Esoteric Enterprises Near-Future Cyberpunk Rules & Setting Resources

Once upon a time, back in the olden days of February, I was preparing to run an Esoteric Enterprises campaign set about 10-20 years in the future, blending some cyberpunk elements with the default concept of the game. 

I actually got to the point of getting a group together and nailing down a day and time we'd meet...and then covid hit.  I don't feel like running online so I've been playing a game run by one of the guys who was going to be in my group.  

I'd been waiting until I was ready to actually start my home campaign before posting some of the Esoteric Enterprises Stuff I've written, but it looks like that won't be until sometimes between September and March, so screw it, here you go.  

Esoteric Enterprises Cyberpunk Game Rules

Setting 

San Francisco, in the 2030’s. Alternate history where magic exists but is semi-secret, almost entirely illegal and underground.  Most people have heard of magic but many dismiss it as a dumb conspiracy theory.  Cyberpunk stuff like genetic enhancement and cybernetic implants is just starting to hit the market, but is still very rare.  There’s no “matrix,” but augmented reality interfaces are common. 

No corporate extraterritoriality because that’s always been a bit silly; it’s more like real life where the rich and the big corporations frequently get away with crimes, but in principle the law as written mostly applies to everyone.  Only, like, more so; corporate lawbreaking is often concealed with only the thinnest layer of plausible deniability.  Corporate espionage and sabotage are still uncommon but becoming more common, and everyone knows they happen.  

The campaign concept is a mix of underground exploration as expected in Esoteric Enterprises, and cyberpunk corporate shenanigans like in Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020.   

The closest cultural touchstones here are probably the movie Strange Days, or the Detective Inspector Chen novels by Liz Williams.  If anyone else has any good near future fantasy cyberpunk suggestions, please share in the comments.       

Core Mechanics

Adding in advantage/disadvantage as in D&D 5E.

For skill checks, particularly difficult or easy tasks will have modifiers to your chance of success.  

Under consideration: replacing the old-school saves with attribute-based roll-under saves, so like DEX for dodging stuff, WIS for resisting mental compulsions, INT for seeing through illusions, and so on.  Need to do more thinking about how balanced that would be; in general it would make characters tougher at most levels but a bit weaker at the highest levels, even with ability score advancement tests as described below.  

Skill System

Tech skill split into two INT-based skills– 

Electronics, which covers hot-wiring, computer hardware and other physical electronic stuff

Software, which covers programming and hacking.  Basic computer use does not require a skill.

Contacts skill split into two CHA-based skills– 

Contacts–Legitimate For businesspeople, journalists, cops, and generally law-abiding people

Contacts–Criminal for criminals and the occult

Vandalism skill is gone- breaking stuff with brute force is now a straight attribute (usually strength) test unless you’re using a specific skill for it. 

In place of vandalism is the Larceny skill, which covers lockpicking, safe-cracking, and the like.  Also can be used for hotwiring cars and basic knowledge of security systems, even though that overlaps with the electronics skill.  Mostly DEX-based.  

Characters and Classes

Every time you level up, you can test two attributes for advancement.  Pick two attributes and roll a d20 for each.  If you roll less than the attribute, it goes up a point. 

Every character receives two skill points at first level to assign as they see fit, and one at every level thereafter.  No skill can be raised above half your character level rounded up (not including attribute bonuses) using these skill points, unless you’re a criminal.  

Equipment 

Smart phones are ubiquitous and everyone gets one for free, except non-human spooks.  They are common items.  They’re similar to real-life smartphones, but more powerful in every respect and capable of being operated by natural-language voice commands.  They also have two cameras each on the front and back, allowing them to take crude 3-d images.    

Augmented reality rig: common item.  Consists of glasses or goggles, a pair of gloves, and optional microphone.  Used to operate a phone or laptop in augmented reality.  

Simple drones are common.  They’re like real-life drones, but with better sensors and longer battery life.  Prices range from 50 to 10,000 dollars.  

Cybernetic implants are still uncommon, but becoming more common as medical devices.  Implants that enhance human performance, rather than correcting medical issues, are cutting-edge and not quite yet on the market, but just about to start being sold.  No implants may be taken at character creation; they will become available as the campaign progresses both as they come on the market and as the party gets special hookups for items that aren’t commercially available.    

All kinds of other equipment exists that’s not in the book.  If it exists in real life or would most likely exist a decade from now, it exists in the game.  If you want to buy it just say so, we’ll determine the price, and you can try to buy it.  

Note: I don't have a list of cybernetic implants or anything like that.  I'll introduce them one or two at a time as the game goes on, pulling from a mix of Shadowrun, Stars Without Number, real-world news and science articles, and this list.

Wealth and Purchasing

Windfalls of cash will confer a temporary boost to your resource level (just realized this is actually in the rulebook and I overlooked it).  A big windfall will boost it until your next level-up or until you spend a lot of money.  Getting paid up front for doing a job will boost your resources for the duration of that job, helping you buy equipment for that job.

When buying things, the “budget” below which you can automatically afford things is rules as written; the mechanic for buying more expensive things is different.

