Previously On

So, the group consisted of Julie, single mom, Alexei, ex-strip club owner, Michael, ex-local councillor, Jacob, ex-minor local league hockey player, and Micaela, his rebellious daughter.

The second session started where the previous left off. The whole group had just defeated three roaming zombies on the railway line beyond the sanctuary. Julie and Michael had shown themselves respectively inept and scheming in their approach, while Alexei, Jacob, and Micaela had shown a little more backbone in the face of a threat. Well, okay – Alexei had shown himself to be fundamentally unstable mentally and a genuine threat to others and himself with a shotgun.

We had a player turn up who didn’t make it to the first session, assuming the role of Marcos, illegal immigrant. Moreover, the player running Alexei couldn’t make it, leaving the unstable ex-club owner shambling and withdrawn, nor could the player running Julie, who didn’t seem much affected by the lack of a player (only kidding!).

The Adventure

So, we resume following the events from the last session, with our group standing amidst the remains of three slaughtered zombies. In the process of battling the undead, Alexei almost killed himself with a misjudged shotgun reload to the head. Oddly quiet before now, Marcos has stepped out of the shadow of the bridge overlooking the railway. Everyone mounts their bicycles and prepares to kick off southwards. Micaela uses her binoculars to confirm no dead ahead, while Michael presses a plan to keep heading south along the rail bed. He seems certain that keeping on the route of the track will guarantee the swiftest and safest route to their destination – though, he knows that the only place it will get them is the Macclesfield Sanctuary Zone, not even close to their destination. As an ex-councillor, Michael possesses an uncanny knack for a convincing speech and he succeeds in a conflict of Control to get the point across to those who might doubt him.

Further down the train track the group spy zombies massing. Two dozen zombies walk in a loose group along the track bed from somewhere to the south. At this distance, with the advantage of Micaela’s binoculars, the shambling flesh-eaters cannot yet sense their prey, so the whole group scales the embankment to their right and climbs over the fence at the top, hoisting their bikes over with them. Beyond the fence they take cover amidst a smattering of trees on the edge of a car park. A warehouse-sized sports and leisure outlet – Decathlon – lies behind them as they look down the track and discuss their plans. Chatting sharply, a disagreement brews about the best way to go – with Michael pushing for a continuation to the south – they all fall silent with the percussive crack of a rifle firing. The bullet misses, tearing into one of the trees.

Everyone ducks for cover. Another shot zips by and catches Marco a flesh wound. Worried eyes stare back towards the zombies down the track. The mass, previously without purpose, begins to shift towards the sound of gunfire. On the roof of the store, Oscar and Louisa keep a close eye on their potential looting rivals. Hidden from view, Oscar tells the group to keep away and keeps the rifle trained on the nearest targets. Micaela takes issues with the attitude of the resident looters, feeling that everyone has a common enemy and that no intent to stray into anyone’s territory was meant. Michael and Marcos seem intent on avoiding conflict, so they wheel their bikes out as wide from the store as possible and then pelt it down the road at top speed towards the nearby motorway slip road. Michael fails his Flee roll and falls of his bike, while Marcos rolls a Break. Not only does the oddly accented immigrant shoot off down the road seeking to avoid his attackers at all costs, he does so at breakneck speed with every possibility he won’t be able to stop. Jacob and Micaela, in the meantime, manage to talk their way clear of the car park without drawing any further firing, very aware that the looters will have drawn potential dangerous attention to themselves from the nearby zombies.

Helping Michael up off the road, the group head down towards the roundabout that precedes the motorway. Micaela wants to loot some cars in the hope of finding medical supplies of some kind – even if only a simple first aid kit, or some antiseptic cream and plasters. Breaking into several parked cars a lacklustre Scrounge roll finally locates a small first aid kit that Micaela pockets. A fresh discussion breaks out as to whether travel along the motorway will be safer or not, but in the end the directness of the route wins everyone over to some extent and they catch up with Marcos, recovered from his moment of abject panic.

