#RPGaDay2025 - Day 23 - Recent

Day 23 of #RPGaDay2025 bring us "Recent."

Since the blog’s focus is definitively role-playing two months out of the year (and every Tuesday for an Actual Play), I'm covering all fronts for the blog (and burying the lead): 

Post-Historicon Maintenance :  I'm grateful #RPGaDay takes my mind off of everything else, because I'm still decompressing from Historicon.  All the figures from the games I ran have commanded the gaming table for the past month, as I do rehab on them after dozens of hands have played with them.  Even if the figures survived unscathed, it's an extra coat of varnish for another layer of protection for Fall-In! in November. 

Painting Bench: There's only so many hat and epaulet touch-ups one can do without going insane.  For a palette cleanser I'm doing up a "family" of Star Wars aliens for the next Fistful of Lead scenario for our Death Planet Iota game. Also on the bench is a 3-D printed truck which looks like a poor variant of a Mercedes L-3000 and some gremlins from Legions of Steel.   Once that is all finished, my focus is one some new fantasy minis from Brigade Games, as well as the Hawaiian Gnomes  for Gnome Wars.  I just need an actual mock up of what the pineapple catapult is supposed to look like and I'm golden.

Reading: How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs by Elizabeth F Thompson for casual brain exercise, and Pirates of the Starstream (Starfinder) to mine for another crack at my Star Wars d6 game. 

Recent Role-Playing: Although I'm so backed up on my normal Tuesday Gamma World Actual Plays that Monday night's online episode won't post until March 31, 2026, I'll warn the dear readers: SPOILERS.

Our heroes, the De Facto Explorers, discovered a facility deep in the Glow Zone wilderness that used to manufactured energy cells.   After a few treacherous encounters, they decided to rest and co-exist with their Hopper hosts for the next two weeks and prepare for the major foray into an alleged treasure lair. 

The De Facto Explorers (L to R)  Lathar, Sneaky Pete, Ramsay (Out of Action), Squiggles (pre-fur), No-Name

With a few game cancellations in August, we decided to go forward with only one player calling off.  Two weeks in the burrow of a race of giant mutant rabbits, with no medkits, might be traumatizing for some, but not De Facto!

• "Squiggles", our 6-foot tall earthworm covered in white fur?   He joined Thumper Rex, the Hopper drum circle.  He got news of odd noises coming from the vault door separating them from the facility, as well as odd howling outside the warren.
• Lathar Bracken, a Pure-Strain Human, pseudo barbarian, and recently married?   He did his best shirtless Kirk moments with Hoppers of both sexes ("They're so furry!!!). 
• Sneaky Pete, our weasel scout (and missing player)?  Despite all his plans for the two weeks, he went on the occasional patrol with the Hoppers through the petrified forest above the warren, but he mostly stayed near the cart the held their equipment.... and a large tub of yellow curry that he had acquired an addiction too.  

• And finally, Sonny Helianthus, our ten-foot tall mutant sunflower artifact expert.  He had a full plate.   Sure, he needed a safe spot to plant himself and absorb some sun outside, but he also busied himself, cleaning a filthy shotgun they had found until it could pass a command inspection, taking days to determine a mysterious black pistol they had acquired months ago was a sonic weapon, then realizing he was wrong, and digging outside in the "junk piles" of tech that could be found in the petrified forest.  

While some of the smaller half-broken artifacts were sent to the Hoppers as tribute payment for their extended hospitality, Sonny had uncovered a three foot long shiny metal cylinder, unblemished from the other junk that had been heaped upon it.  Sonny became obsessed with the object, only confirming that its display and buttons worked, and he could set-up a timer with a countdown, nothing ever less than five minutes.   By the time the rest were ready to go back and explore the rest of the facility (and find the treasure), the sunflower had it safely stowed away in the the Hopper lair, the outer cylinder removed. 

The Explorers spent less than ten minutes in the building, before a radioactive green mist befell them and they resorted to their best "Run away!" impression. 

No one fell ill, but the damage was enough to to take a day or two and regroup, before going in the established, original entrance to the compound they had used.  

So Day 16 since they had decided to rest, Lathar was combing his steed, No Name, after a much needed ride and grazing away from the Hoppers and the Ancients compound that was taking over their lives.  Even with the odd Hopper companionship, he missed his pregnant wife back home.  

Sonny magically appeared out of thin air in front of him.  

"That's not good?"

"Sonny, what's going on?" 

"I don't know, but I think we'll find out in 3.... 2.... 1....

They didn't hear the roar first, rather they felt the ground rend itself...  tunnels collapsed.  Chaos erupted in the warrens. 

"Sonny, what did you do?"

"I got the cylinder to only count down from sixty... couldn't get it to stop.  I teleported back here at 10."

They dared to venture outside, after the dust settled....

An entire swath of the petrified forest, 50 meters in every direction, was laid flat. Everything was gone, save the crater and the remnants of the mushroom cloud. 

"So that's what the cylinder was for..."

They went inside the burrow with the other Explorers to help dig out those trapped in the underground collapses. 

Dr Sonny Helianthus, Destroyer of Worlds

GM Note:  With that many days of searching, I was going to allow for a random piece of technology, although if it needed power, it wouldn't have a working power cell.  I innocently used a random table out of the 1st Edition Gamma World book.  

A result of 44% and 4 on 2d8 can net someone a fusion book in that ruleset, one of the gentlest of the bombs available! 

And as a point of record, if Sonny had failed his Teleportation mutant power roll?  He would have been vaporized as well....