Ramblings, Mecha

INT. DUNGEON. HALL OF THE LUNATIC.

All of the great glowing suns are extinguished. Their light that once calmed the lunatics and pacified their torments is gone. Scraping chains rattle intermittently down a side hallway. Hungry sounds in the dark, the flagstones barely visible through the blood that pools throughout the room. Through the broken ceiling, the moon shines a terrible light on the pile of corpses. Something moves among them. Dimly, in blood written on the wall, a madman's scrawl:

"Kill and eat your darlings. They were not yours to devour. Leave their bones to be kicked up by the mourning sea. BE ASHAMED. Sink the crime into the well, keep it with the moon. In your entrails their viscera will shape a seed that will one day press out from your eye sockets- hands raised to the hungry sun. Your new darling."

CRAB emerges from the pile of corpses, soaked in blood, the broken body of HEARTBREAKER:GRAVITY hanging limply from their mouth.

I want a print for my office to hold staring contests with. I want it perfectly seated behind my chair so when I get up during a video conference or interview the other side is left to stare into saturn's eyes until I return

 

CRAB

 Has this ever happened to you? You want to run a game with mechs but the system you built for the game is trash- and now you don't know which of the many options available suit you? Are you like me, CRAB, one who has this problem? Yes? Yeah me too. There's so many good systems out there, let's do a highlight reel.

LUNATIC CRAB

saturn catches his glimpse in a mirror but the expression is not one of horrible realization but of horrible knowledge and anguish because he knows what he is doing and knows why he must do it and the why is the terrible source of his pale figure misshapen crouched in the dark eyes mad

Two small fish-men in usher uniforms drag a whimpering projector into the room and it screams to life displaying the reel on the bloody wall. 

CRAB

I've been in a mood for mechs as of late. Mecha is a whale I will break a thousand lances tilting at and then a thousand more before I find that two thousand and first lance that, being probably a harpoon, doesn't break- discard it and begin again.

Where was I going again?

Let's take a look at some mecha systems:

 

Mecha Hack: Based on the Black Hack, the Mecha Hack is the most "traditional" of the bunch I have here today as it really is just a reskin of black hack with mecha characteristics applied. It does a good job of it,  

Apocalypse Frame: Powerful combat, tactical choices that make sense, sense of really being an "ace" pilot. Armored Core on paper. Lumen has some very tasty synergies here. I especially like the way advancement is handled in Apocalypse Frame, being shared between Ace Advances, which are slight buffs to the aces themselves and Weapon/Frame improvement and acquisitions. Also damage is a guaranteed value- it's always 1-5 harm etc etc without dice rolls which allows the Aces to turn some battlefields into more of a controlled environment. Also has an expansion with considerations for a mecha hex crawl. MECHA. HEX. CRAWL. 

Celestial Bodies: Gambling your shots, real piece by piece mech construction, crunchy mech building. It has a few neat mechanics such as the main attributes being spent in combat to make enemy attacks less accurate as well as some crazy missile mechanics where you can plop down missiles and direct them independently at targets. The attack rolls combined with the unique gear grid system really feels smooth. Concept-wise too, the setting is fun.

Beam Saber: Is 438 pages long and much more heavily narrative focused. First rpg to teach me what clocks are years ago and it only took like four rereads of the section (in an old version) to actually understand them. I hear it's great, there's like thirty supplements and a bunch of actual plays and podcasts are out there! Still though, not quite what I'm looking for here.

Steel Hearts: I LIKE A LOT. IT'S VERY GOOD. Uses Evangelion typeset because Sandro isn't a coward. Amazing art.  Building a roll will have you rolling a wild amount of dice and construction of a roll is a bit funky. Gravity is a dope concept. Sick vibes, Mekton heritor in style and then some [complimentary]. I dig the setting and all the flare put into it. Also that character sheet? Lovely. The game is generally more focused on fighting monsters than fighting mechs, but also makes room for mech v mech fights- including Trauma From The Consequences Of War! Stratagems are a great way to highlight individual skills/actions, and the tension system for monsters is something I'll be thinking about for awhile. Bezel and resonance though- not present in my campaign.

Mekton Zeta: No one should play Mekton, probably. Does it have a cool lifepath system? Yes. Is it stylistic as all hell to the point of being unreadable? Sort of. Is the best copy I have of it a blurry scan at the best of times? Also yes. Does its professions list include Lawyer, Housewife, and (checks notes) Hello Nurse? Yes. Are its attributes/statistics/skills nonsensical to the point of being willfully malicious? Possibly. Could I spend over 10,000 words of spilled digital ink in lament and praise of this relic? Probably. And does it have one of the most robust mecha construction systems out there? You betcha.

CRAB

Damn. Honestly the more I read Steel Hearts again the more I'm drawn in by the charm alone.

LUNATIC CRAB

you aren't even considering the warhammer40k evangelion hack

CRAB

Of course not, it doesn't Fit My Theme. And also it's warhammer40k and that's a whole different barrel of headless fish to go into the guts of its system. 

LUNATIC CRAB

he walks the abyss, tall as wind

CRAB

Of course I'm not just going to reuse my heartbreaker, it's trash. At one point a player rolled 16 dice to complete an impossible feat. 

LUNATIC CRAB

and was it awesome

CRAB

Fine. But I'm going to chew on it some more. I want something clean and easy, simple with impact and probably only runnable at my table- as all the best heartbreakers and house rules are. Something that bleeds steel and jams its reactor core full of esoterica.

LUNATIC CRAB

the sun resides within me

CRAB

I'm only 40% sure that's a real quote at this point, and honestly you're starting to bug me out.

CRAB scuttles out of the pile of corpses and down the hallway, the fish-men pack the sobbing projector and hurry after. LUNATIC CRAB begins rising up into the moonlight and rotating at a 45 degree angle faster and faster. 

TO BE CONTINUED?

Let's Eat: The Bloom

COLDWATER, WASHINGTON, DAY

Sweeping mountain vistas and deep conifer woods surround the town of Coldwater which rests on the banks of Coldwater lake. The small town is dotted with dated buildings and small-town shops flocking with tourists. In the town center, the preparations for the annual blueberry festival are well under way as townsfolk bustle about, giving one another a smile and cheerful hello. 

COLDWATER, WASHINGTON, SIX DAYS LATER

The quiescent mountain town is exchanged for a horror. Flames lick out from flamethrowers- the guttering  flames accompanied by the occasional burst of gunfire as well equipped hazmat teams sweep through the surrounds. A dated diner is unrecognizable under a heft of black mycelia and fungal growth- tortured moans coming from within as a team approaches, weapons at the ready. 

Camera pans straight down horizontally beneath the town, thick black mycelial cords run from the town surface to a cathedral sized cavern far below, where fungal-crusted residents stand rooted around a descent into the pulsing, blue bioluminescent glow of the mycelial heart- a single blue capped mushroom juts from the heaving mass of growth. 

Sounds of metal on rock in the distance and of something swinging through the air- a large claw sweeps through scene and deftly clips the mushroom away from the mass before tactical chatter and gunfire reveal the approaching cleanup teams in the caverns- the scene is engulfed in flames.

INT. DUNGEON. BANQUET HALL. 

CRAB sits at the head of a fungi-laden banquet table, a covered silver tray in front of him- thick black mycelial cords run from the tray throughout the room, rooting through the hall and sprouting glowing blue mushrooms. Fish-men in bowties idly wander the room- their eyes crusted by fungi and growths visible pushing up from beneath their scales. CRAB pulls the conspicuous silver lever next to his chair. 

Grating gears and the screech of metal fills the room but is rapidly overcome with a shrieking wail from thousands of voices as a cage in the ceiling opens and a chained ball of clacking skulls and searching shadowy tendrils is lowered above the table. Clinking his glass with a fork, the screaming quiets to a murmur and CRAB lifts the covering on the silver tray, revealing the blue, squirming mass of the heart of a nascent fungal bloom.

CRAB

Hearken to me, ye DAMNED, we're eating The Bloom tonight!

