The Red Room's Orbital Decay & The Cha'alt Triliogy - Gates & Keys Session Report and Campaign Update

 I find myself being roped into dealing with my Wretched New Flesh Post Cards from Avilidad players and Orbital Decay! The reason being is that one of our player's PC's mentioned and elaborated Cha'alt. And since our campaign takes place in the distant future of Avilidad. 

The gateway to Cha'alt is actually in the Oort cloud and that place is literally brimming with objects the size of mountains tumbling through space. It's also the domain of the MiGo that originally had thier colonies on Pluto. 
Mi Go also inheritted the gateway to Cha'alt and the PC's have in the the past had interactions with the Mi Go. 
The Cha'alt gate represents a modern day gold rush for Avilidad. Zonetec remains skeptical. Because of the fact that in the past demon clown worms have almost created issues with reality in the past! 
So now all cargos coming into Earth have to go through Zonetec inspectors. Why isn't known. The Mi Go haven't been spotted as thier enter and exiting the Beyond. Alien races have made contact with humanity but it's a relationship still in it's infancy. Indivduals however may have close friend

There's two deep Oort Cloud mining science facilities near the center of the cloud. And there's twenty personel on board. There used to be another but it went dark for unknown reasons.  Orbital Decay is it's own OSR animal. And a deadly one at that with new races, monsters, themes, random tables and more.  an offworlder high-tech facility called Elysium.is now extending it's tenticles deep into Cha'alt.

The human race has no idea of the danger that thier in from Cha'alt!  There's already a demon worm cult within Avilidad  and the PC's have tangled with it but not destoryed it! Little do they realize the fact that the cult are regular visitors to Cha'alt. 

A 70's Sci fi Inspired Beta Max Black Stars Without Number Revised & Red Room's Decaying Orbit Campaign Notes - Saints, Gods, and Relics & Clerical Matters

 When it comes to clerics, it's easy to quickly dismiss the classic PC class. If the original Heavy Metal magazine had shown me anything it was the fact that clerics are warrior priests first and foremost. The role of the cleric is given a complete overhaul within Saints, Gods, and Relics from Night Owl Workshop

.

The role of cleric here is on point with the militant warrior priest of the Original Dungeons and Dragons rules. Here were given an OSR twist and this supplement  takes this PC class in a direction where and when that can be used with Stars Without Numbers and other Science Fantasy  games. Why?! Because Saints, Gods, and Relics revamps the cleric as follows:"

 if a character remains a believer in good standing, their faith means that the following changes apply when a cleric of the same god casts spells upon them: • Cure spells cast on them heal an extra +1 HP per die. However, cure spells cast by any other cleric heal at -1 per die. Reversed effects are unchanged. • The benefits of Bless and Prayer spells are doubled. • They have no saving throw to resist Quest spells cast by a cleric of the same god, but +3 to save against Quest spells cast by any other cleric. • Raise Dead, Restoration and Resurrection cast by a cleric of other than their patron god do not help you at all. • Reversed effects (Curse, Cause Light Wounds, Slay Living, etc.) are unaffected. • Also, if a character has the same patron god as an NPC cleric, the latter will typically offer a 50% discount on any normal charges imposed for cures, raising dead, commune, or similar divine favors, but may also occasionally be sent by their god to get you to do them favors in the interest of their faith. Players may wish to offer a similar discount. If a character reaches 9th or higher level whilst having a patron god, he or she may be assumed to have attracted the personal interest of that deity, who will be likely to try and use them in schemes to support the god’s interests..." 

  Let's say for a moment that Stars Without Number takes place in the same universe as Wretched New Flesh Post Cards From Aviladad. Mankind is just starting to crawl out from under the effects of the Scream. And it is open to all kinds of religions and cults taking it back to the masses. The role of the cleric becomes clearer. Now we're probably thinking that the role of clerics has been talked about to death before. What if the cleric's order is also the provider of culture for many of these interstellar colonies. The cleric is trained to be warrior, counsel, and giver of both religion as well as culture. This of course is in addition to fighting against the blackness of the vile darkness thier rolls become that much clearer. Again this goes right back to the warrior cleric of original Dungeons and Dragons. 
And these styles of cleric's roles would not be out of character for Warriors of the Red Planet. 

