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!

I’m going to zip right along under the assumption that you’ve read Part 1 of this article because I don’t really have the time to recap.

Color impacts on Cognition

There have been studies that showed that exposure to the color red can impact scholastic performance by as much as 20%; other studies looking at the same alleged phenomenon have been inconclusive.

Green has been linked to a greater capacity for creative thinking.

It can be very hard separating out two contaminating factors in such studies, especially if they are broader than the simple red-or-green test that has achieved measurable results (cited above).

The first is the second-hand impact on cognition from emotional state, for which the evidence of color impact is far more strongly established. While this is likely to be less significant than any direct impact, it can enhance or subdue cognitive impacts. Purples, for example, are known to stimulate the imagination – which is great for art and writing, but not so good for other subjects like math, where they can assist the student in mental wandering and daydreaming. This is the sort of situation that I usually file under the heading of “context”.

The second is the third-hand impact of association/suggestion. Certain scents are known to stimulate cognitive function (lemon & green apple especially), while other scents are known to be calming and to suppress mental ability (lavender, for example). This means that lemon-yellow walls should remind occupants (at least somewhat) of Lemons, and that association alone has been shown to be enough to trigger the memory of the scent, and the memory has the same effect as the real thing (though perhaps attenuated). Bright green reminds people of Green apples – same story. Purple, on the other hand, is more likely to remind people of lavender, and that’s going to impair intelligence. So, once again, this factor can either undercut any primary effect, or reinforce it.

Operating at a similar intensity as this tertiary effect is a third phenomenon that I suspect exists, but which is even less studied than this whole question – the influence of secondary colors.

Most people, when they paint their walls, paint the flashing and doors and skirting boards in another color – often, but not always, white. On top of that, white ceilings make rooms seem roomier and cooler, and so are also common. And then there’s the color of the carpet or flooring – which is sometimes a monotone carpet, and sometimes something far more complex.

Humans have been decorating rooms for thousands of years – you’d think we would have a better handle on the impacts by now!

We’ve been painting for even longer – the oldest known painting is on a Spanish cave wall and was done at least 64,000 years ago.

Some rather obvious facts are known – large monotone areas minimize distractions, while isolated features of brighter color encourage focus. Too great a variety of colors tends to be confusing but the human mind has a great knack of “inventing” patterns in such situations, whether they are really there, or not. Some colors are warm and some cool – and if two colors of differing “temperature” are placed side-by-side, these values are subjectively increased if there is a strong contrast between them and a black or dark background, and pulled back towards neutral if there is no strong contrast. These principles, in theory, can be used to enhance or counter any impact on cognition, just as they are manipulated in art to make a snowy landscape feel cool and vice-versa.

But that’s about as far as color theory can take us – in fact, some of the above is not even established color theory, but are my own observations (and hence open to dispute).

According to Psychological effects of color on cognition by Timothy Makori, studies show that classrooms’ wall colors affect the attention of students in which the purple color positively correlates with the highest attention followed by blue, green, yellow and red in that order (Duyan & Unver, 2016), while the use of red or green color-exam booklets does not show any significant difference in performance in institutions of higher education (Arthur, Cho, and Munoz, 2016). However, in other experiments researchers indicated that the use of orange and yellow color-background web-based learning positively impacted on the students’ performance as they were able to complete the tasks faster than their peers with similar jobs in gray and blue website-backgrounds (Kumar et al., 2013)

Note that some of these findings are contradictory to those described earlier in the section. In part, that can be explained by another article, The Influence of Colour on Memory Performance: A Review by Mariam Adawiah Dzulkifli and Muhammad Faiz Mustafar, even though I actually accessed it to look at the impact of color on another aspect of cognition, memory.

Part of the article is a review of other potentially relevant studies, and one of them finds that color helps focus the attention of a subject (well, duh) and paying attention improves recall (likewise).

So what appears to happen is that certain colors of paint on the walls don’t attract the attention of the student, permitting a greater concentration on the lesson, and hence a better academic performance.

To be honest, there’s a lot more information in both these rather densely-packed reports than I had time to unpack, which means that closer examination should reward anyone interested in the subject.

For now, suffice it to say that science has proven a statistical connection between the color of the environment without yet being able to specify comprehensively what that effect is or how intensely thinking may be helped or hindered, beyond educated guesses – but that the impact could be significant, even profound, in at least some cases.

The use of Color in Identity

The colors of clothing choices are an essential expression of personality, especially in cases where such expressions are limited by convention.

There are some professions, for example, where the person is to be the center of attention, and these generally feature a red coat or jacket. Formal business suits are generally charcoal-gray or black, usually with a white shirt – which leaves the choice of tie as the color focus.

In many professions, there is no choice whatsoever – judges typically wear black, for example, and waiters are typically white shirts with black pants. Surgeons can wear just about anything until they have to actually perform an operation, and then they will dress in whatever scrubs are provided by their workplace – though personal (hats? caps? skullcaps? I’m not sure of the correct term) have been shown to be acceptable on some TV shows.

And, at the same time, there have been a few professions that used to be very tightly regulated in terms of what is acceptable and now have a more relaxed stance – Dentists, for example, used to wear white tops, but in more modern times, I have seen both mid-to-light blue and light green. While I’ve never seen a dentist with a fluero yellow shirt, it wouldn’t surprise me greatly were I to do so!

In other words, we are transitioning from a uniformity perspective to a functionality-plus-self-expression perspective when it comes to professional clothing – very slowly, to be sure. And the more conservative the career, the longer it will resist such change and the more slowly it will evolve stylistically as a result.

Take judges, perhaps the single most conservative establishment group. A judge might be able to get away with wearing a brooch as a point of self-expression, but in some jurisdictions not even that would be tolerated. That’s because the law is supposed to be impersonal and even-handed and just, at least that’s the ideal, and anything that suggests that a judge is a person with opinions and attitudes of their own gets in the way of them embodying that ideal.

By and large, though, when you look at society as a whole, there has been a trend for greater scope and levels of permissiveness of self-expression over the last six or seven decades. Which is another way of saying that there has been greater latitude for the use of color in clothing as a means of saying something about the wearer.

Bright colors – reds and yellows and even bright blues and greens – tend to say the most. Because they are bright, they carry an air of flamboyance, they make a personal statement. The pattern and shape of the colored apparel defines the content of that statement.

It’s possible for that statement to be quite nuanced. For example, if you see someone dressed in relatively conservative navy and white, but with a slightly-oversized gold lame bow-tie, you get a very strong indication of a particular personality – especially since bow-ties are no longer ‘in’.

Someone wearing a three-piece black suit, white shirt, black tie, and neon-pink handkerchief neatly folded with the point protruding from their breast pocket, is making a statement.

Black has an interesting duality to its nature in this regard. The ultimate expression of uniformity and conservatism, it is also the exemplar of rebellion. Compare and contrast a biker with black leather jacket and black t-shirt with one wearing the same clothing – but lime green in color. Would your reactions be the same when confronted by such individuals? I doubt it.

The right touch of color in a person’s clothing can speak volumes about who they are and what they value – or about who they want you to think they are. A banker or lawyer in a 3-piece suit is the same as any other banker or lawyer in a 3-piece suit. Add a brightly-polished gold fob-watch to the ensemble and they are visually hinting at success, with the implication that they are more trustworthy and can better help you.

One surprising side-note: the same poll (mentioned in Part 1) that identified brown as the least popular color overall found that it was the most popular color for clothing. There is a perception that brown clothing signals a lack of pretension and that such clothing lasts longer and is more practical because stains are less visible.

There is also a school of opinion out there that suggests that color choices are more aspirational than reflective – that the more conservative you are forced to be, the more likely you are to rebel with loud clothes.

This places the used-car salesman in bright check jacket on the same design continuity as a James Bond, who dresses conservatively to hide his flamboyance because it’s not really appropriate in his line of work to call attention to yourself.

A unifying perspective that I find helpful is to think of a person’s clothing choices as them trying to market who they want to be seen as. That provides a helpful tool in getting a handle on their personality and then reflecting that personality in wardrobe choices, especially color. One image mentally-conjured by a selective choice of words can be worth a thousand more words than you actually use.

Beyond Human?

Most fantasy non-humans derive from a very earth-like world, and so the colors of their environment will be very similar to our own. The cultural associations may be (should be) different, but the biological ones should at least be similar.

This is a level of detail that most GMs never get into, let’s be honest, or when they do, they tend to do something throwaway without contemplating the implications. “Elves can’t see red, it’s just dark to them, but they see more subtle shadings in blue, yellow, and green” is something I’ve seen a number of times.

I have even seen suggestions that ‘red is painful to behold’ for elves while Dwarves ‘love red, seeing shades that humans can’t’.

Another time, I saw a GM positing that Infravision and Ultravision gave species that had these abilities the capacity for seeing colors that those without couldn’t.

All of these suggestions are creditable attempts to push beyond human perceptions and at least contemplate the effects. The simplistic answer is to simple extend the perceptual spectrum into higher or lower frequencies within the spectrum, and that’s as far as most GMs go.

The first simply opens up part of the spectrum. Where humans might see 1.2 million shades of green, such non-humans see 2.4, or 3.6 – so there are subtleties of tone and color that elves distinguish between two closely-related shades that are all one color to humans. So far, so good. But then the overly-creative GM usually posits that this capacity permits two colors that look the same to humans appear starkly distinct to elves – as though an extra color was imprinted on their eyes. This goes beyond the first suggestion, treading into the territory of the fourth.

Before we follow it, let’s take a look at the second suggestion that I’ve mentioned. This does something the first doesn’t – it takes away something to compensate for the extra ability, making non-human races equal to, but not superior to, humans. “Different, not better.” It also goes a step beyond most in specifying a biological reason for the renowned antipathy between Elves and Dwarves – one is quite literally painful for the others to behold.

So far, so good. But most people have no idea what this type of change would actually look like. So let’s try to get some sort of idea, so that we all know what we’re talking about.

Image 1 is a cropped version of the original – the way you or I would see it. Image 2 is what most people imagine the image would look like if you could see infrared instead of blue-violet. Everything has shifted into the red.

On the other hand, if you saw UV instead of red, image 3 is what they imagine that would look like.

Both images 2 and 3 are wrong. Image 4 is what happens if you subtract the blue and violet from the image, then remap what remains onto a normal color spectrum. It’s not red, it’s predominantly cyan – and doesn’t look all that different to the base image, when you get right down to it.

Image 5 runs the same process in the other direction, producing a more dramatic change. If you were to tell someone who ‘saw’ colors this way that the sky was blue and the trees were green, they would be confused because there isn’t that much difference in their eyes between the two.

Not what you were expecting? I’ve also seen images like 2 used to depict ‘red shift’ – completely ignoring the fact that what was UV would shift down the spectrum into the visible light band, replacing the blue that would otherwise be lost. And the same applies in the other direction – a ‘blue shift’ would not be as obvious as many otherwise professional science fiction writers would suggest.

In fact, given how narrow the optical spectrum is, you might be hard-put to actually perceive any difference at all until the red- or blue-shift was significantly pronounced.

Trying to take this analysis any further becomes deeply frustrating very quickly, because we simply don’t know why we react in certain ways to some colors and not others. There are lots of educated guesses and assumptions – like yellow being fatiguing because it requires greater adjustments to the rods and cones of the eye, while green is restful because it requires no adjustments whatsoever – but the fact is that we don’t know why colors have the effects on us that they do. We aren’t even sure of what the effects are. How, then, can we reasonably translate those phenomena into minds of even near-humans?

Does that mean that it’s open slather for the GM to be as inventive as his capabilities permit when it comes to color and non-humans? I would suggest not. Instead, and in the absence of anything more definitive, I would suggest that the first GM was on the right track – ‘mapping’ the spectral response of a species onto a portion of the human range when psychology and biology are taken into account – even if you can’t quantify what those psychological and biological differences are.

Let’s take that “can’t see red but sees more shades of blue and green” proposal. The reddest color that would be visible would be a sort of orangish-yellow, so we label that “red” and presume that it has the same effect on elves that “red” has on us. Pure Yellow would then have the same effect on an elf that Orange has on us – daffodil merchants take note! A very greenish yellow would have the same effect as Yellow, and so on. And the missing “red” color? Well, we rarely see things as a pure tone – reflected light and reflected colors and the psychological impact of neighboring colors all come into play. So this would be a black with a strange shine or sheen.

When I’m trying to picture these color effects, I’m thinking about certain recent auto paints that change shade depending on the angle of light. I’ve seen blacks that reflected purple, and ones that reflected neon green, and ones that reflected sky blue, and several other choices to boot.

But the wilder possibilities don’t end there.

Beyond Earth?

To go further though, we need to contemplate creatures that aren’t just non-human, but are alien to us. What’s the distinction? Non-humans share our basic biology, making life simpler but a little more bland for the fantasy GM. Aliens have completely separate biology, though it might be analogous to our own. And that means that they could perceive what we describe as “Impossible colors”.

You see, the human eye takes color information that strikes it and places it onto two different color maps; this information is then synthesized in the brain into the whole spectrum of color. When one of these color maps isn’t processed properly, an individual is at least partially color-blind.

That doesn’t mean that they can’t see colors; it means that certain colors are simply shades of gray to them, or shades of aqua, or whatever. Since white is a combination of all colors, and black is the absence of them all, gray is itself a compound color; take one of the ‘base ingredients’ out and you are left with something that will inevitably look the same as a value of the color combination that the color-blind person sees – and so they label both of them gray. We don’t (and can’t) know what they are actually seeing – the presumption made is that they see gray correctly, and therefore that the statement “it looks like gray on gray” has meaning.

But we humans are a clever lot, and able to look at an objective physical reality as something separate to what we perceive with our limited senses, at least in the form of theory.

Enter the so-called “impossible colors”. Wikipedia got too technical for me on the subject, so I have relied on two more straightforward sites for this section:

• How Impossible Colors Work (And How To See Them) – Science Notes by Anne Helmenstine, and
• Impossible colors: our vision’s incomplete palette – Ness Labs by Anne-Laure le Cunff.

Impossible colors come in two flavors. First, colors that our brains construct by mixing signals, effectively hiding combinations from us – bluish-yellow and reddish-green for example. We see green and brown instead; and Second, colors that we could see if the red, blue, and green cones in our eyes biologically responded different in response to light.

The reason the human eye can’t perceive these colors is because signals from the rods (light-dark) and cones (red, green, blue) interpret signals in an antagonistic manner termed the opponent process. Scientists believe there are three opponent channels:

• Blue versus yellow
• Red versus green
• Dark versus light.

In 1983, a couple of scientists devised a test that allows some observers to see some these impossible colors. Some participants saw a new color, others saw a pattern of red and green (or blue and yellow dots), while others saw regions of one color on a background of the other color. Some of the participants who saw a new color were still able to imagine it following the test. Participants were generally unable to name the new color. Many had trouble describing what it looked like. Visit the websites listed above to try some of the tests for yourself.