Roll 2d6 and add your wealth level.  The DC is 6 for a ten dollar item, 9 for a hundred-dollar item, 12 for a thousand-dollar item, 15 for a ten-thousand dollar item, and so on.  Big purchases may temporarily reduce your wealth until you either level up or get a big cash windfall.    

Wealth is no longer capped at 9.

Spook characters whose wealth is stuck at zero can’t have band accounts or credit cards but can still carry cash around, although spending large amounts at once anywhere law-abiding will be nearly impossible.  

Setting Generation Resources

The setting generation resources in Esoteric Enterprises are amazing, but I added a few more things, for three reasons.  First and most obviously, to match the futuristic setting.  Second, I wanted to incorporate surface locations directly into the map.  And third, I'd like the game to occasionally get outside the city.  

Can't share my physical and faction maps unfortunately, since I am going to use them eventually.  

Alternate surface locations (rolled with different-colored dice)

1- Skyscraper, mostly business use 

2- Mall

3- Transportation infrastructure

4- Large house or small condo building

5- Government building

6- Warehouse

7- Park

8- Museum

9- Empty lot or ruined building

10+: Apartment/condo building, this many stories (larger ones will have shops on the lower levels)

Color-coding for connections between map locations

Surface- Purple

Natural caves- Blue

Subway- Brown

City infrastructure- Orange

Ruins- Green

Mines and artificial tunnels- Red

Note: I didn’t end up with any direct connections between surface locations.  Obviously getting around the surface is normally easy, so if two surface locations end up connected then say they’re connected by a special tunnel or skyway, or maybe they’re both in the same corporate compound that isn’t open to the general public. 

Alternate Factions (rolled with different colored dice)

1- Tech company- small

2- Tech company- large

3- Biomedical company- small

4- Biomedical company- large

5- Other company- small

6- Other company- large

7- Law enforcement

8- Other government

9- NGO

10- Wealthy collector

11- Academic institution 

12- Social club

13-20– Rival adventuring party.  Contains this many people, minus ten.

Color-coding for connections on the faction map

Open war- Red

Shadow war- Orange

Non-violent competition or exploitation- Yellow/Pink

Neutral or subtle manipulation- Green

Friendly Trade- Blue

Alliance or control- Purple

Locations outside the City

All locations generated using Silent Legions system.  Can't say much about this without either giving away too much about my setting, or plagiarizing the book.  I have three small town locations with 3 location tags each, and three isolated locations with 2 location tags each.  All within a couple hundred miles of San Francisco, and most within like 50 miles.

Overall I doubt the whole map will ever get used, but it was easy to generate because I can wait until the players get close to a given location or faction before I flesh out the details.  

That's it for now; I might post some other stuff like a review of the game, some short adventures, or the mission generator I wrote, sometime later. 

How to Make Beholders Cool Again

Like dragons, beholders are awesome and iconic, but they eventually get boring because you know what powers they have and so there's not much mystery or suspense in fighting them, so now most OSR referees don't even want to use them.  Like dragons, this is easily solved by randomizing some of their abilities.

Artist: David Griffith

Beholder base stats:

10 Hit dice, 50 HP, AC 14 (or as chain), Morale 8, Flies 120’ (40’)

Attacks up to twice per round, either with eyestalks or a bite

Bite: 1d8 plus target must save or be grappled

Can’t use the same attack twice in the same round

Random Central Eye Powers d8

All powers affect a 150 foot cone.  They are always active as long as the eye is open and intact.  

1-3 Antimagic field.  Magic doesn’t work, no save.  

4 Fear.  Save or run away.  

5 Slow.  Everyone in the cone can move or act, not both, and loses initiative if you’re doing round by round initiative.  No save.  

6 Clumsiness.  Everyone in the field has disadvantage on any test where coordination is important, and must pass a DEX check to not fall over if running.  

7 Anti-language.  Nobody in the field can understand or use language.  

8 Fatigue.  Everyone in the cone must save or take a level of fatigue each round.  How that works depends on your system, but usually either a -1 to all tests or to all ability modifiers.  

Random Eyestalk Powers, d4 ten times

No eyestalk can be used two rounds in a row.  Eyestalk attacks at point blank range are made with disadvantage unless they're AoE.  The beholder is not immune to its own AoE powers.  

1– One of the ten usual powers a beholder has, unlimited uses

2– Random 1st level spell, unlimited use

3– Random 2nd level spell, three times a day

4– Random 3rd level spell, once per day

Henchmen, d6 

1– 2d4 Human thugs.  Mundane but well-armed.  

2– 2d6 Goblins armed with McGuyvered together goblin gadgets.

3– d4+1 trained giant spiders.  Poisonous.  

4– Two spectators (those mini-beholder things) 

5– d4+1 drow exiles with swords and poisoned crossbows.  

6– 3d6 kobolds.  Weak but tricky. 

Random Special Thing, d6 

1– Lair is filled with traps, plus knows the surrounding region like the back of its own hand.  

2– Regeneration, d4 HP/round

3– Venomous bite, anyone damaged must save or be paralyzed.  

4– It’s wearing a beholder-sized monocle!  Looks super cool, but also gives it X-ray vision and the ability to zoom in at long ranges like a telescope.

