Neuroscape, After Action Report and Review

So, how much time do you have to devote to entertainment?  Seriously, sit with that question for a moment. What if I told you there was a competitive card game with minimal setup, engaging gameplay, interesting tactical decisions, card synergies, and you could get a game done in 10 minutes, 25 if you are learning the game?

It exists. I’ve played it. It’s good. It is called Neuroscape and it is a cyberpunk themed trading card game where decks revolve around card synergies, but do not limit you with arbitrary blockers like color requirements or class restrictions for deck design. This means you can use pretty much any card in your collection to make a deck. The reason why is that every card is fueled by RAM, which is a resource you can accumulate and, in some cases, must devote continually to certain cards in order to play them.

Let’s get into the two games I played with the intro decks at my Friendly Local Game Store, Brookhurst Hobbies, with the excellent advocate for Neuroscape, Leo.

I was playing the Hackers deck (control) while my opponent was playing Cybernetic deck focused on cyberpsychosis (very aggressive). More on that last word later.

In Neuroscape gameplay there are two unique elements of the system that are immediately apparent.  The first is that there are two forms of life points: 20 Mainframe Health and 20 Bioframe Health.  These represent the health of your neural computer or physical body, respectively. If either of these health pools reach zero, you have lost the game.

The Hackers deck I was playing focused on doing Mainframe damage, while my opponent’s deck was pure Bioframe damage execution.  To distinguish them in game, I just thought of them as “digital damage” and “meat damage.”

The other unique element of Neuroscape gameplay is the use of the Mainframe card.  Your Mainframe card is sort of your neural computer and the center of your deck. You only get to use one Mainframe card in a deck.  I mentioned that Neuroscape is foundationally built on card synergies.  Your Mainframe card gives your deck potentially two synergies.  For example, with the Mainframe card Synthetix if you have two Cybernetic Characters, all Characters you control get +1/+1 for each cyberware attached to them. That is the first synergy.  You don’t have to commit any RAM for that particular ability; it just happens.

So, the Mainframe cards function as a force multiplier and increase the pace of the game.  This adds to the tension of play and makes every decision count, because you are not spending a lot of your time slowly building up your forces to eventually make a strike. 

Speaking of strikes, when you put a Character card into play from your hand you may use it immediately to attack or carry out an action if you have the RAM to run to do so.  “Running RAM” is basically the equivalent of tapping lands (in this case RAM) in that venerable five color fantasy card game that we all know and love.      

To add to the pacing discussion, every turn (with the exception of the first turn of the player that goes first) each player may decide to draw 2 RAM cards, 2 cards from their deck, or one RAM card and one card from their deck.  Again, this accelerates the speed of gameplay as a player almost always has a card they can play from their hand or the resources to do so.     

So how did it play?

To summarize, the gameplay was fast, brutal and tactical.  Since I was playing the Hackers control deck, my strategy was to load up my opponent’s Mainframe card with Viruses or Trojan programs.  My Characters on the field had utility abilities, were sometimes offensive like the awesome Digital Spectre that could be unblockable and dealt more damage to a player if it successfully attacked, or were speedbumps to prevent the opponent’s Characters from damaging me.

This begs the question however, what are Trojans and Viruses and how do they play?  Trojans and Viruses are essentially “enchantments” that occupy a slot next to or above the opponent’s Mainframe.  Not only does this take away a Mainframe slot from the opponent, they also function as Trap cards in Yu-Gi-Oh.  Virus cards are played face up, but Trojans are played face down so there is an element of bluffing and known unknowns with Trojans.

Specifically, in my Hackers control deck, the Trojans I deployed were cards that could damage my opponent in digital damage for each attacker he declared or annihilate all of his attackers outright.  However, victory was not certain, because my opponent had counters, including a card that could destroy one of my Trojans/Viruses for a certain amount of RAM.

In my first game that is exactly what happened.  I heavily invested in Trojans that would damage my opponent when they attacked and then committed the remainder of my RAM to deploying Characters that would block the opposing attackers. 

Now my opponent had an aggressive Cybernetics focused deck.  He could summon strong Cybernetics Characters that would attack me for meat damage exclusively, had equipment to buff their damage, and had cards that make the Cybernetic Characters even stronger…if he took a chance with Cyberpsychosis. Cyberpsychosis is a risk/reward mechanic. If your attacking Character has a Cyberpsychosis rating, then when attacking there is a chance that your attack fails and you hit yourself instead for your Character’s damage value. To determine if your Character fails an attack and hits you instead, you would have to roll lower than the Cyberpsychosis rating on a d20.  Roll higher than your Cyberpsychosis rating and you successfully attack with your cybered up Cyberpsychosis Character.

The d20 is provided with a basic deck as a marker for Mainframe and Bioframe hit points. It is a really nice die; sharper edged than the plastic ones you normally get from a game store and delightfully denser than normal.

Back to the game. My opponent’s primary Cybernetic Character had a Cyberpsychosis rating of 10. He rolled above 10 several times, crushing the blocking Characters I threw in his way and eventually punching me in the face for 9 damage per attack, ending my existence.  It was an excellent fast match. 

In the second game, I found my footing. The game evolved similarly to the previous one, in that my opponent was building up Cybernetic Characters with Cyberpsychosis, but this time I focused equally on my Characters and Trojans. I played the Singularity Character, which destroyed all of my RAM, but allowed me to play two cards of any value from my hand per turn. I began loading up Trojans on my opponent’s Mainframe again, zapped him a couple times with a Digital Spectre and was hit once in meatspace for damage that brought me down to two Bioframe hit points.  In my opponent’s next turn, he was down to three Mainframe hit points and proceeded to attack me again. However, I revealed that I placed a Trojan that would deal three digital damage to him when he committed an attacker.  That Trojan fired before the Cyberpsycho’s attack could complete, and I won the second game.

First Impressions

Overall, playing the introductory Hackers deck designed for control, gave me a refreshing memory of playing Blue control decks early on in the Revised set for Magic: the Gathering.  More importantly, the experience of playing the game was fun. I can’t stop thinking about it a day later and I want to buy my own cards and play again.  The only thing stopping me is that … well Neuroscape is all sold out where I am, so I have to wait until next week!

