village naming tables - if I can do them justice or find someone else who can do this. Other contributions could include player characters, NPCs, essays on trade and cultures, articles on the geography of the Outremer, creatures of all sorts, illustrations, maps, and anything else which would pertain to the game and setting.

Why? Outremer is a deep, deep setting, and ripe for such a delving. Also, I would like to involve customers and friends in fleshing out the setting. I would really enjoy it, both in the making and in the actuality, and would volunteer my time to edit and assemble the Companion. If it's successful, there could be other Companions down the line, and I may make this concept available for other games - StarCluster 3 and OHMAS would both be prime candidates.

-clash

More stuff for Look! Up In the Sky!

2011-06-20T10:20:00.003-04:00

Worked a bit on Look! Up In the Sky! last night. All I am doing with the game is edit and layout. Klax is the writer and designer. Klax had sent me two files just before I left for Montreal, and I hadn't had time to do anyting with them. They were Vehicle Design and Weapons Design. For vehicles, design works like the old SC 2 vehicle design system - vehicles are designed from the ground up, rather than modified from existing vehicles as is SC 3, IHWSC, and Cold Space. The big difference is that costs are given in both Lifestyle for personal purchase, and in Association Resource Points for group purchase. It works well, and I like the dual costing. I will probably use it in the future!

The Weapon Design system is like SC2 and SC3's system - a group of standard weapons are given, and you can modify by steps them on several axes, so long as the changes equal zero. For example, you can raise the steps to make a weapon do more Damage, and add a firing Mode - say Full Automatic fire - but you have to work it down the same number of steps by decreasing Concealability and increasing Cost. Costs are personal, in Lyfestyle only. The group does not purchase weapons for individuals.

So far, it's really looking good!

-clash

Roludothon Pics

2011-06-19T01:53:00.004-04:00

Here's the StarCluster group:

Jocelyn played the uplifted housecat Captain, who refused to make a decision.
Luc played the centauroid construct who was brilliant at following procedures, and helpless without them.
Conan played the excitable Chimpanzee Engineer who was always trying to take things over, because, y'know, he was just better at it.
El played the uplifted Harpy Eagle pilot, who wanted to fly away.
Chris played the uplifted Crocodile who never saw a problem he couldn't shoot.

Here's the Outremer Group:

El played the Edessan Faris (Knight), an Alevi Muslim.
Charles played the Jewish Kabbalist from Damascus. Jeffrey's brother-in-law.
Denis played the Brewer from Acre, who was a half-Djinn, and Anglican.
Charles II played the Aleppan Magus of Djibril, a Sunni Muslim.
Jeffrey played the Jewish Mechanist from Acre, who made an artificial hound.
Chris played the penniless Armenian Crusader, an Orthodox Christian.
Graham played the Cypriot Esotericist, a Roman Catholic.

-clash

Outremer - Suggestions From the Playtesters

2011-06-17T09:00:00.003-04:00

I've got a couple of suggestions from the Outremer playtesters I haven't yet acted on. I haven't acted on them yet because I'm not quite sure how to approach them. Both stem from the fact that the Appendix of Naming Tables was very well received - the tables are broken down by linguistic/ethnic group, and really help in naming characters. These are both extensions of that idea, and can be considered together, though they need to be implemented separately.

First off is a set of linguistic phrase tables - basically common things characters can insert into their speech to give local flavor. Basically the problem here is these languages are obscure at best - outside of Arabic and Turkish - that some of them are completely postulated - such as Outremer Frankish and Edessan, and that they all change over time. This will take some serious research into the languages, and will delay the release of Outremer. Should I release it later on, as a supplement? A big decision!

Second is a name generator for villages and small towns. Cities and large towns show on the maps, but the smaller settlements would need creation by the group and/or GM. The problem? Well, first of all languages, and for that see the above, but also naming patterns. The Arabs generally reinstated an Arabicized version of the old Semitic names, except where they didn't know, but the Crusaders used a hodge-podge of techniques - Latin and Greek names unused since classical times, assigning biblical names to places they thought appropriate - and were frequently wrong! - naming places after geographical features in Frankish tongues, assigning fortress or castle names to nearby towns, renaming settlements after saints and warriors, and the like. the Turks sometimes "Turkified" existing place names - Antioch became Antakya, Smyrna became Izmir - but they didn't differentiate between classical names and Semitic names. They also renamed places by translating the meaning into Turkish, or by commemorating ancient heroes. The Armenians? Who the heck knows? Armenian place names are just GONE! Again, a lot of research, no one method, and missing information I would have to flat out make up. Is it worth the time it will take? Should I delay Outremer until this appendix is finished?

By the way - I bought two games I have wanted for some time - Amber and Over the Edge - up at the Roludothon. I'm hip deep in Amber now. I want to re-write it as a Blood Games II game. The various magics work up well as Paths of Power, and the dice pool mechanic wold be slick. Don't worry! I won't! I just WANT to! :D

-clash

Seeking Suki and Perchance to Dream - Roludothon Finale

2011-06-13T09:34:00.003-04:00

In the Morning, we played a game called Sparks, a story-ish game set in the far future. The Scenario was called Seeking Suki, set on a Japanese settled world with created peasants and ruling humans. It was very interesting, and engaged the GM side of my brain well. The mechanics were step die rolls, with various things allowing you to increase your die size - including assists from other player characters and involving core beliefs. This was El's first exposure to such concepts as PC scene framing, and she was entertained, though she thought it a bit strange.

In the afternoon session, I ran Outremer to a packed house. I had limited the players to 6, and seven showed up. Luckily, I always create an extra character just in case. The scenario started off with a dream, and then the PCs got together and discussed things. They traveled to Damascus and found that circumstances matching their dreams in some way had transpired - the youngest daughter of the Emir had disappeared the night of their dream, and everyone was frantically looking for her.

What was amazing was the speed and thoroughness with which the Players engaged with their characters, bringing bits of information in from their back-stories, like the Jewish Mechanist who lived with his mother. She was constantly after him to get married, which he took with patience and amusement. The game went beautifully, the scenario was paced perfectly, and things wound up in a very satisfactory manner. I think Outremer is much more suited to the con game than SC3 in many ways. It's close enough to the standard fantasy that it can be engaged with on that level, and different enough that the players were interested in the setting as well.

Had a wonderful time in Montreal in spite of the torrential downpours, and the Roludothon members were fantastic - welcoming and hospitable, and superb roleplayers!

