Double Post: Three Nights at Castle Fear and Shen-Yi: Sunslayer!

  Been neglecting to update on the blog so here's a double-post for two trifolds I made recently, along with some thoughts I had while making 'em!

Get them here!

 https://xiaofang64.itch.io/three-nights-at-castle-fear

 https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/572059/three-nights-at-castle-fear-for-fatherfog-0e

 https://xiaofang64.itch.io/shen-yi-sunslayer

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/570959/shen-yi-sunslayer-a-mothership-adventure 

 

Three Nights, Fairy Tales, and (for some reason) running Tier 4 D&D

 

When Fatherfog 0e dropped, I already had an adventure ready to write. I bashed out 3 Nights in about as many real world nights (not counting sprucing up, art and revisions). It's about a haunted castle full of weirdo undead, and a challenge to win the hand of a noble!

This is because, as it happens, I had already written it! My oldest D&D group are currently coming to the end of 6 years of play, with characters they've followed all the way from level 1 to 20. Our tier-4 campaign (which is 2 sessions from being over at time of writing!) is a bespoke, fairy-tale themed adventure called The Faerie's Last Tale.

The difficulties with running high level D&D have been documented to death, so I won't list them all here. But suffice to say, it's more a fairy-tale themed power fantasy. One quest in particular took inspiration from a lesser known Grimm tale and mouthful, The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was. And it was fun, but it wasn't scary.

As soon as I read through FF0e, I knew I had to convert the quest. An aspect of Fatherfog that I love, but which some people bounce off of, is the way it balanced horror with fairy-tale wackiness. One of my playtesters rolled a starting item that was an immortal fly that can't fly. How can you not love this stuff?! The Story of the Youth is a great example of this balance. It's full of deadly shadows and murderous undead, and yet it's also one of the funniest things I've ever read. My sincere hope is that TKG stays the course on this tone, because it has the potential to really distinguish Fatherfog as a product.

Shen-Yi, Action-Adventure, and Triptech 3

 

For the TripTech3 game jam, I tried something a little different, to mixed results. Shen-Yi is more action-horror, with world-ending stakes (a 3-faction terrorist consortium wants to blow up the sun!) and some clear inspirations from the likes of Star Wars and Aliens (with an s).

 

It's not typical Mothership fare, but it also woudn't work in a less deadly system. At least, I don't think so. Having playtested it a few times, the horror comes out in the deadliness of MoSh's core mechanics, the careful planning, and the inevitable gore-soaked, radiation-rich chaos of the final confrontation.

The other entries TT3 was a treasure trove, as usual, and some of my faves were:

• The Apotheosis Engine: a super creative adventure set on a barren planet with an artefact that brings imagination to life!
• Sol Incarnate: A moody ass race-against time vs. a sun cult, where THINGS hunt you in the dark! Has a tie-in with Shen-Yi!
• Seven Stars Remembered: (the #1 ranked title of the TT3 Jam!) a beautifully illustrated alien dungeon where you build a dice obelisk IRL!
• THE OLD DUST: a sci-fi menagerie/medical horror adventure with. (Also it's based on the legend of the moon goddess Chang'e, lover of the archer Hou-Yi that my adventure's based on!)
• SPACE BEND: Just a damn good body horror scenario where the main danger is getting WARPED out of shape!
   

 

 

FLATLINE for Mothership 1e + Thoughts on the TPK (A late, quick one!)

 

 https://xiaofang64.itch.io/flatline

 https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/562593/flatline-a-mothership-tpk-scenario

YOU DIED. AND THAT’S JUST THE BEGINNING.

...

Your last job went wrong. Everybody died. And then you woke up.

    The afterlife is a white-walled room with some suit who says he’s an “angel,” here to judge your “sins.” Is this Heaven? Hell? Or something worse?

        One thing’s for sure. In this galaxy, NOBODY RESTS IN PEACE

...
Flatline is a trifold sci-fi horror/mystery scenario designed for use with the Mothership RPG 1e (Tuesday Knight Games).

