Right!
So, The Bad Doctors Parkour post fucking imploded my mind, the CORPSE//WORK system, and my entire mental wheelhouse. My old posts about CORPSE // WORK - ignore those rules (save those about gun creation) not the lore. This post is where the rules are at now.
I will keep the old posts up for those interested in seeing designs evolve.
So, get a load of this.
This is the entire system, character creation and everything. Leaner, meaner, and in motion.
(Dare i say PARKOUR)
I can see now that CORPSE//WORK essentially works as a combat only system, à la Luke Gearing: Handle all non-violence with RP (and then not quite. See below.). Handle violence with dice.
This is the system now. Combat-first. Built for movement, spectacle, and consequence.
It handles violence with choreography and dice. I handle everything else—grief, desire, memory—with roleplay, procedures, and joy-style play. Leverage, asking How, Why. Drilling down into characters+world. Rip them from my Blog.
You can bolt the bullet ballet onto FIST. I sure will:
FIST gives you enough abstraction to manage downtime, missions. It is chuck full of juicy traits and tables, and with a few rolls and lines drawn between the results, you have weird operators and a weirder world.
Then you rip out the systems combat ribcage: delete HP, delete stats in combat. Only your destination, movements and weapons matter now. John wick does not ask what traits he has. He jams a pencil into someones eye, independently of numerical abstractions and attributes.
Throw those things out, replace them with words.
Do keep traits or other painterly features you like from the system you reincarnate—translate them so the character also receives a Signature or weapon/rig if said traits needs to work in combat.
And then?
Then?
You Bullet Ballet.
CORPSE//WORK plays at the speed of blood spat from self-bit mouth.
It’s about exposure. Decisions under fire. Life as currency. Meat as obstruction. Bullets counted.
It isn’t fair. It isn’t clean. It shouldn't be.
But now its fast and violent to match its theme. And it stands by itself.
DISCLAIMER
This game is not fully tested. At all. But now, this has actually been demoed.
I have run a short shootout demo based on Hades and John Wick now—not quite a one shot or a real demo with meaning—but it was more easily understandable than I thought, and as hectic as I had hoped.
Combat slows down when a character FAILS//RISKS and must make a TRESHOLD TEST, but it seems to do so meaningfully, with some baited breath. I think players can easily find their footing if I provide a printout of the actions.
Combat feels breakneck and rollercoaster-like.
Bringing horrific risks is really important as the psychopomp. The player is incentivized to submit to the rig, and the GM is incentivized into using "More" to both help players in the short run and make it worse for them over time.
With the upcoming rules for OBOLS that work both in and out of combat, the player will be incentivized to use these to make dark bargains and avoid failure too.
Rolling sloppy-drippies is incredibly subversive, wince-inducing, and forces players to deal with hard problems imaginatively.
Blasting through a hundred mooks alleviates this.
F I S T J A M
It gives me an objective, and a venue for feedback.
W H A T I S A S L O P P Y D R I P P Y
Create new sloppy drippy tables for weapons you want to impact the world differently.
W H A T I S A G U N // BULLET
The rules about COVER, OPEN, LOCK, OVERDRIVE are all of utmost importance. And since they are all very material, they help anchor the system to the fictional world.
UNBIRTH // UNLIFE
Use whatever character creation your base system demands.
CORPSE//WORK doesn’t care how you came into this world. It only cares what you bring back from the other side.
If there are bennies, popcorn, inspiration dice—whatever—they’re now called OBOLS.
The Market doesn’t give them freely.
You earn them by completing jobs or by bending your story into one of the ritual shapes described here. The Market likes this.
Now choose whether Y O U A R E R I G G E D or whether Y O U A R E A S H A D E.
Says BLAME! so probably Tsutomu Nihei
T H E A T R E O F W A R
Set the stage.
CORPSE//WORK isn’t a tactical sim.
But it is physical. It is material. It is where-you-stand and what-you-move-through.
The method of ad-hoc generation asks:
“What if someone names 1d4+2 elements, and you must use them to move?”
That’s gorgeous. Do that. It’s a dance built of constraints.
But I do things a little differently.
My Method (the incomplete opera)
I think with clutter. With risk. With meat.
Each building should feel different.
