We are Researchers (Older D&D in space)

0/ Once

You are researchers

Hub and spindle R&D substations; the first decades of your life spent inside cylinders arrayed as a wheel slowly revolving in space. When you first see depictions of the rectilinear habstructures of a planet-bound people the pupils dilate and the pulse quickens.

Everything in-station white to remind you how an incautious action, an ill-considered footfall leaves unintended marks.

Everything white but for:

*your uniforms, the gray of child/pupil/trainee

*the uniforms of Security, black for caution & death

*the Security spindle, red for danger

*the Prayer spindle, cool blue for the safe embrace of Christ Buddha

*the bio-based tools, people and foods

You are Researchers. If asked to identify your people to another, this is the term used. We are Researchers.

The Schola structure is each Year is a Class, to each Class a spindle and each Class split into Groups, the spindle sliced at regular intervals for each Group's play quarters, bunks, dining area and then the central round Classroom. Classmates share Parent/Teachers, two for every ten Pupils and each is fed, bunks by and is guided by their own Teacher.

The Classes of the Security and Prayers spindles are kept separate and we see them only on holidays.

Outside the station are an untold numbers of worlds, planetoids, systems that we will someday explore, study.

A promising few renounce the Group and go Silent, forswearing speech, splicing themselves into a new body of their own design and construction, reactor-powered, brain-storage crammed with security protocol and diplomatic frequencies.

Most of the Silent students will travel in ship-bodies out to the farthest of space, collecting and returning material but themselves never returning, ever voyaging. Some day they may settle in a smear of brilliant stars and implode, transcend to Christ Buddha. They are the strangest among us and the most holy.

The rest of us will have more pedestrian adventures, traveling to new places from which we will collect samples, artifacts, culture logs, DNA and from which we will return to the station.

-If you are one of the lucky few.

-Yes.

The Returned are our heroes, they work in the top-station arcology are station order, maintenance and grand personal projects. We see them occasionally in the distance, or up close once a year, when they welcome the newest inductees with smiles and dead eyes.

-Each of you has certain Traits; during ceremonial En-Soulment, the period of ritual and social induction into early adulthood extending from age 8 to 13, you chose the sort of Researcher you considered yourself and chose what you Traits might suit you best.

Starting Traits
Roll d6, d8 & d10 and pick 1-3 Traits, assigning roll results as desired, if same result or a second bonus to the same Trait's checks, must apply result to different Trait.
Traits	1-3	4-5	6	7-8	9-10
Strong	+1 checks	+1 Carry	+2 Attacks	+1 Carry	+1 checks
Dextrous	+1 checks	+1 Attacks	+1 AC	+1 Saves	+1 checks
Hardy	+1 checks	+1 Endurance	+1 Saves	+1 Endurance	+1 checks
Intelligent	+1 checks	+1 Tech	+1 to Languages	+1 Tech	+1 checks
Wise	+1 checks	+1 Search	+1 Saves	+1 Foraging	+1 checks
Charismatic	+1 checks	+1 Allies	+1 Bravery	+1 Allies	+1 checks

We each have explored the station with our Groups, found remote areas and explored each other's bodies (as instructed), found remote areas and watched a Security Pupil disciplined through the eyes, watched the Prayer Pupils learn how to burn the dead Security Pupil. What did each of us see?

what we saw (Secrets)
Roll d8, describe what you saw to the group and how it resulted in the below
roll	result
1-2	the passcode to a Seed data locker
3-4	the passcode to a Seed weapons locker
5	the passcode to a Seed armor bay
6	where a Prayer Pupil keeps an Orange Book. Add the Book to your inventory
7	where a Security Pupil stored her Veil. Add a Veil to your inventory
8	A lax Parent discarded an un-depeleted Amplifier (3 uses left). Add it to your inventory

Passcodes are universal. They give you access to a date/weapons/armor locker/bay wherever you are, not just a single locker/bay.

1/ Stalled Transit

You are travelers

Substation spins and regurgitates the tiny, unsteady lobes of Seed ships into lanes lit by winking beacons. The ships shudder as internal power wakes and impulse engines test fire. Interior lights blink on, the light sensor clicks once. Each of your Group lie on gurgling white foam beds in crisp white uniforms you did not put on. The lights flick off and your biomantles luminesce, waving glowing flagella in harmonic sympathy with your heart beats, the ship's hum. You swallow anxiety, nerves and a sleeping pill.

The biomantle dreams. Birth ponds on a jungle planet, hunted by the older, sapient, biped adults, hunted by great, sloth-taloned cats. Cavorting, mixing chemical handshakes, developing discrete languages, burrowing tongues into other creatures in the pools, riding your host until it dies or you've learned all you need to, until a more advanced host is required. The hunter's net, the training rod, the Teacher/Parent's lash.

