Libra Actual Play, Session 2

Last week, our favorite wizard criminals trashed a hotel, found the Philosopher's Stone, and shot their way out of a police raid. We start this week with our group hiking (having still failed to figure out how to fit the Finance Optimizer into a car without his aura shutting off the engine) to Walmart, where друг promised they'd find a certain car that the voice on the phone wanted them to sabotage.

While Valrel gets distracted by the commercial glories of Walmart and throws her money away on questionable improvised weapons, duct tape, and a bicycle for the Finance Optimizer, Joe Normal climbs under the car and snips one of the brake lines. 

 

He is... somewhat taken aback when both ends of the brake line rear up like cobras, rather taken aback when they start injecting him with brake fluid, extremely taken aback when the car starts moving, and positively confounded when the Finance Optimizer hops on the hood and it doesn't stop.  

Valrel finishes her shopping trip just in time to find Toka hacking at the car with a machete, Joe Normal's bike leathers barely stopping him from getting grated on the asphalt, and a 70-something year old man hobbling towards them shouting "Bro! My car!". 

When he pulls a toddler-sized ragdoll out from under his coat and sends it skittering at the PCs, Valrel shrugs, takes out a handgun, and shoots him in the back. 

Over on the far end of the parking lot, Toka notices a pickup truck barreling towards them, its driver surrounded by a 40-foot Crown marked out in pinkish light. She rolls off of the living car, draws up her anti-material rifle (I don't know where she keeps that thing, to tell you the truth), misses completely, puts a fist-sized hole in a parked car, and then gets run over. 

The driver leans out and flashes a perfect smile while he helps Toka up - he and the half-dozen henchmen with baseball bats in the back of the truck are from the House of Musagetes, he says. Worshippers of Apollo in his guise as giver of music and poetry. What're you shooting at us for? 

Toka shrugs vaguely and argues that maybe you shouldn't run people over - the cultist laughs it off and then turns to watch Joe, his work done, drop from the living car as it barrels into a streetlight. The House is here for the zôn, the life-energy of the car, so it can be added to their idol of Apollo. друг didn't mention it, so surely he doesn't care about it and you won't mind if we just... 

The PCs consider if there's anything they pressingly need to bring to life, decide there isn't, really, and give the House a thumbs-up to pull the zôn, a ticking clockwork thing in a shoebox, out of the car's trunk. 

While the cultists peel away in their truck, the PCs turn to the still-living zontanamancer. He sure looks like a wizard - maybe he knows the key to immortality through the Philosopher's Stone?  

He doesn't know a thing, but the players have fallen fully into the wizard gangster mindset and decide to use the Stone to turn his hands to gold, in case that makes him a bit more forthcoming. When it doesn't, they go "uhhhhhh...", turn his freak ragdoll to gold to repay him, and then ditch him to go ask the Templar for work.

Fortunately, his magic allows him to shuttle life force into his now-golden hands, so it really didn't do him much harm, I guess.

Analysis

I'm getting closer to getting the thing really spinning - the players are meeting factions, and by the next session the game should just about be running itself as the faction tables get finished. The players seem a bit impatient to get work past the starting jobs from their Patrons - later sessions will start with a pair of faction moves delivered over the grapevine, but I'll probably make a minor job generator for extra Patron work in case I need it. 

I also think I'll be stealing the light downtime procedures from Rota Fortunae - there's not much to say about them (70 hours a week, choose how many 10-hour shifts you take during character creation, gain [shifts]d10*10 dollars each week, spend the rest of your time tormenting NPCs and practicing skills and so on) but they're nice to have. 

The zontanamancer was just a 4 HP guy with 4 MD and Primeumaton's variation of Animate Object - he was supposed to be a one-off joke character but I'm happy I get to keep using him (and, honestly, kind of amazed the PCs didn't kill anybody). I expect there to be more of these specialized caster NPCs, so (unlike the zontanamancer) I'll have to figure out how I'm doing mishaps and dooms for them. Probably just one of each, based around their spell. 

