Adventure Writing Tips feat: Unicorn Meat

So over on twitter (some time ago, because I am slow), Layla (@pandatheist) expressed some sadness over how much adventure design gets lost over time, thanks to the general entropy of internet hobbyist spaces. Since I have a vested interest in spreading good design guides wherever I can, have an adventure soon to be released to the masses, and in another timeline would have spent my life happily getting hand cramps in some monastery scriptorium, I feel it's only fair to do my part.

For each step, just to show that I'm not talking out of my ass, I'll be providing an example of how it was used in Unicorn Meat. (Don't worry, I shan't be giving away all my secrets.) 

 

First, Some Archaeology

This part isn't mine, it's a summary of a now long-gone tumblr post by Rebecca Chenier (author of Blood in the Chocolate), that I luckily wrote down when I had the chance (thereby proving the importance of Layla's original thesis). I've adapted it from my notes so it doesn't match exactly, but it covers the same points. 

 

Rebecca's Four Core Components

• Time - The outside context surrounding the adventure and informing what is going on within it.
• Adversary - A character / group / force that stands in opposition to the players.
• Place - The specific location where the players come into conflict with the Adversary.
• Fantastic element - What it says on the tin.

I find that this sort of setup emerges naturally, for me at least, just by piecing things together. But it remains a helpful reminder that the adventure is a series of moving parts in a greater machine, and all of them are interconnected. The antagonist is motivated by the times they find themselves in. The place is in its current state both by the adversary's actions and the times. The fantastic elements have their fingers in everything.

So, for example, in Unicorn Meat.

• Time - The old aristocracy was overthrown ~50 years prior to the point of play. The farm was re-opened ~20 years ago. The adults vanished 8 months ago.
• Adversary - White-Eyes, charismatic leader of the Bucha gang and now de facto leader of the farm. She's cunning, charismatic, and has already given the players ample reason to hate her (as the Buchas are, by and large, a bunch of violent bullies and have no doubt visited some kind of violence on the PCs and their friends).
• Place - The Backwoods have always been intended as the place that gives off this vibe of "people never should have come here." They're inherently inimical to human habitation and they've been getting worse
• Fantastic element - The unicorns themselves.

And then when tied together:

• The Backwoods have become spiritually polluted thanks to the mass killings of the unicorns (place + fantastic)
• The disappearence of the adults allowed White-Eyes and her gang to gain complete control of the farm (time + adversary)
• The power vacuum after the revolution and the physical isolation of the Backwoods allowed the current operators to both re-open it and to do so in secret (time + place)
• White-Eyes is ordering the continued hunt of unicorns towards unknown ends (adversary + fantastic)

And so on and so forth. You can very easily get a very potent nugget of conflict out of recombining those four points.

That out of the way, on with the show.

 

But what the Fuck Do You Do?

Give players a reason to be at the location and get involved in the conflict there. This will vary. Use "you have a personal enemy here" if you have to, and have everyone list off how this antagonist has wronged them. "Escape the danger" is also a very easy motivation. Remember MICE - Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego.

In Unicorn Meat, the main options are "You have a personal enemy here, also escape the danger." (I did say they were useful!) or "oh fuck we need to find some way to get these kids out of here." Both of them involve finding the key that turns off the containment field, currently in White-Eye's possession. The what and the why are nice and set up. 

 

Steal Everything, Recycle Everything, Remix Everything

You have doubtlessly accumulated a very fine slush pile of unused concepts, striking images, memorable NPCs, and favorite mechanics. Use them liberally and with minimal constraint. Form a pool of ready-to-deploy material and deploy the hell out of it at a moment's notice.

When running adventures, this is a necessary skill to keep things flowing in times when you need improvisation. When designing adventures, this is just the handiest way to fill in blank spots and get yourself unstuck. Plucking something out of one setting and changing it so that it fits in another context is a useful creative exercise.

In Unicorn Meat this typically emerges in small, offhand bits that most people won't get. There's a poster for a movie starring the farm's mascot, Noodle (who is based on a hand-puppet of The Lawful Neutral's) titled "Fuck the King of Space" (a campaign run by Nick Whelan). More substantially, the toxicity mechanic from eating the meat itself is pulled from a very old post of mine about health potions. 

 

The PCs are intruding on a pre-existing conflict

This one is pretty straightforward. A good adventure presents the players with something to do, and there's a lot of things to do when other parties are already doing things. Makes factions and NPCs easy to fill out, because they already have begun acting on their wants and towards their goals.

Or, more directly: Things are going on in the background whether or not the players know about it.

In Unicorn Meat, the farm is right at the cusp of violence between the Buchas and the Church. With White-Eyes in isolation from the rest of the farm, the Buchas are splitting between those who are sticking with White-Eyes, and those who are more in favor of second-in-command Greythorn. The leader of the Nightwatch is missing entirely. Everything is just about to break apart.

 

Detail! Detail! Detail!

You are working within limited space, so make those words count. Paint me a picture, use those sense words, use creative references as shortcuts. One of my personal favorites is describing something in a way that the thing in question is not typically described as, ex Douglas Adams' "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." 

 

Stick to What Can Be Observed

This principle was my workhorse during the SCP days and it has dutifully served me ever since.

Focus your writing on what the characters (or in this case, the players) can directly observe. Save omniscient narration for DM summaries, so that they have a working context of what is going on behind the scenes and why. Keep those bits brief and relevant to the action at hand (Rebecca's four points return!). You're working in limited space anyway.

This method will leave the readers/players with questions and evidence, which they can assemble at their leisure. This is the bonus material, the a-ha moment. Some folks will ignore it all and just go for the superficial read, but people who dig into it more will be rewarded AND referees have the information to actually flesh out these mysteries. It's mystery box avoidance.

An example in Unicorn Meat: there's a certain NPC who has a prominent shelf full of sci-fi paperbacks. Can't miss 'em if you talk to her. Since she is the only person on the farm who is associated with them, if the players happen to find a sci-fi paperback lying around elsewhere, they can connect the dots and know that the NPC was there. It's very simple environmental storytelling, but it can cover a lot of ground other adventures would need clunky box text to exposit.

