DOOM Oracle, Passages style

I got a decent bit of gonzo post apocalyptic play from my other Passages style Oracle, so here is one for DOOM.

Passages oracles work by rolling on this 3 times to construct a scene, but the Doomslayer wouldn't care for my petty rules and neither should you.

1. Flesh
2. Metal
3. Demon
4. Mortal
5. Distant
6. Close
7. Walls
8. Portal
9. Rage
10. Corporate
11. Military
12. Civilian
13. Blood
14. Sterile
15. Ravaged
16. Untouched
17. Hell
18. Earth
19. Treasure
20. Tear (as in Rip and Tear)

DOOM in an RPG

I wanted to play DOOM as an RPG. (Happy 25th anniversary, DOOM!) There are two things you need: Stay Frosty and Exemplars and Eidolons.

Stay Frosty is an RPG about playing a bunch of Doom Marines or Aliens' Space Marines running around, getting stressed, which makes you more competent until you make an unlucky save and then TENSION EXPLODES and you're murdering everything and ignoring tactics, possibly until you die. It's like if Mothership were about just playing marines and people panic by doing Billy-style last stands from Predator. Remove armor, throw away gun, attack big bad with a giant knife. The reason I don't just use it vanilla, is that the PCs are still fairly flimsy, _especially_ if you want to just run 1 PC against squads of enemies like a Doom Slayer.

To up the PC power level, I use damage, Gifts, and HP/HD from Exemplars and Eidolons.

Exemplars and Eidolons is about playing supernaturally-powerful thieves, wizards, or warriors. Your warrior can take on groups of 1 HD fools and destroy them all, punch through walls, never needs to sleep, that kind of thing. E&E evolved into Godbound, where the PCs are even more over-the-top, but E&E is perfect for what I want to play: solo Doom Slayer vs the first level of that game.

So your PC has 4 stats (Stay Frosty): Brawn, Brains, Dexterity, Willpower. Roll 3d6 and sum. You roll _equal to or over_ your stat: So Brains 9 is like '9+', and you want to roll a 9 or higher. If none of your stats are 5+, set one to 5+. Enemies try to hurt you (or terrify you) by rolling a d20 under your stat, and you subtract the difference between their level and yours from the roll.

Stay Frosty is a Black Hack hack that figured out to make everything the PCs want to do roll over. 20s are good! You use your stats to resolve attacks, unbreaking an APC's engine, wire electricity through a bulkhead, dodge falling rains of fire, that kind of thing.

Tension is as per Stay Frosty - you get tenser and better at kicking ass, until Tension Explodes and you flub your Willpower save and then you're fighting a cyberdemon with a knife. There's also critical hit and critical fail tables in there that I'll use. And enemies, mission generators, pointcrawling advice.

You can carry 21 - Brawn items.

You have 8 HP and gain 4 per level. Monsters use their HD as their HP. Armor is ablative HP that gets ruined and replaced just like in DOOM. Back-and-breast armor has 2 hp, a helmet has 1 hp. You could probably cobble together arm and leg armor and have up to 5 hp - for a 1 HD soldier that's a lot of extra survivability. Perhaps too much, we'll see when I run this more.

Damage is: weapons do 1d6 to 1d20 damage, a roll of 1 is 0 damage, 2-5 is 1 hp/HD of damage, 6-8 is 2 hp/HD, 9+ is 4 hp/HD. A combat knife does 1d6 damage, a pistol does 1d8, as does a 1-handed sword, as do some cheap assault rifles. A good rifle or two-handed weapon does 1d10 or more damage - a chainsaw might do 1d12, as might a super shotgun at optimal range. A BFG does 1d20 damage to an area of enemies but has like 1-2 shots taking up inventory slots.

So the damage is one huge thing that ups a single PC's survivability. You start with 8 hit points, you can take out 1 HD enemies with 1 hit, you can probably go toe-to-toe with a decent-sized demon/alien monster and survive.

You get 2 Effort, from Exemplars and Eidolons. You spend that to use some of your E&E Gifts.

You get some of the Warrior or Generic gifts - 3 at level 1. So you might be able to fight large groups of your-HD-or-less monsters and only get attacked once, or you can rip bulkhead doors down given a few minutes, or you can spend effort for the combat to nat 20 hit your enemy. To me this is another thing that we see the Doom Slayer do all the time.

Passages of Planet Psychon

Rescuing this from Google+:

Here's a Passage-style oraclular list but for Planet Psychon or Ultra Violet Grasslands or whatever Heavy Metal / Moebius inspired thing you want. Some are from Passage, because it has a great list of words in there.

How To Use This: Roll 3d20 and make up a scene or thing or resolve some action using the Oracular Words! That's about it. 

1. Weakness
2. Might
3. PSI
4. Magic
5. Tech
6. Ancient
7. New
8. Crimson
9. Jade
10. Fuchsia
11. Azure
12. Light
13. Shadow
14. Memory
15. Hallucination
16. Walls
17. Portal
18. Discovery
19. Loss
20. Gods

The only thing that really needs explanation is the colors.

CRIMSON: Blood, Chaos, violence, brick, sky, rivers, motion

JADE: Wealth, vegetation, jungle, food, decoration, labyrinthine, complexity

FUCHSIA: Mutation, dust storms, sky, weather, skin, pools

AZURE: Sky, wind, air, starkness, openness, expanse, stillness in motion

Gods can be AI Gods, actual Gods, agents of Gods, false gods...

Memories or Hallucinations can be dreams, dream-quests, desires.

Planet Psychon has a lot of tables for weather, what the hex you're in looks like or sounds like, colors, etc. It's great, it's really vivid. UVG has some similar things going on with its illustrations and descriptions. Google them! They're AWESOME!

Passage is also pretty great. It's here: https://www.rpgnow.com/product/250996/Passage--A-Storytelling-Exploration-Game-for-Exactly-One-Player

Coral Made 3: Solo Cthulhu Dark Actual Play

Harvey Mills: 

Drone Pilot

Insight 3

clues: forgot 3 days, Steve is missing, Steve’s sub is missing with all hands lost, Dr Bright did something terrible to Steve in a dream. Others have had terrible dreams. Seismic activity opened up C11, the route down the Rift where the Cyclops was lost.

The too-sweet rot of sick permeated the tiny Drone Control System room. Mills was crammed in between the large bank of controls and the wall behind him. Beside him was the trash can into which he’d vomited. He didn’t notice the smell. 

Mills focused on green screens of the drone cameras, sonar, IR and LIDAR translated to something he could see and understand. Even blurred as the images were, they were crystal clear to Mills.  

His hands flitted across toggles and joysticks. The fleas flexed their limbs and spun up their props. 

Mills had spent months laying down nodules of wired and wireless data transmitters, so the fleas could talk to each other and to him. That mesh network had been rent. Half of his work was gone. No obvious signs of what had happened.  

"In 3 days? 3 days?” Mills murmured.

