The second milestone goal from my Patreon has been completed: No More Ads!

Although the affiliate links and the links to my own books in the left sidebar remain, all of the garish Amazon and Google banner ads have been banished. I’ve coupled this with a utility-and-aesthetic upgrade to the right sidebar, which will hopefully make it easier for you to find all the cool stuff that’s tucked into the corners of the Alexandrian.

This also completes my first full month with Patreon. The day is young, but it’s proven to be a fabulous experience: I was finally able to prioritize finishing Thinking About Urbancrawls, which I feel has been a fabulous success. I’m also well on my way to lining up a full slate of posts for February (which patrons with early access have already begun to receive). Tomorrow night I’ll be hosting a Google Hangout with the Hangout Club, which (truth be told) I’m a little nervous about.

With some Patreon experience under my belt, though, I’m also a little more cognizant of exactly how things balance out on the back end. That means our next milestone goal — So You Want to Be a Dungeon Master? — is now scheduled for $60. We’re just $12.50 away from that and I’m very excited by the fact that we could every easily achieve that goal by the end of February.

Thank you to all of my patrons, who are helping to make these amazing things possible for all of us.

$0.10? $0.25? $1.00?

… even the smallest of pledges can add up to wondrous things.

This is one of the dumber things I’ve written. It’s a proposal I wrote to FASA for a Battletech novel at some point between 1996 and 1998. The reason it was dumb is that I was trying to carve out my own little niche of the Battletech universe when, with the benefit of age and hindsight, I can see that there was zero chance that FASA would be interested in doing that.

The reason I’m posting it here is because it was obliquely referenced last month when I talked about the AlterWorlds project that resulted in the creation of The Human Concordat. I mentioned that one of the subsequent AlterWorlds would have been “an insolated planet in the Mechwarrior universe”. My plan had been to repurpose the planet Callashan, described below, into an AlterWorlds setting.

SYNOPSIS

When General Kerensky performed his dramatic Exodus from the Inner Sphere, prompting the beginning of the Succession Wars, he was not alone in his horror at the fierce partisanship which had grown among the members of the Star League. A group of colonists from a conglomeration of worlds formed a coalition which headed into the Periphery in an attempt to escape the madness of the growing Succession Wars.

This group, unlike Kerensky, sought not to return in glorious triumph to reform the Star League, but rather merely to survive in peace far from the power mongers of the Inner Sphere.

In pursuit of this goal they settled a planet they would come to call Callashan, and for a long time the dreams of these colonists were met. Callashan was a world of peace. The memories of the War they had left behind slowly faded as the years passed, and the future looked to be a bright and hopeful time.

But as the memory of War faded, so too did the warning it provided. After nearly three hundred years of peace the world of Callashan began to politically fracture. Now three feudal kingdoms exist (the Houses of Alcrom, Gaos, and Ethaois), each vying for control of the world with the power of the BattleMech.

The story of The Double Helix focusses upon Kalen, the greatest hero — the “Helix” — of the House of Alcrom. In an attempt to form an alliance between the House of Alcrom and the House of Ethaois, Kalen has been betrothed to Natasha; the Helix of House Ethaois.

The marriage, however, will be anything but simple. The leaders of the two houses argue over where the marriage be held… and when… and how. The bride- and groom-to-be have not only never met each other, they have tried to kill each other dozens of times upon the battlefield. The House of Gaos will do anything to prevent the marriage from taking place, including killing and destroying anybody and anything involved.

And if the marriage is this much fun, just imagine what the honeymoon will be like.

CALLASHAN

The advantages of the world of Callashan are numerous, particularly if it were to ever be translated into a setting within the BattleTech or MechWarrior game systems. Because it is isolated and secluded (Callashan has lost the Dropship technology necessary to leave the planet) Callashan would make an excellent stand-alone product.

Callashan also has a potential as a “beginner’s intro” to the BattleTech system and universe: without becoming fully immersed in the history of the Succession Wars, the Exodus, the Clan Return, and all the other innunendo of the main BattleTech universe a player can become comfortably familiar with the ‘small’ world of Callashan before expanding.

Other possibilities of future expansion would include discovery of Callashan by the Explorer Corps project — possibly mistaking the world for one or more of the Clan homeworlds.

But what is Callashan?

