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Forward!

While Nefertiti Overdrive didn’t fund, I’m pretty sure I’m not just going to let it lie. I love this game. I love the experience around the table. I want to get this out there to people who got excited over it only to watch it die. So, no promises, but I am definitely exploring ways to pursue a release of Nefertiti Overdrive.

But very soon my home group in Ottawa will be completing the Nefertiti Overdrive campaign and we will be moving on to something else. I hope that this will be something that I might also be able to crowd-fund, but that’s getting a few steps ahead.

Right now, my group is mulling over the three options I offered. Those options only have working titles, and they are all more or less mash-ups, kind of like Nefertiti Overdrive was a mash-up of sword & sandal and wire-fu.

The three options are:

1) The Free Lances: the Black Company meets Shogun – the PCs are the foreign bodyguards of the Necromancer Queen who need to protect her from her husband, returning from the grave and siphoning off her powers.

2) A Team of Losers: the recent A-Team movie and the Losers comics meets Supernatural – the PCs are a spec ops force conducting foreign internal defence in the Central Asian Republic of Albenistan when everything gets all paranormal.

3) Starship Commandos: Heinlein’s Starship Troopers meets Aliens – the PCs are Colonial Rangers, tip of the spear light infantry utilizing the state-of-the-art powered armour known as Harnesses, sent down to the planet of Logan’s Cross which has unexpectedly gone completely dark.

I’ll let you know which one my group picks. You never know, I might have plans for the others games as well.

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Direct Action: OP GRANGE – Sitrep

Tactical Air Control by IMKThis is a continuation of OP NOMOS. On completion of the mission related previously, the SRD are recalled to Niamey, the capital of Niger. They haven’t had a chance to sleep, and food gets shovelled in while they are briefed by LCol Nick Adams, the OP NOMOS liaison officer embedded in US Joint Special Operations Command. The SRD are being sent to Conakry, the capital of the Republic of Guinea. While Canada’s JTF-2 are en route, they will not be arriving for at least 24 hours. The SRD have the skill sets to undertake OP GRANGE.

BRIEFING SRD110513-A01
111324Z May 13

REPUBLIC OF GUINEA
CONAKRY

A Canadian diplomat is missing in Conakry, the capital of the Republic of Guinea, presently the site of both an army mutiny and violent civil protests.

On 3 May 13, the army transferred several units from the Kindia military region to the Alpha Yaya Army Base in Conakry for election security, including three companies of BATA, the parachute regiment (Bataillon autonome des troupes aéroportées). SIGINT indicates the presidency did not request this redeployment and President Alpha Condé expressed concern to an unidentified male regarding the arrival of BATA in the capital.

On 5 May 13, President Condé announced a further delay in legislative elections originally set for 8 Jul 12. Canada’s Ambassador to Guinea, Matthew la Pointe (Dakar), arrived in Conakry on 7 May 13 as part of a UN-sponsored diplomatic intervention in order to accelerate the election process, known as the Assistance Committee for Guinean Elections.

Violent street demonstrations erupted on 10 May 13, protesting the latest election delay. Canada’s participation in the Assistance Committee ended and Ottawa directed Ambassador la Pointe to return to the embassy in Dakar, Senegal. As the ambassador was unable to acquire a seat on a commercial airline, Canada requested assistance from allies, and Germany agreed to fly the ambassador out on a military flight that would be removing all non-essential personnel from the German embassy.

The detonation of an improvised explosive device near the presidential palace on 11 May 13 led the presidency to declare martial law, and the ordered army units – including BATA – to enforce a 1900L curfew.

BATA mutinied at 111330L (1030Z) May 13, capturing parts of the airport. Lacking air traffic control, and with BATA engaging in gun battles with regular army forces at the airport, the German military aircraft on which Ambassador la Pointe was to leave was unable to land. Contact with German authorities indicates the ambassador did not arrive at the airport. There has been no further contact with him.

Canada has agreed to assist in an ad hoc international force to secure the airport and allow non-combatant evacuation operations. The German Bundeswehr has command of this force, and participating countries include Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.

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Direct Action: OP NOMOS – Setting the Scene

As promised, I’m going to provide here the notes I use to run the development games for Direct Action: the Quiet Professionals, an RPG of special operations covert action. The technical aspects of the game should be easy enough to adapt, and the notes themselves should provide some level of inspiration for any spec ops-style game.