An occult hospital has MRI halos, soul-pacifiers, IV drips of whispering ichor.
An old-world library has chutes, chandeliers, ancient ladders, archivists gone feral.
I’m building generators to support this—but they’re not ready. I'm still building the method even. Buit i did realize during the demo:
The Bad Doctors indoor terrain generator or Super Clarks outdoor terrain generator to generate the general mise-en-place.
Start with the bones. Then flesh it.
I advise to set this in a structure afforded by the intelligence tables from FIST.
Add to each location
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Cover and Open lines: define where you’re safe, where you’re a silhouette.
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Clutter: junk, dead screens, jawbones, shattered drones. Fictional friction.
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Mooks: not for balance, but for bite. They are meat between you and an objective.
Make them memorable. They may die. They may come back. This can be used for comedy, or for sorrow. What one thing makes these mooks special as a group, and special as an individual. Use the methods here to answer both. Make mooks know. Give the players a reason to keep at least one alive. It establishes connection, gices possibility for recurrence. Let mercy be the best means of interrogation. Afford the little way. Allow for pacifist runs in a death-driven world. -
Kinetic Elements: What moves? What might fall? What hides momentum?
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Dangerous Objects: Gas leaks. Soul-mirrors. Improvised momentum engines.
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Witnesses: Shades, primarily. Crowds, ghosts, children. Do they cower? Do they cheer? Is there someone Rigged ready to spring at you?
Character-world relation: What NEEDS does characters rigs have? What chokes does the player characters have? This is not about being a fan of the characters, or looking at them through crosshairs. It is about making sure that since they are part of the playworld, the playworld must obviously also reflect them. The fruit springs from the tree that can bear it.
Everything should be usable. Nothing is just aesthetic.
Don’t place chandeliers unless someone’s going to swing from them and shoot.
Your job is to tempt players into momentum.
Build spaces where bullet ballet feels inevitable.
Make them move.
Make them choose cover over clarity.
Make them want to run, scream, dive, fire, fall.
Make them realize that guns are not laser beams—they are line of sight, obstruction-aware, and intimate. You need to point them correctly for them to kiss death.
That’s the theatre.
A note on table time speed
To preserve speed (that is, the time it takes for an action to resolve) mooks SCREAMANDCRY//CHOKE and die from the second sloppy drippy - no roll from either - to fasten table time.
so 1 sloppy drippy = scream and cry, or die afterwards
2 sloppy drippy = dead mook
You can roll them though, for gristly gore and satisfaction.
A note on cover:
Guns cannot shoot into COVER. some types of cover you can circumvent by moving to the other side. That would be your chest-high wall. Others are trickier to deal with: Smoke clouds. Others are negated by you being near them: Camouflage.
Don't worry about ducking. Everyone that is smart ducks in combat. Allow the player that too. if they want to lie down to be in cover, fine.Remember that makes them downed too for +1d6 treshold tests.
I am not your mother.
T A K I N G A C T I O N
COMBAT
All combat actions take momentum unless noted.
Killshot (2 sloppy drippy. requires vantage point)
Called shot (choose hit location. that category becomes 1 larger. 1 Sloppy Drippy. requires vantage point)
Fan the Hammer (2 Sloppy Drippy (you pick), 1d6 bullets)
Spray (1 sloppy drippy. Grouped targets. spend 1d6 bullets)
Point Blank (2 sloppy drippy, requires vantage point)
Riddle/Brawl (1 sloppy drippy. starts at 1-4 failure chance unless otherwise covered)
Target is downed (Puts them on the ground (and downed), treshold 1d6 harder until they stand. spend momentum)
Smackdown (1 sloppy drippy, spend momentum)
Execution (kill immediately, no roll. requires incapacitated enemy)
Supress (If enemy enters zone uncovered, target then rolls 1 sloppy drippy. spend 1d6 bullets)
Wound (can only kill as risk on failure , can be repeated +1 time)
Watchdog (Declare what you’re watching for. If it happens, you take 1 action out of sequence. There is a 1 higher failure chance for all actions you take until you stop watching—your attention is divided.)
Lock (reloads your weapon)
Watchdog (Declare what you’re watching for. If it happens, you take action out of sequence. There is a 1 higher failure chance—your attention is divided.)
and with a pencil! (use new improvised element to do harm. 1 sloppy drippy.)
