Arregh Boenval (Chris)

Arregh is a Vargr from the close-knit community of Boenval (aka “Boneville”). Arregh is also a well-placed lieutenant in the military junta. He is generally proud of his success and position, believes in the goals of the junta, and has fully supported suppression of the protestors. On the other hand, Arregh is greatly troubled by the false honor and corruption that he’s seen in the military government. It’s troubled him to such a degree that on one occasion he took matters in to his own hands. Colonel Cobb (Joel) has an idea of what happened, but so far has been willing to keep the secret. Arregh also has some family secrets that can be difficult for him in the nationalistic Vargr community.

One of the events that troubled Arregh was when he was ordered to arrest Kno Moon (David). Arregh knew that Kno had no connection to the protesters.

Skills & Talents: military focused

Sample Aspects:

• Hometown pride.
• Damn good soldier.
• Tainted honor.

Morphin (Jose)

Morphin is human and psionic. Morphin is a member of a community of psionics who fled persecution by the Third Imperium. While psionics are not treated harshly in this area of space, because of their history, Morphin’s community prefers to be secretive about their talents. To the outside, they appear as a school of martial arts. Morphin’s individual psionic talents manifest as the ability to manipulate machines and computers with his mind.

Morphin recently found himself in the area of a student protest and the subject of a beating by police officers. Zh’kath (Ben) realized Morphin was an innocent bystander and convinced the police to stop (Morphin does not know this). After the police left Morphin, Atrika (Eric) found him and helped care for his wounds.

Skills & Talents: psionics, brawling, athletics

Sample Aspects:

• Odd one out.
• Searching for a mission.
• Hate the power.

Zh’kath (Ben)

Zh’kath is a Graken, very large, cat-like creatures who generally prefer solitary intellectual pursuits. Zh’kath was in the Graken version of the military academy but failed out and is now travelling to pursue his fortune. Zh’kath is clairvoyant and telepathic. He is also currently employed by the junta government but is not necessarily a supporter, and in fact, is beginning to question the wisdom of working for them.

Zh’kath helped rescue Morphin (Jose) from a police beating. Leaving his home, he was given a ride off the planet by Kno (David).

Skills & Talents: psionics, combat, security

Sample Aspects:

• There are no victimless crimes.
• Driven to success.
• Bitter over his failure.

Colonel Cobb (Joel)

Cobb is human and a native of Accra. He grew up under the shadow of an abusive military father. As his father wished, Cobb joined the Marines, but to get back at his father, he became a doctor. Cobb has a short temper and a cruel streak.

Cobb has an idea that Arregh (Chris) was involved in his superior’s death, but doesn’t care to pursue it as he’s not fond of Vargr anyway.

At one of the protests, Cobb came to the rescue of Atrika (Eric) and severely beat the officer who was beating her. The government, not wanting to acknowledge the violent response of the police, but succumbing to the political pressure of those police, forced Cobb to retire from the Marines.

Skills & Talents: combat, surgery

Sample Aspects:

• Medicine gives him purpose.
• What are you made of?
• From an abusive family.

Atrika Van der Berg (Eric)

Atrika was born to a Solomani mother and a Vilani father, and was raised in a small commune on another planet. When she was 9 years old, that commune was attacked by Kafoe and her father was killed and the rest of the family held hostage. Military from The Old Worlds rescued the colony and the survivors were resettled on Accra.

For a while, Atrika’s mother became hooked on Shik, but she eventually kicked the habit and began working to help other addicts, as well as speaking out against government collusion with the drug trade. Perhaps not surprisingly, this got her mother killed.

Artrika went to college on a scholarship for commune survivors, studied mechanical engineering, and is now finishing up a graduate degree in chemical engineering. She’s become active in the anti-junta protests. At one protest, she helped care for an injured Morphin (Jose). At another, she was rescued by Col. Cobb (Joel).

Skills & Telents: engineering, persuasion, criminal contacts

Sample Aspects:

• Bleeding heart.
• Maybe not all of them are bad.
• Accra libre!

Kno Moon (Me– NPC)

Kno is an expatriate Solomani who settled on Accra after an extensive career in the Solomani Scout Service. He does not have diplomatic immunity but does have a certain status, as he is on detached duty. Kno was planning a peaceful retirement but apparently chose the wrong planet. He was arrested at the orders of Arregh (Chris), apparently for his connection to offworld political influences. He knows Zh’kath from a visit to the Graken home world.

