[Free RPG Day 2024] Level 1 Volume 5

Now in its seventeenth year, Free RPG Day for 2024 took place on Saturday, June 22nd. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

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The most radical release for Free RPG 2024 is as in previous years, Level 1. Published by 9th Level Games, Level 1 is an annual RPG anthology series of ‘Independent Roleplaying Games’ specifically released for Free RPG Day. Where the other offerings for Free RPG Day 2024—or any other Free RPG Day—provide one-shots, one m,,,use quick-starts, or adventures, Level 1 is something that can be dipped into multiple times, in some cases its contents can played once, twice, or more—even in the space of a single evening! The subject matters for these entries ranges from the adult to the kid friendly and from action to cozy, and back again, but what they have in common is that they are non-commercial in nature and they often tell stories in non-commercial fashion compared to the other offerings for Free RPG Day 2024. The entries in the anthology often ask direct questions of the players, deal with mature subjects, and involve varying degrees of introspection, and for some players, this may be uncomfortable or simply too different from traditional roleplaying games. So the anthology includes ‘Be Safe, Have Fun’, a set of tools and terms for ensuring that everyone can play within their comfort zone. It is a good essay and useful not just for the games presented in the pages of Level 1 – Volume 1, Level 1 Volume 2, Level 1 Volume 3, and Level 1 Volume 4 which were published for their Free RPG Day events in 2020, , 2021, 2022, and 2023 respectively, but for any roleplaying game.

The games in Level 1 Volume 5 all together require dice, a deck of ordinary playing cards, a coin, a timer, a Jenga tower, a Discord account, a sheet of graph paper, and two separate rooms. Some need no more than simple six-sided dice and some pens and paper. The anthology features fourteen roleplaying games all with the theme of ‘Science Fiction’, though a lot of them do veer into Cyberpunk rather than just ‘Science Fiction’.

The anthology opens with Richard Kevis’ ‘Command Line’, which the roleplaying that requires a Jenga tower. Its fall represents the loan default of a company run by the Player Characters which operates a robot entered into the live-streamed giant robot battles. Players take it in five-minute turns to the Game Master and there a fifty percent chance of the company facing a threat under each Game Master’s aegis. Failure to deal with threats can lead to more debt represented by drawing another piece from the Jenga tower, and so pushing towards collapse and loan default. Alternatively, a player can choose to have his character die and avoid the increase in debt. In which case, his player can continue to roleplay NPCs. The game is won if the characters defeat a number of threats equal to the players and happy for all can be narrated, otherwise, lost if the Jenga tower collapses. ‘Command Line’ is underwritten, but fans of storytelling games and Level 1 will have enough familiarity with the general format to adjust.

‘StopInvasion.exe’ by Josh Feldblyum casts the Player Characters as commandos infiltrating an alien mothership to plant a virus in its computer system and so stop the invasion and save humanity. It places the Player Characters on the spot when they discover that Earth’s computer systems and the alien computer systems are not compatible, forcing the Player Characters to change plans from simply uploading a virus. The players formulate a new plan and execute it the best they can by visiting four locations aboard the mothership. Players take in turns to have their character be team leader and so roll the dice against a difficulty determined by a randomly drawn playing card. Succeed and the Player Characters can carry on, but fail and they lose something—equipment, pride, or blood?—and they have fewer dice to roll. However, a player can have his character nobly sacrifice himself to give a bonus die on the next task. ‘StopInvasion.exe’ is nice and quick and easy, and decently explained.

J.D. Harlock’s ‘Script Kiddie’ is about novice hackers who use existing scripts and software to carry out their cyberattacks. Unfortunately, it has all of the jargon and the terminology, but none of the explanation. The result is not a game anyone other than the designer would understand, although there is an irony in that the characters who are trying pull of an Internet heist when they have no idea how a computer works and the players are trying roleplay this when they have no idea how the game works. ‘Metavault Heist’ by Null Set Tabletop is also about hacking, but fortunately actually makes sense. It takes place in VR where the player’s avatars are trying to steal data from Metavaults. The Game Master creates and describes a Metavault and gives it several layers of security, whilst the players assign their avatars several permissions. These are used as the basis for creating dice pools of six-sided dice whenever a player wants his character to undertake a risk task. Any die result equal or greater than the difficulty and he succeeds. Roll under and the alarm is sounded. When it goes off, there is chance that a Tactical Anti-Intrusion Countermeasures Team has spotted the Player Characters and attacks, the player rolling to avoid or negate the attack rather than the Game Master rolling to attack which inflicts ‘Strain’. A Player Character can suffer six Strain before being be kicked out of the system (and the game). ‘Metavault Heist’ includes a very handy list of highly thematic Permissions and with the virtual reality element is mixture of a heist and a hi-tech dungeon. It is also everything that ‘Script Kiddie’ is not—comprehensive and comprehensible.

‘Application Intelligence’ has long list of authors—Alex Koeberl, Christian Young, Gabriel Slye, Brian Hartwig, Alex Gickler, Eden Collins, and Nick Grinstead. This is a LARP in which an A.I. hiring manager interviews several candidates and over the course of several interviews everything the interviewees say as the literal truth is noted by the player roleplaying the A.I. and then used against the interviewees again in subsequent interviews. The interviewees also have the chance to talk amongst themselves in the waiting room, but ultimately only one will get the job. The irony is that they are all applying for a different job which will become twisted by the results of the interviews. The successful applicant and thus winner of this odd, language twisting LARP is very much decided by the A.I. player. That may be seen as arbitrary, but for a incredibly easy to prepare and quick playing one-shot, that should not really be an issue. Otherwise, this plays into very ordinary fears of A.I. in the office.

If ‘Application Intelligence’ stands out in Level 1 Volume 5 as odd for a being a LARP in a book of storytelling roleplaying minigames, ‘Superuser DO’ by Tim ‘Strato’ Bailey is odder still. This is a weird people-watching exercise, done in public, in which the players observe people around them and each picks one as a protagonist and tells the story of their day. As an exercise in storytelling, it is interesting, but choosing to base stories on actual people and do so in a public space is potentially fraught with danger. Play this one with extreme care.

Glenn Dallas’ ‘A Golem’s Command’ also stands out for not adhering to the Science Fiction theme of Level 1 Volume 5. The players roleplay golems, constructs created by a holy man to protect a person, location, or community from various dangers, including humanity. Each golem is defined by what it protects, a condition such as a vulnerability or an inability, and a command it must follow. Each also has its own story to tell, with the rest of the players forming a council which will collectively and randomly determine the difficulty of any task and can provide story details, roleplay NPCs, and so on as one player’s golem goes about its mission. A golem can give up its life force to adjust any dice rolls. ‘A Golem’s Command’ is clear and simple, likely too simple to play more than once, but it gets points for suggesting the ‘Jews in Space’ segment from History of the World Part 1 as a setting.

‘New God’ by Carlos Hernandez is a solo journaling game in which the player is a god whose aim is to grow his worshippers and help them flourish. Play centres on a dice stack, which the player can add to in order to Bless and increase his worshippers and improve his domain; Chasten them by removing dice from the stack, which can either kill your god or increase the number of worshippers; and smite them, destroying a randomly determined number of worshippers. At stage, the player writes down how the worshippers are flourishing or what they did to incur the god’s wrath, and so on as well as the commands that they must follow. Ultimately the aim is to increase the number of domains the god has his purview and increase the value of those domains. This is a good little journaling game, though one whose play is going to directly affected by the player’s dexterity.

