2018/02/16

OSR: Horrible Magical Candyland

So you've read Veins of the Earth and you want to try it out.

One problem; your players have read Veins too. Or they know about it by reputation. Or they wisely fear a huge evil-looking tome. Or the invitation to "visit Patrick Stuart's horrible twisted dreams" didn't appeal. Anything deeper than a broom closet and they flee. Any hint of a cave and they panic.

You could take content from Veins of the Earth and fling it into the clouds, making Lumps of the Sky.

Or you could do something even sillier.


Introducing: Horrible Magical Candyland

Step 1: Buy and read Veins of the Earth
Step 2: Build a gigantic factory. Seriously gigantic. Mostly underground.
Step 3: Run a slightly modified Veins game.
       Step 4: You might want to read Blood in the Chocolate too.
                 Step 5. Sing silly songs.



Wait, What?

Look, everyone knows candy factories are magical places. It's in the rules.

Caves, in a way, are kind of like the interior of industrial buildings. They are dangerous. They make no sense to an untutored visitor. Try walking in a straight line through an oil refinery or a paper mill and you'll see what I mean. There are mysterious drops, forests of pipes, clouds of steam, strange locked doors, rattling loops of chain, and plenty of hazards. 

You can use Veins of the Earth to generate a factory (if you're able to adapt cave descriptions on the fly).

Rules Changes

Light isn't a problem anymore. The factory is fairly well lit. Replace all instances of "light" with "water". The air dries you out. You need to keep drinking water or you'll desiccate. Water is Initiative. Does this make sense? No, but it's OK.

Generate caves normally except they are made of pipes and tubes and chocolate fountains and toffee waterfalls. 

Food is abundant, but Nutrients are rare. You can eat until you burst and still starve to death. Only a few creatures provide nutrients. 

All the caves are 
squashed close together. Everything is jostling for space. 


Creatures

Alkalion
Water-otter. Dribbles water to melt through candy. Wants to eat your bone marrow.

Anglerlich
The Master of the Candy Factory. Whimsical. Wants to teach people moral lessons. Some sort of extra-dimensional entity that feeds on unfairness.

Antiphoenix
N/A

Arachnopolis Rex
Chaotic city made of candy wrappers and discarded industrial machinery. Crewed by thousands of tiny child-clones made by the Master of the Factory and his Shrinkifying Ray. 

Archeans
Cinnamon elementals. 

Atomic Bees
Floating saltwater taffy. Horribly mutating side effects.

Blackfoot Gigaferret
Ferret transformed into a guard. Will wait until you sleep, tap you on the shoulder (mouth full of teeth, eyes shining) then tell you that sleeping is not permitted in this area. Will follow you until you lose your mind from lack of sleep.

Calcinated Cancer Bear
Rock-candy golem. Might be a child underneath; who can say? Big faceted blue crystals.


Cambrimen
Derpa Lerpas, the workers. They sing songs where all the rhymes in a stanza are the same word. Dumb as heck, but very hard to kill. 

Castilian Caddis Larvae
Deranged Dentist, living in a lair of teeth and steel implements. A larval tooth fairy. Wants to pull teeth. Horrible buzzing tentacle-drills.

Cholerids
People whose teeth have been removed by the Deranged Dentist. Wander around moaning. They want to steal your teeth. 

Civilopede
N/A

Cromagnogolem
Toffee golem. Sticky. 

Egg-Dead
Children transformed into Kinder Surprise toys inside of chocolate eggs. They are excitable, cheerful, and indestructible.

The Egengraü
Instead of stealing your memories it steals your words and your bones. Eventually you'll turn into a Derpa Lerpa.

Fossil Vampire
Carbonized children in a thick layer of industrial sugar-sludge. 

Fungal Ambassodile
Quality control auditor. Two heads. One is mercilessly capitalistic, the other is idealistic and quality-obsessed. They bicker. They want you to taste samples. 

Funginid Slaves
Various flavours of living chocolate people. White, rose, milk, dark, with associated personalities. Some have nutritious fruit inside. 

Gegenschein
Rescue Ranger. Mouse in a vest. Will pull you out of danger and drop you off elsewhere in the factory (no the surface, oh no, never the surface). The more perilous the rescue the better.

Gilgamash
Living statues of the Master of the Factory, containing bits of his vices. 

Igneous Wrath
Living industrial accident. What happens when you drop a ladle of molten tungsten through a time machine on a full moon on Friday the 13th. 

Ignimbrite Mite
Bits of souls. Like the soot-balls from Spirited Away. They are helpful but can only speak one word each. If you eat one you get a bit weird but can also speak to candy or do other neat tricks.

Knotsmen
Guests of the factory. Ragged tour group uniforms (the same as yours). Horrifically obese or wracked with sugar-related conditions. Scurvy. They deny this. Everything is just fine. They like it here. They want you to stay. 

