Triangle Agency: Character Creation

“Triangle Agency is a tabletop role-playing game and exciting new job opportunity for humans like you.”

Be the change you want to play

I haven’t made any real progress in deciding what to run next. I asked the question here but have not enough feedback to be helpful. So I thought I would take a more practical approach to the problem. Several times over the last year or so, I’ve written up complete character creation posts for various games and systems to give me more of an insight into them, to see how I like them and to get me motivated to run them. You can read some of them here. I have always found these to be useful exercises and usually pretty entertaining for me too. So this will be the first in a series of character creation posts. I will do one for each of the games in the list in my aforementioned Time for a Change post. The first of those is one I am very interested in getting to grips with. I have been reading the rule book for a while and it’s one of the more unique and exciting on the list.

Triangle Agency

Triangle Agency is a game by Caleb Zane Huett and Sean Ireland published by Haunted Table in 2024. Here is what the back cover has to say about it:

Triangle Agency is a tabletop role-playing game and exciting new job opportunity for humans like you.

Investigate supernatural Anomalies, wield tremendous power, and take advantage of our comprehensive life insurance benefits all from the comfort of your favourite table!

This book includes everything necessary for you to experience the chilling horror, wacky comedy, and emotional truth that can only come from working for Reality’s Most Trustworthy Corporation, 333 years running.

Welcome to the first job of the rest of your life!

I think that’s enough to go on for now.

Getting started

The book has more than fifty pages of material introducing the core concepts and rules of the game before it even dips its toes into the cool waters of character creation.

The first step into that stream would barely be considered part of character creation in most games (and I’m not entirely certain it is in this one, but that’s where I’m starting):

Identifying your Region

The book gives you a few options here, including your own hometown, a place you would like to be, a fictional place and Ternion City, the setting presented in the book as though it were a real place and so does not simply get included in the “fictional place” category.

I normally randomise everything in character creation posts but I’m not sure that will be helpful here. I’m going to go for Ternion City, which is, after all the location for the Agency’s primary HQ, a massive skyscraper that is “hard to miss and not included on maps.” In a real campaign, I’m sure this would have been decided upon through conversation with all the players or just by executive decision by the GM (General Manager.)

The same section wants you to determine the level of mundanity/reality of your setting, asking you to determine if a long list of phenomena are real or if they could be considered Anomalies. The list includes Ghosts, Artificial Intelligence and Debt. This is also probably something to be decided as a table or by GM decree.

Your agent’s ARC

The start of this section takes pains to remind you that you shouldn’t have skipped forward to this page. If you did, your agent will begin play with one demerit.

Essentially, your ARC is the set of components that makes up the essence of your agent. Each component is call an ARC piece. The A stands for your Anomaly, the R represents your Reality and the C is for your Competency.

Anomaly

As an agent of the Triangle Agency, you are bonded with one of the very Anomalies you are tasked with hunting down and dealing with. Such people are called Resonants.

There are nine Anomalies to choose from and I would expect the choice to be a hard one. Every one of them is split into three different abilities, each of which sounds like great fun to use in play.

They include:

Whisper: if you have Whisper abilities you can manipulate what people say, express the thoughts of others or silence your own noises
Catalogue: a Catalogue Resonant can create objects, change the properties of objects or even produce a duplicate of themselves
Timepiece: Timepieces can adjust time to suit their needs, help allies to overclock their own abilities and effect a target’s memory

There are several others that are just as compelling but I love the idea of time manipulation powers so that’s the one for me.

This gives my Agent three abilities. Each of these abilities comes with a survey question to help you build your character’s personality. This is a really nice touch and great way to link personality and ability traits.

We’ve Got Time, Q: I know A1: The deep magic
Overclock, Q: I’ll sleep when… A1: I’m tired
Remember When, Q: I’m more likely to ask… A: Where are they going?

Reality

Reality is as it says, really. It’s the regular, everyday shit we all have in our lives, family, relationships, background, etc.

I need to select one of nine Realities. They include:

Caretaker – devoted to a Dependent who they bring everywhere with them
Overbooked – Maintains a job (Vocation) in the mundane world as well as their Agency duties. Finds it hard to maintain Relationships.
Romantic – constantly distracted by the building of complex relationship webs. They fall in love easily and always want to please that person.

With the Timepiece Anomaly, Overbooked seems like a suitable Reality for my Agent.

Overbooked provides you with a Vocation. There is a d4 table for this so I am going to roll on it. I got a 1! That’s “Journalist.” Very Clark Kent.

Every Reality gets a “Reality Trigger.” You get a work phone for one of your Relationships to call you at any time. This is for the GM to fuck with you at the worst possible time. You get a 4 box track called “Something Gives.” Every time you fail to fulfil the requirements of your Vocation or lose the phone you mark a box on the track. If you mark them all, that’s it, you’re done. You have to choose a new Reality.

Every Reality gets a Burnout Release. This is something you can do that allows you to ignore all Burnout, which is great because Burnout reduces the number of successes you score when you roll your dice pool to do stuff. In the case of the Overbooked, the Burnout Release is Threading the Needle. It means you can do anything relating to your Vocation and ignore Burnout.

Burnout is something you accrue as you attempt actions using Qualities that you have no Quality Assurances in. Sometimes you lose QAs and sometimes you just don’t have any to start with. Your Competency determines the level of QA you have in any given Quality so we’ll consider them more in the next section.

We have some Onboarding Questions here in the description of the Overbooked too. Let’s look at them:

What is the most difficult decision you’ve ever made?
- A: When I decided to take the position as an Agent, I knew it would severely impact the time and commitment I could give to my Vocation as a journalist. Even though I now know I was choosing between becoming an Agent and death, I sometimes regret my decision.
What terrible thing will happen if you give up your responsibilities?
- A: No-one can report the news with the same degree of integrity as I can. The world will lose a ruthless truth-teller.
How do you celebrate victories?
- A: I don’t. There’s no time for celebration. It’s just on to the next story or the next Anomaly.

I feel like I really learned a lot about this character in answering those questions. Very cool.

Finally, as part of my Reality, there’s the Relationship Matrix. You get three Relationships which you must identify by answering the questions provided.

Who is your other boss?
- My editor, Sybill McPartland
Who cares the most about your health?
- Mum
Who are you in charge of?
- My rich kid intern, Hunter

I need to identify one of them as my closest Relationship. That will be my editor, Sybill. She gets 6 Connection. Mum and Hunter get 3 each.

If there were a full table of players for this, I would get three of them to portray each of my Relationships whenever a scene with them came up. These players would be chosen here. As it is, I will have to skip that step.

Competency

The final ARC piece is Competency. The book describes it as the most important aspect of your ARC (although, I have never before met a more unreliable narrator in an RPG book as the one in this section of Triangle Agency, so, you know, take it all with a pinch of salt.) Essentially, this is your role in the agency. It describes your responsibilities, code of conduct and equipment.

The available Competencies include:

R&D – The creatives who see what people really want and make it for them while also figuring out the universe’s enigmas
Gravedigger – These are the agents who are taking care of things no-one else wants to face in places they don’t want to be
Hotline – An ear to listen, a guide and a customer service professional

With this character, I think I’m going to go for Hotline.

Here’s what the Hotline gets me:

Prime Directive – Never say, “unfortunately.” If I deliver bad news to someone, I get a demerit (demerits are used to negatively affect your standing in the Agency, while commendations have the opposite effect.)

Sanctioned Behaviours – I’ll get one commendation if I

Help someone unburden themselves
Take the blame for something I didn’t do
Connect someone to an unexpected fate

If I do all of these on a single mission, I’ll get three extra commendations!

Initial Requisition – Hold Music, Vol. 1
A fantastical tape player the bland music of which has the power to transport the agents to a safe waiting room for up to an hour!

Self-Assessment – I have to answer the three questions presented to determine the increases I will get to particular Quality Assurances.

A customer has a problem I have been unable to fix in my own life. I…
- Share the approaches that have failed, to save them time (+3 Empathy)
A customer has a broken product and a convincing story. I…
- Pull every string necessary to get their refund (+3 Persistence)
A customer’s call disconnected. I…
- Call them back and submit an error report to IT (+3 to Professionalism)

Signature quote – “Your call is important to us. Your time is important to us. Everything you do, think, and are is important to us.” I think my Agent really takes this to heart.

Onboarding Questionnaire

The final part of character creation that I will be dealing with today. There are several more pages dealing with Competencies in detail, Requisitions, Work/Life Balance, etc. but the book insists that you leave this section until after your first mission.

The Questionnaire is a set of nine questions, the answers to which you should expect to be shared with the rest of your Field Team.

