CYOA brainstorming: Otherworldly Land

What is this about?

You awoke in: Deep space
Its two hazards are: Unstable ground and anomalies
Your boon is: The nanite cloud
Its malfunction is: Diabolus ex machina
Your friends are: Automatons
Your two enemies are: Ascendants and cultists
Your escape plan is: Get to the exit
The problem is: Upheaval

Our protagonist awoke in a space station of some sort. A sprawling affair that seems to go on forever. Physical laws are prone to being bent or even broken here, and the superstructure is beginning to decay, so that floors may suddenly give out, walls collapse, or doors jam.

CYOA brainstorming: Super Soldier Adventure

What is this about?

Enhancements: Nanomachines
Appearance: Unassuming (very fat)
Faction: Free Agent
Abilities: Strength 2 (beyond human potential, bench press cars and punch down walls), Agility 3 (move faster than the human eye can see, outrun bullets), Infection 2 (animal cunning, move as they did in life), Unarmed Mastery, Self-Healing 3 (regenerate limbs in a couple of days), Stealth 1 (move in total silence), Durability 2 (shrug off small arms fire, resist assault weaponry), Reflexes 2 (fast enough to dodge bullets), Endurance 2 (almost unlimited stamina, sprint for hours), Natural Toxin 1 (spit is toxic), Predator 1 (eat people in five minutes)
Perks: None
Drawbacks: Aging, Neutered, Valuable

Charles David Walker. That's his name. I don't remember why.

CYOA brainstorming: The Island (Candid version)

What is this?

Island CYOAs were (are?) a fad on /tg/. I know of almost a dozen, and I come across a new one every so often. The idea behind each of them is the same (you find yourself on a spooky island thing, GO) but they differ in the options that they give. They also differ in how many options you can pick before you have to start taking penalties.

This one is not particularly forgiving.

Shelter: None
Companion: The Necromancer
Artifact: The Amulet, Possessed Sword
Covenant: Abominations
Nemesis: Fear and Madness, The Other

Oh, and The Other gets some choices too, dang it:
Shelter: Gypsy Caravan
Companion: The Other (a different one), the Blackbark Faerie
Artifact: The Sarcophagus
Covenant: Island Guardians
Nemesis: The protagonist

So what have we got here?

Our protagonist has been displaced to some horrible Otherworld. It matters not whether it's an actual island or not, though we'll refer to it as such for convenience's sake. It's a very dangerous place, inhabited by all kinds of horrible things. There was apparently a magi-tech kind of civilization based here, but it's anyone's guess what happened to them.

Perhaps the Island got them. It has a will of its own, certainly. And it's out for the protagonist's blood.

To that effect it has also plucked up two of the protagonists friends. Perhaps the protagonist's appearance here is a fluke, but theirs was certainly not. They have been told that the protagonist is a very, very bad person now, and that killing zem is of the utmost importance. Letting zem live will do nobody any good, but will mean the deaths of millions.

It may hurt them to believe it, but they've been thoroughly convinced that ze's somehow gone down a bad road.

The statuesque servants of the old civilization are at their disposal. The faeries of the Island, who may be connected or have simply moved in after the original inhabitants left, are responsible for conveying the Islands orders, and one of them is accompanying the protagonist's friends to help them on their quest. They are traveling with other humans (who, unlike the faeries, are definitely latecomers to the Island), who are not noteworthy for their combat skills but know the roads of the Island. And one of them has slight precognitive abilities that should be of help.

Should they die by anyone's hand but the protagonist's, the Island will be able to revive them.

But the worst thing is... our protagonist can't be totally sure that they're wrong. The protagonist has fallen in with some potentially bad company, an amoral necromancer whose reason for tagging along is unknown, and has explained the situation to the protagonist. The necromancer is definitely not popular in these parts, though, especially among the undead (of which there are many). And... there are horrible Lovecraftian monsters that like you. Which is probably not a good sign.

Finally, the protagonist is in possession of a thinking sword. It can steadily improve the protagonist's skill over time, but it is also the source of a growing compulsion to kill. The amulet, which confers both physical and mental health, is keeping its influence at bay, but the amulet will be effective for only so long.

CYOA brainstorming: Undead abomination

What is this about?

Type Tinker
Seal Holy circle
Phylactery Amulet
Nemesis Merchant

I like the combination of the first two. "You tried to augment yourself with machine parts bridging the gap between living and unliving matter through necromancy," but there's something about holiness, something of Heaven or something celestial, that works against you.

So there are two questions we've got to ask here:

How does necromancy cross with machines? And what does the Celestial Power have to do with machines?

While I'm afraid that we might fall into some unfortunate implications, let's say that there's an industrial element to Hell. Necromancy and the Infernal Power go together like a charm, I guess, and it's because this is some devilish kind of machinery that holy magic works against it. Why don't we do a bit of a biopunk/cyberpunk dichotomy here, and make Heaven a genetic engineering/flesh-shaping kind of place? Like the elements of H. R. Giger's artwork got a divorce and half of them went off to Heaven and the other half to Hell, and then they both got contracts to redesign the places.

