Electric Bastionland: Worked Examples (2)

(Part One)

Deep Water: The Twining Sea

Currents
The Wick - swifter than expected; not as choppy as the other currents round the islands
Whale Lane - colder, deeper and clearer than other stretches of water.
Ungungstruk - draws silt from the coastal islets and deltas. A thick, dark current.

Features
A - Windshook: a rocky island dotted with high columns, seemingly natural (in fact partial ruins built of an abnormally smooth stone).
B - Vansittart Cluster: a number of little islands, with a few scattered houses. (A few sheep farms remain here, but the bulk of the population is currently a film crew).
C - Puffin Perch: a squarish black rock, covered in puffins (if the puffins leave, you may find the body of a nihilist, a straight razor and a cryptic letter)
D - Tescel: privately owned island, known for an artist's colony (many of the artists in question are past their prime; a lack of strong drink and narcotics has set some on edge).
E - Bruning's Knot: a tangle of weed and wreckage caught between the currents (a small family of wrecked sailors reside here and know the way through).
F - Three-Schilling: a watch station on an island (the station head does a good Black Market trade in Coast Guard supplies).
G - Angel's Plait: twining sandbanks, decorated with birds (pools of water between the banks can reveal stranded wildlife until the tides return).

Complications
Whale Lane, circling B: rough waves threaten to drive your vessel onto the rocks of Brensen, uppermost island of the Cluster.
Whale Lane, passing A: a giant squid, bearing the seal of a foreign power on its power harness. An eye swivels towards your vessel.
Whale Lane, far past D: in the distance, the shape of a vast albatross. It stoops and soars down to perch on your deck. About its neck - the corpse of a sailor. It begins to speak....

The Wick, past B: the missionary barge, the Heart of Skegness starts proselytising in morse code.
The Wick, approaching G: the sandbanks are covered by water - can you recall where they lay?
The Wick, in sight of C: a piratical submarine lurks in these waters and will surface and attack you purely for the opportunity of some fresh air and new faces.

Ungungstruk, skirting E: a strong wind draws you closer to the Knot.
Ungungstruk, circling D: a weather balloon appears to be following your ship.
Ungungstruk, in sight of F: the Coast Guard stage a surprise inspection. There has been a change the nautical licensing code.

The Underground: Deep Beneath the Hotel Messala

Rooms and Passages 
A - Corroded Substation - an electricity substation; corroded, flaking fuses and rheostats between blank concrete walls. Arcs of electricity play off the depths of the substation, which sits in a sunken chamber at the junction.
B - Auto-Triage: a medical station with rows of examination coffers (someone placed in a coffer is categorised according to the severity of their wounds. Little or no medical assistance is offered by the automated systems).
C - Emergency District Information Hub - a small, well-equipped print shop and a formal room with a stage, pulpit and magic lantern projector (a hidden safe at the back of the printshop has partial details of civil defence regulations and the degrees of emergency law that may be imposed in time of war. You have not heard of any of the regulations involved, nor of some of the things they apparently ward against.).
D - Heliotrope Helix: a series of spiral tunnels, the ceilings of which gleam like the sun. (Intended so that people in the shelters could change environment and experience something like sunlight - but in a short space of time. Stay too long inside and you will get badly sunburnt).
E - Gaudy Street Seal: an internal gate in the emergency conduit, with a defensive bubble-turret. Named for the street above in chalked letters on the lintel. (Once closed, the gate will seal shut until the system detects that the gas attack has passed. The system is not in good working order.)
F - The Hive of Chains - a shaft, rising up into the regular basements of the Hotel. Chains, ready to lift or lower platforms hang down at every hand. (Some of the chains clatter ceaselessly; something below is shaking them.)
G - Automated Exchange: banks of enamelled stations, where telephone calls can be put through. But the wires are moving all by themselves. (The only calls being made are test calls between emergency stations, introduced by a unique piece of electronic music and a string of numbers).
H - The Discretionary Reception - a plush-carpeted room and four elevators. (An entrance to the hotel for guests desiring secrecy. Far larger than one would expect....)
I - Steel Cookhouse: two long metal counters, two stoves, two sinks. (Approach, and a number of unlabelled tins drop out of a chute. A voice will urge you to cook the best meal possible with these random ingredients.)
J - The Waste Disposal Offices - a dull door with a conspicuous nameplate. Inside, an office with several battered cupboards and a hatch. (This is where hotel employees gather to dispose of discarded luxuries, overlooked delicacies and other valuable items. There is a dumbwaiter directly from the kitchens.)
K - Guest Vault: A series of heavy metal doors, each with a code lock. Each door has a large sealed compartment through which objects may be passed. (You may find the guests inside, in one state or another).
L - The Cellar of Last Resort: the place where the rarest beverages for the hotel above are stored. They are hermetically sealed in individual caskets. (Discovering which casket is which requires knowledge of the symbols and abbreviations used by the caste of sommeliers).