How did you come in contact with your Anomaly?

I was TAPped for fieldwork though the Triangle Academy Program. I was approached by another field agent who must have seen some potential in me. Once I had completed the program, I was left in a glass cell with an Anomaly that looked like an old egg-timer that kept spinning in the air until it fused with my body.

How did the Agency find you?

I found the Agency through a case I was reporting on. It was about the disappearance of a circle of trees in Trinity Park. When I went there to investigate, I discovered several field agents who were impressed with my professionalism and brought me on board.

What is your Annual Salary?

$80,000

What do you look like?

I’m a skinny, white guy who wears a lot of brown and beige coloured corduroy and polyester. I have thick rimmed glasses, brown hair and brown eyes. I look like I’m from the seventies.

Do your powers have a unique visual manifestation?

I sometimes leave little piles of sand behind after using my powers.

How do you take your coffee?

Black

Who among your Relationships is your primary contact, and why?

My editor, Sybill, because she would be the first one to miss me.

What do you bring to the table in a collaborative work environment?

I am a dogged investigator. When I am given a task, I will see it through to the end.

Finally, please list all prior work experience and level of familiarity with Adobe, Excel and the Google suite.

As a journalist, I have ten years experience working with all aspects of adobe software and most of the Google suite although I rarely use Excel for anything other than lists of things. Don’t ask me about formulas.

Two last things, I gave him the pronouns, he/him and the name Mark Dent for some reason.

Here’s the first page of the form fillable character sheet for Mark Dent:

Conclusion

This was a fairly involved process but one that got me thinking quite deeply about the type of person this Agent is and not just the type of character he is, if you see the distinction. I really liked doing it actually. I loved reading about the various Anomalies, in particular. If I was actually about to be a player in a game of Triangle Agency, I’d be eager to get to use them too!
I feel like I learned a lot about how the game would be played as well. So, mission accomplished in that respect.

First Anniversary Blog Post: The Packing Game

A well-packed bag can mean my day is more comfortable and enjoyable. And, let’s be honest, cuter.

This is the second in a short series of blog posts by other authors to celebrate the dice pool dot com’s first anniversary. You can find the first one here: Crying at the Table.

Turning habits into games

My wife, H, has always taken a lot of time and care about packing her bag for a trip. She will start planning days or weeks in advance. As someone who habitually just chucks a few more-or-less random pieces of clothing into a bag five minutes before leaving, it fascinates me how she takes the time to draw out each of the items of clothing in her sketch book and uses that as the basis of her eventual pack. It shows a level of care and attention to detail that I think most of us would genuinely like to possess.

But it doesn’t end there, because at the end of every trip, she will mull over the decisions she made regarding each item. Was it necessary? Did it get worn or used? Was it redundant? Does it deserve to travel next time? You can see the foundation of a game right there. In this special guest post, she introduces the actual solo journaling game she’s making of this habit, the Packing Game.

Introducing the Packing Game

By H.

Is it all just a game?

Somehow packing has always seemed like a game or puzzle to me. It’s nice when things just “click” into place. Having just the right items for your trip, and getting to wear every item you pack really feels like a win. And, if you have access to laundry and clothes that dry quick you get to carry less on your back. Coming home with mostly clean laundry? Ronan knows I will say “it’s a coup!”

Why The Packing Game?

I don’t feel ready for a trip of any length until I’ve done my packing list. I usually draw them. To manage travel anxiety, drawing my packing list gives me time to consider what I would bring, and how I would meet any eventuality.

After my trip, I would mark off what I didn’t wear, and consider it for my next trip. I’d reflect on that item that went unworn, and get an idea of what was an aspirational item, and what was really useful. Slowly, I began to have some faves that made it onto every trip. True “MVPs” in my wardrobe. Like a soft kimono-cut top that works for lounging or dinner over a dress. That is a truly ‘magic item’ because I found out how versatile it was in many situations.

I used to lug around a spinner (rolling bag), and packing too much for trips. Sometimes I used a small Samsonite C-LITE Spinner (4 wheels) 75 cm, 94 L (!). I’d also have a backpack with one outfit and extra pair of unders and socks, in case my bag went missing. So there was a lot going on.

That spinner was heavy. One day, lugging the bag down 3 flights of stairs in Cologne, I injured myself. It took months (Ronan said years) to recover from costochondritis. So that has motivated me to want to carry less. Even if the bag is on rollers, sometimes you have to lift and carry it.

But I did it again, for a trip to Taiwan last year, I brought a large variety of clothes. We had hot weather on the coast, and cool mountain weather in Ali Shan, and we were hopping all over the place. With more stuff, it was more to pack and look after. We did get to do laundry, both machine wash and hand wash. So we were reusing. Still, I feel I overpacked.

I wanted to carry less, but I didn’t want to give up the options and flexibility for what to wear.

I came across the One Bag world and found out that the duration of your stay doesn’t need to impact your bag size. The famous Indefinite Backpack Travel guy uses one “classic” bag all year round. He does just fine with 6 t-shirts, 1 pair of shorts, 1 pair of trousers, swimming togs, and one pair of shoes… A true minimalist.

Having said that, if you think you can walk into any place in a t-shirt and technical trousers and feel comfortable, this entire game might actually sound ridiculous. (It is!)

For me, I need colour and pattern. I need layer-able clothing to deal with temperature changes. The right clothes make it so I adapt to any weather or surprise that comes up. Leaving room in my bag also means I can pick up things along the way.

A well-packed bag can mean my day is more comfortable and enjoyable. And, let’s be honest, cuter.

So that is where I had the idea to hone my skills by creating this packing game.

Making a game is hard

I’ve had ideas for games before. A Cthulhu Dark game with nefarious plant-based cosmic entities where I’d serve dinners to the players, based on the session. I did one session and I genuinely didn’t know what I was doing. It was mood board at best.

Creating this game helped me understand the complexity of setting up rules and scenarios. And I definitely appreciate the work my friends do to create entire worlds with some rules and random tables.

A GAME ABOUT ONE-BAGGING IT

People are drawn to the idea of one bagging because it means:

Easier to manoeuvre
Easier to stow
Less stuff to worry about
Lower fees
No checked in luggage

At the start, they think they are going to haul a 45L+ backpack for a 1 week city break. They are completely new to playing “The Packing Game.” They bring things “just in case” and little bags of “what ifs.”

As people get more experienced, they tend to size down. You can spot the Master Packers, who use sub 30L bags, closer to 20L.

They favour light weight clothing that washes easily and dries quickly. They favour items that are versatile and resilient. So they pack smaller. With a lighter, smaller bag, they are more mobile, and have few items to look after.

HOW IT WORKS

Here’s how this cosy game about one-bagging it works.

Caveat: this hasn’t been play-tested yet. I’m still writing and testing the game. The idea is to make it a zine, or a PDF, with templates to follow in a blank A5 book. The Travel Journal is where you will keep track of what you pack and wear. And the inevitable fates of the items; to level them up to mythic status or be crossed off the list. Remember that one main object of the game is get as many wears for as many items of clothing as you can to level them up.

What you need to play

A pencil and eraser
An A5 notebook for your packing lists
Dice: All the dice
A perverse love of packing
A real or imaginary closet

The Travel Journal

As you play, you’ll keep notes in the travel journal.

Two page spread -Essentials and extras and the slots they take up. 4 step guide to packing your bag. On the second page - illustrating your bag slots and the items in them. — Two page spread -Essentials and extras and the slots they take up. 4 step guide to packing your bag. On the second page – illustrating your bag slots and the items in them.

You’ll work in a box for each day, to note the weather, with AM and PM outfit, and anything packed in a day bag (as needed.)

You should include a sketch of the combo or a short description, making sure to note styling. ⭐ Mark any day bag items (since these are at risk of being lost.) You can list the items. Write in pencil or erasable pen so you can update effects on them.

If you’re not used to drawing your list, the game includes tips on drawing your clothes.

A step by step guide showing how to draw your clothing items.

Playing modes

The game unfolds in daily turns, with two play styles:

Planning Mode – plan your trip in advance, maximise rewears, and level up “magic items”
Spontaneous Mode – each morning, roll to discover the day’s weather and events

Starting out

On your character sheet, you will note the settings for your game.

The duration of the trip
Where you will go and when
The size of bag you need to carry

This sets the scene for your adventure and helps you decide what to pack. For example you can check the local season and note the typical temperature ranges and weather. Daily weather you roll for will be relative to the usual seasonal climate for that time of year.

If you’re in Planning Mode, you can just pick the location, time of year, duration and daily activities.

If you’re playing Spontaneous Mode, you write down six places you’d love to go.

