Maintenance and Preservation Masterpost

Maintenance and Preservation was a nine session Esoteric Enterprises open table I ran for a local RPG group. It was my first in-person game in years and was a lot of fun. The players were maintenance workers and had to go spelunking in the undercity to solve problems, dodging monsters and traps and getting chased around by different factions. Thank you to everyone who showed up to play, both the regular players and people who just tried out one session.

Maintenance and Preservation - Lessons Learned

Juan de Valdés Leal

 

Simplification is great. The lack of classes and class subsystems meant character creation only took a few minutes. This let new players quickly join tables of experienced players without the need to prepare before the session. This is a fantasy offered by other Basic clones like OSE and Lamentations, but in my experience chargen in those games takes substantially longer and requires more paperwork at the table, because you've got to pick a class and then copy a bunch of class features, saving throws and additional items (particularly rolled spells) to your sheet. Every player missed something on their first go (skills, starting items, the ability to "invert" ability scores which I admit is unintuitive) but since there weren't a lot of interdependencies on the sheet it was easy to fix.

 

Maintenance and Preservation - Session Nine (The End)

 

John Benson and Pepper woke up after a long fall. They were in a domed cave, on an island of fine grained white sand in a chalky blue underground lake. An Aelf fussed over them, face a photonegative of the unseelie fairies from the undercity they knew. He brushed a feather duster over John Benson's face, a stick with slimy tendrils cut off an underworld creature. The tendrils had no effect. Benson realized his hands were "bound" by a long glass spike, inserted through his wrists like a syringe. On a normal living human it would have made freeing his hands painful and debilitating. For an undead revenant it was easy.

 

Benson sat up and asked the fairy what was going on. The Aelf was disconcerted by his ability to move and talk. Pepper sat up, similarly unaffected by the paralytic poison from the cave crawler stick. The Aelf hadn't bound her hands yet, the glass spike lay on the sand ready for use. The Aelf shot Benson with a magic spell, which spattered harmlessly against his dessicated flesh. Pepper asked what was going on. The Aelf ran back into his hut, a structure of stone and leather. He turned out a bag onto the sand, containing their possessions.

Pepper realized that the weird underworld guy was trying to ensorcel/enslave them, and was trying to get rid of them now that he realized it wouldn't work. She thought about jumping him and stealing whatever he owned in retaliation, but Benson convinced her to focus on escaping the unknown cave before exacting revenge. He established a pidgin with the cave elf and learned that the way out was to the south, across a series of stepping stones sticking out of the beautiful blue water and through a passage in the rock. As for an explanation of his behavior, the Aelf told the humans that there was a vast wall of impenetrable glass, as high as the eye could see. There was a world on the other side, and he would kill every man in existence to get there.

 

The maintenance workers left. The Aelf was happy to see them go.

 

Maintenance and Preservation Music Post

This was an in-person game, played in a public place where I didn't have control over the sound system, so all these tracks are for my personal benefit.

 

Maintenance and Preservation - Session Eight

New hires Avery and Daniel joined old hands Parker, Benson and Eddie at Eddie's museum in downtown Clearmountain. Eddie had set up all the treasures he found in the underworld, along with paragraphs of factual and conjectural information about what they might be. The healing chair made by the famous Barzini was in the lounge area, where the

Or so they thought. The boss quickly apologized, he wasn't feeling his act. Then he shifted. It wasn't Kurta, it was another illusionist. Not the lizard/goat/old woman, the other one. He had a gift for the explorers: a sack of magic scrolls. They were going into a dangerous place to do a public service, and that reminded him of some people he knew back in Cow Town. People who deserved better than what they got. And they needed to be quick with their work this time, or they'd be lost forever beneath the earth. He left the museum without answering any more questions, and almost ran into the real Kurta as he slipped and fell down the alley stairs.

 

Fortunately for everyone, the one legged supervisor wasn't hurt. He had a big briefcase, containing two smaller cases. One was filled with hand grenades, one for each member of the team, courtesy of the marker he finally called in with the surviving Ponda Rays. The other was sealed, and it contained their mission. The team had to take the machine down to the third level of the undercity, below the now-opened hatch, and open the case in the room with "the machine". This would end the earthquakes and save the city. Then they needed to get the hell out as fast as possible. The things on level three might not recognize the maintenance team as a threat on the way in, but once they broke the device all bets would be off.

The explorers decided to spend some of the money they accumulated before delving back into the underworld. They bought ammunition, weapons, supplies, and a Scroll of Fireballs using money from the museum and the treasure they found over the last seven weeks.

