Category: 23rd Letter

A Hopeful Ending and a New Beginning

We played our final session of The 23rd Letter play test this week, and wrapped up the story of Poppy and her baby.

After recuperating overnight (under Joy’s watchful care, and a handy saline drip), Poppy recovered enough from her ordeal to tell the group about what had happened, which really just confirmed all their suspicions from the previous sessions.

She was a telepath, recruited to be part of The Third Project, a government organisation that worked to keep the public safe from Espers. At first she had thought she was doing the right thing and using her talent for the good of her fellow countryment, but she came to realise that the folks running the Project (or at least her field office in Topeka) were actually working against the best interests of Espers in general, and about a year prior she had started working with a couple of Cells in the Network to supply them with Psilence so that they could avoid capture or detection by the Project.

While pregnant, Poppy realised that the double agent thing really was too much for her to handle along with a baby, so she decided to get out of the Project altogether and slip away into the Network. Her last act was to grab the entire stockpile of Psilence that her office had and bring it with her, but before she could get away, she went into labour. She had the baby, whose name is Anna, but the missing Psilence was noticed and questions started being asked. As soon as she was able, she slipped away. Leaving the Psilence where she’d stashed it, she traveled to St Louis where she was supposed to drop the drugs. Instead, she tried to meet up with the Cell, but the Third Project tracked her down and snatched her. She was able to hide the baby, knowing that help was on the way (and wanting to keep her obviously psychic child out of government hands).

The media was filled with accounts of the ‘Terror Attack’ on the highway from the day before, and Jenny had a meeting arranged for her with Internal Affairs the next week. However, at this point I asked the group if we could go into Downtime to test out those rules, which we did. I’ll handle the open plot points narratively at the start of next session (i.e. what happened in the Internal Affairs meeting, any developments on the location of Clark, etc.)

During Downtime, everyone has the opportunity to spend the Experiences they earned during play, adding new Qualities or Talents, or improving existing Skills, Talents or Attributes. Each member of the group got 12 XP (2 for each session, which is the middle of the road for our guidelines of 1-3). This led to some interesting discussions and changes in how we structure both XP and character creation, so I’m really glad we got a chance to do this part. For example, we discovered that the two very powerful Espers in the group had no real way to improve their Talents, which felt a little disappointing. Both players said they’d rather start a bit less powerful and become better through play. We also discovered that the costs of things was off, so glad we got to address that too.

The Cell used their downtime to shore up their Hideout, choosing to make it large enough for four people to rest in (it starts only large enough for 1, but luckily Bryce has the Builder Quality, allowing him to make an extra upgrade during Downtime). Stress and Heat were reduced for the group (another mechanics discussion and improvement resulted from that!).

A big thank you to my five players and their characters:

  • Stefan – the precog hippie and Cell namesake Richard Moonglow
  • Ellie – the nurse (and Cell mom) Joy Mary Smith
  • Fintan – the pyrokinetic cook/builder Bryce Collins
  • Eve – the mind-reading ‘medium’ and con-artist Vonbella Alexander
  • Sarah – the overworked and overlooked Detective Jenny Blake

The Moonglow Cell will continue to function after a couple weeks break (giving me time to write some more story hooks!) and now has a channel on our Discord to help track actual play.

Venting Pyrokinetics

Our fourth and fifth in-game sessions of the 23rd Letter saw quite a lot of action! I’ll give a brief summary, and then talk about some of the rules that I think were interesting. I’ll put a * and a number on some rules I’m going to talk about at the end.

Everybody woke up in the morning after not having slept very well, and discovered that they had had similar dreams … after some discussion, they determined that maybe the baby’s mother was being held captive somewhere near the Gateway Arch and a McDonalds. Richard (the precog) had an inkling that something big was going to go down, and made a few preparations[*1]. Meanwhile, Vonbella (the telepath) was able to remotely connect to Poppy, the woman in their dreams and the presumed mother of the baby, and find out that she was going to be moved out of the city later today!

Richard (backed up by Jenny the detective) met up with Royal, the Cell’s command and control contact, and got some info that helped fill in some gaps: Poppy had been a double agent within a government Project, secretly working for the Network to help supply them with Psilence (a necessary drug to help reduce Stress). The group pieced together that she’d been compromised and had tried to escape but had been caught, succeeding only in smuggling out her baby (and hiding a stash of Psilence somewhere also). Just as Richard finished up chatting with Royal, Vonbella got an urgent telepathic message from Poppy – she was being moved now!