Skills & Talents: politics & economics, empathy, astrogation

Sample Aspects:

• There are just two kinds of people…
• This is my home.
• I know someone.

This Region of Space

The campaign is set in the official Traveller universe as described in QLI’s Gateway to Destiny book for T20. This is in the time of the Third Imperium (year 993), though the campaign will be taking place outside that polity, toward the trailing end of Chartered Space, in a region known as the Gateway Domain. It’s a region of space that is more sparsely settled, with mostly independent systems and smaller multi-system polities. Spinward-Coreward (think NW on an typical map) is the Third Imperium. Spinward-Rimward (SW) is the Solomani Confederation, home of Terra. Trailing-Coreward (NE) is the Two Thousand Worlds, home of the K’kree (militant vegetarian centaur-like species). Trailing-Rimward is the Hive Federation, home of the Hivers (manipulative hexapod race most closely resembling starfish). [Check out http://www.travellermap.com/.]

Within the Gateway Domain, the campaign begins on the planet Accra, in the Bright Heavens subsector of the Crucis Margin sector (gamma quadrant). Accra is located in the middle of the Tsavo Reach, a string of independent systems forming an arch located about equidistant between two polities, The Old Worlds to Trailing-Coreward and the Syzlin Republic to Spinward-Rimward. Other polities in the area include Greater Osaka, the Kafoe Dominate (home of a violent alien species at war with The Old Worlds), and the Karhyri Worlds (home to an honorable reptilian species).

For the most part, the systems and polities in this area of space have not been involved in the continuing war between the Third Imperium and the Solomani Confederation. Culturally, however, most of humaniti here is of Solomani origin. The region also contains a large minority of Luriani, who are an amphibious human sub-race. (They breathe air and water and have webbed hands and feet.) Vargr are also common.

The Old Worlds is typical human but is culturally Vilani. It is a stable polity formed by Vilani refugees from the Second Imperium (aka The Ramshackle Empire), which had been formed by Solomani after defeating the Vilani First Imperium (aka Ziru Sirka). Thus, while The Old Worlds is a fairly free and democratic society within its own borders, it adopts a paternalistic and superior attitude to the surrounding systems. The government of The Old Worlds is not afraid to interfere in the affairs of others to promote its own values or interests. For example, The Old Worlds has established a number of (space) naval bases throughout the region, ostensibly to protect trade, provide interstellar security, and offer humanitarian assistance. The influence of these military forces, though, certainly exceeds their public mandate.

The Syzlin Republic is a much younger polity and one that has seen a fair degree of instability over its history. While it is currently constituted as a nominal republic, it is well known to have expansionist goals. The Syzlin Republic is majority culturally Solomani.

Home Base

The planet Accra, for whom the system is named, is very-much Earth-like, with the major difference being a somewhat lighter gravity. Accra has extensive ocean coverage, three continents, and one large archipelago. It is home to a population in the billions, approximately 50 percent culturally Solomani humans, 35 percent Vilani, 5 percent Luriani, 5 percent Vargr, and 5 percent other sentients.

The planet was settled long ago but for most of that history was governed by separate and relatively unstable nations. Then 25 years ago, in a conflict known as the Union Wars, Accra was united under a single government controlled by trade unions. With the support of the people, the Union government nationalized most industries and pursued an aggressive campaign of modernization. The campaign was successful and Accra became a high-tech center of trade in the Tsavo Reach. The capital city, Accra, contains a class A starport, and there are two other local starport facilities on another continent and in the archipelago.

Over time, the Union government became corrupt. A number of factors contributed to this trend, but significant among them was the discovery and cultivation of Shik, an algae with narcotic, as well as addictive and inconsistent anagathic properties. Shik use spread across Accra and criminal gangs began exporting it to other systems. The military leadership of Accra, which was majority culturally Vilani, decided that it could not allow the societal collapse that it foresaw and took control in a coup, which while not bloodless enjoyed widespread support.

Unfortunately, the military junta that has governed Accra for the last 3 years, does not really have the experience and expertise appropriate for civilian needs. Given the trade union base of the previous government, one of the first programs of the new government was to privatize industry. Turning the engines of Accra’s success in to publicly held corporations was supposed to benefit the companies, the workers, and the investors at-large. Instead, major blocks of stock ownership ended up in the hands of a relatively few well-connected people. Those people have and continue to reap significant financial rewards from their positions. The working class, however, has been experiencing increasing economic hardship.