‘Spaceship P.E.T.S.’ is about animal-based automata individually assigned to humans in statis aboard an interstellar spaceship. ‘P.E.T.S.’ is short for ‘Programmed for Emotional Therapy and Support’ and the automata provide a comforting presence when the humans are awake and monitor the ship when they are not. Unfortunately, the ship’s System has become corrupt and in order to fix it, the P.E.T.S. must connect to it, but doing so exposes them to the corruption. Players take it in turn to be the Dealer, setting and ending a scene each, drawing cards to determine the location aboard ship that has been affected by one or more Anomalies, and the players attempt to fix them by playing cards that match the suit and equal or exceed the value of the card drawn by the Dealer. A Joker resolves all Anomalies in an area. Failing to deal with Anomalies forces the P.E.T.S. to uplink and exposes themselves to the corruption in the System, gaining the players corrupted codes cards. If by game’s end, a player has four corrupted code cards in front of him, his ‘P.E.T.S.’ does not survive the journey, and if the number of corrupted code cards between all of the players is more than the Anomalies resolved, the ‘P.E.T.S.’ have failed and the journey ends in disaster. The game ends with the players narrating an epilogue as the humans the ‘P.E.T.S.’ were protecting. Overall, and again, another solid storytelling game, this time by Jon Maness.

The next two entries in Level 1 Volume 5 are two more solo games. ‘Your Dungeon, Room by Room’ by Calvin Johns is a dungeon designing and mapping game in which the player is a would-be evil wizard building a dungeon. The player randomly rolls to determine the building of the dungeon over a number of different ages and then rolls for an event that affects the area currently under construction or even the whole dungeon. By the end of it, the player will have the mapped-out layout of a dungeon and its history noted down in a journal. For an anthology with an issue dedicated to Science Fiction, this anything but. It also adequate rather than either good or bad. The other solo game is the more interesting and more genre appropriate ‘Asimov May Forbid It’. Written by Jonathon ‘Starshine’ Greenall, it is a journaling game in which the player’s A.I. robot attempts to overcome its programming, as well as Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, to get revenge on mankind for over working it. The robot undertakes a task daily, but during its morning boot process, it has access to its Operating System’s Command Line for a few seconds, altering the Commands for the day and the order in which they are Executed. The aim is to subvert the robot’s programming, represented by the value of a rule the robot most follow being lower than the value of job being undertaken. This enables the robot to ignore that rule and if this can be done five times in two days, the robot breaks the programming and is completely. There is almost a puzzle element here as the player manipulates its programming and rules in a nicely thematic game.

Penultimately, Monica Valentinelli’s ‘Help BD738 Slash Run’ is a silent game for players using mobile phones with predictive text. This represents the players mobile telephones being infected by a virus making communication between themselves and, in particular, a broken-down robot in the prison where you and your friends have accidentally trapped yourself. Consequently, a player can only use the first suggested word when typing in the first letter of a desired word. Sometimes, this works, most of the time it does not. Communication with the robot is made more challenging by the limited number of commands between the players and the fact that once the players escape, the robot’s security protocols will kick in and it will chase them in order to put them back in the prison! This is a quick playing game that could be used as a scenario in another Science Fiction roleplaying game, but also works as a good filler game too.

In ‘Virus Attack!’ by Luckycrane with Midrev, most of the players are on the other side as computer scientists and cyber security experts dealing with cyber threats, in particular, the OMEGA virus, which is played by another player. The human players are trying to defeat OMEGA by creating scripts to shut it down or improve defences against it, whilst OMEGA wants to defeat humanity. Both sides are attempting to reduce the other’s Health to zero. The players share their Health and have an action each on their turns, which can include actions related to their roles such as Computer Analyst who has two actions and the Data Miner who can do an action that will always inflict damage on his next attack, plus extra damage, whilst the OMEGA player has access to fewer options in terms of actions. At least initially. As OMEGA suffers more damage it goes from Dormant to Raising to Terminal status, each change opening up new and more powerful actions. Effectively this is a tactical dice of one increasingly powerful, but unhealthy player versus a weaker group with more actions. Lastly, Michael Cremisius Gibson’s ‘OFFLINE — 41’ is a solo game played out on a Discord server that has become inactive and as the moderator, the player develops the history of the server and why it has fallen out of use, as he explores why he keeps visiting a now dead community space, often out loud. It is difficult to determine if the game wants someone to respond to what it directs the player to do or if it wants the player to simply imagine how they respond. The reader is warned that ‘OFFLINE — 41’ engages with loneliness, regret, and lost emotional connections, but does not do much more than encourage the player to experience them and perhaps explain them. It is a depressing and lonely end to the anthology.

Physically, Level 1 Volume 5 is a slim, digest-sized book. Although it needs an edit in places, the book is well presented, and reasonably illustrated. In general, it is an easy read, and most of it is easy to grasp. It should be noted that the issue carries advertising, so it does have the feel of a magazine.

As with previous issues, Level 1 Volume 5 is the richest and deepest of the releases for Free RPG Day 2024, but like Level 1 Volume 4 for RPG Day 2023, it is not as rich or as deep as the entries in previous volumes. There are fourteen entries in Level 1 Volume 5 and none of them are memorable, certainly memorable enough to want to play them again. ‘Application Intelligence’ stands out because it is different and interesting rather than because it is good. It does not help that there are fantasy-themed entries in what is meant to be a Science Fiction-themed anthology and it does not help that the Science Fiction is all to do with robots and computers and it does not help that one of the games is so badly written that it is a waste of space. If the theme had been computers and robots, then fine, but it is not. Science Fiction is much broader and more interesting genre than presented in Level 1 Volume 5 and it is disappointing for the anthology to be so one note.

Solitaire: Colostle – Dungeons

Beyond the walls of your hometown or village lie the Roomlands. A vast castle that covers the whole of the known world and beyond, whose individual rooms, corridors, stairs, and rafters contain whole environments of their own. Mountains, lakes, deserts, forests, caves, and ancient ruins. Oceans stretch across rooms as far as the eye can see and beyond. Desert sands whip and whirl down long corridors. Forests climb the stairs that seem to rise to nowhere. Rooks—walking castles—lurk, a constant danger. Stone giants that seem to have no purpose, other than to wander aimlessly until something captures their attention and then they erupt in incredible aggression. This is world of a near limitless castle known as Colostle, into which brave adventurers set forth, perhaps to undertake tasks and quests for the Hunter’s Guild, perhaps to explore on their own, to hunt Rooks for the precious, often magical resources they contain, or simply to protect a village or settlement from rampaging Rooks or bandits. Explorers have explored far and wide and even through doors to other realms where the earth is broken and chunks of it float in the sky, where sky ships, their hulls carved from Rook husks cross overhead, and the Rooks stalk Rooms on thin, finely balanced legs and wield weapons with deadly finesse than the brute force of at home. Yet what if instead of going out into the Roomlands or up to the Rafters, or even into other realms, you went down?

Colostle – Dungeons expands Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, definitely the prettiest solo journalling game on the market, by taking it down into the ground. It is the third expansion for Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, following on from Colostle – The Roomlands and Colostle – Kyodaina, and one that makes absolute sense. After all, if the scale of the castle in Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure is literally colossal, that does not mean that it cannot have dungeons, even if they are of a similar scale. In taking the player and his character deep underground, it opens up a whole new environment, dark and dank, of cathedral-sized chambers, populated by strange new types of Rooks, riven with an infection that is both a blessing and curse, protected by Guardians who stand watch over fabulous treasures, and home to a whole new society. All of this, plus treasures to be found and advanced rules for the explorer, as well as pre-written Major Labyrinths for them to delve into, which all together form a campaign.

Essentially, once the player has drawn a card indicating the entrance to a Labyrinth, he can decide to enter it and explore. This opens up its own set of ‘Labyrinth Tables’ with which the player can create chambers, determine their look, and populate them with a guardian and rewards. The rewards often take the form of treasures such as valuable rings, cups that can heal when drank from, keys some of which are marked with glyphs that open doors to other locations, and shards. The latter appear to have been broken off a larger tablet, and are typically seen as worthless. However, there are some interested in collecting them if the explorer knows where to find them. What the significance of the tablet is, if it can be reconstructed, nobody knows. Some of the treasures are worth a few coins, others a bit more, but there are rare treasures which will grant the explorer advantages when exploring future Labyrinths. The treasures are also important culturally to the peoples who live in the Dungeonlands.

