Incorporating History and Chemistry Into My Tabletop Campaign

Last year I got to run my first full tabletop campaign since before the pandemic and I had a blast. Besides being the first time I’ve run a game in years it was notable for a couple of other reasons. Not only did the campaign run to completion, the setting was one that I’ve been designing from scratch for several years. The other exciting part about this campaign was that the party consisted of a chemist, a biochemist, a biologist, and a biophysicist. Being a chemist, I decided to take advantage of those backgrounds and tried to incorporate some chemistry into the campaign as well.

I decided that the characters would all be new arrivals in a major industrial city where they had come in response to recruitment posters seeking workers for a new munitions factory. There they would have the opportunity to get involved with labor riots, political malcontents, and sorcerous scheming. More on that later.

Goals and Railroading

When I was planning the campaign I had a few limiting factors in mind. The primary one was that one of my players was going to be moving out of the country soon, and the other was that I was supposed to be working on my dissertation. With that in mind, I wanted to make sure I was planning a campaign that could be completed in a relatively short amount of time with brief sessions to best accommodate everyone’s busy schedules. So I decided on some plot points that would always happen no matter what the players did. There was always going to be some kind of labor riot, someone would definitely try to assassinate the local Duke, there would be an explosion at the factory no matter what, and the Duke’s attempts at performing a dark ancient ritual in an abandoned temple beneath the city was always going to happen. The choices the players made would instead determine how they experienced these events, which perspectives they heard, and which faction’s machinations were successful.

Finally, I decided to use Pinnacle’s Savage Worlds ruleset for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I already owned the rulebooks and was somewhat familiar with it thanks to having briefly run a Deadlands Classic campaign a few years ago and a few Powdermage RPG oneshots before that. In practice, the rules were more like guidelines.

Setting Background

The campaign took place in a country called Whalvia, an anachronistic industrialized monarchy made up of a patchwork of regions that used to be independent kingdoms at some point in their history. At home, the Emperor/Empress wields considerable power but is limited in some ways by rights and privileges guaranteed to various city councils and aristocratic families. Overseas the story is much different. Whalvia is located on the edge of a supercontinent that comprises most of the known world. Huge storms fed by the hemispheric world sea regularly buffet the continent and Whalvia is one of the lucky few to be somewhat shielded by these massive storms thanks to its position on the coast of the Inner Sea. This has allowed Whalvian rulers over the centuries to amass large merchant and naval fleets with which they could venture out to far-flung locations for trade and conquest. This empire consisted of loose trade networks, leased territory, and proxy states whose monarchs were related to the Emperor through marriage, or outright conquest. All of this is controlled or owned either directly by the monarch or indirectly through their majority ownership of the Outer Sea Trading Company and its private armies. A lot of this doesn’t come up in the campaign but I like rambling about it so there you go.

More recently, Whalvia has come under the rule of the Empress Imerelda. Her elderly father Kirstivan II ruled for about 60 years and made many reforms during his reign but married late in life. When he died his daughter rose to the throne and while she was capable she was also not ready. Only two years into her reign a war began with Whalvia’s historic enemy and landlocked neighbor Icara. This brings us to the city of Hofni where the campaign took place.

Hofni is a large industrial city in western Whalvia situated at the confluence of two rivers. In the old days, its Kings were major rivals of Whalvia and the descendants of those Kings are now reduced to mere Dukes. The current Duke of Hofni was a close friend Kirstivan II and has become an ardent supporter of Imerelda in turn. He is also very old, is living with the injuries resulting from an explosion in his laboratory, and is very aware of the fact that he isn’t getting any younger. He also has no direct heirs. So naturally, patriot that he is, when the war begins he wastes no time evicting tenants and expanding his munitions factories to supply artillery shells to the front.

While the Duke has been working on these projects he has also departed from his normal scientific and alchemical studies and has been learning to perform sorcery himself with the help of his new advisor Zora(?). His family is old and descended from the original rulers of Hofni who built a temple that is now buried deep beneath the city where his ancestors made offerings to a now-forgotten god.

Historical Inspirations

Women working inside a London munitions factory. Source.

If you haven’t been able to tell this setting is heavily inspired by the early 20th century with fantasy, dieselpunk, and steampunk elements mixed in. And during the First World War, there was a very real shell shortage that was quite the scandal in the UK’s Parliament known as the Shell Crisis. This wasn’t unique to Britain, no one was prepared for the intensity of industrialized war and shortages caused problems in both east and west alike. I tried to replicate some of the working environment inside the munitions factories including the wooden clogs workers had to wear to prevent sparks and included several NPCs who were suffering from the effects of TNT poisoning and other workplace hazards.

