Ashen Stars - Reflect, Reorient, Reboot

Our group's Ashen Stars game went on hiatus earlier this year. After running two published adventures, something felt off. That unease grew as I read through the other published adventures. Unable to put my finger on it, I put the game on pause while we tried other games.

But that feeling didn't go away.

There was the potential for a good game in Ashen Stars. One that I wanted to run. A better one than I had been running. Where was it?

There could be no ongoing story if I was running a series of unrelated published adventures. I knew that going in. The whole point was to test-drive the game without a major creative commitment. That wasn't the issue.

I had a hard time working the characters arcs into the game. The first two adventures I ran had no room for them. The ones that were in the pipeline didn't either. That bothered me.

I talked about it with the players. They pointed out that, of the two adventures they played, neither had a conclusion that flowed from what the player characters discovered before. They felt that there were no real hints to what the ending would reveal. The solutions felt outside the context of the adventures. From their perspective, it would be like Sherlock Holmes find out that the criminals were the Martians from H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds.

It was good feedback. The issue may have been with those two specific adventures or my handling of them. But that explanation didn't satisfy me.

I thought it over some more. Then it hit me. There was a core issue that I needed to address.

Our group restarted the campaign. A complete reset with new characters and character arcs linked to an ongoing plot. That would provide a solid narrative structure that the previous campaign lacked. The first session was right before the holidays.

More importantly, I dumped the game that I ended up running for the game I wanted. I didn't want space police procedurals of the week with the player characters as interstellar private eyes poking around for clues, finding bodies, interviewing witnesses, and getting in over their heads. In particular, reading through Ashen Stars' attempt at noir left me cold.

Ashen Stars and GUMSHOE should be able to handle more than space cops.

There is a cycle that exists in most TV space opera stories. Star Trek, Babylon 5, classic and reimagined Battlestar Galactica, and Firefly all use it to some extent.

• The crew gets involved in a situation.
• The crew gathers information and takes action.
• As a result of that action, the crew gather more information.
• Now better informed, the crew takes further action.
• This cycle continues until the crew has enough information to take actions to resolve the situation.

In these stories, the crew is not explicitly looking for clues to solve a mystery. (Unless the episode is a mystery story this week.) They are getting information and working out how to solve a problem with that information. A key difference between a mystery and a space opera story is when the action takes place. A mystery is about what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. A space opera story is about what is happening, why it is happening, and how to resolve it before past tenses are used to describe it.

What I want is a space opera game. What I was presented with was a mystery game. Fortunately, Ashen Stars and GUMSHOE can do both.

Looking at the published materials with new eyes, I can see the game I want there. It is supported by some of the published adventures. Unfortunately, those adventures are not enough to hang a campaign on. An ongoing plot of my own devising was in order.

And so, a casting off of baggage, a break in continuity, and a fresh start for a game with a little less Mike Hammer and a little more Mass Effect.

Ashen Stars - Three Unofficial Reasons Behind the Boogey Conundrum

The Boogey Conundrum is part of the background of Ashen Stars. The Combine - something like Star Trek's United Federation of Planets - fought a devastating war against the Mohilar The war started seventeen years ago and ended seven years ago. Since then, nobody in the Combine can remember details about the Mohilar Their culture, weapons, language, tactics, and even their appearance is unknown. Trying to recall these facts leads to a state of confusion. Records exist, but accessing those records causes black outs and periods of missing time. Even trying to research the effect itself is problematic. In the end, the Combine just slapped the label "Boogey Conundrum" on the effect and called it a day.

Ashen Stars author Robin D Laws states in the rulebook that the Boogey Conundrum is not part of a metaplot. It is entirely up to GMs and players to work out what it is within their own campaigns. He does offer some suggestions, but no definative answers.

Below are three ideas I fleshed out a little. None of these ideas are official, but certain elements requite a knowledge of the game's background.

Civil War Cover Up

There was never a race named the Mohilar They never showed up with fleets and living weapons, never laid waste to the Combine, and never disappeared. It was all a cover story cooked up to hide a devastating secret - the Combine went to war with itself.

There were always tensions within the Combine. The Seven Peoples had all fought each other at one time or another. Their interests did not always align perfectly. Cooperation had brought great prosperity, but for how long?

How did it start? Perhaps the careful control of the Balla slipped. Maybe the newly developed Cybes were a step too far. Durugh trickery is an easy answer. The ambition and extremism of the Humans, fueled by their boundless energy, may have become an intolerable threat to the other races. The Tavak could have struck at the other races to preserve the Combine before it tore itself apart. Or the Kch-Thk might have just gotten really hungry. In any event, the Combine shattered under the stresses placed on it.

