An Endzeitgeist.com review

This two-shot for DCC clocks in at 40 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page title, 1 page photo/art attributions, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 34 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was moved up in my reviewing queue…because it’s the only Steve Bean Games book I haven’t yet covered, and I’m kind of OCD.

This review is based on the v3-version of the file, and it should be noted that its basic premise is that it takes place during the last leg of a Rock/Metal band’s tour through my native Germany. In the flavor text that litters the pdf. There is no need to play these folks, and a char-sheet is provided for your convenience. Being about the experience of rock/metal stars, the themes herein depict drug-abuse and sexual encounters, though the latter are not explicit. For me personally, I considered this to be pretty much PG 13, but if you’re particular about the like, that’s something to bear in mind. I definitely suggest tackling this with a mature group, as there is a Player versus Player (PvP) mechanic hardcoded into the experience. The pdf thus comes with a “contending for the limelight” tracker sheet, and a worksheet for players. As for the number of players – 4 is ideal, and it works with up to 6 players, but that does require some scaling up on part of the judge. Due to the one-on-one PvP-mechanics, I recommend only running this with even numbers of players.

It should be noted that Rock God Death-Fugue is very much indebted to the aesthetics of Black Sun Deathcrawl and Null Singularity, in that it could be likened more to an experience than to playing a regular adventure, though the PvP-mechanic radically changes the way in which this is played. Their fate is sealed – the rock gods will end some way, but how the world will remember them – well, that’s what this is about, and this “goal” ties directly in with PvP. As for rules, the rock gods use the basis of the wizard class, and determine two different ability scores that modify their spell check result – these are the only attributes they can spellburn. Vocalists can burn Strength and Personality, guitarists Agility and Personality, bass guitar players Strength and Intelligence, drummers Agility and Stamina, and other artists get to use Personality and Intelligence. It should be noted that rules don’t explicitly explain that – you’ll have to reference the character sheet for that.

The group should collectively decide the genre their band plays in. Each rock god is assumed to be looking for art in its purest form, which correlates with a sense of walking the tightrope between genius and insanity –and which comes with a driving force, a thanatotic urge – one of the dark 27, which represent central and crucial flaws that range from badly chosen sexual partners to addictions and the like.

These also, to a degree, also act as a justification for the means in which “spells” are used – the pure truth of artistic expression can highlight a caster’s fundamental falseness and destroy the moral compass, violate dignity and integrity, and at the same time, fuel the creative fires. I could list a ton of my favorite albums and artists for whom this certainly held true to a degree or another. In rules-terms, this is called “Crisis of Self” and it represents basically the corruption mechanic of the game. The pdf contains the two spells this knows, the first of which would be Aura of the Dark Muse, which is basically a means to control beings that is enhanced in its casting by the size of the audience. The Dark Muse Provides basically conjures forth an item ex nihilo – the bag of drugs, the shotgun, and so on – both spells are codified as level 2 spells and come with their own notes on unintended consequences (misfires) and crisis of self (corruption) effects. Unintended consequences and misfires are resolved after the PvP duel, and only is applied once per duel, no matter how many such instances were triggered.

At the end of each concert-encounter/scene, there is a limelight-encounter – one or more pairs of PCs find themselves in a rare artistic moment, invoking the Dark Muse as a metaphysical concept. The limelight battle is basically a simplified spellduel: the judge sets up the frame, and the players narrate their performances. The PC with the higher Inspiration ability (this one is btw. rolled differently – 4d4+2, not 3d6 like the others; bingo – this would be the Luck stand-in!) – and yep, you have to reference the character sheet at the end of the pdf to realize that. But back to the limelight: The players of PCs NOT involved in a limelight battle each award a crowd bonus that ranges from +0 to +4 to one player contending for the limelight, based on which roleplaying they considered to be better. These are written anonymously on a sheet of paper and handed to the judge; the bonus is awarded to the player with the higher average or with more awards. The bonus thus awarded should approximately be equal to the net difference between the two average values between players, and it decreases by a cumulative -1 for each spell check comparison the contestant has lost to the other player.

The duelists then secretly assign spellburn to positions 1 – 5. What are these positions? Well, to understand the rules here, you have to get back to the limelight tracker. After this, they roll 5d20, and record low to high in the respective row; after that, duelists compare modified rolls, and burn Inspiration, as desired – this is noted down on the worksheet, to prevent cheating., but both PCs can competitively burn Inspiration over a single roll The higher check wins and advances the PC’s tracker by +1; for every increment of 6 (rounded down), that the winner exceeds the loser’s roll, the winner advances another step. A spell lost means switching to the other; loss of the second requires spellburn to continue, with the burn retroactively added to results already rolled.

The positions on the tracker are then adjusted as desired, and the duel ends when the two contestants are 5 or more spaces apart. This is repeated if required. Burning through too much Inspiration early may make you easy pickings for your fellow rock gods, so be careful! No Spell duel comparison or counterspell power checks are made, and there is no phlogiston disturbance. At the end of a contesting for the limelight, the PCs dueling dice off in a contested Personality check. If the PC who won the duel has the higher roll on this check, they steal 2 points of Inspiration from the loser of this check – an added insult to injury, if you will. The win/loss-record of these limelight battles ultimately determines the fate of the rock god in question. The wizard base chassis is an interesting mechanic that requires, ultimately, that players are smart regarding the use of their spells in roleplaying and in (limelight) battle. The pdf does note that a dark fate is in store for the rock gods – it’s a foregone conclusion, and as such, it allows the players to dive into the oftentimes darkly hilarious themes of musical excess.

And that is it as far as the mechanics are concerned – in order to discuss the remainder of the experience/one/two-shot, I will have to go into SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

… .. .

All right, only judges around? So, the “mini-campaign” this is contained herein consists of 13 encounters, which are sketched in a pretty minimalistic manner – and consist pretty much of a series of vignettes that lends a somewhat dream-like quality to the proceedings. Considering the themes of sex, drugs and rock and roll, this dream-like state makes sense and reminded me of movies like “Control”, wherein stage life is contrasted with the components beyond that. One could even speak of a fugue state of sorts. This means that the majority of the experience will be ultimately contingent on how the judge and players manage to fill in the encounters, but considering the down-to-earth locale, this isn’t as bad. The prelude has a weirdo fan show up – he wants the band to sign the cursed album of the band “Atramentous” – who recently died in a plane-crash. The strange guy is dragged away promptly. Thereafter, the encounters boil down to one-note set-ups that are wholly contingent on how the players and judge fill up these with meaning. We have fans out of control at a gig, who may need calming (stats provided)…and here’s to hoping that there’s an addict PC, because the second encounter wholly hinges on this addiction resulting in a score gone wrong.