And of course, that economic hardship has led to increasing disillusionment with the military government, and over the last several months, growing civil unrest. As has been known to happen, the unrest began with protests on university campuses. In the capital, Monaca University has been the site of several clashes between protesters and police. Union groups, with support from small businesses, have begun staging demonstrations, and last week were successful at arranging a general strike of many workers and businesses.

Not much, either, in the way of board games. No Memoir ’44 with the kids. However, the whole family did go over to Ido’s on Saturday afternoon, and so we had a chance to play one scenario of Commands & Colors: Ancients after a long break. I don’t remember the name of the battle, but I was playing the Romans against his Seluecids (including Antiochus). Ido won. His medium cavalry and heavy chariot crushed my right flank for three banners in the first turn or two. I eventually earned a few banners myself, but just couldn’t keep up.

Overall, February was a month of both highs and lows in gaming. I finally joined a local RPG group, I enjoyed the hot new game (Dominion) that I was skeptical about, Ido and I got back to C&C:A, and I played a few games of Memoir ’44 with the girls. On the other hand, only six board games played over the entire month. I guess I should look at it as quality over quantity.

Tuesday was RPG night. As I mentioned before, the goal is to have two or three campaigns going on at the same time, so that we can accomodate business travel, irregular schedules, preparation requirements, and other absences of various participants, while still maintaining weekly meetings. This week we started a Savage Worlds 1920s pulp campaign run by Joel. I’m playing a Seminole rumrunner/gunrunner. This first night started a little slow with the players completing character generation. But again, we had a great time, especially playing up the characters, even if we didn’t get too far in to the mystery.

Though the winter should be good for gaming Friday night after Shabbat dinner, again this week it didn’t happen. I was sick earlier in the day and still recovering. Julia started getting sick at dinner. However, after getting to bed early, sleeping through the morning, and bailing out on a lunch invitation, the rest of Saturday was an improvement in terms of games. In the afternoon, I played Memoir ’44 with the girls (scenario 10 [name?]). Julia and I beat Barrie, though it was tense and close.

Then at night was the Kemp Mill Gamers group. At the Tenembaum’s, however, only 2 people showed up (in addition to the host). Still, we played one game each of Dominion and Kingsburg. I wasn’t too eager to play Dominion, but gave it a try and was very pleasantly surprised. I hear it compared a lot to Magic. I’ve never played magic. In addition to the collectible aspect, I’m put off by a game that has many unique pieces. In Dominion, though, while there are many cards, there are not actually that many different cards. And only a select set are involved in each game. Constantly reshuffling the cards is a pain, but worth it for a game that’s easy to learn and plays pretty quickly. After Dominion, we played Kingsburg. For a game that involves dice, Kingsburg takes a fair amount of concentration. And even though I lost again, I still really like it and would put it near the top of my hot games list. (Y’know, I think I’ll finally go add that list to BGG when I’m finished with this post.)

To top it all off, on Sunday I palyed another game of Memoir ’44 with the girls. Again, Julia and I beat Barrie. This time it actually wan’t as close a game even though I thought the setup gave the Allies a significant advantage. Julia rolled spectacularly well.

Of course, I have all the expansions to the game because I love the Commands & Colors system. At one point, then, Barrie noticed the Air Power expansion and wanted to try a game with that. I thought it probably a little advanced for her level of experience, but I made the following proposal: we’d start over with the first scenario (meant to be an introductory one) and work our way through the book one-by-one, in order. When we’d finished the scenarios that came with the base game, we’d start on the first expansion. In that way, we could build up our understanding of the game and the new units that come with the expansions, and at the same time make sure we hadn’t skipped any scenarios we might otherwise enjoy. She loved that idea, and that’s what we’ve been doing, with her 12-year-old sister Julia, over the last month-and-a-half.

Julia and I play as a team, always taking the Axis side. Barrie takes the Allies. We’ve been through nine scenarios so far. Usually we play a game Shabbat afternoon, but we’ve also played Shabbat at night, Sunday afternoon, and even a weekday night. One weekday when we were all home because of the weather, we played two scenarios back-to-back. We all have a fantastic time. Julia always rolls our dice, but together we choose cards. The wins have gone about 50 percent to us and 50 percent to Barrie.