Libra Actual Play, Session 1

After a couple posts, my Libra game's on the road with a group of new-to-the-OSR players (which is fun, given my normal playerbase of obsessives from the various Discord servers). Our PCs are:

• Joe Normal, potentially undercover agent of OSIRIS.
• Moon Dan, who retired from fighting Sumerian mummies just in time to get abducted by aliens.
• Toka, a Ynnbringer who's decided to make ends meet with murder-for-hire. 
• Valrel, elven scion of the Vampire's Head.
• and the Finance Optimizer, who crossed to earth from the planes of law and decided to start gambling.  

The PCs woke up with pounding heads and bleary eyes in a pitch-black room with someone hammering on the door. Moon Dan stumbles up to peer at - oh, it's a cop outside - while Valrel smears her hands around the walls to hit a light switch. 

She reveals a ruin of lost bottles and obliterated furniture in a trashed hotel room, and drops a basketball-sized stone on Toka as the fan's juddering start dislodges it from the ceiling. 

The Philosopher's Stone. Lead to gold. Eternal life. Where did you get this?

Joe Norrmal flings open the curtains - third floor window, it turns out - to find two armored vans and four SWAT guys milling around in the parking lot.

The cop outside is insistent. Where's the Stone? Open the door. Hand it over. I'm calling the Haruspex. 

The PCs panic in all directions. Moon fails to talk down the cop, Finance Optimizer decides to embed the Stone in his body, Toka scours the bathroom (no clue what she was looking for, to be honest), Joe barricades the door, and Valrel considers just jumping out the window.

Then the door turns transparent. The Haruspex is here, an OSIRIS psychic in a long white coat. With a snap of her fingers (and a cast of Telepathy, and a. mishap.) she reads Moon's mind. The infral has the Stone. Kill them. 

Valrel decides she had the right idea, leaps from the window, and between an Acrobatics skill, a lenient ruling, and excellent luck, lands heel-first on one of the SWAT guys' heads, fatally. Moon pops a smoke grenade, Toka exposes the Haruspex and the cop next to her to the fire of the Sun, and the party hustles down the stairs.

Outside, Valrel is immediately shot like 20 times, makes a billion rolls on the death and dismemberment table, and winds up OK :)

Joe hucks furniture from a second-floor window while the rest of the party crashes into melee with the cops and routs them. As the sirens of a second wave of cops approach, the PCs pile into a stolen SWAT van and drive.

Valrel drags them to the home of her patron, the Vampire's Head, to plan for just a second. She talks to the Head (very pointedly not mentioning "the cops are after me" to instead extract compliments for getting the Philosopher's Stone) while Joe loots the SWAT van and throws a brick on the throttle to get it Away and Moon calls друг to do... something, about the Haruspex, and undoes all the Theurge's coverup work by deciding to steal a car for no clear reason except wanting a car. 

The PCs expect that... maybe? Nobody will be after them for a second? The news report on "an infraspatial, a vampire, three freaks" massacring a squad of police officers makes them... less optimistic. 

Joe throws up his hands - maybe друг can help with this too. The voice on the phone says sure, I'm always happy to help, I just need something in exchange. 

There's this car in a Walmart parking lot - green Civic, license plate CFE-7912. It should stick around long enough for you to get there.

Cut the brake lines. 

Analysis

The first session of these city sandboxes is always the most difficult. The faction turns aren't ticking along, the PCs barely know anyone, and you really need to give them a kick to start the game off running. Usually I do this with two things - a pre-set long-term goal, and an immediately provided short-term one. (In Go Away this was "get a ticket to the rocket" and "go shoot the technomonarchists and find out where they keep their money".) 

Here I got experimental - the long-term goal is "??? I'm sure you'll find something to do with the Philosopher's Stone" and the new patrons replaced a clear contact to give out jobs. So, I put them directly into A Situation instead, trusting that they'd run to their patrons to give them a hand with the cops. 

From here, it should keep itself spinning as the faction moves start up. 

