YB107b for Mothership

More mothership content

yeah

pic 2 download

etc

G+ Salvage - Cyberpunk Hack and DCC Adventures

Putting up PDFs of shit I only ever done did post on G+ - in both cases click the picture and get a PDF

CYPERPUNK 2020 POST APOC HACK

Dungeon Crawl Classics Adventures

Now fuck off yeah

Tenum Station

MOTHERSHIP SEEMS PRETTY GOOD

so I did adventure for it - click picture get pdf

Prince of the Woods

They brood in the dappled twilight of the old forests, beyond the twisted secret warrens of thicket and undergrowth. The wolves and deer, the owls and badgers bend their knees in fealty, unbreakable til the pitted iron crown is destroyed. Insects and reptiles lend their ear, and do not take his counsel lightly, but owe no loyalty to the prince - they are apart, and have their own agendas.

1d6	Locals know Him as…
1	Green George
2	Arthur of the Oak
3	Tree-Speaker
4	Long-Jack
5	Goblin King
6	Lord of Teeth

1d6	The rumour goes…
1	The crown he wears is the first crown ever forged, and it put humans on top - in charge of nature, and that’s why the animals do his bidding.
2	The forest? Used to be a kingdom, and the edge marks the boundry. The king were reduced to a mere prince, or was it a prince robbed of being a king? Regardless, he now rules the animals and holds court with them. He’ll sleep at last once his throne is returned.
3	He doesn’t rule the animals, he is the animals, get me?
4	If it weren’t for him the forest’d die.
5	He’s held in thrall by a tree what seduced him - and still is, waiting for her to marry - why else is he a prince and not a king, eh?
6	He’s actually a witch with a glamour, and so is the court of his animals - they can’t pretend to be lizards and bugs, because they’re not warm like people or witches.

1d6	Conflict Arises…
1	The Prince is at war with the insects and lizards - you can hear them fightin’ in the woods.
2	A wolf is leading a coup, and both sides are trying to drag the humans into the conflict.
3	The Prince would see his domain expanded - the forest goes rapidly, cutting off the local village from (something essential, or entirely)
4	The Prince demands oath of fealty from domesticated animals, thinning the herd, causing a potential food crisis.
5	The Prince has killed the charcoal burners - not that the villagers care about them, but who’s next?
6	The Prince has stolen a child to take his place - but isn’t he supposed to be immortal?

Folkloric monsters and shit. Stat is however you please, you can change the ending of the story through the stats I guess. My players would probably just burn the fucking forest down. Also he could just be an Arboreal Vampire to mess with people/

Hunters & Killers

A dungeon contains two main things, as I see it - monsters and treasure. One stops (easy) access to the other, and so you trick, maim and murder the monsters to get the treasure - especially when you're using gold-as-xp (as you should). Whilst this is obviously pretty simplistic, ignoring all subtlety and additional functionality, I'm looking more at the relationship between the players and the monsters here. Removing or negating them is a means to an end, which might mean you basically don't need to worry as much about who/what/why - although I still do this, as do most DMs worth their salt - their weaknesses and pressure-points are often entwined with their history, relationships etc, enriching the game-play.

Which is just a complicated way of saying you kill them because they're in the way.

I'm currently thinking about a game wherein you are (primarily) monster hunters, rather than slayers. This entirely changes how the players relate to the monsters - they are the driving purpose, they are the main event. Consequently, how we as DMs work with the monsters has to change to reflect this, thematically, in presentation and mechanically.

(It'll also change the XP calculations - though I'd still probably link it to "treasure", but the treasure being the reward money for claiming the bounty)

Thematics

There's a couple of schools of thought to be applied here - what does the monster mean, or represent*. Integrating monsters into the (super)natural fauna of the land gives them context, a place, relationships with the rest of the system but simultaneously runs the risk of making them a bear or wolf with magic powers, which is a bit shit. This links heavily into presentation, discussed in that section. However, you could argue that animals are not monsters, that animals are an expected element, a known quantity. Monsters are (in my view) essentially aberrations of the natural order.

