For use with Troika!
Written by Luke Gearing
Layout and Art by Chaoclypse (Brandon Yu)
From https://lukegearing.blot.im/weird-war
Images used for photobashing from Unsplash
The collective anguish, dreams and souls of the continent
are rendered manifest in the Psychogeography,
the sur-reality layered below the earth,
rising up as crystallisations of mind-stuff,
shaped by the soldiers and their
long, long threads back home
to the will of leaders.
As the bombs excavate the land, the separation between the material
and the Psychogeography becomes one of opinion.
You have a history.
Do you remember before the war
or has it colonised your dreams?
History
Roll d66 — one die for the tens digit, and one die for the ones digit.
This is your history.
11. First Wave Survivor
You’ve been here since the start. You saw the streams of horses dying and their
souls swallowed by the sky as their riders took refuge amongst the ribs and
entrails. You shot the wounded, animal or man.
Skills
4 Weapon of your choice
2 Weapon of your choice
2 Forage
2 Forgetting
Possessions
2 Weapons of your choice, loaded
3 Set of ammunition for above weapons
A book of forgotten memories
Half a pack of cigarettes
1d6 Injury
1 Lungs pulled out by the gas - always external, hanging loose and raw.
Carry a lotion to clean them.
2 Eyes rotten. They look like spoiled eggs. Need goggles to maintain
pressure to stop them bursting.
3 Shrapnel-Termite infestation. Double Provision requirements.
4 You and your gun are one, fingers molten into draped flesh-spaghetti,
charred bone fused to wood and steel.
5 Your heart is a live grenade. A hard fall could loose the pin.
6 Your scars extend out from you as a Psychogeography miasma, tendrils
of Hurt squirming from every pore.
12. Downed Pilot
You were dragged screaming from your crashed vehicle. The world makes no
sense when seen with the naked eye. You can still hear them, crying out for you
in no-mans land.
Skills
4 Pilot
2 Revolver
2 Mechanics
1 Survival
1 Old Songs
Possessions
Service Revolver, loaded
6 Bullets for Revolver
Flight Jacket (Light armour)
A Medal or A photo from home
Can of engine oil
Special
You always know the location and status of your vehicle.
13. Psychosphere Storm-trooper
As we plunge deeper in psychogeographical warfare, new kinds of soldiers are
needed - those who can storm and take fortresses of the mind, pamphlets in one
hand and a gun in the other.
Skills
3 Psychology
2 Revolver
2 Rhetoric
1 Psychogeographical Mapping & Navigation
1 Hiding
Possessions
2 Weapons of your choice, loaded
3 Set of ammunition for above weapons
A book of forgotten memories
Half a pack of cigarettes
14. Despised Sniper
If you are caught, you won’t die for weeks.
Skills
5 Rifle
3 Hiding
2 Run
Possessions
Rifle, loaded
15 Bullets for Rifle
Sniper’s Scope
3d6 notches on Rifle or Spotting Assistant NPC
Special
Spotting Assistant gives +2 to all attacks with Rifle. If they die, all Luck is lost
permanently.
15 Colonised Trooper
Forcibly shipped in from afar to an impossible battlefield with nothing to do
with you.
Roll again for what role they have given you, and the decide how you subvert it.
16. Horse Breather
In the early days there were horses. Glittering hordes of cavalry.
There are no horses in the trenches. Machines bite you for remembering the old
ways of war.
Skills
3 Equine Maintenance
3 First Aid
2 Grave-Digging
2 Longing
Possessions
Toy horse
Service Revolver, loaded
6 Bullets for Revolver
Trench-shovel
Special
Test your Luck whenever attempting to use machines powered by fuel or
electricity. On a failure, they deal damage as a Beast, varying by size.
21. Gaseous Disintegrator
Swallowed by gas, becoming-gas, birthed from gas in a form more lethal - an
advancement in Soldiers!
When you relax, your poisonous form could fill a room.
You are vampiric - stealing the breath of men at least once a week or else falling
away to nothing.
