Power Groups within The Forgotten

With Obliviscence finally out, I’ve turned my mind to detailing more of the setting for The Forgotten. And as I’ve been thinking about it more, I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that I need to change it up a bit.

The setting as presented in Obliviscence is one where, in general, Forgotten life is ok. While it’s only hinted at in the NPC descriptions, my original idea was that the “good guys” (lead by Laura) have managed to deal with the old situation in the city that had three rival gangs controlling the city (and the Forgotten within it). Laura and her followers overthrew the old gangs several years ago, and are now attempting to create a peaceful society as best they can.

(Of course, one of her former supporters is attempting to carve out his own power niche, but you get that :-) )

However now I’m thinking that I need to step it back a bit. The idea I'm currently considering is that Laura and her people have managed to overthrow one of the gangs (presumably the most powerful), but the other two are still a significant threat within the city.

On the plus side, this is an obvious source of conflict (and hence adventures) within the game. It means that the setting isn’t safe and happy, and that everyone still needs to be somewhat careful when moving around. And if I assume that the other two gangs have lost a lot of their previous power (even though they still control some territory), it means that things like the Exchange can still exist within the setting.

The negative side is I’m not too sure I like adding such potentially large “militant” slant on the setting. Players who like killing lots of things would probably like it, but others who are more interested in exploring where they are (and trying to find a way home) probably wouldn’t find it appealing.

Much more thought is required I think!

Obliviscence is complete!

Phew! It was a lot of work, but Obliviscence (at least v1) is finally done. You can download it from here (direct link to PDF).

WoAdWriMo Progress Report - day 31

Ok, so by the Australian calandar it is now the end of July. It's a good thing for me that I finished the first edit pass and the layout today then! The only thing left to do is make three more pre-gen characters, and then it's all finished. I'm going to cheat a little a say I'm using the US midnight for the end of the month, so that means I've still got until midday tomorrow (my time) to get those done. :-)

After that I plan on letting the adventure sit for a week or two (perhaps asking my players if they can read through it to spot any editing mistakes, unclear sections, etc). Then I'm going to re-edit the adventure myself, and release a 1.1 version (hopefully around the middle of August). That version will also have a few maps that I haven't had time to draw up.

WoAdWriMo - The Writing is Done! (sort of)

Phew! The main writing for the adventure is finally done (and came to 30 pages in Word). But I'm not quite done yet - I've now got to write up some NPCs, create a few pre-gens, then do my best to edit the adventure (there are a couple of patches that are a little rough). And after that it's layout time.

I had hoped to spend a bit of time on the layout, but given the looming deadline I think I'll just have to keep it basic for the moment. What I think I might do is get v1 of the adventure out by the end of the month, then spend a little bit more time on it (another editing pass, add a few images, etc) and release v1.1 after a week or two.

Unless I get lazy and just leave it as it is ;-)

WoAdWriMo Progress Report - day 29

The days are counting down, and it looks like I'm going to be cutting it fine. The majority of the writing is done (just mainly missing one section early on that's very free-form and proving hard to write), but there's still a lot more I'd like to do (like pre-gen characters). Not to mention the whole editing bit :-) . But overall things are looking promising for finishing on time - just.

I've taken a short time out of writing to put together the cover for the adventure. I'm quite happy with it... but we'll see how I feel about it in a few weeks time!

Obliviscence playtest, part 2

Sometimes things can go right - and luckily enough for me, my group was able to meet again to finish off the Obliviscence playtest. The second half of the adventure seemed to go much better - we were over the "learn about the setting" hump that seemed to be a part of the first session, and overall I felt much more comfortable running the game. My players seemed to enjoy it too. I think it helped that the second half was slightly less "railroaded" compared to the first half.

I was extremely happy that my players managed to trigger a "Collector" - the big nasties of the setting who chase after the Forgotten.

Now I've just got to get everything typed up (and layed out) in the next five days. Eeep!

WoAdWriMo Progress Report - day 21 (eek!)

Time is ticking down on WoAdWriMo. I have to say I'm feeling a little nervous about the deadline, but I'm still aiming to complete in time.

My regular group got together on Friday to playtest the adventure. Unfortunately we only got half way through the material in the time we had, but what we did get done seemed to work ok.

I've already made a few changes to the adventure based on how it played out and some feedback afterward. Some of the feedback was interesting - the start wasn't strongly liked because it was so sudden. If I was running a campaign, I guess I would have eased everyone into things a bit slower (the process of being forgotten taking several days), but for a once-off adventure I figured it was better to just drop everyone into things immediately.

The players also had some fantastic feedback on how one of the NPCs (a friendly one who's there to help them) was introduced. Hopefully her introduction will be stronger for their comments.

I did have one amusing moment while running the game - one of the NPCs suddenly changed gender from what I had originally planned!

The players generally seem like they want to finish the adventure, so I'm hopping we can get together again soon. It probably won't be until August (unless we replace one of our normal roleplay sessions for the second half, which is unlikely to happen). Hopefully what I've come up with will survive the lack of playtest ;-)

As for the actual writing of the adventure - I've completed the introduction section and almost all of Act I. Only four more Acts to go!

