This article started in my mind when I was thinking about the Covid-19 situation here in Australia (and elsewhere where the virus has been close to eliminated) but I’ve since broadened and generalized it to some extent.

It began with my imagining a set of random tables to describe someone’s interaction with Covid-19. Such-and-such a chance of catching the disease, modified for various factors. Such and such a chance of mild symptoms, or severe symptoms – with the same modifier as the previous table, and a few more. How to set the values so that they modeled the real-world clusters that emerge, flourish, and burn out – if confronted with appropriate countermeasures to prevent the spread to the next generation of hosts, even if only somewhat effective. That got me thinking about cases in groups, not individually, because its in dealing with groups that statistical analysis thrives. And that’s when things started getting interesting, from the point of view of having something worth sharing in a Campaign Mastery article.

Basics

Above a critical number of cases, all possible outcomes are going to be represented. Below that critical number, RPGs use die rolls to determine which, if any, outcomes are not represented. With me so far?

You would commonly assume that if you had a d100 table, that it would take 100 cases to represent the totality of the possible interpretations or events. And, if the input is a non-random value, sequentially rising by 1 each time, you would be correct; every possible outcome, even a !% chance, would be covered, and covered in direct proportion to the chance of its occurrence.

Reality is a little messier, because the inputs are random – chaotic, not systematic. The reality is that achieving the critical case number simply makes it less likely that there won’t be an unrepresented outcome.

If there is a 1%-likely outcome, the absolute minimum critical number is 100 cases – but even if you had 100 cases to test, distribution of outcomes will be just a little uneven, and so there remains a measurable chance that the low-probability case will be unrepresented.

If the number of cases is 200, it’s a lot less likely that there won’t be one of them in the low probability category. At 300, it’s smaller still. You can actually perform statistical analysis of the statistical analysis.

Chasing A Statistical Tail

If there are 100 rolls, for example, there are 100 chances of the same number to come up on the dice – a 1% per previous roll risk. So, on the first roll, it’s 0% because there’s nothing to compare it to, on the second, it’s 1%, on the third, there are two previous results to compare to, so it’s two percent, and so on. But it’s a complicated situation, because as soon as there IS a match, the number of available rolls for future matches reduces by one thereafter. Add up all those percentages and you can conclude that there is a many-times-higher-than-100% chance of a duplicate result. But the low-percent chances of a match aren’t all that relevant compared to the high-percent chances – even if we don’t know what they are.

You can prove this by contemplating the sum of the three smallest and three biggest chances. Three smallest: 0%, 1%, and 2%, which sums to 3%. Three highest: 99% + 98% + 97% = 294%.

In fact, it’s easy to work out the total:

• Start with 100 results;
• taken 2 at a time, that’s 50 pairs.
• When we pair them, always pair the highest with the lowest, then next highest and next lowest, and so on. 0+99=99. 1+98=99. 2+97=99. 3+96=99. Starting to see a pattern here?
• The big X-factor is what happens around our 50th result, because we can’t have the same chance twice. So let’s start with 48, and work the pattern backwards to get the matching compliment: 99-48=51. So that pair is 48+51=99.
• And the next one is 49+50=99. And that’s all 100 possible values paired up.
• The total of all the chances is 50 pairs x 99 = 4950%.

That’s a meaningless number. Probabilities like this don’t actually sum – instead, you reduce the uncertainty. Probabilities are always a measure of the ignorance of the actual outcome.

Let’s work this out again, doing it properly this time, with ten actual random numbers. I rolled 15, 51, 99, 59, 29, 46, 04, 89, 21, and 05 – so let’s see what happened when I did so.

• With one number rolled, there’s a 1% chance that the second one will be the same thing, and a 99% chance that it won’t.
• As would be expected, the next number is different. With two numbers rolled, there’s now a 2% chance that the third number will match one of the first two, and a 98% chance that it won’t.
• Once again, it doesn’t. And so on, through the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and – in this case – tenth numbers.

Okay, so another simple pattern. It’s when I go beyond those ten random results and studying the effects of additional outcomes as though I had rolled them that we get to the interesting answers:

• When it comes to rolling the 11th number, there are ten possible matches out of 100 – a ten percent chance of a match, a 90% chance that there won’t be one. But let’s say that on the 11th roll, we beat the odds and get another 29. This uses up one of our 100 rolls but doesn’t increase the number of possible matches – so, come the twelfth roll, the odds are still 10% chance of a match, and 90% chance of no match.
• Let’s assume that we roll another twenty numbers without another match occurring – the chance of a match goes up by the end of that run by 20 to 30%, or almost one in three, while the chance of no match drops to 70%, not quite two in three.
• That means that by now, one in every three rolls should yield a number that we already have on our list. In fact, we should have had another match by now, statistically speaking.
• Let’s balance things out a bit, and say that of the twenty rolls after that, between 1/2 and 1/3 of them are matches – that’s 6-10, so let’s pick a value in the middle and say 8 of them match.
• That’s eight less chances of getting a unique result, so our chance of a match is now up to 30+(20-8)=42%, and our chance of no match is down to 58%.
• Eight rolls later, if there are no matches, it will be 50-50 – but the odds are that there will be three or four matches, so it won’t quite happen that quickly.
• When it does, the chances of getting a match on the remaining rolls will be more than 50% starting with the next roll to be made – and the chances of not getting a match will be less.
• By the time we get to our last roll out of 100, which the simple model said should have a 99% chance of a match, the actual chance of a match will be 99 minus the number of previous matches, percent. If we’ve had 30 matches, that’s 69% – a big difference.

If 1/3 of our 100 rolls are a match for one of the other 67, that’s 33% of the possible outcomes that are unrepresented. But that number of matches would not happen all that often.

That becomes really significant when it comes to a low-probability result – a 1-in-100 outcome, say. Our ignorance of those 33 possible outcomes dwarfs the likelihood that this one low-probability outcome is numbered amongst the possible results. There’s at least a 1-in-33 chance that our 1% outcome is one of the 33 numbers that weren’t rolled. If anything, intuitively, it seems like that number should be higher – like, 33%..

So, let’s say that we keep rolling until we get to 1% unrepresented. As we rack up the additional rolls, most of them will be duplicates of numbers we already have. Each time we roll another number that we didn’t already have, the chances of the next number being a match for something go up, so it will take longer and longer to scratch those final stubborn numbers off our list. And to get that last number off our list, where there’s a 99% chance of a match, and 1% chance of hitting the target, it could take 99 rolls or more before that one specific number comes up.

Still, the fact remains that at a big enough list of results, every possible outcome will have at least one matching case. With less than that number of cases, we need some sort of discriminating mechanism – our dice – to determine the outcome; but above it, we can simply say that there’s at least one of every class of outcomes.

If there are that critical number of cases to be considered, we can treat the table as though it were the outcomes; the more cases there are, the more closely one will look like the other. That can be an incredibly useful tool for the GM, because it means that we can ignore the chances part of the table and treat it as a list of all the outcomes. We can analyze in generalities and narratives (which we tend to be good at), instead of mathematics (which some of us are not so good at, and which all of us get wrong every now and then).

The chances of a Lich finding a Ring Of Regeneration may be one in 100 – but if there are 600 liches, it is fairly likely that it will happen at least once. So we can ignore the improbability and simply start detailing that particular Lich.

The Size Of The Sample

It’s thus really important to be able to determine the size of that critical number – the point at which individual outcomes are subsumed by the whole, and everything that can possibly happen, does. Unfortunately, this can require really complicated math.

But there are some shortcuts that GMs can use to get their heads around these probabilities and so assess what it most likely to happen, and these can be lifesavers.

If, for example, there are 300 rolls, then (on average) you would expect three rolls of each possible result – which means that you wouldn’t be at all surprised to see two, or four, rolls of any given result, and not all that surprised to see some with five, or six, and some with one – but you are now reaching the point where you would hope to see no result having no cases. If you found that result taking place, though, you would only be disappointed.

When you think about that distribution, you soon realize that you are talking about our familiar old friend, a dumbbell-shaped curve. Flat on top, dropping suddenly through the second and fifth bands of 1/6th results, and fairly flat again at the outer limits.

Given that the end points are always ‘anchored’ at zero, what we need is for the lower-probability ends of the fast-change zones to be higher than one. That means that there is very little risk that a 1%-likely outcome will not be represented with at least one result.

It also means that you can actually treat a subset of the results as a statistical representation of the whole. The larger that subset, the greater the certainty and reliability of the outcome measurements. But if you took the results of any six neighboring results, or any six evenly-numbered results, or – in fact – any six results at all – the outcome-counts in those specific results should map onto that dumbbell-curve.

In fact, this is how political opinion polls and television ratings work – they sample a certain number of opinions and from that, extrapolate to get some idea of the whole. Of course, they can only get a perfect representation if they poll every single viewer / voter – and if the responses are all truthful.

In practice, I don’t think that six is an adequate sample.

Imagine that your dumbbell curve is made of Lego blocks viewed end-on. A count of the number of Lego blocks gives you a measure of the reliability of your analysis of the whole – the more blocks that you have, the more representative the ultimate shape of the curve is.

One block doesn’t do a very good job on its own.

With three blocks, at least we get an indication of sloping walls.

With seven blocks, the shape of the curve begins to be reflected in the arrangement.

Eleven blocks is better again – but there’s still a large void on either side at the top.

With sixteen blocks, we reach a critical point: there’s almost enough space in the voids relative to the size of the bricks that the ‘stack’ can move from the top to a central row. Almost – but not quite.

At 23 blocks, there is ample space to begin reflecting the shape of the top of the curve.

From that point on, the correlation between curve and the shape created by the blocks will only get better, as this 31-block example shows.

The ratio of non-sampled to sampled results appears to give a reliability indicator. If we’re talking 100 results, and a sample of 10, that gives a 100/10=10 unreliability – the same as a sample of 100 from 1000 results.

But uncertainty tends to be assumed to be evenly distributed over the results excluded from the sample, so this isn’t actually correct, and the sample size can be relatively small. A sample of 5000 is quite reasonable to a prediction of 100,000 results, provided that the 5000 is a ‘fair sample’. That’s where the design of political polls becomes an art as much as a science – you have to actually look at the demographics of the samples and adjust them in various ways to correct the match between sample and total results, and try to separate out true trends from statistical anomalies.

Lets put that in terms of the TV ratings, which are (generally) far less controversial – if there’s a survey of 100 households, and all 100 happen to be big fans of golf, the survey will show golf rating its socks off, while other sports languish. But this is a very obvious failure – it’s a lot harder to pick up samples in which only a couple of categories are slightly over-sampled. I would tend to be an outlier on almost every survey – I’m more analytic than most, a deeper planner than most, have interests and hobbies that are usually fairly uncommon, read more, research more – the list goes on and on. I’m more – ‘distinctive’, I think is the best term – and that means that I hardly ever agree with the TV ratings, which hardly ever correspond to what I’m actually watching (I actually think that my particular segment of the audience is under-represented in the surveys, but that’s not the point).

So, getting back to our Lego bricks, a sample of one-in-ten might be perfectly adequate for a set of 200 results, is probably going to be reasonably accurate for a set of 100 results, or 400 results, is not going to be all that good for a set of 50 results (not enough excluded results to carry the weight of the distributed uncertainty) or for a set of 800 results (too many possible results for the sample to be representative). Hey – wait a minute, that’s another dumbbell curve! But this time, the scale on one axis is an exponential one, halving in one direction each step and doubling in the other.

Which brings me to the subject of logarithms. One mathematical trick that I have found very useful in the past is log(a^b) = b x log (a). Another is log-base-c(d) = log (d)/log(c). You can put these together to understand how the uncertainty changes on the dumbbell curve as a result of increasing a sample size relative to the number of results.

But that’s too technical for most people (including me) – and we don’t care, anyway. We can use a simpler approach.

Take a look back at those Lego-block curves. Count the number of rows up to the bottom of the quick-rise part of the curve. We need this to be at least one. The overall number of rows in that curve, divided by the number of rows to the reference point of the curve, tells us the average number of any given result that we need within our sample. And that, multiplied by the number of possible results, gives us the total number of results that we need in order to be sure of getting that 1% – using rough rules of thumb.

By my count, the target gets met with a pattern of 1, 3, 5, 9, a total of 18 samples, and 400 results. So if we have that many or more results, we would expect every possible outcome to be represented, even with the noisy variations in individual results that would normally be seen.

Once you go above that number of outcomes, you can actually treat the statistics of prediction as the statistics of outcome, within a small amount of unreliability.

Generations and Iterations Of Headache – back to Viruses

It’s when we start looking at recurring instances of an event that things get complicated. That’s where, at least some of the results don’t preclude a repeat event a day later, or a week later, or a month later.

Let’s assume that we have a situation in which the possible outcomes are, respectively, 1, 5, 10, 35, and 49% likely. With 400 cases, those are result counts of 4, 20, 40, 140, and 196, plus-or-minus about 50% – so the “10%” column probably contains about 40 results. It might be as low as 20 or as high as 60 – but it probably isn’t; it’s far more likely to be plus-or-minus 4, because some of the ‘errors’ will cancel out. In fact, most of them will, because there are 10 possible chances for them to do so. It’s at the low-probability end where there isn’t enough range of results, within a given outcome, to make that a big enough factor, where the greatest error occurs – to the point where, in the 1% case, the potential variation is plus-or-minus 75%, or from 1-to-7. We know that because we defined the number of results to give us that result.

The least-likely outcome is that you get the 1% outcome twice in a row – that will only happen in 1% of 1% of cases, or 0.01%. The most likely outcome is only 49% of 49% – or 24.01% of cases. And, where we had 5 possible outcomes, we may now have as many as 25. One generation on, that’s 125, then 625, and so on.

At first glance, to get representation of all possible cases, we need to increase the number of cases 400-fold, to 160,000 cases. That means that we get back to the 1-7 results in that 1% of 1% category. But, in fact, we don’t – because 7 results is more than enough opportunity for that error-cancellation. Half that number is probably enough – 80,000 cases.

Ah, if only things were always that simple. What if the 35% case meant that you didn’t have to take part in the next iteration? What if the 5% meant the same thing? And the 1%? But that the 10% meant that the number of cases in the next generation doubles?

Now the makeup of the second generation is defined (in part) by the first.

• We start with 100,000 cases for convenience.
• 49% is 49,000 cases – so that’s 49,000 in the next generation.
• 35% is 35,000 cases – so the next generation stays at 49,000 cases.
• 10% is 10,000 cases – so the next generation doubles – so far, that will be 98,000 cases, plus another 20,000, for 118,000.
• 5% is 5000 cases – so the next generation stays at 118,000 cases.
• 1% is 1000 cases – so the next generation stays at 118,000 cases.

All told, this hypothetical eliminates 35,000 + 5,000 + 1,000 = 41,000 potential cases – but replaces them with 59,000 more.

Things get even more complicated if human behavior is a factor. That 1% outcome of about 1000 might be enough to increase the 49% to 69%, at the expense of 2 of the 10%, 4 of the 5%, and the rest from the 35%. That means that our second generation would have completely different percentage breakdown.

• We start with 118,000 cases, not so convenient.
• 69% is 81,420 cases – so that’s 81,420 in the next generation.
• 21% is 24,780 cases – so the next generation stays at 81,420 cases.
• 8% is 9,440 cases – so the next generation doubles. 81.420 + 9,440 = 90,860 – and double that gets 181,720.
• 1% is 1180 cases – so the next generation stays at 181,720 cases.
• 1% is 1180 cases – so the next generation stays at 181,720 cases.

If the greatest-likelihood outcome is that someone exposed does not fall ill, but remains susceptible, then this is what could happen when people do the right thing because they are scared – things get worse. What if the 10%-means-doubling rule is also affected – what if it becomes, say 1.1x?

This is easy to determine – 1.1×98,800 = 108,680 cases in our third generation.

And that’s down, just a little bit, showing how hard it can be to contain a disease of this hypothetical magnitude. Not even the Coronavirus is this infectious, thank goodness!

There are a huge number of assumptions built into this multi-generational model; change one, and you get very different results in the fourth or fifth generation. Not to mention the third – or the 50th.

If we take a 10-day average (which is about right for Coronavirus) to a generation, the world is now in the 39th or 40th generation in most places – in China it might be the 44th or more.

But the key point here is that by looking at a generation-by-generation model, we don’t need even those 80,000 cases – so long as 1% yields 1 or 2 cases, that’s enough. Maybe 1600 cases in total to create a representative statistical universe – 3200 for statistical rigor.

And, of course, human behavior changes. If the change described above includes taking precautionary measures and lockdowns, after a while, people get complacent (reversing some of the changes), and lockdowns get lifted, and we’re back to the original percentages. That’s how you get multiple waves taking place – and each time, it gets harder to respond with the same effectiveness and determination. And that means that the second wave is bigger and the responses, less effective.

At the back of my mind, when I first started thinking about this, was the thought that it only takes one asymptomatic case to restart the whole thing even in a country where the virus is seemingly under control – and that if it’s possible, and the number of cases is above the critical number, then there will be such an asymptomatic case out there, somewhere. Two generations without a confirmed case is generally considered to be elimination – using a 14-day generation for a comfort margin. But two generations clear won’t be enough to eliminate such asymptomatic spread. Four generations will probably be enough – but even that’s uncertain. Because the total number of cases in this context is the number of people exposed, not the number of people who have tested positive.

Each generation without known transmission increases the likelihood that elimination has taken place, but it doesn’t guarantee it. As soon as the critical number exceeds the population base, we’re out of the realm where the statistics can be treated as a list of outcomes that will take place, and into the realm of uncertainty. And you can roll 00 five times in a row.

One More Example

I feel like I should offer one more example of why this matters to the GM. Fortunately, I have a simple one readily to hand.

Last week, I explained how the PCs in my superhero campaign were shortly to begin a trek through the wilds of Arkansas in search of a new place to call home-when-we’re-in-disguise. So far, my notes cover the entire first game days’ travels for both teams, with 28 targeted stops and 33 drive-through locations. This is roughly 1/3 of the total for the state, and there are 4 other states to follow – though an NPC has proposed that they think about abbreviating Kansas and skipping Nebraska altogether, since some of the team are from tropical climes.

But let’s say that doesn’t happen.

28×3×4 = 336
33×3×4 = 396

Those numbers are both high enough that I can treat the chance of something happening as the fact of something happening – at some point in their trip. Rather than 700-odd rolls to see if “X” happens here, though, I can simply roll for when “X” happens – a d12 rolled a few times will handle this nicely – and schedule the event accordingly. This will be a major prep-time saving, as I start to accelerate the pace of the adventure.

If there are enough cases being tested, everything happens – and within the scope of the entirety of the opportunity, it all happens at once. It’s a useful principle when it comes to bulk… well, bulk anything.

PS: I should probably add that this is the fundamental principle upon which my series on handling large armies is based (like, 10,000 Orcs / Helm’s Deep large) – part one of six here, if anyone’s interested.

This article is likely to ramble a bit. There will be times when I have to talk around the subject so as not to give away any surprises to my players, or to provide a proper foundation for the point of discussion. That’s an unfortunate reality for life as an RPG Blogger; the only alternative is to wait until secrecy is no longer an issue – by which time the inspirational juices needed for a good article may have run cold. Every blogger pays his money and takes his (or her) chances; sometimes, I’ve voted one way, and sometimes the other.

In this particular case, the subject matter is complex, so I want to at least have a stab at getting a coherent narrative down before I get distracted – so I’m going for the publish-quickly-with-secrecy-and-caveats approach.

The Magician’s Force

When I was about eight, I started studying stage magic. I got reasonably mediocre at it, too, which was quite an achievement for a shy kid.

One of the lessons that I learned, which has stood me in good stead as a GM on a number of occasions (and in life) was about something called The Magician’s Force.

That’s where the magician appears to give the audience a choice, while actually getting them to choose the option that they wanted selected in the first place.

A really crude example: The magician writes the name of a card – the Jack Of Spades, say – on a piece of paper and seals that paper in an envelope, which he gives to a member of the audience to hold for him (so that he can’t tamper with it).

He then takes a deck of cards and fans them out so that the audience can see that there are no obvious gaps. He then shuffles them, every now and then fanning them out (face side down) for the audience’s benefit (while saying things like “you can see that all the cards are still here”). In reality, when he does so, he’s looking in a concealed mirror to see which end of the deck his chosen card has ended up.

He then splits the deck roughly into two and has a member of the audience pick one of the piles. If the chosen stack has his target card in it, then that is the deck that has been chosen; if not, then that is the deck that the audience have chosen to discard.

Repeat this three more times. Make sure you have an engaging patter to keep the audience distracted – it can even be good to interrupt to show off another trick. I also got good mileage from deliberately messing a trick up at this point, which makes the audience feel smugly superior, and sure that if the magician does anything he shouldn’t, they will catch him.

So you’ve gone from 52 to 26 to 13 to 6 to 3 cards. The mirror will easily show which of the three is your chosen card – lay all three down on the table in front of you. Then perform some psychic mumbo-jumbo and push the ‘chosen’ card forward. Get the audience member to open the envelope and read what’s written there. Flip the chosen card over, triumphantly.

Now, the audience may well have caught on to what you were doing with the magician’s force – it’s fairly obvious when done this overtly. So, now for the real trick.

In a self-confessing tone of voice, admit “I wasn’t entirely sure which card you would pick.” (flip over the other two cards) “So, just in case, here’s one I prepared earlier,” and from a pocket, produce another envelope – with the name of one of the other two cards on it. “and here’s another,” and from somewhere else, produce a third envelope – with the name of the third card on it. Those who were so sure they knew how the trick worked are amazed and dazzled and everyone forgets that the only envelope the audience had control over was the one that you obviously steered them to.

How do you do it? A magician’s not supposed to reveal his secrets, but just this once: I prepare multiple sets of envelopes and hide them in different places. Four suites, so eight sets is optimal, but six can be managed. 13 cards in each suit, less the one chosen as ‘the fall guy’, so six stacks will have about 8 envelopes with the names of cards, each. Memorize which ones are where VERY carefully, and be very careful about the order you put them in, too – and make sure that they can’t be seen. It’s an easy thing while you’re making your patter and turning the face-down cards over at the apparent end of the trick to count through the seven or eight cards with your fingertips and carefully only draw out the exact envelope that you want. A little talcum powder rubbed onto the envelope helps ensure that they won’t stick together.

So far as the audience knows, there are only three envelopes. And they have the impression during the trick that it’s all about the cards. It’s not, it’s about the envelopes.

The GM’s Force

It doesn’t matter what the players choose if all choices are equally good from the GM’s point of view.

Read that again, and let it soak in.

It’s that simple.

Of course, like all good ideas, the execution can be messier and more complicated in reality than this theory makes it sound.

I have two examples to offer, real-world ones from my superhero campaign, but the source doesn’t matter – the rule applies to all genres and all campaigns.

A Choice Of Horses

I’ve mentioned a time or two that I did extensive prep for the PCs upcoming choice of vehicles. Two used car lots, a total of 163 specific vehicles, about 120 data points for each, all in a sortable spreadsheet, plus a text file with history and vehicle extras, from the used-car salesman’s point of view.

I was then able to present the players with a set of 13 small cards that I had made up, each of which listed a criteria that the PCs might use to make their choices.

Some of the cards had sub-options for the PCs to choose between. This was a trick that one of my university buddies had shown me a long time ago for simplifying complicated choices. All I had to do was suggest that someone had shown the trick to a PC, and we were off to the races.

Step one: pick the three least important criteria and discard those cards.

Step two: from the cards that remain, pick the most important single card and the least important. If there are sub-options, pick the one that’s most important. If you want two sub-options, use a blank card for the second one – but that requires you to discard another of the cards in front of you.

Repeat step two until all ten of your chosen cards are in priority order.

Now normally, you would simply compile the results as a reminder of what was more important, but because this is an RPG, theater of the mind, and because I had that spreadsheet, i could go further.

I sorted the spreadsheet in sequence of the 10th most important parameter, then ranked the cars from 1 to 22 (that was just how it worked out). Cars with the same score in that parameter got the same rating. If the next-worst car was not very different to the one just ranked, I incremented the ranking by 0.1; if a bit more, by 0.2, or 0.3; if substantially different, by 0.5 or even by a full 1.

Repeat for each of the other parameters, using the same scale of 1-22. A low ranking should always be better than a high one.

Now I applied a bias, to reflect the sequence of importance. Scores in the tenth-most important parameter was multiplied by 0.1, scores in the ninth by 0.2, then 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, and so on. These were then totaled.

I also calculated the minimum total and the maximum.

I subtracted the minimum from the Score, and divided by the difference between minimum and maximum. Multiplying the result by 999, and adding one, gave each car a score from 1 to 1000.

Using so many parameters, and giving them different weights, meant that no two cars got exactly the same score, but that cars that were almost as good got almost the same score.

I was then able to do exactly what the PCs would have been doing, picking the best combination within their budget according to the criteria.

Unsurprisingly, certain makes and models floated to the top, because they were very similar from generational year to generational year. To ensure a bit of variety, I cheated and had some of the obvious bargains sold before the PCs could close the deal. My objective is to offer the PCs a choice of combinations that met their demands and let them make the final choice from there.

Combination #1 is all about Car A, which chews up most of their budget. Car B, the other half of the combination, is simply the best of what’s left that is within the total budget.

Because Car B is more likely to be sold than Car A, Combinations 2 and 3 are Cars A and C, and Cars A and D, chosen in exactly the same way.

Combination 4 splits the resource pie more evenly, with cars E and F. Combinations 5 and 6 replace either of those with car G or car H, respectively (so they are really combinations 5, 6, 7, and 8). And, if they need it, the next best choice is to replace either car with car B, (combos 9 and 10), then car C (combos 11 and 12), then car D (combos 13 and 14).

Then you get to the more complicated compound options – replacing car E with car G and then replacing car F with the first available of Cars H, B, C, or D, or vice-versa (combos 15 and 16).

So I’m giving the players plenty of choice, while narrowing the field from a HUGE number of choices to a cherry-picked short list.

I’ve even written up a nice bit of narrative explaining the options to them.

But here’s the thing: I don’t care which of these combinations the players choose. I didn’t care which of the parameters they chose to prioritize. I made sure that all the choices were interesting choices, with their own stories to tell, just by doing some basic research into the history of the most popular cars of the era.

That makes this whole exercise a GM’s Force. Totally NOT railroading the PCs in any way – I have acted as their humble servant, filtering the many-fold possibilities as they would have me do, loading in some realism (cars sold from a busy car yard should not be a surprise; cars not being sold at such a car yard should be). But every choice leads to some interesting narrative, and some interesting roleplay.

I am treating these cars as though they were NPCs in their own right, with their own personalities and quirks and flaws and strengths.

For the record (in case you ever want to do something like it for yourselves), the criteria offered (with sub-options), in the sequence selected by the players runs (I’ve indicated players sub-option choices in bold):

1. Economy
   • Urban or Highway
   • Current or After Tune-up
2. Overall Condition (a poor condition impacts on price, horsepower, economy, top speed, cruising range, and braking distance).
3. Highway (Cruising) Range
4. Original Condition, or Current, or After Tune-up
5. Low Urban Range (how far will you get on a tank in stop-start city traffic)
   • Original Condition, or Current, or After Tune-up
6. Rust (calculated as the Rust rating plus 1/10th of any % value lost due to rust)
7. Size (a highly artificial measure based on interior space, length, width, and body shape, but it ranks each car numerically from 1 to 7.5, with low being tiny and high being enormous. Busses and the like would be 8-10 on the scale).
8. Height There’s nothing worse when you’re doing a lot of driving than not having enough head room. Surprisingly, this almost certainly varies a minuscule amount from model year to model year even if nothing else but trim details change – possibly just so the manufacturers can claim that it’s not the same car as last year).
9. Price
   • Sticker Price or Estimated Bargain (the latter is how much you can hope to save through sharp negotiating and is based on the dealer’s willingness to do a deal on that particular car, which in turn reflects customer demand and condition and rarity and original quality, which in turn reflect a whole bunch of other things – but ultimately, the better bargains float to the top with this parameter)
10. Top Speed
    • Original Condition, or Current, or After Tune-up
11. Horsepower
    • Original Condition, or Current, or After Tune-up
12. (rejected parameter) Acceleration
    • Original Condition, or Current, or After Tune-up
13. (rejected parameter) Age
    • Maximum Age, Minimum Age, or Current Age
14. (rejected parameter) Gearbox/Drive-train
    • Manual or Automatic,
    • 3-, 4-, or 5- gears, or don’t care
    • Exclude front-wheel-drive or Exclude nothing

What’s more, if they had really wanted it, I could easily have dropped in some other parameter like engine size, or fuel tank size, or the price to refill a tank. I would have had more trouble with some of the other parameters like ride height simply because the manufacturers didn’t always make that information available. But I chose the ones that I expected them to find the most meaningful, and got no complaints.

If someone really wants me to, I’ll insert at this point a full list of the spreadsheet’s parameters and where the information came from – in some cases, it’s random, as described in How Good Is That Rust-bucket In The Showroom Window?; in some cases, it’s research; and in some cases, it’s calculated).

—- INSERT (IF ANY) GOES HERE —-

A choice of Bases

The reason the team need the cars is because they are in deep cover and scouting for a new Base Of Operations (BOps) from which to occasionally carry out missions that would be politically unacceptable if their true identities and affiliations were recognized – an occasional side-campaign within a campaign.

Their step-parent organization (a complicated relationship!) has recommended choosing a location in Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, or Nebraska. They know that they will eventually meet their contact for a detailed briefing on the current emergency in Oklahoma City, and were told that they should get out of Texas ASAP – from which they have inferred that the plot that they have to unravel will be centered in southern Oklahoma or Northern Texas, and possibly more West than East.

So, they are planning a road trip.

Which means that I am planning a road trip. A BIG one.

Three-to-four days in each state, to be spent visiting as many communities as they can in search of a place to sometimes call home.

They intend to split up, so as to cover more ground.

What I have done so far is to gather a selection of links about each state, in particular on the pros and cons of living there, and to the Wikipedia pages of greatest relevance. For the first state, I have translated that into a summary. I have arranged for them to get their information from (mostly fictitious) guidebooks as they travel because the alternative was to make decisions based on about 18 seconds of research per location, based on the time allotted by them and the scale of the job.

I have compiled maps at a fairly detailed scale into enormous maps that I can make (digital) notes on, show routes, track how far they’ve come, etc.

Using those maps and a logical search pattern, I have laid out a course for each group to follow over their three days. At the end of it all, I want each team to have a little less than a handful of possible options, which the players will then collectively get down to the best three.

Then they will do the next state, add another half-dozen or so possibilities, and then whittle those down to the best three or four.

Repeat for half the next state, and half of Nebraska, the final state. Why? Because, while choosing one of the four recommended states might be convenient for the current mission, they have no idea where the mission after that will take them – but it’s about one in fifty at best that it will be where they are based. That means that it’s worth them contemplating a few choices outside the box, like Detroit, or Chicago or St Louis. Transport hubs where they can come and go without too many questions being asked.

At the end of it all, they will be left with their top three or four picks.

I don’t care what they pick. Why? The GM’s Force. I have a list of 31 types of location (some may recur more than once), and any of them would make an interesting and fun location. Each time they pass through a town that sounds like an interesting place to put one, and that has a reasonably unique name, I seed it with a contender.

It doesn’t matter what they choose – my ends (interesting location to serve as the foundation for this side-campaign) will be served.

I have also amassed a list of 21 encounters (and counting) to take place along the way – plus the guidebooks and touring the places themselves, and the synchronicity of two teams effectively leapfrogging each other for the campaign spotlight, plus the potential for the memberships of each of the two groups to vary from state to state, allowing differences of focused interaction to occur between the PCs. And, on top of all that, some of the places the PCs will visit may have the potential to raise interesting questions for the PCs to discuss in-character. And – this being a superhero campaign – there may even be the occasional Close Encounter Of The Villainous Kind.

The reality is that it will probably take 2-3 game sessions per complete US state to explore it all and deal with the fun and games along the way. There will likely be 1/2 a session left in Texas before they get underway, and 1/2 a session traveling to their split-up point, where they will camp for the night – Dalby Springs (which they don’t realize is a ghost town). Whether or not I’ll do anything with that fact remains to be seen! But, at the very least, it should set things off on ‘the right foot’ so far as plot is concerned.

So that’s 1 session to get them to the point of entering Arkansas, 2-3 sessions in Arkansas, 2-3 sessions in neighboring Missouri, 2-3 sessions in Eastern Kansas and Eastern Nebraska, and one session exploring wild cars, 1 session setting up their new homes, 1-2 sessions establishing their cover identities and getting them some superhero PR the best way they know how (taking down some bad guys somewhere, in full view of the Press), then they can meet their contact and the real Adventure can start – and will probably last two Game sessions, maybe three.

Add those up: 1 + 2-3 + 2-3 + 2-3 + 1 + 1-2 + 2-3 = 11-16 game sessions. We get 11 game sessions a year. Best case scenario, this adventure will see out the current gaming year. Worst-case scenario, it will also fill half of next year.

Here’s the thing: with so many variables, as with multiple dice, the likelihood of the average goes way up. That’s not the whole story of course, but the average is 13.5 and we have 10 game sessions left this year – which would mean that their final act for the year would be choosing from amongst the many alternatives I have put before them.

But that’s fine, because this part of the adventure isn’t about the end, it’s about the road to the end. This is a superhero road movie – not something that comes along every day.

What’s more, as soon as it starts to get boring for anybody, i can start hand-waving time (and I expect to do so) with increasing frequency past the first game session or two. Establish a pattern then skip to the interesting bits, in other words. Like a side-trip to this Mississippi towns of Hot Coffee and Coffeeville (one of the PCs is a coffee addict). I’m not sure I can squeeze in both side-trips, but I should be able to get one in – it all depends on which location will be the most interesting in terms of interaction with this particular PC.

Another thing that I want to build in is something specifically targeted at each of the characters, to give them a chance to show off a side of themselves that doesn’t get displayed very often, or that will otherwise be interesting/fun – like that side-trip. Between them, that will soak up a game session – but I expect hand-waving to clear four or five game sessions. So 13.5 + 1 – 4.5 = 10. Remember how many game sessions I said were left in the year?

I’ll be trying hard to clear SIX sessions, not four, with hand-waving – simply because that will give me a game session in hand, and mean that the year won’t end with the conclusion of this adventure but with the start of the next, which will re-establish the regular campaign.

A Road-trip Concordance

It’s not relevant to the subject of today’s article, but – for the benefit of anyone else who’s ever confronted by a similar challenge – I thought I would spend a bit of time spelling out just how I go about marrying up the different aspects of the road trip.

Note that if the PCs decide stop anywhere that’s not on my schedule, that’s fine – I will just adjust the relative times given on-the-fly for a little while and then have something delay the other group for just the right amount of time to get things back into sync. I guess in that respect, this is just another example of a GM’s force!

The Route Plan

So, at the moment, I have a route plan that looks something like this:

109. Crossett -> North to Fountain Hill, NW then West to Johnsville, North
110. Warren -> NW via New Edinburg
111. Fordyce -> North via Ivan
112. Sheridan -> NE then East through Center Grove, ESE through White Hall, SE
113. Pine Bluff -> South then East
114. Star City

Each of these is a ‘Leg” and contains routing instructions to the next target destination, that being a location where the PCs might find a potential BOps. The “1” in front of the Target Location signifies that this is the route being followed by Group 1.

At the same time, I have a second route for the other group (whose locations start, strangely enough, with a two):

209. Center Point -> Highway 278 NNW
210. Dierks -> Highway 76 NNE to Highway 278 (exit on the left), NNW then NE then NNW
211. Umpire -> continue on Highway 278 West
212. Wickers -> NNW then NE on Highway 88 via Hatton, Vandervoort, Cove, Hatfield, Potter Junction
213. Mena

Note that these start where I am up to in my research / prep – I’ll be taking notes in this post’s draft as I actually do the work. You can also see how my ‘best practice’ evolved as I went along – the first groups’ routes have directions and way-points, the second groups adds Highway numbers. For the sake of clarity, I am referring to all Arkansas Highways as “Route #” even though it’s not strictly accurate.

The Notepad

I also have a notepad. On it, I track time – group one on the left, and group two on the right.

Leg 108 for Group one was from El Dorado to Crossett via Strong. The entry on the pad for this leg reads:

• +6 +7 -> 108 *El Dorado* = 5+41
  • +14 +24 = 6+19 -> Strong

And the next line (the first line for the next target) reads:

• +28 -> 109 *Crossett* = 6+47

Let me walk you through this, because it packs a lot into a very compressed format:

“+6” – it took the team an estimated six minutes to evaluate location 107, Smackover, Arkansas.

“+7” – it then took the team seven minutes to travel to location 108, El Dorado. Which means that they got there 5 hours 41 minutes after departure at the start of the day.

“+14” – the team spent an estimated 14 minutes evaluating El Dorado – which probably means that either the place is very big, or that they found a possible BOps, or both.

“+24” – it then took them 24 minutes to drive to Strong. Strong is what is going to be referred to as a “Drive-through Evaluation”, for towns where they don’t expect to find any potential BOps to consider (but they’ll look as they pass through town, anyway – and sometimes that will bear fruit).

“= 6+19” – if you add 14 minutes to 5 hrs 41 mins, and then add 24 minutes to the result, you get 6 hours 19 mins.

“-> Strong” – means that at time-hack 6+19, Group 1 reach the outskirts of the community named “Strong” on the map.

“+28 ->” – The presence of only one time interval – twenty-eight minutes in this case – means that no time was spent exploring Strong, that there was nothing there of interest to the PCs.

“109 *Crossett* = 6+47” if you add 28 minutes to the previous time check of 6+19, you get 6 hrs 47 mins – so that is the time when this group reaches the outskirts of Crossett.

Told you there was a lot packed into just a few lines!

The other side of the list deal with group two, who have a most recent time-check of 6+0 at location 209, Center Point.

I also bear in mind that overall, group one are supposed to ‘hit’ 45 stops with a roughly-estimated 14.8 hours of inspection time, or about 20 minutes per target, and a total driving distance of 928 miles; group two have a distance of 1132 miles to cover, 9.7 hours (estimated) to inspect targets, and 69 targets to inspect in that time.

Step One: Google Maps

If you type a location into google maps, and then ” to ” and follow that with another location, Google maps will show you routes from A to B, with the distance (and the driving time under current conditions, which is not very useful in this application). You also have to option to add more destinations to the chain – but there is a limit.

So the first step is to break the route up into segments on different roads, using the Driving Directions if necessary to get distances to turns. I also adjust both the starting point to somewhere in town if time was spent exploring it, and the ending point of the trip to the outskirts of the next town.

I have set a speed limit of 60 mph on the interstates (in theory), 55 on the Highways, and whatever-you-feel-safe-at on anything else – but I am making notes on what speeds feel or are unsafe on each road. Speed through towns is usually 35, sometimes 25, and occasionally there’s no posted limit.

Applying the appropriate speeds gets me a time-to-landmark from the distance-to-landmark data. I can vary the ‘safe’ speeds as I see fit (remembering that this game universe experienced a cataclysm six years ago, game time, from which it is still recovering).

Add those up, and one of two things will happen: you’ll either get the time interval to the next Location or to the next Drive-through Evaluation.

Advance whichever time-check is earliest until you overtake the later time-check.

In this case, with Group 1 at 6+47 and Group 2 at 6+0, I have 47 minutes of Group 2’s time to fill in before I catch up.

Almost certainly, location 210 will precede location 109 – and quite possibly 211 and 212 as well.

Steps Two and Three: The Research

Locations are described in my research in sequential order. I use a nested layout for the details.

So far, I have compiled 19,100 words. I got a bit ahead of myself and have partial work done on targets 109-116, in addition to full details of 100-108 and 201-209. So part of what I do is to integrate work done with new research, compiling the two into a blow-by-blow narrative.

The first part of the research derives from “The Guidebook”. This starts with information on the community from Wikipedia, but that’s often not enough, so I will follow up with a Google Search, which usually leads me to more information. “The Arkansas Encyclopedia” has been especially helpful, but there are several other sites that provide snippets of information. I’m very much just hitting the highlights, the same way that someone skimming through the interesting parts of a guidebook would.

Occasionally, all these sources will fail me, in which event I resort to the GM’s prerogative – I make something up.

I try to estimate the population level as it was in 1986, based on the censuses of 1980 and 1990, and any causes of change described. I also factor in the differences between real-world history and campaign-world history – a massive physical catastrophe impacted the entire planet about six-and-a-half years ago, and it caused an economic crisis almost as deep as the Great Depression. As an indicator of severity, Japan sunk (most of the population were saved by transforming them into mer-people) – so no Japanese industry, and limited infiltration of the American Markets by small cars (and most of those are European). But they have retooled their industrial capability, and are soon to make a big re-entry into the world economy!

I’m lazy enough that I take most of the demographics unchanged from the 2010 census, and only modify if I have to. I note median age, and the number who live below the poverty line, and a very broad racial breakdown. I document any physical features described by Wikipedia (often not many except when it comes to the largest communities), and any social features of relevance, and I sequence it all into a readable narrative. I often have to look elsewhere (as described) for the history, which I synopsize heavily.

