Variations on the Johnson Meet

A mysterious figure gathers the players and hires them to do a job. Present since time immemorial, but formalized in Shadowrun, where corporations have anonymous people by the assumed name of Johnson give teams their jobs, negotiate payout, and deflect unwanted questions about who they're really working for. There have always been rich people who need deniable assets to do their dirty work, and the middlemen who intercede on their behalf - no questions asked, no questions answered. The players always have too little information, too good of a reward to pass up, and there's always a 50% chance that the Johnson is actually leading them into a trap.

A table of variations on thereof follow.

1. The Johnson meet, in which a mysterious figure (the Johnson) gathers the players and hires them to do a job.

2. The converse Johnson meet, where the players have gathered to give the Johnson a job.

3. The inverse Johnson meet, where the the players are the job: the Johnson shows up to meet the players, but they're just trying to distract the players until their hired guns can jump them.

4. The contrapositive Johnson meet, where the players are off doing a job that benefits the Johnson, but the Johnson hasn't hired them to do it. Johnson may contact them afterwards, as their interests are momentarily aligned.

5. The inverse converse Johnson meet, where both the players and the Johnson show up at the meeting intending to offer the other a job.

6. The converse inverse Johnson meet, where the players gather to kill a Johnson at a meeting under the pretense that the party is there to receive a job from them.

7. The converse contrapositive Johnson meet, where the Johnson shows up in the middle of the party doing a job, and offers payment for the party to stop doing it.

8. The inverse contrapositive Johnson meet, where the party shows up to meet with the Johnson, but after being offered the job the party then reveals that they did it an hour before the meeting and would like to be paid for it please.

9. The contrapositive converse Johnson meet, where the players have gathered to tell the Johnson that they've figured out that they're being sent into a trap and the job is off.

10. The contrapositive inverse Johnson meet, where the players and the Johnson get into a shootout as paranoid tensions that each is trying to betray the other boil over.

11. The contrapositive converse inverse Johnson meet, where the players gather to kill the Johnson at a meeting, but the Johnson offers the players a new job that's lucrative enough for the players to hold off on killing them.

12. The converse inverse contrapositive Johnson meet, where the Johnson shows up while they party's on a job, and tells the party they're very impressed with their work and would like to pay them for this job at a future meeting, presuming that it goes well... and perhaps if they accomplish a few side objectives along the way.

13. The contrapositive inverse converse Johnson meet, where several different Johnsons have all scheduled simultaneous meetings with the players in the same room, to each give the players a different, mutually exclusive job. None of the Johnsons know about the others, and assume the others are part of the party as well.

14. The converse contrapositive inverse Johnson meet, where the players and the Johnson realize they're both being played and team up to take on an even bigger threat that tried to manipulate them both into killing each other.

15. The inverse contrapositive converse Johnson meet, where the Johnson tells the players everything about the job, including that the party is going to be betrayed, in the hopes that the party uses this information to accomplish the Johnson's aims instead of the Johnson's employer's goals.

16. The inverse converse contrapositive Johnson meet, where the party runs into the Johnson in the middle of a job, and pays Johnson to finish the job in their stead while the party heads out to collect the reward they were initially promised.

Radical Catgirl Anarchist

 Sorry to anyone (Dan) who I may or may not have cribbed this idea wholesale off of in a fit of hyperfocus in the OSR discord. Anyway, it's a slow month for posts on my end (when isn't it these days), so have something small and quick and memey to tide you over until I get off my ass and post another giant chunk of a system.

RADICAL CATGIRL ANARCHIST

by avvart

Radical Catgirl Anarchist 1: Catgirl Can Do Little a Arson (As a Treat), Like Nyaa.... 

Radical Catgirl Anarchist 2: Banned, Kitty Got Claws 

Radical Catgirl Anarchist 3: Polycule, The Discourse, +1 use of Banned 

Radical Catgirl Anarchist 4: One (Cat)Woman Army, Virulent Discourse, +2 uses of Banned

Hit Die: d9 (this is the next best thing to having nine lives, make it count)
Starting Equipment: Anarchist flag, trans flag, flag of a defunct soviet republic, burner phone, cat ear headphones, overflowing gas can, lighter, pamphlets
Starting Skills: 1. Computer Science (or nearest setting equivalent), 2. History, 3. Lockpicking, 4. Seduction, 5. Thievery, 6. Oratory

Catgirl Can Do Little a Arson (As a Treat): You always have the supplies on you to do arson, and it doesn't count towards your inventory slots. This makes you extra-flammable (any magic effect or max-damage attack will light the accelerant you're carrying), and anyone looking for a reason to arrest you will find "carrying a lighter and a gas can" a very compelling reason to do so. You can't not have arson supplies on you.

Like, Nyaa...: By acting cutesy, you can hold someone's attention and distract them from literally anything they're doing, even fighting you. The distraction ends and they realize it's actually really annoying as soon as you do anything else, like paying attention to another person, or scratching them bad enough to deal damage. Affects templates^2 people at once.

Banned: Once, at any point, you can declare that you've been banned from a particular political party, establishment, polycule, cult, university, etc. When you do, learn a skill or ability related to that group. They've blacklisted you, hate your guts, and will mess you up if you ever show your face around there again (and might send people to do so anyway). 

