Phractal City and Pikmin Games

Here's stuff I want to make.

Phractal City  

My buddy and I had an idea for a Real-Time Play-By-Post Roleplaying Game. I love the idea so much that I actually hesitate to share it, as so many people have been making so many RTPBP games ever since CATAPHRACT, and I don't want someone to do this idea before we do. And yet, someone else doing it would mean I don't have to do it...! So we ball. Behold: Phractal City. Get it, like Phract, like Cataphract

Ingredients:

• Girls Like Us: Spiceomancy's amazing NPCs-as-procedures for a city campaign, featuring the Hustle, the the Grid, the Noise, and the Dark of a city as both principles of the setting and as tangible beings. Fucking read it holy shit. We'll build off of this setting.
• CATAPHRACT, or rather Over/Under: Sam Sorensen's RTPBPRPG that launched a thousand RTPBPRPGs. Cataphract concerns the movement and combat of armies, Over/Under is a retooling that concerns the management and turf wars of factions on the Mothership space station Prospero's Dream, with extra rules for city living and civilian duties. We'll put a lot of those systems to use, plus my Many Wisdoms from having been there.
• The Chorus: Garamondia's non-commander player role idea for Cataphracts, where some players across all factions have access to a dreamscape channel and can only communicate in it with sigils from a set of about 50. Specific sigils in specific orders, combined with specific resource expenditure, will function as spells! But this isn't already known, and the methods must be found out in the world. This is the coolest thing in the world. Where will we use it? You'll see..!!
• A Discord server
• 100 people
• 10 referees 

Welcome to da big city 

Here's how it works.
10 city blocks, with 10 players in each! (Alongside an undefined number of citizen NPCs!) And "block" here is almost literal; think the giga apartment complex in Dredd (2012) or the infamous Kowloon Walled City. Why 100? It sounds right. 
1 referee per block! Why? To minimize the strain on any single ref. You submit your actions in a day to your ref, who is basically your landlord. A single ref should totally be able to handle 10 people RPing and occasionally submitting minor orders, like /buynewcar or /skiprent or /killneighbor. 

Speaking of, everyone is assigned a character. Cataphract style. Name, age, home, occupation, relations, duties, modifiers or special quirks, the works. Now, you're free to live however you choose, but the "buy-in" here is that you're stepping into a character and driving them around for X days (I've been imagining 50?) to see what happens. What does your version of James Q Cyberpunk think of the street riots? Or his blockmates, or their nightly activities, or his boss? 

Some people will be related, live together, work together, hate each other, and so on. Your capital g Goal would be to survive, but ideally you'll also manage to improve your lot in life and put out any personal fires that you start with or earn along the way.

I almost forgot, actually, a key part of Girls Like Us is that it's your character doesn't like certain parts of their body and the City is where you go to get that fixed. "Longer legs, fuller flesh, metal bones, extra arms." I'd like to retain a lot of that in this Franken-game (Franken-game's Monster?) but I'm not sure how much. For now, let's say that "fixing" your body and staying alive are basically tied in importance.

Some possible stations to occupy... 

Mayor, mayor's aide, rival mayoral candidate, sanitation worker, cabbie, restaurant owner, bartender, hover car mechanic, pharmacist, petty thief, awesome thief, straight up murderer, peace officer, political canvasser, corporate security, librarian, data entry, street sweeper, butcher, bodymod tech, tattoo artist, psyop writer, construction worker, firefighter, sewer mapper, window washer, tram driver, plumber, hotel doorman, chemical engineer, power plant worker, wedding planner, priest, jeweler, emergency dispatcher, EMT, musician, enemy musician, yuppie, number cruncher, lawyer, hot dog stand, and so on.

Work work work

One musing about my dockworker faction in Over/Under: while we were all doing a lot all the time, it never felt like we were dockworking (with good reason; we weren't!). I often wondered about some kind of container-moving minigame to have my 200-odd worklings play to supplement their automatic income, like maybe if they send a screenshot of a good score I'd wire them a bonus for the day or something. Maybe like, the domino-arranging game Pips on the New York Times website? It never went anywhere, but I was really fixated on the idea for the vibe it created. Everyone's got their little bullshit to do. Great for chitchat topics. So let's say you earn X credits automagically; send in a good score and you get 3X for the day. A high score? Raise! Promotion! 

Basically, everyone would start with a career, and in an ideal world, there'd be some interactive element somewhere that simulates your career's busywork. If Phractal City became some Big Thing, we could probably commission custom Discord bots for this, but a more realistic method would be submitting daily screenshots of your score in some relevant flash game. 

And if not that, do the more obvious thing and have dice rolls.

Whether or not we could ever actually make this part work, consider this: the Morale and Marching rules from Cataphract could be easily retooled to represent the working hours and stress of daily life in the city. Failing rolls and not taking enough action to remedy the situation could mean losing your career or even your home. 

Fancy meeting you here
In a given day, you're free to do what's available, but you're for sure going to meet 2 people; one person that you randomly roll, and whoever randomly rolled you. (100 people = D100 roll! What happens if you roll yourself? Who knows!) I suppose that would mean a fuckton of private threads being created, and I remember we hit the limit a few times in Over/Under, but IDK. Maybe these get cleared/archived where you can't see them (unless you take some specific action).

Point is, the pot will stir no matter what, at least a little bit. Maaaybe certain people would be exempt or have some other system, like criminals or high-ranking officials, but honestly it's kind of interesting this way. The 2 people could briefly discuss how it is that their players have come to meet before they play it out, ("Maybe you spot me at a salon and recognize me from my commercials?") or perhaps one of their refs could throw in a quick intro at the start of the thread after rolling the interaction; like "X sits next to Y on the train" or "X's lunch appointment with Y is in a grimy diner".

They walk among us

Okay, what if the powers-that-be from Girls Like Us were players too? I picture those avatars/aspects of the City as vaguely real, almost muse-like in their mental nature, but this would lean in a more god-like direction. You could call on the Dark for good luck in tonight's mugging with your crew. You could feed the Grid some secrets in exchange for a video feed search. Ooh, maybe it would take some kind of ritual to open a thread with a city aspect.

Maybe your character would start already indebted to or bonded to one of the aspects, or as a follower of theirs. That's probably a private matter, and perhaps there'd be ways to discretely tell if someone was "one of yours" or not. Secret phrases, signs, and trinkets. Not that someone who pays worship to Hustle is necessarily at odds with someone who pays worship to the Dark, but "birds of a feather" and all that.

Each week or every few days, something newsworthy will happen in the city, and it would benefit or relate to whichever aspect is "in the lead" in some invisible way. Most worshiped, most offerings, most impact recently... Or maybe it's random. Or maybe it's up to the player playing them. Or maybe they happen as a symptom of high activity, with zero or vague input from the aspect's player. Or maybe the aspects can cause things to happen through some sort of expenditure or exchange. Each deal / ritual by a worshiper fulfilled = 1 influence point? Cash in 20 God Tickets for 1 Major City Event? Who knows. Somehow, bit by bit, the aspects will exert influence.

Lot of Dark stuff lately? This week's headline is a prison break, and both crime and paranoia are at record highs. Grid? The city has mandated that all homes must have security cameras... in the bathrooms. Noise? Some synth-tuber has a concert tonight, and the city is gonna be abuzz for days! Hustle? The lottery, baby! Only way to win is to play, and good news: you're playing! But how many tickets can you afford?

This part of the thought is less concrete, but perhaps whichever aspect has been in the news the most determines the "end times" of the city (secret unmentioned ingredients: the Calendar of Nechrubel from MORK BORG / Miserable Headlines from CY_BORG). A Dark ending brings wanton bloodshed and fear, like a military occupation or societal collapse scenario. Grid encroachment can usher in a total cyber-police state that strips you of your final shreds of autonomy and privacy. As for the Noise, it'd be cool if brainrot lulled everyone into such deep lethargy that they all just fade away in their beds, with the Feed (see below) being the only channel anyone can talk in anymore. That, or some insane scandal rocks the city to its core and most people are forced to move. Hmm... Hustle, Hustle... I've got it. Recession.

