Fan Club “Blog” #2: Impossibly Large Landscapes

Did Matt stop updating a year ago? :(

AU

I ran Impossible Landscapes and it was hands-down the best campaign I've ever run. Arc Dream are evil geniuses and Delta Green is mind-blowingly good.

Edward Bailey

In my mind, I filed Impossible Landscapes as an exquisite art and ephemera book rather than as a thing people should actually play. Glad there are people brave enough to make the attempt.

Jake G

I've often wondered if it's worth going for Masks for Impossible Landscapes. I'm really excited to hear more about your thoughts. At the moment, I'm just hoping for consistent players before I even attempt to run either of these ;_;

Pang

Definitely long and very, very ambitious is “The Throne of Thorns” for Symbaroum. It's a grand campaign in six! books. Players grow from no one to individuals deciding the fate of the world. Many cool factions to interact with which change over the course of the campaign.

Євген Мокеєв

==bursts through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man== EYES OF THE STONE THIEF! it's 13th Age, it's over-the-top fantasy adventure, it's GARETH

Patrick O'Duffy

I have never felt more seen than by this article.

Adam K Bunnell

Just a heads up, that Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes is on sale https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/344408/delta-green-impossible-landscapes today, 60% off.

Philip Kristoffersen

I share your love for big campaigns and megadungeons. My favorite is the Halls of Arden Vul for AD&D 1e. I was introduced to it through the 3d6 Down the Line actual play, I started watching at episode 16, the party had been captured by one of the factions and had managed to escape through a secret door, but they were now trying to return to the surface through unknown territory. I found it so gripping, I just had to buy the module to see what was around the next corner.

Theodore Gast

In addition to Impossible Landscapes I would also say to look at God's Teeth which is also Delta Green. It's a really fantastic story with a good central element.

Alex Roberts

Next time I'm up in the GM rotation one of the things I'm going to propose to the rest of the group is that I run the classic WFRP mega-campaign The Enemy Within. No idea if they'll be interested or how well it'll go, but having never really been one for using published adventures I quite fancy giving it a go. On the Delta Green front, I'm not familiar with 'Impossible Landscapes' but I consider Delta Green: Countdown one of the greatest RPG supplements of all time, largly on the strength of John Tynes' amazing take on the Hastur Mythos, and have played in a great campaign involving it, so hopefully it'll go well and you'll have a blast.

Robert Hanton

Ah, I played Stars Without Number and I guess it is a OSR. It was great to just "interpret" how the world would react. Things where going on in the world and players might encounter them. I didn't realize that something like that also counted as a campaign. Thanks for the clarification.

Philip Kristoffersen

The best ones aren’t premade stories but situations. I believe the OSR excels at this compared to 5e. They’re basically tool boxes that a GM can use as scaffolding for player shenanigans. When players go off book, and they will, I’ve found it helpful to act more as a referee than a storyteller when it comes to interpreting the world’s reactions to their shenanigans.

Barca206

I LOVE Impossible Landscapes as a story, but I agree that it looks challenging to run "properly." Surreal horror is challenging to run, because you have to keep it on this side of "Well, nothing makes sense anymore and so nothing matters." That said, I believe in you, and hope we'll get updates as you go!

Brian Schoner

Love when there's pro-tips in the comments! Thanks - going to check out Ross Payton as well

Vahlir

Excited to be here and to help see dazzling TTRPGs get the limelight they deserve! Mister Quinns, given your Netrunner enthusiast background and FFG's tentative forays into the pitted chrome world of Android, I'm curious if there is any interest in the 'Shadow of the Beanstalk' module released for the Genesys RPG System. Both of these have been out for a while now with nary a peep. Could we see you returning to the tarnished streets of New Angeles perhaps?

Alex Kay

I forgot to suggest my best recommendation for running the Night Floors. For a maximum "Overlook Hotel" effect, hit them with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL998ajnjN4&ab_channel=alteredzones

Barca206

Good luck Quinns! Hope IL scares the pants off your players. :)

Barca206

It makes me feel kinda mixed on Impossible Landscapes as a product. I think it’s an amazing work of fiction for me to read as a GM, but I think translating it into a gameable experience is tricky. I don’t think the book adequately prepares you, and it’s really for advanced GMs. Impossible Landscapes is trying to be Jacob’s Ladder and In the Mouth of Madness with a side of x-files, but a disempowerment fantasy about the tenuousness of reality can fly in the face of providing player’s with meaningful choices and consequences. It’s a testament to the book then that I want to run it again with all I’ve learned.

Barca206

Honestly, the thing which at my brief glance of it (bar the whole generational concept stuff - the One Ring campaign uses it too) is that it essentially moves through the whole history of Arthurian styles, at an accelerated rate - so essentially, it's switching genre every generation (or at least tone)

Kieron

COWARD, QUINNS!

