Words Between the War

Between the quotas and the quanta, there is time for questions. Between the propaganda and proselytism there is time for pondering. Between the machinations and murders there is time for messages. Between the intrigues and insurgencies there is time for infatuation. Between the assassinations and alterations there is time for assignations. Between these moments, there is time for love. These are not moments that matter to great empires that believe that the only way to survive is to make the past, present, and future theirs, to adjust every version of themselves so that it survives and every version of their rival so that it does not. To wage wars violent in word and deed, but also subtle and imperceptible. There is a war up and down the timeline and sideways across the multiverse fought by armies and agents and two of those agents—one on either side—are beginning to question if the war will ever end? If either side will win? If there is more than the futility of fighting and thwarting each other’s efforts? If the other feels like they do? And if they do, can they shape reality so they are no longer foils for and reflections of each other, but together? After all, as elite agents in the war for time and reality, only they know what the other has experienced.

This is the set-up for The Words We Leave Behind, an epistolary roleplaying game for two players inspired by the multi-award-winning Science Fiction LGBT novella by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War. It is published by Lunar Shadow Designs and uses the same mechanics and format as the publisher’s interstellar epistolary roleplaying game of increasingly challenging communication and saying goodbye, Signal to Noise. In Signal to Noise, the players, as friends, relatives, or lovers, beamed letters to each other back and forth across vast distances of space, between the Earth and a gigantic colony ship. In The Words We Leave Behind, the players take the roles of Proxies on opposite sides of a massive time war, one that has the capacity to spread to other worlds and dimensions. Each is their Faction’s ultimate warrior and agent because they perfectly embody the emotional profile which their Faction views as the ultimate driver behind the rise and fall of civilisations. In The Words We Leave Behind, each player will take the role of a Proxy, each guided by three emotions, which can be opposed to, or in direct competition with, the other Proxy. Over the course of play, the players will not exchange letters as in other epistolary roleplaying games, but draw cards to create points in the future and the past of a Timeline, each an Incursion which their Proxy will enter and alter details. As they play, they may visit previously visited Incursions, adding and changing other details, even to Incursions created by their rival Proxy. These changes can cascade down the Timeline to alter further points in the future. This is all played out on a shared document, meaning that The Words We Leave Behind is intended to be played online.

Besides the shared online document and a means to send each other messages, each player in The Words We Leave Behind requires a standard deck of playing cards. These have their jokers removed, separated into their four suites and shuffled in four decks. A card is drawn from each suit to form the starting hand and there is always a card from each suit in the suit. (An extra Hearts card can be added to simulate the themes of This Is How You Lose the Time War.)

A Proxy is first defined by the three emotions that also define the Faction they serve. The player is free to develop their Proxy’s Faction as much or as little as they want, including its objectives, and will also ask the other player what their Proxy’s Faction thinks of theirs and what their Proxy’s Faction calls their Proxy whom it regards as the enemy. A Proxy also has a preferred form, worn between missions, and three anchors or possessions, which helps maintain the association with their roots, one of which is a trinket, an actual physical object that the player owns. Lastly, each Proxy decides how they perceive themselves and their rival.

Verdigris
I am CALCULATING and you are RECKLESS
Prime Emotion: Hope
Secondary Emotions: Shame, Anger
Anchors: The skull of bird whose species was made extinct by dangerous technology (it reminds me of what we lost); a blade grass from my home farm (it is what we work to preserve and I leave behind on every mission to show what we are working to save); trinket: a single-sided die (from the game we played as children)

Play consists of several turns, typically four to five, in which each player will take control of the narrative and send a message as their Proxy to the other player and their Proxy. In subsequent turns after the first, a player will have their Proxy read the message from their rival, be assigned by their Faction to make an Incursion—roughly between five and thirty sentences long—and manipulate events there, before leaving a message behind for their rival to find. The Incursions are recorded on the Timestream document as are their effects on downstream Incursions. If a Proxy returns to an existing Incursion, their player can edit it by adding text at the beginning or end of the current Incursion, effectively changing the lead into the Incursion or the outcome. These changes can cascade down the Timestream, the current player examining subsequent Incursions and if necessary, adding, deleting, or altering a single sentence in the Incursion description. (Whilst the changes are made directly to the Timestream document, the prior state is tracked via the messages between the players. One of the potential issues with the play of The Words We Leave Behind is losing track of earlier incarnations of the Timestream.)

Cards are played randomly from the hand and provide two important details. First, the number determines the Incursion, whilst the suit advances the emotion which it matches. Once played, the cards represent a Proxy’s emotional state, the more cards a Proxy has in a suite, up to a maximum of three, the more intense the state. Roughly, Hearts equate to the emotion of love, Clubs to anger, Spades to uncertainty, and Diamonds to understanding. The emotional state will influence how the player describes their Proxy’s actions in an Incursion and their Proxy’s reactions to their rival’s actions.

A player can spend his Proxy’s Anchors for various effects. The first two anchors can be used to either let the player choose a card to play, alter three sentences in an Incursion when the changes cascade down the Timestream, or even to reverse the cascade, so back up the Timestream and into the past rather down into the future. The third anchor, a trinket, can be used to revert an Incursion to its original state, place an Incursion under a Temporal Lock so it is immune to the cascading effect, or to take a second turn.