The lights flicker on. The ship is damaged. It doesn't appear to be moving. Three of the Group are still sleeping, locked into stasis. There are three others, dead, missing and Silent:

Samson is dead in his pod, head smashed and pulped against the glass. He looks as if he's been biting himself.

Yuri's pod is empty and two hazsuits are gone. Vee, the ship's computer says Yuri is gone now but will be back soon, but says nothing else, has no video recording of transit, Samson's death, the landing or Yuri's departure.

The final pod contains a Silent, its hard cylindrical body marked with prohibitive seals and wards that trigger Pavlovian fear. Its three lenses are blue, black and red. You ask Vee to fog the pod's glass – catching sight of it even in the periphery is discomfiting.

Vee tells you that you may still be in space or at least if you've landed on something with atmosphere she can't read if it's breathable.

My sensors are damaged. Perhaps Yuri is repairing them.

I tell you that the oxygen recyclining still functions, that my bio-body still functions but is hungry.

The sensors down, I need you to check the Pilot for life signs and out rolls the cockpit, the Pilot inside, hairless, fetal crouching clone of William Ganz. Just like Samson was a Ganz, Pilot is modeled after the 23^rd century mathematician. If Samson had been better at math than biology, he'd likely have made Pilot. Pilot's pulse is fine, no sign of illness, no infection around the various posts and insertions.

We cannot move until Vee is repaired and we must venture out, to feed Vee.

When I am fed I can repair myself, I can heal you. I am fed on DNA, culture logs, all the information and discoveries you make. The process by which my body translates this food into useful matter is occult even to me.

I can train you in fields of expertise if you bring me the right materials.

The Silent One sleeping in my body is on a timer. I am not told all of the precise conditions governing its stasis, but:

1. The timer is at 999.

2. If we tamper with my body or fail to feed me regularly, the timer may begin.

3. If you xxxxxxxxx, the timer begins

4. If you xxxxxxxxxxx, the timer begins.

5. If I xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, the timer begins.

6. The Silent One is programmed to “clean up” after total mission failure. I have no further information on the purpose of the Silent One, the definition of “total mission failure,” nor the implication of, “clean up.”

2/ Rules

Energy

Everything costs Energy and Energy is awarded when you turn in bundles of genetic material, culture logs, etc. You pay for your own food, you pay for your sleeping pod, you pay for everything because everything costs Vee Energy to maintain. The approved perspective is that as long as you do a good job, everything is free. New limbs start at 100 Energy and a new body might be possible. She needs at least a few thousand Energy to repair herself.

Endurance

You begin with d4+1 Endurance. Lost Endurance is restored after ten minutes of uninterrupted rest in a safe place. Once reduced to 0 Endurance, any damage is catastrophic.

The Armory

There are three weapons lockers and two armor bays in the ship. One time access costs 40 Energy, but a passcode gives you access immediately. Fully discharged weapon or armor is to be replaced in the ship for repair and recharge. Recharges cost 1 Energy a charge.

Arms and Armor

Blasters are as crossbows, vibroswords and knives are as short sword and dagger. D6 damage.

Blasters come with 3d4 charges.

Vibro weapons have a 1 in 6 chance at the end of combat or use to deform and need repair back in Vee.

Armor is ablative and Light Armor absorbs two blows while Medium Armor absorbs four.

Catastrophic Damage/Saves

Damage that would otherwise result in immediate death or catastrophic, nearly certain-death may be ameliorated by rolling a Saving Throw. Succeeds on an 17 (d20). Best case scenario is that you're wounded. A second wound is automatically fatal.

Checks
Are usually made on a d6 and succeed on a 4. More complicated checks may require more d6, with success being 4*x+(x-1) where x is the total number of d6s being rolled.

What Vee Eats
Information. This can be large chunks of genetic material, but whole bodies, families, reports on cultural differences, new weapons, art, technology, languages, etc. She's got a number of feeding orifices inside and outside the ship but will not feed herself; you must feed her. She loses about 20 Energy a day just running lifesupport.

images: still from new Battleship Yamato 2199 and frame from Gantz

Basic Character Creation

This is one of those things you put somewhere so you can reference it later. It's super rough, but what I've been working on in what little spare time I have.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gxpiidrtelqv452/QuNFSsDRPe/Character%20Creation.pdf

Most of character creation for ability-scoreless and funnel-esque Basic D&D.

DisgaeaRPG/Monsterland for B/X

Welcome to Monsterland. Here is my B/X Disgaea hack.

1. No classes, everyone starts as 1-1 HD monster (Prinny)*, which is basically the Monsterland equivalent to 0level nobodies.

