Under A Ruined Mall: Weird Occultronic Flora and Candlesnuffers

Planning out the dungeon for Gygax 75 Challenge using the weekend prompts from #RPGaDAY2020:

SHADE & light

The dungeon is the underground structures below where the mall used to be, amidst the ruins of the cyberpunk dystopia. A bunch of these steps are not done but that's fine, the Gygax 75 booklet specifically says that unfinished stuff each week is ok and you just move on and come back to it later, citing Hemingway's technique of ending writing sessions in the middle of a sentence so it's easy to start up again when you come back to it.

Tasks:

i. "Describe the entrance to the dungeon in 7-10 words".

Collapsed ramp into parking garage overgrown with metallic thorns.

ii. "Set aside at least one page of your journal for a point-to-point map."

I did this as well as drawing a quick sketch of the overall structure for myself just to keep the relative locations of things straight in my head. Also I'll probably run it as a pointcrawl anyway.

iii. "For each level, include d6+6 rooms/areas and connect them"

iv. "Include d3+1 ways up or down per level"

v. "Come up with three themes (one per level). Roll d3+2 for each to generate a budget"

So each level has some randomly-determined numbers. I rolled em all and kept track in a table:

Dungeon Level:	Parking Garage	Subway	Sewers and Undercity
Rooms/Areas:	12	9	10
Exits:	3	2	2
Theme Budget:	3	5	3

The themes for each level--if this is an introductory dungeon in this setting then I want it to explore some of the core aesthetics of the setting.

Level one: the parking garage. Theme: cursed vegetation. The occult calamity did all sorts of weird things, but one of the most omnipresent is the fusion of electronics with nature. Wiresnakes, electric berries, metallic thorns. The parking garage, being the level closest to the surface, will have the most contact with the "natural" world above and so will be overgrown and infested with weird occultronic flora and fauna.

Level two: the subway. Theme: technocultists. This is a way to explore the "occult" part of the setting. There is opportunity for some truly strange imagery, not just hooded figures and electric devil skeletons but also rituals and bargains and maybe an actual evil computer. Plus maybe the cultists are in the subway area because the connection to "transit" is important--are they trying to get somewhere else? Bring something here? Change something?

Level three: the undercity and sewers. Theme: shade and light (ha, there's the #RPGaDAY2020 prompts!). I'm basing this on my memory of the Seattle Underground Tour, of the city underneath the new one built on top. A cyberpunk dystopia absolutely would have layers of old buildings at the bottom. This idea of a huge futuristic neon world sitting on top of the ruins of the past literally left in the dark is very evocative. I was thinking things like areas of magical darkness, and bottomless pits, and will-o-the-wisps-but-they're-tiny-drones, and some kind of creature called a "candlesnuffer".

vi. "Make a list of 11 different monsters and place them".

TODO but for a start, there's: wiresnakes, technocultists, electric devil skeletons, candlesnuffers, wispdrones, rats, sewercrawlers, underdwellers, memory ghosts, empty spines, and man-eating plants.

vii. "Spread d6 features throughout the dungeon."

I rolled 4.

viii. "For each room/area, note whether there is treasure."

TODO

ix. "Name three wondrous items and locate them in the dungeon."

What kind of stuff can I pull from the source material to use here?

x. "Spend any remaining theme budget adding detail."

What kinds of sensory details fit into the areas of this map? And specific things to see?

Extra Credit:

"Map out all three levels on graph paper."

No that's hard let me just do a pointcrawl.

"Create a wandering monster table."

11 slots, probably different from the ones I stocked the dungeon with in step vi. WELP time to reskin a bunch of random monsters from the old books.

Lots of things to come back to!

/\/\U%2D00/\/\: #RPGaDAY2020 6 - Forest

Today's #RPGaDAY2020 prompt is

Forest

I've been doing the Gygax 75 and have been developing a post-apocalyptic post-cyberpunk setting. The challenge guides you to flesh out a dungeon map after making a general local area for your PCs to explore, but I wanted to flesh out another area of the map. Here's the description I wrote before:

Malfunctioning Solar Forest South edge of map. I read somewhere that in the future we'd have fake trees covered in solar panel leaves that rotate to face the sun, atop trunks full of filters that remove CO2 and toxins from the air and produce algae. This forest's broken though. And full of wiresnakes.

This leaves us with a couple of key questions we can use to flesh out this area:

Why is the forest malfunctioning?

In principle, the solar leaves themselves could still function. However, the servos that rotate them toward the sun have rusted through due to lack of maintenance. Also, wires and connectors have come loose to to scavenger, animal and occult activity. And some of the trees are just engulfed, ironically, in real vegetation. The vast majority of the batteries that store charge from the solar trees have been looted or broken. The air filter and algae pool systems have also failed.

What are the consequences?

