If you actually run a D&D campaign, Backdrops is just the sort of crunchy goodness that the doctor ordered. If you’re looking for reading material, on the other hand, give this one a pass.

Originally Published June 27th, 2002

CONTENTS

The concept behind Penumbra’s Backdrops is simple: Provide professionally designed, ready-to-use maps and descriptions of fourteen generic locations: A bazaar, an athenaeum, baths, a ship, wharfs, stables, a smithy, a toll bridge, a temple, a caravanserai, a tavern, an alleyway, a merchant’s district, and a city dungeon.

Now, unless you run a very out-of-the-ordinary D&D campaign, then you’ve seen at least 90% of these locations crop up in your game before.

“So, what?” you say. “If they’re (a) generic, and (b) I’ve used them before, why would I want to pay the good folks down at Penumbra nine bucks for the privilege of showing me stuff I already know?”

Well, primarily, because John Davis and Scott Reeves are professional cartographers and you probably aren’t. And, even if you can produce high quality maps, then this book is probably still worth the cover charge for the time it will save you.

“So, what?” you say. “Maps are maps. My players never see them, and I don’t care whether I’m looking at scribblings on graph paper or the next Michelangelo behind my GM screen.”

But that’s where you’d be wrong, because every map in Backdrops includes an enlargement ratio. For example, the map of the wharfs has an enlargement ratio of 220%. So you slap the book down on a copier at Kinko’s, boost up the enlargement ratio to 220%, spend a dime, and out pops a ready-made tactical map. Then, when the PCs chase the bad guys out onto the wharfs, you whip out your awesome looking handout, lay out the miniatures, and away you go.

STRENGTHS

And that’s pretty much what sold me on Backdrops. The xerox enlargement ratio is something that nearly every damn map produced should be copying as quickly as possible. There is nothing I like better than taking out some professionally designed visuals and laying them out on the table: Not only do my players enjoy it, but it makes my job just a little bit easier. (And isn’t that what it’s all about?)

WEAKNESSES

The one problem I have with Backdrops is that there are only fourteen locations. In terms of utility, I would have preferred to see a 64 page product retailing in the $15 range. This would have given the product a broader coverage. As it is, you’ll want to make sure that there’s something in here you’ll find useful before you pick it up (check the list of locations, above).

Each of the locations also includes an accompanying page of text. This material works when it’s covering rules or guidelines for handling a location. (For example, the bridge floor trap accompanying the Toll Bridge location. Or the “break it and buy it” combat variant for handling collateral damage to merchandise in the Bazaar.) It tends to go awry, for me, however, when it makes the location specific instead of generic. (For example, the map of the Smithy is perfectly generic. The description of the Smithy, however, describes it being manned by Azers.) I find this latter type of material to be of almost no worth to me. Perhaps in a longer product it would have worked better, but here I would again say the product would be better served with more maps.

CONCLUSION

Backdrops is an excellent resource. It’s filled with the type of crunchy goodness which is the delight of all true DMs: It doesn’t just take care of the details so that we can focus on the big picture, it spices those details up with high production values and professional quality.

Are you going to have a tavern brawl? An ambush in the stables? A chase through darkened alleyways?

Then buying this one’s a no-brainer.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Will Hindmarch
Cartographer: John Davis with Scott Reeves
Publisher: Atlas Games
Line: Penumbra
Price: $8.95
ISBN: 1-58978-009-4
Product Code: AG3210
Pages: 32
Year Published: 2002

Nobody copied the enlargement factor, which is a pity even in this era of digital options. If you’re okay with black-and-white cartography, though, Backdrops still holds up great in an era of virtual tabletops. On the other hand, the current e-book version doesn’t hold up when physically printed at an enlarged scale.

This was the last RPG review I wrote for RPGnet, appearing alongside my review of Deep Horizons on June 27th, 2002. (There’s one more non-RPG review on its way.) In retrospect, it’s a very strange finale to a rather expansive body of work, but I suppose that is often the way of things: You don’t know that something is ending until it has already passed. I wrote my last review for RPGnet without knowing it would be my last, in much the same way that the day will come when I pick up my daughter for the last time without knowing I will never do it again.

Into eternity all things shall pass. But we’ll preserve it here a little longer; a light shining bulwark against the dark.

