1 week after the event, all power grids shut down, since no workmen have been maintaining it. Unfortunately just before, a massive spike in power causes massive overloads in many places. All but the largest and most important buildings catch on fire as the basic household fuse does not cut it, but the ones protecting the aforementioned malls, do (for insurance purposes). Many die as their household forts burn to the ground without any fire department to come to the rescue. The water mains hold out a little longer, maybe a month or two, same for the gas mains. Within the space of 3 months, all utilities are useless, and everyone must find a way to survive. Enter the players.

How would you survive? How would you live your life? Become a gang member (now known as “raiders”, as they don’t support themselves, but steal goods from others)? Get a group of family a friends together and fortify a location in a mall, or if you had the resources and know-how, build a fort of your own with home-made construction vehicles (cranes and such) out of cinder blocks, retaining wall stones and house bricks? Also now bugs and other animals are going to be a problem. Maybe live way out in the country / desert and concentrate on farming? Put your time and effort into maintaining a small ex-RC model plane to get around? Some people mentioned the desire to tame rats and ride them around like mounts, and those with knowledge of forging and smithing, to smelt soda cans and make plate armor. Some have even gone so far as to get a group, modify a car or gold buggy and use it as a mobile fortress. The limits are endless, but right now we need more people’s input and ideas. Please everyone, give us a hand! What would you do?

We already did this thread, its still upon sup/tg/ you fucking faggot

>My friends and I are trying to build an RPG from scratch with an original concept.

I lol'd

They already did this, it was called The Indian in The Cupboard, and it was badass.

I remember this thread! it was awesome.

>>2760911
That thread didn't go far enough. More ideas are needed.

THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT ACCURSED TOYS

>>2760941
Merely a "The Borrowers" ripoff.

first of all, why are fillings shrunk, while pacemakers are not? Makes no sense.

minus points for "sounds like boring"
bonus points if people play themselves or each other in this game.
minus points again for "lol, another original, from scratch, /tg/ game that won't get farther than this thread."

Timothy and his small band deciude the best method of survival is to slavage on the go, running a van with the help oif about ten or fifteen mini-men and women. Two peeps on the wheel, two on the pedals, one at the windsheild. Also one at every other window. It'd be like piloting a fulkl-sized warship... so They all roll for a some sort of skill together and AVERAGE the result.
Youy'll have people being forced to work as a team a lot, so you need a way to merge dice rolls. Averaging, to me, seems best.

Anyway. They get thaqt shit rolling, and make their wayto the supermarket, fanning out to search for stuff they can still eat.
Again, average checks.
Uh-oh. Nothing found, looks like they'll have to take the hit to their Hunger and Thirst, and just move on. Staying in one place causes vermin to find you...

I was thinking about this a while ago after missing the thread.

It's going to be REALLY hard to kill non-human enemies with 5cm projectile weapons. Weapons are probably going to be more along the lines of poisons (all sorts of these around), fire, with spears (aiming for eyes) as a last resort. Things that scare can be just as effective as things that kill, much of the time.

BEEKEEPERS. BEEKEEPERS SUDDENLY GOT MUCH MORE AWESOME.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bromeliad

>>2760966

Fuck, that too was an awesome thread.

>>2760993
Toothpicks and shit are only going to be useful against hostile minimen, in other words.

>>2760993

Working in groups, humans can probably drive off most things smaller than a weasel or cat, even with just spears. What's going to be really nasty are ambush predators, like preying mantises and spiders.

>>2761014
Holy shit, idea.
Tarantula mounts. Or rather, rules for grappling that allow for 'riding' the creature...

Dog trainers. Dogs are still full size, and recognize their owners principally by smell. Excellent dog trainers would be nigh unstoppable warlords.

>>2761005
You wouldn't want to fire a toothpick, but use it as a spear shaft instead. I'd think a bow/arrow that size is going to have real trouble lethally puncturing anything with the amount of force a 5cm human can provide, even if they have greater proportional strength.

That said, with proportional strength you could see blades from pocket knives taken out, filed down to a decent handle where the blade stops, and actually used like the giant swords you'd see in some weeaboo anime. Which might actually have some win involved.

>>2761024
But giving understandable commands with your new voice is going to be tough. Not to mention how confused the dog will be.

Having a cat in your house when this happens pretty much guarantees your death.

>>2761024
Tinyman town on the back of a great Dane.
DRAWFAAAAGS!

>>2760993
Gives new meaning to OMG I'M COVERED IN BEEEEEEEEEES

>>2761061
A town? No dog is big enough for that.

>>2760974
Double minus points for "lol an original game that is exactly like a thread we had a month or two ago"

>>2761071
see
>>2760959

>>2761071
Kill yourself for not seeing that it's the same OP in both threads.

>>2761066
Awww.
Tinyman towns in places like... OOOH!

A supermarket aisle. Cerials and chips aisle. Two cities clustered on the sides, 'mining' the shelves, with a trade route between the two and leading out to the produce area, which, after some work, has been turned iunto a giant greenhouse.
In fact, a Tinyman campaign set in a grocery store would be awesome.

Armor made from Army Men toys.

Lego trucks powered by two-stroke model engines plowing into Lincoln Logs barricades.

Some crazy fucker that takes a team of people and builds a working aircraft from a model airplane.

Anti-Predator cannons in fortifications that use model rocket engines.

>>2761092
Shit's awesome, yo.

This is a good setting all around.
Just after has the survivalist feeling.
Postshrink feels like a really odd fantasy.
and let's not even get into TinyTech.

>>Anti-Predator cannons in fortifications that use model rocket engines.

Awesome, although getting a base/holder that wouldn't get knocked away would be tough. Also gasoline covered floors, blowtorches, and flame+aerosol cans are going to be nasty business.

