This die-drop method generates a vertical map of Facility sectors. Grab a handful of dice and throw them on a sheet of paper. Note down the die sizes and face values, then draw connections between nearby dice. Prefer vertical elevators, horizontal halls, and slight inclines.
Sectors
Offices
Laboratories
π Artefact Storage
Warehousing
Security
ρ Object Containment
ρ Entity Containment
Maintenance
Residence
Hospital
Transport Hub
Reactors
Archives
Large-Scale Containment
Resource Processing
Executive Branch
Abandoned Sector
Public Front
Bunker
Lρ Artefact
If a sector you want (Reactors, Containment, Laboratories) is missing, add it in or change a sector you’re less enthusiastic about.
Determine the type of connection between sectors by the sizes of dice at its endpoints. When a vertical line can be extended such that more sectors can connect
to it horizontally, do so — this becomes a Sector Elevator.
Architecture says it’s actually riskier in the long term to build
access stairways alongside Sector Elevators. An unappreciated benefit of
clandestine operations: we get to write our own fire codes. — A.O.
Locked connections have a Security Checkpoint that requires level (2d3) clearance level to unlock. Checkpoints deeper into the facility or protecting higher-value sectors tend to have higher requisite clearance levels (3d3).
Sector Elevators have Security Checkpoints at every floor and will not stop at locked floors unless appropriate clearance is presented.
Trams can be called and taken along any clear tramway path, but will not stop at locked stations and will crash into broken trams or other obstructions unless the emergency stop is pulled.
Anomalous Sector Connections
Some connections won’t make sense; a tall vertical roadway, a tramway short enough to walk. Convert them to Anomalous Sector Connections.
Transporter. High power requirements, continuity of consciousness not guaranteed.
Portal highway. Requires transit through hazardous gatespace; denizens may be displeased by increased traffic.
Tramway, choked with anomalous growth and/or entities.
This connection is a stub, you can help by expanding it.
Capsule elevator swallowed and regurgitated by peristaltic tube. Grows new fleshy connections when left to its own devices; regularly pruned by heavily-armed Maintenance task force.
Gravity lift. Requires regular cleaning due to nausea and coffee spills.
Backroom labyrinth. Exit doors are clearly marked, though paths through the junction never repeat. Traversal always takes 1d6 hours. Complimentary cucumber and lemon water has been cleared for staff consumption.
Submarine tram. Aquifer repurposed as containment for anomalous ecosystem including predatory megafauna.
Antimemetic effect erases memory of transit through connection. Each traveler must make an Anomalies save or suffer an Insight wound and emerge with d3-2 random items.
Structural collapse has created a deep ravine. Cave walls open into multiple sectors.
Employees are permitted to establish temporary sector connection through Pπ ritual. Instructions and materials for ritual are stored separately.
One-way zipline.
Sector-Wide Hazards
Roll at least one per sector. Players can fix these; the GM can introduce new ones. Additional hazards will appear at smaller scales within the sector, but these are relevant in every room and hallway.
Radiation leak.
Power outage. Emergency lights offline.
Gas leak. 2-in-6 chance it’s flammable, 4-in-6 chance it’s toxic.
Power surge. Electrifies conductive surfaces and water supplies, discharges at random.
On a good day, everyone in the Facility is in the same org chart and on the same payroll. Today is not a good day.
When all hell breaks loose, the Facility splinters along departmental and sectoral lines. Off-shift Research personnel in Residences band together with Facility Services to barricade the doors and wait for outside rescue; Kappa teams raid Archives to identify priority targets and start cleaning house, Lambda Containment Research abandons their rampaging experiments and rushes to the eyewash stations, then the bunkers, with covering fire from Security. Under the Facility’s full-scale lockdown protocols, paranoia sets in immediately, resource scarcity soon after, and mad science competes with occult ritual for third place.
Roll at least twice on the Departments list to populate a faction, then again on the Common Cause list to determine their highest priority.
When populating factions with characters, include at minimum an overall leader, and one key NPC from each constituent department. If the same Department appears on multiple factions, you have a good old-fashioned intradepartmental schism.
Departments (d66)
Administration
Executive
Accounting
Human Resources
Procurement
Archives
Legal
Operations
Dispatch
Public Relations (REMINDER: circulate memo re. “cover-up” vs. “conspiracy”. while we perform the former, we are NOT the latter)
Internal Affairs
External Affairs
Field Operations “Delta Teams”
Kinetic Field Operations “Kill Kappa Teams”
Research
λ Containment Research
Theoretical Research
ΧΨ Off-Site Monitoring
Facility Architecture
Entity Research
τ Artefact Exploitation (I’ve scheduled a brainstorming meeting in D-04 at 9:15 EST. The extension is -0451 for anyone who wants to call in and pitch a less ominous department name.)
Facility Services
Canteen
Medical
Custodial Services
Warehousing
Maintenance
Information Technology
Containment
μ Facility Security (Just let the mundane guards have a letter like the real artefact security teams. I know it’s not in ACID, but we have enough turnover in the security department already.)
π Artefact Security
ρ Dedicated Containment (ATTN Research: Medical won’t give their sign-off on team-wide blinding, even if you call it a team-building exercise. Procurement has sent over a crate of blindfolds instead. Optical hazards are a solved problem. Please stop asking.)
Entity Handling
Subject Management
Inhuman Resources
Other
Joint task force between Facility and a rival agency
Test subjects, human
Intern pool (Not to be confused with the contents of Lρ3211.001, the “Intern Pool”, until IHR clears it for Tau reclassification)
Rival agency task force, organized incursion
PΧ organized Entity incursion
Oversight (I finally got permission to include them on the org chart. Please clap.)
