Thursday, June 11, 2026

Survive This!! Vigilante City & New Flesh Rpg = Survive This New Flesh City Campaign Part II

 Blending the transgressive, Cronenbergian biopunk of New Flesh (The Red Room) with the gritty, 90s-cartoon-inspired sandbox of SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City (Bloat Games) yields a highly distinct tabletop experience. It transforms a street-level superhero aesthetic into a dark, visceral "splatterpunk-noir" setting. This blog post picks up right from Survive This!! Vigilante City & New Flesh Rpg = Survive This New Flesh City Campaign Part I



Because both games share deep OSR roots—Vigilante City uses a modified B/X chassis, while New Flesh (and its Wretched predecessor) are built for d20/OSR compatibility—kitbashing their mechanics and settings is remarkably seamless.



1. Setting the Stage: "Interzone City"

In a standard Vigilante City game, your heroes fight costume-clad mobsters and mutant punks under moody gargoyles. Injecting New Flesh shifts the focus entirely:

  • The Atmosphere: The bright, comic-book heroism is stripped away. The city is a neon-drenched, rain-slicked corporate playground where biotechnology reigns supreme over standard chrome or gadgetry.

  • The Vigilantes: Heroes aren't fighting just to keep the streets clean; they are fighting to preserve their dwindling humanity. Crime fighters are hunting down illegal organ harvesters, rogue bio-labs, and psychic entities warping reality in seedy underbelly dens.

  • The Factions: Replace standard street gangs with corporate syndicates like Takeda Technologies or the desperate, mutated underclass trying to survive the bio-experiments dumped into the slums.

2. Mechanical Integration: Cross-Pollinating the Systems

Since both games operate on the d20 chassis, you can port elements back and forth without breaking the math. Here is how to map the systems together:

Attributes and Survival

  • Vigilante City utilizes seven core attributes: the classic six plus Survival (which acts as a special pool to alter rolls).

  • Keep this 7-attribute array. Use the Vigilante City "d20, roll-under" attribute check rule for physical stunts, but apply the gritty resource scarcity of New Flesh to limit how quickly that Survival pool recovers.

Class Mapping & Custom Archetypes

You can split your player options down a grim thematic line, using Vigilante City’s Human vs. MegaHuman framework as the bridge:

Vigilante City ConceptNew Flesh Reskin / Mechanics
The Hardboiled Detective / True VigilanteStandard Human. Uses New Flesh’s noir investigation skills. They rely purely on grit, wits, and firearms to survive a world that has out-evolved them.
The Anthropomorph / MutantThe result of horrific, illicit gene-splicing chimera experiments from underground labs rather than a lighthearted accident.
The Borg / Powered ArmorSwitch the focus from clean corporate robotic armor to horrific biopunk interfaces—flesh-fused chassis, neural plugs, and living weapons.
The PsionUses the dangerous, volatile psychic mutation rules from New Flesh. Every psychic manifestation risks tearing a hole in the user's psyche or the local fabric of reality.

The Humanity vs. Power Tradeoff

In New Flesh, enhancing your body with cutting-edge biotechnology chips away at your humanity. Implement a Vigilante Point / Humanity tracker:

  • When a MegaHuman uses high-tier powers or receives bio-augmentations, they must make a saving throw (using Vigilante City's Mental or Death saves) to avoid permanent psychological drift or physical degradation.

  • High Vigilante Points (reputation) can be twisted: instead of just being loved by the public, a high score makes a character a high-value target for corporate asset retrieval teams looking to harvest their unique DNA.

3. Campaign Structure: A Biopunk Noir Procedural

To run this hybrid game effectively, lean heavily on a procedural "investigation-to-confrontation" loop. Vigilante City: Villain’s Guide provides excellent random city and hook generators, while New Flesh brings the specific, grotesque flavor.

[Phase 1: The Incident] 
A bizarre crime scene is discovered in the slums 
(e.g., a corpse modified with illicit, pulsing bio-tech).
       │
       ▼
[Phase 2: Noir Investigation]
Vigilantes use street contacts, Fixers, and forensics to 
track the source through pleasure dens.
       │
       ▼
[Phase 3: The Ethical Dilemma]
Discovering that a corporate subsidiary 
(like Takeda Tech) is behind it, using citizens as test subjects.
       │
       ▼
[Phase 4: Tactical Strike]
A gritty, high-stakes raid on an underground bio-lab 
using Vigilante City's robust combat and vehicle rules.

4. The Toolkit: Custom Distortions

When stocking your sandbox, replace standard superhero tropes with transgressive body-horror elements. Use this table to instantly re-flavor classic street encounters:

Standard Vigilante City EncounterThe "New Flesh" Infused Twist
Bank heist by a high-tech gang.Cultists/junkies raiding a medical transport to steal Chaos Magic stabilizing serums or metamorphic bio-chips.
Mad scientist threatens the city with a death ray.A rogue geneticist releasing a localized pathogen that causes rapid, horrific cell mutation across an entire city block.
Corrupt police precinct taking bribes.A precinct entirely subverted by corporate ZoneSec operatives, using experimental augmented reality to police and mind-wipe the populace.

Running Tip: Keep the combat fast, lethal, and descriptive. When a player uses a superpower or a weapon, emphasize the physical toll it takes on their character's body—the tearing of synth-flesh, the burning of neural pathways, and the visceral cost of being a hero in a broken world.