Rather than tackle the motorway directly, the group chooses to follow the route via a cycle path that follows it. For the next 10 – 15 minutes, the group spend a lot of time arguing, while Michael spends a lot of time hogging the map of the local areas and wondering which way to go. He maintains an insistence that heading south, toward Macclesfield, would be better for everyone and an ideal staging post for the next leg of journey (while clearly stating out of character that he knows this isn’t true but values his life over some foolish act to rescue some jumped up Government official). The group essentially follow the clockwise curve of the ring of M60 motorway around the outside of Manchester, only deviating because of the changes in landscape. While the path follows the general route of the main road, it also takes in the snaking path of the River Mersey.

During the journey toward the Trafford Centre Sanctuary Zone, I attempt to inject an encounter with a barking dog and a golf course overrun with zombies, but neither pans out as I had expected. In both instances the group diverts away from the danger and I fail to follow up with any kind of tangible threat (see Inviews and Oversights, below).

Finally, breaking out of the fringes of suburbia, the group finds themselves on the outskirts of the Trafford Centre car parking, an expansive acreage of endless tarmac capable of holding thousands upon thousands of cars. It looks secure but quiet, with sandbags and wrecked cars piled around entrances in makeshift barricades and heavy barriers blocking most entrances. Bodies litter the car park, but very few zombies. Sniper nests and a couple of abandoned military trucks stand out from the civilian transport. As the team crosses the car park they find bodies of both civilian and uniformed personnel, most corpses mutilated beyond animation. Successful Scrounge checks makes the journey easy and the group find their way to the one accessible entrance. Parking their bikes outside, their approach alerts those inside who usher them in and barricade the doors behind them.

Inside, the group find the Trafford Centre Sanctuary Zone a darkened and uninviting place. Hundreds of people stand inside in various states of dress and attitude. Huddled groups focus on themselves, while others look on with interest at the newcomers. Obvious guards with weapons guide them inside and present them to Shauna, a dark skinned woman with immediate attitude. Shauna demands to know who the group are and who sent them, and Micaela speaks up to outline their purpose in finding the missing man from the Government. Shauna takes immediate issue that the group work for the military, without specifically outlining the reason for her distrust. She explains troubles have left the Trafford Centre without power and that the military forces have left after a disagreement that led to casualties on both side. In Shauna’s opinion the military only look out for their own interests and have no reason to treat the civilians well as a result. Micaela argues that everyone needs to work together to overcome the threat of the zombie plague and without the missing man a cure may not be found. Shauna believes in nothing but her own cause and the right of the people to determine their own fate. She can sense that the military have some alterior purpose, but has no specific proof about what that might be.

A heated argument means a lot of shouting, Micaela and Shauna virtually screaming at each other with the latter threatening violence. At the moment when shooting seems most likely to erupt, Kevin Fox steps in – Shauna’s second in command. He wears the outfit of a maintenance man, with a fairly laid back attitude and a tool belt. He pleads with Shauna to stand down and offers to escort the group away. He suggests that fresh eyes from an night of sleep might make it easier to agree to a way forward the following morning. In truth, Kevin knows that Shauna lurks on the edge of destruction almost all the time and will almost definitely do away with the group rather than tolerate their insolence. He escorts everyone to the food court, midway down the Trafford Centre, and then properly introduces himself. He takes in the groups issues with Shauna and confides in them that Shauna has serious issues with the military and their hidden purpose. If the group plan on continuing with their mission, they will get no support and Shauna will, more than likely, stop them from leaving at all. He suggests they wait until night fall and then escape – and asks they take him along for the ride.

After nightfall, the Trafford Centre in near darkness, the team set out with torches. Kevin guides them to a maintenance corridor that leads to a stairway, then out on to a gantry high in the roof of the shopping centre. If they follow the whole length of the gantry they can pass out through a door near the old security centre. Alas, the need to escape means mistakes and a Break in both Hide and Flee by Michael leads to an almost commical situation where he locks solid for a moment than pelts it down the length of the gantry at unreasonable speeds. The failure of other rolls leads to something getting dropped that alerts the guards set below, and Michael fleeing at full speed simply seems to draw more attention. The whole group seek to progress at maximum speed, hearing the sound of pursuit below, then on the gantry behind them.