Or, well. It should do that, but my standard operating procedure of starting a game and then doing prep has finally caught up to me.

thanks gokun and vik you're both a big help

Now that I'm on a time crunch I think I'll be turning to the generators in Cavegirl's modern occult game, Esoteric Enterprises - which'll be fun! It's nice to have an excuse to use something off my shelf.

Starting Patrons for Libra

My upcoming Libra game is built in the same way as my prior modern urban sandboxes. These games have usually included a patron - a mostly-neutral contact of the PCs who hands them their starting job. At the start of Go Away this was Carne, who had a lead about a technomonarchist bombmaker's workshop. In Rota Fortunae it was Labyrinth, who had heard both about a bit of work for the Vegas mob and about the giant crab currently throwing cop cars into the river.

For Libra, I decided to make this a choice of the players. The reasonable thing to do would've been to make this a party decision, similar to something like marsworms's patrons or grounded sept creation. Vote on your patron and starting job, then get going. 

What I did instead was a) make them individual choices and b) make them all hate each other. This will either be a beautiful second layer onto the faction game (where these starting patrons act on a different layer than the four more active, lower-level groups in Libra's prep spreadsheet - none of the patrons are interested in the Philosopher's Stone as they already have, or at least claim to have, unlimited resources and eternal life) or a disaster. We'll see!

(oh, and c) the starting job has nothing to do with any of them and is, instead, running away from a police raid. really none of that plan survived, apparently)

Satan
A toothless smile under a pair of pilot-light eyes. The adversary, who offers you things against your best judgment. Seemingly completely unrelated to the geometric "demons" of the lawful planes.

Wants:

• The Templar corrupted until he sells away his soul.
• A small hurriedly-stapled together book. Whenever you kill someone, their name is added to its pages, and their soul may be traded to Satan instead of your own. He says this condemns them to Hell no matter their actions. C'est la vie. 
• A particular golden fiddle returned to him, now that its owner has passed away. 
• A jar of hellfire, which radiates blood-red light and never burns out.
• The points of a sigil set in blood at 5 places in the city.
• A lemure - a 1 HP head-sized, boneless, flying imp. Turns invisible, fits under doors, has a myotoxic stinger. If it dies, it will crawl out from your mouth next time you sleep. 

Satan is always happy to make a deal for further rewards - and will throw in one of his gifts to sweeten the pot. 

• Freikugeln - a handful (1d4+2) of cartridges. Black-anodized aluminum cases, bare lead bullets, no primer. +4 to-hit, +1d6 damage, starts fires, any humanoid killed with them explodes into a cloud of caustic black smoke that deals 1 damage per round to those inside. If you pull the trigger and Satan would benefit from someone near you being shot, the freikugeln flies off to hit them instead of your target. He promises that this barely ever happens. 
• Cigar - tastes like smoked paprika and mint. Provides 1 MD, which is lost as normal on rolls of 4-6. Whenever this die is rolled, it deals damage to you equal to its result.
• Mimic Figurine - crush it in your hand to instantly heal to full HP and ignore all your wounds for 5 minutes. After this, take double the healed damage and a new wound for each one you had.

Characters sworn to Satan begin the game with one of these gifts.

Vampire’s Head
Four-eyed, elongated, and half-charred. The size of a person, carried on a litter by some of his favored descendants.

Wants:

• His body found and returned to him. 
• Reward: one of his claws, long as an arm and sharp as a razor (as vorpal sword). 
• One of 6 turned into one of his descendants. 
• Reward: a wax phonograph cylinder. When played, no sound is made or can be heard within earshot. 
• A wayward heir, Islwyn, hunted down and brought to him alive. 
• Reward: a cupful of Islwyn's blood. The next step of your transformation. 

Strange and unnatural bloods can be traded with the Head for further rewards.  

Characters sworn to the Vampire’s Head begin the game as one of its sworn “children” - in direct sunlight their skin chars slowly. Their bite deals 1d4 damage to a target and provides them an equal number of “points” that may be spent on restoring their HP or providing an equal bonus to a roll.

друг
The voice on the phone 🙂. Always a good friend. 

