Things from the Flood (Core Rulebook)

Some time back I went on a big Tales from the Loop binge. Reviewing the Core Rulebook, the “Our Friends the Machines” adventure sourcebook, the eight-episode Amazon Prime television series, as well as a CrowdFUNding Spotlight on the just-released board game. [Review for the board game should be coming soon. -dc]

It was pretty easy to basically immerse myself in the world that Simon Stålenhag created with his artwork. It’s the same 1980s that we lived through for the most part. But while kids are talking on a corded wall phone and riding their bikes to the arcade, there are also robots, massive flying ships, and weird things that are probably the result of The Loop: a massive particle accelerator, and the accompanying research laboratories.

Then came the flood. Dark oozing liquid seeping up through the ground. Rumours that it came from a tear in reality caused by The Loop. Robots started acting like humans. The magnetic polls of the world spontaneously(?) reversed, preventing the flying Magestrine ships that use magnetic fields to travel from working properly. Stålenhag’s vision of the 1990s is even less different (albeit still weirder) than ours. I grew up in the 80s but I was a teen of the 90s. Things from the Flood is my world more so than the nostalgic 1980s of our current pop culture ever was. So let’s take a look at what other “Things” the Flood brought us, shall we?

Just to get the super basic stuff out of the way, Things from the Flood is a standalone sequel to Tales from the Loop. It is still based on the strange suburban vision in Simon Stålenhag’s retro-futuristic artwork, only now set in the late 1990s, and now the players can die. That may seem like an unusual thing to point out, but one of the most important tenants of the original game is that kids shouldn’t die, and the player characters are kids. Well, the players aren’t kids anymore, and teens (young adults, really) can totally die.

The biggest mechanical difference between Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood is the addition of Scars. When you fail to overcome Trouble, you may be forced to take a Condition. The most severe Condition is “Broken” and if your teen is Broken they will automatically fail any dice rolls. When you were a Kid (in Tales from the Loop) that was the end of it. But now you are older and life takes a bigger toll on you. Whenever a Teen becomes broken, they also get a mental or physical scar as a result. It is up to the player to describe how what that scar is and how it impacts them. If the player can justify it, they can invoke this scar to gain an automatic success, but they may only do this once ever. The other main impact of scars is that once you have one, if you get another you must roll a d6. If you roll lower than the number of scars your teen has, they are immediately and permanently removed from the game in whatever manner best fits the narrative (up to and including death).

There is also a significant narrative difference as well. As I already mentioned, the characters in Things from the Flood are teenagers from 16 to 20. That’s a significant time in a person’s life, full of changes of every sort. One of the things young adulthood can bring about is awkward relationships, which may include drinking and (*clutches pearls*) s-e-x. Yes, those are realities that are reflected in the game. There are roleplaying games that handle sex… poorly… to say the least. Things from the Flood handles it generally well, in a very blunt and Scandinavian way. These are things that happen and to ignore that reality would be a disservice. But, the unfortunate reality that is not addressed is that players also have experiences away from the table. Whenever there is even a chance of a game going in a direction that could cause a player unintentional discomfort, a good GM should have some safety tools in place. A close group of friends may not need something formal, but an “X-Card” or “Lines and Veils” are good concepts to be aware of, and Monte Cook Games has a great PDF called Consent in Gaming that every potential GM should read over. I’m not here to judge the what-ifs of how players and their characters behave (I’ll save that for social media discussions) but everyone deserves to have fun and feel personally safe at the table.

The 1990s were a turbulent time in history, and I love how the attitude era was handled by the writers. The version of the 1980’s presented in Tales from the Loop is such a wondrous world. Pinball and 8-bit Arcade games side-by-side with robots and flying ships. Where do you take that as mundane technology advances? However I might have personally answered that question, how Free League did it is not even remotely what I would have thought. Taking the fantastic technological advancements away, like a prehistoric ice age driving entire species to extinction or evolution, was a brilliant concept. 

Will I play in the more innocent time of the Tales from the Loop 1980’s or the slightly raw 1990s of Things from the Flood? I honestly don’t know. Both have great qualities that I enjoy. So I suspect I’ll simply play it by ear and play what comes my way.