Girls Like Us (procedures for a city campaign)

by 02png

4 city procedures-slash-npcs for Glaugust 2025, + a campaign premise

Character creation

Pick up to two that you like about yourself, and at least two that you don't.

• Arms - Lifting, dragging (inventory slots)
• Body - Vomiting
• Legs - Running, jumping, parkour
• Flesh - Physical touch, sex with the lights off
• Skin - Flirting, sex with the lights on
• Bone - Not breaking
• Sinew - Throwing chairs, bending bars
• Good Luck - Lottery tickets + car crashes

Body + Bone are for saves versus wet/hot and cold/hard harm, respectively. (Diarrhea is wet/hot, a bat to the shins is cold/hard.)

Everything else is self explanatory, I think.

You go to the City to fix what's wrong with you. Longer legs, fuller flesh, metal bones, extra arms.

To survive in the City, you must contend with the Powers That Be. 

The Hustle

A crossroads demon. Black-humored, hypermasc, forgiving. It wants your time and your dignity. If you need more money faster, it cheers and calls for a game of chance; stake your health, or your self esteem, or a relationship you treasure.

Real doctors want real money. Fake doctors want favors (harder to quantify, easier to game). They all respect the Hustle.

[Instead of modeling the City, I choose to personify it. Take everything about this literally; you can talk to the Hustle. You can shake its hand. You can seduce it, even fuck it, but you can't change it. The same is true for the other Powers That Be.]

The Grid

If you have a job, use real money, or sign for anything, you're on the grid: Each week, you may be randomly (1-in-6, gm rolls secretly) selected for surveillance. If you're under surveillance and commit a crime, a cop will bust into the room in an hour.

Rigid, hopelessly neurotic, femme in the way a GPS is femme. It wants to meet your friends, and collects people like dolls. It can turn a blind eye in exchange for a secret. Its cultists turn up in police departments and suspiciously high tech trailer parks; it still accepts human sacrifice.

The Noise

Chatter, bright lights, tabloids. You contract it by using the internet, visiting the financial district, or interacting with a carrier for a few hours.

• Stage 1: You're a carrier. Progresses on a weekly coin flip.
• Stage 2: Each week, worsen dysphoria for a random stat by 1 stage. Progresses when you don't like anything about yourself.
• Stage 3: Completely immobile. Progresses to terminal on a weekly coin flip: make a new character.

You can medicate the Noise with houseplants and booktok and anime body pillows and little treats and coffee dates and a cat that looks at you like you're the only person in the world even though you can only afford dry food and cheap litter, but you can't cure it. 

The Dark

If you're walking alone late at night, if you smile at the wrong man, if you forget to lock your door at night, it kills you.

You must perform the rites. You need a home, you need a man, you need a gun. Even with all of these things, the Dark visits on a 1-in-6 (weekly). First, it will try the front door. Then, it will try the window. You may not notice it came to visit, so check carefully. After each visit, you must improve the rites- change locks, move house, buy a bigger gun- or it will get in next time.

When the Dark comes to visit, there is a 50% chance it's someone you know. Do they know you live alone? Did you tell them your apartment number? Did you give them your spare key? It's your fault, says the voice at the foot of the bed. You made it too easy. It's your fault.

DEATH DEATH DEATH

For GLAUGust 2025.

The table of consequences is 20 entries long. Each dungeon gets its own table. The first entry is always DEATH.

To attack...

1. Choose a specific injury (blind, burned, disarmed) or DEATH.
2. Write it down on the table under any entry.
3. Roll on the table of consequences (d20). Everything under that entry happens.

More dangerous attacks roll smaller die sizes. Fighters roll twice and pick one.

To kill a dragon, mere DEATH will not suffice. You need DEATH DEATH DEATH.

Manors

or: "hypothetical mechanics for a hypothetical domain game"

or: "back on my historically inaccurate victorian slash gothic bullshit"

 

Domain Building

First, pick a manor from this list:

1. Falin Castle - Leaning at an iconic 12 degree angle. Leans a little more each year.
2. Supersanctuaria - Commissioned as a church. No worship has ever taken place there.
3. Vernow Castle - Could have been the largest ship in the armada, but the shipwrights ran out of funds and pivoted to real estate.
4. Huginn Hall - Bird-blighted. In Winter, two enormous nagging ravens come home to roost.
5. Chene Castle - Revisionist memorial to the most embarrassing war ever fought on foreign soil.
6. Nefyrlane House - Brimming with horny ghosts.
7. Garfield Hall - School of racial philosophy. Generations of scholars have studied here in search of the world’s most devastating slur.
8. Norfolk Castle - Former revolutionary hideout. Rumor has it the whole manor is rigged to explode. 
9. Titor Palace - Tall and narrow. Scrapes the clouds. Stabilized by a complex arrangement of sails.
10. Axiom Court - In days of old, eight knights swore an oath here. Attracts tourists, and posers.
11. Kayleigh Castle - Allegedly belonged to fairy royalty, who want it back.
12. Ynnit Castle - Sister-construction of Atward Hall. You own both, but one is an uninhabitable ruin. They can each go in different domains.
13. Estcher House - Belonged to a famous demonologist. Red wallpaper, drains in the floors. The locals call it "Chester House".
14. Belgetter Castle - Crawling with culturally insensitive gargoyles.
15. The Nameless Keep - Once held political prisoners. Directly acknowledging its existence is illegal; one may speak around it, but never of it.
16. Seratopa Park - Surrounded by acres of struggling vineyards.
17. Beerwolf Castle - Belonged to an oracle. Will be hit by a meteorite in a year.
18. Totenchaten House - The sky overhead is always clear: perfect for stargazing.
19. Morfeng Park - Designed by a blind, insane architect. Looks like a starfish, throwing up.
20. Canow Castle - Basement floods every spring goddammit fuck >:(

You are within your rights to rename the manor, but older relatives will never use it.

A manor's worth consists of four kinds of appeal: Religious, Intellectual, Tourist, and Supernatural. Rather than improving your domain, domain play primarily consists of raising the value of your manor.

Next, pick a domain from this list:

1. Eldon - Epicenter of the magical industrial revolution. The social season takes place here.
2. Summerseddy - Idyllic countryside where nothing ever happens.
3. Mania - Quarry town that slowly drives its residents insane.
4. Nova Ordea - Beautiful like a painting. Technically ruled by a foreign dictator.
5. Horse Town - Disturbingly American poisonous salt flats. Used to be a prison colony.
6. Ogwalia - Middle class necropolis.
7. Sceolan - Creepy pagan mountain town where skiing was invented.
8. Dioncalad - World's most over-funded police-yard.
9. Broug am Langotep - Four other families already lay claim to this highly sought after historic town.
10. Falnod - Cursed forest ruin where nothing will ever grow again. No locals to exploit; all supplies must be transported perilously and painstakingly thru the forest from somewhere with an actual economy. Don't pick this one, even as a joke.

Your manor goes somewhere in that domain.

There are intentionally less domains than manors, some of which are strictly better than others. This is because PCs don't own their domains: instead, all the manors in each domain vie for control of its resources.

Finally, you get a relation to host in your manor: an art school dropout, or an uncle who is terrified of ghosts, or an old family dog.

You get an additional (actually useful) relation for each point of appeal your manor has: a linguist, for example, if you have Intellectual appeal, et cetera.

If you don't want any relations (because living in a big empty house is your aesthetic), you can give them to other players instead.

Ideally, you do all of this before you roll your character. People are reflections of their environments, after all. I'm not your mom, tho, so do what you want i guess

Maids

You start with seven, and get two more when you level up. They keep your manor running smoothly.

Your House pays their salaries AND their funeral expenses, so don't expect more if they all die.

 

Shared Domains

If there's more than one manor in a domain, they all compete for its resources.

Example: It is tax season in Broug am Langotep, which generates 200/year in tourism and 50/year in church donations. You roll a d6 and add your manor's Tourist appeal; the four other families who live in the domain do the same. Whoever rolls the highest gets the 200. Then, repeat this process for Religious appeal. (This is on top of a significant yearly allowance/inheritance that all House scions get anyway.)

The intent is for PCs to spend all their money renovating their cool houses and all their time openly resenting their neighbors' cool houses.

When there's conflict over domain management (for example, interfering with local politics) make an Appeal check (as above) to see which manor is in charge. [WIP WIP this sounds so annoying but in a way that makes me laugh]

War

Everyone knows domain gaming is just wargaming in a trench coat and sunglasses.

In this game, you aren't allowed to raise an independent militia and point it at your countrymen (that's what assassins are for). Instead, if you want to engage in- good old-fashioned mass combat, the refined, socially acceptable way to do so is to engage in proxy gang warfare.

The player who picks first also picks the location. Your budget varies based on your manor's appeal and can be improved by working closely with gang leadership.