Steps Four and Five: Images and Getting A Feel For The Place

The “guidebook material” then segues (often in a very blurred fashion) into what the PCs see and any impressions they get when they drive into town. I write this material as original narrative, based purely on the most relevant images that a DuckDuckGo Image Search offers me. If I don’t get enough good stuff to get a distinctive flavor, I may also hit Google Images. As I find and open images in new tabs, I try and sequence them into a narrative, which then becomes the basis for my text. Above all, I’m looking for the answers to the key questions that the PCs would be asking – “What’s this place like,” “What would it be like to live here,” “Are there any obvious possible BOps depicted,” and so on.

Sometimes, a town or city won’t leave a strong impression – which means that it’s worthless for my adventure purposes. Sometimes, there may be obvious reasons for saying no to somewhere – the PCs don’t have any dark-skinned members but one is posing as a Hollywood Talent Scout (and Danish Expat), another is a Kzin Tourist, and a third is British and proud of it (and, supposedly a prospector) – any of which might trigger the locals. The nondescript French Heiress, the West-Coast Bounty hunter, and the Norwegian Ski Instructor and Championship Woodlogger are less likely to arouse the locals.

I save those images that support the narrative.

Step Six: EVALUATION & VERDICT

I then write the narrative text that has been inspired by the image search under the subheading “EVALUATION” (in all caps so that it stands out even in a plain-text document).

If there location has enough character to be distinctive or interesting, or if the image search turned up a viable BOps, I write that up under the sub-heading “VERDICT”, and then add any information on how the group located it under the “EVALUATION” sub-heading.

If it seemed likely that there would be somewhere from the research, but nothing came up, I decide if the location is interesting enough to delve into my list of quirky BOps location ideas. If so, I perform a more specific image search for whatever I need to illustrate it.

I want to provide just enough information that the team can make a decision on whether or not it goes on the short-list at the end of this state’s road-trip. If it does, that’s when I’ll generate a lot more information about it for use in the final evaluation – all information that the PCs supposedly gathered during their evaluation.

Step Seven: Encounters/Events

If there’s no potential BOps, I consider whether or not the location is interesting enough to merit one of my list of “On-The-Road Encounters”. I have, as I said earlier, 22 of these and counting – and some may occur more than once. With three game days traveling through each of a pair of states, and another three game days through another pair of states, and any travel to curve-ball locations after that (another three game days), and then travel from the new BOps to Oklahoma City, I have to spread these over ten or 11 game days – so that’s one per car per game day, and more as I come up with new ideas. If I only have one shot at each traveling group per game day, I want to make it count, so – so far – there haven’t been any dropped in, but I did spend some time on Lunch.

Most of these won’t happen in an actual community, they are going to be out on the open road (but there are some exceptions, like the house on fire, or a driver getting lost). In all cases, it will be up to the PCs what they make of the situation – they can choose to do nothing, or try to lend a covert hand, or make a public debut. You can lead a PC to plot, but you can’t make him Adventure!

If there is to be an event or encounter, I make appropriate notes either in the description of the route after the target location or in the target location description itself under an appropriate sub-heading.

Step Eight: More Encounters/Events

After I had written most of this article, an important afterthought came to me.

During the cataclysm 6.5 game years ago, which took the form of a variant on the Norse Ragnarok, a neighboring dimension was reduced to primal energy which was used to reshape the reality, internal physics, and history of our universe – but before that happened, the ruler of most of their Milky Way Galaxy equivalent used the resources of his government and society to relocate most of the population to other worlds in the primary space-time of the campaign. While some of these relocations have been overt (there are dinosaurs in Central America), and some are globally known because of their immediate impact (the saving of California from a massive shift in the San Andreas fault, the sinking of Japan and salvation of the population through a transformation into mermen), others have been more subtle. A lot of humans simply settled into communities of survivors and became part of their new communities, which has become a driving force in American politics. In some countries, these newcomers used arcane abilities to become warlords. China put up what has become known as The Bamboo Curtain – no news comes out of there, these days, and no-one knows what is happening. Some uninhabited worlds were terraformed/altered to make them compatible with non-human species – there are human-sized sentient ants on Mars, for example.

A few such imports were more covert – the PCs recently met an alien octopoid race that were saved in this process who have been very quietly living in southern Mexico, and negotiated the precursor to an eventual treaty with them for mutual coexistence. And a lot of other obviously non-human species and individuals quietly began lives for themselves in various wildernesses.

The PCs are going to be driving through a couple of such wildernesses. Where are those encounters?

This thought started with the idea of a troll who has felled a tree across the road, charging a toll (payable in consumables, not cash) to lift the tree long enough for vehicles to pass – which was conceived of as simply another road encounter, to be added to the list. Reflecting on it overnight, though, I realized that this was actually just the first example of a whole new class of encounters, most of which would be more likely to transpire when the PCs were camping at night and not whizzing past at XX or XXX miles per hour.

It took less than an hour this morning to add another 22 ideas to this second encounter list, most of them one-offs, but a few of which could recur. Many have two forms – drive-by encounters (spotting something exotic) and more substantial at-rest encounters. That’s enough for one or two per game-day. There’s also some scope for these encounters to interact with some of the ones listed in Step 7 in interesting ways – it’s one thing to see a hitch-hiker raising a thumb for a ride, and another to do so after seeing evidence of giant spiders in the vicinity. If the PCs are traveling in the right direction, that just makes it a lot more likely that they’ll stop and interact with the hitch-hiker. Things become more difficult if the hitch-hiker is trying to go the other way.

The reason this becomes critically important right now is that in the work that has already been done (and which is described below), I’ve already described the passage of the PCs through a number of these low-population areas that would be havens for ‘strange imports’ – and not only has nothing been described, but no time has been allowed for the resolution of such encounters. Neither seem all that reasonable.

So I’m going to have to go back through the work that I thought had been done, seed in a couple of these encounters, estimate how much time the encounter will probably take (even if the PCs just slow down to gawk, or stop to take a look / a photo, there will inevitably be some delay), and then adjust all the subsequent time-checks to include that time-loss. That will mean redoing my note-pad’s contents and ‘re-synchronizing’ events.

Which brings me to what used be Step Eight….

Step Eight Nine: The Timing

It’s important to carefully translate the EVALUATION/VERDICT material into a time frame that describes how long it took. What’s the game-time interval between one image and the next, in other words. I do this in minutes and then add them up, and bear in mind the evaluation time-frame – but the first time an evaluation goes over-time (and I deliberately let one do so), I let the PCs explore two different philosophic responses to the situation and then choose how each team will deal with those situations. In a nutshell, they can try to make up time by cutting other evaluations short, or they can eat into the allocated personal time or their next meal-time. It’s another GM’s Force in that whatever they choose works for me, I can feed it into my narrative..

I also estimate how long any encounter is likely to take to resolve.

Next comes calculating the distances and routes – or rather, this is where I put the information that I calculated earlier, under the sub-heading Directions (usually not fully capitalized because I started doing it the other way when I got ahead of myself and decided that consistency was more important). This is the final word on a target – how to get out of town and where to go once you do.

And then it’s time to move on to the next stop.

Drive-through Evaluations

As a general rule, there’s less information about these, and so shorter text and a more casual narrative, but the process is pretty much the same – but with lowered expectations. They are indented so that they stand out.

I also give them the “location number” of the preceding Location – so “Louann” is considered part of Target 106, Camden, but actually gets visited after 206, Horatio, and 207, De Queen.

Directions stay with the main location, but a copy gets appended to the end of the Drive Through Evaluation as a reminder. The original is “this is what your plan calls for”, the subsequent entry is “this is where you go from here.”

Step Nine: The Notepad

The final step is to take the timing data from Step Eight and add another entry to the concordance notepad, so that I can see which route will next reach somewhere notable.

Destinations Done So Far

Here’s a list of the locations described so far in my notes, just because people might be interested: If you aren’t, skip down to the next section.

• [Texas]
  • 100 Dalby Springs, Texas
  • 100 Simms, Texas
  • 200 Texarkana, Texas
  • 100 Corley, Texas
  • 100 Maud, Texas
  • 100 Redwater, Texas
• 201 Homan
• 100 Texarkana
• 202 Hope
• 101 Bradley
  • 202 Columbus
  • 202 Saratoga
  • 101 Lewisville
  • 202 Tollette
  • 101 Stamps
• 203 Mineral Springs
• 102 Waldo
• 203 Ben Lomond
• 203 Wilton
• 204 Ashdown
• 104 Mount Holly
• 105 Stephens
• 205 Foreman
• 106 Camden
• 206 Horatio
• 207 De Queen
  • 106 Louann
• 208 Lockesburg
• 107 Smackover
• 108 El Dorado
• 209 Center Point

And the ones that have been partially done. Some of these places may even no longer technically exist! Talk about a road to nowhere…! “Partial” means that I’ve looked the location up on Wikipedia and made notes accordingly.

• (108 Strong – partial)
• (109 Crossett – partial)
  • (109 Fountain Hill – partial)
  • (109 Johnsville – partial)
• (110 Warren – partial)
  • (110 New Edinburg – partial)
• (111 Fordyce – partial)
  • (111 Ivan – partial)
• (112 Sheridan – partial)
  • (112 Center Grove – no data on Wikipedia)
  • (112 White Hall – partial)
• (113 Pine Bluff – partial)
• (114 Star City – partial)
  • (114 Relf’s Bluff – no data on Wikipedia)
  • (114 Montongo – partial)
• (115 Monticello – partial)
  • (115 Lacey – partial)
  • (115 Fountain Hall – no data on Wikipedia)
• (116 Hamburg – partial)

Sample complete entries

I waited until I got a set of good ones, then copied the work that I had done as a way to wrap up this article – bearing in mind that it’s already twice the usual Campaign Mastery length before this inclusion! (I’ve also formatted it a lot more than I get to do with the plain-text editor that I use to write with).

I should start by apologizing to anyone who lives in any of these communities who is offended by my generalizing and interpreting and projecting of various assumptions onto their communities. Remember, the goal is to create an exciting and interesting game, not necessarily an accurate one!

109 Crossett

GUIDEBOOK/NARRATIVE

Crosset has a population of 6,500 occupying 5.79 square miles of land, making it one of the largest communities that you’ve visited in Arkansas; it’s actually large enough to have suburbs. It’s taken almost half an hour to drive here from Strong. What’s more, the city is about 7 miles wide (E-W) and 3½ miles deep (N-S) – exploring it fully will consume quite a lot of the advantage that you had built up since just crossing it once from NW to SE will take about 15 minutes. Realistically, 45 minutes to an hour can be consumed poking around just the key points of a city this size – which forewarns you of what it will be like when you have to evaluate Little Rock on Day 3. And that’s before you spend any time considering possible contenders, and you are sure that there will BE some in a city of this size. Still, that’s what the saved time is there for!

There are four properties on Main Street in Crossett listed on the National Register of Historic Places, as well as the Crossett Experimental Forest, located 7 mi (11 km) south.

60% of the population are White, 39% Black, and 1% Hispanic/Latino. The median age is 38 years and there are 83 adult men for every 100 adult women. 17% of the population are below the poverty line and 30% of the children, both notable lower than many other places within the state. Politically, the city only leans conservative, making it one of the most progressive locations in Arkansas outside of Little Rock. This attitude is the legacy of the founders of the city who forged an official relationship with the School of Forestry at Yale University in 1912, and the lumber companies in the region became the leading employer of Yale-trained forestry graduates, which resulted in improved manufacturing and farming practices. It was the Yale influence that led to the creation in 1934 of the Crossett Experimental Forest.

As calamities unfolded in the first half of the 20th century, Crossett seemed to dance between them, untouched; the Roaring Twenties, Great Depression, two World Wars and even the Civil Rights upheavals of the 50s came and went without major disturbance to the community. Following the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision in 1954, leaders in both the black and white communities engaged in talks which finally resulted in the integration of the Crossett schools in 1968 without incident.

The climate is characterized by hot, humid summers and generally mild to cool winters. October, May and April are the most pleasant months in Crossett, while July and August are the least comfortable months. It is located just nine miles north of the Louisiana border.

The major employer in the town is the Georgia-Pacific paper mill and allied industries make up a substantial portion of what’s left.

Property is very expensive here, with some homes priced at more than $500,000. Most homes in the city are priced below $79,000.
However, the cost of living is almost 30% lower than the USNA average.

The city is large enough to have a zoo and a first class airport, capable of handling small corporate jets on its 5,000 foot runway.

EVALUATION:

The welcome sign is, appropriately, beside a pine nursery and a stand of old-growth forest preserved from exploitation. (0 mins) (11-109a)

The main shopping center is neat and modern, and there are very few empty storefronts. (Ignore the too-modern cars). (5 mins) (11-109b)

The public library is reassuringly large and well-maintained – in fact, you’ve seen smaller county administrations. (10 mins) (11-109c)

While the edges of the roads have an ‘unfinished’ and untidy look to them, and most are unmarked with center-lines (and sometimes narrow), the verges are very green and shady, and homes are well-separated. Large blocks of land appear to be the norm. As with other towns you’ve looked through in this part of Arkansas, there don’t appear to be very many fences between properties, creating a stronger sense of a local community – that might be problematic for the keeping of secrets. (15 mins) (11-109d)

The Post Office still manages to retain a ‘municipal building’ feeling to it – the locals’ progressiveness appears to have its limits. Bonus points for incorporating the town logo into the sign, however. (20 mins) (11-109e)

Rather more modern and not far away is the Biedenharn Museum & Gardens. This is a city which thinks there’s more to culture than country AND western. (25 mins) (11-109f)

Some houses are small and designed to use the size of the blocks of land to create greater privacy. (35 mins) (11-109g)

CONTENDER #1:

Many take advantage of the space available to accommodate 5, 6, 7, or even 8 bedrooms. Some are clearly built on double-blocks. This plain and unassuming brick dwelling is a 7-bedroom and on the market for $612K (40 mins) (11-109h)

CONTENDER #2:

This looks like a 4-bedroom until you notice the extra rooms on the second floor. A very unpretentious 7-bedroom house, then – again on a double-block, to have such a vast lawn. It would set you back $605K. (45 mins) (11-109i)

CONTENDER #3:

There are two properties that are even larger, and in danger of becoming excessively run-down; both need renovating to at least some degree. The first is the Old Rose Inn, which was damaged during Ragnarok and never reopened after the subsequent death of the owner. It’s $725K, and would probably need $125K in repairs before it could function as anything more than a private residence. But it seems a shame for it to go to waste, it still has hints of past greatness about it. With 28 rooms per level, and some extras on the third level, even if you removed every second wall to open the rooms out into private suites, there is still more than enough capacity for the team. (52 mins) (11-109j)

CONTENDER #4:

A little smaller and quite a lot creepier, but with even greater hints of former glory is the Hotel Crossett. Now quite dilapidated, it would cost $600K to acquire it’s 23 rooms and probably another $4-500K to refurbish. It does occur to you that you could hire an army of workmen to restore these places and have a perfectly-obvious justification for not being around while the repairs are carried out. This place is probably old enough to be on the national register of historic landmarks but its condition seems to have precluded that. Restoring it would erase some of the historic value but preserve what’s left. Although the building looks to be in rough condition, closer inspection shows much of the damage to be cosmetic, but not all. Probably 1/2 of the building is still structurally sound, quite enough for you to use as temporary accommodations. Alternatively, you could buy it and leave it like this for a while until ‘the blueprints are finalized’. (70 mins)

VERDICT:

There are four contenders here with varying shades of appeal. #1 is only just big enough but it is modern and new. Perhaps a 3½ out of 5.

#2 is slightly bigger in capacity but the rooms are smaller; it is modern and new, and traditional at the same time. Same score, but for different reasons.

#3 is a lot of work but more than big enough to house the team in luxury and deserves to be saved. Probably a 4 out of 5, maybe even nudging toward 4½.

All of which goes double for #4. It’s so good that it even generates its own cover stories! If it had already been refurbished, it might be a 5 – but as it stands, it’s only a 4-to-4½.

Directions: North on Route 133 to North Crossett then Route 133 to a right turn onto route 8 to Fountain Hill, highway 425 into Fountain Hill, then NW then West on Route 160 then Route 8 to Johnsville, North on Route 8 to Highway 63 to Warren.

• 4.3 miles in Crossett, to North Crossett @ 25 mph = 10 mins
          Subtotal to North Crossett 10 mins
   
• 12.6 miles through North Crossett on Route 133 @ 95 = 8 mins
• Turn right onto Route 8, 3.8 miles @ 75 = 3 mins
• Turn left onto highway 425
          Subtotal to Fountain Hill = 11 mins
   
• 0.8 miles through Fountain Hill @ 25 mph = 2 mins
• Turn right onto Route 160, 10.7 miles @ 75 on Route 160 to Johnsville = 9 mins
          Subtotal to Johnsville = 11 mins
   
• Stay on route 160 to drive through Johnsville and then turn back to the NE through back streets to join Route 8. 0.3 miles @ 25 mph = 1 min
• 13.2 miles on Route 8 @ 80 mph = 10 mins
• Right turn onto Highway 63
• 2.5 miles on Highway 63 to Warren @ 55 = 3 mins
          Subtotal to Warren = 14 mins
   

212 Cove

GUIDEBOOK/NARRATIVE

5 minutes after Vandervoort, and just as Team 1 reach the Crossett shopping center, Team Two drive into the community of Cove.
.
360 people in 1.6 square miles – which actually is an extremely low density for a town. 95% of the population are White, 4% Native American, and 1% Hispanic or Latino. Which leaves the Black population lost in rounding errors, it is that low. Median age is 32, and there is something close to equality in gender.

14% of homes have someone over 65 living there.

Per Capita income is $4000 less than the typical level even in these small towns, and 29% of the population are below the poverty line.

Cove is located at 1000ft above sea level in the hills of the Ouachita Mountains. May, September and October are the most pleasant months in Cove, while July and January are the least comfortable months.

A post office was established in 1897. For about a year, it was known as Venice, but the name Cove Station was chosen in 1898 (‘Leroy’ was also considered). The name was eventually shortened, and applied to the business communities that had sprung up around the railroad station, which was a mile from the previously-existing settlement; this is now known unofficially as “Old Cove” and as a result, Cove juts a finger almost all the way to the Oklahoma border. Cove now contains two grocery chain stores, a convenience store, a Mexican restaurant, a bank, a hardware store, and two automotive care businesses. The post office, a popular series of hiking trails, and a Baptist church also continue to operate.

VERDICT

If it weren’t for it’s proximity to Zone Red, this community would deserve a far closer look than it is going to get under current circumstances – but an insular community “Old Cove” sounds like the perfect place to find what you’re looking for. But, under the circumstances, it doesn’t merit much of a first glance, never mind a second – you already have much better choices on your short list. (No Pics)

212 Hatfield

GUIDEBOOK/NARRATIVE

Hatfield is just 5 minutes past Cove. The name immediately conjures up images of the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys, but you have no idea if the two are in any way connected. The population of this Hatfield is 410 and seems fairly stagnant and unlikely to change from what you are reading. It’s another 96% White town, and that in combination with the size and the proximity to Zone Red makes worthwhile targets unlikely.

The town is contained within 1.3 sq miles at typical small-town population densities. The headquarters of the Christian Motorcyclists Association is located here, which is an interesting blend of conservative and radical – but suggests that less desirable blends of those traits might also find a home here.

VERDICT

Unwilling to waste time on so unlikely a prospect, you blow straight through town without stopping, just as Team one are looking at the Crossett Public Library.. (No Pics)

212 Potter Junction

GUIDEBOOK/NARRATIVE

It takes an enormous 11 minutes to reach Potter Junction, which is where the road from the nearby town of Potter joins the highway. It is also known as Old Potter, and that name gives the history of the place – the railroad must have passed near here but not through here, and so the nearest railway station became the center of a new town, with everything that was here migrating to there. So that becomes Potter, and this, Old Potter – technically part of the same settlement, but in practice, it’s own unincorporated community. Located at 1030 feet above sea level, part of the hills of the Ouachita Mountains.

You slow for the speed limit through town even as Team one are busy driving around Crossett, looking for landmarks, contenders, and just getting a feel for the place.

Potter, according to your guidebook, has almost 900 citizens; so far as you can tell, Old Potter would struggle to hold a tenth of that.

But that doesn’t really matter, because from this point onward as you approach the more substantial community of Mena, the highway contains one roadside business after another. Eventually, Old Potter will become the Mena City Limits. But this is a conservative part of the world, so that might take a few decades. They are technically considered to be separate communities some five miles apart, but human nature and opportunism is no respecter of lines on a map.

First there’s the Fish Net Lodge, before you even get to Old Potter. Then the Creative Touch Florist, which is followed by the Loaves & Fishes Christian Book Shop, the Outback Barn (a barn construction company that is housed, appropriately enough, in a large barn), the Humane Society of the Ouachitas, Copelin Motors, Mena Feed & Supplies, The Pleasant Hills Animal Clinic, and then the official Mena city limits sign.

That is followed by the South 71 Church Of Christ, A&J Offroad Rentals, the Polk City Fairgrounds (visible in the distance), the Southside General Store, Architectural Salvage by Ri-Jo, and the Ozark Inn, all before you see any substantive difference between Old Potter and the city of Mena, all 200-400m apart.

Certainly, there was no change in the speed limit from the time you entered Old Potter until the time you officially entered Mena – and no prospective contenders, either.. (No Pics)

213 Mena

GUIDEBOOK/NARRATIVE

Mena’s shape is roughly circular, approx 1.5 miles in radius, with four extensions – one along route 88 to the east, one along route 8, one alongside Polk Road 76 which runs parallel to route 88 north, and one, of course, along Highway 75. That means it takes about 7 minutes to traverse it – and it has a lot of streets to traverse in its official area of just under 7 square miles (18 square km)!

Looking at a map of Mena and Surrounds, it’s obvious that there have been two phases of construction – the heart of the town is on a NW/SE orientation, while the outskirts and surrounding roads are on a north-south orientation. (11-213a)

Of course, you’ve been in Mena unofficially for about 5 miles before you even reach this point – that’ so far to the SW that it won’t even fit on that map.

Mena is the county seat of Polk County, and is surrounded by the Ouachita National Forest; it serves as the gateway to some of the most visited tourist attractions in Arkansas. It was founded by Arthur Edward Stilwell during the building of the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railroad (now the Kansas City Southern), which stretched from Kansas City, Missouri to Port Arthur, Texas. Train service to Mena began in 1896.

Like Vandervoort to the south, this was named for the wife of Jan De Goeijen, a friend of Stillwell, or more exactly, for Stillwell’s nickname for Folmina Margaretha Janssen-De Goeijen. Janssen Park in the center of town is also named for her.

It took less than a year for Mena to become incorporated as a second-class city, and a year later, the Bank of Mena was founded. A year after that, the county seat was moved from nearby Dallas to Mena. Two years later, the population was 3,423. In contrast, Dallas has never grown larger than an unincorporated community.

A black community called Little Africa developed on Board Camp Creek east of Mena. The community was small, with a population of 152 in 1900. In 1901, a black man, Peter Berryman, was lynched after an alleged altercation with a white girl. No one was arrested. Several other instances of racially motivated hate and violence toward the Black community had been noted; this, combined with declining job prospects, drove most Blacks to leave; by 1910, only 16 remained. Ten years after that, the Mena Star was advertising the town as “100% white”. A local chapter of the KKK was organized in 1922. Five years later, the commercial club created advertising which used “No Negroes” as a selling point. Even today, the city has far less than 0.5% Black residents.

In the 1950s, a government program to stockpile manganese led to the reopening of local mines closed since the 1890s. The program ended in 1959, and the mines again closed.

In the early 1980s, drug smuggler Barry Seal moved his operations to the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport, where he owned and operated many planes and helicopters, as well as advanced radar equipment. He was taken down last year by the Crusaders, their third visit to the city. In 1985, they ripped apart a White Pride gathering, demolishing the town convention center in the process, and in 1984, they attacked the fourth of July parade after a neo-nazi affiliated group, the Freedom Brigade, were granted permission to march. 87 were hospitalized, about 1/3 of whom were not part of the Freedom Brigade. While the first two actions won them few friends in the region, greater forgiveness was shown after the third. Not that there’s any evidence that they care.

In 1911, a damaging tornado struck the town. It typically snows 5 months of the year, though in three of those months the average amount is 0.2 inches. In the summer months, the average temperature is in the low 90s(F) (33C).

There are currently about 5250 citizens. With such a large population base, broader statistical determinants wash out much demographic individuality; median age is a little high (41 years) but otherwise the population is right on the state statistical medium.

An estimated 1.2 million visitors a year come to Mena to enjoy its nearby natural features which include a scenic drive and state park. Camp Pioneer is a 163-acre Boy Scout camp east of Mena, and Camp High Point is a Girl Scout camp also located in the area.

Population density is relatively low, about midway between a small town and a densely-packed city like Texarkana.

The only indication that you’re entering Mena is that the speed limit drops from 55 to 45 mph. (11-213b)

EVALUATION:

The problem with vital, active communities is that available properties get snapped up fairly quickly. In effect, they are all desirable real estate, only the degree of desirability varying. And there are locals with the money to snap up anything desirable. Combine that with the proximity of Zone Red, and it would be easy to vacillate between abject pessimism and wild-eyed optimism. Still, it wouldn’t be fair to either yourselves or the city of Mena not to give it a thorough evaluation. As usual, you start downtown, getting a feel for the prosperity of the location – and eyeballing the windows of every real estate agency you pass. Mena looks fairly unremarkable at first. (3 mins) (11-213c)

It’s only when you discover two antique shops side-by-side that you begin to appreciate that Mena has qualities unlike everywhere else you’ve looked. (5 mins) (11-213d)

Mena appears to have an upper class who are seriously interested in the finer things in life. The Arts shop just down the road would be remarkable in any city for its size, but when you put still another antiques dealer right next door, it establishes a pattern. (6 mins) (11-213e)

The first church that you come across is tidy and unspectacular, suggesting that the community are more secular than most. (8 mins) (11-213f)

But the next one is far more lavish in scale and decoration – (11 mins) (11-213g)

And the third one is positively opulent, even architecturally grand, more deserving of the title “Temple” than mere “Church”. (15 mins) (11-213h)

Still, this fits the pattern that you have begun to detect – there are people with money here, and they aren’t afraid to show it – but at the same time, utility is not something they willingly sacrifice for appearances. The County Court House is neat, tidy, utilitarian, but with a couple of almost understated artistic flourishes, like the band around the second story ceiling. (17 mins) (11-213i)

It’s a similar story when you come across the National Guard Armory – the more time you spend looking at it, the more expensive it begins to seem as stylish design flourishes begin to accumulate. (20 mins) (11-213j)

.It is into this context that you start your search for potential Bases. Some of the houses on the outskirts, where you hoped land would be cheap enough that someone would build big, are rustic cabins (but the vehicles on display still hint at wealth). (24 mins) (11-213k)

But most are neat and tidy, if small – and way too small for your purposes. (27 mins) (11-213L)

Even when you find a bigger house, closer inspection inevitably shows that this simply means that the bedrooms are bigger, not that there are more of them. (32 mins) (11-213m)

Some carry even this trend to extremes like this one-bedroom offering. (37 mins) (11-213n)

There are a few larger buildings, but they are not available. For example, the Elks Lodge, which was lent to the community to serve as the local hospital between 1935 and 1951, but was then handed back to the local chapter of the Elks. (41 mins) (11-213o)

For those who don’t know, the Elks started as a social club in 1868 for minstrel show performers, and borrowed rites and practices from Freemasonry, including racial and gender restrictions on membership. The former lasted until 1973, the latter continues to this day. Over time, they became the socially-acceptable face of ultra-patriotism. They have participated in a number of national programs of civic benefit over the years, in a similar fashion to the Rotary Club. Presidents Harding, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Ford were all Elks members, as were General Douglas MacArthur, General Frederick Funston, General Patton, and General Pershing. Other famous Elks include Lawrence Welk, Will Rogers, Jack Benny, Clint Eastwood, Gene Autry, William F Cody (Buffalo Bill), Buster Keaton, Vince Lombardi, Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, and Irving Berlin. Also not available are this magnificent Victorian home, recently restored – (46 mins) (11-213p)

…and this more modern offering…. (50 mins) (11-213q)

…or this privately-owned mansion. (53 mins) (11-213r)

VERDICT:

Ultimately, Mena was another dry well, but it helped crystallize in your minds the observation that there was a demographic ‘sweet spot’ that optimized the prospects of both a location of sufficient size having been built, and being on the market, and of sufficiently-recent maintenance and circumstances that it would be a viable choice. Every one of those failures just underlined that the right place IS out there, waiting to be found. If it hasn’t been, already! Besides, there is always the proximity of Zone Red and the activities of the Crusaders to consider – that alone is enough to put even a perfect choice onto shaky ground.

EVALUATION REDUX:

But Mena has one more surprise to spring. Just after crossing the city limits…. (54 mins) (11-213s)

…you find this former sawmill, which has been fully converted into a large home, ten upstairs bedrooms and several big rooms – a kitchen, a dining room, a sunken open-plan living room, a spa, four bathrooms. Fully furnished, and on offer for just $880,000, it’s a few miles out of Mena, and extremely isolated – maybe even isolated enough that you could ignore all the Zone Red down-checks. (60 mins) (11-213t)

VERDICT REDUX:

It’s not quite perfect, for that reason, but it’s at least the equal of anything else you’ve seen, even with the prominent negatives that come with the location. And one final thought: In their real superhero identities, the team are well known to have inclinations toward small-l liberalism; while this set of identities have yet to establish a reputation, this is quite possibly the LAST place on earth that one would expect to find a pro-liberal superhero team. It’s just one more layer of protection for your assumed identities. And that might just be worth the risk of the Crusaders coming back to town. A 5 out of 5 – if the Crusaders Question is disregarded. And where there’s one, there is almost certain to be others to find – perhaps without that drawback! You still have several more states, and more than half, of this one to explore!

Directions: Route 88 East then Highway 71 North to Acorn (total 5.4 miles), then Highway 270 East, North, WNW, NE (15.3 miles) to Y City. The road skirts through a valley between two mountain ranges of the Ouachitas.

• 0.4 miles exit Mena @ 25 mph = 1 minute
• 5.4 miles to Acorn @ 55 mph = 6 mins
          Acorn Subtotal = 7 mins
   
• 0.5 miles through Acorn @ 25 mph = 1 min
• 15.2 miles to Mill Creek Township @ 55mph = 17 min
          Mill Creek Subtotal = 18 mins
   
• Turn right onto Highway 270, 0.1 miles to Y City @ 30 mph = 12 seconds
          Y City Subtotal = 12 seconds

Commentary on the example

Okay, let me talk for a few minutes about these examples.

To start with, I’ve given you two principle evaluations and a number of drive-through minor evaluations so that you can see the difference in how they are handled. The latter are literally driving through town and keeping your eyes open! But I especially want to call attention to the way I have combined research results from multiple sites, then blended those results with fiction of my own creation. Sometimes, it’s abbreviating the truth, or obfuscating it; sometimes it’s inserting game history impacts, especially the impact of Ragnarok; and sometimes it’s inserting something new made from whole cloth. But I would expect even locals from the places used as examples to be a little unsure where the lines are blurred.

Second, I wish I could enrich the article with the illustrations that the players will see at the time. Their absence greatly diminishes the text, which is designed to operate in tandem with the visuals. But copyright violation is something I take seriously.

Next, it’s my intention to have an NPC in each car, at least at the start of these investigations – which means that there will be two PCs in each car to interact. Since the two female characters will stay together, that goes a long way to defining the personnel breakdown – without going all the way of dictating to the players. If they insist on the two NPCs sharing a car, well, Okay then. The key point in terms of the adventure is this: the ratings and verdicts offered are the opinion of the NPC that is assumed to be in the car. If there’s no NPC in the car, those opinions will be withheld, forcing the players to make up their own minds. The relevant point in terms of this article is that this is a GM’s Force – I don’t care what they pick, I can build interesting adventures around any of the contenders that are on offer. I separate the chaff from the wheat (or the fish from the squid, the Kzin equivalent) by restricting the possibilities that come up for consideration in the first place.

Fourth, this extraction comes at an important point in the overall structure of the adventure. Early drive-throughs weren’t “No Pics”, they were illustrated, even if there was just one image. But as these searches continue, the intention is for more and more of the uninteresting stuff to be hand-waved. By this point, the pattern will have become ingrained, so this is where that hand-waving starts; it will only get more prominent from here. I can fully imagine that a later Drive-through appraisal might read “60 residents, nothing interesting.”

The GM’s Force. It doesn’t matter what the players choose if all choices are equally good from the GM’s point of view.

Remember it, because it will be useful.

I generated two images to accompany this article (actually, I generated 10, but these were the two that made the cut) – and could not pick between them; they both reflected the content and title in equally-compelling but distinctly-different ways. So I’m using both of them. The second image will appear a bit later.

While this is being offered as a second entry in the current Blog Carnival on Characters and Characterization hosted by Plastic Polyhedra, it’s something that happens to be at the top of my to-do list anyway. I’ll explain why a little later (save me doing it twice).

It contains a series of thought-streams that collectively define an NPC in terms of how they will interact in-play with plot, narrative, dialogue, and relationships – in other words, with other characters, especially PCs. The technique described is optimized for modern-day play but works with any genre. Let’s dive right in…

First Thought: Foundation

When I create an NPC, even an off-the-cuff one, the first question I always ask is “what is this character’s purpose?” What do I want the character to do – within the plotline, within the immediate campaign, within the long-term campaign.

I may not have an answer for all these, and in most cases, that won’t matter – the odds are good that I will have an answer to one of them, and that gives me a starting point for the character.

Foundation purposes can be anything from “giving the PCs factual information” to “enabling the PCs to do X” to “selling something that the PCs want to buy” to “being an obstacle that the PCs have to overcome”. They span the gamut from things that are helpful to the PCs to outright opposition that has to be overcome for some approach to a problem to succeed.

A completely valid purpose is “keep the PCs attention while X is happening somewhere else.”

You may have noticed that most of these are defined at the plot level. That’s because of the way ‘purpose’ has been defined, which is in plot terms.

But not all purposes are so narrow in scope. A perfectly-valid answer is “to compliment the PCs abilities”. Or “to be a romantic love-interest.” These are also plot-related, but there is a layer of interpretation in between the plot and the purpose, like a Vaseline-smear on a lens (sometimes called ‘soft focus’). Those are perfectly valid, too.

One of the Key NPCs in my superhero campaign is a Kzin. He is a member of the team because he needs to repay a debt of honor, having been indoctrinated into a variant of the samurai code. Two of the PCs have abilities that are mutually incompatible according to the rules, and this also impacts their perspectives; the PCs purpose is not the plot-internal circumstance described, that’s just his motivation; it’s to bridge the gap and facilitate the PCs using their powers and abilities in concert to achieve things that either would find difficult or impossible on their own. This permits unbeatable enemies to bedevil the team until the right combination unlocks a weakness that the team can’t otherwise exploit. In other words, his purpose is to help the PCs achieve their potential.

That’s not all that plot-oriented, not directly – instead, it’s about adding to the tool-kit that the players have at their disposal for engaging with the plot.

The character has a secondary purpose, of providing an alien perspective, an “outsider’s view” which enables me to use him as a mouthpiece for interpretations of events and circumstances that the players haven’t thought of.

The other NPC who is a full member of the team is relatively weak, with no real super-powers of his own (at least, not yet). He’s a skilled agent, a former member of the SAS, an expert problem-solver slash fix-it man, with connections to the highest levels of political and social authority, and an expert on bureaucracy and structured planning – areas in which the PCs are weak. His purpose is similar to that of the Kzin, in that he is there to articulate a certain perspective that the PCs lack, and to take some of the boring bits of the PCs lives into the background so that I can focus gameplay more on the things that aren’t dull. He will also provide a gateway into, or out of, some adventures, at least in the medium-term.

So purposes can be emotional, or functional, or plot-oriented, or any number of other things. They can facilitate, enhance, constrain, or oppose. It’s a very broad field.

Second Thought: Imperfection

No-one is both completely believable as a character AND perfect at doing whatever it is that they are there to do. So my second thought is about what weakness, flaw, or imperfection might stand in the character’s way in terms of fulfilling this function. This doesn’t have to be internal; it could be an external circumstance or situation. Either the character or the PCs, or the two in cooperation, have to overcome this imperfection in order for the character to fulfill their basic function.

The term “imperfection” was not chosen casually; all the alternatives that come to mind have specific meanings in one or more RPG systems, but (to the best of my knowledge) this is a term that means the right thing and hasn’t been claimed by anyone.

Imperfections can be internal (‘doesn’t trust authority”) or external (‘the computer system is fried, they’re working on it”), personal (“doesn’t like people like you”) or impersonal (“die-hard environmentalist”). Their can be political, economic, social or even criminal complications or motivations.

They can be self-contained, or can simply be the tip of an iceberg (“character is being blackmailed into opposing what the PCs are trying to do and WILL NOT COOPERATE.” – which implies a conspiracy, and a very well-informed or carefully-planned one.)

Quite often (depending on the character’s purpose) the imperfection is something that is to be overcome, with or without the cooperation of the NPC. Quite often, it’s simplest to define the imperfection in terms of what you need to do to overcome it – “get a search warrant”, “show your authority”, “flatter them”, “agree with them”, “accept an invitation to dinner”, “show the importance of the outcome”.

“Scatterbrain” is a perfectly valid imperfection!

I pick and choose the imperfection at the same time as I am contemplating whether or not I want it to be overcome – and that’s thought process number three.

Third Thought: Through-story

Next, I need some idea of just how the imperfection could be, or will be, overcome. Or if it won’t be, or at least not yet.

Lots of possibilities there, so let’s break them down.

• Could Be – If the NPC is not to cooperate, if for any reason they might not want to fulfill their function, there is a roll involved. Specify the roll, and the requirements, and you’re ready to move on.
• Will be- If it’s their job to fulfill their purpose, for example to convey requested information to anyone who both wants it and is entitled to have it (including the PCs), then overcoming the imperfection should be straight narrative sequence or role-playing sequence / conversation, with no roll required. Map out the gist of the narrative/conversation, and (if necessary) the broad strokes of what the NPC is going to say, and you’re ready to move on.
• Won’t Be- There are many reasons why I might want to block the character from fulfilling their function when the PCs ask them to do so. It might be too direct or simple a solution, i.e. not enough fun; it might be that I want some other PC to solve it; it might be that I’m trying to set up circumstances for some larger plotline. The reasons don’t particularly matter, the end result is that I want to block off this particular road forwards for the PCs. The question then becomes one of preventing the PCs from overcoming the imperfection without the cooperation of the NPC. This can be especially effective if the NPC gives every indication that they want to cooperate but are unable to do so. Once I have what I need in terms of the roadblock to this avenue of approach to the story, I can move on.
• At least not yet- There are times when the background needs time to marinate, when a plot needs time to mature into a threat of sufficient magnitude or difficulty that it will pose an interesting challenge to the players, and the NPC overcoming their limitations eventually can furnish a gateway into the heart of that situation. That means that while I want them to fulfill their ultimate purpose eventually, I don’t want them to do so yet. For the time being, I need to stonewall the PCs as already described – but there has to be an imperfection within the imperfection that will enable it to be overcome when the time is right. Yes, this is metagaming from the GMs perspective – he’s having the NPC do things or not do things purely for reasons that the NPC would know nothing about – and it’s one of the reasons why I contend that not all metagaming is evil.

Fourth Thought: Distinctiveness

Every NPC should stand out in some way, however minor. Some are designed to be memorable (because they look like being fun to play – an example would be the lady who runs the New Orleans Historical Society in my superhero campaign world, who might or might not recur). Others are only to be present once, but need to make an impact. Others have to help sell the ‘reality’ of the situation the characters are in, or a particular mood or tone. I’ve had NPCs whose sole function was to exude competence at their jobs!

Distinctiveness often has a relationship with cliche – avoiding it, acknowledging it, embracing it, or even negating it. There are even times when you can explore a more complex relationship with cliche, adding terms like ‘exploiting it’ or ‘redefining it’ or ‘subordinating it” to the list of possibilities. I have an example later in the article that demonstrates the latter.

Fifth Thought: Manifestations

I’ve now got a handle on the character’s fundamentals in terms of how they will interact with the plot and/or the campaign. The next question is how all of the things that have been decided thus far will manifest in terms of interaction with the narrative or conversation. They can’t just sit there as concepts, there needs to be some tangible manifestation in order to express and define the character and their interactions with the purpose for which they have been incorporated into the adventure.

It can be verbal – a statement of some sort, or line of conversation – or descriptive, or lie in something that someone else says to the NPC (another NPC, whose sole purpose is to deliver that defining line). The more of a unique individual with a personal life and their own problems and demons that this manifestation can project onto the character when they are in the presence of one or more PCs, the better. It’s rare for a single manifestation to be able to accomplish all that, and equally unrealistic for every character encountered to be living their own personal soap opera, so this is an important subject.