2. No XP, instead: Karma. Karma is earned by beating people up, lording it over humans in nasty, capitalist schemes, but mostly by stealing, theft, robbery, larceny, etc. Steal gold from other monsters, steal it from humans, steal it whenever you can. Every piece of gold stolen earns you one bad Karma. At the first 1,000 Karma and every 2,000 after that (so at 1,000, 3,000, 5,000, etc) you earn an incremental increase. Roll on this table.  At the first 2,000 Karma and every 2,000 after that (so at 2,000, 4,000, 6,000, etc), you can descend further into samsara when you next die. Of course, to earn any of these rewards, you need to die and be reborn.

(EDIT: WHOOPS! Forgot the interim increase table, my mistake)

Roll	1to3 HD	4to6 HD	7to9 HD	10+ HD
1	+1 HD in hp	+1 HD in hp	+1 HD in hp	+1 HD in hp
2	+1 HD in hp	+1 HD in hp	+1 HD in hp	+2 to hit
3	+1 HD in hp	+1 HD in hp	+2 to hit	+2 to hit
4	+1 to hit	+2 to hit	+2 to hit	+2 to damage
5	+1 to hit	+2 to hit	+2 to damage	+2 to damage
6	+1 to hit	+2 to damage	+2 to damage	+1 to crit
7	+1 to damage	+2 to damage	+1 to crit	+1 to crit
8	+1 to damage	+1 to crit	+1 to crit	retain a single special ability from current monster in perpetuity (re-roll if rolled again)
9	+1 to crit	+1 to crit	retain a single special ability from current monster in perpetuity (re-roll if rolled again)	retain a single special ability from current monster in perpetuity (re-roll if rolled again)
10	retain a single special ability from current monster in perpetuity (re-roll if rolled again)	retain a single special ability from current monster in perpetuity (re-roll if rolled again)	retain a single special ability from current monster in perpetuity (re-roll if rolled again)	retain a single special ability from current monster in perpetuity (re-roll if rolled again)

3. When you die, the gods of death and justice check your Karma to determine how awful you've been; you may earn an incremental increase that carries through from incarnation to incarnation or you may descend further into pain, fury, nastiness, glory, sex and violence and reincarnate as a more powerful monster (ie, +1 HD, roll your new form [alternatively, use the wandering monster tables by level from B/X]). After dying, you can be reborn on the battlefield, but usually you'll wake up in a pit of stinking bodyparts back in town.

4. Monster society is run by an evil Overlord and its various princes and princesses. Day-to-day life is more or less a popularity contest to see who can be the biggest, richest asshole around, with regular monster courts being held to condemn acts of kindness an reward villainy with citations and demerits.

Gold and slaves are all well and good, but citations and demerits for acts of villainy are the true currency of monsterland and can be exchanged for magical items, and super-powerful drugs, a night out on the town with some skeleton girls or zombie boys.

So, bribe your way into a court date, then lobby the members of the court, offer bribes, threaten or kill jurors and be well-known for being a real asshole. The GM will determine the president Judge (see Judges chart). The court is composed of six jurors, a president Judge and two angels.

Roll	Judge's Name	Title	Predilection	Monster Type	Variation
1	Marshall	Hack-nose	enjoys eating children	Ancient Red Dragon	+2 HD
2	Bork	Rot-face	enjoys candies from other planes	Vampire Lord	+2 Damage
3	Earlwarren	Cut-tongue	cannot abide a certain color	Demi-Lich in a pimp suit	Stern gaze attack can petrify in fear (save)
4	Ow Holmes	Long-finger	always lies, all verdicts and statements must be taken as opposite	Wyvern-Hyrdra hybrid	Outraged bellow cause lesser creatures to flee in terror (save)
5	Brandeis	Shit-stomper	is addicted to secrets, always wants more, but you've got to find a way to get them the secret “intact”	Small child, world-eater	Can swallow whole anything
6	Harlan	Gut-chewer	delights in fireworks from mass Prinny deaths	Ghoul King	Has another body hidden somewhere, ready to revenge any slight should this body be harmed

On the day of the trial, show up, state your case for how awesome a monster you are and roll a Morale check. Subtract from the roll a one for every juror present that hasn't been successfully cowed or bought. If you beat the Morale roll (ie, roll a 9+), you earn a mark of demerit and, for every point above 9, you also earn a citation of villainy. If you roll a six or less, the angels have successfully won their case and you are, to your horror and shame, considered largely a redeemable and OK person. No one will want to hang out with you and you can't get another court date until you've amassed some seriously nasty Karma and money.

