Related to my latest post, here is a very rough draft of a minimalist one-page RPG version of Project: LONG STAIR.
Project: LONG STAIR swiped from the RPG.net thread “Voices From Below and the Long Stairs” and used without permission.
Rules based on K-Slacker’s Tempora Mutantur, inspired by Simon J. Bull’s “SotU Refired” from the original “Searchers of the Unknown” by Nicolas Dessaux.
Gah; it seems that Gamer Attention Deficit Disorder is afoot.
One of the reasons I started working with a minimalist approach to Tempora Mutantur was because I could complete a single page of gaming material before getting distracted with something else, or get through a game session or two without needing to complete an overall ‘story arc’.
For the past couple days I’ve been re-reading the Project LONG STAIR posts at the RPG.net forums. I had gone through them a year or two ago; since then a similarly-themed wiki has been created, called Subterranean Operational Theatre.
The basic idea is as follows:
In 1963, a nuclear detonation under the Nevada desert knocked a hole in reality. The bomb was something new – and still classified – but what it did was stab through the fragile skein of normal space-time and opened a hole into something stranger.
The Fed put a door and a lock onto the hole – ninety tons of steel and titanium strong enough to bounce nukes. They kept it secret too. The place the hole opened into was just too weird for people to know about or deal with. It’s variously called The Basement, Downstairs, or (most commonly) The Dungeon.
Under reality, in realms so strange they defy scientific models to explain, someone or some thing built tunnels, chambers, traps, lairs… but also filled it with wonders and treasures – including objects and devices which could, quite simply, do the impossible.
Project: LONG STAIR was born.
Go take a look at Project LONG STAIR if you never have before – it’s well worth your time.