When the study was repeated in 2006, it threw into question the whole concept of ‘impossible colors’. But a similar experiment that took place in between, in 2001, suggested that equal luminance was important, but the 2006 study didn’t control for this factor (and neither did the original study) – so it might be that both were flawed. The jury is still deliberating on the very existence of impossible colors, in other words.

On top of those are more definite phenomena, like Chimeral Colors – these are colors that the brain can see even though they aren’t part of the visible spectrum. Colors that fall into this category include:

• Stygian Colors, i.e. colors that are both saturated and dark. An example is Stygian blue, which appears as dark as black.
• Self-Luminous Colors appear to glow although no light is emitted. An example is self-luminous red; and
• Hyperbolic Colors, which appear more than 100% saturated. Examples include the green afterimage produced by staring at pure magenta and then looking at green leaves.

Again, check out the links above to try some of these for yourself!

There are precedents for the principle that alien species may have different biologies within their eyes – and if you change the opponent channels, you change which colors are impossible (and add our ‘impossible colors’ to the visual spectrum). Pigeons have double-cones that permit them to see into the ultraviolet and sharpen their color vision.

There would be some physical consequences to contemplate. For the eye to capture infrared, it would need to be much larger – perhaps twice the size we’re used to. Humanoids with such eyes would look more like anime characters than regular humans.

This isn’t a problem with UV; instead the problem is that UV carries so much energy. It damages human skin cells and can cause skin cancer, and it can damage the cells of the eye and cause cataracts, as well as burning the retina. No species would evolve the capacity to see into the UV spectrum without evolving some sort of defense – probably a second set of eyelids that are only opaque to UV. Again, there are biological precedents here on earth, with some species having multiple eyelids.

Alternatively, these extra eyelids might function as additional thickness of lenses, meaning that it might take a conscious act of will to see into the UV spectrum, and that it would be painful (like looking too closely at a bright light) to attempt at inappropriate times.

Either form of nictating membrane is plausible.

Ultimately, the structure of our eyes is a compromise aimed at most efficiently processing the range of light that comprises the visual spectrum. That spectrum is as wide as it is practical to make it, and while it might be possible to shift up or down the electromagnetic spectrum by a small amount, the physics of electromagnetic radiation aren’t changed – so there would be a tendency toward convergent evolution in the design of this organ.

Of course, it’s not quite that simple. Cognition takes place within the brain, not in the eyes – and we know so little about the whys and wherefores of cerebral structure that we have no idea what alternative structures might be possible, only that any such alternative would inevitably change the processes of cognition – and that includes perception.

That’s not enough to stop us from speculating and imagining, though – as I said before, we’re a creative bunch. For example, it is quite likely that the same processing shortcuts that create optical illusions might be responsible for our capacity to represent reality with a two-dimensional image; take away one, and you take away the other. This would be a considerable hindrance to social and technological evolution until some reasonable substitute was developed – no blueprints, no abstract diagrams, no illustrations. Not until stereoscopy, anyway – but it’s arguable that this would be invented much sooner (and be far more than a curiosity).

Alternatively, it might be that by closing one eye and squinting – a trick that artists use to see broad areas of dark and light for compositional purposes – such a species could manage to make sense of diagrams or paintings. Or perhaps when nature takes away with one hand, she gives with the other – this species might be better at separating different mental processes, enabling a ‘virtual squint’. This, in theory, would also permit them to perform multiple tasks independent of each other at the same time – one eye, one hand, one task – more than compensating for the handicap to their capabilities.

Let imagination be your pilot and plausibility your handmaiden.

The Colors Of The (Real) Spectrum

This is a section that has bounced around this article, at first here and then there, and never quite fitting into the existing narrative line. And yet, it seems important to actually present it somewhere.

The diagram below summarizes the colors of the spectrum, but presents them in a way that forces people to take a slightly fresher look at them. I’ve packed as much information into it as I could without getting too technical.

For a start, even though there are wavelengths specified for the ‘pure’ colors of the spectrum, I wasn’t confident of matching those colors exactly – so I chose to actually interrupt the spectrum at those points. It would be more accurate, in other words, to describe this as a diagram of the transitions between the colors of the spectrum! This also drives home the artificiality of the designations currently in use – you could easily divide the spectrum into eight colors, or nine, or even more if you didn’t space them at uniform intervals.

Because UV waves have more energy than IR waves, I’ve chosen to show the former as white and the latter as black. Neither is strictly accurate!

The color with the narrowest bandwidth is actually cyan; it takes only a small shift to the green to make it seem more green than blue, and only a small shift to the blue to make it seem like a tone of blue and not a separate color.

There are two notable absences from the list of colors: Purple and Indigo.

Purple doesn’t actually exist – it’s a synthesis between blue and red that only happens in our heads. I would describe it as the most famous invented color of all, but I’m afraid that Indigo is an even better candidate.

Described as a slightly purplish blue so dark as to be almost black, and – as a color, and not a dye – it’s been controversial ever since Newton whipped out his first prisms. Some claimed to see an 8th color in the spectrum, others saw nothing of the sort.

The description alone should have been a clue – blue lies on the wrong side of violet. Hence indigo is somewhere between blue and violet, with a tonal value that is almost black.

The final notes worth observing from this diagram are afterthoughts that I squeezed in at the very top – I took the width of the human visible-light spectrum and shifted it first to exclude blue and violet, and then to exclude red and orange. From this, you can see that the highest spectral color visible to an Infravision candidate with the same spectral range as a human is a slightly blue version of cyan – which is, as noted, almost a blue itself, while the lowest color visible to an Ultravision candidate is a slightly orange-tinted yellow color.

Beyond Reality

Of course, as creative types, we aren’t limited to the colors of the rainbow or their infinite variations. When real life doesn’t go far enough for us, we add to it and invent whole new colors.

From Wikipedia:

• One of the earliest examples of fictional colors comes from the classic science fiction novel from 1920, A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay, which mentions two new primary colors, “ulfire” and “jale”.
• The Colour Out of Space, a 1927 story by H.P. Lovecraft, is named after an otherwise unnamed color, usually not observable by humans, generated by alien entities.
• Philip K. Dick’s 1969 novel, Galactic Pot-Healer, mentions a color, “rej”.
• Terry Pratchett, in his Discworld series, describes “Octarine” [Wikipedia page], a color that can be only seen by magicians; and
• Marion Zimmer Bradley in her novel, The Colors of Space (1963), mentions “the eighth color” which is visible during FTL travel.
• Finally, “Plueragloss” is the favorite color of a character who is a natural inhabitant of the afterlife in the television show The Good Place. In the show, plueragloss is described as “the color of when a soldier comes home from war and sees his dog for the first time.”

[Links are to Amazon and may earn me a small commission, unless otherwise indicated.]

As you can see, there have been many imaginary colors through the years, though I was a little surprised that it took us until 1920 to come up with one! I also have a vague memory of Isaac Asimov and EE ‘Doc’ Smith having stories with invented colors in them, though I wasn’t able to find the references in the time available.

Contrasting Choices

I wanted to include this section because sometimes it seems very strongly relevant, and at other times, it seems almost redundant.

There are certain combinations that sometimes seem to play games with human perceptions. These can be manipulated by artists and clothing designers to achieve specific effects.

Light Vs Dark

If you have equal sized swathes of a light color and a dark color side-by-side, the dark colored swathe will appear larger than the light unless they are close together and lined up perfectly – in which case the eye will follow the outlines to estimate the relative size.

This might be the ultimate reason why dark suits and light shirts are such a predominant choice for officials and businessmen – because we are subconsciously aware of the effect, and so mentally attribute the larger dark mass of the suit to the color and not to the fact that the wearer is overweight.

A dark suit, when coupled with a light shirt, in other words, is slimming.

There are limits to this phenomenon, and if you exceed them, the brain is prone to over-correct its error, giving the impression that the individual is even more overweight than they are.

Warm Vs Cool

These colors can coexist beside each other quite comfortably if one or both have a very dark tonal value. When that’s not the case, the brain inserts a dark mental division between them that doesn’t actually exist. This is especially noticeable with sky blue on a bright red.

Earth Vs Sky

Brown and Blue are, I have been told, a fashion no-no of the highest order. But there are limits to this – I have a sand-colored t-shirt that looks just fine with blue denim jeans.

The restriction itself has always seemed somewhat odd to me, because these are the colors of earth and those of sky, and those two are part of any natural terrain.

Plant Vs Sky

Almost as problematic is Green and Blue. And yet, these are the colors of leaves (and other vegetation) and the sky, and those go together quite naturally.

It sometimes seems that brown doesn’t go with anything very readily (except itself). Perhaps it’s a good thing that there are so many varieties of color under the general umbrella of “autumn colors”!

Near Vs Far

Most people are familiar with the fact that colors fade as they become farther away, due to the increased amount of air between observer and observed. What should be equally well known, but sometimes isn’t, is that the same phenomena that colors the sky blue also shifts distant colors toward the blue.

Take another look at the unmodified Alaska Landscape photo earlier in the article, and you will see this effect on the distant mountain. So pronounced is this effect on the eastern mountain range here in Australia, accentuated by the blue-green color of Eucalyptus trees, that the range is known as “The Blue Mountains”.

If the sky is a different color, this effect will also be different. And if there is no air, the resulting brightness will wash out details from any distant point.

The Color Wheel

A color wheel is a way of arranging colors so that the relationship between them becomes definable.

So much for the really easy part.

The first color wheel was developed by Isaac Newton and featured only the primary colors of light, which – when combined – produced white. It took very little time to learn that when mixing paints, inks, and dyes, combining the same three colors produced black.

This led to the color wheel of light being described as “additive” and the color wheel of paint being “subtractive”.

Below is an image of a color wheel.

Notice that color that’s to the far left on the wheel? Most people would call that a purple. It’s not – it’s a dark violet. The color that’s technically a purple is the one just up from it that is actually a purple. And the one to the upper right of that, which looks like a very dark orange is actually a red. You heard it here first!

So much for the easy part. Now it starts to get complicated.

There have been lots of color wheels since Newton. Some have had 7 colors, some 10, some other numbers. The example wheel has twelve.

Color Spaces

There are different ways of defining color on TVs and computers, and these produce different color wheels showing how the base colors combine. The method of definition with which most readers will be familiar is the RGB (red, green, blue) model which websites use to define specific colors – roughly 64000 of them – using three values from 0 to 255. “0,0,0”.is black, and “255,255,255” is white, for example.

Another “color space” is called the HSV model. It, like a third, the HSL model, is simply a “geometric transformation” of the “RGB cube” into “cylindrical form”. Which makes perfect sense if you know what those terms mean.

RGB specifies three values that can be thought of as measurements along the sides of a 3D cube. The “RGB color space” can thus be thought of as the volume of that cube.

If you reshape the cube into a cylinder, you get different colors on the color wheel, and different colors being displayed. Early color monitors used these color spaces, with the graphics card of the computer translating RGB (and whatever else it understood) so that it would display correctly.

Other color spaces and color wheels are used for specific media, for example four-color printing. But most of these have now started to fall out of favor, with a computer doing the hard work of translating what you have into whatever your hardware needs – and increasingly, the standard in use is the RGB color space.

Tonal Factors

A number of color wheels (and paint charts) have a ring of pure color and then a number of rings in and rings out showing different tonal values of the same color, representing the combination of white or black with the base color. Unfortunately, there’s a third possibility that complicates things – combining the base color with both white and black, i.e. with gray.

Sometimes this doesn’t make a lot of difference – it just looks like a “dirty” version of the base color. Sometimes it makes a huge amount of difference – “slate blue” is blue mixed with gray, for example.

Color Schemes

Artists and designers of all types use Color Wheels to create “color schemes”. A color scheme is a selection of colors to be used in a design. Rather than a haphazard throwing together of colors that might clash or be illegible, they are designed to work together as a coordinated whole.

Color schemes can be simple, or incredibly complex. A basic color scheme uses two colors that look appealing together. More advanced color schemes involve several colors in combination, usually based around a single color; for example, text with such colors as red, yellow, orange and light blue arranged together on a black background in a magazine article.

Analogous Colors

Analogous colors work well together when used in the same way, but they don’t contrast strongly. These are colors that are right next to each other on the color wheel, like yellow and green. Yellow text on a green background? Doable – with a strong tonal difference. Without that? Hopeless.

Complimentary Colors

Complimentary colors are harder to work with; these are colors opposite each other on the color wheel. Violet and Yellow; Blue and Orange; Red and Green. Used in the same way, against the same (neutral) background, with sufficient tonal contrast to that background, they can be an effective and quite distinct choice, especially if used sparingly.

Consider a document listing various ways to react to a situation – a staff training document, say. Heading each “bad choice” with a title in red, and heading each “right choice” with a title in green, makes for a very effective mnemonic, effectively loading additional information into the document through the choice of colors.

Triadic Colors

If your color wheel divides by three the way the example one does, then you can pick every fourth color to get yourself a set of Triadic Colors. Yellow, Red, and Blue are Triadic on the example wheel.

If you know what you are doing, Triadic colors can be really powerful combinations. Blue text and Red text against a paler yellow background, for example.

I have also seen Triadic colors described as “harmonic colors”. Some of the combinations are quite eye-opening – violet, light orange, and green, for example.

It can also be said that these will usually select one warm color, one cool color, and one color that will be neutral (relative to the other two colors).

Tonal Contrast=Legibility

I’ve mentioned this a few times, but it’s worth emphasizing again – a strong tonal contrast (dark vs light) makes text legible. The closer in tone two colors are, the less distinguishable they will be from one another no matter what colors they are and the harder it will be to make out any detail.

That’s why black and white photographs work. If you ever design something – uniform, costume, web page, birthday invitation – and you find it hard to read, take a screen cap and use a paint program to desaturate the colors, and I’ll bet that you find that your choices are too close in tonal value – too close to the same shade of gray.

Campaign Mastery – an example

Campaign Mastery’s foundation color scheme is visible on every page – it’s the background, which ranges from a dark blue to a mild blue-green containing quite a lot of gray. These colors form a three-space adjacent set of colors on the color wheel. If you were to map them onto a color wheel with a full range of tonal values – essentially a color cylinder – you would find that the key values form points on a continuous, smooth, spiral. The colors used for headings (like the one below), subheadings (like the one above), and sub-subheadings are also on this spiral – with the last being as light as I can make it and still have it be legible, and the other two falling exactly at 1/3 and 2/3 of the way to black from that sub-subheading value. It’s not something that you’re likely to be consciously aware of, but this continuity plays an important role in communicating the relative importance of a heading – and the text size follows the same pattern.

When I started getting assistance from my local GMs for Ask-The-GMs, I started using another color on this range – a pale green – as background to the potted biographies that were included. This shifted the overall tone of the pages too far to the green, so I had to compensate by shifting the headings a little more to the blue.

