Cellars, Crypts & Catacombs

 

A new pamphlet for GRAVEROBBERS, my rpg system of stealth and sedition. Containing therein, amongst other things: a miniature sandbox of sidequests, a haunted graveyard, a secret laboratory, carousing rules, a playable in-world parlour game, cockney innuendo, and A Bear.

Available for download here.

ADSPACE is on Kickstarter

 

I’m making a pamphlet adventure miniseries for Mothership as part of ZineQuest 4!

You can find out more and support the project here.

Thank you x

electric palace bloodbath

On Monday I made a Mothership zine from scratch in 24 hours. Mainly as a challenge to myself to see if I could do it!

I’ll likely do a postmortem on here about how I feel it went etc, but for now you can download it for free on my online shop.

Happy gaming! x

Extradimensional Research Facility Theta

 ERFϴ is a private building on the Meridian city satellite. According to the satellite’s owners QGC, the facility researches the gate anomaly with the aim of improving their service.

This is where the mysterious persons in black aboard Meridian work. Investigating or tailing these individuals will lead the players here.

Anything locked can be opened only with a keycard.

1. Lobby. The only entrance. White tile, marble counters, healthy potted plants. Stylishly curved sofas that look as though they have never been sat on. There are security cameras in the upper corners. As with the rest of the building, there are no windows.

The unmanned reception has a computer, not connected to any network or containing any data. Files and folders behind the desk contain hundreds of blank pages. To either side are doors marked Research and Administration.

2. Research. A sterile, stock-photo laboratory. Brand new microscopes, empty flasks, Bunsen burners with no gas. Otherwise empty.

In the far wall is a large mirror, reflecting the lab. On the other side of the glass is Observation.

3. Administration. Spotless cubicles, each with a QGC branded mug and the same framed family portrait. Cabinets of blank files, unopened packets of stationary. Nobody here.

Anyone inspecting the cabinets notices a slight draft from behind the rightmost. Moving it aside reveals a door marked Observation.

4. Observation. Grey tile, floor to ceiling, and a single bare bulb. In the wall is a large window, the other side of the two-way mirror in Research. There is also a small door to Administration with a filing cabinet on the other side.

In the centre of the room is an adult female goat. White pads arranged about its head attach with twisting copper wire to a little machine, the size of a VHS player, sitting on a metal folding chair. The machine is on, lights flashing, but does not appear to actually do anything.

The goat is docile and unperturbed by visitors. Doors on the opposite side of the room are labelled Containment and Intelligence. The latter is locked.

5. Containment. A spacious corridor, bright white lights, spotless. At either side, glass specimen tanks are set into the walls, lit in ultraviolet. Several contain biohazards, one contains a crop of glowing mushrooms. Some are empty. All are locked.

A chute, torso-width, leads down into The Pit. It is unmarked except for various esoteric hazard signs. Next to it are black sacks, each containing an unconscious person in a smart black suit, drugged, bound and gagged.

At each end of the corridor is a door, marked Development and Observation respectively.

6. Development. A large cuboid room, neutral earth tones, soft lighting. The floor is slightly springy, faux tatami. The sound of gently trickling water plays from speakers in the upper corners, a repeating clip only a few seconds long. Beside the speakers are cameras, watching and feeding back to Intelligence.

In the centre of the room is a giant ivory chess piece, like a knight but with a ram’s head, over 10 feet tall. It is made of solid stone, or something equally heavy. Two persons in black stand either side of it, appearing to be in deep thought.

If anything distracts them from their training, they attack. [C:55 Subdue 1d10; I:55; W2(11), holding only a chess piece with a ram’s head containing a listening device]. One is holding a keycard.

The door to the right reads Containment. A door to the left reads Accommodation.

7. Accommodation. Dull cream walls, mottled green-brown carpet. Bunk beds, khaki hammocks taut on scaffold frames, enough for twenty or so. Each bed has a small, dense pillow containing a listening device which feeds back to Intelligence. 1d5 persons in black are asleep here, still in their suits and dark glasses. If one wakes, they all do.

The doors here are marked Development and Extraction.

8. Extraction. A long, wide hall. Occasional large, grey smudges on the otherwise pristine tile. The centre of the floor is a large grate with a hatch, locked from this side. Below is The Pit, a trench full of some slowly writhing gelatinous mass.

There is equipment here set up to extract elixir from the slugs below. This substance can be injected into the bloodstream to induce psychic awakening, though the results are unreliable.

Either side of the hall are exits to Accommodation and Intelligence. The latter is locked.

9. Intelligence. Cramped, musty, unlit except for banks of monitors and bleeping machine lights. Monitors show feeds from any security cameras in the facility. Banks of headphones, like a phone operator’s desk, monitor audio from any listening devices here or elsewhere on Meridian.