 

Resource Management Can Be Fun

But! It is only fun if there is a meaningful choice to be made on how you spend the resource. If it only has one effect, it's less fun and more liable to be handwaved (note: I generally hate resource bean counting)

In Unicorn Meat this comes primarily in the form of the MEAT ECONOMY. If you want to buy things - food, tools, ammo, special items, bribes - you need to hunt unicorns. But all of the parts harvested from a unicorn have secondary uses besides as a barter good: meat is your primary means of health and magic restoration. Milk does the same, but is flammable. Bones and hides can be crafted into better armor and weapons. Their shit can be smoked as a hallucinogen.

The same principle can apply to mundane items, too, ammo being my favorite. You can either eat or end a fight quickly, choose wisely.

You Provide Tools, Players Will Provide Solutions

Just dump a bunch of stuff in there. Be generous with gifts. You don't need to have an intended use. Folks will figure something out.

 

It's Okay if Players Don't See Something

This is more or less part 2 of the above point, distributing the cool tools in such a way that their discovery feels organic. Use that environmental storytelling from earlier to your advantage here - drop an important tool somewhere, sprinkle some clues where players can see, and eventually they will tug on those strings. Add a couple that have no clues at all, but if folks are lucky they can stumble on a game-changer.

In Unicorn Meat this most often takes the form of certain encounters or items that can really turn the tide in your favor. Some of them are by chance, some can be puzzled out, some will be difficult to get your hands on

 

Consider the Aftermath

Deep Carbon Observatory had a section in the back describing events that would happen if the players did nothing. I adore that little section and keep it in the forefront of my mind when designing. I keep major variables that players are likely to interact with in mind - the deaths of important monsters or characters, shifts of factional power, special items recovered or world-states achieved, and so on. You don't have to cover every single possible outcome, but a page or two really does help, even if its a one shot.

 

In Summation

It only takes a few major elements and some connective tissue before it starts writing itself.

Fullmetal Alchemist Rewatch Post

As with my prior revist posts (Avatar, Lord of the Rings, Cowboy Bebop), this is disorganized and has no thesis. Spoilers everywhere, naturally. Unlike those prior ones, though, I don't have notes and there's been several months (by this point, nearly a year) of downtime since the viewing. Shoulda been more on the ball, but so it goes.

**

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood was another formative work for me (as these revisits seem to be trending towards). Right time, right place. Watched it as it aired in 2009-2010 (which, if we are paying attention to timelines, came right after Avatar wrapped up), read the first couple volumes of the manga at the library, and didn't get around to watching the 2003 anime until last year, after finishing my most recent (fourth) Brotherhood rewatch.

Going forward, when I say FMA that is in reference to Brotherhood or elements shared between the two. Presume that as the default. If it's specific to the 2003 adaptation, I'll call it 2003.

**

God this show still looks so fucking good.

**

Lots of anime have the "did you get to that part" shibboleth, and against all odds FMA does it twice. And while I know I said there would be spoilers up top it still feels unfair to say precisely what they are, just in case someone has managed to miss nearly 20 years of spoilers.

And if you know, you know. Critically, there's not a whole lot to say. It speaks very well for itself.

**

Anime often has this thing of having a phrase that keeps getting repeated but it's just clunky enough in translation that the meaning takes entirely too long to sink in. Or perhaps I am just thickheaded and was not being an active viewer at the time, because it took me until now to actually realize what is going on with the taboo on human transmutation. What it is actually saying is "a purely transactional worldview will only lead to continual horrors visited upon humanity" and yeah, yeah that's pretty on point.

**

FMA is a poster child for the cathartic benefits of melodrama. Sometimes you feel big emotions and want to have a solid cry and/or scream about it, and this series is all about big emotions with attendant crying and/or screaming. Many tears have been shed.

**

I very much appreciate that the cast of FMA generally look like actual people. And unique ones, too; you can easily identify even incidental characters. I remember what Sheska's coworker looks like and she shows up in maybe 30 seconds of one episode.

**

Another soundtrack that's been burned into my brain. Can't pick a top song, they're all great.

This is a lie; best songs are One is All, All is One, Knives and Shadows, The Fullmetal Alchemist, The Intrepid, OPs 1, 2 and 4, ED 1 and 4.

That is also a lie; The actual best song is Amestris Military March.

**

I do wish we could have seen a bit more of the other state alchemists. I understand why we didn't, but I'd like at least a little throwaway line of "they're all at the southern front" or something like that. We do get to see a bit of the everyday working-class alchemists, and that's nice.

**

FMA is actually one of my go-to mental references for D&D wizards. When you have someone who can set someone else on fire with their brain (and is willing to), whoever is in political power is going to want to get as many of those folks around them as they can. Regardless of how centralized power is, you can expect to see war-wizards as a standard, and the structures in place to create more of them.

**

Brotherhood's pacing in particular is worth some praise; it is steady as a long-distance runner (once the intial rush is done, I must admit), and I (notoriously bad at watching anything that isn't a video game for long periods of time) can easily do 5-6 episodes a night, every night. Got a weak first episode, though, not a fan.

**

Things That 2003 Did Well

• "I LOVE DOGS!", "TINY MINISKIRTS!", etc
• The Philosopher's Stone is a crapshoot - all you'll do is murder hundreds or thousands of people for diminishing returns.
• The final confrontation between Mustang and Bradley.
• Homunculi as the end result of human transmutation.
• Lust having a character.
• Man they weren't fucking around when they were dealing with how Amestris treats Ishval. Writers who use subtext are all cowards indeed.
• The little bit of extra time spent on Al wondering if he was programmed or not.
• Mustang's flashbacks, holy shit (and as part of that, the fact that he killed the Rockbells).

**

Things that 2003 Did Not Do Well

• Robo-Archer, what the actual hell.
• Wrath's part in the story gets undermined by being an obnoxious screeching child, which is at least the third worst anime archetype.
• The early filler episodes are generally pretty weak and anomalously of their time more than the rest of the show.
  
• The plot kinda limps across the finish line.
• Sloth is just kinda eh. I mean so is the Brotherhood version so at least its consistent.
• Not a big fan of what they did with Kimblee. I mean he's still a monster either way, but the loss of the dapperness is too far.

**

It has been noted before by many other people that Lust is the only homunculi who serves as the object of the sin rather than the subject. This works very well with her backstory in 2003, and next to not at all with hers in Brotherhood.

