Live Interview Tonight, and a Mysterious Barrier Lies Ahead!
8 months ago
– Wed, Apr 03, 2024 at 11:10:38 AM
Hello Backers!
Tonight at 7PM Eastern Time, we will be on RPGs Uncovered to talk about Substratum Protocol!
You can watch on
Twitch or
YouTube. Come by and say hello! We'd love to see you there.
We are rapidly approaching 17k raised! A huge shout-out to all our 322 supporters! You have made this our biggest campaign to date, and we still have 22 days to go.
The latest poll results are in, and today we're going to take at the
Barrier Event Horizon depth sector! This sector is a strange one, and depending on the events you roll up, what your table ultimately concludes will be very different. You'll notice that as we travel deeper, the certainty of exactly of what a sector is becomes more fluid.
As players uncover clues, answer portal questions, and gain strange portal influence powers, the world shapes itself around their answers and actions. For that reason, we want to make sure we leave room for their answers to fill the world.
The Barrier Event Horizon
When deciding what each sector would be, I had the idea of a sector that protects the inner core from the rest of the planet, and the barrier itself has strange properties. Perhaps it is why as you descend, the gravity suddenly shifts and changes, and you are climbing upwards towards the core now?
But what would the barrier actually
be? This is where the events that are rolled and the clues and theories players have to date really take over. Some of the options we include is a dense field of time that slows all things that enter it, and the scientists feel like they're walking through molasses.
Perhaps it's a massive, sentient organism feeding off the portal's energies and radiating the alpha particle radiation that creates the grove our scientists just came from. Can it communicate with the expedition as they must enter its gel-like that encircles the Inner Core?
Or it's wholly artificial, and we discover another species of scientists quarantining the area through advanced technology. Is it to study the portal? Harvest the energy and power that comes from it?
Scientists may find their voices distorted and garbled, hallucinations as their brains try to process time faster than it is occurring. Pockets of instability see small, unstable interdimensional portals appear and disappear. What comes through?
What we do know, is that the barrier separates the rest of the planet from the raw, unfiltered
thing at the center that we call the portal. Once the expedition makes it past the Barrier Event Horizon, all bets are off as to what reality may show us.
Until next time, Expedition Team!
-Andy Boyd
Pandion Games
Designing the Exosuit & The Alpha Particle Grove
8 months ago
– Fri, Mar 29, 2024 at 04:36:38 PM
Hey Backers!
Wow, at the time of this writing we are at 13k raised with 265 of you pledging your support! Truly amazing!
With another update, comes another deep dive into a depth sector that you voted for, but first a brief look at what has happened since the last update, and our Illustrator shares how he designed the expedition's exosuit!
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Dicebreaker covered Substratum Protocol, our first major press coverage since we started Pandion Games in 2021, and it's all thanks to you! This was a huge, wonderful surprise for us.
- We coined the term 'deep delving mystery genre' while working on Substratum to describe the games we were inspired by, and people are starting to use the term! So that's cool.
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Rene Plays Games released a bonus podcast episode to play Substratum Protocol solo, and it's great!
- Substratum Protocol has a curated playlist on Spotify - set the deep delving mood.
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Leaderboard Reviews took a look at the free preview PDF, and wrote up a review. We appreciate them catching our humor throughout the book!
We also made significant progress this week on the final section of the book that needs work: The Field Notes bestiary. All the creatures are in place, and we are adding the unknown-scientist's writings across the pages now. Originally, we only commissioned 5 creature illustrations, but we loved Galen's illustrations of our bizarre creatures so much that we now have 11 illustrations in the bestiary!
Designing the DSPRT MK I Exosuit
Galen Pejeau, the illustrator on the project, shares his inspiration for the iconic exosuit for Substratum Protocol. We were adamant that the suit be science-oriented in both aesthetics and features, and Galen knocked it out of the park.
Hey folks, with Substratum Protocol out on Backerkit, I wanted to show off the art piece from it that I'm most proud of, the DSPRT suit! I have to draw a lot of different spaceguys for games, and the brief was to produce a science-oriented exosuit in four colors only!
The layout had a lovely retro tone to it, so my mind immediately ran to the Usborne Book of the Future, a reference I love to go back to. So much of the art in there is built out of a limited, very 60's/70's color palette.
Combine that sort of aesthetic with the goofiest of the early NASA prototypes for exoplanetary exploration, and wham, cool suit that draws itself. The 3D printers were a must. The Earth is... big, and it would take a few meals and resources to walk to the center of it.
The Alpha Particle Grove
It was a close race between The Alpha Particle Grove and Barrier Event Horizon. Make sure to vote in the next poll for which sector you want to hear about next!