The cleric becomes the plug and play warrior missionary on the post apocalpytic  red  planet. Why? Because the colonist on Mars need all of the help they can rebuilding. And the whole planet is ripe for exploitation by the forces of darkness. 
And that alieness of the Outer Darkness is something we see play out again and again the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Clark Ashton Smith, H.G. Wells and many others. 
The roles of warrior priest should never be underestimated and the resolve of such characters is something that will and should come into play during old school or OSR campaigns. 
Clerics are also the arm of darkness as well as those as light. And this means that clerics of the gods of darkness  can cause all kinds of havoc. 
The forces of light must always be on guard and Saints, Gods, and Relics can be augmented with the spells of Trails and Tails Games Faith is My Weapon. 

Tonight my mind was on the cultclassic film Krull. The idea that the 'backward' world of Krull might in point of fact have been a failed interstellar colony in the ancient past. And that it might have been destined to rejoin the interstellar scene once the hero and heroine's son grew to manhood. Makes me think about the idea of the cleric trail blazer leading worlds back from the darkness of technological de- evolution into the light of interstellar FTL flight. 

A 70's Sci fi Inspired Beta Max Black Stars Without Number Revised & Red Room's Decaying Orbit Campaign Notes - Matters of Magick & Loathsome Horrors

 We're just getting back from grocery shopping and at the grocery store I ran into one of my players of our regular games. And she and her husband wanted to know how the Stars Without Number/Decaying Orbit game campaign  was going. 

Anyone whose been paying  attention to this blog knows that when your 'the forever DM' there are only so many hours in the day. 
And the last time we talked we were bringing back the post apocalytic Mars campaign.
What I didn't realize was the fact that Night Owl Workshop has created “Beasties Loathsome Horrors,”.
And I wasn't even aware that this monster book even  was out! 
And “Beasties Loathsome Horrors,” fits  the Stars Without Number/Decaying Orbit vibe so damn well! 
Horrors, weird creatures, etc could easily be found in the Beyond or on a post apocalyptic Mars.What does it mean though?! 
For those who have Warriors of the Red Planet this book gives new teeth to the wizards of the Black Gate some brand new teeth. 

And for the Stars Without Number rpg crowd it means that we have a huge number of horrors that can be added into the mix for  The Codex of the Black Sun: Sorcery for Stars Without Number's wizards and magic wielders even more options or problems. For a post apocalpytic Mars game this really does turn the tied a bit. The NPC races and wizards now have even more horrors to add to the PC's fortunes or is it misfortunes?! 
There are certain nation states  of Mars who supposedly practiced the blackest of magicks. And this lines up right with some of what Clark Ashton Smith wrote in his Mars cycle. It also lines up with some of what the PC's have been doing in Aviladad. 

A 70's Sci fi Inspired Beta Max Black Stars Without Number Revised & Red Room's Decaying Orbit Campaign Notes- The Solar Sagas Option

 So the otherday we were screwing around with Stars Without Number & Orbital Decay from the Red Room. And it got me thinking about an old mini came that we ran using Worlds without Number & this blog entry is going to pick right up from here. 

Imagine if you will that there's a far future Earth and it's inhabitants are a hivemind actively trying to prevent thier timeline from being destroyed. Now imagine that this is a classic 1950's saucer style set of Grey invaders. And this alien hive mind is desparate to do anything to prevent itself from being earsed from history. And this lines up with ATTACK SQUADRON: ROSWELL from Zozer Games which  uses the Mongoose Traveller RPG engine. Now imagine that there's a whole urban Hellscape that our party has been fighting across for decades as a rebel unit of adventurers. They've been fighting the forces of darkness across various alternative Earth timelines and the Beyond.

And one of the things that I love about Kevin Crawford's design and writing work is how adaptable the rpg systems are. And last night I was reading through the rpg pub's forums when I came across this thread and it was something that member Stable Wyvern had written that made me pursue this;"I picked up SWN because Kevin Crawford, plus I was running a Traveller game at the time and thought I might find something useful in it. I didn't end up using anything then, but I did recently convert the SWN psionics system to Mythras as part of my Dark Sun Mythras conversion."

