The Right Stuff

I thought I’d post a short update on the progress of the latest EPOCH scenario collection.  EPOCH: War Stories will see a diverse range of scenarios which feature war – either taking place in wartime, or with war as a backdrop.

A couple of weeks ago I ran a playtest of the scenario by Mike Sands (of Monster of the Week fame) called Coldest Winter set during the Winter War (Finland and the USSR, 1939-1940).  We enjoyed the epic scale of this scenario, and had some great characters.  With a little polish I think it’ll make a really strong offering.

Last week we played through Marcus Bone’s scenario From Above and Below which took us to the horror of trench warfare during the Great War.  You can read Marcus’ thoughts on the scenario here, and how he found the process of creating an EPOCH scenario.  As a player, I had a great time, and found a really evocative setting, paired with a solid premise, and some really atmospheric scenes, made for a really strong scenario.   Marcus has a little more polish to do, but I found his first EPOCH offering very impressive.

My own scenario is progressing more slowly than I’d like.  Mass Destruction is set during it in the first hours of Operation Iraqi Freedom, as a collection of journalists are transported to witness the discovery a cache of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.  The first few scenes are fairly clear to me, as I have a strong idea about the source of the horror, but the final scenes are yet to unfold.  Hopefully I’ll have a finished working draft ready to playtest in a few weeks.

There are some other intriguing sounding scenarios being crafted – Igor will soon test a fantasy war scenario, Andy M. is working on a Home Front scenario with, what I hope will be, a creepy twist on Dad’s Army while Liam will draw on some working knowledge of African Peace Operations.

It’s an exciting time seeing these great ideas resolved into great EPOCH scenarios.