They are everything

I'm gonna take the aspects and try to imagine gameplay actions out of their impositions on the city and their procedures, which of course will be expressed as ominous single syllable words. I sense one of you didn't read Girls Like Us; please scroll up and do so

• The Hustle requires that you work the Grind, and hopes you reap the Spoils. 
• Grind: Do your job, get paid. Take a risk, get super paid or super boned. 
• Spoils: The goods, services, and opportunities are so worth it, and an important part of staying alive in the city. 
• The Grid expects you to obey the Law, and allows you to surf the Net.
• Law: (Maybe Code instead?) You have to stay on the rails or face fees, beatings, prison time, and red tape. There's always a chance you're being watched. You'll have to go outside the Law sometimes, so try to do it when you think you're in the clear.
• Net: Good little tin machines can work the system to find or erase information.
• The Noise compels you to scroll the Feed, but at least you can wear the Mask.
• Feed: Social media brainrot is a real and literal rot, and it's omnipresent. So long as you have it, you can add to and drink of the info-deluge (distorted as it may be) for news and fulfillment. Find ways to medicate and unplug or you will numb your mind and soul.
• Mask: Perhaps you could also somehow wield social media and general tabloidery to boost your image, get dopamine, change your lot in life, or resist bad effects. Put on a smile, so to speak.
• The Dark will kill you unless you perform the Rites, and sometimes it lets you feed the Urge. 
• Rites: Without extreme vigilance and obsessive amounts of preparation, death will visit you in the guise of another player. Worse, there's always a chance that the Dark will wield you; you just "snap" and visit someone to kill them. Inflicting harm on others might stave it off.
• Urge: On the other hand, familiarity with the city's underbelly and a particularly intense motivation may unlock some sort of "do crime" action. 

Phone numbers / microchip addresses

I'll talk about it more in a future write-up, but in Over/Under, anyone could open a private thread with anyone else. As a faction leader, this sucked eggs. I was inundated from start to finish with people contacting me to try and get involved with stuff (not in like a volunteer work way. Like a "give me power" way). And having access to everyone else took away from the RP socializing a bit, where there wasn't anything between you and the ear of who you wanted.

I have an idea: to open a thread with someone, you must have their character's unique PHONE NUMBER or similar sci-fi implement such as a microchip address. Think of the stories there: some people, like families and friends, would start with each other's number. A journalist buys the mayor's phone number from an aide! An investigator finds a dead drug dealer, searches their phone's contacts, and chases leads! Block your ex-husband! Maybe pay a substantial fee to change your number?

Oh, related to private communication, but screenshots of messages would be forbidden. How the hell are you supposed to lie if someone can just ask to see the receipts, or if any and every conversation is leakable to the whole city with 2 clicks? Especially if these are supposed to be in-person conversations. You should be able to lie. The fact that I was an absolutely unforgivably evil ass liar doesn't even factor in here, it was a real damper on suspense.

Social media

I know that look; you're wondering about how The Chorus factors in as an ingredient. All will now be revealed.
The Noise! That buzzing in your brain when you need your fix of Content, that dull throb as your brain soaks up little dioramas of sense and excitement. It comes with perks!

So long as you have a level of the Noise, you're tuned into the Feed mentioned above. It's an in-universe player-driven social media analog. You'll have access to a restricted channel where people can only post pictures, followed by 3 hashtags. Like the Chorus, the pictures would probably come from a pre-existing set; public figures and celebrities, locations in Phractal City, current events somehow?, maybe player icons... Then you hashtag it to convey a very limited message. The tags could be anything, or maybe they come from an expansive but weird list, filled with slang and made up phrases that are supposed to be common parlance in Phractal City. Like #chunkme or something. People could also emoji react, but only with emojis from the server, obviously.

(pic of the mayor's icon) #washed #old #countyourdays
(pic of Housing Structure Beta) #myzone #pullup #meth
(pic of a paste dog from Sal's Nutri-Weenies) #mine #splendid #splendid
(pic of the QQ21 Train Terminal) #byebye #splat #jk
(pic of a city peace officer) #grababroom #bum #bumass
(pic of a dead body) #yup #3186.2764.982 #hitmyline

The higher your level of Noise sickness, the more you'd be able to say in a post. Perhaps near-death social media addicts could squeeze a couple sentences, possibly in limited formats or structures, like mad libs, because memes have addled their online communication abilities. And maybe your career factors in? A journalist may be obligated / RP-inclined to post their findings to the Feed, and be able to type a tweet's worth of characters freely. And perhaps the Feed is where refs post current events as news bulletins; doomscroller's delight!

Okay Phractal City all done

That's all I've got in my notes here. If you do something like this, please Please let me know. Otherwise, stay tuned for an invitation to Phractal City sometime around 2060 when my buddy and I fully flesh out the game.

Here's another idea.

Pikmin Games 

A weird little moment from Over/Under inspired me. Due to 500 strange events, I was the leader of an expedition into the scary underworld of Prospero's Dream, the Choke. 25 of us descended into a hostile purgatory, outfitted with gear, oxygen, and burning questions. We could only manage to stay for a few hours. O/U was a play-by-post game, and of course real-time (like IMMEDIATE real time) play-by-post play is completely feasible, but how the hell do you manage it for 25 count em TWENTY FIVE people?

Sam Sorensen, the Over/Under himself, very generously ran a fast and loose Mothership-adjacent session for the expedition team. He would describe the situation in a main channel, we would react and plan in a little thread within it, and after some deliberation a group action would get posted back in the main channel and stamped with a ✅ seal of approval by most of the expedition team. Theoretically multiple actions could be proposed and we would vote with emojis, but for the most part we were unanimous on what actions made it from scheme-hole to real-world. 

(One fun part was everyone sending fearful emojis in the scheming thread if Sam was typing for a while in the main thread. Like... I thought we were just walking along, what's gonna happen to us??) 

We're very lucky that Discord nests threads in a little side feed inside channels. It made for an excellent dual view setup. Sam aptly described it as Twitch Plays Mothership, and the thin little chat column really added to that feeling. It was our little rapid-fire freakout zone and collab space for cooking up responses, neatly tucked against the big stage where legends were made and one guy died.

Check it.

And here it is in action:

There did end up being some good moments of independent action. 
The most iconic was the tale of Thelen Groos.

Behold. 

 

 

 

 

Less than a week before the end of the month-long game, one greenhorn gave his life to protect his comrades. It was so crazy cool. Besides Thelen, occasionally someone would put forward an Undiscussed Proposal or state they were doing something solo real quick, most often as an amendment to a group action (I watch our six!), or a situationally appropriate complication (I freak the fuck out!).

This expedition might have been my favorite part of Over/Under. There's no denying that it's partly because it was a nice break from my personal Evil Ass Liar subplot (there was even talks of intentionally dying on the expedition so I wouldn't have to face justice!), but it was mostly because of how frenetic, unpredictable, and mysterious the journey was. This was a way to play I had never thought of, and we had no idea what was ahead of us, and the stakes were quite high. Great combo.

Weirdly, it was also nice to know that it was a time-limited thing. While I love my games that start anywhere from 6 to 8 and go until we finish or get tired, we were told ahead of time this would just be a few hours, and it was. We filed in just after 2, launched just before 3, and wrapped around 5. And every person on that team was locked the fuck in for the entire time.

So, all that to say, I loved this PlayMode and wonder what else can be done with it. 
The main ideas were... 

• Large play group. Not 8 or 9 large, but 20+ large. 
• All acting as a (loosely) coordinated group. Rapid deliberation and action voting kept us as a very cohesive little swarm, but there was room for rogue agents, lone wolves, and conflict.
• Specified time window. If it went all night or was cut off to finish up later, it would lose something. We're against the clock here, people! Do or die!

The spooky yet tactical expedition was a good fit. I could also see it working in a war game (any era, really), or some kind of caveman clan management thing. Maybe the many thoughts swimming in one guy's head? "Everyone Is John, No Like Seriously EVERYone"?

So please consider the Pikmin Game. There is certainly a better name for this, speak up if you have one. Swarm games? Mob games? Ant games. Throng-alongs? 

Scrap Heap 3: Oh Hell No!

I've had no time to blog this year! But I do now. 
Here's some stuff that's been on my mind.

Let's talk about...

• War-Torn Ice Moon
• Other FIST stuff I want to make 
• City
• Mission chain 
• Time loop
• First contact
• Black market
• Art Movement Faction
• Bases
• Evil Ass Bayou 
• A Hypothetical Over/Under Write-up  

...War-Torn Ice Moon

You might have seen the update that PDFs went out recently! Just waiting on that paperback proof copy to arrive now, and once we approve it, digital and physical copies will go up for purchase. This thing has been all I do for a year, so it's weird not having anything to tweak, tune, or twiddle with. 

Also, it's weird to think that my entire life changed because of this. I'm still just some guy (aren't we all), but I know people in the Scene now! That's a dream come true.

