A Nocturne play-test v0.8 is out!
The main rules pdf (it’s got bookmarks and everything, y’all) and a sheets pdf are up over at the itch.io page (https://thysane.itch.io/a-nocturne-play-test). There’s a bunch of changes in this, too many to write down here, so you can find the full changelog over here: https://thysane.itch.io/a-nocturne-play-test/devlog/34646/a-nocturne-v08-release
Let me know what you think, and if you’re running your own game of A Nocturne and want to drop me a line, feel free to message me here, on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thysane), or over on itch!
Your cluster sheets are super evocative. This is good stuff!
Silly minor questiom: how is a single Panhuman life worth 2 Profit? I can’t tell from the chart how you’re getting that.
Also, question on re-shelling: is it assumed that this setting has backups, or can consciousness only be transferred from a living body to another? Obviously The Broken can get around this, but I mean for everyone else.
Lex Permann Scale 0 (0 Profit), Complex (+1 Profit), Water etc. (+1 Profit) = 2 Profit. That said, if the panhuman’s body is made of extremely strong metal, that’s gonna be higher.
I haven’t run into this yet, but my current gut feeling is that unless the player says they’re making a neural backup (or takes a flashback to do so, of course), they don’t have one by default. Of course, without The Broken’s The Carriage Held… ability, said backup is probably going to be woefully outdated and perhaps a little faulty.
Thanks for the quick reply! I feel super guilty that I didn’t congratulate you on the updated release. I’m in love with the evocative setting details in the technology section (Membrane is amazing!) and the Look list.
Final nitpicky question: The Broken’s drone all have pretty visible and large example descriptions, yet it’s Load 0. How does that shake out?
Other good news: this version doesn’t lag terribly in my pdf reader like the last did!
Lex Permann I’m gonna be digging back into my Loads for the next version, ‘cos there’s a few that I’m a bit iffy on, that one included. Really, I’d just like to see how it works for people in play though.
I think I’m out of annoying questions for now. Thanks again!
Fitzwilliam’s Ashes rules text describes it as being Saryu.
Lex Permann Oh crap, good catch! I’d pasted in the black hole time dilation rules from the old Saryu text. Putting that on my long list of typos…
What’s the mechanic purpose of Gunning It? It doesn’t seem to take less time than the other options.
And the Technology section seems to imply that there’a no walkie-talkie style comms for the crew, unless I’m reading that wrong. Was it your intent to not allow communication at a distance on a Score?
Lex Permann the intent of Gunning It is to be slightly faster – could maybe use a slight reword on the Years Elapsed to make it more clearly distinguishable.
There are long distance comms, but only of the shitty radio variety, or line-of-sight laser transmission. Nothing on the order of skype or whatevs. You can do wireless communication, but it’s basically guaranteed to be corrupted and low quality unless you have line of sight or can bounce the signal, and then it’s limited by the speed of light – think how NASA communicated with astronauts in orbit during the cold war. Lots of crackle and delay.
📍
I notice that the sheets pdf is loading terribly slowly on my pdf reader; the previous version had this issue, but the new 0.8 core does not. Any clue what’s causing that?
Lex Permann It’s probably the fact that it’s compiled through Photoshop and has fairly high quality images throughout, whereas the main pdf is output from a rich text editor – I’m probably going to upgrade to InDesign real soon, which should somewhat resolve this issue.
The game has a great feel and coherence to it. I hope I get a chance to play or run it soon. Externalizing stress to the ship is quite novel — and is a brilliant way to do an AI going rogue!
It’s a thing of beauty, man. Love it, all the ships so far have so much life
There’s a reference to piloted armatures. Are warshells effectively expensive armatures that you climb into rather than reshelling into?
Michael Atlin I hadn’t necessarily thought of it that way (“piloting” might be a misnomer on my part, but I was trying to get across the disposable nature of Armatures), although that’s actually a very cool way of thinking about war-shells that I might explore a little more.