-clash

If You Should See A Great Big Box

2011-06-11T20:25:00.003-04:00

Awesome!

Playing a con game is always a pig in a poke. You have no idea what you have until you open it up. My first Roludothon game was great fun, due entirely to the players, who were pure awesome! Conan (WalkerP), Chris (Thalaba), Jocelyn - all of whom I had known on line for some years, Jocelyn about ten years - my wife El, and Luc, who I just met. They played a bunch of uplifted animals and bioroids working off their indenture to a huge company in space. They walked into a SITUATION where they were screwed no matter what obvious path they took. The wonderful fun cam in the interactions of their personalities - the roleplaying - which was just a blast. Everyone at that table was an excellent roleplayer, and they did wonderfully.

StarCluster is not the best candidate for a con game. It's designed for long time interaction and much Player/PC input, both of which were necessarily not there. The basic concepts were complex, and took some time to get across. There are a lot of aspects to characters, ways for them to interact with the setting, alkl of which required some bit of explanation. I still could have got through the scenario OK, but the PCs spent a huge amount of time discussing the best course out of their Situation. THIS WAS PERFECTLY FINE! We had a grand time doing it, and it was all very rewarding in its own way.

Just letting you all know!

-clash

Roludothon Prep - Part Deux

2011-06-11T08:01:00.003-04:00

We went to the Grand Prix practices yesterday, and watched the Formula One and Classic Formula One racers run. The new Formula One cars sound like enormous angry hornets. The classic ones have the deeper snarl I remember from my mis-spent youth watching Wide World of Sports. It was great fun, and El wants to come again next year, so hopefully the Roludothon will synchronize with F1 again!

We spent the evening making backstories for the characters. The SC 3 characters were easy - they were all bred and educated for the jobs they hold. They are Uplifts and Boroids from the Diasporan Community, and have no say in the matter. The DC has no over-arching laws about the treatment of non-human sapients, so it varies from world to world.

The Outremer characters were another story altogether. They needed some reason to join the association, and some reason to take the Path of Power they took. This one's husband died in a war. That one was the victim of intolerance.

Do I think the players will even glance at the back-stories? Probably not. Still, they are there if they are needed. Normally, these short, half-page stories are created by the players, not the GM, as the characters are created. The Players are supposed to create their own association, and decide where it will be established. They *own* the characters, rather than use them. I can't do this in a con game, and an essential part of the experience will be missing.

Until next time, au revoir!

-clash

Montreal Update

2011-06-09T21:22:00.000-04:00

Made it to Montreal. I'm sitting in my campsite, logging in through my laptop, surrounded by bugs. The joys of camping! I'll blog about gaming later, just wanted to let you all know.

-clash

How Much is Too Much?

2011-06-08T09:52:00.002-04:00

The balance for a designer on how much information is given in a setting is a tricky one, and very much a matter of personal taste. Some GMs prefer the Designer to nail down every detail and hand them a finished box, where all they have to do is wind it up and stick in the PCs. Others feel hemmed in by too much supplied detail, and prefer a broader brush. Most, of course, fall somewhere in between. I have written both types of setting, but more and more as I get older, I prefer the latter. It's pushing stuff down to the group level, which is one of my most central beliefs - which those of you who read this blog regularly know very well. :D

Giving detail tends to focus games where the detail is densest, thus the Designer can - even unwittingly - push exploration down certain avenues. Personally. I'm much more interested in the group deciding that direction, not me. I don't *want* to channel play in a certain direction.

Now StarCluster 3 was far less Designer coersive than, say, Outremer will be, but SC3 went about as far as one can go in that direction. It was all about giving GMs the tools to create rather than doing the creation for the GM. Outremer is more about the setting itself - so I have to supply more detail. This means establishing some kind of cannon for the GM to work within.

Yet I find myself being asked by the playtest GMs for more information. I'm trying to work a subtle line here, where I only give information as it applies to macro structure - painting with a broad brush. Thing is, we are talking here not about worlds and star systems, but about tiny city states. This info-structure must be by its very nature finer-grained than what I am comfortable doing. My broad brush is much narrower here, and I am constantly finding myself putting in more details than I am comfortable doing - like the Cultural Traits of the various nations of Outremer. I keep thinking I should not have done that, that I should have let the GMs do that.

So I am calling a halt where I am in Outremer. There are a few things that have been suggested that I will implement - like the common-phrase language appendix, which will give a bit of flavor to those interested in doing so. OTOH, I will not give descriptions of important NPCs. That would be a huge temptation - it's fun to generate plot hooks, but that's not a Designer level thing, its a Group/GM level thing. It's a temptation that would sharply focus play in a direction I want. I gave the groups NPC generation tools so they can do this, now I will step out of the way and let them do it.

-clash

Roludothon Prep

2011-06-06T13:20:00.004-04:00

I'm off to Montreal for the Roludothon Thursday, and my wife El and I have been very, very busy prepping for the games I will be running there. I always forget what a pain in the butt prepping for cons is. Normally my group will take a session to prep together, creating the characters and association, sometimes the worlds we are going to be playing in. For con games I only have three or four hours, and I have to use pregens, a set association/company, and a pre-made setting. Ugh! Anyway, that's what I have been doing for the last week or so instead of updating the blog.

For my StarCluster 3 game, If You Should See a Great Big Box, I created six star systems, in an area known as the Calyx Knot - a complex of eight systems with a jump 5 wormhole leading out from either end - treating one star system, the starting point, in detail. Why six? I have no idea where people will go or what they will do past the starting point. The Jump 5s make it very difficult to jump into or out of, with most traffic in the Knot staying in the Knot. The PCs are all Uplifted animals or Bio-constructs, and the vast majority of human settlement in the Knot is Diasporan Community. The DC has no guarantee of sapient rights for anything except humans and those aliens given that status by treaty. Constructs and Uplifts may be treated as chattel slaves by a member planetary society so far as the DC cares. PCs will have to tread carefully.

My Outremer game, Perchance to Dream, will start off in Damascus, 1560. The Association is the Mid-East Peace Association, which is a not-so-secret Secret Society - a la the Freemasons or
Rosicrucians. Their existence and some of what they have done is known, but they operate secretly throughout Outremer. Most people believe them to be a wishy-washy ecumenical trans-religious association of doo-gooders, though some believe them to be an insidious secretive worm at the heart of the social order. Unknown to most, they have an executive arm, amongst whose agents are the PCs. Most of the prep for this was done by El - she loves making characters!

