Actual Play - Toilet Skeleton

Today, I'm playing Toilet Skeleton by slasherepoch! It's a little solo game about being a piece of environmental storytelling. The explicit reference is to the Fallout games (which I've mostly absorbed through my brothers), but I'm sure we all can imagine lots of funny and quirky examples from any number of games. I'm excited to try it out!

I opted for a medium length game, of length 2d3, and got 6! So there will be 6 entries, prompted by cards. Before that, though, we have to generate some background information. My skeleton is found in a dining room (d12 = 11) of a vault or emergency bunker (d10 = 6). Their demise was due to malevolence (d4 = 3), which could mean things like raiders, robots, rebels, etc. They're holding a (d8 = 7) quest item (!) of "common" rarity (d20 = 8). So, a little side quest probably. Finally, there's something "guarding" our deceased - in my case, it's radiation or other ambient hazards (d6 = 4). That's a fun quirk - we were killed intentionally, so maybe the radiation is related, but maybe not. Time to put it together!

Dining room of a vault is a little funny! This could maybe be a mess hall, but I think it's more fun if it's more intimate. How about this - our skeleton is in the private quarters of the vault overseer, where they're face down on their plate. They were an engineer operating the vault's special tech (which is now the ambient hazard), and involved in a movement to unseat the overseer. The overseer invited them to dinner and killed them, igniting armed revolution within the vault, and in the chaos, the ambient hazard was released. I think nuclear generator / flooded with radiation is the most obvious thing here - it's maybe a little pedestrian in the world of Fallout, but our quest is pretty pedestrian too. What is our quest item, anyway? It sounds like probably everyone in the vault died, so it's probably not about retrieving something personal. If someone outside the vault wants something from inside, it probably relates to the nuclear generator - maybe a schematic? That sounds cool - someone from outside figures the only way you get this bad of radiation is from a reactor meltdown, and wants to recover the designs. I think we're ready to begin journaling!

A skeleton, seated at a dining room table, face-down on their plate. Strewn about their plate are various pages of technical diagrams, and a manual for the operation of a nuclear reactor, with handwritten marginalia, offering corrections. At the door to the room is a well-dressed skeleton, surrounded by various more roughly dressed skeletons, armed with tools. The well-dressed skeleton has a few doses of poison.

Final entry: A hastily written note. "Things just aren't going to get better. Jamie told me this won't ever work, and who knows if Andrews changes his mind, but I think this is our only chance. I've brought the read outs and tables, and we'll talk about them after dinner. I just hope I can make him see sense." [Four of clubs - a controversial opinion you hold. Clubs special: Only allude to the prompt, but don't expand upon it.]

Second-to-last: "I went over the specs again, in preparation for the meeting. Andrews has been saying that our data doesn't make any sense, that it's obviously outside the operating norm, as laid out in the manual they gave us, that all the vaults are supposed to use. But this time, I went through the whole generator, piece by piece, and you know what I found? They lied! They fucking lied. We must have some kind of experimental generator. Or maybe they sabotaged it. Either way, the data is right, and we're cooking too hot. It won't last much longer. If Andrews doesn't see reason, well... He has to. Right?" [Queen of Spades. Is this place powered? How? Is that weird?]

Third-to-last: "Talked to Jamie today about our manual - I want to go over some stuff in it, and I noticed that the pages were still just as crisp as I remembered them! My books in my room have all gone kind of yellow and warped, but the manual should be just as old. We figure it might have something to do with the radiation spillage. Cool for archival purposes but might be a useful data point when talking to Andrews. Play up that anecdotal angle. He's a scientist too, but maybe politics has softened his empirical side." [Jack of Hearts. What are you writing on? How is it legible? How is it preserved?]

Fourth-to-last: "Rumbles from outside. Or maybe inside, it's tough to tell. We can see the shakes on the output meters, but not their source. What's going on out there? Are they still fighting? Is this the future we've won? Dying deep underground, oblivious to what's really going on? Hard to shake these thoughts sometimes. The reactor isn't looking good, makes everything seem imminently doomed. Committee meeting tonight though. I'll have to ask Asma what she thinks. Jamie's agitating for a more direct line of action. Maybe he's right." [Ace of Spades. Does war ever change?]

Fifth-to-last: "Andrews is pissed. Says we've been fomenting. Fomenting! Well, maybe. Probably best if I don't write down too many names, in case Andrews' goons pick this up. Jamie, and I think I can say Jamie, because who doesn't know what he's been going around saying, has a bunch of the other techs and engineers riled up, and me too, damn it. It's worse than we thought. It's obvious that something isn't right with the reactor. We're not big enough of a vault to be outputting this much power." [Two of Diamonds. Is it just you in here?]

First entry: "Been noticing a few things odd about the reactor recently. At Jamie's insistence, I'm keeping a few notes about it. He's put together a committee to look into it. Me, ███████, Asma, █████, and ████. Nice to have a little puzzle - it can get boring down here. Plus we've got Andrews' full support! Good, because I wouldn't want to get on his bad side. Hope to have this tidied up nicely." [Seven of Clubs. Something hostile nearby.]