The interaction between the proxies and thus the play of The Words We Leave Behind comes to climax when a player plays the third card from a suit and so acts on the emotional prompt it triggers. As in This Is How You Lose the Time War, this is the point when the Proxies decide to meet, and as in the novel, in The Words We Leave Behind it is not via the messages going back and forth between the Proxies, but in person, face to face (or alternatively, via a video call). Based on the current state of the Timestream, the messages exchanged, and their respective emotional states, the Proxies have a simple choice to make. Will they place their trust in each other or attempt to take advantage of the other. If they both place their trust in each other, their feelings transcend the conflict and they leave both it and their Factions behind together. If they attempt to take advantage of the other, the war continues to a calamitous end. Lastly, if one Proxy attempts to take advantage of the other and one Proxy places their trust in the other, the Proxy who attempted to take advantage prevails and their Faction gains greater control of reality. In all three cases, the outcome is then narrated.

Love and trust are not common themes in roleplaying games, with trust being a more common theme than love because it is easier to deal with via humour or politics or espionage rather than feelings. This is not to say that love cannot play a part in a roleplaying game, but in general, love is not a core theme of most roleplaying games. When it is, it has tended to come out of the storytelling and narrative style of design, such as Emily Care Boss’ The Romance Trilogy, consisting of Breaking the Ice, Shooting the Moon, and Under the Skin. Nor does this mean that more mainstream publishers have not ignored the subject, such as Thirsty Sword Lesbians from Evil Hat Productions and Blue Rose: The AGE RPG of Romantic Fantasy from Green Ronin Publishing. This, though, does not escape the fact that ‘love’ as a theme in roleplaying games is challenging to handle for the players because it requires trust between the participants and it requires them to roleplay feelings that are normally kept private. Lastly, The Words We Leave Behind has the possibility of the most devastating response to both love and trust—betrayal. As with those other roleplaying games, The Words We Leave Behind is best played by mature players.

The Words We Leave Behind can be played from start to finish in a matter of a few hours, but its epistolary format means that it can be played at a more leisurely pace over the course of a few days or weeks. It can also be played on an Earthly, Galactic, or Dimensional scale, but really this only adds to flavour and scope of the setting rather than the themes. Those themes are explored in the messages between the Proxies and in the changes made to the timestream, pushed and prodded by the suits of the cards played and then escalated. Each player and their Proxy is aware of how the other feels as the card details are exchanged in the messages and whilst for the most part the cards themselves are played randomly from their hands, each player has the choice to change how their Proxy feels by playing an anchor and being able to select a card instead of drawing it randomly.

Apart from the aforementioned issue with keeping track of the timestream, The Words We Leave Behind is more challenging to play if the participants have not read This Is How You Lose the Time War to understand the themes and structure of the roleplaying game. The roleplaying game is also part of the publisher’s Dyson Eclipse future setting, the same as Rock Hoppers, Signal to Noise, and The Kandhara Contraband: A System Agnostic Sci-Fi Adventure, but it is not clear how. Lastly, as an epistolary roleplaying game, The Words We Leave Behind feels that it should have more emotional prompts for longer play rather than the three for each suit which befit a game played in one go.

Physically, The Words We Leave Behind is neat and tidy and includes a lot of helpful advice and prompts on handling its themes, which undeniably are all needed give the nature of those themes.

Fans of This Is How You Lose the Time War will doubtless be intrigued by The Words We Leave Behind, but will find it a daunting prospect if they have not played a roleplaying game before or their roleplaying experience is with more mainstream roleplaying games. The Words We Leave Behind is a personally demanding game, asking us to explore themes and feelings that not every roleplaying game does, but the epistolary format means that this exploration does not have to be immediate and it can be more considered, which ameliorates some of the challenge to The Words We Leave Behind. Nevertheless, for mature players willing to do so, The Words We Leave Behind presents the demanding means to explore the growth of love and trust—and potentially betrayal—in considered fashion in an age of a time war.

—oOo—

This review is of the ‘Ashcan’ edition of The Words We Leave Behind. The full version is currently being funded via Kickstarter.

Friday Fantasy: The Dusk Bringers

Two centuries ago, a heretical cult that had begun as a radical sect within the Church of Zonurandi brought to fruition its plans for a great ritual which it believed would bring about a new Dawn for their Sun God when he would shine so very brightly. Yet in order to bring about this age of enlightenment, the world must first enter a perpetual Dusk. The Dusk never came. The cultists—including many secret members within the ranks of Church of Zonurandi—disappeared. In the time since, the Herald of the Sun, the name of the original sect within the church, and the Dusk Bringers, the name for the cult, have become nothing more than an interesting side note in the history of the Church of Zonurandi, and then only to sages and archivists. Recently, a message has been received by the authorities from the remote Wichama Valley. It is a Rite of Protection, an ancient tradition which if fulfilled would be answered with an Oath of Loyalty. What is curious is about this message is that the Wichama Valley is part of the estates belonging to the Mayweather family which has long been loyal to those it owes fealty to. So, the question is, who has sent this Rite of Protection, and what exactly do they need protection from?

