Friday Fantasy: YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE

YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE manages to be both fantastic and a failure. Fantastic because it describes an intriguing setting that begs to be played and explored, whilst being very rules light, but a failure because it never once tells you what it is and it cannot do this this because it does not know itself. However, this does not mean that it cannot used to create and run an exciting mini-campaign aboard its massive floating garbage scow, but to do that, the Game Master will need to do something that the authors of YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE fail to do. Which is to pull back, look at it as a whole, decide whether it is a sandcrawl (trashcrawl?) with factions, locations, and motivations, or more focused with locations and location adventures. As written, it is mix of both, which clash not only together, but also with the higgledy-piggledy mix of ideas from different contributors. Another issue is the format, which is that of a fanzine. YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE was published via Kickstarter campaign as part of ZineQuest #2, but make no mistake it is not fanzine. At least not in the traditional sense. YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE is a setting supplement using the fanzine format, an increasingly regular outcome as the ZineQuest events progressed from year to year. Effectively, YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE has all the messiness and sensibility of a fanzine when what its content called for was something less than an amateur approach to its design and detail.

The problems with YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE start with the cover and continue with the first page. Nowhere does YYOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE clearly state what it is. Not on the cover and not inside the book on the first page or any page. Literally, you pick this up and you have no idea what you hold in your hand. There is no doubt that you will be intrigued enough by both cover and the title to ask, “What is this?” Unfortunately, it is a question left unanswered in an unforgiveable failure of design, a failure that goes right back to the lack of overview upon the part of the creators. The point is, it is the role of the players and their characters to discover what YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE is through play, not that of the Game Master.

So, the question is, what is YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE? It is a setting which describes a floating sandbox, a massive trash scow which grinds its way up and down the coast years, heaving into the harbours of towns and cities to collect their rubbish and unwanted gubbins in return for gas to keep the garbage barge’s tugboats running and other supplies, whilst also letting the workers aboard come ashore. The garbage barge could be one of the biggest things afloat, but it is definitely the unloveliest, a towering, leaking wreck, ready to take a town’s unwanted items, whether they are dangerous, embarrassing, or even on fire. It is also a source of employment and the garbage barge is always looking for new employees. Once aboard, they will be responsible for handling and ensuring the safety of the trash collected and helping to keep the garbage barge afloat. What they will discover is weird and wonderful and wretched. Rusting barrels of chemicals which grow legs and go off to seek their fortune as they leach their contents. Talking possums, raccoons, beetles, the latter always ready to tell their life stories—never more than a year long! Baroque pearls to be dived in the oil-slick bilge waters of the garbage barge. A gas lake that threatens to explode and destroy the whole garbage barge. A whole town on fire. The workers will stay in the company town aboard the garbage barge and buy from the company stores, such as a dried fish with living eyes which can be swallowed to be able to breath water for an hour. At the end of the hour, it is vomited up and the user has to catch it so he can use it again! Animal sentinels such as ‘Gentle’, a rat who communicates through expressive shrugs, can be rented and will warn workers of bad air, damps—dangerous mists, and pressure changes. Workers can return from a day’s labour with scrap and barter with it at Kat’s Salvage Armoury—a workshop in a scrapyard in a junkyard on a garbage barge—for rickety devices or even upgrades to devices they already have. Copper mask wizards meet and lurk on the garbage barge, hiding their thefts of beloved objects until they have been forgotten and can be destroyed for the psychological backfire to fuel their magic. ‘Speaking Bettas’, large, floating, and telekinetic floating fish pop out of nowhere much to their chagrin and disdain.

YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE includes two scenarios. The first is ‘Your First Job Is To Keep The Gas Lake From Exploding’, in which the Player Characters are directed to the gas lake—a combination of damned river and drowned slime mould—where they must vent some of the gas before it explodes. It is a great set-up, combining a great set-up with the garbage barge’s pervading sense of industrialisation and decay, and initiating the Player Characters into the weirdness of the garbage barge. Unfortunately, the presentation is not as clear as it could be in terms of the maps and how they relate to each other and how the various aspects of the scenario connect to each other. Much like the fanzine as a whole, it does not pull back to provide an overview and connect everything for the benefit of the Game Master. Worse, it gives the Player Characters a major task to complete, but does not define exactly what they have to do, especially in mechanical terms. Part of this is due to the general lack of mechanics in YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE, but the tasks themselves and their difficulties could have been at least described.

The second adventure is ‘You’re Going On A Trash Dive’. This sets out to find out just how much trash there is aboard the garbage barge and find out just how deep that trash goes. Not so much Journey to the Centre of the Earth as ‘Journey to the Centre of the Garbage Barge’, this is much more coherent affair, with some excellent NPCs, some of whom have other plans for Scoopin’ Jenny, the giant drilling machine. It is also a much weirder adventure in tone than the previous adventure, verging on cosmic horror and veering into obsessive monster hunting a la Moby Dick, though with an ÜBËRGÖÄT rather than a whale. However, the scenario has the potential to underplay the cosmic horror angle very nicely. This is a much better presented and easy to understand scenario, but it pulls strongly away from the tone of the YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE.

Rounding out YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE are a series of tables which randomly determine the smells around the Player Characters, whilst also adding a new Bard College, the Scent Skald, which uses smells to power and target his magic. Other tables provide random items of trash, and of course, encounters aboard the garbage barge. The back cover blurb consists of a Trash Shanty with which the Game Master can either torment or entertain her players—if not both. The tables are great and add a lot of atmosphere, and are just one more thing to like about YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE, whether it is map, Kat’s Salvage Armoury, the talking animals, and the general tone of the setting.

Using YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE is also a problem. Whether it is the inclusion of a radio mast or go-kart, YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE is not a traditional fantasy setting. It is a technologically advanced setting, more akin to the early twentieth-century than the traditional medievalism of the Old School Renaissance. Consequently, a roleplaying game with those elements already present would work better, such as Into the Odd or Electric Bastionland. YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE does use the mechanics of the Old School Renaissance, but adapting them or writing your own, would not be too challenging for the Game Master.

Physically, YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE is a mess. It dives straight into describing parts of the garbage barge without describing what the garbage barge actually is and just keeps that up, more or less, from beginning to end. It is also table-intensive, including one with multiple fount sizes and formats that is eye-wateringly terrible. The artwork is not necessarily great, but it fits the setting of the garbage barge.

YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE is an almost incoherent mess. Any prospective Game Master is going to have pull its contents apart to find out how they work and work together, before putting it all back together herself in a fashion that will work for her game and her players. And that is what YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE needs. To be pulled apart, to be put back together, to include an overview of what it is, to decide what it is, to present its contents in a way that is easier and more immediate in its use. And again, the content of YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE is not unplayable and there is nothing to stop a Game Master and her players from getting great gaming experiences from that content, but too many times YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE fails to facilitate that. YOU GOT A JOB ON THE GARBAGE BARGE undoubtedly deserves a second edition and developing into what could be a great supplement. Right now, it remains a not entirely incoherent beta.

[Fanzine Focus XXXI] Love Letters From The Baker House Band

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Some fanzines though are not written for a specific roleplaying game or roleplaying games, but are instead about roleplaying and the hobby.

Love Letters from the Baker House Band is not a fanzine about one author’s campaign or his thoughts upon gaming, but instead a collaborative project put together by the various members of a long running gaming group hosted by the games designers, Vincent and Meguey Baker. Funded via Kickstarter as part of Zine Quest #2, its content includes art, reviews, and game design firmly placed in the Indie style or storytelling style of roleplaying, which should be no surprise given that Vincent Baker is the designer of Apocalypse World, the 2010 roleplaying game whose Powered by the Apocalypse mechanics have been adapted to numerous roleplaying games such as Matrons of Mystery and Cartel: Mexican Narcofiction Powered by the Apocalypse to drive strong storytelling. However, there is relatively little that is specifically for Powered by the Apocalypse roleplaying games in the pages of the fanzine, and what there is, is easily adapted to the roleplaying game of the reader’s choice.

