Moonhop Failed Careers: A Knight and a Cowboy Walk Into the GLOG

Here’s some more Moonhop.

That's what Into the GLOG is called now; I’m committing to the implied setting. Today, I’m posting Failed Careers (modeled after James’) to go with the Race table I made. Era die size determines max starting era: d12 for Orbital (default), d10 for Digital, d8 for Modern, d6 for Industrial, d4 for Medieval, and skip the first die for Ancient. Many of the failed careers are “forwards compatible,” so you can update equipment where necessary to avoid anachronism (like an Aristocrat in an Orbital setting basically still makes sense if you call the weapon a Laser Rapier). That said, I’m going to use older failed careers exactly as written, even in Orbital settings, for reasons enumerated below.

First, an explanation of the weapon notations as I use them. I'm not totally confident in this method of sorting weapons, but it'll give you a basic idea of each weapon for now.

dX: Damage, Applied Automatically
Armor X: Reduces Damage by X
OH/MH/BH: Offhand, Mainhand, Both Hands
You can hold up to 2 OH, or 1 MH/1 OH, or 1 BH
Throw: Can be Thrown for Full Damage
Xpld: if damage rolls listed value, add another die
Shots: How many shots before reload
Ignite: Save or d6 every turn until success
Jump: if damage rolls listed value, roll damage against nearest target