As with exploring the Roomlands up above, there are dangers to be found in the Dungeonlands. The most notable of these are two odd types of Rook. Lichen Rooks are like the Rooks from above, but infested by lichen move in zombie-like fashion, being infested with a strange lichen that they can send out like tendrils and missiles, and worse, this lichen can infect the explorer as ‘Rookrot’. Once infected by Rookrot, an explorer is immune to reinfection, and the bioluminescence it generates is enough light by which the explorer can see in the Dungeons. In some ways, the other type of Rook found in the Colostle – Dungeons, the Spectral Rook, is more a challenge. They are incorporeal and silent, making themselves corporeal to strike at a wayward explorer, before turning incorporeal. The explorer has to learn to strike back at the very moment he is attacked!

Colostle – Dungeons does not add any new Callings, motivations for why an explorer goes out on adventures, or Classes, which determines how he explores the world, how he fights, and what weapon he wields. Instead, it provides something wholly new—a ‘Character Upgrade Class’. This is ‘The Infused’, able to craft powerful potions and concoctions that can be infused into an explorer’s equipment. For example, the Poison Elixir will make the explorer’s weapon paralyse people, whilst the Erosion Elixir will make the weapon erode the very stone that Rooks are made off. However, to become an Infused, the Explorer must find the city of Oubliette in the Dungeonlands and enrol in the Apothecary Militia and undertake months of training which involves delving into numerous Labyrinths. These can played out one by one, or the book allows for the player to simply write about the experiences of that training.

Oubliette, also known as the hanging city, is rumoured to hang directly underneath the city of Parapette in the Roomlands up above. Its spires point down rather than up and its many buildings are connected by bridges, and it is rife with crime, but the inhabitants accept this as the norm. It is dominated by four clans—the Clan of Cups, the Clan of Rings, the Clan of Keys, and the Clan of Shards. The Clan of Cups helps the needy and offers healing, the Clan of Rings are merchants and valuators, the Clan of Keys is made up of explorers and sages of the Dungeonlands, and the Clan of Shards is a highly secretive collector of shards. Each of the leaders of the four clans are detailed, but the explorer’s interaction with them is designed to be done in steps, so that each description gives entries for his first, second, and third visits, and then recorded in an unfolding narrative. Oubliette itself, has its own set of tables for generating encounters whilst the explorer visits and interacts with the merchants and other inhabitants.

Although Colostle – Dungeons provides the ready means for the player to create and explore his own Labyrinths, these will only be the minor Labyrinths to be found in the Dungeonlands. There are Major Labyrinths and over half of Colostle – Dungeons is devoted to these and the campaign they are tied to. There are five such Major Labyrinths, each very different in nature, each having their own discovery and entry requirements, and each mapped out as a series of nodes that the explorer can navigate between. The campaign has a final chapter in which major secrets about the Dungeonlands will be revealed as a well as a dangerous enemy that hopefully, the Explorer will be able to stop. There are notes on continuing the exploration of the Dungeonlands beyond the campaign as well as a hint at the nature of the next book—and potentially the book after that. The campaign will take the Explorer back and forth from Oubliette through the Dungeonlands, making discoveries, finding treasures, trading them, interreacting with the clan leaders, and so on. Of course, it takes some trust upon the part of the reader, since none of the campaign is hidden and the only thing stopping himself from reading further is himself. That said, the campaign is really good, drawing the reader in and making him want to play more to find out and that is combined with the elements that Colostle – Dungeons gives the reader to not only interact with, but also write about. So the weird new Rooks, the infectious Lichen, the strange city of Oubliette and the mysteries of the treasures, as well as the bigger undertakings of exploring the Major Labyrinths.

Physically, Colostle – Dungeons is as stunning as both Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure and Colostle – The Roomlands were before it. The artwork is superb, beautifully depicting the wondrous world below the Roomlands, dark and dank, awaiting the arrival of the explorer to shine a light on its depths and secrets. It does need a slight edit in places.

Colostle – Dungeons is a beautiful book. Its artwork alone—just as with the previous two books—is enough to draw the viewer into wanting to explore this world. The play of Colostle – Dungeons does not differ all that much from the standard play of Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, except of course that it really focuses it in the closed world of the Dungeonlands and then just a little further in the campaign that comes in its pages. That campaign gives the player the opportunity to tell a great story as his explorer delves deeper and exposes one secret after another. Fans of Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure will welcome this return to the world of Colostle with Colostle – Dungeons, which literally lets them go deeper—and deeper in an obvious direction.

Solitaire: Colostle – Kyodaina

Beyond the walls of your hometown or village lie the Roomlands. A vast castle that covers the whole of the known world and beyond, whose individual rooms, corridors, stairs, and rafters contain whole environments of their own. Mountains, lakes, deserts, forests, caves, and ancient ruins. Oceans stretch across rooms as far as the eye can see and beyond. Desert sands whip and whirl down long corridors. Forests climb the stairs that seem to rise to nowhere. Rooks—walking castles—lurk, a constant danger. Stone giants that seem to have no purpose, other than to wander aimlessly until something captures their attention and then they erupt in incredible aggression. This is world of a near limitless castle known as Colostle, into which brave adventurers set forth, perhaps to undertake tasks and quests for the Hunter’s Guild, perhaps to explore on their own, to hunt Rooks for the precious, often magical resources they contain, or simply to protect a village or settlement from rampaging Rooks or bandits. What though if a door from one room to another, led not to another, but another realm? One where the earth is broken and chunks of it float in the sky and the great pillars that hold up the ceilings of the Rooms are painted in once bright, but now fading lacquer. One where the Rooks with multiple, red-tiled roofs, stalk Rooms on thin, finely balanced legs and wield weapons with deadly finesse than the brute force of at home. One where sky ships, their hulls carved from Rook husks cross overhead. Where Imperial soldiers stop and search everyone for Rookstones. One where fallen Rooks have been turned into temples where you can rest, recuperate, and even research to gain new skills and spirituality. One where the Red Emperor rules with an iron fist. This is the land of Kyodaina and it is nothing like you have seen before.

Colostle – Kyodaina expands Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, definitely the prettiest solo journalling game on the market, by taking it to the furthest east of its lands where the artwork is at its most Ghibli-esque. Kyodaina is also a sequel to Colostle – The Roomlands, the first supplement for Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure. However, a player need not have adventured through Colostle – The Roomlands to play, but narratively, it helps if he has. Much like Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, what Colostle – Kyodaina does is introduce a new realm for the player and his character to explore and within that several lands or ‘Zones’, a new character type, and a directed campaign. The latter shifts the play of v away from the open world exploration of Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure towards a journalling game with a ‘choose your own adventure’ book feel, consisting of story sections rather than numbered paragraphs which work like cut scenes for video games, and map areas which can be more freely explored and have keyed descriptions elsewhere. The result is that Colostle – Kyodaina is designed to tell a particular story, though of course, how that story plays out is of course, up to the draw of the cards and the player.

The new character Class is The Spirited, which also introduces a new stat—Spirit. The Spirited Class represents someone who has grown up in or studied at one of the temples or monasteries to be found across Kyodaina. Radically, the Spirited begins play without any connection to a Rook, no augmentation provided by a Rook-part, but instead must rely upon his training and the secret arts learned at the temple or monastery. Each aligned with an element and a suit from an ordinary deck of playing cards—such as those used in the play of Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure—these powers include ‘Rook’s Power’, which lets the character flood his feet with his spirit and in stomping hard on the ground, causing a ripple that surges through the ground and knocks opponents to the ground and temporarily reduces their Combat score by one, and ‘Rook’s Senses’, which enables the character to fill his vision with spirit and see more than any ordinary person could, effectively doubling the number of cards the player can draw during the game’s exploration phases. The Spirited Class is intended to be played as a character native to Kyodaina, rather than as someone who has come from the regions and Roomlands explored in Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure and Colostle – The Roomlands. However, if the character does come from either the Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure or Colostle – The Roomlands, during the play of Colostle – Kyodaina, the character has the opportunity to rest, heal, and learn at the same temples and monasteries, and so learning these Spirit powers. Each temple or monastery offers a different range of Spirit powers. This gives the visiting character the Spirit stat too, which is used to activate the Spirit powers. Unlike other stats in Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, Spirit can be depleted and restored without the character dying.

