RPGaDAY 2026 18. Directness

#RPGaDAY 2026

18. Directness

18. A fast introduction of a new PC or player?

If I know players are likely to come and go I’ll try to have onboarding options and avoid cliffhangers. Emphasis on try.

Some games and settings are better for this than others, mechanically and narratively.

Overlooking the old “why do we trust this total stranger walking up to us in the middle of a secret mission?” and the magic power of the PC Glow...

D&D style fantasy calls it “West Marches” when every session begins and ends with the PCs in their base and venturing out from it. That cuts off things like multi-session dungeons and heavier ongoing plots unless you use the old un-narrative kludge of teleporting PCs in, but it’s a good idea for an open table.

Star Trek (a setting where characters can just teleport in and out mid adventure) would do this if it were realistic about its Luxury Space Communism and faster-than-light travel. Ha ha. Star Trek Adventures makes you pay player resources to get specialist NPC crew to go on camera, which is the model-the-show way of dealing with this. Star Fleet Battles RPG Prime Directive goes the other way and has a completely different command structure for its variant universe.

Mission: Impossible on TV started with selecting agents with relevant skillsets. I’ve seen someone suggest pregens in dossiers before.

(Note that the films acquire a consistent team as they go along, leading to narrative issues like needing something for both the computer geniuses to do.)

Last academic year I had a large amount of player turnover in Vampire: The Masquerade and that isn’t ideal for it or how I run it. Even then, if I’d known I could have tailored the chronicle setup to PCs being part of a group that could explain PCs coming and going and make sessions less serialised. Not ideal for personal horror or slow unravelling of mysteries but I could give it a go. Hmm.

My most setting-of-the-week one-and-done game is Doctor Who, which also has fast character creation... but following the series model really expects the PCs to be the one point of consistency.

If I want to go full “jump in any session” open table, I might go with a light superhero game like ICONS with a big team. Fast character creation, largely self-contained adventures. I’m sure threads would reappear at some point, but I can juggle and improvise so we don’t end up with too many “this should be a Penguin adventure but Batman’s player isn’t here” situations.

A large kitchen sink also helps if I want to come up with a largely standalone adventure every week.

Hey, Buffy is a light superhero game too! Albeit one that also expects a consistent Scooby Gang.

Autocratik

Runeslinger

Character Creation Challenge 2026 15d: Star Wars with Black Star - Rey

Character Creation Challenge 2026

PC groups for games I would do with different systems

15d: Star Wars with Black Star

Black Star from LakeSide Games is a light 2d6-based system for classic space opera and heroic science fantasy. Quoting the introduction: “If there is any hope for the galaxy, if the dream of peace, justice and equality for all is to become a reality, if the Imperium is ever to be overthrown, the galaxy will need heroes...”

(Not to be confused with Blackstar, the David Bowie video I most want to run as a Doctor Who game.)

Check out a runthrough of a scene here.

--

Heroes have ten Attributes, starting at 1 with 10 points to spend and a starting maximum of 3:

Blasting, Brawling, Diplomacy, Discipline, Instinct, Intellect, Speed, Strength, Tools, Transports

Two Archetypes each, from a list of ten. They also have five Talents, one for each Archetype, one from the list for each, and one other.

They also start with Gear, a Link (comlink), three other pieces of Gear, any archetype Gear and two slots to have useful Gear in an adventure.

And finally 7 Resolve, the system’s bennies.

--

15d: Star Wars with Black Star – Rey

Rey is “no one”, an abandoned child turned scavenger on a desert planet, but the Force is with her.

Stargate opening again

Stargate SG-1 is getting a new series, a follow-up to the existing TV continuity, on Prime.

Since the TV continuity includes Atlantis being in the San Francisco zip code this could require some explaining, but hey.

I always figured Stargate would come back, as one of the best ST-setting-of-the-week setups out there - a main cast style group based on modern Earth goes through a swirly thing to other planets.

Hence there having been two official RPGs and one before that nearly got published if not for licence issues. And I’ve run and played official and unofficial systems for it.

It might well be less planet of the week this time because of how TV works nowadays but it would be weird not to use that, though it might swing towards the original film style of a long stay and a single Big Bad. Doctor Who still had a few standalones in its recent single-figure-episode seasons.

Found Footage Episodes

Just wondering which genre series have done Found Footage episodes. (Noting that a couple of found footage series exist!)