Characterization Application

Whenever I create a character, I assign them a dominant color. This may appear as a memorable ‘splash’ in the description of the character or what they are wearing, and if that’s the case it’s the ONLY color that I will mention.

Players can assume (or not) that a character named Hiroki Fujiwara is Asian and therefore probably has yellow skin, while ‘Walking Bear’ Higgins is probably Native American and has red skin – and they might even be right! – but I usually won’t waste time saying so UNLESS this is the dominant color of the individual.

More often, the color will be an invisible ‘tint’ that will permeate the space around the character, and as such, won’t be directly mentioned at all – but it will influence my choice of language in the character’s dialogue and any other descriptions of the scene or environment.

Have you ever noticed how some people seem to carry a miasma about them, an aura that communicates and generates an emotional response? There are some people who are gloomy, and others who exude vitality and energy, and others who have an aura of mystery, and so on. Those are examples of such ‘invisible tints’ in action. Assigning such characters a ‘hidden color’ in this way gives me a shorthand reminder of how I want the character to be perceived by the players.

But this technique is more powerful than that. If I have a particular environment – cool blues, for example, or corporate grays – and I want an individual to feel like they fit in, I can use the color wheel and the principles spelt out above, to select an appropriate ‘color’ for the character and use that as the foundation of their personality, dialogue and expressions. If I want them to stand out, I can pick a complimentary color. If I want them to be at odds with the PC, I can assign the PC a probable color to match their mood at the time based on the emotional values described in part one. A straight line between that color and that of the environment, drop a line from the midpoint of that line at a right angle, and I will get a Triadic color to the combination. Shift it one around towards the environment, and you have a color that fits in with their environment and is almost certain to be exactly the type of person who will frustrate the PC when they encounter them, or interact with them in an interesting way.

Color is a tool. You can use it to shape narrative, define personalities, trigger moods, and even turn your player’s intelligences up and down a little when that seems appropriate – if you use them properly.

As readers can see below, there’s been a supplemental addition to this article. Click here to read my afterthoughts (content I meant to include but forgot)… (opens in the same tab/page)

In Pigment On Canvas – Six GMing Lessons from Oil Painting I drew inspiration from the oil painting techniques of two TV programs, Masterclass In Oils with Ken Harris and The Joy Of Painting with Bob Ross.

In the course of Episode 7 of Season 7 (1985) of the latter, Bob made a very interesting observation while painting “Barn At Sunset”. In fact, he made two linked observations deriving from his experience as a professional artist:

• Men buy paintings dominated by cool colors, especially blue, and like more dramatic images like mountains and waterfalls.
• Women buy paintings dominated by warm colors, but are more likely to buy a painting that compliments or matches an existing decor.

These statements touched off a firestorm of questions in my mind.

Are these stereotypes still valid? There have been seismic social shifts since the TV show was first broadcast, what effects have they had?

To what extent are these trends consequent to the early childhood color stereotypes (blue for boys, pink for girls)? Do children whose bedrooms are painted in a more neutral color (yellow, green, or white) have different responses? How about children who have to spend a lot of time surrounded by Hospital Green?

What other manifestations might be observed? Clothing color choices? Cake preferences? Whether you like steak rare or well done?

And, as always, the RPG perspective wasn’t far from my thoughts: How can these facts be used in characterization, and are there any related facts that can be so used?

Color Associations

This isn’t the first time that I’ve talked about color here at Campaign Mastery, but I’m not usually discussing it literally!

Now this is a very big topic (although it might not seem so at first glance), and takes in some controversial territory along the way, so I pondered the best place to start for several hours. (It might be that I’ll have to split the article into two or even three, as there will be a lot of research required – and, even though I’m quick at that (see Lightning Research: Maximum Answers in Minimum Time for my techniques), that was definitely a part of my thinking, too).

To cut to the chase, I decided that discussing the symbolic value of color would be a good place to start, because this would be one of the more variable sections in size required – it might be relatively short, or it might take up the whole of a ‘part 1’. (You’ll be able to tell from the article title what the outcome was!)

The symbolism of color

Color has been used in a symbolic way for at least 90,000 years. The earliest examples are probably red for blood. The meaning attached to a particular color vary from culture to culture and over time within a culture as well, and on top of that, can be context-sensitive to boot. So don’t expect to find hard-and-fast universal rules – even for something as trivial as red being the color of danger!

That said, there are some associations that are more common than others, especially across western culture. If we accept that as a standard, it becomes easier to both note and appreciate exceptions.

For this section and the specific subsections below, I drew heavily on one Wikipedia page in particular, Color Symbolism – credit where it’s due!

Blue

Blue symbolizes the sky, and a greenish shade, the ocean. It often symbolizes serenity, stability, sadness, inspiration, wisdom, and reliability. In the Catholic faith, the Virgin Mary is most often depicted wearing blue to symbolize her being “full of grace” (a state that permits her to be serene at all times, to connect the dots between these meanings). Blue is often symbolic of cold, especially in combination with white, but it is also the color of a natural-gas flame – which may be why it represents warmth in the Netherlands, where it is also the color of Femininity – in contrast to the more common symbolic value of masculinity (see also Pink, below).

Blue symbolizes purity in India, and evil & infidelity in other parts of East Asia. It is the color of mourning in Iran.

In the US, Japan, and Korea, blue is often symbolic of high quality, trustworthiness, and dependability. Blue and Green are often used to denote improving or upwards trends in financial markets, with Red denoting downward or worsening trends – except in mainland China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, where these color associations are reversed, which sometimes creates confusion when western media outlets report on the finances of those nations.

Yellow

Yellow represents sunshine, and the new, and joy in general. It can sometimes be used to represent cowardice or fear. Children tend to like yellow as a color, and it is commonly used to market products to them. Because it is bright and noticeable, it is also used for school buses and taxi-cabs in many western sub-cultures, though this can vary enormously and is one of the easiest points of distinction to use when depicting a foreign culture. Some shades of yellow are unpleasant and unpopular. Yellow and yellow-related tones are often representative of a comfortable warmth (as opposed to a dangerous level of warmth).

The French sometimes use yellow to symbolize evil, though there has been some cultural contamination from other western cultures. In China, it is symbolic of happiness, and is sometimes used to represent high quality, trustworthiness, and dependability, as is Green.

Yellow is the color of envy in Germany and Russia.

Green

Green is the color of vegetation and symbolizes growth, nature, fertility and healing. The latter symbolism has also been inverted; Green can represent sickness or disease. It’s no accident that the most common depictions of the Coronavirus on TV reports are either Red, for danger, or Green. It can be a relaxing color, but it can also symbolize jealousy. In some contexts, it can represent inexperience or naivety, or a newcomer.

Green is the color of danger in Malaysia, and of love in Japan.

In the US, it is the primary color of money and because the US is the most common global currency standard, this meaning has also spread beyond the borders to many nations even if they have more colorful currency. That meaning has naturally extended to incorporate greed.

See also “Black” below!

Black

Bones may be white, but Black is the color that symbolizes death, grief, and evil. A black flag is representative of piracy. In the past, black was worn as the color of mourning. Black can also be the color of formality – black suits, for example, are more formal even than navy blue. I have a vague memory that none of the above is true in many Asian societies, where White or Green has these meanings, so pay careful attention to that when it’s appropriate!

Black can also symbolize distinctiveness (“black sheep”) or rebellion (“black leather jacket”).

White

Throughout western society, white is symbolic of purity, perfection, faith, innocence, softness, and cleanliness. This symbolism is reflected in wedding dresses and wedding cakes, for example. In some societies, White is the color of mourning, however!

Pink

Pink is the color of babies and children, and hence is often symbolic of softness, sweetness, love. Wikipedia reports “there is an urban legend that pink was a masculine color before the mid 20th century, based on evidence of conflicting traditions before about 1940. Del Guicide (2012) argues that pink-blue gender coding has been broadly consistent in the UK and the US since it appeared around 1890.”

Red

Red is often associated with Love (Roses, Hearts), Passion, Lust, Danger, Warnings, and Importance. A ‘splash’ or streak of red can be symbolic of violence, anger, and blood. In China, it symbolizes good luck, happiness, and is used for many holidays and weddings. Red is symbolic of Masculinity in France, and this association also appears in the UK at times. Red and White are often symbolic of Christmas; green is a secondary symbol in this respect. red and purple are symbolic of love in China, Korea, and Japan. It is considered the color of unluckiness in Chad, Nigeria, and Germany, but is considered a lucky color in China, Denmark, and Argentina. In China, red is the traditional bridal color, while in India, it is symbolic of ambition and desire.

Purple

I was hoping to avoid mentioning Purple in this section, but… Traditionally associated with power, wealth, and royalty (who were the people who usually had the first two), luxury, and decadence (which some would argue also derive from royalty). In Japan, it represents evil and infidelity.

Purple can be symbolic of Reliability in China, South Korea, and Japan. It is the color of envy in Mexico – which makes it interesting that it is often a part of the wardrobe of Mexican officials (especially in the form of a sash)..

That seems to at least partially answer one of my questions – there is such variety in the interpretations and symbolism of color that the “Blue is for boys and pink is for girls” concept is parochial at best. It is still true of the US, however, which was the target market for The Joy Of Painting, so the association can’t be completely dismissed – but it now comes with an enormous caveat attached (in addition to the one about stereotypes).

The Colors of Royalty

Purple is not only the color of Prince, it is the color most frequently associated with Royalty. The reason for this is simple: in ancient times, Phoenician purple dye (also known as Tyrian Purple) was extremely expensive, being made from the secretions of a predatory sea snail originally known as ‘Murex’. Extracting the dye involved tens of thousands of snails and substantial labor – to get enough for a single garment.

As a result, purple was the color worn by Roman magistrates; it became the imperial color worn by the rulers of the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, and later by Roman Catholic bishops. Similarly in Japan, the color is traditionally associated with the emperor and aristocracy.

Notably, this die improved in color with age instead of fading, making it symbolic of immortality – a quality that rulers and religious leaders alike wished to incorporate into their popular images!

The Phoenicians also produced a deep blue dye from a related family of snails which became known as Royal Blue. These days, it would probably be considered a shade of indigo with a little bright blue mixed in, at least to my eye.

The final color often attached to royalty is Red, usually as a backdrop to white or gold.

The association of these colors with Royalty creates many secondary associations, as described in the section on Purple above (which is why I hope to avoid including it – I wanted to put it here). In particular, the qualities of Royalty came to be represented by the color Purple – both good and sometimes bad. But it’s the rarity that causes that association to exist, combined with individuals of both wealth and the power to restrict access to the limited supply.

If Purple was common, and some other color was rare, that would arguably be “the color of Royalty”. It doesn’t matter if it’s chartreuse or nutmeg or sand.

This in turn becomes more significant when contemplating camouflage benefits – some colors will stand out more than others. It will usually be the case that in environments where people want to stand out – throne rooms and the like – they will choose a complimentary color with a strong tonal contrast for decorations and furnishings.

The Colors of Wealth

Some places around the world have very brightly colored money. Some do not.

Money – as in, the symbolic representation of wealth by a paper instrument to facilitate its transfer from one individual to another as part of a transaction – started as a written note on plain paper. These were promissory notes that had been in use in China since the 7th century, which gradually evolved into the modern concept of paper money somewhere during the 10th to 13th century. The concept was carried back to Western Europe by travelers such as Marco Polo in the latter century, and in 1661, Stockholm Banco issued the first European banknote.

Between the 17th and 19th centuries, banknotes became attached to the value of a preset fixed quantity of gold, replacing the use of gold coins in Europe. This practice became known as the Gold Standard. The notes were legal tender, and redemption into actual gold was soon discouraged; the abstract entity of the banknote symbolized ownership of that gold, which was held in trust by the bank or the government.

Color was originally introduced to the banknote as a means of thwarting counterfeiters. At first, one color plus black was the limit, then a second color was added in some countries, and then brightly colored banknotes.

US currency actually uses three colors a black, a green, and a third “magnetic” black which can be read by machines. But the currency itself appears relatively plain because the two blacks can’t be distinguished visually (or not easily).

The story of the evolution of color in currency can be clearly seen in the image below, which I assembled from a number of sources for reference in the Adventurer’s Club pulp campaign:

(Note that the history of Canadian Currency provided is absolutely accurate, used to enhance the credibility of an improbable situation involving blackmail, the FBI, and some counterfeit Canadian printing plates).

Compare those to the modern Australian Currency:

And yet – and this is the interesting point – the color that Australians most commonly associate with currency is either Gold (the color of our 1- and 2-dollar coins) or the green either of American currency (or of the old Australian $2 note).

Before anyone suggests that the polymer notes haven’t been in circulation for long enough – that’s true, however the notes that they replaced were also brightly colored and in use for decades, first issued in 1966, and the pre-decimal currency that preceded it was also brightly colored – and in the same basic colors as many of the modern notes (the ten pound note is blue & green, just like the $10 note – only the shades have changed).

To the best of my awareness, every culture has a color which they associate with wealth – but whether or not that color bears any relation to the colors of their currency is an open question.

It could be argued that the very multicolored nature of Australian Currency acts against any one color coming to represent wealth, leaving us open to a more forthright influence – the USA – but I couldn’t find any research on the subject either way, so this is just speculation. I can state that Australians tend to think of their currency as the prettiest banknotes in the world!

I also find myself contemplating the velvet of casino gaming tables. While can be found in an enormous variety of colors these days, the traditional color is a fairly bright green – not dissimilar to the green of pool and billiards tables, though more fluorescent (a marketing person might describe the latter as “louder”), and whether or not these associations contribute to Green being the color of wealth?

Of course, representations of metallic shiny gold will always symbolize wealth. The same is not true of silver or platinum, perhaps because these are harder to identify – such could be a representation of stainless steel, at least visually.

The Olympic Flag

The five Rings in the Olympic Flag are 5 different colors because one of those colors appears in every national flag.

Which raises the whole question of color, in the flag, as being symbolic of national identity, which is a complicated question in and of itself, simply because there are so many national flags out there, and each one will have a story of its own.

Take, for example, the British Flag (sometimes erroneously called the Union Jack – it only has that designation when it’s flown on a ship, the rest of the time it’s more properly referred to as ‘the Union Flag’ (at least according to some! Others disagree!) – except in Canada where it is the Royal Union Flag). The origins of an earlier form of the flag date back to 1606. James VI of Scotland had inherited the English and Irish thrones in 1603 as James I, thereby uniting the three crowns in a personal union, although the three kingdoms remained separate states.

On 12 April 1606, a new flag to represent this regal union between England and Scotland was specified in a royal decree, according to which the flag of England, a red cross on a white background, known as St George’s Cross, and the flag of Scotland, a white saltire (X-shaped cross, or St Andrew’s Cross) on a blue background, would be joined, forming the flag of England and Scotland for maritime purposes.

In 1801, the present-day design was decreed by Royal proclamation, adding the red saltire of St Patrick to symbolize Ireland.