5– This beholder is a freaking wizard, casting spells as a 5th level mage.  Casting a spell replaces one of its attacks for that round.  Can’t cast twice in the same round but can cast plus use an eyestalk or bite. 

6– Despite being a “monster,” it’s actually a citizen in good standing of whatever polity controls the local area– you can’t just murder it without legal repercussions.  

How quickly does poison take effect?

Old-school games tend to have a lot of save or die poisons– or save or lose CON, or save or fall asleep, and so on.  And they almost never specify how fast those poisons work.

That leaves an important question unanswered: if you get poisoned, how long do you have to cure it before you die?

That depends on two things: how fast the poison is absorbed into your bloodstream, and how quickly its effects manifest after that.  The second factor depends on the individual poison, so I'll focus on the first here.

There's also a distinction between when poisons first have a noticeable effect at all versus when their effects peak before starting to subside.  Again though, that's mostly down to the characteristics of the individual poison.  

Poisons mostly get into the body by three routes: inhalation, injection and ingestion.

Inhalation: Seconds to Minutes

This is generally the fastest route.  An inhaled drug gets into your bloodstream within seconds.  

In fact, if the drug/poison in question mainly affects the brain, inhalation is actually faster than injection.  How can that be, you ask?  It has to do with how the circulatory system is laid out.

So blood takes around 45-60 seconds on average to circulate through the body, then it gets back to the heart.  It goes through one side of the heart, then to the lungs to pick up oxygen, then through the other side of the heart, then up through the aorta and into the brain before circulating through the rest of the body.

In other words, a drug that comes in through the lungs actually gets to the brain faster than one that's injected intravenously.

Inhaled drugs and poisons reach the brain within 5-10 seconds, and reach peak concentration and spread throughout the body within a minute or so.  Death takes longer,  but often not much longer; sarin gas can kill in one to ten minutes.

There's very little you can do about inhaled poisons, unless the poison itself takes a long time to work even after absorption.  For balance purposes, they should probably do damage or permanent CON reductions rather than be save or die.  Historically this is pretty accurate; really lethal gas weapons didn't come into use until the 20th century, and even today they usually wound rather than killing provided they have room to disperse, albeit the wounds are often permanent.   

Injection: Minutes to Hours

In an OSR context, injection doesn't usually mean intravenously, like heroin.  Mostly it means poisoned daggers, fangs and the like, which will inject poison into fat and muscle tissue as well as possibly somewhat into a severed blood vessel.  That's slower than injecting directly into a vein, and the speed is a little inconsistent depending on what part of the body the venom goes into and how much blood flow there is. 

Real life snake venom offers a good guidelines here.  The fastest and deadliest snake venom comes from the black mamba, and it takes 20 minutes to kill an adult human.

Untreated rattlesnake bites usually kill within 6 to 48 hours, and almost never in under 2 hours.  It takes around a half hour before symptoms get really bad.

As a side note, around 20% of rattlesnake bites don't inject venom at all; rattlesnakes can't eat humans so they sometimes give us a warning bite and save their venom for actual prey.  Something to consider when running poisonous animals.

Bear in mind that humans are much bigger than the prey snakes usually eat; a bigger venomous animal could inject more venom and kill more quickly.

Contrary to popular belief, sucking the venom out does very little good.

A few drugs and poisons are absorbed transdermally– through the skin.  This works at around the same speed as an intramuscular or subcutaneous injection.

Ingestion: Minutes to Hours for Liquids, Hours to Days for Solids

Ingestion is extremely variable.  Alcohol hits you within minutes, but can take up to a half hour to reach peak blood levels.  Many encapsulated drugs take well over an hour to be absorbed, and sometimes several hours to feel the full effect.

In general, liquids will absorb a lot faster than solids.

Of course it also depends on how full your stomach is, as any experienced drinker knows.  A full stomach will slow down absorption and spread the effect out over a longer period of time, although the same amount of the drug will ultimately be absorbed.

Absorption is also more gradual; there can be a big gap between when you first feel sick from the poison, and when you absorb enough to actually die from it.  Ingestion gives you a lot of time to react.

It takes 1-3 days for food to completely transit through the digestive tract, but usually 36-48 hours.  It takes 3-5 hours to get through the stomach and into the intestine; before that point you'd need to throw up, afterwards it's too late to throw up but laxatives might help you.

Different nutrients and drugs are absorbed at different stages of digestions.  Most nutrients are absorbed in the small intestine, meaning a few hours after eating.  A lot of drugs can be absorbed through the stomach though, which means they can take effect faster.

There also tends to be a limit to how much you can kill people harder and faster by using a higher dose.  Most poisons taste bad– this is why we evolved to dislike very bitter flavors– so a higher dose will be more noticeable.  A higher dose will also make it more likely that the victim will reflexively throw up, so ingested poisons need to hit a sweet spot of lethal, but not enough to guarantee vomiting.  This is difficult. 

Also note that some "ingested" drugs are actually transdermal, absorbing through the skin of the mouth and throat.  Cyanide capsules are like this, which is why they can kill within minutes.

Antidotes and Antivenoms

All of this applies equally well to antidotes and antivenoms, which is why snake antivenom is injected rather than swallowed: you're in a race with the poison.