I also got my pre-release print copy of Outremer saturday, and it looks really sweet. Illos and maps are clear in gray scale, and the color covers look great! No squiggle, you StarCluster 3 haters! :D

-clash

Cultural Imperialism and Causality

2011-06-02T09:05:00.003-04:00

I'm just finishing up Charles Stross' Iron Sunrise, and - as I always do - was thinking about running this universe in a game. First off, it can almost be run in StarCluster 3 as is. The society is definitely a TL 10 society as presented in SC3, complete with Comm jewelry, personal networks, augmented reality, and morphing clothing. More importantly, it's not a monolithic society - each system, each world, is unique, and not part of any empire or greater polity. That's pure StarCluster!

Where I say "almost" though, is Stross' take on interstellar communications. Real time interstellar communications - unlike in StarCluster - are possible through so-called causal channels. which appear to be a variation on the twinned-electron/ansible theme. They are reliable, safe, and easy to use, just hellishly expensive! The reason? They cannot travel through FTL - they must go through real space-time, as FTL violates causality - at least potentially. So worlds are linked via these causal channels, as well as some non-ftl ships.

This has always bothered me, but Stross needs this in the book. The reason people aren't violating causality left and right is that Stross has a transcended computer, which long ago involuntarily dispersed humanity to the stars - and back in time - using information it sent back in time to itself by violating causality. This computer reserves the right to violate causality to itself, as a self-protection, so that multiple god-like machine intelligences don't rear their ugly heads to take him down.

Stross chose this way to control causality violation - basically by creating a god to swat any egregious violators - because he could also use this deus-ex-machina to help his PCs - I mean main characters - take down the big bads, and he needs the causal channels to allow his uber-computer to be ubiquitous in real time. I think it's sloppy GMing. He doesn't trust his PCs to be awesome when push comes to shove. I solved the problem of potential paradoxes in StarCluster by a different route.

I don't like the causal channels for a number of reasons, most importantly because they would tend to make cultures far too uniform, yet he posits a highly differentiated network of cultures. I think he can have one, but not the other. Real time communication is the key to making empires - whether political or cultural. Every empire spreads to the limit of its communication network, thus allowing real-time interstellar communication allows interstellar empire and cultural imperialism. A highly differentiated culture is anathema to any self-respecting empire! It's highly inefficient!

Still, pick this one up for the glimpse of a high Tech Level StarCluster culture in action! It's awesome! :D

-clash

Hacked! And other topics!

2011-05-31T09:11:00.003-04:00

Apparently late last night my yahoo mail account began spewing out hideous amounts of nasty spam. One of my computers was shut down - here at work - and the other wasn't logged into yahoo, but I tested them anyway. Both report no malware, so I think my yahoo account was hacked. I have changed my login, and hopefully that will stop things. Keep your fingers crossed, and don't follow any suspicious links in emails! Especially from me!

This weekend I worked on polishing up Outremer, ordering a late beta print version from lulu to look it all over in print. Outremer is *not* yet on sale, I just loaded up a pdf and the covers to Lulu for a proof.

Klax sent me his latest - the vehicle construction system for Look! Up In The Sky! Now I have to lay it out into the document and edit it. I particularly loved the example vehicles!

In addition to running my usual two games this weekend, I began serious work on the StarCluster 3 and Outremer games I'll be running in Montreal next month at le Grande Roludothon. My wife and I were up all night making characters and setting up organizations.

-clash

The Economics of Slow

2011-05-27T12:53:00.004-04:00

My old friend and longtime collaborator Albert Bailey will be working with me on In the Beginning, the solar system setting for StarCluster 3. Yay!

One of the things I am interested in exploring with In the Beginning is The Economics of Slow. In SF games, everyone is interested in Fast. There are many things which must be delivered quickly - humans for example. Yet many more things would be more advantageous to deliver slowly - metals, ceramics, manufactured items, etc. - because of the steep cost reduction slow delivery entails.

Let's say we have a refinery in the Belt, and a market on Mars. Flying a ship from the belt to mars and back would be hideously expensive. A better way might be to set up a cycle of robotic light sail craft - cheap to build, and cheaper to operate, with no consubables and no lie support. Each individual craft might take months to move between the endpoints of the route, but if you use a lot of them, a delivery will happen every few days either way. Say it takes six months, 180 days, between Mars and the Belt via light sail. If you have 25 craft, you will have a delivery every (180/25)= 7.2 days. If you have 50 craft, that's a delivery every 3.6 days. The more craft, the more it becomes a flow, a waterfall of refined metal.

-clash

New Appendices for Outremer

2011-05-25T09:08:00.006-04:00

I've inserted a couple more appendices I thought would be useful into Outremer - Appendix C: Cuisine and Appendix D: Muslim Titles. Appendix C was written by Sally and Rachel Abramavel, and covers typically available ingredients for Outremer, both in time and in place. Since it has been only 68 years since Columbus discovered the New World at the time Outremer begins, only those New World foods with fast and widespread acceptance were included, such as turkey, peanuts, and maize. Potatoes and tomatoes took a long time to win acceptance in the Old World, so these were left out. It discusses typical means of preparation, and finishes with various selections for different courses, a sample menu as it were.

The second new appendix, Appendix D: Muslim Titles, lists Arabic and Turkish titles that would have been used in Outremer, such as Sharif, Bey, Alim, Haji, Ghazi, Caliph, and Sultan. It also includes titles which were known in Outremer, but were not used often, such as Khan and Shah. In some cases, modern usages of terms such as Sayyid have changed since the times in the game - Sayyid originally meant one was descended from Huseyn son of Ali, and therefore noble, but now in many countries is the equivalent of saying "Mister". The scholarly titles were particularly tricky, as one must judge the particular degree of learning and respect - calling a Mujtahid a Mullah would be fairly insulting, though both are Alim, or Islamic scholars.

I thought both of these would be really helpful if one were to run a game in Outremer - the kind of thing a GM wouldn't think of, but might get totally stuck on when a player says "What's in this feast?" or "How should I address this fellow?". Knowing a Faris ranks above a Ghazi, and a Emir above a Bey might be very important in certain circumstances!

-clash

The Tangled Web

2011-05-23T07:38:00.003-04:00

In our last Outremer game, a strange situation occured where the PCs almost started a war entirely by accident. The previous week, the party had been ambushed by forces of the Emir of Baalbek, who is subsidiary to the Emir of Homs. The party saw the ambush coming just before it happened, and, while shot up, were able to defeat the ambush, killing or capturing all the emir's forces. In the pocket of a sumptuously dressed body, who had been riding a richly apointed and beautiful horse, they found orders to apprehend one of the party, the Oracle, rescue a prisoner, and kill the rest.