Before delving deeper into the plot of The Double Helix I feel it’s important to explain a few things about the local politics, the important people, and the current social structure of the world of Callashan.

Callashan was formed as a Free Colony to escape the terrors of the Succession Wars — following the example of Kerensky, several small colony worlds near the Periphery picked up lock, stock, and barrel and rode out into the unknown in search of a new home under the leadership of a man called Callashan (hence the planet’s name).

Callashan ruled as the first king of this new world, but he died without heir, and a primitive feudal structure was left in his place — a struggle between the houses of Alcrom, Gaos, and Ethaois (the three planets which had first settled this world) for supremacy.

Callashan had not wanted to see war visited upon people who had struggled so long and hard to avoid it, and so he instituted a championship. Each house was to nominate its greatest BattleMech pilot — their Helix — to the Triple Helix, a round-robin competition held once every five years. The house whose Helix emerged victorious would claim the crown for the next five years, when a new Triple Helix would be held.

But kingships are not meant to be prizes, and so, inevitably, this system collapsed beneath petty feuding. The competition of the Triple Helix was moved onto the battlefield. Nonetheless, the position of the Helix still holds tremendous power and respect within the new governments.

Note: Over the years Callashan’s Mechs have developed away from the standards. Therefore, those Mechs whose names are still the same will often be ‘tweaked’ from those currently owned by the Inner Sphere powers. In addition many new Mechs are also present.

MAJOR CHARACTERS

Kalen – Kalen is the hero of our little tale. Kalen is one of the best Helixes in the history of Callashan. He is about 25, sandy-haired, well built and a generally likeable guy. He is also a demon in the cockpit. He feels great respect for, and has a paternal figure in, Lord J’hon (see below).

Natasha – The heroine of The Double Helix, and also the daughter of Lord Optun (see below). Natasha is the youngest to ever achieve the Helix rank. Only 18, her Mech skills are exceeded only by her firery temper. She has olive-skin and dark hair, and serves the House of Ethaois faithfully.

Kenneth – Our primary villain, the Helix of the House of Gaos. In the most classic of traditions where Kalen is “one of the best”, Kenneth is the best. This of course means that by the end of the story Kalen will have barbecued this guy in this cockpit. Ken is extremely talented and about 19 years old. But he’s also a jerk, impatient, and generally immature. He also whines too much. He’s coddled and favored by…

Lord Dysim – Current ruler of the House of Gaos. He puts up with Kenneth, because, on the whole, Kenneth is a superb Mech pilot. House Gaos is the most powerful of the three houses, due in large part to the secret technological programs initiated under Dysim’s reign of power. However, Dysim is also a cruel, corrupt, power-mongering individual. He’s married to…

Lady Eve – Lady Eve is not exactly a “sharp cookie”. She’s easily dominated by her husband, and he cares little for her — she has failed to produce an heir, and is therefore worthless to him. She plays an exceedingly minor role in this novel. In fact, so minor, she has managed to utterly slip off the synposis below.

Giles – Is Kalen’s engineer. Actually he works with the entire Alcrom Helix Guard, but he and Kalen are also the best of friends. He serves…

Lord J’hon – The current ruler of the House of Alcrom. J’hon has taken no wife, nor does it appear he is going to. However, he took Kalen under his wing after the youth’s father was killed in a Mech (his mother having died several years earlier in a cockpit as well), and Kalen is the current heir. He is the mastermind of the marriage which The Double Helix focusses upon, and he’s worked for months with…

Lord Optun – Current ruler of the House of Ethaois, to get the whole thing worked out. Optun, while originally hesitant about the plan, has now welcomed it with open arms. Natasha is his daughter, and with Kalen as the sole heir of the House of Alcrom the two houses will be united under a common rule within a generation. Lord Optun is about ten years younger than Lord J’hon (mid-40s) and is married to:

Lady Julia – Who is generally optimistic about everything… even if the world is about to come to an end. Natasha can’t stand talking to her, usually with good reason. Finally we come to her son,

Prince Andrew – Who is pretty much exactly where he wants to be. He’s slightly younger than Natasha, but still acts kinda like a “big brother” to her.

