Grok?!ier

Grok is a monument to the folly of man. Technomancers pushed their study of the sciences and the arcane to its utmost and saw a way to harness the universe itself. For then Grok was a hollow world, formed around the rippling black mass of negative space known as the Voidstar from which the Technomancer were able to draw mana that in turn was used to develop trans-dimensional travel and contract the Simulacrum, a jigsaw-like spherical space station in turn encapsulated and revolved about the planet—just as Grok revolved around the Voidstar. Man entered a golden age of power and prosperity and Grok welcomed visitors from across the dimensions. Then a malfunction occurred in the harness that connected to the Voidstar, rupturing and unleashing untapped mana. In the Cataclysm, raw mana ruptured the planet and Grok cracked and split, marking enormous rifts in its surface, swallowing continents whole and ripping others free to float above the surface whilst the Simulacrum became unmoored. Parts of it snapped off and fell to the surface of Grok. The raw mana also rendered classical thaumaturgy unreliable and made technomancy inert or corrupt. In the Aether, the Domain beyond the planet’s atmosphere, bands of pirates and pillagers raid and pick over settlements often terrified by aliens discovered during colonisation. The Simulacrum—or the remaining parts of it—continues to revolve around Grok, the thrusters holding it up corrupting the surface of planet with the radiative phosphorescent twilight from recycled mana. The diverse inhabitants of the Simulacrum live under the merciless control of an A.I. to ensure their survival, though a few cyberpunks work to overthrow its control. The Hovering Isles are the lands formed from the parts of Grok’s floating crust after the Cataclysm, as yet not fully mapped, but home to the isolated Islanders who live on the underside to protect themselves from the radiation from the Simulacrum. This means that the Wastelands on the planet below form the Islanders’ sky. The Wastelands make up the planet’s surface, home to nomadic Vagabonds who trade with the Hovering Isles and often have mutations due to exposure to Simulacrum above. More corrupted are the Underlings who live in the Underworld of tunnels, caves, bunkers, research facilities, aquifers, and chasms that thread and shift throughout the subsurface of Grok. The worst of the monstrosities in the Underworld are found in the Underworld closest to the Voidstar, but on the inside surface of the Underworld facing the Voidstar is the Nether. This is a megacity home to Voiddwellers known as Lesser Ones who work towards to summoning the Great Ones from the obsidian spires of their city, The Nether. Grok is a broken planet.

Grok is the setting for Grok?!, a weird Science Fantasy roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic wonder and exploration. It was originally published as a fanzine in 2022, but has now been developed into a full roleplaying game. This includes sample Player Characters, advice for the Game Master, rules for playing solo, and guides to each of the regions of Grok, including adventure tips, sample locations, and tables to create more. None of the descriptions of the peoples or places are canonical so much as examples that the Game Master can use as is or alter as needed. All of which is accompanied by the same great artwork that sold the original fanzine.

A Player Character in Grok?! is simply defined. He has three Attribute dice, one each for Physical, Mental, and Social, ranging between a four-sided and a twelve-sided die. He has an Aspect—a word or phrase—each for his Personality, Motivation, Background, Trouble, and Appearance Traits, plus five Assets. These Assets are Outfit, Accessory, Weapon, Oddity, and either Magic, Vehicle, or Companion. A player is free to chose these as he likes, but he can also roll on the given tables for all of them. Grok?! includes twenty ready-to-play re-generated Player Characters.

Pythagoras Powell
Physical d8 Mental d4 Social d6
Personality: Bigoted
Motivation: Seize Power
Background: Gambler
Trouble: Hunted
Appearance: Illusory
Outfit: Extendable Kilt
Assets: Power Fist, Nanobot Shirt, Star Charts, A Pessimistic Hologram trained as a Torchbearer.

Mechanically in Grok?!, to have his character undertake an action, his player declares his Intention, narrates the Action, and if necessary, determines the Outcome with the roll of an appropriate Attribute die. If the maximum is rolled on the die, it explodes and can be rolled again and the result added to the current total. If the result is between one and two, the Outcome is ‘No, and…’ something Detrimental happens; between three and four and the Outcome is ‘No, but...’ something else Beneficial happens; five and six and the Outcome is ‘Yes, but…’ something else Detrimental happens; seven and eight and the Outcome is ‘Yes...’ and the result is as intended; and nine and over, the Outcome is ‘Yes, and…’ something else Beneficial happens. Grok?! employs the Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic as standard, each one which comes into play—up to five Advantages and five Disadvantages, with the two types cancelling each other out—must be based on an Aspect. Aspects can be the character’s Traits, Assets, or from the environment or situation the character is in. If a roll is failed, it can be pushed, and pushed again, until the roll is a success. However, each time the roll is pushed, the Player Character suffers a detriment. Whenever a Player Character suffers a detriment, whether due to a Pushed roll or a failure to prevent a Threat, he suffers a Condition. This occupies an Asset Slot, and when a Player Character suffers so many Conditions that all of his Asset Slots are full, one of his Attributes suffers a Debilitation and is reduced by one step. When an Attribute would be reduced below a four-sided die, the Player Character is dead.