In other thoughts, the artwork on the cards is gorgeous. I’ve noticed the occasional nod to foundational cyberpunk media like the Matrix, Edgerunners, and real-world penetration testing techniques.   I’ve mentioned the twenty-sided dice you get in the core sets before, but their quality bears mentioning again.  Everything I saw of Neuroscape’s presentation struck me as designed towards quality.  I’m looking forward to buying my decks. 

I was also impressed by the design of asymmetric themes. Control vs Aggressive were both on display in the introductory decks.  If I had the cards from both decks, I could incorporate both themes into my deck. Choosing the right Mainframe would just help my synergy and focus my play style.

I am also happy with the light bluffing aspect that slotting Trojans (facedown) onto a Mainframe creates. This forces the opponent to deal with a few questions. Which Trojans are you going to destroy, opponent? Are you going to devote your precious RAM to cleaning your Mainframe or use the RAM for something else more aggressive this turn?

On point for a cyberpunk themed tcg, Neuroscape has an app for iOS and Android.  They include access to a Lifepoint counter for both Mainframe and Bioframe  points, the free Rulebook pdf, Learn to Play resources like a Quick Start and Tutorial video, and social media links.

In this writeup, I may have made some mistakes with the specific terminology of Neuroscape’s rules or the mechanics, but I hope my enthusiasm for the game and its exciting designs are clear.

Outstanding Questions

Granted I’m excited, but I did only play two games of Neuroscape with introductory decks. Further questions need to be addressed. What about deck building? How does that feel? What about the mechanics of Instability when you have less RAM than you require for the Characters you have on the field?  That’s a mechanic we didn’t even get into in the example of play.  What about the Dustrunner cards that eat opponent’s RAM? How does that work?

I can only address the question about deck building now because I was able to talk with Leo who has been building decks as soon as he got the cards.  I think you can include any of the cards in the set in your deck (remember, just one Mainframe though).  However, your deck won’t be optimized unless you start building around card synergies.  The Mainframe you choose offers some synergies, but other cards offer opportunities as well.  And then some cards break the system.  Remember The Singularity that I played in my second game? If I relied on synergies with The Singularity then I would lean towards stacking my deck with high RAM cost cards, because The Singularity would allow me to deploy two cards of any RAM cost per turn.

In closing, I had a lot of fun playing Neuroscape. Frankly more fun than I have playing tcgs in years.  It is designed to be fast, brutal and have your decisions matter.  There are still some questions I have in terms of the design space of making decks, but I’ll explore that when I get my cards and start dreaming up my own combinations.

Neuroscape. It got it’s hooks into me.

Antler Valley: A Hexcrawl For the Great Plains Apocalypse RPG, Book Review

I like tabletop roleplaying hexcrawls. I think they are a neat way of telling a story though environmental descriptions, encounters, and snippets of world lore that players gather and ponder over, while maintaining players’ freedom of exploration. 

I own a few hexcrawls that I’m very happy with. The OSR juggernaut, Luke Gearing’s Wolves Upon the Coast Grand Campaign. Times that Fry Men’s Souls, the weird hexcrawl set in Colonial New York and New Jersey by Seann McAnally. Gods of the Forbidden North: Volumes 1 and 2, a fantastic frozen hexcrawl, dungeon crawl, and campaign setting. 

This begs the question however, “what is a hexcrawl?” Eric Diaz of the blog Methods & Madness describes a hexcrawl as “exploring a territory that is divided by hexes, with no clear paths.” He goes on to briefly define the sister type of map adventure called “pointcrawls” as “exploring a territory through preexisting paths and points of interest.”

This blog post will be about one type of hexcrawl that I think is a bit rare in the tabletop roleplaying space.  Specifically, the post-apocalyptic hexcrawl for the OSR genre. I am talking about the book Antler Valley: A Hexcrawl For the Great Plains Apocalypse RPG which was released on the 20th of February 2026.  Now this one has a heady injection of supernatural horror added to it, but in it’s bones it is firmly in the post-apocalyptic genre. 

Most hexcrawls, like the three I listed in the second paragraph, are fantasy based.  Post-apocalyptic hexcrawls are few and far between, but there are handful I can think of. The Mutant Year: Zero series of books by Free League Publishing have systems for developing a “squarecrawl,” which is essentially just a hexcrawl but with squares.  Kevin Crawford, rpg author of Other Dust and Ashes Without Number, provides excellent worldbuilding tools for hexcrawls with post-apocalyptic themes in those two books.  

The author of Antler Valley: A Hexcrawl For the Great Plains Apocalypse RPG specifically cites Rural Apocalypse: Antler Valley by David Woodrum (Fishwife Games) as an inspiration and collaborator for his creation.  I’ll be referring to Antler Valley: A Hexcrawl For the Great Plains Apocalypse RPG by Daymon Mills hereafter as “Antler Valley.”

Book Review and Mechanics of Antler Valley

In short, Antler Valley is a 78-page post-apocalyptic hexcrawl inhabited by cryptids, spirits, mutants and the desperate.  It features 58 entries on a 3d20 random encounter table, 27 hexes that are fully described, 5 hooks to snare players into the area, multiple stories that cover several hexes, weird weather with mechanical effects, and a cryptid bestiary: all for under $5.  

I really like Antler Valley and for the price it is a steal.

The characters and combat encounters in Antler Valley are specifically built for the Great Plains Apocalypse (GPA) RPG system.  

I don’t own the GPA core book, but it is my understanding that it is a rules light system based on OSR bones that has 3 stats: scientist, scoundrel, and soldier.  Skill checks are resolved by rolling 2d6, adding the stat that is most relevant to the challenge, and comparing the result to an 8 or higher if the action is difficult. 

Functionally characters and combat encounters in Antler Valley are described with hit points, equipment and possibly a talent or two. This makes it very easy to adapt the encounters from the GPA framework to any other system you desire. 

For example, on page 23 some Thugs are described as having 4 HP, 9mm pistols (1d6+1 damage, have a -1 penalty for far range), and combat knives (1d6 damage).  This stat block is easily convertible to any OSR modern system or even something like GURPS or Delta Green’s 1d100 system.