Complications
A-B - A leaking pipe has spread water across the passage; this has been electrified.
B-C - As you pass down this corridor, the sensation of touch is completely absent from you. Even if you are clutching something tightly, you cannot feel it.
B-K - Several automated cleaning trolleys block passage. They are scouring the walls into harsh, acidic cleanliness.
C-D -  Phosphoric primroses bloom from the iron of the floor grids. Do not tread on these.
C-K - Numerous jukeboxes begin playing music as you approach. Armed figures watch you approach; they do not react to this sound.
D-E - A fierce, disorientating buzzing intensifies as you approach E.
D-L - Birds sit in the passage; magpies, with wings of platinum and black iron. They eyes you in a hostile fashion.
E-H - Custodian Concierge: a respectful but very firm Concierge would like you to go no further away from H. Either go up, or go out.
F-I - Ahead of you, the floor begins to heat up. One more step, and you may fry.
I-C - The concrete slabs and iron grids of the floor fluctuate like the ripples of a pool.
I-J - A revolutionary cell is meeting here, and they do not wish to be disturbed or observed.
J-D - A turnstile bars your path. Several red lights blink into existence as you approach. Something is watching.
K-L - Clockwork scribes tick through here, trailing lists and inventories in their wake. Prepare to be stamped, inspected, briefed, debriefed and numbered.
L-H - Before you in the passage, a pepperpot-shaped automaton pushes a large barrel. It does not appear inclined to stop.

Stretches
B-F
1. Familiar as this passage is, the air around you becomes close. There is a constant shaking and the choking smell of engine exhaust. The winding of great tracks begins, only to stop at the sound of regular shrill plinking. A cannon roars.
2. Former foundations: vaults designed to support a structure that stood where the hotel now is stretch ahead of you. They are not always safe. Some are partially flooded.
3. Ahead of you the corridor is quite lightless. Nothing cuts through the darkness, though pale smoke can somehow still be seen in the air. From somewhere comes a great wind, and the walls no longer appear to be present.
4. Rubble ahead, the bitter scent of ash, and shrapnel fragments. But no bomb could pierce these cellars, surely? And no aerial raids have yet been spotted.
5. The piercing scent of bile is on the air. The tunnel narrows at the top, becoming the shape of an equilateral triangle in cross-section, walls covered in white and orange tiles. A hook-footed crab-like being clicks behind you along the corridor, oil oozing from its joints.
6. A white-painted corridor; coloured lines on the floor, with multiple dog-legs and a gentle slope. Deer of boiled leather and brass wire prance along it. If they come near you, they will entangle you in twining, tentacle like brass antlers.

Lessons and Conclusions

You are meant to have all the notes on the page with the map - but A) that's not as such a blog-friendly format and B) I started drawing maps on A5 paper and so had to continue. So, draw your maps in an A5 space on an A4 sheet, I suppose.

(Like so)

It was a little difficult to establish a proper frame of reference on the currents on the Deep Water map for the complications - quite what a 'stretch of current' is isn't clear from the things on the map. Perhaps my 'Skirting Point X' or 'In Sight of Y' works.

I'm not China Miéville; it has been a little difficult to really put my mind to a living, breathing, self-contradicting metropolis. Bits of what I've done feel a little too much like a stage set, or an orrery  Perhaps that makes this a useful thing to do again. Turning my Silent Quarter post into a borough of Bastion might be worthwhile..

Electric Bastionland: Worked Examples (1)

Using the Mapping pages from Electric Bastionland I have created several maps using the guidelines provided. There are two more to come...