...Other FIST stuff I want to make

My mind explodes with FIST tri-fold pamphlet ideas every day. The official set (RATIONS) is so snappy, diverse, and concise that it almost pisses me off. They are:

• ATARAXIA: Short, simple mission to save a soldier's son inside a son-powered mech
• HAZARD FUNCTION: Funnel mission in an MKUltra-style ultrahuman testing crucible
• CULTURE SHOCK: Alien bacteria mutation trader that can spawn from any fresh corpse
• GREENHOUSE EFFECT: Bestiary of evil intelligent plants that can crop up anywhere (lol)
• ANESTHETIC DEPTH: Optional HP rules for injury accumulation, effects, and treatment
• CASUS BELLI: Miniboss squad of the remaining Knights Templar intent on hunting FIST

So mission, funnel mission, shopkeep, bestiary, injury rules, miniboss squad. 
What new things could we do?

FIST City Nights, Baby

I really want a super-dense urban campaign setting for FIST.

I've been imagining a set of 6 tri-folds that each detail a district of a city, tentatively called New Madison simply because it sounds real.  I would then use the city for a deluge of scenarios and missions. Think of the potential man, holy shit. Recurring locations, becoming familiar with routes and named streets, hopping rooftops, sneaking around, causing big scenes, getting community ties and bonds, watching the area evolve and change, getting caught in crossfires, shaking CYCLOPS tails (the secret world-governing, status-quo-maintaining, supernaturality-suppressing force in FIST... read FIST), hitting the pavement, car chases, laying low, climbing shit... Ahh, city living.

Each district would have... 

• People of note; politicians, community figures, cool gangsters, and any interesting or stand-out folks like the girl who plays jump rope with everyone or the ultrahuman grandpa running the corner store.
• Factions: like 1 to 3 depending on the area. The downtown civic center district probably only has the local police department holding meaningful power and muscle, but there might be 2 or 3 competing forces at the ports and docks. 
• Some weird ongoing situation 
• A map that is partially filled/keyed and partially blank. The keyed locations would serve as anchors, and you would fill in the blanks during play (possibly with the help of tables). You could remake the blank zones between missions to keep the city feeling huge, sort of illustrating that there's numerous paths between places and no telling where you might end up, OR lock them in to make each road and building Perma-Canon. Those keyed locations might be things like a payphone that's actually a CYCLOPS field agent emergency pickup hotline, one of those hidden-in-plain-sight urban power plants that look like a random building on a random street, a hotel for assassins, anything.

(Spoken like American Psycho business card scene) Check it. New Pinterest board. 

 

So, why 6 tri-folds? IDK. I love them, but this is probably better realized as a booklet, like a 20-40 page half-letter-size zine. Then again, that was the original plan for War-Torn Ice Moon, and that turned into a 123 page letter-size beast, so beware scale creep.

Is this my next big project, now that WTIM is complete and awaiting mass deployment? Maybe.

Other FIST ideas...

Mission chain

There's this one episode of Law & Order where instead of the first half being the investigation of a crime and the second half being the trial, the whole runtime is spent scrambling between 4 or 5 unrelated cases that keep cropping up right in front of the detectives. Like, they're bringing in a killer and stop at a gas station, and find evidence of a recent kidnapping in the bathroom.

I want to make a sequence of very short missions, like an hour each at absolute max if everyone is focused, meant to be played in rapid succession in a single night. The distinction as "different missions" might be unimportant if you're doing them consecutively like that, but still, they would be discrete scenarios. I'm not even sure if I'd want them to be related in any way. 

Please let me know if this exists out in nature somewhere.

It could be like, 10 jobs appear at once, all only available for a short window, and it's up to FIST to judge how many and which ones they can squeeze into 1 night. Or maybe it's just 5 or 6, and they all have to get done, but you can choose the order? Almost like Collateral (Evil Hitman Tom Cruise makes Best Taxi Driver Jamie Foxx drive him around to complete like 5 hits in 1 night). Oh, this could be a reeaally good fit for the City Setting.

If you want to get really crazy, the available missions could branch based on how the previous one went. Say FIST has to defeat a mad scientist who is making a bad thing. Complete victory? Proceed to a certain Mission 2. Scientist defeated, but bad thing escaped? Proceed to a different Mission 2. And so on from there. So would it it branch into different missions, or just impact the next one in some way? I do  still quite like the idea of them being unrelated. 

Some quick jobs might be...

• Stop the rampaging mutant behemoth destroying downtown
• Find the evil bomber's evil bomb vans along the city's sea wall
• Sneak into a fancy event and steal a document or a jewel or something
• Escort a celebrity and fend off the rabid fans of rival musicians
• Save science stuff / scientists from a lab actively collapsing from a science disaster 
• Race to find a bad guy whistleblower before the rest of the bad guys 
• Board a blimp that's already taken off, by any means necessary
• Steal a massive tank of volatile chemicals as stealthily as possible
• Prevent a raid of a highrise office building during a critical merger meeting
• Piece together localized anomalies to rescue someone stranded in a dimensional fold
• Save someone who has become fixed in place 20 stories high by unknown means
• Round up runaway spirits wreaking havoc after escaping a buried tomb
• Track down the source of mysterious EMP waves endangering the city
• Find hidden treasure in a condemned building minutes from demolition

A 10 minute time loop mission.  

I think the idea of a really short time loop in a small place with an intricate situation to unravel sounds really fun. You'd play in Real Time, or as close to it as possible. If that proves unwieldy or unrealistic given your playing group's situation or style, there could also be a little loose "turn" system for resolving actions during each stage of the loop. The scene is set each minute, everyone gets 1 or 2 things to do, world reacts, next minute begins. But let's focus on Real Time. Compact, feature-dense location... submarine.

Experimental submarine that's alive, or fused to an artificial living being, and can create wormholes in seawater. FIST is hired to board it in disguise and sneak pictures MGS2 style, but it unexpectedly leaves port with them inside. 10 minutes later, it explodes, and time rewinds to the moment it set off. 

