Miskatonic Monday #428: Colours of the Deep

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—

Name: Colours of the Deep

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Nader Rabie

Setting: Massachusetts, USA, 1925

Product: One shot
What You Get: Thirty-seven-page, 2.19 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: The Colour Out of Space… “Under the sea … Under the sea”

Plot Hook: A tourist trip by advanced submarine ends with a clang and pales into horror...

Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, nine handouts, one schematic and one deck plan, and two Mythos monsters.

Production Values: Excellent

Pros

# Exhilaratingly creepy underwater threat

# Doubly trapped—underwater and in a mine!

# Strange bedfellows make for maddening allies

# Easy to prepare

# Easy to adjust to other modern times and coastal cities

# Nicely selected illustrations

# Submechanophobia

# Thalassophobia

# Monochromophobia

Cons

# Needs an edit (surprisingly)

# No maps, but the schematic works

# Feels a little too modern for its period

Conclusion

# A one-shot which takes the Investigators somewhere different

# Creepy, claustrophobic encounters with the Mythos that are definitely fish out of water!

# Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends

Time & Tide

For three hundred years, the floating city of Naviri has been a beacon of comfort, co-operation, and community. Located in the shallow waters of a tropical lagoon, it consists of a number of large, permanent islands—or docks—as well as many floating ones, hence its nickname of the ‘Floating City’ or ‘Floating Islands of Naviri’, that together make up a warm and welcoming home under azure skies dotted with the fluffiest of white clouds. Despite their differences, numerous species live and work together in the city—Betalods, Chameleons, Crocs, Cuttlebeards, Frogs, Golfins, Humans, Iotas, Magnafrons, Nag’i, Salamanders, Turtles, and Tyros. Yet despite Naviri being a tropical paradise, it is sandwiched between two great threats. Behind it is the endless of expanse of the Droskani Desert, home to desert raiders and fiends, but also the grey-haired Human traders who make the twice annual journey from their home in Stoen on the far mountainous side of the continent to Naviri. Before it looms the Fold. A great storm that has been calcified into a glacier of apocalyptic weather and monsters. Naviri has always suffered from storms, but the city weathered them and the sea monsters that followed in their wake, protected by the Tidal Blades, elite guardians of the Floating Islands. For centuries, the Tidal Blades protected the city from both the storms and the monsters, as well as helping the community and helping to keep order. Fifteen years ago, the city was threatened by the biggest storm in recorded history. The Tidal Blades were no match for its ferocity or that of the monsters that invaded the reef. The city’s leaders asked the Tidal Blades to deploy an experimental piece of technology developed by Arcanists of the Citadel of Time called the Fold that would halt the storm and the sea monsters. Answering the call, in what became known as the Great Battle, the Tidal Blades successfully activated the Fold. It worked, but at a cost. The Fold stopped time. It trapped both storm and monsters in time, but also stopped the Tidal Blades in time. Now, the Fold has begun to weaken. Sea monsters are slipping through. How long until the Fold fails and who will protect the city now and then when it does? For there no Tidal Blades any longer…

This is the setting for two board games published by Druid City Games. In Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef, the heroes undertake a series of challenges across the island and in three arenas as part of the Tournament of Heroes in an attempt to be acclaimed one of the Tidal Blades. In its sequel, Tidal Blades 2: Rise of the Unfolders, the Tidal Blades are entrusted with the Nexus, a device that will enable them to enter the Fold, unfreeze time, discover its secrets, and hopefully recuse the Tidal Blade heroes of the Great Battle. It is also the setting for Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game, published by Monte Cook Games. It is set roughly at the same time as Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef, but can be set before or after, and although mechanically different, the board game could be used to play out the Player Characters’ efforts to become the new Tidal Blades. Or that can be played as part of the roleplaying game, which suggests several paths—or story arcs—that a Player Character can participate in to eventually become a Tidal Blade. In addition to being a roleplaying game, along with its rules for creating Player Characters and playing the game, Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game provides details of the world, making it a gazetteer of the setting, and two scenarios. It is a roleplaying game of hope and adventure, community and duty, exploration and heroism. It is an aquatic Science Fiction setting in which advanced Michronic technology enables Michronic Loops, or time jumps, often moments into the past to change the present.