In this post, I’ll outline the very first adventure, which for my crew lasted a session. The only map I had was one copied from Google Maps of the desert in the west of Niger. Pick a spot, zoom in, Print Screen, paste in Photoshop or Gimp, and crop to get rid of the Google tools. You can’t get rid of the Google watermark, but hopefully your players will be considerate enough not to deride your efforts. If they complain, have them pay for a commercial satellite account from which you can get pristine maps.

The stats for the opposition will come in the next post. For now, here’s the situating information for OP NOMOS, an adventure in Niger.

OP NOMOS
This is a hot opening for the campaign. The PCs are part of the Special Reconnaissance Detachment. In the development game, this is part of Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, though in your game it can be part of the spec ops command of your country or the country you choose. Canadian operations include a name with the first letter from the country in which they occur. Because this opening takes place in Niger, we’re calling it OP NOMOS.

Sniper by Dean MartinPlease note, this is all fictional. While there is a CANSOFCOM, there is no SRD. The situation is as realistic as possible, however the characters, the situation in Niger, and the specific terrorists are all fake. This is a game that is inspired by the headlines, but has no basis in reality whatshowever.

In OP NOMOS, the SRD is in the west of Niger, hunting Tuareg rebels in support of Task Force 22, a combined Delta – SEAL force. The PCs are in place as overwatch of a weapons smuggling waypoint in advance of a planned night-time incursion. The camp consists of about twenty tents and twelve vehicles. (GM’s note: I had no map to work from, just quickly hand-drew a map centred on an open area with the armed vehicles on the exterior and the unarmed vehicles on the interior)

This camp has been targeted because the cellphone of Ismail Mohammed, an extremist with ties to AQIM, was tracked to this location five days ago. Last night, his voice was confirmed on a Thuraya satphone call by the NSA, tracked to within 5 km of this location. No other camp has been identified in that zone.

There are eight technicals – five land cruisers with Dushkas on the back, two with SPG-9 73mm recoilless rifles, and one with what looks like an adapted B-8V20 helicopter rocket pod loaded with 20 80mm S-8 air to ground rockets – along with four transport trucks that look like version of the GAZ-66 Soviet-era transporter.

(GM note: if you don’t know what these things are, Google them. I had images for technicals with Dushkas and recoilless rifles, though I could not find one with a rocket pod on it. There were stories of Libyan rebels attaching rocket pods to their technicals, which is totally insane, but these things happen. You may have trouble with a Google search of the Dushka. It’s slang for the DShK heavy machine gun, very common in Africa and the Middle East. There’s a Wikipedia page for DShK.)

The PCs have counted about thirty armed smugglers in the camp, mostly Tuareg. More importantly, they made a positive visual ID of Ismail Mohammed in the camp. The SEALs want him alive, and therefore the incursion. The raid is underway by 0000 (midnight), and the SRD will receive launch verification at 0003 local (0003L or 2303 Zulu, meaning Greenwich Mean Time, also known in NATO as Coordinated Universal Time or UTC – acronym from the French) Launch verification means there are five Blackhawks from the 160th SOAR in the air with a platoon of SEALs and airborne sniper cells en route. ETA is two hours (0200L or 0100Z), when hopefully the camp will be quiet and the guards will be drunk or high.

The camp is quiet, as is usual. Let’s say the PCs have been on overwatch for at least 24 hours, and they are aware the camp pretty much dies down by 2200. At 0115 local, the PCs will notice headlights approaching along the track from the East. Three vehicles, moving relatively fast (around 50km), meaning more technicals.

The vehicles arrive in camp 0128 local, and the PCs will see three technicals, all of them sporting ZU-23 anti-aircraft artillery. There are approximately twelve new arrivals, all armed with AKs. They are unloading large crates, from the beds of the technical – each crate about two metres by a metre. The targets unload four. The arrival of the technical has awoken some of the residents and a small crowd forms by 0136. The PCs are likely too far away (safe distance would be about 1500m about 4920 feet or 1640 yards) to hear the opening of the crates, but one of the people in the crowd holds up an FN-6, a Chinese produced man-portable air-defence system (MANPADS).