• Things gradually break, flood, and change on the sub until it bursts. 
• CYCLOPS wants the sub, or is responsible for it's development.
• The submarine-creature intelligence is psychic? Maybe it's bonded to the captain, a grizzled old seadog.
• Maybe it psychically bonds to FIST when they board, and that's why they retain their memories? Okay, but then why doesn't the captain retain anything? 
• Maybe he's being brainwave-blocked and thinks everything is peaches with his living sub companion, and finding him and re-establishing their link is a key part of figuring out what's going on. But then who is blocking him..? And what about the rest of the crew? Hm... 
• The creature built/grown into this sub is definitely the cause of the loop (in that it's rewinding time to try and prevent the disaster). 
• I'm thinking that when the sub finally bursts mid-wormhole-usage, in that moment, the hull floods with Hyperspace Fluid full of gluons/time particles. The sub-creature absorbs those to catalyze and rewind time 10 minutes. 
• Perhaps flooding the sub earlier in the loop can let it rewind you further, to before the sub sets off? But how do you blow a hole in a submarine from the inside?
• Or instead, maybe flooding the sub even WORSE in the last minute will give it enough gluons to rewind 11 minutes? It'd be nice to have multiple solutions to break the loop. Imagine trying to convince the captain of either of these.
• The disaster is at least partially caused by a SABOTEUR on board! Perhaps it's the shady government inspector who suddenly called for this skeleton crew exercise, or that's just some cog and the real spy is the first officer who keeps ducking into the sonar room, or he's just whacking it and the real spy is the ship's doctor prescribing the crew strange meds.
• Ooh, some kind of bodyhopper/doppelganger? Maybe it can switch hosts, possessing someone new and leaving the last host unconscious (better hide that body!). 
• Maybe it seems like an instant and sure-fire thing that it can possess you, but after encountering them a few times, you pick up on the unique circumstance that it needs to be able to take control of someone. Like... it has to grab you with both hands, or speaking to it opens the psychic pathway for it, or it only works on targets wet with a bit of water.
• Everything should mostly be set to repeat in the same exact way each loop, but things like precise word choices or split-second decisions can still vary due to the nature of human brains.
• For example, that SABOTEUR! might go hide in the missile tube room in Minute 7. If there's 6 identical missile tubes and he's just choosing arbitrarily, you could roll 1D6 each loop to decide which one he hides in.
• Okay, maybe the SABOTEUR! isn't trying to destroy the sub, but attempting to redirect it and failing miserably. Let's say CYCLOPS wants the sub and ordered an undercover agent to deliver it to them. 
• His plan: 
• Disguise as a government inspector of some kind
• Order a surprise exercise/test to see the sub run with minimal personnel
• Replace the Seawater Wormhole exit coordinates with a CYCLOPS port
• Sub arrives at CYCLOPS, who board and easily mop up the reduced crew 
• The problem: this agent does not know that the Hyperspace Realm that the sub travels through is dangerous and volatile. Changing the coordinates isn't like setting a train on different tracks, it's like launching a rocket at a different angle. The sub is doomed to be destroyed by Crazy Space Turbulence and Crazy Space Creatures unless things are returned to normal in time. 
• So, how do we take this from a short film elevator pitch into a GAME scenario? Where do the interactive elements and challenges lie? 
• At minimum, FIST must learn what the hell is even happening and find a solution to make it not happening. So it's a race to uncover the cause of these crazy ass effects.
• Is it a "race" if they're stuck in a time loop? There's no REAL rush, right? 
• Let's say you've got 4 hours for game night once everyone is settled, not counting breaks and time wasting. As a 10 minute time loop, you could feasibly get through 24 loops. The cutoff time of your game night could represent the Cross-Loop Deadline. Perhaps the Sub Creature, worn down by the psychic toll of rewinding time so much, can only keep this going for so long and will eventually fail to catalyze the gluons the same way you will eventually fail to lift a weight. Or instead, one of the Hyperspace Creatures might incapacitate it with a lucky attack before the rewind.
• So in a sense, once the situation is understood and all the events of the loop are predictable, it becomes about achieving The Perfect Run to get all the conditions in place to break the loop. 
• Perhaps accessing certain parts of the sub is dangerous or difficult. 
• Once the Space Turbulence begins, torpedoes can fall off racks, so watch out when navigating the Combination Crew Quarters and Torpedo Racks (real part of real submarines). 
• Or maybe the reactor overloads late in the loop, cutting off access to the engines unless you do something CRAZY like crawl on the outside of the sub or clamber through the rear ballast tank and pop out of a maintenance hatch.
• Ooh, maybe it's easier to do something risky if you've done it in a previous loop!
• Using that Torpedo Rack example, let's say you figure out that Private Clumsy will have a torpedo fall on him in Minute 3, and that saving him means hauling ass through there. Minute 3 begins and the turbulence hits, jostling the racks; here it comes! But this is your 3rd or 4th time trying this, so you know the exact way that it will dislodge: add +2 to your FRC roll to shove it back into place before it falls off, or maybe the roll is a full degree of success higher (e.g. failure into partial, partial into full), or maybe you just Do it. 
• Maybe the bonus escalates like that for each time you do something across loops, until by loop 10, your team is breezing around the sub saving lives. Well-earned Groundhog Day "I'm a god" type shit. Now you just gotta get that Perfect Run.

First contact timeline

The FIST referee advice suggests laying out "timelines", or sequences of stuff that will happen if allowed to occur.

Awesome. I've got one: aliens are gradually trying to establish communication and relations with Earth, sending messages, emissaries, appraisers, objects, tests, and eventually (hopefully), an invitation to join a larger government body of space societies.

Aliens are a known quantity to FIST; CYCLOPS suppresses knowledge of them to maintain control. But these aren't greens on a flying saucer joyride, or rogue greys stealing cows. This is the real deal, full-scale outreach, like Independence Day and Arrival stuff. Can CYCLOPS keep it under wraps? If not, what will become of Earth? If they can, what will it cost our society and our galactic standing?

Thinking it out, this wouldn't quite be a mission or a definite campaign structure. Until FIST intervenes, this would be something happening in the background, more of a back-at-base chatter topic... OR, perhaps, the increasingly frequent alien phenomena start working their way into missions, sort of like the GREENHOUSE EFFECT pamphlet? 

Imagine drones and probes whizzing past the PCs every other mission, and the one player who takes really good notes is starting to go a little crazy ("RELAX bro, we're on an enemy base, of course there's drones" "No you don't understand, it's the SAME drone as the others..!") until finally some big crop circle messages appear and there's no mistaking it anymore.

Branching paths! It's safe to assume that CYCLOPS will be all over this, carefully tracking and intercepting all suspected Space Alien activity. CYCLOPS and FIST tend to bump into each other a lot, so FIST can expect to wind up involved one way or another. Depending on How and When FIST intervenes, aliens might have very different opinions on humans.

In the opening phase, Spy Probes begin appearing all over the world, easily mistaken for shooting stars as they enter the atmosphere. They will hover to observe particularly intriguing things, like parades, factories, weather events, and ultrahuman activity. CYCLOPS runs a "historic meteor shower season" coverup and deploys mindwipe teams where they fly too close.

Then, large messages are left in open fields by harmlessly flattening crops with tractor beam pulses. They are basic cryptographic bullshit that would translate into some sort of "ba weep granna weep ninny bong" universal greeting, plus some vague allusions to who they are, and a hint at a desired response. Sightings of UFOs increase as Test Overseer Ships park in clouds and watch our reactions to their messages. Of course, CYCLOPS is on top of it, and all events are quickly filtered into superstition, rural teen pranks, and natural phenomena.

From there, I think actual interaction would start to occur. If they observe some kind of response to the crop circles, like a reply spelled out in logs or painted on a roof, Puzzle Cubes could be deployed, or Emissaries might descend, based on perceived hostility. 

I think the aliens would be particularly interested in ultrahumans and erroneously view them as a caste above standard humans. The human that can double jump is obviously more important in some way! So if FIST happens to have been observed, they may find themselves observed by...

THE GRAND GALACTIC INQUISITOR!

DO NOT SPEAK TO ME! DO NOT ALTER YOUR NORMAL HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN ANY WAY! YOU KNOW NOT THE ELABORATE CRITERIA BY WHICH YOU ARE TO BE JUDGED. IGNORE MY PRESENCE AND GO ABOUT YOUR EARTHLY BUSINESS.

 

Imagine a huge alien NPC following FIST around and keeping a silent (or loud) tally of their actions. You could have a big table of things that increase or decrease their score, which would then decide which phase the timeline moves into. You could also say that there are hundreds of GRAND GALACTIC INQUISITORS all over the Earth right now doing the same thing, and have FIST's score be the tiebreaker.

The criteria should be weird and inscrutable, with clear inconsistencies in what's Good and Bad. Combat behaviors, lifestyle choices, social interactions, power utilization, wardrobe... Say there's D66 (6x6=36) JUDGEMENTS (things that increase or decrease the score) spread across 6 SCORING AREAS (gameplay activities) and each one is weird enough to be easily memorable and noticeable to the referee in the moment during that activity. Like... COMBAT, 1. +2 POINTS EACH TIME A SUBJECT IS EVER UNDER MULTIPLE FORMS OF PERSISTENT AFFLICTION. 2. -1 POINT IF A PERSISTENT AFFLICTION IS INFLICTED ON ANOTHER BEING. 3. -4 POINTS IF HIGH GROUND IS TAKEN. Just weird stuff all across the board.

Humanity might be judged as Ineligible, Acceptable, Priority One, or something else. If Ineligible, maybe we get a light invasion to test our resilience; if we fail, we die, and if we hold out long enough, Earth is conscripted into the fodder worlds of the Galactic Unity. If deemed Acceptable, we get voter status in the Unity Council. If FIST's stellar score pushes us into Priority One, someone from the team may be raised to intermediary status, like Dr. Breen from Half-Life, and Earth may be showered in technological gifts as the aliens integrate us into galactic high society.

Or, if CYCLOPS can perform enough dissections of Emissaries and Inquisitors, they can engineer a Space Barrier that permanently censors all Space Bullshit. Would FIST stand aside or even help with that? Or does Earth need a change in management?

These are less fleshed out, but here's the rest. 

Black Market

RATIONS has that amazing shopkeeper / mutation dealer in CULTURE SHOCK. I was wondering what other kinds of creatively interactive exchange zones can be added for FIST to peruse and make use of. What's a mercenary unit without an in with the mysterious Dark Economy? There's definitely already like 20 Mothership things that lay out exquisitely crafted black markets, but we'll try our hand at something uniquely FIST.

This could be an abstract and distant shadow trade that they interface with through an NPC, but it could also be a physical location. Imagine doing a secret knock on a maintenance door in the New Madison subway system, or finding a few tents in the sewer, or showing up to a train yard full of unmarked vans that gather a few times a month. Ooh, or all of the above? 2D6 meetup spots? The Dark Economy can appear anywhere.

