Month: June 2017

Image: Pixabay.

This is post number 20 in the series “30 Days of Tales from the Loop,” a celebration of the game set in an 80s that never was.

One of the ways that Tales from the Loop presents adventures to the players is in the form of the Mystery Landscape. This is a sandbox-style set of partially-developed adventure hooks that the gamemaster can develop either separately or jointly over time, letting the players decide what to investigate and when.

The Tales from the Loop rulebook comes with a Mystery Landscape made up of six locations, each with an associated non-player character. Today I’m providing two locations of my own to start out a mini-Mystery Landscape set at school.

School Bus 102

School Bus number 102 is one of a dozen used by the school, and it looks just like the others. It’s boxy, it’s dark yellow, and its paint has seen better days. But lately, the bus has started to exhibit unusual phenomena. It all started about two months ago, after the bus broke down and needed significant repairs. After a week in the shop, the bus returned to service. At first, only its driver noticed anything odd.

The Truth

Under the hood, School Bus 102 has got a little something extra now: engine parts that originated from the Loop facility. The important thing about these parts isn’t their mechanical function, but the fact that they absorbed significant amounts of poorly-understood subatomic particles during their time near the Gravitron. As a result, the bus is prone to reality-bending mishaps.

These mishaps quickly increase in frequency and magnitude. One possibility for their final manifestation is a journey back in time for the bus and everyone aboard. Others include shifting to a parallel universe, going out of phase with physical matter, or getting out of sync with the rest of the world in such a way that people outside seem to be moving in slow motion.

Hooks

• The Kids go on a field trip in the bus.
• Something strange happens on the ride home—such as everyone losing their hearing for seven minutes.
• Mrs. Gustafsson [Booker], the bus driver, is friends with a Kid’s parent, and mentions something strange happening related to the bus.

Countdown

1. A student (perhaps one of the Kids) reports an item missing that they were certain they had on the bus. Later, the item shows up somewhere in the school.
2. A Kid overhears Mrs. Gustafsson complaining that she sometimes hears a humming sound coming from under the bus’s hood.
3. While waiting for the bus one morning, one of the Kids sees it approach, but when they blink, it’s gone. Then it approaches again without incident.
4. While either driving to or from school—or perhaps on a field trip—the bus travels back in time to the early 1970s. The shock of the journey incapacitates Mrs. Gustafsson, leaving the Kids to find a way back to the future without her help.

Ulla Gustafsson [Thelma Booker]

“You kids be quiet back there! Don’t make me pull over!”

Mrs. Gustafsson is a heavyset older woman wearing a flower-print dress and large glasses. Traffic makes her grumpy, and she sometimes can’t help but take out her anger on the kids by yelling. Mrs. Gustafsson suffers from a variety of health problems, including hypertension and diabetes, but she never misses a day of work. Her two biggest pet peeves are flat tires and kids being loud on the bus.

Science Class

Mr. Hansson’s [Miller’s] science class is even more popular with the students this year than it was last year. People liked Mr. Hansson’s teaching style before, but recently it seems he’s gotten even more funny and offbeat. And his deadpan delivery of hilarious non-sequiturs takes his humor to a new level.

Mr. Hansson never even has to refer to a book when he’s teaching, expounding at length purely from memory about topics such as genetics, chemistry, and high-energy physics. Kids often ask him questions related to the Loop, and he always takes the time to answer them.

The Truth

Sometime last summer, the original Mr. Hansson was replaced by his duplicate from a parallel Earth. The duplicate plans to replace other adults with their alternate-Earth counterparts so they can take control of this Earth’s Loop and reach other, even more divergent, Earths.

Because the parallel Earth is more advanced scientifically than ours, the new Mr. Hansson sometimes slips up and teaches things that are not yet known here. If questioned, Hansson claims that he is merely extrapolating because he is such a science fiction aficionado. (Clever Kids can trip him up on this, as he truly has little knowledge of this world’s science fiction.)

Hooks

• A student starts a rumor that Mr. Hansson is really a robot.
• Someone’s parents talk to each other about how odd Mr. Hansson has been since the summer.
• An adult in town mentions seeing Mr. Hansson near the one of the Loop facilities several times in the last month.

Countdown

1. Mr. Hansson makes a scientific mistake in class and covers for it very poorly.
2. Another teacher starts talking strangely, just as Hansson does.
3. One of the Kids (or another student) finds written evidence of Hansson’s interest in the Loop.
4. More adults, including some not at the school, start acting like Hansson.
5. One or more Kids receive a garbled message from the original Mr. Hansson. He is on the other Earth and is trying to warn people of the duplicate’s plan.

Rolf Hansson [Ronald Miller]

“Why do you need a hall pass? Why don’t you just teleport to the bathroom?”

