5MW Rokaner Report #8, Free 20pg Zine, 24h Only!
RR#8, Everett’s Moon, August 2024, When in Rome
Hello folk of stardust,
Hope you all are well. Here in France, the vacation month of August is ending, and we’re swinging quick into la rentrée. La rentrée is a cultural milestone in the year, a shift sort of like Back to School but for everyone who isn’t retired. Back to Work!
While I did manage to have a lovely holiday, split by a lil work in the delightful madness of GenCon in Indianapolis, I’ve been back at it for the past two weeks. And this week’s work is to bring you my newsletter readers a crazy freebie: a 20pg Mothership zine inspired by Alien: Romulus.
GenCon 2024
As I mentioned last month, at GenCon I was working at the PlusOne EXP Booth 241 alongside Tony Vasinda, Wes Franks, Richard Rook, and ENNIE-award winner Michael Martens. Our booth was between World Champ Games and the aisle, with tons of visitors asking about our games. I recognized a good lot, but had to learn many zines real quick!
Wes gave me a crash course in the several indie Zine Month offerings, Richard laid out all the Roseville Beach goodies, I talked pulp sci-fi adventuure with Michael Martens while he signed a bazillion copies of The Haunting of Klaus Manor, and Tony was the gracious generous host who kept us caffienated and taught me how to use a laminator, hahaha.
Rowan Zeoli over at Rascal News wrote a wonderful piece on the work PlusOne EXP is doing on Zine Month, I suggest you give it a read.
I was lucky to talk and sell games with these kind and fun folk from the safety of our GenCon booth. Because there were TONS of people out there! GenCon sold out 71K tickets, plus the I-dunno-how-many Exhibitor badges circling out there. That said, it was amazing to talk with so many people who actually understand what it is I do, haha, it’s like working in another weird world for a few days.
Plasmodics
Working next to Adam Vass’ World Champ Games, you bet your bottom dollar (what a weird idiom) that I also had the chance to meet Will Jobst of Good Luck Press! We both like funky mutants, didja know?
After two years of deep-fried, radiation bathed development, Plasmodics is now live and funded on Kickstarter!
Plasmodics is a 118pg ttrpg book with mechanics inspired by Cybermetal 2012 and Into the Odd, set in a post-apocalyptic future akin to Toxic Avenger cartoons meets weird alien hybrid freaks. It’s so insano and I’m itching to read more of the loads and loads of mutations Will wrote. Just read these, it’s wild af, haha:
I’ve been following Plasmodics development since the RTFM Gamma World episode when Will Jobst was a guest. I’m super stoked to see the project has had such success. Go check it out on Kickstarter, only one week left!
The Hands That Feed
Marco Serrano of SpicyTuna RPG is prepping the Kickstarter for The Hands That Feed, launching September 17th!
This is a hardback corporate horror anthology for Mothership RPG of insufferable executives, their crummy organizations and the explosive missions they’ll get you mixed up in.
I wrote a short adventure for this book called In Vino Captivitas featuring rival corporations by Joel Hines and Reece Carter, with Marco’s lil agitators in the mix. It’s actually a very seasonal adventure because it’s set during the vendanges, the grape harvest for wine-making. (Yes, yes, maybe a lil French, haha.) Of course, this isn’t the grape, but the jerryvine first featured in 5th QuIIC. So why did a pharma corp outbid a food cult corp, and snag this land for themselves? Curious.
Also, I’ll be working with Marco on some crossover NPCs when this Kickstarter launches. So keep an eye out for the first Avatar Alert!
When in Rome
Right, so I write for Mothership RPG. It was almost a professional obligation for me to go see Alien: Romulus on its opening weekend.
And this movie is ripe for a game. For real, one thing that impressed me with this movie was the smart, OSR-style problem solving the characters came up with. It made me want to put my friends through the same ringer, and write up a similar scenario.
In under a week (what’s wrong with me, right?), I wrote this, playtested it, got Mothership 3pp approval, received feedback from the incredible Josh Domanski, Christian Sorrell, Iko and Allen Hall (who only watched Alien/Aliens once like 20 years ago, the perfect alpha reader, haha), hired Brandon Yu “Chaoclypse” for the sick art (and so fast, wow), then I revised and popped out the whole thing into layout. Woof.
This module is heavily inspired by the film, but has some very notable (read: legally distinct) differences. Grab it before your 24 hours are up, after today it’s $5 digital and will go to print soon after. I would love to hear what you think, and how your PCs fare on Caesar/Augustus.
Click here to download the module on itch.io. Note that I’m still working on the plaintext file and VTT asset updates. I would love to hear what you think, and how your players’ crews fare on Caesar/Augustus. Good luck.
Signing off, Chris Airiau
This is such impressive work!
“Legally Distinct” 😂
Might use “When in Rome” for my a Halloween Mothership game