Frontiers of Adventure

Thanks to Traveller Map

When Traveller first appeared in 1977, GDW's  game of science fiction adventure in the far future followed the model of Original Dungeons & Dragons in being a generic ruleset without an explicit setting. Of course, like OD&D, Traveller's rules included within them assumptions that laid for the groundwork for an implied setting. An illustrative example of what I'm talking about is the relative slowness of interstellar travel and the concomitant lack of a separate (and faster) form of interstellar communications. Thus, Traveller may not have included its own integral setting, at least initially, but its rules certainly pushed referees in certain directions as they created their own settings, much as OD&D had done before it.

This situation didn't last long, though. Starting with the appearance of Mercenary in 1978, GDW started including references to "the Imperium" in its products. Initially, the Imperium was just a stand-in for any remote interstellar government of the sort that Traveller's rules implied. By the time of the release of The Spinward Marches in 1979 (if not before), it had started down the path that would soon make it the explicit setting of the game. From my conversations with the late Loren Wiseman and others, this shift in emphasis was one that players of the game wanted, based on feedback that GDW received from them. I can hardly blame them for catering to their buying public.

More to the point, I've always loved the Imperium. By the time I began playing Traveller, there was very little sense that the game had ever been a generic ruleset without an explicit setting and I was quite content with this situation. That said, most of GDW's efforts in describing the Imperium were focused on its frontiers, sectors of space like the aforementioned Spinward Marches and the Solomani Rim. Likewise, the various third parties licensed by GDW to produce their own materials setting set in and around the Imperium tended to follow their lead, whether they were Judges Guild or Gamelords or FASA. By comparison, there was little or no material set in the core sectors of the Imperium.

I was reminded of all this recently because a good friend of mine offered to referee a Traveller campaign and he chose to set it in the Crucis Margin sector, in the region trailing the Imperium. The sector is in close proximity to the Imperium, as well as the Solomani Confederation, the Two Thousand Worlds, and the Hive Federation but none of these major interstellar powers has any presence here. Instead, there are multiple smaller governments, usually no more than a dozen worlds in size – the very same model I used in my Riphaeus Sector campaign. 

I think it's pretty obvious why this is such an attractive set-up for a RPG campaign setting: frontiers are where adventures happen. Sometimes this is quite explicit. For example, there are The Keep on the Borderlands for D&D and Borderlands for RuneQuest, to cite just two very obvious examples. Back in the realm of science fiction, there's Star Frontiers and Star Trek, whose televisual inspiration dubbed space the final frontier. I rather suspect that one of the reasons that RPGs set in the modern day generally do poorly is that most of them lack a clear frontier and thus the possibilities for adventure are more limited. The only exceptions I can think of are horror games like Call of Cthulhu or Vaesen, where I would argue that the supernatural (or at least extramundane) constitutes a frontier of sorts.

If we turn back to Traveller, it would seem that GDW learned this lesson as well. Most of the editions of the game after its initial one were explicitly set not just in the Imperium setting but during a time when there were lots more frontiers. MegaTraveller (1987) shattered the Imperium in a civil war that resulted in the foundation of antagonistic successor states, while Traveller: The New Era (1993) takes place when much of interstellar civilization is rebuilding in the aftermath of that same civil war. I suspect a big part of the appeal of post-apocalyptic games like Gamma World is the way they take a staid, familiar setting, like Earth, and fill it with frontiers again. 

None of this is to suggest that it's impossible to have a satisfying roleplaying game campaign set in the core areas of a stable society, but, as I scan my bookshelves, looking at the games I have played most often, I see few obvious examples of them. I don't think that's mere coincidence.

REVIEW: A Wicked Secret and Other Mysteries

It's funny: I've written a number of posts over the past few weeks about the centrality of campaigns over individual scenarios, yet I remain a huge fan of prewritten adventures, as even a cursory examination of my retrospective posts will reveal. I don't think there's any contradiction in these two positions, but it's probably worth examining them in a future post. For the moment, what I want to do is talk about the first adventure anthology for Free League's Vaesen. 