Anyone that gets hand grenades is going to really fuck shit up. A team of 5cm people could use them, unlike guns. Really good defense for a city built up high, against invaders from below.

>>2761055
You're forgetting that dogs are highly trainable (ever met a seeing eye dog?) and we are talking about very good trainers. Success would most likely involve a system of physical actions as commands while riding the dog.

>>2761116

They could set up shop near something like a heavy desk or a concrete bench/ashtry/trashcan and either chain the cannon in place or make concrete protrusions in the solid structure (I'm assuming you can still make concrete in this setting if you find the concrete powder bags and "mine" them) at about a cat's eye-level or below, angled slightly upward, and fire them off that way.

Making them anything other than completely stationary will be almost impossible unless you're willing to make the stuff as heavy as fucking possible.

Actually, concrete cannon casings on a concrete base with some leeway for aiming the cannon might work, if you have the concrete somehow glue the cannon and the ground together.

Idea: Go to one of those olde-style toy shops, grab a bunch of those functional miniature steam engines. lug em home, and start the industrial revolution all over again.

>>2761129

Concrete armor or weapons.

EVER BEEN HIT BY A 3 CENTIMETER LONG CONCRETE MORNING STAR?

I HAVE.

IT DIDN'T HURT A BIT.

IF I WAS 5 CENTIMETERS HIGH THOUGH IT'D HAVE KILLED ME.

>>2761137
Tiny steampunk.

Fuck year

>>2761137

Eventually, resources like that are going to run out, and there are going to be people who have them and people who don't.

Like, several generations down the road.

There'd be a billion new civilizations on the planet, and they'd all have a different forte depending on what resources were available to them at the time.

HOLY SHIT THE DOG KINGDOM'S ATTACK, LET LOOSE THE TRAIN-ENGINE TANKS WITH MODEL ROCKET ENGINE CANNONS! GET THE MODEL AIRPLANES INTO THE SKY AND DROP RANDOM SHIT ON THEM! HOLD ON, ALLIES FROM THE GAMES WORKSHOP SECTION OF THE MALL HAVE COME WITH THEIR PEWTER STORMTROOPERS! ALL HAIL!

Pharmacists and those who grabbed control of medicines, vitamin supplements, etc are going to have a lot of power/respect. A 500mg vitamin C tablet could last for months, especially with fruit suddenly being less readily accessible come winter.

Speaking of winter. THAT is going to suck HARD CORE. Humans don't hibernate, have warm fur, and have a high surface area to volume ratio (bad for small mammals). Lasting fires will be really tough without coal or those long-lasting kerosene lamps. I remember in the last thread someone mentioned that Lego housing would provide good insulation besides the obvious protection and ease of construction. Still, getting proper clothing and finding heat sources will be of utmost importance.

>>2761142
CONCRETE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY

>>2761147
Holy shit. You could just mod this for other settings. It'd be like Tiny GURPS.

>>2761164

FUCK YOU, I KNOW YOU'RE RIGHT.

there is a graphic novel about this.

>>2761128
Which means that given the situation, there's probably going to be only a few odd instances of this working properly in the entire world.

But it makes for a good encounter, or guardian for a city. How they'd FEED the thing enough to keep it there would be interesting.

>>2761178

They probably leave it to free roam and hunt its own food (allows it to be more vicious in combat) and the trainers probably use something like a silent whistle on a stand to call it back in times of need.

>>2761156
Feck year.

Oh, god. I'm imagining a WARGAME based off this.

TinyGURPS

>>2761178
>>dog guardian for a city

"Nothing fucks with New Tulsa, not after Cerberus and his trainer starting living there. Nah, its name's really something lame like Fido or some shit. But he's Cerberus to all of us. And more importantly, to all of THEM."

>>2761166
>>2761191
TinyGURPSmind?

>>2761178
I'm imagining a kingdom of slaves and slavers. The ruling class wear certain clothing that they gift to all true-born citizens, while the slaves cower in fear of the giant canine beasts that stalk the restricted areas of the city. Any who wear the scented clothing are safe, but the lean, ever-hungry guardians know to attack any whose smell is off. Regularly, a band rides out to track down game to feed themselves and their monstrous companions, and to replenish their stock of slaves--used for labor and, should they show any disrespect, dog chow.

It is glorious.

TinyFort.
It'd be like Dorf Fortress, cept with a gm and with all the people being managers of various parts of their little city, cities in the same area. 'Turns' are weeks, And the GM comes up with 'events', such aqs earthquakes, rat infestations, bug swarms, and enemy Tinymen.

Rat-riders.

People who had rats as pets have the same kind of connection as dogs and their owners have.

Rats would probably be used less as combat mounts and more as cargo-transports, or as scouting mounts, as they can go practically anywhere.

Also, they breed quickly and abundantly, so there'd be plenty to work with and they could be harvested for meat and fur, and their bones could be used for building material or weaponry. Tanned rat leather would also make for decent armor, building supply, and other assorted, useful purposes.

Basically, a full tiny civilization centered around Rats that's not a stereotypical "LOLDISEASEANDDEATHANDEVIL" kind of thing.

>>2761156
>Eventually, resources like that are going to run out

Tiny, tiny people use tiny amounts of resources. Think about how long one single tree could last as fuel. Hell, you'll probably need a medium sized village to mine that thing efficiently. Scavenging metal isn't hard, one junkyard would be hundreds and hundreds of years worth of relatively pure metals. All you really need to do to recycle metal in a post-apoc setting is find something made of metal with the properties you want, melt it, and then either cast, machine, or forge the new ingots into whatever you want. Steam engines are relatively easy to produce, so as you wear down the models you just create replacement parts. Electricity wouldn't be too hard actually, little hobby sized solar panels, or even just one big residential/commercial sized panel, would power a small village no problem, and wire wouldn't be hard to come across. That's a relatively low learning curve, low maintenance power source that can be locally set up. Small lithium batteries coupled to a charger could work as mobile sources, but I can't think of anything at the moment that you could really use them for. Radio communications are right out, excepting for stationary positions, you can't make them small and light enough for travel use and retain enough power to be effective when you're lilliputian. So light and heat should be relatively easy to set up, along with indoor food production during the winter.