Roll a d6 to let fate choose your Destination
Roll for climate and time of year, by rolling a d12 for the month

Two-page spread showing a destination table, climate/season tables and bag size tables

The classic “one bag” in this game is 25-30 L. Here are some variations. You can choose your difficulty level.

Micro – 0.5 (half bag) sub 20 L.
Classic – 1.0 (classic one bag travel) sub 30 L.
Max – 1.5 bag (this might be a carry on plus personal item) sub 45 L in two bags. Max bag size 30 L.

The bag size you choose is more to do with your own convenience, comfort and style.

Packing your bag

The journal includes a page where you can mark down your item list. This includes traits like “quick wash” and “spill hiding pattern” which will help when you meet the Travellers’ Fates each day. You also mark clothing statuses, like (D) for dirty.

You mark each time you wear an item, and 5 wears equals one level. This will help you discover magic items with excellent versatility.

Two page spread covering Magic Items and their rarities with versatility and combos covered on the next page. — Two page spread covering Mageic Items and their rarities with versatility and combos covered on the next page.

The packed bag is visualised as a grid of “bag slots” where one litre equals one bag slot. You can see and image of this under the Travel Journal section above. Caveat: Real life bags will indicate the volume in litres, but also include mesh exterior pockets. So your real life bag volume may not match the label.

To make it simpler, the game includes rules for estimating the size of items, for example jeans may take up 2 slots, whereas a tank top may take up 1/2 a slot. You can use your judgment, but when in doubt, you can fold up an item and see how big it is compared to a 1 litre carton.

In your bag slots starting out you can pack:

Your toiletries and under garments
A row with your “travel day” combo, including a top, mid-layer, bottom, shoes, outwear, and accessories.
And one “base” combo with a top, mid-layer, and a bottom.

Each day, you will have to make up a new combo to wear, based on the activities you roll for the day (AM) and evening (PM).

If you don’t have the right clothes, you can add or swap items from your “Magic Closet.” This might be something you own, or something you find online for the sake of the game. Alternatively, you can shop for new items on the trip, but then you’ll give up activity time.

Embarking on the journey

The play starts on Travel Day, with the option to roll for a PM activity. This gets you additional wears if you change clothes from your bag before getting to the hotel. Be wary, everything you have on you is subject to traveller’s fates.

If you do an activity, you will meet your first Travellers Fate on Travel Day.

Alternatively you can just wake up on Day 2, having arrived at your destination late at night. It’s up to you!

Good morning!

Roll for the weather
AM Day activity and meal
PM Dinner activity and meal

This means you’re doing 2 big things a day. When we travel, we tend to do one big thing a day, so adapt as you need to.

Managing inventory

Wearing what you already have will increase the number of wears, and level up items faster. But remember, there’s a risk you won’t have a unique combo if you repeat exactly the same items.

Tip: you can get a unique look by restyling. Using the same button down, you can get several unique looks by leaving it opened, or buttoned up, or tucked in/out/french.

If you have enough items and accessories, you can jump to meet your Traveler’s Fate.

If you didn’t have the right clothes packed or cleaned you need to acquire new items.

you can “draw from your closet”
- draw one item from your MAGIC closet. So even if it’s not in your closet at home, you can grab something from your Pinterest or screenshots.
alternatively you can swap up to 2 items
- The swap mechanic encourages you to find items that have more versatility.
or you can “shop” but it eats up an activity

Every day you can bring a small tote or backpack with accessories or even a shirt. Be warned: the bag could get lost due to Traveler’s Fates.

THE TRAVELLER’S FATE

After you’ve set your outfits and packed your day-pack, the day is set in motion. You mark down your wears in your inventory. Then its time to go about your imaginary day.

Unless one of your activities or meal is at your accommodation, you have to assume you only have the items you brought with you on the day.

Now you must roll on the Traveller’s Fate table to find out what happened that day. The table is packed with typical traveller trials, diversions, and mishaps.

Mark effects on clothes by putting a cross through the item, or maybe a “D” for dirty.

Use items and traits to offset Traveler’s Fates

If you have an item to mitigate a particular situation, then you can avoid the negative effects from a Traveller’s Fate.
Examples:

If you have a handkerchief, you can say you tucked it into your collar before you ate, avoiding any spills. Get the achievement: Bib Gourmand
Alternatively maybe you wore a stain-masking pattern to disguise your spaghetti mishap
If you packed a UV jacket you could avoid the effects of forgetting sun protection! If you left your skin exposed, you could get the “Blister in the Sun” effect and have to stay in the next morning and nurse that burn

Finishing your day

At the end of each day, run through this Checklist:

Mark any wears on the item list
If an item has 5 wears, it levels up
Strike off any swapped out items, and “inherit” the wear points (e.g. if you cross off a level 3 item, add 3 levels to the new item)
Add any new items to your inventory. Mark the traits (quick dry, versatile, etc) and the number of slots it takes up. Mark as level 1 unless it was swapped and inherits levels
Add effects, such as dirty as (D) or stained (S). Cross items off as needed
Before you finish your day, you can do a load of laundry. Mark laundry day (3) as a circled number on each item
Unless it has the “quick dry” feature, any washed item is not available the next day. E.g. wash on day (3) cannot be used on Day 4

So make sure you have something to wear the next day!

When you wake up, you start a new day.

Heading home

On your last day you can rewear your travel outfit, or set a new travel outfit.

And then you roll your final Traveller’s Fate. Re-roll if you got a duplicate fate.

SCORING

Add up the total levels of all items on the trip. This is your base score.

5 wears is 1 level. 1 level is 1 point.

An item with 43 wears would be Level 8 and three fifths.
Round up or down on levels. Level 8 and three fifths would be Level 9 (or 9 points.) 8 and two fifths would remain level 8.

Count how many clothing items remain on your list that have not been crossed off. If you have less than 12 items, regardless of length of trip, excluding extras and accessories, you win bonus points equal to the length of your trip.

Count any ZERO level items, meaning unworn. Subtract that from your score. Each Zero item removes 1 level.

Dirty clothes. Subtract a point for every item marked with a D.

How many empty slots have you got left? Add bonus points for each empty slot.

If two or more slots remain empty, pick from the Souvenir table.

Check the Achievements table and make sure you pick up badges for your profile. For example “Accidental Tourist” if your clothing takes damage two days in a row.

Congratulations you have completed the Packing Game!

References

Survey

This game is still in development, dear reader, so H would love to get some feedback. Could you answer these questions?

Would you be interested in playing this game?
What format would you like to see it produced in? (PDF, zine etc.)
Would you be interested in extras like themed journals and sketchbooks?

Troika! Whalgravaak’s Warehouse Review

Here’s the story: hundreds of years ago, the city’s premier logistics wizard, Whalgravaak, abandoned his warehouse, having shredded the Manual of Operations for his Sphere Pool (a mechanism used to import and export goods across the cosmos) so that his rivals could never figure it out.

One-shot fun-shot to campaign of terror

You know what it’s like, dear reader: you want to introduce some noobs to RPGs or just to your group of players, you want to make a good impression but you don’t want to scare them off by plunging them into a multi-session campaign with a complicated, crunchy system. So you pick up a location-based adventure, thinking you can just use a small portion of it, just what you need, just enough for one session, one single shot. But, after that session, the curiosity gets the better of you all. That was a weird, but enjoyable experience, you tell each-other. I bet we could have fun exploring the rest of that odd locale, you tell the players, why not have some more sessions and see how it goes? So you do that. And then the bloodbath begins.

Whalgravaak’s Warehouse

SPOLIERS BELOW! If you are interested in being a player in Whalgravaak’s Warehouse, turn back now!

Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is a Location based adventure by Andrew Walter for Troika! The design is by Shuyi Zhang. It came out in 2023 and was the first of the Melsonian Arts Council’s 1:5, an ongoing series of location-based adventures for Troika! There are a couple more available now and another out very soon. You can find them all here. My somewhat rotating group of Tables and Tales members just had our last session in Whalgravaak’s Warehouse on Monday night, after spending a total of eight sessions there.

Since then, the strange nature of the warehouse, staffed by giants and stocked with oddities, has only grown stranger, and more dangerous. It houses a handful of physics defying, Tardis-like chambers, not least of which is the terrifying Deep Storage, a swirling mass containing several pocket dimensions and a wraith-like being who wants nothing more than to consume intruders. At least one cult has taken up residence, and they are often mutated into horrific Chaotic Spawnlets by the effects of the radiation still spilling from the Sphere Pool. The warehouse is sandwiched by a vast desert of dust occupying the roof, which is peopled by the descendants of Whalgravaak’s former employees and, underneath, the tunnels of a pack of unpredictable Worm-headed Hounds.

