Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Campaign Notes – Diorama – Props Packet

Welcome to Savannah, GA!

The only major structural shift to this section of the campaign is the addition of a viable path by which the PCs can track the local cult agents back to their boss in Bangkok. Combined with the wide enrichment of the campaign’s node structure, this opens the door to a radically different experience with Eternal Lies (in which the PCs begin investigating the extremities of the cult before turning their attention to the nexus of its operations in Los Angeles).

What the remix primarily offers in this section of the campaign, however, is a plethora of props.

NPC NAMES

I’ve includes sheets with a list of sample NPC names for each of the major locations in Eternal Lies (male, female, and last). These should come in handy whenever you need to improv a new lead or contact.

RESEARCH

Each location includes a “Research” section. These list any general research topics that the PCs might pursue in a location. If the PCs are researching a specific node or NPC, those research results are listed with the node or NPC. (Savannah breaks the “rules” here a bit by including general research on the Henslowe Estate and Joy Grove Sanitarium, which are also specific nodes. That’s just because I hadn’t quite figured out my format yet.)

REVELATION LIST

Each location also includes a revelation list, which briefly summarizes all the clues which point to each node or NPC. If the clue is local, it’s simply listed. If the clue is picked up in a different location, the location is indicated. For example, the revelation list for Joy Grove Sanitarium reads:

• NEW YORK: Douglas Henslowe’s Letters
• Interviews at Douglas Henslowe’s Estate

Which simply means that the PCs could have obtained letters in New York that would point them at the Sanitarium. Or there are multiples NPCs at the Henslowe Estate who can tell the PCs that Henslowe is at the Sanitarium.

As described in the Three Clue Rule, you can use this revelation list to keep track of what information the PCs have obtained and what information the PCs have missed. This will allow you to quickly troubleshoot the investigation, easily picking out revelations that they’ve missed entirely.

The revelation list also included a list of Proactive Nodes: These are nodes that the PCs generally won’t find; instead they’ll come and find the PCs. (The group of Bangkok thugs in Savannah is an excellent example of this.) The bullet points below each proactive node lists triggering conditions. (In the case of the Bangkok thugs, they’re watching Douglas Henslowe and Edgar Job, so they’ll become aware of the PCs as soon as they interact with either of those characters.)

Collectively, these revelation lists also provide a handy table of contents for the location.

STAT SHEET

Fairly self-explanatory: The stat sheet at the end of each location collects all the miscellaneous stat blocks for the location onto a single page for quick and easy reference. (NPC stat blocks generally aren’t repeated here.)

PROP NOTES

Savannah Sanitorium Ambience: This is a really fantastic track from someone over at Yog-Sothoth. You can play it pretty consistently throughout the sanitorium scenes, flipping in tracks from the official Eternal Lies Soundtrack when they’re interviewing Henslowe and Job.

Henslowe’s Cemetery: I mounted this graphic on corkboard. The rope that the PCs can find at the Henslowe Estate was represented with a piece of string that I marked appropriately with purple marker. Using push-pins, the players could actually play around with positioning the “rope” in order to figure out where the stash had been hidden.

Henslowe’s Stash: I placed the items from the stash in a fancy box (not included). The “stone dagger” referenced in the campaign notes is an art piece I bought on vacation in Mexico. I’m afraid you’ll have to figure out your own object for the protective artifact.

Go to 1.3 Los Angeles

For those of you being introduced to the American Shakespeare Repertory for the first time with our production of William Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece in the 2011 Minnesota Fringe Festival, one of the distinguishing traits of the company is our “foundational” approach to Shakespeare.

As part of the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare, we go back to the original scripts as they were published during (and shortly after) Shakespeare’s lifetime. We then build up our performance scripts by re-exploring and re-establishing the scholastic traditions of the last 400 years while following a principle of least interference. The process has not only given us a deeper appreciation of the texts themselves, but also — in our opinion — resulted in more accurate and useful scripts for the purposes of rehearsal and performance.