Chemical Inspirations

The munitions factory I had the players working in was synthesizing TNT and then using it to fill artillery shells while the explosive was still molten (TNT melts at 80.35 °C ). Two of the player characters worked on the filling line and two others worked with the factory’s alchemists managing heat flows and mass transport.

Lots of people know about TNT but not as many know that those letters are short for trinitrotoluene. That’s a toluene molecule with three nitro groups. TNT isn’t the only explosive that was used in the first world war but for simplicity, I decided to stick with it. Despite being an explosive it’s actually fairly stable and will only detonate under specific conditions.

TNT is made by nitrating toluene using nitric acid, a process that requires a few other chemicals like sulfuric acid as well. All three may be familiar. Toluene has a sickly sweet smell and is often used to thin or strip paint. Nitric acid and sulfuric acid are also common chemicals and are produced industrially in huge quantities. Concentrated nitric acid is especially fun, is red in color, and gives off toxic red vapors. This red color is not actually nitric acid but various compounds of nitrogen and oxygen that can act as powerful oxidizing agents. These can cause some fun (dangerous) side reactions the synthesis of TNT is not done properly which I considered as a possible cause of the factory’s explosion.

Branching Paths

Like I said before, I had a few different threads planned for the players to follow in Hofni. Here are the main three.

  • Union organizers in the munitions factory agitating for safer working conditions.
  • Evicted tenants who want revenge for being kicked out of their homes.
  • The Duke’s efforts to reach an abandoned temple beneath the city that he believes will heal his broken body.

How It Went

The players immediately took a liking to the NPCs and got mixed up in a brawl between union organizers and the Duke’s guards sent to break up the meeting. Then, in exchange for weapons, they made a deal with the proprietor of a local dive bar to steal a quantity of TNT from the factory in exchange for supplies. Later, discontents used the TNT the players stole to make a bomb that was used to blow up the chemical storage tanks outside the factory. Heavy black smoke and choking chemical fumes filled the streets, it was great in a horrifically tragic way.

I worried about finding a way to draw the players into the Duke’s search for the temple beneath the city. Two character backstories made this pretty easy. One of the characters was academically inclined and wanted to secure a job in the Duke’s research facilities so there was an immediate hook to draw them all to the palace. The other was a character who was being stalked by a lost god.

In this setting gods and other entities are mostly gone from the world. Some are dead, others forgotten, and some just…left. The Old God of Hofni (OGH) was one of the forgotten gods. So forgotten that it had almost lost its form entirely. When one of my players said that his character was on the run from a shadowy entity he had met in a cave I knew what I had to do. The player didn’t know it, but in that meeting the much diminished OGH had latched onto him and his fear of it gave it new strength. In effect, he became a sort of pseudo-worshipper for the OGH which followed him to Hofni and took on his appearance. It was a lot of fun having the OGH appear in the distance to spook the players, give its new worshipper visions, and help them win the Duke’s favor by foiling an assassination plot.

The campaign wrapped up with the players finding the temple beneath the city. In the process, they fought a group of giant spiders and some reanimated temple guardians. Once they opened the temple the OGH was able to return to its home. Then, when the players realized that the Duke planned to use arrested union members as human sacrifices they turned on him and locked him in the temple. Also, they stuffed a roast pig full of TNT as a distraction. It blew up.

Conclusion

I had a lot of fun running this campaign. Like I said it’s the first one I had run in years and the first time I had run a game in a setting entirely of my own design. That was a little nerve-wracking and I came to each session worried that I didn’t have enough planned or that the encounters wouldn’t be fun enough. I was wrong though and we had a blast. I also really liked starting a campaign with a set ending and sessions that were limited to about two hours, it kept everything moving and I didn’t have to worry too much about story bloat or any kind of mission creep. Of course, all the fun we had was really thanks to the players. They took the setting I laid out before them and ran with it creating some unexpected scenarios that were a lot of fun to play through.

Modern Fantasy Is Sleeping On The Pike-And-Shot Era

Woodcut of the Battle of Dornach. Public Domain Image From Wikipedia

If you’re like me and spent far too much time on the internet, you’ve probably encountered the same question in SFF genre forums repeatedly. Why are so many fantasy works set in a “medieval” world? There are a few answers to this. One is tradition, Tolkien and other giants of the genre grounded their stories in medieval aesthetics. Another is that medieval settings are familiar to fantasy fans. An author doesn’t need to spend time on endless exposition if they can fall back on preexisting ideas already in their readers’ heads.

