petey j: we started a dw game last night, toot toooot. conq is a rat man thief named brownbag of the leftovers with an evil ass teapot that grants longevity at the cost of sanity and he stole it from his weird royal rat family
petey j: toaney is a bard named the great melody experience or melody for short, she has a giant dilapidated melodica that started being magical for unclear reasons and had been too variously modified over ~20 years to be easily understood
petey j: fier is charmander the child soldier
petey j: and target practice is the grumpy ranger out of retirement and his animal companion is a miniature horse thats flighty and stubborn
petey j: so that should be fun
Wurzag is now Online.
petey j: our sprawl game is still saved and ready to go but now this is rolling too. i'll probably bounce some ideas off you re: what i'm gonna have them stumble into
Wurzag: haha that sounds really cool
petey j: we actually had everyone together so we were able to do the whole character/world intro as a group instead of in side conversations
petey j: which was real fun
petey j: a big dumb four way fantasy job interview
Wurzag: that sounds really fun
Wurzag: what direction you looking at taking it in?
petey j: i wasnt actually planning on running it so soon but target wattched an entire four hour video of a play session and then as soon as it was over he was like "is there a chance we could have a session toniught?"
petey j: we've established sprawl style that they all know eachother in at least a vague professional coworker context, and i'm gonna start them off just before the first combat encounter having sort of arrived at the place their task will take place'
petey j: thinking im gonna have them be contracted in some form to figure out what the fuck is going on at some weird research institute island out in the bay we decided we live on
petey j: whats going on is that some sort of condition tripped an old magical system for purging the island basically, should some weird intraplanar bad shit or some existential threat accidentally be opened up
petey j: pc'ss don;t know this
petey j: obvs
petey j: and its gonna start off as just weird little decomposer looking crustacean bug things that sorta look all wrought ironey / burnt wood that are just sort of mechanically burning stuff down and don't really pay attention to them
petey j: but they're working their way toward the center of the island from its edges. maybe they came out of the water? idk that might be cool
petey j: then it can be crabs and shit too
petey j: idk quite what the actual threat is, just that the island is burning itself down with automatons to try and contain it / delete the things potentially contaminated by it
Wurzag: i did something similar before in dnd
Wurzag: which was basically half life if black mesa was some arcane research outpost ran by a bunch of gnomes
Wurzag: and demons from the nine hells showed up instead of a load of vortigaunts
Wurzag: so more like doom really is uppose
petey j: during world gen they established that the world has magic but generally distrusts it as weird hooey in the face of rising technology, like hey we can control and predict this etc but magic is all the mercurial whims of you and whatever patron might be smiling on you
Wurzag: maybe its contaminated with wild magic somehow then
petey j: and yeah black mesa for sure, like oops we made a union of tech and magic and It's Bad?
petey j: or were using tech to try and corral contain etc
Wurzag: or theres a leak or something of something that itself is mundane but it turns out it attracts a certain type of creature or something
Wurzag: like they go there thinking theres some weird shit leaking out and fucking everything up
Wurzag: but on investigation its literally just, i dunno, oil or something
Wurzag: but theres some kind of fucked up crabs that like eating it that've killed everyone
petey j: like im thinking that maybe an Oops reveal could be whatever force they uncorked at the institute becoming mixed with the sort of elemental automata protocol thats burning down the island. oops, oops, now its an embodied extraplanar will thats been swirled up with a sort of hazy imperative to burn shit down, with these burnt wood / deorative wrought iron / burning like a dks3 character sort of aesthetic
petey j: idk theres a lot of ways i could take it and im bullet pointing all this instead of making a big brick of lore
Wurzag: could always do the old making it look like the souls of the damned are possessing machines and shit
Wurzag: or at least thats what they claim
petey j: ooooh
petey j: thats a good one
petey j: thats a preeeetty good one
Wurzag: but then it turns out its not actually ghosts or whatever but demons trying to trick people
Wurzag: pretending they're returned people but really trying to fuck over everyone
Wurzag: that sort of shit is great cos players can have people they knew from their past who died show up
petey j: trying to use the souls of the dead to act as the will of basically fantasy lockheed martin combat robots and wow, congrats guys, you did do that but also they're sentient now and can reprodue
Wurzag: and they eventually figure out in character something isnt right
Wurzag: yeah thats cool
Wurzag: they just start making more of themselves and shti
Wurzag: reminds me of feet of clay where all the golems got together and made a golem themselves out of their own clay
Wurzag: but he was all fucked up and evel
Wurzag: *evil
Wurzag: weird magical/technological automata are always a fun theme