He set a few drones through automated repairs of the network, and drove the rest around, looking. Headed two towards C11. In the meantime he had one zoom in on a former mesh network node.

(Investigate the mesh network through the drones roll)

M: 3,4

It looked as though something had flowed over the mesh and wiped it away. There were some smoothed-over microbolt remains where it had been attached. They were designed to come out cleanly if pulled, to minimize damage to the area, but the nodes hadn't been pulled. It was as if they’d been shaved off the rocky surface.

A glimmer on one screen drew Mills attention. The fleas falling down C11 had seen a glimmer of thermal emission. Faint, distant. He pushed the drones down, having one lay down new nodes so they could keep up their broadcast.

Down, down. The craggy tunnel became a column going straight down. 30 meters in diameter, with a faint undulation to the rock. Regular. Like it was undergoing a slow stone peristalsis. He was closer to the heat signature. The cameras cut out. 

"No, what? No!" Mills slammed a palm into his desk. "Come back. You were at double bandwidth cap. Double! Come on."

He flipped switches and the central broadcast nodule at the top of the Rift pumped more power into the mesh. 

One screen flickered on. 

The walls were covered in a smooth heat source. It flowed. Mills tried to move the drone closer to it but the prop didn't respond. Rear cam showed it was wrapped in heat. 

In front, a section of the shaft bubbled, one large swell. It unfurled, slowly, like a linen sheets underwater, sinking. Edges drifting lazily, one layer moved out of the way and another drifted upwards. So many layers. Something under them, jerking, rolling. The temperature was rising. Water began to boil around the drone. 

Alarms flashed, but Mills couldn’t hear them, couldn’t look at them. He could only hear water boiling as he numbly hit controls to swim up and away, to flee. The drone was transfixed, like Mills, robotically staring at the diaphanous veils still drifting open before him, at the spherical thing beneath them, swiveling back and forth. The heat came from it, from a circular shape upon it. It roved about and suddenly shot around to point at Mills through the screen. A lance of heat passed over the drone. Everything went white.

Insight check => 6, ++ (to 4)

The speakers crackled around him. The drone that had seen it all - XF12 - its screen faded a hair, and he could just see the outline of a human.

"Steve?" Mills said. It was the long, lean frame. The swept-back short hair.

The figure leaned forward. Closer, closer. Steve's lips. 

"I miss you."

"I... Steve. I miss you too, but this... isn't real. I'm dreaming you."

“You think you’re dreaming me?" The figure grasped the camera, Mills could see bright white teeth snarling. "He is dreaming us! We are His dreams and when He awakens -"

Insight check: 5, ++ (to 5)

Mills jerked awake, still seated in his chair. The screens were dark. He tapped a key and they hummed awake. 

SIGNAL LOST.

All the drones gone. Static flickered and hissed through speakers. 

The door behind him slid open. 

“Mr… Mills?” A too-familiar voice asked.

He stiffened, hunching over the controls. He flicked a toggle and the screens went black.

“I understand you’re the senior drone operator here. I need someone in-the-flesh to pilot some drones for a, ah, rescue. We might move considerably beyond the mesh network’s range."

“You’re sending people down the Rift? To... rescue the Cyclops?”

“Indeed."

Mills licked his dry lips. 

"When, ah, when do we leave?”

Bright smiled. “Tomorrow at 1000. I have some work to do. If you have any relevant telemetry from the drones, please pass it along.”

Mills nodded. Bright walked out.

He turned around and found the recorder chit under the monitor bank, backing up the drone camera feeds. What he'd seen. No, he thought, that was a dream. I fell asleep. He opened a metal desk door, stuck the chit in halfway, and slammed it shut. Again, again. Again. He cracked it against his thumb and moaned. Shards of plastic littered the drawer. 

(Reduction roll: 6. No)

The whole time the blank monitors seemed to stare at him. Like the men and women in line for alcohol from his dream of catering, bored, waiting. Like the great thing in the Rift, rolling, spinning, spearing him with a ray of light. 

(Miso check: Is the central networking nodule still up?

yes: 2

no: 3 )

It’s slagged by whatever killed the drones. It was at the top of the Rift, the lip of that dark mouth. Can’t break it to reduce Insight)

Mills emailed Bright what fragments of drone telemetry remained. She would see where they had last been, that the mesh was down, but no evidence of what he'd seen. Dreamt, he thought. Mills made his way back to Hab 4 in a daze. 

Watkins had supplied Steve and Harvey with bootleg hooch, in plastic bags. High West Whiskey, something Steve picked. Steve had always loved westerns, the machismo, the hats. The lonesome figure striking out. A love that was both ironic and unironic by turns. A few DVDs were on a shelf, and Mills had put one on.

He got listlessly, confoundedly hammered. Numb, he could pretend he wasn't in pain. He lay in their cubby, sealed in, drinking and watching Unforgiven. What Steve had called one of the greatest deconstructions of the genre ever.

"I don't deserve this, to die like this. I was building a house."

"Deserve's got nothing to do with it."

Mills raised a bag of whiskey in a toast. 

Reduce Roll: 4. Reduction

Harvey Mills, Insight 4, incredibly tired and hungover.

Coral Made 1: Cthulhu Dark Solo Play

Harvey Mills stood in crisp black clothes at the outdoor bar, gleaming bottles before and behind. Beyond this parapet of glass, a line of smiling, laughing guests in suits and dresses stood, waiting their turn. They stood beneath a canopy of leaves and outdoor lights, harsh and bright. Just beyond the curve of the line, Mills could see a corner of a freestanding veranda.

Above the sibilance of scattered conversation, a tone rang out, glass sounding hollowly.

The hum of conversation dimmed and died down. The couple before Mills turned smoothly, as though standing on wheeled platforms. Silence fell and still the tone came again, pause, again, pause. Again. Mills' ears began to ring, a lower pitch than the glass, until that sound drowned out everything.

Suddenly it ceased. The line parted just slightly, and Mills saw a familiar face staring out, severe and serene, under the lights of the veranda. 

“The festivities are about to begin,” she intoned to the silent crowd, which emitted a polite applause and abruptly, as one, stopped.

A squeak came from behind Mills; from the building where some of the other catering staff was working. It repeated and repeated, gathering tempo. A wheelchair came into view, rolling on the brick path between ferns, pushed by a caterer Mills couldn’t make out. Speak-squeak, squeak-squeak.

The wheelchair had a figure upon it, bound, hooded, half-familiar. Squeak-squeak. Pulling arms and legs against restraints, fingers clawing at the armrests. Sqeak-sqeak. All this went right past Mills and to the woman in white, who he could now see as the crowd parted.

No, he saw because Mills had left the bar and pushed into people, through them, numbly, as they muttered angrily at his rudeness. The woman smiled triumphantly and yanked the hood from the bound man.

Steve. Mills’ heart raced. Steve, whose firm hands and lean frame had been wrapped around him just before, before... There was blood all over his face. Wounds all over his face, bored in. Mills began to run towards him.