5. Combat is basically B/X, but:

a. When attacking, you can choose to go "all out": this means you attack without concern for your own safety. You have a +3 chance to crit and do +3 damage, but wind up with damage equal to half the damage you ultimately cause.

b. Successful critical strikes do another attack die's worth of damage UNLESS you or someone else in the party has gone all out in a turn, in which case, critical strikes are now a team attack: you and anyone else that has gone all out that turn attack in a coordinated manner. Your attacks all hit automatically and you roll a damage die for each of your attack AND rolling the highest damage possible (ie a 4 on a d4, a 6 on a d6) explodes (ie, roll another damage die, if you get the max again, roll again, etc).

c. Note that anyone can do the same thing to you, so stay close and try to separate your foes.

d. You heal up your HP to max after resting uninterrupted for about a turn (10 min). You can also heal a quarter of your hp by eating a corpse (1 quarter/round) and doing nothing else. Prinnies leave no corpses.

e. you attack with the weapons your form has given you, unless the B/X entry says you attack with a weapon. In which case you can also attack with a weapon.

6. Magic weapons, armour and devices are all intelligent monsters, are purchased from the backs of intergalactic chevys driven by shady vampires and can only be bought with lots of citations of villainy and marks of demerit. You can sometimes flag one of these vampires down, but mostly you have to wait until they show up in town. Magic weapons, armour and devices can also be "levelled up" by clearing out these intelligent monster's brains. Basically, all magical weapons, armours and devices are split personalities of a single corporate mindgod. The mindgod is a megadungeon. Clear the monsters out of your gear's section of the megadungeon and the weapon becomes more of its former self. Watch out for pirates, though.

Getting into and out of the mindgod's megadungeon just takes a portal ticket and a portal, same as getting to anywhere outside of Monsterland. Portals are in all major cities and located throughout the mindgod's megadungeon brain and portal tickets aren't too expensive (be sure to buy one for the return trip as Charon charges you like crazy if you're stuck in humanworld or the mindgod's megadungeon without a way home [because Charon is a monster and is therefore a dick]). You can't use the item you're exploring while you're exploring it (duh).

6.a. See below for what levelling up the item does and what's going on in the item that's blocking its chakras.

Roll	Devices	Weapons/Swords with one ability or a single +1 bonus	Weapons/Swords with +2 bonus	Weapons/Swords with +3 bonus	What's going on its portion of the megadungons?
1	+10 charges	+1 bonus	+1 bonus	Add a new special purpose	Dungeon is having a nightmare. Run from the invincible boogeyman, make it through to the next level without getting caught!
2	+10 charges	+1 bonus	+1 bonus	Add a new special purpose	Dungeon likes you so much it wants to make it easy for you. All monsters in the level in one room, fighting.
3	+10 charges	+1 bonus	+1 bonus	Add a new special purpose	Dungeon is being invaded! There is a portal to some humanworld here and there are heroes clearing out the dungeon. Stop them!
4	+10 charges	+1 bonus	Add a new special purpose	Add a point of intelligence	Dungeon is schizo. Two factions in a pitched, prolonged battle
5	New, alternate ability of current ability's spell level or lower	Add a new special purpose	Add a new special purpose	Add a point of intelligence	Dungeon is even more schizo. Three factions.
6	New, alternate ability of current spell level or lower	Add a new special purpose	Add a new special purpose	Add a point of intelligence	Dungeon is being invaded! Space pirates and scavenging vampires are culling its depths for treasure. Stop them!
7	New, alternate ability of current spell level or lower	Add a new special purpose	Add a point of intelligence	Add a point of intelligence	Roll again, all dungeon monsters at -1 HD, but do +2 damage
8	can be used to open portals in lieu of portal tickets	Add a point of intelligence	Add a point of intelligence	Primary power changes	Roll again, all dungeon monsters sick! Half HP but its catching! (save after combat or get sick, death in 4 days)
9	can be used to open portals in lieu of portal tickets	Add a point of intelligence	Primary power changes	Primary power changes	Roll again, all dungeon on roids, attack on sight, +2 HD, -2 to hit
10	New, alternate ability of current spell level or d3 higher	Primary power changes	Primary power changes	Primary power changes	Roll again, all treasure in dungeon is in one big hoard

7. When you're a Prinny, the only retainers you can get are other Prinnies (prinnies come in packs of d3+2). If you're of a higher power than a Prinny, you can recruit other monsters or non-monster (human, elven, dwarven, etc) mercenaries, but note that monsters and mercenaries are dicks so for every level higher they are than you, you suffer a -1 penalty to their reaction roll. Probably a good idea to start on the small fries first.

