If you did not get one, or you did not show an interest then but you are interested now, please let me know. We’ll be doing it via at night and on Google Hangouts (hopefully this weekend), you will not need to be familiar with the GUMSHOE system, and you will not need to know more about Fall of Delta Green past the standard ‘Cthulhu Mythos meets X-Files, set in Vietnam.’ Character and one-page rules sheets will be provided. If I get enough people interested, I will split them up into groups and run multiple sessions.
Category: RPGS
Adventure Seed: Operation XYLOPHONE PETUNIA.
Operation XYLOPHONE PETUNIA – Google Docs
Operation XYLOPHONE PETUNIA
Your two-minute background briefing: in 1965 a satellite designated LES1 (Lincoln Experimental Satellite) was launched, ostensibly to place it in an elliptical orbit around the Earth. It instead went into circular orbit, reportedly provided good data anyway, then ‘died’ after a couple of years. Fast forward to 2013, when a British amateur radio astronomer detected renewed transmissions coming from LES1, apparently due to a complicated set of conditions on the derelict satellite.
Continue reading Adventure Seed: Operation XYLOPHONE PETUNIA.
In Nomine Revisited (and Revised): Rebels of the Sacred Heart.
I added some bits to this one because it needed them. Original was here.
Rebels of the Sacred Heart – Google Docs
Rebels of the Sacred Heart
(With apologies to Flogging Molly)
What are they rebelling against? Well, what have you got?
You’ve got a bunch of fascist, obsessive-compulsive humorless toads so hopped up on their own opinion of themselves that they think they have a chance against the Thing that created the ENTIRE UNIVERSE?
Them, then.
Continue reading In Nomine Revisited (and Revised): Rebels of the Sacred Heart.
Item Seed: Magiki Sfaira.
Blame this.
Magiki Sfaira
Well, it’s like this. Back in the fourth century BC, one of the proto-mages that the Greeks had hanging around back then did a favor for a friend of his and enchanted a sling-stone to ‘kill the enemy its user chose.’ Unfortunately, the spell did not do anything to actually help with the aiming of the sling-stone in question; the first time it was used, the slinger missed his target completely. And then apparently promptly forgot about it, except to possibly mildly complain to his magician friend.
The Magiki Sfaira has been the thaumaturgical equivalent of the Goose That Laid The Golden Egg ever since then. The original mage’s notes have been lost, assuming that he ever wrote any in the first place, and nobody else ever learned the enchantment that he used. Which is a real pity, because black-box research on the Magiki Sfaira suggests that said enchantment was a masterpiece of efficiency and potency. Even today’s state of the magical arts would probably still be improved if the spell was finally reproduced — to say nothing of the prestige that would result from finally cracking the code — but the item is still ‘stuck‘ in active mode.
Infinite Worlds: Clinic [Quantum 7] [GURPS]
Clinic (Quantum 7) – Google Docs
Clinic (Quantum 7)
On this timeline, magic exists — but only the whitest of white magic. Faith Healing is a recognized field of study; its practitioners can cure disease, heal the injured, and even reattach limbs. Interestingly, mundane healing is more advanced on this timeline than at the equivalent point on Homeline’s, as well: those Great Powers that were not blessed with a large number of healing mages quickly adopted the innovations proposed by mundane physicians.
Clinic has only slightly diverted from Homeline’s history thus far, possibly because it is in neither Homeline’s nor Centrum’s interest that it do so. Both societies operate clandestine magical clinics in this timeline, and have no interest in rocking the boat. What either — or both — plan to do when Clinic’s Great War presumably kicks off in thirty years is unknown.
Continue reading Infinite Worlds: Clinic [Quantum 7] [GURPS]
Choir (TRAPPIST-1 star system) [GURPS]
Exoplanets! Whee!
