IDLES and Space Sunglasses Backgrounds

 Inspired by 72stations' 4d20 backgrounds for various bands. Use with Troika or my twitter simple system. 

Also available at my itch.io as Stellar Punk Weirdos.

IDLES 4d20

	Background	Ability	Item	Quirk
1	Human Jelly	Caduceus Kick	Carcinogenic Water	Big Mirror of a Smile
2	Person With A Perm	Concrete and Leather	Hairspray	Jaw Like a Fuck-Off Bear Trap
3	Car Crasher	False Front	Motivational DVDs	Loves Holding Hands
4	Catcaller Killer	Riding Wave	Bag of Michael Keaton	Crawls Everywhere
5	Television Destroyer	Gyrate Beautifully	US Flag Pants	Always Dancing
6	Scum	Vibrate Eyes	Rocket Fuel	Cannot Go Slow
7	Mother	Freddy Mercury	1d6 Molotovs	Laughs at Tyrants
8	Heel	Skin is Molotov	Sarcasm Amputator	Studies Gotho 1649
9	Father	Body Full of Pins	Cut Down Throne	Makes wonderful cookies
10	Model Village Escapee	Rollerblade Sword Fight	Katana	Stomps Everywhere
11	Snowflake	Avalanche	Spraypaint	Friend in Every Dive Bar
12	Sloganeer	Middle Finger	6 Cheap Beers	Denies All Gods
13	Excommunicated Office Drone	Musical Metamorphosis	Delay Pedal	Always Tagging
14	Blue Blood Vampire	Hyper Caring	Reigns	Never Had A Job
15	Loop Smasher	Ballroom Sway	Crowbar	Raises Sharks
16	Barfight Gladiator	Shrug It Off	1d6 Benzocaine Bottles	Never Sleeps, Dances
17	Baron-hearted Betrayer	Blend In	Asteroid Stone Mace	Full of Hot Air
18	The Worst Lover	Mean Business	Rollerblades	Natural Winner Despite All Evidence
19	Uniter	Cry To Me	Snake In Boots	Talks to Vultures
20	Rottweiler	Arson	Newspaper Clippings	Attracts Ghosts

Melding (Floodgate Companion, Space Sunglasses, Cardini's Vortex, Vorpal Sword) (Music: The Comet Is Coming, Thee Oh Sees)

	Background	Ability	Item	Quirk
1	Face Melter	Drill Arm	Eye Shield	Clicking Face
2	Melted Facer	Phasing	Silver Organic Gun	Loves Dinosaur-Cyborgs
3	Growing Plantoid	Rapid Temporary Growth	Circuit-bent Synthesizer	Perfect Rhythm
4	Bearded Sage	Self-Split Dodge	3d3 Acid Vials	Always Tallest
5	Robo-luchador	Atomic Piledriver	Hyper-salt	Only Eats Slurry
6	Crystal-headed Skirmisher	Wall-walk	Kneepads and Boots	Telepathic Talker
7	Kaiju Child	Atomic Laser Mouth	Tape Deck	Head on Backwards
8	Beehive with Legs	Honey Transmuter	Egg-shaped Floating Car	Sensitive Antenna
9	Princess Warmage	Scintilating Energy Hands	Eldritch Computer Manual	Flashlight Eyes
10	Ferrofluid Humanoid	Extendo Limbs	Cape and Balaclava	Scared of Omega Bugs
11	Brody Goo-bot	Extradimensional Storage	Horned Biohelm	Cocktail Exuder
12	Last Synth Master	Mega-speed	Golem Armor	Smells like burnt plastic
13	Solar Socialite	Infinity Eye	Party Hover-Barge	Only Wears Metal
14	Doomland Scrapper	Power Fist	Vorpal Sword	Vibrating At a High Frequency
15	Orgone Sniffer	Snake Arm	Melty Houseplant	Speech Bubbles
16	Sphere Wizard	Vomit Vine	High-heel Powerboots	TV Static Voice
17	Remade Android	Wall Destroy	Casio PT-1	Believes in Anti-Moon
18	Gamma Dog	Energy Shield	Grey Goo Taxi	Hates the Party Lords
19	Battle Demoness	Calm Beast	Crystal Lance	Supports Bat-Crab Fighters
20	Beatle Head	Space Judo	Camo Jumpsuit	Controlled by Head Octopus

Troika How Should I Even Resolve This Chaos Stuff

 Sometimes the great chain of existence, the dance of the spheres, the vagaries of unknown gods leaves us alone. The city of Troika or its nomadic fortles demands answers. And in these cases, we can ask simple yes/no questions

1. no
2. no
3. no
4. yes
5. yes
6. yes

Or we can ask a question, give two answers, and roll 2 dice, 1 for each answer. The answer with the highest die wins. 

But sometimes we must resolve actions in chaotic ways, to delight the horrid absent gods. Then we must consult a strange table

How Hard Is It Anyway?

1. Roll 2d6 under current Stamina
2. Luck check
3. Roll under Skill. No advanced skill applies.
4. Roll under Skill. Any advanced skill may apply. Come up with why of course.
5. Opposed roll (vs Skill 9 if no other is obvious)
6. Roll 1d6 in secret. Try to guess the rolled value. If you guess it, success! If off by 1, a mixed result occurs - partial success, or success but the situation becomes much more dire.

Modern Horror with 0e DnD or derivatives

Why DnD for a modern horror-ish game?

I want weird dangerous stuff to be 'scary' because it's weird or dangerous. I don't want to to be scary because your Hype Meter ticked up. I want a dude to be scary because you saw him take 3 pistol shots to his t-shirt covered chest and a little grease came out of the wounds and he seems fine.

open source image from wikimedia commons, photomosh'd by me

Why 0e DnD? 

It's really cool. 0e is not a complete system unto itself. People make hacks of it. It doesn't proscribe how to run a game or whether your PC can be 'trained in forest navigation.' 

What else tho

I kind of want to eschew hp progression, or at least the idea that you go from level 1 to level 9 and suddenly no one with a knife is a threat.

I love system/setting things like Troika, and there are some cool modern urban fantasy-ish hacks, but I don't really want the PCs to start out as supernatural weirdos. If you have a half-vampire as a PC then half-vampires aren't scary or different or horrors. If you get bit and fail a save and turn into one during play, that's fine.

