Coriolis: Recent Episodes
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I am a bit of a system tart, always attracted by the new. And of course my current favourite, Coriolis, isn’t that old. So what games, even if not my favourite, have stayed with me. Traveller is like a comfortable old shirt. I can just slip it on, pull a character together, and slip into […]
Well, my favourite game in Coriolis, that that is set in the future. But there is more to talk about here. I would assume that, given the prominence of D&D, and fantasy gaming in general, that “the past” would be the expected most popular answer. But are fantasy games set in the past? Just because […]
Two things co-incided to bring me to this point: on our discord we rehashed the old discussion about Darkness Points being the clumsiest of the push mechanisms in Year Zero games, and potentially encouraging an confrontational relationship between the GM and the players; and, on Facebook a new GM was eager to play Coriolis but […]
At many tables or virtual table-tops round the globe these past couple of years, there have been many shoot-outs in the Garden of the Seekers on Coriolis, and many times brother Ramas has been shot, stabbed or other-wise killed on that peaceful bridge at it centre. This garden, like many more across the Horizon, is […]
On the podcast we last talked about the Syndicate back in episode 18. Wow! Over three years ago. Back then we were still called the Coriolis Effect, and experimenting with the format. That piece was a discussion rather than an essay and we never consolidated our thoughts into a written article. So here it is. […]
Here, where we live on old Al-Ardah, we have become used to the convenience of modern banking. The recent covid related changes have encouraged an accelerated adoption of contactless technologies, a little like the money-tags in the Third Horizon. But our world is small, the distances tiny and complex transactions don’t take long to travel. […]
Inspired by the article below, John Salquist and I created a beautiful calendar which is available in PDF format from the Free League Workshop. In any space-travel setting, there are going to be local calendars based on local orbits. A 24 hour day means little if your world spins around in nine hours, or 37.74 […]
This is an easy one. As you recall, this year we are not creating new brief podcasts for #RPGaDay, but rather talking the opportunity to celebrate particular episodes of our almost three years of production. Todays episode is one from May 2019. I like it because it has an article it in that helps GMs […]
I was struggling to think of what to post today, until I realised that the 8th of every month is (on Twitter at least) #PodRevDay when listeners are encouraged to leave reviews of podcasts. “Aha!” I thought “The perfect opportunity to let our listeners throw SHADE at us.” So, while we set out to use […]
I am cheating with this one but with good reason. Day seven’s topic is couple, and I have been playing with a couple of brothers pretty much since I first touched a polyhedral. Actually Tony is the one I really like. In the year above me at school he was part of crowd that welcomed […]
Yesterday, I mentioned how the support of our Patrons had enabled us to launch a second stream, just for Actual Play episodes. Before then we used to intersperse our magazine shows with weekly episodes of the games that our home group ran. The thread of each story interwoven with our chat shows. One of the […]
For the last couple of years my co-host Dave and I have produced a daily podcast for #RPGaDay. But we are not going to do that this year. Instead, in a blatant piece of self-promotion we are going to reflect on our last three years of producing the Effekt podcast, and highlight some of our […]
The Order of the Pariah are my favourite faction, but not for the reasons you might expect. I think most players read about the Order of the Pariah, their religious fervour, militaristic outlook, animate armors and Monastery Cruisers, and picture Games Workshops’ Space Marines in their head. And frankly that’s not a bad shorthand, but […]
In the last post I wrote about the Consortium, one of the few factions that we had not shined the spotlight on,in the podcast, because as Dave memorably admitted on the Patron discord he’s “not very interested in them.” I agreed in the last episode that the Consortium was indeed quite boring, but The Free […]
Listener and Patron Nicjar set us an interesting challenge. He has been going though our blogs cataloging all our Coriolis related articles. And he pointed out that we have not done an article on all the Factions in the Third Horizon. I said that I remembered mentioning to Dave that we still had some to […]
Last week Effekt published the last part of our Coriolis actual play, but given that it was recorded in two sessions a year apart and released in five episodes a year ago, and another four more recently, I though it might be worth posting links to all the episodes, on order, to help new listeners […]
Córdoba ©️Effekt/Tom Tyler-Jones In episode eight of Song to the Siren, our Coriolis actual play, Yaphet and Salah confronted Córdoba, the “cannibal king” of Salvagetown. To be honest, I don’t think we heard enough about him in the AP, so as I am writing the adventure in full for the forthcoming Free League Workshop, I […]
This is a transcript of my piece in Episode 97 of our podcast, on The Emissaries. It reveals spoilers for the Mercy of the Icons campaign, if you are a player and don’t want to be spoiled, read no further. If you can level one criticism at the Core book in Coriolis, it’s that it […]
Update I published this early because of a discussion on Facebook, and to get it out quickly, I didn’t do my usual check through the “primary source” – the published books. Preparing this for recording, I have now added references in. Zeni is uncommon on Sadaal. The language is growing slowly on Bahram, but the […]
People listening to our most recent Coriolis Actual Play may have picked up on a few “references” – from a start, and a bad guy, inspired by the movie The Bad Batch, through scavengers modelled after Steptoe and Son (which our American listeners may know better as Sanford and Son) to a wrecked ship absolutely […]
A few weeks ago after episode 2.6 we ran a poll (or three) on whether we should play (and record) Coriolis or Forbidden Lands. We don’t play on line, and we don’t get together often, less than once a month, to play around a table. Given that we have traditionally taken turns GMing, it means […]