Skills
3 Float
3 Drift
2 Pleading
2 Apologising
Possessions
Diving Suit or Knighthood (to be redeemed post-war)
Special
Unless you focus, you fill a room with your poisonous fumes. Those in the room
breathing you in take 1d6 Stamina damage a round. Conventional weapons leave
you unharmed.
Roll twice below for further detail:
1d6 Gaseous Weakness
1 Flammable — Test your Luck if you contact naked flame. On failure, you
explode, dealing damage equal to your Stamina to everyone within
100ft.
2 Incredibly light — Test your Luck if there is a strong breeze - on failure,
take damage as Maul.
3 Herbicidal — all plants die in your presence.
4 Insidious — you are nearly entirely transparent. Your presence
compromises gas-masks if they are exposed for more than 4 hours.
5 Sulphurous — you absolutely reek. You are always smelt coming.
6 Staining — everything you touch is stained with an awful ochre shade.
22. Cinder-Man 23. Disgraced Officer
Fire ruptures the spaces between. You’ve got the gun, the boots, the
Fire looms larger in the sword. They took away your bullets so
psychogeography but equally you couldn’t kill yourself after … the
consumes the material. You made a incident. That’s all we’ll say about
deal with fire, let a little bit in. that, hm?
Fire-hardened.
Skills
Skills
3 Etiquette
3 Club-fighting 1 Sword Fighting
2 Navigation 1 Pistol Fighting
2 Fire-fighting
2 Gambling Possessions
Possessions Revolver, unloaded
Boots
Internal flame Officer’s Sword
Trench-club Letter of Commission
Bone Dice Shame
Special
Fire only deals 1 point of damage to
you, no matter the situation. For
every provision you eat, you must eat
another half for the little-fire inside.
24. Photographer
Like a butterfly pinned to the cork-board, a moment stuck in amber, all
motion frozen. The camera makes and kills worlds.
Does that make you God?
Skills
4 Photography
3 Hiding
2 Run
1 Chemistry
Possessions
Camera
Portable Photo Development Lab
25. Steel-Eyed Machine-gunner
To Load the Gun - (a) Pass the tag end of the belt through the feed
block from the right side; (b) with the right hand pull the crank
handle on the roller; (c) with the left hand pull the belt through the
left front as far as it will go; (d) let go the crank handle. The first
cartridge will then be gripped by the extractor. Repeat the above
and, when this has been done, the first cartridge will be in the
chamber, and another gripped by the upper part of the extractor.
The gun is then ready for firing.
Skills
4 Machine-Gun
4 Drinking
Possessions
Machine-Gun, loaded
200 Machine-Gun Rounds
Loading Assistant NPC
26. Medic / Medic
How many operations have you slept through, hands
moving under the control of another?
Skills
5 Medicine
2 Bedside Manner
1 Narcotics
Possessions
Medical Bag
Double-ration of Morphine
Special
Roll up a separate Skill and Luck value.
While one of you sleeps, the other is busy, busy, busy.
31. Forgotten Chaplain 33. Beached Sailor
You’ve got a stack of Bibles and no Some say the Sea doesn’t exist
congregation. The burgeoning anymore, drained away by a hole in
psychosphere and nihilism of the the psychogeography.
troops are your enemy. If only you
could find God yourself. You know the answer.
Skills Skills
4 Theology 2 Watercraft
3 Oratory 2 Survival
2 Hospice 2 Revolver
1 Scepticism 2 Unarmed Fighting
Possessions Possessions
4d6 Bibles
Service Revolver, loaded
Life-jacket
32. Artillerist Oar
Loader or spotter, engineer or officer
— all are suborned to the gun. Faces 34. Railway Man
blur as shells fly. You used to be one,
but now the other. No matter, the
gun needs feeding. They bid you construct lines.
Enough lines make a net.