Love Letters from the Baker House Band opens with Roxanne Gariepy’s tribute to the group, ‘Love Makes a Family’, depicting a group of misfits—the characters if not necessarily, but probably as much, their players—who come together (to play) and are bound by love. Including a bird and a sentient ‘pile of laundry’ and nicely illustrated, this captures the feel of a gaming group sharing experiences and coming together as a family and hints what it is like being a member of the Baker House Band. The gaming group’s influence is also seen in Evan Janssen’s ‘How Gaming at the Bakers’ Helped Me Design Better Video Games’, which recounts how his experience playing and running roleplaying games influenced and changed how he designs video games. Of course, roleplaying and Dungeons & Dragons have been a strong influence upon video games and especially video roleplaying games, but here the author uses the languages and the tools used by a Game Master to improve how he designs video games. The parallels between the two are fascinating and highlight how the skills used in gaming can be useful beyond its confines.

The first gaming content in the fanzine is ‘Barbara’s Book Club & Motorcycle Gang’ by Alix Janssen. This is both a book club and hardcore motorcycle gang of tough women in crisp print dresses, headscarves, heels, and big motorcycles who read and ride. Armed with their rides, their books, their big handbags containing all manner of useful items, the ladies ride the apocalypse bringing manners and a helpful attitude wherever they go. Obviously written for use with Apocalypse World, but pointers and tags rather than stats, this gang would fit into most post-apocalyptic settings, but also a great many other settings if the Game Master wants a memorable set of eccentric old biddies. ‘Tales of Timberwind’ by Elliot Baker and Tovey Baker introduces an anthropomorphic cosy woodland setting in the style of Mouse Guard or Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game, which sounds intriguing, but leaves the reader wanting more. However, to learn more, the reader will need to sign up for the family’s Patreon.

Tovey Baker’s other contribution to Love Letters from the Baker House Band is ‘Hvanrost City’. This is a setting for Blades in the Dark, the roleplaying game crime and gang activity set in a Dickensian industrial city. Notably, this city is powered by pipes filled with electric eels or leeches, but it is also ghost haunted and surrounded by a toxic mist which rolls off the sea and changes creatures into giant mindless animals. There is plenty to work with here for the Game Master to use the city for his own campaign.

The highlight and the bulk of Love Letters from the Baker House Band consists of Meguey Baker’s ‘Baker House LARP’. Each year, as a teacher, she has hosted a LARP for her teenage students over a five-day period. This is full of advice on how to set up, run, adjudicate, and get the most out of such event, along with advice and commentary based on her experiences. There is a great deal to work through here and perhaps could have been better presented—likely as a separate guide for other educators—but it is fascinating to how this is done. For most readers, this will be an interesting article rather than a useful one, but for the teacher, or someone with a similar role, looking to host something along the same lines, this is to be recommended.

‘The Care and Keeping of Waifs, Strays, and Castaways – A Practical Guide’ by Adin Klotz is a set of pointers and warnings that works as a narrative too, whilst Micah’s ‘Legend of Mandoom’s Leg’ is a short, four-page comic which hilariously turns a Dirty Harry style confrontation aboard a school bus on its head with an ‘Unnatural Lust Transfixion’ Powered by the Apocalypse-style move. It is funny and weird, but captures that moment a desperate dice roll can send a situation in a completely different direction with an unexpected move. ‘PBTA reviews from the BHB’ by Josh Savoie reviews six Powered by the Apocalypse roleplaying games including Dungeon World and Masks: A New generation, and is a good overview of some of the best of the very many roleplaying games available using its mechanics.

