Interview: James Pozenel & The River of Lies
Bring your floaties to the Purple Planet
If you read my newsletter, you likely already know about the crowdfunding for a hardcover reprint of the Purple Planet. However, there’s also the Purple Planet Horde. I wanted to take the opportunity to interview James Pozenel about Rivers of Lies. You may know James from some of his previously works: The House of the Red Doors, Enchiridion of the Computarchs, or Cats of Rahtlü. So if you’re interested, keep on reading!
River of Lies sounds like a pretty harrowing adventure. You mention that the PCs might actually gain "everlasting life" but I think most players are going to be rather suspicious of that. Sometimes I read through an adventure and think something along the lines of "Why this dungeon? Why wouldn't my PC just leave and try exploring somewhere that was less horrible?" So what do you do to pull the players and their PCs into this adventure and keep them around?
Right. The river and its promise of everlasting life is certainly more of an element of lore. The kith would know its significance. The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs plays a big part in shaping the lore of my version of the Purple Planet’s Ghost River of Varnasu. On Barsoom, the River of Iss is a journey to the paradisiacal afterlife. On the Purple Planet, it crashes upon the landscape and beckons the PCs to enter the waters. The adventure starts as the Ghost River appears. It whisks them away (as forces of nature do) to an unknown valley in the Ancestor Peaks. The adventurers are lost and must find their way back to their previous goal.
You've created a new Kith house, the House of Thero-Agarst, who are incredibly secretive. They appear to be the true antagonists of the adventure. They appear to be underground dwelling, cultists, and cannibalistic. What memorable NPCs or encounters did you create that involve them?
The House of Thero-Agarst might be the true villain here. These Ascended Masters are perpetuating the honorable nature of the Ghost River and are in fact controlling where and when it appears. All for self gain. Their brand of immortality requires the blood of sentients.
However, the House is very small in River of Lies. I have only 3 true members in the adventure and they play important roles in the finale. How the party deals with these three NPCs will have repercussions on the end of the adventure. In some misguided way, they are trying to ameliorate the effects of the weirdling sun. Why? How? No spoilers! You’ll have to find out on your own.
It seems like you use the existing Purple Planet material to great effect. There's the mushrooms to eat, Ancestor Peaks to explore, and the PCs may come in contact with the Green Flow. How was your experience working in an established setting like the Purple Planet?
There was a lot of reading to do! The box set has the main adventure, a Purple Planet Companion, and a bunch of additional adventures. My biggest fear was getting the lore wrong in some factual way.
That said, Harley and the other contributors created an evocative setting with lots of hooks and world building nuggets to play with. I was really impressed by the amount of Purple Planet content that could just as easily be employed in MCC RPG as well. So there was a lot of “kid in the candy shop” feelings there, too.
You've created a new "drop-in encounter " for the campaign. Is that going to be a stretch goal? Is that to be placed anywhere on the Purple Planet? Does it have links to your adventure or others?
Every Purple Planet Horde project including Goodman Games will produce a “one-sheet” drop-in encounter if they fund. So it’s a bit of an automatic stretch goal. My drop-in encounter, “The Last Mushroom of Ishgar’Ols”, is set in a mushroom jungle and is usable in River of Lies or any of the mushroom jungles on the Purple Planet. It tells a story of the last days of the House of Ishgar’Ols and their attempts to stave-off their complete extinction.
There is a second drop-in encounter as a stretch goal. Donn Stroud will author the stretch goal drop-in encounter if the campaign surpasses my best crowdfunding effort.
You've also created a special handout that is an interpretation/short history of some of the Purple Planet runes. You chose what are marked as runes 1, 2, and 3. Runes 1 and 2 are often a relic "special function" rune, and rune 3 is often the "deactive" rune. Did their usual function or any particular relics inspire you to choose those runes for the histories that you created?
Yes. I think there ought to be some philosophical reason rune 3 does what it does and the same can be said of all the others as well. The trick of course is contorting those device interactions into legends or other such apocrypha.
Last year, when the idea of a group of 3rd party publishers joining Goodman Games as they reprint The Purple Planet, I had a chance to talk with Doug Kovacs about the designs and motifs used in creating the runes. I am leveraging that conversation as well as the runes’ functions in my interpretation, “The Prophesy of the Weirdling Sun”.
Lastly, I know that you're still working on Netcrawl, which is a DCC-inspired game of yours where the PCs go adventure inside computer systems (think Tron or Reboot). Tell folks a little about that and how it's going!
Thanks for bringing Netcrawl up. This month marks 2 full years of continuous development of my cyberspace TTRPG on Patreon. 24 posts with new content and 24 posts where I journal about the things being created. Patreon has been a good format for keeping my engagement in the project constant over such a long period. I feel like Netcrawl is in a good place now and maybe has too much content! I will probably start a second draft after the River of Lies campaign ends with an aim to reduce word count. If people want a look at the game there is a lot of free content and, of course, one may financially support Netcrawl’s development by subscribing. I’m excited and nervous to begin the journey of publishing a full RPG.
Thanks for sharing so much! Anything that I didn't ask that you wish I did? Please share if there's something you gotta tell folks!
Thank you, Stefan, for providing the opportunity to chat.
A couple small things the Purple Planet Horde crowdfunding is on Backerkit and runs until 9:00 pm Eastern on March 5th. There are 8 separate projects that all support the Purple Planet setting. That’s at least 8 drop-in encounters and 7 runic interpretations as well as all that sweet PP adventuring content.
All this month various Goodman Games twitch shows will be featuring 3rd party publishers and Goodman Games as the Purple Planet Horde campaigns progress. So keep your web browsers dialed into GoodmanGamesOfficial.
Peace!
What do y’all think? What part of the Purple Planet Horde are you most excited about?
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