Insight: 1, no change

Mills pushed through the crowd and left a wake of startled yells and inhuman growls. The woman, who looked just like someone, someone Mills knew, but not from this time in his life, not from catering. Dr Bright. From where he knew Steve. From working in Argos II. From under the ocean. She locked eyes with him and smiled. Mills moved towards Steve as she lapped blood from her hand.

“You… came for me,” Steve said weakly.

There was a tunnel of red gore bored into Steve’s chest. It was too deep to see all the way down, and too full of dark blood, which drooled out slowly. Broken chunks of rib and sternum glinted sharp white around the edges. Mills had a towel in his hand and pushed it to the wound, trying to apply pressure, and his hands slipped inside the wet warm wound. Steve gasped.

“Dreaming me,” he muttered.

Insight: 6, ++ to 2

Mills woke up. The coffin sleeper he and Steve shared was cold. The alarm dully stated 6:22 in red, and the sleeping bag they used as a blanket was soaked with sweat and churned about. Steve was gone. Had some 0500 shit he had to be at, Mills remembered. He crawled to the end of the sleeper and cranked open the hatch.

He could smell himself: sour, like piss after too much coffee. He grabbed a towel off the hatch’s built-in rack and padded off to the showers, trying to shake the unreal fear from the dream, trying to remind himself that Steve was ok.

Sally Watkins found him in the commissary, drinking coffee, eating voraciously.

“Micah wants to see you,” she said, looking nervous.

“What, is it that bad, Sally? I've never seen you look spooked.”

Watkins shrugged, not making eye contact. “I got to run and check some atmo scrubbers; just head there real soon, you hear? I don’t want to get it in the neck from her.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make you look good.”

Watkins snorted, shook her head. “You’re going to go, yeah?”

Mills held out his hands. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

Micah’s office was as far from general quarters as it could be and still be in Hab 4. It was right next to the access way leading to the military spire, its drone control rooms and moon pools and machine rooms. Her office smelled faintly of the oil and grease running through the veins of the spire, and it was as clean as some of the labs in the science center, from what Mills had heard.

Micah gestured to a chair, so Mills sat, leaned back. “How’s things, boss?”

“OK… How are you, Harvey? How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine, you know. About to head to drone control.”

Micah nodded slowly, looking slightly perturbed. “Yes. We need you to get back to work. It’s been three days since you.. shut yourself in. I understand - I really do.” She held up a hand. “I know we have rules about fraternization on the books, but I’m not interested in enforcing anything like that. I just need you back in the saddle.”

Three days? I went to work yesterday! Yesterday! I… I know I did. And fraternization? What on Earth does Steve have to do with this? He had some piloting to do with some researchers...

The steel decking seemed to sway under Mills feet. The chair he was in seemed to rock. He kept his eyes on Micah, and tried not to react to feeling lost at sea in a swell. His mind raced to come up with some way to ask without tipping her off, getting a trip to the company shrink.

“So is there any, ah, news?” Mills asked slowly.

Micah shook her head. “The Cyclops is still missing, all hands as well. I’m sorry.”

Steve’s boat. Steve was gone.

Insight: 6 ++ to 3

Roll to seem normal!
M: 5
F: 1

“Thanks for, for giving me time to recover.”

Micah nodded.

(Micah didn’t seem to suspect that Mills couldn’t remember the last three days, at all. Mills’ heart raced, he was sweating. He felt numb all over.)

“If that’s all, I’ll let you return to your work. You’re cleared through to the spire.” Micah was already looking through a stack of papers, work requisitions from the military or the scientists.

“Thanks Micah.”

It felt like groveling. The words tasted like ash in Mills' mouth. Thanking her. For 3 days in a fugue, while Steve was probably dead or dying. And now back to work like everything was fine. Mills numbly stood and tried to cry quietly as he left the room. If Micah noticed she didn't say anything.

Harvey Mills:
Drone Pilot
Insight 3
clues: forgot 3 days, Steve is missing, Steve’s sub is missing with all hands lost, Dr Bright did something terrible to Steve in a dream

Creeping Fruticose 6

Terra Knafferly, biologist and academic
Insight 5

Babar Alvi, failed chemist postdoc, urban explorer
Insight 4

New clues:

• Bar doesn’t trust Terra, thinks that Terra is uncompromised by the lichen
• They have civvie MOPP gear, a sprayer, and concentrated hydrogen peroxide
• Terra has a sample of the lichen

Bar finds an unoccupied research lab (3,1) several floors up and they toss their bags in a corner. Terra grips her apple as though it were the last handhold over an abyss.

She slices it up and slices the slices. She smears highlighting chemicals onto a slide and smears a cutting against that. The microscope lights purr faintly as she zooms in, looking for cellular structure.

T: 2, 5

It has no cellular structure. Nothing. There’s bits that look like crystallization and bits that seem to… flow, to pump, to move. But no cells. It’s like zooming into a hunk of metal, though one with some highly differentiated parts.

As she watches the structure expands outwards. Growing with no visible means of such. Something coming into place out of nothing.

“Flatland,” she murmurs. “We only see a little bit of the whole, the bits we are capable of seeing."

Terra tastes bile.

“Well, it’s not lichen,” she calls to Bar. She looks up.

Bar is gone. His bag with the biological agents suit is gone.

Terra sighs. She has one last question to answer - will the hydrogen peroxide do anything to the lichen?

Yes: 2
No: 6

(The dice gods favor the mythos AS THEY MUST)

The solution does nothing. Terra shrugs. She shoves the microscope and apple into a trashcan, hearing metal and plastic crack. She pours in a bottle of methanol and lights a match.

Reduction Roll => 4! Reduced to 4 Insight.

Smoke rushes up; the apple sizzles, the fruticose blackens.

“Well, that works.” Terra murmurs, staring into the blue-tinged flames.

She leaves. Behind her, the fire smoke fills with particulate matter. Little flakes drift up and out like a grey snow.

Eventually the fire alarm sounds.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“OK, OK, OK. Bob had talked about using fire in his note. Before… they got him. Just need to get to a 7/11…”

Bar drives frantically, slamming on the gas and the brake. Night has fallen and the town is unusually sedate for a Thursday.

Can he get enough supplies to do some damage?

B: 2
F: 5

Reroll with Insight!

B: 6
Insight: 3
Fail: 5

Insight check: 2, no change

Bar gathers up jerry cans from several gas stations, filling them. He buys cleaning rags and a Bic lighter. He finds himself staring at the beer in the gas station. He shakes his head as though coming back to the moment and leaves. His car is loaded down with gasoline and stinks of it. He rolls down his windows and drives back to campus.

Now all I need is campus police to come along, thought Bar. Find a brown beardy guy who got kicked out of this school, with a chemical protection suit and a shit-ton of gasoline. I’m sure that would go over well.

I’ll just tell them the biology department is full of pod people! Of course!

His laughter is deep and genuine. He laughs until he cried, until he can barely see, just hitting the brakes in time to avoid a concrete embankment.

