The Grey Neighborhood's Log #1

In 2021, before I made the Itch account, before EMPLOYEE was even a concept, there was The Grey Neighborhood.

I even already declared it back then.

Back then, I even didn't know how to make a campaign, or a thing and two that I need to know and prepare to make a D&D campaign - heck, I even didn't really know what the current edition of D&D at that time! All I know was there is a game called Dungeons and Dragons that you play it with a dices and sheets and pencils and imaginations and a bunch of books. There.

And one day, I draws several simple figures and I posted it seperatedly at IG with each roles and health and defense and et cetera on each captions. And at April 28, I post the picture above along with their name - The Gray / Grey Neighborhood. At that time, it's just a concept - an adventure that involving a three boys, a sentient motorcycle, two creature that representing angel and devil, a tyrannosaurus, and a frog magician (that also a merchant). That's all. And I continue with my life.

2022, I started to joining the bandwagon. And all I had inside my head at first was The Grey Neighborhood. Due to limited knowledge and lack of experiences of current edition of Dungeon and Dragons, I believe it would be wise to based my game from it's fundamental, origin documents available on the internet : 

System References

By using Advance Dungeon and Dragons FIRST EDITION and AD&D Monster Manual. That was the first thing I had in mind - First edition will be providing basic informations that I needed. But Boy, how wrong I am.

I read the AD&D and didn't understand at all. I flipped the pages and presented in front of me tables with numbers and things. This is not as easy as I thought. After re-reading for several times and playing the introductionary solo adventure provided on the module, I gave up and start doing that I can do at that time : create the story.

Settings - why with the Risk Mgmt?

What is a semi-modern suburban area? what is encounter on risk management?

Imagine the first area from Tony Hawk Underground 1 but with red, ashes skies and it was a post-apocalyptic setting where the buildings were not buildings anymore but rubbles and ruins. Humans still exist in this world, but also with another sentient creatures - they are forced to lived side-by-side. And what with risk management encounter? I got the idea after purchasing Jason Tocci's 2400 and read several modules from it. And I thought "Shit.. this mechanism is risk-based management". But funny thing is, I didn't confident enough to put Tocci's 2400 on the system reference - I need more data and more evidence on how the game works.

Opening hook

As I mentioned above, I already had the setting on my head. And Preemo (from the word Primer) would be a great name for a starter point. 

Character creation

I remember when I deciding on this : I only had one d6 from a Monopoly and a d12 from MTG's bundle box. And why with the stats? Why there are only STR, AGI, INT, CHR, and WIS? Truth to be told, Constitution was the thing that I totally forgot and didn't understand at all. STR, AGI, INT, CHR, WIS - I'm familiar with these stat blocks, I knew it from the old JRPGs I played since I was a boy. While Constitution was a new thing for me. Hence, I left it out.

Three starting quests

And for The Grey Neighborhood, I wanted to implement a Quest system - which is an absolute steals from all those RPGs I played. 

I think I need to scan my writing book, it had so much more information regarding this.

New Year's Resolution Mechanic : Smoking Kills (But Also Helps)

Disclaimer: this article is and will not suggesting and promoting readers to smokes in their real life. Also this article is not encourage people to start smoking, especially those who still under the age. This article is intended to be used for tabletop role playing games. Smoking is not cool. But yeah, it might help your depressed life a little bit. BUT STILL, SMOKING KILLS.

While reading, compilling, writing and making the last two I Read This in 2024, Prismatic Wasteland is no doubt catching my eyes on. We're talking about the New (Year's) Resolution Mechanic. The challenge was simple - create a new resolution mechanic in this month of January 2024. The complex one is, what kind of mechanism that I can bring to the table?

In my game, Employee, you will be playing as an employee (duh) who work their ass to get the job done or die trying thanks to office-related stress or maybe sinister entity that controlled the whole company. And when this stress level (in-game I named it (IN)Sanity points) is beyond player's threshold, their (IN)Sanity level will up and they might see something that they didn't see before - mentaly and supernatural-y.

Can this level be lowered down? The answer is No. But can it be reduced the impact to their points and levels? There's a possibility.

In every five in-game days, the Player will get Weekends, where their (IN)Sanity points will be reset to zero, but not their level. They can start a brand new week with fresh and a little bit sanity inside their head. But what if it their at their limit, that with just a little nudge and they will became level 5 (IN)Sanity person, but it's still in the middle of the week?