Taking on this concept of the monster as an aberration, we can play with some pretty fun ideas - they represent a wrongness in the area, whether that be social or environmental - the spirit of your murdered brother, or woodland furies emerging to slaughter woodsmen. With this, you introduce the concept of having two immediate routes to solve the issue - hunt and kill the monster (treat the symptom) or attempting to solve the issue causing the aberration in the first place (cure what ails). This concept is used in The Witcher 3, which is a really good game you should try out - although you do sometimes end up fighting the beastie after solving the problem, albeit in some modified way, such as a weakened state, with greater foreknowledge, or with some form of specialized preparation informed by the root cause - put the spirit to rest with their original murder weapon, or prepare an oil with the weeds atop their unhallowed resting place.

Presentation

The monsters themselves must be presented according to their themes - the must fall into place with their respective systems, whether this is naturalistic "monsters" having nesting and food, or the aberrant monsters presented in such a manner to reflect their nature, and the ill they represent. Either approach can give the campaign a more "folky" feel, relying on the local population, their legends and rumours, a lot of spent in the rural areas rather than the cities and towns. 

Divorced from this, the monsters must be capable of being hunted. This can mean innate stealth, necessitating tracking, great speed or flight, requiring some manner of trapping them or attacking them at rest, or just being them so tough and terrifying that a cunning plan is needed to take them down.

Mechanics

The above points should generally somehow be reflected mechanically - with a lot of these, as with most OSR & OSR adjacent stuff, is in rulings and presentation rather than encoded into rules specifically.

A principal challenge with a hunted monster is ensuring the actual confrontation is interesting - I'm sure we've all experienced the players blitzing a single powerful opponent to death in a single round. HP Bloat is not enough to give this feeling of a genuinely dangerous monster worthy of hunting - elements such as speed and stealth, as with presentation, are key. Tapping into the folky nature of the game, having very specific weakness (which, of course, can be discovered by characters investigating sufficiently) are a both a classic element of such legends, as well significantly toughening up the monster itself.

Of course, an infestation of monsters, rather than a single, powerful creature, entirely side-steps this issue, but changes the entire relationship of the hunt - an extermination rather than a hunt. However, many of the other points above still apply, such as infestation-as-aberration, especially in the case that the infesting creature is otherwise normal in many respects.

*Not that I generally ascribe meaning to anything in my games in terms of real-world stuff, but more a sense of history or integration, or going the other way, a negation or lack of history/integration, and indeed, meaning.

I Ain't Dead

Just busy. Also, if you don't know:

FEVER SWAMP

    FEVER SWAMP

        FEVER SWAMP

            FEVER SWAMP

                 FEVER SWAMP

Is my book you can now buy.

Beyond the Mountains

*Sunday Players Go Away*

Across the Northern border of the Nilfenbergian Empire lies the Petty Kingdoms - each run by a self-styled autocrat, all too aware of their insignificance. It is said the witches have saved them from being absorbed. The truth is the Empire is under threat from the Demon Sultanate. But this is of little interest. The Petty Kingdoms end abruptly with the Mountains. Some call them the Brokejaws. Others the Spinal Peaks. Yet others the Marginal Range. But to most, they are simply the Mountains.

Some small villages lurk in the shadows of these imposing peaks - folk scraping by in the crags and fearful of the creatures that crawl from chasms in the deeper ranges. They have little to trade but furs and warnings.

Beyond the Mountains is ash and ice. A desolate terrible plain, marred only by the broken teeth of buildings long-hidden by the ice and snow, appearing more like dunes after the many years of frostbitten burial.

People once lived in these buildings, but now they live above them, grim scavengers atop their dog-driven sledges, tearing across the dead country, either starving or committing to cannibalism. They know not of the secrets buried beneath them, but whisper to their rare children that things forgotten should stay that way. None will enter the ice-bound city beneath them, and they are right to.

