I’ve been looking forward to finally getting around to this idea. It aligns well with some of my current and future project concepts. The conceit of this series of articles, which I have dubbed Monsters of /X/, is to explore the monsters and creatures featured on the /X/ board of 4chan back in the day.
Internet folklore operates much like traditional folklore but on vastly accelerated time scales due to the speed of digital communication.
Attachment & Weapon Mods It seems like a rather large oversight to make a fairly comprehensive set of firearm rules and not include rules for adding attachments or modding your weapons. It surprisingly took a player at my playtesting group to point this out, which made me realize that I had totally missed it. I mean, no good battle rattle setup is complete without a bunch of heavy gizmos sticking off a rifle, just to weigh down an operator before some rando insurgent guns them down with a burned-out AKM produced in 1959 that has magically ended up being serviced in the modern day.
Mythic Underworld vs. Gygaxian Naturalism is a Stupid Debate To put it as gently as I can, both sides of this debate are quite misguided—at least at the extremes. Now, I’m not on Twitter/X (or whatever the kids call it these days) because I prefer to retain my attention span and avoid being a dopamine addict fueled by outrage. But even I hear news through the grapevine from my RSS feeds and podcasts.
Art was generated using Flux Schnell
“Vision’s mostly a lie anyway,” he continued. “We don’t really see anything except a few hi-res degrees where the eye focuses. Everything else is just peripheral blur—light and motion. Motion draws the focus. And your eyes jiggle all the time, did you know that, Keeton? Saccades, they’re called. Blurs the image. The movement’s way too fast for the brain to integrate, so your eye just—shuts down between pauses.
Having already done the Firearms rules, as well as Optics and Ammo Types I think covering Armor and Injury was a logical extension to the topic and a good place to round off these series of articles.
Something of note regarding my system/setting is that humans are squishy and fragile, your average person in terms of hit point value is 1d6, a trained soldier or athletic person is in range of 2d6 to 3d6 hit points, while an exceptional peak human is in 4d6 range hit point range.