*Prinnies are basically re-skinned goblins, look like peg-legged penguins, dual-wield machete-like daggers and have fanny packs of supplies strapped to their chests. Note the crucial difference in the creature description:

Prinny
AC 6
HD 1-1*
Move 60'(20')
Attacks 1, with weapons
Damage d6 or weapon
# appearing 3-5 (3-300)
Save as Normal Man
Morale 7 (or 10 around a Boss, who they call Dood)
Treasure Type Nil
Alignment Bad Guys

Whenever struck for more than 3 hp damage and whenever reduced to half their hp, there is a 3 in 6 chance that the Prinny explodes in a 20' radius, doing d6+1 damage to everyone in the vicinity (including other Prinnies).

pictures: Prinny by Imson, rest are from the games or promotional materials

DUNgeon Crawl 3

I got this free copy of #3 of this Dungeon Crawl zine that +Wayne Rossi  puts out. I wanted to spend more time with it and maybe use some of it before writing this but it's clear I'm not going to have time do any of that for a while...

Most of the zine is by Wayne but there's a bit from +Zach Howard and a couple of other people.

1. It's really mostly tables and lists. This is ideal.

2. There is a d20 list of minor magic items to toss at new characters in a low-level, small party to beef them up a bit. They're mostly utility belt-style magic items, which are my favourite kind. And I love tossing one or two random things at each character at the start. Gives them something interesting to have or do that has nothing to do with their class. There is a lot here you could probably do with character creation, especially in iterative/meat grinder games. Everyone starts as a random level 1 with some random, cool item. This was my favourite bit.

3. There's an article on "Thinking Like a Fantasy Character," and it's a pretty good, short, look at ancient perspectives on the immanence of magic and divinity (it references a particular historical report of a Spartan army being delayed for religious reasons - I think this might be the same document detailing the delay of certain ancient soldiers that inspired Gene Wolfe to write the Soldiers of Sidon stories). Only a few pages long and might be useful to help create consensus around the table in re the setting's cosmology and its impact on daily life, especially if you've got newer players.

4. There are tables to populate empty rooms that have a lot of interesting options. Wayne (and Zach too, but these particular tables are Wayne's) is really good at populating tables with entries terse enough that you don't feel like you've got to do a ton of work to use the table, but also evocative/strange enough that it's worth using (like, we can all come up with "rotten, mouldy chairs"). My only complaint is that I wish there was a ton more of entries on each table.

5. There is a gonzo, pastiche dungeon that looks like it'd be a lot of fun. I kind of wished there was a bit more to tie it together, especially something in the way of an indication of what happens in the neighbouring rooms when you do something loud, like get in a fight. And there is a giant lobster and you can eat it but no butter is provided. Can you milk a goblin and get churn that into butter? Goblin butter is: 1. Gross, 2. Peppery, 3. Cinamonny, 4. Tastes like gravy, 5. Causes vomiting, or 6. Re-roll twice.

6. There's also a long-ish hex/exploration area that started out boring me to death and ended up being pretty interesting. It's packed to the gills with faction stuff and potential conflicts. Clearly a lot of consideration has gone into how this would be run, with the conflicts between NPCs and changes the players can affect to the area so even should you not use it, it's an interesting presentation of how to run a hex with moving parts. It's also generic enough that you can drop it in and out of any desert/badlands area and just file off the names/numbers that don't quite work for your campaign.

7. There's also a new class, some monsters, another magical item (that's pretty cool), and another set of tables on gas traps.

So there's a lot here. It's all clearly meant to be and is presented to be used easily and widely, which I really like and respect. To that end, I kind of wish something more was done with the layout of the hexbits and adventure that made cross-referencing a bit easier than flipping/clicking back and forth, but hey, this is a zine. 

Here are links.


Announcements:http://initiativeone.blogspot.com/2013/08/dungeon-crawl-3-now-available.html

Contents:http://initiativeone.blogspot.com/2013/08/dungeon-crawl-3-contents.html 

Lulu (Print):http://www.lulu.com/shop/wayne-rossi/dungeon-crawl-3/paperback/product-21162919.html

RPGNow (PDF):http://www.rpgnow.com/product/118117/Dungeon-Crawl-%233

Monsterparts (attribute-less D&D)

You are all children. No younger than 7, no older than 14. You live on the same block or nearby and you probably attend the same school. Something is wrong and only children and animals can see it.

The night is longer than it ought to be, the temperature drops and there are wolves bigger than cars in the streets. At night, the shutters clap against the house, brushed aside by the enormous grey-black, craggy knuckles of a vast and careless hand, the sidewalk is wet with ropey drool. "Always so rainy," the adults say, as the step over the puddles.