But entrance has been forbidden by the Autarch for centuries and, even if you were foolhardy enough to ignore a diktat like that, you would still need to be brave enough to face the unknown dangers within.

The Hook and the Party

The book suggests a few potential hooks for your PCs. Since my game started off as a one-shot, with brand new characters and no existing campaign to work it into, I went for one that seemed like the object might be achieved in one session. They, along with many other groups of mercenaries were contracted to return with the head of a Cacogen, known only as the Opportunist, to their patron, an Exultant of the Autarch’s court. But we dealt with that in flashback as they all sat in the weed-choked yard of the warehouse, dotted now with small encampments of adventurers and brigands all gathering their courage to gain entry. The PCs’ band consisted of a Monkey Monger (and monkeys), a Gremlin Catcher (and dog), a Wizard Hunter and a Landsknecht. They were, to put it bluntly, a motley crew.

That first session was all fun and games. Every encounter, except for the last one with the Cacogen, was resolved peacefully. This happened mainly due to the rolls I made on the Mien table for each encounter. The worm-headed Hounds they encountered wanted to play with the Monkey Mongers monkeys, they did not want to eat them. The Flat Serviceman was happy to follow the party around and clean up after them. The Segmented Crippler in the Pigeonholery, didn’t want to wake up, so they skipped that one entirely. This is a pretty standard mechanic in Troika but I think it gave the players a false sense of security. The session ended with this motley crew finding and defeating the Opportunist quite handily. And, at that point, we thought that would be it.

But a few months later we decided to continue with their explorations of the warehouse. Obviously, their original motivation to explore was gone. They had achieved their objective, but the players were all good sports. They decided between them that the motivation was purely one of curiosity and greed. They had spotted, through a bubble like window in one of the rooms they had traversed, a vast and terrifying pool of chaos and wonder in a room far too big to exist within the confines of the building. This was enough for them. Essentially, they went in search of adventure. Although, through the sessions that followed, I did introduce the idea that they might want to find that cult I mentioned earlier and that they should seek out the incredibly valuable Tome of the Sable Fields that was reported to be stored in the warehouse, somewhere. This gave them a little direction when I thought they might need it, but, honestly, I think my players just wanted to see what new wonder/horror the dungeon had in store in the next room.

The Dungeoncrawl

It was only from this point that I started to really treat this adventure like the dungeoncrawl it is very much meant to be. The book does a good job of introducing the concepts of tracking resources like lantern oil and provisions as the party explores. It also explains the concept of exploration turns and their effect on the game, i.e. the distance you can travel in that time, the amount of lantern oil you use per turn, and the likelihood of running into an encounter. I followed all these rules to the letter and they made for some interesting moments in the game. But, to be frank, the weirdness of the setting is the real draw here, not fiddling with rations and light levels. Also, few of the characters lived long enough for starvation or oil-skins to become a problem.

It also has rules for dealing with the spatially distorted, impossibly large areas within the warehouse. It suggests that the players should make Luck or Skill checks to avoid getting lost in these areas, but, in all honesty, I didn’t really require that sort of thing.

Mapping is also a part of the dungeon crawl format and this adventure does want the party to attempt to map the space for themselves. The thing is, when some rooms appear to be a kilometre wide and the next one is spatially normal, that map becomes effectively impossible for them to draw accurately after a relatively short period of time. Eventually, I gave up and just shared the one from the book with the players, trusting their ability to separate player knowledge and character knowledge. My advice, if you are doing this, try get your hands on the PDF version, since the one in the physical book stretches across two pages and the crease obscures part of it.

In fact, the adventure has four maps:

the warehouse floorpan, using 10ft squares to denote distance
a hex crawl for the desert on the roof, replete with points of interest
a map of the Worm-headed Hound tunnels beneath the warehouse, superimposed over the warehouse plan
a largely vibes-based map of Deep Storage

These are all great but usefulness will vary. In our game, the party spent several sessions trapped in Deep Storage but took one look at the desert and noped right out of there. This seems like a good point to note how good all the artwork is in this. There are plenty of colour and black and white illustrations but they leave me wanting even more!

Warehouse Workers and other Beasties

A warehouse is a dangerous place to work, especially when the correct safety protocols are not observed. It doesn’t help at all when you are trespassers and several of the residents are large enough to crush you with a single blow.

The crimson giant, Paude, the pipe-smoking, bearded giant, Arbuthnot and the blue, jelly giant, Gamtomerian. — The giants are not what you might expect.

The giants are the main NPCs of the adventure and Whalgravaak’s only remaining employees. Each one is fabulously interesting, diverse and well-drawn. They have their own motivations and desires. I was gratified that the party managed to encounter all of them during the eight sessions we played. In fact, one player had two different characters killed by two different giants. I will point out that it is entirely possible to avoid violence when dealing with the giants, it’s just that, sometimes, the Monkey Monger on the team has monkeys who decide to fuck with them and one thing leads to another.

The wraith-like Gulf Man Roamer from the swirling vortex of Deep Storage is a potentially lethal foe who has a chance to show up each time the party moves through that already dangerous room. If it captures you in its bag, it’s going to spirit you away to eat you in its extra-dimensional lair.

No warehouse is complete without forklifts. Whalgravaak’s forklifts are humanoid constructs with the face of the wizard himself. They treat intruders like stock, and will attempt to whack them and pack them. They hit very very hard.

Its a black and white dog, with a neck like an earthworm — When you read the words, Worm-headed Hound, is this what you imagined?

There are also a bunch of random encounters, including the Worm-headed Hounds I mentioned before, desert nomads from the roof, and Bandits/Burglars/Bastards. These only turn up on the roll of a 1 on a 1d6 for each turn the party travels. It didn’t occur very often in my game. The Roof and the tunnels have their own random encounter tables as well, but I never used them as the party never spent any appreciable time there.

This is just a selection of the possible encounters you can have in this setting. I haven’t even mentioned the tiny army guys, the sentient crane parts, the Onion God or the Mulled Dead.

The Rooms

I have hinted at rooms that defy physics and rooms with pocket dimensions, and those are usually the big-ticket locations that contain some of the greatest set-pieces in the adventure. Deep Storage alone evoked some of the most inventive use of skills and spells and a great degree of fear and tension from the PCs. It killed one of them (two if you count the Rhinoman eaten by the Gulf Man Roamer.) The Roof could act as an entire short hex-crawl campaign and the Sphere Pool has some truly memorable and dangerous elements to it.

However, many of the other rooms have weird and wonderful contents as well. Some of them, the party will glance at and move on, while others will capture their imaginations and encourage them to interact. I never really knew which reaction I was going to get from them, actually. The room full of melting rope? They had to spend an hour trying to figure out how to set it on fire, the eternal battle between tiny armies playing out across a battlefield seemingly larger than the whole warehouse? Just popped their heads in and left with some captured little men.

Some of the rooms were relatively mundane warehouse style rooms with shelves and containers. The book has tables in the back to help you identify the state those rooms are in and the contents of the containers, which is useful.

One of my over-riding impressions by the end of our game, was that in some ways, the great variety of bonkers content in the rooms served to detract from any unifying theme. There were some elements that went together, such as the warehouse’s disdain for traditional dimensions. If my PCs had explored the Roof or even encountered any of the nomads who dwelt there, they might have found a distinction between those descendants of the ancient striking workers and the giants who continued to obsessively do their jobs even long after their employer had passed on. But, none of that is to say that the rooms weren’t endlessly fun and inventive.

A Note on Lethality

I recently wrote a post sharing some of the obituaries of the characters who met their ends in Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. You can check it out here. There are only three of them in that post. A few months previous to that, I wrote this post, which contained the obituaries of two more. The mathematicians amongst you will have summed those already. That’s five. In the final session, we lost another one. That makes six. That was three character deaths each for two particularly unfortunate/reckless players. Warehouse work is dangerous. Only one of the original party survived to the end. You have been warned.

Conclusions

The covers of the two different versions of Troika! that I own. — Numinous or otherwise, its the same game.

There is so much to recommend in this adventure. It is endlessly entertaining, challenging and bonkers. It has such a variety of locations and such a diversity of encounters that you would need to work hard to get bored in Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. I think it works so well to show off Troika! as a system, too. The problems it asks the PCs to solve and the encounters they have to deal with utilise things like the Luck check really well and encourage players to invent their own unique Advanced Skills. But if they get into fights, especially with the incredibly random nature of Troika! initiative, there is a very high chance they are going to come out of it dead. There are a few opportunities for insta-kills throughout the warehouse too. I can’t overstate exactly how lethal this adventure is. Luckily, my players leaned into that, even when they were creating new characters to join in the same fight the original one died in (they got very quick at creating characters.)