An ingested antidote probably won't help against inhaled poison.  A liquid antidote could help against a snake bite, but it would be less than ideal.  It wouldn't take effect until well after the venom, so it might save your life but be to late to prevent a large amount of tissue necrosis.  The calculus is presumably similar for injected antidotes versus inhaled poisons.

Most RPG settings don't have drug needles, but an herbal poultice rubbed into a wound should be absorbed at about the same speed as snake venom or poison from a dagger.

Magical cures are obviously ideal here, since they can work instantaneously, or close enough.  In fact magic might be the only good solution for inhaled poisons.   

Most settings also won't have inhalers, although incense does exist and antidotes could maybe be burned.  In fact now that I think about it, there's an argument to be made for rolling antidotes into little cigarettes and keeping them ready for use, assuming the antidote wouldn't be rendered inert by heat.  Food for thought anyway.    

d6 Treasures That Generate Another Adventure

Want to make sure the party always has plenty of choices about what quest  to go on next?  Mix a few items into your random treasure table that create the opportunity for another adventure. 

Here are some ideas– they're generic so you'd need to turn them into something more specific.  

1.  Deed to a sawmill, mine, or other decently valuable piece of land.  Currently has a powerful gang of bandits squatting in it.  

2.  Bearer bond from an ancient automated bank– still valid.  Has the bank address on it, but the bank is now sunken into the underdark.  

3.  Blueprint to a goblin war machine– requires exotic components that will have to be sought out.  

4.  Powerful but cursed item.  Curse affects the whole party– they can hand it off to each other but the party as a whole can’t get rid of it.  The party is immediately granted a psychic understanding that lifting the curse requires going to *ruined temple* and performing  *rite of atonement.*

5.  A scroll containing a list of prophecies.  All have already come true except the last, which foretells a great doom upon a nearby city.  The last prophecy will come true unless the players prevent it.

6.  Same as the last one, except the scroll is a scam and was actually planted there shortly before the party arrived.  Figure out what the prophecy is and who would benefit from people believing it– that’s who put it there.  

You're Doing Vision All Wrong

Artist: Daniele Randazzo

GM: You hear a shuffling noise somewhere down the hall.

Player: What do I see?

GM: Nothing, just 60 feet of hallway and then darkness.

Player: I move down the hallway.

GM: Once you get ten feet down the hallway, you see a goblin 60 feet away from you.

This is how vision, or at least vision in the dark, is almost always described in RPGs: either you see something clearly or you don't see it at all.  In more mechanics-heavy games like 5E this is actually explicit in the rules, but I see OSR referees doing it too, perhaps out of a habit carried over from 5E.

This obviously isn't how vision works; things should come into view gradually.  But it also isn't conducive to tension, fear or mystery.  That intermediate step of "you see a shadowy figure that you think looks humanoid" is nerve-wracking.  It gets under players' skin.  Without it, vision is mostly just information.  

So, add it back in.  Have a level of vision in between "you see something and can tell what it is" and "you can't see the thing at all."  

I brought this up on reddit the other day, and someone told me that AD&D actually had vision chart that worked this way.  Here it is:

These should be self-explanatory, but just to be clear:

Movement: You see shadows/figures moving in the distance.

Spotted: You see something you think looks humanoid.

Type: It's a goblin, or maybe just it's a humanoid figure that's clearly smaller than a human and proportioned differently with longer limbs.

ID: You recognize Tom the goblin.

Detail: You see Tom has a bruise on his cheek and a small tear in his shirt.

So, my suggestion: retype this chart and order the rows from best to worst, or make your own chart.  Personally, I might remove all of the mist and fog rows, and only have rows referring to levels of light, then treat mist and fog as modifiers, like light fog cuts all vision ranges by half, moderate fog by 80%, heavy fog by 95%, etc.   

Then instead of treating darkvision as having a very specific range, treat it as shifting you up a category– from moonless night to full moon, to twilight, to day, or whatever.  Better forms of darkvision like drow and svirfneblin have could be two categories, and spells that grant darkvision could stack with natural darkvision.  

If you shift one level above daytime with clear sky you're fine, but two levels above it and you're blinded by the light.  

This will make vision far more realistic, but more importantly it will change the feel and playstyle of your games.  Half-glimpsed figures will inject some real fear and tension into the game.  It also gives players more choices about the risk/reward tradeoff of getting a better look at things: do you move closer to the shadowy figure to see what it is?  Hide and hope it hasn't seen you yet?  

It makes night feel like night, and dungeons feel like the creepy, hostile environments they're supposed to be.

Ten Fantasy Races Made More Interesting

Tolkien is boring and so are most D&D races.  You could re-write them from the ground up, but there's an easier option: re-interpret their existing descriptions.  That is, come up with new explanations for why they behave the way they do and what that means for the world.

1. Dwarves

Dwarves eat gold.  They need it to be healthy and fertile; those who don't eat enough to at least be fertile are viewed as un-marriagable.  Also, they're not that much shorter than humans.

The moral associations of up and down are reversed.  A dwarf who gains money or status is moving down in the world.  Military leaders are called the deep command, not the high command.