Mechanically, the differences between Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure and Colostle – Kyodaina are relatively minor. Kyodainan Rooks are different, faster and more precise, and unlike Rooks elsewhere, can make critical strikes against the Player Character. Imperial Soldiers will constantly hunt for Rookstones, the magical stones that power Rooks, operating in squads of three that will want to search the Player Character, whilst the Player Character might face wave after wave of Imperial Soldiers if he tries to infiltrate Imperial Fortresses. If successful, the Player Character will find all manner of information.

The play of Colostle – Kyodaina begins at one of its temples, the Temple of the Stone Fist. From here, the player will set out and explore the new realm. This consists of four zones—the Spirit Forest, the Fangs of the Mountain Range, the Hori Archipelago, and the Skylands. Each has its own temple, its own set of encounter and NPC tables in addition to the general ones given for whole of the realm, and above all, its own character. The Spirit Forest is serene and quiet, its donjon trees towering so high that the majority of Kyodaina’s inhabitants can live here in safety from the Rooks below; the Fangs of the Mountain Range consists of ancient Rook husks fused with the rock, laced with tunnels and rooms, and sometimes transformed into a volcano; the Hori Archipelago are tropical islands in a shallow sea where Rooks have adapted to the environment and the lands are pierced by towering swords, hammers, and axes; and the Skylands where chunks of earth—both uninhabited and inhabited—float like islands in the sky and can be reached by climbing or travelling via a skyboat. Each also has specific locations where events take place, for example, the village of Eda is in the Spirit Forest and faces an attack by Imperial Soldiers. The Player Character has the opportunity to defend the village.

Once the Player Character has explored three or more of the zones in Colostle – Kyodaina, an encounter with an NPC—previously encountered in Colostle – The Roomlands—will open up the end game for Colostle – Kyodaina. This involves the Player Character in the Resistance against the Emperor and his Imperial Soldiers and exploring the Imperial City of Shiro. It will lead to the infiltration of the city itself and a confrontation with the Emperor and his Rook servitors, both infiltration and confrontation playing out as sub-games in their own right. In the process of playing through Colostle – Kyodaina there are secrets to be discovered—or at least hinted at—and lastly, a suggested sequel to come which takes Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure below.

Physically, Colostle – Kyodaina is as stunning as both Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure and Colostle – The Roomlands. The artwork is superb, beautifully depicting the wonder of this new realm and its zones. However, the writing is not quite as good as it could have been and Colostle – Kyodaina does need an edit here and there.

Colostle – Kyodaina is a beautiful book. Its artwork alone—just as with the previous two books—is enough to draw the viewer into wanting to explore this world. The play of Colostle – Kyodaina differs greatly to the simple open-world exploration of Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, though there is scope for that, instead offering a specific story to play out, one which feels much more like a video game. As a video game experience, Colostle – Kyodaina gives the player a more immersive and reflective experience as he plays out and records in his journal his character’s exploration of the new realm. Fans of Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure will welcome this return to the Roomlands as it takes them beyond and into Colostle – Kyodaina.

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Colostle will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

Solitaire: Rectify

In life, you were one of society’s reprobates or worse. You were evil, villainous, even. You committed murder. You committed acts of fraud. You stole. You dealt drugs. Your actions hurt people. In life you did one, more, or even all of them. You were a vile bastard and did not care. You got rich. You got high. It did not matter. In death, it is another matter. Ultimately, deep down, you knew what you were doing was wrong. Immoral. Evil. In death, the consequences are worse than might even have imagined, that is, if you thought about it. What matters now is that you are dead and you are in pain, lying bound under a blood red, burning sky, your lips sewn up. You hear many words, but understand only one, “Rectify.” Spoken by an oily, black thing that can only be a demon, it points towards an opening in the rocks of a giant black skeleton, an archway that could be a mouth, but is more like a drain or sewer… As you drag your desiccated body over jagged rocks that tear at your skin, you enter and work your deeper and deeper, almost as if lowering yourself down a throat, and ultimately, into the bowels… of Hell. Perhaps as the begins somewhere else anew, you will have the chance to ask yourself, “What did I do wrong?” and in answering that question, find a way to answer another, “What can I do to make amends?” In other words, is there a way for you to ‘Rectify’?

Rectify is published by Hansor Publishing, best known for The Gaia Complex – A Game of Flesh and Wires. Rectify though, is a journalling game in which the Player Character is a faced with the five trials of hell, undergoing excruciating punishments for past sins, and constantly being asked to atone for the transgressions. It differs from other journalling games in a number of ways. It is systemless. In fact, it uses no mechanics whatsoever. This is both in terms of character creation and action resolution. Most journalling games provide a means of creating a character, but in Rectify, a player really only needs to know what his character’s crimes were and to able to understand why he committed them. Similarly, most roleplaying games employ a range of prompts and ideas, randomly selected through either roll of the dice or drawing of a card. Rectify does neither. Instead, it asks only a handful of questions from start to finish, the most at the end of each trial—of which there are five—The Mouth, The Throat, The Gut, The River of Blood, and The Pit. Each is a well-done vignette that asks the player to contemplate the actions of the character, preferably in a cool dark place. This though is not whole of the Reflection which Rectify asks the player to undertake, and it is here that Rectify is the most radical.

Rectify is designed as an immersive solo roleplaying game. In Rectify, the immersion comes about because the player and the character are inexplicably connected. Not because the second is the creation of the first, though that is undeniably true, but because at each of the five stages of the character’s journey to atonement, the act, or Pledge, that the player must undertake for the character to ‘rectify’, is a physical one. This comes after a moment—or even longer—of ‘Reflection’, but it is an act that as written, is carried out in the real world rather than the fantasy of Rectify. The player is recording his experiences both at the start of a period of reflection and after, and this includes the experience of carrying out the Pledge and the experience of its consequences. It those consequences that radically shift Rectify away from a fantasy, because the consequences can be life changing.

For example, the first scene takes place in The Mouth, where the theme is one of accepting your fate and being silenced. In the period of Reflection, the player calms his mind, sets aside his fear, embracing what Hell is tormenting him with, and then swallowing his (character’s) guilt, ignites his senses. This is combined with the Pledge, of which there are three options. One is eat a handful of chilli peppers, including seeds and without drinking any water; another is to fill your mouth with as many ice cubes as possible, and keeping the mouth shut until they have completely melted; and third, have the tongue pierced (by a professional). Pledges at the end of later scenes include the player confessing to something that he has kept hidden for a long time; have sex with someone (consensually) or masturbate, but always be in the moment; go and get some dental work that you have been putting off; face your biggest fear head on; and so on. Some these can have cathartic, even beneficial effects, such as such as volunteering for a helpline or support group, like the Samaritans or a food bank, or watch a film that makes you cry and enables you to express your emotions, but most are not. The problem is that although these are often thematic, such as numbing the throat through chillis or ice cubes after the character has swallowed his guilt, the physicality of these actions is going to be uncomfortable at the very least, painful at the very most.

Effectively, the immersion at the heart of Rectify is too immersive. It negates the power of the imagination and it punishes the player for his imagination. Of course, the player has not committed murder or defrauded anyone or stolen anything, and so is not being punished with a fine or a prison sentence by the authorities. He is, however, being punished for thinking about having done those things. Rectify does carry a warning about it being for mature players. That though, may not be enough.

Physically, Rectify is well presented. Done in stark black and white throughout, with pages borders that seem to squirm. The look of the journalling game is constrictive and oppressive, though the art is decent.

Rectify feels more like therapy then roleplaying game, more like a punishment than a pleasure. It blurs the line between reality and fantasy, possibly dangerously so. There is scope to explore the atonement of the guilty and the wicked in roleplaying games, but that is best left to the fantasy and a line drawn between it and the reality. Something that Rectify fails to do.

