Another pair of surprising swerves to be found in They Grow Up So Fast (2023). This one is a more conventionally structured campaign told in four linear, event-driven chapters. There are still mysteries, but they play second fiddle to the primary problem: an alien/extradimensional pet. More on that in a second.
Swerves. For one, this book introduces a new Loop landscape, in England, which I suspect is a product of writer Oz Mills’ use of the hometown hack from Our Friends the Machines. The Loop fits in nicely with the established British psychogeography, I think; it isn’t really all that far from all the goings on at Belbury in C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength.
The other surprise is two-fold: A. This is the Loop book with the most color art by people who are not Simon Stalenhag and B. I honestly have trouble telling whose work is whose. The cover is by Jaroslaw Kubicki, and another artist, Martyna Starczewska, is listed in the credits, but I have no idea who does what. It’s surprising because I think it all still works together pretty well!
The campaign clearly draws on films like E.T. and Gremlins — the critter in question is a sort of empathic goopy puppy/rabbit thing that eats electricity. The first chapter is set during a camping trip during which the kids discover the egg in a portion of the Loop. Chapter two sees the egg hatch and the kids figuring out how to help the creature survive while avoiding the attention of a meddling science teacher. By chapter three, the creature is too large to hide, so a new habitat needs to be found, and the local UFO club is in the way. Chapter four is the inevitable climax, with the creature being found and captured by scientists and the kids rescuing it so it can gate itself home.
It’s good stuff, though a bit more linear than I’d normally want. But that makes room for emergent problems at the table — the relationship between the kids and the creature is the focal point, not the the usual snooping and trouble. It isn’t nearly so off the rails as Out of Time, though, which is a little bit of a bummer.