Titled A Wicked Secret and Other Mysteries, the anthology is a sturdy hardcover, whose 104 parchment-like pages are filled with full-color illustrations by Johan Egerkrans and Anton Vitus. Taken purely as an artifact, it's a beautiful book that feels good to hold and to peruse – much like the Vaesen rulebook itself. This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Free League's RPG books, whose physical quality is unmatched by those of almost any other game publisher right now. 

The first of the anthology's adventures is The Silver of the Sea by Tomas Härenstam and takes place in the Bohuslän archipelago, along the west coast of Sweden. The characters receive a letter from a young priest living in a fishing village of the area, explaining that his mentor is dead, supposedly of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The priest does not accept this; he believes this "suicide" was staged by one of several sinister groups operating in the area. The locals are suspicious of outsiders and largely uncooperative, which initially gives Bohuslän the feel of a Nordic Innsmouth, even if what is actually happening here isn't quite the same (as the characters eventually learn). 

The eponymous A Wicked Secret by Gabrielle de Bourg concerns strange incidents in a forested region of the north. An industrialist hoping to "modernize" the region runs afoul of locals, some of whom are none too interested in the "progress" he and his logging company hope to bring. He calls upon the characters to investigate the community of Färnsta after one of his employees is driven mad and another goes missing. This is quite a lengthy scenario and involves lots of hunting for clues, interacting with NPCs, and traveling to remote locales to unravel the mystery of Färnsta. 

The Night Sow by Nils Hintze, designer of Vaesen, whom I interviewed recently, takes place in the village of Mölle in southern Sweden, which has become a popular seaside tourist destination. Mölle has a scandalous reputation due the fact that men and women are encouraged to mix on the same beach, something unheard of at the time. Naturally, many locals, including the village priest, are none too keen on this – a recurring theme in these adventures, as you've no doubt noticed. Amidst this social tension, the characters uncover a series of murders and disappearances, as well as evidence of an ancient evil that may be behind it all.

Finally, The Son of the Falling Star by Kiku Pukk Härenstam takes place in Estonia, home to one of the characters' cousin, Hugo von Kaiserling, whose wife has recently given birth to their first child. His wife, however, wants nothing to do with the child and sees him as a "monster." Hugo hopes the characters can talk sense to his wife and a local priest, who both believe that the child is under an evil spell that can only be broken with an exorcism. Naturally, there's more truth to the wife's beliefs than Hugo and his rationalist mindset is willing to accept.

All of the adventures touch upon the clash of "the old ways" with the changes Scandinavia is undergoing in the 19th century – industrialization, urbanization, and science-fueled skepticism, among others. This makes sense, as these are the central themes of Vaesen itself. They provide excellent sources of conflict and drama, in addition to helping to distinguish Vaesen from other supernatural investigation RPGs. This is not simply Call of Cthulhu in 19th century Scandinavia, despite superficial similarities, as these adventures all make quite clear. 

I'm a strong proponent of historical roleplaying; I believe the past, if well presented, can be every bit as interesting as any imaginary world. On this score, A Wicked Secret receives mostly high marks. Each scenario highlights a part of real world Nordic history that was otherwise unknown or only dimly known to me, whether it be "the sin in Mölle," the 19th century Swedish logging industry, or romantic nationalism in the Baltics, and uses it to provide context for the strange events the characters are investigating. This is exactly what I want out of historical adventures and was pleased to see A Wicked Secret exceed my expectations.

At the same time, I do have a couple of small complaints about the adventures. As I commented above, there's a certain sameness to the initial set-up of each scenario: the characters receive an invitation to visit a far-off locale to solve a murder or a disappearance and find the locals uncooperative and/or suspicious, often due to the influence of a local priest. While each of the four adventures is in fact quite different, I nevertheless worry about the perception of repetitiveness. Had a scenario or two been set in, say, a larger urban center, it might have helped alleviate my concern.

My other complaint concerns the portrayal of the local priests – not so much their role in the scenarios but little details that don't seem to ring true to 19th century Scandinavia. For example, none of the priests, despite being clergy of the Church of Sweden (or, in one scenario, the Russian Orthodox Church), are married. Instead, they all come across as ersatz Roman Catholic priests, right down to the Russian Orthodox priest owning a copy of the Rituale Romanum, a Latin book of blessings and rituals that seems an unlikely possession, for both historical and doctrinal reasons. This is a small gripe but I mention it because it stands out against the otherwise compelling presentation of time and place. Further, I genuinely appreciate that all of the adventure recognize the importance of the local clergyman to a community, as well as the thematic role that religion ought to play in adventures of this sort. 