With the clattering of heavy footsteps getting ever closer, Michael made to break the door open and managed to roll a Break in the process. He literally pummelled his way through the exit, beating on the doorway after it had already bust open, and necessitating others dragging him off it. Kevin led the way down the stairs at the end of the short passageway beyond out on to the roof of the Trafford Centre. The whole team stayed low and scampered across to an empty sandbagged sniper position, where Kevin unfurled a rope ladder and allowed everyone to descend. All safe on the ground, the survivors crossed a petrol station forecourt, raced across the wreck-cluttered throat of a main road, and out of harms way into an area of sports and leisure buildings beyond. Someone recalled the presence of a sports outlet nearby and everyone decided to head there to source out replacements for their bicycles…

Inviews and Oversights

Somehow, I lost my bottle in the midst of running this session. While I managed to keep the whole thing moving along, I suddenly found myself running a zombie-lite zombie apocalypse. I have no clue why. Every time I got the chance to run an encounter with a zombie they appeared far off or hardly posed any threat at all. The human threat reared its head at Decathlon and the Trafford Centre, but the brain-munching hoard sort of phoned in a performance at best. The dog and golf course should have been proper encounters, but instead of hitting the characters hard they hardly materialised any threat at all. I doubt blame the system or the adventure for that, as neither holds any responsibility – the fault lies squarely with me. I could easily have done the same with any other game, like a Middle Earth adventure without orcs and a World of Darkness story without the supernatural – but I have no real explanation for why it happened and why I didn’t correct it.

As with the first session, the players really enjoyed the whole Break process. Indeed, the players wanted to Break just to see what might happen. I continued with the view that a Break should translate into something applicable to the situation. Therefore, when someone rolled a suicide, they didn’t simply stab or shoot themselves, but did something suicidal. I suspect Plot Points got short shrift again precisely because people liked Breaking so much, so by the end of the session the whole Group still had more than they started with at the beginning of Session #1.

Gimmick: Fake mute, who may also fake deafness

I have had frequent opportunities to inspect the mouths of several persons, who were taken prisoner by the Algerines and Turks, who had their tongues cut out by those barbarous people… Some few instances of the like nature have occurred… of a man… who having had his tongue cut out… after three years could speak distinctly.

From The Gentlemen’s Magazine, January 1743

A variant of the Dummerar (The Beggars Companion, p 33-34) with a similar tale to tell, the Gabling Domerer communicates a sorry story through sign and the written word. Whether they claim to have suffered the barbarous tortures of the Turk, affliction from some malign rot, or accident at the hand of some agricultural tool, the Domerer seeks alms from those willing to part with it. As with the Dummerar, the beggar feigns disability through physical restraint or manipulation of the tongue. Alternatively, they may have suffered some minor injury to the tongue that they make ghastly through make-up or herbal concoctions.

While begging a Gabling Domerer cannot communicate verbally, except through occasional outbursts of noise or gibbering, from which they claim their name. To communicate intelligibly would break the spell and forfeit any chance of return on their begging efforts. To support this, the player running a beggar of this form should make no direct communication to other players at the table while begging unless achieved through written word or sign language. Unless the player clearly describes, or recreates, any effort to communicate the character suffers a general penalty on Persuasion and communication saving throws of between -10 to -20.

Effects of training: ADDITION Perception, Persuasion; SUBTRACTION Attack Skill, Endurance

Nefarious knack: Adroit Sign – The beggar can very competently and rapidly gesture and signal to communicate concepts and simple messages. The Domerer can effectively communicate via sign language over long distances and despite of noise that would hamper verbal communication efforts. The beggars signing allows them to communicate to anyone within direct line of sight.

Encounter Ideas

A Favoured Haunt: The clientele of the characters’ favoured tavern includes an apparently deaf/mute patron who keeps his own company and nearly blends into the background. Any questions about the character reveal very little other than the obvious – a poor soul, occasionally employed in light work, with little else to reveal. However, the characters would have to overtly take an interest to even find out this much. In truth, this man makes a living as a Domerer, though he genuinely did lose part of his tongue following a serious canker sore and an over-zealous doctor. He listens very carefully to everything going on in the tavern, every bit of gossip, every whispered plan. During a future adventure the characters may find themselves sidestepped, overtaken or second guessed – the work of idle gossip reaching their rival’s ear courtesy of the Domerer. Whether the characters discover the truth or not depends on the beggar drawing their suspicions or some keen-minded planning/thinking to uncover the spy in their midst.

