[Actual Play] The World of Tomorrow, Session 1

I ran a game yesterday for my best friends. Hopefully the start of a casual campaign?

The pitch was dead simple:

“moebius jodorowsky tangerine nightmare oranssi mutant pazuzu heavy metal barsoom carcosa acid police surf”

Moebius, duhh

I asked them in advance to create a 3^rd level LotFP character each: just the stats, class, skills and hp. No name or concept. They rolled up a Magic-User and a Halfling.

At the start of the session, the characters were woken up from a long formless darkness by a distant, glitchy voice. The voice told them that “there has been an accident… but your personality, memories and body will soon be re-integrated… please watch these short promotional videos and signal if you see anything you recognize as your own memory…”

In the memory fragments, the Magic-User saw themselves:

1. Hurriedly grabbing everything from a library with crystal books, storing all the treasure in a vault (and remembering how to open it again!); then emerging to the surface only to see the ideal city swallowed by the ocean
2. Putting on a mask and conducting human sacrifice on top of a black pyramid; only for the gift of the dark gods to be stolen by an interloper
3. Performing elaborate magic tricks on a stage in a 1920s theater, feeding off of the adoration of the audience; getting sawn into two halves, but emerging again from behind the curtains, while the mutilated body was carted off-stage.

The Halfling saw themselves:

1. Riding through an ice age wasteland atop a woolly mammoth, controlling the beast with their mind; then a small flying lizard landed (hunting hawk style) on their outstretched left hand
2. Piloting a spaceship, exiting hyperspace, crashlanding on a blue planet (remembering the place of the crash!); only to be taken captive, probed, interrogated by men in white coats; then blowing up their brains with psionic powers
3. Crawling through underground tunnels, in total darkness, but seeing everything perfectly, breaking through to a large hall of the sewers, and knowing that the dwellers of the depth will rise again and they are to be their leader.

The Magic-User picked the sacrificial priest option and became KETEUS, a mummified sorcerer. With spells from Space Age Sorcery. The Halfling picked the Roswell option and became PSAMTEK, the psionic pilot. With psi powers cobbled together from various sources (Carcosa, LotFP, Realms of Crawling Chaos).

Thus Keteus and Psamtek emerged from their cryo-pods and found themselves in a depressing concrete room. There were old decorations hanging from the ceilings and walls, little festive flags, and a sign that read “WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!!”, with a couple of letters already faded.

One other cyro-pod contained a dead body… And a fourth cryo-pod’s glass top was broken, with clawmarks on the inside of the pod.

Piles of Downloaded Files... #3: more treasures from the Unsorted folder

I’m reviving my old series, Piles of Downloaded Files, in which I delve into the bottomless Unsorted folder of RPG-related PDFs. See the previous installments under this tag. 

 

Micromaiden Spirit Grid by Evlyn Moreau

It is a two-sided pamphlet dungeon, with Evlyn’s trademark art. One side has the map of the dungeon, which is a complex semi-anthropomorphic computer circuit. Each node gets a title and one or two keywords (for function/condition), e.g. Cyber Maintenance Unit [In Use] [Possessed] or Sensation Module [Patched] [Cyber Fauna].

It is evocative, but definitely a toolbox. I feel you need to get into a specific mindset to be able to fit all this together – but then it can provide a super interesting game world. I’d love it if someone made a computer game with the art from this pamphlet. A top-down dungeon crawler of some sorts.

Link: https://evlyn.itch.io/micromaiden-spirit-grid

 

Salo’s Glory by Glynn Owen Barrass

I used to subscribe to the Stygian Fox Patreon. This was one of their monthly adventures, back in 2020. It’s a Call of Cthulhu 7e scenario… IN SPACE! A megacorp sends an exploratory vessel outside the Solar System. The scenario goes for that sci-fi horror vibe that you get in the Alien franchise, like in the comics. Hell, it has stats for power loader exoskeletons! It also comes with quite good floorplans for the space ships and shuttles – definitely a reusable resource for any sci-fi game.