The horoscope for the next day revealed Trickery would be rewarded in Conflict. The idea was that the party would dress in the clothing of the people they had killed and captured, Except those who were to be taken alive, and gain entry into the castle at Baalbek. Everyone agreed. They wanted to speak to the emir. Again, everyone agreed. The next day (this last session) they rode, dressed as the Emir's men, through the streets of Baalbek to the citadel. The gates opened and the party rode into the citadel. They were greeted by a grizzled serjeant who said "You are not the Emir! Who are you?"

At this point things broke down. Some of the party had realized the guy with the cool clothes and sweet horse *was* the emir of Baalbeck. He was dead. They thought everyone knew this. When the party agreed they needed to speak to the emir, some were thinking "emir of Baalbek" and some - those who knew he was dead - were thinking "emir of Homs". The leader of the party was paralyzed at this point, because he didn't realize what was happening. he had just wanted to gain entrance to the citadel to talk to the emir, not realizing one of his party was wearing the emir's clothes and sitting on the emir's horse right beside him.

Men came rushing out of the central keep along the walls and the gates were shut, sealing the party inside, and still the leader didn't give the word to attack. Finally he gave word, and the party exploded into action. Throughout the battle, some of the party thought they were getting massacred, and were trying to call a retreat, while others thought they were winning, and were boldly advancing. finally, the few men left standing on the emir's side surrendered, to the bewilderment of some.

Then the party's leader, presented with a fait accompli, had to say something. He declared he had taken the city of Baalbek for the Emir of Damascus, the hereditary enemy of the Emir of Homs, and whose lands the party had recently passed through. Madness! No one knew why he said that. They weren't working for the Emir of Damascus, They were , in fact, a secret society dedicated to maintainng the political status quo. There could be no doubt the Emir of Homs would gather an army to crush this upstart in Baalbeck, then on to Damascus. Disaster!

Finally the party took counsel and the leader realized what he had done. They could not hold Baalbeck, and didn't in fact *want* Baalbek. The Emir's wives were given rich gifts and sent to their parents, except the youngest, who, being an orphan, could not be. The leader married her himself so she would be taken care of. A small part of the money in the coffers was given over for a feast of celebration for the wedding, followed by a day of remembrance and prayer. Then the leader gifted the city to the mosques and the party left Baalbek on the third day.

It was bizarre, and horribly dangerous. The party went from unknown to suddenly disposing of entire cities. They earned the enmity of the Emir of Homs. They may have started a war between Homs and Damascus, though the actions taken after that rash declaration may have confused the situation enough to stop that. If they are not successful, they will be caught between two armies.

The name of this secret society? The Tangled Web. How prophetic!

-clash

Relics and Artifacts in Outremer

2011-05-19T08:48:00.003-04:00

Relics and Artifacts are important objects of veneration and power in Outremer. Relics are parts of the body of a saint or prophet. Artifacts are objects a saint or prophet used. Unlike in our own time, there is little burden of skepticism to be overcome in claiming an item as a relic or artifact. The proof is in the pudding, as they say - if miraculous deeds are performed in the presence of a relic or artifact, it is the real thing. Yet relics and artifacts obtain their power through belief, which can create a chicken and egg paradox in the absense of reasonable expectation - and here is the key.

In order to function as a relic or artifact, the object must be held to be true before it is used, with the successful use constituting the proof of its power. If an object is claimed to be holy, those hearing the claim must either attempt to doubt or accept it's power when the claim is made. If they decide to doubt the claim, they must fail on a Test of Faith to truly believe. If they decide to accept the claim, they must succeed at a Test of Faith to truly believe. This test has the following modifiers to believe:

If the object is found under supernatural circumstances, such as a person claims he had a dream or vision where the object could be found, and the object is found there undisturbed, such as buried under firm layers of soil, the modifier is -3 to disbelieve, and +3 to believe. If the object is found disturbed, for instance if the soil is broken up or loose, the modifier is reversed to +3 to disbelieve, and -3 to believe.

If an unbroken chain of possession stretching back to the original or previously proved provenance can be provided, such as mention in wills or letters, the modifier is -2 to disbelieve, and +2 to believe. If the chain is broken, for instance if the object is mentioned first centuries after the object was lost, the modifier is reversed to +2 to disbelieve, and -2 to believe.

If the object is found in reasonable circumstances, such as on the battlefield where the original was lost, or the tomb of the saint or prophet, the modifier is -1 to disbelieve, and +1 to believe. If the object is found in an odd place, for instance if the object is found in a location the person was known not to have died or lived, the modifier is reversed to +1 to disbelieve, and -1 to believe.

In other words, the more convincing the circumstances of its discovery, the more widely accepted the claim will be.

Relics and artifacts also vary in power. The more obscure the saint or prophet, the less power it will hold. This power would be ranked from 3 (highest) to 1 (lowest) according to this parameter. This number is the additional number of dice all believers in the object would have when in the presence of the object, but only when the object is on their side. This is reversed is the object believed in is on the other side, to a penalty of 3 to 1 dice, with a minimum of 1 die.

Relics and artifacts can only have power over people who believe in them, for good or ill. Since the Hebrew saints and prophets are considered holy by both Christians and Muslims as well as Jews, objects connected to them can have power over people from all three faiths. Christian saints or prophets would have no power with Muslims or Jews, and objects sacred to Muslims only would have no power over both Christians or Jews.

-clash

The Economics of Outremer

2011-05-18T08:53:00.005-04:00

Acre is an extremely rich little nation, based on trade - it is the southern termius of the Silk Road, and revenues are enormous. It is also a pre-industrial economy, based on weapons manufacture, but branching out into many other mechanical devices. This manufacturing is small, craft-based work, not factories, but the basis is there for expansion. The close ties of Acre with Damascus make the two very similar, though Acre imports most of its food, unlike Damascus.

Antioch is the lesser, northern terminus of the Silk Road, and its economy depends on trade. It also exports much food, as the Orontes Valley is very fertile and well-watered.

Aqaba owns the Hajj pilgrimage route, as well as the lucrative Red Sea trade of incense, gold, coffee, and slaves. Its merchants sail all over the Indian Ocean, bringing spices and riches into the ports. it mines some copper, and the distilleries export Arak, mostly to Christian countries.