A name forgotten a thousand times, no expedition ever returning to restore the torch of knowledge, the city evoked it's own end, as such things always go. A people enslaved by another, joint in a collective plea for revenge - and so it was when the Riven Wolf heard their plight. The plain was blasted for six hundred days with storms and snow, the wind tearing skin free and stealing children into the sky, their screams lost in the howling, their tears freezing in their eyes, tumbling blind through snow thicker than castles.

Seeking a weapon here is madness - all that could be learned is an end to both the Empire and the Sultanate. Yet the expedition left, and is now sealed in the glacier-riddled city with the creeping horrors.

*TREASURE HERE*

SURVIVOR PACK - 4d4 Humans w/ Spears, Dog-Leather Armour. They fight from the back of Dog Driven Sleds (treat as mounted). Each sled has a team of 6 dogs, and can have 3 men fighting and a fourth driving.

FROST MAD DEAD
The people of the city gathered together to conserve warthm - from each cluster emerged one frozen by the cursed flesh of their peers, forever seeking warmth.
HD 4
AC as CHAIN - HARD FROZEN FLESH
MOV as OLD MAN
ATTACK +4 - 2D8 ICY GRIP (8+ damage freezes random limb - cannot be used until thawed out).
M 7 / 12 IN PRESENCE OF FIRE. OH TO BE WARM AGAIN.
2d6 APPEARING

CHAINED OVERSEER
Before the slaves realised what they had invited, they rose up and bound the overseers in chain. The numbing effect of the chains protected them from the blasting to come.
HD 6
AC as PLATE - MANY CHAINS - MAGIC IS ROUTED INTO CHAINS, HAS NO EFFECT IN 30FT RADIUS
MOV as MAN BEARING GREAT WEIGHT
ATTACK +6 - 2D4 WHIP + SAVE VS ENTANGLE - TAKE NO ACTION UNTIL CHAIN BROKEN. EACH ENTANGLED PERSON REDUCES AC OF OVERSEER BY 1.
M 10 / 3 IN PRESENCE OF SLAVES (That is, anyone dressed in rags)
1D4 APPEARING

SLAVE SPIRIT CONGLOMERATION
So too did the slaves gather for warmth in their rags and chains. They pressed closer and closer until their very souls touched, fusing them together in anguish and fear and regret. The only thing that could drive the result away is the whip of their tormentors.
HD 1
AC as INSUBSTANTIAL - CANNOT BE HARMED WITH PHYSICAL WEAPONS. (Except Whip)
MOV as CRIPPLED HORSE
ATTACK +0 (IGNORES ARMOUR) - SAVE OR 1D8 CON DAMAGE FROM UNEARTHLY COLD.
M 2
1d4 APPEARING

The Last Tower - Mini Adventure

This is from a longer thing what I'm doing, but can basically be dumped anywhere you need a weird wizard-tower. Cool. Could be a nice hex filler?

--

The Last Tower – Rising still, each brick heavily engraved with warding sigils, the spirits of longevity bound within so very tired. From anywhere nearby the top of the tower glints, being made entirely of glass, containing something which seems to call, call, call.

All floors of the tower show signs of very small cuts, everywhere. This is from the golem on floor five.

1. The first floor contains mess and rot. Many have used the base of the Last Tower as their camp, and something is always left behind. A stone trapdoor leads to the basement of the Last Tower, which is flooded, and filled with slime-encrusted black leeches, swirling about in their foulsome pool. Eliminating them would allow you to search the basement to no great effect, bar the corroded metal of prior unfortunates.  There is an illusion here, which shows a well-stocked larder, a trap designed to eliminate casual thieves and determined adventurers alike. A set of stone steps curl up to the second floor. A slender silver gate once blocked the way, but it has been successively torn to shreds by passing mercenaries.

