RPG Campaign Tour: Day 26 - Are There Any Dramatic Events From the Campaign You Can Share?

Day 26 of the #RPGCampaignTour for my Gamma World campaign "This Is Not a Test", and again I turn to my players in an interview for "Are there any dramatic events from the campaign you can share?"

First Place: Sonny Saving Lathar

Lathar Bracken was a pure-strain human who had no such stringent requirements when it came to his women... or his liquor. 

During a wintertime stop at Fair-Town, Lathar had gotten plenty drunk and began wandering the streets.  Sonny, the groups educated mutant sunflower, was the only one awake to notice that he wasn't in his room, and he tried his best to follow his tracks.... It was a comedy of errors, including discovering that he had challenged his ex-girlfriend, the blue skinned Kirothian leader, Elona, to a duel!  Thankfully she just called him an idiot and he wandered off, with a group called the Pathfinders.  Upon finding this group and invited to a bonfire and drinking, Sonny learns that they've stripped the poor human naked, strapped him to the front of a side-by-side ATV and were about to drive him off as a sacrifice to something called the "Pathinfinder Run"

The roar of an internal combustion engine could be heard. Emerging out of the woods was some sort of vehicle. There was a pair of skis attached to its front. There was space for two riders, elevated off the ground, and it was moved by a pair of oversized tracks. As the vehicle roared passed, Soony could see a naked Lathar strapped to the front of this device. The other campers cheered it on...

Before the vehicle disappeared, Sonny made a silent prayer to whatever useless deities were listening, and using his teleportation, he landed on the back of the vehicle, Destination: Unknown.

As the vehicle and its internal combustion engine peeled out in the darkened woods, the sunflower climbed forward from the back of it.  There were punches, flintlock pistols discharged, and persons and plants nearly falling off.  

The sunflower continued to fight the duo trying to sacrifice Lathar, when the reached their destination: 

A fire-breathing beast.   

Thankfully Sonny forced the driver to take a sharp left away from the beast, and only the other Pathfinder dude was engulfed in flames.  Ultimately, Sonny forced the driver to flee the scene, and to the upper gates of the town, where he forced the town guard to arrest the surviving Pathfinder.    

Ultimately Sonny got something to cover up the naked Lathar, got him back into his room at the inn, and made sure to wedge the door shut so he couldn't get out for the rest of the night.  

The high point of this story is that Sonny is the least-combat worthy of all the characters, and this action sequence, which took the vast majority of one night's session, was one of the most bad-ass scenarios and character has been through.

Runner Up - Squiggles, our Mutant Earthworm friend, still armed with a flintlock and a superscience weight belt used in warehouses, had suffered some grievous wounds while the group explored "Rho Facility."  But, as luck would have it, the had also befriend a piece of Living Metal named RHA-9, obviously an artificial medic with all its syringes and liquids.  

Squiggles was the most wounded so they let the Living Metal go to town.  A few injections later, Squiggles suffered horrible bouts of screaming, but was miraculously healed.... and grew a layer of shaggy fur....

RPG Campaign Tour: Day 25 - Where Can I Do Some Shopping?

Day 25 of the #RPGCampaignTour for my Gamma World campaign "This Is Not a Test", and the desire for commerce is there, "Where can I do some shopping."

In this world, the shopping bug might be quench by the Fair-Town Bug Mart.  

The Bug Mart is simply a flea market, on the still fairly level macadam of an ancient schools.  While the Queen's Joust is once a year, the bug mart is every week, folks bringing in crafts, but mainly the odd artifacts they've uncovered .    Odd dishes, weird containers, a box of Western Pacific breakers? Definitely.

It's unlikely, but you might get your hands on something cool, like a glow suit, before the agents of the Restorationists sweep down and clean out the too valuable stuff.

Now, a complete run of Boys Life magazine in the 80's, complete with a little red wagon?  Lucky for you, they'll foolishly miss those....

RPG Campaign Tour: Day 24 - Contraband and Chaos

Like I mentioned yesterday Day 24 of the #RPGCampaignTour for my Gamma World campaign "This Is Not a Test",  is something that I wasn't prepared for, and, to be honest, I find somewhat boring, "What Are the Major Imports? " 

And like yesterday, I plugged the rest of the challenge prompts into Chat GPT and asked for a new topic/question for Day 24. 