d12 (Era)	d12	Failed Career	Weapon	Another Thing
1-2 Ancient	1	Astrologer	Augury Knife (d6, OH)	Spyglass
	2	Baker	Rolling Pin (d6, OH)	Delicious Bread
	3	Brewer	Dagger (d6, OH, Throw)	Beer Urn
	4	Embalmer	Excerebration Hook (d6, OH)	Canopic Jar
	5	False Prophet	Gnarled Staff (d6, MH)	Devoted Disciple
	6	Farmer	Scythe (d6, OH)	Ox
	7	Gladiator	Trident (d8, MH)	Net
	8	Outlander	Greataxe (d10, BH)	10 Hallucinatory Berries
	9	Prisoner	Manacles (d6, OH)	Funny Looking Rock
	10	Scribe	Chisel (d6, OH)	Salacious Love Clay Tablets
	11	Shepherd	Crook (d6, MH)	Sheep
	12	Soldier	Spear (d8, MH, Throw)	Shield (Armor 1, OH)
3-4 Medieval	1	Aristocrat	Rapier (d8, MH)	Fancy Clothing, Too Much Chin
	2	Barber-Surgeon	Scissors (d6, OH)	Wig
	3	Blacksmith	Hammer (d8, MH)	Chain Mail (Armor 1, 2 Slots)
	4	Cultist	Wavy Dagger (d6, OH)	Pint of Blood
	5	Falconer	Crossbow (d8, BH)	Falcon (3 HP, d6)
	6	Flagellant	Scourge (d8, MH)	Horrific Scars
	7	Forester	Bow (d6, BH)	Bear Trap
	8	Grave Digger	Shovel (d8, MH)	Sack of Dirt
	9	Jester	Scythe (d6, OH)	Belled Hat
	10	Minstrel	Quarterstaff (d6, OH)	Lyre
	11	Nun	Stick (d4, OH, Throw)	Roller Skates
	12	Squire	Wooden Sword (d6, MH)	Shield (Armor 1, OH) with Heraldry
5-6 Industrial	1	Banker	Flintlock (d6 xpld 6, OH, 1 Shot)	Sack of 30 Counterfeit Coins
	2	Chimneysweep	Barbed Wire Broom (d8, MH)	Endless Soot, Insufferable Accent
	3	Clockmaker	Screwdriver (d6, OH)	Pocketwatch
	4	Cowboy	Revolver (d6 xpld 6, OH, 6 Shots)	Dynamite (4d6, Save for Half, 20' Radius)
	5	Factory Laborer	Hammer (d8, MH)	Tattered Rags
	6	Fireman	Fireaxe (d8, MH)	Bucket of Matches
	7	Gambler	Flintlock (d6 xpld 6, OH, 1 Shot)	Deck of Cards
	8	Mercenary	Rifle (d8 xpld 7-8, BH, 1 Shot)	Chain Mail (Armor 1, 2 Slots)
	9	Milkmaid	Stool (d6, OH)	Bucket of Milk, Smallpox Immunity
	10	Oil Baron	Flintlock (d6 xpld 6, OH, 1 Shot)	3 Wine Bottles of Crude Oil
	11	Revolutionary	3 Molotovs (d6, OH, Ignite, 10' Radius, Throw)	Pamphlets Decrying Status Quo
	12	Street Magician	Brass Knuckles (d6, OH)	Top Hat, White Rabbit
7-8 Modern	1	Actor	Prop Sword (d6, MH)	1 Bunch Flowers
	2	Athlete	Javelin (d8, MH, Throw)	Pole Valuting Pole
	3	Boy Scout	Pocket Knife (d6, OH)	50' Rope
	4	Detective	Snubnosed Pistol (d6 xpld 6, OH, 6 Shots)	Trenchcoat with Deep Pockets
	5	Mafia Thug	Tommy Gun (d6 xpld 1-2, BH, 3 Shots)	Ragged Suit
	6	Philosopher	Book (d6, OH)	Pack of Cigarettes
	7	Photographer	Camera Stand (d6, MH)	Film Camera
	8	Pilot	Revolver (d6 xpld 6, OH, 6 Shots)	Flak Vest (Armor 1, 2 Slots)
	9	Professor	Metal Meterstick (d8, BH)	Pipe, 3 Smokes of Tobacco
	10	Prostitute	Whip (d6, MH)	Restraints
	11	Spy	Butterfly Knife (d6, OH)	1 Dose Lethal-If-Ingested Poison
	12	Stoner	Tree Branch (d8, BH)	6 Joints
9-10 Digital	1	Audio Engineer	Boom Mic (d10, BH)	Boombox, 1 min Audio Storage
	2	Chemical Engineer	Carbon Steel Knife (d8, OH)	Industrial Explosives (6d6, Save for Half, 40')
	3	Drug Dealer	Uzi (d6 xpld 1-2, OH, 3 Shots)	1 Packet Crack
	4	Hacker	Taser (d8, OH)	50' Programmable Blinking Lights
	5	Legislator	Cane Gun (d6 xpld 6, MH, 1 Shot)	1d100 Bribe
	6	Pizza Delivery	Hubcap (d6, OH, Throw)	6 Pizzas
	7	Plumber	Pipe Wrench (d6, OH)	Large Bottle of Glue
	8	Roboticist	Shoulter-Mounted Robot Arm (d8, OH)	Camera Drone, 1 Hour Battery
	9	Student	Bookbag (d6, MH)	1d10,000 Crippling Debt
	10	Tech Support	Pipe Wrench (d6, OH)	Paired Radios, Unmitigated Rage
	11	Weatherman	Brass Knuckles (d6, OH)	3-Day Weather Predictor
	12	Zookeeper	Spiked Electric Cow Prod (d10, BH)	Necklace of Teeth
11-12 Orbital	1	Anti-Riot Police	Shotgun (2d4 xpld 4, BH, 6 Shots)	Riot Shield (Armor 1, OH), 3 Smoke Grenades
	2	Bionic Surgeon	Cauterization Dagger (d8, OH)	Bionic Eye and Viewing Pad
	3	Bureaucrat	Silenced Pistol (d6 xpld 6, OH, 6 Shots)	Blackmail on Local Leader
	4	Geneticist	Invalid Trophy (d6, OH)	Mutant Baby
	5	Hooligan	Bat with Nails (d8, MH)	Hoverboard
	6	Laser Engineer	3 Laser Pointers (2d6, OH, 1 Shot Ever)	3 Flexible Mirrors
	7	Scrapper	Crowbar (d6, OH)	Strong Electromagnet
	8	Space Pilot	Laser Pistol (5d6, OH, 1 Shot Ever)	Bottle of Whiskey
	9	Spaceship Engineer	Coil Pistol (d6 jump 6, OH, 6 Shots)	Blowtorch
	10	Supersoldier	Assault Rifle (d8 xpld 1-3, BH, 6 Shots)	Battle Armor (Armor 2, 4 Slots)
	11	Survivor	Rusty Knife (d6, OH, Throw)	Irradiated Jeans, Irradiated Genes (Sterile)
	12	Warlord	Spiked Scepter (d8, MH)	Outfit with Too Many Spikes (Armor 1, 2 Slots)

