I don’t usually write up blow-by-blow reports of sessions, but this one illustrates the stuff I like about the game, and the stuff that could be improved.
Session one was fun. It confirmed a lot of the flaws I identified in the initial reading, and introduced several new ones. But the game is more than the sum of its parts and I’m going to keep running it.
I ran the game rules as written, except that I awarded 5 XP per unit of currency recovered, instead of 1. I’m happy with this decision and I’m going to keep doing it in future sessions.
Players were recruited from my Delta Green open table server.
Coal City, once a hub of industry. Somewhere in the old world, with catacombs and stuff named after the King. The downtown still shows signs of life, the old money on the bluff still show signs of undeath. Everything else is hollowed out and dying.
(The rules use a handful of dice dropped on a large piece of paper to create a map. I ended up genning a couple maps before I settled on a happy medium of two of each die size, from D4 up to D12, and four D20s. The size of the dice matters just as much as the number rolled for creating the connections between them. The system treats the 00 dice and 0 dice in a D100 set differently, with unique results that can only show up on the 00s die)
The Occultists, here to pillage the occult underworld
- Johan Cilliers, Impulsive “Antiquities Dealer” & Interdimensional Parasite Host (Mystic)
- Zachary Brighton, “Cursed” Dissolute Aristocrat (Spook)
- Connor Vasquez, Law Abiding Gun Owner (Mercenary)
Mara the Mercenary met the agents at Vinculum, a jazz club in the city’s downtown. 1,000 dollars to deliver a package to his colleagues, holed up in a limestone cave on the West side of the river, beneath the suburbs North of the park.
The group knew about three entrances to the Underworld.
The door in the basement of Vinculum was the safest. Controlled by the Ponda Ray crime family, the club took twenty percent of anything anyone brought up (after XP was calculated, of course). In exchange, they protect explorers against exit campers, a major threat in the urban exploration business.
The mausoleum on the hill in the rich part of town. Closer to the objective, but patrolled by the Sunflowers, a militia guarding the tombs of their ancestors against graverobbers.
The warehouse in the industrial district. Dangerous and on the wrong side of town, therefore irrelevant to this mission.
(The system doesn’t offer much help for bringing the city above the underworld to life, forcing the GM to improvise based on underworld locations)
Rather than take the safe entrance and pay the toll on the way out, the occultists chose the fast way through the mausoleum.
Nobody had a car, so they concealed their weapons and took the bus to the base of the hill. It was about midnight when they got to the necropolis. The Sunflowers were patrolling elsewhere, and they made it to the Tomb of Cilinia without interruption. Shove the lead sarcophagus out of the way, crawl into the hole, and you’re underground.
The tunnels presented them with four passages. One went North, another West, two to the South. The North passage had a spray painted image of a teddy bear. Mara had mentioned that the mercenaries were surrounded by “cave men, rock men and bear men”. The occultists again decided the direct route was worth the risk, and headed North.
(It took some calculating to crunch the random encounter frequency, since the map distances in the book are given in kilometers but the exploration distances per-turn are given in feet. I eventually figured that at unencumbered speed, rolling for encounters once every three exploration turns, the players were rolling about four random encounters per inch of distance on the map)
The tunnel took them into an ancient reliquary, packed with bones from floor to ceiling. They stumbled onto a pair of bear cultists wrestling. Made a bad first impression by shining their light directly in their faces (Ursa Major is a goddess of darkness). Smoothed things over while one cultist went to wake up the cult matriarch, Mama Bear, from hibernation. She was happy to let them through when they told her they were here to lead the mercenaries out of the underworld (lie). The mercs had come through earlier, trying to knock down walls to run cables through, and the bears had violently chased them off. Mama Bear led them through a couple cult chambers with sacred taxidermies and bear rugs, through the hibernation room (packed with big piles of sleeping bear cultists) and into a tunnel to the North.
The tunnel led into a series of caverns. The occultists heard music coming down one of them, which was blocked off with piled sandbags. Connor crawled down the passage and pushed the sandbags over. He was greeted by half a dozen mercenaries pointing guns at him, thinking it was another morlock attack. They had found their destination.