Oh yes, and one useless tidbit of info. One of my players recognised the second book that I've used as inspiration for The Forgotten (the one I had forgotten the title of). It's titled Displaced Person, by Lee Harding. I feel a re-read is in order.

WoAdWriMo Progress Report - day 9

So I finally have a title for the adventure - "Obliviscence" (which is 'the process of forgetting'). It seems the more common spelling is oblivescence, but I prefer the extra 'i' instead of 'e' in the appearance of the word (yeah, I'm weird).

Progress on the adventure itself is good. The outline has been reworked, and I'm much happier with it now. There's still one section that I'm unsure about, but as that is towards the end of the adventure I can leave that for the moment and work on the rest of it while my subconscious thinks about it.

Ironically the one scene that had stuck in my mind from the very beginning of this (the PCs starting the adventure in a bus terminal) has now changed :-) Instead of a bus terminal it's an airport. It just seemed to be more sensible in the end, since air transport is more popular than bus transport over a long distance.

Writing wise I've now done the overview of the adventure for the GM, and almost finished writing the first scene. I'm hoping I can convince my players to give the adventure a playtest sometime next week, but I won't find out about that until we play this Sunday.

Adventure Pre-gen - Henry Leech

An important thing for me with this adventure (and The Forgotten setting in general) is that it's about "normal" people who get caught up in strange things. So this is one of the pre-gen characters that will be included with the adventure. Built in EABA with the "normal" (80 A/80 S) point values.

Henry Leech, antiques dealer
"Are you crazy - do you know how old this is?"
Strength: 2d+0
Agility: 2d+1
Awareness: 2d+2
Will: 2d+1
Health: 2d+1
Fate: 2d

Skills:
Brawling: +0d
Land vehicles: +0d
Language (French): +1d
Language (German): +1d
Area Knowledge (business): +1d
Area Knowledge (antiques): +2d
Psychology: +0d
Carousing: +0d
Sleight of Hand: +0d
Scrounging (antiques): +2d

Traits:
Mature age (35)
Pain tolerance
Keen eyes
Obsessive over antiques (Personality 1 level)

Henry has had a love of antiques his entire life. His grandmother’s house was full of them and he spent most of his childhood at her place, listening to her stories about the items or reading up on them in books. He began trading in small items when he was a teenager (when other kids were doing paper runs or working other minor jobs to earn money). He started his own business properly when he was 19 and his grandmother passed away, leaving him the contents of her house. His business has been in the same small shop ever since. He has a reputation for being able to quickly track down specific antiques for his clients via his network of contacts and other dealers.

Possessions (carried): Leather briefcase (business papers, 3 pens, antiques catalogue, old auction catalogue, two chocolate bars), watch (plain), keys, clothes (old suit, shirt, tie, shoes).

WoAdWriMo Progress Report - day 7

(Ok, this isn't really the 7th day that I've been working on this... but it is the 7th of the month, and since the aim is to finish in the month of July, my argument is that it's day 7 of the challenge :-) )

So far, things aren't going too badly. I've written up the first draft of the intro and details of the setting that a GM will need to know to run the adventure, and I've solidified in my mind many more details of the setting that had been bugging my subconscious (I think it's coming together well, but I could be biased). I've also created one sample pre-gen for the adventure - I plan on including four pre-gens with the adventure, just so a group could pick it up and play as a once-off if they wanted to.

I'm starting to write out an overview of the adventure for the GM, but the adventure itself is still in flux - it starts off strong (I think), but as I'm writing down the overview I realise just how weak it gets at around the half-way point. There's still some work to do there.

Adventure Snippets Floating In My Mind

Ok, so my plan was to talk about how I was working on this adventure here on my blog... so I think I'd better start doing that properly!

At the moment I know that the adventure will start with the PCs arriving in a bus terminal late at night at the end of a long trip. I'm not sure why, but the scene of a bus terminal has just stuck in my mind, so dammit all I'm going to use it :-)

One of the scenes I want to use is the PCs arriving at some sort of gathering of other forgotten - like a market or similar. However I am a little hesitant about the market idea, as Neverwhere has an important scene where the main character arrives at a market. So I don't want it to seem like it's too derivative. I could just make it some sort of camp I guess. I've got to think about that some more.

And I don't know why, but for some reason "mad religious groups" have been figuring into my roleplay creations the last year or two. It started with the Cauliflowers in The Veggie Patch, continued with the Fires of Amatsumara game I'm running, and now I'm thinking about it for The Forgotten - people who think they have been "chosen" (or are being tested) in some way.

Oh yes, and the PCs will definitely have to run into Collectors. What's a Collector? Think of them as the Men In Black or Agents (ala Matrix) of the setting, except they capture and drag away forgotten who are too slow and those people are never seen again.

20 Word Description

So over on the WoAdWriMo forums there's a thread where people can give a 20 word or less description of their adventure. Here's what I eventually came up with:

Chased by strange men, ignored by everyone else, regular people must escape the strange new world they find themselves in.