Ride the Giants, Development Blog 1

As mentioned here, I am attending the 'Cauldron' Con in Germany and am trying to develop a 'real time' adventure to run there. This is a development blog for that adventure. This is what I have so far. Later blogs will probably go into more specific sections and problems rather than giving an overview.

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Ride the Giants 

Once in every century, a crowd of ancient, stoop-shouldered giants come down from the Star  Mountains and stride down the Sword Peninsula towards the Titans Reach, where the Sea of Storms separates the Lands We Know from the nightmare Monster Continent which lies beyond. 

There, at the very point of the land, the Giants slow a little, perhaps to gaze at the wild ocean before them. Then they walk off the land, into the sea, and  wade across the Titans Reach, the sea covering them even to the neck, the mouth, the eyes. Without slowing, they surge through the waves and, after four hours of wading, they rise once again to the land, walking up the shore and making their way off into the Monster Continent. 

Where they go, or why, none know, nor how they return. Perhaps they endlessly circle the world, for in roughly 100 years, the same giants will return, again coming down from the Star Mountains, and again, slowing, just a little, to gaze at the Sea of Storms before they plunge into it and wade across the Titans Reach. 

They do not speak or communicate in any way. They walk through anything in their path, pushing down fortress walls like a man pushing through weeds, but ignore anything beyond it. 

A century ago observers with telescopes and trained birds noted ruins on the giants backs, strange parasites in their rocky skin, relics and remnants of unknown actions studded across them and what seem to be mysterious temples built atop their bowed heads! 

Now the Giants come again, but this time we are ready! 

I am King Sleet and I have called adventurers from across all realms. I have called you. 

Not to stop the giants, for nothing can, and we fear their wrath if we try, but to board them! 

As the giants slow before the Titans Reach, they are just slow enough that it becomes possible to climb onto their feet. 

Board a giant. Climb it. If you are quick, it should be possible to climb their legs as they wade into the ocean, staying just ahead of the rising water. Investigate. For any Lore or Treasure you return, you will be well paid. 

My small navy waits at sea. They shall try to follow the giants, as well they can. A few experimental Hot Air Balloons await. They are hard to control but they will try to follow and assist. 

You have FOUR HOURS (in real time) until the Giants walk onto the Continent of Monsters. None who go there return! 

They come! Prepare yourselves!  

 

 

The Scene 

As you look across the ranging fields you see spots of colour; other groups of wild adventurers waiting with hooks, grapples, ladders, horses and a crazy range of tool and tricks. 

Far beyond the giants path, the King observes from his pavilion, and lined around him, the people of the land, waiting to see the Giants. Far out to sea, the Kings small navy prepares to attempt to follow the giants and in the air, experimental but hard to control hot air balloons bob about, hoping to observe and perhaps even offer rescue. 

The brass horns are blowing! The ground is shaking! The crowd roars! 

 

The Giants 

The Giants are proportioned like immensely strong but very ancient men with stony skin. They walk bent over like hunchbacks, heads tilted up so they can see. 

From their perspective they are not walking very fast, but their enormous size means that, to us, their feet thunder past. The relative movement of their bodies is very slow, but for someone on the ground as they step over, the gargantuan foot fairly flies past overhead. 

The Giants heads are roughly 2,000 Feet in the air. 

Their skin is pitted and rocky. Where an ancient man would have wrinkles and folds, they have cracks and crevices. Their surface looks rough and fricative. Scrub plants have taken root in places. Some have trees or heather, scrubland and maquis, even small trickling streams, on their backs. 

If a giant was static and still, an energetic hiker could possibly climb one in an hour and a half. 

The giants have something like hair. Perhaps it is vines or growth of some kind mixed with ancient hair as thick as ropes or the branches of trees. The hair hangs down around their heads and faces. On some, hair speckles their forearms and thighs. The Giants have thick hanging crotch and ass hair, which thankfully spares the modesty of those who look upon them, and which might also prove useful to climbers. 