The mercs explained that they were holed up in the caves, with Morlocks to the Northwest, rock men to the Northeast, and bear cultists to the South. The bear people killed and ate one of them when the mercs tried to muscle in on their reliquary. The occultists had heard of rock men before - emissaries of the Lithic Courts, and underground silicon based civilization. They noted privately that the Lithics, while officious and stubborn, did not make war on surface worlders without good reason. Either the mercenaries had offended them, or they really wanted something in the cave the mercenaries were guarding.
Inger the Mercenary Captain took the suitcase they were to deliver. She opened it briefly to inspect its contents, a mysterious book and some random objects added to make the package rattle convincingly. Satisfied, she wrote a receipt, and offered 500 additional dollars if the group would take an injured merc back to the surface with them. Johan (unrelated to the player character named Johan) had his gut flora destroyed by a blast of radiation from a rock man, and desperately needed a fecal transplant. The occultists agreed to haul him out of there, reducing their movement speed but increasing their payoff. They wanted to ask more questions, but an alarm sounded indicating another rock man attack. They took this as their cue to leave.
Returning to the surface the way they came would have revealed the occultists’ deception to the bear cult. They left via the Western exit, onto a live subway track. They had the train schedule saved from Google maps and were able to avoid getting hit by dashing between the maintenance alcoves. If they’d been interrupted by a monster or something a train would probably have hit them, but they got away without a scratch.
(Twelve rolls, and not a single “1” for a wandering monster!)
A passage in the subway tunnel opened into an abandoned bomb shelter. They discovered a few handfuls of abandoned wealth, a swarm of bats, and most distressingly, an abandoned nuclear reactor whose fuel was still hot.
(“Vampire Bat” appears twice in the random encounter tables, but isn’t listed in the bestiary. Is it meant to be a vampire in bat form? A were bat?)
NPC Johan said the core hadn’t been glowing like that when the mercenaries last came through the bomb shelter. Connor used his knowledge of Technology to hypothesized that the flow of coolant to the reactor had stopped, causing a runaway criticality accident. By unsticking a valve in another room, he was able to restore the flow and bring the radiation down to a manageable level. Which is good, because the reactor was blocking their way out.
(The “empty” dungeon section in the bomb shelter gave the players more freedom to explore than the populated areas. The faction generators create huge numbers of NPCs in each faction, which makes for very crowded rooms if you put them in the underworld. The solution in the future is either more rooms in each underworld section, or fewer faction goons in each given location)
A blast door to the South led to an active sewer, in the direction of the original mausoleum entrance. Unfortunately for the occultists, the passage was occluded by an enormous fungal mass: a myconid queen, pulsating with a deadly fungal payload.
(The random encounter tables lead to more tables, which lead to massive bestiary entries)
The occultists really didn’t want to fight past her, but NPC Johan was in seriously bad shape, vomiting more frequently. He suggested they might be able to ignite the gasses built up in the sewer tunnel, but asked that they leave him behind the blast door if they did so. The entire group decided to follow his lead, sending PC Johan out to toss the bomb. He made it back to the door just in time as the gas went up, slamming it shut as everything in the hallway was incinerated.
The group congratulated themselves on a job well done. Connor reached out to open the blast door again. NPC Johan shouted at him to stop, but Connor’s hand was already on the seal before he realized what he was doing. The still-burning, pressurized gas rushed in through the open door, scorching everyone inside. Everyone survived without injury except for NPC Johan, whose hands were scorched and blackened by the blast. At least the tunnel was clear.
(Based on a minor incident from my own life, involving an incompletely smothered fire in a BBQ range, opened prematurely before it was extinguished)
PC Johan asked his God for some magical healing, but failed to charm the deity. They thought about spilling some of NPC Johan’s blood to sweeten the deal, but decided the mercenaries wouldn’t appreciate it.
(The holy spirit offered the healing spell in exchange for D4 flesh damage, completely defeating the purpose of casting it)
The gang hoofed it back to the mausoleum, back where they started. They peeked up around the lead coffin and discovered a pair of Sunflowers waiting at the entrance. The militia must have heard the explosion and realized someone was crawling around under the cemetery. PC Johan tried to exploit his contacts by phoning Mara and asking him to create a distraction so he could get out, but wasn’t able to persuade him. So they shot their way out instead. The initial volley killed one of the volunteers. The other fled to raise the alarm. The occultists shoved the coffin out of the way and burst out into the necropolis.