Armenia is in a perpetual cycle of war with the Turks. It is more than self-supporting agriculturally, but buys a good deal of weaponry from Acre and Cyprus.

Ascalon is a Trade-and-Agriculture economy, bouyed by the adoption of radically new agricultural techniques by the orders, led by the Hospitalers. It cannot possibly feed itself, with its huge cities and tiny land area, so instead it produces valuable crops for export, like cotton, linen, dye-stuffs, liquors, and other luxuries, exports them, and uses the profits to import bulk food.

Cyprus is the other pre-industrial state in Outremer. It also has focused on weapons, which - along with glass-blowing and copper - make up the bulk of its exports. The farms are rich but primitive, and land use is far from optimal.

Damascus is the Muslim partner of Acre, and they share many similarities, though Damascus' large fertile land area allows it to be self-sufficient in food production even though large areas are semi-desert. Weaving of wool and cotton are important parts of its economy, along with trade and weapons production.

*Galilee is the prime agricultural area of Damascus. Much of its food is grown here, and exported to Acre or sent to the capital.

Edessa is famous for horses, which are bred for various tasks, from chargers to hill ponies. European breeds are crossed with Outremer's native Arabians, Barbs, and Turcomans to create new breeds optimized for climate, disease resistance, and task. The horses are exported overland to every nation except Rhodes and Cyprus, which go through Alexandrette and Armenia.

Homs exports specialized cloth - especially for harem-wear - and fruit and nuts. Pistachios and almonds are big export items throughout Outremer, along with the hardier fruits. Soft fruits like melons and grapes are consumed internally.

Jerusalem's only export is wool cloth, but it is a prime pilgrimage site, the third holiest city in Islam, and the holiest city in both Judaism and Christianity. The Muslim royal family keep hands off on religion, but tax the pilgrims, raking in a fortune. The city is full of churches, mosques, and yeshivot, and there are dozens of other sites like the Mount of Olives and the Via Dolorosa which are musts on every pilgrim's list, along with nearby Bethlehem.

*Caeserea is the port of Jerusalem, both the city of Caesarea and Arsuf to the south being busy ports. Nazareth is a major pilgrimage site on its own, and most Christians and Jews come through Caesarea on their waty to the Holy City. It is also the prime port for transhipping both cargo and Hajj pilgrims to Aqaba and the Red Sea, most importantly to Mecca and Medina.

*Moab is the Hajj gateway to Aqaba. Everything and everyone destined for the Red Sea comes through Moab on its way, and the Principality takes it's share of the tolls. It is a dry and treeless plateau, but fertile when irrigated, and after the winter rains. Balsam and salt are exported.

*Transjordan is the gateway to Baghdad and many overland caravans, coming from the north and east. The land is reasonably fertile, especially after the winter rains, and the land is sef-sufficient in food. Wool is its only export of note.

Rhodes itself exports wine and olive oil, but it is as trans-shipper for goods moving between Constantinople, Outremer, and Europe that the nation makes its living. The big, powerful Rhodian Navy keeps pirates at bay, and the route through Rhodes clear and profitable. Escorted convoys routed through Rhodes are slower than going it alone, but far, far safer. Only the Templar and Hospitaler ships from Ascalon compete using the southern route, and they escort only their own ships.

Tripoli trans-ships wines, liquors, and foodstuffs throughout the Outremer, serving as the port of preference for Homs and Aleppo. There is little to no manufacturing or mining here, and the county has little which is exportable on its own. The hinterland is productive but small, hemmed in as it is between mountains and sea.

-clash

The Languages of Outremer

2011-05-17T09:19:00.005-04:00

Outremer has a very mixed and culturally diverse population, and thus the languages used are diverse as well. Some languages are European, others Semitic, and others asian Indo-European. Some are not to be found in our world at all.

Arabic is the most commonly used language, thanks to the influence of the Koran. All Muslims are encouraged to read the Koran in its native Arabic, and thus non-Arab Muslims can speak and read Arabic in addition to their native Turkic or Kurdish languages. From this position of advantage, it has become used as a second language throughout Outremer, mostly displacing Aramaic in Muslim areas.

Aramaic, a Semitic language related to Arabic and Hebrew, is spoken mostly by Jews in Outremer, as Hebrew is a sacred tongue used in the synagogue rather than a living tongue. Some Syrian Muslims and Christians also speak it, though Arabic is the main language of these groups. It is widespread, but never spoken as the majority language.

Frankish, or Lingua Franca, is the language of most of the European-descended inhabitants. It is derived from Old Langued'oui French, some German, and Italian, and with many Arabic loan words. Related is Edessan, which is derived from Langued'oc French, because most of the settlers were Aquitanians and Angevins, from when Eleanor of Aquitaine was its Princess. Edessan has many Arabic and Kurdish loan words, and a strong Armenian element as well. it is spoken widely in Edessa and Armenia.

Armenian, a native Indo-European language, is spoken mostly in Armenia and Edessa, with a strong presence as well in Jerusalem.

Bohemian is a dialect of Czech and Slovak spoken only in Cyprus. It is a Slavic language, with many Greek and German loan words.

Turkish - an Altaic turkic language, is the language of the Turks, spoken in Edessa and the Othmanli Sultanate, as well as parts of Rhodes and Armenia.

Kurdish is the language of the Kurds, an Indo-European language. It is spoken mostly in Edessa, but also in Armenia and the Othmanli Sultanate.

English is spoken only in Acre and parts of Damascus.

Many Outremer natives are fluently multilingual, with most of those who are not at least bilingual, and which languages they speak natively - that is without taking the Linguistics skill - will be up to the GM.

-clash

Tag Ends in Outremer

2011-05-15T23:59:00.003-04:00

At the end of each national description in Outremer, I've added a tag end of information. For example, here is the one for Ascalon:

Inhabitants of Ascalon:
Ancestry - New French, Frank, German, Arab
Languages - Frankish, German, Arabic
Religions - Roman Catholic
Edges - Warfare, Fortification
Relations - Relations with:

Cairo are Strained

Cyprus are Good

Jerusalem are Awkward

All others are Normal

Cultural Traits - Suspicious 2, Pious 2, Warlike 1, Efficient 2
Political Traits - Theocratic 2, Martial 2, Conservative 2, Puritanical 1
Physical Conditions - Crowded, Orderly, Flat, Maritime

This gives a quick overview on the nation. Inhabitants covers ethnicities, lanuages, and religions in the nation. Edges says what the people from Ascalon are good at. Relations tells us what the diplomatic relations with other nations in Outremer are like. Cultural Traits give us the Stereotype of the typical inhabitant. Political Traits tell us what the government is like, and Physical Conditions describes the nation's topography.