Common Cause (1d20)
Allocating scarce resources.
Contacting outside world for aid.
Contacting another Facility for rescue.
Contacting another Agency for cleanup.
Contacting an Entity for inadvisable reasons.
Containing a dangerous artefact.
Protecting the outside world from further breaches.
Returning the Facility to working order.
Re-establishing pre-Incident chain of command.
Performing forbidden research.
Under the effects of an artefact.
Started a cult dedicated to an artefact.
Infiltrators from (1. a rival agency, 2. the local government, 3. conspiracy message boards, 4. an artefact liberation front, 5. an artefact cult, 6. another world)
Escaping the Facility at all costs.
Escaping the Facility with as many survivors as possible.
Escaping the Facility once everything has been contained.
Leader maintains control over fractious group with pre-Incident credentials.
Leader maintains control over fractious group with access to scarce resource.
Leader maintains control over fractious group with artefact.
Silencing all attempted escapees, both mundane and anomalous.
Sample Factions
Foodbank In order to generate enough food for the population of the Facility while under indefinite lockdown, a special project team (36) has teamed up with the canteen staff (41) to identify, mass-produce, and distribute (1) the byproducts of nutrient-dense artefacts. So far, they’ve converted a laboratory into a hydroponic garden for anomalous flora and produced ludicrous quantities of a nutritious anomaly they call The Stew, which they trade for the ammunition they need to prune their garden.
Rho Containment Team WDH “We’re Done Here” A dedicated containment team for an escaped Rho artefact (53), having suffered horrific losses during the breach, has defected to Rival Agency forces that are storming the upper levels of the Facility (64). The Rho team is providing the Rival Agency with insider knowledge on artefacts and layouts in exchange for the tools to avenge their fallen team members during the cleanup effort.
Director Forthright Immediately in response to the breach, Director Annabel Forthright of External Affairs (24) assumed control of the Monitoring team (33) to use their satellite surveillance tools to assess the scope of the incident. She now leverages her credentials (17), the loyalty of the remaining External Affairs personnel, and the Monitoring team’s fears of reprisal to monopolize all data going in or out of the Facility to make herself the logical choice for Facility Director once the breach is resolved.
E4 (Emergency Executive Entity Enterprise) Members of the Facility’s Executive branch (11) have identified specific entities under the purview of the Entity Handling department (54) as critical to enforcing their authority (9) against rival agencies, dissident elements within the Facility, and the most dangerous artefacts in the Facility’s depths. They’re now engaged in a high-stakes game of Pokémon; attempting to recapture and weaponize every anomalous entity they can find in their files.
UTILITY In response to incursions from within and without the Facility, Accounting (12) has decided that an ongoing partnership between a Delta Team and a rival agency’s counterpart (61) is the model for a new era in artefact containment. By demonstrating the efficacy of inter-Agency intelligence sharing, reasonable bipartisan consensus, prudent spending, and common-sense containment regulations, the UTILITY framework sets out principles for an agile, small-Facility era of global security (7). Now they just have to build it.
The Party The few survivors of the epicentre of the breach (the Lambda laboratory sector) have formed a motley gang of liberated test subjects, Esoteric Assets, and disgruntled maintenance workers. Despite their average Clearance level of 0.5 out of 10, lack of scientific or administrative expertise, and minimal weaponry, their broad variety of expertise across mundane and anomalous fields may just be enough for them to reach the outside (2) and contact their grieving loved ones — if there’s any outside left to reach.
Magic: the Gathering is fertile ground for hexcrawl generation.
Grab a Commander deck. If you know what MtG is, you either have one or you have strong opinions on why you don’t. The 100-card deck should have approximately 35-40 land cards, with the rest as various types of spell. Shuffle the deck, including the commander card.
Reveal cards from the top of the deck until you reveal a land card. Stack all those cards underneath the land.
Then, repeat this process to create another pile beneath that land card. Continue until you’ve completed a column of several piles, then start another column staggered half a card-length lower.
Make the next column start at the height of the first column, and continue making columns in this way until you’ve run out of cards in the deck.
In front of you there should now be nearly 40 land cards, each covering between zero and many spell cards. Each land card is a hex, and each other card beneath it represents a feature of the area — perhaps a roving creature, a band of NPCs, a strange weather effect, a structure, or a piece of loot.
Take the pile of Plumb the Forbidden, Fiend Hunter, and Sun Titan beneath the land card Command Tower -- a daemon-hunter seeks the forbidden secrets of a tower from which a giant rules the surrounding hexes with an iron fist. The Access Tunnel hex to its northeast has, among other things, a secret entrance to the lowest levels of the tower, while the Battlefield Forge to the north is a titan-scale armory where the Sun Titan smiths its great weapons. Local soldiers make pilgrimages to worship its martial prowess at the Temple of Triumph (though as no other cards were revealed beneath the Temple, it's the off-season and no one's yet in town), while the Bloodstained Mire to the south lies unquiet as a memorial to those who once attempted to resist. The two mountain hexes to the southeast make up part of a long mountain range, and the Caves of Koilos to their north/northeast delve deep within their hearts.
Legendary cards like your commander are fertile ground for quests, faction leaders, rivals, or villains. Instant and sorcery spells are well-represented as events — a Murder is a recent murder, a Lightning Bolt a recurring storm, a Wrath of God an ongoing inquisition.
If there’s a pile of 4 or more cards in the land, put a settlement there. Lands with names that mention settlements aren’t necessarily populated; a Nomad Outpost with no other spells might be abandoned.