I've categorized these games by big obvious things in their dice-rolling mechanics because I care deeply about things that actually don't matter. 

d20 roll high or die

Luke's rules. These are good, really close to 0e but clearly their own thing, but largely compatible with things like hit dice, saving throws, to-hit, armor class. No classes, magic is _dangerous_. Only 3 stats: str, dex, con. 3 saves: warding, dodge, physique. Some progression but can just do it via 'heroic boasting' in another post of Luke's. The closest to normal-ass 0e DnD on the list so far.

Dungeon Gig. 1 stat which is your HP, also is what you add to a d20 roll when your background or skills apply. Also the damage you deal and inventory slots. Starts between 1 and 6. HD compatible, map to 1 thru 10. Open license. LATAM creator. Solo rules, plans for expansions. Learning a spell decreases your stat by 1 permanently, have to spend health temporarily to cast. Roll d20 only, roll high.

(Un)Level. 3d6 in order stats, no indication what they're for, you get saving throws, you are level 3 forever, you get 3dx HP + the length of one of the words you used to describe your class/background. This is very cool in its brevity. Things aren't dictated or even hinted at. I'd steal a lot of stuff from Delving Deeper and Liminal Horror and run this like a stolen car.

DURF. 3 stats (Str, Dex, Willpower) 1-3 at start, HD compatible, no HP, you roll HD with every wound and if you don't roll over your current number of wounds with any hit dice, you die. Hit dice are all 1d6. So a neat way to let HD grow without PCs becoming a giant mass of MEAT POINTS. Casting spells causes 'Stress' which takes up inventory slots. Can also take stress to take advantage on a roll. 

Delving Deeper. It's a 0e retroclone. I'll at least use it for reference. It's got the 0e monster manual and all the ship-combat rules you'll ever need.

Sometimes over sometimes under

Simple DeeEnDee has some roll-under stats and some roll over to fights. It is awesome because it is super easy to add classes to (Evey added in a pegasus, catgirl, and amoeba that rock) and because the ACs are _lower_ so that you hit moar and the damage is _higher_ so, yeah. DeeEnDee: Fuck around and find out edition. I love it. 

d20-roll under

Bastards. Roll-d20-under-stats, 3 stats (str, dex, wisdom). Luck is a stat, roll d20 under, reduce luck by 1, restored in the mornings. Use as a Save. Roll under but above opponent's HD if, say, trying to sneak past the Lich or cast a spell on it. Gain 1d6 hp every other level. Enemies get a to-hit roll in a fight (roll under 10+HD), a nice change from some other roll-under-stat systems. The stuff with opponents HD and the sort of roll-above-and-below is brilliant and understated. It makes it harder to sneak up on a lich than a goblin because, you know, fuckin liches suck.

A Dragon Game. Roll d20 under-but-as-close-as-possible-to-stat, HD compatible, fighting is _super_ deadly. Learning magic degrades your stats or HP. There are some enemy hd/HP adjustments to make because the d20 roll is also the damage roll, if your attack hits. Players roll only, attack and defense separately. Perhaps closest to a straight-up horror game. Progression is milestone-ish, and you either increase HP by 1d6 or try to increase a stat, which has a 5% of gaining HP. Open license. Getting attacked is hella lethal, perhaps the lethalist. Has a cool supplement to make dying instantly less common but your character gets eroded away by violence.

17th Century Minimalist. Roll under, no real magic for the starting PCs. HP is hard limited, as is non-magical damage. Classes would probably need some reworking to fit in ze modern era. 

Chainmail just used d6s right?

Murdersoup Tales of High Adventure. 2d6 game, not HD compatible but has ideas for HP for normal folks (1d6), adventurers (2d6) and monsters (go wild). Damage follows a similar trend. HP growth through hitting 0 HP and not dying. Cool stats in Murdersoup Heavy Metal Adventures - basically the Apocalypse World ones, you roll to see which one you're best at. Some cool ideas, generally roll and try to beat a 7 to 9+, ToHA has very minimal addition rules for rolls (+1 to ranged attacks for good dex, that sort of thing). 

0E in space is Traveller, Traveller is 0E DnD I DON"T MAKE THE SCIENCE RULES

So You Want to Be an Adventurer? It's another '2d6 game' to classify it in a way that probably would make Jared feel I've missed the point entirely. But it's cool because you're trying to hit 8+ on 2d6, things like skills or gear each give a +1, things like being concussed or hurt or in a bad spot give a -1, and Something Is Always Happening. You don't just fail to pick a lock, you set off a burglar alarm. I'd make it so if you roll low doubles (1,1) you encounter A Horror, if you roll something like a 3,3 you see the Sam Raimi-style rushing camera of a Horror doing something. What's So Cool About Horror Psychic Fragments or the like.

Advanced Fighting Fantasy Was 0E for the UK

Troika. Evey wrote a cool horror game for it - zombies that do GIGANTIC BEAST damage are gonna rip off your goddamn face. Look it up it rules.

Was Warhammer 0e? (YES)

Sledgehammer. d100 based, wounds and corruption, not 0e-compatible or trying to be, but has a very cool Warhammer 0,000 vibe. 4 stats: fight, speed, fellowship, toughness. Stats are low, only players roll, failing a to-hit roll means the monster hits. Not HD compatible, monsters have two stats (damage and health). MA Guax is making a modern hack (Freaks on a Leash) and put out some stuff on his twitter about a deprecated/lost modern hack (Slickhammer) which both ROCK. Open license. I feel like the limited number of stats gets this away from 'roll under Int/Wis/Cha/Str/Dex/Con' like I see with some things, and you get some neat room for rulings that way.

But also Cairn hacks

Liminal Horror. Open license. Roll d20 under stats, damage per Cairn, not HD compatible but lots of monsters already converted for Cairn. Has a cool mystery generation tool. Really the coolest leveling-up system ever. Advancements take up inventory slots forever, and indicate that your character is also changing, forever altered, by encountering horrors.

But Also Pulp Mothership

Instead of Stress, you gain Adrenaline, which you can use to hulk out. I wrote it up here, just ignore the Strength/Toil thing, I dunno. 

Dreamy Appendix N

Somninauts inspired me to put together a half-completed list of dream games. As in, games about dreams. Some are also about being dead because, hey, in death what dreams may come. 