Skills
You could’ve held in the ground and
3 Loading Artillery stopped the psychogeography rising
3 Aiming Artillery out of the earth - instead, you’ve been
3 Maintaining Artillery posted to the front.
Possessions Skills
Engineers Tools 3 Strength
Ranging Tables 2 Navigation
Cargo Hooks 2 Hammer Fighting
2 Explosives
Possessions
Maul
1d6 sticks of Dynamite
35. Adapted Mole-man
You don’t remember houses. You only remember the dark, the safety as the surface is
bathed in fire and steel.
Skills
3 Digging
3 Dark Navigation
2 Hiding
2 Talking to the Dark
Possessions
Trench shovel
Bucket of water or bucket of notable stones
Mining Helmet
36. Barbed-Wire 42. Radio Blotter
Whisperer
A psychic scream on the radio-waves,
You learnt the language of barbed- blotting out all communication,
wire in the psychogeography, split off meaning, sense.
from your unit.
The psychogeography oscillates with
A kind word, a gentle stroke and voila your ceaseless noise.
— the coils part for you, thrumming
delightedly. Skills
Skills 3 Rifle
3 Poetry
2 Radio Operation
5 Barbed-wire Whispering
3 Rifle
2 Scavenging Possessions
Possessions Rifle, loaded
10 Bullets for Rifle
Chapbook of poetry
Rifle, loaded
10 Bullets for Rifle
Special
41. Machine Mortician Radio equipment cannot be used
within 500ft of you.
Place your hand upon this torn hull
and listen to it’s swan-song.
Skills
4 Mechanics
3 Eulogising
1 Welding Torch-Fighting
Possessions
Welding Torch
Mechanical Toolkit
43. Ghost 44. Pretender
You weren’t killed. Even in times like these, there are rules
on who can be drafted. You broke one,
Somewhere, your body is waiting, the and finally have arrived at the front.
very soul blown out by the bombs.
Skills
You hope it is looking after itself.
3 Disguise
Skills 2 Rifle
2 Throwing Voice
3 Rifle 1 Hide
2 Navigation 1 Run
2 Hide-and-Seek
Possessions
Possessions
Rifle, loaded
None 12 Bullets for Rifle
Disguise Kit
Special
Being not quite dead, your relationship 45. Lying Interpreter
with the physical realm is complicated.
You told them you were multilingual. A
Any time you would take damage, you link between them and some nebulous
must Test your Luck. On success, no Other.
damage is dealt. On failure, damage is
dealt normally. For a while, you kept up the facade.
Skills
4 Confidence
3 Scam
2 Run
1 Distraction
Possessions
Service Revolver, loaded
6 Bullets for Revolver
1d6 Phrasebooks for various languages
46. Academy Observer 52 Conscientious Objector
The Academy is delighted at the
blossoming of war — storied A body willing to fight or not can still
institutions clamour to watch and take a bullet — and so you were
you, meagre scholar, get to be their cudgelled and off to the front.
eyes and fingers.
Skills
Skills
3 Philosophy
2 Note-taking 3 Protesting
2 Citations 3 Rhetoric
2 Reading 1 of your choice
2 Critiquing
2 Writing Possessions
Possessions None
Spyglass
Spectacles
Reams of Paper
Pencils
Papers
Book of First-Class Stamps
51. Blacklisted Reporter
You wanted truth. They will drown
you in it.
Skills
3 Bribery
3 Research
2 Run
2 Lock picking
Possessions
1d6 full notepads
2d6 empty notepads
1d6 pencils
53 Lazarus Man
You died. You are no longer dead — techniques only dreamed of are all-too
possible in this brave new world.
Skills
3 Second Sight
2 Metaphysics
2 Rifle
Possessions
Rifle, loaded
12 Bullets for Rifle
Lazarus Engine
Special
When you would die, Test your Luck — on success,
the Lazarus Engine fires true and you recover on 1 Stamina
the next day. If the Lazarus Engine is ever removed from
your chest, you die, ignoring the prior.