TITLE CARD

CRAB

Published in February of last year, written by Josh Domanski and the Goblin Archives, The Bloom comes to us as- well at least to my knowledge- the third major adventure from Goblin Archives for the Liminal Horror system and the second such adventure jointly written by the authors. This tasty morsel is- of the three so far- my personal favorite and is dripping with gameable sandbox content in a small Twin Peaks style town up in the mountains. Once again, we have art provided to us by Zach Hazard Vaupen this time just for the monsters and NPC portraits from Josh Clark. While not as ever present as the phenomenal art Zach did for the illustrious The Mall adventure- what is there is more than enough to get the neurons firing. As for Josh's portraits, I found them particularly helpful in framing in my head who it was I was portraying- kudos.

DAMNED

[HOWLING OF WIND FROM A BLIGHTED PEAK]

CRAB

Yes the layout by Josh Domanski is particularly readable and flows smoothly; and I'm always one to praise the addition of linked pages in a PDF as being crucial for a GM to keep the pace up. 

Hazy spores cloud the room in a blue-bathed fog as CRAB drinks deeply from a glass filled with hazy amber liquid.

CRAB

Did you know you can make wine from mushrooms? And not just plump helmets. Anyways...

 Right right, the setting. Go read the blurb on their site, but the bottom line is we're adventuring in a Twin Peaks inspired town that has something going horribly wrong with it- and the doom clock to keep things evolving before disaster. As their itch page highlights, this isn't just Twin Peaks- it's "What if Twin Peaks had a The Last Of Us arc?" And that's pretty on point- as the monster of the week is a fungal growth of an Armillaria ostayae variant that infects animal and human hosts- turning them into walking, hunting, zombie-like fungus vectors. 

The DAMNED lash out at creeping mycelia with shadowy tendrils. CRAB puts down the glass and grabs the central mycelia cluster in one claw before devouring it whole. The infected fish-man hosts around the room grow more and more agitated as CRAB wipes the last remains away before hefting a shotgun from beneath the table and loading it.

CRAB

Now, let's do something a little different and roll into the actual play with director's commentary. This time I had the pleasure of actually running this before I reviewed it, and so while I get some cleaning done around the house- please enjoy the show.

Slow zoom to a descending screen on the back wall. A projector whirs to life and the movie begins to play as shotgun blasts fill the room- splattering gore and blue mushroom on the corner of the screen.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

H & R

H & R are our players and their characters, so let's roll with it. R had planned a two week camping trip up into Coldwater with a group of friends but totaled his car and was in the hospital for a week before being able to make it. R on the other hand missed the evite and so got the invitation late but takes the opportunity to treat the camping trip as a time for a writer's retreat. With some minimal camping gear (assuming their friends had the rest to cover them) they drive up into Coldwater.

CRAB-COMMENTARY

The adventure provides a series of archetypes for character backgrounds and some recommendations for how to start the game. My table was drawn down to two players for this session and I knew we only had time for a one-shot, which the module also has considerations for. Deciding to completely ignore those recommendations, we rolled up our party and set them off to join their friends at Coldwater Camp with nothing but the player-facing maps in hand. By no means do you need to runt his adventure with the players being part of the camping group- but it seemed like a good way to draw them into the mystery. Also, I had the Twin Peaks OST cycling through for most of this session.

DAY ONE

Exhausted from the drive, H & R check the map and see a diner in town, so they pull in to get some coffee and food. There, they meet Kass who is more than happy to chat compared to the cold reception from the other locals. In short order, the group mentions they're here to go camping with their friends and the whole room goes quiet. Stumbling over her words, Kass asks the group to wait and have a conversation with the Sheriff, who she calls on the landline.

Sheriff Hank pulls up and greets the party before inviting them to have a conversation back at the Sheriff's office. Once there, he informs them that three days ago a group of campers went missing at Coldwater Camp, their tents destroyed possibly from a bear and no sign of them to be found otherwise. 

The sheriff assures the party that their friends probably weren't there for the attack and should turn up any day now but invites them to go chat with the deputy at the campground if they want to. First up, the two leave and get a room at the only hotel in town, a run-down two story motel called the Lakeview Resort. Up in their room, they find a pamphlet for a strange new age religious service at the Church of Celestial Science in town. H says it looks fishy, but in short order the two first make their way to the campground where they spot their friends' two cars in the parking lot and the deputy, Gerald. 

 CRAB-COMMENTARY

There's a neat voidcrawl procedure to use an overloaded encounter die and generate encounters between travel spots. I'm not highlighting it here when it happens, but it serves to add flavor and additional hints and clues throughout the investigation, and at night brings in some real fun horrors.

A short, bored, man, Gerald shows the two up to the tent sites where some loose caution tape marks the torn apart sites of their friends. Gerald reiterates that they'll probably turn up any day now and then leaves without much further ado- but not before letting slip that he hopes this doesn't turn out like The Incident from last year. The group examines the sites and spend some time identifying whose sites were which, making note of several bullet casings and discovering a folder with a pamphlet from the Church of Celestial Science and a map of the region with the Hines farm circled.

Seeing nightfall approaching, the two decide to check out this Church next but are stopped by the park ranger, Sam. She's disheveled and doesn't look to have had much sleep, but tries her best to answer their questions- but then goes into her theory of a bigfoot attack being responsible. Unsure of how to interpret that but deciding she might be a crackpot, the group leaves amicably after making plans to meet with Sam at dawn for an update and then make their way to the Church- but not before something large and heavy bolts into the woods nearby- spooking the two would-be campers.

CRAB-COMMENTARY

I really dig how the NPCs are framed in the module, with a simple print of desires, secrets, and social bullet points I was able to run them all with a simple glance as they came up- of course this was after reading the whole module twice-over before running it. 

The bigfoot theory was a great red herring and the players weren't sure if it really was a sasquatch attack or not until they find more clues in the next few days.

At the Church covered in modern symbols and gold filigree, the group are about to walk into the atrium to speak with Thomas, the Church's central figure in town- but R spots a photo printout from a CCTV camera in the diner of H & R walking in this morning. Spooked, he pulls H out and the two drive off to the Gorge- the town's local dive bar- to talk the investigation over.

Spinning their wheels for a bit, eventually the Sheriff comes in and the two invite him over for a drink to talk. Hank calms their inquiries about why the state rangers weren't involved yet by saying he'd called them and they should be down- but again their friends should be back any day now. When H brings up The Incident, the Sheriff firmly rebuffs them and says to leave town business alone. Their chat is interrupted as two out of place and clean cut looking people walk into the bar and the Sheriff says his goodbyes before taking the new pair into a back room.

The group heads back to the hotel for the night but get sidetracked investigating a strange glowing blue mushroom in the stairwell that spores when R touches it. Shortly later though, they hit the sack and are plagued with vague nightmares of something watching them from the woods as they examined the campground that morning.

DAY TWO

Noting their similar weird dreams and how tired they were, the group first makes a trip to the diner again and have a chat with Kass and some local fishermen claiming they'd caught a furred trout in the lake. Kass is convinced into talking about The Incident that left 23 dead last year- but she doesn't know much more. She does let some gossip about JJ, the only remaining son of the Hines family who came back after the incident to run the farm.

CRAB-COMMENTARY

 "The Incident" or "The Coldwater Lake Incident" is a reference to The Bureau and is left unfilled in- meaning the details are vague. Something happened, a lot of people died, GM fill in the blanks. For this session, it was never really explained but did hang as a cloud over the town. There's a few other things never really explained- Haru and her whole schtick, or what happened to Gabby at the firewatch tower. These are left vague in the module for the GM to fill in as necessary, which I appreciate.

The next stop is the campground again, the pair meets Sam at her cabin and examine her bigfoot plaster mold and her dozens of cryptozoological drawings before she shows them to the signs of a bloodless scuffle at the hiking trails. Warning them of rain coming in that night, they part.

