Five Children & It

A camping trip on the edge of the Norfolk Broads and the edge of the Norfolk Loop leads to a strange encounter late at night. A pulse of energy in the sky over the Loop appears to open a rift and something flies through it and over the Kid viewing it, bathing him in a strange, purple light. Then it flies away. In the following days there is a surge of activity at the Norfolk Loop, one of the United Kingdom’s leading scientific and technological centres of study and development, its staff disrupted through a change of management and the new management scouring the area around the Loop, including the nearby seaside resort of Great Yarmouth. The Kid who saw the event and was bathed in the light is drawn to a site that a team from the Norfolk Loop is investigating. There he and his friends make an amazing discovery—an egg. A strange, translucent, purple egg-shaped object. Could this have been left behind by the thing that flew out of the rift? Why is the Kid drawn to it? If it is an egg, what is going to hatch out of it? This is the set-up for They Grow Up So Fast.

They Grow Up So Fast is the second campaign for Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the ’80s That Never Was, the roleplaying game of childhood in an alternate 1980s in which young teenagers explore rural small-town Sweden, but a rural small-town Sweden in which its streets, woods and fields, and skies and seas are populated by robots, gravitic tractors and freighters, strange sensor devices, and even creatures from the long past. To the inhabitants of this landscape, this is all perfectly normal—at least to the adults. To the children of this landscape, this technology is a thing of fascination, of wonderment, and of the strangeness that often only they can see. In Tales from the Loop, it is often this technology that is the cause of the adventures that the children—the Player Characters—will have away from their mundane, often difficult lives at home and at school. Published by Free League Publishing, the Ennie-award winning Tales from the Loop is not solely a Swedish-based setting. By default, it is set on Mälaröarna, the islands of Lake Mälaren, which lies to the west of Stockholm. This is the site of the Facility for Research in High Energy Physics—or ‘The Loop’—the world’s largest particle accelerator, constructed and run by the government agency, Riksenergi. There is another Loop however, an American counterpart to The Loop, this time located under Boulder City in the Mojave Desert in Nevada, near the Hoover Dam. Here the particle accelerator is operated by the Department of Advanced Research into Technology and there is an extensive exchange programme in terms of personnel and knowledge between the staff of both ‘Loops’. With the publication of Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries, a third Loop was introduced. This is ‘The Broads Loop’, located under the Norfolk Broads in the East of England and built and operated by MAFF, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food. It is in and about ‘The Norfolk Broads Loop’ that They Grow Up So Fast is set.

They Grow Up So Fast is a short, four-part campaign set in 1988, with its four scenarios divided between the four seasons. It opens in the Spring with ‘Easter Egg Hunt’, in which one of the Kids will have a strange encounter on a campaign trip and together with his friends, come into possession of a strange alien that together they will feel drawn to hide and protect. A few weeks later in the Summer and ‘The Best of What Might Be’, the egg hatches and the Kids bond with the oddly cow-like creature that is revealed. As school begins in the Autumn and ‘The Year’s Last, Loveliest Smile’, the Kids will have to move the surprisingly cute lain and find it a better hiding place. The campaign comes to close with ‘You can’t Get Too Much…’ with a race to find the creature once again and get it home… All of this whilst facing school bullies, news interest about UFO sightings, staff upheaval at the nearby Loop and its consequences as a new government organisation—ReGIS or ‘Regional Geomagnetic Information Sciences’, part of the Ministry of Defence—takes over, protests at the Loop, and a highly qualified, but very new and very inexperienced science teacher who takes a deep interest in their activities. Each scenario is intended to run in roughly four hours or so, perhaps two sessions at most, that They Grow Up So Fast really is very short campaign.

To help the Game Master set the scene for the campaign, there is a solid primer on the United Kingdom and the Norfolk Broads of the late eighties. This covers activities that Kids might engage in, what they might listen to, and what they might watch. There is even a discussion of the politics of the period. Altogether, there is enough here for the Game Master to provide a picture of the eighties for her players, although no doubt there is plenty more to draw on elsewhere and so set further set the background. Nevertheless, there is genuine sense of nostalgia in the description given here and any Game Master or player of certain age, who grew up during this period in the United Kingdom, will recognise it. Further, as with other supplements for Tales from the Loop, there are notes and suggestions on how to run They Grow Up So Fast in either the Swedish or the American setting, including maps of the appropriate locations around their respective Loops. Each of the four scenarios is well organised and follow the pattern set in the core rules by being divided into five phases—‘Introducing the Kids’, ‘Introducing the Mystery’, ‘Solving the Mystery’, ‘Showdown’, ‘Aftermath’, and ‘Change’. Details of countdown events are given to push each Mystery along as well as suggested scenes and other advice.

Physically, They Grow Up So Fast is as well presented as you would expect for a Tales from the Loop title. Of course, it highlights Simon Stålenhag’s fantastic artwork, but the writing is also good and the layout is clean, tidy, and accessible. All four scenarios follow the same format, making them easy to access and relatively easy to run.

It is great to have a campaign for Tales from the Loop set in the United Kingdom and given the fact that its four scenarios take place over the course of the year, there is scope for the Game Master to run other scenarios in between those four. However, the scenarios do rely on the extensive use of the Charm and Sneak more than the others and the plot to They Grow Up So Fast is underwhelming. This is primarily due to two factors. One is the familiarity of its plot, which feels very much like the plot of one of the films suggested as its inspiration, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. Other suggested mood setting films include Pete’s Dragon, Free Willy, and Gremlins. One effect though, of setting the campaign in the United Kingdom, is to give They Grow Up So Fast certain shabbiness as if the Children’s Film Foundation made E.T. The Extra Terrestrial on a very much reduced budget! The other factor is that as written the ending does not feel quite as climatic as it should, it can also end in an even more underwhelming failure, but that will probably be different in play and the Game Master will need to up the pace depending upon the flow of events.

They Grow Up So Fast is a solid enough campaign, but not on par with other releases for Tales from the Loop. Ultimately, this is due to the familiarity of the plot, but if the Game Master is looking for a Tales from the Loop campaign in the style of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, then They Grow Up So Fast is exactly what she is looking for.