 

The Giants Path 

There are about a dozen Giants. They walk together in no fixed formation. They sometimes stumble and brush up against one another. (It might be possible to leap from one to another). 

Over the Eons the Giants have worn a shallow valley in the ground. Rivers and streams often weave and gather in this valley, so the giants sometimes splash through them on their way.

 

Giant Layout – Labelled

 

 

The Climb 

1. The Foot 

A 50 foot cliff. Very rugged, not sheer, more like a clamber. Race to the ankle. Need to climb up over and around the ankle to the back of the lower leg. There are unlikely to be other life-forms or encounters on the foot. 

Though, as the most accessible place, there might be small encampments of bandits, sigilites, monks or others who have mounted the giant at some point during its great journey. Those who understand the ocean is coming will either be about to jump off or, like you, be willing to risk a rapid ascent to stay above the waters. 

This would be a good place for a goatherds shack actually. They could let their goats rove all over the giant. Maybe they are a monk. Will they come with you as you climb or refuse to believe in their doom until the sea washes over them. 

 

The Ankle Cross 

A traverse around a moving joint. Big possibility of falling off here, it must be accomplished quickly before the giant takes too many steps into the sea. Once on the rear of the calf the terrain becomes more predictable and the angle of climb more advantageous. 

Of course you could try climbing the overhand of the shin, but that is madness.. 

If there are other teams or spoiling factors this would be a good first spot to knock someone off, but does not guarantee their death…. 

 

2. The Lower Leg Climb 

How far is this? About 150 feet. A hard scramble and climb up the back of the calf, a moving surface which shifts from near vertical to overhang in pulses as the giant walks. 

This is probably the most important time-sensitive climb as reaching the knee will keep you safe for most of the journey, only the deepest part of the ocean at the two-hour mark will reach past this 

 

The Knee Decision 

As one reaches the knee another traverse is required, followed by a decision. Should one continue to climb the frontal thigh, aiming for the hips and lower back, or risk it all with a daring leap onto the giants hand? 

The hand swings very close to the knee over the giants slow steps. It is certainly possible to try to jump onto a knuckle as it swings near the kneecap. This might allow you to climb the arm and give you a time advantage, avoiding whatever terrors occupy the back.. You can aim right for the head! It’s a straight climb up past the shoulder, 

 

3. The Upper Leg 

The climb up the front of the thigh may be fatiguing but is not technically difficult and it stands the best change of keeping your party together. As you begin to reach the hip you are truly out of danger from the rising sea level and can afford to take s short break to consider. 

Will you attempt a traverse up and over the hip, aiming for the side of the back? Or will you clamber into the giants dense ass hair? The growth is thick and tangled, making the way seem relatively safe. You could move through the crotch like a tick, work your way through the steaming jungle of the taint and then haul your way up to the base of the spine via the ass hair between the cheeks. 

It sounds horrific, but isn’t just such an investigation the reason you are here? And who knows who, or what you may discover in that Dark Realm? 

 

4. The Back 

At last, the great tilted expanse of the Giants Back. Finally you need no longer fear falling off. However this is a ready environment for combat, either with other explorers or denizens of the Giants body. Its also a good place for a Balloon to try to land, they could tie up here and wait for you, assuming you have already made arrangements. Or Balloons could land rival parties or pirates. 

Will you explore the karst and moorland of the back or head straight for the head and its mysteries? From here you can probably easily make out the tailing naval forces. You may also be exposed to any flying monsters.. 

 

5. The Head 

What is the mysterious structure atop the Giants head and what secrets or treasures does it hold? Can you gain access to the Giants Thoughts (and even PILOT the giant?) 

This would be a good place for a Balloon to try to pick you up from (if possible), but the Head may be haunted by Quetzacotolous or other flying creatures, perhaps mountain lions or even super-monkeys making their home in the dense forest of its hair. 