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In case anyone has forgotten, on this blog we stan 2nd Lieutenant Maria Ross.

**

Winry's great. That's it, that's the point. Winry's just great.

**

Honestly let's just expand this to "I like everyone in the cast". Even the weird chimera guys towards the end who really feel like fifth wheels, they're fine. 2003 dropped the character ball in places but Brotherhood nails it. If I hate a character, I like hating them.

**

I like how the antagonists compliment each other: Father and Dante are both trying to cheat death, just with different methods. Dante has embraced the rot, clinging to her life despite the ever-diminishing returns of her stones. Father is hellbent on breaking out of the limitations of mortality entirely by going for the all-or-nothing option. Both options fitting for the overall themes of their respective series.

**

I feel like it was part and parcel for the era, but FMA leans very heavily on the comic-relief violence vs. real violence divide.

**

The one scene in 2003 with Scar's brother, when he walks out into the street naked but for the tattoos of the Grand Art, is one of the most effective moments of cosmic horror I've seen. That's the look of a man who has seen the truth and it is more terrible than anyone can imagine.

**

I love how Envy is just, beginning to end, a repulsive piece of shit without a single redeeming quality. They just like hurting people. No sob story, no glimmers of redemption arcs, just this absolute monster cackling with glee over the time he murdered a child and killed a guy while disguised as his wife. A wonderful change of pace of a genre beset by "we must understand this genocidal maniac's motivations because you see, they were sad once." None of that bullshit. Envy's just cruelty and spite and ultimately pathetic.

**

Ishval being destroyed in antiquity by a philosopher's stone transmutation in 2003 is better than Xerxes doing the same in Brotherhood. Fuckin' inexplicable blond haired white people in the middle of the fucking desert, what the fuck. Also we get the old Ishvalan man telling off Ed for presuming that they were just ignorant desert barbarians.

 

**

Hoenheim in 2003 is...strange. I was used to him being a rather integral part of the story, and then he comes along as just kinda a deadbeat with a degenerative brain condition. It's thematically appropriate for 2003, but I found it a lot less compelling on the whole. He just kinda shows up and putzes around.

**

I am forever amused by Arakawa's "Men should be buff! Women should be vavoom!" quote. She knows what the peorple want and by jove she will give the peorple what they want.

**

Olivier Armstrong definitely got kicked down a few notches on the character rankings on rewatch. "Ridiculing your brother as a coward for having a mental breakdown brought on by being forced to mass-murder civilians" is certainly a look, and I wish she got challenged more on that than not at all. Like holy shit. She is a very good example of how fandoms will twist themselves around to favor terrible people because they are quote unquote badass.

**

I love everything with Mustang's underlings and the counter-conspiracy. Especially when we get to the end and everything is tying together. When similar "heroes' cunning plan executed perfectly" moments show up in other media I will still call them an FMA moment (The sequels to Sabriel had a notable one)

**

I appreciate the chutzpah of the real world twist at the end of 2003, but it falls into the same issue I have with a lot of multiverse stories: when you introduce one alternate world, I immediately think "but what about all the others" and start fixating on that aspect. It's a me problem to be sure, but a problem nonetheless.

**

One of the bloopers for Brotherhood features Hoenheim shouting 'FUCK HIM UP!' during Ed's last fight with Father and I am devastated that they didn't include that. You can get 1 F-bomb and still be Pg-13 and that would have been the perfect place.

**

So they just let Ling go with a Philosopher's stone, right? I'm not misremembering that? That's kinda fucked.

**

It would be, all things considered, rather easy to do a live action FMA adaptation. Yes I know that there was one already and that it failed miserably, but hear me out.

Live-actions often fail because they are trying to capture the style of animation with living people, while ignoring the spirit. The style is nearly impossible to translate and so we end up with cosplay fights on a cheap sound stage.

If you're trying to adapt the exact mixture of melodrama or the exact plot it won't work, but if you stick to "~WW1 era elseworld with alchemy + war is hell + militarist autocrats are evil fucks + nothing is gained without loss + childhood trauma", you should be all good to go. That's the important stuff, the plot can be whatever. Get a director who can do a solid WW2 movie and you're halfway there.

Let's skip over Liore. We're not doing Liore, we're not dealing with the homunculi (we can deal with homunculi, and honestly I think we should, but not those homunculi.) Ed and Al return to central after another bust on looking for the stone. There are two routes we could go here: adapting the Tucker arc, or making something like it (another state alchemist working with incredibly shady shit, possibly with homunculi). Scar can be in the background. Potentially wrap in Lab 5 stuff. You can make a solid movie out of that.

Most difficult thing would be finding a child actor who can convincingly sell his leg being forcibly amputated.

**

Overall - I like many of 2003's themes and detail work a whole lot, in many places a touch more than Brotherhood's, but it's overall plotting and pacing is shaky at best; Brotherhood wins handily in the beat-to-beat plot category and has aged a lot better, if we were making this a contest. Which we shouldn't but does feel inevitable in the comparison.

This makes compositional fanfic nice and easy, as you can port the good stuff from 2003 into the good framework of Brotherhood without much trouble.

Build Your Own Shonen Battle Series

Roll as many times as you like, I don't dictate your life

What Color Is The Naruto?

1. Red
2. Orange
3. Yellow
4. Green (dark)
5. Green (light)
6. Sky blue
7. Indigo
8. Purple
9. Lavender
10. Pink
11. White
12. Black
13. Brown (dark)
14. Brown (light)
15. Umber
16. Amber
17. Octarine
18. Jale
19. Ulfire
20. Dolm

 

What Is the Power Source?

