Fridges and Freezers. A frozen wasteland themed ttrpg

I’m working on a series of short adventures that involve adventurers recovering books for a library. The first adventure’s done, and has a train made from parts of the most evil trains ever made (thanks Dr mcninja), but the next two are a bit more up in the air - the story beats are sorted but the monsters of the week aren’t. Not sure whether to keep cribbing from Dr mcninja or try stealing some bits from Warhammer fantasy.

I’m also still looking for mechanics for a one shot system I’ve kinda made. It was originally bolted on to 5e for convenience, but it’s simple enough that it really doesn’t need all that. It’s about wacky slapstick skeletons that usually fail to commit their intended crime.

A game about water currents, map making, and the movement of small objects on the ocean floor. The players would find a book called ‘a guide to fish and drowning’ which lets them talk to fish and mentions some macguffan on the ocean floor. Each session the players would descend to the ocean floor in a diving bell and do research and mapping of the ocean. They can talk to the fish, who will tell them about which fish are where and why and when they move, etc. The main danger would be drowning obv, but there would be no combat or anything.

Not even put in the oven yet, but orbital “coast” guard roleplay right as an inter-imperialist nuclear world war kicks off and makes orbital space a minefield. Idk what system would be best for this, and there would probably be too many dice rolls that lead to a party wipe lmao but I think the scenario could be very enticing.

I’ve been working on a setting and campaign that is a sort of deconstruction/reconstruction of Star Trek. Let the players be the bridge crew on a starship with a vague mission of exploration and see how they fare. “But Ensign,” you ask “why not just run a Star Trek game?” and it’s a fair question. I’ve got a few reasons.

First, I don’t want to have the players burdened by the vast amount of Star Trek lore, especially players who know a lot about Star Trek themselves. I don’t want players to be thinking about the game in terms of whether or not what they’re doing fits the lore, or being limited by what they think is consistent with Star Trek. A new universe, even if it’s similar in tone, is going to be different enough in the details that it should allow players and GM to do whatever we want without the baggage.

Second, Star Trek works fine for narrative works, but it’s harder to translate into an open-ended, persistent TTRPG experience because of problems with internal consistency. There’s no official Star Trek map, because everything is as close or far away as it needs to be to serve the narrative, and everything moves at the speed of plot. Technology works in wildly different ways depending on the episode or series. Sometimes the technology doesn’t work at all because of plot reasons. Some technologies, like the holodeck or the universal translator, don’t even have a clear explanation of how they work, and exist almost purely to facilitate the writing.

I’d like there to be an actual map, with fixed locations, and relationships based on those locations. I’m not looking to simulate the galaxy or try and create the whole interstellar society from first principles, I just want the players to exist in a world that they can see and understand. Similarly, I want the technology to be internally consistent so that players understand what it can and can’t do, and what to expect. It’s fine if it’s all jabberwocky from a realism perspective as long as the rules and boundaries are clearly defined.

Last, trying to create a plausible post-scarcity society similar to the Federation is giving me an excuse to learn more about economic planning and cybernetics. I’d like the political economy of the pseudo-Federation to be based on essentially cybernetic socialism, with decentralized planning and participatory democracy. The players won’t have to interact with that part much, as I’d like to abstract that part out to a degree, but it’s helping to inform how such a society would function. The Federation is a nice idea, but it suffers from being too idealistic and ambiguous about details. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to describe a similar society with more theoretical grounding, as opposed to “everyone just sort of gets along because we’re all good sports.”

Otherwise, I want to keep to the core themes. Peaceful exploration, humanism, finding creative solutions to unique problems, technobabble, boldly going, and so on. I also like that Star Trek always has a Big Bad of the moment, and I’d like to keep that going, with the possibility that the players can play a role in defeating it (before introducing a new one).

Star Trek works as an ongoing franchise because the universe is extremely large and anything can happen, which is what you want for a player-led TTRPG campaign. I’d like to flesh out a small corner of a similar universe, give it some flavor of its own, and then expand on it as we go if the players are enjoying it.

“Short” (last time I said that it wound up being 30 sessions) campaign inspired by Dynasty Warriors and Vinland Saga S1 about a civil war that breaks out after the death of a young king leaves no clear heirs to the throne. Breaks down into civil war with around 8 factions. Game clearly divided into 3 parts:

• Combat, where PCs engage in small-scale fights, mostly for 1v1 duels with enemy generals
• Tactical, where the PCs move troops and generals around a battlemap, single roll combat for each front. Zooms into Combat when two generals meet.
• Strategic, where the PCs negotiate, spy, and generally try to win over other factions without fighting. Zooms into Tactical when a battle breaks out with another faction.

Rules will be very simple. Players will choose one skill for each part of the game then split points between them as they choose, so you could have Greatsword (Combat), Reckless (Tactical), Intimidation (Strategic). Probably going to have a slight rock-paper-scissors system for each part where eg melee weapons are better against ranged are better against magic etc. Each PC will probably get a retinue of minor NPCs for the other players to take over when their main PCs split up.

Fantasy setting, no real details other than that it requires a decayed central authority. The 7 non-PC factions are at most just fantasy tropes in my head atm, eg the church, the elves, 2-3 dominant noble houses.

My other, even less formed idea, is “D&D but with diegetic levelling, which only affects the PCs and a handful of super-powerful villains”. Partially inspired by Baldur’s Gate 3 (where being a level 12 murder machine wasn’t really recognized by the narrative) and Kill Six Billion Demons.

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