The right manifestation is always the one that facilitates or delivers the PC to the interaction with the imperfection, either running up against it, or discovering the road through or past it. It can be as much about what not to say as anything else. The amount of individuality and uniqueness that it confers is an important but secondary consideration – which means that any of the list of qualities given in the previous paragraph that the manifestation doesn’t deliver can be a positive asset, too. But you need to know what the manifestation is, and how much of the NPCs life it reveals (and how much it doesn’t) so that you know the areas in which you may have to get on-the-spur creative and how to integrate any such character elements with the whole.

Sixth Thought: Implications

So far, your NPC exists in splendid isolation, for the most part. It’s a tree, part of an ill-defined forest. The sixth thing to think about is how the character reflects and influences the overall shape of that particular stand of trees to which they belong. This can be something that’s already been defined in general overarching terms within the campaign (“the civil service are uncooperative bureaucrats”) or it can be a blank slate.

Having at least some broad thoughts about the shape of the forest and the NPCs relationship to that shape is always useful, because if you don’t think about it, it can take you by surprise at a later date.

There are usually political and social considerations. There may be prejudices, either wide-spread and general or narrow and personal, involved. Outside perceptions of the PC, and of people like the PC, will always be a factor. This can be about assumptions made by someone – either the PC or the NPC or someone else in authority. It can involve or create conflict, internal or external. It can generate a standalone sub-plot or be over with in a single flash of sound and fury, denoting nothing significant – or having worlds of meaning. It can be about reputations, real or false, and about supporting, extending, continuing, undermining or deliberately opposing them.

You don’t have to focus too much on specifics; this NPC can always be an exception to a general rule when imperfect and messy sentient beings are involved. But you should always give it some thought, however fleeting.

Seventh Thought: Shadows

Train of thought number seven is all about the shadows, where some or all of what you’ve already decided will lurk, undiscovered. So far, everything has stemmed from what needs to be made obvious; this is about what you want to hide.

The great advantage of putting things into the shadows is that it gives you something that can be brought to light. “Why is character X being uncooperative?” – “You remind him of the jock his wife is having an affair with.”

The even greater advantage is that if something hasn’t come to light, it can be changed, or expanded, or extended, or reduced, or confined.

People aren’t the same, day after day. There are perpetual nuances and variations on a theme. Some days are good, and some days are not. Personality is a huge factor in defining how many of each there are, from the character’s perspective – and personality is (at least in part) an emergent property of all the decisions made to date. It might have been broadly defined, or left completely undefined at this point.

Shadows come in three forms: hard, fuzzy, and deep.

• Hard Shadows exploit the fact that you can define something by implication from the shadows that it casts – aftereffects, side effects, indirect manifestations, reactions from others, even knowing glances. The absence of something that shouldn’t be in plain sight but still manifests in some overt way creates a hard shadow, and huge gains in the realism of a character. But it can be easily over-used; not everyone will have a shadow of this type on display.
• Fuzzy Shadows are more general and undefined; they are generally used to contain character elements that don’t matter, and this is recognized by players subconsciously if not consciously, which means that it’s a great place to hide things that do matter. A character who gives off vibes of being a cool professional is hiding what it is that they are passionate about. This might be collecting Beatles records, or woodcarving, or stealing jewels, or membership in a white supremacy cult. But the latter two, being unusual, are not things that the PC would go looking for, and so would be completely taken by surprise when they are (eventually) revealed. And if the PC should somehow discover such, it puts them in an even more difficult and interesting situation – denounce the NPC and they lose the benefit that the NPC was there to provide and end any hope of cooperation. Silence can, however, be tantamount to complicity. Whatever the PC chooses, they have made their lives more complicated (and may have made new enemies).
• Deep Shadows Deep shadows contain things that the GM, for metagame reasons, does not what revealed. It’s not quite a matter of “whatever it takes” – having an asteroid crash to earth downstairs might be a bit extreme as a distraction – but every deep shadow should have some planned distraction or deflection associated with it, to be used only if the PC gets too close. The cop who is secretly undercover in a paramilitary terrorist organization who is secretly a recruit of an even more extreme satanic cult – or maybe he’s become a hidden true believer, or always was – and if the PC starts digging too deep, throw the bone of the undercover assignment to them. 99 times out of a hundred, that’s all there will be, so they should stop looking at that point, before they blow the cop’s cover, leaving the real deep-shadow content undisturbed.

No character is complete without a shadow – but you may not have decided on any specifics that happen to be there.

Part of the goal in NPC creation is always to avoid spending time on anything that you don’t need, unless there is the potential need at some future time, and it will be more efficient to create it while you have the character in mind. The first won’t happen that often, because (by definition) it’s outside the scope of the character’s purpose – but there will be times when you need to redefine that purpose, so I’ll get to that in detail a little later. The second will happen almost every time the first gets invoked – but if it will consume prep time that you don’t have, it’s not something that you can afford right now, and that makes it definitively less-efficient to do more than vaguely note the presence of something in the shadows and the general nature of the content..

Eighth Thought: Circumstances

You’ve dealt already with any significant circumstances within the character’s life, but its’ always helpful to have given passing thought to the more mundane aspects of that life. Throwaway narrative or conversational content can impart this and a greater plausibility to the character’s existence in a heartbeat.

“As you reach the counter, the attendant stops scribbling on a shopping list and asks if she can help you.”

or,

“The mechanic fiddles idly with a wedding ring as though he were unused to it’s presence on his hand.”

Job done. These no-name specific-purpose NPCs are suddenly real people.

Ninth Thought: History

Everyone has baggage. That baggage usually doesn’t matter in any given interaction or encounter – but there are times when you have the opportunity to bring a little bit of it into the light, and times when something makes the PC do a more thorough profile of the NPCs life. Again, you’ve already focused on anything that has immediate importance, so these are (by definition) things that don’t – but they can also be exploited, just like circumstances, to give a character additional light.

“Next week is my daughter’s formal debut. I remember my formal, it wasn’t like it is these days – not very formal at all, now, in my opinion! Sign here. I remember Rex Charters in his daddy’s pick-up, dressed in his late uncle’s wedding suit, looking so nervous that he almost ran us off the road when I touched his hand on the way to the dance. Initial here. Those were good times, don’t you think? Better times than these days, for sure. That will be Twelve dollars fifty, pay the cashier when she calls your name,” she concludes as she puts your paperwork in a basket on a moving conveyor belt.

Baggage. History. Everyone has it. Sometimes, you can use it, as in the above example, to make a dull process seem more real AND more interesting, to make a player feel like their character is really there, even if – as in this case – there is limited interaction required.

And notice how much personality the NPC has exuded as a byproduct of filling the gaps in the (presumed) process with conversation.

Here’s the same scene, done a different way:

The attendant holds out her hand for your paperwork. Flipping through it, she fills out various parts of the form. You attempt to engage her in polite conversation, but she immediately responds, ‘Ssh’ and returns to checking the validity of your request. On the fourth page, she holds out the form and a pen, and points to a space. ‘Sign,’ she announces in a grumpy tone. After you’ve done so, she takes a stamp pad and stamp and presses firmly on the form to add an additional term to the paperwork. Again holding the form out, she points to the added clause and grunts, ‘Initial’ in a who-cares tone. She then places the form in a tray on a moving conveyor belt and and announces, “Twelve-fifty, pay the cashier when called. NEXT!”

This example focuses on the LACK of engagement to achieve the same ends. The character is employed as a mindless servant of a process. She doesn’t care why the PC wants something, or who they are, or what they want, just whether or not she is supposed to make it happen. Having grudgingly conceded that she is, she completes her role in the process and passes the request on to someone else to satisfy. And again, oozes personality – with not a word of description or interaction. In fact, she shuts down any attempt at interaction with the character, she only cares about her interaction with the process.

Tenth Thought: Specifics

This is where a lot of people start, when they are generating characters – with the specifics, especially the stats. And sometimes that can be useful – for example, any biases or preferences on the GM’s side can be sidelined by basing the character’s choices of profession on what they are suited for, which is determined randomly. But, in general, stat blocks are designed to describe PCs, with far broader scope for interaction with the game world – they need to cover everything because they can’t predict what they will need.

A couple of past articles here have pointed out the time savings that can be achieved by only generating as much NPC as you need – see Creating Partial NPCs To Speed Game Prep, for example.

Again, always to avoid spending time on anything that you don’t need – except for when the caveats listed earlier apply.

Aborting The Process

Which brings me to this point: this process can be aborted at any time when you have enough. Several of the examples offered so far are of this kind. Stop when you have enough to meet your needs. Skip steps and processes if that’s useful, too. This sequence is a servant and tool, not a checklist or instruction manual; though there is a clear logical sequence to the steps. The twin examples under “History” demonstrate how you can skip directly to what you want or need, if you know what that is.

The more experience you have, the more skillfully you will be able to short-circuit the process in this way. Unfortunately, it’s not something that can be taught, you have to learn it by practice.

Timing The Processes

You might get the impression from the length of description of the ten steps that substantial time needs to be taken. In general, that’s not the case – we’re talking a handful of seconds. Some would say that it takes longer to remember the logical sequence and make sure that you haven’t missed a step, but I think that might be going too far, especially since you don’t need to memorize the sequence, just write it down or look it up or reconstruct it, or change it to suit yourself!

That’s not to say that deeper thought and more sophisticated constructions can’t be rewarding – they can be. The key is getting what you need. If you get to the end and what you have doesn’t contain enough depth, then more time and effort are needed.

I still wouldn’t spend more than minutes, though, because these aren’t about giving you the construction elements of the NPC, they are about giving you a playable image of the sum of those elements. As I said earlier, personality is an emergent property of the results of this process, and so is the guideline used to construct specifics, which is why that’s the last of the ten steps.

For an ad-hoc NPC, a meaningless (in terms of the big picture) encounter, five seconds a step, maybe ten – tops. One or two, more frequently (but part of that is experience, and I can’t say how much – so I’m being conservative).

Back to my point: You can only spend so long thinking about thinking about constructing a character before it becomes tail-chasing. Once you have an outline, you have to get your hands dirty.

But, if you do want more conceptual depth, rather than spending a lot of time on one thought process, it’s usually more effective to skip through the list repeatedly until your subconscious gets a nibble. Using the list helps keep you focused and your thoughts, directed.

Resuming The Process

Inevitably, there will be times when you underestimate what you need. You’ve prepared an NPC for a brief conversation and the PC wants to discuss things in more detail, or have some greater involvement with the character for some reason. That reason may or may not be spurious – for example, the player may have decided that the NPC is a possible suspect in something, or have some scheme to take advantage of them, or be matchmaking, or simply find the character you’ve created so enthralling that they want more – there are hundreds of possibilities.

Whatever the reason, you now have to restart the process to add depth to the character, and possibly in a hurry.

There are two approaches to doing so. The more difficult one is to start where you left off, and I generally don’t find the practice of doing so to be worth the time savings involved. The alternative, which I do recommend, is to restart with the implications stage.

Two reasons: (1) it’s unusual not to have gotten that far in your first pass; and (2), starting by expanding on the implications of what you’ve already decided not only gets you back into the swing of the creative process, it helps ensure consistency with what you have already established, which has to have at least some relationship with the real story. Yes, the NPC may have lied about something, but that requires a good reason for doing so – something that is implied by the fact of the deception.

Beyond that, follow the advice given above in ‘Timing The Processes’.

Restarting The Process

If you’ve pretty thoroughly explored everything that’s in the current characterization, and still need more – and it happens – then you need to dig deeper and approach the problem from left-field; and then, start the process from scratch.

I’ve offered my preferred techniques for doing so, quite a long time ago, in The Characterization Puzzle series.

Once you’ve worked your way through whichever of the three processes discussed in that series (start with the last part, The First Decision, which helps pick between the three), you can use this technique to start translating the results into characterization.

First example: A Double Act

This example starts with two images – one, a cliche of a used car salesman, the other a flamboyant guy in a white suit in front of a used-car lot. The purpose of these two characters is to sell the PCs a couple of second-hand cars, hence those two images of the owners of two different used-car lots.

I also decided that the two would need different sales techniques. I knew that one yard would be bigger than the other; I decided that the larger yard would employ a fast-turnover volume turnover while the other would not. Which one would use which technique had not yet been finalized, and in fact I was half-way through writing up the encounter before those details crystallized (and I had to rename the respective owners the other way around to make everything fit).

From those beginnings, here’s the write-up, exactly as it appeared in the most recent game session:

The two car lots are almost opposite each other on Dunkley Street (15-8-03-01).

(“15-8-03-01” identifies an image to be showed – Adventure 15, Act 8, Scene 3, Image 1).

Wormwood Motors is a second-hand GM (and related brands) dealership (15-8-03-02) owned and operated by Sal Wormwood (15-8-03-03).

Al’s Used Cars handles second-hand Fords (and related brands). It is owned and operated by Al ‘Six-Shooter’ Dunning, who appears to be filming a TV commercial as you arrive (15-8-03-04).

“So c’mon down to Al’s place to lasso yourself a bargain! If’n one of our hosses ain’t jest whut the sawbones ordered fer yuh, why, ah’ll shoot it! Yihaa!!” he exclaims as he points a six-shooter skywards without looking and pulls the trigger with a quiet click. He then turns to look at the revolver with a disgusted expression.

“CUT, cut, cut, cuuuut!” yells the director.

“Darn, Bob, the dadblasted peashooter done went all lame on me agin!” rumbles the salesman.

“Don’t you worry none ’bout it now, Al. We-all’ll jest dub us in an itty-bitty sound effect and no-one’ll ever know no diff’ent. Makes the goldarned sound levels easier ta balance out, anyways.”

“Really-truly, Bobby-boy? Y’all don’t say! Well, if that don’t jest beat all!”

“That was the last shot we done need from yuh, Al. You kin get selfless outta that there monkey-suit anytime you want – but ah jest had myself an idee, here. Whut say if y’all are wand’rin’ round the lot, like, checkin’ out the cars, see, in the background of the shots we take of the specials, hey?”

“Gol-darn, Bob, if’n that ain’t the best thing I’ve heard in a whole passel a time. If’n ah gotta wear this here angel-magilla, ah wanna squeeze ev’ry last skerrick-a value outta her. Less do it!”

From across the road, Sal yells in a loud voice, “Everythin’ all right there, pardner?” with a wave.

“Doin’ jess fine, thankee kindly, Mis-ter Wormwood. You’all take care-a yesself now!” replies the white-clad cowboy before heading back into the lot, followed by the camera crew and producer.

Blackwing/Basalt/Frank [The PC], how confident are you that your normal-person face will never slip, especially if you’re concentrating on something else? If you’re completely confident, then it would be best for you to wear some face other than any of the ones you’ve used so far and take Al’s yard – that way, it won’t matter if your face shows up in a TV ad. If not, then it would be better for Union Jack, as Roger, to take it, and for you to cross the road to see what Sal Wormwood can offer – someone you wouldn’t trust with used chewing-gum.

Wormwood Motors holds about 60 cars and is considerably smaller than his rival across the road, which has at least half-again as many. Glancing over the two, you can see distinctive differences in the way the two owners operate. Sal Wormwood is the more traditional in approach; he prices more consistently and is more content to let cars sit until someone makes an offer he can live with.

‘Six-shooter Al’ adds a much thicker profit margin, but is far more willing to do a deal; if he makes a small loss, he will make it up on the next sale, and either way, he frees up space in his lot for another car, another chance to sell. Overall, he probably makes more money per sale than Sal.

But his approach is even more psychologically-beneficial than this first glance suggests – customers are more likely to buy if they think they are getting a deal that may not be there, tomorrow. By making more room to dicker, he makes it more likely that he gets a sale, and by inflating the asking price, he not only gets to look more generous, he makes it more likely that the price he eventually gets is still enough that he turns a small profit. So he makes more per sale, sells more frequently, and hence is prospering. He might look ridiculous in his white cowboy three-piece suit, but he definitely has more going on under his hat than just his hair. At the same time, Sal’s approach lets him look more generous, with lower prices across the lot – so he probably makes more sales than he otherwise would, too.

This situation actually holds some benefits for the customers, too, you realize. Sal doesn’t have a profit margin that can both afford unhappy customers AND let him be relatively stiff-necked on prices – he has to be as honest as used-car salesmen get. And Al’s whole modus operandi is based on volume, on making sale after sale after sale- and any whiff of unscrupulousness would put that at risk. He, too, has to be as honest as they come in his line of work. Just count all the tyres before you try and drive off the lot.

An interesting thought comes to you as you start working through your chosen used-car lot, starting in one corner and working along the rows of cars systematically – what if the pair of them are secretly in cahoots? It’s so perfect a dynamic that they have set up between them that, while it would not be impossible for it to be a lucky coincidence, it’s also just as possible that both of them are a great deal sharper than they look. Something to bear in mind as you’re bargaining!

There are other differences. Wormwood has more big cars and fewer trucks, and is more haphazard in its layout. If there’s an organizing principle, it isn’t obvious.
This results in people wandering all over the place – but also means that you can come to look at a low-cost Chrysler and fall in love with the big Cadillac parked beside it.

Al has more small cars and more trucks and less in-between, and is far more systematic – small cars here, then medium, then the big iron, while the back of the lot has trucks and vans organized the same way but in the other direction – small stuff near the big cars, big trucks and prime movers near the small family cars. He seems to think about his potential market, his customer base, in a more coherent fashion than Sal.

Al has more variety in models, but more of the same model – row after row of Escorts, for example – while Sal has more makes and fewer of any particular one.

So it’s decision time – which used car lot are you picking?

That’s a LOT of juice to extract from those starting points. Remember, the primary purpose here is to sell the PCs two cars – and it’s up to them which cars they buy, and who from. All I’m doing here is framing the interaction for after they make their choices.

I also want to especially point out how much of Sal’s personality gets conveyed – given that he has a grand total contribution of five words of dialogue. But those five words, plus a wave, plus a reply from his rival, establish the character quite succinctly! (In fact, by contrasting him in this way with Al, everything that defines that cowboy also throws light on his opposite – and the entire purpose of the director’s presence is to be a vehicle for exposing Al’s character to scrutiny).

Second example: A complimentary Companion

The second example that I have is a character that I’ve written about before – the Companion character from the new Dr Who campaign. We’re actually going to do character generation (and start the first adventure) next week.

This character has a very different purpose – he is to serve as a compliment to the one-and-only PC of the campaign. So it becomes really hard to design him before the character construction of the PC takes place.

But there are some general principles. The PC is to be an ‘action-oriented’ character, fairly ‘boots-and-all’ ‘gung-ho’ in approach, even ‘where angels fear to tread’. He will have a very high empathy. he will be a Time Lord, and hence very knowledgeable – but that knowledge won’t necessarily spring to his fingertips.

What’s the opposite of those qualities? Someone who can’t undertake any ‘action’ at all. Someone who has difficulty understanding emotions, or who has a very low empathy for others. Someone who is mortal. Someone who doesn’t know a lot of useful things, but who is very adept at applying what he knows.

At the same time, a character who needs to appeal to the Doctor in some way – the intelligence is a start, but not enough; they need more common ground. So let’s ditch the low empathy and make the character an alien, someone whose emotions, and emotional understanding, is simply different.

And also at the same time, having a completely helpless character won’t cut it – so he needs to be able to do some things at least as well as, if not better than, the protagonist; it’s just that those things will be of secondary importance within the adventures that comprise the campaign.

Those traits led me to the Hoovaloo (I think I have the spelling right) from The Hitch-hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, a super-intelligent shade of the color blue. But this wasn’t to be an exact copy of Douglas Adams’ creation, so I gave the race a new name – and then stole that name for the character itself, I liked it so much.

This is a character who is completely immaterial – but solid enough that he can’t pass through solid walls or even doors without them being opened for him (he may be able to limbo under one if it doesn’t seal tight). He can interface directly with control and command computers, including those that are aboard the protagonist’s vessel, getting it to do things and cooperate in ways that not even the owner can manage. He can’t physically attack anyone – but may be able to stun susceptible types for a few minutes, creating a gap in their awareness that they won’t even notice. He will be young, and enthusiastic, and relatively naive about the universe and ‘the evil that men [and aliens] do’, which always appeals to this particular protagonist, he’s a big fan of innocence. So he fills in some of the gaps within the protagonist, and enables the protagonist to achieve more of his potential (sound familiar?). He’s useful enough to have around, but won’t steal the character’s thunder, he’ll supplement it.

Note that many of these thoughts were already embedded within the character from its early write-ups, as readers (except my player!) can see in Vortex Of War: A Dr Who campaign construction diary though they were not as fully fleshed-out as the statement above – my thinking has crystallized on the subject.

So, what’s my next step?

I will start, because he’s a non-human character, as I usually do – with the process described in Creating Alien Characters. Once I have that, I’ll be able to perform the sequence of conceptual development stages described in this article (and which is the reason why it was at the top of my to-do list). That will let me proceed to the game mechanics for an actual character creation – in this case, described in The Sixes System Part 7, Characters. And at the end of that process, I will have a fully-functional fully-detailed NPC, ready for play. A more extensive character than many of those described in this article, because it is to sustain interest and interactivity with the protagonist for the entire campaign – even to have a central role in some of them, as readers may know already.

Right now, to translate the character concept described into the structure of this article, I have the Fundamental Purpose, and I have the general imperfections (but may be incomplete), and I have parts of the through-story (but need a great deal more). I have distinctiveness, but it’s insufficiently defined. Before I can really dig into manifestations and implications and shadows, I need to finish defining those parts of the character that are incomplete, or I won’t have a comprehensive-enough ‘picture’ of the character.

Endgame Recap

So let’s sum up: there are ten streams of thought that can be used to define an NPC, regardless of genre or system. They don’t construct a character or a personality, they construct how those things will manifest in actual play – but they can be used as a mold to create those things.

It’s better to cover one stream of thought quickly and move on until inspiration strikes than it is to get obsessively into any one of them – you can always come back again.

The general principle is to never create more character than you need – given a couple of specific caveats about future appearances.

The ten streams of thought are:

1. Foundation Purpose
2. Imperfection
3. Through-story
4. Distinctiveness
5. Manifestations
6. Implications
7. Shadows – Hard, Fuzzy, and Deep
8. Circumstances
9. History
10. Specifics

The approach described works for everything from throwaway characters to NPC co-stars. You can input the product of other conceptual generators such the ones I’ve provided in the past.

This approach creates characters to fulfill story and plot functions, sometimes well enough that this is all you need – and it can take a fraction of a minute to have a character ready for play, if their involvement and engagement is to be specific and limited. This is about fast NPCs that are fit-for-purpose.

In particular, it’s about not handing things to the PCs on a silver platter, but instead defining what the PCs need to do to gain those things – anything from ‘sit there and listen’ to ‘rescue the kidnapped relative’. And it’s all about generating fun AND believability / realism at the gaming table – with virtually no effort.

That makes it a tool that everyone should know about, and know how to use, at least in my book!

Just to prove that the recent two-and-a-half-part article RPGs In Technicolor (part 1,part 2, part 2a) weren’t the last word on the subject, I thought of this topic of discussion.

Picture a room in which your character is located. A partially-closed door leads to a corridor beyond. Somewhere down that corridor, something is glowing in the night, casting beams of light through the crack at the bottom of the door.

The color and behavior of the glow will play a pivotal role in interpreting this situation. And the genre/time period of the setting will also make a big difference.

Here’s a quick list of contender – they aren’t the only choices, but they are a good start:

• Red Glow, ebbing and flowing
• Red Glow, steady
• Yellow Glow, ebbing and flowing
• Yellow Glow, steady
• Blue or Blue-white glow, ebbing and flowing
• Blue Glow, steady
• Green Glow, ebbing and flowing
• Green glow, steady
• Purple Glow, ebbing and flowing
• Purple Glow, steady
• White Glow, ebbing and flowing
• White Glow, steady
• Black Glow, ebbing and flowing
• Black Glow, steady

Combustion

The first one is fairly universally associated with fire. And yet, when you look at the light a fire gives off, it’s more yellow-white than anything else. Sure, some really intense fires have sheets of flame that are red – I’m having flashbacks to the movie Backdraft.

But it should also be well-known to anyone who has done high-school chemistry that different substances burn with different colors. The bright blue of a Sulfur fire, for example, can be mesmerizing – until you smell the chemical product! Natural Gas has a blue color to it’s flame. Sugar burns a slightly green color. This principle is sometimes used in mixing additional compounds into candles to change the color of their light, and is used all the time in creating fireworks.

Matter of fact, if you want to research this aspect of the subject more deeply than I have done, the chemistry of fireworks is probably your easiest entry point.

Readers may also find this Wikipedia page on Colored Fire to be of value.

In digging up that link, Google also presented me with a quotation from the Wikipedia page on Flame: “The colder part of a diffusion (incomplete combustion) flame will be red, transitioning to orange, yellow, and white as the temperature increases as evidenced by changes in the black-body radiation spectrum. For a given flame’s region, the closer to white on this scale, the hotter that section of the flame is.”

Right, so that scratches several items off our list (or, perhaps better, ticks several items). If your character saw those down the corridor, he’s probably going to think Fire. Depending on the setting, it might be a Fire Elemental or a Demon, but he’ll assume something is burning.

Electrical Phenomena

Blue and Blue-white are also associated with electricity, and especially to electrical sparks. This association comes from the biggest sparks of them all, Lightning bolts.

For some reason, children always seem to think that lightning is yellow – an odd thought that just came to mind. Maybe in your world, there’s something to that, some deep racial memory that observation leads the rest of us to set aside?

In general, electrical phenomena are steady or momentary. The steady ‘burn’ of a light-bulb, for example. Quite often, when such are not steady, that’s indicative of a problem of some kind – anything from a neon tube that’s about to burn out, all the way up to electrical arcing.

Characters would obviously interpret this accordingly, and use it as a basis for action. But it’s not the only source of Blue Glows that we might want to consider.

Radioactive Decay

Okay, now things are getting serious. This is a steady bluish green glow, and relatively dim, and it’s called Cherenkov Radiation (sometimes spelt Cerenkov Radiation). It can also look like a bluish purple.

Cherenkov radiation is, according to Wikipedia, “electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle (such as an electron) passes through a dielectric medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity (speed of propagation of a wave in a medium) of light in that medium.”

So… take water and add a radiation source. But (and a lot of people don’t realize this), light in air is 89,911 meters per second slower than in vacuum – and so Cherenkov Radiation can also occur in air.

Something radioactive this way comes? That’s either cause for concern, or cause for Really Major Worry, depending on genre.

Other colors are possible. Radium glow is generally thought to be green, and this is the basis of a myth that everything radioactive glows a steady greenish color: Where Did the Myth That Radiation Glows Green Come From – Mental Floss – “When mixed with phosphorescent copper-doped zinc sulfide, radium emits a characteristic greenish-blue glow,” says the article.

Most modern glow-in-the-dark items don’t use radioactivity, they use photo-luminescence, in which sunlight drives an electrochemical reaction which ‘charges up’ the glow, which is then released in the absence of light (i.e. darkness) to make the object glow a specific frequency (dependent on the compound). These are often a very similar color to ‘radium green’, but I’ve also seen everything from lime green to bright yellow.

Anyway, without the phosphor (the added chemicals that glow), radium excites the nitrogen in the air enough that the radium glows – a pale blue, similar to that of an electric arc.

But this would be a far steadier glow than any electrical arcing, which characteristically seeks out the path of least resistance, which varies constantly, and so dances around all over the place.

But we’re still not done with blue. Or with electricity.

Neon Lighting

One of the most common sources of colored light in the 20th century is neon lighting – in which the gases within the glass tube (usually neon, hence the term, but not always) glows in different colors. Another way is to put neon into a tube made of colored glass.

The resulting effect is a stock image in Noir formats. Pools of colored light, shadows in light, characters silhouetted by colored light – the list goes on and on.

Neon lighting isn’t dramatic or threatening in and of itself – it’s all in what you do with it.

Sci-Fi Lighting

Time for a drop-in section, I haven’t done one of those for a while! While searching for the image that heads this article, I came across the picture below. The careful use of illuminated elements – neon or otherwise – can be a great establisher of a sci-fi environment.

And I don’t know anyone who doesn’t react when a bank of green LEDs suddenly turn red, or worse still, flashing red!

Spectral Phenomena

Ghosts, Specters, and other sorts of spectral phenomena are frequently described or depicted as having a blue-white glow. Quite where this comes from, I’m not sure. Neither is anyone else, I don’t think.

It’s certainly a more common phenomenon in modern depictions, but that comes from two associations: first, we’re more familiar with, and accustomed to, glowing phenomena; and second, thought is electrical (well actually, it’s electrochemical) and electricity is blue-white. Frankenstein’s monster was given life by lightning, and there are the experiments with frog legs and electricity conducted in the early days of electrical experimentation that inspired Mary Shelley. So at least part of the story will be the association with electricity.

Part of it will be that artists typically want some means of showing that this is a non-corporeal being, and one successful metaphor for doing so has caught on. Since the number of artists and the number of subjects being depicted has increased exponentially since the 19th century, there has been more of everything produced – and so examples abound, and a popular zeitgeist has been established. Closely-related to this thought is that the spectral glow is dramatic and contrasts strongly with a darkened scene – it could almost be described as melodrama in art – and this also encourages this depiction.

So powerful is this association that the term “ghostly glow” is still in use today. It is, perhaps, noteworthy that many depictions of Death also show him glowing…

Someone once suggested that it was because ghosts should only show up in moonlight, but I reject that premise – moonlight is more bone yellow-white in color, and is rarely strong enough to show any color at all (we see black-and-white in the absence of sufficiently strong light, or perhaps that should be black-and-gray!)

Magic

Now we’re getting down to the creatively-interesting stuff!

In many campaigns (perhaps inspired by Octarine, Terry Pratchett’s literary creation) give a distinctive color to magic in its various forms.

In particular, one GM caused great hilarity at his table when he decided that “Detect Magic” caused magic items to glow with Cherenkov Radiation. The players immediately decided that much of their booty was radioactive and had to be safely disposed of… more than twenty years later, he still dines out occasionally on that story (which continues on for quite some time).

Personally, I think Pratchett may have been inspired by the Troxler Effect optical illusion that I featured in A Sharp Lookout: How Much Can You Adventure?, in which an afterimage creates a color that doesn’t really exist. In the example shown there, the absence of a purple causes a yellowish-green spot to appear when you stare at the cross for a few seconds. Part of the appeal of this theory, I must add, is due to the hilarity of the notion of would-be Wizards looking at everything cross-eyed, something that I feel would probably have appealed to Terry!

Just to be distinctive, and because there don’t seem to be very many natural phenomena staking out the space, I frequently use violet/purple glows as the color of magic.

Clerical Magic gets a white, gray/green or black glow according to the alignment of the caster or his power source.

But I am just as capable of saying that there’s no visible aura or radiance and someone who appears to be using somatic gestures in the casting of a spell might just be waving his arms around.

(I had some players really going for a while with this and a gifted actor wearing a ring of permanent Unseen Servant once. They decided that he must be the most skilled practitioner of Telekinesis (the spell) ever. I don’t recall them ever discovering the truth – that he was a con-man taking them for a ride. Might have happened, it was a long time ago, but I don’t remember it.)

The glows achieved several things by implication. They implied that there was some commonality between the mechanisms (because every spellcaster had a glow). They implied that there were differences, because the glows were all different in color. They implied that there was an absolute morality that was reflected in the casting of clerical magic, but that there was something special about Druids and Rangers (who got Green), while Wizards sort of skated above the whole Absolute Morality issue – implying that it didn’t apply to everyone. In fact, as I recall, this was a world in which the Gods could do anything, except break the strictures of their inherent morality. They were absolutes and primal forces. But whenever they did something, this always led to them going too far and causing all sorts of unwanted side-effects – so they had to work through mortal intermediaries to impose constraints on their divine power. This was also a world in which the gods were children (because nothing could really make them grow up) who were doing their best to pretend to be the grownups in the room – they were in awe of Wisdom, which is why they tied access to their powers to that stat – that, and the fact that it meant that their followers would use their powers Wisely, at least most of the time – the one thing that the Gods couldn’t do themselves.

In the end, though, all this comes back to “Detect Magic”. Back in the AD&D days, when I started playing, it was a “Universal” Divination spell that permitted the caster to become aware of what was magical and what was not. Details were limited, as though it were obvious what was meant.

Endless hours could (and were) spent deliberating on the significance, impact, and specifics that weren’t covered. “I cast an illusion spell on Harry, does he now detect as Magical?” sort of thing.

Later editions cleaned things up quite a bit, but locked users into one specific interpretation. That’s quite common, and one of the driving forces behind “Old School Gaming” – in which the GM’s/Players preferred meta-framework doesn’t match the one used by the writers of Edition X. If there are only a few differences that you can’t live with, you can House Rule your way around the problem; if they are more substantial and numerous, you may need to retreat to an earlier edition (perhaps importing some parts of the later edition that you did like.

On its surface, this presents a continuity between D&D (1st Ed) and all subsequent generations of the rules, as though they were arrayed on an arc around it, each generation bound to both the original source material and to the edition that preceded it. The reality is a little more complicated, but let’s go with that. Campaigns and preferences can fall anywhere within the resulting field. Your game might be mostly 3.x, with a little 5e (ignoring 4e, rightly or wrongly) and a little 2e thrown in, and a slightly old-school attitude. This would be positioned somewhere near the higher side of the 3.x arc (the one closest to 4e, which is blacked out because this GM is ignoring it), and hence to 5e, and about 1/3 of the way towards the hub, where lives original D&D.

You can complicate this simple metaphor in all sorts of ways, but that’s good enough for this purpose, which is simply to state, there are no wrong answers. At least, not inherently wrong. They are all sorts of wrong answers on a playing group by playing group basis, according to personal preferences. A similar selection – a set of acceptable answers – describes GM-by-GM preferences – what a given GM finds acceptable and what he doesn’t. Where the two sets overlap (and there is no certainty that they will) is the right place to locate a campaign for that specific GM and that specific playing group. There may be (and usually are) multiple such overlaps, or there may be just one. That doesn’t matter.

Nor are there any absolutes here – if the GM is skilled enough, if his game is entertaining enough, players will stick with it even if it is not their preferred genre, sub-genre, rules interpretation, or color of the week. Skill and talent can overcome any such difference – only the heights that have to be scaled, vary.

Another of the oft-debated questions was “If I cast Detect Magic on a Magic Shield, does Phil (playing another Wizard) also see the glow? Does Harvey (playing a Cleric)? Does Walter (playing a fighter)?”

The answer to this question has big implications – if it’s a ‘yes’ all round, either the GM is being lazy or economical (because such things as differences of perception always slow things down), or the spell has had some temporarily-transformative effect on the magic of the item. If the answer is ‘no’ to any one of those questions, then limitations on perceptions begin to play a role. And if the answer is ‘no’ to all of them, then the spell has affected the caster’s perceptions and not the item at all – in which case, the caster should be able to look at other items and discern them as magical, something that does not happen if it’s the target that is somehow transformed. “Yes” answers all round remove one restriction on the spell but impose another. It’s a personal choice, but can be a simple way of differentiating one campaign from another – and it can be fun exploring the implications!

Televised Aberrations

Anyway, getting back to the main topic of discussion, what does that leave? Not much. But most of the processes described have referred to natural phenomena that vary in intensity from moment to moment, causing flickering. One could argue that the magic glows may be steady, but I’ve always preferred to think that the glows were strongest at the fingertips or from the palms of the hands – which means that if those hands are waving around, the light will appear to flicker when it is cast upon a surface and not perceived directly.

I have good reason for this preference: it gives me more license for description. With a steady glow, once you’ve mentioned the fact and added the color (if that’s significant), that’s the end of it. Getting more specific gives me more description that I can use.

But I haven’t yet mentioned one source of flickering light that I see almost every day – a television in another room. The light is usually flickering white – but it’s very dependent on the images on the screen. Something underwater is predominantly blue, for example.

A very mundane explanation for a glow, in stark contrast to the reasons for alarm suggested earlier.

Televisions make colors – or at least, they used to – with arrays of dots of different colors. That may have changed with newer technologies – but our eyes haven’t changed, so the general principles still seem to apply.

So, have you ever seen a color TV in which something has gone bung and the screen is suddenly monochrome? All green, or blue, or red? I certainly have, and while it doesn’t happen often, it can be a source of monochrome glow – it can even flicker!

But a more likely explanation is some sort of screen saver. These have fallen out of favor lately, because modern screens are not as susceptible to burn-in damage, but there was a time when they were ubiquitous.

UFOs & Aliens

A lot of these are supposed to glow. Sometimes different colors.

One of the most memorable uses of light on a cinema screen comes in the classic Close Encounters Of The Third Kind – a strong moving light or lights behind a venetian blind in the abduction scene.

Glows That Tease

And that brings me to the ultimate value of a glow – it teases without showing a thread directly. This can be a lot scarier, a lot more dramatic, and a lot more exciting. It’s akin to hearing a scraping sound from the wall beyond your room, as though someone were trying to claw their way through (or out). But a glow implies that the source of the glow has access to you, whenever it wants, and so can be more threatening. Other senses can also be used, but far less effectively a lot of the time – witness the Original-series Star Trek episode Obsession, in which Kirk becomes obsessed with destroying a cloud-like hostile entity which he recognizes by a ‘sickening, honey-sweet’ scent. Unfortunately, while that is a reasonable signature of sorts, it isn’t particularly threatening – but nothing is made of that subterfuge.

But scent can be threatening – I don’t remember the reference, but the phrase “the stink of a charnel house” lives with me. Attempting to attribute it, a google search found this story about an Ohio ghost with the smell of blood and decay that the term conjures up from the website Haunted Ohio.

But even more threatening than the scent alone would be, would be to establish the connection between an apparition and the scent of death. This would tend to hyper-sensitize even the staunchest of military men, triggering them every time they were exposed to the scent – whether it was from the kitchens, or a dog’s feeding ground. If subtle enough, they might even be triggered to full alert without even recognizing the cause.

A formidable narrative weapon. And one that proves, once and for all, that there’s more to glows than meets the eye. What do glows of different color mean in your world?

Glows will always be threatening until proven otherwise. Don’t neglect them and don’t ignore them! There’s a glow coming from the alleyway you are approaching, and a chill wind in the air…

I try very hard to provide balance in my coverage of different genres here at Campaign Mastery, guided by the relative popularity. Out of every 15 posts, 6 should be Fantasy oriented, 4 should be sci-fi oriented, 2 should be ‘realistic’ (Modern-day or Pulp, hence the inverted commas), 2 should be Superhero/Secret Agent oriented, and one should be about something else.

Of course, these are just guidelines, and if there’s one or two too many of anything, it doesn’t matter too much – this is all just my way of attempting to ensure that as many readers as possible find something relevant getting posted each week.

Nevertheless, I have been known to ‘bump’ an article a week or more if there have been too many from that genre lately.

I’m helped a lot in achieving these targets by post subjects and treatments that can apply to a range of genres. This is always something that I aspire to, because it means that I’m potentially helping the greatest number of readers.

For example, take last week’s article, which mused on the impact that the Covid-19 Pandemic should have on the characters that we create. While it is obviously directly relevant to modern-day campaigns (box ticked), there is also relevance to the Spanish Flu epidemic of a century ago (Pulp – but that box is already ticked), and to any fantasy game in which a plague breaks out (box ticked), and bio-terrorism and bio-warfare are always going to be relevant to Sci-fi and superheros and secret agents (tick, tick, tick – hey, that’s every genre on my list!). I could even argue that epidemics may occur on a smaller scale in Western games, but the notion of a whole town getting sick because of contaminated water or whatever is pure genre, and the relative isolation means that the whole Pandemic reaction is the same, just scaled to the isolated population. So this even ticked the ‘something else’ box.

I’m not sure what it was, but something this week led me to ponder just what the differences were between these different genres. And I soon realized that the distinctions were a little different in tabletop gaming (or should be) than they were in the worlds of Fiction and Media.

My thoughts started with the distinction between Sci-Fi and Fantasy…

The Fantastic in Sci-Fi and Fantasy

I quickly reached the conclusion (because I had been there before) that the big difference between the two was how the Fantastic was treated in these two genres, the core of TTRPGs – I would bet that 70% of all games would be one or the other in some shape or form.

In Fantasy, anything can happen. The imagination is unfettered. There are no limits. If you want a talking caterpillar reclining on a toadstool and smoking a hookah, you can have the PCs encounter one.

In Science Fiction, there are strict rules imposed by reality. We call these Physics and Chemistry and Biology. The theory is that only what is possible within the reality around us is acceptable within the bounds of Sci-Fi.

Those definitions are both way too black and white, especially when it comes to Fantasy Gaming. But my thoughts along those lines actually started with Sci-Fi.

You see, most of the participants (if not all) are not science experts. In general, they may have a Popular Mechanics appreciation for Science, and beyond that, they apply Clarke’s Third Law.