Land art can also inform the contents of a hex. If it’s one of the Ravnican lands that depicts a swathe of the plane’s ecumenopolis (such as the Boros Garrison or Rakdos Carnarium in the sample map above), perhaps place it within the ruins of an ancient city. The Clifftop Retreat has a massive statue, so it's the petrified body of another titan that the Sun Titan knew, loved, and lost to powerful magics.
Think about the material relationships between the places that have developed this way. Where do the numerous denizens go for their needs? Most commander decks play at most three of the five colors in Magic, so what’s missing from this landscape? What’s scarce, and therefore valuable?
Use creature cards in the deck (and any tokens they may make) to inform random encounter tables. You could even shuffle them up and draw from an impromptu deck in lieu of a conventional table.
Most commander decks play the card Sol Ring. That means it’ll show up in a disproportionate number of these hexcrawls. Here’s some GLOG rules for it.
Sol Ring Ancient starlight woven into a silver torus too large for any mortal’s hand. It hums with the music of the hemispheres. This ring provides +1 Magic Die. It emits starlight that glows through any layers of clothing or magical concealment, as well as an unmistakable static hum that cannot be silenced.
NEW YORK, 2PM EST (BREAKING) Renegade pilots allegedly stand down during dual Category-4 events GIGANT SURGE and HAMMER EMERGENT as kaiju attempt to breach prototype General Engineering Materials (GEM -1750) bunkers. GEM spokespeople are reportedly requesting TacNet (QZXX -132) provide identifying information for all pilots refusing to engage, citing "attempted stock manipulation" on the eve of the official rollout of GEM's new CONDOR armored real estate project - of which the San Diego and Houston bunkers were the flagship models.
- - -
In any city under the Survival Paradigm, there are always two simultaneous crises. One is the obvious - kaiju. Each worse than the last, always barely outscraping your response capacity in some novel and horrible way. The toll is always manageable (for those in power) and devastating (for you).
The other crisis is the ever-hungry jaws of disaster capital, which in this world of perpetual disaster has become the primary financial engine of the planet. Investors always have a scheme, and they aren't just looking to make pennies on the dollar here - they're playing for all the marbles. If they're a big player, they want to kneecap another big player and become even bigger. If they're small-time, they want this plan to break them into the big time. And they're willing to break anything in their way - the planet; the city; your friends; you.
GMs should have two simultaneous and intertwined plots going on. One involves the kaiju and their escalating threat; perhaps a new development to protect the city, or a way to make the kaiju think twice about next time. The other involves the hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, and megacorporate interests playing with the city like a connect-four board.
This isn't a game about shadowy conspiracies like SEELE or the Illuminati controlling the world from behind the scenes. While the specific details of any corporate plan will be obscure, financially obtuse, and most certainly difficult to stop, the powers that be rely on sheer scale to protect themselves - not secrecy. The people destroying the world have names, addresses, Twitter accounts, and public IPOs. And they all hate each other, but not enough to stop punching the little guys (you) in the process.
All the information about their schemes is public, especially if you know where to look. Journalists have made careers investigating these stories, then lost their careers and lives breaking these stories. Or, more often, they've kept their careers, and no one's cared. Nestle keeps on using child slaves, Coca-Cola keeps on hiring death squads to murder dissidents, everyone and their mother has a tax shelter on a private island, and you add a few more atrocities to what you know about the world. There's
no New World Order. There's the same awful world order as always, just
spinning closer to destruction than ever before, while a handful of
fuckers loudly flaunt how rich they've gotten by destroying it.
NEW YORK, 6:45PM EST (UPDATE) Both prototype luxury CONDOR bunkers have been destroyed, after which point pilots on the ground handily dispatched both kaiju with minimal casualties. Collaboration between pilots has been alleged by both GEM and TacNet, the latter of whom has released all personal information on pilots connected to their command network during the engagements to the SEC under the "GameStop Law" of 2021 that allows retaliatory action by endangered corporations on charges of suspected collective stock manipulation. Commensurate federal investigations have been opened... (DEVELOPING)
- - -
The Survival Paradigm is an international treaty, signed in 202X as a
response to the rapidly escalating threat of kaiju attacks. It formally
acts as a statement of intent to maintain the existence of humanity as a species and organized global civilization, declaring a global state of emergency and
ceasefire on all human wars until the cessation of the Kaiju Crisis. To
this end, it establishes a variety of international councils to manage
resources and ensure cooperation of various nation-state and corporate
actors.
Paradigm Coordination Council
Coordination is the main body of the Survival Paradigm, as a 15-member security council of major stakeholders in global defense. Five seats are permanently held by nation-states, representing almost 4 billion people worldwide - the United States of America, the People's Republic of China, the Republic of India, the Federative Republic of Brazil, and a composite delegation representing the European Union as a single actor. Five more are permanently reserved for leading corporations in the mechtech sector; while these initially were rotating seats, they have stabilized within the past decade to be held by the GATES: General Engineering Materials, Aerospace Northern, TacNet, Eka, and Stormwatch. The final five seats are yearly rotating seats held by either nation-states or corporations, recently trending towards a 2/3 split.
The Coordination Council chooses priorities for research and tactical response, declares regional and continental states of heightened emergency for high-category kaiju, and intercedes in humanitarian crises to resolve them to the benefit of the Paradigm. Deployment of paranuclear weapons must be authorized by the PCC, due to their vast collateral damage costs and unknown effects on the environment, collective subconscious, and/or fabric of reality.
Warmer World, Colder War (email newsletter, 202X)
...rumors persist that the
Russian Federation was cut out of the PCC's permanent seats by the demand of
the United States, who refused to sign onto the Paradigm unless they
crippled the political power of their longtime rival...