HIT LOCATION TABLE (2d6)
copied in here, sorry for my shit-ass version of this: Glory goes to the Occult Apprentice.
if it is important, and you are in doubt about where a bullet hits, use the hit location table.
If someone wants to hit something specific, but there is no vantage point and it seems reasonable, let the player say the category they want, and it takes on the "higher category." So wanting to hit eyes would be eyes+head: 2-3-4-5, and wanting to hit hands would be 11-12-2-3.
I mix the hit location cordial with the absinthe-strong sloppy-drippy tables for mind-blowingly specific violence... And because I am utterly addicted to creatively interpretting tables.
2–3 Eyes Rare, vulnerable, intimate
4–5 Head High lethality
6 Legs Mobility, balance
7 Arms Reach, weapon use
8–10 Torso Common, often fatal
11–12 Hands Precision, control
MOVEMENT
All movement save bolting requires use of a new element in the fiction—as in new to this sequence. A mooks shoulders and his head are not seperate elements.
jump (move laterally or gain altitude, gain more OR both by spending momentum)
swing (move laterally, gain momentum, can gain altitude by spending momentum)
climb (gain altitude, requires holds)
wall-run (move laterally, lets you jump off vertical surfaces, gain momentum)
slide (move laterally, gain momentum)
roll (move laterally, preserve momentum)
ride (move laterally, gain or preserve momentum, requires moving object to ride)
flip (redirect momentum shhhh i know that's not real)
Bolt (move laterally, preserve momentum. Does not need an element)
GENERAL
interact (any nonviolent action with an object. Grabbing a key, unlocking a door with the key, throwing it, switching weapons,)
Speak (the first time is free)
Why is this an action? Because I want to go for mid-combat arguments. So it must be meaningful to speak. It signals to the Psychopomp to take it seriously. And punchlines are cool, therefore first one is free.
Hack (Hack something with a probable vector. You give it a command, it follows with interpretation.)
Hack a demonic rig with psalms. Hack a cybered up door with a neurolink. Hack a Heiro-hedonist with a Vibro-rapture bullet (Ew? Yum! Confused!). Failures and risks depend on the vector.)
Investigate (Ask a question, psychopomp answers truthfully if method is correct. otherwise states a correct method.)
CHOKE (if you were forced to CHOKE as part or after your last sequence, all actions until you do CHOKE again voluntarily have a +1d4 failure chance as trauma impinges on you. You roll the choke from your list.)
Remember, you get to interpret the prompt, and the Psychopomp may ask for MORE
Survey (find one probable, mundane element in the environment of your own choice, or have the psychopomp or another player generate 3 as your eyes survey the area.)
The Horrid dance of war. Don't know the artist.
D A R K B A R G A I N S
When invoked, fact is altered for now. Your next sequence will instead be bargaining: A dark bargain is when your character wants something so badly that you will pay who-ever is willing to answer to alter fact as it happens: state what you are willing to pay, or who you call if you know.
How does the bargaining work? It can be inside the characters head, in a nega-hell dimension, in the middle of combat where the player character, now encased in fordite, bargains with capitalist overloads for momentary gain.
In any case, something will answer. And they will decide the cost. Who suffers. What string they gain on you. It is written on your sheet as a trait. A trait may even be changed or stolen away. The Psychopomp decides if the cost is enough, may ask for a larger cost, and makes sure the bargain will be DARK. (Remember again, follow the wants of your table. You are a lover first)
If the player rejects the bargain it will be even worse than before. Psychopomps interpretation.
C O U N T // T O // C A R T R I D G E
Some combat actions require you to spend bullets.
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Default: 1 bullet per action, unless otherwise stated.
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If you spend more than you have: That action does not happen, bullets are spent. Click, not bang.
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You may choose to Overdrive instead: the weapon becomes unstable. Poorly maintained. Sometimes cursed. Some OVERDRIVES scorch your hand. Some whisper your name.
Why this?
Because bullets matter. Not as bean-counting. As rhythm. As risk.
As click instead of bang.
You twist into the fireline.
Steady breath. Sights aligned.
Finger tightens. 1d6 bullets.
click. Not enough bullets.
