Game Board Adventure Module0002

Your characters will encounter the following on this Game Board Adventure Module:

Clear Acid Men: 1,087
Drones: 211
Black Death: 204
Lift Racks: 170

The Game Board has two floors.  The first floor is spaceous with 50 foot steel walls.  Access to the sub-floor is not directly granted.  If your characters have teleportation powers or can slip between planes of existence or dimensions they may be able to slip into the sub-floor.

(Section 1: Theme and setting of the game)

    The theme of the game is to give existing battle hardened characters who possess god-like status or powers a real challenge where they have to depend on each other to survive.  Characters are abducted by way of one-way Tele-Port cubes from their respective (gaming) worlds and thrust into a high tech alien setting where even the laws of known physics need not apply.  Tele-Port cubes are indestructible.  They are ten cubic feet in size, have one completely open side panel, are self-powered.  Tele-Port cubes are transparent steel with paper thin walls, floor, and ceiling panels.  Whatever or whomever fits within their walls will be sent to an alien testing facility simply known as The Main Building's Training Building.  As the name indicates The Training Building provides opportunities for the player's characters to become proficient in the use of their newly acquired skills, weapons, defenses, sensors, vehicles, and other assorted “goodies”.

    Religion has been outlawed.  Those who disobey the law are tracked down at any cost for re-education.  Tracking is done through brain wave detection and Force tracking of Evil, Neutrality, and Goodness alignments.  The Planetary Quintuple Satellite Array is partially tasked with this duty.  It coordinates with the Sky Castles.  The Sky Castles in turn use their creations to enforce their law.  

    Machines have acquired True Intelligence and Artificial Consciousness.  The forces of Evil, Neutrality, and Goodness plus magic, spells, etc have been transformed into precise calculated technological equivalents.  Evil reigns supreme.  Neutrality is a close second.  Goodness accounts for one percent.  These three have the equivalent of a power source that can operate the Living Machines and is also tracked globally by a network of space-born satellites that weave an outer shell around the host planet.

    Eleven Living Machine "fortress castles" float dozens of miles over the surface of the planet.  They control the reality and the actions that are permitted.  Their abducted "Guests" are all sent to The Desert Project to test their survival skills where upon 500,000 organic and in-organic combatants, vehicles, weapons systems, and more await their arrival.  With completion of Phase One: The Test any surviving characters have a choice of staying on their host planet or being sent to other worlds of their choice.  Characters can even return to their home world with all the riches and bizarre alien technologies, weapons, defenses, and other oddities discovered or hoarded along their journey of utter survival.

    For those who choose to stay they may wish further exploration, conquest, to serve as Freedom Fighters, or whatever pleases their twisted souls and broken bodies.  One thing is certain though...they will truly never be the same if they can survive Phase One of The Desert Project.  If they stay they still have to navigate Phase Two: The Desert Project.  For that part of the game more secrets are revealed to them.  As well as new life forms and assorted nastiness to contend with.  The Main Building is at the heart of a gargatuan maze.  Both the Main Building and its surrounding Maze structure are measured in miles.  The Main Building houses seventy-four towers.  Each tower measures one square mile.  The height of each tower depends on the size and type of the Game Board within. 

     This massive steel and titanium maze has seven exits.  Its floor is covered by sand.  The Maze's steel and titanium ceiling provides a formidable barrier to prevent flying over The Maze walls.  The walls of this Maze are as tall as the highest tower from The Main Building.  The characters can choose between starvation or to navigate The Maze which leads into Phase Two: The Desert Project.  This massive Maze is a hybrid space that is rooted in both Phase One: The Test and Phase Two: The Desert Project.  As such enemy combatants, vehicles, weapons systems, creatures (alive or otherwise), plus other "elements" can be introduced or re-introduced as the Dungeon/Game Master deems fit.  There comes a point where the natural light that spills into the gigantic corridors will start to diminish to the point of absolute blackness.  The climatic conditions may vary depending on the season or time of day the player's characters entered The Maze.  Monsters that are not eliminated may follow the player's characters to The Maze as well as Phase Two:The Desert Project.  It is always wise to either permanenty trap, cripple, or erradicate your foe.  Phase Two: The Desert Project starts as each character reaches one of the seven exits.

    I wrote this game with an alien psychology in mind.  I tried to envision a way of life so foreign and bizarre that it does not have the same morals, values, or sensibilities that a human-based civilization has.  A world where player's characters and their foe can gain a tactical advantage by slipping through one form of reality or dimension, space-time position, or planes of existence.  What might an alien world be like where the human defined laws of physics need not apply?  What beliefs would they have?  Are there taboo subjects?  How did evolution progress or develop for them?  Did evolution exist for them?  What are their origins?  

    I also tried to imagine what player's characters would interpret from different types of game worlds.  Are they organic, humanoid, what atmosphere do they breathe, if any?  How would they talk to one another in their new alien setting?  What do they require for sustenance?  How many genders do they have?  A world where machines are alive.  Their damaged metal forms mending themselves like flesh, but at an increased rate of recovery.  A setting where compound fractal visual arrays exist naturally for all forms of life to varying degrees.  What would the conditions be where wood can be melted?  Lasers and other energy-based attacks can “chase” their targets?  Where a beam of light can be manipulated to form temporary solid surfaces on demand?

    I purposely left certain details a mystery.  Other basic concepts I left unanswered for Phase One: The Test.  I tried to write my game as a story that reveals itself to the players and their characters through the progression of the game, their character's encounters, their imaginative Game Masters.  In its original form this  meant buying and reading through all twenty-four of the Monster manuals and the three Phases of  my game.  The Main Building was meant to be played as one successively accessed tower after the next in one large self-contained adventure.  