One of the PCs should be an intel NCO or officer. That character can identify the leader of the new arrivals as Abu Hassan, a Mauritanian who led a cell of MUJAO near Kidal in Mali. He is a target of opportunity, and something the PCs should communicate back to command. It’s 0136/7, and command will reply almost immediately (0139) with an order to the SRD and the incoming SEALs to take Hassan alive.

The SRD is ordered to engage the anti-aircraft weapons before the Blackhawks arrive in range. That gives the SRD about 20 minutes to disable the ZU-23s and the FN-6s. How and when the SRD acts is up to them, but it is hoped that the planning started the moment they saw the ZU-23s on the technicals. If your players are not very conversant with the genre, upon identifying the AAA, it’s important that you tell them those will almost certainly need to be neutralized before the helos arrive.

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Directing the Action

Advancing through the foliage

With Centurion done, work must begin on a new product. Hit that iron while it is hot. Also, it’s become my natural state, even when I am not planning on releasing or Kickstarting something, I tend to be building or tweaking games for use with my current group.

One of the options is Direct Action: the Quiet Professionals (yes, my games do always have subtitles, it’s contractually mandated). This is a game of special operations forces and covert actions. Much of it would be familiar to anyone playing other SEP games like Sword Noir and Kiss My Axe, with Qualities such as Concept, Traits, and Elements, but in this case, measured in dice, and using a damage and stress scale cribbed from Marvel Super Heroes.

Characters are defined through Concept, Traits, Training, and Elements. Concept includes Niche and Service. Traits include Speed, Strength, Awareness, Acuity, and Personality. Training is divided into Training and Signature Weapon, and Elements are for all other Qualities.

Each Quality is rated from d6 to d12. If one does not have a Quality that applies to an action in task resolution, one can still use a d4. In order to resolve tasks in Direct Action, the player takes one dice from each category (Concept, Traits, Training, Elements), or – if the character has no applicable Quality – a d4. That means, in general, the player is rolling four dice.

Task resolution is opposed rolls. Everything that will oppose the PCs, including difficulties and NPCs, are called Challenges, and the four dice come from Difficulty, Threat, Environment, and Complexity. So, for example, a lone terrorist might have a difficulty of d6 (trained, but not well), a threat of d6 (spraying and praying with an AK), an environment of d6 (let’s say the terrorist is in a training camp which he knows well), and a complexity of d4 (only one dude, so pretty darn basic)

Of the four dice generally used for task resolution, one dice each must be applied to Initiative, Success and Effect. In general, two dice are used for Success. Initiative is based on die type first (d12 beats d10, which beats d8, etc.) and then on die result (a 7 on a d10 beats a 5 on a d10). Success is based on die result (so if the Challenge rolls a 6 on two dice, and the PC has an 8 on a d8, the player only needs to apply that d8 to win Success). Effect is based on die type, and if more than one die are applied, if they are within a single step of type (a d6 and a d8, a d8 and a d10, a d10 and a d12, etc.) the highest die type is increased one step.

That’s a general overview. I honestly don’t know if this will be a product that comes out any time soon. The main reason for this is that I don’t think its genre will appeal to people who backed Centurion. However, I will be releasing the material I’m using in my development sessions which should be at least somewhat useful to those running modern spec ops games.

Stay tuned over the few weeks for some of the documents I cooked up for OP GRANGE, in which Canada’s fictional Special Reconnaissance Detachment is called on to assist in the capture of the airport at Conakry, Guinea and to find a missing Canadian diplomat.

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Creating Centurion Adventures: People and Places

So we talked about how I generally come up with the situation in my one-page adventures. In our first playtest for Centurion: Legionaries of Rome (the Kickstarter is funded but help me make at least one stretch goal), I chose a Late Republic game set in Spain/Hispania. Here’s the Situation section:

In 156 BCE (one year before the Lusitani revolt which led to the Lusitanian War), the PCs are linked to a junior tribune in V Legio based in Corduba (modern Cordoba) under Proconsul L. Aurelius Orestes. An ex-legionary now merchant in the city has been paid off by a tribal leader among the Lusitani to sell poisoned food to the Romans. At the outset, no one knows how the men are dying, but sickness is rampant and a plague is suspected. The tribune is ordered to investigate, and he turns to the PCs to find out what is going on.