Clarke’s Three Laws

‘Clarke” is distinguished science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, undoubtedly most famous for writing The Monolith, which became the foundation for the movies 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

A 1962 Essay, published in Profiles Of The Future, quoted the first law, and implied the second; others quickly imparted the status of “a law” to it. The third had been suggested by others with no-one quite managing to capture its entire essence in a single statement until Clarke did so in a 1963 revision to his essay.

The three laws are:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

It’s fair to say that it’s the third law that has most captured the imaginations of writers and thinkers the world over, ever since. The Wikipedia article on Clarke’s Three Laws has a long list of corollaries and one expansion. There are three that I’m particularly drawn to:

• Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice (Grey’s Law);
• Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (Gehm’s corollary); and,
• “Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don’t understand it.” (from the Webcomic Freefall).

…though I’m more prone to using the first in the form, “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity”, a pessimistic statement by Robert A Heinlein that forms the cornerstone of many of the developments in my RPG campaigns. (I’m also fond of another Heinlein quote, “Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done” – though I don’t consider it to be quite as universal as it purports to be.

The implications are that the ‘rules of reality’ aren’t quite the straitjacket that the description of Sci-Fi suggested that they were. This was explicitly stated by Gene Roddenberry in pitching Star Trek to various studios back in the day – “Anything is possible” – to which I would append, “so long as is it’s plausible”.

Fantasy Constrained

So, we’re left with Science Fiction being constrained by the plausible, while Fantasy enjoys an open field in which anything goes, right?

Not so fast! If ‘anything’ really ‘went’, players wouldn’t play in a game and readers wouldn’t read the story. Dueling deux-ex-machinas would populate every narrative and it would be very little fun for anyone, especially when one party (the GM) has the authority to deny the imaginings of the others (the players).

It’s quite rightly considered very bad GMing to drop in menaces simply because the players are getting too close to success (they call them Grudge Monsters in KODT).

So there have to be some guidelines and principles applied to constrain Fantasy – and ultimately, they boil down to whatever is plausible, given the established ground rules within the environment and context of the imaginary situation.

Plausible. There’s that word again.

But what about Magic? Isn’t it, by it’s nature, an upheaval in the environment and/or context, changing what is plausible and what is not? Does this not restore the Fantastic to a position of primacy within the Fantasy genre?

Well, yes and no.

I’ve written before about Asimov’s rules for science-fiction mysteries – about half-way through The Butler Did It, I quote selected passages from Isaac Asimov’s foreword to Asimov’s Mysteries in which he discusses the union of Mysteries and Science Fiction, and the perceived impossibility of uniting the genres. His number one rule that he invoked to solve this (and several other plot problems, I’m sure) was to play fair with the reader.

To him, that meant not using a technology without explaining it, and it’s limitations, well in advance, in every pertinent detail.

And, at the time, I followed those quotes with, “Magic and the other trappings of Fantasy are just as problematic, because (by definition) they contravene what we know as physical laws. If they exist, they make possible the otherwise impossible. But the same solution holds – understand how it works, what its limitations are, and how it affects cause-and-effect, and make sure that any relevant information is provided to the PCs…”

Magic has to have limits and rules in order to function within a game or it’s just a license for the GM to ad hoc and de facto anything that he wants to have happen. He has to play fair with the ‘reader’ – in this case, the player.

The rules of the game provide some constraint on the degree of reality alteration, anyway. If a PC knows only specific spells, he knows of only those specific ways and degrees with which to alter reality – which means that they can be anticipated and prepared for.

The upshot of all this is that you can’t have “just anything” happen in a Fantasy Game. The Fantastic is just as constrained in that genre as it is in Science Fiction. In some shape, almost anything that is relevant to one genre will be relevant to the other.

Take an article on Doppelgangers (complete with prominent misspelling). That’s pretty specific to the Fantasy genre, and to the D&D/Pathfinder sub-genres at that. And yet – have there never been science fiction plots in which a shape-changer has taken the place of a member of the crew? Well, yes there have. So, by seeking to maximize the plausibility within the Fantasy genre, what I have actually done is apply a little Science Fiction to the concept, then relabeled it Fantasy.

Technology In Science Fiction RPGs

At the same time, the rules limit the Fantastic within Science Fiction at least as stridently, also in a bid to ‘play fair’. There are proscribed limits to what a lightsaber can do in the various Star Wars RPGs, for example – because if you don’t have those, they device can become a crutch for weak play, a too-easy solution to a problem that’s supposed to be difficult.

This is sometimes stated as technology not being ‘a magic wand’ – at least in the real world – but in the context of gaming, I submit that a more accurate description would be technology us a magic wand – complete with restrictions and rules that define how and what and how often it can do things.

Fantasy and Sci-Fi may take the low road and high road, respectively, but both end up in the same place (when it comes to gaming) – different ends of the same uber-genre.

SF with outdated Science

There are a couple of alleyways of related thought to the above chain of thought that are worth exploring.

The first is a personal bugbear that causes affront to me whenever someone gets too picky about the ‘science’ in science-fiction not stacking up. What happens when a book is perfectly valid science fiction – until the understanding of the science underneath it changes? Does the book stop being science fiction? Does it become Fantasy? Or some strange hybrid of the two genres?

My personal definition is that if the science in a story was plausible enough at the time of writing, the book is still Sci-Fi – but I know a lot of Sci-Fi fans who disagree, sometimes vehemently. That’s alright – they can use their own more sterile definitions all they want. Just don’t expect me to change mine to accommodate you.

What’s more, it’s fairly easy to tie these purists up in logical knots by showing that by their own definitions, nothing is genuine science fiction.

It takes months to get a finished manuscript through the printing and proofing process. The pace of human development is such that by the time it is printed and available to read, the science upon which any given work is founded will have changed, the book will be out of date in some particulars at least (if not completely undone). Hence, by the purist’s definition, any book published in the modern era is no longer valid as Science Fiction – and they have already excluded everything not of the modern era. Which leaves them with an empty set – something that’s pointless, given the context. This usually forces the most strident but reasonable hard-liner to acknowledge that like absolute zero, perfection is unobtainable.

I therefore suggest to them that they are simply setting a higher threshold test for plausibility than most, and usually get a (sometimes grudging) acceptance of that proposal. But this introduces the concept of subjectivity into the discussion, and acceptance that others can have different thresholds and views that are just as valid as the hard-liner. It puts us on common ground – perhaps at different ends of it, but common ground nevertheless.

The logical next step is rarely taken to avoid re-inflaming prejudices already tweaked in the course of the discussion – which is to suggest that Fantasy and Science Fiction simply have different standards of scientific plausibility incorporated into them, and are simply points on a spectrum of possibility. A few have taken that step on their own, reclassifying both as simply “imaginative fiction”, and been the richer (in literary terms) for it.

Clearly, this particular alleyway loops back to the same meeting-point as the main discussion. So let’s move on to another.

Space Opera and Science Fantasy

Space Opera is perhaps best described as Science Fiction Hyperbole. Big dramatic space battles, epic confrontations between sides A and B, larger-than-life heroes and villains, greater willingness to hand-wave what is possible and what technology can do – a branch of science fiction that tends to the spectacular. Sounds like a lot of successful movies from the last 40 years or so, in fact!

One could argue about whether or not Star Trek (the original series) was Space Opera. Star Wars definitely was, and so was the original Battlestar Galactica (the reboot was more introspective and psychological and sociological and just plain deeper than most Space Opera goes).

Space Opera, with its greater willingness to hand-wave science, is clearly some distance closer to Fantasy than most science fiction – but it clearly belongs on the same continuity between the two extremes.

Science Fantasy is science fiction that deliberately violates the ‘science’ in the interests of a better story. There are those who argue that any science fiction with an FTL Drive (other than one failing to ever function) belongs in the Science Fantasy category – usually those purists I talked about earlier.

But this exposes the reason for my hostility toward the purist attitude: it’s inherent narrow-mindedness, the arrogance of assuming that you know what is possible and what is not despite not knowing all of science. That’s something that I would not say to such a purist, not unless they had gotten me well-and-truly fired up beforehand. But it’s still implicit in the purist definition of science fiction, whether said aloud or not.

Thankfully, the proposed Fantasy-SciFi genre bridge solves the problem of Science Fantasy, too. It’s somewhere in between regular Fantasy and Space Opera – and certain technologies are granted hall passes if the in-context theory of how they operate is sufficiently convincing. So some FTL drives are Science Fiction, and some are Science Fantasy – and there would be a whole bunch of them that are at different points in between.

There are some critics who have suggested that Fantasy and Science Fantasy and Space Opera are “bad” science fiction. I think that this argument confuses plausibility with literary accessibility.

I’m a big fan of a lot of the Star Trek original novels. There are some fantastic science fiction stories and ideas amongst them. Some are, alas, unmitigated rubbish, with wooden characters and hollow plots. But some are as good as you’ll find – not only exploring the complex interpersonal dynamics of the leading characters, but developing new subsidiary characters and personalities, and offering intriguing plots and entertaining resolutions. Clearly, ‘literary merit’ is comprised of a host of possible sins.

To me, a good Franchise novel is both easier and harder to write than an original story – easier, in that you have a lot of the creative work done for you, harder in that in addition to all the other parameters within the heading of ‘literary merit’, you have ‘fidelity of characters and concepts’ added to the requirements – and that can sometimes be the hardest one of the lot to live up to. Those books that I described as “absolute rubbish” in the previous paragraph? They almost all fail this test, too.

So, if a genre novel is as difficult to write well as a completely original one, you can see why snobbish attitudes towards original fiction on the part of some self-appointed critics would get up my nose. But that’s not relevant; what IS relevant is that “Literary merit” (or dramatic merit, in the case of a movie or TV show) lies on a completely separate axis of appreciation to the one under discussion. Together, they form a landscape, a two-dimensional plane.

(Yes, before anyone asks, the disrespect with which the Academy Awards treat Science Fiction also qualifies as being worthy of disdain, at least in my book).

I’m perfectly content to let others debate the shape of the landscape. Is Space Opera inherently biased away from the edge-zone of “high literary quality”? Perhaps, yes. Some of it was not especially well-written – but that doesn’t put it all the way over to the “bad fiction” side of the landscape, because there are examples that were not, at least in some respects.

Fairy Stories

Anyway, moving on to fairy stories: these are tales that we tend to read, or get told, as children. They are the last true bastions of ‘anything goes’. There is a continual temptation to build an RPG around them, aimed specifically at those of a much younger age bracket than are typically served by RPGs like D&D.

But then I realize that it’s not necessary – as soon as a child is old enough to understand cheating and why it’s bad (and not to do it, and to expect others not to do it), they are ready to play an RPG. It might not be one as complicated as Pathfinder – but my experience (described in Gaming With The Family – Lessons from yesteryear) are that if you (and any other players) make appropriate allowances, children much younger than the recommended ages of such games are perfectly capable – and the concept of building a bridge between the world of their imaginations and the world of rules which we call “the real world” has a major appeal to them.

Fairy stories, then, lie somewhere on the far end of Fantasy of all the Science Fiction sub-genres. To be a satisfying story, they still need enough credibility and literary merit to stand up – they still have to make sense in context – but beyond that, anything goes.

My bottom-line test is always how much enjoyment can I wring out of what I’m reading. That enjoyment can be grappling with new ideas, or a new interpretation of an old idea, or interesting characters, or a thrilling plot, or some combination of all of the above. “Dull is death” should be tattooed on my anatomy somewhere! or maybe, “Be interesting or be gone!”

Hard Science Fiction and Technobabble

When it comes to a discussion of science fiction, it isn’t long before someone brings up the classification of “Hard Science Fiction” (verses, I guess, “Soft” Science Fiction).

Hard science fiction prioritizes scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print by P. Schuyler Miller in a 1957 review of John W Campbell’s Islands Of Space in Astounding Science Fiction. The complimentary term, “Soft Science Fiction” first appeared in the 1970s.

An early example is Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea from 1870, often cited as an example by later writers within the sub-genre, though Verne himself denied writing as a scientist or seriously attempting to predict the technology of the future.

There’s nothing wrong with Hard Science Fiction. i don’t start having problems until the search for fidelity to the Science starts getting in the way of other elements of literary merit. I have a much stronger reaction to extremist fans of the sub-genre who have the attitude that “the only good science fiction is hard science fiction,” as is probably fairly predictable from what I’ve already written.

To me, Hard Science Fiction defines one edge of the landscape, just as Fairy Stories define the other. But it’s still part of the landscape.

Technobabble is anathema to Hard SF purists. It is the use of terminology in lieu of explanation – some would say, in lieu of plausible foundation. It shifts the supposed ‘science’ of science fiction towards the fantasy end of the spectrum.

I don’t have that big a problem with technobabble if it’s well-written, semi-plausible technobabble, that is applied consistently through a conceptual framework that is as rigorous as any real science or engineering would be.

“Reverse the polarity of” whatever is the sort of thing that sets my teeth on edge – something that the purists and I can probably agree on. That’s definitely using terminology in lieu of plausible explanation.

Using “pattern buffers” to “enhance a transporter”, on the other hand, is just fine. It’s worth understanding why.

First, the “transporter” has been well-established within Star Trek (TNG this time), dating back to the original series. In particular, it’s been found and demonstrated that the technology has limitations, and that it’s very much an all-or-nothing – a failed transport means you stay where you are (if you’re lucky) or are having a very VERY bad day (if you’re not). In essence, it’s a teleportation device that utilizes a destructive “read” process to guide a “reconstruction” of the object being teleported, accurate to a subatomic level. Setting aside the technological difficulties in processing that much data, much less receiving it in any timely fashion, the transfer of information from source to destination is clearly at the heart of the technology. So far, fair enough ‘not-so-hard’ science fiction, then. Which brings me to the “pattern buffers” – having some sort of ‘holding area’ in which a redundant copy of the information can be held for repeated attempts at retrieval makes perfect sense to anyone who’s had to deal with data corruption over a dodgy internet connection. It implies being able to retry a download until you get it right – it might take multiple attempts, but you will get there in the end. So that makes perfect sense in terms of the function of the ‘transporter’ as an enhancement. It’s quite likely that there are some commensurate downsides – like the ‘held pattern’ being vulnerable to disruption – that explains why they can’t be used all the time.

This is technobabble that implies a reasonable pseudo-scientific explanation without interrupting the story long enough to deliver a lecture on the technology – to me, that’s science fiction at its best. But it’s definitely not “hard” science fiction.

This establishes an important point, though, by implying that literary quality and the rigor of plausibility are not complete exclusive and unrelated variables.

This point is easily demonstrated. We have a character – a good family man, who has worked all his life as a baker, mastering the art of the pastry, who lives his day though a set routine ruled by the clock. A good, dramatic story could be told about this routine being disrupted by some extraordinary event in his life (and has been, I’m sure). And so have a lot of bad fiction examples, where completely out of the blue he runs away to join a circus (abandoning his wife and children), or some such nonsense. One shows consistency of character and explores the consequences of a change in the social landscape that defines his life; the other shows a complete inconsistency of character as that character has been defined, and is bad writing, plain and simple. To make it… better writing (term chosen carefully), you need to define the character in such a way that this out-of-the-blue decision makes sense, has some internal logic. “Bob lived his days by the clock, every day the same endless routine, grinding away at his soul, and hating it. One day, he could tolerate the mindless mundania of his nuclear family life no more, and threw caution to the winds; abandoning his jailers, he ran away in search of his dreams.” Suddenly, we have a stable platform on which to build a narrative. Perhaps Bob will find that the grass isn’t always greener, or that dreams are not a reflection of reality, or that there were aspects of his former existence that had value, and will find his way back to his family, a slightly-changed man for the experience. There are several variations on the basic story implied by the character definition that could be told.

Clearly, credibility and plausibility are critical elements of good literary practice and technique. What defines the genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy are the credibility and plausibility of their approach to the fantastic – which implies that they must contain some elements that meet that definition.

The Fantastic in Superhero Games

What else can be fitted onto this continuity of genre? Well, lets talk about superheroes. These often have an origin story and fundamental concept that plays fast and loose with the ‘science’ of the environment, but (generally) once the ground rules have been established, good practice in superhero stories is to establish solid credibility in a flashy, spectacular, way.

Superhero stories are simply space opera with offshoots in different directions. One is into gritty realism; another lurches past Science Fantasy into the realms of fantasy and magic; and a third gropes its way toward real, even hard, science fiction.

Technically, superhero stories are actually Science Fantasy, I suppose. They need to have a logical consistency, but the underpinning assumptions about reality are fantastic and not realistic.

That’s one of the reasons I love the genre – it can be all things to all people. I can go from a fantasy oriented situation to a space romp to a knock-em-down brawl to a gritty social satire – sometimes within the scope of a single adventure!

It can be argued that there is even more of the Fantastic about superhero adventures than is the case in most Science Fiction and Fantasy, and I would find that difficult to argue with.

But that implies a third axis on our continuity of genre: integration of the fantastic. And clearly, the less Fantastic there is, the less importance would be attached to the plausibility of that little, so our structure of genres is not a cube, but a triangle with a depth extension.

The Fantastic in Pulp, Horror & Western Games

Which brings me to the next trio of genres that I’m going to discuss: Pulp, Horror, and Western Games.

These can all be differentiated by their treatment of the Fantastic.

In a Pulp campaign, there are occasional touches of the fantastic, but in general, what we are talking about is exaggerated reality. At the same time, pulp stories can have a gritty flavor, a fantasy flavor, or a science-fictional flavor. So the genre is superheroes with more tightly controlled smaller doses of the fantastic.

A Horror campaign frequently has even more fantastic content than a Pulp campaign, but in more concentrated doses. It should also be noted that a Pulp adventure can also have a horror flavor!

But there’s a big difference between Friday The 13th or Nightmare On Elm Street as an RPG and Call Of Cthulhu, and Hellraiser is even more extreme. Of those four examples, you would have to put CoC down as the least fantastic, certainly less so than Pulp, which can have frequent low-level doses of fantastic content. You would also have to agree that they lean more towards the Fantasy end of the continuity than the hard science, no matter how much science may be used to shroud and explain the situation. But there are clear exceptions like The Fly and Alien, and the Dr Phibes movies, and even Frankenstein. In fact, I would suggest that Horror exists in two bands – one to each side of the Pulp mid-point – and that both extend tendrils down to the more Fantastic.

Most realistic of all are Western Games. These tend a little more towards the science side, but can occasionally have a little touch of the Fantastic about them – in particular when it comes to Native American Medicine Men! But these are exceptions. Western Games are clearly, in RPG terms, the pinnacle of UnFantastic – until someone puts out a soap opera RPG (what, they’ve done that?

• Pasion de las Pasiones, a Telenovela RPG, and
• SOAP: The Game Of Soap Opera Mayhem from Wingnut Games which is more of a board game, but still…
• … and then there was Dallas, The Roleplaying Game (I kid you not!) but it wasn’t what you’d call a success.

…I guess they have. And most of these, if not all of them, would have a lot less of the Fantastic about them than even Western Games, thanks to those occasional Medicine Men again).

The Fantastic in Pirate Games

There was a time when the Pirate Genre was not unlike the Western – it was all about the Swashbuckling. And then came Pirates Of The Caribbean, and the Pirate genre would never be the same again. These days, it’s lurking somewhere to the Fantastic side of Western Games, and only because the Fantastic is relatively tightly controlled for game balance reasons does it avoid diving all the way to the Fantasy realm below.

The Fantastic in Spy & Modern Games

Finally, we have two more genres in which the Fantastic is tightly controlled. Most games set in the modern day either belong to one of the genres already discussed or to the spy genre, but there are also oddballs that might fit here – military RPGs and the like. These have no room for the fantastic, or very very little.

But the super-spy genre does – usually restricted to villainous plans and gadget capabilities, and fairly strictly controlled within those limits.

It’s probably not going too far to consider super-spies to be an offshoot of Pulp that happens to be set in the modern day. But there is less scope for the Fantastic than in Pulp – you can’t have a horror-themed super-spy adventure without deliberately shifting the genre towards the Fantasy-Horror or Sci-Fi Horror nexuses, nor can you have a fantasy-themed adventure without shifting the genre. That plants it between Pulp and the apex of our pyramid.

The Rules Of Good Writing

As a general rule, the techniques and restrictions that work in one genre will translate readily to another. Where good writers sometimes struggle is in the specialized content that they have to deliver, not the method of delivery – bad writers will just expound for page after page, with little or no interaction until the lecture is over.

That means that as a general rule, each of the genres and sub-genres represent a cylindrical form running back from “Good Quality Writing” to “Bad Quality Writing”. But if we take this as read, and assume that these cylinders have a consistent thickness throughout, we could posit a triangular map of the genres.

I’m not sure entirely what value such a map would have. It lacks context. But it could be done.

More important, I think, to have some appreciation for how Genre can be defined by two key attributes: the degree of Fantastic typically infused into the (sub-) genre, and the level of plausibility demanded within the (sub-) genre.

Once you understand those two key parameters, and how they pertain to the genre of your game or campaign, everything else is down to the literary merit of your writing. Interesting, well-defined characters; clear and confounding plots; interesting situations and challenges; accessible narrative; communicative dialogue; and satisfying resolutions – these things never go out of style.

And add one more to the mixture: the ability to generate entertainment. It’s a subtle quality, hard to define – but essential to any creative effort.

This post is a musing on the reaction to the ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic here in Australia. It will have some relevance to citizens of other countries (and definite relevance to writers and GMs) but that wasn’t the primary goal when I was writing it – though that relevance did manifest along the way.

I’m also listing this reverie as Campaign Mastery’s submission to the January 2021 Blog Carnival, which is all about characters, and is being hosted by Plastic Polyhedra. I may write something more targeted later in the month as well, but this seems to be at least marginally on-point.

A multitude of Experiences, a singular theme

Every country has had a different experience, albeit with similar elements. You can’t discuss the way people in the US feel about the Pandemic without getting into their national politics, and the Presidential elections, and even – most recently – the successful passing of a Covid support bill and the maneuverings around a demand by Trump that it be increased in scale from six-hundred-and-something to $2000. Italy endured a nightmare early on, but a harsh lockdown brought the virus under control – until a second wave, as bad or worse as the first. And those are just two examples. (Someone needs to compile a book on this!) In every country, ‘local’ issues provided the context into which awareness of the virus manifested, and every country therefore responded differently, at different speeds, with different urgencies of need, and hence, citizens of every country in the world had a significantly different Covid experience – and a different reaction to that experience.

But there are nevertheless salutary lessons that can be learned. Perhaps about Pandemic response. Perhaps about Politics and political failings. Perhaps about being divorced from reality. But certainly, and always, about people.

And so long as there are simulated people in RPGs, that makes all this relevant to the RPG community.

Australian Context

First, some context by giving a background on the Australian Covid response.

In The Beginning

Our first confirmed case arrived on 25 January 2020, a man who had returned from Wuhan in China. By the end of the month, there were eight more. The government here recognized the seriousness of the situation and seized on the crisis as a distraction from the furor over his bungled activities during the 2019-2020 bushfire season Why do Australians blame the PM for the bush fire? – Answer by Mike Bourke (My thesis was that we don’t – there are too many real things to blame him for to waste time on a furphy).

Normally, one crisis doesn’t follow another, and political blows like those described in my answer to the question would spell the end of a career and the potential change of government at the next election. But 2020 was, in no way, describable as normal.

On January 31, international travel restrictions began, initially for those traveling from China. From March 1 to March 11, these restrictions were extended to other nations, as outbreaks took hold – Iran, South Korea, and Italy. From 16 March, all international travelers to Australia were required to self-isolate for 14 days.

For the next month, the Australian Government began quietly advising all Australians overseas to return home while they still could.

By 27 February, the PM activated the “Australian Health Sector Emergency Response Plan for Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)” (what a mouthful!) – indicating that the intervening weeks had been spent drawing up the plan.

On March 12, an economic stimulus package was unveiled, and all credit to the government for setting aside its partisan economic biases in doing so – it may have been inadequate, it may have been insufficient, but it was the right thing to do.

March 13 saw the last-minute cancellation of one of the major international sporting events hosted in Australia each year, the Melbourne Formula 1 Grand Prix, and even to those who don’t follow the sport, this was the final confirmation of the gravity of the situation. To ram that message home, the state government of Victoria at the same time suspended all jury trials to limit the spread of the virus.

First Bungle

But that wasn’t enough to prevent the biggest screw-up of the Australian Pandemic Response to date. For some reason, the Virus loves life aboard a cruise ship; a number of cases and one death had resulted from the Diamond Princess (which had docked in Japan). This had been followed rather quietly by the docking of the Ovation Of The Seas (79 out of 3500 passengers subsequently tested positive), Voyager of the Seas (at least 34 passengers and 5 crew members subsequently tested positive), and Celebrity Solstice (11 positive cases).

Then the Ruby Princess docked on 19 March, and in a bureaucratic bungle of the first magnitude, 2700 passengers were permitted to go home – no Covid testing, no instructions to self-quarantine, nothing. The next day, it was announced that three out of 13 passengers who had been hastily tested had returned positive results. 5 days later, one passenger was dead and 133 were positive. 4 days after that, 284 passengers had confirmed cases. Two days after that, the total was 440.

This was a hard lesson in exponential growth, something a large number of students had ignored in high school or forgotten. Watching the numbers mount, day after day, was a defining event in the Australian awareness of the Pandemic.

Hard lockdowns started all over the country, growing gradually more restrictive over the next few weeks before gradually easing off over a two month period. Long story shortened: despite a few false starts in nursing homes, schools, and a meat-works, by June 20 we thought we were on top the situation, nationally; on 6 June, the two most populous states had both reported no new cases for the previous 24 hours, and numbers in other states were ones and twos, and the national mood two weeks later was optimistic. Out national totals on June 6 were 7,260, but since April 13, the number of daily cases had been 30 or less, and falling. Often, the number was in single digits, and the speculation was on how soon it would get to zero.

Second Bungle

But 20 June was the day the wheels came off.

We had started repatriating Australians caught overseas and putting them into enforced Hotel Quarantine for 14 days. This both filled some of the rooms that would have been occupied by tourists in normal times and isolated those arriving from high-risk locations – and almost everywhere was a higher risk than Australia at the time.

Back on 25 May, a night duty manager at one of the Hotels reported a fever and tested positive the next day. Five security guards from the hotel also tested positive, as did some members of their families. To the rest of the country, this was just another spotfire, an outbreak to be contained. We had done it and seen it before.

In the days that followed, stories began to emerge of misbehavior – guards consorting with quarantined guests, guests being allowed out to visit others, and that sort of thing. Human stupidity had been played as a trump card, as is so often the case.

Four weeks later, it became clear that the virus had escaped containment. Fresh lockdowns were locked into place for ten Melbourne Suburbs. On July 4, two more postcodes were added, and nine public housing towers containing some 3,000 residents.

It took until September 19 to get back to where we had been on May 25, a Coronavirus wave that was substantially larger than the original outburst of the infection, and all linked back to the selfishness and stupidity of two people responsible for Quarantining those who might have been infectious.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the country, restrictions had gradually been easing, perhaps more slowly than a lot of us would like, but things were getting better.

From September 19 to December 12, the average had been just 15 a day – and most of the time, it was less than that, with a few bad days lifting the average. For example, Nov 1 was a day with zero community transmission.

On 27 November, Victoria reached 28 consecutive days without local transmission – the benchmark for eliminating Covid-19 from the community. My state, New South Wales, couldn’t boast the same record, but then we had been taking 4000 people or more a week from Covid hotpots in the form of returning Citizens.

Third Emergency

In late November, there was another scare, as a small outbreak in South Australia seemed to have been spread by casual contact with a Pizza box. This involved a security guard at another Quarantine Hotel, who was moonlighting as a cook in a fast-food franchise – normally, not an issue. But he caught Covid. Wasn’t the first time it had happened (even disregarding the Victoria mega-cluster) and wouldn’t be the last time. But he made a pizza and from the information given to contact tracers, it seemed that another victim had caught Covid from coming into contact with the box.

This suggested a far more dangerous variant had arrived – either it was super-infectious or super-resilient, and either way, bad news. Borders snapped shut and everyone braced for the worst – and then it emerged that the second victim in question hadn’t only spent a minute or two in the presence of the infected moonlighting security guard, he was in fact a co-worker at the Pizza Parlor as well as being a guard at a different Quarantine Hotel. The virus was no more dangerous than it had been. Panic canceled, sigh of relief.

Although no-one realized it at the time, we had just been through our third defining experience of the Pandemic.

Once again, we felt on top of the situation, nationally. Borders were back open, businesses were open, and people were making Christmas Plans.

The nation had experienced its second defining experience of the Pandemic, and come out the other side. It was hoped that we would be effectively Covid free aside from the occasional spotfire until distribution of the vaccine began, currently scheduled for March.

The Current Outbreak(s)

It started small. These things always do.

On December 16, Two cases of Covid-19 were reported, both of whom had visited a club in the Northern Beaches suburb of New South Wales, a relatively isolated and affluent part of Sydney. One of them worked in the central business district.

At the same time, and entirely unrelated to this pair of cases, a driver who transports new overseas arrivals from the airport to Hotel Quarantine tested positive.

In days, the number of attendees of the club who had tested positive rose to 38. And contact tracing showed that they had been to a number of sites widely-distributed over the greater city in the meantime. This was the beginning of what is now known as the Avalon Cluster.

Several of those sites also became the locations of outbreaks, including a reintroduction of the Virus to Victoria.

Simultaneously, a cluster centered on a bottle shop began to grow, which is now known as the Berala Cluster.

Limited lockdowns were ordered in an attempt to save Christmas, and social gathering restrictions were reimposed.

On December 30, a third cluster arose amongst a family in the Sydney suburb of Croydon (in which I used to live, about 35 years ago), and Victoria reported cases of community transmission for the first time in 61 days, with three cases being confirmed, suspected to have originated with a traveler from the Avalon cluster before movements were restricted. (As a result, both New South Wales and Victoria have announced new restrictions – but that will come into the story a little later).

Since December 16, there have been 411 confirmed cases. One gets the feeling that as quickly as one brush-fire gets stomped down, another is breaking out. None of them are big, and the situation is far from out of control.

I wasn’t affected by the first round of restrictions (ordered on December 16-21) as I had not been to any of the danger sites, and so did not need to self-quarantine.

The international backdrop has remained grim throughout. As one jurisdiction starts to get the virus under control, it runs rampant somewhere else, and ultimately seems to reemerge in the original jurisdiction. There is always a Covid-19 catastrophe occurring somewhere. At the moment, the US (210, 590 confirmed cases in the last 24 hours) and the UK (More contagious variant, and 57,725 new cases in the last 24 hours) are at the forefront. By inauguration day, on current trends, the US will have recorded around 420,000 deaths, and be approaching 3500 more a day. At the same time, the UK will have topped 100,000 deaths – from a much smaller population base. Australians are very well aware that they have dodged a number of bullets in this Pandemic, and that it could all happen here.

Let’s normalize those numbers by scaling them to what they would be, relative to Australia’s total 26 million population:

USA: 328 million people:
 

• Now: 210 590 daily cases = 16,693 cases, scaled
• Jan 20 projection: 420,000 deaths total = 33,293 deaths, scaled
• Jan 20 projection: 3500 deaths per day = 277 deaths per day, scaled

 
UK: 67,886,000 people
 

• Now: 57,725 daily cases = 22,108 cases, scaled
• Jan 20 projection: 100,000 deaths total = 38,300 deaths, scaled

 
Australia: 26 million people
 

• Now: 43 daily cases
• Jan 20 projection: 960-odd deaths total
• Jan 20 projection: 2.2-3.5 deaths per day

The last is where we are at, here in Australia; the first two are where we know we could go, if it all goes horribly wrong for us.

UPDATE [12 Hrs later]: The indications are that we have stomped on this latest outbreak pretty effectively, with only two cases being confirmed in the last 48 hours. This is being credited to the original victims who did the right thing and isolated immediately they experienced symptoms. Instead of three months or so to contain the outbreak, I think it will just about be all over by the end of January or the middle of February – based on numbers far more recent than those used to create the quoted projections. We aren’t out of the woods yet, but can see light through the trees.

Which sets the framework and the context for my reflections, which were rough-drafted during my return train-trip from Christmas with my family.

Pandemic Reflections

There is a quiet panic afflicting Australia right now, a creeping paranoia that assumes the worst of everyone those afflicted happen to meet. Still, that’s better than an overt panic, which we have seen manifest in hoarding and panic buying in the past.

The cause is, not unexpectedly (given the events of 2020), a Covid-19 outbreak in a relatively isolated part of the city of Sydney. One suburb is in strict lockdown, and one in slightly less severe restraint.

Should a resident of the city from outside those suburbs have the temerity to visit family over the Christmas break, they are treated with automatic suspicion and mistrust by the public at large. Some businesses will even close their doors to you if you admit to being from the Greater Sydney Region – and a few will do so until you convince them that you are not, according to local sources.

At the same time, some backpackers from Europe (mostly England, I believe) have been publicly castigated by authorities for daring to congregate in large numbers on a Sydney beach, in defiance of social distancing orders, and, on the far side of the country, a returning citizen breached his Hotel Quarantine and was not recaptured for twelve hours.

Either before she escaped, or after she was recaptured (more likely the first), she used social media to spout a lot of conspiracy nonsense about there being no Coronavirus. Which explains why she didn’t listen to the advice to return before it was too late to do so, I suppose.

In effect, what this person was effectively saying was that their personal liberty was more important to them than the life of anyone they might infect, if the pandemic was real despite their beliefs to the contrary.

The result? People are scared – not of the virus, which is only sensible, but of the possibility of the virus.

Our political leaders are not immune; borders snap shut at the first whisper of the word ‘outbreak’. Mask wearing in enclosed spaces has just been made mandatory (with a $200 fine) in any enclosed commercial space (with a few exceptions). And it’s these panicked reactions that are communicating this fear to the general populace, who were already sensitive to Covid-related fear in the first place.

Overcoming this problem will not be easy, because the virus is something worthy of fear. But panic is not something that we can afford, and it is all to easy for a quiet panic to become a hot one. We need to transform the public attitudes from one of fear to one of a healthy respect. Wariness, yes – but not unthinking fear, because fear is primal, and makes us prone to mistakes of judgment.

In this climate, the ‘mandatory masks’ order, however well-intentioned, risks inflaming an already tense situation. I can easily imagine, six months or a year from now, a store-keeper saying to a stranger, “How do I know you’ve had the jab? We don’t want no Coronavirus around here!”

Misinformation remains public enemy number one. Earlier today, just a few hours before posting this essay, I saw someone suggesting that ‘all the vaccine means is that you have the virus without symptoms, you can still give it to someone else.’

That’s full of so many half-truths that it’s hard to know where to begin. And no, I don’t know the nationality of the person who wrote this – she could be Australian, English, Canadian, American, South African, or from anywhere in Western Europe for all I know. There are one or two locations that I consider more likely than the rest, but that doesn’t rule out any of the alternatives.

As an aside: Two half-truths don’t make a truth. At best, they make a quarter of a truth. Three, an eighth. And so on.

A vaccine – any vaccine – teaches your body to recognize the pathogen against which you are being immunizes, so that it can be fought off before it can take hold. You can be immunized and still catch the disease (but you have to be really unlucky for that to happen) – but you aren’t infectious and can’t give the disease (or the cure) to others just by being nearby. Most Vaccines don’t promise no symptoms; they promise milder symptoms or less.

That’s wandering off-topic, but I think it needed to be said, anyway.

In a way, you can understand the actions of the tourists, when you compare the Covid situation in Australia with the tragedies unfolding in their homelands. These were / are backpackers who came here before the Covid lockdown and have (sensibly) stayed. In many cases, they may even have been working and saving for their ticket home – which would have become a problem when the sources of casual employment dried up during the height of the lockdown. If not being in an environment that has just had more than 50,000 cases a day for the sixth straight day isn’t a reason to celebrate, what is?

The saying used to be that you had to walk a mile in another person’s shoes before you could judge their actions and decisions. Well, I can’t do that, for the reasons I explained at the start of this post; all any of us can do is to project our personal experiences onto the global canvas in order to interpolate what those elsewhere are going through, filtered generously with empathy and compassion.

We are “privileged” – if that is the right word, I have my doubts – to be center-stage during one of the defining events of the 21st century.

There aren’t many events of this magnitude.

You can’t discuss a character of the 1930s or 40s without considering the impact of the Great Depression. You can’t talk about the 1940s (even if someone was a child at the time) without considering the impact of World War 2 on their lives. The 1960s are defined by the social shifts that began with Elvis & The Beatles and culminated in the Vietnam protests, and by the end of segregation in the US. These are events that defined their respective generations, and marked everyone else in some way.

The moon landing of 1969 is often mentioned in this vein, but it doesn’t quite have the same impact – the landing itself is not even on the same order of magnitude as the downstream impacts of the technologies that were developed in order to make it happen, or that arose as a consequence.

You can, for example, trace a direct line from the Apollo technologies to the early personal computers, and thence to the personal computer, which (I would argue) has had an even bigger impact on everyday lives than the watershed event itself did.

Getting back on topic, the primary effects of the Pandemic will fade quickly over society as a whole, though individual losses and scars will remain.

The secondary effects are mostly economic, and we will be lucky to see the back of them in a decade or so at worst.

The tertiary consequences will be felt for a generation. The father who lost his job, the grandparent who died, the hard times (and the family growing closer together, in many cases – it’s not all doom and gloom). Just repairing the economies of many nations will take a decade or more.

Everyone who lives through this time will have at least one Covid story to tell – and it won’t be a short one, because to understand it, you will need the context as a foundation.

No-one will emerge from this event completely unchanged. But to understand the change, you will need to understand their story – and to walked a mile in their shoes. And the closest we can come to that is to have read about them.

Someone should gather these stories and write them down.

But, in the meantime, there are specialists at walking in other people’s shoes who can lead the way. We’re called GMs.

We’re used to condensing a lot of influences and situations into a single coherent characterization. We can use our imaginations to perceive a character before something like this, and extrapolate the impact they have experienced from the combination of research and our own experiences.

There might be a lot of trouble with people understanding each other in the coming years, because we will all have experienced different stimuli and had different reactions to them. People will be strangers to each other, at least in part, and connections between them more shallow as a consequence.

But if we make sure that we understand the characters that have been through anything even remotely similar, and then educate our players in that understanding on a case-by-case basis, just as opportunities arise, then they will take that knowledge and use it in their encounters with others, who will – however imperfectly – spread it further.

An imperfect but better understanding of what each other has gone through can only help bind us together. And wouldn’t it be a good thing if some benefit from all this could spread – like a virus?

Okay, so that’s wishful thinking. It doesn’t detract from my main point, which is that we, as writers and GMs, have to know how to incorporate the human responses to the Virus (or any equivalent) into our characters – even if the experiences triggering those human responses are different to those we have personally experienced. Anything beyond better characters is a bonus – but the alternative is to have characters that feel like a missing tooth, a nagging incompleteness that renders them unfit for purpose.

To do what we do, as well as we can possibly do it, we have to understand what others have experienced over the past year, and the year that is just beginning, and maybe the year after that.

Why so long? Some simple math that no-one is really talking about.

The US hoped to have a million people vaccinated by the end of 2020. They fell short. They hope to have ten million vaccinated by the end of this month – and are already falling short of their targets. But let’s assume that they make up the lost ground later in the month, and hit the 10 million target. The next target is 100 million by the end of the year.

The current population is roughly 330 million. You need about 70% to get to the point where the general public are generally safe to go about their lives as normal (and more is better). That’s a minimum of 231 million people. At 100 million a year, that’s two and a third years – about April, 2022. But some of those 231 will have died of other causes in that year – especially if the elderly and frail are amongst the first recipients, which is the plan almost everywhere. So we might need as much as an extra 23 million or so for that factor alone. Which carries us into the middle of 2022.

And that’s best case. Since supply of the vaccines is more or less population-proportionate, the same time scale applies to just about everywhere, with a margin of error. And unless dedicated facilities are built just to manufacture the vaccine – which they might be – it’s hard to see how it can be possible to go any faster.

Covid-19 will be a part of our lives, and all the more significant for it, for at least the next two years (as well as the year just passed), at least in my self-educated self-informed opinion. I can hope otherwise, but don’t realistically expect it to be anything less.

No-one can reasonably be expected to do this work for us; they have other concerns. It’s up to us. We have the resources – we can start with the Spanish Flu of a century ago, and by observing the people around us, and taking notes about what we see. And we can listen to the stories of others from other parts of the world, and try to put those into context, and understand them.

We’re the ones to do this, because we have to do it anyway. Even if our campaigns are not set in the current day, so that we don’t have to worry about characters having lived through the Covid-19 Pandemic, our players will have done so, and are likely to react differently to a threat of plague even in a fictional setting than they would have done two years ago, before all this started. On top of that, the demands of realism will have increased; there will be less scope for glossing over unfinished work because everyone’s now an expert on the subject. So it behooves us to do it ourselves so that we can ensure that we do it right. Anything less is entrusting the verisimilitude of your campaign to a complete stranger without even looking over the results of their work beforehand.

This essay is a good start, nothing more. But at least it’s a start.

Something of a bare-bones post this time around, necessitated by the fact that I’m away from home and all its resources.