Getting through that dense hair to the temple or fort on the giants crown will be the hard part. One must risk diving or crawling through the maquis of the scalp, risking attack by whatever lies beneath, or attack from above, the whirl of strange flying parasites which circles above the giants highest point, riding the thermals of its exertions. 

From here you can easily see the head-tops of the other giants. Which other adventurers have already reached their summits? Some may be being picked up by balloons already, others may be rotating vast cannons or lazer guns to blast at you! Or signalling more peaceful intentions, even requests for aid… 

This might be a good place to consider, will you risk leaping to another giant? If you traverse down to the arm it might be possible as they brush against each other… 

Reaching the peak of the head would also give you a good look at the advancing line of the Monster Continent, coming closer with each mighty step…. 

 

6. The Arm Climb 

The arm in general is a tough, vertical climb with less hand holds and less safety. It may however be less populated than the thigh and if one can manage it, it might bring you more directly to the neck, and thence to the head, bypassing the great Karst of the back completely. 

 

The Mysteries of the Hand! 

Do the Giants have great rings upon those stony fingers? If so can you read the cartouche of its symbols as you climb across its golden surface? Or does the giant have something in its hand? How big is that something and might it drop it? Is the giants ‘skin’ around its palm and fingertips perhaps sensitive enough that it may detect the PCs climbing it? Here the swinging force of the giants movements would be the greatest of all. 

 

The Elbow Traverse 

Like the Knee traverse but worse. The angles of the giants arms are more vertical than their legs but its still much easier to climb the upward diagonal of the rear of its upper arm than to risk the overhang of the front of the upper arm. Cover is less, as the rocky ‘skin’ of the giant is less chunky and dense. 

 

Hair or Shoulders? 

The giants armpit hair can provide a brief respite of illusory safety but ultimately you are going to have to get up, out and over.. 

OR – if you are feeling truly radical, and if the giant itself has long enough hair or a long enough beard, you could try another LEAP into the giants beard and/or hair. 

 

Climbing the Hair 

The thick, foresty hair should be climbable by anyone thief-like or elf-like. But the hair is dense, may contain even more bugs and monsters. Huge flakes of dandruff, and is a vertical climb which, no matter the hand holds, will be challenging. Though if you fall there is s good chance of grabbing something on the way down. The beard (if  present) could provide a useful ‘off ramp’ for the last part of the adventure. 

If one wishes to make a quick exit on the return as the giant is rising from the waves, it might be worth abseiling or clambering down its beard and dropping from the tips, hoping to be picked up by following ships before the weight of your treasure drowns you. 

 

The Giants Face 

Only by climbing the hair will you stand a chance of looking deeply into the giants FACE

It can be seen from far off, but what strange sadness does it hold when seem from close up?

What impossible and ancient emotions might it project? 

 

The Great Shoulder Traverse 

The tricky part is getting out of the armpit via the overhang. But once this is done it’s a fatiguing but relatively simple scramble across its shoulders, up to its neck. If you are quick you may well beat anyone climbing from the legs. 

 

The Schedule 

How long to board the foot? 

How long till you have to climb? 

 

THE SPLASH POINT 

The giants enter the sea! This should be a major deal! As the giants foot slashes into the waves, from this point, the water is rising! 

 

Two Hours In – The Mid Point 

The Giants are as deep in the sea as they can be

Now would be the safest time to jump off

And if you are still alive it must be because you have got pretty high

So why wouldn’t PCs jump off at this point?

Maybe the Giants only get up to their hips? So you have two hours to get that high?

Then the rest of the time to get over the back and down?

Or maybe even to try your luck on another giant? 

 

Three Hours In  - race for the scalp 

 

Four Hours In – The Turnaround 

 

Design Questions 

‘Encounters’ while climbing 

Or just things you find or discover there..