Luckily, it turned out that she was halfway between Richard/Jenny in one car and Vonbella/Bryce (the pyrokinetic) in another[*1]. Joy (the nurse) had decided to take the baby back to her apartment … thankfully! Both pairs got into their car and tried to use Poppy’s weak telepathic messages to help triangulate her position. They eventually caught up to the SUV that the agents were transporting her in, but by this stage they were all on the freeway and heading out of the city.

Bryce used his powers[*2] to burn out one of the tyres on the government vehicle, causing it pull over onto the shoulder. He and Vonbella pulled in front, and Jenny/Richard pulled in behind. Everyone put on on their clown masks and got ready to for action (well, Vonbella kinda cowered in her seat, but she was there!) (end of session 4)

Two armed and armoured soldiers got out of the vehicle and drew a bead on each car, while a third agent tried to radio for help. Bryce and Vonbella, despite their antagonism, worked together for the greater good by creating a Gestalt[*3] and using Vonbella’s telepathic powers to see through Poppy’s eyes and allow Bryce to target his pyrokinesis to superheat the soldiers’ weapons and the radio, causing everything to be dropped (although bullets were sprayed wildly). The attempt was successful, but given all the Stress that Bryce and Vonbella had, it caused Bryce to Vent[*4] creating a massive pyrokinetic explosion which destroyed the car they were sitting in and sent fiery debris flying across the freeway. Several cars crashed into each other on the other shoulder, and one went spinning wildly out of control and did several flips, killing everyone inside thankfully nobody was killed.[*1] The explosion was enough to kill one of the soldiers, and set a second one on fire. Jenny quickly finished off that one and the third with some skilled shooting, while Richard hustled up to the SUV and helped the heavily sedated Poppy back to Jenny’s car.

Bryce and Vonbella left their “car” (by this stage it was just the two seats they were sitting in, and a large, blackened crater) and hustled into Jenny’s car. They took off before backup could arrive, and found a safe spot to wait for Joy to come pick them up in her minivan–Richard took Jenny’s car and ditched it in the Missisippi, while Jenny reported it stolen, in an attempt to cover their trail.[*5] They got back to Joy’s apartment, fixed Poppy up with a saline drip to help her recover in bed, and that’s where we wrapped session 5.

OK, let’s look at the rules that helped this story move along.

1. Richard is a precog, which means when he wants to see the future, he makes a roll with his ability and each success gives him one ‘preparation’–a secret thing his character has done ahead of time, but that he as a player doesn’t have to think of until the action is actually happening. Richard’s player rolled 3 successes. Where did everyone get clown masks? That was one of his preparations. How come the bad guys were halfway between Richard/Jenny and Bryce/Vonbella? A second preparation (which in Richard’s case is part of his ‘things just happen the way they are meant to’ view on life). The third preparation went on saving the lives of the folks in the car that flipped: Richard had seen it coming and had called the cops to report *that* car stolen earlier that morning. Those poor folks had been hassled by the cops and never made it onto the freeway, but hey–at least they were still alive!

2. Bryce is a Major Pyrokinetic, with 2d12 in his Psychic Talent. However, he and Vonbella were both Stressed (mostly caused by each other!) – Bryce had 2 Stress and Vonbella had 3, so when he rolled to blow out the tyre, he had to roll 2d12 + 5d6 – 1d6 for each Stress in their shared pool: all psychics share their Stress pool when in close proximity. Luckly, he rolled 1 success and 1 bane, which was enough to blow out the tyre, but it also gave him another Stress (rolling a bane on a Psychic talent roll adds a Stress dice), bringing his total Stress up to 3 (and the shared pool to 6!)

3. Now Bryce and Vonbella are working together, they create a Gestalt – a unified effort to use both their powers in a single, combined psychic action. In this case, using Vonbella’s telepathy to view through Poppy’s eyes so that Bryce could easily see the guns and radio and superheat them. Vonbella is a Minor telepath with only 1d6 in her ability, but because the Stress pool is so high, she gets to roll an additional 6d6 and add those on. Each one has the chance of giving her a success, but of course, each one also has the chance of a bane … Bryce also has to roll 6d6 + his 2d12. After both players had rolled, they had 3 successes. They needed 1 success to heat 1 gun, and an extra 2 successes for the extra two targets, so they just made it! However, Bryce had rolled 3 banes, and rolling 2 banes (snake eyes!) on a Psychic Talent roll means that the Esper Vents!

