Seedy Sci Fi / Cyberpunk bar generator

As I'm currently enjoying running Mothership as much as I used to enjoy running Stars Without Number, and this month's RPG Blog Carnival theme is "Taverns, Bars, and places to meet", I thought why not combine my old love of one-roll generators and my new love of spark tables into a bar generator for your favourite SF TTRPG?

Image credit: Pazuah on DeviantArt

So grab a fistful of polyhedrals and let's see where the party ends up:

This place is:

d10 tens	d10 units
a backstreet or spaceport hotel bar	filled with noisy arcade machines
a streetside kiosk in a shipping container	selling local moonshine
a laser-lit all-night club	rumoured to have a secret back room
a trendy wine bar in a respectable 'hood	tended by an AI/robot/alien
a high class cocktail lounge	with live music playing
a trucker / hauler / biker bar	hosting an open mic contest
a pop-up bar in someone's hab block	allegedly run by the mob
a snug in the back of an ethnic restaurant	with the best bartender in town
rooms in a church, mission, or similar	with plenty of under-the-counter goods
a motel bar in the middle of nowhere	with a priceless bottle under glass

Current patrons (reroll each day / as needed):

#dungeon23 - more mothership metroidvania

My plan for this dungeon23 sidequest is coming together now:

Mothership metroidvania, second area

This is the second area in section A, where restoring the power will open up routes to section B and (back) through section A to section D. 

There's an area here, 15/2, that will change if the external door override is cut in section C so the landscape will be different if the PCs backtrack through to get to section D.

Restoring the power will also add some gribblies to the encounter table ('cos containing them was why it was shut off in the first place) which I'll come to in a separate post.

There's also a draft table of "what these crew have" and "what these crew need" for generating some roleplay scenarios, also to come in the future... Comments welcome!

#dungeon23 side quest - a Mothership metroidvania

I'm starting a Mothership campaign and it's a good feeling so I have - understandably - been pondering a Mothership megadungeon. Gradient Descent exists. 

The nature of Mothership got me wondering what sort of megadungeon I could create without the traditional levels and loot, and without returning to the surface with treasure, but still with a delving feel and with ramping challenge.

After explaining both Samus Aran and Simon Belmont to my youngest child in the context of Smash Bros, the idea - trying to stay within the bounds of dungeon23 - is to make a 12 area "metroidvania" dungeon and play around with escalating encounter tables and with re-traversing changing areas.

4 conceptual stages, 3 diary pages each. One a month:

Beef! A simple session zero tool

I'm starting a new campaign and always find starting to be the hardest part. It's all about inertia.

In the spirit of the previous post, I've come up with a quick tool/checklist to help me begin.

Image credit: Dopaprime on DeviantArt

Starting point:

• The GM presents a list of say half a dozen key NPCs from the setting, OR
• The GM and players each create one key NPC as part of session zero

(I'll be running Mothership, and I'll be using the existing NPCs from "A Pound of Flesh" for this.)

Hopefully, putting the PCs in one of four basic situations with some of the key NPCs can help provide easy inspiration, possible plot hooks and shapes, and get the campaign wheels turning:

They got beef with you. Something you did has upset them or made them angry! The idea is this helps provide an immediate antagonist or villain, even if only short term...

You got beef with them. The idea is this can provide an antagonist as above, and/or a plot point where the party might need someone's help and need to get over their beef...

They owe you a favour. The idea is to set up an ally, willing or reluctant, that might be able to help the party overcome a problem...

You owe them a favour. The idea is to provide a hook for, or add a complication to, immediate or later adventures...

The GM's role is to ask the questions / lead the conversation about the nature of the situation, the cause, and mine the answers for hooks for hooks and inspiration, e.g.

• Why?
• What happened?
• What things/people were involved?
• Where are any relevant things/people now?
• What's the current situation? 
• What do the various parties want?

For longer and/or character driven campaigns, each player:

1. Chooses (or rolls) one of the NPCs
2. Determines the situation their PC has with the NPC (could be roll a d4, or choose)
3. Answers questions from the GM to create some brief backstory which becomes part of the campaign canon

For shorter campaigns, for simplicity, etc. the group as a whole:

1. Chooses (or rolls) one NPC for each of the four situations, which applies to the whole party not an individual
2. Answers questions from the GM to create some brief backstory which becomes part of the campaign canon

As I'm planning on around 10 sessions, and Mothership PCs are fairly disposable, I'll be going for the second option.

Comments always welcome.

Late to the party: Dissident Whispers

I recently found out about this collection of 58 double-page adventures and promptly ordered myself a copy from Melsonian Arts Council.

It arrived today and I've thumbed through already.  Most of the adventures within look viable, some are entertaining or humourously written, many are beautifully presented.