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Campaign Pitch: The Mirk
On 3/25/23, as asteroid 2023 DZ2 passed between the Earth and the Moon, all power went out from L 97° W east to L 32° W — a zone encompassing nearly half the planet, including the eastern US and Canada, all of South America and Europe, most of Africa, and the western edges of Russia.
And it stayed out.
The power-killing effect reached high enough to knock out any satellite that passed above the affected area. Most global communications systems collapsed. Further, light and radio waves were shifted and fell off quickly. No explanation could be found.
The zone was dubbed “The Mirk.”
Within days it was found that no electricity could exist in the Mirk unless it was part of an internal, biological process, light shifted towards blue, and broadcast signals became hopelessly garbled. Storms within the Mirk, unable to dissipate energy through lightning, began to regularly unleash hurricane-force winds, torrential rains, hail, and tornadoes. Weather patterns outside the Mirk also became more violent, thought not to the same degree, and often with massive lightning displays.
Within weeks, billions had died. Thousands of cities and towns in the Mirk were abandoned. While the highest death tolls by far were within the Mirk, several societies “In the Light” collapsed as well, and millions of deaths were brought about by needless panic, civil war, and violent opportunism.
(Art by Cerafts)
Years passed. In the global chaos Australia, China, and Russia became the main world powers, with the Japan-Taiwan Coalition and eventually the new nation of Cascadia — formed from the west coasts of the old nations of Canada and the US — not far behind.
Reports of strange creatures and events within the Mirk were dismissed as rumor, panic, and even intentional disinformation for years. Bodies of such creatures brought out of the Mirk decomposed within hours, and were discredited as misidentification or hoaxes. All that changed six years after the Mirk arose, as massive creatures with the most dangerous elements of bars, rhinos, and spitting cobras began charging out of the murk, and surviving for 20-30 hours before beginning to die and decompose.
It’s now 2033, and the exploration of the Mirk has begun in earnest. The two largest centers of Mirk expeditions and study are at the University of Oklahoma and Bauman Moscow State Technical University, both located near one Mirk edge. New technologies have been developed, with cameras designed with modern materials but centuries-old chemical and flash powder components, vehicles driven by diesel compression and even steam engines, and a wide range of clockwork and chemical devices.
Things are definitely happening within the Mirk. Some makeshift cobbled-together devices have been found with strange functions that only work within the Mirk, making them difficult to study with any advanced science. Bizarre creatures grow increasingly common and dangerous. But also, polluted air and water gets sucked into the Mirk, and emitted clear, without plastics, greenhouse gasses, or toxins.
And there are still people living in the Mirk. Most of them don’t like or acknowledge the authority of outsides. Some have… powers. Powers that explorers in the Mirk sometimes develop after enough exposure, but do not function outside the powerless zone. By the same token, most people from the Powered Zone who spend too much time in the Mirk get sick if they return too often. Only a tiny percentage of Powered humanity and animals seem able to sustain repeated or long-term Mirk visits.
And reports of strange, twisted structures growing, blurry flying shapes, and horrific, calm-destroying sounds deep in the Mirk? Well, they aren’t being ignored as early monster reports were.
The Mirk is the greatest mystery and threat to the Powered world. And you are one of the few who seem to survive its environment without harm.
Support
Medical bills continue to pile up. The main ways to support me right now is these two megabundles. Each has more than $700 of pdfs, from 16+ different companies, for a dozen different ttRPGs (including some core rulebooks!), as well as maps, figures, stock art, and so on. Each is just $34.95, and will only be available through May 15th.
Bundle #1: http://bit.ly/3KNMw8f
Bundle #2: http://bit.ly/3Uu6JTV
You can also maintain (or even increase) your pledge level at my Patreon, or make a direct contribution at my Ko-Fi.
Survival in GammaFinder
One of the core concepts of any post-apocalypse RPG is survival. This is definitely true in GammaFinder, as the world is full of poison earth, acid rain, toxic water, deadly environmental effects, baked earth, rusted, twisted metal… it’s harsh. Just traveling beyond a settlement, even if nothing rises to the level of an encounter, is dangerous.
And, as it happens, Starfinder has a Survival skill.
But making Survival rolls daily, and making people think about where their character sleep, find water, hunt, how they avoid heatstroke, dodge poison ivy, and so on gets boring.
So GammaFinder has a Weekly Survival Check.
Weekly Survival Check
Each group makes a Survival check each week. The DC is equal to 15 + 1.5 x the average CR of hazards and monsters in the area, +1 per person in the group. (When in double, if there is a titan nearby, the GM can assume the average CR is within the Titans range. Otherwise if the area is not known to be particularly hazardous, assume an average CR of 2. Yes, 2. GammaFinder World is rough).
If multiple people make Survival checks, the highest check result is treated as the primary result, and each character in the group after the first who succeeds adds one to that highest result. The following additional factors modify the roll, as can previous rolls (see results, below).
Weekly Survival Check Modifiers
Group begins week out of food and water: -5
Group has no wilderness gear: -2
Group has at least 1 piece of survival gear for each member: bonus equal to the highest item level of such gear every character has. (For example, if 4 people have a piece of 5th level survival gear, but one person only has a 1st-level piece of gear, the bonus is +1. If six people all have a piece of 3rd level gear, the bonus is +3).
