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Fan Club “Blog” #2: Impossibly Large Landscapes (Patreon)

Published:
2024-02-10 14:44:42
Edited:
2024-02-10 14:50:40
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

(Header image taken from this Actual Play)

To say I have a soft spot for ambitious adventure modules would be an understatement. The fascination I have with a good, big, pre-written campaign is the sort of prominent, pulsing weak spot you'd expect to see on a boss in a video game. It will almost certainly see me bringing ruin upon my gaming table.

I have little interest in Traveller, but I'd run Pirates of Drinax in a heartbeat. I wasn't convinced by Mausritter until I read The Estate. My favourite thing to come out of Mothership so far is Gradient Descent (though Pound of Flesh is a VERY close second), and hearing that there's some mammoth adventure coming out for Heart (also written by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, same as Drinax) sets my actual heart aflutter.

The key thing to point out here is that these modules aren't long, they're big.

A long adventure is just a scripted sequence, and in being scripted it's going to siphon some of the magic and unpredictability out of telling a story with your friends. Conversely, these big adventures I'm talking about are sprawling sandpits that offer a queasy quantity of scale and consequence. They often need you to finish reading the book(s) before you can start playing, because you're not preparing a story, but a situation made up of (the illusion of) byzantine clockwork.

And this week, I'm getting ready to actually play one.

We're going to be playing Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes, an epic module for Call-of-Cthulhu-but-it's-a-contemporary-cop-conspiracy game Delta Green. It introduces the players to the (now practically folkloric) character of the King in Yellow, in a story spanning 20 years, contained in a GM-facing book 368 pages long and a .pdf with exactly 100 player-facing handouts.

I couldn't be more excited.

However, anticipation is all-too often the harbinger of disappointment. Just ask a pre-packaged sandwich.

Will I enjoy Impossible Landscapes? Will my players? More to the point, will we finish it? I have no clue. I'll probably end up talking about in a double-feature review with the Delta Green system in Quinns Quest season 2, though, just because it's such an absurd time investment.

(Also because Arc Dream aren't answering my emails, meaning I had to buy the books myself. Can u belief)

But actually, seeing as I haven't started Impossible Landscapes in earnest yet, what I want to do today is point you towards today a blog that I've been having the best time reading: Matt Runs Masks.

This is a regular blog by Matt Sanders of Rowan, Rook & Decard talking about his experience reading and running Masks of Nyarlathotep, the definitive campaign for Call of Cthulhu that has been revised five times and is even longer than Impossible Landscapes, being packaged in TWO hardback books.

Matt decided to run Masks after splurging on the $140 fan-made fancy prop set, which is a terrible life choice that I absolutely also would have made, and his blog posts are exquisite. They combine true excitement for the module with... I wouldn't describe it as an eagerness to ridicule it, exactly? But Matt's an excellent writer and editor, he has high standards, and wherever he perceives the book as failing he doesn't pull his punches. In general, the blog has the feeling of a buddy comedy road trip, with Matt stuck driving an aging, slightly sociopathic, tedious, ever-so-slightly racist yet nonetheless compelling individual, who is a book. Or really, two books. I guess you could imagine both hardbacks in the back seat, muttering darkly about eldritch gods.

I guess I'm personally interested in where the TTRPG community's desire for grandiosity becomes a folly. A lot of us love reading these books or sketching ideas for megadungeons, and I've no doubt that starting a campaign of them is as dramatic and full of potential as anything you could be doing in the space.

But how do these campaigns feel 10, 20, 30 sessions in? Surely the worry starts to creep in that you could (or really, should) be doing something better with your time.

This week is session zero of my Impossible Landscapes game. Time to begin the long, weird process of finding out.

Files

Comments

Randall

"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.

Philip Kristoffersen

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?

Kieron Gillen

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

Seraphina

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.

NathanKlas

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.

Stephen Reid Writes

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

Backpack Boom Bap (Tom)

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?

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.

edmo

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…

Alex Kay

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?

Robert Hanton

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.

Adam K Bunnell

I have never felt more seen than by this article.

Pang

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 ;_;

Jake G

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.

Edward Bailey

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.

AU

Did Matt stop updating a year ago? :(