This is the set-up for The Dusk Bringers, a scenario published by LunarShadow Designs. The scenario is a departure for the publisher, which is best known for solo journalling games such as Signal to Noise or roleplaying games such as Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War, because The Dusk Bringers is very much an Old School Renaissance-style adventure. Excepts for one thing. There are no stats. In other words, The Dusk Bringers is a systemless or systems agnostic scenario. This is a fantasy scenario which could be dropped into numerous settings and not so much adapted, as given stats to run with Old School Essentials, Dragonebane, or the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. To name, but three. Ultimately, all the Game Master needs to apply stats and if the names do not fit her campaign, then change them so that they do. And if the Goblins and Ghostly Knights that comprise the majority of the scenario’s monsters—though not its threats—do not fit her campaign either, then they can be changed to. What all of this boils down to is that The Dusk Bringers is at its heart, a plot, a scenario in the true sense of the word.

However, The Dusk Bringers is not all plot. There are maps too and much of the scenario’s plot is wrapped around those maps. The Dusk Bringers was a submission to the ‘Dyson Logos Jam’, which ran throughout October 2021, using those that are available from his commercially available maps. Dyson Logos is renowned for the quality of his maps which have appeared in numerous releases for the Old School Renaissance. These include maps of what the scenario calls a keep, but is more of a tower, plus a strange temple complex connected to a mine and a map of the nearby walled settlement of Motuen township. The plot concerns a clan of goblins, which like all of its kin, lurked in the hills and caves surrounding Wichama Valley, but without being any real threat to the inhabitants. They have been driven out the mine in which they had made their home and taken refuge in Veranna Keep. However, whatever it was that the Goblins disturbed in the tunnels of their previous home has followed them to Veranna Keep and lurks still, ready to pounce on anyone foolish enough to be alone. The Goblins want help with the thing outside the walls of Veranna Keep and they want to return home, which also means dealing with what it they found in the mines.

Investigating the mines raises questions that cannot be answered there, but might be in the records to be found at the temple to Church of Zonurandi in nearby Motuen. The walled town was once prosperous, but has fallen on hard times with the paying out of the nearby mines. This has led to a loss prestige and power by the local branch of the Mayweather family to the influence of the church and the town’s merchants. The result is some tension between the head of the Mayweather family and the rest of the town, though this is more resentment than anything else. Only a two-page spread is devoted to Motuen along with an accompanying one-page description of the temple to Church of Zonurandi and its staff, but together these three pages are the highlight of The Dusk Bringers providing some local colour and roleplaying opportunities for the Game Master. Details beyond this are left for the Game Master to develop, but the basic building blocks are there.

The plot to The Dusk Bringers has a certain circularity to it, and the whole scenario can be played through in two or three sessions. Beyond this, there is a handful of story hooks that require full development upon the part of the Game Master and there is also a discussion of what happens if the Player Characters deal with the actual threat to the Wichama Valley and what happens if they decide not to. The latter has greater ramifications than the former. There are also notes on all of the scenario’s NPCs and detailed descriptions to accompany the maps.

Physically, The Dusk Bringers is cleanly and tidily presented. Both artwork and cartography are good—very good in the case of the cartography—and whilst there is very little artwork in the scenario, all of it I used to illustrate the various NPCs and monsters to be found in the scenario.

Without any stats, The Dusk Bringers feels threadbare. There is though decent advice on how to run the scenario, as well as questions that the players, their characters, and the Game Master might want answer by the end of the scenario. The outline of the scenario is also decently done. Overall, if the Game Master is looking for something that is ready-to-play with a modicum of preparation, then The Dusk Bringers is not going to be for her, but if the Referee is looking for a scenario that she can readily more design the monster and NPC stats around and adjust to make it her own, then The Dusk Bringers is a good choice.

Psychics Save the Free World!

A line of cars, black, with the Stars & Stripes fluttering from the bonnet. The scene jumps. A cheering crowd, flags in their hands, waving. A band strikes up with the anthem that always announces his arrival. Men in black, sunglasses hiding their eyes, but you know they are looking. Are they looking for you? You look up. The man in the suit. Striding. Waving. Grinning to the crowd, but not to you. The scene jumps again. Looking at the man. Looking at where you are, but from far away. It jumps again. Hands move quickly. They know what they are doing. There is something in those hands. Is it a device? A trigger? A rifle? There is bang. Close to you. The scene jumps. There are screams. People are running. You cannot see the man… Oh my god! Is it real? Will it be real? Will you be there? Fortunately, this is a vision, a premonition, it has not happened. Yet. But it might. Someone really wants to assassinate the President of the United States and that someone is the USSR. Nobody is going to believe you though, nobody except your fellow psychics in the program. Certainly not since the head of the program was killed in a car crash—why did nobody see that coming?—and funding from the US government got cut… Now it is just you, armed with your premonitions, which stands between you and the death of the leader of the free world and the consequences that would have.

This is the set-up for Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War, a roleplaying game of secret government projects and conspiracies in which the psychically gifted, trained as part of a program to spy on the Soviets, are the only ones who know that the President of the United States’ life is in danger. Except, of course, for those involved in the conspiracy to assassinate him. Published by LunarShadow Designs as part of ZineQuest #3 following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is designed to be played as a one-shot, of the Player Characters responding to the premonition and attempting to prevent it from happening, but it can be played as a longer campaign and it need not be about the assassination of the President. There are plenty of pinch points throughout the Cold War, from the Hungarian Uprising and the Bay of Pigs to the Moon landings and the stationing of Pershing missiles in Germany, which serve as inspiration for Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War.

