The Challenge

Seventieth floor and then further up with another elevator. The group walked through the garage hall with silver between them. Deco's thoughts were focused on the target and the group of guards in front of the elevator door he had only reflexively observed, appreciated and continued to monitor, without actually devoting a thought to them. It all happened on a routine while the thoughts played around what scenarios they might need to be prepared for when they reached the top of the spire. Without really reflecting, he made a confident comment to the others in the group that they would not kill anyone who was not Beastmen, a statement that he himself was surprised when he thought about it.
And then all of a sudden he was face to face with the one who seemed to be the leader of the gang. The man looked unthreatening and his gang, albeit armed, Deco dismissed as a real threat. A rage went through his body, as if the last thought had gone a strange and unnatural path, as if the phenomenon of dismissing any threat was new at all. The group's security and backing was so strong and the thoughts at the end of the trip so pressing that Deco ignored his warning bells and instead met the man's gaze. Assured of Hatchet's powerful figure, Ratman's combat experience and tactical thinking, Dai-Kau's lethal efficiency and Loric's quick trigger finger, he did not doubt his group for a second. This was a trial, an insult to him and the group. The men standing in front of them thought they were more powerful and more entitled to the means of transport than they were.
The anger shifted and changed to a loud warning alarm on all frequencies but it was too late now, Deco and his opponents had locked their horns in each other and this could not end with him giving up. They would learn what it meant to stand in the way of "the Birds of Prey". 

Commander's Conundrum

"Still no response?"
"No, commander," responded the neuronav.
"Keep sending anyway."
"But why won't they answer?" asked lieutenant Loreli. "From all readings it's a Union ship."
"Because they can't hear us."
"Uh, there are no problems with the communications servers, sir," said the neuronav.
"Not with the servers. They are jamming us."
"What? Why?" asked Loreli.
"Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps they are just passing this sector and wants to keep their presence a secret from other ships which might hear us. Perhaps there is someone onboard they want to get hold of."
"If that where the case, why haven't they contacted us for a transfer?"
"Perhaps its someone they know we wouldn't hand over?"
"Sir?" Loreli looked puzzled. "Who onboard would warrant a battlenac for capture?"
"I don't know. It's merely a possibility. Pilot!"
"Yes, sir?"
"Prepare defensive measures and generate a starting code for all phoenix avars. And scramble the pilots."
"Yes, sir!"
"You think they will -attack-?" asked Loreli with disbelief in her voice. "Wouldn't be much use for us to do anything - they could disintegrate us without a sweat."
"Indeed. And the fact that they haven't already done so suggest that there is something else that they want. So I intend to be prepared."

Sharing and Caring

With the possibilities for physical meetings being limited a little update to the Centuria generator seems in order. Introducing the Dice Session page where a GM can share a space with players where everyone can roll dice and see each others' results. 

Its still very basic and require user interaction to pick up each others' rolls, but as the function is intended to use alongside some meeting software this hopefully won't be a problem. Suggestions for improvements are always welcome if presented in a nice way 😉

GM Diary: Justice Wanted

It was a strange thing to realize that while most players (to my experience) choose to play characters who considers themselves to be righteous they had one hell of a problem adjusting to being officially recognized as such. On more than one occasion clandestine options where being discussed before everyone realized they could just demand or acquire access/resources or whatever it was that they needed through public channels.

Setup

What I wanted to explore in this campaign was the life of upstanding citizens of the Union and how society seemed from their perspective. To add quite a bit of contrast I wanted to explore this both from a dystopian and an utopian perspective, as Union cities vary greatly in both prosperity and reputation. For the dystopian perspective Merm City was the obvious choice; for the utopian one I picked the city of Gothmor. 

In most Age of Information adventures the players have in someway strived to work against the system. Here the situation was to be the exact opposite and for that reason all characters where to be Union arbitrators; law enforcement officers something akin to Judge Dredd. 