Something goes from house to house, tapping at the windows. It has large reflective eyes, like an owl. The adults do not see and they do not understand why they must not open the windows. Next door, they are all different. They are cold and you saw one killing a squirrel while its parents watched. Next door, all the windows are always open.

Childhood rhymes hold new secrets, open doors. Crouch down in hiding places and the branches grow wide and long, the bush becomes a knot of trunks, the trunks roads and everywhere they go strange and terrible, full of knights dead in their armour and beautiful women in beautiful dresses covering spider legs and they will try to drown you in a vat full of other small, floating bodies or wear you like earings or walk you like a dog.

There are signs and symbols. A threadbare shirt worn by your grandfather, a riddle in Latin, a saying in Greek. The broach in your mother's sock drawer. You present them against the dark and the worst things to turn them aside for a time.

And still things change. The world grows dark and shadows lengthen, take on new forms. From the trunks of passing cars, voices call your name. Under the floorboards, scratches. Things want to be let out, they want to be let in and they are always hungry, curious, violent, terrible.

Characters
Roll d8+6. This is your age.

Choose a character class/type: there are Tough, Studious and Truant.

Tough characters have 6 Endurance Points. 0 Secrets. Damage die: d6. Starting stuff: clothes, 2 other things.

Studious characters have 4 Endurance Points. 1 Secret. Damage die: d4. Starting stuff: clothes, books, notebooks, 2 other things.

Truant characters have 5(4) Endurance Points. 2 Secrets. Damage die: d6. Starting stuff: clothes, cigarettes and/or a key to a safe place or one other thing.

Stuff
Jelly or Jam & Toast (heals EP when eaten at leasure)
Compass (works as normal, goes crazy around some bad things)
Vintage Nimrod Pipe Lighter w/ fluid
Whittling/carving knife
empty glass milk jug with twine around the neck for carrying
pet cricket, salamander or turtle
an old, tattered book of Latin verbs with your Father's name in the front cover
notebooks
old, reliable, favourite pen
a really good sweater
a really good scarf
a really good pair of shoes
galoshes
really sticky tape
a dusty plastic ink well full of holy water, stoppered
chalk
glasses frames
twine
10' rope
A long stick
your backpack
golf club
baseball bat
swiss army knife

Secrets/Rewards
Secrets are rumours you hear whispered during recess or things you see out your window at night, clutching bedsheets. They are strange facts you overhear recounted on the news or They are the things in your weird Aunt's basement and they are the reason it's spring and none of the trees have grown any leaves. None of the adults will believe you. You can only know one Secret before they start weighing on you. Every Secret known past the first does Endurance Points damage (ie, if you learn a second secret, subtract 1 from your EP). For each of these additional Secrets resolved, restore one to your EP. Truants start with 1 point of EP damage.

Every week in the game or so, you learn of a new secret.

Resolve Secrets
Resolving secrets is also something only you can do, so things will just get worse, more families going missing or strange, until you do something about them. If you don't do something about what's happening, you'll slowly fall into darkness, despair, anxiety.

Resolving secrets usually gets you some kind of in-game reward. At least one special thing each. You also get better at doing something tricky or you know something special or you've made some kind of connection with something special. Discuss with the GM and write it down on your character sheet.

Special Things
d4 uses each.
Box with the body of your cat/hamster. Hamster ghost can unlock doors or find secret places if you point it in the right direction. Cat can unlock doors or defend you against a single attack (takes the attack instead of you).

Urn of Great Aunt Edna. Held aloft, produces light as bright as the sun. All bad things are held in place for a turn.

Old Flute. When played, will open a door or lock one against any force.

Cape from the School Play. When worn, may hide you in shadows as if invisible.

Anything that is really good will keep you safe against something bad, but only that one time. Afterwards, it's just normal, whatever was special or awesome about it has been ruined or effaced by the bad things and dark places.

Safe Places
Your fort, your bed, your friend's house.

If you're here, you can't be got at by the bad things.

Endurance Points
Tick down 1/round while in bad places, being pursued by bad thing or in combat. At 0, you can no longer forestall any attacks and start taking wounds, are exhausted. You can take a single wound. A second and you're dead.

A Warm, Square Meal
Restores all EP to current max. You can choose to forget extra secrets and restore all EP lost that way too.

Some Secrets
1. The neighbours were meant to come back a week from now, but they showed up in the middle of the night. But where's their car? They also don't go to work or school, they just stand around, looking out the windows as their house gets dirtier and their clothes more filthy.

2. Mr. Jensen's been staring into space ever since that trip to the museum and they've taken his wife away. They say his house smells terrible, like rotten fish.

3. All the cats are missing and all the single women in town are carrying fashionable, fur-lined gloves. Do they all know?