 

Maintenance and Preservation - Session Seven

Hairy Joe the one armed secretary introduced John Benson, Eddie and Pepper to their two new colleagues: Hank Dredger and Vinny. Kurta the one legged supervisor wasn't available to brief them, he was dealing with some suits from Central Central Services - weirdos with face masks and eye-dagger cufflinks. That made the three veteran members of the maintenance team pretty nervous. Either way, the crew had a job to do: the detectors placed by the maintenance team on a previous delve had pinpointed the source of the seismic disturbances causing the earthquakes. Central Services knew how to get down there, but the path was blocked. The mission was simple: go to the geothermal caves on level two of the undercity, find a path to the hatch east of the old research base, and mark it with signal flags. That would set the stage for subsequent operations to clear the path downward and solve the problem.

Hank wasn't comfortable going into the undercity with just a wrench. He wanted some real firepower. Thanks to the contacts made by the team on previous digs, Loyd the Bartender at the BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD club hooked him up. The barkeep passed him a .380 pocket gun in exchange for a nip of blood, sucked out of Hank's arm and into the massive neon cylinder above the bar counter. Pepper gave Vinny her shotgun because she wasn't interested in hauling it around, and he similarly gave up a little blood for a fistful of shotshells.

Thus equipped, the group went to the old railyard to use the derelict subway entrance. It was the closest one to their objective and the workers wouldn't bother them on the way down.

Maintenance and Preservation - Session Six

The earthquakes were getting worse. Something under Clearmountain was causing them. Central Services needed to pinpoint the source of the disturbance before they could do something about it.

Pepper and John Benson had a job to do: place three sensors in the southeast region of the underground. One in the old church crypt, one in the cult stronghold and one in a complex of buried ruins. With only two people to do the job, Pepper decided to call for backup. She called up the Explorers of the Furthest Realms and asked if anyone wanted to go on a delve into the undercity. 

 

The Explorer Gunnie met them at the central services building. She had the Death Knight Hildegrin's armor on, stripped of the gold damascening that adorned the matte black plates. She didn't make any clanking sounds stomping around, and the explorers noted a yellow scarf around her neck, the only adornment on the dark armor. Benson asked where she got the suit of plates, and she explained it came off a dead body in the underworld. She was excited to get into the undercity, and suggested the group use the entrance at the club downtown, under the old textile mill, which would put them within walking distance of their objectives.

 

Maintenance and Preservation - Session Five

A surly middle aged man in a track suit stormed into the Clearmountain Central Services building. He cornered a pair of maintenance workers in the lobby and read them the riot act. His name was John "Johnny Boy" Benson, and they were responsible for the death of his nephew John Benson. Maintenance workers Pepper and Eddie patiently explained that Benson's soul was just fine in the jar where they stored it, and they had a plan to bring him back. Johnny Boy wasn't having it, but the one legged supervisor interrupted him before the situation turned violent.

 

Johnny Boy tried to flex his authority as a Costa Nostra hood, but Kurta wasn't intimidated. If John Benson was under the protection of a Sicilian family, it was that family's responsibility to protect him from the depredations of a rival crime syndicate. And Johnny Boy was far from home, if he wanted to cause trouble in Clearmountain then the Ponda Ray family would be happy to take care of him.

 

Fortunately cooler heads prevailed, and the maintenance workers explained their plan: they would take John Benson's body and the jar containing his soul down to the crypt beneath the Serpent Ruins and resurrect him. Johnny Boy insisted on coming with them, to make sure they didn't fuck it up.

 

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.

 

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.

Maintenance and Preservation: Clearmountain Central Services Orientation

Welcome to Clearmountain, the place where the highway ends and the Sea of Trees begins. Once a medieval pilgrimage site, then an industrial logging camp, now a college town and tourist resort. Mountains, forests, hot springs. Restaurants and clubs. Natural beauty and all the convenience of civilization.

Below that, a city of tombs and caves and ancient machines. Insulated cables gnawed clean through by beasts of the underworld. Pipes cracked open and the contents swallowed by the earth. It's all getting old. It's dying. 

Someone needs to go down there and fix it.

Esoteric Enterprises: Maintenance and Preservation Player's Guide

I've been thinking about running Esoteric Enterprises in person at a game store. The amount of paperwork necessary (class reference sheets, huge equipment list, huge spell list, starting tomes, starting gods...) put me off at first, but the Maintenance & Preservation concept lets me discard all that and fit everything on a single double sided page. That plus a character sheet with some info pre-filled in (like saving throws) gets us most of the way there. I have no idea what resonates with normal people but I know the "blue collar urban exploration horror" concept has been popular lately in games like Lethal Company.

I ended up not converting the skill system to d20 roll-under because I want to limit how much of the base game I rewrite. 

Esoteric Enterprises: Maintenance and Preservation

I'm thinking of doing EE again. Something more contained, both in scope and player power level. The characters are city workers who descend into the underworld to fix mechanical problems.