How To End A Campaign

So we're playing Rogue Trader...

The first session the Seneschal (played by Dorea) decides the best solution is to assassinate someone inconvenient on a star base--I missed that session. The star base goes into lockdown to prevent the assassins from escaping.

Second session is all about getting off the star base, which we do by showing one of the Imperial higher-ups how spiffy our ancient ship is (40k imagines very Deep Time with its vessels in a future devoid of any progress outside space marine helmet design. Also the ship has a crew the size of the population of West Virginia), with its many hunting trophies (turns out he's a hunter), we go "Say...we could take you on safari, Admiral...?"

"I say! (monocle monocle) Capital notion! I haven't been out hunting in aaaaages!"

Upside: the admiral helps us, bureaucratically speaking, to get off the base.

Downside: the captain decides he's cramping our style.

"Admiral, we've come upon a junglous deathworld! Would you like to go hunting with us?" The captain wants the Admiral to quietly die down there, most of the crew doesn't like the idea of anything called a deathworld. I haven't gotten to play much so I'm pretty excited to go to a deathworld. I vote deathworld, we end up on the deathworld.

We go to the deathworld long story short it is well-named. We lose our captain, near tpk but at least get rid of the Admiral.

After a few more adventures we notice...hey...it looks like, on our massive ship with a crew in the 5 figures, we have a genestealer cult on board.

Obviously and unbeknownst to us we'd picked up the genestealers on the deathworld and they'd been growing geometrically ever since.

After some more tests and shenanigans we discover the infection is massive.

The guy playing the captain goes "Hey, can we switch to playing Deathwing for a few sessions, and play space marines who are on the ship to kill the genestealers?"

The GM is cool with this.

We make space marines. The seneschal player and I both make jump-pack equipped close-combat marines with chainswords. As soon as she wakes up in the game she's like "Genestealers? I got Hatred: Genestealers, let's pilot the ship into the sun!"

My character prevails on hers to maybe play the game instead, we're Space Marines, assets to the Empire, we need not throw our lives away when we can wipe out the enemy and live to kill in the Emperor's name again.

So we spend a session bug-hunting cultists and accidentally trashing parts of the ship.

Then, long story, the hater stumbles on a chamber honest-to-god filled with horde levels of genestealers right next to the engine-coolant tanks. This is, for those familiar, a 60-point horde.

The rest of us marines are 2 rounds behind her finding this place.

We arrive to find her having already chainsworded open a massive tank, freezing genestealers everywhere in a fountain of coolant spraying all over her armor with no regard for life or limb and halfway through ripping open the second tank.

Frozen and shattering the genestealers die prettily. After a round of rolling very well we manage to cut the 60 point horde down to a 3-point horde.

Next round--she jump packs straight toward the next coolant tank.

"There's only 3 left, Dorea! Can I stop her??"

"Roll initiative"

She rolls 8, I roll 7. Oh wait, I get a +1 to initative bc the system is too complicated long story I roll 8.

Simultaneous actions--she's jump-packing toward the final coolant tank, I'm jump-packing toward her in mid-air, trying to deflect her flight path so she lands in the middle of the horde and does not end up ripping open the last coolant tank.

I roll my roll-low d100s. 06. 4 successes.

She gets 5 successes, parries me, plows into the coolant tank, chainteeth whirring. My marine goes streaking backwards into the horde, kicking the air.

"Ok (GM giggling frantically) roll d100, Dorea"

"100"

"Please Please Please Please use a fate point? Please!"

She uses her last fate point. Re-roll. "97"

Worst category critical hit, warp opens, entire ship explodes, thousands dead, crew dead, genestealers dead, Deathwatch game over, Rogue Trader game over.
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Fa-ther: What. Am. I???

For Demon City.

art by me. click to enlarge

ARTIFICIAL LIFEFORM

These creatures are unique results of technological innovation and are never fully understood, even by their creators. Though many appear human, they may be partially or wholly constructed of mechanical, biomimetic, cloned or artificially reanimated components. They encompass androids, cyborgs, vat-grown-creatures, frankenstein-like blasphemies and constructs from other worlds.

