🌟 A Prologue to Dungeon23: Part 2

31 Dec, 2022

Before we start I feel it necessary to discuss which game system I'll be designing my dungeon23 for. I thought about doing it completely system agnostic, but that felt a little unsatisfying. I can build something with greater purpose if I have a specific game to guide my design. Having said that though the game I chose is fairly simple and easy to convert into any other OSR game system.

I'll be using STAR DURF, my own sci-fi conversion toolkit for Emiel Boven's brillaint game, DURF. Its simple, lightweight, and tightly designed.

The implied setting exists somewhere in the Venn diagram featuring Star Wars, Star Trek, and Mass Effect, with some minor inspiration from other properties. So it is quite lose on realism.

Eventually I'll be releasing STAR DURF as it's own standlone booklet, but for now it requires DURF as a base.

Now to the topic at hand; dungeon23.

Where can the Star be?

The first of January 2023 is almost here and I am itching to get started on the dungeon, but first I need to establish the systems that the Errant Star will be occupying as well as some of it's rules.

The Star tends to appear in a system, linger for a few days or even weeks, then disappear. Anything on the Star or within the outer ring is taken with it. Mechanically this means that every day, or 6 watches, that passes the referee rolls a d6. On a 6 the Star teleports to a new location.

It will be important to know where the Star goes as the PCs may have the opportunity to leave the Star and do business, or have other adventures, in the system they find themselves in. Thus I've made a simple star system generator to give referees some fun ideas to play with.

First, roll for the type of star system.

Binary star systems, where two stars orbit each other, are the most common in the galaxy. Triple star systems are the rarest.

For each star roll on the star type table. This table also acts as a star age chart, with younger stars on top.

The star type shouldn't have too much of an impact on how things look on the system, but can make for interesting creative options. Yellow dwarf stars are young and therefor will have young planets with young societies. Red Supergiants have swelled up and probably destroyed a few inner planets. Brown dwarf stars are dim stars the cannot maintain nuclear fusion. Black holes won't emit light but may have a disc of hot gaseous matter around it that does.

Next are the planets. Star systems range wildly in the number of planets they can have. Roll a d20 to determine this.

For each planet roll on the planet type table.

Arrange the planets in any order. Usually the rocky and hospitable planets are closer to their star and the ice and gas giants are further away.

The galaxy is mostly filled with inhospitable planets devoid of life. Hospitable planets are similar to rocky ones but have an atmosphere and are usually more stable, thus they can support life.

For each hospitable planet roll on the number of biomes table.

To keep hospitable planets simple they should have distinct planet-wide biomes. Rarer earth-likes with a huge variety of biomes are more realistic, but much more complex.

For each hospitable planet roll on the hospitable planet biomes table a number of times as indicated by the previous table.

The combination of biomes doesn't have to be realistic. Contrasting environments, such as desert and frozen, can have interesting explainations like the planet being in tidal lock. This makes a planet more memorable.

It should be determined which planets will have something noteworthy or interesting on them. Most planets don't need points of interest, but hospitable planets should have at least 1. Planets with a lot of activity should have at least 3 PoIs.

Roll on the planetary points of interest table.

These represent pretty broad concepts and are completely void of context. Thus they can be made far more interesting with a little bit of creativity. The scrap field can be a simple run-of-the-mill junkyard or it could be a starship graveyard left behind after a massive battle. The ancient temple can be the ruins of a long lost religion or a well maintained and active place of worship.

Besides planetary PoIs there are other objects in the system that can be of interest. Roll on the non-planetary object table.

Thats that. Simple but should give players something interesting to play with if they find themselves in a strange system. I'll probably flesh it out a bit more over the course of the year.

Mastadon - Twitter - Instagram

-Eucatastrophic is written by Jason Christopher Burrows

#design #dungeon23 #rpg