Stopping in at the hardware store, the pair buys some high powered walkie talkies and tune them into the ranger frequency, the police frequency, and the firewatch tower frequency. On their way out, they run into a buck deer, casually standing in the parking lot. Completely docile, it makes no response to them even after H gives it a kiss on the nose. Unsettled, the pair watch the buck wander off further into town before they decide to check out the firewatch tower they've been hearing about. 

Hiking up and examining all the graffiti, the pair finds the tower abandoned recently and the small room tossed as though it had been searched. A map in the middle of the room has a few locales circled with notes, but the group is most interested in the Hines farm and the illegible note about the Pickman Lodge in the hills above town. H finds a walkman and some cassette tapes and decides to listen to them as the pair head back to their car- determined to check out the farm.

With some experimentation, H & R discover that when listening to the cassette tapes, you can see a hazy cloud whenever people lie. They discuss good ways to employ this but are distracted when they spot Deputy Gerald on the main road, walking backwards into the woods with no car in sight. He makes no recognition of the two and keeps walking and the pair decide to get out of the area and move to the Hines farm next.

The farm is sickly and the crop is doing poorly. First thing that catches the pair's attention though is the front door of the farm house is already swung open and banging in the wind with JJ's car in the driveway. They check the barn in the back and the chicken coop but find both empty. Shouting around for JJ, they get no response. Uncertainly, they enter the house and find an unfinished meal in the dining room covered in fungi. Upstairs they examine a shrine in the master bedroom to the 23 who died in the Coldwater Lake Incident- but curiously note the additional 20 names on the memorial. 

Hearing something from the other room upstairs, they find the guest room blocked by a fallen dresser and push past it to discover a fleshy fungal chimera hybrid of the Hines family goats, some chickens, and their milk cow in the middle of absorbing what looks to be JJ. The chimera cries out with all its voices and the group books it out of the house and speed off back to the hotel to collect themselves. 

Rationally, they order a few pizzas from the Occult Pizza down the road and go over the case again. When they see the mushroom pizza covered in fungus H immediately goes to throw it in the dumpster. The rain started pouring and the sun set, he spots an odd lump in the parking lot and catches a human leg as part of it with his cellphone light before the whole mass shudders and moves off into the woods. 

Back in their room, the pair both reflect on some other odd moments- each thinking they're hallucinating as R had experienced a brief episode where he thought his skin was glowing blue- but refused to tell H about it as he suspected it might be the mushroom spores he inhaled. H meanwhile had been having brief episodes where he saw thick veiny cords under his skin- and again didn't bring it up. 

CRAB-COMMENTARY

These hallucinations were my solution to rolls on the dire omen table- an option on the overloaded encounter die that corresponded to the next Fallout the members would experience.

Remembering that the blueberry festival was today, the two head up the road to check it out and find it still in full swing despite the rain. They spot the sheriff getting yelled at by what they presume was the mayor, and offer to get him a beer at the Gorge. Back there, they discuss what little they've found and the flesh chimera with the Sheriff. He seems concerned and tells them to visit the assistant Sarah at the department in the morning and to keep him informed on their investigation before again being interrupted by the clean-cut pair coming in and taking the sheriff into the back room. 

Shortly later, a shotgun blast rings out from just outside and the pair duck under the table as the Sheriff bolts to the front door. He comes back in to let the bar know that it was just someone trying to spook a mountain lion he saw near his porch- which only further confuses the pair who decide to try and get some sleep- but not before noting a strange glowing blue-fungus covered mass in an alleyway nearby. 

DAY 3

Nightmares plagued their sleep again. Once more they roll into the diner where they gossip with Kass, who informs them the clean-cut couple are the newcomers in town, Brett and Angela, who bought out the entire Pickman Lodge as their personal residence just after the Coldwater Lake Incident. The gossip is interrupted as the fishermen from yesterday come in and show off their furred trout. Talking about fishing for awhile, H asks to see it and picks it up before - to his horror - he realizes the fur on the trout is mycelial strands. Furiously washing his hands in the sink, they get back in their car and spot a column of black smoke- visible even in the rain- coming from the Camp.

First, they check in at the Sheriff's office where the assistant informs them they were to be granted access to the armory as necessary- so they pick up two stab-vests and a shotgun before heading off to the camp. 

CRAB-COMMENTARY

Right about here is where how late it was in the night led to me moving the story along a bit to get us to a conclusion before sunrise.

At the camp, the pair find the whole place to be covered in fungus and mycelia- the trees rotten and the smoke coming from Sam's cabin. They briefly try to search for her- only to find her and five others covered in fungus, rooted to the ground in a circle in the campsites. At this point, they decided it was probably best to flee the town. 

Running back to their car, they find the engine flooded and make the choice to swap the battery out to the '72 White Chevy Bronco in the lot which had its keys in the ignition. Just as they were about to finish the swap, they find out what happened to the other campers. 

Barreling out of the mycelial growth behind them- a monster of fungus and melded human flesh- the Flesh Hydra makes its first full appearance. H gets a few lucky shots in with the shotgun and keeps it at bay until R finishes the battery swap and the pair flee the campground. As they try and flee the town, however, they find the routes east and west are both flooded. They decided to head for high ground and make for the Pickman Lodge.

Finding the lodge empty, they take shelter from the rain and search the place, finding rooms filled with lab equipment and survival gear as well as one locked door with something scratching on it. They also find a strange red rotary phone connected to data and telephone cables in the dining room- R spends awhile talking to the person on the other side and getting assurances that help is on the way. 

CRAB-COMMENTARY

 The phone is an artifact being used by Brett and Angela- Bureau agents. They use it to redirect outgoing calls from town into the phone which tells sweet lies. Per the module, Brett and Angela have been there for a year monitoring the area after the Incident, but have been sending falsified reports for the last week. The module leaves this open to question as to why. I decided to run it because they were seduced by the phone's comforting lies and thought they could keep the situation in town handled without further Bureau help which might try to reposess the phone. 

After waiting long enough to come to the conclusion the voice on the phone lied about help, Brett and Angela pull up and there's a tense stand off with guns drawn on both sides before diplomacy reveals them both on the same side. Brett and Angela fill in that their research and samples led them to believe this was all caused by a fungal mass growth using the caves beneath town to grow (the party had been hearing about these caves from NPCs for awhile) and that there should be a central mass they can destroy to impede its growth. The agents deputize the investigators and make a plan. Brett and Angela search the Hines farm for a suspected cave entrance and the party goes to find some ammonium nitrate at the Station to detonate on the fungus. 

Driving off in the dark and the rain, R is keenly aware of the Flesh Hydra following the party, keeping pace with the car just behind them. It keeps just away as they pull into the Station, a convenience store/gas station, and R fills the tank up while H goes in to find some explosives. He finds a flamethrower for sale and immediately purchases it, before the shopkeep informs him of the explosive barrels that JJ was supposed to pick up are just out front. 

R sees another car pull in and the man get out of his car is slammed into a bloody smear on the ground and dragged into the dark by the Flesh Hydra. R decides it best to go inside now and help H. He distracts the shopkeep while H grabs two pony-kegs of ammonium nitrate and throws them in the car and honks the horn to get R back in and they speed off towards the Hines farm. 

At the farm they meet with Brett and Angela and are shown to the hidden cave entrance in the cellar of the Hines farmhouse. The new party dons gas masks and heads into the caves, with R & H hauling the kegs and Brett and Angela leading the way. 

Some cave navigation later, the group runs into a gas-masked Sheriff Hank and have a tense negotiation about what he was doing there before deciding to tentatively team up. They head further down into the caves following the thickest strands of mycelia into a huge cathedral like cave with a pit leading into the fungal heart of darkness. 

Brett, Angela, and the Sheriff fight off a group of fungal-hosts and mycelial strands that seperate the party and R&H run forward to hurl their explosives into the pit. They're stopped at the last minute though as the Flesh Hydra pulls itself out of the pit and attacks. 