My group is going to give A Nocturne a go and I’m in the process of making a custom cluster – a region called the Deodand (“a thing surrendered unto God”) since I rolled a couple of alien god anomalies and decided this was a patch of space most people avoided because it was full of angry star-gods and just not worth the hassle. Any tips to give about coming up with those ‘neighbourhood quirk’ things for systems, like how the black hole system in Ram’s Horn has time dilation?
Patrick Harkin Fuck yeah, this sounds really cool. If you and your group have any feedback, remember that you can hit me up here!
For the system rules thingies, your best bet is to first look at the special rules for each of Blades’ districts to get a feel for things, but also remember that if you can’t come up with something special for the system right away, it might not necessarily need it. If you’ve got lots of alien gods, maybe their purviews, personalities, or the nature of the alien cultures that birthed/worship(ped) them can help define the rule. Also, sometimes these things will present themselves in play. I know this is sort of wishy-washy advice, but I’m still figuring it out meself 🙂
EDIT: Oh, and I almost forgot – look at how actual stellar anomalies and objects work. Like I just ripped the black hole stuff straight from popular scientific discourse and Interstellar. Think about how the presence of a star-god might warp or otherwise influence the system around it in ways that may or may not be supported by existing astronomical/cosmological concepts.
Calum Grace I’ll have a look through Blades tonight. Populous system will probably be the “default”, one system with a fascist military of corpse-men will probably have a modifier on security making engagements harder. The two haunted systems, one probably has time dilation due to an alien god with the “warps space time” descriptor and the second haunted system.. I’ll need to think on.
Patrick Harkin That all sounds great so far!
As an aside, seeing people create their own clusters for this is really, really cool. Once you’re done, if you have any feedback for me regarding making it more streamlined or ideas for guiding or commenting on the process within the text, feel free to send ’em my way.
Hey Calum Grace, I’m working on Roll20 sheets for A Nocturne. Do you have a logo graphic (similar in format to the one on the Roll20 Blades sheet) and/or background graphics for the ship modules that I could use?
Jakob Oesinghaus Oh man, that’s super cool, thank you! I’ll have to get back to you on that when I can spare a bit more time to dig through my files, but I dare say I have everything to fit those specs on hand.
An aside: having those sheets will make me and my players’ lives 100% easier in the play-test game, so looking forward to it!
Cool! Just hit me up when you’ve got them. I’ll give an update once the sheet is in a satisfactory state.
Jakob Oesinghaus Here’s the stuff, and thanks again for doing this man, I love the sheets you’ve had a hand in for Blades hacks so far. Looking forward to it. If you need anything else, I’ve probably got it!
drive.google.com – A Nocturne roll20 materials – Google Drive
Calum Grace
I don’t really have the capacity for announcements or proper tech support right now, but a sheet is a sheet: https://gist.github.com/joesinghaus/d0a21728cbf5685b3de461525742262e
Jakob Oesinghaus Holy shit man, this is fantastic, thank you so much! I’m gonna migrate my play-test game over to this ASAP. It’s starting to feel frighteningly like a real game…
EDIT: I’m digging into this now, and I’m really loving the little touches, like adding Armatures as a part of the main character sheet. This is sweet, man.
It is a real (and really interesting!) game, that’s why I made the sheets :).
P.S.: I made some small adjustments that I should have done before publishing those sheets; if you pull the code again for existing characters, you will have to jiggle all the action ratings and such so that dice rolls show up properly, except for those still at the default.
First session will be tomorrow. The players are the crew of the Haunter, a Dark Orb of alien origin. Ancient and listless, the Haunter’s exact origins are unclear but it’s believed to be connected to the Black Pyramid; the Black Pyramid is an alien god orbiting a white dwarf star, and which seems to be feeding off the dying star’s electron degeneracy, accelerating the transition to a purely-theoretical black dwarf. The Black Pyramid is alive and extrudes avatars from itself to communicate with worshippers, leading to the creation of a cluster-wide cult worshipping these Black Pharoahs. Perhaps the Haunter is a larger, renegade avatar of the Black Pyramid, or an infant member of the same species? Or perhaps the Haunter is a temple with a splitter core attached – but then, where are the priests?