Setting and Plot

Speaking of Thugs, the setting of the hexcrawl is very “Fallout-like” with gangs, mutants, survivors, cryptids and a variety of supernatural creatures. This also influences the treasure found in caches and abandoned buildings in the valley. No magic items here; treasure is mostly supplies, fuel, food (including animals/plants) and weapons. For example, the players may be overjoyed to find heirloom apples (including Arkansas Black, Geneva Crab and Virginia Beauty) in an Old Apple Orchard. It will keep them going for at least one more day. 

Another focus of the treasure pool is vehicles or important parts for vehicles. Part of the plot of Antler Valley is trying to find the equipment and fuel sufficient to leave the valley.  The driving reasons for this is that there are two existential threats hanging over the hexcrawl.  The first is that two monstrous kaiju fought and killed each other in the woods, leaving strange mutating phenomena that is slowing spreading to the enclaves of survivors in the valley.  The other is a growing supernatural threat that sort of serves as a “countdown to doomsday” tracker for the game as a whole.  I’ll leave that undescribed, however. 

Speaking of the hexcrawl’s plot, there are two major story threads that are woven into multiple hexes in the valley. Imagine Jason from Friday the Thirteenth but with a shotgun, a two-handed butcher blade named Hog Splitter, and three enormous mutant hounds.  This is the Butcher, a once-man now-cannibal malevolent presence that predates on the locals, be they human or animal.  A good number of hexes have evidence of that disturbing bushwhacker, and he can be considered one of the major bosses of the scenario. 

The Butcher’s story intersects with that of Cole and Lauren, two survivors whose narrative is doled out in letters and caches of supplies scattered over the land.  Unless the GM decides otherwise, Cole and Lauren are unmeetable presences that describe part of the valley’s history.   This type of storytelling is similar to the story of the Survivalist illuminated in letters found in the Fallout New Vegas DLC Honest Hearts.  This plot thread is very flexible and can be as poignant or melancholic as the GM decides. 

In addition to the main plots of the hexcrawl, there are 58 entries on a random encounter table. These random encounters are suggested for spicing up some of the non-keyed hexes in the valley.  The encounters range from cryptids such as the smelly sheepsquatch (evidently a creature in Virginia’s folklore) to a junked-out car that is home to a stray mother cat and her kittens.  The entries can be used for flavorful post-apocalyptic stories, and there are elements that point to the main plots of the Butcher, and Cole and Lauren’s activities in the valley.  My personal favorite entry is Dale. He’s just an elderly man in a rocking chair out in the post-apocalypse with a hidden hunting rifle that he will immediately greet you with if you approach. 

Layer onto these encounters, seasonal tables for weird weather with 7 unique entries.  You do need the Great Plains Apocalypse core book for some of these weather entries.  However, the three weird weathers described for Antler Valley (drifting pollen, prismatic mite winds, static blizzard) are all interesting, mechanically distinct, and described in the book.  They certainly add a layer of complication to encounters found in the valley either in keyed hexes or randomly generated. 

Also, some of the hexcrawl encounters are dynamic.  For example, clearing the Junked Cars (#5 keyed hex) of its mysterious inhabitant allows the players access to a treasure trove of vehicle parts, tools, scrap metal and some basic supplies.  The players could use such a location as a base of operations!  However, the author notes that liberating the junkyard could make the players’ situation even more dangerous, as the local gang the Wildfire Boys (from hex #4) will investigate habitation of the junkyard and try to claim it violently.  Another example is most of the factions of the valley responding significantly more favorably to the party if the Butcher is slain. Some of them will even provide their relevant trade goods. 

The bestiary at the end of the book contains some mundane threats but mostly supernatural ones. There is not one, but two variants of sasquatches that come from Virigina folklore. My personal favorite is the “REGS” or Rainbow-Eyed Goats.  The are man-eating aggressive mutant animals that can basically paralyze you with the prismatic light flashing from their eyes.  And yes, they hunt in packs. Now the reason why the goats have rainbow eyes is related to the prismatic mutation influence from one of the kaiju who died outside the valley whose taint is infesting the area.  All these little story details are really well tied together in Antler Valley. 

Conclusion

So how is the Antler Valley Hexcrawl? I haven’t run it myself, but I find the book very inspiring for post-apocalyptic adventures that have a strong undertone of horror. It is well written, details of themes are tied up nicely together over several encounters and hexes, and for 78 pages of material it is a steal at less than $5.  Antler Valley may require some mechanical adaption to your favorite system, but I think it’s worth it.  My only quibble is that I would like to have seen more trading opportunities and goods between factions in the valley, but wanting more content only reinforces the excellent material that is there in the book. 

Luna Uber Alles

NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

I am a big fan of the modern Cthulhu investigative game Delta Green. In fact, that is why I made this blog. 

For some years now, I have been researching an idea for a game where Delta Green and other Mythos investigation agencies encounter each other on the Moon and decide to unite against the Unnatural or battle it out for national interests.  I call this near future setting Luna Uber Alles. 

This ‘hard’ science fiction setting would ask several questions.  How would the other Mythos fighting agencies like GRU-SV8, M-EPIC, PISCES and others, compromise their agenda and agents if national interests were on the line in a space-land rush scenario? In the Great Dark of Space when we are competing with orbital mechanics, confronted with the choice of cybernetic augmentation, assisted by some form of artificial intelligence, and dealing with a national mandate to exploit space before our competitors do; would we still be human?  What will individuals be willing to sacrifice to stave off humanity’s eventual apocalypse by mind warping forces we will never be able to understand?  Will we even want to? 

Above all, hangs our grey satellite as a harbinger of our uncertain future. Luna Uber Alles. 

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

News Reports and Papers

I’ve been fired up with these questions for some time. Over a few years I’ve been researching a few selected sources to create a background for this setting.  I’ll detail a few of these sources here, mostly news reports and scientific papers, with a summary of my thoughts under them. 

1) Demand Drivers of the Lunar and Cislunar Economy by T.J. Colvin et al. April 2020. From the Institute of Defense Analyses (IDA). 