I got this idea while I was taking a smoking break at the office earlier today.

See, smoking is an activity that a lot of people do, while also a lot of people despise. Some use cigarette, some use cigar, some use the electronic ones, some rolled their own recipe. Despite how they smokes or what they smokes, I see several things that became an output of smoking:

1. Death. An obvious one. Maybe started with illness first;
2. Stress relieve. Even it's just a temporary nerf of the stress, sometimes it's helpful when the time was not right;
3. Ease up the convos. Some people do business while eat, some people deal at a meeting table, some taking a smoking break that might break the informality between them and the client and ease up the business process they trying to make.
4. A flawless ice-breaking method. New at work or just transfered to new division? Smoking might help to ice-break those thick wall of iceness from those ice-cold stare humans and find some warm and welcoming individuals at the new ice-ice-baby place.
5. Nicotine rush. Sometimes when I need inspiration or I need to clear the fog out of my head, I take a short smoke break, not even finished the whole cigarette; I just need the nicotine hit. It's like a little nudge to the brain to tell them to wake up.

(source)

So, what was the mechanism?

Proposing "Smoking Kills (But Also Helps)".

The concept is when the PC smokes a cigarette/cigar/e-cigs/pipe/handrolled/whatever, they might get a small temporary buff on one or several attributes such as sights, awareness, critical thinking, charisma (for talking and breaking the ice) or maybe shove away the sleepiness for a while. And if I try to apply it to Employee, PC could temporary decrease the amount of their (IN)Sanity points by taking a smoke*1 (releasing stress and followed by contemplating, for example).

But will it always grant them these glorious buff whenever they do one? No. Sometimes, when the time was not right, smoking won't give you a single thing except heat and illness. No inspiration, no convos, nothing - only tars gummed up on your lungs. That's why, when a Player want to use smoking as their buff system or ice-breaking, they should roll a d6 where the result of 4 and above are considered successful (buff granted and ice has been melted).

So, that means, the PC can be smoking all the time to get those sweat buff, right? Yes, but with consequences. In every cigarette PC take, there is a latent harm that is waiting. Like in real life, smoking in games also affecting your character health (poking at you, Kojima-san)*2. Health will decrease as long as the character using/equiping the smoking item, until it depleted the whole health bar.

For this mechanism, health detoriating system (H.D.S.)*3 will be decided by using a d10 as a percentage roll every time a character take a smoke and it will treated as accumulative. For example, PC A with 100 points health, take a two time of smoking with d10 7 & 3, means their health already detoriating at 10%, which makes the permanent PC health into 90 points. Is there any chance to recover their health? Sadly no. It was the consequences. It's the opportunity cost that must be paid.

To conclude, this smoking mechanism might helps character to overcome short-paced encounter or minimizing risk in a very short tempo with simple and quick method to be pulled in the game, with a twist that every time they pull it off, their health detoriating bit by bit.

BRAINFART - Coin instead of Polyhedral Dice

A flip of a coin is and always be giving an equal number of probability - it always be either Head or Tail, always 50 - 50 chance. There's always had a probability that the coin will land on its edge, making it standing perfectly, not giving either any side of it. But its only about 1 / 6000. You can consider your luck been drained for many many years just for getting it to happen.

In games - especially in TTRPG, I love to find when they, the makers, include a coin flip as one of several way to decide what will happen in the game. It might decide which road the players will take, or which bottle should contain a poison and which contain its antidote, or maybe it can decide if an attack be hit or missed.

Despite the existance of polyhedral dice are more commonly used for such decision making stated above (and any other usage such as creating encounter using random tables, or how many percentages an attack lands on enemy, etc.), I see the usage of coin flipping is far more barbaric and raw. It's just like returning to the core mechanism of decision making. Its either you get hit or not, hit the enemy or miss it, go left or right, up or down, doing something or not, survive or dying. It is simple. It is clean. It's unforgiving as fuck.

Even though, after a quick browsing of the History of Polyhedral Dice used in gaming, it is clear that polyhedral dice are an obvious winner. It gave players some hope on their action - a larger windows of opportunity on are they land the minimum number to make them hit the enemy, how powerful their attack in depleating enemies health, or maybe giving a game changing moment that surprised both players and the Game Master (or Referee or Dungeon Master).

In conclussion, I know polyhedral dice will and always will be the winner for table-top games, but you can consider using a coin instead of dice if possible, for more barbaric, raw and "swish-BAM" feeling.