Campaign 80
By Nelson McKeeby
The first Negentropy game was played on Sunday, September 21, 1980, at my family’s residence in Indian Rocks Beach. The inaugural game was a twelve-hour marathon, a format we would occasionally repeat. However, this particular game was distinct because it wasn’t merely the beginning of an adventure; it was an attempt to make the concepts behind Negentropy comprehensible enough for players to engage with and to launchg a new campaign
The name Campaign 80 came from a much simpler source than anything in the setting. In 1979 I saw Airport 1975 on television on WTOG. I became fascinated by the way the Airport movies repeated a recognizable form while identifying later entries by year: Airport, Airport 1975, Airport ’77, and eventually Airport ’79. The numbering made each film feel like another installment in an ongoing sequence, related to what had come before but still representing a new event. When I needed a name for the first regular Negentropy campaign in 1980, Campaign 80 seemed natural. It suggested that there could be another campaign after it without requiring the first one to carry an elaborate title.
George Kennedy also made that association stronger for me. He played Joe Patroni throughout the Airport series, and I felt an affection for the character as one of the continuing elements connecting otherwise different disaster stories. Kennedy was already in my mind because The Eiger Sanction had influenced some of my writing for Negentropy. Calling the game Campaign 80 was therefore a small homage to Airport 1975 and to the idea of a continuing series in which familiar elements could return in a new situation. I did not yet know how appropriate that would become. Campaign 80 was followed by Campaign 81, Campaign 82, and eventually a succession of campaigns that reused places, ideas, and sometimes adventures while allowing different players to take the setting in different directions.
Amy, Wayne, David, Jeff, Brandon, and Paul were all newcomers to role-playing games, not just to mine. Consequently, the day unfolded as a blend of character creation, explanation, experimentation, and actual play. The game I had meticulously crafted since 1979 had finally reached a stage where it required the participation of others.
This shift in design necessitated immediate adjustments. What might have made perfect sense in my notes could be incomprehensible to six individuals who had never played a role-playing game before. I couldn’t rely on established habits from Dungeons & Dragons or Traveller, as the players lacked those experiences. Every procedure had to be explained in detail.
We dedicated a significant portion of the day to discussing the concept of a Troubleshooter, the purpose of a team, the contributions of each player, and the decision-making process once the Cylinders opened. Some concepts that later seemed like inherent elements of Negentropy were refined in that room because they were essential for the game’s initial functionality.
The team roles that later appeared in Master Control emerged from these discussions. While I had already conceptualized Troubleshooters as educated specialists, a group of specialists alone didn’t automatically constitute a functioning team. We needed to establish clear responsibilities, determine how players would divide problems, and understand how one person’s Knowledge could support another’s work. Consequently, the first campaign commenced with organization rather than combat. This approach was fitting for a game about individuals sent into an uncharted future with limited resources and no assurance that anyone outside the Cylinders would be waiting for them.
Creating the First Troubleshooters
I distributed the manuals, and we collaboratively developed the characters. The original character record originated from a school resume used for internships, so we approached character creation through education, qualifications, experience, and Areas of Knowledge. College catalogs served as valuable references. If a character was intended to be a physician, engineer, scientist, or other trained specialist, we delved into their actual academic pursuits. The objective was not to replicate a university transcript in game form but to imbue the character’s competence with a sense of life experience prior to the game’s inception.
During this process, the group observed a notable aspect of themselves. We were predominantly white, and none of us possessed bilingual proficiency. If we had simply replicated ourselves, the Project team would have been significantly narrower than an organization deliberately selecting individuals for a challenging future mission should be. Consequently, we aimed to diversify the characters. Among them were a French character, a Mexican character, and a person from Ghana. Creating the Ghanaian character required extensive reading from the Encyclopaedia Britannica to ensure the background felt authentic rather than merely a label attached to an otherwise generic character. The same principle applied elsewhere: if we lacked sufficient knowledge to make an idea credible, we sought information from various sources.
This process was crucial as it demonstrated the character system’s functionality before the game’s launch. The characters were not mere bundles of combat abilities; they were individuals whose education and cultural backgrounds influenced their knowledge and capabilities. Research was already an integral part of the process. The initial reward for accessing the manuals was not a numerical advantage but a deeper understanding of the characters’ intended personas.
