I have been doing this for twelve years now. Writing against RPG-a-Day. Against. Again and again. Every day, every August, since 2015. Most often on my own, sometimes collaboratively with others here on d6ideas or across different (German) blogs.
2015: ArtifactaDay
2016: Loot-a-Day
2017: Rival-a-Day
2018: Ad-Blog
2019: RPG+Ally+a+Day
2020: Not One Step Back
2021: Veteran-a-Day
2022: The Thousand Titles of the Cat Emperor
2023: Sommerverdichtung (German only)
2024: CampaignConceptaDay
2025: A-Piece-of-History-Every-Day / Calculating World(s)history
And now? The German next door neighbours at Kritischer Fehlschlag have issued the rallying cry “Crime Scene” (German).
But here? After twelve years of doing this dirty work? There is but one possible answer:
The Dirty Dozen.
Interpreted via the lense of the so called Dirty Dozen of persistent organic pollutants such as DDT and dioxins (although an earlier thought was the likewise so called Dirty Dozen of biological weapons and this might still colour some of the entries).
One-hundred-and-fourty-four poisons and pollutants (in the widest, freest sense). Twelve each for twelve systems. Thirty-one days. Twelve years. Against RPG-a-Day. Again.
Lotus resdidue was a thematic and directly applicable block. The selection today as the second half of the Wild Dirty Coast Dozen is – perhaps also fittingly? – the leftover bits, not quite as easily fitting, not as on point, (not just) a bit tryhard, a bit off, a bit irritating. Thin threads, threatening to snap, as I try to hang poison interpretations from them.
- Unreal crystals – spillover from the start of reality, collected like driftwood on the Coast, stored away (contained?) by druids, effects
- Petrification – the petrified wood at the border of the March stands (mute) testimony to some event, that at least once led to this usually targeted magic to have spread like wildfire over a huge area in a true environmental catastrophe, and at least one sage seems to think that the stuff that enabled the spread could still be out there, buried within the rubble
- Will O’Wisps – the massed occurence of will o’wisps alomg stretches of the Jewel River could also be seen as an (persistent and spreading) environmental poisoning of sorts – or it might itself be rooted in some other hidden, harder to understand pollution
- Lotus fertilizers – the lotus itself is one thing, but the environmental dangers surrounding it are more complex than just its residues, the natural and alchemical agents used in its mass cultivation also lead to the growth and spread of all manner of other evil and dangerous plants and plant greatures around the areas of cultivation
- Mining alchemy – old pollution, whose effects still can be felt, the West of the March and the edge of the Kron Hills are plagued to this day with the effects of alchemical effluents from long lost and forgotten mining operations
- Spores – magical spores and fungi are of course a well known danger, in high concentrations dangerous enough to turn wide areas into deathzones, they are not particularly associated with the Coast, but rumour has it that in the Southern reaches of the March, ancient stockpiles of such poisons are located, build by who knows who in whatever ancient times