It generated "Contraband and Chaos" and I must approve.  

For a region that prides itself on peace and quiet first, and  law and order second, the corridor hides a surprisingly vibrant shadow economy.

Riverbend’s Quiet Trades

Riverbend was a lot of artifacts go through the town, mostly through the doors of the Restorationists.  Many times these Restorationists seem to lose said artifacts, or claims they never arrived at all.  The question being begged?  Where are these items going, who are they helping, or are they simply hoarding them in an undisclosed location.  

A bunch of simple farmers with a knack of finding artifacts....

And then, of course, there are those dealing with artifacts that never end up in the hands of the Restorationist.  Like Boson Higby, who runs a neighborhood over the hills from Riverbend prime.  He handles a lot of commodities, and uses rarely trodden paths to move items from place to place.  He knows more about the region (and what lies beyond) than most. 

He may still have an odd suit of armor which fell from the sky in the past year, interesting markings and all. 

There is only a community of farmers actively trying to breed different species for larger creatures to produce wool.  

Fair Town’s Invisible Market

The Bug Mart is the most famous market, but "Invisible Market" is one exploiting the corruption of the bureaucracy.  

• Manipulated arbitration by town barristers 

• Selective enforcement contracts by officials

• Caravan cargo misreporting

• Quiet resale of confiscated goods

While knowledge is most valuable at KIA, The most valuable contraband in Fair Town is information — advance knowledge of tariffs, inspections, and rulings.

KIA Academy's Restricted Archives

The Academy appears to be the true protectors of knowledge.  Their techniques and protocols appear to preserve knowledge responsibly.

The archives in the upper levels have great files on transportation technology. But there are some deeper and darker wings of the archive are sealed for good reason, possibly:

• Weapons technology that has not been destroyed. 

• Political pamphlets and literature that could destabilized portions of the complex.  

• Gene-editing manuals from before regulatory collapse

Heaven's forbid if any of that could get out and fall into the wrong hands.  Maybe they already got out, not from the archives, but common knowledge of the Ancients trickling down in the sub-levels. 

Day 25 :  Where can I do some shopping?

(Gamma World) Not a Test #105 - Into the Mines

The De Facto Explorers have found a tribe of Hoppers, right next to an underground facility in the Glow Zone wilderness across the Big River.   Death seems to have cursed this place long ago.  Here's hoping it has not lingered all these years. 

=============================================================== 

Lathar Bracken: A pure-strain human from River Bend.  He's got the muscle, the face, and a mount for most encounters.  Lathar's trusty beast of burden, No Name, travels wherever he does.   Looking for trouble in all the right places. The two-time champion of the Fair-Town Queen's Joust.  Recently married Thunnelda Haycock.

Sneaky Pete: A mutated weasel scout.  Pete's telepathy and night vision take a backseat when he whips out his electrical powers.  Apparently addicted to his newly uncovered yellow powder found at "The Pool House"

Sonny Helianthus: a nearly 10' tall sentient sunflower artifact examiner with four arms, and trusted Restorationist ties. Knowledgeable,  but not a good one with device repairs or upgrades. 

Slitheran Wurmtail (aka Squiggles): a mutated earthworm scout, in impromptu power armor, looking for trouble in all the wrong places,  and finding it often.   He  has been subject to genetic testing and developed super-human strength, a more human body, and a thick coat of shaggy white hair.  Recently gave birth to a pile of baby worms. 

Luna of the Restorationists:  Recent recruit of the Restorationists, who had uncovered artifacts across the River.  

================================================================ 

Lathar hefted the massive slugthrower he had found.  Not a round of ammunition, but if Sonny could concoct some, it could be mounted on the tripod reserved for the spear-hurler. 

Squiggles peaked down around the far corner of the room, finding a very industrial, but fully enclosed elevator, but no access to call the car.  

Pete snuck over the near side, finding a full room with dozens of selections, collected by a set of double doors.  the same physically broken, burned damage on the bodies matched the damage to the doors.  