We first performed the epic poem Lucrece as part of the Complete Readings in February 2010 with Emma J. Mayer in the title role. For that performance we used a complete version of the poem based on the original 1594 Quarto:

LUCRECE – FULL TEXT

Unlike many of Shakespeare’s works, there is not much to say about this text: It is remarkably clean and free from errors. One point of potential interest is that the poem was originally published as Lucrece and only later became popularly known as The Rape of Lucrece.

CUTTING SHAKESPEARE

When it came time to revisit the show for the Fringe Festival, it was necessary to cut the text so that it could be performed within the festival’s 60 minute time limit.

Cutting Shakespeare is a difficult and daunting task at the best of time. Before you can even begin, you must first have a deep understanding of the work: Otherwise you’ll have no idea what valuable dramatic beats and textual clues you may inadvertently and ignorantly discard.

Fortunately, having edited the text and previously performed the piece, I was intimately familiar with it. But, of course, there were still mysteries. (For example, I’m still not entirely sure why Shakespeare so frequently emphasizes the image of a honey bee over the course of the poem. Each individual piece of imagery makes sense; but I haven’t fully grasped its pervasive totality. Since I was uncertain what Shakespeare was trying to accomplish, I erred on the side of caution and left every honey bee allusion intact.)

Once the process of cutting actually begins, I find it most effective to perform multiple passes through the text. This allows one to gently massage the text instead of feeling the need to cut huge chunks out of it. I can identify the extraneous while also preserving the essential. And it generally makes me more successful in maintaining as much of the text’s original structure and content.

In the case of Lucrece, for example, I performed six passes through the text — each refining the result. (And later a seventh when we were still running a couple minutes too long.) I am very pleased with the result: The only element of the original poem which is entirely missing from this cut is the character of Lucrece’s maid (who fetches her pen and paper to write). And the success of the cut seems testified by those who have seen the show and, having read the poem, feel nothing in its absence.

Here’s the final version of our script as it is being performed:

RAPE OF LUCRECE (MINNESOTA FRINGE FESTIVAL – DRAFT 7)

This script also shows how the lines have been assigned to the two actors for the purposes of performance.

TEXTUAL PRACTICES

Source Text: First Quarto (1594)

1. Original emendations in [square brackets].
2. Spelling has been modernized.
3. Punctuations has been silently emended (in minimalist fashion).
4. In the Fringe 2011 script, lines have been assigned to the two actors for the purpose of performance.

If there is one place where the would-be RPG publisher goes wrong, it is when they think like an amateur instead of a professional.

The amateur is giddy and excited: A labor of love is finally going into print. You’ll see their inability to cope with the realities of publishing in a thousand different ways: Even though it took them two years to finish writing their core rulebook (and they have nothing else ready to go), they’ll include announcements in the back of the book for a new product every month until the end of the year. They’ll start under-capitalized so that, even if they did have material ready to go, they won’t have the money to print it until their print run for the core rulebook sells out. They’ll alienate their customer base by making extravagant claims about their game which only confirm their ignorance of the game market. They’ll publish something with low production values… but then charge the consumer the same price as a product with higher production values.

But there is one mistake that they will make which will put the final kiss of death upon their product: They will fail to take their competition into account.

For example, let’s say you want to create a Tolkienesque fantasy game – elves, dwarves, the whole nine yards. What’s the first thing that should come up on your radar screen?

D&D.

What’s the second thing that should come up on your radar screen?

Earthdawn, Ironclaw, Shards, Ars Magica, Sovereign Stone, Warhammer FRP, Hero Wars, and a dozen other games – major and minor – that fall within the classic fantasy marketplace to one degree or another.

And at that point you should be asking yourself a simple question: Can I offer something that these other games don’t?

For example: Ars Magica (arguably) does magic better than any other game system around. Legend of the Five Rings was an Eastern Fantasy game at a time when there wasn’t any serious competition. Ironclaw is anthropomorphic. Hero Wars has Glorantha. And so forth…

And if Enchanted Worlds possesses a flaw, then this would be it: It’s a game without purpose. Without a niche. Without a role to fulfill.

