Maintenance and Preservation - Session Four

The peg-legged maintenance superintendent of Clearmountain Central Services had a problem. The recent round of earthquakes was barely noticeable on the surface, but it had wreaked minor havoc on infrastructure in the undercity. Chemical sensors in an underground cistern showed contamination by an unknown and potentially dangerous source, presumably ruptured and leaking into the pond as a result of the seismic disturbance. Pollution of a subterranean graywater pond was not itself an issue, but if it were to flood and back up into the main stormwater system...

Pepper and John Benson were joined by new hires Eddie and Gary on their expedition to the undercity to fix the problem. The underworld map suggested two angles of attack to the previously unvisited node: entry through the defunct subway station below the railyard, or entry through the old bathhouse in the northeast of the city. They had heard rumors from the Exploration Project that the bathhouse entrance would take them to the cistern, though the exact route was obscure.

Peg Leg gave the team some useful tools before sending them out: a spray tank of sealing foam (somewhere between caulk and insulation) and a thermal lance (a cool and incredibly dangerous cutting torch that used pure oxygen and an acetylene torch to ignite a tube full of steel rods as fuel). Then they set off for the bathhouse, excited to scout a new dungeon entrance.

Maintenance and Preservation - Session Three

A warning light came on in an old control room at the Clearmountain Central Services headquarters. The one-legged boss didn't know what it meant, but he knew it signified something bad happening in the undercity. Someone needed to go down there and fix whatever was wrong. That someone was veteran maintenance men John Benson and Professor Ethan Boule, assisted by three new hires: Charlie, Pepper and Yana.

The group checked the approximate position of the problem sector against the underworld locations the veteran explorers had already visited. The zone in question was on level two of the undercity, which they knew how to get to through the geothermal caves. But one of the new hires heard there was also a hatch in the underground frontier which led further into the depths, which would shorten the journey significantly. The closest entrance to the frontier was the suburban house used by the mobsters. The boss told them it had been filled in. They suspected he might have been given some bad information, and decided to check it out. They got into the work truck and drove across town.

Maintenance and Preservation - Session Two

The Necropolis by Eric He

 

Three technicians met the one-legged boss on the roof of the Clearmountain Central Services building, under the arched glass that enclosed the grimy tiled roof.

• Professor Ethan Boule, disgruntled lecturer at Clearmountain College
  
• John Benso, experienced maintenance worker from a long line of cowardly adventurers
  
• Kovie Fauxer, nonverbal engineering student at Clearmountain College
  

The mission was this: Tectonic activity in the tunnels beneath the university had severed a fiber optic cable. The maintenance crew had to find the damaged cable in the limestone caves, descend into the next level of the undercity and link it up to the other end of the cable.

 

Based on the zones Benson explored on the last job, the closest underworld entrance to the caves was the necropolis. There was a mausoleum with a staircase leading down into the tombs. They tossed their gear in the work truck and set off across town.

 

Unknown Armies: In Defense of Milestones

 

In Unknown Armies 3e, the players and GM create the characters and setting together at the beginning of the game, all pointed at a shared objective chosen by the group. The player created objective is supposed to have GM created "milestones" that grant percentage point increases to the score when accomplished during the course of play. 

 

Fear & Hunger: Singing Sand Masterpost

David Roberts

 

In the year 1913, archaeologists, scholars and financiers from across the Old World descend on the Valley of the Gods in Songhai, Abyssonia, where scholars from the Temple of the Sun Amon have just unearthed the tomb of the legendary New God Djoser Parahu Daoud. 

 

An adventure in the style of The Mummy and Raiders of the Lost Ark, set in the world of Fear & Hunger. Contains the rules and mechanics necessary to play, along with the pregens, scenario documents and maps.

• Scenario Folder with all necessary files
  
• Playtest 1
• Part 1
• Part 2
  
• Playtest 2
• Part 1
• Part 2
  
• Bonus: Music Post

Maintenance and Preservation - Session One

In the basement of the Clearmountain Central Services building, the sweaty one-legged head of the Maintenance & Preservation laid out a job for his newest hire: a drain in the undercity had become clogged. The new guy needed to go down there and unblock the flooded chamber before the whole storm system backed up. He warned the new hire to be careful of deadly traps, wild animals and unfriendly underworld denizens - he wasn't a police officer or social worker, he had a job to do and an important part of that was not getting killed.

The closest entrance to the undercity was in the garbage dump in the northwest. The new hire locked and tagged out the trash mincer and climbed inside the machine, slithering down the handholds into the depths below.

Dungeon23 Recap

Jean Béraud

 

Besides my other RPG stuff, I completed five "dungeons" in 2023. 

1. The Temple of the Crying Buddha - Unknown Armies 3e. During the 1937 Rape of Nanking, a squad of Japanese soldiers are sent to retrieve an artifact from a hidden temple mysteriously untouched by the looting.
   
2. The Mountain of the Mad Marquis - d20 fantasy. The legendary bandit Gorrister the Great was last seen descending into the ruined DeCavalier estate on the edge of civilization. There's a price on his head, but the real question is what he went looking for.
3. Dungeon Crawling Double Feature - Unknown Armies 3e. The Four Adventurers descend into the underworld in search of occult power, then use their discoveries to raid the Old King's fortress and topple the Monarchy.
4. The Cage Cup - Unknown Armies 3e drinking game. In the year 143 BC, a party of Slaves is caught in the Roman Republic's violent suppression of the Bacchanalia. Their only hope to escape the bloodshed is the power of the wine god himself.
5. Singing Sand - Delta Green dungeon crawl in the world of Fear & Hunger. Feature complete, awaiting a third playtest. The year is 1913, the place the ancient land of Abyssonia, where archaeologists have just uncovered the lost tomb of a New God.

My next project is a hex crawl.