Kieron

Oh… Pirates of Drinax… it has always looked so good (and people say positive things). The only reason I didn’t buy it when I was deep into my Traveller phase (as my first real breakaway game from D&D as GM) was past experience of what happens when I bought a Big Box Prestige Boardgame or two without checking if my friends were interested. There’s a very similar “aspirational purchase” quality to the grand RPG campaign as big box boardgame like Oath or Twilight Imperium. At least they’re cheaper than other aspirational things like a MacBook. I love running Heart though, and that ‘Dagger in the Heart’ sourcebook by GRH of Drinax fame looks awfully tempting…

edmo

Quintin Smith

There’s also Ultraviolet Grasslands! It’s a psychedelic acid-rock road that combines Oregon Trail and the Dying Earth genre. The designer/writer did all the art themself and it’s a real trip.

Barca206

It’s not so much a campaign as a setting, but i think the upcoming Dolmenwood box set is really something special. There’s also God’s Teeth, the next Delta Green campaign, but there are some CONTENT WARNINGS with gigantic 30 foot tall concrete letters looming large here.

Barca206

Impossible Landscapes is a real white whale to run. I remember reading the playtest materials at the start of the pandemic and it absolutely set my mind aflame with the possibilities. If you get the opportunity Quinns, I'd recommend reaching out to Ross Payton from Role-Playing Public Radio. He has a lot of advice for incoming Impossible Landscapes GMs that I wish I had read before running my own IL game 3 years ago. It's a really fun book to read, but the campaign presents a very different style of game than traditional Delta Green. It really helps to get out of the book and tailor the experience to your characters and their bonds. Its possible to be extremely loosey, goosey with the surreal horror and its a balancing act to make sure the players don't feel like the game is too arbitrary. I found it helpful to throw my players into a regular Delta Green operation in between the Night Floors and a Volume of Secret Faces. Something short that can provide some grounding before they fall off the deep end.

Barca206

This Patreon was worth signing up for if only to be informed about the Heart campaign! I've been wanting to play it forever but I've needed to find a way to introduce my players to it. As for 'what if it's a bit rubbish'? - I'd discuss it with my players after each session, if you're not enjoying it, why bother continuing?

Backpack Boom Bap (Tom)

The Masks of Nyarlathotep in the Call of Cthuhlu setting is amazing - travelling between continents in a very Indiana Jones setting thwarting great conspiracies is amazing. Some of the group died, some went bonkers but the GM would find ways to get the players back into the game weaving in back stories and relationships for new characters. Probably the best pre-written adventure I've ever played (apparently it involved a lot of hard work behind the scenes though...) [Edit: And I was so excited about it I didn't finish reading the article before you mentioned it...]

Backpack Boom Bap (Tom)

Stop stealing my words Gillen

Stephen Reid

My RPG white whale is The Great Pendragon Campaign. One day…

Stephen Reid

I just started digging into the "Mercy of the Icons" for the Coriolis rpg, and in really liking it so far.

Andrew

I have been obsessed with Impossible Landscapes since I read it over a year ago, so very excited to see you starting it and maybe reviewing it down the line! I think the surreal horror and the superb layout of the book just scratch an itch that nothing else does.

Nathan Klassen

Agreed, I lean into well written sandbox settings with plenty of hooks and tension points pulsing with palpable adventure potentiality. I love the emergent adventures that come from them directly from PC actions.

P0rthos

Well… if you like Drinax but asked “What if Hitchhiker’s Guide?” then do look at Space Aces: Voyages In Infinite Space. But I’m obviously biased as it represents years of my life to get made. 😆 Also the Lands Of Eem is a delightful sandbox of a setting that asks “What if fantasy but muppets?”

P0rthos

I share this fascination with Big campaigns btw! I’m particularly in love with the ones that are almost more setting book than campaign- laying out a world and its inhabitants in such detail the story almost tells itself. The Absalom, City of Lost Omens setting book from Pathfinder 2e comes to mind- 250 locations, over 400 NPCs, all woven together and connected to create a city that cannot help but create its own campaign the moment your group interacts with any particular element of it, despite not being a campaign book in the technical sense.

Seraphina

The module is also not what you might expect based on the premise, but i wouldn’t want to spoil anything 😉

Seraphina

Definitely not Long, but absolutely Big, is Witchburner. It’s a system neutral module that covers a wet and cold October that the party will spend trying to catch a witch. It breaks the month down almost hour by hour on what happens in the background, and includes something like 30 key NPCs and their households. Perhaps not to the same scope as the ones you mentioned, but I can see telling a Big story in this tragic horror story, full of investigation and moral dilemmas. Definitely a fascinating read!

Seraphina

(My white whale is the pendragon campaign)

Kieron

As a teenager I played all the way through THE ENEMY WITHIN campaign for whfrp and part of me wants to do it as an adult. The current editions of it are really beautiful

Kieron

I never really got how to run premade stories, how do you avoid it feeling like a Teltale game or a Rollercoaster ride? How do you allow for infinite player possibilities while keeping them on track?

Philip Kristoffersen

"I guess I'm personally interested in where the TTRPG community's desire for grandiosity becomes a folly." Oh man as someone who, at like 10 years old and knowing nothing about RPGs or any TTRPG systems at all, bought the Birthright Campaign Setting from a bookstore because it looked cool, this really cuts deep. I never played but it provided countless hours of rich imagination and daydreaming.

Randall

Quinns