CHAPTER BREAKDOWN

Chapter One: Kalen is on the field, commanding his Alcrom Helix Guard against a raid of a supply depot by the forces of the House of Ehaois. The battle goes very well for Kalen and his unit, but as final pursuit for destruction of the incursion is about to commence he is ordered back to base. Upon returning to base he demands an explanation for why he was not allowed to finish his assault, particularly as he was about to confront the Ethaios Helix. By way of his explanation he is told of the engagement to Natasha for the first time. Although the truce is “official” both powers have yet to inform commanders, which is why the encounter happened at all. He has just enough time to ask something to the effect of, “Wait, go over that again…” before Chapter One Ends.

Chapter Two: “WHAT?!” Natasha is a little less calm when confronted with the news from her father and mother. They argue for several minutes (this gives us ample time to introduce several political elements of the planet). Natasha then goes off to seek counsel from her brother, Andrew, and they talk for several minutes. At this point we’re no longer totally certain if Kalen is ever going to come back again, so…

Chapter Three: Kalen goes to Giles, his best friend and mechanic, and tells him the as-yet unreleased news of his engagement. They talk for awhile while Giles conducts repairs on Kalen’s mech (or at least some of the Mech’s in Kalen’s group). Also introduced during this time period is Giles’ assistant, David, who becomes crucial later on in the plot.

We now cut to House Gaos, where Kenneth is speaking to Dysim. He’s somehow discovered the marrriage alliance (through a spy — who is actually David, but that isn’t revealed until later to the reader).

Chapter Four: Natasha is onboard the transport shuttle taking herself, her father, her mother, and Andrew to meet Kalen on a border outpost between the areas controlled by the two houses. She’s sullen, and nobody’s attempts to cheer her up succeed. After a couple pages of sullenness a bomb goes off crippling the shuttle which proceeds to crash.

Cut to Kalen and J’hon waiting at the outpost. News comes in of the shuttle’s crash… plus Gaos Mechs are on their way towards the area. Kalen clambers into a mech himself and is off to the rescue.

Cut back to Natasha in the wreckage. Well, it’s not really much of a wreck. Everybody’s shook up, and the shutttle is defenseless and certainly not going anywhere, but no one’s dead (as we quickly ascertain). She takes instant control, organizing everybody and calming people down.

Back to Kalen, who lumbers over the hill and down to the shuttle. He loads up the four people in the shuttle (Natasha, Optun, Julia, and the pilot) into his own cockpit as best as possible. He completes this just as the Gaos mechs come plowing into sight. What follows is an action-packed, multi-page sequence of a running chase betwen Kalen (who is drastically outnumbered) and the Gaos mechs. Kalen is little aided by Natasha’s constant exclamations of advice.

Of course he is eventually successful at getting within range of a sufficient back-up force to scare the Gaos Mechs off, and the chapter ends on a happy note.

Chapter Five: The official “first” meeting of the betrothed couple takes place as planned. Afterwards, everybody gets together and talks for awhile about the mutual future of the two houses, the stunning rescue by Kalen, and other pieces of stupid trivia which is absolutely boring Natasha (from whose perspective this section is told) to tears. She doesn’t like what she sees in Kalen, which is just as well because…

Kalen thinks pretty much the same as she does, as we switch to his perspective for the remainder of the session. He and Natasha are never left alone, and barely speak to each other. In the end, after much argument a plan is laid for the official announcement ceremony, and farewells are spoken.

Finally we cut to House Gaos where we are treated to Kenneth carefully weaseling his way out of responsibility for the failure to successfully complete the sabotage the House Ethaois transport.

Chapter Six: This story switches POV between Kalen and Natasha rapidly, telling of a dual raid by the Gaos on both House Alcrom and House Ethaois. The chapter begins with Kalen talking to Giles, then receiving word of the raid. Our first contact with Natasha is in the cockpit of her Mech shortly after that as she attacks the Gaos forces. This is basically a straight-out battle chapter. The gaos forces are pushing towards two security compounds (one for each House). Natasha successfully prevents the breach of her compound, but Kalen fails to protect his.

Chapter Seven: The official ceremony of the betrothed couple is committed — it is broadcast across the territories held by the two houses. Afterwards Natasha and Kalen have their first real opportunity to speak to each other in length and alone…. it doesn’t exactly take well. They’re at each other’s throats. They control their tempers quickly, however, when their Lords enter, but they aren’t thrilled to hear the next piece of news: Kalen is to accompany Optun, Natasha, and the rest of the Ethaois diplomatic party back and tour their security measures.

