How To Play Trekking Through History

Trekking Through History is a time travel game where you are exploring history over three days. Each day makes up one of your rounds. In each day you spend twelve time or more to gather cards and experiences and add them to your timeline. That is most of the game, whomever has the most points at the end of the game is the winner. And we’ll talk about the different ways to get points next.

Getting Points

You get points in two main ways, though there is a third that I’ll touch on briefly first. Those ways are ending your day at exactly twelve time, filling in your daily travel itinerary, and creating runs of time travelled from oldest to newest.

So we already completely covered the first. That is just ending your day with exactly twelve. Let’s talk about the itinerary next. Each day you get an itinerary that has four different columns. Each column corresponds to a different type of event that you can find in the timeline. So as you select your next event to add to your timeline, you need to get events that will give you the right tokens. You fill in tokens on your sheet from top to bottom. Some of the spots give you points for covering them. Others give you points if you complete a row. And there is one more resource we’ll talk about soon.

The other way is by creating a run for your timeline. When you grab a new card you always need it to be more recent than your previous one you grabbed. If it is, you add it to your run of cards. If it isn’t you start a new run of cards. But you keep the old run of cards as well. At the end of the game you score each of your runs of cards. If it’s a single card you lose three points, two you get zero and then it keeps going up from there.

Turn Order

The final thing I want to talk about is turn order. I talked about the twelve time that you can spend. You actually can spend over that, but you always stop at twelve on the time track. And as I mentioned, if you like it up correctly and stop right on twelve you get a bonus three points.

Each card you take, beyond having the different tokens, is going to make you spend an amount of time. There is a resource you can get, time crystals that let you reduce the time. So what does this have to do with turn order?

Well, whomever is furthest back on the clock, the time tracker, gets to go next. And if you spend time and land on a spot with someone else, you go on top of them. So then the player on top of that stack is going to go next. The time crystals allow you to reduce your time so that you are able to go multiple turns in a row.

Then, at the end of the game, whomever has the most points wins.

What Doesn’t Work

This is a pretty light game and there is a decent amount of luck to it. Especially in lower player count games the cards for the timeline don’t change that much. So it is possible that in the beginning you get a card that is way back in time, in the BCE (Before Common Era) range and then you need to jump up a long ways and create a gap. So as players you are somewhat dealing with the luck of the cards.

What Works

Firstly the simplicity of this game is great. And not only the simplicity, but one of the things I talk about with a lot of games, the speed of the game play as well. A few turns might take a bit more time. And this is because you want to get the right tokens to optimize your itinerary for the day. But for the most part, most of them are fast, and the game as a whole, three rounds, is really fast as well.

But with that simplicity of what you are doing, I really like that they add in the itinerary. If it is just a game of collecting times and putting them into your timeline in order, that is not super interesting. But the addition of the itinerary gives you that one thing to think about that keeps the game from feeling too simple. How do I get the tokens I need to hit that next big scoring objective is pretty commonly a thought in my head. So I am able to plan out my turns a little bit that way.

And the time crystals are fun as well. They are a resource that is worth a point at the end of the game. But it is almost always better to use them in the game. Why, because it helps you set-up your timeline and it helps you get more cards for that run. It’s another simple thing, but manipulating the turn order is a lot of fun with them. And it can lead to some big swings in your advantage if you do it right.

Who is Trekking Through History For?

This is going to be a game that will be light for a lot of people I’m sure. I find it light as well and I’ll talk about that more. But this is a great game for families in a ton of ways. Firstly, the game play is easy enough to play with kids. I think that even pretty young kids could start to figure it out. And easily by the time your kid is eight, this is a game that you could play.

But the other big reason that this is such a great family game is that it teaches history. Each card, on the back, is going to tell you about the historical event that the card is depicting or the person on the card. It is an amazing opportunity to play a fun game and learn.

Final Thoughts on Trekking Through History

I find Trekking Through History to be a very enjoyable game. It is easy to teach, learn, and play. And sometimes that is an important thing for a game night. Add in the history that you learn form it, and that is a great added element to what you are doing in the game. Plus the game offers just enough to be a solid game as well. There is just enough strategy in filling out the itinerary to keep me engaged and just enough manipulation of the time track with the time crystals.

I suspect a number of people would find this game too simple. And I get that, it is simple but it is a game with a very specific focus for why it was made. It is a chance to play a game and learn about history and engage as a kid and as a family. My kid is not quite old enough to play it yet. But I’m excited for the time when I can use this to help him keep learning and have a fun time doing so. There is more to this than the game Timeline, which can do the same thing, but not a ton more.

My Grade: B-
Gamer Grade: C-
Casual Grade: A
Strategy (out of 10): 4
Luck (out of 10): 6

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Traps

The first area to cover is traps. Traps are generally not too complex a thing in Dungeons and Dragons or in your RPG. In a fantasy setting you have physical and magical traps that players can go into, and since I write these from the point of Dungeons and Dragons, we’ll work with that system.

When using a trap there are a few steps for creating something interesting. Though not every trap needs to be that interesting. It, instead, is able to be used to set expectations if you want. I create a trap in a room at the start of the dungeon, every player is going to check every room for traps. And I think there are good uses for that. But let’s talk about those steps.

