Unfocused Thoughts on the Hell-Caverns

Hercules in the Hell-Caverns is one of the least-recounted tales of that hero

While it's unlikely that I'll seriously develop another megadungeon in the near future, I thought I would spend a bit more time thinking about what I would do withe the Hell-Caverns.  There are three reasons I decided to go with the Hell-Caverns instead of Old Jerah.  First, the Hell-Caverns are much closer to my normal aesthetic, and therefore if I ever decided to run them I would be much less likely to experience the Gamer ADD that often overcomes me when I run things that aren't pseudo-medieval dark fantasies.  Second, the Hell-Caverns model offers a bit more flexibility.  It's much easier to imagine pseudo-Babylonian ruins in a dungeon beneath a medieval milieu than it is to imagine gothic ruins in dungeon beneath a Babylonian milieu.  Finally it fits better with the implied setting of LotFP.  

Here are some unfocused thoughts:

• I'd probably place the dungeon near Conques since I have some familiarity with that region in the time period I wish to set the game.*
• Narbonne might also work.
• The wilderness around the caverns would mostly be populated with mundane encounters.  Robber knights, wolves, bandits, pilgrims, heretics, etc.
• I might do separate encounter tables for day and night, with some small chance of encounter creatures from the nearest dungeon entrance at night.
• Some of the upper dungeons will be the remnants of a monastery carved into the side of a mountain.
• The caverns contain a mixture of medieval, Greco-Roman, Atlantean, snake-men, and old ones ruins.  Generally the deeper you go the older, and therefore more alien, stuff gets but there are isolated nuggets of the weirder shit in the upper levels.
• I kinda picture this as the the Shaver Mystery during the Albigensian Crusade.  In other words: they'll be a shit-ton of heretics and morlocks.
• Some areas of the caverns are miles across and are essentially lost worlds with their own ecosystems.  These will usually just have dinosaurs or ice age megafauna, but sometimes they'll have weirder things too.
• I'd probably put more strange lights in the dungeon, rather than the pitch-blackness that clouds Nightwick Abbey.
• CAS's Averoigne is once again a big influence (as is his Hyperborean Cycle).  Much like the Averoigne stories, many of the menaces will be Mythos (Smythos?) in nature, but the characters -- or at least the NPCs -- will contextualize them as Abrahamic demons.
• If the Dark Country is my attempt to do Averoigne and Uz is my attempt to do Zothique then the Hell Caverns are all three of his big cycles pushed together.

That's it for now.  I'll possibly put up more later, but who knows?

Unfocused Thoughts After Skimming WFRP 1e

Today was the first day I was able to look over the new copy of WFRP 1e I got for $5 off of amazon.  I've only previously dealt with 2e -- which I love -- and I believe someone on G+ wanted me to say what I thought about 1e once I got it.  I've only skimmed it a bit at this point, so here are the things I noticed just flipping through the pages.

• Holy shit! This is awesome!
• There doesn't seem to be the same kind of unified mechanic that exists in 2e, which kind of saddens me.
• The monster list is much more robust than the one found in 2e's corebook.  
• Wait... WFRP rules for random encounters and treasure? I'm in love.  Does anyone know if they port over well to 2e?
• There's a lot of... stuff in here.
• The more I look at it, the angrier I get at my 2e book.  I think I like 2e's system better, but the amount of material in 1e makes 2e look like crippleware.
• The art ranges from mediocre to evocative, and I absolutely love the cover.
• There's a Jabberwock on the monster list.  I approve.
• There's also an entry for boars.  Some may find this boring, but boars are fucking mean.
• I like how the careers are divided up into types.  SBVD does this too, and I may make new tables for 2e that incorporate the materials from those two games.
• There is a certain irony in the fact that my copy of 1e is less beat up than my copy of 2e; however, since it's a softcover I doubt that will last long.
• There is a lot more info on the different states in the Old World.  It'll be interesting to read over Bretonnia to see how it's different.  From what I've heard, I think I'll enjoy the 2e version better.
• Alignment?!
• The organization seems a bit... off, but it's nowhere near as bad as the DMG.

That's it for now.  I'll make a more complete report after reading through it some more.

Unfocused Thoughts Riffing off Jeff's Saikaido Idea

Jeff of Gameblog fame has been posting has been posting about a campaign set in Japan since before I got a blog of my own.  He hasn't posted about it recently - the last one was late last year - so this isn't really prompted by anything, but I had some ideas about what I would do with a D&D/LotFP game set in historical Japan.

• I like his idea of using Onmyoji for Magic Users.  The fount of all knowledge (wikipedia) tells me that during the period his campaign would be set the Onmyoji had fallen out of favor due to the fact that they were associated with the now mostly powerless imperial court.  There is something to be done with this.
• Spirit Folk as children of the imperial line?  Aren't Elves and Magic Users automatically chaotic in LotFP - the system Jeff plans to use?
• Ok so let's taking those two things together, the emperor is the degenerate descendant of a Great Old One or similar entity and a bunch of humans.  His chief advisers, and all magic users in the campaign, are horrid magicians trained in arts that shatter mortal minds.  
• I want to emphasize the word degenerate in that last one.  I imagine that he's a far cry from his ancestors and is generally more interested in getting high and engaging in bizarre and petty amusements with the aforementioned advisers.
• I like Jeff's pick for the historical period, but I'm also tempted to set it during the Genpei War.  I suppose I might think about doing it during the Sengoku period, but I want to keep westerners out of the mix.
• What I would probably actually do is set it during the era right before the Genpei War, populating it with some of the same clans and historical figures, and then use the Oriental Adventures event tables to decide what happens politically.
• For rules I'd use LotFP with some bits - especially monsters - taken from OA and Ruins & Ronin.  I'll also likely be taking some things from the 3e version of OA which was/is my favorite book for 3e.  I really like the monster illustrations.
• If I set it during or around the Genpei War I would try to find a suitable spot somewhere far away from Kyoto to keep the war off camera.  It just needs to be there to explain why authorities don't intervene as much in player antics and to occasionally show up to burn down a village.  If I used the period he wants I'd also put it on Kyushu for the reasons he mentions.
• I'd use a lot of Japanese mythological monsters but I'd try to interpret them in the creepiest, most bizarre, and horribly cosmic ways possible.
• Social monsters will live in isolated, out of the way places and most encounters walking down a road or in a city will be with people.
• Unless it's at night.  Night is bad.
• Most people in the world only rarely see or interact with monsters.  That's something adventurers do.
• My very scant Appendix N: Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, the Lone Wolf and Cub Comics, and those Short & Shivery books I read as a kid.