4. What’s a Vent, you ask? Well, it’s those times when psychic stress builds up too much and explodes out of the Esper in a wild and uncontrolled fashion, wreaking havoc on the people and environment close by (but leaving the Esper intact, and now drained of Stress). Sometimes this is pure mental energy, and people around them might get nosebleeds, aneurysms, heart attacks … in Bryce’s case, it was a massive pyrokinetic explosion. To work out the size of the Vent, he adds on the additional Stress he just rolled (3) to the current Stress pool (6) and adding in his psychic power dice (2d12). So, he uses 2d12 + 9d6 to determine much damage is done – every success on that roll will do 1 damage to everything in close proximity! Bear in mind, 3 damage is usually enough to cause a critical injury, so this was a HUGE explosion! Luckily, because she was part of the Gestalt that resulted in the Vent, Vonbella is also unaffected by the explosion. However, the car was more or less vaporized, and the explosion rolled out in a huge fireball … one dice drops for every zone (10m), so there effects felt up to 100m away!

5. The Network Cell tracks a score called Heat, which is a measure of how much external observation and pressure there is on the group and their activities. The group’s Heat score went up by three over the course of this session, 1 for each crime they committed (the freeway shootings/explosion and then ditching a car in the river), and an extra 1 for the extravagance of the explosion–it was certainly newsworthy! The higher the Heat score, the more likely there will be some kind of external interference, in the form of police, feds or worse …

Anyway, we have one last session to do for our playtest, where we will wrap up the story line of Poppy and Baby Blue, and then have some Downtime–more on that in my next write up.

The 23rd Letter, 3rd Edition playtest doc

It’s out there in the wild. We are inviting you to the Playtest.

Either join our little Discord or, if you already own The 23rd Letter 2nd Edition, check your inbox as you’ll have been sent a link.

The highlights are

  • New character options in a new archetype-based system
  • More focus on The Network
  • Explosive escalation of Psychic Talents with Stress
  • New system compatible with Year Zero Engine (allowing you to take advantage of supplements for Twilight 2000 or even Blade Runner)
  • Foundation of a new story arc for the mid-21st Century

Where you can help?

  • Tell us what you like and what you don’t like.
  • Help us decide the final art style for the game
  • Find us on the Discord and chat about what you want or need in a game.

A precog walks into a bar …

Now a few weeks into the first play-test of the 3rd edition of The 23rd Letter, I wanted to post some updates on what’s been going in the game, and a few reflections as both Referee and game designer. First off, let’s talk about the party, which in this edition is by default a Cell in the Network. If you’ve never player T23L before, the Network is the psychic underground, a loosely connected group of people (some psychic, some not) who help each other to survive, and to keep off the government radar. This game is set in St. Louis, Missouri, chosen because it’s a big city, in the middle of the USA, which none of my players have been to.

  • Richard Moonglow – in his mid-50s, Richard lives out of his old VW camper van and would’ve been a hippie if he hadn’t been born two decades late. He is a powerful Precog, but in his worldview “everything just happens the way it was meant to, man.”
  • Clark (NPC) – Clark is a Cryokinetic, an unusual psychic power which allows him to reduce the temperature of things around him. However, just before the start of our game, Clark went missing.
  • Joy Mary Smith – Joy is a nurse in her late 30s working at a local hospital. She first encountered psychics while treating Clark after he was in a car accident–when he regained consciousness, he froze his saline drip! She’s been helping the Cell ever since.
  • Detective Jenny Blake – Jenny works for St. Louis Metro PD, in their Domestic department. She has a chip on her shoulder about being overlooked for promotion or better roles, and helps the Cell partially out of spite for her job. She and Joy are close friends, having met because they are neighbors in their apartment block.
  • Vonbella Alexander – Young, blonde and classically beautiful, Vonbella is a medium, talking to the spirits of the dead to help her clients. In reality, she’s a minor Telepath, who reads her clients’ minds and makes up stories to fleece them of their hard-earned cash. Hey, everyone’s gotta make a living, right?
  • Bryce – Bryce is Clark’s brother and is traveling to St. Louis to find him. He works as a chef, mostly to help cover up the fact that he is Pyrokinetic.