Clouds of toxic gases hang in the forest like mist, and the algal bloom has gotten so out of control that there are areas of noxious slime. Some of them are corrosive. Some of them, perhaps, sentient.

Many of the wires here became wiresnakes after the occult calamity. They lie dormant, hungry for energy. Other creatures live in this forest, eating the algae and the twisting metallic vines and electric berry shrubs that have reclaimed and integrated with the artificial forest. Things like rats and pigeons and cyberowlbears. Predators too: lazerhawks and wild dogs.

What can people do here?

It's a place to gather resources. The various kinds of algae probably have uses, as do foraged foods(?) like electric berries. It'll be hard to find any charged batteries, but some might not have been looted, especially deeper in the forest. The solar leaves themselves are absolutely still usable. And if you had some unfathomable use for a whole bunch of wiresnakes, this forest has got you covered.

It's also a place of power. As one of the locales where the natural world has fused most completely with occult computing, technocultists and reality-hackers come here to perform rituals and commune with the Web.

Why would the PCs come here?

Here's some hooks and rumours:

1. Technocultists kidnapped an old man and took him to the solar forest.
2. The old control centre in the middle of the forest still has fully charged, giant power cells.
3. Young Fila swears they saw an owlbear climbing a solar tree.
4. Doc needs 20 live wiresnakes for a thing. Don't ask.
5. A reality-hacker calling herself /\/\U%2D00/\/\ is offering a way to jack into the Web without getting a virus, by hooking up to a specific solar tree.
6. On the summer solstice, all the solar trees wake up again and everyone can charge their batteries--but the creatures are all really agitated.

Artifical forests with cyber-occult wildlife are cool.

2d6 Electric Devil Skeletons: Gygax 75 Challenge Week 2

I've been working through Ray Otus' Gygax 75 rpg design challenge, making a post-apocalyptic setting where an occult calamity brought a cyberpunk dystopia to ruin (and it takes place about 150 years after the cyberpunk setting a friend's making for gygax75).

SPOILERS FOR PLAYERS

Tasks for Week 2:

i. "Get a sheet of hex paper."

I drew one by hand in a children's lined exercise book. 17x13 hexes, points to the sides. Will probably redraw on a different scale in Hex Kit.

ii. "One settlement of significant size."

The Dolmens. Central. Based on a dangerous area in Sean's gygax setting that features recently-built megalithic structures. Well several generations later they aren't recent anymore and the area isn't dangerous anymore--people just live in amongst these ramshackle stone slab lean-tos.

iii. "Two other settlements."

Trading Post. West edge of map. Situated conveniently between several large settlements, this village of tents and market stalls is a great place to arrange a meeting, get mods repaired, fill up on fresh water and greasy vendor food, and hear rumours from other parts of the world.

Wind Farm. North northeast. You got to charge up your powercells somewhere. Rusty old blades spin atop patched-up towers. This is like a community garden--everyone maintains it because everyone uses it. Doesn't stop some people from trying to own it though.

iv. "One major terrain feature."

Malfunctioning Solar Forest. South edge of map. I read somewhere that in the future we'd have fake trees covered in solar panel leaves that rotate to face the sun, atop trunks full of filters that remove CO2 and toxins from the air and produce algae. This forest's broken though. And full of wiresnakes.

v. "One mysterious site to explore."

Memory Garden. East. This is like a graveyard, but there are no bodies and the markers are things. Old coats and handwritten notes, abstract sculptures and grafitti and bicycle wheels with candy wrappers tied on the spokes. Nobody knows how it started, but tradition dictates that visitors leave a memory for someone or some event gone by. The memory guardians ensure that the esoteric traditions are followed.

vi. "One main dungeon entrance."

Abandoned Parking Garage. Southeast. Amongst the ruins of a cyberpunk sprawl there's a way to get into the old parking garage system that served the downtown megamall and associated office tower blocks. It probably connects to sewer systems and old subway tunnels that haven't been used in over a century. Early survivors probably stashed things down there, but people and creatures and other, nastier, things have moved in probably.

regarding scale.

I drew it with 3-mile hexes in mind but the scale of things doesn't seem right so I'll probably redraw with the recommended 1-mile hexes.

extra credit.

"Pimp your map."

I didn't do anything to my physical map but I'll mess around with Hex Kit. I wanted more stuff on the map though I added another area:

The Dominos. An area of old residential towers that have collapsed in such a way that it reminds folk of tumbled dominos. Its surrounded by dunes of grey ash--the eroded remains of concrete and ashphalt. Somewhere in the grey wastes is an enormous abandoned arcology-pyramid with a huge spherical chunk missing out the side.

"Create a random encounters table."

Hell yeah. I used the old advice of "2 is always a dragon and 12 is always a wizard", interpreted through this setting lens.