Tales from Spaaace...! (Part One)

For fans of Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was and Things from the Flood, the roleplaying games based on the paintings of Simon Stålenhag, as well as other titles from Free League Publishing, there is the Free League Workshop. Much like the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons, this is a platform for creators to publish and distribute their own original content, which means that they also have a space to showcase their creativity and their inventiveness, to do something different, but ultimately provide something which the Game Master can bring to the table and engage her players with. Such is the case with Deep Space Blues – Journey To The Stars: Part One.

Deep Space Blues – Journey To The Stars: Part One takes the kids out of the Loop and throws them into deep space. It takes the traditional stories of Tales from the Loop, which contrasts the wonder of strange technologies and mysteries with difficult, often fraught home lives, away from Sweden and Mälaröarna, the islands of Lake Mälaren, the site of the Facility for Research in High Energy Physics—or ‘The Loop’—to the west of Stockholm, and sets those tensions in an alternate timeline, very far from Earth. In this timeline, at the end of World War 2, Maximillian von Grau, a German scientist took advantage of the Nazi desire for more wonder weapons to develop an engine powerful enough to get a probe to Proxima Centauri. No one believed he succeeded, until pictures were received on Earth in 1977. There the story would have ended, but for eccentric entrepreneur billionaire Elton Dors. He offered to fund further research and development by von Grau. With the new engine, developed by the German and known as the Max Drive, Dors then built The Argo, the world’s first interstellar starship, capable of travelling to Proxima Centauri in thirty years, with its crew and passengers—the first two hundred colonists on a whole new world—in deep sleep. The Argo is regarded as the eighth wonder of the world and it is aboard this vessel that Deep Space Blues – Journey To The Stars: Part One begins.

The kids are the children of the crew and the passengers—or colonists—aboard The Argo. They and everyone else aboard the starship wake up and very quickly there is a lot of hustle and bustle around the children, though it is not immediately obvious why. They are quickly taken to the ship’s school room where their teacher, Miss Lovely, can keep an eye on them. It soon becomes apparent that The Argo has not reached Proxima Centauri, having stopped in deep space, and that one of the children aboard is missing. Could the two be related? Well, the answer is, of course they are. Exactly how is another matter, but the plot is relatively straightforward, whereas getting to solve it is not. The biggest obstacle for the kids is not the mystery itself, but getting round the adults to investigate the mystery, and then once that is revealed, solve the problem at its heart. The adults are preoccupied with the technical problems aboard The Argo, so will either ignore the kids or send them back to the supervision of Miss Lovely, who is definitely not as nice as her name suggests. The Game Master should have some fun roleplaying her.

Deep Space Blues – Journey To The Stars: Part One is a solid one-session scenario. It makes use of a range of different skills, so every kid should have an opportunity to shine. If it is missing anything, it is advice on creating kids for this scenario. They would still use the same rules from Tales from the Loop, but some questions related to who their parents are aboard The Argo and what they think of travelling to another star system could have helped set the scene. Perhaps a set of pre-generated kids could help with that? The only real issue with the scenario is with its aftermath. Even solving the problem is underwritten, and by comparison, the cost of failure is glossed over. This is severely disappointing, since the cost of failure in Deep Space Blues – Journey To The Stars: Part One is a tragedy that is very likely to be emotionally devastating for the kids as well as the adults. It may well be campaign ending were the Game Master to want to run the sequel to Deep Space Blues – Journey To The Stars: Part One.

Where Tales of the Loop captured the feel of Sweden of the eighties, Deep Space Blues – Journey To The Stars: Part One instead captures the feel of positive, even homely Science Fiction of the period, whether that is Space: 1999 or Star Trek: The Next Generation. Yet, there is a sly dig at its retro-optimism with everything being a triumph of design over practicality and it is not too difficult to work out who Elton Dors is a parody of.

Physically, Deep Space Blues – Journey To The Stars: Part One is well presented, but needs a slight edit here and there. The artwork is excellent, whilst the overview of The Argo gives an idea of the layout rather than specifics.

Deep Space Blues – Journey To The Stars: Part One is undeveloped in places, but contains everything that the Game Master and her players have to roleplay a mystery scenario in space from their kids’ perspective. It can be run as the first part of a campaign or it would work as a convention one-shot. Overall, Deep Space Blues – Journey To The Stars: Part One proves that some things do not change, no matter how far you are away from home, it is just a case that the consequences of failure are bad—really bad.

Petrarchy

For fans of Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was and Things from the Flood, the roleplaying games based on the paintings of Simon Stålenhag, as well as other titles from Free League Publishing, there is the Free League Workshop. Much like the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons, this is a platform for creators to publish and distribute their own original content, which means that they also have a space to showcase their creativity and their inventiveness, to do something different, but ultimately provide something which the Game Master can bring to the table and engage her players with. Such is the case with Puppy Love.

Puppy Love is written by one half of the hosts of the podcast, What Would Smart Party Do?—the other half designed King of Dungeons and presents an engaging and entertaining mystery with lots of Mats and puppies, plus a dilemma or two. It could easily be played in a single session, perhaps two at most, and would make a good option for a convention scenario just as it would for the Game Master’s own campaign.

The scenario begins at the start of the new school year, with the Player Characters all eager to return and catch up with friends at least, if not necessarily return to their lessons. However, on their way to school they spot two things. First, posters for a missing puppy belonging to a boy at school, Mats, and then further along and second, the missing puppy, Petra. Problem solved then. All the Player Characters have to do is take Petra back to Mats when they see him at school. Except, when they get there, Mats is nowhere to be found, and oddly, another pupil, the popular, but catty Doris, also has a puppy—a puppy which almost looks like Petra! What is going on? Is there more than one Petra or just more than one puppy? Where did Doris’ puppy come from? Where is Mats and is his puppy still missing?

The scenario takes an even odder turn—no surprise there, given that it is for Tales from the Loop—when the Player Characters attempt to find Mats. For when they get to his house, they find not Mats, but Mats and Mats. Two of them! Really what is going on?

