astronomy

Tales from the Loop (role-playing game)

Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) rather than just read about it. In short: Tales from the Loop (Swedish: Ur Varselklotet), subtitled "Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was", is an alternative history science fiction tabletop role-playing game published in 2017 by Free League Publishing, the international arm of Swedish game and book publisher Fria Ligan AB, and Modiphius Entertainment. The game, based on the art of Simon Stålenhag, envisions an alternative world where a group of bored and…

Key takeaways

Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Tales from the Loop (Swedish: Ur Varselklotet), subtitled "Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was", is an alternative history science fiction tabletop role-playing game published in 2017 by Free League Publishing, the international arm of Swedish game and book publisher Fria Ligan AB, and Modiphius Entertainment. The game, based on the art of Simon Stålenhag, envisions an alternative world where a group of bored and ignored preteens and teens solve mysteries caused by new technology near their hometown.

Description

Setting Tales from the Loop is set in an alternative history world taken from the artwork of Simon Stålenhag. According to this alternative timeline, back in the 1940s, research began on particle accelerators. In the 1960s, two massive underground particle accelerators were built in Sweden and Colorado with the promise of a harvest of technological marvels that would change everyone's lives. Tales from the Loop is set twenty years later, in the late 1980s, and the better life has not materialized. Although the particle accelerators have created robots and large skyships, the detritus of failed experiments and the ruins of abandoned high tech company buildings litter the landscape. Generally the life of the average family has not changed for the better. A campaign can either be set in the Mälaren Islands, west of the Swedish capital of Stockholm, or in a city in the Southwest United States that resembles Boulder City, Nevada. There is also a step-by-step guide for the gamemaster to use their own hometown.

Character generation Player characters are preteens and young teenagers age 10–15 who live in a society where they are bored and largely left to themselves. Players can choose archetypes for their characters including Bookworm, Jock, Troublemaker, Popular Kid and Weirdo. Unlike most role-playing games, characters in Tales from the Loop cannot be killed, although in an ongoing campaign or due to an in-game effect, they are removed from the game if they reach the age of sixteen.

Game system The game uses the Year Zero Engine first developed by Tomas Härenstam for the post-apocalyptic role-playing game Mutant: Year Zero. (Härenstam served as the editor and project manager for Tales from the Loop.) Problems are resolved by rolling a pool of six-sided dice, with any 6 rolled marking success. Attributes and skills (Sneak, Force, Move, Build, Tinker, Calculate, Contact, Charm, Lead, Investigate, Comprehend, and Empathize) may allow the player to add more dice to the dice pool, increasing the chances of success. However, if a character has earned a condition such as Scared or Injured, dice are removed from the dice pool.

Gameplay The game principles are that life for the characters is dull and boring, but the area around the town is full of wonderful, mysterious things. An adventure is set up as a Mystery, and in order to successfully resolve the Mystery, characters must overcome a series of Troubles, which can range from having to be home by a certain time to dealing with a bully to disarming or otherwise overcoming a booby-trap on a door that must be opened. Each Mystery is played as a series of scenes, much like a TV drama. Although the gamemaster leads the players into the Mystery, each scene is set collaboratively with the players before action continues. As critic Jukka Kauppinen noted, "The players and the gamemaster take turns verbally staging a new scene — where we are, what it's like there — and only then what we do."

Campaign The book presents a chronologically-linked set of four Mysteries called "The Four Seasons of Mad Science" that take place over a calendar year:

"Summer Break and Killer Birds": The Kids hears pigeons having a conversation and investigate "Grown-Up Attraction": Adults start disappearing without any sign of struggle. "Creatures from the Cretaceous": The search for a missing dog leads to the discovery of creatures that don't belong in our time "I, Wagner": The Kids discover a body in a stream, and are drawn into a Mystery with robots and humans that may affect them closely.

Publication history In 2017, Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag was raising money on Kickstarter to publish a book of his art titled Tales from the Loop. One of the stretch goals offered was the creation of a role-playing game. A second Kickstarter campaign to publish the role-playing game was initiated by Fria Ligan AB, who surpassed their crowdfunding goal and raised a total of 3,745,896 kr from 5,600 backers. The role-playing game Tales from the Loop was subsequently published as a 184-page hardcover book in 2017 by Free League Publishing, the international arm of Swedish game and book publisher Fria Ligan AB, and Modiphius Entertainment. Cover art and interior art were by Stålenhag, and cartography was by Christian Granath. A stand-alone expansion, Things from the Flood (Swedish: Flodskörden), based on Stålenhag's art book of the same name, was created by Nils Hintze, Rickard Antroia, and Tomas Härenstam. The 216-page hardcover book was published in 2019 with cover art by Stålenhag, interior art by Stålenhag and Reine Rosenberg, and cartography by Christian Granath. In 2020, the setting of the role-playing game was transferred to the TV series Tales from the Loop developed by Nathanial Halpern and Simon Stålenhag. The series tells eight stories of children's encounters with strange technology.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tales from the Loop (role-playing game)

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Tales from the Loop (role-playing game)

In research: Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Adaptations of works by Simon Stålenhag, Alternate history role-playing games, American alternate history, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) in simple terms?

Why does Tales from the Loop (role-playing game) matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Tales from the Loop (role-playing game)?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Tales from the Loop (role-playing game).