So it’s Red, White, and Blue – the most common choice of flag colors going. The American Flag, the Australian Flag, New Zealand, France, Russia, and many more, are combinations of these three colors.

We already know that the flag combines three separate flags – and so the symbology of the colors derives from those flags. But those meanings are somewhat muddied by the act of coalescing them three-into-one.

Take the Blue. It hasn’t been the same throughout the history of the flag – at first, it’s only use was at sea on civil and military ships of England and Scotland; in 1634, Charles I further restricted it to royal ships. Only in 1707 was it adopted by the land military – with a slightly different shade of blue, closer to the blue of the Scottish Flag. In 2003 a committee of the Scottish Parliament recommended that the flag of Scotland use a lighter “royal” blue instead of the Blue that had now become standard!

Does the blue in the flag of Scotland, and hence the blue of the Union Flag/Jack, mean the same thing as the blue in the US flag, or the blue in the Australian Flag, and so on?

Well, check out the Wikipedia page for “Flag Of Scotland” and you will quickly learn that there has been a historically broad range of colors used – from the blue used in the Union Flag/Jack to a sky blue. So widespread were variations that in 2003 a committee of the Scottish Parliament met to examine a petition for the standardization of the flag.

Heraldry doesn’t specify what shade of blue is used, instead using the more generic term “azure”.

The fact that the specific shade of blue has become important points to a broader significance through national and cultural identity than mere identification. it’s presence at triumphs and struggles, either military or sporting, makes a national flag an emotional tie between an individual’s sense of national pride and achievements by others.

These experiences accumulate over the years until the flag comes to symbolize the nation in the hearts and minds of the individual, or at least, that’s the theory. How strongly those emotions are invoked by components of the flag is an open, and more difficult, question. I looked for, but couldn’t find, anything official on the subject. Even if I had, it would probably have focused more on shape than on color.

In fact, the closest thing to a definitive statement on the subject comes from the Wikipedia page on “National Flag”, which (in its preamble) states, “A national flag is typically designed with specific meanings for its colors and symbols, which may also be used separately from the flag as a symbol of the nation.”

So, in an attempt to put this subject to at least ‘park’ this subject and move on, let me offer the following suggestion:

National identity as associated with the national flag, or other symbols of nationhood, connects through achievement and shared experiences (however vicarious) to a symbolism that is an emergent property of the elements of the flag, including its shapes and colors.

The question this leaves unanswered is whether or not color alone is enough to invoke that sense of national identity. I’m not convinced that there is a simple yes/no answer to this question; a unique or unusual color may be enough, and certainly a color combination may be enough IF the colors aren’t generically used.

For Red, White, and Blue, there are so many flags using these colors that it seems unlikely. For Mexico, or Argentina? It’s quite plausible.

Corporate Colors

Significant content for this section derived from three websites:

• The Meaning Behind Logo Colors – Tailor Brands;
• What Does You Logo Color Mean? – ebaqdesign; and
• The Hidden Meanings Behind Famous Logo Colors – Webfx.com.

These are all worth visiting for additional information. I also drew on memories of a graphic design course that I took many years ago.

Colors in a corporate logo are not chosen at random (usually). They are the results of deliberate and careful thought, and often, intense debate.

“Picking the right palette helps establish your identity better and adds versatility to your designs.

“Color choices also give your logo depth by forging a visual connection to your company’s values and personality. The right combination can visually communicate the feeling your company is projecting to consumers.

“More than just aesthetic appeal, colors help your brand connect with consumers on a deeper psychological level. When you choose your logo and brand’s color palette, you’re also selecting the emotions and associations you’re seeking to evoke.

“Science has shown repeatedly that our brains react in diverse ways to specific colors. By understanding how each color affects the mind and the emotions it stirs up, you can create a more effective brand. It’s important to remember that this is a nuanced and complex field that requires careful thought.” – Tailorbrands

Now, we’ve already talked about the general symbology of color, so let’s move on to some specifics:

Red

Bright, hot colors are often used to suggest a bright, playful, energetic organization. This is especially true of Red, which can be labeled “Brash”. Red is also the most blatantly sexual and passionate color. Brands which use Red include Pinterest, Lego, Kellogg’s, and Coca-Cola.

White

White is used as a surround to convey a sense of exclusivity and luxury. It is also used to create an impression of Hygiene, Purity, and Cleanliness – usually in cleaning products or brands who manufacture such products. Used in different ways, it can suggest clarity or focus, stripping away irrelevancies and excessive complexity. Finally, it can be used with other colors to suggest youth and innocence.

Yellow

Yellow is the color of sunshine and honey, and that bleeds through into its use in corporate logos, where it is used to suggest friendliness and cheer along with youthful energy. Brands whose logos are predominantly yellow include Cat, Hertz, Nikon, and Post-it.

Orange

Orange attempts to fuse and conflate the values of red with those of yellow. What emerges is not truly either, but is symbolic of energy, dynamism and aggressiveness. Brands which use orange in their logos include Fanta, Amazon, Firefox, and Harley-Davidson.

Purple

Purple, as established earlier, has a strong connection with Royalty and thus it’s use in a logo exudes luxury and sophistication. That makes it a favorite amongst brands of cosmetics and high-end retailers – but at least one chocolate company has been using purple this way for as long as I can remember. However, it can be seen as pretentious if the symbol doesn’t match other aspects of the business, and in particular is (or should be) avoided by businesses looking for a more down-to-earth relationship with the consumer.

Brands that leverage purple include Cadbury, Hallmark, and FedEx.

Green

Green is generally considered a restful color, and is often thought to suggest balance and calm. In some contexts, it can suggest a connection to nature, but this will often need to be reinforced in some other way. It lacks the energy of Red, Orange, and Yellow, and is thus more suited to conservative organizations. Brands who use green for their logos include John Deere, Android, Starbucks, and Spotify.

Blue

The sky may be blue, but most tones of blue are more strongly suggestive of terrestrial phenomena. “Sky blue and white” doesn’t make people think of the sky – it makes them think of cold and ice, and that impression (in turn) leads to an imputed suggestion of clinical dispassion. For that reason (amongst others), blue is often associated with medical organizations of various types.

Darker shades of blue are more reminiscent of the oceans, and this association connects the color with many qualities associated with a calm ocean – permanence, comfort, confidence, and calmness – all qualities that most medical organizations also like to exude, along with many investment firms, banks, and legal firms. This usage, in a dog-chasing-its-own-tail way, has imputed some additional characteristics to blue in a logo – wisdom, loyalty, sophistication, experience, and respectability.

The darker the shade of blue (while still being distinct from black), the stronger that last association becomes. But there is a downside – businesses using a dark blue can also be seen as having excessive formality and conservatism, of being out-of-date and out-of-touch.

Brands which use Blue as their foundation include American Express, Dell, Ford, GE, and Twitter.

Brown

Brown is an especially difficult color to work with. The right tone can be suggestive of the permanence of earth, and the practicality and lack of pretension of being down-to-earth. But some shades are generally unpleasant and are rarely used except as a detail color. You won’t see much Yellow-Brown, or Blue-Brown, for example, and greenish shades of brown just look confused. The darker the brown, the more distance is placed between the color and these disruptive shades.

Brown is often more significant in relation to other colors in the logo, used to “ground” energetic colors like yellow and orange in “reality”. Brown can be symbolic of nature, respectability, confidence, security, and seriousness.

Red-browns are the one tone that has no negative associations AND is visually appealing. It serves the same function as a brown-red pairing would do, but in a single color.

Pink

Pink is regarded as essentially feminine by most marketers, but they can also be interpreted as a “light red” (depending on usage) – suggestive of the values of red, but in a more controlled and harnessed way. Pink is also strongly associated with babies, and therefore with motherhood, and therefore with all the virtues of the idealized mother – caring, nurturing, and protective. Romance and Love are natural associations that derive from the same source but viewed in a different direction, while Tranquility is associated with all pale colors but especially strongly with pink.

Brands who employ Pink include Barbie, Dunkin’ Donuts, LG, and Taco Bell.

Gray

Gray is one of the most neutral shades available. Brands often choose it for its timeless, practical, and unbiased feeling. It’s ideally used as a secondary color to provide a calmer and more neutral background to bold colors. Because we’re used to the gray of metal, it has also come to be symbolic of machine values – practicality and efficiency.

Black

Black is the absence of colors, which is to say that all colors are equally absent from it. It is representative, when used correctly, of professionalism, seriousness, authority, and respectability. But it can also symbolize elegance, sophistication, and class – and through association, can imply luxury and glamour.

Lastly, because black never goes out of style, it is always perceived as representing modernity.

Black Logos are used by ABC, the BBC, the New York Times, Gucci, and Tiffany & Co.

In combination

I’ve talked a lot here and there in the above about color combinations. No corporate logo is ever just one color – at the very least, it’s one color set against a background of another. Other elements of design – font, illustration, framing, contrast – also convey messages. Ultimately, the goal of a logo is to exemplify one particular organization’s ethos and philosophy as they want to be perceived. A brand logo is all about appearances, and the impression that the brand wants to convey – it’s about the marketing of a company or organization.

“Research has shown that people make subconscious judgments about a person, environment, or product within 90 seconds of initial viewing. Between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone. As a consumer, your decisions about where to shop and what brands to trust are heavily influenced by logos, whether you realize it or not. We associate certain fonts, colors, and designs with qualities that are entirely unrelated, like product quality and reliability.” – webfx.com

Color is recognized by the human brain right after shape and before typography and text. That means that the symbolism of color (and of shape) is already unwinding in our brains when we see the logo before we actually perceive who this reaction is about.

Our biological heritage makes the utility of this approach clear.

Shape first: some shapes are inherently threatening, even when only seen in silhouette. A bear, for example. A snake. The survival benefits of extra-fast processing of shape far outweigh any negatives from ‘false positives’.

Color second: Some shapes are indeterminate, or not an immediate threat. That means that we can afford to take the mental time to think about whether a berry is edible, and whether or not that fruit is ripe (or over-ripe), or if the meat is cooked. Color can second-guess and backstop shape – some animals might threaten but it’s (usually) just for show – leave them alone and they will usually leave you alone. Color can distinguish between general principles and specific exceptions.

An illustration of tonal illusion

There are some who suggest that dark/light tonal recognition precedes full color analysis by the brain, but this is not established, and is complicated by the fact that the brain interprets such values relative to the tones in contact with the tone being analyzed – an effect that artists have been making use of (or attempting to counter) for centuries.

Which gray rectangle is darker? Take your time – I’ll wait.
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All done? You sure? Take another quick look:
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You probably said the one on the left. Our brains are hardwired to see it that way.

In fact, they are both the exact same shade of gray. I’ve used three tricks to fool you. First, the rectangle on the left has a light yellow dot enclosed within, a very light color, while the rectangle on the right has a dark blue one. The gray contrasts more strongly with the yellow, so we perceive the gray as darker – it’s an attempt by the brain to highlight significance by exaggerating contrast.

Second, the shapes are suggestive of a 3D representation – and there’s a clear suggestion that the light source is behind and to the left of the first panel. That means that it’s in deeper shadow than the one on the right – which reinforces the false impression from the first deception.

And, third, I’ve put a lot of what is technically called “negative space” on the right-hand side. This contrasts strongly with the right-hand rectangle but also with the blue dot, and means that the image can be divided roughly into thirds – the left-hand rectangle, the middle rectangle, and the right hand empty space. And our brains associate like values between the empty space and the yellow dot – and that makes the gray surrounding the yellow dot seem to be more like the darker tone (overall) of the right-hand rectangle-and-blue-dot.

It all adds up, without contradiction, to the left-hand rectangle being darker than the right in our minds – and so that’s the way our brains interpret what they are seeing. (Man, I love stuff on optical illusions, they are just so fascinating!)

Me? For the purposes of this article, I’m going to designate tone as a quality of color, rather neatly sidestepping the whole argument.

The third thing that we process, after shape and color, is anything that requires cognition. That includes typography and activity (in the case of a moving image). This takes so long that sound has already been processed and recognized by the time we get there.

You can test that assertion for yourself – if I say the word “Elephant”, most people (having been cued) will remember an elephant trumpeting. But if you hear an elephant trumpet even in your head you will think the word ‘elephant’ – and more quickly and certainly than you remembered the sound of the trumpeting. Evolution favors reaction over analysis because if you don’t react, you might not have time to analyze

Clever logo design takes advantage of this hierarchy. But even if your designer isn’t clever enough to do this, you still process the emotional resonance of the colors of the logo before the meaning and identification of the entity to which the logo pertains. You could say that the broad associations with color undercut cognition, and brands like to use that to their advantage, deciding what ‘message’ they want the logo to convey to the prospective customer.

Quite obviously, there will be some cultural differentiation, here. Colors to a Mexican, or an Eskimo, will mean different things and have a different association, than they will to an American.

Color impacts on Mood

A lot of people don’t realize that the color of their walls impacts on their moods and emotional state. It doesn’t especially matter if those colors are paint, or a poster, or a potted plant.

It’s been a truism that color impacts on mental state and mood for as long as there have been interior decorators (never mind interior designers), if not longer.

Predominant sources for this section include:

• Color Psychology: Does It Affect How You Feel? – Verywell mind by Kendra Cherry, medically reviewed by Steven Gans MD;
• How Color Impacts Emotions and Behaviors – 99designs by Allison S Gremillion;
• The Surprising Effect of Color on Your Mind and Mood – Psychology Today by Sally Augustin Ph. D.; and
• Color Psychology: The Emotional Effect Of Colors – Art Therapy (and a couple of linked pages in what is actually a 6-part series on the subject).

The last page also offers as free downloads some Color Meaning and Symbolism Charts.

Before getting into specifics, one important caveat: color-related emotion is highly dependent on your personal preference and past experiences with that particular color – which includes sociological and cultural associations. In other words, everyone agrees that color has an effect – but there can be legitimate disagreement over what those effects are.

Yellow rooms make some people anxious. Blue rooms are generally calming. Some colors have been associated with increased blood pressure, increased metabolism, and even eyestrain!

“Given the prevalence of color, one would expect color psychology to be a well-developed area,” researchers Andrew Elliot and Markus Maier have noted. “Surprisingly, little theoretical or empirical work has been conducted to date on color’s influence on psychological functioning, and the work that has been done has been driven mostly by practical concerns, not scientific rigor.” – quoted by verywellmind.com

Some colors are prone to making people more aggressive and argumentative. Some make people feel like the ambient temperature is cooler than others – even in temperature-controlled conditions.

VeryWellMind have links on the page referenced above to a number of pages dedicated to specific colors. Rather than being exhaustive, I’ll just hit the highlights and leave readers to research further if they are interested.