2. Elves

Elves were cast out of faerie eons ago.  Or fled a disaster.  Or perhaps are descended from faeries who interbred with humans.  Nobody's quite sure.  Faeries are polite to them, if condescending.

Their exceptional lifespans make for intense inter-generational conflict; imagine if your parents grew up back when only white male landowners could vote.  Elven teens would probably love Twisted Sister.

3. Orcs

Orcs breed at a prodigious rate; they get pregnant more easily, and usually give birth to twins.  Orc populations can quickly grow out of control unless an iron-fisted government enacts strict population control measures.

As they become more overpopulated, orc societies are usually compelled to turn first to raiding for supplies, then invasion of neighboring territory in a desperate grasp for arable land.  Some orcs justify this, but many view it as a tragic necessary evil.

Orcs grow up faster than humans, reaching full maturity around 15-18 years old.  Contrary to popular belief, they're not less intelligent, but usually less educated and have less life experience due to being younger.  They tend to be more aggressive, but whether that's due to genetics or the pressure of living in an overpopulated environment is anyone's guess.

4.  Goblins

While not a hive mind, goblins are extremely group-oriented, and view the group rather than the individual as the basic unit of society.  They place little value on individual lives, even their own.  That's why they're willing to engage in all sorts of borderline suicidal experiments and military tactics, but also why they tend to flee when they start losing a battle: they don't mind some people dying, but can't stand the chance of the whole group dying.

This gives them a sense of ethics that seems alien to many races.  Goblins would view inflicting a modest amount of suffering on a whole village as worse than murdering one person, for example.

5.  Dark Elves

Descended from Unseelie who rebelled against the growing decadence and sadism of the Unseelie court and were cast out.  Cruelly, rather than lauding their integrity, the surface races hated them for their Unseelie associations (light elves most of all!) and drove them into the underdark.  After generations of the moral compromise necessary to survive in that environment, drow became what they are today.

Also, their skin is mottled in different shades of grey, and their hair is usually grey as well.  This provides some camouflage against most cave walls, at least at a distance.

6.  Halflings

Just like in Tolkien's books, halflings tend to be peaceful, friendly, and adventurous.  They mostly avoid conflict if at all possible.

Since they tend to be neutral in most conflicts, halflings are often entreated to serve as mediators in disputes or to host peace talks, much like Switzerland in real life.

7.  Lizardfolk

Lizardfolk are almost completely devoid of emotion.  They're extremely rational, but have trouble understanding other, more emotional races.  They're not sentimental and really can't understand why eating people who were dead anyway is such a big deal.

Their lack of emotion skews their decision-making in an odd way; lizardfolk are great at evaluating the likely outcomes of a course of action, but terrible at weighing how good or bad an outcome would be.  It might not be obvious to a lizardperson that losing an arm is worse than losing a horse, for instance.  They're smart about pursuing their goals but often pick odd goals to pursue.

I read one that this is how emotional intelligence works.  I think it was the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, but I don't remember at this point and how no idea if it's true.

8.  Dragons

Every dragon is unique.  Dragons hoard treasure for two separate reasons.

First, they hoard valuable treasure as an evolutionary fitness signal.  The more treasure they have, the more and stronger adventurers will try to take it from them, the tougher they must be to still be alive.  Their ability to survive with a target on their back proves their mettle to potential mates.

Their long life spans mean that dragons eventually have a hard time remembering everything.  They collect unique items as mementos to anchor their memories.  Dragons value these items mainly for the memories so anchored, not the item's inherent value.  Thus, a wooden toy may be more valuable than a silver statuette, which in turn may be worth more to the dragon than several thousand identical gold coins.

9. Beholders

Artist: Luciano Komorizono

Like dragons, all beholders are unique, with their own mix of magic eyestalk powers.  The beholder race is becoming more corrupted by mutation with every generation.  This is why they seek to kill beholders who don't look like themselves; they wish to save their race by purging it of mutation.

Of course, this isn't how heredity works.  By culling their gene pool of diversity, beholders ensure that they will become more inbred with every generation, hastening the very extinction they seek to prevent.

10.  Illithids

Like it says in the book, illithids are created by implanting a larva into a humanoid, turning it into an illithid.  An illithid larva implanted into a human will create a more human-like illithid, one implanted into an elf will make an illithid more elf-like in its personality, and so-on.  Combined with their psychic powers, this gives each illithid a great understanding of whatever race it was made from.

Illithids were originally created by a vast hive mind organism to serve as traders and diplomats.  The organism did not understand humanoids, but wished to get along with them, and it believed that its creations would make ideal emissaries.  Unfortunately it completely failed to anticipate how horrifying this whole process would seem to a race of individuals, or indeed why kidnapping and murdering individuals would be seen as more than a minor annoyance.  It was destroyed by an alliance of humanoids, and the surviving illithids became the mind flayers we know today.

Survey: What People Use to Read Game PDFs

Somehow even though I'm not a designer, I've been thinking about game layouts and how different PDF layouts display on different devices, and yesterday I'd gotten a bit curious.  What are people using to read their PDFs?  What do they use to run at the table?