I think it’s also flexible enough for many GMs to easily take it or part of it and fit it easily into their own ongoing Troika! campaign. As I said at the start, our game started as a one-shot and it could have ended there. But we were able to easily adapt it into a short campaign of its own.

Dear reader, let me know if you have played Whalgravaak’s Warehouse or if you would like to! I’d love to know your views on it.

DCC’s The Grinding Keep Review

At one stage, the Elf cast a Magic Missile and it caused a rain of frogs on the entire party and all their enemies, almost killing several on both sides!

DCC Day

I kind of knew it was DCC Day on the 19th of July. It had been advertised to me enough times on Instagram after all. But that was not why I had scheduled a DCC one-shot on the 20th of July. That just happened to be the best day for most of my players. As serendipity would have it, the module I planned to run was the Grinding Keep, an adventure designed by Marc Bruner, which appeared in the Adventure Pack for DCC Day 2024 along with the XCC RPG adventure, Tucson Death Storm!

Hook

I had introduced the hook for this adventure in our recent run of Sailors on the Starless Sea. The PCs discovered a map to a keep and a note hidden in the lining of a cloak in amongst the charnel remains of many butchered humanoids in that adventure’s tower. The note was from the patron of the poor unfortunate who lost their cloak and it indicated that their patron would pay 1000 gp for the safe return to them of a magical lantern. As budding adventurers, most of whom barely had two groats to rub together, this seemed to be motivation enough.

Each player had only one surviving character from the 0-level funnel and one of them was not able to make it to this latest game so I supplemented the four characters who advanced from 0-level to level 1 with a couple of pre-gens kindly provided for the Grinding Keep by Goodman Games themselves.

Big Party

So the party was made up of six level 1 PCs, a Warrior, a Wizard, a Cleric, a Dwarf, an Elf and a Halfling. Two of the players played two PCs each and two of them played one PC each. All of their abilities proved useful. I would say a varied party is very beneficial for this module. On the other hand, if I had to do it again, I probably would have left the players with one PC each even though the adventure calls for 4 to 6 level 1 PCs. They all survived easily enough, although there were a couple of close calls.

Starting the Adventure

SPOILERS! – If you are a player who might want to play this module, stop reading now!

To begin, I plonked them right at the door to the keep as the text suggests. The module wants you to do this. It is designed to be a one-shot by the gods, and it will be! No faffing around in town, shopping or gathering rumours. Just get them in there as quick as you can. I did have to utilise the handy, and essentially invulnerable Leaf Elemental that waits on the grounds of the estate for anyone foolish enough to hold up the proceedings of your one-shot by searching for herbs amongst the overgrown gardens which seem to be under the influence of all four seasons at once. The seasons are a recurring theme and I was gratified to note that the players realised this almost immediately.

Anyway, once they had been chased inside the keep, they were confronted by something that could only have been a magical effect that transformed the interior from a ruin to an immaculately decorated and lit hall. They were greeted by the white robed Host and eventually waited on at dinner by his veiled servants. All of this set up was important. It presented clues to the nature of the keep to the PCs and let their imaginations run with them. Enough strangenesses occur during dinner and upon their investigation of the ground floor of the keep that they should be suspicious. Indeed, before they had even left the dining room, one of my players joked, “the house is a mimic!” He didn’t know how spot on he was…

Of course, the keep is, in fact, an other planar entity who comes to the world to feed, in disguise. The PCs had seen windows and chimneys on the outside but could find no sign of them on the inside. The couldn’t get through any doors that the Host didn’t want them to enter, etc, etc. Clearly, there is enough evidence to allow your players to uncover the truth before things ever really get interesting.

One regret I have is how much time I allowed them to devote to this whole section before Event One occurs. They spent a lot of time searching, theorising, investigating, and it ate into the more adventuresome elements in the latter stages of the module. My advice would be to get them into the Guest Quarters and asleep as quickly as possible. The adventure does not provide much in the way of motivation for the characters to do this, however, so be prepared to improvise.

Event One

Event One is triggered when they wake up after a nights’ sleep in the keep. I was lucky enough that the players wanted to rest and one of them was rendered magically asleep, but without that, it would have been a struggle to get them to wait until the next morning. I probably would have triggered Event One early, if that had been a problem.

What “Event One” means is that the keep is waking up. It will soon be ready to consume a fresh meal of adventurers.

Mechanically, what it means is that every time they open a door, they will be confronted with an intersection of corridors that lead to two randomly determined rooms in the keep. These could be rooms they already visited in the first part of the adventure, or ones that would have been otherwise inaccessible up until this point.

The first room my players visited was the dining room again. This was satisfying as it gave them a chance to kill the Host and his servants from earlier (although, technically they just put the Host to sleep and dragged him around with them for the rest of the adventure.) After that, they encountered one of the three rooms that contained the organs of the keep. They had discovered the journal of a former prisoner/meal in their quarters that gave them hints as to how to deal with each of the organs; eyes, heart and lungs, and that proved useful in the encounter they had with the heart. It is significant that they identified several magic items that act as keys for the doors to these special rooms. But their first instinct was to destroy them if they could. Luckily they forgot about that plan and just kept ‘splorin’ instead. Eventually they managed to overcome the challenge in the heart room and at that point of our session, I realised I was running out of time to get my one-shot done in one shot so I focused things up a bit.

Event Two

The way it was supposed to work was this: every time they left a room, I would start marking that room off as no longer accessible on the random room table, until there was only one possible room left; the one that contained the Alien Intelligence itself. I didn’t have the time for all that. We were approaching the four hour mark at that point and people had work in the morning. So I just told them that, after they destroyed the fiery orb that acted as the keep’s heart, the entire place shook and when they re-opened the door to leave that place, the corridor beyond led to the last room. The players, unknowing, proceeded to their fate. Their fate, as it happened, was to murder the Alien Intelligence of the Grinding Keep, all its Animated Corpses and the Giant Animalcule Swarm that accompanied them. Destroying the heart had pretty much halved the creature’s HP so it wasn’t too difficult. In the end, they fled through the windows in the back of the room, utilising the Feather Fall spell (which two characters had, by coincidence) to safely land in the river at the bottom of the canyon beyond.

Conclusions

Perhaps you can see now why I think I should have made things a little harder for them by reducing their numbers. On the other hand, I am glad they all survived. They had all created and played such interesting and fun characters, even in the context of a game that is not RP-heavy, to say the least.

I was a little disappointed to reach the end of the adventure with so much cool content unexplored. They didn’t find the trap/treasure room where the magic lantern was stored, they didn’t find any of the other organ rooms, which all had really fun mechanics. On the other hand, I felt the adventure was designed to be flexible enough for a Judge to shortcut it exactly the way I did to get them to the end a little quicker, which seemed like good design to me.

This was only the second time any of us had played DCC and the first time with characters of anything other than 0-level. This was a different game to that first experience. PCs used magic and Mighty Deeds at every available opportunity and they got to roll on the crazy magic random tables a lot. At one stage, the Elf cast a Magic Missile and it caused a rain of frogs on the entire party and all their enemies, almost killing several on both sides! This is why we loved DCC. It’s the wonderful and potentially lethal randomness of it and the endless inventiveness of the adventures.

I would recommend the Grinding Keep as a one-shot DCC adventure, as long as you are willing to either cut out bits or extend it to two sessions.

Time for a Change

If you had to choose one, dear reader, which one would it be? If you are one of my potential players, which one would you like to play?

Anniversary Posts

More anniversary guest posts coming soon. In the meantime, have some musings.

Old School Rut?

I’m not sure how it happened but, recently, all I have been playing is OSR, trad and adjacent games. With the exception of Dungeon World, which is about as close to D&D as you can get while also flying the PBTA banner, its been wall-to-wall, dragon games, Borgs and Troikas. And this week? It’s Dragon Age, DCC and maybe some Black Sword Hack or UVG (which is pretty trad in its ruleset to be quite honest.) Am I in a rut or have I just naturally gravitated towards these games? Maybe I have found my niche and I’m occupying it. I don’t think that’s it. I think it has more to do with the ease with which I can roll out one of these games, if I’m the GM, at least. It’s also pretty easy to fall into one of them as a player when you’re familiar with the overall concepts, rulesets and themes. And, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m not enjoying them. But it is time for a change, I think.

Options

So, I have a few options of non-OSR, non-D&D, non-trad games to try out in the near future. My current game of Troika! will be coming to an end next week and Dragon Age probably only has a couple of sessions left in it, for a while. So, some calendar spots are opening up! I’d like to fill them with something completely different.