Minimum Viable Path to GATEhood? (excerpt from Financial Times article, 203X)
...corporations constantly vie for the prestige and power of becoming the
"Sixth GATE", and startup pitches often include their path to GATEhood
through gaining a seat on the PCC...
Paradigm Development Council
Development is the research and finance arm of the Paradigm. Nation-state signatories pay tithes into a collective Paradigm defense fund, which is then distributed by grants to a variety of research conglomerates and promising mechtech corporations. After the dissolution or repurposing of global militaries, the PDC gained access to the military budgets of its signatory nations - and through the PDC, so did big business.
The PDC is the primary source of income for the GATES and the rest of the mechtech sector. While all have diversified into some combination of national and municipal defense contracts, consumer products, corporate partnerships, and land rents, PDC funds are the kingmakers of the corporate world. As such, council membership is fully infested with lobbyists performing regulatory capture on the largest scale. Boondoggles and moonshots can be fully funded in a matter of days, if you just know the right people and convince the giant pots of money that your project will be the one that can raise their bottom line.
Decades After Dissolution, NATO Remains Global Powerhouse (excerpt from Huffington Post article, 203X)
...despite
this, it does not go unnoticed that 4 of the 5 GATES are North
American, and the 5th (GEM) is based in the EU. This gives the former
NATO countries outsize power in the Paradigm, and the accompanying
preferential response capabilities and resource distribution. The
interests of NATO remain the interests of global capital...
Public-Private Partnerships: Public Protection or Protection Rackets? (excerpt from political science undergraduate thesis paper, class of 202X)
...the
United States, Canada, UK, and Australia all operate under the TacNet
model of distributed kaiju defense. This model - full privatization - is
incredibly rare in the rest of the world. China and Russia (among
others) relegate kaiju defense to their national militaries, deploying
within conventional command hierarchies and providing salaries and
benefits to their pilots. The European Union, India, and Brazil follow a
combined-arms approach, with militaries hiring private mech contractors
to execute anti-kaiju operations within a particular region or city. In
this essay I will...
Paradigm Adjudication Council
Adjudication was established as a judicial body for mediating conflict between governments and corporations without resorting to wasteful military engagements. Low-level disputes are mediated through regional judiciaries, drawing legal personnel from existing systems. Higher-level disputes are settled through courts with between three and nine judges.
When a dispute cannot be settled out of court and judges believe that a decision in favor of either party will jeopardize the stability and impartiality of Adjudication, they have reintroduced the controversial practice of trial by combat. Each party nominates a mech pilot to fight in their stead, and the first to forcibly deactivate their opponent in the arena is declared victorious and given preferential terms by the judges. These gladiatorial trials have become high entertainment - prosecutors and defenders on the international circuit are equally experts in the field of law and the field of battle. Because these conflicts are between nations and corporations, they do not lack for funding, and trials-by-combat are as often expos for new mechtech as they are attempts to enforce one's will on the international scene.
Imperial Legacies and the Truth About "Pirates" (clipping from anarchist zine)
While all human wars are under "indefinite ceasefire", imperial paramilitary operations continue as private military contractors make their reputations and fortunes protecting supply lines. Hired ostensibly to prevent kaiju interference and protect local population centers, they don't discriminate between kaiju and human "pirates" - and often deem kaiju attacks too dangerous for their pilots, forcing underequipped and desperate local fireteams into the meat grinder in their stead.
The terminology of "pirates" is also a misnomer - these supply lines are just the most recent evolution of extractive plunder from the colonies to the imperial core, and anyone striking back against the continued imperial looting of already-impoverished nations are executed for Paradigm violations with extreme prejudice...
Suited Up: Inside the Lives of the Modern Gladiators (excerpt from dust jacket)
...contains exclusive interviews with both the prosecution and the surviving family members of the defense in the infamous VOID CHIMERA reparations trial, chronicling the extensive blackmail, bribery, and sabotage on both sides leading up to the climactic confrontation and its interruption by the Category-4 kaiju FUSION RIPPER...
by Vu Hoang Hiep
NEW YORK, 8:00PM EST (UPDATE) Trading in both TacNet and GEM stock has been frozen to "preserve the integrity of public defense". CEOs of all five GATES have given statements to the media in full support of maximum federal penalties for all pilots who allegedly "abandoned their duties as defenders of the American people". GEM has suspended its CONDOR project pending the results of its subsequent lawsuits. TacNet has deactivated all suspected collaborating pilots' TacNet accounts, and is reportedly hiring high-profile private contractors from firms like Eka (EKAA, +663) to supplement tactical demands in relevant metropolitan areas. Eka is notable for its highly polished social media presence, eccentric billionaire founder Jan Tomas, and high-collateral-damage combat record.
- - -
To populate a city with factions for a Survival Paradigm campaign, roll 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12, and 1d20 on the following table. If you roll the same faction twice, there's an internal conflict boiling over where people are forced to take sides - whether between different branches, feuding executives, or the workers and management. Then, roll 2 Relations for each faction to see who they're interacting with and what they're trying to do.
If two factions are related to each other in seemingly conflicting ways, remember that the factions are made of lots of people and none have perfect information on the other's goals. Wheels within wheels ceaselessly turn, grinding us all to dust. If one faction rolls that it's trying to undermine or defraud itself, there's internal conflict - someone is trying to pull a fast one on their own people.
Factions (d20)
1. General Engineering Materials (GEM). Controls entry-level mech fabrication, Eschaton core mass production, kaiju corpse harvesting and processing, TacNet's pilot supply contracts. Constructs millions of modular mech chassis a year. Facilities include factories, kaiju processing plants, prototype subscription-service bunkers. Wants to expand into real-estate - specifically launch bays and bunker construction - to vertically integrate all infrastructure in the urban battle space.