R's shoulder is dislocated and he's hauled up onto the back of the Hydra- still clutching the keg while H's foot gets mangled from another attack but successfully fires a few blasts from his shotgun.With some deft maneuvering, R is able to escape and roll off the Hydra while using the lighter he bought at character creation to partially detonate his keg- blowing the Hydra back into the hole. 

The other half of the party keeps up the assault but Angela goes down as the hosts continue their assault. R & H throw the last powder keg in and on top of the reforming Flesh Hydra- spraying the flamethrower in on top and detonating the mass- barely escaping the blast. The detonation confuses the remaining hosts which are put down in short order as the whole group flees the now collapsing cavern and into the morning sun.

By noon, the Bureau has arrived and begins cleanup through the town. The investigators are given some token monetary compensation and sworn to secrecy and sent on their way with an unassuming gray business card bearing only a phone number to call for work. The pair vow to never eat mushrooms again as the session ends. 

CRAB-COMMENTARY

Things had to wrap up fast towards the end as we'd already been playing for six hours or so- but all in all this was a delight to run. The module presented an intriguing investigative puzzlebox for the investigators to untangle and the town's vibe and detailed NPCs were perfect.

INT. DUNGEON. BANQUET HALL.

Flesh and fungus smears the tables and halls all around. CRAB sits at the table, covered in mycelia and fungus. With a breath in- the growths slink and retreat under his shell. His eyes glow faintly blue. The DAMNED retract back up into the ceiling with a whimper.

END TITLES

Shadow - CHROMATICS plays.

The camera sweeps back and flits between different rooms in the dungeon. Bodies and gore cover the halls amidst smashed mushrooms and furniture. Fish men in gas masks with bloody mops and buckets are at work cleaning the mess. As the last panning shot ends, a mass of flesh and mycelia rolls with a schlop into the shadows. 

Zach Hazard Vaupen

Savoring Centauri Knights

EXT. ARTIFACT RECOVERY SITE 1. NIGHT.

Three tons of stone and soil are heaped around a ten meter deep pit in the frozen wastes. Work lamps burn red against the still night and illuminate the feverish action below. Beneath an ant hive crescendo of limbs and scurrying figures in thick rubberized suits and reflective face plates glimpses of a shiny black metal structure are revealed. 

The arc of plasma torches illuminates the pit briefly before a hiss fills the night and betrays outgassing argon, sending the workers scurrying up and out of the pit until the hissing ceases. A pair of workers slide back down into the pit as the rest watch on from relative safety. The pair disappear into the shiny black structure and silence stretches with the wait. One worker emerges from the structure, dragging the other and carrying a small red metal chest stylized with an insectoid carapace. Clutching the chest tightly, the swarm of workers carry the survivor out of the pit and towards a rapidly approaching bright light.

INT. CRAB DUNGEON. LIVING ROOM 3. 

CRAB is strewn across a couch, asleep, the Star Fox 64 main menu music filling the room and the light of the TV flickering. The camera drifts around the couch, returning to its original position to reveal HUBRIS occupying a previously empty corner. As the zoom drifts to the corner, the music fades out and the light begins to strobe. CRAB wakes with a start and the room returns to normal. After stretching and yawning, CRAB looks into the camera.

CRAB

Well, I've been sitting on this for a bit, now is as good of a time as any. 

Revealing a hidden switch near the couch's totally rad built-in coaster, CRAB presses it and plummets on the couch down a vertical shaft lit with alternating yellow and red lights. Singular frames include flashes of HUBRIS running down one of the walls. Shouting over the rushing air:

CRAB

I think this one came to my attention when doing some research into some alternative rules light systems last year and tasting TinyD6, the DRIVETHRURPG algorithm showed me a name, a picture, and started me on a journey.

 

Cut to the bottom of the dropshaft. A klaxon sounds and the metal plating floor slides away, revealing a pool of deep green translucent slime oozes forth a great tendril which reaches up and catches the couch, bringing it to a gentle halt before the sinking back into the pit as the klaxons sound the plating slides back in place. CRAB steps off the couch and enters a bright hallway.

INT. CRAB DUNGEON. LABORATORY KAPPA.

CRAB exits the hallway into a sterilized airlock, the number ten emblazoned over the image of a stylized turtle shell. He digs into the lockers nearby, donning a lab coat, pointed wizard's hat, and protective goggles before stepping through a sterilization chamber and entering the clean room beyond. Similarly garbed figures sans wizard hat scurry back and forth between halls strewn with crates bearing strange markings. The scientists, green-skinned and with webbed appendages nod and wave at CRAB as he makes his way through the laboratory. 

CRAB

I suppose you could go back quite a ways further, to when Grandfather Crab introduced me to the unparalleled creative project that was Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. That entire game is deserving of investigations on its own, but that's the first time I can recall being introduced to the concept of Alpha Centauri, and that memory rang clear as a bell when I read the title of the subject of our investigation.

Moving through clean tiled corridors, CRAB passes many chambers secured with card readers and keypads, revealing only experiment titles labelled above the room numbers.

SLUGHEADS

REWARD SYSTEMS AND DESIGNING FOR THEM

CRAB SHACK CRAFTING

THE PURPOSE OF HISTORY

PROJECT M 

ACADEMY 9.

DECAY

GLOGTROIDVANIA

A panning shot reveals similar rooms and corridors stretching out.

Looking back, CRAB pauses at the last door, alone in the corridor. The light flickers over his shoulder, revealing the outline of HUBRIS, visible only in the dark. Shivering, CRAB continues to the next door, slides an ID badge through the scanner, and enters. The door shuts revealing the room's name: CENTAURI KNIGHTS. 

INT. CRAB DUNGEON. LABORATORY KAPPA. CONTAINMENT CELL 24.

A long metallic table sits in the middle of a small, bright, room. In the center is a powered off projector facing the far wall. At the far end of the table is a plate, fork, and knife. There is a wrapped brown paper package on the plate. Next to the plate is a small red metal chest stylized with an insectoid carapace, lying open. Beyond the observation glass, a group of scientists watches on, restless.

CRAB enters the room and sits in front of the plate, unwrapping the package carefully. He cuts a small corner off of it, and begins to chew. The projector hums and comes to life as CRAB chews and the presentation begins.

BEGINNING AT THE END

On 31 July 2006, Guardians of Order (GoO) Inc announced their closure. The full story is somewhat muddled and there was controversy at the time. The news broke first thanks to a somewhat small fantasy author whose games were licensed with GoO who broke the news first on his blog. George R. R. Martin had originally licensed with GoO and White Wolf to produce the A Game of Thrones RPG (coming in at a whopping 576 pages) and subsequent line of products, which may come as a shock to those of us living in the recent future of the popularity of his works, but even then it stood out against GoO's standard profile. [1]

The collapse of the company was announced suddenly, but the cracks had begun in 2004 when freelancers began to see payments frozen. The problem worsened until 2005 when company founder, Mark MacKinnon, downsized GoO to a single employee, himself. Even then however, GoO was seeing sales increases and Mark remained optimistic for the year, though his community had doubts [3]. Ascribed to problems with the declining value of the US dollar, the company failed to keep itself solvent and finally declared bankruptcy and dissolved. Per Applecline however, "The worst problem was likely the simple fact that Guardians of Order was a rare RPG company located in Canada." [2, 325].

Regardless, the dissolution engendered a great deal of bad blood in the community, especially amongst freelancers who went unpaid (and are still unpaid for their work done for GoO). This resurfaced in 2013 when MacKinnon opened Dyskami Publishing and was met with hostility from many sources and this wound continues to attract the ire of the community at large. The company continued on to publish Absolute Power, a superhero game based on the GoO Silver Age Sentinels line, as well as most recently Anime 5E, a continuation of the Big Eyes Small Mouth line packed onto D&D 5th Edition. [2, 329][4]

CRAB

Despite the explosion at the end, the GoO games were still pretty fondly remembered by some of those who enjoyed them at the end. There was no small number of blogposts from before the collapse and even years later that did analysis on some of the more popular works and editions and I was honestly surprised by some of the names I read that were writing about the game. 