1. Devil pacts
2. Ninjutsu
3. Normal-ass magic
4. RPG mechanics but in the real world
5. Magical martial arts
6. Mundane martial arts
7. Magic swords
8. Normal swords
9. Tarot magic
10. Magic ghosts
11. Magic animal spirits
12. Cyborg bullshit
13. GUN
14. Supernatural patron entities
15. Raw willpower reshaping reality
16. Incredibly complex qi gong system
17. Children's card games
18. Summoned battle-parters (robots, dolls, monsters, etc)
19. Mecha
20. Nothing. It's basically shonen pub fights

Setting

1. Ordinary high school
2. A different ordinary high school
3. Magical high school
4. Oh god it's another high school
5. They're coming through the goddamn walls
6. holy shit
7. fuck
8. Post-apocalyptic wasteland
9. Alternate-universe
10. Japanese countryside (modern)
11. Japanese countryside (historical)
12. Somewhere in the real world that is not Japan (modern or historical)
13. Sometime in the past
14. Sometime in the future
15. Deep space
16. Near space
17. Inner space
18. Vaguely-defined megastructure
19. Recycled backgrounds from a failed isekai
20. Elaborate fantasy world revolving entirely around whatever social class has the powers and does the fighting.

Aesthetic

1. Realistic, mostly
2. Magical girl
3. Gonzogrot excess
4. Cyberpunk
5. Solarpunk
6. Techno-gothic
7. Duct tape and a prayer
8. Ink and watercolor
9. Superdeformed
10. Incredibly detailed
11. Very simplistic
12. Western comics
13. Very unique house style
14. Everyone is gorgeous, all the time
15. Those chins are sharp enough to open cans with
16. Huge eyes, even huger hair
17. Experimental as hell in places
18. Woof, this did not age well you can count each cut corner
19. Has aged like fine wine
20. Dada surrealism

Side Characters

1. Laconic, superpowered teacher
2. Edgy loner rival
3. BEEFSTRONK
4. Absolutely too pure for this world
5. The bookworm
6. The genki one
7. The one with no powers, who gets by with other means
8. That one motherfucker you're amazed hasn't been arrested for harassment yet
9. The hero's mom
10. Boisterous and over-the-top himbo
11. The hero's sibling
12. Love interest - next - door
13. The mysterious foreigner
14. The loaner from a different school/organization
15. By the book! ONLY BY THE BOOK!
16. The really hot one
17. The unexpected combat expert
18. The lazy one
19. The crazy one
20. The lovable idiot duo

Positives

1. Kickass fight scenes
2. OP / ED slaps
3. Surprisingly good characterization
4. Surprisingly in-depth worldbuilding
5. Monster designs
6. Compelling villain
7. Good side characters
8. Keeps a steady pace
9. Avoids harmful stereotypes
10. Meaningful stakes
11. Makes chuds angry
12. Fanservice (the good kind)
13. God that's some good sakuga
14. Excellent dub
15. Pulled off a successful major status quo change / timeskip
16. Author is actually a pretty cool person
17. The humor actually translated over
18. Has some meaningful things to say about real life
19. Keen eye for scene composition
20. Nothing in this plot makes sense, and I love it

Negatives

1. Filler
2. Too many characters
3. Bonkers morality
4. Rampant sexism
5. Just looks bad to watch
6. Lost the plot (jumped shark, spun wheels, etc)
7. Too by the book / too safe
8. Most annoying character in the world
9. Bland main character
10. Character death (cheap)
11. Is never going to actually end
12. Obnoxious fanbase
13. Fanservice (the creepy kind)
14. Impossible to find / stream
15. Author has an obvious kink and is real weird about it
16. Author is actually a horrid person
17. I literally can't tell these characters apart
18. Pretensions of grandeur with a failing grade in intro to philosophy
19. Just up and forgets the background a lot of the time
20. Nothing in this plot makes sense, and it's terrible

Other Features

1. Tournament Arc
2. Main character rivalry
3. Weird laser focus on one particular hobby or topic the author likes
4. Shit has gone FUBAR Arc
5. Romantic subplot (actually pretty good)
6. Romantic subplot (groan inducing)
7. Harem of some vareity
8. No arcs; mostly episodic
9. They lost the originals so there's no proper blu-ray release
10. Ha ha! You thought X was the main villain, it was in fact Y!
11. There's an elaborate fan theory that makes the whole thing make a lot more sense
12. Manga was never finished
13. Show has a complete different storyline from the manga
14. Very small, very devoted fanbase
15. Got a movie (the good kind)
16. Got a movie (Netflix live action)
17. A pointed critique of modern society
18. I know authors who use subtext and they're all cowards
19. Shit yeah, yokai!
20. Is really just another series with the serial numbers filed off

Three Shorts For Dandibuja

Dandibuja has gifted me with some fantastic fanart in the short time I've known him, and when I expressed the desire to return the favor he suggested that I write some pieces based on some original works of his, so here we go.

What Remains of House Leoviridius

The villa ruins had been as empty as the Jackal's stomach. Disappointing, but only mildly surprising: wealth makes an easy target for those in the trade and the summer home had predictably been stripped clean years ago. The windows were gone - some smashed but most carefully removed for the sake of the glass. The roof had collapsed in the east wing - years without maintenance to blame for that. Kitchen was bare - knives and pots too valuable to leave behind. Wood taken for firestarters, clothing taken for bandages and bedlining. No hope of jewelry being overlooked. Even the floor safe in the master bedroom had been torn up and smashed open. Likely nothing of worth in there, unless the lucky thief wanted gold for ballast or deeds for toilet paper.

The well in the central courtyard still had water. No bucket, but water - cold and heavy and barely gritty. Small mercies. The Jackal refilled their canteens (tying each one to a length of string), drank up, refilled again.

All the while, they kept ears open. Nothing but the dull wind. Not even an ambush of curious dune mice. Years in the trade prevented the Jackal from ever relaxing, but they settled into a state that approximated it and let their mind drift to topics unconcerned with survival and safety.

The crumbling west wall of the courtyard, shielded from the worst of the wind, still bore the icon of the Lords of the World. Green lion rampant, bleeding sun. Tongues of fire? The Jackal cast their mind back to what their grandfather had told them about the signs of House Leoviridius and their meaning, but found nothing. Grandfather had plenty to say about the Leoviridians, far more than anyone with real troubles could keep track of. "Officious cousin-fuckers", he was fond of saying that. Ranting about how they didn't know how good they had it, that they'd never seen a real sandstorm season and you can't trust anyone who'll sell you piss and call it water.

He was right about the sandstorms. When things were first falling apart, he spent his days in a constant chorus of "Told you! Told you just how it was!" He kept it up till he died. In retrospect it was a bizarre thing to take pride in, but the Jackal was charitable to the old man's memory. He'd been through enough to earn that.