Lamenters
Squirrels. Used to sort good nuts from bad nuts. Like all squirrels, they are powerfully insane, and will smash your head open if they think you are thinking bad thoughts. The madness effects from the Lamenters tables are just the side-effects of concussions.

Mantis Shrimp
Crystal-candy predator, sharp and thin and brittle. Long stabbing talons.

Meanderthals
The ghosts of the people you might have been if you didn't eat so much candy. Better, fitter, smarter, thinner. 

Mondmilch
Liquid sweetness. Traps you in happy cloying dreams, not nightmares. Comfortable. Cave full of skeletons, people who starved in their own happy worlds.

Olm
Bubblegum people. Sticky mouths full of moist teeth. They want to chew you.

Oneirocetacean
Really big Knotsman (visitor) trapped in diabetic fever-dream. Instead of tentacles, syringes. Medical nightmare zone.

Panic Attack Jack
Deranged kids on a sugar high. Their touch induces the Rapture.

Phantom Hand of Gargas
Some sort of mobile industrial accident or living safety warning. Tries to pull you from 3D-land into 2D-land, where it can mash you with gears or falling objects.

Psychomycosis Megaspores
Gumdrop megaspores. 

Pyroclastic Ghouls
Original board of directors, lovingly carbonized and coated in sugar dust. They think everything is going splendidly

Radiolarian
Everlasting gobstopper. Will outlast the stars and the gods. 

The Rapture
No change.


Scissorfish
Swarms of fruit candy. Kind of cute until they try to crawl down your throat and into your lungs. 

Silichominds
Workers in industrial suits. Will ask you pointless questions about "reciprocating turbines" and "sump-shaft eight". Voices are distorted, like a subway station announcement.

Sonic Pigs!
Marzipan Pigs! They make you participate in festive dances. 

Spectre of the Bröcken
N/A

Splinterlads
Cavity elementals. Ooooh, your poor teeth.

Spotlight Dogs
Safety Dogs. Hunt you with siren-faces and amber rotating lights unless you wear proper safety equipment for the area. This varies widely. Might need to kill some 

Still-Tor-Men
Horrible hooked cranes overhead, accidentally grab you instead of their targets. 

Stormsheep
Cotton candy sheep. Much less dangerous, but it will get all over your hands and you can't wash them easily.

Tachyon Troll
Child-man trapped in a time loop as punishment for "impatience". Has seen it all before. 

Tetracharcarodron
Butterscotch ooze.

Titanskull Hermit Crab
Gingerbread witch living in mobile gingerbread castle. Will trade for all sorts of things, but always tries to trap you in an iron cage. Fairly obvious, possibly apologetic about it.

Toraptoise
Sugar-adapted vampire tortoises. They smell nutrients. Their shells are beautiful layered hard candy. 

Trilobite-Knight
Armoured Virtue Inspector. Will quiz you on your faults. You'll always get them wrong. Will try to wrangle you into a machine for an appropriate punishment.

Trogloraptor
Golden Ticket Inserter. Sneaks into houses, give kids golden tickets in their next candy bar, escorts them to the factory. Then returns to erase the memories of the parents. Like a weird folded-up spider in a blue tailored suit.

Ultraviolet Butterfly
Lollipop butterflies. Suck on one to trip balls. Delicious, addictive. 

Zombie Coral
Chalk-candy children, fused and coated and stored in sacks.


Races

Aelf-Adal
Treacle Lords from the Deep Treacle Mines, mad that the Master of the Factory has pumped away their homes.

Deep Janeen
Replace "stone" with "chocolate" and make them another kind of chocolate elemental in vast underground palaces.

dEr0
Sugar-addled workers. They know what all the machines do (or do they)? Quick, this way. Aha! It was a trap! Oh no, it was a trap, we must flee!

Dvargir
Factory building golems. As cheerless as the factory is cheerful. Grey men building prismatic cathedrals.

Substratals
Nougat creatures from the world's nougat core. They whisper recipe dreams into your ears.

Gnonmen
Dietitians.


Table of Candy Words to Add To Your Cave Names and Descriptions

1. Gumdrop
2. Lollipop
3. Gumball
4. Chocolate
5. Jellybean
6. Mint.
7. Caramel
8. Cinnamon
9. Sour Candy
10. Fudge
11. Cherry
12. Lemon
13. Candy-coated
14. Nougat.
15. Toffee
16. Taffy
17. Peppermint
18. Peanut Butter
19. Liquorice
20. Sour

5 comments:

  1. You're biting my style here...

    jk, this is rad as hell.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And they said buying Veins in the Earth was a waste of money.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ok but actually did Arnold K just start a new blog under the name Skerples for unknown reasons?

    Hopefully that compliment comes through. I’ve been really digging the blog recently! Lots of great material, and it seems like Veins really lit you up creatively. Keep it up!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Just need a system for PCs involuntarily gorging on candy when deprived of nutrients. Add fat = encumbrance rules and you're good to go.

    ReplyDelete