Yeah.

And our humble character made a deal with Hell to rework zir body into some half-machine thing that would never die.

Its phylactery is a small object. Let's make it a battery. The character will keep on going so long as it has power, so you have to destroy its (basically unlimited) power source. Maybe, to go beyond the bounds of the CYOA but also make things more interesting, the battery is charged by dying. It can conceivably run out, but if somebody dies in its vicinity then the character will start running again.

And some silly merchant holds the battery. For now.

CYOA brainstorming: Domain Master

What is this all about?

Affinity Technology/Acoustics

Size class Giant

Race Monstrous/Construct

Boss perks Vitality prowess, charisma prowess, arena manipulation, phylactery, hybrid, empowerment, shapeshifting, enchanted armor, enchanted weapon, perception prowess

Minion races Humanoid, celestial 

Minion size classes Human, Colossal (only celestials)

Mooks Soldiers (100), clerics (25), slaves (50), recruiters (25)

Elites Warriors (10), craftsmen (10), agents (20), battle mages (20)

Lieutenants Chosen, Hunter

Minion perks Sustenance, training, faction

Realm perks Expansion, hidden

Complications Benevolent, whispers

Genre Splash #4: Pokebots [B]

Continued from Wednesday.

Where people haven't found a way to defend against the machines, civilization has crumbled long ago. Surviving countries have stumbled upon a number of countermeasures: many machines have aquatic capabilities but none of them like salt water, which impairs their senses; many, especially older designs, are vulnerable to EMP. The most effective, however, is using other machines. Techniques exist for modifying their programming in order to turn them to human use. Even with modern improvements the process is far from perfect, though, and machines can go rogue if precautions aren't taken. One of the most important factors to keep in mind is that the programming changes can be fought, and most precautions center on ensuring that the machine doesn't want to escape (a steady diet of its owner's blood is extremely helpful). Machines will even fight attempts to undo these changes if the change was done right.

Genre Splash #4: Pokebots [A]

Challenge: Alternate History: World War II/Pet Monster

The year is 1978. The American Initiative patrols the Panama Quarantine Line. From behind the Rocky Mountains, Remnant Columbia prepares to take back the rest of the continent and save the Holdout States. The Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere is showing its first signs of decay while the British are just beginning to pull themselves back together. It is 1978, and it has been thirty-seven years since the machines came.

The New War started in Europe. Nobody knows if they're a German experiment gone rampant or if the Nazis were just unlucky. The first machines were clunky and inefficient. Very simple, and relatively easy to destroy. They've been getting better. They adapt, changing form and function in response to experience and often demonstrating the ability to shift between different modes- machines of the artiglieria-variety are normally small, speedy things with little firepower but they can convert into a static form, rooted into the ground for support, which can blow holes through concrete walls.

Genre Splash #1: These Vitiated Streets [B]

Continued from Wednesday

The widespread creation of Nightwears was the final blow that felled civilization in the last world to be invaded by the Garbage Men. Already in disarray from the machinations of the Garbage Men, the governments of that world totally collapsed beneath the rising tide of more and more Nightwears after they reached the point where each new Nightwear made conditions easier for creating even more of the monsters. A solution was ultimately devised but not in enough time. Instead, two hundred pairs of people were chosen to undergo a series of magical operations. The operations ended with the extraction of one person's soul from each pair and the death of the other person in the process of using their body for raw materials in giving physical form to that soul. The two hundred survivors, who were given the name "Knights," were left semi-soulless and, unexpectedly, unable to use Sparks themselves. Unable to directly oppose the Garbage Men, they opted to continue with the plan as best as they could and follow them to their next target and from there find people to use the Sparks in their place.

Genre Splash #1: These Vitiated Streets [A]

A couple of years ago I started to wonder about the ideas that I was coming up with. Not all of them- I won't even say most of them- were regarded as very, very peculiar but there were some. What I wanted to determine was whether I had an actual talent at crossing unlikely concepts together or if I subconsciously filtered out the combinations that I couldn't do anything with.

Genre Splash is my way of figuring this out. If you have a combination that you would like to see developed, leave it in the Comments section or send me an email.

Challenge: Crime Noir, Giant Robot, and Magical Girl. No city-wide amnesia allowed.

The time is the late Forties. The Cold War is in high swing- and getting hot.

For a year now, something has been seeping into our world. It is a collective entity of separate minds and bodies but, in some fashion, a single essence and soul. Its avatars are the Garbage Men, insect-like monsters that can rapidly eviscerate a man and wear his flayed skin like a cloak. Like some kind of inverted vampire they are at their most powerful when their blood is being shed. Besides being highly addictive to anyone that is forced to drink it (or is convinced to do it of their own volition), their blood can be psychically controlled and shaped to form knives and pseudo-limbs. The harder the beating, the harder that a Garbage Man can hit back.