It features an ice moon, underwater aliens that I consider to be reasonably alien (although morphologically, they're based quite closely on a type of sea-slug from good old earth), a non-personal threat inspired by a Greg Egan novel and a bunch of bad guys that would feel quite at home in an episode of Farscape (tonally, I've come to associate Ashen Stars closely with the wacky dramatics of Farscape - that's how it somehow always turned out at our gaming table).
So why should you check it out? If you play Ashen Stars, you'll probably do so anyway, since there's far too little scenario material out there for it. I had the privilege to get a lot of feedback from the people at Pelgrane Press, who helped me to (hopefully) make this adventure as complete as needed and as concise as possible. It follows the classical scene structure of most published Gumshoe adventures, creating a network of essential and optional places and events. If you're not familiar with how Gumshoe scenarios are structured, it might help to think of them as point-crawls: They give you a map, but it's not a map of how to get from one location to another, but how to get from one information to another. How you use this map is up to you - Hidden Depths is fairly non-linear and open-ended. The characters will spend some time figuring out what is going on, and then it's basically up to them, with a number of suggestions provided by the scenario and no "right" or "wrong" choices.
Hidden Depths profits from some great cartography work by Ralf Schemmann (who also did a lot of the official Ashen Stars ship blueprints for Pelgrane Press) and from original art by Carolin Kohler. (I'll take this opportunity to express my deepest gratitude to both of them!)
Here's one of Caro's illustrations for Hidden Depths:
We're having great fun with Hidden Depths! Awesome setting!
ReplyDeleteSpoilers:
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1st session: party not very interested in Council of Pods, asked them from orbit for the last known coordinates of the Cordero. Landed there, found the chief biologist, gave her good medical care, got the whole story from her, THEN visited the Council.
The ship doctor is currently working together with the chief biologist on board the party's ship to develop a virus that will infect the β foam, modify its behaviour and keep it from sending obscene messages to surrounding wildlife. Rest of crew preparing to raid the Cordero.
Thanks for the feedback - it's cool to hear from someone who's actually running Hidden Depths! I playtested the hell out of it back then, but I've actually never heard from someone else GMing it until now.
DeleteOne of these days, I need to sit down and write that other Ashen Stars scenario down in earnest ...
One part of the scenario that I never needed was the detailed information about the members of the Council, their personalities and their behaviour. The players had already talked to the chief biologist, so they were not interested in the council members at all. They just talked briefly to the octopus and then accepted the offer to go on a submarine ride.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to submit an AS scenario of my own to Pelgrane soon. Did you have the artwork ready when you submitted "Hidden Depths"?
That's actually a kind of complex question ... I submitted the adventure for official publication way before the Community Content Program, and it was actually accepted and received the whole professional treatment with feedback and proofreading by the good people at Pelgrane Press. Only after that, it was decided to move it over to the CCP. Pelgrane still did the layout, and at that point I suggested providing illustrations and asked the illustrator to work with me on the project.
DeleteSo in short, I didn't have the artwork ready, but I approached pelgrane with it when it became clear that Hidden Depths would be part of the CCP.
Oh, and the players asked the Council to scan for particle emissions *from beneath* the snow-storm vortex to locate the Cordero.
ReplyDeleteThis might be interesting to you?
https://aardvarchaeology.wordpress.com/2021/03/06/thoughts-after-16-sessions-of-ashen-stars/
Interesting points! I made the same experience about money and buying stuff (my players were never really interested in buying viroware or equipment or ship upgrades, partly because they didn't want to deal with the fiddly bits of rules for them); and whenever playing a Gumshoe game, I also tend to just give the characters information without making a deal out of point spends.
DeleteThe most recent Gumshoe game, "The Yellow King", actually pretty much suggests this - there, you don't have separate investigative pools at all, only a number of "pushes" (usually 3 per session) that allow you to get some extraordinary advantage by using whatever investigative skill you want - and it is made clear that you NEVER need a push to get information. Pushes are only for when you want to do stuff like impress someone so much with your knowledge of art history that they'll help you break into the louvre ... I feel its a cleaner design, and if I were to play a Gumshoe game again, I would certainly adapt this rule to it.
I do love the space battle rules of Ashen Stars though; it takes a while to wrap your head around them, but they work really well and offer lots of narrative hooks.
Striking though that nobody who has published a scenario for AS has needed the rules for space battles or ship upgrades. (-;
ReplyDeleteWell, there's a few opportunities for space battles in published scenarios - I definitely remember that there was one in "The Justice Trade" and in one of the adventures in Gareth Hanrahans campaign; and I included an optional underwater mini space battle in Hidden Depths. But yeah, it always seems to come up only as an afterthought in the official adventures, if at all, and that's probably a good thing; as I said, I like space battle, but I can see that a lot of AS players might simply not want to bother with them.
DeleteTomorrow we hit the Cordero. Heat is only at 2: all the mercenaries know is that a vessel has landed near the previous site of the research station.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking of emailing the floor plans to a player's iPad one by one as they move through the structure.
Sounds like it'll end up being a walk in the park for them. Let me know how it turns out!
DeleteI gotta say, these players are always super efficient, methodical and not prone to going after red herrings. I recruited them from my boardgaming friends and got a group that a) is extremely dependable for game night, rarely says no, never flakes out, b) has watched enormous amounts of space opera TV. None of them is a big drama diva, but hey, I'm not complaining!
ReplyDeleteThey got discreetly all the way into the Cordero by the side hatch on floor 1, but forgot to check for surveillance. So pretty soon Aramid came downstairs for a chat while her crew moved the tank and Mila to the Death Defier. The players decided that this was a pretty good outcome and didn't contest the point. A happy ending for everyone but Mila, I guess.
ReplyDeletePoor guy! But I guess he kind of deserved it, and if I remember correctly, I suggested that negotiating with Aramid's crew is probably a lot wiser than picking a fight. Not that my Lasers back then handled it that elegantly - they crashed their shuttle into the Death Defier, killing Centerpiece and turning Aramid and her crew into their sworn enemies. But that was fun, too!
DeleteI was wondering about that! I assume nobody was on board the shuttle at the time? How did they get off Abzu afterwards? According to "The Witness of My Worth" you can't land a laser ship on a planet.
DeleteTo be honest, I can't quite remember ... it's been a few years since I last played this. I'm pretty sure that I wasn't aware that a laser ship RAW can't be landed and that they simply docked at the facilities on Abzu.
DeleteMy scenario is out! Can I send you a free copy?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/353741/The-Disappearing-Sensei
Hi Martin, thanks for the offer! Sorry, I haven't looked at the blog for two weeks (lots of work), so I missed this. I think I'll just buy it, it sounds interesting, and you bought Hidden Dephts as well, after all.
ReplyDeleteVielen Dank!
ReplyDelete