Heyo. Love Blame! and was looking for something like this. 2 Questions:
1) in a Decay area why would anyone spend a moment to commune with the FDM and get damaged for 2 Hits?!
2) any suggestions for what to do with FDM infection? Am I missing something or should I just make a rule up (“hey, you need to find a squeegar to clear it or you can’t use your Type ability!”)
Obvs I'm not the author but I do have thoughts on these.
1) Sometimes games tell more compelling stories when characters make bad decisions. Bet you can imagine plenty of reasons why someone might trade pain and health risk for information they can't get anywhere else! Arguably many college students do a kind of this in real life...
2) The way I see it at least, the FDM should be handled as Big Serious Danger even compared to regular hazards of the Tower. This is certainly a making-up-rules type of game framework, but there being a well-established, reliable way to clear it would diminish the threat and fear factor more than I'd like. Your table could well be different though!
Taking a level in FRGMNT is definitely applicable since that is explicitly about getting partially infected but surviving, if you want to take it in a "you live but are made monstrous" way. Otherwise, I genuinely might make severe contamination a countdown-to-character-death thing and see what players do with the "how will you spend what you know to be your final hours?" scenario.
IMO games like this work best when you read between the lines of the rules and get deeply into what your characters would be thinking and feeling. How does life in this bizarre world effect them? How does the Tower GRIND YOU UP psychologically even in moments of relative safety?
Pretty much hit the nail on the head! There are no explicit mechanics for what you get from communing with the FDM or getting infected by it.
The two could be linked (get infected, now try and commune with it to find a cure or something). I like to think of the FDM as rather, cosmic horror eldritch. What exactly is it? Why is it consuming everything in its path? Communing with it could lead you toward those answers (or something else entirely depending on how the setting is unfolding in your game).
And for the infection, I like the idea of taking a level in FRGMT. You could also create a new ability the infection grants you, but one that comes at a great cost (impending death, total takeover by the will of the FDM, spread the infection unwittingly, etc).