Each player decided for themselves whether to be a psychic (or Esper, as they’re also known) without really talking to anyone else, so we ended up with an interesting mix of three Espers, and two regular folks (or Nulls, as they are sometimes called). We’ve had three sessions after character creation. Our first two sessions were played without Bryce, because his player was unavailable, and Bryce just arrived in the third session.

Session 1

Richard receives a message from Royal, one of his Network contacts. The group meets up at their favourite Waffle House to discuss the message. Clark’s brother is coming to town, which is when the group realizes that they haven’t seen Clark in over a week. The message also instructs the group to collect a package from a drop location. “Blue Monday, 3C, location Bravo.”

Jenny stops by the motel where Clark has been staying, only to discover he checked out a week ago. Some questioning of the staff led her to the lost and found box, where she discovered his copy of Call of Duty for the Xbox, which had been left behind under the bed. Why wouldn’t he pack that?

The group scopes out location Bravo: it’s a warehouse out in the suburbs, and it’s closed (it’s a Sunday). They decide they’ll come back when it’s open, because the message is a little on the cryptic side. Maybe they can just go in and ask for Blue Monday?

Notes: there wasn’t much in the way of psychic activity in this session, although Richard did attempt (and failed) to see if his precognition was telling him anything about Clark or location Bravo. This is when we realized (as game designers) that even though Richard was a Major precog, he was not any likelier to succeed than a Minor precog on the dice roll, and we decided that Major powers should get to roll two dice for their powers rather than just one. This is now so fundamental to how the game works that it was definitely a good call!

Session 2

Richard received a precognitive vision in his dreams, and decided that the right time to visit location Bravo was actually later that night. (As the Referee, having both a Telepath and Precog in the group gives me a lot of opportunity to help shape the story without being railroading too much. I realised I hadn’t given enough info in my cryptic message to be truly useful, so I added this bit in).

The group arrived at the location only to discover that someone had been there before them. Tire tracks in the ground were the first hint, and then the door to the warehouse being broken open was the dead giveaway! They went inside all the same, and in location 3C in the warehouse, in one of shipping company’s cardboard boxes, was a baby, wrapped in a blanket. A hastily scribbled note in the box read “Blue Monday.” The group decided they should smash up the warehouse a bit, figuring that vandalism would be less likely to draw attention than a break-in where nothing was taken. (The Cell received 1 Heat for this, bringing them to 6, enough for the Referee to roll at the end of the session to see if anyone takes an interest in their activities).

Joy and Jenny took the baby to the hospital to check it over for its health, while Richard and Vonbella went to a 24-hour Walmart to buy some baby supplies. They all met back at Joy’s apartment and deliberated about what to do. Eventually they decided to send a message back to Royal to ask for further instructions. While waiting for an answer, they tried to figure out what had happened to Clark, and eventually worked their way into his email account (passwords aren’t as secure as you think, when you have a Telepath for a friend). They discovered he’d posted a personals ad and had been arranged to meet a woman about a week prior. He’d sent no further emails since that date. Jenny took note of the location they were meant to meet for later reference.

The answer came back from Royal by the end of the session. “Split in half. Keep half and drop the other half at location Echo.”

Notes: Joy’s player spent most of the session holding a make-believe baby and trying to keep it soothed. I think there was maybe one or two dice rolls the whole session, and virtually no NPC interaction (apart from the Walmart staff) – the group just roleplayed everything out among themselves and had a blast. As both Referee and game designer, this was very positive feedback! The players know their characters and how their relationships and are happy just acting them out.

Session 3

Vonbella wakes up from some awful dreams, where she’s being interrogated, somewhere near to the Gateway Arch (the big landmark in downtown St. Louis). She tells the group some of it, but it’s pretty vague and the group decides not to take any action.

Bryce arrived in from Florida, after a long bus ride on a Greyhound. Richard picked him up and brought him back to Joy’s apartment, where a very suspicious Vonbella and Jenny interrogated him. At one point, Jenny pulled her gun on him, trying to provoke a reaction (when she did this with Clark, he accidentally froze his coffee!) Bryce, however, was not as easily triggered as his little brother, so Vonbella tried to read his mind, which led to some Pyschic Friction (this is a new mechanic, and basically the Espers push against each other psychically until one of them backs down … or explodes). Both Bryce and Vonbella came off badly from this incident, nursing some aches and pains and generally disliking each other intensely, but Jenny was happy that they’d proven Bryce was an Esper at least.