In order for the USA and other nations to go to the moon and want to establish bases there, there should be more of an incentive than colonizing the moon purely for defense or scientific reasons.  Colvin et al., have created an interesting paper describing possible commercial interests that could drive people to invest in lunar and cislunar projects in the near future. 

Specifically, they mention that they have “identified goods and services that might generate sufficient non-government revenue [so that lunar investment could] to be commercially viable.”

Apart from space tourism, which I personally don’t think is economically sustainable to consistently fund long term lunar settlements, the paper describes that households on Earth may want moon rocks or lunar memorials (ie sending ashes of the deceased to the moon) from the lunar economy.  I think those economic drivers are a little anemic. However lunar advertising, mining precious metals from the Moon, extracting Helium-3 for sale on the Earth, disposing of hazardous Earth waste on the Moon, manufacturing in the lunar vacuum, and supercomputing and data storage as driven by corporations might be more feasible.  I’m taking this data from Table 1, page 8 of the pdf. 

Anyway, there are a lot of ideas to mine in this reference that would be useful for the Luna Uber Alles setting. 

2) Manufacturing In Space: An Inside Look At A Seemingly Crazy Idea by Ethan Karp. September 2024. From Forbes.com.

So, are space factories true and feasible? 

Pharmaceutical companies are interested in the lunar space for manufacturing chemicals in a no-gravity or microgravity environment.  Specifically, this relates to slowing the kinetics of crystal formation which is a useful method for identifying the mechanism of pharmaceutical function. Merck is doing this right now evidently. 

Heavy industry and polluting industries might also be considering operations in the lunar and cislunar space. 

3) In exchange for a lunar rover, Japan will get seats on Moon-landing missions by Stephen Clark. April 2024. From arstechnica.com.

Japan is partnering with the USA to have a Japanese astronaut join a USA team under the NASA-led Artemis program. Also, UAE, Canada and the European Space Agency are involved as well. 

In Luna Uber Alles, Mythos exploiting and Mythos suppressing organizations could have a presence on the Moon in future.  In the case of Canda, Delta Green lore already describes M-EPIC as a counter-Mythos agency. 

What Mythos organization should I look at including in Luna Uber Alles that could have an interest in Japanese lunar operations? In Delta Green (pages 34-37 of the Delta Green Handler’s Guide) the Black Ocean Society is directly described as being in Japan and other countries. That may have potential. 

4) Mining helium-3 on the Moon has been talked about forever—now a company will try by Eric Berger. March 2024. From arstechnica.com.

News report describing interest in and feasibility of harvesting helium-3 from the lunar regolith and selling it on Earth. Helium-3 does not occur naturally on Earth and “it exists in only very limited quantities from nuclear weapons tests, nuclear reactors, and radioactive decay”.  May be an important component in the quantum computing and medical imaging sectors. 

The news article specifically describes the company Interlune. 

5) Soldiers, Spies and the Moon: Secret US and Soviet Plans from the 1950s and 1960s edited by Jeffrey T. Richelson. Posted July 2014. From The National Security Archive. 

A series of declassified USA documents about potential miliary applications of lunar occupation. Deals with the Cold War, and US and Soviet interests in the Moon. Project Horizon is mentioned, which includes technical details from the US Airforce and Army about building a military Moon base. 

There is a section in the article A Study of Lunar Research Flights that talks about the feasibility of detonating a nuclear device on the Moon. 

Both of these articles would be useful for developing the setting Luna Uber Alles, particularly on the US side, and Project Horizon has details for military personnel on a theoretical militarized Moon base. One of the questions I must address in future is, “Are all nationally and corporate funded moon bases in Luna Uber Alles built with the military in mind, or instead do they consist of quasi-militarized or dual-use architectures?”

Books

I have several additional news references for Luna Uber Alles, but that’s enough for now. 

In terms of books that may have information I want for the setting, I’m looking at On the Future: Prospects for Humanity by Martin Rees. Specifically, Chapters 2.1-2.2, biotech and cybernetics, and Chapter 3, which deals with the solar system/space exploration, may be of use.

For historical reference I picked up Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon by the Mercury Seven astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton. I wanted a rough timeline of lunar exploration and mission objectives. 

Games

Now the question is, has anyone published a ttrpg similar to the setting I’m working on? There are a few Cthulhu in Space games, but one of the more recent ones that is closest to my ideas for Luna Uber Alles is Eldritch Horizon. 

Eldritch Horizon is a game set in the “early star-faring future of the human race” where humans are exploiting the outer horizon of Earth’s Solar System to support civilization back on Earth.  Add to this the alien and ancient things that already occupied the Solar System from the Cthulhu Mythos, and you have Eldritch Horizon.  

The setting is somewhere between the scope of Eclipse Phase (without the transhuman tech and themes of that setting) and Orbital Cold War (which I discuss below).

I skimmed Eldritch Horizon and found some elements that could be interesting in a Luna Uber Alles setting. Specifically, I like how Eldritch Horizon deals with Artificial Intelligence, and how AI would react to exposure to the madness of the Cthulhu Mythos. 

There are Sanity rules for Artificial Intelligences.  AIs are treated as being based on AIs of the modern day, just refined and moderately competent.  At least for mundane jobs. AIs are also prone to hallucinations when they encounter data or situations that are outside their training data baseline.  Also, the United Nations has mandated a kill-switch for higher level AI functions (like mining or attacking or so forth) while maintaining life-support and power generations.  This kill-switch is called the Skynet Protocol.  

So how and when do AIs take Sanity Damage? AIs are rather mentally fragile. If they encounter an observation or data outside of their training data, they accumulate Sanity Damage that cannot be removed. Eldritch Horizon calls AI Sanity Damage “Paradox.”  Whenever an AI would take a Sanity Check from the Unnatural/Cthulhu Mythos, they take maximum Sanity Damage equal to “the maximum human loss from a successful SAN test” or 1 Sanity Damage, whichever is higher. AI’s do not take San Damage from Helplessness or Violence sources, unless the GM decides the AI has an empathy prototype and wants to make that call.  