And the mook turns. Gun raised.
Do you overdrive and jam in the mag?
Do you gamble with the future to save the now?
Don’t count the bullets in your inventory. They don’t exist until loaded.
Instead: ask how many are in the gun. Just cap it. Six is a good standard number. That is one shot and a 1d6 special shot. Enough risk.
Picking up a weapon should have you roll how many bullets are left inside the cartridge.
But do track special bullets—the strife-bringers, the name-bound, the ones etched with memory.
Don’t force players to declare them before firing.
That’s not the point.
Instead, let them take the action in their sequence and say:
“This one. This fucker.
I loaded the Trackhound before.
It will find them, even if they run.”
More drama. More weight. More clarity of intent.
This kind of tactical sequencing is honey to some, noise to others.
So:
Do what fits your table.
I am not your mother.
PROCEDURE
only player characters take action.
A player can say what they want to do: You describe your general movement, always including where they want to end up, who they want to shoot.
If another player can make a shorter sequence right then and there, they go before. Psychopomp decides.
I really wanted to adapt F(r)ictional initiative - but that really only works with a system where players and npc's act equally. I'll probably make it fit, but it needs to be much faster to preserve the feeling of speed.
Until then, this'll have to do.
Step 1: Declare Sequence
You describe your general movement.
Then you go through each step of the sequence. You are welcome to say What risks you’re willing to take on yourself for the psychopomps inspiration.
Each step in your sequence is resolved in order.
The first time you use an action and you fulfill its requirements in a sequence, it succeeds. Attacking someone follows what common sense dictates about COVER.
Repeated uses of the same action in the same sequence increase failure chance:
2nd use. Roll 1-in-3 chance of failure. The failure happens before the step.
3rd use. Roll 2-in-3 chance of failure. The failure happens before the step.
4th+ use. Automatic failure. The failure happens after the step
R I S K R E Q U I R E S H A R M
The Psychopomp tallies all the risks that you took as part of the sequence, considering your traits, methods, positioning and what threatened you, if anything. R I S K R E Q U I R E S H A R M
Other characters can be targetted as part of your turn too.
If the sequence takes place in a dangerous space — the Psychopomp must include harm as a risk.
If there’s no risk of harm, the fiction hasn’t been made sharp enough. Step it up.
Remember, risks are specific things that the player distinctly want to avoid.
There are also things that just happen.
Press an elevator's button panel, and it will be directed.
Throw a match into oil, and it will be set on fire.
These things just happen, but the Psychopomp must declare them at the sequence step
C O V E R D E F I N E D
To keep risk resolution smooth and intuitive, I have made a mechanical conceit. It also helps push players to parkour.
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A character in their own sequence is considered in COVER if they end their sequence in COVER to the source of the harm, else they are OPEN
To recap, COVER negates harm risks that rely on exposure (gunfire, watching eyes - Not shrapnel and Bees). Being OPEN can have other benefits.
The Psychopomp assigns each of these individual risks a d6. You then roll all risk dice together:
If dice are different: the highest die determines what happens. If multiple risks share this number, they all appear.
If a double is a six: evade all risks and a signature emerges from what you did.
S I G N A T U R E // E M E R G E N C E
When you roll double sixes on your risk dice:
You evade all risks.
You become more than mortal.
You earn a Signature Emergence.
You must create A signature move, with or without a trait.
A Signature Move
A named, stylized action. Derived directly from your sequence.
This is not a new mechanic. It is a formalization or interpretation of what already occurred.
It should be:
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Descriptive (what it looks like, what it costs or requires)
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Fiction-first (what it does, not how it rolls)
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Non-nested (don’t name other moves in the title — say what it causes on its own terms. It avoids the pain of increasing failure chances on conditionals.)
If it also changes your relationship to the world outside combat, write a Trait in addition. Whatever your table demands.
Examples:
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Spiral Takedown: down someone within arms reach. Gain momentum. Needs momentum.
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Cradlefire Swing: When swinging, may 1 Sloppy Drippy someone below you. Preserves momentum.
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Serpent’s Kiss: Requires position between target’s legs. 2 Sloppy Drippy. use the [non-existing] Poison sloppy-drippy table.