2. The second floor contains portraits, each portrait framed in exquisite white-gold frames. A figure made of wooden splinters hangs from the ceiling. This is the guardian of the room, who will faithfully return the paintings if they are disturbed. Each painting depicts a notable alumni of the college. All are very much alive, and will threaten to blast you with magic should theft be attempted. There are several scorch marks on the floor and walls attesting to the truth of this. Each can cause an elemental blast dealing 5d6 damage once a day. If moved, the splinter golem will replace them to their rightful place, harmless but endlessly reconstructing itself. If stolen and survived, each painting is worth 6000sp. The stairs continue to curl upwards.

3. The third floor is nearly bare, featuring only a glyph set in gold into the floor. Reading the glyph, it is simply a depiction of the creed of the college –

"A light amidst the dark"

The gold is animated to regrow when in this room, and chipping out all of it is laborious and not worth the time taken. 500sp for several days work.

4. The fourth floor contains three sarcophagi, unmarked, constructed of frosted glass. Within each is a blind woman, a bandage covering her face. The founder of the college decreed they be kept here in perpetuity. Each is long dead but perfectly preserved, untouched by time. This effect emanates from the sarcophagi, but only functions on the women. Attempting to interfere with them or the sarcophagi will awaken the golem on the floor above.

5. The fifth floor contains a golem, constructed to resemble an octopus, each tentacle made up of razorblades. If the women are undisturbed, it rests, hanging from the ceiling, swaying gently, whistling as the blades slice the air. If they are distributed, it will savagely kill everyone in the tower before weaving a new sarcophagus, gently caressing the dead women with its razor blades. It cannot leave the tower unless the women do.

HD 8 AC 18 +4 1D8 RAZOR SLASHES 1D10+1 MORALE 12

6. The sixth floor is the Assumed Mausoleum. It marks the supposed death of the founder – he simply vanished and after twenty years was assumed to be dead. All forms of divination have failed to discover anything about what occurred, or her location. All of the goods here are entirely false, and utterly worthless – unless you can convince the buyer of their validity, in which case all the moveable wealth in the room (about a wagon load) is worth 20000sp. It takes the form of exotic silks, precious metals and gems.

7. The seventh floor is filled with star charts, and set about with 4 great lenses, cunningly hidden to stop them being visible from outside. Each one is pointed at a constellation of note:-

The first lens is directed at a constellation which confers luck upon the first viewer, granting them advantage on one roll of their choice. It must be spent within 6 days. The second viewer has poor luck, as the constellation siphons their luck to the original viewer. The GM may force them to roll again and take the lower result at any point for the next 6 days.

The second lens is directed at a constellation which looks really nice.

The third lens is directed at a constellation which renders the first viewer idiotic (2 INT), the second blind and the third deaf. The vampiric constellation feeds on such things.

The fourth lens is directed at no constellation, revealing only inky blackness.

There are no stairs to the eight floor.

8. The eight floor is a chamber of glass, a brilliant gem which randomly emits pulses of powerful, blinding light. (Every d4 rounds). Holding it would burn the hands for 2d6 damage from the sheer intensity of the light. It is an embryonic star, crystallised by unknown processes. The chamber of glass refracts and mutes the light, acting as a containment chamber. It could be worth 10000sp if transported.

The Library

I'm seeing a Library, dour and grey. Not that you can see it from the outside - it floats in the sea of chaos, a bubble of quiet and storage.

The first room, a reception. A ten foot bird-headed figure, silently observing your coming. The head changes species with each visit. Killing it does nothing - it shall return.

Beyond this, things are in flux.

The Atlas of Dead Gods - a black void wherein float the embryonic corpses of gods forgotten. Each has a blank bronze plaque the size of cities attached. If they are named, they are gone, cataloged elsewhere.

Book Finders Office - A wizened old figure atop his floating desk, the Ink Dogs chained to it. Any stolen book will be recovered by this team. One Ink Dog can blank the pages of a book to stop the knowledge escaping. The other barks out one line, forcing the carrier of the book to find the next line and respond.