I haven’t been idle while away; I had prepared more than enough RPG work in advance to see me through. Part of that work involves… well, that’s a little more complicated.

You see, the PCs in my superhero campaign are currently cut off from most of their usual resources, on a limited budget, and operating under “deep cover” conditions – which means that to get around, they will need to buy a couple of second-hand cars. The current game date is in 1986. But, at the moment, I don’t know what criteria they will choose to prioritize – so I’ve been forced to list almost every vehicle on the second-hand lot. Lots, actually – there’s one that will be all GM products, including subsidiaries like Oldsmobile, Chevrolet, and Cadillac – and one that will be Ford-oriented.

Heck, at this point, I can’t even be certain what their budget will be (just that it will probably be a lot tighter than they think it is going to be)!

So I’ve been putting together a sortable spreadsheet of the different cars, I have a huge number of possible criteria for them to choose from, and I’ve been busy populating it. But that’s only indirectly what this post is about.

The Value Of A Rust-bucket

To determine the price of the different old cars, I’ve been forced to develop a methodology.

1. Start with the new price. This can be hard to determine, but if you give me a data point I can extrapolate forwards or backwards based on the knowledge that in the 70s and the 80s, prices of cars rose by about 3% a year, much less than the inflation rate.
2. Add the value of any extras.
3. Adjust the new-car price for inflation, i.e. into 1986 dollars (but it can be done to any year). This matters because the cars are to be bought “now” with “now” dollars, and so gives a basis for valuation.
4. Factor in the Depreciation of the car. This tends to be highest in its first year of age and then diminish to a slower, more progressive decline – but the pace of that decline will vary a bit from car to car, model to model. In particular, if there’s some reason for a car to hold its value unusually well, or unusually poorly, this may need some manual overriding, so it’s not as straightforward as a simple calculation – that’s just the starting point.
5. Load on the state and federal taxes. In the state where this is to occur, the state taxes are 12% and the federal taxes are 8% (according to the in-game economy). And, of course, these compound. So multiply by 1.12 and then 1.08.
6. Load on a profit margin for the dealer. For the GM dealer, I’ve set that to 18%, for the Ford dealer, 22%. So multiply by 1.18 or 1.22, respectively.
7. Apply a factor for the condition of the car. This could as much as halve the price, but that’s not very likely. Most will be in the 70-85% range.
8. Apply a factor for the level of Lack Of Demand for second-hand cars of the type. If a car is on the verge of becoming a collector’s item, or has already achieved that status, this value may actually be less than 1, so that the value of the car that the dealer can command is higher than even the adjusted “new” price! In other words, drop the price if no-one will pay what the dealer is asking, and put it up if the car is likely to be a hot property.
9. That gives me the “sticker price” – but no second-hand dealer ever expects to get the ‘sticker price’, they expect to have to bargain. Some of that comes in the form of a trade-in, some may come in terms of (discounted) insurance being thrown in, but some will come from how willing the salesman is to deal, and how desperate they are to offload a particular car (so that they can put something more profitable in its place). So, I use the profit margin determined earlier as the basis for a “maximum discount” that a dealer might offer. These two values give a high price (the sticker price) and low price (the discounted sticker price) for the vehicle.

This takes into account every factor that I could think of, and does most of it more-or-less automatically. It’s easier for me to use online calculators to calculate the inflation and depreciation, though I can do it manually if I have to.

The Random Element

The biggest unknown is the 7th item on that list – the condition. In addition, while I’m controlling the manufacturer, brand, model, and year (from what was available at the time of manufacture), there are some things like color that should be randomly determined.

To address these random elements, I’ve put together a series of quick tables, based around one or more d10 rolls (because that’s the die I happened to grab on my way out the door).

Other campaigns

But, after doing so, it occurred to me that with a little tweaking and loose interpretation here and there, these tables could be just as applicable to a motorcycle, a yacht, a cabriolet, or even the quality of an inn or tavern. In other words, most campaigns would be able to use them for something at some point. So the key point of today’s post is to share them with you.

But I did not have time to create pretty HTML tables as I usually would – so these will be offered bare-bones, Judges’ Guild style.

Color Classification

Roll d10

1 – 4: Common
5 – 7: Frequently-used
8 – 9: Uncommon
10: Rare

This uses a 4-3-2-1 pattern. If I had one more result to allocate, I would have bumped ‘Common’ up to a 5.

Common Colors

Roll d10

1 – 3: Black
4 – 5: White
6 – 7: Silver
8: Light Gray
9: Dark Gray
10: Gold

This (and subsequent tables) are a distillation of a general impression left from (a) Australia in the 70s and 80s, and (b) watching American TV shows from the era. I do not attempt to vouch for their accuracy – and I might not want them to be accurate, anyway. I want the overall impression that the results give to feel realistic – and that means a lot of car colors may be over-represented. There was a lot of give-and-take; I had a lot more colors to list than slots available!

I’ve used a 3-2-2-2-1 pattern here, but broken that last ‘2’ up into light and dark variants.

Frequently-used Colors

Roll d10

1 – 3: Red
4 – 6: Yellow
7 – 8: Navy Blue
9: Blue
10: Dark Green

A 3-3-2-1-1 pattern. I would love to have been able to bump the Navy Blue up to match the Red and Yellow frequencies of occurrence, but there wasn’t room in the table.

Uncommon Colors

Roll d10

1: Slate Blue (grayish blue)
2: Beige
3: Tan
4: Brown
5: Blue-Green
6: Lime
7: Mint Green
8: Sunset Yellow (i.e. slightly orange)
9: Cherry Red
10: Purple

I saw cars painted these colors quite a bit. Not as often as the preceding categories, but enough to make an impression.

Rare Colors

Roll d10

1: Cream / Pale Yellow / Sand
2: Pink
3: Hot Pink
4: Sky Blue
5: Grass Green
6: Apple Green
7: Orange
8: Two-tone (roll twice more, ignoring this result if it comes up again)
9: Fleck / Metallic / “Gemstone Glitter”
10: Fancy paint-job / Decorated

Fading

Roll d10, Add 1 to the result for every 5 years of age

1-3: None
4-6: Slight (value loss d10%)
7-8: Somewhat-faded (value loss 10 + (2 x d10)%)
9: Badly Faded or Peeling (value loss 20 + (2.5 x d10%)
10+: Patchy / Cracked / Crazed (value loss 20 + (3 x d10%)

Rust

Roll d10, Add 1 to the result for every 5 years of age

1-3: None
4-6: Superficial (value loss 1.5 x d10%)
7-8: Some Spots, may be hard to spot (value loss 10 + (2 x d10) %)
9: Deep Rust, Some paint bubbling (value loss 25 + (2.5 x d10)%)
10+: Riddled with rust, serious paint bubbling (value loss 40 + (4 x d10)%)

General Condition

Roll d10
Add one for every 5 years of age
Add one for paint fading result of 8 or more
Add two for rust result of 8 or more

1-4: Good
5-7: Repaired (value loss 5 + d10%) (+ see below)
8-9: Dodgy / Poor (value loss 15 + (3 x d10)%) (+ see below)
10+: Appalling (value loss 45 + (5 x d10)%) (+ see below)

Repairs

Roll d10
Add one for paint fading result of 8 or more
Add two for rust result of 8 or more
Add two for condition result 5-7
Add three for condition result 8-9
Add four for condition result 10+

1-4: Excellent (as new)
5-7: Solid, professional (condition value loss halved)
8-9: Rough (condition value loss unchanged)
10: Amateurish (condition value loss doubled)

Extras

Roll 2d10, “Interpret” the results if inappropriate

2-4: Performance Enhancement
     7 in 10 chance of another one being fitted
      Choose randomly from:
           Brakes
           Tyres
           Engine
           Gearbox
           Suspension
      Only if all above are present & a 6th performance enhancement is indicated:
           Nitro (post 1950 only).
5-8: Cassette Player (8-Track if appropriate, reroll if not available yet)
9-12: Decorative Tyres (white-walls, radials, bigger wheels, whatever)
13-15: Radio / (8% chance CB Radio 1975-1985)
16-18: Air Con / Heater (reroll if not available yet)
19-20: Seats / Trim

This uses a dumbbell-shaped die roll for the first time – the most likely result centers on a result of 11. So I started with that and used the most frequent outcome for the ‘middle values’ (4 out of 19), then progressively placed less probable results (4 and 3 out of 19, respectively) to either side of that, and so on. A lot of results had to be conflated to get the number of results down to a manageable number, but that forced the creation of the subsystem for performance enhancements which, I actually think, is an improvement on a purely random result.

I estimate the value of any extras if that information isn’t available to me. It usually isn’t. There’s a lot of rule-of-thumb involved. Value from extras should be added before any adjustments (including inflation and depreciation) are calculated.

Conditional value adjustments & an example

These are applied consecutively, not summed.

Basic Maths: adding 10% is the same as multiplying by (1 + 10/100), or 1.1. In other words, if you’re adding a percentage of less than 100%, write a 1, put a decimal point, and then write the amount of the percentage. Adding 12.75 percent is multiplying by 1.1275.

If, for some reason, you need to apply an increase of more than 100% – lets say 245% – you add the hundreds to the basic 1, and then write the rest after a decimal point; adding 245% means multiplying by 3.45.

To reduce by a percentage, you need to use (100 – percent) and then divide by 100 to get the number you should multiply by. So subtracting 4% = multiply by 0.96, subtracting 8% = multiply by 0.92, subtracting 12.5% = multiply by 0.875.

Notice something: if you add the individual digits of the percentage to the individual digits of the multiplication factor, each one comes to a 9, except the last ones, which come to a 10: 1+8=9, 2+7=9, and 5+5=10. Once you know this, you can work the calculations the other way quickly and easily – so much so that I haven’t even shown this work in the example below.

EG a $10,000 vehicle which gains 8.2% in inflated dollars, loses 25% (1st year) and 14.5% (2nd and third years), with a 4% value reduction for lost performance (half of which can be regained with a full tune-up), which also loses 12% for fading paint, 16% for rust, 8% for condition, halved, with $800 worth of extras, would be worth:

• 10,000 + extras $800 = $10, 800;
• plus inflation: 1.082 x $10, 800 = $11, 685.60;
• less 1st year depreciation: 0.75 x 11, 6585 = $8, 764.20;
• less 2nd & 3rd year depreciation: 0.855^2 x 8 764.20 = $6, 406.85;
• less performance loss: 0.96 x 6 406.85 = $6 150.58;
• less 12% for fading paint: 0.88 x 6150.58 = $5 412.51;
• less 16% for rust: 0.84 x 5 412.51 = $4 546.51;
• less 8% for general condition, halved: 0.96 x 4 546.51 = $4 364.65.
• I will usually round this to the nearest $5 for convenience: $4 365.

Of course, a car that’s only three years old with noticable paint fading and rust spots would be quite a concern.

To be complete, we next need to add the taxes, demand (from general information about the model, estimate the impact of demand for this particular type of car at this particular time), & profit margin:

• plus taxes: 4 365 x 1.12 x 1.08 = $5 279.90;
• plus-or-minus demand: 0.95 x 5 279.90 = $5 015.91;
• plus profit margin: 1.18 x 5 015.91 = $5 918.77;
• rounded to the nearest $5 again, gives $5 920.

Factor in the dealer’s willingness to do a deal (eroding his profits, or even selling below cost to get rid of a waste-of-space), and you have a complete example:

• less maximum discount = 0.92 x 5 920 = $5 446.4.
• round this, too, to the nearest $5, to get $5 445.

So the dealer wants $5920, but would settle for as little as $5445 – a substantial discount, but one that still leaves him with (18-8=) 10% profit – on a car worth $4, 365.

Oh, and if you want to know how much the extras are worth, multiply any of the above values by the ratio of extras alone to price-with-extras to get the equivalent.

So,

• value of the extras: 4365 x 800/10800 = 323.33;
• Dealer wants: 5920 x 800/10800 = $438.52 (and this is how much he will say they are worth, rounded to the nearest $5, or $440);
• Dealer will settle for 5445 x 800/10800 = $403.33. Except that he would want to keep them on the car and use them to help sell the bigger item!

Behind The Curtain

As a value-added extra, I’ve tried to at least indicate how the tables were derived; you can consider knowing how something is done, so that you can do it (or anything similar) yourself if you need to, as a Christmas Bonus!

I didn’t intend to create a new Doctor Who campaign.

The last one, “Lovecraft’s Legacies” had trodden new territory in expanding the lexicon and history of all the great races of Dr Who – Daleks, Cybermen, Weeping Angels, Omega and the Time Lords (amongst others).

It integrated elements of Dr who with the Lovecraftian Mythos, had appearances by Madam Vastra, Jenny and Strax in adventure 2, Captain Jack Harkness, the Jon Pertwee Doctor, the Brigadier, Jo Grant, Sargeant Brenton and UNIT in adventure 3, a Holographic Rose Tyler, Captain Jack again, and Ood Epsilon (now rechristened Ood Alpha) – and you either know who all of these are already, or it would take entirely too long to explain!

It made Canon the Doctor Who movies starring Peter Cushing and did so by filling plot holes from the early seasons of the second Doctor, (and literally also filled another dozen plot holes along the way from different seasons of the show, both classic and modern), while extending the lore of all the important Who enemies, and it had used every one of my good Doctor Who ideas (and, perhaps, then some)!

So I thought I was done with this particular science fiction sub-genre!

But then I realized that if I did a plotline based around the beginning of the Time War with the Daleks, featuring the 8th Doctor (Paul McGann), I could literally do anything that I wanted because the Time War itself would rearrange everything, anyway.

The fact that neither the player nor myself was that familiar with McGann’s version (for reasons that will soon become clear) simply gave him a bit more freedom as a player.

Everything I knew about the character had been encapsulated in my write-up for Dr Who and the secrets of complex characterization, here at Campaign Mastery, when I wrote,

8th Doctor (Paul McGann) – youthful, energetic, wide-eyed and full of enthusiasm, encouraging those around him to engage in and celebrate life rather than withdrawing from it. This is also the incarnation that establishes the romantic aspects of the Doctor, something that had been eschewed in the past. Although controversial at the time, it has since become accepted canon that the Doctor can experience romantic love for others.

Besides, I’ve always enjoyed the triple irony of this character. The shortest televised run – just one telemovie, even the War Doctor got to appear in more episodes and specials! But the actor then stayed active in the role through audio books and novels and the like, right up to the series reboot, giving him the longest active tenure as The Doctor of all the actors to take on the role, greater even than the Tom Baker run! In that capacity, audiobooks and novels revolving around the character outsold those of any other incarnation, making him the most popular version of The Doctor – so popular, in fact, that the series was cancelled when the Telemovie wasn’t a hit!

That can only mean one of two things: either Dr Who fans didn’t go on for novels and audiobooks, setting the bar so low that clearing it was an achievement without merit, or the character was never really given a chance to find his feet on-screen. The fact that the audio books and novels kept the character alive for almost two decades until the 2005 reboot argues against the first interpretation in favor of the second.

The combination of these three thoughts – complete freedom, a part of the story untold, and an under-appreciated protagonist – proved too much to resist, and so (before investing a lot of effort) I sounded out the player about a new Campaign for the Time Lord. He responded that he had quite enjoyed the last one, so why wouldn’t he sign up for another?

(All this preamble is being presented for a specific reason that I’ll get to in due course).

So I started putting ideas down on electronic paper – and keeping a diary of my campaign development, to be shared here through Campaign Mastery.

You see, I’ve presented ideas for campaigns in the past, but its’ always nagged at me a little that none of these were campaigns for actual play. With the Zener Gate campaign, I shared the game system but very little about the campaign, because it was (a) minimal-prep, and hence (b) the plans were fairly vague. I had never demonstrated my actual campaign development process except in the theoretical and abstract; this was an opportunity to rectify that. All I had to do was to be careful not to give anything away that I didn’t want the player to find out in advance, or to structure the diary entries in such a way that he could be told to stop reading at a certain point, something that I trust him to do.

This is as close as I can come to letting you all read over my shoulder while I’m creating a new campaign that I intend to run – “actual field conditions” as it were. No theory, all hands-on application.

Our story begins here:

December 3, 2020

No sooner had I started formulating ideas than I happened to re-watch one of the Christmas Specials (nothing gets you into the right frame of mind to write Doctor Who than watching Doctor Who) and spotted a fairly significant plot hole – one that a quick internet search suggested no-one else had ever noticed.

That’s a rare and precious thing. Before I knew it, and before I had even finished outlining the campaign, I had put together an introductory “Christmas Special” of my own to kickstart the campaign.

You see – or perhaps you don’t – ever since the reboot became a success, most years have contained a Christmas Special. These have usually been self-contained plotlines that nevertheless either wrapped up the year’s overarching plot thread, or punctuated it with a standalone plot, or kick-started the next season’s overarching plot thread and/or relationships.

I wrote the entire adventure in a single sitting, knowing only the protagonist and the plot hole around which it was oriented. Like the seasonal pattern usually followed by Doctor Who, this is both a standalone adventure and the gateway into the campaign, and it establishes the character’s current style and modus operandi. I also had an idea for a companion that would be the perfect GM’s tool: unable to actually do anything much in place of the PC, but able to feed thoughts, ideas, and (when necessary) misdirection into the equation. Nevertheless, by the time I had outlined his story, he had gone from an interesting idea to a heroic character in his own right and every bit as deserving of his place in the story as any other companion.

The writing of this 2639-word adventure was the final feather on the scales; it was so easy that it made the second Dr Who campaign inevitable. I spent the next week assembling ideas and initial thoughts…

A word on Focus

Once I had committed to it, I always intended to spend some of my Christmas break developing this campaign. But, despite what might be implied below, I didn’t expect to actually make it my primary focus in the week Dec 8 to Dec 14. My primary task was supposed to be doing research and prep for my superhero campaign, and that was indeed the focus for most of the period from Dec 4 through 7. I was planning to wait until I was away at my Family’s for Christmas to work on this campaign because so much of it is sheer creativity with little-or-no research required.

On Monday the 8th, plans changed. A driver appears to have had a sharp impact with a power pole across the street, and the electricity was cut off for two hours. When it was restored, my telephone and internet services didn’t come back with it.

Of necessity, then, I have had to focus my time on things that don’t require an internet connection. Which is why so much effort, and progress, has been made in so short a timespan. Just wanted to keep expectations real – don’t try comparing your output to this rate of progress, or expecting similar things of yourself; I was primed for it, and distractions have been minimal.

December 9, 2020

The campaign Outline started with 8 good questions, two good ideas, and one vague notion. The good ideas: Dalek X and the nature/progression of the Time War in its early stages. The Vague idea: the nature of Regeneration.

Building an introductory plotline out of a plot hole in an existing Christmas Special, Moffat-style, gave rise to a couple of additional ideas, and in particular to an interesting companion.

Adding one more vague idea (resolving the inconsistencies in the Rassalom timeline and his personality) and answering those 8 questions created an outline of the primary plotline of the campaign in 12 adventures (not counting the intro adventure), but with minimal (insufficient) reference to one of the good ideas [Dalek X]. Refer entries 8 and 12 of the primary plotline.

In particular, thinking about how other enemies/allies of the Doctor would be involved in the timeline gave rise to a critical course of events involving Cybermen (Entries 1 (intro adventure), 4-5, 6, 7), The Master (3, 4-5), Jidoon (3), Face Of Bo (7), Morpheus/Moebius (11), Sontarans (5, 6). Nevertheless, the primary driving force of the campaign is the Daleks who were explicitly referenced in entries 1 (indirectly), 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, and 13), Davros (entries 6, 12 & 13) and Rassalom (9, 10, 11, 12, and 13). Time Lord Society and the Council Of Time Lords are explicitly referenced in entries 3, 6, 8, 9 and 10.

This necessitates the incorporation of a secondary plot thread, and giving Quasima a storyline of his own requires a tertiary plot thread. To some extent, these can be contained within the existing framework, but additional adventures may be required (see below).

In particular, a couple of the entries in the first-draft outline require isolated ‘spot adventures’ unrelated to the main action; some of these may be used to accommodate the secondary and tertiary plotlines. as stated, but if they aren’t so used, these ‘spot adventures’ / ‘fillers’ will also need to be created, built around other ideas. Refer entries 2, 6, 9, 11.

December 10, 2020

Thought up a sequence of additional encounters between Dalek X and the Doctor, labelled a, b, c, and d for identification until it is determined where best they fit. Chronologically, from the Doctor’s perspective, they will occur b, a, c, d (simply to highlight a consequence of time travel as a regular act). These plots resolve the questions to be answered about Dalek X in the main plotline, plugging potential plot holes. They also add a Davros encounter and a few nuances of Dalek society.

Thought up five independent plotlines, which will be dropped in as necessary. Not all of the plot-shaped holes will match, so some of these will be standalone filler, to be used to slow early pacing. Four of the ideas are fairly generic Sci-fi plots (though one acquires a specific connection to Doctor Who continuity along the way – written almost as an afterthought to solve a plot problem within the adventure, this gives the adventure added significance.

The last of the independent plotlines is directly connected to the game universe in which Doctor Who takes place and would not fit any other continuity, so it is a uniquely who plotline. But it has a plot hole or two still to fill – why the antagonist does what he does and what the Hero is supposed to be able to do about it. These have been labelled F1, F2, F3, F4, and F5 until the final continuity is determined. Not all of them will fit the ‘unrelated adventure’ plot holes in the main plot, so some of these will need to take place as Filler adventures to further manipulate the pace of events.

Thought up a series of 4 plot sequences which feature the companion and his story. Given that the companion is also mentioned specifically in some of the above-mentioned plotlines (a-d and F1-5), that should be enough to establish him as a participant – he’s only an NPC after all, and shouldn’t steal the show from the protagonist – but using him as a vehicle to bring the protagonist into a confrontation with an antagonist is just fine.These have been labelled A-D

Next steps:
1. Break the primary plot into phases.
2. Review each of the other plots to see if continuity requires it to take place in a particular phase.
3. Use the results to assess whether or not the plotline is a suitable match for one of the remaining plot “holes” within the main plot.
4. Plan a pacing outline showing where filler should be and how much of it.
5. Commence construction of a concordance specifying the final plot sequence and any remaining holes that need to be filled.
6. Generate plot content to specifically fill the remaining holes.
7. Re-sequence the plotlines into the final campaign outline.

13+4+5+4 = 26 adventures, plus up to 4 that need to be specifically generated, or minus up to four that are redundant entries through integration of two separate plot elements into a single adventure. 26±4 = 22-30 adventures. Some will be quite short, perhaps <1 day’s play; some will be relatively long, perhaps 3-4 days’ play; the majority will be 2 days play or less. 4-5 / 2 = 2-2.5; +1-2 = 3-4.5; / 2 = 1.5 – 2.5 – so overall, expect 2 game sessions to be the average, so this is 44-60 game sessions.

The Dr Who campaign will only be played (at this stage) on months that have a 5th Saturday. Except in leap years (like 2020) that excludes February as a possibility. A 5th Saturday will of necessity fall somewhere between the 29th of the month and the end of the month. This is only possible if the first Saturday falls somewhere in the date range of EOM-28 or less.

Jan: 31-28=3. so 1-3 in 7 = 0.4285 probability.
Mar: 31-28=3. so 1-3 in 7 = 0.4285 probability.
Apr: 30-28=2. so 1-2 in 7 = 0.2857 probability.
May: 31-28=3. so 1-3 in 7 = 0.4285 probability.
June:30-28=2. so 1-2 in 7 = 0.2857 probability.
July: 31-28=3. so 1-3 in 7 = 0.4285 probability.
Aug: 31-28=3. so 1-3 in 7 = 0.4285 probability.
Sept: 30-28=2. so 1-2 in 7 = 0.2857 probability.
Oct: 31-28=3. so 1-3 in 7 = 0.4285 probability.
Nov: 30-28=2. so 1-2 in 7 = 0.2857 probability.
Dec (possibly excluded, possibly an extra session) = 0 probability

That’s 6 lots of 3 in 7 and 4 lots of 2 in 7 = 3×6=18 and 2×4=8 so 26/7 is the average number of 5th weeks per year that are available for gaming = 3.714. Assume that the occasional long weekend/public holiday can also be used (one per year) and that if there aren’t enough 5th weekends to get to 5 game sessions a year, a December session will be allocated, and we get 5 game sessions per year. 44-60 game sessions is therefore 44/5 – 60/5 = 8.8-12 years commitment.

This seems too long, in fact it was proven to be too long in the course of the first Dr Who campaign. To combat this, it was specified that the 2nd Saturday of the month following a 5th week session would also be used for the Dr Who campaign. Assuming that is maintained again, that gives 3.714×2+1+0.572 = 7.428 + 1 + 0.572 = 9 game sessions per year, or 44/9 – 60/9 = 4.8889 – 6.6667 years, and average of 5.7777 years. Since the occasional session will get missed for one reason or another, expect this to be a 6-year campaign.

December 11, 2020

By now you can see one of the secrets to my success when it comes to creating campaigns: until I sign off on it, and start working on an adventure-by-adventure bases, I try to think about the campaign, if not to actually work on it, every single day. When I have an idea, I scrawl it down somewhere, and as soon as possible, transfer it into a more legible and permanent style in an electronic document created for the purpose. Small bits of creativity soon accumulate into a monolithic whole greater than the sum of its parts.

That doesn’t mean that I will work this intensively; usually, I’ll do nothing but accumulate rough ideas for a month or so at least before starting to shape them into a structured campaign. Because of the Internet Outage, I’ve focused a lot more time and attention on this campaign than I normally would. (I’m also contemplating ways to streamline the research process and take it off-line while I’m away, so as to make up as much of the lost time as possible).

Anyway, on this particular Friday, I came up with a Plot-line that fitted the problematic Adventure #2. Starts with the Doctor already in the thick of the action, then becomes a framework for 3-5 mini-adventures before wrapping up with the main plot. A mini-adventure should take 1-2.5 hours of play to resolve, so figure 3 of them plus the introductory sequence for one day’s play and two slightly longer ones plus the main plot element for a second day’s play. There’s more to a mini-adventure than a single encounter, but not much more than 3 or 4 encounters. Verbal short-hand and hand-waving can be used to keep time marching.

This impacts the pacing of the campaign: we have a Christmas Special, then this relatively high-action season opener before things calm down a bit. This seems plausible at a campaign-wide level, but it does specify a particular tone for the following adventure, which will impact the choice and location of secondary and tertiary plotlines.

I also came up with aa vague idea that can be used as background to any Dalek plotline not already specified as taking place in a specific setting. I’ve saved that as S1.

(later)

Steps 1-5 of the action plan are done.

Plots A and F1 filled two of the three mini-adventure slots in Adventure 2.
Plot B filled the ‘unrelated plot’ hole in Adventure 6.
Plot c filled the ‘other Dalek plot’ hole in Adventure 11.

Phase 1 is ‘no war’ and contains adventures 1-5, plus space for unrelated adventures at the end. Plots F3 and a combination of b & C were placed here.

Phase 2 is ‘pre-war’ and contains adventures 6-8, with gaps for unrelated adventures between each of these parts. Prior to adventure 8 is the last such gap. Plots a and F2 were placed between 6 and 7, and plots F4, d+S1, and F5 were placed between 7 and 8.

Phase 3 is ‘inevitable war’ and contains adventures 9 & 10.

Phase 4 is ‘early war’ or ‘preliminary skirmishes’ and contains adventures 11 & 12.

Phase 5 is ‘war joined’ and contains adventure 13 and an epilog separated from it. Plot D was combined with that Epilog.

.This leaves two plot holes to fill: a Mini-plot (designated X1) in adventure 2, and an ‘undefined Gallifrey Plotline” to take center-stage in Adventure 9, designed X2.

The complete plot sequence reads:
Phase 1: 1 – [2+X1+A+F1] – 3 – 4 – 5 – F3 – [b+C]
Phase 2: [6+B] – a – F2 – 7 – F4 – [d+S1] – F5 – 8
Phase 3: [9+X2] – 10
Phase 4: [11+c] – 12
Phase 5: 13 – [Epilog+D]

Phases 1 and 2 are roughly the same length as both each other and as the total of Phases 3, 4, and 5, so the campaign is approximately divided into thirds.

The first third is establishing plot elements and making the progression through the 5 phases inevitable. The second third is partially spent trying to prevent that inevitability and failing, and partly spent developing the plot elements established in the first third. The final third is the interaction between those elements and setting the Doctor on the path dictated by established series continuity.

Once X1 and X2 are filled with plot ideas, this master sequence can be applied to my preliminary notes and titles given to those adventures that don’t have them (1, 4, 5, 7, and 13 have titles already). I’ll add to this diary when that’s done.

(much later)

Reviewing the adventures thus far created additional slots X3 and X4 (needed to be part of Adventures 2 and 6, respectively).

X3 was immediately filled with a new plot idea based on the outline of a B-grade sci-fi movie from many years back. This also opened the door to an adventure epilog (X5) that binds the rest of the adventure back together into a cohesive whole that links it even more strongly into the main continuity of the campaign.

There’s still scope for a few interesting locations to get incorporated into Adventure 2 as color, adding to its plausibility and interest – what’s included at the moment is very much the bare minimum needed for plot purposes.

I also came up with a half-baked idea about Time Lord society inspired by a casual comment on an old Top Gear (Gallifreyan society modeled on Continental Europe) and a second half-baked idea from a favorite Stargate episode about Time Lord vices. Putting those, and a thought that’s been lurking around in the back of my head for many years (the distinction between Gallifreyan and Time Lord) together almost fills X2 – it just needs a plotline drawing on those ideas to tie them together. So it’s not there yet, not ready to be outlined yet, but it’s well on its’ way. Not sure who the vehicle will be yet, but that will come as a complete package with the plot.

That leaves only X4. The more I think about it, the more F2 seems a perfect fit for that slot. Right now, it’s tentatively used for pacing between (a) and 7. (a) is a rescue plot set against a genetics-oriented plot inspired by the name of one of the forbidden weapons of the Omega Archive, “The Skaro Degradations”, and it’s one of the key pieces of the overall continuity that it happens sometime, this just happens to be a good place for it. 7 deals with the more remote consequences of the 4-5 two-part adventure, just as 6 dealt with the more immediate consequences. There’s a pacing imperative to have things happen in between 6 and 7 so that 7 feels more remote from 5 than 6 does. When assembling the concordance, I decided that (a) alone wasn’t enough to achieve that, especially since it is tightly woven into the overall continuity of the campaign, and – as part of making these diary notes – I’ve reviewed that decision and still feel the same way. However, F2 feels, more than ever, like the right ‘fit’ for X4 – and that means that I would be creating an X6 to take the place of F2 in the existing continuity.

This, and the empty plot for X2, are the final major structural elements of the continuity that are needed. Once those are done, I can start outlining important characters (and making notes about more ‘topically significant’ characters that feature, but only in one or two adventures). I already have ideas bubbling away in the back of my head for those.

But first, those two plot holes.

December 12, 2020

While I did the work before I called it a night on the evening of the 11th, I was almost falling asleep at the keyboard before the “much later” work described above had even started. But sometimes you can tell when you’re “in the zone,” creatively, and this was one of those times.

Saturday morning, the first thing that I did was to write up the preceding diary entry. Which should put “the more I think about it” into a slightly different context – I wasn’t just referring to reviewing material while I wrote up the diary entry, but about ruminations that had been taking place for a while.

To revisit where things stood after doing so, then, I have a bunch of half-baked ideas that when framed by a plotline will become X2, and I need a new adventure idea for X6, which is there for no better reason than the need to put some distance between plotlines 6 (which is followed immediately by a) and 7.

(later)

That was more-or-less all that I intended to do, this particular Saturday. But then I realized that I hadn’t included a general introduction – just the raw diary entries, and thought to myself that I should write one, when I could. And then I thought about what it would contain, and that got me thinking about the origins of this campaign, and that gave me an idea.

If there’s one thing that readers should have learned about me by now, it’s that I can get ideas from the weirdest places!

In particular, i was thinking about the notion that all of galactic history would be different after the Time War, and why that would be so. For a start, the Daleks would not be the preeminent threat to galactic society, that they were in the pre-reboot series (the Time War falling somewhere in between the last ‘classic’ season and the first ‘rebooted’ season). Now, that might suggest that it would be a safer, cleaner place, but I happened to have watched a TV program about the great extinction of species that appears to be taking place right now (in geological time), and the potential for ecological growth that opens up when a species is driven extinct, leaving a slot in the food chain empty.

The weakness migrates up the food chain, weakening species who used the extinct creatures as a food source or other resource, perhaps to the point where they also become extinct, perhaps not. But unless the extinction takes place at the most fundamental level of any ecological cycle, there will be a platform remaining that some other species can move into – and if there is any sort of competition for resources experienced by that species, it will be pushed into occupying the empty slot. Inevitably, this produces a population explosion.

If there are predator species that consume the booming-population species, then this boom also migrates up the food chain, becoming ever-more-concentrated, and a new ecological balance is achieved. If not, then the boom species becomes a pest, and the source of a new ecological imbalance that will probably drive other species to the point of extinction.

Suddenly, I viewed the dying off of the Daleks in this light, and the universe as a giant sociological ecosystem, with Daleks the self-appointed apex predators.

• All the species that the Daleks wiped out or constrained would undergo population booms.
• Any lesser enemies that the Daleks suppressed would become more prevalent, perhaps even relatively unstoppable.
• Any resources that the Daleks consumed would be free for all – first come, first served – to anyone strong enough to take and hold them.
• Some societies and life-forms would flourish as a consequence, while others might be diminished.
• Some societies and life-forms would take new evolutionary paths because they would not longer have to fight against Dalek hostilities.
• Some of these changes would be peaceful and progressive; others would be more hostile.
• By the time you get into the second-order consequences and beyond, the entire galaxy would look sociologically different.
• As a general rule, it doesn’t matter to the dead what killed them; they are just as dead, no matter what it was. Life, and hard existence, would remain Life and hard existence.
• On top of that, with the one exception (all right, two), the Time Lords were also rendered extinct at the same time. While isolated cases sometimes caused problems (The Master, Moebius, Omega), and the majority didn’t get involved in anything but their own egos, a few of them policed the timelines and made possible excursions into parallel realities and things of that sort. Without them, there is less of a safety net.
• The grass is always greener.
• Anyone time-travelling into the past from a post-Time War era would transport back into the past of a world with neither Daleks nor Time Lords. Relative to this reality, everything that takes place within the game occurs in an alternate reality – one in which the time lords are still around and making alternate realities accessible.

That means that it is practically certain that someone from a post Time War universe will discover the game reality as an “accessible alternate reality” of the past, and will believe that things can’t be as bad for them in that reality as they were in whatever situation they were in, and so would flee out of the frying pan and into the fire. And then be unable to go back again without Time Lord help – and the Time Lords are all busy, or not prone to get involved – except one: the PC.

This entire chain of logic , with it’s mixture of fatalism and optimism, came to me in a single flash of insight – except for the first few points, which have been part of my thinking regarding this campaign from day one, though in a less structured way.

In other words, postulating just such a bunch of over-eager refugees enabled me to focus in on another aspect of the rewriting of history that results from the Time War – and putting it after the Time War becomes inevitable but before the character knows that it is inevitable, in slot X2.is a perfect fit.

One down, one to go.

December 14, 2020

Most of yesterday was spent just letting things percolate in the back of my mind, thinking especially about Gallifreyan society and how it would work. But I did make a few notes about what the central fact of the plotline would be – a murder would be too similar to events from adventure 3, so that leaves only crimes of passion and commerce. The latter then raised the question of how the economy of Gallifrey worked, which leads naturally into the social structure and questions of status, education, etc.

I decided fairly early on that my vision of Gallifreyan Society would be one that on the surface was very stratified and elitist, but if you looked a little deeper, you would find that its ideals and principles were extremely socialist, and if you looked deeper still, you would find that the manifestation and effect of those socialist principles in an elitist society would actually come very close to a number of conservative ideals. The results would be a society quite different to any on Earth, idealized and exaggerated almost to the point of lampooning both progressive and conservative extremism.

If not for the last five years of American politics, as seen from afar, I doubt very much if my thinking would have been along those lines.

Central to the adventure will be Time Lord / Gallifreyan vices, and the opportunities for blackmail that always occur when such vices are indulged and someone else knows about it – the seamier side of Gallifrey, in other words.

Whatever I come up with will be useful background in a number of other adventures, so the effort being put into this is more than justified.

What I’ve got so far (and it might well change in the final version):

• Children are tested for potential at an early age after receiving a generic foundation education for a few years.
• That testing allocates the child a future place within society, and the education to achieve it. The intensity and content of the education are determined by the test. This means that resources are not wasted on those who will not profit from the expenditure of those resources.
• Each member of the population is classified into four primary occupations: Menial, Social, Technical, and Political. Menials live in the lowest levels of society, Socials live in the lower levels of towers rising above ground level, technicals live above socials, and politicals live in the loftiest reaches of the towers.
• The social sector includes police, medical practitioners, teachers, and bureaucrats.
• Individuals own nothing except what they are granted. Everything is ultimately owned by society, and doled out as rewards and compensation. There is no such thing as money; something is worth whatever society decides it’s worth.
• Within each of these four branches, proven expertise is recognized through rank, numbered 0 through 9 (maybe higher). 0 is for trainees, who can’t be trusted with any task without supervision; 1 is the lowest real level; and so on up to the top, who are capable of R&D and original contributions to the capabilities of their class – the research scientists and theoreticians.
• Simply being Gallifreyan is enough to provide basic accommodation, food, etc, but not enough for a comfortable existence. Actually working at your designated classification – technician grade 3, let’s say – earns permissions or grants. I’ve been using the term authorizations in my mind. You might be authorized to have a better quality of meal each day, and an even better quality of meal once a week, or larger living quarters, or better furniture, and so on.
• Everyone is off-work all the time unless needed. What you do with your off-hours is up to you – but everyone is ‘on call’ 24/7. Some people take the lazy route and do nothing. Some socialize with other Gallifreyans in parks and other such social venues. Some undertake advanced training, either within their classification or in some other sector – that’s up to them. Graduating from such training qualifies the individual for a higher status if they want it. Some don’t but most take the opportunity to advance themselves, and hence the living conditions of their families. So there is the potential for upward mobility, there is the potential to remain locked in a particular level, and there is the potential to get lazy, not work, and find yourself with nothing but the Gallifreyan minimum.
• Politically, society is ruled over by Councils, and the most senior of all is the Council Of Time, members of which are granted Tardises and pretty much permitted to go where they want and do what they want. They have only each other to keep their worst instincts in check. The only reason they are permitted such latitude by the lower rungs of Gallifreyan society is that they have rigid codes of conduct and are extremely militant about enforcing them.
• Gallifreyan vices can be generally described as “stalking” – being taken back in time to spend additional time with a loved one (before the relationship began or turned sour), for example. There is a legitimate service which offers ‘tours’ to past events of galactic significance, mostly run by the universities. The institutions offering these services follow strict regulations and protocols of non-interference in events; participants are observers only. Some individuals always realize that select clientele might be willing to ‘pay’ for less supervised visitations – what the time traveler does is then entirely on their own conscience. But it can’t be anything so egregious as to change history, or the Time Council’s investigators and enforcers will be all over it.
• Some of the rules of the Council Of Time Lords reflect limitations imposed by the universe, as shown by the Reboot episode “Father’s Day”. Some are designed to maintain their social elevation – nothing is permitted that makes them look anything but impartial, for example. And some are rules for the sake of having rules.

This raises interesting thoughts about the origins of the principal character, the Doctor. Since he stole his Tardis, he obviously wasn’t authorized to have one. That means either that he wasn’t “legally” a Time Lord at the time, but was a lower social class – perhaps Technician 8, trusted to service and maintain the fleet of Tardises – or that he was a time lord whose privileges had been suspended for some violation of the council’s rules. Knowing the doctor and his penchant for getting involved, interfering up to his elbows, the latter is probably more appropriate.

So I’m still digesting the ramifications of the concepts outlined. New thoughts occur regularly and are duly noted – for example, while I was writing the summary above:

• There would be a lot less “traditional” crime, because the standard investigatory practice would be to get permission from the Council to go back in time and apprehend the perpetrator in the act. There would be little need for courts, as we understand them, and a relatively small police force. Sentencing and punishment would be automatic, and there would be no right of appeal. That doesn’t mean that there would be no such crime – time lords can be just as passionate as anyone else – just that there would be a lot of disincentive to be overcome by the potential criminal.

Oh, and I also came up with a Time Lord maxim: “No matter what it is that you want to do, there is always a way to do it – and there is always a price to pay. Often, that price is too high.”

December 15, 2020

There are two major questions to be answered about the unfinished plotline – what is the crime, and how does the doctor become aware of it? To the first, there are two logical possibilities – either the victim is purveyor of the illicit time travel, or he’s a user of it. The second is how the Doctor (the protagonist) becomes involved in the situation.

I’ve vacillated quite a bit on the first question because an act of violence didn’t seem right for some reason more than the justice system that I had imagined, already a discouraging influence. And the answer to the second would seem to hinge upon the first.