The duplicate Mr. Hansson is a slim man in his 30s with short hair, black-framed glasses, and a plain grey suit and thin black tie. He speaks in a monotone and is always calm and unflappable. The duplicate really has no sense of humor at all, and what students interpret as a wry wit is really his matter-of-fact utterings of things that are true on his Earth that are not true of ours.

Hansson keeps a device in his briefcase that allows him to travel between his Earth and this one. The device—which looks like a black metal donut covered in multicolored lights—can shift everyone who is touching it, but requires a full day to recharge before it is usable again.

Image: Wikipedia.

This is post number 19 in the series “30 Days of Tales from the Loop,” a celebration of the game set in an 80s that never was.

Considering it is a staple of 80s kid-focused science fiction and features music by a world-class composer, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is a natural for providing music to a Tales from the Loop game. Let’s look at the 1982 release of the soundtrack by John Williams.

Wikipedia tells me that this score won the Academy Award, Golden Globe, Grammy, and BAFTA. The version of the score I’m detailing here was the original release; later editions contain more tracks, and are perhaps more accurate to what we hear on screen, because this release was specially arranged for the album. Each version has fans who like that one best, but I decided to cover this one because (a) it is the oldest, and (b) it contains tracks called “E.T. Phone Home” and “Over the Moon.” I wanted to make sure I had those tracks! (After reading more about the differences in the scores, I now believe the later albums also contain this music, but I wasn’t sure at first.)

Let’s get on to the track analysis…

1. Three Million Light Years From Home. Uneventful but pleasant music of rising anticipation. Good for playing while the Kids are exploring somewhere new.
2. Abandoned and Pursued. This is a more exciting track with an undertone of threat. Play it when the bad guys are coming! Unless the bad guys are monsters—then you’ll need something more scary.
3. E.T. and Me. This track is pleasant, melodic, and low-key but happy. Use it for just about any pleasant interaction.
4. E.T.’s Halloween. As you might guess from the title, this track is whimsical and fun. Use it for any silly scene.
5. Flying. This piece uses the recognizable E.T. theme as its base, and is light and happy and triumphant. You might want to skip it if you think your players will joke about E.T. being in their game, but if not, use it for a pleasant scene and revel in the nostalgia.
6. E.T. Phone Home. A soft, slow piece, maybe useful for a scene of Everyday Life at home.
7. Over the Moon. Another track of rising action, with only a trace of impending menace in the last minute.
8. Adventure On Earth. This is a 15-minute track that includes several of the themes we heard in the previous tracks. It starts off with a feeling of intrigue plus a hint of approaching menace, and generally sticks with that approach throughout. It’s pretty useful as general background music.

This is post number 18 in the series “30 Days of Tales from the Loop,” a celebration of the game set in an 80s that never was.

There are a few other books I’d like to bring to the attention of my fellow Tales from the Loop fans. Some are other 80s-related roleplaying games, while others are not, but are still relevant in some way.

RPGs

Image by Forrest Aguirre.

Beyond the Silver Scream by Forrest Aguirre is a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure in which the PCs are high school kids in the 70s or 80s. The adventure starts in a movie theater and moves on to weirder places from there. I bought this at Gen Con 2016 (because games where you play as 80s kids are an easy sell for me), and I like the simple but fun details that go into making your zero-level kid.

Image by Spectrum Games.

Cartoon Action Hour is a game of 80s Saturday-morning-cartoon action. The game uses “cartoon logic” as its foundation and de-emphasizes violence. Cartoon Action Hour’s publisher, Spectrum Games, also sells separate series books, each containing a new setting. One of these books, Punk Rock Saves the World, was written by the author who wrote Tales from the Loop’s American setting: Matt Forbeck.

Image by Nerdy Games.

Rememorex is the first Kickstarter project by Nerdy City, and bills itself as “the tabletop role-playing game of suburban ’80s horror.” The Kickstarter has reached its funding goal and (as of today, June 18) it has 13 days remaining. The game’s Kickstarter page says that Rememorex will use a simple, streamlined system and include three new mechanics called “the Tracking Error, the Clip Show, and the Montage.” I’m a backer, and I’m looking forward to seeing how this game comes out, which is expected to be around January 2018.

vs Stranger Stuff is a Stranger Things tribute by Fat Goblin Games, using the VsM Engine by Phillip Reed. Like Fat Goblin’s previous VsM game, vs Ghosts (which I mentioned during Ghostbusters month last year), vs Stranger Stuff is a short, rules-light game designed to evoke the feel of its source material while avoiding a lot of complex mechanics. The publisher offers several short adventures for the game, including one set at Christmas and one featuring creepy clowns.

Non-RPGs

Image by Fria Ligan.