As with other roleplaying games from Monte Cook Games, Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game uses the Cypher System, first seen in Numenera in 2013. A Player Character in the Cypher System and Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game has three stats or Pools. These are Might, Speed, and Intellect, and represent a combination of effort and health for a character. Typically, they range between eight and twenty in value. Might covers physical activity, strength, and melee combat; Speed, any activity involving agility, movement, stealth, or ranged combat; and Intellect, intelligence, charisma, and magical capacity. In game, points from these pools will be spent to lower the difficulty of a task, but they can also be lost through damage, whether physical or mental. A Player Character has an Edge score, tied to one of the three pools. This reduces the cost of points spent from the associated pool to lower the difficulty of a task, possibly even to zero depending upon the Edge rating.

A Player Character can be summed up in a simple statement—“I am an adjective species noun who verbs.” The adjective is the ‘Descriptor’, describing how the Player Character acts or his manner; the species is one of the thirteen species who live in Naviri; the noun is one of the four character ‘Types’ in the roleplaying game; and the verb is the Player Character’s ‘Focus, that is what he does. For example, “I am an Exiled Human Speaker who Doesn’t Do Much.”, “I am Sea-Born Tyro Explorer who Sails the Howling Seas.”, “I am an Intelligent Betalod Adept who Conducts Weird Science.”, and “I am Vicious Croc Fighter who Fights Dirty.” The four Types are Adept, Explorer, Fighter, and Speaker. Besides Human, the Species include the pink, semi-aquatic newt-like Betalods who are telepaths and good at analysing their environment; Crocs are aggressive combatants, often with regard to their own safety; Cuttlebeards have face tentacles used as manipulators and to enhance their speech, who are sociable and read the histories of objects; Nag’i are mutant, aquatic humans known for doing everything with a flourish or a quip; and more. All of the Species have one inability as well several abilities to choose from, as do the Descriptors and Foci.

Creating a character is a matter of making some choices, assigning a few points here and there, and so on. It is a fairly simple process, but there are a lot of options to choose from.

Sepiella

“I am an Inquisitive Cuttlebeard Adept who Delves the Fourth Dimension.”

Background: “You used to sneak into the Atoll of the Crab Mystics when you were young and that’s where you became enamoured of becoming an Adept”

Arc: Uncover a Secret

Tier 1 Adept

Might 9 Speed 12 Intellect 19 [Edge 1]

Effort 1

Inability: Medium and Heavy Weapons

Hindrances: Hearing/Noticing Dangers, Initiative, Physical Labour

Abilities: Anticipation, Far Step, Michronic Training, Onslaught, Scan, See History

Skills: Geography [Trained], History [Trained], Learning [Trained], Light weapons [Practiced], Pleasant Social Interactions [Trained]

Mechanically, as a Cypher System roleplaying game, Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game is player facing. Thus, in combat, a player not only rolls for his character to make an attack, but also rolls to avoid any attacks made against his character. Essentially this shifts the game’s mechanical elements from the Game Master to the player, leaving the Game Master to focus on the story, on roleplaying NPCs, and so on. When it comes to tasks, the Player Character is attempting to overcome a Task Difficulty, ranging from one and Simple to ten and Impossible. The target number is actually three times the Task Difficulty. So, a Task Difficulty of four or Difficult, means that the target number is twelve, whilst a Task Difficulty of seven or Formidable, means that the target number is twenty-one. The aim of the player is lower this Task Difficulty. This can be done in a number of ways.

Modifiers, whether from favourable circumstances, skills, or good equipment, can decrease the Difficulty, whilst skills give bonuses to the roll. Trained skills—skills can either be Practiced or Trained—can reduce the Difficulty, but the primary method is for a player to spend points from his relevant Stat pools. This is called applying Effort. Applying the first level of Effort, which will reduce the target number by one, is three points from the relevant Stat pool. Additional applications of Effort beyond this cost two points. The cost of spending points from a Stat pool is reduced by its associated Edge, which if the Edge is high enough, can reduce the Effort to zero, which means that the Player Character gets to do the action for free—or effortlessly!

Rolls of one enable a free GM Intrusion—essentially a complication to the current situation that does not reward the Player Character with any Experience Points, whereas rolls of seventeen and eighteen in combat grant damage bonuses. Rolls of nineteen and twenty in combat can also grant damage bonuses, but alternatively, can grant minor and major effects. For example, distracting an opponent or striking a specific body part. Rolls of nineteen and twenty in non-combat situations grant minor and major effects, which the player and Game Master can decide on in play. In combat, light weapons always inflict two points of damage, medium weapons four points, and heavy weapons six points, and damage is reduced by armour. NPCs simply possess a Level, which like the Task Difficulty ranges between one and ten and is multiplied by three to get a target number to successfully attack them.

