madbaker | Reading

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Episode 2713: Forced Perspective

X marks the spot.

You need to give the PCs a clue to a very specific location, where they will find the Important Thing they need to find. Here are some possibilities:

A musical instrument (or a sword) that hums when near the Thing and gets louder when pointed the right direction or when closer.
A direction finder that uses quantum entanglement to track the location of a paired device which is always an equal distance from the Thing and on the other side of it.
A tattoo that shifts and slithers on the skin, pointing in the correct direction.
Directions are revealed in dreams, in a landscape that partially matches reality, but leaves some spatial relationships ambiguous.
Enchanted boots that walk towards the Thing. Better not lose sight of them!
An augmented reality phone app that overlays location clues onto the streetscape.
A magical guide animal (like a stag, or an owl) that leads the way. But only if treated with respect.
A crystal that refracts starlight into an illuminated map. It rotates with the stars, so you need to read it at the right time.
Giant statues point the way. Except some of them are crumbled and the arms have fallen off, so they need to be reconstructed somehow.

aurilee writes:

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Vast and decaying industrial landscape? I can't quite tell if that's accurate yet, but I think I can call that a half win. An ecumenopolis ruin should still be a lot taller and obviously building like in places I think. And less wet.

Matching the MacGuffin to a silhouette? That sounds like a neat, or at least common, video game action. As a movie action, somewhat less so for some reason? Maybe because while they're both rely on coincidental layouts and points of view, there's nothing to really do or see until the person doing the looking figures something out. Plus, it can't take too long, otherwise it's just pointless screen time. I think perhaps if I was going to set something like this up, I'd have it be a Force-related thing where there's like a magnetic pull towards that location on the surface. And I'd make it obvious that it's not a one-off event by having lots of other crashed and wrecked ships around where the Falcon crashes down. That'd also neatly explain why the ship crashed to begin with!

Anyway, lava-sharks are so not realistic. How can they see through the lava to hunt?

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Episode 2712: The Park Side of the Moon

Crashes are dramatic! Try to have plenty of crashes in your game.

This almost translates into, "Let the PCs have a vehicle."

aurilee writes:

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Aw man, that's going to take forever to fix! And so much duct tape too! Well, the ship was fixed once on the other Peace Moon somehow, it can get fixed again. And there's no cliff that needs to be worried about here as well, so even better.

I wonder if this space-horse rider did something to shoot the Falcon down, or if it's just bad luck. It would be very amusing to find out that a little gun like that could disrupt a spaceship's propulsion system. Or possibly it's related the previous hyperjump situation and the ship is just starting to have problems in general. It was already an old ship in Episode IV, after all. I don't remember seeing anything that describes how Star Wars ships fall apart once there's too much wear and tear, so I suppose it's possible. They all seem to just explode at some point before wear and tear can actually build up. Is Artoo sure that he's got that time juice properly contained?

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Episode 2711: Order Gave Each Thing View

Information is something that can be either extremely difficult to come by, or be essentially free for the taking. In the modern age, and for non-dystopian future science fiction settings, you can pretty much find anything online and download whatever you want. If you want to keep things unknown, you need to come up with reasons why the knowledge wouldn't already be widely spread. It can be top secret, guarded by governments or other institutions, or perhaps lost to civilisation and only recoverable through a perilous expedition.

In historical or fantasy settings, information can be a lot harder to find. Great quests must be made to learn precious trickles of fact. Perhaps only wizened old sages have the knowledge you need, hidden away in dusty tomes of yore. Or it can be magically concealed or erased from people's minds.

Either way, a quest for information can be just as good a goal as a quest for riches.

aurilee writes:

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Oh, well, there we go. One set of coordinates, ready to use. And we're definitely heading there next judging by Chewie's comment. I'll bet the planet's major feature is city ruins. I think we've covered just about every other kind of planet, even with some repeats. Imagine the Resistance having to explore a place like Coruscant that's empty of people or visibly in disrepair? It might even be that industrial mirror place the Falcon accidentally jumped into!

And of course Poe causes the next problem. No surprise there. What is interesting is that Kylo appears to have been entranced by the wall pipes. Is there something on display just out of the panel? Was Kylo trying to use the Force for tracing the protagonists? Is he finally losing his mind and/or has run out of minions to vent his anger at? Who can say!

Transcript

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hrj

Lately I've been thinking about starting a Scrivener file of memoirs. Not necessarily with specific plans to do anything with it, but just to organize some of the writing I've done that I think other people might be interested in.