There you have it.  This is probably one of those ideas that I'll never actually run, but the muse struck me so I scribbled this down.

On a related note: one of the first OSR games I ever ran was Mike D.'s Ruins & Ronin.

Unfocused Thoughts on Karse

Normally I do these posts for something I haven't developed as much as I have Karse, which I've posted about a few times, but I want to nail down some of the bigger picture stuff and think about how I would actually run it.

The name, I should note, comes from taking Sark and Gygaxifying it.  After hearing it said "Cars" by a number of blog readers I play online games with, I added the E to make it clear it rhymes with arse.  Apparently there is a place in the Forgotten Realms called that, but I haven't thought of a better name yet.

• Karse is made up of a set of islands - a largish main island shaped like southern Britain, smaller islands that are like a split off version of Wales and Cornwall, and an archipelago like the Heberdies stuck at the top.
• The main island is home to a fair number of towns and one city - the capital of Nindle.
• The area between these towns is sparsely populated moors and marsh or the occasional greenwood. 
• These between-spaces are the haunts of giants (leftovers from the first race to live on the islands), fairies and elves (the second race), the undead, and vicious bandits.
• In a crater lake north of Nindle there sits an island.  On that island are the ruins of Llamalot, the capital of Rutha the Unconquered who united the peoples of Karse long ago.  This acts as a large dungeon/ruincrawl for those who like that sort of game.
• Travel between towns is fraught even in the day time.  Visibility is rough due to the almost ever present mist which is only occasionally banished by the Sun, whose glare then blinds the Karslish eye unused to its presence. 
• The most famous giant roams the remains of the road between Nindle and the ruins of Llamalot.  His name is Headless Jack.  Once he had two heads, but Brutus, the son (or maybe father?) of Rutha took off one of the heads and now he roams the countryside mourning the loss of it.  If you hear his cries come from across the moors you'll get the shits.
• The idea, in case it was not clear before now, is to create a kind of spooky/miserable setting based on British folklore, folk songs, Arthurian Myth, Celtic Mythology, and filtering that through the World of Nightwick as already established.
• Other monsters include fomorians, linworms, nuckalavees, and any number of other British or Irish bugaboos.
• Social class would play a big part in town - where the gulf between the nobles and the peasantry is vast - but very little part in the misty wastes between them.
• Brian Froud and Alan Lee are major visual influences but you kinda have to imagine them with meth mouth.  The over all effect, I hope, will be something like a mix of Excalibur, Jabberwocky, and Hammer Horror.
• I'm not sure if I would use some version of D&D for this (either OSD&D or 5e) or some WFRP derivative, given the tone.

Unfocused Thoughts on the Fyrdlands

For a bunch of reasons I don't want to get into I wrote a new setting that would allow me to hand someone the PHB and make a character without my telling them X or Y thing was off limits.  It started out as a C&C project but quickly became a 5e one for more reasons.

Anyway here's some stuff to know about it and to help me crystallize some of the ideas in my head.

• The Fyrdlands is a coldish border region north of the Realm of Man.  It was previously colonized by some humans who wanted to escape the Realm of Man but now the Realm has begun to push into the region itself.
• The area lies on the southern border of what was once the land of a powerful entity referred to primarily as the Prime Evil but also as the Dark Enemy and the Shadow.  He was destroyed long ago but many of his lieutenants and evil spawn remain.
• Some of the most famous of these surviving "lieutenants" are Elemental Evils, which some ancient texts believe only came about when the Prime Evil was destroyed.
• There may be other big-time lieutenants (Vecna maybe?) who have quasi-god like powers.
• There are also the races he created: Goblins (from Dwarves), Hobgoblins (from Elves), and Orcs (from Men).
• Some evil wizards have used the work the Prime Evil did to create their own monsters, such as the Dragonborn which may only be chromatic due to their being an evil experiment (though their personal alignment is up to them).
• Elves and Dwarves lived in peace for a time but warred because the Dwarves supposedly did not actively help in defeating the Prime Evil.  Both those races dwindled and it allowed for the servants of the old Enemy to return, filling the Fyrdlands with goblins and orcs again.
• Tieflings are the descendants of Men who chose to side with the Prime Evil.  They founded a strange culture known as the Nations of Night which flourished sometime before the birth of the Realm of Man and ruled the goblinoids of the Fyrdlands through governors.
• The Nations of Night collapsed for reasons unknown to Realmish folk.
• The original wave of Realmish settlers (actually fleeing the Realm) came a few hundred years ago.
• The PCs are assumed to have arrived in a Realmish settlement from the direction of the Realm.
• Some new evil is stirring in the wilderness in the area causing orcs and goblins to return and breathing out fresh horrors.
• The local town (which I think I need to rename) is ruled by a Marques (who also needs to be renamed).  He generally would like to control the old settlements as well.
• The chief religion is the Unconqured Sun who, in addition to having other divine aspects, allows for the worship of smaller gods.
• Many of the setting elements not present here will be stolen from the Jennell Jaquays penned Forgotten Realms supplement "The Savage Frontier," which is a book I think is phenomenal attached to a setting I basically hate.

That's probably enough for now, though this one might need multiple posts.

Unfocused Thoughts After Running DCC

As I mentioned earlier, I'm in Hattiesburg right now.  One of my friends said he wanted to try DCC, and I had a copy of the adventure starter from Free RPG Day, so I decided to give it a shot.  Here are my thoughts.

• The character funnel is really fun.  Even my old players who liked 3.x liked it.  I noticed that as the group thinned out certain characters gained more personality.
• Individual initiative for 18 level 0 characters is insane.  We used party initiative.  I'm going to try the individual initiative system if we run it again with level 1 or level 5 characters.
• The adventure had some really cool things in it, but too much of it was just "characters walk in and are attacked."
• I basically had to assign DCs for things completely off the top of my head.  I hope I'm supposed to do that.
• Since there aren't any experience rules yet, I'm a bit worried about the pace of advancement.  Though I acknowledge it was rather slow in the Nightwick campaign so far, I don't want something so fast that I can't have Nightwick Abbey have massive levels.
• On that note, I'm not really interested in any RPG that can't run Nightwick Abbey.
• Character creation went really quick.  This is of course a good thing.
• It was weird seeing DCs for saving throws again after having dealt with static numbers for so long.
• I think I mentioned this last time, but I really hope there is more guidance for the referee to build his or her own adventures and setting than is provided in the beta rules.  I understand they want to be elitist, but I don't have a lot of use for rpgs without random encounter tables.
• The alignment of monsters is kinda all over the place.  It's weird to see a lawful demon snake next to chaotic undead who were all supposed to be created by the same evil War Wizard.
• On that note, can one actually play a war wizard?  I hope so.
• Finally, I'd really like to see some support for non-Dungeon Crawling activities.  Don't know if that's going to be in there.