Design Notes: 

First, decide who created the artificial lifeform and why. Unlike alien lifeforms and many other monsters, these creatures were usually created for a reason. Offering the party avenues for discovering, exploring or exploiting that reason is often the most interesting way to address artificial life-forms if you’re looking to use them as more than just a one-off villain. The creature’s abilities will likely be built around that reason, the creature’s creators will be obsessed with that reason, the creature itself may even wonder about that reason. The adventure featuring an artificial lifeform is often about how society uses people (or animals) to accomplish that purpose in real life—for war, for money, for sex, for biomedical experiments—or, if the motive is simply to create life, about the grave responsibility inherent in bringing life into the world—the creature desires things, but has it been given the means to acquire them or has it been born a broken thing from the start?

If the reasons it’s alive aren’t horrible yet, move on to what it eats.

Another pre-eminent theme in any story involving artificials is a sort of bipolar effect—they are better then human in so many ways….and worse in so many others. As horror villains the easiest way to exploit this is to begin by unsettlingly demonstrate the many ways they’re superior, and then hint at the ways they are inferior, so players can discover them and bring the creature down. As PCs, the most effective way to use this is to simply bring it up a lot “As soon as she takes off her sunglasses, the clerk keeps darting looks over at Cathy’s eyes—they don’t catch the light the way he expects. You can tell he’s a little put off.”

Calm: 0-9
Agility: 0-6
Toughness: 0-6
Perception: 0-7
Appeal: 0-5
Cash: 0
Knowledge: 0-9

Calm Check: 6 (when it becomes clear they’re artificial)
Cards: The Wheel of Fortune (10), Possibly also The Hermit (9), The Lovers (6), Page of Swords (10), Page of Cups (10)

Possible Special Abilities:

Inorganic digestive/respiratory system: Constructs without ordinary lungs, stomachs or other organs will not breathe and will be immune to poison and other ordinary toxins.

Recall and Calculation: Undamaged constructs with cybernetic brains will retain the kinds of information that can be easily preserved in digital format and will be able to perform calculations like a computer.

Mutilated Life: The severed extremities of many forms of artificial life can continue to attack even when separated from the main body. These parts have -1 Agility and -3 Toughness. To keep life interesting, the Host should interpret any attack that could have reasonably severed a limb as having severed a limb until the combat gets too confusing to keep track of.

Other abilities: Artificial Lifeforms can have a variety of other abilities as the Host sees fit. For example, electronic terrors might have an ability like the Frenzied Process spel, biological mutants might be able to Warp Flesh or cause Mutation with a touch (see Supernatural Abilities section later in the library for these).

Possible Weaknesses:

Interpretive Disfunction: If the construct has an artificial mind its Knowledge score will reflect a high degree of recall and calculating ability, but many constructs lack the basic social experience to understand what pieces of observed information mean. They might, for example, not understand the difference between a child dragging a child-shaped doll behind it along the ground and a parent dragging a child along the ground. This is often what makes the creature a horror rather than just an interesting anomaly.

Power source: Artificial beings may not necessarily eat or breathe but they do need to run on something—electricity, photovoltaic cells, chemosynthesis, photosynthesis, nutrient slurry, etc. The power source may be external, internal or (as in the case of rechargeable batteries) both.

Short-circuit: Electronic artificials will generally be built water-tight but will take standard damage each round that liquid reaches their internal systems.

Processing damage: Any time an artificial with an electronic brain goes into negative health, they must make a Calm check vs the Intensity to avoid also losing a point of Calm. “Mental” disorders picked up by these artificials will be strange and repetitive.


Player Character Artificial Life

Problem-type player characters may elect to start the game as an experimental construct. In this case they may elect to trade any number of points of Appeal (they are often socially awkward or physically distorted, though PC artificials will appear basically human at the start) for any number of points to spend on Agility, Toughness or Perception up to the maximums above.

In addition, Artificial PCs conversant in the skills that created them (whether these are biochemical, mechanical, etc) may attempt to improve themselves during Downtime. To do so, the character cannot throw for a Downtime activity. Note many Downtime tables won’t work for certain kinds of artificials anyway.

To improve Agility, Toughness, Perception or Appeal, roll a d100 on the following table. A PC artificial can gain abilities up to the maximums above this way.

1-Disaster! Something disturbing has occurred. Lose 1 point in the characteristic you were attempting to improve and a point of Calm permanently. (Minimum 0.)

2-69 No results yet—try again later.

70-93 You realize this isn’t going to work early on in your modifications, choose an ordinary Downtime activity you can perform and roll there instead.

94-95 You can’t leave this half-done but you’re missing something important—lose one point of Cash and gain one point in the characteristic you’re attempting to improve. If your Cash is already zero you can’t make this modification until you get more Cash and are at -1 to the stat you were attempting to improve. If you do get more Cash the improvement is automatic at the next Downtime.