Of course it has to do with the Facility for Research in High Energy Physics—or ‘The Loop’—the world’s largest particle accelerator, constructed and run by the government agency, Riksenergi, and since shut down. The question is how and then how do the Player Characters get in? Actually the latter is relatively easy, but the former will take a little more investigation. The actual difficulty comes in interacting and dealing with Mats—multiples of them, because all of them are slightly different and slightly wrong. The Game Master is accorded a pair of tables to randomly determine the appearance and personality of each Mats, though the scenario does come with a warning because the personality traits are potentially a little extreme for what is still a little boy.

Physically, Puppy Love is decently presented with the usual plot diagram for Tales from the Loop scenarios, nicely done artwork for each the scenario’s NPCs, and clear maps of the location for the scenario’s denouement. It is also well written and easy to read.

Although Puppy Love is set in Sweden on Mälaröarna, the islands of Lake Mälaren, which lies to the west of Stockholm, which is the site of the Facility for Research in High Energy Physics—or ‘The Loop’, it actually has an English sensibility to it. There is a mystery, and this being a scenario for Tales from the Loop, a countdown which escalates the situation, there is no real threat, and so it has the feel of Children’s Film Foundation television series or film. Certainly as weird as having multiple Mats and Petras is, having multiple Petras gives it a certain cosiness or cuteness.

Puppy Love presents a thoroughly charming, even cute mystery for Tales from the Loop. It is easy to add to a campaign and just as easy to use as a demonstration or convention scenario.

From Tales to Things

Out of Time is the first campaign for Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the ’80s That Never Was –and quite possibly the last. With Out of Time, Free League Publishing brings the award-winning roleplaying game based on the paintings of Simon Stålenhag to a close. Throughout this alternate childhood of the 1980s, young teenagers have explored rural small-town Sweden, but a rural small-town Sweden in which its streets, woods and fields, and skies and seas are populated by robots, gravitic tractors and freighters, strange sensor devices, and even creatures from the long past. To the inhabitants of this landscape, this is all perfectly normal—at least to the adults. To the children of this landscape, this technology is a thing of fascination, of wonderment, and of the strangeness that often only they can see. In Tales from the Loop, it is often this technology that is the cause of the adventures that the children—the Player Characters—will have away from their mundane, often difficult lives at home and at school. Taking place at the end of the decade, Out of Time takes place over the course of year, but has potential to be something more—and all because the campaign involves time travel…

Out of Time begins with a rash of pets and farm animals going missing, followed by flyers asking for information about lost pets going up across the neighbourhood, then rumours of a mechanical contraption seen roaming the fields outside the small communities of the Mälaren Islands. When the Player Characters investigate, they discover the first of many strange experiments taking place, experiments which get stranger and stranger as the campaign progresses. Later, their summer takes a decidedly strange, literally ‘Out of the Body’ turn, which reveals more of the Mystery, before the weather gets randomly worse and storms threaten to shut the region down. Ultimately, to solve the Mystery and even save the world, the Player Characters must sneak out during a lockdown and break into the Facility for Research in High Energy Physics—or ‘The Loop’—the world’s largest particle accelerator, constructed and run by the government agency, Riksenergi. There at last they can discover what links the storms out of nowhere which bring strange mud and sand, the repeated crashes of the magnetrine ship Susi Talvi, the weird flashbacks at their summer camp, and the 1969 moon landing.

The campaigns consists of a trilogy of scenarios—‘The Animal Ark’, ‘Summer Camp’, and ‘The Storm in the Hourglass’. The first takes place just before Christmas, 1988, which only serves to heighten the fractious state of their home lives, but at the same time, there are reports of missing animals, strange devices can be found scattered throughout the area, and a magnetrine ship appears out of a rip in the sky to crash again and again. ‘The Animal Ark’ is quite a short scenario, but does a good job of setting up the campaign, whilst giving the players scope to develop their characters’ home lives. There is advice for the Game Master and suggestions as to what can be added to reflect the heightened anxiety and emotions which seem to occur at Christmas, but many players will have had experiences of their own and can make suggestions of their own too. Essentially setting the scenario at Christmas serves to strengthen the two contrasting strands of a Tales from the Loop game, one being the Game Master presenting the weirdness of its alternative setting and the Mysteries of The Loop, the other being the players exploring the emotional, but mundane complexities of their characters’ home lives.

‘Summer Camp’ moves the time on to the summer of 1989 and the tradition of children being sent to summer camp. Here the Player Characters and other local children are kept busy with a range of outdoor activities, from hut building and gymnastics to orienteering and telling ghost stories round the fire. Things get strange though, when each of the Player Characters wakes up to find that not only is he not in his own body, but he is not in his own time—it is 1969! This presents a challenge for both character and player, as he must negotiate life in an unfamiliar period and negotiate unfamiliar relationships. This is in addition to the ups and downs of life at the summer camp, a strange old man in the woods, and weird dreams… Although replacement characters are provided for the players to roleplay in 1969, one of the options is for the Game Master to create the parents of the Player Characters from back in 1989. Here is a fantastic opportunity for the players to roleplay their characters’ parents and what they were like as children. However, this will take some extra effort upon the part of the Game Master to set up and develop, but the emotional payoff, as the Player Characters realise that their parents had Mysteries of their own to solve and weirdness going on around them just as their children do in 1989, is a great piece of storytelling…

‘The Storm in the Hourglass’ brings the campaign and the 1980s to a close. Set in the autumn of 1989, the storms back in ‘The Animal Ark’ appear again and begin to escalate, forcing the authorities to declare an emergency as the weather worsens. ‘Men in Black’ are seen around the Mälaren Islands as ‘time bubbles’, which when the Player Characters investigate, turn out to be unstable, appear across the region. There are indications too that the technology which has been a fixture of the Player Characters’ childhood is malfunctioning, including the Loop itself. The climax of the campaign will see the Player Characters hopping from time bubble to time bubble and breaking into the Graviton at the heart of the Loop, there to confront their antagonist and the threat she has created.

Of the three scenarios in Out of Time, ‘Summer Camp’ is the longest, mainly because there is a large number of camp activities and events to involve the Player Characters in before anything strange happens. Potentially, this may unbalance the tension between the ordinary and outré strands of a typical Tales from the Loop scenario. Probably the best solution would be for the Game Master to tailor the camp activities and events to the Player Characters to avoid this. As the campaign progresses though, it does grow in complexity, especially in the finale with all of the hopping from time bubble to time bubble.