1. The Evolutionists appear wherever intellectuals gather. None of them can read, they just like throwing bricks thru church windows.
• 1 - Atheists (1hp, immune to miracles)
• 2 - Originmen (1hp, as chimpanzee on amphetamines)
• 4 - Missing Link
2. The Sunday Best appear wherever there's strong church presence, burning textbooks and kicking the shit out of scientists.
• 1 - Bookburners (1hp, max damage to wizards, sets off scrolls on attack)
• 2 - Inquisitors (2hp, d10 headsman's sword, +1 to Hit for nearby allies while singing)
• 4 - Decapitantes
3. The Werewolf Mafia exclusively serves scions of House Norbury.
• 1 - Pup (2hp)
• 2 - Howler (2hp, summon d4 wolves 1/battle)
• 4 - Silverback
4. The Carpenters Guild will only fight if fate is in your favor (1-in-20 chance).
• 1 - Carpenter (1hp, invisible until they're right next to you)
• 2 - Chainsaw (2hp, cleave, invisible until they're right next to you)
• 4 - Craneslayer

Each player controls all of their units directly (the units aren't aware of this; they don't know it's a game).

[WIP WIP WIP this is unforgivably WIP the actual takeaway is that i should write a self-indulgent skirmish wargame]

Attic, Closet, Basement

All manors are too big to live in, and are therefore too big to know. Keys get lost. Old bedrooms get closed up and forgotten. You’ve never seen the floor plan, and you’ve likely never set foot in the basement. (You have servants for that.)

Manors tend to have lots of stuff in them, tucked away, just out of sight. At any time, you can assert that a treasure or artifact is actually an old family heirloom, and try to remember where it is in the house. If you succeed, you learn whether it is in the attic, the closet, or the basement.

The servants, of course, can’t find it. You’ll have to go down there yourself.

victorian romance slush pile 2

For a victorian-adjacent gothic romance. This one's more game-y, but still very slushy

Courtship

Courtship is highly systematized and divided into stages (levels, even) with specific rituals for moving between them. Here's a simple map:

You take strings on other characters when they break a promise, reveal a secret, or break etiquette.

This may be too much system for the thing I want: basically, players should pay attention to each others' etiquette, and choose when and where to break the rules in service of romance. (this isn't historically accurate or genre convention- i just read a lot of romcom manga)

Gender + Etiquette

A respectable man is...

• Traditional, yet fashionable
  
• Secretive
• Violent; duels on his and others' behalf
• Pious

A respectable woman is...

• Traditional, yet fashionable
  
• Candid; never whispers, never gives the impression of keeping secrets
• Nonviolent
• A little mad; which is why they aren't allowed to duel or drive or go to church
  

Those who do not fit the binary are forced to pretend. Nonconformity is not welcome here. (Other forbidden things: premarital sex, queerness in all its forms, divorce, secret relationships, visible piercings, bigamy, talking about death, speaking french)

Your House further modifies your etiquette:

• House Devinsen must wear black and never laugh in public: they are all collectively in mourning over the death of their ancestor-patriarch. They're also comfortable talking about death in polite conversation.
• House Norbury have a vendetta going with House Larsene. They cannot cut their hair and must be visibly tattooed. (Visible tattoos are not forbidden for other houses, but they are considered non-traditional. House Norbury considers them extremely traditional, but only these specific designs in these specific locations. God forbid you use them to express yourself.)
• House John cannot marry members of their own House. (The major houses are groups of multiple families, united by geopolitics and a shared ancestor. It's much more common to marry within one's house, frequently between first- and second-cousins. House John considers this yucky, but they're the weird ones here.)
• House Sardon is ruled by matriarchal harems. Men wear veils, and never speak unless spoken to. Women chosen by the heads of house must marry at least twice and have as many children as years of marriage. Other women are not allowed to marry or have children.
• House Oleone are socially acceptable to make fun of to their faces. They may present as either gender (i.e. men may be candid, women may be violent) and change social gender as often as six times a day. To compensate, gender performance is particularly extreme- big beards, big dresses, and so on.
• House Larsene have a vendetta going with House Norbury. Both men and women must duel often and aggressively to remain in good standing; the heads of house keep score.
• House Rhayadder are socially acceptable to insult, albeit not to their faces. Women must go to church. (Their churches are still segregated by men and women.) Men are not allowed to openly duel; all violence must be implicit or covert. (Poisonings are standard.)
• In House Mything, men are allowed to be a little mad. Fashions and etiquette change four times a year. It is good manners to play along; they are taste-makers as much as any other House.

Social Combat

Spend two(?) strings on someone to coerce them with lies, threats, or charms. Choose an approach and roll 2d6. If you beat their defense (1 = gullible/craven/lustful; 12 = telepathic/fearless/vampiric), you change their mind permanently. If you fail, they change yours instead.

trying to add some kind of social combat option, so you can do battle with romantic rivals. Each dinner party should feel like a battlefield, but with your character's ego at stake instead of their health. I like when characters get their limbs lopped off, and this is somewhat equivalent: pick a bad fight, and suddenly you're a snake-worshipping libertarian

Strongly held beliefs are challenged, not broken: a follower's faith shaken, a spouse's loyalty tested. Put a crack in that belief, like an injury; if its cracked again, it breaks. You can repair cracks in downtime on a 2-in-6, or with the help of a trained professional.