So naturally I decided to collect data.  Yesterday I ran a couple of surveys to find out what kinds of devices people were using.  The first survey I ran, I shared with r/osr on reddit as well as the OSR Discord.  A few hours later, based on feedback I got as well as some new thoughts that occurred to me, so I shared an updated version of the survey to r/rpg on reddit.  

Here are the results.

OSR Survey

I know the extra large images hang over my sidebar, but large just wasn't large enough to read everything really easily.  

Phone is 3.5%

General RPG Community Survey

What Can We Learn From This?

First, aside from the surveys not being identical, differences between them could be Discord vs reddit just as easily as OSR vs general RPG community, so don't read too much into it.  I have a sense that most of my responses in the first survey came from Discord, but no way to tell for sure.

Second, some people misunderstood the directions and responded based on how they play right now rather than in non-covid times.  So both online play and laptop/desktop usage are a bit overstated, but probably not by much.  

Third, I had no idea tablets were so popular.  Apparently 51% of American adults have a tablet now.  I had no idea they'd caught on that well.  It's good for designers since tablets read pretty much any format well, but tablets will never be a solid majority in any use case so you can't just assume people are using them.

Fourth, a lot of gamers have a lot of devices.  At least 55% of respondents have both a desktop and a laptop, plus 58% have a tablet.  I mean, damn.  

Finally and perhaps most importantly, there's a fairly predictable split between GMs and players, with GMs mostly using laptop/tablet at the table and players mostly using phone/tablet.  Or nothing I guess; I didn't think to include that but in person, most players don't all have their own copy of the book.

Presumably if they started having a book at the table, players would be more likely to read on their phones.  There might be some social barriers there like not wanting to look like you're texting, idk.  

Another thing to note is that because the proportion of people saying they use a laptop while playing matches up so well with the proportion who say they play online, my initial assumption was that almost all people who play with a laptop are playing online.  Looking through the individual responses, this isn't the case; more people than I expected bring their laptops to in-person games, as players.  In my experience this is partly a function of table space, i.e. if the gaming table is bigger people do that, but if it's small only the GM gets to use a laptop.  

When I started this I had the idea that single-column layouts display better on phones and double-column displays better on laptops.  Several people told me I was wrong and that's not always true; it depends on column width, maybe epub is better for phones, or a PDF designed to reflow really well, some people would rather just do two-column and deal with the hassle of scrolling back and forth, etc.  So I can't recommend a specific format here.

One thing that was agreed on is tablets handle both single- and double-column well, but not triple-column.

If there is one big takeaway here, it's that designers should think about how they design player-facing products differently from how they design purely GM-facing products.

Purely GM-facing products, like adventure modules, can focus on optimizing for laptop/tablet, which mostly means laptop since again, tablets work for everything.  That still may leave out as much as 10% of GMs according to this poll though.

Player-facing products on the other hand, need to work for all device types, and that may well mean you want to have two different versions, like a single and a double-column, or a PDF and an epub.  Thankfully for most independent product lines this means the core rulebook only, which is the one that sells the most and thus can most justify the extra expense of having two versions.  

P.S.  A lot of people said internal hyperlinking is really important.  I know we all know this and it's pretty much independent of what device you're using, but if I don't point it out someone will ask me why I didn't.  Plus I agree with it– do more of this, designers.  

Sand Giants

This is going to be my last giant article for a while.  I promised I'd do one of the more exotic types (not void giants though, they're magical enough already).  Maybe I'll come back to this topic at a later date.

Artist: David Hueso

D6 Sand Giant Powers

1– Burrow Through Sand

Can burrow through sand at the same rate at which it moves.  Has to move at walking speed to avoid creating noticeable ripples in the sand.  Can sense heavy footsteps or loud noises within 20-100 feet depending on weight/volume.  Can burst out and attack on the same turn, or grapple people and pull them under, causing them to drown at the normal rate.

2– Choking Sandstorm

The giant summons a sandstorm that covers a 200 foot radius.  The sand will choke anyone who doesn't cover their mouths and irritate the eyes of anyone who doesn't cover their eyes with goggles or a thin cloth.  The giant can see 30 feet through the sand.

3- Sand Devil Form

Can transform into a sand devil– a little tornado of sand.  Moves ten feet faster than normal speed in this form; automatically inflicts d8 damage to anyone nearby each round, which isn't much for a giant.  Mainly uses this to scout or sneak attack by seeming like a normal sand devil, or to escape.  Can de damaged by wind in this form. 

4- Control Scorpions

Will have d4+1 scorpion swarms under its control.  Will often have these hide under the sand, waiting for a command to jump out and attack.  Might also have them in a bag.  Note that this controls scorpions but doesn't summon them out of nowhere; it can often be nullified by not fighting the giant on ground it has prepared.

At the referee's discretion, may also apply to giant scorpions or even Scorpions.

 


5- Desiccate

The giant can draw all of the fluids out of nearby air and objects and into itself.  After activating this power, the air around it for 20 feet begins getting noticeably drier.  Starting on the giant's next turn, any human-sized creatures within 20 feet take 2d6 damage per round as the water is sucked out of their bodies; halfling-sized or smaller creatures take 2d4, and horse-sized or larger ones take 2d8.

