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

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

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 Concept	New Flesh Reskin / Mechanics
The Hardboiled Detective / True Vigilante	Standard 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 / Mutant	The result of horrific, illicit gene-splicing chimera experiments from underground labs rather than a lighthearted accident.
The Borg / Powered Armor	Switch the focus from clean corporate robotic armor to horrific biopunk interfaces—flesh-fused chassis, neural plugs, and living weapons.
The Psion	Uses 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 Encounter	The "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.

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

 Yes, they can be played together, and mechanically, they are a surprisingly smooth fit.

• SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City (Bloat Games) is a street-level supers game built on an OSR d20 engine derived from the d20 SRD and classic B/X D&D foundations.

• New Flesh (The Red Room) is a biopunk body-horror future-noir game built on the Red System, which is inherently designed to be compatible with OSR d20 games.

Because both games share OSR/d20 OGL roots (using the traditional six attributes, classic d20 task resolution structures, and standard OSR compatibility guidelines), you don't need to rebuild either game from scratch to mash them together.

Here is exactly how they intersect, where the friction points are, and how you can combine them for a gritty, Cronenberg-inspired superhero campaign.

1. The Thematic Fit: "Gonzo Street Heroics" meets "Body Horror"

Vigilante City excels at 90s-style street-level campaigns (think TMNT, X-Men, or Batman: The Animated Series). New Flesh leans heavily into Burroughsian transgressive fiction, corporate decay, and flesh-warping biotechnology.

Bringing them together gives you a campaign world reminiscent of Dark Angel, Prototype, or the darker side of Cyberpunk and Rifts. Your "Mega-Human" mutants aren't born with the X-gene; they are the escapees of Takeda Technologies labs, or underworld junkies mutating from illicit street drugs.

2. Character Conversion & Compatibility

Because New Flesh is OSR-adjacent via the Red System, bridging characters between the two systems is straightforward:

Attributes & Saves

Both games use the standard six-attribute layout. Vigilante City adds a 7th attribute called Survival. If you use New Flesh as the base system, you can treat Survival as a specialized saving throw or secondary stat, or map it directly to New Flesh’s internal resilience mechanics.

Classes as "Origins"

• Vigilante City splits characters into Humans (Gadgeteers, Hardboiled Detectives, Martial Artists) and Mega-Humans (Borgs, Mutants, Psions, Super Soldiers).

• New Flesh focuses on archetype roles like ZoneSec operatives, corporate scientists, and underworld fixers.

The Hybrid Approach: Use Vigilante City to define the character's physical abilities and powers, while using New Flesh to define their societal role, corporate ties, and fractional alignment within the Interzone. A Vigilante City "Borg" fits seamlessly into New Flesh as a victim of unchecked corporate cybernetic commodity testing.

3. Integrating the Mechanics

While the math aligns cleanly, you will need to establish a hierarchy for a few specific subsystems:

Power Scale vs. Lethality

Vigilante City features "Vigilante Points" (a form of heroic hit points/stamina) to help street-level heroes survive massive brawls. New Flesh treats the human body as fragile and disposable.

• Verdict: If you want a gritty noir game where powers are dangerous and costly, use the New Flesh HP and damage scales. If you want heroic action with a horrific veneer, import Vigilante City's Vigilante Points.

Magic & Psionics

New Flesh features revised Psionic rules and replaces traditional ritual magic with volatile Chaos Magic. If a player wants to play a "Mystic" or "Psion" from Vigilante City, use the New Flesh rules for their power implementation. This ensures that using supernatural abilities retains the unsettling, reality-distorting themes of the setting.

Cybernetics & Mutations

Vigilante City uses modular independent rules for Mutant Animals, Borg Conversions, and Power Armor. You can lift these options wholesale and drop them into the New Flesh setting as specialized corporate gear or extreme "fleshcrafting" surgeries.

Summary Checklist for the GM

If you are running this crossover, structure your rule hierarchy like this:

System Element	Recommended Source System	Why?
Core Resolution / Combat	Either (Both use OSR/d20 d&d style math)	Seamless compatibility.
Character Powers / Mutations	Vigilante City	Provides robust, modular class structures for weird abilities.
Setting, Lore, & Atmosphere	New Flesh	Excellent tools for generating an oppressive, biopunk cityscape (Interzone).
Sanity, Chaos Magic, & Stress	New Flesh	Keeps the thematic horror impactful and prevents powers from feeling trivial.

To merge the superpower toolkit of SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City with the high-transgression body horror of New Flesh, you need to inject instability, resource scarcity, and systemic decay into the classic d20 superhero framework.

In Vigilante City, a Mutant is a hero with a reliable power set. In the New Flesh Interzone, that same mutant is a "Chimeric Glitch"—a weaponized corporate project or an underground fleshcraft survivor whose very cells are rejecting their programming.

Here is a ready-to-use OSR-compatible class template that blends the raw mechanics of Vigilante City with the thematic horror of New Flesh.

The Chimeric Glitch (Class Template)

Hit Dice: d8 per level

Weapon/Armor Restrictions: Capable of using any weapons or armor, though heavy physical armor often interferes with organic adaptations.

Core Stat Priorities: Constitution (for mutation stability) and Dexterity (for street-level survival).

Level   HD     BBA     Saves    Class Features
1       1d8    +0      As Thief  Origin Power,

 1 Bio-Adaptation, Tissue Rejection
2       2d8    +1      As Thief  Bio-Augment, Survival Point Pool
3       3d8    +2      As Thief  2nd Bio-Adaptation
4       4d8    +3      As Thief  Stability Boost
5       5d8    +4      As Thief  3rd Bio-Adaptation, 

Accelerated Grafting

1. The Vigilante City Foundation: Origin Powers

Choose one primary Vigilante City Mega-Human archetype power at Level 1 to represent your core genetic deviation. However, in the Interzone, these powers carry a severe biopunk tax:

• Biomechanical Borg: You have integrated cybernetics. The Twist: You don't heal naturally. You must consume scavenged raw tech, metals, and specialized chemical fixatives to repair Hit Points during rests.

• Psionic Outcast: You possess telekinetic or telepathic powers. The Twist: Your brain undergoes massive swelling when you push your limits. Every time you use a major psionic ability, you must check for Interzone Brain-Bleed (Will/Wisdom save or suffer 1 point of temporary Intelligence damage).

• Flesh-Warped Freak: Classic mutant (super strength, elemental projection, etc.). The Twist: Your appearance is highly unstable. Your Charisma is treated as 3 when interacting with un-augmented corporate citizens unless you actively disguise your tumors, extra joints, or weeping skin pores.

2. The New Flesh Integration: Bio-Adaptations

Instead of standard superhero level-up perks, your character undergoes ongoing cellular mutations or black-market surgeries. At levels 1, 3, and 5, choose one Bio-Adaptation.

To capture the New Flesh aesthetic, these adaptations are driven by Survival Points (from Vigilante City), but fueled by the character's physical toll:

Organic Carapace

• The Look: Hardened, chitinous plating pushing through your torso, or a dense layer of calloused, scaly hide.

• Mechanic: Gives +3 to Armor Class. You can spend 1 Survival Point to shrug off a critical hit, turning it into standard damage, as your plating shatters to absorb the blow. Regrowing the plates takes 24 hours and a heavy protein intake.

Glandular Overdrive

• The Look: Visible, pulsating chemical sacks along your neck or forearms that inject glowing, illicit biotics directly into your bloodstream.

• Mechanic: Once per encounter, you can trigger a frantic surge of adrenaline. You gain +2 to hit, an extra attack per round, and move at double speed for $1d4$ rounds.

• The Cost: When the rush ends, you enter an immediate crash, suffering a -2 penalty to all d20 rolls until you rest or inject a fresh dose of New Flesh street chemicals.

Acidic Exudate / Necrotic Spittle

• The Look: Your jaw is unhinged or your fingertips secrete a highly corrosive, sizzling bile.

• Mechanic: You can make a ranged touch attack ($1d20 + \text{Dexterity}$) out to 15 feet. On a hit, it deals $1d6$ acid damage per two class levels. The acid melts through standard locks and thin metal doors over the course of 1 minute.

3. The Friction Point: Tissue Rejection & Cellular Glitch

The core balancing mechanic that keeps this class feeling like New Flesh rather than a clean comic book game is Tissue Rejection.

Every time you drop to 0 Hit Points, use an adaptation without spending a Survival Point, or are exposed to heavy industrial radiation/bio-toxins, your DNA begins to fragment.

When this happens, you must roll on the Cellular Glitch Table:

d6 Roll	Mutation Decay Effect
1	Necrotic Slough: One of your bio-adaptations rots off. It is useless until you spend $1d4 \times 100$ credits at an underground meat-shop to graft a replacement.
2	Neural Tremors: Your nervous system misfires. You suffer a permanent -1 penalty to Dexterity checks as your fingers twitch with phantom signals.
3	Chemical Dependency: Your body stops producing essential enzymes. You must consume 1 dose of corporate-grade anti-rejection meds every 48 hours or lose 1 point of Constitution per day.
4	Hyper-Tumor: A massive, benign growth forms overnight. It provides +2 hit points but permanently reduces your speed by 5 feet due to the weight and asymmetry.
5-6	Violent Adaptation: Your body violently fights off the infection. You gain a random cosmetic mutation (e.g., milk-white eyes, prehensile toes), but your current adaptations stabilize.

Setting the Campaign Scene

When introducing a character like this into your game, bridge the two manuals by using the Vigilante City rules for tactical combat tracking (Initiative, grid movement, and striking rules), but use New Flesh's equipment lists, price economies, and district maps to dictate where they get their fuel. Your hero isn't fighting to save the city from a supervillain's death ray—they're fighting the street gangs and corporate extraction teams just to secure the next batch of immunosuppressants.