This is all well and good but inevitably these settings get old. Recent authors like Brian McClellan and Django Wrexler have made gunpowder fantasy popular. It’s fantasy, but with guns. This sub-genre draws on imagery from the Napoleonic Wars and similar periods. Like the medieval era, this period of history looms large in people’s minds. Unfortunately, this jump skips past an entire era of human history between 1400 and 1700 (approximately, I’m not a historian) when gunpowder hadn’t quite achieved supremacy and armored warriors and ranks of pikemen were still common sights on the battlefield.

I’m using pike-and-shot because fantasy books and D&D Campaigns tend to be rather violent, but this new mode of warfare was far from the only thing that changed. It was during this time that modern banking was developed and Europe and the idea of the state first arose. It was also a time of discovery when the scientific method was first conceived and the ideals of the Enlightenment were promulgated. All of these ideas are perfect for a fantasy setting. And to be fair some fantasy IPs do use imagery from this period, Warhammer Fantasy stands out among them. But it still feels that this period has been woefully neglected.

This was a period of immense changes in Europe and the rest of the world. Changes bring conflict and inspire all kinds of questions for a fantasy setting that authors and dungeon masters could seek to answer. What use is a wizard’s fireball when a row of arquebusiers can take out rows of spear-wielding infantry? What will happen when the king’s subjects decide not to pay their taxes until they get the services they are owed? What did that disgruntled priest just nail to the door?

The classical Forgotten Realms settings already verge on the beginnings of an early modern setting so why not move the clock a few years forward?

Book Review: House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

I really liked this book. It didn’t hook me at first, and I thought it slowed down a bit in the middle, but I’ve always enjoyed Reynolds’ work and John Lee is a great narrator. Ultimately, the ending was fantastic and I think the Goodreads score of 4.2 is completely justified.

House of Suns follows three first-person POVs. Two of these belong to Campion and Purslane, clones of a woman named Abigail Gentian born nearly six million years before when humanity was just starting to explore the galaxy. Since then they and the thousand other clones of Abigail Gentian have crossed the galaxy countless times assisting and observing the many human cultures that have come and gone during that time. The third POV consists of flashbacks from Abigail Gentian’s childhood, memories that all of the clones share. At the beginning of the novel Purslane and Campion are running several decades late for the Gentian Line reunion, an event that happens every quarter million years at which the clones of Gentian Line sync their memories and conduct various pieces of business. At first, this tardiness is a major problem as the two of them have become romantically involved and the implications of them both arriving late together are obvious. As it turns out, their tardiness saves their lives. When they arrive at the reunion and discover that the entire star system has been destroyed in an effort to wipe out all of the Gentian clones. Luckily there are other survivors, and together they have to discover why someone would try to wipe them out aa well as find the collaborator in their midst.

It’s during the investigations and politicking that follow the ambush that the plot slows down a bit. Although we learn a great deal about the characters involved I found some parts of this book drags. The ending however makes it worth it. Reynolds excels at portraying the weirdness of post-human societies and basking in the enormity of the universe. Read this book, or listen to it on Audible like I did, if you want a story that takes place on long time scales (60,000+ years), have a fascination with megastructure concepts, or like to ponder the relationship between memory and identity.

Last of Us: Was Joel Right?

If you played the game like I did you were probably looking forward to the season finale of HBO’s Last of Us adaptation in which Joel tears through a hospital full of fireflies to save Ellie’s life. The internet has been filled with discussions of whether Joel was right to do what he did.

But all these arguments are irrelevant because there is no way that the doctor had IRB approval. I jest, because the fireflies almost certainly don’t have anything like an IRB (Institutional Review Board). What organization gets ahold of the first (as far as we know) person with immunity to cordyceps and decides the best route is to immediately kill them? The doctors could have run blood tests. They could have tried to infect Ellie on purpose to study how her body reacts. They had lots of non-destructive options and the fact that the fireflies wouldn’t question this clearly insane doctor who decided to kill the patient upon first meeting doesn’t bode well for their organization’s survival.

Obviously, writers for both the game and show probably went with this ending because it is the easiest to convey. It would be difficult to convey a long series of boring, uncomfortable, unethical tests. But people make bad decisions all the time so who knows maybe this scenario is more realistic than I’m giving it credit. After all, it wasn’t too long ago that bleeding and leeches were standard practice.

On a related note, why don’t the fireflies try to build their own communities? There’s obviously plenty of room and Tommy’s commune shows that it is possible. With their networks and resources, the fireflies should be able to build and protect at least one commune of their own.