3 persons in black sit at the monitors here, wearing crisp white lab coats over their suits. They all have the PSI 1 skill and will use it in self defence, though they are largely unaware of its limits and may overextend themselves. Each has a syringe with a single dose of fast-acting knockout serum and a keycard. They may exit Intelligence to investigate if they notice more than one unusual occurrence.

The computers here contain files detailing the facility’s operations, scientific research mixed in with pseudoscience and veiled references. Agents are trained and tested here for psychic abilities. Candidates who react poorly to the tests are disposed of as food for the grey slugs, as are any interlopers.

The slugs are extradimensional aliens found through gate travel, as are the other life forms here. The ultimate aim of training these psychic operatives is unclear, but QGC’s research into extradimensional travel seems to be entirely predicated on mastering and understanding these abilities.

10. The Pit. Dank, dark, completely filled with forearm-sized grey slugs. Dim light from an overhead grate in the floor of Extraction, as well as a chute from Containment.

The slugs attach to the temples and consume brainwaves. Anyone not in an airtight suit must make a Body save in their presence or take 1 Stress per round as the slugs feed. A failed Panic check during feeding always results in a loss of 1d10[+] Sanity. Reducing Sanity to 0 this way results in brain death.

Mothership character names

 This sneak peek at a bit of Another Bug Hunt (the starter module that will come in the Mothership 1e box set and the reason I haven’t been posting here much lately) got me thinking about character names.

I think naming things in general is something I’m good at, and I know it’s something other people struggle with sometimes. And it comes up quite often in this hobby as a thing that needs to get done.

But unfortunately like most times when people are just kind of good at a thing I don’t think I can really explain how or why I can do it. I just find it easy. (That’s what “style” is by the way, in creative work, leaning into the things that come naturally. If you don’t think you have a style, get lazier.)

I thought maybe if I wrote a bit about my thoughts, those ramblings might be useful to someone? I don’t have a process but if you see something you want to take here, take it. It’s what a lot of this blog ends up being, haha.

And since we’re talking about Mothership characters, here are some I’ve named. Minor spoilers, maybe.

The Haunting of Ypsilon 14

has maybe too many characters, but you know I had to fill out that sweet d10 table. Plus they don’t really serve “character” functions so much as being like… hit points.

I tried to include names from different parts of the world. Since there wasn’t enough space or any real need to detail character appearances, this would suggest that these people each looked a bit different from each other. But again, part of a new whole. Ypsilon was intended as an “introductory” module (to players, if not necessarily to Wardens), and that bit of cultural mish-mash is a good setting shorthand.

Thinking of cohorts of colleagues I’ve worked shitty jobs with myself, and with an image in my head similar to the crew of the Nostromo all sitting round and eating in that early scene, I tried to suggest what Mothership’s future looks like. Basically, a lot like now.

I also made sure to get differently gendered names in there, as well as at least one that could be read as either masculine or feminine. Like how the Alien script was supposedly written gender-neutral, because these things both matter and don’t.

Other than that I didn’t put a lot of thought into each specific name. They’re not references to characters or anyone I know. If I’d had more time maybe I would’ve done that, but I don’t know that it would’ve added anything. If the meme had been meme’d already I would’ve called Mike Dave.

Dr Ethan Giovanni is the only character with a first and last name given. This and the title makes him seem more important, so hopefully the next question, even if it’s subconscious, is “important to who”. Why is this guy written with a family name, a lineage, and the others aren’t? Spoilers: it’s classism.

Speaking of the good doctor and names, on his personal cassette he refers to someone, probably Mike, by a number rather than a name. Worker number something-or-other. Again, the question of who “gets” a name, an identity, and how much, and in whose eyes. In the corporation’s eyes, Mike is a blip on a spreadsheet.

Oh, and Prince. I think that was probably a reference to, y’know, Prince, but also I was likely thinking of that bit in The Simpsons when Santa’s Little Helper has puppies and one is “the puppy formerly known as Prince”. Prince is just a good solid pet name. (My rule for dog names specifically is that it must sound good when shouted across a park.)

One last thing - Kantaro, one of the workers. That’s a surname, not a first name. I think maybe in the back of my mind I thought “oh yeah, at this workplace, there’s probably that one guy everyone refers to by their surname”. American Office vibes, i don’t think there was a character like that in the show but that’s a thing people like that would do. “Hey it’s Johnson, hey Johnson”.

But now I think maybe that’s not something i should’ve expected the average reader (I assume, perhaps uncharitably, white and North American) to pick up on? So maybe it just confuses things. Then again, on those cool fan computer things I’ve seen people do, they list it as his last name. People get it. I’m probably just overthinking.