54. Submariner 56. Trench-Knight
Whilst the land is ravaged by the In the drowning-mud and the
surface flowerings of the choking-fumes of the trenches
psychosphere, you have seen the strides one figure unbroken. Some
depths. Abstract symbols, older than ancient memory of a green and
thought, dancing in the dark. You pleasant land, an oath made and a
watched them swarm around the knighthood earned. Full-plate and a
hulls of sinking ships, burning gas-mask. A trench-club and a
impossibly underwater, screams deathwish.
distorted into song.
Skills
Skills
4 Club Fighting
4 Listening 3 Chivalry
2 Mechanics 2 Practical Compromise
2 Device Operation 1 Oaths
2 Revolver
Possessions
Possessions
Ancient Plate Armour (Heavy)
Snub-nosed Service Revolver, loaded Trench-Club
10 Bullets for Service Revolver Gas-mask
Life-jacket Token of Favour
55. Shell-Observer
Unlike the preening scholar, you are a
person of action. You tabulate the
spreadsheets of war, adjusting the
ranging tables, crunching the kill-
ratios. You haven’t seen a bombsite in
months.
Skills
5 Calculation
5 Dispassion
Possessions
Book of Multiplication Tables
Book of Ranging Tables, heavily
annotated
Pencils
Abacus
61. Bureaucrat-Seer 62. Artillery Witch
Within the swirling miasma of Rain is a given. Bombs can be
numbers, schedules and bureaucracy forecasted.
is chaos. Where there is chaos, some
can divine prophecy. Skills
You may not work in tea-leaves, but
you can tell fortunes. 3 Aerial Observation
3 Fortification
Skills 3 Running
1 Yelling
3 Paper-Pushing
3 Forming Filling Possessions
2 Hiding
1 Entrepreneurship Service Revolver, loaded
11 Bullets for Revolver
Possessions Cut-down Trench boots
Rifle, loaded Special
12 Bullets for Rifle
3 Packets of Cigarettes You always know when bombs are
2 Bars of Chocolate about to fall - with 1d6 minutes
warning.
Special
63 Oil-Skimmer
You roll all dice pertaining to lengths
of Deployment and Downtime. These
are your prophecies. As machines die they exhale, pissing
oil and lubricant. You know how to
coax every last drop — and you know
what the engineers will do to get their
hands on it.
Skills
4 Collection
2 Strength
2 Fluid Dynamics
1 Mechanics
Possessions
2d6 Containers for Liquids, empty
1d6 Containers of Oil
1d6 Packs of Matches
64. Displaced Noble 66. Batman
You were meant to be in the General If you could find the officer you are
Staff, or perhaps one of the more meant to be batting for, that would
tasteful diplomatic missions. Some of be splendid.
these ruffians are positively ghastly
— working men too, no doubt. Skills
Skills 2 Boot-licking
2 Butlering
5 Etiquette 2 Compliments
4 Foppery 2 Cooking
1 Ignorance 2 Wine-Pairing
Possessions Possessions
Whatever you want — you’re rich! Boot Polish
12 Bullets, Revolver
65. Quartermaster’s Boy Sword-Cane
Wine
Correspondence from the Family
You may not be the most powerful
man behind the lines, but you do
shine his boots.
Skills
3 Theft
3 Backhanders
2 Errands
2 Skulking
Possessions
Boot Polish
Wicked Knife
1d6 Packs of Cigarettes
1d6 Bars of Chocolates
2d6 Provisions
Missions
Game Structure
Play begins Behind the Lines — the ‘safe area’ behind the trenches, and rarely
reached by bombs and artillery. It is a foreign land to you.
Rest periods last 1d6 days. During this time, the characters are free to do as they
please - unless they are caught by the Military Police, of course.
At the end of this period, the characters are summoned for a Mission. There is a
2-in-6 chance they receive 1d6 Provisions each, and a further 2-in-6 chance of 2d6
appropriate Bullets each. Any shortfall is up to them to make up.
Once the mission is given and supplies are collected, they will be given transport
to the Mission Area. Failure or success may result in medals but little else
of consequence.
Missions either take place Behind the Lines or at the Front.
Mission Generation
Roll 1d6. On a 1-3, the mission is Behind the Lines. On a 4+, you are being sent to
The Front.