The second part of my one-pager format is Places. This section refers to a couple of interesting sites that the action should take place in or around. One of the places I chose is right there in the Situation: Corduba – New Carthage. We know the place as Cordoba, and it continued to be an important part of Spanish history, so I thought it would be fun to set the adventure there, in a city that had a couple of thousand years of intrigue and political machinations in its future.

Generally, the Places in a one-pager have a hook that links them into the adventure, but both Places in the original playtest were more about general setting than special encounters or action. For Corduba, I wrote:

Corduba – capital of Hispania Ulterior (Far Hispania). As with most provincial capitals, this town has been laid out like a legion camp, so it has east-west and north-south roads, along with an earthen wall topped with a wood palisade. It exists beside the far less organized and geometric Iberian town founded by Hamilcar Barca in the late 3rd century BCE as Kartjuba. Two legions are present in Corduba under the proconsul.

Again, this is pretty much cribbed straight from Wikipedia. There wasn’t a whole heck of a lot of research that went into it. Maybe that too much of a glimpse of the sausage getting made, but I’m being honest here – historical gaming doesn’t need to be that difficult.

The second setting in Places was the province itself. I used these two in places mostly because I am not as conversant with this place and time in Roman history as I am with some others. I encapsulated what I thought was essential for my knowledge into a concise paragraph. It worked. It was all I needed.

Hispania Ulterior – Far Hispania is along the south-east and southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The province has been at peace since Carthage’s defeat in 201 BCE. Although the Celtiberian tribes within the province have been quiet, the Romans know that they have not been fully assimilated, and so the legions remain. Raiding into the province from the Celtiberian tribes along the borders, such as the Lusitani and the Vettones.

After Places, I have People. These are the major NPCs, good-guys and bad, that are going to help move the plot forward, or support the PCs as they do so. These characters are a mix of actual historical figures (most of the Celt Iberians) and totally made-up dudes whose names might not even be historically accurate (I’m not good at identifying in which period certain names were used).

I used the history of the time and the Lusitanian Rebellion to decide who I needed to move my conspiracy forward, then I tried to decide who in the legions the PCs might consult or interrogate. There was very little difference between what I do for any other game – from D&D to Covert Forces – and what I did here, other than having history as a backdrop and inspiration.

And an important thing that I learned is that historical names can be much, much worse than any consonant-riddled, constructed fantasy name.

Given all that, here’s the cast of characters I cooked up.

1. Quintus Cincius Salvius: A legionary who retired to Corduba. He had lost his farm after a stretch of six years in the legions, and that left him pretty bitter. He left behind a wife and children in Roman Italy. He now has a wife, Sicounin of the Turduli tribe of the Lusitani, and sister of Sosinbiuru, a Turduli war-leader.

2. Sosinbiuru: A war-leader among the Turduli tribe of the Lusitani, Sosinbiuru is an ally of Viriathus, the Lusitani leader creating a confederacy to fight Rome. Sosinbiuru has a camp on the western borders of Hispania Ulterior, and his confederate, Terkinos, maintains a rebel faction within Kartjuba.

3. Terkinos: A confederate of Sosinbiuru and a warrior of the Turduli, Terkinos is Susinbiuru’s contact with Quintus and Sicounin. He passes himself off as a grain merchant, which explains his regular contact with Quintus.

4. Titus Didius Iustus: The signifier (standard-bearer) of the 1 Centuria of V Legio, he acts as the senior commissary, and is the one who deals with Quintus for grain and other food.

5. Marcus Carvilius Narses: The medic for 1 Centuria in V Legio. He’s almost 50 (not absolutely certain of his age) and has seen a lot of action. He does not believe the sickness is a plague, but the symptoms are like poisoning.

6. Urcebas of the Turduli: Urcebas is the confederate of Tureno, Susinbiuru’s rival in the Turduli tribe. He is in Kartjuba to spy on Terkinos. If he can foil Terkinos without word getting back to Sosinbiuru, he’ll do it.