The Triangle Agency Normal Briefcase Edition

Triangle Agency – I’m reading this at the moment. I have to say, so far, I’m loving the way the game is presented, the really original ideas, the surprisingly bare-bones ruleset and the way it treats the GM (General Manager) as as much of a player as the Agents. It has gotten me excited to play it and I am trying to get potential players excited about it too. The downside is that I feel like I still have a lot to read before I can think about getting it to the table.

Slugblaster – I got this great boxed set for Christmas and have yet to crack the spine of the rulebook in anger. But I have been listening to the excellent My First Dungeon actual play of the game over the last several weeks. It has made me want to try it out despite having little to no understanding of skate culture. I know at least one player who would be very interested in playing so I’m sure I could get a few more. Once again, the difficulty is that I have not even skimmed the rules yet. This is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that I’ve been learning how to play while listening to the podcast.

Blades in the Dark – Although I was a player in a campaign of Blades last year, I still haven’t run it as the GM. I think I would enjoy doing it and it is such a classic, it would be a shame not to put a game of it together. And it is the basis for games like Slugblaster and The Wildsea, which also feature on this list. I have been nicking enough rules from it for my D&D game, also, that I feel confident I would mesh quite well with the ruleset. At least I have read this one cover to cover and played it before, so that’s a big tick in the “pro” column for Blades.

The Wildsea – I wrote about this already last year and still haven’t managed to run it! Essentially, this game imagines a world where the entire surface has been covered in a vast forest and your players are sailors across the canopy, using boats with giant chainsaws attached to sail. Take a look at the last post about it if you want more info. I have rad a lot of this and could probably run it ok, but I am afraid of doing another game where my players are sailors as I am already doing that with Spelljammer and kind of, with UVG.

Deathmatch Island – I also wrote about wanting to play this around this time last year. I having been feeling the urge to scratch the Lost, Severance type itch over the last few months. I watched both of those shows in the last half a year and they have stuck with me a lot. I think Deathmatch Island would be perfect for that. Also, I have read it completely and would be very excited to try out its mechanics. Here’s my post about it from last year.

There are a couple of outsiders as well, Orbital Blues and Apocalypse Keys, both of which I purchased on something of a whim (and a sale.) I’m curious about them but have barely opened either. I know Apocalypse Keys is a PBTA game and that it is beautifully illustrated, but that’s about it. And I know Orbital Blues is a game of sad space cowboys ála Cowboy Bebop and Firefly so that is a big tick in its favour as far as I am concerned.

If you had to choose one, dear reader, which one would it be? If you are one of my potential players, which one would you like to play?

First Anniversary Blogpost: Crying at the Table

Each one of these moments brought tears to my eyes and became a part of the scene itself.

HBD TDP

That’s Happy Birth Day The Dice Pool, in case you’re wondering. Today is the dice pool dot com’s first birthday and I have invited a few friends over to jump in. It’s a pool party and a pot luck. So today, I have something a little different. For the first time ever, I have invited a guest author to the blog. Next week, I’ll have another. I’m hoping this will become a more regular occurrence as the blog grows and changes.

I’ll introduce the guest blogger in a moment but I just wanted to first take the opportunity to thank everyone who has supported this blog in the last year. A few of you have been here since day one and some of you are more recent readers; either way, I appreciate you. If you have only ever read a few words or if you somehow have the patience to peruse every post, you’re a scholar and a gentlebeing, in my book. I am still doing this for me, mainly. If that weren’t the case, I would have packed it in about eleven months ago. I find that, sometimes, when I’m writing for the blog, it focuses my thoughts about certain subjects like in my last post about the Quantum NPC. I refine my opinions while I type, like I did while writing my review of After the Mind the World Again. Doing this has been a challenge but in a good way. Still, it’s nice to feel the love sometimes too.

Now on to today’s special guest blogpost. Tom of the Media Goblin’s Hoard is a great friend and has been a stalwart of my gaming table for the last six years or so. They jumped at the chance to write a special anniversary blogpost for the dice pool dot com and they have chosen a wonderful subject for it, weaving an emotional narrative through retellings of some very memorable gaming moments. I also want to draw your attention to the artwork in this post, all of which was created by the talented and amazing members of our little RPG community, Tables and Tales.

Crying at the Table

by Tom Ball

Every week I will sit around the table with a group of friends, bring out the snacks and drinks, and live out some of the greatest stories I’ve ever heard. It’s in sharing and creating these stories that I feel a most genuine and strong connection with the others around the table, and it grows with each game played. Playing TTRPGs, I feel, has elevated my bond with my friends in a way I previously would not have known. It sounds cheesy but in the moments we play I feel myself step away from my own life and inhabit the life of my characters. Their ambitions, their bonds, their goal on the horizon and their friends and foes, all become real. For an evening we all step out of our lives into the stories of a shared adventure. Like all good things, it eventually comes to an end for the night and we step back into ourselves, the same as before except now with another shared experience together.

There’s a common phrase repeated by players in TTRPGs “never split the party” because we’re all stronger together. Our characters won’t make it to the end without each other no matter what background they come from, what they have done in their past, or even who they are as a person. In the end, they will rely on those closest to them in order to achieve the impossible. I feel this is a good analogy for life itself, I wouldn’t be where I am now without those closest to me and every week I get to see those I hold dear do the most incredible and creative feats.

Throughout the many stories told, there have been cheers of joy where what was thought to be an impossible feat becomes reality, and moments of tension so strong it’s impossible to cut through. Hidden between these are the instances of tender and emotional impacts that shake me to the core and have brought me to tears on multiple occasions. I am quite an emotional person as it is, and in the moments where the story shifts I look around and see everyone else, eyes glistening like a quiet lake on a star-filled night moments before the waters fall over the edge of the eyelid in a wave. We are all there riding that surf together. I’d like to mention below some of these highlights where I have been brought to tears and felt my bond with my friends grow ever stronger still.

A High Elf and his Humans

A High Elf Vermissian Knight, masked, sword by his side. Face unmasked in the top left corner. — Art by Isaac Wilcox @lostpathpublishing

Deep underneath the towering city of Spire is The Heart and an Aelfir, Crowns-Under-Heaven, suited in armour of scavenged trains, steaming and pumping to keep him alive. He was obsessed with the hopes of bringing back the ancient Vermissian transport network and he teamed up with two humans to complete this task. Though he loathed it, it seemed these two were just as close to the brink of insanity as he was. Perhaps they would make handy tools or servants, at least?

The Seeker, an esoteric man who spoke of prophecy in between mad ramblings. Once dead, now back alive dancing between purgatory and the mortal world, his own death now a forever companion, both of them cursed with an intoxicating song sung by The Heart itself beckoning him ever closer.

Riley Rollins, an eccentric person whose pursuit of arcane majesty and wanderlust for the winding deep corridors and depths of The Heart could take them and their companions to the very end, witness the impossible and entangle them with a Queen from another world…

The trio’s companionship was rocky, Crowns-Under-Heaven would expect the other two to act a lot like cannon fodder. Seeker would often vanish into The Gray, abandoning the group. On top of that, Riley had a connection to the Drowned Queen, an ancient and ferocious being hellbent on flooding the depths claiming The Heart as her own domain, becoming ever stronger. The team had a lot of growing to do together.

When the finale came around Riley went to face the Drowned Queen and Seeker went with Crowns-Under-Heaven to reactivate the network. However, he came face to face with his obsession and the truth. The Vermissian Network was doomed to die and fall into ancient myth. In a long forgotten city where the Heart lay just a cave away Crowns was gifted with the Heartseed for his travels, the last source of energy for the doomed network system. This source of wild and limitless power was able to power his armour and by extension himself to a status beyond living. His adventures underground and with his companions had changed his old steam powered heart. He would become an unstoppable force within the cities and tunnels below. travelling the winding depths saving those on the brink of Death and becoming a figure of myth and legend. He looked to his human companion and said his heartfelt goodbyes. Knowing this would be the last time that Crowns-Under-Heaven would lay eyes on his friends.

A Goblin and a Minotaur fall in love

A goblin with big hair and a minotaur seated on a loveseat in a tent under the stars. — Art by @auttieshi (Instagram)

In the early days of her adventures, Vidris Pipp, a bombastic and spontaneous little Goblin, locked eyes for the first time with Birch Burley, a quiet, reserved and dignified Minotaur, and she knew she had fallen in love. The problem? Birch was the daughter of the leader of their town, Undercroft. Worse still, Vidris and her friends discovered that that self-same leader, Bryne Burley, had secrets to hide. He quickly became an adversary in their lives. The hope of a happily ever after between the two was far off. However, after a chance encounter of Vidris falling through the manor’s chimney and landing in Birch’s bedroom, they were able to have a one on one and quickly became close. It did not take long for the Minotaur to find that she shared the same feelings for the Goblin.