Kitty Got Claws: Turns out the catgirl thing is more than just an aesthetic! Your unarmed attacks deal d6 slashing damage, and you have the proportionate hearing (real cat ears! what a world) and mobility of a cat (jumping, climbing, kneading, having a tail, sunning yourself in the most inconvenient locations, etc.)

Polycule: At any point, you can declare that someone in your polycule has the very specific skill your party needs and reach out to them for help. The GM makes a reaction roll to see if that person is actually still in your polycule or if it's all collapsed since you've last checked in, and how they take you reaching out for aid. They don't tell you what result you got until the person arrives.

Polycule Reactions

12: Surprise party! Not only do they show up, but d4 of their metamours show up too - with d4 total class levels (yes, possibly in Radical Catgirl Anarchist), and d4 eighths of good weed.

10-11: They were just on their way to see you! The partner or metamour in question shows up and joins the party until you don't need their skills anymore (or until they realize they aren't gonna get lucky this time).

7-9: It's a date! They arrive in d6 (exploding)*10 minutes, because public transit is just Like That sometimes.

5-6: They're on their way (as It's a Date), but they have some drama to share. They'll do you this favor this once, but then they're breaking up with you and/or whoever you're both dating.

3-4: Explain yourself! They show up in d6*10 minutes, and are immediately hostile. Hurting them (physically, and probably emotionally too) will get you on bad terms with your other partners if you don't have a chance to spin the story first*.

2: Your polycule has completely imploded. Not only does the person you're reaching out to hate your guts and want revenge for slights both real and imagined, but you can't use this ability again until you return to town and queer dance nights at the local tavern.

The Discourse: Your truly dizzying knowledge of radical theory lets you whip up any political group into a frenzy with a quick speech. Roll a d6 when you try; on a 5 or 6, they'll follow one order you give them (to the letter and their own interpretation of your arguments). On a 3 or 4, they fall into a frenzy against each other, quickly forgetting that you're even there to stir the pot. On a 1 or 2, they realize your ethos is diametrically opposed to theirs and attack you! Damn anarchists! They ruined anarchy!

Virulent Discourse: Discourse now gets the group to follow you on a 4, 5, or 6, causes them to attack each other over minor doctrinal differences on a 2 or 3, and makes you their next target on a 1. You can initiate discourse with a single sentence, rather than multiple paragraphs; or you can do it by getting them all to read your ((cat)wo)manifesto.

One (Cat)Woman Army: You're always prepared and spectacularly lethal. Gain an AK-47 with practically limitless ammunition. Of course, it never breaks, but it's also subject to the same stipulation as CCDLaA(AaT) - you can't leave it behind or hide it; it's always slung over your shoulder, practically begging to be used.

AK-47 Stats: 2d4 damage, 4s explode (roll another d4 and add that damage, explosions can cascade). You may split the dice between up to 2 different targets. Needs to be reloaded after any of its dice roll a 1 or explode. Reloading takes an attack action. Never jams.

*Needless to say, the RCA is in an incredibly dysfunctional polycule. There's honest, open, and healthy ways to do polyamory - and very few of them involve being an adventurer who's incommunicado for weeks at a time fighting monsters while everyone else is chilling back in town.

Meta Prompt Generator

I've been slowly working my way out of a creative rut brought on by the general state of the world and my life in 2020. Something I've toyed with is just posting short things more often, instead of scope-creeping my way into 2000-word opuses that are both a: incredibly cool and b: take about a month to percolate and cut into something postable.

Here's a d100 list of tags to mix, match, and recombine into inspiration for your (or my) next blog post! Hit the button. Write that post. I double-dog-dare you. It doesn't have to be good, or long, or more than like (2d4*100) words. A good table can go a long way.

With whatever you roll, try to make something conceptually dense and useful immediately at the table. Practical utility > highminded theory, especially when I haven't actually run a game in a year and likely won't until it's safe to have 4-5 people in close quarters indoors again.

by Guangyuan Yu

d100 Post Tags
1. advice
2. alchemy
3. alignment
4. an adventure
5. art
6. b/x
7. campaign prompts
8. character creation
9. cities
10. class
11. clothing
12. combat
13. concise
14. crafting
15. crime
16. cultures
17. currency
18. d20 tables
19. death
20. deep time
21. dice
22. divinity
23. downtime
24. dragons
25. dungeons
26. dwarves
27. elements
28. elves
29. endings
30. environments
31. equipment
32. exploration
33. factions
34. folk
35. food
36. fountains
37. giants
38. glog
39. healing
40. hexcrawling
41. history
42. horror
43. humans
44. items
45. just write a short dungeon and post it
46. language
47. law
48. leveling up
49. light
50. machines
51. maps
52. math
53. meat
54. mechs
55. meta
56. metal
57. modern
58. monsters
59. mutations
60. narrative
61. nature
62. npcs
63. one page
64. orcs
65. outsiders
66. patronage
67. peasants
68. plague
69. plot hooks
70. pointcrawls
71. prophecies
72. prosthetics
73. psionics
74. random encounters
75. religion
76. royalty
77. sample characters
78. schools
79. sci-fi
80. ships
81. shops
82. skills
83. social
84. space
85. spells
86. stress
87. theory
88. time
89. tools
90. traps
91. treasure
92. trivia
93. undead
94. vehicles
95. villages
96. war
97. weather
98. weird shit
99. wilderness
100. worldbuilding