All of the races found themselves fighting for survival. The early war's surgical strikes failed to be the decisive. The middle of the war saw a steady escalation as fleets maneuvered and alliances were forged and broken. By the end of the war, there was only horror as population centers were bombarded out of existence.

At the end of a decade of war, somebody made a deal with the Vas Kra. The cosmic consciousness had watched the conflict with sadness as the once-proud Combine committed suicide. The Vas Kra could not reverse the damage or restore the lives lost - they were powerful, but not gods. What they could do was alter the memories of the survivors. Blame for the devastation would be cast on a race of mysterious invaders. It was hoped that this - and the implied threat of their return - would unite the Combine as it rebuilt.

The Vas Kra knew that it would take almost all of their power to accomplish the task. They did it anyway, becoming the Vas Mal. Their work was imperfect, but good enough to conceal the real reason of the near-destruction of the Combine. Unfortunately, the restored Combine is not as unified as the Vas Kra hoped it would become.


The Mad Gods

D’jellar was not the only Vas Kra to go mad, only the first. More branches of the Vas Kra turned away from the cosmic consciousness to satisfy sadistic urges. The malignancy spread quickly. Soon, the majority of the Vas Kra began to delight in using their powers to torment and destroy.

There seemed to be no defense and no hope as the decade of madness stretched on. Fleets and worlds were wiped away. Countless lives were lost as the Vas Kra amused themselves. The Combine and Durugh formed a desperate alliance, but their depleted forces were helpless against the rampage.

In the end, a way was found to reconfigure the anomaly the Vas Kra used to manipulate reality. It was widened into a gate and a weapon designed to disrupt the energy forms of the Vas Kra was sent through it. The Vas Kra were devolved into the misshapen forms of the Vas Mal.

But the crude weapon had side effects. There was a huge psychic backlash as the Vas Kra fell. The malignancy the drove the Vas Kra mad was itself a cosmic power and found itself devolving with them. Its decade of madness and joy was over, but it would go down fighting. It rode the psychic backlash, ravaging every mind in reach to create a myth. The false story of the Mohilar would serve as a distraction until it could find a way to wield real power again.

The Mohilar Went Home

The Mohilar were rolling over the Combine. The Combine's fleets were pressed up to the wall. Combine worlds burned in the night. Only a little more time and the Mohilar emerge victorious.

Then... they packed up and left.

The Mohilar's armies regrouped, withdrew from the front lines, and boarded their assault craft and transports. The Mohilar reorganized their logistics - dismantling their bases and loading everything up for the trip home. The warships of the fleet guarded the evacuation effort. Slow moving cargo ships joined convoys and turned for the home systems. Nothing was left behind.

The Boogey Conundrum was one of a number of carefully calculated acts designed to slow the Combine's recovery until the Mohilar returned. The bombardment of Earth and the fall of the Vas Kra were other parts of this plan. Leaving some of their living weapons behind was not part of the plan - the Mohilar just couldn't be bothered to gather them all up. A disrupted Combine without the aid of the Vas Kra or even any memories of the Mohilar would be ill-equipped to deal with another invasion.

Why did they go? A military campaign could be called off for any number of reasons.

Politics:

• Loss of popular support back home.
• A restless population or civil war.
• A new set of legitimate leaders who see no point in continuing the conflict.
• A political process that the leaders of the campaign need to go and participate in.

Weird:

• A religious rite that must be observed personally every 10 - 15 years.
• Some biological cycle that has already been delayed for as long as it can.

Practical:

• Ran out of slave troops and their living weapons weren't considered reliable enough.
• Ran out of the unobtainium that their technology runs on.
• Ran out of royal jelly for their queens.
• Ran out of money.

Whatever the reason, the Mohilar left. But they'll be back once they deal with whatever caused them to leave. And the Combine won't be ready.

Ashen Stars - Dead Rock Seven

Recently ran another Ashen Stars adventure.

Got mixed feelings about it.

The adventure in question is Dead Rock Seven, from the adventure collection of the same name. It wasn't my first choice. I planned on running the group through the adventures in the collection in order, but ran into issues with the first adventure - The Pleasure Bringers. The noir feel that it tries to evoke fell flat for me. Also, The Pleasure Bringers is set on a pleasure planet with human male-oriented descriptions of what pleasure is. Kind of problematic for a player character group of two female humans and an insect-like male. After wrestling with the amount of rewriting it would take to make it work for our group, I set it aside and went looking for a better option. Dead Rock Seven seemed promising. It starts with a murder mystery and takes place in a remote asteroid mining outpost. Best of all, it has a pretty straightforward structure.

I know what you're thinking. "This is the part where I read about how it all crashes and burns." And you would be wrong.

There were, however, a couple of near-misses.