When they arrive in Ethaois, however, the tour is cut short by news of a second Gaos attack along the border — again the intended target appears to be the security compound. Kalen suits up with Natasha and they’re off again. (Although this looks awfully close to the last combat sequence, there’s a lot of actual character development between the two.) In addition to their viewpoint, we also follow the Gaos Elemental Leader as he leads his strikeforce into the security compound and withdraws the files needed before blasting out. Although Kalen and Natasha (and Natasha’s Guard) fight hard, they’re too late to stop the extraction (although they take out a good number of Gaos Mechs).

During the end of the fight, however, Natasha’s Mech is seriously damaged and she is forced to eject — Kalen saves her life by attacking a mech preparing to destroy her ejection seat. At this point Kalen begins to analyze how he really feels about her.

Chapter Eight: In the aftermath of the battle Kalen and Natasha begin discussing what the purpose of the raid was. Kalen knows his security compound was also harboring secret research into a next generation of mech, and Natasha also knows that her compound was being used to test new satellite spy equipment. After a bit of brainstorming they realize the only common element between the two compounds was the fact they were security compounds: Meaning the probable target of extraction was the area battle sheets used by the two houses.

Kalen needs to get back to Alcrom and warn his people, and Natasha warns her father.

Chapter Nine: Now the fun starts and the plot starts speeding up. When Kalen tries to board his shuttle, he is denied access by a guard. He is forced to knock out the guard and forcibly take off from the Ethaois compound.

Meanwhile, Natasha has reached her father who is in an uproar about Kalen’s “escape”. Natasha is confused.

It turns out that Optun had no intention of actually going through with the marriage. Instead the entire purpose was to lure Kalen to the Ethaois compound, trap him, and then ransom him for a considerable gain of power and territory from the House of Alcrom. Natasha is disgusted… if nothing else, Kalen saved her life, and now she discovers that she has been utterly deceived by her own parents.

Kalen, for his part, is madly flying towards the Alcrom border. He is being pursued by Ethaois aerofighters, but — after several tense moments of aerial acrobatics — he manages to cross his border and be joined by Alcrom aerofighters who force the Ethaois fliers off. When Kalen arrives at the main Alcrom compound he is greeted by the news that Gaos has begun a full scale assault upon the Alcrom border. J’onn has sent to Optun for assistance, but has been refused. Kalen decides he must have been mistaken about Natasha after all, and that the whole situation was a part of some sick ruse.

The situation on the front is bleak — Gaos has used the battle sheet tactics stolen from the security compound to breach the normal patrols, and they are striking deeply into Alcrom territory — their apparent target being the Alcrom central compound. Kalen is heading out into the thick of things.

Chapter Ten: Kalen leads his men into the battle, and over the course of the chapter they are slowly decimated by the Gaos forces. The chapter ends with Kalen in a nearly hopeless position with his men dropping around him like fleas.

Chapter Eleven: The cavalry rides in — taking the form, in this case, of Natasha and the Ethaois Helix Guard. She’s rallied her loyal soldiers, ignored her father’s orders, and come out to aid House Alcrom. The battle rages on, now switching POV between Natasha and Kalen. They become separated as things begin to look worse and worse for House Alcrom. Kalen is eventually faced off by Kenneth and two other Mechs of House Gaos. Kalen fights a slowly losing battle, destroying one of Kenneth’s supporting mechs, but Natasha (again) shows up in the nick of time to wipe out the second supporting mech. They win the day, signalling a turning point in the battle of House Alcrom.

Chapter Twelve: House Alcrom emerges victorious. Kalen and Natasha return to House Alcrom. Natasha has been disowned by her father, her Helix status cancelled, and the other warriors in her guard decommissioned. Kalen and Natasha face their true feelings for each other, and the book concludes in a glorious ceremony which names Natasha an Honorary Helix of House Alcrom (another first for her) and recommissions her warriors as House Alcrom soldiers.

FUTURE PLANS

The Double Helix ends in such a way that no sequels are necessary. If such sequels are requested, however, they are easily provided. Kalen and Natasha do go on to unify Callashan, but shortly after their reign begins new trouble looms: The Explorer Corps have found the planet; the Inner Sphere has returned.

