Lore : Office23

Prologue

In the year 2022, the Moons - Helen & Romeo - once again clashed after thousands of years has passed under the night skies of Nüearth. The sea rises, lands submerges, the faunas behaved weirdly, and some creatures came out from their hidings at last. It's no longer be any ordinary day at Nüearth : no more mundane commute, no fancy lunch meetings, no stealing some puff of smoke at the rooftops, no more buying snacks in the middle of the night at a konbinistore. All creatures walks among the humans on the top crust of the Nüearth. It will be a brand new life.

Part 1: The Building

January 4th 2023 A.C. - four day after the clash of Helen & Romeo, a mega earthquake happens all over Nüearth. Casualties and damages couldn't be avoided, economy plummeted to the ground, chaos happens both on the streets and inside houses. All the three nations suffers from the disasters that happens only for five minutes but delivers a handful of power. Some said it was the Wrath of The Kame-kami. Some said it was the Solomon's Right works. Some were too tired and too hungry to think about the conspiracies.

At the Utara Nation, a huge cracks opened directly at the Business District, claiming hundreds to thousands of offices, firms and small joint ventures as their casualties. As trying to divide the area into two, the cracks left untouched by the Utara Nation's Ministry of Defence - leaving a big gap of unknown darkness lurks beneath it.

On the next day, a megastructure erected at the middle section of Utara Nation's Business District - right at the middle of the gap. Supported by a towering grounds from the darkness below, the structure stood proudly. No one claims seeing any works of constructions or whatsoever for the building. The words spread fast like a bullet - a building stood at the middle of the chasm, covered with windows and reflectives. It has twelve floors, and basement would be impossible with that kind of land support. At the top of the structure, a visible neon sign shine bright, brighter than any company logos all across the district. Its read "Office23".

Part 2: The Rumours

Seeing this opportunity, Utara Nation's Ministry of Transportation decided to establish a bridge that connecting the divided land. By utilizing the towering grounds that supports the megastructure, both lands now connected - while the megastructure itself acting like a rest area for those who walks to and fro the Business District.

At first, people amazed by its appearance and how it appeared by night. When it shined by the sun above, the exterior reflects it into a glimmering lights. When the night appeared, the neon lights from surrounded buildings reflected beautifully - flickering, waiving and colorful. Making it like the building was moving by itself, moving independently floor by floor, side by side. Almost like a peristaltic movement.

But under the glimmering mirror at the exterior, many claims upleasant things came from the structure. Some said they smelled an awful pungent odor creeping from inside. Some said they heard rustlings and banging and some even claims they heard screams and growls from inside the building. No one ever saw a person or a creature ever enter the building - as if the building itself was locked shut. Like barricading themselves for unwanted visitors.

Part 3: Shields

Utara Nation's Ministry of Defence took some action regarding this megastructure. After receiving a lot of claims from the civilians which mainly catagorized as "disturbance", a small team was dispatched to investigate the inside of the building.

Led by Col. Yoosuf "Shields" Syndock, a cleanse team of twelve enter the building on February 10th 2023 A.C.. Initiated as "Search and Investigate" mission, the team were made of a number of scientists along with Shields and his teams. The main tasks were:

- Eradicate the foul smells that came from inside the building;
- mitigate the source of the bangings and rustlings from inside the building;
- investigate, mitigate (and if necessary help) the source of the screams and growls from inside the building.

The mission was intended to be an in-and-out mission that only last less than twelve hours, with or without fulfill all three tasks above. Fourty eight hours has later, Shields and his team hasn't came back yet. Three days later, they were considered as missing in action, and the Ministry of Defence dispatched a rescue team to retrieve Shields and teammates. This rescue team was also considered missing in  action after three days later. In total, The Ministry dispatched three rescue team, but none of them were able pull it out.