4. All the dogs won't go near the principal's house. He's friendly enough but they say there isn't any furniture inside.

5. Paul's parents go every night to that old factory but we've not seen Paul in weeks. One of your parents were just invited to some club that meets at the factory...

6. Put your ear against a pipe to hear the next person to go missing. You can't quite make it out, but it sounds like the name of your little brother.

7. Mirrors are doors and they break the doors when they climb through them. There are broken mirrors everywhere...

8. There are two of Judy. The one the adults see and the one we see. Both are pale and so cold and falling apart. The one we see is begging for help but she can't do much because the other Judy has her all tied up.

9. So many people have a little worm sticking out of the back of their neck. Pull on it and the person dies. Everyone with the worm spends the night in graveyards or old cellars, stuffing dirt into their mouths.

10.  The giant animals that stalk the night are all going to one specific place in the woods that only exists at night. The floor rattles with human bones and a talking big with a crown of fire sits on a throne of thorns and bones.

11. There are weird lights out on the mountain. The dead are dancing and holding an enormous celebration. Terrible things happen when the party ends.

12. Every night, a horn sounds right outside your window. It used to be so loud that it shook the panes, but it's getting quieter and quieter. You can hear things outside, climbing the walls now too, they get closer and closer.

Imagines: Donn/John Kenn and Edward Gorey.

You will be wondering about that sugar bowl, I imagine

+Scrap Princess asked what these potions did and this was my answer. I guess it was well liked enough that I want to put it here so I don't forget about it & I've tweaked some of the original post.

THERE ARE FOUR KINDS OF POTION...

Each character consumes one of four potions. There are as many potions as there are characters. Nearby, you discover empty vials, some of which are broken, crushed. It's hard to guess how many others have consumed these potions.

...AND THEY WILL KILL YOU...

All potions are lethal after 48 hours, though this final affect can be delayed an additional 48 hours if you consume the liver of someone who has also consumed one of these four potions (any of the four will do).

...UNLESS YOU DRINK ONE OF EACH.

Consuming all four variety of potion (either directly or via liver) delays the final  affect indefinitely. "Special affects" of consumption fade, with weird after affects persisting. Information to this affect will be relayed to the characters by a talking fox with two tails and seven eyes once the last potion is drunk. Or maybe they just know it to be true. Or maybe some creepy consigliere types lets them in on the situation. Flavour to taste.

THE POTIONS

  i. Blue Moon Jelly This is an exceedingly rare deep-sea creature. Consuming the creature grants you a rubbery consistency (you can't wear armour or bear heavy loads but  you're immune to most bludgeoning damage). You are virtually immune to high-gravity affects and being above deep-sea pressure levels lets you leap incredible distances (like 50' horizontally and 30' vertically) by compressing your body and shooting away, like a spring. Your skin dries and cracks, longs for salt water and by the end of the second day you either die of dehydration or dissolve into sea water.

After affect: if this is the potion you first consumed and you manage to consume all other varieties before they kill you, you survive, but you are always cold, clammy, your hair hangs wet and you may add up to 10' to any distance you could otherwise jump and you take falling damage only after you've fallen 30' (ie, d6 for each ten after 30).

  ii. The Frog Your knees snap and your leg joints invert. Your jawline joins your shoulders as your neck vanishes and your mouth grows enormous. You can dance across water and tree tops if unencumbered and you can swallow whole things half your size. Eventually, your mind fails, grows strange, hateful as your organs de-acclimate to this environment and you die, hyperventilating, suffocating on now-poisonous air, longing for steaming green jungles of a planet far, far from here. 

After affect: if this is the potion you first consumed and you manage to consume all other varieties before they kill you, you survive, but you are never happy, always longing for a land you've never actually seen outside of dreams. Similarly stranded brothers and sisters will send you a map to a possible way home.

  iii. The Shrimp Your eyes bulge, extend on stalks and you have all-around vision and wide spectrum vision. Your skin hardens and becomes chitinous  You cannot wear armour but your skin counts as plate. You eat trash, smaller creatures, whatever you can find and you become strange, secretive. Eventually, your skin grows too heavy and gravity peels it from the flesh below, killing you in the process.

After affect: if this is the potion you first consumed and you manage to consume all other varieties before they kill you, you survive, but your skin is now translucent and your hair becomes a stiff and brittle mass, like coral. Your eyes remain larger-than normal and brilliantly-hued, and you retain wide-spectrum vision.

  iv. The Fish You bud scales, gills and you can see  and breathe underwater as on land. When under water, you can attack and evade by darting suddenly. Save v paralysis instead of rolling to hit or using your AC; attacks made in this way ignore armour and attacks avoided in this way deal no partial damage if missed and require no additional save for area/breath affect damage. Eventually, you can no longer breathe in water or land and die in a panic, asphyxiating, flopping.

