Asteroid 1618

Today I thought I'd tell you about my own personal Worldwide Adventure Writing Month project. Asteroid 1618 is planned as an old style map-and-key type of adventure for S. John Ross's Retro Stupid classic Encounter Critical. Damn, that game is a lot of fun.

The asteroid in question is the last fragment of planet Aldaria, which was blown up a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Most of the survivors of this catastrophe live in two domed cities, as elsewhere the atmosphere is thin and getting thinner. Monsters and mutants roam the land between the domes and lurk in the towns that are falling to ruin for lack of their own atmo-generators. A few brave folk live outside the city, working hard to retain the biosphere of their planetary shard.

I envision the whole thing as one of those toolkit adventures that don't try to tell a story, but equip the playgroup with many different avenues for adventure. My models for this approach are things like The Village of Hommlet and the old Judge's Guild book Verbosh. Those adventures offer themes, a prior history of the region, and a snapshot of the present. Everything else is left up to the iniative of the players and the inventiveness of the GM.

I've got several pages of notes that I've been working on since December of last year. So far I've actually written a little over four pages of complete text and finished one map. I've still got a long way to go to reach the 32 page goal, but if I get around to writing up everything scrawled in my notes I shouldn't be wanting for material. At this point time is a scarcer resource than crazy stupid ideas.