On the whole I'd have to say it was a positive experience.  The reason I hope all that stuff above is in there, and that the pace of advancement isn't too quick, is that I think it would be neat to use with Nightwick Abbey/the Dark Country.  However, if it doesn't provide the support needed for a megadungeon or hexcrawl campaign that can be run pretty much indefinitely, I'll just stick to the rules I posted previously.

Unfocused Thoughts on Uz

I've been trying to coalesce a few Uz related thoughts into a coherent post.  I've failed, so I'm going to do what I always do when I fail at that...

• What the Dark Country is to Doom Metal, Uz is to Space Rock.
• Uz takes place in Earth's very very very distant future.  Some of the humanoids (morlocks, deros, etc.) are degenerate humans.  Others (reptoids, greys, etc.) are the remnants of alien invasions that succeeded and failed at various points in the planets past.
• The biggest influences are: HPL, CAS (particularly the Zothique cycle, Atomic Horror movies, Coast to Coast AM, and the Old Testament. 
• I need to go back and remake the Priest class.  I still like the idea of them mutating hideously as they get higher in level, but I'm not sure how big to make there spell lists.  I'm also not sure if I should make different spell lists for each god or one big one they all draw from.
• If I can nail down Priests good enough, then I'll probably get rid of MUs.  That'd mean there would only be three character types: Fighter, Specialist, and Priest.
• No demi-human characters.  Well... maybe Reptoids.  That would be kinda cool.
• Psionics and tech stuff taken from Carcosa.  Also a bunch of monsters.
• No magic items, just ray guns.
• No alignment.  Hell, there won't really be any metaphysical forces at all.  "Gods" are killable (with probably only like 15 - 20 HD) super-aliens who have strong enough psionic powers to give mortal spells.  Theres probably really powerful ones like Azathoth, but most are what CoC would classify as Great Old Ones, and pretty weak ones too.
• Two types of ruins/dungeon: high tech and low tech.  Low tech ruins are structures that became ruined after the deluge.  High tech ruins usually became ruined before the deluge, but some priests/sorcerers/whatever that survived the flood remembered crazy super-magic-science long enough to pass it on to other enterprising young demons.
• Gods are Moloch (a sentient patch of radiation), Dagon (exactly what it sounds like), Mot (mass of swirling, decaying flesh with awful Ghoul Priests), Kothar (Yog-Sothoth in a disconcerting, humanoid form), and a few others.  I want to include Lilith, but I'm not sure how to treat her yet.
• The Sun has turned a deep shade of red.  Most of the world is desert with rain forests trapped in little valleys.

That's it for now.  I might post more later on this crap later.

More Unfocused Thoughts on the Hell-Caverns

• One of the entrances to the caverns will be an archway in the dungeons of the local castle.  The castellan's ancestor who built the edifice stole a number of stones from the ruins nearby and even some inside the caves.  At certain times of day, the doorway -- which is made entirely out of stones from the caverns -- turns into a portal to some deeper level.
• I picture the monster list as a mixture of lost world fare, mythos booglies, more traditional looking demons (with extradimensional origins), and radioactive mutants.  Those last guys look like this:

• The rules would definitely be LotFP, but I'd draw from Realms of Crawling Chaos and the Dismal Depths as well.  The Black City is also a big inspiration.
• I'm refining the elevator pitch to '"The Black God's Kiss" meets the Shaver Mystery.'
• I might be able to cannibalize some of my Uz material, particularly deros.
• In case it isn't obvious yet, the Hell-Caverns aren't entirely made out of caverns. Depending on whether or not I use Dave's Mapper this could mean that theres an even mix of caves and dungeon or it could mean that the various Saturday Night Specials are manufactured complexes and are connected by natural caves and tunnels.
• The magic items and dungeon specials are as likely to be technological as they are magical.  Since the characters are High Medieval knights, clerics, and magicians I don't think this will matter all that much to them.  It's all deviltry.
• Mole people.  There will definitely be mole people.
• You will find few more staunch opponents of Erich von Daniken than I, but his fantastical bullshit makes good fodder for D&D.
• I bet I'll be using the Random Esoteric Creature yadda yadda quite a bit.
• Despite the name of the dungeon, I'll be taking a slightly more atheistic attitude towards the metaphysics of the setting.  I'm not sure where clerics get their powers from yet.  The Malleus Monstrorum for CoC -- an awesome book btw -- I think says Jesus might be an avatar of Yog-Sothoth.  While that offends me on some small level, I suppose it's kinda neat if I'm also throwing von Daniken in the mix.
• When I settle on a specific location I'll change the name of the dungeon to The Hell-Caverns of X.
• I think the Hell-Caverns of Narbonne sounds good, but the Hell-Caverns of Conques could explain where the vivid depictions of demons on the Cathedral of St Foy come from.

Unfocused Thoughts on the 5th Millennium

A Traveller thing I've been working on to fight the Blues.

• It's a homebrew Traveller setting that keeps as many of the assumed setting elements of Traveller as possible.
• I'm keeping the name "Imperium" but it is not set in the "Third Imperium."
• The overall political situation of the Imperium in the 5th Millenium is not unlike the Roman Empire during the Crisis of the Third Century.  The imperial throne is contested (and most people in the further provinces of the Imperium don't even know who the candidates are) and large swathes of territory are becoming de facto independent.
• There are also parallels to later Roman history - for example, Terra has been "sacked' by human and alien "barbarians," but since it is no longer the Throneworld its relevance is mostly psychological.
• Play will focus on the Zenobia sector, which lies close to (on?) the border with [Click] Space.  It is normally ruled by a Warduke, but due to the confusion about the emperors there are currently two Wardukes in the sector gearing up for war.
• I'll be using the aliens from the Directorate setting I made because I like them and don't really have a good sense of what the OTU aliens are like.
• The players will start in the only subsector I've developed so far, Palmyra.  Here's a map:

• The Palmyra subsector is at the heart of the dispute between the two Wardukes.  Warduke Ignatius Casso has built a powerful defensive line at the capital of Palmyra and the planets of Hannibal and Sinbad.  His rival's primary toehold in this subsector is Al-Mahdi
• In addition to the the looming presence of the [Click] (subbing in for Sassanids) and the two Wardukes threatening to war with each other, the region also holds a large number of ruins of an ancient alien empire. 
• The [Click] claim to be the successors to this empire, but archaeological records clearly show it was ruled by a different species.
• I'm using Mongoose Traveller (1st edition) because it's the one I have and I like it.
• I'm not sure I'll actually keep the time as the "5th Millennium" because it seems too distant from our time for a lot of the references in the planet names. 
• However, the far off date allows me to explain some of the clunky technology of Traveller.  Progress is a myth.
• One thing I want to establish very clearly is that there is no FTL communication.  If you want news from another planet you need to get it from a free trader who has been there recently.