The Jackal rested there for a few hours before they departed by the leeward road down out of the hills. They died ten days later, stabbed in the throat in a roadside mugging. The IDRS Madrid out of Arcturus, still the closest vessel that could provide aid, was thirty-nine years away. The sands would engulf the villa well before then.

 

The Monstrous Seagulls' Feast

The gulls had no questions at all about the great gelatinous corpse. It wasn't poisonous and something else had done the work of killing it, and that was all that mattered. Smart birds, seagulls.

(The crabs did question it, and came to different conclusions. They have yet to share.)

Speculation on the creature's origins exploded as soon as the news cameras started rolling, but it peaked early. The fervor couldn't be maintained through the next crisis of the week, especially when the answers that were forthcoming were so plain: the creature washed up on the Argentine shore during the night of April 16th, it was almost certainly terrestrial in origin, some kind of mollusk, and it was very dead. Within seventy-two hours it had dissolved into a mound of dirty translucent gelatin, and within two more days it had decayed completely. The final verdict was that it was some kind of long lost cephalopod from the abyssal zones.

The conspiracists remembered it, and the graduate students in biology departments around the world, and the unfunny Facebook memes lasted a couple months beyond that, and for the creature this was the end of it.

But it was never the important part of the incident, only the vehicle by which it arrived on the scene. The abyssotitan's flesh was riddled with parasites - minute corkscrew worms, near-invisible to the eye. Most died with their host, but the eggs survived, and the eggs were eaten by the seagulls, and the eggs hatched within the seagulls, and the seagulls shat them out and then...

Well, that's the end of it.

The Knight

Khuñ Khaphun, last knight of the Order of Unn, posed for only one portrait during his life. He was an intensely private man, and so it was only at the behest of his close friend Pricipio d'Ardevarke that he agreed to see the painter. This was in the spring of the year of the Golden Rabbit, a mere seven months before his death.

Khuñ's life had seen him pulled in opposing directions since his early childhood. As a youth he was enamored with stories of the great mountain-home knights and the adventures of the Sunrise Age, which put him at odds with his family of stonemasons. Dissatisfied with the trades, and likewise distasteful of the formal military, he became obsessed with the idea of reviving the knights of Unn. He was self-taught in combat, as provided by whatever training manuals of the era that he could find. Unfortunately, he was an withdrawn and introverted man, who made connections rarely. While he might have named himself a knight of Unn, he simply didn't have the social adeptness to attract others to his cause - the few volunteers who joined him quickly returned home in all cases, finding him too difficult to work with.

He came into the eye of the public after he slew the Giant of Gjanisang, but he found himself unable to follow it up with subsequent feats and spent the years to follow wandering up and down the Hojenvaid River valley. He refused offers of patronage, even from d'Ardevarke, claiming always that it was not knightly to do such a thing, and took payment only in exchange for monster slaying or performances of feats (he was fond of trick jousting, and this was more profitable in the long run than monster hunting).

He died without fanfare in his roadside camp of natural causes. Likely a disease of the heart. The Order of Unn went with him, and he is remembered only now by students of the historically curious and those who walk past his portrait at the museum of art in Harandara.

Slush Pile 10

Slushpile Index

Assorted bits pulled from notebooks, old documents, and my twitter archive.