And now a quick aside about the world of the video game Rimworld:

In Rimworld, humans fly around their arm of the Milky Way at sublight speeds in cryosleep, colonizing planets. Every time a planet gets to a certain tech level, it either becomes a singularity and cuts off contact with everyone OR it nukes itself into ruins. That’s not the end, though: eventually, survivors rebuild from the stone age up. This has been going on for a long time. In the actual game part of Rimworld, you manage a colony of people whose cryosleep ship has crashed into a world on the rim of the arm of the Milky Way. Your characters get a random childhood and a random adulthood, and they don’t even have to be from the same tech level: you might get a medieval serf kid who grew into a spacefaring mercenary, or a gene-modded super soldier child who grew up to be a librarian.

So basically, I’m trying to do something similar here. Every moon is at a different tech level, so player characters can be from any tech level, presumably abducted into space. Humans get two failed careers, so most of them will actually be transplants from one tech level to another, which is neat. A game might start with a Barber-Surgeon, a Cowboy, and a Hacker sharing a last drink before a lethal dungeon-delve. That’s good shit.

Also I realized that I had left off a major inspiration for Moonhop: Enter the Gungeon, which is just fantastic all around. It’s super gonzo, it oozes charm and fun, and it still manages to pull off interesting, melancholy NPCs. It also has a great implied world, one very similar to what I’m trying to build here, with lots of anachronism and desperate adventurers blundering around the universe. I’ll probably do a more in-depth post on it at some point in the future, separate from Moonhop.

Starbound isn't currently on the list of inspirations, but I love it a lot and at some point
I'll realize some fundamental piece of Moonhop is lifted from it (Lili Ibrahim)

This image was like two months of controversy in the Starbound community, you have no idea (Starbound)

Moonhop Race Table: Gonzo Space Fantasy

So, as I mentioned in my post about Halloween in the Deep Carbon Observatory, I’m working on a hack combining Into the Odd and the Goblin Laws of Gaming. For the past few days I’ve been working on a GLOG-style table of races, and since it’s done, I guess I’ll post it here.

d8	d6	Name	Perk	Drawback
1	1	Human	Two Failed Careers	Disadv vs Mutation
	2
	3
	4
	5
	6
2	1	Human (Color = 1d6 ROYGBV)	Two Failed Careers	Disadv vs Mutation
	2
	3
	4
	5
	6
3	1	Dwarf, Booze	Blood is Alcohol	Disadv when Sober
	2	Dwarf, Candle	Burn HP for Light, 1 HP:10 min	Slowly Melt at High Temps
	3	Dwarf, Jumping	30' Standing Jump	Save vs Heights
	4	Dwarf, Mole	Smell Metal within 15'	Allergic to Copper
	5	Dwarf, Sea Floor	Hold Breath 8 Hours	Sink
	6	Dwarf, Spinner	Secrete 30’ Rope/Day	20' Color Vision
4	1	Elf, Amnesiac Space	STR +4, DEX +4, CHA +4	3 HP, not d6 HP
	2	Elf, Blood	Your Blood heals HP 1:1	d4 HP, not d6 HP
	3	Elf, Chitin	Armor 1	Save vs Molting when Stressed
	4	Elf, Hair	Animate Own Hair	Save vs Bad Fashion
	5	Elf, Sea	Speak to Fish	You Irritate Fish
	6	Elf, Silence	1’ Radius Silence near Hands	Deaf
5	1	Copper Knight	Armor 1	Disadv on Stealth
	2	Cyborg	2d8 Beam 1/day	Eat Coins to Recharge Beam
	3	Devilspawn	Ignite Eyes, Arrowhead Tail 1d6	Terrify Small Animals
	4	Dragonflyling	1d6 Firesneeze 20’	2x Fire Damage
	5	Dryad	Dead Plants Bloom at Touch	Disadv vs Electronics
	6	Facetaker	Eat heart to appear as person for 1 day	Reflection is True Appearance
6	1	Frederick	Telepathy with Fredericks	Identity Crisis
	2	Galatean	Punch for d8, 24 HP, not d6 HP	Cannot Heal
	3	Giant	Eat Strong Heart to Grow 1d12 inches	Save vs Challenges
	4	Gray	Move handful-of-coins-sized objects at 20'	Disadv vs Insanity
	5	Half Orc	Extra Attack after First Blood	No Legs (Start with Wheelchair)
	6	Jackalling	Speak with Recently Dead 1/day	Disadv on Death and Dismemberment
7	1	Many Rats	Pile of Rats, Trenchcoat	Scatter at 0 HP, become One Rat
	2	Rookling	Perfect Mimicry	No Voice
	3	Sepiidaling	Adv on Sneak when Naked	Skin shows emotions under stress
	4	Sharkling	Smell Blood 200’	Save vs Frenzy
	5	Skeleton, Bee	Beehive in Ribcage	Disadv on Stealth
	6	Skeleton, Clockwork	Don't Eat	Must be Wound 4 Hours/Day
8	1	Skeleton, Vine	1 hour Sunlight = 1 Ration	2x Fire Damage
	2	Snakehair	Petrify 1d4 rounds Gaze 1/day	Hair is Argumentative
	3	Trollkin	Regrow Limbs, Extremities	Gain Mutation on Regeneration
	4	Twitch	50' Teleport 1/day	Touching Iron Deals Damage
	5	Weaselling	Fit through any hole 8” wide	Save vs Pocket Valuables
	6	Roll Twice	Get Both Perks	Get Both Drawbacks