That's more or less what I've got for now.

Unfocused Thoughts on Greyhawk Folio

I've been sitting on these half-hatched ideas for over a week and I thought I needed to get them out in some form, so here they are.  Some of them will be elaborated on in more coherent and better formated posts as I continue to develop this project.

• Based on the names on the map and a cursory skim of the book itself I've picked out a few places I may want to focus on.
• The Shield Lands immediately jumps out at me due to its name, the fact that it neighbors the similarly awesomely named Bandit Kingdoms, and the description itself.  The Horned society sounds kinda lame, but I like anybody whose religion is described as "deviltry."
• I also like the Hold of the Sea Princes, which I imagine as a combination of Venice and King's Landing as portrayed in the Game of Thrones HBO series.
• On that note, I essentially want this setting to be one part Hyboria, one part Newhon, and one part Westeros, with some middle ages thrown in for flavor.
• My other choice for the focal point of the setting is Greyhawk itself.  One thing I've been missing in my current campaign is urban adventures, which I'm a big fan of.    I'll likely be using Zak's urbancrawl system to flesh it (or any other city I have to detail) out.  Not sure yet what to do about the infamous ruined pile if I pick this location, but we'll see.
• The Sword Lands is the one that is most obviously in my wheelhouse (knights fighting Satan), but that may be the best reason not to do it.  Still, I like knights... a lot.
• Religion is proving to be an issue.  The original folio lacks any details on the Greyhawk pantheon that I know through the 3e core books.  I don't want to use those because that strikes me as lazy, but when reading the folio I get a very clear image of a society with a pseudo-Christian dynamic.  Theocracies, intolerant of old religions, sacred orders of knights who oppose the Adversaries, and so on populate the folio.  Unfortunately, I already have that setting.  I want something with paganism.
• Maybe I could do some kind of old gods vs new gods thing a la Game of Thrones, where it's much less confrontational than the pseudo-Christian idea.
• I also want to use some of the Newhon stuff from DDG in my campaign.  Kos, God of Dooms, is awesome.
• Right now my rough equivalents for the different ethnic groups are as follows: Suloise = Phoenicians, Oeridians = Indo-Europeans (particularly Latins and Greeks but the farther from Aerdy you get the more they look like Germans), Baklunish = Turkic peoples, and the Flanae = Finno-Ugric peoples.  This breaks down in certain areas, particularly the Yeomanry, and I probably need to think about it a bit more.
• I imagine The Great Kingdom as being rather like 6th century Byzantium, but more evil.
• I may steal some ideas from my Might & Magic project, including making Oerth really be some kinda spaceship.  Not 100% on that, or really anything else on this list, though.

Well that's about it.

Sorry about the light posting recently, but I kinda went into a coma after the semester was over.  It should pick up more in the coming days before returning to normal.  

Next week I'll be in Hattiesburg running another quick side game.  Not sure what it's going to be yet, but I need to figure it out shortly.

Unfocused Thoughts on the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Beta Rules

• I absolutely love the art.  Even the worst pieces in it are completely bearable.
• Speaking of art, they leave Trampier off of the list of influential artists. Not. Cool.  Trampier is the man.  Interestingly enough they include an homage to his famous full page illustration in the treasure section of the Monster Manual.  That's my favorite piece of D&D art ever.
• I was scared shitless when I read "skills," but they're more or less just ability checks.  It's sorta similar to C&C.  Sorta.
• I find it weird that it has a general mechanic but also has percentile skills for thieves.
• The example Wizard's patron is an evil frog demon?  That's what I'm fucking talking about.
• I wish there were a few more monsters in the play test document, but it doesn't look to difficult to spitball.
• I really really hope the final product has rules for random encounters and dungeon stocking.  Thats one of my favorite things about OSD&D (and might deserve a post on it's own).
• Right now there is no guidelines for xp, so I wonder how treasure is going to factor into that or if it will at all.
• The spell tables and crit charts remind me of Warhammer.  This is a good thing.
• I think the tone is a bit too authoritarian.  Can't the judge decide if he or she wants players to roll 4d6 and drop low?
• The setting assumptions are a tiny bit thicker than I would have liked.  I wish the god examples were more explicitly examples rather than just the gods that are in the game.
• That said, the relationship between the gods and the old ones is cool.  I'll probably steal that.
• Luck is cool, and I really like the birth omens thing. 
• I sorta wish they had split race and class, but I can deal.

Note: this is only my thoughts after an initial skimming.  One of my players expressed some interest in it last session so I may run a few sessions to put it through it's paces and to take a break from NWA, but we'll see. This should not be considered a review.

Unfocused Thoughts on City States of Arklyrell

Jeff Rients, who I imagine needs know introduction, recently commented on the suitability of City States of Arklyrell as a campaign map.  One of the commenters, rorschachhamster, suggested that the setting could be in the twilight zone of a tidally locked planet in order to explain why there is so little space between the frozen north and the desert in the south.  This fired my imagination pretty much instantaneously so heres some notes on how I'd use the setting.