The adventure is written in the usual CoC style: lots of text, not skimming-friendly. But overall, it feels like a solid offering for CoC/Mothership/Alien RPGs.

Link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/309908/salo-s-glory-a-sci-fi-call-of-cthulhu-scenario-set-in-interstellar-space

 

Bonus mystery entry!

“original-colony.pdf” is a single-page file. It’s labeled “Original Drawing of the Ant Colony”. And it has a side-view section map of an ant colony. Pretty good map, I gotta say!

Reverse image search leads to a Something Awful topic I cannot access.

However, next to this file in my folder, I have:

Percent in Lair: Ant, giant by Justine Rogers / Angrymog Games

Turns out, the colony map was made for this project. This is a 10-page-long brainstorm on Giant ant colonies in fantasy adventure games. It contains the aforementioned map. Adventure hooks – why are we delving into an ant colony? And all kinds of Giant ant variants. Weird ecosystems, fungi, psychic ants, gem-encrusted ants… This is actually not bad!

Link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/150281/percent-in-lair-ant-giant

How I prep

Joining Weird Writer’s blog challenge.

So, how do I prep?

First, I stock up on weapons, ammo, first aid essentials, canned and dry goods. Next, I transport it all into my rural fenced-off compound and store it in my underground vault. Then I post a shelfie on the survivalist forums…

What?

Oh, this is about RPG referee prep.



Sure, here are a couple of disjointed ideas. I don’t have a system and, well, just don’t run games regularly enough nowadays, but when I do, I like to do as many of these as possible.

I’m only covering pre-session prep here, not campaign prep.

• I write a lot of random game content, adventures, random tables, etc. So before a session, I check back to see if there is anything useful or relevant or something I just want to try in my archive.

• I run 75% homebrew stuff, 25% published modules.

Notetaking, general:

• I often make flowcharts and relationship matrices. I write out important factions, NPCs, locations, McGuffins and draw lines and arrows between them, note their relationships or connections. To me, this is the best way to organize info.
• If the adventure has a monster summary, I print that out. If it doesn’t, I try to make one. Stats & special abilities on one page, so it’s all in one place, no need to look it up in the module or the bestiary.
• I might do a condensed key for dungeons. But that’s pretty time consuming.
• Print out the map separately! It also helps to annotate the map, add notes about room contents, etc.
• I like re-drawing maps. Esp. for bigger dungeons. You memorize the layout and note interesting things for yourself, AND if you run an online game, this can double as preparing a VTT version of the map.

Pre-session prep for ongoing games:

• Check notes, curse yourself for not taking better notes.
• Any dangling threads or cliffhangers that require resolution or extra thought? E.g. a character was bit by a werewolf, how do we handle this, setting-wise and also rules-wise (see next section)? An enemy ran away, are there consequences? Any restocking needed Is there anything that might come back and bite the players’ ass?
• Rules-wise, are there any complex situations that might come up? E.g. aerial combat, underwater adventuring, chases, mass combat, anything that I need to look up the rules for or make rulings on.

Pondering the moldy tomes

Searchers of the Unknown - pocketmod version

I really like Searchers of the Unknown, the super-minimal D&D by Nicolas Dessaux, where you just use the standard monster statline to represent any character. It's a one-page ruleset. So I converted it into a pocketmod.

Searcher of the Unknown pocketmod PDF for printing

I edited it a little bit to make it fit better. Then to PAD IT OUT, I added Monsters of the Unknown by Brent P. Newhall and a quick equipment list by me.

(Turns out, there is another pocketmod version out there, but I prefer my formatting)

Fight on!

Rules for pulpy barbaric solo/CYOA games

Quick resolution rules for solo games. With a pulpy sword&sorcery feel. Quite likely this is all based on a misremembered version of a choose-your-own-adventure gamebook I'd read as a kid.

You are a barbarian warrior

Your name, gender and appearance are all up to you.

You start with 3 Might and 3 Luck Tokens. Keep a record of your maximum and current Might and Luck Tokens. You maximum Might raises as you level up. You can never have more than 3 Luck Tokens.