The Tales from the Loop art book by Simon Stålenhag is the book that led directly to the roleplaying game, so you should not be surprised to see beautiful depictions of Swedish landscapes, robots, dinosaurs, cooling towers, and 80s Kids. Many of the full-page art spreads are accompanied by anecdotes that give some details about what’s going on in the images—and all of these narratives are compelling and  evocative and make you want more.

Image by Fria Ligan.

Speaking of wanting more…Things from the Flood is Simon’s second art book, a follow-up to Tales from the Loop. Things from the Flood extends the narrative to the 1990s, “the decade of great change when the outside world truly came to Scandinavia.”

Image by Evil Hat Productions.

Designers & Dragons: The 80s is book two of Shannon Appelcline’s four-volume set containing a detailed summary of the tabletop roleplaying hobby. Even if your Bookworm doesn’t need such  in-depth details about what was happening at her favorite publisher at the time, you as a player or GM will probably enjoy this overview of game releases and some of the drama that went on behind the scenes.

Do you know of a Tales from the Loop-adjacent book or game I haven’t mentioned here? Let me know in the comments.

This is post number 17 in the series “30 Days of Tales from the Loop,” a celebration of the game set in an 80s that never was.

The technological wonders represented in Tales from the Loop–magnetrine ships, robots, artificial intelligences–are a key part of showing that the setting is “an 80s that never was.” But just as the game advises us to mix scenes of mystery with scenes of Everyday Life, so should we ground the game in background description that is mundane and realistic. The following is a sampling of the state-of-the art in computer and home video game tech in 1980s America.

Computers

The Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 was the best-selling home computer in the early 80s, until it was overtaken by the Commodore 64 in 1982. The TRS-80 was an 8-bit system with 4K of memory and a 4.7MHz processor, offering data storage on cassette tape or floppy disc.

1981 saw the premiere of the IBM PC, in the form of the IBM 5150. This was the machine that solidified the term “personal computer.” It featured a 16-bit 8088 CPU that ran at 4MHz, used 5 1/4” floppy discs for storage, a monochrome or color display, 16K of memory, and ran version 1 of Microsoft’s new Disk Operating System (DOS).

The Commodore 64 premiered in 1982, boasting an 8-bit architecture, 64K of memory, and a 1MHz processor. Like the TRS-80, data was saved to cassette tape or 5 1/4” floppy disk. Even at the time of this writing, way into the 20-teens, the Commodore 64 remains the best-selling computer model of all time, at 17 million units sold.

My own Commodore 64, as it appears today.

In 1984, the Apple Macintosh helped popularize the graphical user interface and the mouse. It included a 16/32-bit architecture, 128K of memory, an 8MHz processor, and a 3.5 inch floppy drive for storage. The Macintosh was especially popular for educational and desktop publishing tasks.

Commodore’s Amiga came out in 1985, featuring a 16/32-bit operating system, 256k of memory, and a mouse-based graphical user interface. Like the Macintosh, its storage was on 3.5 inch floppy discs.

Although the Internet didn’t exist in the 80s, computers still did a lot of talking to each other using phone-line modems and dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSes). These systems allowed 80s Computer Geeks to trade files and communicate on message boards and in chat rooms.

Video Games

The Atari 2600 came out in 1977 but got a renewed boost in 1980 with the release of Space Invaders. It used simple (but iconic) joysticks and its games came in cartridge form. Like many game consoles at the time, it connected to a television to use as its display.

Mattel released its Intellivision console in 1980, and is perhaps most recognizable for its wired, remote-control-looking controllers containing a numeric keypad at the top and a circular thumb pad at the bottom. Popular Intellivision games included Q*Bert, Donkey Kong Jr., and BurgerTime.

The ColecoVision appeared in 1982, using controllers that looked like the inverse of the Intellivision’s, with a numeric pad at the bottom and a circular joystick at the top. Popular ColecoVision games included Gorf, River Raid, and WarGames.

The Nintendo Entertainment System (1983) helped revitalize the market after the video game crash of 1983. The NES used a distinctive style of rectangular gamepad controller, and an add-on light gun called the Zapper was also available for some games. A popular activity among 80s video gamers was blowing on the bottom of NES cartridges in an attempt to improve a sometimes-glitchy connection.

The Sega Genesis (1988) was a 16-bit console and a major Nintendo competitor. Although the game it is arguably the best known for, Sonic the Hedgehog, didn’t come out until 1991, the Genesis had plenty of notable late-80s games, including Altered Beast, Golden Axe, and Ghouls ’n Ghosts.

Handheld game consoles such as the Nintendo Game Boy (1989) and Atari Lynx (1989) weren’t available until the end of the decade, but the 80s saw the use of numerous specialized LED-driven handheld video game systems such as football, hockey, and driving games.

Did I leave off your favorite computer or game system? If so, tell me about it in the comments!

Image: Fria Ligan.

This is post number 16 in the series “30 Days of Tales from the Loop,” a celebration of the game set in an 80s that never was.

