Esoteric Enterprises - Underworld Vault

I really liked the Vaults from the roguelike Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. The enemies have cool abilities that disrupt the usual player tactics and force them to prioritize threats in novel ways. I had a scrapped post about adapting some of them to tabletop games, and that became this custom area for Esoteric Enterprises.

The biggest flaw with this adaptation is that it's not very interesting unless the players deliberately break the rules, and then it might be too dangerous to be worthwhile. Too scary for low power characters, not worth the effort for tougher ones.

Google docs version here

GENERATING AN UNDERWORLD VAULT

Separate your dice out, with D4s and D6s in one pile, and everything else in the other pile.

Toss a couple D4s or D6s at the edge of the map for each connection to the rest of the underworld. These are the public facing rooms

Toss the rest of your dice inside the perimeter formed by the public rooms. These are the inner vaults.

CONNECTIONS
Doors between rooms whose value is 6 or lower are ordinary wooden doors, which can be easily opened or battered down.

Doors between rooms 7 and up are reinforced steel. Vault inhabitants can move between them freely, but they’re locked to the players. If it matters, roll a D4 to see what a vault door is secured by.

1. Retinal Scanner
2. Fingerprint Scanner
3. Voice Print Scanner
4. Keypad Lock

With a dungeon turn’s worth of work, vault doors can be hacked with a Technology roll, or forced with Vandalism. The latter sets off an alarm.

VAULT VISITORS
Rooms numbered 1 through 6 are often visited by inhabitants of the occult underworld. Choose a random faction or roll on the Weirdos (page 184), Mundane Explorers (184), Religious Sorts (184), Petty Criminals (185) or Inhabitants of the Undercity (187) table to see who’s doing their banking.

Esoteric Enterprises - No Town Like Cow Town - Prep For Session Nine

RUMORS

Tattoos made it through the shoggoth pit. They've arranged a sit-down with Boney. This is seriously bad, if you couldn't already tell.

Fire cult's back. Got a plan to burn the sink, but they need some stuff from the druids to make it happen. They'd better hustle, UMT's planning a raid on the grove. Got tired of asking.

Talk about raids, I think the cops are about to Waco the shit out of the Megachurch.

Worms of the Earth tore through the Hooker Slashers. Probably an accident, but don't look a gift rock in the mouth, unless you want to get augured. Seekers are going to hit Vampire HQ, keep up the pressure.

Esoteric Enterprises - No Town Like Cow Town - Session Eight, Part Two

(Continued from part one)

On the other side of the painting, the explorers walked past the donation box into a cafe, where a group of art students were drinking ouzo from a bottle with a pickled mandrake inside. They didn't know where the Fire Cult was, but they knew that Clarissa had dealt with them. Her apartment was on the West side of the gallery, past the livingroom.

The first exhibit the explorers had to get through was completely dark. Something whistled and clicked as it slid around in the dark room. Sax couldn't see it, but Cassie had darkvision. The enormous olm scurried around the walls, floors and ceiling. When they entered, it rubbed against their legs, brushing them with its electrical sensors and smearing them with slime.

The next exhibit was a living room, with walls of skin and chairs of bone. Eyes in the walls watched the players, and a mouth greeted them when they entered. Clarissa probably wasn't home, but they were welcome to bang on her apartment door. Their best bet was to find Ryan, he'd know what was going on.

Esoteric Enterprises - No Town Like Cow Town - Session Eight, Part One

Session eight only had two players. That worked fine, since the areas they visited were relatively low-threat.

In attendance:

• Cassiopeia Unseelie the Third Generation Red Cap (Spook Lvl 3)
• Seaxneat "Sax the Knife" Saint Sebastian (Mercenary Lvl 1)

They began the game at the downtown Burger Head. They watched the police come in and hassle a table full of teenagers, eventually picking one to drag away to an unknown fate. There was something wrong with the police - they were all greasy, and drooling a little. They counted themselves lucky that the police hadn't clocked them as persons of interest, climbed in their van, and drove to Flowers Coffee. They climbed through the painting on the second story, leading to the Occultists' lair.

The Red Barn was guarded by Wayne the Pyromancer, who freaked out and almost incinerated them. Cooler heads prevailed, and they were allowed entrance to the guest rooms again. They found the surviving Explorers, who had abandoned the Love Shack to shack up with the occultists.

The stakes were this: The Occultists had a plan to deal with the Meat God, but they needed the Fire Cult. The Fire Cult was missing, only the Art Collective knew where they were. The Art Collective was also missing. The only clue was a weird painting on sale in the showroom at the Underworld Vault, East of the Cistern. And the underground was even more infested with Vampires than ever before, so they had to be careful.

Delta Green NPC: Dr Franz Farber

Dr Franz Farber

A Nazi rocket scientist obsessed with escaping the apocalypse through space travel

Esoteric Enterprises - No Town Like Cow town - Prep For Session Eight

RUMORS

Cops are still fucked up... More than usual, I mean. They aren't kicking down doors anymore, they're  grabbing people off the streets now. And they don't come back.

Which is funny, because that suit still wants someone to buy her a boon from the Dungeon Druids. I think she's running her own con, on the side of... whatever the hell UMT is doing.

Tattoos still trying to get into Dry Bones' lair on the West side. Last I heard they ran into some trouble West of the cistern.

Seekers looking for the Fire Cult. Want to work together on the meat problem. Trouble is, nobody can find them. Rumor is the Artists had something to do with it. Not happy about the gallery, I guess.

Lester kept a bunch of shit in his box at the Underworld Bank. It just got out of probate and now they're selling it off. Take a look if you're down there, some of it's seriously weird.