As a campaign, Out of Time introduces an aspect intrinsically excluded from Tales from the Loop, and that is the potential death of a Player Character. In 1969, the Player Characters are threatened by the campaign’s antagonist with a gun—and she is not afraid to use it. Now in this sequence, it is not as much of an issue, since the Player Characters are not in their bodies, but it highlights the greater peril they face in the campaign. Of course, if the Game Master has decided to port the Player Characters back into their parents, it amplifies the peril, even threatening a Grandfather Paradox should one of the parents be shot and die… Back in 1989, there is the possibility that the Player Characters will fail and unlike in previous scenarios for Tales from the Loop, that has world-ending consequences…

The possibility of the Player Characters facing their death in Out of Time foreshadows another possible option for the campaign, which is to run it as a link between Tales from the Loop and its nineties sequel, Things from the Flood, where death for the Player Characters is a possibility. The authors suggest that the final part, ‘The Storm in the Hourglass’ be shifted forward to 1994 when the ‘Mälarö Leak’ occurred, hot, brown liquid bubbling up out of the ground, forcing an evacuation that would last for years, flooding the Loop, and precipitating to a scandal that would force the Swedish government to shut down Riksenergi and sell the Loop. The advice on this is perhaps somewhat underwritten and it does mean that there is a much longer gap between the events of ‘Summer School’ and ‘The Storm in the Hourglass’, during which time events will have moved out of the framework for Tales from the Loop. However, Out of Time does provide options which would bridge this gap.

The first option is a nonet of ‘Secret Places’, a Mystery Landscape which fits both the 1980s of Tales from the Loop and the 1990s of Things from the Flood. These range from the strange platforms, mechanical marvels, and scrap ships being seen throughout the area of ‘Castle in the Sky’ to the lone concrete foundation with a single hatch which appears having thrust up from the ground in ‘Extra Life’. All of the Mysteries come with an explanation as to the Truth, Hooks, Countdown, and the Antagonist, and can be easily slotted into a Game Master’s campaign or expanded as necessary. The second option is ‘The Mystery Machine’, a set of tables for inspiring and generating Mysteries of the Game Master’s own design, whilst the third, ‘The Mix-CD of Mysteries’ presents an octuple of Mysteries based on eight classic CD tracks from the nineties, such as Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and Pulp’s Common People. Again, these come with an explanation as to the Truth, Hooks, Countdown, and the Antagonist, and can be easily slotted into a Game Master’s campaign or expanded as necessary. Again, just like the Mystery Landscape of ‘Secret Places’, they will need some development upon the part of the Game Master. However, most of the tracks listed come from the mid to late nineties and so thematically, do not quite bridge the gap between Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood as well as a wider selection might do. In many cases, the mature nature of the lyrics and the Mysteries they inspire better suit the nineties and thus Things from the Flood than they do Tales from the Loop. Nevertheless, thematically they can be used to foreshadow the nineties and events of Things from the Flood and of course, inspire the Game Master to write her own using other lyrics.

Physically, Out of Time is as well presented as you would expect for a Tales from the Loop title. Of course, it highlights Simon Stålenhag’s fantastic artwork, but the writing is also good and the layout is clean, tidy, and accessible. All three scenarios follow the same format, making them easy to access and relatively easy to run.

It is great to finally have a campaign for Tales from the Loop, even if it is bringing the decade and the roleplaying game to a close. It should be no surprise that the campaign is challenging given it involves time travel, and although the plot is given a clear diagram for the Game Master to follow, it is complex and will require her to read through the plot with some care. With that preparation, Out of Time is a fantastic campaign, presenting the Player Characters with a challenging and enjoyably complex mystery, a mystery which brings Tales from the Loop to the conclusion it deserves.

Your Loop Starter

As its title suggests, the Tales from the Loop Starter Set is an introductory boxed set for Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was. Published by the Swedish publisher, Free League Publishing, this is the roleplaying game based on the paintings of Simon Stålenhag, in which young teenagers explore the Sweden of an alternate childhood. It is rural small-town Sweden, but one in which its streets, woods and fields, and skies and seas are populated by robots, gravitic tractors and freighters, strange sensor devices, and even creatures from the long past. To the inhabitants of this landscape, this is all perfectly normal—at least to the adults. To the children of this landscape, this technology is a thing of fascination, of wonderment, and of the strangeness that often only they can see. In Tales from the Loop, it is often this technology that is the cause of the adventures that the children—the player characters—will have away from their mundane lives at home and at school.

Specifically, Tales from the Loop is set on Mälaröarna, the islands of Lake Mälaren, which lies to the west of Stockholm. This is the site of the Facility for Research in High Energy Physics—or ‘The Loop’—the world’s largest particle accelerator, constructed and run by the government agency, Riksenergi. In addition, the Iwasaka corporation of Japan has perfected self-balancing machines, leading to the deployment of robots in the military, security, industrial, and civilian sectors and these robots are employed throughout the Loop and its surrounds. Meanwhile, the skies are filled with ‘magnetrine vessels’, freighters and slow liners whose engines repel against the Earth’s magnetic field, an effect only possible in northern latitudes. There are notes detailing the particulars of life in Sweden in the 1980s, but the culture is radically different—especially in terms of its (almost Socialist) government—to that of the USA and so Tales from the Loop includes an American counterpart to The Loop, this time located under Boulder City in the Mojave Desert in Nevada, near the Hoover Dam. Here the particle accelerator is operated by the Department of Advanced Research into Technology and there is an extensive exchange programme in terms of personnel and knowledge between the staff of both ‘loops’. Similarly, the description of Boulder City and its Loop include plenty of notes on life in the 1980s and as much as the two cultures are different, there are plenty of similarities between the two.

Since its publication in 2017, Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the ’80s That Never Was has won many awards and Tales from the Loop itself has been developed into a television series to view on Amazon Prime . The Tales from the Loop Starter Set is released in time to coincide with the release of the television series and is designed introduce roleplayers to the world of the roleplaying game—whether they have watched the television series and want to try Tales from the Loop or are experienced roleplayers wanting to try something different. It comes with everything necessary for the Game Master to present—and both Game Master and players alike—to roleplay a mystery within the Loop over the course of an evening or two.

