Hi there!
If you have any questions regarding Nekropol, you're free to ask here and I'll do my best to answer.
I'm running some campaigns with it, gonna see where that leads first before I make future plans!
But if you like this post-mortality style RPG I also made this a while back https://bugbearslug.itch.io/bonepunk, it's not as polished as this one, but it could be a fun read if you enjoyed Nekropol!
Nekropol has been my favorite sourcebook of the year so far. Tons of style and creativity!
The first thing I thought when I read through the generators was making a variant in the vein of Eclipse Phase and Altered Carbon. I was just wondering how you find inspiration for all those tables and items while still making them flow. Also, if I were to ever publicly release a sci-fi variant, what sort of permissions/credit would I need to add?
Finally, is there any way to support your work? I feel guilty just being able to download this for free.
Thanks and keep up the awesome job!
Hi!
I'm all for Sci-Fi Nekropol! Originally, Nekropol was sci-fi rather than science-fantasy. Undead sailed the void between stars, going mad from centuries of isolation. It had reanimated planets and haunted space-stations of bone and enamel. The scope was however too big for a zine and I scaled it down to a city.
Inspiration comes from many sources, there’s a little bit of Electric bastionland, Bonepunk, Goblin Laws of Gaming, Frankenstein, Gideon of the Ninth, Lichjammer, Catacomb Saints, Spaghettibastard, Biomega, Phyrexia, Coco and various speculative/real technologies. As I worked on items I had a number of constraints on to help narrow down and focus creativity.
I wish I had some better guidelines and words for the Setting generators though, as quite a few of them end up with dry or confusing results. I’ve been considering switching over to 2D6 tables instead of 3D6 as those tables usually yield far more consistent results.
If you or someone else wants to use Nekropol in their own work I’m fine with it given the following caveats.
The best way to support my work is to use it, remix it, break it apart, slap it together, do your own thing and share it with others. That is worth more than any money I could hope to get from this.
Cheers!
Awesome!
I personally enjoyed the more contradictory or odd results as making them work is part of the fun.
Those constraints you mentioned are one of the great things about this zine. Just enough detail to get some sparks going without the crunch. Just enough world built to have a unique setting while still giving room for players to make it their own.
Coco as a touchstone is unexpected but pretty great. I can definitely see it!
From a design standpoint, how interchangeable are Skulls intended to be? I like the idea of X + Y character types as tools but am hitting a block on reflavoring that particular component. For my draft I'm currently using Sleeve + Overhaul (A sort of permanent full-body system) but it just doesn't feel as intuitive or defined as Skulls. There's also quite a bit of overlap there with grafts/cyberware that's been tough to reconcile.
A few skulls have visual features that communicate what they can do, or are components of its powers. Each skull and skeleton is also designed to allow its bearer to be described in a new way, a different variant of Nekroborg. But these are constraints you do not need to abide by and if you don’t they can be changed or re-flavoured.
One option could be re-flavouring your skeleton as Internal augments and Skulls as External augments. (Grafts as auxilliary augments maybe?)
No matter how you do it, I don't think it'd be possible to do a 1-1 conversion, you'd need to change quite a bit of things that come out awkward. Finally, if you’re doing anything vaguely transhuman SF I would recommend looking into using Eclipse Phase art as they have a very generous license for it.