Generating escalating threats
Learning from Mythic Bastionland: Lesson 43
One thing that I felt was missing from ECO MOFOS!! was a sense of how the Corpos, the maleficent forces that represent the corporations of the old world, influence and change the world around them through their presence.
The Elegance of Omens
I’ve been reading through Chris McDowall’s Mythic Bastionland, and yet again, I realised that Chris has beaten me to it. The way that the Myths influence the world through a series of escalating events, as Omens, is just an incredibly elegant way of introducing a coherent but procedural narrative into an otherwise freeform game.
The engine of the mechanic is the Wilderness roll. If you move within the game, the Myths will inevitably advance.
The Roll is on a d6, rolled if the party ends their turn in Wilderness.
Encounter the next Omen from a Random Myth in this Realm.
2-3. Encounter the next Omen from the Nearest Myth.
4-6. Encounter the Hex’s Landmark. Otherwise All Clear.
Entering a hex that contains a Myth also triggers the next event for that Myth.
This is a form of Encounter die - the “standard” is rolling a 1 on a d6 when entering a new hex in wilderness will trigger a random encounter with a creature from the environment’s Encounter table. But here, like in the Overloaded Encounter Die, each result has the potential to change the situation in the game. Also, instead of the encounter being a simple meeting with a possibly hostile creature, instead the roll triggers the development of a situation - the Myth enters its next stage, through a human-scale event. For example, in The Plague, the PCs might encounter a family with the disease, then in a later stage a whole village will have succumbed, or they might meet someone seeking a cure. The world becomes organic, shifting with the changing state of impending problems.
Corpo Schemes
I think a system like this could work really well for ECO MOFOS!!, adding in linked narrateives to the individual situations that are created by the combination of the procedural Environment, Feature and Hazard rolls. If some of the Features were a trigger for the next event of a sequence, they would bleed into the game. I like the name of Corpo Schemes for these events. The Feature Roll is a d20, so 7 entries should be the Nearest Scheme, and 3 entries would be for a random Scheme. I like this mix, so that the PCs are never quite sure which Scheme they’re finding evidence for, or even if this event is evidence of a Scheme at all.
Example
Here’s an example of what one of these Schemes could look like. There is the overall threat, in this case a new Corpo Landing Pad for an incoming force from Mars, and how the building and presence of that new threat affects people and places in the world. I’m trying to make each Event in some way interactive, to give a situation that the PCs need to react to, while building the overall situation.
1. Landing pad
Strange lights in the night sky off on the horizon. Members of a settlement saw them, say they’ve been happening for weeks. A teenager has gone off to investigate and not returned.
A mass of dead fish, floating on the water. They’ve attracted sharks, and they’re gorging on them. A small trading skiff is caught in the turmoil.
A family of Punks, lead by mum Shinead, have made a home in a strangely new piece of high tech salvage. They found it floating nearby.
A settlement is being frightened by loud noises being heard accross the sea. Thilas says that it’s an omen of the end times, and some people believe him. Some think it’s roar of landing rockets, they’ve seen the lights.
Invasion. The closest island to the Scheme is now under occupation. A resistance, lead by Silia Root, is underway.
Links
A few great crowdfunders are underway.
MAC ATTACK by Chris McDowall - a new awesome Mecha minis game.
Vaults of Vaarn by Leo Hunt - the new edition of one of the finest procedural settings out there.
A Perfect Wife a Southeast Asian vampire horror by Zedeck Siew has just been released on pdf (I did layout on this)
Summer Sale I’m hosting a little sale of Solo and ECO MOFOS!! modules to support the development of the next installment. Maybe there’s something fun for your table.