2. Aerospace Northern. Formerly Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop; forced to merge after Paradigm forced radical reinvestment from NATO militaries into mech sector. Controls advanced mechtech development, military holdover patents and facilities, elite mercenary supply contracts. Focuses on bleeding-edge prototype tech, including paranuclear weapons, Wants to be as big as it was when it was the primary contractor for the United States military, instead of just one of five.
3. TacNet. "Uber for mech pilots". Controls the app, uses vast profits to contract GEM for mech manufacturing and Stormwatch for algorithmic kaiju event prediction. Vital nexus of capital in the mechtech sector, and the de-facto tactical coordinator in all United States combat zones. Wants the status quo to stay stable as long as possible, actively kneecaps corporations trying to rise to the GATES. Has heavily-fortified tactical command bunkers in all major metropolitan areas, and invests in launch bays for rapid response (renting a berth isn't cheap).
4. Eka. Mercenary company turned bespoke mech manufacturer, media darling with incredible PR department and army of online stans. Deploys their own fireteams to prove their proprietary "kaiju-inspired" tech in real combat conditions; high-casuality engagements are nevertheless flashy and impressive tech demos. Jan Tomas, controversial and high-profile entrepreneur founder, makes constant media appearances to keep Eka in the media - made his initial fortune in the crash after the first kaiju emergences. Isn't profitable; kept afloat by vast VC streams and needs those flows to remain intact.
5. Stormwatch. Controls the largest server clusters in the world, manages orbital infrastructure. Provides hosting for TacNet, develops/deploys/operates the advance kaiju warning satellite network, space launch systems, AI predictive systems, paranuclear orbital weapons platforms. All this tech comes out of their R&D wing, STAR Group (STormwatch Advanced Research). Funnel promising student projects directly from university campuses into STAR, providing great benefits and vast resources in exchange for exclusive rights.
6. Municipal government. In the end, it always comes back to the city. State capacity handles everything it's too difficult or not glamorous enough to privatize; like roads and sewer systems and power lines. Depending on who's in power, they might be trying to sell off even the unprofitable parts, or trying to claw back a little of the capacity their predecessors divested in order to provide for the citizenry. Either way, the mayor's office is a vital chokepoint for anyone trying to ensure corporate dominance - with the stroke of a pen, they can give you the keys to the city, and send your rivals packing.
7. Startup. Galvanized by low interest rates, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds, and the PDC pour trillions of dollars into every idea that seems vaguely promising or sounds good on paper. The key buzzwords to make a cool billion change every few months, and the business plans seem to only get stranger over time. Attitude and aesthetic are what gets a startup off the ground, but don't make profit - not that any of their founders seem to understand.
8. Hedge fund. These piles of money exist only to grow as quickly as possible. Their managers make shrewd investments in companies they believe are the future - but are quick to hang them out to dry if it becomes apparent their money will be wasted. Slick, greasy, willing to do anything to keep their investments safe and their dividends flowing in. It's not like anyone will regulate them for making an end-run around such petty things as "legality" - they have the money to field the best corporate lawyers (and Adjudication gladiators) available.
9. Real estate magnate. Land is the ultimate source of capital. Everyone needs to sleep somewhere; every corporation needs physical space for factories and server farms and offices; every government needs space for bureaucrats. The Kaiju Era has made real estate a riskier proposition, what with giant monsters shredding entire neighborhoods, but this just means that landlords have grown more cutthroat and brutal. Rents on shielded kaiju-safe condos with integrated bunkers are sky-high, and the slums that grow around devastated areas are the only option for anyone who's lost their home to a kaiju - a monopoly that slumlords are more than happy to exploit.
10. Local politician. Every political party has a political opponent, whether the established Party-in-Opposition or a political outsider rising on the strength of their demagoguery. Opposition politicians have an agenda, don't like the way things are being run, and are willing to make waves to get their way - especially if they have an extensive war chest from interested parties.
11. Mercenary company. There's strength in numbers. The alternative to TacNet, mercenary pilots are contracted by states and corporations with money to burn and hard targets that need an extra layer of defense. PMCs differ in their symbology, tactics, tolerance for collateral damage, and PR history - but if a company wants to survive, they need a certain ruthlessness that refuses to consider humanitarian goals when they conflict with their mission.
12. Criminal syndicate. Deprivation creates a demand for smuggling; hard times create a demand for illicit substances; a dangerous world creates an opening for protection rackets. Syndicates crop up everywhere, operating under the radar with impunity in a world that has much bigger fish to fry. They might be less exploitative, on net, than the corporations. They might follow some sort of code. There's a million reasons to get involved with criminals - but it always paints a target on your back, and there's no honor among thieves.
13. Kaiju Responders' Union. Unionized with the air line pilots association, KRU-ALPA (under the AFL-CIO) is the premier mech pilot union in the states. Naturally, TacNet hates them, as do the rest of the GATES and their regulatory capture stranglehold on mechtech development and production. Despite the vast array of unstoppable forces deployed against them both on and off the battlefield, they've won some important concessions: mandatory corp-funded search and recovery services for KRU-registered pilots after battles, free chassis repairs to original specs, and corporate coverage of 50% of pilot funeral expenses.
Most pilots aren't KRU. They've been scared out of it by TacNet's marketing and higher bounties for non-union pilots, or they're gunning for GATES sponsorships (few make it, but those who do are rock stars), or they've joined a mercenary corp for lucrative state contracts. KRU also tends to get the brunt of media blame when ops go very, very wrong.