Oh yeah, Explorers cleared out of the Love Shack. Said it was compromised. Probably wanted to tell you, but they didn't want to talk on the phone. Said it might be compromised too. You know how it is. Said to tell you they were "through the painting", like you'd know what that meant. Took the Light Market with them, if you can believe that.

Esoteric Enterprises - No Town Like Cow Town - Session Seven

Session seven was short and sweet. We had three players and they all kept their eye on the ball.

In attendance:

• Cassiopeia Unseelie the Third Generation Red Cap (Spook Lvl 3)
• Elizabeth West the Necromancer (Occultist Lvl 1)
• Seaxneat "Sax the Knife" Saint Sebastian (Mercenary Lvl 1)

(Sax was a late arrival who didn't have a character sheet ready. Chargen in Esoteric Enterprises takes too long to do at the beginning of a session, but I had a spare ready to go from Coal City)

Sax met Cassie and Elizabeth at the public library, fresh off a job and looking for work. They decided to visit Radna, who had asked that they meet her at the old Pascal mansion. They were puzzled and disturbed by her insistence that they "bring bugspray" for the meet, and asked around town to see if anyone knew anything about the location. A repair technician from the Coal City Power substation next to the abandoned mansion agreed to talk to them.

The guy told them that none of his crew would go down into the basement of the substation without HAZMAT suits and flamethrowers, due to the spiders of unusual size that infested it. Some of them could talk and set traps. That was just the power station, he'd never gone inside the mansion because one room was bad enough. But there were sometimes cars parked outside the Pascal house, like people were there. He never bothered to investigate that either. The mansion wasn't CCP property, it's not like he could tell them to leave.

Esoteric Enterprises - Spider Nest

Another custom underworld area for Esoteric Enterprises. Also available as a Google Doc here

Vaguely inspired by the area of the same name from Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, and a little bit by the Deepnest and a couple other areas from Hollow Knight. 

And of course, the classic children's book Trouble in Bugland by Kotzwinkle and Servello.

Delta Green NPC Triple Threat

Thomas the Fat - Morbidly Obese Ghoul Crime Lord and Nazi Collaborator

Slobodan “SoCal Sal" Obradovic - Sassy Serbian Gangster

Lilly Dosik - Helpful Social Worker

Esoteric Enterprises - Abattoir

I developed a few custom dungeon areas for No Town Like Cow Town. I wanted to see if I could take the tools presented by the EE book and iterate on them to make something new. The main thing I wanted to improve is the guidance presented for using a specific mix of dice to achieve a desired result. I also gave page number references for all the monster manual entries to make referencing the book easier.

The abattoir is the first one I created, and also the first one the players visited, so now I can post it. It's based on the original Oddworld game, with a little inspiration from Pathologic.

Also available as a google doc here

The Crocodile Hunter - an ESPER Scenario

The Crocodile Hunter

ESPER investigates a locked room mystery after an outlaw biker is devoured in his home by a crocodile.

Esoteric Enterprises - No Town Like Cow town - Prep For Session Seven

RUMORS

Good job at the abattoir. Set 'em back a week, at least. UMT's not thrilled with your little caper. Cops are really looking for you now. And there's something fucked up about them... More than usual, I mean

Which is funny, because that suit still wants someone to buy her a boon from the Dungeon Druids

Speaking of buying stuff from the Druids, the Light Market got out of the underground okay. They're holed up somewhere safe, Radna might know where. RIP Carl, Swain and Darling

Tattoos aren't bothered though. They're trying to get into the lich lair on the West side. No idea what they want with old Dry Bones

Seekers looking for the Fire Cult. Want to work together on the meat problem. Trouble is, nobody can find them. Rumor is the Artists had something to do with it. Not happy about the gallery, I guess

Church had an accident at the K-12 school during one of their snake shows. Kid got bit. Don't worry, nobody you knew

Lester kept a bunch of shit in his box at the Underworld Bank. It just got out of probate and now they're selling it off. Take a look if you're down there, some of it's seriously weird

Oh, Radna wanted me to tell you she needs to talk. Said to swing by the old Pascal house on the West Side when it's convenient for you. And bring bugspray, whatever that means.

Esoteric Enterprises - No Town Like Cow Town - Session Six

Session six was harder on the players than it was on me. We had a full house, which is a rarity in Cow Town compared to Coal City. I got to use the first custom dungeon generator I made for Esoteric Enterprises.

The characters:

• Cassiopeia Unseelie the Third Generation Red Cap (Spook Lvl 3)
• Acrasia, Dream of Hunger (Spook Lvl 3)
• Dwayne Brutananadilewski, Big Guy & Rock (Bodyguard, Lvl 2)
• Elizabeth West the Necromancer (Occultist Lvl 1)
• Thurston East, Fragile Cyberneticist (Doctor Lvl 1)

Cassie got word from the loan sharking operation that some dad in the suburbs was holding out on her. She sent Hatchet Hands Fred to deal with the problem, removing the need to resolve it herself. Acrasia kick started a bootlegging operation, recruiting a bunch of drug addicts from the K-12 school for her crew.

The job: meet up with the Seekers of the Path, and figure out what they want done about the Sink, which rumor has it is about to kill everyone.

Last time they talked with the Seekers, the Occultists told them a better way to get to the hideout: the ugly painting on the second floor of Flowers Coffee. The painting was ugly, all right. A couple barns in the middle of a field. They tried taking the painting off the wall, leaving notes behind it, and exploring the area for secret doors. Then they tried climbing through the painting, into the field on the other side.

They went around behind the two barns, one red and one black. The black barn was nailed closed, with a big DO NOT ENTER painted in letters ten feet high on the door. The red barn had an occult assistant brewing a strange potion in a still. He told them to go down the stairs to the guest rooms.