The Tales from the Loop Starter Set comes in a surprisingly sturdy box. Open up and the first thing you see is a set of Tales from the Loop dice—some ten in all, with the number six on each of them replaced with the symbol for Riksenergi, the Swedish government agency which built and ran the Facility for Research in High Energy Physics or ‘The Loop’. Underneath that is a double-sided map of the region around the Loop. Roughly A3 in size, this depicted the region of Mälaröarna, the islands of Lake Mälaren on the main side, whilst on the other is marked the area around Boulder City, Nevada. The map is full colour and printed on thick paper. Below that there are five sheets, one for each of the five pre-generated player characters. Marked ‘Kid 1’ through ‘Kid 5’, they are again double-sided and include a Popular Kid, a Weirdo, a Jock, a Computer Geek, and a Bookworm. All five are part of the same gang and have connected relationships, and they have background and illustration on the front and the stats on the back. Like Tales from the Loop, they give suggestions which pertain to both the Swedish and the American Loops. Here this consists of names, so the player character Frederik is given the name Chad when playing in the American setting.

Lastly, there are two books in the Tales from the Loop Starter Set. These are the ‘Rules’ and ‘The Recycled Boy’ booklets. The former presents the game’s rules and explains how Tales from the Loop is played, and is marked, ‘Read This First’. The latter contains the scenario and is marked ‘For The Gamemaster Only’. The ‘Rules’ covers everything in four chapters—‘Welcome to the Loop’, ‘The Age of the Loop’, ‘The Kids’, and ‘Trouble’. The first of these, ‘Welcome to the Loop’, introduces the setting of Tales from the Loop and explains what roleplaying is. It does decent job and is backed up in the examples of play throughout the book. It also gives and explains the ‘Principles of the Loop’, essentially the six fundamental elements of the setting which set it apart from other roleplaying games. These are that ‘Your home town is full of strange and fantastic things’, ‘Everyday life is dull and unforgiving’, ‘Adults are out of reach and out of touch’, ‘The Land of the dangerous, but kids will not die’, ‘The game is played scene by scene’, and ‘The world is described collaboratively’. These nicely sum up the world of the Loop, that Kids will explore a world just outside their homes which is full of scientific marvels and mysteries, one that the Adults are unlikely to really appreciate, being wrapped up in their problems and dramas—problems and dramas which are likely to have an impact on the Kids on an ongoing basis. Although dangerous—the Kids can be robbed, beaten up, mocked, and so on, they cannot be killed (though they can be forced to leave the game due to trauma). The collaborative element of play means that not only can the Game Master set scenes, she can ask her players to do so too, and she can also ask the players to describe and add elements to the setting too. What this means is that Tales from the Loop is a game in which the story is played out together, some of the setting elements are worked out together as well.

 ‘The Age of the Loop’ describes the setting for the Swedish and the American Loops. As such, anyone familiar with the contents of Tales from the Loop will recognise the much shorter descriptions given here. Here though it sets the scene for the scenario to come rather than the full game, so is done in broader strokes. For anyone new to roleplaying or new to Tales from the Loop, perhaps what is interesting here are the cultural and political differences between Sweden and the U.S.A. Of the two, the Swedish Loop is the more interesting because it is different, the outlook and attitudes of its inhabitants presenting more of a roleplaying challenge because of the differences. Essentially, despite the presence of the Loop making many things different, the American Loop still feels too familiar from film and television, so too easy to fall into clichés.

The shortest chapter is ‘The Kids’. This describes what the various elements on the character sheets are—age, attributes, skills, Luck points, items, Drives, Problems, Pride, Relationships, and Conditions—and how they affect game play. Each Kid has four attributes—Body, Tech, Heart, and Mind—and each of these has three associated skills. Both are rated between one and five. Luck points are used to reroll dice and younger Kids have more Luck points than older Kids as they are simply luckier. Items can dice if appropriate to the situation, a Drive pushes a Kid to act and to investigate mysteries, a Problem is a personal thing related to a Kid’s home life and will get him into Trouble, Pride is what a Kid values and can get a Kid into Trouble as well as help him, and Relationships are between the other Kids in the gang as well as another NPC. So Dave or Isak might have the Drive of ‘I am fascinated by self-balancing machines, I’ve always wanted a robot of my own’, the Problem of ‘My parents are getting a divorce, but my dad hasn’t moved out yet’, and the Pride of ‘I know how that works’. Dave’s item might be an electronics toolkit. All of the various elements of a Kid are clearly explained and easy to understand.

Lastly, almost a third of the ‘Rules’ is devoted to the last chapter—‘Troubles’. This explains how the dice work and the dice pool mechanics in both Tales from the Loop and Tales from the Loop Starter Set. Known as the ‘Year Zero’ mechanics, dice pools are formed from a combination of a Kid’s attribute and appropriate skill, or just the latter if no skill applies. The player rolls the Tales from the Loop dice and if a six—or a Riksenergi symbol—comes up, the Kid succeeds. Failures can complicate situations or impose a Condition upon a Kid, like Upset or Exhausted, but a player can push a roll and get a reroll, though this is not without its consequences. Typically, only one Riksenergi symbol is needed for a Kid to succeed, but more challenging Trouble may require more. Sometimes extra successes can be used to add further narrative elements to play, such as to find out more information about a machine and its maker, not only beat a bully, but upset him, and so forth. Lastly, the ‘Troubles’ explains how the game’s skills work and give some bonus effects for those extra Successes.

‘The Recycled Boy’ is half the length of ‘Rules’ and contains the scenario of the same name. It presents a four or five scene mystery which can be played out in a session or two. Written to be run in either the Swedish or the American Loop, it concerns a fellow student at the pre-generated characters’ school who has begun acting oddly. Its plot feels suitably eighties, being too dissimilar to films of the period, though perhaps the title of the scenario might be a bit knowing. Either way, it is a good first scenario for Tales from the Loop, presenting a problem which can be best solved through roleplaying rather than other means and it would be easy for a Game Master to add it to her campaign.