I think this kind of precis can be very valuable as an in-game reference. Sure, you could infer these things from the descriptive texts, but it's hard to find information buried in text when you are reading at the table. This way, it's all out there and easy to find.

-clash

Why a Believable Timeline with Magic

2011-05-11T22:25:00.000-04:00

One of the outremer playtesters noted that it seemed strange and perhaps almost futile that I would go to all this trouble constructing a plausible timeline for Outremer, then have magic, with no trace of its effects in the timeline. An excellent point. My reply was that the central conceit of the Blood Games Line - which Outremer and OHMAS are part of - is that magic has always been here, an accepted part of life until the Age of Reason suppressed it and our collective memories of it. The magic is there in our records of the time, but we have rationalized our way into believing it is natural causes.

For example, in the First Crusade, at the siege of Antioch, the Crusader army was trapped in Antioch with no food, and a huge Turkish army all around. In our records, a soldier dreamed that the spear of Longinus, the one that wounded Christ on the cross, was buried in the city. He searched around, found a place that matched the dream, and dug, finding an ancient rusted spearhead. With this sign, the crusaders felt they were unbeatable, and they were - crushing the Turks, and opening up the conquest of Outremer. It's all there in the record. Yet when we look back on it, we see a crass attempt to manipulate superstition by foisting off some corroded junk as something historically and spiritually vital, not the will of God made manifest. The magic was always there, we just can no longer see it. In Blood Games, skepticism dilutes and destroys magic, and skeptics are sinkholes of nullity. There are just too few of them in Outremer to matter.

So it's important to make a believable timeline, with magic working as it has always worked, behind the scenes, underpinning everything.

-clash

My Electronic Toys Will Defeat Your Scheduling Nightmares, Demon!

2011-05-09T08:52:00.003-04:00

Ran this weekend's playtest of Outremer with Klaxon telecommuting from Orlando. I set up my Ipad at one end of the table, and Klax connected in with Skype. The video was jerky, and froze once for a minute or so, but he could see us - once we switched the Ipad to landscape format - and we could see him, and it worked very well over all. The Ipad was in vertical format during the first part of the session, so that we could leave it in the cradle/dock, and keep it powered. Unfortunately, it limided his peripheral vision substantialy, and once we tilted it into landscape format, he was a lot more comfortable.

James continues to have troubles getting here because of his jobs, especially now that we've switched back to Saturdays so that Adam can make it. Next week, we are splitting James and Michelle off on Sunday while our main group continues to meet on Saturday. We'll still be playing the same playtest campaign, but the two groups can work simultaneously but separately. This is in addition to Klax and my IHW:NN game over IRC on Sunday morning. Klax is also playing in a D&D game in Orland Sunday evening with his project group.

Speaking of Klax's project group, here is the url to their Facebook page . According to Klax, it's to be a full 3D puzzle-platformer.

-clash

Stereotypes of Outremer

2011-05-05T08:35:00.006-04:00

Stereotypes are another name for cultural Traits in StarCluster 3 games - they are what you might get if you asked a stranger for a generalized description of a whole culture. They are very useful as descriptors for the culture as a whole, and as personality traits for people from that culture when it's not worth creating a personalized set of Traits. They also can be used as starting points for player characters when choosing their own Traits. What follows are stereotypes for the nations of Outremer - note that entries preceeded by * are quasi-independent subdivisions of a nation.

Acre: Brisk 2, Arrogant 2, Tolerant 2, Creative 1

Aleppo: Cultured 3, Proud 2, Pious 1, Protective 1

Antioch: Arrogant 1, Argumenative 2, Hot-tempered 1, Prickly 3

Aqaba: Efficient 2, Lazy 1, Cheerful 2, Independent 2

Armenia: Warlike 2, Arrogant 1, Loyal 2, Stubborn 2

Ascalon: Suspicious 2, Pious 2, Warlike 1, Efficient 2

Baghdad: Lazy 1, Cultured 3, Inventive 1, Argumentative 2

Cairo: Tolerant 3, Creative 1, Good-Humored 2, Proud 1

Cyprus: Clannish 2, Defensive 2, Loyal 2, Meticulous 1

Damascus: Inventive 2, Accepting 2, Cultured 2, Proud 1

*Galilee: Laid-back 2, Tolerant 2, Bucolic 1, Aloof 2

Edessa: Arrogant 2, Expansive 1, Loyal 2, Brave 2

Homs: Standoffish 2, Aloof 2, Vengeful 1, Subtle 2

Jerusalem: Proud 1, Cultured 3, Superior 2, Sarcastic 1

*Caeserea: Proud 2, Urbane 2, Superior 1, Glib 2

*Moab: Proud 1, Standoffish 2, Superior 3, Close-mouthed 1

*Transjordan: Proud 2, Defensive 2, Aloof 1, Sarcastic 2,

Othmanli: Proud 2, Stubborn 3, Warlike 1, Cheerful 1

Rhodes: Methodical 2, Cultured 3, Arrogant 1, Patient 1

Tripoli: Flexible 2, Sly 2, Cheerful 2, Creative 1

Hope this is helpful!

-clash

Of Djinn and Angels

2011-05-03T08:39:00.003-04:00

Saturday's session was the last before Klax went back to Orlando, but we are going to try linking him in virtually through my Ipad via Skype and playing with his disembodied head. I'll set the Ipad at the opposite end of the table in its cradle, and see how it goes. Klax is playing a rather dim-witted and extremely funny half-Djinn, who has fire magic and flight. He's constantly jumping to conclusions, misunderstanding information, and weaving it all into ridiculous imaginative constructs ehich he firmly believes in.

Another new player joined us as well, Martha. She had never played before, but fit right in, playing a badass half-Angel who is a bit too bad for the Light, but nowhere near nasty enough for the Dark. She and Klax' half-Djinn interrogated the prisoner by playing catch with him four miles above Damascus.

We played the Outremer playtest, of course, but Saturday was a more in-character day. We determined that the group needed a leader, so we held a series of votes, all of which were flawed because Klax's character kept cheating in hilarious ways. Eventually we held an election in which no one noticed his cheating, and went with it. in that last election he wasn't trying to win, but to avoid no votes at all, and luckily it tipped the balance away from an NPC and towards a PC, So I was happy to go with it.