Also I have an itch.io list of dream and death games, also incomplete.

 In no particular order

• Paprika. The dream-world and the real world collide. Two women, each aspects of each other. A man spreads his filthy dead roots and would strangle the world. A cinemaphile deals with his past and present. A really big dude picks locks and takes responsibility by turning into a giant robot that Paprika gets inside and turns into a giant baby.
• Piotr Jabłoński
• Daniel Isn't Real. It's horror and it's like a pretty bad example of mental illness, or maybe it just features the worst psychologist ever. When your shrink shows up to get you to unleash your inner demon and has a ceremonial dagger you need a new person. More horror-y but still quite nice.
• Marc Rebillet. This guy is a wonderful musician and I love him. He sings about being a flamingo and makes it both danceable and terrifying. That flamingo is your nemesis.
• Watching mushrooms grow.
• Mandy. Nic Cage takes Hell cocaine and sees shit. Mandy is badass. We start in reality and (spoilers) end up somewhere else entirely. 
• Lisa Bella Donna playing a synth.
• Stuff from Killer7. H E L L O. M R S M I T H.
• Dr Casper from Control. This is some decent worldbuilding by way of informative videos he makes in-universe, for new employees / civil servants / prisoners of the Bureau of Control.
• The Frank Book. No dialogue. Adventures in an interesting way - it seems like most of the book Frank is just dealing with the strange encounters of keeping his home in one piece. A plant picked grows rapidly and attacks. ManPig is killed and lives again and again. Smirk smiles his creepy smile.
• Nostalgia Goons. Your stats are basically inner child, adulting, and boomer. You wander halls of nostalgia, looking for coffee shops and friendly company, trying to retain your memory - which is also your inventory, and your emotions, which when depleted mean you are gone.
• Goons of Unreality. Reality breaks apart, and your Goons can adventure, warp reality with their will, and visit thought whales. Another nice Tunnel Goons hack. Has some good adventure generators.
• The Book of Imaginary Beings. Borges. A bestiary for your dreams and nightmares.
• Adventure Time. Serious and whimsical. I feel this show is a mishmash of things that contradict, that should not fit together, and yet still do somehow. And there's a Pillow Dimension?!?
• War in the Heavens. All of Nate's stuff is so great but this is really good for strangeness. The art is different than lots of his other stuff, you are Rat Mutant Abominations, and you're on a quest to kill God. The art style has its own tutorial video in there which ROCKS.
• Psychopomps. Tunnel goons in the hereafter making sure heaven and hell and all the rest keeps working (?). 
• Aetherway. Cool little planar wandering game, has some good random tables for where you go and who you meet. 
• Oniria's Slumber. Great Troika hack of people in a city where the dreams leak out into the world, and some folks are there to make sure nothing gets too out of wack. So unlike a lot of Troika hacks/settings, the group as a whole gets a reason to adventure together out of the book (though any given table is free to ignore this!). Has a spread of setting skills, gear, and some locations and NPCs which is nice.
• Oneironauts and Oneironauts 2. Mix of dream and reality backgrounds suggesting how the worlds are colliding, gear and NPCs. A bit more like standard Troika hacks - and I don't say this as a bad thing! Evocative setting hinted through backgrounds and enemies and gear and spells.
• Katana ZERO. 
• This music video. What if we were turning to moths in the city?
• My Body Is a Cage

Stray Thoughts of God

 I wrote a planescapey dungeon of strange thoughts and gargantuan body-bits of God, which He has been forgetting. He needs the PCs to go through and clear out the Final Boss and then the dungeon will collapse onto itself, and this ruminating thought of God will go away completely. The PCs and some NPCs will be on to the next thought stuck in God's mind.

Much of this I owe to Amen Break and War in the Heavens. Amen Break has the brilliant idea of making dungeon-crawls like this, and tables and guides to doing so. Any good idea I have for the overall conceit comes from that; any bad idea is just me. War in the Heavens is a pocketmod book of collages and a smol awesome solo game. Nate Treme was nice enough to make a video about how he made it, and I've been using that to make Stray Thoughts of God.

Stray Thoughts of God is in that link. It's PWYW. Check it out!

Art by me

Charlie, a Troika Background, and pull-chit rules for dying of POiSoNNN

 CHARLIE

A Troika! Background (It's me)

Content Warning: I game-ify my anxiety.

Advanced Skills

• 2 Running
• 1 generate surplus value for capitalists
• 2 Remain Silent
• 2 Small Creature Friendship
• 2 Find Humour
• 1 Entertaining Game Time
• 1 CharAnxiety
• -1 Penmanship

Possessions

• Notebook 
• Warped metal pen (as knife)
• String (1 meter)
• Silver religious(?) symbol
• Mask
  
• Pamphlet Dungeon Map
• 1d6 anti-anxiety ampoules in a jar shaped like a beetle

Notes on New Skills!

Remain Silent can be used in lieu of Etiquette, as long as the Charlie remains silent and goes along with the other being. It also can have other uses.

Small Creature Friendship does not charm or control animals, but they will treat the Charlie as a friend or at least a distant uncle. Small animals are up to the size of a large dog, but not a truly massive dog.  Cats and snakes are not included - roll in their respective Mien tables.

Find Humour can both find entertaining things about the situation or locate actual bodily humours.

CharAnxiety can be used to have 1 obscurely appropriate tool for a task in a given session, but sometimes one must fail an Anxiety skill roll to get shit done, especially when carrying out the drudge-work of the Gleaming Capital Lords. It cannot(?) be used when eating anxiety ampoules.

LOTS OF PEOPLE WILL EXPERIENCE ANXIETY DIFFERENTLY. This is just how The Charlie does it!

BESTIARY

CAT

Skill 8, Stamina 4, Init 3, Damage as Knife. 

Mien

1. Distracted
2. Secretly Angry
3. Overtly Angry
4. Disinclined
5. Sleeping
6. Playful

You think you know them. You know nothing. They will tolerate us for a time longer. How long, only they know. They abide us, they indulge us. Or not. Moment to moment, it is their choice.