All that said, I'm very happy with A Wicked Secret and Other Mysteries. Any one of these scenarios would be a terrific kick-off to a Vaesen campaign, making the book invaluable to any GM of the game. Even if one does not use the scenarios as written, they aprovide lots of useful information in the form of maps, NPC write-ups, new vaesen, and historical information, all of which could be adapted to other uses. I like this book a great deal and look forward to the day when I might be able to use it with one of my regular groups of players.

Interview: Nils Hintze

Nils Hintze is the writer of several roleplaying games published in Sweden, most recently Vaesen: Nordic Horror Roleplaying, which I reviewed here. A professional psychologist by training, with experience writing for theater as well as RPGs, Mr Hintze kindly agreed to answer my questions about his work past and present.

1. How did you first become involved in the hobby of roleplaying?

In the '80s, when I was a kid, the most popular RPG in Sweden was Drakar och Demoner (Dragons and Demons). My older brother got a copy of it as a Christmas present from our grandfather, and since I still couldn’t read and my brother couldn’t really understand the game, our mother read it with a yellow highlighter, underlining every piece of rules in it. She was our first Gamemaster in a scenario at the kitchen table where I was a dwarf and my brother an elf with a bow. After that, we kept on playing, unfortunately without our mother. And I have pretty much played RPGs since then, and most of my friends from my childhood are RPG friends.

2. Do you have any favorite roleplaying games – not simply to play but ones whose rules design or setting you find particularly appealing?

I love Solar System by Eero Tuovinen, based on The Shadow of Yesterday by Clinton R. Nixon. We used to play it a lot, and I really like the mechanics with keys, and that the character transcends and leaves the story when she has gathered enough experience points. The rules focus the story on interaction among characters and emotional development.

Recently, I have become interested in a game called Odd Soot. It is a mix-up of Call of Cthulhu and Space: 1889, though it takes place in Europe during the '30’s in a fictional version of Earth. It is primarily the mood of the game that I like, with strange illustrations of creepy aliens and a lot of things in the backstory kept secret.

Then again, nothing beats a good old Call of Cthulhu campaign. It is something with the fact that the characters are at a constant disadvantage, under-equipped, and not even capable of understanding what takes place, that makes it fun to walk right into danger and be consumed by madness and death.

Also, I have an unreasonably love for Burning Wheel, even though the mechanics at times could steal too much of the group’s focus during play. It is so well constructed; every little rule is connected to the whole of the game. And at the same time as it is a mechanically complicated and technical game, it has a crystal clear theme that not only runs through all of the parts of it, the theme—to fight for what you believe in and pay the prize to get what you want—actually emerges at the center of the story, just by playing it according tot the rules.

3. When did you start writing for roleplaying games and what were some of your most notable designs?

I wrote other stuff, like scripts for theater, before I started to write for RPG. But in 2006 a game called Oktoberlandet (the Octoberland) was published and I fell in love with it and started to write free pdf-scenarios for it. The author, Christian Mehrstam (Whitehack, Suldokar’s Wake) helped me a lot in the process of learning to write for games, and since then we have become friends, and he still helps me with texts.

When Free League and Christian decided to publish a second edition of Oktoberlandet, I was asked to write scenarios and campaigns. In the process, I got a taste for writing RPG-materials, and I wrote an email to Tomas Härenstam at Free League, asking him if there where other things I could write. That led to me writing the RPG Tales from the Loop, based on the artbook by Simon Stålenhag. I then wrote the follow up: Things from the Flood, based on the second artbook by Simon Stålenhag.

My latest product is of course Vaesen, based on the artbook by Johan Egerkrans. But I have also written some other, smaller stuff, such as some of the content in Forbidden Lands and some texts to the upcoming Twillight 2000. Though I mostly write for Free League, I have done some stuff for other companies. In 2021, a campaign for the horror game Kult will be published. It takes place during the Lebanese civil war, and it is called Dome of Desolation.