• Type of Trap
• Finding Trap
• Disarming Trap
• Setting Off Trap

Type of Trap

Each of these is simple in it’s own right. But you need each of them to be there. Firstly, what type of trap is it goin to be. Physical, magical, and if it’s physical, pit trap, spike trap, poison trap. Or if it is magical, fire, water, changes room, teleport? There are a lot of fun things that you can do. But pick that and that is going to determine some other things as you go down.

Finding Trap

Next is how can the players find the trap. Even if it is arrows being shot off of a floor trigger when they step in a spot, there are signs. Or a magical trap, there might be a glyph that is triggered. But I think there are two worthwhile numbers coming up with. First, what is the difficulty for just passively perceiving the trap? If someone is very good with their passive perception can they just spot it? Or what is the perception check to see it. And then, what is an investigation if they are looking for a specific type of trap.

The second one shows up more if it’s a known trap. If in room one there is a pit trap, in room two they might look for a pit trap again. That is investigating to find something specific. So use both.

Disarming Trap

Next up is disarming a trap. Know kind of how this is going to work. Let players maybe brute force it, if you don’t have a rogue in the party. The Barbarian rips up the pressure plate on the floor, sure. But generally, rogue with thieves tools. Or if it’s a magical trap, do they need to dispel magic?

But this is again about creating that difficulty for the check. It might be a 12 for a rogue with thieves tools and slight of hand to be able to disarm it. It isn’t that complex a trap. But if you don’t have the rogue that day, or the barbarian gets there first, it might be a 18 strength/athletics check to rip it out of the ground. So know what numbers you want. But more so, know the ballpark. If you think they may come up with an alternative way know if you want that to be as easy as a normal way or harder.

Setting Off Trap

Finally, they might just set off the trap. Now, traps can be their own mini little puzzle in a game. What is going to happen if the whole party falls into a pit traps. Now they need to get out. Or maybe it is going to be timed event now for them to get through clouds of poison while taking damage?

Sometimes it is as simple as, a volley of arrows shoot and that is it. Or the player literally gets their foot stuck in a trap (or hand if they were disarming it). But think about how you want to use the trap and the trap affect to advance story or create interesting interactions if you want.

Bonus Dungeon Master Tool – Traps and Expecations

I talked about this a little but I knew I wanted to come back to it. What is the expectation when you create a trap in the first room of a dungeon? Well, the simple answer is, there are going to be more traps. In fact, there are going to be lots of traps. The player is going to check every room for traps.

Change Them Up

Now that the players are checking for traps there are a few things that you can do. Firstly, change up the traps. Not every room should have a trap, but when you set the expectation that there can be traps don’t waste your and the players time by only having one in the first room. But change up the traps, magical and non-magical in nature.

Only One

Or, do only have a single one. But make it so difficult and terrifying that most groups would immediately run in fear. Since a good adventuring party doesn’t have enough fear or brains to know to be afraid, they will just keep checking for traps. If you do that, though, make the rest of the dungeon a cake walk. All the energy was on the start of it, the rest is just empty hallways because no one ever gets through.

Develop History

Another thing, and last one I’ll talk about, is you can develop history. The history of the dungeon could be new traps are being created so it means that someone is still down there taking care of it. Or you might find adventurers who were killed before and the players gather pieces of history from them. Nothing like the first room and the adventurers see someone dead in a sprung trap. Now you immediately plant concern and can give them some history with the adventurers journal as to what they knew of this dungeon.

Puzzles

That is more on traps than I had expected. But I think that doing a great job with traps can make for an interesting campaign. And it is going to give the rogue something to do besides trying to steal everything that isn’t bolted to the ground.

But now we are onto puzzles. And puzzles, I think, offer three different routes to go. Though, the routes can overlap in some ways. But I want to firstly talk about who the puzzle is for, that is two of the routes. And then finally, what if there isn’t an answer.

Determining Who the Puzzle is For

This might sound odd. But there are two groups that the puzzle could be for. When you create a puzzle it is either for the characters in the game. Or it is for the players out of the game. Neither is a wrong way to create a puzzle and doing both can offer a lot of fun in the game for the players. But this is the first thing you want to determine when you create a puzzle, who it is for. Because that is going to change what you do.

Puzzles for the Characters

Puzzles for characters are going to be less of the cryptograms, jumbles, patterns, things like that. Instead, for the characters, a brain teaser or pieces of history and knowledge needed are the type of puzzle that you are going to create.

You go to the temple of the god of death, for example. Well, what is it that your characters know about the god of death? You create a puzzle where they need to know something about it. The players outside of the game don’t know this god of death unless you gave them a document with it all in there (don’t do this it’s a waste of your time). But the characters in the game sure do because it’s the god of death, they’d have heard of it at least.

So think about the checks that you want them to make. It might be an investigation to see if they can tell how someone beat the puzzle before. Or it might be a religion check to determine what they remember about the god of death. Again, it’s the god of death, the characters know of it for sure, but do they know the right detail.

So a puzzle for the characters is all about the checks that they do. And you decide how hard or easy you want it to be. But if you make it too hard, also have a way around it.

Example – The God of Death

So let’s run with this god of death example. There is a dungeon where they need to get down to the lowest level. They know that there is a secret passage called the River Styx that they can use to get down to the bottom. But they get there and it’s locked away behind a riddle.

“Bestow they worship upon me, pay the tolls once, twice, and three. Coins of death marked for their fate. Hours gone don’t tarry late.”