Physically, the Tales from the Loop Starter Set is well presented. Notably both books are presented on glossy paper rather than the matt paper of the Tales of the Loop core rulebook. The package as a whole does need a slight edit in places, but throughout, is illustrated with Simon Stålenhag’s fantastic artwork. Everything is of a high quality and presents an attractive product, especially if you have not looked at a roleplaying book before.

However, there is a problem with the Tales from the Loop Starter Set and it is very simple. There is just the one scenario. What this means is that there is not the easy, next step to take after playing ‘The Recycled Boy’. Now of course, there is the Tales of the Loop core rulebook and Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries, but another scenario would support the continued interest of the Game Master and her players more immediately rather than forcing them to cast around for their next scenario. As good as the scenario is in Tales from the Loop Starter Set, it is difficult not to compare it with other recent starter or beginner boxed sets and be somewhat disappointed because they offer more value for money. Similarly, if a gaming group already plays Tales from the Loop, then the Tales from the Loop Starter Set only provides the one scenario—though one which is only available in the Tales from the Loop Starter Set—and so does not offer as much value for money as it could. That said, it comes with another set of dice for the game and good maps of each Loops, as well as the scenario.

Yet the Tales from the Loop Starter Set is a solid, well-presented package. As an introduction to the alternate, fantastic world of Simon Stålenhag’s artwork and the roleplaying game based on it, the Tales from the Loop Starter Set is enjoyably accessible and attractive, presenting a good first step into an eighties that never were.

Looping Your Home

It is not an unreasonable claim to suggest that the ENinie award-winning Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was, published by Modiphius Entertainment, was the best roleplaying game released in the English language in 2017. Based on the stunning artwork of Simon Stålenhag, also used to illustrate the roleplaying game, Tales from the Loop depicts an alternate past in which children discover that the landscape around them is rife with mysteries, many of which seem to stem from the advanced scientific research institutes that their home towns are built around. And all this whilst having to deal with an often troubled home life and adults who never believe what the children have seen.

The first supplement to be released for Tales from the Loop is Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries. This presents three full scenarios, a mixtape of scenario hooks and threats, four blueprints for threats, and a guide to putting a Loop around your hometown. All bar the latter is written with the setting of Mälaröarna, the islands of Lake Mälaren, which lies to the west of Stockholm in Sweden, the default setting in Tales from the Loop. As in the core rulebook, they are supported by notes and indicators to help the Game Master adapt the content to the roleplaying game’s other setting of Boulder City, though it would be interesting to see a collection of scenarios written with Boulder City as the base setting rather than Mälaröarna.

All of the scenarios in Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries as well as the scenario hooks of the Mixtape, are inspired by various aspects of the nineteen eighties. So there are stories about the commercialisation of toys and the craze for certain toys, the moral panic about video nasties, hooks based on classic eighties rock and pop tracks, and so on. As to be expected, this is all very well presented, with a clean layout, fantastic illustrations, and some very nice cartography. That said, the editing is a little scrappy in places and it does feel as if the book was rushed into English translations. Nevertheless, Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries is a handsome looking book.

The supplement opens with the titular, ‘Our Friends the Machines’. In this mystery, the Kids’ hometown has been selected to launch a new toy line based on the animated series, Our Friends the Machines. The toys in this series are robots, divided between the Convoys and the Deceivers, each capable of transforming into ordinary vehicles and objects. After the chaos of the launch at the local toyshop, strange things begin happening in the town, the adults begin acting obsessively, and the toys…? Very obviously inspired by The Transformers, devotees of the animated series will get a kick out of playing what is a fun Mystery. Groups who have a Computer Geek archetype amongst their number will have a certain advantage, but any Kids with Tech skills will be useful.

There are creepy moments to be had in ‘Our Friends the Machines’, but the tone of the book definitely makes a shift to the creepy in the second scenario, ‘Horror Movie Mayhem’. It starts with the Kids’ hometown being beset by a moral panic at the video nasties—or at least the horror movies—that the youths are swapping and watching. Led by the Parent-Teacher Association, this escalates into an attack on the local video store and then just out of sight, against anyone or anything who is different or stands out from the social norm. The one by one the adults begin changing their behaviour and of course, this includes many of the Kids’ parents. Somehow, the Kids need to find out what is going on and who is responsible, before finding a solution before its effects spread even further. Given the video-based theme of the scenario, the inclusion of some movie inspiration is a nice touch and a slight pity that the other scenarios did not include similar lists.

After having done a certain whimsy with ‘Our Friends the Machines’ and creepy with ‘Horror Movie Mayhem’, the third scenario, ‘The Mummy in the Mist’, takes the supplement in a weird direction. Rumours spread round the school of an actual mummy being seen in nearby woods. Ideally this should be enough to pique the curiousity of the Kids. This may not be enough motivation for some groups and the Game Master may have to provide further options or nudges. At the same time as the Mummy appears, the nearby lake appears to be fog bound all of the time and the police are more active. What this scenario buys into is the curiousity and seeing everything as dare attitude of Kids rather than the rationalism of adults, for of the three scenarios in Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries, this one the Kids have to go looking for the mystery rather than the mystery coming to them. This is also a scarier, weirder scenario and it feels markedly different in tone from the previous two.

All three of the scenarios are well organised and follow the pattern set in the core rules by being divided into five phases—‘Introducing the Kids’, ‘Introducing the Mystery’, ‘Solving the Mystery’, ‘Showdown’, ‘Aftermath’, and ‘Change’. Details of countdown events are given to push each Mystery along as well as suggested scenes and other advice. The three scenarios are followed by ‘Mixtape of Mysteries’. These follow the minor Mystery format to be found in the core rules, but what sets them apart is that they are inspired by particular rock and pop tracks from the nineteen eighties. So the tracks include ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by the Eurythmics and ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson as well as Belinda Carlisle’s ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’ and The Police’s ‘Every Breath You Take’. The authors then build plots around them, including the theft of dreams by rogue robots, a trio of women offering a refuge—or could the rumour that they are witches be true, a la the film, The Witches of Eastwick, a vagrant with the power to steal away children, and more. Barring a couple which do play upon a ‘Pied Piper’ effect, there is a decent medley here, all of which should be relatively easy for the Game Master to develop into full scenarios.