The X Files got one in early in February 2000, and Doctor Who did one IN SPAAAAACE which I felt lost the immediacy of the idea. Star Trek hasn’t, not even doubke distant in Lower Decks, though I did find a brief fan film.

Buffy and Angel didn’t - could have with the Trio.

I didn’t do it in The Watch House either as it’s an odd genre to try in RPGs. Though we did do a behind the scenes episode.

(Still waiting on that FMV computer game from the makers of Host.)

Though the genre broke out with The Blair Witch Project being essentially a filmed LARP, and online sessions can go that way too, see on-screen LARPs like Viewscream too. I remember a Delta Green forum comment that The Blair Witch Project or something like it could also be a great player handout. Which would be interesting, if a lot to organise. (I actually saw it done with the first LARP I ever attended.) And would also fit with the series having a mystery-solving evidence box game as well as video games. And an escape experience.

It's about time

Suddenly tempted to run Doctor Who again. Some time in the next year and a half maybe.

Hostile Dimensions

31 Days Of Horror

27: Hostile Dimensions (2024)

Trailer

A largely found footage style scifi horror comedy from Glasgow, which starts with an eerie idea and a solid scare before going off in various surprisingly comedic and strange ideas.

I think it’s a better found footage Doctor Who than the tine the show actually did one, but it’s much more high concept comedy than horror.

It looks to have been made by some friends with some nice use of convenient locations, and gets by on the central idea and the characters being fun to hang out with for an hour and a bit. It’s okay in a shabby improv way.

The medium: Prime

Gameability: I ran a whole Doctor Who game about a TARDIS appearing to be a door, so, yeah.

RPGaDAY 2025 20 - Enter

#RPGaDAY2025

20 - Enter

“Enter, stranger.”

Knightmare

Do you take the opportunity to make a dramatic entrance or exit?

It doesn’t fit every character but if presented I almost certainly will.

“Who are you?”

“We are justice!”

And it’s good to have the stats to back that up as it tends to make the antagonists attack you in particular.

Monsters from beyond trying to find ways to enter our world is a go-to plot I’ve used really rather often. It gives the villains a clear goal and ways to stop it along the way, and a partial success on their part gives you a boss fight in a contained space.

The PCs traditionally arrive just in time. Best to include some riders about closing the portal if you don’t want the world to actually end if the PCs are a bit late, but you could certainly make the final battle easier or harder depending on their preparation and promptness.

And one of the funniest episodes of The Watch House was the result of me letting the PCs discover an attempt to summon ancient evil a couple of days early, giving them time to sabotage the site and grab the cultists while the resident werewolf PC distracted them by pretending to be the demon.

It’s all about timing.

20a - 1, 5, 5

Who, Confident, Accessory

An accessory that allows you to enter confidently and the word Who? Doctor Who lets the Doctor open just about any door with the sonic screwdriver and bypass plenty of questions about why they’re there by faking credentials with psychic paper. What kind of trouble could your PCs get into with shortcuts like that in their pockets?

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 12 - Path

#RPGaDAY2025

12 - Path

A path suggests something narrower and perhaps less clearly marked than a road.

Morpheus says “there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path” in The Matrix. The Crow ends with Jane Siberry speaking of how “we walk the narrow path beneath the smoking skies” and City Of Angels ends with Heather Nova singing “I believe there’s a path we follow...” The end of the Tenth Doctor’s era in Doctor Who begins with a hymn that “there is always a path, we walk it all our lives...”

Pathfinder emphasises paths have to be found.

And the Onyx Path heads into the horizon.

All suggest going out past the roads where civilisation ends, possibly going into literal danger and wilderness or possibly seeking wisdom. And that it isn’t easy.

(Of course you can also have a garden path, but work with me here.)

12a - 3, 7, 3

Where, Lucky, Genre

Going in search of mystical answers all gets a bit too metaphysical for the genre you’re in. Buffy didn’t take her vision quests entirely seriously. To be fair, one involved Giles jumping out of a circle of sticks and back in and shaking a magic gourd. Presentation is important when trying to seem mysterious and wise.

Runeslinger

ALIEN DAY

ALIEN DAY was a cute choice to drop a Doctor Who episode about space troopers going to a colony gone silent in which someone literally suggests nuking the site from orbit.

