Wednesday, April 26, 2017

He was scanning the horizon!



3d20
Scanning the horizon, you see...
...and...
...with
1
Wrecked vehicle
Velociraptor
Scrap!
2
Fallen-over skyscraper
D6+3 Raiders
Food, 40% chance radioactive
3
Kudzu-covered entrance to buried parking deck
Pterodactyl
Tracks
4
Primitive wooden wall around small structure
Glowing locust storm
Trap
5
Swamp
Just some cannibals. 50% chance they’re sated and friendly
Ongoing battle!
6
Copse of pines, sweating sap
Mega Ant Hive
Water supply, 40% radioactive chance
7
Rocky rubble
Wandering trader with armed guards
Really old gear, still useable
8
RAD cultist shrine, glowing water flows from an icon
Scrapper
D6 slugs
9
Crashed airplane
Omega Cat

10
Thick underbrush and trees. If passed through, CHA check to avoid poison ivy
Wild multidog pack

11
Interstate intersection
*Blood Dragon

12
House-sized lumps in the Urth - former neighborhood covered in mud and kudzu


13
Pristine house amidst still-hot rad craters


14
Sinkhole


15
Skyscraper husk


16
Occupied, guarded couple of houses


17
Rusting billboard


18
Half-life water oak copse crashing about


19
Kudzu-shrouded rush hour traffic, permanently halted.


20
Ruined strip mall remains



*reroll, only encounter if you reroll the same number

Random 'driving around post-apocalyptic Atlanta.' Some of the locations are a lil bland, but I figure it's kind of like the empty rooms of a dungeon. OR you could cross out locations as you go, and just roll a d12 for that.

Inspired by Eric Nieudan's post here.

I wrote all this below in a G+ post and realized I need it here too, just 'cause otherwise you miss out on how cool Omega Cats are.

The default landscape is kind of a sweaty field, tall green grasses, some patches of asphalt. There's still trees - lots of pine, the gross redneck of the tree world. They're generally sparse enough you can drive around just fine, on a car or a lawnmower with a repurposed straight-6 engine.

Omega Cats should have 1 randomly chosen ability:
1. NegaYowl
2. Invisibility
3. Feather Fall
4. Phasing
5. CharmFace
6. Hypercut

Half-life water oaks mature and die within 15 minutes of a seed hitting wet clay. They cause havoc by spreading seeds and falling onto things. A sapling takes about a minute to form from a seed. At least we have lots of lumber.

Multidogs are probably regular dogs that can glorp together like The Thing and punch through walls and the like, but some are still semi-friendly even in hulked out form.

Blood dragons are just neon dragons. Sorry. I wanted them to be rare but possible.

Edit:
As Eric pointed out, Blood Dragons should shoot beams of radiation at people. I also now recall from Far Cry: Blood Dragon that they were attracted to cyberhearts, so if you have a bag of salted cyberhearts handy, you can distract them. They're flightless. Should be about HD 9-10 in a Black Hack game. 

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Random Tables for Rad-Hack


Edit: I am trying to increase the font size to something normal. Blogger doesn't seem to want to keep that update. Sorry!

Oh, you know, just thoughts and notes on setting material for a Rad-Hack game. I started out looking for a good loot table and got carried away. 

Worth noting, loot for post-apocalyptic games comes in two flavors, in my link collection - many assume the apocalypse happened right around now, and all the gear is essentially modern or older. Then you have Gamma World and Rad-Hack type games, where loot can be modern, or it can be gonzo sci-fi insanity. 

http://wizardawn.and-mag.com/rpg_gamma.php *** Tons of places and encounters and gear
http://wizardawn.and-mag.com/rpg_mutfut.php *** Same. 'wasteland junk' on that page is a good random things table, scavenging list is nice. Worth noting, both seem to generate loot that's modern-era only, rather than some science fictional stuff. I do like how the scavenging list can create a bunch of corpses (including obviously mutant ones) and random semi-standing buildings (like a hardware store or an office or a hospital) with things inside. So that's cool. I need more than just modern stuff though - I want the world loot tables to be a little more science fictiony.

http://www.critical-hits.com/junkulator/# - uses the Grand Unified Junk table, which is here:
The GUJ is great because there’s more fallout-esque or science fiction things in there. I mean, great for Rad-Hacks set in places with Omega Tech / Ancient High-Tech. This makes it the superior junk / loot table, if you ask me. So, this is my go-to loot table for Rad-Hack, other than the tables in Other Dust. More on that un below.