96-98 Gain a point in the characteristic you’re attempting to improve and make a Cash check vs a 4 or else lose a point of Cash. If your Cash is already zero and you lose Cash you can’t make this modification until you get more Cash, but if you do, it’s automatic at the next Downtime.

99-00 Gain a point in the characteristic you’re attempting to improve.

Help get Demon City out here

This Fucking Town

I live in downtown Los Angeles and this is all true.

Downtown LA is literal Raymond Chandler territory. A sign over a urinal near here says "Charles Bukowski pissed here". Mickey Cohen, too. Blade Runner is supposed to be set in downtown LA.

A place of desperate souls, inches from Skid Row. On weekends the sidewalks are a 4d maze of taco trucks and people trying to get into nightclubs. Hipster clothing stores arrive and die like mice in the cages at the CDC. Grown men commute on skateboards past fashion models heading up to the big agencies on 5th street. Sirens constantly. The easiest way to avoid getting stared at by security is to get them to stare at the guy with the MS13 face tattoo instead.

Last week I headed to the bar for a stiff drink.

"Say are you Zak Sabbath?" said the barman. A porn fan, I figured. I allowed that I was and began arranging the paragraphs in the How do you get in to porn? speech in my head. "I love I Hit It With My Axe!" he said.

"Oh yeah?" I asked "Are you rolling?"

"Yeah, 5e!" he said "I just got a group together!"

That's not so weird. It takes all kinds.

Then last night I'm in a whole other bar down here.

This bar is one of the oldest in the city, but also a Pokemon gym. The kid behind the bar is the champion, he takes out customers left and right--they have no idea it's their bartender kicking their asses.

"How's your game going?" he says. He's talking about Demon City. I show him some of the art on my phone.

"What's that?" says the other bartender.

"He's making a game! Like a tabletop game!"

This was not the conversation I had intended to have with my bartenders.

"Oh yeah?" says the second bartender "Me and my dad are working on an RPG! A kinda Bronze Age thing!"

He tells me about the dice mechanics. I tell him I got the idea for my game working on the new edition of Vampire, he tells me he was really into Werewolf.

At this point the stripper I'm waiting for comes in.

"Good luck with your game, dude!" says the bartender as she rolls up. Very loud.

"Oh your working on a game?" she says, "I have a friend who's trying to get me to play....Pathfinder?--is it good?"

Jesus, I think, can't a man have a drink in this town without having to talk about goddamn Dungeons & Dragons?
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New Year New Gigacrawler

Longtime readers and clever postscavenging souls will remember Gigacrawler--the claustrophobic multigenre sci-fi dungeoncrawl based on an idea by me with crowdsourced content from the entire internet.

Well, happy to say, James Teleleli has picked it up and got running with it and is doing new and interesting stuff. His work has always been extremely creative with a nice literary bent. Check out what he's been up to...
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Creepy Repeaters

Looking at the use of language in horror.

This text was created by feeding in the entire script of the Silence of the Lambs film, removing every line that didn't include the word "Clarice", and rearranging them in order of length.

It makes a nice little treatise--or christmas tree--on how much Lecter loves to say her name (perhaps because you have to bear your teeth and bite the air just to say it)--and the uses he puts it to.

Clarice.

Hey, Clarice.

Brave Clarice.

Well, Clarice?

Goodbye, Clarice.

Clarice M Starling.

Hot damn, Clarice.

Not "just", Clarice.

Thank you, Clarice.

Good evening, Clarice.

Clarice M. Good morning.

You're very frank, Clarice.

Yes, he did. Clarice Starling.

I'll help you catch him, Clarice.

Clarice, phone. It's the guru.

Where were you going, Clarice?

What became of your lamb, Clarice?

First principles, Clarice. Simplicity.

No. It is your turn to tell me, Clarice.

I'm Clarice Starling. I'm with the FBl.

I have no plans to call on you, Clarice.

And how do we begin to covet, Clarice?

Our Billy wasn't born a criminal, Clarice.

That was an especially nice touch, Clarice.

How did you feel when you saw him, Clarice?

Look deep within yourself, Clarice Starling.

What did you see, Clarice? What did you see?

Clarice. They're waiting for you. Watch your step.

Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice?

I've been in this room for eight years now, Clarice.

Yes or no, Clarice? Poor little Catherine is waiting.