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Slick Tears: When ending your turn crying with a CHOKE, you may move laterally as well.
A Trait
Permanent change, born from violence or GRACE//DISGRACE.
Not an action. A reflection. A scar. A signal.
Not for use in combat directly.
Examples:
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Doesn’t flinch under small-arms fire
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Rig learned to fear crowds
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Your bones remember the impact
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Watches the exit before every kill
Table Procedure:
The player declares what the emergence looks like.
Everyone else? Applaud.
Try it out this session. If it feels weird, unusable, obscure, "overpowered" or breaks tone, refine it next time, together.
M O R E
The Psychopomp may at any point, when violence is gratuitous, a failure or CHOKE could be more degrading demand that you Keep going. You need to respond and escalate. You please the crowd.
(Write it down. They’ll remember you for this.)
The psychopomp may keep invoking more multiple times in a row, demanding greater violence or excess.
The player must respond:
Refuse. You stop. Failure remains, and all debasements you have done so far.
Or you go all the way until the psychopomp is satisfied. Expect to live with your violence, or//and that fiction escalates in response... later. You get to reroll your dice, in addition You very likely take a name. And you earn a measure of infamy. Write a trait and a signature emergence. Others will recognize you for this. You become more than what you were. Also take an OBOL, the market likes this.
Examples of how a more may haunt you:
A witness plots vengeance.
The river watches.
You hear sirens. Yes, again, literal sirens.
When to Use This:
After a victory that was too clean.
When a player wants to make a statement through cruelty. Make them regret it.
When the player could lean more into CHOKE or HACK.
When the table is leaning into the operatic. Make them savour it.
When the crowd, shades, the elites, the river is watching, and the character plays to it — even if the crowd is just ghosts and shade-children in the slums. The spectro-camera is rolling.
“More.” is not GM fiat — it’s a ritual incantation.
A dare. A litmus. A way to taste the red iron mist.
This is not “edge for edge’s sake.”
It’s about spectacle that stains, that breakdowns tear at agency, and power that eats the one who wields it.
If the table isn’t in the mood: don’t use MORE. Be respectful, and know your table. Remember, you are a lover first. But if they are up for it...
And the player smiles a little too wide at the kill.
Whispers something soft into a dying ear.
Does not really turn the blade upon themselves at a CHOKE.
... Ask for MORE.
T E S T T H E T R E S H O L D
The first time a character gets a sloppy drippy, they CHOKE instead.
Only player characters, named characters and recurring characters get a treshold test.
If you have more than one injury, you risk immediate death on any combat action, unless an action taken to keep it at bay is taken in the sequence - this is of course on top of all the fictional risks the injuries create.
Roll when attacked (named enemies roll too.)
Mooks are as dangerous as non-mooks here. If the gun can see you, it can reach you.
Roll 2d6 (if more dice are rolled, take the two highest)
-6 Clarity. It was less worse than you think. You avoid the harm.
7-8: downed (+1d6 to treshold tests while downed. cleared by getting up through vertical movement.)
9-10: sloppy drippy ( +1d6 to all treshold tests until healed from the horrible injury. How do you heal it? I dont know, save for a dip in the river, invoking the rig, or costly Obol-priced necro-cybernetics.)
11-12 Dead Again. Check this document for what death means.
N O T Q U I T E C O M B A T
SCAVENGE
After combat, Tally Obols: Named or recurring kills gives a single Obol. Describe whose obol it was. The Psychopomp describes the motif on the Obol.
Everyone may:
Say if there is a a weapon they want to pick up. They do.
Tend to the wounded and dying, or not. Those not tended to die. Those tended to do not, for now. The Psychopomp decides if they die or not, after you have left, unless you give them proper medical attention. In either case, they will remember.
RENDEVOUZ
For an Obol, the players may request a rendevouz point - the psychopomp will describe it nearby, but difficult or dangerous to reach where they can recoup.
These places are the sacred lifeblood lay-lines of Her, The River, Styx. The Obol calls to her. A character may choose inside to
DIP INTO HER
GAIN INTEL (Earn useful information about the mission)
RESUPPLY (Either restock mundane supplies fitting for your character, or take a single bullet from your list of bullets already earned or rare supplies fitting your character for an OBOL.)
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