To help calm things down, Richard takes Bryce to go help in the local soup kitchen, and on the way they send a message to Royal asking for a face-to-face meeting – surely there must be some mistake, nobody could really be suggesting to split the baby in half?! Jenny spends some time during her working day to look at footage of the park where Clark was meant to meet his date, and discovers that Clark was grabbed by two men who injected him with something and tossed him into the back of a van! She immediately panics, and worried that everyone is at equal risk of being grabbed, sends the bug out signal to everyone (which the group agreed would be a picture of a Quokka). Everybody gets their emergency bags and heads out of town to a log cabin near the commune where Richard used to live. On the way, Richard picks up the reply from Royal, with a location for a meeting the next day.

Out in the cabin, Jenny brings the group up to speed. She may have overreacted, but everybody thinks its better safe than sorry. Bryce talks a bit about he and his brother’s past, how his parents were killed because they wouldn’t let Clark be taken by “some guys in suits”, and how Bryce’s talent literally exploded out of him that night. Vonbella makes some off-colour comments about his history, and pisses Bryce off even more, but Richard plays the peacekeeper. Everyone settles in to try to get a night’s sleep before they go back to the city tomorrow.

Notes: Bryce and Vonbella generated a lot of Stress dice on themselves and each other with their Pyschic Friction, so they are tense and angry. This also spills onto Richard because when Espers are close together, they feel each other’s stress. It’s going to be difficult for the group to get any sleep at all tonight …

Why Yeezy?

So, you know we have switched from out ERIS House System to the YZE for the Third Edition and we have been asked why.

The first reason is that it’s a decent system. It’s pretty grounded, pretty lethal and abstracts a lot of the bookkeeping (reducing crunch while maintaining verisimilitude). We are using the Step Dice version which is used in RPGs like Twilight 2000 4th Edition, Blade Runner, Terminal State, Exsanguine, micro2K, De Occulta.

The second is to take advantage of a lot of great content that’s been created for the Twilight 2000 4th Edition RPG. For a slightly more military campaign, the scenarios and equipment would be invaluable.

The third is making the rules available for games which need psychics but maybe don’t include them in the base game. Could Blade Runner do well with psychics? Hell, yeah.

The 23rd Letter 3rd Edition

So, we have been working a lot on this. The rules are probably 90% complete but we keep finding little places where we think a rule or guideline is needed. Like today it was clarifiying how Hideouts function mechanically in relation to Heat from the authorities.

We are starting to look at design and layout and starting to put together an art list. Art? I mean, there was zero art in the first two editions. Yes, there will be art in this edition. Some of the new concepts need some art to illustrate.

Changes we can talk about?

  1. It’s less of a gun game. We have greatly simplified this.
  2. It’s still lethal. It’s easy to be taken out of the fight.
  3. We have changed the system considerably
  4. Psychics are much more powerful, but still vulnerable
  5. Greatly expanded rules for running the Network
  6. Oh, the metaplot. Play it or ignore it. There’s a metaplot

And we are looking for a couple of playtesters. Get in touch.

EXCESSION: Session 1

Excession is a new low-to-mid powered superhero game using the Year Zero Engine.

Session 1

Excession is a privately owned non profit organisation that seems to have unlimited money and a private army.

Louis and Jana are two hard chargers for the Excession organisation. Louis is a German-American with a real love of animals and an equal love of his well groomed porn-star moustache. Jana is a matronly experienced soldier with no need to prove herself. They like to get in quick, hit hard and leave the nerds to come in and tidy up. They’re both relaxing in the Ready Room when they feel the whole building, all 19 storeys, shudder. A shadow falls over the building and over the comms there’s the sound of gunfire and panic. Both grab their webbing and weapons and bolt up the stairs as the Evac siren sounds and the office workers begin to spill out of the offices and to the stairwell.

Taking the steps 4 at a time, they arrive at the roof and take cover behind an aircon unit to see a tall (3 metres tall!) silvery armoured figure directing energy weapon fire upon a fire team on the roof. They’re pinned down behind a pipe. The energy weapons fire is coming from a suspended black disc, perhaps 3 metres wide. But above it, in a seeming haze, is the ‘impression’ of a much larger vessel, perhaps cloaked.

