Players in Tales from the Loop play Kids who get caught up investigating and solving mysteries in the ‘80s that might have been. I grew up in the ‘80s and they were weird enough in real life; throw in time travel and dinosaurs, robots and weird tech, and aliens and monsters and you’ve really got something. A GM looking to explore this world with his or her players would be well served with two supplements for Tales from the Loop: They Grow Up So Fast and Our Friends the Machines.
My thanks to Free League for sending me a copy of They Grow Up So Fast to assist in my continuing coverage of their RPGs. Previous articles have covered The One Ring extensively and other Free League RPGs like the Forbidden Lands.
The Setting of Norfolk Broads
In addition to adventures, They Grow Up So Fast and Our Friends the Machines cover a new setting in the world of Tales from the Loop. Norfolk Broads is a United Kingdom-based Loop. It gets a map and a few details in Our Friends the Machines and is more fully fleshed out in They Grow Up So Fast.
Norfolk Broads is part of East Anglia with a nearby town called Great Yarmouth. The area around Great Yarmouth is defined by the Broads, an of rivers and lakes broken up by farmland, woods, and beaches of sand and pebble.
The Loop in this location is ostensibly controlled by MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food). Secretly, a division of the Department of Defence called ReGIS (RE-gional Geomagnetic Information Sciences). The Loop provides plenty of clean energy and jobs, especially with coal mines shutting down, publicly and a variety of weird experiments secretly.
They Grow Up So Fast goes into a lot more detail, providing a variety of tools for GMs. Life for Kids in the ‘80s is covered including fun things to do and places to go along with popular music and TV shows. This book in particular leans into themes of being an outsider, losing parents, hiding to protect yourself or those you love, and is any life worth protecting no matter what type of life it is?
Linking the Kids Together
If all the Kids go to school together, this location provides a natural link for all of the player characters. Yarmouth School is a great option. The GM can also introduce the scientist Daniel Wraff who works at the Loop and champions its scientific achievements while discounting any problems.
A great way to kick off a campaign and grow the world of Norfolk Broads is to start with a few unrelated Mysteries from Our Friends the Machines. In addition to three fully detailed Mysteries, there are also eight other Locations that can be used as a mixtape of Mystery Landscapes and tied into and interspersed with other Mysteries in the campaign. These Mysteries and Locations are tied to the Swedish Loop with details provided for adapting them to the US Boulder Loop. A GM will need to make similar adjustments to set these Mysteries and Locations in the Norfolk Broads.
With this slower launch to the four seasons of adventures in They Grow Up So Fast, the Kids get to know each other and their hometown. They can also get to know Daniel Wraff as a respected scientist before he loses his job.
Support for the GM
A GM armed with these two supplements has a variety of support for building up the world of Norfolk Broads and running a campaign there. In addition to seven Mysteries, four of which are linked through four seasons, there is a lot of other support.
A map of the area is provided with details on important locations and people. The mixtape of Mystery Landscapes can be mixed in easily between other Mysteries and may provide additional ideas a GM can turn into Locations or additional Mysteries. Our Friends the Machines also had machine blueprints with 12 suggested Mysteries a GM can develop. These options are in addition to the variety of maps, NPCs, and creatures in each Mystery.
They Grow Up So Fast and Our Friends the Machines suggests starting the campaign in 1988. A GM wanting to start slow could kick a campaign off in 1987. News from the UK in that time is provided, and a GM can incorporate what is going on in the larger world into the setting.
A GM could even kick off a campaign in 1986 with Our Friends the Machines, follow it up with the four seasons of Mysteries in the Tales from the Loop core rulebook, and finish up in 1988 with They Grow Up So Fast. Depending on the age of the Kids during character creation, the GM could also plan for the Kids to become Teens in 1990 and set up the campaign for a campaign part two with Things from the Flood and Out of Time.
The world of the Norfolk Broads would then encompass Kids in middle school from 1986 to 1988 and could then roll into the Kids becoming Teens in 1989 and going on at least eight more Mysteries in high school. The world of the Norfolk Broads will be well developed by then and a campaign of epic proportions will have been run.
Should You Get They Grow Up So Fast and Our Friends the Machines?
Playing Kids may not be something all game groups want to do. On the other hand, the Norfolk Broads is a fascinating place full of Mysteries and challenges. Also, solving Mysteries and taking death off the table is quite a change of pace if your group is more used to combat and dangerous violence. The stakes are different but just as heart-felt. If a group wants to dive into a time in the past when problems weren’t quite as lethal but were just as challenging to the Kids who had to tackle them, then yes, this combination of books is perfect for a GM wanting to explore a world of the ‘80s like our own but with a twist. In that case, the answer is a resounding yes you want to get They Grow Up So Fast and Our Friends the Machines.
Picture credit: Pixabay
