Tag Archives: Maelstrom

UK Games Expo 2012 – Part 1

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Day One at the UK Games Expo – the last one to be held at the Clarendon Suites, somewhere (I think) in the West Bromwich sort of area of Birmingham. I travelled down here today from Manchester at about 6.30AM, and made solid time until I got within a mile of the venue, when I decided to make a detour that took about 20 minutes to correct. That O2 decided to completely pack up leaving me without my phone for sat navigation really didn’t help at all.

When we did arrive, we immediately bumped into Graham Bottley, from Arion Games – the very person we had hoped to help. He had returned to the car park for his final box, so we failed completely to be any help at all. The Suite seemed to be busting with tables, with some rejigging of traders and tables at odds with previous years. We ended up in the Green Zone in a good spot not too far from the door, and not too far from the RPG room where I would be running an Advanced Fighting Fantasy game at 10AM.

We, my youngest son and me, assisted Graham with extracting books from boxes and arranging the piles into something bordering on, but probably not really related to, proper merchandising. Graham sells a lot of standard solo Fighting Fantasy books as well as the coffee table format Advanced Fighting Fantasy roleplaying game volumes.

All prepared and topped up with a cup of coffee, I went off to the RPG room at 9.55AM and found a table (the only one left, as it happened). I found one pre-booked player already waiting for me, another soon followed, and a new signing came not too long after that. I started going through the mechanics of the game, then co-opted my son (just passing) to bulk the party out to four players (not for fun, I may add, but for the good entertaining of the paying pundits).

We played Fighting Fantasy until about 1.30PM – playing a variant version of the classic adventure ‘The Wishing Well’ (one included in the new edition of Advanced Fighting Fantasy). The game involved a dungeon crawl, complicated by a necromancer with world domination in mind and the neat complexity of time travel. Having faced the necromancer in their first ever adventure together and failed to defeat him outright, the characters had to return to the same place and time – using a variant of the sorcerous ZED spell – and put right their mistake without – most importantly – bumping into themselves. The first 20 minutes or more covered some fairly indepth planning, then when they arrived they very cautiously followed themselves into the dungeon and took an alternate root. They passed through a furnace funnel, faced off against a ghoulish monk, discovered an animated skeleton production facility, stumbled across the bones of a Black Dragon, then finally reached an underground river – just after their earlier selves completed the crossing. Trying to follow, three of the four almost got swept down the river – saved by the stalwart adventurer Jack – and then struggled to the shoreline just as part of the cavern collapsed revealing a very angry and now thoroughly animated Undead Black Dragon Skeleton. Setting a trap to stop the necromancer escaping – which he managed to do last time, though mortally wounded – they spent several tense moments fending off the necrotic flames of the dragon before the villain died. The future saved, the spell collapsed dragging them back through time – to a world that didn’t even know that it had been in a danger…

For the rest of the day, I supported Graham in selling stock from the stall. Largely, this involved chatting with people about their first experiences with Fighting Fantasy and Maelstrom, the other game for sale on the stand and the one I contribute to. I love hearing about how people got into gaming, their experiences with solo adventures, and their favourites out of the series. Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone attended the event and gave a talk at 2PM, and a little after 3PM a queue formed in front of our stall and their co-authors soon followed. Ian and Steve signed various books for loyal fans – and I got Steve to sign my copy of Fighting Fantasy (the original roleplaying version of the solo games and the place where ‘The Wishing Well’ adventure first appeared).

By 5PM we felt tired and relieved to pack up. We – my son and me – had a slightly uninspiring buffet dinner in the hotel restaurant (a ‘one trip’-only affair where we didn’t quite make the most of the plate-based real estate), then played a game in the lobby. He then went on to play Shadows of Camelot, while I sloped off upstairs to type this…

Tomorrow – more from the stall and a Maelstrom sci-fi adventure at 10AM (sold out three weeks ago during pre-booking).

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Maelstrom Beggars Companion Appears

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A year ago, I set about writing a Beggars Companion supplement for Maelstrom. Having struggled to write PARANOIA: The Underplex, a process that seemed to span a whole year and still turned out a product that felt a little wayward, I wanted to set myself a clear goal. At a minimum of 1,500 words a day, I wanted to have a completed text ready for the end of December 2010.