• Black – tends to isolate the resident. This can be a negative – fueling emotional states of isolation and loneliness – or a positive, freeing the resident from external distractions and enabling them to be more creative.
• White – also has two sides to it, making some inspired and refreshed while others find it austere, cold, and lonely. Peacefulness, Emptiness, Cleanliness, and Innocence are all emphasized for some people by white rooms. White, like all light colors, can make a space feel larger and less confined – whether that makes you feel more alone is a matter of personal psychology.
• Red – red walls (and clothing) has been found to have genuine physiological effects, including elevated blood pressure, elevated metabolism, increased heart rate, and increased respiration rate. These cause energy levels to spike, just as they would if you got a burst of Adrenalin. Unsurprisingly, then, the list of emotional responses to red mirror those of a person who is emotionally worked up – passion, rage, aggression, anger, power, and expressions of dominance. People seeing others in front of red backgrounds generally find those other individuals are more attractive than when they see them silhouetted against other colors.
• Blue – is a third color with at least two sides to it. Blue can convey serenity, calmness, or sadness and coldness. Pale blue can be technically white in terms of its effects. Research has shown that (regardless of gender), people are more productive in Blue rooms – making this a popular choice for office spaces. Blue has also been shown to reduce appetite, and some diet plans recommend eating off blue plates (which brings a whole different meaning to the phrase “blue-plate special”!) Blue has also been shown to lower the pulse rate and body temperature. I know one family who painted their walls a very neutral light gray and add color through blinds and other decorations – blue in summer and yellow in winter – but I don’t how much they save in electric bills, if anything. YMMV.
• Green – is considered to invoke tranquility, peace, and to be ‘refreshing’. Researchers have found that green can improve reading ability – some students find that laying a transparent sheet of green paper or plastic over reading material increases reading speed and comprehension. It has also been found that a green work environment produces a reduction in minor illnesses like stomach aches. Darker greens are especially calming and soothing to some, while brighter greens invoke greater vibrancy, energy, and motivation. Green is also believed by some to evoke compassion – one reason why it is a common color for doctors and nurses in hospital situations (along with blue and white).
• Yellow – while it can be bright and bubbly, it can also create visual fatigue. Yellow can increase metabolism but is also known to create feelings of frustration and even anger. It tires people out, and tired people can sometimes be snappish. The impact of yellow is known to be highly dependent on color saturation and slight tints. Yellow is also known to stimulate the appetite – so a yellow kitchen is not a good idea if you’re overweight.
• Purple – I don’t know of many walls painted in any shade of purple other than a fairly light violet. It is often a tranquil color and there have been suggestions that the association with mystery makes people more imaginative. Some people have reported dreaming more vividly in purple rooms. A grayish violet is linked with an impression of sophistication for some.
• Brown – can be drab and boring, especially in pale tones like beige. It can create feelings of loneliness, sadness, and isolation. In large quantities of similar tone, it can seem vast, stark, and empty, like an enormous desert devoid of life. More women than men choose brown as a preferred color, but it’s still one of the three least favorite colors for both genders – except in clothing, but that’s a separate issue that I’ll deal with a little later. It is also worth noting that under-stimulation can also be stressful! Use beige as an accent, not a theme!
• Pink – paler shades have been known to increase more feminine emotional traits like kindness and empathy, but it’s very easy to use too dark a shade that can be aggravating. One particular shade is known as “drunk tank pink” because it is often used in prisons to calm inmates. However, it has also been shown that this effect is transitory; once accustomed to the color, inmates became even more agitated than they had been.

That last point – about the reactions being transitory – also applies to many of the other impacts of color on mood, for example the calmness induced by blue.

There is also some intriguing anecdotal evidence that’s worth being aware of:

• Warm-colored placebo pills were reported as more effective than cool-colored placebo pills in one study.
• Blue-colored streetlights can lead to reduced crime according to anecdotal evidence.
• Red causes people to react with greater speed and force, something that many sports teams attempt to take advantage of.
• Black uniforms are more likely to attract penalties on a sporting field. Additionally, students were more likely to associate negative qualities with a player wearing a black uniform according to a study that looked at historical data of sports teams and how they were dressed.

Finally, it can’t be under-emphasized how important the cultural context can be. The colors of a favorite sports team can be inspirational and promote a sense of security and confidence. That’s not due to the colors; that’s due to the association the individual has with those colors.

And, with that, I’m plumb out of time (and then some). I’ve gotten about half-way through – which is better than I expected at some points in the process! So, next week, look for RPGs in Technicolor, part 2!

To whet your appetite, here’s what’s planned:

The effects of color on cognition, the use of color in identity, Non-human terrestrial color interpretations of color, non-human alien interpretations of color, contrasts, color theory, and applying color theory to characterization – in other words, most of the application of the information presented to RPGs!

I’m going to start this article with a bit of tooting of my own horn.

One of the many steps that led to the creation of Campaign Mastery in November 2008 was the publication in early 2007 of a two-part article on “Scenario and Story Arc creation” called “Hipbone’s Connected To The Thighbone”.

These days I’d describe it as “Adventure and Campaign Arc creation”; my nomenclature has evolved, something I might write about in a future post.

Anyway, this was one of the first articles I wrote to make something of a splash – Martin Ralya (now of Gnome Stew, then of Treasure Tables) wrote (with links):

Part one is all about building adventures. It includes some great advice about loosely assigning roles to the PCs: Stimulator, Foil, Detective and Driver. (Even if you skim the article, read this section – it’s excellent).

Part two opens with advice on tying the various elements of your adventure into a unified whole, and then moves into story arcs, finishing with a brief note about extending this technique to campaign creation.

Adventure creation is an area where I can just never get enough help – it’s something I’ve always struggled with as a GM. Even if this is one of your strengths, though, you might find some surprises in these two articles.

Comments on Martin’s heads-up included (selectively quoted):

John Arcadian: So that is really a great article and way to look at it.

V V _GM: I subscribe to Roleplaying Tips, and that is one of the best articles they’ve had in my opinion.

Martin Ralya (post author): If you [meaning me] ever want to write a guest post about adventures for TT, consider this an open invitation …

This was an obvious ego-boost for someone relatively new to the Published-RPG-Writing game. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to take Martin up on his offer.

Moving on: Anyone familiar with what I’ve written here at Campaign Mastery who is reading those articles today will see that I haven’t really changed my approach to the task all that much in the thirteen-plus years since, and therefore they still stack up.

Arguably, the first part was the more completely realized at the time; the second part was comparatively short of specifics and details, which is why several articles here at Campaign Mastery have superseded / expanded on what was written back then.

These days, a link to Martin’s post lives in a bookmarks folder marked Idea Sources at the very top, for three reasons:

1. If ever I need a quick boost of enthusiasm, this gives me a quick rev-up;
2. I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that I would one day update it, even though detailed and specific articles here at Campaign Mastery have stolen a lot of that thunder;
3. There’s always more to say on a big subject like this. Which is where today’s article comes in.

Obscured by Distance

Often, you need a plotline to ripen before it becomes a sufficiently-challenging problem for the PCs to solve.

The diagrams above describe what this actually means in campaign terms. This adventure is intended to operate for a total of 12 game sessions – 5 of them before PC involvement (section 1a, pre-plot) and 7 of them as that plot unwinds (1b, PC involvement).

Below that is a triangle the length of the entire adventure which is fattest at the start of the 12-session adventure and almost non-existent at the end, describing the vulnerability of the overall adventure to being derailed by the PCs doing something unexpected.

Combating this, in theory, is PC Focus, which is depicted as a triangle with its fattest end at the end of the 12-session plotline and thinnest point at the start. This indicates that, in theory, the PCs should transition from barely being aware a situation exists to being concerned enough to intervene at the start of the 7-session PC Involvement mark. (Another way to look at this is the scope for the inclusion of subplots and side-plots in an individual game session).

If everything goes according to plan, then, the diagram below shows what is expected to happen:

At the start of the 7-session game arc, there is virtually zero PC involvement in the plotline, growing as the seriousness of the situation becomes apparent (I’ll get to the question of what the PCs ARE supposed to be paying attention to, a little later).

From the end of the third game session, this plotline becomes the dominant focus of the campaign (PC Focus exceeds Plot vulnerability, in other words the PCs start setting the agenda). Or you could say that the problem has “fully matured” into a crisis, if that’s more appropriate to the campaign genre!

Now let’s imagine that one of the PCs becomes sufficiently concerned by the possible consequences that they start investigating the problem early, ignoring whatever the GM wants them to be doing. That’s their prerogative, as a Player Character.

Diagrams 5 and 6, above, show what happens. 5a and 6a show the point at which the PC starts meddling in the GMs plans – yellow for 2 1/2 sessions early, red for almost immediately.

5b and 6b stack the two triangles one atop the other, with the PC involvement truncated to the point of engagement. This is what happens if the GM has prepared for this possibility and his contingency plans work perfectly. In effect, as a result, the adventure still fills out it’s allotted total of 12 game sessions, and the adventure has not succumbed to the vulnerability exposure.

GMs have to cope with this sort of thing all the time. We get really good at coping with it (most of the time). I can count the number of adventures that have gone this seriously astray on one hand (okay, perhaps two) from 40 years behind the game screen.

(I got started early – I offered up the Tomb Of Horrors to a pair of first-level characters, expecting them to discover it to be too tough for them (the adventure is designed for characters of 10th-14th level) and that they would go elsewhere to ‘build themselves up’ to being tough enough to cope with it. Surprisingly, they persisted, stopping to heal as frequently as necessary, and earning enough experience from even partial successes that they were able to cope. One of those players could take the hobby or leave it and played thereafter only for the entertainment of the other, who still remembers those game sessions around the kitchen table fondly – despite officially being way below the target age for the game.

Two 1st-level characters taking on encounters intended to trouble four 10th-14th level characters? You can bet that I was scrambling! But diplomacy and reason work just as well when you’re a novice as when you’re experienced – if you’re smart enough to use them – and they were. Traps intended to be lethal only work if you haven’t punched a hole through a copper piece, and tied a piece of string to it, which you can throw through apertures ahead of your physical entrance – if you can pull the copper piece back, you know it’s safe to proceed, if you can’t….

Unfortunately, sometimes there’s nothing you can do. I’ve been the player in question in other GM’s campaigns (twice, in different incarnations of Ian Mackinder’s Traveler campaigns, for example), as my PCs agenda (or paranoia) completely took over the campaign, to the point that he chose to shut them down before things got out of hand.

5c and 6c show what happens. In 5c, by the time the players are supposed to first become aware of the impending crisis, it is becoming the focus of their attention – and half-way through the 6th game session, the adventure comes to an abrupt end. What should have been 12 game sessions, and the central focus of 7, has lasted only 6 1/2, with the climax only 1 1/2 game sessions long. Almost half the adventure has gone up in smoke.

In 6c, the adventure lasts only 5 game sessions, and is all over at the point the GM intended for the players to start taking it seriously. It was still the focus of attention for about 1 1/2 game sessions, but the problem had so little time to snowball that it was relatively easy to nip it in the bud.

Distracting the players

Ideally, you want to tease the players with breadcrumbs that – if followed – will achieve 5c or 6c, while keeping the players too occupied with higher-priority problems to actually engage in that process. That way, when they get to game session 6 and the crisis unfolds, they will look back and see that you’ve been building up to this adventure for a while.

There are two basic approaches to distracting the players. The first is to occupy them with subplots from their personal lives, with the breadcrumbs hidden in the background.

The alternative is to overlap your adventures, so they are too busy with the climax of Adventure A to prevent Adventure B from manifesting.

This is actually a lot harder than the first technique, and quickly becomes unrealistic; it won’t be too long before your players are demanding some down-time for their characters to rest, recuperate, and resupply (if nothing else). What’s more, without the (relative) calm of such downtime, “campaign fatigue” soon settles in.

For that reason, I tend to leave it until a campaign is approaching its’ epic conclusion and I’m wrapping major plot threads up with every adventure. That way, it feels to the players like they are “clearing the decks” and girding their loins for the impending ultimate battle.

Since this is ultimately what they would want to do at such a time, it comes across as being their own idea, and that you are delivering exactly what they want – in other words, like they have control of the campaign.

Outside of that, “Adventure on Adventure” is a rarity in my campaigns, and it’s always notable when things get unusually busy. Instead, I’ll use the sub-plot model.

I’ve discussed this approach a number of times, here at Campaign Mastery, but never looked so closely at the “why” of such a plot structure.

That’s the omission that this particular post is intended to solve.

I’m deliberately keeping it small so that people will have the chance to go and read those early articles – and so that I have time to think about what I’ll be posting over Christmas, 2020, which is only about 6 weeks away at this point!

So lets’ sum up:

If your plots need time to mature, there are three techniques that you can use to keep the players from prematurely focusing on them:

1. Keep the developments so small and remote that they barely register on the players, creating a crisis that they could not see coming;
2. Distract them, either with personal lives / subplots, or with the dramatic conclusion of another adventure in which they are already involved;
3. Have a ‘Plan B’ ready to go if these should not prove sufficient.

An example

I wasn’t going to provide one, but as I wrote, one came to mind, and I couldn’t resist sharing.

1. Tease without delivering much information, making an event seem trivial:

   “Your clock radio goes off, waking you a little after 6AM. Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, you fumble for the radio-alarm’s off button, hearing just part of the last item of the news bulletin: ‘Dramatic developments today in the world of chess…’ “

   Unless the character is a chess aficionado, this seems like a splash of color, nothing more.

2. Next game session, “As is your habit, you watch the evening news while eating the delicious meal of TV dinner, soft drink, and something sweet and over-calorific. Tonight, there’s been a threat of war between Nadibia and Rumfordine; the economy is trending down again, and speculation is rising that the property bubble is finally going to burst; Modorolla have released a new model of mobile phone; and a Chess Champion has committed suicide after withdrawing from the World Championships one match short of winning the tournament without explanation. Your phone rings….”

   The critical news is there, and can even be identified by the fact that you’ve referenced the events twice now. The ‘Dramatic Development’ was obviously the withdrawal from the Chess tournament.

   But you’ve distracted beforehand with more substantial news that makes this seem trivial, and distracted immediately afterwards with the phone call, which provides the beginning of a personal plotline.

3. Third game session. An intelligent surmise from what the players know already is that an organized crime syndicate have probably gotten involved in the world of chess and forced the favorite to throw the tournament before the final game – an event so unlikely that they would have gotten very big odds against it happening. So it’s time to shake things up a bit and make them less predictable.

   “An amazing new health regimen, reportedly a closely-guarded private discovery, has enabled Guinevere O’Hara to rejoin the Olympic team-in-training. As viewers may remember, Miss O’Hara suffered a crippling spinal injury while competing six months ago. At the time, she was favorite to take the Gold Medal in a number of skiing events. Medical reports at the time stated that she would never be able to walk again, but today Miss O’Hara dazzled the crowd with a perfect jump before announcing that she was resuming her Olympic campaign. In other news….”