Louis bolts for the stairs and leaps over the bannister, plummeting two floors to the upper armoury and grabs a LAW (Light Anti-Tank Weaton) and an AMR (Anti-Material Rifle) and then starts climbing up the stairs again, meanwhile Jana unclips a frag grenade from her webbing and lobs it at the silvery figure. The grenade detonates with seemingly no effect. Arriving back up, Louis hands her the LAW and he cocks the AMR. Both take aim and Louis makes an abdomen hit while the LAW round hits the being in the chest. This seems to stagger the being so they signal for the fire team to depart. One of them isn’t so lucky, Hank gets grabbed by the being and thrown off the roof….

Jana reports this over the comms and luckily there are two Enhanced on their way up. One is codenamed Jade Dragon, a superlative martial artist withthe ability to transmute objects and people to jade. The other is Strobe who has limited control over his personal space time – in effect he can stop time for a few seconds. Strobe hears about the falling Hank and detours to a window, grabbing a firehose as he runs. He shoots out the window and dives out, stopping time as he begins to fall, allowing him to catch up to the plummeting soldier. He grabs him roughly and the hose goes taut, slamming them into the side of the building three floors lower.

Meanwhile Jana and Louis pump more AMR rounds into this thing and lob grenades – which seems to stagger it. It raises a hand and there’s a pause ….and then the black disc rains heat death rays upon the rooftop. Hair singed, they barrel into the stairwell and begin to descent the stairs as quick as they can as the plaster cracks and the glass melts. They’re met by Jade Dragon on his way up who can see that the whole top three floors of the building are going up in smoke. He leaps over the balcony and falls five floors before deftly grabbing a railing and throwing himself to safety.

The vessel, slowly moves off….

Fire marshals and first aiders are checking everyone at their assembly points outside the building and the four, Strobe, Jade Dragon, Jana and Louis are approached by an elderly man, one of the trustees. They know him as Arthur Joyce. He mutters that “They’re back….” and instructs the team to go find Zachery Ackermann. When they ask him how, he says the address is with his secretary…

Switch To:

November 1945. The back of an Army truck. Sergeant Roy James and Corporal Curtis Cox have been seconded to Excession. The third man in the truck is wearing a white suit and they know he’s a Brit by the name of Arthur Joyce who made his name in the SOE during the war. They’re driven to an airfield and put onto a transport plane which flies them to the heart of Kansas. Then two more hours of driving and they find themselves in the middle of a cornfield looking at a furrow caused by a fallen meteor. But this meteor seems to be made out of silvery metal. Joyce orders Corporal Cox to jemmy open the thing and he does while Sergeant James covers with his rifle.

The capsule opens and there’s a rush of strange smelling gases. As the mist clears they see a hairless small baby, white in colour with no nose, looking at them. They tell Joyce it’s just a kid and he suggests they’ll have to deal with it. “After all, it’s an invader”. Corporal Curtis picks it up and as his flesh touches it, the baby shifts colour to his skin colour and develops a human nose and a patch of dark hair on its head. Within seconds it’s indistinguishable from a human child. Joyce again uses his horrible euphemisms about killing and the two soldiers take a stand. They ain’t killing a kid and, heck, even Nazi babies aren’t born evil – they reckon they can raise this kid. Joyce concedes and tells them to get married – if they can find a woman who’d stoop so low. Curtis asks what they’ll call the kid. Joyce interrupts, “Call him Zachery”.

End of session 1.

New Project: Beyond Human

New? I’ve been working on this for a while.

2008. I wrote that in 2008.

The project has advanced. It’s now 70 pages which puts it as the largest book I’ve made to date.

The premise is that it’s a grounded superhero game. I mean, as grounded as superhero games can really be. It’s got a lot of backstory in it because it’s the same game world that I’ve been playing in for decades. Not going to put all of that into the game – only the interesting bits.

But it’s a grounded superhero game. With a Mythos background.

So I asked an artist to sketch something.

That’s Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos.

The 23rd Letter, 3rd “Fury” Edition

Yeah, I wasn’t planning on having to talk about it so soon. Blog post isn’t even written.

but…

it’s set nearly thirty years later. The Psychic War as was died with the final end of the Cold War. Corporations figured out it’s easier to manipulate people with social media than fragile psychics. Many of the government projects have collapsed. Only three major factions remain.