• The "clear" hexes are brown, so I'd imagine they're more like Mediterranean shrubland than what I typically mean by "clear" on my maps.  That gives me kind of a Ray Harryhausen Sinbad vibe, so let's run with that.
• I've also been watching a lot of original Trek, so I imagine that the habitable zone of the planet looks like this:

• Since it's already tidally locked lets just say that Aklyrell is the name the inhabitants give Gliese 581 g.
• It's unlikely that humanoid life would develop on such a planet, so maybe the inhabitants are the descendants of Earth colonists in the far distant future.  The colony probably got cut off in a style similar to Tekumel, but maybe without getting ripped out of the universe.
• That means some of the dungeons might have ray guns.  Let's make those phasers.  In fact, let's make some of the races and monsters descendants of Federation aliens.  I wouldn't really stress it, but it'd be there.
• The cold side of the planet would probably be called the Night Lands.  Don't know what I'd call the hot side yet.
• I'd probably use Labyrinth Lord or BECMI for the rules with some AD&D monsters.
• Elves can see in the dark because they come from the Nightlands.   How they exist in the extreme cold is a mystery to humans.
• Even if I use BECMI the setting will be covered in Morlocks.
• I'll probably use the Monster Manual II's system for random encounters over BECMI or Labyrinth Lords.  When you have that many forests in such a small area it's important that you make sure they feel different and encounter tables are a good way to do it.
• Theres probably some non-Sinbad looking barbarians running around.  They look like this: 

• I won't add any other settlements.  All of the humans live in fortified citadels that look like Mycenae in order to keep out the monsters (including the Rocs!).
• I would add some monster lairs though to compliment the bigger multilevel dungeons.
• The hexes would probably be 10 miles across, with a party able to cross three clear ones in a day.

Thats it for now.  If I think of anything else I might post it.

Unfocused Thoughts on Might & Magic Inspired Setting

This has been kinda running around my head for a few days, and I thought I'd get it out of my system.  It's unlikely I'll end up doing much more with it than making a map or two, but it might make a cool place to adventure in if a TPK happens in Nightwick Abbey.  That'd depend on the players of course, and I rather like the Dark Country (obviously).

• The world is flat with two sides that are unaware of eachother.  There is a massive web of underdark style tunnels that ultimately connect the two, but the core is thick enough and the path dangerous enough that it is extremely rare that someone make it from one side to  the other.  The players will most likely do this at some point.
• The world was created thousands of years ago by a group of Immortals using both science and sorcery in order to examine how life ultimately develops and other such inscrutable things.
• In the center of both sides of the world is a giant Mountain that contains two computers (one for each side) that make sure everything is working right.
• The most holy artifact of [insert lawful religion here] is actually a key card that allows access to the computer.  No one in the religion knows this.
• There is one Lawful kingdom of Humans (called the Realm of Man) ruled by a king or queen.  It uses a fantasied up version of the feudal system that still allows for social mobility.  Individual lords are whatever alignment is most appropriate for them.
• At least one lord is secretly working for [insert badguys here].  Most likely it's more than one.
• Other kingdoms include: a fairy realm, a land ruled by wizards, a land ruled by warlocks, a stinking mire controlled by necromancers, and a barbaric wilderness
• The fairy realm is ruled by a (perhaps the) Sorceress.  It includes both Elves and Dwarves as well as a number of other creatures in a manner similar to the way the Narnians are portrayed in the second move
• Humans can be found in all the realms, including in leadership positions
• The Wizards, Humans, and Fairy races will occasionally team up to defeat especially arbaric Barbarians, especially warlock-y Warlocks, and especially dead Necromancers
• Evil lords rarely work together, but they often employ lots of different types of evil minion
• One Warlock knows about the computers and wants to destroy them.  He believes this will cause clerical magic to disappear
• "Demons" are actually invaders from space who want to turn the world into a base from which they can take on the Immortals.  (Thats possibly why the Warlock knows about the computer)
• Halflings are a servitor class for the Wizards.  Many have escaped into the Realm and made hillside villages there.
• Orcs were created by some Wizard who really liked boars before he decided to become a Warlock instead.  The ones who are friendly with the Barbarians escaped captivity.
• Necromancers don't like anybody.
• PCs who are awarded Immortal status get to live on their kickass spaceship.  They have a foosball table.  It's totally rad.  The Demons are jealous.
• The world is positively littered with gates that transport you to other areas, other worlds, or even elemental planes.
• The worlds name is probably Xenroth, but may be Xerathia, or Irass (I.R.A.S.S. -- It's Really a Space Ship).
•  The Realm is possible having a succession crisis when the campaign starts.
• Lands surrounding gates to the elemental planes are obviously affected; covered in lava, crystaline, filled with permanent storms, that sort of thing.
• Most adventure locales will be discrete things, but I might through Stonehell on there for shits and giggles.
• I'd try to do something similar to Jeff Rients's Epic Sandboxery.  Mostly a sandbox, but if your cleric wants to keep their magic it wouldn't be a bad idea to knock that Warlock over the head and take his stuff.
• Possible name for the concept: Steel & Sorcery

Well, there you have it.  Again, at most I'll make a map for this thing, but I thought I'd ruminate on it anyway.

Unfocused Thoughts on Fimbulwinter

Climate Change

I've been going through kind of a rough patch recently, and this was the first gaming idea I had in a while that got my creative juices flowing, so with the encouragement of Jeremy Duncan I decided to write some stuff about it.

• The gods died at Ragnarok.  The Sun and the Moon were both eaten by wolves and now everything is eternal winter and twilight.
• The gods are dead, but their blood still flows.  There are those among men who are descended from the gods and they have magic that is otherwise unavailable to men.  
• I want to use OpenQuest or some other RuneQuest/BRP variety to handle the above, and because vaguely-Germanic migration periods settings are tied to RQ in my brain.
• The way many human communities survive in the snow and the grey is through the use of certain magics.  Those halls who have someone descended from various agricultural, hunting, or sea gods are able to ensure their communities have enough surplus to continue to live and sometimes even trade.
• Communities that aren't able to ensure this surplus degenerate into barbarism.  They raid their neighbors and engage in cannibalism and other things best not mentioned in a blog post.
• The old enemies - giants, dragons, trolls, draugr, etc. - still live too; however, these are only the most degenerate and cowardly examples of their races.  The rest died at Ragnarok.  Still, even these are more powerful than men.
• The various groups of pseudo-Germanic type people will have names like the Sword People or the Dagger Men or be named after a particular god they descend from.
• The map will probably be based off of Doggerland.
• To the south there are the remnants of a Roman-like empire that once had its own gods.  They too died at Ragnarok.  Many of these areas are ruled now by pseudo-germans, but the empire is coming back in a new form thanks to the White God.
• The White God is the only god that still "lives" after Ragnarok.  It is kinda-sorta based on Christianity, but the eternal life it offers is the life of undeath.  The White God is a god of snow and death and despair.  Even so, many in the Empire and even in the pseudo-German areas have begun to worship him.
• I'm thinking the Empire will have an army called the Pale Legion which is made up entirely of dead soldiers whom the White God has resurrected.
• PCs will generally be warriors and important-ish members of a community.  Since in OQ all PCs have magic they will be descended (distantly) from the gods.
• I've said pseudo-Germanic through this whole post because, despite the idea obviously coming from Viking stuff, I've always been more of a fan of earlier Migration Period material culture, like Anglo-Saxon, Gothic, and Frankish stuff.
• Quickie appendix N: Beowulf, Northlanders, Valhalla Rising, Before France and Germany, The Getica, Njal's Saga, Gesta Danorum, Ecclesiastical History of the English People 