On March 12th 2023 A.C., Shields was found outside the Office23 by a civilian while doing their early commute. They claimed that they found Shields lies on the ground, faced-down and not moving. His armor covered with scratches, scrapes, dents, slimes, chunk of meats and bloods. When ER Responds Team arrived and making some procedural actions to him, they found out the time of death was five days prior.

Part 4: Evidence

Amazed and confused with this phenomenon, Shields' body was autopsied while his full set of armor was taken to the laboratory of Ministry of Science to be examined thoroughly. Ministry of Defence cleared the permissions and things need to be done, both to Ministry of Science and Shields' family members.

At one point while the researcher observing Sheilds' cadaver, just like being fast forwarded through time, the organs and the body decays rapidly. In a mater of seconds, the fresh cadaver of Shields becomes a stenching lump of rotten meat.

Meanwhile at the Laboratory, the researchers carefully taking samples from Shields' armor as much as they could and conducting several different experiments with it. From the blood samples to the micro-est residue they could find on the scratches and dents. From many experiments they done, only one test that giving them results : blood test.

Alongside with Shields' teammate bloods, the deceased researchers and the rescue teams, they find some anomalies regarding the blood samples. First, the blood itself despite having the same colorization with any other samples, under the microscope the cells were mutated. Second, the mutated cells will become "aggresive" if contacted or stimulied with another different samples of blood (both humans and animals). The result was powerful enough to become an evidence. An evidence that there were another living being, living creature that different from humans and animals that lived inside the building of Office23.

After presenting the results to the Ministry of Defence and also the Federal Magistrate of Nüearth, megastructure Office23 was declared off-limit by the Nation. Civilians was inhibited to enter the premises in under any circumstances. Guards were placed on several possible entry points of the premises, with a permission to cease the trespasser. Night curfew was established around the buildings, not even a hobo was allowed to sleep at their entrance door.

Part 5: The Call

Once a week, a phone rings could be heard from inside the Office23. Always stopped at the third rings. One night, the rings stopped abruptly at the second ones.

The Insurer

Art generated by Freeway ML

 

The Insurer is a creature that PC can encounter when exploring the megaoffice at the early stages of the game. With the excel of speed and persuasion from their past, The Insurer could be a threat for PC when they alerted by them - they'll chase PCs, both individual or in a group, and try to make PC join their insurance company by giving them striking them with briefcase and papercut them with assesment forms.

Habitat

The Insurers lingers and wanders the Grand Lobby area, usually seen alone, maybe two or three of them lingers near seats. Some might also standing near the front door, waiting for someone entered the building as their prey. Some of other Insurer might lurks around the upper floors, trying to seek preys that might need some insurance at their unstable and hazardous workplace. Some were also stays at their own offices, waiting for command from the leader. Sometimes PC could also encounter one of them, strolling on a corridor, seems lost.

Actions

Action	Type	Description
Running Bash	Attack	an Insurer took a run and try to bash you with their boney, sharp shoulder.
Paper Cut	Attack	using their unlimited stack of insurance assessment form stored inside their briefcase, an Insurer could slice and damage PC using the thin side of a paper d6 times per turn.
Briefcase Block	Defence	by using a thick, office-issued briefcase, they repel and cover everything the world throw at them. P.S. It IS a sturdy briefcase.
Shout	Support	producing a loud, disturbing voice that could hurt you and also calls d4 nearby Insurers into current encounter

Characteristic

Physical appearance: many Insurer were a skinny, sick-pale-looking, zombie-ish humanoid creature wearing white shirts and tie and holding briefcase and papers. But some other also have different builds: muscular, fat, well-build. Detoriating by time, their hair was no longer as lush as they be, some of them already lose an eye (or maybe two), dislocated bones and joints on their body, and an absolute stench of a thick load of damp paper inside a damp storage.

Movement: The Insurer walks slow. But when they found their prey, they could move three times faster to approached them. Their advantage was located on their feet - years of waiting and running and chasing potential buyer could train their legs into somewhat magnificent level. Not forgot to mention, a lot of them are skinny. But for Insurer that already lost a leg or both, they can't do nothing except alerting nearby Insurer by shouting whenever they saw prey walking nearby or accidentally step on them.

