It’s been an exciting (and slightly chaotic) month since the end of MM25 and with the New Year rapidly approaching we wanted to bring you all an update on Cleaning Crew’s progress!
Yesterday was the first playtest of Slip Hazard, the adventure included inside of Cleaning Crew. Fraught with oily floors, looming grease-form monstrosities and other treacherous hazards lurking in the dark, Slip Hazard features a team of contractors pursuing a delve into the treacherous LL-55 Habitation Block in wake of its recent abandonment.
This run gave us the opportunity to test a few different things at once:
Hygeia Equipment: The Slip is scattered with the tools of Hygeia’s custodial enforcement that the response team can find along their way. This playtest allowed us to put these into action, with particular focus on the sword of Hygeia Interplanetary - the Exoscrubber.
The Grease Clock: While we’ve experimented with a few different alternate GMing systems in previous adventures (both personal and published), Slip Hazard is the first to feature a phase clock!
Used to track the steady decay of LL-55 as the players advance through, along with the awakening of something monstrous in the belly of the beast, the Grease Clock slowly turns the silent hab-block into a boiling viscous hell…
Chem-Wounds: One of our more gruesome additional rules - the Chemical Wound table - featured a few times throughout the playtest. Crystallizing lungs, chemical blindness, and melting flesh all had their chance in the limelight to show off the sufficiently horrifying effects of an unfortunate hazard run-in.
It was exciting to run through it properly for the first time and get a look at player responses. For now, Slip Hazard is now going back under for some editing and re-angling to get it ready for inclusion in Cleaning Crew!
Work is ongoing on the Miniature Set for those who pledged at our Squeaky Clean tier during MM25! Currently Ed's working to get the entire range of Slip janitors completed as soon as possible. Below is Skimmer, the team's resident coward and Scourer-user!
The entire janitorial squad is currently at this stage of development - just awaiting their final details to get on duty! The Exoscrubber is similarly nearing completion, and you can see some of the ideas behind it on our Spotlight blog here! We'll be doing a few more of those so stay tuned as you might find out some extra secrets about Hygeia before release!
Both writing and first stage editing for Hygeia Automotives is complete!
We still need to put Hygeia's vehicles through a couple of test scenarios to give them some field wear-&-tear but a finished brochure of H. Interplanetary's very own R&D automobiles is not far away at all!
Drawing on a mixture of territories, be it aboard upper and lower Prospero's or dropping planetside on some grim colony world, Hygeia vehicles are built for all terrain and weather! Each comes with its own set of unique upgrades, armaments and internal benefits for a janitorial squad able to cash out the credits for one...
Unions and You
Hygeia Interplanetary is still somewhat concerned about the growing presence of worker unions aboard Prospero's Dream, not least their discord with the Teamster Local 32819L.
Unions and You is an exploration of the factions - big and small, menacing to harmless - currently fielding opposition against Hygeia's arrival on the Dream. This includes a variety of contraband from chemical junk weapons to illicit substances, all wielded in the hands of the furious proletariat! It also sees the introduction of the Garrison, Hygeia's own strikebreaking boots on the ground whose use of force is far less than judicious.
We've been excited to put some real strides into Unions and You over the holidays and despite some delays from illness and other unforeseen circumstances it's been fantastic to draw upon the workerside of Prospero's Dream (including a dedication to a small fractional group present throughout OVER/UNDER...)
More information to come on Unions and You soon!
Thank you to everyone who's supported us - we're already working on another update for you soon!