Results
You not only need to know if the group succeeded or failed, but by how much.
Success by 5 or More: Things went very well! You slept in protected spots, avoided unpleasant allergens and minor hazards, and found plentiful and quality food and water. You do not use up any of your carried food or water resources, and everyone in your group gains a +2 bonus to the next week’s Weekly Survival Check.
Success by 4 or less: You use up resources (such as food and water) normally, but manage to avoid being run down by the constant dangers of the GammaFinder World.
Fail by 5 or less: You didn’t manage ideal conditions, but it’s livable. You might be sleeping in a cold, cramped space under a large rock, eating grubs, drinking water that’s slimy but not poisonous, or just dealing with gnat bites, rough terrain, sunburn, weariness, and so on.
Everyone in the party takes a -1 penalty to skill checks, including next week’s survival, until you succeed at a weekly survival check or you get a good night’s sleep and food in a settlement. This is cumulative if you fail by this amount in consecutive weeks.
Fail by 6- or more: Why did you ever leave your hovel?
Everyone in the party takes a -2 penalty to skill checks, including next week’s survival, until you succeed at a weekly survival check or you get a good night’s sleep and food in a settlement. This is cumulative if you fail by this amount in consecutive weeks.
Everyone temporarily has their maximum Stamina Points reduced by 1 per character level. This lasts until the group succeeds at a Weekly Survival Check by 5 or more, or get 2 good night’s sleep and food at a settlement.
Want More GammaFinder?!
I now depend on my Patreon for more of my income and support than I ever expected to. If you find any value in my blog posts or videos, I could use help with the Patreon. If you can spare a few bucks a month, it’s a huge help. If not, even just sharing and linking to my blogs, videos, and the Patreon itself is a huge help that just takes a moment of your time.
Thanks, everyone.
GammaFinder — Simple PA rules for Starfinder
I am a huge fan of Post-Apocalypse games. That may be why I wrote for Sword and Sorcery’s Gamma World line, and d20 Apocalypse.
Setting
The world ended. A few times. But for living memory, there were two Great Cities — Alpha, a land of ancient technology and highly-educated people living in a gentle, safe, totalitarian Bubble; and Beta — A huge, sprawling rough-and-tumble metroplex of rivers and bridges and canyons where mutants and rogues lived and traded and taught and sometime killed each other, but were free of most outside influences. Both had occasional visitors from a Third Great City — Gamma — but no one knew where ti was or what it was really like.
The Omega Invasion was unlike anything that had been seen in centuries. New horrors, new machines, new creatures, wiped out Alpha and Beta. The OI seemed poised to wipe out all life… until the Gamma Strike, which wrecked their bases and leaders, and left them in a scattered wreck of damaged robots and crazed ex-soldiers and experiments.
But there are Omega Invasion forces left, and they are trying to rebuild their armies. So heroes must seek out Gamma, and see if it can be convinced to once again save the world of the GammaFinders.
Level
Characters start at 4th level. The GammaFinder World is a harsh place, so we start with more competent characters. And that means you are just one level of a nice ability score bump!
Starships
Not happening, don’t worry about them.
Emphasis
Every character gets an emphasis. There are three available at the moment.
Mutations: Select one item of your character level -1, or two of your level -3. You gain the abilities of those items as mutations. If they use batteries or ammo, you can use the ability as often each day as one full load of ammo or batteries. As you gain levels, you can change these items. When you gain levels you can improve your mutations to higher-levels of the same thing, or switch to entirely different items your mutations emulate, to represent ongoing mutation.
Relic: Select one item of your character level +1 or less. You have an ancient piece of tech that does what that item does, though you can change its appearance. If it has batteries or ammo, you refill them each time you spend Resolve to regain SP following a 10-minute rest. If your relic is lost or destroyed, you get a replacement when you gain your next level. You can change your relic at each character level, to represent the shifting effects of this ancient technology.
Talent: You get one bonus feat at every odd level. You must meet the prerequisites. Alternatively, at each off level you can gain one additional spell slot of the highest-level spell you can cast at that level. If you select this latter choice, you are likely described as a “psionic” or “witch.”
Items
You get one item of your level (Major Item), one of your level-1 (Moderate Item), one of your level -2 (Minor Item), and one of your level -3 (Incidental Item). If it’s a consumable item, you can replace it when used at the beginning of each day (you may be able to make a new one, or find a new one, or have something that produces refills for it once per day).
These items don’t go up in level automatically, and if lost are not replaced.
Level Advancement and Treasure
You gain a level every 12 encounters. Over 6 encounters, you expect (on average) to get one Major, one Moderate, one Minor, and three Incidental items. If you have the ranks in a skill needed to make an item, you can convert an items of the same type into a different item, once. Every time after that you convert and item, it loses one item level.
That’s it! It’s otherwise just Starfinder as a quick-and-easy PA setting!
A Request
I now depend on my Patreon for more of my income and support than I ever expected to. If you find any value in my blog posts or videos, I could use help with the Patreon. If you can spare a few bucks a month, it’s a huge help. If not, even just sharing and linking to my blogs, videos, and the Patreon itself is a huge help that just takes a moment of your time.
Thanks, everyone.
Owen K.C. Stephens 