The are several NPCs in Dead Rock Seven, which took some getting used to on my part. These weren't just "stay in the background" NPCs either. They all had things to relate to the player characters. Of the eight NPCs in the adventure, I only managed get six into play. One got himself killed before meeting the player characters. The other never got on stage at all, but did get a mention here and there. Of the six that got screen time, one got dropping from a potentially major role into a bit part. The five remaining NPCs did get good scenes interacting with the player characters. This points to an area that I need to strengthen as a GM. I generally don't have more than three or four "speaking role" NPCs in an adventure.

Keeping the game going was a challenge. Our group tends to be goal-oriented problem solvers with a strong tactical sense. They nearly short-circuited the adventure by driving straight for the solution. This would have left them without information they needed to resolve the climax. I reacted by throwing in a couple of things from a little later in the adventure to slow things down enough to get the information in the player character's hands.

Keeping the game short was also a challenge. Ironically, after stretching out the adventure a but, I had to shorten the end and cut short the after game wrap up to finish at a reasonable time.

Our group is starting to settle into Ashen Stars. The players are adapting elements of their more tactical play style to an investigative game. We're all still climbing the learning curve, though.

There was some good background bits presented in Dead Rock Seven that I would like to see expanded a little. The outlaw planet presented in some of the NPCs' backgrounds sounds like a good place for some player characters to find trouble.

Overall, our group is having fun with Ashen Stars. The differences between it and other games make it interesting, but also add to the difficulty of picking it up. I'm still struggling with it, but I can't put my finger on why.

I'll have to put some thought into it.

Ashen Stars - The Witness of My Worth

I ended up spending a fair amount of time looking for a good starter adventure for Ashen Stars. The demo offers up a taste of what the game is like, but I didn't want to kick off the campaign with it. I bought and read all the Ashen Stars adventures available to date. They were good, but not as jumping off points. I considered writing an adventure, but I didn't feel confident enough with the system. In the end, I sheepishly decided to run the adventure provided in the core book.

Yeah, I know. Core book adventures tend to be mediocre. Writing for a group that is, naturally, unfamiliar with the game means keeping things simple. The need to introduce game concepts and mechanics overshadow the things that make for a memorable game. Cunning plot twists and strong NPCs might take away from the process of learning how the game works. These assumptions, based on long experience, were why I initially didn't even consider the one in Ashen Stars. I changed my mind after reading through it while looking for ideas.

Oh, right. Robin Laws wrote this. Maybe I should have picked up on that particular clue a little sooner.

"The Witness of My Worth" did the job of introducing Ashen Stars without feeling like there were training wheels attached. The multiple ways through the adventure gave the players meaningful choices. The plot, based firmly on space opera troupes (specifically Star Trek), kept the players engaged throughout the session. Important elements of the setting were presented in a way that did not interrupt the flow of the action. Mechanics were introduced without feeling forced. The group felt challenged by a "real" adventure rather than going through "AS 101: The Keep Along the Borderspace."

The players initially had trouble getting into the mindset of an investigative game. While there are events moving in the background, there is no GM directed story to sweep the player characters along a predetermined course. It requires player characters to assert themselves over the adventure and drive it forward. Simply reacting to events doesn't work. They have to ask questions, get answers, and use those answers to determine their next step.

Likewise, the GM has to be willing to give up some control to the players. Ashen Stars is neither a railroad or a sandbox. It hands the GM a road map, shows the road signs to the player characters, and lets the players decide between the highway, the back streets, or the shortcut through Albuquerque.

I was surprised to blow through the whole thing in one session. I expected to run it in at least two sessions, since the group tends to give out after three hours. The desire to find that next piece of the puzzle kept the players going until the climax. The need to solve the mystery kept them going to the end.

We're all looking forward to the next time.

A Look at Character Creation in Ashen Stars

Spent last month's gaming sessions working up new characters. The group is new to Ashen Stars, so it took awhile. The mechanical parts were relatively straightforward. The emphasis the game places on character development took the players a little off guard.

Mechanics

The players divide up shipboard and groundside roles between them. The shipboard roles relate to the operation of the player's ship in combat. The groundside roles define what each character brings to an investigation. The mechanical aspect of the roles amount to a title and a list of the skills needed to be effective in the role. The roles are not as restrictive as classes. Players can even opt out as a group from using roles and simply pick out their skills directly.

Skill selection is a simple point buy. There are no conversions between experience or other points to skill points. One point buys one rank in a skill. Points may be banked for use after character generation. These banked points can be used later, even during an adventure, to purchase new skills.

Equipment is simple. No need to go through lists to purchase every single item. Player characters are assumed to start with what they need to perform their role. This includes a sidearm, a communications device, and a data retrieval/scanning device. The only time players need to pour over lists is when big ticket items like cyberwear or their ship come into the picture.

