Coopdevil over at the Fighting Fantasist blog had a neat idea: Create a fake old school RPG zine cover for your blog! Sounds fun, so here’s my five minute addition to that club:
(The image is from Uller Uprising.)
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I’ve been digging through old files all day working on… something. During that digging, I unearthed something very interesting. According to documents from 1998, Enderra saw its first game session on October 23rd, 1993. Now, I will probably never be entire certain if that’s right, but it was a Saturday – and the files and the folder look like they were evolved from my very first notes about the world.
It’s good enough for me. October 23rd is now officially Enderra Day. And it gives me 1.5 years to prepare some sort of celebration for its 20th anniversary.
Asteroids. Big lumps of rock and metal floating in the endless void of space. The Dawn probe is about to enter orbit around Vesta, where it will stay a year before moving on to Ceres.
The Andiope Doublet (Image credit: ESO)
So I was wondering: What can you actually do with Asteroids? They seem pretty useless, but here are some ideas:
- Prisons: Try to escape from a ball of rock a few hundred kilometers in diameter, literally out in the middle of no-where. Good luck.
- Mining: Some asteroids contain valuable metals or minerals or even tiny primordial black holes, and could be a source of conflict if more than one party claims them.
- Warfare: Use them as a military base or crash them into a planet. It ensured victory over the dinosaurs.
- Secret hideout: Pirates, spies, alien invaders, mad scientists, religious fanatics, the Space Mafia, rich eccentrics, anybody who wishes to remain out of the limelight for a while may set up shop on an asteroid.
- Space ship: Hollow them out, put in quarters and a big drive system, and ride a chunk of rock to the stars. In theory you could even use the rock of the asteroid itself as reaction mass.
- Waystation: Use it as a refueling and resupplying depot on your way to the outer system, or assemble your first FTL ship using that asteroid as a base.
- Monuments: What better place for the grave of your early space heroes than an asteroid cemetary?
- Natural Hazard: Very dense asteroid belts might actually pose a hazard to spaceships. The asteroid belt in the Solar System doesn’t; but it’s a staple of Space Operae to posit belts where asteroid tumble about chaotically and close enough to each other to constantly bump into one another. If a belt is created within the story’s timeframe, say by destroying a planet, it could become a new hazard to hyperspace lanes or what have you.
- Doomsday: In fiction, asteroids have a habit of constantly crashing into Earth or other inhabited planets. The players could either be helpless to stop it, and need to deal with a society gone wild in expectation of doomsday, or are heroic heroes that get sent into space to help Bruce Willis blow up that approaching menace.
- Mystery: Back in the days, people thought the asteroids might be the left-over of a fifth planet that was ripped apart. They don’t have enough mass, among other things, so this seems no longer plausible. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true in your fictional universe – and it might be the origin of asteroid belts in other systems. The players could hunt for artifacts from the fifth planet, prevent a similar fate from befalling Earth, could encounter Aliens in cold sleep, survivors from the catastrophe; or they could travel back in time to prevent the disaster (or, in a twist, cause the disaster in the first place to keep the timeline intact).
What other uses could asteroids have in adventures? How have you used asteroids in your games or stories?
Tags: Asteroid mining, Asteroids, Astronomy, Doomsday, Fifth Planet, Inspiration, Meteorites, Planetoids, Role Playing Games, RPG, Solar System
China was recently hit by a scandal: It turned out that the rich & powerful of the People’s Republic had a “rich man’s club” going – and used one of the most famous of China’s sites as their club house: The Forbidden City. This came to light after artifacts – on loan from Hong Kong – were stolen.
The Forbidden City used to be the palace of the Emperor of China. As such, it is one of those iconic sites with a lot of history that just lend themselves to all kinds of adventures.
Forbidden City, by Saad Akhtar
The Club could aim to…
- …set up a new political system in China, and the PCs are there to spy on the conspirators or to even stop them by assassinating their leader. Of course the PCs could be members of the conspiracy, too, and find out who the government infiltrator is before he signals for the start of a raid by special forces.
- …ensure Cthulhu or another Old God rises when the stars are right. The Forbidden City is an ancient Site Of Power, so the dark rituals performed there are magnified a thousand times in potency. The PCs need to stop the ritual from being completed, which is made more difficult by the fact that all these rich guys enjoy strong government protection.
