Ttrpg designer, 1/2 of Gem Room Games

posts from @itsdanphipps tagged #campaign building

also:

I'm building a setting using a modified Gygax 75 Framework i'm tentatively calling Phipps 23! You can read about that here. The Meteor Break main post is here.

Icons Representing the Idiotic, Destructive Power of the Hyper Wealthy

Event: The Waning. The autumn parade from the top of the city to the earth carrying the preserved corpse of the last moon elf king via palenquin, mourning the death of the moon and the founding of Loch Syzygy. It culminates in a feast to new beginnings and the future.

Landmark: The Vector Building. Downtown skyscraper of steel and glass evoking a rocket launch. Indirectly owned by multiple aristocratic houses, it is the foothold of the immortal aristocracy in the city.

Person: Nicolai Stone, CEO of Syzyrgy Liquidations. Former partner of a larger private military company who left abruptly and on bad terms to seize an opportunity to operate out of Loch Syzygy.

Creature: Blight Ochre. Industrial magic byproducts left to accumulate and gain life. Shared enemy of Fungal Bellringers and Forest Folk (though they differ greatly in approach).

Treasure: Telemetry Records of The Basilisk. A magnetic tape from the godhunter craft that shot the moon in pursuit of a new god. Contains both evidence of the house that funded the act and indicates where that god hid. Any house of the immortal aristocracy would kill to get their hands on it. The Loch Syzygy Council could use it to demand reparations, to know who pulled the trigger and destroyed their ancestral home.

Secret: Envoys of House Ecliptic are meeting in secret with the Terminal Authority board of directors to establish a shell company and smuggle goods in and out of the city.



Meteor Break

I did 3/5 of a gygax 75 challenge and now I'm pivoting it to get it into a playable state by Thankgiving (by which I mean Christmas (by which I mean January)). I'm using a new and exciting framework that I'm making up as I go. I'm tentatively calling it the Phipps 23 Challenge, cuz that's funny. For part one, I'm going to write out some media touchstones. I'm gonna use those to write out a few core About statements to express the tone, vibe, and themes I wanna hit on. Then I'll loop back and write the pitch for the setting, name a few genre conventions, describe the kind of RPG systems I want to use, and post the playlist cuz I made one.

The Pitch

Immortal Aristocracy godhunters accidentally blew up the moon, and a lunar elf city crash landed here. A few generations later anyone who's anyone in the adventurer scene is operating out of there. From the ivory towers of the immortal aristocracy to the chaos pits of pandaemonium, all eyes are on Loch Syzygy: known to you and your band as Meteor Break.

Influences

These are the main things I wanna pull from

  • Point Break
  • Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
  • Repo Man (1984)
  • Dorohedoro (2020)
  • Dune (1965)
  • Sorry to Bother You (2018)

About

Meteor Break is About:

  • The blind, idiotic, destructive power of the hyper-wealthy
  • Moving to a cool neighborhood and fighting to keep it a cool neighborhood
  • The world his haunted and scarred and shaped by past mistakes but who isn't?
  • Well meaning dumbasses fuckin' around and finding out
  • Unattended super-weapons have a way of falling into the wrong hands
  • If you don't take care of this world, it'll take care of you

Genre Conventions

Post Dungeon Fantasy, Dirtbag Fantasy, Science Fantasy, Surf Crime

Mixtape

RPG Systems at Play

Any game that supports a revolving cast of dirtbag adventurers operating out of a city, getting into trouble, and making their way back. Going for a looping West Marches variant with a strong sense of home base. Games I'll probably end up running for this:

  • Neutron Axe
  • Into the Odd
  • 24xx
  • Blades in the Dark, most FitD systems tbqh
  • SpeedRune
  • The Bell Hack

Coming in Pt 2:

I'm gonna take each of the About statements above and I'm gonna try and come up with one of the following for each:

  • An Event
  • A Landmark
  • A Treasure
  • A Person
  • A Creature
  • A Secret

If this sounds rad let me know cuz I wanna flesh this out like a little bit more and then start running it with cool people.

Part 2: Icons


 
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