AI Sanity Damage (Paradox) matters because that value subtracts from the AI’s ability to make skill checks.  So, if you have 20 Paradox and your AI’s Mining skill is 65%, it’s effective Mining skill becomes 45%.  Essentially, exposure to the Unnatural/Mythos will degrade an AI’s ability to carry out actions until it is destroyed.  However, if an AI attempts to use a skill where the modified success score is zero or below, roll d100.  On a failure it just shuts down. On a roll of doubles, it develops an aggressive psychotic response.  

I like the AI rules from Eldritch Horizon because they are appropriate for Artificial Intelligences (AI) that are marginally better than we have today. I think these rules work well for the Luna Uber Alles setting.

I am not going to include Artificial General Intelligences (AGI) in Luna Uber Alles because frankly I don’t think AGI will be developed in the timeline I foresee Luna Uber Alles taking place in.  So, AGI is out in my setting, and I don’t have to worry about rules for it. 

Eldritch Horizon is currently available as a 73-page free quickstart pdf.  They advertise that the full game will come out in 2026 sometime. 

The other question I had was, is there any near future space game that I could use as a backbone to build Luna Uber Alles on? The answer is “yes” and that game is Orbital Cold War.

Orbital Cold War is an alternate timeline near-future setting where the Space Race between the USA and the Soviet Union never stopped and continued through the early 1990s.  Player characters are astronauts, scientists or possibly soldiers, with the objective to maintain or have adventures in space stations in orbit or on the Moon. 

The geopolitical tensions in this setting between the USA-European alliance and the Soviet Union is exactly the type of drama I want to replicate in Luna Uber Alles.  However, in my setting I want more factions vying for space and the Moon. I am envisioning the following nations/agencies as having stakes in the lunar surface: USA, Canada, UAE, Russia, UK, European Space Agency, Japan, China, and the corporation Intuitive Machines (USA). 

Some of these nations/agencies have organizations aware of the Mythos according to the Delta Green lore; namely: USA (Delta Green), Canada (M-EPIC), Russia (GRU-SV8), and UK (PISCES).  In addition, Japan is mentioned as having the Black Ocean Society embedded in their territory, and that organization may have Lunar ambitions.  

So, what does Orbital Cold War provide as a backbone for my setting? It has a great deal of excellent information about spaceflight with historical examples of space vehicles, information for human survival in space stations and on space walks, and detailed diagrams on Moon bases and space stations.  I’ll be using all of that information to inform the development of Luna Uber Alles. 

Conclusion

Looking back on the past few pages, I think I have a decent rough sketch of some of my ideas for the Luna Uber Alles setting.  The idea of mankind colonizing the Moon, and the Mythos’ response to our first halting steps to get off our singular planet, is very exciting to me.  I have at least 15 news sources or scientific papers that are relevant for research for the setting, and I have broadly detailed five here.  I’ve found two books and two ttrpgs that would be relevant for Luna Uber Alles; and I think that is a solid enough foundation to build upon to move forwards with this Delta Green-spinoff without succumbing to research inflation. 

Adapting Delta Green Shotgun Scenarios to Call of Cthulhu, The (Un)Natural Man

 

Example sovereign citizen licence plate
 by Merrrittt - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Delta Green (DG) has a wealth of quality fan created adventures and material. The shotgun scenario contest, which has been run annually for 20 years, alone has generated approximately one thousand adventures. 

The problem is my home game yearns for the simpler gangster era of the 1920s, rather than the messy spycraft of the late 90s.  So, what is a Handler to do?  Adapt, evolve, and change. The adventure that is. 

First of all, my players are all veteran Call of Cthulhu (CoC) investigators and wanted that era. I am more comfortable with Delta Green’s systems, so I pitched a CoC game with DG mechanics and they agreed to that.  DG and CoC are both based on Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying d100 system, so the transition mechanically was not hard. 

The next issue is that I wanted to run some of the DG adventure gems I was familiar with in the world of 1920’s Prohibition era.  Specifically, I had a four-hour session coming up and I wanted to run the award-winning (2020’s contest) DG shotgun scenario The (Un)Natural Man by Bird Bailey.  GMs, please read the scenario before continuing. It is short. 

** Players please avert your eyes. Spoilers for The (Un)Natural Man will follow. **

Here was the trouble. As awesome and compact as this adventure was, the adventure hinges on the main character, Elroy McIntyre, being a sovereign citizen. 

The sovereign citizen movement believes, generally, that all government statues do not apply to them unless they consent. The way you access sovereign citizen powers is through pseudo-legal mumbo-jumbo which includes writing down certain statements on legal documents.  Also, importantly for the adventure, sovereign citizens hate taxes and do not believe the government can legally take money from them. 

Sovereign citizens show up in the US around the 1970s. My players wanted a Prohibition era 1920s game.  

The (Un)Natural Man scenario summary

First, I will explain the plot of the scenario. 

In The (Un)Natural Man, Elroy McIntyre wants to avoid paying taxes, divorce payments, etc. and thus purchased a pamphlet filled with instructions and a ritual for separating his real self (Elroy original) from his legal self (Elroy fictional) by giving his True Name to a God.   Unfortunately for Elroy original, the ritual purchased was real and summoned Nyarlathotep, in the guise of The Black Man, whom Elroy original struck an infernal bargain with.  As a result of putting his True Name in The Black Man’s book, Elroy original got his wish of being immune from taxes and alimony.  However, since Elroy original sacrificed his True Name, Nyarlathotep created Elroy fictional, a perfect copy of Elroy original except a Hunting Horror in disguise, designed to kill Elroy original and take his place in the real world. The reason for Nyarlathotep’s creation of Elroy fictional is uncertain and done for inscrutable cosmic reasons, but I suggest Nyarlathotep did it because He thought it would be funny.  

The completion of the ritual leads to Elroy original getting blackout drunk from the horror of the ritual, waking up to Elroy fictional being present, being physically assaulted by Elroy fictional, attempting to fight back and kill Elroy fictional, both Elroys being arrested by the police for a domestic disturbance, and now both Elroys accusing the other of being an imposter while nursing an epic hangover in a police holding cell. 

One story that inspired Liam Myrkr. Available here

Adding a new character: Liam Myrkr, cultist-lawyer

Ok. Having said all that, I asked the author of the scenario if they had any ideas about converting the game from the modern era to the 1920s, given that there were no sovereign citizens in the 1920s.  