Josh Savoie also provides the Powered by the Apocalypse move, ‘Last Breath’. It is made when a Player Character is reduced to zero Hit points and has the opportunity to utter his last words. It begins by asking the other players round the table a number of questions, the bonus to the roll being determined by their answers. The Player Character is going to die, but this gives him one last action, whether glorious or helpful. It is pleasingly dramatic. ‘Shadow Magic’ by Annika Sturmer is more straightforward and designed for long term play, providing a means of teleportation or travel via the shadows, though it is not without its perils. Failure gives the result, “You bring something with you or leave something behind that you did not intend.”, which is again a dramatically great result. This move would work in a number of genres, whether fantasy, superheroes, or urban fantasy. It would be good to see this developed into a suite of moves rather than just the one here.

Love Letters from the Baker House Band comes to a close just as it started with tribute. Again, this is to the family and the gaming group as a family. Sebastian’s ‘D&D Day’ captures the feel and joy of play in an all-day session which runs to midnight. It is a lovely memory, which perhaps wistfully, as adults we miss a great deal.

Physically, Love Letters from the Baker House Band is a lovely fanzine. It needs an edit here or there, but is decently presented.

Love Letters from the Baker House Band is a snapshot of a gaming group and the pleasure its members take in gaming together and being in each other’s company. There are useful things to be found in its pages, especially for educator wanting to host a LARP for his students, but those are not necessarily what this fanzine is about. As a fanzine, Love Letters from the Baker House Band achieves a rare sense of warmth and feeling that radiates from the title on the cover to the very last page—and that is what sets it apart.

[Fanzine Focus XX] Gamma Zine #2

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. As popular in the Old School Renaissance as the genre is, not all fanzines are devoted to fantasy.

Gamma Zine carries the subtitle, ‘A Fanzine supporting early post-apocalyptic, science-fantasy RPGs – specifically First Edition Gamma World by TSR.’ This then, is a fanzine dedicated to the very first post-apocalyptic roleplaying game, Gamma World, First Edition, published by TSR, Inc. in 1978. Gamma Zine #1 was published in April, 2019, following a successful Kickstarter campaign as part of Zine Quest 1. Published by ThrowiGames!, it came as a black and white booklet, packed with content, including adventures, equipment, monsters, and more. Published as part of Zine Quest 2, Gamma Zine #2 was published in February, 2020 and promised more of the same—adventures, equipment, monsters, fiction, and so on.

Where Gamma Zine #1 began with a short interview with James M. Ward, the designer of both Gamma World and its predecessor, Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma Zine #2 starts with ‘An Interview with Luke Gygax’. This is not just because his father is E. Gary Gygax, but also because he is listed as the co-author of GW1 Legion of Gold, the very first scenario for Gamma World. What is interesting about the development of the module is that Luke Gygax was just nine or ten years old at the time the adventure was written. Thus we we read about his influence over the design of the module as well as the time he spent as a child with his father. Which adds a more personal touch to our views of the man who co-created Dungeons & Dragons and began the hobby.

‘New Horrors from the Wasteland’ provides two new monsters. One is the Chog, a canine creature which seems to adsorb radiation and expell it in its bite. The bad news for the Player Characters is that the stronger the intensity of the radiation it has adsorbed, the worse its bite! The other creature is the Dizard, a lizard-type known for its tenaciousness when attacking—it likes to get a grip and keep hold, forcing a Player Character to try and break that grip! Leather taken from the Dizard is also known to be sturdy and all but fire proof.