I had spent a good while before reading source materials, histories, reference work, and sociological accounts. I hit the writing from day one with enthusiasm, but cannot claim to have kept to it. However, if I slipped during the week, I made up for it at the weekend. I kept plugging away, sketching out the high level structure, filling in the high level pass, then homing in on the detail. I created the main descriptions of the various types of beggars, roughed out the new rules for referees, and, last of all, wrote the adventure; ‘The Long Road‘ adventure would add up to a fifth of the length of the final work, and flowed surprisingly easily. By the New Year, I had about 25,000 words complete and very little more to add (so I thought).

Alas, complications arose in respect of publishing the work and it languished for much of the rest of the year. I didn’t give the text too much attention over that time, but another 7,000 words crept in somewhere, and a couple of thousand crept back out before the end. I swear I read through that thing six or seven times, but I know my blindness left many elements I plan to correct. Just yesterday I noticed a quote from another work repeated within a couple of pages of the first reference – and can’t account for just how I might have missed that!

At Dragonmeet on Saturday, I handled a printed copy of the work and watched as the pile on the Arion Games stand slowly halved in size. Yesterday evening, the PDF version went live at RPGNow and I’m happy to say at least another half dozen sold within the first few hours.

I believe I’ve written a decent overview of beggars and their historical tricks. As I mentioned to someone at Dragonmeet, I believe many of those tricks survive to this day – including an early variation of the Nigerian scam carried out by a fellow called the Ring Feller. While I wrote the book for Maelstrom and had the Tudor period in mind, the quantity of system specific content remains sleight. You will find a lot of generic material here and the option to apply it either as material for character creation or ideas for non-player distractions. The end of the book includes a fiendishly unpleasant table for determining random ailments for those sleeping rough; and a small extension to the classic herbal section of the original Maelstrom rules (oft referred to as a seminal aspect of the game system, along with it’s freeform approach to magic).

I’m happy I managed to write it to deadline, and happier still it finally made it out as both a physical book and a PDF. I hope many people will read it and find something useful or interesting. I certainly found it a very interesting book to research and write. And now I plan the next couple of projects with a spring in my step and just a pinch of excited enthusiasm.

Getting It Write

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I wish I could say that I had nothing to write about. In truth, I have a lot to talk about, however I seem to lack the inclination to write much about it. I have a lot of other things to write that I’m not spending enough time on, so I wouldn’t precisely say I’m sat here idle. But, I don’t have the time to come up with anything insightful, amusing, original or contemplative to disperse upon the blogging world.

I wish I could say I have been wrestling with one of the November writing events, the amusing acronyms for which I can’t bring to mind at the moment. Heck, I don’t even seem to have the time (or the follicle prowess) to take part in Movember, despite the fact I find the whole idea highly amusing.

I have a Maelstrom supplement to finish editing and I have an adventure to write for Dragonmeet. I plan to get the first completed in the next couple of days, and the second completed in the next couple of weeks. Both have deadlines. Completing either project late carries consequences, such as not getting my supplement out to the consuming public or looking a right idiot at the demo table at the end of November. I fancy neither as an option, so I have to get the work done.

I must go to bed now, but I realise the rest of the week has an underlying purpose. I write and nothing more. When I pause or find myself staring into space, I should write instead. Write here, write now.

Our Lady’s Mantle

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Available: Su, Au 60%
Preparation: none
Cost: 1s. 6d./3s.
Uses: 2
Effective: 65% / 30%

A perennial plant, with rounded leaves and small green flowers growing in loose clusters. Found in damp places, such as meadows and shady woodland.

The clean, fresh, green leaves of the Lady’s Mantle may, if taken as a tea, settle the stomach and the bowel, reducing the symptoms of poor appetite, stomach upset and diarrhoea. The extract of the plant may also, when applied externally, aid in coagulation of the blood – reducing bleeding.

The influence of the herbal remedy over the blood has also led to a reputation for returning ‘bigness and hardness’ to the otherwise sagging or over large breasts of a woman by the application of the bruised leaves to the bosom. Use the second Effective rating in determining the success rate of the herb for this purpose. The effects are temporary.

Maelstrom Herbal Overview

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Not the most exciting post for many, but I don’t care. I have compiled a ‘complete’ herbal overview for Maelstrom, and uploaded the result at Scribd.com. I did say this would very likely not excite many people.

The herbal overview includes all the information from the original rules, broken down into a succinct and common language. So, you will find all prices in pennies and all timings in days, for example. I have also appended the short herbal expansion included in the as yet unpublished Maelstrom: Beggars’ Companion. Anything new I have shown the name in a green-tinted cell and there should be a ‘X’ in the New column at the end of the row.

For slightly extended information on, and illustrations of, the herbs you will need to refer to the original rules (or wait patiently for the release of the Beggars’ Companion).