This encounter also brings me to a component that kinda broke immersion for me – the thugs that crash the drug deal are all armed. With guns. In Germany. While this may not be utterly implausible, considering the obvious organized crime connection here, guns are strictly regulated in Germany. You won’t be bearing firearms in public, and if you get caught with even an airsoft gun (you know, an air gun that shoots plastic pellets), you may be in trouble. Statistically, quite a few of our criminals are more likely to bear such imitation guns rather than the real deal. I come from a family with a long hunting tradition, but beyond hunting rifles and VERY selective means to gain access to guns, things become very hard very fast for firearms proponents around here. How rare are guns? In all my 30+ years of life, I’ve never heard a gunshot outside a shooting range (and these are heavily and strictly regulated) or outside of hunting (ditto). An exceedingly small amount of people has access to firearms, and there are pretty strict background checks that check for histories of violence, mental illness, etc.

But I digress. A more problematic aspect would be that the other instances of the dark 27 have no such dedicated encounter set-up included. Indeed, drugs are a major focus – a fan that OD’d on heroin makes for an optional encounter; the next such vignette consists of an impromptu gig, wherein the PCs thereafter get to participate in a “swinger” scenario, i.e. the switching of sexual partners/casual sex with strangers, which includes a rather twisted rivalry/obsession between two NPCs that could turn to violence. Problem here – no stats are included.

After this, the PCs visit the concentration camp Buchenwald.

…yeah, this is the encounter where things become dark. I’ve been to Buchenwald, and Auschwitz, and a couple of other concentration camps for that manner. It’s a stark experience that is deeply unsettling, particularly if you’re a German with a functional moral compass and more than two brain cells. In the encounter herein, a semi-senile old lady mistakes the tattoo of a PC for a SS-insignia, and the wheelchair bound lady assaults the PC in question. She’ll have to be calmed…or she’ll die. This could be funny in another context – I have a dark sense of humor. Here, though? Utterly horrifying. Problematic here – how to stop here is never elaborated upon, neither are there suggestions on how to save here. In the absence of proper stats, we’re left with judge-fiat to determine success or failure, which is, frankly, frustrating.

En route to Frankfurt, we have easily the most complex vignette, because it actually is a multi-round encounter, wherein the tourbus of the PCs careens out of control – including a smashed windshield, a driver in flames, etc. After one final limelight conflict – the fan from the prelude, the weirdo with the Atramentous album, returns…and shoots the most successful PC dead. Roll credits, narrate epilogues. As a final nitpick: Kauptman, the last name of the perpetrator, is an anglicized version of the German name Kaufmann – using the proper version here would have added at least a bit to my sense of immersion.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are per se very good on a formal level; on a rules language level, the pdf could do a better job differentiating between steps and the like. Grating for me – sometimes, the text uses “2” when no specific number in the game context is referred to, and “two” when referring to actual game mechanics. This may be a small thing, but it exacerbates one of my main gripes with this supplement. I can’t comment on the print version, since I do not own it, but in an utterly puzzling move, the pdf has NO BOOKMARKS. The pdf uses shaded stock art and photography for a great effect, and combined with the layout, it makes for an aesthetically pleasing pdf – at a cost.

Layout – oh boy, layout. The book is aesthetically pleasing – its format is uncommon and more quadratic than you’d assume – this generates the illusion of a CD/DVD-booklet, an illusion that is further enhanced by the lyrics of bleak rock/metal songs that are printed in black letters throughout. I really enjoyed these…but guess what? The actual rules-text? That’s presented in a blue ink-like font that looks a bit like it is hand-written. The rules text and game-relevant material looks like notes in a notebook that have been added in on post-its etc. – like a sketchbook, paper clipped inside, partially covering the lyrics in the background. Here’s the issue – I’d honestly like to read the entirety of the lyrics…and the font of the rules is really, really ANNOYING. It makes reading the rules text take longer. It makes it hard to distinguish rules-relevant material, as there’s no bolding, no italicizing here. It means you’ll be reading the margins more than the rest of the book. And it labors under the misconception that adding in “#” for “number of” in a running sentence and using “b/c” will add to the illusion conveyed by the book. It does not, it is frickin’ grating. Add to that the inconsistency regarding the numbers. And then, there’s the main issue that’s exacerbated by this presentation: I have rarely seen a book this refined, that does such a bad job explaining its rules. There is no sensible sequence here. You need to flip back and forth to understand anything. You need to reference the character sheet to understand some rules references. (!!) Without looking at the character sheet, you’ll be hard-pressed to get how the rules work. Let that sink in. The pdf is, from a didactic point of view, needlessly obtuse. Far beyond the levels of obtuseness that e.g. Black Sun Deathcrawl or Null Singularity sported, to the point where I really considered it to be exceedingly grating. This pdf opted for style over substance, opted for not breaking the aesthetic vision – which is valid…up to the point, where the presentation sequence is such a pain that I would have just put this down and never attempted to use or understand it again, were it not for the fact that I’m a reviewer. Now, remember that this has NO BOOKMARKS, and you’ll be flipping back and forth from start to back until you get how this is supposed to work.

In short: This is one of the most inconvenient books I’ve analyzed in quite a while. And Steve Bean’s Rock God Death-Fugue didn’t need to be that – the contesting the limelight PvP mechanics are actually an interesting mechanic, though one that could have used expansion. Which brings me to my second major gripe with this supplement: Its scope. There is not much meat to this supplement beyond the PvP-component. The encounters are sketch-like, and when you read two paragraphs on an aesthetically-pleasing page and realize that this is the entirety of information you’ll get for the encounter, you’ll start being pissed off by the lack of actual content on the per se lavish pages. In a way, this is as minimalistic in its presentation as Black Sun Deathcrawl and Null Singularity, but without the singularity (haha) of purpose that these offered. By grounding this in reality, by creating an illusion of depth via the dark 27, we really could have used more meat here, we needed more complexity to contextualize this in its realistic backdrop. The presence of the spells also feels like they are, in a way, a needless addition, and particularly on repeat playthroughs, can become somewhat stale. As the system already simplifies spellduels, further tweaking for depth, perhaps with a direct correlation of the dark 27 and the abilities of the respective rock god, would have been amazing.