A Fateful Encounter: A young Gabling Domerer wanders into the characters’ presence signing furiously for help or alms. Whether she receives it or not, she leaves and disappears. If the characters provide her with assistance, the Referee should reward them with a positive experience – perhaps a lucky find or a positive modifier on a Saving Throw. If the characters refuse to offer anything, the characters suffer a plague of poor fortune for the rest of the day. They can only lift the curse if they find the girl again and seek forgiveness for their mean reaction to her request. She may know nothing about the curse or she might be responsible for it – the Referee must decide.

An Itch Scratched: A beggar, John Gray, who suffers from genuine selective mutism pleads with the characters for help. He has no money and needs a specific herb from a local apothecary to alleviate his symptoms, a moderately expensive relaxant. If assisted the beggar will owe them something and promise to make good that debt however he can. In the current, or a future, adventure when the characters require some key piece of information, an item, or to find a specific location, John will have a vital clue to help the characters on their way.

Mind you, I can’t manage the session report right now. I just wanted to make it quite clear that one will follow. Well, two will follow, as I have this Monday’s session to write up as well.

To rewind a little, I have run three playtest sessions now for the as yet unpublished, but available, Outlive Outdead roleplaying game. In OO, you play survivors of the a zombie apocalypse. You might think you have heard that before, but OO approaches this from new angles (you can get a short sharp review of the system by downloading the Quickstarter). You have mechanics that stimulate and drive a rich group dynamic, supporting character building and relationships through a little incentivising crunch. The game supports a fairly standard dice roll mechanic for failure and success, but adds in the possibility that stress and overwhelming horror might just push you over the edge at any time. Moreover, if you die in the middle of the game, you don’t get left sitting out the session or forced to pick up another character – in OO you have the chance to play a zombie and assist in the downfall of those you might once have considered friends. You have the opportunity to measure success in the number of player characters who fall to the ceaseless advance of your brain munching undead minions.

I have enjoyed running the game and general, ad hoc feedback from the players has echoed the same. They have voiced very positive feedback around the Break mechanic (getting pushed over the edge by the horror of the situation before them) and the potential of the Karma system. The latter allows you to occasionally exercise special abilities that guarantee success, but which other people can tap into too by paying you one of their Karma points. If they pass the Karma to the GM, you get the benefit of the ability. However, they can also choose to double-cross you and keep the Karma for themselves – a move that means the original player can’t tap into the ability, but the character doesn’t necessarily realise the cause of the ‘inconvenience’. In roleplaying terms the other character might look like they simply failed to realise they could help, roamed out of earshot when called, tripped over at just the wrong moment, or whatever. I feel the game system augments the story potential rather than interfering with it.

On a personal level, I don’t necessarily feel that I have provided the greatest roleplaying experience. I have a bit of a character flaw when it comes down to judging myself, as I always err on the side of being a bit rubbish. I certainly feel I haven’t pushed the zombie quotient hard enough, but at the same time if you look at a show like ‘The Walking Dead‘ you can see an example of a zombie scenario where the threat lies as much with the character interaction as anything else. OO’s mechanics firmly support the interplay of individuals.

I promise I will get that session report written up as soon as possible…

I chose to run the whole adventure in our current locale of south Manchester. On the one hand, I felt more comfortable knowing the general locations involved. On the other hand, the players couldn’t take the idea seriously. Manchester, the second (or third) largest city in the UK had avoided the worst of the epidemic, despite London, Norwich and Edinburgh all falling to the undead plague. How did that work? Moreover, why would anyone set up a Sanctuary in Stockport? I experienced a period of much amusement, broad grins, giggles, and loud merriment. I tried to kick off the adventure, but each link back to reality served to reinvigorate the sense of bemusement and tittering. I had the players wake in the very room we used for running the game and the Army stationed in the nearby homes and shops.