More Unfocused Thoughts on Arklyrell

It's been a while since I messed around with this, but I've had a bunch of ideas I haven't articulated so here they are:

• A lot of this setting will be based on The Sword's Album Warp Riders.  They're both set on a tidally locked planet of science fantasy nonsense, so I thought they fit well together.
• The south is ruled by the Chronomancer, a pseudo-immortal God-Lich of immense power.  He trades minerals and other natural resources with the civilizations on the campaign map that are mined on the Day Side of the planet.  He does this with a horrid, skeletal work-force.
• The Chronomancer is probably equal amounts machine and undead.
• The Elves on the Night Side get more tribal as it gets colder.  The ones closest to the sea are (comparatively) hospitable.
• One of the cities in the icy part of the map is totally going to be Vornheim.
• System will probably be LL + AEC so that I can have some of the doofier classes like Illusionist and Assassin in there.  I'll also add some weird races like Ghuls.
• Equipment list will include a giant, white dragonfly that you can purchase as a mount.
• I might get rid of the Roc nests, but I'm not sure about that yet.  They provide a good excuse for the large citadels.  It's sorta like Might & Magic 1 where the people live in underground cities to avoid being burned to death by dragons.
• Treasure tables are totally going to include Mutant Future artifacts.
• I need to work the Fuel-less Fire in there somewhere. (In case you haven't guessed from the other posts that mention it in passing, the Fuel-less Fire is a sentient patch of radiation).
• I bet I'd use the Fiend Folio pretty heavily when making wandering monster tables, but that's just a guess.
• There are ruins on both the Day and the Night Side.  No one knows how they got there.
• I've pretty much settled on the human settlements on the islands being grunting, Mycenaean types.
• Dwarves are gross, genetically engineered degenerates who mine precious things out of the mountains on the islands.  Rumor says that a strange, dark skinned race of Dwarves lives on the Day Side, but that's probably impossible.

That's all for now.  I'm probably not going to do much more with this, but that stuff had been in my mind for a while.

Unfocused Thoughts: Cuccagna

This is another one of those "I'm probably not going to run this but I need to get it out of my system" posts.  It is inspired by my thinking about why I was intrigued with Isle of the Unknown - and was ultimately disappointed with it - and my recent reading of The Dying Earth.  Also The Tempest.

• Cuccagne is a warm Mediterranean-type island inhabited by a bunch of petty, venal wizards.
• If I placed it on Earth, it would be somewhere west of Sardinia and Corsica.  The rough date would probably be around AD 1250 but...
• The island would sorta be "timeless," or at least not like the areas around it.  I'm thinking it would look vaguely Carolingian with large dashes of the later portion of the Western Roman Empire.  But fancier and more decadent in that word's modern sense.
• I'd try very hard to make the place seem idyllic, as opposed to the crapsack sorta thing I normally do.  Fields of wild flowers, crystal clear streams, scenic sea-caves, that sort of thing.
• However, I'd also want to make sure there is a (fairly obvious) dark side to all that stuff.  The archetypal encounter I imagine would be the PCs finding a nice Roman-style villa somewhere and being met by a man who offers them a place to stay and some nice wine.  Since PCs are too smart for that shit, they refuse.  When they do so he gets all made and turns into an oozing snake thing and tries to eat them.
• I also want to contrast the idyllic setting with the petty motivations of the NPCs (and the PCs if I know anything about D&D players).  The wizards are too busy plotting against each other to notice how beautiful - and dangerous - their surroundings are.
• I imagine that most settlements are fairly small and most live in the shadow of some terrible wizard who vomits rainbow colored goo into a human skull or something.
• There might be one big town that acts as a port on the island.  That's probably where PCs start.
• For the monster list, I would strip out most of the D&D monsters that aren't directly from some sort of folklore.  Once that's done, I'd shove in a bunch of freakazoids made by wizards that are all fucked up.  One could easily meet a unicorn or a oozing-snake-thing, but never an orc.
• Europe, the Levant, and North Africa are assumed to have the religions that would have been present in those regions c. 1250.  Cuccagna, on the other hand would be a bastion of weird mystery cults and creepy paganism.  Sorta like the Wicker Man, but with more painted chthonic chambers and maenads.
• Ruins and dungeons would either be "Atlantean" or Greco-Roman in origin.  I envision this as a hexcrawl setting.
• I imagine there would be quite a lot of Yojimbo-style action with the PCs playing wizards off of each other between dungeon or wilderness romps.
• Maybe it's the time of year or the fact that I live further inland than I used to, but I definitely want this to be an island.  
• Part of the "this isn't crapsack" thing will be my not worrying about farmland and also having a gold standard for coinage.  Gold is so common and easy to come by there that giant gold coins - ten of which way a pound! - are as worthless as tiny silver coins in the rest of Europe.

Ok, hopefully that got that outta my system.

Unfocused Thoughts on Castle Drakenstein

"No!  You musn't go!  We People of the Mountains believe fucked up shit happens at the castle."

Tunnels & Trolls is a game that fascinates me.  I've run a session or two using the quickstart -- which I don't seem to be able to find at the moment -- and I remember having mixed feelings.  However, Scott Driver's love of the game combined with its lighthearted tone have made me want to revisit it at various points.  I think, for example, it would make a kickass system for the Land of Ooo.

One thing I particularly like is the idea of a dungeon "proprietor."  I especially liked Scott's making his a messed up parody of himself.  So I decided to see what I could come up with for myself.  Thus was born Castle Drakenstein.

Note: this is another one of those settings I'm not likely to run.  This is especially true because the overlap with Nightwick Abbey is pretty heavy.  However, I'd like to have something if I ever decide to give T&T a second chance.