These could be potential treasures, life forms, bits of history

Maybe whole ship fragments

In the foot-to knee area (currently the part of the giant where they are climbing quickly to escape the rising sea levels 

 

When might you fall off?

Lets say with climbing limbs

You are in most danger of falling off *when the limb is vertical*

And since the limb is moving in ‘real time’ you can use that as the ‘pulse’ of the game

With some kind of real-time timer

So while climbing, each pulse of gaming would be a scramble to secure yourself, or at least not be doing anything risky, before the limb reaches vertical 

 

What is the Procedure for falling off and getting back on? 

I mean, if you fall from high enough, death is pretty likely

Above a certain height water, even sea-foam, is like concrete

But there should be some kind of possibility of getting back on the giant

Bribing a ship captain with treasures or a balloon pilot 

 

Spoiling factors.. 

A Naval war as ships from a rival king, or even from the Monster Continent attack those following in the lee of the giants. A Trafalgar attacks! You see the ships blasting at each other from above. No idea who will win. Will you risk leaping into the sea, not knowing who may pick you up or how long it may take? Will you try to intervene, perhaps firing from the giants head or even attempting to manipulate a giant into crushing your foes?

The Gravity of Cows

Over many a volume of forgotten Lore, through many an hour of Netflix and Disney dreck and many a meltdown over whatever Games Workshop is doing this week, I have pondered the interlacement of the Paracosm, the Corporation, and Autism.

Lets say instead, - 'autistic traits' or 'light autistic spectrum traits'. Strongly Autistic individuals have a very hard time and don't get to do much. Those of us with autistic traits, of whom there are many more, well we have quite a strong effect on, and relationship with, popular culture.

You might even say that we are the collective gravitational force of Genre-based popular fiction.

Part One - Evolution of the Paracosm

But first the Paracosm, the alternate world! Its primordial precursors; most religions, imagined tales of distant lands, stories of a legendary past, 

Then more recently; the philosophical disquisition given concrete form; what if there was an island where this or that happened? Or a country that was ruled this or that way? Lets imagine it in detail, not just the parts relative to the argument but the whole thing. a republic, a Utopia, a perfect king a most awful tyranny.

Then; what if we just imagined such a place but there was no (direct) political argument to it? Or at least, it did not primarily rest on such an argument. This is not, legend, history, argument or scripture, it is directly stated fancy, a fiction. A creation of the imagination, and called so,

but described as if it were a real place.

Then; when does it become a full Paracosm? When it is shared between multiple people? If so then the earliest I can think of is Glassland, the imaginary world cooked up by the Brontes. 

There must be a deep forgotten history of the Paracosm because it emerges so naturally from the play of children in friendship groups and families.

E.R. Eddison, writer of The Worm Ouroboros had one with his own brother I think, which is where many of his stories were set. The serial scientific and fantastic fictions of the late 19th and early 20th century were Paracosm, but owned by their author, and usually made purely as a vector for stories, the linked stories by various authors in 'Strange Tales' in particular

The vast, many-peopled Paracosm as we understand it I think really took root in the 70s and is closely related to D&D and corporate ownership.

Part Two - Corporate Power

for a Paracosm to be projected across a vast range of people, and for those people to be able to interact in a regular and systemic way with it, and for those systems to be unified and universally communicated, requires industrial production, complex communication and organisation.

A substantially large organisation must do this. Something bigger than just a small business, and for a substantially large organisation to do this there must be a substantially large reward. At minimum enough to pay for the industrial reproduction, communication and organisation. So the beast becomes something that feeds upon itself. The more industrial reproduction and systemisation spread the Paracosm, the more people interact with it, which feeds back into greater profits, which can go into more industrial production.

But more. As we consider the Paracosm though time, (and the most active ones have not been active that long), like land, if you want it to remain coherent, that is; stable in use and nature, then it must have an owner of singular identity, but one much longer lived than any individual person.

Historically the owners of land have been; an aristocratic family, the Church, a religious order, the King etc.