1. This is your regular reminder that all tabletop RPGs can, in some form, be improved by the inclusion of Aku, shapeshifting master of darkness.
2. I had a dream last night, wherein I was explaining to my late father the principles of blaseball, citing specifically that the Commissioner is doing a great job. Also the HU was playing on a nearby rooftop but I couldn't see them.
3. A further Dune thought: The series is a farce. Six entire books of billions of people dying because a tiny cadre of people can't see past their own noses because they're too busy posting on r/iamverysmart.
4. Obtuse and Probably Terrible TTRPG Idea of the Night A zine game, but it is written in a conlang. The actual rules and game don't matter, the actual game is the act of translating the zine.
5. What if you replaced Jupiter with the entire Trappist-1 system.
6. Renewable / clean energy sources are likely the standard in fantasy settings where magic usage is common but low power cap - easier to make simple solar panels out of roof shingles than it is to drill for oil.
7. The afterlife exists due to the efforts of necromancers, who have managed to figure out a way to maintain soul cohesion after bodily death, and a means of carving out regions of Hell from demonic control.
8. Uplifted octopi make everything better. Space truckers, Eid al-Fitr celebrations, grocery shopping, sealed room murder mysteries - all of these and more can be improved by adding uplifted octopi.
9. Very rough sketch - dungeon delving as religion. Literal journeys to the underworld made by the poor and disenfranchised, both in service of their communities and in seeking some salvific endpoint - found, stolen, built accomplished.
10. Demons do things to people. Devils get people to do things of their own volition.
11. Domesticated paraceratherium should probably be in your setting.
12. I can't get the idea of liches throwing themselves into impossible projects for millennia out of my head because it is some raw heroic-tragedy potential there. "This is the tower of Anaximander the Great. He's been working towards the cure for cancer for the last 6000 years."
13. troublem [trɒbləm] (n): a troublesome problem, or a problem that causes trouble.
14. Wizard's towers serve as part of an ancient weather control and terraforming network used to spread greater habitability and stability across the world as part of an early civilization's permaculture efforts.
15. Last night, I had a dream that I was visiting my elementary school, and was met at the front door by a cone-form yithian made entirely of dark red felt. So as to stop any hostilities from go, I waltzed right up say "Hello my good yithian!" and let myself in. It was confused.
16. From a dream last night: Immense crow's feet, perhaps as big as a large garbage can lid. Large black feathers in tufts from the stumps, with white bands or chevrons. Hop around as if still attached to a crow. Perched on wooden crates in what I think was the undead burg.
17. A "warlock's wedding" is a slang term for a marriage between men. Army custom dictates that the best man gathers the funds for a cheap bottle of wine that is poured over the grooms, and a slightly less cheap bottle that is drunk.
18. Dwarves are mole people. This is absolute and retroactive. Gimli is now a mole person. Snow White's crew? Mole persons. Norse myth? Molefolks. Your PC? M O L E P E R S O N.
19. Sailing long distances is significantly easier in fantasyland, on account that a ship's mage would not only be able to influence winds somewhat, but also desalinate water.
20. Micromegas dungeon - an environment that feels like a megadungeon, but is in practice compact and lightweight.
21. In Mass Effect (Throne of Salt Edition), it's impossible to get the "defeat Reapers" ending if Garrus survives ME2, as he will end up killing the batarian party member in ME3 and cut off access to the Khar'shan underground and vital components for completing the Crucible.
22. An idea (which I am kicking myself for not using as my senior project in college) - an RPG module presented as the recovered notes of a fictional DM, using this meta element to make it both module and character study.
23. I had a dream last night where an automated spam caller told me my "works are saturated with sin", and that's a nice ego boost for the day.
24. An rpg idea: Reverse cosmic horror game, where you play as a cult working to prepare for the arrival of an elder god and dodging the cops and investigators out to stop you.
25. There is no such thing as summoning a demon. The actual ritual constructs a demon from scratch, destroying it when dismissed.
26. Trolls are large, aggressive, territorial mammals that typically live in and around rivers. Ergo, trolls are hippopotami.
27. I can't believe the best mechanical contribution I have made to rpgs is the MEAT ECONOMY
28. What if a lyric game, but its presented as a translation of in-universe epic poetry cunningly designed to provide setting, character options, and rules. Like it opens at a banquet where the hero is playing a drinking game and this explains how dice work.
29. Lilith, but instead of "hot demon" she's an Iraqi woman with a penchant for owl sweaters and dunking on her ex-husband.
30. Sapient spaceships are pacifists, or at least not inclined to violence on human terms - to them it's like committing murder over someone's gut biome.
31. An adventure presented as one of those iceberg memes, and you have to fill in the blanks to these obscure mysteries of a setting that doesn't exist.
32. A real Dark Souls inspired RPG would be rolling on tables of items / bosses / covenants / areas with evocative names and coming up with flavor text for them.
33. Respectful euphemisms: Mr Peppercorn, The Thousand-and-One, Little Widemouth, Lady Red-Face, Lonny-Men, Old Dunkirk, Ossiferous Court, Cousin Crown, Wellwishers, Good Friends of Buzz Aldrin.
34. For MoSH: Gaunt "crypts", floating in hyperspace, where they keep harvested populations.
35. Lunacy is a heretical stance, of course: believing that a lump of inert stone, no matter how beautiful, might shed light of its own.
36. Throne crab - docile armored pseudocrustacean with a brilliantly colored and patterned shell. Easily tamed and domesticated without use of a neural=computer link. Used as personal steeds by the upper class, but have been a fad long enough to trickle into the aftermarket.
37. Xenomorphs are ambush/stalking predators fit for tight spaces - useless in open environments. If Weyland-Yutani had succeeded in using them to their own ends, I would expect to see habitat design shift to favor the presence of xenomorph security forces.
38. An immortal emperor - decapitated, undying - still slumped on his throne.
39. Honey staves off rustblight, but there is no cure.
40. Crematory ash exorcises ghosts.
41. Fields of blue flowers are signs of spilled godblood.
42. The angel in the clocktower knew Master Dremon.
43. Bring the nymph ring to Old Man Alder.
44. Okay it looks like your cause of death was "Eaten by alkalion" and your horrible afterlife event was "had to shovel soul-coal in a demonic voidship" You now have knowledge of hell-shanties and a resistance to the effect of imp-gin.
45. Hollow men are those who have had their life-flames drained by the monoliths. The giants, the servants of ever-sleeping Death, rest inside them.
46. Angels as embodiments of depersonalized violence 
47. Unloading the tomb of a lich off a plane, as seen on the news.
    

Dicember leftovers

AMMO

• Armor-piercing weapons are treated as doing double damage to armor.
• Plasma weapons deal double damage to shields. Absorbed plasma damage will permanently degrade armor rating.
• Needle weapons deal half damage against armor but explode like a grenade on a critical / 3 successful hits on the same target.
• Spike weapons are useless against shields and ignore armor entirely.

ICE

Cryo isn't actually all that cold.

It used to be, back in the early days. It turned out that a travel method with a 45% chance of permanent brain damage was too much even for the early interplanetary corps in the wake of the Anthropocene Collapse. Even if you were part of the lucky 55, you'd still probably find yourself in therapy or reconstructive surgery to repair the ravages to your body.

So the options were to stick with remote drones, or the slow, costly and inefficient strategy of throwing a few people at a time out into space and hoping that the monkeys in a can don't kill each other before they reached their destination.

The biotech revolution saved the day. Induced metabolic hibernation has become standard practice and has only improved in efficiency since then.

DAEMON

A digital guard dog; an ainima employed as a guardian of a node or cluster and tasked with the removal of unwanted intruders. Trying to get past one will require either the appropriate credentials or some sort of appeasement program.

NAP

"Four Teamsters After A Double Shift" (oil on canvas without AI assistance, al-Safi, 2871) - A realist life painting of four sleeping dockworkers, famous primarily for its brazen theft by a rights-squatting NFT farm and the eight year counter-theft by members of the Epsilon Indi V Longshores Union. The painting depicts in great detail a quartet of union workers (two women, one man, and an androgyne) sleeping on top of a pile of canvas tarps. One of the women is comedically sprawled out flat on her back and drooling. The man and androgyne are sleeping together, and generally interpreted as partners. The second woman has fallen asleep sitting upright against a packing crate. A half-eaten meal-in-a-pouch is splattered on the deck, presumably trampled by passersby. The identity of the four subjects is unknown - The Rooster-Year Rebellion destroyed most company records of The Big Crunch, and al-Safi themself did not survive the violence. The painting is currently on display at the Museum of the People, Union Moot A, Epsilon Indi V.

DOOR

There is something in the airlock. You're still four months out of port and something is rap-tap-tapping on the airlock door. There's grime on the camera lens, you can't make out what's in there. Something wrong with the electronics, too, you can't open it up by computer. You can use the other airlock, but that doesn't stop the tapping and rasping and thudding and scraping. It is becoming impatient.

GOLD

Gold isd cheaper than paper these days, practically worthless outside of manufacturing and art. For the latter, there are very few people who remember when it had any value at all - everyone else thinks it's just tacky. Cheap gold jewelry is omnipresent.

