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.