To which we may now add the corporation. The aristocratic houses of our modern day, and the Paracosm a virtual barony, which, like a stretch of agricultural land, can be conserved, developed, sold off, reduced to ruination and treated in many ways as a real place.

Now the Corporation, a 'virtual' aristocratic house, has its own virtual kingdom, a place sustained and made real by the interest and investment in it.

Something happened in the late 60's and 70s. Something to do with the growth of genre, the power of information technology and industrial production, free time for nerds and corporate interlacement with the imagination.

The 60's - Star Trek, Tolkeins major growth. Marvel and DC get a boost here and are re-integrated as Paracosms though they have been running for a while.

The 70s - Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons

The 80's - the Warhammers 

So we have a synthesis; the Paracosm, an imagined barony, and the Corporation, an imagined and potentially immortal individual. The Corporation can own a Paracosm ... forever perhaps, and can theoretically maintain a profit on it forever, and it is that profit that allows the Paracosm to keep developing. The corporation is not an author, it has no single use in mind for the Paracosm

but far from it, desires as many uses as possible across as many systems of production as possible. 

Part Three - Autistic Traits

The interest in a Paracosm is not the same as the interest in an individual book or film but is renewed and remade through books, films, comics, television, animation, games, toys, models, props, bought costumes, embodied in acts of shared social play and through gatherings. All of these methods united by their shared love for and expression of, a place, or a reality, which is not real, yet is still shared and experienced by a great many people.

• DEPTH of interest.
• love of DETAIL.
• Love of OBJECTS.
• SYSTEMISATION of shared communion.
• DISCUSSION and ARGUMENT over details.

And chief and ruler of these passions, desire to be POSESSED BY THE IMAGINED WORLD

None of these are necessarily the product of light autistic traits, but as a whole they synthesise with those traits, and with the pressures and coping strategies they produce, perfectly.

And from hence comes the great and terrible danger and most subtle trap of the Paracosm, the need to MILK THE COWS, for the cows are we.

Four - The Milking Process

Those who are drawn to the Paracosm tend to have autistic traits and of those who are drawn, there is something of a curve.

Cows.

Cows is what we are.

But imagine you owned a field of cows, and some cows you could only milk once a day, or even once a week, and you had to go and round them up to do it.

But there were other cows, a minority, who you could milk twice a day, three times a day, more. And you don't have to go round them up. Instead they come to you, constantly, and in fact they get quite violent if you refuse to milk them.

So originally you start out with a Dairy Farm, as we would understand it, but what you end up with is quite different. It’s a milk factory . Which, yes a Dairy Farm is a milk factory. The difference is in the proportion of attention and resources you give to each part.

By the end, the factory is the main thing and you have forgotten you even had fields. There are fields out there sure, the cows live there, but most of your time is taken up with the very productive cows

and even more with those small minority of hyper-productive cows.

Really, as accounting goes, and as your milking operation improves, becoming more and more efficient, your fields decay, and this is inevitable.

Hence the life-cycle of the Paracosm

Five - The Natural Life-Cycle Of The Paracosm

Now, we don't know a lot of this for certain. The Paracosm that most neatly fit our definition have only been going since the 30s , so even the oldest are less than a century old, nor can we guess how they will respond to copyright laws which usually max out after about 100 years, but within that time period we can see a continual process, a pulse of growth and die-back.

Following the cows.

Always follow the cows.

............

(It’s beyond curious to me that after Marvel and DC essentially bricked themselves into the Comic Book stores, to milk the cows of course, and maybe 40 years later, Disney/Marvel finds itself doing exactly the same thing, bricking itself back up inside Disney Plus.

It costs less outlay, less terrifying risk and the cows come to you.

At the same time Games Workshop attempts its own Streaming Service.