This works on all fluids, not just water.  Fluids kept in airtight containers are unaffected, but it can backfire quite badly if there's an open container of poison or oil nearby.  This power lasts up to a minute, and there's a one-round delay in deactivating it early.

6- Sands of Time

There's a giant hourglass the size of a barrel.  If the giant places it so that the sand is on top, it takes one minute for all of the sand to run to the bottom.  When it does, the giant is returned to the state it was in when it placed the hourglass– standing next to it, all wounds suffered in the last minute are removed, etc.  This can even bring the giant back to life.

The hourglass is nearly indestructible, but tipping it over will prevent the effect.

It can be used by player characters too, with difficulty.  You have to place it by hand, without benefit of telekinesis or a crane.  It's a heavy barrel-sized object (around 100 pounds) that a person can can only carry short distances.

Other Articles in This Series

Storm Giants
Frost Giants
Fire Giants
Stone Giants
Cloud Giants

How To Run OSR-Style Investigative Adventures

People love the idea of investigative adventures, but there's a lot of confusion about how to do them, or whether they can be done OSR-style– that is, sandboxy, player skill-based, difficult, failure is an option, etc.

The only OSR game built around investigative adventures that I know of is Silent Legions, and as much as I love Kevin Crawford, he seems to think the answer is no, you have to discard a lot of OSR principles to make investigations work, because without some rails most parties just won't solve the mystery.

I think he's wrong.  Here's how you can make investigations sandboxy, challenging, and OSR-style while still making it highly likely that the party will (eventually) complete the investigation.

Artist: George Doutsiopoulos

Four Things Not To Do

1.  Don't Railroad

It's generally agreed that railroading is bad so I won't belabor that point, but a lot of people think that you have to throw this rule out the window when designing investigative scenarios.  You don't, as you'll see.

Let's be clear about what railroading means in this context though.  A mystery has one definite solution– that is, a definite truth about what really happened.  Railroading means a) having a clear plan for how players reach that solution, or b) a clear plan for what they do with the information when they get it.

In other words, a good investigative adventure should be a bit like a hexmap or sandbox setting in which the players have a clear destination in mind, but any number of ways to get there, and multiple options for what to do once they arrive.  

2.  Don't Organize Things By Time (Mostly)

This is generally just good sandbox design advice, but again it gets thrown out a lot where investigations are concerned (See: Silent Legions).  Organize your scenario by things to be investigated– locations, people or organizations. Not by time, or by "scenes."

There are exceptions though, where a certain sequence of events may be logically required within the fiction.  Like, the cult has to murder 7 people in ways that match the 7 deadly sins before it can summon Balphegor.  But note that even then, it's only dictated that things have to happen in that order if they happen at all, and not that they definitely will happen.  Preventing them from happening is often the point.

It's also fine to have some if-then statements about stuff that might happen in a certain sequence– like what happens if it gets out that the king's second son is the killer.  Still not railroading as long as the players aren't forced into either solving the mystery, or publicizing the truth when they find it.  

3.  Don't Make Players Roll To Find Clues

Don't let the whole adventure come to a screeching halt because of bad rolls.  Either make finding the clues more or less automatic if they're out in plain sight, or have players find them using player skill.  

Note the use of the word "make" though.  It's fine to allow players to roll to find clues as a backup to using player skill, the same way they can make search rolls instead of manually searching.  Like search rolls, it should just take more time and be less certain to succeed.  

So like if there are fingerprints on the windowsill, you could allow any player to say "I search for fingerprints on the windowsill," but also allow a player with a forensics skill– or any player if you don't specifically have a skill for that– say "I search the room for fingerprints," take a turn or an hour or however long it takes, and see if they find the ones on the windowsill. 

4.  Don't Put In Red Herrings Or Dead Ends

Your players will create their own red herrings by misinterpreting clues, or seeing some random flavor detail as a clue.  Deliberately creating red herrings is redundant.

That said, if the investigation is part of a broader campaign, you can have some side branches that connect to other things in the game world, but don't help solve the mystery.  This makes the investigation take longer, but these side branches at least have a reward so they're not a total waste of time.  

Five Things To Do

There's a general theme here: redundancy.  Having a massive amount of redundancy makes it unlikely that the investigation will ever come to a dead end.

1.  Have Multiple Pathways To The Conclusion

Think of investigations as consisting of a series of "nodes" that players can investigate.  These are usually locations or people, but they could be organizations or objects too.  

Justin Alexander's series on node-based design does a great job of illustrating how this looks; here's one example of how an investigation could be plotted.

Let's assume that the blue node is the beginning of the investigation, and node H is the conclusion.  Every connection between two nodes indicates clues, so node A has clues leading to nodes B and D, and so on.

That means there are multiple ways to get from the blue node to node H.  If you're in node A you could find clues leading either to B or D, and so on, so no particular clue is absolutely crucial, and neither is any particular node other than the first one (which you don't have to work to find) and the last (which you have many ways to get to).  

2.  Have Multiple Clues Connecting Any Two "Nodes" In The Investigation

Justin Alexander also has something called the Three Clue Rule, which says you should have three clues pointing to any conclusion you want the players to draw.  