The author suggested that Elroy McIntyre may have fallen for a bad legal advice scam and now he was crazy. 

I turned the idea that Elroy had been suckered by bad legal advice into a character. A Nyarlathotep cultist-lawyer, to be specific, who arrived at a discovery of the Mythos from delving into the law, religion, and accounting.  This cultist-lawyer was responsible for drafting and selling the ritual to Elroy. Since one of my players chose the Swedish language at 40%, I made the cultist-lawyer Swedish and named him Liam Myrkr. The name was an Easter egg meaning literally “Light Darkness” as a Haunter in the Dark reference.

In the original The (Un)Natural Man scenario there was an NPC lawyer Al Silverstein. The purpose of that lawyer NPC was to be a vehicle to inform the players about crank sovereign citizen theory necessary to the plot, and convey that Elroy McIntyre original got into a scuffle behind a local diner in his past, thus establishing that Elroy is pugilistic curmudgeon. I decided to move those clues from the character of Al Silverstein into the notes and files of Liam Myrkr. 

Importantly I made the decision to have Liam Myrkr not reachable as an interrogatable character. I took a page from Dreams in the Witch House and had Myrkr disappear to unnatural parts unknown by carving the Gate spell into the corner of the bedroom of his apartment.   This allowed the players to gradually discover Myrkr through his writings and annotations found in his law office and home. 

Specifically, I added three clues at Liam’s law office to illuminate the purpose and nature of the ritual sold to Elroy original. 

The first clue was information about making pacts with God through the law (in a bizarre interpretation of the Magna Carta) and pacts with otherworldly Beings through trade or an exchange of one’s life/soul/True Name.  I put these details as annotations in the book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) by Margaret Murray which was discoverable in Myrkr’s office library. 

The second clue I added was contained in a French Bible (one of my players chose French as a language) as more annotations.  These annotations stated, that the Catholic God was not the real God, and cross references between God and the US and Swedish law. Also, there were musings about the fundamentals of the law based on Catholicism, pacts, trade, and Gods.

The third clue was in Liam’s accounting notes. It discussed people owing money to the state, odd mathematical gibberish about taxes, the soul, blood, what “one owes to God,” one’s True Name, and separation from worldly legal taxes or financial responsibilities to the government.  

The purpose of these clues was to lead the players to a scenario resolution where they could get rid of Elroy fictional by having Elroy original reclaim his True Name from Nyarlathotep by signing a contract with the US government or the Catholic God.  More on that in the resolution section. 

Adding a new character: Wilma McIntyre, estranged wife

In addition to Liam Myrkr, I added Elroy’s estranged wife, Wilma McIntyre as a character. I added her to tell the players that Elroy did not have any twins, brothers or cousins that looked like him.  This was to remove the possibility in the player’s minds that Elroy fictional was a natural human and have them consider unnatural possibilities. 

Also, an important clue Wilma conveyed was that she had been pressing her claim for community property in California (California had community property laws back in the 1920s) for 5 months since the divorce, and then mysteriously dropped the claim and did a complete reversal saying that she no longer wanted her half of Elroy’s property and money. 

The reason for Wilma dropping the case was that Elroy successfully executed the ritual giving away his True Name and obtaining his wish of immunity from alimony from Nyarlathotep. Wilma was now under the magical influence of Elroy’s ritual, and her sudden reversal made the players very suspicious of what Elroy original had done in the days prior to Elroy fictional showing up. 

I also positioned Wilma “off camera” by having her in Florida with her mother and only reachable by phone.  This limited the party’s interaction with her and allowed me to suggest that Wilma only had two clues and otherwise was an investigative dead end.  

Additional changes and 1920s Tax Law 

One important change was that I made Elroy a landowner (small plot of land with a two-story house) in Castaic in outskirts of LA county.  I did this so that it was clear Elroy had the resources for legal recourse incase players got frustrated and tried to use physical methods to get to the truth of who was the real Elroy.  Which would not have worked anyway because Elroy original was the real one, and Elroy fictional had access to all of Elroy original’s memories and motivations. 

Another change I made was to change Tony Linetti into Elroy’s gardener rather than Elroy’s landlord. Tony Linetti’s clue about there being no breaking and entering to the Elroy house remained the same. Also, he served as another source of the information that the party could receive from Wilma McIntyre, namely that Elroy had no twins, brother or cousins that looked like him.

So how did I deal with the main issue that sovereign citizens do not show up in the USA until the 1970s? Well, I decided to sidestep the issue. By looking into taxes. 

I leaned into the idea that Elroy was a drunk who has gotten increasingly crazy over the years and hated the high taxes that had been issued post WWI. 

Let’s talk about tax law in California in the 1920s.

 For reference, individuals and businesses in California were subject to the federal income tax, which saw significant rate reductions during that decade. In 1920-1921, the top marginal rate was 73% (on income over $1,000,000).  In 1922-1923, the top marginal rate on that same level of income was reduced to 58%.  Lower income brackets also saw reductions, with the lowest marginal rates falling from 4-11% in 1921 to 1.5-5% from 1925-1931.

Now I’ll be honest, I got this information from the google AI summary. I like my readers but my mind slides right off things like tax law so I didn’t do a deep dive and verify any of this. 

Even though the tax rate was dropping, Elroy was still a hoary chestnut and wanted to weasel out of his taxes. The high tax rate and the community property Wilma was demanding from his divorce were the two main motivations for Elroy to find Liam Myrkr and execute the ritual that summoned Nyarlathotep.

By Iohn Wright, Public Domain

Resolution and After-Action Report

One of the ways to resolve the scenario is to get Elroy original to reclaim his True Name by willingly signing himself over to some form of government authority. 

I modified this resolution end point by allowing Elroy original to also reclaim his True Name if he willingly signed a document rejoining himself to another God, specifically the Catholic God. 

In the Liam Myrkr section, I had introduced three clues that suggestively pointed to the idea that one could reclaim one’s True Name (or do the reverse) by making pacts/contracts with Gods or the government. 

I thought all three clues would help make it clear that Elroy would need to reclaim his Name legally by signing a contract with the US government or the Catholic God in order to get out of the previous ritual contract with Nyarlathotep.  