Combat in Grok?! is an extension of these rules, except that Grok?! phrases it in terms of dealing with Threats. The aim is to apply a Condition, and even a Debilitation, to an opponent if attacking and avoiding them if being attacked. The rules for combat are underwritten in comparison to other roleplaying games, the roleplaying game talking about dealing with threats rather than adversaries. For some players, some adjustment may be required to switch to narratively driven combat. However, Grok?! does acknowledge this possible difficulty by including optional rules for Health Points and weapon effectiveness, amongst other rules. They include alternative attributes, Supply dice, NPC conversion from other roleplaying games, opposed rolls, and more.

There is advice and commentary on this edition of Grok?! as well as the previous edition, throughout the rulebook, but the specific advice for the Game Master begins with a short discussion of safety tools, how to use both Aspects and Assets in play, define NPCs (this can be as simple as a single Aspect or as relatively complex as a Player Characters), an examination of Benefits that can be gained and Detriments that can be opposed, and then how to define a scene with locales and events, motivations extending from the latter. There are tables for random locales and events or random locale and event prompts. The advice is relatively light and it is somewhat unbalanced by the rules and procedure for running and playing Grok?! solo. These are built around an adventure loop that initially revolves around establishing and playing a series of scenes before using them to formulate a plot and then check to see if the plot is true or not. If not, more scenes are played through and the veracity of the plot checked again. At this point a capstone scene can be played to bring the plot to a climax. More attention is paid to the solo rules, but at the same time, the Game Master can use them as a tool towards creating plots too.

More than half of Grok?! is dedicated to the world of Grok itself. Attention is paid to all of the planet’s six domains—the Aether, the Simulacrum, the Hovering Isles, the Wastelands, the Underworld, and the Nether—and how each caters to different styles and types of adventures. For example, adventures in the Aether, set in space beyond Grok’s atmosphere, are about survival, discovery, alien horror, and Science Fiction, whilst adventures on the Hovering Isles, set on floating islands lit only by the dim reflected light from the Wastelands above, focus on isolated islands, their cultures, and breaking their taboos. Every domain has adventure tips, sample regions and scenes, notable NPCs, tables to generate prompts and ideas, and touchstones. The latter comprises a list of books, films, games, and music that inspired the domain. It gives an abundance of potential further reading and watching for the whole of Grok and Grok?!.

Grok?! is rounded out with a scenario, ‘The Thesis of Mr. Person Hugh Mann’. This will take the Player Characters across Grok at the bequest of a shrimp piloted mechanoid known as Mr. Person Hugh Mann to locate and rescue his Field Teams, which happen to be small contingents of shrimp hiding in unique headpieces. It is fast-paced, over-the-top, gonzo affair that showcases the different Domains and playstyles of the planet.

Physically, Grok?! is stunning. The layout is bright and breezy, but the artwork is amazingly good, capturing the weirdness of the broken world, whether is the three-eyed, beaked and spike-tailed camel-like camel on the front cover, the fecund fungi, the broken canal city menaced by a tentacled monster who eyes cry black ichor, the shattered land amidst which a warrior swathed in a cloak surveys the chaos and a floating island, or a scythe-wielding Plague Doctor-like figure rides a bewinged jet bike down a street. The artwork is truly excellent and hopefully future releases will feature more of it.

What sold the original version of Grok?! was its artwork. However, as good as the artwork was, and as well as it showed the reader how fantastically weird and gonzo the world of Grok was, it did not leave enough room for the author to tell the reader what the world of Grok was like. Grok?! Second Edition—a full roleplaying game rather than a mini-roleplaying game—has the room for that. It can both show and tell the reader what the world of Grok is like, and it does. Grok?! Second Edition brings the roleplaying game’s weird post-gonzo apocalyptic setting to life and provides the tools with which the Game Master can make it her own. If you dismissed the original Grok?! as unfulfilled potential, then take a look again.

—oOo—

The Kickstarter for Grok?!, Second Edition can be found here.

Not Enough Grok

Grok?! is an adventure role-playing game set on the planet of the same name, a gonzo world which was once a haven for trans-dimensional migrants and a bastion of advanced technomancy, until a cataclysm rendered it a desolate hollow planet. Now Planet Grok is rent with chasms haunted by feral monstrosities as cities float across its skies and a derelict space station contains the whole the planet, constantly bathing it in phosphorescent radiation. Yet the survivors of the cataclysm have begun to rebuild and explore, cities have been founded and lost relics discovered and begun to be understand, and war looms as the cities and their cultures clash, all whilst something black and unfathomable peers out from the hollow left by the cataclysm.