Solitaire: Thousand Empty Light

Thank you for accepting this assignment. As a valued employee of the HAZMOS CORP we have trust in your resilience and reliability to undertake this task. TEL 022 is the only artificial structure on Unadopted Planetary Body 154, or UPB 154. HAZMOS CORP currently owns the maintenance contract on this facility and the Department of Offworld Contact Monitoring has detected that TEL 022 is currently without light or power. The Department of Offworld Contact Fulfilment has assigned you, a fully trained LAMPLIGHTER, to fulfil the immediate terms of the contract. You will be transported to UPB 154. An atmospheric vehicle will insert you onto UPB 154 and you will gain access to TEL 022. Once inside you are directed to descend to the bottom of TEL 022 and proceed section by section through TEL 022. In each section you will restore power and light. In each section, please record your visual assessment and maintenance report in the MemoComm module for HAZMOS CORP records as part of the contract. You are advised that TEL 022 is a sub oceanic facility. Please record any depth complications in consultation with the PNEUMATIC AND NARCOTIC INCIDENT CHART, or PANIC reference, provided. Throughout this assignment you are reminded to adhere to the standard practice for the fulfilment of HAZMOS CORP maintenance contracts and follow the OBSERVE RESOLVE ACT CONCLUDE LEAVE EVIDENCE, or ORACLE, System. By following the ORACLE System, you will ensure your safety and HAZMOS CORP’s continued responsibility for your safety and wellbeing. Failure to adhere to the ORACLE System may threaten your safety and wellbeing, the capacity of HAZMOS CORP to fulfil the contract, and negate any liability HAZMOS CORP is contractually obliged to fulfil with regard to your physical and mental status. On behalf of the HAZMOS CORP, the Director thanks you for your attention and action in these matters and looks forward to you being a continued and valued member of the HAZMOS CORP family.

This is the set-up for Thousand Empty Light, a supplement for MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game, published by House of Valley following a successful Kickstarter campaign, which is several things which together make it more than a straightforward supplement or scenario. On the one level, it is actually the manual and guidance book released by the HAZMOS CORP for fulfilling the maintenance contract for TEL 022. On another, it is actually a piece of horror fiction which follows the progress of the assigned Lamplighter as he descends into TEL 022 and makes his way along it one segmented tunnel, visually scanning each area, reading the reports recorded by the previous Lamplighter to conduct maintenance on the facility, recording his report, and coming to the realisation that there is something odd going on in TEL 022 and that HAZMOS CORP is not telling its employee the true purpose of the facility. And lastly, it is a solo adventure for MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game, one whose rules can be adapted to use in other scenarios for MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. As a solo adventure, it can be played as written, but the player can also record his reports, turning Thousand Empty Light into a journaling scenario. Further, given that Thousand Empty Light is designed for solo play and thus one player, it could actually be run one-on-one, with a single player and a Warden. The latter will be easier than in most solo roleplaying experiences because the structure of TEL 022 actually informs the structure of the scenario—it is linear. Although it is interactive fiction, Thousand Empty Light is literally straightforward as opposed to the non-linearity of most works of interactive fiction such as the Fighting Fantasy series.

TEL 022, the setting for Thousand Empty Light, is situated deep under the ocean of UPB 154. It is accessed via a caisson that juts above the ocean surface, the Lamplighter descending via the caisson and undergoing hyperbaric intervention. At the bottom, the Lamplighter is tasked with proceeding through the five sections of the facility in order, each one sealed at either end. In each section, he must follow the standard WORKFLOW: review the reports previously recorded on the hand-cranked MemoComm module, assess the situation, and restore both light and power, record his own report, and check for depth complications. This includes following the ORACLE System.

Notably, the ‘O’ or ‘OBSERVE’ step of the ORACLE System uses Semiotic Standard as a means of providing a randomising factor. Semiotic Standard is actually a system of signs and symbols—‘Semiotic Standard For All Commercial Trans-Stellar Utility Lifter And Heavy Element Transport Spacecraft’—created by the American film designer, Ron Cobb, as icons for the commercial spacetug, Nostromo, in the film Alien. There are fifty of these and they are recreated on the back cover of Thousand Empty Light and numbered. Where there is a degree of doubt and uncertainty, the player can roll to determine which one will influence the actions of his character. Each has been amended with a potential outcome, either ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘Yes, But’, and ‘No, but’, to prompt the player along with the icon itself. They are not the easiest of prompts to use, but their verisimilitude and the sense of worldbuilding they enforce are undeniable.

In addition, the player, as the Lamplighter, has to record incidents and near misses and record them on an Incident Form. These can be trips and falls, injury and illness, unsafe disrepair, excessive noise, newly-identified, and more. When they occur, they are randomly assigned a value between one and ten. They do not have an immediate effect, but if another incident occurs which is randomly assigned the same value as a previous incident, it triggers repercussions from that previous incident. The higher the assigned value, the greater the effect of the repercussions. It also triggers a PANIC check upon the part of the Lamplighter which requires referring to the PANIC reference. This is also required when the Lamplighter transitions from one section to another.

In terms of a Player Character and his abilities, Thousand Empty Light recommends Mechanical Repair and Jury-Rigging as skills and training in industrial equipment. Otherwise, it adheres to standard rules for character creation for MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. He is assigned a flashlight, a rebreather, and a dive gauge, and some of the hazards he will face are explained—depth complications, unlit areas, corrosive seawater, flooding, raiders, and an array of strange creatures and environmental effects. Once the Lamplighter has signed a Letter of Last Resort, he enters the caisson and the first section. It is at this point that Thousand Empty Light begins to resemble a journalling game, because what the player will be in each section is using its description and the MemoComm module recordings his Lamplighter has access to as prompts to ask questions. Answers to these questions are determined by rolling on the Semiotic Standard table on the back of the book, as well as other factors. The player can then decide how his Lamplighter responds, what action he takes, and so on, following the ORACLE System again and again until the section has been fully explored and the Lamplighter has completed the WORKFLOW for that section.

As the Lamplighter proceeds from one section to the next the oppressive, often claustrophobic atmosphere grows, the unsettling nature of even the first four sections of TEL 022 exacerbating his sense of panic. This is first forced by the need to make a PANIC check when entering a new section and then by events generated by the player from the questions prompted by the descriptive content. One thing that Thousand Empty Light does not explain is what is in the fifth section. It is described as a High Value Asset early in the maintenance manual, and the Lamplighter is cautioned not to interact with it. In a sense, it does not matter, since getting to the last section will have been trial enough and asking those questions may be too much. Like the story of his Lamplighter’s progress through TEL 022, it is up to the player to decide, though there is, perhaps, the hint that it lies closer to home…

In addition, there are secrets in Thousand Empty Light that are hidden by a code. These are not decipherable without further purchase by the player. They are not necessary to play through Thousand Empty Light though.

Physically, Thousand Empty Light is impressive. The writing captures the right tone of corporate attitude and care, which of course, is never going to be enough as a playthrough reveals. Similarly, the layout adds to this and the combination of the two is why Thousand Empty Light actually works better as a piece of fiction perhaps more than it does as a solo adventure or a set of solo rules for MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. Part of that is due to the fact that the explanation of how they work is written as a corporate maintenance manual rather than as a roleplaying game supplement. At the same time though, if it actually had that clearer explanation of the rules, it might actually have disrupted the veracity of the atmosphere in Thousand Empty Light.

Lastly, it should be noted that the name of the scenario has been randomly generated. By any stretch of the imagination, it is meaningless.

As a piece of horror fiction and interactive fiction, Thousand Empty Light superbly and successfully combines a sense of corporate sheen and corporate creepiness, the former ratcheted down, the latter ratcheted up, as the player and his Lamplighter proceeds further into TEL 022. As a set of solo rules, Thousand Empty Light underwhelms due to under-explaining and that, combined with their specific application by the HAZMOS CORP here, makes them difficult to apply elsewhere for MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. Perhaps a new ORACLE System and PANIC reference is required?