 This adventure hook bridges the street-level criminal enterprises of SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City with the transgressive, organic bio-horror of New Flesh. It features an iconic Vigilante City style kingpin who has turned to forbidden biopunk tech to secure his grip on the city's underworld.

Adventure Hook: "The Flesh-Market Kingpin"

The Premise

Don "The Carcass" Falcone was once a standard, ruthless mafia don in Vigilante City. After a rival gang explosion left him near death, he didn't turn to cybernetics or standard mutation—he backed an illicit, underground laboratory run by a rogue geneticist. Today, Falcone operates out of the city’s Meatpacking District, completely physically transformed and distributing a highly addictive, transformative street drug called "Soma-Plus."

[The Meatpacking District] ──> [Soma-Plus Street Epidemic] ──> 
[The Meat-Puppet Enforcers]

Key NPCs

1. Don "The Carcass" Falcone (The Villain)

  • Concept: A bloated, mob-boss-turned-biopunk-monstrosity.

  • Appearance: He sits in a reinforced, hydraulic wheelchair, his flesh unnaturally swollen, translucent, and pulsing. His body has been spliced with deep-sea invertebrate DNA, allowing him to absorb blunt trauma and regenerate wounds instantly. He breathes through an organic apparatus fused to his neck.

  • Motivation: Monopolize the city's vice trade by making the entire population dependent on his biological product.

2. Dr. Alan Cross (The "Mad Scientist")

  • Concept: A disgraced corporate geneticist from Takeda Tech, now Falcone’s chief bio-architect.

  • Appearance: Emaciated, twitchy, with nervous eyes hidden behind thick, blood-splattered goggles. His own fingers have been surgically replaced with micro-scalpels and organic diagnostic tools.

  • Motivation: Pure, unfettered experimentation. Falcone provides him with infinite "raw materials" (kidnapped street denizens) to perfect his New Flesh theories.

3. "Switchblade" Sally (The Street Contact)

  • Concept: A low-level street informant and Soma-Plus addict desperate to clean up her neighborhood.

  • Appearance: Shivering, wearing a tattered trench coat. Her forearms show the horrific tracking scars of Soma-Plus usage—the skin there is beginning to harden into jagged, calcified, chitinous ridges.

  • Motivation: Find her missing brother, who was taken by Falcone's men after he couldn't pay his drug debt.

The Investigation Steps

Step 1: The Inciting Incident (The Meat-Puppet Attack)

The adventure begins in the rain-slicked neon alleys of the Neon District. The vigilantes are tipped off to a violent mugging or a store shakedown.

  • The Twist: The thugs aren't normal mob enforcers. They are Meat-Puppets—low-level thugs whose bodies have been violently augmented by Dr. Cross. They have bone-blades bursting through their knuckles, don't feel pain (immune to morale checks), and bleed a thick, black, oil-like substance.

  • The Clue: Searching the bodies reveals specialized, organic injectors containing a glowing, viscous blue fluid (Soma-Plus), stamped with a butcher’s meat-grade stamp: Choice Cut - Processing Plant 04.

Step 2: Hitting the Streets (The Informant)

The heroes must track the origin of the stamp. This leads them to a seedy, neon-lit underground pleasure den known as The Velvet Sinew.

  • The Encounter: They meet Switchblade Sally. She can point them directly to Falcone's distribution network, but she's currently going through violent, agonizing withdrawals. Her body is trying to reject the biopunk mutations caused by the drug.

  • The Choice: The vigilantes can use medicine/science skills (or burn a point of Survival) to stabilize her, or use intimidation. If helped, she reveals that Falcone is operating out of the abandoned Imperial Meat Processing Plant in the industrial district, and that her brother was taken there alive.

Step 3: Infiltrating the Processing Plant

The Imperial Meat Processing Plant is a nightmare labyrinth where Vigilante City logistics meet New Flesh body horror.

  • The Environment: Heavy steel hooks hang from the ceiling, but instead of beef, they hold massive, pulsating sheets of synthetic, vat-grown flesh. The air smells of ozone, copper, and rotting fruit.

  • The Stealth/Combat Challenge: The plant is patrolled by Falcone’s elite "Graft-Guards"—men whose nervous systems have been hardwired directly into the facility's security cameras. Moving through requires careful navigation of the blind spots or fast, silent takedowns before an alarm is triggered.

Step 4: The Bio-Lab Confrontation

Deep in the freezer vaults, the vigilantes discover Dr. Cross’s operational theater.

  • The Scene: They find Sally’s brother strapped to an organic gurney, half-integrated into a machine that is harvesting his spinal fluid to synthesize the next batch of Soma-Plus.

  • The Boss Fight: Don Falcone confronts the party here, flanked by Dr. Cross and a hulking, asymmetrical bio-monstrosity (a failed experiment used as a guard dog). Falcone doesn't just use firearms; he can spit caustic digestive acids and commands the very environment, turning the vat-grown meat walls against the PCs.

Vigilante City Mechanical Twist: During the final battle, if a player character is dropped to 0 Hit Points by Falcone's acid or bone-blades, they don't just face death—they risk contracting a New Flesh Distorted Mutation. If they survive the encounter, they must seek specialized medical help to excise the invasive, parasitic tissue before it alters their archetype permanently.

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