Thoughts on Across a Thousand Dead Worlds

 

I got turned on to the Kickstarter for Across a Thousand Dead Worlds (AATDW) a while ago.

I was looking for a procedurally generated solo scifi experience. An almost-final draft pdf of the core rules just dropped about a week ago (446 pages!) and I've been looking through it and I really like what I see. I knew there was scifi horror, but I didn't figure it would be like Roadside Picnic crossed with Dungeon Crawling in Space with Cthulhu-like Stress and Emotion rules and Vault-Tech-like dystopian corporate humor. 

So, the central conceit is that human asteroid miners found a hollowed out asteroid with alien ships in it. Lots of them. Each alien ship can house one, three or five humans and they take their passengers to one of a series of ancient alien sites somewhere in the galaxy by warp speed. This travel takes weeks that may or may not extinguish all of your food/oxygen supplies. If you are going to a previously unknown alien site you don't know how long it is going to take. Also, there could be time dilation problems given you are using totally mysterious alien warp tech.

If this set up sound somewhat familiar, it may be because you have read Gateway by Frederik Pohl. I was not aware of this connection until I started posting about AATDW, and I was informed by forums members on a traditional games board about the scifi story. To me, Roadside Picnic was the closest scifi I had read that has similar themes to AATDW, so I will make comparisons between the game to that book. 

When the characters arrive at the alien site destination, it's like Roadside Picnic, except with more radiation and no Anomalies. It turns into a horrifying dungeon crawl (generated by random tables) where characters look for ancient alien scrap and artifacts while encountering still active alien security systems, terrifying slavering aberrants and/or biomechanical experiments. The point is you never know what you are going to get at one of these sites. I don't see why a particularly devious GM couldn't introduce physics bending Anomalies a la STALKER and pass them off as mysterious alien weirdness that no one understands. Depends how deadly you want to make the expedition.

Players need to manage their Stress and Emotional state or else they can go crazy and turn on their fellow explorers...or maybe the plan is to be the last one on the spaceship with the Monty Haul of artifacts. Be careful who you take with you! When you get back to the space station of the megacorp that sponsors these expeditions (Karum Station), you rest and recuperate...and pay corpo taxes through the nose which motivates you to take the next expedition to make money/get out of debt.

The human explorers of the alien sites are called Deep Divers. If a Deep Diver dies or goes missing on an expedition (you hope they are dead) the Deep Diver's loved ones will wear a black blindfold over their eyes for 24 hours. As I recall the rpg book said this was a custom taken from an Earth custom in the Philippines where the eyes of the corpse of the deceased were covered with black cloth for a day. Given that the Deep Diver community usually don't have a body for the dead or missing the tradition has migrated to relations willingly blindfolding themselves.

One of the cool things in Across a Thousand Dead Worlds is that the random tables tell the story for a particular site. For example, in Karum Station, the main space station around the asteroid hollowed out by the aliens, at the Red Asteroid, the main bar for Deep Divers exclusively, you may encounter a blindfolded person lead around the bar by her Deep Diver team. Also, there is a very expensive to maintain but free to visit garden of Earth and Mars flora on Karum Station. If you party too hard on the space station, an option on the tables may have your character waking up by rolling over on a very expensive flower bed in the garden. The designer of the tables really took the time to integrate details and make things thematic.

Character creation for Deep Divers starts with six primary attributes familiar to anyone who has played Dungeons and Dragons.  Attribute checks or skill checks are rolled on a d20, plus the relevant attribute or skill, with the objective to get higher than a total of 20 to succeed. Positive and negative modifiers also apply to that roll. For some situations determined by the game master, degrees of success matter.

Combat can take place on a hex grid or in zone-based combat. As a brief overview, combat involves spending stamina to take combat actions that require you to roll a d20 to try to bypass the target’s constitution to cause a wound.  

AATDW is a one to five player game.  A scenario of Mothership, Alien or Dead Space could be run with these rules and fit right in with the theme and tone of the rpg. 

