The Inside Scoop on Gaming

John Tynes has a great wealth of role-playing material available for free on his website, Revland. Settings like the Zone or short little games like Puppetland are available for download and use. He also has some other work up, like his original draft for the Stargate RPG for West End Games that never got printed because the company went belly-up. One of the other interesting bits on the site is the adventure for the game TRAUMA, Instrument of Precision, a short surrealist adventure that could be adapted to add a bit of weirdness to nearly any game.

As Tynes says in introduction for Instrument of Precision, it is less a scenario or adventure than a series of episodes to be sprinkled into another on-going game to shake it up and unnerve the characters. Reading that, I expected a series of completely unconnected scenes that could be strung together however I need to, but it was actually much more an ongoing subplot. Furthermore, Tynes provides no explanation for what is really going on, "in keeping with TRAUMA's design intentions," he says. It falls to the game master and the players to wrap around what's going on. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing.

The story starts with the random appearance of a naked, mute woman in one of the character's bed. All attempts to communicate fail, until the players provide her with paper, upon which she carefully draws a seemingly random placement of dots, maybe a star map or something more esoteric. Later scenes (I'm being vague so as to not spoil the surprise if anyone intends to use this information) include a meeting with a mysterious (and supposedly dead FBI agent), a high-speed and high-danger chase on the highway, a mysterious letter from a dead friend that is related to the diagram the woman drew and finally the home that the player character grew up in.

While this is a really surreal subplot, I'm not so sure that it could remain a subplot. It just seems so grabbing that I can't see it as doing anything other than taking the main stage for itself, especially with it's complete refusal to make sense. My players would gallivant off into the subplot, assuming that it ties into the main story somehow. Furthermore, I don't think that it would work perfectly for all games. The more over-the-top modern occult games would suffer some loss of mood with this story, I think it fits Unknown Armies or another low-key modern occult/conspiracy game best. A World of Darkness or WitchCraft game could handle it, but it would require a tight reign on character powers and a strongly focuses game master.

Beyond that though, I think that the hardest thing about Instrument of Precision is coming up with an explanation about what is really going on. I know that my players would string me up and beat me with wet noodles if I ran this and didn't let them know what the hell was going on. The biggest challenge is explaining all of this, and it would require a lot of thought and creativity to even begin dealing with it, but then again, maybe forcing some creativity is just what Tynes was trying to do.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Instrument of Precision
Author: John Tynes Category: game Company/Publisher: John Tynes Line: TRAUMA Cost: free Page count: about 9 printed out Capsule Review by Derek Guder on 11/15/99. Genre tags: Fantasy Modern_day Horror Conspiracy	John Tynes has a great wealth of role-playing material available for free on his website, Revland. Settings like the Zone or short little games like Puppetland are available for download and use. He also has some other work up, like his original draft for the Stargate RPG for West End Games that never got printed because the company went belly-up. One of the other interesting bits on the site is the adventure for the game TRAUMA, Instrument of Precision, a short surrealist adventure that could be adapted to add a bit of weirdness to nearly any game. As Tynes says in introduction for Instrument of Precision, it is less a scenario or adventure than a series of episodes to be sprinkled into another on-going game to shake it up and unnerve the characters. Reading that, I expected a series of completely unconnected scenes that could be strung together however I need to, but it was actually much more an ongoing subplot. Furthermore, Tynes provides no explanation for what is really going on, "in keeping with TRAUMA's design intentions," he says. It falls to the game master and the players to wrap around what's going on. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. The story starts with the random appearance of a naked, mute woman in one of the character's bed. All attempts to communicate fail, until the players provide her with paper, upon which she carefully draws a seemingly random placement of dots, maybe a star map or something more esoteric. Later scenes (I'm being vague so as to not spoil the surprise if anyone intends to use this information) include a meeting with a mysterious (and supposedly dead FBI agent), a high-speed and high-danger chase on the highway, a mysterious letter from a dead friend that is related to the diagram the woman drew and finally the home that the player character grew up in. While this is a really surreal subplot, I'm not so sure that it could remain a subplot. It just seems so grabbing that I can't see it as doing anything other than taking the main stage for itself, especially with it's complete refusal to make sense. My players would gallivant off into the subplot, assuming that it ties into the main story somehow. Furthermore, I don't think that it would work perfectly for all games. The more over-the-top modern occult games would suffer some loss of mood with this story, I think it fits Unknown Armies or another low-key modern occult/conspiracy game best. A World of Darkness or WitchCraft game could handle it, but it would require a tight reign on character powers and a strongly focuses game master. Beyond that though, I think that the hardest thing about Instrument of Precision is coming up with an explanation about what is really going on. I know that my players would string me up and beat me with wet noodles if I ran this and didn't let them know what the hell was going on. The biggest challenge is explaining all of this, and it would require a lot of thought and creativity to even begin dealing with it, but then again, maybe forcing some creativity is just what Tynes was trying to do. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty)