Prisoner Drop - Niv Lova Actual Play 1

I need a plan...

I’m always excited to help playtest a new game.

The first few sessions of Niv Lova by

Write Firster

have been a blast. I won’t attempt a dry description of the setting or the mechanics. I’ll just let you experience it through the story.

Character Creation

Why are you here?

Roll 5: Crime – You broke the law, and this is the price. What law did you break and why? It must have been serious.

What do you want?

Roll 4: Survive – You’re not here to make friends. There’s no law, no order, and no rules. You’ll cheat, steal and kill to stay alive. You’ll do whatever it takes, no matter what the cost.

Stats (Points allocated randomly)

MUSCLE (MUS): 0

VIGOR (VIG): 0

FINESSE (FIN): +1

MIND (MIN): +2

PRESENCE (PRE): +1

I assigned max hit points using the “normal method” to my character rather than the “hardcore method” of rolling. I wanted to make sure I had some chance of staying alive.

Garth Colley, Prisoner ADX 630321-753, Aka Knife

HP: 6

Starting Equipment

Knife

Bedroll

Backpack

Common Gun (8 rounds)

Skills

Sneak attack. Do +1d6 damage when attacking from hiding.

Quick sketch of Knife

I’ve never cared much for the law or the bastards that enforce it. They don’t know what I’ve been through.

Mom was a junkie who overdosed when I was eight. Never knew who my dad was. Gangs raised me. Brutal murders, hard drugs, and dirty hustles have been my life since I can remember.

Right and wrong has nothing to do with it. The streets eat the weak – there’s just predators and prey.

Prison was my second home. I never really could stay out for long. I’ve done stretches for robbery, assault, you name it. One crime has a way of leading to another.

I was a lifer, sent to supermax for stabbing up that CO. He didn’t like me. I hated him. I caught him off guard one day and put a piece of metal six inches into his eye socket.

My hopes of ever seeing daylight died with him.

“Knife,” the boys called me after that one. I was a king inside – even if my kingdom was a 6’ x 8’ room without windows.

Then, that thing happened up at Niv Lova.

I don’t know exactly what it was, and the talking heads won’t say. They just walled it off and fenced it up. Probably aliens, or some new tech or virus they shouldn’t have been messing with. They wouldn’t let anyone in or out.

Just when I thought I was going to rot in solitary confinement, a bunch of countries thought it might solve their prison overpopulation problem. Just lock them inside and forget about them.

Let the animals kill the animals.

Enough countries got on board, I guess, that they decided to turn this walled-off shithole into a prisoner dumping ground. They bagged my head, locked me in magnetic cuffs, and tossed me into one of their SDTs. You know, those new AI self-driving transport vans.

I guess the guards won’t even go into Niv Lova.

I heard the doors open, and the seat just dumped me out. I hit the asphalt flat on my face. A few minutes later, the cuffs unlocked.

The bag was off immediately. I fucking hate not being able to see.

It was like some kind of parking lot. Shady looking and overgrown and big. Grass and scrubby trees grew through the cracks. Trash was everywhere. The place smelled like shit.

Weather: Rain, Low Intensity (drizzle)

POI: None

Encounters: d6 Skinners, Range – Far

Scavenge: 3 food, 2 scrap

Not lost

Right next to me was a backpack. It had clothes and shoes and a bedroll. Hell, they even put my Glock and knife in there. Even left some rounds in the mag.

That’s the first time any pig has ever given me a weapon.

I chambered a round, tucked it in my pants, and shouldered my gear.

I guess this is home now. Don’t look like nobody’s coming back for me.

A few hundred feet away was a pile of debris and trash. I checked to see if I could find anything useful. Three cans of dog food and a couple of old car parts. If there’s one thing prison taught me, it’s how to make anything out of anything. I’m keeping them.

Then, movement…

Maybe 50 yards out, I saw…well, I don’t know what I saw. A bunch of spider looking things crawling and hopping around.

I got real low.

I’m no pussy, but you got to pick your battles sometimes. Those things had to be as big as a person, and they had strangely human heads.

The way they were moving wasn’t natural.

No sir. I want no part of that.

They scampered away, and so did I. There was an old, busted-up concrete building. Well, it wasn’t much of a building – holes in the walls, holes in the roof, no real doors.

But it was empty, so for now, it was mine.

I was stuck in hell’s asshole, but at least I was out of the rain. Now I needed a plan.

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So I’m excited to see what happens to this hardened criminal in the dangerous land of Niv Lova. He’s resourceful and no stranger to violence. However, reading through the game rules, I don’t think he’s quite ready for what he’ll encounter.

More to come…

Check out the Niv Lova playtest document here.