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

Like an arrow drawn from its quiver, so were the carach sent forth from their towers of dread iron. And like arrows in flight, so are the carach in their pursuit – singular in their purpose, relentless in their aim, and methodical in their doom. To be carach-marked is to be carrion.

Three blood-stained scrolls have been bound together, each describing the carach: Assassins and enforcers who rank among the “servitors of the Galchutt”.

THE PAEAN UNTO DEATH

This scroll is a sequence of dark sonnets, each dedicated to describing one facet of the “glorious imperfection of tentacular destruction” which is the “carach in its grim-deathed leap”. Collectively, they describe a horrible, insectoid monster. Where its head should be, a long, muscular neck extends up to a head covered in tentacles. These tentacles surround a mouth full of teeth, with two small, beady eyes perched to either side. Four of the tentacles are particularly long and end in turgid, razor-sharp spikes.

THE BLOOD OF POISON

This scroll is a triumphant celebration of the carach’s natural weapons. Their venomous bite is described as a necrotic flaying of the flesh, forcing the body to consume itself in massive, cancerous self-destruction.

Their “tendriled mass” is nothing but a “brewing corruption” – such a violent anathema to the natural order of life itself, that its merest touch will leech enervation from the limbs of the living.

Even their very minds are poisonous – with any creature touching the thoughts of carach “damned to eternal madness.”

UNTO THE DEATH OF WORLDS

This scroll begins with a mass of poetry describing the carach hiding within their “iron towers upon the edge of all worlds”. It then describes them emerging from these towers, and the deeds of death they perform.

It appears that the carach, when dispatched upon their dire tasks, are methodical and relentless in their pursuit – surprising traits for such chaotic creatures. But in their homes, they revert to their most primal nature – fighting themselves and plotting down through the long aeons in schemes of byzantine insurrection and betrayal.

The carach are unfailing in their duties, acting without hesitation. In addition to the natural arsenals of their bodies, they will also frequently use chaositech devices.

The scroll builds slowly to greater and greater achievements of the carach, which one can only hope are exaggerated – princes are slain, kingdoms fall, empires are destroyed; even entire worlds are said to have been destroyed… “consumed unto their last mote by the dark swarms of the poisoned assassins”.

Back to Chaos Lorebooks

Ego Hunter is amazing one-shot scenario for the equally amazing Eclipse Phase roleplaying game: The PCs are all different forks (copies) of the same person who, upon returning home to be merged back into their alpha, discover that their alpha has instead been killed.

I loved the adventure so much that I remixed it, creating prep notes and maps that expanded the adventure material and also reorganizing material and creating player handouts to make the running the adventure smooth as butter.

The adventure has just been re-released for the second edition of Eclipse Phase as Ego Hunter Resleeved. Although I didn’t work on the book, I have a small credit inside because the writers liked my prep notes so much they used them as inspiration for reorganizing the new version of the adventure.

Which I think is super cool!

At some point I may revisit my original prep notes to make them fully compatible with the new edition, but until then:

Check It Out!

GURPS Space continues to be one of the best resources for a science fiction campaign in the industry today.

Originally Published March 18th, 2002

CONTENTS

The goal of GURPS Space is simple: To provide an authoritative resource and reference for any conceivable science fiction campaign set in the wide universe beyond Earth’s atmosphere. For a GM it is a toolbox for any campaign set in the broad genre of “space adventure”. For the GURPS product line it is a centralized resource for the same (both GURPS Traveller and Transhuman Space, for example, reference GURPS Space as a place to find more detailed information on a variety of subjects).

Creating a Universe: The first goal of GURPS Space is to help the GM build their own worlds of starfaring adventure. Indeed, the first chapter of the book is called Creating a Universe. Here we find a detailed survey of SF campaign types, alien races, and interstellar societies and organizations. Later in the book we are given an absolutely stunning (and scrupulously scientifically accurate) star and planet generation system.

This really sums up everything that GURPS Space does well: On the one hand, you receive a comprehensive survey of seventy years of science fiction world-building. On the other hand, you are given a centralized reference with a hard science backing.

Technology: In addition to everything you would expect in a sourcebook of this kind (personal gear, weapons, medicine, starships, etc.), GURPS Space also takes the time to provide guidance on how to choose the technology of your campaign setting. How is actual technological improvement likely to happen? How has science fiction predicted future history in the past? What are the effects of different technologies on a setting? All of this discussion obviously backed up by a tremendous amount of research.