• The general theme would be horror movies of various sorts, particularly the Universal and Hammer ones, with a smattering of 50s sci fi, horror literature, swords & sorcery, ufology, and metal stuff thrown in willy nilly.  It might be best described as "the kind of castle a horror host would live in."
• The proprietor, Baron Edric van Drakenstein, is a capricious and melodramatic lich who has a habit of dressing like the above picture.  He is usually sulking in his chambers beneath the castle, playing an enormous pipe organ.  When he's in a manic state, however, he will often appear to badger the delvers with terrible puns, horrible monsters, and incoherent whining.  This is all done with an excessive amount of gesticulation.
• Dungeon levels/sublevels will have themes based on various types of movies.  For example there would be a Frankenstein lab (this would also include things like Mu-tants), a Dracula crypt, a cavern that looks suspiciously like the forest from The Wolfman, etc.
• Monsters will include Wolfmen, Wolfwomen, Mu-tants, Frankensteins, Draculas, Draculaensteins, Skeletons (a la Jason and the Argonauts), Orcs with Halloween masks on, Froguloids*, Creatures from Various Lagoons, Gorgons (complete with purple back lighting), CHUDs, Morlocks, Zombies (both flesh eating and voodoo varieties), Flatwoods Monsters, Igors, Jersey Devils, Swamp Monsters, and a lot more.  I'm too lazy to think of more now, but that took me like a minute so whatever.
• Sections of the dungeon will disappear based on the good baron's mercurial moods.  If somehow the delvers were to integrate Edric on this point, he would declare "the map was ugly!" and complain about how hard running a dungeon is.
• The Baron is just the most recent in a long line of fucked up liches in the van Drakenstein family.  They all look eerily similar, but that's easy when your face is a skull.
• The castle is on a high mountain and only appears at night.  A village lies at the foot of the mountain, and the peasants have various nonsensical excuses for why they don't move.
• Various magic items and/or technological gizmos would only work on the levels whose genre matches their theme.  So the ray gun you found on the Devil Planet level doesn't work in the Tomb of the Mummpire. 
• SFX provided by Ray Harryhausen.
• There will be a lot more lighting than in most of my dungeon complexes.  In this case it will appear like the various psychedelic lighting tricks used to make Hammer movies so lurid.
• I like the idea of the more traditional fantasy monsters in the dungeon thinking all this horror movie stuff is stupid and complaining.  They stick around because they get a hot meal and a place to sleep.
• DRACULAS HATE WOLFMEN!
• The system would obviously be T&T, but I'm not sure what edition I would use.  I only really have experience with the quick start.
• I suppose there would probably be some TOS Star Trek references in there.
• One of the Draculas, or perhaps the Baron himself, would have a gallery of busts of himself in different extravagant hats.

Ok, I feel like I'm reaching now, so that's it until I get more inspiration.

Unfocused Thoughts on the Wilderlands of Something Something

I've mentioned before that I have a great fondness for the Wilderlands.  I ran it for most of my time as an undergrad, and it has created some of the most memorable gaming experiences I've ever had.  For some reason, yesterday my mind wandered back to those Judges Guild maps, and I decided to see what I could come up with in one of these posts.  So here we go...

• When I ran it in college, it was a bizarre combination of Classical and Late Antiquity.*  I'd likely keep that mix because I like it.  
• In my old Wilderlands game, the CSIO got destroyed by a giant robot.  If I run this, it will have been rebuilt but that means it's going to look significantly different than the one presented in Judges Guild products.
• I'm probably only going to use the original 70s Wilderlands of High Fantasy book and then fill in the details based on what I remember from the 3e version as well as stuff I think is cool.

• Also this map.  I'm using that too.  Primarily to determine the polities and the different groups whose cultures I have to describe.  I care mostly about the part north of the equator because the areas covered in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy book are mostly located there.
• Based on that map and my recollection of what I liked from my old campaigns, the different groups would be Skandiks (pseudo-viking guys), Ghinorians (pseudo-Hellenistic Greek guys), Avalonians (blue part elf guys), Altanians (red Conan guys), Viridians (green fish worshiping guys), Karakhans (mongol guys who worship gods that require blood sacrifice), and Orichalcans (purple skinned, scaly humanoids that dominated the area of the CSIO in the distant past)
• There are also micro groups, like Tarsh and Antil, but these tend to be permutations on the above cultures.
• Elves are blue.  Dark Elves are pale and morlock-y.
• I'd either run the game in the newly rebuilt CSIO or in Tarsh.  Both of which have large sections of the city which are in ruins, which gives me a good excuse to have an undercity as the central dungeon in addition to the ruins and stuff in the wilderness.
• I'd have quite a bit of ray guns and stuff, as well as quite a bit of Devil.  My inability to combine these two in settings which aren't the Wilderlands has led to immense frustration on my part over the last three years.
• If I run it in Tarsh, there will be a large portal in the shape of a dolmen that is covered in depictions of Flailsnails.  This is where inter-dimensional travelers come from.
• Originally, my Wilderlands was a ring world.  This was done solely so that when the players figured it out I could go "well you never asked!" which amused me at the time.  Some of my G+ players seem to like the idea.
• IF it is a ring world, then the map above marks the East and West boundaries of the world.  Any farther and you reach a giant mountain range that runs the length of the ring.
• Viridians wear the fish hats that my Uz players have come to associate with Phut.  I originally designed them for the Viridians and put them in Uz because I remember my Hattiesburg players liking the Viridan fish cult.  Viridians also scourge themselves in sorrow for not being a mermaid.
• Oh, there are also Ghuls!  How could I forget about them?!
• Which also reminds me: it'll be heavily influenced by Leiber's Swords Series (the Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser stuff)
• I'd probably use the Swords & Wizardry White Box with the normal classes and demihumans plus my version of the thief and demihuman write ups for Viridians and maybe Altanians, Avalonians, and Orichalcans too.
• The gods would be taken from Unknown Gods and Petty Gods, with maybe the ones from Pegana thrown in there too.
• At the time, I was calling my custom version of the Wilderlands "The Wilderlands of Foul Devilry" after the Wilderlands of Darkling Sorcery and the Majestic Wilderlands.  I might keep that or do something like the Wilderlands of Swords and Wizardry (or Swords and Deviltry as a reference to Leiber)

That's it for now.  Just had to get that out of my system.