I got my copy of Emissary Lost, the first part of The Mercy of the Icons campaign today. And I am boyishly excited at seeing my name in print – not only as a KS backer, but (with my co-host Dave) on the main credits page. Find out why (at least why I think we’re […]
Last episode, we speculated that the Draconites knew what dreadful racists the Zenithian Hegemony would become and set themselves up to defeat it. So I am going though the books looking for evidence of the nazi-punching heroes I hope the Draconites will turn out be. If we paint the Hegemonists as the dark uniformed Imperial […]
I am going to say it straight. The Zenithian Hegemony are the bad guys. The Syndicate are actual criminals of course, but the Hegemony are the evil empire. I put it to you, that this is the faction you should love to hate. The Zenithian Hegemony is Imperialism writ large. No, more than that. The […]
You have heard me grumble about the Reputation and Manipulation mechanics in Coriolis. My biggest gripe, as I explained in season 1 episode 17, is the potential for two starting characters to have a modifier of plus or minus six on manipulation rolls. A few weeks ago, I played the QuickStart for the new Expanse […]
For Icon worshipers across the horizon, including the Church of the Icons and the Order of the Pariah, it is traditional to cremate the dead, except those revered as saints. Their holy bodies are preserved so that their spirits may continue to find a way to the horizon and continue their good work. One of […]
I think there is only a full colour version of the official ship sheet out there, so I took it apart in Acrobat DC, removed the ink-sucking space background and drop shadows, replaced the Coriolis logo with a black version, and of course, made it form-fillable. I left the little crew icons in colour. Please […]
I am guilty of taking the Church of the Icons for granted. And I think that is because for most of us, our experience of churches is of something that has always been there, or at least been around for centuries. Whether for not you go to church, the building itself is a landmark in […]
A discussion in G+ prompted me to share this talent, which featured back in an early episode of The Coriolis Effect, but never saw publication on this blog. That is partly because it’s never been play-tested. I wrote it just in case a player might want to be an atheist. So far, no-one has. So […]
What do you think is the worst rule in Coriolis? It’s an elegant system, and frankly I don’t think there is much wrong with it. But I do have a problem with Reputation. And this bit in particular: Your Reputation score and that of your opponent will affect your MANIPULATION roll. If yours is higher, […]
Click Here to take survey We’ve been publishing The Coriolis Effect podcast since May, and it quickly became more successful than we ever imagined. Thanks to you, all our lovely listeners. To be honest we bashed that first episode together quickly to see if there was any interest. And when it turned out there was interest, […]
The natives of Nhamada are a proud but primitive race, which Foundation anthropologists believe are ancient humanites. Fierce warriors, perhaps bred for some long forgotten war, they organise in tribes and compete in an arcane system of inter-tribal sports and challenges. Foundation scientists have identified a unique response to trauma in the Nhamadan physiology which […]
I don’t recall if Tony rolled it randomly, or chose to come from Dabaran, but I was very happy to let him. Of course, it was a slight problem when, later in character generation, Tony and Dave decided their characters were twins, and Dave wanted his to have grown up on Karrmerruk. Obviously separated at […]
The situation was ready and waiting, the adjustments from Fria Ligan’s subsequently published Hamurabi supplement made. So how did my players manage to make the story their own? Well, the first disruption had actually happened weeks ago, when I had to run an extra adventure at short note for just two of the players. To […]
I don’t normally write session logs, which can feel a bit “let me tell you about my character”, but yesterday’s game of Coriolis has given me plenty to think about. So I thought I might process some of that here. Yet again, it was a “at the last minute” game. Dave’s Symbaroum wasn’t ready for […]
Please, please, please, graphic designers and layout artists (or rather, I suspect, commissioning editors), will you just STOP faffing about with overly fussy layout? Just because the costs of full colour production have come down to meet the price that RPG geeks seem willing to pay for books, it doesn’t mean we need to have colour […]
Yes, you’ve seen this before. But this is a slightly extended version, written for the Coriolis Effect podcast. It extends the description of Samar, introduces another character, Alnadhl, and has a short paragraph about how the location might be used in play. Life on broad ship is dirty and restricted. Water is a carefully rationed […]
We had a couple of requests after our podcast for a transcript of the piece. So here it is: Ijma’urf One of the things I love about the setting of The Third Horizon is that it doesn’t have one overarching government, no Alliance, no Federation, no Empire, evil or otherwise. The clash of cultures, Firstcome […]
We were generating characters for Coriolis, and Andy wanted to be a Humanite. I think what attracted him was the idea of having a low reputation, rather than the extra talent Humanites get, but of course getting to chose an extra, humanite specific talent was quite exciting. As the character took shape, Andy’s hopes for […]
I’ve taken Fria Ligan’s printer friendly two sided version of the character sheet, and added fields to it using Acrobat DC. Its my first time doing this, so please do feedback any errors I’ve made, or improvements I could change in the comments. update There is now a form-fillable Ship Sheet also.
Life on broad ship is dirty and restricted. Water is a carefully rationed resource on board. After weeks in space, and considerable time in stasis during portal jumps, what crews most want is a bath. So most spaceports have a Hamam or bathhouse, either within the spaceport itself, or very nearby. Samar’s Hamam is typical […]
My mate Dave was coming to the end of running his SOIAF campaign, and was going on and on about how he’d Kicked in on Coriolis, and how brilliant it was. As the Kickstarter campaign closed I foolishly replied, saying something like “I suppose I should get the PDF then” expecting that’s what we would […]