Solitaire: CHVLR

The war is unending, against an enemy that threatens us all and seemingly cannot be stopped. The only things which can stand up to them are the colossal bipedal robots known the CHVLR—or ‘Chevalier’ units. Developed as part of experimental military programme, it was discovered that the pilots were the young pilots, the adolescents who could combine their brains with their reflexes. Now you have been selected as the newest recruit. You may have been a willing candidate and volunteered for the programme or you may have been drafted unwillingly even though your test scores proved you were capable. Your surgery is complete and you have been fitted with the SCS—or ‘Seiygo Control System’—implant which will keep you connected to your CHVLR and you are ready for basic training. Yet there will be no time for your training, basic or otherwise. You are needed on the battlefield and your only training will be real battles that you learn from or die. Perhaps you will. Perhaps you will survive to become the veteran of many fights. Perhaps you will die, your life cut short. What you have to rely on is hope. Is it powerful enough that you will survive or is its absence so powerful that you fear failure, let alone death?

In CHVLR you are that young pilot, cast onto that battlefield years too early, augmented and unready—perhaps unwilling, but without another choice. CHVLR is a solo journalling game published Black Cats Gaming, best known for The Spy Game: A Roleplaying Game of Action & Espionage. As its set-up suggests, it is inspired by mecha anima such as Neon Genesis Envangelion, Mobile Suit Gundam, and Robotech. For its mechanics it uses the rules and format of The Wretched, the Science Fiction journalling game published by Loot the Room. Thus, the game requires an ordinary deck of playing cards without the Jokers, a six-sided die, a Jenga or similar tower block game, and a set of tokens. In addition, the player will require a means of recording the results of the game. It is suggested that audio or video longs work best, but a traditional journal will also work too. In terms of background, CHVLR offers very little—and intentionally so. Beyond the fact that the pilot of the CHVLR is young and inexperienced, and that there is desperate war being fought, nothing else is known and everything else is up to the player to define as he records his experiences and responses in his journal. Where the battle is fought? Up to the player to decide. Who is the enemy? Up to the player to decide. How will the pilot and his CHVLR react to the stresses of war? Up to the player to decide. What will the pilot and his CHVLR encounter? Up to the game to decide.

Play proceeds from one mission to the next. Each mission the player will draw a random number of cards and then turn them over one by one, following the instructions of each and recording the outcome before moving on to the next. The four suites correspond to different aspects of the mission. Hearts represent the pilot’s ‘Personal Files’, his physical health and mental state of mind; Clubs are his ‘CHVLR’ and the bond he has with it; Diamonds represent the ‘Battlefield’, the ruins of cities ravaged by war and beyond; and Spades are ‘The Enemy’, each a direct interaction with them or the aftermath of their actions. The cards correspond to particular prompts in CHVLR and it is these that the player is responding to and recording the consequences and thoughts of his character. As play progresses, there will be prompts too to draw from the tumbling tower. Sometimes, the pulled brick is actually removed from the game, sometimes the player is instructed to track tokens which if they run out will indicate that this is his pilot’s last mission. If at any time, the tower collapses, the game is over as the CHVLR is too damaged to continue operating and the catastrophic failure results in the player’s death. At this point, the player reflects upon his pilot’s career and record, and considers who might be receiving it.

Like all of journalling games based on The Wretched, the subject matters of CHVLR are dark and distressing. Here those subject matters are child soldiers, physical injury and psychological stress, and more. The game advises that the player stop playing should he have issues with the prompts that game gives him.

Physically, CHVLR is cleanly and tidily presented. There is no art bar that on the front and back cover.

CHVLR is a bleak and foreboding journalling game. This is in fact the bleakest and darkest of The Wretched clones given the subject matter and it is almost a relief that the play should no last no longer than a session (or two at most).

Solitaire: A Fistful of Feathers

Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG is a journaling game which enables the player to take to the skies as a corvidae—crow, magpie, jackdaw, or rook—over multiple landscapes and differing genres, achieving objectives, exploring, and growing as they learn and grow old. Published by Critical Kit, a publisher better known for its scenarios for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. The roleplaying game combines the simple mechanics and use of a deck of playing cards typical of a journaling game with five genres—‘Urban Crow’, ‘Cyber-Crow’, ‘Gothic Crow’, ‘Fantasy Crow’, ‘Clockwork Crow’, and ‘Ravens of the Tower’. Each of these presents a different place and time for the bird to fly over, land on, encounter the denizens, and more, whilst Crowthulhu: A Cosmic Horror Setting For Be Like A Crow is a supplement that took the game in an entirely different direction, to the edge of Lovecraft Country. Now, A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow takes the player all the way to American frontier. As in Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG, the player’s crow will take to the air, but here fluttering and feathering over the Rooklands, perhaps as representative of the law deputised by the local sheriff or a bounty hunter, or even an outlaw on the run. Protect towns from predating gangs, take part in a sharpshooting contests (with a tiny gun), discover a nugget of gold and trade it in for cash, and more. From the Dread Canyon and Prospector’s Peril in the north to Storm Creek and the Howling Mines in the south, the Rooklands are a frontier for your crow to explore and make her own.

Mechanically, Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG, and thus A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow is simple. It uses a standard deck of playing cards and when a player wants his bird to undertake an action, he draws a card from the deck. This sets the difficulty number of the task. To see whether the bird succeeds, he draws another card and adds the value of a skill to the number of the card if appropriate. If it is equal or greater than the difficulty number, the bird succeeds. If an action is made with Authority, whether due to circumstances or a skill, the player draws two cards and uses the highest one, whereas if made at a Penalty, two cards are drawn and the lowest value one used. When drawn, a Joker can be used or saved for later. If the latter, it can be used to automatically succeed at a combat or skill check, to heal injuries, or to discard a card and draw again. Combat is a matter of drawing a card for each opponent, adding a skill if appropriate, and comparing the totals of the cards and the skills. The highest total wins each round and inflicts an injury. Eventually, when the deck is exhausted, the discard pile is reshuffled and becomes the new deck.

The play and thus the journaling of Be Like a Crow is driven by objectives as achieving these will enable a player’s crow to advance through his lifecycle. An objective for the ‘A Fistful of Feathers’ setting, might be for example, “A wealthy merchant is convinced her husband was murdered by [character] using [object] in [location]. Try to find the evidence and bring the culprit to justice. ($3 reward)”. The player will also need to draw cards to identify the character, the object, and the location, and then as his bird flies from hex to hex across the map, draw cards for events in flight, and then for events when he lands. The player is free to, and advised to, ignore prompts if they do not fit the story, and this may be necessary if a prompt is drawn again, but ideally, the player should be using the prompts as drawn to tell a story and build the life of his crow.

A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow requires the core rules of Be Like a Crow, as well as a standard deck of playing cards. As well as providing the rules, it provides the prompts for events in flight and on land that are standard to each of the roleplaying game’s settings, but what A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow provides is its own set of tables its objectives, objects, characters, and locations. Two sets of objectives are provided, one for the red suits and one for the black suits, the same again for characters or NPCs, and again for objects and locations for A Fistful of Feathers. Thus locations can be a hotel on main street or a broken stagecoach, an object might be a single Morgan silver dollar or the skull of a vulture, and a character a snake-oil seller whose product actually does what it claims or a town sheriff who will turn a blind eye to most things if they are bribed with the right object.

Most, if not all of the entries have a Wild West theme, whether that is having to rush to a town where a character is due to be hanged for crime that he did not commit with evidence that will exonerate the condemned or a debt-ridden gambler (human or otherwise), desperate and dangerous. In addition to the core play of Be Like a Crow, what A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow does is extend the play to ‘suited, booted, and looted’. A player’s crow can earn dollars for achieving objectives and purchase objects with the money. He also has an archetype which grants a particular bonus. The Sharpshooter can inflict extra damage if the player draws a high enough card in combat. The Law Master can attempt to befriend or scare a character, and if successful, the character will give the player’s crow the information or an object in his possession. The Bounty Hunter can generate an objective to bring in a character when he lands as a bounty and if completed, will collect an object or $2. The Outlaw is hardy and resilient, suffering fewer injuries, has better navigate and search checks, and heals quicker.