4. Since most of my readers are English speakers, they're likely unfamiliar with the world of Swedish roleplaying games. How would you compare the Swedish and English language scenes? What are the similarities and differences between them, particularly when it comes to subject matter?

Dungeons & Dragons (and OSR games) is the biggest game in Sweden, but not in the overwhelming sense that is the case in the rest of the world. People play a lot of different games and many Swedish games. The Swedish RPG scene is extremely big, considering how many people live here. There are many people doing their own games, and it is really a creative and vigorous scene, with a lot of cooperation. A couple of years ago, many people were in to the Story Now scene, but nowadays OSR is very popular, just as in the international scene. 

The biggest RPG companies are Free League, Helmgast and maybe Riotminds. A common thing for them is that they sort of have two groups of customers, one Swedish and one international. Some games are only published in Swedish, while others are translated after they have sort of been tried out on the Swedish market. 

Concerning subject matter, I think most Swedish games are about the same things as the international games: murder hobos stealing gold, space ships, and horror monsters. I would say that the trend to do somewhat different games, for instance about characters who are kids and not heroes, or about more serious subjects such as racism or global warming, is not bigger or smaller in Sweden than in other places. Hopefully we see a more diversified scene all over.

5. How much of a free hand did you have in creating Vaesen? For example, was the decision to set the game in the 19th century yours or did it originate with someone else? I'm very curious about the process of taking the ideas present in the original art book by Johan Egerkrans and turning them into a roleplaying game.

The big picture of the game was already in place when I was contacted. For instance, that it was to be set in the 19th century. Some of these decisions were changed during the process such as where the base of the player characters should be located, and what parts of northern Europe would be described in the book as a part of “the North”.

But within that bigger frame, I took a lot of decisions about content while I wrote the text. After I wrote the first draft, we edited it several times, with input from Johan Egerkrans, and Nils Karlén and Mattias Johnsson from Free League. And then after the Kickstarter, some texts by Nils Karlén and Richard Antroia were added as a consequence of stretch goals, such as for instance the system for buying equipment and three of the Vaesen described in the book.

I was actually interview about this process recently.

6. Are there any aspects of the final game of which you're particularly proud? I'm interested in both rules and setting details for which you were responsible.

The chapter about how the Gamemaster should construct a mystery (scenario) is what I am most proud of. I think many game designers write too little about this – maybe they don’t know how to explain the process, or they want their audience to buy scenarios instead of writing their own, I don’t know.

I think the model that I present, with some locations that the characters may visit, some things that may happen at any time to escalate the situation, and some things creating mood (for instance nightmares or spells) build scenarios with a firm “backbone”, but also room for a lot of adaptation and creativity for both the Gamemaster and the players. I believe that it finds the middle ground between too structured scenarios with scenes that must be played out in a particular way and scenarios that are vague or lacking in focus, forcing the Gamemaster to put a lot of effort into fleshing them out and organizing them.

Maybe these ideas about how to structure scenarios is the reason so many people write their own scenarios for Tales from the Loop and Vaesen? I hope so. I am also quite proud of the short in-game texts at the start of every chapter, and also the texts to the archetypes. I think I managed to create a coherent mood in all of the in-game texts throughout the book. For some, I used real texts from the 19th century as a base, and the changed them, and some I wrote from scratch.

The short texts at the start of each description of the Vaesen, from the diary of the scientist Carl von Linné’s travels in northern Sweden, are actual texts I found in his diary from this trip. I changed some small wordings to make them be about Vaesen, but most of it is authentic. That was a fun thing to do, and I think that things like that give an overall impression of authenticity, even though the reader might not know that the texts are from the from the actual diary by Linné.

7. You wrote a scenario ("The Night Sow") in the first adventure anthology for Vaesen, Wicked Secrets. Is this based on any actual legends or folklore or is it entirely of your own creation.

The Vaesen part of the story is my own creation, but of course based on folklore stories about the creature that figures in the scenario. The backstory, “the sin in Mölle” and the conflict about the bathing hotel is more or less historically correct.

8. You mentioned you're involved in the upcoming new edition of Twilight:2000, which is a game I'm anxiously anticipating. What are you doing for the new edition and what can you share about its overall approach to the subject matter?