Solution

So, what is the answer to that riddle? The players need to provide the total value of the cost to cross the River Styx either three times or six times. Once, Twice, and Three could be 1+1+1 paying it three times. Or it could be 1+2+3, paying the set each time. I think I’d set this as an intelligence check of 10, pretty simple if they want both options.

But it is also a specific coin. What is a coin marked for death. Well that might be a soul coin from the hells. A soul given up to a devil would be interesting payment to get across the River Styx. This one is more of a religion check, and I think while people know of the god of death, it is taboo to worship them, so it’s less common. Make it a difficulty check of 15 for religion, so tougher.

What If They Fail

So what if in this case they all fail their religion rolls. They don’t know about the soul coins. But after feeding in a bunch of coins and nothing happening are they locked out of the dungeon? No, there is a longer path that is more dangerous for them. But if you need a roll to succeed to progress the story, always gives a different, harder way for them to go forward. If it is just a case of finding some treasure that would be nice. Sure, it is possible that they never figure it out. But if it is for anything related to story, give them that other option.

Puzzles for the Players

Next up, a puzzle can be for the players. This one I think is a bit simpler. Yes, you still might incorporate checks that the characters can do to give the players hints. But it is all about the players for this one. A cryptogram is a great example of this. You give them a little bit of a key and then let them get going on breaking the whole thing. It is something that all the players can take part in, but it isn’t part of the game and it isn’t meant for them to roleplay it out.

I am going to skip an example on this, but it can be a lot of different things. I made a room with gouts of flames that were being shot out. As I describe what the players watch, I kind of expect the players to take notes and solve the path. It isn’t something you do by trial and error but in that case, I also make it simple. And if the players aren’t solving it, I give them an intelligence roll and give some more details that make the puzzle simpler.

Puzzles with no Answer

The final thing is something that I think more Dungeon Masters should do. This is going to be the best Dungeon Master tip overall for traps and puzzles. It is simply, don’t create a solution. This is something that you can do with puzzles but also just with issues that arise. Throw the players a problem and see what happens.

Why wouldn’t you have a solution, though? The simple answer is, the players can come up with one. And this is something that can be done in character as well. You just wait until they try something that you think makes enough sense or is cool enough to work. When they suggest it or they try it, it can work as simple as that. And let’s face it, there is one of you and probably two to eight players, so more brains, more creative solutions.

This also can let you set a time for it. If you think, I want them to sweat a bit on this trap, give them ten minutes to discuss it and try different things, or maybe even longer if it’s supposed to be key and important. Or if it is supposed to be pretty trivial, make it that way, let the first cool or fun idea work.

Example from My Game

This came to be because I actually created one of these, kind of, last night in my game. The players were on a labyrinthian type floor of a tower, the main dungeon in the campaign. Every room was the same except for a few had plaques on the wall. The big thing is that they needed to get to the stairs for the next level. To do that they needed to go into rooms and figure out where to go.

In the rooms, and only a few of them, did I leave clues for the players. But the clues were fairly general. In the first room it said the following.

First Puzzle

“Beware – Zombies
Go this way.”

That was next to one of the four doors in the square room (one per wall). The players had to decide what that meant. But little did they know, and they messed this up in an interesting way, was that every room a character went into had more and stronger zombies. So if they fought, each time the zombies would get tougher and tougher and more and more.

Second Puzzle

So the player went the right direction, eventually, after one had done a loop to see how it would work and ramping up their difficulty. Eventually they got to another room with another plaque and a dead adventurer.

“Two Far
[down arrow]”

This meant head back two rooms and go south. Now going back is going to cause more zombies and harder zombies to appear. At this point, by the way, the zombies had +23 to hit and were dealing 1D6+21 damage.

The Real Puzzle

So the new puzzle was simpler but harder. How do we get through rooms without getting hit by the zombies. They had already spent a fair number of resources on a battle or two with the zombies. And I didn’t give them a solution. If they had gone the ideal route, it wouldn’t have been a major deal. But because they went further and created more zombies, it was way harder for them.

So two flight spells later and the Warforged character being disguised as a zombie the players got to the right room. But they needed to do it in a way where they weren’t taking 3-4 attacks of opportunity each, Because say it was three, all likely hit with a +23 to hit, and that’s a minimum of 66 damage, a lot for even a level 16 bard.

Final Dungeon Master Tools for Traps and Puzzles

This is the reminder that I give at the end of all of these Dungeon Master tools. Or if not at the end, sometime in there. But the point of everything is to create a great experience at the table. And that means progressing characters and stories as you go along. When you create a trap and a puzzle that should be in your mind as well. Because when you do that the most fu n is going to be had at the table for both you and your players.

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There are going to be spoilers in this. A lot of spoilers, not even going to pretend to do a review without it. If you want the two sentence review if this is good, the answer is yes. It’s not a perfect season but it’s really good.

Spoilers Ahead

The Storylines

This is a bit of a different season. As the boys are growing older, it is like they are closer to the ages of the older generation. So instead of getting that split of the older kids, younger kids, and adults, we have two groups of kids and a group of adults. Plus then Eleven is split off on her own some. I think it is important to talk about all of these different groups and if their stories worked.

Eleven

Eleven is the best spot to start because really this world and overall story revolves around her. Her story, is both one of the more interesting parts and one of the less interesting parts. Her time in California is just fine. It has strong Carrie vibes but doesn’t really pay off. We already know she’s not a normal kid and doesn’t fit in.