So next up was

Hideo’s World

Which, as a module itself, was named by Sean. Because as I recall I think I literally just forgot to name it. So maybe I’m not so good at this after all!

There’s only one character with a person name and that’s Hideo, and I didn’t name him - he’s an NPC from A Pound Of Flesh. So go bother someone else about that. I’m guessing he’s a reference to that one guy.

Mr Goodnight™ is the only other named character I believe. I’m pretty happy with that name. It sounds ominous enough while also sounding like a thing you’d actually call a mascot character, friendly and silly. For a pepsi that makes you sleepy lol. Yeah Hideo’s World is a bit chaotic overall but I’m very happy with the way it does setting.

And, to me at least, there’s something very unsettling about how his name is trademarked in the text itself! I don’t think anyone but me thinks of that as “horror”, but personally that’s one of the most weird and existential things I’ve come up with for MoSh, at least it effects me that way! I think he’s a very good baddie

Piece by Piece

Contrasting Ypsilon, everyone* in Piece by Piece has a first and last name. That’s because this is a murder mystery style adventure, like an episode of the X Files. And the police going over the case in that kind of film or show will always call people Firstname Lastname. Nobody stands over an establishing shot of a crime scene and says “yeah this is the victim, Brian”.

*except Curtis. This isn’t a tie-in to Gradient Descent but it came out around the same time-ish as i recall, and I was thinking about those themes, and the role of the android in MoSh. I like to play with the baked-in setting elements when I can, because it’s cheap, good grist, and Mothership has Androids. An android character playing through this adventure is going to have a very separate experience, I think. I wanted to emphasise that separation.

And “Curtis” specifically because in the Alien movies the androids are named alphabetically, and this was my third pamphlet.

As for the human names, I had a similar tack from Ypsilon. A bit of cultural variety makes it feel more specific and real, and at this point more Mothership. But still just normal people names from real life.

I think I tried to go in on the metaphor layer a bit more this time, not aiming for a “hidden meaning” just adding to a vibe. There are the surnames Nishida, Flores, Fuentes, Dragavei, all plants or Spring- or plant-related words. Growth, life. Human lives being the only(?) living, sentient things in this cold, sterile lab, the contrast between the organic living world and the not. And then we can blur those lines.

Dr Ojo was a more specific choice, she has a Yoruba name. Where I’m from there’s a huge West African population and in Yoruba culture you typically name a child based on the circumstances of their birth.

Anyway, Abidemi means “born without the father”, which ties into themes of parenthood, fathers failing their children and cycles of trauma in the adventure. As does Daedalus labs. (Also the map is a circle, did u notice. Also there’s a bit of a circle/eye/camera thing going on oh ok you’ve stopped reading, that’s fair)

The only other character is ABI i guess. Which is a robot-y name, and also a short form of Dr Ojo’s name. So it implies maybe she made her. Themes innit.

The only other one out right now is 

The Horror on Tau Sigma 7 

which I wrote for Magnum Galaxy games. Another one I didn’t name, because they already had a name for it. It sounds like The Haunting of Ypsilon 14, which btw I named that because it seemed like a good mix of pulp horror and pulpy sci fi. I think every game needs adventures with names Like That. The Thing of the PLACE.

Anyway, Tau Sigma 7.

… oh there’s no named NPCs in this one! :D

I specifically chose to not use any, because I thought that would serve it well as an introductory thing. One less thing to worry about whether running or playing.

And so we’re done.

Again, don’t really know what anyone is supposed to learn from this, but hopefully you got something from it. There will be more adventures with more names to come!

Btw, normally when I’m coming up with names for sci fi characters they’re absolutely terrible. Everyone sounds like the worst cyberpunk bounty hunters you’ve ever heard of. Things like Jimmy Lobster and Dusty Marie. I literally just made those up while writing that sentence. I’m doing a stream of consciousness thing. Here’s another one, wonder what it’s going to be, Ronaldo Ballsack.

So if anyone ever wants names like that, hit me up. I bet I could do d100 of em. Wenceslas the Viper. Artificial Ron. Marjorie “Good Grief” Golightly. I’m going to stop now.

(There’s one character with a silly cyberpunk-y name in an upcoming module, actually. He’s an asshole.)

The Gutter

 The high street that runs the length of the residential quarter on the Meridian city satellite. Only the locals get to call it that.

Priced out of prefab QGC condos, the majority of the population live in a sprawl of shacks and shipping containers that grow up the slopes of the station’s artificial valley. Deep in their shadow, the city’s heart still beats.

What’s That Sound?

1. Sports fans gathered round a radio. You get all kinds of signals through the gate, if you have a machine that can handle them. Tune in from the other end of the galaxy.

