INCURSION (JAM PROTOTYPE)
A downloadable game
THE AGE OF THE HUNTER IS ENDING.
It began 20 years ago, when aliens landed in several locations on earth for one day, made no apparent effort to communicate with humanity, and then left. In their wake they left ecological disaster, mass death, and an assortment of powerful artifacts with dangerous and unpredictable properties.
Overnight, our understanding of the universe changed. We knew we weren't alone, and we knew we didn't have the most advanced technology. We knew there were things out there that we feared, and things left behind that we wanted for ourselves.
At the same time, nothing changed at all. World governments remained largely the same. The Cold War continued just as it ever had. We had advanced alien technology on our planet now, but we could hardly get to it safely, let alone ask its creators what it was for and how it worked.
Borders went up around the Incursion Sites, official institutes were set up to study the Incursion Artifacts for the good of all humanity, and for any other interested parties there were Hunters. In the boom towns on the edges of Incursion Sites, illegal salvage became a lucrative (if dangerous) prospect for displaced locals and hungry newcomers alike.
But of course, it didn't last. The Incursion Sites killed off most would-be Hunters early in their careers. In the past 5 years, military police crackdowns have put most of the survivors behind bars. For the few who still have their lives and their freedom, the final nail on the coffin was automation- the Institute's new drones have picked the IS mostly clean.
But there's one last Artifact that the Institute doesn't know about. The Golden Sphere. The Wish Granter. The biggest of them all, the one that could get you out of any trouble you can imagine. It's even more dangerous than usual, a trip to the heart of the IS and back, but with a well picked team you might just make it. The age of the Hunter is ending, and this is your last job.
INCURSION is a hack of FIST, written for the FIST ULTRA JAM, largely inspired by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's 1972 novel Roadside Picnic, and intended for short-form play with 3-5 players and a GM. This is a science fiction horror game. Content warnings for: intense violence, grievous bodily injury, potential confrontations with a military police force, cosmic horror, body horror, illness, player character death. Depictions of broken bones, chemical exposure, radiation, damage to lungs, damage to hearing, damage to vision (though not directly to eyes), panic attacks, and game-mechanical consequences of many of these types of injuries
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Incursion is a Roadside Picnic/Stalker spin on FIST and MOONGRAVE. Notably, it twists the formula by having the Zone be mostly scavenged out, but one big prize still remains.
The PDF is 27 pages, with a simple, unornamented, technical manual style layout. It's easy to read and uses white space well, but there are no interior illustrations.
Mechanically, Incursion deviates from FIST's loose structure and saturday morning cartoon tone. It's a gloomier, more desperate game, and it relies on specific mechanical frameworks to reinforce that.
Doom is a new resource that accumulates during the game's first phase, and imperils you later. Phases are now a thing. The game consists of a trip out into the Zone, and a trip back. Each trip takes three days, and encounters and camps are evenly spaced between them. There is a concrete end point, and when characters die their players can't reroll and come back in.
The writing of Incursion is really solid and direct. I don't think I've seen many games take such a no-nonsense tone, and it works for the material. You could just read this game and still feel like you've played it, and that's impressive.
However, in terms of gameplay, this *is* still a playable thing. There's a small assortment of FIST TRAITS, as well as new INJURIES that debuff you after you receive them.
For GMs, there are roll tables to generate encounters on the journey across the Zone. There's also plenty of advice throughout on how to run it, and a deep breakdown of the philosophy of the game. It's all a good read, and worth not skipping.
Overall, if you like games that lean on tone and atmosphere, that have heavier and bleaker vibes, and that explore their characters and the landscape around them, I'd strongly recommend this. It's a great FIST hack and an equally solid standalone and it has a lot that's worth reading even if you aren't going to run it.