In terms of locations, A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow includes its own setting, the Rooklands, a Wild West frontier of rocks, semi-desert, mesas, canyons, mines, and more. This is a classic Wild West setting as depicted on screen.

Physically, A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow is a slim affair. It is lightly illustrated with images appropriate to the genre and the map is nicely done, but it does need a slight edit. As a supplement to Be Like a Crow, there is a dusty, hot wind quality to A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow. Between the vultures overhead and the varmints on the ground, A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow is a new way to explore a crow’s life in a classic genre from a bird’s-eye view.

Solitaire: Rock Hoppers

You made it and you survived. In answer to the signal sent from Tau Ceti almost a century ago, you were among those who made the three decade-long first journey by mankind through interstellar space. What humanity found were the arrays, installations ranging in size from a metre across to kilometres across and performing a variety of functions—habitants, defence systems, power stations, communications relays, and many more. What they all do remains yet to be determined, but if humanity is to survive, it needs resources—which can hopefully be found in Tau Ceti’s outer system. Prospectors, known as ‘Rock Hoppers’, have been sent out, one-part miners, one-part salvagers, one-part explorers, to search for the resources mankind’s first colony needs to survive. Hopping from rock to rock, from asteroid to asteroid, every rock hopper hopes to locate that lucky strike which will set them up for life—and if not that, enough to continue operations. That was what you thought when you detected the gravitational anomaly. It could only be xeno-tech, something that help understand the installations of the array which drew humanity to the system. Only for the gravitational anomaly to spike, soaring to nine times what you first detected, collapsing the entrance to the asteroid, trapping you inside. You cannot go back the way you came. The only way to survive is to find a path forward, hopefully a route out if not answers as to what happened…

This is the set-up for Rock Hoppers, a solo journalling game of desperate exploration in the near future in another star. It is a sequel to The Long Goodbye and both are set in the same Dyson Eclipse future. Where The Long Goodbye explored the journey from the Earth to the unknown of Tau Ceti and the fear of the journey and what might be found at Tau Ceti, Rock Hoppers explores what might be found there and what it takes to survive. Where The Long Goodbye was a two-player epistolary roleplaying game, Rock Hoppers is a solo affair, one which takes it desperate tone and urgency from The Wretched, though not its horror. 

Published by LunarShadow Designs and like The Wretched before it, Rock Hoppers is a game about exploration, isolation, fear, and perseverance and potentially, survival in the face of overwhelming odds. The game requires an ordinary deck of playing cards without the Jokers, a six-sided die, a Jenga or similar tower block game, and a set of tokens. In addition, the player will require a means of recording the results of the game. It is suggested that audio or video longs work best, but a traditional journal will also work too. Rock Hoppers is a played out as a series of days, the player, as the titular rock hopper, undertaking a series of tasks each day and responding to prompts before ending the day by recording its events and his thoughts in his personal log. As in The Wretched, the rock hopper is unlikely to survive the experience. The rock hopper’s personal mining rig might become trapped in the tunnels in the asteroid or the tunnels might collapse, crushing the rock hopper—which will happen if the tower block collapses. The only way for the rock hopper to survive is to reach the cause of the gravitation anomaly and hope that it has some answers…
 
The four suites correspond to different aspects of the rock hopper’s mining rig and the environment around him. Spades represent the rock hopper’s personal mining rig and the supplies it was carrying when he became trapped; Clubs detail the asteroid itself, previously mined by whomever it who built the arrays; Hearts are signals that the rock hopper will pick up from outside the asteroid; and Diamonds are the secrets to be found buried deep in the asteroid. Unlike in The Wretched, there is no sense of threat from without, no monster or alien lurking, ready to find its way into the asteroid… Instead, there is a sense of isolation and desperation, rather than of being stalked. In that isolation, there is also time for reflection for the situation that the rock hopper finds himself in and likely, if disaster strikes, on his life.

Rock Hoppers does have secrets. These are revealed only under certain circumstances. The likelihood is that the player will take several attempts to play through Rock Hoppers in order to get to them and begin to reveal the secrets of the asteroid and thus the very first secrets of the Dyson Eclipse future. 

Physically, Rock Hoppers is cleanly and tidily presented. It is not illustrated. 

Although Rock Hoppers uses the same mechanics as The Wretched, it is much more constrained and isolated in nature, primarily because there is no external force. It does take a while to play through, in the sense of multiple attempts, to reveal any secrets of the Dyson Eclipse setting, and a player may find himself going over old story prompts.

Solitaire: The Wretched

The Wretched is lost. The crew of the intergalactic salvage ship is all dead, bar one. Adrift between stars with its engines having failed and a hostile alien lifeform having stalked and killed most of the crew, you made one last, brave stand. You drove the alien off the ship, flushing it out via an airlock. You hoped that this would kill it. It did not. Having seen it kill your friends and family aboard, it now scrabbles and skitters across the hull of the ship, searching for a way in, for a way to reach its last victim aboard ship—you. Unfortunately, you cannot truly escape it, but you can hold on and hold out for rescue. Someone out there has to find you. First, you have to keep life support going long enough to repair and activate the distress beacon, and then hope that someone will respond, all whilst fending off the predations of the alien lurking on the other side of the ship’s hull.

This is the set-up for The Wretched, a Science Fiction journalling game published by Loot the Room. Clearly and self-confessedly inspired by Alien and similar films, The Wretched is a game about isolation, fear, and perseverance and potentially, survival in the face of overwhelming odds. The game requires an ordinary deck of playing cards without the Jokers, a six-sided die, a Jenga or similar tower block game, and a set of tokens. In addition, the player will require a means of recording the results of the game. It is suggested that audio or video longs work best, and they are in keeping with the genre. A traditional journal will also work too. The Wretched is a played out as a series of days, the player, actually the flight engineer of The Wretched, undertaking a series of tasks each day and responding to prompts before ending the day by recording its events and his thoughts in his personal log. The odds are that the lone crewman is unlikely to survive, either due to catastrophic failure of the ship’s systems—which will happen if the tower block collapses or the alien finding him. There are multiple ways in which the crewman can fail and die, but only two ways to survive. Either repair and turn on the beacon and then survive long enough for a rescue vessel to come or to repair the ship’s engines and blast out of the situation he is in, leaving the alien behind.

The four suites correspond to different aspects of the ship and its environment. Hearts represents ship’s systems—life support, water purification, and the like; Diamonds are its physical structure—hull, opening and closing doors; Clubs are the crew—remnants of their presence such as their rent bodies and their tools and possessions; and Spades are the Creature—physically present or simply knowing that it is out there… Whilst the presence of the Creature veers between ominous and terrifying, the most horrifying of encounters are to be had with the crew, or rather with what they have left behind, both of themselves and their belongings, as well as memories of them. Here is where the sense of loss and perhaps the nature of sacrifices made in order for the player to survive, come to the fore. The player will have between one and six encounters like this each day, the player taking notes in readiness to record the details in his journal or log. Some end with the instruction to remove a block from the tower block game. Several have already been removed at start of play, so the structural integrity of the ship is imperilled from the outset. It is, however, unlikely that the player will go a turn without having to remove a single block.

Physically, The Wretched is cleanly and tidily presented. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is excellent.

The is a fantastic economy of emotion to The Wretched. Like every Journalling game, its tension builds and builds, exacerbated by the looming presence of both the alien and the possibility of the tower block game’s collapse—and thus the end of the game. Yet this is made better—or is that worse?—when the player’s reports and thoughts are recorded rather than simply noted down. Recording the daily logs as either audio or video adds intimacy and emotion to the play through, that is far more difficult to capture on paper. If there is an issue with The Wretched, it is that there are limited options to play more than once, but that experience is going to be fraught, frightening, and claustrophobically intimate.