The crew of the Haunter are not the first to have found it; an outer ‘shell’ of panhuman construction encapsulates a clearly-alien core. As the Haunter was found drifting in a spaceship graveyard that is prime hunting ground for scavengers and cannibal crafts, it appears likely whoever last settled the ship was attempting to profit from it somehow. Before they vanished. The ship is secure and has the ability, like its ‘parent’ the Black Pyramid, to extrude duplicate humanoids from its smart-material core, which it allows the crew to use as part of their missions as decoys.
Rep modifiers: By piloting the craft, the crew have been marked as special by the Cult of the Black Pharoahs. (+1) However, the ship has a bad history with the Migrant-Fleet Rhongomiand, whose robotic crew have long memories (-1). More locally, by getting the Haunter up and running again the PC’s have deprived the crew of the cannibal craft “Ravenous” of a fine prize, leading to bad blood between the crews (-2). But its stealth capabilities have proved invaluable to the smuggling routes feeding the Sovereign Revolution, a fledgling rebellion operating under the thumb of a fascist regime of half-dead tyrants (+2). They spend a Profit to increase their ties with the Revolution, to represent resources spent on a daring mission to sabotage a republic weapons platform that threatened revolutionary smugglers.
Patrick Harkin This all sounds incredible man, can’t wait to hear how this plays out! I really love how you and your group have tied the craft into the cluster (as well as how the cluster itself seems so tightly-wound), and the way you’re bringing in other craft and nomadic factions. Good shit.
After action report on session one. This was my first time running any Blades product at all, actually, and being so improv-y meant it was quite different from my usual structured investigation games (lots of DG and CoC). The crew of the Haunter are: Jian Noble, a flamboyant and pan-ethnic Earther Outlaw cast out into this backwater cluster centuries ago in a slow-drifting coldsleep ship; Wayne Rockford, an Orbital Pilot who spent his youth working with the Hiraethi machine culture and whose knack with AI’s are what helped him get the Haunter running in a tight spot; and Rasmus, an Alien Witch whose body was infested with an artifical intelligence as part of an attempt to make a zombie-like soldier.
For session one, and since our crew wasn’t super combat oriented, I decided to go with a smaller-scale job and work in a classic crime fiction staple: a casino job. In the upper atmosphere of a gas giant, Dasani Pilger (of the staggeringly wealthy Pilger banking dynasty) was wiling away months of his immortality. The crew of the Haunter were contacted by a slighted political operator on the planet to sabotage Dasani’s vacation, so that their rival is shamed for having dropped the ball. The terms are left intentionally vague, as many backroom deals are; so long as Dasani doesn’t come back, the client is happy (even if that means wetwork).
After some recon to learn more about the target, and after a tussle with Dasani’s hiveminded triplet bodyguards, the crew decide on a social score. The plan is to humiliate Pilger at his favourite game: Azad (wholeheartedly ripped off from Player of Games). Wayne infiltrates some hardware to the gaming room before play begins, to feed Rasmus (the team’s best player) intelligence on the state of Pilger’s hand. Rasmus uses his manipulative powers as a Witch to get a high-roller to vouch for him and allow him into the high-roller game, while Jian begins leveraging what they learned about Pilger’s psychology to maximise the mind games they could pull. The game goes through three hands, all building to a punishing crescendo that was to be the master stroke.
And, of course, then Rasmus rolls 1,1,1. Blindsided by the more experienced player, Rasmus is taken to the cleaners by Pilger who gloats in victory. This makes the crew decide maybe this shouldn’t be a social score after all, and to maybe ramp up the Chaos. Wayne brings the Haunter down on Pilger’s personal craft, smashing the smaller ship to bits, while Rasmus and Jian ‘go loud’ outside the game room. Jian guns down one bodyguard, Rasmus’ nanomachines disable the second and the third was in Dasani’s ship. Jian maims Dasani’s hand before the two escape to the Haunter and stealth up to wait the heat out in the debris field of the nearby spaceship graveyard. Needless to say between the injuries and the loss of his ship, Pilger would be going elsewhere and the client was satisfied, albeit the Chaos rating was a bit higher than she would have entirely liked. The Haunter got a little banged up, Jian intentionally leaned into stress to pick up a Reckless trauma for the XP trigger, and in general everyone had a good time.