This close to the portal, our understanding of the laws of the universe breaks down. GM's, if you haven't introduced the strange and cosmic yet, this is the sector to really crank it up!
Anyone familiar with our other games knows that we love imagining alien ecology, and at 3,822 kilometers below the surface, the Alpha Particle Grove is a flourishing alien environment. The flora and fauna here use the intense alpha radiation much like we use oxygen, and it's not just biological creatures here, either.
While the sector is full of life, the air sizzles with radiation deadly to Terran biology. The scientists will find themselves in a lush paradise while their suit's radioactivity alarms scream and flash red in the background. Getting caught with a suit breach or blown airlock in your inflatable habitat will incur extreme radiation poisoning.
Strange tree analogs shift and move in response to the expedition team, are they just curious? Hungry? Telepathic fungus may seed connections to their exosuits through spores and mycelium weaving into their systems to speak through or control it, and joyous crystalline creatures dance about manipulating time for their entertainment, while transparent
ghostwolves exist just outside their periphery. And that's the normal stuff.
The creatures adapted to living here can take all of this in stride, but the expedition is unfamiliar with the ebb and flow of this nature. When the radiation thickens and aligns, rifts in reality can start time loops, give views to other dimensions, manifest fears to reality, and much more.
Is all this a product of the portal? A side effect or its purpose? Perhaps this radioactive ecology has grown to coexist with the portal's energies and always grows alongside it. Maybe it is artificial in nature, terraformed by a sentient alien species? We don't have enough data to know yet. All we do know, is the alpha particle radiation that allows all this life to happen is emanating from further below.
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Thank you all again for the amazing support! We are blown away. Make sure to vote in the poll for the next sector we'll talk about!
-Andy Boyd
Pandion Games
24 hours in, and the Ancient Civilization!
8 months ago
– Wed, Mar 27, 2024 at 12:41:49 PM
Hello! Andy from Pandion here!
24 hours into the campaign, and we are blowing past all of our previous campaigns by leaps and bounds. We are truly grateful for the outpouring of support from all of our fans!
In our first update, we posted a poll asking which sector you'd like to know more about. The results are in, and the ancient civilization sector was the overwhelming choice! Let's discuss the lore, events, and my own inspirations in including it. Make sure to vote for the next sector we'll cover!
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.
The Ancient Civilization Sector
Buried 637 kilometers beneath the surface, this is the first sector the expedition encounters after the Fracture's massive opening. A sprawling ruin of a civilization that predates our species. Who used to live here? What were they like? Why did they die out? How advanced were they? Did they deal with this same situation in their far distant past?
Inspired by the short story "The Green Marauder" by Larry Niven, I was fascinated by the idea of an intelligent and advanced species that existed before photosynthesis. A civilization so old that oxygen was toxic and corrosive to them. The first algae that bloomed in the oceans that filled our atmosphere with oxygen, was the apocalypse of their world.
While exploring through the ruins, players may find ancient diseases, still whirring and blinking computer terminals, or friendly but malfunctioning artificial intelligences. Perhaps scientists will discover scriptures speaking of the same catastrophe the expedition faces today. Are there any biological remnants left of this long-forgotten species? What dangers or creatures have made their home here since the collapse?
Joyride around in a decaying transit system across the ruins, perhaps too old to still carry passengers, or wade through rivers cutting narrow passages to sectors further below.
Regardless of the splendor or decay you find here, you can't help but think if in another millennia that next intelligent species will be walking in your ruined cities if you cannot put a stop to the portal far below!
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Comment below what you would like to discover in the Ancient Civilization, or possible events that could unfold while you explore!
A New Actual Play Released Today
A new actual play podcast drop for Substratum Protocol using its solo rules at Rene Plays Games.
"This game is so wonderfully weird and stressful, playing scientists in a desperate expedition to the center of the earth to confront a cosmic portal is such a gnarly concept." - Rene Legault
Give the episode a listen here on Spotify, or your favorite place to listen to podcasts.
Thanks!
-Andy Boyd
Pandion Games
We're Funded! Thank you so much everyone!
8 months ago
– Tue, Mar 26, 2024 at 11:27:40 AM
Wow, what a whirlwind of a morning! Thanks to everyone's support, you funded Substratum Protocol in 3 hours and 45 minutes! The expedition to save the planet is happening!
Below is a poll to vote on which depth sector you want to hear about! We will release regular updates about the highest voted for sector talking about its hinted lore, events to uncover, environment, and creatures to be found, and ways that players and the GM can build upon the world.
If you have any questions, comments or just want to share your excitement with us, jump into the
Community to leave your message!
Thank you again from the entire team, and keep an ear out for more to come!
-Andy Boyd
Pandion Games