   That’s a lot more attention-getting, but still not really enough to cause more than superficial attention. A little later, though,

   “…On a day of sporting miracles, it is our sad duty to report that Roger Fulward, often described as the voice of boxing, was accidentally killed in his home this evening. Somehow, a connection within his television set shorted out, killing the legend of the sporting and broadcast worlds. Fulward is one of 125 reported accidental electrocutions today, raising the question of whether or not there is an issue with manufacturing standards. Inspector Graves of the [local forensic authority] stated that this was an extremely improbable coincidence if there was no more material explanation. Investigations are proceeding.”

4. Still not a crisis, but there’s clearly something going on. It doesn’t seem connected to the chess stories, though, so the true extent of the situation the GM is setting up won’t be recognized. Which brings us to Game session four.

   “Controversy today as the Doctor who examined Guinevere O’Hara six months ago stated publicly that as her spinal cord had been completely severed in two places, it was quite impossible for her to be walking, let alone competing at an Olympic standard, without the use of artificial supports or implants, which are expressly banned by the IOC. In response to this statement, Miss O’Hara launched legal action for medical malpractice and slander, and undertook a medical scan to prove that technology was not the means of her miraculous recovery.
        Meanwhile, in other news, the spate of electrocutions nationwide has continued to spike alarmingly, with reports 743 people lost their lives today in [local state name]. Authorities report that no pattern can be discerned from the specific circumstances apparently surrounding the deaths. The appliances in question were all different, say investigators, of different vintages, and manufactured by different corporations, all reputable brands. They report that it all appears to be a bizarre coincidence, and warned all users to carefully check cords and outlets for damage and avoid overloading circuits. The government has commissioned an emergency public advice notice, in a move described as a band-aid measure by the leader of the Opposition.”

   A lot to unpack there, and clearly this has moved from the tail end of the serious news to the main headlines.
   .
   Later in the adventure, “The strangeness surrounding electrical deaths took another twist late this afternoon as an Autopsy revealed that Chess Champion Gary Dominic did not in fact commit suicide as first thought, but was killed when his pacemaker malfunctioned. Chess fans took the news with relief, many suggesting that this redeemed his reputation. Dominic joins a list of 1,842 electrocutions or electricity-related deaths that have taken place statewide over the last three days. Urgent inquiries are being made to electrical supply equipment as the one thing that most of these deaths have in common, but no-one has been able to suggest how this could have occurred or how it could be so selective and yet so widespread. There is a growing movement to remove electrical devices from the home as dangerous, and stockpiles of many are beginning to accumulate on curb-sides…”

   Okay, so now I’m hinting darkly at a MUCH larger problem – and the Pacemaker, which doesn’t rely on outside wall current at all, vastly complicates any theories as to what’s responsible. I’ve also connected the two seemingly unrelated events, suggesting that this has been going on unnoticed for quite a bit longer than it seems..

   It’s not clear yet what the PCs can do about it, there has been no “call to action”, but they are certain to be paying close attention, and may even react to the story in some fashion – checking the sanctity of their electrical equipment, or joining in the dumping.

   The other thing that’s happened is that I’ve been positioning these news bulletins closer and closer to the end of the days’ play. That means that even though there’s been an update to the overall story each day of game-play, they seem widely spaced – there’s a discernible time-gap between developments that helps sell the idea that things are getting worse.

5. And so, finally, to Pre-plot part 5, the fifth game session. I’ve set things up to be able to turn the last installment into a cliffhanger ending – that was the intent behind the careful timing mentioned above.

   “The electrical epidemic continued to worsen today, as authorities report 8,655 new cases in the state of [local state]. Investigations have shown the phenomenon has spread to neighboring states as well, who collectively reported almost three thousand cases over the last 24 hours.
        It has also been discovered that this is but one of three such clusters world-wide – one centered on the city of Birmingham in England and one in Tokyo.
        Collectively, more than 46000 people have succumbed to this mysterious malady. Medical experts today stated that in fact these are not cases of electrocution, but something far worse; the victims are, generally still alive but in a comatose state, and almost completely drained of electrical energy. Every few minutes, enough potential builds up to trigger heartbeat, respiration, and other autonomic responses.
        Fortunately, their metabolic demands in this state are so low that they can be sustained by this level of activity. Some have suggested that it’s akin to what happens in deep meditation, or when people survive being frozen – but those are considered hearsay by the broader medical community.
        This means that the individuals who have been autopsied in recent days may well have been vivisected alive, adding to the grief and trauma experienced by both family members and the medical personnel involved. We now go live to Patrick Du—”

   There’s a zzap sound from the other room, where your [NPC Relative] was cooking Dinner, and the lights and TV go off. You call out, but there’s no answer…

The Rest Of The Adventure

Okay, obviously I have something in mind for the rest of the adventure – it’s that Miracle Cure, which repairs physical damage temporarily by stealing “vitality” from others. There’s one case in England, one in Japan, and one in [the local country] – but only one of them has been publicly revealed. The more people they steal from, the more superhuman the “Healed” become – and if any one of them is defeated, that power is transferred to the other two, so they will become successively harder to overcome.

As for the how: An electrical storm in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time released a demon from hell – but he could only escape from his confinement there in electrical form. He divided his presence amongst three different people around the planet because his presence in this form would burn out any single body if that body had not been reinforced and rebuilt to be strong enough. He hadn’t yet figured out which body to ultimately claim, or how he was going to reunite himself – but the PCs will solve that problem for him.

So there it is – an example that quite obviously focuses on the Pre-plot, because that’s what this article is all about.

Until next week, then, stay safe and have as much fun as you can create!

There’s a little-known curse that sometimes afflicts GMs. It reads, “may you have far more prep time than you need.”

It’s not a situation that is encountered very often; more frequently, the converse is the norm, and almost every GM would give a good d20 for an extra hour a day. Or even an hour a week.

Covid-19 has turned the RPG Hobby on its’ head in the same way that it has done so for so many other activities.

Before the virus took hold, I had three campaigns operating – one with two players, one with four, and one with five and a co-GM.

Several of us, including myself, are in higher-risk categories so the Pandemic forced a shut-down of all three of them.

As my state and my country have gotten on top of the virus and reopened, one by one I’ve been able to restart these campaigns (with the exception of the last).

The two-player campaign was the first to resume, recommencing as soon as restrictions on gathering were eased. A month later (and some careful measurement) later, and I found that there was just enough room around my table for the second to restart. I can’t quite space people 2m apart, which was the requirement here, but I can give each a 4-square-meter bubble, which was the underlying requirement.

The last remains on hold, and may have to stay that way until there is a vaccine and it is widely distributed here. 2020 is out, and 2021 is therefore in serious doubt; the expectation is that even when a vaccine is proven both safe and effective, it will take a year to manufacture enough doses, and there will need to be a carefully controlled phased release – Doctors, nurses, and other front-line healthcare workers, then the elderly and those in the highest-mortality categories, and so on down. That puts me about third in line, but some of my players will be towards the back end of the queue.

And we still don’t know how long an immune response will stay active. The Vaccine could be good for anywhere from a lifetime to a handful of months, with the smart money on 1-3 years, 5 if we’re lucky.

I reached out to the youngest of those players last month to wish him a Happy Birthday, and he commented that at least I had plenty of prep time (as though this were a good thing) as a result of the fact that we weren’t playing.

If only life was that easy….

Unlimited prep: past experiences

This isn’t the first time that I’ve effectively had unlimited prep time at my disposal.

My first job was working for a bank in the Australian Snowfields. Once a month or so, I would get a rostered day off, and combining those with Public Holidays meant that every 6 weeks or so I could spend half a day traveling back to Sydney, a couple of days playing, and then half a day traveling back to my residence again. Arrangements were made a couple of weeks in advance, no more, and I had no TV – so there was nothing to do outside of work but read and perform game prep and – occasionally – socialize.

What prevented me from falling too deeply into any of the traps described later in this article was the desire to actually game – I worked toward the available playing time, so there was an ongoing impetus to keep moving forward instead of getting bogged down..

When my career plans within the bank were frustrated by changes in policy, and that job went away, I immediately laid plans to move back to Sydney, choosing accommodations recommended by one of my friends from Gaming (made on one of these excursions).

There was a time, subsequently, when I moved out of Sydney (where my game is played) to my home town, hundreds of miles away. I didn’t let that stop me from gaming, though – I saved what I could and 3 or 4 times a year, I was able to travel to Sydney for a week. This was a longer trip – 14 hours or more – but I usually booked a sleeper compartment and traveled overnight. While in Sydney, we played almost every day, my players taking their annual leave to coincide with the trips – and full use was made of public holidays to boost the available gaming time. It wasn’t unusual to get through 12-15 adventures in a trip.

The need to prepare so much in advance kept me from falling too deeply into any of the traps, though I got bruised by one or two along the way.

More than a decade later there was the third occasion: For many years, I’d been thinking about running another D&D campaign, and accumulating ideas (it took me that long to find players who were willing). The resulting depth showed in the campaign – though a lot of the ideas I’d had were tossed aside as not dovetailing well with each other. In fact, there was enough leftover material that I could turn it into a second campaign.

In that decade-plus, I had plenty of brushes with the dangers of unlimited prep, but having another campaign running prevented me from focusing too intently on what I was doing – and then I started to rewrite/update the rules to my Superhero campaign, which took almost all the free time that I had outside of immediate game prep, so development of the D&D campaign was set aside.

Besides, it’s not the same thing – unlimited prep time in the middle of an ongoing campaign is altogether different from unlimited prep background development time.

The final occasion was when I took a year to update the background of the Superhero campaign, turning what had seemed like a final epic event (Ragnarok) into a new Beginning. Once again, the fact that I was recapping past adventures kept things moving forward with regularity, preventing many of the traps from biting.

So it’s fair to say that I had never been presented with quite the same situation as this lengthy period of forced non-gaming.

The Dangers Of Excessive Prep Time

There are seven reasons why excessive prep time can be (and usually is) a problem. It’s rare for a GM to be susceptible to more than one of them at a time, but far from uncommon to find that one of them takes the place of another.

“Improving” Descriptions

One of the most overt problems is expanding descriptions in the guise of “improving” them. This can refer to descriptions of actions, situations, settings, and/or individuals.

What usually happens is that the descriptive language becomes more Flowery & Verbose, and a lot more opaque and difficult to decipher for players.

It may well be the case that initial expansions are, in fact, improvements – but the line can be hard to find and is easy to cross.

Over-complicated Plots

A bigger danger is that a GM will revise his plotlines, taking advantage of the opportunity to increase the number of moving parts that the GM (and the players) have to keep track of. Again, initial changes may be improvements – dotting I’s and crossing T’s and cleaning up loose ends – but it’s easy to cross the line.

One of the hardest tricks to master is having plot depth while keeping plot focus to a manageable degree. The best way to master this is by watching TV that manages it – but there aren’t a lot of shows where that’s the case. You need a series that is not especially episodic, but which nevertheless focuses on only a few elements, or one or two particular plotlines amongst the several that they have running at the same time, leaving the rest to fade (temporarily) into the background.

In many areas, Babylon-5 is my gold standard, but not in this case; instead, the accolades go to the middle seasons of Stargate SG-1. Say, seasons four through eight.

Plot Trains

One of the dangers of ‘enhancing’ a plotline is that you can fall in love with your own vision of how it will play out, and then become defensive towards it when things transpire differently. Predicting what a player will say and do, given the situation that you have presented to them, is never easy, but sometimes you can call it exactly right for a whole game session, producing tremendous satisfaction on the part of the GM, because it means that his prep focus was also spot-on – and that in turn means that he has wrung every last drop of entertainment out of his game. Such sessions are often personal favorites of the players too – everyone enjoys a good friendly challenge and competition is stimulating.

The results of obsessive focus on one possible outcome path through an adventure is commonly known as a plot train, and they have been the enemy of Good GMing for as long as I can remember.

It’s one thing to focus on the most likely course of events; it’s quite another to force the players to follow that course by denying alternative answers

Mental Rust

Perhaps the most insidious problem is this: every day that you aren’t GMing, your skills are atrophying and mental rust is developing. The most successful GMing happens when you are at your sharpest.

It takes time to get back into mental gear. I know from the period when I was only able to game three or four times a year in concentrated marathons that I was not as good a GM in the first such session as I was in the last.

Clumsy responses, vague statements, miscommunications, and a greater tendency to ‘stick to the script’ are the results.

The longer you go without gaming, the thicker this mental rust becomes, and the longer it will take you to buff it away.

Perfection Never Comes

Another problem is that you can focus so much on getting one part of the adventure “just right’ that you neglect the subsequent ones. News Flash, folks: it will never be perfect, there are simply too many variables. There may be times when it seems perfect, but that just means that reactions have matched anticipation (see above). While that can be gratifying – strike that, it IS gratifying – it doesn’t mean prep was perfect, or can ever be perfect.

Tinkering

Unlimited prep time means that you finally have the time to put together that critical hits table that you’ve always wanted to do – or the new magic system, or the ranged combat system that truly takes ballistic motion into account, or to rewrite everyone’s basic concept of Elves, or whatever.

All this falls under the general heading of tinkering.

“Tinkering” implies that you are puttering around without a specific purpose in mind – and that means that you have no specific criteria on which to objectively judge whether or not it’s an improvement on the existing rules or content.

Without that, you can transform a playable game system / campaign into something unplayable and unrecognizable, sometimes without thinking.

If there is some clear deficiency in the rules as they apply to your campaign, that’s one thing. Trying something because it sounds ‘cool’ is something quite different.

The problem is that you have a lot more time to come up with ‘cool’ ideas when you have unlimited prep time available. When you have another game session perpetually on the horizon, you have no choice but to focus on the essential needs.

Reinventing The Wheel

The last danger is to fall into the trap of doing make-work – reinventing wheels endlessly simply to fill the time.

Having careful notes of past sessions can help avoid this problem, at least in one of its manifestations. I’m really terrible at making such notes, so do as I say and not as I do! As a result, there was one occasion when I inadvertently introduced three different explanations for the same past event, all of them incompatible with each other, and all of them supposedly canon within the campaign – I had simply forgotten that there had been a previous explanation!

I got out of it that time by having an NPC enemy of the NPC enemy spreading misinformation and dropping in a time loop in which the PC faked the third explanation to delay and hold back a third enemy with a deliberate deception. Taken as read was that the PC at the time wasn’t taken in completely by either, but played along to give whoever was responsible enough rope to hang themselves – but I don’t think that would work a second time!

But most of the time, this is a rules-oriented problem, stemming from a vague desire to make something “better” – quite often, succeeding (but making something else intolerably worse). In particular, attempts to correct perceived flaws in “game balance” quite often fall into this category.

Good ways of using extra prep time

If you’re really desperate to do something useful with your extra prep time, I thought I would throw in some suggestions. These are just off the top of my head, there are undoubtedly others.