Experience Points in Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game are earned in several ways, primarily through achieving objectives, making discoveries, and so on. There are two significant means of a Player Character gaining Experience Points. The first is ‘GM In trusion’. These are designed to make a situation and the Player Character’s life more interesting or more complicated. For example, the Player Character might automatically set off a trap or an NPC important to the Player Character is imperilled. Suggested Intrusions are given for the four character Types and the Foci. When this occurs, the Game Master makes an Intrusion and offers the player and his character two Experience Points. The player does not have to accept this ‘GM Intrusion’, but this costs an Experience Point. If he does accept the Intrusion, the player receives the two Experience Points, keeps one and then gives the other to another player, explaining why he and his character deserves the other Experience Point. The ‘GM Intrusion’ mechanic encourages a player to accept story and situational complications and place their character in danger, making the story much more exciting.

There is the reverse of the ‘GM Intrusion’, which is ‘Player Intrusion’. With this, a player spends an Experience Point to present a solution to a problem or complication. These make relatively small, quite immediate changes to a situation, such as an old friend suddenly showing up, a device used by a NPC malfunctioning, and so on.

The other means of gaining Experience Points is the Character Arc. A Player Character begins play with one Character Arc for free, but extra can be purchased at the cost of Experience Points to reflect a Player Character’s dedication to the arc’s aim. Each Character Arc consists of several steps—Opening, two or three development steps, followed by a Climax and a Resolution. Suggested Character Arcs include ‘Avenge’, ‘Become a Parent’, ‘Enterprise’, ‘Finish a Great Work’, make a ‘New Discovery’, and so on, that the Player Character can follow and be awarded Experience Points for each stage completed. This formalises and rewards players for engaging in their characters’ objectives. he selection of the Character Arc during character creation signals to the Game Master what sort of story a player wants to explore with his character.

One of the aspects inherent to Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game and all Cypher System roleplaying games and settings are the Cypher System’s namesake—Cyphers. Again, first seen in Numenera, Cyphers are typically one-use things which help a Player Character. In the Science Fantasy world of Numenera, they are physical or Manifest devices and objects which might heal a Player Character, inflict damage on an opponent or hinder him, aid an attack, turn him invisible or reveal something that is invisible, increase or decrease gravity, and so on. They are effectively, one-shot Player Character abilities that are free. In the Science Fiction setting like that of Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game, Cyphers are parts of Tidal Blade relics which so broken that they can only be used once or fruits that can be harvested. Cyphers are always obvious, but not always obvious in what they can do. Plus only a few Cyphers can be carried at any one time, otherwise there are side effects which can be dangerous. Artefacts can also be found. These are rare, but do have multiple uses.

Intrinsic to the setting of Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game is Michronic energy. This powers the technology in and around Navri and can be manipulated to enable time travel. A Michronic Loop or time leap will only take a Player Character back a few seconds into the past, but will enable him to reattempt an action or do another action instead. This can have the side effect of a memory loss. Mechanically, it requires the expenditure of Experience Points to allow a reroll, but devices such as a ‘Time Stretch’ Cyber or a Shell Shield artefact, or the abilities of someone who ‘Delves the Fourth Dimension’ also allow it. Where changes can be made as a result of a time leap, it is considered all but impossible when travelling in hyperdimensional space as the past is fixed whereas the future remains a series of possibilities.

In terms of support, the advice for the Game Master is as good as you would expect for a Monte Cook title, expanding upon this advice with setting specific guidance, such as running challenges. In terms of setting, Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game gives a gazetteer of Naviri, a bestiary of both creatures and NPCs, notes on languages, and two scenarios as well as details of various Cyphers and artefacts that the Player Characters can scavenge. Notable locations in the city of Naviri include the Citadel of Time from where the city is governed and much of its technology is developed and manufactured, and the Chronosseum, the Lamara Stadium, and the Droska Ring where festivals and other events are held, such as challenges. Challenges are a major part of Naviri culture and seen as a way of proving oneself, ultimately preparing participants for the Tournament of Heroes. There are numerous different challenges, including races and battles, and each venue has its own. Challenges are not intended for beginning Player Characters, but like the Tournament of Heroes, something for them to aspire to. Other cultural notes include elements such as the fact that killing other people is frowned upon, unless in self-defence, which is more likely the further away you are from the city. The bestiary lists a wide range of creatures, including the legendary Akora, a creature so big, it can be seen from miles as it emerges from the water, the volcano on its back spewing lava and ash! There is a variety of crabs as well as things like the Dragonslime, which has a dragon-like head and an octopus-like body, its tentacles exuding a burning slime, and the Whirlpool Weaver, a manta ray-like beast that can detect, absorb, and even use Michronic energy. 