ORB

A pearl-white sphere twenty-some miles across, cracked open like an egg. Wet red ripples of scar tissue, clustered of black eyes, yellowing teeth in long zipper-lines.

SLOW

A persistent issue in colonization is the arrival of automated slower-than-light ships in systems already colonized by hyperspace-capable vessels. The AI on these STL ships are difficult or actually impossible to interface with due to the drift in handshake protocols over time, on top of their limited computational plasticity. These ships will often ignore communication attempts entirely and have been known to establish colonies on already inhabited worlds, treating the current inhabitants as an invasive native biosphere to be eliminated.

A Pair of Poems

There is a house upon the moor

of bloodied stone and shattered glass

where that old lord, his gods undone,

took up precious things in hand

and descended into the blind obscurity

of the lightless, septic bowels

below the wounded earth.

**

Of lies most pernicious, I know of only one

That perfection might exist here beneath the sun

The toll that dread ideal form demands

The weight that crushes human hands

And hearts into rotten pulp

Forever echoing not good enough.

 

State of Affairs, Jan 2022

Looking forward to the rest of the year, I wanted to work out where I stand with my larger projects - both those I am actively working on and those that are still purely hypothetical. I am a terrible judge of project management, so writing it down and letting other people get their eyes on it is as good a method as any to get my thoughts in order.

Many thanks to Layla for always being down to talk shop.

Unicorn Meat

Barring catastrophe, it'll be out in the next few months. You can hold me to that. 

Lighthouse

Lighthouse has been stuck for a while now, but the plus side of that is looking back at what I've already made and reassessing.

The primary current issue, I feel, is that while anticanon is great and all but it does leave something to be desired if you want focus. The material is pulling in opposite directions - both big and small, both specific and general - and that does me no favors when my design thru-line is "Delta Green, if it was Disco Elysium". Can't have Disco Elysium without Revachol.

So to that end, I think I am going to focus more on the (very loosely sketched at the moment) sandbox setting of [REDACTED], and developing it more. The Field Guide posts are great, but they aren't enough to hang a game on, and I think they're a part of why this has stalled out.

I had originally envisioned the Underworld as a dedicated depthcrawl aspect, but on review that unbalances everything. Instead I will be adapting my card-based expeditions from Unicorn Meat for delves, so that it's not just dumping a megadungeon in a game that's not about that.

Sisters of the Sable Maid

I still have very little for this, but I do at least have the ideas. A hack of Yokai Hunters Society for MSF (as that setting fell away from being a traditional D&D setting years ago) where you play as the Sisters of the Sable Maid and you go fuck up demons. Nice, simple, specific, actionable answers for who you are and what you do.

Two goals I have set for this project

• A "multiple moving parts" character creation in the spirit if not the mode of 5e - give people a series of simple, flavorful choices to make about their character.
• A greater focus on combat, but making it fun. The vision in my head looks more like JRPG combat, for whatever that is worth. 

Mothership Compilation

What it says on the tin: a compilation and expansion Mothership material that I have already written, plus additions that will naturally emerge from the editing, plus the posts I have been sitting on for ages, into a toolkit and resource book. Would contain tables, character options, gear, planet / sector generation, a planet gazetteer, and probably a couple shotgun scenarios. Half done already.

Assortment of loosely-sketched Mothership adventures

This is where this exercise starts going down rabbit holes, as I only just have ideas and nothing practical for these. Hopefully I will be able to run some this year and flesh them out. So far they are

• Introductory "wake from cryosleep on a spooky ship, learn the ropes of the game as you get it back into working condition" scenario.
• Investigation of a murder, and a datademonic possession, players as exorcist and support crew.
• O'neill crawl above a rim world crawling with devils. Re-visiting my Road to Pandemonium post for setting material
  

Mother Stole Fire and Other Stories

A collection of revised / adapted / expanded versions of the fiction pieces on the blog. Simple enough in concept, but if I know my perfectionist streak, and I do, this one is likely to be a long haul.

The Dog Gospel

Another compilation, this time of revised blogposts and fleshed-out slush pile ideas. I specifically want to make this a "binder book" - that is, everything is no more than front and back of a single page, so that the entries can be printed out in whatever combination one wants, then hole punched and put into a 3-ring binder and plugged into a game as one sees fit. Again, this is another half-done idea, I just need to get a proper workflow for actually doing it.

A Planet Called Shithole

For when you need the worst place possible.

Selausaun (Shithole)

An enormous mistake.

• Parent Star: G5V
• Population: 7.4 million (ground), ~1000 (orbit)
• Who's In Charge?: Technically, a CTA governance node allied with House Tauvi. Practically, no one. House Tauvi, having inherited the whole mess through a buyout of the founding company, has tried multiple times to sell the planet and being unable to extricate themselves without falling afoul of their creditors, they have stationed a cursory detachment of their armigers to fulfill their legal requirements and effectively abandoned the entire enterprise.
• Gravity: 1.31 G
• Atmosphere: Nitrogen-oxygen mix with high Co2, water vapor and sulfides. Breathable only at extremely high altitudes, limiting open settlements to the Huaguo Plateau. Nitrogen narcosis will swiftly kill anyone at lower elevations without a pressure suit. Even in regions where the pressure is tolerable, the temperature, humidity, and particulate content are hellish.
• Major Settlements: Paradise Pools, Toadstool Town, Isaac's Altar, Pipe Dream, [FIELD EMPTY], Dudfuck
• Moons: 2
• Orbital Infrastructure: Negligible. Shuttle service is available between the primary orbital habitat and Paradise Pools.
• Biosphere: Partially compatible with terragen biochemistry.

The one benefit to Shithole is that it isn't Hell. Of course, the one benefit to Hell is that it isn't Shithole, so in terms of human misery we have just about broken even. No one should have come here, but we unfortunately did and the inhabitants are now trapped by a series of enormous, easily-avoidable mistakes.

Mistake 1: The initial long-distance observations, while promising in terms of gravity, temperature, atmosphere and biosignatures, were not sufficiently reviewed.

The first big colonization push was fueled in a large part for the search for a new Earth, a do-over after the horrors of the Collapse (This is why there are thirty-odd planets named some variant of New Earth). Shithole was, at first glance, a dead ringer for the coveted "superhabitable planet" slot, and the lucky stake claimers went plummeting into inescapable debt gambling on a single seedship.