14. Military remnants. The dissolution of military apparatuses under the Paradigm and mass reallocation of state/manufacturing capacity to kaiju defense left a whole lot of material and disgruntled soldiers behind. While many retrained to become mech pilots or cops, military bases are covered in old hardware that still works just fine. Whether arms dealers, local mercenaries, criminal syndicates in their own right, or political extremists demanding a return to the good old pre-Paradigm days of imperial conquest and overseas slaughter, ex-military troops are a wild card searching for a home in a world that deems them obsolete.
15. Paradigm Coordination Council. Coordination steps in when an area is under increasing kaiju threat; sending military officials to work with local stakeholders and prepare a large-scale defense plan that ensures the threat is neutralized with minimal damage to Paradigm signatories. Signatories include: corporations and governments. Notable exclusions: people. High-risk neighborhoods are designated "ablative buffer zones", entire fireteams of pilots are thrown at the threat as acceptable casualties for reconnaissance missions, the brutal utilitarian calculus of necropolitics deems some lives to matter and some to not. Property is protected. You are not. And the threat is approaching regardless.
16. Paradigm Development Council. Development typically acts on an international scale, but local municipalities are useful testbeds for new initiatives and technology. If there's a big contract in the offering, they often turn cities into free-enterprise zones where each bidding corporation tries their hand at a proof-of-concept pilot program for several months. Whoever's most effective gets the contract - and everyone who gets shafted has to live with it.
17. Paradigm Adjudication Council. They have a presence everywhere there's likely to be skirmishes between corporate and state interests. While local branches try to stay under the radar, every so often a major case emerges that everyone knows will end in trial by combat. When the media starts baying for blood, they ramp up the coverage, and the trial's progress becomes a daily news update.
18. Rapture Futures, LLC. A research group approaching the current eschaton from a divinity studies perspective. Surprisingly widespread, their research projects investigate the strange side-effects of the Eschaton Core - and while they were founded by highly conservative think-tanks, recent sweeping changes in leadership have opened up opportunities for progressive researchers to make waves. Notably not funded by the PDC, but well-funded regardless.
19. University. The Kaiju Era has opened up a universe of questions, and entire fields of science are mutating to approach them. Department heads and enterprising graduate students can get a lot of money if they play their cards right, and sometimes they ask the right questions to get world-shaking answers. Corporations are always scouting for the best-and-brightest, and students often end up taking on pilot gigs on the side to make rent.
20. Cult. Between the Kaiju Era Neo-Gnostics, the Church of the Sainted Pilot, kaiju worshippers, the Techno-Rationalists, prosperity gospel evangelists, Marxist-Calvinists, and devotees of the American civil religion (praise the Checks and the Balances and the Commander in Chief!), there's a million burgeoning sects scraping the symbolism of these endless end-times for believers and tithes. They might be trying to build a new world, or might just prophesize the end of this one - but they have a way of growing and metastasizing and bubbling over at the worst possible moment.
Travel between star systems is achieved through the jump drive, a technology that lets a ship translate itself into the higher-dimensional parallel realm of gate-space and back into real space at specific naturally-occuring "jump points" or through artificially induced jump gates. Distances in gate-space are sufficiently different to realspace to permit travel between star systems on the order of weeks or months. Gate-space and realspace only coincide at jump points and gates; objects in gatespace cannot otherwise interact with realspace and vice versa (as far as modern science is aware). Jump points can be calculated at long distance given sufficient information about the gravitational bodies in a star system.
You can forego asking a question to reduce the number of complications you suffer by 1.
Interstellar Travel
Travel through gate-space costs fuel just like through realspace. While relative distances don't proportionately translate, most para-astrogation charts measure stars' distances in "jumps". 1 fuel gets you 1 jump of travel. Make the Exploration roll each time you enter into realspace from a jump point.
Questions Who do I know here? Where in this system is safest to rest and restock? What threats can we expect in this system? What's the most dangerous threat to us in this system? What's being hidden from the wider galaxy? Where are we?
Complications 1. Deplete fuel by 1 level. 2. Deplete rations by 1 level. 3. Gain 1 level of Stress. 4. System failure aboard ship, will require repairs. 5. Contact inbound, hailing your ship. 6. Someone in the system is immediately hostile to you - and they know you're here.
Interplanetary Travel
The fuel cost to travel between two bodies in one star system is the
number of orbits they are apart. This can be reduced by 1 for each
planet you get a gravity assist from on the way, though common assist
trajectories are often policed, taxed, or raided. Make the Exploration roll each time you enter the orbit of a planet or sensor range of a station (if it's your destination, or you're getting a gravity assist from it).
Questions
Who do I know on this planet (or station or moon or whatever)?
Where can we safely land?
What's the greatest danger to us here?
What is the hardest threat to notice here?
What's out of place here?
What's recently happened here?
Complications
1. Deplete fuel by 1 level. 2. Deplete rations by 1 level. 3. Gain 1 level of Stress. 4. System failure aboard ship, will require repairs. 5. Contact inbound, hailing your ship. 6. Someone near this planet is hostile to you - and they know you're here.
Stress, among other things, provides -1 to future Exploration rolls. It can be reduced by getting proper R&R in port, or with a variety of medications that have interesting side effects.
System Generation
Systems have 3d4 orbits, each filled on the following d20 table. If the resulting system lacks jump points or stations with jump gates, add one in so the players can actually get there.
The galaxy is a stranger place than we could ever have imagined. If some
of these results don't make sense at first glance, justify them
yourself (that's half the fun). Write new tables for habitation, for plot
hooks, for factions inhabiting these systems - Deep Space Bitches might
end up using this for setting generation. The implied setting below is
vaguely similar to Mothership, a corporatist spacefuture with lots of
ill-fated ventures that go horribly wrong but manage to hang on in new
and fascinating dystopian conditions.