And then we go to the new lab with Brenner and Owens. It is a very good vehicles for telling the story of Eleven’s powers, and who Vecna, Henry, the Orderly and One all are. The unraveling of that mystery with Eleven and Nina and Eleven getting her powers back works well. However, her time in this new lab, the fighting between her, Brenner, and Owens, the military showing up, there is too much of that and that part was not interesting.

The Adults

Then we head over to Russia with Joyce, Murray, Yuri, Hopper, and Antonov. And this is a bit of a mixed bag for me again. I really loved Antonov and her and Hopper’s relationship. How they loosely work together to really work together. How they both help out the other. And Murray and Yuri provide some good comedy for this.

Overall, really know knocks on the storyline for the adults. It does feel a bit like it’s less connected to the overall story though. And I get it, they need to get Hopper back to the rest of the group. The fact that they never really were in the same fight, even though they tried to help, is interesting. I’d have loved for there to be something more to get them directly involved.

Hawkins Kids

Easily my favorite part of the story, and I don’t think that’s a surprise. The Hawkins story has most of the bigger cast with Dustin, Lucas, Max, Erica, Nancy, Steve, and Robin and introducing Eddie. All characters that you really start to like.

They also have the best ability to interact with the upside down and it was fun to delve into there more. We’ve gotten these hints throughout the other series. We even spend time there, but this time we really get to spend time in the upside down. There are still mysteries to it but we know more now, some because of them.

And I also think that the Max storyline was interesting. What she is going through, Vecna targeting her, she’s a character I really like. She brings something different to the group. And to have her be a focus and really the whole Hawkins kids side of thing being so relationship drama free, I think it worked well.

California Kids

Finally, the California kids with includes Argyle, a great character, and Mike, since he timed up his spring break amazingly. But their story was intriguing. They got to do the whole road trip thing which is fun and very much a trope from that time period. And getting to meet Suzy’s family was interesting.

I think that their story was stronger once Eleven was gone and them trying to get her. While that intersected with hers at one of the more boring parts, overall, it felt real. And to see the emotion from Will and Mike. And just that relationship and rebuilding between Eleven and Mike, it worked well. Plus Argyle was a great humor character.

Stranger Things Season 4 Overall Story

To me, while there were outliers, mainly the adults, the whole story did work together. And I think you could argue that they lost this fight, Vecna still lives, Max is in a coma, because they split the party at the end of season 3. Now the adults being split off, or at least Hopper, makes sense, really all of them splitting makes sense. But it’s leaning into a D&D trope that way where you never split the party.

I also think that building up the history of the upside down is very good. And for Eleven and her powers. It makes the world that is being more impactful to go back. And they did it in a smart way where the consequences to the real world mattered as she was finding out all of this. It was an information dump, technically, for her stuff, but not one that felt only like explaining. There is a reason behind it.

How It Ended

So, this is a bit more speculation going forward. If you don’t know, season 5 is going to be the final season of Stranger Things. Now there is plans for a show set in the same “world” as Strangers Things. And The Duffer Brothers are the runners for that show as well. It is an idea that they had, not someone that they were asked.

But let’s look at the world as it is now. Vecna is out there. Hawkins is a disaster area, what is going to be happen next? I expect that the finale will again be a face off against Eleven and Vecna, though that might be mid season. If they split it into two, I wouldn’t be shocked if Vecna is defeated by the end of the first half. For Hawkins, the question is, how do you close it up again? And that is where the story gets interesting.

Because I think that is going to be the harder part. Vecna might have an army around him, but he is injured both on the mental level and the physical. But how do you close everything back up again. I think we might see a character lost to doing this. In particular, I think Will might need to sacrifice himself. Not die, but go back to the upside down. Face that fear that he has and go back to close the portal. Eleven working on the outside and him on the inside.

I also think we end with more deaths in the season. Murray, unfortunately, and possibly Joyce or Hopper I could see dying. One of Steve, Jonathan or Nancy might die. And I don’t know if I think one of the kids will die or not. Max seems like a choice, if she never recovers, but she’s had that experience. And Will staying in the upside down could be seen as that. But I don’t know about Lucas, Dustin, or Mike. Mike seems fairly safe, but Lucas or Dustin could be a casualty.

Stranger Things Season 4 Final Thoughts

It is a very good season. I put my rankings of the seasons as 1 followed closely be 4. Then there is a gap down to 3 and a gap down to 2. Two is not bad, I think that it feels like it’s trying to be season 1 again without capturing that same feeling. Season 4 captures that feeling of season one and is darker as well. For me that is really interesting and works really well.

I think they walked that line nicely, though. It is darker, but they kept much of the essence of Stranger Things. And with that it let people who maybe don’t love that slight step darker stay engaged. Because, in the end, we want it to feel like Stranger Things and this season really did.

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But this idea, it isn’t that type of game. The world is peaceful and the characters lead normal lives. No one goes out adventuring to stop anything, there are no wars that need to be broken up. Goblins are nice, Chromatic Dragons are peaceful, deomons aren’t even a thing that cross people’s minds.

This, however, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And it kind of needs to be that way, because otherwise it’s a boring game. If there is no danger, what is going to push the players out adventuring? What is going to keep them going out instead of just starting a nice little school for adventurers? Where do you get even the skills for adventuring?

The Perfect World

The lands of Calagathra are beautiful. The crops grow and there is always enough food. While people get old and pass away, no one has died of an accident or illness. There are no wars between the neighboring rulers. Everything is amazing.