‘Machine Blueprints’ details four of the signature machines to be found within the environs of the Loop—wherever it is located. They include the Alta ABM100 fire patrol robot, the Paarhufer MK 79 service and maintenance robot, the Lieber-Alta M75 Locomotive Ship, and MG/S Sierra Nevada bulk freighter. One lovely tidbit here is the idea of teenagers taunting Alta ABM100 fire patrol robot with flares and driving away in a car chased by the robot. Each of the write-ups is accompanied by a Mystery suggestion or two, which will need much more development than the Mixtape Mysteries. 

Rounding out Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries is ‘Hometown Hack’, a guide to dropping a Loop onto your hometown or where you live. It sets a few criteria for a Loop and takes the Game Master through the few steps necessary, including preparing and placing the agency. In Sweden it is Riksenergi and in the USA it is DARPA, in the worked out example and third Loop, ‘The Broads Loop’, it is ReGIS or ‘Regional Geomagnetic Information Sciences’, part of the Ministry of Defence (and not Department of Defence as given here). It really is only a quick example, so it would be nice to see it further developed and it is an indication of Modiphius Entertainment and Free League Publishing working closely together.

Besides providing support for Tales of the Loop, what Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries also does is point to possible further support—more Mysteries and Mystery Hooks, more blueprints, and sample Loops (though of course, it is possible to have too many Loops). Overall, this is good, solid support for a solidly good roleplaying game.

Tales from your Childhood that never were

Roleplaying games and their genres run in cycles, typically drawing from other sources such as events and other media. For example, both Godlike: Superhero Roleplaying in a World on Fire, 1936-1946 and Weird Wars: Weird War II appeared following the sixtieth anniversary of the USA’s entry into World War Two, and Skull & Bones and Pirates of the Spanish Main appeared following the release of the film, Pirates of the Caribbean. If for the last fifteen years or so, the trend in roleplaying has been the nostalgia of the Old School Renaissance, there is a whole new trend in 2017—and it is just as nostalgic. It is for the 1980s and specifically for being kids in the 1980s—and it is all due to one television series, Stranger Things. What this nostalgia—and indeed, Stranger Things—offers for a great many is a chance to revisit a familiar time, a time which was their childhood. For many, this will have a certain emotional resonance, and this is reflected in Tales from the Loop.

Released in English by Modiphius Entertainment following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was is based on the paintings of Simon Stålenhag. These depict the rural small-town Sweden of the 1980s, an alternate one, for its streets, woods and fields, and skies and seas are populated by robots, gravitic tractors and freighters, strange sensor devices, and even creatures from the long past. To the inhabitants of this landscape, this is all perfectly normal—at least to the adults. To the children of this landscape, this technology is a thing of fascination, of wonderment, and of the strangeness that often only they can see. In Tales from the Loop, it is often this technology that is the cause of the adventures that the children—the player characters—will have away from their mundane lives at home and at school.

Specifically, Tales from the Loop is set on Mälaröarna, the islands of Lake Mälaren, which lies to the west of Stockholm. This is the site of the Facility for Research in High Energy Physics—or ‘The Loop’—the world’s largest particle accelerator, constructed and run by the government agency, Riksenergi. In addition, the Iwasaka corporation of Japan has perfected self-balancing machines, leading to the deployment of robots in the military, security, industrial, and civilian sectors and these robots are employed throughout the Loop and its surrounds. Meanwhile, the skies are filled with ‘magnetrine vessels’, freighters and slow liners whose engines repel against the Earth’s magnetic field, an effect only possible in northern latitudes. There are notes detailing the particulars of life in Sweden in the 1980s, but the culture is radically different—especially in terms of its (almost Socialist) government—to that of the USA and so Tales of the Loop includes an American counterpart to The Loop, this time located under Boulder City in the Mojave Desert in Nevada, near the Hoover Dam. Here the particle accelerator is operated by the Department of Advanced Research into Technology and there is an extensive exchange programme in terms of personnel and knowledge between the staff of both ‘loops’. Similarly, the description of Boulder City and its Loop include plenty of notes on life in the 1980s and as much as the two cultures are different, there are plenty of similarities between the two.

In Tales of the Loop, the players take the role of Kids aged between ten and fifteen. They play archetypes—Bookworm, Computer Geek, Hick, Jock, Popular Kid, Rocker, Troublemaker, and Weirdo—who have two lives. In one they go to school, do homework, spend—not always happy—time with their family, and so on. In the other, they explore the landscape and its ‘mysteries’ around them with their friends. As thrilling and as fraught with danger as these mysteries are, the adults will never believe the children and the children will never actually die—although they can be hurt. Or as Tales from the Loop defines it, suffer from Conditions. In the main, this is an emotional hurt rather than a physical one, although it possible to be injured or broken. When this happens, a Kid can rely upon his friends, but he can also turn to a particular parent, teacher, neighbour, or other adult for comfort, care, and support. This will restore their emotional state.

Each archetype provides a Kid with three key skills, plus and options in terms of iconic items, problems, drives, pride, relationships to the other kids and NPCs, and an anchor. For example, the key skills for the Popular Kid are Contact, Charm, and Lead. An Iconic Item might be a pack of chewing gum or a diary with juicy secrets, the problem a crazy aunt living in the family basement or a parent having an illicit affair, the drive a hatred of secrets or to get away from being so popular, and the pride being that everyone likes him or knowing everything about anyone. A relationship with another Kid might be that he knows he is love with him or she is freaky and I like it, whilst a relationship with an NPC might be that a new girl has appeared at the Wildlife club and she is scary or that the school janitor hates him, but he knows that he is up to something. Lastly, an anchor, the source of emotional care and support might be an older sibling or a famous friend of the family.

To create a Kid, a player first chooses an archetype and then decides on his age, between ten and fifteen years of age—a Kid essentially retires from investigating Mysteries once past the age of fifteen. A Kid’s age determines how many points a player has to assign to his attributes, although the older a Kid is, the fewer Luck points he will have to spend on rerolls. A player has ten points to assign to his Kid’s skills. The maximum is three for the archetype’s key skills and one for other skills. The player then chooses the Kid’s Iconic Item, Problem, Drive, Pride, Relationships, and Anchor from those listed for the archetype, or makes them up himself. 