Talents are streamlined – more ‘cooperation’ between psychic powers is encouraged, lots more wild talents included (psychic vampirism? Ok) and a bigger metaplot regarding a psychic menace known as the Fury that particularly affects telepaths.

Telepaths get mind linking powers, Regents get sleeper suggestion, TKs get offensive strikes and shields, precogs get BITD-inspired Preparations, Healers can harm.

System is a little less severe though getting shot still ruins your day. Toned down the rules on Fatigue. But Stress now affects everyone.

………and I’m in the art-commissioning phase.

23rd Letter, 2nd Edition PDF

After a lengthy delay, I released the PDF of the second edition of The 23rd Letter.

Anyone who has the print edition gets it free (so, if you have it, get in touch).?

There’s a third edition (different time period, different metaplot) coming so don’t rush out and get it unless you want some amazing stuff. ?You’ll see it and all of my books at https://www.lategaming.com/buy-the-books/

Silver Haired Sentinels: Superheroic Role-Playing in the Retirement Age

Take on the reigns of a retired superhero living out their lives in a retirement home with other seniors. Try and relive smome of your glory days while fighting authoritarian wardens, the rigours of modern life and a family that would rather they didn’t have to visit so often.

Silver Haired Sentinels is a roleplaying game about the residents and staff of a Continuing Care Retirement Community. That would be interesting in itself but some of these Residents have a lot of history; they’re the surviving members of a vigilante team responsible for putting down villains and stopping global conspiracies in their youth.

They’ll be a core team and there will likely be visiting or replaced members. There’s an opportunity to relive past glories, revisit old rivalries and maybe even get some closure on things that didn’t work out in the past.

This game is directly inspired by:

Watchmen (Comic and Movie)
Kick The Can (from the Twilight Zone)
The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (from Cloud Atlas)
Brindlewood Bay (roleplaying game)
New Tricks (TV series)
and by the general realisation that I’m closer to 70 years old than 25 years old.

The name itself is referential to Silver Age comics (and the name of the RPG Silver Age Sentinels).

Latest Project: Silver Haired Sentinels

I’ve been working on this for a while now – and just waiting on a few art pieces to be finished.

So, what is it?

Silver Haired Sentinels is a roleplaying game about the residents and staff of a Continuing Care Retirement Community. That would be interesting in itself but some of these Residents have a lot of history; they’re the surviving members of a vigilante team responsible for putting down villains and stopping global conspiracies in their youth.

They’ll be a core team and there will likely be visiting or replaced members. There’s an opportunity to relive past glories, revisit old rivalries and maybe even get some closure on things that didn’t work out in the past.

This game is directly inspired by:

  • Watchmen (Comic and Movie)
  • Kick The Can (from the Twilight Zone)
  • The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (from Cloud Atlas)
  • Brindlewood Bay (roleplaying game)
  • New Tricks (TV series)

and by the general realisation that I’m closer to 70 years old than 25 years old.

The name itself is referential to Silver Age comics (and the name of the RPG Silver Age Sentinels).

So, it’s coming soon!

Announcing Twilight Tangents – a multi-world sourcebook for Twilight: 2000 4th Edition

I’ve produced a couple of books for T2K4e but I’m really enjoying putting together this latest one. This book describes three alternate futures for the T:2000 game. Things to spice up the game.

GET IT NOW on DTRPG

Here’s some of the opening prose from one of the Tangents.

For your own reasons, you joined the Army and when SPR came looking for recruits, you volunteered. You were put into a squad with ten others. You trained together, you ate together and you slept in the same billet. You had to talk to doctors and psychologists – and then they gave you some injections which knocked you out.?

When you woke, you could feel something was wrong. For one thing, eight of the beds were empty. You and one other person were lying in bed. But that wasn’t the worst of it. There was something in your head – a tickle you’d not felt before – a feeling that wasn’t quite an irritation.?

Later that day, Staff Sergeant Mottram came in and sat with you. She told you that you were special. She told you she was there to help you through it. And she told you all this without her lips moving at all.?

Next day, you were alone in a room with Sgt Mottram; a room with a glass window on one side. You heard her voice in your head again and she told you something was going to happen and to just relax and let it happen.?

And then it happened. You felt the tickle, heard a noise like the rushing of blood in your ears and the world changed. You were special. You could do something special. You were unique.?