Go to Part 2: An Untold Novel’s Beginning

One of the interesting qualities of Elizabethan playwriting is the seamless connection between thought, word, and action. What makes the art of the soliloquy work, for example, is the lack of division between what the character is thinking and what the character is saying: They do not form their thoughts into words, but rather their thoughts leap directly to their tongues and into the ears of the audience. (Which is why Hamlet can advise his players, “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.”) In a very real sense, the heightened reality of the verse essentially gifts the audience with telepathy: In watching Shakespeare, you are looking straight into the mind and soul of the character as it is stripped bare upon the stage.

In a related fashion, Elizabethan plays often rely upon choric speech: Sequences in which the description of an action becomes the action itself as the words of the actor are transformed through the imaginative powers of the audience. In fact, such sequences can often be even more powerful than the action would be in a direct presentation. In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud speaks of closure of as “the phenomenon of observing the parts and perceiving the whole”, and when a work of art demands of its audience that act of closure they become “silent accomplices”, “willing and conscious collaborators”. So, too, the Chorus of Henry V says:

Think when we talk of horses that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs in the receiving earth;
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: For the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history.

It is a technique which turns a passive audience member into an active participant in the drama itself.

In the character of Richard II, Shakespeare weds the principles of the choric to the mold of the soliloquy in a series of transformative speeches which chart the fall of England’s king. It begins in Act III, Scene 3 as Richard speaks to Northumberland:

A’God’s name, let it go:
I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads:
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage:
My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown:
My figured goblets for a dish of wood:
My sceptre for a palmer’s walking staff:
My subjects for a pair of carved saints,
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little little grave, an obscure grave;
Or I’ll be buried in the King’s highway,
Some way of common trade, where subjects’ feet
May hourly trample on their sovereign’s head;
For on my heart they tread now whilst I live:
And buried once, why not upon my head?

The sequence of exchanges described by Richard are intensely choric in their nature: His description of those physical acts force the audience to “deck the king” (or, rather, undeck the king) as they specifically create for themselves the specific reality of those actions.

Of course, the actions in question are not real: They are, at best, a future possibility which Richard conjures up for both Northumberland and the audience of the play. But more than that, they are a metaphor for Richard’s shifting self-image. The change from Divine King to Holy Hermit is not merely a swap of costuming, but rather a fundamental change in Richard himself.

Which all sounds wonderfully abstract and soullessly intellectual, but here’s what the speech boils down to in practical effect: Physical transformation becomes a metaphor for mental transformation, and in the process the telepathic power of the soliloquy is coupled to the audience participation of the choric.

As an audience, we are not only gifted with an incredibly intimate vision of Richard’s thoughts, but we are also invited to participate in Richard’s process of transformation. Just as Richard himself is both the agent of his destruction and the victim of his destruction, we as witnesses are simultaneously both the agents and the victims of that destructive process.

THE CHORUS OF THE MOMENT

Shakespeare uses a similar and yet subtle variation of this technique in the next of Richard’s transformative speeches, which can be found during his deposition in Act IV, Scene 1:

Now, mark me how I will undo myself.
I give this heavy weight from off my head,
And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,
The pride of Kingly sway from out my heart.
With mine own tears I wash away my balm,
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duteous oaths;
All pomp and majesty I do forswear:
My manors, rents, revenues I forego;
My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny:
God pardon all oaths that are broke to me,
God keep all vows unbroke that swear to thee.
Make me, that nothing have, with nothing griev’d,
And thou with all pleas’d, that hast all achiev’d.
Long may’st thou live in Richard’s seat to sit,
And soon lie Richard in an earthly pit.

Here the elements of the soliloquy become muted, but they are not completely discarded: The physical actions of Richard undoing himself are still serving as metaphors for mental revelation, and thus the passage, like a soliloquy, is still a baring of Richard’s innermost thoughts.

What’s particularly fascinating here, however, is that the choric elements of the speech are amplified by their immediacy: Richard is performing the action in the very moment he’s describing it as the Chorus. And make no mistake, it is a Chorus: Because they’re metaphors, Richard is not literally performing any of the actions he’s describing. Which means that the audience is forced to create those actions in their mind’s eye.