And no, I am not talking out of my behind: When you list the actual game-text on a word-doc, you’ll be left with MUCH less content than the page-count would suggest, and here, this lack of content actually hurts the game. And this is a genuine pity, because I damn well love the idea here. I love the scenario. As a lifelong Metalhead and aficionado of all kinds of rock music (minus soft rock), this is pretty much right up my alley. And the macabre “you are doomed”-angle? Genius!

At the same time, this supplement promises depth that it doesn’t have on a symbolic level. Whereas Black Sun Deathcrawl and Null Singularity have the necessity to find your own meaning and in-game identity hardcoded into their DNA, this one professes a level of depth in the title that it never lives up to. I am not making that up, mind you: The pdf does imply that depth, for a very brief time, tries its hand at symbolic depth: In case you did not know: “Death-Fugue” is a reference to perhaps the most well-known poem of the genre of Trümmerliteratur, post WWII-literature, in which Germany tried to reestablish a culture that wasn’t tainted in aesthetics and language with the verbiages and themes claimed by the Nazis; the poem, of course, would be the masterpiece “Todesfuge” by Romanian-born Paul Celan, and it has entered popular culture via famous oxymora like “Schwarze Milch der Frühe” (Black Milk of Dawn) and the often (mis-)quoted “Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland” (Death is a master from Germany); its melody, repetition and content is famous, stark and brutal. It is part of the German school curriculum, and it shows a glimpse of the horror of being in a concentration camp in a devastatingly effective manner. The only encounter in this pdf with any close ties to this theme would be the one in Buchenwald, and as noted, it lacks game-relevant information and ultimately is just another brief step in a sequence of token vignettes without gravitas on its own. It fails the theme of the Todesfuge as hard as it possibly can. It also is bereft of any ramifications; which also extends to the other more combat-y encounters. There isn’t enough going on beyond the PvP; there is no reason to be a team-player, to try to help to survive, etc.

Ultimately, all the depth of the exploration of the abysses of creative excess must come from the interaction of players and judge; the pdf provides the absolute bare minimum of set-ups, and all depth must be generated; but unless you and all players are musicians with experiences that resound herein, then you probably, ultimately, won’t be able to 100% understand the emotional aspect of the conditio humana experienced herein; much like folks that have not experienced true despair probably won’t get anything out of Black Sun Deathcrawl. Thing is: Being an artist is a more peculiar and personal experience than the ones evoked by Black Sun Deathcrawl or Null Singularity. The pdf brands itself as a tragicomedy, and I can see that; I can see this change of pace in the make-belief in our silly elfgames making for a fun offering. It’s fun to play the massive egos of caricatures of egoistical rock stars! But the game doesn’t embrace the ridiculousness wholly; instead, it has these tie-ins to a deeper, darker meaning, sports this pretension of depth, which ultimately only compromises the “fun” aspect of this supplement, at least for me.

In Buchenwald, at the very latest, all fun evaporates for me, and the change of tone can’t ever recover from that – which would be a GREAT thing – had this been the half-way point before the inevitable begin of the collapse. But Rock God Death-Fugue lacks the length and detail to properly develop this change in tone and pace. The brevity, scarcity or rules-and flavor-relevant material, coupled with the emphasis on style over substance, is frustrating –because Rock God Death-Fugue has all the makings of a true masterpiece.

It comes tantalizingly close to being a monumental experience that could have dwarfed, easily, Black Sun Deathcrawl. As written, though, I am left with a supplement, which, while beautiful, sacrifices functionality on the altar of aesthetics, and that requires serious player- and judge-mojo to reveal its true potential. With the right group, this can be a true masterpiece and a memorable experience; with the wrong group, it can be a frustrating failure…and I can’t rate the skill of hypothetical groups and player constellations out there. I can rate how this helps enhance player/judge interactions, how good a job it does at enhancing the roleplaying experience. And ultimately, my response, alas, is that this doesn’t do a particularly good job there. If you are intrigued by the novelty of the setting and premise, if you enjoy the cool premise and are intrigued by the PvP-mechanics, then this is worth checking out – you should round up from my final verdict.

But how to rate this? Ultimately, this had all the makings of a masterpiece, but fell short by a long shot, at least for me; as such, I wrangled long and hard with my own convictions here. I do consider this to have some really flashed of brilliance, but it’s at the same time, a very deeply flawed offering. As such, my final verdict will clock in at 2.5 stars, rounded up.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This massive adventure clocks in at 56 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with an impressive 52 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review is part of a request of one of my patreon supporters.

Now, first of all: This adventure is unlike any other I’ve reviewed so far; it genuinely managed to evoke a sense of jamais-vu, which is a rare thing for me these days. It should be noted that a portion of the proceeds from selling this adventure will be donated to a charity focusing on technology education for rural, Latino youth. Formally, this is a DCC-funnel. That is, it is a module for 0-level characters. 3 -4 per player, for some will die. It is also an adventure that actually defines a lot of the campaign world into which the PCs will be thrust. We have plenty of read-aloud text, in case you were wondering.

While one could construe it to be a holiday adventure of sorts, in that is has themes of the year ending etc., it is, ultimately, a module that works just as well during any other time of the year. It is also a module that has left me deeply conflicted, more so than almost all other adventures I have covered over the course of my reviewer’s existence. As such, I’d urge you to read the entirety of the review, for there is a lot of ground to cover.

Since some of my readers tend to ask: This module is pretty deeply entrenched within DCC’s rules aesthetics, so it’s not any easy module to convert in a linear manner; while the module offers a rich and easy panoply of things to mine conceptually, I think that converting this one would prove taxing for me. Make of that what you will.

Okay, so the default assumption of the module is that it takes place in the region of Varjorma, basically a frigid north where the border between world becomes tenuous and thin. The PCs are assumed to be Zvart as a default – lithe, olive-skinned demi-humans with a slightly animalistic cast. A 10-level race-class is provided, and we have a progression of up to +6 for Fort and Will-saves. Action die starts at d20 and upgrades to d20 + d14 at 6th level,, +d16 at 7th, to culminate at d20 + d20 at 8th level. Crit die and table begin at d6/II, and improve to d16 over the course of the race-class progression. Attack improves to +6, and we get 5 titles for levels, culminating at 5th. Zvart get 1d8 HP per level, are trained with single-edged daggers, darts, slings, javelins, short spears, clubs and short swords. They are sensitive to iron like elves, getting a free mithril armor and weapon at first level. They have infravision 30 ft., and they are lucky: They may burn Luck to lower the results of enemies that would attack, damage or use spell-like tricks or skill checks that would harm the zvart. This only works when direct harm is the result. A zvart may burn a maximum of 1 + class level points of Luck to affect a single roll of the bones.