If I help you, Clarice, it will be "turns" with us too.

Why, Clarice? Did the rancher make you perform fellatio?

Good morning. Dr Lecter, my name is Clarice Starling.

Oh, Clarice, your problem is you need to get more fun out of life.

I don't imagine the answer is on those second-rate shoes, Clarice.

I've waited, Clarice, but how long can you and old Jackie Boy wait?

Nice to meet you, Clarice. You can hang your coat up there if you like.

Clarice Starling and that awful Jack Crawford have wasted far too much time.

Clarice, doesn't this random scattering of sites seem desperately random, like the elaborations of a bad liar?

Below is a very condensed but surprisingly coherent remix of Lovecraft's original Call of Cthulhu story created by removing every sentence that doesn't have the word "Cthulhu" in it. The overall effect is to get rid of almost everything ordinary or dull in the story and reveal a very effective imagism at the core of the writing. Lovecraft seemed to not want to waste his invented word on any merely scene-shifty sentence.



Once before, it appears, Professor Angell had seen the hellish outlines of the nameless monstrosity, puzzled over the unknown hieroglyphics, and heard the ominous syllables which can be rendered only as “Cthulhu”; and all this in so stirring and horrible a connexion that it is small wonder he pursued young Wilcox with queries and demands for data.

This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway.

 He talked of his dreams in a strangely poetic fashion; making me see with terrible vividness the damp Cyclopean city of slimy green stone—whose geometry, he oddly said, was all wrong—and hear with frightened expectancy the ceaseless, half-mental calling from underground: “Cthulhu fhtagn”, “Cthulhu fhtagn”.

Hieroglyphics had covered the walls and pillars, and from some undetermined point below had come a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic sensation which only fancy could transmute into sound, but which he attempted to render by the almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, “Cthulhu fhtagn”.

From Dunedin the Alert and her noisome crew had darted eagerly forth as if imperiously summoned, and on the other side of the earth poets and artists had begun to dream of a strange, dank Cyclopean city whilst a young sculptor had moulded in his sleep the form of the dreaded Cthulhu.

There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration.

I had largely given over my inquiries into what Professor Angell called the “Cthulhu Cult”, and was visiting a learned friend in Paterson, New Jersey; the curator of a local museum and a mineralogist of note.

They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them.

That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth.

These words had formed part of that dread ritual which told of dead Cthulhu’s dream-vigil in his stone vault at R’lyeh, and I felt deeply moved despite my rational beliefs.

What seemed to be the main document was headed “CTHULHU CULT” in characters painstakingly printed to avoid the erroneous reading of a word so unheard-of.

Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency.

I suppose that only a single mountain-top, the hideous monolith-crowned citadel whereon great Cthulhu was buried, actually emerged from the waters.

Here were new treasuries of data on the Cthulhu Cult, and evidence that it had strange interests at sea as well as on land.

Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young.

The carven idol was great Cthulhu, but none might say whether or not the others were precisely like him.

The two sounds most frequently repeated are those rendered by the letters “Cthulhu” and “R’lyeh”.

After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.

The chant meant only this: “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

d10 Awful Things To Say When Something Bad Happens To Their Skin

A lot of horror is just in how you say it.

1, It darkens and curls off like a leaf in a fire, batwing-shaped

2, It begins to drag and strip away in peals. like when tissue paper gets wet

3, It explodes in small, filthy yellowed bubbles that sag in on themselves instead of pop

4, It begins to run and then drip the way plastic melts, hanging in long hanging drops

5, It turn drier and tighter, ripping like paper showing red underneath

6, The veins and arteries in your arm pulse and writhe with something that isn't your blood

7, It's as if you're wrapped in some synthetic fabric that doesn't breathe but there's nothing there

8, A meniscus forms, like an algae, it feels like someone else's skin all around yours

9, There's a hot and cold like a needle or a staple's punched in and then dragged around your neck muscle while still anchored

10. You know, cherry pie filling? It feels like that, warm, and the cherries are made of saliva
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Advanced GMing stuff: Getting Cozy

One of the most fun things in games, but one of the things it's most difficult to give solid advice about, is campaign-specific, slow-burn plot twists. Like: Leia is Luke's sister in Jedi.

Game products and game bloggers thrive on modular ideas that can be plugged into any old game with specific characteristics (You got a desert? I got a scorpion cult! etc). But in order to get a really good, really slow-twist you have to know that specific campaign really well.