You start with 0 Experience. You level up at 12, 36 and 92.

You can carry one Weapon. You start with a Spear (Weapon Rating 5). If you haven’t got a weapon, you fights with your Fists (Weapon Rating 6).

You can have one Mount, which is usually a tamed beast or a vehicle. You start without a Mount.

You can carry up to three Items, five if you have a Mount. Your Weapon doesn’t count towards this tally. You start with no items.

 

Facing Danger & Combat

Life-threatening situations and enemies have a Danger Rating.

Roll a number of dice equal to your current Might. Optionally, you can burn a Luck Token to add an extra die.

In combat, any die that scores equal or over your Weapon Rating counts as a success.

In non-combat situations, a 5 or a 6 is a success.

Compare the number of successes to the Danger Rating:

Over	Triumph! Choose one Reward, or two Rewards and take a Wound. Progress to favourable outcome.
Equal	Hard-earned victory. No Reward, or choose one Reward and take a Wound. Progress to favourable outcome.
Less	Defeat! Take a number of Wounds equal to the enemy’s Danger Rating. If you are still alive, progress to unfavorable outcome.

 

After resolving the situation

Lower your current Might rating by one for each Wound. A Wound can be negated by burning a Luck Token or losing your Weapon or an Item.

Add the Danger Rating to your Experience tally. If you reach a level-up threshold, raise your maximum Might and choose a Reward.

 

Rewards

Regain one Luck Token.

Regain one Might.

Gain Item or Weapon (if available).

 

Weapon Ratings

Unarmed combat	6
Common weapons	5
Rare and powerful weapons	4

There is no difference between ranged and melee weapons.

 

Items

Valuables. Catch-all category for all kinds of treasure & fancy objects. Each such Item can be used to barter for something else, bribe, reward or hire somebody, and so on.

Explosives/Magical Artifacts. Burn to achieve an automatic Triumph in a combat or use contextually.

Armor. Negate a single Wound after every combat. Only rolls of 6 count as success when resolving non-combat situations.

Shield. Burn to negate a single Wound after combat.

 

Foes & Danger Ratings

Regular foe, small group	1
Trained foe, medium group	2
Deadly foe, large group	3
Unusual power	+1

 

Approximate chance to achieve at least a Hard-earned victory:

Danger Rating	3 Might, WR 5	3 Might, WR 4	4 Might, WR 5
1	70%	87,5%	80%
2	26%	50%	70%
3	3,7%	12,5%	11%
4	-	-	1,2%

 

From "American Barbarian" by Tom Scioli

[Solo] The Prussian Infantry Marches to Carcosa, Turn 3: Dinner Invitation

Continuing the adventures of the Prussians on Carcosa. See Turn 1, Turn 2.

The Detachment:

• Captain Friederike “Freddy” Krüger, a woman who entered service disguised as a man, but is by now accepted as she is
• Brother Paul, Augustine monk and scholar
• Dr. Krowitz, field surgeon
• 20 disciplined Infantrymen with muskets

Turn 3

Day 2, dawn

Location: Hex 0410, Forest

Weather: 7, Neutral

Encounter: 1, Daytime: 58, 3 Mummies. Party surprise: 1, yes. Encounter surprise: 1, yes. Encounter distance: 100’. Encounter reaction: 7, Neutral

                    Soundtrack: "Mummified Fragment of Everyday" by Zofie Siege

With sunrise, the blackness of night first shifts into an indescribable blue iridescence, then into a purple haze. Light filters through the black leaves. The infantrymen lay wrapped in their cloaks, huddled together for warmth.

Four sentries sit, leaning on their rifles. The last shift was trying, the alien forest full off invisible insects and bizarre whispers. But they persevered – driven by discipline… or fear? 

///

But something else stirs in the forest.

Three dark, gaunt, sickly thin figures stalk between the trees. Their joints seem bloated, yet their movements are fluid. Ribbons and thin veils float behind them. Their gazes are trained downwards. From time to time they examine the leaves of certain trees.