He parks and heads to one of the back doors of the building. Looking around, he carefully pulls out a cat’s paw tool and lock picks.

B: 4, 6
Insight check: 4, no change

The itch of a memory half-forgotten distracts him, looking at the flat lock surface, the cleft of the keyhole, empty expressionless - Bar grits his teeth and ignores the feeling. The deadbolt moves and the door is open. He tapes over the deadbolt and wedges the door with his cat’s paw tool.

He is walking back and looks up. Lance Gleason stares at him from the doorway. Bar drops the jerry cans and steps back, shocked. Gleason flees into the building.

“Fuck!” Bar pants. He grabs the jerry cans and moves in, nylon bag swinging over his shoulder.

Insight check: 2, no change

The department’s air is full of tiny flakes which waft gently through the air. Bar stops before the threshold and begins to put on the hazmat suit.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Her office light was on. Terra had meant to go straight to the basement, but her office light was on. The lights were triggered by motion sensors - it was a pain, if you were writing, every 15 minutes you had to flail about to keep them on.

Someone was in her office.

She paused outside the biology building. The air is full of grey flakes, like ash. Edged in a metallic blue.

“I should put on my suit, I suppose,” Terra said, thinking of what she ingested before.

Will she?
T: 6
No: 4
Insight: 4

She dons the suit and gas mask. Her view warps around the edges slightly. She breathes and the sound of it, and of rubber valves fluttering, fills the tight space around her face.

She goes inside, goes up to the third floor.

The hallway is dim, fluorescents only on at irregular intervals. One side is interspersed with doors, leading to offices or small classrooms. The other is a floor-to-ceiling window, all along the hall. Beyond it, dimly visible through the reflected hallway lights, Terra sees a few patches of light from streetlamps in the North campus. Otherwise the school is a dim outline, a vague suggestion.

The lichen floats through the air serenely, unaffected by the overhead air vents.

She rounds the corner. Her door is slightly ajar. Bright light from her office shines into the dim corridor.

She tries to sneak in, but the suit rubs against itself with every step, swishing.

Bob looks up as she comes in. His bald pate shines under the mirror as though shellacked. Before him is a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, and three glasses.

Insight: 5 ++

He looks up at her and smiles warmly. He stands up.

“Terra. I know this is a shock, but it’s alright. Is, ah, Babar with you?”

Terra stares at him. “You can’t be you. You can’t be.”

Bob smiles and points to the seat in front of her desk. “Please, I can explain.”

Terra stands frozen. Bob shrugs.

“Well, you see.” He threads the corkscrew into the wine bottle. “I thought the lichen was, you know.” He smiles. “Some kind of monster.” Twist. “Out to destroy us all.” Twist. “I had no idea, no idea… It wanted to partner with us, Terra. Save us.”

He smoothly pulls the cork from the bottle, pours himself a small measure, another for her.

“It helped me. It fixed me. I was an alcoholic, before. But I’m not an addict any more.” He takes a small, measured sip. “I’m better. But I’m still me.”

“I saw.. your body.”

“Well, yes. The lichen absorbed my memories and consciousness through that hole, you know, in my skull. A brain is hard to duplicate precisely without… touch. A given body’s facsimile is easier to manufacture.”

“I…”

“Listen, Terra, I know this is a great deal to absorb. But soon things are going to change here. I’ll change. And I want you to be able to change with me, you know? To join in.”

His eyes sparkle as he gazes at her. Terra tastes bile in her mouth.

“Like Lance? Like Ben? Blank-faced, dead-eyed?”

Bob waved dismissively, leaning back. “Lance and Ben are still walking around in the flesh. It made some drones to try to herd you here, that’s all. Their visages, not them. They’re fine. I mean, idiots, but they’re fine.”

A door opens behind her. Someone in a suit walks in, an elderly man, pallid and tall. Dr. Gingery.

He smiles blandly, but then, Terra thought, he always did.

“It’s almost time,” he says.

The lichen in the air reverses as though on tracks, begins to move forward again, lurching, whirling faster and faster. It thrums against Terra’s mask, blinding her, shakes the flourescents until one shatters and another is blinking. A gale of grey and blue screams into the room. In between flashes of light she sees that Bob and Gingery are still. She looks closer.

They are writhing piles of fruticose curls, unwinding from human shapes to masses. What was Bob creeps towards her; Gingery’s arcs between the door frame, trying to trap her. She hears Bob’s voice:

“We will have you join us Terra. You know why. You belong to it. Try to remember.”

Insight: 1

Terra tries to break through all this and flee the room.

T: 5
F: 1

She runs and dives through the fruticose and it claws at her, it pulls at her mask, and she slams a hand on it to keep it in place. She tumbles out of the room and begins to run.

The ashy flakes in the air are dancing, faster, slapping into the exterior window and cracking it, tapping fluorescent lights and smashing them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Footprints in the lichen. Two sets. Bar’s breathing fogs the mask. The suit crinkles and folds around him. The jerry cans in his nylon bag pull and twist the strap.

Lichen drifts through the air, covers the floor and walls of the basement in a metallic blue flakes, peeling away like dead skin.

Thicker and thicker. The footprints, once cleaner spots on the tile floor, are now concentrated cracks amidst layered sheets. Coils of the stuff have crawled from a doorway down the hall.

Has Bar managed to sneak in somehow, have Lance and Ben lost him?

B: 5, 1
Fail: 4

(So yes, he’s actually managed to creep in.)

He keeps slowly twisting to look behind him, convinced they’ll be there, staring. The lichen drifts serenely in empty halls.

“I don’t have enough gas to just burn down the building… And everything in here is fucked.” Bar murmurs to himself. “They must have some kind of gas main in here, for the labs that use burners. If I can light that off…” He changes course.

Searching for the gas main:
B: 4
Fail: 5

(The failure involves getting caught or herded by the drones)

Reroll with insight!
B: 6
Insight: 2
Fail: 2

Insight check: 5 ++

(Bar finds the gas main, BUT the lichen starts freaking out. Terra is upstairs and It’s Time and all that.)

The lichen in the air twitches and begins to quicken. Bar pries open a panel as it rushes around him. He sees the caked layers of lichen on the floor moving around, growing, shifting into and away from each other like tiny tectonic plates. The airborne flakes whirl at him and for a moment Bar sees them transported through him, in him, growing out, his skin covered in a patina of the stuff…

“Anytime it wants. You can finish me whenever you want!” he screams into the maelstrom, bending a pipe with his cat’s paw. “Come on!”

Gas seeps out of a pipe as he cracks it. Bar opens a jerry can, pouring gasoline as he backs away into the gale.

B: 4
F: 2

He backs out a decent way. He runs out of gasoline with the doorway in sight. He pulls the lighter from the nylon back, lights the gasoline on the ground. The flame catches and races down the hallway. He looks up, a hard grin on his face, watching the flame dance.

Before him, only ten feet away or so, are Ben and Lance. The fire burns between them and past. They have eyes only for Bar.