Bastion: the Borough of Gideon's Blessing

Landmarks and Paths
A Praetor's Gate (Ceremonial gate for obsolete government post with three copper domes)
B Upper Bronpuhr Wharf (Former warehouses now covered market)
C Lower Bronpuhr Wharf (Nearby docks now a high-instensity fish-farm)
D Allingham Street (Saloons and gaming parlours - some once quite high-end)
E Secretary Park (Former residences of warehouse bosses and low-level officials)
F Hobson-Jobson Square (Former residences of warehouse workers)
G Winged-Iron Circus (Circular elevated walkway decorated with wings reaches over busy junction)
H Cannery Main Entrance (the fish is gutted and canned)

Complications
A-B: Another spell of maintenance work on the Gate. Scaffolding blocks large vehicles.
A-F: The long way round; chances are you will miss any appointments.
B-C: Dense crowds moving through the market; keen vendors likely to buttonhole you.
B-G: The elevated walkway removes you from the sight of the fish being gutted, but not all of the smell.
C-D: The trams always slow down by the dockside; the walkway is full of people who know this.
D-E: Clash as a religious procession meets a syndicalist demonstration. Definitely crowds, possibly violence
E-F: Secretary Park was once accessible to residents only. The gates have yet to betaken down and restrict traffic
E-H: A narrow walkway. Better hope nobody is trying to take a hand cart across.
G-H: Gangs doing a trade in odour-muffling face masks impregnated with a minor stimulant clash for territory on the cannery walkways.

Going off-grid
B-C: Maintenance access. Lots of delivery vans and technicians to dodge.
D-E: Back alleys and parallel streets slowly fill with police (uniformed or otherwise). Just monitoring the crowds, for now.
G-H: Through the Cannery. You aren't supposed to be here, and there's lots of industrial machinery to dodge around.
[B, C, D, E] - [G, H] - A dock full of fish to navigate through. Hope you know someone with a punt.

Deep Country: The Approach to the Joelite Range

Landmarks and Paths
A Second Nun Bend (A railway station largely dedicated to repairing the track dow to the river valley)
B Burn Reeving (A watch station is maintained at this point, despite the lack of river traffic or fishing trade)
C Pardoner's Crossing (The trains from the mines need to pass through here. That's all the importance it has.)
D Manciple Station (A former town, known for the cattle trade. Empty stockyards now inhabited by things other than cattle)
E Topaz Junction (Railway yard, with signal box and other buildings decorated with low-grade semi-precious stones from the mines)
F The Husband's Bath (By the junction of the rivers a large hole has been dug. Local stories claim a lazy husband was forcibly scrubbed there.)
G Barton Franklin (Once known for the quality of the waters; now known as the town you stop at one the way to the mines)

Complications
A-C Scree has blocked one of the rail lines
B-C A river toll levied at Pardoner's Crossing
C-E The signal station at Topaz Junction refuses to let anyone through. Desperate brigands hide there.
C-F The river is full of sharp rocks.
D-E Only one train in ten has any reason to stop at Manciple.
E-G The Prefecture Warden's deputies are conducting a search of the moors. You may be held at a way-station and interrogated.

Going Off-Route
Between A-C-F: Steep Slopes (Loose scree, dust, precipitous drops)
Between E-G: Damp Heath (hills, dense scrub, heather)
Downriver from F: Former Proving Grounds (Unexploded munitions, shell craters, barbed wire)
E-X: Out on the moors, a former hunting lodge can be seen. Behind it, something tall, covered in scaffolding.
F-X Across the river, the sandbag-clad bulk of an observation post.
G-X Below the railway cutting, a former sanatorium in heavily wooded grounds.

Part Two here.

Postcard Games: Improvised Playing Cards

In order to give your tabletop setting a little flavour, you might want to create a set of images or icons necessary to fuel, for instance, the symbols of the suits of playing cards, or the tiles of Mahjong or the signs of the Zodiac - or even the Loteria (thanks, Tim Powers). These aren't as such arbitrary, having their own heritage and meaning - but I would argue the way they are used can be and that any wider context for these (for instance, why the constellation of Capricorn is named as it is) rarely plays a part in their use.

I possess a (larger than necessary) collection of postcards purchased from Museums and Galleries over the years. These images would form the basis for the symbols involved. I decided to pick only the portrait orientated pictures - just as a real playing card. I excluded any repetitions or near-repetitions (for instance, Edward IV and Richard III, or two scenes of the Annunciation). I also excluded anything too close to an existing symbol (no fools or magicians), anything too modern or anything with an obvious literary root (a scene of HG Wells's Tripods, for instance).

The biggest grouping of symbols for fortune-telling, card games, aesthetic schemes &c, I thought to be the Tarot.  So I drew three set of images:

4 Suits
3 Face cards
17 Major Picture cards (Major Arcana)

(This last figure was decided as being d12 + 10. That many unique images should serve most goals above. If putting a rule on this, I would say 1d6 suits, 1d4 face cards.)