"I picked up WWN because Kevin Crawford, plus I am running an ACKS game at the moment, and tend to run fantasy in general, and was sure I'd find something useful in it. So far, I have used some of the generation tools for fleshing out some of the regional politics in my ACKS world, as well as using some of the ideas from the magic items to inform my own items."

If I wasn't planning to run Dark Sun with Mythras, I'd almost certainly do a conversion to WWN instead."

Also, yes, prima facie, SWN is OSR D&D + Traveller."

So basically you've got adventurers on alien worlds who have been fighting balls deep against Greys and other monsters while grabbing artifacts and ruined technologies from a million worlds. 

And if you think that this can't be a long term sustainable campaign then your dead wrong. Zonetec from Avilidad is not only aware of this timeline but has advisors in the mix.

And this comes down to the fact that the 'Invaders' are a cancer across the planes. And yes we've run a varaiton of this campaign years ago with Stella Gemma publishing's These Stars Are Ours campaign setting. The Reticulans of that setting's royals and rulers are 'the invaders' those infected with the parasitic entities that enslaved the Terrans within that timeline. 
There's a lot more going on below the surface then most folks know. 
We're going to be sticking with Stars Without Number if possible.  Why Stars Without Number? There's an excellent series of videos Legion of Myth did  on the  Stars Without Number.rpg  

We don't want to add to many rpg irons in the fire but Solar Sagas is another excellent rpg resource for this campaign. 

A 70's Sci fi Inspired Beta Max Black Stars Without Number Revised & Red Room's Decaying Orbit Campaign Notes - The Center Cannot Hold

Tonight it poured as thunder and lightning played outside meanwhile the Stars Without Number rpg found it's way into my hands again. And over the course of reading I started thinking about revamping our 'Post Apocalpytic Mars' game. The one we did used a combination of Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu, Worlds Without Number, Warriors of the Red Planet, and a healthy dose of public domain Barsoom. 

Our version of Mars wasn't a peaceful place at all but instead a burnt up ruin of a planet where the player's PC's were on a mission to get off planet. We had PC's literally crawling across radioactive Sarmak walkers & mecha ruins to grab any power and psi crystals they could. 
Eventually the player's PC's made it off planet and then the real fun began with the PC's dealing with the crawls across the galaxy. Mars was thier home base and they returned back it time and again. 
But why Stars Without Number? There's an excellent series of videos Legion of Myth did  on the  Stars Without Number.rpg  
Angry Golem Games also did an excellent series of supplemental books for Revised Stars Without Number here. 
And it's this alien dungeon asthetic that suits the mood here. And this plugs back into the dungeons of yore. Exploring the bowels of weird planar craft and ancient alien ruins. 

It's this 70's Science Fantasy  spirit that flows into our game campaigns. The Red Room's Decaying Orbit  fits deeply into this OSR combination by being another part of this OSR puzzle campaign. 

Decaying Orbit fits the asthetic of this campaign idea and it's been one I've been working on for the last two months. What Decaying Obrit brings to the table top is that 70's Science Fiction vibe with the usual Red Room twist! And in this case it's Wretched New Flesh Post Cards From Avilidad 
And it's the horror factor that twists it back to B/X Dungeons & Dragons. 
The idea of exploring ancient ruins and point crawls into the bowels of the ancient alien dungeons. And given some of the history that we see in Stars Without Number Revised there's reasons why Lovecraftian horrors and the like are oozing through the cracks of reality. 

The Sanity Erodes - Sine Nomine Publishing's Cities Without Number rpg & The Red Room's Orbital Decay -The Expert D&D Connection - The Caecilia

 Call it nostaglia or simply the fact that a friend of mine suggested that I go back to the Expert set of TSR Dungeons & Dragons for some monster inspiration. What I found however was something horrifying and I thought I'd share. 