Mistake 2: The company that backed the colonization effort was trying to get in on the initial gold rush of interstellar expansion and had no prior experience in field.

Typical of the era. Anyone with enough money wanted in on the rush, regardless of any presence in the Reclamation or the settlement of the solar system. A reliable seedship template, full of exowombs and zygotes and parental AI, was by now easy enough to build (if incredibly expensive) This led to most of the funding companies collapsing well before seeing a return investment, sometimes before the mission ever reached the destination.

Mistake 3: The seedship was operated via dumb AI that prioritized for planetary habitats rather than orbital ones.

A smart AI, or any sensible human overseer, would have passed over Shithole as a scientific study for another day and taken advantage of the convenient, if cold, Mars-sized world orbiting the local ice giant to set up an initial colony. But dumb AI have their parameters set in silicon and this one was locked right on Shithole. Planet-side colonization was what the parent company used to get investors, and so the oversight was justified as a way of keeping them happy.

So the ship arrives and sends all its cargo down through the haze and finds the situation on the ground much, much worse than expected.

The Situation on the Ground

The preliminary studies were correct: Shithole had plenty of water. But nearly all of it was in the form of atmospheric water vapor and all that remained of its ancient shallow seas were stagnant, salty dregs. All the rest was locked up in the biosphere - a near-global macrobiome of fungus-analog forests that thrived in the heat, humidity, and dim light of the lower altitudes of the dry ocean beds. Only a few high plateaus, once the continental shelves, were suitable for humans. At the very least, the ship's AI understood this.

The initial colony on Huaguo Plateau (what would eventually be named Paradise Pools for its hyperchromatic sulfuric hot springs) managed to avoid Oedipal Colony Collapse Syndrome (a single mercy in the rolling clusterfuck), and for a few years looked like it might actually stabilize and survive its early stages.

Then the local bacteria learned how to eat plastic. Within another five years, the fungi could as well. This is on top of being able to eat human flesh. Metal without special treatment corroded too quickly to be useful as a building material, and there wasn't the industrial base to support the treatment processes. Colony conditions deteriorated swiftly after that. Nearly half the population (by then nearing 40,000) died, and many of the survivors ended up abandoning the settlements entirely for life on the plateau barrens and fungiforests (where, to this day, they are regularly reported as cryptids).

While most sociologists agree that the shift to hunter-gatherer lifestyles was the right idea, hunting and gathering in a mushroom jungle does not a profitable colony make. By this time the original company was long gone (to the point that their records have been erased) and ownership of Shithole passed through a series of successive rights-holders who made attempts at re-colonizing the world through influxes of criminals and the politically unwanted. These attempts stuck, mostly because every time disaster struck a new influx of people and resources would be incoming to help prop things up. House Tauvi would try this as well, and eventually give up on the practice. The plantations here were never able to make a profit for them, and they had better prisons closer to home anyway.

Shithole Today

So the question then becomes "why the fuck would anyone ever go to Shithole?"

Drugs and science, mostly. Often both.

Thanks to the partial compatibility with terragen biochemistry, there are plenty of substances with effects of interest to humans on Shithole. Most of these remain unknown - The soft jungles of Shithole have remained almost completely unexplored and uncataloged, despite being one of the most complex alien biospheres yet discovered. The occasional short-term science station will crop up (under the close watch of the armigers), but no one has been willing to invest in a proper ecological survey (though biotech and pharmaceutical companies will gladly pay for survey data).

It's no secret that the armigers of House Tauvi are exporting drugs from Shithole under the auspices of their absentee landlords. While they live like comparative kings to the average inhabitants of Shithole, they are very small fish when compared to the Great Houses and major syndicates surrounding them on the outside, and so long as they stay that way there won't be any trouble.

This peace isn't bound to last. Eventually the armigers will overstep, either with the locals or with the outside, and someone will get it in their head to put them in their place. If a valuable enough substance is discovered, the planet could flip from worthless to lynchpin overnight. Then everyone is going to be very interested.

NPCs

The Colonel - Leader of the House Tauvi armigers. Babyfaced, orange hair in a thin braid, impeccable white suit, wears medals like a classic junta dictator. Smooth talking and friendly exterior over a core of childlike cruelty and entitlement. Currently lives in orbit directing the operation.

The Commandant - Head of armiger operations on the ground, operating out of Paradise Pools. Marks where scars have been rejuvenated away. A veteran whose hardline policies are tolerated only due to their unnatural impartiality - no favor is given to armigers or groundsiders when order is disrupted. Compromised through a romantic relationship with a groundsider, which is liable to cause scandal (the armigers of House Tauvi practice Theban military endogamy).

The Headman - Cracked and raw skin from years' labor out in the elements. What hair remains has been shaved away. Bulgy eyes, voice raspy. Unofficial representative of the plantations around Paradise Pools. Respected there, considered a quisling elsewhere.

The Holy Hermit - A religious leader of the indigenous Shitholers that has risen to prominence in the wildnerness. Prophecies of doom for the armigers, the final failure of the colony, and the mass movement to life in the jungles are everywhere.

The Sister - Short, energetic. Member of an offworld religious order (St. Mab the Mad of Mars). Snooping around and causing trouble, not shy about insinuating ulterior motives. Knows a bit too much about military operations.

The Corpse - The morning started with Jonjen Losarri floating facefirst in a hot spring.

**

Sometimes, on rare days when it is neither raining nor sporing, you can see the sun from Paradise Pools. It will be shrouded in a thick haze of puke-colored clouds, but you'll be able to see it.

If the breeze is favorable, you might even be able to peer through the mist and spore veils at the soft jungle below the plateau: broad yellow shingles; corpse-pale domes and caps; tangled veins of red; brain-broccoli clusters of purple, brown and grey. No matter how favoriable the weather, you will not be able to make out the horizon. The air is thick with life: currents and eddies of spores and aeroplankton, larger creatures filtering the chaff through sails and fins. Herds of floaters, clouds of sprites, pods of balloon animals, the occasional hungry gel-hawk.

At night, it is completely black. You cannot see the stars from Paradise Pools, only the faint phosphorescence of the life down below the death-line.