He runs.

B: 2, 5
F: 4

Bar sprints, fighting the mask for air. He makes the doorway and peers back over the threshold.

Lance has stopped there like before. He holds up a hand and Bar is lifted off his feet as the gas main explodes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Terra is outside when the explosion hits. The building shakes and part of the roof fires off into the air, raining debris down. She’s thrown to the ground, her mask cracking.

She lays there for a time, ringing in her ears, as debris splatters the lawn. Eventually the sounds die down. She slowly picks herself up.

The sky is full of lichen. Rancid flakes of it fall from the sky, others soar upwards, caught in a thermal over the burning center of the biology building.

“We didn’t kill it,” she murmurs. “We’ve just helped spread it. God…”

One by one, the stars are obscured.


Terra Knafferly, biologist and academic
Insight 5

Babar Alvi, failed chemist postdoc, urban explorer
Insight 5

Creeping Fruticose 5

Terra Knafferly, biologist and academic
Insight 5

Babar Alvi, failed chemist postdoc, urban explorer
Insight 4

Clues

• Bob’s notes detail an Alaska expedition which uncovered a voracious and unknown lichen, which seemed clumped around a curiously eroded stump of wood. (1)
• One of the people on the trip, in the 80s, has the same face as Terra Knafferly, Bob’s niece. (1)
• Bob’s suicide note spoke of a gate and various incoherent things. (2)
• Adina Haun mentioned Bob’s expedition, which otherwise seems scrubbed away. She’s in the Anthropology department. (3)
• materials storage moved to biology department (4)
• Dr. Troy Gingery led this movement and a subsequent dangerous chemical cleanup that wasn’t really announced (4)
• Dr. Troy Gingery was a rival of Bob’s. (4)
• Dr Lance Gleason and Dr Ben Samuels have duplicates on campus who chased Terra and Bar (4)

(Their plan: Teaching Hospital for supplies, then biology department)
(I’m rolling for Terra getting gear, as always, it's Human and Profession d6s in that order)
T: 1, 1

“So you’re saying you can’t requisition anything for me?” Terra said.

“We have some N95 respirators…”

Terra glared at her hospital contact, Shelly Millard, hands clenching. Her face begins to twitch hideously, in anger or fear, Millard can't tell.

Reroll with insight: 1, 6
Insight: 5
Extra insight check! : 2 (Since I re-rolled with insight and got a 6 for Terra’s profession, I check insight) (I think I mistakenly bumped up her Insight from 4 to 5 here because the Insight die in the re-roll was a 5. EH)

Shelly crumbled under Terra’s glare. The biologist never blinked, even as her face spasmed.

“I’ll... see what I can do, Terra.”

Terra remembered something as Shelly turned around. “I also need a pump-sprayer and concentrated hydrogen peroxide for it.”

"Great!” Shelly called out as she left.

She left. Terra turned to Bar, told him to wait at the counter, and hurried off to a bathroom. Inside, she pulled the photo from her uncle's notes. The writhing pattern written in wood, and the woman.

“Not my face, not my face”

She murmured, over and over, as she ripped the photograph up and flushed it away.

Insight Reduce Roll: 1! Terra loses Insight.

The fragments swirl and are gone, and Terra feels that the other woman must be as well. Somehow.

She comes back as Shelly carried out a heavy black duffel bag and plopped it on the pharmacy counter.

“Will that be all?” she asked drolly.

“Thank you Shelly. Really. Thank you.” Terra said, leaning in. Shelly looked almost as scared of the genuineness in Terra’s voice as she had at her twitching intensity.

Outside, Bar glanced over at Terra.

“So now what?”

“I think this is what was used, more or less, to clean out… Something. Something that happened to the lichen stored under the bio department, if that’s what’s down there.”

“It couldn’t have worked that well, if we’re where we’re at now.”

Terra shrugged.

“You want to walk, go ahead. But I think we both owe it to Bob - Bob’s memory - to go down there and try.”

(roll to avoid searching lichen duplicates? not yet!)

It’s getting into late afternoon. The two head to the hospital cafeteria and eat. Bar searches through his pockets.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just my lucky coin.”

“Your name is Bar and you're in AA?”

Bar shrugged. “It’s short for Babar. I just got tired of that kid’s book getting brought up. Anyway, it’s how I met Bob."

“I didn’t know he was in there.”

“Yeah, he was a great guy. Really friendly.”

“Bob never, well. I think he must’ve saved that side for the meetings, then.”

Bar looked at her quizzically.

“He was just… very driven. Very driven. Very intense. I guess it was just how he dealt with knowing all this, knowing it and never saying anything, knowing and hoping no one else ever would.”

“What do you think we’ll find in the biology department?”

“I’ve worked there for 20 years. It’s not a sinister place. But…”

“What?”

“I guess I don’t really know it. If Ben and Lance are going to come and chase after us, all…”

They both thought of those empty, expressionless faces. It hadn’t looked like the two were breathing hard as they came on. They looked untroubled, almost serene. Terra had never seen either of them look so relaxed.

Terra finished her soup, chews on her grilled cheese. Puts it down slowly.

There’s fruticose edging out under the cheese. Scraped by her teeth. She’s already swallowed, the bite traveling into a deep, growing emptiness inside her, a hole full of bile and fear. Bar takes a bite of apple, pauses. Slams his hand on the table as he leans to the side, vomits.

A trail of lichen stretches from the core of his apple.

INSIGHT:
T: 6, ++. Good thing she destroyed some evidence before this!
B: 2

Terra feels vertigo. She sits wondering if she can detect the lichen inside of her. If a bite of it will survive her stomach acid.

“No reason to think I’ll be alright from this,” she murmurs.

Bar retches again. She reaches out and grips his hand. He pants and looks up to her.

“We need to get to a lab,” she says.

"Did you swallow any? I think I got all that back up..." Bar says, coughing.

"I'm fine. I think I stopped just short of it. Listen, we need to get to a lab... This is the first sample of this rat bastard, we need to find out what it is."

(Does Bar believe this? Bar: 2, Terra: 1, so, nope.)

“Wait.”

The kitchen staff is gone. The off-hours cafeteria is empty save for the two of them.

“I want to check back there.”

Bar hops the counter and checks the back area, kitchen and dishwashing nook. No one is around. A large steel vat of water boils.

“Bar?” Terra calls out.

“They’re gone,” he says to himself.

Terra Knafferly, biologist and academic
Insight 5

Babar Alvi, failed chemist postdoc, urban explorer
Insight 4

Creeping Fruticose 4

Terra Knafferly, biologist and academic
Insight 3

Babar Alvi, failed chemist postdoc, urban explorer
Insight 3

Clues:

• Bob’s notes detail an Alaska expedition which uncovered a voracious and unknown lichen, which seemed clumped around a curiously eroded stump of wood. (1)
• One of the people on the trip, in the 80s, has the same face as Terra Knafferly, Bob’s niece. (1)
• Bob’s suicide note spoke of a gate and various incoherent things. (2)
• Adina Haun mentioned Bob’s expedition, which otherwise seems scrubbed away. She’s in the Anthropology department. (3)

Terra heads to Grace’s office, piles of folios to sort and catalogue on one desk, Grace almost buried amidst it all. They talk about material storage from old scientific trips.