NarcoScholars Den - The NarcoScholars bend and warp psychedelically. Some are less psychotic than others. They gladly exchange your induced visions for ever more novel narcotics. Just stay a little longer.

Gorestained Pit - The Haruspexes collect life to gut and discern information from. Every living thing is another book, aching to be read. Everything has entrails if you are willing to stretch the definition.

Stitchers Workroom - The Figment Finders stitch stitch stitch tiny fragments, single words in pages, pages into chapters and chapters into books. To the other librarians, they are dull restorers. They know they endlessly weave new works to infiltrate the Library.

Grammar Fiends

(d4 actions is a sentence, judged from beginning of combat. They can be cut short.)
Comma Imp - Can pause two attacks per sentence, allowing the target to take action first.
Period Devil - Negate an action, undoing it's effect. Ends the sentence.
Exclamation Devil - Double a numerical effect.  Ends the sentence.
Noun Fiend - Whatever the noun is their form, inky and sketchy, made of tiny words floating free. Can change once per sentence.
Subject Succubus - Can change the target of a spell or action (where logically possible) a number of times equal to the number of combatants.

Intellectual Contagion.

It was locked away for a good reason.
HD - Highest INT in party.
Damage - Lowest INT in party.

A smokey black cloud of thought, untouchable by action, only hurt by argument. Characters argue against the concept, the GM decides the strength.

1d4 - weak argument.
1d6 - average argument.
1d8 - good argument.
1d10-great argument.
2d6 - crushing argument.

category of contagion
1. political
2. religious
3. social
4. cultural
5. artistic
6. economic.

(For fun/fist fights, make it a view held by a player or the GM)

BRUTAL NECROCRAWL

I quite often come up with stupid ideas for games that I will probably never run. I have a page in my notebook just of these ideas. Whatever.

A DEAD REALM FOR THE UNHALLOWED CORPSES.

A stack of shards of a reality where the dishonoured dead gather. Faces, memories and people fade.
(if a player can't make a session, their character will flicker and fade out of our stack of shards as they become distant.)

When anything dies here, roll 1d4-1. It will raise again in that many days, more horrible, more twisted, more confused. Memories die as you do. A 0 means they do not return.

Players start with d10 memories. Memories are currency and XP here. You can collect them from others, or else kill them and take memories. Players lose 1d6 memories when they die. At 0 memories they lose all tethering, and become hostile NPCs when they raise.

At character creation, all items below 50 sp are 1 memory, 51-150 2 memories and more than that are 3. You must be able to carry it. (Be reasonable with stacking items - 30 arrows are 1 memory for example.)

In play, the cost of items will fluctuate more.

Players can begin with multiple levels, but they must be purchased. These costs are static.

Level	Memories
2	5
3	10
4	20
5+	Previous x 2

The one thing you won't forget - how you died.

The Death…	…and the role
A soldier laid upon a foreign field.	Fighter.
A liar hung at midday.	Specialist.
A witched drowned in trial.	Magic User.
A heathen ripped apart by dogs.	Pyromancer.
A heretic, cast from atop the cathedral.	Cleric
A godless scientist, eaten by their creation.	Stitcher.
A cannibal, stoned by the people.	Ghoul

Players start by breaking out of their sarcophagus. There are multiple branches from here, with portals to individual shards interspersed. Everywhere will lead back to this place, eventually. It is the future ruin of all things.

DATA ROT - HALF REMEMBERED CYBERPUNK ADVENTURES

First, some music.

These are some half-remembered adventure-type things I've run for Cyberpunk 2020. It's weird, in a setting most open to people finding out about things and exploiting them on their own initiative, people are most eager to look for discrete jobs. Something to do with choice paralysis maybe?

Most of these ideas are quite nihilistic and nasty. People with money and power abuse it - if that's not your tone they'll need re-working. May as well talk about what my players got up to whilst we're at it.