The boxed set, as a whole, comes across as a slightly amateurish effort, but with a certain amount of quality within those boundaries: A ring-bound booklet, a short introductory adventure, two eight-sided dice, a full-color map, a reference card, and a handful of character sheets.

The main booklet presents both rules and setting information. The rules are difficult to learn and reference because almost every single system is split up – with one half of the system described on an overview page and the other half of the system located later on in the book. Once you get past this odd fact (and the lay-out, which routinely leaves major sub-sections completely unlabeled, mixing dissimilar concepts together into one big lump of text) the system is fairly clean: Point-based character creation, a simple Attribute + Skill incarnation using a 2d8 die roll, and casting spells from a list.

The setting for the game is squeezed into about a dozen pages, and looks the worse for wear: It’s a standard Tolkienesque fantasy settings (elves, dwarves, humans, and the humanoid minions of evil), and the limited information which is provided does little to nothing in helping it stand out from the dozens of other settings out there that look just like it.

There’s a persistent problem with everything in this box: What’s there is fine for as far as it goes… but it doesn’t actually go anywhere in particular. There are at least a half dozen games on the market which do almost exactly what this one does – and do it better.

So I’m left searching for some reason you should buy this game, and I’m afraid I just don’t have one. I’ve seen this game before… only it was in full color and about 200 pages longer.

Ultimately, that’s a problem Enchanted Worlds just can’t live down.

Writers: Matthew Rodgers and Daniel Price
Publisher: New Worlds Gaming
Price: $14.95
Page Count: 40
Product Code: EWRSK1

Originally Posted: 2000/09/05

If I had written this review a couple of years later, I could probably have gotten away with just writing IT’S A FANTASY HEARTBREAKER! in blazing capital letters.

By the time this review rolled around, I was receiving RPG review copies from a number of different sources, including RPGNet, Games Unplugged, and the defunct Gaming Outpost website. Graveyard Greg over at Gaming Outpost contacted me about this Enchanted Worlds Starter Kit, complaining that he couldn’t find anybody who wanted to look at. Could I help him out? I said sure.

About a week later I got a copy of the game in the mail, but it wasn’t from Greg. Instead, Games Unplugged had decided to also throw me a review copy. A week after that I got a second copy, but this one ALSO wasn’t from Greg: New Worlds Gaming had somehow gotten my snail mail address and had sent me a copy directly with a request that I produce a review. (I never actually figured out where they got my address from.) The Gaming Outpost copy showed up shortly thereafter.

So now I had three copies of this shitty game.

I also had an obligation to both Gaming Outpost and Games Unplugged to produce a review of it. Which, after some deliberation, I did: I wrote two completely different reviews (albeit with the same basic conclusion) for two different outlets. You’ve just read the Gaming Outpost review (which actually appeared second). I’ll be posting the Games Unplugged version next week.

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Campaign Notes – Diorama – Props Packet

New York is relatively straight-forward and is primarily designed to launch the PCs on their investigation.

The major addition to New York for the remix is to follow-up on local leads: Going to Winston Mansion will foreshadow some of the horrors which are to come, but major progress can be made if the PCs manage to dig up Walter Winston’s travel records (which can point them directly to Los Angeles without stopping in Savannah first).

NPC BRIEFING SHEET

I’ve prepped briefing sheets for each of the key NPCs in Eternal Lies. (In the case of New York, that means Janet Winston-Rogers and Frank Kearns.) These use the Universal NPC Roleplaying Template, which I’ve discussed previously as part of my remix of Keep on the Shadowfell and also used as part of the “Muse on Your Left” concept for Eclipse Phase. Here’s a quick overview of how I’m using them in the Eternal Lies remix.

Character Portrait: Most of these NPCs have a photograph associated with them. It’s reproduced in miniature on the briefing sheet for the GM’s reference (and to make it easy to find the corresponding photographic prop to hand to the players).

Character Description: A short description of the NPC.

Roleplaying Notes: This is the heart of the briefing sheet, but it should also be the shortest section. Generally two or three brief bullet points at most. I’m looking to identify the essential personality traits or mannerisms which will serve to define my performance as the NPC.