Our sample character is Barbara, a bespectacled redhead with a twin brother who is a Computer Geek. She prefers her books. She and her brother are rivals and from a one parent family; her father having died. Neither likes to say who the older is—only who is cleverer. She is from a game I played in at Spaghetti ConJunction 1b on Saturday, October 21st, 2017. The game was set on the outskirts of Derby and involved the theft of the full size Big Trak  military vehicle. 

Barbara
Archetype: Bookworm
Iconic Item: Encyclopaedia
Problem: Nobody tells me how my dad died.
Drive: I want to find answers to the big questions in life.
Pride: I’m one of the smartest kids in the school
Relationships: He is my competitor (twin brother); Mary, the school librarian, was my friend until she disappeared. I am sure that the school janitor knows more than he is saying.
Anchor: Teacher

Age: 12
Body 2 (Sneak 0, Force 0, Move 0)
Tech 3 (Tinker 0, Program 0, Calculate 1)
Heart 2 (Contact 0, Charm 1, Lead 0)
Mind 5 (Investigate 3, Comprehend 3, Empathise 2)

The creation process is collaborative, each player creating a character and then as relationships are decided upon, forging links between the members of the gang. In addition, each Kid has a favourite song and together the Kids have a Hideout, a place which the NPCs cannot find on their own and where the Game Master cannot put any of them in Trouble. It also works as a possible place to recover from Conditions if the Kids are mentally or physically close with each other. Lastly, the Game Master gets to ask the players some questions about their Kids and about their gang. These add flavour and detail to further define everyone.

Mechanically, Tales from the Loop is very simple. The roleplaying game uses a simplified version of the mechanics to be found in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, also from the same publisher, to handle what it calls Trouble.  To undertake an action, whether in Trouble or not, for example, slipping out of the grasp of a bully or working out what a machine does, a player adds the values of the relevant attribute and skills together and rolls that number of six-sided dice. Use of an appropriate Iconic Item will add two dice to the pool. Each six rolled counts as a success. In the main, a player only needs to roll one six to succeed. Tasks needing two or three successes are rare and represent almost impossible situations, though some situations, such as overcoming the final situation or bad guy, might require every Kid to get involved and roll successes. Excess successes can be used to purchase effects, which the player can decide upon with the Game Master.

Failing a task can lead to a Kid suffering a Condition—Upset, Scared, Exhausted, Injured, or Broken. For example, a Kid might be Upset if he fails to avoid the bullies and their taunts, or Scared when hiding from a robot that is acting strangely. If a roll is failed, a player has two choices, spending a point of Luck to reroll the task or pushing the roll. Doing the latter though will inflict a Condition on a Kid. For each Condition a Kid has, his player rolls one less die. If a Kid has the Condition of Broken, then he cannot deal with any Trouble without failing. Recovering from Conditions requires spending time with a Kid’s Anchor or with another Kid in the Hideout and roleplaying the scene out.

A Mystery, as Tales from the Loop calls its scenarios, can be divided into five phases—‘Introducing the Kids’, ‘Introducing the Mystery’, ‘Solving the Mystery’, ‘Showdown’, ‘Aftermath’, and ‘Change’. There is no limit to the scenes which can be run during each of these phases, but the first and fifth, ‘Introducing the Kids’ and ‘Aftermath’ are always grounded in the reality of the Kids’ lives at home. Their mundane nature counterpoints the reality of the Mystery and the secrets of the landscape around them. The sixth phase, ‘Change’, is really after the scenario, when the players have the chance to reflect on the Mystery and what their Kids did, spend any Experience Points and so on. The advice for the Game Master running Mysteries is excellent, covering mood, nostalgia, and getting the players involved in setting up scenes for the Kids as well as the Game Master.

Tales from the Loop includes six minor Mystery outlines that the Game Master can develop into fuller Mysteries as ‘The Four Sciences of Mad Science’, a four-part campaign. Together they provide hours and hours of play and really delve into the weirdness in and around the Loop. All of the Mysteries are set in Sweden, but notes are included to adapt them to the USA.

Phsyically, Tales from the Loop is a sturdy hardback, written in a light and engaging style. Of course, it benefits from and features the excellent artwork of Simon Stålenhag, which really highlights how the technology of the Loop has imposed itself on the landscape. One oddity of the artwork is that the children depicted are always looking into the picture and at the technology, never out as they alone are fascinated by it. The layout of the book is interesting in that it feels very much more like an architectural magazine of the period.

Tales from the Loop is any number of Spielberg-style movies from the 1980s, but is also any number of films from the Children’s Film Foundation also. It is about how amazing these adventures and solving the Mysteries in and around the Loop are, but always balanced by the ordinary, often emotionally fraught the lives of the Kids are away from their adventures. The importance of emotion in this game and how the Kids feel and are affected by their situation is for a certain audience—the gamers who were teenagers in the 1980s—further exacerbated because this is when they grew up, when their family situation would have been like it is depicted in Tales from the Loop, when they could have had these adventures and solved these Mysteries, and when they would have encountered many of items, songs, ordinary technologies, and so on, for the first time. So in effect there is both an emotional and nostalgic underpinning to the roleplaying and for many of its players, this is what they will be drawing upon in playing Tales from the Loop. This does not mean that players of other ages cannot play Tales from the Loop, but for some players it will have a certain emotional resonance. 

As to the horror of Tales from the Loop, it is twofold. One is the emotional horror, both in coming face to face with the dangers of the Mysteries in and around the Loop and in dealing the tensions and little things of mundane life—family and otherwise. The other is scientific horror, essentially the side effects and unexpected results of the research carried out of the Loop. 

Although very much packaged as a traditional roleplaying book, Tales from the Loop is really more of an ‘Indie’ roleplaying game, a storytelling game with its simpler mechanics and exploration of emotional nostalgia. Yet the combination of the repackaging with its theme and genre mean that this roleplaying game and its storytelling mechanics are wholly accessible and acceptable. Above all though, its exploration of emotional and scientific investigative horror in playing a Kid once again give Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was a surprisingly emotional heft which few roleplaying games achieve, let alone strive for.