Wake Up
The adventure commenced with Wake Up. A lone player character emerged from a Negentropic Cylinder. From this character’s perspective, the Cylinder’s closure and opening had been instantaneous. However, the room outside was not the world that had existed when the journey began. Before forming a party, the first person had to comprehend enough of the situation to open the other Cylinders and release the rest of the team.
I preferred starting with a single character because it compelled the premise to become tangible. The player didn’t receive a lecture explaining that the team had traveled into the future. The initial problem was immediate and physical: wake the others. Once the remaining Cylinders were opened, the group could begin behaving like the Project team they had meticulously crafted. Their first significant idea was obvious and logical. They decided to turn on the radio.
What they discovered was an absence. The radio spectrum did not resemble the modern world they had anticipated. There were no familiar concentrations of contemporary signals that would have indicated the presence of ordinary technological civilization around them. That silence was one of the first ways the game conveyed the Fall. The players realized something was amiss because a piece of equipment they understood was revealing what was missing.
The Signal
At that point, I had prepared five potential directions for the campaign. Alpha India was one of them, alongside Free Trader, Sacred Places, Chuhopi Carbine, and Rangers. I didn’t intend for all five to unfold in sequence, nor did I need to decide in advance which one the players would follow first. These were potential lines of development that awaited the players to take actions that connected with them.
One of the characters decided that a quick radio check wasn’t sufficient and carried out a thorough and intensive examination of the bands. This decision provided me with the opportunity to introduce the Alpha India line. The signal was there to be discovered if the players investigated deeply enough, and because they did, the first campaign shifted its focus to Alpha India. The adventure was chosen by the players’ actions rather than being announced to them that the next scene had begun.
This moment established a method that I continued to use. Preparation didn’t have to mean a single track. I could prepare multiple scenarios and let the players’ questions determine which one became immediate. The unused material wasn’t wasted. Free Trader, Sacred Places, Chuhopi Carbine, and Rangers all remained available and eventually found their way into the campaigns between Campaign 80 and Campaign 86. Consequently, the first session contained more potential Negentropy than the players actually encountered that day.
Scenes, Acts, and Flowcharts
I needed a way to organize adventures that provided me with more structure than pure improvisation without forcing the players through a predetermined path. I adopted the concept of Scenes and Acts as the fundamental framework for thinking about the pacing of an adventure. Alpha India still retains this underlying method. A scene presented a manageable situation with people, information, hazards, or choices within it. An act grouped scenes into a larger progression of the adventure. While the terminology was theatrical, its practical purpose was to control the pacing while allowing the players to change direction.
I used a computer flowchart template and large sheets of chart paper to make the structure of the game visible. Boxes and connecting lines helped me visualize potential decision paths and possible reconnections between different lines. This chart proved useful because it allowed me to prepare consequences without assuming I knew exactly which choices the players would make. As the players intensified their radio search, the flow of the game shifted into Alpha India. Another decision could have led the campaign along one of the other prepared lines.
I had examples of both more constrained and more open game structures in front of me. For instance, in adventures like the Hill Giant Chief material I had purchased, the dungeon itself acted as a guiding force. Walls, doors, passages, and rooms restricted movement and made the sequence of possible encounters easier to manage. On the other hand, Judges Guild’s City State of the Invincible Overlord presented a different approach. It contained numerous people, shops, places, and brief descriptions that a game master could use as players navigated through the city. This material didn’t require dictating a single story because it provided sufficient local detail to support improvised stories. Negentropy needed both types of control: enough structure to maintain the adventure and enough prepared world to handle unexpected player actions.
Finding Alpha India
When the players first discovered Alpha India, parts of the game felt like a dungeon crawl. They were entering an unfamiliar place, moving through physical spaces, uncovering what remained, and trying to determine what posed a danger. This resemblance to a dungeon was beneficial because exploration naturally led to immediate questions. What lies beyond this door? What does this machine do? Is this place inhabited? Can the team safely venture further? These questions didn’t necessarily rely on fantasy architecture to create tension.
At other times, the same campaign could turn into a terrifying experience. The future held unknown and intangible threats that could not be gauged from a glance. While the characters were competent, their knowledge of this unfamiliar world was limited. A strange organism, an abandoned installation, an unknown signal, or evidence of something passing through an area could be frightening precisely because the players understood their own limitations.
