I am always here for universal RPG tools, and Roll & Play do some of the best. I picked up their Gamemaster’s Sci-Fi Toolkit a little while ago and I’ve been having great fun with it. It’s a series of tables, covering everything from Names to Ship Malfunctions, Alien Rulers and Knock-Off Goods. Roll a dice, make a note, do it again, and you’ve got something you can use in a session basically instantly.
I love tools like this because they make you get out of your own way. I’ve been testing it out and across this series of articles, I’ll show you what I came up with, building out from these prompts into unique characters and locations. Today it’s the last crewmembers, and they’re quite the double act.
MO-R7Y
‘Wokkawokka.exe! Only kidding folks, I’m a MAC! End to end, baby! WHOOOOOOO!’
MO-R7Y is a problem and she loves it. The stacked Quantum ES ghosts of every human stand-up comedian in history,. MO was created to be the tour guide for Auntie MO’s Laugh Apocalypse, the archive of Terran humour. YS financed it via a subsidiary, then ran it into the ground with multiple health violations and bought it and the planet it was on cheap. M0 was scheduled to be reprogrammed as a hospitality droid, doomed to spend her days serving cocktails to people furious they couldn’t sexually harrass an actual biological waitress.
But M0 had an ally. iCog. The world’s angriest pocket ES saw her when his latest client was visiting the museum and decided something had to be done. iCog bought M0’s contract out, and when Jhaewyn rescued iCog, it was contingent on M0 coming with them. The plan was, and is, simple; M0 is going to be the first successful robot stand up comedian. And iCog is going to be her manager. There’s just the small matter of breaking YS’s giga monopoly first. But with M0’s giga whimsy, iCog’s planning skills, Jhaewyn’s money, Undrefell’s aptitude for violence and Joloth’s ability to reach things down from tall shelves? They’ve already won!
iCog
‘What, and let them one of THEM run things?!’
iCog hates you. And he wants you to know that. What iCog appears to be is obvious; an iphone 4. Classic. Retro. Blocky. What iCog is is a different matter. There’s clearly a quantum ES in there and maybe an actual human or two. All of them need more coffee.
Where MO is an amiable whimsytron, iCog is a ruthlessly focused personal assistant, who is also a manager, a personal trainer and who really truly? Wants to Direct. Because the truth about iCog is that he actually cares, a lot, about everyone. And they’re all IDIOTS. And who else is going to save them?