One thing contributing to these thoughts is my "analyze the Best Related Work" category and looking at published memoirs, but it's not like I think I'm operating at that level.

I pulled up my Dreamwidth tag "personal history and philosophy" and laughed to see that the second most recent post under that tag was a similar rumination where I noted that I'd put together a spreadsheet of links to DW posts that I thought fall in the category of memoir-worthy. Well. So. That will make assembling the Scrivener file easier!

As I noted in that post, I have a lot of posts on writing philosophy and technique in my Alpennia blog that I'd need to identify separately, but that might be of more interest to people than random natterings.

What I don't know is whether that interest actually exists. I mean: *I* think I'm pretty darned good at a turn of phrase and interesting angle on things, but maybe I'm deluded? I'd like to think I write a lot of interesting things in this blog and in the Alpannia blog, but how can I tell unless people have interacted with me about them?

ETA: LOL, and of course, having followed up on that supposed "list of memoir-worthy blog posts" I can't for the life of me figure out where, or under what name, I saved it! Fortunately, I guess I can reconstruct it using the same process.

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Episode 2710: Moonington Crescent

A useful method for giving players clues in roleplaying games is the Three Clue Rule, first expounded by The Alexandrian blog. The idea is that players will miss about 2/3 of all clues. So for everything that you need them to find to continue the adventure, you need to have three different clues that let them proceed. Most importantly: they don't have to find all three clues. Finding and figuring out just one is enough to let them know where to go or what to do next.

Read the essay. It's full of good tips for running games with clues and mysteries. And woe betide if you don't follow its advice.

aurilee writes:

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

It's a good thing Wedge is practically invincible; how else would the GM manage to get the party going where they should? That said, expecting things to be fully examined by the players? It's not obviously related to one of the players, so why would it ever be important?

So will we end up getting to Ajan Kloss next in spite of the nav computer having the route? I note that Wedge didn't actually seem to transmit anything. Or is Phanastacoria the next place that we'll see? The only thing I can think of that the group would need to head back to jungle planet for is to let them know about the back-up Peace Moon and assemble whatever fighters might be available for an attack of some kind. Which wouldn't need an in-person message I would think, but who can say how the writers think.

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Episode 2709: Death on the Tiles

Spying is a risky business. Which makes it perfect as a career or job for PCs!

You can set your whole campaign in the spy genre, with a highly cinematic game based on James Bond, more gritty ones like the Jason Bourne or Impossible Mission films, or even humorous like Kingsman or Austin Powers. Several games are dedicated to the genre, including the venerable James Bond 007 roleplaying game*, Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, and Top Secret, and the more modern Spycraft and Night's Black Agents.

Or you can insert a spying mission into some other campaign to mix it up a bit. Scouting for information can involve spy-like infiltration and action, as can heists or rescues.

* Out of print, but a faithful, inexpensive, and highly recommended retroclone is available on DriveThruRPG: Classified.

aurilee writes:

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Oh. Huh. And here I'd thought we'd have Hux not show up again or get killed by Kylo. Like really, who's this random admiral? With how nonsensical it was for movie Hux to stay behind instead of escaping as well (there aren't restrooms in Star Wars after all), it feels like a waste for Kylo not to be the one with the metaphorical gun. Maybe this is the part of the scene that people didn't like, rather than the surprise assistance.

So ties to Resistance figures? Is Hux meant to be Leia (and Luke)'s uncle or something? I don't think Poe is from Tatooine, and I don't know if we've got enough information to tell if the little girl is meant to be Shmi or Rey. Either way, Hux being related to any of them as a cousin or uncle? That would be really odd.

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Episode 2708: Oh, Can’t You See What I Mean?

There are generally two things you can tempt PCs with. Vast wealth, and amazing power.

Use them wisely.

Meaning to lure them into trouble.

aurilee writes:

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Ha hah! Guessing what happens next by going with the crazy option finally pays off! Okay, it's not exactly how I'd guessed; who would think that Kylo would just stand there and watch things happen? Or that this would be like the only example of spaceship exhaust meaningfully existing? The Falcon must have stuck the rear through the force field, otherwise the exhaust would just bounce off as it's air, right? But I guess the writers wanted to keep the space jump, so it didn't completely enter the hangar bay.

All in all, a very successful rescue! The prisoner was rescued, all of the plot MacGuffins are on hand (I think), and best of all, nobody we care about died in the process! As long as Phanastacoria doesn't have yet another old Resistance base for a weird meaningless fight, I think things might start looking up for once.