The game could also shift to political or practical tasks without altering the campaign. For instance, the Troubleshooters decided to assist in maintaining the town dam. This was precisely the kind of choice that Negentropy should allow. Keeping a dam functioning was not a side activity that required conversion into a combat encounter to gain significance. Water, power, machinery, local trust, and the survival of a settlement all depended on infrastructure. The players could choose to help people maintain a real system, and the game had to support that decision.
Beyond Combat
From the outset, one of my goals was to provide players with meaningful tasks beyond combat. Role-playing games could make combat exciting due to its immediate and visible results. A monster attacked, the players fought it, and someone emerged victorious. However, I wanted investigation and accumulated knowledge to have equally practical consequences. If the Troubleshooters discovered something about the future, that knowledge should enhance their capabilities for the next time they encountered a similar problem.
One early example occurred when the group accompanied a ranger on a hunt for a BEM. At that time, I envisioned BEMs as genuinely alien organisms, and I introduced the term XNA to represent the concept that their biology was based on something unlike ordinary terrestrial life. However, there was no substantial scientific basis for my use of the term at that time. It served as a label for an idea I wanted the setting to encompass, and the X was one of the ways I marked places where I knew I was beyond my ability to adequately explain. The subsequent scientific history of xeno nucleic acids belongs to a separate article. In Campaign 80, XNA was still a speculative game concept.
What mattered in gameplay was that investigating an organism could enhance the team’s chances against future encounters. By learning how one BEM sensed its environment, what damaged it, what chemicals affected it, or what signs it left behind, the characters could gain valuable insights that would prove useful when they encountered another BEM. Science surrounding a single specimen could provide protection against others. Consequently, the characters advanced not only through experience points and treasure but also by gaining a deeper understanding of the world. A BEM encounter could result in a body, samples, observations, and questions rather than merely providing experience points and loot.
The Manuals Expanded with the Campaign
The game materials evolved almost as rapidly as the players discovered the world. Initially, we used ring binders containing handwritten temporary pages and typed material that had become more permanent. The Standard Manual contained the Five Rules and basic procedures. Character Forge provided descriptions of character components and summarized Areas of Knowledge, along with references to the books used to control those subjects. Nomiconus housed information about BEMs and PEMs, Dwimmer accumulated the magic system, Logi contained equipment, and miscellaneous material awaited a more permanent location.
I continuously added information. A handwritten page could be added to a binder after a game, used for a while, and later replaced by a typed version. Whenever I made an update, I would type the change on the cover page. Players would photocopy the binders and add pages as new material emerged. This blurred the line between design and play. For instance, Tuesday’s game might reveal something that required explanation, a lunchtime discussion could generate notes, and the next version of a manual could contain the answer.
In the first four months, the amount of material grew rapidly because almost every session created new needs. Character creation led to the development of team jobs, encounters necessitated new creature notes, and equipment questions expanded Logi. Magic was being explored in Dwimmer, and Wayne’s later request for an elf prompted the creation of Kindred as a new book. The campaign wasn’t consuming a finished ruleset; instead, it was building the library that future campaigns would inherit.
After the opening Sunday marathon, regular Negentropy play settled into Tuesdays. The related Oasis and Ocean games were played on Thursdays. We also played at Play and Learn in Seminole as well as at my family’s house. The group composition could change, and over the first few years, several dozen people participated. However, Campaign 80 began with a small enough core that ideas could be debated repeatedly from week to week.
The occasional twelve-hour Sunday games served a different purpose from an ordinary evening session. A long game allowed us to explore a complex setting, test new procedures, and remain in a sequence long enough for consequences to accumulate. The first marathon was particularly significant because none of the players had prior role-playing experience to rely on. We had to learn how to play Negentropy simultaneously as I learned how to explain it.
That experience significantly influenced my writing. If six new players misunderstood a procedure in the same way, it wasn’t because six people had failed to read my mind. I needed to explain it better. Campaign 80 taught me that rules and source material had to work for people who hadn’t participated in their creation. That may sound obvious now, but it was one of the most crucial transitions from private design to an actual game.
Lunch the Next Day
Postmortems weren’t formal meetings with every player present. More often, some of us would sit together at lunch the next day and discuss what had happened. I took notes. The conversation could revolve around a confusing rule, an action that seemed too easy or too difficult, an unexpected behavior of equipment, or simply a decision that yielded an interesting result.