Gamma Zine #2 also continues adding something not found in Gamma World—a Class. Classes are not a feature of Gamma World, but ‘Class Option — The Wasteland Blacksmith’ shows how they could be added to added. Following on from Artificer from Gamma Zine #1, in Gamma Zine #2, this is the Wasteland Blacksmith who makes and repairs things from the wasteland junk, earning Experience Points for doing so, but does not gain as many Experience Points from mere combat. The rules are fairly basic, but it adds flavour and enables a player to add a skill and round out his character a bit more. ‘Artifacts of the Ancients’ in Gamma Zine #1 concentrated on weapons, but ‘Artifacts of the Ancients’ in Gamma Zine #2 focuses on tools and survival aids. So the Stimpack Drone is designed to be used to deliver doses of a healing agent by remote, but others have adapted it to deliver poisons and radiation and more! The Hop-Pack provides the wearer with short jumps, the collapsible axe is a handy tool, and the Survivor Armband is perfect for anyone wanting their Gamma World adventures to be a bit more like the computer game, Fallout!

Gamma Zine #2 comes with three adventures. The first is ‘Adventure #1 — The Millionaire’s Vault’ describes the vault where a millionaire from before the apocalypse hoarded his most valuable possessions. Unless the Player Characters are looking for the reputed  ‘Cure All’ said to be hidden in its depths, there is little reason for them to visit what is actually a converted missile silo. It is more of an adventure location and as an adventure location, would work well with ‘Adventure #2 — Paradise Island’. The island of the title is home to farmers and fishermen and is known to trade in foodstuffs, but when the Player Characters arrive they discover that the island has been attacked by pirates and their mercenary island. In comparison to ‘Adventure #1 — The Millionaire’s Vault’, and even though it is quite simple, there is a whole lot more plot in ‘Adventure #2 — Paradise Island’. The vault from ‘Adventure #1 — The Millionaire’s Vault’ could easily be moved onto Paradise Island, and ‘Adventure #2 — Paradise Island’ enlarged and expanded, perhaps to form a hexcrawl of its very own also using the three adventures in Gamma Zine #1. 

‘Adventure #3 — Rescue!’ likewise includes a bit more of a plot. It describes a pre-apocalypse, advanced detention facility and the idea in the scenario is that the Player Characters need to rescue someone held in one of its cells. It is quite detailed and should present a challenge to any Player Characters attempting to break or con their way into the facility. The map is a little cramped and difficult to read, and it does feel as it could have been better orientated on the page.

The issue also includes two pieces of fiction. The first is  ‘The Hunted, Chapter Two’ which picks up from the cliffhanger that ended in ‘The Hunted, Chapter One’. In the first part, Whyla and her faithful cybernetic hound, Arnold, were ambushed by bandits and this gives the payoff. Again it is nicely written and with the resolution of the first cliffhanger sets up another. Unfortunately, the other piece of fiction, though again decently written, is not just as engaging. ‘Opportunity of Lifetime, Prologue’ really sets everything up for the next part, detailing how a student is selected for an important scientific mission. Set before the apocalypse, not a great happens and at three pages in length, it is too long a read. Hopefully the next chapter provide a better payoff.

Lastly, Gamma Zine #2 gives the Game Master another ‘Artifact Use (Solution) Flowcharts’. The focus of this set is guns and ammunition. So there are flowcharts for identifying revolvers and semi-automatics, along with standard and advanced ammunition types. It splits ammunition types because they are easy to get mixed up. Of course, some groups will find them fiddly and annoying, but they are part of the mechanics to Gamma World, so having more of them is fun.

Physically, Gamma Zine #2 is neat and tidy. It is decently written and nicely illustrated with good art throughout. Each of the scenarios is accompanied by excellent maps.

If you enjoyed Gamma Zine #1, then the likelihood is that you will enjoy Gamma Zine #2. It provides excellent support for the first edition of Gamma World, as well as for post-apocalyptic roleplaying games with a drier, slightly less fantastic tone, such as Free League Publishing’s Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days. It is not perfect though, there being a bit too much fiction and the adventures being more encounter locations than actual scenarios. This does not mean that they are not useful and the Referee can easily pick and choose how she uses the content. Certainly the adventures could be used to populate a hexcrawl of the Referee’s own devising. Overall, Gamma Zine #2 is continued solid support for Gamma World.