We've been looking back through the B/X Dungeons & Dragons expert set today. Why?! Because there were a lot of monsters unique to this set. And we've been looking into these unique monsters for something a bit different and unexpected for our - Sine Nomine Publishing's Cities Without Number rpg & The Red Room's Orbital Decay campaign.  The idea here is that each time the Beyond touches our reality it leaves behind a bit of itself and corruption. And one monster that leaped out immediately is the Caecilia. Which according to the Expert set's stats go something like this; "Caecilia Armor Class: Hit Dice: Move: Attacks: Damage: 6 6* 60' (20') lbite 1-8 No. Appearing: Save As: Morale: Treasure Type: Alignment: 1-3 (1-3) Fighter: 3 9 B Neutral These giant gray wormlike creatures are about 30' long. They attack with their cavernous mouths and sharp teeth. An unadjusted "to hit" roll of 19 or 20 means that they have swallowed their prey whole. The victim will take 1-8 points of damage each round after that until either the victim or the caecilia is dead. Any attack from inside a caecilia may only be made with a dagger, and with a penalty of -4 on "to hit" rolls." 
And then I ran across Al's take from the Beyond The Black Gate blog from 2011 here; 
"Caecilia

AC 6[13]
HD 6
Atk Bite (1d8)
Special Swallow whole
Move 15(Crawl or Dig)
Save 10 (Fighter5)
No. Appearing 1d3
Morale 9
AL N
Treasure Type B
These 30' long, slimy, gray worms are voracious predators, often lurking just behind dungeon walls, floors, or ceilings (or spongy wilderness earth) and waiting for the vibrations of passing prey to bring them forth. Their toothy maws can swollow up anything horse-sized or smaller on a natural roll of 19-20. Swallowed victims are largely helply helpless and suffer 1d8 points of damage per round until dead, though they may attack with a small weapon such as a knife or dagger (at -4 to-hit). A faint scent, reminiscent of cinnamon and ozone, may linger in caecilia hunting grounds, warning savvy dungeoneers of their possible presence. The tooth of a Caecilia is rumored to enhance spells of an earthy nature." 

Now what's interesting about this is the fact that neither entry counterdicts the other. These could actually be merely different species or life stages of the same alien monsters from The Beyond. For our own Hudson River  City game the Caecilia are alien horrors that lurk around whenever a magus has been dallying to much with the Beyond. The Caecilia are corrupted lifelorms that have close ties to cults that use a form of unearthly Lovecraftian magic and they have ties to Bholes within our campaigns. The Caecilia are found wherever blood and magick have been spilt in the name of the Old Gods. 

The  Caecilia manifest whenever a gateway to the Beyond is found. They begin to grow and adapt to our reality very quickly. They hunger for the life and flesh of Earthly life. Any Earthly life that they can find is far game to these monsters. These horrors are fast multiplying branching off 1d6 worm spawn once they find a suitable food source. They are not only tolerated but actively summoned by wizards and occultists because of the fact that they actively sweat a gold like compound or  substance. They leave this behind along with a calcium like depoisit from thier feedings. This 'treasure' like substance is 99.9 % pure gold but is found in a matrice of human bone or animal calcuim as a waste product. 
The  Caecilia are also drawn to feed on psionic energies and so will seek out the flesh of psychics or shamans to feed upon.  This happens numerous times across the stars as the wizard or pychic opens the wrong doors. And instantly regrets it. 
In the Beyond there are often found  'Caecilia pits' places of thousands or millions of the monsters writhing together in obscene displays of inverted psycho sexual energies. The  'Caecilia pits' are the source of immense occult powers and are found in the wastelands of the side time Atomic War wastelands.  'Caecilia pits' beam occult power to the Lovecraftian gods & demons of inner reaches of the qlippoth.

Recently we had an encounter deep in the wastelands of  our Wretched Apocalypse game with a  'Caecilia pit' but it was merely a 10 mile across pit filled with tentacles. The players had no idea what it was after leaving the scene. Actually neither did I but now?! Yeah it was  a  'Caecilia pit' & there were rumors about Lovecraftian horrors after the players encountered an old mutant fortune teller in 

Apocalyptic Territories: Wasted Americana. 

The Sanity Erodes - - Sine Nomine Publishing's Cities Without Number rpg & The Red Room's Orbital Decay

 Over the weekend I got together with a fellow gamer Paul, who reminded me of the fact that we were due to play a Silent Legions Rpg  Phantasm campaign. Then our mutual friend Steve passed & that fell by the wayside. And over the weekend I found those campaign notes. What's interesting is that at the time I had taken the Phantasm gates of the Tall Man to lead into a whole cloth Stars Without Numbers sector. Different gates led to different time periods then the Tall Man sorta fades into the background.This blog post is going to links back up with this post here.  