Investigate: 3, 5

(Everything and something more.)

Storage was moved from the library basement back to respective departments, in the late 90s. It was actually something Bob Knafferly strenuously fought against. The effort had been led by Dr. Troy Gingery, now the head of the Biology department. Grace had figured Bob’s standing had been greatly diminished by Gingery’s ascendence.

Terra remembered some Sunday during winter break where the biology department was closed for a deep cleaning… Gingery had been there, directing workers, who donned chemical suits and respirators. She hadn’t thought much of it as she had been fighting tooth-and-nail for a grant at the time.

As she left Grace’s office, she ran into Dr. Samuels, one of the professors she’d ducked earlier, a biologist roughly her age and a million times more valued by the department. He glared at Terra, who bared her teeth.

“You forget to bring Lance back with you, Ben?” she asked.

His countenance flickered with confusion, some barbed quip caught in his teeth. He coughed as though clearing it.

“I just got here, Knafferly. Ah, excuse me.”

He brushed past her, then turned back at the threshold, smiling sharply.

“We don’t all have to struggle morning and night to make our way, you know.”

He closed the door. Terra fumed on top of the confusion - Samuels and Lance Gleason were both in the library earlier. She had walked right past them.

Terra insight: 6 +++

Terra pales. Blank expressionless faces stare at her in her memory, stare past her. Two bland men striding forth in perfect lockstep. As though connected. As though built together, conjoined, despite the distance between them. She rushes to the elevator, not noticing the rust flake with its branching nub stretching out...

“He wasn’t lying.” Terra said to Bar, who jumped in his seat.

“Fuck! Terra, you startled -“

“We walked past Ben and Lance on the way in, two professors from my department…”

“So?”

“Ben hadn’t been in before I saw him. He had just arrived, as in, after us. But he was here before as well.”

“He’s just lying to you, Terra. You know how these Chosen Ones are.”

Does Bar believe this, really?
Bar: 6
Fail: 3

He does but he still gets an Insight Roll! => 4, ++

Bar is rubbing a bronze coin between thumb and forefinger. He begins sweating.

“He’s lying…” Bar repeats, quietly. “Lying. Just rust.”

Lies pile up, Bar thinks. You think they’re protection, but all you’ve really done is dug a grave and called the earth around you a wall. We’ve been lying to ourselves all the time, all this time. This thing has been happening for a long time. But we don’t look, we can’t. 1840s, that archeology class I took, read about some prospector out in Alaska who was haunted by someone with the same face as his dead wife. He died in a sanitarium. Walls closed in on him and became a grave...

“Bar?”

He shakes his head. The one-year coin skitters onto the keyboard and he snatches at it.

“Did you find her schedule?”

Bar investigate roll: 6.
Insight check! 4, nothing.

“I did… but... Haun is a strange one, you know? Used to be very active on social media, posting all the time, her family, kids, activism, that sort of thing… In the last six months it’s all dropped off.”

“She might be busy.”

“Not here. She teaches one class and it looks like some of her research efforts have stalled. Also, this. She made one post in the last six months. A week ago.”

LOOKING FORWARD TO DECEMBER

“Not exactly her normal style,” Bar says, scrolling through older, erudite posts.

Two people walk in from the far end of the computer lab.

It’s Ben and Lance again, together. Their expressions are flat. They pan their heads around the room slowly. They don’t speak to each other but move in sync.

“We should go,” Terra whispers, ducking below the cubicle fabric wall before them.

“What-“

Terra grabbed Bar’s shoulder and dragged him behind her, low. His one-year coin fell out of his hand and rolled off into the lab.

Behind them, soft footfalls on the carpet. Bar glances back and sees Dr. Lance Gleason sprinting towards them. Face placid as if he was sleeping, but for open eyes.

“Book it!” Bar pulls his arm from Terra’s grasp and they run, panting, faces contorted with fear.

ESCAPE:
Terra (using the library and campus as cover / obstacles): 3, 5
Bar: 3, 1
Fail: 1

They run out of the library’s lab, through the ID check as someone exclaims and curses, but they are gone, through doors and into the lawn and turning. The footfalls follow for a while but are diminished. Eventually the two are behind the Philosophy department, it’s Corinthian columnade screening them from view as they hunker in a deep doorway.

“What the fuck was that? Those are professors you know?” Bar panted.

“I’m not sure.”

INSIGHT:
Terra: 5, no change
Bar: 4, no change

“Aren’t you?"

“Not my face, not my face,” she mutters to herself.

“What?”

She shakes her head.

“We should head to the biology department. But first I need to pick up some supplies in the teaching hospital.”

“Are those two going to be… looking for us?”

Terra shakes her head.

“Why don’t you ask them, Bar? How would I know?”

She strides off. Bar looks after her for a moment, then jogs to catch up.

Terra Knafferly, biologist and academic
Insight 5

Babar Alvi, failed chemist postdoc, urban explorer
Insight 4

New clues

• materials storage moved to biology department
• Dr. Troy Gingery led this movement and a subsequent dangerous chemical cleanup that wasn’t really announced
• Dr. Troy Gingery was a rival of Bob’s.
• Dr Lance Gleason and Dr Ben Samuels have duplicates on campus

Creeping Fruticose 3

Terra Knafferly, biologist and academic
Insight 3

Babar Alvi, failed chemist postdoc, urban explorer
Insight 3

The library, for all its height and sprawling stone heft, has low ceilings, the tiles of which often show signs of old water damage. It is musty, slightly humid, cramped.

A pair of prim professors walked out as Knafferly and Alvi walk up the stone steps - do the professors notice the two?

Terra: 5
Bar: 3
Fail: 2

Terra looks away casually, and Bar is walking just behind her enough they don’t notice. The professors stare placidly ahead as they walk past, not talking.

“Who were those two, Terra? That you were, hm, avoiding?” Bar asked, sliding his library card through the turnstile’s reader.

“Avoid? They’re just some professors in my department. I wasn’t trying to avoid them” Terra said.

“Sure. ‘Cause, I thought you were, so, I tried to look inconspicuous.”

“Great, Bar.” Terra said flatly.

They head up to the biology research depository, the ninth floor. The carpet by the elevators is damp, the ceiling-mounted sprinkler having leaked again.

“Alright. Most of Bob’s work is over here,” Terra gestured. “You start there, I want to see about any other expeditions out this way. It’s a pretty unique location. I’m surprised Bob never spoke of it.”

Terra: 5, 1
Bar: 1

Bar doesn’t find much about Bob’s expedition to Alaska, other than an oblique footnote in a current professor’s publication he skimmed by mistake. (Adina Haun, anthropologist.)