2. Cassettes are a way of life for teenagers here. Expect to hear the same song copied and played until the tapes wear out, unless a spacer stops by with the next big hit.

3. The main way in which the Gutter’s myriad stall owners and street vendors compete is by being louder than the next person. Booming cries, tinny jingles, sizzling pans.

4. Excuse me, have you heard the good news? Pamphlets promise peace and prosperity. Flavour of the month is Godman Richard, a local healer nobody’s actually seen in years.

5. Screams from a back alley. Petty thugs, teen pranksters, community doctors, unlicensed casinos and sex workers all have their own ways of getting those noises out of a person.

Make Way!

1. The old street sweeper bot. Its AI is off, so it has no set schedule and doesn’t quite register people as obstacles. Can’t detect graffiti, either, but still does an ok job overall.

2. A bunch of kids playing a game. The one at the front has a big stick. Parents call them in from windows up above, past the laundry lines and lanterns.

3. Someone got a bike from Miracle Cycle and hasn’t figured out the brakes yet. Bicycles make a lot of sense on a station that’s one big circle. 100cr new, or plenty old and going spare.

4. Street performers. Nobody wants them, but nobody wants a Gutter without them. Lion dancers, musician troupes, folding tables for card tricks or the occasional honest game.

5. Some folk just aren’t used to the crowds. Spacers, stall owners, stray dogs, the high street’s always moving. Got to learn the flow or you’ll tread on someone’s toes.

Food and Drink

1. The Bent Spoon does the best bad coffee in town for 1cr a cup. Their herbal teas cost up to 5cr, but some are said to have medicinal properties.

2. Ragpickers flog whatever truckers bring through the gate. Even basics are expensive when imported, so get ready to haggle or you’ll be spending 10cr on a Goo-Chew bar.

3. Of all the busiest food stands, most agree that Mr Son’s Meat-Filled Buns are worth the queue. 2cr for a big mutton buuza. Mr Son’s smile, however, is priceless.

4. The food at The Golden Ass is surprisingly good for a strip club. Get a pitta platter, 10cr. TGA also donates old clothes, which explains some Gutter fashion idiosyncrasies.

5. Don’t get caught up in an argument over which unnamed kebab stall is the original. A lamb kofta box meal costs 4cr at either. They taste identical, but keep that to yourself.

Local Businesses

1. Giga Potato have all kinds of second-hand tech. The other stores get their neon signs and radios here. The owner Ellie also does tattoos and android repairs on the side.

2. Everyone knows that “Little” Jimmy Kozlov sells knock off weapons. Nobody says it to his face. 75% market price, break apart on a critical failure.

3. The fortune teller Madam Galkin is a charlatan, but her customers either don’t know or don’t seem to mind. 10cr for a reading and a weak cup of tea.

4. The Black Dog just opened and is already attracting unsavoury types. Just about the only place to get a drink around here, though.

5. Ratcatcher Keith retired when his dog Percy died. People say the old mutt must have trained the local strays to follow in his pawprints, though, because you rarely see a rat around.

Rumours and Gossip

1. That new pub, The Black Dog, used to be a club. It just suddenly closed down. The new dancer at the Golden Ass used to work there, I think.

2. Someone saw the men in black around that club that closed down. The Rabbit Hole, I think it was called. Anyway, the basement is all sealed off now for whatever reason.

3. You’ve seen them, right? The men in black. Always carrying those briefcases, but you never see them open. I bet they work for QGC. Some secret division. Keeping an eye on us.

4. How do QGC even know the gate is safe? I mean, think about it. Who really knows what that thing is? We could all be getting blasted with radiation, like, right now.

5. Aliens! It’s all aliens. They run the gate, they run QGC. Open your eyes, people!

the graverobber’s guidelines

Excerpts from a (hypothetical (probably never(can’t be arsed))) GM’s guide for GRAVEROBBERS

COIN

If players are ever stumped on how to overcome a challenge, remind them of the COIN in their pocket - their Crime, Odds, Inventory and Notes. Something written on their criminal record may give them an answer, or the beginnings of one. (This means good note-taking may be necessary!)

If more than one of these four facets of a character lean towards their succeeding, rule in their favour. For instance, a convicted Burglar with rope and a grappling hook in their inventory most likely has enough skill and the necessary tools to scale a wall without rolling the bones.

The Hangman’s Rule

Your role as Dealer is a lot like the popular game of Hangman, in which one player chooses a word which the others must guess letter by letter. Choosing an easy word provides no challenge or fun, while too obscure a word makes the game unfair.

When setting challenges for your fellow players, aim for somewhere in the middle, and remember that while the fun of the game is in them figuring out the answer on their own, you are the only one in the know. Guidance or corrections will be required when you misjudge a challenge.