 I agree with Martin Ralya's Silent Legions comments from the Rpg Geek site; "I like Silent Legions, but I wanted to like it more than I do. It has all of the hallmarks of a Sine Nomine book: clear writing, lots of tools for your sandbox, fun bits to play with.But there's less "faction move" stuff than I was hoping for, and considerably more adventure prep than I wanted -- I wanted zero session prep. Seeding the sandbox with adventures I have to write ahead of time is a dealbreaker.I wanted a Lovecraftian sandbox, and all the other Sine Nomine books I own delivered sandboxes, so it came as a surprise that this one is a sandbox full of plotted adventures. That's weak sauce."

"I guess the alternative is seeding it with Call of Cthulhu modules, but then I might as well just play Call of Cthulhu. Which would be shame, because I like the house system here, particularly for its deadly combat. I've played SWN, and it's a breeze in play; Silent Legions looks just as good."

Going over these campaign  notes I can see where Silent Legion hooks into Stars Without Numbers. Now with the Red Room's the Wretched New Flesh Postcards for Aviladad rpg on the scene I can really see this taking off. Especially if with a us of a combination of Wretched Darkness & the  Orbital Decay rpg setting book. as I stated last time, " Our own campaign is going to take place on the meanstreets of a cyberpunk backwater city. The megacorporations are starting to explore nearby alternative realities and dimensions. And the leap frogging in occult/high technologies are allowing humanity to gain contacts with outside forces that could  easily potentially wreck humanity. " 

Right so according to my notes the PC's encounter the undead of the Tall Man within our campaign city and then the time space gates. And accordingly they run into the back alleys of Avilidad via Fish Wives Games Cyber City Block 001 & finds Switchblade City 01: Randy's Pool Hall (Modern Generic).

The idea here was to start the pool hall & make the NPC  patrons a bit more cybernetic or what not with Stars Without Number. Now that  Cities Without Number rpg book is on the scene it's quite easy that we're going to bring things to a far more sinister direction. 
That being said I really love the monsters within the Wretched New Flesh Postcards for Aviladad rpg. 
So according to our notes there really are other forces at work within the city. The alien realms are starting to encroach upon this reality. 

Go down the wrong alley and you could end up not coming back at all. But this also leads into the fact of why I chose the pool hall as the central starting point for this campaign. 
One is the familarity of my own childhood having grown up around pool halls as a kid. And the sorts of scum that we find within a not typical Cyberpunk bio/cybernetic horror campaigns. 

Starting on a smaller scale allows the DM to scale the encounters to the PC's. This is after all an OSR game. Out of time and out of place means that the forces of outside are primed to exploit the PC's in many and possibly horrific ways. 

Cracks In The Plaster of Reality - Sine Nomine Publishing's Cities Without Number rpg & The Red Room's Orbital Decay

 So over the last couple of months I've been following the steady progress of writer/designer Kevin Crawford and Sine Nomine Publishing's progress on  the cyberpunk RPG Cities Without Number rpg book. He's been taking it through various incarnations & changes with little fanfare but a lot of fan or player input. But a recent post by Twitter buddy Redshift has me thinking that perhaps there's been a misstep on my part. Red Shift suggests using the Red Room's the Wretched New Flesh Postcards for Aviladad rpg combined with  the cyberpunk RPG Cities Without Number rpg book. As for myself I remain skeptical & instead with use a combination of Wretched Darkness & Orbital Decay rpg setting book.

'Why Orbital Decay?!' The whole reason is in the tag line on Orbital Decay;"Building upon the surreal and nightmarish world of Avalidad, Orbital Decay explores the depths of human ambition, desperation, and depravity as we venture beyond Earth’s atmosphere, establishing orbital stations and colonies on other planets within the solar system. This setting draws heavy inspiration from iconic films such as Alien, Aliens, Outland, Escape from New York, Stalker, Solaris, Event Horizon, and Pandorum, expertly weaving themes of isolation, claustrophobia, desperation, fear, and horror into the fabric of its narrative. As humanity reaches for the stars""
Now we've done a lot with the Invisible College rpg and the Red Room's the Wretched New Flesh Postcards for Aviladad rpg. And that's fine those world grinding occult conspiracies are going to come home to roost later on. Our own campaign is going to take place on the meanstreets of a cyberpunk backwater city. The megacorporations are starting to explore nearby alternative realities and dimensions. And the leap frogging in occult/high technologies are allowing humanity to gain contacts with outside forces that could  easily potentially wreck humanity. 