The projector continues to hum as the presentation proceeds. CRAB cuts another corner, revealing it to be a piece of an obscured book, then eats it thoughtfully.

CONTINUING AT THE BEGINNING

GenCon Program Book, 1997

GoO was founded in 1997 in Guleph Canada, first publishing the Big Eyes Small Mouth (BESM) system for a GenCon (August). According to MacKinnon, it was a modest hit with 125 copies sold and then began to penetrate the markets a bit more and gain in popularity. [5, 2] Speaking about the RPG companies coming out at the time Peter Adkison noted: "These companies were started by hardcore RPG enthusiasts- people who love RPGs. They were gamers first and businesspeople second. This isn't the sort of industry some MBA business executive out to make money dives into... And that's okay. This kind of quest needs a hero who is in it for the journey, not just the loot." [6]

CRAB

Oh, how the times do change.

Certainly at the time, MacKinnon fits this note to a T. The game got popular and GoO put out more anime titles as the years went on, including some of their bigger hits such as The Sailor Moon Role-Playing Game and Resource Book, and with the addition of GURPS-famous author David Pulver to the company came out even more titles such as Big Robots, Cool Starships and Hot Rods & Gun Bunnies which were supplements to the BESM 1st Edition rules and added skills and mecha/ship creation processes. There were other, more curious, licensed games specific to anime such as Dominion Tank Police and Tenchi Muyo!, with the strangest choice in my eyes being the Demon City Shinjuku book. Now, to those more savvy in the 80s/90s anime/OVA scene these are big names that can stand up to this day, but at the time of publishing the audience for these RPG books was restricted to American and Canadian anime fans (largely American) which was already a small if growing group around the turn of the century. 

BESM fills a gap, as seen by MacKinnon, in the field of anime RPGs available at the time. After the first and second anime RPG booms [2, 316-319] MacKinnon found there was a lack of non-mecha inspired RPGs that could handle a variety of different genres: "I set out to fill that void by creating a system that would allow for a wide variety of character talents, skills, and oddities, but was not hidden behind a heavy assortment of charts, numbers, and complex rules." [7]

CRAB

Later editions of BESM are accused of having this very flaw, becoming more and more bloated as the editions continue. As an example, the first edition BESM comes in at a tidy 87 pages, with the second edition being 210 pages and the third edition sitting at 242 pages even after adopting a dual column style. 

In this manner, BESM is an all-rounder system. It's designed in line with MacKinnon's game of choice at the time, the Amber Diceless RPG, but with added systems and procedures that reinforce the anime style. The Tri-Stat system of MacKinnon's design is on center stage here, the only stats are Mind, Body, and Soul. All actions are concluded with stat checks against these three or there associated derived stats such as Combat Value, Health, and Energy Points. 

To my eyes, what really powers the roleplaying of BESM is the character attributes which function as a leveled tag-like system where certain powers or abilities and defects are chosen at certain levels which grant the ability to perform differently. The whole setup is broad enough that you can simulate most anime into this system easily and quickly. As for gripes, my personal biggest ones are the lack of specificity in these attributes as well as a tendency in supplemental materials to list the attribute name only. As the supplements came out and time goes on, there are simply too many attributes for anyone to be expected to know off the top of their head and this can lead to getting bogged down in cross referencing attributes. Others have written about their takes on the system and I encourage examining their interpretations as well. [8]

CRAB

But this isn't really about BESM. The system in its first edition works and is pretty easy to pick up and play without too much bloat or bog down. No, what we are here to taste, savor, digest, and incorporate is a product released first in 2001 and then again adapted for d20 in 2003. It was GoO's first original setting and written by David Pulver:

TITLE CARD

CRAB

 David L. Pulver joined up with GoO in 1998 and began cranking out the supplements until he was able to work on this original setting on his own. Pulver comes with a pedigree of his own at the time, having written an entire series of GURPS books since the late 80's as a freelancer. This isn't his first dance with anime either, as in 1997 he published Bubblegum Crisis: Before & After, a supplement to the R. Talsorian Games RPG based on the show of the same name: Bubblegum Crisis. 

And actually that timing is auspicious and you can taste some flavors of Talsorian running all throughout Centauri Knights, especially the lore. It really feels like something out of the also published in 1997-

//POWER FAULT//ERROR-CODE 0937279951

A distorted shot of Containment Cell 24 is shown, the outline of HUBRIS hovering in center frame above the projector as a dark liquid begins filling the room. 

//REBOOTING SYSTEMS

Containment Cell 24's camera is restored, with nothing amiss from before the fault aside from a red smear over the observation window where one of the scientists had been observing. The remaining group does not make any indications that they notice this. Thirty-three seconds have elapsed since the previous cut.

CRAB

 - Ed Northcott. Really an odd choice for this product and some of his art here feels lackluster and incongruous to the setting, especially in line with other products of the time. The general design of Centauri Knights  though has some good highlights, like check out this opener. 

CRAB

Crisp. 

Now, this sets us up for the lore dump at the beginning of the book, a classic strategy for products of this era. The book itself is only 114 pages with about a third going to lore and lore adjacent topics for the setting. The rest is all species, skills, attributes and stats etc. etc. BESM stuff. 

BESM is a decent system, but I want to focus in on the setting. What can we use from it? What nuggets and ideas are buried within this artifact that can be transplanted into our modern wet and electric idea holes to grow and spore into new gems? Some of this is appreciation for the time and the product, but the ideas contained within remain valuable to us today who craft and play new game stuffs while also providing a window into the sexy post-Y2K sci-fi thoughtspace. 

Let's start with the lore. As I mentioned earlier, my experience with Sid Meier's brought this title to my attention, and there are threads in the lore that keep that tie going- but more so I feel a strong undercurrent of mid 90s Kim Stanley Robinson throughout the setting. Let's start from the beginning. Again.

LORE

Let's turn back the clock to the first BESM supplement, Big Robots, Cool Starships published in 1999. Recognizing the need to integrate mecha bigger and better into BESM, GoO makes a 111 page supplement with all the mecha options you can handle. Vehicles and the like are right up Pulver's alley, filling this supplement top to bottom with procedures and such but I'm going to skip all of that and go right to the end where we talk game seeds (this is the best one): 

And skipping further we go to the sample adventure: Red Planet, Blue Helmets. This is our setup to Centauri Knights: The year is 2029 and the international community came together to create a joint program under the UN to study a crashed alien spaceship discovered on Mars. The players are a troop of combat-walker equipped "Blue Helmets" who act as a small security force for the research base and the associated dig site. A summary of good ideas from this:

• Pro-Siberian Russian rebels meant to relieve you seize a Japanese warship and bomb the hell out of your research station. 
• Brain diving into a broken alien warship and fighting the alien AI
• Stingray shaped alien spaceships getting in an ALIEN CROSSFIRE to save Earth
• The mechs you use are called Coleopterans 
• This is a read aloud line: “Max Planck exploded. I’m tracking an incoming missile from Musashi, target is...Gott in himmel!"

Dave White's art here kicks ass

The end result taken as canon is that the brain diving PC discovers the aliens come from a nearby trinary system, Alpha Centauri, and successfully fight off the Pro-Siberian attack and prevent the alien ship from being destroyed. Centauri Knights picks back up from where this story leaves off and fills us in on the next 121 years. 

Together, the international community builds asteroid-based particle beams to power the first ships to Alpha Centauri. This whole lore section is told in multimedia snippets from different sources, painting the picture of the whole journey. It's neat, a political candidate uses the phrase "We know alien robots visited Mars — in Biblical times!" We get some transhumanist additions here, the first travelers get their brains sucked into jars for safekeeping and cryosleep. Before they arrive, a Von Neumann probe has already ID'd and set up a factory to produce their new cyborg bodies and set up a base of operations. 