The group also determined from interrogating the Minstrel we had captured that the Grandfather of Assassins was north of Damascus, and the Oracle had a vision of a castle in the mountains, so the group decided to work its way north from Damascus. They were in the hills south of the Bekaa valley when their group was hit by Sandwalkers - a nasty amalgam of crab and scorpion that prefers camel meat. They were dispatched, but the Oracle was grieviously injured in the process.

That's it for the recap!

-clash

Systems - Matter or Anti-Matter?

2011-05-02T09:05:00.009-04:00

I'm a system guy. I make no bones about it, though I'm a fair dab at settings too. Designing the StarCluster 3 system has been illuminating for me. Being an extremely abstracted framework system, it allows yoinking parts and pieces off and slapping new bits on to an unprecedented degree. In playtesting, I could - and did - swap resolution sub-systems in mid adventure, requiring only a change of dice and character sheets, pre-made of course, as I knew I would be doing this. This allowed me to look at the impact of various resolution systems on play as an isolated phenomenon, because all other parameters were identical.

This allowed me to prove empirically that system does indeed matter. The flavor of the games would change markedly depending on the resolution package I was using. The percentile StarPerc mechanic, for example, allowed a big random element in Quality, as chance and quality were entirely separate rolls. This meant skill was less important because it had no influence over quality of success. It also encouraged to a far greater degree abstract tactics. Players would freely take a penalty in one aspect to enhance another aspect, and there was greater control, with small gradations and three different aspects - four with the optional Active Defense rule - to tweak.

StarPool on the other hand, with its d20 dice pool with skill rank+1 dice rolling under stat and counting successes, has chance and quality tightly bound in one roll, both heavily influenced by skill. There are only two aspects - three with optional Active Defense - to manipulate, and the gradations are coarse. Consequently, players are less likely to use abstract tactics, and will tend to stick with their die rolls straight.

So, let us construct a sequence of events in StarPerc and see if it can happen in StarPool. We will take a tyro with a pistol, say skill+1, against a enemy threatening his family, friends, and shipmates, and he is the last defense. The character knows he's a tyro, so he will do whatever he can to improve his lot. Say he rolls a 25 on his initiative. He immediately changes this by 95 to 120, waiting and waiting to the last for the best shot possible, giving him a +95 to split between chance and quality. He bumps chance up by 25 from 50% to 75%, and gives himself +75 to his quality. He could also throw in traits or edges as appropriate. Let's say he uses his "patient" trait to give him an extra +10 to chance, now at 85%. He now has an 85% chance to hit, his damage is d%+75+20 from the pistol, so between 96 and 194 points, with an equal likelyhood of anything in between, and a mean of 146. That is a hell of a blow in one shot.

Now with StarPool, he has two dice to roll under his attribute. He can throw in his "Patient" trait for another die, to make three. He can knock his initiative back, giving him an extra die for each 3 points of initiative. Say he rolls a 5 - equivalent to the 25 rolled in StarPerc - so he can add 5 more dice by going up to 20. With eight dice, he is almost assured of at least one die rolling under his attribute of 9 for a hit, so lets assume a result of between one and 8 successes, most likely about 4-5. With each success worth 10 points to success, that is 10-80 points, most likely 40-50, +20 for the pistol. The range then is 30-100 damage, but strongly tending toward 60-70. Since Constitutions in StarPool are half that of StarPerc, if we double the damage, we can compare the two directly - low 60, high 200, very strong mean of 120-140.

"So what's the difference, clash?" you ask. "Looks like you pretty well nailed it, with high, low, and mean right close in there." The difference lies in two things, the strong propensity for the mean with multiple dice results, and the psychological aversion to taking advantage of the point trading/abstract tactics inherent in a lower variable system like StarPool. Players don't think statistically when they are in-character. Players think viscerally, and the transparency of the percentile manipulations, which can easily be handled viscerally, at the character level, trumps the obscure 3-points-of-initiative-for-an-extra-die of the pool, which can't. Players won't take that kind of risk, especially knowing they will most likely end up with the mean or near to it.

So, upshot is that the character will not hold out til last and give one huge bang with StarPool. I have never seen a player change more than two three-for-a-die units in StarPool. Never. In most combats, only one unit is changed, by one PC. That's usually it. Three-for-one, which is perfectly sound statistically, is not such an easy choice to make psychologically. Play changes to accomodate. Player Characters go with skills they are good at, and ignore skills they aren't good at.

So - at the group level, system is important. Yet play is not radically changed - it still follows fairly closely to the patterns established using the other system. It's just edge conditions that are different. Thus other things are *more* important in play - trust between players and between players and GM, internal logic of the game so far, estimations of the goals and resources of the opposition, and the inherent parameters of the setting are all *more* important to what happens in game, and they are extremely hard to quantify for the GM, and impossible for the designer.

So, does system matter? It very certainly does. Is it the most important thing? No, not by a long shot, not at the table. For designers, it's a parameter they can control, so it is far more important for them, but for the Group? Not so much.

-clash

Le Grande Roludothon

2011-04-29T14:59:00.002-04:00

I've signed up to run two games at Le Grande Roludothon in Montreal this June. Saturday. I'm running "If You Should See A Great Big Box" - a StarCluster 3 adventure. I ran a version of this for my face to face group when SC 3 was being planned, using the SC 2 ruleset and a number of supplements. In it, the PCs are a group of Uplifted animals and bio-constructs working of their intenture for a huge shipping company. Its set in Diasporan Community space, where non-humans are not always welcome or treated as human under law, though the PCs are from SaVaHuTa, where they are protected as human. There is trouble with a cargo, and one thing leads to another. The time we played it out, one of the PCs successfully shot down a flyer with a pistol on a desert island, using Physics, with a truly amazing roll.

I really doubt the crew at Roludothon will see that flyer, or the desert island. I have no way to predict how the players will react to the initial Situation, or where it will go from there. I know what's in the cargo, who sent it, who is to recieve it, and why. From that, and from the PCs actions, everything else flows.

The second game, on Sunday, will be an Outremer adventure. I ran this one recently, but this will be a very different implementation. The game I ran was part of a much larger arc, and this will be stand alone. it will also be somewhat more complex - I had to run the last game around a crying baby, which doesn't lend itself to complexity. Again, once the initial Situation happens, I don't know how things will proceed. This Situation involves a dream each of the PCs will have involving a young girl, a knife, and change. Religion will play a big part in it, as will politics - I mean it's outremer, after all! We shall see what we shall see!