---

SNAKE

Skill 9, Stamina 4, Init 4, Damage as small beast + potentially POISON

Mien

1. Danger! Noodle!
2. d_ANGER (noodle)
3. danger?? Nooooodle!!!
4. Snoot boop
5. Sleep
6. Sunbathe

3-in-6 the snake is poisonous. If so, and if bitten, put 2d6 dice of one color and 1 die of another in a bag. Every 5 minutes at the table (or if the PCs travel for a while), have the player draw a die out of the bag. If they draw the 1 unique colored die, their character dies. Some snakes allow one to put more (or fewer) 'safe' dice in the bag.

Snakes generally only attack if stepped on, or if they feel threatened.  If left alone they will not attack, unless one is the size of a rodent.

Strange Loops, a spark table pocketmod 'adventure' 'generator'

I've been busy and depressed but here's the spark tables I used to put together some point-crawl horror stuff for that system I put together, CESR. You should be able to right-click on the image, click 'view in another tab', and see the pocketmod in its original size and print it from there. HAVE FUN exploding heads and such! There's no way out written into this so think of that before you start.

Strange Loops A4 (Americans noooo)

Strange Loops Letter (Americans Use This) ^^^

Gaining Insight Rather Than Losing Sanity

Insight has a positive ring to it. We can destroy that.

The Wizard of Macke Town is a fantastic blog with a relevant blog post. Bloodborne apparently tracks 'frenzy' and this can, if accrued, cause horrible damage to the player. The wizard adapts this to games with Wisdom scores. 

One gains Frenzy by encountering horrible things ('reading the grimoire deals 1d6 Frenzy damage and teaches you to speak to vermin'), gaining new knowledge of the world when speaking to some monsters. When your Frenzy score and Wisdom score are equal, you take double your Wisdom in HP damage.

Image from Scanners

I would also posit that memorizing a spell should add to Frenzy - say, the spell's level determines how much Frenzy you gain when you memorize it. The spell will squat in your skull for as long as you want - you don't forget it when you sleep, you dream of it. Dream of it watching you. Anyone can memorize any spell they want - they just are in more and more danger of Frenzy making them burst blood vessels, have heart attacks, or have their head explode. 

Now anyone can be a wizard - in plate mail or kevlar or just a comfy pair of joggers.

Another nice bonus is that this doesn't conflate horror with real-world psychological issues. You don't gain so much insight you get depression. You gain so much that your head explodes from the inside as the horrible living ideas try vainly(?) to flower and spore with your dying flesh. Rates of depression and anxiety here in the US have doubled in the last year, thanks to Trump's inability to lead in the face of a global pandemic. And even before this, mental health was considered a huge, yet systemically unaddressed problem. Given this, I prefer a system that doesn't tell you that you have PTSD or anxiety or depression during fun-relax-time. 

I need something far more fantastical and strange.

To this end I have written a very simple character sheet and 'system' for this: CESR, Charlie's Eerie Simple Roleplaying. It owes a lot / steals from The Black Hack, Nate Treme's NOSR, Jared Sinclair's Anti-Sisyphus, and of course The Wizard of Macke Town. I am working through different Silent-Hill-4-esque scenarios of surreal mismatched interior places, dungeon crawls, where one must battle monsters and their own insight. 

Soon there will be more.

Not Dead But Dreaming: Noble Hunt adventure for Acid Death Fantasy, 24?? Supplement for 24XX games

 Despite 2020's efforts I am not yet dead. I am alive. I have dreamed adventures and things. I have published more things on itch.io. I have more things I must do. I am not yet ready to slumber in a grave, my skull embraced by the warm dirt, my eye-sockets full of worms, my brain-meat translated by them to Earth.

Library of Congress + PHOTOMOSH

2400

If you have not bought 2400 yet, you should. It is a fantastic cluster of systems and settings which covers classic cyberpunk, Classic Traveller, RIFTS/time-asplodin, space horror, science-fantasy... lots of things. There are a ton of hacks for it because Jason (the author) put together a great jam and a great 24XX SRD and template pack. 

Anyway, I wrote some character 'classes' / backgrounds and enemies to go with some of the wackier, more science-fantastical stuff. 24??: Enemies and Allies. There are ant-mecha, there's Entropy Wizards fighting anti-entropy wizards, there's luchadors, there's all kinds of stuff. 

Acid Death Fantasy Adventure: Noble Hunt

Some shit nobles are hunting desert folk. You can hunt them back. And do prophecy-inducing drugs! I took a lot of Dune ideas and jammed them into Acid Death Fantasy, added in a bunch of super-lo-fi 'layout' and, yeah. Noble Hunt. You can explore a titanic skull-cavern and find living memories, you can crawl under razorwire and over worm-traps, you can befriend soldier-conscripts and save them from shitty nobles. 

What's coming

Dang Mork Borg has teased this: CY BORG. I am super down. I am ready. It may be ready in 2021. I cannot wait that long. I have begun to compile a list of Modern/Future Miseries based on, what else, how hard the rich are trying to kill us all for their amusement / bank accounts. Heavily based on a Dread X Collection game, Shatter, which is a fantastic short game about how apocalyptic and horrid cyberpunk could be. Mork Borg has a great open 3rd party license, so I'm going to put some stuff together for it. I'm not trying to steal Cy Borg's thunder because I literally could not, but I want to play some mud-pit-cyberpunk (emphasis on the PUNK) before 2021. 

The War On Christmas

There's no RPG content here folks, just proof that conservatives hate Christmas.

In America now the President, a trash bag of human skin, is hobbling the Post Office, an organization enshrined in the Constitution. By attacking the Post Office, it's possible holiday cards will need to be shipped via private carriers - most of which charge around $6 per letter at present. At that rate sending 20 Christmas cards will cost $120 in shipping. We send about 100 Christmas cards a year, but we won't be doing this if we have to budget $600 for shipping letters.

Conservatives are enabling this and debating for this in some cases. 'Not all conservatives!' I know is being shrieked. But if you vote for this, you're asking for it. A war on sending Christmas cards is a war on Christmas. USPS ships more in a month than Fedex and UPS in a year. If you want your nieces and nephews to get their Christmas presents, the choice is clear.

I have loved and thrown lots of money into the last two Zinequests on Kickstarter; I'm hoping the USPS doesn't get so hobbled that we cannot ship zines around my country. And/or destroy all kinds of small businesses that utterly rely upon shipping infrastructure, established by our Constitution.