From there Birch became a part-time member of the party and ally to the group. However, their love for each other was to be kept secret. Vidris’ mother and grandfather already plotted to revolt against the leader alongside other citizens and Bryne was, at this time, not best pleased with Vidris’ meddling in his town and livelihood.

Months later dangerous secrets, far beyond the leader’s knowledge, of ancient cities were revealed far beneath the town of Undercroft. Birch was there side by side with Vidris as the party delved deep underground to face an ancient wizard that brought death to the world millennia ago. Meanwhile, the town of Undercroft and their new found allies in the peoples of the world around them prepared to face the encroaching wizard’s army of automatons.

Believing this could have been the last time Birch and Vidris might see their parents alive, they approached their parents, hand in hand and revealed their love for each other. Their parents accepted and acknowledged their love. Bryne gave Vidris his blessing and Vidris’s mother and Grandfather buried the hatchet with their leader and pulled them both in for a hug that felt to last a lifetime.

A family brought together

A femme tielfling in her two forms, one blue and aquatic, one red and demonic. — Art by @cheriyuki (Instagram)

Yulla Odasdottir nearly met her death at an incredibly young age when her father and mother wished to escape the forever storm that circled the island of Erlendheim. Believing the storm would destroy the island one day, they fled and were never seen again. Yulla, however, was saved by a mysterious entity from the deep dark depths of the ocean and sent back to the shores of Erlendheim, alongside the wreckage of her family’s boat. Her skin forever changed by this eldritch touch. What was once a rich scarlet topped with little black horns now shone blue, her face glistening with aquamarine scales and a large dorsal fin protruding from her head.

She was accepted by a fisherman and his wife who came across the wreckage and then raised Yulla as their own. Yulla grew up knowing she was not blood bound to her human parents. Her adventure would take place years later and through a series of extraordinary events the party would hear of a portal that lay on the seabed floor. This portal would be able to lead the party to Sigil, the city of doors, where the answers to their mysteries at the time would unravel further.

Once there, Yulla happened to hear the names of her parents. They were alive and were high up in a faction called The Believers of the Source. After a long search she was finally able to lay eyes on them, donned in the robes of The Source. There was a shocked moment of silence and they all slowly stepped forward, all of them in disbelief. Before the family embraced and wept.

Each one of these moments brought tears to my eyes and became a part of the scene itself. If I was crying real tears then my characters certainly were too. I like to think I put my whole heart into my characters and I wear that on my sleeve. I get lost in these stories and love every moment. It’s both a testament to the DMs who bring to life the world and to the players I’m with who build the most believable and real characters. I love being brought to tears by a game and I love sharing that moment with my friends.

I’m so thankful for those I get to share these adventures with.

The Quantum NPC

This works even better through the medium of TTRPGs than TV to be honest, because your imagination simply works around them, never focusing on their details.

Star Trek

I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek the Next Generation lately. I hadn’t seen it in many years, although I watched the whole thing as it came out in the eighties and nineties. I have obviously been watching it with different eyes this time around. I have noticed things in it that I don’t think I could have seen before. I wonder, for instance, about Mr Data. Would he have been such a sympathetic character today, as an AI in humanoid form? I think about how many of the episodes had no action, how many were just talking heads and techno-babble and whether Sci-fi TV shows today could get away with that. I ponder the special effects and make-up and marvel at how well they stand up 35 years later. But I have also been looking at these episodes with TTRPGs in mind. Now, of course, Star Trek has been made into a number of role playing games. I have never played any of them and this post isn’t about them. This post is about the crew of the Enterprise. Not Picard and Riker and Troi and Worf, but the ones who you see occasionally pass the bridge crew on one of the ship’s many lushly carpeted corridors, the ones having their own conversations in the background in Ten Forward, even the ones who so consistently took the con after Wesley Crusher left. They would get names sometimes and every so often, they’d even get lines! There are a couple of those that are recurring characters, such as Ensign McKnight and Robin Lefler. The most iconic of these, Chief O’Brien, went on to enjoy a major role in two Star Trek shows. But when he first appeared on the Enterprise, he was an unnamed bridge officer. Total NPC. He only became someone when the show creators decided he had to be someone.

The Quantum NPC

So this is what I have started doing for crews in my Spelljammer campaign. I think it would work in any game where you have a lot of NPCs that hang around in close proximity to the PCs all the time. So it works particularly well for ship crews.

In the main campaign, the party lost their original crew in the best possible circumstances. The crew, a bunch of spirits who had lost their memories and were not initially aware they were dead at all, finally fulfilled their goals and were able to shuffle off to whichever outer plane would have them. So, the PCs were forced to hire a whole new crew to take care of rigging and swabbing and whatnot. Now, I did not want to spend an entire session where they press-ganged or interviewed eight or nine NPCs that I would then have to name, outline and give voices to. That kind of thing can be fun but I don’t want to spend two full hours at it. Instead I told them that they picked up eight new competent crew members and that we would come up with their characters as and when they were needed.

So this is how that works, you imagine the scene where the PCs are on deck, in the foreground talking about something like how to defeat the weird root creatures that have invaded the ship from some eldritch, otherworldly space. In the background, just like in Star Trek, you have a few crewmembers, maybe they are even in uniform, but they are ill-defined and unremarkable. This works even better through the medium of TTRPGs than TV to be honest, because your imagination simply works around them, never focusing on their details. But then! They need one of the NPCs to be good at something, a specialist, an expert. Or maybe they just need a buddy, someone to talk to, or someone to listen. That’s when the players get to stretch those imagination muscles!

Pulling the NPC Out of Their Quantum State

The NPC existed in theory but not in practice. They were always there as a number, but not as a person, not as a character. Until the players make them up. The GM asks a player who this NPC is, what their name is, their ancestry, their job, what their personality is like. The players generally end up working together to do this but I usually start by asking the player who decided they wanted one of the quantum NPCs to become real for some reason. I ask that particular player the type of character they want in this situation with the understanding that, once they have been defined, they will forever be part of the crew, taking up one of those eight spots. It’s just like Blades in the Dark items. You know how many slots you have to fill when your PC is out on a Score but you don’t define the items until you need them in the narrative. Once you have said you have “A Blade or Two,” though, those blades are filling one of those slots. Same-same but different.

In this manner we got these three NPCs:

Deckhand Dewey – kobold, he/him, spry and wiry and can fit in little places.

Cook – Barry Keoghan (this is the consequence of allowing the players to name NPCs) – orc, he/him, big guy with big arms, beer belly, loves food and loves cooking. His chef hat does not fit very well. Apron always slightly dirty. Has a space rat companion.

Mr Cannon – Halfling he/him – weapon-master.

As you can see some of them got more detailed description than others. Barry Keoghan was described thoroughly partly because of who I asked to describe him and partly because of the moment I asked for his description, i.e. a quiet moment aboard ship where they had some time to talk about provisions and joke about silly Disney movie references. Meanwhile, Mr Cannon was created in the literal heat of battle. But that was ok, because the idea was always to flesh these NPCs out as time went on. We did, for instance, in subsequent sessions, discover that Mr Cannon had a wife waiting for him at home and that Barry Keoghan had some sort of tragic love-affair in his past.

I think, in future I will bring Between the Skies to bear on the Quantum NPCs as they are being birthed by the players, giving them desires, bonuses, hindrances, quirks and all the rest. Time allowing, of course.

The Quantum NPC method has the added advantage of endearing the newly created NPCs to the players from the off. They are, after all, fully their own creations. From the players’ point of view, I believe it was also quite devastating when both Mr Cannon and Deckhand Dewey got breath weaponed into oblivion by a lunar dragon along with the rest of the NPC crew (apart for Barry Keoghan who was in the galley at the time of the attack.) Unforgettable.

Dad-quest

Dad-quest is getting under way tomorrow night. Our resident Giff Fighter-Paladin, Azimuth is rounding up a crew of misfits (the other players with their new characters that I discussed here) and a few more Quantum NPCs and spelljamming out to the Amos Expanse to find his Dad. Can’t wait to see what new crew-members the players come up with this time!

Obituaries

…Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is, by a long way, the most murderous I have ever run. Death truly waits around every turn. It’s really just as well Troika! characters are so easy and quick to create.

Bring out your dead!