I like that as a rough guideline, although the exact number of clues can depend on how vital a particular conclusion is.  It's alright to have a non-critical "easter egg" with only one clue leading to it.  

I disagree with how Justin combines the three clue rule with node-based design though.  He thinks you can split the three clues up between every connection leading out of a given node, so like node B would have just one clue each leading to nodes C, D and E, and so on.  I think that's too little, plus it's pretty easy to rapidly come up with a few ideas for clues, so I'd sprinkle more around.

Given that it's possible to move towards, perpendicular to or away from the solution to a mystery, I'd bias the number of clues towards going closer to the solution.  So like in the above chart, I would have 2-3 clues for every "downward" connection like from A to D, 1-2 for every "sideways" connection like from B to C, and only one for every "upward" connection, like from D to A.  

This means the players can potentially find a lot of clues and maybe get lead in the wrong direction, but on the whole those clues usually take them in the right direction.

Bear in mind that players often will have some ability to make an educated guess about which clues are more likely to lead closer to the heart of the adventure.  Like if you're investigating a murderous cult and you find one clue leading towards a pizza parlor and one clue to a cavern deep under the city, you can infer that the first is likely a front and the second might be a major cult hideout.  

3.  Make Some Clues Really Easy To Acquire

The GUMSHOE system, which is billed as the ultimate investigative system, has this rule that clues are always found automatically and the challenge is purely in interpreting them.  It's fine to do that for some clues, but I don't like that as a rule for all clues,  since it negates half the challenge of an investigative adventure.  

Clues can be rated on two dimensions of difficulty: how hard they are to find, and how hard they are to interpret afterward.  

A clue can be obvious, like message written in blood on the wall.  Obvious clues generally take no effort to find.

It can be inconspicuous somewhere you probably would think to look if you thought long enough, like a fingerprint on the doorknob.  Inconspicuous clues can be found either with a highly focused player skill-based search (I check the doorknob for fingerprints) or a moderately focused character skill roll (I roll forensics to search the room for prints, or search the door for whatever is there.)

Or it can be hidden somewhere you might truly never think of, like a drug stash hidden in an empty protein powder jug in someone's pantry.  These can only be found through player skill, unless a truly exhaustive amount of time and effort is put into searching, and even then a roll might be called for.  

A clue can be clear in its meaning, like a record showing that suspect A ordered Uber Eats the night of the murder.  This takes little interpretation; the person was home when they ordered it (assuming there's no message saying like "we left it at the door because you didn't answer")

It can be vague and in need of some figuring out, such as a book about human anatomy.  Was the person in med school?  Are the pages related to the liver, which was cut out of the victim, dog-eared?  This has to be figured out with player skill; character knowledge may sometimes help in interpreting clues (you realize this book is geared towards first-year med students, not surgeons) but can't do all the interpreting for you.

Or it can be cryptic with no obvious interpretation, or at least the correct interpretation isn't obvious.  Like, a suspect has a lot of oddly-colored  red dirt under his nice loafers because he's been sneaking into the underground from his office, but the dirt probably wouldn't mean anything to you unless you had already seen the cave or tunnel it came from.  

Cryptic clues usually can't be interpreted on their own; they only make any sense when combined with other clues.  Or alternatively, they might have an obvious explanation that's wrong, and a less obvious correct one.

So combine these possibilities and you have a 3x3 chart of clue types, not unlike an alignment chart

The numbers are very rough guidelines for how relatively common each type of clue should be.  So the moderate-difficulty clues are more common by default.  If you do a lot of investigations and your players get good at them, shift this breakdown towards the hidden-cryptic corner of things a bit more.   

Have one path from the start to the end of the investigation that can be followed entirely via relatively easy clues; clues in the upper left four boxes and not the other five.  At least, if you don't have much confidence in your players' abilities; this gives them one path of least resistance they can follow.  

4.  Have a Fail-Forward Mechanism For When The Investigation Stalls

So if the party still can't figure out the clues and keep the adventure moving forward what then?  Well, the bad guys aren't just static fixtures in the world; eventually they get to take action too.  At any given stage of the investigation, have an idea of what the opposition will do if the party doesn't keep things moving forward.

Early on, if you don't make any progress, the cult kills another person.  Once you've started to worry the cult, any time you give them enough time to react, they send a hit squad after you.  If the party doesn't make something happen, the bad guys will.

And this is a fail-forward mechanism because it provides more stuff to investigate.  A new victim means a new crime scene with more clues.  A hit squad coming after you means you can investigate the people in it after they die, maybe interrogate a survivor, or follow one back to their hideout. 

5.  Be Willing To Let The Players Fail (Or Quit)

Hey, it's OSR.  Failure is an option.

Let the party fail or quit, but if that happens, do dig into it and figure out why.  Were your clues too hard to find or too hard to interpret?  Was the adventure not that difficult, but just too slow to keep their interest?  Are they just not into investigations?  Would they have liked more combat?  Was there no clear reward for taking part in the adventure?

Let the chips fall where they may, but learn what you can to design a better adventure next time.  That said, as long as you a) verify beforehand that the players actually are interested in investigative adventures and B) combine all four of the above rules to have massive redundancy against failure, this shouldn't happen much, if ever.