Zvarts may make an action die roll to lay on hands as a clerics, and they may not heal undead, constructs, etc. Stamina modifier and level are added to the action die, and treats the target of restoration as being of adjacent alignment for the purposes of determining effects. The race-class comes with a d24 occupation table. Hmm, personally, I think these fellows are a bit overkill, and they don’t exactly fit my vision of DCC’s flavor, feeling more like a high-fantasy race. That being said, it is easy enough to ignore these fellows and run the module with other characters.

Now, the adventure also presents two fully-depicted new patrons, including invoke patron tables, but it should be noted that these are inextricably entwined with the story presented within. Thus, in order to discuss both them, and the narrative framework of the adventure, I will now go into SPOILER territory. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion. … .. . All right, only judges around? Great! In the ancient times, two evil demi-gods coupled, spawning the Nine Afflictions – one of those being Grim Inchyron, inventor of colic and artificer most foul. An agent of Chaos most foul, the entity managed to murder Lamushea, the Law-Shaper, wearing the deific face to instill untold chaos among mortal agents, prompting untold suffering to spread. Unbeknown to the entity, Lamushea was not truly slain – instead, the divine essence had fled into the mighty Krytz, a potent scrying device and divine symbol. However, on the eve of victory, the plans of Grim Inchyron were foiled by the most unlikely of things: An act of moral transcendence, wherein mortals forgave their obviously mad deity. This act struck down Grim Inchyron, making it a mere shadow of itself, the devil-wraith. The corporality of the legendary Artificer of Anguish fused with Lamushea’s essence, becoming something else entirely – Laylokan, the God of Weighing the Cost of Balance. The birth of this god stripped the world of any memory of these world-shaking events, and these memories converged into a kind of planar morality tale, which encapsulated both devil-wraith and the Krytz. Laylokan fashioned the eponymous winter-calendar to contain this lost tale, and he has borne the massive thing ever since.

The PCs meet Laylokan in a penumbric glen, in the space between planes and worlds, trapped, in a way: Barbed imps assault the wintry clearing and drive the PCs towards the vicinity of the world-calendar. Communication with Laylokan will, among other things, yield this:

"The Winter Calendar Contains the tale Of murder and miracle That upended the scales Hubris for both: Devil, and 'wisdom impearled;' The morals you glean Will reshape the world!"

In order to return from the penumbric twilight, the PCs will have to enter the morality tale in order, from chapter 1 to 7, exploring the Sacred Krytz Mystery. The god emphasizes that the PC’s task is NOT to stop what is happening – the events have already come to pass, after all. It is their job to witness, and they cannot influence the ultimate outcome of the story. After 4 intervals of the story, the PCs are to relate what they witnessed within the chronicles, and determine the moral of the tale. One or more PCs MUST take the perspective of Law; one or more PCs must take the perspective of Chaos – this ultimately provides a lens that is a great example why I loathe the alignment system as a simplification in all D&D-related games with a fiery passion. Here, the dichotomous nature of the Law/Chaos-conflict looks particularly bad, as DCC favors the old-school notion of Chaos equaling…well, Warhammer chaos. The thing with tentacles that’ll end worlds. I was pretty surprised, considering the dichotomous set-up, to see the consequences here slightly more nuanced than what I expected to witness.

But back to moral-making. The remainder of PCs will decide on the preferred interpretation, and if you don’t want to handle the like solely on the basis of roleplaying, there is a mechanic solution presented as well, and some guidelines for judges are presented. A moral should, for example, not exceed 12 words, and some example from playtesting help judges contextualize material.

Now, in contrast to my expectations, this indeed makes good on its promises as per the vast impact this adventure can have on the world: The first of the aspects, and most obvious one, would be the two new patrons. One of these would be the aforementioned devil-wraith as a remnant of Grim Inchyron. On the other side, we have the Logos of Lamushea the Law-Maker, a radical and stern adherer to the law, who is, depending on your interpretations and personal point of views, just as dangerous as the devil-wraith – less overtly malign (doesn’t make tainted PCs spread colic to kids, unlike the devil-wraith…), and more Judge Dredd-y, if you will. Both of these do come with proper invoke patron tables, patron taint tables, spellburn and no less than 3 signature spells per patron. These patrons may end up replacing a major deity of the campaign world or never materialize, depending on the choices of the PCs.

Moreover, the decisions of the PCs influence pretty much EVERYTHING. How stifling and restrictive or how loose and inefficient laws are, religious freedom, warfare, government, morality and ethics – Law, Chaos and Neutrality all have the consequences of triumphs for a given field noted in specific sheets, and a sheet for the judge allows for easy tracking of the consequences of the PC’s decisions. These decisions not only influence fluff – they also greatly influence how some class mechanics and in-game crunchy bits work. This commitment to consequences is the greatest and most impressive aspect of this adventure, and something that made me smile with honest glee. At the same time, it also represents the crucial failing of the adventure itself, but in order to elaborate upon that, I need to start discussing the respective chapters into which the PCs are thrust.

You see, the fact that the module per se does not recount the tale as exposition (that would be boring) means that it sports basically scenes from the epic conflict between law and order – the first scene, for example, puts the PCs into the homebase of Grim Inchyron, the labyrinthine undercroft ( a nod to Melsunian Arts Council’s ‘zine?), where the horrid entity if currently recounting his masterplan in a kind of pulpit, while his demonic legions haunt the caverns. The complex comes with a small map (no scale provided) and mechanically is navigated via Stealth and Navigation checks – d20 + Int modifier + 1 for related occupation +1 per successful assist. The PC’s task is to escape, to survive, and enough successes mean that they get out. Pretty detailed tables closely correlate exact performance and thus help, though the features the PCs happen upon doe not really mirror the pretty small complex. Basically, ignoring the map and running this like an abstract labyrinth are the best course of action, as the horrid Affliction rants on and drones. And yes, the rant is represented.