Social: Insurers love to walks and roams alone. But sometimes you can meet them lurking alongside with fellow Insurer, maybe up to a group of 3 insurers. No longer be able to talk, they communicate to each other with groans and shouts.

#office23 and what it will be

At December 5th, Sean McCoy posted on his twitter about #dungeon23 - which later he put it in his monthly newsletter substack - and the community welcome it well.

The plan was creating a megadungeon, one room per day for 365 days aka one year. Months become levels, days counted as rooms. The decision for what room it will be, fully given to its maker. Sean himself stated (I'm paraphrasing) when you can't get anything inside your head regarding the room for that day, just put an "empty room" and "have something to show for your time".

After few searches and scrolls at twitter and land of the interweb, I found out that some people made their own versions of #dungeon23. And I thought "Why not create a huge, multi layered, office building as dungeon?".

Of course, the thought was based on the game I made called EMPLOYEE, where the PC is an employee who works on an office. It was a game surrounded itself on a office-themed settings, happens in the year 2022-ish or whenever the Referee want to be set on. It was a genre-neutral in general, but I intended to make it a bit of horror-esque genre in mind.

What is #Office23?

Generated by Freeway ML

#office23 is a #dungeon23 with modern, office-themed with sinister/horror output.

I imagined the "dungeon" will took shape of an office building on the outside, just like any standard office buildings. But the inside was different. Just like a TARDIS, it's bigger on the inside.

The building itself from the outside will not as sinister as its inside. Twelve floors can be filled with long corridors, rooms - both important or not, traps, check encounters, etc.

tl;dr : #office23 is just a theme change from #dungeon23 with more modern setup regarding the nuance, traps and also the encounters.

It's not purely to be made for EMPLOYEE..

Despite the birth of #office23 itself was the existence of my own game and how I want to play this megadungeon for it, #office23 is not exclusive to be made and played for EMPLOYEE.

I browsed several games on itch and other places and found several games that suitable to be played and implemented on this megadungeon:

Liminal Horror by Goblin Archives (horror will be intensified... A LOT...)

FIST by CLAYMORE (office corners and tables and water dispansers will be an awesome covers for gunblazin..)

In The Light of A Ghost Star by Highland Paranormal Society / Nate Treme (pop the building somewhere, for scavenge for example..)

Mausritter by Losing Games (hell, you could make this as whole new world to explore..)

In the end..

It will be fun to create this project for whole next year. I'll try to post several ideas for the rooms, traps and maybe encounters that possibly could be implemented on this project. Have fun and keep rollin' the dice.

Restroom

Inside an office building, restroom sometimes become a place for someone to escape from stacks of work, disturbing boss, unnecessary meeting or just simply avoiding all of them. Sometimes a restroom could be shared between two or more companies if they were established on the same floor, sometimes they don't - usually when whole floor was occupied by one company OR the building itself was owned by one company.

Characteristic

A restroom might be one of several rooms inside an office building established with small area. Had a couples of sinks and mirrors, toilet stalls and urinoir for male restroom. Some office might also provide handdryers, fresh clean hand towels, even a soft, low volume, elevator music (or baroque, classical or maybe slow instrumental music) that might soothes and calms anyone who enters it.

A restroom usually kept clean by the janitors - the floor was pristine and dry, the air circulation was well maintained, the water runs well, all the toilet seats were lift up when you entered one of the stalls, urinoirs cleans and spotless, toilet rolls were sufficient, handsoaps filled and smells fresh, and usually the room was covered in fresh, floral scents.

But in some other case, a restroom might be in their worse condition : water trickling from the faucet all the time, a blot of fungi covered some area at a damp ceiling, flickering lamps, slippery floors, stall doors won't close properly or unable to be locked from inside, and the ultimate one was when you entered the room, it was reek - damp, stinks, etc.