The players start out in the capitol city of one of the lands, and everything is amazing. They are part of a school which is focused on teaching about the history of the lands. But the lands of Calagathra only seem to go back about 1000 years. Before that, besides the creation story, there is no information. But there are rumors of ruins, at the edges of the Silver Mountains, in the middle of the Swamps of Carthak, and deep below the blue waves of the Estidial Sea.

That is the jumping off point for the campaign. The players, either because they are required to or because they want to, will pick one to go investigate. What they find is going to be a world that doesn’t match the rest of Calagathra. Going to the place is not a sanctioned activity, but a Professor can ask them to assist or investigate something if they need motivation. But the ruins are banned for people to go to, for some reason. But everything else is so perfect that no one cares. Most people who study are doing so because technology, magic, and knowledge of the natural worlds is growing at an amazing rate.

The Ruins

The ruins should tell the players that something isn’t what it seems. Which ever one they pick, it is going to be the first spot they encounter danger. The further they go into the ruins, the more danger there is. We are talking skeletons in some areas, traps in other areas, but also just injury, checks they need to make to avoid accidents. If you make a trap, maybe make it a poison or a disease.

With that, though, the player characters learn about the world as well. They find out that the perfect lands of Calagathra might not have been so perfect before. The ruins contain signs of battles, they find remains, unanimated, of people, they see ghosts and specters who either attack or beg for help. And the characters should be unprepared for this. I would let the characters buy weapons, but when they start, roll for gold instead of letting them pick equipment. Weapons outside of something like an axe or knife don’t exist in this world or are just toys.

The further the go into the ruins, the more weird that they find, like I have said. But what’s in the middle? I think there needs to be something that captures their attention. The adventure is kicked off by whatever they find. Bind a spirit of something powerful and hide it away deep in the ruins.

Break The World

That spirit, that is a good spirit. Or it was a good spirit anyways. The spirit tells a lie about why it was trapped and some of the truth when pressed. It was trapped along with three of it’s kin to create almost a protective field around the lands of Calagathra. Nothing bad is allowed to come through, no murders, no robberies, no diseases, no accidents, nothing of the sort. The players, by stepping foot into this area, are now free of the compulsion to be good, however. In fact, anyone who steps into the ruins, any of them will lose that compulsion.

The spirit asks to be freed. Basically talking about all the pain, suffering and agony that it is taking on, the stuff that could be happening to the people. Not that will, but that could happen, all the possibilities, and how it is slowly tearing it apart. The spirit promises to help them, promises to try and keep as much calamity at bay as it can, in exchange to being freed. It should only promise twice though.

Now, there are a few things that can happen. The players can free the spirit. If they don’t, someone else can free another spirit. Maybe have the professor leading one team and the players going on another. Either way, when one spirit is freed, you can either have the other two freed or all the pain and everything can crash into those two causing them to explode or something along those lines.

Either way, when the players come back to town, or come back to the world of Calagathra, things are going poorly. People are getting sick and something like a common cold is now a big deal because no immune system has had to deal with anything for years. People break a leg and that does them in because no one knows how to heal. The weather starts to become unpredictable versus a light shower most mornings and then sunny in the afternoon with a mid 70’s high. Basically the world is breaking up.

Where To Go From There?

There are so many ways you can go with this. Villains arise, dragons start to horde again and attack, demons could even show up. And of course, the players will be blamed at least in the capitol and at their school for what happened. So put the players on the run. Also, the good spirit, make it fey, and it didn’t promise three times, and it said it’d help as much as it can. However, the other two spirits did not. So even the helpful spirit, which should bounce between our realm and the fey realm needing to recharge, shouldn’t be that helpful.

The decision or the players asks if they should capture, basically torturing the spirits again, or if there is another answer. As well as they should be on the run, and they need to try and stop some power hungry people who happen to be ahead of the curve when it comes to being the ones in control.

At the end of the campaign, I think the players will face a decision that can go a few ways. They can capture spirits again and learn to trap them. Or they can do a never ending job of stopping power hungry wizards or dragons, but there will be a big bad who is going to try and destroy the world. That can be the one they focus on at the end of campaign and need to stop.

Heck, even make it their Professor who is stepping in wherever they create a power vacuum by stopping someone else, pretending to be good. Make it their scheme that set this all in motion. The Professor can monologue about how they had gone to the ruins before and been enlightened. They knew that they need a fall person to free the spirits, someone who everyone would blame. They could then be the good person coming in after, but really, they wanted to destroy it in a way where they ruled everything.

And that is the Perfect World campaign. Is this one that you’d be interested in running? As a player would you want to play in a game like this? Now, it hits some traditional things later on, how would you role play in the perfect world?

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The premise of the series is that Jaya Jones, a historian, keeps being pulled into these incredible adventures where there is some lost treasure that she needs to track down. With an interesting cast of characters around her, in Artifact, she travels from her apartment in San Francisco (don’t ask how she can afford it, I’m assuming blackmail), to Scotland to a dig where her ex has died in a car accident. But it seems suspicious since he sent her a package containing a bracelet from India that showed up the day that she found out he’d passed away. Is it fall play, and is something going on at this dig?