(Terra discovered everything and something extra - legend, etc)

There were prior expeditions, in 1939 and in 1898, through the University. Both had ended dreadfully for the academics - no findings of serious note, other than a drawing of a shape familiar to Terra - the stump, eroded into the form Bob documented. A stump of wood preserved for 100 years.

Terra also saw footnotes that led to the autobiography of an Inuit trapper, using the pen name Jack Anawak, who grew up in the region. He, with his brothers, journeyed through the expedition site, practicing his trade, but reported that the flesh of beasts in the area was wrong, somehow - that it did not provide any sustenance. They was eventually tracked and hunted by a man with his own face, who the group barely escaped.

Terra reports on the prior expeditions and tries to keep the… face-stealing nature of this research from Bar. Can she?

Yes: 2
No: 3

The book is underneath everything else, a bookmark sticking out.

“What’s this?”

“Oh, a red herring, you know…”

Bar flips it open to the marked page, eyes flickering back and forth hungrily.

“A stolen face? Seems a theme.” He doesn’t look at Terra.

She shakes her head.

“That wasn’t… my face. She just looks similar. Not the same.”

“Sure."

Terra stares at Bar, who keeps reading the notes. “Listen,” she says, "I’ll go talk to Grace, the head librarian here, about materials storage under the library. Why don’t you snag Dr. Haun’s schedule from the computer lab downstairs?”

Bar nods and gets up.

He heads to the elevator. A single curved leaf of rust is in the carpet in the middle of the carpeted landing. No metal above, no metal around that’s rusted, despite the wet.

Bar insight: 1. No change!

“It’s nothing,” he thinks as the elevator dings. Someone gets out, but Bar is focused on the floor, then jerks his gaze away and heads inside.

A fruticose branch now juts from the flake, unseen.

Terra Knafferly, biologist and academic
Insight 3

Babar Alvi, failed chemist postdoc, urban explorer
Insight 3

Clues:

• Bob’s notes detail an Alaska expedition which uncovered a voracious and unknown lichen, which seemed clumped around a curiously eroded stump of wood. (1)
• One of the people on the trip, in the 80s, has the same face as Terra Knafferly, Bob’s niece. (1)
• Bob’s suicide note spoke of a gate and various incoherent things. (2)
• Adina Haun mentioned Bob’s expedition, which otherwise seems scrubbed away. She’s in the Anthropology department. (3)
• More face-stealing, now from the 1800s (3) and evidence that the lichen-stump Bob found has been around (but not transportable) for a long time (3)

Creeping Fruticose 2

(Part 2 of my solo Cthulhu Dark playing.)

Terra Knafferly, biologist and academic
Insight 2

Terra wakes up blearily, makes instant coffee, toast, and walks from her apartment block, through the sleepy downtown restaurants and bars, and onto the northern section of campus. Past the huge stone library with its tiny windows like some many-eyed pachyderm, past the colonial-era English and History department buildings, and into the Biology building, all glass and steel. A clock dully clicks through the first seconds of 7:43am as she walks by, her uncle’s notes pressed against her through her bag.

A tall, thin brown-skinned man sits on one of the desks in her classroom, re-reading a sheet of paper. Younger than Terra by at least a decade, short hair and stubbly. His long legs were crossed at the ankles, his pose one of forced calmness. The skin around his eyes was bruised and bleary.

“Terra Knafferly?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Bar.” He stood. “Bar Alvi. I, ah. I knew Bob. I’m really sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, I -“

“Listen, Bob, he, uh. He didn’t leave you a note, right?”

Terra frowned. “Mr. Alvi, no, he didn’t.”

Alvi held out the sheet of paper. It shook in his hands. “Have you his notes?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with, with what he did. With any of this.”

“Just read the note.”

IT IS A GATE. THEY ARE NOT MAKING ART, THEY ARE NOT MAKING SCULPTURE. THEY FORGE A GATE AND MORE WILL COME, MORE WILL COME. I’M SORRY THEY ARE COMING, THEY WILL NOT MAKE ME ONE OF

I FEAR THE LIBRARY BASEMENT STORAGE WAS COMPROMISED. BURN IT FOR ME PLEASE.

I’M SORRY

(Terra Insight Check -> d6 => 3! ++)

(Alvi already has insight of 2 from this)

“How…” Terra holds one hand just under her mouth, fingers upon one cheek, thumb on the other. As though to stop the words.

“Bob and I had a dead drop.” Alvi shrugged. “It started as a joke. Well, I thought it was a joke. I guess it was Bob’s idea. Just a place we stuffed notes on campus, little things. Haikus. Jokes. The occasional cigarette.”

“Bob smoked?”

“Yeah, I mean, once in a while. Once in a bit. So” Alvi looked hungry, eager. “I mean, I know this is weird… but is there anything weird from his notes?”

“Yes… Yes.” Terra digs out the notes, flips open the folio to the photo of her double. She pushes the notes into Bar’s hands like they were burning her, then she marches up to the whiteboard and begins writing.

“What the fuck…”

(Insight check Babar: 3. ++)

CLASS CANCELLED TODAY: HAVE FUN! on the whiteboard in large black letters. Terra turns back to Alvi, trying to keep her face neutral. Unlike the smiling photograph.

“I guess we ought to go to the library, Bar?"

“Sure,” he said, shakily.

On the way there, Terra summarized the notes as Bar looked far-away, barely responding.

Terra Knafferly, biologist and academic
Insight 3

Babar Alvi, failed chemist postdoc, urban explorer
Insight 3

Creeping Fruticose 1

This is some Cthulhu Dark solo play. I use Miso RPG when needed, quite rarely, and some notes / ideas for a lichen's creeping horror and the like (little clues that show up, NPCs). Most of the locations are from going to a giant University at some point. The first PC is:

Terra Knafferly, biologist and academic
Insight 1

---------------

Terra rubbed her eyes and ran fingers through her greying hair. She'd just finished grading for tomorrow's morning class. She swept the post-its on her desk into a drawer, and then cracked open one of the withered cardboard boxes from her uncle's storage unit. He hadn't left a note, and Terra doubted the box's contents would help her understand his suicide, but she wanted to look.

Investigate rolls: 4, 4 (Person and Occupation, in that order)

Bob Knafferly had squirreled away notes and photos of an trip to a remote section of Alaska in 1978, when he was a budding biology professor. He had found a lichen of previously unknown existence, which alternated between crustose and fruticose forms. Flakes of rust-like material, or leafless, branch-like structures in maggot-white. It was virulent and present throughout an isolated area but had not spread. It seemed to be centered around a tree stump which had eroded in a strange way.

It didn't make sense that Terra had never heard of this trip, or the lichen. It was a find worthy of a publication. And Bob had been prolific.

A photo slid out of the last folio and Terra saw the central stump, looking like it had been carved into a writhing art project. It was covered in a crust of lichen. Holding it, squatting beside Bob and smiling at the camera, was a woman with Terra's face.