Most weapons are obtained through On-Site Procurement (OSP), also called stealing, and a lot of FIST's items are parts of their unique character traits and thus refill between missions. So this wouldn't be so much of a Grenade Refill Booth, Only 5 Mercenary Dollars, as it would be an exchange of favors, information, and tangible assets. Steal some RPGs from that military base and cash them in here for a hit anywhere in the city. Pass along those secret CYCLOPS files from the last arc (and don't worry about where they end up) for some intel on your upcoming job. If you pick up a few debts for us, we'll make sure you have a place to hide when the heat turns up. That sort of stuff. You could also have Special John Wick Assassin World Coins, but perhaps those are some sort of Elevated Currency for cashing in only the most elite special requests. Literal tokens of respect.

A good selection could be...

Goods: crazy drugs, special or rare weapons, vehicles, poisons, body parts, fissile material...
Services: intel gathering, robbery, mugging, assassination, gangstalking, observation, protection, transport, hiding, surgery, cleanup, weapon alteration and repair...

Art Movement Faction

FIST has CYCLOPS to contend with, plus the governments of most nations, and few allies. CLAYMORE is working on SUPPLY DROP, and when it's done, it will have some more factions slinking around the Cold War: the rival PMC and decidedly milquetoast sellouts PANTHER, the ultrahuman liberation force CRAWL, the civilian militia against alien activity XENOWATCH, the old school hunters of demons and werewolves and vampires SILVER BULLET, and the paranormal market dealers and artifact runners LOTUS CORP (hey, market! relevant!).

So, any big gaps to fill? There's dozens of small-time, one-off, short-lived evil organizations gathering under tyrants and dark geniuses all the time (hence the never-ending stream of fires for FIST to put out), but very few last long enough to be true Factions like these groups.

What sort of force has staying power in the roiling sea of international espionage and paranormal incursion? You gotta be able to go with the flow, hold your own, and think outside the box. I'm thinking Art Movement Bad Guys. 

Think Brotherhood of Dada. Super weird abilities that break the fourth wall, even weirder plans, and a message they intend to spread far and wide.

Bases

FIST has rules for bases and base upgrades. Any place FIST controls can be a base. We actually included a shit ton (36) of new base upgrades in War-Torn Ice Moon, but I'm interested in a pamphlet that has some ready-to-claim, yet-to-be-upgraded bases. This tri-fold would have 3 to 6 depending on the level of detail.

I'm thinking name, place, what it is, any unique situations or upgrade possibilities, NPCs involved with it, and perhaps how FIST would acquire it. There isn't Zillow for rogue mercs, as far as I know, but maybe some of them can just be traded for? Others would need to be captured or received as payment for a mission. Let's see...

• Oil rig or ocean platform, classic Diamond Dogs situation. Maybe a micronation out in the Indian Ocean gets sick of sea life and sells their parcel, or it's a dilapidated coastal watchtower from WW2, or an oil well dries up and the rig is decommissioned and abandoned. Outside expansion opportunities are limited, but perhaps there's space within its massive concrete trunk legs? Or you can cultivate the surrounding kelp and algae to provide HP items to the team each mission, or you could refurbish the old oil drill and get fuel for rocket strikes (if you're fine with the political hot water that comes with it oil drilling and rocket striking). 
• A prepper bunker somewhere in the States. Maybe the owner found God and sold it, or died in it. While expertly hidden and impressively stocked, this place is a bit intimidating to inhabit. Maybe there's hidden passages, secret floors, and all kinds of contingency plans ready to kick in that need to be found and addressed. In downtime, FIST could explore the compound, finding offshoot branches and disguised rooms and caches of raw materials. If any of the previous owner's fellow doomsday soothsayers catch wind of the new tenants, they may have a bone to pick. NPC ideas: The prepper's ghost? A bunker management AI?
• Shithole apartment in the worst part of town. Cheap, out of the way, inconspicuous, horrible conditions and small. Easy to get back to undetected, if you take the alleys and back streets. Upgrades: new wallpaper, mold removal, water filter... extra beds for rescued civilians? NPC: Mercenary-amenable landlord? 
• Something zany like a pocket dimension accessed by an extremely complicated sigil, or a dreamspace you have to noclip into. Possibly a gift from a wizard you did a mission for. Pros: enter from anywhere, extremely hard to invade or compromise, possible to manipulate the layout or function with your mind or magic prowess... Cons: upkeep of this base might be beyond the scope of the average agent's abilities.

I think all of these (besides the submarine time loop, which I would want to be it's own separate thing) could probably be part of the proposed City Zine. The Mission Chain could be a cluster of missions strung around a few districts, First Contact could take place anywhere/everywhere (maybe the aliens take an interest in New Madison in particular?), the Black Market could be accessible in multiple points in the city, the Art Movement Bad Guys could be based out of NM and be local legends / threats, and the Bases could either be safehouses within the city or close enough for rapid deployment. 

It'd be a loaded booklet zine thing. But... tri-folds...! We'll see what happens. 

I think that's all the FIST stuff on my mind. Wait I actually just remembered one more.

Evil Ass Bayou

This one's a little undercooked. Something in the water of this swamp is mutating people and making them evil. Sort of like Resident Evil 7, from what I understand. At the river mouth that forms the swamp, some rich family or a company is keeping an anomalous flesh thing in a dam, and they were selling water from it as a miracle tonic, and it's all gone wrong.

Moral of the story: FIST shows up in one of these bad boys. 

 

One of the tri-fold's panels would be a map of the twisting overgrown swamp. (Maybe for ref use only, and players have fog of war? Or they could move a little token around on the map?) You would cruise around, rescue civilians, fend off the mutated, and maybe try to synthesize a cure from infected plants? You'd then go upstream and face the evil family.

Ok that's all my FIST ideas right now. 

...A Theoretical OVER/UNDER Autobiography

You may remember that I was Secretary Thatch in the famous Real-Time Play-By-Post Operations Level Roleplaying Wargame, Mothership Edition: Over/Under. It was the most stressful month of my life, and one of the most enriching game experiences I'll ever be part of. Thank you infinite times to Sam Sorensen for the opportunity!

When I write my memoirs about my time as a faction boss of the Local, it will genuinely just be this. 

Source: Crawfish Comic

I really want to do a write-up, but I've been super afraid to. You see, my long, downward spiral of a heel/villain arc culminated in a series of (what I believe were) misunderstandings. Like the final week of the game was just 5 or 6 torture and confusion gauntlets. To be sure, I knowingly and gladly dug my own grave for like 3 weeks, but these mishaps cost me everything and vexed the shit out of me. So every time I start mentally planning out what to talk about, it just comes out very "sore loser." Still, I'll do it sometime. Maybe for the O/U anniversary on October 14th.

What's Next

I cut this post in half because it was too long, which I know is a myth, but this way I get 2 posts. The rest will be stuff I want to make that isn't for FIST. See you then!

GLOG Class for GLOGmas: Snakestone Taker

Merry GLOGmas! I was TheShribe's secret santa. I loved reading your posts and learning about the world of Sequoia. (A donut world with the sun in the middle!) My fav part was the star-snakes, and the mention of a super one.

"The star-snakes are the souls of the ancestors. When your body returns to the land and your spirit becomes one of the snakes in the night sky. They form the barrier between the world and the hungering void, protecting it until the time is right for it to be consumed."

"Immense cosmic snake that constricts the sun to stop it going supernova. It spits Exotics (known as snakestones) out to the planets below. They grant power but come at a cost."

It gave me the idea for someone who collects those snakestones, using the power inside to transform themselves or commune with star-snakes. Here is a GLOG Class based on that. My first one ever!

Snakestones are teardrop scales of warm, quietly humming obsidian. Pressing one to your skin for a minute melds it seamlessly to you, removable only by force. Each new snakestone adds +1 to your choice of Lying, Sneaking, or Intimidation, -1 to monster reaction rolls, and +1 damage received from cold or void-based sources. Some say that those who bind these stones to them are fools, doomed to slink in the shadows of society, skinning people they don't know for the favor of a master they don't understand.

Snakestone Taker

ΔA
1 snakestones melded
Sense: You can feel the direction of the closest snakestone within [Templates] miles, and know if it is melded to someone.
Slither: You can evade an incoming attack [Snakestones] times per day. You can squeeze through any gap big enough for your head. 

ΔB
3 snakestones melded, at least 1 taken from someone
Swallow: You can engulf [Templates] things into a sort of spiritual stomach, suspending them in stasis. It's hard to watch. Dangerous or magical things are rendered inert. If you are hurt, everything comes back out. 