Richard creates a ritual in which the rites and duties of his office are systematically stripped away. The process is both a transformation of identity and the loss of identity. But by invoking that intensely personal ritual in the form of physical metaphor, Richard forces his audience (both the audience of the play and the audience of nobles within the play) to become his partners in the act.

THE FINAL TRANSFORMATION

Which brings us to the last of Richard’s transformative speeches in Act V, Scene 5. (A speech which is also Richard’s only true soliloquy in the play.) The speech is long enough that I won’t quote it in full here, but its major framework looks like this:

I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it: Yet I’ll hammer it out;
My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father, and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts:
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humors like the people of this world:
[…]
Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented; sometimes am I King,
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: Then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king,
Then am I king’d again, and by and by
Think that I am unking’d by Bullingbrooke,
And straight am nothing.

The same basic structure of self-transformation is pursued, but in an almost transcendant fashion: Richard transforms himself into the world, the world into himself, and ends himself in nothing. It culminates a sequence in which Shakespeare’s language literally transforms Richard before our eyes from one state of being to another. (And in a play with multiple references to caterpillars, no less.)

POWER AND IMPOTENCE

There is more to be found in this theme of transformation, however. The ability for power to enforce transformation is suggested heavily from the very beginning of the play (Act I, Scene 1):

RICHARD Rage must be withstood,
Give me his gage; Lions make Leopards tame.

MOWBRAY Yea but not change his spots: Take but my shame
And I resign my gage…

Mowbray may resist this change, but he is nevertheless forced to it.

There is a degree to which the play can be seen as an abstraction of the old query: Can God create a rock so large he cannot move it? Can the king’s power to force transformation be used to transform the king into something other than the king?

Viewed through this lens, Richard’s struggle to give up the crown is not merely the mortal struggle of a man who doesn’t want to give up his power; it is a literal struggle between potence and impotence. Richard says:

We thought ourself thy lawful King: (…)
If we be not, show us the Hand of God
That hath dismiss’d us from our stewardship.

Only the Hand of God can remove divinity from the King and thus remove the King from his right. But while the king himself can be said to act as the hand of God, if he tries to take that power from himself does he not take the very power which would let him take it?

BULLINGBROKE Are you contented to resign the crown?
RICHARD Aye, no; no, aye.

Shakespeare presents us with an immovable object and an unstoppable force; he forces Richard to face a crisis both human and divine. And then he gives to the actor both “aye, no” and “no, aye”: The opportunity to express both the mortal and immortal dimensions of the problem (or vice versa) in four simple syllables.

Originally posted on September 29th, 2010.

Tagline: Two words: Bizarre. No wait, that’s only one word. Uhhh… Okay: Really bizarre. How’s that? Good? Good. Great. Okay.

CONCEPT

Government-Funded Robot Assassins from Hell – Mission One: Kill All Evil Game Designers (henceforth, for obvious reasons, referred to merely as Government-Funded Robot Assassins) is a card game dating back to 1995.

Basically it combines a tongue-in-cheek presentation of “government-funded robot assassins from hell” with a satiric look at the gaming industry. Hence you get cards like:

Steve Jackson. He has his own game company! Creator of gaming chaos, this man is wanted by not only the Pentagon, but also the Secret Service! KILL HIM NOW!

And:

Favorable Review. Everyone loves it! It could be because the game is good or maybe the designer slipped the reviewer some cold, hard cash.

(Note: Any game designers wishing to slip me cold hard cash should contact me via e-mail to obtain my snail mail address. I have no scruples. None at all. Honest.)

THE RULES

You win the game by earning a hundred points. Points are earned by carrying out a successful assassination – your targets being various game designers (each of whom are worth varying amounts).

Basically each player starts with a Plain Bot (a really basic model of robot assassin) and a hand of seven cards. You roll 4d6 to determine who plays first (why 4d6? I don’t know). Each player then draws a card and places a target on the table. Then he plays a card (which modifies the score of either his robot or a target, depending on the type of card). Everyone does the same thing.

When play returns to the first player he may now place a second card and then he needs to attack his target (the card he played back on his first turn). To carry out the assassination attempt he adds up his Assassinate score (his ‘bot plus its modifiers) and adds 4d6. If the total is higher than the defense of his target, then the target is dead and the player collects the points. Play out a new target.

Repeat until someone wins.