These discussions helped us develop the distinction we used between cinematic reality and concrete reality. A dramatic scene might tempt us to let something work because it would enhance the story. Concrete reality, however, asked whether the physical circumstances actually permitted it. Campaign 80 repeatedly forced us to negotiate that boundary because the players were inventive and the setting provided them with real equipment, injuries, distances, power limits, and unfamiliar organisms to contend with.
I didn’t want the game to become a physics examination every time someone acted, but I also didn’t want a dramatic die roll to erase the conditions we had already established. The lunch conversations were where many of these judgments became principles. They were informal, but they were an integral part of the design process. The next game often benefited from an argument that had started over sandwiches the day before.
Death, the Oldari, and Master Control
By December, the campaign had already yielded consequences I hadn’t anticipated in September. Wayne lost a character to a BEM. We were still figuring out how to incorporate replacement characters into the ongoing game, and Wayne suggested playing an elf. This request eventually led to the introduction of the Oldari from Oasis into Negentropy, creating the Kindred material. A character death, therefore, had a lasting impact, not only removing someone from the party but also expanding the setting permanently.
The encounter with Master Control also occurred in December. By then, the players had spent months learning that the future couldn’t be reduced to mere ruins and monsters. They discovered systems, organizations, surviving communities, hidden histories, and sources of information that could alter their understanding of their mission. Master Control was a part of this expanding scale of the campaign.
It’s important to note that not every major modern element had reached its final form by December 1980. The significance of Campaign 80 lies in the fact that actual play had begun selecting which ideas needed to be developed. The players’ questions guided the accumulation of details. A BEM encounter could expand biology, a dead character could expand the world’s peoples, and a radio search could select an entire adventure line. Play was becoming a key driver of design.
Campaign 80 didn’t end simply because December 31 arrived. It was the first campaign cycle, named after the year it began. The subsequent mission, Vault of Heroes, served as a bridge into Campaign 1981, which commenced in July 1981. The second adventure, Samely Clicker, followed in that phase, and Campaign 82 began in July 1982 with the adventure that became Classe Mulet.
The four adventure lines that were not chosen in the initial intensive radio search continued to wait for their turn. Eventually, Free Trader, Sacred Places, Chuhopi Carbine, and Rangers were included in the sequence that ran from Campaign 80 through Campaign 86, the final campaign of that initial series. Therefore, the decision made in the first game did not invalidate the other preparations. It simply determined which part of the world the players would encounter first.
This approach continued even after the first series. Later campaigns became associated with different periods of my life and work. Chinow started the Home Shopping series, City on a Lonely Rock began the KCCI series, and Dromed Lords and Seven Fires became the two campaigns of the North Carolina series. I also revisited older material, wrote new adventures, and sometimes had two or more games running simultaneously. Campaign 80 established the pattern: adventures were not disposable performances. Instead, they became part of a growing body of material that could be revised, revisited, or approached by another group from a different perspective.
What Campaign 80 Changed
Before September 21, Negentropy was a vast collection of writing with a limited set of rules. However, after Campaign 80 began, it transformed into a shared method for making decisions about an unknown world. The initial players compelled me to explain the character system, which ultimately led to the creation of team jobs. Their backgrounds required research, and their initial radio decision resulted in selecting Alpha India from five potential campaign lines. Their interest in infrastructure made maintaining a dam an integral part of the gameplay. Their hunt with a ranger turned an alien-monster concept into a scientific problem. Even their conversations after games influenced the manuals. A character death played a crucial role in the creation of the Kindred.
The initial campaign also demonstrated the coexistence of various tones. A Negentropy game could transform into a terrifying experience when the characters were deprived of information, a dungeon crawl when they ventured into an uncharted installation, a political narrative when they interacted with settlements and organizations, or an engineering challenge when a dam required continuous operation. None of these scenarios necessitated a distinct rules system because the game ladder managed uncertainty, while the source material provided the essential details of the problem.
More significantly, the initial campaign illustrated that knowledge could be a form of progress. Players didn’t have to defeat every unknown entity in order to gain something from an encounter. Instead, they could observe it, test it, learn from it, and apply their newfound knowledge later. This principle seamlessly connected character creation, research, BEM investigation, practical work, and the structure of the adventures themselves. The game commenced with one individual waking up in a Cylinder and attempting to liberate the others. From that pivotal moment, Campaign 80 unfolded as a series of individuals striving to comprehend enough of the world to make informed decisions about their next steps.