So what did I get?

Well, we have our Suits:

Bears, Serpents, Rams and Owls. (I chose Serpent over Dragon to unify the suits as mundane beasts.)

Next, the face cards:

Huntsman, Syndic and Hierarch. Whoever these people may actually be, these are the names I am picking. Besides, 'The Hierarch of Rams' sounds rad.

And so, onto the picture cards:

The Flightless Bird, the Pyx and the Stylite.

The Charter, the Maiden of the Wilderness, the Battle

The Effigy, the Procession, the Mystic Rose [Cue TS Eliot]

The Companions, the Scholars, the Surgeon

The Glass, the Harper, the Hospitable Castellan

The Stairway, the Garden

[If you want to know where any of these come from, just ask and I'll post it in the comments.]

So, there it is. One pseudo-Tarot suitable for use in a constructed world at the tabletop, set aside from real iconography.

In-universe people might know and use the suits and face cards for games, but have no real knowledge of the picture cards. Your one fortune-teller or magician might know the meaning - and of course these meanings can be created in the course of play.

A method for creating sets of symbols - it could be used for artistic motifs or coats of arms or even street gangs (the South Side Mystic Roses?). Perhaps you don't even need postcards.....

Electric Bastionland: First Thoughts

I put in a spot of money for the Electric Bastionland Kickstarter, and was duly rewarded with a PDF. So then, a few words on it, for the general discussion.

The book is roughly divided into three section: An Introduction with details of the Into the Odd rules, a list of character Failed Careers backgrounds and advice for play, involving details of the setting.

A presumed party of would-be adventurers automatically start with a debt and someone (or something) to whom they owe money. This skips neatly over the improbabilities of player characterisation and, frankly, allows a probable cause for the dangerous work of dungeon crawling in a city buzzing with money and possibility. Also, it adds an automatic contact - a mentor or benefactor, though also a predator. It's an elegant source of motivation.

This is bolstered by a list of Failed Careers and people you owe money to. It gives superb variety; there are about a hundred careers, each with unique items and skills attached. The city of Bastion, much like (for instance) Virconium or Gormenghast does not really have an official map or set of parameters. So the list of careers is the meat of the setting - setting up the main flavour of Bastionland. On top of that, the black and white art, full of blank faces and thin lines gives a very good impression of squalor, shabbiness, brash fashion and detached stylish opulence. There is a deliberate urban 'cool' to it in places.

Following this, as I said, is a set of advice for play. This is good, frankly. Neatly laid out, with bullet points grouped into threes. The advice for play and for the Conductor (GM or similar) seems sound - and, even if were you disagree with the philosophy, it is nearly laid out and comprehensible.

Electric Bastionland is not a toolkit for describing cities. Yes, as it says, Nobody's Bastion is incorrect, but Bastion is not a description of early-mid 20th century city life (and how to use that for tabletop RPGs). It is a more poetic rendering of the city, where the world is divided into Bastion, Deep Country, the Underground and the Living Stars. Other cities exist, but none can compete with Bastion. The City is moves and changes at astonishing rate - with nothing like a central authority, the Country is supremely hidebound, the Underground spectacularly dark.

One principles of the city boroughs of Bastion is that there is always a crowd; that if possible, a problem or obstacle should always be a human being. 'Mastery of People is Mastery of Bastion'. The city is always crowded, always living. Bastion has no business districts deserted at the weekend, no vibrant provincial towns with artistic colonies, no stifling domestic suburbs, no demands of a central government, no national spirit (nationalism within Bastion seems possible, but probably not of any simple type).  Maybe I am thinking too much of the late twentieth century, mass communication and mass transit - but Metro-land and the Holloway of Diary of a Nobody certainly predate this.

It is a poetic cityscape, an archetype put into formal, almost ritualised terms for use on the tabletop. That isn't automatically bad - I've never felt that RPGs have to be simulations - but I like some of my wider context to be a little granular. It is so unremittingly urban-centric that I want to rejig my anti-urban setting to act as a mental counterweight. It works, and can work for a great many things.

I suppose I would square the circle by having Bastion as the metropole of a larger empire/alliance/federation &c, rather than the literal City beyond all Cities, even if it is that for all intents and purposes.

I like Electric Bastionland. I want to use Electric Bastionland. You may do so as well. I might post a few worked examples here. But remember what it is before you try to use the setting as it is on the page.