7. Korribilo of the Vasconnes. Kooibilio is the chieftain of the Vasconnes, a Celtiberian tribe allied to the Romans. He commands a forces of auxiliaries attached to V Legio. His warriors are known as exceptionally capable and professional.

And there you have it. That is the total of the one-pager that I used in the first playtest. I am comfortable creating on the fly, and I had some other resources with me to help me, including lists of names for the various cultures that were interacting – Roman, Celt-Iberian, and Carthaginian.

The time spent reading to create this one-pager helped to immerse me more deeply than the one page might indicate, so while the one-pager was my guide, I also had gained a lot of knowledge of the setting and events during the prep phase. You might want to print off some of the on-line resources you used (*cough* Wikipedia *cough*) or photocopy particularly helpful pages from a physical reference you might have used, highlighting important passages.

The prep was honestly not much more than I would do for a game of Sword Noir, and about on par for the prep in my Vikings campaign that led into the creation of Kiss My Axe, so don’t get intimidated with historical gaming. A lot of the work is already done for you!

Go support the Centurion: Legionaries of Rome Kickstarter campaign here.

Interested in the games mentioned in this post? Get your own copy of Covert Forces Redux, Sword Noir: a Role-Playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery, or Kiss My Axe: Thirteen Warriors and an Angel of Death at RPG Now.

For research, Wikipedia has got you covered.

You can see the first post, “Creating Centurion Adventures: the Situation”, here.

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Creating Centurion Adventures: the Situation

One of the things that’s going to be included in Centurion: Legionaries of Rome (please support the Kickstarter) is a discussion of building campaigns and adventures. It was a tough section to write, because it is something that comes naturally to me. I had to try to break it down in order to explain what I do. This article, in an edited form, will also appear in the game, because examples are a good way of teaching.

For the first playtest of the rules – for the one that I ran – I decided I wanted to run something in the earliest period covered in the book. That’s from the Second Punic War (which started around 218 BC) to the rise of Gaius Marius (who gained his first consulship in 107 BC). I didn’t want to run a campaign during an actual, full-on war, so that excluded the Second and Third Punic Wars. I knew that after the Third Punic War, Rome gained a kind of controlling interest in Spain, so I started reading about the Roman conquest of Spain.

Where did I read about this? Wikipedia, of course.

Wikipedia is the free and accessible version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. While it is not without errors, for prepping for a game, it’s accurate enough. Don’t use it for your term paper or master’s thesis, but if you are trying to brush up on a historical period, culture or concept for your game, it’s just about perfect.

And, of course, there’s a page devoted to the Roman Conquest of Hispania, along with plenty of side articles about different aspects of that conquest. It was here that I found out about the Lusitanian Rebellion (or the Lusitanian War, whichever you’d like to call it).

There were a lot of options at that point, and I basically broke down my interest into scouting, infiltration or conspiracy. Scouting would have the PCs scouting for Celt-Iberian forces at the outset of the rebellion. Infiltration would have the PCs attempting to infiltrate the Celt-Iberian forces. Conspiracy would have the PCs involved in uncovering a plot by the Celt-Iberian rebels before the rebellion takes off.

I went with this last one. I love a good conspiracy, and this could easily lead into the other two types of adventure I envisioned. Cracking the conspiracy could lead to infiltrating the enemy and when the war actually broke out, scouting out their forces.

I decided that the PCs would be part of a newly arrived legion, and they would uncover a plot by Celt-Iberian rebels to poison the legions. Almost all of the research I did was on the internet. Again, this isn’t for some kind of academic paper, it’s just for a game. If you get stuff wrong, it’s no big deal.

Usually, when I run a game, I do it using a one page document which can be either the entirety of the plan for the game, or an encapsulation of the key points. The one-pager starts with the situation. The information I gleaned from Wikipedia and cursory research on the internet, I came up with this situation:

In 156 BCE (one year before the Lusitani revolt which led to the Lusitanian War), the PCs are linked to a junior tribune in V Legio based in Corduba (modern Cordoba) under Proconsul L. Aurelius Orestes. An ex-legionary now merchant in the city has been paid off by a tribal leader among the Lusitani to sell poisoned food to the Romans. At the outset, no one knows how the men are dying, but sickness is rampant and a plague is suspected. The tribune is ordered to investigate, and he turns to the PCs to find out what is going on.