The Psychogeography haunts both.
Behind the Lines
The safety of trenches and occupied manors, barely haunted these days. The
liberated villages and towns, filled with locals inured to grief, soldiers
and bombs.
Trucks and bicycles.
Railways and guns.
1d6 Objective
1 Gather 10d6 Provisions
2 Rescue a Friendly Group from Location or Local Group or
Psychogeographical Feature
3-4 Investigate a Location, Local Group or Psychogeographical Feature
5 Infiltrate a Local Group, based in Location
6 Recruit 2d6 ‘Volunteers’
1d6 Friendly Group
1 Royal Propaganda Core
2 Her Majesties Foreign Intelligence Service
3 High Command Catering and Hospitality Core
4 Ordinance Psychogeographical Survey, Minor Talents Division
5 Volunteer Battalion Under 16s
6 London Philharmonic Orchestra
Locations Behind the Lines
d6 1 2 3 4 5 6
Forgetting Redeployed Inexplicable Ghost- Smuggler Finishing
1 Club Factory shipwreck trenches Cache School
Bombed Out Camouflaged Unharmed Smuggler Locked
2 Book-pile
Druid Grove Officers Club Church Route Orphanage
School for
Bullet-holed Debutantes Ancient Brothel of Burial-
3 Race-track
Theatre and Female Fortification Poets Mounds
Companions
Immobilised Looted Not-So-
convoy-
4 Town cinders Onion Farm Refugee Camp Aristocratic Ancient
turned- Tombs Guillotine
settlement
Empty
Dairy-turned- Looted Crashed Aristocratic
5 Airfield Deserter
abattoir Orchard Enemy Plane Household
Camp
Double- Hidden Billeted
Druggists Deserter
6 stacked Vineyard Resistance Aristocratic
Office Camp
Graveyard Cache Household
Local Groups
Some are friendly.
Most are not. They appreciate liberation, but resent you for being the liberators.
d6 1 2 3 4 5 6
Local Ruling Wandering
Piano- Luxury
1 Oilmouth Cult Aristocratic Penitent Band Journalists
Farmers Smugglers Family
Ink-thief Food Camp Literature
2 Plane Tamers Nationalists
Band Smugglers Followers Society
Belligerent Clothes Rogue Vintner Bullet-
3 Art Brawlers Resistance Dog Collectors
Smugglers and Crew Chewers
Band
Defeated
Narrators Sleep Walking Barefoot
4 Guild Chapter Word Hunters Smugglers General and Dreamers Infantry
Entourage
Psychogeogra Book Contents of Shadow
5 Nunnery Urchin Gang
phic Explorers Smugglers Asylum Aristocracy
Left-behind Flour-Baron’s
6 Monastery Enemy Hired Killers Horse Thieves Papal Agents
Men
Soldiers
Psychogeographical Features
Unless deliberately revisited, these should be replaced after use.
1d6 Features
1 A snaking-snake legion slithers amongst the hills, in Southern Steel and
iron and marked with Eagles and a crushing grip. A wake of fire follows,
searing beyond this War.
2 The Old Palace, all crystal stained red, red, red, the soil all liberated
heads singing the old songs. Perhaps the Royal Family are in, heads
crowned and lap-borne.
3 A crawling plane, core burnt out, dead pilots pulled behind on ejector
umbilicals. Smoke filled with the lethal bullets.
4 A maw in the earth filled with the soft soil of human history — barely a
snack. The maw has forests for hair, dolmens for teeth. Kings once knew
it’s name.
5 An impossible beach, wooden vessels hungry for soldiers. Smoke from a
not-so distant shore. Home to you, perhaps.
6 A gloaming descending from above and bleeding out of the land. The
wretched history of the continent reaching towards unimagined
futures, echoes of the now forever.
Encounters
To be checked once per reasonable unit of time. Roll d66 and consult the table
below.
All may be spies - on a d66 roll of 11, they are working for the Enemy. They may be
dangerous agents, view themselves as patriots, mercenaries or just simply hate
you.
d66 Encounter
11 2d6 Civilian Refugees, looking for lost animals/children/wealth.