I will double down on the fact that I enjoyed this book. Jaya Jones is an interesting character and the author, Gigi Pandian, does a good job of fleshing out her style and characteristics. You feel like she’s generally a pretty complete character and while she doesn’t have any major flaws, in a fluffy summer book, you don’t feel like you are missing them. I think that the other characters are pretty well written. Lane, whom you meet early in the book has an absurd history, and I don’t think it was something that was really needed for how over the top it got. Now, that isn’t much of a negative, though, on the book. I just kind of rolled my eyes and skimmed those couple of pages to get back to the main plot.

You can probably tell that this story and character are basically a female Indiana Jones, and that is really the case. I don’t mind that it heavily borrows from that feel, because it is just a summer light read. And the plot isn’t something that is much more complex than an Indiana Jones movie. When you ask yourself, half way through the book, who is the bad guy, it’s pretty obvious. That’s fine, again, because it’s summer reading. And knowing that, you want to know where the story is going to end, because of the treasure hunt aspect it ends up being pretty interesting, again, much in the way of Indiana Jones. And while I don’t need another Indiana Jones movie, I would gladly read another Jaya Jones book.

I also liked how the book delved into some of the history of India. That might seem out of left field, because we’re in Scotland and San Francisco for the story, but Jaya is an Indian and American character, and has done her history degrees on India. I feel like when you’re talking about these adventure books, you get this mystical Asian culture or South American, but this feels more grounded in what it is doing. Pandian even adds some information about what actually happened in those periods of history and how it ties into her story. That was interesting to read through, though the discussion questions at the end are just weird to have there. This is a book that you really don’t need to think about as it’s a summer read, but apparently the author or publisher wanted it to be more. Even in books that are meant to be more educational than this one, those questions are generally dumb and not questions that I’d use, and this book isn’t an exception to the quality level of the discussion questions.

It’s summer and I like reading summer books, so this book hit a good spot for me. I’m curious to see how Pandian can develop the characters going forward and which characters will stick around from book to book. If they are all as straight forward as this one was, I’m not sure I’ll stick around for the full series, but with that said, if they keep up the fun romp and keep being fast reads they are a lot of fun. The quality is solid, and overall it’s enjoyable. I think that most people would like this series, but you have to know going in that you are getting a pretty light book.

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Why were you rolling the die?

If nothing bad was going to happen, there was no reason for you to roll the die there. You aren’t in character spending time rolling the die over and over and over again. I’m guilty of this as a DM sometimes, not having any real pressure on the players while they make the die roll. So there has to be a better way to make the die rolls matter.

How do you do that?

There are two ways that you can do this. The first is immediate consequence. To stay with my previous example, you roll the die, you fail, the guards patrolling the estate or the town come across you and now you’re either running from the guards or you’re fighting them. It gives a threat of real punishment for what has happened and for failing the roll. It’s very straight forward.

But what if there’s an important map that the characters know for a fact is in that estate. They run away, they come back the next night, they fail again, they run away, they come back the next night, and the cycle continues and it gets pretty boring. We want to avoid that bit of boring in our role playing games.

So the other option is to, as the title suggests, fail forward.

What does that even mean?

Failing forward is the idea that you still get to unlock the door on a failed roll, but it comes at a cost. So you get into the house, but you startle a cook who screams. Now your plan of sneaking around the house slowly and avoiding all the guards is shot. You’re in the house, so you better use your opportunity, but this is going to be more of a smash and grab than a cat burglary.

Failing forward is a great concept to use because it can create a lot of interesting situations. In my example with the cook, do you kill the innocent cook who was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, because the cook screaming means the damage is done already. But I’ve also managed to keep the story moving forward. Instead of trying the same thing over and over again either without consequence or on different days and the game gets stuck in a rut, now things are moving quickly. In fact, by failing forward and having the cook scream, things have to go even faster and the players need to be even more creative.

Maybe the rogue and monk make a run for the map while the wizard and fighter stay behind to deal with any guards who might be coming to their escape route. Maybe the wizard decides to cast charm person or suggestion on the cook to get them to say that they had just seen a mouse, which is why they screamed to try and defuse the issue. Either way you’ve ratcheted up the intensity of the scene and made the best laid plans of the players go by the wayside, but you didn’t grind the game to a stand still.

Making sense thus far? The next question that I would have had is, how do you keep the pressure on without it turning into the scenario where the guards show up and you get into a fight?

That is true, we want to avoid that, otherwise, we can just use that option. If your group loves combat or doesn’t mind having those combats, definitely you can go with that option. However, if you want to change things up, there are some things that you can do.

When failing forward, I’d strongly consider using a skill challenge to show the timing of what is happening. A skill challenge is where the players try and get a certain number of success before they end up failing and having the guards, in this case, swarm them. My rule of thumb is that the players need to get twice the number of players successes, so six successes for three players, before they get the number of players failures, so three for three players. To continue with the crunchy bits for a bit, you then set a difficulty check for the players to beat using their abilities. Maybe the rogue wants to persuade the cook to lie and say it was a mouse, the player then rolls their persuasion. If they succeed, they get a check mark on the success track, if they fail, on the failure track. Then it goes to the next player, and the next player cannot roll persuasion for their check. So everyone has gone around once, they have two successes and a failure, it’s back to the rogue, the rogue can’t roll what they’ve rolled the previous round, so persuasion, or use the skill that was previous rolled, so the fighter who rolled strength to knock down a locked door. And you continue like that until the  players either succeed or fail.

So, why might you do it this way?

First and foremost, it allows you to skip combat sometimes. It means that you get to do something different than the normal three things in a lot of RPG’s, either exploring, role playing with NPC’s, or fighting. It allows you to use skills that you wouldn’t use normally.