Polished and Compressed Narrative

You could go over your narrative elements (I listed them at the start of the equivalent section, above) and polish them, tighten them up and compress them. I showed how in a multipart series some time back – Polished Loquacity: The Secrets of Stylish Narrative (link is to part 1, there are links to the rest of the series at the foot of that part).

I usually aim for about 1/2 to 2/3 compression and then claim some of the gains back by adding additional descriptive or characterization elements. But 1/4 or even 1/5th the original length of text is quite achievable if you work hard at it.

One word of warning – compacting narrative means that it takes less time to read. You can find that you need more adventure than you thought – maybe a lot more!

One way of achieving this is to incorporate a safety net – an optional plot complication that exists for no other reason than to pad out the adventure by an hour or so. Put a couple of those in succession, and you’re prepared no matter how quickly you get through your primary material.

Flexible Options

Most GMs are pretty good at attempting to anticipate player choices and prepping accordingly. This can be a good opportunity to look for alternatives and prep for them, too – doing so is never wasted effort, even if they don’t get used it’s good practice and “keeps your hand in”.

It’s not enough to think about how you will handle it if the players do something different. How will the antagonists respond? Will there be anyone else who will muddy the waters? Will any of the PCs’ allies do something foolish?

Bear in mind the potential for short-sighted opportunism and miscommunications amongst the ranks of the enemy, too!

Deep Plots

Think back over the last year or two of the campaign (assuming that it’s been running that long). Were there any plots in which the antagonists’ goals were (in hindsight) too simplistic, or even outright stupid?

It’s usually the case that early plotlines in a campaign are relatively simple, even incongruously so – that’s because everyone is still getting used to the game setting and maybe to the rules, too.

Now’s your chance to devise a fix.

Start by assuming that what (historically) happened was what the villain wanted the PCs to think had happened, or maybe it’s what (historically) they appeared to want to achieve. Then brainstorm until you find a more fitting goal that they could have actually achieved while maintaining this deception, or even as a consequence of the deception – no-one looks for the master villain amongst the ranks of those already defeated!

Once you have a more sophisticated vision, you need only do two things: update their progress to allow for the in-game time that has passed, and work out how all this will start to come to the PCs’ attention. If you’re feeling generous, or have still more time on your hands, you can work out what the PCs can do about it, just to prep for that.

Patch any continuity holes while you’re at it!

Core Refocus

This is also a rare opportunity to reflect on the campaign and recognize that it’s probably drifted away from the core of your initial vision. That happens to all campaigns, part of the to-and-fro between players and GM. This is an opportunity for a subtle reset in your mindset, a refocusing on that core, even if it’s in the form of a single adventure that does little more than highlight how far things have evolved.

Both players and GM can sometimes get too close to the trees to see the forest. Often, this can give the impression that the PCs have had no substantive impact on the game world (maybe because they haven’t) – this is a golden chance to gain / offer some perspective.

Needed Refurbishment

Are any of the campaign elements feeling tired, over-used, or just plain hokey? Now’s your chance to do something about it – or to revel in that, if you want. Change things up, replace that aging Mentor, trash that boring base of operations, dress up that old enemy.

Deeper Understanding

Part of what I did with my Covid-induced downtime was to revise and revitalize the underpinning in-game concepts that describe how magic works in my superhero campaign so that they were more reflective of the current evolution of the game mechanics. I’ve described the results and the process elsewhere – see The Meta-Physics Of Magic and Creating a Campaign Physics for details.

Enhancements on the side

Have you always wanted to paint that particular Mini? Now’s your chance. Are there any game processes that are a little clunky? Now’s you chance to slipstream the process, maybe by simply reformatting a table into an easier-to-use format. Look ahead – are there any game props that you know you are going to need? Now’s your chance to prep them with as much time as you need to do the task well.

What I Did in my Covid Shutdown

I did very little of the above, either good or bad, and that was intentional. The past experience that I described earlier made me aware of the traps, and I didn’t want to fuel any frustration over not being able to use my efforts right away – and I didn’t feel any pressing need to fill the game prep ‘void’.

What I did do was:

• Thought about my campaigns.
• Did some re-engineering of the background narratives and concepts for magic.
• Solved a plot problem that had been holding me back.
• Took time away from the campaigns to recharge (putting off burnout for an unknown period of time). Instead, I wrote up some solo-play championship rules for Formula De and started a Lockdown Championship, writing up post-game reports – extremely lengthy ones! – and posting them to board-games group’s Facebook page.

Once it was confirmed that a campaign was restarting, of course, I resumed the normal prep schedule for that campaign.

A timely warning?

Europe is heading back into Lockdown. The US should already be in Lockdown – depending on the outcome of this week’s election there, it might be in Lockdown by this time next week.

For the time being, at least, the virus has been suppressed in Australia – but that could change at any time. We were pretty close to suppression a few months back, but then two breaches of quarantine happened, and led to what was – in some respects – a huge cluster of thousands of infections and 800 dead.

So no-one here is fooling themselves – the virus is still out there, prodding at our defenses on all fronts to see if it can find a chink in our armor. There are those, as there are elsewhere, who feel that the economic impact of a shutdown is more important than the health outcome. Personally, I think most people would prefer to be unemployed than dead.

At any time, then. we might all find ourselves faced with the prospect of effectively unlimited prep time.

It might be that I should have written this article back in February/March. I thought its contents fairly self-evident. Perhaps I should have known better – but it’s better late than never.

PS: One More Thing

I got a message through Campaign Mastery from Anthony Schilling

Hey guys! I’ve been on a Cthulhu kick lately and enjoyed reading through your site. I actually launched a Kickstarter to share a bunch of Call of Cthulhu themed models I made on my 3D printer! My project reached its goal, but I figured you guys might enjoy taking a look and it might be something your other readers will enjoy!

Anthony is being a little modest in his message. As I write this, there are still 31 days remaining in the kickstarter campaign, and it passed its target on or about the day it launched. It’s on track with no further support to achieve its first and maybe its second stretch goals at a canter. The figures look tremendous. Anyone with a 3D printer should check the project out, if you haven’t done so already!

But what if you don’t have a 3D printer? Anthony has thought of that, too, and has a backer’s tier just for those who want him to print and mail the figures.

Plus, at the common support level ($29 US), you get access to tutorials for printing, finishing, and painting the figures.

If you need a project with which to fill your Covid-enforced prep time, you could do a lot worse – which, at the end of the day, is what this article has been all about!

The First Frontier: Appearance

Early science fiction depicted aliens as having animal heads or other elements of animal anatomy. Fantasy, myth, and legend carry the principle even further back in time – the Minotaur of Knossos comes to mind. And I would not be at all surprised to be told that centaurs predate even those tales.

I can picture the scene in my head – the first time a tribe who has not achieved it witnesses riders from a tribe that has domesticated or ‘broken’ horses, perhaps clinging to the mane or around the neck (because the bit, bridle, and reigns have not yet been invented) and the results are so outside their experience that they blend the two into a single creature. And at the speed of a galloping horse, even moderate cover would have the pair out of sight in fairly short order – making a correction to the impression that much less likely to occur.

But most of those early creations (there are some notable exceptions) cross only the first frontier of ‘alien’: appearance. Biologically, Culturally, Socially, and in their relations with humans both as individuals and as a Society, these are no more than humans in rubber masks.

The Second Frontier: Biology

One of the first massively-popular novels to actually advance this minimum threshold is HG Well’s ‘War Of The Worlds’, first published in 1898. The martians not only looked a lot more alien than a humanoid with a strange head, they had a different biological inheritance – even though their basic biology was obviously the same as ours (otherwise, they would not have been susceptible to terrestrial diseases).

You could say that Wells advanced to the very brink of crossing the second frontier, Biology, but lacked the knowledge to cross it (or felt that his audience had insufficient foundation to accept anything further – and he might have been right).

Even today, writers and GMs have to occasionally curb their creativity, limiting it to what they can communicate to their audience in a timely fashion – for writers, that’s an editor and his readers, for a GM it’s his or her players.

Nevertheless, by the time that the great pulp magazines arose and began publishing science fiction, some noteworthy authors had began to envisage alien biologies that went beyond humans – at first, simply by tacking on biological traits from the animals whose heads adorned human bodies.

Feline races weren’t just fur-covered, they began to exhibit other feline traits, and the same was true of every other hybrid concept out there. Once the threshold had been crossed – and I don’t know who was the first to do so, or in what story – even by a little, it became a matter of slow and steady progress for the terrestrial shackles to be thrown off.

The author I read most frequently from this era is EE ‘Doc’ Smith, and he definitely had a toe (if not an entire foot) over that boundary.

By the time of James White’s Sector General series, writers were so far beyond that frontier that they could barely see the border checkpoint in the distance behind them. It was no longer acceptable for a competent writer to simply slap an alien head on an otherwise humanoid creature – an alien head meant alien senses, alien diseases, and other attributes of non-human biology.

The Third Frontier: Psychology & Behavior

EE ‘Doc’ Smith’s creations (in the Lensman series more than the early Skylark stories) also flirted with the Third Frontier, but in an extremely limited way – the individuals were humans with exaggerated psychological situations which existed for one of two reasons: as an outgrowth of environment or unusual senses; or to make them seem more alien.

The latter was a perennial problem for decades. Certainly, it persisted into the 1980s in some quarters and in some media. Does anyone remember the complaints that the aliens in Star Trek: The Next Generation were just humans in forehead appliances? There were times when the complaint was richly justified, especially in the early season or two, but they slowly inched past the problem now and then – only to beat a hasty retreat in the next episode, or so it often seemed.

That’s one of the reasons I was a bigger fan of Deep Space Nine than of Next-Gen; the aliens in DS9 were more fully realized, more rounded, and more adventurous, conceptually. Voyager started off more akin to Next-Gen in this respect, chock full of aliens that weren’t alien except in ways that made no logical sense, like the Kazon, an interstellar species that was hamstrung and left too primitive to justify their having space flight by a lack of…. water? – but also got better as it went along (with the occasional regression).

If they were planet-bound, this might have made sense. As soon as you give them starships, given how prevalent water is in the universe, they stop making sense.

Isaac Asimov once stated that the reason so few aliens appear in his stories is because he found it hard trying to work out how they would think, and didn’t want to do the kind of hatchet-job aliens that populated the worst science-fiction of his era (not an exact quote, I’ve paraphrased quite a bit). It’s noteworthy that outside of the original Foundation trilogy and his Robot stories, my favorite Asimov is The Gods Themselves – in which he does feature aliens with not only an alien biology, but a society which is justified by the strangeness of the biology, and an alien psychology (with just enough resonance with human behavior to be comprehensible) that fits both.

Which shows that there was the occasional work that crosses the frontier, even while the ‘mainstream’ persisted in more …limited… expressions of creativity in the area (to put a gentle face on it).

Even famous and popular works like “2001: A Space Odyssey” suffer from this problem – aliens behaving strangely because that’s “alien”.

This all betrays a human-centric perception of reality that was slow to fade (and still lingers in some corners). The notion that all ‘alien thought processes’ take an aspect of human behavior and amplify it beyond what is reasonable, implies that humans are the centrists, the perfect compromise between extremes.

Nevertheless, aided by TV shows such as Babylon-5 and an accumulated body of exemplars (like the works of Larry Niven), creators slowly moved beyond these being exceptions and made aliens with a rational psychology borne out of environment and physical capabilities the ‘acceptable standard’.

RPGs are very much at the threshold of this transition right now. D&D and 2nd Ed were very strongly ‘humans in strange bodies’. 3e began to expand beyond that, as had many specific articles in The Dragon over the years, but this was still very much just the occasional flirtation. I haven’t read 4e, so I can’t comment on it, but Pathfinder 1st Ed was contemporary with it, and while it flirts with the third frontier of Alien more frequently, and more consistently, and even crosses it a time or two, it’s inconsistent. Even D&D 5e advances just an inch or two, still not crossing that line.

Science Fiction RPGs are often even less advanced for the most part – many of them are still stuck in the ‘humans in strange bodies’ or ‘humans with animal heads’ stage. There are some exceptions out there, which I will continue to laud when I encounter them!

That presents GMs with a huge opportunity. Take Orcs, as an example – beyond the information in the core rulebooks, there’s a gulf of undescribed social and behavioral patterns and realms. Put those together in an appropriate and self-consistent way that the players can discover, and you immediately elevate your game above the typical.

The more races that you treat this way, the richer your campaign world becomes, and the higher into the ranks of the elite GMs you climb. Of course, there’s only so far that this enhancement can take you, before other aspects of the GM’s craft become limiting factors – but this is a fun and (relatively) easy way to give a game a serious leg up – but be warned, it can be a never-ending job!

(For those who might ask me to put my money where my mouth is, or who want a practical real-world example of the richness that can result from this creativity, check out the Orcs and Elves series here at Campaign Mastery – but be warned, it’s NOT short (and still unfinished)).

The Fourth Frontier: Cultures, Societies, and Inter-species Relationships

No, I’m not talking about Riker (or Kirk) getting intimate with the attractive alien of the week!

I am talking about the generalization of individual behavioral traits into a consistent cultural and social structure (something that I hinted at in the previous section), and of a bigger issue: how one species interacts with, and relates to, another.

Science Fiction writers have been ‘going there’ almost as long as they’ve been crossing the Third Frontier, or at least trying to – the imagination needs some foundation to build on, and there hasn’t really been enough state of the art for them to advance too far.

We have, after all, only the one technological civilization to study, and even that one we understand extremely imperfectly.

Slowly, the boundaries of ignorance are being peeled back. And by bringing together discoveries in a great many fields, the speculative creator can start to reason his way to the fourth frontier by analogy. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

There have always been philosophical debates and discussion over the way humans would interact with alien societies; it’s been a matter of serious (theoretical) study from the first SETI proposals, back in the 1970s. But it’s largely been abstract and without strong foundation in reality, or been far to human-centric, based on the interactions of one human culture with another (and presuming that nothing had been learned from those experiences). Now, that’s changing, thanks to a growing understanding of the relationship between humans and the animals that they have domesticated, which provides a whole new perspective on the inevitable questions.

GMs willing to put the research and skull-sweat into their creations now have the opportunity to advance not only beyond the Third Frontier (where only the best games dare to tread), but to cross the Fourth Frontier Of Alien.

Which brings me to the inspiration for this article – a question on Quora about the way (domesticated) dogs perceive humans, and an answer that went far beyond my own understanding of the subject. I had previously seen something similar about how cats perceived humans that was interesting but less authoritative, so I was primed.

I’ll get to the specifics in a moment. First, I have to acknowledge that I’m reading FAR more into the answer than the author intended, and second, to thank him for granting permission to reproduce his answer in full, below. Nathan Stevenson is a Dog Enthusiast and presently studying Canine Psychology, which makes his answer authoritative in my book!

Question: “When a dog bonds to a human, what kind of relationship does the dog think of it as? Does it think of the human as its puppy, mother, sibling, or another dog?”