Rules: There are two major rule systems to be found here – Space Combat and Starship Design. The latter is a stripped down version of the system found in GURPS Vehicles (with accompanying conversion notes); the former is flexible and fairly simple (by GURPS standards).

BAD STUFF

The perceived utility of GURPS Space has been degraded, I think, by the continued expansion of the GURPS product line. For a book which has long been perceived in the industry as the resource for science fiction campaigns, it is somewhat disheartening to note just how frequently GURPS Space refers you to other products in the GURPS line: GURPS High Tech, GURPS Ultra Tech, GURPS Ultra Tech 2, GURPS Bio-Tech, and GURPS Vehicles — among others – are constantly being referenced and recommended. In this third edition, some sections of GURPS Space no longer read like a sourcebook: They read like a teaser for a plethora of GURPS products. Perhaps it is inevitable that the chapters on technology look like a stripped down GURPS Ultra Tech and the chapters on starships look like a stripped down GURPS Vehicles — but one is forced to question the utility of a centralized sourcebook if the meat has been distributed elsewhere.

GURPS Space is also beginning to show its age. Despite the revision by the (justly) renowned David Pulver, the book seems scarcely touched by the science fiction of the past twenty years. Subjects such as terraforming and nanotechnology are relegated to nothing more than sidebars. The elegant design and adaptation of galactic civilizations such as those found in Brin’s Uplift novels and Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep are conspicuously absent. The list of favorite authors found on page four of GURPS Space really says it all: Not one new author of the past twenty years can be found on that list.

I also question the organization of GURPS Space: A lot of key information seems to get relegated to the sidebars, but – more importantly – information has not been drawn together into rational packages:

For example, Chapter 1: Creating a Universe gets things started – providing some basic information about alien races, interstellar societies, and sci-fi organizations. Things appear to be progressing logically with Chapter 2: Choosing Technology, which begins to discuss the wide range of technology which has been presented in science fiction over the years. But this discussion is then interrupted by Chapter 3: Characters – which includes more information about alien races and some discussion of character roles.

In Chapter 4: Gadgets, however, we return to the discussion of technology – computers, air marks, communication devices, and some other personal equipment is discussed. Chapter 5: Weapons and Chapter 6: Medicine proceed logically out of this, and then we move onto Chapter 7: Environments – which discusses game rules for gravity, atmosphere, radiation, and the like. But then, incomprehensibly, we’re back to technology again with Chapter 8: Starships. Chapter 9: Space Combat proceeds logically from that, but Chapter 10: Stars and Worlds and Chapter 11: Civilizations seem to take us all the way back to the material in Chapter 1.

And that’s just the chapter organization. Things are equally confused as you begin breaking things down inside those chapters, as well. This lack of organization results in a product which proves less useful as an active guide to the new GM (because there is no conceptual flow to the material), and more difficult to use a quick reference (because related information may – literally – be found at opposite ends of the book).

GOOD STUFF

That being said, GURPS Space is still well worth your cash. After nearly twenty years of on-the-market playtesting, the ruleset found here is about as solid as they come. Plus, as a result of the extreme realism, research, and fidelity which SJG demands of its GURPS product line, GURPS Space is an authoritative supplement to any science fiction campaign. What does exposure to vacuum actually mean? Look it up here. How long does space travel take? Look it up here. What types of stars are there? Look it up here. How do bussard ramjets work? Look it up here. And on and on and on.

On top of that, GURPS Space also provides a near-encyclopedic survey of science fiction universes (despite its failings when it comes to the most recent developments of the field). When it comes to the creation of an SF universe, this needs to be your first stop: Nothing else will lay out the plethora of options available to you with a greater eye towards giving you the tools and options you need to create the world you want.