Firstly, everyone introduced themselves clockwise around the table. Alexei used to run a “gentleman’s club” in central Manchester and had a history of fighting in one of the recent Eastern European conflicts. Jacob played for a struggling local hockey team (hockey not really being much of a draw in UK sport) and frankly, in his mid-30s, he had past his prime. While Jacob explained something about himself, the player playing Micaela noted she shared his surname and asked me if she was his brother. I highlighted the 19-year age difference and she realised the actual familial relationship of father-daughter. That provided a distinctive Empire Strikes Back moment. Julie had lost both of her children to the zombies and had a past haunted by drugs and drink. Michael was really an ex-mayor from before the epidemic and now just a councillor in Stockport. Finally, Micaela spoke up, though not immediately admitting her relationship as daughter of a failing sports star.

Captain Maddox arrived and proceeded to explain the situation about the missing minister and the loss of contact with the Trafford Centre Sanctuary Zone in west Manchester. One or two players reacted to move the game forward, while the rest struggled under the continued giggling around the inability to suspend disbelief! I don’t think this ever got 100% under control and I would suggest if you make the adventure local for yourself you might want to prep the players before hand. Maddox took them to a nearby cafe, now stripped down and ransacked, and explained the mission.

After clarifying some outstanding details, Maddox guided the group to a bank, wrecked and ravaged with a lobby strewn with pamphlets for loans and mortgages. In a large back room, the Captain tested the party’s resolve in putting down one of the caged infected in the makeshift Quarantine Zone. Micaela took the pistol and rolled a perfect low-end success for Control. BANG. SPLAT. One of the other detainees freaked out and broke free. Alexei’s player obviously took the time to read his character sheet, as he pulled out his shotgun and took aimed through the door into the lobby. Both Alexei and the escapee rolled failures – the shotgun exploding a piece of masonry and the detainee slipping on the scattered leaflets. Jacob pulled out his hockey stick, ran through to the lobby and knocked the man unconscious with a swift puck shot. During the disturbance, Michael scrounged around in the back room and discovered a couple of packets of fags and a heavy-duty torch, which he promptly borrowed.

Next Maddox guided the group across the road into an abandoned vet’s clinic. In the cellar he revealed three ‘disarmed’ zombies chained to the back wall, and a yellow line spray-painted on the floor on the opposite side of the room. He proposed some combat practice, starting with ranged weapons and then following through with melee. Alexei took aim with his shotgun, fired and rolled a fail. Determined, he started advancing closer to the zombies and rolled again. This time the player rolled a Break – roleplayed as a flashback to some terrible trauma from his time in the war. Alexei proceeded to empty his shotgun repeatedly until he ran out of bullets, declaring his devotion for the Mother Country. Micaela moved forward to calm him, but Michael cut in and tried to stop her. They rolled a conflict and Micaela rolled a Break. This time, we roleplayed the effect as a childhood trauma involving being physically restrained by an enraged father figure. Micaela pulled free and while the Break proposed she flee away from danger, the zombies and imagined intervention by an angry father presented two differing sources of danger in opposing directions. As a result, she backed up against the wall and collapsed in a sobbing heap, Jacob swearing at Michael for upsetting her.

Captain Maddox guided the mismatched group outside and took them to the fence on the outskirts of the Sanctuary Zone. He gave them a map, a satellite phone and bicycles, and a crane ride over the barrier deposited them on the railway lines beyond. To both north and south, the barriers continued for some distance high atop a steep, scrubby embankment. Dismembered zombie corpses lay strewn along the tracks, victims of passing freight trains. After taking stock of their surroundings, Micaela used her binoculars to scope out the route to the south and spied three zombies, each slightly further away than the other. Jacob and Alexei approached like knights on bicycle-back, the first with his hockey stick and the second with an improvised melee weapon made from a broken heavy-duty bike chain. Both attacked and brought the zombie down, before Micaela swept past and decapitated it with a kick. Jacob rolled a break so, through a red haze, set about the next zombie without a pause.