There are echoes here of the Comic Shop but also of Apples 'walled garden', of a lifestyle brand where every widget and thingy integrates with every other whatever, and where you can charge people a LOT, for entrance to that garden because, in Apples case, you are essentially guarding entrance to the globalised middle class.

None of the Paracosm-guardians have managed that yet, and likely nor shall they, (because of the Autistic Traits))

............

I will venture this as a thesis; every corporate-owned Paracosm, (which is to say nearly every major Paracosm), is at any point, somewhere in this long orbit between states.

Its natural arc is to slowly decay into a nightmare milk factory.

Then once that collapses, the milk factory will be razed and the clean open fields of a fresh new farm to be opened (with the ruins still lingering beneath the soil).

Then the whole process will begin again.

At times Paracosm can be pulled back and forth between the poles. Sometimes they can totally collapse and be regenerated, either by being newly acquired or even through 'community action', but they are always somewhere between these two points and defined by the gravitational pull between milking the cows and luring more cows. Those are the tectonic forces of imaginary worlds. The Gravity of Cows.

Designing for the Cauldron

 WHATS GOING ON HERE

I have been invited to a Con in Germany called 'Cauldron' 

https://cauldron.pesa-nexus.de/en/home/

and my mum said I should go so I am going. I will be picked up in Frankfurt and driven to a castle in the middle of Bavaria.... For several days.. I am sure everything will be fine...

Anyway they asked me to run something;

"the general idea is to play mostly FLAILSNAILS compatible sessions, so that a player can play his character across the convention. .... The minimum requirement for any game system during the weekend is to award gold & treasure in the adventure commensurate with the challenges & dangers, i. e. an  "XP for gold"-standard, roughly following B/X, 1e or OD&D tables in value."

So, now I must dig through my mental 'bits box' to put together... something. A four-hour FLAILSNAILS session at least.. 

Lets think about some possible concepts;

1. GIANTS IN THE ACID SEA

A dungeon, or a series of dungeons, set 'on' the bodies of some enormous stony giants who are wading across a sea of acid. (So you can't just jump off).

Though, the problem of what to do if or when someone fals off a giant, and if or how they might get back on, would be tricky.

Mapping would also be tricky; the backs and top of the heads would be relatively easy 

but climbing around the torsos and faces and under the chins would be hard to depict

and YES its just 'Shadow of the Colossus' or whatever was going on with those Zelda dungeons.

If its for a Con, the time factor of the giants wading the acid sea could be a neat limit. Say you leap onto a Giant as they enter the Acid Sea and have until they wade across to complete your mission. We could just say there is a real-time time limit. 

Maybe they are gradually wading so deep that only the tops of their heads are exposed and you need to jump back on the airship before they go completely underwater, or they reach the deep part of the sea precisely half-way through the session, with parts of the giants becoming un-navigable up to that point, with all the surviving creatures on the giants gradually forced up to the crown of their giant heads, then after the middle of the session the 'maps' slowly open up again until they reach the shore, then you can climb down a leg and exit via the heel.

You can jump from giant to giant. They have treasure on them, like earrings or crumbs of gold in their hair. Or you have a mission of some kind to find something.

Probably they have small temples or castles on the tops of each head and you can fire catapults or cannons from crown to crown.

For some reason I was imagining this as a knock-out 'vs' game with rival teams of adventurers clambering over the giants and trying to take each other out. Or maybe a rival tomb, or crown-robbing expedition where you leap onto the giants feet right at the start and everyone is racing to make it to the top, but also you can 'board' or jump onto other giants who are also stumbling along.

2. THE ROPE BRIDGE BROKE

An adventure starts mis-en scene with the party in the middle of a rope bridge, they are in the middle of a fight or adventure, the bridge snaps and two half's of the group are flung to either side of the ravine.

Its entirely random who ends up on which side of the ravine. Though the groups are relatively equal in number.

From that point on its a journey up along the river/ravine. The aim of the party is to get back together (maybe each half of the party has half of a magical McGuffin

There is a group of bad guys, a specific group, with their own identity and rituals. Presumably they also want the McGuffin (both halves). 