Sounds like a cool encounter? Yeah, it is. Here’s however, the failing of the module, and it is a pretty crucial one, as far as I’m concerned. The actions of the PCs and the themes of the respective encounters do not correlate to the things the PC’s moral making influence in the world to come. The first component here is about government …yeah, I could draw a (very) flimsy connection here, but ultimately, there is no really pronounced one. This is so obvious to me, and kinda sad, for the story told is epic enough to actually feature such themes, to correlate to the things changes. Not every encounter has its own moral-making, mind you: This whole sequence prompted moral making number 1, whereas the next two encounters have one moral making process assigned to them, not 2.

The second encounter, though, blows this one out of the water – big time. The PCs are transported to a place of fundamental power, to witness Grim Inchyron’s assault on the forces of Lamushea. (As an aside: The pdf previously stated that Laylokan would not utter the devil-wraith’s name, yet here it’s stated in the read-aloud text.) This place of power is a ginormous tower fashioned of house of cards style clay tablets, and it’ll be assaulted by slag hellions, and clever use of sticky clay vats and terrain can help the PCs stave off the horde, as a fight of most epic proportions rages. Well, or here things become actually cooler, you can blend this encounter (which is hurt slightly by the lack of artworks or maps – I had to really carefully read this to get what’s going on) with Jenga or a similar game as a prop/mini-game to supplement the proceedings! This is epic and a really creative alternate way of determining the extent of foes faced(how well the PCs prepared. Kudos!

Encounter 3 has the PCs meet an elven arms dealer working with grim Inchyron, and then infiltrate the Foundry, where the horrid entity is creating the Ferro-Zefir (think infernal bull mecha, it’s there to impersonate Lamushea) – there are different means of getting out of the sweltering heat and choking fumes of the foundry, and falling unconscious is just as possible as stealing the Ferro-Zefir – the escape clause here is truly banal. There is a minor layout glitch that cuts off half a sentence here, though, and this would be another good point of criticism against the module. It is utterly puzzling, from a player-perspective, how to beat this one. There are multiple ways, and failure is very unlikely here, but ultimately, in this one, following the task of just witnessing is all that’s required….where previously, getting out was required. Just waiting did not suffice. I strongly suggest to all judges running this adventure to provide some additional hints by Laylokan – otherwise, this can become a bit frustrating, as player’s attempt to guess what’s required.

In encounter 4, the PCs are to bear witness to the world suffering by the claws of chaos, but are told that they can lessen that harm – ultimately, that has no consequence, though. The PCs witness the forces of Grim Inchyron attempting to burn the Chapel of Akaa – instead of providing a reward, failing to stop the firestarter devil-things will expose the PCs to a chance of gaining a corruption…or to dissolve and die. As an aside: The chapel’s artwork features a black sun, which may be a hint towards the rather…potentially dark components of too strict law-adherence. Or it has been chosen by accident/for its non-political meaning. This encounter and encounter 5 are linked as far as moral making is concerned, and encounter 5 rocks: It has super-shrunk PCs in a ginormous living room of Grim inchyron eats sprites – these can be freed and grant luck…but freeing them will cost time, the carpet is a horrid thicket, and the dire rat? It’s, relatively to the PCs, gargantuan. These two encounters feel like they should easily have a direct correlation to morals, but they are associated with…war and racial conflict. Okay

The final scene within the calendar presents an emotionally brutal decision. The betrayal of the Artificer of Anguish is in full swing, and the PCs happen upon a priest being in danger of being slaughtered by an enraged mob. Forgiving the god is a noble act…and if no PC volunteers, a little girl will do so, but whoever offers forgiveness…is actually slain. No save. The character is transformed into pure, redemptive force, part of the energy that created Laylokan in the first place. Well, correction – only the PC with the highest Personality is slain – the others instead get a +1 Personality and Luck…which isn’t really fair from a game-design perspective and could be somewhat frustrating. Indeed, the module seems to acknowledge that this represents a WTF-moment that may require explanation – but, you see, that is one of the issues here. If there was a correlation between encounters and moral making, this would be more evident. Similarly, it would be fairer if the player whose PC actually died received some form of reward. PCs trying to take possession of the Krytz is also covered here, and after a final moral-making, the PCs are sent back to their world.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are good, though not perfect on either a formal or rules-language level. Layout adheres to a no-frills two-column b/w-standard and the pdf features a few decent b/w-artworks. The cartography is basic, with the exclusion of the cool isometric map of encounter 5. No key-less, unlabeled player-friendly versions are provided. The pdf does come with two hand-out style artworks. The pdf does have bookmarks that point towards these aforementioned small graphics, but that’s it. In a puzzling decision, the pdf has no bookmarks apart from these, which renders electronic navigation a colossal pain. I strongly advise in favor of printing this when using it, particularly since you’ll want to use the moral making sheets for reference. I can’t comment on the merits or lack thereof of the print version, as I do not own it.

Steve Bean and Julian Bernick, with development by Roy Snyder and Brendan LaSalle, have created a truly UNIQUE adventure that particularly jaded “been there, done that” players will appreciate. I certainly have never read anything like it, and the idea behind the living morality tale to form a world? Pure frickin’ genius. Indeed, the same could be said about a few of these encounters. This module provides the means for the PCs to play in the mystic high-fantasy land that Appendix N literature usually relegates to the past, referencing it only in remarks and subordinate clauses. Theme-wise, this is more high fantasy than what we usually get to see in DCC, while still sporting the general notions and aesthetics we associate with DCC-adventures.

That being said, as much as I love the sheer ambition and creativity of many of the encounters and the overarching plot, I also consider this module to have failed. The lack of correlation between encounters and the things the PCs shape via their morals makes the whole tale and the consequences feel disjointed, and the module does not do the best job of providing the exposition that would make it evident for the players what actually happened. The cosmic plot and struggle, ultimately, can be hard to grasp. This may be intentional, but I don’t think it is in this case, as the success-scenarios of the respective encounters also suffer somewhat from this issue. In one instance, passivity and focusing on survival is rewarded, whereas in another, failing to intervene results in a save-or-die. The module is inconsistent. It also clearly depicts Chaos as evil – granted, something that DCC tends to do, in the tradition of old-school gaming, but here and there, glimpses of a more nuanced concept of law and chaos can be glimpsed at, with the patron for Law featured within being potentially rather creepy.