The Alpha Centauri system gets a full Egyptian naming convention to its core. On display we have the central and most important planet, Osiris, home of the long dead Osiran race that built the ship found on Mars. The planet is similar in size to Earth, lacks geological activity, and is totally completely dead. Nothing but sands and ash, along with a pervasive fog awaits the explorers. On inspection though, this fog is actually a cloud of inert nanomachines, purpose unknown. 

Further exploring the Alpha Centauri system, the UN team finds O'Neill cylinders/asteroid habitats and breaks in. These habitats are, for the most part, bursting with native Osiran life complete with blue skies and clouds but orange, crimson, pink and grey landscapes home to the native Osiran xenofauna and xenoflora. Here, explorers find the first dead Osirans. 

Humanoid and vaguely reptilian/draconian, curving horns, smooth skin, and a tail that ends in a scorpion stinger. The arranged alien dead are found with strange piercings in their skulls hosting jewels, which would eventually be known as dream jewels. For the Osirans, these allowed access to their planet-spanning computer network known as the Synthesis- built straight into that nanomachine fog called the Ghost Fog. Eventually, humans start implanting the jewels in their own heads and become Fog Witches, able to control the fog and create items and interface with Osiran technology. 

On exploring the sites, the team finds that the Osirans are all dead but their robots aren't, as a scorpion like armored tank melds out of a solid wall (smart-matter Osiran tech, also usable by Fog Witches) and blows some of them up. And with all this data in hand sent back to Earth, the rush begins. Scattered all over Osiris, the explorers find hundreds of Star Tombs. Large, resilient, Osiran tombs chock full of dangerous robots and that juicy xenotech.

So, the year is now 2150, how's Alpha Centauri looking? Bad. But good for play. Pulver has created for our use a powder keg in the process of going off. Who are our big players now? 

FACTIONS

Oppression is still the same in 2150

UNSAID: The United Nations Special Agency for Interstellar Development. These are the ones charged with enforcing the UN treaty (yes Pulver wrote an actual UN treaty) and are the de facto Alpha Centauri government. These guys also confiscate dangerous Osiran relics and contract the police forces. 

UNPACFOR: United Nations Protection of Alpha Centauri Force, the fascists here to stomp out resistance. These are your stock standard military troops transported from good ol' Sol and sent here to work alongside an army of robots and enforce the peace with military precision.

CENCOR: The Centauri Consortium, transtellar megacorp. The bad guys researching Osiran tech and looking to turn it to profit. Surprisingly not that detailed herein, and that's a shame. Transtellar megacorp is a label just asking for more definition as the main antagonist.

Eyes of Re/Selket: These guys both want the same thing for the most part: to be able to use Osiran technology freely and oppose the CENCOR/UNSAID plan to terraform Osiris for human occupation. These people have been adopting Osiran culture, a movement called Alexandrianism, and the more radical Eyes of Re have even started the Resurrectionist movement and began xenocloning- bringing Osrians back to life. Both groups make heavy use of xenomods, becoming more like Osirans through implants, and this helps them turn some star tombs into rebel bases. 

CRAB

 This is where that Kim Stanley Robinson thing comes into play. We have several ideologically opposed groups all thrown together and unable to compromise. There are plenty of smaller organizations listed out as well, including journalists. In fact, one of the recommended modes of play is as a journalist team- and that's just a beautiful idea for a campaign. Journalists running around an alien planet trying to report on fascist takedowns of rebels? Uncovering transtellar megacorp corruption and warcrimes? I dig it. 

There's a great deal of gab about equipment and such in the book as well, but to suffice there's some alien tech. The coolest is the dream jewels as they give you visions of long dead Osiran domestic life and the ability to make nanofog and smart-matter do what you want. Xenopanzers (mechs) of course get some love, with most being the power armor variety and not the glorious big stompy mechs you see in-

//POWER FAULT//ERROR-CODE 0937279609

The screen is black. Lines come into focus, an inverted color scheme of the previous shot. CRAB is speaking but the only sound is a low whine. There is something thrashing against the observation window. HUBRIS appears for sixty-two seconds as the thrashing continues, eye to eye with CRAB. CRAB makes no recognition of this.

//REBOOTING SYSTEMS

 

Containment Cell 24 is lashed with scrapes along every surface. The observation window is bloodied and cracked. Along the projector screen, the words "AN HOUR MAY LAY IT IN DUST" is slashed. CRAB continues speaking, nearly finished consuming what is now clearly displayed as a physical copy of Centauri Knights.

CRAB

-have been more elaborate or detailed but, serves the job. Now, what's Pulver want us to do with all this? 

CHARTERED ARCHAEOLOGICAL TEAM (CAT): The standard recommended start. These guys are licensed by UNSAID to go raid Osiran tombs and bring back relics for sale to officials (or illegally to Alexandrians for beaucoup bucks). You get some mechs to start with, a rotar-wing transport, and free license for tomb raiding. 

FREECOPS: These are freelance police hired by CENCOR or UNSAID and have free reign to perform civil rights abuses. Sure, they can also be used for investigative work and SWAT team efforts smoking out terrorists, but the fascism is strong with this setup. 

GHOST JACKALS: See CAT but make them blatantly illegal and working only with the black market. 

GUERILLA CELL: Be they Eye of Re terrorists or less radical Selket trying to win popular support, these are your hidden base living safe house using rebels trying to overthrow the UNSAID and CENCOR forces and prevent the terraforming of Osiris. 

NGO TEAM: Yeah this is the interesting one for me. These are your reporters, aid agency types, complete with some local muscle for guidance and bodyguards. Really vague as to what they will do, but this open ended prompt really gets the wheels spinning for me. 

UNPACFOR PLATOON: Play the soldiers freshly decanted from Sol and here to put the boot to Eye of Re types. The best armed of the bunch, diverse with the international background, and mostly doing generic military tasks.

CRAB

Now, the final key to the puzzle is the Osirans. We have all these factions fighting over Osiris and its future, but, spoilers here folks, the Osirans didn't really leave. That Synthesis/Internet running on the Ghost Fog is just the outer portion of a gigantic hive mind AI the Osirans built. 

Thousands of years ago, the Osirans began using the dream jewels as a way to record memories, and to circumvent death. Through the jewels, the subject can be encoded and uploaded into the Synthesis, becoming a part of the whole and living forever as digital life forms. 

For the Osirans, they split into two factions- one favoring Synthesis and the other Individual Identity. Eventually, one of their super weapons got loose and a xenoplague powered by nanobots destroyed the entire Osiran species within weeks. Some survivors were still fighting and got off course, with the ship on Mars being a Synthesis ship that crashed after shooting down two Identity ships that had tried to make it for 1000BC Earth and take it over. 

Those who survived built the star tombs and hijacked the ghost fog that remained to expand the Synthesis network. Right now, they're all still focused inwards, dreaming their digital eternity. But as the human presence on Osiris continues to develop and grow more violent, and as Fog Witches and CENCOR continue to brush against the dreams of the Synthesis entity, is left up to the GM to decide.

CRAB finishes the final bite and exhales in satisfaction. A large plate from the ceiling crashes to the ground.There is a flicker in the lights, and a shadow moves beyond the observation window. One of the corners of the room is suddenly dark. There are eyes looking out.

CRAB

Well, that's that. I got a bit carried away here in... well several respects, but this was an engrossing journey. There are some more interesting nuggets from the BESM line that struck me when I was doing the research for this, and maybe I'll talk about them later. For now though, it's time to close up shop and-

The room is silent. CRAB looks around carefully, the camera pans as he sweeps his eyes across the carnage. Cut back to the initial view, HUBRIS is inches in front of CRAB. The cracks on HUBRIS widen and the camera shudders.

CRAB

 You! It's not time yet yo- WHO BROKE CONTAINMENT?

CRAB presses a button and a smooth flowing metallic substances coats his body as he breaks out of the observation window, revealing a scene of bloody mayhem outside as HUBRIS cracks into pieces and CRAB begins hurling discs of spinning flowing metal at it. The discs rapidly inflate wherever they strike, restricting HUBRIS in place as it breaks its outer shell, revealing the fine metal lines and red-white paint job of a humanoid mecha-  M E K T O N

CRAB

Damn you MEKTON, return to your cursed slumber beneath the waves and haunt me no more! It's not your time yet! Be bound once more! The Talsorian curse will not take me today!