Alexei, frustrated with his weapon, pulled his shotgun out and shot the second zombie. He rolled another Break and then a 9 on the Fight Break table, for a total Break Test of 13 (with the Shotgun modifier). Flashbacks washed back in of the attrocities in Eastern Europe, and Alexei rolled a 1 on 1d4 for a stab at suicide. Roleplayed, Alexei attempted a Terminator style reload of his shotgun without accounting for the presence of an unexpended shell. As he swore in his native tongue and went to snap the ‘gun, Micaela reacted – with a successful Control check – and knocked him down. She dropped next to him and attempted to console him. Meantime, Michael held back and Julie managed to fall off her bicycle while trying to hold her riot shield in front and steer simultaneously.

Jacob attacked the final zombie, but the zombie countered with a swing that revealed a supermarket handheld scanner gripped tightly in one hand. Successes meant both made contact, knocking Jacob of his bike and flooring the zombie as the stick swept a leg away. Down on the ground, Micaela and Jacob finished the dead man off together.

And our time ran out…

Overall – the session went well, despite a slow start hampered by giggling. I should have warned the players about the precise setting and maybe handled it differently. I could easily have run the adventure in the original American setting. When we did get going, the events progressed well and we quickly learned about the various features of the game, like standalone and contested checks, Karma, Serendipity and Setbacks. The reveal of Plot Points and Talents came too late to prevent earlier failed rolls and one player voiced quiet frustration that we didn’t cover this feature of game changing early enough to change anything. The Break mechanic went down extremely well and people actually chose to argue against spending Plot Points to prevent them simply to see what would happen. We haven’t really played enough to see how Karma, Serendipity and Setbacks might pan out. I didn’t even use any zombie abilities because the characters didn’t need the hassle – they seemed to fail and Break on rolls without any outside assistance!

Looking forward to the next session.

I have no illusions about my writing skills. I have a lot of potential learning points. Not only do I create passive sentences filled with unnecessary gerunds and dangling participles, I also talk too much. I waffle. Apparently, I seriously waffle. When I need to answer a question concisely and to the point, I find a way to write three or four sentences, some or none of which will likely have skirted around the point. I believe I have an overcompensatory attitude to writing. My uncertainty about the quality of what I write might very likely mean I choose to write too much. I could very well compare my style to using a shotgun instead of a pistol. I lack the confidence to squeeze off a single shot to strike my target, so I pepper it with shot instead.

I also utilise the wrong words. When I could use the right ones. Now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t cite any examples, but trust me when I say I can always find a long word (or three) when a short word would do. Again, I may have a problem here. My lack of confidence may well mean I need to use long words. My verbosity obfuscates my shortfall in certainty about my written aptitude. Yes… I hide my uncertainty behind big words.

So, I want to see how I can apply some new thinking to my game writing. I have a lot of material I’d like to write at the moment, and I have very little spare time to get it done. I have plan for at least three Maelstrom supplements and want to experiment with some generic adventures. If I can hone my structure and refine my content, I might have it in me to get a lot more done. Maybe I should consider short sentences and mono-syllable words for a while. I could do with a way on from here that means less effort and better output. I guess a future post here will tell you how I got on, or I will spend my time complaining about how hard it was.

I can always manage a short, sharp act of grumbling.

For example, Maelstrom has a priest orientated toward preaching and dealing with evil spirits. I think a Shepherd might need to some tweaking to draw in more skills around influence and less about exorcism. I might even draw on the more martial template of certain orders of medieval knight, individuals who combined faith and steel into a workable package. Shepherd Book, from the series, would best fit if considered an experienced character with more than one Living, as his back story suggests an understand of the criminal underworld, familiarity with combat, and influence within the bureaucratic structure of the Alliance. I can see some measure of rogue and military officer behind the monastic training, the role of Shepherd serving as a refuge and a cover story, rather than Maelstrom‘s requirement that certain Livings have a ‘cover’ career.

I can envisage various combinations for other types of character, laced with background skills associated with farming, exploration and handiwork. In some ways, my vision for how I could adapt the rules ties into my own in-house desire to expand and develop the approach to skills and talents in Maelstrom. Currently, the game lacks mechanical crunch in this area, which I feel warrants corrections, but others might appreciate for the freedom. If you want to play a blacksmith, you can make certain assumptions about skills and not get bogged down in the mechanics. Alternatively, I prefer a more defined option to dictate key skill areas, both broad and narrow.