In a way, this adventure feels like it almost achieves true greatness, but then falls flat of what it could have been. The puzzling inclusion of the new race eats some pages that the encounters could have used to flesh out their challenges or differentiate between successes. Anyways…as noted in the beginning, there is a lot to love about the ambition and high-concept idea of this adventure, but similarly, it’s easy to dismantle the scenario and show the flimsy connections between the cosmic plot, the morality aspect and the consequences ultimately encountered, almost as though the morality angle had been added in hindsight.

But I’m speculating here. When this module works, it has impact, gravitas and works exceedingly well – using a funnel to shape the campaign world is a glorious angle, and one that plenty of judges can certainly reappropriate to their own scenarios. But when the encounters feel suddenly very down to earth or even banal, when the success-conditions are opaque and when players are suddenly punished for things that were clearly fair game an encounter ago, the module can also be excruciatingly frustrating in how close it gets to greatness. Instead, all those glitches, lack of bookmarks, etc. do accumulate – unfortunately to the point where I can’t rate this higher than 3.5 stars, rounded down. If you do think that the type of tale woven here, that such a world-shaping funnel would be fun for you and yours, then this is worth getting. Just get ready for some work to polish the connective tissues of this adventure’s narrative.

Endzeitgeist out.

An ENdzeitgeist.com review

This supplement/one-shot/setting-ish book clocks in at 56 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 52 pages of content (laid out in 6’’ by 9’’(A5), in a landscape orientation), so let’s take a look!

This review was requested and sponsored by one of my patreons, to be undertaken at my convenience.

I can review this book in one sentence: Black Sun Deathcrawl, Scifi-edition.

…I jest, of course. Partially. I assume familiarity with my review of Black Sun Deathcrawl in the discussion below. If you haven’t, please take a look at it. You can find it here.

You see, Null Singularity does note on its cover that it’s inspired by Black Sun Deathcrawl, and the author has actually asked Black Sun Deathcrawl’s (I’ll shorten that to BSD below) creator for his blessing – a brief interview can be found in the back of the book, spanning two pages.

And indeed, in a way, Null Singularity does imitate BSD in several obvious key components: The ominous flavor-text used to establish tone and setting? Check. The slightly obscure, doom-laden introductory scripture that invites individualized exegesis to fill out details? Check. The unstoppable, all-encompassing threat, coupled with a theme of futility and nihilism? Check. You get the idea – there are a lot of similarities, quite intentionally so.

However, there also are plenty of differences that mirror the science-fiction context and that influence, rather significantly, the tone and experience of playing this game. In a way, it is nigh impossible to discuss Null Singularity without spoiling some parts of it – before I get into the “story”-related components presented within, I will add another spoiler-warning, but in order to discuss it and how it diverges from BSD, I have to explain a couple of things, so if you want to go into this as a blank-slate experience for maximum efficiency, stop reading NOW and skip ahead to the conclusion.

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Okay, only judges around? Okay, so a key difference of this supplement and BSD would be focus. BSD is very much a game of savagery, one wherein struggle for survival is often brutal on a physical and emotional level. Null Singularity is similar in that it gets rid of classes and races – there only are the Voidants (character sheet provided in the back). The Null-Singularity is basically consuming everything, a thing beyond even the Singularity as an event, something beyond the infinite, crushing in its endless inevitability – it is, to quote the pdf, “EveryWhere and EveryWhen.” Voidants, life, learned F/Utility aboard their VoidArks. There is just the mission. It has no parameters.

Voidants roll 3d6 for ability scores, get 1d6 +1d4 +2 for Stamina modifier hit points, and one ability is raised to the lowest score that improves its modifier. Voidants act, functionally as thieves, substituting the thief skill that works best for using a scifi item/accomplishing a task: Find Trap to diagnose malfunctions, etc. Alignment is randomly rolled, and each PC begins play with a Void Zoot, Oh-Too Well, Squawk Box, VoidZeal, HydraCycler, HeatPak, Battery and Ration (Ize-Kreem Brik and Or’nge-Flave Powder). You get a d12 roll for additional equipment, and you roll 1d4-1 to determine how many pieces of equipment are malfunctioning; then, a d12 to determine the extent of the malfunction. Every 30 minutes real time, every piece of equipment with failure imminent will be destroyed/shut down. Also, every PC rolls a d6. On a natural 1, one piece of survival gear will malfunction – for every additional 30 minutes passing, you ADD another d6. If you roll all sixes, you find a salvageable piece of gear.

There is no Luck score, only Resource Fullness. Resource Fullness may be burned, but PCs don’t get a luck die and do not recover burned points. A PC at 0 Resource Fullness is taken by the Void.

Resource Fullness is also on a timer: Every 20 minutes real time, all players mark off half a box of Oh-Too, H2O and Battery Pak (for heat). In any round that a PC has zero Oh-Too, H2O or Battery, or a malfunctioning Void Zoot or HeatPak, the PC MUST burn one point of Resource Fullness.

PCs may steal Resource Fullness from other PCs and monsters.

Okay, this is the basic rules-chassis, and it is radically different from BSD. It isn’t focused on exploring the dynamics between PCs and Hope, about what it’ll take for them to give up. This is not, like BSD, an attempt to depict the experience of depression or other such metaphysical experience. Instead, from language to rules, it is focused on one thing “F/Utility.” The duality encompassed in this term is stark and reverberates through the entirety of the supplement: For one, Voidants being thieves in functionality places a greater emphasis on trickery and adds options to their array, at least when compared with BSD’s Cursed.

The language, as you could glean from the equipment names above, depicts a clever evolution of terms, which adds a distinct feeling of both estrangement and familiarity – like many contemporary scifi books, it thus manages to enhance immersion. From the rules, you will have noticed one thing: The voidants are horribly fragile, and unlike the Cursed, they can, and will die without their consent mattering in the least. That there is the central and most important distinction: Beyond the scifi-theme, which, by font, language, etc., evokes a stark and harsh sense of clinical detachment, the central theme and goal of this game is radically different from BSD: This is a game of survival and doing whatever it takes; it is indebted to BSD, yes; it is similar in many components, yes. It’s a wholly different playing experience nonetheless.

Since the launch of the VoidArks, XenoData has been collected, which is represented by stats for the XenoPhases encountered so far – these include GravSpectra, malevolent fields of gravity; silicate, maggot-like things that leech heat and fungal masses that consume Otoo. Quantum fluctuations caused by the Null Singularity represent hazards based on spell effects, and among these, there also would be StarkReal – basically, the madness engine of the system. And, there would be XenoHorrors. In a way, this feels like a better realized mini-bestiary/hazard array to complicate matters…but this is also where Null Singularity drastically diverts from the course of BSD.

