Guardians of Sol-Tau: After the Adventure

Several players and GMs who have enjoyed Guardians of Sol-Tau have asked for possible follow-up adventures for the player characters, so I turned the question to Andrea Mollica, who wrote the story. This is what he had to say!

The conclusion of Guardians Of Sol-Tau leaves the heroes with a sense of accomplishment and fulfilling (assuming everything goes well and they defeat the Iods!), yet this does not mean their adventures are necessarily over.

If you want to see the shabby crew of the Astrid tackling new adventures, the finale of Guardians of Sol-Tau definitely offers room for further development.

Warning! Spoilers ahead! If you still haven't played GoST yet, I suggest you not to read on. Have fun with the adventure and check back here after that!

The Iod's defeat doesn't imply the entire destruction of their race. As described in the last chapter, several Iods die, but many of them still have the chance to start a new life in the Sol-Tau system - and they have no means to reach another solar system, anyway. How will the fare? Will they try to peacefully find a place to live, or their martial culture will cause violent conflicts? And how will the peoples of Sol-Tau react, now that the Iods have lost their military supremacy? It's entirely possible the surviving Iods will have to face distrust, hostility, or hate.

In both cases, our Heroes may be called upon to help. They may be regarded as the ones who can tell whether the Iods deserve a second chance, or where to deploy them. If the Iods behave aggressively, the PCs will be surely called to action, since they're the ones who destroyed their empire. Or, in an interesting turn of events, the group might be called for help by a group of Iods facing threats by people of Sol-Tau who don't want them as neighbors.

An entirely different lines of story development regards the new political assets of Sol-Tau system after the Iods' defeat. Most likely, a power vacuum occurs, and there may be someone who wants to exploit the situation in their favor, be they a criminal organization, a former rebel brigade, an entire people of one of Sol-Tau's planets or one of their governments.

Again, the heroes may be involved in several ways. Did they risk their lives against the Iods for nothing, just to see another dictatorship arise?

Since the PCs have acquired a huge fame within Sol-Tau, they are now considered an elite crew (even if their gaming stats may say otherwise...). There are many people willing to hire them for any sort of mission: transport, escort, smuggling, planetary research, body-guarding etc. Remember that, despite the dark years of the Iods, all the inhabited planets thrive with bristling life; many cities are huge and full of mystery and intrigue.

And, don't forget the Pilgrims. Who are they, after all? Whence the prophecy come from? What exactly was the supernatural power wielded by Hope? You can answer these questions in many different ways, and introduce more mysteries and conflict to involve the heroes.

But perhaps, the most interesting lead for a follow-up scenario would be answering the question: what's up with the Hrax? An impossible machine made of metal and dark energy, capable of killing suns! What's happened to it? Where has all that energy gone? What about the technology? What if a new villain of your choice found a way to tap into that energy and try to become the new ruler of Sol-Tau?

And all of those ideas could of course be mixed together into one scenario, of course. A Pilgrim gone rogue might trick the heroes into getting for him the means to use the residual energy from the Hrax, and the surviving Iods might become useful allies for another desperate battle against all odds!

All I can say to sum it up is, keep the Astrid flying!

Impressions on The Secret Files of Section D - Taster Edition

 The Secret Files of Section D - Taster Edition has just debuted!

It is the free, introductory pdf to the upcoming Secret Files of Section D setting for Savage Worlds, soon to launch for crowdfunding.

I'm very happy to say Allan Wroe passed me the file a couple weeks ago, so here's a short review and my overall impressions.

First of all, we're talking about a nice 90+ pages pdf, with a nice, retro-style layout and lots of art.

Here's a bit from the Introduction, explaining what Section D is and what the game is about:

So what have we've got here? A pulp-era, historically accurate, unconventional espionage setting where heroes punch Nazis, face supernatural mysteries and investigate dark conspiracies, and all of that in a very British, adventurous but also humorous flavor.

Here's another snip from the pdf, showing you a nice piece of art, a new action-oriented Setting Rule, and a cool quote. 

Beside describing the setting, the Taster Edition PDF offers a few examples of setting rules, new Edges and Hindrances, and new gear, focusing on spy gadgets as they were in the 1930s.

And then there's "Trouble in Tripoli", which is a HUGE three-act adventure, complete with pre-made characters and an incredible amount of maps. Of course I'm not going to spoil it here. The adventure begins as an investigation into an unusual robbery at the British Museum, but evolves into an action-packed scenario that will see the agents visit several exotic locations and face some incredible villains.

The setting and adventure look really fun to me. Download the Taster Edition see for yourself!

About Character Variety in Savage Worlds

 One topic that now and then surfaces on forums and social media about Savage Worlds is how players end up picking the same Edges (Combat Edges, usually) and developing the same skills... aka "all characters look the same".

In time I've come to think of this as another problem: it's just that "all your adventures are the same"!

Players develop their character to adapt to the situations that emerge in play, session after session. If they only have ONE meaningful, relevant Social Conflict every six sessions, no player is going to go beyond Persuasion d8. If you always set up four combats per session, everyone will end up picking Quick, Block, Dodge, etc... and so you would, too!

This is not thoroughly bad, mind you. It simply makes sense that most the heroes of a Veteran posse in Deadlands pick the Brave Edge: they've been facing (and hopefully defeating) all kinds of horrors! Same in a Weird Wars campaign, with the Quick Edge: be quick or be dead, you know.

If you as a GM want to see variety in player characters "builds", you must offer variety in adventure situations! Investing in a "face" type of hero requires a return for the advances spent there. Let those count, make sure your adventures include meaningful social interactions.

Meaningful means those situations and rolls truly affect the story in a major way. A Social Conflict to win Allies can turn an impossible fight into an easy victory, for example.

The same is true for all non-combat skills and linked Edges. Leadership Edges are only good if characters get Allies. Survival, Repair, Occult, Academics, Piloting, and related Edges, are only good and will be picked after character creation only if they play a reasonably important and frequent part in your games!

Because it really boils down to effectiveness. As a player, I know that Combat Edges and skills may make a difference between life and death. If, after a few sessions, I feel that Charismatic, Scholar, Woodsman won't make a dramatic impact on my adventures, changing the course of events for the better, I'll keep stacking Combat Edge upon Combat Edge.

Some campaigns are heavily focused on combat, and that's ok. Maybe player characters are soldiers, or monster hunters, etc. If you want to preserve character variety, several approaches might be tried.

You may put limits. A maximum of one Combat Edge during character creation, and/or a maximum of two Combat Edges per Rank.

Or you may put incentives into developing different features. During Advances, players might be allowed to gain twice the benefits of each advance if they don't pick Combat Edges and/or attacking skills: gaining two Edges, or four skill points, or one Edge and two skill points.

Both courses of action are not great, frankly. Adding limits to players' choices is always bad. And having characters gaining the equivalent of two Advances at once might create some really bizarre situations.

In short, even in a military or combat-heavy campaign I would still suggest to put as many non combat situations as reasonably possible!

Many Savage Worlds setting books include adventure generators. Some outline the goal, villains, and complications of a scenario; others, like the one in Saga of the Goblin Horde, explicitly refer to game systems (Chases, Dramatic Tasks, Social Conflicts, etc) to be used for each scene or situation.