As a final challenge I decided to test the players' flexibility by having a plot involving an arbitrator commander as the bad guy. I imagined that the characters couldn't really get to him without working slightly outside the very system they were set to uphold; he would simply be too good at covering up his own tracks and using his position against them.

Development

The characters started out in Merm City where they faced crowd control challenges and criminal gangs and where introduced to a very cynical frame of mind. It was a (fun) challenge for most to suddenly be the ones with the law on their side, but still having to wrestle with moral choices due to societal segmentation. This was then sharply contrasted as the characters were transferred to the city of Gothmor to investigate a series of murders with suspected links to Merm City. Very different from Merm City, Gothmor was a pristine place with no slums, little apparent poverty and a rooted respect for law enforcement among most citizens. 

The players had to adapt both to the new perspective and the shifting setting and unfortunately I think I brought this on a bit too rapidly to give room for the roleplaying to catch on. But nevertheless the characters progressed in their investigation of the murders, but never really seemed comfortable enough to step outside of the established procedures. 

In retrospect I have mixed feelings about this campaign. Mostly I think this is because how it all ended. I had prepared an ending scene in which the characters could choose to side with one of two arbitrator commanders, one bending the rules for good, the other (the villain behind the murders) for his own gain - though they couldn't know for sure this was the case. In the end the characters choose to walk a middle ground; refusing to bend the rules for unclear reasons and thus ended up without allies against an overwhelming foe. To their credit they survived, but for the players it was a big anti-climax to find themselves without much closure beyond my explanations off game. 

On the plus side, I don't think I've played a single Age of Information campaign since when a reference to this campaign haven't been brought up. Having an understanding for the arbitrator perspective both for me as a GM and for the players have been very valuable for deepening our understanding of the world we're playing in. Thus Justice Wanted was a wonderful reference and I would love to return to the setting again with players now familiar to the challenges ahead.

Serious production

Going through the Age of Information rulebook I noticed some inconsistencies in the Commerce chapter (p 232) regarding commodity quantities, basically turning most production facilities into horrible investments due to much smaller production than maintenance costs. This has thus been rectified and an updated version is available on the download page.

2020

Its been a quiet year on this blog so far, so here's breaking the silence.

The CG3 character generator has been moved to MS Azure and is now available at cg3.centuria.se. The old address will probably work for a while longer though characters created there might not be migrated to the new site (current Dagger's Watch residents have already been migrated).

There's also some plotting for LinCon 2021 going on, but don't expect any updates on that for a while.

With all rule books now available in print that is certainly a milestone worth mentioning. While there are adventures and campaigns being written and played there currently aren't any plans for new text material - though I know for experience these things can shift fast when I get an idea into my head...

So for now Centuria lives on mostly in the way it was intended to be: played, with friends. Thanks to technology we can continue our journey - currently exploring the workings of the Gothic Inqusition from within.

So happy playing everyone and keep safe! Centuria will be back with at least a few campaign descriptions this year and then we'll just see what comes along.

The CG3

It is not without pride that I can finally announce the release of the Character Generator v3: http://cg3.centuria.appcloud.se/. Much is of course the same as the previous version but apart from being implemented in the outstanding Blazor framework I've introduced some additional changes!

I've added save and load functionality for characters in progress (the Dagger's Watch will still display completed characters). I did deviate from the rule books by introducing archetypes and personalities (personalities are technically in the rulebook but not used for PC:s) to speed up character creation and help produce more plausible backgrounds. It feels like a suitable way to take advantage of the possibilities a generator grants in a way that would probably not work so well if incorporated into the rules themselves.

There's also a lot of small bugs and such stuff which have been fixed or improved. Then I've also gone and implemented a 'description' option for random businesses, which will add a neat little description to each business generated (if you've checked the option). Not a whole resume but something to get you started with some ideas.



I hope you enjoy!

The old generator will be around for some time still, but eventually it will be removed.