The following is slightly more SPOILER-laden that before. I strongly suggest that players jump ahead to the conclusion.

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Only judges around? Great!

Know how I basically told you that the encounters in BSD, with one exception, pretty much sucked and probably should be ignored? Yeah, well Null Singularity goes a different route. The second half of the book is devoted to basically the adventure – we have massive read-aloud texts and a sequence of challenges that a judge could expand/develop further, if desired. It is here, where you can choose to play Null Singularity not as a customizable campaign template, but as a linear one-shot module, and honestly, it’s a pretty amazing series of encounters that we get here. The descriptive text really drives home the atmosphere of F/Utility suffusing the game, of the nightmarish existence depicted within. To quote from the introductory read-aloud text: "You were brought into being aboard Alektryon and you’ve spent 99.1968% of your life inside It. LifeDatum: you spend most of your time in SomniStays-Iz to help conserve resources. You hate it. In SomniStays-Iz you dream endlessly about the Null Singularity. Occasionally, you Re/Sur/Vive. And then, it happens. The VoidArk is experiencing catastrophic PlanetFall."

I am not going to explain the entirety of the plot here, but the F/Utility angle reaches its culmination in the end, when the book basically closes a loop, one that may not restract, but actually become worse. True to the focus on Survival, it is thus theoretically possible to replay this scenario over and over – to survive it. Null Singularity, within its bleak parameters, may be “won.”

The pdf does btw. offer an appendix for inspiring media.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no significant glitches. Layout adheres to a landscape, one-column b/w-standard, with the pdf using plenty of thematically fitting stock-art to enhance the stark atmosphere of the experience. Much to my chagrin, the pdf-version has no bookmarks, which makes navigating the pdf a colossal pain – a serious comfort detriment. I strongly suggest printing this or getting a print copy. I can’t comment on the merits or lack thereof of the print version, as I do not own it.

Steve Bean’s “Null Singularity” is more than Black Sun Deathcrawl in space – and that is quite a feat, considering the shared themes and obvious homage to the latter. In theme, this feels like someone took the black metal band Darkspace and wrote a game as bleak and uncompromising as their devastatingly bleak sound. The suggested bands in the appendix (Pink Floyd, Husker Du and Philip Glass) or acts like Mare Cognitum, imho, do not capture the mood half as well. The stark science-fiction backdrop is uncompromising in its vision, and the threats, the constant experience of malfunctions – they render this one brutally-tough game with a singular, most efficient vision.

And this brings me to the point that differentiates this most from Black Sun Deathcrawl, at least for me: While the trappings are similar, the function couldn’t be more different. Where Black Sun Deathcrawl, arguably, is more artwork than game, more experience than RPG, Null Singularity is, very clearly and distinctively, a game – a game of resource-management that shares themes and bleakness-levels with BSD, but a game that may be won – in a manner of speaking. Kind of. As a piece of game design, it is clearly superior in that its plot and playing experience is, by design, more differentiated. This, however, also means that it can’t duplicate the sledgehammer-like impact, the psychological intensity, of Black Sun Deathcrawl. I don’t think that this would trigger most folks, for example. So yeah, whichever of the two you prefer is ultimately up to what you want from the experience – or, as one of my players remarked, of “…how much of an RPG-hipster you are.”

Black Sun Deathcrawl manages, like e.g. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice did for psychosis, to depict, in a gaming context, how it can feel to live with depression.

Null Singularity does not attempt the like. Instead, its thesis could be summed up as follows: “Look, this is how you can make an experience like Black Sun Deathcrawl behave more like a game without losing the emergent storytelling from a super-bleak setting.” In a way, it re-gamifies the aesthetics of Black Sun Deathcrawl and creates something that is truly and wholly distinct from its parent. Beyond the different setting, Null Singularity is probably more fun for groups that like to see if they can “beat” or “endure” or “survive” something. It is more fun than Black Sun Deathcrawl, courtesy of the frantic resource consumption mechanics. On one hand, this makes it the better game; on the other, this means that it can’t, at least for me, reach the level of impact that Black Sun Deathcrawl had.

But what does it mean? Well, ultimately, in the face of the Null Singularity…nothing, of course. Only you can decide what meaning is, as a concept, to you and yours, only you can ascribe meaning, quantify and qualify your priorities and that of your group – whether you prefer this or Black Sun Deathcrawl is a matter of aesthetics and what you’re looking for.

As a reviewer, I consider Null Singularity a resounding success – it could have just been a lame clone of Black Sun Deathcrawl and instead created something wholly and radically distinct. While the lack of bookmarks hurts the book and makes it lose half a star, I still arrive at a final verdict of 4.5 stars, which I will round up for the purpose of this platform. This also deserves my seal of approval.

Endzeitgeist out.

For me, writing and tabletop roleplaying scratch two sides of the same creative itch. As I've examined the two hobbies (neither pays enough to be a profession . . . yet), I appreciate the creative freedom that each allows. I consider writing a very "open" individual creative act, one in which I can let my imagination run free. If I use the excuse of "poetic license," I can write whatever I want, rules of grammar be damned. At least for myself. Of course, there is an audience "out there" that I need to think about for works that I'm planning on having pub(lic)ished. Even then, my own wild flights of imagination fuel the writing.

Tabletop roleplaying is, or should be, in my style of playing and game-mastering, an "open" group creative act. Rules are there simply to adjudicate situations which characters do not fully control (e.g., combat resolution, "finding" of secreted doors or traps, etc). In other words, the game master facilitates the players as they cooperatively (NB: This does not mean "without internal conflict") "tell" a story where the outcome is not entirely known until the moment dice are rolled to determine the consequences of a particular course of action.

Of course, like any other group activity, you'll sometimes have someone who spoils the fun.

Sometimes, it's the game master herself!

We call this, in the Roleplaying Game (RPG) world, "Railroading". A Railroading game master pushes player characters into situations where they have to follow certain plot points in a certain order so that the story can be completed in the "right" way. Needless to say, this tends to stifle players who value, above all else, the right to choose their own character's actions. There's an old adage among game masters that "it doesn't matter what you plan as a GM, the players are going to screw everything up in the first ten minutes anyway". The character is, after all, hers or his, not the gamemaster's. Some systems (rightfully, I think) eschew the term "game master", instead using "judge" to reinforce the idea that the person in charge should be impartial, more of a facilitator than a dic(k)tator. The literary equivalent is the overbearing editor who simply will not allow the writer any creative freedom, who dithers with the author's work so much and in such a specific way that the author's work is no longer his own.