Betrayal Is Such A Fun Game

Dhadius "Dhaddy" The Scarlet. Objectively the best character in the game.

Betrayal, both in its original form and in the D&D-themed variant Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate, is a lot of fun. With the variety of end-game scenarios and the random map generation no two playthroughs are the same. Plus the game mechanics are basic enough that they don’t get in the way of the pre-built storytelling and roleplay opportunities that the game creates. I think it’s a really good game for people who want a pre-built RPG adventure. I’d give it a 4/5.

First Impressions of HBO’s Last Of Us

Pedro Pascal as Last of Us's Joel holding a flashlight and looking concerned
Source

I know I’m late to the party, but I watched the first two episodes of Last of Us the other day, and I really like it! I haven’t ever paid much attention to announcements and trailer releases, so most of the time when a new series starts I’m often one of the last to know. For the record, I was aware that HBO was adapting the Last of Us video game, I just didn’t know it was coming out this January.

So, without knowing much about it besides Pedro Pascal being cast as Joel, I went in knowing basically nothing about the show. But not really nothing, Last of Us was a game I spent many a Saturday night playing during my freshman year. I don’t play games for completeness, but I loved the reclaimed cities and the unique fungus-based zombies. So I know all the story elements already. Although Pedro Pascal did a great job as the Mandalorian and is basically playing the same type of character in Last of Us, I was a little wary about watching a video game adaptation. The last one I tried to watch was just plain bad (Halo), and I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

A screenshot of a meme posted to r/shittymoviedetails that says "In the second episode of The Last of Us (2023), Joel shoots wildly and does little damage to a clicker. This is an example of HBO faithfully adapting my own gameplay
This show is extremely faithful to the original source material

It turns out Last of Us is pretty good! It’s true to the story and spirit of the show and follows the original plot closely. It’s precisely what I would expect a faithful adaptation to look like. It’s captured the spirit of the game and so far has done a great job of translating storytelling techniques between mediums. I’m looking forward to episode three, which Twitter tells me was very good.

Book Review: Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 by Max Hastings

The cover to Max Hasting's Book "Vietnam: And Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975
Source

I’ve been on a Max Hasting kick lately. If you’re a history buff, you have probably heard about him. I started with his book on the Korean War, then moved on to Retribution, his book about the end of the war in the pacific. And now I’ve finished his book on Vietnam.

This is another case of a book I first bought in print and never got to until I found it on Audible. The book itself is probably thick enough to stop a bullet, and its contents certainly deliver the tragedy that the title promises. That was largely the problem I had with getting through the physical version, it’s too big to care around in a bag easily and requires a huge time investment.

Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy gives the reader exactly what it promises. Hasting’s knack for description and emphasis on the very human stories of the people who lived through the conflict. Telling the story of a war where many of the participants lost much and in the end found themselves asking what the point of it was.

It’s a good book made even better by the excellent narration provided by Peter Noble. I give it a 5/5.

Book Review: Nona the Ninth

Tamsyn Muir has a distinct voice and a talent for writing prose that reveals nothing, hints at everything, and keeps you reading.

I don’t really know how to describe Muir’s writing to you. She manages to combine grimdark, internet culture, bible references, and Tumblr together into a compelling narrative. What’s more, Muir doesn’t mind reminding us that she will do whatever she wants and we will probably like it.

Nona the Ninth (NtN) is the third entry in what is now the Locked Tomb Series, it was originally a trilogy, but all of us who have ever tried to make something out of an idea know that these things inevitably grow.

The greatest warning I have to give about this book is that it is slow. Telling the story from the perspective of someone who is practically a child was a brave choice. Somehow, NtN manages to be a book in which nothing happens, a lot is revealed, and a plot where nothing but loose threads remain.

I really liked this book, it’s certainly not for everyone, but read this modern science fantasy novel if…

  • You grew up on Tumblr
  • You want to dive into an active cosplay, and theory community
  • You want to finish a book with more questions than you started it with
  • You don’t care if the POV and authorial voice changes from chapter to chapter or book to book (Muir does this very well).
  • You want to sympathize with necromancers.
  • You like campy dialogue and internet culture.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, go read the first book in this series; Gideon the Ninth. If you want to tell me I’m wrong or just chat, come find me on Twitter. If you have any specific theories or thoughts about Nona the Ninth or the greater Locked Tomb Series leave a comment below.

Four Hard Science Fiction Books You Should Read

The last title of the Expanse series is a callback to the title of the first.