However, given its subject matter, what inspires Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War is not the obvious cinema and television of the period. So instead of dark psychological thrillers or the constant dread of all too many of those who lived through the era, it takes its inspirations from lighter fare. The question is, what exactly is that inspiration? If not The Manchurian Candidate or The Parallax View, or similar films and television series, the most obvious inspirations, what then? These after all, are not only great cinema, but also great inspiration in terms of tone and atmosphere. Unfortunately, Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War does not include a bibliography and that is a serious failing. So why not dark psychological thrillers or the constant dread? The simple answer is Safety Tools. This is not a criticism of Safety Tools in general. They deserve a place in the roleplaying hobby and they deserve a place in Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War since it is set in the past when negative social attitudes were rife. Yet to ignore the inspirations for its inspiration means that Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War is really doing a disservice to its audience. It should not only have included them, it should have included them as an option and allowed the Game Master and her players to make that choice given the genre of Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War.

A Player Character in Project Cassandra has an Identity, a Background, ten Skills, several Knowledges or areas in which he is an expert, and a single, unique psychic power. The Skills are divided between three categories: Mental, Physical, and Specialist. The Skills can be anything that a player likes, but the Mental and Physical, skills are broad, whereas the Specialist skills are fairly narrow. To create a character, a player assigns a Rank value of one to one of the three categories, and a Rank value of two to the remaining pair. The player assigns four Skills to one category and three skills to each of the other two. The Player Character starts with a single Knowledge. It has no numerical value, but is used once per session to introduce a fact or truth related to the Knowledge into the game.

Identity: Maureen Herslag
Background: Housewife
Premonitions: 14
Mental – 2: Intimidation, Haggle, Chutzpah, Being Nosy
Physical – 2: Cleaning, Look Anonymous, Dodge, Athletics
Specialist – 1: Pistols, Self Defence
Knowledge: Cookery
Power: Yesterday

Project Cassandra uses what it calls the Precognition Engine. To undertake an action, a player must roll six six-sided dice and obtain as many successes as he can. Each roll equal to or under the value of the skill counts as a success. The difficulty and the number of successes that a player has to roll varies between one and seven, the latter being almost impossible. Successes can also be spent to overcome a challenge, such as picking a lock or punching out a senator’s aide/Communist sympathiser, representing both the amount of effort it takes and the amount of time it takes. It might be done in a single action, or it might take several. A failed roll will result in a Player Character suffering a consequence, typically a narrative consequence, but it can also be a condition, such Paranoid or Bloodied. A player can choose to have his character suffer a Condition in order to gain an extra success, meaning that it has come at some cost. A Condition can increase the difficulty or it can make a Player Character’s Premonitions more difficult to use.

A Player Character starts play with fourteen Premonitions. These represent his ability to see the immediate future and can be used to reroll any dice that did not roll successes. They recover slowly, at a rate of one Premonition per night of rest. A Player Character’s tenth and fifth Premonition is special. It grants the Player Character a more detailed vision of the future, specifically about the next scene. A Premonition is also used to activate a Player Character’s power. Most people will be unaware of psychic powers, but some are Nulls, who have no psychic footprint and who can negate a Player Character’s power if it is used directly on them. The conspiracy does employ Null agents as well as psychic agents.

The set-up to Project Cassandra is intended to be fairly freeform. It begins with the players and the Game Master building a conspiracy. Together they create an Opening Vision and answer some Conspiracy Questions. This should set the era, the nature of the conspiracy, and so on. Typically, this will involve the assassination of the President. For example, ‘How will the President be killed?’, ‘Where will the attack take place?’, and ‘Why will the world believe you are responsible?’. Project Cassandra incudes some sample questions, an example of play, and good advice for the Game Master on running the game and what Safety Tools to use. There are notes too on running longer term conspiracies—longer than four sessions—but they are fairly brief.

Besides five ready-to-play Player Characters, Project Cassandra includes two Mission Profiles, also ready to play. The Opening Vision of ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ sees President Kennedy assassinated in Berlin in June 1963, and starts with a bang for the Player Characters, whilst ‘The Dark of the Moon’ is pulpier in tone, asking the Player Characters to confront what hidden secrets Apollo 12 brought back from the Moon. Both come complete with questions to set the stakes and details of the conspiracy.

Physically, Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War is generally well presented and nicely illustrated. However, it could have been much better organised and it takes a while to work out quite what is going on. Once done, the roleplaying game is easy to grasp. The other aspect of the roleplaying game which could have been made clear on the cover is the fact that it is a storytelling game.

Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War is in need of a bibliography and really some general background about the period, because not everyone is going to be familiar with it. However, for those that are, Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War does have an enticing set-up. That though is far as it goes, for Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War is storytelling game, and the uncovering of the conspiracy and the prevention of it coming to fruition as well as the set-up depends on both players and Game Master working together. For the most part, Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War is best suited for a group which has some experience with storytelling roleplaying games and some understanding of the period.