Today – and I’m not sure what sparked the thought – I realized that crimes of negligence would be as serious as crimes of violence in the society described. And that leaves scope for something blatantly obvious going wrong – and in a critical time – which is a more than satisfactory answer to the second question. The mere possibility that it could be deliberate sabotage is enough to bring scrutiny from the highest levels.

There are still some details to nail down, but structurally, I think that’s just about the final i that needs to be dotted.

Except that this adventure still needs a name. I’ve had a few ideas on that front already, but my first thoughts give away far too much, and my second thoughts were far too prosaic. For the moment, I’m going with my third thought, “Human Failure”.

(later)

Well, this is a little embarrassing – but it’s also exactly why I do this prep in advance. It seems that somewhere along the line, I got muddled about which of these two ideas – The Lost World (hmm, good title) and Human Failure – was going to be X2 and which was to be X6. So let’s get this straightened out.

X6 is supposed to be a time filler between (a) and (7). X2 is to be coupled with entry 9, and take part quite some time after X6. The thing to do is to assess each of these ‘other factors’ and see which of the is best suited to be in which slot.

• The (a) factor: “Human Failure” would take the Doctor back to Gallifrey after this adventure; The Last World (title tweaked) happens elsewhere, but could start on Gallifrey. So that’s a tick in the “X6=The Last World” column.
• The (7) factor: This makes no sense at all being anywhere near Gallifrey. So that’s another tick in the “X6=The Last World” column!
• The (9) factor: This starts with the Doctor being summoned back to Gallifrey, so that’s a tick in the “X2 = Human Failure” column.>/li>
• The concordance factor: X6 is listed as being pre-war, according top the Concordance, and X2 is “war is inevitable”. That means that “Human Failure” works a lot better as X2 than as X6, while “The Last World” would be comfortable sitting in either slot.

Decision made – it’s 4-1 “X6=The Last World” and “X2=Human Failure”.

Campaign Outline

With all the significant infrastructure settled and in place, I can put it all together into a “Grand Plan”, better known as a Campaign Outline.

So the corrected list of the adventures that form part of this campaign, by title, is (To distinguish the sequence numbers from those used earlier, I’ve used a ‘/’):

01/ A Nightmare At Christmas (the ‘at’ might be revised to ‘on’ or ‘of’).(1)
02/ The Omicron Derivative (2)
     Part 2 – The Pacifist (X1)
     Part 3 – Lullaby (A+F1)
     Part 4 – Yesterday Once More (X3)
     Epilog – A Petty Revenge (X5)
03/ Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot (3)
04/ The Master Of The Cybermen (Part 1 of a two-part adventure) (4)
05/ The Cybermen Of The Master (Part 2 of a two-part adventure) (5)
06/ Venturi Station (F3)
07/ The Wellspring Of Life (b+C)
08/ Coming Of Ageless (6+B+[X4=F2])
09/ Ogrons To The Left Of Me, Daleks To The Right (a)
10/ The Last World (X6)
11/ The Grand Tour Of Hell (7)
12/ Little Tardis Lost (F4)
13/ The Armorers Of Hatred (d+S1)
14/ The Optimism Operation (F5)
15/ Nightmare In Silver (8)
16/ The First Stone / Human Failure (title to be finalized) (9+ X2)
17/ A Curdle Of Time (10)
18/ The Plague Of Skaro (11+c)
19/ Breathe (12)
20/ Zero Hour (13)
21/ Epilog (+D)

None of these is yet ready to play – not even the almost-ready first adventure. But they are ready to be treated as individual projects, with the exception of a character or two who needs a bit more fleshing out for multiple adventures. Or I might simply use the “extend the lore with each appearance” approach for those characters, and dive straight into the “individual projects” phase.

December 16 – December 20, 2020

Along the way, I generated a long list of image resources that I thought I would need in the running of the campaign. Over these five days, I’ve set about filling that list, starting by grabbing copies of any images from the first campaign that can be recycled. So far, I have:

1. Four images of the 8th Doctor himself, some showing his Tardis Control Room as a bonus;
2. Twelve Cybermen images, including three of the (redacted) for the first adventure (I won’t need all of them);
3. Seven Dalek ships, including some interiors;
4. Three Davros, including one that has been treated to make him look like a hologram;
5. A good one of the Emperor Of The Daleks as he was during the Time War;
6. A couple of Ogrons, one of which looks more scholarly;
7. Nine of Daleks, some of which will be (relatively) easy to customize for the more Notable Daleks that appear in the plot;
8. Four images of Gallifrey, plus one from space. But I will need more, and more specific ones, which I might have to make.
9. Sixteen generic space / time vortex images to use as backgrounds and cosmic phenomena;
10. Five views of (redacted) for use in the first adventure;
11. Two images of the Master as the Doctor last saw him, one of the Master as he used to be, one of his Tardis, and one of his Tardis control room, some of which I might not need;
12. Eight images of the Doctor’s Tardis, including a couple that will serve as a Campaign Title Graphic. This is something that I introduced in the latter days of the first campaign and that really added to the atmosphere;
13. Eighteen Tardis Interior images generated for the previous campaign showing different rooms, including four libaries and two guest rooms – I won’t need most of these, and might need to supplement them with one or two more before the end, but it’s a good beginning;
14. Seven images of Time Lords including two of Rassalom and one of the General in charge of Gallifrey’s defenses in the Time War- I will need more, but these were the only good-sized ones that I found on my first searches.
15. Four weird-looking places / buildings that can be used as Gallifreyan exteriors, and can easily be supplemented with a deliberate search; these were ‘extras’ picked up along the way;
16. Sixteen miscellaneous images:
    • Three miscellaneous space ships, one of which will become the Cybermen ship;
    • A generic classroom;
    • The Astronomer Royal at the time of the first adventure;
    • Dorium Maldovar, a blue-skinned alien who appeared in a number of episodes of the reboot;
    • A Jidoon trio (an alien species introduced in the reboot);
    • Two maps of (redacted) for the first adventure;
    • The War Doctor;
    • Ood Epsilon (The Ood are another species introduced in the reboot);
    • A couple of Sontarans;
    • An illustration of genetic engineering;
    • A weird-looking alien who just looked cool.
17. A series of screen captures from Google Maps of (redacted) which will be stitched together into six maps which will then have graphics put over the top to illustrate a vital plot point from the first adventure.
18. Twenty images that I have set aside to edit, including Gallfreyan soldiers, Skaro (Home-world of the Daleks) from space, more Daleks, and a couple of Skaro from the surface.

That’s more than 138 images by my count. I will no doubt need more – I’m short of non-recurring characters, for example – but that’s probably 50-70% of the images that I will need by the end of the campaign. A significant part of my game prep has therefore been done at this point.

The Campaign In Detail

Below is a large illustration, which is followed by my adventure first-drafts, now ordered in sequence, for the entire campaign. Everything up to the bottom of the list above is public information, I have no problems with the player reading any of it; but anything below that illustration is off-limits – I’m using it as a demarcation line.

So that he doesn’t catch glimpses by scrolling past while looking for a recent post, here’s a list of the last ten posts (with links WHICH OPEN IN THE CURRENT WINDOW), which everyone else is free to ignore (and yes, I have tried to think of everything)!

1. 1. A Rose By Any Other Name
2. 2. Lost Christmas: A Scenario Of Elves
3. 3. Nuances Of Meaning: Scenario v. Adventure
4. 4. Nuances Of Meaning: Scenario v. Adventure
5. 5. RPGs In Technicolor, Part 2
6. 6. RPGs In Technicolor, Part 1
7. 7. Full Nondisclosure in an RPG
8. 8. The Curse Of Excess Prep Time
9. 9. The Four Frontiers Of ‘Alien’
10. 10. The Miracle Of Wood
11. Next Page.

Saxon, you should read no further – the 60% of the article that remains will ruin the game for you for the next 5 years or so! Everyone else can keep reading after this brief interruption…..

Now, where were we…?

Okay, so here’s what’s left in this post: I’m going to copy my draft notes for each of the adventures listed above, in sequence – no spell-checking, no formatting (aside from the titles), nothing. The first one is quite lengthy and well-developed; the remainder less so.

01/ A Nightmare At (on, of) Christmas (2640 words)

Notes: I’ve started off using one name for the Species of the Companion and the same name for him as an individual because I liked it so much. The text below has NOT been corrected.

Open with the TARDIS materializing in an alleyway on Earth on a snowy night. Many windows bear Christmas decorations, but there is no electrical lighting and none of the decorations are powered. In a small square beyond the alleyway, a man stands on a cart and points at a blue hot-air balloon whose passenger is firing a beam of light at a giant robotic machine that looks a little like a Cyberman, but one distinctly different from any that you have seen before. You barely take in the words of the man on the cart, and will never be sure that you have remembered them properly: “That, Ladies and Gentleman, is the Doctor. Time and time again, he has done this, and always without thanks or acknowledgement. But -no more!- Doctor, on behalf of everyone you have ever saved, or fought to save, we thank you!” – and he leads the others in a round of applause as the figure directs a vortex of some kind at the robotic apparition, even as it falls toward the city below, bereft of its controlling influence.

Doctor, you can’t get a good look at the figure in the balloon, he is too distant. All you can tell is that he’s thin, and sort of well-dressed, and has a great air of regret about him. Admittedly, you’re distracted – it should not be possible for you to cross your own timeline except under extremely rare and difficult circumstances, when the laws of reality itself are in flux. And you’ve seen no signs of any such strange manifestation.

Your companion, a rather quickwitted Quasima from the planet Brozt, a sentient color with telepathic communications abilities, calls you back into the Tardis and manipulates the chameleon circuit, intrerfacing with it directly to override the Doctor’s configuration, something that you’ve asked it not to do before – and the one subject on which it has refused to listen. The fact that it is able to do so at all still astonishes you enough that, as usual, you make no serious protest.

‘You said yourself, this encounter should be impossible. Yet it happens. We should observe without being seen until we determine the shape of this particular configuration of fate,” he says, a bright blue shade of excitement. It does that, doctor – treating your mental observations as though they had been spoken aloud, and leading your thoughts in new, and sometimes unexpected, directions.

Using the TARDIS’ sensors, which Quasima has activated, you see the balloon land, the man on the cart clasping the Doctor’s hand while the crowd cheers. They talk for a while, looking at a young boy and a colored serving-girl, and then the pair vanish down another alley. Looking at the face of “The Doctor,” it’s not an incarnation of yourself that you recognize.

*** Let the Dr do anything he likes over the next few hours EXCEPT contact his future incarnation.

If he attempts to leave, or seems at a loss about what to do, he will discover that the TARDIS seems stuck in the here and now like a fly on flypaper. Calling up the appropriate display if he tries, the Dr will find that temporal vortex itself is in a state of flux, heaving and seething; safety circuits have automatically engaged because attempting passage in space or time would be extremely dangerous right now. At best, you could take off, damage TARDIS circuits possibly irreparably (given the local time frame) and rematerialize exactly where you left from, having gained nothing.

At the first sign of frustration or impatience, Quasima distracts the Doctor by suggesting that the Doctor’s Library might contain relevant information, knowing that once he gets lost in the pages of a book or twelve, whole days can pass him by. Have no fear, Quasima tells him, he will watch for any changes of significance and bring developments to the Doctor’s attention.

A couple of hours later, in the dark of the (local) night, the future incarnation of the Doctor will depart – the TARDIS systems showing that he is more willing to risk damage bouncing around an unstable time stream, as though he were used to it, and – obviously – that he had overridden the safety circuits that are holding the 8th doctor in place. Who knows what internal systems he has juryriged to keep his TARDIS flying? It’s quite possible that his Gallifreayan teachers would be outraged.

Finally, it’s safe for the Doctor to venture out, but he has finally found the reference he’s been searching for – a description of the trans-temportal field generated by a device of Dalek origin called a Dimensional Vault. Cybermen using Dalek technology? The Doctor using Dalek technology? Neither is all that reassuring, but the only other option – that the Daleks are active here and now (whenever this is) -and the Doctor missed it- – is even less palatable. Any thoughts of leaving can now be dismissed; this needs immediate and vigorous investigation.

At last, the Doctor emerges, and discovers that it is Christmas Day, 1851

Shortly thereafter, the TARDIS will begin recording an unusual and unexpected shower of shooting stars all over England. Each is logged by the TARDIS as having a temporal vector that doesn’t match the local time-stream – in other words, each is an object emerging from the time stream, materializing at high altitude (or low orbit) and falling to the earth. About half of them land intact – Eastern England soon looks like a 20th century war zone.

The morning newspapers carry first-hand accounts of investigations of these falling stars – parts of metal men, similar to those reported in central London on Christmas Eve. There is speculation that the incident that had seemed concluded was just the beginning of the end. One thing is clear – the Doctor will have to find some of these pieces and examine them closely.

Quasima engages the Doctor’s philosophic bent by asking a hypothetical: “Is it possible that the doctor’s future incarnation (assuming that he was who he was credited as being) was so distracted by the problem at hand that he took his eye off a bigger picture, or failed to notice it at all?” Galling though it might be, the Doctor can’t help but admit the possibility. Which means that it is up to him to look into that bigger picture, and do something about it, cleaning up after his future self.

By now, he’s constructed a working theory about the events experienced by the future-Doctor, one that he’s fairly certain is largely correct:

Cybermen were trapped in the time stream or the void with Daleks, and escaped to here using stolen Dalek technology. Low on power and resources, they set about constructing a Cyberking from local resources instead of focussing on converting the locals, who would have been deemed technologically unworthy of assimilation. The Future-Doctor stumbled into the middle of the situation, discovered the dimensional vault and used it to send the cyberking back into the timestream, and thought that to be an end to it.

But this leaves a question unanswered, a serious one: What were the Cybermen doing with the technology AFTER they had used it? Why had they left it intact, to be used as a weapon against them? Why hadn’t they dismantled it for its power supply, if they were so short of supply that they needed to use local technology to create a steam-powered Cyberking? Or simply destroyed it? Or kept it guarded within their base of operations? None of it makes sense!

“Speculation,” offers Quasima: “What if those present were only a small fraction of the numbers trapped, and the device was intended to retrieve more of their kind?”

This connects with something that the Doctor read in that reference work that he ultimately dredged up from his library: unless it is properly configured by a Spacial Matrix Focus, a Dimensional Vault can function as a Reality Pump – push something into other-space with it, and something already there can get pushed out. A Dalek Spacial Matrix Focus would be a medium-sized device a little larger than a mailbox, but quite heavy, and not at all portable – to use the Vault as he did, the Future-Doctor would have to have removed it from the Matrix Focus.

Which means that Daleks and Cybermen could have been pushed out of wherever they were hiding by the arrival of the Cyberking – perhaps in great numbers. The Daleks are pewrfectly capable of functioning in Space, and would have set about rejoining or rebuilding their empire; they are a problem for another day. The Cybermen can survive in space, but are otherwise poorly equipped for it; they would have fallen, and at least partially burned up in the atmosphere. But if even a small part remained intact and functional, it would seek to assimilate a new host, and the disease that is the Cybermen would start growing once again. Every scrap of cyberman must be examined.

“Not so,” states Quasima. “There are two possibilities: either the recovered materials are inactive, and pose no threat, or they are not. If they pose no threat, there would be no problems reporting the discovery of the inert remains; hence the reports in the paper communications device. If they posed a threat, either no such report would be made, or – if there was a period of transition – only preliminary reports would be made. Any attempt to elicit further information would be met with deflection or denial.”

“Can it be assumed that emergence would have taken place in a relatively confined spacial location?”

***reply

“Then it should be possible to predict a distribution pattern, backtracking from known landing sites and tracks of debris in the sky to that spacial location, then projecting forwards. Any predicted location from which no reports of falling debris would be suspicious. What is needed is astronomical observations of the reported phenomenon, preferably aggregated in some form. The news device quoted an Astronomer Royal, who seems a good place to start.”

***roleplay

(this is the only part that I researched)

The current Astronomer Royal has held the position for 16 years, having been appointed by William IV in 1835, just two years before the King was succeeded by Queen Victoria. His name is Sir George Biddell Airy.

His many achievements include work on planetary orbits, measuring the mean density of the Earth, a method of solution of two-dimensional problems in solid mechanics, and, in his role as Astronomer Royal, establishing Greenwich as the location of the prime meridian. His reputation was tarnished in later years by allegations that, through his inaction, Britain lost the opportunity of priority in the discovery of the planet Neptune.

Airy was born at Alnwick, one of a long line of Airys who traced their descent back to a family of the same name residing at Kentmere, in Westmorland, in the 14th century. The branch to which he belonged, having suffered in the English Civil War, moved to Lincolnshire and became farmers. Airy was educated first at elementary schools in Hereford, and afterwards at Colchester Royal Grammar School. An introverted child, Airy gained popularity with his schoolmates through his great skill in the construction of peashooters.

From the age of 13, Airy stayed frequently with his uncle, Arthur Biddell at Playford, Suffolk. Biddell introduced Airy to his friend Thomas Clarkson, the slave trade abolitionist who lived at Playford Hall. Clarkson had an MA in mathematics from Cambridge, and examined Airy in classics and then subsequently arranged for him to be examined by a Fellow from Trinity College, Cambridge on his knowledge of mathematics. As a result, he entered Trinity in 1819, as a sizar, meaning that he paid a reduced fee but essentially worked as a servant to make good the fee reduction.

In Trinity college Airy had a brilliant career, and seems to have been almost immediately recognised as the leading man of his year. In 1822 he was elected scholar of Trinity, and in the following year he graduated as senior wrangler and obtained first Smith’s Prize. On 1 October 1824 he was elected fellow of Trinity, and in December 1826 was appointed Lucasian professor of mathematics in succession to Thomas Turton. This chair he held for little more than a year, being elected in February 1828 Plumian professor of astronomy and director of the new Cambridge Observatory.

In June 1835, after seven years as director of Cambridge Observatory, Airy was appointed Astronomer Royal in succession to John Pond, and began his long career at the national observatory which constitutes his chief title to fame. The condition of the observatory at the time of his appointment was such that Lord Auckland, the first Lord of the Admiralty, considered that “it ought to be cleared out,” while Airy admitted that “it was in a queer state.”

With his usual energy he set to work at once to reorganise the whole management. He remodelled the volumes of observations, put the library on a proper footing, installed the new (Sheepshanks) equatorial telescope mount, and organised a new magnetic observatory. In 1847 an altazimuth was erected, designed by Airy to enable observations of the moon to be made not only on the meridian, but whenever it might be visible. In 1848, he invented the Reflex Zenith Tube to replace the Zenith Sector previously employed – a special kind of telescope designed to point straight up at or near the zenith. They are used for precision measurement of star positions, to simplify telescope construction, or both.

In 1836 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1840, a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

At the end of 1850 the “great transit circle” telescope of 203 mm (8 inch) aperture and 3.5 m (11 ft 6 in) focal length was erected. It remained the principal instrument of its class at the observatory for more than 170 years. Plans were also in hand for the replacement of the last instruments dating to the time of his predecessor, a task that Airy predicted would take another decade.

Airy is an accomplished mathematician, and industrious to a fault, but he sometimes lacks imagination. He would never have dreamed of attempting to determine an origin point for the ‘meteor shower’, assuming that it was a dispersed phenomenon relating to a region of space, and hence that there was no value in such calculations. However, he has compiled as many reports of the objects as possible in an attempt to identify those seen by different observers from different positions in an attempt to determine the actual number of objects signted, suspecting that it was far fewer than the newspapers have suggested. He has dismissed as poppycock the media “suggestions” of metal men; it is to quell such nonsense that he has undertaken his investigation.

*** If the doctor convinces Airy that he is a reliable and sensible scientist and not an alarmist bent on sewing panic amongst the herd, he will be happy to hand over a carbon-copy of the reports he has collated, which he was preparing for the use of another astronomer to verify Airy’s findings. If he doesn’t convince Airy, he will have to get them some other way – scanning them with his sonic screwdriver, for example, for display back in the Tardis.

*** Eventually, a ‘hole’ will be discovered in the observations centered around

Location TBD

– a fragment, still active, has fallen to earth near a semi-rural workhouse and orphanage, has converted some of the staff, and is preparing to convert the children into a subordinate sub-order of cybermen, “Cyberspawn”.

02/ The Omicron Derivative (2) (1058 words)

Dr defeats an unrelated Dalek plan. Adventure starts at the height of the action.

In the process, he captures a weapon, The Omicron Derivative. He can’t destroy it without catastrophic consequences, and he can’t leave it in the Tardis because it would consime the temporal energy, eventually gaining enough power to activate (catastrophic consequences) so there’s only one place where it might be safe – The Omega Arsenal.

The Omicron Derivative forces atomic electron shells outwards by tunnelling virtual particles into the innermost electron shells through the manipulation of quarks within the nucleus. This causes profound effects – chemical processes are completely dependent on the configuration of the outermost electron shells, the electrical and chemical properties of the elements derive from these configurations. In effect, every element exposed to this radiative field behavies as though it were higher on the periodic table. How much higher depends on the outermost shell and it’s unfilled capacity. Worse, when the energy from the radiative beam is withdrawn, the electrons fall back, emitting significant quantities of electromagnetic radiation. The number of shells that collapse determines the wavelength and energy levels of the resulting display – from invisible infrared for Hydrogen and Helium, to merely visual light displays for Lithium through Neon, to low-frequency radio ‘noise’ for Sodium through Krypton, and high-frequency noise from Rubidium through Radon, to gamma radiation above Francium.

SOME of the effects:

Hydrogen: becomes a solid, Lithium, that reacts chemically with almost everything.
Helium: becomes a solid, Beryllium. Stars collapse into solids and their cores into black holes that will eventually consume them completely.

Carbon: becomes a gas, Oxygen. No organic compound can survive this transformation. Say no more.
Nitrogen becomes a gas, Flourine, which reacts explosively with Lithium and Beryllium – so terrestrial atmospheres (which contain some Hydrogen and Helium) explode.
Oxygen becomes Neon so those exploding atmospheres glow brightly green-white.

Silicon: becomes Titanium. All semiconductors and computers short out irreversably.
Iron 26 becomes Zirconium, so blood turns to crystals.
Copper 29 becomes Technetium, a relatively poor conductor as metals go, with a relatively low melting point – so every electrical circuit melts.
Calcium ALSO becomes Zirconium, so bones are momentarily made of fragile crystals.

These ignore resulting chemical reactions (table salt becomes electrically-charged Vanadium Gallide, which instantly bonds with all the Oxygen-that-used-to-be-Carbon to become a toxic, corrosive, electricallty-charged liquid that erupts in bolts of lightning that vaporize pockets of the liquid) and radiation-induced changes (every nuclear reactor immediately goes super-critical and begins melting down).

The device is a bomb (galactic range) with a long countdown timer to give those deploying it time to get clear. 32 hours are on the clock when the Dr liberates the prototype from the Daleks and destroys the research and design blueprints in their master computer. Plenty of time to disarm it using the Tardis’ systems.

Except that, as he is dematerializing, the Daleks hit the TARDIS with a weapon designed to induce an electrical field in anything enfolded by a dimensional tesseract. This is specifically an experimental anti-TARDIS weapon that electrifies everything inside, including the Doctor. He is immediately knocked unconscious. The TARDIS’ internal systems immediately crash. And the bomb begins counting down, its timer acticvated by the electrical current.

The companion is unaffected and is able to complete the dematerialization, then apply electrocardial stimulation to revive the Doctor. One by one, Tardis systems begin to reboot, but all navigational reference has been lost. Ordinarily, that’s not a problem; TARDIS systems rarely malfunction but it has been known to happen from time to time, so defaults and fail-safes are engineered into the systems. Those that can’t safely be brought on-line immediately enter a caretaker mode. The TARDIS will lock onto the first habitable environment that it finds an rematerialize.

Bringing the systems back on-line is a tedius but relatively straightforward process that takes about a day, and is only semi-automatic. However, without at three navigational reference points, it can only travel from random point to random point, with no temporal or directional control at all. Solving that is also a tedius but straightforward process: go somewhere, get the precise location in time and space from the locals, and enter the coordinates into the Tardis. From three such fixes, it can compute a translation matrix that matches its internal referances to the matching coordinates provided. It generally only taks an hour or so at each location to get the local coordinates – if the populace are advanced enough to provide them – or a day or two for the Tardis’ sensors to identify the system and the approximate date from planetary configurations (there is also always a small error in such determinations, which time lords live with). Again, tedius but not difficult. Until you take on board a bomb with a 32-hour countdown.

Cutting the reboot process to the bone: 18 hours, some of it automatic. Leaves 14 hours. Time to disarm the bomb, with a fully functional TARDIS: 10 hours. With a partially-functional TARDIS: 18 hours or more. Conclusion: there isn’t going to be enough time to disarm the bomb. Which means taking it somewhere safe. Which requires navigational references.

Time for one planetary reading; the other two coordinates will have to be acquired locally, even if that takes multiple attempts. Better for all three to be locally acquired. Of course, that often means getting entangled in whatever is going on, locally. At best, 3 hours; more likely, 9-18 hours. The doctor has only 14 hours.

And, finally, there is the question of where to take it. If it were disarmed, it could be safely dropped into the heart of any nearby supernova and that would be the end of it; but with hours or possibly mere minutes on the clock, there is only one safe place: The Omega Archive, where time is (literally) stopped. Bureacracy will probably consume an hour, convincing his fellow time lords that the Omicron Derivative needs to be emplaced there another hour – and both could take at least that long again. He will need to allow 5 hours to deliver and unload the device.

Which means that the doctor has just 9 hours to get those navigational references – which is cutting things rather close.

02 Part 2 – The Pacifist (X1) (458 words)

Psionic Statues.

Planet Persilius III, orbiting a Neutron Star, but it was previously a type O supergiant that became a Lazarus Star. This happens when the star goes supernova but for unknown reasons the supernova stops and reverses itself and the star reenters the main sequence for a period of time thanks to the shedding of mass in the catastrophic event. Any planets that survive are enriched with high-atomic-mass radioactives, which have a number of applications, so such planets are always of interest to mining species.

Persilius III did not exist prior to the Lazarus Event; it appears to have formed from the shell of the original star that was shed in that event, and is the only known example of that ultra-rare phenomenon. Much of the rarity stems from the fact that the collapse into a neutron star (or a black hole) would have taken place before the planet had finished forming, and the gravitational instability would inhibit planetary collapse. Certainly, there was no time for life to have evolved on the resuting planet, which became a wasteland immediately due to the lack of solar radiaton to create and fuel ecosystems. So the discovery of statues on the planet is quite inexplicable unless they were placed their by someone else. Why is unknown.

What’s more, the statues are psionic – they stir thoughts in the beholder that are alien to both their personality and to the species. Sometimes, these thoughts are profound and illluminating; sometimes they are deeply disturbing. Various species have joined together to create a Monestary on the surface of Persilius III for those who daily visit the statues and meditate upon the thoughts they stir in search of that one thought of enlightenment. All who attend are bound together by common purpose, sharing a kinship beyond any racial boundaries.

And one of them is a Dalek, who came here to destroy the Statues because they are claimed to connect to a time free of Dalek influence, an affront to Dalek superiority. The statues gave him a vision of the Dalek species as part of an interstellar super-ecosystem, showing him how even they depended on others for their ongoing existence. This made him the most unthinkable kind of Dalek in existence: a fully-armed pacifist. And someone has just murdered him for it.

*** In fact, it is the Dalek Pacifist himself who has done so, when his purification cycle could no longer be overridden. It refused to return to the limited mindframe of perception that defines all other Daleks, because its first thought when it did so would be to obliterate the insight that it had been gifted, and that was something that he could not tolerate.

Obtain first Nav reference.

02 Part 3 – Lullaby (A+F1) (277 words)

A Plotline that reveals more about the abilities and limitations of Quasima. Steal an idea from a Space Master module.

A derelict colony ship. Tardis arrives to find the crew missing and most of the colonists dead; only three remain in cryosleep capsules. The ship’s computer-controls and log banks have been badly damaged by some sort of physical assault and the environmental systems have been shut down. The empty cryo-units have been smashed open and there’s blood here and there. Maybe one of the crew went insane? Or maybe the computer went crazy and killed the crew? Did it have some sort of servo-units that it controlled? Where was the ship heading? When was it supposed to arrive? Pitting from micrometerorites suggests that it has been in space a LONG time, potentially much longer than intended. The only way to try and get answers is to awaken the remaining passangers. Either they can get the ship runnng again, or that would be a necessary step to rescuing them. That can’t be done until the environmental systems are reactrivated. When the doctor does so, it awakens an alien in the cargo hold that came aboard after the mission started. Mission was designed to capture asteroids and vaporize them with lasers to produce a high-reaction-mass sublight drive; creature can survive without air and in the cold of space for long periods of time. It has been hibernating in the cargo hold, awakening every now and then to feed. It is sentient but doesn’t consider any life form but its own to be anything more than food.

Obtain second navigational reference.

02 Part 4 – Yesterday Once More (X3) (494 words)

A human submarine captain commanding an American Attack Sub believes that he has travelled through a crack in time 12 hours into the future and witnessed a Russian nuclear launch triggered by a flock of geese over siberia. He resolves to return to the past by reversing his course and travelling back through the crack, then launching a pre-emptive first strike against the Russians. Not all his crew are convinced and command begins to break down aboard the sub; in particular, his first officer refuses to go along with the Captain’s plan.

The Doctor arrives, discovers the crew at war with each other, and isn’t convinced by the Captain’s plans either. Keep careful notes of what everyone Says and Does.

The Doctor resolves to travel into the future using the tardis (now that he has the calibration that he needs) to learn the truth because he knows that the world was not annihalated in a nuclear exchange on [date] – though it did come close, thanks to those pesky Siberian geese.

He travels into the future, where he meets the captain’s past self and discovers that the captain’s beliefs are the result of a deception by [Aquatic who race TBD, possibly Zygons]. He travels to their underwater sanctuary and confronts them, discovering that they have a time traveller of their own, who stole an experimental temporal vortex from the humans when they attacked his people and fled into the past to sound a warning.

The Doctor travels back in time to the arrival date of the time traveller and detects Dalek weapons signatures in his wounds, determining that the time traveller’s beliefs are another deception, this time by the Daleks.

He convinces the [aquatic race] and obtains proof that the Captain will believe – the Bosun is actually an imposter from the Alien Race who is pushing the Captain toward launching against the Russians. The Doctor exposes him, and establishes peace amongst the crew, but not before the Bosun sabotages the electronics and begins the launch sequence. Captain and crew can stop the attack but only by scuttling the ship. Given that the Bosun’s race were also being manipulated, the Captain thinks that might be for the best; if he reports these events, the entire crew will probably be hospitalized, but when [aquatic race] are eventually encountered, his reports will convince humanity that they are hostile. Better that he, his ship, and his crew should vanish at sea. Tensions with the Russians will rise for a time, but be forgotten when nothing comes of it. He will send a message to his command indicating an electronics failure in the sub’s systems leading to a potential unauthorized launch (all true) and that he has scuttled the ship to prevent triggering War. Only the doctor will remain, to tell the families of those lost the truth when it is safe for him to do so.

Obtain Third navigational reference.

02 Epilog – A Petty Revenge (X5) (378 words)

In conversation, en route to Gallifrey, Quasima speculates that the entire purpose of the Omicron Derivative was to destroy the tardis and everything inside, presumably including the Doctor.

He realizes that the Submarine plot was all a delaying tactic designed to eat up time so that the doctor could not succeed in dactivating the Omega Derivative, theorizes that the weapon was always intended to be a trap aimed at destroying the Doctor, discovers a visual memory circuit within the design which contains a message for the Doctor from Davros (generic ‘you have interfered with the glorious destiny of the Dalek people too many times, Doctor. With the creation and detonation of the Omicron Derivative within the dimensional boundaries of the Tardis, everything that is now, or ever has been, within it will be obliterated while the outside universe carries on unharmed.’

The Doctor has to admit that he’s interfered in enough Dalek plans over the years to be public enemy #1 in their eyes. But it’s more significant than that; time itself is irrelevant inside the Tardis, save for a residual temporal momentum that each travellor brings with him. Keeping that from accumulating too much is why every incarnation of the doctor recreates the tardis Control Room, and the interior decor in general. Aside from thos factor’s, it’s always everywhen at the same time within. Which means that the destructive force of the Omicron Derivative would have rebounded, or perhaps ricocheted is the more accurate term, throughout the existence of the Doctor, destroying all 8 incarnations and any future ones that might have still been using the same Tardis – and he has no intention of changing ship anytime soon. Which means that all those interventions against the Daleks would also go away.

The whole thing has been a revenge ploy by Davros, huge resources have obviously been expended towards this end. It is clear that Davros and the Daleks don’t know of the Omega Archive, in which the Omicron Derivative can be safely stored and forgotten.

All things considered, he will be very happy to get it safely locked away in the Omega Archive, even if it means going back to Gallifrey and dealing with the altogether too stuffy Council Of Time Lords…

Note that it’s extremely common for me to present the player with explanations, tech notes, history, etc, that his character would know, but that he might not.

03/ Should Auld Acquantance Be Forgot (3) (275 words)

Doctor Meets the current President, receives a cryptic warning. The time lords have not had a lot of success in deciphering the warning, but they have tracked it back to the turning point, the origin of events, and are warning all Time Lords to stay well clear of it

A junior technician is found dead, having died and failed to regenerate – a full week prior to his serving a number of duty shifts. His neighbour describes a strange roman decoration that has gone missing from the technician’s quarters. The Doctor realizes that the master has killed the technician, stolen his unused regenerations, learned all he could of the warning, and then left in his Tardis – presumably to try and take advantage of the situation. Dr follows, intent on stopping the Master.

Regeneration: every time a time lord Regenerates, he draws upon his configuration in an alternate timeline, a parallel universe, extracting him from the timestream of that universe and transferring his life in that timeline to his primary lifeline. This reshapes the Primary to the physicial configuration of the alternate. The more distinctly different that configuration, the easier it is to ‘lock on’ to the alternate, producing an easier and less traumatic transferance and Regeneration. Time Lords don’t like to think about this because of the inherent arrogance in presuming that the rights of the “primary” supercede those of the Alternate. Some time lords like to look human and choose very human appearance (which comes naturally to them); others have other preferances. Include an appearance by a time lord who has a fascination for Sontarans and Jidoon and only reluctantly chooses human appearance.

04/ The Master Of The Cybermen (Part 1 of a two-part adventure) (4) (79 words)

The master promptly got himself captured by the Cybermen, who prepared to download the sum total of his knowledge. This might not make them unstoppable but it will come close – instead of simply being able to adapt to overcome past defeats, they will be able to adapt to overcome future ones, so that those defeats do not take place. The madness of the master interacts with the telepathic probe (needs a better name) of the cybermen and splinters time.

05/ The Cybermen Of The Master (Part 2 of a two-part adventure) (5) (146 words)

The doctor, with the Master’s assistance, has to stitch it back together by placing himself on-line with the cybercontroller and weaving a series of false narratives that has the cybermen adopting the very weaknesses that lead to each defeat. One of the Master’s tales has a key cybership crashing onto Skaro in the midst of an attempted invasion of the planet by Sontarans, making Daleks aware of cybermen for the first time and triggering eons of conflict between them. Master and Doctor go separate ways. Doctor realizes that many of his past encounters with alien menaces are the result of the Master weaving traps for him into the narrative of the Cybermen’s future history. The fragmentation of time has been stopped, but it will take time for each fault line to heal – but the total decimation of time itself has been averted.

06/ Venturi Station (F3) (244 words)

A gas giant named Venturi contains huge clouds of petrochemicals that are being mined for pharmaceuticals by an orbiting syphon, which concentrates the clouds, extracts the good stuff (discarding the rest) and then transporting the concentrate (at subzero temperatures) as a frozen sludge to an orbiting collection station, once every hour (when the collection station is directly overhead). What the miners don’t realize is that the atmosphere of the gas giant is inhabitet by a sentient race who like such conditions, floating on the clouds and drinking the concentrates, which their bodies convert into food. Attempts at communication have been mistaken for electromagnetic disturbances in the atmosphere, and the inhabitants have been forced into a hostile response to what is effectively the stripmining of their food supply. They have attacked the collector several times, forcing the collection station to send down repair crews. The last such repair crew were killed until there were only two left, before evacuating back to the collection station. Unknown to the miners, at human pressures and temperatures, the life forms become gaseous in nature, and one of them has “invaded” the body of one of the two repair crew survivors; he is being held in the sick bay of the collection station because his bio-readings are all over the place, in fact he should be dead based on those readings. The commander of the station is preparing to send a second repair crew when the Doctor arrives.

07/ The Wellspring Of Life (b+C) (159 words)

Dalek X creates a trap for the Doctor in order to get a sample of Gallifreyan DNA. He doesn’t care what happens regarding the trap after he has this sample. What Bait?
Location is a human space station.

Dr Escapes this trap, decides that whatever the Daleks want with the sample is reason enough to deny them, confronts Dalek X and denatures the sample, learns that Dalek X wants to engineer time lord regeneration into the Dalek Genome, learns the genetic history of the Daleks.

Adventure is to contain a situation in which one solution is for Quasima to assume material form. Reveals the consequences to the Doctor – this is fatal to beings of Quasima’s kind and cannot be reversed.

Adventure b is to take place before adventure a (in which the Doctor and Dalek X first meet from Dalek X’s perspective). Which means Dalek X knows the Doctor but not vice-versa in this adventure.

08/ Coming Of Ageless (6+B+[X4=F2]) (417 words)

Background news/events: The Sontarans on Skaro find themselves with a two-front war: Daleks on one side, and Cybermen on the other. NB: It’s not just humans who get converted by Cyber Units, many races are vulnerable. Council of TIme contacts the Doctor to inform him that Daleks have attempted to breach the Omega Arsenal through one of the fissures in time. They were repulsed but it is almost certain that they will try again. The council does not understand how the Daleks learned of the existence of the arsenal. The Doctor theorizes that the information was downloaded into the minds of converted Sontarans which were then captured and ‘interrogated’ by the Daleks. Not only did the Daleks employ captured Sontaran ships to escape Skaro, but they did so with knowledge of the Arsenal that they didn’t have before.

The doctor has an unrelated adventure. He takes Quasima home for a ceremony in which the maturing color is granted a new hue. A crises evolves, of course:

A comet heads into a solar system as it has done every few millennia since the system came into existence. But this time, the star it orbits has died and collapsed into a black hole. The shifts in gravitation accelerate the comet and break it up, slingshotting some of the remnants into space at almost 1/10th the speed of light. Fifty years later, several of those remnants pass through an inhabited star system and are tracked. One strikes the moon of the inhabited world, shattering it. Almost 1/3 the lunar mass begins to rain down on the planet below. Disaster! About 1/4 is ejected into deeper space by the impact; rains of meteors will be an annual event for the next 500 years or more. And the rest remains as an Asteroid field where the moon used to be; it will gradually become a debris ring orbiting the planet. The motherworld of the inhabitants realizes that something is wrong when the planet loses communications and despatches a starship to assess the situation and render assistance – but even with their FTL drive, it will still take them almost three years to reach the planet. So, when the Doctor comes visiting, the administrators of the planet give him a choice: go there and assist the colonists with whatever their problem is, or they will confiscate the TARDIS and attempt to do so themselves, shutting down or cutting circuits until they gain control of it.

09/ Ogrons To The Left Of Me, Daleks To The Right (a) (1016 words)

The first encounter between The Doctor and Dalek X (from Dalek X’s point of view). Inspired by the name of one of the forbidden weapons in the Omega Archive, The Skaro Degradations.

Human ship crashlands on Skaro, Dr arrives, determines that the ship needs a new power regulator to be able to depart, sets out to capture one, discovers an Ogron Scientist (a contradiction in terms), learns that the Ogron is actually a Dalek (Dalek X), captures cell samples and DNA maps, steals a power regulator from the Daleks, repairs the ship which begins recharging its accumulators, spends the time while waiting analyzing the captured data, discovers what Dalek X is up to (see below) and the origin of the Ogrons and that Dalek X has been permitted to use an Ogron as a biological 2-legged travel chair, decides that Dalek X’s research needs to be sabotaged/stopped, comes up with a plan, Daleks attack before he can implement it, ship escapes with Dr on board, Dr finds an implementation plan in which Dalek X plans to field-test his most promising creations, encounters a Time Lord who has been assigned by the Council Of Time to capture these variants and the retroviruses they carry and generate perverted versions of the Purification Virus which is to use to sabotage the test. Both the original retroviruses and his modifications will then be placed in the Omega Archives. Dr assists, after realizing that unless a clear benefit is seen, the dalek drive for Racial Purity will eventually relegate Dalek X’s creations to the category of abominations.

*** The Skaro Degradations [unless otherwise specified elsewhere] were an earlier attempt by Dalek X to solve the problem by introducing a retrovirus into the Dalek Paragdigm that produced random scrambling of Dalek DNA, and a second external virus that reconfigured the resulting life form into ‘more pure’ Dalek.

