Substratum Protocol, the Solo+ Apocalyptic Mystery TTRPG by Pandion Games
The Substratum Protocol campaign is nearing its end! There are less than 24 hours left to join over 600 scientists on the expedition to save the planet!
If you haven’t yet, check out the campaign before it’s too late!
There have been some fun updates since launch, including additional artwork by Galen Pejeau, new rules for environmental hazards, and a big story update!
If you want to see what the game is about, we also have a free preview PDF for you on the campaign page.
During our interview with Rascal News, we realized we had made a fundamental mistake in writing an open-ended mystery: We said what was at the core of the planet, an interdimensional portal.
The portal being is now just one possibility. We spent last weekend updating all the writing to now be an anomaly. The otherworldly abilities you get from taking stress are now Anomaly Influences, rather than Portal Influences, for instance.
The Expedition can still decide it's a portal, but calling it an anomaly opens up a huge range of possibilities. What is the anomaly that's splitting the earth open?
Is it a massive cosmic egg hatching a world eater as part of a natural lifecycle?
Did an advance interstellar ship accidentally exit hyperspace at the center of the planet due to a miscalculation, and its damaged engines are holding open a hyperspace bubble?
Is there a cult of advanced species calling forth eldritch gods with a powerful ritual that consumes planets to power it?
Substratum Protocol is about letting the clues and your answers determine what is really happening, and we think this update opens the floodgates for it.
In our campaign updates, we have been talking about the different sectors players can visit and their inspiration. These are all available publicly on the campaign - but we wanted to share the Fracture Opening sector with you here.
How the Depth Sectors Work
Substratum Protocol is a collaborative mystery game. The text gives hints and whispers of possibilities, but strays away from definite answers. What you discover and imagine at your table becomes canon to the story and the setting.
Each sector shows its location in the Fracture, includes in-universe handwritten notes from an unknown scientist, relevant art, and a table of events - each giving a glimpse into what the sector contains. Scientists can spend as much or as little time in a Sector as they want. When they're ready to venture deeper, whoever leads the way rolls for the Travel Action.
This is the first sector of the expedition experiences. At 1,300 kilometers long, it covers the distance between New York City to Miami, Florida. London, England to Naples, Italy. Melbourne, Australia to Alice Springs. Buenos Aires, Argentina to São Paulo, Brazil.
It is massive. Where did the fracture open in your game? What exists teetering at its cliff walls?
The world at the surface is a hellscape of the apocalypse, and much of the Fracture Opening is littered with crumbling buildings, detritus, and ancillary debris of civilization. Oceans spilling over the edge seem small in scale. Sitting suspended over it, is the Fracture Observatory. The Fracture Observatory, the home of Mission Control.
Furthest from the anomaly, this sector is rooted most in the reality of the surface. Here, players may find groups of survivors from the cities that tumbled into the great fracture, steam vents, cave ins, and earthquakes make finding solid footing and a reliable path difficult, and even here, strange subterranean creatures may make an appearance.
Old research stations, part of the Substratum Protocol's monitoring efforts may still be intact here, and dangerous fast flowing waters threaten to whisk away scientists into massive whirlpools to further below.
When we were first designing Substratum Protocol, the thought was that players would start in the action of the expedition and wouldn't really spend time on the Fracture Observatory or on the surface. The Fracture Opening was our way of showing what the surface was going through while still being en route. It is meant to showcase the incredible destruction happening, and give the players a sense of urgency to stop it from getting worse.
How do the scientists descend into the fracture before being left to their own power? Lowered on a cable lift? Paraglide down? Or perhaps they are more like hell jumpers, free-falling through the gargantuan opening (or Link entering the depths in Tears of the Kingdom!)?
The title screen fades to klaxon alarms and screams of the world above, slowly giving way to a deafening silence of rushing wind as the expedition descends past the cliff walls into the abyssal black depths of the Fracture Opening...