CONCLUSION

It doesn’t matter whether your SF is hard, soft, space opera, military, or fantasy; it doesn’t matter whether you universe reaches from here to Luna or here to Andromeda; it doesn’t matter whether you’re playing GURPS or Spelljammer: GURPS Space should be on your shelf.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Authors: Steve Jackson and William A. Barton (Third Edition Revised by David Pulver)
Company: Steve Jackson Games
Line: GURPS
Price: $22.95
ISBN: 1-55634-390-6
Production Code: 6005
Pages: 176

There was a time when my first impulse — and that of many gamers — when starting a new campaign was to reach for the most appropriate GURPS supplement. In recent years, this is a habit I’ve drifted away from. (Likely, in no small part, due to how easy the internet makes direct research.) Revisiting GURPS Space, though, I’m reminded of just how useful these supplements are, and I’ve pulled this back off the shelf to use as a resource for my Mothership open table.

GURPS 3rd Edition has, in the years since this review was first written, been replaced by GURPS 4th Edition, and this has brought with it a new edition of GURPS Space. I’ve never truly dived into the new edition, instead simply maintaining my existing library of 3rd Edition supplements, so I’m afraid I don’t have much to say about that. (Except that apparently even more material has been jettisoned, as the new edition requires a separate GURPS Spaceships.)

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

This is the tomb of Strongbow, aka Earl Richard de Clare, in Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin. Richard was an English nobleman who, through a complicated series of treaties, wars, and arranged marriages, was instrumental in making the Kingdom of Leinster subject to the English King Henry II. This fascinating history – and the many terrible and tragic events it begat – is not our primary focus here, but rather the tomb itself.

If you take a closer look at the effigy atop the tomb, you can see a rather noticeable dent atop its head:

This is not, as I first surmised, a cold-hearted allusion to Strongbow being killed by a strong blow to the head. It is not, in fact, an original feature of the effigy at all.

Instead, for several hundred years, it became customary in Dublin for business contracts, debt payments, and other business to be formally witnessed at Strongbow’s tomb. At the conclusion of each deal, a coin would be scraped across the head of the effigy for good luck. The original reason for this practice is variously disputed (possibly having something to do with checking whether a coin was a forgery by scraping it across hard stone), but the end result of such use after centuries was wearing a hole in the statue’s head.

This is a fun bit of history. It’s also exactly the sort of detail that can make your campaign world come alive: Whether the PCs are signing a contract or shadowing a banker doing business, it gives a bit of vibrant life to an otherwise forgettable interaction. It turns the generic into the specific. It draws you deeper into the world.

To add these kinds of details to your own campaign world (assuming you’re not pulling them directly from history), look for the use beyond use.

There will be plenty of stuff in your world that has a simple, straightforward, utilitarian purpose. Just choose one of these, and then­­­—

FIRST: ADD A SECOND USE. Ideally one discordant or at least orthogonal from the original use. So, for example, the tomb (primary) is also a place for moneychanging. (Or, conversely, you start with a place for ratifying contracts and decide that it could be the tomb of an important king. Our real world example can work either way.) Other examples could include:

• The blacksmiths of Maernath are also innkeepers for fire elemental traders, who book “rooms” in their forges.
• Contracts and treaties with the elves are “signed” by magically carving their initials into a tree in Dryads’ Grove. The ritual embodies the tree with a fey spirit, creating the dryad who protects the tree and adjudicates the agreement. Important agreements may have a single, dedicated tree. Less important agreements may share a tree, with a single dryad perhaps serving as adjudicator for dozens or hundreds of contracts. (The agreements, of course, are only considered binding for as long as the tree stands. And, vice versa, a broken agreement may cause a tree to die.)
• The altar of Kingsbury Cathedral is also where mothers are taken during labor so that their children might be born in a state of blessing.

SECOND: ADD A DETAIL. This should, like the hole scooped out of Strongbow’s skull, evoke the second use, making it manifest in the game world. Often these will be quite obvious, but the important thing is that the detail serves as a curious point of interest – something that will make a player ask, “Hey. What’s going on here?”

• The forges of Maernath having “viewing ports,” often accessible from the outside of the building, where visitors can call upon and chat with the elemental visitors.
• An elf lad seeking vengeance for the death of a contract tree that ruined his mother carries a stake of the tree’s wood, intent on plunging it into the heart of those he holds responsible.
• The Kingsbury altar has a contoured top. Some say it has been worn away through countless births; others that it was made that way when the altar was replaced in 1219 so that the mothers could be more comfortable. One tale claims the stone was burnt away by the buttocks of goddess who reputedly gave birth to a demigod on the altar.

You can, of course, add additional details as appropriate, but often less is more, and the important thing is weaving these elements into the life of your campaign.