Activities

Things that could be executed inside a restroom were, but not limited to:

• Number One / Two
• Washing hands / face
• Refreshen up
• Applied make up / touch up
• Contemplating self
• Angry
• Extra Confidential Call (if nobody inside except them)
• Steal some sleep (while sitting on the toilet)
• Smoking (inside the stall)
• Chats with other employee / other interactions possible

________________________________________________________________

For #dungeon23

The application of restroom might be strange for the settings on medieval / high fantasy, but it possible to be pulled off. Reffering from this top list, old time restroom was simple. At least it has:

• seated / squating toilet
• easy-to-reach water source to clean their *ehm* bottoms
• tools to reach their *ehm* bottoms
• ventilations
• holes / pit for the excretions

Some of them might provide a private toilet with doors. Some might give the users of the toilet to chat side-by-side while dumping their loads (in the other words: its a huge boarderless, wallless toilet).

Toilets might be established inside a tavern, house, castle, an outside toilet (ref: Shrek's toilet) or even a ruins

Enemy / Monster Encounters

Toilets in different establishment might provide different kind of encounters.

• Tavern / House : the most logical ones for this environment might be small creatures like rodents, goblins, or any pests that might be able to slip through the small gap on the toilet. Its almost possible that the toilet was private ones with door, so those small creatures could linger inside the toilet, or if they're quite smart, they could open the door, steals some food (or precious things), or even create disturbance inside the tavern or house. IF the toilet was an outside one, dirt digging creatures (mole, goblin with shove, etc.) might able to ambush anyone who dare to lower their bottoms to the hole.
• Castle : from the top list above, assume the toilet on the castle was uplifted. Meaning the holes were on the second floor, while on the first floor, the pit that collecting what dropping from above collected and will be discarded. If somehow there's a way that quite sufficient enough for up to medium sized creature to get inside the pit, they could terrorized those who sitting / squatting upstairs. Creatures who attracted to dirty things - poo, stinks, dirt, etc. - might also come inside the pit IF they found a way to get inside. Remember : the pit is quite far from the hole above, meaning it will be an encounter surrounded with high walls, sticky grounds (if not clean up yet) and bad odors.
• Ruins : either on second floor or first floor, or being an outside ones, toilets in ruins abviously will be easy to guarded by any size of creature. Weak walls, minimalistic roof, nothing to become a barrier for creatures to having fun with it. But at least, there's no sticky grounds and foul aroma lingering the area.

Loot

Possible loot inside a toilet / restroom at this settings might in bare minimum. Nothing to loot for except basic toiletries. It is possible that someone might drop their gold or items down the hole, or a person hide their precious items or belonging by throwing them inside the pit or under the toilet seat. But rather than that, 90% might be crap.

________________________________________________________________

For #office23

Restroom can be easier to be applied in more modern settings of gameplay. Almost modern restroom inside an office building could provides things listed above, some even might go beyond that. Usually each restroom had 4 - 5 doored stalls, more than 3 urinoirs at male, sinks and mirrors and wall-mounted handdryers.

Encounter could be different on each restroom: it's depend on the atmosphere. And your settings of the game.

Enemy / Monster Encounters

In general genre, a clean, pristine restroom won't give any dangerous / battle encounter. You might encounter some residues or clues that might lead to another encounter, either inside or outside the restroom. Restroom also could be the place for NPC or player to release their fear, being angry or having an anxiety attack, place for looking a run-away NPCs or place for player being mad, stared blank to the mirror, smash it with their hands and screamed while grabbing their own hair violently. It is not impossible for player gather information inside the restroom with overhearing conversations from NPCs, or maybe an invitation from a key NPC to talk in private (with awkward pause whenever another person come in). And also don't forget a feared NPC that will give hints behind the closed, locked stall door.