My Child is a Prostitute and is Missing

The son of the local *big corp* division has a very specific tastes - exotics - which are people genespliced and modified for animal traits. Women with animal fur, ears, shit like that. The deal is a friend of the characters has a child, who is a prostitute. No big deal so far, but they've gone missing. Search of their home reveals a datapad with the clients booked in - namely a lot of visits from the son mentioned above. There's signs of forced entry, maybe some people who got shot for being in the way of a corporate snatch team. They've been transported to the home of the son, who has:

a) many exotics already, all of whom have been memory-wiped and programmed for loyalty. If you wanted to get really nasty they could have cyberweapons built in, to double up as body guards.

b) his own private surgery at the back of the apartment (located deep into corporate territory, ofc.) wherein the missing child is sedated, awaiting the surgery and the mind-wipe. Obviously, this stuff is very illegal, hence the surgery being in the home.

My players first infiltrated the sex-fur party thanks to the Rocker in the party. They went in the back, brutally murdered the surgeon, and picked up the kid. One player was so disgusted with all this they blew the son's head clean off. This caused a riot of exotics running for the elevator whilst the heavy guys took out the security team that had been dispatched to investigate the band of heavily armed weirdos going into the rich-people tower complex. They ended up escaping via the sewers to avoid pursuit by aerodyne vehicles (basically harrier jump jets, but more helicopter-y.) They were paid in free noodles for life by Asian Juan, the proprietor of Noodlebar, the noodle bar, wherein bars of noodles are served.

The Pharaoh is an ex-military Cyborg Impostor

(this one was inspired by Transmetropolitan #2, which is sick)

Flights of Fantasy Inc. maintain several resorts, which are slices-of-life from distant time periods populated by many many clones. Incredibly rich clients pay huge sums to pretend to be people of power and import in these fantasy worlds.

The issue? A cyborg has gone rogue inside the Ancient Egypt Resort, and nerve-gassing all the clones isn't a cost-effective measure for dealing with. The players are. This cyborg is tooled up to all fuck, with laser eyes, appearance changing camouflage (hence him being to kill the pharaoh clone and replace him) and a secret stash of plastic-body guns he smuggled into the resort.

Payscale will vary depending on how many clones need memory wipes/outright replacements. A flat rate for removing the cyborg is low, but you can keep the body and all the black-ops enhancements he's toting.

The players poisoned his food so much that his cyber-liver couldn't handle. He died messily. Cooking contests between guards were involved.

Bounty: Organ Mule

(offering players quick and easy bounties is a nice way of breaking up the larger, more involved operations. This one is not that)

A corporation is offering 10k for the (live) return of an experimental heart contained within the chest of a carrier, who has since gone rogue, and is selling the heart for 50k, or the highest bidder. They've done this to pay for the medical bills of their brother. They are protected by a pretty solid mercenary team, and have a tunnel to the sewers hidden on the ground floor of the building they are selling from to escape. The leader of the mercenary group is a well known sniper-for-hire. The organ mule is desperate and is making very stupid decisions - even with the money from a sell, about half goes to the mercenary outfit, making this a very temporary fix to her brothers's medicals bill.

The party said 'fuck this' and instead decided to look into other lines of employment.

Drug-Chip Freak-Out Zombies

This can be thrown in anywhere really. Basically, the hot new drug is pumping experience/emotion into your skull via datajack - these blackmarket datajacks being very crude, and very damaging. A drug-den is now a lot of people with cables hanging out the back of their skulls, tended to by drug dealers toting sub-machine guns. If the players decide to fuck with the drug dealers, they've got a very crude, very basic ATTACK program they can use to burn out the brains of the junkies, and use them as attack-zombies. Cheap and nasty, just like the drug-chips. They're pretty shitty combatants but have numbers and covering fire from the drug dealers, so they can be used to quite a horrid effect.

The players killed fucking all of them without remorse.

that's all I can remember right now - at least the ones which are interesting and uniquely cyberpunkish