The other day, I posted a random demonic incursion generator and an example of its usage in a traditional D&D hexcrawl campaign.
Somebody made the excellent point in the comments that you could reskin this method for a more 'fey' setting (perhaps even a New Troy or Summerland), with the demons replaced by faeries, witches, and other fantastical entities, and the Abyss replaced by Faerie/Muspel/'The Woods'/etc. It got me thinking that I may inadvertently have hit upon a method that could have almost universal application for campaigns in which the PCs are the 'good guys' and you want to ensure that player agency remains the driving principle in the context of sandbox style play. All you would need to do would be to come up with a better set of tables than the simplistic ones I put in the entry, and then tweak them for different genres. Hence, for example:
- A Raveloft-esque horror campaign in which zombies/warlocks/ghosts/etc emerge from Hell, Hades (insert afterlife of choice) to bother the living; the PCs are priests, paladins, and the like
- An X-Files affair in which the PCs are paranormal investigators of some kind in a particular region of the world; the intruders are aliens abducting farmers, annoying cows, and so on
- Lovecraft: A band of scholars has discovered the awful truth about the universe; horrible entities from beyond the stars or under the sea keep appearing in the area, and only this group of academics, philosophers and cranks has any idea what they are or how to stop them
- The things in the looking-glass world have found a way to slip into our own, and the PCs are a secret cabal trying to put them back....
the best take I've seen in ages on "doing Shadowrun properly" has definitely been Scrap Princess's recent thing, hella recommend that if you haven't seen read it yet. very much in the vein of "cyberpunk but the margins of reality are ontologically fraying" you might like. it's a sort of xenofuturism based around radical extrapolations of ✨present day✨ instead of radical extrapolations of the 80's, tho, which I love but might not float your boat...
ReplyDeleteI only recently heard about this and am surprised at how out of the loop I am (or how soft the launch has been). I intend to get it and write a review.
Deleteoh yeah launch has been very soft, it just kinda came out of nowhere from what I can tell. plus the fact that Scrap's mostly known as an artist and this is a project where they did none of the actual art maybe meant it flew even more under the table than it otherwise would've. Personally I'm super fucking into the whole cyber-Deleuzian schizo-dystopian future-shock Nick Land CCRU "technocapital is a malevolent Lovecraftian entity traveling backwards through time" sort of thing, and Scrap's serving a pretty solid dose of that kind of vibe, so it was very very directly up my alley, but I'm really curious how someone who doesn't know what a "hyperstition matrix" is would digest it lmao
DeleteWhat is the title of the thing being mentioned?
DeleteIt's called NooFutura!
Deletehttp://monstermanualsewnfrompants.blogspot.com/2022/03/noofutura-available-for-purchase.html?m=1
Dammit. Your incursion idea has inspired me to create something.
ReplyDeleteAh, but what?
DeleteI was just playing Forbidden Island and the sinking/shoring up mechanism merged with your demonic incursion concept to birth an idea that I'll almost certainly half-finish.
DeleteCastle Raveloft is an unintentional but pristine location or even campaign idea for a cyberpunk setting.
ReplyDeleteA random horde generator idea like this could be used very effectively for a mech style setting as well. Something that's a mix of the Survival Paradigm setting maybe or even taking an old Mekton idea like fighting off an invasion of Earth.