You can't make someone fall in or out of love this way.

The Most Beautiful Woman You've Ever Seen ← nothing to add, i'm just linking this here because I like it a lot

by suzushiro
this image is irrelevant to the rest of the post

The Monster Inside Me Has Grown This Large (GLOG Class: Wandering Monster)

A werewolf, or perhaps a slasher.

MONSTER
Start with: mask, weapon, trustworthy voice, victimology
A - Victims, Monster
B - Pawns, +1 Inhuman Physiology
C - Hunters, +1 Inhuman Physiology
D - Sacrifices, +1 Inhuman Physiology

Once upon a time, there lived a nameless monster.
The monster was dying to have a name.
So it set out on a journey to find its name.

A: Victims
Between adventures, you attract up to [level]+1 hapless goons: lantern boys, village fools, plucky street urchins, people no one will miss.

• Individually, they have 1HP and take no damage on a successful save vs aoe. Collectively, they are as helpful as a single character (if that) and take a single share of loot/xp. 
• You get +[templates] to Hit while your goons are in formation. (This is their only contribution in combat.)
• You may treat any hirelings you personally take on as goons.
• You may reduce incoming damage by d12 by sacrificing one of your goons, as if you were sundering a shield. 

Whenever something scary happens, your goons scatter, split up, and get lost, such that only one remains “on-screen”. Whenever you enter a new room, you can have one stumble back on-screen from behind curtains, inside closets, etc., teeth chattering and faces pale. If there is a non-obvious trap in the room, they've already triggered it (the gm describes their fate as part of the room description). 

A: Monster
At any time, if your goons are on-screen, you can stumble off-screen and become a wandering monster on the encounter table. While the monster is out, you play as your goons.

The monster…

• …is a [level x 2] HD NPC under the GM’s control.
• …has your skills, class abilities, and equipment, yet is unrecognizable as you.
• …is mute, intelligent, and single-mindedly homicidal.
• …is drawn to loud noises (arrives in 1d3 turns).
• …doesn't trigger traps, is invisible to the undead, and can slip past locked doors.
• …cannot die, although it may appear to when reduced to 0 HP. Instead, it plays dead and escapes at the first opportunity. It cannot return until downtime has passed.

You can stumble back on-screen whenever the party enters a room (oh my god guys, did you know there's a monster in this dungeon, i only barely escaped and somehow ended up here!)

If the monster "dies" or you run out of goons, return on-screen or die.

If you die, the monster escapes, forever to haunt the encounter table.

The monster went to a village where nothing ever grew.
"Little girl, give me your name.
If you give me your name, I will make you strong."

Inhuman Physiology
The monster reveals inhuman physiology. Additional attacks, darkvision, acid spit- gain one every time you level up and another every time the monster "dies", negotiated with the GM (see below). Ideally, the new ability is related to how it died: gelatinous bones if it was crushed, immunity to fire if it was burned, etc.

If an NPC sees you use these abilities as a human, you lose access to Victims, forever. (Other PCs may choose to ignore your eccentricities, but everyone has their limit.)

1d10 Example Monster Traits

1. Wolf's Head: Gain an additional bite attack (d6).
2. Ghoul Guts: Eat a whole corpse to gain d6 HP.
3. Spring Heel: 40' vertical leap from standing.
4. Fireproof: You are immune to fire.
5. Ripper: Your nails deal d6 and bypass armor.
6. Roar: Everything in earshot saves versus fear.
7. Mimicry: Perfectly reproduce any sound you hear. Otherwise mute.
8. Plague: [templates]-in-6 chance to inflict fever, visions, and shakes.
9. Iron Head: Break stone and bend metal with the top of your skull.
10. Toymaker: Swallow a doll or marionette to create a living puppet.

"If you'll feed my village, you can have my name."
The monster became the little girl with the pretty name.
The village became wealthy. There was plenty to eat.

B: Pawns
In place of hapless goons, you may choose to attract distinguished goons. They add +[level] to checks in a single, very specific skill.

If you know two secrets belonging to an NPC, you can command them to do anything, once.

C: Hunters
In place of hapless goons, you may choose to attract daring goons. They get their own turn in combat.

With a touch, you can change someone's fear response to one of the following: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

D: Sacrifices
In place of hapless goons, you may choose to attract devoted goons. They trust you completely, and will do obviously dangerous things if you tell them to.

You can summon your choice of any wandering monster to your location by sacrificing a goon: it bursts thru a door to gore them thru the chest, or rises from a lake to drown them.

The monster liked its new name, so it stayed inside.
But one day, it was just too hungry.

Tom Cuzor

Δ: Final Girl
If you only have one goon left, she can kill the monster.