The vigilantes of Hawlett City are a part of this campaign acting as muscle against the forces of darkness and the supernatural. The real issue here comes from the occult realms that are invading Earth from the alien Hells from the outside. Ancient demons and Lovecraftian entities have been shut out of  humanities world eons ago. Now they've returned for better or worse and the warzones are heating up. 
Time is collapsing and even humanity's past or side time isn't safe. Adventurers from  Wretched Époque maybe be visiting the mean and alien streets of our campaigns. 

Weird aliens, strange gods and dark forces along with thier worshippers could be trading bullets in the dark alleys of our upcoming campaign. 
How is this a different campaign then say 2d6 Hostile rpg that we currently run. There are a number of ways and these include the fact that many of these rpg  concepts are going to come from folklore, the occult, and more. More Coming Up! 

OSR Review & Commentary On Red Room's Orbital Decay Rpg Supplement For The Wretched New Flesh Post Cards From Aviladad and The Rest of The Wretchedverse rpg Games

 "Building upon the surreal and nightmarish world of Avalidad, Orbital Decay explores the depths of human ambition, desperation, and depravity as we venture beyond Earth’s atmosphere, establishing orbital stations and colonies on other planets within the solar system. This setting draws heavy inspiration from iconic films such as Alien, Aliens, Outland, Escape from New York, Stalker, Solaris, Event Horizon, and Pandorum, expertly weaving themes of isolation, claustrophobia, desperation, fear, and horror into the fabric of its narrative. As humanity reaches for the stars"

Orbital Decay is one book that is absolutely essential book for the Wretched New Flesh Postcards for Aviladad rpg. And it's no wonder because Orbital Decay plugs deeply into the Eighties & Nineties Sci Fi and Sci Fantasy Horror films and books; "Orbital Decay - RELEASED (digital format at the Red Room Store and BGE, print on demand coming to Lulu in a couple of weeks)

Wretched New Flesh: Orbital Decay is a gritty industrial science-fiction setting that can be used as standalone, though it is primarily meant to be an expansion to the dark and twisted universe of Wretched New Flesh (160 pages)."  Is Orbital Decay any good? In a word oh yes! Why?! Because it crosses a line even more important then the Wretched Space Rpg. Let me explain. In  the Wretched New Flesh Post Cards from Aviladad rpg we're given this cutting scapel edge of the future or is an alternative Earth? And told about mankind's ascent into space with a host of horrors and Lovecraftian adventure plot points. And we see a great deal of that within 'The Wretched Space Rpg'. But 'The Wretched Space rpg implies that it's situations happen out there in the reaches of interstellar space. 
Orbital Decay brings that Lovecraftian promise home to roost and brings it right into your party's lap for better or worse. And knowing the fact that Orbital Decay plugs into the themes of Wretched New Flesh Postcards from Aviladad makes the themes of Orbital Decay work even better. And while it is set within the Wretched New Flesh Postcards universe Orbital Decay is it's own OSR animal. And a deadly one at that with new races, monsters, themes, random tables and more. 

Orbital Decay takes the themes of the Red Room Wretched universe & it does an excellent job of taking the themes of Wretched New Flesh and moving them into the realms of space. 

Want to salvage wrecked space craft? We've got you covered. Want to do a wretched bug hunt? We've got you covered. 

Orbital Decay does an excellent job of hitting the high points of both regular, Cronenberg, and Lovecraftian interstellar horror all in one nice and neat OSR tightly packed interstellar rpg package. Why do I say this because Orbital Decay pairs so well with the rest of the Wretchedverse rpg products and it slots nicely into the niche that the Red Room has created for itself over the last year or so. I hope to see more installments within the confines of Orbital Decay including new minions, alien races, etc. Pick Orbital Decay if you want to expand and entertain your Wretchedverse players with new PC o options, enhancements, aliens, foes, and more.