Behold the throbbing flesh blob!
How creative restrictions made the Black Egg Artifact Generator better, and why not everything needs to be explained.
I’ve mentioned many times that restrictions breed creativity when it comes to game design.
This was particularly true for me in this year’s Appendix N Jam hosted by Dank Dungeons. The jam requires that submissions be not more than four A5 pages or the equivalent — two A4 pages or eight A6 pages. Having never worked in an A6 format before, I thought it would be a fun challenge.
Combined with my randomly assigned title of Cemetery of the Silent Monks, I created a little, black and white, A6 adventure zine.1 It’s a zonecore one-shot for MÖRK BORG inspired by Roadside Picnic and Stalker:
“The sky over Graven-Tosk was torn asunder with blinding flame and choking, black smoke. At least that’s the way Aalgut the Gravedigger explains it. Says a Black Egg now sits just outside the main cemetery. Big as a house. Perfectly smooth. Doesn’t cast a shadow. He’s seen it himself, but refuses to go too close. He’s seen the Silent Monks that come and go from inside. He’s seen them take people inside the egg — and never come out.”
It’s got sphincters, mutating milk, and digestion machines. As one person described it: “This adventure has wonderfully grotesque imagery, but leaves out just enough detail for our imagination to fill in the blanks with something personally upsetting. Bravo!”
The constraints and that imagination came together in how I built the Black Egg artifact generator.
The Black Egg Artifact Generator
Powerful alien artifacts feature prominently in Roadside Picnic and are important to the genre. These discarded items are probably just junk to the aliens, but to humans they are inexplicable, magic-like objects.
I wanted to include them in the adventure, but with a tight space constraint, I couldn’t actually list them out in detail. While a list of D12 Black Egg Artifacts would be handy for a GM, there was simply no room.
Instead, I opted for a A+B+C combinatorial table plus a table of D6 powers that (when combined) could generate 1,296 different items.2 The specific details are left to be imagined, which can sometimes be even better.
The table has three Aspect columns (A, B, and C) of independent aspects that can be combined. The first column is an adjective, the second is a material, and the third is a physical form. They are then combined in order to create an artifact:
1+3+4 = humming stone needle
6+5+1 = spinning crystal sphere
5+1+5 = throbbing flesh blob
Then a power is added to the artifact with an additional d6 roll. The powers are more defined and may include mechanical effects. Examples: “Animals are terrified of it. Dogs whine. Livestock panic.” or “Will explode when struck. Test Toughness DR12 or stunned, +4DR for d4 rounds. Artifact destroyed.”
With just a few rolls, a GM can create any number of unique artifacts — some useful, some dangerous, some useless. They seem utterly mysterious to the players, and it is up to them to figure out what they do.
Less is more with zonecore
If I were unconstrained, I’d probably still be working on Cemetery of the Silent Monks. I’d be tempted to include a long list of interesting artifacts for players to find, listing out each one in great detail. Each would have a name, description, and specific mechanical effect. It would be a lot of work and fill up a bunch of pages.
And I’m not sure it would be better.
In fact, I’m quite certain it would be worse.
I think people are enjoying the artifact generator because it doesn’t indulge in excessive exposition. It doesn’t explain the artifacts in detail. By its very nature it creates a bit of mystery and unknowable information.
That captures the “unknown and unknowable” zonecore vibe far more than a detailed list of artifacts.
- E.P. 💀
P.S. Grab a free copy of Cemetery of the Silent Monks at itch.io and leave a review.
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For the Appendix N Jam you do not choose your own title. You join the jam and a random title is assigned to you. It’s up to you how you interpret the title.
The number of possible combinations is 6*6*6*6 which is 1,296 in total.