One thing we decided fairly early on is that the capacity of ships needs to be a bit more explicit. Like, what scanning equipment was to be assumed ‘as standard’ without a module that might improve it? What should happen when a player does what Wayne did and decides to go ‘ramming speed!’? (I ruled that Harm was inevitable but a Piloting check would determine the level).
No after action report for session 2 per say, but it’s actually something feedback-able? Basically we found we struggled a lot more to establish a core theme/purpose/identity for the group than we had done for Blades. The setting is much larger and less directed than Blades (ship type versus crew type didn’t help, i think) so we decided to play a session of Microscope to flesh out the history more and give us more ideas for where the cluster is going, what people are fighting over etc.
Patrick Harkin This is actually really useful, thanks man! I’ve definitely been wrestling with this myself. This directionless-ness is something I really need to address. I feel like I need something to replace the pressure-cooker nature of Duskwall, something to drive play in a more urgent way. The centrality of the craft is sort of doing that for my play-test group, but it’s something I really want to work on.
So, session three. We decided to do a ship-based mission this time, delving into the Ancient Archives to try and make future missions go a bit easier since they had earned quite a bit of profit last time. We did some downtime, and people were a little precisely about what externalising their stress should be – we abstracted it to a general burning of ship resources or letting off steam in a way that would be harmful overall to the ship. Wayne burned power marathoning ancient media, while Rasmus crept to a part of the ship that he was pretty sure wasn’t used and started cutting things to blow off steam. Jian focussed on training, going through the left-behind academic records in the outer levels of the ship, while Wayne spent time repairing some minor damage inflicted to the ship during the ramming speed incident, and Rasmus started a long-term project delving into the Liminality; a near-miss with the Singularity that left a planet of people trapped between life and death, stuck in exo-suits with their half-digitised minds trapped between body and suit.
Wayne noticed signals the ship was picking up sometimes didn’t make it to the bridge and would sometimes get routed to somewhere else in the ship; by scanning and analysing the ship systems they found a pocket of activity down near an area marked ‘archive?’ in a confused note by a missing archaeologist. Getting some of the camera systems working, they found the area around the archive appeared to be temple-like in architecture, with robed figures moving near the end of the corridor. Thinking quickly, Rasmus gets some of the ship’s intercoms working and imperiously commands the robed figures to halt and explain themselves. They halt – and fall to their knees in prayer, apparently in religious ecstasy. The party quickly realise this cult worships the ship itself, and by speaking to them Rasmus has inadvertently played into some of their beliefs.
The party decide to get a direct eye on the situation and head down to the archives – at least a day’s walk, made a little easier by zero-g drifting. A Deception engagement, they decide to present Rasmus as a religious figure there to demand obeisance and access to the archives. The confusing alien architecture of the ship makes getting to them challenging, but not impossible. With a good engagement roll, Rasmus makes a strong impression on the cult leader, Etaion. Jian thinks he recognises Etaoin from the academic records he pored over earlier, but the professor is twisted and distorted in his body; they soon realise that rather than mutants the cult is made up of renegade Decoys, made by the ship but mutating the longer they go without being ‘recycled’. The cult lives at the bottom of a vertically-aligned church with the altar and stained window as the ‘floor’ and the pews rising out of a sheer cliff face; sometimes lights play in the stained glass which the cult interpret as visions from their god, living ‘below’. In other words, the archive. Etaoin describes their beliefs, that the ship is a creator deity, but explains they are plagued by giant ants which sometimes snatch unwary cult members if they venture into the archives proper. The party agree to venture down into the archive to assess the situation.