There is a little bit of the idea from Red Markets that Deep Divers are pushing themselves for just one more job. However, unlike Red Markets, AATDW is not designed to be a grinding poverty simulator. But it would be easy to make it one if you wanted that kind of game. In the game world, Earth was turned into a massive landfill thanks to climate change and corporate greed. You all know the drill. Player characters usually have backgrounds in some terrifyingly grim down and out job like an Algae Farmer, Ocean Sweeper, Plastic Miner or Blue Collar Worker. It's not all grim and grime all the time though. You could start out as a Celebrity (a glorified blogger on Earth or Mars) or a Hedge Fund Kid (looking for excitement or a legitimate way to make a difference for humanity) if you wanted to (and want the stat bonuses for those backgrounds).

I like how the alien creatures that characters can encounter are handled. Creatures are classified into Types, for example Guardian or Synthetic and they have a Role that determines their combat behavior and statistics. Roles are sort of a melding of actions and goals, for example Roles can be Brute, Lurker, Ranged, Swarm or Psychic.

This creature classification reminds me of the Fantasy Flight Rogue Trader bestiary (Warhammer 40K) Koronus Bestiary which classified randomly generated aliens by the ecological niche the occupy (predator, herd beast, scavenger, swarm, etc). In fact, I would use that book as a sourcebook for generating lesser aliens or xeno-hazards in the main alien sites. In terms of other books to use with Across a Thousand Dead Worlds, I would also break out Kevin Crawford's Stars Without Number supplement Dead Names for lots of additional tables for ancient alien ruins.

I'm really excited for its full release and to play it with my group or solo.  There is a preview pdf of AATDW here at Black Oath Game’s website. 

Delta Green and Drones

    

This blog post is a companion piece to the article “Military grade AI, the Mythos and Delta Green.” 

Statistics and rules for robots/drones/slaughterbots for use in the TTRPG Delta Green will follow. Please note, these stat blocks are somewhat bare so that Handlers can use them as templates for their own creations.  Special thanks to magnificentophat, Duke Spookum, Splizwarf and Anonymous on the Night at the Opera discord for discussions and ideas.

How to Handle Robots in Delta Green

Using the vehicle rules in the Agents Handbook on page 95 as a basis, we suggest the following rules for robots, drones or slaughterbots.    

A robot takes damage from unarmed attacks and small weapons only when the Game Master thinks it makes sense. For example, an unarmed attack on a robot may do no damage (punching the metal chassis) or some damage (slamming the robot into a brick wall).  

A robot that loses half of it Hit Points is badly damaged and suffers a -20% to all rolls.  If a robot loses all its HP, it is demolished.

An Agent or NPC may substitute their Pilot (Drone) skill for the skills that a robot is programmed with. 

Optional Lethality rules for Robots: Robots can be very lethal in combat if equipped with the firearms or heavy weapons found in the Agents Handbook on page 97. One way to moderate constant lethality attacks against players is to give robots a fixed number of lethality bursts that can be spent in combat. Try giving the robots described below three lethality bursts each. 

Optional ideas for limiting Robot capability: It is possible that the robots are programmed to respond to a specific visual symbol or QR code.  Contact with the symbol may make the robot stop, avoid an area or lower its defenses.  Alternatively having a lanyard ID (for example one from March Tech) may instruct the robot to ignore, escort or cease offensive action against a target.

Quadcopter: Quadcopters come in two flavors: civilian and military

Civilian Quadcopter:  

HP: 1

Armor: 0

Flying Speed: Fast

Weapon Systems: (Optional) Improvised explosive device (IED)

Skills: Demolitions (Deliver IED): 70%, Dodge: 50%, Athletics (Fly): 50% 

Base Range: N/A

Damage: N/A

Lethality: 15%

Kill Radius: 10m

Ammo Capacity: 1

Armor Piercing: N/A

Special Rules: Successful delivery of the IED destroy the civilian quadcopter.  Quadcopter is -20% to hit because it is small.  If the quadcopter only moves during a turn or spends a turn juking in an area, all attacks on it are -40% to hit.  

Military Quadcopter: 

As above, with the following changes.