This was not obvious to the players at the penultimate portion of the game and I had to prompt them a bit. I was reading the Three Clue Rule by The Alexandrian again recently and realized I violated the Corollary: Proactive Clues A.K.A Bash Them On the Head With It. I should have been clearer and more direct. 

In retrospect, the players and I were pressed for time at the end and I accepted Elroy signing a contract with “God” in general as breaking the previous Mythos contract. When Elroy original signed the contract, Elroy fictional disappeared in a crack of unseasonable thunder and a scream from a room on the other side of the cell block.  

Honestly, I have some misgivings with this conclusion because the Catholic God has no power in Lovecraft’s Mythos, but I did not really specify which God Elroy was making a new contract with either.  Lesson learned for next time.

The following are my post-game musings. 

I think putting Liam Myrkr and Wilma McIntyre off camera this focused the attention of the party back on Elroy once they realized there was no cultist to intimidate, which was a good thing! One player was trying to get a reaction out of Elroy saying that the OTHER Elroy was going to remarry Wilma because he wasn’t a drunk and was a better Elroy than him.  This led to both Elroys breaking down into blubbering messes, because Elroy fictional was part of the original Elroy’s Jungian Shadow and I played them both as sad and regretful drunk assholes. 

Another gem by the players as they tried to get to the truth, was threatening the Elroys with “being put at the bottom of the LA reservoir if you don’t tell us what’s going on.”  It was a darkly comical opening move and I think inspired by the film L.A. Confidential. Naturally, it made the Elroys more frightened and belligerent.  

After the game I explained the original plot of The (Un)Natural Man to the players.  One player found the premise of the Elroys and the sovereign citizen elements interesting and different from most CoC games.  My other player keyed into the idea of the scenario being inspired by Doctor Faustus once the Elroy was discussing signing a contract with “Someone” or “some God.”

A good time was had by all in about 4-5 hours of gameplay. Thanks to Bird Bailey for writing The (Un)Natural Man.

Choir of Flesh, Useful Tables

 Choir of Flesh has many evocative descriptions in its tables. I wanted to add to them. On pages 100 and 101 of the core book there are d20 tables for Ruined Landmark and Natural Feature descriptions, respectively.  Here are my 10 additions for each table, with day and night variations for each entry.

Environmental Storytelling

There are stories behind a handful of the entries. I hope my intent of what has happened in the locations comes across in the descriptions. 

Ruined Chimney - A family was immolated in their house by Purifiers here 

Chalk Mound - The Choir turned a parent protecting his two children into chalk statues. Now they erode into dust when the wind blows. 

Chapel of the Dancing Plague – The Dancing Plague was a real event! Most famously it occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (modern France) in 1518. However, I got my hands on a paper in the Lancet (medical journal) called “A forgotten plague: making sense of dancing mania” by John Waller.

Waller’s article describes the dancing mania as being recorded as early as Christmas Eve in 1021. Since the twin apocalypses of Choir of Flesh occur in 1001 AD, I thought I could include a nod to this odd event in medieval history as the dates are close enough.  

Lancet article on the dancing plague found here.

Abandoned Suit of Armor- This references the biblical story of Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt. Lay the blame at the feet of the Choir for turning the Norman warrior into salt.  

Eerie Farmstead- The peasants were assumed into heaven in a Rapture. 

Copse of the Watchful Squirrels - I attempted to make squirrels scary without making them homicidal flesh eaters.

Ring of Burning Toadstools – This references the Burning Bush that Moses encountered in the Old Testament story. 

Additional Thoughts

I would like some advice from you, the reader, about software or techniques to improve the layout of my tables. Currently I make them in word or excel and frankly I would like to present them in a more aesthetically pleasing manner.  Please post ideas in the comments below. 

In the core Choir of Flesh book, the brutal Purifiers are described on page 98 in a single dramatic paragraph and in the NPC stat block on page 198.  But what we know about them is limited.  

Frankly, I want more. It is stated that they act as general antagonists; fighting the Choir, the Flesh and anyone else they feel like. There has got to be more detail and interesting nuance BlackOath Entertainment has in store for us. 

Also, we know that the Purifiers have taken over the city of Tours and use it as home base. What does the city look like after the twin apocalypses?  Are there conflicts in the city between factions in the Purifiers?  Are citizens huddled inside locked doors praying for salvation, or is there trade between neighborhoods and some semblance of civilization continuing?  The Choir and the Flesh are omnipresent.  Do they subtly influence encounters and terrain inside the city?  

What would that look like, for example, in a random table? 

These are some of the questions that go through my mind when reading and playing this game of medieval and cosmic horror.  

Choir of Flesh, Apocrypha Early Access

 The medieval post-apocalypse horror rpg Choir of Flesh has been released after a successful kickstarter. It can now be found on DriveThruRPG here and itch.io here!  Full disclosure, the DTRPG link is the affiliate link for my blog. 

I have written a partial review of Choir of Flesh and completed character creation for a solo game here.

The kickstarter for Choir of Flesh also had a number of stretch goals.  These stretch goals for additional mechanics, backstory and tables are coming in the form of a zine called Apocrypha.  I have had the opportunity to read a beta version of Apocrypha that contains some of the art, and I can say with full conviction that it is really good with more Choir of Flesh eye-popping art, and equally top-tier writing.  

My book review of the 33 pages of Apocrypha will follow. You can get your hands on Apocrypha if you are a kickstarter backer likely next month, once it is fully complete, according to Blackoath Entertainment.  Public release is expected to come in January 2026.  At that point Apocrypha will be available for purchase via DTRPG, itch.io and Amazon.

Onward to the book review!

The Nephilim

Apocrypha opens with the last stretch goal: The Nephilim’s Arrival. Now what is a Nephilim? In the Hebrew Bible Nephilim are supposedly beings of great size and strength or possibly great power and authority which some sources claim are offspring of rebellious angels and humans.  

Apocrypha has a unique really interesting take on Nephilim that further builds out the world of Choir of Flesh.  Nephilim are alchemical amalgams of a Choir’s Angel stripped down and fused with human body parts and elements of the Flesh so that the giant monstrosity functions as one unit from disparate parts. This giant, Frankensteinian creature was made as a weapon against both the Choir and the Flesh by gnostics with alchemical techniques. As the book says, with a chilling line, “This [Nephilim] was a weapon of war. It did not need to stay sane.” 