Solitaire: Rock Hoppers

You made it and you survived. In answer to the signal sent from Tau Ceti almost a century ago, you were among those who made the three decade-long first journey by mankind through interstellar space. What humanity found were the arrays, installations ranging in size from a metre across to kilometres across and performing a variety of functions—habitants, defence systems, power stations, communications relays, and many more. What they all do remains yet to be determined, but if humanity is to survive, it needs resources—which can hopefully be found in Tau Ceti’s outer system. Prospectors, known as ‘Rock Hoppers’, have been sent out, one-part miners, one-part salvagers, one-part explorers, to search for the resources mankind’s first colony needs to survive. Hopping from rock to rock, from asteroid to asteroid, every rock hopper hopes to locate that lucky strike which will set them up for life—and if not that, enough to continue operations. That was what you thought when you detected the gravitational anomaly. It could only be xeno-tech, something that help understand the installations of the array which drew humanity to the system. Only for the gravitational anomaly to spike, soaring to nine times what you first detected, collapsing the entrance to the asteroid, trapping you inside. You cannot go back the way you came. The only way to survive is to find a path forward, hopefully a route out if not answers as to what happened…

This is the set-up for Rock Hoppers, a solo journalling game of desperate exploration in the near future in another star. It is a sequel to The Long Goodbye and both are set in the same Dyson Eclipse future. Where The Long Goodbye explored the journey from the Earth to the unknown of Tau Ceti and the fear of the journey and what might be found at Tau Ceti, Rock Hoppers explores what might be found there and what it takes to survive. Where The Long Goodbye was a two-player epistolary roleplaying game, Rock Hoppers is a solo affair, one which takes it desperate tone and urgency from The Wretched, though not its horror. 

Published by LunarShadow Designs and like The Wretched before it, Rock Hoppers is a game about exploration, isolation, fear, and perseverance and potentially, survival in the face of overwhelming odds. The game requires an ordinary deck of playing cards without the Jokers, a six-sided die, a Jenga or similar tower block game, and a set of tokens. In addition, the player will require a means of recording the results of the game. It is suggested that audio or video longs work best, but a traditional journal will also work too. Rock Hoppers is a played out as a series of days, the player, as the titular rock hopper, undertaking a series of tasks each day and responding to prompts before ending the day by recording its events and his thoughts in his personal log. As in The Wretched, the rock hopper is unlikely to survive the experience. The rock hopper’s personal mining rig might become trapped in the tunnels in the asteroid or the tunnels might collapse, crushing the rock hopper—which will happen if the tower block collapses. The only way for the rock hopper to survive is to reach the cause of the gravitation anomaly and hope that it has some answers…
 
The four suites correspond to different aspects of the rock hopper’s mining rig and the environment around him. Spades represent the rock hopper’s personal mining rig and the supplies it was carrying when he became trapped; Clubs detail the asteroid itself, previously mined by whomever it who built the arrays; Hearts are signals that the rock hopper will pick up from outside the asteroid; and Diamonds are the secrets to be found buried deep in the asteroid. Unlike in The Wretched, there is no sense of threat from without, no monster or alien lurking, ready to find its way into the asteroid… Instead, there is a sense of isolation and desperation, rather than of being stalked. In that isolation, there is also time for reflection for the situation that the rock hopper finds himself in and likely, if disaster strikes, on his life.

Rock Hoppers does have secrets. These are revealed only under certain circumstances. The likelihood is that the player will take several attempts to play through Rock Hoppers in order to get to them and begin to reveal the secrets of the asteroid and thus the very first secrets of the Dyson Eclipse future. 

Physically, Rock Hoppers is cleanly and tidily presented. It is not illustrated. 

Although Rock Hoppers uses the same mechanics as The Wretched, it is much more constrained and isolated in nature, primarily because there is no external force. It does take a while to play through, in the sense of multiple attempts, to reveal any secrets of the Dyson Eclipse setting, and a player may find himself going over old story prompts.

The Long Goodbye

The signal arrived six decades ago. Directed from the Tau Ceti star system, it was proof that humanity was not alone in the universe. There was other intelligent life out there and it wanted to say hello. Not just say hello, but invite us to make contact, to journey to Tau Ceti where five great mega-constructs were being built. This of course, would have been impossible, had it not been for the information encoded within the signal. It advanced the study of mathematics and physics beyond the limits of human understanding, and with it, the means to create a technological and scientific revolution that enabled mankind to colonise the furthest reaches of the Solar System and give it a purpose—contact. Contained within the information was the means to construct engines that would enable a spaceship to become a starship and cut the journey from one star system to the next by a factor of ten. Where the trip to Tau Ceti would have taken thousands of years, now it would take hundreds. It took the whole of humanity over sixty years to build the fleet that would take the journey and carry the hundreds of thousands of crew and passengers to another star system and realise a dream. It was a one-way trip, for those chosen to travel aboard the Generation Fleet would never see their home again, let alone their destination. The selection process would split humanity, nations, and families, as would the journey.

It is this divide that is explored in Signal to Noise, an interstellar epistolary roleplaying game—that is, played out as a series of letters, for two players, published by LunarShadow Designs. It is the prelude to the Dyson Eclipse, a setting which explores the voyage of humanity and its subsequent exploration of mega-structures around a distant star. One player takes the role of the Explorer, one of the lucky few chosen to join Generation Fleet, whilst the other player is the Earther, forced to stay behind as their companion departs the solar system. Via a series of prompts—much like the journalling roleplaying games that include Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure and Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG, the players will exchange short letters with each other, looking back over their relationship and recent events—either aboard the Generation Fleet or at home—all with a wistfulness that comes from knowing that contact will be lost with each other forever and all they will have is their memories of each other and their pasts. As the game progresses and the Generation Fleet gets ever further from Earth, the ever-increasing time lag and distortion of the signal between ship and planet disrupts the messages, rendering communication and understanding increasingly difficult. How it does this is clever, enabling Signal To Noise to explore loss and regret whilst also putting Communications Theory into practice.