The first of the two scenarios is ‘Chef Surprise’. This is designed as an introductory scenario in which the Player Characters are asked to help out a restaurant by obtaining some special ingredients from a distant island. Once past finding and equipping a boat, the scenario is all about the trip there and what the Player Characters find on the island, an on-the-run band of thieves hiding out. It presents a moral dilemma for the Player Characters to sort out, but is fairly direct affair and there is advice for the Game Master on running it throughout. The second scenario, ‘A Dock of Their Own’ is more complex and broken into discrete tasks, meaning that it can be run is or spaced out as series of events over the course of an ongoing campaign. The Game Master advice suggests ways in which it could be tied into a Player Character Arc, but leaves some of the scenario set-up to the Game Master, specifically how Player Characters might get involved in the project at the heart of the scenario, which building a dock that they can freely use. It is not a bad scenario, but it is not as immediately useful and ultimately it really works better as a framework into which the Game Master can add her won content.

There is nothing missing from Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game per se. It contains everything that a Game Master and her players need to begin playing and set up and support the aims of their characters. It also serves as a good introduction to the Tidal Blades setting. Yet there still remains much that is unexplained and unexplored, most obviously the Droskani Desert and the Flow. Both deserve further treatment and adventures involving them. A more minor issue that the example of play is given at the back of the book rather than the front where it would have been more obviously useful, especially to anyone new to roleplaying as a hobby.

Physically, Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game is well presented and written. The artwork, much of it in a cartoon style, is good. The illustrations of both buildings and sea-going vessels in Naviri are excellent. Overall, the artwork does a great job of imparting the look and feel of the world of Tidal Blades, a mixture of anthropomorphism and anime.

Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game is a Saturday morning cartoon of a roleplaying game, bright and breezy and positive. This makes it suitable for play by a younger audience, but it is not written for them, so requires a more experienced Game Master. Further, although the Cypher System is not complex, the Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game is a still daunting prospect for any fan of the two board games it is based upon, but for the fan who does roleplay, the Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game is much easier to grasp, presenting the players with a wealth of character options and an interesting setting to explore.

A Colder Cold War

There are not a lot of roleplaying games which feature submarines. Polaris, the French roleplaying game originally published by Halloween Concepts in 1997 is one since it is set in a post-apocalyptic undersea future. Cold Space, from Better Mousetrap Games is another, presenting an alternate Cold War era in which interstellar travel has been achieved in spaceships which are designed along the lines of submarines. Then of course, Game Designers’ Workshop published a trilogy of scenarios—The Last Submarine, Mediterranean Cruise, and Boomer—for Twilight 2000 in which the Player Characters have to capture a Los Angeles-class submarine in the post-Twilight War and use it to help defend what is left of civilisation. SUBMERGED is a rules-light roleplaying game which takes it cue from Polaris in that it is a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game set under the sea. In its future, the climate did not heat, but cooled down, and the planet froze. The lucky few of the billions on Earth escaped to the underwater cities and survive under the icy waters in the ‘Sub-burbs’. Contact and trade are kept going via nuclear-powered submarines. The last contact with the surface was in 1983 when the plummeting temperatures forced the rapidly built ‘Sub-burbs’ to close their doors to more refugees. The Great Plan was to wait thirty years for the temperature on the surface to rise again and the survivors to return to reclaim the planet, but even after forty years that has never happened. In the meantime, ‘Sub-burbs’ have failed, others are barely holding on, many have become totalitarian states, and some have gone to war. With the failure of the Great Plan, the ‘Sub-burbs’ remain in a stalemate, not ready to go to war in the face of an uncertain future. Above and below, the Earth is in the grip of a new Cold War.

SUBMERGED – A Rules Light Roleplaying Game of Life Under the Frozen Oceans is published by Farsight Games and written by the designer of Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying and Pressure. In it, the players take the role of crewmembers of a submarine trying to make a living, hauling cargo and passengers, scavenging and salvaging, smuggling, and fulfilling whatever contract they can and pays the bills, all to pay off the mortgage on their vessel. Think of it as an undersea version of a tramp freighter campaign in the vein of Traveller or the television series, Firefly. Certainly, SUBMERGED has a similar blue collar sensibility—just not in space.

A Player Character in SUBMERGED is simply defined. He has ten Skills. These are Agility, Charisma, Close Combat, Technical, Medicine, Ranged Combat, Science, Strength, Submariner, and Subterfuge, and they range in value between two and eleven. In addition, he has Hit Points starting at twelve and then modified by his Strength. He can have an extra specialist or hobby Skill which lies outside the scope of the standard ten. Lastly, the Player Character has four Submariner Sub-skills.* These are ‘Helm’, ‘Sonar’, ‘Engineer’, and ‘WEPS’, the latter being the Weapons Officer. To create a character, a player simply assigns each of one of the numbers between two and eleven to one of the Skills and decides on a specialist or hobby Skill, if any, a name, and lastly assigns six points to the Submariner subskills. Character generation can be done in thirty seconds.