Wayne slips through a maintenance duct adjoining the archives and notes an extreme, localised drop in local temperature inside the archives; the same cold-state computing process that shields the ship from protection seems to be happening in the archives, making the room dangerously cold to unshielded organic life. But he does in fact see several ant-like robots scurrying around the archives, keeping the frost-rimed towers clean. He realises these ants are part of the maintenance system around this part of the ship and were ‘snatching’ the cultists to repurpose the defective decoys and reuse their material. Of course, he soon realises he’s not alone in the vents and one of the maintenance ants is interpreting him as a blockage. A bad Scramble roll and a very bad Guts roll to resist getting dismantled leads Wayne to trauma out pretty quickly from the session; he decides to mark Paranoid. Jian, being reckless, decides to kick some ass and quickly formulates a plan to capture the drone with an exotic net-throwing weapon. The second venture into the vents goes much better; Jian nets a drone and drags it out for Rasmus to study. Rasmus quickly identifies that the ants operate on a local hive mind and since this one has been disabled it’s now filed as ‘junk’ and will be collected for salvage. Seeing an opportunity, they decide to poison-pill the ants with the Witch’s corrupted data-orb, corrupting the disabled drone and having it pass on the corruption to the hive. Soon the ants in the archive are registered each other as blockages and pulling off limbs; it doesn’t take long for the crew to be able to access the archive, bringing the cult with them.
Once in the archives, the party discover an altar of membrane that begins to display Mandelbulb arrays that Rasmus at first interprets as something trying to communicate with them. As the shapes shift through different fractals, they’re realise they’re seeing a representation of inside Xibalba, an fractal anomaly in a nearby star system that only the most desperate treasure hunters throw themselves in as a form of suicide. The Haunter, at some point in its past, was inside Xibalba in order to record these images – it’s not a map to the treasure, but it’s better than anybody might have right now. More importantly, it was in Xibalba and it got out alive. But the crew don’t feel ready to make a run on Xibalba just yet and decide to enter a long, slow journey to Heimat, a much more populated system with bigger business, to make preparations and gather resources for their run on the treasure. We ended with the ship moving between star systems.
In terms of feedback, one thing we noted on the travel times is the phrasing is a bit ambiguous and it makes the benefits of Gunning It versus Normal Acceleration super clear. On my end, I realised that the rules as read on Chaos meant I had to keep track of how long it’s been since they were last in System 1 which wasn’t explicitly provided for so what we ended up doing was coming up with an in-universe calendar and making the note of what year it was when they left. It seems like a bit more legwork than the Heat system but for something that would come up less often? A final note is that we found, while discussing the game, that the name A Nocturne was a bit unwieldy because it started with the A, so we ended up just calling it Nocturne.
Patrick Harkin On the issue of years elapsed since visiting a system: I’m going to be making this a bit more explicit in the next version, but I figured I’d put my still-nascent thoughts on it here: I treat tracking this time a lot like the faction clocks in Blades i.e. I take a look at it and do Movement rolls when it interests me or feels important. The only bit of overhead I track is noting down the years elapsed when the crew Travel, or if it feels like a big enough deal that they spent a long time somewhere. Ignore any unit of time smaller than a year for this process.
BTW I’m really loving these after action reports. Not only are they proving really helpful for the design process, but the concepts you guys are deploying are genuinely brilliant, and your group seems like a very cool bunch. Keep me posted 🙂
One way to make it a little easier to keep track of might make it be something like roll as they LEAVE since that’s when you’re determining how long the journey is? (Avoids the memory problem of ‘ah shit, well, we took a slow ride from A to B but then we gunned it B to C, spent a long time at C and then normal acceleration back to A? How long is that? It was weeks ago out-of-game.’ Coming up with a year system was my initial solution to that problem.) So, instead of leaving system A you know the crew are going be away for AT LEAST [time units here] and what the chaos rating in the system is, and you roll on departure, make a note of the keyword?
Patrick Harkin Ooooo, that’s actually a really great fix. I might play around with this (and a few other approaches if more occur to me) next time it comes up in the play-test game, see how it feels to me in practice.