What's in this orbit? (d20) 1. Terrestrial planet, class Red. Desert, no surface liquid water. Reference Sol IV "Mars", Luyten's Star III "Arrakis". 2. Terrestrial planet, class Orange. Inhospitably hot, typically due to proximity to star and/or tectonic activity. Reference Proxima Centauri I, Delta Pavonis V "Haven" (and accompanying 23XX Haven Goldrush Crisis documentation). 3. Terrestrial planet, class Yellow. Dense, toxic atmosphere. Reference Sol II "Venus". 4. Terrestrial planet, class Green. Lush, extensive biosphere. Highly valuable, most often product of terraforming. Reference Sol III "Earth" and Epsilon Indi IV "Chen's World" for naturally occurring class Green worlds; Procyon VIa "Novaterra" for successful induction and maintenance of class Green conditions on a gas giant moon. 5. Terrestrial planet, class Blue. Primarily liquid surface; not necessarily liquid water. Reference Alpha Centauri II "Cetacea". 6. Terrestrial planet, class Purple. Inhospitably cold, due to distance from primary or atmospheric composition. Reference 61 Cygni V "Billiard", Sol IX "Pluto" (EDITOR'S NOTE: Planetary status irrelevant to example. Whether it's a dwarf planet or a planet-planet, it's still cold. Discussion locked). 7. Terrestrial planet, class Grey. Barren, deemed unfit for human settlement. Covers a myriad range of conditions - high/low gravity, radiation, hostile presence, absence of profitable resources. Reference Sol I "Mercury", Gliese 876 VII "K'thhz". 8. Roll twice and combine (on an 8, roll an extra d8, keep going).
9. Gas giant, class Magenta. Faint ring, d4 major moons (roll up as terrestrial planets). Reference Sol V "Jupiter".
10. Gas giant, class Coral. Major ring, d2 major moons. Reference Sol VI "Saturn". 11. Superjovian sub-brown-dwarf, class Maroon. Reference DT Virginis c. 12. Ice giant, class Navy. d2 major moons. Reference Sol VIII "Neptune", inner-system hot-Neptune Gliese 687 II. 13. Ice giant, class Cyan. Ringed, d2 major moons. Reference Sol VII "Uranus". 14. Asteroid field. 15. Asteroid field, d3 dwarf planets (treat as moons). 16. Debris field (d3: 1. hulled stations, 2. starship junkyard, 3. battlefield debris). 17. Station. 18. Station and jump gate. 19. Jump point (natural). 20. Anomaly. Roll for 3 keywords that describe it on the following d20 table. 1. RELIC 2. CONSCIOUS 3. VAST 4. GATE 5. GROWING 6. VALUABLE 7. ARTIFICIAL 8. ONE-OF-MANY 9. SHROUDED 10. TRAVELLING 11. ORGANIC 12. HOLY 13. SWARM 14. WORLD 15. DEAD 16. CLOUD 17. SIGNALLING 18. INHABITED 19. HOSTILE 20. PARACAUSAL
Terrestrial planets (results 1-10) have d4-1 moons. Just because a terrestrial planet isn't class Green doesn't imply there's no life, just that it's orders of magnitude less prevalent than Earth - extremophiles develop and thrive in a wondrous range of environments.
Often, a planet cannot be described with a single class designation; standard Agency recording process is to mark down two primary classes and put further clarification in addenda. Examples follow, planet designations referenced from deep-storage archive THRONE-OF-SALT.
Gliese 687 I "Han Xiangzhi", Red-Orange. Hyperactive tectonics cause constant lava flows, surface comprised of shifting plains of igneous rock. Surface changes on scale of decades, rather than millennia, exposing valuable minerals that require rapid extraction for maximized rate of return.
Wolf 1061 IV "St. Severian", Red-Yellow. Global dust storms of micronized silicates abrade unshielded survey equipment and environment suits within hours. Inhalation through standard suit filters causes permanent lung damage.
Luyten's Star III "Arrakis", Red-Green. Dunes conceal vast ecosystem mirroring sea life, but under sand. Source of "sandwurm" pest species and apex predator (Harenaevurmis shaihulud) now endemic to most deserts on life-bearing class Red planets.
61 Cygni I "Mirror Mirror", Red-Blue. Planet's surface covered in thin film of mercury (average recorded depth, excluding outliers: 0.3 meters).
61 Cygni V "Billiard", Red-Purple. Frozen wasteland. Nevertheless, prevalent helium-3 deposits make mining a profitable enterprise.
Epsilon Eridani IV "Dead Heat", Red-Grey. Plans to bombard planet with ice comets from outer system lost economic traction after crash of 'XX. Stellar radiation stripped away what little atmosphere the project had created. Remaining colonists and support workers evacuated (survival rate 85% immediate, 25% ten-year projection). Grey status appended.
Sol II "Venus", Orange-Yellow. High-pressure sulfuric atmosphere, theorized to be the result of a runaway greenhouse effect. Aerostats can be floated on the upper atmosphere with little difficulty, where temperatures are comfortable compared to the blistering surface.
Delta Pavonis III "Lathe",Orange-Green. Organisms that would be considered extremophiles in Earth-based biospheres can independently flourish in vastly different conditions. Undersea vents on Earth play host to sulfur-metabolizing archaeobacteria, and hothouse worlds have been found to play host to entire ecosystems of sessile or free-floating colony-creatures that evolved in an environment where those conditions are common.
Epsilon Indi A I "Whiskey-on-the-Rocks", Orange-Blue. Oceans perpetually boiling, storming. Only source of liquid water in system.