I love playing games with my children.

Game Night Games is an amazing store. It’s a little unusual for a game store in that it carries no roleplaying games, no collectible card games, and no miniatures. But in terms of board games and non-collectible card games, I haven’t been to a brick-and-mortar store with a better collection. Game Night Games’ inventory is both broad and deep. The store has many different board games of all styles and genres. There are complex Euro games, light family games, heavy themed games, children’s games, war games, traditional card games, and modern card games. And not just a few in each category. The store has separate sections for different categories, some by theme and some by style. There’s a section for science fiction games, a section for young children, a section for economic games, and several more. The store also has multiple copies in stock of most games.

But that’s not all. The store is neat, clean, the fixtures are nice and all match, each section has a painted wood sign, and they even have fancy custom printed paper shopping bags (like the kind you get at a nice department store). It’s the kind of place that would be attractive to non-hobbyists as well.

When I went to Game Night Games on Tuesday night, there was a meeting taking place of the Board Game Designers Guild of Utah. This group meets 1-2 times per month to playtest each others games and discuss advice on getting games published. The group was extremely welcoming and I participated in two playtests that night. The first was a Latter Day Saints themed game that was a cross between a Euro style and a war game. I thought it was a very good game and while I recommended the designer consider a few areas that could be improved, it definitely had the potential to be published. (Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the game. I recorded the play in Board Game Geek as “Unpublished Prototype.”) The second was Abstracts. This game has been published before, but the designer is working on an update. For what I little know of trivia games, it had some interesting twists, but I didn’t enjoy it. I’s just not my type of game. Nevertheless, I think the designer must have appreciated my comments because he gave me a free copy of one of his other games (a card game that uses a standard deck, so doesn’t seem to be in the BGG database).

With all the great game play and conversation, I neglected to actually purchase anything on Tuesday, so I had to go back on Wednesday (what a shame!). As I was ready to check out with Army of Frogs and Leaping Lizards (for my neices), a group of people completely different from the night before invited me to play Werewolf with them. I did, twice. And though whene I played it before, I hated it, this time was fun. I think the nature of the players makes a big difference. My home group is much more analytical and serious. This group was ready to have fun with the accusations and betrayals.

In summary, if you’re ever in Salt Lake City, you most definitely should check out Game Night Games.

The group gathers at the home of Joel, who is also a relatively new member of my neighborhood boardgaming group. And get this—the current GM, Eric, works at the same agency as I do, in my building!

Eric is running a D&D 3.5 campaign. The setting is original. Nothing particularly inspired, yet, but nevertheless, I’m already having a great time. The game as played is an interesting mix of adhering to the rules and ignoring the rules. But that’s good for me, as given the length of time since I’ve actually played, it may take me a little while to catch up and get in to my part. In the one session so far, we began investigating a series of brutal murders, only to discover the involvement of the party’s nemesis, who was previously thought dead.

Eric will continue running his campaign for the next few weeks. Then Joel has promised a 1920s pulp campaign using Savage Worlds. And since the group likes to have more than one campaign going on at the same time (to account for people not being able to attend on any particular week) I’ve been inspired to restart development on my science-fiction RPG system. More on that soon.

In the meantime, I did play a couple of games of It’s Alive, two-player with Ido. He came over late on Shabbat afternoon. I’ve played the prototype before and wasn’t expecting two-player to work very well, but it did. Two quick games. I enjoyed it very much. At the risk of being labeled a shill for daring to speak publicly about my colleague’s game, I think I’ll post a review on BGG.

Also played some Flea Circus with the girls. Barrie doesn’t like it any more, but Julia is still a big fan. These days, I can’t ever seem to get them to agree on a game, so we often end up with something like one game of Flea Circus followed by one game of Ticket to Ride. I like Flea Circus. Barrie’s doing better at choosing the best cards to play. Julia finally understands and remembers the rules, but she’s still pretty much playing random cards. I posted an article in the strategy forum on BGG explaining how to throw the game. We’ll see how that goes over. It’s the first strategy posting for Flea Circus!

I have to say that I didn’t play as many games as I expected. Five days was just not enough time for everything there is to do. But looking back, I did play quite a few. Some highlights of the games I played

Revolution! — A playtest version of a board game soon to be published by Steve Jackson Games. Played this at PSI Game Night on Trade Day. Loved it.

