Category: Random Encounters
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Random Encounters: Martian-Ravaged London
(Yes, the Random Encounters are back! Once again, I'm going to try to put up one table each week.) The Martians dropped down out of the sky onto southern England in the spring of 1899, and got as far as London before succumbing to Terrestrial germs. They left behind a devastated city, transplanted Martian organisms,…
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Random Encounters: The Ruined Arcology
It seemed like Utopia: a city in a single building — high-tech, secure, and "sustainable." Shopping, entertainment, health clubs, offices, and services all in one gleaming structure. When the giant multinational company built it, the planners envisioned a hundred-story "company town" filled with fifty thousand workers and executives. They'd get coddled and cared for in…
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Random Encounters: At Scintillation
You've wandered into the amazing Holiday Inn Centre-Ville in Montreal, but there's some kind of odd event going on. Over the course of the weekend roll 1d20 every hour during the day to see who or what you encounter. Roll Twice and Combine Plot-Advancing Encounter: Someone or something related to whatever brought you to Montreal in…
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Random Encounters: The Underground World
No, not the familiar roleplaying realm of 10-foot grid squares and angsty Drow. This is the underworld of pulp adventure! In giant caves and artificial tunnels, three factions war for supremacy: the sadistic Deros, masters of ancient super-science; the dreaded Fungus Vampires; and the primordial Cthonians. Explorers may find their way down here through natural…
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Random Encounters: Elizabethan London
The Virgin Queen is on the throne, Drake harries the Spanish at sea, and Walsingham counters their plots at home. Somehow, England is becoming a superpower, and London is at the heart of it all. In the narrow, filthy streets, noblemen rub elbows with footpads, while spies and poets drink together in the taverns. You…
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Random Encounters: Monster Island!
No one's exactly sure where Monster Island lies. Those secretive government men in sunglasses made sure it's omitted from the charts. It may be off Siberia, or in the Indian Ocean. It may even be a peninsula. Nobody knows for sure. What we do know is that it had a thriving native ecosystem of giant…
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Random Encounters: Aboard the Generation Ship
Travel between the stars takes a long time. Your ship has been voyaging for centuries, and centuries remain before it reaches the destination world. Unfortunately, over that kind of timespan, things can break down: ship systems, information storage, civilization . . . The ship is huge, with vast habitat areas containing transplated ecosystems from Earth.…
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Random Encounters: Aboard the Alien Saucer
You managed to slip out of the lab before they could do whatever it was they were planning — and then erase all your memories of the event. Now you're wandering around the alien spaceship in your pajamas, trying to find a way back to Earth. The inside of the saucer is a maze of…
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Random Encounters: Aboard the Mauretania
In 1925 the famous RMS Mauretania is the fastest and most luxurious liner on the Atlantic run, crossing from Liverpool to New York in just six days. That still leaves passengers plenty of time to get into mischief. With two thousand passengers, eight hundred crew, and vast interior spaces for stowaways to hide in, there's…
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WorldCon 76 Report: Day 2
On Friday the 17th I dressed in my frankly magnificent Professional Author costume and plunged into the convention. All the really interesting panels seem to be first thing in the morning, so I went to one on constructing alternate histories, called "If This, Then What?" After that I took a pass through the dealer room…
The Cambias Digression 