Character Arcs

Players create a character arc with a beginning, middle, and (if desired) conclusion. These arcs relate to some goal of each player character (find a lost sister, reestablish and uphold lawful government, have a grand adventure and look good doing it). The goal and each step in achieving it are presented as one sentence ideas. These are the seeds for future adventure subplots. It is still up to the GM to incorporate these ideas into the campaign. The details (who, what, where, when, and how) are controlled by the GM, but this allows the players input into the development of their characters.

Reactions

The group had no problems with the mechanical aspects of character generation. Looking up what each skill or piece of cyberwear did take time, but grasping the concepts was not an issue.

Coming up with character arcs was a little more challenging. It's an approach to character development that places more on the players' shoulders. It is more proactive than writing up a backstory and seeing what, if anything, the GM decides to use. It allows the player to decide what is important to their character and how that effects future game sessions.

Initial Thoughts on Ashen Stars

I finished reading through Ashen Stars during the holidays. I gave the rules another going-over and ran my group through a demo last week to get a feel for the game. Ashen Stars is a sc-fi tabletop RPG using the GUMSHOE system. Both the game and rules system were created by Robin D Laws. It is published by Pelgrane Press.

GUMSHOE solves an issue with "investigative" games. In an adventure that relies on giving the player characters information needed to continue the story, what happens when they fail to acquire that information? Many systems require a successful skill check to get information. If none of the player characters have the skill needed to find a particular clue, they don't get that clue. If one of them does have the skill, but fails the roll, they also don't get the clue. Without that key piece of information, they cannot continue the adventure.

Faced with that situation, a GM has three basic options. One, accept that the player characters have failed to complete the adventure and deal with the fall out. This is like a murder mystery where the detective doesn't catch the killer. It can be done, but may not be a satisfying end. Two, fudge the skill check and hope the players don't notice. In that case, why require a skill check in the first place? Three, find another way of getting the information into the hands of the player characters. Again, this brings requiring a skill check into question.

GUMSHOE circumvents the whole issue by just putting the information into the hands of the player characters. During character generation, the players determine which character buys a given investigative skill. The entire range of investigative skills is doled out between the player characters. This avoids the issue of not having a specific skill. If a player character possesses the required skill to obtain a particular clue, they find the clue automatically. This is a more elegant solution that keeps the adventure running seamlessly.

Note that this only applies to core clues - those that are needed to continue the adventure. Information that is helpful or optional, but not critical to keeping the game going, is not automatically given.

The core mechanic for Ashen Stars is simple. A single die (d6) is rolled against a target number based on the difficulty of the task. The die roll result can be modified by spending points from a skill pool refreshed at the beginning of an adventure. The difficulty is adjusted due to circumstances. For example, the base difficulty for hitting a target with a disrupter pistol is a 3. However, trying to hit a target using cover and in poor lighting would change that to a 5. The player has the option of offsetting the increased difficulty by spending points from the Shooting skill pool.

Combat is quick, but abstract and dependent on GM descriptions to provide context and flavor. There is no map and modifiers are kept to a minimum. Such a simple system might not hold the interest of a group with a more tactical play style. Fortunately, the investigative system and the task resolution mechanic are easily separated from each other. This allows a group to run the GUMSHOE investigative system with a more robust combat system. I might try combining GUMSHOE with Savage Worlds in a game with a bigger emphasis on combat. But that will have to wait.

The setting for Ashen Stars tries to solve some issues related to sci-fi roleplaying. It sticks to the usual troupes of space opera to keep things familiar. But there are enough twists on those troupes to make the setting interesting.

A specific issue that Ashen Stars addresses is the military or paramilitary command structure in many sci-fi settings. The usual approach to space opera is a big ship with a big crew run with a hierarchical organization. This implies rules, regulations, and a chain of command that players may find confining. There is also the issue of creating adventures that the players can bludgeon into submission with their capital starship and crew of specialists.

Ashen Stars makes the player characters independent problem solvers working under contract. Their ship is something small enough to run with a crew of about half a dozen people. This makes the player characters less like starship bridge officers from Star Trek and more like the crew from Firefly.

The Ashen Stars setting mixes utopian and dystopian concepts and explores the conflict between the two. It takes an interstellar civilization of high ideals and wrecks it with a decade-long war. Picture the difference in tone between Star Trek the original series and late-season Deep Space Nine. The player characters are
faced with the desire to live up to the example of a golden age and the desperate needs of a now that is barely getting by.

Ashen Stars avoids being too grimdark with a Reputation mechanic. Players have to balance the temptation of having their characters take pragmatic or self-serving actions versus upholding a more idealistic and moral stance. In some ways, this reminds me of similar mechanics in the Mass Effect games.

Overall, the game looks pretty good. I'll be running my group through some published adventures until we all get a solid grasp of the game. Then I'll see about working up a short campaign to fill out the next couple of months.