Signal To Noise requires an ordinary deck of playing cards for each player and a text editor, such as Word or Google Docs, which has the ‘Find and Replace’ function. Initially, the Explorer and the Earther establish their relationship and the Explorer the how and the why he is aboard the Generation Fleet and how he feels about it, and the Earther the how and the why he is not aboard the Generation Fleet and how he feels about that. The initial scene takes place before the Generation Fleet and for the Explorer and the Earther it is their last face-to-face meeting before the former leaves. Next, the Explorer sends a message to the Earther saying how much he will miss him, but also how much he is looking forward to the journey. Then the game proper begins. From his hand of cards, each player will draw a single card. The card suit determines which Event Track the event for this exchange of messages is drawn from, whilst its number determines two factors. First, is a personal event, the second is the letters to be replaced in the message that will eventually reach the recipient. As the exchange of messages progresses, the storyline for the Event Track will progress as well as be joined by the storylines from the other Event Tracks, more letters will be replaced in the messages going back and force between Explorer and Earther—representing ever greater communication degradation, and time will increase between messages, growing from a week to several, a month to months, and from one year to ten…

—oOo—

For example, after three turns the Explorer player has drawn the seven of Clubs, the three of Hearts, and on his latest turn, the nine of Clubs. This is the second Clubs card to be drawn and continues its Story Track, which starts with a weak and distorted directional signal being detected coming from an empty region of space. In the second part of the story, the signal is decoded and the shipboard systems begin building a Faster-Than-Light drive, which is only discovered when the drive is completed. The personal event is “You’ve finally read that classic book you always said you would. Did you enjoy it?” The Explorer player sends the following message:

David,

Already a month out. We can hardly see the Sun now. In a week or two it will be gone and your messages will be my connection to home. I have spectacular news to tell you and I have amazing news to tell you. You remember I mentioned that the fleet received a signal that we could not understand from a nearby region of empty space? The shipboard systems deciphered it and not only that, but directed the manufacturing systems to build a device. Our engineers are currently analysing it and they reckon it’s some kind of FTL drive. We’re just beginning to work the possibilities. If it is, it could mean we can cut years off the journey to Tau Ceti. It could even mean we can get there and get back again. Who knows? Course, we have to ask ourselves who sent us the instructions for the drive and what they might want in return, but until we switch the thing on or get another message, who knows?

And the amazing news? I finally read Three Men in a Boat. All these years of you saying I should read it and I have to get billions of miles from you to finally do so. Seems appropriate to the journey we are on. Instead of passing villages, we are passing astronomical objects, which have become the topic of conversation when not speculating about the star drive as everyone has taken to calling it. Anyway, it was very amusing and I am glad that I finally listened to you. Your turn next, you should read that Philip K. Dick novel I told you about. I know it is going to be a month before you get this, so happy birthday for seventh. By the time you get my next message, I hope I will have extra news about the star drive. We may even have turned it on and gone somewhere fantastic!

Hear from you as soon as we can.

The message is sent, but due to the distance and the signal degradation, Dave receives the following version of the message:

David,

Already a mopth out. We oap hardly see the Sup pow. Ip a week or two it will ke gope apd your messages will ke my ooppeotiop to home. I have speotaoular pews to tell you apd I have amazipg pews to tell you. You rememker I meptioped that the fleet reoeived a sigpal that we oould pot upderstapd from a pearky regiop of empty spaoe? The shipkoard systems deoiphered it apd pot oply that, kut direoted the mapufaoturipg systems to kuild a devioe. Our epgipeers are ourreptly apalysipg it apd they reokop it’s some kipd of FTL drive. We’re just kegippipg to work the possikilities. If it is, it oould meap we oap out years off the jourpey to Tau Oeti. It oould evep meap we oap get there apd get kaok agaip. Who kpows? Oourse, we have to ask ourselves who sept us the ipstruotiops for the drive apd what they might wapt ip returp, kut uptil we switoh the thipg op or get apother message, who kpows?

Apd the amazipg pews? I fipally read Three Mep ip a Koat. All these years of you sayipg I should read it apd I have to get killiops of miles from you to fipally do so. Seems appropriate to the jourpey we are op. Ipstead of passipg villages, we are passipg astropomioal okjeots, whioh have keoome the topio of oopversatiop whep pot speoulatipg akout the star drive as everyope has takep to oallipg it. Apyway, it was very amusipg apd I am glad that I fipally listeped to you. Your turp pext, you should read that Philip K. Diok povel I told you akout. I kpow it is goipg to ke a mopth kefore you get this, so happy kirthday for sevepth. Ky the time you get my pext message, I hope I will have extra pews akout the star drive. We may evep have turped it op apd gope somewhere faptastio!

Hear from you as soop as we oap.

—oOo—

Ultimately, Signal To Noise will play out to between seven and ten exchanges of messages at which point time will have passed and the signal will have degraded to the point of incomprehensibility. It will take between two and even five years for messages to travel between Earth and the Generation Fleet. The game will end with the players first reflecting upon the exchange of messages and the story they have told of two lives, far apart, before a debrief together.