If you are still here, I should say: I've been vocal about this on Twitter as well, but it's worth pointing out - Black Lives Matter. Trans rights are human rights. And now back to RPG content! I lied before! I am capricious!

RULE ZERO - ACAB

This came out of a discussion on twitter, where Fiona rightly pointed out that the best rule zero is that all cops are bastards. Even if you believe otherwise (buh bye) this is a great rule zero for any modern campaign. 'Why don't the protagonists go to the police?' Well all the cops are bastards. If some monster is terrorizing the town the police will pin it on the PCs for trying to come forward. They'll arrest the PCs for knowing about the terror that the police have been trying to hide, because they want to avoid public panic. Unrealistic? Just check out our coronavirus response.

Or the cops are working for the monsters... Think of BLADE. 

Are You Out Of Your Damn Mind

Watch how the cops yell freeze, Wesley Snipes turns around calmly, and then the cops start blasting. Now I know someone will show up to whine that he's holding a sword! And wearing black clothes! But the cops or hospital security or whatever are far away, and this movie was made before the '21 foot rule' became a popularly misunderstood reason for capping people. 

Also there is a VAMPIRE that has been burnt but it somehow still alive and he has blood on his face from biting and sucking human blood, but do the cops shoot the vampire? NO! They shoot at the Big Scary Black Man With A Katana. Because he turned around calmly.

This is of course because most of the law enforcement is in league with the vampires in the Blade cinematic universe. 

So the next time the PCs want to get the police to fight cosmic horror for them, just remember: all cops are bastards. 

What's So Cool About Modern Occultists and a Burning Revolving World

I wrote a game! It's here: What's So Cool About Sigils and Bibliomancy When The World Is Aflame

It's about people dealing with how terrible the world is through a collection of simple resolution systems that involve doodling magic symbols and divination and stuff. It's a d6-only system where sometimes you roll 1d6, sometimes you roll 2d6, sometimes you flip over tarot cards or use whatever divination oracle you want, and sometimes the GM makes up a new system of magic and drops it on you and the world. Sometimes riot cops are kicking down you door, sometimes the giants beneath the Earth are kicking in their sleep.

Art by Jakub Rebelka

It's very simple, there's almost no art or layout work, and I still need to re-edit it and re-upload it at some point, but I wanted to get something out there rather than try to find more time to polish it forever and never get done with it.

Towards an Anti-Canonical Not-Warhammer 40k: Blood Floats In Space

Blood Floats in Space is a great Mothership supplement that imagines a beauty-obsessed space authority and its vassals, the Empire Without Borders Or Competition. Ruled with martial law, social classes are determined by beauty, systems with aesthetic flaws are destroyed and harvested for their base parts. The zine adds in two new classes - an armor entombed warrior and a ticking time bomb of a psyker. 

art by ArielP

The armor warrior can straight-up replace the Marine class, which is cool - all off-brand Astartes and no Imperial Guard with their flashlights, I say. The Psyker class freakin can melt its own face off if it successfully uses its powers a lot, much less if it fails psychic cast rolls. That's perfect. Psychic powers are like lighting a stick of dynamite with your brain, the zine informs us, and this class' characters are going to screw that up and some point.

Horrible star gods are detailed, which are worshiped by people in the empire. There are a small number of new gear-bits, a great number of psychic powers with amazing names ('For Every Psychic That Dies To Their Own Folly, Another Dies In A Psionic Duel'), Psychic Catastrophes ranging from merely gross to rolling a new character, a character sheet, d100 amazing rumors and d100 Empire-specific trinkets for your PCs.

The Gods are great and terrible. Each has a paragraph about their history/domain, a d6 table of manifestations that could wreck the players' day (or provide adventure fodder), and a final paragraph about their terrible human worshipers.

The Empire is ruled by the Empress, who was a popular musician before fusion with an alien lifeform and becoming an immortal floating space brain which commands the decaying remains of the delightfully-named Empire Without Borders Or Competition. 

I think there are a few things I'd love to add - the zine has some real fruitful voids where I want more stuff but I'm sure what I want is different than someone else. I feel like Mothership characters should get some Beauty stat for dealing with people in the Empire, and that maybe characters with a higher starting Beauty stat have some kind of Noble 'class' that they can unlock. A Noble would be good at, I dunno, dueling and evaluating poison in food. And that's about it. They're pretty (by Empire standards) and pretty useless. 

Maybe there should be mutation - just use A Pound of Flesh! But it should reduce your beauty stat? Because the Empire hates mutants because Empires are actually dumb. 

The PCs are sent on tasks that will likely gain mutations and have to hide them, Nobles are foppish and like the opposite of Teamsters, psykers are as useful and dangerous as unstable explosives, the Gods sometimes manifest in benevolent ways but really aren't here for anyone but themselves. It's a cool zine with a great setting in it - both explicit and implicit.

TROIKA BACKGROUNDS FROM THINGS IN MY OFFICE BACKGROUND

THAT'S RIGHT IT'S TIME FOR troika: THE BEST RPG OF ALL TIME.

These backgrounds are hot off the memetic cobweb receiver and guaranteed to `make destroy` all things. 

SAMPLE MONSTER / SAMPLING MONSTER

You were just a moth, once. You lived in a nice cave, free of bats thanks to the dragon. Those callous adventurers hurt her, made her flee into strange angles, and all that was left was her blood. You mourned her, you supped on her lifeblood, and learnt that you can absorb things from monsters. 

And everything is a monster.

Possessions: Large moth body, wings. You're big enough that a small person could ride on you.

Absorb 2
Absorbed Power 3
Fly 4
Astrology 3
Spell: Languages 2

Special: Roll Absorb against the monster's Skill to absorb whatever special ability it had. Use your Absorbed Power skill to use said power, if relevant. You can only have one at a time. You take on some aspect of the monster, you may use your Absorbed Power skill to heighten this aspect. Use of Absorbed Power may come at a Stamina cost. 

TOTAL RESISTANCE

Absolute power inspires rebellion. But only in a few. Your rebel cell was rolled up, captured, and you were denied sanctuary by others in the organization. You are in a unique position - are you still willing to fight the Autaurch, your old compatriots, both, neither? No one is sure. Either way, both sides consider you a loose end to be tied up.