* Yes. Really.

Sunday Faruku
Engineer
Agility 4 Charisma 3 Close Combat 8 Technical 9 Medicine 6 Ranged Combat 5 Science 7 Strength 10 Submariner 11 Subterfuge 2
Sub-Skills: Helm 1 Sonar 1 Engineer 3 WEPS 1
Skill: Singing 6
Hit Points 22

Mechanically, SUBMERGED is a simple. To have his character undertake a task, a player selects the most appropriate Skill and adds its vale to the roll of a twelve-sided die. If the result is thirteen or more, then he has succeeded. The Game Master can adjust the difficulty as needed. It is as simple as that. Combat is handled as opposed rolls, with the highest roll indicating the winner. Thus, Close Combat versus Close Combat in a fist fight, but Ranged Combat versus Agility if the defendant wants to dodge. A punch does 1d2 plus Strength in damage, a blade 1d4 plus Strength, a pistol 1d6+6, and a rifle 1d12+6. Most Player Characters will last a punch-up, even a knife fight, but once firearms start being used, the best thing a Player Character is to get behind cover as a rifle can kill in a single shot.

The Submariner Sub-skills are used in conjunction with the Submariner skill. They are spent on a one-for-one basis to modify rolls using the Submariner skill.

The submarines are equally as simply defined. Each has stats for ‘Knots’, ‘Depth’, and ‘Cargo’, so how fast it can go, how deep it can go, and how much it can carry. The Armament details its weapons and defences. For the most part, operating a submarine is handled narratively until actually matters. Such as in combat. Initiative requires a Sonar operator since submarines have to detect each other, submarines have to be positioned to attack, and so on. Submarine combat is run as a series of opposed rolls. Sonar versus sonar to gain initiative; Helm versus Helm to gain a better firing position and bonus to the firing roll; and WEPS versus Helm to track a torpedo. The latter is done three times with the best out of three determining if the torpedo hits the target submarine or is avoided. Countermeasures can be launched once per combat to try and distract an incoming torpedo. Fortunately, most torpedoes are not designed to destroy submarines, but to cripple them or slow them, though a lucky—or unlucky—strike can still destroy a submarine. The crew can suffer injuries from the jolt of a torpedo explosion and damage typically knocks out a system that the engineer must race to fix.

SUBMERGED details several sample submarines, some of which are cheap enough for the Player Characters to take a mortgage out on (though if second-hand or more, it means beginning play with damaged systems), and small enough to be crewed by three or four Player Characters. Others consist of transports, defence and combat boats, and even pirate and mercenary boats. There is also a list of equipment, some suggested rates for various contracts, and descriptions of the major city states. There are scenario hooks too, plus an introductory adventure. In ‘The Blue King’s Wrath’, the Player Characters are hired by the city-state of Sub-London to infiltrate the base of a notorious pirate called the Blue King, who has established himself and his cult in an abandoned city-state project off the coast of Iceland, so threatening the North Atlantic trade route, and claims to be in possession of the ‘ultimate weapon’. The authorities in Sub-London want to know if this ‘ultimate weapon’ actually exists, what it is, and ideally, stolen from the Blue King. It is a quick and dirty affair that can be played through in a session or so. Plus, there are some secrets that once revealed the Game Master could develop into further adventures.

Physically, SUBMERGED – A Rules Light Roleplaying Game of Life Under the Frozen Oceans is a bit messy and it does need an edit in places. The main problem is that not everything is quite in the right places, but the roleplaying game is short enough not to matter very much and simple enough that the Game Master will not need to refer to the rules too often.

SUBMERGED – A Rules Light Roleplaying Game Of Life Under The Frozen Oceans has the very grubby feel of a seventies post-apocalyptic film and even a little of Escape from New York, especially in the scenario. Surprisingly, it combines quite a number of different genres in just a few pages—seventies disaster and post-apocalyptic films, all things nautical, piratical, and subaquatic, and blue collar trucking adventure—all of which will be familiar to both the Game Master and her players. SUBMERGED – A Rules Light Roleplaying Game of Life Under the Frozen Oceans is rough and ready, if not a bit damp and slightly rusty, but definitely easy to run and play. It would be interesting to see this alternate Cold War future developed and explored a little more.