This is great worldbuilding. We already know that members of the Roman Catholic Church are terrorized by the Choir in Italy and pagans are competing or just trying to survive the Flesh when it has been summoned in their lands. Now we know what a new group of people, the gnostics, are doing in the twin apocalypse of 1001 AD.  

Frankly this is exactly what I wanted from an expansion of Choir of Flesh. It provides more information about what other peoples are doing in this blasted post-apocalyptic medieval world and how they are coping, or seizing on the opportunity for change. 

The chapter continues, describing how the Nephilim are a threat to the settlement you have built in the base game. Ultimately the Nephilim will be inexorably drawn to your lands to wreak havoc unless you and your party charge into a new Incursion written for Apocrypha, find the Nephilim’s spoor, and destroy it. 

One of the many things I like about this chapter is the use of color symbolism in the Omens that herald the Nephilim’s coming; and the same symbolism is sprinkled throughout the encounters in the new Incursion.  The Choir and Flesh are well defined in the core book, so how is the Nephilim, this amalgam between the two, made distinct?

The author uses the colors red and crimson in natural and unnatural phenomena to signify the Nephilim’s encroaching violence.  One quote I can give from the book is “Grasshoppers and butterflies turn bright crimson in the fields and die midflight.”  There are other Omens that describe red ants pouring forth from the ground and swarming in the air; and crimson clovers releasing choking pollen.  In addition, in the Incursion an exploration is described that progresses through a ruined gnostic laboratory. During this delve, the color red is featured in various descriptions and progressively as the player’s reaches the Incursion’s dark climax. 

This style of writing is literary and not often seen in tabletop rpgs. As I said before, the writing in this book it top-notch. 

In addition, there are elements of the design of the new Incursion to find the Nephilim’s spoor that stand out to me as being well crafted.  In the core book, an Incursion is randomly generated from a table of 100 points of interest.  These points of interest are all thematic, graphic, and dangerous; but they are mostly self-contained.  The points of interest in the new Nephilim Incursion are steps in a journey the lead to the climax of a story.  

There is foreshadowing in the early points of interest.  Features of the Flesh and the Choir are seen in the same setting; casually side by side as seams of meat in the earth along with wildflowers that sing the Choir’s song when wind passes them by.  Or more grotesquely in a stone circle where one hemisphere has been infested by the Flesh and the other half is consecrated to the Choir. In that supernaturally charged locale the players are forced to make a choice between the two sides or navigate a third more dangerous middle path.  

The themes of alchemy are slowly revealed in the nine points of interest.  A terrible implied alchemical accident has created a morbid watchtower that may test the player’s humanity.  A dormitory is found before the ruined gnostic workshop that birthed the horrid Nephilim is encountered.  Abhorrent alchemical experiments can be found in both locations and the subsequent one in which there is a particular flower. I will not discuss the final area. It is for you to discover. 

New Notable Citizens

Moving along in Apocrypha, we come to the new Notable Citizens chapter.  All the new Notable Citizens are great and would be vibrant characters to interact with, but four stand out to me as having deeper roleplay potential.  Brother Gregor the Anatomist, Bastian the Reeve, Luc the Lookout, and Isolier the Sin Eater are characters that frankly I want to plop down in a multiplayer game and have my players interact with them. 

Take Bastian the Reeve for example. A reeve is an administrative official serving a king or lesser lord in a variety of roles in Anglo-Saxon England. In Apocrypha, Bastian can act as your settlement’s judge, jury and enforcer of the law.  And Bastian clings to the “Old Law” as fervently as your Unbroken character clings to their Sin to keep them going through the horrors of the apocalypse.  In a multiplayer game, you could spend a couple hours with this character debating the morality of Old World Law, if it even applies in this post-apocalyptic world, if it should be revised, or even based on a more religious or humanistic world view. Isolier the Sin Eater has similar interaction potential on the themes of Sin and redemption.

New Settlement Options

Next up, we have the new settlement options chapter. This is full of random tables to flesh out your settlement, including tables for the surrounding environment, weather, the central structure of the settlement, quirks for your population as a whole with mechanical effects, downtime events, and the notorious Celebration and Carousing table. Someone had a fun time writing this because entries such as It Is Vital That We Go Into The Fields And Knock Over The Cows and Absolute Blowout are quite fun.  This re-centers the idea in Choir of Flesh that the player is trying to maintain their humanity in this grim-dark horrific apocalypse. 

New Character Options

In the new character options chapter, there are 16 new Feats and 8 new Drawbacks. I'll have to spend some time theory crafting to really have an opinion on those.  The new Drive and Revelation mechanics look good. Drive is a new resource for player to spend to enhance their rolls to be heroic or survive by just squeaking by. It does make players more powerful or resilient but I do not think it makes them overpowered, since Choir of Flesh’s encounters can be punishing.  I do think that Drive is more useful for a game master than it is in solo play because the Drive resource is replenished by roleplaying their Passions (Sin, Doom or Anchor), their Drawbacks and just by participating in a session.  That is not to say that one cannot use Drive in solo play. Far from it, the mechanics are there and simple to fulfill. I just think that giving points of Drive is a nice reward that is not experience, treasure or settlement resource related that encourages players to explore their Passions in the Choir of Flesh world with a game master present. 

Final Thoughts

Apocrypha is 33 pages with no space wasted. Either there is excellent art, interesting new mechanics, or compelling story present.  Having said that, what more would I like to see in the future? Well, there is a line on page 7 that has fired my imagination. "The pagans who summoned the Flesh were immediately subsumed into its ranks, becoming undifferentiated gristle at the heart of something ancient."

What is going on with the pagans? Which pagans? How are they coping with members of their population turning to the Flesh or the Choir?  Is it possible that a fraction of a pagan tribe got trapped inland and now may interact with your settlement because they were on a boat when the Seas turned to Flesh and they are displaced? 

There is a lot of fertile history to be mined in the vibrant world of Choir of Flesh and I want to see more of it.