Category: RPGS

Adventure Seed: Alien grave in Mississippi!

Man, but I miss the print edition of the Weekly World News.

Alien grave in Mississippi – Google Docs

Alien grave in Mississippi!

 

There is a corpse waiting to be dug up in Mississippi.  It’s currently somewhere among the up to seven thousand corpses currently buried on University of Mississippi Medical Center property (said bodies dating back to the 19th Century, when the land was part of the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum), and nobody at the moment is particularly looking for the corpse. Not that there’s much reason to, given that almost the only records involving the corpse were part of the batch of papers quietly burned by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton after Lincoln’s assassination. Including a 1863 handwritten memorandum by General Sherman reporting success in removing all details of the corpse from the asylum’s own records (a copy of this memorandum can still be found in Sherman’s papers at the Library of Congress, albeit physically misfiled among some papers from a 1866 diplomatic mission to Mexico that General Sherman had participated in).

Continue reading Adventure Seed: Alien grave in Mississippi!

Item Seed: Galvanized Bouquets.

Galvanized Bouquets – Google Docs

 

Galvanized Bouquets

 

The alchemists never really went away; they simply decided to go off by themselves for a while.  Also, it should probably be noted here that virtually nobody in the magical community with real power minded the dawn of our current rationalist-secularist era at all.  Why should they? Thanks to modern science and technology, the number of superstitious peasants desirous of burning magicians — or, worse, desirous of constantly importuning and begging busy magicians for an endless stream of tawdry love spells and petty curses — keeps ever-shrinking.  Books are cheap enough that mages no longer have to go to war with each other for the last remaining grimoire on a particular subject. There are such things as dentists. Indoor plumbing. Blessed, blessed anonymity.  Plus, magic still works! But now that mages no longer have to suck up to rich patrons to get funding, it can now get to be a bit more baroque.  

Continue reading Item Seed: Galvanized Bouquets.

Creature seed: Carnideer.

Carnideer – Google Docs

Carnideer

They were to be Doctor Ampersand Relentless Struggle’s (let us just say that the man had a complicated upbringing) finest creation, and a fitting revenge for human intrusion in the woods!  Behold! The CARNIDEER!  Genetically engineered with lupine DNA to give it a taste for meat and blood! Quake before its serrated Antlers!  Tremble at the thought of its heightened senses!  Fear the wrath of Mother Gaia, fools!  Fear, and DIE!!!!!

Continue reading Creature seed: Carnideer.

Guthorga [GURPS 4E]

Guthorga – Google Docs

Guthorga (7/24)

This particular fantasy martial art is taught to those pursuing the bardic lifestyle. At its most general levels, it is mostly concerned with teaching how not to draw blood in a bar fight: Guthorga practitioners practice with batons instead of edged weapons, on the grounds that it’s usually easier to explain away a broken arm or two to the City Watch afterwards than it is to justify a slit throat.  The school does not typically teach how to talk your way out of trouble, however. If you want to be a bard, you should already know the basics of that!

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Tweet of the Day, I’ve Never Gotten Into Audiobooks… edition.

…but I know that people who read me do get into audiobooks.  And I did read and like Delta Green: Tales from Failed Anatomies. Heck, I’d hope that I would; I did the Kickstarter for it. So check this out.

Moe Lane

PS: I’ve actually wondered from time to time why I don’t get into audiobooks. Maybe I like going back and checking the text too much? It’s hard to do that with audio.  At least I perceive it as being hard.

Group Seed: Porlock Solutions, Ltd.

Porlock Solutions, Ltd – Google Docs

Porlock Solutions, Ltd.

 

This particular company is difficult to hire, mostly because the services it offers — the removal of irritating people from one’s personal history — are equally difficult to bill for.  Let’s say that somebody employs Porlock Solutions to ensure that a crusading district attorney about to get a conviction against the client’s company is not assigned to try the case.  Porlock Solutions arranges the switch.  How does Porlock actually get paid for that?  After all, from the client’s point of view the case was now always being handled by a fumble-fingered idiot.

Continue reading Group Seed: Porlock Solutions, Ltd.

Group seed: Aglet Solutions.

Pardon the joke.

Aglet Solutions – Google Docs

 

Aglet Solutions

 

A variant of this group can exist at any point of a particular society’s technological or social development.  Provided, of course, that the society has access to resurrection or general necromantic magic.  Aglet Solutions exists to counter such magic, for the noblest of reasons: people will pay them extremely well to do so.

 

The pay is good because this is actually a surprisingly popular service, particularly in worlds where the resurrection process can or does have extremely nasty side effects.  There is a lot that necromancy can do with a person’s corpse, and some of it can be only be prevented or reversed by people who are effectively necromancers themselves, if only theoretical ones. Magicians who discover that they simultaneously have a talent for death-related magic and a basic ethical sense are Aglet Solution’s preferred candidates for employment, as the group gives them an opportunity to practice their art in a non-corrupting manner.

Continue reading Group seed: Aglet Solutions.

Campaign Seed: Project GAMMA YELLOW.

Just my little joke.

Project GAMMA YELLOW – Google Docs

Project GAMMA YELLOW

 

NATO’s GAMMA YELLOW project would be legendary in the conspiracy theory community, if only any of them had ever heard of it.  But there are in fact certain security restrictions that people do take seriously, and the ones involving GAMMA YELLOW fall in that category.  It helps that the classification is at a level that can be beyond the reach of mere ministers of defense, or even some heads of states. For example, no American President has been briefed on GAMMA YELLOW since Jimmy Carter, and that was widely (for given values of ‘widely’) seen as being a horrendous mistake.

Continue reading Campaign Seed: Project GAMMA YELLOW.

Item Seed: The Scablands Map.

Sorta inspired by this.

Scablands Map – Google Docs

The Scablands Map

 

Description: there are three versions of the Scablands Map. First is what appears to be the original, which appears to been a thin slab of slate with numerous scratchings and markings on it.  Unfortunately, about thirty percent of that Map is missing, and the rest was carefully broken into numerous pieces.  The second Map appears to have been drawn on vellum some time around the beginning of the 17th Century AD, probably by Spanish monks.  That Map is intact, and is stored in a wooden case with extensive scorch damage.  And the third map is dated 1937, and is a product of the WPA’s Federal Art Project.  It is reproduced below: Continue reading Item Seed: The Scablands Map.