Background: Also bullet-pointed for easy reference. This provides a detailed reference for when you need to pull out specific information

Clues: This section fluctuates a bit throughout these campaign notes as I experimented with different ways of presenting this information for Trail of Cthulhu. The general format is a bullet-pointed list, with additional details where necessary and almost always an indication of what investigative skill would work best for gaining the clue.

Notes: Some NPCs also get a separate section for important notes. This is stuff that it’s really, really important that you don’t forget about while playing the NPC, but which don’t comfortably fall into Roleplaying Notes or Clues. Most of this stuff would probably be appropriate for Background, but I don’t want it to get “lost” in there during actual play.

Stats: Should be fairly self-explanatory.

THE SILVER SABER

Unless the PCs do something totally wacky, Janet Winston-Rogers will loan them a plane for their investigation. As detailed in the campaign notes, the Silver Saber is a DC-2 that’s been upgraded by her personal friend Donald Douglas (owner and founder of the Douglas Aircraft Company) to include features from the DC-3.

The idea of getting an “updated” DC-2 has no historical basis as far as I know, but the basic concept here is that the DC-3 could make transatlantic flights and the DC-2 couldn’t. While it’s possible to limit the group’s use of the Silver Saber to the Americas, the bulk of the campaign takes place in Eurasia and I liked the image of the plane serving as a touchstone throughout  the campaign.

But the DC-3 doesn’t fly until December 1935. Hence the compromise.

PROP NOTES

Silver Sable Photos / Interior: A large number of photographic references are included for the Silver Saber. The plane is meant to remain a significant set piece throughout the campaign, so I wanted to provide a rich visual reference for it.

Henslowe’s Letters: These are deliberately designed to be a vague trove of information. The players are likely to pour over them again and again throughout their investigation in Savannah (and perhaps beyond). I printed these on some very nice linen parchment and then crumpled them up, tore their edges, and the like. If you wanted to make the players really work for it, you could take the letter dated August 9th, 1933, and tear it up completely (forcing them to piece it back together). This would direct their attention strongly towards the journal, of course.

Go to 1.2 Savannah

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Campaign Props (Zip)

This is a special props packet containing a bunch of campaign-wide material that doesn’t fit conveniently into any of the individual locations.

Letters of Inquiry: These props are specific to the characters who played in my original campaign, but I’ve included them to provide a template for creating your own (including the necessary fonts). I actually printed these letters and physically mailed them to my players so that they’d arrive roughly a week before the campaign began. (I used the Veteran Typewriter font to address the envelopes, using the character names.)

Calendar: A simple wall calendar from October 1934 to December 1936 (which should be more than sufficient time to complete the campaign). I printed off fresh months as I needed them and posted them on the wall. The calendar conveniently includes the phases of the moon for easy reference once that becomes significant in the campaign. I had the players keep a log of where they were and what they were doing each day.

Reference Documents: For use when the players learn about either A Spell to Open the Sky or the Rituals of Self-Denial, regardless of where they learn about them.

The Mouth: This image had a tendency to manifest itself throughout the campaign.

MAPS

Campaign Maps (Zip)

These 16 maps are designed to be printed at a large, poster size and used as the centerpiece for each location’s diorama. This can be surprisingly affordable: I was able to go down to my local FedEx/Kinko’s store and get them printed off for a couple of bucks each.

When I initially started this project, I thought it would be relatively easy in this internet era to find period-appropriate maps for each city. That turned out not to be even remotely true, which is why some of the maps are a decade (or more) out of date. In a few cases, however, I’ve been able to provide multiple options for a map and you can use whichever one you feel is most appropriate. (Or all of them if you want to go hog wild.)

Of the maps that are out of date, the only one that’s truly problematic is the 1910 map of Valletta, Malta. One of the key locations in Malta is located in the parish of Paola on the far side of the Great Harbor from Valletta. The only problem? As far as I can tell, the section of Paola which abuts the harbor (where the key location is to be found) appears to have been almost wholly constructed between 1910 and 1930. So it’s not on the map.

If you find more period-appropriate maps for any of the locations (particularly at a size conducive to poster printing), please share!

Go to 1.1 New York