YZ Ceti II "Chimera", Orange-Purple. Tidally locked; one side burning, one side freezing. Efforts to classify tidally locked planets in their own color, due to their prevalence, are ongoing.
Barnard's Star I "Hellmouth", Orange-Grey. Small, close to its parent star. Metal deposits are relatively poor, but proximity has led to disputes between rival hypercorporate celebrity-executives over who gets to dismantle it to build a Dyson swarm (a concept which still remains outside their capabilities, according to Agency analysts).
Lacaille 9352 III "Sekhmet", Yellow-Green. Atmosphere filled with fungal blooms; corrode most metals, all organics not native to the planet. Ecosystem fascinating, diverse, and hyper-competitive on microscopic level, atmosphere ensures nothing larger survives.
Teegarden's Star II "Circe", Yellow-Blue. Ammonia oceans and atmosphere. Avoids class Grey status because of ease of harvesting by properly shielded craft, necessity for farming and terraforming operations in-system and across sector.
Struve 2398 B IV "Menelik", Yellow-Purple. Cold, dense atmosphere where semi-solid cloudbergs drift across the sky. Construction of sky-palaces for tourist ventures and megarich getaways currently underway, highly promising.
Groombridge 34 A VII "Bad News", Yellow-Grey. Atmosphere of volatile fluorides. Miraculous that it hasn't exploded yet.
Sol III "Earth", Green-Blue. Class maintained through artificial reterraforming/radiation-scrubbing techniques and legacy status due to cultural importance to off-world population.
Sirius V "Nessus", Green-Purple. Highly elliptical orbit has led to ecosystem that hibernates in near-cryostasis conditions for centuries, waking for a decade on close approach to its star. First waking cycle since initial discovery will occur in X years.
Wolf 359 II !!QUARANTINE ZONE DO NOT APPROACH!!, Green-Grey. BREACH OF QUARANTINE VOIDS HUMAN-SPACE RIGHTS TO LANDING, RESUPPLY, TRIAL BY JURY.
Tau Ceti IV "Ram Setu", Blue-Purple. Water oceans beneath ice crust, kept liquid by tidal forces. Green status rejected due to corporate request despite recent megafauna discoveries to protect sub-crustal hotels from environmentalist interference.
GJ 1061 VI "So I Get to Name This Planet Anything I Want?", Blue-Grey. Ocean of hydrochloric acid makes mining operations economically unfeasible.
Interstellar Object 9b2193r.3X12 "Polyphemus", Purple-Grey. Rogue planet. Location discovered in course of establishing trade route through third-expansion antispinward worlds. Subject of various baseless conspiracy theories, equidistant position from twelve different ICARUS AXIOM anomalies deemed coincidental.
Each terrestrial planet, gas giant, asteroid field, anomaly, or jump point may have d3-1 notable stations.
Roll again for each planet, moons, or station to see if it's inhabited. Based on how developed you want the system to be, it can be anything from 1-in-6 to a 5-in-6 chance. Then, roll for the nature of the habitation (d20) 1. Metropolitan hub, administrative/luxury. 2. Metropolitan hub, manufacturing. 3. Metropolitan hub, independent. 4. Waystation port, refueling/resupply. 5. Extractive operation (1. precious metals, 2. food, 3. water, 4. helium-3 fuel, 5. plastics, 6. unique). 6. Research installation. 7. Outlaws. Left alone by authorities, for now. 8. Wildlife preserve. 9. Refugee camps fleeing recent disaster in-system. 10. Luxury production (1. medical, 2. entertainment, 3. technology, 4. vacation destination, 5. fashion, 6. food) 11. Frontier goldrush, started d20 years ago. The higher the number, the closer it is to fizzling out. 12. Subsistence farming, mostly self-sufficient. Have adapted to environment in novel ways. 13. First-wave colony, from pre-FTL era. Diverged for centuries without outside contact. 14. Trillionaire's private world. Playground for their whims. 15. Fortification, tactically vital for system/sector defense. Fleet in parking orbit, armed to the teeth. 16. Starship drydock and construction facility (1. military, 2. corporate, 3. local planetary gov't, 4. independent, 5. criminal, 6. contested between 2+ factions). 17. Archeological dig 18. Experimentalist colony (1. anarcho-capitalist, 2. doomsday cult, 3. fascist ethnonationalist, 4. leftist splinter, 5. singularitarian transhumanist, 6. historical reconstructionist). 19. Roll twice, both are present. 20. Roll three times, all three are present.
Some stations will be uninhabited. No station is built and just left there - there's a reason it was abandoned. 1. Plague. 2. War. 3. Famine. 4. Necropolitics. 5. Cult ideology. 6. Economic incentives. 7. Lost funding before completion. 8. Failed uprising. 9. Mechanical failure, 5d20% evacuated. 10. [CLASSIFIED]
I spent most of late July and early August writing a short new GLOGhack for an upcoming zine. I had a lot of fun writing and formatting it, and it gave me an impetus to use and streamline all of the design plans I made in my previous posts about a vague new hack. It'll be the game I run for the forseeable future - it's called Sawn-Off (due to its short length; 4 pages including classes and spell lists), and I'll be releasing a slightly expanded version of it on this blog over the next few days. Here's the core rules and character creation, which should be usable in any GLOG game regardless of the other rules. These posts will also include some of my thoughts around each component of the rules; I like putting my process out there so everyone can check my work.
This is a short GLOGhack that isn't quite minimalist. I want to slip in implications about the setting, leave gaps to expand upon, create obvious places for GMs to insert their own content and replace my own. It's compatible with the vast majority of GLOG content, and ripe for quick and dirty modification.