I have written three of the scenario sites to the game; places of conflict, from which stories may emerge. I have not had any part in creating the game or making any of the decisions about it. But to my understanding, the team that writes it puts a lot of effort into taking the best from the older versions while simultaneously using more “modern” RPG game design. I don’t think it will be a game of traditional scenarios, but rather a sandbox game where the group at the start of the campaign decides who they are and what they are trying to do. Then they will try to travel across Europe encountering problems and possibilities – and then it is up to them what to do about it.

For the scenario sites that I wrote, I tried to find a good balance between horrifying and hopeful content. As I work as a psychologist with traumatized refugees from warzones and torture, I have heard a lot of scary stories. My intention was to use some of these things, but to try to make it a little less bad than how it is in reality. I don’t think anyone would enjoy a “torture RPG,” not if it was done for real. But some of these themes are certainly part of the scenario sites I wrote.

9. Were you familiar with Twilight: 2000 beforehand? I know there was a Finnish translation of the game in the 1990s, but I don't believe there were any other translations into European languages.

I didn’t play Twilight 2000 when I grew up, but my brother did, and heard his stories about it. When I grew older, I collected some of the products, but I still didn’t play it. I think the game has been fairly big in Sweden. Most Swedish gamers play English games. A translation is more of a bonus, not a necessity.

10. What roleplaying games are you currently playing?

I play in a Burning Wheel campaign loosely based on Yoon-Suin, where my character is a revolutionary doctor who recently swore allegiance to a death God and now tries to poison the Intruders in the Yellow City with “the Black Plague." Very entertaining.

I also play a Call of Cthulhu homebrew campaign, where my character is an emotionally damaged nurse named Sally. She is also a mother to a five-year-old girl played by one of the other players. Sally is not a good mother.

A while ago, me and my wife started to play a superhero-campaign with our oldest son, who is four. Be he got scared when I, as a GM, changed my voice to portray the villain, and now he doesn’t want to play anymore. Traumatized for life…

REVIEW: Vaesen

As my friends can attest, I've been singing the praises of Swedish game company Free League a lot lately. Free League is the publisher of Mörk Borg, as well as Forbidden Lands. Since last Fall, I've been playing in a weekly Forbidden Lands campaign and continue to enjoy it greatly. For those who don't know, Forbidden Lands is a survival fantasy hex crawl RPG about "raiders and rogues bent on making [their] mark on a cursed world." It's not only an extremely fun game but exceptionally well made, with production values that, quite frankly, put most RPGs from this side of the Atlantic to shame.

It's these production values that overcame my initial skepticism about Free League's latest roleplaying game, Vaesen. Vaesen – the word (or variants of it) means "spirit," "creature," or "fairy" in several Scandinavian languages – is a roleplaying game of "Nordic Horror," set in a mythical version of 19th century Scandinavia. You can probably understand the source of my initial skepticism. Though I like to think of myself as fairly well read, my knowledge of 19th century Scandinavia is limited. Even more limited is my knowledge of Nordic folklore. Therefore, Vaesen was going to be a hard sell for me – that is, until I saw the artwork of Johan Egerkrans, which fills the rulebook. 

To call Vaesen's rulebook gorgeous doesn't really do it justice. True, the illustrations of Egerkrans are stunningly evocative and immediately overcame my reluctance to give the game a chance. Almost as important, though, is the quality of the 232-page volume itself. Well-bound and sturdy, its pages have a heavy, parchment-like feel that give Vaesen an old fashioned, even "fairy tale" sensibility that works very well given its subject matter. In combination, the art and the character of the book won me over most unexpectedly. Merely as a physical artifact, Vaesen is remarkable in a way few RPG books are (aside from some of LotFP's output, for example).

The premise of the game is that, throughout history, supernatural beings – vaesen – have lived side by side with the people of Scandinavia. Unless they want to be seen, vaesen are generally invisible, except to individuals who possess "the Sight." In the past, vaesen were prone to beneficence, if they were properly propitiated. With the rise of industrialization and new ways of thinking in the 19th century, people are forgetting the vaesen and failing to treat them with appropriate respect. In return, the vaesen are becoming angry and aggressive, lashing out and creating havoc. Some have even left their ancient homes in the countryside to invade the growing cities and spread chaos among those who dwell there.