So the best you can do is dance around it, but I'm gonna dance around this one: The Cozy.

i don't know who drew this

The Cozy

The Cozy is--, in murder-fiction lingo, the counterpart of the hard-boiled detective story. Murder She Wrote, Agatha Christie, etc Typically:

• It happens in an isolated, pleasant community instead of in a city.
• The murder isn't a part of a larger theme of corruption, it's some specific old grudge.
• The tone is light.
• Not a lot of action.
• Lots of ladies, often elderly, often kicking ass.
• Tone is light, not a lot of sex and violence.
• Bringing the suspect in is largely a matter of puzzle-solving.
• A relatively clear list of suspects, like in Clue.
• All of them are interesting, eccentric people, many friendly and pleasant.

The last three are the ones I want to focus on here as essential: the action of figuring out whodunit from a list of suspects. The rest is relatively easy to do (or not do) in any game.

Properly done, this can destabilize your campaign worse than Death Frost Doom or Broodmother Sky Fortress.

While there is no doubt at this moment a child being born who will stitch together a hyperfocused cozy-specific one-shot system, I am more interested in the cozy murder as an emergent revelation late in your game. OSR-style, this isn't about reproducing a story in which a cozy murder happens, it's about reproducing what a cozy murder and subsequent investigation would be like from the pov of the characters.

That is: you play for months or years, the players get truly comfortable and cozy and then, all of a sudden, a murder. And this brings on a revelation in the campaign.

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The first thing you need, which requires mostly patience, is at least 4 NPCs. You don't need or want to create them all at once.

These need to be long-running NPCs that are organically in the campaign. There will inevitably be some, but this is easier in systems where friendly NPCs are part of the mechanics of the game, like FASERIP or Night's Black Agents (or Demon City, which made me think to write this post)--my years-long D&D game has maybe 2 at the moment, going on the your NPCs suck and are going to die principle. 

They have to be NPCs that the players remember. 

If you don't have four yet, you'll have to slowly introduce them over the course of several sessions. This may take time. How? I cannot tell you that, that's why this is 'Advanced GM Shit' it depends on where your campaign is at.

Second thing is: one of them is a victim. Now this doesn't necessarily mean you have to off them, it could just mean that they have to be the victim of something, it could just be someone clearly threatening to murder them, like sending messages, etc.  

They do have to be an NPC that you could let die if the PCs don't do something. Unlike the step above, this is easier in systems where friendly NPCs aren't part of the mechanics of the game--because then you're not taking away a resource a player "paid" for. In that case the NPC definitely needs to be threatened rather than outright dead.

Third thing is: another one of them is the murderer. Just as the victim needs to be someone the campaign could do without, this needs to be someone you could see being bad (or, conversely, it turns out the victim was bad). 

They do not have to obviously be related right now.

Fourth thing is: seed the grudge into the game. You may not even have to--it may already be in there. Players tend to disregard the inner lives and desires of NPCs--all you need is a reason for one to dislike the other. A competition for someone's affection (a PC?), an opportunity lost to a rival, a potential opportunity snatched away, whatever.

Seed the grudge during a session about a different thing, long before the players even expect a murder coming on. This is advanced GM stuff--it requires patience.

The more the grudge relates to a revelation about past events in the campaign, the better. Like if you find out the tavern where the PCs kept getting hired was secretly feeding secrets to the evil lichpriest all along.

Fifth thing: give all the non-victim NPCs plausible motives for murder and reasons to act suspicious. Give them things they want to do and don't want anyone else to know about, give them reasons to mistrust the PC investigators.

Sixth thing: isolate the suspects and victim. Create a situation where only the 4 NPC suspects--or the suspects and PCs--are present. You know the kind of thing: a quiet island, a dinner party, a wedding, whatever. All the NPCs--possibly from disparate backgrounds--will need to be there, it may be the first time they every appear in the same place at the same time.

Magic and superpowers make this a little hinky--there are ways to kill people from across a continent. If your campaign has these features, find a psychic or wizard who can assure PCs that the killer is in this room. Or something.

The dense social atmosphere and the contained nature of the problem are what distinguish the cozy from the typical noir murder--once the murderer could be any number of unknown people then you've created a much more open-ended problem which requires more procedural solutions to identify and eliminate suspects. By guaranteeing the murderer is someone on the island, you clearly cut the players' work out for them.

Last thing: enact the crime and give the players a reason to solve it. The reason can be that they are the prime suspects otherwise.

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