But there are instances where a writer works under self-imposed constraints in order to "squeeze" their own creativity. Italo Calvino's excellent If on a Winter's Night a Traveller is a prime example of this. In this novel, Calvino uses a complex mathematical iteration, as outlined in the book Oulipo Laboratory , to write what is one of the most brilliant second-person narratives in all of literature, possibly the only brilliant second-person narrative in literature. He purposefully used the constraint of the form to discipline the work and to create self-referential loops that, rather than alienating the reader with academic sterility, actually bring the reader further "in" to the story. The Oulipo, a rather exclusive and somewhat secretive group of writers and philosophers, have created an entire literary movement (though I doubt they would characterize their efforts that way) around this idea that creative writing can benefit from being constrained.

Until the last few months, I must admit that, while I have used Oulipo techniques to generate some of my own works, the idea of constraining my gaming was anathema . . . until Black Sun Deathcrawl! Here, author James MacGeorge opened my eyes to the possibilities of what could be done with gaming constraints. "BSDC," as it is popularly known, showed that, with its existential, even nihilistic atmosphere, gaming with constraints could be, dare I say it? Fun and full of despair?

The subtitle of Steve Bean's Null Singularity explicitly states that the adventure is "Inspired by James MacGeorge's Black Sun Deathcrawl, and this is clearly the case. The goal here is not to be heroic, not to defeat the powers of evil, the goal is to survive as long as you can. Defeat and death are inevitable. You will die! If you're lucky, you'll have the luxury of being driven insane before the unavoidable doom that awaits you, whether it is slow asphyxiation from lack of oxygen or being slashed to ribbons by the claws of the XenoHorror. Space is big and powerful. You are puny and weak. All is hopeless.

But it works. Perhaps it is the constraints themselves that allow for a full player immersion into the heart and mind of a character that is low on resources and in a great deal of trouble, an existentialist escapism that safely allows the player to face her worst fears, then walk away from the game table physically (though not psychically) unscathed. A story will play out and, judging from the mechanics, a very fun, if fatalistic story is to be had by players and judge alike. In other words, you won't mind being "railroaded", so long as you go into this knowing that you're going to die in the end. It's kind of like life that way, isn't it? There is a certain dark wonder to it all: the universe is doomed, you are low on resources, you are rather likely to go insane simply as a result of being where you are and realizing what is happening, and it is . . . awesome, in the truest sense of the word.

Mechanically, Bean's repurposing of the Dungeon Crawl Classics rules show just how resilient the DCC ruleset is. I am continually amazed by the different "flavors" of DCC that crop up. It is possibly one of the most malleable systems around. Null Singularity uses the skeleton of the DCC rules, but clothes it in its own . . . let's call it: "EVA Suit". Once you've participated in one of the scenarios in the book, you'll understand why this nomenclature is the only adequate description of this particular flavor of the rules. "Extravehicular activity" indeed!

All-in-all, I highly recommend Null Singularity. At $8+shipping for the hard-copy zine, it's definitely worth skipping Starbucks for a day. Available from Steve Bean Games. Get it while there's still time . . . before the Null Singularity swallows all of reality and your frail, puny body along with it!

As a direct descendant of Black Sun Deathcrawl, Null Singularity succeeds at carrying the tone of its parent forward without sacrificing originality. Simple, concise rules for timekeeping help to build a sense of urgency while allowing the doomed players a slim chance of hope, mayhaps a bit more than BSDC. The use of the DCC Thief class as a basis for Voidants is perfect- at the end, hurtling through space, we'll all steal whatever is around to sustain our fragile dying breath. Definitely recommended for DCCers, fans of storygame (forge) style play and fans of the end times.

This is an evocative little scenario, and really intrigues me despite its ultimately deadly endpoint. I would certainly be enthusiastic to run or play in it, though I feel it only fair to advise players of the genre conventions involved.

That said, there were a few aspects that didn't satisfy my personal tastes:

• Wasted Space - This 56 page document uses the first score of pages to parse out the setting in spoon sized dallops. Most of the early pages have only a brief paragraph or an unaccompanied picture. It isn't until about p.25 that we start to get really denser text.

I suspect the intent was to hit readers with suscinct, self-contained bits of lore or chargen to reflect on. But in practice I just found myself annoyed at having to constantly click to page down.

• DCC Lineage - I have nothing against Dungeon Crawl Classics, but I don't see why this was specifically intended for use with that system. Rather than giving an exhaustive list of Voidant related skills, it suggests reinterpreting DCC skills.

Aside from use of the Luck stat, I'm really not sure why an existing OGL space system like X-plorers or Hulks & Horrors wasn't used (White Star might've been in infancy when the game was being conceived). Or, for a fraction more page space, it could have been made as a self contained game, borrowing a page from Microlite20 or its ilk.

• Stat generation - This is not particularly more complicated than normal, but the selection of dice being rolled for hit points, and the after-roll stat adjustment makes me wonder what was trying to be achieved.

• NeoTekuLR terminology - There's a fancy word for everything. This is of course supposed to be evocative and show you how weirdly alien the future is to our modern conventions. And it works in that regard, I'll admit. But I found myself having to reparse words repeatedly, as I read along in the text even after figuring out their meaning the first time.

Also, I found that the spelled-out numbers above ten (as names and identifiers, not stat descriptors) really made me stumble over them while reading.

• Keeping Track - In addition to constant hazards the scenario scenes specifically throw at players, there are also persistent problems:

  • Every 20 minutes check for resource consumption.
  • Every 30 minutes check for equipment issues. Also remember that this chance is increasing. I don't know if these worked fine in playtesting, but were I running, I think I'd find keeping track of all of them a bit frustrating.
• End Notes - Throughout the text there were numbered references mentioned. It wasn't until my second read-through that I realized that a numbered list at the back of the book labeled "Course History DataLog" was actually a table of related end notes. Again, more of a personal preference, but I favor the immediacy of footnotes, so I don't have to scroll to the end of the PDF to read. Or at least a clearer (if less cleverly tone-setting) title to indicate an end notes section.

Despite these complaints, I'd like to reiterate that really do find the scenario grimly inspiring and do not regret the money spent on it.