This article is partially a review and partly an after-action report. An unplanned format with an unexpected system. Ten people without TTRPG experience and the solarpunk system Lost Eons. Both were a pleasant surprise.
The players
The party consisted of ten people, of whom only one had previous TTRPG experience, with Shadowrun specifically. It was an affinity group of people from the climate movement who take part in direct actions and occupations. Our paths crossed during their retreat, and I offered them a chance to play an RPG to build trust and improve group dynamics. They went for it, so I gave them two choices – Mausritter or Solarupunk. They chose the latter for one afternoon.
What is solarpunk?
Solarpunk is a literary and artistic movement that paints a positive vision of the future. A future where humanity overcame, or at least survived, the climate crisis. A future where human communities have an interconnection with nature. A future that is post-capitalist, just, and decolonial. Visually, it combines parts of art nouveau, high-tech and low-tech elements with natural motives. I am a big fan of this genre, and at the end of the article, you will find some reading and gaming links.
Lost Eons
Lost Eons is a dice pool RPG mechanically inspired by Blades in the Dark and the 24xx system. It comprises three books – The Players Handbook, GM's Guide and The Fens Setting. The player's handbooks include the basic mechanics, rules and classes. The main resolution mechanic is a dice pool roll of a universal d6 (soul die) and a dice of the corresponding skill. Everything six and above is a success, with two six-plus results being critical, three to five is a success with a complication, and one to three is a failure.
There are nine skills. Muscles, reflexes and endurance are the physical. Hack, search, and research are the mental. Analyse, persuading, and channelling are the mental ones. Their level ranges from d4 to d12.
Six classes are available to the players – Salvager, who can collect materials and items and use them to repair or construct new ones; Scrapper – who is your fighter type; Outcast – adept at hiding in the shadows and close to the Thief; Psych – who can sense thoughts and emotions of others and manipulate them as well; Seer – who is most adept at using magic; and the Shifter – who can use magic to change into animals. Each class begins the game with one talent; with experience, they can create new ones, creating a skill tree.
During character creation, players roll the dice twice to determine their previous life experience and which skills they developed. It's random and gives the game quite some variability – you can create a seer that is above average in magic and muscles or a magically talented scrapper. Otherwise, the players make the character from scratch.
The magic system is exciting. At the beginning of each game day, the GM distributes playing cards to the party – each character receives one, and a Seer gets two. These carts have words assigned to them; for example, Two of Spades is the word, Thunder. To use the magic, the player must describe their desired effect within reason and roll their dice. The players can pass their cards to one another, combining or expanding effects. As magic is available to every character, it creates room for creativity and cooperation. During our game, the party used every card given to them. The imaginative system reminded me of magic from Ursula le Guin's Earthsea Cycle. The player's handbook pdf has 44 pages.
The GM's guide is more of a toolbox for creating encounters, scenes and situations. It contains several random tables to create dungeons, find items or resolve random encounters. A bestiary is also included.
The system uses the Encounter die and the Clocks from Blades in the Dark. Even if Lost Eons is more of a narrative system, it has OSR adjacent flavour – in it is deadly and dangerous, has a lot of random generation, emphasises player agency in problem-solving and, in the rulings, not rules approach. The GM's guide is 28 pages long in pdf format.
We played a one-shot, which I put together using the GM's guide in about an hour. Hence, I did not use the settings handbook at all.
The play
The adventure took the party back to the surface from the safe underground Haven, where their ancestors survived the climate collapse. Their mission was to scout out if the occupants of their Haven, threatened by earthquakes, could return to live on the surface after hundreds of years. The way up consisted of three levels of tunes, pipes, staircases and rooms. As I wrote, it was all randomly generated, but here is my most extensive critique. The tunnel adventures are built significantly linearly. Even if they have a certain level of verticality, they are still made in the A -> B -> C-> scheme. It might not be an issue for some. Still, I prefer my dungeons to be circular or looped, allowing them to be explored from various directions. Paradoxically, the linear structure was beneficial when playing with a big group.
Ten people played for about five hours. I have never GMed a large group, and it is a challenge. Specifically, to allocate player time and attention more or less evenly. The advantage of this particular group was that they knew each other quite well and helped each other while being entirely independent. This really let me manage it. I really enjoyed that the party got into the system quickly and, about halfway through, knew the basic mechanics even without my help. The play flowed seamlessly, and with some luck, they survived without significant harm. It was great to see them creatively interact with the world. It says a lot about them as people and the GM book, which I used to create almost everything.
At times, we encountered the problem that not all mechanics were fully explained. That goes along with the rules not rulings approach. A more significant issue was that not all game terms were described in terms of mechanics. For example, the character sheet uses statuses like weakened or fatigued, but nowhere does the book describe their mechanical effects. I don't mind, and even enjoy, improvising rules on the spot, but more significant mechanics are something else. This was the second fault.
What speaks most for the play itself was that the table was full of laughter; people actively engaged with the world and went beyond the scope of the adventure, coming up with ideas that really surprised me. When we were saying goodbye a few days later, some of them thanked me for the game again. It was heartwarming. I am attaching a picture one of our players drew during the gameplay, covering everything necessary that the party encountered on their way to the surface.
Conclusions
Lost Eons is a solid RPG game combining narrative and OSR influences. The magic system is very creative, allowing the party to experiment and cooperate. The GM's guide is a good toolbox that you can use to build an adventure from scratch. A few mistakes aside, it is a good RPG product that will not take up much space. There are only so many solarpunk RPGs out there, so it's good this one is worth it.
A few links
A few wordson what solarpunk is
Sunvault –a collection of short stories, poetry and drawings. A great gateway to thegenre
No comments:
Post a Comment