2d6	Encounter	Description
2	Cryoleviathan.	Sleeping. It hoards power sources, and collects people. It puts them into the hundreds of cryogenic pods inside of its body.
3	Ritual circle.	Unholy computing stuff is wired all wrong. In the centre of the circle, someone is wearing a cyberhelm, jacked into the beyond.
4	Patrolling fascist drone.	Will beat anyone who isn't an upstanding citizen of New Haven (which stopped existing over a century ago).
5	Technocultists.	1d6+1 cultists on the hunt for materials. They need blood and power.
6	Wiresnakes.	2d4 hide somewhere they could be stepped on. Attracted to power sources: they want to attach their prong-teeth and suck them dry.
7	Travelers.	2d4-1 fellow survivors. Wary of strangers. Don't want no trouble. Will trade if reaction roll goes well.
8	Riders.	1d6+1 antagonistic folk. Probably on horses, though 1 in 6 might have an electric mountain bike. They don't believe in laws and want to take stuff.
9	Electric Devil Skeletons.	They want skin to cover their chrome. 2d6 skeletons lurk here.
10	Cyberghouls.	1d6+2 people who modded so much they've lost their minds.
11	An abandoned campsite.	They left in a hurry--stuff's still lying around. A corpse is in one of the tents; it's missing its blood.
12	Ritual hacker.	They're setting up equipment and aim to call a rogue AI for "favours".

Technoccult: Gygax 75 Challenge Week 1

A couple of months ago Ray Otus released the Gygax 75 Challenge, a 5-week workbook guiding one through making a small campaign setting based on the advice of an article Gary Gygax published in a zine less than a year after D&D came out.

It looks super fun so I printed it out and bound it with a pamphlet stitch and flipped through and saw a one-line suggestion that it could be a cyberpunk setting instead of standard fantasy. I shared my excitement about this with Sean Smith (creator of such wonders as Quarrel & Fable, Gully-Toads, and Exuviae), who it turns out had -also- decided to do the Gygax 75 with a cyberpunk setting.

WELL

I decided it would be fun to do a setting linked to his.  Mine takes place 100 years after a calamity destroys whatever cyberpunk civilization existed, and might even feature the same location as a ruin. Fuck knows if this will actually realize in that way but it's a hell of a good idea to start off running with.

What would the the post-apocalypse be like after a cyberpunk future?

Anyway, Gygax 75 Week 1:

i. "Get/create a notebook." This blog is it!  also the simplenote app on my phone. I did consider using a physical notebook and I might do that for maps, but I find it easier to capture ideas in text digitally.

ii. "Develop your pitch." So it's a kind of post-cyber-occult-pocalypse. Here goes:

    1. A century ago, the technologic future suffered an occult calamity.

    2. Humanity scavenges for survival in the ruins of a cyperpunk dystopia.

    3. Electric devil skeletons animated by technocultists lurk in collapsed arcologies and burnt-out server farms.

    4. There is a belief that if the dark ritual that caused the calamity can be discovered, it can be reversed. Not everyone wants this.

    5. Power sources are valuable because old cyber-tech still exists and can be repaired and run; batteries are sparingly traded for other goods; "if it runs a current it's currency".

    6. Forests of broken solar-panel trees snaked through with exposed wires; vast expanses of grey ash made of former office tower blocks.

    7. Technoccult magicks are accomplished through rituals that blend blood with computing; sorcery is just another kind of hacking; demons are indistinguishable from rogue AIs.

iii. "Gather your sources of inspiration." Not to be viewed by players, so close your eyes I guess.

    1. Mad Max series (George Miller). Post-apocalyptic settings full of freaks in gonzo costumes roaming around a ruined landscape owe much to Mad Max.

    2. Dangerous Days (Perturbator). The visual aesthetics of dark synthwave are just right on in general but Dangerous Days in particular--I mean there's one image that literally says "SATAN IS A COMPUTER"

    3. Polybius (urban legend). The idea of a satantic mind-control arcade game released as a psychological experiment in portland in the 80s is THE BEST. also other games where demonic forces bleed into the real world like Pony Island and Undertale

    4. The neon graveyard (Las Vegas). What would the bright neon cityscape of a cyberpunk dystopia look like post-collapse? I reckon it'd be like the vegas neon graveyard.

    5. The Matrix trilogy (the Wachowskis). Specifically the real world outside the matrix with that wild underground city and giant vat-walls full of dreaming battery-humans.

    6. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott). What if this society collapsed? Those giant pyramids and video screens, dark and abandoned?

    7. the occult origins of personal computing (Al Robertson). This cyberpunk author has spoken on the idea that the pioneers of the internet, virtual reality, and mass technology were inspired by occult and psychedelic movements. Never mind if it's true or not, that idea's cool as hell.

extra credit. "Assemble a mood board" yes good

That'll do for now I think! Maybe a hack of Mutant Future could run this pretty good.