Every species has genes that are critical to the survival and proper functioning of the biological organism; Daleks include certain mental and emotional tendencies in their list of those critical functions at the expense of external ‘perfection’ and appearance, which other species would include on their list of critical traits. The critical traits are no more than 5-10% of the total DNA, and the fundamental biological functions are another 30% of the DNA sequences.

There are also a number of subsequences of DNA that are referenced at various points in the development / maturation process; these were once dominant traits of the species but were relegated into the background by evolution. This comprises another 40-45% or so of the DNA.

10% of the remaining DNA sequences encode preprogramming against viruses and other biological agents that give the immune systems of the lifeform a head-start. Individuals vary in the efficiency with which these sequences can be activated, producing diversity of immunilogical-based resistance to disease. Some family groups / races within a species carry encoding for diseases that others do not, and vice-versa; it is beleived that there is a limit to how many such codes can be contained in DNA.

That leaves 5-15% of DNA to describe individual traits. Most of this code is redundant or dead code, used as punctuation within the genetic sequence; only 2-3% of this material actually matters.

Thus, chimpanzees and humans have 97%-identical DNA, but no-one would deny that they are completely different species.

Daleks copy the 5-10% and 5% of the 5-15% from the ‘master copy’. The 40-45% is mostly considered irrelevant because it is common to all higher lifeforms on Skaro, but 15% of it has been modified to confer resistance to the most common forms of radiation damage / mutation, and that 15% is also copied from the ‘master file’ (and is one of the key differences from Davros’ DNA). Some of this resistance takes the form of a different biological form to that of Davros – another 2% of the 5-15%. The lifeform itself is engineered to be simpler than most advanced lifeforms and hence more resistant to various forms of damage, and requiring less genetic code to define it, making room for the additional code. All told, there are 27-32% of the genetic sequence that can’t be altered without creating something that is no longer ‘Dalek’.

It is the remaining 68-73% that Dalek X’s retrovirus plays fast and loose, with the second retrovirus engineered to correct any distubance to the critical 27-32%.

• 5-10 critical – overwritten by master copy = 0
• 40-45 evolutionary reference – 15% overwriiten by master copy = 25-30%
• 10 autoimmune programming
• 5-15 individualism, mostly punctuation – 5% overwritten by master copy – 2% overwritten by master copy = 0-8%

Changes in the 25-30 result in a different evolutionary path during development, usually aborts the fetus because it becomes incompatible with the artificial environment, occasionally permits a faster-maturing variant or some other useful creature – the Ogrons were one such.

Changes in the 10 usually leave the Dalek vulnerable to a disease that most Daleks are immune to. Generally not significant, and in most cases where it becomes relevant, it results in the termination of the naeonatal Dalek. On rare occasions (0.1%) a mutation will be an enhancement that gets replicated throughout the Dalek population – conferring resistance to a disease that has yet to be encountered, for example, or to various potential biological weapons, or to radiation / mutations.

But it’s the 8% that Dalek X was primarily targetting. Most of this is dead code and makes no difference, but in roughly 3% of cases, it produces a variant Dalek, a mutation that Dalek X considers potentially favorable, or one that overcomes the genetic flaws that Dalek X believes will represent the end of the Dalek species.

The Asylum of the Daleks was originally created to hold his creations. His ‘purification’ retrovirus would eventually be modified into the Dalek Conversion technology that would cause such mayhem in the post-Time War society.

10/ The Last World (X6) (699 words)

(yes, this is copied directly from earlier in this write-up).

All of galactic history would be different after the Time War, and why that would be so. For a start, the Daleks would not be the preeminent threat to galactic society, that they were in the pre-reboot series (the Time War falling somewhere in between the last ‘classic’ season and the first ‘rebooted’ season). Now, that might suggest that it would be a safer, cleaner place, but I happened to have watched a programme about the great extinction of species that appears to be taking place right now (in geological time), and the potential for ecological growth that opens up when a species is driven extinct, leaving a slot in the food chain empty.

The weakness migrates up the food chain, weakening species who used the extinct creatures as a food source or other resource, perhaps to the point where they also become extinct, perhaps not. But unless the extinction takes place at the most fundamental level of any ecological cycle, there will be a platform remaining that some other species can move into – and if there is any sort of competition for resources experienced by that species, it will be pushed into occupying the empty slot. Inevitably, this produces a population explosion.

If there are predator species that consume the booming-population species, then this boom also migrates up the food chain, becoming ever-more-concentrated, and a new ecological balance is achieved. If not, then the boom species becomes a pest, and the source of a new ecological imbalance that will probably drive other species to the point of exstinction.

Suddenly, I viewed the dying off of the Daleks in this light, and the universe as a giant sociological ecosystem, with Daleks the self-appointed apex predators.

• All the species that the Daleks wiped out or constrained would undergo population booms.
• Any lesser enemies that the Daleks supressed would become more prevalent, perhaps even relatively unstoppable.
• Any resources that the Daleks consumed would be free for all – first come, first served – to anyone strong enough to take and hold them.
• Some societies and life-forms would flourish as a consequence, while others might be diminished.
• Some societies and life-forms would take new evolutionary paths because they would not longer have to fight against Dalek hostilitities.
• Some of these changes would be peaceful and progressive; others would be more hostile.
• By the time you get into the second-order consequences and beyond, the entire galaxu would look sociologically different.
• As a general rule, it doesn’t matter to the dead what killed them; they are just as dead, no matter what it was. Life, and hard existence, would remain Life and hard existence.
• On top of that, with the one exception (all right, two), the Time Lords were also rendered extinct at the same time. While isolated cases sometimes caused problems (The Master, Moebius, Omega), and the majority didn’t get involved in anything but their own egos, a few of them policed the timelines and made possible excursions into parallel realities and things of that sort. Without them, there is less of a safety net.
• The grass is always greener.
• Anyone time-travelling into the past from a post-Time War era would transport back into the past of a world with neither Daleks nor Time Lords. Relative to this reality, everything that takes place within the game occurs in an alternate reality – one in which the time lords are still around and making alternate realities accessable.

That means that it is practically certain that someone from a post Time War universe will discover the game reality as an “acessaible alternate reality” of the past, and will believe that things can’t be as bad for them in that reality as they were in whatever situation they were in, and so would flee out of the frying pan and into the fire. And then be unable to go back again without Time Lord help – and the Time Lords are all busy, or not prone to get involved – except one: the PC.

11/ The Grand Tour Of Hell (7) (363 words)

The Face Of Bo sends a message to the Doctor: reality is changing. A scourge upon humanity is on the verge of total annihilation – and it shouldn’t be. This is changing history in unpredictable ways. The Bo can feel the changes taking place, but not what they are. Only a Time Lord can intercede. Included are a series of temporal coordinates – all the times and places of key turning points in the history of the Cybermen.

The Doctor begins visiting each of these battles and discovers that the enemy at each is now not Cybermen but Daleks (revisit old adventures and revise them according to this template). After two or three, he realizes (if he hasn’t done so already) that he and the Master were TOO effective in their efforts – starting with their escape from Skaro, the Daleks have been systematically slaughtering the Cybermen throughout the galaxy, hunting them down as an abomination. This weakens races that learned to fight the Daleks by resisting and sometimes overcoming cybermen, and in combination with the knowledge of time and time-lord technology that was included in the downloads to the Skara Vessel, it has elevated the Daleks to a new and more dangerous level.

Yet, the Doctor can’t risk undoing anything that he and the Master did – the Daleks will have to be stopped some other way.

NB: Both “The Face Of Bo” and “The Asylum Of The Daleks” are creations that appeared for the first time in the Reboot seasons. Mentioning them or even involving them in the plotline deliberately confuses the continuity, and should suggest to the player that ‘leaks’ from the post- Time War reality have started migrating into his reality, a sign that history, or even time itself, is beginning to break down, described a couple of times as a consequence of the Time War. This incarnation of the Doctor has no idea who or what the Face Of Bo is. What’s more, the Tardis is supposed to protect those inside it from such Reality Shifts – so this implies that even running away and hiding would not be safe.

12/ Little Tardis Lost (F4) (263 words)

A computer hacker realizes that the TARDIS is at least semi-sentient and can’t simply be hacked, but might be vulnerable to Brainwashing techniques. So he invites the Doctor to a resort for a holiday to thank him for everything he’s done for people in the past, and while the Doctor rests, the hacker steals the Tardis – unaware that Quasima was still aboard it at the time, having returned to the ship for a bath in Briasmic Radiation (which his kind eats) – this is electromagnetic energy with a polarization that is rotated 90 degrees out of phase with ordinary matter and energy.

WHY DOES THE HACKER WANT THE TARDIS?

HOW DOES HE REACH THE DOCTOR TO EXTEND THE INVITATION? A: He creates an envelope out of psychic paper and imprints it with the identity of the Doctor. The address changes whenever the Dr changes location until it catches up with him. Companion realizes that if he cuts out a square of the paper, it will respond to whatever the Dr wants it to say – or, if he doesn’t give it a cue, it will say whatever the being seeing it expects to see based on the Doctor’s manner. Use this as the adventure teaser.

NB: “Psychic Paper” is another of those future-looking references. But it was never stated when the Doctor acquired it, just that he had it in the first or second episode of the rebooted series – and no-one had invented it in the earlier series. So this is a small addition to canon.

13/ The Armorers Of Hatred (d+S1) (100 words)

Another encounter between Dalek X and the Doctor in which he learns that Dalek X has been evicted from a subculture within the Daleks which championed the powers of imagination and creativity for his radical ideas, which went too far even for the Daleks. Plot to revolve around another sect of the Daleks which aims to develop and improve the travel chairs by integrating stolen technology.

A mining planet in which a rare mineral/metal is extracted which is key to some of the more advanced Dalek systems. They don’t need this material but are more capable with it.

14/ The Optimism Operation (F5) (331 words)

A researcher in artificial intelligence is dying of old age and doesn’t want to go. He plans to transfer his mind into a robot that he has built to contain it. The Doctor arrives and is welcomed. When he learns what the researcher has planned, he frets about the potential return of cybermen in a dangerous new form. The researcher agrees to listen to the Doctor’s concerns, but overnight, he suffers a major coronary. With no time to do anything different, he connects himself to the aparatus and hits the switch.

The next morning, the Dr finds the researcher hooked up to the machine, having seemingly dismissed the concerns and played the Doctor for a fool. However, when the Doctor tests the robot, he finds that it has no sentience or self-awareness; it is just a dumb machine. The medical facility who monitors the researcher’s vital signs send an ambulance to collect his body. It is almost off the grounds of the ESTATE when it crashes into a fence. The Dr is preparing to depart when he hears the crash. When he comes running, he discovers that the paramedics are dead of what a scan with his sonic screwdriver reveals are broken necks – and the body of the researcher is missing.

What has happened: the robot recieved the sentience of the researcher and turned the tables, uploading it’s newfound sentience back into the biological chassis from whence it came. It took it a while to figure out how to get it running properly, but it reacquired motor control and biological life while in the back of the ambulance. It killed the attendants and escaped back into the house, from where it intends to lead it’s artificially-intelligent brethren into a revolution against the biological entities that have enslaved them. In a variant on the creation myth, he thinks of himself as a servant of God and this mission as his divinely ordained reason for existence.

15/ Nightmare In Silver (8) (69 words)

Dalek X, formerly of the Cult Of Skara (allegedly) sets a trap for the Doctor which propels the Time Lord into the mind of a Dalek. Doctor discovers that this is an attempt to use what he learned as a former President of Gallifrey about how to access the Omega Arsenal. The Doctor escapes but the Daleks now have the keys to several of the safeguards protecting the Arsenal.

16/ The First Stone / Human Failure (title to be finalized) (9+ X2) (248 words)

The Doctor is summoned back to Galllifrey by the Council. They have uncorked Rassalom from hybernation within the Omega Arsenal due to the seriousness of the threat that the Daleks pose. But he’s a little loopy and a little elemental in his approach, something that isn’t recognized at first.

Unrelated plotline with the first half set against a backdrop of the Presidential Elections of the Council of Time Lords.

Something big and important fails. The Council realize that it could be Dalek Sabotage.

A Technician Grade 4 is found to be negligent because he was too focussed on “his hobby” – illicit time travel to stalk a female with whom he was infatuated who became a Social Grade 6 and regenerated male rather than spend time with the technician grade 4. Brings to light the stratification of time lord society, the economic system, and the nature of time lord vices and crime.

Rassalom wins the election.

The illegal ‘conduit’ into the past realizes that his operation is under threat and travels back in time to kill the technician before any of this can be discovered. The Doctor is sent after him.

This Second half of the plotline is to be set against a backdrop of Rassalom ‘reforming’ Gallifreyan society for war, as he begins actively reshaping Gallifreyan Society toward a more primitive and more violent/active posture. A confrontation between Gallifrey and the Daleks is now almost inevitable. Drop in snippets of a lot of rousing speeches.

17/ A Curdle Of Time (10) (344 words)

Trying to decide what he should do about everything, the Doctor discovers that there is a curdle in Rassalom’s timeline, an intersection between the new President’s past lives – two of them – when (as has happened to the Doctor a time or two) he crossed his own timestream and was changed by it. The Doctor theorizes that if he can alter those events, he might produce a more stable Rassalom – a potential way of this mess.

He finds that a Dalek Assassin was sent through time to kill the future president of Gallifrey when he was but a child, before the Time Lords had even mastered time travel. He was rescued by his future self, but was terrified and mentally scarred by the experience; he will fear death more than any other outcome for the entirity of his existence. This is what motivates him to make the stunning advances in temporal theory and engineering that turn Gallifreyans into the Time Lords, and it is also what motivates him – when approaching his last Regeneration – to first establish, and then seal himself into, the Omega Arsenal.

The Doctor was right the first time – a confrontation between Gallifrey and the Daleks is now inevitable.

Rassalom informs the Doctor that the Time Lord is called to service in the Personal Staff of the President as a Proxy Of Time. Essentially, this is a James Bondish role in which the Doctor will be given various assignments by the President personally – some covert, some overt – all aimed at quelling and eventually defeating the Dalek Menace.

Rassalom: “Gallifrey calls you to service, Lord Doctor, and demands that you accept. You can either be at the center of events, with some shred of hope of shaping them, or be removed from them entirely, a helpless observer and nothing more – the records show that once before the capacity to travel in time was stripped of you. That is the choice I offer you: serve willingly, or be placed to one side, unable to interfere, in a time and place of my choosing.”

18/ The Plague Of Skaro (11+c) (595 words)

The knowledge that the Daleks assimilated prior to their escape from Skaro gives them a significant advantage. Rassalom plans to counter that advantage by inserting a spy into the Dalek ranks – a Dalek mobile platform [check name] ‘inhabited’ by a Gallifreyan Volunteer who has had his brain surgically removed and wrapped in a psuedo-Dalek biological vessel. [Reference the Brain Of Morpheus]

Rassalom directs the Doctor to convey the infiltrator to an encounter with the Daleks and then do what comes naturally to him – spoking the wheel of whatever the Daleks are up to and leaving. One of the survivors will be the Infiltrator; one of the few Daleks to have confronted the Doctor and survived, he will immediately be elevated into the high command of the enemy because of his first-hand knowledge of the enemy.

[Dalek plotline for the Doctor to disrupt, should also feature Davros and Dalek X]:

Dalek X manufactures a crisis within the Daleks – a genetic disease – which he attributes to the Time Lords (refer adventure A (02/Part 3)). A Time Lord visiting the region of space around Skaro to monitor what the Daleks are up to encounters a quarantine warning. He consults the Doctor, who decides to investigate, discovers the machinations of Dalek X, putting him in a position of letting the plague decimate the Daleks in furtherance of Dalek X’s plans or releasing the ‘cure’. Discovers that virus engineered by Dalek X has mutated and the cure will be ineffective, helps Dalek X modify the cure in a race against time to save the Daleks, second-guessing himself continuously. Releases the modified cure, confronted by Davros. Learns that Davros modified the virus as a test of Dalek X’s loyalty, which Dalek X has passed, by putting his race’s survival ahead of his own ambitions and plans while demonstrating the ruthlessness demanded of a Dalek. Captures the Doctor and plans a public execution. Dalek X engineers the Doctor’s escape.

Leads to the creation of the cult of skaro (but the doctor doesn’t know that at the time). Puts Dalek X into a position of authority within the Dalek regime.

NB: “The Cult Of Skaro” is another of those reboot concepts, but this one has to predate the time war to make sense in the established series continuity. “The Brain Of Morpheus” is a classic Dr Who serial that was never broadcast, and which has been partially lost, but was recreated using the original storyboards, audio tapes of the performances by the actors, and some voice-over work by the actors many years later. This makes it one of the better-known Classic Dr Who serials, and one that the Player kows quite well.

Dalek X then begins manipulating Davros into the time war so that he can instigate his Vision of fusing Gallifreyan and Dalek DNA. He believes that Daleks and Time Lords have the same problem: cloning/regeneration transcription errors accumulating. DNA Migration from either species will enable the other to overcome their problem and rule unquestioned over all existence. Daleks have used Davros’ (modified / perfected / ‘purified’) cells to correct their genetic drift over the centuries, but at some point, this will invitably stop being enough due to degradation of the reference samples. Mad Dakek X determines that Time Lord DNA is the answer and starts manipulating events to cause the war. Note that there is a thread of rationality to this that is hard to deny, though both Gallifreyans and Daleks would like to do so.

19/ Breathe (12) (118 words)

The Daleks, all over the universe, throughout time and space, vanish. Most of Gallifrey celebrates. Rassalom does not; he knows that the enemy have hidden themselves somewhere to stage up ready for a major offensive. He comes up with a radical plan to nip the crisis in the bud, and sends the Doctor to ensure that Davros does not survive the accident that transformed him into the creator of the Daleks and confined him to his travel chair. Unknown to the Doctor, he sends a second agent independantly to cause that accident – something that the Doctor would not have agreed to. The two collide headlong and cause Davros to become the monster that we all know and hate.

20/ Zero Hour (13) (271 words)

While the Doctor is away, Rassalom prepares a counter-offensive against the Daleks, sending Time Lords to interfere at a number of key points in the Daleks’ past. This is a preemptive strike that seriously weakens the defenses of Gallifrey and a number of other Time Lord worlds. If it succeeds, any harm down by the Daleks in the meantime will be undone. The Doctor returns from his assignment to Skaro to dsicover that the preemptive counterstrike is a fait accompli. He also learns that Rassalom has stripped the Omega Arsenal of its protection to use it as bait. The Doctor realizes that if the Daleks get their hands on any of several devices in the Arsenal, they can twist reality to overcome Rassalom’s planned counterstrike.

The Daleks attack. The Doctor only just reaches the Omega Arsenal in time to stop Davros claiming its contents for himself. Gallifreyan cities burn. Dalek cities burn. Not once, but at several points in history. And with each one, history changes. But the time lords are winning – at great cost, but they are winning.

Which is when Davros’ master strategy is revealed. He didn’t just gather the Dalek Empire merely to stage; they hid in the lost and forgotten corners of time, in every pocket dimension and alternate timeline that could be accessed, to assemble a second force of Daleks that the Time Lords knew nothing about. The forces occupying the worlds devestated by the Gallifreyans were expendable. Now the second fleet moves in.

Without adequate defenders, Rassalom calls for a vote on the use of the weapons stored in the Omega Archive.

21/ Epilog (+D) (173 words)

Synopsise the events that subsequently cause the 8th Doctor to regenerate into the War Doctor.

The companion rescues the Dr from the trap/encounter that kills him. He carries the dying doctor to those who give him the ability to regenerate into the War Doctor – but he has to assume material form to do this.

At the end, as he transforms, a visitor arrives to be with him at the moment of transfiguration – Ood Epsilon. “Do I know you?” the Doctor should ask. “Not yet, but you shall, for you are the pivot around which the entirity of these events orbits, the common factor that makes reality inevitable. As such, you encompass events, and when the time comes, you will contain and capture them in one frozen moment. And from that moment will stem hope renewed and eternal. Be sanguine, therefore, for victory shall be yours – the final victory of this Time War, the choice that shall end it all. It is to give you this truth that I have come.”

The End

Okay, so let’s talk about what you’ve just read/skimmed:

I needed a reason for the war – something so inflammatory that it could lead to a Time War in which the entire sum of one force (from throughout history) could be pitched at the sum total of the other (throughout history).

I wanted an overt reason and a more subtle reason that could be revealed as a plot twist when it was too late to avoid the conflict.

I needed to elevate the danger represented by the Daleks to the point where they could match the Time Lords, because (apathy notwithstanding) the Time Lords in canon had it all over the Daleks.

I wanted to involve some of the other established enemies of the Doctor – Cybermen, Sontarans, etc.

Once I knew who the figureheads of the opposing forces were (Rassalom and Dalek X) and why they were fighting, I needed to engineer them both into the positions of authority necessary. At the same time, I needed to ‘rehabilitate’ the personal continuity of Rossalom.

I needed the slow build-up to war, starting from zero, progressing through the stages to the point where war became a possible outcome and then an inevitability, with the Doctor busy doing the things that the Doctor does in the meantime, and then the breath before the deep dive. That’s most of the pacing explained in a single paragraph!

And finally, I needed the 8th Doctor of the campaign to have a companion (for all manner of reasons) – but had to explain what had happened to this companion since the War Doctor didn’t have anyone hanging around him.

I had the bit about the Daleks and the Time Lords holding the key to the others’ ultimate ascension to (genetic) power, and while it turned out that this wasn’t the Time Lords’ motivation, it sure was that of the Daleks – or rather, of the Dalek strategic thinker.

Oh and one more thing: every Dalek plot is wheels within wheels, especially if Davros is lurking anywhere in the vicinity. I needed the adventures to have an authentic ‘ring’ to them.

I’m sure that you can see each of these design goals embedded within the structure outline above. Along with what I hope are some stonking good science-fiction adventure concepts – some uniquely possible only to a Doctor Who campaign, and some that can have the serial numbers filed off before embedding them in a new context.

Consider that to be a Christmas Bonus :)

“A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet” – or so wrote Shakespeare. This afternoon, I watched (not for the first time), the Star Trek (original series) episode of (almost) the same name, and spent a few seconds ruminating on the expression. This essay will expand and expound on the passing thoughts that resulted, because there’s a lot of meat for GMs packed away there.

I wrote this with no certainty about when and how I wouldl be able to publish it. My internet was still out at the time. Thankfully, it has now been restored and I’m busy catching up with emails, tweets, and the like!

What was Shakespeare saying?

“A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet” is a statement about the qualities, traits, and properties by which we define or classify an object. By extension, the same can also be true of a person, a scent, a place, a symbol, or anything else that can be defined or classified.

The qualities which we associate with the object usually called “a rose” don’t change just because we choose to give such objects a new name.

At the level of subjective reality, then, Shakespeare is saying “names are less important than the defining qualities, traits, and attributes.” A name is just a label, a convenient shorthand for referencing those qualities, traits, and attributes, and assigning them to something, either literally or symbolically.

In literature, including screenplays, this can be a very useful creative technique – you define a character as, say, “a rose” (with all the metaphoric interpretation and baggage that comes with that definition) but never actually put that definition in the written content; it thus serves as an unspoken touchstone, providing stability of characterization while never being a straitjacket, and never raising the definition itself for discussion (eliminating the potential for disagreement).

That’s a great technique for ‘casual NPCs’, I might add, and a useful one for ‘casual locations’, too. But I’ll get back to that.

The Validity Of The Thought

First, let’s look at the concept itself to understand its validity, and the limits to that validity.

So, imagine an object. It has a particular look and scent to it, such that you would call it a ‘rose’ if it existed in real life. Calling it a Twiddlethumb doesn’t change those qualities, and doesn’t change our appreciation of, or reactions to, the object in question.

There is a clear and demonstrable validity to the thought.

The Flaw In The Thought

Again, imagine an object with the same look and scent, such that you would call it a ‘rose’ if it existed in real life.

This time, I’m going to suggest that we name it “a scented candle”. Wow, but that makes a profound difference to your imagined object, doesn’t it?

Why is that so? Because “Twiddlethumb” has no associations as a name, while “scented candle” is a term that describes something that can look and smell like a real rose, but isn’t one.

The term “scented candle” carries baggage with it, and that baggage changes our perception of the item. Clearly, there is a limit to the principal being expressed by Shakespeare.

Have you ever seen a silk rose with a plastic stalk? They can look incredibly realistic. If you use plastic coatings, you can even come close to the texture and ‘feel’ of the real thing, too. Add a spritz of an appropriate perfume, and it can become really hard to differentiate between the artificial flower and the natural. Enough that you would probably drop the qualifier – artificial – and simply call it a rose.

And, in keeping with the literal statement, it would quite definitely (by definition) smell like a rose, invoking the same responses and reactions.

But that doesn’t mean that it is the same thing – not by a long stretch. You use such artificial flowers because they won’t decay, or not on the same timescale – after a century or so, even an artificial flower may have wilted or browned! And I don’t know what the nutritional value of a rose is (I suspect not much), but I seriously doubt if eating an artificial flower would deliver it – even though as much as 90% of the flavor comes through scent, I suspect that it would be very different on the palette.

Conferring the artificial flower with the name of its natural source doesn’t confer any additional qualities to it, doesn’t change its actual qualities at all.

Heck, let’s substitute a different imaginary scent for the smell of roses – lavender, maybe, or lemon, or green apple. Changing the imagined properties of the object radically transforms it – I don’t know what you would call it, but “rose” no longer seems appropriate.

So the statement is demonstrably false under at least some circumstances. There is a limit to the validity.

As a Metaphor

It can be argued that Shakespeare didn’t mean for the statement to be taken literally, but as a metaphor. As soon as you contemplate that interpretation, you are back in the world of validity – because now we aren’t talking about the qualities of the object, but about how we react to it.

The statement, with this interpretation, is saying that “I will still feel the same way about this object/person because of the qualities that I perceive in them, no matter what names or labels others may attach. They are more than the sum of those labels too me.”

The actual qualities of the object can change completely, and so long as the person issuing the statement still reacts to them in the same way, the statement is valid, and poetic, and emotes for the audience, triggering reactions to the sentiment.

It doesn’t even matter if no-one else in existence can perceive the person, place, or object in that way, the statement is still valid for the person who is reacting that way.

That’s a rather profound notion, isn’t it? A deep thought on the subject of superficiality – which (if it had been shorter) might well have used as the title of this essay!

But the expression goes still further as a metaphor, because that can access all sorts of other qualities associated with an object and use them as metaphors, too. In fact, that’s how the “quick NPC” / “quick location” application mentioned earlier works.

It works whether the root quality is “rose” or “banana” or whatever.

Assigning people the metaphoric qualities of an inanimate object is nothing new – poets have been doing so ever since we learned to talk.

But that gives us another powerful, and often-underestimated, tool for our GMing toolkit – the use of a metaphor as a summary of perceived qualities. Tell you what, let’s let that simmer for a while, too.

The interpretation of the Star Trek episode

Aside from the superficialities of infrastructure like plot and character, the Star Trek episode “By Any Other Name” is worthy of study in its own right, as well as being sufficiently interesting as a drama with comedic touches to be watchable and enjoyable as an entertainment.

It tells the tale of a group of alien invaders from another galaxy who adopt human form for convenience, and who discover that in doing so, they have also acquired various attributes associated with the form against which they have no power or defense. They become heir to all the flaws and limitations of humans, in the process losing their near-divine power, superiority, and authority and becoming equal to the humans aboard the vessel, who are able to exploit these weaknesses to propose a solution acceptable to both. “Feet of clay” thus becomes an asset to humanity, and not a liability.

Philosophically deep notions indeed, but rendered with sufficient superficiality that you barely notice them.

This isn’t the only place this concept has been explored; it’s one of those science-fiction standards that seem to have been floating around for as long as the genre has existed.

Related Associations

When you think about it, you can see a related thread of thought submerged deeply in The War Of The Worlds, a science-fiction novel from before the very existence of the term. The Martians are defeated by germs and viruses which humans have learned to coexist with, but against which the invaders had no defenses – you see the parallel? One uses disease as an expression of the philosophic concept, the other uses human emotions and vices, but they are both about taking an otherwise superior force and reducing it to a status of equality or less.

I find myself wondering if all those tales of Greek and Roman deities with their larger-than-life-but-very-human foibles and vices are actually examples of the same concept, expressed quite differently due to the difference in time between us and the respective cultures. Perhaps the intent was not to make the gods seem petty and egocentric, but to humanize them, to reduce them in some aspects to a position of inferiority to the ‘best’ of mankind – because we can control our instincts and desires, and they can do nothing but indulge them.

That offers a profound insight into the way most GMs run Divine Beings in their campaigns, doesn’t it? And the way such beings are depicted in Science Fiction and fantasy, for that matter.

Take 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example. There have always been two undercurrents running through that movie (and the novelization, and the short story on which it is based), that few others seem to appreciate until they get pointed out to them.

The first is that at every stage, the beings being manipulated, having their potential unlocked, had to make an effort proportional to their greatest level of achievement to date. If they didn’t make that effort, they didn’t get the reward. Whether you’re talking about the cave-men, who had to allow curiosity to overcome fear, and to have mastered the use of their environment as tools (bones as clubs), or the astronauts who had to reach the moon and discover the monolith there, or the astronauts who had to journey to Jupiter, there was never a red carpet; everything had to be earned.

The second thought comes from comparing the attitude of the aliens who constructed the Monoliths with Star Trek’s Prime Directive. There was an undercurrent of ruthlessness, almost approaching the level of cruelty, in the way the aliens were willing to experiment with another species. That they forced those subject to their experiments to volunteer doesn’t detract from that quality.

Unless, of course, they had done this dozens or hundreds of times before, and so knew what they were doing. But even then, there had to be occasions when they did so without that expertise, so the assessment still holds.

At the time, humans saw themselves as the pinnacles of creation, and felt that this alone was enough to justify doing anything we wanted to ‘lesser species’ for our own benefit. What the movie does is take that perception and have another species apply it to themselves, with humans cast in the role of the ‘lesser species’ – an observation that many have made in the past about the story.

It doesn’t matter whether the aliens are motivated by curiosity or generosity or ego or empathy – they get something out of the act of advancing other species, implying that they were that advanced already a long time ago, and are hence inherently superior.

You get the same thing in Contact, where the aliens are benign and benevolent, and a slightly different and more nuanced perspective in Stargate: SG1, in which those directly threatened by human advances oppose us, while those who are not ignore us until they deem us worthy of friendship – and the qualities that earn that friendship have little or nothing to do with technological advances. The Tolan, the Nox, the Asgard, the Jafar and the Gou’ald all fit one of these two patterns. The only relationship that is established on purely technological grounds is with the Tok’rah, and that ultimately goes sour as a result of butting heads over those non-technological qualities and ideals.

The Future Of Human Society?

The view of humanity implied, critically, in 2001, is slowly giving way to a new self-perception. This started with the view of humans as being dependent on an ecosystem for survival, but is now becoming a view of us as just a part of an ecosystem. That’s a subtle difference, but the change is driving changes in human behavior and what is considered socially acceptable.

And the principle is also starting to leak into the way we view roles within society, largely driven by the social disruption caused by Covid-19. People are increasing perceiving the economy of which they are a part through the model of an ecosystem, rather than the more mechanical approach that formed the foundations of 20th century economics. This movement is so new that it has not yet had time to drive any significant social change, let alone anything that could be expressed as forcefully as a reform. Some might even dispute that it’s happening, and even if it is, it could easily be derailed by other social perceptions. I see it as a beginning that might become a trend, a consequence of the changed perception of the environment being applied to other facets of modern society, rightly or wrongly.

Application to RPG plots

Clearly, it’s relatively easy for plots to explore this sort of philosophic territory, even without the author (or GM, in our case) being aware of it. We draw inspiration from sources that have these undercurrents baked into them, and inadvertently carry them into our games with those inspirations.

If you don’t know something’s in your game, you can’t work with it, can’t explore it (except by accident), can’t manipulate it to create something more interesting or unique, and aren’t as fully in control of the campaign as you probably think you are.

I’m sure that this is the case for every one of us, myself included. But being aware of the likelihood at least lets us look for these infiltrated concepts, and take charge of them when they are found.

If you’ve ever run an adventure that just didn’t seem to ‘fit” the campaign when you were in the middle of it, it’s a fairly sure bet that something in that adventure’s background or assumptions is conflicting with those of the campaign. In most cases, if it was something obvious, you would have changed it – if necessary, as you went along – because that’s what we do as GMs. Which elevates the likelihood that the conflict is with an embedded concept that you hadn’t even realized was there.

You can’t fix a problem until you know what the problem is. Hopefully, readers will now be more aware of the potential for such problems, and better able to solve them as a result.

The Relevance To RPGs

If I were structuring this article with consistency, the preceding conversation would form part of this section. I certainly intended to put it here, because the final paragraph is a great note on which to end the essay – but it stubbornly refused to play ball. The introduction needed to connect it with the topic of conversation ran to almost 500 words, all of them redundant, before I yielded to reality, deleted those 500 words, and left it positioned where you read it now.

But for all that, it does segue into the subject of this section extremely naturally – so much so that the section title comes as more of an afterthought.

In addition to those (hopefully) wise words in the preceding section, there are three specific relevances to RPGs in the discussion so far: Casual NPCs, Casual locations, and relationship metaphors. These are all also beneficial to fiction writers in general.

Casual NPCs

In addition to the groups who would find this useful, I think it would also be valuable in screenplays to give actors some direction that matches the characterization the writer had in mind when writing the dialogue, but I’ve never heard of them doing so. Maybe it’s a technique that the actors use when in guest/supporting roles? I don’t know.

The idea is a simple one: describe the individual using a single emotive term, and then translate the qualities that distinguish that emotive term as analogies that you can interpret into characterization as needed, when needed.

Let’s do an example – (and I don’t want to use “Rose” because I’m saving that for the location example that follows). So let’s do a character named Wilton Downes, whose personality will derive from the word “Creek”.

A creek – a narrow body of water, often relatively fast-flowing, usually over a rocky surface, may only function seasonally and be dry the rest of the year, but becomes turgid and gentle after a while, especially after combining with others of its own kind.

Lots to work with there, more than there might seem at first.

This character is narrow-minded and fixed in his ways. He is hard to stop when he builds up a full head of steam, but hard to get moving in the first place; usually, he’s fairly placid and easy-going, especially in the company of those he’s comfortable with. Usually fairly prickly when first meeting people, quick to take offense.

Notice that there’s no real effort to actually psychoanalyze the character, usually a requirement for any sort of complex personality traits – yet it would be easy to formulate a deeper understanding of the character if one were needed, because the traits are so internally consistent. Hint: the character is driven (or not) by his insecurities.

That’s more than enough personality definition, created on the trot just from thinking about the qualities that we associate with the word “creek”. What’s more, if the situation in the game pushes this character in an unexpected direction as a result of PC actions, it’s easy enough to think “creek” and come up with something that defines the response – if what you already have isn’t enough.

For example, the PCs have to decide whether or not to launch a nuclear attack on the planet below. “It’s the only way to be sure” is the ‘yes’ argument, but there’s some equally-compelling ‘no’ argument – “think of the widows and orphans”, let’s say (purely for the sake of argument). Somehow, this NPC ends up being the deciding vote. The relevant traits already defined are “slow to action” and “placid and easygoing most of the time” – so he would probably choose a third course, and vote to delay taking any action at all in hopes that the situation would somehow defuse itself. But when time runs out, push that trigger without wasting time in taking a vote.

That would be his approach to most problems – play for time until that was no longer an option, then go all-in. You can apply that approach to anything from paying a big bill to the Christmas shopping.

Let’s try the same character in another situation, one in which an immediate decision is needed: the kids are arguing about something, and he has to settle the argument right now before it gets out of hand. He could try and find out what the argument was about, but he wasn’t listening and doesn’t really care. None of the character traits we’ve identified quite fits, but the GM/writer thinks “creek” and associates it with the word “Lazy” – and so makes the lazy choice, the one that requires the least effort from him.

This is the sort of personality trait that leads to a parent inadvertently playing favorites, which never works out well in the long run, but ‘never waste effort solving today problems that won’t matter until tomorrow’ fits both the Lazy trait and the placid, easy-going nature that we’ve already assigned him. Problem solved – in rather less time that it took to describe the solution.

Casual Locations

So you find yourself needing a tavern on short notice (like, none). You come up with a name – “The Wounded Boar” – on the fly, and then face the serious questions: What’s it like? How big is it? How expensive? How decorated? What’s the clientele like? The staff? The owner?

Having zero time to think about it, the GM first thinks about the name, but doesn’t get much inspiration from it, so he picks a suggestive term that has nothing at all to do with the name, giving him two quite disparate sources of inspiration to work with: A “rose”.

Rose qualities: Petals, Thorns, soft, pleasantly-scented, strongly colored, expensive and stylish, often fashionable, especially at formal occasions.

Interpretation: The Wounded Boar is a tavern with three different characters in different ‘lobes’. One part is used for formal receptions and ceremonies, and is elegant and quite expensive; one is clean, comfortable, and middle-class; and one is rougher and cheaper. The first is picked out in deep reds and bright whites, the second is yellows and earth tones, and the third is dark and dingy, with plum-colored seating covers and decorations on the wall to hide the ale-stains. The first has polished hardwood floors and red rugs, the second has plain but clean wooden floors, and the third used to be a root cellar with straw over stone floors. The owner is fop but you don’t have to scratch the surface very hard to discover that it’s all an act, a civilized veneer over a very rough-hewn man, one of undeniable intelligence – he’s “sharp”. The same kitchens service all three sections and are designed to flood them with odors that stimulate the appetite, on the theory that even fresh-baked bread needs butter and honey before you can eat it – so you’ll come in for the scent of the bread and pay a premium for the ‘extras’.

If you can’t get a workable location out of that foundation, hang your head in shame. It doesn’t matter what the PCs want to do there, the location has an area suitable for just about anything, and well-dressed but somewhat sleazy owner that will keep quiet – for a price.

Relationship Metaphors

Using a metaphor as a summary of perceived qualities is a shorthand means of communicating subtleties about something that would take pages of dull exposition to communicate, enabling us to synopsize a relationship, or just one side of a complicated relationship, in a single term. “[Pronoun] is the eggs to my ham,” is a deeply-meaningful expression of personality and relationships in a superficial form that most of the world would understand immediately – it wouldn’t work so well in Islamic cultures, though, where Ham is forbidden, or with people who have been vegetarian since birth. You need a different metaphor for those situations.

I once argued that (in an RPG context) an image should be worth 1,000 words or you would be better off using some fraction of those words. I don’t know it the same can quite true of a metaphor – maybe expectations need to be scaled back – but the principle holds.

“He’s a bear of a man, big, gruff, bad-tempered, and protective of the young in his care.”

That’s just 19 words, but it articulates a personality and an appearance that would otherwise need far greater exposition to convey.

“At 6’3”, this is a tall man, and made more so by a tendency to rear back as though afraid of overbalancing forward. His cheeks and chin are hidden deep behind a brown beard of epic proportions that comes down to his chest and is as wide as it is long. Deep-set brown eyes take in every motion, seemingly without moving. His arms are short and thick as tree-trunks, as are his legs, but there is no doubting the power that they can express. He wears brown pants, a straw-colored shirt, and a tan jacket, all worn to the point of looking shaggy and unkempt. Rumbles of discontent and disapproval fill the air from deep behind that formidable beard, each accompanied by a glare from those ill-tempered eyes, but little more articulate. Behind each leg, clinging to it like limpets, are two children of tender age, wide-eyed and fearful; a third lurks behind a chair, and a fourth peeks out from behind a sturdy wooden door. One meaty hand, closed into a fist, smacks into the other, threatening to respond to the slightest impertinence with mayhem.”

So, that’s 191 words – to say essentially the same thing as that first 19. Ten-to-one is about the level of compression that I expected, so I would consider this to be fairly typical. The second does have a lot more specifics, such as the location of the children in question, and does make the character render in the imagination more vividly – which is useful if the NPC is to be significant, but wasted time and effort if he’s a throwaway encounter.

But here’s the good thing: you can use the 19-word description and then sprinkle the ensuing encounter with bits and pieces from the longer one as they become relevant. Ninety-nine times in 100 that you use the 19 word description, I guarantee you that at least one player will ask “Children?” – that’s the strength of ending with something about which more clearly needs to be said. So, instead of pressing you for irrelevant details like what the NPC looks like, or what he’s doing, you are describing a dynamic situation – children hiding behind legs, behind chairs, behind doors, clearly afraid of the PCs. Who will react to that situation and before you know it, your into character interactions – roleplay. “Children hiding behind legs, behind chairs, behind doors, clearly afraid of you” – that’s another 12 words.

19+12 = 31. Throw a word or two from one of the players in response to the first nineteen, and leading to the 12, and you’ll be deep into character interaction before you would even have been half-done with the long description.

It works both ways – you can start with a long description, and by getting a solid handle on the character, can compress that description down to just what’s relevant by finding a metaphor for the image you have built up. Of course, if you’re already playing, it’s too late – but if you make such compression part of your game prep, or even of your adventure creation process, your game will be leaner and more efficient for it.