It should be no surprise that Signal To Noise was written during lockdown, a roleplaying game entirely built for the exchange of messages via electronic mail. There are alternative rules which suggest it could be done via exchanged and later exchanged and edited video messages, as well as rules for extending play. The format means that it can be played at any distance and only one copy of the roleplaying game is needed as the author has given permission to share the PDF between the two players. As play progresses the game becomes about what we can understand, what meaning we can deduce from the increasingly garbled text from the context of the words and letters we receive at increasingly long intervals. Ultimately, the ‘noise’ of the signal will intrude to the point of incomprehensibility and loss of meaning accompanied by a loss of contact between Explorer and Earther. (As a side note, parallels could be drawn between the loss of communication and eventually, the loss of emotional connection in Signal To Noise and between a couple one of whom is suffering from onset dementia, though obviously it is not designed with that in mind.)

Physically, Signal To Noise is nicely presented. Its play is easy to read and grasp, made all the easier with the example of play included. The artwork is excellent.

Signal To Noise is about the long goodbye. Saying the long goodbye to a loved one or friend, one who is going away never to return, the other one who is staying behind. Within that long goodbye, Signal To Noise combines wistfulness and wonder, about that relationship that is to be lost and the future that is to be reached, and tells a story that will eventually be lost to the void between the stars.

Space Crime

There is a big difference between making ends meet and making a living when it comes to operating a starship. With expansive docking fees, fuel costs, and repairs to be made, let alone paying the crew, making a profit is never easy, unless that is, you pick up a contract from a crime boss. A crime boss like Algoth Nieminen, who just happened to take over and expand the Jitana Syndicate to the point where it is the primary crime organisation in the binary. Now he has a cargo which he needs transporting both carefully and speedily and he is short of his usual ships and crews. He will not say what it is, but it is sensitive and highly illegal. He will, however, say where it is. The cargo is aboard a ship which has been impounded and the held at the impound yard in orbit around Kandhara. So all the crew has to do is, fly to the Shan system, infiltrate the Kandhara Independent Impound yard, get aboard the ship, steal the cargo, and deliver it as Algoth Nieminen, as promised, right? Wrong. We not entirely wrong. The crew do have to fly to the Shan system, infiltrate the Kandhara Independent Impound yard, get aboard the ship, steal the cargo, and deliver it as Algoth Nieminen promised, but it is nowhere as simple as that. First, there are three ships and crews who worked for Algoth Nieminen in the impound and one of them has the cargo. Second, Algoth Nieminen has hired four other crews to retrieve the cargo and will only pay the bonus to the crew which successfully retrieves the cargo. Third, there is a detective who wants to make a name for himself—and if that means arresting Algoth Nieminen and breaking up the Jitana Syndicate, then all the better.

This is the set-up for The Kandhara Contraband: A System Agnostic Sci-Fi Adventure. Published by LunarShadow Designs, this as the title suggests is a rules free, mechanics free, stats free scenario for the Science Fiction genre. So more plot than numbers—and more set-up than plot—this is also a scenario which involves space crime. Which narrows it down to the types of roleplaying game it will work with. In terms of generic roleplaying games, Savage Worlds or GURPS or FATE Core would all work easily with this plot. In terms of setting, the set-up and theme points to two obvious choices. Star Wars is the most obvious, whether that is the D6 System version from West End Games or Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. The other option is the Firefly Roleplaying Game published by Margaret Weis Productions. But whichever system or setting the Game Master decides to run The Kandhara Contraband, the key elements are crime and space travel.

Half of The Kandhara Contraband is dedicated to the set-up and describing the other interested parties in the adventure. This includes the three syndicate ships and their captains who got impounded, as well as the four rival ships and their captains that Algoth Nieminen has also hired to retrieve the cargo, plus of course, the police detective. These are all given a good paragraph or two’s worth of description, which in most cases is accompanied by a question, which the Game Master has to put to her players. For example, Jacinda Sedius is the captain of The Icarus, a ship which though the same make and model as the Player Characters’, but is often on the verge of breaking down and in need of much maintenance. Captain Jacinda and her crew has suffered a rash of bad luck and really needs the payout that successfully retrieving Algoth Nieminen’s cargo would bring. The accompanying question is, “Ask the PCs about a time they have previously helped Jacinda and her crew. How many drinks does he owe them?” The Kandhara Contraband asks similar questions for each of the NPCs in the scenario, as well as at Kandhara Station, the orbital station. The effects of this are twofold. First, it involves the players in the creation of elements of the scenario, tying locations and NPCs to their characters and into the setting or game that the Game Master is running, and in the process setting up background details and roleplaying hooks. Second, if The Kandhara Contraband is run as a convention scenario—and it is about the right length to do that, even if there are no suggestions as to how to that or pace the scenario—each time it is run, it will be different for the Game Master.

The second half of The Kandhara Contraband is devoted to the scenario’s locations, which consist of the barren mining world of Shan, Kandhara Station, the orbital station above Shan, and the Kandhara Independent Impound Yard, and the final destination for the cargo. Here individuals, facilities aboard Kandhara Station, and events are all described. Most of the detail is spent on Kandhara Station, as it is here that the Player Characters will find the crews of the impounded ships and learn more about the cargo—which is very much far from ordinary.

Physically, The Kandhara Contraband is a plain and simple affair. Behind the decent cover, the scenario is unaccompanied by either maps or illustrations. Otherwise, the layout is tidy and the booklet a clean affair.