Wants:

• The brake lines cut on a green Honda Civic, license plate CFE-7912. 
• A note with the words "damaging habit formation" stuck to a streetlight on 16th Street. 
• One specific computer in the Cerulean Global building smashed with a hammer.

друг does not mention rewards, but rest assured a package will arrive promptly - as will more work.

Characters sworn to друг begin the game with a shattered phone (usable only to receive calls from друг - you can't call them, but whenever you would want to the phone rings) and two favors owed by друг.

Templar
A… something, under interlocked armor. Humanoid, under the hair and the teeth and the burning wild eyes.

Wants:

• The Vampire's Head as a trophy on his wall.
• Excalibur, granted to the Templar centuries ago. 
• The gateway to his home found. 
• The secrets of the Templar's posthuman augmentations.  
• The nest of the City Bugs cleared.
• An M4 for all of you. Don't tell the ATF.

Templar will continue to trade the heads and bodies of monsters for weapons and ammunition.  

Characters sworn to Templar begin the game with a .50 anti-material rifle (+2 to-hit, 1d10) and 10 rounds. 

6
Always someone different when you meet - but always the same voice. Collected, far-thinking, sees violence as purely a last resort.

Wants:

• Provide overwatch while another set of 6's agents break in to a penthouse apartment.
• Reward: $6,000.
• Containment Center CATERPILLAR infiltrated, and certain rooms bugged.
• Reward: $18,000.  
• друг positively identified.
• Reward: $72,000. 

6 will always accept actionable intel in exchange for further reward.  

Characters sworn to 6 begin the game with a skeleton key - 4-in-6 chance it instantly and silently opens any door.

GLOG Classes - OSIRIS Theurge, Ynnbringer (Libra)

My sprouting in-person group voted for Libra as our next game, so it's gone from "something to think about" to "an immediately upcoming deadline". As such, here are the game's two clerics.

• Infraspatial
• OSIRIS Theurge
  
• Psychic
  
• Mundane
  
• Wizard
  
• Ynnbringer 
• Sidhe

The Pyramid commands with the voice of Law - and yet, you've slipped away, to cavort with PCs. Is it still watching? Has it decided this is permitted? 

Are you still part of its plan? 

Class: Escaped(?) OSIRIS Theurge 

Skills: 1) Threatening People 2) Electronics 3) Paranoia 4) Forensic Accounting 5) Aggressive Driving 6) Police Procedure

A: No Argument, No Escape, +1 MD

B: Dead Stillness, +1 MD

C: Animism, +1 MD

D: Beg and Plead, +1 MD

A: No Argument

Your MD are used to speak with the Pyramid's voice. A human target must Save or follow a single-word command to the best of its ability for one round. For each MD past the first, you may choose one of the following:

• The command affects +2 targets.
• You may increase the length of the command by +2 words.
• You may increase the duration of the command by +2 rounds.

This command can be used to make targets attempt to kill themselves. "Forget this happened" is another favorite of OSIRIS.

A: No Escape

When you roll doubles on your MD, gain a point of Notice. When you roll triples, gain five. You are still under surveillance. 

At 5 or more Notice, you start to look vaguely plastic and perfectly symmetrical. People become unable to remember your face or name. 

At 10 or more Notice, your mind becomes impossible to read. Attempts to do so only return an empty white room. You feel the same - at least, you think you do.

At 15 or more Notice, you begin to hover 3.1415926 feet above the ground. The Pyramid's influence is inescapable. Once per day it will pilot you for five minutes, if it wants. 

At 20 Notice, you vanish instantly and silently.

When you dream, the Pyramid will send you instructions. Kill this person. Destroy this artifact. Fulfill them, and your Notice drops by 1d6. Thank you for your cooperation.

B: Dead Stillness

Under the Pyramid there will be no interference on Earth. You may spend your MD to oppose an incoming spell, lowering its [sum] by your [sum] and its [dice] by your [dice].

C: Animism

The voice of the Pyramid has no sound. Your commands may now be used on nonliving things.

D: Beg and Plead  

There is a phone in your house now. It's ringing. It never stops. 