Possessions: Poison capsule, lethal. Book of 1-time passphrases. Pistolet, 2 plasmic cores.

Pistolet Fighting 2
Secret Sign: Resistance 3
Awareness 1
Run 2
Spell: Coal Resolve 4

ICEHEARTED

You inhaled a spore of the anti-sun, and its cold has settled into your heart. It may eventually consume you and render you an icy golem of its will, but for now you can use its effects for your own ends.

Possessions: Ice-crystal sword, 

Golden Barge 2
Sword Fighting 1
Club Fighting 1
Spell: Hurricane (but with snow as well) 4

Special: Spend 1 Stamina per level of Ice Armor you'd like until your next rest. Ice Armor protects you from heat and cold completely. It also protects from damage. It can be created as a reaction, before damage is applied. Once you have spent 10 Stamina on Ice Armor, you become an Ice Golem. Hand your character sheet to the GM.

WEAPON EXPLAINER

There are many warriors. Yours is a different path. You explain the function and mechanism of weapons to plebians - sometimes to convince the masses to avoid troubling their betters, sometimes to convince the masses to spend their silver ducats on exotic weapons at the behest of monied interests. 

Blacksmithing 1
Clean Weapon 2
Etiquette 1
Evaluate 2
Metallurgy 2

Possessions
Weapon Cleaning Oil, 3 doses bottle
Rags
White Gloves
Crystalline Recorder / Projector - can project up to 500' and generate an image up to 150' square

Special: If you clean a weapon for an hour, it gets +1 to damage rolls for the first combat it's used in. Uses up 1 dose of weapon cleaning oil (which is about 46 sp a bottle). On a fumble you can't put the weapon back together and it needs to be repaired.

FORMER FARMER

You loved your life as a farmer until you found out it was a complete lie. The rest of the villagers set aside your plot and prepared a place for you to get you ready to be a human sacrifice to keep their crystal dome alive and well, and to satisfy their Blood God.

Possessions: 
Hungry Goat (Skill 7, Climb 4, Stamina 6, Small Beast Damage)
Shovel (2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 8)

Awareness 2
Plant-wise 3
Secret Sign: Blood God Cult 2
Run 2
Scythe 1
Shovel 1

Special: You can reroll the mein of any wild or farm animal, but must take the rerolled value.

Todo: 

CAPSULE COMMANDER

JAZZPUNK

FLOATING SKULL

PSYCHIC DRUMMER

Science Fighting Fantasy

Brian wrote some brilliant stuff about how to retroclone Fighting Fantasy. He has since expanded this into a Part 2  which I need to re-read again, but I came up with some ideas already. 

I wrote about Odd Light already, which has 1 'stat' called Skill. I figured for low Skill characters, you get to roll on a table and you get one more stat, based off what you are or your background. So a 4 Skill PC gets to be a Robot and has a ROBOT stat that they roll under to do robot-y things. I think you could roll 1d6 + 4 for Skill in Brian's FF hack, and have an Awesome Background stat that's 15 - Skill. So if you have a high Skill, you actually suck at your Awesome Background - you're the awesome soldier who has a 5 in Following Orders, or a swashbuckling rogue with a 5 in Con Artist. 

But then I figured you would just roll 1d6 + 4 for Skill, and low skill people just can cast spells or are radiation ghosts or are 2-meter-tall floating skull heads. You know, just, they can do some neat things without a roll at all, because their Skill is terrible. For a 5 or 6 Skill character, if you can cast spells you still roll 2d6 to see if you fumble, Troika style, but otherwise you just pay your Stamina fee. 

SKILL: Roll 1d6+4, consult the table below for your Background.
LUCK: Roll 1d6+6
STAMINA: Roll 2d6+12

BACKGROUND / SKILL MATRIX

10 SKILL: Soldier, Starbarian, Boarding Specialist, Escaped Convict, Space Paladin, Laser Sword Duelist, Semiferal Hypercat

9 SKILL: Ship's Gunner, Combat Medic, Pyromancer, Vat-Grown Hyperwarrior, Robotic Siege Soldier, Dog-bonded trooper

8 SKILL: Thief Entertainer Singer, Space Monk with mild Telekinesisperosis, Bounty Hunter, Conman Pilot Scoundrel, 2-fisted ex-cop

7 SKILL: Parkour Half Ghost, Electric Gnome Asteroid Miner, Spiderbot Scout Ambusher, Reflex-boosted Knife Juggler, Embodied Black Hole, Lava Person

6 SKILL: Angel Summoner, Space Wizardling, Rebuilt Warbot Botanist, Ultratrucker w/ Morphin' Fists, Telestrike cyborg mechanist

5 SKILL: Radiation Ghost, Psi Vampire Shadowform, Rewinder Sage, 2-meter flying stone head, Skeleton Astroneer Mystic, Nitrous-blooded race witch.

Now I just need to expand on all of these backgrounds such that the game can be easily played. Some low skill characters may have 1 or 2 UNCHANGING advanced skills, but most of them would just have a neat Special power or two.

Odd Light: Monsters Made Me Do This

Chris at Bastionland wrote Odd Lite back in the long-ago days of Google Plus, when the world was not on fire as obviously. Odd Lite is a lighter version of Into the Odd - something I figured would be impossible. In Odd Lite, you have hit points and one roll-under stat, SKILL. 

I freaking love the 4 example monsters in this tiny hack so much I thought of ways to make this a viable-er to me game. My only concern was, with one randomly-rolled stat, even in a system where you roll under it more as a saving throw than as a normal 'skill check,' someone with a really low SKILL will feel sad. 

I took a page out of the larger Into the Odd book(let), where low stats and HP let one get better starting gear / abilities, and figure if you have low skill you should be able to roll to get one more roll-under stat that describes your specialness. I know, going from 1 to 2 stats makes this about as crunchy as using all the GURPS splatbooks at once, but hear me out.

OTHER STAT = 21 - SKILL

Only roll on this table if you have a low SKILL! GMs, think of what that means before you run the game. (My table, 8 or lower.)