Then you were filed into a room for paperwork and then back into your uniform to join all of the other special, unique people in SPR. It’s like Basic all over again, except after your morning run you’re all filed into warehouses and made to set fire to things, read minds, and delve into people’s memories. Usual stuff.?

But at night you think about those eight empty beds and you wonder where they took number 9. Because you haven’t seen her since.?

Astute readers and fans of this site (both of you) may notice that this sounds a little like The 23rd Letter. And indeed it is. I’m debating whether to make a full sourcebook for T:2000. It’s a similar game to The 23rd Letter – actually slightly less crunchy but that’s no bad thing. T23L was always described as a bit of a deadly gun game.

WatchTower: The Game

After many games of WatchTower played using rules from other systems (primarily the classic Marvel Super Heroes game), Matt and I have knuckled down to start writing the actual WatchTower game. We were planning to start a new group and play a Supers game (Godlike was the original proposal), and before you know it we had 12,000 words and all the major system components in place. This will be the first game we’ve written together, and the third published under LateGaming. For me, it’s the one I’ve wanted to write most (it will actually be my first full game, and Matt’s sixth!).

So, what is it?

Matt wrote the background for a supers game back in mid-90s when we played the first iteration, and then a quick primer for a new group that we kicked off in early 2007 that’s a good overview of the background. Most of the blog posts we’ve written under the WatchTower category are about games we’ve run or thoughts we’ve had along the way. It’s a labor of love, because we’ve played the characters and backgrounds multiple times, with different groups, in different countries. It resonates with anyone who enjoys the genre.

What makes it different?

As with all of our games, we value simplicity, flexibility and storytelling. This game reflects those values, and will allow gaming groups to play as any super (or Exotic, as they are known in-world) that they might want to, while having to remain grounded in dealing with real world consequences of what it really means to have powers, and to live in a world where powers exist. The background spans the last 100+ years, allowing for different flavours of game experience, based on the era in which you choose to play. Different classes of campaign are possible also, based on which powers are available in that era and what power level of Exotics you choose to play. The mechanics of character creation are simple and fast, while still having plenty of nuance to allow for interesting stories. This also works in favor of the GM – creating NPCs is a snap, allowing you to focus your energy instead on the flow of the narrative.

When will it be ready?

Ah, the big question! We are getting the mechanics ready to game with our group starting in the next few weeks, and use that as the main play-test. Meanwhile, we (who am I kidding? Matt) will be writing the background material, explanations for the powers, and useful descriptions of the game mechanics. We’ll be commissioning art for our favourite heroes, villains and scenes from the games we’ve played to tie it all together, and that can be the longest turn around for getting the book finished. So, the answer is: 2021, sometime ?

Stay tuned!

Glowing Eyes

Over the weekend I watched “The Darkest Minds”. A movie of the YA novel of the same name about some kids who gain superpowers (there are very few kids around as the ones who don’t gain superpowers tend to die). So it has shades of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a little Wild Cards (edited by George R. R. Martin) and a little J. Michael Straczynski’s “Rising Stars”. Yeah, there’s a passing similarity to “The 23rd Letter” too – especially as we use a psi symbol on our cover too. But I digress.

It bothered me about the glowing eyes. A lot of stuff about superhero fiction and radiation emission bothers me. To have glowing eyes, you have to have actual light emitters inside the eyes. And that’s weird to me. Weirder than psychic powers anyway.

A few years ago I wrote a superhero background where every superpower had a basis in biology. Some people had poisonous touch or acidic spittle. Some people had enhanced strength or reactions, others had increased resistance to harm. But there was always a trade off. A reason for their power. We had flyers, don’t get me wrong, but these were people with enhanced nervous systems who could control the flight surfaces on experimental jet packs. Every super power had to have some sort of sensible grounding. After a fact. And it was a lot of fun.

No glowing eyes.

Current work…writing scripts

For the last few months, on top of travelling and attending a bazillion courses, I’ve been writing.

I’ve written five short scripts in the world of THE 23RD LETTER. I’ve written two more in the world of STATUS: REFUGEE. I’ve written one horror script. And I’m looking at writing some scripts based on FRONTIER and QABAL very soon. And there’s one very special property that I would love to pitch to the BBC…

Two of my scripts are going into production in 2017 and I’ll be doing a “mobile phone” shoot of one of my scripts probably over the upcoming holidays.

So, all change.