Freelance Traveller21 Plots: Planetside
This article originally appeared in the January/February 2025 issue.
21 Plots: Planetside. Tony Hicks, John Watts, Bonnie Dodson .
Independence Games https://independencerpgs.com/
28pp., Softcover and/or PDF
US$12.99(S+P)5.99(P)/UK£10.36(S+P)4.78(P)
O why, O why, O why do I do this? Most of the 21 Plots series from Independence Games are pretty poor. So why am I looking at this one? Because I’m hoping against hope that there will be something that I can use.
And sometimes there is. It keeps that hope against hope alive and keeps me wading through the dross because sometimes there is a light that shines through and 21 Plots: Planetside is a light, not all that bright but it’s a light. It might only be tea candle against the darkness, but it’s there.
21 Patron encounters, 6 options for each of them (a good thing). It’s not a wall of text with too much backstory that I don’t need, and they are not setting specific so that’s more dross I don’t need to wade through. They are not terse, but they are to the point. It’s not evocative writing, but there’s a spark in a few of them, and it’s that spark that I’m looking for. It’s that someone else’s thinking that is different to mine that I think “I can use that”, “I can take this here, with a twist like this” and then put them into my campaign. I know that I’m going to have to do some work to fit them in, it’s a Patron encounter I’m expecting to have to do the work but it’s the spark from the author that I’m looking for, and I expect that other people looking at the product are likely the same.
I expect that this 21 Plots is early in the series when Independence Games didn’t have a setting that they are trying to sell because all the stuff that detracts from their later products is the wall of text and setting specific stuff. My guess is that there are more people who will buy this that don’t use their setting than do use it so my advice to them would be to drop the back stories and putting these patron encounters in their setting and get back to doing it like this. The formatting they used for their earlier products is much better even though they might think that it isn’t. The re-formatting into their new style make is worse. I’m not worried about whether it looks good, I’m worried about whether I can read it. A readable format is a good thing for me because I’m dyslexic and poor presentation really distracts from content in the product. And it’s the writing that I’m after not what it looks like.
All these Patron encounters are based on being Planetside (it’s in the title) so for most you don’t need a spaceship, and they are all for Cr500 (they’re not but I’m sure you get my gist). There is one that really stood out “Even Dave Knows ….” where the locals only ever say “Even Dave Knows” to the PCs and that’s it. There are 6 options that are of course different takes on why but I wasn’t expecting that, it was completely out of the blue and I’m asking myself if I can use it somewhere? Because that was interesting and caused a spark. There are a couple more of the patron encounters that I thought I could run with, not that many, but more than I was expecting from the rest of the series.
The DriveThruRPG preview gives you a flavour of the rest of the product that is what you want a preview to do. Is this value for your hard earned gaming cash? Well it’s a lot better value than much of Independence Games’ other 21 Plots products.