One of my favorite things about Tales from the Loop is something called the Principles of the Loop. These are the game’s six guiding tenets, the ones that establish the setting’s parameters and atmosphere.

The Principles of the Loop are:

1. “Your Home Town is Full of Strange and Fantastic Things”

This is an idea you probably understand simply from seeing the book’s artwork, and probably the easiest to keep in mind when you’re running the game. (Especially if you’re a Numenera GM!)

But this principle’s description in the rulebook also reminds us to present these strange and fantastic things as they would appear through the eyes of Kids. To use an iconic example from film, riding a bike through the woods can be a new experience for any Kid—now picture that same ride when the bike lifts off the ground and flies across the moon.

2. “Everyday Life is Dull and Unforgiving”

This principle reminds us to contrast the weird and unusual with the mundane and boring. Don’t forget to saddle your Kids with homework, paper routes, and scaaaaary trips to the dentist so that their later encounters with dinosaurs and robots stand out even more.

For more info about scenes like this, check out my earlier post, Everyday Scenes.

3. “Adults are Out of Reach and Out of Touch”

Anyone who watches movies featuring Kids solving major problems gets it—the grown-ups can’t believe that there’s really weird stuff going on that they have to take care of, otherwise they’ll step in and fix things and leave the Kids with little to do. (Stranger Things tweaks this model and has significant adult involvement, but the Kids are still the major force in the narrative.)

4. “The Land of the Loop is Dangerous But Kids Will Not Die.”

I have a lot more to say about this Principle, because it’s my favorite. Principle 4 says that the player characters don’t die in Tales from the Loop.

I’ve always thought I was strange because I avoided killing player characters in games. The first two RPGs I played were Star Trek (by FASA) and Villains & Vigilantes. I don’t believe either game came out and said “don’t kill the PCs,” but neither were they presented like common fantasy games at the time (the mid 80s) which assumed a lot of PC death and even total party wipeouts.

For me, having a Starfleet officer die by a random disruptor shot or a superhero vaporized by a villain’s death ray didn’t make sense from a story perspective. (Another factor may be that a lot of my gaming involved me and a single player at a time, as we walked home from school or talked on the phone—and killing off the only player character would simply end the game, which seems strange.)

When I finally got in a regular game of Dungeons & Dragons in the early 2000s, and of course my character died right away, I mentioned to the dungeon master how I’m a “no-kill GM.” He had a lot of trouble understanding. “But…how do just not kill PCs?” I told him you just never say “you are dead!”

I think that’s all it takes, and this attitude is great to see in Tales from the Loop. This is a game rooted in nostalgia from childhood; in addition to playing Kids, you are playing in a decade in which many of the players really were kids at the time. Adding death to this, I think, would make things less fun. (Besides, I think losing your character in an RPG—in an unplanned way—is almost always less fun. Two possible exceptions are Paranoia and the zero-level funnel in Dungeon Crawl Classics.)

For GMs that might find it useful, here are some ways to avoid killing your player characters (whether they’re the Kids in Tales from the Loop or PCs in another game).

• Reduce the damage a PC would otherwise take
• Put a cap on the damage a PC can receive, making “unconscious” the worst condition one will suffer.
• If possible, deal attack damage to an uninjured PC rather than one who is already suffering.
• Tell the players that their characters are driven away from the area rather than hurt or killed. (This technique is used in Tales from the Loop.)
• Have the enemy knock out the PCs instead of killing them.
• Picture what would happen in an action movie if something went wrong as it just did for a PC. (She falls but grabs a ledge. The boulder glances off her shoulder instead of smashing her head. The gunshot causes a lot of bleeding but turns out to be treatable.)

5. “The Game is Played Scene by Scene”

Here’s another hint (along with not killing PCs) that Tales from the Loop is a game that tells a story rather than one that creates a simulation of a world. This Principle tells us to just play out the bits that are interesting and skip the connecting parts that aren’t. For example, play out the scene where Anna bonds with her sister, but don’t bother describing the subsequent walk to the drug store and what she buys there—unless it’s interesting for some reason.

6. “The World is Described Collaboratively”

This is another wonderful Principle, which means: Let the players do some of the work of world-building! In addition to lessening the load on the GM, this can also make the players feel more invested in the game.

Here are a few examples of how a GM might encourage the players to create some details in the world:

• “The girl you’ve got a crush on walks in. What does she look like?”
• “Since your teacher is still missing, you have a substitute today. What kind of accent does he have?”
• “The small glowing creature rubs against your leg and purrs. How many heads does it have?”

Finally, in addition to encouraging the GM to ask the players for world details, Tales from the Loop puts even more narrative power in the hands of players by encouraging them to choose scenes for themselves. The rulebook suggests that the GM ask players to set the scene at least half the time.