-clash

Full Slate

2011-04-26T09:10:00.003-04:00

Thursday night I played in a playtest of Tim Kirk's Derelict Delvers over IRC

Saturday I ran a playtest of Outremer.

Sunday morning I ran In Harm's Way: A Napoleonic Naval RPG over IRC.

Monday, I ran the first alpha playtest of Klaxon's Look! Up In The Sky!

Forgive me if I haven't been posting as much as normal! :D

DD is a neat pulpy space game based around exploring enormous Ancient artifacts. The current game arc revolves around trying to wrest control of an enormous kilometers long ship plunging into a heavily settled system from a Machine Empire suicide squad. Thursday's battle ended in an epic Beamblade battle between my character - a Fist of God, of the Sacrament of the Holy Flame - and a blue-skinned bioroid, while my character's partner was rescuing a seven foot tall alien princess type from torture.

Our Outremer game revolved around silencing a minstrel whose slyly malicious songs had been fueling sectarian violence in Damascus. More importantly, the party now believes the Old Man of the Mountains, the GrandMaster of Assassins, is returned form occultation, and is behind this, and the attempted kidnapping/murder of the daughter of the Prince of Galilee last week. The first half of the game was the party figuring out just before they left town that they *hadn't* caught and beaten up the minstrel already, and that he *hadn't* told us it was a personal thing between him and the Emir of Damascus. The minstrel had sung and implanted false memories into their heads, convincing them that it as all over and they should leave. The rest of the session was spent tracking him down and making sure he didn't sing again, with an elaborate ruse involving fortunetelling to capture him.

In our In Harm's Way: NN game, in the after-shock of the earthquake in Fort-de-France, the surgeon and surgeon's mate argued over whether to operate on the Governor of Martinique for a depressed skull fracture - a risky and long operation - or treat as many injured as possible. One of the ship's captains almost threw the surgeon's mate in the brig for mutiny before the surgeon agreeed to allow the mate to attempt the operation. The operation was a success, but five patients died in that time that might have lived. The process was fascinating, as both sides had valid arguments - the surgeon that more lives saved outweighed the single life of the governor, and the surgeon's mate that not all lives are equal in value, especially after such an emergency. A passionate conflict, sharply fought, with no blood shed except the operation itself. The commander of the expedition told the surgeon's mate afterward that if he had failed, he's have been flogged and drummed out of the service for disobeying orders. As it was, he should consider himself lucky.

Then L!UITS! slammed in. I ran the game even though Klax was up from Orlando. When we all created the city and the Association, we were all working towards a grim, gritty, and harsh setting - the Association was a gang, HQ'd in an abandoned subway station, with next to no money, and the opposition was the city government itself - rich, powerful, and also metahuman. Then the big dumb Nuke showed up in the first scene, and dumped six video surveillance cameras with ripped off wiring on the table. "They were just sitting there" he explained, deadpan, "No one was watching them." It turned into the funniest game I have ever run. We were howling all night as circumstance after circumstance piled up in the most absurd way possible. We weren't planning on a comedy game at all! it just happened! The game was great, with some rough spots - as expected ion the first run-through - but it's hard to separate the game itself from how much fun we had!

-clash

Outremer Playtesting

2011-04-22T08:43:00.006-04:00

Feedback is coming in from the Outremer playtesting. As a result, I've started fine tuning the game based on feedback from the playtesters.

I added a bunch of name lists/generators in an appendix for Frankish, Arabic, Armenian, Sephardic Jewish, Kurdish, Greek, Bohemian, and Turkish male and female period names. I figure it's easy enough to find English, French, Italian, and German names that I won't bother, but these others are different enough that they need something in the game. Kurdish surnames were the most difficult, as there just was nothing out there on how they formed patronyms back in the 16th century. Eventually I decided to use Arabic ibn, bin, and bint with Kurdish first names. The Kurds in Outremer would be outside their homelands anyway.

I put in relationships between the various nations of Outremer in each nation at the end of the description - i.e Nation X has Friendly relations with Nation Y, and Good realtions with Nation Z, but relations with Nation A are Strained, and with Nation B are Tense. These are the terms I have always heard international relations described in on the news, so I figure most players shouls understand them intuitively. At the end of the Nations of Outremer section I put a listing of all the possible relations, from most to least friendly.

I put in a dual timeline with what happened in the real world and what happened in the alt-history of Outremer from the preaching of the first Crusade, through the split during the Second Crusade, to 1400. I figure few people who are going to play in this setting understand what actually did happen, and need at least an overview to comprehend the differences.

More as it happens!

-clash

Society of Night Update

2011-04-20T09:16:00.002-04:00

Also being designed under the StarCluster 3 license is Society of Night by Michael Scott and Randolph Allen. SoN is a vampire society game, with Vamp Houses locked in a constant battle for dominance and territory. Unlike Blood Games, SoN has sexy vamps - they can do the dirty, and even have children. In SoN, vampirism is caused by a virus, and can be transmitted on purpose, allowing humans to be "turned".

SoN Vamp Society is highly structured. On top are True Born Vampyres - children born to two other True Born vamps. These are rare and precious. Only True Borns can breed, and they become heads of their Houses in time. They age extremely slowly once they hit puberty and their Vamp natures come to the surface, eventually stopping any aging.

Turned Vamps were once human, but have become infected by the virus. They cannot have children via sex, only by "turning" people. They do not age once they have been 'turned".

Dhamphyrs are the children of True Born vamps and humans. They age slowly, and can walk in the light, but are not immortal. They are usually female, and normally are "Turned" at some point.

Servitors are humans addicted to Vamp blood. This extends their lifespans and gives them some vampiric powers. They can also walk in the light, but have shorter lifespans than Dhamphyrs. Their role is to protect and care for the Vamps during the day. Faithful and useful Servitors are usually rewarded by being "Turned".

Gifteds are humans who have some PSI powers. These they are born with, not given by the virus. They live a normal human lifespan, and can pass on their Gifts.

SoN has a currently full Chargen and skill list, and uses the StarPerc resolution sub-system. it is set in the modern day or near future. Eventually, the designers want to extend their line by bringing in other races - Fay, Weres, Ghosts, etc. It's currently in alpha playtest in Baton Rouge, with online bluebooking, set in the near future. A previous version was played last year based on StarCluster 2, but this one is intended for publication.

-clash