The Librarians: The Next Chapter

The Librarians: The Next Chapter finds a new channel in the US, with trailer and all. With its flappy-coated British out-of-time hero it looks slightly less Ghostbusters and even more Doctor Who than last time.

2025 Hugo Award nominations

Here.

Delighted by Best Related Work including The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel.

Vote splitting could mean the two analyses of the failings of the 2023 Hugos cancel each other out?

Doctor Who and Lower Decks likewise both gets two Short Dramatic nods, which could mean Agatha All Along or Fallout get it.

The Box Of Delights

The Box Of Delights (BBC TV 1984) repeated for its fortieth anniversary - and when it was first on it was nearly fifty years after the book came out. Which I didn’t know was the second of two, though it does explain some character connections, specifically why the villain discounts the hero.

Title sequence with eerie strings theme and assorted faces that would feel Whovian even without Patrick Troughton, end title cheerful symphonic version

(Compare the crowdfunding video for the official RPG I just discovered.)

The mix of video filming, computer animation like chromakey and traditional animation feels bumpy at times. Likewise the weather, where deep snow is a plot point and represented by effects but there was actual deep snow for some of the filming (which stopped a lot of it) and then it was maybe late autumn an episode later.

I’m more interested in the tonal oddness. Everybody rolling with it after very little alarm when discovering magic. The villains first presented as wolves in human form and then being regular criminals apart from their leader. And the resulting idea of a pretty regular gang of crooks working for an evil wizard. Not really getting what the villain’s plan was for disrupting a Christmas service. The way Kay can casually question adults and only the police inspector seems to remember he’s a child, even more so than the usual teen sleuth types. The pause to go boating while one of the sidekick family has been kidnapped. The reveal of the box’s rightful owner. A Brazen Head and assorted demons. A guy-in-a-costume talking mouse who appears as casually as an old friend.

My favourite part, the idea that one of the villains had to put on a Punch And Judy show.

A lot of this is the kind of thing I glossed over when I was ten, but not all of it. So when it pulls the “it was all a dream - or was it?” ending it seems to fit.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 15: Doctor Who

Character Creation Challenge 2025

15: Doctor Who

In case Velvet Generation wasn’t David Bowie enough, I’ve been taking Bowie’s song titles for Doctor Who episode ideas since Blackstar, with a Stranger who is at least sometimes based on him.

But going the other way, a band as characters in the Whoniverse:

John Smith And The Common Men

“Who are you?”

Concept

A bandwagon-jumper starting to enjoy playing, in this case a flagrant attempt to get into the Merseybeat movement despite being from Chichester. Briefly considered disguises and full anonymity to avoid alien surveillance or help with the gimmick before realising they could get on Ready Steady Go! but by then the name scheme had stuck.

And given the setting they live in, likely to get mixed up in stories involving aliens invading Swinging London, falling into a parallel universe where the Beatles never recorded anything (ahem) or records that drive people mad if played backwards, and the time travelling PCs have to work with them to save the day.

Time travellers in a phone box having to save a band? Hmm.

Not going to try and fit in the audio play backstory as it gets even more Starchildren.

Adventure Calendar 2024 15: Snow Angels

Adventure Calendar 2024

15: Snow Angels

Snow Angels: Lie on fresh snow and move your arms and legs to make the outline of a traditional (rather than Biblically accurate) angel.

One of the simplest activities on the list, though can be complicated by things like a world record attempt for the most in one place. And the note that seals and pheasants can do it as well.

Actual angels might find this rather puzzling. And in Doctor Who this may or may not allow Weeping Angels to manifest.

The BBC Sound Effects Library

The BBC Sound Effects Library, free to use non-commercially, and searchable.

And yes, the horror spot effects are here.

(By way of example, the wolf used in Doctor Who: The Meddling Monk and I think The Late Show.)

#RPGaDay2024 28 - Great gamer gadget

#RPGaDay2024

28 - Great gamer gadget

Something that seems to have vanished - novelty keyrings with sound effects. Nowadays if you want a lightsabre whoosh or a Wilhelm Scream there’s an app for that, but I’d prefer a suitable little toy with buttons.

Of course I’d really want one I could choose the sounds for.

This dates from around 2012.
TARDIS, Sonic, Daleks, Cybermen, K-9, Judoon gun
What does a Judoon gun sound like again?

On that note, starting a new Star Trek game and I’d pick up a proper toy phaser if there was one on shelves at the moment that would be nice. Particularly tempted if it makes zappy sounds.