This table is intended for the tentative implied setting of Into the GLOG--gonzo space fantasy set in a system of moons around a gas giant. It’s called Moonhop, and it takes inspiration from FTL, Rimworld, and Kerbal Space Program. I’ll go into more detail later if I keep posting about it, but basically I like FTL’s soft sci-fi, Rimworld’s intentionally anachronistic technology, and Kerbal Space Program’s realistic orbital physics.

I spend a lot of time hanging out on the OSR Discord, and the people there were a huge help both in suggesting races and cutting the list down. If you want to see us hack out a system in real time, just head over there and hang around the GLOG text channel.

"Skeleton, Bees" (I haven't listened to this album but here's the link anyway)

Halloween in the Deep Carbon Observatory: a Challenge, a Session, a Debriefing

First: 

This is not a review. I like Deep Carbon Observatory a lot, and I recommend it if you don't have it. Most of the evaluation bits of this post focus on stuff that went wrong with the module rather than stuff that went right; that’s more due to what I tried to do with it than the quality of the thing itself. This post is more about planning out a session with DCO and reviewing what happened.

You can buy it here. The PDF is $10.00; the softcover is $13.30. 

The Setup: 

The Challenge:
I have four hours to run a Halloween oneshot for a group that normally plays combat-focused 5e. This is the opportunity to give the players a taste of wonder instead of spending four hours fighting through four rooms.

The Module:
Deep Carbon Observatory, specifically the final dungeon--the Observatory itself. It's an ancient ruin full of lethal treasure. A cruel band of NPC adventurers--the Crows--stalks the party.

The System:

You can download the version I used for the oneshot here. It's short, just 7 pages long, and covers character generation only. 

I'm working on a hack that combines Into the Odd mechanics with GLOG classes. This version is, like Into the Odd, classless, so there's way more Into than there is GLOG, but I'm going to keep working on it. The Failed Career table is based on James', and the Quirks table is a modification of one I collaborated on with the OSR Discord, which Saker Tarsos instigated and posted on his blog.

The Plan:

1. Players generate their characters. Hopefully a half hour or less. Could be ten minutes if people arrive on time. 
2. Read starting blurb about ancient kingdom with great powers, do best possible Cate Blanchett impression. 
3. The players start outside the observatory proper. They were headed to Carrowmore; it was flooded. They ventured upriver to find the source of the flood. They were not the only ones (stragglers as replacement PCs + Crows). Eventually, they arrived here: A deep, black pit, with mirrored towers surrounding it, perfectly dry. At the bottom is a gate. Cue the music. 
4. Run the observatory proper. The Last Thing is in room 39, as suggested. The Crows harass the PCs and try to steal their stuff. Hopefully they release the Last Thing and die horribly. 
5. In the event of TPK before session end: Run Isles of the Dead (this step is implicit in all my sessions). 
6. In the event that the players actually survive the Observatory and lose the Crows and the Last Thing, they can venture toward Carrowmore. 