A genre made popular by the recent explosion of the Expanse by James SA Corey and its television adaptation, hard science fiction is a genre with a history as old as science fiction itself. With the series complete, this is the time to explore other greats of the genre, including one with a future movie adaptation by none other than Dennis Villeneuve.

We’re about to experience a renaissance of science fiction movies and television. With luck, more of these books will be adapted soon.

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynold's flair for the existential vastness of space is evoked in the series cover art

Alastair Reynolds began his career as an astrophysicist working for the European Space Agency. He is an extremely prolific writer of short stories, many of which take place in the Revelation Space setting and provide the novels with greater context. Read this book if you are looking for epic interstellar adventures at sub-light speeds.

Check out my essay on mind uploading in fiction if you want to read about Revelation Space and related works.

Blue Collar Space by Martin L. Shoemaker

A commercial shuttle is seen leaving a ring station

Blue Collar Space is a rejection of “Big Man Science Fiction” that focuses on the people who built the future those larger-than-life characters exist in. Its subjects include civil engineers on the moon, father-daughter lunar hikes gone wrong, and other examples of people living their lives and saving humanity in less glamorous ways. Read it if you want to be immersed in lives that our descendants might one day live out in space.

The Quiet War by Paul McAuley

This is another series that gets the vastness of space right

Of the four books on this list “Gardens of the Sun” has the most in common with the Expanse. It envisions a future where Earth has been wracked by climate change and the remaining authoritarian empires on Earth devote most of their resources to shape and rebuild the ruined environment. Genetic engineering has made many things impossible, including novel synthetic ecosystems in the outer solar system. With Earth’s governments on the verge of developing a new and improved fusion engine, the many settlements of the solar system are wary of an increased Earth presence in the outer solar system. Read this book if you want a future mix of political scheming, warfare, and hopeful but sometimes strange depictions of future science.

I also just learned that you can get the Quiet War and its Sequel Gardens of the Sun in one big omnibus edition. I’ll be doing a re-read of this series soon so keep yours eyes out for more posts about it.

Rendevous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Perhaps the most minimalist title of the bunch

A classic of the hard science fiction genre. “Rendevous With Rama” is a science fiction classic that follows a group of astronauts sent on a detour to a massive alien ship that is using our Sun to perform a slingshot maneuver. While the governments of Earth and the other planets debate how to respond to the object, the scientists of Earth scramble to understand the object and advise a team of accidental explorers on how to make the best use of their limited time exploring the object. Read this book if you want a story that evokes a sense of the unknowable and the vast scale of our universe. You should also read it if you plan to watch the upcoming Dennis Vilneuve adaptation.

A First Look at Brian McClellan’s Latest Epic Fantasy Novel

Brian McClellan’s new epic fantasy novel from Tor, In The Shadow Of Lightning, is finally out.

I haven’t finished reading it yet, but I am so excited about this book that I decided to start with a review of the prologue. Some might consider prologues to be annoying, but I think this is an example of a prologue done right. Just to be clear, there will be spoilers. You have been warned.

McClellan is one of the more prominent authors in the flintlock fantasy subgenre and helped it make it popular with his debut novel Promise of Blood. I’ve been a big fan for ten years now and for the past year, I’ve been included in McClellan’s “Street Team” group chat. I wasn’t able to beta-read the book, but it’s been fun to get a look behind the curtain at a book as it is being written. I can’t wait to read it and take about it with you all and I already think this book is worth your time.

It’s set in a world of industrial magic, where huge factories churn out magical glass called cindersand. Society runs on this vital resource, and it’s running out. But the wealthy guild families of Ossa aren’t about to let something as minor as the death of magic to stop them from scheming.

The book begins with our MC Demir accepting the surrender of a defeated city. Instead of killing its leader and decimating its population (killing 1 in 10) as is tradition, Demir declares his intention to spare the city. After all, they would not have rebelled if they didn’t have legitimate grievances. Right from the beginning we see Demir as someone with a conscience and a strong sense of right and wrong. And then the schemes of others breaks him.

While he had been busy accepting the city’s surrender someone else had been busy distributing counterfeit orders to his officers. The falsified orders in question instructed the army to raze the city. Demir was too late. His own soldiers fail to recognize him and push him aside. When they find him the next morning he is cradling the body of a young girl who was trampled by his cavalry.

If this first look at In The Shadow Of Lightning has you interested then you should definitely pick the book up or listen to it on Audible. Audiobooks are a great way to keep up with current fiction on your drive to work. You can also follow me on Twitter if you want to chat about it or be the first to know when my full review is posted.