The Sunflowers came running, drawn by the gunfire. The occultists scattered, but only Zachary was able to escape, using his sneakiness rather than his speed. The other were lost in the maze of tombs and tombstones. Thankfully, the militia was as adept at pursuing them as they were escaping. With no side having a clear advantage, a cat and mouse game ensued.
(Everyone had the same movement speed, all the player characters had 1 Athletics, and the stat block I chose for the NPCs also had 1 Athletics)
Zachary ran out the cemetery gate and took the long way around the block to the other side, to outflank the militia. The rest of the group tried to sneak out, warned by NPC Johan that the Sunflowers were trying to delay until reinforcements arrived. They made a run for the gate where Zachary was posted up, but were pinned down by the militia. With no way out, they started blasting. BANG!
With both sides in good cover, the gunfight turned into a slog. The occultists got a lucky hit, but not lucky enough to drop their target. The militia fired their shotguns while their comrades advanced with sharp objects. Zachary hit them from the flank, cutting one down with a handful of buckshot from the shotgun he took off the volunteer they shot earlier. The crossfire halted the Sunflowers’ advance while they scrambled for cover from the side. Connor used his mercenary training to lay down cover fire while the rest of the group ran away, then scampered after them. They ran down the hill and into a side street as police sirens sounded in the distance.
(Gunfights are an absolute slog once everyone gets into cover, thanks to the substantial AC bonuses provided, but in my opinion that’s a good thing. Most shots in a firefight miss, especially if both sides are blazing away at a decent range from behind cover. Make a decisive move if you want to get the initiative!)
NPC Johan wasn’t happy about his hands, or Mara refusing to help get him out. Mara was pleased, and handed over a cool 1,500 dollars as agreed.
(With the payoff, the haul from the looted bomb shelter, and the five times XP bonus I instituted, the total was just enough for everyone except Zachary the Spook to level)
In the final reckoning, the mercenaries are pleased with the player characters, the bear cult will be somewhat annoyed once they realize the occultists were lying, the lithic courts aren’t thrilled about the package they delivered the mercs, the cops aren’t happy about the gunfight and the murdered militiaman, and the Sunflowers fucking hate them.
POST GAME 1 THOUGHTS
Flesh vs Grit, I think a lot of games are doing this now - a large pool of fast regenerating HP, protecting a smaller pool of hard to recover HP, protecting a death and dismemberment table. Good mechanic.
The skill system gives extremely low chances of success for some pretty basic tasks. Athletics is required to run away, if you aren’t significantly faster than your pursuer. Contacts is required to buy and sell stuff, and to get underworld jobs. Both of these start at 1 in 6 for most characters. I don’t like this because it makes running away a stalemate by default. If you want players to run away instead of shooting it out every time, you need to give them a bit more incentive than a 1 in 6 chance to make the hurting stop.
A lot of entries in the book reference a table number rather than a page number, which makes them useless for looking up quickly. Moreover, some of the table references are straight up wrong. Page 137 and page 161 claim that table 61 is a treasure table for the undercity, when it’s actually a reputation modifier table.
The lack of detail about the surface world is a problem, but not as big as I thought on the initial reading. Once the underworld starts coming to life, it suggests something about the city. As above, so below.
The book suggests that you build the rooms and halls of individual points of interest in the underworld when the players arrive, rather than doing it beforehand. I was suspicious about this, but it worked pretty well in practice. The main stumbling block was the table entries that sent me to other tables, which sent me to other tables, requiring lots of scrolling through the book.
If I do another map (I’m not going to just yet, I like Coal City), I’d roll more dice for dungeon gen and make everything a lot closer together. Random encounters in the connecting passages can be pretty cool (the myconid was a big hit) but they aren’t exactly the most interesting choice when your’re in a big tube and your options are “walk forward” and “retreat”.
The game uses the B/X experience totals, but the treasure tables are much stingier than B/X. I stand by my decision to multiply the rewards earned by five. If the world is a dangerous place and life is cheap, who cares if the players level up fast? Why have ninth level spells if nobody ever even reaches level two?
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