Metal screams as MEKTON tears through through the barriers to get to CRAB. Four spider-like robots the size of sedans burst into the room behind CRAB and begin layering on more of the flowing metal, until MEKTON can no longer be seen and the sounds of screeching metal stop. 

CRAB

Yet again, investing in a Tachikoma defense system has proven worth it. Get this thing contained again, I'll get to MEKTON... one day. For now though, Corneria needs me.

END TITLES

"Zombie Zombie - Rocket #9" begins to play. 

The shot flashes. COMMENTARY ENABLED.

COMMENTARY

The turn of the century RPG scene is messy and complicated, but the nature of web archiving and the frailty of digital media makes it challenging to get a good picture of the scene back then- if there's anything egregiously out of place here please let me know. 

I had thought about chunking this into a few posts and ended up just pulling it all together in the one. There definitely is more to be said here, but I encourage anyone interested in Centauri Knights to take a look at the setting themselves. Digging through settings I've never heard of before and finding little bits of useful tropeisms or campaign ideas is a delight, so there might be more like this in the future too.

Much of this data took a lot of digging to find, and really if not for Designers & Dragons it would have been a few more weeks before I could get this in a satisfactory state. Hiding just the right music clips took time too, but that's more fun to match. On the note of data though, I'm curious as to what the state of Blogspot archiving looks like for the RPG scene. Data archiving will be a massive problem for the future, and people looking back to study the RPG scene might start running into some pretty big problems in just getting the fundamental picture- but I'll do some research before going any further. 

Zooming out from the carnage, the shot follows over CRAB's shoulder as he retraces his steps through the laboratory, launches the couch up, and returns to Living Room 3. The TV powers on: Continue?

FADE OUT

 

[1] See the partnership announcement here and here from GRRM. Curiously enough, as the wheels of history turned, GRRM would reacquire publishing rights from the fall of GoO and Arthaus, a subsidiary of White Wolf, would acquire assets from GoO such as BESM 3rd Edition. Another curious note for this time in history was when White Wolf was fatefully acquired by CCP in 2006, yes the EVE Online CCP, who was still figuring out monetization for the EVE Online MMORPG and began to try and produce a Vampire the Masquerade MMORPG. Fiscal issues eventually resulted in the gutting of White Wolf. [2, 44-48]

[2] Applecline, S. (2014). Designers & Dragons. A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry: The '90s. Evil Hat Publishing.

[3] Helton, C. (2005, January 3). Guardians of Order: And Then There Was One

[4] History deserves to be looked at through the lens of empathy and humanity. On 28 July 2022, MacKinnon opened an indiegogo to fund a medical operation. As a part of this funding, Dyskami Publishing auctioned several pieces of memorabilia on Ebay. One of the products was a first edition copy of BESM that MacKinnon had given to his parents. Inside was an inscription to his parents: "Mom + Dad, My first real publication! Pretty cool, eh? Thanks for all the support you have both given me over the years. I love you both Mark". The auction noted that this first edition copy had been recovered from his parents' estate after they had passed away and was now on sale. In the 31 July 2006 post announcing his company's closure, MacKinnon wrote several notes thanking those he could before saying the final goodbye from GoO, including this one: "(I would like to thank) my parents for always giving me their best wishes and telling me how proud they are of my accomplishments". Seeing these items together in my research gave me pause and I feel that I would be remiss to not record the finding here.

[5] Pulver, D. L., & MacKinnon, M. C. (2002). Big Eyes, Small Mouth (Second). Guardians of Order.

[6] Peter Adkison. (2014). This Kind of Quest. In Applecline, S, Designers & Dragons. A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry: The '90s. Evil Hat Publishing.

[7] MacKinnon, M. (1997). Big Eyes Small Mouth (First). Guardians of Order.

[8] Alexander, J. (2012, November 22). Ex-rpgnet reviews—Big eyes, small mouth(1st edition). https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/20423/roleplaying-games/rpgnet-reviews-big-eyes-small-mouth-1st-edition

 

Let's Eat: Unicorn Meat

EXT. THRONE OF SALT. DAY.

Winds howl and tear across a broken, rusted landscape. Scrap towers twisted in heaps and torn open with bellies to the sky litter the horizon, wounds filled with drifts of salt. Pan to a singular unbroken spire of chalk splitting apart the vacant blue steely blue sky. A great bronze brazier rests atop, its towering flames spite the wind. Fly through the window to the chamber beneath the flame. A cerulean light swirls and twists shadows in the room, we face the back of a jagged throne hewn from a singular chunk of crystalline salt. Circle the room and reveal a robed wizard atop the throne, brow furrowed and gesturing wildly at the formidable orb in front of the throne, manipulating crackling lightning and swirling mist inside its shadowed depths. After great exertion, the lightning ceases and the wizard, revealed now in steady light now as DAN D, settles into the Throne. Slow zoom on DAN D. from across the orb as a brilliant white light pours out, flooding the room.

NOODLE

I'm Noodle! My flesh is worth more than your life!

DAN D. smiles. Camera flies back out the window and races upwards into a darkening, empty sky. We hear cackling mingle with the howling wind as the scene fades.

INT. DUNGEON. KITCHEN. 

A cozy furnished kitchen well lit with oil lamps. CRAB is searching through an ice chest. The dumbwaiter suddenly drops into the kitchen with a loud clatter and CRAB jumps, then carefully moves to examine. A brightly wrapped package is on the dumbwaiter, spotted with grease. Through a tear in the packaging a slab of opalescent meat can be seen. CRAB froths at the mouth, lifting the package in claws above his head and scuttles out of the room.

INT. DUNGEON. BANQUET HALL. 

CRAB sits at the head of the banquet table, a silver tray covering a dish in front of him. Squat frog-like creatures with bow-ties busy about preparing cutlery for empty seats and stoking the fireplace. They jump and scurry out of the room as CRAB clacks his claws suddenly. As the doors shut and we hear only the crackling of fire, CRAB pulls the conspicuous silver lever next to his chair. 

Grating gears and the screech of metal is heard and rapidly overcome with a shrieking wail from thousands of voices as a cage in the ceiling opens and a chained ball of clacking skulls and searching shadowy tendrils is lowered above the table. Clinking his glass with a fork, the screaming quiets to a murmur and CRAB lifts the tray on the dish, revealing the colorfully packaged slab of meat, distinct artwork clearly displayed. 

CRAB

 Rejoice, ye DAMNED, we're eating Unicorn Meat tonight! 

TITLE CARD

 

Rowan A. (Mon)

CRAB

Fresh from the THRONE OF SALT itself, this is. A machination by the hands of DAN D. with all this packaging and artwork courtesy of Rowan A. You know, just from it being a product of DAN's I was interested to start with, but even if not for him this artwork is dripping with a sauce and flavor that is hard to resist. From the rainbow of blood alone down to the rotting white-eyed unicorn corpse you get an immediate picture of what we are in for in this adventure. And let me tell you, that artwork carries on in quality and in its insidiously unsettling nature. The portraits of these NPCs reveals their nature just as much so if not more than the actual descriptions. Really, the art is such a choice pairing for the mood of the setting. I might even get that cover art as a print if I can find it, I'm so delighted. 

 

The DAMNED clack their jaws and howl as their shadowy tendrils flit about, dimming the lights and shaking dust from the ceiling. 

 

CRAB

 Oh right, yeah let's start with what this is all about. Unicorn Meat is a low magic and low level module meant to run for a couple of sessions. Its pretty system neutral and generally can be fit into any old-school-ish ruleset. In a 19th centuryish country backdrop, the Sunny Smiles Unicorn Farm has been running for decades, butchering unicorns and selling their product to the wealthy who can afford (and taste the sweet succor of) the unspoilt meat of these magical beasts. 

