GM: Riley Daniels
Players: Cris Viana, Sophie Lagacé, Fred Hicks, Sean Nittner
System: As the Sun Forever Sets
As the Sun Forever Sets is a Forged in the Dark game about a group of ordinary Victorian people embroiled in the chaos of Britain as it collapses under the overwhelming weight of an invasion from Mars.
Where our players go, how they’ll survive these extreme circumstances, and what they hope to save from the wreckage is up to them. After 15 days, the Martians – who long ago eradicated all disease on the red planet – succumb to the micro-organisms of Earth, and the game ends, leaving behind a world forever changed. Each hour might bring a fresh threat to their lives, or a shimmering beacon of hope in the darkness.
It’s a Horror Survival game. These 15 days will be the longest and most fraught of our characters lives, and every new day will be harder than the one before. You’ll need food, medical supplies and weapons to make it through, and if you’re not prepared, you’ll be left in the dust.
It’s about Relationships & Change. Victorian society is stratified by class, and riddled with prejudice. With its liquefaction, the most important thing we have is each other. Your character is shaped by the actions you take, as are the relationships with the people you meet.
It’s a Sandbox Hex Crawl – utilizing a map to plot the groups course across the stricken country, and track the invasion that tears it asunder. The map gives you ideas of the types of things you’re likely to see along your journey. What you’ll actually find is up to you, and the roll of the dice.
We play to find out how the cataclysm shapes our characters and their relationships to each other, what ends they’ll go to to justify their means, and if they live to see a new world, or die amidst the rubble of the old.
The Play is the thing
A preacher tried to calm their flock and we really thought waiting for the inevitable destruction was a bad plan. Tryin to interfere didn’t go so well!
Here’s some of the things we really liked:
Mechanics. There’s a lot of cleverness going on in the system elements. We really liked the ways you chose to deviate from the Blades baseline, particularly the more fluid use of traits instead of actions, the differentiation of action and reflex rolls, the way traits evolve in response to how well you did, the relevance and levels of bonds/relationships to helping other PCs out while living through stressful circumstances, etc. Furthermore, the ability to sacrifice some of those relationships in order to gain some necessary resources feels very on point for the game.
Setting and Tone. The game does a great job of showing normal people in impossible situations. The threat of the martians felt so overwhelming it was clear you don’t fend them off, you run, hide, and try to care for those you love. The social pressures and other stressors (and moral dilemmas) of the premise read through in clear, playable ways.
There are also some areas that we’d like to see further development on:
Mechanics. Currently the camp phase feels a bit dense. With a possible 24 actions for 4 people, and a few things that need to be checked before you can spend those actions (exhaustion) it feels like the system could be streamlined.
GM Guidance. We’d like a little more Narrator-facing guidance on how to really put teeth into the situations that the PCs find themselves in specifically relevant to challenging the group’s Accord, or providing opportunities for Accord-relevant dilemmas. You did a great job of this as a Narrator, but we’re not sure if the book trains the reader to think this way.
Player Guidance: We’d like to see more opportunities for the players to flavor the world as well. Example: during the phase “setting the scene” (pg 176), at the beginning of the session, a round with the players was made so they could set how their chars were feeling (specially in relation to what we have on the sheet). Is he afraid? Tired? Are those feelings showing up, and when? What are the thoughts that go through in his head at the time? We think that would make it more clear how each player will interact that game session, and help dive further into the horror.
Campaign Length. The rulebook suggests 15 to 20 sessions to end a campaign. We find it’s hard to get players to commit to a campaign that long and would like to see options for shorter campaigns.
Setting/Content. We don’t know if the game addresses problematic issues of the time (and fiction about the time) adequately. There was a scene when it seemed like Sophia (played by Cris) was going to have a harder time swaying the congregation because she was a woman, but otherwise we didn’t feel an oppressive amount of racism, sexism, etc. The Martians were truly alien enough that they didn’t feel like a stand in or justification for xenophobia.