SUMMARY

I ended up picking up Government-Funded Robot Assassins because I was ordering a number of products from Propaganda Publishing and my eye caught the title (which is very catchy, you have to admit). Since it was only six bucks I added it to my figurative cart. I’m very disappointed by it.

Basically I would sum the game up by its major problems:

First, the production values are very low. Hand-scribbled lettering in the graphics, which are generally low quality anyway. The game as a whole shows up as a set of cardstock pages (the cards, which you have to cut up yourself) folded into a large sheet of xeroxed instructions. This isn’t too bad, overall, since the whole product is basically one large in-joke – so you’re hardly going to expect laminated perfection — but it’s still a knock.

Second, the game – by it’s very nature – ends up being very topical. And the topic is now half a decade old. To put that in perspective, realize that Magic: The Gathering was new, TSR was still independent, and SHADIS still existed. It’s not a knock against the game as it was originally conceived, but it is a knock against purchasing it today.

Third, the rules are presented in a rather sloppy manner in a couple of places. A far larger problem with the rules, however, is that they just aren’t that effective or fun. Your average assassination almost always succeeds, particularly once you start building your robot up (you can move your assassinate score up, but not down – while you are able to modify defensive scores in both directions).

Finally, the jokes were never that funny to begin with. I picked a couple of the more humorous ones, above, but most of them are just yawners. For example:

Wizards of the Coast. The publishers of a hot new card game. Though they have money, they aren’t exactly in the same league as TSR. If they survive Magic, look out!

(Okay, that’s a little funny now — in an ironic sort of way.)

At the end of the day, this just isn’t worth your time or your money. It has a note of pleasant nostalgia to it for “old timers”, like myself, who happened to be kicking around when the events discussed on these cards were unfolding. But that’s not reason enough to pick it up.

Style: 2
Substance: 2

Author: Philip J. Reed, Jr.
Company/Publisher: Propaganda Publishing
Cost: $6.00
Page Count: n/a
ISBN: n/a

Originally Posted: 2000/03/12

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Go to Part 1

Now we have a basic framework for the urbancrawl: A map divided into districts. Content keyed to each district.

What we need now is a default action that will allow the PCs to engage with that keyed content. In dungeoncrawls and hexcrawls, that action is geographic movement. In the urbancrawl, it’s the investigation action.

In my discussion of hexcrawls, I advocated for the “hidden hex”: The hex is an abstraction that’s useful to the GM for keying and managing content, but which has no meaning for the PCs. In the urbancrawl, however, I believe that you will generally be keying content to districts that are meaningful to the PCs: They know where that ward or neighborhood or landmark or street is located.

So the basic investigation action ends up being pretty simple and very transparent: The player points to a neighborhood and says, “I want to investigate there.” The GM looks at their key and tells them what they’ve found. (If the GM is using multiple urbancrawl layers, then they can randomize which layer has been discovered with this investigation action.)

GENERIC vs. SPECIFIC INVESTIGATION

In actual practice, though, you’re quickly going to want to add additional utility to this basic action.

The first thing you’ll need is the ability to distinguish between generic investigations and specific investigations.

In a generic investigation, the PCs are just looking for anything interesting without any particular agenda. This generic investigation is identical to our basic interaction above.

In a specific investigation, on the other hand, the PCs are poking around with a particular goal in mind. This is where the urbancrawl layers become significant: They’re not just looking for anything of interest, they’re specifically looking for a patron. So instead of randomly selecting content from your available layers, you’ll key the specific content tied to the patron level of your urbancrawl.

(You might also include a chance of them finding something other than what they were looking for. For example, you might roll 1d6 and on a roll of 1 they get information from an urbancrawl layer other than the one they intended.)

I’ll also argue that this is the point where you should start hiding the abstraction again: You’ve arranged the content of your city into urbancrawl layers because that’s a convenient way of organizing it and interacting with it as a GM, but those layers don’t really have “meaning” in the game world. The players shouldn’t be saying things like, “I’d like some content from the Heist urbancrawl layer, please.” You want them to be saying, “We need another big score real bad. I’m going to go hit up my contacts in Oldtown and see if I can find something lucrative.”