1. Robot. Other stat is MIGHT, used for strength checks, absorbing physical damage. You must be repaired to fix MIGHT and SKILL. You don't eat, sleep, or breath. Each fist is a 1d6 weapon, together they are a 1d8 weapon.
2. Thief. Other stat is THIEF, used for crime, sneaking, and related saves. Start with black cloak, thieves' tools, soft shoes, 3 daggers (1d6 damage).
3. Acrobat. Other stat is ACRO. Roll under for parkour, falling. Fall damage is applied to ACRO. Out of ACRO, you cannot move. Start with a long pole (1d8 2-handed weapon), bright clothes, starter pistol (fires blanks).
4. Prehistoric Dog. Other stat is DOG. Used for tracking, running, absorbing damage. You're about the size of a tiger. 1 armor (fur), bite does 1d8 damage, cannot hold things in your paws.
5. Dirt Wizard. Other stat is DIRT. You can control up to a person's worth of dirt, DIRT is used if saving throws are needed for your dirt-homunculus, or to do very difficult things with dirt. You can see through the pile of dirt you control if you began controlling it when you touched it. 
6. Forgotten God. Other stat is GOD. Used to turn undead / divine things not of you / demons. Also can check to heal others. Costs 2 GOD per entity turned or HP healed. 
7. Deposed Royalty. Other stat is ROY. Used to command others, rally mercenaries / hirelings. Or garner respect if the people already, you know, like tyrants. (Keep in mind you were deposed for a reason.) Start with a 1d8 rapier (1 handed) that has a fancy, gold-plated hilt.
8. Pyromancer. Other stat is FIRE. Can summon fire, up to 1d6 damage worth, basically the size of a campfire, or can extinguish the same amount. Can only have 1 fire summoned at a time. Burnt robes, 1 armor (scars, nerve damage).
9. TK. Other stat, TK. Roll under to move something small as if by 1 hand, spend HP and ESP to move a larger object (human-sized, 3 points). Can deal structural damage if you spend 8 points from HP and/or the stat, but you have little control compared to normal telekinetic stuff.
10. Water Mage. Other stat is WAT. Roll under to turn into a liquid or turn back, your equipment doesn't come with you. Start with a bucket you like to sleep in.

I'm super glad Bruno saved that G+ post.

Whiff Table: Something happens every round of combat

I'm thinking of running 0e DnD or Black Pudding's flavor of B/X, or Moldhammer, or Wolfbreaker. But I love combat systems from Into the Odd where there's no to-hit roll (and no missing) or Troika/Tunnel Goons/Macchiato Monsters where someone always gets hit. What to do? Write a whiff table! 

WHIFF

When two opposed combatants in melee both miss their attacks, roll on the whiff table.

1. You knock each other's helms off. If anyone involved is not wearing a helm, they take 1d6 damage.
2. You both fall down. 50% chance you're on top. You're at a range where punches, kicks, and daggers will work; larger melee weapons will not.
3. You bind weapons and then push one another back. Their weapon lands at your feet; yours lands at theirs.
4. Belt or backpack cut. Lose the top item in your inventory, as it is on the ground now.
5. Lesser HD combatant knocked back into someone else on their side, who must save or be knocked down. 
6. Environmental damage! Crack the ceiling, start a fire, destroy furniture, valuables, etc.
7. Tooth loosened. You can spit it out in their face for a +4 to hit bonus next round, or try to keep it in place and get it fixed later (maybe?). No hp loss.
8. Metal strikes stone. You and your opponent are bathed in sparks. Exposed paper or oil will begin to burn. Hair smolders.
9. Opponent had an oil jar or gland that you just barely nick, but it splits open nevertheless. You, your opponent, and the ground are drenched in oil. 
10. You just barely get an opening. If you swing with everything you have, embedding your weapon in your opponent, you can do so and roll damage with advantage, but you lose your weapon. Otherwise, normal miss.
11. Their swing or thrust misses, but tosses sweat and grit in your eyes. Take -4 to AC until you spend a round wiping that out; your peripheral vision is .
12. You clash weapons and it's incredibly loud. Roll for an additional encounter.
13. You disarm them and their weapon sails behind them. If they have natural weapons they take 1d6 damage.
14. Their weapon pins you in place. They lose it but you will have to struggle for 1d3 rounds to be able to move again. Can still fight.
15. Ancient war-sigil mine stepped on, 1-3 by you, 4-6 by enemy. Spend next round levitating 10' in the air. Spells lowers you down gently (defective).
16. Skyknife! Your weapon is knocked up into the ceiling and lodged there. It'll fall in 1d6 rounds. Anyone under it could be hit by it. (If no ceiling is available your weapon targets someone random closeby.)
17. Ambient magical energy interacts with your intent to cause harm. You and your opponent glow like torches. -4 AC penalty to both of you for 1d6 rounds.
18. You blink blood out of your eyes. You and your opponent are covered in blood and gore. Perhaps another attack drenched you both, perhaps some blood god is merely happy at your mishap.
19. Their swing is about to cleave into your throat and you are suddenly in the Dead Realm. Any spirits or undead in the area are still present, otherwise it is empty, grey, cold, foggy. You can move about for 1 round and then you will re-appear wherever you moved to. Any valuable treasure or items are but dust in the Dead Realm, unless you brought them in yourself.
20. Both of your weapons bind and break. If either of you were using magical weapons, said weapons can save against breakage. (Roll a 4 or more on a d6, adding the weapon's magical bonus.)

You could just roll a d6 against this table, or a d12 if you don't want random magical war-sigils to show up in your theatre of the mind, or random Dead Realm trips. 

Ghost Gang Random Tables for Esoteric Enterprises or whatever modern urban fantasy you got

In anticipation of Cavegirl's AWESOME Esoteric Enterprises coming out bigger and badder, here are my thoughts on Ghost Gangs. Because people die all the time, there's almost always a few ghosts in a rough collective, if not an outright organized body of the disembodied.

They're a fantastic organization to hire out freelancers, because they need a literal pair of hands (or 4) to lift up a priceless painting from one subterranean hidey-hole and carry it safely to theirs. 

(Also here's a link to the player's handbook for Esoteric Enterprises, with which one can create ghosts.)