In the last several months, since I published Death and Troika! the Tables and Tales RPG community has suffered the losses of many more PCs. Good and bad, greedy and selfless, sci-fi and fantasy. Most of these mortalities have been described or at least touched upon in the two DCC posts here and here. Sailors on the Starless Sea proved to be one of the most lethal modules I have ever run. But it’s a 0-level funnel so of course it was always going to have a high body count. If I am counting correctly, it took eighteen of the 23 PCs that sailed it. But, for a non-funnel adventure, Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is, by a long way, the most murderous I have ever run. Death truly waits around every turn. It’s really just as well Troika! characters are so easy and quick to create.

Nicksen aka Sticky Nicky

An impressionistic depiction of a Rhinoman with a tiny helmet on his head and a small spear in one hand. Red lines on yellow background. The illustration is from Troika! Numinous Edition. — Nothing in the world is Rhinoman-sized.

The character who replaced Tim the Gremlin Catcher lasted just three sessions. Here is his obituary:

The heroes continue to meet their ends in Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. Nicksen, known by his friends and casual acquaintances as Sticky Nicky, came to his end in the swirling maelstrom of Deep Storage. We had little enough time to get to know this intimidating Rhinoman but we did discover that he had been sent to the warehouse by one of Troika’s underworld bosses to track down a band of underlings. Instead he had been captured and almost exsanguinated by Paude, the vampiric red giant. When our other warehouse workers discovered and freed him, he joined them in their explorations and told them of a treasure they could seek out. Sticky Nicky used his formidable strength to help them break into the energy maelstrom of Deep Storage where they met a Gulf Man Roamer, a wraith-like creature. In his efforts to fight off the swirling menace, Sticky Nicky found himself trapped in a sack and whisked away to be eaten alive in the depths of the void by his captor. A moment of silence, please, for Sticky Nicky.

Socrates Honeysuckle

The black ink on white background drawing of an owl perched on a branch. The owl has a smadt, checkered cloak and a sporran-like satchel. The illustration is from the a supplement to the original edition of Troika! — His Excellency, the Prime Minister of Owls.

Borrowick Grimpkin, Wizard Hunter, was replaced quickly by a most august personage who also lasted only three sessions. Here is his obituary:

All Socrates Honeysuckle, Prime Minister of the Owls, had ever wanted was to regain control of the Owl Nation from the Usurper Queen. Shamefully, however, politics is all about who has the biggest pockets these days, and Socrates had been thrown out of Owl Parliament on his ear, with barely a Silver to his rather ostentatious name. He was forced, as a consequence, to assume the unseemly roles of adventurer and treasure seeker in the hopes of striking it lucky with one big score. The Prime Minister had heard of the potential riches stored in the Warehouse of Whalgravaak, the city’s most notorious and dead wizard, so he flew there, heedless of the unknown dangers within. Inside he happened upon his soon to be fellows, Ba’Naana , Puddle and Sticky Nicky (RIP.) Together they succeeded in exploring the strange reaches of the Warehouse. Socrates Honeysuckle had a way with words that succeeded in getting the party out of trouble on several occasions but, in the end, his silver tongue proved useless when he was sucked into the void outside time and space at the bottom of the vortex known as Deep Storage. Despite being the only member of the crew with the ability to fly, his luck ran out and his slight, owlish frame disappeared forever into oblivion. Doff your caps, dear friends, for Socrates Honeysuckle, Prime Minister of Owls.

MHIEE

A red, yellow. and white illustration in a cubist style of a humanoid with oddly shaped limbs and an unbearded face. The illustration is from Troika! Numinous Edition. — There’s something off about this dwarf.

Sticky Nicky’s replacement was a poor lost soul. He survived only two sessions (being generous.) Here is his obituary:

Very little is know about MHIEE. To all intents and purposes, he seems to have popped into existence, whole cloth, in an infinite wardrobe dimension, where he, almost literally, ran into Ba’Naana, Socrates Honeysuckle and Puddle the narcoleptic Sorcerer of the Academy of Doors. They had been exploring the pocket dimensions of Deep Storage and experimenting with the wardrobe’s automatic garment dispensing properties. To their eyes, MHIEE was nothing more than a regular, if somewhat forgetful Dwarf. And he was happy to allow them to labour under that misapprehension throughout their short acquaintance. The fact was, though, that MHIEE was a Derivative Dwarf, carved from the ancient rock by a Dwarven mason. On completion, he was deemed imperfect, flawed, poorly made. So he was abandoned. Only a Dwarf could have seen the flaws, however. To all others, he was the very epitome of Dwarfishness. MHIEE and his new companions had adventures together and while Socrates Honeysuckle’s luck gave up on him in the vortex of Deep Storage, MHIEE’s positively carried him to the exit. Soon afterwards, they encountered the giant, Arbuthnot, warehouse employee and stickler for maintenance. He attacked them when Ba’Naana’s monkeys attempted to steal his master key. But he was soon tricked into falling through the unstable floor above the sunken lair of the Mother of the Worm-Headed Hounds that lived in the tunnels below the warehouse. MHIEE fought bravely, whacking the giant, over and over, but finally, all it took was a single mighty blow to connect. Arbuthnot crushed MHIEE with his enormous fist. Our thoughts and prayers are with his surviving companions, Ba’Naana and Ishmael D’Undifoy.

Warehouse closure

We are nearing the end of the PCs’ time in Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. I have warned them that the next session will be the last. I have also warned them that, like the last session, which claimed the lives of both Socrates Honeysuckle and MHIEE, I reckon there is the potential for at least two more PC deaths. Can Ba’Naana continue to be the only original player character to survive, or will he too succumb to the deadliness of the Warehouse?

Homebrew Heart Landmarks 5

It was the kind of party that took its toll on a number of different organs, the brain being not the least of them.

Two-day Wedding

Dear reader, I returned yesterday from a trip to Cork where I attended the wedding of a dear friend of mine. It involved a great deal of time spent with very old friends in the most convivial of circumstances, accompanied often by a pint of Murphy’s and a lot of reminiscing. I’m still recovering. It was the kind of party that took its toll on a number of different organs, the brain being not the least of them.

But, you know, inspiration is a fickle mistress.

Pub Crawler

Name: Pub Crawler
Domains: Wild, Haven
Tier: 3
Default Stress: d6
Haunts: The Pub Crawler (d12 Mind)

Description:
Vansant Depwy, former Knight of the Lower Docks and Minister of Our Hidden Mistress fled the City Above many years before. Burned by the Ministry and broken by his former companions in the knighthood, he found himself wandering the arteries of the Heart, lamenting his lost companionship and honestly, just gagging for a pint. As always, the Heart provided.

The millipede of enormous proportions that is Pub Crawler came to Vansant when he was most desperate and dribbled ever so delicately into his open mouth as he lay directly in its path. It roused him immediately. The finest ice wines of the High Elves the flowing ichor seemed to him. The next moment a fine brandy from the Home Nations. He could not get enough, despite the dubious origins of the divine liquid. His head swam and he rejoiced. Immediately he hopped aboard the cyclopean insect and continued to ride it forevermore. Along the way he collected what salvage he could to hook the creatures glands up to rubber pipes to facilitate easier imbibing. He built a small structure and started filling casks while welcoming visitors to his little ramshackle hostelry. As time went on, he and the beast attracted the attention of more less-than-discerning travellers desperate for a decent drink so deep as they were in the Heart. Some of the visitors became residents and then publicans in their own right. The pubs stretch now from the great insectile head to its earwiggy tail. Vansant’s, of course, has pride of place between the two many-faceted, ale-gold eyes. Its name is synonymous with the creature itself these days, the Pub Crawler.

Special Rules
They say it’s a mile from one end of the Pub Crawler to the other. A visitor who wants to partake of the healing effects of the Haunt must work their way up from the tail, taking a drink in every pub on the way. In other words, it’s a pub crawl. The booze is not particularly strong at the tail end as the further they get from the mouth, the more they are forced to water it down. So each visitor is forced to make and Endure/Wild roll or take a d6 Mind stress as they begin to commune directly with the Pub Crawler itself. The first roll is Normal difficulty, the second at Risky and the third at Dangerous.

Fallout Tipsy (Minor, Mind) One more? One more. Doing anything but getting another drink is now Risky.

Fallout Well on it (Major, Mind) There is a constant clicking and clacking in your mind. You must now either try to kill the source of it (the Pub Crawler) or try to understand it.

Fallout Pallatic (Critical, Mind) You understand the Pub Crawler and its reason for being. You know why it secretes such delicious and delirious juices. And now that you know, you have no choice but to stay and set up shop yourself. Spread the booze and spread the word.

If you do manage to make it all the way to the magelight illuminated superpub known as the Pub Crawler, Vansant himself will come and serve you the most potent brew of all, purging you of all Mind stress and Fallout and bestowing on the lucky patron an honorary knighthood.