ΔC
6 snakestones melded, at least 2 taken from someone
Spirit: You can petition ancestor spirits for aid. When you sleep, you can choose to test CHR. On success, a star-snake delivers guidance for the following day, up to [Snakestones] words and [Templates] images. On failure, nightmares wrack you with exhaustion the next day.

ΔD
9 snakestones melded, at least 3 taken from someone
Servant: You are ready to commune with the great serpent coiling around the sun. Through winding poetic dream-speech, it will instruct you in the preservation of the world. You can understand [Snakestones] words per message. Once per full moon cycle, you can send someone you are grappling into the great serpent's permanent care.

Δ: Shed
Crush up a snake's discarded skin with a snakestone. Smoke the remains and meld the stone.
You can rid yourself of any serious malady or curse by paring a snakestone off of your body.

Δ: Shiver
Soak a snakestone in cold blood for a day before melding it on.
Your snakestones hum agitatedly when a Void Witch is within your sense range.

Δ: Strike
Meld a snakestone within a day of it falling from the sky.
You may attack the instant a foe enters your striking range.

Δ: Speech
Without angering the inhabitants, sleep in a snake nest with a snakestone under it. Then meld the stone.
You can talk to snakes. They make reaction rolls +[Templates].

Scrap Heap 2: Kickstarter, Cataphracts, and some ideas

My week off from thinking is over. Let's overthink. In this scrap heap:

• War-Torn Ice Moon, now live on Kickstarter
• My Cataphracts campaign
• Ideas for play-by-post campaigns
• Some blog posts I like

Let's start with the big news.

WAR-TORN ICE MOON

On Monday, the Kickstarter for War-Torn Ice Moon went live!

And funded in 6 hours!!!

I could try to wax poetic about how crazy that is, or crazy this all is, but it's too crazy for even that!

Mockup made with permission using Europa art by Finn (@Sharp_Sticks)! He's working with us on the book!

As you probably know from previous posts and it being the only thing I've talked about for 5 months, this an expansion for FIST based off the "Europa War" setting of my invention that went omega viral in April. (I'm really proud of the tagline "FROM ONE COLD WAR TO ANOTHER." (By default, FIST assumes a Cold War-era espionage backdrop.))

Countless little ideas mentioned in those funny chat log posts, or mentioned in those gritty anecdotes, or spontaneously born from the flood of public interest, have been expanded on and rolled into the book. Dozens of throwaway thoughts and "Woah What If"s have been made into gameable, interesting, unique components. (When I say gameable, I mean incorporating it into an RPG campaign should yield interesting narrative and/or mechanical interactions...) It's all been discussed and iterated across many full days and full nights at my computer, my writing partner's place, or a coffee spot. This thing is full.

The book is very fun, at the risk of having to eat my words later. We're making sure nearly every distinct "thing" on Europa has 1. something Cool about it and 2. something Funny about it. That standard has paid dividends towards fun factor. There is a very large, very busy world waiting for you to tear into it in a few months.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice this cover is slightly different from the cover in other pictures.
This is because I had better design ideas After everything went live. Fail

It's unreal to imagine holding the final book. Multiple times, I've gone to the local game store JUST to hold other books and better imagine what holding mine will be like. Literally I'll go in, grab 8.5" x 11" inch paperbacks with similar page counts, and just hold them in my hands. A dozen or so and then I leave. I study the weight, the texture, the presence it takes up on your person and in your vision. 

Sidebar. I obsessively tell people at the store that I'm in one of the books. Have you heard of Planegea? It's a 5E setting and campaign book in a prehistoric composite of the Forgotten Realms, when it was just the one plane of existence. (Hence Pangea + Plane!) I won a sweepstakes to work with the writing team to add an item to the book. One advertisement of Planegea in a server = One entry in the raffle; so obviously I made myself a nuisance. I was something like 60% of the entries.

I can't help myself since my local store stocks Planegea. (Maybe it's been the same copy all this time, and no one has bought it? Scary to think about) I just tell people "By the way, I'm credited in that book over there." It's a ridiculous thing to do, and I earnestly can't stop. It usually goes like this: An employee asks if I'm finding everything alright, I say that I am, and then I spring the trap. My writing partner hits me in the head with a big club. Repeat in two weeks.

I am bolding the start of the paragraphs to see if that works as little headers that are also part of the sentence. I'm a sucker for useless bullshit. On that note, while I'm thinking about it, I don't talk like this in real life or online. Not at all. I'm shooting for the bluntly sharp, world-weary, laugh-at-yourself kind of tone usually found in the autobiographies of comedians. This is my blog voice. 

There is a cost to going beast mode on a single idea for so long. I'm tired. I don't post on Twitter anymore! I don't write for other stuff anymore! My idea well has dried up. When I have time to sit and think, I don't go somewhere new, I go to Europa. When my buddy and I have time to collab, we don't have Creative Nights, we have Europa Nights. I love what we're doing, so this isn't really a problem. But it also kind of is a problem- how will the Europa stuff stay fresh if I'm not stretching my brain muscles correctly? Well, it's my fault for shutting out everything else. It's because I wanted to keep the ball rolling at all costs. But now it's rolling! 

Now that victory is assured, I'm taking steps to make sure that I'm not smothering my spark. The project is funded, and we've got a nice stretch of time to bag this thing. I feel safe thinking about other stuff, and even spending some time on that other stuff. Which is part of why I'm making this post! I think that does it for my Europa Commentary. I have a lot of other stuff I want to talk about.

CATAPHRACTS

I am in a game of Cataphracts and it is awesome. Sam Sorensen has made a real-time play-by-post operations level roleplaying wargame, and it is surprisingly approachable. (Believe me, if I understand it, it is approachable.) 

• Real-time: a day in the game world equals a day in the real world. Travel takes days or weeks, certain things take a month.
• Play-by-post: (How WE do it at least) In a Discord server, every player has a private channel with the game master. They submit their orders (we march here, we attack them) and when those actions resolve they submit new ones.
• Operations level: No need to concern yourself with the actions of single people. Your strategy is grand. Six mile hexes, a huge game area, supplies a major concern.
• Roleplaying wargame: It isn't a wargame like you might first imagine. You definitely want good units like Epic Horsemen and Elite Spearguard, but you are a character in a fictional world, not an all-seeing strategist. You parlay at meetings, discuss with advisors, write letters. It's a game of war.

I am Spahbod Varazdat of House Vatavidarna, Commander of Shakhar, 48. I am the best spahbod in the world. I am the highest ranking official in the Empire's Satrapy besides the Satrap herself, and no one acts like it. 

I can't say a whole lot about my campaign, because sharing actionable intelligence is obviously forbidden. So here's some general stuff that all commanders know. This should give you a good idea of the life of a commander.

• An army marches on its stomach, and some days they make a really big fucking stink about it 
• Intercepted messages are fun to mess with, almost as much fun as the intercepted messengers
• Listen, sometimes you gotta sack your own town. Just try not to make it a habit
• You are a maker of war and a bringer of death. You don't have to say please when giving orders
• If you to complicate everything and make your game master hate you: give peace a chance
• Don't bother with tactics or maneuvers, just only fight battles you'll win #SunTzu

Our game master has added a tasteful amount of custom material to fit the setting, like faction-specific units. Marsh-trained pikemen, elephant riders, civilian militia turned berserkers, the works- all genius and exciting. Each empire also has their own religion, and I'm like 90% sure that each religion is just actually true. Like God, Allah, and Brahma just hover above their respective loyal nations, occasionally blessing a virtuous follower with +1 At War Rolls and other boons. (These are all perversions of the truth to avoid actionable intel leaks.)

A year-long war of push, pull, love, death, blood and glory could be yours... the only obstacle is having a good game master. Honestly, the pressure seems to come from how many people are involved, not the complexity of executing any specific order. It's easy to file 1 guy's command and move him on the map. Now do that 25 times, and answer all their questions, get them to answer yours, and remind them of shit, and get 2 people's attention when it's time for them to kill each other, and so on, ad infinitum.

I love the real-time aspect more than the big armies or being the head honcho. I love how long the different actions take, the anticipation across days and weeks as your plan comes together. You sit with certain ideas for a long while (The enemy is over there, we are the superior force, these 2 groups are aligned, etc), and then find them uprooted or disproven, and now that's your life. 

The possibilities are for real endless. The bulk of the rules' page count is procedures that account for all the little scenarios you'll come across, like morale tests and sieges and food shortages and such; the core mechanics are as forward and simple as possible. That means you can take this system anywhere. And boy, do I want to take it places. Like so many others in this sphere of the hobby, this game has lit a fire in my mind.

