Game concept:
A Jar, A Leaf, A Twig
or
Natural Habitat

Players are in a zoo for humans. Amazing tech has simulated a human environment, but there are hints that show that things aren’t as they seem (which can be collected as a meta-currency to find a way out). Game scenarios can/should be written by writers representing a particular subculture that not everyone playing is familiar with: a Christian summer camp, a hawker fair in Singapore, a research lab, an American mall.

Players must pick up clues like “a youth counselor would not be playing Metallica on acoustic guitar” or “shu mai would not be served with avocado as a primary ingredient” and then find their way out of their cage.

Every X play sessions, they may find themselves actually back on Earth, to “keep them healthy.” This will either be very frustrating or very paranoia-inducing.

Playbooks could include:
The Blackfish – gain advantage if you can identify and kill a zookeeper
The Breeding Pair – gain advantage when working as a team
The Mascot – gain advantage from zookeepers ’cause you’re so cute

It’s a good day to join a legion and get sent to a remote post, chatting on the top of a wall, guarding against nothing, making up a new back story every time someone asks for yours, wearing a spiffy uniform and sighing at the horizon.

I’m from the ocean. I’m from the plains. I’m from the woods. I’m from the snow.

a scenario for adventurers lvl 0 (or worse)

Nothing is going on in town. Why not go check out that sword that people say “sucks?”

• 8 maps
• 4 factions
• bestiary
• full color
• a useless sword
• words words words

SPRING 2020

On a budget this holiday season? You can have a Star Wars viewing party of your own by going outside on a clear night, picking two stars, and declaring they’re at war.

“Fuck ’em up,” you might whisper to your preferred star, quietly, so as not to annoy your neighbors.

1. Strawberry
2. Crumbs
3. Frosting and crumbs
4. 1d8 gold
5. Poison trap! (Strawberry-scented)
6. Nothing (metallic foil wrapper, no value)

Name(s): Face Fae | Face-Grabbers | “The New Relations”

Description (Appearance) The Face Fae look like normal humans. Which is part of the problem, as their facial features are entirely “borrowed” from humans who would otherwise have been happy continuing with the use of their own face.

Common behaviors Once a child comes to the point of adulthood, and has the misfortune of living near one of the seaside cavernous networks that Face Fae prefer to live in, they may awake one morning and find their face entirely missing. People living in affected areas tend to invest time and effort into developing and maintaining an artisanal mask-making industry, both for aesthetics and general mental/emotional well-being, as finding oneself without one’s face can be fairly off-putting. Those afflicted merely select a beautiful replacement mask and carry on with their new crafted face as best they can.

Most often encountered in: Near oceans, in the sort of caverns that can be carved out by aeons of tides and waves, such as those found by Green-Rolls-to-Ebon (which is where I made most of my study.)

To ensure a safe encounter (advice): One can wear a mask, firmly affixed in the back, during all waking and sleeping hours. The Face Fae, while deft enough to remove features without waking their sleeping victims, have not the dexterity to untangle knots. (If only one’s home could be latched safe with knots… but somehow they find a way in through cracks and gaps.) Should one encounter a Face Fae wearing one’s former features, it is considered polite and safest to treat them as a “relative,” greeted with a “Hullo, [Uncle/Auntie, etc.], to stay in their good graces, as they can be quite nasty in a scrap.

[shouting at the masked killer lurking in the woods, just out of sight]

Hey, y’know… you can only kill me ONCE! But, uh, with the hiding… all the hiding in the woods. That’s something a COWARD would do, and they, y’know– a THOUSAND deaths, is what they say. And is what I’m saying to you, I guess.

I’m WINNING, out of the two of us, is the point.

Dracula: Blood of Bunyan (1976) – This bicentennial bite-fest, filmed in the Philippines, relocates American folk hero Paul Bunyan to the jungle where he clashes with Dracula (Filipino film star Antonio Ocampo) and his paramilitary vampire strike force. Best Kill: As a swarm of bats, Dracula enters Babe the Blue Ox’s mouth, then pushes on Babe’s stomach (a practical effect built with blue stretchy latex), Dracula’s face and claws distending the belly before tearing out, dumping gallons of blood and Ocampo’s stunt double.

Sn’otters (1986) – Equal parts a horror movie and a promotional vehicle to sell plastic figurines of otters in small tubs of slime, this movie’s ecological message was buried somewhere under eruptions of goo and slithery river mammal attacks. The plot was basic: Industrialists dump toxic goo in river, affected otters kill men in suits. Best Kill: CEO Hoyleman’s shareholder call is interrupted as a sn’otter slides down a conference table and into his mouth, back legs scrabbling. Then an obvious replacement Hoyleman head in close-up is inflated with slime until it erupts out the eyes, ears and mouth in jets.