*Known to some as "The Dark Ages" /shudder

Unfocused Thoughts: A Barbaric Age

The Great Cities have risen and fallen,  civilization's grip on mankind has grown weak and arthritic, dark powers seek to renew forgotten covenants, and primordial beasts reclaim the wilderness. -- Korgoth of Barbaria, "Pilot"

Ah, another setting destined for the creative detritus of my wandering mind.  Hopefully this will get it out of my system and I can get back to Dark Country and Uz* related things.  The impetus for the idea came from this post by another Evan** whose blog appears to be defunct.  Anyway he points out that OD&D using the Outdoor Survival map is a rough place to live, and it's filled with roaming bands of armed humans.  That's saying nothing of the castles.

Anyway, that reminded me of Korgoth, 80s S&S movies, and the Greek Dark Ages for some reason, so here are some setting notes.

• The map is (obviously) the one from Outdoor Surival.  Ponds are castles, buildings are towns, deer are probably going to be villages and the little wolf-looking things (I can't really see what they are from the maps online) are probably what Scott would call an "8 page module" dungeon.  I may cut the villages out or make the monster layers if I want to make it very "barbaric," which I do.
• Basic premise is, as stated above, our civilization has crumbled and a civilization that looks suspiciously like pre-modern Earth has risen in it's place.
• Rules would be OD&D plus some classes and monsters from the supplements and probably some copious house rules.
• Part of the idea would be to develop things (house rules, setting info, monsters, etc.) through play and the needs of play.  I want the setting to have an overall flavor, but it's a bit closer to baseline D&D than is say... Uz.
• While I want to retain some of the barest Tolkien elements, I want to emphasize some of the other source literature a bit more.  If orcs are in it then they'll be the pig-faced guy from the three Deathstalker movies or something equally stupid.
• Since it's a far-future Earth I plan to make good on OD&D's promise of Robots.  Ray guns are probably but not a replacement for magic items in the way they will be in Uz.
• I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet with alignment.  If I go with a REH style split between barbaric and civilized people I may use it to get that across; however, it seems like this setting is going to be pretty barbaric all around, so I dunno.
• I wanna go back to using some mythological monsters I haven't gotten to use with Nightwick Abbey or Uz.  I miss Minotaurs.
• If it looks like I'll run this at some point -- which seems unlikely right now -- I'll probably work up some kind of "underworld" for beginning play.  OD&D's wilderness can be rough on level 1 characters.
• On that note, I may steal a page from Scott and use the CSIO 4 Level dungeon for that.  I wouldn't have to draw many maps right away and it seems like it would be fun to stock.
• Speaking of the underworld: I need more dungeon NPCs!
• I'd generally take the "whatever you want to play" approach to PC races, but I think I'd like to work up some writeups for things like lizardmen and other weirdos.  I swing back and forth between human only campaigns and campaigns where you can play minotaurs.
• The basic culture of the area would probably be movie-style-medieval, with a thick layering of bronze age and classical crap over it.  Some clerics might worship God, while the next one over is a fan of Apollo, and that wizard is totally a Satanist.
• The various castles on the map would be generated using the rules for such things in Underworld & Wilderness adventures.  I'll probably also add a few fighting men whenever that seems appropriate.
• The towns will use a combination of the guidelines for determining population in the Greyhawk Folio and in the Ready Ref Sheets.
• Place names will be a mix of historical place names and shit I like spelled backwards.  Expect the return of Vennax the Mauve.

That's it for now.  Hopefully the idea will stop bugging me now.

*More on that later

**There can be only one!

Unfocused Thoughts on Operation: Mobile Armor

I like mechs and the various anime and video games that contain them. I haven't talked a lot about them on this blog, but in pretty much every other venue where I post about stuff they are a running theme of mine. The main reason I have not talked about them on here that much is that I have yet to find a ttrpg for mechs that I like. The ones I've seen are either too fiddly in a particularly 90s way - build points and all that - or are some of the more modern rpg designs I can't stand - pbta, blades in the dark, 4e, that kind of thing. I am also reliably informed by an expert that the particular niche I want for a mech game isn't currently being filled.

So what's a girl to do? Well since I am ostensibly a game designer now (gasp!) I guess I'll at least think about designing a game. So I'm going to list some stuff I'd want and try to express the general tone and hope that either gives me an idea of where to start or that some brave and intelligent reader will stop me from tilting at windmills by pointing out my expert was wrong and they missed or x or y game I should try.

• The series I most want to emulate with this is Mobile Suit Gundam: 08th MS Team and Fang of the Sun: Dougram as well as other real robot type anime like Patlabor and probably a variety of other UC Gundam series such as the original, Zeta, ZZ, and the other two in the gritty gundam trilogy, 0080: War in the Pocket and 0083: Stardust Memory.
• I want the PCs to be members of some sort of military org - whether regulars or irregulars - who perform various missions with action being both in and out of the cockpit. In researching for this I found out that there is actually some real world equivalent to the out of mech scouting we see in some episodes of 08th MS Team in the form of people dismounting British WWII cavalry tanks to scout. Neat!
• Sandro referred to this as the "Ace Combat" type after the series of jet fighter video games and yeah that sounds about right.
  
• I don't want heavy mech customization at the start but I would like some system where damaged mechs need to be jury rigged or refit with various new parts based on the campaign. Mech customization happens as the mech develops a story in the fiction of the game world.
• Rules wise I'm currently split one of two ways - either a version using the Cepheus Engine or some variant or one using BRP with some influence from the old and out of print BRP Mecha book.
• I do see the campaign idea as very similar to "what if you ran a traveller merc game where everyone were members of various tank crews" and I do think Cepheus has some pretty robust vehicle combat rules. The problem is figuring out how to make combat machines that act like they do in the shows I want to emulate and still function within those rules.
• I think I need something like both Dougram and Gundam have that explains why these machines can do things like make surprise attacks in an assumed technologically advanced future. Gundam has Minovsky Particles which jam stuff* and the planet from Dougram passes through a nebula which interferes with electronic communications - though apparently not the controls of mechs. I think having a planet be honeycombed with tunnel systems that mechs could retreat into (and which they were partially developed to navigate) might be a good idea.
• In my head I'm largely imagining the campaign frame I tried way back in college for a mech game where a proxy war is being fought on a far away planet with an imperial power fighting an insurgency on it and the insurgency being secretly armed by a rival power. The PCs in this old campaign were members of the insurgency who stole some mechs and then were going to use them to carry out quick but devastating attacks on the imperial flank.

That's it for now and I guess is not much but maybe someone will save me from having to write my own system by suggesting something I'll like in the comments!

* I think the initial fighting of the One Year War also seems like it would've obviously destroyed a great many satellites required for the normal kind of surveillance we're talking about.