Grok?! is not a retroclone like Old School Essentials or Labyrinth Lord, nor is it a microclone like Knave or Into the Odd, although it is heavily inspired by both as well as Numenera, Savage Worlds, Shadow of the Demon Lord, Technoir, and Troika!, amongst others. The simplicity of the mechanics suggest that Grok?! is a microclone, but the player-facing mechanics, use of advantage and disadvantage (at a cost), capacity to bring elements of the setting into play with description-based modifiers, and narration of Player Character actions push it away towards more storytelling style of play.

A Player Character in Grok?! is simply defined. He has three Attribute dice, one each for Physical, Mental, and Social, ranging between a four-sided and a twelve-sided die. He has a word or phrase each for his Personality, Motivation, Background, Trouble, and Appearance Traits, plus an outfit and four Assets. Bar the outfit, which the player—or Actor as Grok?! terms them—is free to decide on his own, everything is determined with a roll of a few dice. The creation process takes a few minutes at most.

Nero Stout
Physical d6 Mental d6 Social d10
Personality: Pessimistic
Motivation: Create strife
Background: Paranormal Inquisitor
Trouble: Impoverished
Appearance: Hulking
Outfit: Inquisitor’s Ruby Lame Trouser Suit
Assets: X-Ray Monocle, Telekinetic Glove, Auto-Inflatable Airship, Spell of Mind Melding

Mechanically in Grok?!, to have his character undertake an action, his Actor declares his Intention, narrates the Action, and determines the Outcome with the roll of an appropriate Attribute die. If the result is between one and four, the Outcome is ‘No, and…’ something bad happens; between five and nine, then ‘Yes’ as intended; and ten or more, then ‘Yes, and…’ and good happens. Grok?! employs the Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic as standard, each one which comes into play—up to five Advantages and five Disadvantages, with the two types cancelling each other out—must be based on an Aspect. Aspects can be the character’s Traits, Assets, or from the environment or situation the character is in. Advantages and Disadvantages are also acquired through Effort. However, applying Effort comes at a cost. This is a Condition appropriate to the action, and when acquired, it fills one of the character’s Resource Slots, of which he has seven. Conditions can also be acquired by failing actions.

Normally, Resource Slots are filled with the character’s Assets, but as they are filled Conditions, the character can carry fewer and fewer Assets, to the point where he acquires the Incapacitation Condition and is unable to act. Beyond that, if the character gains further Conditions, they reduce the appropriate Attribute die step by step, until if educed to below a four-sided die, the character is dead. The die-rolling is, of course, all Actor-facing, so the Director never rolls a die.

Grok?! uses the same mechanics for combat, the aim being to apply a Condition to an opponent if attacking and avoiding if being attacked. The rules for combat are underwritten in comparison to other roleplaying games, the roleplaying game talking about dealing with threats rather than adversaries. For some players some adjustment may be required to switch to narratively driven combat.

However, Grok?! does acknowledge this possible difficulty by including optional rules for Health Points and weapon effectiveness, as well as rules for handling wealth in a less abstract fashion and the use of the exploding die for characters with low Attributes. The Director, as the Game Master is known in Grok?!, is also given tables for creating Director Characters and one line scenario prompts, such as “An Angry Tree is Teaching Musical Masterpiece in a Derelict Spaceship”.

Planet Grok is described as world in part rent and in part shattered by a cataclysm caused by the failure of hyper advanced technology. Most of its inhabitants are divided between four castes—Celestials who reside in the giant Simulacrum which surrounds the planet, Islanders who live on the microcosms that float above the planet’s surface, Vagabonds who travel its surface exploring and trading, and Underlings who survived in the underground shelters despite many of their number being warped into monstrosities. The realms for each of the castes—the A.I. controlled Simulacrum of the Celestials, the haphazard wanderings of the Islanders’ floating Isles, the Wastelands travelled across by the Vagabonds, and the tunnels, caves, bunkers, research facilities, and chasms of the Underworld are all given a page each, which includes two tables for creating encounters.

Physically, Grok?! is stunning. The layout is bright and breezy, but the artwork is amazingly good, capturing the weirdness of the broken world, whether is the three-eyed, beaked and spike-tailed camel-like camel on the front cover, the fecund fungi, the broken canal city menaced by a tentacled monster who eyes cry black ichor, the shattered land amidst which a warrior swathed in a cloak surveys the chaos and a floating island, or a scythe-wielding Plague Doctor-like figure rides a be winged jet bike down a street. The artwork is truly excellent and hopefully future releases will feature more of it.

However, as good as the artwork is—and it is very, very good—it is also Grok?!’s curse. It is not difficult to imagine so many of the Kickstarter backers being enticed by the artwork with the promise of the roleplaying game’s weird post-gonzo apocalyptic setting and being disappointed at the lack of background or a scenario or a starting point for play or anything beyond an overview. There are a lot of prompts in terms of the tables for creating Director Characters and encounters, but that leaves a lot of work for the Director to undertake to bring world of Planet Grok to life. For some Game Masters that may not be an issue, but for others…? Ultimately, Grok?! is more mechanics than Planet Grok and the prospective Director and her players will have to wait to get more of the latter than the former.