28a - Gadget

My favourite gadget rules, as seen in games as diverse as TOON, Leverage and the Preparedness skill in Night’s Black Agents, are a bit of a specific take on player influence on the narrative where instead of the GM working in the gadgets a PC has, the player gets to say “I have a gadget that does this!” when the GM presents a problem.

28b - Mimic

A day after Shapeshifting, so taking mimics and mimicry in a different direction, mundane disguise. (Which can also tie in the gadgets with the Mission: Impossible masks.)

David Chapman

Runeslinger on dogs

#RPGaDay2024 16 - Quick to learn

#RPGaDay2024

16 - Quick to learn

Your Skill and Luck are D6+6, Stamina is 2D6+12. Roll less than or equal to your Skill on 2D6 to hit. A hit removes 2 Stamina. Roll less than or equal to Luck on 2D6 if it comes up. You have now learned Fighting Fantasy.

I can introduce new players to the basics of D6, Storyteller, Cinematic Unisystem or Vortex fast enough to start in the first session too, but not that fast.

It's a regular sized paperback with fairly large print.
And the adventures start on page 64.

16a - Quick

One of the things I like about Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition is the combat suggestion of playing three turns and stopping unless there’s a strong reason not to such as a very even match.

16b - Dungeon

The dungeon is a great idea for a straightforward series of action encounters.

David Chapman

Runeslinger

#RPGaDay2024 13 - Evocative environments

#RPGaDay2024

13 - Evocative environments

I’m pretty bad at this. I can describe an old dark house or the like, but don’t take it much further. And I use maps on a less than annual basis so don’t expect many tactically interesting locations. I also look for far more visual references for characters than places.

But I manage a telling detail now and then, like the recent description of a nightclub as OONCHA OONCHA OONCHA OONCHA.

13a - Environments

One place I would try to provide a map would be a limited environment like a space habitat or similar location for a classic Base Under Siege.

I would love to do a full maps-and-flee-meter play of Grace Under Pressure for Call Of Cthulhu sometime.

Also soundscapes, like Tabletop Audio.

Take all you know
into the undertow

13b - Zombie

And speaking of bases under siege. How do you make a zombie apocalypse not feel overly familiar? How many ways can we reveal that Humans Are The Real Monsters?

David Chapman

Runeslinger

Star Trek ideas

For about my 250th Star Trek tag:

In almost forty years GMing I have never actually run a Star Trek game.

And the idea goes back a while.

Reminded of this by the current game, see overthinking re toys and ship designs

The closest I’ve come was a guest GM shot at a not-quite-Trek game, and the closest I came to offering was in 2009 using Cinematic Unisystem when I got that game’s GM as the only interested player.

I’ve done a fair bit of Doctor Who, going back to when FASA did both licences, so I’ve done my share of planet-of-the-week games although they lack the Starfleet hierarchy. (Not that a Trek game needs that, but it does usually assume that.) The Time Lord then was the first and still regular Trek GM I know, a significantly bigger fan and the person most likely to be interested but also to have strong opinions about it.

Indeed that one not-Trek adventure was as I’ve mentioned before a MegaTraveller adventure that I’d previously run in C7’s Doctor Who with that game’s GM as a Time Lord.

Amusing side note, I never successfully completed the fourth Fighting Fantasy gamebook, Starship Traveller, a Trek-alike which briefly risked a lawsuit with Traveller for using the UK spelling.

So my history of not quite doing Star Trek gaming predates my first Star Trek game.

I’ve made notes since those early games - Klingons? TOS with better effects? The Enterprise after next? - but never gone for it.

I’ve done a lot more Star Wars, since WEG first edition, because that’s much more my idiom. And naturally some Trinity.

I’m considering it now with the my-style-friendly Star Trek Adventures system after playing in a couple of games, and the more loosey-goosey feel of the Kelvin timeline and Strange New Worlds. If nothing else it would give me more authority to grumble about some of the published adventures.

Of course the ship would need a new model and a cool-sounding name. I’ve used Horizon before...

Time Bandits

Time Bandits, Terry Gilliam’s Not Doctor Who, being rebooted as a series by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement (trailer and talk at Tor) starring Lisa Kudrow as the gang leader, with Waititi as God and Clement as Vladislav The Poker as David Warner as Evil.

I can certainly see it being expanded to a series, because time travel plus heist comedy plus fantasy realms.