Choose one:

• Pick up the phone. Let's work this out. In an emergency, you may roll 1d20 over your current Notice - if you succeed, the Pyramid will assist you. No matter what, you gain +3 Notice.
• Break it. You no longer gain Notice. The kill-team will arrive shortly.  

Inversely, the planes of Chaos provide no instruction. Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Class: Ynnbringer  

Skills: 1) Pharmacology 2) Gardening 3) Avant-Garde Painting 4) Criminal Culture 5) Navigation 6) Sleeping 

A: Wonder-Worker, +1 MD 

B: Pet Sun, +1 MD 

C: Seeker, +1 MD

D: Catastrophic, +1 MD

A: Wonder-Worker 

You have a radius, called a "Crown", of [templates]*20 feet around your brain. All your magical effects originate within your Crown and must stay within your Crown. 

To perform magic, combine a Word, an Implement, and one or more MD. Each level, you learn 2 Words from the list below. Begin play with an Implement of your choice. New Implements and lists of Words can be found in game, but this is the most common tradition. 

MD spent to work wonders are not lost when they roll 4+ - instead, an Instability Die is added to your pool. Instability Dice are d6s and must be rolled whenever you work wonders. They are not lost on any roll, and do not count for any purpose except for mishaps on doubles, triples, and quadruples. At dawn, all instability dice are lost as the Sun draws on chaotic energy to be reborn.

Words of the Tradition of Ynn

1. Fear
2. Growth
3. Sunlight
4. Confusion 
5. Faces
6. Wood
7. Soil
8. Heat 

Implements of the Tradition of Ynn  

1. Grail - distill a potion of [Word], or cause one who drinks from the grail to be wracked with [Word] at your will. 
2. Camera - project images of [Word], or immobilize [Word] in your Crown.
3. Bow - make an arrow of [Word], or an arrow that seeks [Word], even as it is fired from your Crown.
4. Wand - create or conjure [Word].

B: Pet Sun

A piece of the Sun travels with you - the size of a softball, silently floating on your shoulder. Its light does not travel past your Crown, but counts as sunlight for all metaphysical purposes.

Your pet Sun can be used to flare off Instability Dice, exploding for [best] damage to all in your Crown (including you) and removing all ID that rolled 4+ for the explosion. It returns in the morning. 

C: Seeker

Your pet Sun can leave your Crown, though not your line of sight - a ten-foot radius around it counts as part of your Crown.  

D: Catastrophic

Instability Dice now count for [sum], [dice], et cetera. They still must be rolled whenever you work wonders. 

Ynnbringer Doubles

1. Brightly colored sparks fly from your ears. 
2. You make a noise like a thunderclap.
3. A strong wind billows around you, extinguishing all torches and candles within 20'.
4. You act last in the next initiative round as your Crown sparks in your eyes like a flashbulb.
5. You broadcast your current emotional state. Everyone in a 60' radius must Save or experience your emotional state.
6. Take 1d6 damage, struck by lightning. 

Ynnbringer Triples

1. You become unable to tell the truth until the next dawn.
2. Dogs and other domestic animals abhor you until the next dawn.
3. Teleport 1d6x10' in a random direction.
4. Take 1d6 damage. You are flung 1d10' in a random direction.
5. Add +1 ID to all rolls for the rest of the day.
6. Take 2d6 damage.  If reduced to 0 HP or below, explode. 3d6 damage, 20' radius. 

Ynnbringer Quadruples

1. Burst into flames. The light of this fire counts as sunlight.
2. Effect is maliciously altered.
3. All plants within your Crown grow suddenly as if one hundred years had passed.
4. One of the Sidhe crawls out from the corner of your Crown, released into reality.
5. Save or become afflicted with the Idea of Thorns.
6. Take 3d6 damage. If reduced to 0 HP or below, explode. 5d6 damage, 50' radius.  

Machine Space Exploration - Navigator Domain Procedures Part 2

Part 2 of my four part series on fixing mistakes in my spaceship-hunter-gatherer domain game. See part 1 (on economy and domain actions), and later part 3 (troupe play and character advancement) and 4 (new players' document).