Insight: rolled 3, so it gets raised to 2.

"That's not me. That's not me. No. No..."

She pushes off from the desk, then jerks back to cover the photo. She rubs her face and looks at the wall clock: 11:40pm. Pitch black out the window above her desk. She leaves the room, shutting the door, and goes to bed.

Her dreams are of branching strands of lichen pouring into lopsided wooden corridors, into which she wanders. Pursued by someone unseen.

Terra Knafferly, biologist and academic
Insight 2

(This is Terra's character sheet after this scene / part of the adventure.)

Solo DCC Funnel for Fun and Practice

I wanted to run a funnel in some spare time, for practice. I really like using a solo engine to learn about a given system, and to suss out anything I'd want to change about a module in advance. Running a solo game gives me a better feel for the ergonomics of a module. It's not everyone's cup o' tea, but I enjoy it. There are some modifications to the rules, described below.

I snagged Kevin Crawford's wonderful Stellar Heroes. You can also use the more fantasy-oriented Black Streams: Solo Heroes. I use his model for damage, and fray dice. Each PC gets a 1d4 Fray die, and can use it the way a wizard in Solo Heroes would - so they can use it on any enemy, regardless of HD, as long as they could plausibly make an attack against said enemy. Once the PCs level up, they'll get whichever fray dice make sense for their class - for DCC, this is described best in Black Streams. Wizards get the 1d4, warriors get 1d8, everyone else gets 1d6. Elves pick between 1d4 and 1d6.

Level-0 scrubs are not experts in their fields, but I figure I'd give each one an auto-success per game on one non-combat check. I didn't use Defy Death at all, as it doesn't seem appropriate for a level 0 funnel. Really, DCC is supposed to be a bit more lethal, so I imagine I'm not going to be using it at all. I'm also not adhering as strongly to the idea that there can be only one PC - DCC really suggests at low levels that you have more than one character, and I want that kind of atmosphere.

For module running, I use the Scarlet Heroes General Oracle (a 'yes/yes, but/no, but/ no' machine) to see what the 'player' does. This way my knowledge of the module doesn't mean the PCs always do the Most Optimal Thing. Here's a free alternative oracle if you're curious. Really stupid things may be more or less likely, but I tend to go with Unknown for most of these questions, which gives 50/50 odds.

For the solo player in a funnel, you start with 4 level 0 PCs, randomly created. I gave them all 4 + Endurance modifier hit points; after first level, they'll roll to see how much they get as per normal.

With this, I managed to clear through most of Frozen in Time, with half . Two PCs died climbing the glacier, hilariously. I forgot about the noncombat auto-succeed, first time around, then the last person to climb fell and no one climbed down to check the body. No one wanted to risk the rope climb again. Of the surviving 2, one dropped to 0 HP fighting Robby the Robot, but recovered thanks to his decent luck score. My oracular rolling indicated the place blew up before my PCs could explore 5-1 or 5-2, which probably would've claimed one of the PCs, at the very least.

I did decide to throw in some extra swag - Zepes' shimmering bathrobe basically counts as leather armor, the plant pot in the hallway outside is room has a spare palm-key and copper nuggets in the bottom. I'd imagine his kitchen-area has a bit of preserved, emergency food, which the PCs will eagerly take back to their village. Zepes' right hand was clutched around a tiny crystal which, when held, plays La Vie En Rose. The PCs had to frantically leave things behind to climb out of the glacial base before it exploded, which is what I want to deliver when I run this for other folks.

What's next is filling in some adventures, running this module for some other folks, and probably using Scarlet Heroes to generate some dungeons and wilderness adventures. Definitely will adapt this adventure about cave people exploring a crashed star, meeting a telepathic future-human. Also working out random encounters for the Forlorn North for the hexcrawling.

How I've Run White Star

Having run it solo and for a one-shot, this is what I've done when running White Star.

I really like Chris Hogan's Thiefless DnD - possibly because bringing in new players was fun with Blades in the Dark. Everyone likes being a thief, it gives them a clear set of goals in a sandboxy game, especially one without some Evil Empire to fight.  Stealing shit is also how Conan got started, sneaking into places, all hiding how swole he was until they needed a Plan B. So, everyone is a damn thief. White Star comes with no default thief class, and one can easily be ported, it'll just be better at the thief skills and gain, say, an extra skill point per level.

Having played (and loved) Stars Without Number, a OSR-influenced scifi game with a well-done skill system, it was interesting to come to one with zero skill system built in. Some of the classes just ought to rock at certain tasks (Robots can hack, Pilots can pilot), but sometimes the Mercenary needs to rewire a door or the Alien Mystic needs to use ship scanners. There are plenty of ways to build in skills, but I preferred how Dave Arneson apparently handled skill checks. Have the PCs roll 1-5 d6 and compare it to their relevant stat, plus half their level, _if_ their experience ought to help them. This way the stats don't have to get upgraded every time the PC levels up, but you also get to say that the characters get better at certain things thanks to their experience.

So that is every non-combat check covered, as far as I'm concerned. Either the PC can Just Do Stuff, or its looking for hidden doors or hiding in shadows, or it's something related to Int or Dex or whatever stat. Obviously it's OSR stuff, so if the player is banging every floor tile with a 3.048 meter carbon-fiber stick, they'll find the pressure sensitive traps or illusionary floors without any roll. But I like having some arbitrate system when things aren't that clear.

Speaking of Kevin Crawford's stuff, in addition to using some sector generating rules and some faction stuff from Stars Without Number, I've been using the add-on rules for Stellar Heroes to make one PC games work. It was for a one-shot, and allowed the PC to get through that entire built-in scenario without too much difficulty. The rules may be a bit on the cinematic action-hero side of things, but I can attest that it's easy for the PC to take on too much very quickly. Death can still come swiftly - as it should in these games, especially at low level.

(At the same time, one character in a Fighter-type class, with decent gear and tactics, can take out small squads of opponents. I'd imagine that becoming a plot point - surely military leaders would notice super soldiers in their backyards. It might be a little too on the nose, but I imagine it could lead to some interesting sessions. Militaries might want to hire the PC, or vivisect her to find what makes her simply better than anyone else. It's like Emily Blunt's character from Edge of Tomorrow.)

When running solo, I used Scarlet Heroes, and had fun with the dungeon and urban adventures it can generate. It's not for everyone, but it's a great way to learn a system or experiment with adding on random blogpost stuff, without having to corral players into a game that may or may not suck.

I also ran some Stars Without Number games solo, using Scarlet Heroes, but it's not a system that requires any customization. It's very good as well, I just wish it had a built-in 'Jedi Knight' class like White Star. There's also something awesome about creating your own brew of the White Box game.

It's not something people are clamoring for, but I am going to work out a way to play Dungeon Crawl Classics' funnel adventure solo. That system is too awesome, and it's been sitting on my shelf too long. I'll run through Frozen in Time and see how it goes, so I can see how that scenario can play out for actual, live humans this coming Thursday.