>>2761236
>>2761236
If you have access to any sort of simple chemical supply, you can create black powder firearms. With scavenged modern metals, you can conceivably create strong enough firearms (probably like old black powder safari rifles more or less) to take down house pet sized animals. Cat's and rabbits don't have very thick skin, and their internal organs are suddenly much easier to hit. One might not take down a cat, but a small firing squad with high caliber lead slugs should do it. Failing that, crossbows with deadly deadly poison.

Also, insects and small mammals as livestock. Do it.

>>2761236
Also remember: The experts in these feilds are probably still alive.

>>2761219
Scent... don't bees use that too? What about people living in and around some amateur beekeeper's hives, keeping enough scent on themselves to pass off as bees? The bees provide them with a food source and with protection--if danger threatens the people, the hive is shaken and the bees riled until they swarm out and attack. The humans support the bees in their own fashion (too tired to think what this might be. Pun unintended).

>>2761236

Eventually the parts required to keep those devices going are going to run out, simply because, due to the new distance, the new civilizations won't be able to get the metals, silicon, copper, plastic, etc. in the forms required to keep that shit going.

It'll take a long time, probably, but without universities, the ability to get those raw materials or produce them once the finished products run out, or latent talent in the community for such things, those resources WILL run out, and only a select few kingdoms will be capable of making these things from scratch.

>>2761253
Fuck just attack bees, lets see some tinymen air cav fly into battle on those big ol carpenter bees. Wasps, if someone can manage it.

>>2761244
I don't know about that. Pellet guns are just enough to down a cat or rabbit, but you have to aim really well. How does black powder work, force wise, when in such tiny amounts? Same for arrows. Should we ask /k/?

Also, making guns is NOT easy without the proper tools and enough heat. Good luck with that.

I'm thinking about the idea of a town fortifying a vending machine.

it'd be super easy to barricade the trap door, and maybe through some modification, scouts can leave through the change return dish-thing.

it'd be a mildly succesful town, at least until the food runs out, but that could make for a good starting point campaign-wise.

a vending machine that hadn't been completely stocked. weapons would be basic, seeing as they'd have far less need for actual combat weapons.

>>2761282
CANNONS!!!!

>>2761282
>Should we ask /k/?

Going to do so right the fuck now, actually.

>>2761267
Wasps carrying 5cm humans? Ehh... you probably want small birds, sparrows and such. Also a bee rider can only use his mount's weapon once before he no longer has a ride... heh.

>>2761235

I like this. Rats are actually very intelligent and friendly. (I've had pet rats, as have lots of friends)

>>2761263
Maybe in a century or two, but people in a major city or even a small town could have re sized or redeveloped modern technology by then. Just because before shrink learning institutions are mainly unusable now doesn't mean learning stops, it just means you have a short period where you have to copy info from books into, well, smaller books. Everything known to science (that is still valid theory at least) up through the late Victorian era, and in some fields of study even up through the 30's and 40's, can currently be found in high school textbooks, to say nothing of college level material. One single steam and solar equipped society could link up with several neighboring settlements, forming a reasonable civilization within a few years easily.

>>2761292 here,
Thread up. I forgot how to link across boards, though

>>2761311

Probably, I'm still unsure of the whole matter of "trying to replace the original raw materials with new ones" dilemma and how people are going to overcome that after their supplies run out at the end of those two centuries, but even if it happens as you say, that still means that there are going to be pockets of "civilized" vs "non-civilized" where there are people who hold monopolies on technology like that. With the sudden anarchy, people are going to be a little suspicious of others' intentions with that technology.

Which was the point to begin with.

>>2761325
>>>/k/2153559

>>2761331
Gah, figures...

>>2761282
>Also, making guns is NOT easy without the proper tools and enough heat. Good luck with that.

We handmade effective muskets over five centuries ago. We can make revolutionary war through civil war era firearms right off the bat, and plenty of firearms up through the Victorian era were still black powder. Any competent metalworker could make simple enough firearms from common metals available through salvage, given instructions to work from (and there's plenty of books on the subject). A forge of sufficient strength could be created quickly from an electric heating element (from say a stove, hot plate, or water heater) linked to a solar generator or even something like a car battery. You could make a hand fired coal or liquid fuel forge with just a little more difficulty. Sterno is easily hot enough to melt most common metals, for one thing. As long as you construct the forge and proper hand tools first, you'll be fine.

I'd probably put the setting somewhere between a few months to a few years after the shrinking happens, so that things have stabilized a bit--but not too much that massive changes aren't possible thanks to the PCs. You could give a very "wild west" feel to it... hell, you could do a LOT with this setting.

You may need to handwave a few things for fun gameplay, though. A proper metabolism for 5cm people would leave them needing to eat constantly. It'd be extremely difficult for them to keep warm, even in only mildly chilly temperatures. Etc, etc. A game that's all about finding the next source of food--and that's it--will get dull.

That said, think about what the proportional strength would mean. Heck, toss in a proportional sense of time (so things seem slightly slower than they do now). Now people are like little versions of spiderman, jumping higher, carrying more, able to fall several body lengths without any injury--all sorts of physical wonders. Mice don't have quicker reflexes, so it's just their size and teeth that are worrisome. So on, and so on.

The hard shit is that the Tiny people won't be able to repair anything.

I mean, so you hole up in the mall. What if something breaks? Or worse, what if there's not enough light in some crucial areas.