Now, these Sunny Smiles characters are your run of the mill corpo-fascist bastards out to squeeze every inch of profit from a system they can. With this case, we have the unicorn farming and slaughtering business. What DAN has done here is to take the idea of the magical unicorn and yank it into the post-industrial revolution to examine how it could be domesticated, farmed, and generally exploited. Following that logical line, who exactly is best suited to handle unicorns? Most people know them as gentle beasts, good aligned yada yada, but vicious as hell in the right circumstances. The unicorns we deal with here on Sunny Farms are these classic types that can only approach virgin girls, fleeing or berserking and otherwise spoiling the meat if anyone else touches them. 

DAMNED

[INCOHERENT GIBBERING AND THE SHRIEKING OF RATS]

CRAB

Look, I know what you may be thinking, but DAN really did his work here to handle this topic with as much respect and care as he can for the players and game runners who are averse to the conceptual consequences of where this sort of set up can go. The third page of the book- before even the table of contents- contains a Safety warning about the kinds of topics being covered and instructions for how to  run things while respecting everyone's boundaries.

DAMNED

[COYOTES YIPPING]

CRAB

Yeah I know some of you are big strong burly nerdskulls who scoff at these sorts of things but chill out and pay attention here. This is an example of a wizard performing a class act. Check out the preview on the drivethrurpg page, you'll get the whole first fourteen pages including the details of the content warnings. 

There. If anything listed isn't your cup of tea then feel free to walk away and go on with your day. For the rest of you, let's dig in. 

 

A crackling boom is heard followed by a long high pitched wail somewhere further in the dungeon. From underneath the tail, A soiled plush Unicorn with a limp neck crawls from underneath the table and slides up one of the legs like a slug, planting itself on one of the empty dishes. 

 

NOODLE

Organic is our guarantee!

 CRAB

 No, it really is not. This here cuddly symbol of corporate oppression is NOODLE. He's the mascot of the farms and should be slathered liberally around all the environments that you can. More on him later. 

So, the farms. All this unicorn murder has gone downhill and corrupted the area around the farms, called the Backwoods, and now all the adults on the farms have wandered off into the swamps, leaving the various press ganged and kidnapped young girls who worked the machinery to survive on their own. We pick up about 8 months after the adults left. 

None of the kids can escape the farm because of a big magic fence that surrounds the area kills you if you leave because of a chip in your head. Of course, you could play as an adult coming to search for a missing kid, but honestly I think you would be missing out if you don't embrace the setting and run as a band of carvergirls. 

Sunny Smiles has devolved into a tribal system of multiple factions of carvergirls at this point who have really gone full cargo cult and developed a culture all around unicorns. The hunting and processing of them, that is. As such there is plenty of cargo cult slang to sprinkle around that gels so perfectly with the setting. Anyways, there's tasty set of tables to roll up your carvergirls and then we're off to the races. 

 

The plush unicorn slumps over. Its skin bulges as something inside it moves around. 

 

NOODLE

If your parents loved you then why haven't they come to save you?

DAMNED

[DOGS, WHINING]

CRAB

Isn't he just a peach? He's one of the many just super flavorful magical items scattered around the book to find. There is plenty of mystery to solve around the farms with about 10 locations and two dungeons. No matter which of the three factions vying for power you end up helping out though (if any), you will eventually need to go out onto a swampcrawl and hunt a unicorn. 

Swampcrawling is a great little mechanic to simulate your expedition out into the swamps hunting unicorns. See, everyone needs the bits and pieces of unicorns and its sort of one of the best currencies to be found, and now you have to go find and murder one in the swamps to make any headway. The swampcrawl is done by way of drawing cards out of a deck and dealing with their results in order, sometimes running into the various mutant denizens of the swamp, finding caches of supplies, and hopefully ending in finding a unicorn. There are ten different types of unicorns (they come in horse breeds and I just think that's neat) and once you've managed to murder one you need to butcher it for parts. There's a table for how much you can get from a unicorn and even a little crafting system for building and upgrading unicorn bone weapons and armor a la Kingdom Death or Monster Hunter.

This NOODLE plush here is one of the many things you can find while swampcrawling and he whispers secrets and little corporate nonsense at you when held, serving as a way to deliver some information to players when stuck. Like I said before, used correctly this adorable little shitstain can be a great tool to add that banal factory cruelty vibe to any location.

NOODLE

 Your tarnished hands could never hope to touch a god. 

 

A side door at the back of the hall is thrown open and a fat bloody crow crashes through, squawking profanities at the froglike creature chasing it with a net. The pair eventually clamor through the opposite door, slamming it shut behind them, leaving the room silent but for the moaning DAMNED.

 

CRAB

Moving on then. There's a spooky factory dungeon where the unicorns used to be process and is now the home of a crazed Beast that stalks you like the Alien Isolation Aliens and it's a really nice chef's kiss of a touch when you pair it with the environments and the various "signs of the Beast" you can use to flag the creature's presence.The second dungeon is the cave systems and I'm not spoiling any of that. The descriptions of the rooms are all quick and detail oriented, letting the game runner get the important bits zapped into memory quickly and without extraneous fluffery- granting you the tools to make those quick details into wretched painting.

There are 10 NPC carvergirls detailed who all have their own agendas and quirks and highly flavored portraits. Each one has their own relations to other carvers and factions as well and are all succinctly described. Overall the feeling much of this gives is a Bloodborne-y swamp with farm itself being a Southern Lord of the Flies summer camp gone horribly, horribly wrong. Nothing in here is explicitly Southern per se, but a factory in the swamps that industrially farms and processes unicorns feels like something you would see in a low-magic 19th century Florida or Georgia.

DAMNED

[CONGRESS OF BOREDOM AND DISCONTENT] 

CRAB

Fine yeah let's wrap it up. This module is good. It tastes like a soft-shelled crab roasted over a campfire and then fried in butter that you bite into and savor as gushing blood runs down your face. Everything from the setting to the artwork I've already praised to even the simple, readable layout (also by DAN) flows together and presents a clean product with just the right amount of seasonings. There's intrigue and mystery and plot stuff that is also well paced and revealed for those who want to go hunting for it, but you can read that yourself. Go buy Unicorn Meat there or here. It's $12 and is driving me slowly insane. 

Come on, this is DAN's first work and it's so good! How did he cook this delicious dish up? What other secrets is he hiding in his orb? Go play it! And then after that let's all start porting some basic D&D monsters into this scrumptious 19th century hellscape and see what other mundane cruelties twisted into eldritch horrors the players must overcome. 

And get me more NOODLE! he should be all over the place! Give that plush to a character as a starting item and make it FOLLOW the party! It's free license for snark and puns and grim commentary from you as a game runner and he needs to be omnipresent! My sole gripe is that I can ctrl+f and only find six instances of NOODLE and maybe two drawings of him. Criminal.

 

CRAB continues frothing at the mouth for several minutes before settling and tying on an ornate bib and sharpening a knife. He then pulls the lever again and the DAMNED shriek and strain against their chained enclosure as they are lifted into an unseen chamber once more and sealed away. CRAB looks into the camera and cuts a chunk of the slab of meat off  and then stabs it with a fork. Vibrant red juices run down the fork. 

 

CRAB

So why farm unicorns anyways? 

It's the taste. 

Unspeakably disgusting to the innocent and yet addictive and decadent to the cruel.

What's it taste like to you?

The camera pans back slowly to a corner in the banquet hall and out down a corridor through the open door. Dozens of frog-like creatures pile into the hall from the corridor and the sounds of cutlery against porcelain can be heard. 

END TITLES

"Moon Hooch - Number 9" begins to play.

Shot continues to pull down a straight dimly lit corridor. The NOODLE plush walks down the center of the corridor, following the camera as it continues retreating down the the hallway, flashes of light from off camera sources reveal a twisting slumped unicorn in NOODLE's shadow. 

When Number 9 ends the corridor goes dark. A distant whinnying can be heard.

Rowan A. (Mon)

FADE OUT