Pete kicked around the remains, while Lathar upended the desk and terminals in the.  Lathar spied the other door that led to the stairs.  It was chained shut from this side, like the first door.   Flipping the final desk, Lathar disappeared to the ground, only to pop up holder a slug-thrower with the barrel sawed down.... but no ammo... and no saw. 

Pete is his searches fell upon a brown key card with a symbol matching some in the items in the facility,, some personal mining tools, and a single gold coin, which he slipped into his pocket.

Pete:  "I assume we need to go through these doors."

Lathar:  "The two large doors where a bunch of bodies piled up, trying to get through?"

Pete tried the doors, they were shut, but the new brown key card on the access pad made the inter-workings of the door *clang* and the doors opened out.  

The walls to the passageway were machined squared, a  dirt floor leading on.

The weasel worked his way down.  Soon to two pieces of metal equidistant space between them, emerged out of the dirt a few inches.  There were more skeletons and carts along the sides.  There no signs of fighting, although these skeletons surely had a lot of gnaw marks on them.

"Let's but the cart on the track..."  Lathar suggested.  No one agreed except Luna, so he emptied a car and moved in onto the tracks. Luna went inside, Lathar pushed until it seemed to maintain a slow speed

The cart began getting ahead of the group. Lathar's lone light source allowed them to see the track split in two directions.  

"Lean right! Lean right!  Lathar cried out to Luna, and they threw themselves to that side.  Miraculously, the cart followed the direction., but thirty meters later, the tracks seemed to be swallowed up back into the dirt, dumping the cart and sending Lathar and Luna flying.   Lathar tumbled out effortlessly, and allowed him to dust off a rattled Luna.

No one heard the beasts emerging from the darkness...

A group of these greasy albino humanoids with massive arms and sharp claws, came from each side of the split in the track.  

Luna immediately pulled out her flintlock with no effect.  Soon lasers, death rays, and blasters lit up the mine shaft.

But none of the half-dozen creatures fell, they moved into melee.  The humanoids were incredibly precise, but their claws were more painful that effective, but they forced the Explorers to switch to hand to hand weaponry.   

Sonny quickly began panicking.  He was a giant sunflower with bioluminescence, an easy target for theses beasts.  One thought and he could be back at the first door... and the Hoppers.  But as the first beast dropped, he hoped his compatriots had the gumption to pour it on.

The fancy gadgets of the Ancients in hand were replaced by swords, spears, and daggers, whittling down the humanoids bit by bit. 

When a second albino beast man finally dropped, Sonny moved to the original hall. His brightness seemed to thwart a second wave of beasts, who remained lurking in the shadows. As darkness neared Lathar and Luna, the other beasts retreated, but just within the shadows. 

Next: #106 - The Tush Push

RPG Campaign Tour: Day 23 - What Are the Arteries of Survival?

Day 23 of the #RPGCampaignTour for my Gamma World campaign "This Is Not a Test", and we finally hit our first road block.  The question from the challenge,  "What Are the Major Exports? "  Let's be totally honest.  Gamma World for me is a series of gonzo adventures with crazy character concepts.    With few exceptions, there larges swaths of the world that are glossed over, politics, military, and economics are only fleshed out as needed. 

So I plugged the other 26 questions into ChatGPT and asked for replacement questions for Day 23... and it's counterpart for tomorrow, Day 24 "What are the major imports."  

Today is a similarly worded question, but one that sparks my interest more, "Arteries of Survival"

Because our three three towns along the Big River: Riverbend, Fair-Town, and KIA Academy, as technically independent of each other, but their is trade, political organization, and problems.  And the one question my one player has essentially asked multiple times in varying ways, "How are these players still around in a dangerous world like Gamma World?"

The Roads: 

One thing about the Big River, the area a few days journey downriver of KIA Academy, with places along its bank with dangerous names like "The Wildlands" and "The Wall" seem to have stifled traffic of any sort upriver... on both sides of the banks.  While there is a stable but narrow path on the KIA side (old railroad tracks on phenomenal levee that survived the apocalypse and 500-year floods. 