Could you imagine "convoys" gathering supplies and getting ambushed?

GO GO GO JUST GET PAST THE JAMBA JUICE STAND!

Then there's the super markets. Tons of canned materials would last, as well as preserves, shit like that, but all the rotten fruit and spoiled meats....ugh it would actually be kinda dangerous to be in those places.... little to no light...very little food....tons of rotten shit for "predators" to eat.


That's a "Raid once a decade" sort of place.

>>2761347
Imagine a sun god cult society developing around a small solar water heater.

>>2761352
>GO GO GO JUST GET PAST THE JAMBA JUICE STAND!

People are chilling on the counter tossing down plastic spears at the people rushing past with their goods on their animal mounts, everyone screaming and yelling as animals and humans alike die in the torrent.

Then the motherfucking Bees are unleashed.

>GO GO GO JUST GET PAST THE JAMBA JUICE STAND!

I love jamba juice.


Anyway, one game could be one of these raids. A group of people moving through a supermarket, armed with nothing but toylike weaponry, searching for the canned foods and nonperishables.

>>2761328
>>Probably, I'm still unsure of the whole matter of "trying to replace the original raw materials with new ones" dilemma and how people are going to overcome that after their supplies run out at the end of those two centuries

Cute little trains and truck convoys probably, linking little towns and cities together, each with specific specialties regarding local resources. Most of the materials you'd need (excepting for anything made of non organic polymers) are actually fairly simple in their original forms. I'm not saying its easy, but with rebuilt modern technology its doable, if you're motivated. Giant cats and wild dogs are good motivation.

>>there are going to be pockets of "civilized" vs "non-civilized" where there are people who hold monopolies on technology like that. With the sudden anarchy, people are going to be a little suspicious of others' intentions with that technology. Which was the point to begin with.

Oh totally. It'll be awesome too.

So, what about the crunch?
Characters or whole cities?
Dice system?

>>2761357
>Imagine a sun god cult society developing around a small solar water heater.

That would be fucking sweet.

Another idea: Thanks to the information age, most of the information you'd need to find (in book form at least), is only going to be in a few locations, mainly libraries and schools. I'm seeing little enclaves of monks dedicated to the preservation of knowledge, maybe even little cloistered ones who only give out advanced knowledge to those they deem fit or those who pay them tribute and protect them. A knowledge cult of the before time writings or something.

Also, we need some kind of Conan style barbarian tribes, semi nomadic ones riding on little mounts with salvaged steel weaponry, led by a tiny Thulsa Doom or something.

>>2761342
Yeah, you need to try again later, either early afternoon central time, or late evening (but not this early in the morning) eastern time. Those are the only times I think enough knowledgeable people are gonna be around. We used to have a few cool black powder enthusiasts in /k/, but I haven't seen them around in awhile. It's a board of temporary figures, sorry.

Am I the only one who thinks this needs to be a series of sci fi novels?

I can see hydroelectric power as something people would experiment with. Relatively easy to set up with basic level knowledge of physics, and with the proportional size of rivers you could get a lot of juice. The only problem would be not having half the workmen drown.

>>2761407
Thank you.

Also, can someone post the suptg link to the first thread on this setting?

>>2761394
The people who live in the boondocks would work, hopefully turning into the most badass little people of all time.

This is relevant to my interests.

>>2761428
/tg/ getting shit done is always relevant.

Can anyone else imagine a DF-like game based around this? Hopefully with better graphics (read as: graphics of any sort) and maybe even multi-player support. I wish I were a code monkey so I could do it :/

I think Air travel would become a mainstay given that the land would be full of mountains (effectively).

Of course this would be after maybe 50 years when people had banded together into cities again.

>>2761437
see
>>2761220

>>2761414
Small streams would work better, with tiny waterwheels you wouldn't need much force. A series of waterwheels set up along a steady, small waterway would work wonders, but an actual river would probably be way too rough for tinymen. A town in a building could set up a rooftop lake or something in old cookware, and salvage some small gauge copper plumbing to set up a man made mini river. You'd want a condensation plant for a clean freshwater source anyway, think a dirt pile with a plastic container, covered with a clear tarp or glass or plastic or something, like you'd use in a survival situation.

>>2761437
No because DF is shit.

>>2761380

A turn-based strategy game on a map of a city block or something laid out by the DM. Players are their own budding band of "survivors" who set up shop and start small villages.

Dice-pool depending on how many people are in the tribe, a chart dictating population growth every month dependent on scores in food, housing, defense, technology, etc.

Cards for an added randomness factor, with a deck for monthly occurences, a deck of technological advances pre-planned by each player (cards available dependent on the "city type" they receive based on their location, determined by DM), and a hand of starting resources that players will use in conjunction with the dicepools to either allow themselves to draw a card from their tech deck.

They can also opt to remove a dice from their different labor pools to add a soldier into their army (represented by the musketeer from the Risk games). These soldiers can move around as groups or as single scouting parties and will trigger Random Occurrences or Random Discoveries as dictated by DM dependent on the squares they visit.

Basic idea of how I think this should work. Think of it as a tabletop, turn-based version of Civilization.

>>2761438
Except that it's incredibly resource-intensive, too much so for transportation.

Scouting, on the other hand... especially if you could have bird riders or some such.

>>2761447
oh, wow.
/tg/ can kick so much ass

>>2761453
When we aren't fapping to loli deamonettes at least.

>>2761448
I just pictured a bird carrying a coconut full of people.

It's like the fucking flintstones, half the shit is done by animals.

How do they manage to not being eaten by mices?

>>2761447
I'd say go with characters. There's some awesome stuff that would get skipped over in a Civ-style game.