- …enjoy themselves in all kinds of carnal and evil ways. For example, they could be doing illegal drugs and employ the services of girls kidnapped all over China – or even the World – and forced to work as prostitutes. The PCs were hired to shut the whole thing down – or at least rescue the pretty, young daughter of their patron.
- …bring about an end to the world financial system, creating a neo-communist utopia. Only James Bond can stop them – and since he has been cancelled, that task falls on the shoulders of the PCs.
ForbiddenCity's Location in Beijing
Naturally, no matter what you decide, China is rich in interesting locations that you could add to your adventure. Some quick ideas off the top of my head:
- The Great Wall
- Qingdao is an interesting mix of European and Chinese city, and its super-modern high-rise buildings are home to many rich Chinese.
- Tibet with its monasteries
- Xian – home of the Terracotta Army
- The Gobi desert
Enjoy.
Tags: China, Forbidden City, Plot, Plot-a-Day, Role-Playing Game, RPG
Tsojcanth had an awesome idea, one-page-dungeon designs in an organizer like notepad booklet. Whatever do you call those? Anyway, he took small notebook and put maps and notes into it. I absolutely love this idea, and I am going to steal it – I put some of these notebooks into my Amazon shopping cart already.
Well this is the last one. I swear.
Original photo: Fort du Lomont : couloir à l’arrière des chambrées du premier étage du réduit (HDR), by Bresson Thomas.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2011-03-09-fort-du-lomont-10.jpg
Tags: Cover, Fantasy, Mockup, Role-Playing Game, RPG
More doodling.
Original photo for the last mock-up: Eilean Donan Castle in Scotland by Shadowgate, cc-by licensed
Tags: Cover, Fantasy, Mockup, Role-Playing Game, RPG
Just doodling.
Ruins & Adventures: Mock-up 1
Original art: Ruines du château de Saint-Cloud, Public Domain.
Ruins & Adventures: Mock-up 2
Original art: Ruin walls on the Rhine, Public Domain
Tags: Cover, Fantasy, Mockup, Role-Playing Game, RPG
And now for something completely different: Another post in my “Plot-a-day” series, where I point out news articles that make wonderful inspiration for plots and adventures (and the series that is anything but daily).
Today, I found a great article from the Japan Times: The Curse of Roppongi. Roppongi, if you do not know, is an upscale and touristy district of Tokyo.
The article explores the bad sides of Roppongi, and includes accidents that happen in the suburb. According to the geomancers, Roppongi is awash in negative energy (“fengshui”).
“The many shrines and temples in Monzencho — as Roppongi was called in olden times — were situated to ensure the proper flow of ki (spiritual energy), and with the kimon (devil’s gates) aligned — north, south, east and west — so as to direct bad spirits from the area, but they were successively demolished to make way for new redevelopment projects that have upset the balance. It’s the changes wrought by the disappearance of the temples that are enticing more people to commit crimes.”
What a great start for a cursed part of town. Of course, in our real world, this is all superstitious nonsense; there are no ghosts, no spirits, and no curses. But in your fantasy world, all of this could literally be true.
“Foreigners worship their own countries’ deities, so one might say the old spirits that protected Roppongi have lost their force. Then came redevelopment, which was aligned unfavorably, which also affects the corporations quartered in Roppongi Hills. All these corporate crimes are a result of the bad spirits that converged on the district.”
The possibilities are endless. You could transplant this to a different world, or use it in a weird stories type setting, where ghosts and goblins roam. You could send the Ghostbusters into the Japanese capital or, in best Japanese fashion, teenage girls in powered armor. Picture battles at night, in the still crowded streets, or in the dark, dank and spacious sewers.
Tokyo Sewers
The curse could literally be true – the undead, creatures from a parallel universe, demons, or space aliens could have set up an outpost under Roppongi, and the “curse” is a result of their meddling. Or maybe the Yakuza is using stories about a curse to cover up their illegal dealings…
Tags: Adventure Idea, Horror, Ideas, Japan, Mecha, Organized Crime, Plot, Roppongi, RPG, Supernatural, Tokyo
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