They are not as spooky if you kill their friends before meeting them (Scrap Princess)

The Crows: 
Hooloch can reload and fire on the same turn and gets two melee attacks. Zolushika has a derringer (d8, exploding 6-8, 1-in-6 reload, melee range, last resort). The Snakewood Staff takes 1 Max HP/use.
They arrived a few hours before the PCs, opened the gate, scouted out the first room, then left and waited for someone else to come by and venture down. They will harass with zombies and special arrows every night, or attack in the Observatory if they see an opportunity.


All of that was written before I ran the session. No plan survives contact with the players.

I don't really want to do a room-by-room session report, so just take this player map instead

The Debriefing: 

In Summary: 

1. Into the GLOG is a solid foundation
2. I’m bad at horror
3. The Observatory is not suitable for a single 4-hour Halloween Oneshot
4. All the talk of randomly generated abilities encouraging player ingenuity is absolutely correct

Self/System Evaluation: 

1. The Character Generation Packets (the Into the GLOG document above) were a resounding success. I printed out six copies and put them on the table; each player had their own. We were able to start playing in just a few minutes, and the characters were fairly interesting. The players definitely read the Player Advice page, although I don’t think they processed it fully. 
2. I’m happy with HP calibration. Monsters get HD*8 HP and each “level” of Armor grants 1 Damage Reduction (see the rules doc for player HP). Monsters felt tough without taking forever to kill, and players were clearly in danger (two died, there were a bunch of lost fingers and one lost hand) but not unfairly so. I’ve struggled with balancing monster and player toughness for the entirety of my time GMing OSR stuff (about the last year), and this system was the first to feel really good. 
3. I tried classic “both sides roll a d6, whoever rolls higher goes first” initiative, and I think I still prefer the GLOG style of “everyone rolls an initiative check; anyone who succeeds goes before the monsters.” I’m already fairly lenient in terms of allowing players to ambush things, so having every player act at once even in regular combat is too swingy for my tastes.  
4. I don’t really know how to handle players asking to attack things outside of combat yet. I had them just roll for damage like regular Oddomatic attacks, which worked out okay, but didn’t feel great. I probably should have allowed the players to just execute the guy in the Razored Lock, but I had them roll for damage twice instead, which was weird. Screwing with the ooze automatons led to a couple of similarly difficult rulings on “fighting without entering combat”: How do I handle the automaton grabbing for a jar out of a backpack? How about players shooting the jar out of its hands? What I did was have the player make a STR check to avoid being grabbed, and when they failed I had the automaton just take the jar out of their backpack, and that felt alright. When they wanted to shoot the jar out of its hands, I just said “you shoot it and it shatters,” but in retrospect I should have given it “Damage Reduction 3, HP 1” or something to model the automaton trying to protect it. 
5. I forgot to implement reloading for pistols, which in theory makes them a decent chunk more powerful than regular melee weapons and much stronger than bows, but in practice--in the context of a oneshot where players didn’t have the opportunity to shop--it didn’t really matter. People who started with guns used them; people who started with bows or daggers used those. 
6. I’m not confident enough in sad/scary things to run them well. Specifically, I feel awkward describing things seriously instead of in a lighthearted tone; I’m not confident in my descriptive abilities. Hopefully I'll be able to practice this and it'll help. 
7. Using a speaker for music didn’t work out very well; we were playing in a room with 5 other groups (it's a large club), so the background noise basically forced me to keep the music down in order to be heard. The playlists were also a bit short. 20 minutes of exploration music probably isn't enough. 

Cane Threadington, his argumentative tattoo of his ex-wife, and his blood, which is spiders

DCO Evaluation:

1. The Observatory itself isn’t really scary. I know that information is in the module, but I foolishly thought I could make it scary and it wasn’t. It’s a series of rooms full of great dangerous toys and NPCs, but without the context of the trip upriver and the dam and the lakebed I don’t think it had a properly eerie feel. Player feedback indicated that, too; there were a couple things that were a bit creepy, but the players mostly just attacked them. They didn't reach the Last Thing. 
2. The Observatory itself is too long to run in a oneshot, at least for me. We got a bit less than halfway through in about 3.5 hours of play. They explored most of the right stalactite, ending at the Book Elf Woman. 
3. The players killed the guy in the Razored Lock and the mushroom dudes, which may have damaged the horror feel early on. 
4. My mapping player was able to map the vertical dungeon fairly well, but I think the players' vision of the space they were in was harmed (I’m not good enough at description to improvise the horizontal layer, I don’t think). 
5. As far as I can tell, the Observatory does not/should not have random encounters. Without random encounters, I didn't think to track light-time, and without tracking light-time I didn’t think to track light-radius, which is itself made worse by DCO’s vertical map. This was a oneshot, so ultimately all of that was fine or even good, but I think it’s still important to note that all of those concepts are strongly linked. I need to consider them together in my regular campaign. 
6. My players LOVED the scales. They spent maybe about an hour real-time goofing around with them. They used them to identify ghar’s crossbow bolts, figure out their own character traits, compare how cool two PCs were (had to be settled by IRL arm wrestle), assess the magicalness/dangerousness of various objects, and probe the moral opinions of the scale (they learned that it doesn't think very highly of souls or freedom). 
7. They obsessed over the Cervit ceramic plates for a while without discovering what they actually did, and they didn't think to ask NPCs what they did. 
8. I ran the Crows in a somewhat forgiving way, since with Oddomatic attacks and a party used to direct-combat 5e the players would have just been crushed. They were able to ambush and kill Ghar and Zolushika, but the other two are still at large. The players were a little bit creeped out, but without the history of the journey upriver I don’t think the Crows were anywhere near as scary. 

Roxas Carter, Pirate King, who can mix oil and water, with an animated zombie hand taped to his right stump, wearing a crabclaw over that, wearing a shield, holding a magic arrow. There's another guy borrowing his eyepatch. And he has viking horns. And two peg legs. And a gun. Honestly, there's a lot going on here. 

Player Stuff:

1. Using the Scales to identify Ghar’s crossbow bolts. They were able to get keywords like “hallucinations,” “ensaring,” and “scrying”
2. Using the quirk “you can mix oil and water” to mix oil into the water-based automaton oozes and burn them for lots of damage
3. Ghar shot one of the players with his eyeball-seeing arrow, and then that player took another player’s eyepatch and put it over that eye for no reason in particular, allowing them to ambush the Crows. They then found the mirror, displaying fabric (they thought it was the inside of a pocket), and then later when they checked on the player’s eye I told them that the mirror was showing what he saw (over the course of a couple exchanges). They were amused that they had accidentally thwarted the spying attempt.
4. When they found the alien plant biospheres, the only player in the room said “I drop it on the ground at my feet.” 5d6 damage, Save for Half: They lived through that incident with 2 STR (and some lost fingers) but later died.
5. Welded automaton fingers to the iron palms of the person who dropped a bomb on themselves. 
6. Animated a zombie hand, tied it to the stump of another person who lost a hand, put a crabclaw on top of that, and put a shield on the whole thing
7. Two characters died during direct combat with the silk golems/silk tapestry, because they basically just traded blows and lobbed alien plant biospheres (and rolled poorly).
8. One of the players—someone new to TTRPGs—walked in like a zombie, and said “I feel like crap, guys, so I might leave early.” As the session went on, however, she perked up, and played the whole time. Furthermore, she was one of the people whose character died, and after the session was over, she said “I really liked switching characters in the middle.” The OSR Works™.

Left to right: Uliczny Magik, Sometimes Invisible Street Magician; Black Brady Barnacle Butt, Iron-Palmed Pirate (Deceased); and "Tinman" Smith, Telekinetic Forester. There were some other characters, but these are the ones with art. 

Plans for the Future:
So, this group is probably not coming back to DCO. We normally play 5e with a different DM, and we only have a few sessions left, so we're probably just going to keep playing through that campaign.

If I run DCO again in the future, I’m going to expand my music selection, run it in a quieter room, and run the entire module. If I run another Halloween oneshot, it'll probably be something campy rather than scary.

Otherwise, I’m going to keep working on Into the GLOG, write up some classes, and go back to running non-horror stuff with my regular group.

It turns out that posting weekly is too often. Things will be sporadic.  If you want to hear about stuff early, hang out on the OSR Discord.