The advice for the Game Master in The Kandhara Contraband is brief. For the Game Master with experience of running a fairly improvised scenario, this should not be an issue. A less experienced Game Master might well have wanted more help and advice, or at least a summary of the events and hooks which help her more readily prepare the scenario and give her some idea as to what might happen once the players and their characters get involved.

The Kandhara Contraband: A System Agnostic Sci-Fi Adventure is plot and set-up. Both though, are more than enough to get a good session or two’s worth of Sci-Fi action and intrigue going, as well as provide content that the Game Master can easily add to her campaign and the players add to their characters’ backgrounds. Of course, it is going to need some effort upon the part of the Game Master to supply the stats, but once she has that, the Game Master is ready to run her Player Characters into trouble and hopefully, back out again, hopefully with The Kandhara Contraband in their cargo hold and out again.

Solitaire: Numb3r Stations

Throughout the Cold War and even today, secret messages were broadcast across international borders and around the world, enabling instructions to be passed from handlers to their agents in the field. The means were Number Stations, shortwave radio stations which broadcast formatted numbers, often vocalised, but also broadcast as music or in Morse Code. Perhaps one of the most famous is the ‘LincolnshirePoacher’, which broadcast bars from the English folk song ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’. These Number Stations and the messages they broadcast form the basis for Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG. Published by LunarShadow Designs and available in print here, the reader and player takes on the role of a spy posted to a foreign country where he will undertake an important mission. Tuning in to regular broadcasts, he will receive instructions and updates and in turn pass back news of the mission’s progress and what he has learned so far. However, successfully or spectacularly completing each stage of the mission has a price—it brings the activities of our patriotic spy to the attention of counter-intelligence operations in the country he is spying upon. Ultimately, if the spy is too successful, counter-intelligence will identify him as a spy and arrest him. This is espionage in the style of John le Carré and George Smiley rather than Ian Fleming and James Bond.

Solo roleplaying games and journalling games are built around prompts, typically generated in random fashion either through rolling dice or drawing cards from a standard deck of playing cards. Using those prompts, the player typically creates and resolves a scene or encounter, and then writes it down in his journal. Numb3r Stations also uses prompts, but instead of using neutral mechanical means of generating them, it uses prompts that are both random and highly thematic. In other words, it uses the Number Stations and their broadcasts as prompts. During the Cold War, an agent would listen to the designated number station for the code being broadcast and use it to decode a message on a one-time-pad. In Numb3r Stations, the player is doing exactly the same, if not to commit acts of espionage himself, then to tell the story of the agent and his mission. Nevertheless, there is a sense of vicarious subterfuge to Numb3r Stations, as the player listens in, knowing that someone else once did the same on some secret mission far away from his home, or even could be on a secret mission right now, depending upon which number station the player decides to listen to and use for the source of his prompts.

To play Numb3r Stations, the player requires pen and paper and ideally, access to Priyom.org. This site provide numerous number stations to listen to and all the player has to do is select one to generate a random three-digit code. This is his prompt. Alternative methods of generating this number are also suggested, but for real immersion, the authors suggest using the same number station, such as E11, even if that means listening in at the same time of day to hear its broadcast. Numb3r Stations is played out over five stages—Infiltration, Mission: Objective, Mission: Recon, Mission: Execution, and Exfiltration. At each stage, the player uses a three-digit code to select a one-time-pad from the ten in the back of Numb3r Stations and from this a combination of a letter and a number. The entry on that one-time-pad is then crossed out. The letter indicates the prompt for that stage of the mission and the number the Success Rating. There are five prompts per stage, from A to E and the Success Rating ranges from ‘1’ and “You have failed this stage of your mission so poorly, adversary counterintelligence don’t even know something happened” to ‘5’ and “Outstanding work, among the best your organization has seen. All eyes are on you now, mostly unwelcome.”.

Using both Prompt and Success Rating, the player writes a report to his handler. This report must include a code. There are ten given in Numb3r Stations, such as “Your report must contain a secret message that is composed of every 5th word in the message.” or “Include a list within the text, of exactly five items, listed in alphabetical order.”

Lastly, the player determines his Exposure Level based on the Success Rating. If it is too high, his messages have been Intercepted by Counter-Intelligence and his progress is easier to tracked. If he is Intercepted twice, or if a three-digit code indicates an entry on a one-time-pad that has already been used and crossed out, player is captured by counter-intelligence. This is alternative to the fifth and last challenge and gives the player a chance to write one last two-hundred-and-forty-character message to his loved ones. (In other words, a tweet!) If the player or agent completes his mission, his final Exposure Level determines handler’s or even history’s verdict on the mission.

Physically, Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG is a rather grey, dreary little book. However, that actually feels thematically appropriate, matching the often-drab nature of espionage during the Cold War. The cover is decent though, depicting a man in fedora hat and trench coat and carrying a briefcase. Wholly unremarkable, he could be a travelling salesman, a businessman, or even a spy! The book is otherwise decently written, but in places a close study is required to understand what a player is required to do.

Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG is at its heart, a writing exercise in five stages. At each stage, the player will be given a prompt as a subject matter, and both a degree of success and a code which will influence and complicate what the player has to write. Even overcomplicate what a player has to write if he is intercepted! Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG is a delightfully drab espionage roleplaying game, capturing the fraught, grey no-man’s land feel of the Cold War, beginning in thematic fashion by listening into messages from a bygone age before being prompted to draft dreary report after dreary report!