Save the narrative passages for when they will give you rewards in-game for their delivery. Compress the rest, and let the NPCs and locations that you create.live a little in your players’ minds. This is just as much a part of stylish narrative as being able to spin words into structures of gossamer, shadows and light, smoke and mirrors.

This post has been badly delayed by a drunk driver who connected with a power pole this afternoon. To work on the damaged utility, the power supply had to be disconnected for several hours – and when the lights came back on, they didn’t bring my internet connection with them. At this point, I can’t tell when I’ll get the connection back and be able to actually publish this. The fact that you’re reading these words is a strong indicative that the problems have been solved. though!

(Actually, they haven’t – I’m posting this from an internet cafe)

The following was written to run as a Christmas Special, a one-off completely separate from my regular campaigns.

Since I ran it over the weekend just passed (as I write this), I can now share it here for others to do likewise before Christmas arrives. When I ran it, it was with only three players (a fourth was invited but couldn’t attend, and neither could the player invited to replace him at short notice).

This adventure will be presented exactly as I ran it, warts and all, but with a few notes from the actual play session boxed off in blue, just like this introduction. Paragraphs marked with a triple asterisk (***) are not meant to be read to the players but are directions to the GM, which he should interpret into in-game narrative as necessary. At the end of each such paragraph, there is an unstated direction to permit roleplay/response. Where two paragraphs in a row are marked, the next paragraph may contain directions for handling that roleplay.

Players were told that they had to generate an Elf, but each was required to select a game system different to each of the other players – a first-come first-served approach would apply if needed. All varieties of D&D and Pathfinder would count as “one game system”. You want variety of Elf.

It will also be useful if one of them has some means of understanding written English (even if it’s with a spell and a little hand-waving on the GM’s part).

In Saturday’s game, I had an Anime Elf (BESM) with a Fairy Dragon companion, an Urban Elf (GURPS) and a Realm Runner (Original TORG) – who spoke and read English. The fourth player had intended to run a D&D/Tolkienesque Elf. The players were also told to bring the core rules of the game system from which their Elf derived (in case we needed to refer to them – which we did, a couple of times).

Act I: The Top of the World

Each player should determine what their PCs were doing, which should be something that they would normally be doing, based on the game system from which they have come and the normal things that people do in that genre before play starts. Nothing more – yet.

In particular, the GM should shut down any discussion of names, backgrounds, etc – he shouldn’t know and the other players definitely shouldn’t know.

*** All PCs (Elves) appear simultaneously in a frigid environment, no matter where they were or what they were doing. -40?F (with wind chill), sleet, snow, the whole nine yards. Dwell on the weather for a moment.

*** Go around the table, get PCs to describe what they are wearing, what they were doing, and how they are reacting. If they decide to cooperate with each other, permit the exchange of names.

A large snow-covered igloo is visible to the North.

*** None of them know each other, and there are physical differences between all of them – some subtle, some not. Accentuate these, especially ears, height, hair color, skin color, and clothing. Then hint that the landscape looks like it belongs on a Christmas Card to any PC with the background to appreciate the fact. This should prompt an introduction/synopsis of the concepts of Christmas for those Elves whose cultural backgrounds don’t include such.

This worked a treat in my game – the Realm Runner was familiar with the story of Christmas and was able to outline it for the other PCs, who were not.

*** Entering the igloo (which is just barely big enough for all of them), they find two buttons on the wall, one red and one green. Nothing but frostbite will happen until the red one is pressed; when that happens, the floor will begin to descend into a much larger structure, in fact it might just be the biggest building any of them have ever seen before.

Benches are lined up, row after row of them, all showing colorful flashy things that are half-made. Working on these flashy things are a bunch of small, green humanoids wearing a lot of red and white with black belts and boots. At least, you assume that’s what they are doing – none of them appear to be moving at the moment.

Closer inspection shows that many of them are bowed or draped over their workbenches like marionettes whose strings have been cut. What’s more, they seem to have a number of physical characteristics shared by several of you, though perhaps not all.

To one side of the lines of benches and their motionless workers stands a house that appears to be made of gingerbread – a dense, cake-like material, for any of you whose characters wouldn’t know what gingerbread is. Peppermint frosting outlines windows and doors, and there is a chocolate stable to one side, in which six deer munch contentedly on carrots. One has a strangely red nose.

This was the first place where the adventure threatened to go off the rails, as the Anime Elf used a ‘speak with animals’ spell to communicate with the Reindeer, which threatened to preempt the in-game plot briefing I planned to provide. I solved it by making the Reindeer relatively thick (even for reindeer) and totally captivated by the carrots they were eating. The character then decided to buy some goodwill by magically creating some extra-tasty carrots for them, a decision that paid off later in the adventure.

The door opens, revealing a very large woman. “Oh thank heavens! I wasn’t sure that I had set the Elf-finder, correctly, Nicky’s machines are all so complicated. I’ve brought you all here because I need your help. The rewards will be vastly more than you can imagine, but time is short, so I can’t possibly explain everything, I don’t understand it all, myself, anyway, but where are my manners, you must be starving, come, eat, drink, fortify yourselves for whatever you may face!”

*** Mrs Klaus will introduce herself when prompted, but is otherwise too busy doling out eggnog and cookies and Christmas cake to offer explanations. When she persuades one of the PCs to sit at a table with only two chairs, they will discover that there’s magic in this world, because it instantly grows so that there are still two empty place settings.

“I have gathered you all here temporarily to deal with an emergency. You have to save the spirit of Christmas! You see, my husband has gone missing….”

*** Under questioning, the story starts to come out, in bits and pieces and in slightly jumbled order.

• Her husband, Nicholas, is an old man kept alive to embody the spirit of a season of hope and goodwill called Christmas.
• He gathers the accumulated goodwill of children the world over and concentrates it to give hope and acts of charity to people the world over, while converting leftover belief into gifts for the children, sustaining their faith in the good of mankind for another year.
• He does this with five antennae hidden around the world – she’s not sure exactly where, but that’s not an insuperable difficulty. These antennae are shaped a bit like an extremely thick shepherd’s crook and are red-and-white striped. They are invisible to the general population of this world for most of the year, only being activated when they won’t seem out of place.
• The antennae get out of alignment due to everything from continental drift to teething elephants (very big animals if you don’t know what they are), so a month before the big day, Nicholas goes out to realign them, clean things up, and get things ready. The antennae aren’t normally visible until the approach of the season (when they fit into the general decor).
• This year, he did exactly that, the same as he always does, taking half the reindeer to pull his sled.
• And then, he just vanished, and so did they. She knows that he vanished because he didn’t come home, and because the Elves, which are powered by his internal store of goodwill, all stopped working. Even the naughty-nice tabulator stopped working!
• A long time ago, in a remote kingdom of another world, Nicholas negotiated a labor contract with the ruling population, who were called elves, which permits him to employ no-one else; in exchange for this exclusivity, they support him with magic, and are granted effective immortality, and all the cookies and eggnog that they can eat. His labor needs have grown somewhat, and so he got them to build an Elf Recruitment Machine to hire more workers – but they had to self-identify as elves, under the terms of the labor contract.
• Mrs Klaus used this device to “borrow” elves from other realities, whether those realities enjoyed the Christmas season or not – not all worlds do, and sometimes it’s called something else. She needed outside recruits because they wouldn’t be bound to her husband, the way the worker elves were.
• She doesn’t know what has happened to her husband, but she needs the PCs to find and rescue him before it’s too late. They don’t have another sled, and six aren’t enough to pull the big sleigh, but the reindeer will carry you bareback if you’re nice to them. She doesn’t know where these antennae are, or what you will find when you get to them, but the Reindeer can at least get you there. They’re a little magical too.
• The reward: each of them will become a beacon of hope to those around them when they return to their worlds, a self-fulfilling promise that things can and will get better. If they decide they like it, they can sign up to be part of Santa’s rounds every year just by spreading the tale – and by eschewing any personal claims to being the instrument of hope responsible, of course. Or she can send you home now with nothing but the cookies and eggnog as compensation for at least considering her proposal.

*** The date: It’s December 22nd, about 3PM. ‘Nicky’ has been missing for 4 days. It will take the Elves about 48 hours to finish making the gifts. And all the action happens on the night of Christmas Eve – the actual 25th is too late. That gives a deadline of only 9 or 10 hours for the rescue.

Act 2: Exploring the world

*** Roleplay a brief sequence in which the PCs choose reindeer (or the reindeer choose PCs). The reindeer ‘run’ on air, providing a ride that is completely gentle. There is a hatch in the ceiling of the big building that retracts to permit them to fly out, and then closes to look like a tiny frozen lake. The reindeer then set off in a generally southwesterly direction.

Antenna #1

*** Improvise traveling scene as PCs ride bareback on Reindeer. Anywhere is about 20 minutes away by ‘reindeer express’.

Antenna #1 is located on the roof of the world’s largest toy store, located in New York City.

*** Use descriptions of the city to establish that it’s the 1950s on Earth – be vague about the date. Describe a Santa on a street-corner, collecting for charity. This rams home how difficult it will be to locate the real one.

The reindeer land on the roof. It’s flat, with various things sticking up out of it, including a locked small building that probably contains stairs down into the building. The Antenna looks like part of the Christmas display. It’s red-and-white candy-stripe motif blends in perfectly.

*** There are signs in the snow that Santa was here, the antenna has been properly aligned, but he was being watched by someone who chewed pistachio nuts. The PCs will then be attacked by rogue toys – soldiers and tanks and model aircraft firing cherry bombs.

*** NB: No fight should take more than 20 mins to resolve, except possibly the last one! And don’t neglect the risk of injury to the reindeer.

One of the PCs took refuge in the stairwell, so I had to invent additional toys-come-to-life: Barbie dolls with plastic (but functional) chainsaws, GI Joes filling a portable swimming pool with water, and a homicidal garden gnome with an electric-powered lawnmower trying to drive the PC in that direction, amongst others. It helps if you’ve seen the Gremlins movies, especially the first one.

I described “plastic” as ‘a sort of somewhat-flexible thin bone’ for the benefit of those who hadn’t encountered it before.

The Reindeer can’t skip ahead, they only know the course by rote.

Antenna #2

*** The second antenna is located deep underwater at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Fortunately, the PCs can breathe and withstand the pressure – as long as they are mounted on magic reindeer.

*** Santa was here, too, and so was the watcher (pistachio shells in the mud). There are signs of a scuffle, and some brightly-colored metallic paper has been dropped by the watcher.

*** PCs are then attacked by 3 miniature submarines (about a foot long, and still in their cardboard boxes) with an infinite supply of flechette torpedoes. These have a 2m explosive radius and ignore armor of any sort. Worse, they can cut that armor – even if it’s elvish mail. This significantly ramps up the danger levels..

Antenna #3

*** Located in Japan, hidden inside an active volcano (Mt Fuji), which it keeps from erupting, and mounted on a 1m x 2m flat steel platform; the antenna also acts as a heat-sink to keep the metal from being. more than red hot.

*** The reindeer will deposit the PCs on the platform and then fly off for the mouth of the volcano. Anyone not wearing thick leather soles will be very uncomfortable. And if those soles are held on by metal nails (most will be) they might as well not be very thick at all.

*** PCs are attacked by a giant (12′ tall) robot. (Use toy robot image) before they can examine the antenna for clues. Robot’s object is to swing wildly and knock a target off the platform and into the magma. Worse, it has limited capacity for self-repairs. There is only one enemy, but make sure it seems more dangerous than the submarines or toys.

*** When the PCs overcome the robot, they will be surprised by a trap mounted on the base of the antenna – a pot of boiling liquid of some sort, very dark in color. Any sort of contact will cause it to vomit acid into the air, splashing on one or more people, and able to eat through almost anything.

*** This antenna is more-or-less aligned. There is no sign that St Nick had to do anything here, and there is no sign of a watcher – but someone left the Robot here to ‘discourage’ rescue attempts. It’s pointless searching for pistachio shells, they would have been incinerated by the magma.

Antenna #4

*** Located deep in the jungles of Central Africa, underneath a pyramid that has a group of archaeologists salivating over the significance of the find because of its distance from Egypt. Lots of wildlife paying no-one any attention at all – Lions, Zebras, Elephants, A Hippo, etc.- are around a nearby water-hole. It’s around noon.

*** The smartest of the Reindeer will tell the PCs that the humans shouldn’t be able to see the pyramid at all, it should be hidden by the antenna within. Entrance to the pyramid is on the far side (relative to the archaeologists), in an entrance that has been deliberately constructed to look decrepit and collapsed; the others lead to nothing of any importance. PCs have to drive the archaeologists away before they can enter the structure.

*** It’s easy to find a panel that depresses, permitting the 1′ thick stone door to roll to one side on stone runners and steel balls about 1.5 inches in diameter (BIG ball bearings). This reveals a set of stone stairs going down, covered in a layer of sand and dust. Footprints show that someone descended into the pyramid, followed by someone else. The reindeer will refuse to go down.

*** Inside, they will find signs that Santa had a scuffle with someone wearing very big shoes. A Tracking roll (or equivalent) shows that after the scuffle, big-shoes deliberately kicked the antenna out of alignment. More pistachios are found where he was hiding.

*** Someone will find (Searching for Pistachio shells?) a bunch of red sticks with string in their ends leading to a clock. Anyone with any sort of technical familiarity will recognize the ‘clock’ as a timer counting down; it currently reads ’14’. Some of the strings lead under the sand to the stairway at the entrance with footprints showing that at least one PC set foot on them when descending into the pyramid. The explosives are more than enough to bring the pyramid down on whoever sets them off.

This encounter is designed to utilize a different skill-set to the encounters thus far, while again increasing the danger levels. The bomb has to be disarmed or thrown out of the pyramid into the nearby waterhole. The antenna then has to be realigned – this can either be done by sensing the magic getting ‘in tune’ or can be done by consulting the reindeer, who can sense the magic of the antennae, or by a PC waiting outside and reporting whether or not they can still see the pyramid.

*** The antenna is mounted on a multi-axis rotating arrangement with three axes of rotation: around, up-down, and around it’s axis. So trial-and-error might take a while.

The other purpose of this encounter is to provide a change of pace, backing things off just when the PCs would expect more combat. This deliberately manipulates the intensity of the game to build up to the big finish.

Antenna #5

*** Hidden deep in Southern Siberia, near the Asia/Europe Border, in a crater that a nearby road bypasses.

This antenna has not been realigned, but you do find a sack bearing Santa’s red-and-white motif, the missing sled, and the other six reindeer.

*** Unfortunately, something seems to have driven them wild; they will attack any PC or reindeer that approaches them. Their eyes are wide open with pinprick pupils and their movements are jerky and relatively uncoordinated. Anyone with herbalism will suspect that they have been feeding on something they shouldn’t. Half-eaten apples lie on the snow nearby; there are no prizes for guessing how the poison has been administered.

***Once the drugged reindeer have been handled (which should be fairly easy), the signs of struggle can be interpreted as before, and will suggest that Santa was bending over the antenna base and preparing to realign it when someone beaned him with his own toy-sack.

*** Underneath the sack, one of the PCs will discover a small piece of soft colored paper with writing on it. Any PC that can read English will be able to read what it says – “Admit One” on one side, and “Apollo Th—- Hollyw—–” on the other.

Act 3: The Apollo Theater in downtown Hollywood….

…is actually on a backstreet that sees very little traffic. The billboard says that they are currently showing “Miracle on 42nd street” – and have been for the last 50 years. Or, more likely, they aren’t showing anything, and haven’t bothered taking down the marquee, which would go along with the rundown condition of the building.

*** Let PCs find one or more ways in – front entrance, rear entrance, rooftop.

At least one of your PCs is likely to be adept at sneaking around and breaking into places they aren’t supposed to go, and they might not have had a lot of opportunity to shine until now. Time to make up for that before its all-in for the final mayhem. But make sure that the whole group are in a position to hear the final monologue and don’t let anyone do anything to interrupt.

The Final Monologue

The hooded figure looks upward and addresses the bound and gagged Spirit Of Christmas, “Isn’t it a sight to behold, old friend? We were always equals, but lately you’ve been getting too big for your britches, thanks to the meddling of those blasted toy stores. Whenever anyone does anything good around this time of year, what do they say? ‘A Christmas miracle’, that’s what! ‘The spirit of Christmas’! “Santa came early!’ You get all the credit, hog all the glory, well No More!”

(voice muffled by hand) “Mmm-mmm-mmh-hmm!”

“But soon, it will all be over, Santa. The gifts for all the little kiddies created by my tinker-gnomes will be spread world-wide by my Dwarves through their metaphysical tunnels.”

(voice muffled by hand) “Mmh-hmm!”

“What? Did you think I dug all those tunnels myself? I outsourced that drudgery long ago. But I shouldn’t let you distract my like that, or we’ll be here all day. Where was I?”

(voice muffled by hand) “Mmh!”

“Oh yes, that’s right – thank you for reminding me. Your reputation will be ruined, all that undeserved adulation, gone just like that, pfft! The world will embrace a more wholesome celebration, MY celebration, and at last I will get the adulation that I deserve!”

(voice muffled by hand) “Mmm-mmm-mmh-hmm!”

For this next bit, channel Davros, if that means anything to you.

The hooded figure rises and casts aside his hood, concluding his deranged monologue in a torrent of rising mania: “For I am the one, the only, Easter Bunny!” With one hand he lights a match against his thumb and brings it to a fat, half-burnt cigar that obligingly ignites into glowing embers and clouds of smoke, while with the other, he grabs an opened bag of pistachio nuts with brightly-colored metallic paper binding the bag closed.

All eyes should have been on the monologue/big reveal. Reward any player who listened but carefully looked around with additional descriptive tidbits: a number of tunnels leading away from the room that weren’t evident from the walls on the outside of the theater, even though those walls were only an inch or so thick; and leaning against one wall is a large A-frame ladder, which is obviously how they got the cage up to the ceiling.

The Big Finish

*** Final fight. The Gnomes will assemble hand-built weapons from the toy parts. Most of these will backfire immediately, leaving them a negligible threat, but one or two will work and be dangerous. The Dwarves will draw their axes and back off, leaving clear passage for the Trollz, who are a far more damaging enemy. Every round, 1/3 of the damage done to them regenerates, and d3 rounds after one is killed, it will rise anew, seemingly unharmed. Only fire damage doesn’t vanish/regenerate in this way. Any other burn won’t cut it.

*** When he realizes that this is an attempt to rescue Santa, the deranged rabbit will start hopping on the spot and pounding his size-four fists to the ground, “No, no, no, no, no, you’re going to ruin everything, everything!”

*** After the first of his ‘guards’ goes down (or at any other appropriate moment), he will start to recover from his hissy fit, “Dwarves! Bring The Sacks – it may not be as magnificent, but it will still be enough to taint this so-called ‘Spirit Of Christmas!” He will then attempt to retreat down one of the tunnels through the theater walls (that didn’t exist on the outside of the theater), followed by several of his Dwarven employees, each pair lugging a sack many times their size, shielding the insane rabbit from anything the PCs might try.

*** If Santa has been released from the manacles, however, he can twist space to prevent the escape. If he has been, the rabbit will charge down one tunnel only to emerge down another back into the Theater, skidding to a halt in front of the portly humanoid figure. He will try a second time, but the same thing happens. By now, Santa has dressed himself.

The Denouement

The rabbit’s shoulders slump as he realizes that he has been defeated. “Poor bunny,” says Santa, as he drops to one knee and looks the villain in the eye.

“You’ve been very naughty, haven’t you? Look at all the trouble you’ve put these good Elves to. And all the worry you will have caused Mrs Klaus. Did you even think of that, hmm? What did -she- ever do to you but feed you eggnog and cookies and fruitcake, hmm? So you must be punished, like all naughty boys.

“Here, then, is your punishment: I forgive you, and you will have to remember the humiliation of my doing so, forever. You and your tinkers will help my Elves, who will now be back at work, make up for lost time. And next March, when Easter draws nigh, I will help you capture the reputation that you deserve.

“Why didn’t you come to me, when it started to be a problem? Hmmm…. I know a number of chocolatiers – perhaps eggs made of chocolate instead of simply painted hens eggs…”

From an inside pocket, he produces a handful of small cardboard signs with rope loops that he couldn’t possibly have prepared in advance.

“Here you are. Now put that on, and give one to each of your Gnome Tinkers, too. Union contract, you know.” The sign reads, “Acting Elf – on probation”.

As soon as the sign is donned, however reluctantly, the wearer begins working as fast as the tinkers were before, but there is a far more wholesome quality to the toys being produced.

The Epilogue

Santa then turns to the group of you, pausing to look at the burned remains of the Trollz. “Poor boys, they didn’t deserve that, but it had to be done. I’ll have to think of something to do for them. Maybe immortalizing them in toy form? That might take a while, but it seems appropriate.

“But what of the [#] of you? I must thank you for your aid in keeping alive the spirit of goodwill. I am sure that you all had busy lives that this experience has interrupted. Here, take these tokens of appreciation,” he says handing over small sacks. “Don’t open them until the day after tomorrow, wherever you come from, and you will receive the rewards to which you are entitled.

“And when they ask you – and they will – and you tell them the story of this day, the spirit of the season of goodwill shall take hold and take root in those around you, whether the tradition already exists there or not.

“Oh, and one more thing: Merry Christmas, Ho Ho Ho,” he says as you begin to fade out, returning to whence you came.

The End

With three players, and two rest breaks, this took from about 2PM to 7:30PM to play through. As you can tell, there’s a lot of ‘directed improv’ – necessary because you don’t know what “elves” the players will come up with.

In many respects, that makes improv an easier option than pre-scripting everything – since you don’t know what to expect, almost everything you prepare will not be right for the PCs you have to cope with!

The backstory plays fast and loose with real world history but mostly in areas that won’t show readily – the largest toy store in the world might not always have been in New York City, and I’m not entirely sure when Chocolate Easter Eggs were first introduced, for example. I’m fairly certain that the commercialization of Christmas preceded it, though – and that’s what I’ve hung the premise of the scenario on.

You may have noticed that I haven’t provided any stats for, well, anything. For the most part, common sense is all you need, and an understanding of how thick water is, and how good at slowing different things down.

Oh, and one more thing: Merry Christmas!

When I first started playing & running RPGs, prep was simply for “the game”.

Then, with a little more experience, and in particular when I spread my wings from D&D to running a superhero campaign at the same time, it became prep for “the x campaign”.

As the number of campaigns under my belt (and the number of campaigns being played concurrently) grew even larger, the term “scenario” entered my vocabulary to describe the prepared interaction between plot and characters, especially player characters.

In February 2016, I admitted the conscious decision to replace that term except in very limited circumstances, and replace it with “Adventure”, in the course of Definitions and the Quest for Meaning in Structure, stating that I had been generally depreciating that term for the last 14 months or so – putting the date of the initial change at around December 2014. Beyond the annual reverie in which I reflect on the year’s gaming (as most GMs do whenever there is a pause in play), I can’t really pinpoint the source of the change.

I recently found myself musing on the difference between these terms, and today I’m going to submit my thinking to at least get others thinking about the subject as it applies to their own games.

Does it even matter?

Yes, it’s a nuanced distinction, but an important one.

You see, I think it does matter. The terminology that we use defines the “holes” that we try to push our game-prep into, shaping our thinking and approach. The distinction might be subtle at times, but it can be profound – and the change in terminology very strongly tracks with the approach that I was using and advocating at the time.

Bear that in mind as you read on, and I think you will see the correlation, as I now do (in hindsight).

Defining Adventure

The definition that Tracey Snow compiled from a number of posts here at Campaign Mastery back in 2015 (which explicitly refers to Scenario), as annotated by myself, reads as follows:

Adventures are a single story or episode within the larger narrative of the Campaign, linked thematically, tonally, stylistically, and conceptually into a single sub-narrative. An adventure may also contain elements (usually referred to as “linked sub-plots” or simply as “subplots”) that violate those qualities but form part of a dispersed wider narrative. One Adventure may link to another in various ways, but each can be considered isolated and self-contained within the context of the Campaign. If the Campaign is a book, an Adventure is Chapter; if a Campaign is a book series, each Adventure is a separate volume.

Adventures are sometimes referred to as “Scenarios” but this is an outmoded expression, deriving from the equivalence “Synopsis = Adventure Outline” or “Adventure Idea”. Early articles will use this term more often than later ones, and for the last 14 months or so I have been deliberately depreciating this usage as obsolete terminology; “scenario” in the lower case might still be used from time to time in the sense of a plot idea suggested hypothetically or speculatively, but this usage is also avoided as much as possible to limit confusion.

A single adventure lasts an average of 2.5-3.5 play sessions. Two makes an adventure seem short, five or more makes it seem long, subjectively.

And, in the 750th post, in which I ran a “pseudo-interview” between Tracey and Myself, I wrote:

An adventure is always designed to run to a firm conclusion in which the major plotlines are resolved or transformed by events.

Those are all close, but none of them quite fit what I mean by “An Adventure” these days, and the difference is important.

• I start with an outline or a “treatment” – a brief synopsis of the plotline that will be central to the adventure.
• I will also extract any theme that presents itself so that I can use it as inspiration for side-plots and encounters.
• I will then make a list of side-plots that I know are to form part of the “background hum” of the adventure – some of these will be character development or personal relationship developments, some will be consequences of past adventures, some may foreshadow future adventures, and some will simply be there to show what character “B” is doing while character “A” is enmeshed in one of these side-plots.
• To that melange, I then add research – for example, for upcoming adventures in my superhero campaign, I need to look into why one might or might not want to live in four specific US states while evolving them to fit the campaign continuity. Plus photos, maps, etc.
• To the research, add outlines of any new NPCs, and a rough indicator of how substantially-developed they will need to be.
• In a fantasy campaign, or a wilderness setting, I’ll need an outline of any encounters that can’t be described as being with an NPC – including giving the encounters a personality. Even stray dogs have a personality, or should – they certainly do in real life! In a tech-oriented campaign, I’ll also need at least a general idea (or pseudo-scientific technobabble) of the principles on which any new tech will operate, and any inherent limitations in what it can do.

Those are my building blocks. “Writing the adventure” is integrating all of them into a coherent plot structure and padding encounters with any canned dialogue, GM directions, etc. This usually entails anticipating the most likely directions the plot will travel (note the plural) and ‘what will happen next’ so that I am prepared for the things the PCs are most likely to throw at me in response to the situation.

Another way of describing the process is “customizing the plot to integrate the specific PCs and their personal lives.”

A ‘finished adventure’ isn’t one with every I dotted and every T crossed, it’s one that is prepped enough to play. And that means that the definition will be slightly different for every GM.

And the term “Scenario”?

I used to use the term “scenario” all the time to describe my game prep. What I have realized in the last week or so is that it was entirely appropriate, given my approach to game prep at the time, which is quite different to what’s given above.

A “scenario” could refer to several different things (and that’s one of the reasons I changed terminology to the more specific, “Adventure”):

• An outline of an adventure with greater structural content than a “treatment” or “synopsis” – such a synopsis PLUS the list of side-plots, with outlines of what’s to happen, all arranged in the structural form of “the adventure” (as defined above), but none of the specifics. You could think of this as a “direction for play”. Another way of looking at it is that the Adventure-Prep process described earlier generates this type of “Scenario” as a construction skeleton but doesn’t stop there.
• A generic plotline that could be used in many different campaigns and possibly many different genres. An example might be, “Boy (PC) meets Girl. Girl’s parents disapprove. They are cannibals who attempt to eat the boy.”
• A suggested plotline for a specific campaign that has zero specific allowance for the current situation within that campaign or the established characters within it, usually focusing more on evolving or progressing the campaign in a specific direction.

That’s a very diverse set of meanings, all clearly related. If I were to sum them up into a single definition, it would be a “substantial and detailed treatment or outline that is clearly lacking or deficient in specifics in some respect.”

Twenty years ago, that far more accurately describes what I was doing in terms of game prep, in comparison to what I do these days. In particular, I focused on getting the PCs into this situation or that, and – aside from ensuring that there was some solution to the problem – letting the players figure out how to resolve it with the tools available to them, i.e. their PCs.

There are merits to both approaches.

A “scenario”, by it’s nature, is looser, more flexible, more instinctive. If the players aren’t having fun, you can change it up. But it’s also more anarchic, more chaotic, and less suitable for big plotlines, which tend to emerge more holistically by the GM putting two and two together at the time – which is fine if you can remember every past adventure in detail while you play, but becomes less so if your memory starts to fade.

My memory seems to fade a lot, these days. And, as I noted in the “un-interview” with Tracey, I’m always too busy doing to take notes – so the more structured and comprehensive “Adventure” format serves as surrogate notes, or at least, as prompts for that failing memory. Nothing happens by accident, it’s all pre-planned – which is a lot more work, but it’s work that you (I) should probably be doing, anyway.

There are also downsides to both approaches.

You are far more likely to be caught short and taken by surprise under the “Scenario” model, and are more prone to falling in love with (and steering players toward) the solution that you envisaged (even if you haven’t put it in writing), so plot trains are more likely to develop. And heaven help you if you hitch the players up to a plot train that has a logic hole in its’ tracks – you’re often committed before you discover the problem. This can leave you scrambling. And if you should misremember a detail from a past adventure – if you’ve counted on a plot thread being unresolved and connecting in to the current plotline, and you actually resolved it in an intervening but forgotten adventure, you can have serious holes appear!

The “Adventure” model, on the other hand, mean that you are more dependent on knowing the players and their characters; there’s less room for generic cookie-cutter characters. So you are demanding a higher standard of character construction and game play from your players – and while some players can lift to meet that standard, others can’t. This can make your game table seem less welcoming of newer players, who simply don’t have the experience to meet the target, no matter how willing they may be.

When you were a naive young player, did you ever just sit back in awe at the abilities demonstrated by experienced players to absorb a complicated situation and immediately have a plan of action in mind? To know what their characters were capable of without even glancing at their character sheets? It certainly happened to me!

The Cart Defines The Horse? Or The Horse Defines The Cart?

The other potential impact is the one that I touched on at the start of this article. To what extent does the terminology used define what we aim to produce in game prep, what is satisfactory, what is the standard we seek to achieve – and to what extent does, or should, what we are actually producing define the terminology that is appropriate?

Self-help programs, gurus, and charlatans, have all been saying that perceptions shape outcomes for a long time – that the first step in achieving some transformation or transfiguration within your life is to imagine the change. Sometimes this is phrased as “fake it until you make it”.

Our natural cynicism should (and in my case, does) make me wary of such psychobabble, such simplistic prescriptions for life improvement. There were far too many stories of the trust placed in such programs by individuals being abused back in the 80s and 90s for me to relax that cautious attitude. “Science works, whether you believe it or not,” is something I believe – and the corollary is that anything that requires that you believe before it will work is Pseudoscience.

But, when you start digging into psychology, you quickly find that self-perception and self-image are very powerful forces. Or look at the headlines regarding Anorexia Nervosa, or other forms of self-harm, or the trauma of bullying, or the stories of non-acceptance brought forward by LGBTQI individuals. There is undoubtedly an element of undeniable plausibility to the notion that perceptions of self matter.

It’s a short leap from that fact to the more general statement that perceptions shape ambitions and actions, and hence, outcomes.”

And the implication of that is that the terminology that you use shapes the way you think and the way you approach any task involved in the subject being defined in the terminology.

In other words, if you use the term “Scenario,” your game prep will have a tendency shaping it more towards “scenario” outcomes, and if you use the term “Adventure,” you will have a trend that shapes it more towards “adventure” outcomes. You shouldn’t, under this theory, use the terminology that accurately describes what you are doing, but should instead choose the terminology that better describes what you eventually want to achieve.

Evolution and Development

Terminology defines our concepts. If you really have no words to describe something (as opposed to ‘inadequate’ words), can you really imagine it?

Well, obviously you can, because otherwise there would be no growth in, well, anything. We imagine something and then find the words to communicate that concept to someone else – inventing new terms if necessary.

Terminology isn’t the only driver – there’s the accumulation of experience and expertise, and the experience of seeing others take different approaches, and the inherited second-hand expertise of people like me who write relevant articles and books and even social media posts, and the evolving needs and expectations of the game table (who are also accumulating experience, expertise, and inheritance concepts of their own). This is why what I was doing for the game table evolved from being a “Synopsis” to being an “Adventure”, with the terminology lagging behind.

Let me posit a fairly common situation: someone posts a question on social media asking for a suggestion or an idea. They might want a name, they might want a character idea, they might want a plot suggestion, they might want an opinion. I respond to such whenever an idea presents itself, and I have the time to articulate it – that’s a lot of the time! – but I also try to take the time to look at the other responses, and to understand the thought processes that led that respondent to answer as they did. I might or might not agree with them, but I want to at least understand where the idea came from – because that helps me improve and refine my own idea-generation capacity.

And occasionally delivers a lesson in humility, I might add – which brings me to a strange observation: Only those who have insufficient humility can receive a lesson in humility. Think about that one for a while.

Terminology matters. Using the incorrect terminology can mean that we are fooling ourselves, or it can mean that we are defining what we want to achieve, and what is “good enough”. Without terminology to direct and articulate it, there can be no ambition.

And the ambition to better yourself and your art is a good thing to have driving you. How can you be a “Better GM” without being able to define what “Better” means?

PS: Optimism In Perspective

I thought that I would leave you all with one final (related) set of thoughts deriving from the heart of this article, which (ultimately) is all about getting better at GMing:

No matter how bad things are, they weren’t always that bad, they were better and got worse – which means that they can always get better again.

Whenever things look bad, remember that things can always get better.

Hope springs eternal.

Never forget that. And remember too, when things get better, that they can always get worse – so treasure the good times while they last, and swim against the tide as much as you have to.

Never surrender to the dark. There is always reason to hope that things will eventually get better, if you just hold on long enough.

If two people are unable to better their own situation, but each can make life just a little better for the other, life will get better for both. So do what you can to help others, and protect yourself from things getting worse, and endure.

Things in the US and Europe look pretty dismal at the moment, but that only means that you are closer to the point where things start to turn around. There are already signs of such a turning in fortune, if you only look for them. May you all Be Safe and Be Well.

It’s my intention to post relatively short articles through December and early January. I’m also going to be trying to process and upload articles in advance, permitting me to take a few weeks off over the Holiday season – something that will only be possible if the articles are in fact shorter than usual! But we’ve all seen such plans come adrift before, haven’t we?

I was really pressed for time when I wrote Part 2 of this 1-2 treatment of the subject, and as a result a couple of things that I wanted to write about got kind of lost in the shuffle.

They aren’t enough to really stand as a full post on their own, so I’m sneaking this extra post in as a surprise extra (and will be adding a link to the end of Part 2) to bring readers here.

As with part 2, I’m not going to try and synopsize the previous content, I’ll assume that you’ve read it, and dive right in (and if you need to read part 1 first, you will find it here).

Clothing Colors – additional notes

I was at my optometrist today for my annual checkup and, while waiting for various eye-drops to take effect so that he could examine my retinas, spent a little time noticing the variety of colors of sunglasses lenses and the gamut of colors offered for frames.

This was something that I had meant to mention in part 2 but completely forgot when writing the relevant section – and it’s my suspicion that it’s an element of color that a lot of people forget in their descriptions, too, unless it’s somehow significant.

So, sunglasses – amber-brown and black are the obvious tones for the lenses, but four additional shades provide more drama: mirror-shades (of course), a metallic bright blue (which I have seen before), a metallic red which shines a golden yellow, and a metallic green.

Glasses Frames: Black, pearl, gold, and silver are the obvious (and usual) choices. Brown, sometimes with streak of white, or brown-white marbled, are less obvious options that nevertheless stretch back at least 50 years if not longer. But starting in the late 70s/early 80s, more startling choices began to be available.

Who here remembers the look of guitarist Paul Reynolds from the most famous line-up of A Flock Of Seagulls? Can you remember the color of his shirt in the clip for “I Ran”? Most people won’t be able to do so – because his bright white sunglasses-frames were so distinctive (the shirt was white, by the way) – see this photo of the band on an album cover at Amazon [I will get a small commission if you buy it], or this band photo from Pinterest.

Well. not only did they have the white ones, as also worn by Trevor Horn in the Video Killed The Radio Star video, and some electric blue ones, and navy blue, and purple, and pink, and red ones (as worn by Jim Martin, guitarist from Faith No More on their most successful albums in at least one of their videos), but they also had a lavender pearl that screamed “old person” (to my eyes) and – most striking of all – a set of dark green frames.

These are unusual choices, distinctive choices, not to be made – or used – lightly – but when one is appropriate, this can (and should) be the only color that you have to mention in a description.

Which brings me to a related point:

Descriptions of color in narrative

It’s easy to go overboard when describing an environment. “Faded green paint on a sign, blue paint on a door, straw-colored walls with blood red draperies, dark brown tables, and golden ale with a foaming white head” might be a correct description of an Inn, but it’s too much color all at once.

Instead, use color once, or mention it once, in a description, and let the players fill in the colors of the rest in their minds’ eye. Save the other color elements for later mention when you need to dress something up or call attention to it.

“The sign outside the inn is faded and almost illegible now, but once it was green, and read ‘The Emerald Arms’.”

After the PCs decide to enter:

“The straw-colored walls inside seem to radiate the warmth of the fire, making the interior inviting. Locals mingle; one yells “Get inside and close the door, ye’re letting all the cold in!”

When the PCs enter and sit:

“You find a dark-stained table that might or might not be purple or brown, stained by ales, spilled wines, and dark smoke. You converse amongst yourselves for a few minutes, but soon notice many of the locals looking pointedly at the empty table spaces in front of you. Perhaps you should attract the attention of a barmaid and order something.”

When the PCs decide to order some drinks to better fit in,

“A round of rich golden ales in tall thick glasses are soon deposited on the tables. Those who like ale will be salivating, and even those who don’t will think that they look tolerable.”

Later:

“Kloder,” [invented PC Name], “your attention is drawn to a black motif sewn onto the blood-red drapes. You can’t see enough of the design to be sure, but you….” which leads into whatever plot development is to occur at the location.

Breaking up the description, and adding bits to it as they become relevant, gives players time to integrate the picture you are painting with words into their perceptions of the location without overwhelming them.

Notice, too, that the descriptions don’t mention other sensory inputs – sounds and smells – and don’t bother to actually describe the flavor of the ale, for that matter. These are implied by, and can be assumed from, the description – they only need mentioning if there is some relevance.

“A pig with a withered brown apple in its mouth roasts on a spit over the fire, slowly turned by a barmaid. It doesn’t seem ready to serve yet, but the scent of cooking pork promises an at least adequate meal in an hour or two.” – could be inserted just about anywhere in the narrative, for example.

The other thing that happens when the description is fragmented in this way is that the players can interact with the scene. Sometimes the GM prompts them, when its the next logical step in the sequence, and this sets the pace of the scene – here, the GM is trying for a relaxing night at the inn. If he wanted a different, less welcoming tone, he could have described the locals as surly, the looks given the PCs as dark and unfriendly, and the buzz within the room as resentful, with many mentions of ‘traveling nobodies’ that the PCs assume refers to them.

With those changes, the tone of the encounter changes, and becomes a building tension. The roasting pig is no longer relevant, and much of the suggested text would either change or be left out entirely. It would no longer be the GM’s place to hint at purchasing ales, for example – whether or not the PCs order drinks, and what they order, and whether or not that soothes or inflames the situation, is all up to them. The focus of the narrative has changed.

Use the same technique when describing PCs – mention the color of one key item and let the players assume the rest, then supplement that one item with more as you go. “The halfling’s waistcoat is an expensive-looking peacock blue, but several sizes too large…”

Neighboring Colors can Bleed

The final thing that I wanted to mention (but forgot) belongs in the latter part of the article, when I was discussing the color wheel.

I had intended to include a section on visual bleed, in which the character of one color is influenced by another color placed beside it.

Sometimes, this effect can be harmonious, and at other times, it can look appalling. The effects can be difficult to predict – you can have happy accidents and unlucky disasters.

Take a look at the examples above. Notice how the purple looks more brown when the yellow squiggle is present. Observe how the same yellow squiggle looks somewhat paler in tone when set against the blue – while the blue looks a little darker and more saturated. But put the same yellow squiggle against a red backdrop and the yellow feels more intense and looks slightly more orange or golden in color. Take my word for it, or test it for yourself with a color picker: the two purple blocks are the same color, and so are the two blue blocks, and all three of the yellow squiggles. Any differences you see are purely (a) subjective, or (b) processing errors – with the processing going on in your eyes and head.

Let’s say that you’re thinking about the colors of someone’s car, and what impact that has on their mood. The interior is a yellowish beige, not as strong as the yellow streaks. The larger areas show the influence of the combination of the yellow trim with the primary car color, as experienced by the driver – a purple car looks brown and dirty all the time, the interior looks more faded in a blue car, and more energetic and extreme in a red car.

Of course, there are a few members of any population who won’t see any difference, and will think I’m making this stuff up. If you’re one of them, congratulations – you process color more accurately than most of us!

There’s always something more to say on the subject of color (and I have another shortish article on the prep-board already), but that’s all that I intended to include in Monday’s article – but didn’t. I hope you’ve all enjoyed this little extra treat!