From Wikipedia

WHAT DOES THIS GHOST GANG WANT ANYWAY

1. Enchanted fresh food to actually eat. 
2. Ancient vinyl pressing of ritual music.
3. Large (4' x 6') oil painting, frame optional.
4. Unenchanted stone idol.
5. Large pile of enemy's wealth to be destroyed dramatically.
6. DVDs and DVD player. Holy oil to anoint such that they can push the buttons.
7. Hookah, brick of undergrown-cultivated herb. 
8. Blessed salt to keep out uninvited spirits.
9. Silver-coated sword that they can wield.
10. Rune-carved zippo lighter shipment. They don't run out of fuel.
11. Ectoplasm-filled jar, the remains of one of their own.
12. Liber Noctis, a book of binding ghosts. A furnace to destroy it in.
13. Soul trapper's scalp or forefinger.

WHO HAS IT WHO IS TERRIBLE

1. A thief-lich (HD6) and her disciples.
2. Null soul zone-dwelling scavengers. 
3. Overly large cryptid.
4. Nearby police precinct. 
5. Bank vault, front for some undead businessfolk.
6. Devotee of the Void and their flock.
7. Rival ghost gang.
8. Urban explorers, last seen diving the depths.

WHERE DO THEY HOLE UP

1. Underground, an abandoned subway stop
2. Aboveground, in an unknown safehouse
3. Underground, beneath a small settlement of worshippers / traders
4. Underground, in an automatic sewer processing system
5. Underground, in an ancient building that was built over hundreds (?) of years ago but looks like it's from the 1980s
6. Aboveground, a squat atop an abandoned (?) building

Oh yeah, obviously if you get a location or WHO HAS IT from the What they want table, don't bother rolling on the later tables unless you want.

Mothership AP: Kids Are Alright 2: Hellslide to the Sink

Players:
Ryan, Teamster, Pilot and Jack of Many Trades
'Doc' Krober, probably not a real doctor?, Scientist, Curiosity Fulfiller
Willow, Former Marine, current computer / hacker specialist
Ed, Mercenary-stat'd Android, (Combat: 38, Instinct: 45, Loyalty: 50, Revolver, 3 reload cylinders Flight Suit)

Getting to the Dream

So the niece/nephew/brother-in-law/android merc squad dock just outside Prospero's Dream, because their 93 Hull mining vessel will not fit in the dry dock. They lose some stress from getting back to civilization, and then the Q-Team pointing pulse rifles at them and hosing them down with disinfectant stresses them out again. They head through the dry docks, down a corridor towards the Stellar Burn to buy drinks, look for weapons, and offload their cargo.

Art from Tsutomu Nihei's Blame!

The Slide

My first encounter roll is a deadly one. I roll an 8. I ask them who's in front of the group. Ryan's up front, and fails a Body save. The group (I rule) has blundered into a section of walkway that irises open and they tumble down a chrome-slick peristalting gullet. Random chrome slide to the Sink! When they awaken they're on a plateau of broken concrete. In the distance they see what looks dimly like a waterfall, with a few flickering yellow lights on a precipice atop it. Above them, cold blue lights shine like distant uncaring stars. Cracked buildings lean drunkenly, and in the distance a series of vast pipes seems to writhe. (In retrospect I should've had them roll a fear save or panic check, but I was so flummoxed that I was just trying to give them some semi-viable choice of direction). They manage to find an old O2 bottle with 6 hours of breathe left to it. Taking stock, they march towards the waterfall. I roll an encounter and get 8 Hunglungs with spears (and quite low speed) waiting in ambush.

The Ambush

The PCs wind up in a canyon formed of two colossal buildings leaning against one another, an alley between them turned into a small steep ravine. It's quiet, they don't see anything moving. Willow asks if she can see anything with her IR goggles, and I tell her there are dim handprints on one of the empty window-panes.

 |        |
 |        |
 |_      _|
   \    /
    \  /
     \/


So at the base of the buildings there's a shelf of concrete about as wide as a sidewalk, then the ravine, which bottoms out in a narrow trail. Willow sees someone looking out at them, just a sliver of face, partially masked by concrete and some kind of blocky monocle. The figure darts away.

Willow's player smartly asks if her bioscanner will help, and whips it out. She notices 8 signatures spread out between the buildings. Willow wants to sneak up to the 'sidewalk' and listen in on the larger cluster. I tell her there's enough debris on the ground she needs an auditory distraction, and Ryan obliges by smacking his crowbar against the ground like a maniac. The sneaking marine touches one of the metal 'vines' growing all over the Sink, and it is warm to the touch, despite not showing up on IR (Sanity save!). 

Willow listens in; the Hunglungs seem to think they're clueless tourists. As they spring out to 'ambush' them, Willow has gotten behind the Hunglungs and surprises them, snatching a spear from one of them and hurling him down the ravine. Doc, Ryan and Ed are stressed to receive a charge of emaciated, tired Hunglungs with spears, but manage to down 3 of them in the scrum. 

The Loot

The rest of the Hunglungs opt to flee, and the PCs watch them go. The PCs manage to salvage 5 spears, 2 ancient hazardous environment suits that are relatively undamaged / patchable, a flare gun (3 flares) and the IR monocle. Doc and Willow have begun to feel feverish as ACMD takes hold. Willow and Ryan don the environment suits and the four keep moving towards the waterfall. 

Takeaways

I'm playing around with encumbrance rules Sean is playtesting. Characters can carry Strength / 10 items. Stacks of 3 stimpacks/magazines/grenades are 1 item slot. There's a wearing slot for armor or otherwise wearable items (flashlights, RAW, and short-range comms at my table) outside of the Str/10 limit, as are slots for your mitts. So there was more deliberation at the Dream and when looting the Hunglungs about what to take, which seems very apt to me. Drives home 'survival horror' and doesn't seem to slow things down overmuch.

Also I was not at all ready for them to go straight to the Sink - there's only a 2% chance of this happening by default. But, uh, be ready for this. Just in case. You can just wing things a bit with random encounters, and a dim-and-vague description of the overall layout, which is awesome, but next time I'm going to use some of the landmarks specifically mentioned in that spread. Probably put together a small pointcrawl of where they've been, options for where to go. 

Also the rules for 'you don't have an O2 tank' in the Sink are on page 31 at the start of the Choke, which totally makes sense because you'd go through there first... unless this happens. So I forgot about that! But it's not a huge deal. They have a tiny amount of O2 and I can always say 'now that you've been down here long enough you feel really woozy' if they lose that O2 for any reason. Anyway, I do love that APoF has a Hellslide straight to the Sink.