Probably the cliffs to both sides have various tombs, statues and complexes worked into the stone, so you can run along the cliff top, or if threatened, or that becomes impassable, climb across the statues and run through the tunnels of the cliffside.

(Maybe there are giants or trolls up there throwing boulders for fun so you don't want to skyline). 

The main challenge in this case is not getting past any particular problem but getting past it *quickly* and without burning a lot of resources.

Probably the enemy group is pursuing you and, since the terrain on each side of the ravine is very lumpy, the PCs on the *opposite* side can see the people pursuing you, and even shoot at them, while you can't see them yourself, and visa-versa. So part of the game might be combining your efforts to aid each other.

The end-game is you need to get to the stone bridge further upstream, but when you get there there is a big monster or something waiting and you will need to work together and hopefully use the stuff you grabbed as you ran through the tombs to fight it.

3. A RACING GAME....

this is kind of blissfully dumb but could stripmine Gaslands for rules, instead of cars, use magic animals. Players can pick toys to choose which animal their PC is riding. All PCs retain their powers and skills. 

Now their job is to win a race. Maybe they are racing for the hand of the Infinite Princess. But its an apocalyptic deathrace 2000 pod race kind of thing, with lots of encounters and strange terrain, treasure and tools hanging around plus problems its really hard to overcome without teaming up with other players, plus orc racer gang on pigs.

Will the PCs work together or try to beat each other to the finish line? Coolness of prizes goes in order of finishing so being ahead of someone might get you more XP or fun magical stuff for the next adventure.

4. LOOT THE SINKING SHIP

A ship is a nice, contained and explicable shape. A sinking ship having four real-time hours before it fully sinks and you need to get away from it to escape being dragged down. Advancing fish-creatures or mer-people. Interesting time-sensitive choices between things i.e. do you release prisoners or search for treasure. 

You might have to fight the crew, or choose between fighting or saving the crew.

5. STOP THE MEMETIC PLAGUE

This is one, really designed specifically to be a nightmare for EVERY OTHER DM AT THE CON. 

I don't know exactly how it works but there is some kind of memetic plague, maybe something that trades power for slow degradation and transmittabillaty. Like Vampirism except faster and more fun, like Fireball Vamparism where someone gets the ability to cast 'Fireball' but its transmissible and wants to keep being cast. (Also its slowly killing you).

Maybe the fire itself is the medium of transmission. 

But if the PCs screw up and the 'infection' gets out of this particular game (like the Zombie survivor who gets bitten but doesn't tell anyone), then it can 'infect' every other game at the CON that those survivors get to, and then pass on, and on, absolutely destroying Germanies FLAILSNAILS scene, if such a think exists.

I suppose a good basis for this would be the 'Fire at the Laboratory' adventure. Maybe a wizards black tower, or worse, an interdimensional TARDIS-like lair, but its burning down. (A fire burning in an interdimensional place might be fascinating). The PCs have to make choices about fighting the fire, looting the place, not getting infected by the Fireball plague, (or 'getting' infected if they are sneaky). 

The Wizards wierd mutant experiments getting out, or maybe you want to let them out, they are just experimental animals after all, its not their fault they are locked in a burning TARDIS. 

The interdimensional nature of the space makes incorporation into a FLAILSNAILS setting pretty simple since PCs could easily be vomited out wherever. It also means creatures and NPCs could 'escape' into other games, or that people or things from other games could show up in this one, having accidentally wandered in, or having been captured or whatever.

6 - One of these OLD POSTS turned into an adventure somehow;

THE WATCHMAKERS WIFE 

WHO CAN STOP THE WORLDS MOST EVIL DOG?

AN ADVENTURE IN XOPHT

THE STOLEN SKIN OF SUN

YOU MAY VOTE OR COMMENT IF YOU WISH