>>2761447
>either allow them to draw a card from their tech deck

meant to say "or build improvements in their towns with the resources they currently have in their hands based on a chart of basic increases per level and bonus increases per level, etc."

Could be anything from "Gain a free soldier with each recruitement per 5 levels" or "A 'plastic bottle' resource card gives +X amount of building materials per 3 levels", etc.

>>2761467
Do mice even eat meat and/or people?

>>2761468

The city management would go by so fast that you could conceivably use random occurrence cards as story hooks for that particular situation.

Like 5 scouts from Rockapopolis spy a convoy from Titwillows traveling through the Radio Shack Pass. You triggered the event, what do you plan on doing?

>>2761467
Mice aren't as big a problem as cats, weasels/muskelids, snakes (oh fuck), crows and similar birds, foxes, and dogs.

And they don't get eaten, because they kill any predator that gets near. By any means necessary. (Barring that, hope your fortifications weren't rushed.)

>>2761477

Or "you stumble upon a freshly opened can of sardines. It looks like they're still good, with a minimum of flies currently swarming. You turn to leave, but there's a cat blocking the way you came. It hasn't noticed you yet."

>>2761478
Fucking owls holy fuck don't be outdoors at night ever if you want to live.

>>2761473
Mice eat insects. There's not a lot in the way of "meat" that a mouse can reasonably prey on.


There's a fair bit of small animal, predators-as-monsters fiction out there that you could mine ideas from. I was reading Mouse Guard the other day. Snakes and crabs as giant monsters, bees kept as a mix between dobermans and cows, there's plenty of ideas to loot.

>>2761477
I mean more the individual badassery of tiny people who are in a desperate struggle to survive. You thought killing a dragon in D&D was cool? You don't know cool until your group has somehow managed to take out a tomcat with only your little spears.

Frankly, as someone who DMs more than plays, I would love the opportunity for a setting like this that lets you have all sorts of different civilizations for the PCs to visit, and room for so much potential small group creativity.

>>2761473

Mice? Not usually. Hell, they tend to be mostly friendly and they could recognize a former owner by scent.

The problem would be rats. Mean motherfuckers that can and will eat anything non-metallic, plastic included. There was even a documented case in a russian town where rats managed to thrive off rat poison, of all things.

>>2761498

Why not have rules for both, and maybe start on the character level and leave the more advanced city building rules for after they've banded enough people together to set up cities?

That way, after they've seen the different budding civilizations, they have a chance to compete against them.

Wait, if cats and dogs are big problems what about the big animals like Komodo fucking dragons, monkeys, elephants (OH HOLY FUCK)

>>2761500

Feral rats would be a problem. Domesticated rats wouldn't, as they could be used as a pack animal.

>>2761473

Meat of course yes, they eat EVERYTHING
(at least rats do)

>Why not have rules for both, and maybe start on the character level and leave the more advanced city building rules for after they've banded enough people together to set up cities?

Looking a little Spore there, not that that's a problem.

Also, gamename, in case there isn';t one yet: Powers of Ten.

>>2761511

I figured if you could do it in some part with DnD, it wouldn't be a horrible idea to include two different scales of gameplay.

>>2761500
Humans would have to get just as mean. Rat poison and rat traps (using pulleys and levers to set them) would work initially to keep the population down. But when the poison starts to run out, and the rats don't fall for traps anymore... then it's up to the guard to drive them off personally.

>>2761524
No objection here.

Do the 'Civ' until an event, like a supermarket raid, then 'zoom in' on the party, whom you outfitted and selected beforehand from a list.

>>2761539
Now this is cool. Some people would just use the same characters day in, day out, while others could try out all sorts of roles.

Very cool. Would play.

>>2761502
What about them? Do you see lions darting after mice?

>>2761549
I was thinking a list of specialists.
Survivalists for when you're in the wilds, former employees of the store you're headed for who can access certain areas and know where shit actually is, Marines/Army dudes who know how to lead... All giving bonuses depending on the area and also gaining levels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planete_Sauvage

Heavily related

>>2761511
>>gamename, in case there isn't one yet: Powers of Ten.

I like. There might be better ideas, but this is good.

>>2761557
More like...

"Hey, ted, what's that?"
"It looks like a colomn of some sort OH HOLY FUCK IT'S MOVING!"
"EVACUATE THE TOWN! OH SWEET JESUS NO!"

http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/2/21701757/

>>2761549
>>2761539
>>2761558

Yes, I like this. And if character creation is kept ridiculously simple with a basic set of rules that apply to everyone of a particular class, it's much easier to keep everyone in a small community feeling individual and varied.

As far as naming, call it TinyLoli. It's a time-honoured /tg/ naming tradition that everyone adores.

>>2761571
Basic of basic stats. STR, CON, and INT. We don't need CHA, that would be the armydudes inherent ability (strong leadership) and the Executive's (Negotiation). Nor do we need WIS, that's also inherent abilities, albiet less often used (survivor and inspector)

>>2761584

Remember Rodentloli or TriggerDisciloli? Good times, good times.

>>2761558
I know what the idea is. I just think >>2761549 is how it would turn out.

I'd recommend against a level-based system. I think the setting would be easier to visualize and come up with accurate/good ideas for if the timeframe was set fairly soon after the shrinking. A few months, maybe a few years. Getting a plausible setting 30+ years afterwards as some people have mentioned will probably require more concentrated brainstorming than /tg/ can provide. With that in mind, the people are already "levelled" in their chosen areas of expertise. What could be used for character growth, then, is how well they've adapted to this new environment. They get a better sense of how to perceive the world, and relearn how their physical abilities really work. Plus how to modify their former skill set to apply when they're 5 cm tall.

>>2761588

I was thinking "Body, Mind, Perception."

Body for shit like strength, constitution, etc.
Mind for intelligence, aptitude, etc.
Perception for ingenuity, inventiveness, common sense, spotting, appeals to the crowds, etc.