After affect: if this is the potion you first consumed and you manage to consume all other varieties before they kill you, you survive, and you can breathe under water but you're totally hairless and you've got fluttering gills from the side of your face down to your nipples.

The Wild Hunt

You saw something you shouldn't have...

When your fever breaks, you find you've no job, barely any money - just weapons, gear, an address for the huntmaster's meeting, a pass sign for the meeting, a bit of food and this mask.

Choose a class (Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, Thief) (or really, just be a Fighter or Magic-User), roll for mask, how you get to the meeting called by the huntmaster and then join the hunt.

The Masks (d12)
1.The Cock
Immune to sleep and charm.
2. The Crow
Eat the dead for sustenance and health.
3. The Fox
Flee pursuit; can hide in a 2' cube.
4. The Hound
Tireless pursuit of fleeing foes.
5. The Hippo
Swallow something your size whole.
6. The Hare
Burrow deep.
7. The Badger
Defend your allies long after others would have died.
8. The Owl
Never surprised.
9. The Owlbear
Deadly embrace.
10. The Wolf
You've got a vorpal knife.
11. The Heron
Handily navigate rough terrain.
12. The Bat
Can see in the dark.

How to get to the meeting? (d8)
1. Tavern under a bridge, blue lights, only ghosts come here anymore.
2. Room full of corpses, most of which looks just like the party. Close your eyes, whisper a childhood prayer and open one of several doors to get there.
3. Long-abandoned shrine. Offer a blooded sacrifice.
4. String up the outline of the door in the entrails of an innocent, a bully, a liar, a thief, a vagrant or a magic-user, and then step through.
5. Light a branch of a hazel tree and use it to burn a sprig of holly and a sprig of mint. Breath deep.
6. Eat the flesh of the plague-slain.
7. Douse your mask in arterial blood of a sentient creature.
8. Consume unclean meat.

The Huntmaster
Waits for you at the meeting; is someone you've never seen before but once you've met them you'll see them all the time, rummaging through garbage, dead in a gutter, arguing in a coffee shop, on a wanted poster, as a barkeep, as distant relative of the Empress.

In ceremonial garb, when leading a hunt or celebrating a glorious kill, the huntmaster appears differently:

A man or woman well-muscled, tattooed, nude but for the trophy heads it wears about its neck, wrists, shoulders and waist.

In the Spring, the heads are all alive and each knows a great secret (the name of the rock, where the last of the first dragon's slumbers, how to unwind time, etc, etc); the huntmaster's head is the head of an elk and it speaks thunderously, telepathically. It walks upon the ground barefoot and each footfall leaves behind cinnamon-scented ferns of curative potency.

In the Summer, the heads are dead and rotting. The huntmaster's head is that of an eyeless stag. The huntmaster rides a rotten, limping boar, wears a coat of feathers and hangs from its antlers the tongues and fingers of each sort of people in the race of man. Its touch brings pestilence, its mere presence sours food but it may also consume any disease, decay or rot, if it so desires.

In the Fall, the heads are mummified and the huntmaster's antlers are hung with glistening glass shards. The huntmaster's head will be a skeletal stag's head. The huntmaster will ride upon an enormous elk and be attended by two deaf mutes, each of which will bear a legendary weapon or armour on a silken pillow.

In the Winter, the huntmaster appears to be an emaciated human wearing a stag mask. It wears a cloak of quills and will speak as if human. It is born on a palanquin to its court by the Grugach and his son and two daughters. On the palanquin lays more wealth than any can imagine.

The Hunt is called to (d10)
1. Kill all of the royal line, their children, their bastards, their most distant relatives. Their power, secrets and treasure are yours.
2. Ruin the wealthy and raise up the poor, including yourself.
3. Empty the area of all human life so that something stranger can grow there. What takes root will call you an ally for long after your death.
4. Find a lost relic of the hunt (The huntmaster has lost its shield, the effaced Shield of Galahad, and its dagger, Carnwennan. Should the Shield be found and returned to the huntmaster, the wild creatures of the wood will rise up on two legs, speak as man and overthrow all his works. Should the dagger by found and returned, a great, tangled highway will appear and run through each city and town; the highway will lead back to the fairy court and other, even worse domains and hell will empty its outhouses, lounges and barracks onto the earth.)
5. Find and kill the last huntmaster
6. Destroy a city but leave its buildings intact, for a dungeon to soon take root. The wealth of the city is yours for the plundering.
7. Wage a war in fairy country with lances made from holly trees. Castles and lands to the survivors.
8-10. The huntmaster simply wants you to hunt and consecrate each kill to it.