Gamma World Scavenger's Guide. Sci-fi loot with longer entries, has some good detail if that's what you're looking for. Very good. 

3169 things to do in Gamma World - so not a loot table, but fun and good for some inspiration.
" 1584 Get stuck on an inland mud flat. There are things in the mud that consume everything organic (which is why the boats are metal) and keep the soil consistency the same through out the flat. The boats' engines ran out of fuel and now the PCs (and crew?) have to figure out how to turn them into sail boats or starve to death. As the surface is mud, normal wind doesn't move the boats very fast." In the future the earth doesn't wait for you to rot and turn back into it, it helps the process along. rpg.net is quite ban-happy with rpg authors I love, but I figure I won't find this list elsewhere for now.

http://mutationapocalypse.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/index-of-elfmaids-octopi-tables.html?m=1 The EMO index. Great stuff. Elf Maids and Octopi is hyper prolific. Even if you're not trying for post-apocalyptic stuff, he probably writes a d100 table about some genre you like at some point. And this index makes it possible to find the stuff. d100 Tragic Old Murderhobos is pretty fantastic for a 'hireling' generator. I mean, who else would take a pittance to walk point for the PCs?


http://www.paforge.com/files/resources/search.pdf - pdf of random modern-isa items you can find. paforge.com has some pdfs of worth, just temper any excitement you have as some links are broken (some are on archive.org, but don't expect them all to be saved there). A few others just contain, say, lists of elements, or military designation names. Still, lots of stuff in there.

http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/15023/random-tables-for-near-future-world-gone-weird-dungeoncrawling - starts with a bunch of links to other random tables, also has some random-table content. Has some loot tables with different degrees of utility/worth, which I like. Krippler in general is posting some useful stuff / theft-worthy ideas in that thread.


And then there's random not-random-tables things. 

review of other dust:

I’m using Other Dust because Kevin Crawford knows what he’s doing as far as sandbox creation goes. Other Dust is full of random tables, especially the back of the book. Name charts, enclave architectural details. He has d100 tables of rooms for several categories of location (cavern, bunker, enclave, factory), and d100 tables for things found in each location category. Sample maps. So like even if you're not interested in Other Dust's specific setting, it seems like a very useful toolkit. 

http://chaosgrenade.com/2017/03/29/gutterpunk-sprawl-crawl-setting-stuff/ - some nice setup for a campaign, some actual plays in there as well. The megacity reminds me a bit of the city in Neo Scavenger, a PC game where most of the map is crazy wooded wasteland, but there's a pocket of ultra-high-tech wealth. (So if you made a hacker character it's the one hex where he gets to shine.) Seems very cool. The writer is using a bunch of random tables (Vornheim, Augmented Reality, Other Dust) to run the game, so you know. Much more urban than the typical post-apocalyptic game, but I think it's a cool idea. What else does this remind me of? Oh yeah, a Pentagon video about Megacities in real life, which is depressing. But at least we can turn depressing future portents into present gameable material. 

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Rad-Hack and Maze Rats PCs

I'm surprised how versatile Maze Rats can be.  I threw up 3 random PCs in its tables and buttons in Adventuresmith, and used that app to generate some stats, and have 3 interesting PCs for a game of The Rad-Hack. (The Rad-Hack has an SRD, which is awesome, but the pdf with art is better.) Even the names are good for a post-apocalyptic, Gamma-World-esque good time.

I would like to thank the random number gods for giving me the most insane stats for a game of The Black Hack.

Orchid Crumpling: Human
Str 11, Dex 15, Con 17
Int 5, Wis 14, Cha 15
10 hp
Profession: farmer
Appearance: Wrinkled, long hair, ceremonial clothes
Personality: Rude
Mannerism: Long Pauses

Trillby Beetleman, Mutant
Str 15, Dex 12, Con 16
Int 16, Wis 16, Cha 14
Hp 5
Adrenal gland
Amphibian
Appearance: Sinewy, missing teeth, undersized clothes.
Personality: Jolly
Mannerism: Flowery speech

Minerva Coffin
Psionic
Hp 7
Str 4, Dex 12, Con 9
Int 11, Wis 14, Cha 17
Telekinesis
Psi blast
Appearance: Slumped, broken nose, patterned clothes
Personality: Sarcastic

Mannerism: Whispers