Role skills would lead to either increased single stat bonuses for certain actions, or increased synergy between two stats for certain actions, or auto-successes, etc.

>>2761600
Sudden;y, the thief who was 4'5 no longer needs a lockpick.

>>2761610
much better than my old stat idea.

MIND, BODY, AND SPIRIT

>>2761611
??

Are you saying the thief who is 45 yrs old? Or the thief who was really really short preshrinking?

>>2761634
Really short.

He now fits into the lock!

The groundwork for the crunch has been laid.

I now pronounce this soon-to-be-short-lived project in-progress.

So.... risk-style civ for the city level and D&D with simple character base teams for events.

How does combat flow? Initiative count?

>>2761420
>>Also, can someone post the suptg link to the first thread on this setting?

Am going to archive this thread, and can't seem to find the first one. I'd like to put the link in this thread's description for ease of working on this later.

>>2761584
Im about to go to sleep.
I cannot express in words how badly I want to have a dream about tinypeople and adventures.

>>2761662
Brikwars ruleset.

>>2761662

I'm guessing initiative would be based on DM decision, a coin-toss, or some function of roles in the group.

I think Initiative should be based on one of three Speed Classes in the roles or the individuals' stats for Reaction Time: slow, average, fast.

Fast, of course, costs a lot more character creation points than Slow does.

>>2761662
How about... no initiative? Have some way of determining whether enemies or players go first, then have all players take their turn as a team.

Plot event: normal sized (4.5ft) loli shows up.

How about modifying the Fate rules?

>>2761683
THISTHISTHIS

I cannot express my hate for D&D's complicated-yet neccessary initiative system.
Also, this refines the 'teamwork' idea from before.

>>2761683

I'm down for this.

>>2761500
Plot event: The President stops by to say hello.

And he's normal sized.

Plot Event: Your scouting party, deep in enemy territory, finds a Vienna Sausage can in reasonable condition.

GHOLY SHIT, A PIKMIN TABLETOP

Good stuff in this thread. Time for me to pull out and do some writefaggotry, and maybe get the party version of the rules worked on. And sleep. Yeah I need that first.

We should move some of this to 1d4chan.

Plot Event: Your scouting party, deep in enemy territory, finds a normal size, tied up woman in good condition.

>>2761769
WRITE SHIT BEFORE SLEEPING. YOU WILL FORGET.

>>2761734

Ignore it, shit's disgusting.

Plot Event: Your scouting party, deep in enemy territory, finds a normal size, tied up Batman in good condition.

>>2761774
Must sleep before writing or it will be shit. I don't have anything particular in mind yet to forget. Mostly, I'd like to take some of the ideas from here and the other thread, and start fleshing out the setting.

We'll need to have another one of these brainstorming threads for this idea in a while.

>>2761787
I'll start one tommorrow afternoon or something, I think.

Plot Event: Your scouting party, deep in enemy territory, finds a normal-sized nothing in excellent condition.

Plot Event: Your scouting party, deep in enemy territory, finds a picture of two dwarves killing a sagefag. They are screaming. They are on fire. There is a bucket. The bucket is on fire.

Archived on suptg.

>>2761565
>>2761511
Why Powers of Ten? If we're reducing by a factor of 36... Powers of Six?

It's not bad, but I think it could be better.

Win thread is win.

>>2761410
I call it.

I'm going to run this as a Unisystem game. A group of people in a pub, shit happens, the first task is how the fuck to get down from a bar stool without broken bones.

It will be awesome.

>>2762321
Call it? Everyone in this thread could call it, and there probably wouldn't be a single finished draft, let alone something published.

I just had a very cool idea-

An entire civilisation in a huge 18-wheeler. living like the traction towns from mortal engines, constantly tearing apart other vehicles for spare parts and petrol, while absorbing people and culture where they find it. the vehicle slowly growing and growing until one day it stops for good, and settles as a stationary town, albeit an incredibly large and marvellously well defended one

>>2763744
This 'mortal engines' sounds fucking weeaboo to me. Nobody with a proper grasp of the English language would use such a fucking stilted phrasing, and therefore you should leave.

>>2763764

You fail so hard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Engines_Quartet

Like everybody else, I considered making a game for this setting back during the first thread.

It would be a miniatures wargame, conveniently letting you make much of your army out of found objects. The rules would be designed with facing and very short timesteps, to support a system where units can climb up bigger units. So your troop of needle-wielding militia could try to climb up an enemy rat rider's mount, kill him, and go all Shadow of the Colossus on the rat.

Because such a thing requires a very small timestep, the game has to be exceedingly streamlined to still play at a reasonable pace. The obvious resolution mechanic is a single roll of1dX+Mod vs Value, though I don't know if it would be worth it to lump together an entire unit's roll or not. Turns would obviously have to be single phase (probably move or attack).

But what got me stuck is that I don't know how to make movement, range, and adjacency move fast without a tactical grid. And the requirement for strong facing rules means a grid is a very bad idea.

tiny steam punk god yes.
and without any of the scaling up problems that happen IRL.
Magnifying glass/ laser pointer death rays, tesla coils match rocket volleys charges of the spider cavalry against the pipe cannon of the enemy

>>2763849 l aser pointer death rays, tesla coils match rocket volleys charges of the spider cavalry against the pipe cannon of the enemy

What, we quote Mars Volta lyrics now?

I imagine that to keep from extinction and to go logically with the new size, not only are humans now more agile and capable of greater leaps and bounds (we went over this in the last thread), but their metabolism and reproductive cycle are changed, while oddly their aging is not as much.

What that means is that the old meaning of time will lose it's meaning and anything beyond day and night will become muddled and confused as perspectives change. There will be adventurers whose parents never knew any other world than this, living alongside a few elders who mutter insane things about the old world because they lived it.