It will be a different case for dirty, dim-lighted restroom. Associated with terror, horror and mystery, this kind of restrooms might provide a lot of encounters. Below are several example :

• monster made of liquid / slime-substance could slipped through the drainholes / faucet / cracks on the walls / dripping from the hole on the ceiling.
• Player approached a NPCs who turned into a creature (zombie, werewolf, were-anything, transformation-based creature) at the corner of the room, usually the bare lighted ones.
• Rough sounds (scratching, banging) came from one of the stalls.
• A NPC runs toward one of the stalls, player tries to catch them but when they opened it, it's empty. The NPC suddenly appeared behind them.
• Medium sized creature (trolls, werewolf, were-anything, creatures as tall as the ceiling) took the restroom as their nest. Bodies and bones scattered around. One of the sinks broken and sprays a lot of water. Another broken sinks dried up.
• Ghost appearance.
• An encounter with an enemy that turn out to be another helping NPC, where the real enemy smiling, lurking inside the dark side of the room and came out while clapping hands.
• Slime-based environmental encounter that might severe players visions / health / breath / movement.

Loot

It is possible that inside this restroom, both clean version and foul version, player could get or loot something for their adventure. For example:

• they could took something precious like money or luxurious items that left by deceased NPCs, after beating the enemy / conquer the encounter.
• the key item that required / requested for player to retreive was either hidden above the ceiling or hidden inside the toilet tank (if the item was small to medium).
• investigation item(s) that could be used as evidence(s) for pointing someone / something is the culprit.
• toiletries.
• poo (high chance lays around at the foul version).

What is Retreat to Unknown Hex?

In 2022 (which is this year, I write this post for the future readers) I started to make some TTRPGs.

At first I had this initial plan for creating a post-apocalyptic adventure, with makeshift weapons, ruins of modern stores like SevenEleven or McDonalds and a bunch of radioactive monsters. Day one, I already wrote several pages of mechanism on character creation, mechanism on stats (which I took a copy from AD&D 2e GM's Guide) and early flow of story. Day three, I got too focus on drawing a map of the first starting village, neglecting the production and progress of the fundamental ones - the game itself. At that point, I still didn't know about the existence of Itch, donjon, Dyson's Logos, etc. All I know was I just want to make my own adventure game.

That's it.

Several months later, I finished my first OnePageRPG, with adopted mechanism from Tunnel Goons and with an office-themed setting. I could say I AM proud of this.

I never played D&D at all. I never played any TTRPG before. I played boardgames like Monopoly and Chutes/Snakes & Ladders (here we called it "Ular Tangga"). I never know anything called an SRD or system reference document before, or something called a random tables or oracles or a 2d12+2 or THAC0 or DC and so on and so on. One part of TTRPG (D&D maybe) that I know since the old days were Bestiary. I love to look at all the monsters illustrations and reading their attacks and defences. Back then, I give zero facks about the stats or anything beside those three. I look up at the internet, searched Bestiary on Google while hopping to find some interesting pdf with a pagefull illustration of griffin, trolls, monsters and other fantasy faunas (or maybe floras). Sometimes the internet gave me something I want, but sometimes they led me to some dodgy website that I don't want to remember at all.

This was a brand new experience for me. From only loving the illustrations and now creating the story, mechanism and the monsters itself, this is an absolute experience gain. I don't know is this project will succeed or not. But I think I just want to make a game for myself that I could played for myself and maybe with several of my friends.

That's enough about me and my backstory. Now for the main question:

What is Retreat to Unknown Hex?

This blog will be the place for me to share things that I had in my mind about the development of my own games, new games announcements, things I learn from another games, things I want to explore from another games (expecially about mechanism), or anything that having some relation with ttrpg - like testing and reviewing a solo rpg I found on Itch, or creating some random tables for players out there could adopt.

The title Retreat to Unknown Hex was taken from one of my published minigame called Walk of the Candy, which also my first attempt on creating a hexcrawl rpg.

I think that's it.

Thanks for reading.