Perfect — An RPG played at Games on Demand. GM was Darcy Burgess. Takes place in a dystopian version of Victorian England. Players commit crimes and always succeed. The question is how long will they get away with it. My first RPG in a long time, and my first story-game type RPG. Very entertaining. Lots of fun. Real exercise of one’s imagination.

Wealth of Nations — Played this board game late at night in the open board gaming room on a supersized 3-D board brought by the publisher. I’ve played this game once before. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it after the first time. But after this play, it’s grown on me. Now, I’d really like to have my own copy. It’s not too difficult to learn, and if you stop wasting time bargaining over petty change, the game progresses quickly. Also, made friends with TableStar’s demo people. Gave Jennifer a large supply of Purple Pawns. She said she might send me a game after the show (they needed to sell stock on hand to cover expenses). We’ll see.

Traveller — That old RPG. But the new version from Mongoose. It’s pretty much Classic Traveller with some updates to smooth out the kinks. This was a scheduled event. Also, it was officially “Introduction to Mongoose Traveller,” so we spent most of the time going through character creation and discussing the basic mechanics. Still, I had a good time. I like the lifepath character generation method of Traveller. You get to guide your character’s development, but many things, like in real life, are beyond your control. I tried to create a criminal-type character but failed out of that career path. Ended up with some sort of shady scout/explorer type with many years in the service—and an excellent marksman. In a short scenario we did play through, a poisonous creature was standing on my ship-capatain’s shoulder. There was much debate in the party about what to do. I took aim and rolled an 11 on 2d6, shooting it off without a scratch to the captain.

Memoir ’44 — Starting about midnight Friday night in the open board gaming room, I joined a group of friends (that is, they all knew each other for years) to play an Overlord scenario. The thing is we didn’t have the Overlord rules with us. No problem. We had a great time making it up as we went along. In fact, even when my side lost, everyone decided to continue playing. And then we extended the scenario two or three more times. Again, a great time. And it’d be great to meet up with these guys again next year

Battlelore — Saturday afternoon I sat down for a full-length demo game of the epic scenario For Troll and Country. The game was actually being set up by the designer, Richard Borg. But it turns out an epic scenario with new players takes a lot longer than the basic scenarios. I left early to make the Media Meet & Greet event. Thankfully, my teamates were very understanding. Another example of why even better than the games, was all the people I met.

Kingsburg — Wandering around the Embassy Suites lobby late Saturday night, I was invited by another group of strangers to a board game. It’s a recent Euro-style game (but with dice) from Fantasy Flight. I’d never heard of it, but again I really liked it. And again, I had a great time meeting Brian, Chris, and Dave.

Spirit of the Century — Just a demo of this RPG, but with Leonard Balsera, one of the designers. This guy has energy and excitement to spare. The scenario was short but fun. I own and have read the game, but actually playing it, even for a short time, puts a very different perspective on the game.

La Strada — A light/medium tile-laying board game from Mayfair. From Martin Wallace, though not what you usually think of as a Martin Wallace design. I played this game Sunday evening (after the show officially ended) with Don Dehm and Jeremiah Lynch of the Pulp Gamer Podcast network. The tile laying reminded me of laying tracks in Railroad Tycoon. The scoring reminded me of Kingdoms. I listen to Pulp Gamer but I haven’t found hardly any Mayfair games that I like. So this was a surprise hit. It’s a simple, mostly abstract game with some interesting strategic decisions. It’s something that would probably fit well when the game group has a little extrat time to spare, or when non-gamer family or fiends are visiting. I think I’ll be buying it soon

Other games I played, mostly as demos of varying length include:

• Classic Battletech (miniatures)
• Exalted: Legacy of the Unconquered Sun (board)
• Say Anything (board/party)
• Thou Art But a Warrior (RPG)
• In a Wicked Age (RPG)
• No Thanks (card) x 4
• Red November (board)

Purple Pawn is a fantastic site. Purple Pawn is a lot of fun. But Purple Pawn has also turned out to be a lot of work. And so, this personal game blog has been ignored. Now though, I’m getting the hang of the amateur journalism involved in that site, and the things I wanted to do with this one have been nagging at me again. So, I’m back.

I’ll see you in a couple of days with an update on where I am with the game design concepts…