Check out At Your Order by one of my favorite blogs, Garamondia. It reframes everything as being on giant vehicles. 

And now...

IDEAS FOR OTHER REAL-TIME PLAY-BY-POST OPERATIONS LEVEL GAMES

Post-apocalypse setting

Mad Max-adjacent (isn't it all?) for those vehicles and crazies. 

You are the warlord of a warband. Rove, raid, raze, trample. Maraud. 

In place of armies, great hosts of thundering engines.

In place of detachments, vehicles. War rigs, dune buggies, technicals, sandrails, tanks, bikes bikes bikes.

In place of triple digit troop counts, maybe single digit crews of war boys?

Fervor over Morale. Largely the same, but with new complications if it gets too high. If your underlings are TOO eager to serve you, they might get twitchy and pull a Witness Me at a bad time.

Spitballing a situation

Rumor has it there is a "Green Place"-like oasis in this corner of the desert. Warlords from all over have come to search for it, or kill the ones looking for it and take their shit.

War parties criss-cross the wastes, skirmishing and colliding and crashing and burning. The few struggling settlements are the only sources of gas, bullets, men, steel, and hope. Goods have to get from A to B somehow, so intrepid car-jockeys and engine tamers take to the sand to move supplies and keep the wasteland alive.

You might be...

• a survivor with a small band of like-minded have-nots
• an iron despot with a legion of hot-blooded maniacs
• a mercenary escort party accompanying a water tanker
• the bandits ambushing that tanker at Ambush Ridge
• the tar striders giving chase when the fighting spills into the tar-lands
• the township just trying to eke out an existence

Oh shit, imagine playing as the keepers of the Green Place, springing ambushes on any who learn of your secret paradise. Wondering who to trust and who to make an example of. You could set a bunch of traps in the wastes, plant false clues leading people away from you... Maybe your ultimate campaign goal is not to stay hidden forever, but to move enough of your green / biofuel / pure water / whatever before you're inevitably uncovered, so that by then it's all already safely elsewhere. Or maybe your goal is to find someone worthy of the secret and the mantle of Steward, protector of the last fertile soil on Earth.

Imagine being a demagogue with a flock of sycophants (I love those words so much), cooking up the perfect lies to further your legend and get them to give their lives for you. You could use downtime to mythologize yourself, having your historians tell tall-tales around oil drum campfires under the desert sky. The crazier your war boys, the better they try to serve you... as long as the charade is maintained!

Remember the Motorfliers from Furiosa? God

Does it make for good Real-Time Play-by-Post Operations Level gameplay? 

(Can we think of a better name for this? Phract-like? Phractal?) It sounds fun to live out the struggle of vast distances, and the delirium of post-everything scarcity. I really want to drive across the desert with a big horde of cars, even if its aimless.

There'd be a focus on getting a good Inner Circle for your faction- a little cadre of NPCs that help with the upkeep and round out your capabilties. Think of all the whack jobs you can acquire; engineers, lorekeepers, warrior trainers, number-crunchers, deluded soothsayers and such. Lieutenants and enforcers that keep your rabble in check.

Hmm, I guess battles could take place on the move? In fact, they all should, it's the ideal battle in this world. Maybe motorcycles, being very maneuverable but frail compared to a car, receive both an attack bonus and a hit point reduction during high speed chases.

The golden age of piracy

You are the captain of this fine vessel and her crew. Maybe even a small fleet, depending on your faction and standing, or your desire to cooperate with other players.

Spitballing a situation

Ok, it takes place in an Arc of islands within sailing distance of some kind of mainland, which is occupied by a big snobby Empire. This Empire is plundering faraway lands, and wants to put ports on the Arc islands (Who do they think they are?) to service their returning treasure ships- great vessels of war, full to bursting with stolen gold. 

Besides ports, they've offered (or threatened) to "grant" the Arc all the benefits of Empiredom in exchange for full authority. 

The Arc islands have troubles of their own; they are plagued by pirates (many of which are criminals or exiles from the Empire), who view the island societies as vulnerable and their trade ships as free game- not to mention that the islands aren't even united under one government yet, and thus one cannot speak for all.

Also, the plundered lands called, and they want their plunder back. And maybe a nice little colony of their own, to help them put pressure on that there Empire?

Things are busy here.

You might be...

• daring outlaw with a crew of criminals on a stolen merchant ship, living in pursuit of freedom
• the same but much more murderous and explicitly seeking wealth, possibly so you can bury it
• sailor in the Arc militia trying to rally the various islands together and repel foreign adversaries
• imperial captain of a galleon; bristling with cannons, trained soldiers, and plunder from faraway
• privateer from faraway, come to intercept imperial ships and recover goods stolen from your lands

Imagine being an imperial criminal in a prison hulk, freed by pure circumstance during the escape of a much more notorious pirate captain. You go to the local cities in disguise, gathering your former associates and slowly building a new crew. You earn a nickname like Steel Nick or Loathsome McCorquodale, and eventually meet the captain you escaped with, earning his respect. You sail up and down coasts, zigzag between islands, evading imperial patrols and militia hunters to keep sticking up merchants. Life is good.

Imagine being a were-kraken. You got cursed by a sea witch for your misdeeds committed in the name of the law (or chaos), and on the 31st day of the game, you wake up on the beach among splintered driftwood and green blood. Your ship is moored nearby, a hole in the side where you burst out from while transforming. Nearby, a coastal village burns in the wake of your rampage. I don't know, this idea is out of nowhere but really grabbing me.

Does it make for good Real-Time Play-by-Post Operations Level gameplay? 

This is the same spin At Your Order! puts on Cataphracts' simple RT PBP OL G blueprint- put them in a vehicle. Your vessel is your home, your weapon, and your sole method of locomotion in the setting. Sailing is a great fit for real-time travel, and a single boat can very easily be abstracted into manageable systems and qualities to oversee. Find a good ship doctor, a carpenter, some generals to compliment your plans, or scurvy dogs to stab huge knives into maps for you, and to help with your ship ops.

It'd be fun moving and selling cargo, and executing the dance of a robbery, and amassing and losing crewmates... On the pirate side of things, you'll want to gobble up small-time crooks for your crew, but small-timers get locked up or killed fast, so stage breakouts and interrupt executions for that sweet loyalty bonus. Keeping them in line means appealing to their vices, so steal plenty of rum and stop at plenty of really shitty ports. And don't let them get delusions of grandeur, or they'll try to break away with a crew of their own.

On the imperial / civilized side of things, building manpower is less of an ordeal, as the Empire has no shortage of sailors to send you. While insurbordination is rare, it's simple to keep them in line when it does happen: you can simply have the offender's family sent to a penal colony for hard labor. Easy. A bigger concern is probably officials just below you in rank, who want to see you fail so they can have your job (and living quarters).

POSTS THAT I LIKED

Here are some posts I read recently that are doing things to me.

Six Dungeon Gods

Some lovely gods or animist spirits for dungeons. I'm a big fan of Locheil's art for each one.

Girls Like Us (procedures for a city campaign)

A terse, evocative post that has set my mind on fire in a different way: procedures-as-NPCs.

It's quick and amazing, read it. 

The Powers-That-Be of the city, the essences that make life there so exhausting and exacting and maddening and deadly, the very things that make the concrete a jungle, are also NPCs. The Hustle, the Grid, the Noise, the Dark are somewhere between characters, forces, and gods. Presences? They are avatars of the principles of the city setting. Honestly, trying to pin it down with words dullens it.

They're there, and they're also literally "there." 

Their whims are the way of life in the city. You have to learn how to appease them, or you'll drown in their retribution. Their desires and fixations are the mechanics of the setting. You can invoke them, proffer and plead to them, placate them, scorn them, make wagers and trades with them, but you can't change them, and you certainly can't get rid of them. You might as well worship them.

I don't think the Evil City 4 march in and introduce themselves when you first get an apartment in the city, and I don't think The Dark holds press conferences about increasing murder. I think they're more subtle and unreal than big known faces. Still, making use of these Presences calls for a level of personal involvement, I think, or else they don't really need to be NPCs. 

In my head, they'd be best used as muses of sorts; maybe they're voices in your head, or shadows looming over you while you mull over your current crisis. Figures of otherworldly, mercurial beauty (or ugliness) that show up during an ordeal to give you a costly way out, or a warning, or unwanted advice. You can call upon them, but it's fun to imagine them coming to you, like a devil with a bargain. But they do also need you; they're man-made, in a way. You can use that to your advantage.