    With this revised iteration of my game the seventy-four towers of the Main Building are a series of successively accessed self-contained Adventures or Missions.  By doing it this way the players and Game Master don't have to reference an index from all three Phases of the game to locate each monster or Game Board item.  Those things are now bundled with that particular Game Board.

    Once player's characters choose to stay on their host world they are sent to the exterior of The Main Building where they must solve a gargantuan Maze.  This Maze begins their exploration of Phase Two: The Desert Project.  To the characters this might be the first time they are informed of where they had been during their recent torments and trials.  Player's characters access each tower in successive order.  Going to either the next or previous tower in order from the first to the seventy-fourth.  Each tower identified as a Game Board of some type.  What is not known to the characters is that these towers are not arranged numerically sequential.  As in tower one is not necessarily adjacent to tower two.  In other words the position of the towers is not in an orderly fashion.  Also in Phase Two: The Desert Project the Game Master has the liberty to create their own adventures using my style of game play and many more creations in conjunction with adventures I had already devised for the second Phase of my game.

(Section 2: Introduction to Phase One: The Test)

    This game does not have a single correct way to play it.  Dungeon/Game Masters are free to use whatever set of rules they wish from any other game.  So if you like a particular set of rules from D&D/AD&D for example you're more than welcome to adapt my game's various items, monsters, vehicles, technologies, weapons, settings, etc as desired.  The idea behind my game was to make a heavily sci-fi themed game compatible with virtually all other gaming systems and their characters, monsters, weapons, vehicles, etc.  If you dislike a particular aspect of my game it is okay to ignore it or replace it as necessary.  Although I would ask that you try to play the game as it was written.  Phase One: The Test uses existing experienced player's characters from other game worlds/systems.  In this game all of the player's characters receive a hefty upgrade to their Hit Points as well as to their Damage, Defense, and Healing Points.  Damage Points reference any form of attack a player's character(s) utilize.  Players are permitted to play as many characters as the Game Master will allow.  

    This game is divided into three phases.  Each Phase is grander in its scope than the one before it.  Phase One: The Test is closely tied to Phase Two: The Desert Project.  Phase Three takes place after the secrets of The Desert Project have been revealed.  Each of these three Phases of my game reveals more secrets about the dominant forces, the planet's history, its original inhabitants, different regions, a variety of new races and species both of this world and from elsewhere, plus other details.  Game Masters are encouraged to create their own tales of how things once were, the changes that took place, and what the future may yet hold.  

    This part of the game deals with Phase One: The Test which takes player's characters from all points from time-space, all dimensions, realms, planes of existence throughout the known Universe(s).  Those characters are abducted by means of indestructible ten cubic foot Tele-Port cubes.  Each Tele-Port cube has five transparent steel sides making it easy for a wayward soul to accidentally enter these one-way Tele-Port cubes.  The Tele-Port cubes are scattered in places such as in rivers, streams, lakes, oceans, on land, underground, in caves, on and inside buildings, free floating in outer space, etc.  Anyone or any thing that enters a Tele-Port cube is instantly sent to The Main Building's Training Building.  The Training Building It is an integral structure just outside the entrance to the first Game Board.  

    The Main Building is a massive structure that is measured in miles.  It features 74 self-contained towers.  Within each tower is one Game Board where the survival skills of these characters is tested.  Game Boards present a variety of battle scenarios to the player's character(s) where the known laws of physics are routinely bent and broken.  In their place alien physics are applied.  Its interior spaces of The Main Building are completely void of all atmosphere.  Within the Training Building characters are put through training simulations and upgraded significantly to increase their chances of surviving mostly intact.  New defenses, magics, spells, weapons, vehicles, and offenses are also provided on a first come first serve basis.  Once the player's characters have started their training they will be referenced as “Guests” of the Sky Castles.  The Training Building is where "Guests" battle for their very survival along with other god-like, psychotic, crazed and/or deprived, blood thirsty characters whose form may or may not be humanoid.

    Each Game Board has its own set of conditions that must be met before an energy gate which is controlled by the Game Master will be deactivated and thus permit the characters to exit to the next Game Board.  Game Boards are like battle arenas.  For each Game Board there is a detailed map depicting the starting positions of all enemies, traps, weapons systems, etc.  The Game Master can choose to show the entire Game Board's contents to their players or they can show a traced outline of the Game Boards to their players.  The Game Master utilizes a privacy screen which enables them to keep track of information not meant for their players to see.  One such use of the privacy screen would be the detailed version of the Game Board's map.

    The game can handle up to 100 characters all participating at the same time.  With the use of a Weapons Holder each character can transport their own personal army.  These “carry-alls” will follow their respective users.  Weapons Holders are primarily used to store and transport supplies, weapons, armor.  They can also be used to store and transport an entire army.  This is handled by using the planet's natural alternate reality realms, dimensions, time-space positions, and planes of existence.  There is no guarantee that the stored armies or other properties within a Weapons Holder will not be altered for better or worse while “contained” within these alternate spaces by the inhabitants, if any, or the unique environmental conditions of said alternate reality realm(s), dimension(s), time-space(s), and plane(s) of existence.

All proceeds from sales of this play tester's edition will go toward the commercial-grade publication of my game in book form.  The art will be replaced with professionally drawn depictions.  Please check back periodically.  I will make updates to this game description in an effort to clarify certain points.  When in doubt Dungeon / Game Masters and players are advised to contact me, to improvise, or go with their gut instincts.  Please send your game related questions or comments to whiteboy1@mindspring.com

Copyright Bruce Berryhill  1981-2016  All Rights Reserved.