Example:
Player: I worked for the city, so I’m going to roll history to see if I remember the blueprints that were on file with the city. I’m trying to see if there’s a faster route that we can take.
DM: Sounds good to me, roll that die.
Player: 14
DM: You just succeed, and remember that there is actually a servants hallway that runs between some rooms that will let you out right next to the study.

How often would you use history otherwise? Or how often would someone think to look for blueprints? It’s a creative use of a skill that really only comes up in research capacity or trying to remember things and gets to be used in an action sequence instead.

Also, it allows everyone to stay more involved in the story and story telling. Live the above example, the players are having to be creative and are actually creating story elements for the world. This has a real anything goes vibe to it and that can lead to a ton of cool moments.

Skill challenges also can move faster than combat. The action is always focused on the players, so the DM isn’t taking turns and rolling for the five guards to show up. Once the players are in the mindset of thinking about everything they can do and coming up with crazy ideas, a skill challenge will fly by. As a dungeon master, this is where you are going to have to let things go a little bit more loosely. You won’t have been able to plan and lay out this estate in such a way that you’ve thought of everything the players will do. You’re going to want to say yes a lot, or yes and but/and.

Example:
Player: I worked for the city, so I’m going to roll perception to see if I remember the blueprints that were on file with the city. I’m trying to see if there’s a faster route that we can take.
DM: That sounds more like a history check to me, so why don’t you roll that instead. Since you worked for the city you’d be trying to remember what you’ve seen before.
Player: Okay, I got a 14
DM: You just succeed, and remember that there is actually a servants hallway that runs between some rooms that will let you out right next to the study.

That’s an example of what I mean by yes and but/and. They got to see if they remembered anything about the blueprints, because that is cool, but perception just didn’t make sense for the player to use with what they said. So swapping out for history probably means that the player didn’t have as good a bonus on their roll, but made sense for what they were doing.

What are some downsides?

This isn’t say that there aren’t some downsides to a skill challenge. The main one being is that players will suggest one thing, like my example with wanting to use perception with the blueprints, and when they can’t, then want to pick another idea that they can use perception with. It makes sense because they want to do something where they are likely to succeed. So you can get stuck with someone who is trying to figure out how animal handling can be used in this estate because they have a plus five in animal handling.

Solution for that issue is a timer of some sort. Either, they have to have something ready to go by the time it comes around to them or it’s an automatic failure, but that seems harsh, so if they are taking too long, put them on the clock. Give the player 30 seconds to come up with something, it might not be the most creative, but it’ll keep the game moving and everyone engaged which is what we’re always shooting for when we play RPG’s.

The other, tied into this, is analysis paralysis. If you can do everything, how do you pick which skill to use. What is going to be better, the ones with the higher numbers obviously, but using acrobatics isn’t going to be as cool so maybe you should try and use animal handling, but how would that work in the situation, and maybe the person after me is going to use athletics, so I should use that, and the person before me did something really cool and I want to do something really cool too so what is the coolest thing that I could do? Yes, that is a horrible run-on sentence that no one should ever write, but that’s kind of the point. That’s how the brain of someone who can’t decide what option to choose is working, they are stuck with too many options.

If you see someone getting stuck in a loop of not knowing what decision to make, how can you help them to keep your skill challenge moving along? There are a couple of different things that you can do. One is to use the timer. That will likely get a them to throw out something, but might end up making them feel like they are getting stuck doing the boring option. The other is to help them by soliciting ideas from other players or from yourself as the DM. If they are taking a while, toss out a bunch of options for them to pick from, and by a bunch, I mean three at the fewest, and five at the most. That’ll either give them something to pick or give them something to jump off of and get them out their run-on brain loop.

So back to the main concept of this article, failing forward. There are a lot of reasons to do it an to use it in your game. The main take away from this should be that failing forward allows your story to continue and progress while the setting up consequences down the line. You don’t end up getting stuck, but there’s still a cost for the players. It buys time for you as the DM to come up with that cost, and it keeps the players more engaged in the game.

Do you have any examples of failing forward? If you do, let us know about them with one of the ways below

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As one glance at the book cover will tell you, Chemistry is a parody of Twilight, but with zombies this time instead of vampires. Or at least, that’s how it started out — as the author notes in her Goodreads profile, she set out to write a book that was the exact opposite of Twilight, and the characters took on a life (er…undeath, in some cases) of their own. What is on its surface a goofy satire of Twilight that plays for laughs is in actuality a book with more depth, heart, and well-rounded characters than I’ve chanced across in quite some time.

Our heroine is Stella Blunt, a tall, curvy, brash, and supremely confident junior in high school. After Stella’s mom gets her dream job, Stella is forced to move across the country (Canada, in particular) with her parents, to Vancouver, British Columbia. To Stella, the move might as well be the end of the world — to say she doesn’t make friends easily is a vast understatement, and she dreads trying to fit somewhere into an unknown social sphere. At first, it’s just as bad as she fears — the students at her new school bully her relentlessly from the start (not that she puts up with it in the slightest, but this doesn’t even seem to slow them down). But then, she comes across Howard Mullins (known by all as Howie) in her chemistry class, and life as she knows it changes still further.