It makes me want to do procedures-as-NPCs for everything. They work uniquely well for a city; the one described in the post is a place of body modding and feverish self-fascinations, but its 4 presences articulate what's tempting and scary and powerful in any fictional city. Have you seen Seven (often stylized Se7en)? That vision of a city is good. Nauseating, suffocating, hungry... meticulous and well-oiled, but the oil is sewage and blood. Anything where the environment gets lots of characterization and narrative presence can have Powers-That-Be.

Giving it a shot for that pirate setting... What are the omnipresent forces at play there? We don't want it to just be a spirit presiding over each faction, but the actual pillars of the setting personified. What things or actions color the area and the things going on there? 

So... for one, the anarchic force of whimsy and vice that seafaring enables, a force that pirates are tuned in to very well. It likes when you take, taste, and disobey, and it wants freedom and honor (in a thief way). The Dance, the Jig?

Maybe one for the allure of wealth and land urging on the imperialist countries, like a kind of manifestation of manifest destiny. It likes when you seize, overcome, and convert, and it wants materials and people. It wants more. The Call?

One for the sea, infinitely vast and capricious. Everything depends on it, and it knows that. It likes when you explore, confront, and flow, and it wants to be respected. The... Sea.

Do we need 4? We've got the Sea, the Dance, the Call... Davy Jones, Jolly Roger, Victoria. 

Sort of a different thing than the original post, but a very fun excercise.

Testudis (Cataphracts Setting, Hexmap, Rules)

Going back to Cataphracts, this is an awesome setting for it. A boatload of unique units and special mechanics for each of the Peoples.

ENOUGH

Holy shit, I accidentally 3,635 words about what's on my mind lately. 

Good! Now I just need to purposefully 15,000 more for War-Torn Ice Moon.

War-Torn Ice Moon: Update + Outline

 Yup, still happening! Here's a quick rundown.

• The grand outline is solidified. I believe we know everything the book will have.
• We've written 10,000 words out of an estimated 20,000. (Unrefined rough draft wording, of course)
• All of the new rules are devised and fleshed out, just in need of proper wording and playtesting.

We're in Phase 2

I'd like to be done writing in August. I mean, I'd like to be done writing tomorrow. But right after the last time I estimated completion, my car broke down and my tooth broke down. So then I played Animal Well to cope. But we're back on track, and going strong!

It's time to finally share some details. Let's jog through the entire damn book real quick.

Outline

The first section is the new rules for FIST. They're made with Europa in mind, but perfectly suitable for use in the paranormal Cold War setting.

• Squads, a way to consolidate enemies into coordinated groups. They can execute unique Tactics they wouldn't have as individuals, and attack multiple players simultaneously per Failure roll. Dangerous... but players can make them too! Bring some grunts along on missions. Optionally, you can sacrifice squad members for roll bonuses.
  
  
• Extra Base Upgrade Options. There's 6 in base FIST; Backup, Defense, Expert, Offense, Storage, and Support. We're using those as categories of upgrade, and ideally, we'll have 6 unique options for each. For example, Backup by default is a squad of NPC goons you can send on missions or bring with you on yours. We're adding 6 different takes on Backup's idea of "calling in some dudes", from mercenaries (weak, plentiful, disloyal) to an embedded agent (disguised as an enemy), to a distress call that you hope the right faction will answer.
  
  
• Assets. A new advancement method, usable alongside or in place of XP or the standard way. Players acquire Assets for completing missions, fulfilling their roles, or as bonuses for going the extra mile during missions (or as the main reward of the mission). They represent your characters acquiring materials, tools, manpower, favors, and other resources during and between missions, which can be exchanged for Traits, extra max HP, or even field equipment and Base Upgrades.
  
  
• Dogtags. When a player character dies, they drop their dogtag or similar sentimental item. Other players can scoop them up to keep your memory alive. Plus, holding it and thinking hard about your dead bro will max out the value of one War Die, or other one-time character-relevant bonus.
  
  
• SEVERAL MORE, such as Morale, Standing, and Heat. Gotta save some for later...
  
  

The rest is all Europa, starting with these intro materials.

• Campaign Setup, where we break down what makes this different from standard FIST, how best to run it, the "gameplay loop" of War Forever, some suggested optional rules from the base game, and some examples of play.
  
  
• A Player Primer, which contains some "origin stories" for players to brainstorm how they got to this evil ass moon. Examples: Ice Miners, PMCs, Tourists, and even the rogue paranormal mercenary outfit themselves, FIST. The primer also has suggested goals for your players to work towards, such as conquering or escaping Europa. This will probably be where some character Traits unique to Europa will go (likely 18), plus some premade characters (4 to 8).
  
  
• Welcome to Europa, a smorgasbord of information about what this place is like moment to moment, divided into 3 sections: War-Torn, Ice, and Moon. (More comprehensive than it might seem.) This section also includes a simple timeline of what was going on before the war started, and the key questions you'll want to answer to make this your Europa.
  
  

Lastly, the War Chest, a massive collection of people, places, and things to populate your ice moon. Many are presented with suggestions for fitting them into your table's overarching story, unique situations involving them, and their interactions with other gameplay elements. There's also generators, tables, in-universe chat logs, read-alouds, table brainstorming prompts, examples of buildings and regions, and an introductory mission.

• Locations. Kind of broad, right? This part covers key landmarks and features across Europa's 4 layers: the surface, in the ice, the undersea, and low orbit. There's different environments in each, such as debris fields and cryogeysers, which impact what's there and thus the kinds of missions to go on. The surface section also details how to roll up or hand-make one of Europa's many Facilities, from the smallest guard outposts to the largest drill cities. There's "common" locations, like the plentiful howler nests and barracks, and "unique" locations, like the one and only Tomb of the Alien Ghost Hero.
  
  
• Factions. Armies, corporations, rogue cells, hordes, herds, and cults. We load up on these. We want you to have a wealth of options for major and minor forces at play. Wherever on Europa your game is set, you'll have a living conflict area with a huge array of mission possibilities, tons of people to fight or recruit, shit to steal, and groups to ally with or attack. Factions have named members, qualities to tack onto NPCs to make them part of that group, and multi-phase agendas. Here's the loglines for some select factions: Geneticist fishermen, felons with robot armies, cargo mafia, a thousand clones of the same guy, Clown Ops, guys who found a nuke, and Yeti No Human Kill Human Yeti Team.
  
  
• NPCs. Roughly divided into 6 categories, each of which contains 6 or more beings, most of which have at least 6 variations or adjustments to suit your situation. Grunts are your fodder and newbies, with different ways to mess up under pressure. Elites are specially trained, specially equipped, or just abnormal freaks. Specialists are experts in particular fields and often have helpful capabilities if recruited (or captured). Robots include all manner of building-controlling AI, worker androids, janky soldier-bots, and unstoppable metal murder machines. Fauna are true creatures and beasties. Aliens are sapient beings, such as yetis, cryoliths, and there are rumors of xenoplasmic beings wandering the tunnels... Outside of those categories are Legends; individual beings with moon-wide reputations and amazing skills. You may know some, like xSnoWolfx and Ursa Polaris. 
  
  
• Items. You've got your essential survival gear, like breathable air grenades in 6 different scents. There's also your less essentials, like space suits, armors, moon tents, laser drills and laser saws, and life-saving heatsinks. You've got jabs, nanite-chemical cocktail injections originally meant to "augment productivity" before the war. There's prosthetic limbs and proxy organs, both custom-made and cheap-ass. Grab some grub, like ice-meal, cryoffee, and xenoplasm. There's conventional weapons, there's plasma variants that use heatsinks, and of course there's repurposed industrial tools, Isaac Clarke style. For getting around, hop on an ice crawler, a slush trawler, a yeti, or any number of jury-rigged turbo sleds. And if you run into any xenoterica, like a cryolith prism or virulescent urn, be smart and don't mess with that shit. It's weird and dangerous.
  
  

Okay now help me out

Yes, you! After reading all that, did anything feel missing? I'm concerned, perhaps irrationally, that something fundamental is missing, and that when people finally read it, they'll say "Okay, now what?" or "How can I use this without [thing]?" So if anything essential seems missing- not a wishlist item, like a cool enemy or item, but something crucial that makes it usable for assembling a tabletop campaign- please sound off, here or on X the everything app. If I add it, I'll get you back somehow, probably with a free paperback copy. 

So what else is up

I played Animal Well. Animal Well is the only game in the world, play it. I also saw Hundreds of Beavers. Hundreds of Beavers is the only movie in the world, watch it. Otherwise, just gettin' by, man. See you in the next one!