A city called NO

Okay, so we've started a game set in the American southwest. We agreed that the Savvyhead gets by from scavenging in a city called NO (also: "fuck no!" and "hell no!"). It's a huge pre-catastrophe metropolis, with furnished homes and well-stocked stores. It's also squeaky-clean and eerily quiet. No dograts, no concrete-eaters, no megabugs (or even normal bugs, for that matter). Even when the bromide winds are blowing, you can't smell anything foul on the streets of NO.

Problem is, scavenger paradise as it is, nobody in their right mind will enter NO (hence the name); most would rather starve. Except for the Savvyhead, and maybe few other brave individuals.

Now I'm trying to figure out for myself - what's wrong with NO? How can I make some neat countdowns and custom moves to complement the creepiness and danger I want associated with this place?

Some alien is wondering where they lost their key-chain of doom.  Now you know.

But is it a psychic thing that makes people go mad?  Or does it issue a cloud of nanotech bugs that "clean" things up?

Some alien is wondering where they lost their key-chain of doom.  Now you know.

But is it a psychic thing that makes people go mad?  Or does it issue a cloud of nanotech bugs that "clean" things up?

First post, yay.

I like the notion of nanobots because they are cool, relatively tangible sci-fi (I can imagine an apocalypse in the near future, where nanobots have been fully developed) and still, most players won't really have an idea about the limitations of nano technology.

In addition, they'd go well with the concept of fuckery an pushing players where they're not in control. You could consider if they just "clean up" microbes, bacteria, virii, or are harmful to larger organisms as well. Maybe they effectively prevent any process of decay in NO, leaving corpses to dry out and mumify. Maybe they start slowly, attacking your eyes, respiration system and upper dermal layer first.

You could describe how the player's characters get itchy after a while in NO, how their eyes and lungs burn, their noses become dry and irritated ... and then somebody starts coughing up blood (maybe after some physical exertion) as their alveoli start to burst. I guess you could build a countdown based on that.

Also: Consider if these nanobots got released simply due to apocalypse-whatever or on purpose. And by whom. And why.

Maybe it's too early to tell what secret NO may hold.

As a GM (for other systems), I usually keep several possibilities open and only decide on one once the players' actions force me to.  It keeps both sides negotiating/guessing about the threat.

You could do the Front as a series of escalating symptoms, with the cause being revealed only once the clock runs out.

I'm in love with the man-eating nanobots. I don't think I want there to be anything else in NO.

One session later, the nanobots are already proving to be mega-awesome.

Session started with Joshua the Savvyhead going into NO (which, we established, was actually Albuquerque) to scavenge firearms from a hunting shop. He starts working the locks when he notices a guy called Hugo, wiggling on the floor, vomiting blood, eyes all wide. Joshua kicks him around a little, and the guy dies. He opens his brain, and gets a vision of Hugo entering the city, finding his way into the mall, and scratching himself as he fiddles with the locks of a grocery store. Hours later, he's on the floor, dying. That's when the vision ends and Joshua starts to feel that annoying itch he gets every time he stays at NO for over an hour. He freaks out and leaves.

At the same time, a local merchant called Lala gets an audience with BBQ the hardholder, asking him to look at what happened to her brother Hugo, who took off a few days ago, promising he'll come back a wealthy man. BBQ's player uses OOC knowledge and says, "yeah, this guy, I know for a fact that he was found in NO". "Who told you that", she asks. "Oh, you know, that creepy Savvyhead fellow". So she freaks out. Obviously, she says, that freak killed her brother and left him somewhere in the wasteland, and for some reason the hardholder buys his bullshit story and lets him walk after a mock trial.

Later in the session, Lala barges into Joshua's workspace at the abandoned gas station outside of town, 9mm in hand, and pumps him full of lead. He gets a shot at her weapon hand and makes her leave when his harm clock is at 11:00, and not before she promises to be back with her brothers, and make him pay for what he did.

His driver friend Cobra comes to check on him later to find his friend all pierced and dying. The session ended with Cobra checking Joshua at a local doctor.

The players think that Lala character is crazy but sympathetic, so they want to be on her good side. Cobra's player plans on taking her to NO next session, to see her brother's body for herself and call off her vendetta against Joshua. Surely, when she inspects the body, she'll be able to see that the guy was just the victim of a strange, but natural disease.


Did I mention what a cool idea the bio-degrading nanobots are?

Nano-bots are well cool! I ran a game at Conception here in the UK last month where the psychic maelstrom was basically nano-bots, the game revolved around the PC's trying to get control of devices that could control the bots. In the end game 3 of the PC's ended up getting swarmed and eaten to various degrees, with the Hocus deciding to open is brain to the maelstrom whilst this was going on. He didn't do very well on his roll and got eaten.