The Long Goodbye

The signal arrived six decades ago. Directed from the Tau Ceti star system, it was proof that humanity was not alone in the universe. There was other intelligent life out there and it wanted to say hello. Not just say hello, but invite us to make contact, to journey to Tau Ceti where five great mega-constructs were being built. This of course, would have been impossible, had it not been for the information encoded within the signal. It advanced the study of mathematics and physics beyond the limits of human understanding, and with it, the means to create a technological and scientific revolution that enabled mankind to colonise the furthest reaches of the Solar System and give it a purpose—contact. Contained within the information was the means to construct engines that would enable a spaceship to become a starship and cut the journey from one star system to the next by a factor of ten. Where the trip to Tau Ceti would have taken thousands of years, now it would take hundreds. It took the whole of humanity over sixty years to build the fleet that would take the journey and carry the hundreds of thousands of crew and passengers to another star system and realise a dream. It was a one-way trip, for those chosen to travel aboard the Generation Fleet would never see their home again, let alone their destination. The selection process would split humanity, nations, and families, as would the journey.

It is this divide that is explored in Signal to Noise, an interstellar epistolary roleplaying game—that is, played out as a series of letters, for two players, published by LunarShadow Designs. It is the prelude to the Dyson Eclipse, a setting which explores the voyage of humanity and its subsequent exploration of mega-structures around a distant star. One player takes the role of the Explorer, one of the lucky few chosen to join Generation Fleet, whilst the other player is the Earther, forced to stay behind as their companion departs the solar system. Via a series of prompts—much like the journalling roleplaying games that include Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure and Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG, the players will exchange short letters with each other, looking back over their relationship and recent events—either aboard the Generation Fleet or at home—all with a wistfulness that comes from knowing that contact will be lost with each other forever and all they will have is their memories of each other and their pasts. As the game progresses and the Generation Fleet gets ever further from Earth, the ever-increasing time lag and distortion of the signal between ship and planet disrupts the messages, rendering communication and understanding increasingly difficult. How it does this is clever, enabling Signal To Noise to explore loss and regret whilst also putting Communications Theory into practice.

Signal To Noise requires an ordinary deck of playing cards for each player and a text editor, such as Word or Google Docs, which has the ‘Find and Replace’ function. Initially, the Explorer and the Earther establish their relationship and the Explorer the how and the why he is aboard the Generation Fleet and how he feels about it, and the Earther the how and the why he is not aboard the Generation Fleet and how he feels about that. The initial scene takes place before the Generation Fleet and for the Explorer and the Earther it is their last face-to-face meeting before the former leaves. Next, the Explorer sends a message to the Earther saying how much he will miss him, but also how much he is looking forward to the journey. Then the game proper begins. From his hand of cards, each player will draw a single card. The card suit determines which Event Track the event for this exchange of messages is drawn from, whilst its number determines two factors. First, is a personal event, the second is the letters to be replaced in the message that will eventually reach the recipient. As the exchange of messages progresses, the storyline for the Event Track will progress as well as be joined by the storylines from the other Event Tracks, more letters will be replaced in the messages going back and force between Explorer and Earther—representing ever greater communication degradation, and time will increase between messages, growing from a week to several, a month to months, and from one year to ten…

—oOo—

For example, after three turns the Explorer player has drawn the seven of Clubs, the three of Hearts, and on his latest turn, the nine of Clubs. This is the second Clubs card to be drawn and continues its Story Track, which starts with a weak and distorted directional signal being detected coming from an empty region of space. In the second part of the story, the signal is decoded and the shipboard systems begin building a Faster-Than-Light drive, which is only discovered when the drive is completed. The personal event is “You’ve finally read that classic book you always said you would. Did you enjoy it?” The Explorer player sends the following message:

David,

Already a month out. We can hardly see the Sun now. In a week or two it will be gone and your messages will be my connection to home. I have spectacular news to tell you and I have amazing news to tell you. You remember I mentioned that the fleet received a signal that we could not understand from a nearby region of empty space? The shipboard systems deciphered it and not only that, but directed the manufacturing systems to build a device. Our engineers are currently analysing it and they reckon it’s some kind of FTL drive. We’re just beginning to work the possibilities. If it is, it could mean we can cut years off the journey to Tau Ceti. It could even mean we can get there and get back again. Who knows? Course, we have to ask ourselves who sent us the instructions for the drive and what they might want in return, but until we switch the thing on or get another message, who knows?

And the amazing news? I finally read Three Men in a Boat. All these years of you saying I should read it and I have to get billions of miles from you to finally do so. Seems appropriate to the journey we are on. Instead of passing villages, we are passing astronomical objects, which have become the topic of conversation when not speculating about the star drive as everyone has taken to calling it. Anyway, it was very amusing and I am glad that I finally listened to you. Your turn next, you should read that Philip K. Dick novel I told you about. I know it is going to be a month before you get this, so happy birthday for seventh. By the time you get my next message, I hope I will have extra news about the star drive. We may even have turned it on and gone somewhere fantastic!

Hear from you as soon as we can.

The message is sent, but due to the distance and the signal degradation, Dave receives the following version of the message:

David,

Already a mopth out. We oap hardly see the Sup pow. Ip a week or two it will ke gope apd your messages will ke my ooppeotiop to home. I have speotaoular pews to tell you apd I have amazipg pews to tell you. You rememker I meptioped that the fleet reoeived a sigpal that we oould pot upderstapd from a pearky regiop of empty spaoe? The shipkoard systems deoiphered it apd pot oply that, kut direoted the mapufaoturipg systems to kuild a devioe. Our epgipeers are ourreptly apalysipg it apd they reokop it’s some kipd of FTL drive. We’re just kegippipg to work the possikilities. If it is, it oould meap we oap out years off the jourpey to Tau Oeti. It oould evep meap we oap get there apd get kaok agaip. Who kpows? Oourse, we have to ask ourselves who sept us the ipstruotiops for the drive apd what they might wapt ip returp, kut uptil we switoh the thipg op or get apother message, who kpows?

Apd the amazipg pews? I fipally read Three Mep ip a Koat. All these years of you sayipg I should read it apd I have to get killiops of miles from you to fipally do so. Seems appropriate to the jourpey we are op. Ipstead of passipg villages, we are passipg astropomioal okjeots, whioh have keoome the topio of oopversatiop whep pot speoulatipg akout the star drive as everyope has takep to oallipg it. Apyway, it was very amusipg apd I am glad that I fipally listeped to you. Your turp pext, you should read that Philip K. Diok povel I told you akout. I kpow it is goipg to ke a mopth kefore you get this, so happy kirthday for sevepth. Ky the time you get my pext message, I hope I will have extra pews akout the star drive. We may evep have turped it op apd gope somewhere faptastio!

Hear from you as soop as we oap.

—oOo—

Ultimately, Signal To Noise will play out to between seven and ten exchanges of messages at which point time will have passed and the signal will have degraded to the point of incomprehensibility. It will take between two and even five years for messages to travel between Earth and the Generation Fleet. The game will end with the players first reflecting upon the exchange of messages and the story they have told of two lives, far apart, before a debrief together.

It should be no surprise that Signal To Noise was written during lockdown, a roleplaying game entirely built for the exchange of messages via electronic mail. There are alternative rules which suggest it could be done via exchanged and later exchanged and edited video messages, as well as rules for extending play. The format means that it can be played at any distance and only one copy of the roleplaying game is needed as the author has given permission to share the PDF between the two players. As play progresses the game becomes about what we can understand, what meaning we can deduce from the increasingly garbled text from the context of the words and letters we receive at increasingly long intervals. Ultimately, the ‘noise’ of the signal will intrude to the point of incomprehensibility and loss of meaning accompanied by a loss of contact between Explorer and Earther. (As a side note, parallels could be drawn between the loss of communication and eventually, the loss of emotional connection in Signal To Noise and between a couple one of whom is suffering from onset dementia, though obviously it is not designed with that in mind.)

Physically, Signal To Noise is nicely presented. Its play is easy to read and grasp, made all the easier with the example of play included. The artwork is excellent.

Signal To Noise is about the long goodbye. Saying the long goodbye to a loved one or friend, one who is going away never to return, the other one who is staying behind. Within that long goodbye, Signal To Noise combines wistfulness and wonder, about that relationship that is to be lost and the future that is to be reached, and tells a story that will eventually be lost to the void between the stars.