I fully intend to use some upcoming down time to experiment and playtest the idea a little. I might take an initial approach to try to apply the current system to a sci-fi adventure without too much tinkering and see where the gaps appear, then work back from there. I wouldn’t want to retool the whole thing if I can adapt what exists now to do most if not all.

Maelstrom currently does most things now with a simple Saving Throw approach. You have a base set of percentile attributes and roll d100 against them to succeed or fail. If you have expertise, you might get a +10% or +20% on the attribute before making the roll. If you have no skill, struggle, stress or otherwise have reason to expect failure, you penalise the attribute by -x%, Referee’s call. If you go with the broad view of someone’s Living, a Mechanic should have the means to fix and maintain mechanical stuff. With a more narrow view, he can bring Knowledge to bear when fixing machines, sense distress in a device with Perception, and deftly shift around the engineering room of a ship in freefall with Agility – all with a small bonus. You could go narrower and define actual, titled skills. Right now, Maelstrom opts for something in the middle ground, though not necessarily with consistency from Living to Living, as some have no specific skills or have very vague ones, closer to the broad view.

When I ran a Maelstrom adventure two years ago at a con in London, I didn’t really use any mechanics beyond some fairly generic requests for Savings Throws. In the heat of the moment, you only need to know if someone succeeded or failed. When I last ran the adventure I plan to play with these rules, I made the rules of the game up as a I went along. Somewhere in between, the combination of a simple rules set and an adaptable adventure might just find common ground.

I can’t honestly account for the reason that I have been so long without gaming. I certainly having stopped thinking about games throughout that period. I took a moderately active role in the rebirth of the PARANOIA game and have more recently done something similar with Maelstrom. I have accumulated many more books and magazines over that period, despite not really playing much at all. I did actively play-by-mail for a good ten years after I finished roleplaying regularly. I admit I may have staved off any urge to play face-to-face by focussing heavily on the somewhat perverse entertainment of running a by-mail game for a dozen or more people. Ten years ago I spent a lot of time doing play-by-forum games, mostly Star Wars and a little fantasy. In the end, that dried up, too.

I wonder whether my own waning confidence in myself had something to do with it. While I have the occasional wit and eloquent thought that might suggest a comfortable approach to performing, I struggle quite a bit with a nagging lack of confidence. I have times when the thought of a fall in front of other people makes me overwhelming averse to any sort of performance. I can find something as simple as a short presentation a harrowing experience, best avoided at all costs. At other times, I don’t find it so hard, perhaps given confidence by my familiarity with a subject.

In that frame of mind, my lack of familiarity with many games might be the cause of my inactivity. I have owned many games for almost thirty years now, like MERP and PARANOIA. For some reason, I have sought solace elsewhere, dipping in and out of other systems as if something out there might overcome my own lack of confidence. I realise that the game system has very little to do with it. In fact, I suspect that opening myself up to other systems simply stokes the flames of my self-doubt with further fuel. I introduce complexity and confusion to my roleplaying life by reading more and find no clarity at the end because none lay there to begin with.

I have roleplayed for a whole year, dropping maybe half-a-dozen weeks along the way to illness or distraction. I have found my old hobby again and taken to the role of GM several times – for Dragon Age, The Laundry, Doctor Who and others. I realise now that I have not run anything from the beginning, anything really familiar. If I ran MERP, PARANOIA, Maelstrom or WEG Star Wars, wouldn’t it be easier? Wouldn’t I lift some of the burden of uncertainty by playing something I have known for more than half of my life and grown comfortable with?

I find myself hankering for a dungeon crawl, but somehow in my mind this equates to having a dirty thought. On the other hand, how can that be true? When I go to sites like RPGNow, online purveyors of roleplaying materials always seem to have loads of maps and adventures that cater to those who favour subterranean environs. The indie gaming environment seems positively engorged with simple Old School games that support the sort of stereotypical view of gaming common in the 70s and 80s.