(At that point you might look at your key and note not only the Tablets of Shandrala that are being held by the local Sheriff of Taxes (as keyed to the Heist layer of your urbancrawl), but also that Count Ormu on the Vampire layer of your urbancrawl in the same district holds the onyx crown jewels of the Lich Queen of Rasang.)

At this point, you might also be thinking about prepping a random table for selecting specific districts if the PCs attempt city-wide investigations. That’s certainly an option and I’m not going to say thee nay, but I suspect you’ll lose some feeling of the ‘crawl if you do that: Instead of crawling to a specific part of town and poking around (exploring the town and everything it has to offer as they do so), the players are just kind of generically asking for a content handout.

(For similar reasons, I wouldn’t run a dungeoncrawl by randomizing which room they explored next. This is why I think making the district structure of the urbancrawl explicit is the right way to go: It encourages that specific engagement with the geography of the city and requires that meaningful exploration choices are being made. On the other hand, I could certainly be completely wrong about this.)

MECHANICS OF THE INVESTIGATION ACTION

Instead of having the investigation action result in an automatic success, you might want to resolve it mechanically. Obviously the exact nature of the mechanic will depend on the system you’re using, but for the sake of argument let’s assume we’re using D&D 3.5.

The most obvious mechanic here would be a Gather Information check. You could set a universal DC for the check (DC 15 to perform an urbancrawl investigation); or you could vary it by city (DC 15 in the City-State of the Invincible Overlord, but DC 20 in the more tight-lipped City-State of the World Emperor); or you could vary it by urbancrawl layer (DC 10 for the Random Encounter layer, DC 20 for the Vampire layer); or you could define it for each key entry (DC 15 to find the blood den in Midtown, but DC 22 to find the den in the Nobles’ Quarter).

You could also allow for exceptional successes to generate additional information. If you were using a One Roll Engine system like Better Angels or Reign, for example, you might generate “soft rumors” for each additional set after the first. These soft rumors wouldn’t give the PCs a specific hook, but they would tell them about general areas of interest that are available in the local urbancrawl. (For example, you might tell them about rumors circulating through the Temple District about people showing up with puncture marks on their necks. They won’t find a specific blood den that way, but it might prompt them to go looking for it.)

You could similarly use the height of an ORE set to determine if the PCs get additional pieces of actionable intelligence. For example, any simple success tells them where the vampire blood den is. But if they score additional dice in the set you might tell them how many vampires are nesting there or give them a floorplan. (This could also just translate into additional rolls on an old school rumor table about the location.)

CONTEXTUALIZING

Starting off with generic Gather Information checks is probably a good starting point, but I’m guessing it won’t take long for the PCs to start attempting investigatory actions that would be handled better through alternative skill checks.

If we think back to our survey of old school city supplements, we might recall that Pavis had some interesting guidelines for PCs researching information in the city.

Gather Information checks can be used to handle the collection of gossips and rumors from taverns and markets.

Knowledge skills could be used when searching through records and the like. Pavis suggests the records of cults and guilds (diaries, receipts, letters, ledgers). It might also represent tax records or newssheets or libraries or any number of other things depending on the particular setting. Gaining access to these records might require Bluff, Diplomacy, and/or the paying of a fee or bribe.

Knowledge (Local) could be used to generate “soft rumors” like the ones discussed above (suggesting potential avenues of investigation).

Specific types of urbancrawl layers might also suggest other skills. For example, maybe an Appraise check would make the best fit for the hypothetical Heist layer I keep using for examples. Players are also likely to suggest all kinds of specific hijinks that could trigger other skill checks (like a Forgery check to gain access to property records or a Decipher Script check to figure out the graffiti patterns the local gangs are using).

The point here is that, like any action resolution, you want to contextualize the investigation action and you also want to respond to the contextualization provided by your players: Don’t just tell them “the vampire den is on Highborn Street”, tell them how they learned that piece of information.

A good technique for this is to make the skill check and then (assuming success) frame the scene just before the information is acquired. For example, if they make a Gather Information check to figure out where Don Carlo is holed up don’t just tell them, “You talk to Don Carlo’s driver and he tells you that he’s got safehouse on the east side.” Instead, cut to the point where they walk into a seedy bar and find the driver half drunk. That lets you play through the moment, which can set the mood, allow for memorable roleplaying opportunities, or lead the investigation in unexpected directions.

Go to Part 12: Exploring the Advanced Urbancrawl