The player characters are individuals who possess the Sight and have gathered in the city of Uppsala in central Sweden, after having learned that there was once an organization simply known as "the Society" that studied and combated the vaesen. Most members of the Society disappeared a decade ago and, since then, its old headquarters, Castle Gyllencreutz, is now a crumbling wreck. One surviving member of the Society is now in an asylum but she gives the characters the keys and deed to the castle so that they can rebuild it and the Society it once housed. 

As a campaign set-up, it's a good one, not terribly far removed from that of many Call of Cthulhu campaigns. Not only does it provide the characters with a headquarters from which to launch their investigations, it also provides them with two goals: to rebuild the Society and to rebuild Castle Gyllencreutz itself. Over the course of a campaign, players can, like most RPGs, improve not only their characters through the expenditure of experience points but also the Society and the castle through the expenditure of development points. In this way, the characters gain access to new facilities (e.g. infirmary, observatory, workshop), contacts, and personnel. Players familiar with other Free League games, such as Mutant: Year Zero or Forbidden Lands, will no doubt recognize certain similarities to their campaign frames, but this is no simple cut-and-paste. Lead writer Nils Hintze has done a superb job of tailoring these and other systems to the unique setting and atmosphere of Vaesen.

Character creation is straightforward. Each player chooses an archetype, of which there are ten. They are: academic, doctor, hunter, occultist, officer, priest, private detective, servant, vagabond, and writer. The rules suggest that there not be two characters with the same archetype, which I think is a good idea (but then I think it's largely true of D&D character classes, too). Archetypes are more than mere professions, as they provide motivations, traumas, dark secret, and talent choices for the character, in addition to resources and equipment. Motivations, traumas, and dark secrets flesh out the character and provide means of acquiring roleplaying-based experience points, while talents are tricks and traits that grant situational benefits or bonuses. 

Vaesen uses a dice pool system. Hence, character attributes – physique, precision, logic, and empathy – are rated from 1 to 5, representing the number of six-sided dice a player rolls when using them. Skills, of which there are twelve, function similarly. Rolling even a single 6 is a success, though there are occasions (such as combat) when rolling multiple 6's is useful. A failed roll can be re-rolled (or "pushed") but doing so results in a "condition," such as being exhausted or frightened that decreases a character's dice pool for subsequent rolls until the condition is healed. Having used a similar system in Forbidden Lands, I can attest to the fact that these rules are fairly simple and straightforward, with lots of room for interpretation by the Gamemaster. I wouldn't call them "old school," but they're quite unobtrusive and easy to use.

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the setting and time period, Vaesen provides an entire chapter on "the Mythic North" and the city of Uppsala, including some lovely maps. The chapter stresses that there's no need to stick to real world history and that players and Gamemaster alike should feel free to alter anything they feel gets in the way of a fun game. This is probably the one area where I found myself disagreeing with the game's approach. I believe strongly that, if you're playing a game set in a particular time and place in the real world, there's much to be gained by mining that history in creating characters and adventures (called "mysteries" in Vaesen). Otherwise, why not set the game in wholly fantastical place? Plus, as I have begun to realize, in researching 19th century Scandinavia, there's a lot of fascinating people and events that would make great elements in Vaesen mysteries.

Naturally, the vaesen themselves get a lengthy chapter to themselves and it's perhaps the best part of the rulebook. We learn about their connections to nature, their common homes, and magical powers (including enchantments, curses, and trollcraft – the bending of time and space). Twenty different types of vaesen are described, along with examples of conflicts in which they might take part. This is more than enough to kick off a campaign, though I'd love to see more. A later chapter extensively discusses the creation of mysteries (adventures) for the game by providing not just extensive advice and examples but also many random tables to spur the imagination. An introductory mystery, entitled "The Dance of Dreams" is also included.

All in all, I loved Vaesen. It not only overcame my considerable skepticism regarding its subject matter but proved sufficiently compelling that I now want to give it a serious try with one of my gaming groups. It's certainly one of the most beautiful and evocative RPGs I've read recently, with a ready-made foundation for starting up a campaign right away. I highly recommend it.