I admit I may simply have created a stereotypical activity aligned with a certain type of game – like people who play 4th Edition D&D or Pathfinder must spend all their time trailing around the musty depths of the Underdark. I’m 100% certain I have fabricated this vision. For every dungeon adventure published, in series like the Pathfinder Adventure Paths by Paizo, you can probably find another one (or a greater ratio) set somewhere above ground. You can, afterall, adventure in almost any environment and many genres don’t even have dungeons in the strictest sense. Yes, you might have a science fiction game set in an underworld, sewer, or claustrophobic hive complex, but I’m not sure that strictly equates to a dungeon.

Or does it? In the broader sense, is a dungeon actually a specific thing? If you have a series of encounters connected across an area doesn’t that basically amount to a dungeon? If I travel through the sewers, meeting mutants, rats, beggars and hideous slime beasts, how does that not count as a dungeon? If I throw in a necromancer at the end of the labyrinth, plotting from the stinking depths to raise an army of darkness from the corposes dumped in the fetid waters does that differ from another necromancer planning to do much the same thing from the midst of a crumbling underground den in the back of beyond. The guy in the sewer probably deserves some respect for having a better plan, as a swarm of undead rising from the sewers will likely meet less resistance than a shambling army heading towards the city walls.

I suppose that using the term ‘dungeon’ doesn’t help, because a gaming dungeon and an actual historical dungeon have very little in common. A gaming dungeon really represents a type of environment, a common type of adventure setting, populated with creatures, traps, treasures, and one or more megalomaniacal would-be overlord. A historical dungeon basically amounted to an underground jail, torture chamber or perhaps a vault for secure storage. I doubt it had anything else to offer.

In the mood for dungeoneering, I have mulled over the game to play with, and after juggling thoughts of Old School systems, I might use Maelstrom. The Tudor backdrop for Maelstrom amounts to quite a short background in the era over a few pages – otherwise, effectively, the game offers up a low magic quasi-historical setting not unlike many other Old School games. My familiarity with the system and desperate urge to tinker with it seems to fit my need.

So, now I just need to overcome the feeling that spending time in a dungeon somehow undermines my serious roleplayer credentials…

So, we had this one-shot, pick-up game set in an asylum. I suspect all good games of anything with Cthulhu in the title should include at least a reference or a flying visit to a mental institution, so using one as a setting took the experience to the extreme. Why wait to get made late in the game when you can start out that way! Two players – me included – chose to play patients, while two played staff. I played Edgar Grebe, one time doctor at the asylum, now confined as an inmate following some unorthodox self-administration of experimental drugs. Fellow patient, Johnathan, perhaps got a little too close to his artistic creations and visions for the theatre, slipping into a state where the world became his stage. Of the staff, we had Tony, an orderly, making a small profit out of selling the bodies of the dead – of which this sanatorium seemed to have an oddly high number. We also had Sebastian, the enthusiastic doctor who took over Grebe’s position, a man keen to experiment with practical (and impractical) approaching to curing the ills of the residents.

Cthulhu Dark offers a very clean, simple system – all about degrees of success, ensuring the story keeps moving along and doesn’t get bogged down in the dead-ends of failure. Yes, you can go insane, but you can’t end up hammering your forehead against a wall simply because you could roll lower than a target percentage. When you roll a die to check for a result, you can get anything from a vague and unsatisfactory success through an adequate one, all the way off toward something awe-inspiring and potentially mind-blowing. Getting a 6 can mean you achieve the level of success that opens your eyes to a whole new level of understanding, and in Cthulhu that kind of thing can drive you mad. You choose an occupation at the start of the game, and when an activity fits the chosen role you get a add an extra die to the mix. Fancy pushing yourself and your sanity, then add another – differently coloured – die into the set and increase your chances of rolling a high. However, roll the highest value on the sanity die and you’ll risk taxing your mental stability in the face of all that alien horror.

I used a variation of the Dark system to run a science fiction adventure a little while back, using differently coloured mental and physical stress dice. You could choose to not only rely on simply luck or actual skill, but on pushing yourself harder and harder. Alternatively, mental trauma or threat of physical damage could cause you to have to roll one or both dice and face long term disability.

Anyway – in the end, I suspect I died. The curtain fell on my tale before my demise, but sitting in the wreckage of a doctor’s office, surrounded with burning files, watched by baleful red eyes from amongst the shadows… it can’t end well.