The megastructure is crossed by Machine Space - thousands or millions of miles of airless tunnels that twist around the structure's hexcrawl regions. Navigator sept-vessels travel through this place - a great black sea for the Volume's sailors.

spaces between spaces

Machine Space is handled in the same way as Phlox's wonderful Acmori - known routes through its halls, recorded in songlines, are handed out as a type of loot. These routes have a couple static pre-rolled encounters (it is known, of course, that this route is haunted with constant sensor sweeps), a couple descriptive landmarks (the geyser, where the broken air pipe sprays condensation into the vacuum), and a couple spaces for newly-rolled random encounters (on a list that I do not, uh, have yet). 

Many of these routes lead to the "islands" of Machine Space - humming devices, precarious factories, and other adventure sites. Septs can reach one of these islands, explore it, and move on in the course of a season. While exploring an island, characters can still communicate with their sept-vessel using light-semaphore (so you can do Fun Problem Solving with your giant tow cables and big saw and so on). 

Some routes lead, instead, to hexcrawl regions - the beautiful Spire, the distant Vault, the Hanging Gardens, et cetera. Exploring these regions takes two seasons - the first spent reaching the site and breaking it open, and the second exploring the hexcrawl. 

If you are inside one of these regions during a change of season, you are given the option to flee immediately into Machine Space. If you do not, gain 1 Glory as the structure notices the damage done to its region and sends its Dreadnought for repair and sterilization. 

Island Prompter

The island itself is a hexflower or a tiny pointcrawl or something. Because I'm already in the hex-keying mines for this project, the button below provides concepts for islands of Machine Space. Thanks to Slight Adjustments for their list-to-HTML-generator tool. 

GLOGmas 2025: Known World #56, the Emitter World

A GLOGmas gift for Swan and Raven Studio, derived from her Known World #32 - Sideways World. 

Key Characteristics: world exists only in direct line of sight of Site #42106 / MP.56.1 ("Leyline"). Shadows projected by solid objects form holes to interspatia. Objects (including living beings and portions of living beings) placed out of sight of MP.56.1 vanish, assumed into interspatia. Total land area of KW56 is a 2.01 km diameter circle centered on MP.56.1.

Magic Barrier: Required, along with particular tinting to prevent mixed consciousness. Breathing equipment is also necessary - pressure equipment is not.

Climate: moderate temperatures, air contains an asphyxiating concentration of argon. 

Intelligent Species: light produced by MP.56.1 is sapient. This sentience is infectious (leading to the above warning). Communication via infected interpreter is possible. Light describes MP.56.1 as a separate "building-individual" incapable of conscious thought. Light appears to be individuated - later exposures lead to interpreters with different memories and personality. Attempted diffraction of light to observe consequences to individuation is awaiting approval.

Other Flora and Fauna: KW56 seems completely disconnected from HW concepts of "flora" or "fauna" - though above-referenced conversations with infected interpreters imply MP.56.1 could be placed in this category.

Notable Cities or Landmarks:

    Site #42106 / MP.56.1 ("Leyline") is a 543-meter-tall helical structure at the center of KW56. A luminous sphere travels up and down the helix at a constant pace - a full trip from top to bottom or vice versa takes 439 minutes. 

    Site #42107 / MP.56.2 ("Great Hall") is a partially-buried complex composed of ulexite. Light from the MP.56.1 site fully suffuses the complex - interpreters have described the inhabitant-light of the Great Hall as "1.62 million years old", though ristetic anthropological research is confident "1.62 million" is cultural poetic license for any particularly large number.

Concerns: as with any potentially infectious KW, precautions should be taken to avoid uncontrolled spread of sapient light to HW. We consider the psychological effects to be low-risk - infected interpreters do not appear to be contagious. The ontological effects are currently not understood - high-risk concerns include the possibility of sapient light infection of HW light and the possibility of erasure of HW areas not illuminated by sapient light.

Secrecy: currently maintained. KW56 has few ristetic links and is not expected to be found by any outside groups for at least 30 years.