That’s the first part of the one-pager. I’ll get into the rest in the next article.

If you want to learn more about the Centurion Kickstarter, go here.

If you want to learn more about the Roman conquest of Spain, go here.

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Sword Noir One-Pager: Kiss MacGuffin Deadly

This one-pager probably works best if your PCs are Urban Cohorts in Everthorn–or otherwise representatives of some level of law enforcement or other organization that imposes order in some fashion, like the Knights Templar and Hospitaller in the Holy Lands during the crusades. If not actual “police,” the PCs could be something akin to private detectives–if the setting has them–or some other freelance troubleshooters (or gunslinger/dirty-knight errant like Caspan Trey in my story “For Simple Coin”). Given that the PCs are expected to assist an innocent, criminals might not be the best choice.

This one-pager is also short on locations as it is long on everything else. You can always re-cycle a cool location from one of the earlier one-pagers if necessary.

 

Kiss MacGuffin Deadly

Situation
An innocent—to whom the PCs are likely to react positively but whom they don’t know—secretly connected somehow to a powerful mage of ill repute from afar requests the PCs’ help. This innocent needs to deliver a package to an individual in Everthorn. This is a matter of life or death. In an ambush, the innocent is killed or abducted. Various factions vie for the package, which is actually an uncontrollable item of power that destroys all around it when released from its confines.

Plot Points
1. The innocent does not have the package, but is receiving it from a trusted ship’s captain who travelled from afar. The innocent has a note to the captain to release the package to the bearer of the note. The innocent provides the note to the PCs once she secures their assistance. The innocent has a sense of impending doom.

2. The Evil Mastermind sends four mercenaries (possibly named Sucre, Xavier, Tang and Celeris) to get the innocent and the package. If the capture is unsuccessful, the crew are tasked with killing the innocent. The recovery of the package is a top priority.

3. When the PCs secure the package, there is a note included with it that it must be delivered to Al-Ansar or the Invisible Judge for safekeeping.

4. Just before the PCs make the delivery, the Evil Mastermind along with any surviving mercenaries and a total of eight toughs attack in an attempt to grab the package. The powerful mage of ill-repute, Skeleros, appears and joins in the struggle, attacking the strongest party first.

Location
1. Star’s Reach: The galleon of the Ship’s Captain. This is a large, fast vessel, able to cross oceans and perhaps introduce the PCs to entirely new settings.

Narrative Characters
1. The Innocent, plot initiator
Concept: Naïf (+2) Faculty: Engender trust (Cha, +2)
Phy 7; Agl 7; Wit 9; Cha 12; Wil 9

2. Mercenaries
Concept: Tough Guy (+4) Background: Street Hunter (+2)
Faculty: Rough housing (Phy, +4) Flaw: Unimaginative (-2)
Phy 15; Agl 9; Wit 7; Cha 9; Wil 7
Cracking Heads (Phy, +4); Powerhouse (Phy, +2)

3. The Ship’s Captain
Concept: Merchant Adventurer (+2) Faculty: Cold Read (Cha, +2)
Phy 7; Agl 9; Wit 9; Cha 12; Wil 7

4. Evil Mastermind
Concept: Underworld Spider (+2) Background: Arcanist (+2)
Faculty: Intimidation (Cha, +2) Flaw: Impatient (-2)
Phy 12; Agl 9; Wit 12; Cha 12; Wil 9
Fight Dirty (Phy, +4), Aggressive Negotiations (Cha, +2)

4. Skeleros, powerful mage of ill-repute from afar
Concept: Necromancer (+2) Background: Spurned Scholar (Wit, +2)
Faculty: the Arcane (Cha, +2) Flaw: Imperious (-2)
Phy 7; Agl 9; Wit 12; Cha 15; Wil 9
Arcane Quality – Water, Charm of the Grave (+4), Rain of Fear (+4)

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Operations Nearscape: an Osiris File

The DNA of an astronaut and naval aviator declared MIA in 2006 has been found in a fragment from the Tunguska event of 1908. Is the aviator alive? How could his DNA be involved in the explosion of the Tunguska event, 100 years earlier? Osiris is tasked with learning the answers to these questions.

Black projects, super-science, and conspiracies all play a part in Operation Nearscape.