The person raising the question, Pedro Gracia, then goes on to credit another Quora user, Paul S Cilva, for a similar question which was modified to the above.

(There are 11 other answers at this page).

Nathan wrote, in response:

Dogs do not see humans as other dogs. They are intelligent enough to realize that we are another species, since dogs mostly communicate with body language that we really can’t mimic. We don’t have tails or snouts, we can’t move our ears and we have half the requisite number of legs. Trying to communicate like a dog will probably only make your dog confused, and also make you look hilarious and you might even end up on a viral video if you’re particularly (un)lucky.

As for what a dog sees a bonded human as, I’d say the closest thing would be a leader. Domesticated dogs have human interaction basically hard-baked into their lives, and dogs have been so bred and conditioned over the centuries that human contact is basically a requisite. As such, dogs quickly learn that humans are a good source of food, shelter and comfort, but they are also the ones who know how the world works, and as such it tends to be a good idea to do what they say. When a dog knows exactly how to react to a given situation thanks to their human they will trust that human more. Alongside providing the dog with food, shelter and comfort, the human will gradually build the dogs’ trust and the bond will be formed.

Dogs do not see us as other dogs, and since there is a species difference there is no concept of being dominant over each other. Dogs should respect and obey their humans, but they will only do so if the trust and the bond is there.

Applied Theory

My first thought, on reading this, wasn’t actually about Canine Bipeds – it was about Kobolds, a (fictional) species that is smart enough to recognize that humans can communicate with bodily language that their lizard-based biology can’t replicate – they would have limited expressive capability, and might well have restricted vocal capacities, to boot. Kobold, as a language, would evolve far beyond hissing sibilants.

I then came across a post in the Traveler RPG Facebook Group which mentioned canine-headed aliens. And that made me think of Felines, and Ursoids, and all the other humanoid aliens with unusual heads (or unusual bodies with human heads) that humans have been inventive enough to create.

And that thought reminded me of a documentary I once watched on the intelligence of Octopi – no link, I’m afraid – which suggested (and demonstrated) that while they almost certainly didn’t have sufficient brains to be sentient, they had far greater problem-solving skills than most non-hominids, more even than some ape species.

While Dolphins and similar species may have greater intelligence, Octopi have limbs capable of manipulating tools and controls that these other aquatic species lack – and that may give them a greater practical applied intelligence than the dolphins.

And that reminded me of the Hyver that I once played in a traveler campaign, who saw it as his task to “domesticate” the other members of the crew (since he was clearly the superior life-form).

Hyvers are an interesting species to reference, because they are the only traveler race that isn’t humanoid. And so this was a memory that led me back to the answer by Nathan, and how it might be relevant to the handling of alien (i.e. non-human) species in roleplaying games, both fantasy and science-fiction in orientation.

A [highly speculative] History Of Domestication

I almost always have a rough plan in mind for these articles before I start; sometimes I have something even more formal or comprehensive. Almost every section in last week’s article on wood was pre-planned, both in the context of inclusion, and in terms of having a rough idea of what the content would be about and how one section would flow into the next. The few exceptions were add-ins placed in the middle of existing lists covering some application that I hadn’t thought of.

Today’s article has been somewhat different – I had a general notion of the overall structure, and bits and pieces of how it would fit together, but less of a coherent plan. As a result, this section was left out even though I had intended to discuss the subject – it would have simply gotten in the way and side-tracked the flow of the article, taking attention away from the points that I really wanted to make.

One of the abiding impressions from the answer is that Dogs have been domesticated for a very long time – and that cats haven’t been domesticated for anywhere near the same length of time.

We know that domesticated cats were treated royally in ancient Egypt (where they had the cat-headed deity, Bast). So if the above is correct, dogs must have been first domesticated in pre-history.

That makes sense to me – I imagine the story went something like this: A hunter catches a wild dog (scaring off the rest of the pack, somehow) and tethers it to a peg or stick or branch outside his dwelling – whether that be a cave or an adobe hut – because he can always eat the dog if he gets hungry, but in the meantime, it will react to anyone or anything approaching that might threaten his safety. To keep the dog alive while it is still useful, he feeds it. This may have been the pattern for a long time, or the story may have advanced relatively quickly; it doesn’t matter much.

What probably happened was that a dog pulled free of the tether, but instead of running off to freedom and an uncertain diet of whatever he could catch, chose to stay. The hunter observed this, and left the dog free when he left for the day’s hunt – only to find the dog following him / accompanying him.

It might be fanciful, but that’s the way that I see the partnership between dog and man beginning. The hunter may well have been Neanderthal or even more primitive – but it was a long time ago, I think.

So I thought it might be useful to actually see what Wikipedia has to say on the subject of domesticated animals, especially historically – just to see how close to the mark my speculation was. Consider it a logic check on the whole article, in a way.

According to the Domestication Of Animals page, “The dog was the first to be domesticated and was established across Eurasia before the end of the Late Pleistocene era, well before cultivation and before the domestication of other animals” – and the Late Pleistocene is an unofficial designation between the start of the last Ice Age and the end of the preceding one – which is when Neanderthals were the dominant humanoid species in Eurasia.

They were followed by the first domesticated livestock – goats, pigs, sheep, and cattle. About 5000 years later, the horse followed, and about 1500 years later, the cat and the chicken – at least 11,000 years after the dog, in about 2000BC.

It’s also important to note the difference (heavily emphasized at the start of the Wikipedia page) between domestication and taming – the latter is what I have provided a speculative account of; domestication involves the genetic manipulation of the species through selective breeding to the point of achieving a different, specific, subspecies adapted to the needs of the partnership.

How long before they were domesticated were humans taming and training wild dogs? I don’t know, but suspect that it was a fair while – innovations seemed to come fairly slowly back then! But, at the same time, I suspect that it was fairly inevitable. It probably started with a conversation: “Your dog is good at guarding. Mine is good at hunting. If they breed with each other instead of a wild dog, maybe we will get puppies that are good at both.”

This is relevant when you compare the degree of adaption to a human partnership. Cats have been domesticated for about 4000 years,.and are still relatively independent; humans are largely a convenience. Dogs have been domesticated for between 15 and 30,000 years.

I wanted to try and convert that into generations – but it’s not that easy.

Cat years to human years: 2+y(c) = approx 25+4*y(h).

Which is to say that the first 2 years of a cat’s life are roughly equivalent to the first 25 years of a human life, and each year thereafter is roughly equivalent to 4 human years. The feline equivalent of a centurian is therefore (100-25)/4+2 = 20.75 years. But a Feline generation is going to be less than that first two years – maybe a year and a half. So that gives us roughly 2667 generations of domesticated cats.

Things get even more complicated for dogs. The first year is ~15 human years (and a generation, by the same rough standard used for cats); the second year is ~9 human years; and each year thereafter is about 5 human years. So that’s about 15,000 generations of domestic dogs.

Perhaps, 12,333 years from now, the cat will be as adapted to human partnership as the dog. Or perhaps there are psychological differences between the species, and cats will always have that air of independence about them. Without a crystal ball, who can tell?

The cow might give us a clue. It’s been a domestic animal for somewhere in between the two – but cow generations are a bit longer in real terms. A 1-year-old calf is the equivalent of about 14 years of age, so our “15-year generation” standard is a little older than that – about 1.074 years old. A 20-year-old cow is equivalent to 90 human years old – a 76/19 ratio, or roughly 4-to-one, the same as a cat. Yet, cattle are very domesticated compared to the cat – perhaps as domesticated as the dog, in the case of the females (bulls are a different matter). Hmm… that suggests both that there is such a ‘species’ factor, and that different genders can be ‘domesticated’ more quickly than each other – but here, I think the evidence is misleading us – Bulls are bred for qualities other than domestic tranquility!

If we accept that, and that dogs achieved their current state of domestication some time ago (it hasn’t only just happened), then we end up with a rather rubbery timeline in which 5000 years is roughly enough for complete domestication.

The Horse is therefore of interest in this respect – 3500 years of domestication, and they still have to be ‘broken’ or tamed. Either there will be a big shift in another 1500 years, or again we’ve been selecting for other things, or there is an inherent difference between species.

I justified including this section as a logic check on the deductions, and to put the answer by Nathan Stevenson into some context. I think that it’s done both jobs very well!

Which brings me to a long list of related links that might be of interest (generated with a series of Google & Duck-Duck-Go searches):

Cats:

• The Inner Life of Cats – Scientific American – By rubbing around our legs when they greet us, cats show that they regard us as friendly but at the same time slightly superior to them.
• Cats really do need their humans, even if they don’t show it – NBC News – You really are more than just a source of food to your cat: A study published [in September, 2019] finds that cats see their owners as a source of comfort and security, too.
• Cats Apparently Think Humans Are Bigger, Clumsy, Hairless Cats – Bustle.com – …what do cats think when they look at us? Well, according to some experts, cats might think humans are cats, too. Bigger, clumsier cats, sure – but cats nonetheless.
• What Do Cats Think About Us? You May Be Surprised – National Geographic – Cats learn specifically how their owners react when they make particular noises. So if the cat thinks, ‘I want to get my owner from the other room,’ …
• Do cats think humans are the pets – Quora (26 answers) – Strictly speaking, they see you as part of their colony, which is their extended family. Ideally, they should see you as the Queen (the head female and often the matriarch of all the other cats)…
• Deep Thoughts: What is Your Cat Thinking Throughout the Day? – Cat Care Of Vinings – …cats meow to humans, not other cats…[1]

[1] Some people to whom I have mentioned this factoid have disputed it, claiming to have heard cats meow to other cats. If you accept that cats only meow when a human is around to interpret the sound, the reports can be reconciled. Wild and Feral cats do not meow.

Bears:

• Bear Behaviour – Understanding black and grizzly bears – BearSmart.com – Bears are normally shy, retiring animals that have very little desire to interact with humans. Unless they are forced to be around humans to be near a food source, they usually choose to avoid us. Bears, like humans and other animals, have a ‘critical space’ – an area around them that they may defend.
• Dispelling Myths About Bears – BearSmart.com – Bears have fascinated humans for millennia. As one of the most adaptable and versatile mammals on earth, their behavior stirs fear, awe, wonder, and curiosity in us. Unfortunately, there are still many myths surrounding the lives and behavior of bears that negatively impact our relationships with them.
• What do bears think of campers & hikers? – Quora (8 answers) – To overgeneralize, black bears see humans as an aggressor and grizzly bears see humans as a threat.
• BEAR INTELLIGENCE – all-cretaures.org – …some even dare give them the equivalent intelligence of a 3-year-old human…
• Top 10 facts about polar bears – WWF – POLAR BEARS ARE ACTUALLY BLACK, NOT WHITE. Polar bear fur is translucent, and only appears white because it reflects visible light. Beneath all that thick fur, their skin is jet black.

Dolphins: [2]

• Dolphins often seem to want to befriend us – The Independent – Scientists don’t know why it happens, but tales of dolphins befriending humans reach far back into history. Aristotle wrote offhandedly about dolphins’ “passionate attachment to boys”, as if everyone just knew this as a fact.
• Protect Wild Dolphins: Admire Them from a Distance – NOAA Fisheries – Dolphins have a reputation for being friendly, but they are actually wild animals who should be treated with caution and respect. Interactions with people change dolphin behavior for the worse. They lose their natural wariness, which makes them easy targets for vandalism and shark attack.
• Are Dolphins Also Persons? – ABC News – …research shows that dolphins can at least think about the future.
• Whales and dolphins have rich ‘human-like’ cultures – Whales and dolphins (cetaceans) live in tightly-knit social groups, have complex relationships, talk to each other and even have regional dialects – much like human societies.

[2] I didn’t get an exact match to my search for “What do dolphins think of humans?” My personal theory, which might not be worth the time taken to expound it, is that they think we are oversized (depending on the species) calves, clumsy and perhaps backwards children to be protected and rescued when necessary, and played with – but not trusted with anything serious. Studies have found that dolphin calves ‘babble’ the same way human babies do – and no doubt that’s what humans attempting to make dolphin noises sound like to a real dolphin, too!

Octopi:

• Are Octopuses Smart? – Earthpedia – Earth.com – Octopuses are far smarter than they appear. They can solve mazes and remember people.
• Octopuses keep surprising us – here are eight examples – National History Museum UK – ‘I remember reading one [story] about a lab where all the fish were going missing from their tank,’ says Jon [Ablett, curator of the Museum’s cephalopod collection]. ‘The staff set up a little video camera and it turned out that one of the octopuses was getting out of its tank, going to the other tank, opening it, eating the fish, closing the lid, going back to its own tank and hiding the evidence.’
• Octlantis: the underwater city built by octopuses – The Guardian – The discovery of aquatic architecture has led scientists to compare the behavior of cephalopods to humans – but octopus city life is no utopia.
• Social Octopus Species Shatters Beliefs About Ocean Dwellers – The discovery of an octopus that lives in big groups is shattering even the most expansive ideas of known octopus behavior.
• What would an octopus society look like? – Worldbuilding – …this is way too general and opinion-based, but I will take a stab at it anyway…
• An invertebrate with flair – American Psychological Association – Last summer, staff at the Seattle Aquarium discovered that their new octopus had a talent for mischief. When they came to feed her or clean her tank, she would blow water jets in their direction…
• Armed with 10,000 more genes than humans – The Independent – Scientists have decoded the genome of the octopus and have discovered just how different it is to other intelligent creatures.
• What’s it like to be an octopus? “Their intelligence is like ours …” – Reddit – Octopuses are the closest we can come, on earth, to knowing what it might be like to encounter intelligent aliens.

Horses:

• How horses perceive and respond to human emotion – Medical News Today – A new study shows, for the very first time, that horses respond to human emotional cues by integrating the emotional value of the voice they hear with that of the facial expressions they see.
• Do Horses Like Humans? – Bustle.com – …new research … has found that the animals can not only recognize expressions but can also remember them and link them to a specific face. In other words, horses can recognize human faces and their emotional expressions, something that they then use to discern whether the person is a threat or not.
• What Do Horses Think We Humans Are? – Horse Illustrated – Horses know, from the moment they see you approach exactly which category you fall into: dangerous or non-threatening. If you are perceived to be dangerous, the horse will react out of self-preservation. He’ll be unpredictable and in many ways dangerous to you.
• Understanding horse intelligence – Features – Horsetalk.co.nz – Horses have evolved as prey animals. They are the hunted. Their instinctive flight response and much of their complex interaction within a herd have grown from this basic premise: escape or be eaten.
• What does a horse think about a human riding it? – Quora (5 Answers) – …really depends on the horse and how it was brought up and trained. Horses who are trained with empathy and patience love having a rider on their back.
• Read Before Riding: Horses Have Consciousness – National Geographic – “Mustangs think a little different from other horses”…

I think I’ll stop there – I’m not sure that snakes and spiders would provide much enlightenment, anyway, because of the size differential, and that’s enough to get everyone’s minds ticking over….

Until next time, have fun!