Also, my idea from the last thread was mouse farming. Mice would be great mounts, great for tracking down food in the grassy jungles, and great food themselves. Also can be pretty big. Little white lab mice will be easier but there will be ways to control big bulls that are wild mice. Bridles, saddles, the dangerous but profitable life of a herdsman/tamer, etc.

Of course the really badass barbarians, the kind who as a band will go after a cat, they ride rats (hueg guts!).

>>2761461
and how would the bird carry the coconut?

>>2761800
Plot event: I read this post and lol'd heartily.

And a vengeful wizard climbs up to the top of the tower built around the town's supply of the elixer of life. And after muttering the incantations he throws in the white demon stone and chaos emerges, destroying the village.

>>2763744

That'd make a great campaign. The PC's can control where they go to an extent, go on missions for fuel and parts, all the while trying to accumulate enough supplies that settling down becomes a viable option. maybe scouting out sites for the new city...

>>2763855
Kinda lol'd.

>>2763744
Spare parts? Good fucking luck changing a tire, even if there's a lot of you, when you're 5cm tall.

>>2763986

It'd be a bit of an epic undertaking, but it could be done i think. You'd need a lot of people, to work the jacks, and more to hang down from the op and get the nuts and bots off, and strings dangled from the top to drag the wheel up, with pulling teams on top... but, if you filled the entire back of the van with dwellings etc, it probably could be done.

>>2764003
Even with proportional strength, the amount of force needed for some of those things is probably too much for our 5cm people to provide. Nuts/bolts are tightened on TIGHT in many cases. Getting them off sometimes requires finding someone with a really strong arm, and that's for us normal people. Let alone lifting off a tire.

Now, what would be cool is the thought of people using it to get out of someplace where a plague hit or something else made their home unlivable, trying to find somewhere livable soon--before their truck broke down beyond their mere capacity to fix it.

>>2764080

All they need is a long enough lever. that'll do it right.

>>2764099
Fair enough. It'd still be a herculean task, but I'll grant that it's possible for them.

>>2763986

When your that small, a tire IS a vehicle.

Is anyone else reminded of The Borrowers/The Bromeliad Trilogy?

>>2763927
they could grip it by the husk

>>2764374

It's not a matter of where it -grips- it, it's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut.

Any more ideas?

>>2761864
Any ideas for a better name?

An African swallow could do it.

I like the idea of people shrinking... sort of forced fuel efficiency. Everybody gets smaller and uses less, prolly don't use cars anymore, and commuting doesn't happen. We get set back a century or so, and start again!

5cm people are really hard to work with, though. Go with something GI Joe scale, like 1/6 size, and things get interesting. Lawnmowers might be converted to vehicles (guy who said two 5cm people could turn a steering wheel? Wat?) Okay, so pocket knives become machetes instead of swords-as-big-as-you-are, but now we've got access to kitchen knives and shit. And more pets can be domesticated at that size.

I know it's kind of the point, to make most tech useless, but shit, I really doubt humans could survive at 1/36 scale. I doubt a team of humans could even down a stalk of corn to feed themselves at that scale. Most all prepared foods would go bad within weeks, and then it's all over.

>>2767007
Fuck year! I can imagine ~30cm people sitting around a campfire, one of them telling how he singlehandedly fought off a housecat. It'd be more like figting off a lion than a MEGABEAST that takes a line of spearmen to hold off, but I guess it depends on what kind of game you like.

>>2767007
People could down a stalk of corn, they'd just use a steak knife as a two-man saw. I don't think humanity as a whole would starve to death, but there would be massive famines for sure. You'd have to be tough and adaptable to survive.

I think there was a reason in the old thread why 5cm was chosen instead of a bigger size.

>>2767042
Oh. And the original thread wasn't archived, either. Hm, guess I'll have to wait for OP to come back and explain it.

I'm sure there's advantages to both, but they're different playstyles. I think the bigger player characters are, the less they'll use teamwork. I mean, it's certainly still important, but especially if "GI Joe" is mentioned as a reference frame, people will think they're playing DnD but in a "bigger" world. Maybe in the 5cm version, players would control more characters, maybe even become a sort of resource management game, though I may be getting a little too out there with that.

Hello everyone, OP here. I post, go to bed, wake up and by golly, the thread has grown! What are you people feeding this thing? Ideas, most nutritious... Anyway, to answer a few questions, for the game mechanics (still looking into the various systems) we went with 1:36 due to: the smaller, yet not totally useless, size makes the players think; it can get the creative modelling juices flowing, in that if you can raid the kitchen and garage and build something, then it stands to reason that your tiny player can build it also; also the small size forces players to look at their environment more and use what they can find / build / create, as opposed to “My gang leader is wearing G.I. Joe chest armor and boots, a Batman helmet with cape and needle-tipped spring loaded dart gun, driving an Action Man jeep”. We want people to see things like the toy jeeps and spring-loaded dart guns as vehicles for many people and 2 to 3-man team weapons respectively. And to make the visualisation easier, having the weight of objects multiplied by 36, and the strength of players reduced by 36. Maybe everyone can go to the gym for an hour and see how much they can bench-press to determine their character’s strength…

>>2767519
>strength of players reduced by 36
Don't do this. Proportional strength.

the original thread has been archived on sup/tg/, under the title "Little Folk": http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/2047216/

i'm not sure if the archive allows more posts, so this 2nd wave for ideas seems like a good idea. also, i believe that OP just copied and pasted the situation brief without reading thru it properly (as evidenced by the conflicting notes of implants shrinking and posing no risk, and the later sentence of implants causing death). After reading the archived post there are a few changed, I recommend browsing through it.

>>2767584
THANK YOU! Finally someone delivers, I couldn't find it to save my life.