This product is part of the Osiris Files series and is systemless. It is not a complete adventure, but is a “concept module,” providing ideas and inspiration built around a central conceit to help the GM build an adventure suited to the GM’s campaign.

You can find Operation Nearscape at RPG Now, along with the rest of our products.

The Osiris Files: Operation Nearscape was created as the first of a possible series of similar concept modules. If there is interest, the plot arc conceptualized for the Osiris Files will be released through a series of concept modules.

The Osiris Files series
The Osiris Files take place in a world right beside ours. Next door, or perhaps just down the block. People drive cars you would recognize, have jobs you would recognize, and eat food you would recognize. Somewhere, though, there is a shadow world. It might be a world of super spies, super humans, or magic. It might be a world of hidden monsters, ancient threats, or that which man was not meant to know.

The characters inhabit this shadow world. They may pose as accountants, or librarians, or electricians, but they are not. They are not butchers, bakers or candlestick makers. They are something different, something special, and something absolutely dangerous.

The Osiris Files are not adventures, they are concepts. Each operation provides briefing materials, background and ideas. All the material is systemless, and therefore can be used with any role-playing game system. The core of the adventure and its place in the campaign are left to the GM. There are no maps. There is no conclusion. While the concept provides possible conclusions and ideas as to what is happening, there is no set path to solving a problem. The Osiris Files only provide ideas.

This has been a long time coming (copyright on Nearscape is 2009, if that tells you anything). If this moves forward, it will only be if I get enough interest that I believe I can sell enough of each of the other 7 planned “concept modules” in the Osiris Files plot arc to motivate me to get it done. The writing for module two, Operation Savage, is complete. Let’s see if this pans out.

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Sword Noir One-Pager: The Lost

This one-pager only fits on a page with 10 pt font, but that’s fair, isn’t it? One thing I like about this one is that if the PCs are playing criminals, this is where they distinguish themselves from the scum. I talk about that a bit over at Sword’s Edge.

The Lost

Situation
Regher Gaunt, once an Urban Cohort, achieved something of note when he was drilled out of that corrupt organization for being too corrupt. He’s now a resident of the Gagerum, maybe the biggest slum in Everthorn, and an old enemy has taken the only thing that matters to him, his daughter. He almost got killed trying to get her back, and now he’s turned to the PCs as his only hope. Cut-Lip Caladis—who used to run with the gang known as the Fallen Ones—took the girl and has someone backing him up, a bunch of someones who almost killed Regher. Now Regher’s got nothing, no one to help him, and might not even live to see another morning. All he wants is his daughter safe.

Plot Points
1. Regher actually did his job when he put Cut-Lip to the oars for robbing and killing a family, but Cut-Lip holds a major grudge because this was one time when Regher couldn’t be bought. Regher knows Caladis is willing to kill children, so he’s desperate.

2. This is just sweet revenge for Caladis, who intends to sell the girl into slavery. He tried to interest the Fallen Ones, but only his previous association with them stopped them from gutting him. He’s gone too far. They didn’t stop him but they have no love for him. They know he’s on the way to the Pit.

3. Caladis indeed has Regher’s daughter, Lydia, at the Pit. He also has 8 hired goons led by Druxis, a mercenary.

Locations
1. The Aerie: The Fallen Ones congregate at an old watchtower that is now on the edge of the North Road, just on the outskirts of East Corners. It’s been modified and heightened so that it now climbs six stories up, and has a diameter of 20 metres at its base and 10 metres at its apex. Each floor serves a different purpose—tavern, gambling hall, brothel, and opium den—with the top two stories the headquarters of the Fallen Ones.

2. The Pit: Three kilometres north-east, off the North road, is an old quarry or mine or something. This is an illegal slave market that opens for one night during the full moon. The Pit is only the most recent location, as whenever the Urban Prefect learns of its location, he sends the Captain and his Whites to shut the place down.