12 1d6 Friendly Soldiers, on assignment/dodging an assignment/off-duty.
13 1d6 Local Civilians, seemingly very interested in you and your mission.
14 1d6 Local Civilians, interested in you but trying not to show it.
15 4d6 Wounded Soldiers, moving away from the front.
16 Rogue farm animals, huddled together as if for protection. They smell
like fear.
21 Officers car on the prowl.
22 Newspaper crew, plying soldiers with liquor and cigarettes.
23 A Civilian Witch.
24 Smell of vinegar — overturned wine cart, left in the heat and rain.
25 Planes sluggishly crawl across the sky — friendly, by the lack of
munitions.
26 Wild artillery shell explosion near enough to deafen. No way to tell
where it came from.
31+ No notable encounter.
The Front
Fire has scraped clean the earth. The soil bleeds only poison — our weapons have
left the wound infected.
You have already seen scores of friends die, limbs dangling from barbed wire.
Safety is a dark hole and a mask.
1d6 Objectives
1 Trench Duty. 12 Days.
2 Rescuing someone from no-mans land.
3 Moving to cut enemy telephone lines.
4 Called up to support as we go Over the Top. Wait for the whistle.
5 Night raid against an enemy trench.
6 Rebuilding trenches and defences.
Encounters
To be checked once a day when waiting, hourly during active movement. Roll a
d66 and consult the table below.
Where Soldiers are not specified as Friendly, they may be in the employ of the
Other Powers.
d66 Encounter
11-12 1d6 Dying Soldiers, gassed.
13-14 1d6 Dying Soldiers, shot.
15-16 1d6 Dying Soldiers, shelled.
21 Sniper fire — player with least Luck tests it to avoid.
22 Screaming of Shells — test Luck or relevant Skill to get in cover in time.
23 Laughter of Machine-Guns — hit the deck or take 1d6 hits.
24 Animal-Whine of a plane — grenades dropped into the trench, elsewhere.
25 Broken rasp of a rattle — gas attack inbound.
26 Sergeant Inspection: challenging the troops to show some bravery — now.
31 Friendly Soldier, holding a boot to his chest. The boot still has his foot in it.
32 Starving mule, eyes wider than dinner plates, rampant amongst the
trench. Kept alive as a good luck charm.
33 Friendly artillery falls short. Test Luck to avoid.
34 Soldiers sing for their dead friend.
35 4d6 Enemy Soldiers on a trench-raid, crawling over the parapet right now.
36 Screams in no-mans land. Closer than usual.
41-56 Residual stink of rotting flesh, munitions. Distant cackle of gunfire. Low
roar of shells. Dog-ends of cigarettes burning the lips of the soldiers.
Whispered jokes. Stifled laughs.
61-66 The Psychogeography boils up from the ground, and drowns the trench.
All are swept into this new landscape.
The Psychogeography
The horrors of The Front are only amplified in the Psychogeography.
1d6 Psychogeographical Location
1-2 Trench labyrinth, miles of wet earth packed with bodies, liberated hands
grasping from the walls, poison gas snaking and moving - a predator on
the hunt. Anything other than a half-crouch is death, bullets roaming in
flocks, looking for any revealing themselves.
3-4 Blasted-ruin-splinters of a town eaten, consumed, turned to memory by
the carnivorous no-mans-land. The War is the egg, and that blasted
dead toxic earth is the Child, industry and nations the parents.
5-6 The open field. The killing ground. Behind are demon-officers, ready to
execute, jeering. Ahead, machine-gunners. All must walk forward,
regardless of nationality in the other world.
The Deep Psychogeography
The shallows of the Psychogeography heighten and make the metaphorical
literal.
The deep of the Psychogeography presents the alien vistas and wrinkles
forgotten yet carried within. The obscene truth-trending-toward-fiction.
It can only be found with determined investigation and either the latest in
para-scientific devices or the most ancient of religious practices.