As soon as Stella sits down beside Howie, he can’t keep his eyes off her. His relentless yet unassuming adoration intrigues Stella, and she forms a tentative, curious friendship with him. She discovers that he is unfailingly sweet, if a little slow when he hasn’t eaten in a while, and full of an old-fashioned charm the likes of which she’s never seen. His pallid complexion, monotone voice, and lurching gait confuse her at first, so she does some research — and finds out that Howie, along with his father, brother, and sister, are all zombies. They eat brains (from animals only, of course) and inject themselves with formaldehyde on the reg in order to stay functioning/semi-normal, and to keep the virus from progressing or making them contagious. Naturally, Stella finds this beyond strange, but by the time she finds out, she’s gotten to know Howie well enough to know that he’s a rare gem, virus or no virus — and that she’s crushing on him, hard. Love quickly blossoms between them — but will it be enough to carry them through all the dangers and difficulties that lie ahead?

As I mentioned, this book is indeed a parody of Twilight, but to limit it to that would do it a disservice. More than just a feminist response to Twilight, Chemistry is a compelling feminist work that can stand on its own two feet. Thus, to my thinking, reading Twilight before reading Chemistry is only necessary for deriving maximum enjoyment from the jokes throughout the book — certainly not for enjoying the book as a whole. Not only does the story take every potentially questionable part of Twilight and stand it on its head, as well as elegantly fill in every plot hole that tripped up Twilight, its characters understand what feminism really is (i.e., what true equity, agency, and respect really mean) — and it manages to communicate this without sounding preachy, which was refreshing as all get-out.

Beyond this, the characters in this book are just fantastic. I believe we’ve noted in past reviews that there seems to be a trend among a lot of fiction these days where the protagonist of the story is totally flat and uninteresting, while being surrounded by loads of great side characters, all of whose stories we’d much rather read than the main character’s. So much of the time (especially with stuff that’s written in first-person POV), the protagonist is nothing more than a benign lens through which to view the story happening around them. That’s definitely the case for the material Chemistry is inspired by, and it’s something I’ve run into more times than I care to count. Because of this, finding a protagonist who actually feels like a real, multi-faceted, actually interesting human being in a book that I expected to be all goofiness and absurdity, well — it blew my tiny little mind, you guys.

And Stella, magnificent as she is, isn’t the only great character in this story. Howie is an absolute delight (beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world, too pure), and is the kind of sweet, respectful, capable male protagonist I want to see way more of. Almost all of the side characters have a compelling persona and backstory, everybody’s motivations feel well-founded and understandable, and the majority of them go through some level of believable character development.

As much as I could continue gushing about this book for ages, I do have a couple of critiques — the most prominent one, for me, was the way Stella’s new classmates take to brutally bullying her right away. Like, they are instantly peppering her with fat jokes and mean, snide comments. Now, it’s been a little while since I was in high school, so maybe the memory is slightly less seared onto my brain, but it seemed a little implausible coming from students who didn’t know Stella or have any sort of history with her. I’ll grant you that kids can sometimes be jerkwads for no reason, and for the purposes of this story, it worked okay, but it felt like a lot to swallow at some points. This behavior is partially explained by the fact that Stella draws attention not so much because she’s tall and plus-size, but more so because of the sheer force of her personality (which is considerable). Basically, her peers are threatened by her way of owning whatever room she walks into, so they lash out at her. This goes some distance toward explaining why Stella’s classmates are so hostile, but it still felt over-the-top to me at times.

Another thing I noticed is that the reader is sometimes asked to suspend disbelief just a smidge too far, or sometimes a moment goes a step past the point of no return in terms of cheesiness. These moments are few, and easily forgivable in the larger scheme of the plot, but there were a couple of points where it was enough to give me pause and pull me back out of the story a bit. But then I reminded myself I was reading satire, and that it all serves the larger purpose, and I dove back in to the amazingness.

Lastly — and this isn’t a flaw so much as a heads up — the content often veers toward the very mature (swear words and sex talk and violence, oh my!) — I didn’t find it too much to swallow, but some readers might, and it was enough that I’d be hesitant to call this book a straight-up Young Adult novel, even though it’s billed as such. I would maybe recommend it to a mature 17- or 18-year-old, but that’s a pretty hard maybe. Basically, use your judgement–if this sort of stuff tends to be a bit much for you, approach with caution.

Despite these things, though, I pretty much enjoyed every minute of this book. The powerful combination of fantastic characters I wish I could befriend in real life, a ton of refreshing themes, and a pace that doesn’t let up, this book was exactly what I wanted to read right now, and nearly impossible to put down. It had so many of the tropes and themes I want to see more of, like the soft action boy (listen, I know this is barely a thing, but I’m trying to make it a thing, so there), the BBW, great platonic friendships, and some really great, non-token-y representation. Basically, it did a lot of the things I love to see a story doing, and beyond that, it was a straight up blast, and I already kinda want to re-read it (and I definitely want to do fan art of it).

After finishing Chemistry, I was beyond stoked to find that History, the second book in the series, is out now too, and I promptly devoured it as well (I may do a separate review of it later, but I’m still deciding…with the way it plays out, it’d be a challenge to review it without dropping some major spoilers, and I am morally opposed to spoilers). There’s a third book, Biology, in the works as well, but Chemistry just came out in 2016, and History in December of 2017 (fresh as fresh gets, y’all!), so needless to say, it’ll be awhile. And I shall be waiting with bated breath until it’s out!

Love or hate Twilight, would you read Chemistry? If you’ve read it, what did you like and/or dislike about it? What popular book would you love to see someone do a parody of?

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