Choir
It was natural for explorers from Earth to go to the TRAPPIST-1 dwarf system as part of the first wave of interstellar exploration, once humans finally cracked the code on faster-than-light travel. The planetary system had seven confirmed exoplanets, and a remarkably tolerant habitable zone for a dwarf star; it was also extremely young by stellar standards. So it seemed unlikely that life would have developed so quickly there… thus making it probably safe enough for a species just starting to practice exploring the Galactic Arm.
This proved to be… incorrect. Not only were there three water worlds with functional biospheres: the other four planets all proved to have their own forms of life. And sentient races living on all of them, although admittedly none of those species were born there. It turns out that TRAPPIST-1 is well-named; it’s a favorite spot for monastic communities from all over this part of known space. Fortunately, humans were welcome enough… or at least their religious communities were.
Creature Seed: Hyper-Mega-Goanna.
Hyper-Mega-Goanna – Google Docs
Hyper-Mega-Goanna (HMG)
Well, goannas were merely mildly venomous Australian monitor lizards, about man-length in size; which is to say, no more or less unusual than any other animal native to Australia. But then there was an almighty electrical discharge in the skies above Australasia; the first reports of somewhat altered goannas appeared shortly thereafter. The current generation of Hyper-Mega-Goannas (blame the tabloids) all have a length of about 15 feet, and it’s not entirely clear that the HMGs have stopped growing as a species.
Forjas Taurus “Arpão” Deck-Mounted Mechanical-Action Ballista [Day After Ragnarok]
Needed to practice my Savage Worlds crunchy bit writeup skills a bit.
Forjas Taurus “Arpão” Deck-Mounted Mechanical-Action Ballista – Google Docs
Forjas Taurus “Arpão” Deck-Mounted Mechanical-Action Ballista
The Brazilian firearms company Forjas Taurus has been working on these monster-killers since just after 1945, thanks to a series of what turned out be prescient dreams suffered by the board of directors. The Arpão is a fairly ingenious weapon: it’s basically a ship-mounted ballista that uses a small diesel motor to cock the swing arm that fires its forearm-thick bolts. Interestingly, the Arpão is also designed to be cocked by hand – well, by using a hydraulic jack. It’s obviously much slower to reload that way, but an experienced crew can still put out a decent rate of fire.
Continue reading Forjas Taurus “Arpão” Deck-Mounted Mechanical-Action Ballista [Day After Ragnarok]
Quote of the Day, This Is Great News About The Cyberpunk Video Game edition.
Creator Mike Pondsmith is actively working with CD Projekt Red on the Cyberpunk 2077 game:
“My wife told me that these guys in Poland wrote to us and said they wanted to do a Cyberpunk game,” says Pondsmith. “They told me that the game was really important to them back in the Iron Curtain days – back then, they had Cyberpunk and communism. What impressed us was not just their capabilities and their well-organized toolsets, but that they knew and loved the material. I said, let’s do this thing.”
“I go over there pretty regularly,” says Pondsmith. “I’ll probably go back in the next couple of months. I’m in a room with a hundred people, all firing ideas back and forth. We jump up and down on the systems and see how well they work. I really got lucky.”
Also: mayyyyybe more tabletop Cyberpunk. That could be a thing.
Campaign Seed: The Great Drone Wars of 800 AD.
Yes, it’s mildly awful. Or at least the implications are. Gotta give the PCs a suitably awful Ultimate Big Bad to aim for, right?
The Great Drone Wars of 800 AD – Google Docs
The Great Drone Wars of 800 AD
Well, it’s like this. Time travel is possible, you can change the past, but it doesn’t effect anything that happens back in your home time period. The nations of the world — at least, the ones whose governments survived any number of revelations by people raiding the recent past for evidence of awkward or illegal shenanigans — have banded together to create an international organization dedicated to making sure that all the awful consequences of time travel stay strictly Downtime, and never impacts Uptime (currently 2057 AD) at all. OK? OK.
Continue reading Campaign Seed: The Great Drone Wars of 800 AD.