HP: 5

Armor: 3

Flying Speed: Average

Weapon Systems: Hand Grenade

Skills: Athletics (Throw Grenade): 70%, 

Base Range: 20 m

Damage: N/A

Lethality: 15%

Kill Radius: 10m

Ammo Capacity: 1

Armor Piercing: N/A

Special Rules: The military quadcopter throws the hand grenade. It doesn’t just crash into the target as a suicide drone.  The military quadcopter may be reloaded with an explosive device by a technician.

Spot: These drones appear dog-like and come in civilian and military versions.

Civilian Spot:

HP: 10

Armor: 0

Land Speed: Average, can climb stairs

Weapon Systems: none

Skill: Dodge: 50%, Athletics: 50% 

Military Spot: 

As above, with the following changes.

HP: 15

Armor: 5

Land Speed: Slow, can climb stairs

Weapon Systems: Light Rifle 

Skills: Firearms: 50%, Dodge: 50%, Athletics: 50%   

Base Range: 100m

Damage: 1d12

Lethality: 10%

Ammo Capacity: 30

Armor Piercing: 3

Special Rules: Military Spot can carry out Suppression (p.57 of Agents Handbook) using the option rule: Suppression Without a Kill Radius (p.58 of AH). However, Military Spot must spend one turn to hunker down and brace itself by not moving before it can attempt Suppression with its Light Rifle. 

Note: An example of a rifle firing remotely from the back of a drone dog can be viewed here.

Slaughterbot: I imagine one iteration of slaughterbots would likely look like Boston Dynamics’ BigDog, but quieter and with ports that could accept a variety of military firearms for ease of deployment. These drones are about the size of a large horse.

Slaughterbot ‘Trident’: Armed with three light rifles able to be rotated in complete 360-degree arcs. 

HP: 20

Armor: 6

Surface Speed: Slow, can climb stairs

Weapon Systems: 3 Light Rifles. 

Skills: Firearms: 50%, Dodge: 20%, Athletics: 50% 

Base Range: 100m.

Damage: 1d12

Lethality: 10%

Ammo Capacity: 30 per Light Rifle

Armor Piercing: 3

Special Rules: Light Rifles can be removed from Trident for a human’s use or replaced on the Trident by spending one turn on the action.

The Trident can carry out Suppression (p.57 of Agents Handbook) using the option rule: Suppression Without a Kill Radius (p.58 of AH). However, the Trident must spend one turn to hunker down and brace itself by not moving before it can attempt Suppression with any of its Light Rifles.

Slaughterbot ‘Groundclearer’: An assault weapons platform with a minigun affixed to a single rotating turret.  

As above, with the following changes.

Weapon Systems: Minigun

Skills: Heavy Weapons: 50%, Dodge: 20%, Athletics: 50%

Base Range: 300m.

Lethality: 20%

Kill Radius: Long Spray

Ammo Capacity: 4,000

Armor Piercing: 5

Special Rules: Minigun may not be removed from the Groundclearer without tools and about 15 minutes of work.

The Groundclearer can carry out Suppression (p.57 of Agents Handbook), however, the Groundclearer must spend one turn to hunker down and brace itself by not moving before it can attempt Suppression with its Minigun.

Mini Tank: This drone is modeled after the Russian Uran-9 unmanned combat ground vehicle.

HP: 80

Armor: 15

Surface Speed: Slow

Weapon Systems: Autocannon, Artillery

Autocannon

Skills: Heavy Weapons: 70%

Base Range: 400m

Lethality: 30%

Kill Radius: 3m

Ammo Capacity: 100 

Armor Piercing: 5

Artillery

Skills: Artillery: 70%

Base Range: 5 km

Lethality: 50%

Kill Radius: 100m

Ammo Capacity: 4 – 10 (there are 10 in the picture) 

Armor Piercing: 10

Special Rules: The Mini Tank is considered to have military-grade night vision goggles. This allows operating in reduced light conditions. Unlike human wearers of military-grade night vision goggles, the Mini Tank does not suffer a -20% penalty to alertness when finely detailed perception is required.  

Further Reading

For an interesting discussion on Russian unmanned military systems and AI, try this episode of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. 

For an example of air and ground drones working in sync for security, visit the Asylon Robotics website.