The truth of the matter is, transportation in this river valley starts at the Ancient technology softrock bridge crossing the Redline Creek, is extraordinary in KIA, transforms to a stable and maintains dirt track for traffic going back and forth,  the road runs through Fair-Town, continues upriver to Riverbend, until is winnows out to a path through the wilderness at a second bend in the river, eight or nine miles upriver near an odd low spot that could be used to ford across in the Hisser lands.   The path continues, and folks from places to Blackvale and The Catacombs do venture down from a long journey.  

The Redline Bridge.

The Big River:

The Big River is far more massive than anyone ever recalls.   There are not even ruins of bridges in this region from the Ancients, and KIA probably has plans to construct a beautiful four lane softrock bridge to the other side... but there's nothing on the other sides.  Perhaps the start of a road to the now-ruined town of Jainus?  Not particularly appealing.  

There is extremely limited fishing in the river.  Certainly a mutant raccoon with a pole and some bait could catch fish of varying sizes, but the predators swimming within it as quiet and deadly.   Someone could make a basic living fishing on the river... for a year or two, until disaster strikes.

The Capillaries of the Towns

The one thing I've failed to do is probably explain that these three towns are not bastions of civilization, surrounded by nothing but wastelands.  

Riverbend is an agrarians town with farms  upriver and downriver, but not going into the interior. Barley, root vegetables, and enough linen and wool-equivalent material for basic clothmaking.  I would expect further beyond the town that there are trapper, hunters, and furriers bringing back their kills.  They would make the true front line of defense against those creatures migrating from a land labelled on the maps only as "Nightmare Monsters"

Beyond the famous walls of famous are primitive farms, producing grains and vegetables.  Beyond the walls are two functioning mills using water power from streams.  

KIA Academy has the most obvious capillaries.  Most of the population is situation within the complex, but until the recent worries of war encroaching their lands, KIA had different outside districts that resembled suburbs.  Each district had departments operation out of stations for road work and other functions, and self-sustaining communities were beyond the direct protection of the academy.

Day 24 - Contraband and Catastrophe

RPG Campaign Tour: Day 22 - Tell Us About Any Notable Flora and Fauna

Day 22 of the #RPGCampaignTour for my Gamma World campaign "This Is Not a Test", and we're in Monster Manual territory with "Tell us about any notable flora and fauna."

Qualifer: A lot the "creatures" listed in Gamma World 4th Edition are humanoids with some level of civilization.  Hissers, Hoppers, Orleans, Gren, etc are playable races, but they will interact with the player-characters, so we'll bring them up under other questions.

The group hasn't encountered a whole lot of post-apocalyptic wildlife that worried them. 

They encountered a patch of wilderness run rampant by the Terleens, or "Tree Fish" their feathers are valuable and fashionable.   Their bites are what best to be avoided.   

Terleens

Podogs can make great steeds, but there are a number of roving packs of the beasts, and if you're caught outside without defenses, you best climb a tree (and pray no Terleen are residing in it. 

Podogs

While many fear the Living Metal that fly amongst the clouds, belching smoke, most quickly forget of the Giant Golden Eagles that soar in the stratosphere.  Almost everyone knows of a person, or a person's livestock, that have been subject the terror of these birds.

The most unique critter they've encountered, isn't even a mutated creature.  It's Chambray, the loyal peacock of Lathar Bracken. 

That most interesting flora is usually somewhat sentient plants that have just infiltrated certain areas you wouldn't expect.    The De Facto Explorers dread any space in an Ancients facility that could be a closet... or a bathroom for that very reason.

Day #23 - What are the arteries of survival?

Happy Birthday George Washington

 I've really tried not to reshare or repurpose every blog post that catches my eye, but Jim Purky (Der Alte Fritze) painted up a new George Washington from his own Fife and Drum figures, and it's worthy enough to wish our first president a happy 294th birthday.  

I'm not much of a SYW or AWI fan, but I've followed Jim since he was pushing colonial teddy bears and capturing peanut M&Ms with his little girl.  That little girl is now old and in college, I believe.  Time waits for no man, so buy some figures, paint some more, and play a game. That's what we should be doing on Presidents' Day anyway.