Narrative Characters
1. Regher Gaunt, disgraced Urban Cohort
Concept: Loser (+2) Faculty: Tough Guy (Phy, +2)
Phy 12; Agl 9; Wit 7; Cha 7; Wil 9

2. Cut-Lip Caladis, holds a major grudge
Concept: SOB (+2) Faculty: Back Stabbing (Phy, +2)
Phy 12; Agl 9; Wit 9; Cha 7; Wil 7

3. Adreanna, leader of the Fallen Ones
Concept: Honourable Criminal (+2) Background: Kill My Way to the Top (+2)
Faculty: Drawing Blood (Agl, +2) Flaw: Tied to Oaths (-2)
Phy 9; Agl 15; Wit 12; Cha 12; Wil 9
Voice of Authority (Cha, +2), Sharpest of Blades (Agl, +2)

4. Druxis the merc
Concept: Mercenary (+2) Faculty: Swordsmanship (Phy, +2)
Phy 12; Agl 9; Wit 9; Cha 7; Wil 7

5. Hasault, runs the Pit
Concept: Flesh Merchant (+2) Faculty: Smell Weakness (Wit, +2)
Phy 9; Agl 9; Wit 12; Cha 7; Wil 7

/

Sword Noir One Pager: Layers

I talked a little bit about one-pagers over at Sword’s Edge. Here’s the first one-pager for Sword Noir, Layers. You can read the Sword’s Edge article here.

Situation
The criminal boss, Dugald the Lame, has brought the PCs into a major operation that he is planning, one that offers a massive pay-out. He won’t take no for an answer because he says the PCs are the best in the business—and if the PCs insist on saying no, that’s a whole other adventure. Just as the job/deal/whatever is going down, the Urban Cohorts swoop in to arrest everyone. As the PCs may (or may not) learn, Dugald sold them out. Under the guise of the Ghost Crow, he’s been selling anyone he doesn’t like to the Cohorts, getting their money and a free pass for his own operations.

Plot Points
1. Just before starting the job, the PCs recognize a crooked Urban Cohort named Vindiacos skulking around, trying to look non-descript with a big cloak covering his breastplate and weapons. This will hopefully clue them in that things are wonky. If they don’t figure it out, they are faced with double their numbers in Urban Cohorts who are—thankfully—out to arrest them rather than kill them.

2. Either information from the crooked Cohort or other resources lead the PCs to the Maze and Alisanos. He sells the information to the Cohorts, but it comes from the Ghost Crow, who seems to know almost everything about the Everthorn underworld. The Ghost Crow can only be found at his Sea Palace.

3. The Ghost Crow is well-protected by both Urban Cohorts and his own gang of cut-throats both at the launch to the Sea Palace, and on the Sea Palace as well. No one seems to know what the Ghost Crow looks like, or where on the Sea Palace he can be found.

Locations
1. The Maze: Likely in Gagerum or a similar slum, the Maze is a collection of tenements covering over three blocks that have been attached by walkways, additions, and extensions so that they form one giant building, but a building that is its own neighbourhood, inhabiting vertical as well as horizontal space. The Maze has merchants, taverns, inns, a cooper and even a blacksmith. It is run by the Cursed Crew.

2. The Sea Palace: This is a collection of barges, anchored outside the sea walls near the Tides. Buildings have been built on these barges and there are chain and board bridges between barges. There is a brothel, a casino, an opium den, and an inn and tavern. It is not open to anyone, and the Ghost Crow keeps invites to a minimum.

Narrative Characters
1. Duglad the Lame master of Right Banks/Ghost Crow, master of the Sea Palace
Concept: Ringleader (+2) Faculty: Deception (Wit, +2)
Phy 9; Agl 7; Wit 9; Cha 12; Wil 7

2. Vindiacos, Urban Cohort contact
Concept: Corrupt Cohort (+2) Faculty: Bringing the Pain (Phy, +2)
Phy 12; Agl 9; Wit7; Cha 7; Wil 9

3. Alisanos, purveyor of information
Concept: Underworld Merchant (+2) Background: Orphan of the Streets (+2)
Faculty: Connections (Cha, +2) Flaw: All that glitters (-2)
Phy 9; Agl 9; Wit 12; Cha 15; Wil 12
Sell you Anything (Cha, +2), Know It All (Wit, +2)

4. Requin, master of the Cursed Crew and Mayor of the Maze
Concept: Enforcer (+2) Faculty: the Blade (Phy, +2)
Phy 12; Agl 9; Wit 7; Cha 7; Wil 9