I’ve been revisiting ECO MOFOS!! again. Dan’s (incredible) art is all flooding in and I bit the bullet and submitted the text for critique from a great group of designers that Christian Sorrell (Meatcastle) has put together. Honestly, it felt like being at college again, people picking over the bones of your scrappy piece of creation. It was really constructive and has made the book (over 160 pages now!) so much better.
Anyway, the process got me thinking about what the text was lacking and, for me, it was an emotional way into your character at character generation. I’ve built the entire game around quick character generation. I want people to be able to get playing within minutes. It’s part of the reason I decided to use the Into the Odd rules and some Cairn-ish adaptations, as it’s a ruleset that lends itself to fast yet immersive play. The tables I've created to help build the world contain lots of visceral elements, around the weather and sights and sounds, but the character creation, though fun and built to create initial complexity through gaining an emotional Burden straight away (a different Fatigue for Eco mofos!!) the process lacked a little personality. I thought I could add a little setting and, fundamentally, tone, through some flavour text for each starting Adaptation.
Adaptations are a special ability in ECO MOFOS!!, a pseudo-magic item that becomes a part of you, a way of building XP diagetically into the game structure. Your Punk starts with one, as an equivalent to Class in other games, which sets out your starting items and one starting ability, partially defined by your starting HP. High HP, and you have a more physical adaptation, towards fighting or salvaging, low HP and your adaptation is more weird, knowing spells or being able to change physical form. In order to learn new Adaptations, you find Key Items around the world that you fuse with (inducing a night of visions and weirdness) that grant you their powers.
So I’ve been adding Starting Backgrounds to each of the Adaptations, trying to relate how it might actually feel to live with this particular ability. The entries are terse, as I don’t want them to slow the character creation process down too much, but I’ve been trying to make them as evocative as possible.
So here are a couple:
HP2, 2. Technomancer
Starting Background Gadgets just seem to work for you, one glance and Essence sparks, helping the ancient engine to purr, or the door unlock.
Ability On fusing with the Skullcap, learn 2 spells. Risk a Burden to control one piece of visible Tech.
Starting Items
Blaster (d8)
Serrated Knife (d6)
Kevlar jacket (+1 Armour)
Scout Drone | 1 HP, 12 DEX, Laser (d6)
Blackleaf
A Game and Watch
HP2, 3. Biotech
Starting Background You taste the soil through your toes, trace mitochondrial networks in your mind, mapping the world as organic nodes.
Ability Risk a Burden to discover information on the local environment and recent history through the soil and plant network. Risk a Burden to calm or control plants.
Starting Items
Staff (d6)
Scalpel (d4)
Padded camo (+1 Armour)
Vial of spores
Portable microscope
A pipe and leaf
Combining the items, Background and Ability I think gives a nice flavour for the type of character you might have just rolled up. Add in the emotional burden and age of the character, and it all becomes quite nuanced and rounded. Hopefully.
This was partially inspired by Yochai Gal’s work on the already excellent Cairn 2e (go follow/back it right now, you won’t be sorry), but also by my previous work on Lost Eons, where each Archetype has a little flavour text like this.
So ECO MOFOS!! is almost there. The printer is all set up, and we’re still optimistic that the book will be in people’s hands in May.