In Flatline, players start the adventure dead, and must discover the truth behind their resurrection. Flatline can be played as a one-shot mystery, or as a continuation of a campaign after a Total Party Kill (TPK)! Plus:

• Unique mechanics for playing a CYBERGHOST.
• A layered mystery; NPCs with conflicting agendas.
• New TECH for dealing with the undead

FLESH, DON’T FAIL ME NOW! (Release + Thoughts)

 

https://xiaofang64.itch.io/fdfmn

 Flesh, Don't Fail Me Now! is my entry into the Lean Green Zine! jam!

FDFMN is a splatstick, body-part-based narrative / journalling TTRPG. Players take the role of decomposing Zombies, seeking the mysterious Sanctuary. Dead as you are, a tiny glimmer of humanity still burns within.

Designed for 1-5 players and 1+ hours, FDFMN is about survival, memory, and FLESHING OUT the details. FDFMN can be played with a Gore Master (GM) who adjudicates the world, GM-Less or Solo.

You can get it now on itch, Pay What you Want! 

  

Brainy Thoughts, Bodily Thoughts

The key unique feature of FDFMN is its body-part based mechanics. Your body parts are your hit points and your stats, rather than a character's avatar and the statistics operating in different abstracted spaces.

 

I stuck on the zombie idea pretty early on, the process of writing was really just me stripping down RPG assumptions until I was left with what you see. 

 

The game is designed to be printed, cut up and ripped apart. Especially the character sheets!

 

The rest of this I'm going to write in a Q&A format, based on questions I imagine someone might ask about the game, but really I'm just adding details I couldn't end up fitting into the pamphlet.

 

You can survive without a brain?

You can survive if you're nothing more than a rotten old leg, hopping along! These aren't sci-fi/Romero zombies, they're more like mythic zombies, or whatever Thing from Addam's family is.

 

Okay but, you can have MEMORIES without a brain?

Sure! Think of it like muscle memory.

Why are brains and guts collapsed into one stat?

Initially I did have a separate "brain" or "intelligence" stat but it just didn't feel right. When you design a game's mechanics, you're communicating, however implicitly, the way you're supposed to play. And having a stat for intellect implies thinking is a big part of the game.

    By combining both features into "guts" I think it communicates better the type of creature you have become. You're driven by instinct to consume, not higher-order thought. The brain serves to direct the guts... to flesh!

 

But can the Zombies communicate with each other?

An interesting question for sure. For the sake of roleplay, I would say it's more interesting if they can. But it's also important that they can't communicate with humans. The game works on the assumption that there isn't any chance of peace between the two groups. So how do they talk?

    Perhaps they talk through untranslateable groaning. Maybe there's a pheremonal aspect to it. I also like the idea that there's perhaps some preternatural way that they can communicate their intentions to each other, some kind of latent zombie telepathy. Its always felt like zombies in films have this. How do they horde up so well? How do they know not to attack their fellows?

 

What were your inspirations?

Wow thanks for the great question, hypothetical person. Various old-school horror films with splattery sfx, but especially Braindead by Peter Jackson. As a kid I also had this weird zombie love-story comic, Fragile by Stefano Raffaele. Finally, one of my favourite games from childhood was PS1's Medievil, in which you play a skeleton whose body is falling apart. You could do things like rip off your own arm to use as a club. In the sequel you could put your head on a disembodied hand to have it walk around like a scout.

    If you like the comedy-gore-horror themes, I also wrote HEAD GAMES, a D&D 5e adventure about losing your head and becoming a pumpkinhead:

https://www.dmsguild.com/en/product/498748/head-games-a-hallowe-en-adventure-about-losing-your-head

 

The Ladder, a 48-Word Game About Money (And a long-winded version)

 

 I partook in a couple of little game jams this past week. First of them was the 48-word-game jam, for which my contribution was The Ladder. You can get the pretty version right here, for free:

https://xiaofang64.itch.io/the-ladder 

But since it's just 48 words, I can also reprint the whole thing, like so: 

MÖBIUS: BUILD YOUR JUNKER

 

MÖBIUS

Build Your Junker

MÖBIUS: D100 RIDE NAMES

 

MÖBIUS

D100 Ride Names

MÖBIUS: D100 RIDE ACCESSORIES

 

MÖBIUS

D100 Ride Accessories