Writefag here, lets see how well I can kill time tonight.


I was just a child, the day it happened. Night, actually. I was in my room, only about eight years old, when I heard what sounded like a car crash outside. I woke up from sleep, and tried to get up to look out my window.. But I couldnt stand. The blankets were heavy like they were made of lead, and the window was larger than anything I had ever seen, bigger than the sun on the clearest day.

I remember crying, and im not ashamed to admit it now. I was scared, and I know now that I adapted to my tiny size much easier than others. Maybe it was because I was already a child and small, maybe it just didnt shock me as badly. I really dont know.

But back to the story- my blankets were covering me, and it took some effort to get out from under them. I dont know how long it took, could have been minutes, could have been an hour.

( Cont'd. )

>>2767773
It took some work, but eventually I managed to escape the confines of the blankets. I crawled to the edge of the bed, using the light of my far-overhead window to see that jumping would kill me, it was like looking over the edge of the ten story building when my parents had taken me up to the roof of the hotel in town. I tried calling out for my parents, but either my voice was too weak or their room was too far, or maybe they were sleeping. I really dont know; or didnt, at least. Ill get to that in a minute.

When I called out for my parents, I heard my mice moving around in their cage and it gave me an idea- I crawled up my lamps power cord as carefully as I could, and got to the top of my dresser. There was the cage- as big as a movie theatre, looking like a very different prison than the one I always remembered opening and closing with ease. I moved closer to the cage, making sure to make some noise, and calling their names softly, to hopefully not spook them. One of them poked their head out of their cardboard box, and eyed me carefully. I had reached the edge of the cage, and as if at a petting zoo, held out my hand and calling quietly.

She scurried close, and I realized just how bad the situation was... My pet mouse was now as large as I was. That was a pretty fucked up moment for an eight year old, you know?

Bumping for more writefaggery.

Bump for the continuation of an excellent thread.

I dunno if this has been brought up, but consider how history and education would be impacted by this setting, eh? You can't really effectively use a computer or read a book if you're two inches tall. Maybe some people would be smart enough to transcribe materials from normal-human-sized font to text suitable for tinyfolk, but the basic need for survival might preempt that in a lot of cases. Big revival of oral histories and old-fashioned scribes.

>>2767570
YES, SERIOUSLY, IMPORTANT PHYSICS HERE.
Strength is relatively inversely proportional to size. For instance, a human might be able to lift something twice as heavy as itself, but ants are commonly known to lift things, what, ten times their own mass?

Semi-related: that's why mecha are ridiculous, anything that size wouldn't even be able to lift something half its weight; it would probably just collapse under its own weight.

>>2767878

I was scared, but I could tell by the way she was sniffing, that she at least recognised my scent.

And then I had the idea.

I walked over to the door of the cage and looked closely, it was just the simple kind that attached at the top with a loop of metal, and was loose enough that I could pull it open. Probably. I climbed up easily enough, and while it was heavy, I was able to move the loop, and the door fell with a crash.

The noise made the remaining three mice wake up, and they ruffled themselves out of their woodchips to see what the commotion was. Two of them promptly ran out of the cage, they were my newer ones that werent completely used to the cage, or me, yet.

I lowered myself down and repeated the caution with the other mouse, but it didnt give me any trouble either and came close.

I pet both of them and talked to them, and they seemed content enough, if not confused, just like I was.

( Cont'd. )

>>2768266
Going by organic standards, yes.
It's a machine. There are machines that can lift incredibly heavy things.
There are incredubly huge machines that do not collapse under their own weight.
Now being bipedal is certainly not the best design, I'll grant you that.

I hope someone archived this damn thing.

Nope.

>>2768328
I didnt think to ride the mice, though I could have probably pulled it off with enough time.
Hell, compared to some of the shit weve seen recently, me riding my mice would have been cake. But I digress.

I fashioned a sort of leash/harness out of some string I had lying around, and with some work, got my small fixable skateboard out of its carrying case. I grabbed a spare wheel and the four-sided wrench thing, knealt down on the skateboard, held on with one hand, and did a sort of 'Yah!' motion with the string I was holding in the other.

Holy fuck, do mice run fast. I remember wanting to scream but not being able, it was like riding the fastest rollercoaster knowing my face was literally an inch from the ground. The mouse stopped at the edge of the dresser, and I blew past; hauling ass, and we flew towards the ground in an almost comedic ball of fur, skateboard, and screaming little kid. I landed on the skateboard, busting my face and falling off from momentum, luckily with no real injuries other than my now bleeding nose.

I passed out, but eventually came to on my side, face stuck to the ground from the blood congealing. Grossed me out more than being an actual problem, but again, I was 8.

I touched my nose and cried out, but really, was otherwise fine. I located the skateboard and parts, they were undamaged. I traveled on the skateboard to the edge of my bed, my blankets covering the underside.

When I was probably a foot away, the blankets began moving up, and I saw a sight that haunts my dreams to this day.

There, directly in front of me, was a pink nose that was a large as my entire head, and two glowing yellow eyes that were even larger. And they were staring right at me.

( Cont'd. )

i would assume that the reason why ants can lift 10 times their own body weight is not their size, but their construction. they have what i believe to be the same structure (almost) as a crab, that is, internal muscles housed inside an exoskeleton which can handle all the extra pressure. a human, on the other hand, isn't built like that, and has a finite limit on strength to weight (muscle mass and anatomy [internal skeleton]).

bumpity bump bump

>>2768452
And, Im now tired.

Im going to continue this story regardless, because im enjoying it, but feedback would be nice; both in story and critique.

>>2768607
stop whining moar writing

bump

>>2768607

I'm liking it so far, though i can't really offer any in depth commentary until it is finished, or at least reaches a nice intermediate point.